Last 3 weeks of Class (50% of Final)

Question 1

What is the need to belong?

Answer 1

• Desire to form social relationships is fundamental - we need to be part of stable, healthy bonds with family members, romantic partners, and friends in order to function normally.
  
  • we need to be part of relational bonds
• Need to Belong:
  
  • Is satiable
  • Is universal
  • Can lead to mental & physical health problems when unmet
    
    • E.g., depression, anxiety, pain, aggression

Question 2

What was Pressman et al. (2005)’s study on the Need to Belong about and what did it show?

Answer 2

• Pressman et al. (2005) loneliness study:
  
  • Students responded to questionnaires
  • Gave students flu shot
  • Students with high levels of loneliness and a small social network had poorer immune response to vaccine (belonging actually factor to physical health)
  • Loneliness was also related to greater psychological stress, and negative affect

Question 3

What are Parasocial Relationships?

Answer 3

• The need to connect and belong is so strong that we sometimes use proxies for relationships
  
  • Wilson! (the volleyball)
  • Social surrogacy hypothesis:
    
    • E.g., TV characters, lit. characters can satiate the need to belong → in order to satisfy the need to belong we will form relationships with literary characters, TV show characters, and objects, animals
    • we anthropomorphisize → we treat our pets like humans → eg. say Koda has a personality
• Robot revolution!
  
  • Worldwide, billions of dollars are spent annually on developing robots that will
    
    • care for the elderly
    • assist doctors in surgery
    • work in factories
    • fight alongside human soldiers
  • Robots will become fully integrated (according to some futurists) into society within next few decades (Ripley, 2014).
  • Robot/AI friends?
    
    • Eg. that girl on Instagram who has that AI bf who calls her kitten lmao
    • will probably form relationships with these robot things

Question 4

What are the downsides of Parasocial relationships, especially in terms of AI?

Answer 4

• If parasocial relationships are
  helpful, can they also be harmful
  
  • Rejection from a robot???
• Typically programmed with AI
  
  • AI can go horribly wrong
    
    • E.g., Microsoft’s Tay bot
• Inadvertent rejection is likely
  consequence of making AI act
  like people
  
  • Tay was meant to be a 16 yr old girl on Twitter as a learning AI
  • She started off as eager and interested, was meant to learn to converse → turned it down within an hour
  • She started getting pretty antisocial pretty quickly based off what she was learning from others
  • Particularly with human-trained AI

Question 5

What was Nash et al.’s 2018 study on and what did it show?

Answer 5

Robot Rejection
- Baxter the robot
- Can do a lot of things: converse, play games
- Had Baxter play connect 4
- Had people come in and play connect 4 with him
- Baxter said some things
- Had good time
- Then Baxter said one of 3 things:
1. That was fun, let’s do it again sometime
2. control condition: said nothing
3. Rejecting condition: said it was boring
- RESULTS: Rejection triggered effect to self-esteem → went down
- If people were in the acceptance condition, they wanted to play again, meet up again.
- If they were in the rejection condition they either felt really sad or angry
- one told him to f off

Question 6

Who is in the Relationship? (Personality and Interpersonal Processes)

Answer 6

• The Big Five
  
  • Largely hereditary
  • Strong biological basis
  • Relevant to a number of
    interpersonal processes
• Attachment
  
  • Sense of security
  • Partly learned (based in childhood)
  • Close others
  • Can persist from Childhood → adulthood
    
    • can change it, but there is a relationship

Question 7

What are the Big-5 Personality Traits?

Answer 7

• Openness
  
  • Curious
  • original
  • creative
• Conscientious
  
  • organized
  • punctual
  • achievement
• Extraversion
• Agreeableness
• Neuroticism/Emotional stability
  
  • Anxiety, irritableness, more emotionality

Question 8

What was Dyrenforth et al., 2010 JPSP’s Relationship Satisfaction and the Big Five study on and what did it show?

Answer 8

• Using data sets from Australia (N = 5,278), the United Kingdom (N = 6,554), and Germany (N = 11,418)
• Predictions?
• Openness
• High relationship satisfaction = Less rigid
• C
• High relationship satisfaction = less impulsive
• E
• High relationship satisfaction = more social
• A
• High relationship satisfaction = more trust/cooperation
• N
• Low = more stability
• RESULTS:
  
  • Essentially they were correct, for all their predictions except openness
  • Higher openness was related to less relationship satisfaction → idea was that high openness was interested in novelty → what’s new attracts them → what isn’t new is long-term relationship → what is new is new relationships/new people.

Question 9

What is Forgiveness?

Answer 9

• Process…
  
  • Letting go of a transgression
  • Return to original relationship
  • Can take time
• Apology prompts forgiveness
  
  • Part of a social code
  • Acknowledges wrong doing
    
    • when you apologise, you’re signalling you know what you did and that you’ll try to fix what you did or avoid doing it in the future
• Who forgives? (in terms of personality types)

Question 10

What was Brose et al.’s study on Personality and Forgiveness? What did it show?

Answer 10

• Neuroticism negatively related to forgiveness
  
  • More likely to hold a grudge
• Agreeableness positively related to forgiveness
  
  • Value agreeableness, cordialness → more likely to forgive

Question 11

What was Karremans and Smith’s study on Forgiveness (2016)?

Answer 11

Context matters!
- Power promotes goal-directedness
- Closedminded pursuit
- What if the goal is connection, or relationship success?
- RECALL Altruism
- Power considered in
context…
- Study:
- people randomly assigned to 2 conditions: weak power or low power and either in a strongly committed relationship or weakly committed relationship
- Found people that were higher in power in a strongly committed relationship were more likely to forgive/engage in forgiveness process

Question 12

What was McNulty’s study (2010) on Personality and Forgiveness and what did it show?

Answer 12

• Dark Side” of Forgiveness
  
  • For low power people, forgiveness may involve submission (eg. agreeable people) → prioritize a relationship but don’t champion yourself
  • Recall, agreeableness and submissiveness
  • Looked at high forgiveness vs low forgiveness groups
  • Results: High forgiveness = stable levels of aggression
  • Low forgiveness showed decline in aggression → in context, helped them develop less aggressive relationship → if they were still in a relationship behaviour did probably change
  • But, consider the graphs, perhaps not a dark side?

Question 13

What is Attachment Style?

Answer 13

• Contingencies learned in childhood persist into adulthood
  
  • RECALL: Resilient Mice Pups
• Harlow’s cloth and metallic
  mommies for monkey
  *https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsA5Sec6dAI
• 2 conditions:
  
  • Monkeys being raised by different kinds of mothers → one just providing sustenance, other one providing closeness, contact, softness (that baby monkey can go there and get comfort)
  • Harlow was a colleague of Maslow for a time at Wisconsin-Madison
    
    • Hierarchy of needs
  • Those with the wire mother, despite getting their physical needs met (water, food) they became super insecure → Low exploration, clingy, socially
    stunted, became poor mothers themselves
  • connection with primary caregiver just as important as relying on for food

Question 14

What was Bowlby and Ainsworth’s Attachment Theory?

Answer 14

• Mary Ainsworth
  
  • student of Bowlby
  • The Strange Situation
    
    • used to analyze the quality of attachment of a child to their caregiver
    • What happens when mother leaves the new, strange room
    • Reunion (when she returns is most important)
    • stranger enters room once child sits down to play → after a couple minutes, the stranger attempts to interact with the child, Lisa
    • soon after, the mother gets the cue to leave the room
    • the stranger tries to comfort Lisa, in vain
    • When her mother comes back into the room, they record how Lisa reacts
    • When the mother leaves, left with stranger, then the stranger leaves, Lisa alone
    • Sends stranger to comfort Lisa

Question 15

What were the attachment styles like that Ainsworth and Bowlby observed?

Answer 15

• Within the strange situation:
  
  • Secure: caregivers respond quickly & reliably to distress
    
    • Infant becomes relaxed and resumes exploring/playing
      when caregiver returns to room → infants would then become relaxed and went back to playing when the caregiver came back
    • caregiver as “base” → they know they have them in the room, can now go explore bc they know they’re there if they need that → due to successful comfort situations by caregiver
  • Anxious: caregivers not consistently reliable (sometimes intrusive, sometimes rejecting)
    
    • Infant remains angry and resistant when caregiver returns, and is reluctant to return to playing
    • based in less reliable caregiver: care and comfort from caregiver is varied: sometimes too much, sometimes too little
  • Avoidant: caregivers consistently unreliable (reject
    infants)
    
    • Infant is not affectionate when caregiver comes back, doesn’t play much, not distressed when caregiver leaves and is somewhat avoidant when caregiver returns (what are you doing?)
    • Based in learning that the caregiver is consistently unreliable → I’m upset, nothing happens -> have to find my own way to deal with it

Question 16

What did Bowlby claim attachment styles were?

Answer 16

From “cradle to grave”: Bowlby claimed these attachment
styles (“working models of relationships”) remain as stable patterns in our romantic adult relationships

Question 17

What is Secure Attachment Style like in Adulthood?

Answer 17

I find it relatively easy to get close to others and am comfortable depending on them and having them depend on me. I don’t worry about being abandoned or about someone getting too close to me.

Question 18

What is Anxious Attachment Style like in Adulthood?

Answer 18

• I find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like. I often worry that my partner doesn’t really love me or won’t want to stay with me. I want to get very close to my partner, and this
  sometimes scares people away.
• everything is like an iceberg → there is a bit above the water, but they assume there’s some giant, terrible thing under the surface.

Question 19

What is Avoidance Attachment Style like in Adulthood?

Answer 19

• I am somewhat uncomfortable being close to others; I find it difficult to
  trust them completely, difficult to allow myself to depend on them. I am nervous when anyone gets too close, and often, others want me to be more intimate than I am comfortable being.
• Essentially learned to put up a protective wall
  
  • Learned sb isn’t going to help them when they’re in trouble → become hyper-reliant on themselves

Question 20

What are the different implications of each attachment style?

Answer 20

• Secure: often longer-lasting relationships, more romantic satisfaction, more confidence and trust in relationship, more positive attributions of partner’s behaviour
  
  • secure ppl usually stay secure, especially if the other person changes → depends on quality of relationship
• Anxious: often short intense relationships, hypervigilant, interpret
  relationship events in a threatening manner
  
  • iceberg: on the lookout → why did you say that? what do you mean?
• Avoidant: less physically affectionate & intimate, shorter relationships, lack trust, emotionally distant
• In adulthood, indicator of current attachment style is past relationship → if the person you were dating has an insecure style, you’ll probably have insecure style

Question 21

What was Fraley and Shaver (1998)’s Airport Study on Attachment Style and what did it show?

Answer 21

• Looked at Couples saying goodbye to each other at an airport
• Filled out emotion &
  relationship questionnaires
• Researchers secretly
  observed their behaviour
  RESULTS:
• Adult attachment behaviour was similar to what is observed in children
  
  • “Avoidant” partners sought less physical contact (e.g., embraced and held hands less)
  • “Anxious” partners were more distressed, experienced more fear and sadness

Question 22

What did Hazan and Shaver; Brennan, Clarke and Shaver Studies on Adult Attachment Styles do/show?

Answer 22

4 Styles
- Secure: Comfortable with
intimacy and autonomy.
- Anxious-Preoccupied:
Dependency and ‘clinginess’
- Dismissing-Avoidant: Dismissing of intimacy (counter-dependant) -> low anxiety, high avoidance.
- highly prefer independence → don’t want to be dependant on others
- Fearful-Avoidant: Desire
closeness but feel unworthy of
affection.
- they’re both wanting the relationship but also doing their best to keep it at a distance

Question 23

What did Twin Studies on Attachment AKA - The Only Way Parenting Matters Show?

