Deviant behaviour and motivation

Question 1

What is the self-maintenance theory?

Answer 1

The self-maintenance theory states that the decision to lie imposes a threat to an individual’s moral self-image, which is aversive. Hence, individuals are tempted to lie only rarely. Individuals engage in a form of ethical maneuvering, thereby securing additional payoffs while also trying to maintain a positive self-view. With all else being equal, dishonesty should increase with increasing benefits.

Question 2

What are brazen liars?

Answer 2

Participants with a very high proportion of “yes”-responses, indicative of consistent cheating even for small incentives. To brazen liars incentives seem to be of little relevance as they will consistently cheat even if relatively small payoffs are at stake.

Question 3

What are corruptible individuals?

Answer 3

Participants whose willingness to lie increase significantly with increasing payoff. Payoffs between €20 and €50 were sufficient to elicit cheating.

Question 4

What are incorruptible individuals?

Answer 4

Higher incentives did not increase the willingness to lie for these individuals. There were still more “yes”-responses than the to-be-expected amount, so there was still cheating present (although limited).
In the second experiment this group was the honest group because the experiment required that they do not cheat at all.

Question 5

What are small sinners?

Answer 5

Small sinners are willing to cheat for relatively small payoffs but refrain from cheating for larger sums.

Question 6

Does everyone cheat for the right price?

Answer 6

Depends highly on individual differences in the display of dishonest behaviour (brazen liars, corruptible, small sinners, and honest individuals). A distinction can be made between ethical and economic people. Either a person will never lie (ethical), or he will lie when he prefers the outcome obtained by lying compared to the one obtained by telling the truth (economic). There are three different types of individuals: the income-maximizing subjects that cheat to the maximum extent possible, the partial liars that cheat to a limited extent, and the honest subjects that do not cheat at all.

Question 7

What issues arise when describing human aggression?

Answer 7

1. It is hard to interpret research findings and theories without a clear definition of aggression.
2. Many laypersons and misinformed professionals use the term aggresssion interchangeably with other concepts.
3. The term “violence” is often used interchangeably with aggression which leads to confusion and misunderstandings.

Question 8

What different forms of aggression are there?

Answer 8

• Physical, verbal, and relational.
• Direct or indirect.
• Function to punish someone, or it involves a deliberate plan to harm another to gain the deisred outcome.
• Automatic response driven by self-protection mechanisms.

Aggression can be put on three dimensions:
1. The degree to which the goal is to harm the victim versus benefit the perpetrator.
2. The level of hostile or agitated emotion that is present.
3. The degree to which the aggressive act was thought through.

Question 9

What is the frustration-aggression hypothesis?

Answer 9

This hypothesis suggests that the occurrence of aggressive behaviour always presupposes the existence of frustration and that the existence of frustration always leads to some form of aggression (research: not always the case).

Question 10

How do learning theories relate to aggression?

Answer 10

Learning theories explain aggression in terms of classical conditioning. Children can be taught to behave aggressively by rewarding aggressive behaviour or removing a painful consequence after aggression. Children learn to discriminate between situations where aggression has a desirable consequence and when it does not and to generalize this knowledge to new situations. Aggression can be learned through observing and imitating others (vicarious learning of aggression).

Question 11

How does social learning theory relate to aggression?

Answer 11

Making inferences about observed aggression not only increases the likelihood of imitating it, but also expands the range of situations to which the response might be generalized.

Question 12

What is the excitation-transfer theory (ETT)?

Answer 12

Posists that if two arousing events are seperated by a short amount of time, arousal from the first event will add to arousal from the second. However, the cognitive label given to the second event will be misattributed as being relevant to all the arousal experienced, thus producing an inappropriately strong response.

Question 13

What is the social information processing theory (SIP)?

Answer 13

Emphasizes the way people perceive the behaviour of others and make attributions about their own motives. A key concept here is the hostile attributional bias which describes a tendency to interpret ambiguous events as being motivated by a hostile intent.

Question 14

What is the script theory?

Answer 14

Emphasizes the acquisition of scripts for behaviour through either direct experience or observational learning. Scripts define praticular situations and provide a guide for how to behave in them. In script theory, a person faced with a particular situation first considers a script relevant to that situation, assumes a role in the script, assesses the appropriateness or likely outcome of enacting the script, and if judged appropriate, then behaves according to the script.

Question 15

What is the cognitive neo-association theory (CNA)?

Answer 15

This theory is based on the frustration-aggression hypothesis and states that aversive events produce negative affect, which is neurally linked to various thoughts, feelings, and behavioural tendencies that are in turn linked to fight/flight tendencies. Depending on personal characteristics, one response will eventually dominate.

Question 16

What is the general aggression model (GAM)?

