Social Psychology Part III Chapter 13 Social Situations are Subtle Others and social situations can affect our behaviors in ways that are very subtle and often outside of our conscious awareness Social Facilitation In 1897 Norman Triplett did a study in which he found that bicycle racers were faster when they raced each other than when they raced the clock Social Facilitation Weirdly enough this effect doesn t just happen with humans Social Facilitation Robert Zajonc did a study in which he found that cockroaches trained to run a maze ran faster when other cockroaches are present Social Facilitation Zajonc found evidence of this with everything from fish to insects Social Facilitation The presence of others is physiologically arousing When a task is easy extra arousal can help a person or animal perform extra well Social Disruption The opposite is social disruption When a task is hard the extra arousal makes it harder to to the task Yerkes Dodson Law Social Loafing When we are solely responsible for a task we tend to put a lot of effort into it Social Loafing When people work in groups however each individual puts in a little less effort than a single individual does Social Loafing Examples When people are asked to yell as loud as possible they yell louder when alone When asked to lift with a rope and pulley people apply more force when they are alone Social Loafing Why does it happen One explanation is diffusion of responsibility But we will come back to this question Diffusion of Responsibility Diffusion of Responsibility Weirdly enough an misreport led to a real discovery Kitty Genovese was attacked and murdered in New York About a dozen neighbors heard yells but only a couple called the cops Diffusion of Responsibility The newspapers misreported the story as 38 people witnessing the attack and coldly ignoring it Darley and Latane were two psychologists horrified by the report Diffusion of Responsibility They did a study in which people were led to believe that someone was having an epileptic seizure The more other people participants believed were around the less likely they were to help Diffusion of Responsibility Diffusion of Responsibility Even if the Genovese story was wrong it turns out there actually are a lot of instances of people not responding to an emergency Explanations The big explanation is that people feel less responsible if more people are around They tend to assume someone is taking care of a problem Explanations Another issue is pluralistic ignorance When we see nobody else responding we assume it s not an emergency Does This Always Explain Social Loafing Sometimes it isn t a bad thing If everyone is helping to lift something then you don t HAVE to put as much effort in to be efficient In that case social loafing is fine and even optimal When Social Loafing is a Problem When you have a group project for example social loafing can be a problem In these cases diffusion of responsibility is a likely culprit What to do about it Clearly define everyone s responsibilities Individual evaluations also help Dindividuation Loss of a sense of self in a group Related to diffusion of responsibility but even more intense Happens during riots Brainstorming in groups People have less creative ideas when they brainstorm in groups One reason is social loafing The other reason Yerkes Dodson Law The Power of Social Roles We have a lot of social roles friend student employee child parent lover enemy leader follower Social Roles Our behavior can change as we shift roles often below the level of our awareness Or schemas about roles can affect how we act when we take on new ones The Stanford Prison Study One of the most influence and least scientific social psychology studies of the 1970 s Stanford Prison Study Stanford Prison Study Zimbardo set up a fake prison in Stanford s psychology building He assigned college men to play either guards or prisoners He played the warden Stanford Prison Study By the end of the first day the guards started humiliating the prisoners By day two the prisoners rebelled Guards started shoving trouble makers in a closet called solitary confinement Stanford Prison Study Guards resorted to disrupting sleep making people clean toilets and humiliation in order to break the prisoners Stanford Prison Study A couple prisoners mentally broke down Zimbardo got into his role as warden Stanford Prison Study The study finally ended when Zimbardo s then girlfriend and future wife snapped him back to reality It was supposed to last two weeks It lasted 6 days And some of the prisoners were traumatized Stanford Prison Study Zimbardo couldn t get the results published because of a lack of scientific control but it totally changed his life The Power Of Roles We have schemas and cognitive scripts for our social roles Activate the schema and you can get absorbed Recognizing this can keep people grounded as they enter new social roles However we often don t realize the change ourselves
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