1. Social Psychology II

2. Prosocial Behavior
Why did people risk their lives to help those in Japan after the earthquake and nuclear fallout?
Why do people run into a burning building to help someone?

3. Prosocial Behavior
- These tragedies show humans have the potential for prosocial behavior and altruism
Prosocial Behavior- a
behavior carried out with
the goal of helping other
people

4. Prosocial Behavior
- Altruism- prosocial behaviors a person carries out w/out considering their own safety or interests

5. Prosocial Behavior
What makes people behave this way? Why do people feel they should risk their life for others?
Depends on who “others” are…
- for relatives, altruistic behavior makes sense, b/c you aid in the survival of your gene pool

6. Prosocial Behavior What about strangers though?
Theorists believe in reciprocal altruism- idea that people perform altruistic behaviors b/c they expect others will perform altruistic behaviors for them in turn

7. Prosocial Behavior Reciprocal altruism is not only in humans
Researchers also found that people will be altruistic even if they don’t expect the behavior to be reciprocal
Evolutionary evidence for altruism

8. Prosocial Behavior
 women believe that men who provide evidence of altruism would make better fathers

9. Prosocial Behavior Motives for Prosocial Behavior: Altruism
Egoism- perform the behavior for your own self-interest, to later receive a favor, or reward
Collectivism- perform the behavior for a larger group the person is a part of

10. Prosocial Behavior
4. Principlism- perform the behavior to uphold moral/religious principles 5. Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis- feel empathy toward another  evoking altruistic motives to provide help

11. Prosocial Behavior How does this motive affect prosocial behavior?
Psychologists demonstrated that bystander intervention (people’s willingness to help strangers in distress) was very sensitive to the precise characteristics of the situation

12. Prosocial Behavior
- However, sometimes people are slow to help or don’t help at all b/c of diffusion of responsibility (when more than one person could help in an emergency, people assume someone else will or should help, so they back off and don’t get involved)

13. Prosocial Behavior Other reasons bystanders fail to help:
Have to notice the emergency
Label the events as an emergency- how are other people responding?
Must feel responsibility

14. Aggression and Prejudice

15. Aggression Why are people aggressive? - genetic predisposition
- brain & hormone differences (amygdala)
- serotonin levels

16. Aggression 2 Types of Aggression: Impulsive- reaction to the situation
Ex. Fist-fight
2. Instrumental- goal-directed, premeditated
Ex. Knock down a lady for her purse

17. Aggression In what situations do people seem to be aggressive?
- Frustration-aggression hypothesis- frustration occurs when your goals are blocked & a rise in frustration leads to more probability of aggression

18. Aggression Temperature & Time of Day – warmer aggression
9pm-3am  aggression
- Direct Provocation/Escalation- believing the behavior was intentional is more upsetting

19. Aggression Some cultural constraints to aggression:
More connected you are with culture/community  less likely to be aggressive
Regional differences- Southerners have a code of conduct; if you dishonor it, tend to be more aggressive

20. Aggression
3. Modeling- TV and home life become the norm

21. Prejudice
Prejudice- a learned attitude, involving negative fear, negative beliefs (stereotypes) that justify that attitude, and intention to avoid, control, dominate, or eliminate the “target object”

22. Prejudice Where does prejudice come from?
Social Categorization- people organize their environment by categorizing the people around them
- People divide the world into “in-groups” & “out-groups”

23. Prejudice
- “In-groups”- groups with which they identify as members - “Out-groups”- groups which they do not identify with

24. Prejudice
These distinctions lead to in-group bias- believing that the group you are in is better than others
Leads to societal problems like discrimination

25. Prejudice
The tendency toward defining “us against them” becomes more powerful when perception grows that resources are scarce & that goods can only be given to one group at the expense of another

26. Prejudice
Prejudice people spend time deciding who is “us” and who is “them”
- Easy to create, difficult to remove  leads to discrimination
Stereotypes- generalizations about a group of people in which the same characteristics are assigned to all members of a group

27. Prejudice
Stereotypes encode expectations that create social realities for people
Stereotypes are used to produce behavioral confirmations
- People tend to devalue information that is inconsistent with their prior stereotype  thus difficult to change them

28. Prejudice
Stereotypes can lead to stereotype threat- a stereotyped group’s knowledge that they must work against a negative stereotype

29. Prejudice How can we reverse prejudice?
- Contact hypothesis- idea that direct contact between hostile groups alone will reduce prejudice  theory has been disproven
- Mutual dependence, deprovincialization, & jigsaw techniques work well (ex. Remember the Titans)