hello everybody my name is Iman welcome back to my YouTube channel today we're going to be covering chapter 10 for our MCAT Behavioral Science playlist and in this chapter we're going to cover three main objectives the first objective is titled social behavior and here we're going to cover a couple of things first we're going to talk about attraction and cover the factors that influence interpersonal attraction then we're going to Define aggression and look at examples of aggressive behavior then we'll move into attachment we'll Define attachment and then we're going to list the four types of attachment and how they affect childhood Behavior then we'll move into social support here we're going to identify the common types of social support before moving into our last topic on social behaviors and evolutionary Fitness now the second objective is called social perception and behavior here we're going to Define and discuss social perception and then we're going cover something called attribution theory last but not least we're going to talk about stereotypes prejudice and discrimination here we're going to Define each of these terms compare and give examples so with that let's go ahead and get started with that first objective social behavior now social psychology is really concerned with social behavior which includes the ways that people influence each other's attitudes and behaviors social social behaviors involve interactions with others and these May flow from positive emotions and feelings like attraction or attachment or they may flow from negative feelings such as aggression now those are three terms we really want to cover so let's go ahead and begin first with attraction researchers they found several factors that affect attraction including similarity self-disclosure reciprocity and proximity now outward appearance this also plays a role for example the more symmetric someone's face is usually the more physically attractive we find them to be humans are also attracted to individuals with certain body proportions Etc now in the general scheme of things we're often drawn to individuals who share our values our beliefs and our characteristics and part of this Affinity can really be attributed to the practicality of it it affords us a peace of mind it affords us similar preferences and tastes that really simplify planned shared activities and enjoying mutual interest from playing video games to reading to hiking and so on now additionally there is an inherent comfort in having our beliefs and Life Choices echoed and affirmed by someone else social psychologist actually suggest that we are some sometimes also attracted to those who possess qualities we lack but that complement our own so for instance a person who naturally takes care of others they might find themselves drawn to someone who welcomes such care now another component of Attraction lies in the opportunity for self-disclosure or being able to share one's fears thoughts and goals with another person and then being meant with non-judgmental empathy engaging in this Behavior really deepens attraction and friendship but here's the catch it has to be reciprocated all right revealing one's innermost Secrets it creates this sense of vulnerability and if it's not met by the other person it can then feel not so good and it can be interpreted as being taken advantage of finally proximity or just being physically close to someone also plays a factor in our attraction to them Studies have shown that we are more likely to form friendships with people who are in the same dorm or same building as us or with people who sit closest to us in class and part of this Con part of this is convenience right because it's easier to have conversations when you live right next to each other or if you're consistently sitting in the same row or right next to each other because it's easier to talk and make plans with people in the same area another explanation is just the mere exposure effect which is the tendency for people to really prefer stimuli that they've been exposed to more frequently so that's attraction interpersonal attraction is influenced by many factors from physical characteristics to similarity to self-disclosure reciprocity and proximity what about aggression aggression this is defined as a behavior that intends to cause harm or increase social dominance aggression can take the form of physical actions as well as verbal or non-verbal communication now the question that might come up is like what is the purpose of aggressive behavior if it causes or can cause so much destruction evolutionarily aggression offers a protection against both perceived and real threats aggression helped our ancestors fight off predators and it also helps organisms gain access to resources like food additional territory or even meats and in some cases of limited resources aggression that could be the deciding factor that allows one to reproduce and pass down their genes now from a biological perspective multiple parts of the brain contribute to Violent Behavior the amydala which we've talked about in this playlist before as well as the biology playlist this is a part of the brain that's really responsible for associating stimuli and their corresponding Rewards or punishments and really Ure it's responsible for telling us whether something is or is not a threat now when the amigdala activated this increases aggression however there is higher order brain structures that also play a role in acting out aggression for example higher order brain structures like our prefrontal cortex can very much hit the brakes on a revved up amydala that can help us reduce emotional reactivity and impulsiveness in the moment so there's a lot of parts that are at play here in feeling and acting out aggression now in the realm of aggression it's also important for us to discuss the cognitive