Social Psychology

1
Social Psychology

• Psychology A Concise Introduction2nd Edition
• Richard Griggs
• Chapter 9

Prepared byJ. W. Taylor V
2
Social Psychology

• The scientific study of how we influence one
  anothers behavior and thinking
• Social psychologys focus is on how situational
  forces influence our behavior and thinking

3
The Journey

• How Others Influence Our Behavior
• How We Think about Our Own and Others Behavior

4
How Others Influence Our Behavior

• Why We Conform
• Why We Comply
• Why We Obey
• How Groups Influence Us

5
Social Influence

• Examines how other people and the social forces
  they create influence an individuals behavior

6
Why We Conform

• Conformity is defined as a change in behavior,
  belief, or both to conform to a group norm as a
  result of real or imagined group pressure
• Although conformity has negative connotations
  in Western cultures, some conformity is needed
  for society to function
• For instance, in the military, conformity is
  essential because in a time of war, soldiers
  cannot each do his or her own thing while in
  battle

7
Why We Conform
Informational Social Influence
NormativeSocialInfluence
SituationalFactors
8
The Sherif Study and Informational Social
Influence

• Participants, who thought they were in a visual
  perception experiment, were placed in a
  completely dark room and exposed to a stationary
  point of light, and their task was to estimate
  the distance this light moved
• The light never moved it was an illusion called
  the autokinetic effect, whereby a stationary
  point of light appears to move in a dark room
  because there is no frame of reference and our
  eyes spontaneously move

9
The Sherif Study and Informational Social
Influence

• During the first session, each participant was
  alone in the dark room when making their
  judgments
• But during the next three sessions, they were in
  the room with two other participants and could
  hear each others estimates of the illusory light
  movement
• The average individual estimates varied greatly
  during the first session
• During the next three sessions, though, the
  individual estimates converged on a common group
  norm
• A year later, participants were brought back and
  made estimates alone yet, these estimates
  remained at the group norm

10
The Sherif Study and Informational Social
Influence

• This pattern of results suggests the impact of
  informational social influence, which is
  influence that stems from our desire to be
  correct in situations in which the correct action
  of judgment is uncertain and we need information
• When a task is ambiguous or difficult and we want
  to be correct, we look to others for information
• For instance, when visiting a foreign culture, it
  is usually a good idea to watch how the people
  living in that culture behave in various
  situations because they provide information to
  outsiders on how to behave in that culture

11
The Asch Study and Normative Social Influence

• In Aschs study, the visual judgments were easy
  visual discriminations involving line-length
  judgments
• Specifically, participants had to judge which one
  of three lines was the same length as a standard
  line
• In this study, the correct answer/behavior was
  obvious
• Indeed, when making such judgments alone, almost
  no one made any mistakes

12
An Example of Aschs Line-Length Judgment Task
13
The Asch Study and Normative Social Influence

• In Aschs study, there were other participants
  who were in fact experimental confederates, part
  of the experimental setting
• On each trial, judgments were made orally, and
  Asch structured the situation so the experimental
  confederates responded before the true
  participant
• These experimental confederates arranged to make
  mistakes on certain trials in an effort to see
  how the real participant would respond when
  asked to make line length judgments

14
The Asch Study and Normative Social Influence

• About 75 of the participants gave an obviously
  wrong answer at least once, and overall,
  conformity occurred 37 of the time
• This conformity occurred despite the fact the
  correct answer, unlike in Sherifs study, was
  obvious

15
The Asch Study and Normative Social Influence

• Aschs results illustrate the power of normative
  social influence, influence stemming from our
  desire to gain the approval and to avoid the
  disapproval of other people
• In essence, we change our behavior to meet the
  expectations of others and to gain the
  acceptance of others
• If the line-length judgments were extremely
  difficult, and the correct answers were not
  clear, then informational social influence would
  likely lead to even higher levels of conformity

16
Situational Factors that Impact Conformity

• If the group is unanimous, conformity will
  increase
• Asch found that the amount of conformity
  decreased considerably if just one of the
  experimental confederate participants gives the
  correct answer, or even an incorrect answer that
  is different from the incorrect answer all other
  confederates gave
• As one person is different somehow, it allows
  other people to avoid conforming.

