Essay 6

PSYC101_Ch_7_Personality_and_Social_Psychology1.pptx

The study of personality and social psychology often go together as we try to understand human behavior.

CH. 7 PERSONALITY & Social PSYCHOLOGY

Personality

The set of attributes that characterize an individual, including temperamental, emotional, mental, and behavioral tendencies, influenced by genetics, learning, & social experiences.

Social psychology

The study of the relationships among individuals or between individuals and groups.

Approaches to Understanding Personality

Approach	Major Points	Representative Theorists
Trait-Type	Discovering and verifying the existence of related clusters of traits composing personality types	The Greeks Jung Costa and McCrae
Biological	Looking at genes (genomics) and at brain structures and functions (neuropsychology) to identify processes and structures underlying personality	Eysenck Researchers in genomics and neuropsychology
Psychodynamic	Clarifying the interplay of unconscious forces; understanding the conflict between basic inclinations and social/environmental constraints	Freud Jung
Learning-Based	Personality as learned habits, predispositions, attitudes; also looks at rational contributions to behavior and emotions, decision making, attributions	Watson Skinner Bandura Rotter
Humanistic	The self; worth, dignity, individuality	Maslow Rogers

The Trait-Type Approach & Early Trait-Type Approaches

Trait Any distinct, consistent quality in which one person can be different from another. There are physical traits (blonde, big, buxom), behavioral traits (quick, quiet, quarrelsome), moral traits (bad, base, benign), and many more.

One approach to personality has been to attempt to reduce the total number of possible traits to a few highly representative adjectives. The most useful would be those most often displayed in human behavior, most variable from one person to another, and most distinct.

Another way of looking at a trait is to say it implies a prediction about behavior.

Among the best known of the trait approaches is that proposed by Cattell (1946).

Cattell reduced the list of personality traits to 16 by combining separate but closely related traits using a statistical process called factor analysis.

The traits are based on popular adjectives used to describe people in meaningful ways. The traits are arranged in pairs of opposites.

Personality type is a more inclusive term than trait:

A trait is inferred from a tendency to behave in a given way in certain situations.

A type describes a group of related traits.

Factor Analysis:

A statistical procedure for reducing correlational data to a smaller number of dimensions by grouping closely related variables.

Type:

A related grouping of personality traits.

The Trait-Type Approach Cont.

Early Trait-Type Approaches

An ancient approach to personality types was suggested by Greek philosophers, who described four distinct types of individuals:

the sanguine (optimistic and happy)

the melancholic (unhappy, depressed)

the choleric (of violent temper)

the phlegmatic (apathetic, not easily moved to excesses of emotion

They thought each of these personality types depended on fluids in the body—then called “humors.”

Early Trait-Type Approaches Cont.

Psychodynamic theory is the elaborate theory developed by Freud, based on his notion that behavior and personality are developed by unconscious urges and motivations. These theories emphasize the interplay between unconscious and conscious motives.

In Carl Jung’s psychodynamic typology, he believed many of our unconscious motives stem from archetypes,

Archetypes:

Literally, the first or original model.

In Jung’s theory, a universal thought or shared historical memory which is largely unconscious. Archetypes are a sort of unconscious, shared historical memory—part of what he labeled the collective unconscious.

Jung proposed two main types, which include great clusters of traits: extraversion (also spelled extroversion) and introversion. These represent the two possible attitudes with which all people approach life.

Extroverts — those who run toward life, are adventurous, bold, eager to live and to experience, are concerned with others, with sports, with all the external world. Extroverts are fun-loving, outgoing, friendly, and active.

Introverts — those who turn inward and away from the world (intro meaning inward). They are concerned more with subjective than objective reality. Introverts are described as timid and quiet.

The Big Five

Big Five factors A widely accepted personality typology that includes extraversion, openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

As a memory aid, note the first five letters spell the acronyms CANOE or OCEAN.

Extraversion includes being outgoing, seeking stimulation, and wanting to be in the company of others. Those high in this trait are engaged in the world, highly sociable, and energetic.

