#Prosocial Behavior

[themontessoriacademyofarlington]

Early Childhood - Collaborative Learning

This Early Childhood student is very focused, helping another student by putting on her sock. This seemingly simple task offers so many learning opportunities. Learning from peers allows one child to act as a mentor, demonstrating the steps involved in this everyday task. It also instills independence and confidence for the student observing, learning as the Practical Life skill is modeled. Finally, the social skills of patience, empathy, and cooperation are experienced during this wonderful interaction.

[arahabakis-vessel]

thinks about how we see Dazai hit the required criteria for ASPD across all the BSD media... but also how so many people blow entirely past the actual evidence and go !!! SOCIOPATH!!! MANIPULATIVE PSYCHOPATH!!!! Not seeing the "he was clearly traumatized in a way that severely affected him to the point it entirely dictates how he interacts with the world now" part of it.

[queerpyracy]

finally getting to write a scene i've been looking forward to, which is an encounter with a big scary apex predator which our protagonist handles by throwing rocks and bellowing obscenities at it

[transhomicidal]

how you gonna have aspd and be anti mspec. how do those societal rules taste bootlicker?

[vivi-scera]

What do you think gay men are attracted to in men that they can’t be attracted to in women?

It can’t be anything about femininity or masculinity obviously. That’s both sexist, and cultural so can’t be what drives men-only attraction.

It can’t be anything about stated identity because someone could lie just as easily as they could tell the truth in such a statement, and it makes no sense because homosexuality and heterosexuality exists in other species with no stated identities. It’s not like other animals without gender are all pan.

Saying idk it’s the vibes or some indescribable trait men have that women can’t but “I can’t explain” is a nonanswer.

Soooooooo what is it? Or do you think any sexuality but bi/pan is just cultural performance or an identity rather than an inborn orientation?

- [ ]

girl what? are you asking me, holder of a mere bachelor's degree in biology, to solve one of the biggest psychosocial debates in human evolutionary history?

[heedra]

im still riding high on hearing rat 'laughter' on the bat detector. extremely confident that was the vocalization i was hearing bc it was the correct hertz range for it and i only heard it while playing with the two babyboys (in contexts where their body language was extremely positive). so basically, peace and love on planet earth.

[radio-charlie]

[maxlearnmicrolearningplatform]

The Joy of Gaming: Beyond Entertainment

Playing games makes us happy. It takes us back to our childhood and gives us a sense of freedom. The inherent joy of gaming transcends mere entertainment, tapping into our primal instincts for challenge and achievement. When we engage in games, we automatically jump into action and put our best foot forward when we face a challenge. We are more than willing to use our cognitive abilities, jog our memory, pay attention, and employ our skills – all to somehow win. This drive and enthusiasm that games evoke are not just about fun; they have profound benefits for our cognitive, physical, and social development.

Cognitive Benefits of Gaming

It’s a fact that playing games improves our problem-solving and fine-motor skills. Games often require players to navigate complex environments, solve intricate puzzles, and make strategic decisions. These tasks engage various cognitive processes such as critical thinking, spatial awareness, and logical reasoning. For instance, strategy games like chess or modern video games like "Civilization" demand foresight and planning, honing players' ability to anticipate and strategize several moves ahead.

Moreover, gaming builds better hand-eye coordination. Action games, in particular, necessitate precise control and quick reflexes. Players must often respond rapidly to on-screen stimuli, synchronizing their hand movements with visual cues. This coordination not only enhances gaming performance but can also translate to improved motor skills in real-life activities, such as sports or even surgical procedures.

Enhancing Decision-Making Skills

Gaming helps make accurate decisions. In the heat of gameplay, decisions must be made swiftly and effectively. Whether it’s deciding the best route to evade an enemy in a shooter game or choosing the right moment to strike in a fighting game, players learn to evaluate situations quickly and act decisively. This rapid decision-making process enhances their ability to process information efficiently and respond under pressure, skills that are invaluable in real-world scenarios such as driving, emergency response, and high-stakes business environments.