Answer 23

• % Heredity genetics:
  
  • Big five traits: 50% variance explained by genetics
  • 2 yr old attachment: 0% variance
  • adult security: 35%%
  • adult anxiety: 35%
  • Adult dismissive: 0
• % Shared Environment (parents):
  
  • parents have no impact in terms of big 5 traits
  • 2 yr old attachment: 50%
  • adult security: none
  • adult dismissive: 35%
• % Non-Shared Environment
  
  • big 5 traits: 50%
  • 2 yr old attachment: 50%
  • Adult security: 65% explained by relationships outside your parents
  • adult anxiety: 65%
  • adult dismissive: 65%

Question 24

So are insecure attachment styles (anxious and avoidant) always maladaptive?

Answer 24

• No.
  
  • Anxious and avoidant attachment are adaptive responses to the type of care that people receive (i.e., it’s not safe to trust someone who is
    unreliable)
    
    • Anxious → look for signs, keep them close
    • Avoidant → I keep crying ,no one is coming → now I know it’s not good to rely on people like that, I need to look after myself, I can’t trust them
    • so can be adaptive → doing the best they can
  • But, can become a problem when we carry them forward into new relationships or leave individuals prone to distress
    
    • when we become hypervigilant of threats that aren’t there
    • when we can’t trust trustworthy ppl

Question 25

What is Interpersonal Attraction?

Answer 25

• Interpersonal attraction: the
  study of attraction or liking
  between two or more people.
• Focus here on dyads

Question 26

What are the Person-Factors that Influence Attraction?

Answer 26

1. Proximity
2. Similarity
3. Physiological Arousal
4. Physical Attractiveness

Question 27

What was Festinger, Schachter, & Back
(1950)’s study on Proximity and Attraction: Westgate Housing Study?

Answer 27

• MIT students randomly assigned to 1 of 17 buildings in an apartment complex
  
  • Looked at friendship in terms of proximity
  • Previously strangers
  • Asked who 3 closest friends from the complex were
• RESULTS:
  
  • 65% of friends mentioned lived in the same building
  • Those in the same building
    represented only 5% of all
    residents
  • Massively influenced by those closer to them
  • People more likely to have closer friendship with those closest to them → next door, → linear, goes down with each door further from them

Question 28

Why does proximity influence attraction?

Answer 28

• Opportunity for interactions
  - We are more likely to meet and interact with people who are physically close by– the more we interact, the more likely we will become friends
• Mere exposure effect
  - We tend to like novel stimuli more after we have been repeatedly exposed to them
  (i.e., familiarity)

Question 29

According to Hinsz (1986) Study what does Similarity have to do with Attraction?

Answer 29

• In attitudes
• In personality
• In appearance
  
  • Hinsz (1986) Study: Participants
    rated facial similarity of photographs of couples or random pairs
  • Results: Actual couples rated as more similar than random pairs

Question 30

What was Tdwell, Eastwick and Finkel’s (2013) study on Perceived Similarity vs. Actual Similarity and what did it show?

Answer 30

• Speed-Dating Study
  
  • Assessed similarity before and after each date
    
    • Perceived similarity – compared self-ratings to ratings of partner (rate yourself and then ratings from your partner)
    • Actual similarity – compared self- ratings of each partner
      
      • Results: perceived similarity (not actual) → romantic liking

Question 31

Why does Similarity Influence Attraction?

Answer 31

• Facilitates smooth interactions (similar attitudes, less conflicts of interest)
• Similar others have qualities we like; dissimilar others are “unreasonable.”
  
  • We dislike people who are dissimilar to us even more than we like people who are similar (negativity bias)
• We expect similar others to like us
  
  • Reciprocity- we tend to like those who like us → I like them, they must like me

Question 32

What was Dutton and Aron’s (1974) Capilano Bridge Study on and what did it show?

Answer 32

Link between misattribution of arousal and bridge study
- 85 men visited one of two
bridges:
- Suspension bridge (scary) vs. Control bridge (not scary)
- Attractive female experimenter asks them to fill out survey
- Gives her phone number in case they have later questions about the survey they just did
- DV was how many men ended up calling the female experimenter
- Results:
- compared to people who crossed the control bridge (13%), 50% who crossed the scary bridge ended up calling the female experimenter
- Misattribution of arousal → scary bridge made them aroused (heart racing) → when they encountered the experimenter they made a secondary appraisal (wrong) and said that their arousal was probably due to the experimenter (salient stimulus)

Question 32

What do we find Physically Attractive?

Answer 32

• Facial symmetry: We prefer symmetrical faces (seen across cultures and ethnic groups)
• Beyonce
  
  • Can take the mirror image of her face and it lines up extremely well.
  • She has a very symmetrical face
  • High degree of symmetry
  • Very culturally accepted beautiful face
    RECALL: What is beautiful?
• Lots of ideas, seemingly related
  
  • Symmetry
  • Averageness
  • Divine proportions (patterns in nature)
  • Balance
  • Prototype
• In effect, patterns and rules that you expect and know
• We know this because of
  cultural differences

Question 33

What is the influence of culture and situation on attractiveness?

Answer 33

• People in different cultures are attracted to those who exemplify the traits that their culture values.
• Standards of beauty vary over time.
• Cultures vary in the kind of ornamentation people use to enhance their attractiveness.

Question 34

What is the cultural influences on attractiveness?

Answer 34

• High-status attributes in a given culture are often viewed as more attractive.
  
  • Skin tones
  • Body size and weight

Question 35

Attractiveness and Imagery Over Time

Answer 35

SEE IMAGES of Jesus
- first one left is first attempt on how Jesus might have looked with their computer rendering at the time and area he would have lived
- Slowly start seeing lighter skin tone, beard, longer hair
- Now Jesus made attractive, symmetrical

Question 36

Buddhism in India vs. China: Buddha and Budai as an example of Culture and Attractiveness

Answer 36

• Both high status individuals looks quite different
• Both valued for the way that they look

Question 37

According to the evolutionary perspective, what are the gender differences in terms of what is considered physically attractive?

Answer 37

• Women: Signs of fertility (e.g.,
  waist-to-hip ratio)
• Facial features: large eyes, full
  lips, small nose, prominent
  cheekbones, high eyebrows,
  broad smile
  
  • Youth and maturity
    Waist-to-Hip Ratio
• When people are asked to judge which of these women is most attractive, the average preference is usually a woman with a 0.7 ratio of waist to hip.
• Over time, standards of
  attractiveness for the overall size of women’s bodies have
  changed, but the ideal of a 0.7
  waist-to-hip ratio has remained fairly constant.
  
  • Associated with hormone balance (estrogen and progesterone) linked with better fertility and better health
    FOR MEN - Gender differences: Evolutionary Perspective:
  • Men: Signs of masculinity and power
  • Facial features: prominent
    cheekbones, large chin (higher levels of testosterone usually lead to these features)
  • Provide resources and protect
  • Testosterone

Question 38

What did Pennebaker et al.’s (1979) Closing Time Study demonstrate?

Answer 38

Power of the situation on attractiveness.
- 103 women and men recruited from local bars near a university in the southern U.S.
- Asked: on a scale from 1-10 on attractiveness, how would you rate the men/women in here (the bar) tonight? And did it at 3 time points:
- 9:00 pm
- 10:30 pm
- Midnight (half hour before close)
- Found that compared to 9:30 and 10:30, at midnight, the attractiveness of the bar went up a whole point 5/10 → 6/10
- Same people, same attractiveness but the situation they were in lead to them rating them as more attractive in general

Question 39

Interpersonal Effects: What is the Attractiveness Halo Effect?

Answer 39

• Attractiveness Halo Effect: Tendency to believe that attractive people also have other, unrelated positive traits.
  We think that attractive people are
• Happier
• Warmer
• More healthy
• More outgoing
• More mature
• More intelligent
• More sensitive
• More confident
• More successful
• Not actually true, but…
• Self-fulfilling prophecy: Attractive people….
  
  • Report more satisfying interactions with others
  • School work evaluated more favourably
  • Earn more money (especially men)
  • Receive more help from others (especially women)
  • Receive lighter prison sentences

Question 40

According to Buss and Singh, Do men and women look for different things in a mate?

Answer 40

Evolutionary psychology argues that gender differences in mate preference would be as follows (e.g. Buss, 2003; Singh, 1993):
- Men are motivated to find a fertile mate and threatened by paternal uncertainty.
- Women must be selective because biologically limited in child bearing and look for men who possess resources or traits predictive of it.\
- Large survey of about 10,000 men and women in 37 different cultures revealed that (see Buss, 1989):
- Men and women both valued kindness as one of the most important traits along with others such as dependability and sense of humour.
- Adapted from Fletcher et al., 2013
- Research also suggests an asymmetry in jealousy of sexual versus emotional infidelity (e.g. Buss, 2003; 2000; Shackelford et al., 2004; Dijkstra & Buunk, 1998).
- E.g., women rate emotional infidelity as more threatening than men.
- Men more jealous of partner flirting with a dominant man, while women more jealous of partner flirting with a young attractive woman.

Question 41

Are gender differences in mate preference only because of evolutionary explanations?

Answer 41

No!
- Socio-cultural factors may also help explain these findings:
- Women’s preference for status may be driven by their lack of access to resources (e.g. Wood & Eagly, 2002; Zentner & Mitura, 2012).
- Supported by evidence that preference lower in countries with more equal
distribution of economic resources.
- Also, gap between stated preference and actual preference (weak attitude-behaviour link; e.g. Finkel & Eastwick, 2008).
- Although men sought attractive partners and women sought partners with earning prospects, no real differences in actual preferences in speed dating context.

Question 42

Evolutionary Perspective vs. Social Structural Theory on Finding Mates and Attraction

Answer 42

• This area of research and the textbook contain a large quantity of evolutionary theorizing
• Important to know that there are different explanations
• “Universality” in mate selection may not be so universal
• Social context matters
  
  • Gender differences can be modulated by certain social contexts
• Evolutionary or sociocultural explanations are not all correct or wrong, but rather both may
  interactively be at play, or operate at different levels (e.g., proximal vs distal)
• The way we talk about gender differences isn’t actually how we talk about it
  
  • Usually smaller
• eg. research on risk-taking:
  
  • literature very much says men are riskier than women but prof has done lots of studies and found no big difference between men and women

Question 43

What was Meltzer and McNulty’s study (2016) on Personality and Sex and what did it show?

Answer 43

• Sex an important part of
  relationships
  
  • Indicator of romantic
    connection
• Personality plays a big part!
  
  • A wife’s agreeableness
    predicts probability
  • A husband’s low neuroticism and low openness and a wife’s low neuroticism associated with satisfaction
• Gives a picture of security,
  stability, and the importance
  of the wife’s role

Question 44

What is the Protective Effect of Sex?

Answer 44

• Sex might increase connection, and have protective effects
• The punchline: more sex, better relationship
• Most beneficial for attachment insecurity and neuroticism!
• Protective factor
• As sexual satisfaction goes up, the anxious people start to look like the low anxious people
  
  • These are the people who are anxious in the relationship and they become more like their less-anxious counterparts
• Liner relationships with sex
• More sex in relationship → leads to increased satisfaction in life in general

Question 45

According to self-expansion theory, how can sexual attraction be maintained?

Answer 45

• According to self-expansion theory, engaging in activities with a romantic partner that broaden one’s sense of self and perspective of the world (e.g., novel, exciting, interesting, and challenging activities) can reignite feelings of exhilaration and passion reminiscent of when couples first fell in love (Muise et al., 2018)
• In other words: Try new things together (out of the bedroom)

Question 46

What was Musie et al’s (2019) study on maintaining sexual attraction and what did it show?

