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What is pier group influence?
- People of our same status, pressure to be popular.
- Who you hang out with affects your life.
- Values are influenced by church, school and family
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What are some examples of humans as "social animals"?
- Teacher asks students sum of math problem. Girl is puzzled by answer, raises her hand tentatively, when called on answers. The teacher nods, she is right. The next questions, the girl leaps up and ready to answer question.
- 4 yr. old boy given toy drum. Plays with it for while, sets aside until another young boy comes over and shows interest in it. Boy grabs it out of his hand.
- 10 year old girl eating Wheaties because Olympic gymnastic champion is on front, em-plying she owes cereal for her skill.
- Shopkeeper lived his entire life in small town, never having contact with real, live black people, but he "knows" they are unintelligent, lazy and oversexed.
- College girl has prided herself on keeping fit. She receives a Dear Jane letter from boyfriend, and rejection sets her on an eating binge. A straight-A student, she flunks an exam she would have normally aced.
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What does it mean, "people who do crazy things are not necessarily crazy"?
- Occasionally, natural situations become focused into pressures so great that they cause people to behave in ways easily classifiable as abnormal.
- It is important to understand the nature of the situation and the processes that were operating to produce the behavior.
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What is altruism?
- The belief in or practice of disinterested and selfless concern for the well being of others. Ex. unselfish, compassionate, humanitarian.
- Person runs into burning house to save someone is altruistic.
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How do scientist conduct experiments?
- 1. Hypothesis - what you expect to find.
- 2. Control variables - independent: can be manipulated (things that changed)
- dependent: how does it change outcome
- Every person must be exposed to same thing, uneducated, lower self esteem, catholics, military.
- Looking for dependent variable, outcome.
- 3. Random assignment - each person has equal chance to experiment same thing.
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Parts of Experiment:
- Hypothesis - Expect to happen
- Independent Variable - Can be manipulated (not at Yale)
- Dependent Variable - how you change outcome of results (male vs female)
- Random Assignment - Equal chance to experience same thing
- Controls - control all parts of expereiment
- Correlation - decreased distance, less shocked. Moved scientist away, less shocked, obedience went down.
- Protect subjects - don't really want them in pain. Should experiment end?
- Debriefing - Explain true purpose, feelings? suspicious? Make them important for taking part.
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What was the Hawthorne effect?
- If they know the true purpose of experiment, less likely to commit. Disguised truth about experiment.
- People will try to please person conducting experiment. True nature unknown, interesting and realistic so they
- "buy in".
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What was the My Lai incident?
- In 1969, Soldiers in VietNam obeyed their commander, who told them to kill everyone in village. The killed 504
- (massacred) animals, babies, old people, unarmed peasants and left to die in street. The Plain Dealer was first to publish picture of clump of bodies, by Fairview High School photographer. He shot pictures of the soldiers shooting victims, but destroyed. 26 soldiers were found guilty. They raped, cut off tongues, scalped the victims. In defense, they said this group (company) of soldiers had been losing a lot of their buddies killed and they had become hardened. Brought about critical shift in American's views on VietNam and helped bring an end to the war.
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What was the Milgram experiment, by Stanley Milgram?
- Social Psychology experiment conducted at Yale, which measured the willingness of participants to obey and authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience. Milgram described the research, in 1963. Milgram was testing a suggestion that the millions of accomplices of the Holocaust were following orders, despite violating their deepest moral beliefs.
- There was a "learner" and a "teacher" It was rigged for the teacher to always draw the same card and they were in on the experiment. It was always done the same way, with 14-450 volts. Hidden camera. Strapped learner to electrodes. They were in separate rooms. The teacher was given a list of words. His voice was a recording, played as the volts were higher. Please continue. The experiment requires that you continue. It is absolutely essential that you continue and You have no other choice, you must go on. It was believed 1% would continue, but 65% continued. Variables: Teacher in another room, could be heard, victim in same room. Obedience reduced when in the same room.
- Conformity/obedience to authority. Tells us human nature, not character, but the situation we are in, we conform.
- "Defusion of responsibility" they asked who was going to be responsible if something happened to victim.
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What is the bystander effect? Who was Kitty Genovese?
- Phenomenon that refers to cases where individuals do not offer help in an emergency situation when other people are present. The greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that any one of them will help.
- Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death in New York City in 1964. Numberous neighbors were reported to be aware of what was going on but noone called the police. Her attacher stabbed her several times and left. She crawled to the stairwell, still noone called. He returned 10 minutes later, with her out of view of those who may have seen the original attack, he proceeded to stab her several more times. While she lay dying, he raped her and stole $49 from her ald left her in the hallway. The attack spanned about 30 minutes.
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What is Diffusion of Responsibility?
