ALTRUISM/CONFLICT
& PEACEMAKING
Chapter 14 -- Pg. 685-692
Focus Questions
1. When are we most – and least – likely to
help?
2. How do social traps and mirror-image
perceptions fuel social conflict?
3. How can we transform feelings of prejudice,
aggression, and conflict into attitudes that
promote peace?
Altruism
The unselfish
regard for the
welfare of
others
Bystander Intervention
•We will help only if
•People in a group of
the situation enables
strangers are more
us first to notice the
likely than solitary
incident.
individuals to keep
•Then to interpret it as their eyes focused on
what they themselves
an emergency.
are doing or where
•And finally to assume
they are going!
responsibility for
helping.
Continued…
•Bystander effect: •When alone with the
person in need, 40%
any particular
helped.
bystander was
•When in the presence
less likely to give of five other
bystanders, 20%
aid with other
helped.
bystanders
present.
The Norms for Helping
• Why do we help?
• Social exchange theory: the
theory that our social behavior
is an exchange process, the aim
of which is to maximize
benefits and minimize costs.
• Reciprocity norm: an
expectation that people will
help, not hurt, those who have
helped them.
• Social-responsibility norm: an
expectation that people will
help those dependent upon
them.
Conflict and Peacemaking
•- conflict - a perceived • - many real life
situations pit out
incompatibility of
actions, goals, or ideas individual interests
against out communal
•- social traps - a
well-being
situation in which the • - social traps challenge
conflicting parties, by
us to find ways of
reconciling our right to
each rationally
pursue our personal
pursuing their selfwell-being with our
interest, become
responsibility for the
caught in mutually
well-being of all
destructive behavior
Enemy Perceptions
• The mirror image perception
• As we see the person as
untrustworthy and evil
• They will see us the same
way
• This concept “mirror’s” our
perceptions of one another
• This mirror image perception
often feeds a vicious cycle of
hostity
Contact
• When contacting two conflicting parties of equal
status by putting them together typically helps work
out the problem
• But with interracial conflicts their attitudes have
moved into closer alignment
• When there is a conflict between a heterosexual
person and a homosexual the outcome of the conflict
has a greater chance of being good if the
heterosexual person has a family member that is
homosexual
Cooperation
• Muzafer Sherif
• Used isolation and competition to make strangers into enemies
• Then used shared predicaments and goals to reconcile the enemies and
make them friends.
• The Conflict was reduced not by just mere contact but by cooperative
contact
• Superordinate goals- shared goals that override differences among perople
and require their cooperation
• “Common Values” are what we need !!!
Communication
• Mediators help each party to voice their viewpoints
and to understand the other’s side.
• Mediators aim to replace a win-lose orientation with
a cooperative win-win orientation.
•Orange Conflict
Conciliation
• Charles Osgood created a strategy of Graduated and Reciprocated
Initiatives in tension-reduction, also known as GRIT, a strategy
designed to decrease international tension.
• When communication has been non existent in a conflict a small
conciliatory gesture-a smile, a word of apology may work wonders
• Conciliation allows both parties to begin edging down the tension
ladder to a safer rung where communication and mutual
understanding can begin.