Social Psychology: Obedience, Group Influence, and Prosocial Behavior

Logistics and Exam Preparation

• Exam 4 Schedule: The fourth exam is scheduled for next Friday at $01:00$ in the current classroom.
• Exam Format: The format will remain consistent with previous exams. Practice questions and essay ideas will be provided to assist in preparation.
• Course Evaluations: These are to be completed at the end of the current session to avoid a burden during final exams.
• Schedule Adjustment: There will be no class meeting this coming Monday.

Milgram’s Study of Obedience to Authority

• Experimental Overview: Stanley Milgram designed a study to investigate how situational factors can cause individuals to abandon their moral codes and engage in actions they would normally avoid.
• Key Statistic: Using a confederate, Milgram found that $65\%$ of participants were willing to administer what they believed was a lethal amount of electric shock to another person.
• Situational Catalysts for Obedience:     * Verbal Prompts: The presence of an authority figure giving direct commands such as, ‘Please continue,’ or ‘The experiment requires you to continue.’     * Assumption of Responsibility: A higher level of compliance was reached when the experimenter explicitly stated, ‘I will take responsibility for your actions.’     * Institutional Prestige: The study (per the transcript) occurred in the basement of Stanford University, a prestigious institution, which lent perceived legitimacy to the authority figure.     * Appearance: The experimenter wore a lab coat and a tie, reinforcing their status.     * Physical Distance/Visibility: Milgram manipulated the visibility between the ‘teacher’ (participant) and ‘learner’ (confederate).         * Obedience stopped immediately when participants could see the learner writing the test.         * Obedience increased significantly when a blinder was used or when there was a physical distance between the two parties.
• Ethical Implications: This study is regarded as extraordinarily unethical by modern standards.     * Psychological Harm: Researchers today cannot legally or ethically induce this level of psychological harm.     * Debriefing Requirements: Modern protocols require researchers to debrief participants after a study involving deception to explain the true nature of the research.
• Core Social Psychology Principle: The situation or the presence of others is a more accurate predictor of human behavior than individual personality traits or personal morality.

Social Influence in Groups

• Social Facilitation: This refers to how the presence of others influences performance on tasks.     * Group Work Dynamics: Working in groups can lead to ‘strength in numbers,’ where collaborative effort helps solve problems that an individual might not understand alone, thereby increasing performance.     * Performance Variation: Individuals often report working harder in a group because they do not want to be the sole reason for a project’s failure.
• Social Loafing: The phenomenon where individuals exert less effort when working in a group compared to when they work alone.     * Anecdote Example: The speaker describes a childhood task of raking leaves with his brother to earn money for a video game. While the speaker filled four or five giant leaf bags, his brother filled zero, simply moving the rake and smoking a cigarette while the speaker did most of the work.     * Causes of Loafing:         * Overestimating the output of others (‘You're doing a great job, why should I interfere?’).         * Feeling that an individual contribution will not be significant enough to matter.         * Lack of group identification, particularly when working with strangers, which allows for ‘passing the buck.’
• Deindividuation: The loss of self-awareness and self-restraint occurring in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity.     * Soccer Hooligans: Primarily noted in the UK, individuals in massive crowds lose individual personality traits and get sucked into the collective behavior of the group, often resulting in violence or aggression.     * Riots and Civil Unrest: A study on a $2011$ riot noted that the majority of those arrested had no prior criminal record; they were college students and ordinary citizens who looted simply because ‘everyone else was doing it.’ They lost their individual moral compass to the group dynamic.

Group Polarization and Prejudice

• Group Polarization: The tendency for a group's prevailing attitudes to be strengthened through internal discussion.
• Myers and Bishop Study ($1970$):     * Design: A pretest and posttest design utilized questionnaires to measure explicit (self-report) levels of prejudice.     * Groups:         * High Prejudice Group: Scored $3.0$ standard deviations above the mean.         * Low Prejudice Group: Scored approximately $1.0$ to $2.0$ standard deviations below the mean.     * Procedure: Groups discussed the negative effects of prejudice and how it perpetuates stereotypes. Researchers intended this as an ‘intervention’ to reduce prejudice.     * Results:         * The low prejudice group became even less prejudiced.         * The high prejudice group saw an increase in prejudice, doubling down to $3.5$ standard deviations above the mean.     * Conclusion: Participants in the high prejudice group were afraid to go against the group norm or be viewed as an ‘out-group member,’ so they reinforced their maladaptive thinking to avoid being ostracized.
• Political Implications: This creates a ‘slippery slope’ in politics (e.g., Republicans vs. Democrats) where individuals refuse to agree with the opposing side for fear of being disowned by their own ‘camp.’

