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psych ch 10

Terms in this set (49)

Social psychology is a branch of psychology that addresses human social interactions. Topics in social psychology include prejudice, group-influenced attitudes, and conformity. Social psychology draws from a number of other psychological perspectives, such as behavioral and sociocultural.
Some key terms to learn in the study of social interactions include social norms and social scripts.
Social norms
are societal expectations about what is appropriate or inappropriate regarding attitudes and behaviors. Norms have to do with what is acceptable behavior in a particular society. For example, in many Western cultures, cutting into a line or queue at a store is looked down upon. Amusement parks have rules against line jumping. However, other cultures may not place as strong an emphasis on taking one's turn in a single line.Social norms can also dictate what attitudes should be held. For example, many American universities are made up of faculty who lean politically liberal. Social norms for classrooms in these universities would emphasize liberal social attitudes. It can be difficult to go against powerful social norms. Studies show that being surrounded by people holding a particular attitude or belief often "rubs off" on an individual. Students going to very liberal schools often graduate with similarly liberal beliefs (Newcomb, Koenig, Flacks, & Warwick, 1967).
Social scripts
inform people of the step-by-step behavior they need to perform in order to engage in socially acceptable behavior in a situation. For example, eating at a nice restaurant in the Western world while maintaining socially acceptable behavior would include the following script: a) wait for the host or hostess to seat you, b) quietly walk to your table when called, c) answer the waiter or waitress with your menu order, d) engage in quiet conversation during the meal, and e) pay your bill before leaving.
Classic Social Psychology Studies
Social psychology has some classic psychological studies that are world-famous, even many decades later. This section will cover some of these classic studies.
Asch Conformity Studies
Conformity and resistance to conformity were topics of interest in the Asch studies (1940, 1956), conducted by researcher Solomon Asch.
Conformity
can be defined as a person changing her behavior in response to real or imagined social pressure.
As indicated in the video, most participants succumbed to the powerful group conformity. Specifically, three out of four participants conformed at some point. Why did they conform? Because Asch varied the experimental conditions while holding others constant, he was able to tease out the reasons for the conformity. He identified the following reasons:
Unanimity: Because the group gave unanimously incorrect answers, it communicated to the participant that they were right and that he was wrong.
Group size: Generally, the larger the group, the higher the conformity. However, at a given threshold (approximately five people in a group), conformity plateaus. Thus, groups of two or three people are likely to have less conformity, groups of four to five people should have more conformity, and groups of six or more people should have similar conformity to the groups of four to five people.
Public answers: The large amount of social pressure in this experiment came from participants having to give their answers out loud. Changing the study so that answers are submitted via secret ballot greatly decreases conformity.
Other variations of these experiments indicate that conformity increases if the task is difficult. For example, while most people conformed during the line judging trials, nearly everyone would conform if they were trying to solve a complicated calculus problem and had to judge whether to go with their own answer or the unanimous group's answer. Also, the group's perceived competency level matters. Individuals are even more likely to conform in the line-judging task if the group members appear to be seasoned professionals rather than college students.
Interestingly, Asch found that all it takes is one confederate in the group to reduce conformity. That is, having one other person in the room who is not going along with the group answer drastically reduces the other participant's conformity. This has important implications for everyday life and resisting group pressure.
Groupthink
is a related social psychology term. Groupthink occurs when group members conform their opinions to what they think is the consensus of the group. Thus, it specifically has to do with belief and attitude conformity. Groupthink is thought to commonly occur in committee meetings. Famous political events that some attribute to Groupthink include the Bay of Pigs invasion, under the Kennedy administration, and the assessment of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction under the George W. Bush administration.
Factors that increase the likelihood of groupthink (Janis, 1972) include the following:
Dominant leader is driving the discussion
Lack of a template or protocol for decision-making; the lack of systematic and unbiased processes may make the decision-making vulnerable to being swayed in a particular way
Group homogeneity (that is, group members are very similar to one another)
High stress
High group cohesiveness (the group gets along well)
Milgram Obedience Studies
Stanley Milgram conducted studies on obedience (1965, 1974) at Yale University.
