Instructions:
Read each scenario or brief question in the Aggression and Prejudice Activity Template and respond in the boxes provided (they will expand to fit your answer). All information needed to answer these questions can be found in the Module 5: Week 5 readings. Note that each question is worth up to 5 points.
To earn maximum credit please include:
· A response that is concise but thorough (3-5 sentences for each answer).
· An in-text citation to identify the source of any information that is not common knowledge.
· Correct spelling and grammar.
· Proper APA formatting.
To avoid point deductions please:
· Do not copy and paste information from your textbook. Instead, paraphrase/rewrite in your own words to demonstrate your knowledge.
· Do not include any direct quotes.
PSYC 312
Aggression and Prejudice Activity Template
Markus was excited to finally arrive in Metrocity and was eager to explore. He stepped out of the crowded subway car and headed for the long, steep stairway that led to street-level. He was shocked to see a group of young men forcing their way through the crowd on the stairway, pushing people aside, shouting about trying to catch the next train. Several people were hurt including a young woman who fell down and was bleeding. Her husband grabbed one of the young men and began shaking and punching him.
1. Two types of aggression are described in this scenario. Describe each type, identify which person or persons exhibited each type of aggression and support your answer with information from our textbook.
2. Based on empirical evidence described in our textbook, would you say that aggressive behavior is learned or are we all born with aggressive tendencies? Be sure to include examples from our textbook (cited) to support your answer.
3. A man was punched and knocked unconscious when he was caught in the act of breaking into another man’s home. Which of these men is more likely to have reacted to the home invasion in this aggressive manner: Mitchell (who was born and raised in an area historically inhabited by sheep farmers in a Southern state) or Steven (who was born and raised in an industrial Northern city). Explain your choice based on what Myers and Twenge wrote about culture and aggressive behavior.
4. Based on information provided in our textbook, how is aggression related to social status?
5. Describe the experiment Albert Bandura conducted that provided important information related to aggressive behavior. What did this research tell us about aggressive behavior? Why was this landmark study so significant?
Pat has been arrested several times for crimes involving aggressive behavior. Explain how the following factors may be impacting Pat’s behavior.
6. Alcohol:
7. Gender. Did you assume Pat was male or female? Explain why. Does gender typically have an impact related to aggressive behavior?
8. Family Background:
9. Personal Discomfort or Pain:
Respond to the next two statements based on the information provided by Myers & Twenge regarding violence and the media.
10. Violent movies and television programs should be banned because they cause people to commit violent acts. Do you agree or disagree? Why?
11. People are responsible for choices they make. Violent movies and television programs are purely entertainment and have no impact on violent behavior. Do you agree or disagree? Why?
12. Myers and Twenge identify eight factors associated with (or predictive of) aggressive behavior. Please list all eight.
13. What are some ways Myers and Twenge suggest that could help reduce cyberbullying? Please provide at least two specific examples from our textbook and explain why each of these might be successful.
14. What role does parenting play in reducing aggressive behavior? Provide an example from research cited in our textbook. Explain from a Biblical perspective why parenting has such a powerful effect.
15. Explain how anger and aggression may or may not be connected. What is the best way to manage anger or frustration (venting, holding it in or other?). Use information and scenarios from our textbook rather than from personal experience.
Reference(s)
Page 2 of 3
SOCIAL
PSYCHOLOGY
David G. Myers
Jean M. Twenge
13e
SOCIAL
PSYCHOLOGY
David G. Myers
Hope College
Jean M. Twenge
San Diego State University
13e
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, THIRTEENTH EDITION
Published by McGraw-Hill Education, 2 Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10121. Copyright © 2019 by McGraw-Hill
Education. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Previous editions © 2016, 2013,
and 2010. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or
stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education,
including, but not limited to, in any network or other electronic storage or transmission, or broadcast
for distance learning.
Some ancillaries, including electronic and print components, may not be available to customers outside the
United States.
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ISBN 978-1-260-39711-6 (bound edition)
MHID 1-260-39711-4 (bound edition)
ISBN 978-1-259-91104-0 (loose-leaf edition)
MHID 1-259-91104-7 (loose-leaf edition)
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Myers, David G., author. | Twenge, Jean M., author.
Title: Social psychology / David G. Myers, Hope College, Jean M. Twenge, San
Diego State University.
Description: Thirteenth Edition. | Dubuque : McGraw-Hill Education, [2018] |
Revised edition of the authors’ Social psychology, [2016]
Identifiers: LCCN 2018018043| ISBN 9781260397116 (hard cover : alk. paper) |
ISBN 1260397114 (hard cover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Social psychology.
Classification: LCC HM1033 .M944 2018 | DDC 302—dc23 LC record available at
https://lccn.loc.gov/2018018043
The Internet addresses listed in the text were accurate at the time of publication. The inclusion of a website
does not indicate an endorsement by the authors or McGraw-Hill Education, and McGraw-Hill Education
does not guarantee the accuracy of the information presented at these sites.
mheducation.com/highered
iii
DGM
For Dennis and Betty
kindred friends, servant leaders
JMT
For my daughters: Kate, Elizabeth, and Julia
iv Part One Social Thinking
Photo by Hope College Public Relations.
For more information, or to contact David Myers, visit
davidmyers.org. ©David Myers
Jean M. Twenge by Sandy Huffaker, Jr.
For more information, or to contact Jean Twenge, visit
www.jeantwenge.com ©Sandy Huffaker, Jr.
About the Authors
Since receiving his University of Iowa Ph.D., David G. Myers has professed psychology at Michigan’s Hope College. Hope College students have invited him to be their
commencement speaker and voted him “outstanding professor.”
With support from National Science Foundation grants,
Myers’ research has appeared in some three dozen scientific peri-
odicals, including Science, the American Scientist, Psychological
Science, and the American Psychologist.
He has also communicated psychological science through
articles in four dozen magazines, from Today’s Education to
Scientific American, and through his seventeen books, including
The Pursuit of Happiness and Intuition: Its Powers and Perils.
Myers’ research and writings have been recognized by the Gordon
Allport Prize, by an “honored scientist” award from the Federa-
tion of Associations in the Brain and Behavioral Sciences, and
by the Award for Distinguished Service on Behalf of Personality-
Social Psychology.
He has chaired his city’s Human Relations Commission,
helped found a center for families in poverty, and spoken to hun-
dreds of college and community groups. In recognition of his
efforts to transform the way America provides assistive listening
for people with hearing loss (see hearingloop.org), he has received
awards from the American Academy of Audiology, the Hearing
Loss Association of America, and the hearing industry.
David and Carol Myers have three children and one grandchild.
As Professor of Psychology at San Diego State University, Jean
M. Twenge has authored more than 140 scientific publications on
generational differences, cultural change, social rejection, digital
media use, gender roles, self-esteem, and narcissism. Her research
has been covered in Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, USA
Today, U.S. News and World Report, and The Washington Post, and
she has been featured on Today, Good Morning America, CBS
This Morning, Fox and Friends, NBC Nightly News, Dateline
NBC, and National Public Radio.
Dr. Twenge has drawn on her research in her books for a
broader audience, iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are
Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy—And Com-
pletely Unprepared for Adulthood (2017) and Generation Me: Why
Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled—
And More Miserable Than Ever Before (2nd ed., 2014). An article
by Dr. Twenge in The Atlantic was nominated for a National Maga-
zine Award. She frequently gives talks and seminars on genera-
tional differences to audiences such as college faculty and staff,
parent-teacher groups, military personnel, camp directors, and
corporate executives.
Jean Twenge grew up in Minnesota and Texas. She holds a
B.A. and M.A. from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from
the University of Michigan. She completed a postdoctoral research
fellowship in social psychology at Case Western Reserve University.
She lives in San Diego with her husband and three daughters.
iv
v
Brief Contents
Preface xv
Chapter 1 Introducing Social Psychology 1
Part One Social Thinking
Chapter 2 The Self in a Social World 25
Chapter 3 Social Beliefs and Judgments 55
Chapter 4 Behavior and Attitudes 88
Part Two Social Influence
Chapter 5 Genes, Culture, and Gender 111
Chapter 6 Conformity and Obedience 141
Chapter 7 Persuasion 173
Chapter 8 Group Influence 201
Part Three Social Relations
Chapter 9 Prejudice 237
Chapter 10 Aggression 275
Chapter 11 Attraction and Intimacy 312
Chapter 12 Helping 352
Chapter 13 Conflict and Peacemaking 388
Part Four Applying Social Psychology
Chapter 14 Social Psychology in the Clinic 423
Chapter 15 Social Psychology in Court 453
Chapter 16 Social Psychology and the Sustainable Future 479
Epilogue 503
References R-1
Name Index NI-1
Subject Index/Glossary SI-1
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McGraw-Hill Education Psychology
APA Documentation Style Guide
Research Methods: How Do We Do Social
Psychology? 13
Forming and Testing Hypotheses 14
Sampling and Question Wording 14
Correlational Research: Detecting Natural
Associations 17
Experimental Research: Searching for Cause
and Effect 19
Generalizing from Laboratory to Life 22
Postscript: Why We Wrote This Book 24
Part One: Social Thinking
Chapter 2
The Self in a Social World 25
Spotlights and Illusions: What Do They
Teach Us About Ourselves? 26
Research Close-Up: On Being Nervous About Looking
Nervous 27
Self-Concept: Who Am I? 28
At the Center of Our Worlds: Our Sense of Self 29
Self and Culture 30
Self-Knowledge 34
The Inside Story: Hazel Markus and Shinobu Kitayama
on Cultural Psychology 35
What Is the Nature and Motivating Power of
Self-Esteem? 39
Self-Esteem Motivation 39
The Trade-Off of Low vs. High Self-Esteem 41
Self-Efficacy 43
What Is Self-Serving Bias? 44
Explaining Positive and Negative Events 44
Can We All Be Better Than Average? 45
Focus On: Self-Serving Bias—How Do I Love Me? Let
Me Count the Ways 46
Unrealistic Optimism 47
False Consensus and Uniqueness 48
Explaining Self-Serving Bias 49
How Do People Manage Their
Self-Presentation? 50
Self-Handicapping 50
Impression Management 51
What Does It Mean to Have “Self-Control”? 53
Postscript: Twin Truths—The Perils of Pride, the
Powers of Positive Thinking 54
Preface xv
Chapter 1
Introducing Social Psychology 1
What Is Social Psychology? 2
What Are Social Psychology’s Big Ideas? 3
We Construct Our Social Reality 3
Our Social Intuitions Are Often Powerful but Sometimes
Perilous 4
Social Influences Shape Our Behavior 5
Personal Attitudes and Dispositions
Also Shape Behavior 6
Social Behavior Is Biologically Rooted 6
Social Psychology’s Principles Are Applicable
in Everyday Life 7
How Do Human Values Influence Social
Psychology? 7
Obvious Ways Values Enter Psychology 7
Not-So-Obvious Ways Values Enter Psychology 8
I Knew It All Along: Is Social Psychology Simply
Common Sense? 10
Focus On: I Knew It All Along 13
Table of Contents
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Part Two: Social Influence
Chapter 5
Genes, Culture, and Gender 111
How Are We Influenced by Biology? 112
Genes, Evolution, and Behavior 113
Biology and Gender 114
Gender and Hormones 116
Reflections on Evolutionary Psychology 117
Focus On: Evolutionary Science and Religion 118
How Are We Influenced by Culture? 119
Culture and Behavior 119
Focus On: The Cultural Animal 120
