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Week 1. Introduction, Overview, and Early History (Week of September 25)

Lewin, K. (1952). Group decision and social change. In G.E. Swanson, T.M. Newcomb, & E.L. Hartley (Eds.), Readings in social psychology (pp. 459-473). Holt.

This paper examines experiments on group decision and addresses the importance of integrating cultural anthropology, psychology, and sociology into one social science.

I. Social Channels and Social Perception

-Involves the motivation to action and the effect of setting on an individual’s willingness to change vs. maintaining certain standards, as well as the position of the group in the total social field.

Study on Food habits: Channels, Gates, and Gatekeepers

Comparison of different ethnic and economic groups in a mid-western town/ attempting to link changing food habits in line with war needs/ thus, the study attempts to provide some social change on a small scale – dinner tables in families.

Channels though which food reaches the family table – the housewife plays some role in food habits, the food is likely to be eaten by someone in the family since little is thrown away, and to change food habits, change the channel by which it reaches the table.

The conflict in acquiring food is assessed on the force and opposing force on the food, specifically the buying situation which can be seen as a conflict situation. For example, a food may be attractive and liked by the family, but it is overly expensive and not essential for survival. Thus, food is bought if the total force toward buying becomes greater than opposing forces (price, length of preparation, unappealing taste, etc.). Across cultures, the middle socioeconomic group contains the highest conflict ratings.

Once food is bought, however, can change force direction based on the gate (in this case, the person buying the food, say the housewife). True for businesses, universities, etc. Try hard not to admit weak candidates, but once people pass through the gate and gate keeper, try everything in their power to make sure everyone succeeds. Changes of the whole group depend on the psychology of the gatekeeper.

Planning, Fact-Finding, and Execution

Planning starts with a general idea and then results in a strategy for a) an overall plan and b) a first step of action.

The next task is how to execute the first step, which involves fact finding involving four functions:

1) evaluate the action according to if what has been achieved is above or below expectation

2) correctly plans the next step

3) modifies overall plan

4) gives planners a chance to learn and gain general insight regarding strength and weakness of action

Each step of the plan consists of such an array of steps including a circle of planning, action, and fact finding about certain potential results of action.

If we do not have criteria for evaluation, there is nothing to prevent wrong conclusions and the encouragement of wrong work habits, especially in areas of social management and self-management of groups.

Group Decision depends on:

1) how the group views the situation and therefore can be influenced by a change in this perception

2) a correct perception of the result of social action for the decision necessary to initiate the next step

Group Decisions

Experiment in changing food decisions for 6 Red Cross Groups – objective was to increase the use of beef hearts, kidneys, and sweetbreads. Only 45 minutes available to induce such a decision.

In three groups, lectures were given which linked the problem of nutrition to the war effort, the value of minerals in the three meats. Health and economic aspects were stressed. Hints on how to prepare these ‘delicious dishes’ and success among HER own family were stressed as well.

In the other three groups, Mr. Alex Bavelas developed the procedure of group decision. Addressed the same concerns in the lectures, except not until after the groups themselves discussed remedies on how to remove the obstacles in getting their own families to incorporate hearts, kidneys, and sweetbreads into their own meals.

Before the lecture and group meeting, a consensus was taken on how many women served these foods in the past and then taken again at the end to see which ones would incorporate these meals within the next week.

In a follow-up study, it was noted that:

3% of the women who heard the lectures served the meats never served before

32% of the women after group decision served the meats never served before

Such findings lead to the following criteria for group decisions:

1) degree of involvement

2) motivation and decision

3) individual vs. group

4) expectation – only after group discussion did the discussion leader mention that an inquiry would be later made about who incorporated the meals

5) leader personality

More experiments were conducted in an attempt to figure out which these criteria are more critical than the others:

1) Lecture vs. Group Decision

a. 6 groups of housewives with 6-9 members; using more milk at home; again lecture vs. group decision; check-ups 2 and 4 weeks later

b. at both 2 and 4 weeks, housewives who were in the group discussion reported an increase in the consumption of milk

c. this showed that it was not the personality or accomplished position of the lecturer or group leader in exp 1, not due to the type of food, not only after one week in exp 1, but relevant for 2 and 4 weeks, and also both groups did not know they were going to be asked about milk incorporation after 4 weeks.

2) Individual instruction vs. Group decision – Iowa city mothers given advice on how to feed babies after giving birth to their first children

Individual instruction vs. Group

After 2 and 4 weeks, people assessed on their incorporation of cod liver oil and orange juice, more people in groups than individual instruction complied with the advice. After 4 weeks, 100% used orange juice after group instruction.

Individual instruction puts more pressure on the person

No interaction among mothers before and after, thus no affiliation

Giving milk and orange juice to babies higher possibility than cod liver oil and kidneys/beef hearts in exp 1 – resistance to change of gatekeeper to disliked food, then less likely to pass on to group

3) Quasi-stationary Social Equilibria and the Problem of Permanent Change

a. Objective of change – involves a social process and a multitude of factors involved in one particular case; combination of educational and organizational measures

b. Conditions of a stable quasi-stationary equilibrium – strength of forces to lower standard of equilibrium should be equal to those that increase the standard of equilibrium; it is possible to change the strength of opposing forces without changing the level of social conduct

4) 2 basic methods to change levels of conduct

a. adding forces in the desired direction or by diminishing opposing forces; avoids high pressure methods and sensitive to resistance to change

5) Social habits and group standards

a. To break social habits, introduce a force to overcome inner resistance

6) Individual procedures and Group Procedures of Changing Social Conduct

a. If resistance to change depends on how the group values the individual, such a resistance to change would diminish if one diminishes the value strength of the group standard by the individual as having social value. If the group standard is changed, then the resistance due to the relation between individual and group standard is eliminated.

Summary

In order to make group change last: 1) unfreeze the present level of group belief 2) move group level to a new level 3) freeze group belief on new level.

Group decision is related to social channels, gates, and gatekeepers; to the problem of social perception and planning; and to the relation between motivation and action, and between the individual and the group. Experiments were reported where certain methods of group decision are preferred to lecturing and individual treatment in order to change social conduct. Group decision potentially related to quasi-stationary equilibria relating to the balance of forces, specifically to social habits and resistance to change, as well as to the problems of unfreezing, changing, and freezing social levels.

McGuire, W.J. (1973). The yin and yang of progress in social psychology. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 26, 446-456.

• Discusses the main research paradigm that had developed in social psychology, and a new emerging one that attempted to address some flaws in the old one

o Mainstream paradigm

▪ Constructs hypotheses from current theories and frameworks

▪ Manipulates experimental variables in a laboratory setting

o Emerging paradigm

▪ Constructs hypotheses relevant to social problems

▪ Emphasis on fieldwork and correlational data from natural settings

• McGuire argues that the emerging paradigm does not address the problems with the current one that it claims to deal with

o Hypothesis formation and testing

▪ For McGuire, the problem with the current paradigm stems from the fact that researchers choose obvious hypotheses, and then try to devise experiments that will corroborate their hypotheses, rather than using the data to reform them

▪ The fieldwork approach does not alleviate this problem, it just changes the nature of the work from “stage-managing” experiments to finding the right place in the natural world that will confirm a given hypothesis

• The problem isn’t with the experimental methodology, though fieldwork and socially relevant research is useful – the problem is with theory and hypothesis formation

o Suggests emphasizing the hypothesis formation portion of research in methodology courses

o Too much emphasis on linear models (“a causes b”) – “students…must be encouraged to think big, or rather to think complexly, with conceptual models that involve parallel processing, nets of causally interrelated factors, feedback loops, bidirectional causation, etc.

o Keep one eye on the real world rather than just experimental data in driving hypotheses

o Increase the use of longitudinal studies

McCord, J. (1978). A thirty year follow-up of treatment effects. American Psychologist, 33, 284-289.

This article examines the effects of an experimental treatment program conducted by Richard Cabot Clark in 1935 known as the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study.

Original Methods

Several hundred boys from eastern Massachusetts were chosen and placed into two groups: control and treatment. All subjects were chosen based on recommendations of ‘difficult’ and ‘average’ youngsters chosen from welfare agencies, churches, and policemen. Delinquency scores were given to them following interviews by social workers, then paired with similar subjects who had similar ages, delinquency-prone histories, family backgrounds, and home environments. Randomly placed into control or treatment group.

Treatment began in 1939, where the median age of subjects was 10.5 years (range 5-13). Counselors met with subjects in the treatment group on average twice a month. Some focused on family problems, academic subjects, and/or medical or psychiatric attention. Some were sent to community programs or YMCA programs. The control group only provided information about themselves. 253 had been in the treatment program and 253 of their ‘matched mates’ had been in the control group.

Current Methods

In 1975 and 1976, the 506 members were contacted for follow-up study.

Due to death and unreturned questionnaires, only 113 questionnaires from the treatment group and 122 from the control group were used to make these longitudinal comparisons. Court convictions not juvenile records were used to assess criminal behavior.

For those in the treatment group, 119 committed minor crimes as adults and 49 committed serious crimes (ranging from assault to rape to attempted homicide). For those in the control group 126 men had committed minor crimes, 42 serious crimes. 29 from the treatment group and 25 from control group committed serious crimes after the age of 25. Overall, there were no significant differences between the treatment and control groups for a) the number of serious crimes committed, b) the age when a first crime was committed, c) the age when committing a first serious crime, and d) age after which no serious crime was committed. Delinquency scores did not aid in predicted the crime rate of individuals in either group, but a high proportion of criminals from the treatment group committed more than one crime than criminals in the control group (78% to 67%, respectively).

Differences/Similarities between each group:

Health: no difference for alcoholism from the records of treatment centers and mental hospitals, but from this given health questionnaire, 17 % in treatment group were alcoholic in comparison to 7% of control group;

21% of treatment had mental disorder, harder diagnoses (71% schizophrenic) from this group, vs. 67% of control group for personality disorder.

Home Life:

68% married from control, 61% of treatment; no significant differences between divorces, re-marriages, number of children, etc.

Equal % of unskilled workers in each group, but there were 43% toward the end of the socioeconomic scale for the control group and only 29% for the high end of the treatment group. Treatment groups less likely to report that their work was satisfying. Did not differ across groups for how they spent their leisure time.

Beliefs and Attitudes

Did not differ in how they thought their lives would turn out and their ability to plan ahead. No difference between their thoughts on authoritarianism, politics, or the best periods of their lives.

Evaluation of the program

2/3 claimed the program had been helpful to them in keeping them away from a life of crime.

Conclusions

Though 2/3 claimed it helped, the objective measures discussed here provided little evidence that the Youth Study improved the lives of the treatment group.

1/15 comparisons for criminal behavior were significant

4/15 comparisons for health favored the control group

2/13 comparisons for family, work, and leisure time favored the control group

14/14 comparisons about beliefs and attitudes failed to indicate any differences between groups

Treatment actually produced negative side effects:

1) more likely to commit a second crime

2) more likely to evidence signs of alcoholism

3) more likely to manifest signs of serious mental illness

4) of those who died, more likely to die younger

5) more members reported having stress related disease

6) more likely to have occupations with lower prestige

7) tended to report work as not satisfying

Interpretations:

Interactions with adults whose values were different than those of the family potentially created internal conflict that later manifested in disease/dissatisfaction.

Agency interaction may create a dependency on outside assistance, may experience resentment when help is not available.

May have processed the project itself as the ‘treatment’ group requiring help, though this may not have been true. As a result, perhaps went through life thinking something was wrong with them.

Ross, L., & Nisbett, R.E. (1991). The person and the situation, Chapters 1 and 2 (pp. 1-58).

McGraw-Hill.

Chapter 1: Introduction

• General point is that lay-psychology serves us well in most situations but is wholly wrong. Particularly because individuals imply too much reliance on personal factors (i.e., disposition) in predicting behavior. Information regarding specifics of the situation are most important and useful.

• Such ‘dispositionism’ is widespread in our own culture and we, scientists and laypeople alike, find support for it in our everyday interactions.

• The highest found correlation, or “Predictability Ceiling” between measured individual differences on a single trait and behavior in novel situations is .3.

• This inflated belief of the importance of personality traits (vs. situational factors) is the Fundamental Attribution Error

• Counterintuitively, apparently strong situational manipulations that are intended to have positive outcomes more often than not have negative effects (ex. Sommerville delinquency study.)

- Situationism started with Lewin who believed that behavior is a function of the person and the situation – which he coined ‘life space’ to describe the individual and the individual’s representation of the environment. His main point was thatsocial context created potent forces producing and constraining behavior.

• Lewin’s channel, gate, and gatekeeper described in the outline for Lewin’s paper prevent one possible explanation for why the Sommerville study didn’t work; specifically, seemingly big interventions that provide no effective channel in the form of situational pressures or no behaviorally effective outlet channel in the form of clear intentions or plans, will generally produce disappointingly effects.

• Likewise, small situational factors that operate on important input or output channels will often produce large effects.

• The authors accept that social psychology will never reach the point of predicting how any given individual (even one who is well known to us) is going to behave in a novel situation; people do, however, make correct predictions on the basis of erroneous beliefs and defective prediction strategies.

• TRIPOD of social psychology (mainly regards prediction):

+Construal: the manner in which the person understands the situation as a

whole

]

*main difference between early social psych and behaviorists was that the behaviorists didn’t want to address the issue of

personal construal

*”[social psych’s] most astute practitioners always understood that it is the situation as construed by the subjects that is the true stimulus” – which should influence the factors we attend to as researchers.

*After Lewin, Asch was the 2nd biggest advocate of construal;

Piaget and Bartlett introduced concept of schema

*Laypeople consistently underestimate the role of construal in determining behavior – three errors: failure to recognize the degree to which perception is the result of active interpretation rather than passive reception of reality; failure to appreciate the variability of construal (esp. in others, or for future behavior); failure of causality, where behavior is seen as dispositional rather than based on subjective construal

+Tension systems

*psyches and collectives (groups of all sizes) must be understood as systems in tension

*no simple 1to1 law for stimuli and responses, as both are embedded in a dynamic context

*analysis of restraining factors associated with stimulus introduction can be as important as analysis of the stimulus itself; Kohler’s ‘quasi-stationary equilibrium’

*can alter tension by adding or increasing impelling forces, or eliminating restraining forces for a particular change

*Festinger – studied individual attitudes are in tension with the individuals in their groups – tension system notions

people do not like the state of being in disagreement with

their group members

groups are in tension from requirements to uniformity and the forces operating on individuals to stray from the group standard

when in disagreement one will either attempt to change others minds; move their own attitude to match others, or reject others from the group

when all three resolutions are impossible (or difficult) one experiences cognitive dissonance (this is the original definition, later expanded) – which is often resolved in favor of the group’s view – (ex. Groupthink)

tension within an individual = DISSONANCE

when dissonance is present, people will shift their beliefs line with their behavior

Prediction and Indeterminacy

Prediction by Social Scientists have been pursuing unrealistic goals of prediction; unapologetic because the constraints of the complexity of situations and the people in them just mean there are limits to what is possible and tinkering is necessary to achieve an accurate prediction. Related to ‘butterfly effect’ where small, unanticipated perturbations can have dramatic effects.

Predictions by Laypeople

Lay predictions are more often than not wrong and too confidently made. People sometimes feel obliged to act consistently and as a result, anticipate a predictable social world with consistent and coherent actors. Laypeople’s most fundamental assumptions about personal consistency and predictability are validated by everyday experience even though the basis of this consistency is misinterpreted by the perceiver. Lay psychology, like lay physics, generally gets the job done using dramatically mistaken principles.

Statistical, Pragmatic, and Expectational Effect Sizes

The magnitude of experimental effects should be judged relative to the variability of the measure in question. Effects are big or small relative to the obstacles that stand in the way of getting a particular job done, and relative to the importance of the job. Effects may be big or small relative to what we expected them to be – called expectation criterion because requires changes in one’s previous beliefs (“Bayesian priors”) with respect to some outcome or event.

Chapter 2: The Power of the Situation

Starts with description of British soccer fans attacking and killing Italian fans – used to illustrate that the situation provides elements vastly different from ordinary life situations or from knowledge of the life histories of the participants.

“For few of us can contemplate such instances of collective abandon without feeling that neither we ourselves, nor our friends and neighbors, nor, for that matter, any other decent members of our society would have succumbed to the group influences.

+Situationism

*Lewin’s belief that behavior is a function of the person and the situation…his particular slant was on the capacity of situational factors to influence behavior that is normally seen to be indicative of personal disposition. Main point:

”social context creates potent forces producing or constraining behavior”

*Social (peer) pressures are the most influential (for overcoming, or initiating behavior)

*Sherif’s Autokinetic effect – message: “perception is socially dictated” – even held when subjects came back a year later

*Asch – initially out to disprove Sherif’s claim, using EASY, unambiguous tasks. Found a large effect of unanimous groups to influence Sx judgment. Claims that perception wasn’t altered, but that pressures to uniformity were the main acting force. Related this to McCarthyism and real

world situations. Were these effects legit or artifacts of laboratory? Milgram (1961) ran a similar study using pitch in a more “real world” paradigm

*Ross, Bierbrauer, Hoffman (1976) – people can almost always cite reasons for their choice of dissent or conformity. Asch is different here, as there was no good reason for the wrong

responses of the group. Internal logic is that only crazy people would make a mistake, and since everyone was making the mistake, dissent would lead others to find *me* crazy. Also, dissent could be seen as an insult to the others in the group. Ross, et. tested this by varying the consequences for judgments in a particular direction (using tones, i.e., higher correct pitches pay more). Sx here were more willing to dissent, because they could attribute their partner’s action to something

*Bennington studies conducted by Theordore Newcomb show that a social situation can have a HUGE shift in the social and political attitudes of people. Attribution is that the social situation at Bennington was such that various PTUs promised social acceptance and threat of rejection based on political views.

*Sherif’s three camp studies (1953, 1955, 1961) were used to demonstrate that intergroup hostility and negative perceptions aren’t inevitable given diverse social groupings. But that hostility arose from a scarce pool of resources or perceived conflicts of interest. Conflict is reduced when superordinate goals and cooperating behavior are introduced (but not just from informational campaigns)

*even meaningless groupings can provide a basis for discriminatory behavior (i.e., children allocating money to groups sorted by art preference)

*Bystander intervention is inhibited by diffusion of responsibility and the construal of a social situation. Presence of others prohibits a quick response, which changes the construal (to make intervention seem unnecessary) which prohibits response more, and so on..

*we don’t like to ignore the opinions of others, because they can be useful. So, disagreeing with others produces tension that we resolve by changing attitudes (theirs or ours) or deciding that their opinion isn’t useful

*groups are punitive toward deviates because they inhibit movement (group goals depend on a certain amount of unanimity)

*Channel factor = “a stimulus or a response pathway that serves to elicit or sustain behavioral intentions with particular intensity or stability.” (ex. War bonds bought more when asked face-to-face)

*minimal compliance – “foot in door” technique. Small acts could motivate Sx to adopt attitudes consistent with their later behavior. Or these acts inform subjects about the nature and degree of their unexamined views.

*Milgram – used to show that people’s leaps from behavior to disposition is unwarranted, also point out that our lay view of the study is flawed…the teacher didn’t obey a single command to deliver a powerful shock, rather the social situation was subtly, and slowly increased to reach that point.

Studies cited here and discussed in class:

Darley & Batson (1973) : From Jerusalem to Jericho. study on Seminarian helping behavior and the Good Samaritan parable – doesn’t tell us much about the disposition of the Sx, but that the situation plays a large role.

