Exam 4

lecture

kin selection

• helping those genetically clsoe to you; aids in passing on related genetic material

altruism

• helping is selfless; end-state is increasing the welfare of the other

egoism

• helping is self-interested; end state is increasing helper’s own welfare

social exchange

• people engage in prosocial actions when cost/benefit equation allows it

norm of reciprocity

• expectation that people should repay prosocial behaviors

empathy

• the ability to experience events/emotions the way another person experiences them

batson et al. (1981)

• how to distinguish altruism from egoism? cost!

• empathy is by definition associated with altruism in their study

• empathy is evoked in terms of similarity to the person in need of help (dissimilar points to egoism, similar points to altruism)

• put in situations: difficulty of escape either easy (low cost) or difficult (high cost)

• IVs: similarity (high/low), difficulty of escape (2 trials/10 trials)

• result:

  • easy, dissimilar: 18%

  • difficult, dissimilar: 64%

  • easy: similar: 91%

  • difficult, similar: 82%

gender

• men: acute (help in situations when it’s a heroic act)

• women: chronic (help in normal, constant situations)

culture

• ingroup > outgroup

• cultural values

mood effects

• happy people more likely to engage in prosocial action to maintain their happiness

• sad people likely to engage in order to feel better

• neutral makes you less likely

bystander effect

• a person is less likely to help when others are present

• negative correlation between number of people and likeliness to help

decision tree

• darley and latane

• most people don’t follow through to engage in prosocial behavior

  • notice (urban overload, distraction) → interpret (audience inhibition, pluralistic ignorance) → assume (diffusion of responsibility) → know → decide (what’s the cost?) → help (if no at any point, then help will not be given)

urban overload

• people fail to notice events because they are trying to reduce their arousal due to city living

audience inhibition

• aka “evaluation apprehension”

• withholding help out of fear of embarrassment or negative evaluation

• eg: call police on neighbors because you think you hear something bad happening? but what if nothing was actually happening?

pluralistic ignorance

• interpreting as non-emergency due to apparently calm reaction of others

• we’re all looking at each other, internally panicking but everyone else looks calm → convince ourselves it isn’t important

• eg: how people reacted in thornton when the active shooter message popped up

latane & darley

• 1968

• “the smoke study”

• experiment:

  • Ps in a small room, asked to fill out very personal personality questionnaire

  • IV: alone, w/ 2 confederates, or w/ 2 naive Ps

  • measures: time to notice the smoke, time to seek help

• result:

  • noticed in <= 5 seconds:

    • 63% alone

    • 26% for 2 confed + 3 naive (median = 20 seconds)

      • don’t want it to seem like they’re looking at others’ papers, so purposefully restrict vision to just focus on their own paper

  • time to seek help

    • alone: reported within 2 min of noticing, 75% report before end

    • w/ 2 confederates: 10% report before end

    • 3 naive Ps: only 1st reporter timed, only 1 group reported in less than 4 min (delayed responses), 38% of groups reported

diffusion of responsibility

• the more bystanders present, the less responsibility each individual bystander feels to help

• the “why” that the bystander effect does not explain

• decrease this effect:

  • assign responsibility directly

cost

• people evaluate costs associated with helping

• maybe very low (dialing 911), maybe very high (running into a burning building)

darley & batson (1973)

• Ps: princeton theological seminary students (priests in-training)

• setup:

  • asked to plan a brief talk on (IV 1):

    • tasks required in vocation (eg: sitting next to someone’s deathbed, being on call for service 24/7, etc.)

    • good samaritan parable (eg: upstanding citizens walk right past someone who looks clearly beaten up, a good samaritan comes along and extends a helping hand)

  • told to record their talk on the other side of campus and they are (IV 2):

    • late (high hurry, high cost): if you leave now, you’ll be late

    • on-time (med. hurry): you’ll make it in time

    • early (low hurry, low cost): finished up early, plenty of time to make it

  • see “the victim” (some random guy slumped over)

  • helping response (DV), Ps given a score

    • 0: didn’t notice

    • 1: noticed, didn’t help

    • 2: indirect help

    • 3: asked victim

    • 4: escorted victim to a more helpful place

    • 5: stayed with the victim until they seem better

• result:

  • when the message was help-relevant, more prosocial action

  • overall not a very engaged response, mostly indirect help (score of 2 or less)

  • hurry level:

    • low: 63%

    • med: 45%

    • high: 10% → more rush, less likely to help (even if they gave good samaritan speech) because cost is perceived as too high

  • probably not different from how other, normal people would respond

group

• two or more people in an interdependent relationship that fulfills needs or achieves goals

  • important: size (2 or more), must be interdependent, must be trying to fulfill a goal or need (and interaction is helping you get there)

social roles

• takes place within a group

• will take on roles in group based on:

  • personal goals

  • personality

  • group identity

stanford prison experiment

• haney, banks, and zimbardo (1973)

• shows influence of social roles on behavior and thought

• use regular people, randomly assignment to “prisoner” or “guard”

• prisoners get (fake) arrested and strip-searched

• things escalate quickly, two prisoners got sent home because they broke down

• zimbardo acts as the “warden”, actually acts like

problems with the stanford prison experiment

• le texier, 2019

• guard “training”: guards kind of knew the results zimbardo desired (eg: loss of identity), given instructions