Research Close-Up: Passing Encounters,
East and West 123
Peer-Transmitted Culture 124
Culture and Gender 125
Gender Roles Vary with Culture 127
Gender Roles Vary over Time 128
How Are Females and Males Alike
and Different? 129
Independence versus Connectedness 130
Social Dominance 133
Aggression 134
Sexuality 135
What Can We Conclude About Genes,
Culture, and Gender? 137
The Inside Story: Alice Eagly on Gender
Similarities and Differences 139
Postscript: Should We View Ourselves as
Products of Our Biology or Our Culture? 140
Chapter 6
Conformity and Obedience 141
What Is Conformity? 142
What Are the Classic Conformity
and Obedience Studies? 143
Sherif’s Studies of Norm Formation 143
Research Close-Up: Contagious Yawning 145
Asch’s Studies of Group Pressure 147
Milgram’s Obedience Studies 149
The Inside Story: Stanley Milgram on Obedience 150
The Ethics of Milgram’s Studies 152
What Breeds Obedience? 152
Chapter 3
Social Beliefs and Judgments 55
How Do We Judge Our Social Worlds, Consciously
and Unconsciously? 56
Priming 56
Intuitive Judgments 57
Overconfidence 59
Heuristics: Mental Shortcuts 61
Counterfactual Thinking 64
Illusory Thinking 65
Moods and Judgments 67
The Inside Story: Joseph P. Forgas: Can
Bad Weather Improve Your Memory? 68
How Do We Perceive Our Social Worlds? 69
Perceiving and Interpreting Events 69
Belief Perseverance 70
Constructing Memories of Ourselves and Our Worlds 71
How Do We Explain Our Social Worlds? 73
Attributing Causality: To the Person or the Situation 73
The Fundamental Attribution Error 75
How Do Our Social Beliefs Matter? 80
Teacher Expectations and Student Performance 80
Focus On: The Self-Fulfilling Psychology
of the Stock Market 81
Getting from Others What We Expect 82
What Can We Conclude About Social
Beliefs and Judgments? 84
Postscript: Reflecting on Illusory Thinking 86
Chapter 4
Behavior and Attitudes 88
How Well Do Our Attitudes Predict
Our Behavior? 89
When Attitudes Predict Behavior 90
When Does Our Behavior Affect Our
Attitudes? 94
Role Playing 95
Saying Becomes Believing 96
Evil and Moral Acts 96
Social Movements 98
Why Does Our Behavior Affect Our
Attitudes? 99
Self-Presentation: Impression Management 99
Self-Justification: Cognitive Dissonance 100
The Inside Story: Leon Festinger
on Dissonance Reduction 104
Self-Perception 104
Comparing the Theories 108
Postscript: Changing Ourselves
Through Action 110
vii
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Many Hands Make Light Work 208
Social Loafing in Everyday Life 209
Deindividuation: When Do People Lose
Their Sense of Self in Groups? 211
Doing Together What We Would Not Do Alone 212
Diminished Self-Awareness 214
Group Polarization: Do Groups Intensify
Our Opinions? 215
The Case of the “Risky Shift” 216
Do Groups Intensify Opinions? 217
Focus On: Group Polarization 221
Explaining Group Polarization 221
Groupthink: Do Groups Hinder or
Assist Good Decisions? 224
The Inside Story: Irving Janis on Groupthink 225
Symptoms of Groupthink 225
Critiquing Groupthink 227
Preventing Groupthink 228
Group Problem Solving 228
The Inside Story: Behind a Nobel Prize: Two Minds Are
Better Than One 230
The Influence of the Minority: How Do Individuals
Influence the Group? 231
Consistency 232
Self-Confidence 233
Defections from the Majority 233
Is Leadership Minority Influence? 233
Focus On: Transformational Community
Leadership 234
Postscript: Are Groups Bad for Us? 236
Part Three: Social Relations
Chapter 9
Prejudice 237
What Is the Nature and Power of Prejudice? 238
Defining Prejudice 238
Focus On: Personalizing The Victims 153
Reflections on the Classic Studies 155
What Predicts Conformity? 159
Group Size 159
Unanimity 160
Cohesion 161
Status 162
Public Response 162
Prior Commitment 162
Why Conform? 164
Who Conforms? 166
Personality 166
Culture 167
Social Roles 168
Do We Ever Want to Be Different? 169
Reactance 169
Asserting Uniqueness 170
Postscript: On Being an Individual Within a
Community 172
Chapter 7
Persuasion 173
What Paths Lead to Persuasion? 175
The Central Route 175
The Peripheral Route 176
Different Paths for Different Purposes 176
What Are the Elements of Persuasion? 177
Who Says? The Communicator 177
Research Close-Up: Experimenting with a Virtual
Social Reality 181
What Is Said? The Message Content 182
How Is It Said? The Channel of Communication 188
To Whom Is It Said? The Audience 192
Focus On: Cults and Persuasion 194
How Can Persuasion Be Resisted? 196
Attitude Inoculation 197
Implications of Attitude Inoculation 200
Postscript: Being Open but Not Naïve 200
Chapter 8
Group Influence 201
What Is a Group? 201
Social Facilitation: How Are We Affected
by the Presence of Others? 202
The Mere Presence of Others 202
Crowding: The Presence of Many Others 205
Why Are We Aroused in the Presence of Others? 205
Social Loafing: Do Individuals Exert Less
Effort in a Group? 207
viii Table of Contents
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Chapter 10
Aggression 275
What Is Aggression? 277
What Are Some Theories of Aggression? 278
Aggression as a Biological Phenomenon 278
Aggression as a Response to Frustration 282
Aggression as Learned Social Behavior 285
What Are Some Influences on Aggression? 287
Aversive Incidents 287
Arousal 289
Aggression Cues 290
Media Influences: Pornography
and Sexual Violence 291
Media Influences: Television, Movies,
and the Internet 293
Another Media Influence: Video Games 298
Effects of Video Games 299
The Inside Story: Craig Anderson on Video-Game
Violence 303
Group Influences 303
Research Close-Up: When Provoked, Are Groups More
Aggressive Than Individuals? 305
How Can Aggression Be Reduced? 306
Catharsis? 306
A Social Learning Approach 308
Culture Change and World Violence 309
Postscript: Reforming a Violent Culture 310
Prejudice: Implicit and Explicit 240
Racial Prejudice 240
Gender Prejudice 244
LGBT Prejudice 247
What Are the Social Sources of Prejudice? 248
Social Inequalities: Unequal Status and Prejudice 248
Socialization 249
Institutional Supports 252
What Are the Motivational Sources
of Prejudice? 253
Frustration and Aggression: The Scapegoat Theory 253
Social Identity Theory: Feeling Superior to Others 254
Motivation to Avoid Prejudice 258
What Are the Cognitive Sources of
Prejudice? 259
Categorization: Classifying People into Groups 259
Distinctiveness: Perceiving People Who Stand Out 260
Attribution: Is It a Just World? 264
What Are the Consequences of Prejudice? 267
Self-Perpetuating Prejudgments 267
Discrimination’s Impact: The Self-Fulfilling
Prophecy 268
Stereotype Threat 269
The Inside Story: Claude Steele on Stereotype
Threat 271
Do Stereotypes Bias Judgments of Individuals? 271
Postscript: Can We Reduce Prejudice? 273
Table of Contents ix
©Ariel Skelley/Blend Images LLC
How Can We Increase Helping? 380
Reduce Ambiguity, Increase Responsibility 380
Guilt and Concern for Self-Image 381
Socializing Altruism 382
Focus On: Behavior and Attitudes Among
Rescuers of Jews 385
Postscript: Taking Social Psychology into Life 387
Chapter 13
Conflict and Peacemaking 388
What Creates Conflict? 389
Social Dilemmas 389
Competition 395
Perceived Injustice 397
Misperception 397
Research Close-Up: Misperception
and War 400
How Can Peace Be Achieved? 401
Contact 401
Research Close-Up: Relationships That Might
Have Been 405
The Inside Story: Nicole Shelton and Jennifer Richeson
On Cross-Racial Friendships 406
Cooperation 407
Focus On: Why Do We Care Who Wins? 408
Focus On: Branch Rickey, Jackie Robinson, and the
Integration of Baseball 413
Communication 415
Conciliation 419
Postscript: The Conflict Between Individual and
Communal Rights 421
Part Four: Applying Social
Psychology
Chapter 14
Social Psychology in the Clinic 423
What Influences the Accuracy of Clinical
Judgments? 424
Illusory Correlations 425
Hindsight and Overconfidence 426
Self-Confirming Diagnoses 427
Clinical Intuition versus Statistical Prediction 427
Focus On: A Physician’s View: The Social Psychology
of Medicine 429
Implications for Better Clinical Practice 430
What Cognitive Processes Accompany Behavior
Problems? 430
Depression 430
The Inside Story: Shelley Taylor on Positive
Illusions 433
Loneliness 434
Chapter 11
Attraction and Intimacy 312
How Important Is the Need to Belong? 314
What Leads to Friendship and Attraction? 316
Proximity 316
Focus On: Liking Things Associated with Oneself 319
Physical Attractiveness 321
The Inside Story: Ellen Berscheid
on Attractiveness 324
Similarity versus Complementarity 329
Liking Those Who Like Us 331
Focus On: Bad Is Stronger Than Good 332
Relationship Rewards 334
What Is Love? 335
Passionate Love 335
Companionate Love 338
What Enables Close Relationships? 340
Attachment 340
Equity 342
Self-Disclosure 343
Focus On: Does the Internet Create Intimacy or
Isolation? 346
How Do Relationships End? 347
Divorce 348
The Detachment Process 349
Postscript: Making Love 351
Chapter 12
Helping 352
Why Do We Help? 353
Social Exchange and Social Norms 353
The Inside Story: Dennis Krebs on Life Experience
and the Study of Altruism 355
Evolutionary Psychology 361
Comparing and Evaluating Theories of Helping 363
Genuine Altruism 363
Focus On: The Benefits—and the Costs—of
Empathy-Induced Altruism 365
When Will We Help? 367
Number of Bystanders 367
The Inside Story: John M. Darley on Bystander
Reactions 368
Helping When Someone Else Does 372
Time Pressures 373
Similarity 373
Research Close-Up: Ingroup Similarity
and Helping 374
Who Will Help? 376
Personality Traits and Status 376
Gender 377
Religious Faith 378
x Table of Contents
Table of Contents xi
Are Twelve Heads Better Than One? 474
Research Close-Up: Group Polarization in a Natural
Court Setting 475
Are Six Heads as Good as Twelve? 475
From Lab to Life: Simulated and Real Juries 476
Postscript: Thinking Smart with Psychological
Science 477
Chapter 16
Social Psychology and the Sustainable
Future 479
Psychology and Climate Change 483
Psychological Effects of Climate Change 483
Public Opinion About Climate Change 484
Enabling Sustainable Living 487
New Technologies 487
Reducing Consumption 487
The Inside Story: Janet Swim on Psychology’s Response
to Climate Change 489
The Social Psychology of Materialism
and Wealth 490
Increased Materialism 491
Wealth and Well-Being 492
Materialism Fails to Satisfy 494
Toward Sustainability and Survival 498
Research Close-Up: Measuring National
Well-Being 500
Postscript: How Does One Live
Responsibly in the Modern World? 501
Epilogue 503
References R-1
Name Index NI-1
Subject Index SI-1
Anxiety and Shyness 436
Health, Illness, and Death 437
What Are Some Social-Psychological Approaches
to Treatment? 441
Inducing Internal Change Through External Behavior 442
Breaking Vicious Cycles 442
Maintaining Change Through Internal Attributions for
Success 444
Using Therapy as Social Influence 445
How Do Social Relationships Support Health and
Well-Being? 446
Close Relationships and Health 446
Close Relationships and Happiness 449
Postscript: Enhancing Happiness 452
Chapter 15
Social Psychology in Court 453
How Reliable Is Eyewitness Testimony? 454
The Power of Persuasive Eyewitnesses 454
When Eyes Deceive 455
The Misinformation Effect 457
Retelling 459
Reducing Error 459
Research Close-Up: Feedback to Witnesses 459
What Other Factors Influence Juror
Judgments? 464
The Defendant’s Characteristics 464
The Judge’s Instructions 467
Additional Factors 469
What Influences the Individual Juror? 469
Juror Comprehension 470
Jury Selection 471
“Death-Qualified” Jurors 471
How Do Group Influences Affect Juries? 473
Minority Influence 473
Group Polarization 473
Leniency 474
McGraw-Hill Education Psychology
APA Documentation Style Guide
Guide to Culture
xii
Text coverage of culture focuses on the following topics:
Affluence and happiness: pp. 493–495
Aggression and culture: pp. 286–287
Anonymity and violence: pp. 213–214
Asserting uniqueness: pp. 209–211
Attachment styles: p. 341
Attitudes about race: pp. 98–99
Behavior and culture: pp. 119–125
Biology and culture: pp. 137–139
Close relationships and happiness: p. 549
Cognition and culture: pp. 32–33
Collectivism: pp. 30–31, 172, 421–422
Interdependent self: p. 33
Conformity: pp. 142, 144, 148
Nonconformity: pp. 170–172
Counterfactual thinking: pp. 64–65
“Cultural racism”: p. 242
Culture of peace: p. 501
Definition of culture: pp. 8–9, 119–120
Depression: p. 434
Diversity: pp. 120–122
Divorce: p. 348
Evolutionary psychology: pp. 113–114
Facebook profile pictures and cultural
differences: p. 32
Facebook posts expressing positive emotion in India
and the United States: p. 126
Group polarization in terrorist organizations:
pp. 220–221
Fundamental attribution error and cultural
differences: pp. 78–79
Gender and culture: pp. 125–127
Generalizing from laboratory to life: pp. 22–23
Group and superordinate identities: pp. 414–415
Guilt: p. 356
Immigration, children’s preference for new culture’s
language and norms: p. 124
Implicit attitudes: pp. 90–91
