Social psychology Flashcards
1
Q
Types of identity: 3 selfs
A
- Social and personal identity (Taijfel and Turner 1979)
- Brewer and Gardner (1996) – 3 types of self
- Individual – personal traits that distinguish you from others (friendly)
- Relational – dyadic relationships that assimilate you to others (mum)
- Collective – group membership (academic)
2
Q
What is Self-awareness?
A
- Psychological state (traits, feelings, behaviour)
- Reflexive thought ‘fundamental part of human beings’
- Realisation of being individual – Mirror test (Gallup 1970) whether the child touches the mirror or themselves when they put a red dot on their face
3
Q
What are 2 types of self?
A
- Private: thoughts, feelings, attitudes
- Public: social image
- Public self can be seen and evaluated by others (evaluation apprehension, enjoy success and admiration, adhere to social standards of behaviour)
4
Q
What is chronic self-awareness?
A
- Very stressful as constantly aware of shortcomings
- Avoidance behaviour: drinking, drugs
- Reduced self-awareness (deindividuation, no monitoring of own behaviour)
- Heightened private (more intense emotion, accurate self-perception, adhere to personal beliefs, depression)
- Heightened public (focus on perception by others, nervousness, loss of self-esteem, adhere to group norms, avoid embarrassment)
5
Q
Self-knowledge: schemas
A
- Self-awareness: access information
- Schemas: Highly structured, cognitive network that we use to make sense of the world
- Self-schemas: act, feel, Self-schematic (important part of self-concept), behave, think, A-schematic (not that important to me)
6
Q
Self-development theory: Other individuals
A
- Social comparison theory (Festinger 1954)
- Objective benchmark in similar people
- For performance generally downward comparison
- But also upwards in some situations - Self-evaluation maintenance (Tesser 1988)
- Upward social comparison:
- A) exaggerate target’s ability
- B) change target
- C) distance self from target
- D) devalue comparison dimension
6
Q
Self development theories: How it should be
A
- Control theory of self-regulation (Carver & Scheier 1981)
- Self-awareness: assess whether goals are met
- Test – operate to change – test -exit
- Private/public standard - Self-discrepancy theory (Higgins 1987)
- Actual (present), ideal (like to be), ought (should be)
- Motivate change and if fail:
- A) actual-ideal: dejection (e.g. disappointment)
- B) actual-ought: agitation (e.g. anxiety)
7
Q
Self-development theories: Other groups
A
- Social identity theory (Taijfel and Turner 1979)
- Personal identity: unique personal, attributes, relationships and traits
- Social identity: defines self by group membership – associated with inter-group behaviour/ group norms - Self-categorization theory (Turner et al 1987)
- Self-categorisation to groups, internalise group attributes, collective self, social identity
- Meta-contrast principle
- BIRGing – ‘basking in reflected glory’
- If group categorisation too salient, perception of self and others becomes depersonalised
8
Q
Self motives: 3 types
A
- Self-assessment (desire for accurate and valid info, seek out the truth about self)
- Self-verification (desire to confirm what they know, seek out consistency about self)
- Self enhancement (desire to maintain good image, seek favourable info about self)
- Self-affirmation theory (e.g. boasting)
- Self-serving attribution bias
9
Q
Cultural differences in self-awareness
A
- Individualist Cultures (Independent Self)
- Autonomous individual, separate from context
- Focus on internal traits feelings, thoughts, abilities
- Unitary and stable across situations
- Acting true to internal beliefs, promoting own goals & differences from others
- Collectivist Cultures (Interdependent Self)
- Connected with others and embedded in social context
- Represented in terms of roles and relationships
- Fluid and variable self, changing across situations
- Belonging, fitting in and acting appropriately, promoting group goals and
- harmony
10
Q
What is social cognition?
