Understanding Prosocial Behavior

Prosocial Behavior

• Encompasses interactions between two or more individuals.
• Includes positive actions like smiling, seeking advice, or group engagement.
• Classified as behavior intended to benefit others, groups, or society.
• Intent and underlying motive are key in determining if a behavior is prosocial.
• True prosocial behavior is deliberate.

Factors Influencing Prosocial Behavior

• Situational factors
• Social norms
• Personal factors

Situational Factors

• Influenced by specific situations:
  • Noticing the situation
  • Interpreting the need for help
  • Taking responsibility for intervention

Social Norms

• Learned through observation within a culture or society.
• Giving help is right whereas being selfish is wrong.
• Two key norms influencing helping behavior:
  • Reciprocity norm
  • Social responsibility norm

Reciprocity Norm

• Based on the principle of giving what one receives or expects to receive.
• Driven by mutual exchange.

Social Responsibility Norm

• Dictates helping those in need as a duty, with no expectation of return.
• Stems from community and societal membership.

Personal Factors

• Empathy
• Mood
• Competence.

Empathy

• Increases likelihood of helping those in need.
• Understanding and identifying with another person's feelings or difficulties.
• Empathetic people feel distress and concern for others, imagining their needs.

Mood

• A good mood increases helping.
• A bad mood can either increase or decrease the likelihood of helping behavior.

Competence

• Having required skills to help increases likelihood of helping.
• The perceived ability to assist can influence whether help is offered and its type.

Antisocial Behavior

• Any behavior disruptive, harmful to others, or society's functioning.
• Involves actions breaking laws, rules, or social norms.

Reluctance to Help

• Psychologists are interested to discover factors that prevent someone from helping.
• Two factors explain why people are reluctant to help:
  • Diffusion of responsibility
  • Audience inhibition

Diffusion of Responsibility

• Belief that responsibility is divided among those present in a situation needing help.
• Individuals feel less personally responsible when others are present.

Audience Inhibition

• Hesitation to help due to fear of embarrassment or appearing foolish in front of others.
• Bystanders remain calm to gauge others' reactions, potentially decreasing helping behavior.

Forensic Psychology

• Application of psychological principles within the legal system.

Areas of Involvement

• Civil legal system:
  • Child custody
  • Discrimination
  • Sexual harassment cases
  • Worker’s compensation
• Criminal legal system:
  • Psychological assessment of offenders and their criminal responsibility
  • Profiling offenders
  • Insanity defenses
  • Victim’s behavior
  • Human memory

Role of a Forensic Psychologist

• Conduct assessments
• Offer expert testimony
• Research offender behavior to inform legal decisions and treatment

Criminal Profiling

• Investigative technique used to narrow down potential suspects.
• It does not provide offender identity, but indicates likely characteristics.
• Based on:
  • Crime committed
  • Crime scene
  • Victims
  • Police reports
  • Autopsy reports.
• Personality is a crucial element in profiling.

Crime Scene Analysis

• Established by the FBI.

Six Steps of Crime Scene Analysis

• Profiling inputs
• Decision process models
• Crime assessment
• Criminal profile
• The investigation
• Apprehension

Profiling Inputs

• Collecting and assessing all evidence related to the case.

Decision Process Models

• Analyzing evidence to establish basic facts and patterns.

Crime Assessments

• Reconstructing the crime scene to determine event order and individual roles.

Criminal Profile

• Creating profile incorporating motives, physical qualities, behavior, and personality.

The Investigation

• Giving profile to investigators, reassessing it with new information, and making changes where necessary.

Apprehension

• Interviewing, investigating, and comparing suspect to the profile to obtain an arrest warrant.

Stalking

Types of Stalkers

• The rejected stalker
• The intimacy stalker
• The incompetent stalker
• The resentful stalker
• The predatory stalker

The Rejected Stalker

• Motivated by reconciliation or revenge after a relationship ends.
• Behavior can begin at the end of the relationship and is often linked to domestic violence.
• The behavior can continue because it helps the stalker feel close to the victim.
• Counselled on how to move on from an angry preoccupation with the past to the sadness of accepted loss.

The Intimacy Stalker

• Desires a relationship with the victim, fueled by loneliness and delusions.
• Oblivious to victim's feelings and views rejection as a positive response.
• Court-mandated psychiatric treatment may be required.

The Incompetent Stalker

• Seeks dates or contact due to loneliness or lust, targeting strangers/acquaintances.
• Indifferent to the victim's distress, lacks interpersonal skills, and may have low intelligence.
• Will usually quickly stop stalking if confronted with legal action or after mental health treatment and social skills training.

The Resentful Stalker

• Aims to scare the victim, feeling justified due to perceived mistreatment.
• Results from injustice or humiliation from a stranger or acquaintance.
• Confronted with legal sanctions early on.

The Predatory Stalker

• Stalks as part of a plan to assault the victim.
• Seeks power and control but conducts surveillance instead of harassment.
• Must be secured in a correctional or forensic setting due to potential for violence.

