|
- Hostile aggression is motivated by anger and hostility,
with the primary aim of harming others, either
physically or psychologically. Instrumental aggression
is behavior that is intended to achieve some goal
that just happens to require aggression.
- Violent and aggressive acts are more likely to be
committed by men than by women. Women are
aggressive in different ways than men, using relational
violence such as gossip, alliance formation,
and ostracism to hurt others emotionally.
- Media violence has been shown to cause violence and
aggression in real life. When a media-publicized suicide
occurs, copycat suicides follow. Longitudinal
studies show that children who watch lots of violence
on TV commit more serious crimes as adults
than children who watch less violence. Watching
violence on TV also causes more violent behavior in
the short run. Violent video games also increase the
likelihood of violence.
- Heat affects levels of violence. There are higher rates
of violent crime in hotter cities and more violence
during hot months than during cool months.
- According to the frustration-aggression hypothesis,
aggression results from thwarted needs, and
thwarted needs result in aggression.
- Construal processes affect both anger and aggression.
Acts that seem to be intentional are more likely
to cause aggression than identical acts that do not
seem intentional.
- People in many parts of the world, including many
people in the U.S. South, adhere to a culture of honor,
meaning that they are inclined to respond to insults
and actions that convey malicious intentions with
violence or threats of violence. Such cultures can be
found wherever there is a history of herding, with its
great attendant risks of loss of all wealth.
- Rape-prone cultures have high levels of violence in
general and use rape as a weapon in battle. They also
use rape as a ritual act and as a threat to keep
women subservient to men. Relatively rape-free cultures
tend to grant women equal status.
- Evolutionary theory provides a useful perspective on
family violence. Stepchildren are more subject to
abuse than genetic offspring who can carry on one's
genetic line. Men, who have more to gain by eliminating
romantic rivals, are vastly more likely to kill
other men than women are to kill other women.
- Situational determinants of altruism can be far
stronger than our intuitions tell us they should be.
Being late reduced the likelihood of a seminary student's
helping a victim from 60 percent to 10
percent.
- Whether someone offers help to a victim or not
(bystander intervention) also depends greatly on the
number of people who observe some incident. The
presence of others leads to a diffusion of responsibility,
in which no one individual takes responsibility for
helping the victim.
- Pluralistic ignorance occurs when people are uncertain
about what is happening and do nothing, often
out of fear of embarrassment in case nothing is
really wrong. Their reaction reinforces everyone's
erroneous conclusion that the events are innocuous.
- Victim characteristics that increase the likelihood of
being helped include whether the victim is similar
to the target, whether the victim screams and makes
known the situation, and whether the victim is
female.
- Evolutionary approaches to altruism lead initially to
a puzzle as to why it would exist at all. From the
standpoint of evolution, all our actions should serve
to increase the likelihood of survival and reproduction.
The kin selection hypothesis explains, however,
that people will help others to preserve the genes of
close kin so as to benefit their own gene pool.
- Another kind of helping behavior, reciprocal altruism,
also arises out of selfish motives. The reciprocity
motive entails people grant others favor or help
others in the belief that those whom they have
helped will at some future time grant them favors of
similar value.
- People may help others out of another selfish
motive—to enhance their reputation or to obtain
social rewards. People may help others to gain praise,
attention, rewards, honor, or gratitude. They may
make charitable contributions to improve their
image and to gain the approbation of others.
- Another form of altruism that is actually based on a
selfish motive is the reduction of experienced
distress—one person helps another simply to avoid
feeling distress at the other's pain.
- A form of pure, undiluted altruism is based on empathy—
the feeling of concern for another person after
observing and being moved by that person's needs.
Experimenters have found clever ways to distinguish
between people who help for empathic and
nonempathic reasons. Those who help for egoistic
distress-avoidance reasons actually show different
physiological patterns than those who help for
empathic reasons.
- People who live in rural settings are more likely to
help others than people who live in urban settings.
|
|
|
