Download Goals of Psych - Deerfield High School

Goals of Psych
• DESCRIBE – The first goal is to observe behavior and
describe, often in minute detail, what was observed as
objectively as possible.
• EXPLAIN – While descriptions come from observable data,
psychologists must go beyond what is obvious and explain
their observations. In other words, why did the subject do
what he or she did? Based on the observable behavior,
psychologists can infer mental processes from behavior.
• PREDICT – Based on basic research, what is the science
behind the factors? When, where, and why does the
behavior or mental processes occur?
• CONTROL – Based on applied research, use the principles
and discoveries of psychology for practical purposes, such
as controlling real-world problems
GBN Hazing
Abu Ghraib: Pair & Share
Pick a partner. Write your partner’s name on the back of your E.Q.
You and your partner will be sharing information from your E.Q. with each
other. You will talk once and then you will listen once.
3. Complete the following with your partner on the back of your E.Q. response:
a. Spend about 4-5 minutes TELLING your partner the main factors that you
thought contributed to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal
I.
As you are sharing, your partner should be taking down synthesized
notes over what you are presenting. These do not have to be complete
sentence just complete thoughts
II. SWITCH ROLES AND REPEAT ABOVE
b. Next, discuss and write down what you both agree upon as the single most
important factor that contributed to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. Make
sure to explain why!
4. Write the single most important factor on the board and turn in EQ
1.
2.
Attribution
Attribution
• the process by which people infer the causes of other
people’s behavior
• Example: Why did your boss yell at your co-worker?
– co-worker was slacking off and deserved it?
– boss is always a hothead?
– boss is usually easygoing but is undergoing a divorce that has her
stressed out?
– boss really needed this particular job to be done right because her
job is on the line
External factors
• people, events, situation, environment
Internal Factors
• traits, needs, intentions
Attribution
• How we explain someone’s behavior affects how we
react to it
Situational attribution
“Maybe that driver is ill.”
Tolerant reaction
(proceed cautiously, allow
driver a wide berth)
Dispositional attribution
“Crazy driver!”
Unfavorable reaction
(speed up and race past the
other driver, give a dirty look)
Negative behavior
Fundamental Attribution Error
• Tendency of observers, when analyzing another’s
behavior, to underestimate the impact of a situation
and to overestimate the impact of personal
disposition.
• Also called actor-observer discrepancy
• e.g., “I did poorly on the exam because I had a
heavy exam schedule and I’d been sick and I was
really stressed out and my goldfish died that
morning and…. He did poorly on the exam
because he’s stupid and lazy.”
• e.g., GBN Hazing - Girls are crazy, bad apples,
have low self-esteem.
Why do we commit FAE?
• Actor-observer discrepancy
– we know our behavior changes from situation to situation, but we
don’t know this about others
– when we see others perform an action, we concentrate on actor,
not situation -- when we perform an action, we see environment,
not person
• Mental representations of people (schemas) can effect our
interpretation of them
– William College students
• Students had a guest speaker
• Woman acted either aloof and critical or warm and friendly.
• Beforehand, one group of students were told that the woman’s
behavior would be spontaneous; while the other group was
told the truth… that she had been instructed to act friendly or
unfriendly
• Truth had no effect… students disregarded info. Each group
attributed her behavior to her internal disposition.
Why do we commit FAE?
• Cross-cultural
differences
– Western culture
• people are in charge
of own destinies
• more attributions to
personality
– Some Eastern cultures
• fate in charge of
destiny
• more attributions to
situation
Effects of Personal Appearance on
Attribution
• The attractiveness bias
– physically attractive people are rated higher on intelligence,
competence, sociability, morality
– studies
• teachers rate attractive children as smarter, and higher
achieving
• adults attribute cause of unattractive child’s misbehavior to
personality, attractive child’s to situation
• judges give longer prison sentences to unattractive people
• The baby-face bias
– people with rounder heads, large eyes, small jawbones, etc. rated
as more naïve, honest, helpless, kind, and warm than maturefaced
– generalize to animals, women, babies
Attitudes
• Belief and feeling that predisposes one to respond in a particular way to
objects, people and events
– Attitudes can influence behavior through…
• Central Route Persuasion = focus on arguments and scientific
evidence
• Peripheral Route Persuasion = influenced by incidental cues,
such as speaker’s attractiveness
– Attitudes guide our actions if…
• Outside influences on what we say and do are minimal
• We are keenly aware of our attitudes
– e.g., Too Fat? Read your Email or put a mirror on your fridge
– However, often times evidence confirms that attitudes follow
behavior, such as seen by the…
• Foot-in-the-door technique
• Role-playing
Roles and Role Playing
• Role
– set of expectations about a social position.