Independence versus connectedness: pp. 130–133
Independent self: p. 30
Individualism: pp. 30, 170–172, 421–422
Growing individualism within cultures:
pp. 31–32, 422
Influence of human nature and cultural diversity:
pp. 112–119
Justice, perceptions of: p. 397
Loneliness: p. 434
Love, variations in: pp. 337–338
Norms: pp. 121–124
Obedience: pp. 151, 156–157, 167–168
Observational learning of aggression: pp. 364–365
Perceived injustice: p. 490
Physical anonymity: p. 279
Physical attractiveness: pp. 326–327
Reciprocity norm: p. 447
Religion and racial prejudice: pp. 250–251
Self and culture: pp. 30–34
Self-esteem: pp. 33–34
Self-presentation: pp. 51–52
Self-serving bias: pp. 44–50
Similarity: p. 125
Social comparison and income inequality:
pp. 496–498
Social influence: pp. 2, 5
Social loafing: pp. 210–211
Social-responsibility norm: p. 359
Socialization: p. 249
Stereotypes: pp. 239–248
“System justification”: p. 343
Tragedy of the Commons: pp. 391–392
Values in social psychology: pp. 7–10, 477–478
Violence and culture: pp. 309–311
Feature coverage of culture can be found in the following boxes:
Focus On: I Knew It All Along: p. 13
Focus On: Self-Serving Bias: How Do I Love Me? Let
Me Count the Ways: p. 46
Focus On: The Cultural Animal: p. 120
The Inside Story: Hazel Markus and Shinobu Kitayama
on Cultural Psychology: p. 35
Research Close-Up: Passing Encounters,
East and West: p. 123
Research Close-Up: Measuring National Well-Being:
pp. 500–501
xiii
Guide to Technology
and Social Media
Text coverage of technology and social media focuses on the
following topics:
Aggression and “rant” websites: p. 307
Altruism in online gaming: p. 379
Anonymity on the Internet: p. 225
Belief perseverance on social media: pp. 70–71
Bystander effect on Facebook: p. 367
Confirmation bias on social media: p. 61
Conformity in online gaming: p. 164
Cultural differences in Facebook posts: p. 126
Cyberbullying: pp. 266, 276
False consensus effect on Facebook: p. 48
Gender differences in Facebook posts:
pp. 129–130, 132
Gender and STEM subjects: p. 252
Group polarization on the Internet: pp. 219–220
Interactions, in person versus social media:
pp. 435, 450
Internet, television, movies and aggression:
pp. 293–298
Jury presentations: p. 477
Loneliness on social media: p. 435
Narcissism on social media: p. 43
Online dating:
Increased disclosure and liking: p. 346
Personal advertisements on the Internet, asset
matching: p. 323
Similarity: p. 330
Speed dating: p. 329
Online rumors forum: p. 126
Ostracism on social media, effects of: p. 315
Persuasion:
Credibility of fake news depends on who
shares it: p. 179
Media compared: p. 191
Media influence: pp. 189–191
Online games as children’s advertising: p. 199
Political advertising: p. 189
Primacy effect and TripAdvisor reviews: p. 186
“Viral marketing”: p. 189
Pornography and sexual violence: pp. 291–293
Prejudice: pp. 310–311
Prosocial media and gaming: p. 384
Selective exposure: pp. 100–101
Self-presentation on Facebook: p. 52
Social comparison on social media: pp. 29–30,
223, 496
Suggestibility on social media: p. 146
Use of social media by young people: p. 313
Technology, affluence, and happiness: p. 493
Technology and sustainability: p. 487
Video games and aggression: pp. 298–302
Feature coverage of technology and social media can be found
in the following boxes:
Research Close-Up: Experimenting with a Virtual Social
Reality: p. 181
The Inside Story: Craig Anderson on Video Game
Violence: p. 303
Focus On: Does the Internet Create Intimacy or
Isolation?: pp. 346–347
xiv
A Letter from the Authors
We humans have a very long history, but social psychology has a very short one—barely
more than a century. Considering that we have just begun, the results are gratifying. What a
feast of ideas! Using varied research methods, we have amassed significant insights into
belief and illusion, love and hate, conformity and independence.
Much about human behavior remains a mystery, yet social psychology now offers partial
answers to many intriguing questions:
■ How does our thinking—both conscious and unconscious—drive our behavior?
■ What leads people sometimes to hurt and sometimes to help one another?
■ What creates social conflict, and how can we transform closed fists into helping hands?
Answering these and many other questions—our mission in the pages to come—expands
our self-understanding and sensitizes us to the social forces that work upon us.
We aspire to offer a text that
■ is solidly scientific and warmly human, factually rigorous, and intellectually provocative,
■ reveals important social phenomena, as well as how scientists discover and explain such,
and
■ stimulates students’ thinking—their motivation to inquire, to analyze, to relate principles to
everyday happenings.
We cast social psychology in the intellectual tradition of the liberal arts. By the teaching
of great literature, philosophy, and science, liberal arts education seeks to expand our
awareness and to liberate us from the confines of the present. By focusing on humanly
significant issues, we aim to offer social psychology’s big ideas and findings to pre-professional
psychology students, and to do so in ways that stimulate all students. And with close-up looks
at how the game is played—at the varied research tools that reveal the workings of our social
nature—we hope to enable students to think smarter.
To assist the teaching and learning of social psychology is a great privilege, but also a
responsibility. So please: never hesitate to let us know how we are doing, and what we can
do better.
David G. Myers
Hope College
www.davidmyers.org
Jean M. Twenge
San Diego State University
www.jeantwenge.com
Preface
Social Psychology introduces students to the science of us: our thoughts, feelings, and
behaviors in a social world. By studying social psychology, students learn to think critically
about everyday behaviors and they gain an appreciation for how we view and affect one
another.
Social Psychology’s conversational voice allows students to access and enjoy this
relatively young and exciting science. In Social Psychology, students find scientific
explorations of love and hate, conformity and independence, prejudice and helping,
persuasion and self-determination.
Social Psychology focuses on how people view, affect, and relate to one another.
Beginning with its chapter-opening stories, the text relates the theme of the chapter to the
human experience. The cutting edge of social psychological research is also at the
forefront, with more than 450 new or updated citations since the last edition.
The Research Close-Up feature remains a mainstay in this edition, offering comprehensive
looks at current research in the social psychology field around the world, ranging from “On
Being Nervous About Looking Nervous” in Chapter 2, to “Misperception and War” in Chapter
13. Research Close-Ups provide students with accessible examples of how social
psychologists employ various research methods from naturalistic observation to laboratory
experiments to the harvesting of archival and Internet data.
Other engaging and instructive features retained in the new edition are:
■ the Focus On feature, an in-depth exploration of a topic presented in the text. For
example, the Focus On in Chapter 11, Does the Internet Create Intimacy or Isolation?,
describes the pros and cons of using the Internet for communication and a sense of
belonging;
■ the Inside Story, famous researchers in their own words, highlighting the interests and
questions that guided, and sometimes misguided, their findings. For example, Chapter 5
offers an essay by Alice Eagly on gender similarities and differences;
■ the Postscripts, chapter-ending afterthoughts on the essence of the chapter that engage
students with thought-provoking questions and personal reflections on the chapter. For
example, the Postscript to Chapter 16, Social Psychology and the Sustainable Future,
offers thoughts on “How does one live responsibly in the modern world?”
Much about human behavior remains a mystery, yet social psychology can offer insight
into many questions we have about ourselves and the world we live in, such as:
■ How does our thinking—both conscious and unconscious—drive our behavior?
■ What is self-esteem? Is there such a thing as too much self-esteem?
■ How do the people around us influence our behavior?
■ What leads people sometimes to hurt and sometimes to help one another?
■ What kindles social conflict, and how can we transform closed fists into helping hands?
Investigating and answering such questions is this book’s mission—to expand students’
self-understanding, and to reveal the social forces at work in their lives. After reading this
book and thinking critically about everyday behaviors, students will better understand
themselves and the world in which they work, play, and love.
xv
Students Study More Effectively with Connect®
and SmartBook®
Social Psychology harnesses the power of technology and data to improve the instructor and
student experiences.
■ SmartBook helps students study more efficiently by highlighting where in the chapter to
focus, asking review questions and pointing them to resources until they understand.
■ Connect’s assignments help students contextualize what they’ve learned through
application, so they can better understand the material and think critically.
■ Connect creates a personalized study path customized to individual student needs.
■ Connect reports deliver information regarding performance, study behavior, and effort, so
instructors can quickly identify students who are having issues, or focus on material that
the class hasn’t mastered.
Better Data, Smarter Revision, Improved Results
For this edition, data were analyzed to identify the concepts students found the most difficult,
allowing for expansion upon the discussion, practice, and assessment of challenging topics.
In the past, the revision process for a new edition began with gathering information from
instructors about what they would change and what they would keep. Experts in the field
were asked to provide comments that pointed out new material to add and dated material to
review. Using all these reviews, authors would revise the material. But now, a new tool has
revolutionized that model.
McGraw-Hill Education authors now have access to student performance data to analyze
and to inform their revisions. This data is anonymously collected from the many students who
use SmartBook, the adaptive learning system that provides students with individualized
assessment of their own progress. Because virtually every text paragraph is tied to several
questions that students answer while using the SmartBook, the specific concepts with which
students are having the most difficulty are easily pinpointed through empirical data in the
form of a “heat map” report.
The Heat Map Story: Appreciating the Power of
Student Data
STEP 1. Over the course of three years, data points showing concepts that caused
students the most difficulty were anonymously collected from SmartBook for Social
Psychology, 12e.
STEP 2. The data was provided to the authors in the form of a Heat Map, which
graphically illustrated “hot spots” in the text that impacted student learning.
STEP 3. The authors used the Heat Map data to refine the content and reinforce student
comprehension in the new edition. Additional quiz questions and assignable activities
were created for use in Connect for Social Psychology to further support student success.
xvi Preface
RESULT: Because the Heat Map gave the authors empirically based feedback at the
paragraph and even sentence level, they were able to develop the new edition using
precise student data that pinpointed concepts that caused students the most difficulty.
Powerful Reporting
Whether a class is face-to-face, hybrid, or entirely online, McGraw-Hill Education Connect
provides the tools needed to reduce the amount of time and energy instructors spend
administering their courses. Easy-to-use course management tools allow instructors to spend
less time administering and more time teaching, while reports allow students to monitor their
progress and optimize their study time.
■ The At-Risk Student Report provides instructors with one-click access to a dashboard
that identifies students who are at risk of dropping out of the course due to low
engagement levels.
■ The Category Analysis Report details student performance relative to specific learning
objectives and goals, including APA learning goals and outcomes and levels of Bloom’s
taxonomy.
■ Connect Insight is a one-of-a-kind visual analytics dashboard—now available for both
instructors and students—that provides at-a-glance information regarding student
performance.
■ The LearnSmart Reports allow instructors and students to easily monitor progress and
pinpoint areas of weakness, giving each student a personalized study plan to achieve
success.
