WEEK 11 Flashcards
What are the key elements to social influence?
obedience: compliance with authority
conformity: changing attitudes or behaviour to accommodate the standards of peers or groups
group processes: when people congregate, their actions tend to become patterned in various ways.
Freud theory towards aggression…
proposed that aggression is an instinctive biological urge that builds up in everyone and must be released. Sometimes, he said, the release takes the form of physical or verbal abuse against others. At other times, the aggressive impulse is turned inwards and leads to suicide or other self-damaging acts.
Genetic mechanisms, in relation to aggression…
There is strong evidence for hereditary influences on aggression, especially from animal studies.
In one study, the most aggressive members of a large group of mice were interbred. Then the most aggressive of their offspring were also interbred. After this procedure was followed for 25 generations, the resulting animals would immediately attack any mouse put in their cage. Continuous inbreeding of the least aggressive members of the original group produced animals that were so docile that they would refuse to fight even when attacked.
Research on human twins reared together or apart suggests that there is a genetic component to aggression in people as well
other research suggests that people do not necessarily inherit the tendency to be aggressive; instead, they may inherit certain temperaments, such as impulsiveness or emotional oversensitivity in social situations, that in turn make aggression more likely
Biological mechanisms in relation to aggression…
Hormones such as testosterone, the masculine hormone that is present in both sexes, may also play an important role in aggression. Aggressive behaviour increases or decreases dramatically with the amount of testosterone in the human bloodstream, especially in individuals who also have low levels of cortisol and serotonin
Criminals who commit violent crimes have higher levels of testosterone than those whose crimes are nonviolent, and murderers with higher levels of testosterone are more likely than others to have planned their crimes before committing them
pregnant women were given testosterone in an attempt to prevent miscarriages. Accordingly, their children were exposed to high doses of testosterone during prenatal development. Results show that these children grew up to be more aggressive than their same-sex siblings who were not exposed to testosterone during prenatal development
Another study found that girls who had been prenatally exposed to elevated levels of testosterone by virtue of having shared the womb with a male twin were more aggressive than girls who had a female twin
Learning and cultural mechanisms influencing aggression…
Aggressive behaviour is much more common in individualist than in collectivist cultures
Cultural differences in the expression of aggression appear to stem in part from differing cultural values.
For example, the Utku, an Inuit culture, view aggression in any form as a sign of social incompetence. In fact, the Utku word for aggressive also means ‘childish’
observational learning, including the learning that comes through exposure to violent television, does play a significant role in the development and display of aggressive behaviour
Reward or punishment can also alter the frequency of aggressive acts. People become more aggressive when rewarded for aggressiveness and less aggressive when punished for aggression
Following adult examples, learning to express aggression is especially easy for children who live in countries plagued by war or sectarian violence because they see aggressive acts modelled for them all too often.
Frustration-aggression hypothesis…
a proposition that frustration always leads to some form of aggressive behaviour
Generalised arousal…
the physiological arousal caused by jogging may increase the probability that you will become aggressive if, say, a passer-by shouts an insult. This is due to arousal from one experience carrying over to an independent situation, producing what is called excitation transfer. Therefore, the physiological arousal caused by jogging may intensify your reaction to an insult.
Malamuth study on pornography and sexual aggression…
Extensive exposure to pornography does not by itself make most men more likely to engage in sexual aggression. However, among men who are hostile towards women and have a history of sexual promiscuity, those who view a lot of pornography are much more likely to engage in sexual aggression.
Environmental influences on aggression..
One aspect of the environment that clearly affects social behaviour is the weather – especially
temperature.
High temperature is a source of stress and arousal, so it might be expected to correlate with aggressiveness. The results of many studies conducted in several countries show that many kinds of aggressive behaviours are indeed more likely to occur during hot summer months than at any other time of the year
What causes aggression?
Freud proposed that aggression is an instinctive urge that builds up in everyone
The evolutionary view is that aggression helped prehistoric people compete for mates, ensuring survival of their genes
Genetic influences include heredity and brain damage that causes defensive aggression
A biological mechanism for aggression is testosterone.
