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17: Prosocial and Antisocial Behavior 

17.1 Affiliation and Attraction

  • Need to affiliate: The desire to associate with other people.

  • Interpersonal attraction: Social attraction to another person.

  • Reciprocity: A mutual exchange of feelings, thoughts, or things between people.

    How Relationships Deepen

  • Self-disclosure: The process of revealing private thoughts, feelings, and one’s personal history to others.

    Social Exchange Theory

  • Social exchange: Any exchange between two people of attention, information, affection, favors, or the like.

  • Social exchange theory: A theory stating that rewards must exceed costs for relationships to endure.

  • Comparison level: A personal standard used to evaluate rewards and costs in social exchange.

    Loving: Dating and Mating

  • Intimacy: Feelings of connectedness and affection for another person.

  • Passion: Deep emotional and/or sexual feelings for another person.

  • Commitment: The determination to stay in a long-term relationship with another person.

  • Romantic love: Love that is associated with high levels of interpersonal attraction, heightened arousal, mutual absorption, and sexual desire.

  • Companionate love: A form of love characterized by intimacy and commitment, but not passion.

  • Fatuous love: Love characterized by passion and commitment, but not intimacy.

  • Consummate love: A form of love characterized by intimacy, passion, and commitment.

    Evolution and Mate Selection

  • Evolutionary psychology: The study of the evolutionary origins of human behavior patterns.

    17.2 Prosocial Behavior: Helping Others

  • Prosocial behavior: Any behavior that has a positive impact on other people.

  • Altruism: A specific type of prosocial behavior motivated primarily by improving the circumstances of others.

  • Empathy: State in which people, when faced with someone who is suffering, experience a feeling state that parallels that of the person in distress.

  • Bystander effect (bystander apathy): The unwillingness of bystanders to offer help during emergencies or to become involved in others’ problems.

  • Diffusion of responsibility: Spreading the responsibility to act among several people; reduces the likelihood that help will be given to a person in need.

    17.3 Antisocial Behavior: Aggression, Conflict, and Prejudice

  • Antisocial behavior: Any behavior that has a negative impact on other people.

  • Aggression: Any action carried out with the intention of harming another person.

    Aggression

  • Bullying: The deliberate and repeated use of aggression (whether verbal or physical, direct or indirect) as a tactic for dealing with everyday situations.

    Biology

  • Instinct: Innate impulse that directs or motivates behavior.

  • Frustration-aggression hypothesis: States that frustration tends to lead to aggression.

    Social Learning

  • Social learning theory: A theory that combines learning principles with cognitive processes, socialization, and modeling, to explain behavior.

    Prejudice

  • Prejudice: Positive or negative attitude toward an entire group of people.

    The Fundamentals of Prejudice

  • Social stereotypes: Oversimplified images of the traits of individuals who belong to a particular social group.

  • Discrimination (in social behavior): Unfair actions based on stereotyping and prejudice.

  • Microaggressions: Subtle acts of discrimination that may not be intended to hurt the victim but rather reflect a lack of awareness or sensitivity.

    Classifying Prejudice

  • Racism: Stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination directed against someone based solely on their race.

  • Sexism: Stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination directed against someone based solely on their gender.

  • Ageism: Stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination directed against someone based solely on their age.

  • Heterosexism: Stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination directed against someone based solely on the belief that heterosexuality is better or more natural than homosexuality.

  • Ethnocentrism: Placing one’s own group or race at the center—that is, tending to reject all other groups but one’s own.

  • Explicit prejudice: Prejudice that is conscious and clearly and publicly expressed.

  • Implicit prejudice: Unconscious prejudiced thoughts and feelings about members or other groups.

    Factors Associated with Prejudice

  • Scapegoating: Blaming a person or a group for the actions of others or for conditions not of their making.

  • Displaced aggression: Redirecting aggression to a target other than the actual source of one’s frustration.

  • Status inequalities: Differences in the power, prestige, or privileges of two or more people or groups.

  • Authoritarian personality: A personality patter characterized by rigidity, inhibition, prejudice, and an excessive concern with power, authority, and obedience.

  • Dogmatism: An unwanted positiveness or certainty in matters of belief or opinion.

  • Dehumanization: Beliefs that outgroups are less human and deserve the discrimination that they are subject to.

    Consequences of Prejudice

  • Self-stereotyping: The tendency to apply social stereotypes to one’s self.

