Aggression, Altruism and Attachment (AAMC 8C)
Content category 8C covers how people interact: the structures that organize interaction (statuses, roles, groups, organizations), how we present ourselves, and the social behaviors that bring us together or drive us apart. Statuses, roles, groups, networks, Goffman's dramaturgy and the basics of attraction are on the social interaction and social thinking page. This page covers what is missing there: formal organizations and bureaucracy, impression management strategies, attachment, social support, the causes of aggression, why people help, and the evolutionary view of social behavior in humans and other animals.
Formal Organizations and Bureaucracy
A formal organization is a large secondary group deliberately structured to achieve specific goals efficiently, such as a hospital, a university or a corporation. Organizations persist even as individual members come and go.
Max Weber described the ideal bureaucracy (an idealized model, not a description of any real organization) as having:
- A clear division of labor with specialized roles.
- A hierarchy of authority, with each position supervised by a higher one.
- Written rules and regulations applied consistently.
- Impersonality: decisions based on rules, not personal relationships.
- Employment and promotion based on technical qualifications (merit).
Bureaucracies are efficient and predictable, but they have known problems. Robert Michels' iron law of oligarchy holds that organizations, even democratic ones, tend to become ruled by a small elite. McDonaldization (George Ritzer) describes how the principles of fast-food restaurants, efficiency, calculability, predictability and control through technology, spread through society, sometimes producing irrational outcomes such as dehumanizing service. Other dysfunctions include bureaucratic ritualism (following rules even when they defeat the goal) and goal displacement.
Self-Presentation and Impression Management
Impression management is the effort to control how others see us. Goffman's dramaturgical approach compares this to acting, with a front stage (where we perform for an audience) and a back stage (where we relax the performance). Common tactics:
- Self-disclosure
- Sharing personal information to build trust and closeness; usually reciprocated and gradual.
- Managing appearances
- Using props, clothing and settings to convey an image (a white coat, a diploma on the wall).
- Ingratiation
- Flattery or conformity to win approval.
- Aligning actions
- Giving excuses or justifications for questionable behavior to keep one's image intact.
- Alter-casting
- Imposing an identity on another person to steer the interaction (you are such a generous person, so...).
- Self-handicapping
- Creating an obstacle to success in advance (not studying) so that failure can be blamed on the obstacle instead of ability.
People also differ in self-monitoring. High self-monitors adjust their behavior closely to fit each situation; low self-monitors act more consistently with their inner attitudes across situations.
Attachment
Attachment is the emotional bond between an infant and a caregiver. In Harry Harlow's studies, infant rhesus monkeys raised with two artificial mothers, one made of wire that provided milk and one covered in soft cloth that did not, spent most of their time clinging to the cloth mother and ran to it when frightened. This showed that contact comfort, not just feeding, drives attachment, contrary to a purely reinforcement-based account.
Mary Ainsworth's Strange Situation observes a 12- to 18-month-old during a sequence of separations from and reunions with the caregiver, with a stranger present at times.
| Style | Behavior at separation and reunion | Associated caregiving |
|---|---|---|
| Secure | Explores using the caregiver as a secure base; distressed when the caregiver leaves; comforted quickly on return | Sensitive and responsive |
| Avoidant | Little distress at separation; ignores or avoids the caregiver on return | Unresponsive or rejecting |
| Ambivalent (resistant) | Very distressed at separation; on return seeks contact but resists being comforted (clings then pushes away) | Inconsistent: sometimes responsive, sometimes not |
| Disorganized | Confused or contradictory behavior, such as approaching then freezing | Frightening or abusive caregiving; most concerning style |
Early attachment patterns are associated with later relationships and emotional regulation, though the link is moderate rather than fixed. Adults show parallel attachment patterns in romantic relationships.
Social Support
Social support is the perception or experience of being cared for and part of a supportive network. It is one of the most consistent predictors of better physical and mental health and lower mortality.
- Emotional support
- Listening, empathy, reassurance.
- Esteem support
- Expressions of confidence in a person's abilities.
- Informational support
- Advice, suggestions and useful information.
- Tangible (instrumental) support
- Concrete help: money, transportation, meals.
- Network support
- A sense of belonging to a group with shared interests.
Social support may help through a buffering effect (reducing the impact of stressors) and by encouraging healthy behaviors. Social isolation is associated with health risks comparable in size to some well-known behavioral risk factors.
Aggression
Aggression is behavior intended to harm another person who wants to avoid the harm. Hostile aggression is driven by anger and aims at harm itself; instrumental aggression uses harm as a means to another goal (a robbery). Aggression can be physical, verbal or relational (damaging someone's relationships or reputation).
| Level | Factor |
|---|---|
| Biological | The amygdala (threat response) and weak prefrontal control; higher testosterone; low serotonin activity is linked to impulsive aggression; alcohol reduces inhibition |
| Psychological | Frustration-aggression hypothesis: being blocked from a goal increases the likelihood of aggression. A revised version adds that frustration produces anger, and aggressive cues in the environment (such as a weapon) make aggression more likely |
| Social learning | Bandura's Bobo doll studies: children imitate aggressive models, especially when the model is rewarded |
| Situational | Heat, crowding, noise, pain and provocation increase aggression |
| Cultural | Norms such as a culture of honor, in which insults must be answered, are associated with higher rates of certain kinds of violence |
Researchers want to know whether violent video games increase aggression. A correlational study finds that adolescents who play more violent games report more aggressive behavior. A lab experiment randomly assigns participants to play a violent or nonviolent game for 20 minutes and then measures how loud a noise blast they choose to give a provoking opponent.