neoassociation model this states that we are more likely to respond to others aggressively when we're feeling negative emotions already like being tired or being sick or being in pain now this can also be seen on a large scale there's some really interesting experiments that have observed that for example riots riots are more likely to happen on hot days than cool ones also other things like drivers without air conditioning they're more likely to actually honk at other drivers than those who have air conditioning so this really demonstrates how we are more likely to be aggressive if we're already in a bad mood now another factor that contributes to aggressive behavior is exposure to Violent Behavior whether that be in your immediate environment by the people who surround you or if it's through different types of media or Video Games Etc now that is aggression the next thing we want to talk about is attachment attachment styles are patterns of how we think feel and behave in close relationships they originate from our earliest relationships with caregivers and then they can influence our connections throughout life we're going to cover four primary attachment Styles starting off first with secure attach attachment people with a secure attachment style are generally comfortable with intimacy and they're also independent they tend to have a positive view of themselves and their relationships and this ties back to Childhood in childhood their caregivers were more likely responsive and very attentive to their needs and so then as they grow up securely attached adults tend to have more healthy stable relationships and they're very much comfortable sharing feelings with friends family and partners now avoidant attachment these are individuals that Value Independence and self-sufficiency and they're a bit uncomfortable with closeness and vulnerability they often keep somewhat of an emotional distance from others now this style May develop from caregivers who were emotionally unavailable or rejecting leading the child to kind of learn to cope by avoiding Reliance on anyone and this avoid attachment essentially it results when the caregiver has little to no response to a distressed child and so given the choice these children will know will show no preference between a stranger and the caregiver they show little or no distress when the caregiver leaves and little to no relief when the caregiver returns due to the part that the caregiver initially shows little to no response to a distressed child anyways as adults they might struggle with intimacy and they might not invest much emotions in relationships next is the ambivalent attachment people with this attachment style often feel insecure about their relationships they worry that their partner doesn't love them or that they will leave them and they need a lot of validation and reassurance and this style can develop from inconsistent caregiving where the child was sometimes given lots of attention and other times neglected and so it occur URS from and in response to a caregiver having inconsistent responses to a child's distress sometimes they'll respond appropriately sometimes they're neglectful and so as such the child is really unable to form a secure base because they know they can't consistently reply on the caregiver's response then we have the disorganized attachment this is often the result of trauma or severe consistency in childhood and so as a result the child learns no clear strategy to get their needs met by their caregivers and children with this disorganized attachment they show no clear pattern of behavior in response to the caregiver's absence or presence but instead can show a mix of different behaviors adults with this attachment style they might not they might want closeness but they very much fear to get too close and they tend to find themselves in a cycle of Rocky Relationships now understanding these attachment Styles can be really helpful in recognizing personal patterns in relationships helping navigate challenges and Foster more fulfilling connections with others it can also be a first step toward working through attachment issues and moving towards a more secure attachment style now something that kind of helps us segue into this next part is what helps us find and and and work through personal issues and a lot of This falls back on having social support which is our next topic here in Psychology social support is the perception or reality that one is cared for by a social network social support it can be divided into many different categories we have emotional esteem material informational and network support so let's go over what these mean emotional support is listening affirming and empathizing with someone's feeling it's like when you take a trip to the hospital to visit a sick friend or relative or you send a card uh with your condolences after a friend or relative loses someone important and so it is again listening affirming empathizing with someone's feelings now esteem support this is similar but it touches more directly on affirming the qualities and the skills of a person you know reminding others of the skills they possess to tackle a problem can really help build their self-esteem and their confidence then we have material support this is any type of financial or material contri uh contribution to another person so this can come in the form of maybe making a a meal for a friend or it can be donating money to a person who is in need then we have informational support this refers to providing information that will help someone so all of you who are listening you are all future doctors you are going to be doing a lot of this because you're going to spend a lot of your career providing informational support to patients you're going to have to explain their diagnosis explain potential treatment options and elaborate on the