• Helping
• Intending to help or assist others.
• Altruism
• Endangering oneâs own life to save another life.
• Prosocial
• All acts, whether self-motivated or not, that benefit others

• Triggered by a real-world event
• Kitty Genevese, March, 1964
• Friday, 3:00-3:30am
• Assaulted for 35 minutes, then murdered
• 38 witnesses. No one helped.
• Why?

• Something to do with the bystanders.
• Apathetic
• Uncaring
• Cold
• Typical New Yorkers
• What sorts of explanations are these?
• Dispositional attributions.
• Why do we make these?

• Actor-Observer Difference
• As observers, we tend to assign causality to the actors rather than the situation. The witnesses didnât think they were uncaring, but observers of the witnesses did.
• It is self-protective
• To think they didnât help because of the types of people they are, we can convince ourselves that WE would have helped, because weâre not that type of person.

• What could explain why most people would have behaved the same way as the 38 witnesses?
• Look for social/situational explanations
• Latané & Darley thought, the bystanders knew there were other people watching the assault. This could be important.
• This led them to what is now called, "The Bystander Effect."

• Defined:

• The more bystanders present, the less likely any one of them will act.

• Pluralistic ignorance (aka, modeling, conformity)
• others donât look concerned, so I guess thereâs nothing to be concerned about
• Social inhibition
• fear of negative evaluation, over-reacting, doing the wrong thing, drawing attention to self
• Diffusion of responsibility
• our obligation or responsibility to help is diffused (or divided) among the other bystanders

• Pluralistic ignorance
• You can see the other bystanders non reactions
• Social inhibition
• You think (or know) that other bystanders can see you
• Diffusion of responsibility
• You think (or know) that others are available to help

• Time pressure (Darley & Batson, 1973)
• The "Good Samaritan Study"
• Princeton Theological Seminary Students
• Half preparing to give the "good Samaritan" parable
• Crossed with time pressure (some had to hurry) while moving to another building
• All encountered man on ground groaning and apparently in pain
• Results: Regardless of topic they were preparing for, those in hurry: 10% helped; not in hurry: 66% helped
• But, as group size increased, helping still decreased

• Personal influences: Feelings
• Guilt (McMillen & Austin, 1971)
• Induced to tell lie: 63 minutes of helping
• Not induced to tell lie: 2 minutes of helping
• Negative Mood sometimes increases, sometimes decreases helping. Why?
• Is helping by itself self gratifying?
• Children (decrease) v. Adults (increase): if being helpful is a way to improve mood, then helping increases
• Self vs. other focused attention
• if self-focused, sadness decreases helping; if other focused, sadness increases helping

• Personality Influences
• Those high in emotionality, empathy, and self-efficacy are most likely to be concerned and helpful.
• High self-monitoring people are especially helpful, but only if they think helpfulness will be socially rewarded.
• Men help more if situation appears dangerous; women are slightly more likely to help in safe (volunteerism) situations (Eagly & Crowley, 1986).

• Undoing restraints on helping
• Reduce ambiguity, increase responsibility
• Guilt and concern for self-image
• Socialising Altruism
• teaching moral inclusion
• modeling altruism
• attributing helpful behaviour to altruistic motives
• Learning about altruism

• We commonly use the word aggression to mean:
• assertive
• competitive
• forward
• risk-taking
• dominant, powerful
• angry (aggro?)
• Factors that predict aggression are different from factors that predict these behaviours

• Social psychologists define aggression as:

• Problems with this:
• hard to measure intention, so why donât we just say "Doing harm to others?"
• Harming without intent shouldnât be called aggression
• Not harming, but intending to do so, should be called aggression

• Psychodynamic (Freud)
• Sociobiological (Lorenz)
• Learning
• I. Two-factor theory (Berkowitz)
• II. Social learning (Rotter, Bandura)

• We all possess an innate drive for sex and aggression. They are inescapable.
• Society functions to inhibit direct expression of these urges, so we seek socially acceptable means to express them
• sex: creativity, the arts
• aggression: sports, competition
• Hydraulic Model: aggressive tendencies build up over time and must be released (catharsis)
• Can achieve catharsis vicariously: watching violence can release pent-up aggressive tendencies