A
- How we process and store social information
- How this affects our perceptions and behaviour
- Social psychology: perceptions and behaviour and how influenced by others
11
Q
Key concepts: Attribution, Social schemes, Category & Casual Attribution
A
Attribution – process of assigning a cause to our own and other’s behaviour
Social schemas – knowledge about concepts (make sense with limited knowledge and facilitate top-down processing)
Category – organised hierarchically (fuzzy sets of features organised around a prototype)
Prototype – cognitive representation of typical defining features of a category
Casual attribution - an inference process through which perceivers attribute an effect to one or more causes
12
Q
We all practice psychology: 3 types
A
- Naïve scientist – people are rational and scientific-like in making cause-effect attributions
- Biased/ intuitionist – but information is limited and driven by motivations which can lead to errors and biases
- Cognitive miser – people use least complex and demanding info processing (cognitive short-cuts)
13
Q
Motivated tactician
A
- Think carefully and scientifically about certain things (when personally important or necessary)
- Think quickly and use heuristics for others (when less important so that can do things quickly and get more done)
14
Q
Theories of attribution: Naive psychologist (Heider 1958)
A
a) Need to form a coherent view of the world (search for motives in others behaviour)
b) Need to gain control over the environment (search for enduring properties that cause behaviour)
c) Need to identify internal (personal) vs external (situational) factors
15
Q
Theories of attribution: Attributional theory (Weiner 1979)
A
- Causality of success or failure (locus, stability & controllability)
- People encouraged to make more optimistic attributions
- University athletes (Parker et al 2018) prone to difficult transition from school. Randomised control trial (RCT). Attributional training got better grades explained by increased perceived academic control compared to waitlist control
16
Q
Theories of attribution: Correspondent inference theory (Jones & Davis 1965)
A
- 5 cues (act was freely chosen, act produced a non-common effect, not socially desirable, hedonic relevance, personalism)
- These cues reflect the true characteristic of the person
17
Q
Theories of attribution: Covariation model (Kelley 1967)
A
- Use multiple observations to try to identify factors that co-vary with behaviour
- Whether behaviour internal or external is key
a) Consistency – does this behaviour always co-occur with the cause
b) Distinctiveness – is the behaviour exclusively linked to this cause or is it a common reaction
c) Consensus – do other people react in the same way o the cause/situation - People with depression attribute negative events to internal, global and stable causes (Abramson et al 1989)
18
Q
Attribution biases: 4 examples
A
(systematic errors indicative of shortcuts, gut feeling, intuition)
1. False consensus (Ross et al 1977) – seek out similar others, salience of own opinion, self-esteem maintenance. People with extreme views often overestimate others who have similar views
2. Fundamental attribution error – tendency to attribute behaviour to enduring dispositions even when clear situational causes. Focus of attention = more likely to forget situational causes (dispositional shift) and target more salient (internal attribution most accessible)
3. Actor-observer bias (Jones & Nisbett 1972) – ‘Others are rude’ = internal factors, “you are rude” = external factors. Perceptual focus and informational difference. Moderators: positive behaviour (dispositional more likely), perspective taking reverses effect
4. Self-serving bias (Olson & Ross 1988) – success = internal factors, failure = external success. Motivational: maintenance of self-esteem. Cognitive: intend/expect to succeed (attribute internal causes to expected events)
19
Q
Attribution heuristic: (Tversky & Kahneman 1974)
A
- Cognitive shortcut: avoid effort, not complex mental judgment, quick & easy
- Availability heuristic: judge frequency of events by how easy it is to think of examples
- Representative heuristic: categorise based on similarity between instance and prototypical category members
- Anchoring and adjustment heuristic: starting pint influences subsequent judgments
20
Q
What is attitude?
