Theories Of Prosocial Behavior In The Movie 'Solomon Northup'

SUMMARY

It revolves around a man named Solomon Northup, an African American who was kidnapped and forced into slavery for 12 whole years. He was a free man living with his wife and children in Saratoga, New York until he was tricked and kidnapped by two men who went by the names of Merrill Brown and Abram Hamilton in 1841. Solomon believed the two men came with good intentions and accepts the offer to travel to Washington DC where slavery was legal. Little did he know that Brown and Hamilton were tricksters with wicked minds. He wakes up the next morning just to find himself in shackles. After this Solomon Northup is transported by various slave traders, sold and treated like livestock. He is forced to work on plantations in the Deep South

In the movie we see how the overseer on Mr fords plantation saves Solomon from Tibeats and also how one of the female slaves moves out of her way to offer Solomon while everyone else just watches and ignores the fact that Solomon was hanging for hours together. Secondly Bass helps Solomon by putting his own life in danger. All these instances refer to prosocial behaviour which consists of many theories to explain it in various ways. One explanation of prosocial behaviour is the empathy-altruism hypothesis which shows that people help others purely because they sense the person is in need by empathising , where they are selfless and go to the extent of risking their own lives(Batson & Oleson , 1995) such as Bass. Bass was against slavery and the mistreatment of black people unlike Mr Epps who compared them to gorillas. Many other motives can explain prosocial behaviour such as the negative –state relief model which proposes that we help people in order to improve our negative mood. Next the empathetic joy hypothesis shows that we help people so that we can see a positive reaction from them which makes us feel good about ourselves and also kin selection theory and defensive helping are two other explanations. Usually we assume that more number of people equals more help but this is proved to be the opposite by the bystander effect. in the movie we see how Solomon is left hanging and people just ignore and act as though it is normal for someone to be suffering that way and no one goes to untie him until Mr ford arrives and does so himself. One event that had a huge impact on research was the murder of kitty Genovese where her neighbours did nothing to help her or reported the crime to the police while a man was trying to murder her. Diffusion of responsibility