Antisocial Relations Module 58

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Antisocial RelationsModule 58
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Social Relations

• Social psychology teaches us how we relate to one
  another from prejudice, aggression and conflict
  to attraction, altruism and peacemaking.

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Prejudice

• Simply called, prejudgment, a prejudice is an
  unjustifiable (usually negative) attitude toward
  a group and its members often of different
  cultural, ethnic or gender groups.

Components of Prejudice

• Beliefs (stereotypes)
• Emotions (hostility, envy, fear)
• Predisposition to act (to discriminate)

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modern prejudice

• a study of 390 colleges and universities, 53 of
  African American students felt excluded from
  school activities, compared to 24 of Asian
  Americans, 16 of Mexican Americans, and 6 of
  European Americans.
• Greenwald et. Al (1989) showed that 9/10 people
  who deny having prejudices took longer to
  identify pleasant words when presented with Black
  (vs. White) faces.
• Harber (1998) found that White university women
  gave higher ratings and fewer harsh criticisms to
  authors of papers they believed were African
  American.
• Correll et. Al and Greenwald et. Al shoed that in
  a simulated police situation in which a mans
  wallet was mistaken for a gun, both Black and
  White people more often mistakenly shot at
  targets who were Black

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How Prejudiced are People?

• Over the duration of time many prejudices against
  interracial marriage, gender, homosexuality,
  minorities have waned.

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Racial Gender Prejudice

• Americans today express much less racial and
  gender prejudice, but prejudices still exist.

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Race

• Nine out of 10 white respondents were slow at
  responding to words like peace or paradise
  when they saw a black individuals photo compared
  to a whites (Hugenberg Bodenhausen, 2003).

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Gender Bias

• Worldwide, women are more likely to live in
  poverty and 2/3 of children without schooling are
  girls.
• South Korean male births have exceeded female
  births by 14, China now has 120 boy babies for
  every 100 girls, and India has 126 (in spite of
  the fact that sex determination tests are illegal
  in India).
• In China and India together have 76 million fewer
  females than they should have, and globally, 100
  million women are missing.

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Gender

• Although prejudice prevails against women, more
  people feel more positively toward women than
  men. Women rated picture b feminized higher
  (665) for a matrimonial ad (Perrett, 1998).

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Social Roots of Prejudice

• Why does prejudice arise?

• Social Inequalities
• Social Divisions
• Emotional Scapegoating

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Social Inequality

• When people have money, power and prestige, and
  others do not, prejudice develops. Social
  inequality increases prejudice.

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In and Out Groups

• Ingroup People with whom one shares a common
  identity. Outgroup Those perceived as different
  from ones ingroup. Ingroup Bias The tendency to
  favor ones own group.

Scotlands famed Tartan Army fans.
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Emotional Roots of Prejudice

• Prejudice provides an outlet for anger emotion
  by providing someone to blame. After 9/11 many
  people lashed out against innocent
  Arab-Americans. (Scapegoat Theory)

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Cognitive Roots of Prejudice

• One way we simplify our world is to categorize.
  We categorize people into groups by stereotyping
  them. The hindsight bias may also affect our
  thinking.

Foreign sunbathers may think Balinese look alike.
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Cognitive Roots of Prejudice
Vivid cases like the 9/11 terrorists can feed
stereotypes or prejudices (terrorism). Most
terrorists are non-Muslims. (Availability
Heuristic)
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Cognitive Roots of Prejudice

• The tendency of people to believe the world is
  just and people get what they deserve and deserve
  what they get (the just-world phenomenon).

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Aggression
Aggression can be any physical or verbal behavior
intended to hurt or destroy whether done
reactively out of hostility or proactively as a
calculated means to an end.
Research shows that aggressive behavior emerges
from the interaction of biology and experience.
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The Biology of Aggression
Three levels of biological influences on
aggressive behavior are

• Genetic Influences
• Neural Influences
• Biochemical Influences

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Influences
Genetic Influences Animals have been bred for
aggressiveness for sport and at times for
research. Twin studies show aggression may be
genetic. In men, aggression is possibly linked to
Y chromosome.
Neural Influences Some centers in the brain,
especially the limbic system (amygdala) and the
frontal lobe are intimately involved with
aggression.
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Influences
Biochemical Influences Animals with diminished
amounts of testosterone (castration) become
docile, and if injected with testosterone
aggression increases. Prenatal exposure to
testosterone also increases aggression in female
hyenas.
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The Psychology of Aggression
Four psychological factors that influence
aggressive behavior are

• Aversive Events
• Learning Aggression is Rewarding
• Observing Models of Aggression
• Acquiring Social Scripts

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Aversive Events
Studies in which animals and humans experience
unpleasant events reveal that those made
miserable often make others miserable.
Ron Artest (Pacers) attack on Detroit Pistons.
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Environment
Even environmental temperature can lead to
aggressive acts. Murders and rapes increased with
temperature in Houston.
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Frustration-Aggression Principle
A principle in which frustration (caused by
blocking to achieve some goal) creates anger,
which can generate aggression. Some suggest that
frustration is the cause of all aggression, but
research does not support this idea.
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Learning that Aggression is Rewarding
When aggression leads to desired outcomes, one
learns to be aggressive. This is shown in animals
and humans alike.
Cultures that favor violence breed violence.
Scotch-Irish settlers in the South had more
violent tendencies than their Quaker, Dutch
counterparts in the Northeast of the US.
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Observing Models of Aggression

• Sexually coercive men are promiscuous and hostile
  in their relationships with women. This
  coerciveness has increased due to television
  viewing of R- and X-rated movies.

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Acquiring Social Scripts

• The media portrays social scripts and generates
  mental tapes in the minds of the viewers. When
  confronted with new situations individuals may
  rely on such social scripts. If social scripts
  are violent in nature, people may act them out.

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Do Video Games Teach or Release Violence?

• The general consensus on violent video games is
  that to some extent it breeds violence.
  Adolescents view the world as hostile, get into
  arguments, and get bad grades after playing such
  games.

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Summary
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Conflict

• Conflict is perceived incompatibility of actions,
  goals, or ideas.
• Social Trap a situation in which the conflicting
  parties, by each rationally pursuing their
  self-interest, become caught in mutually
  destructive behavior.

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A Game of Social Trap

• By pursuing our self-interest and not trusting
  others, we can end up losers.