A
- A general feeling or evaluation, positive or negative, about some person, object or issue
- Three-component model (Rosenberg & Hovalnd 1960)
- Affective – expressions of feelings towards an attitude object (e.g. The thought of eating meat makes me feel sick)
- Cognitive – expressions of beliefs about an attitude object (e.g. It is unhealthy and wrong to eat meat)
- Behavioural – overt actions/ verbal statements concerning behaviour (e.g. I will only eat vegetarian food)
21
Q
Attitudes: 2 dimensions
A
- Simple dimension “Dogs are so sociable”
- Complex dimension “dogs look cute, but I hate the way they smell”
- Attitudes become stronger, more extreme positive or negative
22
Q
What is the function of attitudes? (Katz 1960): 4 factors
A
- Knowledge function – organise and predict social world; provide a sense of meaning and coherence
- Utilitarian function – help people achieve positive outcomes and avoid negative outcomes (e.g. right attitude = no punishment)
- Ego-defensive – protecting one’s self-esteem from harmful world (e.g. many other people smoke, justifying the bad habit)
- Value expressive – facilitate expression of one’s core values and self-concept
23
Q
Where do attitudes come from? 3 places
A
- Mere exposure effect (Zajonc 1968)
- Repeated exposure to stimulus = enhancement of preference for that stimulus
- E.g. pp’s were more likely to say that familiar novel words meant something positive
- Classical conditioning – repeated association of previously neutral stimulus elicits reaction that was previously elicited only by another stimulus (attitudes learnt from others)
- Instrumental conditioning – behaviour followed by positive consequences = more likely to be repeated; behaviour that is followed by negative consequences is not. Reinforcement with positive feedback = attitude likely survives (attitudes learnt from others)
- Self-perception theory – gain knowledge of ourselves from making self-attributions. Inger attitudes from our behaviour (e.g. I read one novel a week, so I must enjoy reading novels)
24
Q
How are attitudes revealed?
A
- Can’t be seen/measured directly (reliability & validity)
- Self-report & experimental paradigms (attitude scales, implicit association task)
- Physiological measures (e.g. skin resistance, heart rate, pupil dilation)
- Measures of overt behaviour (frequency of behaviour, non-verbal behaviour)
25
Q
Attitudes and behaviour: LaPiere (1934): Famous study of racial prejudice
A
- Test: Chinses couple visited more than 250 restaurants and received service 95% of the time without hesitation but afterwards 92& of the establishment said they wouldn’t accept members of the Chinese race
- Issues: different people involved, cause and effect of the time, attitude strength & direct experience
26
Q
Relationship between attitudes and behaviour: 3 research examples
A
- Wicker (1969): Attitudes weakly correlated with behaviour – the average correlation was 0.15 in 42 studies
- Gregson and Stacey (1981): Small positive correlation between attitudes and alcohol consumption
- Sheeran et al. (2016): Medium-to-large-sized changes in intentions are associated with only small-to-medium-sized behavioural changes
(Seems that attitudes do predict, but the relationship is weaker than first envisaged)
27
Q
3 things that impact how well attitudes predict behaviour
A
- How strong the attitude is
- Whether it is formed through direct experience
- How it is measured
28
Q
Theory of planned behaviour (TPB)
A
- Proposes people make decisions as a result of rational thought processes (Ajzen 1991)
- Multiple components (attitude towards the behaviour, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control)
- Does TPB replicate across cultures? Korean and US pp’s showed personal control had a stronger association with intentions in an individualistic culture and subject norms had a stronger predictive power in a collectivist nation
29
Q
Can we change attitudes?
A
- Cognitive dissonance (Festinger 1957) counter-attitudinal behaviour = feel discomfort/ dissonance. Strive to reduce dissonance = can reduce dissonance by e.g. changing inconsistent cognition by giving them 1 or 10 dollars to lie that the experiment was enjoyable
30
Q
The power of persuasion: 2 models
A
Elaboration likelihood model (Petty & Caciopoo 1986)
- 1. Central route = when message is followed closely, considerable cognitive effort expended
- 2. Peripheral route = when arguments not well attended to; peripheral cues (e.g. attraction)
Heuristic-systematic model (Chaiken 1980)
- 1. Systematic processing = when a message is attended to carefully; scan & consider available arguments
- 2. Heuristic processing = use cognitive heuristics
- 3. The key difference is pathways = the elaboration likelihood model suggests pathways independent, whereby these could be active at the same time
31
Q
How is knowledge of attitudes used in the real world?
