PSYCH 10 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Smoke-Filled Room, Stanford Prison Experiment, Black Tie
3/5/18
Social norms
- Normative influence: our tendency to conform in order to fit in with the group
o E: dress ode to fit i, do’t want to go to a black tie wedding wearing jeans
- Informational influence: our tendency to conform when we assume that the group is right
- Why conform?
o Advantageous to being part of a group
o We’re great at detetig heaters
o Cooperation can reduce outgroup bias
▪ Northwestern students vs ucla students; we can ucla students as more diverse and
northwestern students as more homogenous
▪ Ex: robber cave experiment – students work together in mixed-race or mixed-sex groups
• Each member of the group is an expert on one aspect of the assignment (jigsaw
technique; have to work together to solve the task)
• Children grow to like each other more and develop higher self-esteem than do
children in traditional classrooms
- How do groups affect the way people behave?
o Professional athlete – cheering enhances their performance
o Novice musician – crowd makes them more nervous
o Social facilitation: the presence of others generally enhances performance
▪ E: if there’s ore people at the g, ou’re ore likel to do ore/loger orkouts
▪ Can enhance or impair performance
• Depends on what your dominant response is
o Group polarization – the more you talk the more polarized ou’ll get
o groupthik – when the group fails to see the other side so makes bad decisions
▪ Ca aoid this if ou pla deil’s adoate
o Experiment: participant going into a smoke filled room with confederates
▪ Goig i ith ofederates ho did’t go to help → participant not going for help
- Deidiiduatio: eig i a group a lead ou to do thigs ou ould’t orall do o our o
o Whe people do ad thigs, it It the are ad apples or the’re i a ad arrel?
o Ex; Stanford prison experiment
▪ Deindividuation from no names – ou do’t hae to at like ourself
▪ Power of social roles (guards vs prisoners)
• Set of expectations about a social position
• Defines how we think we should behave in social situations
▪ Ethical guidelines
▪ Implications for today
- Aggression
o Men are more likely to be aggressive than women
o Aggression has a relationship with testosterone
o Younger men are the most aggressive
o In the US, physical violence is much more prevalent in the South than in the North
o Murder rates are far higher in some countries than in others
- Altruism
- Cognitive dissonance: we experience dissonance when our actions are not in line with our attitudes
o To bring them in line with each other, we can either change our actions or change our attitudes
o In cases where ou do’t hage our atio or hae o good justifiatio for doig thigs ou
do ot agree ith…ou hage our attitude
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