A Social phenomenon which occurs in groups of people above certain critical size when responsibility is not explicitly assigned. Groups of three or fewer, everyone took action but in groups over ten, no one took action. The mindset is seen as "no one raindrop thinks it caused the flood". They allow events to occur, through action or inaction, which they would never allow if they were alone.
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What is groupthink?
A type of thought exhibited by group members who ry to minimize conflice and reach consensus without critically testing, analyzing and evaluating ideas. Uniqueness and independent thinking are lost in the groups cohesiveness. Members of the group avoid promoting viewpoints outside their comfort zone.
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What variables could have been changed in Millgrim's experiement?
- 1. Let teacher see them, sit close
- 2. Let learner sit next to teacher, put hand on plate.
- 3. Distance of experimenter and teacher.
- 4. Phoned in orders. As distance decreased, obedience decreased.
- 5. Didn't see - all on tape
- 6. Changed location from Yale to downtown
- 7. Groups, if one was pressing, all would press.
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Who tend to conform more often?
Other countries are less trusting, more sinicle.
Japanese are less obedient than Americans
Catholics are most obedient
Germans, less educated, technical occupations like chemist and biologist,
No difference between men and women
Enlisted soldiers more than officers
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What is Cognitive Dissonance? Justification for why you did what you did.
- The uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by changing their attitudes, beliefs and behaviors or by justifying or rationalizing their attitudes, beliefs and beaviors.
- It is one of the most influential theories. Ex: eat meat but animal activist.
- The anxiety that comes with the possibility of having made a bad decision leads to rationalization, the tendency to create additional reasons or justifications to support your choice. Ex: spend too much money on a new car.
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Getting a good grade effects behavior of compliance.
Conform to how you dress, reward...smile
Identification, do because other do it,
Internalization, do because you think it's the right thing to do.
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Inconsistency in way our society feels about conformity (team playing) and non-conformity (deviance)
Ex: Kennedy in Profiles in Courage, praised politicians for their courage in resisting great pressure and refusing to conform.
Refused to be good team players
Establishment or modal groups tend to like conformists better than nonconformists.
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What happened in 1986 with the space shuttle, Challenger, exploding seconds after launching. Seven astronauts, including a civilian teacher, died. This is an example of GroupThink
The decision was made to go ahead with the launch despite a near disaster on an earlier Challenger flight and despite strenuous objections and warnings from knowledgeable ingineers about the defective O-rings.
Key National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) were not ignorant of the danger.
- There were flaws in the decision making process. NASA had already conducted two dozen successful launches with the same equipment. Their confidence was high and administrators were oriented toward a "go" decision.
- NASA, like the public, were caught up in enthusiasm surrounding the launching of the first civilian (Christina McAuliffe).
- NASA needed to secure congressioal funding by desplaying its efficiency and productivity, given the intense public interest in the teacher in space.
- Liftoff was a more desirable decision than delay. Any mention of delay would suggest a need to spend more money.
- In the atmosphere of enthusiasm and external pressure, no one at NASA wanted to be reminded that any kind of accident was possible, and they weren't.
- The engineers who manufactured the solid rocket boosters were not concerned about the political, economic or public relation implications to launch. They were concerned if it would work and they objected strenuously to the launch.
- The vice president of engineering was told to "take off his engineering hat and put on one representing management. Only the employees at the company were polled to vote to go with the launch, not the engineers. Only management personnel, who voted to "go".
- Groupthink is the mode of thinking that persons engage in when concurrence seeking becomes so dominant in a cohesive ingroup that it tends to override realistic appraisal of alternative courses of action.
- They were blinded by optimism. Individual group members came to doubt their own reservations and refrain from voicing dissenting opinions. Consensus seeking is so important that certain members of the group sometimes become "mindgaurds", people who censor troublesome incoming information.
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What is conformity?
What causes people to conform to pressure?
A change in a person's behavior or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people.
Ex: asked to look at 4 lines and say which is longest. You are convinced of your answer but after hearing other 3 people say different answer, you second guess yourself and go along with them.
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In a group, most people do not want someone who is different from themselves in behavior, dress or thinking.
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Why do people conform? To obtain reward or avoid punishment.
Other peoples behavior is your guide if you don't know what to do.
How you behave is affected by people around you. Ex: Adrenaline shot and placebo. Reacted same as if gotten adrenaline, even though they got placebo.
People will help if: have common interest.
you will see them again
If majority opinion is unanimous, size of majority isn't as important as unanimity. If 4 wont' do it, most likely you won't.
- If person has high self esteem, will not conform
- How parents raised you,
- Urban or rural area, rural area more likely to help. Big cities more afraid of crime, won't help
- How secure you are in the group
- Get someone to make a commitment or statement prior, w/ go against the group.