Social and Emotional Benefits

Playing games also improves our prosocial skills. Many games, especially multiplayer and cooperative games, require teamwork and communication. Players must collaborate, share resources, and develop strategies together to achieve common goals. This collaborative environment fosters social interaction, helping players build and strengthen relationships. Additionally, it promotes empathy and understanding as players work together, often forming lasting bonds and learning to appreciate diverse perspectives.

The sense of camaraderie and achievement in games can also boost self-esteem and emotional well-being. Successfully overcoming challenges and reaching goals within games provides a sense of accomplishment and pride. This positive reinforcement encourages players to take on new challenges, both in-game and in their everyday lives, fostering a growth mindset and resilience.

The Physical Thrill of Gaming

Playing games gives an adrenaline rush that excites and engages us. This physiological response is due to the immersive and often high-stakes nature of many games. The thrill of competition, the excitement of overcoming difficult obstacles, and the joy of victory all contribute to this adrenaline surge. This heightened state of arousal not only makes gaming enjoyable but also sharpens focus and concentration, enabling players to immerse themselves fully in the experience.

The engagement and excitement provided by games can also serve as a powerful motivator. Gamification, the application of game-design elements in non-game contexts, leverages this principle to enhance motivation and engagement in various fields such as education, business, and healthcare. By incorporating elements like points, badges, and leaderboards, gamification taps into the intrinsic motivation that games provide, making mundane tasks more appealing and encouraging sustained effort and participation.

Broader Impacts on Learning and Development

The benefits of gaming extend to educational contexts as well. Educational games, or "edutainment," combine learning objectives with game mechanics to create engaging and effective learning experiences. These games make learning fun and interactive, often resulting in better retention and understanding of complex subjects. For example, games that teach coding skills through interactive puzzles or history through immersive narratives can make these subjects more accessible and enjoyable for learners of all ages.

Furthermore, the problem-solving and critical thinking skills developed through gaming can enhance academic performance. Research has shown that students who regularly engage in strategic and problem-solving games tend to perform better in subjects such as mathematics and science. The interactive nature of games encourages active learning, where players experiment, hypothesize, and learn from their mistakes, mirroring the scientific method.

Promoting Mental Health and Well-being

Gaming can also have positive effects on mental health. For many, games provide a much-needed escape from the stresses of daily life, offering a safe and controlled environment to unwind and relax. This escapism can be therapeutic, helping players manage stress and anxiety. Additionally, games with immersive narratives and compelling characters can provide emotional catharsis and a sense of connection, alleviating feelings of loneliness and isolation.

Moreover, games designed with mental health in mind, such as those that promote mindfulness or cognitive behavioral techniques, can directly contribute to mental well-being. These games encourage players to engage in activities that promote relaxation, self-reflection, and positive thinking, providing tools for managing mental health in an accessible and engaging format.

Conclusion

In summary, playing games is far more than a trivial pastime. It takes us back to our childhood, evokes a sense of freedom, and harnesses our natural desire to overcome challenges. The cognitive, social, emotional, and physical benefits of gaming are vast, improving problem-solving abilities, fine-motor skills, hand-eye coordination, decision-making, and prosocial behaviors. The adrenaline rush and engagement games provide keep us excited and immersed, enhancing focus and concentration. By integrating gaming principles into education, mental health strategies, and everyday activities, we can leverage the joy and benefits of gaming to enrich our lives and foster personal growth and development.

[holyscream]

This is the most stressful game, man, and it’s not even timed. FYI I am currently running the slowest moderation team on the planet but at least I got them a counsellor. #YapperOfficecore

[answersnetwork]

Ep. 691 - The Emotionally Intelligent Child: Effective Strategies for Parenting Self-Aware, Cooperative, and Well-Balanced Kids

[boreal-sea]

*takes T shot* Who wants a cuddle?!

[butch-reidentified]

I've spoken before about psychopathy, particularly my own, and the importance of recent research and demolishing the stigma and absolutely absurd past conceptions and measures of psychopathy, which were exclusively based on studies of male prisoners convicted of violent crime.

