This week I would like to attempt to tackle the controversial issue of prosocial behavior, specifically altruism. Altruism is defined as any act helping others, that does in no way benefit the helper and is done without self-interest in mind.

A question has long been contemplated by social psychologists and citizens alike: does altruism really exist? Can someone truly do something for another person without some sort of personal gain?

For instance, take Abe Zelmanowitz, a victim of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Zelmanowitz was on the 27th floor of the North Tower when the second plane hit floors above him. Instead of instantly fleeing to safety, Zelmanowitz stayed on the 27th floor with his friend and coworker Ed Beyea, who was confined to a wheelchair, waiting for firefighters to help transport Beyea downstairs. Both Zelmanowitz and Beyea were killed when the North Tower fell. 

Zelmanowitz’s behavior was undoubtedly heroic and incredibly selfless. But, was staying with his friend an act of real altruism? Zelmanowitz sacrificed his life for the possibility of saving his friend, which is something to be respected, but was this truly altruism?

The Social Exchange Theory argues no. In fact, it asserts that altruism does not even exist. This theory states that any prosocial behavior, any seemingly selfless act, does in some way bring the doer of this act reward. This reward could be an increased probability that the person you helped will eventually help you in a time of need. It could be to relieve the personal distress of seeing someone unhappy or in need. And, very importantly, it could be to provide one with feelings of self-worth.

Social exchange theorists would, of course, consider Zelmanowitz’s actions brave, but they reiterate that those courageous actions brought him psychological rewards. They would most likely focus on the idea that helping others increases self-esteem.

When I say self-esteem, I am referring to something intrinsic, something inherent in the human psyche. Self-esteem is much more deeply rooted in our subconscious than our casual understanding of the term implies. The need to be liked and accepted, to feel good about yourself, is one of our most basic motivations. It frames our perceptions of the world and induces different behaviors.

How would Zelmanowitz have lived with himself if he had deserted his friend? How would he feel about himself if he had fled when Beyea needed him the most? By remaining by Beyea’s side in a time of great chaos and fright, by helping another person, Zelmanowitz was able to retain his self-esteem, not in a vain way, but in a primal and intensely human way. Social exchange theorists would argue that this subconscious reward discredits the claim that Zelmanowitz acted altruistically.

So, I challenge you. Can you think of a time that you helped someone and did not receive any form of reward, no matter how small, for that behavior? Ask yourself, does altruism really exist? While the Social Exchange Theory is, in fact, cynical, it may just be correct.

 

The classic rhetorical question, “If all of your friends jumped off a cliff, would you jump too?” Is meant to test the power of social influence, a topic I discussed in my last blog post. An edited version of that question, “If a person of great authority ordered you to jump off a cliff, would you do it?”, is focussed more on the idea of obedience.

Obedience refers to complying to a command, made typically by someone who is of high authority. This implies conformity without really believing in or supporting the behavior demanded. While self-preservation, the drive evaluated in the second question proposed above, is often strong enough to overcome our desire to obedient, you would be surprised by how much we are capable of sacrificing in order to satisfy this desire.

It is frightening to believe that all people, not just those who are perceived as bad or immoral, have a capacity for evil. This capability depends especially on our psychological need to be obedient. But from where is this need derived? Social psychologists attribute human obedience to normative and informational social influence, as well as self-justification.

Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram wanted to explore the extent of human obedience when people are told to harm other people. Milgram created an experiment that is taught in almost every university’s social psychology class. HIs findings provided significant information about how the social situation affects the behavior affects human beings, while also calling into question the morality of psychological research methods.

Milgram has participants enter his lab under the impression that they would be participating in a study regarding learning and teaching methods. Participants were joined by confederates, people working with the psychological team. The participants and confederates were assigned either the role of teacher or student for the next situation. This assignment was not random, although the participants believed it was, with confederates being given the student role and participants the teacher role.

The participants and confederates were taken to separate rooms. Participants were shown a shock device and were told that the confederates in the other room were wired to this machine. They were instructed to ask confederates questions from a list. If the confederates answered correctly, no shock would be administered, but if the answer was incorrect, the participants were told to press a button and unleash an electric shock on the “students’. After each incorrect answer, the shock level would increase in increments, spanning from 15 volts to 450 volts.

In the other room, confederates increasingly answered questions incorrectly, as per instructions. As the electric shock voltage grew, confederates played pre-recorded audio snippets of them crying out in pain or asking to be let out of the study. These recordings became even more disturbing as the voltage grew. Eventually, the confederates stopped playing recordings, giving the participants the idea that they had gone unconscious.