Antisocial Relations: Implicit and Explicit Prejudice

• Two Types of Prejudice:     * Explicit: Conscious, self-reported attitudes about specific groups.     * Implicit: Unconscious beliefs or associations that people do not openly express but still harbor.
• Implicit Association Test (IAT):     * Methodology: Measures reaction times (in milliseconds) to determine how quickly a person categorizes a face as ‘safe’ vs. ‘dangerous’ or an object as a ‘tool’ vs. a ‘weapon.’     * Findings: Participants are significantly more likely to misperceive a neutral tool (like a wrench) as a weapon when it is preceded by a flash of a black face compared to a white face. This same bias has been observed in studies involving both white and black police officers.
• Trends in America: While Gallup polls show that explicit prejudice (e.g., opposition to integrated school systems or having neighbors of different races) has steadily decreased since the $1940s$, implicit racial associations have remained relatively constant.

Evolutionary Context and In-group Bias

• Categorization: Humans have evolved over millions of years to categorize others as a survival mechanism.
• In-group Bias: The tendency to favor one's own group (those who look, talk, or act like us). This is adaptive because it ensures resources are shared with those who may share genes or similar interests.
• Out-group Bias: The denigration or apprehension toward those seen as different. While it may have aided survival historically, it leads to the perpetuation of stereotypes and antisocial behavior in modern contexts.

Prosocial Relations and Attraction

• Malleability of Beauty: Standards of attractiveness vary significantly by culture and time.     * Renaissance Era: Being overweight was considered the peak standard of beauty because it signified wealth and the ability to afford food.     * Greek Statues: Figures like Aphrodite (goddess of love) are depicted with curves and bellies, which modern women might mistakenly view as ‘ugly’ due to current shifting standards.
• Passionate Love: Characterized by physiological arousal and sexual desire; often involves high intensity and ‘butterflies in the stomach.’ This usually initiates a relationship but typically decreases over time.
• Companionate Love: A deep, affectionate attachment involving equity and shared goals. This is essential for a long-term, high-quality relationship.
• Similarity vs. Opposites: Research suggests that similarity (shared interests, needs, and desires) is a better predictor of relationship longevity than the ‘opposites attract’ myth.

Altruism and the Bystander Effect

• Altruism: An unselfish concern for the welfare of others.
• Experimental Simulation (Darley): Researchers used confederates to feign emergencies (e.g., heart attack or passing out) in rooms of strangers to observe reactions.
• Factors Increasing Helping Behavior:     * When the emergency is unambiguous.     * When the victim is a woman.     * When the victim appears ‘deserving’ of help or is similar to the bystander.     * When the bystander is in a good mood, feels guilty, or is unhurried.
• The Bystander Effect: The tendency for any given bystander to be less likely to give aid if other bystanders are present.     * Diffusion of Responsibility: ‘Someone else will help, so I don’t have to.’     * Case Study: Kitty Genovese: A woman murdered in New York City with roughly $400$ witnesses. No one intervened or called the police because each person assumed someone else would.
• London Street Experiment:     * Condition A: An actor (Peter) dressed casually faked illness. He lay on the ground for more than $20$ minutes while $34$ people passed him without stopping.     * Condition B: The actor was dressed in a suit and tie (respectable gentleman). He was helped within $5$ seconds.     * Analysis: People follow the ‘rule’ of the group. If the group norm is ‘don't get involved,’ people stay silent. Once one person helps, the ‘rule’ of the group changes to ‘helping,’ and others join in.

Questions & Discussion

• Student Question: Regarding the Gallup poll on black families moving next door ($50\%$ in $1958$), why was that number so high?     * Response: You are reared in a culture to think that way; your friends, family, and neighborhood all influence you. The Civil Rights movement of the sixties began to change this notion.
• Student Question: If I see a question that is odd, like the moving next door question, and I laugh at it, would that influence a reaction-time test?     * Response: The explicit reaction (the laugh/no) is different from the implicit association test, which measures the very first few milliseconds of internal processing.
• Student Question: Regarding the tool vs. weapon study, did the facial expressions of the photos matter?     * Response: Yes, that would be a confounding variable. Researchers use neutral expressions to control for that, and large sample sizes help wash out nuances.
• Student Discussion on Helping Behavior: A student shares a story about finding a wallet and her mother refusing a reward, emphasizing doing good for the sake of being good. Another student mentions seeing an old lady stumbling/dehydrated; when one person in a gym finally helped, everyone else suddenly joined in.     * Response: These illustrate how the situation and the ‘new group rule’ created once someone intervenes can completely shift behavior.

Exam Review Information

• Review Materials: A word document with review questions and answers will be posted online (labeled ‘Exam 4 Review’).
• Essay Topic Ideas:     * Topic 1: Milgram’s study (situation vs. moral code).     * Topic 2: Schizophrenia.