About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about the topics of helping and help-seeking within social psychology, focusing in particular on: (i) defining helping or ‘prosocial behaviour’ more generally as ‘acts done for the benefit of others’ and consider how common this type of behaviour is; (ii) the importance of thinking about helping as a transaction between two or more people; (iii) highlighting the fact that, to fully understand the psychology of helping, we must examine the circumstances and motivations of the help-seeker or receiver, as well as the help-giver.

About the lecturer

Dr Juliet Wakefield is a senior lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Nottingham Trent University. Dr Wakefield is a member of the Groups, Identities, and Health research group and has research interests in the social identity approach and implications of group membership. Some of Dr Wakefield’s recent publications include ‘Communities as conduits of harm: a social identity analysis of appraisal, coping and justice-seeking in response to historic collective victimisation’ (2022) and ‘The link between family identification, loneliness, and symptom severity in people with eating disorders’ (2022).