The Strategic Side of Out-Group Helping

The act of helping is a way of sharing information and expertise, a means of redistributing wealth, and the primary tool by which people take care of less fortunate others. We often do this, as a society, out of genuine empathic concern for others (Batson, 1994), sometimes augmented by reciprocity beliefs (Eisenberger, Armeli, Rexwinkel, Lynch, & Rhoades, 2001; Hardy & van Vugt, 2006). Recently researchers have begun to recognize the importance of group membership in the study of helping behaviors (e.g., Hopkins, Reicher, Harrison, Cassidy, Bull, & Levine, 2007; Levine, Prosser, Evans, & Reicher, 2005; Nadler & Halabi, 2006; Stürmer, Snyder, Kropp, & Siem, 2006; Stürmer, Snyder, & Omoto, 2005). A growing body of evidence is showing that people are not necessarily less willing to help members of other groups (thus there is no clear evidence pointing in the direction of an in-group bias in helping; Saucier, Miller, & Doucet, 2005); however, the reasons for helping out-group members as opposed to in-group members do differ substantially (Stürmer et al., 2006). Some of the motives for out-group helping can be labeled “prosocial,” for example when they are rooted in the belief that we share a common bond with the out-group (e.g., Levine et al., 2005). However, oftentimes out-group helping is beneficial only to the in-group and to the self as a member of that group, potentially even at the expense of the out-group who is the recipient of help. These in-group-serving motives for out-group helping are the central focus of the current chapter. The argument that helping may be advantageous to the provider of help as well as to the recipient of help is not new. For example, Gil Clary, Mark Snyder, and their colleagues have already argued that 9781405178815_4_004.qxd 12/06/2009 10:58 Page 81