week 8 psy 607
Which of the following statements about gender differences in aggression is true?
Girls are more likely than boys to express aggressive feelings indirectly, as by shunning or slandering a target.
Suppose a researcher found a strong positive correlation between the number of tweets people send each day and their reported happiness. Which of the following is the best conclusion he or she can draw from this finding?
Happy people are more likely to send a lot of tweets than sad people.
aggression stems from feelings of anger and is aimed at inflicting pain, whereas aggression serves as a means to some goal other than pain.
Hostile; instrumental
The observational method is best at answering which of these questions?
How polite are people in public places?
According to social-cognitive learning theory, which of these factors intervenes between a person's observation of media violence and his or her likelihood of imitating it?
How the observer interprets the violent story
Sexual Scripts
Sets of implicit rules that specify proper sexual behavior for a person in a given situation, varying with the person's gender, age, religion, social status, and peer group
Megan reads a research study which shows that children who see a lot of violence on television are more likely to be aggressive on the playground. Megan thinks, "This is obvious; I could have predicted that!" Megan's reaction to the study is probably an example of:
the hindsight bias.
The "weapons effect" refers to the fact that
the mere presence of a gun can provoke an aggressive response.
Noah was counting on his roommate George to help him on moving day, but George never showed up, and Noah is plenty annoyed. What might he say to himself to reduce his wish to retaliate or tell George off?
"I bet George is under a lot of stress about exams this week."
Which form of apology is most likely to be accepted and believed?
"I'm really sorry, and I understand what I did wrong; it won't happen again."
Social Psychology: An Empirical Science
A fundamental principle of social psychology is that social influence can be studied scientifically.
John has consumed enough alcohol to make him legally drunk. Under which of the following conditions is he most likely to become aggressive?
A stranger bumps into him in a crowded restaurant.
Is Aggression Innate, Learned, or Optional?
Aggression is intentional behavior aimed at doing harm or causing physical or psychological pain to another person. Hostile aggression is defined as having as one's goal the harming of another; instrumental aggression inflicts harm as a means to some other end.
Hostile Aggression
Aggression stemming from feelings of anger with the goal of inflicting pain or injury
Some Physiological Influences
Alcohol can increase aggressive behavior because it serves as a disinhibitor, reducing a person's inhibitions. Alcohol also disrupts the way people usually process information so that they may respond to the most obvious aspects of a social situation and fail to pick up its subtle elements. But thanks to the "think-drink" effect, when people expect alcohol to have certain effects, it often does. When people are in pain or in a very hot environment, they are more likely to act aggressively.
How do social psychologists formulate hypotheses and theories?
All of the above answers are correct.
Suppose you want to reduce the chances that your children will act aggressively toward other people. Which of the following strategies is most likely to work?
Be a good role model; do not be verbally or physically abusive.
What is the most significant risk factor for teenage suicide and violence?
Being socially rejected
What does research find about the validity of the catharsis theory?
Disconfirmed: Expressing anger often makes people angrier.
The experimental method is best at answering which of these questions?
Does playing violent video games cause people to be more rude to someone who cuts in line in front of them?
The Evolutionary View
Evolutionary psychologists argue that aggression is genetically programmed into men because it enables them to defend their group and perpetuate their genes; males also aggress out of sexual jealousy to protect their paternity. A hormone involved in male aggression is testosterone (which both sexes have in varying levels), but the aggression-testosterone link is modest, and each affects the other. Two evolutionary theories believe this link depends on the social situation: the Dual-Hormone Hypothesis shows that testosterone only leads to aggression when there is a potential to dominate such that, under times of stress, testosterone even predicts less aggressive behavior whereas the Challenge Hypothesis states that testosterone only leads to aggression when there is the potential to mate. There is substantial variation in the degree of aggressiveness among human males and also among our two closest animal relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos. Even if aggressive behavior has survival value, nearly all animals have also evolved strong inhibitory mechanisms that enable them to suppress aggression when they need to.
New Frontiers in Social Psychological Research
In recent years, social psychologists have developed new ways of investigating social behavior.