Answer 46

• Muise randomly assigns people to one of three conditions (self-expansion; familiar and comfortable; control)
  
  • Exercise of self-expansion - >thinking about a new novel experience they had
• Found the self-expansion is related both to relationship satisfaction and increased sexual desire to one’s own romantic partner → this generally increases relationship satisfaction
• self-expansion led to more sexual desire, more relationship satisfaction and sexual satisfaction than familiar and comfortable and control condition.

Question 47

What did Gottman’s “Love Lab” Study?

Answer 47

• Relational Happiness
• Research on couples -> trying to predict who would break up.
• “Came up with the 4 Horsemen of Relational Apocalypse”
  1. Criticism – telling partner his/her faults
  2. Contempt – superiority; being sarcastic, rolling eyes
  3. Defensiveness – denying responsibility
  4. Stonewalling – withdrawing/avoiding partner
• Emphasized Nonverbal Bids

Question 48

According to Gottman’s “Love Lab” what was important for relationships and what was the “Relationship Cure”

Answer 48

• Affectionate touching - back slap, handshake, pat, squeeze, etc.
• Facial expression
• Playful touching
• Affiliating gestures – opening a door, handing over a utensil or tool
• Vocalizing – laughing, grunting, sighing (when your partner says something)
• Common denominator is being aware of your partner and just responding through nonverbal bids
  RELATIONSHIP CURE:
  
  • Newlyweds, busted bids, and divorce (65 vs.15% of successful bids)
  • Got couples to practice fielding bids for emotional connection.
  • Practice sending good bids, not lame ones.
• FOUND that you could take these couples and they had different communication patterns.
• They both start at 0 and were told to discuss an issue.
• What was measured was the positive and negative turns of the conversation in terms of their partner ?
• Low risk couple starts trending upwards in terms of being positive
• For the high risk couple, it just gets more and more negative
• This was classified based on successful and busted bids

Question 49

So how do we maintain a healthy relationship?

Answer 49

• Foster mutual support (including emotional support) and growth
  
  • Responsiveness is important in good times and bad!
• Share novel & enjoyable experiences together

Question 50

What are the 2 types of romantic love?

Answer 50

1. Passionate love: Feelings of intense longing with physiological arousal; when it is reciprocated, we feel fulfillment and ecstasy,
   and when it is not, we feel despair
   
   • the spark!
2. Companionate love: Feelings of intimacy and affection we feel for another person about whom we care deeply.

Question 51

What happens to passion and intimacy over time in passionate and companionable love?

Answer 51

• Passionate love: passion
  starts high then decreases
  over time
  
  • starts high then decreases over time
• Companionate love: intimacy starts low and gradually increases over
  time

Question 52

According to Lauer and Laur (1985) What is lasting love?

Answer 52

• Companionate love is long-lasting
• Lauer & Lauer (1985):
• Surveyed couples married for
  15+ years
• “Why did your marriage last?”
• Top 2 answers:
• “My spouse is my best friend.”
• “I like my spouse as a person.

Question 53

What is the definition of Aggression?

Answer 53

• Any physical or verbal behavior that is intended to harm another
  person or persons (or any living thing)
• Harm can be physical or psychological

Question 54

Aggression must require what?

Answer 54

Intent.
- Aggression requires an intention to harm
- Can be a deliberate action or a deliberate failure to act
- Violence: Acts of aggression with more severe consequences

Question 55

What is violence?

Answer 55

Violence: Acts of aggression with more severe consequences

Question 56

What are the 2 types of aggression that social psychologists distinguish between?

Answer 56

• Affective aggression: Harm-seeking done to another person that is elicited in response to some negative emotion
  
  • eg. when sb cuts you off while driving and you go and cut them off (you’re flying off the handle)
• Instrumental aggression: Harm-seeking done to another person
  that serves some other goal

Question 57

What is Affective Aggression?

Answer 57

• Affective aggression: Harm-seeking done to another person that is elicited in response to some negative emotion
  
  • eg. when sb cuts you off while driving and you go and cut them off (you’re flying off the handle)

Question 58

What is Instrumental Aggression?

Answer 58

Harm-seeking behaviour done to another person that serves some other goal.

Question 59

Origins: Motivation to Aggression and the Trust Game

Answer 59

• TRUST GAME:
  
  • 1 round: Investor (P1) can give $ to trustee (P2)
• $ increases
• Trustee can give back some
  (investor profits) or none
• ‘Rational’ choice = Invest $0
  (trustee should never return
  money) (is on the left top → Nash equilibrium → should know that P2 is rational and should take the 20 over the 10, so if that’s true I should not trust P2 and so I should not send the money)
• Actual = Invest $
  
  • Trustee returns profit
  • Actual is that we share it

Question 60

What did De Quervain et al., 2004’s study in Science show and what was it?

Answer 60

• Trust Game
• Previously: Striatal activation
  during Trust Game
  
  • Trustee caudate activated after investee trust behaviour
  • Caudate signalled ‘intention to trust’
  • Caudate activation = learned trust as reward
  • Donating and observing donation to charity also activates striatum
• De Quervain
  
  • Investor inflict punishment where the investor keeps everything = exact same caudate activation
  • Punishment feels rewarding…!
    
    • inflicting punishment on sb else feels rewarding

Question 61

Freud’s The Aggressive Unconscious consists of what elements?

Answer 61

• Eros: Freud’s term for what he proposed is the human inborn instinct to seek pleasure and to create
• Thanatos: Freud’s term for what he proposed is the human inborn instinct to aggress and to destroy.
• Displacement and Catharsis
  
  • we don’t like to see thanatos in ourselves so we do either of these two things
• Jung’s Shadow: the dark side of personality, can be positive, but is mostly negative because it is the hidden and unwanted part of ourselves
  
  • one response to seeing this in ourselves is projection
• Projection
  
  • And the destruction of things embodying those unwanted aspects

Question 62

According to Freud how do we Learn to Aggress?

Answer 62

• Counter to psychodynamics
• When aggressive actions result in desired attention, specific rewards, or alleviating negative feelings, they become more likely.
• Aggressive actions can create dissonance, which leads to attitude shifts that justify actions.
  
  • they’re not longer bad, they’re good → here’s why
• Social Learning Theory: People learn by watching the actions of others
  (Bandura, 1973).
  
  • RECALL: BOBO doll study
  • Opposite of catharsis or displacement!
  • the more we engage in aggressive behaviours the more likely we are to do them

Question 63

What was You and I like as per early Psychology?

Answer 63

• Psychoanalytics
  
  • We are a dark being, we have this aggressive harm-causing unconscious that we have to wrestle with
• Behaviourism
  
  • We are like a pigeon: we do something → are rewarded → do it more.

Question 64

Empirically what are You and I like?

Answer 64

• We are relatively unimportant in terms of population growth and decline
• In terms of periods of life on earth, we’re essentially a pixel of history on Earth
• In terms of the Universe, we are just part of a planet that is a part of an observable universe
• We are essentially nothing in the universe

Question 65

What is Awareness?

Answer 65

• Existence is a bummer (exisentialists)
  
  • Existence unmoored from
    meaning
  • Religious authority undermined
• However, we aware! (and that sets us apart)
  
  • This capability and struggle for meaning elevates and unites us
  • ‘Know Thyself’ (Hypocrates)

Question 66

What are the Existential Origins of Aggression: ‘Bad Faith’

Answer 66

• Escape from the dilemma of
  existence
  
  • Don’t worry about the meaning of life
  • Don’t try to think for yourself
  • Don’t examine your life; do what society, convention, peers, etc., tell you to do.
• Living in bad faith: ignoring the existential questions and
  ignoring our moral imperative

Question 67

What is ‘Bad Faith: According to Erich Fromm and Theodor Adorno?

Answer 67

• Escape from the angst of
  freedom by
  
  • 1. Impersonal identity
       - Conform to a social ideal (eg. stereotype, prototype, conforming to an ideal of how an individual should behave)
       - Removes the burden of choice
       - eg. Hipsters → claimed high level of individuality but all look the same → escaping into an impersonal identity
  • 2. Authoritarianism
       - Submission to external power (eg. group or social institution)
       - Nietzsche’s herd mentality
  • 3. Destruction (aggression itself)
       - The source of angst is the world
       - Eliminate that world
       
       • eg. trolling behaviour → to break things down, to destroy.

Question 68

What is the Evolutionary Basis for Aggression/who proposed it?

Answer 68

• Evolutionary basis for aggression (e.g. Daly & Wilson, 1996; 2005; Hobart,, 1991):
  
  • Male aggressors more likely to obtain resources and attract mates through higher status, thereby increasing odds of reproductive success.
  • Females from an evolutionary perspective protect offspring and therefore use indirect means.
    
    • protective aggression
  • Social animals can coordinate against other groups
    
    • Violent takeover of territory
    • chimpanzee attack on other chimpanzees in the area where they basically engage in war
  • Increased aggression found in step families.
  • Children younger than 2 years 100 times more likely to suffer lethal abuse in hands of step parent than genetic parent even controlling for several factor.
    
    • the idea is that genetic material is sth you want to pass on so you’re less likely to aggress against a child you’re genetically related to

Question 69

What is the Genetic basis for aggression?

Answer 69

• Behavioural genetics basis for aggression (e.g. Coccaro et al., 1997; Miles & Carey, 1997;
  Hines & Saudino, 2002):
  
  • E.g., identical twins show greater overlap in aggression and irritability than fraternal
    twins or siblings.
    
    • increased genetic material being shared, increased aggressive traits
  • However, twin studies reveal overlap in physical, but not relational aggression.
  • Meta-analysis suggests that genetic factors account for an important portion of the
    variance in aggression.
    
    • does seem to be a genetic component

Question 70

What is the Neurobiological Basis for Aggression?

Answer 70

• Research confirms physiological mechanisms involved in the detection of social threat, the experience of anger, and engaging
  in aggressive behaviou r.
  Brain regions
• Dorsal anterior cingulate cortex
  (dACC): Detection of social
  threat; unjustified wrongdoings
• Hypothalamus and amygdala:
  Anger and fear (emotions that evoke threat)

Question 71

What is the Dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortex (dACC)’s role in aggression?

Answer 71

• This brain area is active when people detect actions and outcomes that interfere with their goals, including social threats.
• See frustration → aggression link (later)

Question 72

What is the connection between the brain regions for fight or flight and aggression?

Answer 72

• The hypothalamus and the amygdala are two brain regions that play a key role in people’s emotional
  experiences of fear and anger and prepare them for a fight-or-flight response.
  
  • flight is more likely when there is somewhere to go → if you can get out of there.
    
    • flight is less sensitive to obstacles → rats will crash through barriers to get out
  • Meanwhile, fight arises more often when there is no avenue out.
• Adrenaline (epinephrine) and
  Noradrenaline (norepinephrine)

Question 73

What is the area of the brain responsible for Impulse Regulation? (and thus perhaps maybe aggression)

Answer 73

The dorsolateral prefrontal
cortex and medial prefrontal
cortex help regulate impulses,
share connections with the
limbic system, and contain
serotonin receptors.

Question 74

What role does Testosterone play in the origin of aggression?

Answer 74

• Sex hormone
  
  • Development of primary and secondary male sex characteristics
• About ~10 times higher concentration in men
• Link with aggression is complex
  
  • Mostly a positive relationship, however…
• testosterone also plays a role in control and inhibition of aggression and sexuality
• BEST DESCRIPTION:
  
  • Energizer; accentuates existing behavioural tendencies

Question 75

What did Reinisch’s 1981 Study “In Utero Testosterone Exposure and Aggression” show?

