Alright so it's been a whole semester of social psychology and now it's time to announce my favorite theories and theorists.
So here they are, the top five sexiest theories:
1.Cognitive Dissonance- Hands down! Who thought that the reason for why we make up excuses or change our minds about something would have such a cool name.
2.Social Comparison- This is one of my favorite theories because I enjoy people watching and through this I get to see who my “similar others” are and who other people compare themselves with.
3.Psychological Reactance- The explanation for teenage rebellion. Let’s just tell them to go out and do whatever they want! Maybe that way they’ll behave!
4.Self-Fulfilling prophecy- The best way to make students smarter! Just believe that they will be.
5.Self-verification- This concept is one of the sexiest in social psych. Who would’ve thought that we were attracted to people that told us the truth even if it’s ugly.
Top five sexiest social psychologists:
1.Leon Festinger- His two theories are on my top five sexiest theories; of course he’s number one!
2.David G. Myers- “The science of happiness” was one of my favorite articles this semester. Also, he had three of his books presented at our project showcase!
3.Bill Swann- He came up with self-verification theory, did research in a mall and a ranch, and his methods in his manuscript included a side note that the results a few participants were excluded because they did not match on the number of children they had. That kept my attention for the rest of the article.
4.John Gottman- He can tell whether or not a couple will last just by hearing the story of how they met. That’s pretty sexy!
5.Norman Triplett- The founder of social psychology. The reason all the rest of this exists!
Friday, April 30, 2010
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Conflict Escalation
The concept that I could relate to most out of the group processes chapter in the book was the conflict spirals (Brett et al., 1998; Rubin et al., 1994). These spirals can be defined by frequent retaliation from parties when a disagreement is started. My conflict escalation story begins senior year of high school. It was very close to the end of senior year, my friends and I were very excited about prom and were trying to plan it all out. We would randomly call each other and talk things over. On the day of the conflict spiral my friend Elizabeth (yes, the same one from the last entry) and I were planning out prom. The conflict begun because half of us in the group had dates and the other half did not, we had previously said that we would all have dates for prom so that’s what really sparked the argument. My boyfriend is actually a year younger so I could have gotten away with not bringing him; however everything was already set for him to come. The conflict escalated because we started blaming each other for the inequality of our group and what apparently ‘ruined’ prom. The conversation went from “OMG prom is going to be so fun” to “Ugh! Prom is ruined” in a twenty minute phone conversation. Of course, once we hung up on each other Elizabeth called our other friends and told her what I supposedly said. I got a phone call from one of our other friends telling me to fix everything because Elizabeth was mad. This surprised me because to me it seemed much easier for them to either get a date for prom or to get over the fact that some of us had dates and some of them didn’t. Well, I was wrong, and getting our friends involved made the conflict escalate even more.
What also made the situation worse is that we also experienced group polarization between the ‘date’ and ‘no date’ groups. Group polarization is where the group’s initial opinion becomes exaggerated (Moscovici & Zavalloni, 1969). The “no date” group’s opinion became so exaggerated that it became “we don’t think that your boyfriend is good enough for you and y’all should break up!” after we had been dating for over a year and a half! They became quite demanding and biased towards everything that had happened since we started dating and blamed all our problems on him; when in reality it was everyone’s lack of communication that created the problem. I wish I could tell you a happy ending of how we ended up getting over the whole thing and how we had a great time at prom. However, we still don’t really talk very much, and that last month of senior year conflict ruined four years of awesome memories.
This is the 'date' group and we still had a GREAT time at prom!
References:
Brett, J.M., Shapiro, D.L., & Lytle, A.L. (1998). Breaking the bonds of reciprocity
in negotiations. Academy of Management Journal, 41, 410-424.
Moscovici, S. & Zanalloni, M. (1969). The group as a polarizer of attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 12, 125-135.
Rubin, J.Z., Pruitt, D.G., & Kim, S.H. (1994). Social conflict: Escalation, stalemate, and settlement. New York: McGraw-Hill.
What also made the situation worse is that we also experienced group polarization between the ‘date’ and ‘no date’ groups. Group polarization is where the group’s initial opinion becomes exaggerated (Moscovici & Zavalloni, 1969). The “no date” group’s opinion became so exaggerated that it became “we don’t think that your boyfriend is good enough for you and y’all should break up!” after we had been dating for over a year and a half! They became quite demanding and biased towards everything that had happened since we started dating and blamed all our problems on him; when in reality it was everyone’s lack of communication that created the problem. I wish I could tell you a happy ending of how we ended up getting over the whole thing and how we had a great time at prom. However, we still don’t really talk very much, and that last month of senior year conflict ruined four years of awesome memories.
This is the 'date' group and we still had a GREAT time at prom!
References:
Brett, J.M., Shapiro, D.L., & Lytle, A.L. (1998). Breaking the bonds of reciprocity
in negotiations. Academy of Management Journal, 41, 410-424.
Moscovici, S. & Zanalloni, M. (1969). The group as a polarizer of attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 12, 125-135.