Aggression
Intentional behavior aimed at causing physical harm or psychological pain to another person
Tend-and-Befriend Response:
Responding to stress with nurturing activities designed to protect oneself and one's offspring (tending) and creating social networks that provide protection from threats (befriending)
Which of the following men is most likely to act aggressively toward someone who insults him?
Richard, who grew up in Louisiana
Challenge Hypothesis
Testosterone relates to aggression only when there are opportunities for reproduction
Dual-Hormone Hypothesis
Testosterone relates to dominance-seeking behavior only when the stress hormone, cortisol, is not elevated
Perceived Control:
The belief that we can influence our environment in ways that determine whether we experience positive or negative outcomes
Social Support
The perception that others are responsive and receptive to one's needs
Culture and Social Psychology
To study the ways in which culture shapes people's thoughts, feelings, and behavior, social psychologists conduct cross-cultural research. This is not simply a matter of replicating the same study in different cultures; researchers have to guard against imposing their own viewpoints and definitions, learned from their culture, onto another culture with which they are unfamiliar.
"Sexual scripts" refer to
a set of rules governing notions of "appropriate" sexual behavior that people acquire in learning gender roles.
Suppose a psychologist decides to join a local commune to understand and observe its members' social relationships. This is
ethnography.
Relational aggression refers to
expressing aggression indirectly by manipulating a relationship.
A researcher conducts a study with participants who are college students. The researcher then repeats the study using the same procedures but with members of the general population (i.e., adults) as participants. The results are similar for both samples. The research has established through .
external validity, replication
According to frustration-aggression theory,
frustration increases the likelihood of aggression.
Having sexual intercourse with a woman who is drunk or otherwise incapacitated
is against the law.
A team of researchers wants to test the hypothesis that drinking wine makes people like jazz more. They randomly assign college students who are 21 or older to one room in which they will drink wine and listen to jazz or to another room in which they will drink water and listen to jazz. It happens that the "wine room" has a big window with nice scenery outside, whereas the "water room" is windowless, dark, and dingy. The most serious flaw in this experiment is that it
is low in internal validity.
After watching his teenage brother beat up a classmate in a fistfight and walk away with the admiration of their friends, a little boy takes a swipe at another boy in the playground. He has acquired this behavior through a process of
observational learning.
The basic dilemma of the social psychologist is that
there is a trade-off between internal and external validity in most experiments.
Social-cognitive learning theory explains why, when people are provoked,
they respond aggressively if they think aggression is justified.
Instrumental Aggression
Aggression that is done as a means to achieve some goal other than causing pain
3. Watching violence in the media and behaving aggressively are positively correlated. What does this mean?
All of the answers are correct.
Jim has been convicted of assault and offers many reasons for his behavior. How many of the following of Jim's arguments have social psychologists studied scientifically?
All of the answers are correct.
A researcher is interested in whether moods vary by the day of the week. She codes the postings on thousands of Facebook pages to see whether people express more positive comments on some days than others. Which research method has she used?
Archival analysis
The correlational method is best at answering which of these questions?
Are people from the southern United States more polite in public places than people from the northern United States?
Does Punishing Aggression Reduce Aggression?
If punishment is itself aggressive, it actually models such behavior to children and may engender greater aggressiveness. Punishment may also enhance the attractiveness of the transgression to the child, get the attention that the child is hoping for, or backfire by making the child anxious and angry. Punishment often fails to reduce aggression because it does not communicate what the target should do, only what he or she should not do. For punishment to serve as a deterrent to misbehavior or criminal acts, it must be both prompt and certain. For that reason, in the complex world of criminal justice, severe punishment is unlikely to deter violent crime.
Suppose a researcher found a strong negative correlation between college students' grade point average (GPA) and the amount of alcohol they drink. Which of the following is the best conclusion from this study?
If you know how much alcohol a student drinks, you can predict his or her GPA fairly well.
What does the "think-drink" effect refer to?
If you think alcohol releases your anger, it will.
Provocation and Reciprocation
Individuals frequently aggress to reciprocate the aggressive behavior of others. This response is reduced if there are mitigating circumstances or the recipient believes the other person's behavior was unintentional.
What does the research on cultures of honor suggest about the relationship between testosterone and aggression?
It shows that testosterone and aggression are unrelated.
Which of the following is a basic assumption that social psychologists make?