17
Situational Factors that Impact Conformity

• The mode of responding is also critical
• Secret ballots lead to less conformity than
  public, verbal reports
• The status of group members intervenes
• More conformity is observed from a person that is
  of lesser status than the other group members or
  is attracted to the group and wants to be part of
  it

18
Why We Comply

• Compliance is acting in accordance to a direct
  request from another person or group
• Occurs in many facets of life (e.g., salespeople,
  fundraisers, politicians, and anyone else who
  wants to get people to say yes to their
  requests)

19
Compliance Techniques
Foot-in-the-door
Door-in-the-face
Low-ball
Thats-not-all
20
The Foot-in-the-Door Technique

• Here, compliance to a large request is gained by
  prefacing it with a very small, almost mindless
  request
• The tendency is for people who have complied with
  the small request to comply with the next, larger
  request
• In Freedman and Frasers (1966) classic study,
  some people were asked directly to put a large
  ugly sign urging careful driving in their front
  yards
• Almost all such people refused the large ugly
  sign
• However, some other people were first asked to
  sign a petition urging careful driving
• Two weeks after signing this petition (that is,
  agreeing to a rather small request), the majority
  of these latter people agreed to allow the large
  ugly sign in the front yards

21
The Foot-in-the-Door Technique

• This technique seems to work because our behavior
  (complying with the initial request) affects our
  attitudes, leading us to be more positive about
  helping and to view ourselves as generally
  charitable people
• In addition, once we have made a commitment
  (such as signing a safe driving petition), we
  feel pressure to remain consistent (by putting
  up the large ugly sign) with the earlier action

22
The Foot-in-the-Door Technique

• The technique was used by the Communist Chinese
  in the Korean War on prisoners of war
• Many prisoners returning home after the war
  praised the Chinese Communists because while in
  captivity, the prisoners did small things such as
  writing out questions and then providing the
  pro-Communist answers, which often they just
  copied from a notebook
• Such minor actions induced more sympathy for the
  Communist cause

23
The Door-in-the-Face Technique

• The opposite of the foot-in-the-door technique
• Compliance is gained by starting with a large
  unreasonable request that is turned down, and
  then following it with a more reasonable smaller
  request
• It is the smaller request that the person making
  the two requests wants someone to comply with

24
The Door-in-the-Face Technique

• For instance, a teenager may ask his parents if
  he can have a new sports car for his 16th
  birthday
• His parents are likely to refuse
• Then, the teenager asks his parents to help him
  pay for a used 20-year-old car, which is what he
  wanted his parents to help him with all along

25
The Door-in-the-Face Technique

• The success of the door-in-the-face technique is
  due to our tendency toward reciprocity, that is,
  making mutual concessions
• The person making the requests appears to have
  made a concession by moving to the much smaller
  request so shouldnt we reciprocate and comply
  with this smaller request?

26
The Low-Ball Technique

• Compliance to a costly request is achieved by
  first getting compliance to an attractive, less
  costly request, but then reneging on it
• This is similar to the foot-in-the-door technique
  in that a second larger request is the one
  desired all along
• Low-balling works because many of us feel
  obligated to go through with the deal after we
  have agreed to the earlier request, even if the
  first request has changed for the worse
• We want to remain consistent in our actions

27
The Thats-Not-All Technique

• People are more likely to comply to a request
  after a build-up to make the request sound
  better
• Often in infomercials on TV, for example, the
  announcer says But wait, thats not all, theres
  more! and the price is lowered or more
  merchandise is added to sweeten the deal, usually
  before you even have a chance to respond
• Similarly, a car salesperson is likely to throw
  in additional options as bonuses before you can
  answer yes or no to a price offered

28
The Thats-Not-All Technique

• As in the door-in-the-face technique, reciprocity
  is at work
• The seller has done you a favor (thrown in bonus
  options, lowered the price), so you should
  reciprocate by accepting the offer (i.e., comply)

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Four Compliance Techniques
30
Why We Obey

• Obedience is following the commands of a person
  in authority
• Obedience is good in some instances, such as
  obeying societal laws
• Obedience is bad in other instances, such as in
  the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War, when
  American soldiers were ordered to shoot innocent
  villagers (and they did so)