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As indicated in the video, 65% of participants went all the way to the maximum 450 volts. On average, participants gave 27 out of 30 possible shocks. The participants were ordinary people. They did not take a sick pleasure from harming Mr. Wallace. Rather, most were very upset by the whole experience. Many of them pleaded with the man in the lab coat, and some of them trembled, perspired, and dug their nails into their skin out of nervousness. When the study was re-administered to samples of women and people from a variety of countries, similar results were found. Recently, the Milgram study was replicated, but with significant modification to adhere to current ethical standards (the Milgram study has come under criticism for a number of reasons, including putting participants into such a stressful situation). This replication also found similar results.
The major factors contributing to this extreme obedience are
1. the presence of an authority figure (the man in the lab coat).
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diffusion of responsibility; the participants were relieved of a sense of responsibility for their actions because they were just doing what they were told. You can hear one of the participants muttering about this in the video.
3. removed from anonymous victim; in this situation, the participants didn't really know the victim and could not visibly see his pain.
4. high status authority; variations of the study in which the project was moved off-campus to more dingy quarters resulted in less obedience. This indicates that the lab coat authority figure seems prestigious at Yale but not so much at a downtown office building.
Researchers Krackow and Blass (1995) applied these principles to a reality-based study in which 500 actual nurses in Maryland answered questions about carrying out a medical doctor's orders. Approximately half of the nurses indicated that they had carried out orders that they personally felt could have harmed the patient. The authors concluded that the situation was strikingly similar to the Milgram study and that the nurses exhibited diffusion of responsibility and obedience to an authority figure despite their private reservations about their behavior.
A related Social Psychology issue is Bystander Effect. In bystander effect, individuals do not take action when someone is being harmed, and this is thought to occur because of a diffusion of responsibility. In essence, people think that someone else will help.
Bystander Effect became famous after a murder in New York City in 1964. That year, newspapers reported that 38 bystanders watched as a young woman named Kitty Genovese was stabbed by a man in Queens, NY. The stabbing took more than 30 minutes. During this time, no one intervened, even though the murderer was occasionally distracted by bystander noise and lights turning on. When no one stopped him, he resumed his gruesome task. No one called the police, except one woman. And by then, Kitty was dead. Investigators attributed the lack of intervention to the bystanders rationalizing that there were other people around and that surely someone else had already called the police.
More recently, investigations show that the original New York Times article on the murder contained a number of inaccuracies. Most likely, many fewer than 38 people observed the murder. Most were in hearing range but probably did not have a good view of what was occurring. One female neighbor did try to help Kitty at the end and held her while Kitty died. Regardless of the specific details, the gruesome incident has come to represent human indifference.
Laboratory experiments confirm that bystander effect can happen in everyday life. For example, one study (Latané & Darley, 1968) involved having a participant overhear someone having a medical emergency, presumably a seizure. The speed of response by the participants depended on how many people they thought were present. If the participant thought that he was one of only 2 people who heard the person's distress, then he typically responded and did so quickly. If he had been told that there were 5 other people in nearby rooms, then he responded more slowly, if at all.
Interpersonal Attraction
In addition to the classic studies and topics that we just explored, social psychologists also study factors that draw people together. Key features that draw individuals together, either in a romantic sense or in friendship, include:
Proximity
We are more likely to develop relationships with people we live near and interact with frequently. However, the Internet has changed this scenario so that online dating and other online groups break down the distance barrier. However, the same principle applies: Frequency of interaction matters when building relationships.
Similarity
While opposites may theoretically attract, similarities and shared interests cement relationships long-term. Whether getting to know someone for the first time, fostering a deeper friendship, or coming to love someone, connecting over shared interests is key. Similar core beliefs, in terms of political, religious, and worldview beliefs, matter as well. While couples can overcome differing perspectives in these areas, especially if they are not strongly held, couples with firm beliefs in these areas typically experience extra stress if their partner believes very differently than they do.
Physical Attractiveness
Dion, Berscheid, and Walster (1972) studied the "What is Beautiful is Good" phenomenon by showing pictures of beautiful and not-as-beautiful people. They found that participants judged beautiful people as having more desirable social qualities (such as being better parents) than the less beautiful people. Subsequent research indicates that this phenomenon appears to be strongest when making first impressions that may die away once one get to know the person. Still, physical attractiveness appears to give people advantages in terms of connecting with others and creating a favorable impression.
Matching Hypothesis
A key theory of interpersonal attraction, the matching hypothesis, has to do with attractiveness. It states that most people find friends and romantic partners who are at their same level of attractiveness. While there are certainly exceptions to this rule, you can observe in everyday life that attractive people tend to marry one another while less attractive people tend to be drawn to each other. Furthermore, we are so used to this phenomenon that when we find an attractive man paired with an unattractive woman (or vice versa), it often strikes us as being unusual.
