Pro and Anti-Social Behaviour

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering pro-social and anti-social behaviour, including definitions, theoretical models, and developmental stages from the provided lecture transcript.

Prosocial Behaviour

Behaviour that is defined by society as generally beneficial to other people and/or to the ongoing political or cultural system.

Helping

Any action that has consequences of providing some benefit to or improving the well-being of another person.

Casual helping

A form of prosocial behavior involving a small favour.

Substantial personal helping

A form of prosocial behavior involving considerable effort.

Emotional helping

A form of prosocial behavior providing emotional support.

Emergency helping

A form of prosocial behavior addressing an acute problem.

Altruism

Helping purely out of the desire to benefit someone else, with no benefit (and often a cost) to oneself.

Cooperation

Acting together in a coordinated way in the pursuit of shared goals, the enjoyment of joint activity, or furthering a relationship.

Bystander effect

A phenomenon where someone is more likely to help when they are the only witness; the likelihood of help decreases as the number of bystanders increases.

Pluralistic ignorance

Looking to others to interpret a situation in order to determine if it is an emergency.

Diffusion of responsibility

The belief that someone else will take responsibility in a witnessed situation.

Reciprocity norm

A social norm where individuals feel inclined to help those who have previously helped them.

Social responsibility norm

A social norm where individuals feel inclined to help others who are dependent on them.

Personal norms

Individual feelings of moral obligation regarding how to behave in a certain situation.

Negative state relief model

Using prosocial behaviour as a tool to relieve one's own sadness or distress.

Reciprocal Altruism ($Trivers, 1971$)

The theory that acts of help are naturally selected if animals remember and repay the favor in the future, providing long-term survival benefits.

Kin Selection (Inclusive Fitness)

The genetic predisposition to prioritize helping biological relatives to ensure shared genes survive, shifting focus from the individual to the genotype.

Genetic Determinism ($Rushton, 1989$)

The theory that humans subconsciously seek to help others who look or act like them, assuming physical similarity mirrors genetic similarity.

Dispositional Praise

Telling a child "You are a very helpful person," which targets their internal identity and is more effective at cementing habits than global praise.

Global Praise

Saying "That was a nice thing to do," which focuses only on an isolated action and is less effective at long-term change.

Audience inhibition

The fear of looking foolish or doing the wrong thing in front of others, which can paralyze the urge to intervene in emergencies.

Aggression

Any form of behaviour directed toward the goal of harming or injuring another living being who is motivated to avoid such treatment.

Proactive aggression

Premeditated, "cold-blooded" aggression that is goal-oriented.

Reactive aggression

Impulsive, "hot-blooded" aggression driven by frustration or threat.

Hostile aggression

Aggressive behaviour motivated by the desire to express anger and hostile feelings.

Instrumental aggression

Aggressive behaviour performed to reach a specific goal.

Steam-boiler method ($Lorenz$)

The theory that aggressive energy is produced continuously within the organism and will burst spontaneously unless released by external stimuli.

Adoption Studies

A study design comparing children to biological vs. adoptive parents to evaluate the influence of shared genes against shared environment.

Epigenetics

A field of study showing that adverse experiences may change a person’s genes related to aggressive behaviour.

Dual hormone hypothesis

The theory that the combination of high testosterone and low cortisol leads to high aggression.

Eros

The life instinct in Freudian psychoanalysis that drives pleasure seeking and fulfilment.

Thanatos

The death instinct in Freudian psychoanalysis that drives self-destruction.

Catharsis

A mechanism for releasing destructive energy by acting aggressively toward another to protect intrapsychic stability.

Displaced aggression

Aggression directed not at the source of frustration but at an unrelated, easier to access target.

Weapons effect

The finding that individuals previously angered show more aggressive behaviour in the presence of weapons than neutral objects.

Cognitive neo-associationism

The explanation of aggressive behaviour as the result of negative affect that activates a network of aggression-related thoughts and feelings.

Excitation transfer theory

The idea that neural physiological arousal becomes frustration arousal and instigates aggression based on arousal strength and labeling.

Aggressive scripts

Cognitive representations stored in memory that guide when and how to show aggressive behavior.

Bobo doll paradigm

A research model in which children were shown adult models behaving aggressively toward an inflatable clown, demonstrating observational learning.

Internalization Stage ($Cialdini$)

A stage ($15-16+$ years) where external norms become internalized and helping becomes intrinsically satisfying.

Compliance-concrete ($Bar-Tal$)

Helping only due to direct orders backed by threats of punishment, associated with operant conditioning.

Preconventional Morality ($Kohlberg$)

A level of morality (<7 years) where judgments are driven by fear of punishment or pursuit of rewards.

Postconventional Morality ($Kohlberg$)

A rare level of morality guided by internalized social contracts and universal ethical principles of conscience.

Facilitation ($Bandura$)

One of three model effects where the model prompts the performance of an already learned behaviour that complies with social norms.

Boomerang effect

A reduction in child sharing that occurs when a selfish model loses credibility by actively praising a child for being good.

Power-Assertive Discipline

Discipline involving physical punishment or threats, which serves as a negative predictor of prosocial behavior.

Inductive Discipline

Victim-centered discipline where parents draw attention to the plight of the victim or suggest reparation.

Foot-in-the-Door Technique

Securing compliance for a minor request to increase the likelihood of agreement to a larger request later, based on Self-Perception Theory.

Cumulative continuity

The maintenance of aggression via the accumulative negative consequences it generates over time.

Interactional continuity

The maintenance of aggression via the responses it triggers in the social environment.

Hostile Attribution Bias (HAB)

The habitual tendency to interpret another person’s ambiguous behavior as intentionally malicious or hostile.

Victim sensitivity

A facet of justice sensitivity involving the chronic expectation of being treated unfairly by others; positively correlates with aggression.

Perpetrator sensitivity

A facet of justice sensitivity involving the awareness that one’s own actions might cause injustice; negatively correlates with aggression.

Alcohol Myopia Model (AMM)

The theory that alcohol reduces cognitive capacity, causing people to focus on immediate salient cues while ignoring internal inhibitory cues.

Cyberball

A virtual ball-tossing experimental paradigm used to study the effects of social exclusion and ostracism.

Reflexive Stage ($Williams$)

The immediate stage of social exclusion characterized by automatic social pain, anger, and sadness, unaffected by situational explanations.

Temporal Precedence

The criterion in media research stating exposure to media violence must occur before criminal behavior to establish causality.

Internal Validity

The extent to which differences found in a study can be confidently attributed to the experimental variable, often high in laboratory experiments.

External Validity

The ability to generalize research findings to everyday real-life circumstances, often high in field experiments.

Homophily

The tendency for individuals, particularly aggressive children, to choose friends based on similarity, such as popularity level.

Bistrategic controllers

Individuals who use a mix of both prosocial and coercive strategies to control resources like toys or status.