  • Stereotype threat: The anxiety caused by the fear of being judged in terms of a stereotype.

    Combating Prejudice

  • Equal-status contact: Social interaction that occurs on an equal footing, without obvious differences in power or status.

  • Superordinate goal: A goal that exceeds or overrides all others, a goal that renders other goals relatively less important.

    17.4 Psychology and Your Skill Set: Diversity and Inclusion

  • Individuating information: Information that helps define a person as an individual, rather than as a member of a group or social category.

  • Just-world beliefs: Beliefs that people generally get what they deserve.

  • Self-fulfilling prophecy: An expectation that prompts people to act in ways that make the exception come true.

  • Social competition: Rivalry among groups, each of which regards itself as superior to others.

Chapter In Review:

17.1 Affiliation and Attraction

17.1.1 Provide three reasons that explain why humans seek to affiliate with others

Affiliation is tied to needs for social comparison, anxiety reduction, and the desire to get and give approval, support, friendship, and love.

17.1.2 Describe four factors that influence our attraction to others

Four factors include familiarity (stemming from Physical proximity and frequency of contact) "similarity (in terms of characteristics such as background, age, sex, and attitudes) physical attractiveness, and reciprocity (responding to one another in a similar way).

17.1.3 Describe how relationships deepen, making reference to self-disclosure and social exchange theory

Relationships deepen through self-disclosure, which follows a reciprocity norm: Low levels of self-disclosure are met with low levels in return; moderate self-disclosure elicits more personal replies. However, overdisclosure tends to inhibit self-disclosure by others. According to social exchange theory, we tend to maintain relationships that are profitable; That is, those for which perceived rewards exceed perceived costs.

17.1.4 Explain the fundamental ideas behind Sternberg’s triangular theory of love

According to Sternberg's triangular theory of love, romantic love is based on feelings of both intimacy and passion, and fatuous love is based on passion and commitment period companionate love involves feelings of both intimacy and commitment period consummate love, involves intimacy, passion, and commitment, is the most complete form of love.

17.1.5 Name and describe the three types of adult attachment

Adult relationships tend to mirror patterns of emotional attachment observed in infancy and early childhood. Secure, avoidance, and ambivalent patterns can be defined on the basis of how a person approaches romantic and affectionate relationships with others. Secure adults generally trust each other and find it relatively easy to get close to each other. Avoided adults tend to be more suspicious of others in close relationships, often worrying that partners will not be reliable. And bivalent adults have completed conflicted feelings about their close relationships, wanting those close relationships but simultaneously warning that partners may leave them.

17.1.6 Describe how evolutionary forces shape men’s and women’s preferences for mates

Evolutionary psychology attributes human mating patterns to the differing reproductive challenges faced by men and women during the course of evolution.

17.2 Prosocial Behavior: Helping Others

17.2.1 Define prosocial behavior, and outline three motives that can promote it

Pro social behaviors are those that benefit others. Three models that promote pro social behaviors are evolutionary forces, self-oriented motives, and other oriented motives.

17.2.2 Distinguish between prosocial behavior and altruism

Altruistic acts are a smaller subset of prosocial behaviors that are motivated primarily by other oriented motives.

17.2.3 Distinguish three factors that influence helping

Three factors that influence helping include the characteristics of the person requiring help, characteristics of the helper, and characteristics of the situation.

17.2.4 Describe three components of empathy and distinguish empathy from sympathy (or compassion) and personal distress

Empathy has affective (emotional), cognitive, and behavioral components. It differs from sympathy/compassion on the effect of a component: An empathetic response involves feeling and emotion that is the same as the victim; A sympathetic/compassionate response instead involves an effective response that would be more similar to concern or caring for the victim.

17.2.5 Explain what is meant by the term bystander apathy, and the three decision points that are relevant in determining whether bystanders will assist others in need

Bystander apathy (the bystander effect) refers to the finding that bystanders are often likely to provide help when others are present. Three decision points must be passed before a person gives hope: noticing, defining an emergency, and taking responsibility/ selecting a course of action.

17.3 Antisocial Behavior: Aggression, Conflict, and Prejudice

17.3.1 Distinguish between antisocial behavior and aggression including the difference between direct aggression and indirect aggression

Antisocial behavior is defined as behavior that violates social norms in the rights of others, and it may be non-aggressive or aggressive. Aggressive acts are a subset of antisocial behaviors in their specifically defined as actions that harm other people. Direct aggression refers to verbal and physical attacks, while indirect aggression refers to acts that harm others' reputations, social standing, friendships, or self-esteem.

