Your first assignment asked you to develop a behaviour modification plan to change a behaviour of your own. With assignment 2, I’m asking you to think about how to increase prosocial or altruistic behaviour in other people. These are fancy ways of saying acts of kindness or generosity directed toward others that do not appear to be directly related to an external reward. Your textbook doesn’t cover altruism/prosocial behaviour and I think it is essential, so for this assignment you will use information from websites that I provide in these instructions to define the key terms, and to offer a general introduction to the altruistic behaviour you choose. You will use information from these sources and your creativity, to design advertisements to increase the altruistic behaviour you choose. Please read the following instructions carefully and ask questions of your assigned TA early in the process of preparing this assignment to avoid confusion and significant loss of marks.

You have 2 choices for the altruistic/prosocial behaviour your assignment will focus on:

Option 1: Blood donation 

Rationale: Canada has one of the lowest rates of blood donation in the developed world, with only a tiny percentage of eligible blood donors regularly donating blood. That number is even lower in big cities like Toronto. This means that Canada Blood Services frequently experiences extreme shortages of blood supply that put all of us at risk, should we require surgery or blood transfusions for any reason. I want you to read about this issue and following the instructions below, design two advertisements to increase the rate of blood donation in the Canadian population.

OR

Option 2: Donations to food banks

Rationale: Food insecurity has always been an issue, but the pandemic and related inflation has created the perfect storm for people struggling to put food on the table. Food is increasingly expensive, while wages haven’t increased accordingly, and many people are struggling to find or keep their jobs. Food banks have seen a massive increase in demand, which has not been met by a corresponding increase in donations. I want you to read about this issue and following the instructions below, design two advertisements to increase donations to food banks in Canada. 

Once you have chosen one of these 2 options to focus on, you must come up with 2 advertisements that would increase societal awareness of the issue and perhaps target those best positioned to help. For each of your 2 advertisements, you must describe the type of advertisement you would create and how it would be distributed (e.g., TV ads, Infographics, flyers distributed via regular mail, door-to-door canvassing with flyers, social media ads or hashtags, Tiktok videos, etc.). You must include details on the specific content or messaging of the advertisements. You don’t actually have to make these advertisements, but you do need to be specific in terms of what they would say, who would be featured in them, if your ads include people, and how you would get them out to the general public. This is your chance to be creative, but be clear in your ideas. 

Each of your advertisements must be directly and explicitly guided by one of the following influences on prosocial/altruistic behaviour and each advertisement must be guided by a different influence. For example, this means that if one of your advertisements is guided by kinship, then the other advertisement must be guided by reciprocity or social responsibility norm. 

1. Kinship

2. Reciprocity norm

3. Social responsibility norm