A
- Political campaigns
- Advertising/ sales
- Encouraging socially
32
Q
Types of groups: 5 types
A
- Strong interpersonal relationships (family, small group of close friends)
- Formed to fulfil tasks (committees, work groups)
- Groups based on large social categories (women, Americans)
- Groups based on weak social relationships (people from same local area, same fav artist)
- Transitory groups (people at bus stop, people waiting in a queue)
33
Q
Minimal groups: Tajifel et al (1971)
A
- ‘Minimal groups’ split randomly into two-groups
- People allocated more money to their ‘own’ group than the other group, and the effect could not be explained by: self-interest, existing friendships
- Demonstrates hoe easily bias can develop
34
Q
Social facilitation: Early work
A
- Triplett (1898) was the first to ask these sorts of questions (performance when timed alone vs timed and racing alongside other cyclists)
- Hypothesised that the presence of the audience, particularly in a competition, ‘energise’ performance on motor tasks
- Allport (1920) called this ‘social facilitation’ or a more generalised effect called ‘mere presence’
- Improvement in performance due to the mere presence of others as co-actors or passive audience
- Not just present in humans
35
Q
Social facilitation vs inhibition
A
- The presence of others can impair performance for both humans and animals, known as social inhibition
- For example, men take longer to urinate when someone is standing immediately beside them at a urinal than alone
36
Q
Social facilitation: Zajonc’s (1965) Drive Theory
A
- Argued mere presence of others creates an increase in arousal and energises ‘dominant response’
- When people are anxious, they tend to do better on easy tasks and worse on difficult task
- If the dominant response is correct (easy), then the performance will be facilitated
- If the dominant response is incorrect (difficult), then performance will be inhibited
- An improvement in the performance of easy tasks and deterioration in the performance of difficult tasks in the mere presence of members of the same species
37
Q
Social facilitation: Cottrell (1972) Evaluation Apprehension Theory
A
- We learn about social reward/punishment contingencies based on others evaluation
- Perception of an ‘evaluating’ audience creates arousal, not mere presence
- Social facilitation is an acquired effect based on perceived evaluations of others
- Test: 3 audience conditions, all well learned: 1. Blindfolded, 2. Merely present, 3. Attentive audience
- Results: social facilitation was found when the audin3ce was perceived to be attentive; wanting to perform well for their audience worked in their favour
- Against: Markus (1978) (3 conditions of alone, inattentive audience, attentive audience) Results – attentive audience speeded up performance in easy task and audience much no difference in difficult task
- Against: Schmitt et al (1986) showed that adding in an evaluation apprehension condition made little difference to the typing speed
38
Q
What is the Distraction-Conflict theory?
A
- People become distracted, focusing on what others are doing and performance worse
- Sanders et al (1978) found that people performance worse when someone did the same task as them (i.e. more distraction)
39
Q
Tasks in groups: The Ringelmann Effect
A
- Social loafing – found that men pulling on a rope attached to a dynamometer exerted less force than the number of people in the group
- Reasons for the effect – Coordination loss (as group size inhibits movement, distraction, and jostling), motivation loss (pp’s didn’t try as hard, less motivated)
40
Q
Social loafing: 3 study examples
A
- Ingham et al (1974) investigated with ‘real groups’ (groups of varying size) and ‘pseudo-groups’ (only one true pp) pulling on a rope, pp blindfolded
- Latane et al (1979) supported this through clapping, shouting, and cheering tasks. Recorded amount of cheering noise made per person blind folded reduced by: 29% in 2 person groups, 49% in 4 person, 60% in 6 person
- Geen (1991) Why do people loaf?
1. Output equity – when people learn others are not pulling their wight, thy too can lose motivation and put less effort in
2. Evaluation apprehension – individuals only believe their efforts are being judged when they perform alone
41
Q
Impact of groups on performance
A
- Identifiability: i.e. when people’s individual contributions to a task can be identified.
- Individual responsibility: i.e. when people know they can make a unique contribution to a task
- Social loafing appears to be robust across gender culture and task
- People will put more effort into a group when they believe their input will have an impact
42
Q
What is group polarisation?
A
- People often discuss topics with those who are similarly minded which can strengthen the attitudes
- As people come together to share their grievances, they are often in isolation from others, likely becoming more extreme overtime, leading to actions that might not have happened on their own
43
Q
What are group problem solving?
A
- Group problem-solving is useful, but in certain contexts:
- When groups get together and critique each other’s ideas, they have been found to come up with better-quality ideas (McGlynn, et al., 1995).
