Helping behavior refers to voluntary actions intended to help the others, with reward regarded or disregarded. It is a type of prosocial behavior (voluntary action intended to help or benefit another individual or group of individuals, such as sharing, comforting, rescuing and helping).
Altruism is distinguished from helping behavior. Altruism refers to prosocial behaviors that are carried out without expectation of obtaining external reward (concrete reward or social reward) or internal reward (self-reward).
Famous quotes containing the words helping and/or behavior:
“To me it seems that to give happiness is a far nobler goal that to attain it: and that what we exist for is much more a matter of relations to others than a matter of individual progress: much more a matter of helping others to heaven than of getting there ourselves.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“The ease with which problems are understood and solved on paper, in books and magazine articles, is never matched by the reality of the mother’s experience. . . . Her child’s behavior often does not follow the storybook version. Her own feelings don’t match the way she has been told she ought to feel. . . . There is something wrong with either her child or her, she thinks. Either way, she accepts the blame and guilt.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)