Sternberg's Triarchic Theory of Love
A second interpersonal theory is Sternberg's (1988) triarchic theory of love. This theory states that there are three components of love: passion, intimacy, and commitment.
Passion refers to romance, physical attraction, and sexual attraction.
Intimacy includes feelings of closeness and friendship.
Commitment involves a decision to remain together.
According to Sternberg, these components combine together to form different types of love. For example, one couple may primarily be drawn together due to passion, while another couple has commitment and intimacy. Some names of key types of love include the following:
Romantic love contains passion and intimacy, without a long-term commitment.
Infatuation involves passion alone, without the other components.
Consummate love involves all three components and is viewed as the most complete and long-lasting form of love.
Beliefs and Attributions
Earlier in this module, we learned that social psychologists study social attitudes as well as behavior. In this section, we'll explore socially influenced beliefs and attributions, which have to do with the motives that we assign to other people's behavior.
Cognitive Dissonance
Regarding beliefs, Cognitive Dissonance is an extremely important term. It refers to a state in which someone has two conflicting beliefs, behaviors, or attitudes.
Fundamental Attribution Error
Regarding attributions, fundamental attribution error is a key term. We learned in earlier modules that experts differ on their beliefs about the relative contributions of personality versus the environment on behavior. Fundamental attribution error takes this idea a bit further and pushes it into error in thinking about other people's behavior. Essentially, what happens when we commit fundamental attribution error is that we overemphasize the role of someone's personality on behavior and minimize situational factors.
Interestingly, we often take the opposite tactic with ourselves: We are well aware of situational explanations for our behavior (for example, you had a long, tiring day) and often let ourselves "off the hook" for behavior that we consider to be out-of-character for ourselves.
Also, while we tend to apply fundamental attribution error toward others, we often use self-serving bias on ourselves. This type of bias occurs when an individual takes credit for his/her successes but denies responsibility for failures. Think of a sports star who takes all the credit for making the right plays but blames his teammates for failure. Humans seem to need to view themselves in the best possible light!
Prejudice and Discrimination
Another key social psychology topic in beliefs and attributions includes prejudice and discrimination
Dissimilarity and social distance
If similarity draws people together, dissimilarity can drive them apart, especially when the parties are not interested in finding common ground. Social distance has to do with perceived differences between yourself and another person. Whether the perception is true, one perceives a great gulf between oneself and another person. For example, high-school cliques are built on the idea that students in these groups are very different from one another.
Economic competition
Some of the most egregious examples of prejudice and oppression in history arose out economic competition. Whether Jews in pre-World War II Germany, African-Americans in the American south following the Civil War, or Mexican immigrants in Texas, racial and ethnic minorities tend to be most hated by groups who are in direct economic competition with them. In the above examples, the competition was between German people struggling economically after World War I versus minority groups, African-Americans versus economically poor white southerners, and Mexican immigrants versus American blue-collar workers in border states.
Scapegoating
Similar to economic competition, scapegoating identifies a group of people to blame for something (often, economic woes). In the above examples, the individuals exhibiting prejudice perhaps may not have power to help themselves out of their struggles. They instead turn their angst against a group of people and scapegoat them.
Conformity to social norms
As previously discussed, the pressure to conform can be strong. When an entire community exhibits prejudice against a group or groups, this exerts pressure on all the community members to join with the others in this prejudice.
Media stereotypes
While great social pressure may exist for TV and movies to not depict certain groups in unfavorable lights for risk of social outrage, studies nonetheless indicate that stereotypical portrayals of groups are still alive and well. For example, media may depict woman as being emotional and bad at math, African-American women as brash and extroverted, African-American men as either one-dimensional comedians or aggressive thugs, Asian-American men as nerdy and quirky, and gay men as flamboyant and clothes-conscious. While the stereotypes may seem funny and harmless, they may nonetheless alter social views of these groups and contribute to perceived dissimilarities.
Individuals who are portrayed in these stereotypical ways may find themselves at risk of stereotype threat, which is the risk of confirming negative stereotypes about one's group.
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Coping Strategies in a COVID-19 Era
One of the top memes of 2020 included side-by-side pictures with the captions, "My Plans," and "2020." Folks are being careful to avoid setting too high an expectation on 2021 as we continue to see COVID variants emerge that make a return to pre-2020 normalcy seem unlikely in the near future. Many challenges emerged, including:
Mental health concerns increased significantly. One study (the SERU COVID Survey) reported that 1/3 of students screened had depression, anxiety, or both. This is 1.5 to 2x higher than rates reported in the previous year.