- Also, more effective when small rather than large groups and if the experimenter is not present to monitor the process (Mullen, et al. 1991).
- However, if only simple group decisions occur, with no break-out from individuals, solitary efforts are typically better than the group’s (e.g., Diehl & Stroebe, 1987)
44
Q
What is social influence?
A
- Process whereby attitudes and behaviour are influenced by the real or implied presence of other people
45
Q
Norm development: Sherif (1936)
A
- Social norms emerge to guide behaviour in conditions of uncertainty
- Autokinetic effect (point of light appears to move)
- Judgments alone or in groups of 2/3
- Use judgments of others as frame of reference
- Converge away from individual to common standard: group norm
46
Q
Conformity: Asch (1951)
A
- Rational process – people construct norm from others’ behaviour to determine appropriate behaviour
- Object of judgment = ambiguous, frame of reference convergence on group norm
- Line study results: average conformity was 33% but when judgments were anonymous, conformity dropped to 12.5%
- Why? Could be due to self-doubt, self-conscious, fear of social disapproval
47
Q
Informational and Normative social influence: (Deutsch & Gerald 1955)
A
- Informational social influence
- Ambiguous/uncertain situations
- Need to feel confident our perceptions/beliefs/feelings correct
- Influence to accept info from another as evidence about reality
- True cognitive change
- E.g. Sherif’s study - Normative social influence
- Need for social approval and acceptance
- Avoid disapproval
- Surface compliance
- E.g. Ash’s study
48
Q
Minority influence: Moscovici
A
- ‘Social influence processes whereby numerical or power minorities change the attitudes of the majority’
- Effective if consistent, not rigid, committed
- Majorities and minorities exert social influence through different processes:
- A) majority influence – produces public compliance via social comparison
- B) minority influence – produces indirect, private change in opinion, conversion effect because of active consideration of minority point of view
49
Q
Obedience to authority
A
- Milgram (1963) electric shocks to confederate in mock earning study
- People socialised to respect authority of the state
- Agentic state = mentally absolve of own responsibility and transfer responsibility to person giving order
- Throughout the study, if pp was hesitating, researcher told pp to go on (verbal prompts)
- Results: 100% went to 300V, 65% went to 450V
50
Q
Facttors influencing obedience: 4 factors
A
- Gradual change and commitment – pp’s committed to curse of action
- Immediacy of victim – as immediacy increased, obedience decreased
- Immediacy of authority figure – obedience decreased when experimenter not in room & directions given by telephone
- Legitimacy of authority figure – lab coated experimenter, Yale University & reduction when the experiment was conducted in industrial setting
51
Q
Ethical issues with Milgram’s experiments
A
- Is the pp free to terminate experiment
- Does the pp freely consent to take part\is the research important
52
Q
Categorisation
A
- Category = collections of instances that have a family resemblance organised around a prototype
- Prototypes = cognitive representation of typical defining features of a category (standards against which family resemblance is assessed & category membership decided)
- Categories not rigid, but fuzzy (more or less typical of the category, depending on the prototype, categorisation of less typical members more difficult)
53
Q
Why do we categorise? 3 reasons
A
- Save cognitive energy – saves time/ cognitive processing and simplify how individuals think about world
- Clarifies and refines perception of the world – once category is activated, tend to see members as processing all traits of the stereotype and reducing uncertainty/ predict social world
- Maintain positive self-esteem – motivational function for social identity & self-concept
54
Q
Stereotypes: Illusory correlation
A
- Negative stereotypes may occur when people inaccurately pair minority groups with negative event/behaviours because they are both distinct
- Hamilton & Sherman (1996): asked White American pp’s to estimate the arrest rate of various types of American