Openness is characterized by a high degree of inventiveness, adventurousness, and curiosity.

Neuroticism is marked by fluctuating emotions, high anxiety, and a tendency toward negative moods such as anger and depression. Those who score high on this factor are sometimes described as emotionally unstable.

Conscientiousness includes awareness of one’s personal identity and mental processes like thinking, imagining, and feeling. Those high in this trait tend to exhibit a high degree of organization, self-discipline, thoroughness, and a need to achieve.

Agreeableness includes the traits friendly, compassionate, and cooperative. Those high in this strive to be pleasant and cooperative, are polite and compassionate, value friendships, and tend to have an optimistic view of people.

Contemporary Trait Theory

Questions that still remain to be answered by trait theorists and that are currently being researched and discussed:

What is the nature of traits? Are they real?

What is the relationship between traits and behaviors?

Are personality traits stable or changeable?

What is the relationship between trait and state?

What are the descriptive and explanatory powers of traits?

What is the function of personality traits (i.e. their practical utility or influence on function)?

Trait-type approaches to personality are primarily descriptive. Their main concern is to describe and label the dimensions of personality rather than to explain how personality develops.

Biological Approaches

Biologically oriented theories of personality look at genetics as an important cause of our relatively stable behavioral tendencies, such as our tendency to seek or avoid social situations.

Whether genomics will find a demonstrable link between genes and personality has been widely debated.

Research in neuropsychology also looks for the biological bases of personality characteristics, and some personality-related psychological disorders.

Genomics:

The discipline studying genomes in an attempt to establish relationships between genes and characteristics.

Genome:

The complete set of chromo-somes of an organism. All of an organism’s inheritable traits.

Biological Approaches: Eysenck’s Biological Theory

One of Eysenck’s basic premises is we are born with tendencies to behave in certain ways. Social expectations must be congruent with biological expectations and explainable at the biological level. His theory includes three, essentially independent dimensions:

Extraversion (as opposed to introversion)

Neuroticism (as opposed to emotional stability)

Psychoticism (as opposed to self-control)

A basic assumption underlying the theory is that the nervous systems of extroverts and introverts differ, as do those of neurotics or psychotics and so-called “normal” people.

By conducting experimental research, he demonstrated this hypothesis as correct.

Takeaway from Eysenck’s Theory:

Our nervous systems differ in important ways from those of people who have fundamentally different personality characteristics than us.

A Psychodynamic Approach: Freud

According to Freud, deep-seated psychological forces, sometimes instinctive, often unconscious, interacting with the environment produce personality and guide behavior.

This is a psychodynamic approach to personality—so called because it emphasizes the interaction of unconscious emotional and mental processes and their influence on personality and behavior.

Among the most basic of Freudian notions is the belief that powerful instinctual tendencies account for human behavior and development.

The urge to survive and to procreate (Eros, Libido)

The death wish (Thanatos): This instinct is sometimes manifested in high-risk behaviors in aggressive behaviors.

He gives sexuality and aggression a central position in his theory. These two, largely unconscious, forces are the main motivators of our behaviors.

Libido:

A Freudian term for sexual urges.

Thanatos:

A Freudian term denoting the death wish or death instinct.

Three Components of Personality: Freud

Id:	In Freudian theory, all the instinctual urges that humans inherit, including eros and thanatos.
Ego:	In Freud’s theory, the rational, reality-oriented level of human personality, developing as the child becomes aware of what the environment makes possible and impossible.
Superego:	The personality structure that defines the moral or ethical aspects of personality.

Identification:

This involves attempting to become like others—adopting their values and beliefs as well as their behaviors. By identifying with their parents, children learn the religious and cultural rules governing their parents’ behaviors; these rules become part of the superego.

Psychosexual Stages

A psychosexual stage is a developmental stage characterized by identifiable sources of sexual gratification and by behaviors related to these sources of gratification. Through the course of normal personality development (see chart below), these sources of gratification change; with each major change, a new developmental phase appears.

