ALL Learning Objectives for Test 5, Chapter 14, Social Psychology

4/28/09 4:24 PM 14.1 Social Psychology: scientific study of how individuals behave, think, and feel in social situations (that is, in the presence, actual or implied, of others.) The need to affiliate (associate with other people) is based on basic human desires for approval, support, friendship, and information. Schachter?s study on affiliation consisted of groups of women who were told they were going to be given electrical shocks. Those who were told the shocks were going to be painful chose to be wait in rooms with other women who were participating in the experiment. Those who expected the shock to be a tingly or mild shock were more willing to wait alone. The frightened women found it comforting to be with others. Social Comparison theory: Leon Festinger theorized that belonging to groups fills our needs for social comparison (comparing your own actions, feelings, opinions, or abilities to those of others). Meaningful evaluations are based on comparing yourself with other people of similar backgrounds, abilities, and circumstances. EXAMPLE: Comparing yourself to people in your specific group (tennis group, study group, etc) is a meaningful evaluation because it focuses on those in your same group to compare yourself to. 14.2 Interpersonal attraction (affinity to another person) is the basis for most voluntary social relationships. We look for friends and lovers who are kind and understanding, who have attractive personalities, and who like us in return. Factors that determine influence: 1. Physical Proximity: or nearness. The closer people live to each other, the more likely they are to become friends. Lovers like to think they have found the one and only person in the universe for them. In reality, they have found the best match in a 5 mile radius. Physical proximity promotes attraction by increasing frequency of contact between people. We are attracted to people we often see. 2. Physical Attractiveness: people who are regarded as good looking by others. Generally rated as more appealing than average. Due in part to the halo effect: a tendency to generalize a favorable impression to unrelated personal characteristics. WE assume that beautiful people are also likeable, intelligent, warm, witty, mentally healthy, and socially skilled. Physical attractiveness almost has no connection to intelligence, talents, or abilities. Physical attractiveness mainly effects our initial interest in getting to know others. Later, more meaningful qualities gain in importance. 3. Competence: people with knowledge, ability, or proficiency. We are more attracted to people who are talented or competent. Interesting twist: the intelligent person/coffee experiment. Based on the experiement, we like people who are competent, but imperfect?makes them more human. 4. Similarity: refers to how alike you are to another person in background, age, interests, attitudes, beliefs and so forth. From casual acquaintance to marriage, similar people are attracted to each other. It?s reinforcing to see our beliefs and attitudes shared by others. In choosing a mate, we tend to marry someone who is like us in almost every way, a pattern called homogamy. Married couples are highly similar in age, education, ethnicity, and religion. They are also similar in attitudes and opinions, mental abilities, status, height, weight, and eye color. Also applies to unmarried couples who live together. It?s probably a good thing, risk of divorce is highest among couples with sizable differences in age and education. Varying degrees of self disclosure: must be willing to talk about more than just the weather, sports, or nuclear physics. At some point you must begin to share private thoughts and feelings to reveal yourself to others. This process is called self disclosure and is essential for developing close relationships. We more often reveal ourselves to people we like than those we find unattractive. Disclosure also requires a degree of trust. Many people play it safe or stay close to the vest with people they don?t? know well. Self disclosure is governed by unspoken rules about what?s acceptable. Moderate self-disclosure leads to reciprocity (a return kind). Over disclosure exceeds what is appropriate for a relationship or social situation. When self disclosure proceeds at a moderate pace, it builds trust, initimacy, reciprocity, and positive feelings. When it is too rapid or inappropriate, we are likely to back off and wonder about the person?s motives. It?s interesting to note that on the internet, people often feel freer to express their true feelings, which can lead to genuine, face to face relationships. But can also lead to some very dramatic overdisclosure. 