Sociology Exam 2

Helping

any behavior intended to benefit another person

Latane and Darley

students believed they were hearing students in another room have a medical emergency. The number of other people they thought were also hearing it varied from one student to another

Bystander effect

the more people who witness an emergency, the less likely any one of them is to help

Pluralistic ignorance

when each person in a group is privately unsure, but everyone assumes from everyone else’s calm that nothing is wrong

Diffusion of responsibility

the more people who are present, the less responsible each one feels

Altruism

voluntary self-sacrificing behavior intended to benefit another person whith no expectation of external reward

Egoism

the view that self-interest is the actual motive of all conscious action

Empathy

an emotional response to others as it we ourselves were in the other person’s situation, feeling pleasure at their pleasure and pain at their pain

Empathy-altruism hypothesis

empathic concern for a person in need produces helping that is truly altruistic

Public good

something that everybody in a group benefits from, whether or not they helped pay for it

Free rider problem

when people can benefit from public good without contributing, each person is tempted to let everybody else do the work

Conditional cooperator

someone who contributes as long as they believe other people are contributing

Braggart’s dilemma

Bragging about good deeds in particular backfires because it leads people to question the motive behind the giving

Altruistic punishment

paying a cost to yourself to punish somebody who isn’t contributing

Norm of reciprocity

we should help those who have helped us

Generalized exchange

I help you, you help somebody else, and somewhere down the line somebody helps me

Social responsibility norm

A widely accepted social norm stating that individuals should help people who are dependent on them

Crowding out

When paying people for something they were doing for social reasons leads them to do less of it (Crowding out is when offering a reward (like money) makes someone lose their natural desire to do a good deed)

Ego depletion

the idea that self-control draws on a limited supply that gets used up

Loneliness

feeling isolated from others. It is only weakly related to how much time a person actually spends alone

Habituation

as we are frequently exposed to something our physiological and emotional responses diminish

Love

deep affection that sustains over time

John Watson

founder of love, all emotions are learned reflexes (He was WRONG)

Well being is…

based largely in how people cope with the struggles they will inveitably experience

Love is a feeling of pleasure but also

protection

4 things to make sure of before intervening in a situation

notice something, decide its an emergency, decide its your responsibility, decide to act

End of history illusion

people at all ages tend to believe that they have undergone considerable change and growth to become who they currently are, and also that they will not substantially grow and change in the future

meta-emotions

our feelings about our feelings

The widower effect

people become more likely to die in the period immediately after their spouses die

The opposite of love

indifference

Aggression

behavior intended to harm another person who wants to avoid it

Three facts about violence

It rises and falls fast, it is hard to do, it is concentrated in small neworks

Confrontational tension

the tension and fear that build when people face off, which usually keeps a confrontation from turning violent

Forward panic

tension that builds during a confrontation and then suddenly releases at all once, in a rush of attack, once the other side suddenly looks weak

Frustration-aggression hypothesis

When something blocks you from reaching a goal, you feel frustrated, and that frustration makes you more likely to act aggressively

Who gets helped?

people we think deserve it, people we see as one of “us”

About how much do we as humans underestimate each other?

about half

How groups get people to help

reputations, rules, relations

Groups reward individual sacrifice

People who give to the group earn respect; getting respect leads people to give more, and getting respect leads people to value the group more

Character contest

a confrontation in which each person tries to save face at the other’s expense

Violence as social control

using force to punish what the person doing it sees as a wrong (they are righting wrongs")

Interpersonal attraction

a postive attitude held by one person toward another person

Proximity

physical closeness. The people we happen to be near are the people we’re most likely to like

Mere exposure effect

repeated exposure to the same stimulus produces a more positive attitude towards it

What is beautiful is good

the tendency to assume that physically attractive people also have other good qualities

Foci

The places and activities that bring the same people together again and again

Homophily

The tendency for people to form ties with people who are similar to themselves

Jonathan Haidt (reasoning)

intuitions came first, strategic reasoning second

Moral dumbfounding

Holding firmly to a moral judgement while being unable to give reasons for it