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Lecture Notes - Development of Pro- and Antisocial Behaviour CA$4.55   Add to cart

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Lecture Notes - Development of Pro- and Antisocial Behaviour

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This document contains my lecture notes of the course Development of Pro- and Antisocial behaviour. The notes include the pictures used in the slides and important words are highlighted. There is a summary of the lectures at the end. I have completed this course with an 8.

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  • January 31, 2023
  • 39
  • 2021/2022
  • Class notes
  • Y.h.m. van den berg
  • All classes
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College 1 – Definition and main theories of prosocial
behaviour


Why examine prosocial behaviour?

Important theme in religion (bible), philosophy, folktales. We can state that acting prosocial
is

- A universal rule or guideline
- An adaptive function (evolutionary psychology)

1900: scientists (Mc Dougall, social psychologist) show interest in prosocial behaviour, but
interest readily declines. Behaviourism (based on observable and experimental behaviour)
became more influential, while Mc Dougall relied on reasoning.

- Turning point in the ‘60’s: murder on Kitty Genovese

What is prosocial behaviour?

Prosocial behaviour: behaviour that is defined by society as generally beneficial to other
people and/or to the ongoing political or cultural system

Important features:

- Prosocial behaviour is always an interpersonal act
- The behaviours that are seen as prosocial are context depended

Specific forms of prosocial behaviour are:

- Cooperation: acting together (in a coordinated way at work, leisure or within social
relationships) in the pursuit of shared goals, the enjoyment of the joint activity, or
simply furthering the relationship
- Example: 3FM serious request
- Altruism: helping purely out of the desire to benefit someone
else, with no benefit (and often cost) to oneself
- Helping: any action that has the consequence of providing
some benefit to or improving the well-being of another person

Four types of helping (McGuire, 1994):

- Casual helping: Small favour
- Substantial personal helping: Considerable effort
- Emotional helping: Emotional support
- Emergency helping: Helping with an acute problem (doesn’t
require a personal relationship with the
recipient)

3-dimensional classification system

- Formal/planned: doing voluntary work
- Informal/spontaneous: picking up a pen for
someone


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, - Serious: helping someone who has a heart attack
- Not serious: picking up a pen for someone

- Direct: giving an euro to a homeless guy
- Indirect: donation to a charity




When are people prosocial?

Latané and Darley Model: Whether a person will act prosocial (or not) is the result of a logical
decision-making process that includes five steps:

1. Notice the event: the clarity and context of the event as well
as the mood of the helper determines whether someone
notices something is wrong
- Clarity: hen someone falls down the stairs it is more
likely you will interpret it as an emergency
- Context: people who live in urban environments are
less likely to notice an event due to stimulus overload
- People in good mood are more sensitive to others
needs and often more attentive to their environment
2. Interpret event as emergency: obvious signs of distress increase the chance of
bystanders interpreting the situation as an emergency
- Example: screaming is a clear sign someone needs help
3. Taking personal: a number of actions could hinder actions to help: bystander effect:
when you are the only person witnessing an emergency, you are more likely to help
than when there are more witnesses
- The bystander effect is an inverse relationship: the greater the number of
bystanders, the less likely will help
Due to:
- Pluralistic ignorance: looking to one another to (re)interpret situation
- Diffusion of responsibility: believing that someone else will take responsibility
4. Know what to do
- Research: are people with first aid training more able to decide what to do and
do they take action?
- They don’t help more often but
provide better quality of help
5. Implement decision
People are only prosocial when all these steps are
fulfilled, in al other cases: no help is given

Model does not explain all helping situations and
does not (completely) explain why people are
prosocial

Why are people prosocial?

Five potential explanations - we help people because:

- The benefits outweigh the costs




2

, - Cost-benefit analysis: the decision to help depends on the consideration of
costs benefits: people want to minimalize their costs and maximize their
benefits

Benefits for helping Costs for helping
- Social recognition - Time and effort
- Positive self-view - Loss of goods Model explains the
- Positive emotions - Risk getting individual differences
injured when peoples are
- Emotional toll witnessing the same
emergency
Costs for not helping
- Social disapproval The model does not
- Physical/mental explain that in certain
problems situations all people are
likely to help

- It is the norm. This can be based on religion, philosophy, law, culture or even
storybooks. We can differentiate two types of norms:
- Social norms: rules for acceptable and non-acceptable behaviour in certain
situations (Schwartz theory of norm activation)
- Reciprocity norm: we feel inclined to help other who have helped us
- Social responsibility norm: we feel inclined to help others who are
dependent on us
- Personal norms: one’s individual feelings of moral obligation on how to behave
in a certain situation
- Predict helping behaviour better than social norms

Explanations presented mostly focused on cognition: think + weight + decide = help

Do people only help from cognition, or is there more to it? – Explanations prosocial
behaviour from a more emotional perspective:

- We feel empathy and we want to reduce stress
- Aversive arousal reduction: we want to reduce our arousal when witnessing an
event or emergency either by helping or by
walking away  this leads to the question
whether helping it the result of altruism or
egoism. This is explained in:
- Negative state relief model: people have an
innate drive to reduce negative moods
(motivation stems from egocentric reasons:
helping to make yourself feel better)
- Empathy-altruism model (motivation stems
form altruistic reasons: helping to make the
other feel better
- We learned this from others
- It is an inherited characteristic (evolutionary
psychology)




3

, College 2 – Definition and main theories of antisocial
behaviour


Why are people aggressive? - Introduction

- Release internal energy/conflict?
- In genes and evolutionary adaptive?
- Physical disposition (hormones)?
- Frustration?
- Cognitive interpretation of arousal?
- Learned from others?
- Aggressive scripts?
- Many factors?
Personal and situational factors including influencing affect, cognition, physiological
responses leading to aggressive behaviour

What is aggression?

Working definition: aggression is any form of behaviour directed toward the goal of harming
or injuring another living being who is motivated to avoid such treatment

Aggression is behavioural

- ‘Any form of behaviour’
- Aggression is no emotion, motivation, or attitude
- Emotion is not necessary for aggression
- Aggression is behaviour hurting another person

Aggression is intentional

- ‘Direct toward the goal of harming or injuring’
- Aggression is not accidental
- Aggression is ‘voluntarily’ chosen and intended to hurt someone else

Aggression involves harming

- ‘Harming or injuring’ Physical vs. verbal
- Aggression does not have to be physical damage Active vs passive
perse
Direct vs. indirect
- Negative consequences for another person

Aggression involves living beings

- ‘Direct toward another living being’
- Not acted directly towards living being perse
- Act aimed at hurting a living being

Aggression involves avoidance motivation in the recipient

- ‘Who is motivated to avoid such treatment’
- Those who undergo the aggressive treatment want to avoid this aggressive
treatment
- Suicide and auto mutilation are not aggression
- BDSM is not aggression

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