Social Relations - Conflict, Cooperation, and Attraction
You began exploring social relations through a negative lens that honed in on ingroups, outgroups, and injustices. When combined with anger, these negative attitudes can lead to discrimination and aggression. Then, you had the opportunity to explore positive social relations, including cooperation and altruism. Finally, you delved into how these positive relations can help you develop a rich life in which you cultivate attraction for family, friends, and even romantic partners.
Extend Your Learning
In this module, you learned inspiring examples of altruism, but you also learned the factors that may prevent people from helping in certain situations. Specifically, you explored the bystander effect. Take a moment to read about an extreme case of the bystander effect that was featured in the news, and prompted social psychologists to do further research on factors that prompt people to take action or not.
Kitty Genovese
In 1964, Kitty Genovese was attacked outside of her apartment building at 3:00 a.m. According to newspaper reports, during the nearly hour-long incident, Genovese was screaming, and more than thirty-eight neighbors heard someone in distress but did not intervene or call the police. Genovese died from multiple stab wounds. In the aftermath, questions raged, focusing on the seemingly callous nature of Genovese's neighbors.
Why do you think Genovese's neighbors were indifferent to her screaming? Do you think the bystander effect had anything to do with the fact that Genovese did not survive the attack? Why or why not?