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Movie, "The Wave"
In 1967, at Cubberley High School in Palo Alto, History teacher, Ron Jones, talking to the students about the Holocaust, was asked by student if it could happen here. He came up with an unusual answer. He decided to have a two week experiment on dictatorship. He wanted to explain fascism to his class through a game but his class turned into a Fascist enviornment. Students gave up their freedom for the prospect of being superior to their neighbors. He declares himself leader of a new movement and his students follow.
Strict set of social guidelines: unquestioning loyalty to the cause, ope contempt for those inferiors who have not been invited to join the movement. They were promised to "be part of something more important than themselves". The Wave gets out of hand and the entire school is part of it. Ross tries to shock his students back to their senses by running a newsreel footage of the Waves true leader (Hitler)
Shows how we conform.
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When do you have a better chance of people getting involved to help?
- Less people, better chance someone will help
- empathy, if you know person
- if setting is where you can't get away, subway, camp ground
- feeling of togetherness, shared interest
- if you are alone, feel more personally responsible to get involved
- Decision making group is tight knit, same page, think alike, close bonds
- Insulated from other groups, more of a chance for group think
- Withhold information "mind gaurds" as in Space Shuttle
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What is a Total Institution
- Where you are totally controlled by denegration, staff has all the power, will go along with everything.
- Ex: Concentration camp, military, nursing home, orphanage.
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What is Emotional Contageon? Emotional Contagion is more automatic. It relies mainly on non-verbal communication. Ex: peopleare effected by the other persons emotion without being able to perceive non verbal cues, as in email. Emotional, unlike cognitive contagion, is more automatic.
- The tendency to catch and feel emotions that are similar to and influenced by those of others.
- A process in which a person or group influences the emotions or behavior of another person or group through the conscious or unconscious induction of emotion states and behavioral attitudes.
- You are affected by another person (especially a child) who appears distressed because another person is distressed, or happy because they are happy. Ability to transfer moods.
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What is Explicit Emotional Contagion?
When emotions are manipulated by a person or a group in order to achieve something. This can be a result of intentional affective influence by a leader or team member, as with Joseph Gervez, the "Master of Hate" for Hitler. He was a genius and a "minister of propaganda".
He created Hitler's image, through control, by way of his control over the press, radio, films.
- Emotional Contageon, social contageon, is the total control of the radio by the government to pursuad people and bring about conformity.
- Gervez staged movies with flags and flames to instill emotion from audience, as Hitler protecting them.
- $1,000,000 a day was spent on propaganda. People were forbidden to listen to any other broadcasts!
- Went all over the world, movies in 27 languages.
- Gervez oversaw all facets of movies, movies of priests handing out guns and bibles at the same time.
- Weapons of victory becoming toys for children.
- Total war demands sacrifice.
- Claimed the war is won, we have victory.
- German people will fight, we will prove it to the enemies.
- "Are you determined to fight for victory, willing to follow Hitler through thick or thin, to give total sacrifice"
- Hungry, homeless nation in 1944 because money was going towards Hitler propaganda and people were made to believe their sacrifice was noble.
- Hitlers birthday, movie made to exploit events.
- Germans were eating out of garbage cans, ruied by the lies and propoganda.
- April, 1945, Russians approaching Berlin, enlisted old men and children. Russians siez Berlin.
- Gerez convinced Hitler to commit suicide, he killed his 6 children and commited suicide too.
Danger of not having freedom of press bring about mass conformity!
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What is "Deindividuation"?
To begin conformity, stereo type to make them subhuman.
Nursing homes get patients to conform, no freedom, have to follow their schedule, do what you are told.
Does not take into consideration their individuality.
A situation where anti normal behavior is released in groups in which individuals are not seen or paid attention to as individuals. Immersion in a group to the point which the individual ceases to be seen as such.
- Blend into the mass, conform to the mass.
- Dangerous to be involved in large crowd.
- In a large crowd, contagious behavior, happy or sad, both biological and social processes. Unaware of the influence of persuasion.
- We laugh if other laugh, yawn if someone else yawns, depressed if someone else is down, road rage.
- Humans neurons fired in brain by watching someone elses behavior.
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Article 36: To Err is Human
Group influence
GroupThink, leader should not express their opinion.
Cults are group conformity.
To avoid GroupThink you need diversity of thinking looking at everything!
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What is the Innoculation Affect" Prepares you for the real thing.
Vaccine exposes you to harmful agent, forms antibodies, little cells fight to build up immunity.
Bring "little awareness"
1st movie ever made, About a Nation, was about the Klu Klux Klan. 400 children became prejudice against black after never having met any black people.
- In communication theory, the inoculation effect refers to a strategy of rejudicing one's audience agains an opposing argument they may hear in the future.
- Ex: Damaging knowledge evidence is available, reducing the resulting controversy when the evidence becomes widely known.
- Ex, the British government realised a report on Iraq was going to be published, the government officials publicly admitted that Iraq likely never had weapons of mass destruction. This dented the outcry that the published report would have originally generated.
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