New to the Thirteenth Edition, Power of Process, now available
in McGraw-Hill Connect™, guides students through the process of critical
reading, analysis, and writing. Faculty can select or upload their own
content, such as journal articles, and assign analysis strategies to gain
insight into students’ application of the scientific method. For students,
Power of Process offers a guided visual approach to exercising critical
thinking strategies to apply before, during, and after reading published
research. Additionally, utilizing the relevant and engaging research
articles built into Power of Process, students are supported in becoming
critical consumers of research.
Concept Clips help students comprehend some of the most difficult ideas. Colorful
graphics and stimulating animations describe core concepts in a step-by-step manner,
engaging students and aiding in retention. Concept Clips can be used as a presentation tool
in the classroom or for student assessment.
New in the Thirteenth edition, Concept Clips are embedded in the ebook to offer an
alternative presentation of these challenging topics. New clips cover topics such as
attraction, mate selection, replication of research and learning gender roles.
Interactivities, assignable through Connect, engage students with content through
experiential activities.
Through the connection of psychology to students’ own lives, concepts become more
relevant and understandable. NewsFlash exercises tie current news stories to key
Preface xvii
psychological principles and learning objectives. After interacting with a contemporary news
story, students are assessed on their ability to make the link between real life and research
findings.
The Instructor Resources have been updated to reflect changes to the new edition.
These can be accessed by faculty through Connect. Resources include the test bank,
instructor’s manual, PowerPoint presentations, and image gallery.
Supporting Instructors with Technology
With McGraw-Hill Education, you can develop and tailor the course you want to teach.
Easily rearrange chapters, combine material from other
content sources, and quickly upload content you have written,
such as your course syllabus or teaching notes, using
McGraw-Hill Education’s Create. Find the content you need by searching through thousands
of leading McGraw-Hill Education textbooks. Arrange your book to fit your teaching style.
Create even allows you to personalize your book’s appearance by selecting the cover and
adding your name, school, and course information. Order a Create book, and you will receive
a complimentary print review copy in three to five business days or a complimentary
electronic review copy via email in about an hour. Experience how McGraw-Hill Education
empowers you to teach your students your way (http://create.mheducation.com).
Trusted Service and Support
McGraw-Hill Education’s Connect offers comprehensive service, support, and training
throughout every phase of your implementation. If you’re looking for some guidance on how
to use Connect, or want to learn tips and tricks from super users, you can find tutorials as you
work. Our Digital Faculty Consultants and Student Ambassadors offer insight into how to
achieve the results you want with Connect.
Integration with Your Learning Management System
McGraw-Hill integrates your digital products from McGraw-Hill Education with your school
LMS (learning management system) for quick and easy access to best-in-class content and
learning tools. Build an effective digital course, enroll students with ease and discover how
powerful digital teaching can be.
Available with Connect, integration is a pairing between an institution’s LMS and Connect
at the assignment level. It shares assignment information, grades and calendar items from
Connect into the LMS automatically, creating an easy to manage course for instructors and
simple navigation for students. Our assignment-level integration is available with Blackboard
Learn, Canvas by Instructure, and Brightspace by D2L, giving you access to registration,
attendance, assignments, grades, and course resources in real time, in one location.
Taking Sides: Clashing Views in Social Psychology
This debate-style reader both reinforces and challenges students’ viewpoints on the most
crucial issues in Social Psychology. Customize this title via McGraw-Hill Education Create®
(http://create.mheducation.com).
xviii Preface
Chapter-by-Chapter Changes
The research on social psychology is ever increasing. Not only does the Thirteenth Edition
incorporate the latest research and scholarship, it also reflects current social and cultural
trends. Below are listed the major additions and changes to the Thirteenth Edition:
Chapter 1 Introducing Social Psychology
■ Chapter reorganized to move from survey research to correlational research to
experimental research
■ New examples including social communication via texting and social media
■ New material on response rates in polling using the example of the 2016 U.S. presidential
election
■ Discussion of replication projects and open science archives
Chapter 2 The Self in a Social World
■ New studies and examples about social comparison on Facebook
■ Studies showing that individualism is on the rise globally
■ New studies on how narcissism develops and how it impacts leadership
■ New study and example of online “humblebragging” as a self-presentation strategy
■ Self-control research reports on when failures of self-control are most likely to appear and
when they are not, and how self-control exertion leading to self-control failure may be a
uniquely Western occurrence
Chapter 3 Social Beliefs and Judgments
■ Current research on partisanship leading to trust or distrust of the news media
■ New priming research with a new figure and a subliminal-exposure example
■ Example of how embodied cognition can be social and positive
■ New overconfidence research on how people can change their opinions
■ New confirmation bias research on “ideological echo chambers”
■ Updated statistics on transportation safety as related to the availability heuristic
■ New example about fake news as related to belief perseverance
Chapter 4 Behavior and Attitudes
■ Political example of the disconnect between stated attitudes and actual behavior
■ Research on what is necessary for an attitude to lead to behavior
■ Added research reporting on criticisms of the implicit association test (IAT)
Chapter 5 Genes, Culture, and Gender
■ Chapter reorganized to flow smoothly from genes to culture to gender without backtracking
■ New material on intersex conditions, gender fluidity, nonbinary identity, and transgender
individuals, including new examples
■ New material on distinguishing between average group differences and self-relevant information
■ Updated women’s graduate school attendance statistics
■ Updated statistics for housework hours
■ New figure displaying gender differences in pornography use
■ Updates and editing by Alice Eagly in the Inside Story feature
Preface xix
Chapter 6 Conformity and Obedience
■ Research study of brain activity after obedience
■ Additional example of suicide and gun violence as socially contagious
■ Discussion of a study on mass shootings showing social contagion
■ Social eating as an example of everyday conformity
■ New reporting on Milgram-experiment justification attempts by participants, and how
close relationships prevented conformity
■ Research on the differences in individualistic and collectivistic views of conformity
Chapter 7 Persuasion
■ Examples in chapter introduction of the spread of false beliefs and attitudes around
equality
■ Updated statistics on Americans’ views of global warming
■ Updated statistics on high school seniors’ alcohol consumption
■ Examples of reactions depending on the communicator
■ Research on Facebook users trusting or distrusting an article depending on who shared it
with them
■ Additional example of peripheral-route persuasion helping to persuade mothers to
vaccinate their children
■ Additional coverage of the persuasion value of graphic images
■ Research on the advantage of two-sided appeals
■ Political example of mere repetition creating misinformation and false beliefs
■ Expanded discussion of comparing media, and how persuasion works best by speaking in
person rather than writing
■ Discussion of a counterargument research study on healthy eating in a middle school
■ New discussion of attitude inoculation helping to counter “fake news”
Chapter 8 Group Influence
■ Added research study on social facilitation contributing to a soccer team’s home
advantage
■ Example of group polarization occurring when people believed many other viewers were
watching an online political speech
■ All new, updated material in Group Polarization and Politics section
■ New examples and discussion in Group Polarization on the Internet section
■ Research showing how groupthink can debilitate the individual self
Chapter 9 Prejudice
■ Research showing obesity at the root of much child bullying
■ Added example of prejudice in politics
■ Basketball example of stereotype generalizations sometimes being true
■ Example of how strong beliefs can exaggerate reality
■ Added discussion of criticisms of the Implicit Association Test (IAT)
■ Updated statistics on racial prejudice, hate crime incidents, and White nationalist views
■ Many new examples of favoritism in employment discrimination
■ New reporting on implicit-bias training for police and in the political arena
xx Preface
■ Research showing Americans supporting equal gender work roles while still believing in
differing gender traits
■ New reporting on hostile sexism and benevolent sexism
■ Studies showing faculty prefer female job candidates
■ Updated statistics on worldwide gender discrimination
■ Statistics from 23 countries on attitudes toward transgender individuals, and worldwide
anti-gay attitudes
■ Discussion and statistics on job discrimination against gays and transgender people
■ Updated U.S. statistics on support for gay marriage
■ Statistics on harassment of transgender people at school and on those evicted from their
family homes
■ Updated U.S. statistics on gay and lesbian teen and transgender suicide rates, with new
research showing fewer suicides in states where same-sex marriage has been legalized
■ Research showing how those who strongly support ethnic tolerance can display
intolerance and discrimination toward those who disagree with them
■ New section on hate speech and hate crimes
■ Study on how media may strengthen stereotypes, with focus on portrayals of Muslims
■ Research example of a door-to-door conversation technique reducing prejudice
■ Added research study showing that individuals differ in own-race bias
Chapter 10 Aggression
■ Updated U.S. crime statistics
■ Additional discussion about American mass shootings and mental illness
■ Analysis of studies confirming that alcohol consumption is associated with higher levels of
aggression especially among men
■ Updated U.S. statistics on violent crime and murder involving alcohol
■ New studies on testosterone and aggression
■ New studies with examples of relative deprivation
■ Added examples of aggressive cues related to anger
■ Added statistics on U.S. number of firearms and gun murders compared with other high-
income countries
■ Reporting on 130 studies across 10 countries showing laws restricting firearm sales
producing reductions in gun crimes
■ Study showing “right-to-carry” states experiencing more violent crime
■ Research showing the connection between sexually explicit/violent movie watching and
dating sexual violence; how pornography viewing makes people more likely to be
sexually aggressive
■ Experiment with children exposed to a PG movie either with guns or without guns and
how they later played with toy guns and a real, unloaded handgun
■ Updated U.S. statistics on number of video game players
■ Research showing evidence of the link between violent video games and aggression and
fewer prosocial acts
■ New example of catharsis where “rage rooms” are becoming popular
■ Research showing how aggressive behavior spreads in social groups through modeling
■ New examples of how to reduce aggression
Preface xxi
Chapter 11 Attraction and Intimacy
■ Research showing how mere exposure by reading can change attitudes
■ Study showing that too much exposure can have a negative effect
■ Discussion and research example about online dating sites using similarity as a basis for
matching
■ Studies showing how passionate love involves the same brain reward pathways as
addictions to substances
■ Research revealing how anxiously attached people can become anxiously attached to
their smartphones
■ Study revealing what relationship “deal-breakers” are for college students, with the
underlying issue being equity
■ New example from self-disclosure research on ways to feed intimacy by talking about
emotions and views
■ Research showing that couples report more relationship satisfaction when their partner
understands their perspective in a disagreement
■ Introduction of the evolutionary psychology term the “mate-ejection module”
Chapter 12 Helping
■ New research examples of how helping others aids a person to find meaning in life,
improves mood and physical health, and boosts the immune system
■ Research showing how “extraordinary altruists” have a larger-than-average amygdala
■ Study indicating that sunny days trigger more tips to taxi drivers
■ New example of how empathy-induced altruism can feed favoritism, injustice, and indifference
to the larger common good, and introduction of Batson’s strategy of “rational compassion”
■ New discussion about learning to assume responsibility through training programs
■ Research showing that the personality trait of agreeableness best predicts willingness to
help, and callous traits (psychopathy) predict less willingness to help
■ Added section on how status and social class affects altruism
■ Further example of helping and religious engagement
■ Example of a “dynamic norm” versus a “static norm”
Chapter 13 Conflict and Peacemaking
■ New example of Cape Town’s water-depletion emergency
■ Research showing how threats (terrorist bombings, pandemic disease) can increase
competition
■ New political polarization research in Mirror-Image Perceptions section
■ Newer studies show the correlation between contact and positive attitudes
■ Study showing that highlighting genetic differences between ethnic groups contributes to
violence risk, while learning about genetic similarities helps foster peace
■ Research showing that when at an impasse, simply going for a walk and experiencing
movement synchrony can help engender cooperation
Chapter 14 Social Psychology in the Clinic
■ Addition of a survey of practicing clinicians showing that none believed their performance
was below the 50th percentile
xxii Preface
■ Added meta-analysis showing there was only a weak correlation between clinicians’
confidence in their judgments and their accuracy
■ Research revealing that loneliness increases in later life, but is more emotionally painful in
earlier adulthood
■ Added statistics on Canadian, Australian, and European multiplication of one-person
households, and the appointment of a British “Minister for Loneliness”
■ Studies revealing that face-to-face interaction appears to better relieve loneliness than
electronic connection
■ Statistics on likelihood of premature death for people who are socially isolated, live alone,
or are lonely
■ Longitudinal study revealing that women living in poor neighborhoods were 39% more
likely to die of cancer than those in better-off areas
■ Study showing that with more U.S. income inequality come higher rates of death from
suicide and heart disease; other studies showing as U.S. income inequality continues to
rise, White Americans’ death rate during midlife increased but declined in countries with
less income discrepancy
■ Two studies finding that teens are happier when face-to-face with their friends, and those
who spent more time on Facebook felt less happy
Chapter 15 Social Psychology in Court
■ Study revealing that mistaken identification by confident witnesses is involved in nearly
3 out of 4 cases of innocent people exonerated by DNA evidence
■ New research on child witnesses
■ Research on better eyewitness accuracy when police follow certain procedures
■ Research showing “enhanced interrogation” techniques are ineffective
■ Study revealing mock jurors perceive sexual assault victims have more control over the
situation
■ Study on ratings of defendants through photographs predicted which defendants had
received the death penalty
■ New statistics and expanded discussion on the disparity between Black and White men’s
and juveniles’ sentences
Chapter 16 Social Psychology and the Sustainable Future
■ Updated statistics on rising temperatures with new atmospheric CO2 figure
■ Studies showing 2017 set record for the most billion+ dollar weather-related U.S. disasters,
U.S. daily tidal flooding is accelerating, insurance losses are rising, and worldwide deaths
increasing from weather disasters
■ Statistics on U.S. population’s views on the effects and causes of global warming
■ New discussion of journalistic “false balance”
■ Research on positive experiences bringing more happiness than material purchases
■ Commercial flying example of inequality
■ Discussion of the adaptation-level and social-comparison phenomena helping explain
rich people’s lesser generosity, compassion, and empathy
Preface xxiii
Acknowledgments
xxiv
Sarah Angulo, Texas State
University, San Marcos and
Round Rock
John Bickford, University of
Massachusetts, Amherst
Steve Charman, Florida
International University
Mary Dolan, California State
University, Chico
Steve Ellyson, California State
University, San Bernardino
Donna Garcia, California State
University, San Bernardino
Ethan Gologor, Medgar Evers
College, City University of
New York
Vincent Granito, Lorain County
Community College
Jeffery Gray, Charleston Southern
University
Kerth O’Brien, Portland State
University
Dylan Selterman, University of
Maryland, College Park
David Wilder, Rutgers University,
New Brunswick
Brandy Young, Cypress College
Hope College, Michigan, has been wonderfully supportive of these successive editions. Both the people and the
environment have helped make the gestation of Social Psychology a pleasure. At Hope College, poet Jack Ridl
helped shape the voice you will hear in these pages. And Kathryn Brownson did online research, proofed and
edited the manuscript and art, helped select photos, and managed the work flow.
