PSY124 FINAL EXAM

Chapt 9,10,11

Need to Belong: A Fundamental Human Motive

• the need to belong is a basic human motive, “a pervasive drive to form and maintain  at least a minimum quantity of lasting, positive, and significant interpersonal relationships”

• The need to belong runs deep, which is why people get very distressed when they are neglected by others, rejected, excluded, stigmatized, or ostracized, all forms of “social death”. Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary (1995)

Social Anxiety Disorder

characterized by intense feelings of discomfort that invite public scrutiny

·       People who are socially connected rather than isolated are also physically healthier and less likely to die a premature death

·       As Facebook friends lists have grown, most of that growth has come from an increase in distance and superficial relations

Need for Affiliation

The desire to establish and maintain many rewarding interpersonal relationships

• Individuals differ in the strength of their need for affiliation

• Set to maintain a certain “temperature” of optimum balance

• “Sociostat” social thermostat

• Others provide energy, attention, stimulation, information and emotional support

• Stress strongly arouses our need for affiliation

• External threats trigger fear and motivate us to affiliate

• Embarrassed misery seeks solitude

• Affiliating can satisfy us for other reasons too, as others provide energy, attention, stimulation, information, and emotional support.

Utility

\- stress sparks the desire to affiliate only when being with others is seen as useful in reducing the negative impact of the stressful situation.

·       Schachter’s participants had to believe that affiliation would be useful

·       In Sarnoff and Zimbardo’s study, when we face embarrassment being with others is more likely to increase our stress than reduce it

States of mind that inspire social affiliation:

1. Stress

2. Loneliness

3. Lack of Power

Agony of Loneliness

·       People who are shy often reject others perhaps because they fear being rejected themselves

·       For extreme shyness, the result is a pattern of risk avoidance

·       Shyness can be an inborn personality trait or developed as a learned reaction to failed interactions

·       Some research suggests there is some continuity of shyness from childhood to adulthood

·       Toddlers observed to be inhibited, shy and fearful at age 3 are more likely than toddlers who were more outgoing to be socially isolated at 21

·       People who are shy exhibit greater activity in the amygdala - responsible for fear processing

·       Studies show that shy people evaluate themselves negatively, expect to fail in their social encounters and blame themselves when they do

·       Many shy people go into self-imposed isolation which makes them feel lonely

·       To Westerners shyness is a weakness to overcome, yet in collectivist cultures it can be socially appropriate and adaptive

Loneliness

• A feeling of deprivation about existing social relations.

• Loneliness is a sad and heart-wrenching emotional state.

  • To be lonely is to feel deprived of human social connections, which occurs whenever we have less contact with others than we want.

3 Main facets to loneliness

1) Intimate 2) Relational 3) Collective

Collective Loneliness

comes from the remote relationships and the social identities we derive from alumni of schools we have attended and clubs we join based on common interests. (150-500)

Relational Loneliness

is felt when someone wants but lacks friendships from school work and family connections. The 10-15 people whom we see regularly and rely on for occasional help. (10-50)

Intimate Loneliness

is felt when someone wants but does not have a spouse, significant other or best friends to rely on for emotional support especially during personal crises. (5)

Eli Finkel and others (2012) note that online dating promises three benefits

(1) exposure and access to large numbers of profiles of potential romantic partners;

(2) a means of communicating through e-mail, instant messaging, and live chat via webcams; and

(3) a matching “algorithm” that brings together users who are likely to be attracted to one another.

Initial Attraction

·       People are attracted to those with whom they can have a relationship that is rewarding

·       Direct rewards = attention, support, money, status information

·       Indirect rewards = feels good to be with someone who is beautiful, smart or funny

·       Each of us is attracted to others we see as both able and willing to fulfill our various relationship needs

·       Evolutionary perspective  - human beings all over the world exhibit patterns of attraction and mate selection that favor the conception, birth, and survival of their offspring.

·       Historically most people met their romantic partners through friends and family, now online

Proximity Effect

• Leon Festinger and his colleagues (1950) studied friendship patterns in married-student college housing and found that people  were more likely to become friends with residents of nearby apartments than with those who lived farther away.

• ·Single best predictor of whether two people will get together is or used to be physical proximity or nearness.

