Ch. 6 - Human Aggression Flashcards
Mindfulness
Teaches people to focus attention on the present moment; people reduce reflexive, aggressive responses to a perceived provocation or insult.
Altruism
Doing something for others, even at the cost of our own immediate comfort or pleasure.
Sexual Scripts
Ways of behaving socially that we learn implicitly from the culture. Implicit roles that specify proper sexual behavior. These scripts shape what women and men learn is the “right” way to be sexual and popular, primarily from observations of role model, peers, and media images messages.
Desensitization
A treatment or process that diminishes emotional responsiveness to a negative, aversive, or positive stimulus after repeated exposure to it.
Deindividuation
A state of lessened self-awareness, reduced concern about what other people think of them, and weakened restraints against prohibited forms of behavior. Promoted by anonymity, large groups, diffusion of responsibility, unstructured situation, arousal because of noise, and being tired.
Imitation
In Bandura’s experiment of power with a Bobo doll, children imitated aggressive stimuli and built upon it.
Weapons effect
The mere presence of an object associated with aggression can serve as a cue for an aggressive response.
Social cognitive learning theory
People learn how to behave through cognitive processes such as their beliefs and perceptions of events and through observation and imitation of others.
Relative deprivation
The deprivation we feel when we see others enjoying a better situation or when we are deprived of something relative to our expectations.
Frustration-aggression relationship
If an individual is thwarted on the way to a goal, the resulting frustation will increase the probability of an aggressive response.
Causes of aggression
Alcohol, pain, discomfort, and hunger, heat and global warming, rejection, exclusions and taunting, frustration, deprivations and aggression.
Retaliation and Overkill
Acts of retaliation tend to be more severe than the initial insult (bc we perceive the pain we feel as more intense than the pain we inflict), meaning we tend to engage in overkill.
Culture of Honor
When men’s pride/masculinity are challenged, they feel the need to restore status through violence (often white southern males). In these cultures even small disputes put a man’s reputation on the line.
Culture and Aggression
Societies are not equally war-like. Many social psychologists believe we are born with the capacity for aggression but whether, how, when, and where we express it is learned and depends on circumstance and culture.
Catharsis
The notion that “letting off steam” – by performing an aggressive act, watching others engage in aggressive behaviors, or engaging in a fantasy of aggression – relieves built-up aggressive energies and hence reduces the likelihood of further aggressive behavior.
