Exam 9: Prosocial Behavior: Doing What’s Best for Others

Recall Milgram's classic research on obedience to authority. One interesting finding here was that numerous participants who went ahead and administered shocks at relatively high levels ____.

Geraldine feels empathy for her neighbor who is going through a medical crisis. She worries that the other people in the neighborhood will think she is not doing enough to help, so she tries to organize a fundraiser to offset the medical bills for this individual. Which hypothesis best explains Geraldine's motives for helping?

During the hurricane and subsequent flooding in New Orleans several years ago, survivors reported that they were much more likely to search for displaced family members than for friends. This finding supports the idea of ____.

If laws do not exist or are widely disobeyed, ____________________ is said to be lacking.

The political scientist Robert Axelrod once held a computer tournament designed to determine the most successful prisoner's dilemma strategy (the strategy that would win most often for the longest period of time). The winning strategy was called ____________________.

The first step to helping behavior is overcoming pluralistic ignorance.

Describe the features that tend to promote cooperation in a prisoner's dilemma game.

Compared to people in good moods, people in bad moods do not tend to be especially helpful to others. This seems to be the case in particular when their bad mood is focused inward (i.e., when they are thinking about themselves).

Someone who is high on the dimension of belief in a just world would be MOST likely to agree with which statement?

In one well-known study on empathy, participants had to watch a confederate ("Elaine") receive electric shocks. They were told either that they had to watch 10 full trials of shocks, or that they could leave after watching the first two trials only. They were also told that their values and interests were similar to those of the confederate (similar group), or that their values and interests were different from those of the confederate (dissimilar group). After the first two trials had been completed, participants were asked whether they would switch places with the confederate-she was apparently very upset by the shocks due to a negative childhood experience with electricity. The researchers found that, in the dissimilar group, ____ agreed to switch places.

According to the textbook, the outcome of a prisoner's dilemma game (whether people end up cooperating of competing) depends most on how the players initially approach the game and on ____.

Research with humans and monkeys on fairness-and the concepts of being overbenefited versus underbenefited-indicates that ____.

In his classic research on obedience to authority, Milgram found that roughly ____ of participants eventually "went all the way" and administered the highest levels of shocks.

The notion that empathy triggers fears of guilt, censure, and shame, which in turn motivates helping behavior, is called the ____.

In Axelrod's computer tournament, tit-for-tat emerged as the strategy to earn players the most points.

Who is most likely to be trusted?

Explain the norms that humans use to determine fairness, and provide one example of each.

In terms of your willingness to offer help to others, audience inhibition can be an obstacle to which of the following?

Which of the following is an example of a zero-sum game?

An emotional response that corresponds to the feelings of others is called ____.