Electra Complex:

A Freudian stage (around 4 years) when a girl’s awareness of her genital area leads her to desire her father and to become jealous of her mother.

Oedipus Complex:

A Freudian concept denoting the developmental stage (around 4 years) when a boy’s increasing awareness of the sexual meaning of his genitals leads him to desire his mother and envy his father.

Stage	Approximate Age	Characteristics	Dominant Personality Component
Oral	0–18 months	Sources of pleasure include sucking, biting, swallowing, playing with lips. Preoccupation with immediate gratification of impulses. Id is dominant.	Id
Anal	18 months–3 years	Sources of sexual gratification include expelling feces and urinating, as well as retaining feces.	Id and Ego
Phallic	3–6 years	Child becomes concerned with genitals. Source of sexual pleasure involves manipulating genitals. Period of Oedipus complex (where the father becomes the male child’s rival—unconsciously) or Electra complex (a female version of the Oedipus complex).	Id, Ego, and Superego
Latency	6–11 years	Loss of interest in sexual gratification. Identification with like-sexed parent.	Id, Ego, and Superego
Genital	11+	Concern with adult modes of sexual pleasure, barring fixations or regressions.	Id, Ego, and Superego

Normal and Abnormal Personality

Regression:

A Freudian expression for the phenomenon of reverting to some of the activities and preoccupations of earlier developmental stages. sometimes because of trauma, or perhaps because of insufficient sexual gratification at a later stage.

There are three main routes the individual may take in the course of development. One route is presumed to result in normal personality (moving through the psychosexual stages sequentially)

Two routes are presumed to result in abnormal personality:

Fixation:

A developmental delay due to unsuccessfully developing through a stage, sometimes manifested in personality characteristics and emotional disorders relating to the earlier stage.

Defense Mechanisms

Defense mechanism An unconscious mental strategy designed to avoid conflict and anxiety; they are ways of channeling urges and of reinterpreting (and often distorting) reality.

Below are the most common ones:

Mechanism	Example
Displacement: Undesirable emotions are directed toward a different object.	A man who is angry at his wife yells at his dog or drives his car unusually aggressively.
Reaction formation: Behavior is the opposite of the individual’s actual feelings.	A woman loves an unobtainable man and behaves as though she dislikes him.
Intellectualization: Behavior motivated by anxiety-provoking emotions is stripped of its emotional meaning.	A football player who enjoys hurting opponents convinces himself he is moved by the desire to win and not by his desire to inflict pain.
Projection: Undesirable feelings or inclinations are attributed to others.	A student who is extremely jealous of another who has received a scholarship convinces himself it is the scholarship winner who is jealous of him.
Denial: Unpleasant, anxiety-provoking aspects of reality are distorted.	A heavy smoker, unable to give up the habit, concludes there is no substantial evidence linking nicotine with human diseases.
Repression: Unpleasant experiences are buried deep in the subconscious mind and become inaccessible to waking memory.	A person who was sexually abused as a child remembers nothing of the experience.

Review of Freud’s Theory

Freudian theory has also had an enormous impact on the development of other theories, but many of Freud’s students and followers have rejected important aspects of the theory, and much of his theory has been criticized by other scholars.

Disadvantages of Freud’s Theory:

Freud proposed that much of these conflicts occur beneath human awareness, it is impossible to study the validity of it. Good theories must be falsifiable. In the case of many of Freud’s unconscious elements, falsifiability is impossible because they cannot be accessed and measured. Therefore, it is impossible to say if it is true or if it is false.

Many have argued Freud placed much too much emphasis on sexual drive, and that his limited focus on two drives does not capture all of human motivation.

For many, Freud paints too dark and cynical a picture of human nature: In his view, primitive forces over which we have no control drive us relentlessly toward the satisfaction of instinctual urges and bring us into repeated conflict with reality.

Falsifiable:

The quality of being able to be tested through scientific methods and shown to be false or true.

Learning-Based Approaches

Learning-based approaches are more concerned with the role of the environment, of social interaction, and of cognitive processes.