Darley & Latane (1969) – bystander intervention using smoke

Latane & Rodin (1969) – bystander intervention using a fallen experimenter

Darley & Latane (1968) – bystander intervention using seizure

Somerville delinquency study – large counseling intervention program for at risk boys, that, in the end appeared to have slightly damaging net effects

Leventhall, Singer, Jones (1965) – inoculation study, where plotting a specific plan for getting an inoculation led to much increased follow-through (channel factor)

Sherif (1937) Autokinetic effect – where Sx judgment of “moving lights” was substantially altered by being in groups (quick development, and persistence of group norm)

Sherif (1953, 1955, 1961) – camp studies, robber’s cave, eagles/rattlers…

Asch (1951, 52, 55, 56) – line studies

Bennington Studies (Newcomb, 1943)– shifting political ideals in college

Freedman & Fraser (1966) – foot in door studies, window cards and billboards

Millgram

Rozin, P. (2001). Social psychology and science: Some lessons from Solomon Asch. Personality and

Social Psychology Review, 5, 2-14.

-The article is a ‘plea for balance, for a greater consideration for identification and description of phenomena and invariances as opposed to modeling, hypothesis testing, experiments, and sophisticated approaches.’

Analyzes social psychology methodology and journal articles relative to those of biology; claims that by striving to be a harder science, social psychology lacks the ‘observant’ background that the monumental theory of evolution and discovery of the double helix structure of DNA are routed in.

I. Introduction

Asch’s studies as prominent paradigms in social psychology and social cognition because his experiments have an orientation to real world phenomena and sensitivity to context.

-Most social psychology experiments observe acts in an experimental setting and

lose meaning to due this isolation from natural context; most of the experiments are not preceded by work on description of universal/contingent invariances, and as a results are tested on a limited range of salient methodology

-Rozin claims that because social psychology wants to be based on the natural sciences, “as a result of a misinterpretation of the approach of the basic natural sciences and a focus on design, experiment, and certainty over relevance, reality, and durability, much of the current field of modern social psychology has an unnecessarily narrow focus that . . . a) pays little attention to powerful cultural influences b) discourages the discovery of new phenomena and creativity c) discourages the description of basic regularities in the social world, and d) presents a rather narrow model of what is acceptable science to graduate students in the area. (p 3)”

II. Methods and approaches in social psychology

-He goes on to show that the majority of papers in a random sample of JPSPs use only undergraduates and do not describe any background information of the subjects (race, gender, religious affiliation, etc). They use ANOVAs, but ignore continuous independent variables, which constrains the type of study that can be done and the way in which one can think about problems and experiments. There are nearly no interview or observational studies done. Rozin compares the techniques of studies in a biology journal and find that those studies are more demonstrative in nature (informed curiosity). Rozin suggests that psychology is a prematurely advanced science and needs to stay focused on the “big social phenomena.”

III. Methodology in more advance natural sciences

-Current methodology that dominates in social psychology is the interplay between theory-model and empirical results.

-Rozin suggests that social psychology wants so badly to become an advanced science that the psychologists slight earlier work, whereas hard sciences emphasize early work. Also, social psychologists need to use something as concrete as Mendelian genetics, Bayes’ Law of gases, Darwin’s observations on Galapagos, to build on, rather than slight the ‘informed curiosity’ of early science.

-Behaviorism, ethology routed in the world, learning in context, should emulate this; though social psychologists have the burden of explaining mental processes as well as behavior, have the advantage of using communication with participants as well as their own self reflections.

IV. Modern Social Psychology

-Here he loosely relates Darwin and Watson/Crick to social psychology, making the argument that, ‘much of the science that led up to these great two discoveries is of the type that would be rejected by many modern social psychologists and journal editors as crude, pre-scientific, poorly controlled, susceptible to alternate explanation, and most critically, not ‘model or hypothesis driven.’ (pg. 7)

V. Modes of Approach in the Biological Sciences

-Informal curiosity is justifiable in referred biology journals; furthermore, premier journals consider replication in another species very important – psychology would publish such replications, but in lower journals.

VI. The illusion of definitiveness in Experiments

-Though multiple causation and complex interactions require different methodology, the experimental procedures in social psychology are not ideal because a) they allow for the possibility that the results will not bear on real social situations and b) they may generalize to only a very narrow range of apparently similar experimental situations.

VII. Prematurely Advanced Science

-Social Psychologists desire to be natural scientists.

-Use sensation and perception as well as cognitive science as principle methods of social psychology, but not necessarily ideal since if you know the specifics of a person, it is not generalize across a situation, whereas perception and sensation models do.

VIII. Studying Football

-Creates a parody of a grant submission, where tennis is the hot topic of the time and no one studies football; should provide opportunities for those that want to study topics based on informed curiosity even if they lack prior theoretical and scientific support.

IX. Conclusion

-Reiterates main point that the article is a ‘plea for balance, for a greater consideration for identification and description of phenomena and invariances as opposed to modeling, hypothesis testing, experiments, and sophisticated approaches. Since we bring insight into the situations we study, we should take advantage of this likeness since it provides opportunities that other fields of science lack.

Wilson, T.D. (2005). The message is the method: Celebrating and exporting the experimental approach. Psychological Inquiry, 16, 185-193.

• Wilson considers the application of controlled experiments to psychological theory to be the most important innovation in social psychology (and indeed psychology in general).

• He argues that social psychology is now in a position to take up the Lewinian approach (“action research”), which stressed rigorous theory formation and testing and using the knowledge derived from experiments to solve social problems.

• He gives a number of examples of where psychologists could be useful partners for policy-makers, and others where actual comparisons demonstrated that the effects of interventions can be non-obvious

o Diversity education

▪ Most diversity programs are created for businesses and schools by consulting firms

▪ These firms rarely employ control conditions to test whether their programs have any effects on reducing participants’ prejudice or increasing cohesivity in groups, instead relying on simple feedback from participants abouth whether they found the treatment worthwhile

o Cambridge-Somerville youth study

▪ Two randomly assigned groups of “at risk” boys, one given psychotherapy, a great deal of attention, activities, etc. over a five year period, the other control group left alone

▪ Though the boys who received the intervention reported feeling positively about the experience, there was no evidence that they fared better, and in fact they were significantly more likely to have multiple criminal offenses compared to the control group

o Critical incident stress debriefing (CISD)

▪ Brings together individuals who’ve experienced a traumatic event to discuss it, immediately after the event for 3-4 hours

▪ Individuals report positive effects, but comparisons to controls demonstrates that those who get CISD are more likely to experience later PTSD problems

o Moving to Opportunity

▪ Some low-income families moved from a low income area to housing in a higher income one

▪ In the first two years, crime rates among adolescents fell, but after 5 years, though females showed a continuing decreased rate of arrest, males were more likely to be arrested for property crimes (perhaps due to the fact that there was more to steal in a wealthier area)

• Cites a number of researchers who have both done a great deal of experimental/theory-based work in basic social psychology and have also worked on applied research, e.g., Elliot Aronson (dissonance theory, jigsaw classroom), Claude Steele (stereotype threat, both theoretical and applied)

Aronson, E. (in press). An autobiography. To appear in M. Runyan & G. Lindzey (Eds.). The history of psychology in autobiography.

In this autobiography, Aronson discusses his childhood, how he became interested in social psychology, and a number of the papers and experiments that he considers to be the proudest moments of his career. He also stresses how his family background influenced him, and is noted for having both completed groundbreaking experimental research as well as applying psychological theory to relevant social issues. Since I don’t know how useful Aronson’s personal background will be for anyone on this final (this reading is generally unlikely to be that important), I’ll just summarize some of his main contributions.

• Aronson & Mills (1959)

o Classic dissonance study - demonstrated that people who went through a severe initiation to join an ultimately boring group enjoyed it more than those who went through a mild initiation

▪ Presumably because the thought of the severe initiation and the lack of satisfaction with the group are dissonant cogntions

▪ However, Aronson states that he later realized the dissonance was actually related to the self-concept, between “I am a sensible, competent person” and “I went through a severe initiation to join a worthless group”

• Aronson & Carlsmith (1962)

o Students who expected to fail at a task (by having already failed a number of times) showed dissonance arousal when they later succeeded.

o After succeeding once following numerous failures, students would change their responses from accurate to inaccurate ones in order to preserve the consistent negative self-concept

• Aronson & Linder (1965) – we like people who speak negatively about us and slowly begin to act more positively toward us more than people who start out with strong positive feelings (before we really know them)

• Jigsaw classroom

o Social psychology had predicted that desegregation would be a great success but it wasn’t

o Aronson and colleagues after visiting several schools realized that the problem was that the classroom was too competitive an environment, which reinforced preexisting inequalities

o In the jigsaw classroom, students were split into diverse groups, and each student was responsible for one portion of the information necessary to complete a project, creating a cooperative environment

o Reduced gaps between ethnic groups, increased attendance

• Using dissonance techniques to increase condom use in students

o Had students give speeches about the dangers of AIDS that implored audiences to use condoms, and later asked them to talk about instances in which they hadn’t used condoms.

o Induced dissonance in those students, who later bought more condoms than students in a control group which had only written the speech, and under self report the experimental students self-reported much higher condom use

Week 2. Groups and Group Dynamics (Week of October 2)

Zajonc, R.B. (1965). Social facilitation. Science, 149, 256-268.

Goal: To provide an explanation for the contradictory results that had been found with regards to how the presence of others affects performance on different tasks. Reviews studies with different species of animals and humans and provides a generalization of the phenomena that accounts for the mixed results.

1) Audience effects: behavior in the presence of passive spectators

a. Up until the 1930s there were mixed results about how audiences affected performance; some studies found an improvement in performance in some tasks – motor responses (Travis), multiplication & word association (Dashiel) – while others found a decrease in performance – learning nonsense syllables or mazes (Pessin), etc.

b. Solution: Performance is facilitated and learning is impaired in the presence of spectators. Why? Audiences enhance the emission of dominant responses; drive, arousal, and activation are known to enhance dominant responses. Now put them together.

2) Co-actor effects: behavior in the presence of other individuals engaged in same activity.

a. Results from these studies (Allport, 1920) fit with the generalization above: Presence of others raises probability of dominant responses, if strong incorrect responses prevail, the presence of others will be detrimental to performance (happens with stutterers, for ex – Travis)

3) Avoidance learning (in the presence of others):

a. If exhibiting the behavior is the dominant response (drinking water), then the presence of others will make it harder to inhibit the behavior (stop drinking) (Rasmusen rat experiment)

b. However, once the avoidance response is learned (i.e., now the dominant response) presence of others now enhances the avoidant behavior (Adum & Tatum experiment with med students).

4) Generalization: The presence of others increases arousal (though this is still only an assumption at that time), which enhances emission of dominant responses. Therefore, the presence of an audience or co-actors enhances performance on a task that is well known, while it impairs learning a new task.

Festinger, L., Schachter, S., & Back, K. (1950).The spatial ecology of group formation. In L. Festinger, S. Schachter, & K. Back (Eds.), Social pressure in informal groups, Chapter 4 (pp. 146-161). Stanford University Press.

Goal: Study on the ecological determinants of friendship and group formation.

Background: Previous research had shown inverse relationship between distance and marriage selection. 76% of marriages in New Haven (1940) were between people living 20 blocks away and 35% percent within 5 blocks.

Westgate and Westgate West studies: Perfect place to study this relationship. Housing projects; people moving in were pseudo-randomly assigned; no previous basis for friendships.

Sociometric data was collected by asking people: “What 3 people in Westgate or Westgate West do you see more of socially?” Their choices were related to units of physical distance. Showed that even small distances (20 or 30 feet) played a role in the establishment of friendships.

This relationship holds for distances within a building as well as for distances between buildings, within a community.

Mechanism: Physical distance (next-door neighbor vs. 5 doors down) and functional distance (living by the stairs, the garbage dumps, etc.) affect the number of passive contacts (nodding head, smiling, saying hello) that people have. Passive contacts evolve into acquaintanceships, which evolve into casual friendships, which evolve into friendships.

Note: Important to keep in mind that these were communities of graduate students. Therefore, they were all homogeneous communities, and it’s still an empirical question whether these factors will have the same effect among more heterogeneous communities.

Sherif, M. (1966). The experiments (Chapter 5). In common predicament (pp. 71-93). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Goal: Study on the characteristics of intergroup relationships.

Conducted in the 1940- and 50’s this group of experiments by Sherif examined cooperation vs. competition in light of WWII and in-group- and out-group conflict.

Summary of the Method:

Sherif set up an elaborate summer camp for boys (11-12 yrs old), at which every staff member was part of the research team. Sherif conducted a series of experiments examining how groups formed norms and identities, and how they interacted with other groups.

All of the campers were selected in order to minimize the differences between them. Then, the boys were divided into 2 different cabins so as to form two arbitrary groups. After the groups were stably formed, the different groups were brought into contact under conditions intended to create competition and hostility. Finally, tried to reduce hostility between groups by the creation of common goals.

Hypotheses:

These experiments encompassed a number of hypotheses. The general themes were that even when arbitrarily assigned to groups, boys would show greater affinity for the group they were put in, to the extent that affinity w/ In-group members would be greater than for friendships based on mutual interest etc. w/ members of the out-groups. Groups of strangers were predicted to develop norms and status structures. Members of a group were predicted to overestimate the ability of high status members of their own group. Competition between groups was predicted to increase hostility between groups.

Findings

Pretty much nothing unexpected happened (experimental design??). Boys were more loyal to their camps, regardless of whom they formed initial friendships with before the boys were divided. Groups tended to evolve their own behavior and status norms. Boys tended to think that high-status members of their groups were the most capable. The experimenters found that with repeated, positive interactions to solve a common problem, different camps of boys could become friendly, and overcome out-group prejudice.

• Key here is the dramatic experimental stage that Sherif and co set up. Ability to tweak processes through subsequent summers, led to increased refinement of theories about in group and out-group favoritism. However, the factors that were believed to produce this behavior were not explicitly tested against a comparison group.

• Important to keep in mind: 11-12 year-old American boys may be an ideal group in which to test hypotheses regarding competitiveness. Question about whether this would generalize to other populations.

• Also, we have no idea what the role of the research staff (camp counselors) actually was, and how much this affected the results.

Zimbardo, P.G. (1969). The human choice: Individuation, reason, and order versus deindividuation, impulse and chaos. In W.T. Arnold & D. Levine (Eds.), Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, Vol. 17 (pp. 237-307). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.

• Part of the non-Lewinian research tradition. Examined the behavior of groups, but mostly as a way of characterizing the way individuals behaved in these situations (involving groups). Explained the phenomena in terms of the individual, not the group.

• The phenomena: People in group settings are more likely to act in ways the violate established norms, frequently in ways that are harmful to themselves or others (e.g., behavior of mobs, riots, etc), but doesn’t work exclusively for anti-social behavior (e.g., expressions of open love in the sixties).

• The proposed explanation – deindividuation: People in group settings experience anonymity and diffusion of responsibility. Changes in their perception of the self and others leads to a reduction in the threshold of normally restrained behavior.

o De-individuation can be further understood as the opposite of individuation (duh! sorry). Individuation is the process by which an individual is conscious of freely making a commitment for which he then assumes responsibility. Individuation causes the individual to internalize the motivations for his behavior and thus to exert control over them.

Summary

[pic]

Hypothesis:

• Examine behavior in a manner where social identity is taken away. Not just anonymity but also diffusion of responsibilities. Being a part of something that is larger than ourselves.

• Anonymity reduces the concern for social evaluation. This loss off identifiability can be experienced by being submerged in a crowd.

• Diffusion of responsibility occurs when responsibility for an actions is shared with others. A loss of responsibility may also be felt if the relationship between an action and its effects is obscured.

• Presence of a group provides both anonymity and diffusion of responsibility. It also provides additional functions, such as: models of behavior, triggers of behavior, and arousal.

Experiments:

1. They set up a study on the effects of anonymity among college coeds. For half the subjects, anonymity was induced by never using their names; for the other half, identifiability was emphasized by making them wear name tags. Both groups delivered electric shocks to another girl. The anonymous group exhibited much more aggression than the identifiable group. Also, in the anonymous groups aggression increased with successive trials. While there was no "enforcer" like in Milgram's studies, the girls obediently shocked the victim for as long as allowed. "Conditions which induce feelings of remoteness lead to lowered self-consciousness, less embarrassment, and reduced inhibitions about punishing the victim."

2. Another study allowed a release of aggression by the subjects against some confederates pretending to be resisters. The "catharsis" had no effect on reducing aggression and actually increased it a bit. The test was duplicated among a group of Belgian soldiers under even stricter control of the important variables. However, the opposite effect was found – the anonymous group shocked the victim less often and will less intensity, and felt less satisfied after shocking them. In this case the soldiers were somewhat de-individuated by their roles as soldiers. Putting hoods over their faces made them feel isolated and more anxious. The soldiers in groups identified actually felt more de-individuated because of the soldier’s group mentality.

1. The researchers also conducted a field experiment in auto vandalism. A car left on a street in New York was stripped in 10 minutes. Over 26 more hours a steady parade of vandals removed all sorts of parts. Nine hours later destruction began. In less than three days 23 incidents of destructive behavior. In fact, most vandalism was observed by one or more passersby, most destruction was during the day. In Palo Alto, the car was untouched and even the hood was lowered by a passerby so it wouldn't get wet in the rain!. However, once the researchers initiated some vandalism to the car at Stanford, others eventually joined in.

• Findings:

2. Dehumanization is possible when a large flow of people must be processed. Also people become desensitized to the empathies aroused by unfortunate people and eventually felt helpless and then resentful at the emotional burden caused by these unfortunates. Doctors must learn to see patients as bodies to distance themselves from the immoral act of cutting into another person. Others who are doing something purely for self-gratification need to dehumanize others.

Relevance

• Important aspect of non-Lewinian tradition which eventually will be lumped with the group literature

Crocker, J., & Major, B. (1989). Social stigma and self-esteem: The self-protective properties of stigma. Psychological Review, 96, 608-630.

• Several psychological theories predict that members of stigmatized groups should have low global self-esteem (= generalized feeling of goodness, worthiness, self-respect.) Reasons for this:

1. Reflected appraisals – self-concept depends on the opinions of others. We know how we are seen by others, and we adopt their viewpoint. Stigmatized members should be aware of the negative feelings people have toward them, and might incorporate these into their self-concept, producing lower self-esteem.

2. Self-Fulfilling Prophecies – people may come to behave in ways that are consistent with others’ expectations. This change in behavior may then cause them to change their self-concept due to self-perception.

3. Efficacy-Based Self-Esteem – self-concept develops through efficacious interaction with the environment. Stigmatized group members should have lower self-esteem because they are afforded less opportunity, control, and resources than those in more advantaged groups.

• Despite these speculations, there is very little evidence for the idea that stigmatized members have lower global self-esteem. In fact, members of these groups often have just as high, or higher, global self-esteem than members of the advantaged outgroup. Why?

• Authors hypothesize that membership in a stigmatized group offers protection in the following ways:

1. One can attribute negative feedback to prejudice against their group – an external attribution is given after failure, so a stigmatized member does not have to believe that it was their inadequacy that caused the failure. This preserves self-esteem.

2. One compares their outcomes with those of the (stigmatized) ingroup rather than the advantaged outgroup – Comparing performance with the advantaged group would likely lower self-esteem (since the advantaged group has more opportunity, etc.), so members of disadvantaged groups instead compare themselves to those who are similar to themselves.

3. Once can selectively devalue the dimensions on which their group does not do well, and selectively value the dimensions on which the group does do well – the things that the group does well are parts of their self-definition; the things the group is not good at are ignored, and not considered part of self-definition.

• These mechanisms are special cases of self-serving biases that have been documented in the literature. The authors highlight that being a member of a stigmatized group offers special opportunities for self-protection (and one might add that this is so because members of stigmatized groups are also victims of a special kind of threat to their identity, “not only from prejudice and discrimination, but also from daily setbacks, failures, and rejections”).

• However, certain factors moderate the effect that each of the protection strategies offer. Here are a few examples of moderators mentioned:

1. Time since the acquisition of the stigma – it is harder to become stigmatized later in life than it is to be born into a stigmatized group. This is because you may not know how to use the protection strategies (e.g., takes time to learn to devalue outcomes that are no longer attainable, or to compare oneself to members of a comparably stigmatized group). The authors cite acquired physical disabilities, disease, and rape as examples of cases in which self-esteem suffers.

2. Concealability of the stigma – The less obvious the stigma is, the less the individuals suffer from stereotype. However, it is also true that individuals that conceal their stigma cannot use some of the mentioned protection strategies.

3. Accepting negative attitudes towards one’s stigmatized group – internalizing negative attitudes about one’s group leads to lowered self-esteem.

4. Responsibility for the stigmatizing condition – when people believe that the person with the stigma is not responsible for it, there will be treated better. Also, if a person blames himself for his stigma, his self-esteem will likely be lower, and it will be harder to use the protection strategies.

• Although these strategies help protect the individual’s self-esteem they may also have a negative effect on motivation, and may lead to group differences in aspirations, skills, and achievements (see also Steele). Additionally, if individuals overuse these strategies they may miss opportunities for learning or improvement.

• Conclusion: stigmatized individuals are able to protect and buffer global self-esteem, but this does not mean that discrimination is not harmful in other ways.

Steele, C. M. (1997). A threat in the air: How stereotypes shape intellectual identity and performance. American Psychologist, 52, 613-629.

Goal: To identify how being part of a group that is negatively stereotyped in a particular domain may impair the ability of members of that group in that domain.

Assumption/starting point: In order to have high achievement in a particular domain, individuals must care about the domain. High achievement in this domain must be part of one’s self-identity, as this causes achievement motivation. Could it be that members of stereotyped groups lack this identification with certain domains? Why could this be?

Hypotheses: Negative stereotypes of one’s group in a certain domain create a threat to one’s ability when performing in this domain (“stereotype threat”). This threat causes an emotional reaction that interferes with performance, causing individuals to under-perform. Furthermore (and more important in the present article), being unable to perceive good prospects for achievement cause one to disidentify from this domain, creating a further lack of motivation and causing further declines in achievement. This disidentification has the terrible consequence of causing individuals to underperform even when they’re not under stereotype threat.

Process: First, individuals from a stereotyped group who identify with a domain (e.g., women in science) are more likely to suffer from stereotype threat. Being aware that they may be seen stereotypically and caring about the domain creates a pressure that may cause them to underperform.

Second, as a consequence of having to constantly deal with this, individuals may be motivated to disidentify with the domain (i.e., to stop caring). Disidentification causes a decrease in achievement motivation and achievement thus declines.

Experimental evidence:

1. Evidence in support of stereotype threat: Spencer, Quinn & Steele, 1997 – showed that women score less than men on a math test, but that this difference goes away if they are explicitly told that this test does not show any gender differences. Same effect was achieved with African Americans in a test that was presented as being diagnostic of ability (performance lower than for Whites) or as not being diagnostic of ability (difference in performance goes away).

2. Evidence in support of disidentification:

a. Crocker & Major (1989 – see above summary)

b. Indirect evidence: Achievement in certain domains is not part of overall self-esteem for stereotyped individuals (Hare & Costenell, 1985; Major et al., in press).

c. Direct evidence: Experiment which manipulated the level of stereotype threat experienced by female math test-takers. Women under stronger stereotype threat disidentified with math more than ones under weaker stereotype threat (Stoutemeyer & Steele)

Abstract: A general theory of domain identification is used to describe achievement barriers faced by women in advanced quantitative areas and by African Americans in school. The theory assumes that sustained school success requires identification with a school and its subdomains; that societal pressures on these groups (e.g., economic disadvantage, gender roles) can frustrate this identification; and that in school domains where these groups are negatively stereotyped, those who have become domain identified face the further barrier of stereotype threat, the threat that others' judgments or their own actions will negatively stereotype them in the domain. Research shows that this threat dramatically depresses the standardized test performance of women and African Americans who are in the academic vanguard of their groups (offering a new interpretation of group differences in standardized test performance), that it causes disidentification with school, and that practices that reduce this threat can reduce these negative effects.

Gladwell, M. (1996, June 3). The tipping point. The New Yorker.

[Available at ]

Gladwell, M. (1999, January 11). Six degrees of Lois Weisberg. The New Yorker.

[Available at ]

Week 3. Compliance and Social Pressure (Week of October 9)

Milgram, S. (1965). Some conditions of obedience and disobedience to authority. Human Relations,

18, 57-76.

Study Aim: To explore under what conditions will one hurt someone else when told to do so and under what conditions will he refuse.

Organizes hostility into 3 fundamental elements: authority, executant, victim

Debriefing: extended discussion, “friendly reconciliation with victim,” detailed report of study sent afterwards, psychiatric evaluation of participants, their responses mostly favorable

Obedience in this study assumes hierarchical, dominant-subordinate relationship

Sample: All male, 20-50 yrs., paid $4.50

Told they were in a study examining the effect of punishment on memory

Rigged a drawing so that every participant drew “teacher” and every confederate drew “learner.” Experimenter insists on administering shock for every wrong answer given using a simulated shock generator ranging from 30 volts (slight shock) to 450 volts (extremely severe shock); set up so that learner performs poorly and graduates to higher levels of shock quickly; taped learner’s voice to standardize protests to shock and painful cries; while experimenter urges on hesitant subjects by saying “you have no choice, you must go on!”

Pilot Studies: 1. Victim behind glass/barely visible; no vocal protests ( nearly all went to 450 volts; 2. Mild protests ( still inadequate; 3. Stronger protests ( still many went all the way, but mean voltage where subject stopped lowered and spread increased.

Results: Obedience to authority was greater than expected and found that it was necessary to have vocal feedback from the victim to elicit any defiance.

Found that subjects avoided looking at the victim ( wanted to examine how salience of victim affects obedience

Immediacy: 4 conditions – Remote (victim in another room, pounded on wall once @ 300v) = 34% defiance; Voice (heard victim through wall cry out) – 37.5%, Proximity (victim 1 ½ feet from subject) – 60%; Touch-proximity (had to place victim’s hand on shockplate for ever wrong answer) – 70%

Possible explanations: visual cues trigger empathy; denial/narrowing of cognitive field to put victim out of mind; reciprocal fields (victim scrutinizes your actions ( guilt; similar to blindfolding someone about to be executed.; phenomenal unity of act (proximity brings action and consequence closer together spatially); incipient group formation (feel more aligned to experimenter when close, proximal victim shifts alliance to him); acquired behavioral dispositions (disposition to not harm others present when victim is proximal, learn to harm others easier when further away).

Closeness of Authority: 3 conditions – few feet away (26 obedient); orders by phone (9); tape recorded and never seen

Power severely curtailed when subjects did not have to face experimenter; some subjects even administered shocks that were lower in voltage as act of passive defiance; reappearance of E forced further obedience; Proximal relation of E to subject had greater effect than proximity of victim.

Obedient were more tense than those who defied according to self-report ( conflict between disposition not to harm others and tendency to obey authority

Background Authority: effect of Yale’s reputation on willingness to obey

Changed Locales to run down office building, inside marginally respectable looking

-Somewhat reduced obedience from 65% to 48%

Group Effects: 2 disobedient others ( 90% disobeyed too

2 obedient others ( strengthened obedience slightly

Subjects not directly administering shocks but part of group that did – only 3/40 defied.

Subjects determining shock level – 2 wanted higher some insisted on lower, others neither (no numbers reported here)

Had people estimate when someone would disobey: typically underestimates reported (psychiatrists basing opinion on disposition, not situation)

Contend that for certain circumstances, situation is determinant of behavior; questions raised as to role of personality and motivation; People willing to act inhumanely and disregard conscience if order comes from a legitimate authority.

Baumrind, D. (1964). Some thoughts on ethics of research. American Psychologist, 19, 421-423.

Study of obedience not sufficient in lab setting: lab and experimenter automatically create obedience level greater than baseline (outside lab setting) because study volunteers are by their very nature ready to obey

Points out that Milgram does not detail debriefing procedures: found them unconvincing and hard to believe that any procedure would suffice given the graphic illustration of the stress, tension, anxiety endured by the subjects; also questions ecological validity, sampling techniques, generalizability, replicability.

Says benefit to humanity does not justify that harm being done

Questions parallels Milgram draws to Nazi Germany ( victims there seen as less than human and the agent is acting for a larger “cause” believing he is righteous in his actions

Threat to public image of psychology ( points out importance of fully informed consent and extensive debriefing in emotionally distressing experiments, given they are even necessary.

Milgram, S. (1964). Issues in the study of obedience. American Psychologist, 19, 848-852.

(Response to Baumrind article)

Milgram starts by stating that her critique was based on deficient information that was easily accessible in footnotes and references (other reports in study series);

Points out that stress/tension effects produced were not intentional; underestimated reactions based on colleagues estimation and group of psychiatrists who lead them to assume the subjects would break off from the experiment.

Initial subjects exhibiting stress later endorsed experiment, so he continued with studies.

Debriefing rebuttal: defiant subjects were supported and obediants reassured; comprehensive reports mailed out, friendly reconciliation with victim, & told shocks were fake; follow up questionnaires with reaction to experiment (only 1.3% negative feelings, 80% felt such studies were important, and 74% said they learned something bout themselves).

If he felt it was dangerous, he would not have continued; put a lot of care into sending out carefully worded report explaining value of their participation; participants understood they were just carrying out an experiment afterwards; had psychiatric evaluation of most distressed subjects one year later and found no signs of trauma.

Rejects her contention that obedience was not ecologically valid because it occurred in a situation where obedience was the appropriate behavior by pointing out that those are exactly the contexts in which obedience is appropriate and are precisely the ones we should examine.

Responding to Baumrind highlighting the differences between Nazi Germany and lab setting, he says he only uses that example as an illustration of destructive effect of obedience, not as a framework for his design. His design allows for looking at mechanisms underlying obedience to legitimate authority like the Experimenter & diffusion of responsibility.

Baurmrind felt that 65% obedience due to subjects not having a reasonable alternative to disobey, but Milgram counters that many disobey depending on condition, (e.g. in once condition, 90% disobey)

Points out a contradiction in her argument: on one hand, she argues that experiment cannot generalize outside the lab, on other hand she states that subjects will lose trust in authority figures outside lab setting ( states that losing trust in authority figure requesting harmful behavior, if distrust does indeed emerge, would be beneficial, increasing awareness of indiscriminate submission to authority.

No reason to divide learning about people from helping people.

Orne, M. T., & Holland, C. H. (1968). On the ecological validity of laboratory deceptions. International Journal of Psychiatry, 6, 282-293.

Begins by pointing out that the “flair” and shock value of Milgram’s experiments contributed to the oversight of questioning the validity of his methods, such as: the plausibility of situation to prevent subject suspicion.

-Need for post experimental inquiry to assess potential suspicion, otherwise, unclear if subject is behaving naturally; no way of knowing if subject were deceived in this study.

-Subjects have a tendency, they say, to evaluate experimental cues: setting, experimenter, purpose, instructions; perception of experiment does not rely solely on explicit direction ( congruence of cues indicate plausibility, thus slight changes in procedure could influence behavior (e.g., addressing spontaneous responses by subject could vary greatly); Also, difficult to prevent subject from communicating with eachother.

*Milgram gives no indication of procedural snafus*

More implausibility: Role of teacher seems pointless in eyes of subject for purpose of the study, especially when operating a shock generator requires no training of any kind; E demanding victim to be hurt and showing no concern to victim cries, especially for a trivial study on memory, seems unrealistic; Technical problem of vocal feedback timing: only cries out when shocked then goes silent and then responds to question calmly.

Suggest that for immediacy study when victim is close, using good actors may increase plausibility and this is way you see a reduction in obedience.

Gives example of hypnotized girl wiling to feign killing people but immediately “awakens” when asked to get undressed.

Being told (as opposed to having an option) to carry out the experiment implies that it is safe to do so.

Holland (1967) replicated experiment – subjects reported that when victim stopped responding, they thought the victim escaped or was released; postexperimental interviews indicated that 75% did not believe it was real; also had condition telling people something fishy about experiment but to go along anyway and found no differences in behavior between this group and unaware group; blind E could not predict which group was which.

Constrains inference of obedience to contexts perceived to be safe.

To understand what they are obeying exactly, need to know subjects’ perceptions; by volunteering, you are agreeing to do whatever the E asks of you; Orne (1962) had subjects complete tedious, serial additions for lengthy periods of time and then tear up their work and continue; did this many times without question.

Total compliance dependent upon awareness of experimental situation and willingness to trust E.

Also raises issue of the absurd conditions of the experiment: subjects shocking a heart patient is evidence of them not believing in the experiment.

Milgram, S. (1972). Interpreting obedience: Error and evidence. In A. Miller (Ed.), The social psychology of psychological research (pp. 138-154). New York: Free Press.

Response to Orne and Holland’s criticism re: postinterview procedures: 1) doesn’t matter if they do not believe the experiment is about learning and memory, nor does it matter if they suspect they are the focus of the study 2) does matter that they believe the learner is getting painful shocks. Milgram did assess participant perception both immediately afterwards and a year later. For a manipulation check, asked subject how painful they thought shocks were, most rated them close to extremely painful. 2 gave low pain ratings (both obedient) but Milgram suggests that this could be interpreted as a defense mechanism to rationalize their behavior. Also one year follow up questionnaire about belief of study, ¾ believed the set-up; even eliminating those who were suspicious, you get a 60% obedience rate. Milgram felt is was not ethical to remove suspicious subjects as that would “inadvertently shape” his hypothesis.

Counters argument that people are trying to guess real intention of experiment. Sample not exposed to psychological experiments, especially a community sample; most subjects treated experimenter as though he were a psychiatrist. Cannot assume subjects are all suspicious, only those prone to paranoia perhaps.

Also explains that being a teacher in charge of shocking learner was accompanied by detailed instructions and stated why the subject giving the shocks was required.

Also countered that cool reaction of E can be interpreted as professionalism.

Emphasizes process of gradual commitment by having participant increase shock level slightly, one step at a time.

Points out that Orne’s “experiments” are merely anecdotal, observing one or two people in each condition; discounts hypnosis example asserting that there is no way of knowing what the hypnotized woman was thinking and has nothing to do with authoritarian obedience embedded in a hierarchical social structure.

States that his study has nothing to do with persuading random people but involves legitimate authority figure prescribing behavior and the meaning of that behavior.

In response to experiment and anecdote about tedious, pointless tasks, Milgram points out that the shock task was “coordinated as a set of rational purposes,” which is more realistic. Important that meaning is attached to the act, and is not arbitrary; and it is explicit that harm Is not the intention which forces subject to decide whose request to weigh more (the E or victim).

Orne construes demand characteristics as impediment, but Milgram views these as the focus of his investigation; Orne also states that his colleagues could not be induced to act in such a manner but this just speaks to the importance of implementing a hierarchical dominant-subordinate relationship.

Another refute to Orne’s question of successful deception is illustrated in similar studies in which participants subject themselves to unpleasant tasks willingly.

Points out that Orne’s own study getting subject to perform tedious tasks is evidence for the power of a legitimate authority figure.

Similar effects in more naturalistic setting in which nurses are told by physician to administer meds to a patient that is actually double their allowed dosage, 21/22 nurses comply…speaks to ecological validity of his own findings of authoritative power.

Orne only discredits phenomenon without presenting alternative, improved methods of study. Finally, he does concede with Orne’s point that it is invaluable to increase experimental sophistication.

Freedman, J.L., & Fraser, S.C. (1966). Compliance without pressure: The foot-in-the-door technique. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 4, 196-202.

Previous work on external pressure: the more the better..except under cognitive dissonance; sometimes minimum pressure is better (minimize pressure, maximize effectiveness).

Foot in the door or gradation technique: compliance to small request increases likelihood of complying to larger one (e.g., brainwashing, propaganda, advertising).

Experiment 1: 3 conditions – Performance (small request that they fulfill, then large request); One condition (only large request); Agree only (small request that they do not fulfill, then large); Famliarization (no request).

Small request: answer survey questions about soap products

Large request: survey team of 5-6 men come to your house to inventory all household products in your cupboards.

2/3 agreed to small request, all of those that refused, also refused large request

Found that large request compliance was greatest for performance condition > agree and familiarization > one condition

Small request does increase compliance

Not due to familiarity since it didn’t differ from one condition bud did from performance; simply agreeing lower than performance but not significantly ( agreeing may be part of the effect

Question as to why and how first request affect compliance still unanswered.

Possible explanations: obligation to particular person; increase commitment to particular cause; for similar requests, cannot disagree to larger request based on principles since already agreed to small request, therefore, less reasons available to disagree.

Limitation: E not blind; 2nd study to examine possibilities and address limitation

Experiment 2: In person requests; 1st request: small sign for safe driving or sign petition to keep CA beautiful; Two weeks later, 2nd request very large sign saying drive careful (obscures view of house and front door); 4 groups: same task, same issue; same task, different issue; different task, same issue; different task, different issue.

Control group: no 1st request, only 2nd

No difference between groups for agreement to 1st request; 55% complied versus 20% in control group; 1st request agreement increased compliance to 2nd request across groups; same issue/same task had highest compliance but wasn’t significantly higher than other 3.

Since different issues, could not be matter of principle explanation or sense of commitment to a cause; since different people, could not be sense of obligation.

Attitude change: general increase in wanting to get involved; thinks their the type of person who does these types of things; or change in attitude towards compliance in general.

Study findings limited to good causes sponsored by not for profit organizations, may not generalize to political or marketing campaigns, for example.

Cialdini, R.B., Vincent, J.E., Lewis, S.K., Catalan, J., Wheeler, D., & Darby, B.L. (1975). Reciprocal concessions procedure for inducing compliance: The door-in-the-face technique. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 31, 206-215.

Door in the face: making an extreme request first that is sure to be rejected, followed by a more moderate second favor.

Two reasons this method should be effective: 1) Reciprocity- the authors extend this reasoning to include, “you should make concessions to those who make concession to you.” Willingness to compromise should elicit the same behavior in return. 2) Mutual concessions – must be some indication of retreat from the initial position before the other will be willing to budge.

Study 1: 3 conditions – request for favor (smaller request only control); request for smaller favor after refusal of larger favor (rejection-moderation); only heard about larger favor before request for smaller favor (exposure control, to examine mere contrast effects)

72 students; experimenter introduced himself as being with a county youth counseling program; then made either extreme request followed by smaller one, or just smaller one.

Extreme request: volunteer as big brother or sister 2 hrs/week for 2 years at juvenile detention center; Smaller request: chaperone juvenile delinquents on 2 hr. trip to the zoo.

In exposure control, subjects were presented with both favors and asked if they would participate in either one.

Results: No subject agreed to large favor; found highest compliance in rejection-moderation condition (50%), p=0.011 compared to exposure control (25%) followed by smaller request only control (16.7%), no difference between controls.

Study 2 (replication and extension): Wanted to confirm that the change from the large favor to the smaller one is perceived as a concession by the requester. To do this, they compared the rejection-moderation condition using the same requester and using two different requesters for each favor.

3 conditions: small request only, two requester control, rejection-moderation using blind experimenters.

RM was found to have significantly higher compliance rates (55.5%) than the two requester control (10.5%) and the smaller request only (31.5%); these groups did not significantly differ. Two requester control appears to inhibit compliance which is consistent with other findings that people are consistent in their responses to favors.

Study 3: Addresses possible explanations of social desirability and tenacious requesters.

3 conditions: RM, equivalent request control (asking 2nd favor of equivalent size, should not increase compliance if phenomenon is function of initial large favor), smaller request control.

No subjects complied with extreme request, but 8 subjects complied with initial equivalent request (2 hour trip to museum with juv. Delinquents). Also, no difference between control conditions, equivalent request and smaller request both 33.3%. The RM condition had a 54.1% compliance rate, but was only marginally higher, p =0.091.

Suggest that tenacity of requester is not an issue since there was no difference between equivalent and smaller request conditions. Also, only 1 of the 8 that agreed to initial request in equivalent condition refused the 2nd request, suggesting consistency as opposed to a persistent requester (22/24 responded similarly to both requests).

Powerful because it requires little persuasion, is derived from social norm (reciprocal concession), and can result in heightened sense of satisfaction by the person doing the favor (which may positively influence future interactions with requester).

Limitations: only tested face to face interactions, interactants of the same sex, and prosocial requests only.

Miller, R.L., Brickman, P., & Bolen, D. (1975). Attribution versus persuasion as a means for modifying behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 31, 430-441.

Persuasive efforts do little to change attitudes; investigated manipulating attributions as a means of persuasion.

Study 1 attempted to modify children’s littering behavior; expected attribution condition to persist longer in treatment effects than persuasion 2 weeks later.

3 5th grade classes (1 is control), 8 45 min. sessions

Attribution condition: told all week how orderly and clean they were using all 3 attribution techniques; Persuasion condition: told all week how important it is not to litter and that they should be orderly and clean.

Pretest- # of assignments students were told to throw away in trash versus # on floor

Posttest – gave out candy and counted # of wrappers in trash vs. floor; later in day left out candy wrappers, came back an hour later to see if picked up

2 week posttest – gave puzzles with wrappers, then same procedure as posttest

Results: Attribution significantly better litter behavior, no difference in persuasion and control; 3 mos. later, teacher reports attribution group is significant improved compared to prior to treatment.

Study 2 controls for differences between teachers on Math achievement test to see if effects generalize to more valued skills (highly valenced aspect of self), and to separate out motivation and ability attributions.

Compared attribution and reinforcement techniques (verbal praise, extrinsic reward); same procedure as study 1 except did not explain why it was important because thought that was obvious; and used public labeling.

6 conditions: Attribution Motivation, Attribution Ability, Persuasion Motivation, Persuasion Ability, Reinforcement, & Control (no message)

4 2nd grade classes – all conditions in each class

Math and math self-esteem pretest ( 8 days of treatment ( Math/self-esteem posttest ( same tests 2 weeks later

Results: no differences at pretest across groups; found effect of time on self-esteem, such that it improved from pretest to 2 weeks after treatment for everyone but control (decreased across time possibly due to awareness that they were not in a treatment group). Attribution treatments significantly changed math ability and change persisted over time. Persuasion was generally not significant and any small effects dissipated over time.

Limitation of all conditions in one class versus study 1 that had one teacher per condition; since effects were found in both studies, cannot ascribe them to idiosyncrasies of methods.

Findings lend support to communication of expectancies/teacher expectancy effect.

No significant difference between attribution ability and attribution motivation –both internal attributions found to be sufficient. Note: do not expect external attributions to be an effective technique.

Effects may be specific to children, adults may recognize intent.

Persuasion may cause person to believe that the need to be persuaded indicates that they may not have the characteristics to begin with (e.g., if they are being persuaded to be clean, perhaps it’s because they are not a clean person) and thus, they will make negative self-attributions as a consequence.

Finally, attributions themselves may be a form of reinforcement.

Week 4. Conformity, Cooperation, Conflict, and Social Dilemmas (Week of October 16)

Asch, S.E. (1951). Effects of group pressure upon the modification and distortion of judgments.

In H. Guetzkow (Ed.), Groups, leadership, and men (pp. 393-401). Pittsburgh: Carnegie Press.

• Subjects put into situations where their own experiences and beliefs conflicted with group norms, in this case determining the length of a line as compared to a standard

o Found progression towards majority opinion as trials progressed

o 1/4 of subjects remained completely independent and did not conform; 1/3 displaced estimates towards group opinion in majority of trials

• Yeilding subjects experienced

o Distortion of perception under stress of group pressure

o Distortion of judgment, begin to believe their estimates are inaccurate

o Distortion of actions, need to not appear different or inferior to others

• Role of majority size: full force of conformity with majority of 3, increasing majority up to 15 does not increase conformity

Latane, B., & Darley, J. (1969). Bystander “apathy.” American Scientist, 57, 244-268.

Study: People may be less likely to intervene in an emergency in the presence of other than if they are alone. Four experiments: smoke in the room, woman falls off chair in other room, stolen beer, and epileptic seizure. Subjects are less likely to intervene when with a confederate that doesn’t intervene.

Explanation: presence of others makes the interpretation of the situation more ambiguous (social influence) and diffuses responsibility. The presence of even 1 other person caused a failure or delay to act (possible misinterpretation of the event).

Pluralistic ignorance - until someone acts, others see non-responding bystanders. Thus, situational factors more important than personality (“apathy”).

Difficulties of helping: 1) few positive benefits of intervening; 2) rare events – lack of experience; 3) variations – difficult to deal with; 4) unforeseen; 5) requires instant action; and 6) often ambiguous.

• Intervention requires a series of processes to understand nature of emergency as well as help needed.

• Processes of what to do in an emergency are easier when alone – know the help must come from you. There is a diffusion of responsibility when others are around. Social inhibition becomes very generalized. Often victims are strangers, which also decreases likelihood of intervention.

Darley, J.M., & Batson, C.D. (1973). “From Jerusalem to Jericho”: A study of situational and dispositional variables in helping behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 27, 100-108.

• The “Good Samaritan” Experiment, testing influence of situational versus personality variables on helping behavior

• Seminarian students sent to give a sermon, some assigned to speak about the Good Samaritan parable, others assigned a non-helping parable. Some were told they were late for the talk and thus in a rush, other were told they had extra time. All walked by a distressed person on way to talk.

• Most likely to stop and help were students with most time, least likely to stop were rushed students

• Religious personality and Good Samaritan priming did not determine helping behavior.

• However, if subject did stop to help, character of helping response was related to religiosity

• Main Point: situations matter often much more than dispositions

Platt, J. (1973). Social traps. American Psychologist, 28, 641-651.

Social Trap: situations in society that contain traps, where men or organizations or whole societies get themselves started in some direction or some set of relationships that later prove to be unpleasant or lethal, and that they see no easy way to back out of, or are able to avoid.

Three major classes: 1) one person trap (smoking cigarettes); 2) missing – hero trap (failing to help); and 3) common trap (prisoner’s dilemma).

• Represents all of our more intractable and large-scale urban, national, and international problems today.

Latane, B., Williams, K., & Harkins, S. (1979). Many hands make light the work: The causes and consequences of social loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 822-832.

Experiment:

Social loafing defined as decreased effort when performing act in group verses on own. Examples: clapping and shouting in public vs individually; in natural situations (experiment 1) and even when social components of group behavior and auditory feedback are removed (experiment 2).

Mechanisms:

• Faulty attribution processes: attempting to maintain equal division of labor within group, though not likely after results of experiment 2 show effect persists when group performance can’t be inferred

• Sub-maximal goal-setting

Learned contingency between input and outcome

Cialdini, R.B., Reno, R.R., & Kallgren, C.A. (1990). A focus theory of normative conduct: Recycling the concept of norms to reduce littering in public places. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 1015-1026.

Demonstrating how social norms operate in response to littering

• Study 1: measured littering behavior in (a) clean environment (anti-littering norm) or (b) littered environment (pro-littering norm), with (a) confederate littering (high norm salience) or (b) confederate walking by (low norm salience). See interaction of descriptive norm (environment, e.g. amount of litter) and injunctive norm (acceptable actions, “what you should do”), such that more litter in environment increased likelihood of subject littering, but in environments with less litter the subject was least likely to litter after observing the confederate litter.

• Study 2: replicated results, this time testing main effect of descriptive norm. Found that probability of littering increase with number of pieces in environment except least likely to litter with 1 (as opposed to 0) piece of litter.

• Study 3: showed that more litter in environment shortens time before subject litters

• Study 4: Altered the norms by sweeping litter, but saw same interaction effects of descriptive and injunctive norm

• Study 5: Negative norm: able to decrease littering behavior by varying degree of anti-littering norm (signs from “do not litter,” to “recycle” to “vote”)

Ross, L., & Ward, A. (1996). Naive realism: Implications for social conflict and misunderstanding.

In T. Brown, E. Reed, & E. Turiel (Eds.), Values and knowledge (pp. 103-135). Hillsdale,

NJ: Erlbaum.

Assertions:

1. Differences in subjective interpretations or construal MATTER

2. Social perceivers make insufficient allowances for such impact.

Ross and Samuels, 1993: The Wall Street/Community Game

• Title of the game (construal) effects more than personality. Peers underestimated importance of this fact (fundamental attribution error - FAE).

• Fundamental Attribution Error: The tendency for observers to attribute actions and outcomes in the social sphere to distinguishing personal dispositions of the actor instead of the situational forces and constraints forced on or experienced by the actor.

o The False Consensus Effect (1st two tenets of Naïve Realism) people tend to think that their choice is the normative one.

o Ross et al. (1977): Sandwich board study - if I agreed to wear it, most people would agree).

o Construal and Social Enmity (3rd tenet of Naïve Realism) – belief that one’s perceptions are the objective reality and other perceptions are not.

When it comes to other people – beliefs will generally be construed in whatever manner best serves self-interest.

Additional notes from week 4 lecture:

The Group Dynamics tradition:

A.) Sherif and Asch. The ironic dispute:

The indisputable fact of conformity and the questions of normative vs non-normative mechanisms

Sherif: history of Robber’s Cave and Marxism; effects of norms on ‘perception’ the autokinetic effect (use of confederate, consistency, etc, later demonstration of persistence of group norms)

Asch: His own history and original critique of Sherif: initial study and followup; seen by him vs. others. Additional results of effect of deviant on group

Cialdini’s study on group norms focus on littering, 0 vs. 1 vs many pieces of litter

Minority influence: importance of consistency, certainty, extremity/clarity

B.) The Risky (/Normative) Shift

1. Stoner’s scale on individual risk taking

2. Wallach, Kogan and Bem. Risky shift in group decisions: initial finding and interpretive issues; polarization effect of normative shift

3. Shkade, Kahneman and Sunstein: Pro-Plaintiff shift in Jury Award: Ross and Shestowski reanalysis and further evidence of normative shift

C.) Later group dynamic traditions

1. Groupthink (Janis): how groups do better than individuals

a. Dangers of groupthink with strong loyalty to norms and high cohesiveness, leads to errors: premature decisions; pluralistic ignorance

b. E.g. Bay of Pigs, Cuban missile Crisis emphasized potential dangers of collective decision-making when conformity pressures are strong

c. Policy implications:

i. Encourage diverse inputs, analyze risk and benefits

ii. Encourage position of critic/sceptic

2. Perceptions of In-group vs Out-group homogeneity

a. Jones and Quattrone: groups show bias that outgroups are homogeneous, own group is heterogeneous (e.g. eating clubs at Princeton)

b. False consensus / biased sampling and naïve realism:

i. Make estimates about entire group based on people known well; perceive majority as similar to self

c. False polarization: Hawks vs. doves in negotiating; self-labelers tend to polarize themselves more as well as polarizing opponents

i. (e.g.) Abortion: pro-life vs. pro-choice; people tend to think they are within the moderate realm of the ‘correct’ group, thus overestimating the extremity of both groups

ii. Naïve realism; biased media

3. In-Group Favoritism:

a. (Moskovich et al) tend to reward/favor our side more than other side, even when group membership is decided at random in experiment; only get effect when must make unequal allocation between groups, driven by fact that opposite group will likely allocate unequally

b. differences when there is a prior allocation precedent; those that received more will assume unequal allocation is normal and will protect their privalidged position—justification

4. Latane: Bystander Apathy, construal and diffusion of responsibility; social loafing

a. (e.g.) epeleptic seizure over intercom, more likely to rescure with fewer listeners in room; also smoke through vent

b. lack of intervention acts as social proof that intervention is not needed; demonstrates effects of modeling, communicating social norm’

Game Theory:

1. PD Game (Prisoner’s Delemma): cooperate or defect, final outcome based on opponent’s choice as well

a. Single game vs. continuous play, if continuous- always move to mutual defection

b. Kelley, “Why choose to cooperate?” what a person thinks others will do is a proxy for what he does

c. Bob Axelrod: holds computer PD tournaments annually, cooperators can win in N-round games

2. Hardin’s Commons Delemma: models problem of limited resources, especially community goods

a. (e.g.) advertising and price wars; terrorism, spaceship earth

b. Talking is not able to defeat commons dilemma; becomes role of government to ensure CDs don’t control decisions

Week 5. Attraction and Preference (Week of October 23)

[Festinger, L., Schachter, S., & Back, K. (1950). The spatial ecology of group formation.

In L. Festinger, S. Schachter, & K. Back, Social pressure in informal groups Chapter 4.

Review from Week 2.]

Jones, E.E. (1964). Tactical variations in ingratiation (Chapter 2). In Ingratiation: A social-psychological analysis (pp. 24-45). New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Situation

• Reciprocity one of five sources of variation in attraction literature (fourth source)

• Jones focuses on ingratiation. Demonstrates how ingratiation relates to reciprocity and impact on attraction / preference

• Selection is a theory piece / lit review that is part of book chapter aimed at presenting “an informal taxonomy of those tactics which may, and often do, operate in the service of ingratiation” (44). Therefore, formal experimental methodology not part of article

Summary

• Research Question

o What is impact of ingratiation: telling people what they want to hear?

• Propositions

o Determine three levers in ingratiation and a fourth possible class: 1. other-enhancement through evaluative statements, 2. conformity in opinion, judgment, and behavior, 3. self-presentation.

o Fourth possible class is gift giving or rendering favors

• Review of Propositions:

o 1. Other-enhancement

▪ Assumption: It is hard not to like those who think highly of you.

▪ Use of compliments directs receiver to evaluate the sincerity of compliment

▪ The giver needs to establish a motivational context to increase impact of compliment.

▪ Compliment communication tactics: playing down dependence of giver on receiver, timing, mediation by third party, inherent plausibility of compliment, self-esteem of receiver, blend of bitter and sweet, relative comparisons more effective than ambiguous absolutes, spontaneous better than solicited compliments

▪ Compliments especially effective go degree recipient unsure whether he/she possesses qualities being complimented

o 2. Conformity in Opinion

▪ Assumption: Easier to like those whose beliefs and values appear similar to our own.

▪ Mechanism of action: conforming in various ways to target person

▪ Have found that target likes those who disagree the least and likes those who agree the most. Examination of confederate who switches opinion appears to show little impact.

▪ The lower status the individual, the more effective conformity of opinion is

▪ More advantageous to express conforming opinion before target expresses their opinion

o 3. Self-presentation

▪ Mechanism of action: Accomplished through direct and indirect presentation of self

▪ Ingratiator presents elf as a function of target’s likes and dislikes

▪ Two distinct and contradictory forms: present one’s strengths / virtues or enhance target’s strengths and virtues by modest presentation of self

▪ Examination of contexts reveals that high profile individual when they want to be liked will react with modesty and humility whereas low profile individual will generally respond by advertising strengths

o 4. Rendering favors / gifts

▪ Is attraction involved or is it just a manipulation of obligations?

▪ Some favors / gifts cannot be reciprocated therefore purpose must be to increase attraction

▪ Conclude category is part of self-presentation

Relevance

• Implications for Festinger and social comparison theory

• Important review of the role of ingratiation in reciprocity

Snyder, M., Tanke, E.D., & Berscheid, E. (1977). Social perception and interpersonal behavior:

On the self-fulfilling nature of social stereotypes. Journal of Personality and Social

Psychology, 35, 656-666.

[SUMMARY: Hypothesis, Methodology, Results, Conclusions when applicable]

• This article looked at self-fulfilling influences of social stereotypes on social interaction.

• Goal of paper: Demonstrate that “stereotypes may create their own social reality by channeling social interaction in ways that cause the stereotyped individual to behaviorally confirm the perceiver’s stereotype.”

• They tried to create a self-fulfilling prophesy using the stereotype that attractive people are more likeable.

• Does expecting a person to be likeable because they are attractive lead them to behave in a way that makes them likeable?

• Method:

o Undergrads were recruited and told the study was concerned with studying acquaintance processes.

o The S’s were told they would be meeting a person of the opposite sex on the phone and they were to become acquainted with them. Before speaking with them on the phone, they received a packet of information on the other person (where they learned their major, etc.).

o The male S’s also received a picture of the female they would be speaking to (but the picture was not of the person they would talk to – the pictures used were taken of volunteer models who had been ranked as attractive or unattractive by others). Some of the pics were of unattractive women; some were of attractive women.

o Before the phone conversation, the S’s filled out a questionnaire about their initial impressions of the person based on the info they had been given (i.e., how intelligent do you think this person is…). This was meant to assess the extent to which the first impression reflected stereotypes linking physical attractiveness and personality characteristics. However, women did not have pics of the men – it was only the men who had pics of their partner.

o Then the S’s had a recorded 10-minute phone conversation with the woman.

o All S’s then answered more questions about their impressions of the person after having spoken to them.

o Later, different S’s (who nothing about the purposes of the study) listened to the recorded conversations (without ever having seen these people) and assessed the extent to which the actions of the women

• Findings/Conclusions:

o Based on the pre-conversation questionnaires, the male S’s were found to have made erroneous assumptions about the women before speaking with them.

o In addition, S’s who listened to the recordings determined that the men had different patterns and styles of interaction for the attractive vs. unattractive women. These styles nurtured behaviors in the women consistent with the stereotypes the men held.

o Women perceived to be attractive came to behave more friendly and were considered more likeable than the perceived unattractive women.

o The authors consider this to be a compelling demonstration of behavioral confirmation in social interaction that has pervasive social consequences.

Zajonc, R.B. (1980). Feeling and thinking: Preferences need no inferences. American Psychologist,

35, 151-175.

Cook, S.W. (1985). Experimenting on social issues: The case of school desegregation. American Psychologist, 40, 452-460.

Aronson, E., & Osherow, N. (1980). Cooperation, prosocial behavior, and academic performance: Experiments in the desegregated classroom. In L. Bickman (Ed.), Applied social psychology annual (Vol. 1, pp. 163-196). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Background:

• Aronson was a student of Festinger, did cognitive dissonance experiments.

• Sherif’s Robber Cave experiments provided some theoretical motivation for this experiment- since Sherif found that cooperation increases liking between competitive groups.

Summary:

Motivation for study:

• The authors review the disappointing results of desegregation in schools

o Upon publication of the article, expected reductions in prejudice and gains in performance have not been demonstrated.

• The authors believe that the traditional American classroom environment is competitive- students are all competing for a limited resource: the teacher’s approval.

• Minority students may feel uncomfortable answering questions in class. Teachers may contribute to negative stereotypes by avoiding calling on minority students.

Hypothesis:

• Authors propose that interdependent learning (called the “jigsaw method” in their studies could promote cooperation, increase liking of minority peers.

Method:

• Jigsaw method involves students being put in small groups and different pieces of information are assigned to each student in the group. The student is responsible for learning their own assignment and teaching it to the other students in the group. The students are then tested on all of the sections.

Results:

• A number of studies reviewed showed positive results from the jigsaw method.

o Increased liking of peers

o Increased liking of minority peers

o Increase liking of school

o Increase in academic performance (especially of minority students)

• Mechanisms which were hypothesized to play a role in the increase in liking:

o Empathic role taking

o A shift in attributional patterns

▪ Cooperation leads individuals to use ego-enhancing attributions to others just as they do toward themselves

• Potential caveats:

o Increased liking of peers could be due to mere increased exposure

o Greater liking of school could be due to institution of change

o Hawthorne effect or demand characteristics may play a role because students predict that innovation should

Relevance to Class Lectures

• Early studies on attraction showed that proximity is an important variable. The authors acknowledge that increased proximity did not reverse stereotypes and prejudice right away after the schools were desegregated.

• The expected effect of proximity were reversed: In some cases liking decreased as closeness increased after desegregation

o The authors hypothesize that the competitive classroom environment is one reason for the continued problems.

Buss, D.M. (1994, May-June). The strategies of human mating. American Scientist, 82, 238-249.

Week 6. Attitudes and Attitude Change (Week of October 30)

Hovland, C.I. (1959). Reconciling conflicting results derived from experimental and survey studies of attitude change. American Psychologist, 14, 8-17.

-Goal: seeks to reconcile differing results obtained from experimental and observational/correlational (surveys and interviews) studies on attitude change.

-General difference is that experimental studies show much larger impact of attitude change (opinions of ½ to 1/3 of subjects reported changed).

-Hovland attributes this to two factors:

1- ‘Differences in research design itself’: In particular, there is the selection bias where those in the experiment did not choose the attitudes they were exposed to, whereas periodic interviews of participants reflect participants choice of what they are exposed to.

2- ‘Historical/Traditional differences in general approach’-

A: Size of factors: interviews try to take into account all media encountered which might influence attitude, whereas experimentalists typically vary an aspect of content within one communication.

B: Timing: experiments usually assess change immediately after exposure to some communication, whereas interviews take place periodically over time.

C: Situational differences: Experiments take place in classroom when the subject is isolated (as opposed to the opposite for interviews) so subject is susceptible to more influence by the communicator and less same group norming for held attitudes.

D: Samples: Interviews tend to use random samples, experiments typically use students.

E: Type of Issue: Experiments usually try to change more controllable and theoretically relevant perspectives in order to get larger, more relevant effects.

3- Additional differences:

-experiments can control the difference in the held belief of the subject and presented viewpoint of the communication. Tend to find larger opinion change with larger difference of initial viewpoints (b/w subject and communication). However, this is not in line with what one would expect in natural situations, and indeed this played out in wet/dry (prohibition) questions in real world where people were more favorable of positions closer to their own.

-Additionally, estimated viewpoint of ‘communicator’ impacts viewpoints of subjects closest to it (and the more trusted/respected the source, the more attitude change).

-Finally, role of presentation order is large (what we hear first tends to stick.

-Integration:

-Hovland concludes no fundamental difference in data from the two methods, just difference in what effects they examine. Both have merit and can be used with differences in mind. Challenge lies (lays?) in untangling all the factors and coming up with causal stories.

Person 2:

There has been a divergence in the literature of attitude modification through communication. One brand of literature uses experimental techniques, and the other uses wider survey-level studies. This divergence stems from the historical basis for the two kinds of studies, as well as the actual differences in the experimental designs. Although it seems that experimental literature often shows clear changes, while surveys do not, this most likely stems from the characteristics of the design. Hovland suggests the two branches can be re-integrated, their differences accounted for by the situation of the communication used to modify attitudes.

Leventhal, H., Singer, R., & Jones, S. (1965). Effects of fear and specificity of recommendation upon attitudes and behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2, 20-29.

Person 1:

-Introduction:

-Examines the role of fear and specificity on impacting attitude change and subsequent changes in behavior.

-Previous evidence suggests higher level of fear produces more change in attitude and behavior.

- This study intends to control fear level and specificity of recommended action.

-Method:

-Gave subjects pamphlet on tetanus with two sections, fear section (with two levels of fear- e.g. emotion-provoking, frightening, presence of colored pictures, facts about pervasiveness, etc or not) and suggestion section (both advocated getting shots, high specificity section outlined exactly where and how subjects could get shots).

-Then had subjects fill out questionnaires (measure attitudes) about the pamphlet and medical history and also tracked subsequent number of subs from each condition to actually go and receive shot (behavior measure).

-Results:

-High-fear pamphlet definitely produced more fear (reported by subjective measures as well as incidental reports of ‘paleness.’ ‘distress,’ etc).

-Attitude change: those in high fear had slightly higher ratings of importance of getting a shot

-Action change: Those in high specificity condition more likely to get shots, but no effect of fear.

-Controls: Nobody in control (recommendation without full pamphlet) got a shot suggesting some fear might have effect vs. no fear.

-Mediating factors:

-Variables associated with attitude change:

-High fear subs thought tetanus was more serious, expressed more concern, also expressed more annoyance at pictures, but thought they were effective.

-Variables associated with action:

-Those in high specificity condition reported less nausea (but more susceptibility to tetanus) and greater interest in the communication.

-Shot-takers vs nontakers:

-Those who took shots not only had higher specificity, but also reported higher measures of fright, anxiety and the importance of shots (feeling heightened by the pamphlet).

-Discussion:

-Data lend mixed support to the hypothesis that higher fear and higher specificity will impact attitudes and behavior (i.e. high specificity led to greater action, high fear led to great attitude change).

-Subjects must accept effectiveness of recommended action, and moreover, must have some degree of motivation (i.e. be in a fear (as opposed to non-fear) condition) to produce action.

-Only weak positive relationship between attitudes and action (which was puzzling to the researchers). Offer explanations of timing factors diluting fear effect for action, or specificity lessening impact of fear’s influence on action. Perhaps different factors lead to attitudes vs. action.

Person 2:

This is the famous study about tetanus shots, which Lee used in the example of channel factors. While fear acts as a motivational force for getting inoculated, a channel factor was information; students given an informative pamphlet were more likely to go get the shot. Information included a mock schedule suggesting how students could integrate the inoculation into their daily lives. Note the interaction between motivation and channel factors on attitude change.

Lord, C., Ross, L., & Lepper, M.R. (1979). Biased assimilation and attitude polarization: The effects of prior theories on subsequently considered evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 2098-2109.

Person 1

-Introduction:

-Paper proposes that proponents of opposite viewpoints will both take mixed or inconclusive evidence to support their side of an argument in what is called the ‘polarization hypothesis’.

-Occurs through biased assimilation that confirms present beliefs. E.g. one tends to remember confirming evidence as stronger, more relevant and at face value whereas disconfirming evidence is seen as weaker, irrelevant, and needing further scrutiny.

-Authors predict three things:

A- subjects will rate studies confirming their beliefs of having higher quality and probative value

B- studies confirming subject’s views would ‘exert a greater impact’.

C- net result of exposure to conflicting studies is increased polarization of previously held beliefs.

-Method:

-24 proponents and 24 opponents of capital punishment selected using responses on previous questionnaire.

-Mixed groups of proponents and opponents were sat together at table and told they would be presented with 2 of 20 randomly selected studies on the deterrent efficacy of the death penalty.

-Controlling for order, subjects were first shown either prodetterent or antideterrent results followed by a questionnaire asking about change in beliefs about capital punishment as well as efficacy as a deterrent.

-One set measured change based incrementally on this one piece of information, while another set measure cumulative change.

-Next, experimenter gave out corresponding research descriptions of the previous results (procedure, results again, criticisms, rebuttals, data, graphs etc), and asked how well the study had been conducted as well as how convincing the study seemed for evidence of deterrence.

-Subjects then asked to write why they thought study did or did not support deterrence as well as another incremental and cumulative questionnaire about belief change.

-Entire procedure repeated with a second fake study with opposite results of the first, etc.

-Results:

-Participants indeed reported their believed side’s study as being more convincing as well as better conducted (and the opposite for the opposing side’s).

-Evidence also shows strong support for the polarization hypothesis (subs reported being more in favor of their side of the argument at the end of the study).

-Subs initial move slightly toward presented results, but when given experimental details, tend to make each group believe in their side more, regardless of study.

-So, there might be a ‘rebound’ effect where any plausible reason for discounting data that contradicts one’s preconceptions will eliminate effects that mere knowledge of the data might have caused.

-Discussion:

-Polarization hypothesis seems to play out.

-Nothing wrong with be skeptical of new data, however it is a ‘sin’ to readily use data to justify belief that initially gave rise to the bias which processed the data.

-Findings here are just reported (as opposed to coming from subs’ actions)

-Contributes to belief perseverance and attribution processes literature.

-Important ramifications for social science research and social policy (cannot expect ‘objective’ data to clarify points of contention).

Person 2:

This is the study on attitude polarization that was lectured on in class. People with strong views (on capital punishment, for example) were subjected to “studies” either supporting or challenging their views. People accepted the supporting evidence as more convincing, while generally rejecting the challenging views. In addition, their attitudes were polarized following this re-appraisal.

Vallone, R.P., Ross, L., & Lepper, M.R. (1985). The hostile media phenomenon: Biased perception and perceptions of media bias in coverage of the “Beirut Massacre.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 577-585.

Person 1

-Goal: Document and explore why partisans tend to find hostility in media coverage that nonpartisans find evenhanded and objective.

-Preliminary Study: Media treatment of Carter vs Reagan

-Telephone survey 3 days before the 1980 presidential election revealed two main findings:

1- Majority of registered voters (66%) reported media had generally been impartial

2- When partiality was perceived, it was almost always against respondent’s favored candidate.

Media coverage of Beirut Massacre:

-Two objectives: document Hostile Media effect, and examine underlying mechanisms such as processing bias of nonpartisan evidence (see Lord, Ross, & Lepper).

-Method:

-Pro-Arab, Pro-Israeli, or neutral (as determined by attitude survey) Stanford students were recruited and shown 36 minutes of major network news coverage

-Subs asked about fairness and objectivity of news, as well as item allowing them to report their feelings on the ‘standards’ applied to Israel in the newscast (including its responsibility vs. that of non-Israeli agents, and the supposed opinions of the broadcasters, etc).

-Results:

-Strong evidence of hostile media effect (partisans rate media (programs and creators) of being biased against their side compared to ratings from neutral people).

-Mechanisms: Partisans disagree about what they “saw” in the newscasts (biased perception), and perceptions of bias were still significant when controlled for differences in perceived content.

-Additional findings: More knowledgeable subs more likely to see bias against their side (this is inline with notion that more knowledgeable subs will find more evidence that could be perceived to be against them). Slight effect of neutrals being closer aligned with pro-Israeli perceptions (but not much should be concluded from this).

-Discussion:

-Compelling evidence of hostile media effect, and two mechanisms:

- First mechanism (cognitive) of believing truth to be largely black or white instead of shade of grey (and therefore media is biased in comparison)

- Second mechanism (perceptual) of each side thinking the news report was actually ‘whiter’ or ‘blacker’ than the shade of grey neutrals perceived it as.

- Further research required, and effect is not limited to media (think about perceptions of refs in a sporting event, etc).

Person 2:

This is Lee’s famous study on biased perception of the media (and media bias). They used coverage of the Beirut massacre to show that an individual’s perception of media coverage was moderated by their personal standing and knowledge. For instance, Arab viewers thought coverage favored the Israelis, while the Israelis thought the opposite. The more knowledgeable the individuals believed themselves, the more polarized their attitudes. This may be due to two mechanisms, cognitive and perceptual.

Petty, R.E., Cacioppo, J.T. (1986). The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology, (Vol. 19, pp. 123-205). Academic Press.

Introduction:

- General theory of attitude change called Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) which can serve as general framework for organizing/categorizing/understanding processes of persuasive communication

- Based on initial speculation of two routes to persuasion (central vs peripheral), it is now a more generalized theory.

Postulate 1: Seeking Correctness

- People are motivated to hold correct attitudes

Postulate 2: Variations in Elaboration

- The amount of elaboration (extent to which people think about the issue-relevant arguments contained in a message) people are willing/able to use varies with individual and situational factors

A. The Elaborative Continuum

- Extent of elaboration ranges from no thought given to the message to complete elaboration of all relevant ideas and integration into attitude schema.

B. Developmental Trends in Elaboration

- Children tend to be purely hedonistic, then after some development elaboration might occur due to various simple inferences, decision rules, and social attachments. Finally, formation and change of attitudes becomes very thoughtful process.

Postulate 3: Arguments, Cues, and Elaboration

- Variables can affect amount and direction of attitude change through the 3 ways below:

A. Argument/Message Quality

- In ELM, arguments are bits of info in communication relevant to a person’s subjective determination of the true merits of an advocated position

- In practice, a desired group of subjects rates a range of arguments for persuasiveness (strong or weak).

B. Peripheral Cues

- Cues in persuasion context can affect attitude in absence of argument processing

C. Affecting Elaboration

- That is, determining the extent or direction of message processing (also see objective vs biased processing)

Postulate 4: Objective Elaboration

- Affecting motivation/ability to process a message in a relatively objective manner can do so by either enhancing or reducing argument scrutiny (depending on strength of argument)

A. Distraction

- Distraction disrupts the thoughts that would normally be elicited by a message, and disrupts thought greatly for high motivation (to process the message) and not as much for low motivation.

B. Repetition

- Repetition impacts persuasion via a two stage attitude modification process. The first stage claims repetition objectively impacts elaboration as it allows additional processing. In the second stage, excessive exposures create tedium arises and objective processing ceases.

C. Personal Relevance/Involvement

- In general, information processing increases with personal relevance. However, there is a point where personal involvement is so extreme it will produce biases as well as confounds with prior exposure to an idea.

D. Personal Responsibility

- Effects should be similar to C above.

E. Need for Cognition

- There are individual differences in the need to structure relevant situations in a meaningful, integrated way. Clearly, the higher this need, the more they scrutinize and elaborate issue-relevant arguments.

Postulate 5: Elaboration vs Cues

- Inverse relationship between motivation/ability to process arguments and the impact of peripheral cues on persuasion.

A. Personal Relevance/Involvement and the Operation of Cues

- Can vary elaboration by manipulating personal relevance and then test various cues (source cues, message cues, etc).

B. Other Moderators of Cue Effectiveness

- Five factors mentioned in Post. 4 should effect motivation/ability, and one more not mentioned (message presentation modality)

Postulate 6: Biased Elaboration

- Variables affecting message processing in a relatively biased manner can produce either a positive (favorable) or negative (unfavorable) motivational and/or ability bias to the issue-relevant thoughts attempted.

A. Prior Knowledge

- Prior knowledge tends to bias processing to validating pre-existing beliefs. Specifically, it has been studied how pre-existing beliefs bias message processing and are more resistant to cue effects (the opposite for lack of prior knowledge).

B. Forewarnings

- Refers to forewarnings of either topic or attempt to persuade. ELM posits that when motivation/ability are low, forewarning will enhance the salience of various cues in the situation that are capable of producing attitude change without issue-relevant thinking. When motivation/ability is high, forewarnings should modify attitudes by affecting issue-relevant thinking.

C. Other Biasing Treatments

- e.g. labeling someone as close-minded or open-minded, having them nod yes or no while processing persuasive message, having hecklers, or excessive repetition.

Postulate 7: Consequences of Elaboration

- Attitude change that result mostly from processing issue-relevant arguments (central route) will show greater temporal persistence, greater prediction of behavior, and greater resistance to counterpersuasion than attitude changes that result mostly from peripheral cues.

A. Persistence of Persuasion

- Experiments have shown that the postulate holds (e.g. info with high personal relevance persists longer than low personal relevance).

B. Attitude-Behavior Link

- Experiments bare out what’s predicted (e.g. higher behavior-attitude correlation with persuasion of high personal relevance)

C. Resistance to Counterpersuasion

- Although the theory predicts this, there has not been any explicit testing of this.

Complicating Factors

A. Variables with Multiple Effects on Elaboration

- In most natural settings, factors combing to influence elaboration. Also, they present a test finding an interaction of personal relevance and rhetoric (rhetorical questions thought to increase elaboration).

- Objective and biased processing, etc.

B. Variables That Affect Elaboration and Serve as Cues

- E.g. source factors are cues if motivation is low, but aren’t if motivation is high.

Summary and Conclusions

- ‘ELM attempts to place many conflicting results and theories under one conceptual umbrella’ by enumerating the basic processes underlying persuasion.

- Major strength is description of variables and their limited number of methods of impact

- ELM does not say why things are persuasive, but rather limits the mediational processes of persuasion to a finite set.

Banaji, M.R., & Hardin, C.D. (1996). Automatic stereotyping. Psychological Science, 7, 136-141.

-Authors aim to test role of automatic stereotyping by using a priming paradigm.

-Important point- stereotyping can occur implicitly without someone’s conscious awareness of how it impacts their behavior/judgment.

-Measured in two studies:

-Study 1: used gender specific or neutral (and non-word) primes on RT of subsequent gender specific pronouns (either congruent or incongruent with prime).

-Subs told to ignore primes and to classify the pronoun as male or female

-Found faster RTs for gender congruent prime-target pairs (e.g. father-he) vs incongruent ones (e.g. father-she). Effect stronger for definitional relationships (e.g. fathers are males) than for normative base rates (e.g. using ‘doctor’ as a prime as doctor’s are more frequently males) but present in both.

-Measures of explicit beliefs as well as subject’s gender did not correlate with priming effects.

-Study 2: Similar to study 1 except non-gender related task used (pronoun vs. non-pronoun)

-Effects similar to study 1, although weaker.

-Discussion:

- Claim there are two moderators: gender-relevant vs. gender-irrelevant task and definitional vs. normative base-rate primes.

- Claim priming RT might be indirect measure of stereotype strength (using congruent vs incongruent differences to examine implicit associations).

Person 2:

This experiment proved automatic stereotyping occurs in word priming procedures, where participants primed with gender-related words (nurse, for instance) were faster to identify pronouns that fit with the gender word (she, for nurse). Even when not asked to explicitly define the gender pronoun, automatic stereotyping exists, implying that stereotyping may be fast and uncontrollable, despite situational modifications.

Week 7. Social Comparison, Emotion, and Affiliation (Week of November 6)

Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7, 117-140.

• People want to evaluate their opinions and abilities

• If objective info is not available (if available: people use that info), people compare their opinions and abilities to others (if both types of info not available: unstable subjective evaluations)

• Social comparison less likely if differences to other person is large (similar people will be chosen for a comparison)

➢ People like situations in which other people are close to them re. abilities and opinions

➢ If discrepancies exist in a group re. opinions and abilities, this will lead to action on the part of the members to reduce the discrepancy

• Unidirectional push upward re. abilities, not opinions: we compare ourselves to the mode re. opinions and to the best re. abilities

• easier to change opinions than performances (non-social restraints to change one’s ability)

• Cessation of comparison with others will be accompanied by hostility or derogation in the case of opinions; for abilities this will not generally be true

• “pressure toward uniformity” highest if a) particular group is important (attractive), b) particular ability or opinions is important (relevant in that group)

Schachter, S., & Singer, J. (1962). Cognitive, social and physiological determinants of emotional

state. Psychological Review, 69, 379-399.

• Emotional state: state of physiological arousal + appropriate cognition to this state of arousal

o If an individual does not have an immediate explanation for a state of physiological arousal > description of the feeling based on available cognitions

➢ The same state of physiological arousal can be labeled “joy” or “fury” or anything else depending on the cognitive aspects of the situation

o If an individual has an appropriate explanation for a state of physiological arousal > no evaluative needs; alternative cognitions available will not be considered

o An individual will react emotionally only if, in addition to cognitive circumstances, he/she experiences physiological arousal

• Supported by experiment: Injection of epinephrine

o If participants don’t have explanation for bodily state: they feel anger or euphoria (depending on whether interacting with an angry or euphoric confederate)

o If participants have an explanation about effects of injection: immune to manipulated cognitions (emotions of confederate)

o If no physiological arousal (no epinephrine): no emotion

Taylor, S.E. (1983). Adjustment to threatening life events: A theory of cognitive adaptation.

American Psychologist, 38, 1161-1173.

• Adjustment to threatening life events centers around

a) search for meaning in the experience (e.g., finding a causal explanation for the experience)

b) an attempt to regain mastery over the event in particular and over one’s life more generally (e.g., believing that one has control)

c) an effort to restore self-esteem through self-enhancing evaluations (e.g., by construing personal benefit from the experience, by comparing oneself to others who are less fortunate, or by focusing on aspects of one’s own situation that make one appear to be well off)

> Illusions! But these illusions protect and prompt constructive thought and action and are essential for adequate coping!

• Example: Cancer patients respond with cognitively adaptive efforts that enable them to return to their previous level of psychological functioning

Ekman, P. (1992). An argument for basic emotions. Cognition and Emotion, 6, 169-200.

• Emotions have adaptive value in dealing with fundamental life tasks

• Description of the basic emotions position

• Characteristics of emotions in general:

o Rapid onset

o Short duration

o Unbidden occurrence (emotions happen to us, we don’t chose them)

o Automatic appraisal

o Coherence among emotional responses

o Presence in other primates

• Different emotions can be differentiated based on these features:

o Distinctive universal signals

o Distinctive physiology

o Distinctive universals in antecedent events

• All emotions which share these nine characteristics are basic

• These shared and unique characteristics of emotion are the product of evolution and distinguish emotions from other affective phenomena

Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing

one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of Personality and

Social Psychology, 77, 1121-1134.

• People view their abilities overly favorable in many social and intellectual domains

• Reason for this overestimation: Unskilled people suffer a dual burden:

o They reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices

o Their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it

• Results of 4 studies:

o Participants scoring low on tests of humor, grammar, and logic highly overestimated their test performance and ability and thought they were above average

o This miscalibaration was linked to deficits in metacognition (i.e., the capacity to distinguish between what one has answered correctly and incorrectly (Study 4) or distinguishing between superior and inferior performances on the part of one’s peers (Study 3))

o Improving the skills of participants (and thus increasing their metacognitive competence) helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities > making people competent makes people recognize their incompetence! And: once people recognize their incompetence, they are no longer incompetent!

[Birgit’s comment: people think they do things right; if they knew something is wrong they would correct it – thus, this finding can be linked to research on naïve realism]

Taylor, S.E., Kemeny, M.E., Reed, G.M., Bower, J.E., & Gruenewald, T.L. (2000). Psychological resources, positive illusions, and health. American Psychologist, 55, 99-109.

• Are optimism, personal control, and a sense of meaning protective of physical health (in addition to mental health)?

• Research is presented that tests the implications of cognitive adaptation theory and positive illusions to disease progression among men infected with HIV:

o Even unrealistically optimistic beliefs about the future may be health protective

o The ability to find meaning in the experience is also associated with a less rapid course of illness

> psychological beliefs such as meaning, control, and optimism act as resources, which not only preserve mental, but also physical health.

Week 8. Dissonance, Consistency, and Self-Justification (Week of November 13)

Aronson, E. (1969). The theory of cognitive dissonance: A current perspective. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology, (Vol. 4, pp. 181-214). Academic Press.

Dissonance is a negative drive state which occurs whenever an individual simultaneously holds two cognition; reduce by addint “consonant” cognitions or by changing one or both cognitions to make them “fit together” better

Testing derivations from dissonance theory:

1) Dissonance following a decision: Brehm

- gave individuals their choice between two appliances which they had previously evaluated

- following decision, when subjects reevaluated the alternatives, they enhanced their liking for the chosen appliance and downgraded their evaluation of the unchosen one

- following difficult choice, people experience dissonance: negative attributes of the preferred object vs having chosen it; positive attributes of unchosen object are dissonant with not having chosen it

2) Dissonance from Effort: Aronson & Mills

- people undergo a great deal of trouble in order to gain admission to a group which turns out to be dull and uninteresting they will experience dissonance

- to reduce dissonance, they will distort perception of group in a positive direction

- college women underwent an initiation in order to become a member of a group discussion on the psychology of sex; severe initiation condition rated the discussion much more favorably than did those in other 2 conditions

3) Insufficient justification: Aronson & Carlsmith

- if threats used to prevent people from performing a desired activity, the smaller the threat, the greater will be the tendency for people to derogate the activity

- a mild threat provides less justification for not performing the activity, leading the individual to add justifications of their own in the form of convincing himself that he does not like to perform the activity

- children who were threatened with mild punishment for playing with a desired toy decreased their liking for the toy to a greater extent than did children who were severely threatened

Psychological Inconsistency

Festinger (1957): 4 kinds of situations in which dissonance can arise -

- Logical inconsistency

- Cultural mores

- Inconsistency between a cognition and a more encompassing cognition

- Past experience

Critiques

1) Methodological Problems

- lack of tried and true, standardized techniques for operationalizing conceptual variables

- lack of standardized method

- problem of alternative explanations: severe initiation could be due to “sexual arousal” or felt relief from sexual anxiety; though taken together (+ Gerard & Mathewson using electric shocks), they eliminate most possible alternative explanations

2) “Nothing but”

- nothing but a new name for an old explanation – conflict theory

- but conflict occurs before a decision is made, dissonance occurs after the decision

- Jecker; subjects offered their choice between phonograph records either in low or high conflict (high chance of receiving both or either one of the records chosen)

- Bem: insufficient justification can be accounted for by a self-judgment model; individual’s ability to infer what his real attitudes are by merely discriminating the circumstances which control his behavior; if person observes that he performed for a large reward, he is less apt to believe that the behavior was a reflection of his real attitudes than if he performed it for a small reward

3) Multiple Mode Problem

- in a given situation, there is usually more than one way for a person to reduce dissonance

- the same dissonance-producing situation can result in quite the opposite dissonance-reducing behavior

- consistency with other events

- commitmenrt and volition

4) Dissonance theory and Reward-Incentive Theory

- it frequently leads to predictions which stand in apparent contradiction to those made by other theoretical approaches, to a general reward-incentive theory

- under certain carefully prescribed conditions, cognitive events are set in motion which result in behavior quite different from what one would expect from reward-incentive theories

- commitment & complexity – dissonance effect only under conditions where subjects lied to another person in a highly committing face-to-face situation (degree of commitment) and complexity of counter-attitudinal task involved

5) Underlying Cognition Problem

- underlying cognition prevents the occurrence of dissonance but commitment can make it a dissonant situation

- If many children entered the Aronson & Carlsmith situation with the strong feeling that adults must be obeyed always; there would have been no dissonance

6) Importance of Self-Concept and other Expectancies

- people differ in their ability to tolerate dissonance

- people differ in their preferred mode of dissonance reduction

- what is dissonant for one person may be consonant for someone else

- Why do people who buy cars selectively expose themselves to advertisement about their own make of car (Ehrlich et al)?

- The assumption of people have high self-concepts who fail do experience dissonance but they experience many other negative feelings as well simply because failure is unpleasant

Zanna, M.P., & Cooper, J. (1974). Dissonance and the pill: An attribution approach to studying the arousal properties of dissonance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 29, 703-709.

Study to test if dissonance has arousal properties

- subjects induced to write counter-attitudinal essays under either high- or low-choice conditions

- subjects given a drug in order to “investigate its effects on short-term memory”

- 1/3 led to believe that a pill would lead them to feel tense, another third led to believe that pill would cause them feel relaxed, last third expected no side effects

- Dissonance was manipulated by varying the degree of decision freedom which subjects were given to write an attitude-discrepant essay (high or low choice)

- Dependent measure: subjects given 10 minutes to complete the essay and indicate how they felt “right now”, and then how free they felt to decline to participate

Results

- High choice reported more tension than low choice

- When no information about pill provided, standard dissonance effect was replicated – high choice agreed more with the position taken in their counter-attitudinal essays

- High choice produced more attitude change in the direction of the essay than low choice

- When could attribute arousal to the pill, this effect was virtually eliminated

- When subjects felt they should have been relaxed by the pill, this effect was significantly enhanced

Implications

- Dissonance does indeed have arousal properties as Festinger originally suggested

- Support for the internal process of dissonance arousal

- Amount of arousal which a person must deal with is arrived at by a process of attribution

- Another interpretation in the relaxation condition: focusing a subject’s attention on dissonant cognitions apparently increases the dissonance (Zanna et al) – possible that the unexpected arousal in the relaxation condition had the effect of focusing subjects’ attention on their cognitive dilemma more than usual

Lepper, M.R., Greene, D., & Nisbett, R.E. (1973). Undermining children's intrinsic interest with extrinsic reward: A test of the “overjustification” hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 28, 129-137.

Test the over-justification hypothesis suggested by self-perception theory (Bem) – proposition that a person’s intrinsic interest in an activity as an explicit means to some extrinsic goal

Self-perception theory – when an individual realizes himself engaged in some activity, he infers that himself is intrinsically motivated to engage in that activity to the extent that he does not perceive salient, unambiguous, and sufficient extrinsic contingencies to which to attribute own’s behavior

Over-justification effect – situation results in an extrinsic situation where previously an intrinsic interest was the only salient attribution; contracting explicitly to engage in an activity for a reward should undermine interest in the activity, even when the reward is insubstantial or merely symbolic

Study

- children showing intrinsic interest in a target activity (magic markers to play with) during baseline observations were exposed to either expected-award (Good-Player Award) condition, unexpected-award condition or no-award condition

- children in expected-award condition showed less subsequent intrinsic interest in the target activity than subjects in either of the other two conditions and decrease in the quality of pictures drawn

Implications

- Person assumes that he has performed this activity for the external reward, and infers that he is not really interested in the activity itself

- Implications for situations in which extrinsic incentives are used to enhance or maintain children’s interest in activities of some initial interest to the child (e.g. grades, gold stars…)

- Central problem in educational system is its inability to preserve the intrisinci interest in learning and expliration that the child seems to possess when he first enters school

- Schoolign process seems almost to undermine children’s spontaneous interest in the process of learning itself

- However, there are certain situations where extrinsic incentives (token economies) may be used effectively to increase interest in certain broad classes of activities: when the level of initial intrinsic interest in the activity is already very low; or the activity is one whose attractiveness becomes apparent only through engaging in it for a long time or only after some minimal level of mastery has been attained

Steele, C.M. (1988). The psychology of self-affirmation: Sustaining the integrity of the self. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 21, pp. 261-302). Academic Press.

Proposed the existence of a self-system that essentially explains ourselves, and the world at large, to ourselves – this is to maintain a phenomenal experience of the self – self-conceptions and images

Name-calling and compliance

- Male experimenter posing as a pollster and call female subjects either in negative-name calling condition (in a heavily Mormon city) which would threaten a reasonably important self-concept of these women, or positive name condition, or irrelevant negative name condition or base rate control condition with no initial name-calling telephone contact

- Two days later, contacted by female experimenter ostensibly unrelated to the first caller and asked each woman to help with a community project

- Results showed that relevant negative name condition caused more helping than either the base rate or the positive name conditions (twice as much)

- Irrelevant negative name condition also caused twice as much helping as these other conditions

- Hence, regardless of the type of negative name calling, more of them helped subsequently

- Name-calling induced helping by arousing a general ego-protective system, one function of which is to affirm an overall self-concept of worth after it has been threatened

Assumptions:

- Different terms: self-seeking, self preservation, ego-enhancement, totalitarian ego, self-efficacy, etc

- People respond more fluidly to self-threat than is typically recognized – existence of a larger ego-protective self-system not geared to resolving specific self-concept threats but geared to maintaining an overall conception of self-integrity

- suggest many of other related models is because subjects usually are given only one means of responding to the threat, and were other self-affirming responses available in these experiments, subjects might have used them and might even have foregone attempts to resolve the provoking threats

- When an important self-concept is threatened, an individual’s primary self-defensive goal is tro affirm the general integrity of the self; motivation to adapt to a specific self-threat of one sort may be overcome by affirmation of the broader self-concept or of an equally important, yet different, aspect of the self-concept without resolving the provoking threat

Dissonance as self-affirmation

a) Reducing dissonance through value affirmation – participate in a survey of student views on tuition increases; high dissonance by giving ample choice to write this essay; low dissonance by giving no choice to students to write this essay; complete attitude measure that would affirm a valued self-concept for subjects; found that a self-affirming experience eliminated dissonance from high-choice group (less attitude change)

b) Affirmation or distraction – scale might have reduced dissonance by distracting them from thinking about the dissonant essay; asked them to write down three “key” words from their dissonant essays; showed that distraction did not mediate the self-affirmation effect; did not chance their attitudes to reduce dissonance even after forced to recall their dissonant essays

c) Generality of the effect in the forced-compliance paradigm – dissonance was successfully replicated for aesthetically oriented subjects using the perceived essay strength measure

d) Dissonance and the lab coat – forced-compliance paradigm is especially favorable to the self-affirmation effect? Examined in the free-choice paradigm, in which subjects simply chose between two moderately valued alternatives, as part of an ostensible “marketing survey” where subjects rated their liking of 10 popular record albums and then ranked them in order of preference; subjects selected based on indication that a lab coat symbolized their personal values and professional goals vs business suit. After choosing a record album to keep, half were asked to put on lab coat in preparation for another experiment involving messy lab tasks, subjects re-rated the albums; for science-oriented subjects, the simple act of putting on a white lab coat significantly reduced their dissonance over the choice of record albums; the lab coat eliminated their dissonance completely for whom it affirms a valued self-concept; for business-oriented subjects, the coat had no effect;

e) Nature of dissonance motivation

- dissonant-provoking inconsistency does not motivate cognitive change once the self is affirmed

- dissonant inconsistency does not motivate change once the unpleasant affect associated with it is eliminated through drugs

- doing something that meets all of he requirements of a dissonant act motivates one to reaffirm one’s adequacy

- reducing dissonance include activities that affirm valued self-concepts

- dissonance can be reduced without altering or adding to the cognitions involved in the provoking inconsistency, it is the image of the self that is at issue, not the inconsistency of cognitions

Bandura, A. (1999). Moral disengagement in the perpetration of inhumanities. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3, 193-209.

Moral agency – both the power to refrain from behaving inhumanely and the proactive power to behave humanely

- Self-organizing, proactive, self-reflective, and self-regulatory mechanisms

- Self-regulatory mechanisms governing moral conduct do not come into play unless they are activated

- Moral disengagement may center on the cognitive restructuring of inhumane conduct into a benign or worthy one by moral justification, sanitizing language, and advantageous comparison; disavowal of a sense of personal agency by diffusion or displacement of responsibility; disregarding or minimizing the injurious effects of one’s actions; and attribution of blame to, and dehumanization of, those who are victimized

Monin, B., & Miller, D.T. (2001). Moral credentials and the expression of prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 33-43.

3 experiments supported the hypothesis that people are more willing to express attitudes that could be viewed as prejudiced when their past behavior has established their credentials as nonprejudiced persons

Study 1 - participants given the opportunity to disagree with blatantly sexist statements were later more willing to favor a man for a stereotypically male job

Study 2 – participants who first had the opportunity to select a member of a stereotyped group for a category-neutral job were more likely to reject a member of that group for a job stereotypically suited for majority members

Study 3 – participants who had established credentials as nonprejudiced persons revealed a greater willingness to express a politically incorrect opinion even when the audience was unaware of their credentials

Week 9. Attribution and Self-Perception (Week of November 20, NO CLASS MEETINGS)

Kelley, H.H. (1973). The process of causal attribution. American Psychologist, 28, 107-128.

Summary of past papers on attribution theory. “Attribution theory is a theory about how people make causal explanations/inferences.” It deals with social perception and self-perception.

I. Two systematic statements of attribution theory

a. Covariation: an effect is attributed to the one of its possible causes with which, over time, it covaries. Validity of causal attribution is based on 3 criteria:

i. Consensus: with other people

ii. Consistency: over time

iii. Distinctiveness: response is associated distinctively w/stimulus

b. Configuration: causal inferences may be made on the basis of a single observation. Two principles:

i. Discounting: role of a cause in producing an effect is discounted if other plausible causes are also present

ii. Augmentation: if there is a cost or risk to the actor in doing an action, the action is attributed more to the actor than it would be otherwise.

II. Schematic Analysis: we have a schema for thinking about causes and effects. Discounting implies a “multiple sufficient cause schema”, whereas augmentation implies trade-offs between causes (a “compensatory cause schema”).

III. Problems: what is the interplay between analyzing present info and preconceptions/stereotypes (causal schemas)? How do a priori causal beliefs affect intake and processing of further info?

a. Chapmans: clinical psychologists persist in using projective tests that are not valid because they have made causal associations between the test and the behavior.

b. We prefer simple schemas over complex ones

c. People tend to treat causes as interdependent and influencing each other; covariance and schematic paradigms would imply that they should be treated independently.

d. There are biases in info processing relating to consistency. We make attributions that are temporally unstable, and are subject to illusions.

Bem, D.J. (1972). Self-perception theory. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 6, pp. 1-62). Academic Press.

“Individuals come to “know” their own attitudes, emotions, and other internal states by partially inferring them from observations of their own overt behavior and/or the circumstances in which this behavior occurs. Thus, to the extent that internal cues are weak, ambiguous, or uninterpretable, the individual is functionally in the same position as an outside observer, an observer who must necessarily rely upon those same external cues to infer the individuals inner states.”

I. Explains Festinger’s dissonance studies: “self-perception theory interprets such results by considering the viewpoint of an outside observer who hears the individual making favorable statements about the tasks to a fellow student, and who knows the individual was paid $1 ($20) to do so.”

II. Self-perception theory asserts that subjects in the Festinger experiment are themselves behaving just like these observers.

III. Cartoon experiment: subjects rated cartoons, then were asked to tell the truth/lie about whether cartoons were funny; a green light signaled the subject should lie, a red light the that he should tell the truth. When re-rating the cartoons in the presence of the light, they changed their rating when the truth light was illuminated.

IV. False Confession experiment: false confessions made in the presence of a lie light, true statement in presence of a true light, about nouns they had crossed out. Presence of lie light did not change lie recall, but truth light made subjects make more recall errors and have less confidence in answers.

V. Pain Perception: subjects that could escape a shock thought it was more painful than a shock they couldn’t escape.

VI. Reinterprets cognitive dissonance experiments and others in terms of self-peception, e.g. Festinger & Carlsmith peg study, Robby the robot studies, Brehm & Cohen’s free choice studies, Freedman & Fraser’s foot-in-the-door study.

Jones, E.E., & Nisbett, R.E. (1971). The actor and the observer: Divergent perceptions of the causes of behavior. In E.E. Jones, D.E. Kanouse, H.H. Kelley, R.E. Nisbett, S. Valins, & B. Weiner (Eds.), Attribution: Perceiving the causes of behavior (pp. 1-16). General Learning Press.

Lepper, M.R. (1983). Social control processes and the internalization of social values: An attributional perspective. In E. T. Higgins, D. N. Ruble, & W. W. Hartup (Eds.), Social cognition and social development (pp. 294-330). Cambridge.

I. Divergence between “internalization” and “compliance” research. “Taken together, these findings suggest that the effectiveness of different socialization techniques in producting internalization of stanfards parents are attempting to teach children may depend, in part, on the manner in which different social-control procedures affect children’s perceptions of their reasons for having engaged in related actions or activities in the past.

II. Three Experimental Paradigms:

a. Psychologically “insufficient” justification

i. Festinger and Carlsmith (1959): subjects were offered either quite minimal or substantially more attractive incentives to defend a position at variance with their prior attitudes. People did so with minimal incentives encounter a psychologically insufficient justification.

ii. Aronson and Carlsmith (1963): The forbidden toy procedure. Subjects complying with the request in the face of minimal external pressure would be more likely to internalize this prohibition.

b. Objectively insufficient justification: fails to produce initial compliance. More pressure applied, less likely is the attitude change.

c. Psychologically “oversufficient” justification: produces initial compliance with unnecessarily powerful or salient (i.e. functionally superfluous) extrinsic constraints. It might undermine later intrinsic motivation.

i. Lepper, Greence, & Nisbett (1973): children who had previously undertaken the activity to obtain a reward showed significant decreases in intrinsic interest compared to the unexpected award subjects and subjects without knowledge of award. Detrimental effects appear when children’s actions are perceived as directed toward the attainment of some extrinsic goal.

III. The Minimal Sufficiency Principle: techniques of social control that are successful in producing compliance, but are at the same time sufficiently subtle (rather than obviously coercive) to prevent the individual from viewing such compliance solely as a function of extrinsic controls, will be most likely-other things being equal- to promote subsequent internalization.

IV. Implications for social-control.

Greenwald, A.G. (1980). The totalitarian ego: Fabrication and revision of personal history. American Psychologist, 35, 603-618.

I. The ego is an organization of knowledge that contains biases that are analogous to totalitarian information-control strategies, and these biases function to preserve organized cognitive structures.

II. Three cognitive biases

a. Egocentricity: self perceived as more central to events than it is

i. Organization of memory in relation to self

b. Beneffectance: self perceived as selectively responsible for desired, but not undesired, outcomes

i. Selective recall of success, denial of responsibility for harming

c. Conservatism: resistance to cognitive change

i. Confirmation bias, rewriting of memory, leading questions.

III. Ego as Organization of Knowledge, enhancing cognitive biases and increasing cognitive consistency.

a. Related to totalitarianism because ego fabricates and revises history.

IV. Explanation: “intrapsychic evolution” type of explanation, where cognitive-system characteristics such as totalitarian ego biases cannot become pervasive unless they “survive” in our minds. Cognitive systems that contain biases may survive better than those that don’t contain biases.

Kunda, Z. (1987). Motivated inference: Self-serving generation and evaluation of causal theories. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 636-647.

Person 1

I. We construct theories to describe how attributes are related to outcomes, but these are biased in a self-serving manner. They allow us to believe that we are more likely than others to experience desires outcomes and avoid the feared ones.

II. People use cognitive inferences to arrive at conclusions, but motivation determines which evidence will be considered.

III. Examines whether people generate and evaluate causal theories in a self-serving manner and whether such biases are due to motivational factors.

a. Motivation based on personal involvement with the outcomes

IV. Study 1: People judged own attributes are better determinants of a happy marriage than a marriage ending in divorce.

V. Study 2: People view their own attributes are better predictors of desired outcomes, (going to professional school)

VI. Study 3: We evaluate evidence in a self-serving manner, i.e. people are less likely to believe evidence linking an attribute to a negative outcome (caffeine and negative effects) if they possess the attribute.

VII. Study 4: When motivational pressures to doubt evidence were reduced, less likely to disbelieve evidence. Negative implications of caffeine, when made to be more mild, resulted in decrease in self-serving interpretations.

Person 2

People tend to be overly optimistic about their own outcomes, especially because they can generate causal stories which connect attributes they possess to favorable outcomes. In one study, participants are told about attributes of a person who later got divorced or stayed happily married, and forecasted which attributes contributed to a stable or unstable marriage; they were more likely to say that attributes they shared contributed to stable marriage than were people who did not share those attributes. A second study replicated this effect for success in professional school, but only among students who said they would or might attend a professional school; those who were not planning on attending showed no difference in their evaluations of attributes, as there was no motivation for them to think of reasons why their own attributes would lead to greater success. Similarly, heavy coffee drinkers were less likely to believe a study claiming that caffeine was associated with breast cancer in women -- but only when the coffee drinkers were women. When, in contrast, the study indicated that the negative effects of caffeine were very mild, even female coffee drinkers were willing to believe the study.

Wegner, D.M., Schneider, D.J., Carter, S.R., III, & White, T.L. (1987). Paradoxical effects of

thought suppression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 5-13.

Two direct experimental studies of conscious thought suppression are carried out. In the first, two groups of subjects speak and record their streams of consciousness; in one condition, they are told to first think of a white bear, then to not think of a white bear, while in the other condition, they are told to suppress thoughts of a white bear before being permitted to think of it. Both groups were not very good at suppressing their thoughts, as measured by verbal mentions and by rings of a bell. However, the group forced to initially suppress thoughts dwelled much more on the white bear when allowed to express those thoughts than did participants who expressed the thoughts before trying to suppress them.

In the second experiment, the above finding was replicated, but a third group of participants were told to think, rather than a white bear, of a red Volkswagen. This did not help them suppress thoughts at the time, but it did eliminate the "boomerang" effect when they were allowed to express those thoughts. Rather than everything "not a white bear" being associated with "white bear", as in the initial suppression condition, only the red Volkswagen was associated with "not-white-bear-ness", so the boomerang effect was removed. Suppression does seem to lead to "obsession" under some situations, but focusing on a single alternative idea can help in the long term.

Gilbert, D.T., Pinel, E.C., Wilson, T.D., & Blumberg, S.J. (1998). Immune neglect: A source of

durability bias in affective forecasting. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75,

617-638.

People tend to overestimate their long-term changes in emotion after strongly positive and negative events. There are six possible sources of this "durability bias": misconstrual, where the actual event does not match our prediction of it; inaccurate theories, where we are incorrect about what will make us happy or unhappy; motivated distortions, where assuming dire consequences of failure will motivate us to try harder; undercorrection, where we fail to correct sufficiently for the passage of time; focalism, where we assume we'll spend most of the time thinking about the event; and immune neglect, the focus of this paper. The psychological immune system works by way of rationalizations, and immune neglect, unlike the other five durability biases, operates only on negative events, not positive ones.

Six studies are presented, three of which establish the existence of the durability bias and three of which demonstrate the role of immune neglect in particular. In the first study, people outside of relationships are less happy than people in relationships, and accurately guess how happy they would be if they entered a relationship, while people in relationships are not happier than those who have broken up, and inaccurately guess that they would be less happy after breaking up. In the second study, assistant professors guessed how they would feel after receiving or failing to receive tenure; compared to professors who actually had received or failed to receive tenure, they inaccurately guessed that they would be happier or less happy in the short term (five years), but accurately guessed that they would be no happier in the long term (six to ten years). In the third study, voters guessed how they would feel a month after their chosen political candidate won or lost; winners accurately thought they would feel no happier after winning, but losers inaccurately thought they would be less happy, failing to realize that they would become happier with the winning candidate. In these studies, the durability bias tends to be stronger for negative than for positive events.

In the fourth study, forecasters guessed how they would feel after a computer program or a team of experts determined they had an undesirable personality type; compared to people who actually experienced the classification, they failed to recognize the extent to which a fallible source (the computer program) would help them feel better afterwards. The fifth study was similar, except with a newspaper article about a dead infant; forecasters failed to take into account how blameworthy parents would make the article less painful (due to the just world hypothesis) relative to blameless parents. The sixth study showed that all participants rejected for a job would feel equally bad at first, but those rejected by a single uninformed judge would feel better ten minutes later than those rejected by a reliable, informed panel; forecasters failed to recognize how an unfair decision could make them feel better over time.

Markus, H.R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion,

and motivation. Psychological Review, 98, 224-253.

Understanding of the "self" varies greatly between cultures. In an effort to indicate the ways in which the Western, European-American, and male view of the self has dominated psychological literature, the article contrasts this view with that of Asian cultures.

Some sense of self must be universal: "I am here in this place now, and distinct from other people". In other ways, the sense of self can vary substantially. Two examples of the ways in which the self can be construed are the independent and interdependent views.

In many Western cultures, people are seen as unique and bounded individuals, distinguished by "each person's configuration of internal attributes" (p. 3). Most self-representations are considered independent of relationships with surrounding others.

In many Eastern cultures, people are seen as connected, with many internal attributes and self-representations seen as fundamentally relational and context-specific. Social situations are opportunities to control, rather than to display, one's independent attributes. Aspects of this view are apparent in Chinese, Hispanic, Thai, Japanese, and many African cultures, and even many American subcultures. The article focuses on Japanese culture.

Differences in construals of self influence self-regulation strategies, for evaluating the self, affect regulation, and motivating the self and setting goals. Predictions: interdependent persons should attend more to relationships with others, represent self and other in a particular social context, and display differences in categorization and counterfactual thinking.

"More interpersonal knowledge": Americans think of others as more similar to self than self is to others; students from India flip the results.

"Context-specific knowledge": Indians described acquaintances in more behavioral, situation-specific ways, while Americans used more stable internal attributions. Again, Indian Hindus used fewer dispositional attributions than Americans, both when explaining their own and when explaining others' stories about deviant behaviors, instead using more "role relationships". American students generated more stable self-attributions in a "Who am I?" free-response than when the questions were socially contextualized; Japanese students showed the reverse.

"Basic cognition in an interpersonal context": Some researchers argue that Chinese people, based on the rule of deference to superiors, may be impaired on creativity tasks due to the distraction of tracking others. Chinese people can reason counterfactually and abstractly, but are less willing to do so when the social situation demands a more personal response.

"Consequences for emotion": Ego-focused emotions ought to be expressed more frequently, and other-focused emotions less frequently, by independent selves. Thus, American students report feeling (predominantly ego-focused) emotions longer and more intensely than Japanese students, and are more likely to say that some action should be taken in response to those emotions. There are cultures (Tahiti, Ukta Eskimos) which are claimed to have no social construction of anger. Expressions of anger might be rarer in Japanese culture, and more frequently targeted at outgroup members or in social contexts. In contrast, Japanese infants tend to be more "ambivalently attached" to their mothers (according to the Western classification), in that they are more stressed after a brief separation than American infants. There are culturally derived emotions, such as Japanese amae [being cared for and accepted] and fureai [feeling a close connection with another] may vary along a dimension of interpersonal engagement-disengagement as well as the familiar dimensions of arousal and valence. For Japanese participants, positive and negative ego-focused emotions are correlated in how frequently they are felt, with each other and with an independent construal of self; so are all other-focused emotions, with each other and with an interdependent construal; in addition, negative ego-focused and negative other-focused emotions are correlated with each other, indicating that negative interpersonal situations can give rise to ego-oriented feelings of frustration and anger.

"Consequences for motivation": Chinese respondents showed high levels of social- and other-oriented motives, such as abasement, nurturance, and socially oriented achievement, and low levels of motives like individually oriented achievement, affiliation, and aggression; notice that the interdependent motives are oriented, not towards affiliation as such, but towards modulating the self so as to fit with group needs. Americans seem more concerned with consistency between inner feelings and outer actions than Japanese, and so perhaps more affected by cognitive dissonance. Striving for achievement, rather than being about personally surpassing one's fellows, may be about reaching expectations and enhancing social standing of the group. Americans tend to have very high opinions of themselves (25% of students think they're in the top 1% of leadership ability); Japanese students do not show this tendency, and in fact may show a modesty bias. Moreover, self-promoting comments are seen negatively by Japanese children, and even as an indication of poorer ability among older children. Japanese students performed an anagram task; after success, the dominant attribution was to ease of the task, while after failure, the primary attribution was to lack of effort; ability was de-emphasized overall, especially after success.

Week 10. Judgment and Decision-Making, Motivation, Automaticity, and Culture (Weeks of November 27 and December 4)

Readings, Judgment and Decision-Making:

Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1973). On the psychology of prediction. Psychological Review,

80, 237-251.

Hypothesis:

“People predict by representativeness, that is, they select or order outcomes by the degree to which the outcomes represent the essential features of evidence.”

Categorical Prediction:

• Participants estimate the percentage of total graduate students in specific areas of study. (base rate)

• Then rate, based on a description, how similar Tom is to graduate students in each of the fields. (judged likelihood)

• Then rate how likely Tom is to be a graduate student in each of the fields. (judged similarity)

• Positive correlation (.97) between judged likelihood and similarity.

• Negative correlation (-.65) between judged likelihood and base rate.

People are more likely to use similarities to representations of each group to predict likelihood than actual predicted base rates.

Prior vs. Individuating Evidence:

• Participants given descriptions of 30 engineers and 70 lawyers.

• One group given probability of being a lawyer or engineer in the group.

• One group not given probabilities.

• Given a description of a person and asked how likely he is to be a lawyer or engineer.

• Participants in both groups rated similar likelihood which was not consistent with the probabilities.

Numerical Prediction:

• Given an alleged description of a college freshman by a counselor on the basis of an interview.

• Study 1: description uses five adjectives describing attributes.

• Study 2: description uses general descriptions about background and adjustment to college.

• Participants asked to predict student’s GPA and class standing by the end of freshmen year.

• Aside from how the student was described, GPA and standing predictions were positively correlated.

Prediction and Translation:

o Three groups asked to predict the GPA of a student based on percentile scores GPA (in a percentage)

o Mental concentration (in a percentage)

▪ Level of concentration and ability to abstract meaning from information

▪ Were told that this was only predictive of GPA if student was not sleepy or in an extreme mood state.

o Sense of Humor (in a percentage)

▪ Were told that a higher sense of humor usually suggests a higher GPA but is not necessarily the best predictor.

• All three groups showed a high correlation between GPA and percentile score no matter what was said about the usefulness of each score to predict GPA.

Confidence and the Illusion of Validity:

• Participants were told to predict GPA based on a score of

o Creative thinking and symbolic ability (told there was a correlation –creates more confidence in prediction)

o Mental flexibility and systematic reasoning (told there was no correlation –creates less confidence in prediction)

• Were told that both tests were equally as useful in predicting college performance.

• Participants who were more confident in predictions that were most likely to be off mark.

Conclusion:

People seem to use comparisons of information already represented to make judgments aside from what stronger evidence may be available.

Relation to Class:

We don’t discuss it until the last week.

McNeil, B.J., Pauker, S.G., Sox, H.C., & Tversky, A. (1982). On the elicitation of preferences

for alternative therapies. New England Journal of Medicine, 306, 1259-1262.

Note: This is one we’re all familiar with. This is the study that demonstrated that people’s preferences for medical treatments are strongly affected by the way in which the information is presented to them.

Background

- Study was conducted in response to growing awareness that patients should be involved in selecting their own treatments.

- Wanted to figure out how people made use of statistical information in their decision making processes.

- Two earlier studies on prospect theory by Tversky and Kahneman (1979, 1981) had already demonstrated that the way a question is framed (e.g. mortality vs. survival rates) will have an affect on people’s decision making.

Methods

- Manipulated four variables

1. Input data presented to subjects: life expectancy vs. cumulative probability[1]

2. Framing of the outcomes: mortality vs. survival

3. Identification of treatments: radiation or surgery vs. treatment A or B

4. Population of respondents: grad students, patients, physicians)

- Input data was a w/in subjects variable, so each subject would get the information framed both ways. See below for further clarification.

- Over 1100 total subjects tested.

Results

- Responses across subject type (students, patients, physicians) were strongly affected by the way the information was summarized

- Raises question of how summary data should be presented to people such that they are not swayed either way in their judgment.

- Most notable finding seemed to be how drastically people’s answers varied across the way the outcomes were framed (i.e. mortality rates vs. survival rates). Surgery, for example, was much more popular when the results were framed in terms of survival rather than mortality (this held across subject type).

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After selecting their choice, subjects were then told that hospitals across the country were facing similar dilemmas. The subjects were then asked to make a decision for a second hospital given the information below.

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Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1984). Choices, values, and frames. American Psychologist, 39,

341-350.

SUMMARY

• Kahneman and Tversky examine the ways in which people make decisions under circumstances of gain or loss.

• People are risk averse when the domain is gain, and risk-seeking when the domain is loss. That is, “a clear majority of respondents prefer saving 200 lives for sure over a gamble that offers a 1/3 chance of saving 600 lives.”

• Loss aversion: “the loss of $X is more aversive than a gain of $X is attractive”.

• Framing of outcomes is important and can change preference of options: “the possible outcomes of a gamble can be framed either as gains and losses relative to the status quo or as asset positions that incorporate initial wealth”

o The impact of framing violates the rational assumption of invariance. Invariance “requires that the preference order between prospects should not depend on the manner in which they are described.”

• Category-boundary effect: “a change from impossibility to possibility (an increase from 0% chance to 5% chance) or from possibility to certainty (an increase from 95% chance to 100% chance) has a bigger impact than a comparable change in the middle of the scale (an increase from 35% chance to 40% chance).

• What separates positive from negative outcomes is a hedonic reference point. And, “the hedonic reference point is largely determined by the objective status quo, but it is also affected by expectations and social comparison.”

• “An objective improvement can be experienced as a loss, e.g., when an employee receives a smaller raise than everyone else in the office”.

RELEVANCE TO CLASS LECTURES

• We haven’t had this class yet, and I’m not clairvoyant, so I have nothing to say here.

Gilovich, T., & Medvec, V.H. (1995). The experience of regret: What, when, and why.

Psychological Review, 102, 379-395.

A rather tedious and long-winded article that articulates some of the possible mechanisms that underpin feelings of regret and our cognitive attempts at assuaging those feelings. It would be wise, I think, to focus on the content rather than the form of this article.

Background

- Gilovich & Medvec attempt to discern the causes and effects of regret, distinguishing primarily between commission (regrettable action) and omission (regret of failure to act).

- This study represents a considerable departure from what was classically a philosophical approach to defining, and coping with regret.