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Why We Obey
MilgramsExperiment
The Astroten Study
SituationalFactors
32
Milgrams Basic Experimental Paradigm

• Stanley Milgrams obedience studies were done
  primarily at Yale University in the early 1960s
• Imagine that you have volunteered to be in an
  experiment on learning and memory
• You show up at the assigned time and place, and
  there is the experimenter and another participant
  there

33
Milgrams Basic Experimental Paradigm

• The experimenter tells you both that the study is
  examining the effects of punishment by electric
  shock on learning, and specifically learning a
  list of word pairs
• One of the participants will be the teacher and
  the other participants will be the learner
• You draw slips for these roles, and you draw the
  slip of the teacher, so the other participant
  will be the learner

34
Milgrams Basic Experimental Paradigm

• You accompany the learner to an adjoining room
  where he is strapped into a chair with one arm
  hooked up to the shock generator in the other
  room
• The shock levels in the study range from 15
  volts to 450 volts
• The experimenter gives you, the teacher, a
  test shock of 45 volts so that you know how
  intense various shock levels will be

35
Milgrams Basic Experimental Paradigm

• You return to your room with the shock generator
• You notice that on the shock generator, each
  switch has a label for each level of shock,
  starting at 15 volts and going to 450 volts in
  15-volt increments
• There are also some verbal labels below the
  switches, Slight Shock, Very Strong Shock,
  Danger Severe Shock, and under the last two
  switches XXX in red.
• Each time the learner makes a mistake, he is to
  receive a shock, which should increase one
  15-volt level for each additional mistake

36
Milgrams Basic Experimental Paradigm

• As the experiment begins, the learner makes some
  mistakes, and you as the teacher throw the shock
  lever as instructed by the experimenter
• At 120 volts, the learner cries out that the
  shocks really hurt
• As the learner continues to make mistakes, he
  protests and says that he has a heart condition
  and that he refuses to continue with the
  experiment, demanding to be let out of his chair
• After a 330-volt shock, he fails to respond with
  any protest
• You turn to the experimenter to see what to do,
  and the experimenter says to treat no response as
  an incorrect response and continue with the
  experiment

37
Milgrams Initial Obedience Finding

• Before this experiment was run, Milgram asked
  various types of people what they and other
  people would do
• Most people thought people would stop at
  relatively low shock levels
• Psychiatrists said that maybe one person in a
  thousand would go to the end of the shock
  generator

38
Milgrams Initial Obedience Findings

• In reality, almost two out of every three
  participants (65) continued to obey the
  experimenter and administered the maximum
  possible shock of 450 volts
• This is particularly disturbing because the
  learner had mentioned a heart condition before
  the experiment started and during his protests
• It is important to realize that the learner was a
  confederate who was programmed to make mistakes
  and was never really shocked
• But the teacher thought that he was administering
  real shocks because of real mistakes

39
InterpretingMilgrams Findings

• The difference between what we say we will do and
  what we actually do illustrates the power of
  situational social forces on our behavior
• The foot-in-the-door technique was used because
  participants started off giving very mild shocks
  (15 volts) and increased the voltage relatively
  slowly
• The learner did not protest these early shocks,
  and the teacher had obeyed several times before
  the learner started his protests

40
InterpretingMilgrams Findings

• It should be noted that later studies with
  female participants found similar obedience
  rates, and other researchers have replicated
  Milgrams basic finding in many different
  cultures (e.g., Jordan, Spain, Italy, and
  Australia)

41
Situational Factors that Impact Obedience

• The physical presence of the experimenter (the
  person with authority)
• If the experimenter left the room and gave
  commands over the telephone, maximum obedience
  (administering the highest shock level) dropped
  to 21
• The physical closeness of teacher and learner
• Milgram made the teacher and learner closer by
  having them both in the same room instead of
  different rooms, and maximum obedience declined
  to 40
• It dropped to 30 when the teacher had to
  directly administer the shock by forcing the
  learners hand onto a plate