risks and benefits of all those treatments options last but not least we have Network support this is a type of social support that gives a person a sense of belonging this can be shown physically or it can be accomplished through gestures or group activities and shared experiences now no matter the form all of these social supports offer many different types of health benefits social support helps reduce psycle ological distress like anxiety and depression and even Beyond these improvements in mental health there's also improvements to our physical health and with that what we want to move into is our last topic for our first objective here we're going to talk about social behavior and evolutionary Fitness many behaviors have a neurological basis and here we're going to look at some specific behaviors and the Brain regions that are implicated in causing them and we're going to first start with foraging this is the act of searching and consuming food and it's influenced by many factors our bodies signal hunger through a complex interplay of both hormones and neurotransmitters now the brain's hypothalamus it has particular regions that are responsible for Hunger signals the lateral part triggers the urge to eat while the ventromedial part signals fullness now if the lateral hypothalamus is damaged one may lose their appetite whereas damage to the ventromedial part this can lead to overeating now genetics also play a role in foraging behaviors affecting When Animals begin to forage and how foraging roles are distributed within a group now some animals they Forge in groups and this can be a learned behavior from watching and mimicking others within their species on the other hand cognitive abilities such as memory spatial understanding and decisionmaking are really crucial for the success of independent foragers now in group scenarios learning is key right young animals observe their Elders to learn what food is edible how to hunt or gather effectively what are their roles in the group and how to abide by that Predators like wolves they hunt in well-coordinated packs and they follow very strict rules and very strict hierarchies that determine the feeding order after a successful hunt so that's foraging the next thing we want to talk about is mating and mate Choice the sexual behavior of a group is structured by its mating system which can be categorized into monogamy polygamy or promiscuity now monogamy is a onetoone exclusive relationship in contrast polygamy is where either a male pairs with several females or a female pairs with several males under the guise of exclusivity as well promiscuity this allows for meeting with multiple partners without exclusivity now animal species they tend to follow a single system but humans humans show variability and they're very much influenced by both biology and Society now choosing a mate is based on a lot of different things all right it's based on attraction it's aimed to improve species fitnesses and so on and so forth and we actually want to go over how mate Choice operates through several mechanisms first starting off with phenotypic Benefits this is choosing mates with traits indicating they can enhance Offspring viability the next thing is we have sensory buys this is preference for traits that previously signaled other benefits which are now exploited by potential mates to attract Partners we also have fisherian um selection this is a trait that becomes increasingly exaggerated not because it offers survival benefits but simply because it's sexually appealing then there's indicator traits this is traits signaling Health which suggests genetic robustness and last we have genetic compatibility right choosing mates with different genetics to decrease the chances of offsprings inheriting recessive disorders and so overall these mechanisms really steer mate choices towards maximizing the chances of healthy viable offsprings the next topic is altruism this is an act of aiding others at a personal expense it's often seen as selfless though it can be driven by various motives including the desire for recognition a key factor that's thought to fuel such behavior is empathy which is the capacity to resonate with someone else's feelings social psychology have proposed the empathy altruism hypothesis suggesting that we're moved to help others when we emphasize with them no matter the personal sacrifice involved however this idea has spurred some debate and it's leading to newer theories suggesting that we're inclined to help when we perceive that the benefits of doing so actually outweigh the personal costs next we have Game Theory Game Theory is a framework for analyzing how individuals make choices that are interdependent often formulated in terms of strategies and outcomes it actually originated in economics and Mathematics where it focused on predicting behavior in competitive situations but it can be extended into biology where it's applied to understand how different behaviors can become evolutionary stable strategies or ESS and ESS is a strategy that if adopted by most of the population cannot be bettered by an alternative strategy effectively making it a trait that provides a fitness advantage without a specific environment within a specific environment now something we could talk about here is the hawk Dove game this is going to help us understand this right there's two strategies that compete for resources you have the so-called aggressive Hawk that fights to win at the potential cost of injury then you have the pacifist Dove that opts for sharing or Retreat to avoid conflict the best strategy depends on the value of the resource compared to the potential cost of conflict and so this Hawk Dove game represents pure competition between individuals however social influences apply in nature and it can result in four possible alternatives for competitors