- African Americans were estimated to have a higher arrest rate than they in fact did
55
Q
Effects of stereotypes: Behavioural assimilation
A
- Stereotypes don’t just influence our perceptions of others; they can influence our own behaviour
- Bargh et al (1996) pp’s make sentences out of randomly ordered words (IV were word types, DV were how long it took pp’s to leave room)
- Results: pp’s primed with elderly words behaved in a way related to an ‘elderly’ stereotype (i.e. move slower out of room)
- However, the studies that prime stereotypes often don’t replicate – could be due because the effects are not universal as people might need to care about what’s being primed
56
Q
Effects of stereotypes: Prejudice and discrimination
A
- Strong, highly accessible negative attitude – dominated by cognitive bias and negative stereotypes
- Behaviour based on unjust treatment of certain groups:
A) reluctance to help – pp’s were more reluctant to help a minority member when faced with an emergency, but only when others were present
B) Tokensim – process of favouring a member of a minority group in isolated episodes
C) Reverse discrimination – opening displays pro-minority behaviour but as a way to deflect accusations of prejudice (e.g. giving more money to a minority member when feeling threatened)
57
Q
Effects of stereotypes: Stereotype threat
A
- The threat of negative evaluations can lead to poor performance
- When negative stereotypes define our own groups, and we behave in line with it
- This negative impact isn’t inevitable, reframing low expectations as a challenge instead of a threat can eliminate the effect
- Replicability? Tan & Barber (2020) examined whether age-based stereotypes impact older Chinese adults (results found poorer memory recall in stereotype threat condition)
58
Q
2 major ‘isms’: Racism & Sexism
A
- Dovidio et al (1996) decline of racist attitudes over 60 years
- Specific stereotypes changed but negativity remains
- Racism changed in the form: new/ modern racism (conflict between evaluation towards out-group and values of equality and egalitarian attitudes)
- What causes prejudice? Historical and psychological causes
59
Q
Three theories of subtle prejudice
A
- Modern or symbolic racism (Kinder & Sears, 1981) Blaming the victim and support of policies that all happen to disadvantage racial minorities
- Ambivalent racism (Katz & Hass, 1988) High scores on pro-Black attitudes (pity for the disadvantaged) and high scores on anti-Black attitudes (hostility toward the deviant).
- Ambivalent sexism (Glick & Fiske 1996) Hostile sexism paints women in a negative light and benevolent sexism could be seen as apparently positive
60
Q
Frustration-aggression hypothesis
A
- Frustration causes aggression as ‘psychic energy’ builds up and we find a scapegoat as our frustration needs an outlet
- Evidence: Hovland & Sears (1940) as price of cotton increased the number of lynchings of Black worders increased – however issues with cause and effect
61
Q
Psychological causes: Authoritarian personality
A
- ‘Authoritarian’ Personality traits: Extreme reactions to authority figures, obsession with rank and status, tendency to displace anger
- Related to upbringing and harsh parental discipline
- Measured using the F scale
- Evidence: Adorno et al (1950) retrospective interviews about childhood and found correlation between harshness of upbringing and measures of prejudice
- Criticisms: problems with cause and effect, poor methodology and ignores the social context
62
Q
Social learning
A
- Rather than personality, Taijfel (1981) argued that hatred and suspicion of certain groups are learnt early in life
- Parental prejudices: modelling (child witnesses’ expression of racial hatred), conditioning (parents’ approval of racist behaviour)
63
Q
Group process
A
- Conformity - Conforming to group norms
- Minard (1952): Investigated attitudes of White miners
- Results: 60% would readily switch between racism & non racism depending on whether situational - Group relations theories – social learning theory
- We have a social identity as well as a personal one, made up of how we categories ourselves in terms of social groups
64
Q
Why is social identity important?