Many social problems can be studied scientifically.
Gender and Aggression
Men and boys are much more likely than women to commit physical aggression in provocative situations, to pick fights with strangers, and to commit crimes of violence. However, gender differences in physical aggression are reduced when women are as provoked as men or when cultural norms foster female aggression. Husbands are far more likely to murder their wives than vice versa, but community studies find no significant gender differences in rates of less extreme partner abuse, such as hitting. Girls and women are more likely to commit relational aggression, acts that harm another person through manipulation of the relationship (e.g., spreading rumors, shunning).
Resilience
Mild, transient reactions to stressful events, followed by a quick return to normal, healthy functioning
Putting the Elements Together: The Case of Sexual Assault
Most crimes of rape are committed by assailants known to the victim (acquaintance or date rape). Rape may occur as a result of physical force or through incapacitation, when the victim has been drugged or is drunk or unconscious. Sexually aggressive males who commit these acts are often unable to empathize with women, may feel hostility and contempt toward women, and feel entitled to have sexual relations with whatever woman they choose. Date rape may also occur because of misunderstandings and ambiguities in the sexual scripts that men and women follow regarding sexual norms. Because most couples communicate sexual interest and intentions—including a wish not to have sex—indirectly through hints, body language, eye contact, and other nonverbal behaviors, the possibility of misunderstanding one another is greatly increased. The topics in this chapter lend themselves to understanding the factors involved in sexual assault: the importance of social and cultural norms; the power of perceptions and beliefs; the role of observational learning from role models, peers, and the media; why "testosterone made me do it" is an excuse, not an explanation; and the disinhibiting effects of alcohol and the "think-drink" effect.
Which of the following statements about rape is true?
Most rapes are committed in the context of an acquaintance or ongoing relationship.
Culture and Aggression
Most social psychologists believe that human beings are born with the capacity for aggression, but whether or not it is expressed is influenced by situational and cultural factors and is therefore modifiable. There is a great variation in the levels of aggression across cultures; under some conditions, groups have had to become more aggressive, and under other conditions, they have become more peaceful. Cooperative, collectivist cultures have low levels of aggression, and in the past few centuries, war, murder, and torture have been steadily declining around the world. In cultures of honor, however, such as those in the American South and Southwest and in the Middle East, men are raised to respond aggressively to perceptions of threat and disrespect, a response that originated in economic conditions. In such cultures, the rate of physical abuse of women is often higher than elsewhere because such abuse is regarded as a male prerogative. Multiple factors shape whether or not a culture tends to nurture aggressive behavior, including the extent to which male aggression fulfills a central part of the male role and identity.
What do experimental studies of media violence tend to find?
Playing violent video games has a stronger effect than watching violent shows.
Which of the following is the best way to increase the external validity of a study?
Replicate the study with a different population of people in a different setting.
Fight-or-Flight Response
Responding to stress by either attacking the source of the stress or fleeing from it
Tiffany finally decides she is ready to confront Whitney directly. How should she express her anger (assuming she wants to keep the friendship)?
She should explain why she feels upset and hurt, as calmly as she can, without blame and accusation.
Formulating Hypotheses and Theories
Social psychological research begins with a hypothesis about the effects of social influence. Hypotheses often come from previous research findings; researchers conduct studies to test an alternative explanation of previous experiments. Many other hypotheses come from observations of everyday life, such as Latané and Darley's hunches about why people failed to help Kitty Genovese.
Which of the following is true about social neuroscience?
Social psychologists are increasingly interested in the connection between biological processes and social behavior.
Which of the following is true about new frontiers in social psychological research?
Social psychologists are interested in the role of culture but not in evolutionary processes.
Social Neuroscience
Social psychologists have become increasingly interested in the connection between biological processes and social behavior. These interests include the study of hormones and behavior, the human immune system, and neurological processes in the human brain.
Research Designs
Social psychologists use three research designs: the observational method, the correlational method, and the experimental method.
Disrupting the Rejection-Rage Cycle
Social rejection is the most significant risk factor for teenage suicide, despair, and violence. Most of the teenagers who have committed horrifying murders in their schools felt angry and vengeful at having been bullied and rejected by their peers. Changing the structure and atmosphere of schools through awareness, empathy training, and bullying-reduction programs that take advantage of existing social dynamics can reduce bullying and improve the lives of children and teenagers.