when dealing with strategic interactions and these four uh potential outcomes are shown here all right we have donor and recipient and the four possible things that you can have is altruism where the donor provides a benefit to the recipient at the cost of themselves you can also have cooperation both the donor and the recipient benefit by cooperating you can have spite where both the donor and recipient are negatively impacted or selfishness where the donor benefits while the recipient is negatively impacted so again game theory is very much a attempt to explain decisionmaking behavior the last thing we have before we move into the second objective is Inclusive fitness in evolutionary psychology Inclusive fitness is a measure of an organism's success in the population this is based on the number of offspring success in supporting The Offspring and the ability of those Offspring to support others and themselves so that is Inclusive fitness with that we're going to go ahead and move into objective two which is titled social perception and behavior social perception is the name social psychologists give to how we form Impressions about the characteristics of individuals and groups of people now we form impressions of others through observation of their behavior past experiences and personal beliefs and attitudes we also feel the need to be able to explain and understand the behavior of others which is a process we perform through attribution so let's get started with this section and really dive into social perception social perception is also referred to as social cognition and it provides the tools to make judgments and Impressions regarding other people now the judgments and Impressions include assessments of social roles relationships characteristics as well as attributions which are explanations for the causes of a person's actions there are three primary components of social perception we have the perceiver the Target and the situation the perceiver is influenced by experiences motives and emotional state past experiences affect our attitudes towards current and future experiences and it can lead to particular expectations of events our motives also influence what information we deem important and what we choose to ignore finally emotional state can also help us flavor out our interpretation of an event now the target this refers to the person about which the interpretation is made not knowledge of the target can include past experiences or even specific information that affect perception when little information is available though there is a need for greater observation and greater interpretation by the perceiver finally the situation is also very important in developing perception a given social context can determine what information is available to the perceiver now in this realm we also want to talk about implicit personality theory which states that people make assumptions about how different types of people their traits and their behavior are related certain cognitive biases really impact our perception of others so let's go over a list of some cognitive biases and psychological concepts related to social perception and interaction and Define them properly we first have the Primacy effect which refers and refers to and describes the tendency to remember information from the beginning of a sequence better than the information that's presented later and so in social interactions this refers to the phenomena where first impressions are more influential than subsequent Impressions informing one's view of another person right we always say First Impressions matter and this is based off of this effect the recency effect this is in contrast that this is the tendency to remember the most recently presented information best in Social perception it refers to the impact of the latest information about a person being more influential than earlier data we can also talk about the halo effect this cognitive bias occurs when an observer's overall impression of a person influences their feelings and thoughts about that person's character so for example believing someone is generally good can lead to perceiving them as maybe being even more competent or kind or intelligent next is the just World hypothesis this is a belief that the world is fundamentally just leading individuals to rationalize an otherwise inexplicable Injustice as deserved by the victims it reflects a need to believe that everyone gets what they deserve it's like what a lot of people say like what comes around what goes around comes around and Karma's you know karma is the b word right so this kind of falls under this idea of the just World hypothesis there's also the self-serving bias which this bias involves attributing positive outcomes to one's own character but attributing negative outcomes to external factors it protects self-esteem in essentially by enabling individuals to see themselves in a favorable light regardless of their actions or or the outcomes now something else I want to discuss here is ingroup and outgroup bias ingroup bias this is the tendency for people to give preferential treatment to others when they perceive those individuals to be members of their own group and outgroup bias is characterized by a predisposition to treat people outside of One's group with suspicion or disdain and so it's often the counterart to the ingroup bias next all right we want to talk about attribution theory another aspect of cognition is explaining the behavior of others it is human nature to observe and try to understand why others act the way they do an attribution theory describes how individuals infer the causes of other people's behavior Fritz Haider one of the founding fathers of attribution theory divided the causes for attribution into two main categories dispositional or internal and situational or external dispositional or internal