Marisa Przyrembel

Zusammenfassung: Um zu erklären, warum Menschen an Unglücksorten zusehen, werden bisher auf theoretischer Basis biologische, individual- und sozialpsychologische Motive herangezogen. Empirische Untersuchungen in rettungsmedizinischen Kontexten fehlen bislang.In diesem Artikel werden anderen zugeschriebene Beweggründe für das Zuschauen an Einsatzorten erhoben. Zusätzlich wird ermittelt, wie viele Personen qua Selbstauskunft bereits bei Rettungsmaßnahmen zugesehen haben und was die eigenen Beweggründe dafür waren. Diese Beweggründe werden gegenübergestellt und mit bestehenden theoretischen Annahmen abgeglichen.Studie 1 – repräsentative Bevölkerungsbefragungen (t1 n = 1032, t2 n = 1012) im Abstand eines Jahres zu eigenem Zuschauen und Beweggründen bzw. jenen anderer. Studie 2 – Gelegenheitsstichprobe (n = 40) zur Bewertung der in Studie 1 ermittelten Beweggründe.Die Mehrheit der Befragten verneint, selbst an Einsatzorten zugesehen zu haben (t1: 80,1%, t2: 86,9%). Zu t2 berichten 131 Personen (12,95%) von eigenem Zuschauen und nennen ihre eigenen Beweggründe dafür. Insgesamt entsprechen diese weitestgehend den in der notfallpsychologischen Literatur postulierten Motiven. Die Beweggründe anderer werden überwiegend dispositional und abwertend ausdrückt. Dagegen werden eigene Beweggründe stärker selbstwertdienlich und situational formuliert. Die Daten werden vor dem Hintergrund des fundamentalen Attributionsfehlers diskutiert.

Research from psychology, neurobiology and behavioral economics indicates that a binary view of motivation, based on approach and avoidance, may be too reductive. Instead, a literature review suggests that at least seven distinct motives are likely to affect human decisions: “consumption/resource seeking,” “care,” “affiliation,” “achievement,” “status-power,” “threat approach” (or anger), and “threat avoidance” (or fear). To explore the conceptual distinctness and relatedness of these motives, we conducted a semantic categorization task. Here, participants were to assign provided words to one of the motives. By applying principal component analysis to the categorization assignments we represent the semantic inter-relations of these motives on a two-dimensional space, a “semantic atlas.” This atlas suggests that, while care and affiliation are conceptually close, affiliation is closer to threat avoidance (or fear); opposite to these motives we find achievement, consumption and power, with the latter lying closer to threat approach (or anger). In a second study, we asked participants to rate how well the motive-specific words obtained in the first study described their currently experienced feelings. We find that semantically close motives are also more likely to be experienced together, that is, we replicate most of the semantic relations in the “subjective atlas.” We discuss our findings in comparison to other multi-dimensional models of motivation, which show clear similarities. In addition to these motivational atlases, we provide a database of motive-specific words, together with the valence and arousal scores. These can be used for future research on the influence of motives on decision making.

Successful human social interaction depends on our capacity to understand other people's mental states and to anticipate how they will react to our actions. Despite its importance to the human condition, the exact mechanisms underlying our ability to understand another's actions, feelings, and thoughts are still a matter of conjecture. Here, we consider this problem from philosophical, psychological, and neuroscientific perspectives. In a critical review, we demonstrate that attempts to draw parallels across these complementary disciplines is premature: The second-person perspective does not map directly to Interaction or Simulation theories, online social cognition, or shared neural network accounts underlying action observation or empathy. Nor does the third-person perspective map onto Theory-Theory (TT), offline social cognition, or the neural networks that support Theory of Mind (ToM). Moreover, we argue that important qualities of social interaction emerge through the reciprocal interplay of two independent agents whose unpredictable behavior requires that models of their partner's internal state be continually updated. This analysis draws attention to the need for paradigms in social neuroscience that allow two individuals to interact in a spontaneous and natural manner and to adapt their behavior and cognitions in a response contingent fashion due to the inherent unpredictability in another person's behavior. Even if such paradigms were implemented, it is possible that the specific neural correlates supporting such reciprocal interaction would not reflect computation unique to social interaction but rather the use of basic cognitive and emotional processes combined in a unique manner. Finally, we argue that given the crucial role of social interaction in human evolution, ontogeny, and every-day social life, a more theoretically and methodologically nuanced approach to the study of real social interaction will nevertheless help the field of social cognition to evolve.