Prosocial Behaviour and Aggression - TCE Psychology (Tasmania)
“Explain prosocial behaviour and aggression, including the factors that influence each.”
You need to explain prosocial behaviour (helping and altruism) and the factors that promote or block it, especially the bystander effect, and explain aggression through biological, social-learning and frustration-aggression accounts, using named studies for each.
What this dot point is asking
Social psychology covers not only how others influence us but also two contrasting outcomes of social life: helping and harming. This dot point asks you to explain both prosocial behaviour and aggression and the conditions that shape them.
Prosocial behaviour and altruism
Prosocial behaviour is any voluntary action intended to help another person. Altruism is a special case: helping with no expectation of reward, sometimes at a cost to the helper. Helping is encouraged by empathy, similarity to the person in need, a good mood, and seeing others model helping. It is discouraged by ambiguity about whether help is needed, time pressure and the cost of helping.
Helping behaviour carried out for the benefit of another person with no expectation of personal reward, and sometimes at a cost to the helper, distinguishing it from helping motivated by self-interest.
The bystander effect
The bystander effect is the finding that the more people present, the less likely any one of them is to help. It is explained by diffusion of responsibility (each person assumes someone else will act) and pluralistic ignorance (people read others' inaction as a sign that no help is needed). Darley and Latane (1968), prompted by the Kitty Genovese case, staged emergencies and found that participants who believed they were the only witness helped fastest and most often, while those who thought others were present helped less and more slowly. They proposed a five-step decision model: notice the event, interpret it as an emergency, take responsibility, decide how to help, and then act.
Counter to intuition, a victim is often less likely to receive help in a crowd than with a single witness. Responsibility is diffused across the group, so each individual feels less personally obliged to act. Naming diffusion of responsibility is essential to a full answer on helping.
Explaining aggression
Aggression is behaviour intended to harm another who is motivated to avoid it. The major explanations are:
- Biological: genetic predisposition, hormones such as testosterone, and brain structures such as the amygdala contribute to aggressive responses.
- Social learning (Bandura): aggression is learned by observing and imitating models who are rewarded for it. The Bobo doll study showed children imitated an adult's aggression toward an inflatable doll, and imitated more when the model was rewarded (vicarious reinforcement).
- Frustration-aggression hypothesis (Dollard and colleagues): frustration, the blocking of a goal, creates a drive toward aggression. The later reformulation by Berkowitz added that frustration produces readiness to aggress, which is more likely to become aggression when aggressive cues (such as weapons) are present.
The proposal that frustration (being blocked from a goal) generates an aggressive drive, and that aggression is in turn usually a response to some frustration. Berkowitz revised it to say frustration creates readiness, not certainty, of aggression.
Reducing aggression and increasing helping
Aggression can be reduced by removing aggressive cues, modelling non-aggressive responses, and teaching emotional regulation. Helping can be increased by reducing ambiguity, naming a specific person to help, and modelling prosocial behaviour, which is why bystander-intervention training teaches people to assign responsibility explicitly.
Read the scenario
A person collapses in a busy shopping centre and many shoppers walk past. The task is to explain why and to suggest how the victim could get help faster.
Diagnose the mechanism
This is the bystander effect, driven by diffusion of responsibility: with many shoppers present, each one assumes someone else will help, so no individual feels personally obliged to act. Pluralistic ignorance reinforces it as people copy the crowd's inaction.
Apply the remedy
The victim could overcome it by pointing to one specific person and asking them directly for help. Naming an individual removes the diffusion by assigning clear, personal responsibility, which is exactly what bystander-intervention training teaches.
Aggression is often explained as simply "human nature", but the evidence shows it is also learned and situational. Bandura's modelling research and the frustration-aggression hypothesis demonstrate that environment and circumstances strongly shape aggression. A balanced answer combines biological, learned and situational factors rather than relying on instinct alone.
Putting it together
For helping, explain the influences on prosocial behaviour and use Darley and Latane to show how group size reduces helping through diffusion of responsibility. For aggression, contrast the biological, social-learning and frustration-aggression accounts with their named evidence. Showing that both helping and harming depend on the situation, not just the individual, connects this dot point to the wider lesson of social psychology that the situation has power.
Exam-style questions
Questions in the style of TASC exam questions on this dot point, each with a worked answer. They are written by ExamExplained unless tagged "Past paper"; the year shows the paper a question is modelled on.
Practice6 marksDescribe the bystander effect and explain two factors that reduce the likelihood of an individual helping in an emergency, referring to Darley and Latane (1968).Show worked answer →
This is a knowledge item marked on Criterion 3. Define the effect, then give two factors with the study.
- The bystander effect
- The bystander effect is the finding that the more people are present at an emergency, the less likely any one of them is to help. Darley and Latane (1968), prompted by the Kitty Genovese case, staged emergencies and found participants who believed they were the only witness helped fastest and most often, while those who thought others were present helped less and more slowly.
- Factor 1: diffusion of responsibility
- With more witnesses present, each person assumes someone else will act, so personal responsibility is spread thin and no one helps.
- Factor 2: pluralistic ignorance
- People read others' inaction as a sign that no help is needed, so the calm of the crowd suppresses helping.
Markers reward a clear definition, the study, and two correctly explained mechanisms.
Practice10 marksDiscuss the explanations of aggression, referring to biological, social-learning and frustration-aggression accounts with evidence. Evaluate which account best explains a real incident of school-yard aggression.Show worked answer →
This is an extended-response item marked on Criteria 3 and 7. Set out the three accounts with evidence, then apply and evaluate.
- Biological
- Aggression is linked to genetic predisposition, hormones such as testosterone and brain structures such as the amygdala. This explains stable individual differences but not why aggression varies so much by situation.
- Social learning (Bandura)
- Aggression is learned by observing and imitating rewarded models. The Bobo doll study showed children imitated an adult's aggression toward an inflatable doll, and more so when the model was rewarded (vicarious reinforcement).
- Frustration-aggression (Dollard; Berkowitz)
- Blocking a goal creates a drive toward aggression; Berkowitz added that frustration creates readiness that becomes aggression more readily when aggressive cues are present.
- Application and evaluation
- For a school-yard incident, social learning often fits best because peers model and reward aggression, but a full answer notes frustration (a blocked goal) as a trigger and biological differences as a predisposition. The strongest judgement is that the accounts combine: situation and learning shape when a biological capacity for aggression is expressed.
Markers reward all three accounts with evidence, genuine application to the incident, and an integrated rather than one-sided judgement.