attributions are those that relate to the person whose behavior is being considered including their beliefs attitudes and personality characteristics situational or external attributions are those that relate to the feature of the surrounding such as threat money social norms and peer pressure in order to understand the behavior of others a variety of cues are used these include consistency cues consensus cues and distinctiveness cues consistency cues these refer to the behavior of a person over time the more regular the behavior the more we associate that behavior with the motives of the person consensus cues relate to the extent to which a person's Behavior differs from others if a person deviates from like socially accepted Behavior we're more likely to form a dispositional attribution about that person's Behavior now distinctiveness cues this refers to the extent to which a person engages in similar Behavior across a series of scenarios so if a person's Behavior varies in different scenarios we're more likely to form a situational attribution to explain it now here we want to really talk about the correspondent interference Theory this concept takes this one step further by focusing on the intention of the other's Behavior so when an individual unexpectedly performs a behavior that helps or hurts us we tend to explain the behavior by dispositional attribution and so we may correlate these unexpected actions with the person's personality now the fundamental attribution error this is a cognitive bias that causes us to overemphasize person personal characteristics and then underestimate situational factors when we're evaluating others actions so for instance if a colleague fails to complete a project on time we might be very quick to label them as irresponsible or lazy rather than considering external circumstances like illnesses or overwhelming workload this bias also applies in the positive situation if someone stops to help someone across the street we might think that they're just inherently really good person overlooking the possibility that they might know the person or they have another situational motive and so this tendency occurs really because making judgment because we're making judgments based on personal traits and that is simpler than analyzing the potential complexities of a situation now attribute substitution this is a cognitive process where individuals replace a complex judgment with a simple one often without realizing this happens when faced with complex decisions or questions leading to intuitive but potentially incorrect responses so a common example in Psychology involves this problem right where a pencil and an eraser together cost A110 and the pencil is $1 more than the Eraser many quickly answer that the Eraser cost 10 cents which is instinctive but it's an incorrect response and it results from simplifying and misapplying the given information attribute substitution also occurs in visual perception such as with optical illusions where the apparent size or color of an object can be misleading due to contextual clues or cues experienced painters and photographers they are less prone to these errors because they're more attuned to interpreting these two-dimensional spaces accurately but this is something that gets a lot of people especially like images like this where you're asked you know is this box and this box which one's darker and they just happen to actually be both the same color right but that's sometimes hard to interpret considering there are different colors surrounding that box and so this is an example of attribute substitution here now another important factor in attribution is culture right the type of culture an individual belongs to that plays a really big role in the types of attributions that individuals make individualist cultures like American cultures or some European cultures they put a high value on the individual on personal goals and on Independence but then you you can have um collectivist cultures like a lot of Asian and African societies that really view individuals as members of a group and they Place high value on Conformity and interdependence and so those are really important things to consider all right because they all play a important factor in attribution and with that we can go ahead and move into our third and final objective titled stereotypes prejudice and discrimination while stereotypes prejudice and discrimination are terms that are related and often used together they are very different concepts stereotypes are viewed as as cognitive Prejudice as effective and discrimination as behavioral stereotypes refer to the expectations Impressions and opinions about the characteristics of members of a group Prejudice reflects the overall attitude and emotional response to a group and discrimination refers to differences in actions toward different groups now we're going to dive into each first starting with stereotypes in psychological sense the purpose of a stereotype is to make sense of a complex World by categorizing information in order to better identify items predict their behavior and react in the context of Sociology stereotypes occur when attitudes and impressions are based on limited and superficial information about a person or a group of individuals the content of stereotypes are the attributes that people believe Define and characterize a group now The Stereotype content model it attempts to classify stereotypes with respect to a hypothetical ingroup using two Dimensions warmth and competence warm groups are those that are not in direct competition with the ingroup for resources competent groups are those that have high status within Society the four possible combinations of warmth and competence is what is shown here and these are associated with distinct emotions so what you see here is we have the uh paternalistic