An increase in stressors for people classified as essential workers. According to a KFF tracking poll, essential workers report anxiety and depression at higher levels than non-essential workers, as well as increasing substance use and suicidal thoughts.
Increased childcare and schooling challenges for parents, also contributing to reported rises in anxiety and depression.
When psychologists talk about stress, they focus both on the situations that we experience as challenging or threatening, and on our responses to those situations. So, beyond potential concerns about contracting the virus (a challenge or threat), psychologists would also look at how we interpret that situation and respond to it. Do we see that stressor as one that can motivate us to conquer our challenges, or is the situation so overwhelming to us that it threatens the resources we have available to us? How we perceive the stressful situation can help us understand the ways we might try to cope with it.
Psychologists tell us that there are two broad categories of coping styles: problem-focused and emotion-focused. Problem-focused coping strategies are ones used when you can actually exert some control over the stressful situation, where you can make an effective change to minimize the stress. Emotion-focused coping takes a different approach. It works at managing the emotions that are resulting from a situation you can't change. Both of these kinds of strategies can be helpful.
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Seeking accurate information
It's important to know what the extent of the situation actually is. It can be stress-relieving to find accurate information to understand the nature of the problem you're facing.
Seeking help
You can seek help and support from your social network, or from more formal sources. Many counselors are currently conducting telehealth sessions. You may wish to look for one in your area who could help you deal with the stress.
Making decisions
My family and I made decisions about how we would address different aspects of the stay-at-home orders. Making those decisions empowered us to know how we were dealing with the situation and what we could expect as a result.
Practicing optimism
We tend to think of people as either optimistic or pessimistic. But some psychological research suggests we can practice optimism and become more resilient as we face stressors.
Mindfulness exercises
Mindfulness means paying attention to ourselves in the present moment, and recognizing and accepting our emotions and thoughts rather than judging them as good or bad. It helps us to focus on where we're at right now through concentrating on breathing and becoming aware of all five senses. Research shows that practicing mindfulness can reduce anxiety and depression.
Healthy distractions
It can be very helpful to find ways to unplug from the situation to recharge and face it again another day. I saw many people walking in our neighborhood during the strongest stay-at-home orders. I spent hours and hours knitting over the past few months, and my children played more Minecraft than they normally would. Those activities helped us all.
A study published in the journal, Sustainability, found that hardiness predicted lower levels of stress and emotional exhaustion among COVID-19 emergency workers. As you read the following description of hardiness, consider which aspects fit best with problem-focused strategies and which aspects fit best with problem-focused strategies.
Hardiness is a psychological term referring to functioning well amidst significant stress. It's also a term used in gardening, for plants that can survive difficult growing environments, such as extreme temperatures. While some people may be born with qualities that give them an advantage during difficult times, psychologists believe that everyone can improve their hardiness potential.
Challenge
Some people see challenges as overwhelming obstacles. Stress-hardy people learn to see challenges as something to be overcome. Challenges can be motivating, rather than deflating. Instead of being paralyzed, challenges spur hardy individuals to action.
Control
For many people, at the heart of depression and anxiety lies a sense of uncontrollability. While most people recognize that there are always events that are beyond one's control, too many things hitting at once can contribute to this feeling of uncontrollability. While the particular events, such as sudden illness or job loss, may indeed be beyond one's control, it's important to find areas where one can have personal control. Usually, one of the best key areas is self-growth and improvement. Choosing education to improve one's knowledge and job prospects is a perfect example of what someone can do to exert personal control. I keep a quote in my workspace from Nelson Mandela that says, "Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." Setting health goals or making a needed life change would be additional examples.
Commitment
The quote, "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration" (attributed to Thomas Edison, but based on a lecture by Kate Sanborn), gets at this idea of committing and persevering. It's helpful to have a purpose and goal to commit to. Finding meaning in what you are doing helps one to commit to putting forth effort. It can be helpful to take the time during an enforced downtime to re-evaluate what you view as important, and to reorganize your life in a way so that you are committing your time and effort to the things that are most important.
As you face continued challenges, COVID-19 related or not, consider how you will manage your stressors in order to balance those with healthy approaches to not just surviving, but thriving.
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