Emergency situations amplify individual tendencies to behave egoistically or prosocially

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-10/m-tho100516.php

Public Release: 5-Oct-2016
To help or not to help?
Emergency situations amplify individual tendencies to behave egoistically or prosocially
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

In emergency situations do people think solely of themselves? In a study published in Nature Scientific Reports, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development have shown that readiness to help depends heavily on personality. The results show that most people would help others in emergency situations, some of them even more so than in harmless everyday situations.

It is said that people show their true colours in times of adversity. In a recently published study, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development have found that extreme conditions bring out the good in people as well as the bad. In their experiments, prosocial and altruistic people in particular often helped others even more in an emergency situation than in a relaxed and non-threatening situation, whereas selfish participants became less cooperative. "Emergency situations seem to amplify people's natural tendency to cooperate," says Mehdi Moussaïd, researcher in the Center for Adaptive Rationality at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development.

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