stereotype these are um those in which the group is looked down upon as inferior dismissed or ignored then we have the contemptuous stereotype forgive me if I mispronounce that these are which the group is viewed with resentment annoyance or anger then there's the envious stereotype this is where those in which the group is viewed with jealousy bitterness or distrust and then we have admiration stereotypes which are those in which the group is viewed with pride and other positive feelings now stereotypes can lead to expectations of certain groups of individuals and these expectations can create conditions that then cause the expectations to become a reality this is a process referred to as the self-fulfilling prophecy in some social situations a person might be concerned or anxious about about inadvertently confirming a negative stereotype about their social group this concern is known as a stereotype threat now unfortunately the feeling of a stereotype threat often results in a self-fulfilling prophecy people experiencing stereotype threat often exhibit stress arousal and are preoccupied by monitoring their own performance on a task and these dist distractions can then lead to reduced performance on the task now an example of a well-studied group that often experiences stereotype threat is women in mathematics and there was a study actually this is a really interesting study it showed that women taking a math exam scored lower when the only other test takers in the room were men the researchers concluded that when taking an exam with only men present the female test subjects were more concerned about stereotype threat and performed more poorly as a result of their concerns and I think that's that speaks a lot and is is a really important thing to consider moving forward next we want to discuss Prejudice from a social psychology approach Prejudice is defined as an irrational positive or negative attitude towards a person group or thing prior to an actual experience with that entity now Prejudice can form in response to dissimilarities among groups race races ethnicities or even environments and while racial and ethnic prejudice against individuals are at the Forefront of most people's minds Prejudice exists against objects and places as well Prejudice may be kept internally or shared with a larger Community um propaganda is a common way by which large organizations and political groups attempt to create Prejudice in others and something that's important to talk about is that there are a variety of social factors that influence Prejudice three of the most important are power Prestige and class power refers to the ability of people or groups to achieve their goals despite any obstacles and their ability to control resources Prestige is the level of respect shown to a person by others class refers to socioeconomic status social inequality or unequal distribution of power resources money or Prestige this can result in the groups in into groupings of halves and have kns have kns may develop a negative attitude towards halves based on Envy um and halves May develop a negative attitude towards have knots as a defense mechanism to justify the fact that they have more but again remember three social factors that influence PR Prejudice our power Prestige and class now this also leads into an important discussion on ethnocentrism this refers to the practice of making judgments about other cultures based on the values and beliefs of your own culture especially when it comes to language customs and religion this can manifest really in different ways from innocent displays of ethnic Pride to violent sup like Supremacy groups Supremacy groups I'm sorry I don't know why I mispronounced that Supremacy groups and because of this ethnocentrism is closely tied um to the previously discussed concepts of in versus outgroup biases and group conflict now in order to avoid this the concept of cultural relativism has been employed by so uh sociologists to compare and understand other cultures this is the recognition that social groups and culture should be studied on their own terms and so when you're studying a culture social relativism acknowledges that the values mores and rules make sense in the context of that culture and they should not be judged against the Norms of another culture and so in other words while one group may follow a given set of rules cultural relativism holds that those rules should not be perceived as Superior or inferior to those of other other cultures they're just different and the last thing that I want to talk about today before we end this lecture is discrimination discrimination occurs when Prejudice causes individuals of a particular group to be treated differently from others and while Prejudice is is an attitude discrimination this is a behavior discrimination can be either individual or institutional individual discrimination refers to one person discriminating against a particular person or group whereas institutional discrimination refers to the discrimination against a particular person or group by an entire institution individual discrimination is considered to be conscious and obvious and can be eliminated by removing the person who is displaying the behavior institutional is a little more challenging sociologists have begun to stress the need to focus on instit U discrimination because this is discrimination that's built into the structure of society so it's far harder to fix and resolve and because it is part of society it is perpetrated by simply maintaining the status quo and so with that we have completed the last objective for this chapter and we are done I hope this lecture was helpful I hope you found it interesting let me know if you have any questions comments concerns down below other than than that good luck happy studying and have a beautiful beautiful day future doctors