Defines how those in the position ought to
behave
• Role Playing
– Power of the role can take on a life of its
own. People change attitude or behavior to
fit role. BEHAVIOR  ATTITUDE
– e.g., Zimbardo Prison Study (1975)
– e.g., GBN - Seniors took on the behavior of
an authority figure as the role of upper
classman and juniors took on submissive
role. Juniors did not fight back. Good
natured, likeable seniors became vicious
attackers. Role of seniors and role of juniors
(superiority and grunt – have to take it even
though they knew it probably was going to
far).
Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon
• Tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to
comply later with a larger request. Small request has paved the
way to compliance with the larger request
– cognitive dissonance results if person has already granted a
request for one thing, then refuses to give the larger item
– e.g., GBN - Getting seniors to do such extreme things. Go from
yelling, to pushing, to hitting, to smearing fish guts, to throwing
buckets, etc. Actions feeding attitudes feeding actions enables
behavior to escalate.
Cognitive Dissonance
• Tension we experience when attitudes are
inconsistent with each other or inconsistent with
behavior. If people cannot justify their behavior,
they’re likely to change their beliefs about it in
order to decrease discomfort
Cognitive Dissonance
•
•
•
Attitudes must be consistent with behavior… if they are not,
people experience discomfort  must either change behavior or
change attitude; usually it’s easier to change the attitude. Come
to believe in what one stood up for – adjust beliefs to be
consistent with public acts.
e.g., Stephan is a neurologist and knows that smoking is a
serious health risk. Stephan smokes. Stephan must either:
1. stop smoking
2. change his attitudes
– “The risks are exaggerated.”
– “I’m going to die from something anyway.”
– “Smoking reduces the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.”
e.g., GBN - Reason for the lack of remorse by seniors.
Understood that hitting and shoving is wrong but did it. Now they
are experiencing discomfort, so they change their attitude and
we hear statements like, “Nobody was killed.”
Case Study
• Suppose you had volunteered to participate in a psychology
experiment. Upon arrival, you were seated at a table and
asked to undertake a series of dull, meaningless tasks for
about an hour (such as counting pennies). Afterward, the
experimenter convinced you to extol the virtues of the tasks
you had performed by describing them to other potential
participants as highly worthwhile, interesting and
educational. You were paid either $1 or $20 to do this.
Suppose you were then asked to privately rate your
enjoyment of the tasks on a questionnaire.
• After which amount do you believe your actual enjoyment
rating of the tasks would be higher - $1 or 20$?
Cognitive Dissonance and Insufficient
Justification Effect
• If people cannot justify their behavior, they’re likely
to change their beliefs about it
• Experiment (Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959)
– gave subjects a boring task
– asked subjects to lie to the next subject and say the
experiment was exciting
– paid ½ the subjects $1, other ½ $20
– then asked subjects to rate boringness of task
– $1 group rated the task as far more fun than the $20
group
– each group needed a justification for lying
• $20 group had an external justification of money
• since $1 isn’t very much money, $1 group said task was fun
Initiation Rites
Conformity
• The adoption of attitudes and behaviors shared by a particular group of
people.
• 2 general reasons for conformity
– Informational Influence
• change attitudes and behavior to fit with the group because don’t
know the rules or the correct answer; other people can provide
useful and crucial info
• e.g., Seniors learned how to haze when they went through it
themselves or followed the example of other senior girls because
they did not know how to haze.
– Normative Influence
• change attitudes and behavior to fit with the group because of the
desire to belong
• e.g., Powder puff group is the group to belong to. Seniors
participated in the violent hazing because they did not want to
become an outcast from the group.
Conditions that Strengthen Conformity
• One is made to feel incompetent or insecure
• The group has at least three people (further
increases in group size yield not much more
conformity)
• The group is unanimous (the support of a single
fellow dissident greatly increases social courage)
• One admires the group’s status and attractiveness
• One has made no prior commitment to any
response
• Others in the group observe one’s behavior
• The particular culture strongly encourages respect
for social standards
Conformity is not always bad
• there would be anarchy without conformity
• social acceptance often depends on conformity
“The only thing a non-conformist
hates more than a conformist is
another non-conformist who
won’t conform to the rules of
non-conformity.”
Asch’s Line Judgment Experiment
Solomon Asch, 1955
• replicated by others in 1990
“Which comparison line is the same length as the standard?”
3
3
3
3
???
