Social Psychology: Cults, the Bystander Effect, and the Science of Emotion

Social Psychology: Group Dynamics and Cult Thinking

• Group Decision Making: A significant discovery in social psychology is that committees or groups can make very poor decisions. A group can make a decision that is objectively worse than the decision any individual member would have made on their own.
• Study of Brainwashing and Cults: Cults and brainwashing techniques have been extensively studied by social psychologists.
• The Kool-Aid Cult (Jonestown):     * Origin: A doomsday cult located in South America (Jonestown).     * Description: It was a religious, so-called Christian cult that engaged in numerous illegal activities.     * Leader Behavior: The leader controlled sexual relationships within the group, had sex with children, and dictated who would have sex with whom.     * Legal Consequences: The US Congress became involved, and when representatives arrived, the group committed mass suicide.     * Outcome: Hundreds of people—men, women, and children—died by drinking poisoned Kool-Aid (from which the expression "drink the Kool-Aid" originates).
• Mechanisms of Cult Recruitment:     * Isolation: The primary strategy is to separate individuals from all outside sources of information.     * Delegitimizing Authority: Members are told not to believe their parents, professors, teachers, or standardized news sources.     * Trump Cult Comparisons: The speaker notes that many articles and books discuss the "Trump cult," arguing that strong adherents are isolated from mainstream media (labeled as "woke" or "liberal"), the church, the Pope, and educational institutions.     * Adherent Behavior: Strong adherents may follow a leader until "the end of the world" because they do not process information from anyone except other "true believers."     * Defection/Escape: The speaker mentions individuals like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson as examples of people who have "escaped" or moved out of the previous circle of influence.

Prosocial Behavior: Helping in Emergencies and the Bystander Effect

• Helping Strangers: While helping can include charity or small favors (mowing a lawn, providing food), research focuses specifically on behavior during emergencies.
• The Kitty Genovese Case ($1964$/Mid-$1960s$):     * Location: Queens, New York.     * Event: A woman named Kitty Genovese (or Genovese) was murdered at $2:00$ in the morning.     * The Killer: A psychotic killer who chose his victim at random.     * The Incident: The killer stabbed her; he initially fled when neighbors turned on lights, but when no one intervened, he returned to finish the murder.     * Public Reaction: The news story became world-famous not because of the murder itself, but because $38$ people reportedly witnessed it from their windows and did nothing to intervene or call the police.
• Social Psychological Findings:     * Psychologists interviewed the witnesses and found they actually did care, but each person assumed someone else would take responsibility.
• The Bystander Effect Defined:     * General Rule: If one person witnesses an emergency, they will almost always help.     * The Effect: The more bystanders present at an emergency, the less likely it is that any one individual will help. Some texts refer to this as "Bystander Apathy."
• Intervention Strategy: To break the effect, you must point at a specific individual and give a direct command, such as: "You, call $911$."
• Exceptions: The bystander effect applies primarily to untrained people. If the bystanders are trained professionals (lifeguards, police, doctors, nurses), then the more people present, the better the outcome.
• Causes of the Bystander Effect:     * Social Comparison/Fear of Social Blunder: People look to others to see how they are reacting. If no one acts, individuals assume they are misreading the situation. They fear looking foolish or making a social mistake.     * Diffusion of Responsibility: Responsibility is divided among those present. If you are alone, you have $100\%$ responsibility. If there are $10$ people, you feel only $10\%$ responsible.

Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions

• The Wheel of Emotions: Developed by Plutchik to categorize human emotions.
• Eight Primary Emotions: Joy, acceptance, fear, surprise, sadness, disgust, anger, and anticipation.
• Mixed Emotions:     * Adjacent Emotions: Emotions next to each other on the wheel can mix (e.g., Joy + Acceptance = Love; Acceptance + Fear = Submission).     * Opposite Emotions: Plutchik originally claimed opposites (like Joy and Sadness) cannot mix, though the speaker disagrees, citing examples like graduation, weddings (losing a child vs. happy marriage), and funerals (grief vs. laughter at stories).
• Intensity and the 3D Model: The speaker describes a "half watermelon" three-dimensional model where intensity increases as you move toward the outer edges (e.g., Pensiveness -> Sadness -> Grief).
• Zero Point: The center of the wheel represents a state of no emotion.