The unifying theme of learning-based approaches to personality is primarily acquired through experiences rather than genetically determined or influenced.

Behavioristic Approach:

The clear assumption of behavioristic approaches to personality (Watson, Skinner) is we are born with few genetically determined personality characteristics; what we become is a function of the experiences we have. In other words, personality characteristics are learned.

Few personality theorists now believe personality is entirely determined by environmental experiences.

Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory:

This is one of the best-known and most useful learning-based theories examining the effects of social experiences. It includes these aspects:

Observational Learning

Reciprocal Determinism

Personal Agency

The importance of Bandura’s social learning theory of personality is that it facilitates an understanding of the manifestation of personality through social situations.

Rotter’s Cognitive Approach: Externality–Internality

In the course of learning socially acceptable behaviors, we learn what to expect when we choose one behavior versus a different one. Expectations guide our behaviors and should be a part of any meaningful approach to personality according to Julian Rotter.

We can have one of two different attitudes toward our behaviors and their outcomes. We can be externally oriented or internally oriented in our locus of control.

Expectations:

Beliefs about sources of reinforcement

Those who are Internally Oriented tend to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions. They see themselves as being in control; they attribute success or failure to internal factors (ability or effort).

Those who are Externally Oriented believe they have little control over what happens to them. They attribute success or failure to external factors (luck and task difficulty). Expectations of reward, and behaviors, will be affected accordingly

These are items similar to those used by Rotter to assess a person’s locus of control.

Humanistic Approaches: Abraham Maslow’s Self-Actualized Person

Maslow’s principal concerns have been with the development of the healthy person. Fundamental to his position is the notion we are moved by a hierarchy of needs, the lowest of which relate to physiological survival and the highest to the fullest and most desirable blossoming of the person.

The process of growth is one of self-actualization—of becoming in the most abstract sense of the term.

According to Maslow himself, the concept of self-actualization is extremely difficult to define. It is characterized by the absence of “neurosis, psychopathic personality, psychosis, or strong tendencies in these directions.”

Self-actualization:

An ongoing process in which an organism attempts to reach its full potential.

Humanistic Approaches: Rogers’s Phenomenology

Phenomenology is concerned with the world as it appears rather than as it actually might be – that is, the world as it appears to the individual.

No two people see the world in exactly the same way, and understanding people requires understanding their notions of the world.

Carl Rogers’s theory of personality is well summarized by this abbreviated list of his theoretical beliefs:

Every individual exists in a continually changing world of which the person alone is the center. The person’s world is thus private, unknown and unknowable by anyone else. As the existential philosophers have pointed out, existence is lonely; it is necessarily always alone.

My perception of the world is real. So is yours. We have our separate realities. If we are to understand each other, you must try to understand my world, and I yours.

We have one basic tendency—actualization. In short, we have an inner, directing need to develop ourselves in Maslow’s sense of the word.

The structure of self—notions of I or me—develops as a result of interaction with the environment and, particularly, interaction with others.

Values attached to notions of self are obtained either as a result of direct experience or indirectly. Thus, I can learn I am good as a result of engaging in good behavior; or I can infer I am good as a result of having people tell me I am.

Most of our ways of behaving are consistent with our notions of self. We tend to engage in behaviors that do not violate our internalized conceptions of what we are like—our values and ideals.

Measuring Personality Variables

There are many ways we can determine what someone’s personality is:

We could simply observe someone’s behavior. Observation is one way psychologists can determine personality as well.

A more time efficient and widely used method is personality tests, which fall into one of two categories:

Projective tests

Non-projective tests

Projective Tests & Non-Projective Tests

Projective tests Personality tests in which stimuli are ambiguous and testees’ responses are interpreted as reflecting unconscious aspects of personality.

Non-Projective tests Personality tests that measure personality through straightforward questions or statements on which individuals report.

Rorschach

Among the best known of the projective measures is the Rorschach inkblot test, so called because it presents the subject with ten stimulus cards with printed figures resembling elaborate inkblots. The scoring procedure is complicated, detailed, and not well validated, and interpretations of different experts vary a great deal.