3
Asch’s Line Judgment Experiment
On average, subjects conformed on ~40% of trials
Conformity dropped to ¼ of its peak if one other person dissented (even
when the dissenter made an inaccurate judgment)
Conformity dropped dramatically when subjects recorded their responses
privately  indicating that they conformed due to normative social
influence; rather than informational social influence (doubting own
perceptual abilities)
Obedience
• Change attitudes and
behavior to follow the
orders of an authority
figure.
• Request is perceived
as a command
• EX: Senior girls telling
younger girls what to
do or more powerful
senior girls telling
submissive senior girls
what to do.
“We do what we’re told.
We do what we’re told.
We do what we’re told.
Told to do.”
-- lyrics to “Milgram’s 37” by
Peter Gabriel
Stanley Milgram
1933-1984
Extreme forms of Obedience
Nazi Holocaust
Germany & Poland
(Europe)
1941-1945
6,000,000
Cambodia
(Asia)
1975-1979
4,000,000
Rwanda
(Africa)
1994
800,000
An estimated 210 million people were killed by genocide in 20th century.
Milgram’s Obedience Experiment
Milgram interested in
unquestioning
obedience to orders
Psychologists’ predictions
Follow-Up Studies to Milgram
• Original study
• Different building
• Teacher with learner
• Put hand on shock
• Orders by phone
• Ordinary man orders
• 2 teachers rebel
• Teacher chooses shock
level
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Percentage of subjects administering
the maximum shock (450 volts)
Factors that affect obedience
1.
2.
3.
4.
Remoteness of the victim (actual distance or depersonalization)
– teacher and learner in separate rooms: 65% obedience
– teacher and learner in same room: 40% obedience
– teacher and learner in physical contact (teacher had to put learners hand on
apparatus): 30% obedience
Closeness and legitimacy of authority figure
– “ordinary person” confederate instead of experimenter: 20% obedience.
Authority of Yale and value of science.
Cog in a Wheel
– “another subject” confederate does the dirty work and real subject assists:
93% obedience
– “another subject” confederate disobeys: 10% obedience
– subjects told they are responsible for learner’s welfare: 0% obedience
Personal characteristics
– no significant differences based on sex (though women reported feeling
more guilty), politics, religion, occupation, education, military service, or
psychological characteristics
Group Polarization
• The enhancement of a
group’s prevailing attitudes
through discussion within the
group
• e.g., racist attitudes; AA
meetings
• e.g., GBN - Hazing was preplanned. Many senior girls
must have met up to discuss
what items they would bring
for the hazing. They already
had the similar attitude that
they have a right to haze as a
tradition. During discussion,
girls probably came up with
more and more ideas about
how to haze and reasons to
support their ideas,
strengthening their attitude
that it was okay to haze.
Groupthink
• Mode of thinking that occurs
when the desire for harmony in
a decision-making group
overrides realistic appraisal of
alternatives. Dissenting views
suppressed to maintain good
feeling of group.
• e.g., Responsible for many
stupid policy decisions, such as
Bay of Pigs invasion by JFK or
Space Shuttle Challenger
launch in 1986
• e.g., GBN - Hazing was preplanned. Many girls probably
understood what they were
planning to do was wrong but
wanted to be part of the
prestigious group. No one
dissented.
Groupthink
•
•
Causes of Groupthink
– Powerful group of people who think
alike
– Absence of objective and impartial
leadership
– High levels of stress regarding
decision
Preventing Groupthink
– Be impartial and objective
– Leader should encourage dissent
– Assign at least one “devil’s advocate”
– Occasionally break group into
subgroups
– Seek opinions of external experts
– Towards end of decision, have a
“second chance” meeting to review
lingering doubts
Space Shuttle Challenger
January 28, 1986
•
•
•
•
NASA under strong pressure to launch
shuttle
– first civilian in space
– many delays had occurred
Engineers were opposed to the launch
because of concerns that cold
temperatures might make rubber seals
too brittle
NASA executives made the decision to
launch without input from engineers
final NASA decision-maker was never
told of engineers’ concerns
Social Facilitation
• An individual performs better in the presence of others when
the task is easy or well-learned
• Examples:
– 1898: cyclists who competed against one another performed better
than those who cycled alone or against the clock
– cockroaches running toward a goal run faster in pairs
– home team advantage
• home teams win ~60% of games played
Social Interference
• an individual performs worse in the presence of others when
the task is hard or your not good at it
Zajonc’s Theory
• Linked social
interference and
facilitation to arousal
level
• High arousal
improves simple or
well-learned tasks;
strengthens most
likely response
• High arousal worsens
complex or poorlylearned task
Presence of others
Increased drive or
arousal
Improved performance
of dominant responses
(social facilitation)
Worsened performance
of nondominant responses
(social Interference)
Social Loafing
• As the number of people
increases, the effort exerted
by each individual declines
• examples that are probably
all-too-familiar to you:
– group projects
– roommates and housework
• less common in collectivist
cultures (e.g., China) than
individualistic cultures (e.g.,
USA)
– Chinese subjects work
harder in groups than when
alone (social
compensation)
Preventing Social Loafing
•
•
•
•
•
Make each person accountable
Record who did what
Make the task challenging, appealing and involving
Keep the group small
If possible, put people of the same intelligence &
competence together
What would you do?