42
Situational Factors that Impact Obedience

• Setting of the study
• Instead of conducting the research at prestigious
  Yale University, Milgram did the study in a
  run-down office building in Bridgeport,
  Connecticut
• Here, he found a 48 obedience rate thus, the
  setting did not influence obedience as much as
  presence of the experimenter or closeness of the
  teacher and learner
• Experimenter unanimity
• Milgram set up a situation with two experimenters
  who at some point during the experiment disagreed
• One said to stop the experimenter, while the
  other said to continue
• In this case, when one of the people in authority
  said to stop, all of the teachers stopped
  delivering the shocks

43
Situational Factors that Impact Obedience

• Teacher responsibility
• In another variation, Milgram had the teacher
  only push the switch on the shock generator to
  indicate to another teacher (an experimental
  confederate) in the room with the learner how
  much shock to administer
• Here, 93 of the participants obeyed the
  experimenter to the maximum shock levels

44
Results for Some of Milgrams Experimental
Conditions
45
The Astroten Study

• Participants were real nurses on duty alone in a
  real hospital ward
• Each nurse received a call from a person using
  the name of a staff doctor not personally known
  by the nurse
• The doctor ordered the nurse to give a dose
  exceeding the maximum daily dosage of an
  unauthorized medication, called Astroten to a
  real patient in the ward

46
The Astroten Study

• This situation violated many hospital rules
• Medication orders need to be given in person and
  not over the phone
• It was a clear overdose
• The medication was unauthorized
• Of the 22 nurses phoned, 21 did not question the
  order and went to give the medication, but were
  intercepted before actually giving it to the
  patient

47
The Astroten Study

• A separate sample of 33 nurses were asked about
  this situation and what they would do if they
  were placed it in
• All but 2 said they would NOT obey the doctors
  order, again demonstrating the difference between
  what we think we will do and what we actually do
  in a given situation

48
The Jonestown Massacre

• In 1978, more than 900 people who were members of
  Reverend Jim Joness religious cult in Jonestown,
  Guyana committed mass suicide by drinking
  cyanide-laced Kool Aid
• These were Americans who moved to South America
  from San Francisco in 1977
• Using various compliance techniques, Jones
  developed unquestioned faith as the cult leader
  and discouraged individualism

49
The Jonestown Massacre

• Using the foot-in-the-door technique, he was able
  to increase financial support required of each
  member until they had turned over essentially
  everything they owned
• He had recruiters ask people walking by to help
  the poor
• When they refused, the recruiters then asked them
  just to donate five minutes of time to put
  letters in envelopes (door-in-the-face)
• When given information about other charitable
  work, having agreed to this small task, people
  returned later as a function of the consistency
  aspect of the foot-in-the-door technique
• Informational social influence was also at work,
  as being moved from San Francisco to Guyana
  created an uncertain environment in which
  followers would look to others to guide their own
  actions

50
How Groups Influence Us
SocialFacilitation
SocialLoafing
BystanderEffect
Deindivi-duation
GroupPolarization
51
Social Facilitation

• The emergence of a dominant response on a task
  (for which a person is individually responsible)
  due to social arousal, leading to improvement on
  simple or well-learned tasks and worse
  performance on complex or unlearned tasks when
  other people are present
• This effect occurs because that the presence of
  others increases physiological arousal, and under
  conditions of increased arousal, people tend to
  give whatever response is most dominant

52
Social Facilitation

• For example, for a professional basketball
  player, shooting free throws is a simple, easy
  task
• Thus, such a person would shoot free throws
  better when other people are around and watching
  than when shooting alone
• However, for someone not good at shooting a
  basketball, s/he will shoot even more poorly when
  other people are around and watching than when
  shooting alone

53
Social Loafing and the Diffusion of
Responsibility

• Social loafing occurs when people are pooling
  their efforts to achieve a common goal
• It is the tendency for people to exert less
  effort when working toward a common goal in a
  group than when individually accountable

54
Social Loafing and the Diffusion of
Responsibility

• A major reason why social loafing occurs is the
  diffusion of responsibility, which means that the
  responsibility for a task is spread across all
  members of the group so individual accountability
  is lessened
• The larger the group, the less likely it is that
  a social loafer will be detected and the more
  responsibility for the task gets diffused across
  group members
• However, for groups in which individual
  contributions are identifiable and evaluated,
  social loafing decreases

