Prosocial and antisocial behaviour - SED2 Flashcards
What is prosocial behaviour?
behaviour that benefits another at a cost to the self
What does evolution theory suggest in terms of prosocial behaviour? (3)
- genes are selfish and just want to replicate themselves
- helping your own child or family member therefore makes sense
- helping others doesn’t make sense
What is reciprocity?
you may help someone because they will likely help you in return, so you gain something from it
what is indirect reciprocity?
help someone so someone observing will see you helping and then be more likely to help you, even though they weren’t helped by you themselves
Are 18 month infants helpful when an adult needs help?
yes - helpful across many situations
What psychological mechanisms motivate us to be prosocial? (3)
- empathy
- sympathy
- guilt
What evidence is there for empathy in infants?
they cry when they hear another infant crying - more for another baby’s cries than their own cries recorded
What was found when looking at whether infants respond to their mothers’ distress (sympathy)? (3)
- infants showed concern for others
- prosocial responding increased over the second year of life
- became more diverse with age - from purely physical comfort to a wider range of options
What was found in the study where an experimenter lost her balloon in front of 18 month olds? What is this evidence for?
- more likely to help if they had previously observed someone being mean to the experimenter
- evidence for sympathy
What happened when 2 and 3 year old children vs experimenter ‘accidentally’ knocked a tower down?
- 3 year olds more likely to help if the mishap was their fault
- 2 year olds sometimes repaired damage, but not more likely if it was their fault
What were children prone to guilt in the 5th grade less and more likely to do?
- less arrested, convicted, incarcerated, drugs in adolescence
- more safe sex
How are parents suggested to influence children’s prosocial behaviour? (5)
- modelling of empathic and responsive behaviour
- direct instruction
- warm and sensitive response to child’s needs
- discussion of others’ emotions and mental states
- variety of emotion and mental state vocabulary
What does parent mental state talk predict?
- emotion-based helping
- not simple goal-directed helping
What is relational aggression?
behaviour that intentionally upsets another person
What did aggression in 3 and 4 year old children relate to in Crick et al’s rating of peers study? (3)
- low prosocial behaviour
- rejected by peers
- high negative emotion = more aggression
What was found when 12 year old children’s antisocial behaviour was compared to their instability at age 3?
lack of control at age 3 = more antisocial in adolescence
What was poor emotion regulation at age 3 related to in adulthood?
- respond to everyday frustrations with more negative emotions
- experienced negative emotions more often
How can peers influence anti-social behaviour? (2)
- may lead friends into anti-social activity
- negative social experiences can lead to a hostile attribution bias
what are children who spend a lot of time watching TV more prone to?
aggression
What did a small subsample of boys who were antisocial in childhood and adolescence have? (2)
- difficult temperaments age 3
- impairments in verbale functioning and mental flexibility
What is extreme anti-social behaviour in childhood and adolescence related to?
attention deficit disorder
What physical thing do antisocial males have? What is this associated with?
- lower resting heart rate
- lower guilt and shame
What are the callous and unemotional traits? (3)
- limited empathy
- a lack of guilt
- shallow affect
What was found in the twin study about callous and unemotional traits?
- high levels = strongly heritable
- lower levels = environmental factors explain
What is an aspect of callous-unemotional traits and how can that be used?
- they are malleable - respond to warm parenting, not negative parenting
- tailor interventions to train in emotional literacy and emotional recognition
What is moral judgement?
the ability to distinguish right from wrong
What is moral behaviour?
the tendency to act on the distinction between right and wrong and so bring positive benefits to others
What are moral emotions?
the tendency to feel pride in virtuous conduct and guilt or shame over conduct that violates one’s own moral principles
What did Piaget find about how children judge intentions vs outcomes?
- younger children tend to judge the negative outcome more harshly
- older children judge the negative intention more harshly
When does the ability to reason moral conflicts develop according to Piaget?
10
What are Kohlberg’s 3 levels of moral development?
- preconventional morality
- conventional morality
- postconventional morality
What evidence is there for Kohlberg’s moral development theory?
longitudinal studies find the percentage of participants with lower-level reasoning decreased with age and higher-level reasoning increased
What are some critiques of Kohlberg’s stages? (4)
- higher levels of cognitive development don’t automatically lead to more moral actions
- the samples were not representative
- stage 6 is individualist (own set of morals, not group)
- tasks focus on verbally demanding dilemmas
What do infants do when they see a shape helping another up a hill and a different shape pushing it down the hill?
they reach for the helpful one first
What do infants do when a puppet is helped or attacked when the puppet is similar to them (likes same food) or different?
- 9-14 month olds prefer puppets who harm those dissimilar to them
- they prefer puppets who help those similar to them
What do children do when asked if they would save the lives of 10 dogs vs one human? What does this suggest?
save the dogs
they are not speciesist so this is a socially acquired ideology