14.3 Rubin?s studies of romantic love: based on interpersonal attraction, but it also involves high levels of emotional arousal and or sexual desire. Rubin chose to think of it as an attitude we hold towards another person. Allowed him to develop ?liking? and ?love? scales to measure each ?attitude?. Then asked dating couples to complete the scales twice?once with their lover in mind and once for a close friend of the same sex. Love for partners and friends differed more than liking did. (Liking?affection without passion or deep commitment). Dating couples like AND love their partners, but mostly they just like their friends. Women, however are a little more loving of their friends than men were. Love and friendship differ in another interesting way: Romantic love, in contrast to simple liking, usually involves deep mutual absorption: lovers unlike friends attend almost exclusively to one another. Couples who score high on rubin?s love scale spend more time gazing into each other?s eyes than couples who score low. Romantic partners tend to idealize each other which helps keep the relationships going, despite the fact that nobody is perfect. Evolutionary psychology: study of the evolutionary origins of human behavior patterns. May psychologist believe that human evolution left an imprint on men and women that influences everything from sexual attraction and infidelity to jealousy and divorce. Acoording to David Buss, the key to understanding human mating patterns is to understand how evolved behavior patterns guide our choices. Compared with women, men are more interested in casual sex, they prefer younger, more physically attractive partners, and they get more jealous over real or imagined sexual infidelities than they do over a loss of emotional commitment. Compared with men, women prefer slightly older partners who appear to be industrious, high in status, or economically successful, women are more upset by a partner who becomes emotionally involved with someone else, rather than one who is sexually unfaithful. Buss and others believe these mating preferences evolved in response to the differing reproductive challenges faced by men and women. As a rul, women must invest more time and energy in reproduction and nurturing the young than men do. Consequently, women evolved an interest in whether their partners will stay with them and whether their mates have the resources to provide for their children. In contrast, reproductive success of men depends on their mates fertility. Men tend to look for health, youth, and beauty in a prospective mate, as signs of suitability for reproduction. This preference is why some older men abandon their first wives in favor of young, beautiful ?trophy wives?. Evolutionary theory further explains that the male emphasis on their mates sexual fidelity is based on concerns about the paternity of offspring. From a biological perspective, men do not benefit from investing resources into children they did not sire. 14.4 Dimensions of being in a social group: Social roles: patterns of behavior expected of persons in various social positions. Some roles are ascribed: assigned to a person or are not under personal control (male, female, son, adolescent, inmate) Achieved roles: voluntarily attained by special effort: spouse, teacher, scientist, bandleader. Roles streamline daily interactions by allowing us to anticipate what others will do. When a person is acting as a doctor, mother, clerk, or police officer, we expect certain behaviors. However, roles have a negative side. Many people experience role conflicts in which two or more roles make conflicting demands on them. Consider, for example, a teacher who must flunk a close friend?s daughter, a mother who has a full time job, and a soccer coach who?s son is on the team, but isn?t a very good athleate. The clashing demands of work, amily, and school create role conflicts for many students. GROUP STRUCTURE: consists of network of roles, communication pathways, and power in a group. Organized groups, such as an army or an athletic team, have a high degree of structure. Informal friendship groups may or may not be very structured. GROUP COHESIVENESS: refers to the degree of attraction among group members or the strength of their desire to remain in the group. Members of cohesive groups literally stick together, they tend to stand or sit close together, they pay more attention to one another, and they show more signs of mutual affection. Also, their behavior tends to be closely coordinated. Cohesiveness is the basis for much of the power that groups exert over us. Therapy groups, businesses, sports teams, and the like seek to increase cohesion because it helps people work together better. IN-GROUPS: groups with which a person mainly identifies. In groups are defined by a combination of prominent social demensions, such as nationality, ethnicity, age, education, religion, income, political values, gender, sexual orientation, etc. Helps us define who we are socially. OUT-GROUPS: are those groups which we do not identify with. WE tend to exaggerate differences between members of out groups and our own groups. This sort of ?us-and-them? thinking seems to be a basic fact of social life. It also sets the stage for conflict between groups and for racial and ethnic prejudice. STATUS: level of social power and importance. Higher status bestows special privileges and respect. (the dime in the phone booth experiment?well dressed/poor dressed). GROUP NORMS: widely accepted (but often unspoken) standard for appropriate behavior. (the littering experiment). 