At San Diego State, colleagues including David Armor, Jeff Bryson, Thierry Devos, David Marx, Radmila
Prislin, and Dustin Thoman shared their knowledge of teaching social psychology. Social psychology friends and
co-authors also provided insight, including W. Keith Campbell, Julie Exline, Benita Jackson, Tim Kasser, Sonja
Lyubomirsky, and Kathleen Vohs.
At McGraw-Hill, senior portfolio manager Nancy Welcher envisioned this new edition and supported its author
team. Dawn Groundwater commissioned and oversaw its creation. With diligence and sensitivity, our editor and
“product developer” Marion Castellucci guided, cajoled, and deftly edited this new edition. Peter de Lissovoy fine-
tuned the final manuscript. Sandy Wille coordinated the transformation of our manuscript into your finished book.
After hearing countless dozens of people say that this book’s supplements have taken their teaching to a new
level, we also pay tribute to the late Martin Bolt (Calvin College), for pioneering the extensive instructor’s
resources with their countless ready-to-use demonstration activities, and then to Jon Mueller (North Central
College) as author of the instructor’s resources for the eighth through tenth editions. We extend our thanks to
Diane Willard (Iowa Central Community College) for updating and extending these resources, and to the faculty
contributing to the instructor resources in this edition. To all in this supporting cast, we are indebted. Working with
all these people has made the creation of this book a stimulating, gratifying experience.
David G. Myers
davidmyers.org
Jean M. Twenge
jeantwenge.com
Although only two names appear on this book’s cover, the truth is that a whole community of scholars have
invested themselves in it. Although none of these people should be held responsible for what we have written—nor
do any of them necessarily agree with everything said—their suggestions made this a better book than it could
otherwise have been.
This new edition still retains many of the improvements contributed by the dozens of consultants and reviewers
who assisted with the first twelve editions, and now we extend our thanks to these esteemed colleagues who
contributed their wisdom and guidance for this new edition:
C H A P T E R
1
What is social
psychology?
What are social
psychology’s big
ideas?
How do human
values influence
social psychology?
I knew it all along: Is
social psychology
simply common
sense?
Research methods:
How do we do social
psychology?
Postscript: Why we
wrote this book
Introducing Social
Psychology
©Lifesize/Getty Images
There once was a man whose second wife was a vain and selfish woman. This woman’s two daughters were similarly vain and selfish. The man’s own daughter,
however, was meek and unselfish. This sweet, kind daughter, whom we all know as
Cinderella, learned early on that she should do as she was told, accept poor treatment
and insults, and avoid doing anything to upstage her stepsisters and their mother.
But then, thanks to her fairy godmother, Cinderella was able to escape her situ-
ation for an evening and attend a grand ball, where she attracted the attention of
a handsome prince. When the love-struck prince later encountered Cinderella back
in her degrading home, he failed to recognize her.
Does this seem hard to believe? The folktale demands that we accept the power
of the situation. In the presence of her oppressive stepmother, Cinderella was humble
and unattractive. At the ball, Cinderella felt more beautiful—and walked and talked
and smiled as if she were. In one situation, she cowered. In the other, she charmed.
The French philosopher-novelist Jean-Paul Sartre (1946) would have had no problem
accepting the Cinderella premise. We humans are “first of all beings in a situation,” he
wrote. “We cannot be distinguished from our situations, for they form us and decide
our possibilities” (pp. 59–60, paraphrased).
2 Chapter 1 Introducing Social Psychology
WHAT IS SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY?
Define social psychology and explain what it does.
Social psychology is a science that studies how situations influence us, with special attention
to how people view and affect one another. More precisely, it is the scientific study of how
people think about, influence, and relate to one another (Figure 1).
Social psychology lies at psychology’s boundary with sociology. Compared with sociol-
ogy (the study of people in groups and societies), social psychology focuses more on
individuals and performs more experiments. Compared with personality psychology, social
psychology focuses less on differences among individuals and more on how people, in
general, view and affect one another.
Social psychology is a young science. The first social psychology experiments were
reported a little more than a century ago, and the first social psychology textbooks did not
appear until approximately 1900 (Smith, 2005). Not until the 1930s did social psychology
assume its current form. Not until World War II did it begin to emerge as the vibrant field
it is today. And not until the 1970s and beyond did social psychology enjoy accelerating
growth in Asia—first in India, then in Hong Kong and Japan, and, recently, in China and
Taiwan (Haslam & Kashima, 2010).
Social psychology studies our thinking, influences, and relationships by asking questions
that have intrigued us all. Here are some examples:
▯ Does our social behavior depend more on the situations we face or on how we construe
them? Our construals matter. Social beliefs can be self-fulfilling. For example, hap-
pily married people will attribute their spouse’s acid remark (“Can’t you ever put
that where it belongs?”) to something external (“He must have had a frustrating
day”). Unhappily married people will attribute the same remark to a mean disposi-
tion (“Geesh, what a hostile person!”) and may respond with a counterattack.
Moreover, expecting hostility from their spouse, they may behave resentfully,
thereby eliciting the hostility they expect.
▯ Would people be cruel if ordered? How did Nazi Germany conceive and implement
the unconscionable slaughter of 6 million Jews? Those evil acts occurred partly
because thousands of people followed orders. They put the prisoners on trains,
Social psychology is the
scientific study of . . .
Social relations
• Prejudice
• Aggression
• Attraction and intimacy
• Helping
Social influence
• Culture
• Pressures to conform
• Persuasion
• Groups of people
Social thinking
• How we perceive
ourselves and others
• What we believe
• Judgments we make
• Our attitudes
FIGURE 1
Social Psychology Is . . .
social psychology
The scientific study of how
people think about, influence,
and relate to one another.
Throughout this book, sources
for information are cited
parenthetically. The complete
source is provided in the
reference section.
Introducing Social Psychology Chapter 1 3
herded them into crowded “showers,” and poisoned them with gas. How could
people engage in such horrific actions? Were those individuals normal human
beings? Stanley Milgram (1974) wondered. So he set up a situation in which peo-
ple were ordered to administer increasing levels of electric shock to someone who
was having difficulty learning a series of words. Nearly two-thirds of the partici-
pants fully complied.
▯ To help? Or to help oneself? As bags of cash tumbled from an armored truck one
fall day, $2 million was scattered along a Columbus, Ohio, street. Some motorists
stopped to help, returning $100,000. Judging from the $1,900,000 that disap-
peared, many more stopped to help themselves. (What would you have done?)
When similar incidents occurred several months later in San Francisco and
Toronto, the results were the same: Passersby grabbed most of the money (Bowen,
1988). What situations trigger people to be helpful or greedy? Do some cultural
contexts—perhaps villages and small towns—breed less “diffusion of responsibility”
and greater helpfulness?
These questions focus on how people view and affect one another. And that is what
social psychology is all about. Social psychologists study attitudes and beliefs, conformity
and independence, love and hate.
WHAT ARE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY’S
BIG IDEAS?
Identify and describe the central concepts behind
social psychology.
In many academic fields, the results of tens of thousands of studies, the conclusions of
thousands of investigators, and the insights of hundreds of theorists can be boiled down to
a few central ideas. Biology offers us natural selection and adaptation. Sociology builds on
concepts such as social structure and organization. Music harnesses our ideas of rhythm,
melody, and harmony.
Similarly, social psychology builds on a short list of fundamental principles that will
be worth remembering long after you forget the details. Our short list of “great ideas we
ought never to forget” includes these (Figure 2), each of which we will explore further in
chapters to come.
We Construct Our Social Reality
People have an irresistible urge to explain behavior. We want to attribute behavior to a
cause, and therefore make it seem orderly, predictable, and controllable. You and I may
react differently to a situation because we think differently. How we react to a friend’s insult
depends on whether we attribute it to hostility or to a bad day.
A Princeton–Dartmouth football game famously demonstrated how we construct reality
(Loy & Andrews, 1981). The game lived up to its billing as a grudge match; it was rough
and dirty. A Princeton All-American was gang-tackled, piled on, and finally forced out of
the game with a broken nose. Fistfights erupted, with injuries on both sides. The game
hardly fit the Ivy League image of gentility.
Not long afterward, two psychologists, one from each school, showed game films to
students on each campus. The students played the role of scientist–observer, noting each
infraction as they watched and who was responsible for it. But they could not set aside
their loyalties. The Princeton students, for example, saw twice as many Dartmouth viola-
tions as the Dartmouth students saw. A recent study found the same for political views:
People who disagreed with the views of protesters were much more likely to describe them
as “blocking access” to a building or “screaming” at those going in (Kahan et al., 2012).
Reprinted with permission of Jason Love
at www.jasonlove.com
Tired of looking at the stars,
Professor Mueller takes up
social psychology.
4 Chapter 1 Introducing Social Psychology
The conclusion: There is an objective reality out there, but we always view it through the
lens of our beliefs and values.
We are all intuitive scientists. We explain people’s behavior, usually with enough speed
and accuracy to suit our daily needs. When someone’s behavior is consistent and distinctive,
we attribute that behavior to her personality. For example, if you observe someone making
repeated snide comments, you may infer that she has a nasty disposition, and then you
might try to avoid her.
Your beliefs about yourself also matter. Do you have an optimistic outlook? Do you see your-
self as in control of things? Do you view yourself as relatively superior or inferior? Your answers
influence your emotions and actions. How we construe the world, and ourselves, matters.
Our Social Intuitions Are Often Powerful but
Sometimes Perilous
Our instant intuitions shape fears (Is flying dangerous?), impressions (Can I trust him?),
and relationships (Does he like me?). Intuitions influence presidents in times of crisis,
gamblers at the table, jurors assessing guilt, and personnel directors screening applicants.
