Social Interaction 3 - Aggression and Prosocial Behavior

Social Interaction 3- Aggression and Prosocial Behavior

The cause of aggression

• frustration, pain
• genetics: the lymbic system, especially the amygdala
• chemical influence: testesterone and serotonin
• alcohol
• learning aggression

1. Aggression and Biology

1) The Amygdala

• memory and resonse of fear
• to trigger aggressive responses
• to damage the amygdala: aggression

2) Chemical influence

• high level of testosterone, low level of serotonin

3) Alcohol

• make aggression
• to act as an inhibition of serotonin and decrease the serotonin

2. Social Learning Theory

In social learning theory for aggression, aggression is learned by watching aggressive models (Bandura), two imoprtant evidences are studied:

• Social role
• watching aggression

1) The Power of Social Roles

• the pattern of behavior that is expected of a preson who is in a paritcular social position
• Zimbardo's study: a participant of a guard role of the prison tended to do aggressively to others of prisoner roles of the prison.
• the guard, army, police and etc

2) Violence in the media and aggression

• social learning theory by Bandura
• watching aggression through the media such as a movie or TV.
• Violent videogame

2. Prosocial Behavior

Prosocial behavior is one of the social interactions: a person helps someone in the emergency without any expectation of reward.

• Altruism
• Bystander Effect
• Diffusion of responsibility
• Five decisio pointsin helping behavior

1) Altruism

A person see someone almost drowned in the water, and then decide to help him without any expectation of reward, Which is called altruism.

• cause: genetics
• in the emergency: helper/bystander

2) Five Decision Points in helpong behavior

• Noticing
• Defining an Emergency
• Taking responsibility
• Planning a course of action
• Taking action

3) Bystander and diffusion of responsibility

In the case of Kitty Genovese, there are 38 "bystanders" at the windows of the apartment and none of them helped her, which is called bystander effect. That is because the presence of other people interfere to take responsibility and then fail to help. That is to say, most of them think there're a lot of people to help her even if I don't help her, which is the diffusion of responsibility.