Just to reiterate - psychopathy is not being deranged and uncontrollably violent. Villanelle from Killing Eve is actually an excellent and well-researched example of high-EQ female psychopathy, and the first fictional portrayal I can genuinely see myself in. Psychopaths with high EQ are entirely capable of cognitive empathy, and many (like myself) are actually very gifted in it, and can even make excellent counselors/therapists as a result of this combined with a lack of strong internal biases and the fact that we won't be emotionally impacted/drained by patients. This presentation of psychopathy is becoming more and more recognized and studied, and is distinctly more common in women. We retain the core defining traits, obviously - boldness, deviancy, disinhibition, very high fear threshold, a tendency toward meanness (self-control is a thing, though), reduced capacity for remorse and regret*, and of course lack of affective (emotional) empathy - but are much more able to moderate ourselves and prioritize social functioning, and tend to view the sadistic behavior of low-EQ psychopathic males as wasteful. My wife calls it "prosocial psychopathy."

Anyway, I just kind of wanted to touch on this again since it's been a while and there's a fair few new followers out here. I encourage you to read the above links and check the tag - it's a pretty interesting topic, to me at least.

Edit 4/25/2024: *Regarding the reduced capacity for remorse/regret: I firmly believe this sounds worse than it is. For people like me, at least, it's not that I'm going around doing terrible things and incapable of feeling bad about any of them. The truth is that remorse & regret most frequently occur as a result of intensely emotion-driven behaviors, which as a concept is largely foreign to me - I don't tend toward remorse/regret because the way I interact with the world, analyze situations, and choose to behave in response, is inherently from the very beginning done with the acceptance of potential consequences actively held in my mind. I'm not prone to regret/remorse because I know myself extremely well and make choices as consistent with my understanding of self as possible, having already prepared myself for the possibility that things could go wrong. It's more about being prepared for what might happen and able to cope when things do go wrong, rather than being a piece of shit and not feeling anything about it.

This doesn't make me better or worse than others; it's a neutral fact that male supremacy has made seem otherwise by constantly claiming that "logic" or whatever is superior to emotions. Fuck that. Loads of the best people I've ever known have been very emotion-driven (what non-shit people identify as a form of being passionate) and some of the shittest people I've known would waste their dying breath insisting they're 100% logical creatures, as if that's even a real thing. To me it feels very simple: if I'm making the best (most internally consistent, most reflective of my personality and values, etc) decisions I possibly can with whatever information I have at the time, then I've done my best, acted with integrity, and don't need to regret my choices. This is very challenging to write/talk about bc of the stigma & connotations involved, but again, this is a completely neutral fact to me in the same way I describe being a woman as a completely neutral fact despite the stigma & connotations involved there. Does any of this make sense?

[thoughtlessthinkythoughts]

Look, I would love to believe that Gerry is having a perfect time in an alternate universe, but I can’t. Something is up. Note: I’m using some info from the arg spreadsheet for this.

Cw for unethical psychology experiments and harm to children.

He claims to have been too young to remember, but according to the spreadsheet he is two years older than Sam. Of course they probably weren’t tested at the same time, but his development level indicates he was school-aged.

He says he just remembers filling out forms and answering questions. The spreadsheet indicates that they put the kids through the Milgram experiment (you know, the giving electric shocks to people one)

He is happy to invite strangers in first thing in the morning and offer them anything- food, a large painting, etc. This goes beyond typical hospitality/generosity.

He even thinks the landlord is lovely. And yes I think this is a hint considering TMA’s politics.

Gerry immediately considers strangers old friends.

I may be reading the spreadsheet wrong because it is ambiguous. But if I am correct, when tested Gerry was ranked very prosocial, but also wasn’t compliant with the Milgram test or a test of social conformity (the one where a bunch of people lie about the length of a line to see if the person being tested will agree with something obviously wrong). The Gerry we met seems very compliant.

Gertrude is eager to get rid of Sam and Celia, which is completely understandable, but I think there is more to it. She knows something and wants this away from Gerry.

The little “I like them” “of course you do” exchange. It isn’t much on it’s own, but altogether…I don’t think Gerry has a choice. Not in liking them or being generous. I think Gerry was so close to being what they wanted, but he wouldn’t comply with some things, so they…somehow made him compliant.

According to the spreadsheet, Gerry had the second highest empathy index. The only individual higher was Sam. And I think we can assume Sam’s results are significant, considering he is a main character. Sam’s results were similar to Gerry’s in almost every way…except that Sam was given opposite results in the social conformity and obedience measures. In general, as empathy, moral development, and prosocial behavior increased in the kids, milgram and asch scores were lower, which is why I believe low=not going along with them.