14.5 process of attribution: the process of guessing how people will act from small shreds of evidence. As we observe others, we make inferences about them. WE attribute peoples behavior to various causes. Whether we are right or wrong about the causes of behavior, our conclusions affect how we act. External causes are ones that lie outside of a person. (Nell?s food needed salt) Internal causes are like needs, personality traits, that lie within a person. (Bert really likes salt, so he put it on before he tasted his food). Some mistakes arise with attributions (Macy goes to a lot of parties, we assume she likes parties when she doesn?t.) Types of mistakes: fundamental attribution error: when we tend to attribute the actions of others to internal causes (Macy) even if they are actually caused by external forces or circumstances. ACTOR-OBSERVER BIAS: when our own behavior is concerned, we are more likely to think that external causes explain our activities. As OBSERVERS, we tend to attribute others behavior to their wants motives and personality traits (fundamental attribution error). As actors, we tend to find external explanations for our own behavior (actor observer bias). Attributions reveal an interesting double standard regarding the abilities of men and women. (Study by Deaux and Emswiller?men performance is skill, female performance is luck, though they were identical). Boys tend to take credit for success, women tend to discount their own performance or put themselves down. 14.6 Social influence: changes in behavior induced by the actions of others. (NYC sidewalk experiment). Different kinds of social influence: conformity: we bring our behavior into agreement with the actions, norms, or values of others in the absence of any direct pressure. Compliance: more directed form, we comply when we change our behavior in response to another person who has little or no authority. Obedience is an even more direct form, we obey when we change our behavior in direct response to the demands of authority. Asch experiment: Solomon Asch performed the first experiment on conformity. A group of students were placed at a desk and were shown a standard line. They then had to best match a group of lines that matched the standard line. When the ?actor? students all said the same line (which was wrong) the subject either felt pressured to change their mind or disagree w/ the group. Real students conformed to the group about 1/3 of the time. 75 percent yielded atleast once. People tested alone erred less than 1 percent of their judgements. Those who yielded clearly denied what their eyes told them. Important study in that it showed the sanctions were informal and rejection had no lasting importance, but conforming to the group was still important and evident. Factors that affect conformity: group sanctions: reactions where people are rewarded with acceptance and approval for conformity and threatened with rejection or ridicule for noncomformity. Negative sanctions range from laughter, staring, or social disapproval to complete rejection or formal exclusion. Importance of a group: More important group membership is to a person, the more she/he will be influenced by other group members. The risk of being rejected can be a threat to our sense of personal identity. Number of group members: large groups have more influence. The size of the majority also made a difference, but a surprisingly small one. The number of people who conformed increased dramatically as the majority grew from two to three people in other studies. But some studies show that a group of 3 in the majority or a group of eight made no difference in influencing conformity. UNANIMITY of the group: (total agreement) Even more important than the size of the group. Having atleast one person in your corner can greatly reduce pressures to conform. When Asch gave subjects an ally (who also opposed the majority by giving the correct answer) conformity was lessened. In terms of numbers, a unanimous majority of three is more powerful and a majority of eight with one dissenting. This may account for the rich diversity of human attitudes, beliefs, opinions, and lifestyles. If you can find atleast one other person who sees things as you do, you can be relatively secure in your opposition to other viewpoints. 14.7 Compliance vs. Conformity: Pressures to fit in and conform are usually indirect. In contrast, the term compliance refers to situations in which one person bends to the request of another person who has little or no authority. These more direct pressures to comply are quite common. Methods of gaining compliance: Foot in the door effect: a person who first agrees to a small request is later more likely to comply with a larger demand. Usually based on observing one?s own behavior. Seeing yourself agree to a small request helps convince you that you didn?t mind doing what was asked. After that, you are more likely to comply w/ a large request. DOOR IN THE FACE effect: tendency for a person who has refused a major request to agree to a smaller request. After a person has turned down a major request (slammed the door in your face), he/she may be more willing to comply to a lesser demand. Person who abandons a large request appears to have given up something. In response, many people feel that they must repay him/her by giving in to the smaller request. Usually works best to do a small favor before asking someone to do something for you. LOW BALL Technique: getting a person committed to act and then making the terms of acting less desirable. 14.8 Milgram?s study of obedience: Milgram?s study took a ?learner? and a subject ?teacher?. The learner had to learn a list of word pairs and was given a ?shock? from the teacher every time there was a mistake. Shocks ranged form 15 v to 450 v and were labeled from slight shock to extremely intense shock. The teachers was asked to increase the shock by 15v every time there was a mistake. 