55
Social Loafing and the Diffusion of
Responsibility

• For instance, in a group project for a shared
  grade, social loafing would decrease if each
  group member is assigned and responsible for a
  specific part of the project

56
The Bystander Effect

• In 1964, Kitty Genovese was returning home from
  work late one night when she was attacked in
  front of her apartment building
• She screamed for help, and many apartment
  residents, at least 38 of them, heard her cries
  for help and looked out their windows
• The attacker fled, but no one intervened
• The attacker returned and continued his assault
  for another 35 minutes before finally murdering
  her
• The first person in the apartment complex did not
  call the police until after Kitty had been killed

57
The Bystander Effect

• Many media people said this incident illustrated
  big city apathy
• However, experiments by social psychologists
  suggested that it was more diffusion of
  responsibility
• The bystander effect holds that the probability
  of an individual helping in an emergency is
  greater when there is only one bystander than
  when there are many bystanders

58
The Bystander Effect

• Darley and Latané (1968) did an experiment in
  which college students were ostensibly going to
  participate in a round-robin discussion of
  college adjustment problems, and that this
  discussion would occur over an intercom system
• Thus, participants could only hear each other,
  not see each other
• The experimenter says he will not listen to the
  conversation so participants wont feel at all
  inhibited

59
The Bystander Effect

• After each student gets a turn to talk, the first
  student gets to talk again, but he seems to be
  very anxious
• Suddenly, he starts having a seizure and cries
  out for help
• What would a participant do in this situation?

60
The Bystander Effect

• Whether or not a participant helped depended on
  how many other individuals the participant
  thought were available to help the student having
  the seizure
• The researchers manipulated the number of other
  people present (either 0, 1 or 4 others present)
• In reality no one else was present, the supposed
  other participants were merely tape recordings
• When no one else was thought to be present, 85
  of the participants tried to help the person,
  whereas only 31 of the participants did so when
  4 other people were supposedly present

61
The Bystander Effect

• The probability of helping decreased as the
  responsibility for helping was diffused across
  more participants
• In the case of Kitty Genovese, there were 38
  bystanders who could see each other staring out
  of their windows with some turning on their
  lights
• Responsibility was diffused across all of them,
  with no one person assuming full responsibility
  to help
• Kitty might have received help and possibly
  lived had there been only one person available
  to give help (i.e., call the police) rather than
  38!

62
Deindividuation

• The loss of self-awareness and self-restraint in
  a group situation that fosters arousal and
  anonymity
• Deindividuated people feel less restrained, so
  may forget their moral values and act
  spontaneously without thinking
• Diffusion of responsibility also plays a role in
  deindividuation because of the anonymity of the
  group situation

63
Group Polarization Groupthink

• Apply to more structured, task-oriented group
  situations

64
Group Polarization

• The strengthening of a groups prevailing opinion
  about a topic following group discussion of the
  topic
• For instance, if students who dont like a
  particular class all start talking about that
  class, they will leave the discussion disliking
  the class even more because each student may
  provide different reasons for disliking the class
• Each member learns new reasons for his or her
  dislike of the class

65
Group Polarization

• In addition, normative social influence is at
  work
• We want others to like us, so we express stronger
  views on a topic to gain approval from others in
  the group
• For instance, students who belong to fraternities
  or sororities tend to be more politically
  liberal, and this difference grows during college
  because group members reinforce and polarize each
  others views

66
Groupthink

• A mode of group thinking that impairs decision
  making
• The desire for group harmony overrides a
  realistic appraisal of the possible decisions
• Leads to an illusion of infallibility, the belief
  that the group cannot make mistakes

67
Groupthink

• Examples of groupthink in history include the
  failure to anticipate Pearl Harbor, the Bay of
  Pigs invasion of Cuba, and the Space Shuttles
  Challenger and Columbia disasters
• In the case of the Space Shuttle Columbia, NASA
  apparently ignored safety warnings from
  engineers about possible technical problems

68
How We Think about Our Own and Others Behavior

• How We Make Attributions
• How Our Behavior Affects Our Attitudes

69
Attribution

• The process by which we explain our own behavior
  and the behavior of others
• That is, what do we think are the causes of our
  behavior and the behavior of others?