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

It consists of 30 black-and-white pictures showing people in various situations and asks subjects to tell a story suggested to them by the pictures. Clinicians often use the TAT as a way of gaining insight into the subject’s fantasies. Although the test does not measure specific personality characteristics, it may be highly suggestive of preoccupations, fears, unconscious needs and desires, personal relationships, and related themes.

NEO-PI-R	The Neuroticism Extraversion Openness Personality Inventory, Revised (NEO-PI-R) is an inventory designed specifically to assess the Big Five personality factors
MMPI-2	One of the best-known, most rigorously developed, and most widely used of the personality inventories is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2). There are various forms of this test. Ordinarily, it yields measures on a wide number of dimensions. Ten of the original scales are clinical scales, along with validity scales and supplementary scales each measuring different factors.

Although personality have proven useful in a number of practical and theoretical situations, results obtained from different inventories for the same individual are sometimes different, and not all predictions made on the basis of diagnostic instruments have been entirely valid.

What Is Social Psychology?

Attitudes and Attitude Change

Social psychology’s subject matter spans almost all facets of human behavior minus those that are clearly individual and not affected by the presence of others. Social psychology tries to understand the socially influenced aspects of attitudes, relationships, and behaviors.

An Attitude is a prevailing and consistent tendency to think, feel, or act in a given way about the world around us. Attitudes are either positive or negative and have strong motivational consequences, distinguishing them from opinions.

Opinion:

Evaluations, which lack the strong motivational consequences of attitudes.

Stereotypes:

A type of attitude; widely held beliefs about groups based on illogical reasoning or faulty generalization.

Prejudices:

Personal beliefs about groups based on illogical reasoning or faulty generalization.

Psychologists have long asserted that attitudes have three components work together to determine one’s attitude about something:

Affective (emotional)

Cognitive (thoughts)

Behavioral (actions) components.

Source: Bailee Robinson

Compliance, Conformity, & Obedience

Conformity	Compliance	Obedience
This refers to changes in behavior due to unspoken group pressure. This group pressure can be real or imagined. You have probably conformed your behavior to group pressure in a number of social situations. You have likely experienced conformity a lot over your life and quite simply, it is when you change your behaviors due to a silent, but influential pressure to go along with what other people are doing or saying.	This occurs when you change your behavior because someone has explicitly asked. Requests to comply are often in the form of a clear and direct question (i.e. “Will you get me a glass of water?”) but can also be more subtle and communicated in a gesture, a look, or an unspoken request. Regardless of whether or not it is actually verbalized, compliance involved changing our behaviors to a communicated request to do something.	This is defined as a change in behavior due to a direct request from someone in authority over you. Often referred to as a demand, the request comes from someone who has the legitimate authority to enact rewards or punishments and thus performing (or not performing) the requested behavior has consequences. Due to these consequences, people often report that obedience to an authority feels more like a requirement and less like you have a choice to perform the behavior.

Research on Conformity, Compliance, & Obedience: Solomon Asch Conformity Study

This is one of the most classic studies of conformity. In a typical experiment, “participants” were placed in a semicircle facing an easel on which the experimenter placed two large cards. One of these cards had a single vertical line on it (the standard); the other had three vertical lines of different lengths, one of which is clearly equal in length to the standard (below). In a “test of perceptual accuracy,” the “participants” were required to determine which of the three lines was equal to the standard.

The test was not of perceptual accuracy but of social pressure and its effects on conformity. Only one of the “participants” was actually a participant; the other “participants” were confederates. The confederates had been instructed to answer correctly for the first few trials and then to answer incorrectly but to agree on the incorrect answer. The actual participant had no reason to suspect the other individuals were not also participants. The true participant was the second to last to provide an answer.

A simple visual perception test was used to determine the effects of social pressure. Both participants and the experimenter’s confederates were asked which comparison line is the same length as the standard line. The confederates all chose an obviously incorrect line, but the confederate’s solidarity pressured the participants to also choose an incorrect line.

