Here are some sources that may be useful when you are revising, primarily for altruism.
The first source is an RSA animate of a talk by Jeremy Rifkin. Jeremy Rifkin talks about how humans are biologically "soft wired" for empathy and that we can extend our empathy to others by extending our social identities to include the entire human race as well as other creatures. Rifkin claims that anti-social behavior, such as violence are secondary to our nature and are affected by sociocultural factors. His talk partly relates to biological factors for emotion - when other people are communicating their feelings, our mirror neurons create the same feelings in us. Therefore, when you are in need of help it is essential that you communicate your emotions to others as well as you can. The social identity theory (SIT) or kin selection theory may be arguments that can be used against his claim. As you all know, according to these theories, we have a tendency to "help and stick to our own kind" or our in-groups. One may ask if it our brains are capable of including all creatures on earth in our in-group in thought as well as in action. According to SIT our self identity is defined by this exclusion and inclusion of others. In his talk Jeremy Rifkin relates to research on mirror neurons. I think I showed you the first part of a documentary on mirror neurons a long time ago. Mirror neurons can be used as an example of how our biology influences our behavior as well as a biological factor influencing emotion. It is also a biological support of social learning theory. Speaking about social learning, I want to inform you that for dogs, barking and peeing with one leg lifted seems to be learned by imitation. As you might know, we taught our chihuahua Teddy not to bark and not to pee with his leg lifted (because I live in a condo and don´t want to disturb neighbors or have my walls spoiled) However, now when Teddy has seen other dogs lift their legs while peeing and heard them bark he is showing slight tendencies for these behaviors. Please do not use this last anecdote in any of your essays!!! If you are using Dan Batson´s empathy-altruism hypothesis as an empathy you may consider this article that is written by him: Empathic concern and empathy in humans It mentions a recent study by Batson where female participants read a story about Kayla who was being rehabilitated after a broken leg. Kayla was either a student, a child or a dog depending on the experimental condition. Interestingly enough, participants reported more empathic concern for the dog or the child than the student, implicating that empathic concern is more than just identification (because in that case participants who were students, should have identified more with Kayla the student) Another study than the Carol study that you all know of supporting Batson´s hypothesis is a study from 1983 where participants watched a confederate (unknowingly to participants) receiving electric shocks. They either watched him receive shocks over two trials or ten trials. After watching the trials participants had to answer questions about their emotional state. After filling out the questionnaire, participants were informed that the confederate had had a traumatic experience with electric shock during childhood and were therefore asked to take the remaining shocks in the confederate´s place. If participants had a high distress score as measured by the questionnaire they were more likely to accept the offer, supporting the view that we are more likely to help when we can empathize (which may be made possible by our mirror neurons). In regards to the "dog versus human" study I find it amusing that participants had more empathic concern for a dog than a full grown student, which may be because we a similar bonding with our pets as with our children. A study from 2003 has shown that when people pet their dogs, oxytocin is released in the dog as well as in the human. Oxytocin, which is another example of how hormones influence our behavior, is related to bonding, trust and helping behavior and is therefore a biological factor of altruism. More on oxytocin and bonding with pets can be read on this blog page (recommended to me by Chaya): Pampered pooch syndrome In regards to dispositional factors for altruism, Nicky sent me this link a long time ago: Oliner & Oliner This is the study of heroic rescuers that we have talked about in class. It may be used as an example of dispositional factors for behavior and maybe as part of an evaluation of bystander theories (even though there may be situational factors for bystanderism, some people may be less prone for bystanderism than others) The same may be used during evaluation of altruistic theories. There may of course also be social and cultural factors influencing both altruism and bystanderism. In an early presentation of altruism I mentioned the hypothesis of strong reciprocity, that states that we are more likely to help people in a group if a social norm of reciprocity and cooperation has been established. Conversely, if an egoistic norm has been established, we should be less likely to help others. We are also likely to punish those that break the social convention of helping. This behavior has been observed in humans as well as in animals. This possible "innate sense of fairness" has recently been observed in an interesting study on babies. Situational factors can also affect altruism. In one study, scientists compared survival rates of men, women and children between the sinking of Lusitania and the sinking of Titanic. The sinking went much faster for the Lusitania than the Titanic, and consequently more men and less women and children survived the Lusitania compared to the Titanic. The explanation is that because the sinking of the Titanic went so fast, men were more likely to follow their basic instinct rather than their internalized norm of allowing children and women to board the lifeboats before them. In a similar study, Dr Aguirre analyzed the records of a deadly nightclub fire and found that those who were alone in the nightclub were more likely to survive than those that were with friends or relatives (further support for SIT and kin altruism): How the men reacted as the Titanic and Lusitania Went Under Friends of mine, by the way, claim that feminism may eventually change the norm that women are to be saved before men if the lives of a group of people is at stake (as implied by the saying "women and children first"). But this is a new discussion in itself.
1 Comment
Magnus
5/6/2013 06:07:12 am
This is really helping me, thank you :)
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AuthorThis is my class blog for IB Psychology. Here I will publish reflections on psychology, reviews of psychology books, recommended links, lecture notes, and information on psychology topics that are not covered by the syllabus. You are free to add comments or ask me questions. Archives
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