Future Study Direction and Conclusion
The nature of helping has been debated for a long time. On the one hand, under the negative state relief model, the ultimate goal of helping is to relieve bystander’s negative mood, thus, pro-social behaviors are viewed as the results of helper’s selfishness and egoism. On the other hand, some disagree with this stance, and think that empathy, other than negative states, leads to helping behaviors. The debate continues, and it is thought that there is still a long run before reaching a consensus on the nature of helping.
In recent years, a large body of researches showed that motivations to help are different in different relationships and across different contexts. For example, it was found that empathic concern was linked to the willingness to help kin but not a stranger when egoistic motivators were controlled (Maner & Gailliot, 2007). To get a more comprehensive view, future studies should test the negative state relief model under different contexts. Such explorations would be crucial to dig out the contextual effects and psychological factors underlying prosocial behaviors.
Read more about this topic: Negative-state Relief Model
Famous quotes containing the words future, study, direction and/or conclusion:
“Plato—who may have understood better what forms the mind of man than do some of our contemporaries who want their children exposed only to “real” people and everyday events—knew what intellectual experience made for true humanity. He suggested that the future citizens of his ideal republic begin their literary education with the telling of myths, rather than with mere facts or so-called rational teachings.”
—Bruno Bettelheim (20th century)
“Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man?... We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!
A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“The conclusion has never changed: the worst sort of people come here for the worst sort of reasons and put upon those of us who have conveniently forgotten where we came from and how we got here.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)