Research on Conformity, Compliance, & Obedience: Milgram Obedience Studies

An alleged participant (a confederate) was to be presented with a series of learning tasks while attached to electrodes so he could be shocked whenever he made an error. The real participant’s task was to depress the switch that would deliver the shock. Participants were first connected to the electrodes and administered a mild shock so they would have no reason to think that the shocks would not be real. They were then seated in front of an instrument panel containing a series of switches labeled from 15 to 450 volts, in 15-volt increments. Verbal descriptions above the switches ranged from “Slight shock” to “Danger: severe shock” at 390 volts and “XXX” at 435 volts.

In Milgram’s (1963) first experiment, “victims” (confederates) were placed in a separate room and were instructed to make a predetermined number of errors. The participants controlling the switches were instructed to administer a shock for every error the victim made, beginning with the first switch and progressing as high as necessary, in one-step increments.

If a participant hesitated or indicated any unwillingness to continue, the experimenter would employ up to four predetermined verbal “prods.”

In Milgrim’s studies, participants were duped into believing they were confederates of an experimenter studying the effects of punishment on learning.

None of the participants categorically refused to obey from the outset. In fact, of the 40 original participants, 26 obeyed the experimenter’s instructions right to the very end (“victims” committed sufficient errors to ensure that participants would have an opportunity to administer the most severe shock—450 volts). The remaining 14 all obeyed until at least the 300-volt level.

Research on Conformity, Compliance, & Obedience: Zimbardo’s Prison Experiment

In the classic 1971 experiment carried out at Stanford, 12 young men, were abruptly arrested by police, handcuffed, and brought into a prison (actually, a converted basement space in a Stanford building). There they were stripped, searched, deloused, fingerprinted, and in every way treated like real prisoners. Their guards were 12 other student volunteers instructed to do whatever was required to maintain order and command respect.

The entire Stanford prison study was photographed and filmed and is available online at http://www.prisonexp.org/

The results were sobering:

Almost immediately, guards developed coercive, aggressive tactics, humiliating and dehumanizing prisoners.

Both the prisoners and the guards carried their roles to an unforeseen extreme.

The conditions were so severe that 5 of the 12 prisoners had to be “released” before the experiment ended. The experiment was slated to run for 14 days, but it was abruptly terminated on the 6th day when one of the more than 50 outsiders who had seen the prison was shocked at what she saw and raised objections about the ethics of the experiment.

Takeaway:

What the study illustrated was the power of institutions and of institutionalized roles. In contrast, the Milgram experiments were more about the power of individual authority.

Persuasion

Persuasion refers to deliberate, usually verbal, attempts to alter beliefs or behavior. The most powerful forms of persuasion are those that succeed in changing attitudes rather than simply behavior.

Three characteristics of persuasion are important in determining its effectiveness:

Importance of Message Characteristics	The nature of the message is important: It is much easier to persuade someone of something fitting with previous beliefs or with the individual’s goals and wishes. It is difficult to change attitudes when the message runs counter to strongly entrenched prejudices and stereotypes.
Importance of Message Sources	Belief is important. Persuasion coming from a source marked by qualities such as expertise, liking, and high trust is most effective. Similarly, people are more easily persuaded by opinions apparently shared by many, rather than by few. The persuader’s motives also play an important role.
Importance of Audience Characteristics	Certain characteristics of the person being persuaded, such as intelligence and independence, are also important.

Cognitive Dissonance

The dissonance model predicts people will change their attitudes to conform to their behaviors when there is a conflict between the two, but only when there is insufficient justification for the behavior and when the behavior has been engaged in willingly.

Researchers have studied the effects of forcing participants to engage in dissonant behavior, theorizing that participants exposed to the most severe threats for engaging (or not engaging) in some dissonance-inducing behavior will experience the least amount of dissonance. In other words, the participants would be expected to change their attitudes—and their behaviors—less than those exposed to milder threats.

Takeaway:

If you resort to severe threats to coerce someone to do or not do something, you are less likely to get them to change their attitudes and subsequent behavior than if you can bring about the same behavior with less coercion—whether it be a reward or the threat of punishment.