Answer 16

The GAM is a biosocial-cognitive model of the effects of certain variables on aggression. Every instance of aggression involves a person responding to an environmental trigger. These person and situation variables influence the person’s present internal state. Depending on the nature of activated knowledge structures, the person’s immediate response may be an impulse to aggress; however, if the person has enough cognitive resources and time, a period of appraisal and reappraisal will follow. Then, and only then, will alternate responses be considered.

Question 17

What are aggression research methodologies?

Answer 17

• Usually measure short-term increases in mild form of aggression or in known precursors, such as aggressive thoughts and feelings.
• Laboratory experiments create situations in which participants behave in a way that they believe will harm another, but in which no person is actually hurt.
• Using brain imaging techniques, researchers can compare activation patterns to determine whether changes occur over time, one type of stimulus has different effects than another, or different groups typically respond differently.

Question 18

What are determinants of aggression?

Personal factors

Answer 18

• Aggression peaks in toddler years and then decreases across the lifespan.
• More common in men than women (but similar physical aggression when provoked).
• Trait anger: extreme sensitivity to provocation, and increased inclination to respond with aggression.
• Callous-unemotional personality traits: psychopahty, machiavellianism, and narcissism.
• Impulsivity, executive control, and self-control.
• Low intelligence.
• The Big Five: low agreeableness and high neuroticism.
• High testosterone and low oxytocin.
• Genetic predispositions: MAOA and the 5-HT serotonin transporter gene.

Question 19

What are determinants of aggresion?

Environmental factors

Answer 19

• Provocation
• Weapons
• Violent environment
• Violent media
• Environmental stressors
• Anonymity
• Social rejection
• Substances

Question 20

What factors mediate aggression?

Answer 20

• Emotion/affect: anger, shame, and jealousy have been linked to increased aggression.
• Cognition: attitudes, beliefs, expectations, and perceptions; a variety of external triggers can increase the accessibility of aggressive cognitions in semantic memory (priming of aggression-related action tendencies).
• Arousal: physiological and emotional arousal are linked with increased aggression

Question 21

What is the “risk factor approach”?

Answer 21

Aggression only occurs when there is a confluence of risk factors for aggression and insufficient protective factors to inhibit it. The greater the number of risk factors and the stronger their influence, the more likely it is an individual will behave aggressively, especially when protective factors are few or of little impact.

Question 22

What is deviance?

Answer 22

Behavioural departures from norms of a reference group.

Question 23

What is the social labelling theory of deviance?

Answer 23

Social labeling theory says that deviant behaviour is the product of social construction and requires no behavioural component. Thus, if a group labels an individual a deviant, that person is considered a deviant, despite a possible lack of evidence. Deviance is a product of perception rather than behaviour.

Question 24

What is the behavioural theory of deviance?

Answer 24

Deviance is associated with specific behaviours that reflect dysfunctional aspects of society. Deviance arises because of a divide between society’s goals and feasable means for achieving those goals. The behavioural approach to deviance focuses on actions that may have important implications for organizational and social welfare, but it does so without explicitly endorsing a set of normative standards for judging behaviour as destructive and constructive.

Question 25

What are norms?

Answer 25

Norms summarize the behaviour of a reference group. There are many interpretations of norms, such as biological regularity, statistical regularity, and behavioural regularity (perceptions, actual behaviour regularity, expected/desired regularity).

Informal norms: actual or regularly exhibited behaviours.
Formal norms: expected behaviours.

Question 26

What is ego depletion?

Answer 26

The initial exertion of self-control impairs subsequent self-control performance when resources for self-control are depleted; it becomes more difficult to resist temptation.

Question 27

What are the criteria for negative characterizations of deviance?

Answer 27

1. There is departure from the reference group norms in the behaviour.
2. The behaviours are implicitly or explicitly consiered socially or organizationally harmful.

Question 28

What are the criteria for positive characterizations of deviance?

Answer 28

1. There is departure from the reference group norms in the behaviour.
2. The behaviours are implicitly or explicitly considered socially or organizationally beneficial.

Question 29

What are the standards for juding deviance?

Answer 29

1. The mere departure from a norm itself indicates the destructiveness of the behaviour, because individuals should abide by the norms of the reference group.
2. Comparing departures from reference group norms to the norms of another group. The norms of the outside group serve as the standard for determining the value of the depatures from reference group norms.

Question 30

What is organizational misbehaviour?

Answer 30

Any intentional action by members of organizations that defies and violates (a) shared organizational norms and expectations and/or (b) core societal values, norms, and standards of proper conduct.

Question 31

What are hypernorms?

Answer 31

Globally held beliefs and values; based on a social contract that attempts to capture people’s values and beliefs worldwide. Typically involve basic beliefs and values associated with survival. Hypernorms are inclusive and easy to apply; they are pluralistic because they capture multiple normative approaches to ethical theory.