Pro- and Anti-Social Behaviour Lecture Notes

This set of flashcards covers the definitions, philosophical views, biological explanations, and psychological models of pro- and anti-social behaviour as discussed in the lecture.

Prosocial behaviour

Behaviour that benefits others, which is culture-dependent and defined by society.

Helping

Actions that provide benefit or improve another person’s wellbeing.

Casual helping

Doing a small favour for an acquaintance.

Substantial personal helping

Considerable effort to give a friend a tangible benefit.

Emotional helping

Providing emotional or personal support to a friend.

Emergency helping

Aiding a stranger with an acute problem.

Altruism

Providing help without anticipating rewards from external sources for it.

Cooperation

Acting together in coordination to pursue shared goals such as material rewards, communal relationships, or coordination.

The Golden Ladder of Charity

A hierarchy of prosocial actions from helping reluctantly to helping to prevent future need.

Socrates' view of behavior

The belief that each person pursues what is in their best interest.

Plato's view of human nature

The belief that human nature draws us to selfishness to avoid pain and seek pleasure, requiring laws to shape behaviour.

Aristotle's view of behavior

The belief that people are inherently good and worried about the well-being of others through their relationships.

Niccolo Machiavelli's view

The belief that people are ungrateful, fickle, and false, and that prosocial behaviour is rooted in selfish reasons.

Thomas Hobbes' view

The belief that humans act naturally in their best interest (individual vs individual) and require laws/government to keep order.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's view

The belief that people are innately good but get eroded by society; education should foster concern for the common good.

Ayn Rand's view

The belief that the pursuit of one’s own benefit is the highest morality and selflessness is immoral.

Reciprocal altruism

An explanation for the paradox of altruism where the helper assumes the beneficiary can repay the help later.

Kin selection

Sacrificing self to save family members to ensure the survival of the genotype.

Genetic determinism

Seeking lovers and helping others who are genetically similar to improve the chances of genotype survival.

Reciprocity norm

The moral obligation to help those who have helped us, which must be internalised.

Social responsibility norm

The motivation to help those in need because they depend on us, such as an elderly person.

Theory of norm activation

A process involving Activation (awareness of need), Obligation (moral feelings), Defenses (assessment of costs), and Response (action).

Empathy

The vicarious experiencing of another person’s emotions.

Empathy-specific punishment

Helping in order to avoid others thinking negatively of us.

Empathy-specific reward

Helping to obtain the chance of praise or reward from others.

Aversive arousal reduction

Decreasing emotional arousal by either leaving the scene or helping.

Negative state relief model

Acting on the concern of making ourselves feel better.

Empathy-altruism model

Acting on the concern of reducing the other’s distress which is empathetically felt.

Empathetic-joy hypothesis

The motivation to experience the joy that a positive action will bring, rather than just reducing negativity.

Just world hypothesis

The attributional belief that a person is at fault for their own situation, making others less likely to help.

Aggression

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

Hostile aggression

Aggression performed with the desire to express negative feelings.

Instrumental aggression

Aggression performed with the aim of achieving an intended goal.

Steam-Boiler model

An ethological model where aggressive energy builds up and overflows if not triggered, leading to spontaneous aggression.

Dual hormone hypothesis

The theory that aggression is influenced by the interaction of testosterone and cortisol levels.

Eros (Life instinct)

In Freudian psychoanalysis, the basic human force for pleasure seeking and wish fulfilment.

Thanatos (Death instinct)

In Freudian psychoanalysis, the basic human force for self-destruction.

Catharsis

The process of using aggression to divert internal self-destructive forces (Thanatos) away from the self and toward others.

Frustration-aggression (F-A) hypothesis

The theory that aggression is a likely response to frustration, which is an external interference with goal-directed behaviour.

Cognitive neo-associationalist model

The theory that aggression results from affect elicited by aversive stimulation and interpreted as anger.

Excitation transfer theory

The theory that neural physiological arousal can become frustration arousal and instigate aggression depending on strength and labelling.

I3 theory

A model where aggression results from the balance between Instigation (triggers), Impellance (intensity), and Inhibition (weakening forces).

General Aggression model (GAM)

The result of personal and situational input variables that elicit aggressive responses.

Multisystemic therapy (MST)

Therapy provided to a patient and their entire system, including parents, peers, teachers, and social workers.

CAN

A specific branch of therapy focusing on Child Abuse or Neglect involving children and their parents.

Clarification letter

A therapeutic intervention where parents write a letter taking accountability and apologizing for abuse to help reduce a child's guilt.