65 percent of the subjects obeyed the experimenter and nearly no one stopped short of 300 volts, despite the actors requests for the shocking to stop (fake). Factors that affected the degree of obedience: prestige: first experiment held at Yale University?follow ups usually held in shabby office buildings (reduced obedience to 48 percent). Distance between subject and learner: When subjects were in the same room as the learning, only 40 percent obeyed fully. When they were face to face with the learner and required to force his hand down on a simulated ?shock plate? only 30 percent obeyed. Distance between subject and authority: when experimenter gave his orders over the phone, only 22 percent obeyed. Group support can greatly reduce destructive obedience. When real subjects saw two other ?teachers? resist order and walk out of the experiment, only 10 percent continued to obey. A personal assertion of courage or moral fortitude by one or two members of a group may free others to disobey misguided or unjust authority. Examples of ?crimes of obedience? in world events: In Vietnam, Rwanda, Bosnia, Soth Africa, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, and Laos, the tragic result has been ?sanctioned massacres? of chilling proportions. IN everyday life, crimes of obedience are common. IN order to keep their jobs, may people obey orders and do things that they know are dishonest, unethical or harmful. 14.10 attitude: mixture of belief and emotion that predisposes a person to respond to other people, objects, or groups in a positive or negative way. They summarize your evaluation of objects. As a result, they predict or direct future actions. Components of attitude: belief: what you believe about a particular object or issue. Emotional: your feelings toward the attitudinal object. Action: your actions toward various people, objects, or institutions. Attitudes orient us with the social world, in doing so, they prepare us to act in certain ways. 6 ways of forming attitudes: direct contact (personal experience), chance conditioning (learning that takes place by chance or coincidence?experiences with the object, institution, etc.), interaction with others (through discussions), group membership (pressures to conform help shape our attitudes/behavior), child rearing (parental values, beliefs, and practices), and mass media (all media, such as magazines, television, and those that reach larges audiences). Three reasons why people may exhibit discrepancies between attitudes and behavior: immediate consequences: weigh heavily on our decisions, difficult to resist immediate convenience of doing an action that we may have a negative belief of. Expectations of how others will evaluate our actions: fear that others will be critical of the stands we takes affect the way we behave on our attitudes. And habits: doing something persistently for a long period of time will have an effect on our behavior and whether or not they reflect our attitudes. Conviction and how it affects attitudes: evoking strong feelings for issues you think about and discuss often and you are knowledgeable about it. Often lead to major changes in personal behavior. 14.11 persuasion: any deliberate attempt to change attitudes or beliefs through information and arguments. Attitudes can change when the following conditions are met: 1. Communicator is likable, expressive, trustworthy, an expert on the topic, and similar to the audience in some respect. 2. Message appeals to emotions, particularly to fear or anxiety. 3. Message also provides a clear course of action that will, if followed, reduce fear or produce personally desirable results. 4. Message states clear cut conclusions. 5. Message is backed up by facts and statistics. 6. Both sides of the argument are presented in the case of a well-informed audience. 7. Only one side of the argument is presented in the case of a poorly informed audience. 8. The persuader appears to have nothing to gain if the audience accepts the message. 9. The message is repeated as frequently as possible. 14.12 Cognitive dissonance theory: contradicting or clashing thoughts cause discomfort. We have a need for consistency in our thoughts, perceptions, and images of ourselves. When someone acts in ways that are inconsistent with their attitudes or self images, they typically feel uncomfortable. It can motivate people to make their thoughts or attitudes agree with their actions. We also tend to reject new information that contradicts ideas we already hold. The FIVE Strategies for reducing cognitive dissonance: 1. Change your attitude. 2. Add consonant thoughts. 3. Change the importance of the dissonant thoughts. 4. Reduce the amount of perceived choice. 5. Change your behavior. Amount of justification: the amount of justification for acting contrary to your attidues and beliefs affects how much dissonance you feel (the degree to which a persons actions are explained by rewards or other circumstances.) The students who were paid 20 dollars to turn wooden pegs?their attitudes about the act and trying to lie and persuade people were not changed because they believed anyone would tell a little white lie for 20 bucks. Those who were paid 1 dollar actually changed their attitude because their was no actual gain from lying about the act of turning the wooden pegs. We are especially likely to experience dissonance after we cause an event to occur that we wish hadn?t taken place. (Move friend to apartment example). You don?t want to help your friend, but you convince yourself that the work will be ?good exercise? or ?sort of fun? or that you really should help your friend. We often make these adjustments in attitudes to minimize cognitive dissonance. 