Why would the participants continue to shock the confederates after feelings of pain were vocalized? It is important to mention that an experimenter was present in the room where the participants sat. This experimenter told the participants that it was imperative that they continue with the study, and that they could not stop. Protesting participants were met with those kinds of statements.

The participant’s behavior can be attributed to their need for obedience. Participants did not want to challenge the experimenter; they felt the need to continue administering electric shocks simply because the experimenter was telling them to do so.

The participants who reached the electric shock level after which the confederates feigned unconsciousness or death walked out of the studying knowing they were capable of killing a stranger, simply because someone else told them to do so. This inevitably caused psychological, even though they were informed that they had not actually harmed the confederates.

The findings of Milgram’s study make me re-evaluate my power to resist the authority of others, and hopefully, they do the same for you.

 

We all like to believe that peer pressure doesn’t affect us, that advertising doesn’t work, and that we would be completely comfortable being the only individual facing the door of an elevator when the six other passengers decide to randomly face the back. Why would you turn to the back of an elevator, even if everyone else was? You are not stupid! Unfortunately, when placed in this situation, you would most likely find that your ability to resist the actions of the group is handicapped. Just like the man in this episode of the popular 1960s show Candid Camera, which I have linked, you are greatly susceptible to the power of conformity.

Conformity in social psychology is defined by Revel’s Social Psychology as “changing one’s behavior due to the real or imagined influence of others.” Conformity is a strong aspect of almost every social situation. Our willingness to sacrifice individuality in order to fulfill the expectations of others has puzzled social psychologists for years and has spawned an abundance of psychological research.

Social psychologists have been able to identify two major reasons for conformity. The first is informational social influence, which occurs when situations are ambiguous and we look at others for information. When we are unsure about something we use the behaviors and attitudes of other people to fill this void in comprehension. We adopt the behavior of others, thus conforming for the purpose of cognition.

The second cause of conformity is derived from our need for high self-esteem, the desire for others to like us. This is referred to as normative social influence. Psychologist Solomon Asch was particularly interested in this source of conformity, conducting a series of experiments that are now widely known and respected- Asch Tests. 

In this blog post, I will simply focus on Asch’s initial experiment. Asch had subjects walk into a room as a group and sit around a table. Of the five to six people spread around the table, only one was a participant, all the others were confederates- members of the study working directly with the experimenters. The participate was unaware of this; he or she believed he was surrounded by fellow study participants.

Asch knew he had to create a situation that was not ambiguous, because such a situation would lend itself to informational social influence, instead of proving the presence of normative social influence.

He first showed participants a photo of three vertical straight lines of various sizes. Then he showed a photo of one line and asked the participants which of the three lines from the first photo was closest in length. The correct answer to this question was obvious, thus the singular unwitting participant could easily identify the right line to choose. However, Asch had all of the confederates answer the question before the participants, all choosing the same incorrect line.

Asch continued to ask other similar questions with obvious answers. He found that around 76% of participants conformed, offering the incorrect answer, after only one of these questions. The 24% that did not conform after the first question caved after the next few rounds.

While these participants decided to affirm the answers of the confederate majority, Asch understood that they did not actually believe that was the correct answer. The participants were motivated by a need to fit into a group, to be liked and accepted by others, by normative social influence.

76% of people were willing to offer an obviously incorrect answer to a question in order to fit in with a group of people they did not even know and would most likely never see again. This information seems to challenge the commonplace that we all tend to hold that we are strong enough to resist conformity. It might be time to reevaluate just how much the presence of others influences your thoughts and behaviors.

 

What are you feeling right now? Can you describe it? Are you happy that it is Friday and the school week is almost over? Are you nervous about an upcoming exam? Are you homesick, wishing you could see your family and pets?

When I asked you what you were feeling, I asked you to identify an emotion. We all know what emotions are, and we can easily bring forth examples. But, it is much more difficult to answer the questions of how and why we are able to experience emotion.

Psychological researcher Stanley Schacter developed a two-factor theory of emotion. This theory asserts that in order for one to feel and emotion, two components must be available. First, one must undergo physiological arousal; heart rate increases, breathing rate increases, one’s palms start to sweat. Second, one must acknowledge this change in body physiology and attempt to understand it. Only after physiological arousal occurs, accompanied by a social cognition, can an emotional label be created.

This theory asserts that humans can actually make mistakes when identifying emotion. When the social cognition created about arousal is incorrect, one has undergone the process of misattribution.

Misattribution is the key to how emotional theory relates to social psychology. The social situation is often ambiguous, and although we do not feel as though we are constantly confused, our brains work incredibly hard to make sense of all facets of the situation. The vagueness of the social situation offers a breeding ground for misattribution.