17.3.2 Outline three potential causes of aggression

Three potential causes include biology (emphasizing brain mechanisms and physical factors that lower the threshold for aggression), frustration (which may increase arousal make people more sensitive to aggression cues), and social learning which suggests that we learn from aggressive models).

17.3.3 Describe some of the ways that aggression can be minimized, at both the societal and individual levels

That's a societal level, aggression could be minimized by reducing exposure to violence and increasing exposure to pro-social behaviors. At the individual level, strategies may include enhanced self-regulation, problem-focused coping, and making more charitable attributions for events that frustrate us.

17.3.4 Name the three components of prejudiced attitudes

Prejudiced attitudes are comprised of effective (emotional), cognitive (stereotype), and behavioral (discrimination) components.

17.3.5 Discriminate between explicit and implicit prejudice

Explicit prejudices is that which is conscious and publicly displayed period in contrast comma implicit reduce includes attitudes towards groups that reside awareness.

17.3.6 Name four factors that are associated with greater levels of prejudice

Four factors include higher levels of frustration social learning, a greater endorsement of authoritarian beliefs and dehumanization.

17.3.7 Outline some of the consequences experienced by victims of prejudice

Research suggests that victims of prejudice are sometimes unable to do what they wish (e.g., rent an apartment or secure a desired job) and may be victims of racial profiling. They may also experience negative consequences related to their mental and physical health, or fall prey to stereotype threat.

17.3.8 Describe three ways that prejudice can be reduced

Aggression can be reduced through equal- status contact, the pursuit of superordinate goals, and through direct instruction (in diversity training sessions, for example).

17.4 Psychology and Your Skill Set: Diversity and Inclusion

17.4.1 Create a plan that will allow you to foster improved relationships with diverse others

skillfully managing relationships with diverse others requires that we think carefully about several things, individuating information, avoiding just-world beliefs, awareness of self-fulfilling prophecies, looking for commonalities, setting a good example for others, and always remembering that different doesn't mean inferior. We hope t after reading this section, you'll be better able to think about how you can use these components to help when you are working with diverse others in your everyday life.

17: Prosocial and Antisocial Behavior 

17.1 Affiliation and Attraction

  • Need to affiliate: The desire to associate with other people.

  • Interpersonal attraction: Social attraction to another person.

  • Reciprocity: A mutual exchange of feelings, thoughts, or things between people.

    How Relationships Deepen

  • Self-disclosure: The process of revealing private thoughts, feelings, and one’s personal history to others.

    Social Exchange Theory

  • Social exchange: Any exchange between two people of attention, information, affection, favors, or the like.

  • Social exchange theory: A theory stating that rewards must exceed costs for relationships to endure.

  • Comparison level: A personal standard used to evaluate rewards and costs in social exchange.

    Loving: Dating and Mating

  • Intimacy: Feelings of connectedness and affection for another person.

  • Passion: Deep emotional and/or sexual feelings for another person.

  • Commitment: The determination to stay in a long-term relationship with another person.

  • Romantic love: Love that is associated with high levels of interpersonal attraction, heightened arousal, mutual absorption, and sexual desire.

  • Companionate love: A form of love characterized by intimacy and commitment, but not passion.

  • Fatuous love: Love characterized by passion and commitment, but not intimacy.

  • Consummate love: A form of love characterized by intimacy, passion, and commitment.

    Evolution and Mate Selection

  • Evolutionary psychology: The study of the evolutionary origins of human behavior patterns.

    17.2 Prosocial Behavior: Helping Others

  • Prosocial behavior: Any behavior that has a positive impact on other people.

  • Altruism: A specific type of prosocial behavior motivated primarily by improving the circumstances of others.

  • Empathy: State in which people, when faced with someone who is suffering, experience a feeling state that parallels that of the person in distress.

  • Bystander effect (bystander apathy): The unwillingness of bystanders to offer help during emergencies or to become involved in others’ problems.

  • Diffusion of responsibility: Spreading the responsibility to act among several people; reduces the likelihood that help will be given to a person in need.

    17.3 Antisocial Behavior: Aggression, Conflict, and Prejudice

  • Antisocial behavior: Any behavior that has a negative impact on other people.

  • Aggression: Any action carried out with the intention of harming another person.