14.14 Prejudice vs. Descrimination: Prejudice: negative emotional attitude held toward members of a specific group. May be reflected in the policies of police departments, schools, or government institutions. Also refered to as racism, sexism, ageism, or heterosexism, depending on the group affected. Most times, these lead to discrimination: unequal treatment of people who should have the same rights as others. Prevents people from doing things they should be able to do, such as buying a house, getting a job, or attending a high-quality school. Prejudice is formed from the idea of scapegoating or blaming a person or group for the actions of others or for conditions not of their making. It?s a type of displaced aggression in which hostilities triggered by frustration are redirected at ?safer? targets. Personal prejudice occurs when members of another ethnic group are perceived as a threat to one?s own interest. Group prejudice occurs when a person conforms to group norms. How prejudice can be considered a general personality characteristic: authoritarian personality: marked by rigidity, inhibition, prejudice, and oversimplification. They also tend to be ethnocentric: palcing one?s own group at the center usually by rejecting all other groups. Authoritarians think they are superior to everyone who is different, not just other ethnic groups. They are overwhelmingly concerned w/ power, authority, and obedience. To measure these qualities, the F SCALE was created (F for Facism). Make up of statements such as the ones that follow to which authoritarians readily agree: - obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn. ?people can be divided into 2 distinct classes, weak and strong. ?if people would talk less and work more, everybody would be better off. ?what this country needs most, more than laws and political programs, is a few courageious, tireless, devoted leaders, in whom the people can put their faith. ?nobody ever learns anything really important except through suffering. ?every person should have complete faith in some supernatural power whose decisions are obeyed without question. ?certain religious sects that refuse to salute the flag should be forced to conform to such patriotic action or else be abolished. AUTHORITARIANS are rather close minded. As children, authoritarians were usually severely punished. Most learned to fear authority (and to covet it) at an early age, they are not usually happy people. 14.15 Shared beliefs that tend to trigger intergroup conflict: superiority, injustice, vulnerability, and distrust are common triggers for hostility between groups. Characteristics of social stereotypes: oversimplified images of people in carious groups. Top three categories are based on sex, age, and race. They tend to simplify people into us and them categories. Often include a mixture of positive or negative qualities. Even though some consist of negative traits, they often are used to maintain control over other people. When a person is stereotyped, the easiest thing for him/her to do is to abide by others? expectations?even if they are demeaning. Symbolic prejudice: many people realize that crude and obvious racism is socially unacceptable, but this may not stop them from expressing prejudice in thinly veiled forms when they state their opinions about affirmative action, busing, immigration, crime, and so on. Modern racists find ways to rationalize their prejudice so that it seems to be based on issues other than raw racism. People in power positions set to decide whether or not to hire people from a different race from their own and someone who is the same tend to believe their decision was not based on prejudice, when it was unconsciously motivated against minorities. 14.16 Jane Elliot?s experiment: she sought to give her pupils direct experience w/ prejudice. She announced that brown-eyed people were to sit in the back of the room and they could not use the drinking fountain. Blue eyed children were given extra recess time and got to leave first for lunch. At lunch, brown eyed children were prevented from taking second helpings because they would just waste it. Brown eyed and blue eyed children were kept from mingling and the blue eyed children were told they were cleaner and smarter. Eye color might seem like a trivial bias for creating prejudices, however, people primarily use skin color to make decisions about the race of another person. Surely this is just as superficial a way of judging people as eye color is, especially given recent biological evidence that it does not even make genetic sense to talk about ?races?. The roles were later reversed and the same thing that happened with the brown eyed kids started happening with the blue eyed kids. It was possible to get children to hate each other based on status inequalities (differences in power, prestige or privileges). More frequent equal status contact between groups in conflict should reduce prejudice and stereotyping. Equal status contact refers to interacting on an equal footing, without obvious differences in power or status. In various studies, mixed race groups have been formed at work, in the laboratory, and at schools. The conclusion from such research is that personal contact w/ a disliked group tends to induce friendly behavior, respect, and liking. These benefits occur only when personal contact is cooperative and on an equal footing. 