EK Ch2 Relationships and Behavior Flashcards
Aggression
Aggression refers to behavior that can cause harm to others or to oneself.
Aggression can be expressed verbally, physically, or emotionally.
It can serve a variety of functions. For example, aggression can be used to show dominance or to express anger, but it can also be the result of fear.
Attachment
Attachment is a psychological bond to another person.
- Attachment theory asserts that bonds formed between young children and their mothers or caregivers affect the bonds that those individuals are able to form throughout life.
- Secure attachment in childhood tends to predict higher self-esteem, better grades, and lower rates of anxiety and depression.
- Stranger anxiety, the distress experienced by young children upon exposure to unfamiliar people, can be seen as a manifestation of attachment.
Factors in attraction
Proximity: Most friends live near one another in the initial stage of friendship formation.
Lasting friendships, however, often continue even when geographic distance is considerable.
Association: Individuals are often influenced by the social environment of a first meeting when making new friends.
Similarity: Individuals can be influenced in making new friends by discovering what they have in common.
Reciprocal liking: People tend to feel better in a relationship that consists of positive feelings from both sides.
Physical attractiveness: Physical attraction influences the choice of friends more than it does of mates.
reciprocal liking
People tend to feel better in a relationship of that consists of positive feelings from both sides.
altruism
Altruism is selflessness of action and concern for the well-being of others.
Altruism is lauded in many traditional cultures and religions, but it is not universally recognized as a virtue.
Altruism can be often tested by the selfish nature of some societies and individuals.
Altruism is often defined by personal sacrifice.
Because altruism is often accompanied by a degree of humility, it is often contrasted to egotism and narcissism (high self-regard).
Altruism may be psychological (helping others without thinking about oneself) or biological (contributing to the survival of the species).
Another term for altruistic behavior is prosocial behavior, which describes those behaviors intended to benefit one or more people other than the individual performing a given set of actions.
Examples of prosocial behavior include sharing, cooperating, helping, and comforting others.
Prosocial stands as an antonym to antisocial.
attribution theory
Attribution theory focuses on understanding how we think about others’ behavior.
casual attribution theory
Causal attribution is the process by which we attribute another person’s behavior to a particular cause.
- Dispositional attribution: When we attribute another person’s behavior to inherent qualities of that person.
- Example: “Sally didn’t stop to say hello because she is unfriendly and doesn’t like me.”
- Situational attribution: When we attribute another person’s behavior to the external context surrounding that person in a particular place and time.
- Example: “Sally didn’t stop to say hello because she was late for an appointment, and it was raining.”
Dispositional attribution
Dispositional attribution: When we attribute another person’s behavior to inherent qualities of that person.
Example: “Sally didn’t stop to say hello because she is unfriendly and doesn’t like me.”
Situational attribution
Situational attribution: When we attribute another person’s behavior to the external context surrounding that person in a particular place and time.
Example: “Sally didn’t stop to say hello because she was late for an appointment, and it was raining.”
The fundamental attribution error
When making attributions about others’ behavior, we tend to systematically overestimate the role of internal (dispositional) factors and underestimate the role of external (situational/contextual) factors.
self-perception
Self-perceptions: Individuals develop self-perception by comparing themselves with others.
It can be difficult to accept an unequal distribution of talent and potential.
The process of evaluating oneself and others shapes our perceptions of others through constant comparisons.
social facilitation
Social facilitation is also known as “the mere presence effect” because it describes how the mere presence of other individuals can enhance our performance on simple or well-learned tasks.
A well-known example: Cyclists perform better when they compete against each other than when they are racing against a clock; this effect also occurs for many other types of simple tasks.
This effect is thought to be due to elevated arousal, which is triggered by the presence of others and which enhances performance.
Social facilitation is the opposite of social inhibition: performance on complex tasks can be disrupted by the presence of others. For certain tasks, individuals actually perform better in solitude. For example, people tend to solve complex puzzles more quickly when tested alone.
social loafing
Social loafing refers to the idea that people working in groups tend not to work as hard as people working individually. Social loafing is observed across most cultures and in a variety of different tasks.
• This could be because members of the group feel less motivated or because there is a lack of individual accountability.
the bystander effect
The bystander effect: People in a group are much less likely to help when they encounter a stranger in distress than when an individual encounters the stranger alone.
A well-known example: Kitty Genovese was assaulted and murdered on a street in 1964. Her cries for help were overheard by many neighbors, but none of them came to her assistance.
May be due to diffusion of responsibility; the greater the number of people in a group, the less each person feels individually responsible for failing to act.
Deindividuation
Deindividuation: Individuals in groups can experience a loss of self-awareness and a diminished sense of personal identity; these effects can lead to disinhibition and mob-like behavior.
This concept was developed by psychologists seeking to understand how seemingly “normal” people could be driven to commit awful acts of violence as members of a group (e.g., lynch mobs, riots, genocide).
The Stanford Prison Experiment: Stanford students who volunteered for this study were assigned the role of “guard” or “prisoner” in a mock prison set up in the basement of the Stanford Psychology Building. Without instructions from the experimenters, the students quickly assumed their assigned roles regardless of their personal identity prior to the experiment, and the “guards” treated the prisoners with such disrespect (bordering on psychological torture) that the study had to be terminated after only six days.
