Psychology 2410A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Tabula Rasa, Relational Aggression, Clothespin

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2410A/B
• Professor: Lynne Zarbatany

Document Summary

Agenda: evolutionary perspective on prosocial behaviour and aggression, development of prosocial behaviour, development of aggression, development of lying, evolutionary perspective on prosocial behaviour and aggression. It may also have benefits to the self, but primarily the benefit is to someone else: eg. sharing, helping, giving, caring for someone, protecting or defending someone, offering sympathy, donating, comforting, rescuing, providing needed information. Aggression: behaviour intended to harm someone: eg. physical aggression, verbal aggression (name-calling, gossiping, threatening), relational aggression (trying to damage people"s relationships), electronic aggression (cyber-bullying) Evolutionary functions of aggression: buss & shackelford, 1997: there are 7 adaptive problems that aggression. You may need to aggress to get the resources you need to survive may have evolved to solve: co-opting resources of others, defending against attack. If we beat up our rivals, we get access: negotiating status and power hierarchies. It is difficult to call aggression evil" because it does serve some adaptive functions: development of prosocial behaviour.