14.17 Summer camp experiment: the groups created at the camp began hating each other after competitions and games. They tried many things to make them stop hating each other, but the only thing that worked were emergencies that required their cooperation. Like the water supply was damaged and they had to work together to fix it. This was a superordinate goal, a goal that supersedes all the other lesser goals of the individual group. These seem to reduce conflict by encouraging people in opposing groups to see themselves as members of a single, larger group. Superordinate goals, in other words, have a ?were all in the same boat? effect on perceptions of group membership. Can be seen in the unity that prevailed in the US for months after the Sept. 11 attacks. Also important in helping peace keepers constructively engage with people from other nationalities. Global scale: desire to avoid nuclear holocaust. Need to preserve the natural environment. Such goals may be far from universal but their superordinate quality is clearly evident. Ordinary Classrooms: Aronson-such goals are effective because they create mutual interdependence. People must depend on one another to meet each person?s goals. When individual needs are linked, cooperation is encouraged. ?jigsaw? classrooms refer to pieces of a puzzle where each child is given a piece of the information needed to complete a project or prepare for a test. Children are divided into groups of five or six and given a topic to study for a later exam. Each child is given information to learn and teach to the group, each child makes a unique and essential contribution, so the children learn to listen and respect each other. Children in jigsaw groups are less prejudice, they like their classmates more, they have more positive attitudes towards school, their grades improve, and their self esteem increases. 14.18 Aggression: any action carried out with the intention of harming another. Role of aggressive behaviors: instincts: theorists argue we are naturally aggressive, having inherited a ?killer instinct? from our animal ancestors. Ethologists argue that aggression is biologically rooted behavior observed in all animals, including humans. Many psychologist question this ?intuitive appeal? . Just labeling behavior as instinctive does not explain it. We are left w/ a question of why some individuals or human groups show little hostility or aggression (the arapesh, the senoi, Navajo, Eskimo, etc.). The vast majority of humans DO NOT kill or harm others. BIOLOGY: physiological studies show that some brain areas are capable of triggering or ending aggressive behavior. Researchers have found a relationship between aggression and such physical factors as hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), allergy, and specific brain injuries and diseases. Both men and women, higher levels of the hormone testosterone are associated with more aggressive behavior. Men are 10 times more likely to commit murder than women are. None of these biological factors can be considered a direct cause of aggression, instead they probably lower the threshold for aggression, making hostile behavior more likely to occur. Effects of alcohol and other drugs provide another indication of the role of the brain and biology in violence and aggression. A variety of studies show that alcohol is involved in large percentages of murders and violent crimes. Intoxication drugs also seem to lower inhibitions to act aggressively?often w/ tragic results. Scientists have concluded though that violence is neither in our evolutionary legacy nor in our genes. The same species that invented war is also capable of inventing peace. Human are fully capable of learning to inhibit aggression. FRUSTRATION: frustration aggression hypothesis states that frustration tends to lead to aggression. Frustration does not always lead to aggregation, but it may lead to stereotyped responding or perhaps a state of learned helplessness?. Aggression can occur in the absence of frustration. Illustrated by sports spectators who start fights, throw bottles, tear down goal posts, and so forth after their team has won. AVERSIVE STIMULI: produce discomfort or displeasure, can heighten hostility and aggression. Include insults, high temperatures, pain, and even disgusting scenes or odors. These stimuli probably raise overall arousal levels so that we become more sensitive to aggression cues (signals that are associated with aggression). Also tend to activate ideas, memories, and expressions associated with anger and aggression. Weapons serve as a strong cue for aggressive behavior. Weapons effect seems to be that the symbols and trappings of aggression encourage aggression. Murders are almost three times more likely to occur in homes where guns are kept. Nearly 80 percent of victims in such homes are killed by family members or acquaintances. SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY: combines learning principles with cognitive processes, socialization, and modeling to explain behavior. There is no instinctive human programming for fistfighting, pipe bombing, knife wielding, gun loading, 95 mile and hour ?bean balls?, or other violent/aggressive behaviors. Aggression must be learned. Social learning theorists predict that people growing up in nonaggressive cultures will themselves be non aggressive. And vice versa. 