Altruism
Define altruism
doing something for someone else without any personal gain. AKA prosocial behavior, helping behavior. Any act where there’s help to another person without concern to one’s own benefit.
Define aggression and give an example of an aggressive act
any act intended to do harm to another person
What do hormones and genetics tell us about aggression?
Hormones—in every other culture except 2, men are more aggressive than women. Testosterone—children who receive these injections are very aggressive
Genetics—Females are XX, males are XY. Men who are XYY called “Supermen”, occurs in every 1/440 in the normal word but in prison populations 1/20. Also tends to make the men larger and more muscular, same with testosterone. May know this and take advantage of it
Define conformity
Conformity- the yielding or giving in to real or perceived group pressure.
Define a group
A group is two or more people who, for longer than a few moments, interact with and influence one another and perceive one another as "us"
Define the bystander effect and explain one study that shows this
What does instinct theory say about aggression?
Define catharsis and the hydraulic model
Catharsis—it’s not always true that frustration leads to aggression. If you don’t act on frustration, you get frustration residue. Over time, residue builds up. Hydraulic model the person can no longer hold it in, and it bursts. The person becomes aggressive at the smallest thing. Catharsis is releasing some of that residue so that the need to aggress goes down. You can either do it in a socially acceptable way. Sometimes you take it out on someone smaller/weaker (children, spouse) this is displacement. Other thing is scapegoating hold minority groups responsible for something that they have nothing to do with.
Compare and contrast informational social influence and normative social influence
Normative social influence—conforming to belong. Public commitment, privately disagree.
Informational social influence—conforming in order to be correct. They don’t know the right answer, so they use each other’s’ answers as information. Not even really conformity, more like pluralistic ignorance. Public commitment, private commitment.
Define social facilitation in its current meaning
The strengthening of dominant (prevalent) responses in the presence of others
Boosts performance on easy tasks and hurts performance on difficult tasks
Define pluralistic ignorance and explain one study that shows this
Define disinhibition effect and one study that shows this
Disinhibition effect—once you break the barrier once, it becomes easier the next time
the condition when there was no insult and they gave a sample shock, they then proceeded to give the highest shock out of the rest of the conditions
What does cue theory say about aggression? Explain one study that showed this
Cue theory (Berkowitz et al., 1972)—according to him it’s not the finger that pulls the trigger, it’s the trigger that pulls the finger. If you are in the presence of aggressive cues, it makes it that much easier to become aggressive in its presence. The presence of weapons brings out human beings’ violent nature.
When rifle present and were insulted, much higher shock
Explain the Milgram study and what it says about obedience
Milgram shock experiment, were obedient to authority to the point of giving deadly shocks b/c they were told to do so
Explain social loafing
Social loafing is the tendency for people to exert less effort when they pool their efforts toward a common goal then when they are individually accountable
Identify at least 3 things that make people more likely to exhibit helping behavior
Explain the frustration-aggression hypothesis and one study that shows this
Frustration-Aggression—Miller & Dollord (1939)
1:1 ratio for frustration and aggression. If you are frustrated, you must aggress. If you aggress, you must be frustrated and no other reason.
Frustration- the arousal experienced when we have a goal that is blocked
Hokanson (1967)—subject is teacher, confederate is learner. Teacher uses electric shock as punishment to teach learner pairs of words. Half of the subjects are insulted by the confederate prior to beginning teaching process (in order to frustrate them). Half the subjects are low shock, other half are high shock. DV: level of arousal that the subject shows as the teaching is going on.
Insult & high shock—lowers arousal a lot
Insult & low shock—lowers arousal a little
No insult & high shock—no change
No insult & low shock—no change
Explain the Bandura (1973) experiment with Bobo dolls and what theory this supports
Social Learning Theory—
Bandura (1973)—when kids watch an adult model kill/stab Bobo and then introduce the kids, the kids will do the same exact thing. The kids imitate the adult whether the adult was live, on film, or a cartoon.
Explain the Asch (1951) experiment and the type of conformity it shows
Asch (1951)—used an objective (unambiguous) stimulus: line length comparisons (which line is most like the others). 7 other “subjects” that are really confederates. Go around in the circle and everyone says answer aloud (real subject is last), first few times, everyone says correct answer. Next time the confederates give obviously wrong answer, subject gives the same wrong answer 38% of the time. Then Asch takes subject outside alone, tell me what the correct answer is, subject gives the correct answer, asks subject why they said wrong answer, subject says I was afraid if I didn’t say that that they would ostracize/ridicule me.
Normative social influence—conforming to belong. Public commitment, privately disagree.
Explain group polarization
Group-produced enhancement of members' preexisting tendencies; a strengthening of the members' average tendency, not a split within the group
What are the 5 stages that someone must go through to help?
1. Notice the event
2. Perceiving the event as an emergency
3. Perceiving responsibility to help
4. Decide an appropriate assistance
5. Decide to implement decision
Explain the excitation-transfer model of aggression and one study that shows this
We excite you through one means (e.g.: exercise), but you transfer that excitement to another thing (i.e.: we get you angry from insult, if you exercised first, you’ll be even more angry).
Zilman (1999)-- those who watched the most arousing movie (The Couch) and were insulted gave the highest shocks
Define deindividuation and how it applies to the Stanford Prison Experiment
Deindividuation—in a group, people can become much more aggressive than they are as individuals. B/c in a group lose sense of individuality and become capable of doing things that they would never do as individuals. Other ways to create anonymity: driving, sunglasses, masks
Zimbardo et al. – Stanford prison experiment, put them in uniforms. Uniforms hide our identity.
This is why there is so much bullying on the internet.
Explain the Sherif (1935) experiment and what type of conformity it shows
Sherif (1935)—autokinetic effect in which people perceive movement of a spot of light in a very dark room that is not actually there. Ambiguous stimulus. Wanted to see if he could get people to conform to an estimate.
Session 1: all subjects by themselves
Session 2: all together, start coming together
Session 3: all together, come together more
Session 4: all together, all subjects have converged on the same estimate
Session 5: 1 year later, by themselves, they say the group answer
Informational social influence—conforming in order to be correct. They don’t know the right answer, so they use each other’s’ answers as information. Not even really conformity, more like pluralistic ignorance.
Private commitment—subjects give the same answer whether in public or in private
Explain groupthink and define mindguards
Groupthink is the mode of thinking that people engage in when concurrence-seeking (seeking to agree) becomes so dominant in a cohesive in-group that it tends to override realistic appraisal of alternative courses of action
Overestimate group's invulnerability, morality, become close-minded, and more.
Mindguards-- protect members of the group from disagreeable facts