Mere Exposure Effect

• Robert Zajonc (1968) found that the more often people saw a novel stimulus—whether it was a foreign word, a geometric form, or a human face—the more they came to like it. Although it is not clear how best to explain this result, Zajonc’s mere exposure effect has since been  observed in over 200 experiments

• Proximity doesn’t necessarily spark attraction, but it increases the frequency of contact

• The phenomenon whereby the more often people are exposed to a stimulus, the more positively they evaluate that stimulus.

Why are we drawn like magnets to people who are physically attractive?

·       One possibility is its inherently rewarding to be in the company of others who are aesthetically pleasing, like watching a sunset

·       For men, the same brain areas known to respond to rewards such as food, money, or drugs are also activated by facial beauty.

·       Perhaps we expect the glitter of another person’s beauty to rub off on us

·       We tend to associate physical attractiveness with other desirable qualities

Why Are We Blinded by Beauty?

• One possibility is that it is inherently rewarding to be in the company of others who are aesthetically appealing—that we derive pleasure from beautiful men and women the same way that we enjoy a breathtaking landscape.

• A second reason for the bias toward beauty is that people tend to associate physical attractiveness with other desirable qualities, an assumption known as the what-is-beautiful-is-good stereotype

what-is-beautiful-is-good stereotype

The belief that physically attractive individuals also possess desirable personality characteristics.

* The stereotyped link between beauty and goodness can also be seen in the human brain.
* scanned the brains of participants while they evaluated faces for physical attractiveness and actions for goodness.
* Both types of judgments increased activity in one region of the brain and decreased activity in another.
* Within each of these regions, the activations sparked by the two types of judgments were similar.

·       Example: Snow White and Cinderella are beautiful while the witches are ugly and cruel

Mark Snyder Experiment (1977)

·       Men who thought they were interacting on the phone with a woman who was attractive:

·       1) Formed more positive impressions of her personality

2) Were friendlier in their conversational behaviour

·       The female students whose partners had seen the attractive picture were rated later by listeners to be warmer, more confident and more animated.

Men who expected an attractive partner actually created one

First Encounters: Getting Acquainted

·       Proximity boosts the odds that we will meet someone, familiarity puts us at ease and beauty draws us in like magnets to a first encounter.

·       Research has shown that people tend to associated with others who are similar to themselves

·       It’s the mere perception of similarity that draws people together

First Encounters: Getting Acquainted

Four types of similarity are most important:

1. Demographic (age, education, race, religion, height, level of intelligence)

·       Studies show that people tend to be more attracted to others of the same race

2. Attitudes (opinions, interests and values)

·       In a study where an attitude survey was taken, participants liked the other person better when they perceived his or her attitudes as being similar to theirs

·       People tend to marry others who share their political attitudes, religiosity, and values but who did not necessarily start out having similar personalities

·       One study found that similarity was unrelated to the length of relationship

·       Milton Rosenbaum - Similarity does not spark attraction, rather dissimilarity triggers repulsion, the desire to avoid someone

·       We avoid associating ingroup with those who are dissimilar, and then by those who remain, we are drawn to those most similar.

3. Mismatches

·       Matching Hypothesis: the idea that people tend to become involved romantically with others who are equivalent in their physical attractiveness

·       Online dating - Men and women tended to initiate and receive contact from others whose relative popularity on the site was similar to their own

4. Similarity in subjective experience

·       Whenever two people who are at a common event laugh, cry, jump to their feet, cheer, shake their heads at the same time, they feel as if they have shared a subjective experience

·       Elizabeth Pinel called this “I-Sharing” and theorized that people who I-share, even if they are otherwise dissimilar, feel a profound sense of connection to one another like “kindred spirits”

Complementary Hypothesis

holds that people seek others whose needs “oppose” their own, that people who need to dominate for example are naturally drawn to those who are submissive.

·       The validity in this has no support.

·       Research shows that complementarity does not make for compatible attraction

·       Opposites do not attract

two-step model

* People can also be similar in other ways, as when they share the same opinions, interests, and values.
* For example, what about *attitude* similarity and attraction?
* A two-step model that takes both reactions into account.

 Our reactions may also be influenced by expectations. People expect similarity from

matching hypothesis

is the idea that people tend to become involved romantically with others who are “equivalent” in their physical attractiveness.

* “popularity” was calculated for each user on one site. Sure enough, analysis of their interactions indicated popularity-based matching: Men and women tended to initiate and receive contact from others whose relative popularity on the site was similar to their own.
* A fourth type of similarity can also trigger attraction among strangers: a similarity in subjective experience.

