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Behavior in a social and
cultural context
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Watch the Screen and
Follow these
Instructions:
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Stand Up
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Put your right hand on
the shoulder of the
person to your right
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Put your left foot on
your chair
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Say ‘Hello” to the person
on your left
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Give Professor Reyes
the Finger
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Say ‘Fuck You’
Professor Reyes
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What does this experience
mean?
It’s based on shared
Social Knowledge
Professor Reyes is an authority
figure. Be respectful. DO what is
asked. (Also why it was hard to say”fuck you” to me.)
We follow norms for our roles. We
defer to authority.
Norms
Rules that regulate human life, including social conventions, explicit
laws, and implicit cultural standards
Role
A given social position that is governed by a set of norms for proper
behavior. Student and Teacher.
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Diffusion of Responsibility
We see everyone else giving the finger so we figure it’s
okay. If everyone else is doing it then no single person
can be held accountable.
Situations are Ambiguous
We look to others to help define situations but we often
don’t realize we are doing this; it’s a social process.
Social and Cultural Context
How we affect others and how they affect us. Shared
rules that govern our behavior, values, beliefs, and
attitudes a lot of the time.
The “ I made you look”
study
Stanley Milgram and coworkers (1969)
Milgram had a confederate stare as the sky pretending to be
looking something.
-> When one person is looking up 40% of passerby looked up
->When two people looking up 60% of passerby looked up
->When three people looking up 65% of passerby looked up
->When four people looking up 80% of passerby looked up
Two ways to think about this finding:
Consciously: “Maybe these folks are looking because there is
something interesting up there. I think I’ll look too!
Automatically: Where others look automatically directs our
gaze to the same place. Did we evolve to do this? It’s hard NOT
to look up.
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The Obedience Study
VERY FAMOUS. Also Stanley Milgram et al (1969)
Subjects asked to shock a fellow subject (who was really a
confederate of the research team) whenever he made a mistake
in a learning task. As the learner made more mistakes, voltage
of the shock increased. And the learner screamed from the
next room. When subjects looked to the experimenter, he just
said “the experiment must continue”.
Most people were far more obedient than anyone expected.
Every single participant complied with at least some orders to shock another person.
Two-thirds (26/38) shocked the learner to the full extent or all the way to XXX and
had to be stopped. NO ONE demanded that the experiment stop at moderate,
strong, or very strong. 5 stopped at intense and 1 at danger.
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What do we think of
these people?
They have no mind of their own? No conscience? They’re not
thinking of long-term consequences? They’re abnormal?
But the definition of normal is what MOST people do. So the
normal people are the one’s who had to e stopped at XXX. So
the way we think about the people in this study is actually
backwards….
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What should we think
of these people?
Those who went all the way to XXX are not psychopaths but normal
people. It’s those who stopped who are different. Those are the people
you’d want on your side if the chips were down…
Milgram was originally interested in showing the character defects of
Germans after WWII. HE wanted to show that Americans would never
commit atrocities because an authority figure ordered them to.
Oops.
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Factors that reduce
obedience
When the experimenter left the room
When the “learner” was in the same room
When subjects could see the “learner” suffering
When the experimenter issued conflicting orders
When the person ordering them to continue was an
ordinary man
When the subject worked with peers who refused to go
on
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The prison study
Subjects were physically and mentally healthy
young men who volunteered to participate for
money.
They were randomly assigned to be prisoners or guards.
Those assigned the role of prisoner became distressed,
helpless, and panicky.
Those assigned the role of guards became either nice,
“tough but fair,” or tyrannical.
Study had to be ended after six days.
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Factors in obedience
Allocating responsibility to the authority,
(That’s his problem, “I’m just following orders”
Routine tasks (this is how governments typically get
people to aid and abet genocide. Keep them busy with records
etc, routine task)
Wanting to be polite
Becoming entrapped
Entrapment: a process in which individuals escalate their
commitment to a course of action to justify their investment of time,
money, or effort.
Dating someone? The war in Iraq?