The correlational study cannot rule out reverse causation (aggressive teens may prefer violent games) or third variables. The experiment supports a causal short-term effect, but its outcome measure (a noise blast) is an operationalization of aggression whose link to real-world violence is debated. That is a question of external validity. Expect MCAT questions that ask you to name one strength and one limitation of each design.
Helping and Altruism
Prosocial behavior is any action that benefits others. Altruism is helping motivated by concern for others, at a cost to oneself, without expectation of reward. Whether pure altruism exists is debated.
| Explanation | Claim |
|---|---|
| Empathy-altruism hypothesis (Batson) | Feeling empathy for a person in need produces genuinely altruistic motivation; high-empathy people help even when escaping the situation is easy |
| Negative-state relief / egoistic models | People help to reduce their own distress or to gain rewards (praise, self-esteem), so helping is ultimately self-interested |
| Social exchange theory | People weigh costs and benefits of helping, as in other exchanges |
| Reciprocity norm | We help those who have helped us |
| Social responsibility norm | We help those who depend on us, such as children |
Situational factors (the bystander effect and diffusion of responsibility, time pressure, ambiguity) often predict helping better than personality does. In one well-known study, seminary students in a hurry were much less likely to stop for a person in distress, even when on their way to give a talk about helping strangers.
Evolution and Social Behavior
Evolutionary explanations ask how a social behavior affects an individual's survival and reproduction, including through relatives.
- Kin selection and inclusive fitness
- Helping relatives can spread one's own genes, because relatives share genes. Inclusive fitness counts an individual's own offspring plus the effect of their behavior on relatives' reproduction. Hamilton's rule says helping is favored when the benefit to the recipient times the genetic relatedness exceeds the cost to the helper (rB > C).
- Reciprocal altruism
- Helping non-relatives can be favored when the favor is likely to be returned, as in vampire bats sharing blood meals with roost-mates that previously shared with them. It requires repeated interaction and the ability to recognize cheaters.
- Game theory
- Models decisions whose outcomes depend on others' choices. In the prisoner's dilemma, each player does better individually by defecting, but both do better if both cooperate. In repeated games, a tit-for-tat strategy (cooperate first, then copy the partner's last move) performs well and helps explain how cooperation can evolve.
- Foraging behavior
- Strategies for finding food that balance energy gained against energy spent and risk. Group foraging can improve food finding and predator detection but increases competition.
| System | Description |
|---|---|
| Monogamy | One male and one female form an exclusive bond; common when both parents are needed to raise offspring |
| Polygyny | One male mates with multiple females; the most common system in mammals |
| Polyandry | One female mates with multiple males; rare |
| Promiscuity | Both sexes mate with multiple partners without lasting bonds |
Mate choice (intersexual selection) is the selection of partners based on traits that signal genetic quality or resources, such as the peacock's tail. In many species, the sex that invests more in offspring is choosier. Applied to humans, these ideas are hypotheses that must be tested against strong cultural influences on partner preferences.
Worked MCQs
5 MCQs in the style of the Psych/Soc section, several built around a study design.
Q1. In the Strange Situation, an infant shows little distress when the mother leaves and turns away from her when she returns. This pattern is classified as:
Little distress at separation combined with avoiding the caregiver at reunion defines avoidant attachment. Securely attached infants are typically distressed at separation and comforted on reunion; ambivalent infants are very distressed and resist comfort.
Q2. A student goes to a party the night before an exam, telling friends that if he does poorly it will be because he was tired. This strategy is:
Creating an obstacle in advance so that failure can be attributed to the obstacle rather than lack of ability is self-handicapping. It protects self-image at the cost of performance.
Q3. Harlow's finding that infant monkeys preferred a soft cloth mother that gave no food over a wire mother that did best supports which conclusion?
Because the monkeys spent most of their time with, and sought comfort from, the cloth mother that provided no food, attachment cannot be explained by food reinforcement alone. Physical comfort was the key factor.
Q4. A worker bee that never reproduces but defends the hive, which contains her sisters, illustrates:
Helping close relatives reproduce passes on shared genes, increasing the helper's inclusive fitness. This is kin selection. Reciprocal altruism involves helping non-relatives who are likely to return the favor.
Q5. Researchers randomly assign participants to play a violent or nonviolent video game and then measure how intense a noise blast they give to an opponent. Which is the most significant limitation of this design?
Random assignment allows causal conclusions about the short-term effect in the lab, so the main concern is external validity: whether a noise blast represents real-world aggression. The nonviolent game serves as the control condition.
Quick Recap
- Weber's bureaucracy: division of labor, hierarchy, written rules, impersonality, merit. Iron law of oligarchy; McDonaldization.
- Impression management: self-disclosure, managing appearances, ingratiation, aligning actions, alter-casting, self-handicapping.
- Harlow: contact comfort drives attachment. Ainsworth: secure, avoidant, ambivalent, disorganized.
- Social support: emotional, esteem, informational, tangible, network; buffers stress.
- Aggression: hostile vs instrumental; amygdala, testosterone, low serotonin; frustration-aggression; social learning; heat and crowding.
- Correlational media studies cannot show causation; lab experiments raise external validity questions.
- Empathy-altruism vs egoistic helping; reciprocity and social responsibility norms; situations strongly affect helping.
- Kin selection and inclusive fitness (rB > C), reciprocal altruism, prisoner's dilemma and tit-for-tat; mating systems and mate choice.