Cognitive dissonance describes a situation where there is conflict among behavior, beliefs, or attitudes.

Attribution and Attitude Change

One explanation for attitude change in dissonance situations has to do with the attributions we make for our behaviors and feelings and for the behavior and feelings of others (the reasons we ascribe to them).

We are constantly observing our behavior, the behavior of others, and the circumstances surrounding behavior.

As we observe, we make inferences about ourselves and others, attributing causes to the behaviors we observe. Our attributions are dispositional attributions, situational attributions, or mixed attributions.

Attribution theories of attitude change in situations of forced compliance (dissonance-creating situations) maintain when there is low justification for engaging in dissonant behavior, people infer they did so because they wanted to. In contrast, when there is high justification, they attribute their behavior to external circumstances (e.g., compulsion or reward).

An overjustification hypothesis that says, in effect, large external rewards for behavior that are initially intrinsically motivated may undermine our attitudes toward the behavior.

Attributions:

Inferences regarding the causes of behavior.

Dispositional Attributions:

Causes of behavior related to character-istics of an individual.

Situational Attributions:

Causes of behavior related to character-istics of the situation.

Overjustification:

Large external rewards reduce the intrinsic value of a behavior.

Antisocial Behaviors

Researchers in social psychology have asked questions like:

How do we justify our antisocial behaviors like aggression and violence?

Do external rewards serve to justify and explain these behaviors?

Is there something in our dispositions that explains them or does our environment cause them?

Aggression, Violence and Bystander Behavior are primary areas of focus and research within social psychology.

Aggression And Violence: Theories of Aggression

Frustration–Aggression	A number of beliefs have dominated social psychology’s attempts to understand and explain aggression. Among them is Dollard and Miller’s frustration–aggression hypothesis—the contention that aggression is the result of anger and the most important cause of anger is frustration, which is to be frustrated is to be prevented from reaching a goal.
Territoriality	This explanation is based on the assumption that we are aggressive by nature. The assumption is that since aggression appears to be common among other animals, it must have a biological basis. In some cases, the stimuli are highly specific and have clear survival or reproductive significance, and in other cases, the stimuli are less specific, as in the case of territoriality, an example of an innate or biological aggressive tendency.
Social Learning Theory	This is a widely supported theory to understand aggression. This theory argues that aggressive behavior is often learned as a result of observing aggressive models. A classic experiment demonstrating this theory is Bandura, Ross, and Ross’s (1961) “Bobo” doll experiment.
Physiology	Aggression, like all emotions, also has a physiological basis. it appears aggression may be associated with hormones (most importantly, testosterone), with olfaction, with brain damage or dysfunction or with stimulation of appropriate areas of the thalamus, and with certain drugs.

Aggression And Violence: Violence in Society

The most obvious instances of aggression in society are those involving overt acts of violence: rape, homicide, assault, and destruction of property. Interpersonal violence, which includes the first three of these, is committed primarily by males.

The extent to which these acts can be attributed to frustration, deprivation, pain, or sex-related factors, and the extent to which character and personality disorders or other factors are involved, is not clear. There is little doubt, however, that each of these factors can play a significant role.

Violence in society is reflected not only in crime, but in international aggression as well.

Violence in the home is another example and one which is not always obvious.

Four explanations for aggression. These aren’t mutually exclusive, as aggression is often a function of several underlying factors.

Bystander Behavior: The Bystander Effect

One classic example of aggression that received a lot of press and spurred a lot of research in social psychology is the murder of Kitty Genovese.

In the early hours of March 13, 1964, 28-year-old Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death outside of her apartment in New York City. While that alone may not be noteworthy, what was noteworthy is that an article published by the New York Times reported that 38 people claimed to have seen or heard the attack, but none of them came to her aid or even called the police

Even though her stalker took over half an hour to murder her, even leaving once and returning later to continue his attack, no one intervened to help, and Kitty Genovese died.

Bystander Effect:

The more people who witness an event, the less likely they are to get help.