Rubin, J.Z., Pruitt, D.G., & Kim, S.H. (1994). Social conflict: Escalation, stalemate, and settlement. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Demonstrate-a-concept: Conformity
Have you ever wondered why we swing sitting down? Why not standing up? It’s more fun because you feel like you’re higher and when it’s time to jump off the swing you’re already standing up! It’s rather convenient. Being a psychology major, I have gotten pretty good at analyzing other’s behavior and finding a better answer than: “Well that’s just how things are.” I have learned that people conform to norms very often; which answers my swinging dilemma. When people go to the park they act like others around them do, this is part of conformity (Milgram & Sabini, 1978).
People conform for two different reasons. The first is because they want to be right, this is called informational influence. Research on this phenomenon includes having participants identify pictures. Results show that participants are more likely to agree with the others in the room, if they are unsure of the details (Gabbert et al., 2003). The second reason is because they want to fit in and are scared of the consequences of not fitting in, this is called normative influence. Research on this area includes putting the participant in a room of confederates that chose the wrong answer in an easy task. Forty one percent of the participants conformed to the answer that the confederates picked. In this specific study it was also interesting to see that brain imaging techniques showed changes in perception of the task (Berns et al., 2005).
These two reasons for conforming are also important in understanding what type of conformity one engages in. The first type of conformity is called private conformity. This type of conformity is also known as conversion because it involves completely changing one’s behavior to fit in with the group. The second type of conformity is public conformity, this conformity is not as strong, and the individual only changes to respond to the normative pressures of others (Baron et al., 1996).
In the following video conformity is illustrated by the two boys hanging out in the park. Before I begin analyzing, please let me introduce you to the participants of this video, the boy in the blue shirt is C.J. and the boy in the white shirt is Robert. The very first example of conformity that we see is that they both go toward the swings. They are conforming to the social norm of going to the park and playing on the playground instead of doing something radical, such as breaking into the pool next to the park. The second example is of normative influence, Robert falls prey to this type of influence by swinging sitting down just like C.J. Although, C.J. also falls to this normative influence because he jumps off the swing after Robert; both of these boys are under public conformity because they are responding to each other’s and the society’s normative pressures.
http://www.youtube.com/user/lopezfua#p/a/u/0/UgVWf-r-EKg
References:
Baron, R.S., Vandello, J.A., & Brunsman, B. (1996). The forgotten variable in conformity research: Impact of task importance on social influence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 915-927.
Berns, G.S., Chappelow, J., Zink, C.F., Pagnoni, G., Martin-Skurski, M.E., & Richards, J. (2005). Neurobiological correlates of social conformity and independence during mental rotation. Biological Psychiatry, 58, 245-253.
Gabbert, F., Memon, A. & Allan, K. (2003). Memory conformity: Can eyewitnesses influence each other’s memories for an event? Applied Cognitive Psychology, 17, 533-543.
Milgram, S. & Sabini, J. (1978). On maintaining urban norms: A field experiment in the subway. Advances in Environmental Psychology (1).
People conform for two different reasons. The first is because they want to be right, this is called informational influence. Research on this phenomenon includes having participants identify pictures. Results show that participants are more likely to agree with the others in the room, if they are unsure of the details (Gabbert et al., 2003). The second reason is because they want to fit in and are scared of the consequences of not fitting in, this is called normative influence. Research on this area includes putting the participant in a room of confederates that chose the wrong answer in an easy task. Forty one percent of the participants conformed to the answer that the confederates picked. In this specific study it was also interesting to see that brain imaging techniques showed changes in perception of the task (Berns et al., 2005).
These two reasons for conforming are also important in understanding what type of conformity one engages in. The first type of conformity is called private conformity. This type of conformity is also known as conversion because it involves completely changing one’s behavior to fit in with the group. The second type of conformity is public conformity, this conformity is not as strong, and the individual only changes to respond to the normative pressures of others (Baron et al., 1996).
In the following video conformity is illustrated by the two boys hanging out in the park. Before I begin analyzing, please let me introduce you to the participants of this video, the boy in the blue shirt is C.J. and the boy in the white shirt is Robert. The very first example of conformity that we see is that they both go toward the swings. They are conforming to the social norm of going to the park and playing on the playground instead of doing something radical, such as breaking into the pool next to the park. The second example is of normative influence, Robert falls prey to this type of influence by swinging sitting down just like C.J. Although, C.J. also falls to this normative influence because he jumps off the swing after Robert; both of these boys are under public conformity because they are responding to each other’s and the society’s normative pressures.
http://www.youtube.com/user/lopezfua#p/a/u/0/UgVWf-r-EKg
References:
Baron, R.S., Vandello, J.A., & Brunsman, B. (1996). The forgotten variable in conformity research: Impact of task importance on social influence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 915-927.
Berns, G.S., Chappelow, J., Zink, C.F., Pagnoni, G., Martin-Skurski, M.E., & Richards, J. (2005). Neurobiological correlates of social conformity and independence during mental rotation. Biological Psychiatry, 58, 245-253.
Gabbert, F., Memon, A. & Allan, K. (2003). Memory conformity: Can eyewitnesses influence each other’s memories for an event? Applied Cognitive Psychology, 17, 533-543.
Milgram, S. & Sabini, J. (1978). On maintaining urban norms: A field experiment in the subway. Advances in Environmental Psychology (1).
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