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

Which of the following is/are motivated by empathy?

Feeling underbenefited tends to provoke feelings of ____, while feeling overbenefited tends to provoke feelings of ____.

When each person in a group does his or her part, and together they work toward a common goal, the group is said to be ____.

Marcie is at the pool and her little boy has struck his head on the diving board and is injured. What should Marcie do to make sure her son receives the help he needs? Why?

Suppose that you are in a ship wreck and numerous people around you are drowning. No one present knows how to swim except for you. According to evolutionary theory, if you only had time to save one person, which of the following people would you save?

According to evolutionary theory, people are more likely to help siblings (with whom they share roughly half of their genes) than cousins (with whom they share roughly one-eighth of their genes), and more likely to help cousins than strangers. Research demonstrates that, in reality, ____.

Research using fMRI to assess brain activity has found that the brain's reaction is ____ when people receive electric shocks compared to when they watch their romantic partners receive shocks.

Describe Stanley Milgram's classic research on obedience to authority. What was the setup of the study? What were the results? What are the implications?

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. Which group almost never agreed to switch places?

Suppose that, one day, a fierce and crazy lion broke loose from the zoo. Instead of running around wildly, however, the lion calmed himself down rather quickly, walked through the crowds at the zoo, exited the facility, and made his way to a local park; here he stretched out to do some child-watching. People in the park were confused by the sudden presence of the lion. They thought to themselves: "Isn't that a lion?" "Um, is it really dangerous to have a lion right here?" However, none of them voiced their concerns, and as a result there was no communication about the lion; the park-goers ultimately assumed that there was a reason for the lion to be there ("otherwise," they thought, "someone would have said something"). And the lion ended up staying at the park for several hours. In this example, _____ was most at play.

In the "trust game," participants generally ____.

As discussed in the textbook, "spring break sex" (low-commitment sex) often represents a "good deal" for men and a "bad deal" for women. Interestingly, both men and women tend to travel in same-sex packs during spring break. Moreover, ____.

Compared to people who do not have a strong belief in a just world, people who do have a strong belief in a just world are MORE likely to ____.

Suppose that two cats take turns grooming one another (cleaning one another's fur). This would be an example of the cats demonstrating ____.

You are driving to school and notice that there is an injured dog lying on the side of the road-presumably the victim of a hit-and-run. You are in a very busy part of town, however, so you decide that your help probably isn't needed (someone else will attend to the dog and call for help, if they haven't already). Social psychologists would say that ____ prevented you from helping in this case.

In general, in which of the following situations are women more likely to offer help than men?

In general, people are more likely to help others who appear to be similar to them than others who appear to be different from them.

As discussed in the text, the sociologist Phil Kunz once performed a study in which he sent 578 Christmas cards to a sample of complete strangers living in Chicago, Illinois. What happened?

Which of the following hypotheses looks at helping behavior as truly unselfish in nature?

Research has generally concluded that the negative state relief hypothesis is ____.