Answer 75

• Looked at mothers with pregnancy complications who received testosterone therapy or not
• Looked at the children’s behaviours in terms of aggression
• Boys were more aggressive than girls in general
• The girls who received testosterone therapy in utero matched with or looked like boys (in terms of aggression) who did not received in utero therapy.
  Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia and ‘Boy’s Toys”: In Utero Testosterone and Active Play Preferences (Berenbaum and Hines, 1992, Psychological Science)
• If there was exposure → testosterone therapy → no difference in preference for boys’ toys between girls and boys.

Question 76

What is the 2D:4D digit ratio and what does it show?

Answer 76

• length of the index finger compared to the ring finger.
  -> Average male: Low 2D: 4D: Index finger shorter than the ring finger.
  -> Typical female: Equal 2D: 4D -> index and ring fingers are equal length
  -> High 2D:4D Index finger longer than ring finger
  SEE IMAGES
• Lower 2D:4D ratio (as seen in men) correlates with:
  
  • good visual and spatial performance (Bull et al., 2010)
  • athletic achievement (Tester and Campbell 2007)
  • dominance and masculinity (Neave et al. 2003)
  • sensation seeking and psychoticism (Austin et al. 2002)
• Characteristics typically associated with women correlate with higher
  2D:4D ratio
  
  • verbal fluency (Manning 2002)
  • emotional problems (Williams et al. 2003)
  • neuroticism (Austin et al. 2002)
    → however, a lot of this stuff needs to be replicated, studies on it are old → probably not popular anymore bc it doesn’t replicate well (suspicion)

Question 77

What is the Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis including Situational Triggers?

Answer 77

• Original version: Aggression is always preceded by frustration, and that frustration inevitably leads to aggression (Dollard et al., 1939)
  
  • Revised to suggest that frustration produces an emotional readiness to aggress (Harris, 1974)
  • The hypothesis has received cross-cultural support.

Question 78

What are the Situational Triggers of Aggression noted in the revised Aggression-Frustration hypothesis?

Answer 78

• Context
• Priming
• Culture
• Physical threat
• Psychological conflict

Question 79

Context and Aggression: It’s Getting Hot in Here?

Answer 79

• The context can be more or less frustrating
• Researchers looked at how the temperature it is outside can increase aggression
• Looked at baseball players and how the temperature affected how aggressive they played.
  
  • It becomes more likely that the pitchers will throw at opposing team’s batters.
  • looked at temperature and how often the pitcher’s hit the batters on the opposing team.
• As temperature goes up, the effects get stronger.
  
  • The hotter the temp, the more they engaged in this aggressive behaviour.

Question 80

What is the relationship between priming and aggression (aggression-hypothesis theory) ?

Answer 80

• Situational cues which prime hostile concepts and feelings can lead to aggression.
• Weapons effect: The tendency for the presence of firearms to increase the likelihood of aggression, especially when people are frustrated.

Question 81

What is the Weapons Effect study and what did it show?

Answer 81

• Berkowitz and LePage’s (1967) classic weapons effect study shows that participants became the most aggressive when they were in a condition in which they were both angered and in the presence of a gun and a rifle, administering an especially large number of shocks to another person.
• Had participants come in. Weapons were either present or not. (did this in 2 areas)
  
  • While walking to a location, they walked by a table either with a weapon on it or something else.
  • Angered before by a researcher who is rude, and after seeing the gun, the participants were more likely to shock higher in learner study.

Question 82

What is the connection between the Weapons Effect and Gun Ownership?

Answer 82

• For some people (e.g., sport
  hunters), guns are not cues to
  aggression, but most Americans are not recreational
  hunters.
• Gun-related homicides occur at a much higher rate in the
  United States than in other
  industrialized nations.
• Switzerland???
  
  • high level of gun ownership but low homicide
  • mandatory military service from 18-20 → these people would get on the train and put their guns on the train and sit down
  • so kind of confusing
  • people less frustrated in Switzerland?

Question 83

What is the connection between Culture and Aggression (Frustration-Aggression hypothesis)?

Answer 83

• Culture influences the extent of aggression within a society.
• Among national cultures
  
  • United States: Murder rate is double the world average; aggression used to solve interpersonal conflict; availability of firearms; individualistic
  • whereas in Switzerland that is not culturally encouraged
  • No single set of variables that accounts for a given nation’s violence record.
• Within nations
  
  • Culture of honour, especially in United States South and West
    
    • Status protection
    • insults to honour require a response
  • Gangs

Question 84

What is the relationship between Culture of Honour and Aggression (Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis)?

Answer 84

• While walking down the hallway, sb shoulders them in the insult condition
• In condition 3, is a very large intimidating man who shouldn’t be shouldered → measures how close the insult condition person shoulders the scary man → in insult condition → decreased distance between the big person coming down the hallway
• Seems to be a link between threat, frustration, and aggression

Question 85

What is the relationship between Physical Threat and Aggression?

Answer 85

• Physical: Attack
• Perception of imminent, intentional physical or verbal attack is the most reliable provocation of an aggressive response.
• Fight or Flight system
• Psychological: Insult and social rejection
  
  • eg. Cyberball study → person was furious with 2 strangers when she was rejected in a game of catch
• Insults and social rejection can arouse anger and the impulse to aggress to protect self-esteem.
  
  • People high in rejection sensitivity tend to expect, readily perceive, and overreact
    to rejection with aggressive responses. (higher sensitivity, higher aggression)
  • Narcissism and unstable self-esteem…

Question 86

What was Kurt Lewin’s Push and Pull Force B = (P, E)? And what did it show?

Answer 86

• Brought in the importance of the forces outside of you and your interactions with those things
• Called push and pull
• Behaviour is a function of personality and the environment
• Looked in children → disagreement between the push and pull lead to aggression in children
  
  • Eg. children would go to sit down on this rock → but would lose sight of it → would look again and try to sit, then turn around and look again because they couldn’t sit down on it → felt too scared to sit because they couldn’t see it

Question 87

What is the relationship between Psychological Conflicts and Aggression? (Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis)?

Answer 87

• Drives towards things we want (Approach) and drives away from things we don’t want (Avoid)
• Drives can conflict
  
  • Approach-Avoidance Conflict
    
    • eg. you see a delicious cake but you know you shouldn’t eat a bunch of cake; driving real fast is exciting; being told not to do sth makes you want to do it
  • RECALL: Key motives lecture and conflicts
• Drives can be blocked
  
  • eg. approach approach → you want this, you want that → but if you take one you can’t take the other.
• Frustration – Aggression
  hypothesis
• Aggression after frustration has utilitized
  
  • Can help remove the block or obstacle → can bash through it
  • Not always appropriate, however

Question 88

According to the Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis, what are two types of aggression that can come from frustation?

Answer 88

• Displaced aggression is directed toward a target other than the source of one’s frustration.
  
  • eg. having a difficult day and coming home and yelling at someone (whatever they did is not that big)
• Triggered displaced aggression occurs when someone does not respond to an initial frustration but later responds more aggressively
  than would be warranted to a second event.
  
  • bad day, come home and stub your toe, then you kick the table. → take it out on a safer object

Question 89

What was Pederson et al’s study (2000) on Triggered Displaced Aggression on and what did it show?

Answer 89

• Deal with experimenter one, then passed on to experimenter 2 who is kind of rude.
• If you have a nice experimenter to start with and you undergo a frustrating thing and then you meet rude experimenter 2 you rate experimenter 2 as more negative as compared to if you were not frustrated beforehand.

Question 90

What is the example of Frustration-Aggression Narcissism and Noise Blasts in Triggering Displaced Aggression?

Answer 90

Eg. Narcissism and Noise Blasts
- Cyberball reject vs accept
- DV: Noise blasts
- Max 105 db (lawn mower or motorcycle loud)
- give it to a participant or person who was unrelated to the cyberball
- you let the narcissist choose the level, you don’t actually administer the blast
- Narcissism and rejection →
increased dACC and increased
noise blast
- People who were high in narcissism and were rejected showed increased d ACC activation and administered higher noise blasts.

Question 91

How does displaced aggression work?

Answer 91

Aggression and anger are related to approach motivation.

Question 92

Is anger approach or avoidance motivation?

Answer 92

Researchers looked at the idea that anger is actually an approach motivation → geared toward getting what you want.
ANGER IS APPROACH
- Anger is clearly negative
- People don’t like it
- Anger and…
- Left PFC
- ANGER ACTIVATED BY SAME AREA OF BRAIN AS APPROACH MOTIVATION
- Approach personality
- Reward sensitivity
- Maybe the aggressive response is another way to kickstart the approach motivation

Question 93

Are Morals a Cause or Constraint of Aggression?

Answer 93

• Morals largely concerned with reducing harm (aggression) and promoting prosocial behaviour
  
  • However, moral violations seem to unleash increased aggression (due to being frustrated)
    
    • As seen in culture of honour studies → when the moral to not threaten someone’s honour is broken → leads to increased aggression
• Where do morals come from?
• Are morals based on rational, logical prepositions and conclusions?
  
  • E.g., Utilitarianism allows discovery of moral behaviour through rationality and observation

Question 94

What is the Social Intuitionist Model of Emotions (Haidt, 2001)

Answer 94

(Haidt, 2001) (RECALL: Moral Foundations Theory)
- “Julie and Mark are brother and sister. They are traveling together in France on summer vacation from college. One night they are staying alone in a cabin near the beach. They decide that it would be interesting and fun if they tried making love. At the very least it would be a new experience for each of them. Julie was already taking birth control pills, but Mark uses a condom too, just to be safe. They both enjoy making love, but they decide not to do it again. They keep that night as a special secret, which makes them feel even closer to each other. What do you think about that? Was it OK for them to make
love? Why?”

→ Its wrong because ew!!!

• there is actually no reason to say why this is wrong → it is wrong because it is.

Question 95

Morals and Aggression?

Answer 95

• Morals are largely based in emotion, preceding cognition
• Should be intimately linked with anger and aggression, in a couple of ways
• As a cause (When one is an observer):
  
  • As observer, what we want is violated by another individual
    
    • Frustration → aggression
    • Aggression is turned on the transgressor

Question 96

Is there a utility of aggression?

Answer 96

• Serve a purpose?
• Proximal function vs Distal function
• Proximal: Aggression is emotion-driven, irrational, harmful, bad for relationships, etc.
• Distal: Aggression serves to help groups or societies cohere
  
  • Aggression is turned on those who might hurt the group
  • if the group is harmed, we start to lose the coherence of the group.

Question 97

What is the proximal function of aggression?

Answer 97

Aggression is emotion-driven, irrational, harmful, bad for
relationships, etc.

Question 98

What is the distal function of aggression?

Answer 98

• Aggression serves to help groups or societies cohere
  
  • Aggression is turned on those who might hurt the group
  • if the group is harmed, we start to lose the coherence of the group.

Question 99

What is an example of the proximal function of aggression in terms of Anger and ‘Altruistic’ Punishment?

Answer 99

• Altruistic punishment
  
  • Punishment that has no direct benefit but has significant cost for the punisher
• Why would people do this?
  
  • Anger as a proximal cause
• Free riding or not helping the group should make people angry
• Anger should then cause increased altruistic punishment
  → society works bc ppl get frustrated and aggressive → go after the person who wronged them

Question 100

What is Fehr and Gaechter’s 2002 Study “Free Rider and Anger” on? And what did it show?

Answer 100

PROXIMAL FUNCTION OF AGGRESSION
- `You decide to invest 16 [5] francs to the project. The second group member invests 14 [3] and the third 18 [7] francs. Suppose the
fourth member invests 2 francs to the project. You now accidentally meet this member. Please indicate
your feeling towards this person.’‘
- people who invented fair share or unfair share
- measured how much people deviated from the group
- found that the more free-riding, the angrier people got → increased punishment of the free-riders
- RESULTS: Increased anger, increased punishment

Question 101

What was Fehr and Fischbacher’s 2003 “Altruistic Punishment and Functioning Society” Study on and what did it show?