Liking Others Who Like Us

• Many years ago, Fritz Heider (1958) theorized that people prefer relationships that are psychologically “balanced” and that a state of imbalance causes distress.

• People prefer relationships that are psychologically balanced.

• We want to like the friends of our friends and the enemies of our enemies.

Between two people, a state of balance exists when a relationship is characterized by reciprocity: a mutual exchange between what we give and what we receive. Liking is mutual, which is why we tend to like others who indicate that they like us

Reciprocity

A mutual exchange between what we give and receive— for example, liking those who like us.

·       Liking is mutual which is why we tend to like others who indicate that they like us

·       When men or women were asked to reflect on how they fell in love or developed friendships, many said they had been turned on initially by the realization that they were liked

Aronson and Linder Experiment

·       Participants liked the partner more when her evaluation of the other person changed from negative to positive compared to when it was positive all along

·       As long as the “conversion” is gradual and believable, people like others when their affection takes time to earn than when it comes easily

hard-to-get effect:

The tendency to prefer people who are highly selective in their social choices over those who are more readily available.

·        One problem is that we are turned off by those who reject us because they are committed to someone else or have no interest in us

·       We tend to prefer people who are at least somewhat selective compared to those who are not selective or too selective (snobs)  

·       Spielmann theorized that people who fear being single - because they desire and intimate connection and because of social stigma attached to being alone- set lower standards, are less selective, and tolerate lesser relationships

·       While everyone expressed romantic interest in highly attractive and responsive profiles, participants with high scores on the Fear of Being Single Scale also expressed an interest in profiles that were not attractive or responsive. Confirming the hypothesis.

·       “The girls all get prettier at closing time” as suggested, people of the opposite sex were seen as more attractive as the night wore on.

Expressions of Love

·       When asked about gender and expressions of love, regarding who says “I love you” first, 64% chose women. When asked who “gets serious” first, 84% chose women.

·       However, when asking male and female college students who once had a past romantic relationship to recall who said it first, 62% reported that the man said it first.

·       Prior to sexual activity men reported feeling happier and more positive about the expression of love than women did.

·       After sexual activity, however women reacted with somewhat more positive emotion.

·       “A pre-sex confession may signal interest in advancing a relationship to include sexual activity, whereas a post-sex confession may instead more accurately signal a desire for long-term commitment”

Jealousy

·       A negative emotional state that arises from a perceived threat to one’s relationship

·       A man should be most upset by sexual infidelity because a wife’s extramarital affaires increases the risk that the children he supports are not his own.

·       A woman should feel more threatened by emotional infidelity because a husband who falls in love with another woman might leave and withdraw his financial support.

Sociocultural Perspectives

·       Some suggest that women trade youth and beauty for money not for reproductive purposes but rather because they often lack direct access to economic power.

·       The more economic power women had, the more important male physical attractiveness was to them.

·       Studies suggest it may be the generally low status of women relative to men that leads them to care less about the physical attributes of a potential mate.

·       Women desire physical attractiveness as much as men do when asked about a short-term casual sex partner

·       In a speed dating study the stated preferences didn’t match the actual preferences when met with a person of the opposite sex.

·       Sex differences often observed are neither predictable nor universal

·       Human men care for their children in part because they enjoy more parental certainty than do other male primates

evolutionary perspective and provocative perspective on relationships

• The evolutionary perspective offers social psychologists an important and provocative perspective on relationships.

• The approach draws the criticism that the results are weak, limited, or explainable by non-evolutionary means.

  • However, it also continues to generate new and interesting ideas. Currently, scientists in this area are studying a range of issues—such  as the possible links between facial appearance and health and fertility.

    • The flexibility or “plasticity” of sexual orientation in men and women, the potentially deadly link between sexual jealousy and  violence, the reason some men refuse to make child support payment the use of oral sex as a mate retention tactic, women’s  ability to detect and prefer men who are intelligent, the conditions under which men and women misperceive each other’s sexual  interest, and whether women become more or less “sexual” while ovulating.

Bari Tribe in Venezuela

·       Believe that a baby can have multiple fathers

·       Being promiscuous enables a woman to secure child support from many men

·       Human behaviour is flexible and people develop mating strategies based on the environment.

Close Relationships

• In a survey of 300 students, 73% said they would sacrifice most other goals before giving up a good relationship.

• Being attracted to people can be exhilarating or frustrating, depending on how the initial encounters develop.