•
•
•
•
Rip out a piece of notebook paper and tear it in half.
Do NOT put your name on the piece of paper.
Do NOT discuss your answers during or after the exercise.
Answer the following question…
– If you could do anything humanly possible with
complete assurance that you would not be
detected or held responsible, what would you
do?
• When you are done answering the question, fold sheet of
paper in half and sit quietly
If you could do anything… Research Results
• 11 content categories seem to arise: aggression, charity,
academic dishonesty, escapism, political activities, sexual
behavior, social disruption, interpersonal spying,
eavesdropping, travel, and a catchall category “other”
• Answers were categorized as prosocial, antisocial,
nonnormative (violating social norms but without helping or
hurting others), and neutral (meeting none of the other three
categories)
• Most frequent responses were criminal acts (26%), sexual
acts (11%), and spying behaviors (11%). Most common
response was “rob a bank” that were 15% of all responses
• 36% of the responses were antisocial, 19% nonnormative,
36% neutral, 9% prosocial
Deindividuation
• Loss of self-awareness and self-restraint
in group situations that foster pyhsical
arousal and anonymity
• Occurs in large groups and groups
heighten physical arousal
– e.g., looting, rioting
• Physical anonymity
– e.g., Would KKK members burn
crosses if they weren’t wearing
hoods?
• e.g., Taunted to Jump
• e.g., GBN - Mob of girls. All wearing
exactly the same thing, can’t be
detected. The presence of alcohol and
the group cheering them heightened
their arousal. Do things that you would
“Jump jump!!”
Prejudice & Discrimination
•
•
Prejudice = an unjustifiable and usually negative ATTITUDE toward a group and
its members
– Involves stereotypes = a generalized (often over-generalized) belief about a
group of people that distinguishes those people from others
• Public – what we say to others about a group
• Private – what we consciously think about a group, but don’t say to
others
• Implicit – unconscious mental associations guiding our judgments and
actions without our conscious awareness.
– IAT Test
– Public stereotypes have decreased in North America recently
(“political correctness”). Does this mean people no longer carry
stereotypes?
– Stereotypes lead to self-fulfilling prophecy = one person’s belief about
others leads one to act in ways that induce the others to appear to
confirm the belief.
Discrimination = unjustified, negative BEHAVIORS toward a group and its
members
Discrimination vs. Prejudice
No Prejudice
No relevant behaviors
A restaurant owner who
is bigoted against Jews
treats them fairly
because she needs
their business
An executive with
favorable views toward
Hispanics doesn’t hire
them because he would
get in trouble with his
boss
A professor who is
hostile toward women
grades his female
students unfairly
No Discrimination
Discrimination
Prejudice
• Discrimination
– unfair treatment of a group
• Prejudice
– negative attitudes toward or beliefs (stereotypes) about members of
a group
Self-fulfilling prophecy
Robert Rosenthal
The Pygmalion effect
• In the myth, Pygmalion created a statue that he treated
with such affection, it came to life
– person A believes that person B has a particular
characteristic
– person B may begin to behave in accordance with
that characteristic
• 1968 experiment in a lower class San Francisco
elementary school
– gave students an IQ test
– told teachers that the test had identified students who
were “late bloomers” and would show a spurt in IQ
growth
– the experimenters randomly selected 20% of the
pupils who were identified to the teachers as late
bloomers (in reality, these students were no different
in their IQs than the remaining 80%)
– after one year those students showed significantly
higher IQ scores (an increase of 12 points compared
to 4 points in the other students)
• works on rats too!
Stereotype Threat
Claude Steele
• black students perform worse on a verbal test when it’s
described as an “intelligence test” a (race prime) than when
it’s described as a “laboratory test” (no race prime)
• Asian American women did better on a math test when
primed by “Asians are good at math” and worse when
primed by “Women are bad at math.”