Answer 101

DISTAL FUNCTION OF AGGRESSION
- You see how much one person puts in, they put in less than you.
- So you revise what you’re going to put in, now that person sees how much you put in and they readjust.
- Over time, the cooperation goes down and down and down.
- Found: that this is what happens with groups as they grow larger (tipping point of 16 ppl) cooperation goes down to 0
- The only time the cooperation was maintained across group size was when punishment was possible for the defectors and when punishment was possible for those who failed to punish the defectors
- regardless of group size, the group now cooperated.

Question 102

What did the Ultimatum Game and Rejection of Unfair Offers Study?

Answer 102

PROXIMAL UTILTY OF AGGRESSION.
- Player 1 receive $6
- Offers:
- SEE IMAGE
- Player 2: Accept or Reject
- Rational choice = 5,1
- i get 5 and you get 1
- assuming the other person has a number between 1 and 5 → 1 is better than 0
- Actual Offer: Mean ~ 50/50 (3,3)
- a spot that is almost fair!
- Players Reject: offer < 20% (5,1)
- Suggests lack of self-interest (for player 1 & 2)
- Fair offers and punishment
→ indicates that people reject unfair offers despite the fact that it gives them less money.
→ pure self interest → I will give up my 2 dollars, but I won’t let you have my 4

Question 103

In the Ultimatum Game and Rejection of Unfair Offers testing the proximal function of aggression, was the rejection due to control or anger?

Answer 103

• Some evidence suggests that
  altruistic punishment is just that—prosocial, controlled, unselfish, etc
• E.g., knock out the right LPFC (left prefrontal cortex) with
  TMS
  
  • Reduced rejection rate
  • RECALL: Self II lecture
  • RLPFC (right lateral prefrontal cortex) critical in inhibition of (selfish) impulses
• Problem: Different reasons for the same behaviour
  
  • Prosocial?
  • Spite?
    
    • spite should play a role in some people
• Solution: See what these people do in other situations
  
  • Dictator Game
  • Like Ultimatum, but proposer’s
    distribution is final, no choice, no rejection

Question 104

What did Branas-Graza et al find in Spite in the Ultimatum Game: Proximal Anger?

Answer 104

• split ppl into 3 things
  
  • being unfair
    
    • you get nothing I get everything
  • being fair 50/50
• wanted to look at the percentage of ppl who rejected unequal offers
• Idea: fair ppl should care about fairness and reject the unfair offers
• The unfair people should maximize self-interest and choose the unfair offer
• Found: the unfair group to reject accepting the unfair offer but put out an unfair offer
  
  • RESULTS: They’re not taking the unfair offer, not because of concern for unfairness, but because they’re angry.

Question 105

What is the connection between Morals and Aggression?

Answer 105

• Morals appear largely based in emotion, preceding cognition
• As a cause:
  
  • as observer, what we want or value is violated by another individual
    
    • Frustration → aggression
    • Aggression is turned on the transgressor
• As a constraint:
  
  • As actor, we feel angst and guilt as our behaviour conflicts with morals and values we cherish and motivates us to…
    
    • a. pre-emptively avoid the behaviour altogether (better not, I’ll feel bad about this)
    • b. repair or address the harm done
• An obvious question about our own harmful actions
  
  • Would muting emotion when we engage in immoral behaviour increase aggression and violence?
  • 3 ways that this can occur:
    1. Moral disengagement (cognitive)
    2. Oxytocin (anxiolytic)
    
    • hormonal
      3. Personality (impaired emotion systems)
    • personalities related to muted emotional responses

Question 106

What could be 3 ways that we could see if muting emotion when we engage in immoral behaviour increase aggression and violence?

Answer 106

1. Moral disengagement (cognitive)
2. Oxytocin (anxiolytic)
   
   • hormonal
3. Personality (impaired emotion systems)
   
   • personalities related to muted emotional responses

Question 107

What was Alberta Bandura’s observations on Moral Disengagement and Aggression?

Answer 107

• Albert Bandura
  
  • RECALL social learning theory
• Internalized moral codes and
  values guide us away from
  aggression and violence
• Aggression and violence conflict with morals, causes self-sanction
  
  • Negative emotions like guilt and shame that motivate behavioural change
• We can cognitively disengage our morals to allow for immoral acts
  
  • disengage our morals from our behaviour.

Question 108

According to Alberta Bandura, what are the 3 stages we uses to cognitively disengage our morals to allow for immoral acts?

Answer 108

Three Stages:

1. Reprehensible conduct → moral justification, palliative comparison, euphemistic labelling.
   - Leads to displacement or responsibility, diffusion of responsibility.
2. Detrimental Effects → Minimize the detrimental effect, ignoring, or misconstruing the consequences;
   - 3. Victim → Change how we view the target (the victim of our immoral behaviour)
   
   • eg. dehumanization
   • and attribute blame to them

Question 109

What are the paths from Moral Disengagement → Aggression?

Answer 109

• Moral disengagement leads to aggression proneness -> can lead to rumination of irascibility -> rumination leads to guilt and restitution (GandR) -> GandR can lead to aggression proneness which leads to either rumination, irascibility or delinquent behaviour.
  If we have moral disengagement leading to a Prosocial behaviour that can lead to either GandR leading to aggression proneness and delinquent behaviour or straight to aggression proneness and from there to ruimination, irascibility or delinquent behaviour.

Question 110

What is the link between Oxytocin and Aggression?

Answer 110

1. Oxytocin (RECALL relationships lecture)
   
   • Oxytoxin → hormone released during pregnancy and physical closeness
   • Oxytoxin when we engage in close contact with others or hug others → “hug drug”
   • “MOTHER BEAR DRUG” → promote increased aggression to those who threaten these associations

Question 111

What was the study bu Shalvi and De Dreu, 2014 on Oxytocin and Dishonesty: Coin-toss Benefits Self vs. Ingroup and what did it show?

Answer 111

• Oxytocin sprayed up the nose or placebo spray → found those who received oxytocin in the study were more likely to lie in terms of a coin toss.
  
  • Could either get money for yourself or for the group
  • particularly after oxytocin spray they were more likely to say that the money was for the group when they were going to keep it
  • More likely to cooperate with group
  • More aggressive behaviour to outgroup in oxytocin group -> led to high fear of outgroup

Question 112

What did Sheng et al’s (2013) study on Oxytocin and Ingroup Bias using ERP show?

Answer 112

• all participants were EAST ASIAN
• After given oxytocin, showed increase response to East Asian faces in pain, but no distinction for the outgroup → Caucasian faces in pain

Question 113

What did studies on Oxtocin and Aggression in animals show?

Answer 113

• In prairie voles, oxytocin treatment after birth, enhanced aggression
• In mice, oxytocin decreased aggression towards pups, but increased aggression towards intruders
• In squirrel monkeys, oxytocin is associated with enhanced territorial aggression
• In rats, aggressive tendencies correlate with oxytocin receptor density

Question 114

What was De Wall et al’s study (2014) on Oxytocin and Partner Violence and what did it show?

Answer 114

• Oxytocin has both positive and negative effects
• Hypothesized to promote
  relationship goals
  
  • Including typical strategies for affiliation and social maintenance
  • Can be both positive and negative
  • what matters is what kinds of goals you have → can be a good thing or more negative
• People who were higher in physical aggressiveness, when took oxytocin, became even higher in inclination towards intimate partner violence;
• People in relationship who were either high in physical aggressiveness or low in physical aggressiveness
• Found: oxytocin promoted aggressive behaviour in those who were high in physical aggressiveness

Question 115

What is the Dark Triad?

Answer 115

IT IS A PERSONALITY CLUSTER THAT CENTRES OF LOW SELF-SANCTIONING
- Morals are largely emotion based
- We feel that something is wrong, build the rationality later
- Disengagement from moral emotions should increase aggression and violence
- Similar to moral disengagement (reduced self-sanction, i.e., guilt, shame, anxiety, etc.)
- Personality cluster called the dark triad centres on low self-sanctioning:
- NARCISSISM: selfishness, lack of empathy
- RECALL Narcissism x rejection → Noise blasts
- MACHIAVELLIANISM: increased self-regard, inclinations towards exploitation of others to get what we want, disregard for morality
- PSYCHOPATHY: harmful to others, impaired empathy, impulsive

Question 116

What is one popular example of Psychopathy?

Answer 116

• Ted Bundy
  
  • Serial killer
  • “charismatic, ability to verbalize right from wrong but with little to no effect on behaviour (knew what he was doing was wrong), absence of guilt or shame”
  • Chameleon-like appearance
    
    • looked different from one day to the next
  • “Guilt doesn’t solve anything, really.” “I guess I am in the enviable position of not having to deal with guilt.“

Question 117

What did Hare say about Psychopathology?

Answer 117

• General pop.: 1% could be diagnosed as pyschopathic
• Wall Street: 10%
• E.g., hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli
  
  • Daraprim → he bought up the patents for it and made it $750 a pill from its original price of $13.50
    
    • Life-saving drug in HIV, some cancers, important for immune response
    • One-of-a-kind drug (only thing that did this)
    • 13.50→ 750/pill (5455%)

Question 118

What is the Neuroscience Perspective of Psychopathy?

Answer 118

• Impaired emotional system?
• Self-report low levels of negative affect
• Reduced reactivity to negative stimuli
  
  • Faces, sounds, images, negative feedback, etc.
• Abnormalities in insula (body
  sense, disgust) and amygdala
  (fear, salience)

Question 119

What was Shane and Groat (2018)’s study on Psychopathy about and what did it show?

Answer 119

• Shane & Groat, 2018
  
  • Asked if these abnormalities in insula (body
    sense, disgust) and amygdala
    (fear, salience) was an impairment or are they just not using it?
  • Most studies were using passive task studies → eg. look at a picture, hear audio
  • (condition 1) Passive viewing of empathy inducing images vs. (condition 2) instruction to increase or decrease emotion
    
    • that matches empathy inducing image
  • Were told to enhance the emotions they’re feeling when they look at it and then rate how they felt
  • Passive condition → near inactive brain areas for those high in psychopathy to look at these images
    
    • Active brain activity for those who were low in psychopathy
  • Instruct condition: when told to feel the way the images are supposed to make them feel, brain activity in these areas was the same across all levels of psychopathy
    
    • RESULT: What they said they felt and what their brains showed they felt, looked the same
    • RESULT: the idea is that they can do it, they just don’t care to → is ability, but lack of motivation

Question 120

Can Religion be a Cause of Aggression?

Answer 120

• Long-standing debate
• 4 Horsemen of atheism (Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel C. Dennett and Christopher Hitchens)
  
  • that religion evokes more emotional type thinking instead of rational/scientific thinking → could lead to aggression
  • For them religion was sth that was searing behind a lot of the world’s conflict

Question 121

Religion as Inhibitor of Aggression?

Answer 121

• Scholarly individuals promoted idea that religion was an inhibitor of aggression
  
  • Religion at its core is a prosocial thing
  • Anything that was promoting aggression was due to the time and place

Question 122

When does Religion Increase Aggression?

Answer 122

• Promotes
  
  • divisions between groups and dehumanizes outgroups (non-believers)
  • illusions of moral superiority and invulnerability
    
    • “we have God on our side”
  • irrational thinking

Question 123

What was the study “When God Sanctions Killing” and what did it show?

