The Helping Connection

A consistent theme appears repeatedly in this chapter: A sense of connection fosters helping. Throughout the chapter, this connection has taken various forms—genetic relatedness, empathic concern, sense of responsibility for some- one, perceived similarity, shared group membership, and so on. The relation- ship between helping and interpersonal connection runs like a bright red thread through much of the research on helping:

d People are prone to help their kin, in group members, and people with whom they have a close or reciprocal relationship.

d Two kinds of connections lie at the heart of the empathy–altruism hypothesis: the cognitive connection of perspective taking and the emotional connection of empathic concern.

d In an emergency, bystanders who know the victim or know each other are more likely to intervene.

d People who respond empathically to another’s suffering and consider the plight of others in their own moral reasoning are more likely to help than are others.

d Perceived similarity increases helping.

“To change the world we must be good to those who cannot repay us.”

—Pope Francis

Taken as a whole, these points suggest that helping requires the recognition of individual human beings with whom we can have a meaningful connection. Which brings us back to Ladder Company 6 and the so many others who risked and even lost their lives that day trying to save others. Most of the people didn’t know the others they were helping. But suddenly, horribly, fate had thrown them together, and suddenly their lives deeply mattered to each other. They felt responsible for each other. Many of those who helped in the face of grave danger may never have read the words that English poet John Donne wrote almost 400 years ago. But they would have understood them: