The Social Minds

Conformity

• Push-pull - we want to individuate, but also belong to a group
• Asch experiment, volunteer vs confederates, which lines have the same length? We tend to follow the herd.

Authority

• Stanley Milgram experiment
  • Confederate is always made the learner, volunteer is always made the teacher
  • Teacher and hear and speak to the learner
  • After each wrong answer, experiment conductor will require the teacher to shock the learner with higher voltage
  • People follow authority even when they think it’s wrong

Protecting the Self

• Self-serving bias
  • We tend to attribute failure to the environment, success to ourselves.
  • Which is helpful for our recognizing our own value.
  • Depressed individuals do the opposite
• Just World Hypothesis
  • We tend to think victims must be guilty and deserve what happened to them.
  • Underlying logic: Our desire for security. “If we don’t deserve it, bad things won’t happen to us.”
• External vs Internal Locus of Control.
  • Can we determine what happens?
  • Disempowerment, shifting the locus of control to the external, makes Alzheimer patient become nasty.

Good People Do Bad

• Stanford Prison Experiment by Philip Zimbardo
  • At the beginning prisoners joke with the guards. Then a guard decided to “exert control on the prisoners.”…
  • Prison culture then emerged. Guards act oppressive.
  • “The Lucifer Effect”. Bad apples… When we’re in the context, any of us could behave in that certain way…

Bystander Interference

• Kitty Genovese Case

  • It was estimated that 30 to 40 people in the apartment heard the scream. However, nobody came out to help Kitty.

• Bystander Effect = The more people there are that could help, the less likely any will help.

• Diffusion of Responsibility

  • Responsibility is diffused among the group.
  • Somebody is more capable.
  • Or, the distance of the victim also diffuses your feel of guilt.

Schema, Stereotypes and Prejudice

• Generalization and Discrimination; Sometimes this could be applied to people…
• Schema = the cognitive script that we follow when entering into a familiar or similar situation
• Indirect experience

Competition, Ignorance, Fear and Prejudice

• In-groups and out-groups
• Robber’s Cave Experiment by Muzafer Sherif
  • Similar kids were randomly assigned into two groups
  • Stage 1: Create in-group identities such as names, flags, in-group activities.
  • Stage 2: Add in cross-group competition.
  • Prejudice emerges! Kids rate very positively to their in-groups, but act prejudicial to the out-groups.
  • Stage 3: Have groups join forces to defeat a “common enemy”.
  • At this point, the bias decreased. Kids know each other more.
• Basis of prejudice: lack of knowledge.

Attraction

• First impression matters. Positive adjectives first or negative ones first? The first words set the tone!
• Animals don’t have sense of attraction based on beauty. They do so based on heat and odor.
• In human world, long-term relation must be formed in order to raise off-springs.
• Humans like averaged (symmetrical) face. Average is Beautiful! We’re attracted by symmetry.
• Large pupils are attractive. Interest increases the size of the pupil. We like people who like us.
• Waist to Hip Rate = 7/10. Which is related to less health problems, and higher survival rate in child birth, more likely to give birth to healthy and more children.