Intimate relationship

• A close relationship between two adults involving emotional attachment, fulfillment of psychological needs, or  interdependence.

• Intimate relationships often involve three basic components:

(1) feelings of attachment, affection, and love;

(2) fulfillment of psychological needs; and

(3) interdependence between partners, each of whom has a meaningful influence on the other.

Bernard Murstein’s (1986) stimulus– value–role (SVR) theory

• According to one perspective, relationships progress in order through a series of stages.

  • For example, Bernard Murstein’s (1986) theory says there are three:

(1) the stimulus stage, in which attraction is sparked by external attributes such as physical appearance;

(2) the value stage, where attachment is based on similarity of values and beliefs; and

(3) the role stage, where commitment is based on the enactment of such roles as husband and wife. All three factors are important  throughout a relationship, but each one is said to be first and foremost during only one stage

• One common answer is rewards. Love, like attraction, depends on the experience of positive emotions in the presence of a partner. Step by step,  as the rewards pile up, love develops. Or, as rewards diminish, love erodes. In reward theories, quantity counts. But some would disagree.

social exchange theory

A perspective that views people as motivated to maximize benefits and minimize costs in their relationships with others.

• Social exchange theory is an economic model of human behavior according to which people are motivated by a desire to maximize profit and  minimize loss in their social relationships just as they are in business.

  • The basic premise is simple: Relationships that provide more rewards and fewer costs will be more satisfying and endure longer.

• Relationships that provide more rewards and fewer costs will be more satisfying and endure longer.

• Rewards include love, companionship, consolation in times of distress and sexual gratification

• Costs include the work it takes to maintain a relationship, work through conflict, compromise, and sacrifice opportunities elsewhere.

• Research shows that dating couples who experience greater increases in rewards as their relationship progresses are more likely to stay together than those who experience small increases or declines.

• All people bring to a relationship certain expectations about the “balance sheet” to which they are entitled.

“Comparison Level” (CL)

·       refers to this average expected outcome in relationships.

·       A person with a high CL expects his/her relationships to be rewarding

·       A person with a low CL does not

·       Even a bad relationship can look pretty good to someone who has a low CL

Comparison level for alternatives (CLatl) 

·       Comparison level for alternatives (CLatl) refers to people's expectations about what they would receive in an alternative situation.

·       If the rewards available elsewhere are believed to be high, a person will be less committed to staying in the present relationship.

If people perceive they have few acceptable alternatives, they will tend to remain, even in an unsatisfying relationship that fails to meet expectations.

Relational Building Blocks

* The building blocks of social exchange are rewards, costs, comparison level for alternatives, and investments. These factors are strongly  associated with the satisfaction and commitment partners experience in their relationship.

Equity theory

The theory that people are most satisfied with a relationship when the ratio between benefits and contributions is similar for both partners.

·       According to this theory, an equitable relationship is a matter of social justice

·       People are most content when the ratio between what they get out of a relationship (benefits) and what they put into it (contributions) is similar for both partners.

trust-insurance system

Three steps of the trust-insurance system in action:

1. On days after participants anxiously felt that they were not good enough for their partner, they were more likely to make sacrifices - for example by doing the dishes, making lunch etc.

2. These restorative actions were accompanied by lowered feelings of inferiority that same day

3. On the next day, the partners who benefited from these actions expressed fewer doubts about their marriage

Exchange relationship

a relationship in which the participants expect and desire strict reciprocity in their interactions.

·       Characterized by an immediate tit-for-tat repayment of benefits.

·       Typically, between strangers and casual acquaintances, and in certain long-term arrangements such as business partnerships.  

Communal relationship

a relationship in which the participants expect and desire mutual responsiveness to each other’s needs.

·       Partners respond to each other’s needs and well-being over time and in different ways, without regard for whether they have given or received a benefit.

·       Usually limited to close friends, romantic partners and family members

Attachment Style

• Another approach to understanding close relationships is provided by Phillip Shaver, Cindy Hazan, and others who have theorized that just as infants display different kinds of attachment toward their parents, adults also exhibit specific learned attachment styles in their romantic relationships. (Secure, Avoidant, Anxious)

Attachment Style is the way a person typically interacts with significant others

·       Secure attachment babies cry in distress when the mother leaves and then beam with sheer delight when she returns

·       Those with insecure attachments show one of two patterns

1. Some babies, described as anxious, cling and cry when the mother leaves but then greet her with anger or apathy on her return.