Facial Expressions and Lie Detection

• Evolution of Facial Muscles: Humans have more facial muscles and variations in expression than any other animal. Dogs, by contrast, use body language (tail wagging) or pulling the mouth straight back, as they lack the muscles to curl the edges of their mouths into a human-like smile.
• Paul Ekman’s Research:     * Smile Variations: Ekman identified $18$ distinct types of smiles (social, sarcastic, psychotic, etc.).     * The Duchenne Smile: The term for a truly happy smile, named after the physiologist Duchenne. It involves "eye involvement" (squinting and crow’s feet) caused by muscles pulling the cheeks upward.     * Cross-Cultural Universality: In $1971$, Ekman proved Charles Darwin's theory that facial expressions are universal. He used photographs of six emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust) and found that people globally recognized them regardless of culture.
• Lie Detection and Body Language:     * Microexpressions: Extremely brief facial expressions (lasting fractions of a second) that reveal hidden emotions like anger or joy.     * Interchannel Discrepancies: Inconsistencies between different communication channels (e.g., a smiling face paired with closed/folded body language).     * Deception Indicators: Liars may increase or avoid eye contact or touch their faces/bodies more frequently while speaking.     * Media Reference: The TV show Lie to Me (Fox) used Paul Ekman as a consultant and contains scientifically accurate psychology.

Theories of Emotional Experience

• James-Lang Theory:     * Geometry: Linear transition.     * Process: Stimulus → Bodily Response → Experience of Emotion.     * Example: You see a bull, your body goes into flight mode, you run, and the act of running/adrenaline leads to the feeling of fear.
• Cannon-Bard Theory:     * Geometry: Parallel/Non-linear.     * Process: Stimulus → Brain simultaneously triggers Social/Bodily response AND the emotional experience.
• Schachter-Singer (Two-Factor) Theory:     * Geometry: Convergent/Non-linear.     * Process: Bodily Arousal + Cognitive Label → Experience of Emotion.     * Example: If you feel arousal while taking an exam, you label it "test anxiety." If you feel the same arousal with a partner, you label it "love."
• The Suboxone/Suproxin Study:     * Participants were injected with adrenaline (mislabeled as a vitamin called "Suboxone" to improve vision).     * Groups were placed with either a happy or an angry "confederate" (a fake participant).     * Results: Participants who didn't know the injection was adrenaline adopted the emotion of the person they were with (labeling their arousal as happiness or anger). Those told the injection would make them feel hyper remained neutral.

Learning and Recognizing Emotions

• Innate vs. Learned: While we are born with the ability to produce facial expressions (genetic heritage), we must learn to recognize the meaning of expressions in others.
• Childhood Development:     * Newborns imitate faces without meaning.     * A "true" Duchenne smile usually develops later through social interaction (mom-baby interactions).     * Delayed onset of meaningful smiles can be an early indicator of conditions like autism.
• Monkey Studies:     * Monkeys raised in isolation fail to recognize the emotional expressions of other monkeys.     * In experiments, a socialized monkey will see a "frightened" face on a monitor and press a button to stop a shock. An isolated monkey will ignore the expression because they never learned that a facial reaction has meaning for them.

Questions & Discussion

• Student Question: "Do you think it's [the bystander effect] gotten worse since social media?"
• Response: The speaker suggests it may have actually improved because cell phones allow people to call $911$ immediately while still watching, rather than leaving to find a wired phone. However, social media can cause people to hesitate if they think an event is being staged (e.g., filming a movie or a hidden camera prank).
• Student Follow-up: The student suggests that being filmed might make people more accountable or feel more pressure to behave in a certain way.