Learning to Behave Aggressively
Social-cognitive learning theory holds that people often learn social behavior, including aggression, through observational learning—observing and imitating others, especially people or institutions they respect. But their actual behavior also depends on their beliefs, perceptions, and interpretations of what they observe.
What is the main problem in interpreting longitudinal studies of the effects of media violence?
Teasing apart whether media violence causes aggression or whether aggressive people are drawn to media violence
The Correlational Method: Predicting Social Behavior
The correlational method, whereby two or more variables are systematically measured and the relationship between them assessed, is very useful when the goal is to predict one variable from another. For example, researchers might be interested in whether there is a correlation between the amount of violent television children watch and how aggressive they are. The correlational method is often applied to the results of surveys in which a representative group of people are asked questions about their attitudes and behaviors. To make sure that the results are generalizable, researchers randomly select survey respondents from the population at large. A limit of the correlational method is that correlation does not equal causation.
Frustration and Aggression
The frustration-aggression theory states that frustration can increase the probability of an aggressive response. Frustration is more likely to produce aggression if one is thwarted on the way to a goal in a manner that is either illegitimate or unexpected. Also, relative deprivation—the feeling that you have less than what you deserve or less than people similar to you have—is more likely to cause frustration and aggressive behavior than absolute deprivation, as illustrated by protests and revolutions from the civil rights movement to Eastern Europe to the Middle East.
Weapons Effect
The increase in aggression that can occur because of the mere presence of a gun or other weapon
A researcher wants to see whether people are more likely to donate money to a charity when they receive a small gift from that charity. She sends an appeal for money from the charity to 1,000 people. For half of the people (randomly chosen) the letter includes free address labels and for half it does not. The researcher then sees whether those who got the address labels donate more money. Which of the following is true about this study?
The independent variable is whether people got address labels and the dependent variable is how much money they donate.
Weapons as Aggressive Cues
The mere presence of a gun, an aggressive stimulus, in an otherwise neutral situation increases the degree of aggressive behavior, especially if a person is already feeling angry or frustrated. In a classic study, participants angered in the presence of a gun administered stronger electric shocks to their "victim" than those angered in the same setting in which a tennis racket was substituted for the gun.
Stress
The negative feelings and beliefs that arise whenever people feel unable to cope with demands from their environment
Catharsis
The notion that "blowing off steam"—by behaving aggressively or watching others do so—relieves built-up anger and aggressive energy, and hence reduces the likelihood of further aggressive behavior
The Observational Method: Describing Social Behavior
The observational method, whereby researchers observe people and systematically record their behavior, is useful for describing the nature of a phenomenon and generating hypotheses. It includes ethnography, the method by which researchers attempt to understand a group or culture by observing it from the inside, without imposing any preconceived notions they might have. Another method is archival analysis, whereby researchers examine documents or archives, such as looking at photographs in magazines to see how men and women are portrayed.
The Experimental Method: Answering Causal Questions
The only way to determine causality is to use the experimental method, in which the researcher randomly assigns participants to different conditions and ensures that these conditions are identical except for the independent variable. The independent variable is the one researchers vary to see if it has a causal effect (e.g., how much TV children watch); the dependent variable is what researchers measure to see if it is affected (e.g., how aggressive children are). Experiments should be high in internal validity, which means that people in all conditions are treated identically, except for the independent variable (e.g., how much TV children watch). External validity—the extent to which researchers can generalize their results to other situations and people—is accomplished by increasing the realism of the experiment, particularly its psychological realism (the extent to which the psychological processes triggered in the experiment are similar to those triggered in everyday life). It is also accomplished by replicating the study with different populations of participants. As in any other science, some social psychology studies are basic research experiments (designed to answer basic questions about why people do what they do), whereas others are applied studies (designed to find ways to solve specific social problems).
Which of the following is true about cross-cultural research?
The purpose of cross-cultural research is to see which social psychological findings are universal and which are culture-bound.
