The psychology of helping behavior is a topic that has received a great deal of scholarly scrutiny, and researchers are divided as to whether the motives for helping others are genetic or environmental. Scholars who fall within the “genetic” camp argue that individuals who have been born with the innate propensity for empathy, altruism, and religiosity will be more likely to help an individual in distress. On the other hand, those scholars with a more “environmental” approach claim that external factors such as the cost to the potential helper and the likelihood that they will be witnessed in the helping behavior are more likely to help. In the research undertaken for this paper, it appears that while internal personality factors play a minor role in the propensity of an individual to help others, environmental factors play a much stronger role. In short, when an individual weighs the decision to help another, they engage in a conscious “cost-benefit” analysis that includes several factors, including the cost to themselves, the likelihood that helping the person will pay off in the long term, and the social proximity of the distressed individual to themselves.

While most ethical systems and world religions constantly exhort individuals to strive to be helpful to others, this behavior does not always manifest itself as much as it could. In the literature on helping behaviors, one of the most cited case studies is that of Kitty Genovese, a woman who was murdered in 1964 in broad view of an apartment complex. When the complex residents were questioned as to why they did not help Genovese, many responded that they were afraid for their own safety if they got involved, and others stated that they presumed someone else would step in to help. While not all situations that require people to make a decision to engage in helping behavior are as extreme as the Genovese case, it nonetheless appears to be the case that people generally engage in a detached analysis of the cost-benefit ratio of helping another person before they decide to engage with the situation.

In a 1973 examination of helping behaviors among people who clearly identified as religious, and considered themselves to be “helpful” individuals, Darley and Batson found that the single greatest determinant of helping behavior was whether or not the potential helper was “in a hurry.” Additionally, the issue of social proximity appeared to be a factor in this study; the distressed individual was a man who was slumped in an alleyway in a major metropolitan area. Thus, the potential helpers under scrutiny may have simply presumed the man was a homeless individual with a drug or alcohol problem, and that trying to help him would not do much good in the long term. In a 2016 study of helping behaviors within an organizational context, Choi and Moon found that individuals were much less likely to help if they perceived “low levels of efficacy in helping.” This is not to say that people were only likely to help if they believed that it would pay off for them personally in some way, but that they wanted to be assured that their efforts would pay off for the distressed individual, or serve a greater organizational good.

The strength of external, environmental factors in motivating helping behaviors is further reinforced by several other studies of this phenomenon. A 2013 article by Paciello et al measured test subjects for the personality dimensions of empathic tendencies, personal distress, prosocial moral reasoning, and moral disengagement. While Paciello et al (2013) initially hypothesized that individuals who displayed high levels of empathic tendencies and prosocial moral reasoning would be far more likely to engage in helping behaviors, they ultimately found no correlation between a subject’s personality traits and propensity to help in a given situation. Further, Oswald (2002) found no correlation whatsoever between high levels of empathy and a demonstrated willingness to help others in distress. Oswald (2002) concluded that people, of any personality type, are most likely to engage in helping behaviors when “it makes them feel good.” As for what made these subjects “feel good,” Oswald (2002) found that a low potential cost for helping combined with an expectation of future reciprocity from the helped individual provided the “helper” with positive feelings. Moreover, a 2012 examination of helping behaviors by members of racial minorities who work in business organizations by Singh and Winkel found that individuals are much more likely to help when they strongly perceive that they are respected by their organization. In short, people are much more likely to engage in helping behaviors when they believe that there will be a payoff, real or imagined, to themselves, and these factors are all environmental. Often, the status and behavior of the distressed individual is the deciding factor in determining whether others will decide to help them or not.

While most decent individuals like to think of themselves as helpful individuals who would not ignore a distressed human being in any circumstance, the available research indicates that this is clearly not the case. While genetics may play a role in our selective altruism—it is likely that we have been hard-wired to save our energies for members of our own in-group—it is clear that environmental factors play a much stronger role in our propensity to help. Human beings can be incredibly altruistic creatures, but only to a certain extent, and usually only when there is an implicit promise of future reciprocity.