2. Others are generally more detached, or avoidant, not reacting much on either occasion.

Secure Attachment

“I find it relatively easy to get close to others and am comfortable depending on them and having them depend on me. I don’t often worry about being abandoned or about someone getting too close to me.”

·       Report having satisfying relationships that are happy, friendly, based on mutual trust and enduring.

·       Cognitively they see people as good-hearted and they believe in romantic love.

Avoidant Attachment

“I am somewhat uncomfortable being close to others; I find it difficult to trust them completely and difficult to allow myself to depend on them. I am nervous when anyone gets too close and often love partners want me to be more intimate than I am comfortable being.”

·       Fear intimacy and believe romantic love is doomed to fade

Anxious Attachment

“I find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like. I often worry that my partner doesn’t really love me or won’t want to stay with me. I want to merge completely with another person, and this desire sometimes scares people away.”

·       Report a love life full of emotional highs and lows, obsessive preoccupation and extreme sexual attraction and jealousy.

·       There is a universal shift in attachment styles over the lifespan.

·       Attachment anxiety was highest among young adults and declined thereafter

·       Attachment avoidance was lowest among adults but then peaked in middle age

·       Various schemes for classifying types of love have been proposed.

·       1) Eros (erotic love)

·       2) Ludus (game-playing, uncommitted love)

·       3) Storge (friendship love)

·       These primary three styles can be blended together to make secondary styles

·       Mania - demanding and possessive love

·       Pragma - pragmatic love

·       Agape - (other-oriented, altruistic love)

three primary love styles

* There are identified three primary love styles: **eros (erotic love),** ***ludus*** **(game-playing, uncommitted love), and storge (friendship love).** **Lee theorized, these three styles can be blended together to form new secondary types of love, such as mania (demanding and possessive love), pragma (pragmatic love), and agape (other-oriented, altruistic love).**

Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love

• taxonomy is derived from Robert Sternberg’s (1986) triangular theory of love.

• According to Sternberg, there are eight basic subtypes of love (seven different forms and an eighth combination that results in the absence of love)—and all can be derived from the presence or absence of three components. The combination can thus be viewed as the vertices of a triangle.

• A theory proposing that love has three basic components

1. Intimacy - the emotional component, involves liking and feelings of closeness “I have a comfortable relationship with ___”

2. Passion - the motivational component, contains drives that trigger attraction, romance and sexual desire “Just seeing ___ is exciting for me”

3. Commitment - the cognitive component, which reflects the decision to make a long-term commitment to a loved partner. “I will always feel a strong responsibility for ___”

eight subtypes of love

·       “Ideal lover” scored high on all three components

·       “Friend” scored high on intimacy and commitment but low on passion

·       “Sibling” scored high on commitment but low on intimacy and passion

·       Liking: the type of feeling you would have for a platonic friend

·       Loving: the kind of feeling you would have for a romantic partner

Passionate Love

Passionate love is an intense, sometimes fast to develop, emotional, heart-thumping state of absorption in another person.

• Drawing on Schachter’s (1964) two-factor theory of emotion described.

  • they theorized that passionate love is fueled by two ingredients:

(1) a heightened state of physiological arousal and

(2) the belief that this arousal was triggered by the beloved person

• Sometimes, the arousal–love connection is obvious, as when a person feels a surge of sexual desire at the sight of a romantic partner.

Excitation Transfer

·       the process whereby arousal is caused by one stimulus is added to arousal from a second stimulus and the combined arousal is attributed to the second stimulus.  

·       Suspension bridge example - Men who crossed the scary bridge were later more likely to call the attractive research assistant than those who crossed the stable bridge. “Love at first fright”

·       Arousal, even without distress, intensifies emotional reactions, positive or negative.

·       Arousal-attraction effect does exist.

·       Passionate love is highly sexualized, like a “natural addiction”

·       People associate “in love” with sex

·       Comparisons of couples at different stages of their relationships and longitudinal studies that measure changes in the same couples over time have suggested that intense, sexual, passionate love does tend to diminish somewhat over time.

·       While the “obsessional” aspect of passionate love diminishes in long-term relationships, the “romantic” aspect often endures.

Companionate Love

• In contrast to the intense, emotional, erotic, and sometimes obsessional nature of passionate love, companionate love is a form of affection that binds close friends as well as lovers. Companionate relationships rest on a foundation of mutual trust, caring, respect, friendship, and commitment as necessary for “minding the close relationship.”