Such intuitions are commonplace.
Indeed, psychological science reveals a fascinating unconscious mind—an intuitive back-
stage mind—that Freud never told us about. More than psychologists realized until recently,
thinking occurs offstage, out of sight. Our intuitive capacities are revealed by studies of
what later chapters will explain: “automatic processing,” “implicit memory,” “heuristics,”
instant emotions, and nonverbal communication. We think on two levels—“intuitive” and
“deliberate” (Kruglanski & Gigerenzer, 2011)—some call these “System 1” and “System 2.”
A book title by Nobel laureate psychologist Daniel Kahneman (2011) captures the idea:
We do Thinking, Fast and Slow.
Intuition is huge, but intuition is also perilous. For example, as we cruise through life,
mostly on automatic pilot, we intuitively judge the likelihood of events by how easily they
come to mind. We carry readily available mental images of plane crashes. Thus, most people
fear flying more than driving, and many will drive great distances to avoid risking the skies.
Actually, we are, mile per mile, 86 times safer on a commercial flight than in a car, reports
the National Safety Council (2017).
Applying social psych
olo
gy
Social relations
Social thinking
Social influence
s
Some
Big Ideas in Social Psychology
1. We construct our social
reality
2. Our social intuitions are
powerful, sometimes perilous
3. Attitudes shape, and are
shaped by, behavior
6. Social behavior is also
biological behavior
7. Feelings and actions toward
people are sometimes
negative (prejudiced,
aggressive) and sometimes
positive (helpful, loving)
4. Social influences shape
behavior
5. Dispositions shape
behavior
Social psychology’s
principles are applicable
to everyday life
FIGURE 2
Some Big Ideas in
Social Psychology
Introducing Social Psychology Chapter 1 5
Even our intuitions about ourselves often err. We intuitively trust our memories more
than we should. We misread our own minds; in experiments, we deny being affected by
things that do influence us. We mispredict our own feelings—how bad we’ll feel a year from
now if we lose our job or our romance breaks up, and how good we’ll feel a year from now,
or even a week from now, if we win our state’s lottery. And we often mispredict our own
future. When selecting clothes, people approaching middle age will still buy snug (“I antici-
pate shedding a few pounds”); rarely does anyone say, more realistically, “I’d better buy a
relatively loose fit; people my age tend to put on pounds.”
Our social intuitions, then, are noteworthy for both their powers and their perils.
By identifying our intuition’s gifts and pitfalls, social psychologists aim to fortify our
thinking. In most situations, “fast and frugal” snap judgments serve us well. But in
others, in which accuracy matters—such as when needing to fear the right things and
spend our resources wisely—we had best restrain our impulsive intuitions with critical
thinking. Our intuitions and unconscious information processing are routinely powerful and
sometimes perilous.
Social Influences Shape Our Behavior
We are, as Aristotle long ago observed, social animals. We speak and think in words we
learned from others. We long to connect, to belong, and to be well thought of. In one study,
University of Texas students wore recording devices that periodically listened in on their
lives. Even on weekdays, almost 30% of the students’ time was spent talking to other people
(Mehl & Pennebaker, 2003). Facebook has 2 billion users around the world, and the aver-
age 18-year-old in the U.S. spends two hours a day sending texts (Twenge, 2017). Relation-
ships are a big part of being human.
As social creatures, we respond to our immediate contexts. Sometimes the power of
a social situation leads us to act contrary to our expressed attitudes. Indeed, powerfully
evil situations sometimes overwhelm good intentions, inducing people to accept false-
hoods or comply with cruelty. Under Nazi inf luence, many decent people became instru-
ments of the Holocaust. Other situations may elicit great generosity and compassion.
After major natural disasters, such as the hurricanes that hit Houston, Florida, and
Puerto Rico in 2017, affected regions are often overwhelmed with donated items and
offers of assistance.
The power of the situation also appears in widely different views of same-sex relation-
ships. Tell us whether you live in Africa or the Middle East (where people overwhelmingly
oppose such relationships) or in western Europe, Canada, the U.S., or Australia/New
Zealand (where most support them), and we will guess your attitude. We will become even
more confident in our guess if we know your educational level, the age of your peer group,
and the media you watch. Our situations matter.
Our culture helps define our situations. For example, our standards regarding prompt-
ness, openness, and clothing vary with our culture.
• Whether you prefer a slim or a voluptuous body depends on when and where in
the world you live.
• Whether you define social justice as equality (all receive the same) or as equity
(those who earn more receive more) depends on whether your ideology has been
shaped more by socialism or by capitalism.
• Whether you are expressive or reserved, casual or formal, hinges partly on your cul-
ture and your ethnicity.
• Whether you focus primarily on yourself—your personal needs, desires, and morality—
or on your family, clan, and communal groups depends on how much you are a
product of modern Western individualism.
Social psychologist Hazel Markus (2005) sums it up: “People are, above all, malleable.”
Said differently, we adapt to our social context. Our attitudes and behavior are shaped by
external social forces.
6 Chapter 1 Introducing Social Psychology
Personal Attitudes and Dispositions
Also Shape Behavior
Internal forces also matter. We are not passive tumbleweeds, merely blown this way and
that by the social winds. Our inner attitudes affect our outer behavior. Our political attitudes
influence our voting behavior. Our attitudes toward alcohol influence our susceptibility to
peer pressure to drink alcohol. Our attitudes toward the poor influence our willingness to
help them. (Our attitudes also follow our behavior, which means we often believe strongly
in what we have committed ourselves to or suffered for.)
Personality dispositions also affect behavior. Facing the same situation, different people
may react differently. Emerging from years of political imprisonment, one person exudes
bitterness and seeks revenge. Another, such as South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, seeks recon-
ciliation and unity with his former enemies. Attitudes and personality influence behavior.
Social Behavior Is Biologically Rooted
Twenty-first-century social psychology provides us with ever-growing insights into our behav-
ior’s biological foundations. Many of our social behaviors reflect a deep biological wisdom.
Everyone who has taken introductory psychology has learned that nature and nurture
together form who we are. Just as the area of a rectangle is determined by both its length
and its width, biology and experience both shape us. As evolutionary psychologists remind us,
our inherited human nature predisposes us to behave in ways that helped our ancestors survive
and reproduce. We carry the genes of those whose traits enabled them to survive and repro-
duce. Our behavior, too, aims to send our DNA into the future. Thus, evolutionary psycholo-
gists ask how natural selection might shape our actions when dating and mating, hating and
hurting, caring and sharing. Nature also endows us with an enormous capacity to learn and
to adapt to varied environments. We are sensitive and responsive to our social context.
If every psychological event (every thought, every emotion, every behavior) is simultane-
ously a biological event, then we can also examine the neurobiology that underlies social
behavior. What brain areas enable our experiences of love and contempt, helping and
aggression, perception and belief? Do people who are shy (vs. more socially secure) react
differently seeing a friendly face? How do brain, mind, and behavior function together as
one coordinated system? What does the timing of brain events reveal about how we process
information? Such questions are asked by those in social neuroscience (Cacioppo &
Cacioppo, 2013; Cikara & Van Bavel, 2014).
Social neuroscientists do not reduce complex
social behaviors, such as helping and hurting, to
simple neural or molecular mechanisms. Each sci-
ence builds upon the principles of more basic sci-
ences (sociology builds on psychology, which builds
on biology, which builds on chemistry, which builds
on physics, which builds on math). Yet each disci-
pline also introduces new principles not predicted by
the more basic sciences (Eisenberg, 2014). Thus, to
understand social behavior, we must consider both
under-the-skin (biological) and between-skins (social)
influences. Mind and body are one grand system.
Hormones affect how we feel and act: A dose of tes-
tosterone decreases trust, and a dose of oxytocin
increases it (Bos et al., 2010). Feeling left out elevates
blood pressure. Social support strengthens the dis-
ease-fighting immune system. We are bio-psycho-social
organisms. We reflect the interplay of our biological,
psychological, and social inf luences. That is why
today’s psychologists study behavior from these dif-
ferent levels of analysis.
social neuroscience
An interdisciplinary field that
explores the neural bases of
social and emotional processes
and behaviors, and how these
processes and behaviors affect
our brain and biology.
Social support and love impact both the mind and the body, leading social
psychologists to consider bio-psycho-social effects.
©Cade Martin/UpperCut Images/Getty Images
Introducing Social Psychology Chapter 1 7
Social Psychology’s Principles Are Applicable in
Everyday Life
Social psychology has the potential to illuminate your life, to make visible the subtle influences
that guide your thinking and acting. It also offers many ideas about how to know yourself better,
how to win friends and influence people, and how to transform closed fists into open arms.
Scholars are also applying social psychological insights. Principles of social thinking,
social influence, and social relations have implications for human health and well-being,
for judicial procedures and juror decisions in courtrooms, and for influencing behaviors
that will enable an environmentally sustainable human future.
As but one perspective on human existence, psychological science does not answer life’s
ultimate questions: What is the meaning of human life? What should be our purpose? What
is our ultimate destiny? But social psychology does give us a method for asking and answer-
ing some exceedingly interesting and important questions. Social psychology is all about
life—your life: your beliefs, your attitudes, your relationships.
The rest of this chapter takes us inside social psychology. Let’s first consider how social
psychologists’ own values influence their work in obvious and subtle ways. And then let’s
focus on this chapter’s biggest task: glimpsing how we do social psychology. How do social
psychologists search for explanations of social thinking, social influence, and social rela-
tions? And how might we use these analytical tools to think smarter?
Throughout this book, a brief
summary will conclude each
major section. We hope these
summaries will help you assess
how well you have learned the
material in each section.
Social psychology is the scientific study of how people think
about, influence, and relate to one another. Its central
themes include the following:
▯ How we construe our social worlds.
▯ How our social intuitions guide and sometimes
deceive us.
▯ How our social behavior is shaped by other people, by
our attitudes and personalities, and by our biology.
▯ How social psychology’s principles apply to our every-
day lives and to various other fields of study.
What Are Social Psychology’s Big Ideas?SUMMING UP:
HOW DO HUMAN VALUES
INFLUENCE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY?
Identify the ways that values penetrate the work of
social psychologists.
Social psychology is not just a collection of findings—it’s also a set of strategies for answer-
ing questions. In science, as in courts of law, personal opinions are inadmissible. When
ideas are put on trial, evidence determines the verdict.
But are social psychologists really that objective? Because they are human beings, don’t
their values—their personal convictions about what is desirable and how people ought to
behave—seep into their work? If so, can social psychology really be scientific?
There are two general ways that values enter psychology: the obvious and the subtle.
Obvious Ways Values Enter Psychology
Values enter the picture when social psychologists choose research topics. These choices
often reflect current events (Kagan, 2009). Not surprisingly, the study of prejudice flour-
ished during the 1940s as fascism raged in Europe; the 1950s, a time of look-alike fashions
and intolerance of differing views, gave us studies of conformity; the 1960s, with its riots
8 Chapter 1 Introducing Social Psychology
and rising crime rates, inspired interest in aggression;
the feminist movement of the 1970s helped stimulate
a wave of research on gender and sexism; and recent
decades have witnessed heightened interest in culture,
race, and sexual orientation. Susan Fiske (2011a) sug-
gests that we can expect future research to reflect
today’s and tomorrow’s issues, including immigration,
gender fluidity, income inequality, and aging.
Values influence research topics not only across time
but also across cultures. In Europe, people take pride in
their nationalities. The Scots are more self-consciously
distinct from the English, and the Austrians from the
Germans, than are similarly adjacent Michiganders from
Ohioans. Consequently, Europe has given us a major
theory of “social identity.” In contrast, American social
psychologists have focused more on individuals—how
one person thinks about others, is influenced by them,
and relates to them (Fiske, 2004; Tajfel, 1981; Turner, 1984). Australian social psychologists
have drawn theories and methods from both Europe and North America (Feather, 2005).