Answer 123

• People who believe in God/Bible vs Not
  
  • 2 studies
  • Brigham Young 99% belief
  • Amsterdam students 50% belief
• Read biblical passages of God Sanctioned violence vs No mention of God in violent passage
  
  • “The assembly fasted and prayed before the LORD and asked ‘‘What shall be done about the sins of our brothers in Benjamin?’’; and the LORD answered them, saying that no such abomination could stand among his people. The LORD commanded Israel to take arms against their brothers and chasten them before the LORD”
• DV: Noise blast in RT comp.
  
  • Found: participants who were assigned to read God sanctioned passages who also believed in God were administering the highest level of noise blast in this competition with sb else.

Question 124

When Religion Decreases Aggression: According to Armstrong, what is at the core of religion?

Answer 124

• Armstrong: The core of religion is the golden rule
  
  • Said that aggression was coming from sth else, the tainted part of religion
  • But said that at the core was a message/golden rule of compassion
  • Each religion has the golden rule in some way or another
    When Religion Decreases Aggression:
• Content-free or unadulterated content
  
  • Religion without corrupted
    aspects
  • A benevolent God to follow
  • A punitive God to obey
• How do you study that?
  
  • Prayer (personal)
  • Primes

Question 125

What was Bremner et al’s study (2011) on Pray and Aggression and what were its results?

Answer 125

• Ppl who beleived in God were provoked or not in the lab then told to deliver noise blasts
• Prior to that, they were allowed to either sit and wait quietly or pray
  
  • Found: if they prayed before, then they were least likely to deliver high noise blasts when provoked and did
  • Praying decreased the blaming of others for bad outcomes when provoked, but did not reduce the blaming of others when not provoked.

Question 126

What was Ginges et al’s “God is Good” study (2016) and what did it show?

Answer 126

• Religion is supposed to promote intergroup conflict by cementing tribalism and devaluing nonbelievers
• Religion emphasizes God as
  universal
  
  • Moral laws for all
• Muslim Palestinian Youth sample
• The trolley problem(s)
  
  • Save Jewish vs. Palestinian children
• DV: ingroup preference
• Ppl assigned to read passage about self or Allah/God as universal
• FOUND: ppl who were assigned to reading about God as universal, became less biased toward the ingroup
  
  • RESULTS: The priming of God was enough to change/reduce the ingroup favourtism

Question 127

What did Shariff and Norenzayan’s “God is Watching: Priming God and DG” (2007) show?

Answer 127

• Priming God → Sb is watching you → behave better
• When primed with God → ppl were more generous in dictator game
• But when secular primed → also nearly as generous

Question 128

What is Altruism?

Answer 128

• Desire to help another, to improve their welfare, regardless of whether we derive any benefit. Helping another without conscious regard for one’s self-interest.
• All altruistic behaviour is prosocial behaviour, but not all prosocial behaviour is altruistic behaviour.
  
  • eg saving sb bc you know you’ll get recognition for it

Question 129

What is Prosocial Behaviour?

Answer 129

• Behaviour that benefits another person
  
  • Helping
  • Giving
    
    • eg. resources
  • Sharing
  • Cooperating
    
    • eg. on a task

Question 130

According to Evolutionary Theory, why do we help?

Answer 130

• Survival of the Fittest - The “Selfish Gene”
• Helping has survival advantages:
  
  • Kin Selection - Help your kin = Help your genes
    
    • increase prosocial behaviour when we are engaging with sb we’re related to
• Reciprocity - Help Strangers = Help your survival chances
  
  • by instilling a norm of reciprocity, this allows you to increase your survival chances → eg. you might help me back in the future

Question 131

What was Burnstein, Crandall and Kitayama’s 1994 study “Who Would You Save ?” What did it show?

Answer 131

• Likelihood or running into a burning building with linear decreasing of shared genetic material
  
  • Likelihood extremely high when shared material is .5 (parents, siblings, children)
  • .25 grandparents
  • .125 first cousins
  • None (attractive stangers)

Question 132

What was Knoch et al’s (2009) Study on Human Nature and Prosocial Behaviour and what did it show?

Answer 132

• Reciprocal helping
  
  • Reciprocity patterns can provide adaptive advantages to individuals and groups (norms of reciprocity).
  • Reciprocal helping can be found in many species.
  • Reasoned that reciprocity is a high level process → need to control your self-interested desires to maintain the social norm of reciprocities
  • Used TMS to temporarily knock out parts of brain including rlPRF → partcipants in the rlPFC knock-out condition were less reciprocal when that part of the brain was temporarily off-line
  • Requires rlPFC (right-lateral pre-frontal cortex)

Question 133

According to Social Exchange Theory, why do we help?

Answer 133

• “Minimax” strategy
  
  • Minimize cost and maximize benefits
• Unconscious weighing of costs and rewards
• If we can minimize the costs to use and maximize the rewards – we will
  help
• Suggests that true altruism does not exist

Question 134

What is Social Exchange Theory?

Answer 134

• Benefits of helping:
  
  • Make us feel good
  • Avoid punishment for breaking social norms
  • Social approval of others
  • Decrease stress (aversive
    arousal) of seeing someone in need of help
    
    • ppl high in empathy tend to have more emotional difficulty and tough times with emotional regulation → more stressed out more often → so if you help sb and think that they will feel less stressed, it helps you feel less stressed
  • Be reciprocated in future – an investment
• Costs of helping:
  
  • Physical danger
  • Pain
  • Embarrassment
  • Time consuming

Question 135

According to the Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis, why do we help?

Answer 135

• Daniel Batson (1991)
• Empathy
  
  • The ability to experience events and emotions the way another person experiences them.
• When we feel empathy for a person we will attempt to the help them regardless of what we have to gain (Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis).
  
  • empathy is required for altruism
• Help motivated by empathy lasts longer than when there is no empathy (help for some other reason, e.g., rewards)
• Altruistic or not? E.g., feel good about ourselves
  
  • Empathy Joy Hypothesis explanation → you will help ppl bc it makes you feel good → you will never not have anything to gain

Question 136

What was Batson, Ahmed and Stocks (2004) Empathy Joy Explanation of Altruism? What did it show?

Answer 136

• Procedure
  Story related to Katie’s misfortune and Katie needed help with some charitable work for her situation
• Two Independent Variables
  
  • Empathy
    
    • High Empathy – told to take Katie’s perspective (empathic) while reading about her pov
    • Low Empathy – or told to take an objective perspective while reading about her pov
  • Feedback
    
    • No feedback – not meet Katie; not find out the results of your help
    • Feedback – not meet Katie; but receive follow-up info → if your help was beneficial or not
  • Dependent Variable
    
    • Whether they agreed to help Katie by volunteering to stuff envelopes next week or not.
• Which condition demonstrates truly altruistic behaviour, according to Batson et al.?
• FOUND THAT: compared to ppl who received feedback in both the high empathy condition and feedback conditions, the one who exhibited the most empathetic behaviour/helped her the most was those who were in the HIGH EMPATHY condition and received NO FEEDBACK
  
  • to Batson this exhibited true altruistic behaviour
• Is there true altruism?
  
  • is its existence falsifiable?

Question 137

What does “Empathy: The Fragile Flower” refer to?

Answer 137

• “I will gladly sacrifice my time to help others in need”
  
  • Socially valued behaviour
    
    • Empathy scales correlates very highly with social desirability scale
  • Empathy → “The fragile flower, easily crushed”
    
    • Empathy and giving to homeless
    • Attributions:
      
      • Dispositional, low effort = less help
    • measured how much empathy ppl felt toward the homeless ppl after they walked by them whether they helped or not → empathy did not predict if they gave to the homeless (everyone felt empathy with them)
    • If you were on the other side of the street, you would never give to the homeless → simply had to be across the street from them to not give in to empathy and give to them

Question 138

What was the case of Kitty Genovese and what did it show?

Answer 138

• When we fail to help.
  New York City, 1964 – Kitty - Genovese was murdered by Winston Mosley over the course of half an hour. In a busy area. She was raped and stabbed repeatedly. After her assailant left, she staggered to the corner and screamed for help. Of the 38 people who heard from the nearby apartments, no one helped or called the police.
• possible bystander effect?
• possible diffusion of responsibility?
• possible pluralistic ignorance?

Question 139

When we Fail to Help: What is the Bystander Effect?

Answer 139

• Bystander effect (Darley & Latané, 1968): A person who witnesses another in need is less likely to help when there are other bystanders present to witness the event; the effect increases as the number of
  bystanders gets larger.
  
  • More likely to occur when need for help is minor
  • Less likely to occur among friends or when the bystanders are ppl you know

Question 140

What was Latane and Darley’s “Smoke from the Vents” (1968) study and what did it show?

Answer 140

• People were more likely and faster to report the potential emergency when alone compared to with others.
• Had ppl come into the study and put into a room → in the room they were either alone or there were 3 ppl in the room
  
  • They poured smoke under the door into the room
  • Reported how long it took for people to report that there was smoke pouring into the room
• FOUND that when alone, ppl were more likely to report the smoke way earlier
• Found with more people → less likely to report it and it took longer to report it

Question 141

What are some reasons for when we fail to act?

Answer 141

• Diffusion of responsibility: A situation in which the presence of others prevents any one person from taking responsibility (e.g., for helping)
• Pluralistic ignorance: A situation in which individuals rely on others to identify a norm but falsely interpret others’ beliefs and feelings,
  resulting in inaction
  
  • ppl who are in an uncertain situation rely on others and look to them to decide what the right behaviour/course of action is
  • eg. if you look at sb and they’re just sitting there, and they look at you and you’re just sitting there, no one thinks to do anything else.

Question 142

What happened when the Kitty Genovese was revisited in 2006 by Manning et al?

Answer 142

• Re-examined evidence for Kitty Genovese NYT story
  
  • Probably many fewer than 38 eye-witnesses
  • Witnesses could not have seen the attack for more than moments
  • Witnesses intervened (called police, screamed and yelled at assailant)
• “the three key features of the Kitty Genovese story that appear in social psychology textbooks (that there were 38 witnesses, that the
  witnesses watched from their windows for the duration of the attack, and that the witnesses did not intervene) are not supported by the available evidence”

Question 143

What did Meta-analysis of bystander studies (Fischer et al., 2011) show?

Answer 143

• Strong effect for passive bystanders and non-instructed bystanders
  
  • more pluralistic ignorance and diffusion of responsibility when you don’t know each other
• Nearly opposing effect for active bystanders (at least 1 helper)
  
  • i.e., increased the likelihood of helping
  • the more helpers there are, the more likely others are to help

Question 144

What are the Steps to Helping… or Not?

Answer 144

1. Attention: Notice the event: failing to notice the even (eg. time pressure or distraction)-> no intervention/no help is given
2. Interpret the event as an emergency: Assuming there is no real danger or threat (eg. pluralistic ignorance) -> no intervention/help given
3. Take responsibility: Believing sb else will take action (eg. diffusion of responsibility) -> no intervention/help is given
4. Not knowing what to do (eg. feeling unqualified or unskilled) -> no intervention/help given
5. Give help: Danger to self; legal concerns; embarrassment (costs of helping too high)

Question 145

What is the relationship to Self-Control and Human Nature?

Answer 145

Are We Selfish or Selfless People?”
- First impulse defines us
- whatever wells up inside us naturally, is our nature
- Self-control can reveal our basic nature, our first instincts
- Are we selfish?
- Self-control is necessary to restrain our base impulses towards temptation
- if we’re selfish then self control is essential to stop impulses and do the right thing
- Are we prosocial?
- Self-control is necessary to restrain blind altruism to enable personal achievement
- standing up for yourself and doing what you want

Question 146

Who states that We Are Selfish First?

Answer 146

• Gordon Gekko
• Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature. Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that
  no other species has ever aspired to.”
  