Implicit Stereotypes
• Use of priming: subject doesn’t know stereotype
is being activated, can’t work to suppress it
– Bargh study
• have subjects read word lists, some lists include words like “gray,”
“Bingo,” and “Florida”
• subjects with “old” word lists walked to elevators significantly more
slowly
– another study
• flash pictures of Black vs. White faces subliminally
• give incomplete words like “hos_____,” subjects seeing Black make
“hostile,” seeing White make “hospital”
Implicit Stereotypes
• Devine’s automaticity theory
– stereotypes about African-Americans are so prevalent in
our culture that we all hold them
– these stereotypes are automatically activated whenever
we come into contact with an African-American
– we have to actively push them back down if we don’t
wish to act in a prejudiced way.
– Overcoming prejudice is possible, but takes work
Implicit Association Test
Web test results
Race
• 75% of White participants showed pro-White/anti-Black preference
• 42% of Black participants showed pro-White/anti-Black preference
Age
• preference for young over old, held by old and young, the strongest
effect yet observed.
Gender+Career and Gender+Science
• Males and females equally linked women to ‘home’ and ‘Liberal Arts’
and men to ‘career’ and ‘Science.’
“If we are aware of our biases, we can correct for them—as when driving a car that drifts
to the right, we steer left to go where we intend."
Origins of Prejudice & Discrimination
1) Heuristics = rules of thumb; shortcut methods to solve problems
(vs. Algorithms)
– Vivid cases (availability heuristic) – estimating the likelihood
of events based on their availability in memory; if instances
come readily to mind (perhaps because of their vividness or
rarity), we presume such events are common
• Can lead us to believe a relationship exists between two
events/things when none really does – illusory correlation
– Confirmation bias – tendency to notice and recall instances
that confirm our beliefs and ignore instances that disconfirm
our beliefs. Media plays a role because it supplies us with
confirming evidence.
– Belief perseverance – clinging to one’s initial conceptions
after the basis on which they were formed has been
discredited.
Prejudice and the Brain
• Ohio State psychologist Cunningham measured whit people’s brain
activity as they viewed a series of white and black faces
– Black faces – compared with white faces – that they flashed for only
30 milliseconds (too quick to notice) triggered greater activity in the
amygdala (assoc with vigilance and fear)
– Black faces that were flashed for half a second – enough time to
consciously process them – triggered heightened activity in the
prefrontal brain areas associated with detecting internal conflicts and
controlling responses. Individuals were consciously trying to
suppress their implicit associations.
Origins of Prejudice & Discrimination
2)
Just world phenomenon (blaming the victim) = tendency of people to believe the
world is just or life is fair and people get what they deserve. EX: the rape victim
was asking for it, what was she doing in that neighborhood anyways?
–
it would seem horrible to think that you can be a really good person and bad
things could happen to you anyway
3) Social Categorization = “Us” vs. “Them”
–
In-group bias = evaluation of one’s own group as better than others and a
tendency to disparage those outside the group. EX: Blue Eye / Brown Eye
Experiment
•
“To bolster our own status, we are predisposed to ascribe superior
characteristics to the groups to which we belong, or in-groups, and to
exaggerate differences between our own group and outsiders”
–
Out-group homogeneity bias = members of out-groups are viewed as more
similar to one another than are members of in-group. “We are diverse; They
are all alike. EX: White Americans see Hispanics as all alike; Mexican
Americans see themselves as different from the other types of Hispanics who
they see as all alike (Cuban-Americans, Puerto-Rican Americans)  leads to
stereotypes
•
Same Race Memory Advantage - More readily remember faces of your own
race than of other races
Belief in a Just World Survey
• Reverse scores on items 1, 4, 5, 8, 10, 13, 16, 17,
and 20
– 0=5
– 4=1
– 3=2
• Add up the numbers in front of all twenty items.
• Range: 0 – 100
• Higher scores indicate a stronger belief in a just
world
David Hamilton and Robert Gifford Study from
PsychSim “Not My Type”
David Hamilton and Robert Gifford Study from
PsychSim “Not My Type”
Media then reinforces these stereotypes…
Media’s Reinforcement of Stereotypes
After Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, two photographs published by Yahoo! News
depicting residents making their way through chest-deep water caused an uproar relating to bias in
media coverage. The first image, shot by photographer Dave Martin for the Associated Press, showed a
young black man, who, according to the accompanying caption, “walks through chest deep flood water
after looting a grocery store.” In a similar shot, taken by photographer Chris Graythen for AFP/Getty
Images, a white couple was shown wading "through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from
a local grocery store.”