Latané and Darley (1970) conducted a series of experiments investigating the alleged apathy of bystanders.

Effect of group size on the likelihood of responding in an emergency.

Bystander Behavior: The Bystander Effect Explained

Studies indicate that individuals who have reason to believe themselves the only witnesses and hence the only immediate sources of intervention are more likely to involve themselves, either by reporting a potentially dangerous situation or by offering direct assistance. But when there are a number of apparent witnesses, people are more reluctant to become involved.

Takeaways:

A person’s willingness to help is often related to the seriousness of the situation.

Before bystanders intervene, they must notice an event, interpret it as an emergency, make a decision as to their personal responsibility, select a form of assistance, and implement that assistance.

Choosing a form of assistance, other than calling on someone else (the police) for assistance, also presents a real problem.

Darley and Latané (1968) attribute the bystander effect to one of three sources (or a combination of these):

A process of diffusion of responsibility, where the presence of others reduces the cost of nonintervention

A process of social influence, where the nonintervention of others leads the participant to misinterpret the seriousness of the situation

A process of audience inhibition, where the presence of others brings about fear of making a wrong decision and acting unwisely.

Prosocial Behaviors

In addition to the research that shows that the presence of bystanders can decrease helping behavior, there is also research that shows that real or imagined bystanders can have a powerful effect on engaging in prosocial behaviors such as helping and giving.

Research on altruism, helping behavior, and giving to others has yielded much attention in recent years. Recent research has shown positive emotional and physical health effects of giving to others as well as relationship and social benefits.

Altruistic behaviors are defined as any self-sacrificing behaviors that help another person. In its strictest sense, altruism is both of these:

Costly to the one. performing the helping

Helpful to the recipient

Research in social psychology on altruism has focused largely on what would constitute altruistic behaviors and why people behave altruistically.

Takeaways:

We are more likely to be altruistic if we think others are, or would be, under the same circumstances—a sort of positive bystander effect.

Studies also reveal altruism is often related to the status of the actor, with higher-status individuals engaging in more altruistic behaviors. We see that positive social behavior is not always as simply motivated or performed as we may think.

By definition, altruism goes beyond simple acts of warmth and kindness: it implies behavior where there is significant disadvantage to the doer or giver and clear potential advantage to the receiver.

Sociobiological Altruism:

An explanation for altruistic behavior that asserts organisms are helpful to others to ensure survival of the species.

Reciprocal Altruism:

An explanation for altruistic behavior that asserts individuals are helpful to others because of the expectation this will be reciprocated.

Altruism

The Rules of Attraction

Interpersonal attraction is generally considered positive thoughts of another person that are strongly influenced by proximity, similarity, and physical attraction.

Propinquity	Similarity	Physical Attractiveness
Physical proximity; factor related to physical attraction. People in closer physical proximity (propinquity) tend to have more in common and have much stronger ties than among those more physically distant.	Research finds that similarity between people is more associated with attraction than dissimilarity. Degree of attraction is closely related to how similar each person thinks the other is.	Research demonstrates that physical attractiveness is perceived as exceptionally important in interpersonal attraction. In an elaborate “dating” experiment at the University of Minnesota, findings showed that of all the measures employed (intelligence, self-acceptance, extroversion, and a number of other scores in student files based on standardized tests such as the MMPI), physical attractiveness was the only significant variable in determining degree of social attraction.

Love:

Liking and Loving & A Model of Love

Compared to linking, loving implies deeper feelings, feelings of intense caring, strong attachment, and intimacy than liking. Love brings with it a degree of emotional interdependence, a quality of exclusiveness and absorption.

Love:

The province of poets rather than scientists.

A strong, interpersonal attraction, says science: a combination of passion, intimacy, and commitment.

Triangular

Theory of Love:

Sternberg’s theory of loving involving commitment, passion, and intimacy.

In Sternberg’s triangle of love, different combinations of commitment, passion, and intimacy determine the nature of the love relationship.

Consummate Love:

Love that has all three components from the triangular theory.

Created by

Bailee Robinson