70
How We Make Attributions

• An internal attribution means explaining behavior
  in terms of a persons disposition/personal
  characteristics
• An external attribution means explaining behavior
  in terms of a persons circumstances/situation
• For example, if you are sitting in the airport
  and see someone trip and fall over their own two
  feet, you might think What a idiot meaning the
  persons disposition lead him to trip
• However, if you think He must be late for a
  flight, you are making an external attribution

71
Attributions for the Behavior of Others
Fundamental Attribution Error
Self-FulfillingProphecy
72
Attributions for the Behavior of Others

• The fundamental attribution error is the tendency
  as an observer to overestimate internal
  dispositional influences and underestimate
  external situational influences upon others
  behavior
• More simply, we tend to ignore external factors
  when explaining the behaviors of other people
• May have played a role in Milgrams results The
  teachers figured that if the learner was stupid,
  he deserved the shocks

73
Attributions for the Behavior of Others

• Placing such blame on victims involves the
  just-world hypothesis, the assumption that the
  world is just and that people get what they
  deserve
• Helps justify cruelty to others
• The primacy effect is partially responsible for
  the fundamental attribution error
• In the primacy effect, early information is
  weighted more heavily than later information in
  forming an impression of another person
• Be careful of the initial impression you make on
  others!

74
Attributions for the Behavior of Others

• In the self-fulfilling prophecy, our expectations
  of a person elicit behavior from the person that
  confirms our expectations
• For instance, if you think a person is
  uncooperative, you may act in an uncooperative
  way in your interactions with the person
• Given your uncooperative behavior, the person
  responds by being uncooperative, confirming your
  expectations

75
Attributions for Our Own Behavior
Actor-Observer Bias
Self-Serving Bias
76
Actor-Observer Bias

• The tendency to attribute our own behavior to
  situational influences, but to attribute the
  behavior of others to dispositional influences
• As actors, our attention is focused on the
  situation
• But as observers, our attention is focused on the
  individual, hence why we make the fundamental
  attribution error

77
Self-Serving Bias

• The tendency to make attributions so that one can
  perceive oneself favorably
• As actors, we tend to overestimate dispositional
  influences when the outcome of our behavior is
  positive and to overestimate situational
  influences when the outcome of our behavior is
  negative
• In short, we take credit for our successes but
  not for our failures

78
Self-Serving Bias

• We tend to see ourselves as above average when
  we compare ourselves to others on positive
  dimensions such as intelligence and
  attractiveness
• However, such traits tend to be normally
  distributed with half of us below average and
  half of us above average

79
Self-Serving Bias

• Self-serving bias can also influence our
  estimates of the extent to which other people
  think and act as we do

FalseConsensusEffect
False Uniqueness Effect
80
False Consensus Effect

• The tendency to overestimate the commonality of
  ones opinions and unsuccessful behaviors
• For instance, if you like a certain type of food,
  you overestimate how many people also like that
  type of food
• Or, if you failed an important exam, you tend to
  overestimate the number of your classmates who
  also failed the exam

81
False Uniqueness Effect

• The tendency to underestimate the commonality of
  ones abilities and successful behaviors
• For instance, if you are a good golfer, you think
  that few people are, thus allowing you to feel
  good about yourself

82
When Our Behavior Contradicts Our Attitudes

• Attitudes are evaluative reactions (positive or
  negative) toward things, events, and other people
  
• Our attitudes tend to guide our behavior when the
  attitudes are ones that we feel strongly about,
  when we are consciously aware of our attitudes,
  and when outside influences on our behavior are
  not strong

83
When Our Behavior Contradicts Our Attitudes
Festingers Cognitive Dissonance Theory
Bems Self-Perception Theory
Impact of Role Playing
84
Festinger and Carlsmiths Study

• In the study, participants completed an
  incredibly boring task, such as turning pegs on a
  pegboard or organizing spools in a box, dumping
  them out, and organizing them again
• After the hour is over, the experimenter explains
  to you that the experiment is concerned with the
  effects of a persons expectations on their task
  performance and that you were in the control
  group
• The experimenter is upset because his student
  assistant has not shown up for the next
  experimental session
• She was supposed to pose as a student who just
  participated in the experiment and tell the next
  participant who is waiting outside that this
  experiment was really enjoyable