Media’s Reinforcement of Stereotypes
“I hate the way they portray us in the
media. You see a black family, it says,
'They're looting.' You see a white family,
it says, 'They're looking for food.' And,
you know, it's been five days [waiting for
federal help] because most of the
people are black.”
Kayne West, during a fundraiser broadcast
on NBC for the victims of Hurricane
Katrina.
Origins of Prejudice & Discrimination
4) Scapegoat theory = theory that prejudice provides an outlet for anger
by proving someone to blame
5) Social inequalities = competition for scarce resources enhances
prejudice. EX: ongoing prejudice against immigrants
6) FAE leads observers to blame innate, dispositions for behavior instead
of situational factors. EX: Unemployed people are irresponsible
instead of victims of a slow economy or discrimination; obese people
are lazy instead of byproducts of our fast food culture
7) Group polarization = enhancement of a group’s prevailing attitudes
through discussion within a group. EX: If prejudiced people get
together, become more intolerant and negative
How can we reduce prejudice?
• Cooperative Action
– Robbers Cave Experiment (Sherif et
al., 1961)
• 22 5th grade boys in summer
camp in 1954
• experimenters arranged for camp
truck to break down
• both groups needed to pull it
uphill
• intergroup friendships began to
develop
• cooperative approached is being
used in US classrooms
– give assignment where
students from different racial
groups can only succeed by
working together in a “jigsaw”
approach
How can we reduce prejudice?
• Be mindful of your biases
– children who were shown pictures of handicapped
individuals and asked to think carefully about them (e.g.,
to think how they would drive a car) were more willing to
play with disabled children than those who did only a
superficial task (Langer et al., 1985)
– recognizing the presence of implicit bias helps offset it
• Mere Exposure Effect – increased exposure leads to
increased liking
– friendships with outgroup members (as friends,
neighbors, co-workers) leads to reliably lower levels of
prejudice
– Seeing targeted groups in more favorable social contexts
can help thwart biased attitudes
Aggression and Causes
•
Aggression = any physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt or destroy, whether
done reactively out of hostility or proactively as a calculated means
Causes of Aggression
1) Biology
– Genes and Evolution
– Neural
• Brain has neural systems that facilitate aggression and compassion
• Biochemical influences
2) Frustration-Aggression Principle – frustration – the blocking of an attempt to
achieve some goal – creates anger, which can generate aggression
– Scarcity
– Social exclusion
– Death of a family member
3) Learning
– Rewards and/or punishments
– Modeling – observe others in real life or on tv/video games and imitate behavior
• Observing violence  aggression???? (Not CAUSE, just CORRELATE)
Aggression and Causes
•
Aggression = any physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt or destroy,
whether done reactively out of hostility or proactively as a calculated means
• Altruism = unselfish regard for the welfare of others
Causes of Aggression
1) Biology
– Genes and Evolution
• If one identical twin admits to having a violent temper, the other twin will
often admit the same
– Neural
• Brain has neural systems that facilitate aggression and compassion
– Rewire brain to strengthen circuits that underlies virtues. Make
person feel more secure!
– Electrode implanted in limbic system – amygdala – person will
become aggressive
• Biochemical influences
– High testosterone is correlated with violence – violent criminals tend
to be muscular young males with lots of testosterone
Aggression and Causes
3)
Learning
– Rewards and/or punishments
• Children whose aggression intimidates other kids at school or provides them with
attention may become more aggressive
– Modeling – observe others in real life or on tv/video games and imitate behavior
• Observing violence  aggression? (Not CAUSE, just CORRELATE)
– YES
» Bobo Doll Experiment
» Homicide rates doubled in US with the intro and spread of TV
» While spending 3 evenings watching sexually violent movies male
viewers became less bothered by rapes and slashings. Expressed less
sympathy for domestic violence victims – desensitization to violence
» University men who have spent the most hours playing violent video
games tend to be more physically aggressive (hitting someone,
arguments with people) – action fuels attitude
– NO
» Video game experiment in the article “Chasing Dreams” found no
increase in aggression among game players
» America’s violent crime actually fell sharply in the 1990s, just as the use
of video and computer games was taking off.
Dealing with Aggression
• Catharsis Hypothesis = reduce anger by releasing it through
aggressive action or fantasy. Emotional release that relieves aggressive
urges.
• Spill-Over Effect = Blowing of steam may temporarily calm us (reduce
anger), but it may also amplify the underlying hostility
– Fried Green Tomatoes
– Experiments with video games and pornography shows that
expressing anger breeds more anger and practicing violence breeds
more violence
• How should one deal with their anger?