Values also influence the types of people who are attracted to various disciplines
( Campbell, 1975a; Moynihan, 1979). At your school, do the students majoring in the
humanities (like art) seem different from those majoring in the natural sciences (like
physics)? For example, social psychology and sociology may attract people who are eager
to challenge tradition and more inclined to shape the future than preserve the past (Pren-
tice, 2012). Studying social science might also enhance such beliefs (Dambrun et al., 2009;
Inbar & Lammers, 2012). Such factors explain why, when psychologist Jonathan Haidt
(2011) asked approximately 1,000 social psychologists at a national convention about their
politics, 80 to 90% raised their hands to indicate they were “liberal.” When he asked for
those who were “conservative,” only three hands went up. (Be assured that most topics
covered in this text—from “How do our attitudes influence our behavior?” to “Does TV
violence influence aggressive behavior?”—are not partisan.)
Finally, values obviously enter the picture as the object of social psychological analysis.
Social psychologists investigate how values form, why they change, and how they influence
attitudes and actions. None of that, however, tells us which values are “right.”
Not-So-Obvious Ways Values Enter Psychology
It is more difficult to recognize the subtle ways values can masquerade as objective truth.
Consider three not-so-obvious ways values enter psychology.
THE SUBJECTIVE ASPECTS OF SCIENCE
Scientists and philosophers agree: Science is not purely objective. Scientists do not simply
read the book of nature. Rather, they interpret nature, using their own mental categories.
Our numbers do not speak for themselves. We interpret them.
In our daily lives, too, we view the world through the lens of our preconceptions.
Whether you see a moving light in the sky as a flying saucer or not depends on your per-
ceptions. While reading these words, you have been unaware that you are also looking at
your nose. Your mind blocks from awareness something that is there, if only you were
predisposed to perceive it. This tendency to prejudge reality based on our expectations is
a basic fact about the human mind.
Because scholars in any given area often share a common viewpoint and come from the
same culture, their assumptions may go unchallenged. The beliefs we take for granted—known
as social representations (Moscovici, 1988, 2001; Rateau et al., 2012)—are often our most
important yet least questioned convictions. Sometimes, however, someone from outside the
camp will call attention to those assumptions. During the 1980s, feminists and Marxists
exposed some of social psychology’s unexamined assumptions. Feminist critics called attention
“Science does not simply
describe and explain nature;
it is part of the interplay
between nature and our-
selves; it describes nature as
exposed to our method of
questioning.”
—Werner Heisenberg,
Physics and Philosophy, 1958
culture
The enduring behaviors, ideas,
attitudes, and traditions shared
by a large group of people and
transmitted from one generation
to the next.
social representations
A society’s widely held ideas
and values, including
assumptions and cultural
ideologies. Our social
representations help us make
sense of our world.
Social events influence social psychologists’ interests. In response to today’s
social issues, will immigration, aging, inequality, and racial polarization be
prominent research topics in tomorrow’s social psychology?
©Ariel Skelley/Blend Images/Getty Images
Introducing Social Psychology Chapter 1 9
to subtle biases—for example, the political conservatism of some scientists who favored a bio-
logical interpretation of gender differences in social behavior (Unger, 1985). Marxist critics
called attention to competitive, individualist biases—for example, the assumption that confor-
mity is bad and that individual rewards are good. Marxists and feminists, of course, make their
own assumptions, as critics of academic “political correctness” are fond of noting. Social
psychologist Lee Jussim (2005, 2012), for example, argues that progressive social psychologists
sometimes subtly discriminate against conservative views, such as by denying group differences
and assuming that stereotypes of group difference are never rooted in reality.
In the chapter on “Social Beliefs and Judgments,” we discuss more ways in which our pre-
conceptions guide our interpretations. As those Princeton and Dartmouth football fans remind
us, what guides our behavior is less the situation-as-it-is than the situation-as-we-construe-it.
PSYCHOLOGICAL CONCEPTS CONTAIN HIDDEN VALUES
Implicit in our understanding that psychology is not objective is the realization that psy-
chologists’ own values may play an important part in the theories and judgments they
support. Psychologists may refer to people as mature or immature, as well adjusted or poorly
adjusted, as mentally healthy or mentally ill. They may talk as if they were stating facts,
when they are really making value judgments. The following are examples.
DEFINING THE GOOD LIFE Values influence our idea of how best to live. The person-
ality psychologist Abraham Maslow, for example, was known for his sensitive descriptions
of “self-actualized” people—people who, with their needs for survival, safety, belonging, and
self-esteem satisfied, go on to fulfill their human potential. He described, among other
individuals, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Eleanor Roosevelt. Few readers
noticed that Maslow, guided by his own values, selected his sample of self-actualized people
himself. The resulting description of self-actualized personalities—as spontaneous, autono-
mous, mystical, and so forth—reflected Maslow’s personal values. Had he begun with some-
one else’s heroes—say, Napoleon, Alexander the Great, and John D. Rockefeller—his
resulting description of self-actualization might have been different (Smith, 1978).
PROFESSIONAL ADVICE Psychological advice also reflects the advice giver’s personal
values. When mental health professionals advise us how to get along with our spouse or our
co-workers, when child-rearing experts tell us how to handle our children, and when some
psychologists advocate living free of concern for others’ expectations, they are expressing
their personal values. (In Western cultures, those values usually will be individualistic—
encouraging what feels best for “me.” Non-Western cultures more often encourage what is
best for “we.”) Unaware of those hidden values, many people defer to the “professional.”
But professional psychologists cannot answer questions of ultimate moral obligation, of pur-
pose and direction, and of life’s meaning.
FORMING CONCEPTS Hidden values even seep into psychology’s research-based concepts.
Pretend you have taken a personality test and the psychologist, after scoring your answers,
announces: “You scored high in self-esteem. You are low in anxiety. And you have exceptional
ego-strength.” “Ah,” you think, “I suspected as much, but it feels good to know that.” Now
another psychologist gives you a similar test, which asks some of the same questions. After-
ward, the psychologist informs you that you seem defensive, for you scored high in “repres-
sive coping.” “How could this be?” you wonder. “The other psychologist said such nice things
about me.” Actually, the labels used by both psychologists describe the same set of responses—
a tendency to believe nice things about oneself and to not acknowledge problems. Shall we
call it high self-esteem or defensiveness? The label reflects the judgment.
LABELING Value judgments, then, are often hidden within our social psychological
language—but that is also true of everyday language:
▯ Whether we label a quiet child as “bashful” or “cautious,” as “holding back” or as
“an observer,” conveys a judgment.
▯ Whether we label someone engaged in guerrilla warfare a “terrorist” or a “freedom
fighter” depends on our view of the cause.
Hidden (and not-so-hidden) val-
ues seep into psychological ad-
vice. They permeate popular
psychology books that offer
guidance on living and loving.
Courtesy of Kathryn Brownson
10 Chapter 1 Introducing Social Psychology
▯ Whether we view the deaths of civilians as “the loss of innocent lives” or as “col-
lateral damage” affects our acceptance of the death toll.
▯ Whether we call information “propaganda” or “education” depends on our opinions.
▯ Whether we call public assistance “welfare” or “aid to the needy” reflects our polit-
ical views.
▯ When “they” exalt their country and people, it is nationalism; when “we” do it, it
is patriotism.
▯ Whether someone involved in an extramarital affair is practicing “open marriage”
or “adultery” depends on our personal values.
▯ “Brainwashing” is social influence we do not approve of.
▯ “Perversions” are sex acts we do not practice.
As these examples indicate, values lie hidden within our cultural definitions of mental
health, our psychological advice for living, our concepts, and our psychological labels. Through-
out this book, we call your attention to additional examples of hidden values. These implicit
values are not necessarily bad, but scientific interpretation is a human activity. It is therefore
inevitable that prior beliefs and values will influence what social psychologists think and write.
Should we dismiss science because it has its subjective side? Quite the contrary: The
realization that human thinking always involves interpretation is precisely why we need
researchers with varying biases to undertake scientific analysis, and why we need scientific
analysis rather than limited personal observation in the first place. By constantly checking
our beliefs against the facts, we restrain our biases. Systematic observation and experimenta-
tion help us clean the lens through which we see reality.
▯ Social psychologists’ values penetrate their work in
obvious ways, such as their choice of research topics
and the types of people who are attracted to various
fields of study.
▯ They also do this in subtler ways, such as their hidden
assumptions when forming concepts, choosing labels,
and giving advice.
▯ This penetration of values into science is not a reason
to fault social psychology or any other science. Human
thinking is seldom dispassionate, which is precisely
why we need systematic observation and experimenta-
tion if we are to check our cherished ideas against
reality.
SUMMING UP: How Do Human Values Influence
Social Psychology?
I KNEW IT ALL ALONG: IS SOCIAL
PSYCHOLOGY SIMPLY COMMON
SENSE?
Explore how social psychology’s theories provide new
insight into the human condition.
Social psychological phenomena are all around you—thus, many of the conclusions presented
in this book may already have occurred to you. We constantly observe people thinking about,
influencing, and relating to one another. It pays to discern what a facial expression predicts,
how to get someone to do something, or whether to regard someone as friend or foe. For cen-
turies, philosophers, novelists, and poets have observed and commented on social behavior.
Does this mean that social psychology is just common sense in fancy words? Social psychol-
ogy faces two contradictory criticisms: first, that it is trivial because it documents the obvious;
second, that it is dangerous because its findings could be used to manipulate people.
Introducing Social Psychology Chapter 1 11
In the “Persuasion” chapter we explore the second criticism. Here, let’s examine the first
objection.
Do social psychology and the other social sciences simply formalize what any amateur
already knows intuitively? Writer Cullen Murphy (1990) took that view: “Day after day
social scientists go out into the world. Day after day they discover that people’s behavior
is pretty much what you’d expect.” Nearly a half-century earlier, historian Arthur Schlesinger,
Jr. (1949) reacted with similar scorn to social scientists’ studies of American World War
II soldiers. Sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld (1949) reviewed those studies and offered a sample
with interpretive comments:
1. Better-educated soldiers adjusted less easily than did less-educated soldiers. (Intel-
lectuals were less prepared for battle stresses than were street-smart people.)
2. Southern soldiers coped better with the hot South Sea Island climate than did
Northern soldiers. (Southerners are more accustomed to hot weather.)
3. White low-ranking soldiers were more eager for promotion than were Black low-
ranking soldiers. (Years of oppression take a toll on achievement motivation.)
4. Southern Blacks preferred Southern to Northern White officers. (Southern officers
were more experienced and skilled in interacting with Blacks.)
As you read those findings, did you agree that they were basically common sense? If so,
you may be surprised to learn that Lazarsfeld went on to say, “Every one of these statements
is the direct opposite of what was actually found.” In reality, the studies found that less-
educated soldiers adapted more poorly. Southerners were not more likely than northerners
to adjust to a tropical climate. Blacks were more eager than Whites for promotion, and so
forth. “If we had mentioned the actual results of the investigation first [as Schlesinger
experienced], the reader would have labeled these ‘obvious’ also.”
One problem with common sense is that we invoke it after we know the facts. Events are
far more “obvious” and predictable in hindsight than beforehand. When people learn the
outcome of an experiment, that outcome suddenly seems unsurprising—much less surprising
than it is to people who are simply told about the experimental procedure and the possible
outcomes (Slovic & Fischhoff, 1977). After more than 800 investigations of this tendency
to retrofit our prior expectations, hindsight bias (also called the I-knew-it-all-along phenome-
non) has become one of psychology’s best-established phenomena (Roese & Vohs, 2012).
Likewise, in everyday life we often do not expect something to happen until it does. Then
we suddenly see clearly the forces that brought the event about and feel unsurprised. Moreover,
we may also misremember our earlier view (Blank et al., 2008; Nestler et al., 2010). Errors in
judging the future’s foreseeability and in remembering our past combine to create hindsight bias.
Thus, after elections or stock market shifts, most commentators find the turn of events
unsurprising: “The market was due for a correction.” “2016 was a ‘change election,’ so it
makes sense that Donald Trump won.” As the Danish philosopher–theologian Søren
Kierkegaard put it, “Life is lived forwards, but understood backwards.”
If hindsight bias is pervasive, you may now be feeling that you already knew about this
phenomenon. Indeed, almost any conceivable result of a psychological experiment can seem
like common sense—after you know the result.