    Aggression

  • Bullying: The deliberate and repeated use of aggression (whether verbal or physical, direct or indirect) as a tactic for dealing with everyday situations.

    Biology

  • Instinct: Innate impulse that directs or motivates behavior.

  • Frustration-aggression hypothesis: States that frustration tends to lead to aggression.

    Social Learning

  • Social learning theory: A theory that combines learning principles with cognitive processes, socialization, and modeling, to explain behavior.

    Prejudice

  • Prejudice: Positive or negative attitude toward an entire group of people.

    The Fundamentals of Prejudice

  • Social stereotypes: Oversimplified images of the traits of individuals who belong to a particular social group.

  • Discrimination (in social behavior): Unfair actions based on stereotyping and prejudice.

  • Microaggressions: Subtle acts of discrimination that may not be intended to hurt the victim but rather reflect a lack of awareness or sensitivity.

    Classifying Prejudice

  • Racism: Stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination directed against someone based solely on their race.

  • Sexism: Stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination directed against someone based solely on their gender.

  • Ageism: Stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination directed against someone based solely on their age.

  • Heterosexism: Stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination directed against someone based solely on the belief that heterosexuality is better or more natural than homosexuality.

  • Ethnocentrism: Placing one’s own group or race at the center—that is, tending to reject all other groups but one’s own.

  • Explicit prejudice: Prejudice that is conscious and clearly and publicly expressed.

  • Implicit prejudice: Unconscious prejudiced thoughts and feelings about members or other groups.

    Factors Associated with Prejudice

  • Scapegoating: Blaming a person or a group for the actions of others or for conditions not of their making.

  • Displaced aggression: Redirecting aggression to a target other than the actual source of one’s frustration.

  • Status inequalities: Differences in the power, prestige, or privileges of two or more people or groups.

  • Authoritarian personality: A personality patter characterized by rigidity, inhibition, prejudice, and an excessive concern with power, authority, and obedience.

  • Dogmatism: An unwanted positiveness or certainty in matters of belief or opinion.

  • Dehumanization: Beliefs that outgroups are less human and deserve the discrimination that they are subject to.

    Consequences of Prejudice

  • Self-stereotyping: The tendency to apply social stereotypes to one’s self.

  • Stereotype threat: The anxiety caused by the fear of being judged in terms of a stereotype.

    Combating Prejudice

  • Equal-status contact: Social interaction that occurs on an equal footing, without obvious differences in power or status.

  • Superordinate goal: A goal that exceeds or overrides all others, a goal that renders other goals relatively less important.

    17.4 Psychology and Your Skill Set: Diversity and Inclusion

  • Individuating information: Information that helps define a person as an individual, rather than as a member of a group or social category.

  • Just-world beliefs: Beliefs that people generally get what they deserve.

  • Self-fulfilling prophecy: An expectation that prompts people to act in ways that make the exception come true.

  • Social competition: Rivalry among groups, each of which regards itself as superior to others.

Chapter In Review:

17.1 Affiliation and Attraction

17.1.1 Provide three reasons that explain why humans seek to affiliate with others

Affiliation is tied to needs for social comparison, anxiety reduction, and the desire to get and give approval, support, friendship, and love.

17.1.2 Describe four factors that influence our attraction to others

Four factors include familiarity (stemming from Physical proximity and frequency of contact) "similarity (in terms of characteristics such as background, age, sex, and attitudes) physical attractiveness, and reciprocity (responding to one another in a similar way).

17.1.3 Describe how relationships deepen, making reference to self-disclosure and social exchange theory

Relationships deepen through self-disclosure, which follows a reciprocity norm: Low levels of self-disclosure are met with low levels in return; moderate self-disclosure elicits more personal replies. However, overdisclosure tends to inhibit self-disclosure by others. According to social exchange theory, we tend to maintain relationships that are profitable; That is, those for which perceived rewards exceed perceived costs.

17.1.4 Explain the fundamental ideas behind Sternberg’s triangular theory of love

According to Sternberg's triangular theory of love, romantic love is based on feelings of both intimacy and passion, and fatuous love is based on passion and commitment period companionate love involves feelings of both intimacy and commitment period consummate love, involves intimacy, passion, and commitment, is the most complete form of love.