• Compared with the passionate form of love, companionate love is less intense but is in some respects deeper and more enduring.

  • Companionate love is characterized by high levels of self-disclosure, a willingness to open up and share intimate facts and feelings. In a way, self-disclosure is to companionate love what arousal is to passionate love.

Nancy Collins and Lynn Miller (1994) reasons for companionate love

• Research shows that the more emotionally involved people are in a close relationship, the more they self-disclose to each other.

• Nancy Collins and Lynn Miller (1994) note three possible reasons for this correlation:

(1) We disclose to people we like,

(2) we like people who disclose to us, and

(3) we like people to whom we have disclosed.

·       Couples who reported higher levels of self-disclosure also expressed more satisfaction, commitment and love. Also more sexually satisfied than those who are less open.

self-disclosure

Revelations about the self that a person makes to others.

Sexual orientation

A person’s preference for members of the same sex (homosexuality), opposite sex (heterosexuality), both sexes (bisexuality), or neither (asexual).

• To explain the roots of homosexuality, various theories have been proposed.

  • The origins of sexual orientation are complex for two reasons. First, it’s not clear that sexual orientation for men and women is similarly rooted.

    • A second complicating factor is that although there is strong evidence for a biological disposition, this does not necessarily mean that there’s a “gay gene”.

      • The results indicated that genetics plays a role in whether someone has had a same-sex sexual experience. However, that influence comes not from one gene but from many, and it accounts for only a third of the effect

• Recognizing that sexual orientation is complicated, Daryl Bem (1996, 2000) sees its development as a psychobiological process.

Social Penetration Theory

Social Penetration Theory -holds that relationships progress from superficial exchanges to more intimate ones.

·       At first, people give relatively little of themselves to each other and receive little in return

·       If initial encounters prove rewarding, exchanges become both broader (covering more areas of their lives) and deeper (involving more sensitive areas)

·       Patterns of self-disclosure change according to the state of a relationship.

·       Among couples in distress, two different self-disclosure patterns have been observed.

·       In this case, social de-penetration occurs

·       Individuals differ in the tendency to share private, intimate thoughts with others.

·       On average, women are more open than men and that people in general are more self-disclosing to women than men.

·       Women rate their same-sex friendships more highly than men rate theirs.

·       Men seem to bond in North America by common activities whereas women bond by sharing feelings.

Negative affect reciprocity

a tit-for-tat of expression of negative feelings

· Women report more intense emotions and are more expressive than most men

Demand/withdraw Interaction Pattern

·       in which the wife demands that the couple discuss the relationship problems, only to become frustrated when her husband withdraws from such discussions

·       Healthy relationships are most likely when both partners have similar styles of dealing with conflict.

Two basic approaches to reducing the negative effects of conflict:

1. Increase rewarding behaviour in other aspects of the relationship

2. Trying to understand the other’s point of view

Relationship-enhancing attributions

·       they see a partner’s undesirable behaviour as caused by factors that are situational “bad day”, temporary “it will pass”, and limited in scope “that's just a sore spot” Yet they perceive desirable behaviours as caused by factors that are inherent in the partner, permanent and generalizable to other aspects of the relationship.

·       Distress-maintaining attributions: distressed couples don’t give in inch. Reported that relationships who made distress-maintaining attributions early in marriage reported less satisfaction at a later point in time.

prosocial behaviors

Actions intended to benefit others.

Altruism refers to helping that is “motivated by the desire to increase another’s welfare”

The “Selfish Gene”

• By means of this indirect route to genetic survival, the tendency to help genetic relatives, called kin selection, could become an innate characteristic of humans.

• In fact, kin selection is evident in the behavior of many organisms

kin selection

Preferential helping of genetic relatives, which results in the greater likelihood that genes held in common will survive.

Social Norms

Norm of Social Responsibility says that we help because it is the societal expectation that we help those in need, dependent upon us, or less fortunate than ourselves

Reciprocal Altruism

Altruism that involves an individual helping another (despite some immediate risk or cost) and becoming more likely to receive help from the other in return.

* Through reciprocal altruism, helping someone else can be in your best interests because it increases the likelihood that you will be helped in return.

Arousal: Cost-Reward Model

What are the costs and rewards associated with helping?