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Attributions
Attribution theory
Theory that people are motivated
to explain own and others’
behavior by attributing causes of
behavior to situation or
disposition
Fundamental
attribution error
Tendency to overestimate
personality factors and
underestimate situational
influence
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Attributions
Self-serving bias
Tendency to take credit for one’s good actions but to rationalize
one’s mistakes
Just-world hypothesis
Many people need to believe that the world is fair and that justice is
served.
Bad people are punished and good people rewarded.
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Attitudes
A relatively stable opinion containing
beliefs and emotional feelings about a
topic.
Explicit: we are aware of them, they shape conscious
decisions
Implicit: we are unaware of them, they influence our
behavior in ways we do not recognize
Factors influencing
attitude change
Change in social environment
Change in behaviors
Need for consistency
Cognitive dissonance: a state of tension that develops when a
person simultaneously holds two contradictory cognitions or when
a person’s belief is incongruent with his/her behavior
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Influencing attitudes
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Conformity
Subjects in group asked to
match line lengths.
Confederates picked wrong
line.
Subjects went with wrong
answer in 37% of trials.
Conformity has decreased
since 1950, possibly due to
changing norms.
Individualistic vs. collectivist cultures
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Groupthink
In close-knit groups, the tendency for all members to
think alike and suppress disagreement for the sake
of harmony.
Symptoms
Illusion of invincibility
Self-censorship
Pressure on dissenters to conform
Illusion of unanimity
Counteracted by
Creating conditions that reward dissent
Basing decision on majority rule
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The anonymous crowd
Diffusion of responsibility
The tendency of group members to avoid taking responsibility for
actions or decisions because they assume others will do so.
Bystander apathy
People fail to call for help when others are near.
Social loafing
When people work less in the presence of others, forcing others
to work harder
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Deindividuation
In groups or crowds, the loss of awareness of
one’s own individuality.
Factors
Size of city, group
Uniforms or masks
Can influence either unlawful or prosocial
behaviors
Depends on norms of specific situation
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Disobedience and dissent
Situational factors in nonconformity
You perceive the need for intervention or help.
Situation makes it more likely you will take responsibility.
Cultural norms encourage you to take action.
Cost-benefit ration supports decision to get involved.
You have an ally.
You become entrapped.
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Group identity
Social identity
The part of a person’s self-concept based on
identification with a nation, culture, or group, or with
gender or other social roles
Us vs. them social identities strengthened
when groups compete.
Robber’s cave studies
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Ethnocentrism
The belief that one’s
own ethnic group,
nation, or religion is
superior to all others.
Aids survival by
making people feel
attached to their own
group and willing to
work on group’s
behalf.
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Robber’s cave
Boys randomly separated
into two groups
Rattlers and Eagles
Competitions fostered
hostility between groups.
Experimenters contrived
situations requiring
cooperation for success.
Result: cross-group friendships
increased.
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Stereotypes
Cognitive schemas of a group, in which a person
believes that all members of a group share common
traits
Traits may be positive, negative, or neutral.
Allow us to process quickly new information and
retrieve memories
Distort reality
Exaggerate differences between groups
Produce selective perception
Underestimate differences within groups
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Origins of prejudice
Psychological functions
People inflate own self-worth by disliking groups they see as
inferior
Social and cultural functions
By disliking others we feel closer to others who are like us.
Economic functions
Legitimizes unequal economic treatment
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Measuring prejudice
Not all people are prejudiced in the same
way.
People know they shouldn’t be prejudiced
so measures of prejudice have declined.
Explicit vs. implicit prejudice
Measures of explicit
prejudice
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Defining and measuring
prejudice
Measuring
implicit prejudice
Measures of symbolic
racism
Measures of behaviors
rather than attitudes
Measures of
unconscious
associations with a
target group
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Reducing prejudice
Groups must have equal legal status, economic
opportunities, and power.
Authorities and institutions must endorse
egalitarian norms and provide moral support for all
groups.
Groups must have opportunities to work and
socialize together, both formally and informally.
Groups must work together for common goal.
(Elliot Aronson’s JIGSAW Method in some California schools”.