1. Social Psychology: Interpersonal and Group (Chapter 15)
Second Lecture Outline:
Helping behavior
Prejudice
Aggression and deindividualtion (Zimbardo’s prison study: M146)

3. Bystander studies
The larger the group, the less likely someone will intervene
Someone falls down in front of you at the bus stop. You are more likely to help them if you are alone than iff waiting with other strangers.
Bystander effect leads to diffusion of responsibility
Observers need to notice and define the emergency, take responsibility, and act

5. Altruism or prosocial behavior is defined as actions that provide benefit to others but that have no obvious benefits for the person who carries them out, often with a potential of cost or risk to the helper.
1. NOTICE THE SITUATION
2. Define the situation as an emergency
3. Assume responsibility
4. Decide what exactly to do
5. Actually decide to help
Altruism involves potential risk to the helper. .

6. Prejudice
Unfavorable attitude towards other groups based on weak or incorrect evidence
Social categories and stereotypes
Outgroup heterogeneity: Everyone from another group is alike
Illusory correlation: “odd” behavior of others
Why? Competition, identity, modeling
Reduced by contact between equals involved in cooperative activity

7. We encode information based on our inherent prejudices
We encode information based on our inherent prejudices. What do you recall of Dianna’s car crash?

8. Aggression Hostile: Impulsive and emotional
Instrumental: To get what we want
Adaptive: Contributes to survival or reproduction
Preying mantis, pheasants, infanticide
Hormones (e.g., testosterone) and odors (e.g., dogs)
Caused by aggression, pain, frustration, deindividuation

9. Is Aggression Inborn?/Testosterone
(1) "Bonobo Society: Amicable, Amorous and Run by Females." New York Times, 4/22/97; p. C4.
The title says it all. Bonobos (less accurately called “pygmy chimpanzees”) share at least 98% of their DNA with humans, yet they live in a remarkably peaceful, non-aggressive society. Bonobos are much less obsessed with power and status than their chimpanzee (and human) cousins. Their lack of violence suggests that aggression need not be innate nor linked to male testosterone (male bonobos are as peaceful as females)--which refutes the evolutionary psychology position. The article outlines the rest of Bonobo society: females are dominant, but in a way that is "so mild and unobnoxious" that equality between the sexes reigns. Bonobos cement their social bonds through frequent and enthusiastic sex, of all types, in all possible combinations. "Make love, not war" is definately the Bonobo motto.

10. Deindividuation
Once a sense of individual identity is lost, internal constraints against socially unacceptable behavior are reduced
Example: Scavenger hunt can get out of hand
Example: War propoganda -- dehumanize the enemy
Zimbardo’s prison experiment (M146)