The Problem of Determining Cause and Effect
The relationship between media violence and actual aggression, however, is a two-way street: Children who are already predisposed to aggression are more likely to seek out aggressive shows and games to watch and play. The effects of violence in the media have the greatest effect on children already predisposed to violence because of a genetic predisposition, living in a violent family, or a personality trait. And many other factors have a far more powerful influence on aggression, including growing up with violent or otherwise abusive parents, living in a violent community, and being rejected socially.
Internal-External Locus of Control
The tendency to believe that things happen because we control them versus believing that good and bad outcomes are out of our control
Can We Release Anger by Indulging It?
The theory of catharsis predicts that venting one's anger or watching others behave aggressively would serve to "get it out of your system" and make people less likely to behave aggressively themselves. Research shows the contrary: Acting aggressively or observing aggressive events or sports increases the likelihood of aggressive behavior in players and fans. Ventilating anger directly toward someone who has insulted or otherwise angered you also increases blood pressure, feelings of anger, and acts of aggression. In turn, because of self-justification and the need to reduce dissonance, each act of "righteous aggression" a person commits increases the likelihood that it will be repeated.
Frustration-Aggression Theory
The theory that frustration—the perception that you are being prevented from attaining a goal—increases the probability of an aggressive response
Social-Cognitive Learning Theory
The theory that people learn social behavior (e.g., aggression or altruism) in large part through observation and imitation of others and by cognitive processes such as plans, expectations, and beliefs
Coping Styles
The ways in which people react to threatening events
All of the following except one are part of the guidelines for ethical research. Which is not?
There must be a cover story for every study, because all studies involve some type of deception.
What does research suggest is the most reasonable conclusion about the effects of media violence?
They have a strong effect, making most young children more aggressive.
Which of the following is true about social psychological findings?
They sometimes seem obvious after we learn about them, because of a hindsight bias.
Studying the Effects of Media Violence
To try to determine what effect all the violence in media and video games might have on children and adults, researchers have conducted laboratory experiments and longitudinal studies. Watching violence is associated with an increase in aggressive behavior, especially in children, but not all studies find a relationship. Exposure to violent pornography, in contrast to nonviolent erotica, increases acceptance of sexual violence toward women; the effects are strongest on men who already have hostile attitudes toward women and are predisposed to behave aggressively with them. In the laboratory, playing violent video games does increase hostile feelings and aggressive behavior and also has a "numbing" effect, increasing people's indifference to the needs of others, especially if the others are not "one of us." Longitudinal studies show that the more television violence observed by children, the greater the amount of violence they exhibit as teenagers and young adults. Viewing violence also exaggerates people's perceptions of danger in the outside world.
What Are We Supposed to Do with Our Anger?
Venting anger usually causes more harm than good, but stifling serious feelings is often not useful either. It is more effective to become aware of the anger and then to deal with it in ways that are more constructive than yelling or hitting: cooling off; remembering the angering event from a distanced perspective; becoming more self-aware (perhaps through writing down your feelings privately); learning to communicate your feelings in a clear but nonjudgmental or noninsulting way; taking responsibility for acts that anger others, through understanding and apology; learning how to solve the problem that has made you and the other person angry; and strengthening empathic skills.
Mary wants to find out whether eating sugary snacks before an exam leads to better performance on the exam. Which of the following strategies would answer her question most conclusively?
Wait for exam time in a big class, give a random half of the students M&Ms before the exam, and see whether the students who ate M&Ms perform better.
Which of the following statements is true?
Watching violent shows makes some children more likely to imitate them.
What is relative deprivation?
When people feel there is an unfair discrepancy between what they have and what they expect to get
In terms of physical aggression, men are more likely than women to
behave aggressively to defend their honor or status.
From a social-psychological perspective, a problem with evolutionary theories of aggression is that they fail to account for
different rates of aggression across cultures.
In the United States rape occurs most often because of
incapacitation of the victim.
Social psychologists often do experiments in the laboratory, instead of the field, to:
increase internal validity.
Professor X wants to make sure his study of gifted youngsters will get published, but he's worried that his findings could have been caused by something other than the independent variable, which was a new teaching method he introduced. He is concerned with the his experiment.
internal validity
Tiffany is angry at Whitney for forgetting her birthday. To defuse her anger, Tiffany should
write about her feelings privately for 20 minutes a day for a few days to get some perspective.