Intervention for Stalkers

• Treatment of underlying mental illness is the first priority in helping change stalking behaviour.
• Many stalkers have narrowed their daily activities to being entirely focused on the victim, so encouraging even limited social activities can be helpful.
• Programs developed to enhance empathy can also be useful.
• Managed individually to avoid mutual support networks, seeing them as individuals needing psychological help.

Facts About Stalkers

• Stalking laws enacted in Australia during the 1990s.
• 75% of victims are female (67% stalked by males).
• 84% of stalkers are male.
• The highest rate is stalking those aged 18-24 years experience the highest rate of stalking.
• 46% of victims experience one or more unwanted contacts per week.
• Stalking averages 6 months to 2 years.
• Cyberstalking involves technology to harass, including false accusations, identity theft, and threats.

Eyewitness Testimony

• Accounts given by people of an event they have witnessed.
• Testimony can be affected by psychological factors, impacting accuracy.

Factors Affecting Eyewitness Testimony

• Extreme witness stress
• Presence of weapons at the crime
• Racial disparity between the witness and the suspect.
• Brief viewing times at the line-up or during other identification procedures.
• Reconstruction of memory

How To Spot A Liar

• Previous research on lying behavior has focused on reading a liar’s intentions via their body language or from their face, such blushing cheeks, hand movements, nervous laughter or darting eyes.
• Research has been done into the words people are actually saying, rather than their observable behaviours, and have found several ways to out a liar through conversation.

Techniques to Identify Liars

• Use open questions: Forces liar to become trapped in web of deceit.
• Employ the element of surprise: Increases liar's cognitive load.
• Watch for small, verifiable details: Check for facts in what they’re saying.
• Observe changes in confidence: Liar may clam up if losing control.

Insanity Defenses

• Allows mentally ill individuals to avoid imprisonment by not being able to distinguish right from wrong.
• Rarely raised and even more rarely successful.
• Used in only about 1% of cases in the U.S., and is successful less than 25% of the time
• A successful defence requires severe mental illness that affects perception or control like psychosis or PTSD.
• Confined in mental health institutions until judged no longer legally insane
• Most defendants pleading insanity have a history of mental illness.
• Experts usually agree on defendants' legal insanity.

Organized and Disorganized Crime

• Classification to assist profiling based on crime scene, and personal characteristics.

Organized Criminal

• Confident, exercises control, appears sane but is irrational and antisocial.

Disorganized Criminal

• Lacks confidence and control, tends to have lower intelligence.

Crime Scene Characteristics

Organized

• Targeted victim selection
• Planned Attack
• High sophistication, little evidence left
• Planned weapons/props
• Torture, prolonged physical assault
• Sexual assault usually before death
• Hidden victim's body
• Trophy or souvenir taken
• Carefully selected, isolated location

Disorganized

• Random victim selection
• Unplanned, spontaneous Attack
• Low sophistication, chaotic, evidence left
• Unplanned weapons found at scene
• Quick physical assault
• Sexual assault usually after death
• Exposed and Disfigured victim's body
• Sometimes souvenirs taken
• Location part of victim’s routine

Criminal Characteristics

Organized

• Average/above average intelligence
• Skilled/specialist employment
• Confident social competence
• High self-esteem
• Inconsistent/lax childhood discipline
• Older child in family
• Stable paternal employment
• Residence is away from crime scene
• Lives with partner
• Follows crime story in media

Disorganized

• Low intelligence
• Menial/unemployed
• Lonely social competence
• Low self-esteem
• Harsh childhood discipline
• Younger child in family
• Unstable paternal employment
• Residence is close to crime scene
• Lives alone/with parents
• Does not follow crime story in media

Psychopaths and Murderers

• Psychopaths are about 1% of the population.
• Appear normal but are dishonest, undependable, and reckless.

Tools to measure psychopathy

• Psychopathy Checklist Revised (PCL-R).
• Devised by psychologist Robert Hare in 2003.
• Hare's model argues that psychopathy is a personality disorder with antisocial tendencies, and has four dimensions:\
  • Interpersonal
  • Affective
  • Lifestyle
  • Anti-social

Characteristics of a Psychopath

• Consistent psychopathic tendencies (PCL-R)
• Antisocial behavior
• No prosocial behavior

Mass Murderers

• Kills several people in a single event.
• Those responsible for killing are mass murderers.

Serial Killers

• Kills on three or more separate occasions.
• 'Cooling off' period between killings.

Common Characteristics of Australian Serial Killers

• Single Caucasian males with troubled childhood
• Middle-class upbringing
• Aged twenties/thirties
• Mental health issues from a young age

Types of Serial Killers

• Visionary
• Mission-oriented
• Hedonistic
• Power/control oriented

Visionary

• Believes visions or voices guide their actions.

Mission-Oriented

• Believes removing a group from society is necessary.

Hedonistic

• Derives pleasure or gain from killing.

Power/Control Oriented

• Gains sexual satisfaction from controlling others.