VI. Agression, Anti-Social, and Pro-Social Behavior
AGGRESSION AND ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOR Another major area of study for social psychologists is aggression and antisocial behavior. Psychologists distinguish between two types of aggression: instrumental aggression and hostile aggression. Instrumental aggression is when the aggressive act is intended to secure a particular end. For example, if Bobby wants to hold the doll that Carol is holding and he kicks her and grabs the doll, Bobby has engaged in instrumental aggression. Hostile aggression, on the other hand, has no such clear purpose. If Bobby is simply angry or upset and therefore kicks Carol, his aggression is hostile aggression. Many theories exist about the cause of human aggression. Freud linked aggression to Thanatos, the death instinct. Sociobiologists suggest that the expression of aggression is adaptive under certain circumstances. One of the most influential theories, however, is known as the frustration-aggression hypothesis. This hypothesis holds that the feeling of frustration makes aggression more likely. Considerable experimental evidence supports it. Another common theory is that the exposure to aggressive models makes people aggressive as illustrated by Bandura, Ross, and Ross’s (1963) classic Bobo doll experiment. PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR While social psychologists have devoted a lot of time and effort to studying antisocial behavior, they have also studied the factors that make people more likely to help one another. Such helping behavior is termed prosocial behavior. Much of the research in this area has focused on bystander intervention, the conditions under which people nearby are more and less likely to help someone in trouble. The vicious murder of Kitty Genovese in Kew Gardens, New York, committed within view of at least 38 witnesses, none of whom intervened, led John Darley and Bibb Latane to explore how people decided whether or not to help others in distress. Counterintuitively, the larger the number of people who witness an emergency situation, the less likely any one is to intervene. This finding is known as the bystander effect. One explanation for this phenomenon is called diffusion of responsibility. The larger the group of people who witness a problem, the less responsible any one individual feels to help. People tend to assume that someone else will take action so they need not do so. Another factor contributing to the bystander effect is known as pluralistic ignorance. People seem to decide what constitutes appropriate behavior in a situation by looking to others. Thus, if no one in a classroom seems worried by the black smoke coming through the vent, each individual concludes that taking no action is the proper thing to do. |
Vocabulary to Know
Instrumental Aggression Hostile Aggression Frustration-agression hypothesis Bystander effect Diffusion of Responsibility Pluralistic Ignorance People to Know John Darley Bibb Latane |
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