14.19 Television teaching antisocial actions: Children may learn new aggressive actions by watching violent or aggressive behavior, or they may learn that violence is ?okay?. Either way, they are more likely to act aggressively. Boys and girls who watch a lot of violence on TV are much more likely to be aggressive as adults. Violent videogames are atleast as problematic and even violent song lyrics increase aggressive tendencies. They also disinhibit dangerous impulses that viewers already have. Disinhibition refers to the removal of inhibition. It results in acting out behavior that normally would be restrained. Lastly, it tends to lower sensitivity to violent acts. The combination of viewing dramatic, TV violence in the comfort of your home diminishes emotional reactions to violent scenes. Heavy TV viewers who watch a bloody street fight are less affected then those who watch littler or no TV. Media can cause desensitization (reduced emotional sensitivity) to violence. According to a study by Leonard Eron, one of the best predictors of how aggressive a young man would be at age 19 was the violence of the telvision programs he preferred when he was 8. Children learn aggressive strategies and actions from TV violence. Because of this, they are more prone to aggress when they face frustrating situations or cues. Other have found that viewers who experience violent media have more aggressive thoughts. As we have noted, violent thoughts often precede violent actions. Spiral of aggresision might be broken if we did not so often portray it, reward it, and glorify it. SEVEN ways parents can buffer the impact of television on children?s behavior: 1. Create a safe, warm environment at home and school by modeling positive ways of getting along in the world. Children typically model parent?s behaviors including their media viewing habits, and they are guided by parents reactions to this media. 2. Limit total media time so that tv and comp games do not dominate your child?s view of the world. If necessary, set schedules for when watching TV of playing video games is allowed. Don?t use media as a babysitter. 3. Closely monitor what your child does experience. Change channels or turn off the TV if you object to a program. Be prepared to offer games and activites that stimulate your childs creativity and imagination. 4. Actively seek media your child will enjoy, especially those that model positive behavior and social attitudes. 5. Explore media with your child that you can counter what is shown. Help your child distinguish between reality and fantasy in media. Reply to distortions and stereotypes as they appear on screen. 6. Discuss the social conflicts and violent solutions shown in media. Ash your shild in what ways the situations are unrealistic and why the violence shown would not work in the real world. Encourage the child to propose more mature, realistic and positive responses to situations. 7. Show by your own disapproval that violent TV and comp game heroes are not the ones to emulate. Remember, children who identify with media characters are more likely to be influence by media aggression. By doing so, you can help children learn to enjoy television and other media without being overly influenced by programs and advertisers. 14.20 Prosocial behavior: actions that are constructive, altruistic, or helpful to others. Kitty Genovese case (bystanders listened as kitty was stabbed and murdered on the street. No one even called the police until after the attack). This was described by some as bystander apathy, the unwillingness of bystanders to offer help during emergencies, also called the bystander effect. The presence of other bystanders was another factor. Darley and Latane described the situation as a failure to help being related to the number of people present. Many studies have sown that the more potential helpers present, the less likely people are to help. In Kitty?s case, people thought that someone else would help. In general Darley and Latane assume that bystanders are not apathetic or uncaring, they are inhibited by the presence of others. The four decision points before a bystander gives help: First they must NOTICE: If the sidewalk is crowded and you passed out on the street, few peope would even notice it happened. It is widely related to accepted norms against staring at others in public. (Smoke in the room experiment). Second step, DEFINING AN EMERGENCY: In real emergencies, people sometimes fake each other out and underestimate the need for action because each person attempts to appear calm. In short, until someone acts, no one acts. Third step, TAKING RESPONSIBILITY: Most crucial step, groups limit helping by causing a diffusion of responsibility (spreading responsibility among several people.) (Intercom experiment, epileptic seizure, failure to act/responsibility if others were in the group). And Last step, Decide a course of action. Factors of who will help: when we see a person in trouble, it tends to cause heightened arousal, an aroused, keyed up feeling that can motivate us to give aid, but only if the rewards of helping outweigh the costs. Higher costs (great effort, personal risk, or possible embarrassment) almost always decrease helping. Additionally, potential helpers may also feel empathic arousal, they empathize with the person in need or feel some of the person?s pain, fear, or anguish. Helping is much more