Sociobiological Perspective:
Lorenz

• Aggression is innate,
  necessary and adaptive
• Genes for aggression are passed along,
  whereas genes for passivity are not.
• Situational or environmental cues interact with genetic predispositions:
• Arousal caused by hormones, etc.
• A situational cue or trigger: hard wired, not learned
• The case of the "stickleback fish"

Learning I: Two factor theory of aggression (Berkowitz)

• We are not born with innate tendencies to be aggressive
• Two factors must co-occur in order to produce aggression:
• Arousal (could be hormonal, could be externally induced)
• External cue (learned to be associated with aggression

• Originally stems from the
  "frustration-aggression hypothesis"

• But, hypothesis overly strong and generally not supported, because:
• Many things can instigate aggression
• heat, insult, modeling or conformity
• Frustration causes other feelings and behaviours
• helplessness, perserverance, reactance

• Internal arousal
• External cue, which is learned (via classical conditioning)

• Examples
• Rifle study (lab)
• Horn-honking studies (field)
• Dunking booth study (field)

• Aggression is learned, not innate
• We learn
• either directly through reinforcement of aggressive behaviours; OR
• by modeling others who are behaving aggressively
• aggressive behaviour must be rewarded
• aggressive behaviour must be seen as real

• Participants were normal children
• Watched violent TV episode or
  various "control" episodes that were not violent
• Manipulated whether aggressor in video was rewarded or not
• Observed children in play area after they watched video
• Aggression defined as number of times the children hit the bobo doll

• Viewing rewarded violence increases violent behaviours in children.
• Viewing unrewarded violence does not necessarily increase violence
• Choice of control groups are very important when conducting this research
• So, what are the effects of watching violence? Catharsis or modeling?

• U.S. suicides increase after publicised suicide stories
• the more publicity given to the suicide story, the higher the suicide rate thereafter; and
• the rise occurs mainly in the geographic area where the suicide story is publicised

• Additionally, automobile fatalities also increase just after publicised suicide stories;
• the more publicity given to the stories, the greater the increase in automobile fatalities, and
• the increase occurs mainly in the area where the story is publicised.

• Also, single-car crash fatalities increase more than other types, and
• the driver in these crashes is significantly similar to the person described in the suicide story, while the passengers are not.
• THEREFORE:
• suicide stories appear to elicit additional suicides, some of which are disguised as auto accidents

• What sort of media-depicted homicide would be modeled?
• Rewarded
• Made exciting
• Perceived as real
• Culturally Justified
• What is shown on TV that fits these criteria?

• Across U.S., homicide rates increased by 12.5% following highly publicised prize fights.
• The more publicised the fight, the greater the increase in the rate
• The relationship between prize-fight and homicide rate persisted after statistically controlling for day of week, seasons, and other extraneous variables

• Hypothesis 1:
• Prize fighting triggers an increase in gambling, which in turn provokes anger, fighting, and murder.
• However, increased homicide rate did not occur following the Super Bowl. Therefore, not supported.
• Hypothesis 2:
• Prize fight merely precipitated a murder that would have occurred anyway, even in the absence of the prize fight.
• Found no evidence of any dip in homicides soon after the peak. Therefore, not supported.
• Hypothesis 3:
• Social learning / modeling hypothesis. Was there victim modeling? -- is a person is more likely to aggress against a target victim if his target is similar to the victim? This hypothesis was supported:

• White-loser prize fights are followed by significant increases in young, white male homicides; in contrast, Black-loser prize fights do not seem to trigger young, white male homicides
• Black-loser prize fights are followed by significant increases in young, Black male homicides. White-loser prize fights do not trigger significant increases in Black male homicides.

• Japan has (or had) extraordinarily low violent crime rate
• Japan has explicit violence/nudity on TV, even on Sunday mornings
• How can this be?
• Offenders NOT rewarded
• The consequences of the violence are shown, not ignored. Grieving widows, children, etc.