A
- Helps us to maintain self-esteem
- Social bonding
BUT - Implications for interaction with out-group members
- Hypothesised cause of prejudice and stereotyping
65
Q
Blue/ brown eyes demonstration
A
- School teacher Jane Elliot (1968) tried to highlight effects of prejudice to school children:
- One day, blue eyed children were ‘inferior’ and had to wear a collar and lost privileges
- Brown eyed children were very quick to derogate those with blue eyes
66
Q
Bringing it together: Akrami et al (2011)
A
- Previous research has almost exclusively examined sexism from either a personality or a social-psychology perspective
- Explored whether personality or social-psychological or a combination of both predicted sexism
- Results: demonstrated that sexism was best explained by considering the combined influence of both personality- and social-psychology constructs
- The findings imply that it is necessary to integrate various approaches to explain prejudice
67
Q
What is aggression? And how do we measure it
A
- ‘Intend to harm of another individual’
- Multiple methods in the laboratory: Bandura Bobo doll, observations form teachers, self-reports
68
Q
Gaming and aggression
A
- Video games have long been thought to be associated with negative real-world outcomes
- Some evidence of a link between the two, but the effect is small
- But there’s plenty of evidence that suggests no effect (i.e. one of the big problems is not standardised use of aggression measures and selective use of measures can make effects seem bigger than they are)
- It also struggles to account for real-world crime rates- engagement with gaming has increased, whereas crime has fallen
- Kennedy et al (2014) found that people who frequently played violent video games were less distracted by violent images in other contexts
69
Q
Theories of aggression: Innate
A
- Aggression is unlearned and universal, if it is not released, it builds up until it explodes
- Psychodynamic theory (Freud) aggression builds up naturally and must be released
- Ethological perspective (Lorenz 1966) aggression has a ‘survival value’ Dual-factor theory (1. Innate urge to aggress, 2. Aggressive behaviour elicited by environmental stimuli)
- Evolutionary – social behaviour is adaptive and helps the individual, kin and species to survive. Evolved to allow the procreate and pass on genes t the next generation
- Issues: Limited evidence for the psychodynamic theory, struggles to explain the functional value of aggression in humans
- Aggressors often find themselves punished and excluded from the group
70
Q
Theories of aggression: Social
A
- The social context in which we exist can also explain it
- Social learning theory ‘Bobo doll’ and observed children exposed to the aggressive model displayed significantly more aggression
- Frustration-Aggression hypothesis – aggression results of having one’s goals thwarted and if the target is too powerful, unavailable or not a person displace aggression onto alternative target (scapegoat)
- Barker et al. (1941) Children are shown a room full of toys: Initially not allowed to play with them or allowed to play without waiting. Assessed how children played with toys. Results: Frustrated group acted more aggressively: Smashed toys on the floor, Threw against the wall, General destructive behaviour
- However, Berkowitz (1962) frustration does not always lead to aggression – aversive events
71
Q
Excitation transfer (Zillman 1979)
A
- Expression of aggression is a function of 3 factors
1. Learnt aggressive behaviour
2. Arousal or excitation from another source
3. The person’s interpretation of the arousal state – such that an aggressive response seems appropriate
72
Q
Factors influencing aggression: 7 factors
A
- Type A Personality - ‘Striving to achieve, time urgency, competitiveness & hostility’ , More conflict with peers and subordinates but not superiors
- Heat - Numerous experimental studies have demonstrated heat’s independent effect on aggression (Pp’s were shown images and words commonly associated with heat. Pp’s with heat-related words and imagery led pp’s to perceive neutral facial expressions as aggressive and to have more aggressive thoughts. Another approach is to compare crime rates in similar regions to examine the link between heat and violence. Findings consistently show that hotter areas have higher violent crime rates, even when controlling for confounding factors
- Heat and Climate Change - Mares and Moffett (2016) analysed violence data from 60 countries, finding a significant link between heat and violence, particularly in conflict zones. Their models suggest a 1°C global temperature rise due to the climate crisis could increase homicide rates by up to 6%
- Presence of a weapon (Klinesmith et al. 2006) Men took part and held a gun or held child’s toy. Measured aggressive behaviour (how much hot sauce to the next person). Holding a gun increased aggression
- Alcohol (Miller & Parrott, 2010) Intoxicated participants behave more aggressively and respond to provocations more strongly. Also, low aggressors became more aggressive when intoxicated, whereas high aggressors did not
- Narcissism (Bushman & Baumeister, 1998) Participants wrote a pro-life or pro-choice essay on abortion. Some given negative feedback, such as “This is one of the worst essays I’ve ever read”.
- Later, they were asked to deliver blasts of noises to another participant, and they could adjust the level. Results: Narcissistic pp’s gave the person whom they thought that had criticised their easy louder bursts. But not other participants.
