PSYC20009 Chap.8 Attitudes, Relationships, Helping and Harm
Attitudes, Relationships, Helping and Harm
The later social-psychology lectures cover attitudes and behaviour, relationships, and helping or harming. The official examinable-content notice includes all lecture material and identifies the textbook portions required for those lectures. The available files establish those boundaries more fully than they preserve the detailed slides, so this chapter organises scientific reasoning across the topics.
An attitude is an evaluation and should not be silently substituted for an intention or observed behaviour. Relationship evidence may concern selection, similarity, interaction processes or later outcomes, and a cross-sectional association cannot choose causal direction by itself. Helping and harmful action can be explained at person, dyad, group or situational levels.
A broad disposition may raise the probability of action, while a context can change opportunities, norms or incentives. The study decision is always to match the measured construct, the comparison and the claimed scope, then return to the named lecture and reading material for the subject-specific theories and studies.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Attitudes as evaluations rather than observed actions
- 02
Intentions and behaviour as related but distinct outcomes
- 03
Situational opportunities and constraints on action
- 04
Relationship similarity and alternative explanations
- 05
Personality links with relationship dynamics
- 06
Selection, convergence and shared-context accounts
- 07
Helping and harmful behaviour at several levels of analysis
- 08
Norms, identity and relationship context
- 09
Construct and causal validity in later social topics
- 10
Specified lecture and textbook boundaries for revision
Worked example · free
Bound a campaign claim about helping
- 1Reported approval supports a change in measured evaluation, not proof that every person's deeper attitude changed.
- 1Observed helping supports behavioural change in the studied context and should not be replaced by intention language.
- 1The stronger rise in discussing groups suggests a conditional social process, while the exact mechanism remains open.
Key terms
- Attitude
- An evaluation of an object, person, issue or behaviour that is conceptually distinct from intention and action.
- Behavioural intention
- A stated plan or readiness to act, which may relate to behaviour without being the behaviour itself.
- Observed behaviour
- An action recorded in a defined context rather than inferred solely from a person's evaluation or intention.
- Assortative selection
- A process in which people form relationships with others who already resemble them on relevant characteristics.
- Relationship dynamics
- Recurring interaction patterns between partners that can connect personal tendencies to relationship outcomes.
- Prosocial behaviour
- Action intended to benefit another person or group, studied with attention to actor, context and opportunity.
- Causal direction
- The proposed ordering of influence between variables, which a cross-sectional association cannot determine by itself.
Attitudes, Relationships, Helping and Harm FAQ
Is an attitude the same as behaviour?
No. An attitude is an evaluation, whereas behaviour is an observed act. Intentions form another distinct layer, and contextual opportunity can affect whether evaluation becomes action.
Why can relationship similarity occur?
People may select similar partners, shared contexts may produce similarity or partners may converge. A single observation of similar scores cannot determine which process occurred.
How should helping be explained?
Identify the actor, target, opportunity, norm and social context. A personal tendency and a situational cue can each matter, and their effects may depend on one another.
Which materials should guide detailed revision?
Use every later lecture's slides and recording together with the textbook pages named in the examinable-content notice. The available guide organises inference but does not replace missing lecture detail.
What makes an integrated answer strong?
A strong answer labels the measured construct, states the observed relation, names a plausible process and preserves unresolved causal direction and scope where the design requires restraint.
Exam move
For each later lecture, make a four-column sheet for construct, closest confusable concept, evidence pattern and boundary condition. Use the designated textbook pages to supply the theories and studies that belong to that lecture. Practise converting broad claims into measurable comparisons: attitude versus action, similarity versus selection, and disposition versus opportunity.
When an option uses a causal verb, ask what was manipulated, what alternatives were controlled and whether temporal order is known. Keep additional debate readings separate from final-exam scope. Where detailed teaching material is missing from your notes, return to Canvas rather than filling the gap with a generic theory from memory.
Use a three-stage chain for integrated scenarios: evaluation or perception, intention or decision, then observable action. Insert one contextual constraint between each stage and ask whether it weakens prediction or changes the likely process. For relationship similarity, draw separate arrows for initial selection, shared environment and convergence over time; label the data that would distinguish them.
For helping or harm, write one person-focused hypothesis and one opportunity-focused hypothesis about the same event, then identify a comparison capable of testing each. Record missing lecture detail as an explicit retrieval task with its source location rather than replacing it with remembered material from another subject.
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