So, the institute was looking for kids who were highly empathetic but also easy to control. Until they found Sam, Gerry was the closest, so they tried to control him. And ended up damaging him badly and messing with his memory of what happened.

[cringefailvox]

@downthegenderriver asked if i had any more radiobelle headcanons and the answer is yes <3

whenever alastor wants to wriggle out of a tough conversation or for charlie to stop talking about something, he'll drag her into an dizzying song and dance until she's too high on the fuzzy warm musical feelings to notice him disappearing

charlie was creeped out by his shadow for a long time, but eventually she realized it was just an echo of the snappish nervy animal in alastor's soul and now she treats it accordingly. one day she'll get it to chase a laser on the wall and alastor will stare sightlessly into the distance with total humiliation (he loves her)

they have a private two-person philosophy club where every week they trade off and one of them tries to lure the other to the dark side / redemption. they are always at a stalemate. charlie makes hand-drawn flashcards about prosocial behaviors and virtue ethics while alastor bitches and nitpicks the whole time over a plate of scones and then when it's his turn he just selects random historical atrocities to make charlie defend the goodness of humanity against

alastor gives charlie elocution lessons at her request and inevitably this always ends with charlie earnestly trying to do an impression of an transatlantic accent and making alastor cringe so hard he melts into the floor

charlie LOVES combing his ear tufts with a toothbrush and they look so so silly when they do this but alastor enjoys it. he will never admit it but he does

like i said in the notes of this post i don't think they have anything close to normal sex because what alastor (asexual; bottom) would want is so specific & violent that charlie can't do it without suffering intense guilt, and what charlie (allo; bottom) wants is too tender and romantic to not make alastor crawl out of his skin with revulsion. sometimes they compromise with the shadow tentacles, other times they compromise by alastor making charlie so mad she slaps him across a room, etc

alastor has really bad cuteness aggression and sometimes he'll just lightly clamp down on her hand or something while she's filling out paperwork and she's like ok. fine. and then she pays him back by surprise-ruffling his ears during his broadcasts and completely shattering his composure

charlie finds out pretty quickly that alastor genuinely sucks at close-range physical combat when she asks him to show her some moves (he's an expert at evasion and brute force tentacle stuff but not much else), and it actually turns into charlie showing him how to throw a punch because if lilith did one thing right it was teach her daughter the basics of self-defense

they are in a qpr <3

[queercodedangel]

Shame often just feeds into cycles of self-hate, alienation and repression that reactionary circles capitalize on and are generally characterized by.

Instead of relying on shame to try to change people for the better, we need to establish structures of aid, support, education and community. Those are things that actually empower us, promote prosocial behavior and change people for the better.

[pokemonshelterstories]

please give me some examples of homosexuality in "human-like" pokemon. I'm trying to prove someone wrong

erm, i'm not really sure what argument you're having...but there are instances of same-sex pairing behavior in a variety of pokemon, including some that fall into the humanlike egg group. this is best studied in single-sex pokemon such as jynx and morgrem. in fact, a study a few years ago about prosocial behavior in throh revealed that the packs of five that throh travel in regularly mate with each other both as a method of strengthening pack bonds and as a way to de-escalate arguments; there were high incidences of mating following spars, and if one member of the pack initiated mating with another, the rest of the pack would often join in.

outside of these groups, we see some other examples of same-sex mating as appeasement/de-escalation behavior. the more social the pokemon is, generally the more frequently nonbreeding mating occurs. for example, the ralts line will sometimes engage in mating in response to stress behaviors from members of their group, and this includes mating between same-sex individuals.

less common are examples of same-sex pairs outside of these social behaviors, but wild same-sex mated pairs have been documented in the ralts, abra, gothita, and toxel lines. this most often occurs between male individuals (with the exception of gothita) and in situations where opposite-sex individuals are lacking, but i've also seen reports of same-sex ralts line pairs forming even when there were plenty of opposite-sex individuals to choose from, indicating that there may be some aspect of sex preference when these pokemon choose mates.