  • “The Selfish Gene” by Prof. Richard
    Dawkins (1976)
  • → Greed is actually as good thing
  • Freud → core of human nature is base animal impulses → sex, aggression, getting what we want

Question 147

What evidence do we have for selfish nature of humans?

Answer 147

• Right Lateral PFC associated with self-control
• If you could turn off the rlPFC,
  then people should be less
  controlled, more selfish
• Ultimatum game
  
  • Rejection of offer is self-control over selfish greed
• rTMS
• TMS → hurts → each condition is right TMS plus hurt, left TMS plus hurt, sham is not hurt bc TMS is off
• Reasoned that in the ultimatum game, when you get an unfair offer, the greedy response is to just take the money
  
  • The controlled response is the social response → to reject the money, knowing its anything, but accepting the altruistic punishment of knowing its an unfair offer

Question 148

What did Knoch et al’s study on rTMS knock out of self control (rlPFC) study show?

Answer 148

• INCREASES SELFISHNESS IN ULTIMATUM GAME
• Ppl knew it was unfair, they just started taking the money
• Idea there is that our first impulse is greediness, but our controlled, social impulse is to be fair and reject unfair offer
  those with right TMS accepted the unfair offer more (45% acceptance rate) compared to left TMS (15%) and Sham condition (10%)

Question 149

What is the view that We are Prosocial First?

Answer 149

• We are social creatures
• More social than any other
  animal
• Sacrifice for others with no
  personal gain (reputation) nor
  gain for the group
  
  • Irrational according selfish
    theories

Question 150

What was Rand et al’s study on “Spontaneous Giving and Calculated Greed” and what did it show?

Answer 150

• Much like rTMS studies, sought to strip people of self-control
• Time-pressure!
  
  • Decision time
  • Act fast!
  • Intuitive, trust your gut
• designed to reduce deliberation and control
  
  • Measure cooperative behaviour
  • RESULTS: Across all manipulations, if you reduce the time and the ability for ppl to deliberate, they’re going to be more giving.
  • Placed under time pressure, ppl give more
  • Longer you delay time, less ppl will give

Question 151

So, Which is it? Are we Altruistic First or Selfish First?

Answer 151

• Probably both
  
  • It’s an Interaction:
    
    • (P)ersonality x (E)nvironment (as always!)
• Personality
  
  • Prosocial traits
    
    • Ppl higher in Agreeableness? Extraversion?
  • Selfish traits
    
    • Ppl higher in Power? Achievement motivation?
  • Environment
    
    • Social cues, social norms
• Eg. dictator game: making offers in front of cup → 3 dots like image, or 3 dots flipped upside down
  
  • The 3 dots are enough to activate FFA
  • When the cup had dots similar to a face, people were more generous in dictator game → that’s all it took

Question 152

What is the connection between Self-Control and Selfish-Prosocial?

Answer 152

• Some may need self-control to curb greed and be able to sacrifice and care for others
• Some may need self-control to stop sacrificial altruism or submission and assert themselves and their personal goals
• Some may need self-control for both of these outcomes

Question 153

Altruism vs. Egoism?

Answer 153

• Push and pull of motivation toward prosocial vs selfish behaviour
• Self-control allows us to peek at our basic nature, our first impulse
• But personality and environment shape this dynamic
• Maybe the most important
  extrinsic variable…
  
  • Money!!!
  • Money or even the thought of money is going to change how prosocial sb is going to be

Question 154

What did Vohs, Med and Goode’s study (2006) on Money Primes and Prosocial Behaviour Do and Show?

Answer 154

• Money associated with:
  
  • free of dependence (no help)
  • people feeling self-sufficient and behaving accordingly
  • work toward personal gain and being separate from
    others.
• Independent variable
  
  • Scrambled Sentence Task; Monopoly
    
    • Money prime vs. No prime
• Dependent variables related to helping
  
  • Study 1 - # of data sheets ppl volunteered to code
  • Study 2 - # of seconds an individual engaged in helping a peer
  • Study 3 - # of pencils gathered when an experimenter walked by and dropped them → the idea being the more helpful you are, the more you pick up
  • Study 4 - $ given in donations
• FOUND: money prime muted what would be the prosocial response
  
  • gathered fewer pencils
  • helped for less time
  • gave less in donations
• Money related to less prosocial, more selfish behaviours

Question 155

What is Meant by “Money: Good for Me, Bad for You”?

Answer 155

• Similar to narcissism and feelings of power
• Money makes me feel good,
  promotes autonomy and justifies sense of superiority
  
  • “I earned it” “You get what you put in”
• RECALL: Wealth and happiness link
  
  • the more money you make, the more life satisfaction goes up
• At the expense of compassion and empathy?

Question 156

What was Paul Piff’s Study on Money and What did it Show?

Answer 156

• Looked at the idea: does money make you mean?
• Got ppl to play monopoly
• Randomly assigned to 1 of 2 conditions
  
  • Rich player vs. poor player
  • One player gets clearly unfair rules → tipped in their favour. eg. penalties halved, starting amount higher, get to roll more
• Monitored behaviour while engaging in this game
• FOUND:
  
  • As the game went on, the rich player started getting louder, smacking their piece around the board, also got more showy physically (moving around more, ate more pretzels), started making comments towards the other player (more confident), got more insulting to the other player
    
    • Them being in an advantageous condition made them ruder to the other person
  • When asked the outcome, the rich player ascribed their win to personal skill, despite the obvious unfairness.

Question 157

What was Paul Piff’s Observations about Richness and Meanness?

Answer 157

• High SES predicts reduced offer (less fair) in the dictator game
• High SES tend to moralize self-interest and greed
  
  • It’s sth I should do
  • Gordon Gekko → greed is good philosophy
• Nicer cars less likely to stop at crosswalk
• Manipulated status decreases support for prosocial behaviour
  
  • eg. in a monopoly game
  • When ppl felt high status, they showed decreased support for prosocial behaviours

Question 158

What was Piff et al’s (2010, 2012) study on Social Class and Chaos and what did it show?

Answer 158

• Randomly assigned to read about a chaotic future or stable future
  
  • Stable future = no difference
  • Chaotic future → ppl in low SES became more communal
  • Chaotic future → ppl in high SES became more individualistic
• When people primed with compassion:
  
  • High SES became more helpful in terms of time given in helping behaviour DV

Question 159

What is Compassionate Action’s relationship to Basic Psychological Needs?

Answer 159

• RECALL: Self-determination theory outlines basic psychological needs:
• Basic psychological needs
  
  • Autonomy
  • Relatedness
  • Competence
• Compassionate action (e.g., using money earned to help others) should serve these needs
  
  • I’m helping, helping others, and I seem to be good at this
  • Whereas attaining money as an end in of itself might not hit these psychological needs
• Increased well-being…
  
  • benefit of compassionate action

Question 160

What was Dunn’s (2014) study on Money and Giving to Others and what did it show?

Answer 160

• Looked at prosocial spending and wellbeing
• In almost every country, positive relationship between prosocial spending and wellbeing
  Toddlers and Giving (Dunn)
• looked at children interacting with an experimenter and giving to that experimenter
• 4 stages:
  
  • child is given 8 treats → asked to give experimenter’s treats through to the puppet → then asked to give their own treats to the experimenter puppet
  • First stage: (a) happy, meet puppet (experimenter)
  • (b) Receives treats, a little less happy
  • (c) Child gives the experimenter’s extra treat to puppet → increased happiness
  • (d) Child gives own treat to puppet → even more increase in happiness

Question 161

Connection between Prosocial Ideals and Psychological Needs?

Answer 161

• People suggest you can take these prosocial ideals and place them at the top → fulfill psychological needs
• Still have autonomy, but is connecting you → can replace aggressive defenses we often have

Question 162

Wisdom: Reorienting Towards Altruism

Answer 162

• Wisdom:
  
  • Pursuit of prosocial, compassionate ideals
• Dialecticism
  
  • Ok with conflict
• Self-control (temperance)
  
  • Reasoning in the face of conflict
    
    • step out of your own selfish cravings and can arrive at wise decisions
  • Long-term focus
• Perspective-taking
  
  • Core feature of empathy
  • ‘Escape the self’
• 1. Change the response to anxiety
     - Create a frustration→ compassion link
     - Prosocial and Compassionate ideals
• 2. Defusing anxiety
     - Halts the frustration→ aggression/obsession
     link
     - Allows empathy and mutes narcissism and power

Question 163

Wisdom: Reorienting Towards Altruism: How can we create a frustration -> compassion link?

Answer 163

• Terror Management people: Create a frustration→ compassion link
• Prosocial and Compassionate
  ideals
  
  • Priming
    
    • Religion Prime study earlier in lecture
    • cemetary
    • Cemetery study…
      
      • Gailliot et al., 2008
        
        • Went to a campus where there was a high traffic area where there was a cemetery ppl had to walk through -> waited outside and gave them a survey → 2 conditions → helping is primed or not
    • and see how many papers they picked up or pencils when dropped
      
      • FOUND: most helpful were ppl who were primed with helping and walked through cemetery
        
        • ppl who were primed with helping but no cemetery were not that helpful
    • Death motivated ppl to protect their values → helping values → gravitate towards it to protect their values → engage more in that behaviour

Question 164

Wisdom in Charlie Wilson’s War?

Answer 164

• Democratic Congressman Charlie Wilson talking to a CIA agent → responsible for invasion to be repulsed →
• Story of Little boy on 14th bday gets a horse → how wonderful it is to get a horse → years later boy falls off → horse bad idea? (we’ll see)-> we’ll see → goes to war and loses his legs year later → people say how wonderful he survived → ppl replied “we’ll see!”
• Telling a story about wisdom → taking a longer perspective → what seems good now might seem bad later
• “We’ll see…”
  
  • I think this is pretty wise (and we all know how that situation turned out) but tough to say exactly why…
  • What makes it wise?
    
    • relates to idea of a longer-term perspective
    • Idea of temperance

Question 165

We’ll See: What is temperance-prudence?

Answer 165

• Merriam-Webster (simple def)
  
  • The practice of drinking little or no alcohol
• Temperance Movement
  
  • Tangled up in conflict of moral authority
• Prudence: Facet of temperance
  
  • Has become synonymous with reluctance
  • “Prude”
    
    • Prig, Puritan, Killjoy
• Negative tone…
  
  • Not someone you want at a party, at least
• Almost no empirical research on temperance or prudence

Question 166

Prudence Practical Virtue and the Golden Mean: what is prudence associated with?

Answer 166

• Prudence associated with antiquity
• Plato, Socrates, Aristotle
• Each one said how important it is to the psychological being

Question 167

What are the Platonic Cardinal Virtues in Being a Good Person?

Answer 167

• Temperance
• Prudence
• Fortitude
• Justice

Question 168

What is Aristotle’s Golden Mean?

Answer 168

• Virtue is found between excess and deficit
• appropriate action is contextually dependent and divined through intellect and wisdom
• Depends on too much, too little
• Finding the right behaviour given the situation you are in is the Golden Mean
• Excess: foolhardiness, vanity, timidity, apathy, buffoonery, arrogance, bashfulness…
• The Golden Mean: courage, rightful pride, gentleness, patience, wittiness, truth of oneself, modesty
• Deficiency: cowardice, undue meekness, wrathfulness, aggression, boorishness, false-modesty

Question 169

What is Aristotle’s Phronesis?

Answer 169

• Phronesis
  
  • often translated as prudence
  • practical wisdom that allows one to judge whether actions fit this golden mean
  • Beyond mere restraint
    
    • Could ‘restrain’ good impulses, too

Question 170

In western traditions, what is prudence seen as?