Both emotional factors and cognitive factors are involved…i.e., bystanders experience shock and alarm of personal distress (emotion). BUT helping __also__ depends on the computation of costs (to self and victim) and rewards (to self and victim) (cognitive)

Altruism vs. Egoism

Ø The role of empathy and compassion
Ø The role of relieving personal distress
Ø Getting in touch with your feelings of empathy (the vicarious experience of another’s feeling) leads to acts of altruism, where the behaviour serves to reduce the distress in the other person
Ø Getting in touch with your own personal distress (upset, anxious, disturbed) leads to acts of egoism, where the behaviour serves to reduce your own distress

Empathy

Understanding or vicariously experiencing another individual’s perspective and feeling sympathy and compassion for that individual.

Negative state relief model

The proposition that people help others in order to counteract their own feelings of sadness.

Personal Variables

Ø  Feelings

Ø  Guilt – causes increased likelihood of altruism

Ø  Mood – negative mood increases likelihood of altruism with adults but not children, for whom altruism is rewarding

The Empathy–Altruism Hypothesis

• According to the empathy–altruism hypothesis, taking the perspective of a person in need creates feelings of empathic concern, which produce the altruistic motive to reduce the other person’s distress. When people do not take the other’s perspective, they experience feelings of personal distress, which produce the egoistic motive to reduce their own discomfort. Based on Batson, 1991.

• The proposition that empathic concern for a person in need produces an altruistic motive for helping.

Egoistic

Motivated by the desire to improve one’s own welfare.

Altruistic

Motivated by the desire to improve another’s welfare.

The Bystander Effect

The effect whereby the presence of others inhibits helping.

The Five Steps to Helping in an Emergency

Pluralistic ignorance

• As everyone looks at everyone else for clues about how to behave, the entire group may be paralyzed by indecision.

• The state in which people in a group mistakenly think that their own individual thoughts, feelings, or behaviors are different from those of the others in the group.

Diffusion of responsibility

* If a person knows that others are around, it’s all too easy to fail to help because of the diffusion of responsibility: the belief that others will or should intervene

Audience inhibition

Reluctance to help for fear of making a bad impression on observers.

Why Feeling Good Leads to Doing Good

• Desire to maintain one’s good mood. When we are in a good mood, we are motivated to maintain that mood.

  • Helping others makes us feel good, so it can help maintain a positive mood.

• Positive thoughts and expectations. Positive moods trigger positive thoughts, and if we have positive thoughts about others, we should like them more and should have positive expectations about interacting with others; these factors should make us more likely to help them.

When Feeling Good Might Not Lead to Doing Good

• Costs of helping are high. If the anticipated costs of helping in a particular situation seem high, helping would put our good mood at risk. In this case, if we can avoid getting involved and thus maintain our good mood, we are less likely to help.

• Positive thoughts about other social activities that conflict with helping. If our good mood makes us want to go out and party with our friends, our motivation to engage in this social activity may prevent us from taking the time to notice or take responsibility for helping someone in need.

When Negative Moods Make Us More Likely to Help Others

• If we take responsibility for what caused our bad mood (“I feel guilty for what I did.”)

• If we focus on other people (“Wow, those people have suffered so much.”)

• If we think about our personal values that promote helping (“I really shouldn’t act like such a jerk next time; I have to be nicer.”)

When Negative Moods Make Us Less Likely to Help Others

• If we blame others for our bad mood (“I feel so angry at that jerk who put me in this situation.”)

• If we become very self-focused (“I am so depressed.”)

• If we think about our personal values that do not promote helping (“I have to wise up and start thinking about my own needs more.”)

Reluctant Altruism

Altruistic kinds of behavior that result from pressure from peers or other sources of direct social influence.

Identity fusion

A strong sense of “oneness” and shared identity with a group and its individual members.

*implicit social support*

support that comes from just thinking about close others but that does not involve actually seeking or receiving their help in coping with stressful events.

Aggression

Behavior intended to harm another individual

Proactive aggression

Aggressive behavior whereby harm is inflicted as a means to a desired end (also called instrumental aggression).

* Instrumental Aggression – aka  “cold aggression” or proactive aggression, i.e., aggression that is a means to some other end

Reactive aggression

Aggressive behavior where the means and the end coincide; harm is inflicted for its own sake.