In order to test the occurrence of misattribution, in relation to Schacter’s two-factor theory of emotion, researchers Donald Dutton and Arthur Aron developed an experiment involving a suspension bridge and a beautiful woman.

In 1974, Dutton and Arthur observed people walking along a suspension bridge. The bridge was strung at an extremely high height over a large river. The researchers knew that crossing the bridge evoked physiological arousal, as it was a slightly dangerous and scary situation. They decided to capitalize on this arousal in order to emotional misattribution.

Dutton and Arthur had an attractive woman approach different men, give them her phone number, and tell them to call her some time. Unfortunately for these men, the number was actually that of Dutton and Arthur’s laboratory. Some of these interactions occurred in the middle of the bridge, where the men’s physiological arousal was high. Other interactions took place on a bench a few feet away from the edge of the bridge, where men sat to relax after crossing the bridge. These men were experiencing less physiological arousal.

A larger percentage of men who had been approached by the woman while standing the middle of the bridge called her phone number. The men who had been approached while cooling down on the bench where less likely to call the woman back.

This was due to the misattribution of arousal. The men in the middle of the bridge attributed their arousal to sexual attraction to the woman, when in actuality, they felt that way because of the alarming height of the bridge. Men that had time to unwind on the bench, did not have this extra arousal to attribute to sexual attraction.

The results of this study show that we can actually be experiencing an “incorrect” emotion. It is often difficult to think about emotions in biological terms, because our feelings seem so personal and almost spiritual. It is hard to believe that what one feels could possibly be “wrong” in relation to the social situation, but psychological studies have proven the existence of misattribution.

 

 

 

Leon Festinger, an influential American social psychologist, wrote, “We come to love the things we suffer for”. Festinger was referring to the result of the cognitive dissonance people feel when something we have worked incredibly hard to achieve turns out to be quite disappointing.

Cognitive dissonance is the feeling of discomfort people experience when our behavior becomes inconsistent with our self-concept, the perception of ourselves in the past, present, and future.

Typically, humans have rather high levels of self-esteem, which has proven to be a crucial aspect of mental health. Unfortunately, people with low self-esteem are more likely to develop anxiety, depression, and other forms of disordered thinking. A problem arises when this high self-esteem is challenged by behavior. Humans whole heartedly believe in the commonplace “I am a good person”, therefore when our actions contradict this statement, our minds are automatically filled with discomfort.

When actions threaten self-esteem, people must somehow find a way to eliminate the discomfort we feel. Often times, we resort to modifying our thoughts and beliefs about something in order to make it appear more appealing in our eyes. The occurrence of this process is even more likely when we have exerted large amounts of energy to acquire something or become something.

This phenomenon is better understood when explained in the context of examples. Take the puzzling relationship between hazing and fraternity loyalty. Hazing is a degrading, embarrassing and hurtful process. Logically, one would think that the subject of such initiation bullying would strongly dislike, even hate, those responsible for such actions. Surprisingly, the opposite it true.

Victims of hazing experience a blow to their self-esteem; they become ashamed of the insane requirements forced upon them in order to become a part of a community. Drinking beer until one vomits and crawling around on all fours on command of a fraternity brother, contradict the victim’s belief that they are “a smart, logical, and good person”. Therefore, the victim must somehow justify his past behavior.

And what better way to do this than to pledge their undying love for that fraternity? Due to the psychological presence of social cognitive dissonance, the more a boy endures during fraternity initiation, the more devoted he will be to that organization. In order to make up for the inner humiliation he feels for his coerced actions, he asserts that no fraternity’s greatness could rival the greatness of his own and that he has no better friends than his fraternity brothers. He convinces himself of the fraternity’s amazing brotherhood.

There have been numerous psychological studies concerning social cognitive dissonance. Due to the multitude of fantastic study examples, I decided to focus on examples of dissonance in everyday life rather than feature a specific study during this blog post.

This process occurs in our minds more often than we may believe and in less obvious ways than are revealed through fraternity hazing. After you have successfully made any type of decision, whether it is choosing between using a pen or pencil to write notes or choosing between attending a university located on the west coast or the east coast, your brain will ultimately do the same thing. You will attempt to justify your decision, stressing the positives of the option you chose while conveniently forgetting its drawbacks.

Not all of us will experience hazing, but we will all undoubtedly experience social cognitive dissonance. I find it extremely interesting to dive into my reasons for feeling some way about a topic or choice, and this process has shed some light on the inter-workings of my complicated brain. I hope you can take this knowledge and apply it to your future decisions as well.

This week I would like to explore a particularly interesting, yet controversial, social psychological study. In 2001, Dr. Keith Payne, a professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, conducted a study focussed on people’s automatic thinking.

