Chapter 14: morality, alterism and cooperation Flashcards
Define moral judgment and moral dumbfounding
Moral judgements are the judgements about what we consider to be universally right/wrong about human action and character and what is worth punishment/reward.
Moral dumbfounding is the idea that someone holds a moral judgement without a reason for it.
Explain the Social Intuitionist Model of moral judgment.
The social intutionalist model of moral jusgement is the idea that people first have set emotional reactions to morally relevant events, in turn influencing their reasoning toward a judgement of right/wrong. An example of this is the trolley dilemma.
What are the moral foundations proposed by Moral Foundations Theory?
The moral foundations theory is a theory that pruposes 5 evolved universal general moral domains in which specific emotions guide moral judgement. Care/harm, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity.
Define altruism. What underlies the debate about altruism in social psychology?
Alterism is a prosocial behaviour that benefits others without regard to consequences for oneself, debating if they can do any action purely altursistic. It provides a social reward, personal distress, empathic concern – all of which are situations affecting alterism.
Differentiate between social reward, personal distress, and empathic concern in altruistic behaviour.
Social reward: a benefit such as praise, positive attention, something tangible or gratitude that may be gained from helping others thus serving as a motive for alterusistic behaviours
Personal distress: a motive for helping others in distress that may arise from a need to reduce ones own distress
Empathic concern: identitfy with someone in need, including feeling and understanding what that person is experiencing.
What is bystander intervention? What is the bystander effect?
Bystander intervention refers to the actions taken by an individual (the “bystander”) to help someone in need, particularly in an emergency or distressing situation. It involves intervening to assist or offer support to a person who might be in danger or distress. Bystander intervention can take various forms, such as providing direct help, seeking assistance from others, or calling emergency services.
The bystander effect refers to a psychological phenomenon in which individuals are less likely to offer help to a person in need when other people are present. In other words, the more bystanders there are, the less likely any one of them is to intervene.
Why does the presence of other people influence helping behaviour? Describe the roles of the diffusion of responsibility and pluralistic ignorance.
Diffusion of responsibility is the reduction of the sense of urgency to help someone involved in an emergency based on the assumption that other people who are present will help. Pluristic ignorance occurs when people are unsure about what is happening and assume that nothing is wrong bc no one else is responding or appears concerns, resulting in informational social influence where we look at others to decide what to do.
What factors increase or decrease prosocial behaviour in emergencies?
Factors that increase prosocial beahvior: Personal responsibility, empathy, perceived urgency, intervention that is assumed to be done by others, prior experience, relationship with the victim and visibility of the situation. Factors that decrease prosocial behaviour: bystander effect/diffusion of responsibility, ambiguity (how clear is it that there is an emergency), fear of making a mistake or evulation apprehension, fear of personal harm, social influence or conformity, time pressure, anonymity, and lack of reward or recognition.
What are the social determinants of cooperation? In which cultures are there higher rates of collaboration, and why?
Cooperation is essential for human functioning idnividuals must balance the desure to cooperate with the desire not to be taken advantage of, with inclination to cooperate for common goals. People who live in cultures requiring high amounts of interdependence for survival allocate resources more fairly than people from other cultures. It is important to note that peoples construct about whom they are interacting with are important as to wether people will cooperate.
How does Wisdom-based Buddhist-derived meditation practices and prosocial behaviour?
these interventions enhance prosocial behavior through mechanisms such as developing a sense of interdependence and common humanity, fostering an altruistic desire to help others, and experiencing a state of oneness
