Helping Reflect Social Rewards

Instructions: Post to your individual groups as part of a discussion.  Locate at least one real-world example of someone who helps another person (or non-human animal), and analyze the apparent motive(s) behind the helping behavior (i.e., does the helping reflect social rewards, personal distress, empathic concern, or some combination of these?).  Your example can be something that you experienced personally, something that you observed firsthand, or something that you read about in a news source, article, or online post.

Make sure to:

• Describe the specific example of helping behavior that you located,
• Analyze the helper’s apparent motivation in terms of whether it seems to reflect a social reward motive, a personal distress motive, or an empathic concern motive (or even some combination of these),
• Clearly explain why you think the helping reflects that motive, and what cues or information you used to determine which motive caused the helping