Answer 170

The path to virtue.
- St. Thomas Aquinas
- Platonic Virtues
- Included temperance and prudence
- Prudence was the path through
which all other virtue flowed
- Directly reflects Aristotle’s view on
Phronesis and the Golden Mean

Question 171

Paradise Lost “The Rule of Not Too Much”

Answer 171

• Adam and Eve getting kicked out of Eden, last chat with the Archangel Michael
• “…I yield it just,” said Adam, “and submit. But is there yet no other way, besidesThese painful passages, how we may come
  To death, and mix with our connatural dust?”
• “There is,” said Michael, “if thou well observe
  The rule of not too much, by temperance taught…”
• Book XI, 526-531
• The only divine advice Michael had humans got after being kicked out of paradise → be more careful, think more wisely
• Direct reference to the Golden Mean

Question 172

What did The Divine Comedy: Purgatory indicate?

Answer 172

All Sin Comes From Love
- Excess or deficiency
- Depends on how its represented or enacted
- eg. jealousy, or avoidance

Question 173

What is Temperance in Hinduism?

Answer 173

• Dama (Damah)
  
  • translated as Self-restraint
  • Primary facet of good character
• Required for adhering to
  Dharma
  
  • duties, values, morals, and ideals that sustain social and universal order.
  • the web we are all emmeshed in

Question 174

What is Temperance in Buddhism?

Answer 174

• First Noble Truth
• Life is Dukkha
  
  • Uneasy, friction, anxiety, stress, pain, suffering
• Du: Bad
• Kha: Space
• Dukkha: Bad axle hole (mechanical problem) → when your wooden cart, was bumpy bc you have a bad axel hole → frustrating
• We find easy escape from Dukkha in impulsive desires and cravings
• Noble Eightfold Path
  
  • Ways to build insight and
    eliminate these impulsive cravings in an impermanent world
• Avoidance of excess and contact with the world as it is
  
  • i.e., temperance and prudence

Question 175

What is Temperance in Moral Philosophy?

Answer 175

• Virtue Ethics
  
  • Emphasizes tempered reasoning, thought, and good character
  • Contrasted with consequentialism (morality is contingent on the value of an action’s outcome) and deontology (morality is the action we ought to do)
    
    • something is good or bad in and of itself → murder is just wrong, it doesn’t matter when you commit it
  • Emphasizes being and developing good character
  • Draws heavily on Classical Antiquity
  • Temperance again classified as virtue

Question 176

What is Temperance in Positive Psychology?

Answer 176

• Character Strengths and Virtues Handbook
  
  • Mirror twin of the DSM
  • when things go right → the good life, the well-being, how do you get there?
  • written by Martin E.P Seligman → learned helpless studies → who studied this via shocking dogs → now saying how to be a good person
  • Virtues that make a good person: Wisdom, courage, humanity, transcendence, justice, moderation (aka temperance)

Question 177

Overall, what is temperance?

Answer 177

• Temperance (Character Strengths and Virtues)
  
  • Humility and modesty: accurate assessment of personal attributes, escape
    myopic self-focus, open to other perspectives and ideas.
  • Prudence (phronesis): pragmatic wisdom, involves deliberation, foresight and
    planning, restraint of shallow impulses and persistence in long-term goals
    
    • drawn from Aristotle
  • Self-regulation: effortful inhibition of unwanted impulses and emotions
  • Forgiveness and mercy: Revenge is seductive, but forgiveness fosters trust and
    connection

Question 178

Why is Temperance important?

Answer 178

• Staging a comeback!
• Contrasted with myopic
  convictions, arrogance,
  impulsivity, and aggression
• When and for whom might
  these negative behaviours be
  restrained and more appropriate actions be taken?
  
  • most useful for those who have high defensive impulses

Question 179

What is the connection between Defensive Impulses and Temperance?

Answer 179

• Anxious circumstances can cause the reverse of Temperance
  
  • Reduced humility, prudence, control, and forgiveness
  • instead, want to engage in revenge
• Temperance ‘when it counts’
  
  • when aggressive, extreme, impulsive reactions loom large
  • When we are trying to escape, to feel better
  • better path to release

Question 180

What is the connection between Temperance and Self-Control?

Answer 180

• Self-control
  
  • DF: Detection of conflict and restraint of inappropriate impulse for more appropriate goal
  • The same ‘starting point’ as defensive impulses
  • Different outcome
• Self-control sounds a lot like temperance in anxious circumstances
• Trait self-control capable of restraining defensive impulses after goal conflict and anxiety?
  
  • it does seem to be the case

Question 181

Trait Self-Control

Answer 181

• People high in self-control appear to have found a way through ‘painful passages’ mentioned by Adam in Paradise Lost
• High Trait Self-Control are…
  
  • Healthier
  • Less stressed
  • Better relationships
  • Better grades in school
  • Better workers
  • Etc

Question 182

Age and Wise Reactions study?

Answer 182

Had ppl read about Ralph, Dawn and Curt:
- My husband, “Ralph,” has one sister, “Dawn,” and one brother, “Curt.” Their parents died six years ago, within months of each other. Ever since, Dawn has once a year mentioned buying a headstone for their parents. I’m all for it, but Dawn is determined to spend a bundle on it, and she expects her brothers to help foot the bill. She recently told me she had put $2,000 aside to pay for it. Recently Dawn called to announce that she had gone ahead,
selected the design, written the epitaph and ordered the headstone. Now she expects Curt and Ralph to pay “their share” back to her. She said she went ahead and ordered it on her own because she has been feeling guilty all these years that her parents didn’t have one. I feel that since Dawn did this all by herself, her brothers shouldn’t have to pay her anything. I know that if Curt and Ralph don’t pay her back, they’ll never hear the end of it, and neither will I. What should I do about this?
- Intelligence goes down as you age, but wisdom goes up
- Looked like wise range of ages in their sample and asked them questions about social dilemmas and quoted these open-ended responses in terms of different characteristics of wisdom → Grossmann et al, 2010.

Question 183

What was Grossmann et al’s “Wise Reactions” Study on and what did it show?

Answer 183

• coded participants’ open-ended responses to social conflicts
• derived wisdom characteristics from most frequently mentioned
  characteristics in literature
• i) perspective shifting from one’s own point of view to the point of view of people involved in the conflict
• (ii) recognition of the likelihood of change
• (iii) prediction flexibility, as indicated by multiple possible predictions of how the conflict might unfold
• (iv) recognition of uncertainty and the limits of knowledge
• (v) search for conflict resolution
• (vi) search for a compromise
• FOUND:
  
  • Across these different characteristics of wise reasoning, age was indeed associated with more wise responses
  • As age goes up, wise reasoning goes up
  • Wisdom score: Top 20% age:
    64.9
    Wisdom score: Bottom 80% age:
    45.5

Question 184

What are we referring to when we talk about “Remembering to Be Wise”?

Answer 184

• Doing, not knowing (being smart can be a trap)
  
  • Socrates “I know that I know nothing”
    
    • the limits of knowledge
  • Martin Shkreli? Fairly logical rationalization of +5000% price hike on life-saving drug
    
    • the way markets work, I’m not the one doing it, it’s the way markets work
  • Mark Zuckerberg and “Let’s create a global community where everybody is connected (through my product)! Everyone will get along great!”
    
    • Clearly didn’t think that one through…
• Even when anxious or eagerly excited.
  
  • These promote escape via the tunnel vision of approach, particularly personally powerful ideals
• How to quell anxiety yet avoid the perils of power (e.g., low empathy, high aggression, narcissism etc)?

Question 185

How can we escape the self?

Answer 185

Wisdom and Hypo-egoic states.
- Hypo-egoic: relinquish deliberate, conscious control over personal behaviour so that you will respond more naturally, spontaneously, or
automatically
- Psychological distance
- Awe
- Gratitude
- Mindfulness (present-focus)
- Common Humanity
- Compassionate Action
- Inspirational people, symbols, reminders
- Prayer and religious/ spiritual rituals for some people…

Question 186

What are Hypo-egoic states?

Answer 186

• Hypo-egoic: relinquish deliberate, conscious control over personal behaviour so that you will respond more naturally, spontaneously, or
  automatically
  
  • Psychological distance
  • Awe
  • Gratitude
  • Mindfulness (present-focus)
  • Common Humanity
  • Compassionate Action
  • Inspirational people, symbols, reminders
  • Prayer and religious/ spiritual rituals for some people…

Question 187

Hypo-egoic states: according to Kross and Grossman (2012) How is Wisdom impacted by Psychological Distance?

Answer 187

• Think about the economic recession (Study 1) or the government run by political opponents and then reason about personal impact from a(n)…
• immersed perspective:
  
  • “imagine the events unfolding before your own eyes as if you were right there”
• distanced perspective
  
  • “imagine the events unfolding as if you were a distant observer”
• FOUND:
  
  • People were more wise/reasoning more wisely about the difficult scenario, showed more intellectual reasoning, when they felt MORE PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTANCE from the problem rather than being in it.

Question 188

How does Awe Impact Altruism/Wisdom?

Answer 188

• possibly from
  Greek word achos
  
  • pain, ache
• Threatening but
  uplifting, affirming kind of experience
  
  • Typically when things are way bigger than you
    
    • Yet you can feel kind of connected to it
      Awe of Religion
• Eg. cathedrals
  Piff and Awe (Piff et al., 20150
• being able to escape the self may make ppl more prosocial
• Manipulated sense of awe or amusement/neutral state
• Found
  
  • Awe made ppl feel small but through that feeling they became more generous

Question 189

According to Piff’s studies on Awe, what is the outcome of awe on altruism?

Answer 189

• being able to escape the self may make ppl more prosocial
• Manipulated sense of awe or amusement/neutral state
• Found
  
  • Awe made ppl feel small but through that feeling they became more generous

Question 190

Mediation and Prosocial Behaviour?

Answer 190

Meditation and the UHOH! Signal (Teper and Inzlict, 2013)
- Looked at error response in people in control condition or intensive mediation condition
- Meditation condition showed increased sensitivity to errors
- These errors were then more correlated with improved behaviour in the task
→ this is feedback, they were more accepting of that feedback
Meditation Training and Prosocial Behaviour (Condon et al., 2013)
- 8 week training group vs.
Control group
- 3 chairs in waiting room,
one open spot
- Participant takes that chair
- Someone in crutches, in
discomfort shows up
- Give seat or not?
- Found: Meditator group 5x more likely to give up seat

Question 191

What is Meditation?

Answer 191

• Hindu-Buddhist roots
• Huge variety today
• Two broad components
• Present awareness (here and now)
• Emotional acceptance (knowing you’re angry but thats okay)

Question 192

What is Hedonia vs. Eudaimonia?

Answer 192

Pleasure
- Pleasure principle:
* We want to avoid pain and experience pleasure
* So maximize happiness!
- Freud, Skinner, James, Ancient Greeks like Epicurus…,
- Meaning and Growth
* Eating a cake vs. caring for a sick child
* Not very happy, but very meaningful
* Pixar has this experience nailed down to a science…
* Relationships and meaning…

Question 193

Downsides: Hedonia vs. Edaimonia

Answer 193

• Pleasure doesn’t last
• We lose interest, habituate
• Depends on external factors (attainment or not)
• Personal integrity might suffer if we focus on pleasure for too long
• The aspects of our life might not cohere as well around a pleasure principle
• Good for me, but bad for you
  
  • And probably bad for me in the long run…
• The world is not really a fun place
• Suffering abounds (Usman)→ so living according to meaning might be better
• Eudaimonia! (Greek for good spirit)
• There’s more to life than the shadow’s we see cast on the wall’s of the cave (Plato)
• Virtue and well-being
• Human flourishing
• Journey (not a destination)
• Good for me and good for you
• Relational values