17.1.5 Name and describe the three types of adult attachment

Adult relationships tend to mirror patterns of emotional attachment observed in infancy and early childhood. Secure, avoidance, and ambivalent patterns can be defined on the basis of how a person approaches romantic and affectionate relationships with others. Secure adults generally trust each other and find it relatively easy to get close to each other. Avoided adults tend to be more suspicious of others in close relationships, often worrying that partners will not be reliable. And bivalent adults have completed conflicted feelings about their close relationships, wanting those close relationships but simultaneously warning that partners may leave them.

17.1.6 Describe how evolutionary forces shape men’s and women’s preferences for mates

Evolutionary psychology attributes human mating patterns to the differing reproductive challenges faced by men and women during the course of evolution.

17.2 Prosocial Behavior: Helping Others

17.2.1 Define prosocial behavior, and outline three motives that can promote it

Pro social behaviors are those that benefit others. Three models that promote pro social behaviors are evolutionary forces, self-oriented motives, and other oriented motives.

17.2.2 Distinguish between prosocial behavior and altruism

Altruistic acts are a smaller subset of prosocial behaviors that are motivated primarily by other oriented motives.

17.2.3 Distinguish three factors that influence helping

Three factors that influence helping include the characteristics of the person requiring help, characteristics of the helper, and characteristics of the situation.

17.2.4 Describe three components of empathy and distinguish empathy from sympathy (or compassion) and personal distress

Empathy has affective (emotional), cognitive, and behavioral components. It differs from sympathy/compassion on the effect of a component: An empathetic response involves feeling and emotion that is the same as the victim; A sympathetic/compassionate response instead involves an effective response that would be more similar to concern or caring for the victim.

17.2.5 Explain what is meant by the term bystander apathy, and the three decision points that are relevant in determining whether bystanders will assist others in need

Bystander apathy (the bystander effect) refers to the finding that bystanders are often likely to provide help when others are present. Three decision points must be passed before a person gives hope: noticing, defining an emergency, and taking responsibility/ selecting a course of action.

17.3 Antisocial Behavior: Aggression, Conflict, and Prejudice

17.3.1 Distinguish between antisocial behavior and aggression including the difference between direct aggression and indirect aggression

Antisocial behavior is defined as behavior that violates social norms in the rights of others, and it may be non-aggressive or aggressive. Aggressive acts are a subset of antisocial behaviors in their specifically defined as actions that harm other people. Direct aggression refers to verbal and physical attacks, while indirect aggression refers to acts that harm others' reputations, social standing, friendships, or self-esteem.

17.3.2 Outline three potential causes of aggression

Three potential causes include biology (emphasizing brain mechanisms and physical factors that lower the threshold for aggression), frustration (which may increase arousal make people more sensitive to aggression cues), and social learning which suggests that we learn from aggressive models).

17.3.3 Describe some of the ways that aggression can be minimized, at both the societal and individual levels

That's a societal level, aggression could be minimized by reducing exposure to violence and increasing exposure to pro-social behaviors. At the individual level, strategies may include enhanced self-regulation, problem-focused coping, and making more charitable attributions for events that frustrate us.

17.3.4 Name the three components of prejudiced attitudes

Prejudiced attitudes are comprised of effective (emotional), cognitive (stereotype), and behavioral (discrimination) components.

17.3.5 Discriminate between explicit and implicit prejudice

Explicit prejudices is that which is conscious and publicly displayed period in contrast comma implicit reduce includes attitudes towards groups that reside awareness.

17.3.6 Name four factors that are associated with greater levels of prejudice

Four factors include higher levels of frustration social learning, a greater endorsement of authoritarian beliefs and dehumanization.

17.3.7 Outline some of the consequences experienced by victims of prejudice

Research suggests that victims of prejudice are sometimes unable to do what they wish (e.g., rent an apartment or secure a desired job) and may be victims of racial profiling. They may also experience negative consequences related to their mental and physical health, or fall prey to stereotype threat.

17.3.8 Describe three ways that prejudice can be reduced

Aggression can be reduced through equal- status contact, the pursuit of superordinate goals, and through direct instruction (in diversity training sessions, for example).

17.4 Psychology and Your Skill Set: Diversity and Inclusion

17.4.1 Create a plan that will allow you to foster improved relationships with diverse others

skillfully managing relationships with diverse others requires that we think carefully about several things, individuating information, avoiding just-world beliefs, awareness of self-fulfilling prophecies, looking for commonalities, setting a good example for others, and always remembering that different doesn't mean inferior. We hope t after reading this section, you'll be better able to think about how you can use these components to help when you are working with diverse others in your everyday life.

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