Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
Altruism & Aggression
Altruism and Aggression
Social psychology is a science that studies a series of specific relationships. Social psychology attempts to explain human behavior as a consequence or condition of the intersections among individual mental states and the social conditions of immediately experience reality. Social psychologists study many of the internal mechanisms within us all such as feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. Our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by other people in our immediate vicinity, and they are influenced by those whose presence is implied in some way. Social psychologists seek to study by means of an empirical method the measurable psychological variables present within a person. Two specific behaviors this paper will focus upon are altruism and aggression. The paper will define and discuss altruism and aggression from within the context of the social psychological perspective.
Altruism is the practice of selfless acts. Altruism is the practice...
Altruist acts are ones of self sacrifice and demonstrate aspects such as empathy, caring, and proactivity. Professionals across several disciplines argue as to whether true altruism exists. Some people perform acts for attention from others or from the gratitude of other people. People who do good deeds with poor or selfish intentions are not practicing altruism. Though the act may benefit others, the act is still selfish. Altruism is a character trait that typically comes naturally for children and young people. As human beings age, the frequency and intensity with which people generally perform altruist actions diminishes significantly.
Aggression is a feeling that many of us can relate to instantaneously. Aggression is also an emotion and a behavior that demonstrates itself early on…
References:
Staub, PhD, Ervin, & Vollhardt, Johanna. "Altruism Born of Suffering: The Roots of Caring and Helping After Victimization and Other Trauma. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, Vol. 78, No. 3, 267 -- 280, 2008.
Wilson, Barbara J. "Media and Children's Aggression, Fear, and Altruism." The Future of Children, Vol. 18, No. 1, 87 -- 119.
True Altruism Exist? The objective of this study is to analyze the work of Batson, et al., and Cialdini, et al. And to discuss whether true altruism exists. Batson et al. entitled "Is Empathic Emotion a Source of Altruistic Motivation" published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (1981) holds that true altruism does exist while the work of Cialdini, et al. entitled "Empathy-Based Helping: Is It Selflessly or Selfishly
Human Aggression and the Stanford Prison Experiments Studies of human aggression tend toward myriad and often competing conclusions about that which drives us to behave ethically or unethically, about the forces that incline us toward altruism as opposed to those which incline us toward aggression, about the impulses to behave according to internal values and the pressures to bend to contextual authority. Perhaps few studies on the subject have penetrated the
Traditionally, researchers in various fields of study have generally limited investigations to their area of expertise. Social scientists attend to prescribed areas such as memory, deviance, and microeconomics. In addition, natural scientists restrict their focal points to phenomena like DNA, gravity, and erosion. This practice of detached exploration, which initially proved productive, is gradually giving way to interdisciplinary endeavors as new and overwhelming evidence indicates that many domains are profoundly
History Of Social Psychology: Past and Future Directions The fields of psychology and social psychology owe their existence to the earlier philosophical thinkers including Aristotle, Plato, Descartes, Locke, Hume and Kant. However, the recognized founder of the field (by most historians) is the German scientist Wilhelm Wundt (Farr, 2003). In 1862 Wundt proposed that there psychology should consist of two branches: a social branch and a physiological branch of psychology (Farr,
Sociology: Changing Societies in a Diverse World (Fourth Edition) George J. Bryjak & Michael P. Soroka Chapter One Summary of Key Concepts Sociology is the field of study which seeks to "describe, explain, and predict human social patterns" from a scientific perspective. And though Sociology is part of the social sciences (such as psychology and anthropology), it is quite set apart from the other disciplines in social science; that is because it emphasizes
The purpose of this set of questions is to see whether they would engage in similar action even if they know that the other individual will not reciprocate given the reverse of their circumstances. All individuals will answer blindly, and we will anonomously collect all of the information. Discussion: There are many different results that are possible within this experiment. First, the expected result is that the majority of individuals will