Aggression and Altruism

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Aggression and Altruism
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Aggression

• Hostile aggression - behavior intended to harm
  another, either physically or psychologically,
  and motivated by feelings of anger and hostility
• Instrumental aggression - behavior intended to
  harm another in the service of motives other than
  pure hostility (for example, to attract
  attention, acquire wealth, and to advance
  political and ideological causes)

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Suicide Attacks

• Disproportionate share of terrorism casualties
• Numbers increasing worldwide
• Effect on societys morale and the economy
• Threat of WMD
• How to prevent suicide terrorism?
• Individual Can we profile suicide bombers
• Group disrupt organizational structures
• Society Drain popular support

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Attributional Biases

• The case of suicide terrorists (contd)
• Personality profile of suicide terrorists in
  Palestine young unmarried adult males
• Not suicidal
• No evidence of psychopathology
• Not from poor or uneducated backgrounds
• To prevent ST, it would not help to profile their
  personality
• Instead, focus on
• 1) Disrupt organizations who recruit them
• 2) Drain popular support for ST

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Aggression

• Gender and Aggression
• Aggression is overwhelmingly a male activity
• 2. Situational Determinants of Aggression
• Media (modeling)
• Heat
• 3. Cultural determinants of aggression

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Fig. 13.6
Marriage lowers aggression levels in males
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Fig. 13.1
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Fig. 13.2
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Fig. 13.3
Frustration-Aggression
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Aggression

• 4. Culture and Aggression
• a. The culture of honor
• Culture of honor - a culture that is defined by
  strong concerns about ones own and others
  reputations, leading to sensitivity to slights
  and insults and a willingness to use violence to
  avenge any perceived wrong or insult

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Fig. 13.5
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Altruism

• altruism - unselfish behavior that benefits
  others without regard to the consequences for the
  self
• Situational Determinants of Altruism
• bystander intervention - helping a victim of an
  emergency by those who have observed what is
  happening it is generally reduced as the number
  of observers increases, as each individual feels
  that someone else will be likely to help

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Altruism

• Diffusion of responsibility - a reduction of a
  sense of urgency to help someone involved in an
  emergency or dangerous situation under the
  assumption that others who are also observing the
  situation will help

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Altruism

• Construal Processes and Altruism
• pluralistic ignorance - a tendency not to
  respond to a potentially dangerous situation
  because of a collective uncertainty about what is
  happening that is reinforced by the fact that no
  one else seems concerned or is responding

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Altruism

• Evolutionary Approaches to Altruism
• Kin selection - the tendency for natural
  selection to favor behaviors that increase the
  chances of survival of genetic relatives
• reciprocal altruism - tendency to help other
  people with the expectation that they will be
  likely to help in return at some other time
• Costly signalling tendency to help other people
  to communicate a hard to fake signal that
  establish some value (reliability,
  cooperativeness, mate value)

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Leivine, Norenzayan, Philbrick, 2001