– Wait – bring down physiological arousal created by anger
– Don’t get mad at every little annoyance an don’t sulk or ruminate
– Exercise, play an instrument, talk to a friend to calm yourself.
Conflict
• Conflict = perceived incompatibility of actions, goals, or ideas, which
leads to potentially destructive social processes that produce results no
one wants
– Social traps = a situation in which the conflicting parties, by each
rationally pursuing their self-interest, become caught in mutually
destructive behavior EX: Individual whalers reasoned that the few
whales they took would not threaten the species and that if they
didn’t take them others would anyway; thus, the result was some
species of whales became endangered and the reason for the show
WHALE WARS. Challenging us to find ways of reconciling our right
to pursue our personal well-being with our responsibility for the wellbeing of all.
– Mirror-image perceptions = in conflict we tend to form diabolical
images of one another; mutual views often held by conflicting people,
as when each side sees itself as ethical and peaceful and views the
other side as evil and aggressive
Social Trap: Prisoner’s Dilemma
•
Social trap – a situation in which the conflicting parties, by each rationally pursuing their
self-interest, become caught in mutually destructive behavior
– Zero-Sum Environment -- Here the resources are strictly limited and the allocations
based on any particular set of decisions cancel each other out, thus equaling zero. In
effect, this means that if one person gains, others must lose in direct proportion.
Competition and mistrust created.
• When participants realize that there is no possibility of meaningful cooperation,
they generally move toward a minimax strategy that minimizes their losses and
maximizes their gains under the worst situation that their opponent can produce
for them.
• Saddle point = the point at which the minimax strategies of the two players
converge. it's the most favorable result they can expect, given the competitive
strategy of the other participant.
– Non-Zero-Sum Environment -- Here the resources are flexible, and the allocations
do not necessarily sum to zero. This means that certain sets of decisions could lead to
gains for all, while other sets of decisions could produce losses for everyone. Payoff
matrix.
• Tit-for-Tat - When participants believe that the other player is trustworthy and fair,
they generally move toward a joint strategy that maximizes the overall gains of
both participants without favoring one over the other.
• When participants find that they cannot trust the other person to work for the
common good, they tend to fall back on a competitive strategy, even if it means
that both of them lose.
Prisoner’s Dilemma
Person 1
Person 2
Choose B
Choose A
Choose A
Choose B
Optimal
outcome
Probable
outcome
Altruism
• Altruism = unselfish regard for the welfare of others
• Why we Help?...
– Social Exchange Theory = social behavior is an
exchange process, the aim of which is to maximize
benefits and minimize costs (cost-benefit analysis). EX:
donate blood  benefits (reduced guilt, social approval,
and good feelings) have to outweigh costs (time,
discomfort, and anxiety)
– Through socialization we learn the reciprocity norm - an
expectation that people will help, not hurt, those who
have helped them - and the social-responsibility norm
– an expectation that people will help those dependent
upon them, such as children, the poor, the elderly, etc
Altruism
• Why don’t we Help?...
• Bystander Effect = the tendency for any given
bystander to be less likely to give aid if other
bystanders are present
– People don’t help because…
• Diffusion of responsibility
• Ambiguity
• Risks to self
• Anonymity
Kitty Genovese
• New York City, 1964
• Kitty Genovese was raped
and murdered while at least
38 neighbors looked on
• nobody phoned the police
until after the attacker left the
scene
• When asked why they didn’t
act, bystanders said things
like, “I just don’t know,” or “I
just didn’t want to get
involved.”
Bystander Apathy
•
•
Experiment (Latane and Darley, 1970)
– subjects heard student in adjacent
room having an epileptic seizure and
gasping for help
– likelihood and speed of intervention
depended on how many others subject
though were present
Field studies (Harold Takooshian)
– New York City
– bicycle theft
– wallet pick-pocketing
– man put unconscious woman in car
trunk
• 20 replications, no intervention
– why car alarms don’t work
• 95-99% false alarms
• few people stop thieves (1-5%)
Practice What You Preach
• Experiment (Darley & Batson,
1973)
• Princeton Theology Seminary
students were on their way to
give a sermon about “The Good
Samaritan”
– Good Samaritan: New Testament
figure who takes time to help injured
man at a roadside
• Subjects were deliberately made
to be early, on-time, or late
• On their way through an alley, the
seminary students found a man
slumped in a doorway, coughing
and groaning
• What do you think they did?
