Microsoft Word Chapter 1 done doc

Personality and prosocial behaviour – Researchers proposed 
five important dimensions of altruistic personality. 
1) Empathy
2) Belief is just world 
3) Social responsibility

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4) Internal Locus of control and
5) Low egocentrism. 
How does one feel to receive help – 
When someone comes to provide you help the expectation 
is that the victim must react positively with feelings of gratitude. But 
this may not happen in every instance, a person who receives help 
may experience discomfort and feel resentful towards a person who 
is providing help Elderly adults to require help from others due to 
physical impairment but they feel depressed that they have to 
depend on others for helping. 
Receiving help lowers the self esteem of the person, if a 
person who helps is similar in education, age and many other 
characteristics (Depaulo et al 1981). When self esteem is 
threatened, it creates a feeling of dislike towards a person who 
offers help. Similarly, when a member of a stigmatized group (eg. 
black) gets unasked help from non stigmatized group then it is 
perceived as patronizing insult (Schneider 1996). 
Help from younger sibling is also unpleasant (Searcy and 
Eisenberg 1992). Help from non sibling or non similar person is 
seen more positively. Generally, if someone who is similar to you 
helps you, it indirectly raises the question about competitiveness.
When person responds negatively to being helped there is one 
positive aspect that accompanies it is that the person is motivated 
for self help in future (Fisher, Nadler and Whilche Algana 1982).
Such motivation can reduce the dependence on others, eg., when a 
family receives a financial help from family, friends and neighbors it 
creates a feeling of inadequacy and resentment. This may 
motivate a person to work hard and avoid such problems in the 
future. But when help comes from government agencies, the 
positive self image is retained and very little efforts are made to 
avoid future crisis.