Methodology

- A series of phone and pencil-and-paper surveys about regret, typically requiring subjects to recall events from their lives about which they were most regretful.

- Gilovich & Medvec also analyzed the responses to questions of regret in subjects of Terman’s ‘Genius’ study.

Take home points

- The primary finding is that on a short-term basis people experience more regret from acting than from abstaining from action, but over the course of a lifetime (long term) people tend to emphasize and experience the most regret about things they failed to do.

- Gilovich & Medvec offer several possible solutions as to how and why this temporal pattern of regret takes shape. Table 3, below, was taken directly from the article and summarizes the causal structure of temporal patterns of regret.

Commission (acting)

- People make more life changes to cope with regrettable actions than they do to cope with inaction.

- People are more likely to find a silver lining for regrettable actions than inactions (“I might have married Mr. Wrong, but I have three wonderful children that I wouldn’t have had otherwise” A lot more difficult to find silver linings for not marrying someone, who you later realized was perfect for you)

- People engage in more dissonance reduction to reduce the pain of errors of commission

Omission (failure to act)

- The number of imaginable outcomes from omissions is nearly infinite. That is, if you had decided not to go to grad school (omission) you could, later in life, imagine a near infinite number of positive outcomes from going to grad school if you had only taken that chance

- People tend to display retrospective confidence when thinking about things they failed to do. That is, they exaggerate the likelihood that they would have succeeded if only they had tried. Confidence is easy to come by when the task is no imminent.

- People are generally better at remembering the reasons for engaging in a particular action than they are at remembering forces that restrained them from acting.

- People tend to remember incomplete tasks and unrealized goals better than tasks/goals that have been completed, thus increasing the cognitive availability of omissions over time (i.e. people tend to forget the finite number of consequences that their past actions once had (commissions), but can easily bring to mind all the positive things they missed out on by not taking advantage of an opportunity (omission))

All of the above are reasons why commissions generate greater regret initially, but are overcome with time by the experience of regret over omissions.\

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Readings, Motivation:

Dweck, C.S. (1986). Motivational processes affecting learning. American Psychologist, 41, 1040-1048.

• Research on motivational processes that affect success on cognitive tasks

• Eventual goal of empirical basis for intervention and practice

• Social-cognitive approach emphasizes cognitive mediators:

o how children construe a situation

o interpret events in the situation

o process information about the situation

• Achievement motivation falls into two classes of goals:

o Learning goals, in which individuals seek to increase competence

o Performance goals, in which individuals seek to gain favorable judgments and avoid negative judgments of their competence

• Adaptive vs. maladaptive motivational patterns

o Adaptive: promote establishment, maintenance, and attainment of challenging achievement goals

o Maladaptive: associated with failure to do so

• Achievement behavior:

o Adaptive “mastery-oriented”: challenge seeking & high, effective persistence in the face of obstacles

o Maladaptive “helpless”: challenge avoidance & low persistence in face of difficulty

• Controlling for intelligence, mastery-oriented kids perform better on cognitive tasks

• Children’s theories of intelligence orient them toward different goals

o Intelligence is fixed ( performance goals

▪ If high confidence in present ability ( master-oriented

▪ If low confidence in present ability ( helpless (avoid challenge)

o Intelligence is malleable ( learning goals ( mastery-oriented

• Children w/ performance goals more likely to attribute failure to a lack of ability and view them as predictive of continued failure

• Children w/ learning goals tend to use obstacles as cue to increase effort or vary strategy

• Being a high achiever and knowing one has done well in the past does not necessarily translate into high confidence in one’s abilities for future challenges

• Dweck adds motivational explanation to sex differences in math achievement – more compatible with motivational patterns of bright boys b/c:

o Bright girls seem to display lower preference for novel, challenging tasks

o More frequent failure attributions to lack of ability

o More frequent debilitation in the face of failure or confusion

• Interventions to bring about adaptive motivational patterns incorporate challenge/failure within learning-oriented context, addresses underlying motivational mediators

o For example, retraining attributions of failure to effort/strategy rather than ability

Iyengar, S.S., & Lepper, M.R. (2000). When choice is demotivating: Can one desire too much

of a good thing? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 995-1006.

Cohen, G.L., Garcia, J., Apfel, N., & Master, A. (2006). Reducing the racial achievement gap: A social-psychological intervention. Science, 313, 1307-1310.

Readings, Automaticity:

Gilbert, D.T. (1991). How mental systems believe. American Psychologist, 46, 107-119.

Bottom line: Humans are “Spinozan” information-processing systems – at first we believe what we comprehend, and then may reject it as untrue.

• Descartes claimed that when we form an idea, we have no opinion about its truth value. After inspecting this idea, we decide whether it is true or false (the Cartesian approach).

• Spinoza, on the other hand, claimed that when we form an idea, we first believe in it, and can later (sometimes very quickly) come to reject it (the Spinozan approach).

• Little children act like immature Spinozan systems – they believe everything. If they were to operate in a Cartesian manner, we’d expect them to deliberate everything, or have no opinion about what they are told or presented with.

• Resource-depleted people (through sleep deprivation or cognitive overload) are much more likely to believe new information that they are presented with – once again, operating like a depleted Spinozan system, rather than like a Cartesian system.

As further support for a Spinozan system, Gilbert provides a confused linguistic argument, and cites research showing that people are faster to say “true” to a true statement than to say “false” to a false one (i.e. the “default” value of the answer is “true,” and that default value is modified as necessary).

When hearing a negative sentence (“I am not tired”) a listener must first understand the affirmative sentence (“I am tired”) and then negate it. A Spinozan listener would momentarily accept the affirmative sentence, while a Cartesian listener would be agnostic. Experiments have shown that listeners who are interrupted shortly after receiving indication that the affirmative sentence is correct or incorrect generally tend to err on the side of believing too much (false alarms, rather than misses of true sentences).

Gilbert then proceeds to ask himself (and us) whether it is possible for someone to comprehend a statement without accepting it. The shocking truth is revealed through careful review of past experimentation: no. When we hear something, we generally believe it. Even entertaining a thought is enough to push us to seek confirming information about it. The best way to conduct honest deliberation is to consider both a hypothesis and its antithesis, and then start testing.

Bargh, J.A., Chen, M., & Burrows, L. (1996). Automaticity of social behavior: Direct effects of

trait construct and stereotype activation on action. Journal of Personality and Social

Psychology, 71, 230-244.

Experiments using priming to activate stereotypes ( automatic behavior priming effect

Priming = incidental activation of knowledge structures by the current situational context

• Use of a trait construct or stereotype carries over for a time to exert unintended, passive effects on social perception and behavior too

• Attitudes have been shown to be activated automatically on the mere presence of attitude object, without conscious intention or awareness

o Self concept become active automatically in presence of self-relevant stimuli

o Stereotypes become active in presence of physical features assoc. w/ group

• Behavior, however, is assumed to be under conscious control and influenced by automatically produced perceptions and feelings

• Authors propose that social behavior is often triggered automatically on mere presence of relevant situational features – unmediated by conscious perceptual/judgmental processes

o Lewin’s psychological situation: totality of the individual’s immediate reactions to objective, external situation

o William James’s principle of ideomotor action: mere act of thinking about behavior increases tendency to engage in that behavior

Experiment 1

• IV: priming manipulation (rude, polite, neutral)

• DV: amount of time participant waits until interrupting experimenter

• DV: politeness rating of experimenter (-3 to +3)

• Results

o Rude priming significantly faster to interrupt than neutral or polite conditions

o Rude priming condition more likely to interrupt at all than other conditions

o No reliable difference in experimenter rating

• Results point to direct effect on behavior unmediated by perceptual/judgmental processes

Experiment 2

• IV: priming manipulation (elderly vs. neutral)

• DV: amount of time participant takes to walk down corridor after exiting lab

• Hypothesis: participants primed with elderly stereotype would walk more slowly

• Hypothesis confirmed, evidence of particular stereotype unconsciously influencing behavior (controlled for mood)

Experiment 3

• IV: priming manipulation (African-American v. Caucasian)

• DV: hostility of reaction to having to start experiment over (facial reaction + experimenter rating)

• Hypothesis: participants primed with A-A stereotype would react with more hostility

• Hypothesis confirmed by experimenter and blind coders (controlled for racist attitudes)

Central message: social behavior can be triggered automatically by features of the environment!

Kay, A. & Ross, L. (2003). The perceptual push: The interplay of implicit cues and explicit situational construals on behavioral intentions in the prisoner’s dilemma. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 39, 634-643.

It is known that non-conscious primes affect behavioral behavior, but what about a mediating interpretive process? Kay & Ross assess situational construals as mediators in the prime-to-behavior link. In other words, how do primed concepts lead to behavior? It is possible that the link is automatic (Bargh et al.), but it may depend on the effect that priming exerts on perceptions of the situation and appropriate behaviors. They argue that while implicit priming can impact how one perceives situational norms, no one has studied this potential mediator’s role in the link to behavior

**They seek to show that situational construals, when given an opportunity to surface, can play an important role in the prime-to-behavior link.

Experiment

• Subjects given scrambled sentence task to prime ‘cooperation’ and ‘competition’

• Then introduced to a Prisoner’s Dilemma payoff matrix and explained the rules and how it works [2-person task: if both respond A, they both get $20, if both respond B, they get $10, and if one responds A and one B, then A gets $25 and B gets $5]

• Construal task - They were then given the opportunity to judge the appropriateness of a name for the game (community, team, wall street, battle of wits, and numbers) on a 9-point scale.

• Intention task - They were asked to indicate their own and hypothetical others’ probable responses to the matrix. (COUNTERBALANCED with Construal task)

• Prediction: Intention task after construal task subjects would show a larger effect – the construal would have increased the power of the prime-to-behavior link.

Results

• Subjects primed with ‘cooperation’ found the team and community names more appropriate, and saw themselves and others as more likely to respond in the “cooperative” way

• Subjects primed with ‘competition’ found the wall street and battle of wits names more appropriate and saw themselves and others as more likely to respond in the non-cooperative way

• Importantly, there was a significantly larger effect of one’s own intended response when construal task was first. Additionally, mediational analyses showed that explicit construal = mediator

“When primes first lead to situational appraisals, they may exert their influence to the fullest possible degree across the greatest range of potential responses, including some that are ‘fully-intentional’”

Eberhardt, J.L., Goff, P.A., Purdie, V.J., & Daview, P.G. (2004). Seeing black: Race, crime, and visual processing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 876-893.

Readings, Culture:

Nisbett, R. E. (1993). Violence and U.S. regional culture. American Psychologist, 48, 441-449.

The U.S. south and regions settled by southerners are more violent than other regions of the country. This violence is specific to argument-related homicide. (Southerners do not endorse violence in the abstract more than do Northerners).

The author argues that this difference in violence is due to cultural determinants that promote violence for protection and pride. Unlike the North, which was settled by Puritans and farmers who were generally peaceful, the South was settled by aristocracy, who defended their pride violently, and herders, who had to vigilantly guard their herds.

1. There are more argument-related homicides in the South and southern-settled areas.

Neither higher temperatures in the south nor a greater concentration of African-Americans accounts for this difference. Rates are higher only in rural areas, where the population is overwhelmingly white. Though poverty does account for some of the differences between northern and southern homicide rates, it does not explain all of it.

Furthermore, these differences are greatest in regions where the majority of the population is still herding, supporting the theory that herding societies underly this different approach to violence.

2. There are regional differences in attitudes towards violence between the north and the south

Southerners differ from northerners on three measures of attitudes towards violence: Self-protection, proper response to an insult, and role of violence in the socialization of children

Self-protection: Southerners are more likely than northerners to own a gun for self protection, and more likely to say that it was alright for a man to kill another man to protect himself or his family.

Response to an insult: Southerners are more likely to think violence is an appropriate response to an insult than are northerners.

In one study by Nisbett, college students from many regions of the country were taking part in a study when they were shoved and called an asshole by a confederate. Northern students showed more amusement than anger, while Southern students did not. The insult also seemed to prime southern students to respond violently to future insults, while the same effect did not occur for northern students.

Socialization for violence: Southerners think spankings are more appropriate than do northerners, and southern fathers are more likely to expect their sons to respond violently to someone who is threatening them.

Iyengar, S.S., & Lepper, M.R. (1999). Rethinking the value of choice: A cultural perspective on

intrinsic motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, 349-366.

Iyengar S.S. and Lepper M.R. (1999). Rethinking the Value of Choice: A Cultural Perspective on Intrinsic Motivation, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(3), 349-366.

Person 1

Many studies have show that providing people with choice results in ‘intrinsic motivation, greater persistence, better performance and higher satisfaction.’ However, these demonstrations have all applied to American subjects, where freedom is all-important. Do the same findings apply to people raised in Asian cultures, in which a greater level of interdependency may cause people to attach less importance individual choice?

“For Americans, therefore, making a choice provides an opportunity to display one’s preferences and, consequently, to express one’s internal attributes, to assert one’s autonomy, and to fulfill the goal of being unique. For Americans, individual choice and personal autonomy may be deeply intertwined with one’s sense of self-identity.” (p.350).

The same may not be true for people raised in an Asian culture. There, making a choice that goes against the grain may feel threatening to the harmony of the group. The same choices that others make (particularly people close to you, such as parents or peers) may even be more desirable because decisions of this kind are more likely to preserve group harmony.

Study 1

Asian and American children were asked to solve anagrams. The anagrams came in a variety of topics. There were three conditions: one in which the children chose which type of anagram problem they would like to solve (personal choice condition); one in which the experimenter assigned them to a condition (experimenter choice condition); and one in which they were told that their mothers had selected the category for them (mom choice condition).

Anglo American students performed best in the personal choice condition; Asian American students performed best in the mom choice condition. The effects on performance were also echoed by children’s level of intrinsic motivation (measured by how long the child opted to continue solving anagrams in a free-play situation).

Study 2

This time children were asked to play a video game designed to improve their knowledge of the order of arithmetic operations. The child either got to choose various parameters of the game (e.g., the icon they used and the name they would be addressed by) or these settings were selected either by members of an in-group for them (a vote conducted by their classmates) or members of an out-group for them (younger students at another school).

Basic findings:

• Anglo American students reported liking the task more in the personal choice condition, whereas Asian American students preferred it most in the in-group choice condition.

• Anglo Americans chose to play more games in the personal choice condition; Asian Americans chose to play more games in the in-group choice condition.

• Anglo Americans opted to play more difficult games in the personal choice condition; Asian Americans opted to play more difficult games in the in-group choice condition.

• Perhaps most importantly, the children’s overall increase in math ability (measured as the difference in scores on a pre- and a post-test) also depended on the choice condition. Anglo Americans improved most in the personal choice condition, and Asian Americans improved most in the in-group choice condition. Neither group seemed to learn at all in the out-group choice condition.

Person 2

Personal choice enhanced motivation more for American independent selves than Asian interdependent selves

• Markus & Kitayama self-systems theory: personal agency is less relevant for collectivistic cultures of Asia than for individualistic America

• Studied responses of Anglo American v. Asian American children in three conditions:

o Personal choice over small or incidental aspect of activity

o Same choice made by someone with whom they had no history

o Children led to believe that own mothers had made choice

• Hypotheses

o Anglo American children would show more motivation in first choice condition

o Asian American children would show more intrinsic motivation in third condition

• Study 1

o IV: personal choice, experimenter choice, mom choice

o DVs: task performance (anagrams correct) & intrinsic motivation (time spent on anagrams during free play)

o Results

▪ Task performance higher for Asian Amer. only in mom condition

▪ Motivation higher for Asian in mom condition, higher for Anglo in personal condition

• Study 2 (varying identities of in-group and out-group members)

o IV: personal choice, out-group choice, in-group choice conditions

o DVs: task engagement, preferences for challenge, reports of liking experiment, measure of success and generalized learning

o Results

▪ Generally Anglos prefer personal choice to other conditions

▪ Generally Asians prefer in-group, then personal, then out-group

• These findings challenge assumptions about human motivation – contrasting cultural ideals (re: choice) have shaped motivational contexts of different societies differently

Kim, H., & Markus, H.R. (1999). Deviance or uniqueness, harmony or conformity? A cultural

analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 785-800.

The authors examine cultural attitudes to conformity and uniqueness in a range of settings, such as everyday public messages. They also address how cultural values influence individual preferences in even non-social aspects of life. The prediction, in general, is that “East Asians would show a preference for conformity and Americans would show a preference for uniqueness.” (p.787). This hypothesis is made because of a general understanding that Asian cultures tend to value conformity and collectivity, whereas Americans tend to be more like rugged individualists who value individual choice and freedom. Since people tend to conform to their cultural norms, Americans would prefer to non-conformity, while Asians would prefer conformity.

Study 1

Abstract figures were presented to Chinese American and European American high school students. The figures were presented as groups of figures, in which one or more would be distinctive from the rest. On the whole, European Americans tended to prefer the unique elements more than the Chinese Americans. The Chinese Americans were somewhat neutral with respect to the unique subfigures (they neither preferred them more or less to the other ‘conformist’ subfigures).

Study 2

This was a replication of Study 1, except carried out with East Asians, rather than Chinese Americans. The effects were more pronounced than in Study 1: Americans again preferred the unique elements, and this time, Asians showed a distinct preference for the “conformist” figures.

Study 3

Participants were asked to choose a pen from a group of 5 pens to receive as a reward for completing a short questionnaire. The pens came in 2 colors, such that there was a majority and a minority color on each trial. Americans chose the less common color pen 74% of the time, whereas East Asians chose the less common color only 24% of the time.

Study 4

This study compared a series of advertisements from American and Korean magazines on their messages of conformity or non-conformity.. Conformity themes were used more often in Korean advertisements; uniqueness themes were used more often in American advertisements.

General Discussion

These studies are interpreted as supporting the idea that culture and the psyche are mutually constituted (they support one another reciprocally). Values are embodied in a culture and also in specific acts of people; the existence of each reinforces the existence of the other. Hence cultural systems tend to be largely homeostatic.

Chua, H.F., Boland, J.E., & Nisbett, R.E. (2005). Cultural variation in eye movements during scene perception. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 102, 12629-12633.

There exist cultural differences in perceptual judgment and memory between Westerners and East Asians. Westerners attend more to focal objects, while East Asians attend more to the contextual information.

Westerners tend to explain events in terms of salient objects, while East Asians describe contextual factors. This trend extends judgment and memory tasks, such as picture viewing and memory.

-Americans describe underwater scenes in terms of focal objects (moving, alive, or bright objects) while Japanese describe them much more in terms of the background (rocks, small nonmoving objects, etc).

-One study asked both American and Chinese participants to look at a rotating line inside of a rotating square frame and judge when the line was vertical. Chinese participants’ judgments were more dependent on the context (the position of the frame) than were American subjects’.

The authors monitored eye movements to determine whether these differences were due to differences in encoding (rather than retrieval, mental comparison, or differences in reporting bias).

Both American and Chinese students looked at pictures with focal object and complex backgrounds while in an eye-tracker. American students looked at the focal object significantly more than did Chinese students, indicating that American and Chinese students in fact allocated their attention differently. Americans students encoded more information for focal objects than did Chinese.

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[1] Cumulative probabilities gave people the mortality or survival rates immediately after treatment, one year after the treatment, and five years after the treatment. Life expectancies gave subjects probability of survival/mortality immediately after treatment, and average number years lived after treatment.

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