Drugs that alter central nervous system functioning are also influential
Effect of drugs – alter central nervous system functioning
Accumulated experiences (including cultural teachings) also affect aggressive behaviour
Learning and culture play a role; e.g., observational learning
Violent video games may increase aggression
Helping behaviour (prosocial behaviour)…
any act that is intended to benefit another person
Altruism…
an unselfish concern for another person’s welfare
Arousal: cost-reward theory….
a theory attributing people’s prosocial or helping behaviour to their efforts to reduce the unpleasant arousal in the face of someone’s need or suffering, while considering the costs involved
Before rushing to a victim’s aid, however, the bystander will first evaluate two aspects of the situation – the costs of helping and the costs (to the bystander and the other person) of not helping. Whether the bystander actually helps depends on the outcome of this evaluation. If the costs of helping are low (e.g., picking up someone’s dropped grocery bag) and the costs of not helping are high (e.g., the other person is physically unable to do this alone), the bystander will almost certainly help. However, if the costs of helping are high (e.g., when the task is to load a heavy box into a car) and the costs of not helping are low (e.g., when the other person is obviously strong enough to do the job alone), the bystander is unlikely to offer help.
Bystander effect…
a phenomenon in which the chances that someone will help in an emergency decrease as the number of people present increases
Why does the bystander effect occur?
One explanation for why the presence of others often reduces helping is that each person thinks someone else will help the victim. That is, seeing other bystanders allows each individual to experience a diffusion of responsibility for taking action, which lowers the costs of not helping. This diffusion of responsibility among all the witnesses leaves each witness feeling less obliged to help and thus lowers the perceived cost of not helping.
People often have difficulty speaking to strangers, particularly in an emergency, and without speaking, they have difficulty knowing what the others intend to do.
Empathy-altruism helping theory…
suggests that people help others because they feel empathy towards them
Evolutionary theory of altruism…
People help relatives because it increases the chances that the helper’s genes will survive in future generations
Prisoner’s dilemma game…
a social dilemma scenario in
which mutual cooperation guarantees the best mutual outcome
two people are separated for questioning immediately after being arrested on suspicion of having committed a serious crime. The prosecutor believes they are guilty but does not have enough evidence to convict them. Each prisoner can either confess or not, but they are told that if they both refuse to confess, each will be convicted of a minor offence and will be jailed for one year. If they both confess, the prosecutor will recommend a five-year sentence for each. However, if one prisoner remains silent and the other confesses to what they did, the prosecutor will allow the confessing prisoner to go free, whereas the other will serve the maximum 10-year sentence.
Zero-sum game…
a social situation in which one person’s gains are subtracted from another person’s resources so that the sum of the gains and losses is zero
Barriers to resolving interpersonal conflicts…
1.people in conflict invest so much time, effort and commitment in establishing their own point of view that being asked to adjust it in order to compromise seems to be asking too much
- conflicts can become entrenched because of the actor–observer effect and other attributional errors discussed in this chapter. E.g. seeing the problem as being due to someone within the argument’s hostility
- communication can start a cycle of increasingly provocative actions in which each person believes the other is being aggressive and unfair
- a tendency to believe that the other person is not really interested in reaching a settlement. This view may become a self-fulfilling prophecy; each side may begin to behave in ways that actually bring about the uncooperative behaviour expected from the other side, and the end result may be increasing conflict and, eventually, a stalemate
Social facilitation…
a phenomenon in which the presence of others improves a person’s performance
social interference..
a reduction in performance due to the presence of other people
Task-oriented leader…
leader who provides close supervision, leads by directives
and generally discourages group discussion
Relationship-oriented leader…
a leader who provides loose supervision, asks for group members’ ideas and is concerned with subordinates’ feelings
Groupthink…
a pattern of thinking in which group members fail to evaluate realistically the wisdom of various options and decisions
Conformity…
involves ‘changing one’s behaviour or beliefs to match those of others, generally as a result of real or imagined, though unspoken, group pressure’
Compliance…
involves ‘adjusting one’s behaviour because of an explicit or implicit request
Obedience…
involves ‘changing behaviour in response to a demand from an authority figure
Commons dilemma…
a classic problem in economics and social science that arises when a shared resource, such as a common grazing pasture, fishing area, or environmental resource, is overused or depleted due to the self-interest of individuals or groups.
