PSY220H1 Lecture 2: Lecture 2
Document Summary
Altruism: altruism: helping someone without expecting something in return. Key principle: experience of arousal is neutral, ambiguous, it doesn"t come with an emotion attached to it: negative state relief model: the negative-state relief model states that human beings have an innate drive to reduce negative moods. They can be reduced by helping: people aren"t truly altruistic, batson came up with the empathy-altruism hypothesis: the negative state relive model does occur, but empathetic concern also makes people altruistic. See exp: empathy blurs the boundaries between yourself and others thus we. Caildini thought that empathetic model wasn"t truly altruistic bc if your identifying with the other person you are just helping yourself. The larger the group the les likely subjects are to go and help. The god smitten study analyzed the role of time/pressure/cognitive load in helping. Low levels of serotonin are also associated with higher levels of aggression and drugs that increase levels of serotonin may decrease aggression.
