An employee is considering whether to help a coworker who is struggling with a difficult project. Helping would mean staying an hour late. According to the principles of social exchange, which of the following internal calculations would most likely lead the employee to help?

We make decisions (such as helping others) in order to maximize our rewards and minimize our costs.

New York University

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- Instinct and Genes
- Social Exchange
- Empathy and Altruism

Basic Motives Underlying Prosocial Behavior: Theories

Aronson, E., Wilson, T. D., Akert, R. M., & Sommers, S. R. (2018). Revel Social Psychology (10th ed.). Pearson.

Revel Social Psychology

Spielman, R. M., Jenkins, W. J., & Lovett, M. D. (2020, April 22). Psychology (2nd ed.). OpenStax. https://openstax.org/books/psychology-2e/pages/1-introduction

OpenStax Psychology (2nd ed.) Textbook

Social Exchange theory

Evolutionary psychologists attempted to explain prosocial behavior in three ways: kin selection, the norm of reciprocity, and group selection.

Theory of Prosocial Behavior: Instinct & Genes

Batson (1991) proposed that when we feel empathy for others, we will try to help out of purely altruistic reasons.

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