85
Festinger and Carlsmiths Study

• The experiment asks the participant to play the
  role of the student assistant, and he will pay
  you either 1 or 20 for telling the next
  participant (actually a confederate of the
  experimenter) how enjoyable and interesting the
  experiment was

• After telling the supposed participant how great
  the experiment was, another person who is
  studying students reaction to experiments asks
  you to complete a questionnaire about how much
  you enjoyed the earlier experimental tasks

86
Festinger and Carlsmiths Study

• Participants who were paid only 1 rated the
  boring tasks as fairly enjoyable, whereas
  participants who were paid 20 rated the boring
  tasks as boring
• Possible explanations of this counterintuitive
  finding

87
Festingers Cognitive Dissonance Theory

• Proposes that people change their attitudes to
  reduce the cognitive discomfort created by
  inconsistencies between their attitudes and their
  behavior
• For instance, people who smoke, an unhealthy
  behavior known to most everyone, may feel
  cognitive discomfort because of the inconsistency
  between their behavior and their
  attitude/knowledge that smoking is bad for their
  health
• According to cognitive dissonance theory, many
  smokers change their attitude, so that it is no
  longer inconsistent with their behavior

88
Festingers Cognitive Dissonance Theory

• So why did participants paid only 1 indicate on
  the survey they enjoyed the experiment more than
  participants paid 20?
• The people paid 1 lied and said the task was
  interesting to another person
• Thus, there was an inconsistency between their
  actions (saying the experiment was interesting
  without any significant external incentive) and
  their attitudes (the experiment was in reality
  quite boring)
• To reduce this inconsistency, these participants
  changed their attitude to be that the tasks were
  fairly enjoyable
• Now the inconsistency and resulting dissonance
  are gone

89
Festingers Cognitive Dissonance Theory

• A key aspect of cognitive dissonance is that we
  dont suffer dissonance if we have sufficient
  justification for our behavior (i.e., the
  participants paid 20 in the study had perfectly
  good reason to be inconsistent but not experience
  dissonance) or our behavior was coerced
• Cognitive dissonance theory also says that once
  you make a tough choice, you will strengthen your
  commitment to that choice in order to reduce
  cognitive dissonance

90
Bems Self-Perception Theory

• Proposes that when we are unsure of our attitudes
  we infer them by examining our behavior and the
  context in which it occurs
• We have no dissonance to reduce, but are merely
  engaging in the normal attribution process
• For instance, in the experiment, people would
  examine their behavior (e.g., lying for 1) and
  infer the task must have been fairly interesting
  or else they would not have lied for only that 1
• Self-perception theory contends that we dont
  change our attitude because of our behavior, but
  rather we use our behavior to infer our attitude

91
Cognitive Dissonance vs. Self-Perception

• Cognitive dissonance theory is a better
  explanation for behavior that contradicts
  well-established attitudes
• Such behavior creates mental discomfort, and we
  change our attitudes to reduce it
• Self-perception theory explains situations in
  which our attitudes are not well-defined
• We infer our attitudes from our behavior

92
The Impact of Role-Playing

• A role is a social position that carries with it
  expected behaviors from the person in it
• Each role is defined by the socially expected
  pattern of behavior for it, and these definitions
  impact both our behavior and our attitudes

93
Zimbardos Study

• In a now-classic study, Zimbardo (1970) recruited
  male college students to participate in a study
  held in the renovated basement of the Stanford
  University psychology building, renovated to be
  a mock prison
• He chose the most emotionally-stable volunteers
  for the study and then randomly assigned them to
  play the roles of prisoner and prison guard
• The guards were given uniforms and billy clubs
• The prisoners were locked in cells and had to
  wear humiliating clothing (smocks with no
  undergarments)

94
Zimbardos Study

• The participants began to take their respective
  roles too seriously
• After only one day of role playing, the guards
  started treating the prisoners cruelly
• Some of the prisoners rebelled, and others began
  to break down
• Role-playing quickly became reality
• The situation deteriorated so much that Zimbardo
  had to stop the study after only 6 days
• Even these emotionally stable, normal young
  educated men were vulnerable to the power of
  the situational roles