Automatic thinking is considered non-conscious, involuntary, unintentional, and cognitively effortless. This is the type of cognition that occurs at the biological level when your heart continues to beat and your lungs continue to expand without being constantly reminded to do so.

But automatic thinking also appears when you walk down the street each day, passing by a plethora of people. Would you believe me if told you that even if it feels as though they were in your range of vision for a fraction of a second, you did, in fact, form a judgment about those people? Well, you should….because it’s true.

So, how does this topic of automatic thinking relate to social psychology? Isn’t social psychology is rooted in the situation, the way behavior is affected by certain environments? How do split-second judgments relate to social influence?

In Dr. Payne’s study, he identified racial bias as a form of involuntary, non-conscious, automatic thinking. The effects of racial bias on the social situation are extremely significant. Our perception of every social situation is governed by elements of automatic thinking such as racial bias. Therefore, social psychology and automatic thinking mesh harmoniously, they go hand in hand.

The 2001 study, entitled Weapon Bias, was not incredibly complex but produced groundbreaking results. Payne invited white participants to sit before a screen. These participants would first be shown a photo of a white face or black face; the faces would vary each time. Then directly after the face, a photo of a weapon (ex: a gun, a knife) or a tool (ex: a hammer, a screwdriver) was shown. The participants were asked to ignore the face that was revealed initially and to simply focus on distinguishing between a weapon or tool in the second photo.

The task seems easy enough, right? How hard could it be to identify a weapon or tool? The participants were only given a fraction of a second to see both pictures. The visual flashes were almost instantaneous. Such a minuscule time period was offered, because Payne intended to ensure that only automatic thinking capabilities were activated. Participants could only make snap judgments about what they saw.

Unfortunately, the color of the face shown did affect the participants’ ability to distinguish between a weapon and a tool. All participants made mistakes, whether they were offered a white or black face, proving that automatic judgments are often incorrect. But participants were more likely to make these mistakes after seeing a black face. Following the visual of a black face, participants were more inclined to classify the next image as a weapon.

Remember that these attributions were entirely involuntary and non-conscious. The participants did not actively choose to display racist tendencies; their actions were due to inherent automatic thinking.

While these results are far from flattering, almost disgusting, they were recorded from a valid scientific study. Social psychologists, and psychologists in general, aim to illuminate the faults in human thinking in order to better society. Accepting that racial bias is real and scientifically proven is the first step in improving a culture that is continually plagued by issues of racism and intolerance.

Imagine you are a customer at a local deli. You and a middle-aged blonde woman are the only two customers in the establishment; you are both waiting in line for a sandwich. After taking her order, the owner rushes to the back of the deli, beginning work on her turkey and cheese sandwich. Suddenly, the woman becomes tense, her eyes scan her surroundings; she realizes that she is practically alone, except for you. But your presence is far from intimidating, and you do not seem to be lingering too close to the register.

Out of the corner of your eye, you see the blonde progressively move toward the register. She gravitates toward the tip jar, filled almost to the brim with dollar bills. You hope this suspicious behavior means nothing. The woman is just impatient, so she unconsciously drifted toward the register, you think. But your fears are realized as she slips her hand stealthily inside the tip jar, grabbing several bills.

So what do you do? How do you react? Do you call the woman out directly? Do you wait until she has left the building and then notify the owner of her malfeasance? Or, do you simply do nothing, leaving her nefarious deeds unchecked?

Most people would like to believe that they would undoubtedly choose the first option: making the business owner aware of the woman’s actions and stopping her from leaving with the tip money. This is the obvious “right” thing to do, the most moral choice. But truly evaluate that experience. Would you really have the courage to stand up to the woman?

If you are interested in seeing how other people reacted to this exact situation, check out this video clip from the TV show “What Would You Do?”. You might be surprised to see what action each person chose to take.

People often forget the immense power of the social situation. The field of social psychology attempts to understand that power and all of its elements. The accepted definition of social psychology is: the scientific study of the way in which people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people.

Social psychology seeks to understand people at a level deeper than simply their personality characteristics, because they believe in the influence of the social situation. They believe that an individual is motivated and guided by more than just his or her personal morals, that they can be affected by the environment.  A person may think that they are brave and that stealing money from the tip jar is wrong, but when faced with the choice of standing up to a tip jar thief or not, they fall short. Social psychologists attribute this to the social situation.

Throughout this series of blog posts, I will provide you with an engaging yet informative understanding of social psychology as a whole. In each post, I intend to describe an individual study or experiment and its impact on the field. Prepare yourself for surprising results that will hopefully provoke deep thought about how significant the social situation is to your identity.