  • not the role and people’s understanding of the role that shaped their behavior, it was because they were told to do so

• demand characteristics: if Ps feel like experimenters will expect them to behave a certain way and want to match what they think the experimenters want

  • this is something that should be avoided; want to see real human behavior and not curated behavior

• unrealistic situation (people were very aware that it was an experiment)

• prewritten, nonacademic conclusions

  • zimbardo wanted to make the point that prisoners will come out worse than when they went in because the role of being a prisoner changes people

  • maybe (consciously or not) got carried away for the sake of proving a point

triplett (1898)

• wanted to see why cyclists seemed to ride faster in groups

• had several different ideas for why this may be (based on other theories/research)

  • people at the front of the pack will break the wind for people behind, allowing them to expend less energy to achieve the same result

• triplett theorized that the presence of other people

social facilitation

• either directly competing or even just watching you

• performance is enhanced

• caveat: seems to work on easy tasks, but not difficult ones

  • why? presence of others doesn’t actually improve performance. rather, it causes arousal, which facilitates a dominant response. focusing more on an easy task makes it even easier. but harder tasks already require all of your focus, so the presence of an audience doesn’t make any different with arousal

• for easy (for you) tasks, the dominant response is success

• for difficult (for you) tasks, the dominant response is failure

mere presence

• conspecifics (same species) create arousal

evaluation apprehension

• desire to avoid embarrassment/negative evaluation

• effort is being put into avoiding embarrassment, which takes away from the effort that could have been instead put toward focusing on the task at hand

• requires for other people to see you and for your to feel like they’re judging you

• when you’re doing difficult math problems, you do worse when there is an audience

distraction

• if the presence of others can create arousal, can’t it be anything that draws your attention away?

• presence of others causes attentional conflicts & cognitive overload that affect performance

• created a condition where lights mounted on a framework are flashing and moving when you’re doing math problems (distraction w/o evaluation apprehension)

ringelmann

• experiment

• IV: number of workers

• DV: amount of work

• result: people put in less work as the number of workers increases. 8 people only produce the “output” expected of 4

• demonstrates social loafing

coordination loss

• productivity decreases due to imperfectly coordinate effort

• maybe people are pulling the rope as hard as they can, but at different intervals

• eg: coxswain keeps rowers coordinated → higher efficiency

social loafing

• doesn’t look at arousal, looks at anonymity

• individual is not evaluated, but the group is

• if i’m not being recognized for my contribution to the end product, what effect does that have on my performance?

• individuals within groups whose effort can’t be identified perform

  • poorly on simple tasks/tasks they don’t care about

    • relaxation occurs in big group, and there’s no blame

  • better on complex tasks/tasks important to them

    • relaxation occurs because the task takes greater attention and effort, no effort spared for micromanaging

• DIFFERENT from social facilitation (not anonymous)

group polarization

• tendency for groups of like-minded individuals to make decisions that are more extreme than the initial leanings of its members

myers & bishop

• 1970

• pretest: assessed hs students individually on prejudice

• IV: divided into higher (upper 1/3) and low (lower 1/3) prejudice groups

• high prejudice people were put in the same discussion group and prompted to discuss questions that had appeared on the pretest (which occurred awhile ago)

• result: substantial increase in prejudice

why?

• informational influence: hear new information and good arguments that makes current position feel so much stronger (and much more middle of the road)

• normative influence: i’m in a group that was put together by researchers; naturally want to be good members of groups that we’re a part of. try to be more extreme because current position already seems middle of the road

prisoner’s dilemma

• recall wall street game vs. community game

• pits what’s good for the individual against what’s good for the group

harvesting dilemma

• tragedy of the commons

• looks at exploitation (are you going to exploit a resource that you are harvesting and benefit from?)

  • e.g., fishing, timber → other people also have access to these resources and want to benefit from them, too. how do i get more money? i fish more, cut down more trees. however, these resources are not infinite. strong temptation to also take advantage of the resource because if i don’t, i’m missing out (especially if my livelihood depends on it.

• smaller piece of the pie, but the pie is still there vs. get what you can while you can and get out

contributions dilemma

• there is a resource present that people have access to

• the resource needs to be maintained, but you are not required (individually) to maintain it (eg: npr, pbs, wikipedia)

• these problems will exist because people are making choices that benefit them. will

solving dilemmas

• only go away when people sacrifice their best interest

• how do we get people to go against their individual best interests?

• methods to “solve”:

  • coercion: oftentimes from the government, trade organizations, etc. (eg: there are limits to catching fish, and you will be fined if you disobey). downside: people hate it

  • appeals to group identity: persuade in a way that prompts that aspect of your self-concept (“what’s an identity i can play on to get people to support this?”). harder and not as guaranteed as coercion, but makes people feel better about the group

    • both normative and informational social influence

    • eg: using npr tote bag + coffee mug → “i’m the kind of person that supports npr”

tit for tat

• if you do this, i will do the same thing (if you make a decision that benefits the individual, then i will too)

• in the iterative prisoner’s dilemma game, people will realize if you choose not to screw someone over, others realize you’re a good person → trust is built, and decisions are made to benefit the group rather than the individual (because if they choose themselves, you will change your answer too and both will be worse off)