Peacemaking
• Cooperation
– Superordinate goals = shared goals that override differences
among people and require their cooperation
• Shared predicament unifies, such as 9/11 and
superordinate desire to overcome it
• Leads people to define a new, inclusive group that
dissolves their former subgroups
• Communication
• Conciliation
– GRIT (Graduated and Reciprocated Initiatives in TensionReduction) – a strategy designed to decrease international
tensions. One side first announces its recognition of mutual
interests and its intent to reduce tensions. This modest
beginning hopefully opens the door for reciprocity by the other
party
PsychQuest: How do we Pick our Mates?
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Go to the following website: http://bcs.worthpublishers.com/myers7e/content/psychquest/index.htm
Scroll down and click on the link “How do we Pick our Mates?”
Click on the link “Background”, read through each page, and then click next at the bottom
*Use headphones for this quest!
Directions: Take notes as you go through the psychquest in your notebook. You can type your notes
or handwrite your notes. If you type it, do not cut and paste. Detail counts! Focus on the following
points:
Dating and/or marriage across cultures
Factors that influence romantic attraction
Characteristics of your ideal partner and how you compare to research
Darwin’s theory
Gender differences in mate selection and the evolutionary reasons for these differences
Gender differences in jealousy and the evolutionary reasons for these differences
The most interesting concept/theory you learned from this psychquest and the reasons why
You do not have to take the quiz.
Love and Attraction
Passionate Love vs. Companionate Love
Passionate Love…
• Intense preoccupation with loved one
• Deeply felt desire to be with him/her
• Feelings of incompleteness without loved
one
• It can develop rapidly and be very robust
when it does
Companionate Love…
• Feelings of deep affection, attachment,
and intimacy
• Feeling at ease with partner
• Includes development of trust, loyalty,
and willingness to sacrifice for partner
Understanding Love
• Evolutionary Perspective:
– Mate selection is influenced by reproductive benefits;
increase chances of attracting a mate and producing
offspring that would survive to reproduce. Men tend to
focus on women’s physical appearance, while women
focus on men’s social status and access to resources
• Psychoanalytic Perspective: Freud and Jung
– We love because of the past we hope to reclaim; love is
rooted in our earliest infantile experiences with intimacy
– Passion is driven by some kind of collective unconscious
• Socio-cultural Perspective:
– Romantic love = human universal; however, expression
of it varies from culture to culture
Understanding Love
•
•
Neuroscience Perspective
The limbic system, located between the
brainstem and cerebral hemispheres controls
drives, such as sex.
– Dopamine = a neurotransmitter,
contributes to a feeling of giddiness,
excitement, attention, energy, and may
be at work in the early "falling in love"
stage, and it may predominate in
obsessive relationships.
– Testosterone = a hormone, contributes
to maintaining arousal state
– Oxytocin = a neurochemical that
women release during labor and nursing,
also is released after orgasm in both men
and women. May be the "bonding or
cuddle" chemical--designed to keep men
and women together by enhancing a
feeling of closeness and belonging.
– http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/scienceof-sex-appeal-human-behavior/
Recipe for Love
1.
Proximity
• Geographic nearness (neighborhood, job, school)  greater availability to
meet
– Mere exposure effect – the phenomenon that repeated exposure to stimuli
increases liking (why we like our mirror image of ourselves)
• Physical Proximity
– Scent is amplified up close
– Men can exchange testosterone with women by kissing
– Release oxytocin through touch
2.
Physical attractiveness – youthfulness, clear skin, bright eyes and
symmetry may be associated with health and fertility
• Attractiveness bias – physically attractive people are rated higher on
intelligence, competence, sociability, morality
• Matching hypothesis – people tend to find partners that are just as
attractive as they are
• Women = ample breasts, broad hips, 70% waist to hip ration  high fertility,
can bear and nurse children
• Men = broad chest and shoulders, deep voice  good immune system and
fertile
3.
Similarity – opposites do not attract
Recipe for Love
• Go on date when ovulating
• Find someone with a different MHC (major histocompatibility complex related to finding different genotype of immune system)  t-shirt smell
test and kissing as taste test of MHC
• Don’t be too eager – show that your genes are worth waiting for.
• Reciprocal Liking – you are more likely to like someone that likes you
• Provide touch or hugs to release bonding hormone of oxytocin
• Do something exciting – adrenaline can distort perceptions and person
will start to be associated with the good feelings produced by opiates
– Two-Factor Theory of Emotion – experience emotion by 1)
experiencing physiological arousal and 2) cognitively label arousal
– Transferred Excitation - residual excitation from one stimulus will
amplify the excitatory response to another stimulus
How to make love last?
• Equity – people receive from a relationship in
proportion to what they give it
• Self-disclosure – revealing intimate aspects of
oneself to others