* Emotional aggression – aka “hot aggression” or reactive aggression, i.e., aggression driven by anger and performed as an end in itself

Cyberbullying

* Women are more often killed, seriously injured, or sexually assaulted during domestic disputes than are men
* “Women were more often the victims of severe partner assault and injury not because men strike more often, but because men strike harder”
* Even in cyberbullying this pattern of gender differences is evident: found the frequency of moderate forms of cyberbullying to be similar across gender, but men were more likely than women to engage in severe forms of cyberbullying.
* Rates of aggression and violence in the form of sexual assault differ greatly by gender, with men being overwhelmingly more likely to be perpetrators and women to be targets.

Ø  There is a universal finding that men are more aggressive than women

Ø  But when you consider different __types__ of aggression, the evidence challenges this notion

Ø  Physical Aggression – aka “overt aggression,” i.e., punching, kicking, hitting, swearing, etc. more characteristic of boys’ aggression

Social or Relational Aggression – aka “covert aggression,” i.e., aggression by maligning a person’s social position - more characteristic of girls’ aggression

Theories of Aggression: Biological

Ø  Instinct – an inborn drive (e.g., toddlers); Freud’s “death instinct” or Thanatos; Kurt Lorenz and his observations of animals in their natural habitats

Ø  Evolutionary Psychology – emphasizes genetic survival rather than survival of the individual; some supportive evidence, e.g., in the rate of step-parent vs. biological parents who abuse or kill their children

Ø  Genetic Influences – some support from twin studies; aggressive parents beget aggressive children

Ø  Biochemical Influences

(a) increased __testosterone__ is associated with more aggression

(b)  lower __serotonin__ is associated with heightened aggression

(c) __alcohol__ unleashes aggression by reducing self-awareness, inhibitions, and problem-solving

Ø  Chromosomal – males have a greater propensity for aggression than females; perhaps men with an extra Y chromosome (XYY) are more aggressive (inconclusive evidence)

Ø  Neurological – exposure to teratogens (e.g., alcohol leading to FASD, drugs) or lack of proper nutrients during critical periods of prenatal development may increase risk of aggression

Individual Differences

* “Big Five” factors—five dimensions that account for a great deal of variability in people’s personalities across gender and culture. These five dimensions are:

(1) agreeableness (good-natured, trustful, cooperative),

(2) conscientiousness (responsible, orderly, dependable),

(3) openness to experience (intellectual, independent minded, prefer novelty),

(4) extraversion (outgoing, energetic, assertive), and

(5) neuroticism (easily upset, emotionally unstable).

Type A personality

the tendency to be driven by feelings of inadequacy to try to prove oneself through personal accomplishments, impulsivity (being relatively unable to control one’s thoughts and behaviors), and being low in agreeableness.

Narcissim

• Narcissism involves having an inflated sense of self-worth and self-love, having low empathy for others, tending to focus on the self rather than others, and being especially sensitive to perceived insults.

  • Narcissism is consistently and positively correlated with aggression in response to provocation, particularly if the provocation is public rather than private.

• Narcissism is one of the three traits some researchers call the Dark Triad (which we admit sounds like what should be the name of the villains in the next

• One factor that has a very clear and consistent relationship with aggression is self-control.

Dark Triad

A set of three traits that are associated with higher levels of aggressiveness: Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism.

Evolutionary Psychology

* According to an evolutionary perspective, males are competitive with each other because females select high-status males for mating, and aggression is a means by which males were able to achieve and maintain status.

executive functioning

The cognitive abilities and processes that allow humans to plan or inhibit their actions.

Aggression- a learned behaviour

Ø  Aggressive behaviour is strongly affected by learning

Ø  Those who are rewarded for their aggression will maintain the behaviour

Ø  Aggression can be positively and negatively reinforced

Ø  Positive reinforcement: Aggression is reinforced when it produces desired outcomes

Ø  Negative reinforcement: Aggression is reinforced because it prevents or stops undesirable outcomes

Punishment

Ø What about the role of punishment to decrease aggression (e.g., removal of privileges, spanking, or incarceration)? Ø Punishment may lead to a decrease in aggression, but only when it…

1. immediately follows the aggressive behaviour

2. is strong enough to deter the aggressor

3. is consistently applied and perceived as fair and legitimate by the aggressor

Social Learning Theory

• The power of models to modify behavior is a crucial tenet of Albert Bandura’s (1977) social learning theory.

  • Social learning theory emphasizes that we learn from the example of others as well as from direct experience with rewards and punishments.

    • Models influence the prosocial, helpful behavior. They also affect antisocial, aggressive behavior.

• Social Learning Theory: The theory that behavior is learned through the observation of others as well as through the direct experience of rewards and punishments.