likely when we are able to take the perspective of other and feel sympathy for their plight. Empathic arousal is especially likely to motivate helping when the person in neeed seems to be similar to ourselces. Feeling of connection to the victim may be one of the most important factors in helping. This is why being in a good mood also increases helping. When we feel successful, happy, or fortunate we may also feel more connected to others. There is a strong empathy-helping relationship: we are more likely to help someone in need when we feel for that person and experience emotions such as empathy, sympathy, and compassion. People who see others helping are more likely to offer help themselves. Also, person who give help in one situation tend to perceive themselves as helpful people. This change in self image encourages them to help in other situations. Norms of fairness encourage us to help other who have helped us. Helping other not only assists them directly, it encourages others too. Devictimizing yourself in times when you need help during an emergency is important so that you do not become a victim of bystander apathy. You should make sure you are noticed, that people realize there?s an emergency, and that they need to take action. Being notice can be promoted in some situations by shouting ?fire? bystanders who might run away from a robbery or an assault may rush to see where the fire is. At the very least, remember not to just scream. Instead, you should call out ?help? or ?I need help now? Whenever possible, define your situation for bystanders. Say, for instance, ?I?m being attacked, call the police? or stop that man, eh has my purse. You can also directly assign responsibility to a bystander by pointing to someone and saying, you call the police or im injured, call an ambulance. 14.21 multiculturism: gives equal status to different ethnic, racial, and cultural groups. It is a recognition of acceptance of human diversity. Eight ways to become tolerant: beware of stereotyping: placing people in catagories almost always causes them to appear more similar than they really are. We tend to see out group members as very much alike, even when they are as varied as our friends and family. Get to know individuals from various ethnic and cultural groups. Seek individuating information: information that helps us see a person as an individual, rather than as a member of a group. This keeps us from placing a person in a particular social category that would tend to negate stereotyped thinking. Focus on the person, not the label attached to her/him. DON?T fall prey to just world beliefs: beliefs that people generall get what they deserve. They can lead us to assume that minority group members wouldn?t be in such positions if they weren?t inferior in some way. Amounts to blaming people who are victims of prejudice and discrimination for their plight. Be aware of self fulfilling prophecies: an expectation that prompts people to act in ways that make the expectaiont come true. When you meet someone who is different from yourself, you may treat him or her in a way that is consistent with your stereotypes. If the other person is influenced by your behavior, sh/he may act in ways that seem to matc your stereotype. This usually reinforces the stereotype and creates self fulfilled prophecies. REMEMBER, different does not mean inferior: Some conflicts cannot be avoided, but social competition is unnecessary, rivalry among groups, each of which regards itself as superior. Refers to the fact that some individuals seek to enhance their self-esteem by identifying with a group. Groups tend to view themselves as better then their rivals. Persons with high self esteem do not need to treat others as inferior in order to feel good about themselves. It is not necessary to degrade other groups in order to feel positive about one?s own group identity. IN fact, each ethnic group has strengths that members of other groups could benefit from emulating. UNDERSTAND that race is a social construction: based on modern genetics, race has no meaning. Members of various groups are so varied genetically and human groups have intermixed for so many centuries, that it is impossible to tell, biologically, what race any given individual belongs. Thus, race is an illusion based on superficial physical diffrences and learned ethnic identities. People act as if different races exist, but this matter of social labeling, not biological reality. Biologically, under the skin, we are all brothers and sisters. LOOK FOR COMMONALITIES: We live in a society that puts a premium on competition and individual effort. Competing with others fosters desires to demean, defeat, and vanquish them. When we cooperate with others, we tend to share their joys and suffer when they are in distress. If we don?t find ways to cooperate and live in greater harmony, everyone will suffer. That, if nothing else, is one great thing that we all have in common. Everyone knows what it feels like to be different, greater tolerance comes from remembering those times. Importance of cultural awareness: often lies in subtleties and details. Knowing about other cultures and ways of living can prevent any sort of confusion or arguments between groups of people. No one culture has all the answers or best ways of doing things. Getting to know these different cultures can be a very wonderful learning experience. PSYCH Unit 5 Review 4/28/09 4:24 PM 4/28/09 4:24 PM