You can demonstrate the phenomenon yourself. Take a group of people and tell half of
them one psychological finding and the other half the opposite result. For example, tell
half as follows:
Social psychologists have found that, whether choosing friends or falling in love, we are most
attracted to people whose traits are different from our own. There seems to be wisdom in the
old saying “Opposites attract.”
Tell the other half:
Social psychologists have found that, whether choosing friends or falling in love, we are most
attracted to people whose traits are similar to our own. There seems to be wisdom in the old
saying “Birds of a feather flock together.”
Ask the people first to explain the result. Then ask them to say whether it is “surprising”
or “not surprising.” Virtually all will find a good explanation for whichever result they were
given and will say it is “not surprising.”
hindsight bias
The tendency to exaggerate,
after learning an outcome, one’s
ability to have foreseen how
something turned out. Also
known as the I-knew-it-all-along
phenomenon.
12 Chapter 1 Introducing Social Psychology
Indeed, we can draw on our stockpile of proverbs to make
almost any result seem to make sense. If a social psychologist
reports that separation intensifies romantic attraction, John Q. Public
responds, “You get paid for this? Everybody knows that ‘absence
makes the heart grow fonder.’” Should it turn out that separation
weakens attraction, John will say, “My grandmother could have told
you, ‘Out of sight, out of mind.’”
Karl Teigen (1986) must have had a few chuckles when he asked
University of Leicester students to evaluate actual proverbs and their
opposites. When given the proverb “Fear is stronger than love,” most
rated it as true. But so did students who were given its reversed
form, “Love is stronger than fear.” Likewise, the genuine proverb
“He that is fallen cannot help him who is down” was rated highly;
but so too was “He that is fallen can help him who is down.” Our
favorites, however, were two highly rated proverbs: “Wise men make
proverbs and fools repeat them” (authentic) and its made-up coun-
terpart, “Fools make proverbs and wise men repeat them.” For more
dueling proverbs, see “Focus On: I Knew It All Along.”
Hindsight bias creates a problem for many psychology students.
Sometimes results are genuinely surprising (for example, that Olympic
bronze medalists take more joy in their achievement than do silver med-
alists). More often, when you read the results of experiments in your textbooks, the material
seems easy, even obvious. When you later take a multiple-choice test on which you must choose
among several plausible conclusions, the task may become surprisingly difficult. “I don’t know
what happened,” the befuddled student later moans. “I thought I knew the material.”
The I-knew-it-all-along phenomenon can have unfortunate consequences. It is conducive
to arrogance—an overestimation of our own intellectual powers. Moreover, because out-
comes seem like they should have been predictable, we are more likely to blame decision
makers for what are in retrospect “obvious” bad choices than to praise them for good
choices, which also seem “obvious.”
Starting after the 9/11 terror attack and working backward, signals pointing to the
impending disaster seemed obvious. A U.S. Senate investigative report listed the missed or
misinterpreted clues (Gladwell, 2003): The CIA knew that al Qaeda operatives had entered
the country. An FBI agent sent a memo to headquarters that began by warning “the Bureau
and New York of the possibility of a coordinated effort by Osama bin Laden to send stu-
dents to the United States to attend civilian aviation universities and colleges.” The FBI
ignored that accurate warning and failed to relate it to other reports that terrorists were
planning to use planes as weapons. The president received a daily briefing titled “Bin Laden
Determined to Strike Inside the United States” and stayed on vacation. “The dumb fools!”
it seemed to hindsight critics. “Why couldn’t they connect the dots?”
But what seems clear in hindsight is seldom clear on the front side of history. The intel-
ligence community is overwhelmed with “noise,” with rare shreds of useful information
buried in piles of useless information. Analysts must thus decide which to pursue, and only
when a lead is pursued does it stand a chance of being connected to another lead. In the
six years before 9/11, the FBI’s counterterrorism unit could never have pursued all 68,000
uninvestigated leads. In hindsight, the few useful ones are now obvious.
We blame not only others, but also ourselves for “stupid mistakes”—perhaps for not having
handled a person or a situation better. Looking back, we see how we should have handled
it. “I should have known how busy I would be at the semester’s end and started that paper
earlier.” “I should have realized sooner that he was a jerk.” But sometimes we are too hard
on ourselves. We forget that what is obvious to us now was not nearly so obvious at the time.
Physicians who are told both a patient’s symptoms and the cause of death (as determined
by autopsy) sometimes wonder how an incorrect diagnosis could have been made. Other phy-
sicians, given only the symptoms, do not find the diagnosis nearly so obvious (Dawson
et al., 1988). Would juries be slower to assume malpractice if they were forced to take a
foresight rather than a hindsight perspective?
“It is easy to be wise after the
event.”
—Sherlock Holmes, in Arthur
Conan Doyle’s story “The Problem
of Thor Bridge,” 1922
If you hear that similar people are attracted to one another
(“birds of a feather flock together”) it may seem like common
sense. But so does the reverse idea “opposites attract.”
©kiuikson/Shutterstock
Introducing Social Psychology Chapter 1 13
What do we conclude—that common sense is usually wrong? Sometimes it is. At other
times, conventional wisdom is right—or it falls on both sides of an issue: Does happiness
come from knowing the truth, or from preserving illusions? From being with others, or
from living in peaceful solitude? Opinions are a dime a dozen. No matter what we find,
there will be someone who foresaw it. (Mark Twain jested that the biblical Adam was the
only person who, when saying something, knew that nobody had said it before.) But which
of the many competing ideas best fit reality? Research can specify the circumstances under
which a commonsense truism is valid.
The point is not that common sense is predictably wrong. Rather, common sense usually
is right—after the fact. We therefore easily deceive ourselves into thinking that we know and
knew more than we do and did. And that is precisely why we need science to help us sift
reality from illusion and genuine predictions from easy hindsight.
“Everything important has
been said before.”
—Philosopher Alfred North White-
head, Address to the British Asso-
ciation for the Advancement of
Science, 1916
I Knew It All Along
focus
ON
Cullen Murphy (1990), then managing editor of the Atlantic,
faulted “sociology, psychology, and other social sciences
for too often merely discerning the obvious or confirming
the commonplace.” His own casual survey of social sci-
ence findings “turned up no ideas or conclusions that can’t
be found in Bartlett’s or any other encyclopedia of quota-
tions.” However, to sift through competing sayings, we
need research. Consider some dueling proverbs:
Is it more true that . . .
We should keep our eye on the prize.
Too many cooks spoil the broth.
The pen is mightier than the sword.
You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
Blood is thicker than water.
He who hesitates is lost.
Forewarned is forearmed.
Or that . . .
We should keep our nose to the grindstone.
Two heads are better than one.
Actions speak louder than words.
You’re never too old to learn.
Many kinfolk, few friends.
Look before you leap.
Don’t cross the bridge until you come to it.
▯ Social psychology is criticized for being trivial because
it documents things that seem obvious.
▯ Experiments, however, reveal that outcomes are more
“obvious” after the facts are known.
▯ This hindsight bias (the I-knew-it-all-along phenomenon)
often makes people overconfident about the validity of
their judgments and predictions.
SUMMING UP: I Knew It All Along: Is Social Psychology
Simply Common Sense?
RESEARCH METHODS: HOW DO WE
DO SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY?
Examine the methods that make social psychology
a science.
We have considered some of the intriguing questions social psychology seeks to answer.
We have also seen how subjective, often unconscious, processes influence social psycholo-
gists’ work. Now let’s consider how social psychologists go about doing research.
14 Chapter 1 Introducing Social Psychology
Forming and Testing Hypotheses
As we social psychologists wrestle with human nature to pin down its secrets, we organize
our ideas and findings into theories. A theory is an integrated set of principles that explain
and predict observed events. Theories are a scientific shorthand.
In everyday conversation, “theory” often means “less than fact”—a middle rung on a con-
fidence ladder from guess to theory to fact. Thus, people may dismiss Charles Darwin’s theory
of evolution as “just a theory.” Indeed, notes Alan Leshner (2005), chief officer of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, “Evolution is only a theory, but so is gravity.”
People often respond that gravity is a fact—but the fact is that your keys fall to the ground
when dropped. Gravity is the theoretical explanation that accounts for such observed facts.
To a scientist, facts and theories are apples and oranges. Facts are agreed-upon state-
ments about what we observe. Theories are ideas that summarize and explain facts. “Science
is built up with facts, as a house is with stones,” wrote the French scientist Jules Henri
Poincaré, “but a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.”
Theories not only summarize but also imply testable predictions, called hypotheses.
Hypotheses serve several purposes. First, they allow us to test a theory by suggesting how we
might try to falsify it. Second, predictions give direction to research and sometimes send
investigators looking for things they might never have considered. Third, the predictive feature
of good theories can also make them practical. A complete theory of aggression, for example,
would predict when to expect aggression and how to control it. As pioneering social psycholo-
gist Kurt Lewin declared, “There is nothing so practical as a good theory.”
Consider how this works. Suppose we observe that people who loot property or attack
others often do so in groups or crowds. We might therefore theorize that being part of a crowd,
or group, makes individuals feel anonymous and lowers their inhibitions. How could we test
this theory? Perhaps we could ask individuals in groups to administer punishing shocks to a
hapless victim who wouldn’t know which person was actually shocking them. Would these
individuals, as our theory predicts, administer stronger shocks than individuals acting alone?
We might also manipulate anonymity: Would people deliver stronger shocks if they were
wearing masks? If the results confirm our hypothesis, they might suggest some practical
applications. Perhaps police brutality could be reduced by having officers wear large name
tags and drive cars identified with large numbers, or by videotaping their arrests. Sure
enough, all of these have become common practice in many cities.
But how do we conclude that one theory is better than another? A good
theory
“Nothing has such power to
broaden the mind as the abil-
ity to investigate systemati-
cally and truly all that comes
under thy observation in life.”
—Marcus Aurelius, AD 161–180,
Meditations
theory
An integrated set of principles
that explain and predict
observed events.
hypothesis
A testable proposition that
describes a relationship that
may exist between events.
▯ effectively summarizes many observations, and
▯ makes clear predictions that we can use to
▯ confirm or modify the theory,
▯ generate new research, and
▯ suggest practical applications.
When we discard theories, it is not usually because they have been proved
false. Rather, like old cars, they are replaced by newer, better models.
Sampling and Question Wording
Let’s now go backstage and see how social psychology is done. This
glimpse behind the scenes should help you understand the findings dis-
cussed later. Understanding the logic of research can also help you think
critically about everyday social events and better comprehend studies you
see covered in the media. In this section, we’ll consider two issues: Who
participates in the research and what questions we ask them.
SAMPLING: CHOOSING PARTICIPANTS
One of the first decisions that researchers must make is about their sam-
ples—the people who will participate in their studies. If researchers want ©Warren Miller. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
For humans, the most fascinating subject
is people.
Introducing Social Psychology Chapter 1 15
to describe a whole population (which for many psychology studies is not the aim), then
they will obtain a representative group by taking a random sample—one in which every person
in the population being studied has an equal chance of inclusion. With this procedure any
subgroup of people—blondes, joggers, liberals—will tend to be represented in the sample to
the extent that they are represented in the total population.
Whether we sample people in a city or in a whole country, 1,200 randomly selected
participants will enable us to be 95% confident in describing the entire population with
an error margin of 3 percentage points or less (you might have heard these terms before
in reference to election polls, where this is a common method). Imagine a huge jar filled
with beans, 50% red and 50% white. Randomly sample 1,200 of these, and you will be
95% certain to draw out between 47% and 53% red beans—regardless of whether the jar
contains 10,000 beans or 100 million beans. If we think of the red beans as supporters
of one presidential candidate and the white beans as supporters of the other candidate,
we can understand why, despite skepticism about people’s dishonesty or bias when answer-
ing survey questions, surveys work. When done well, self-report data from representative
surveys can tell important truths. As a few drops of blood can speak for the whole body,
so can a random sample speak for a population.
Bear in mind that polls do not literally predict voting; they only describe public opinion
at the moment they are taken. Public opinion can shift. To evaluate research studies, we
must also bear in mind four potentially biasing influences: unrepresentative samples, ques-
tion order, response options, and question wording.
How closely the sample represents the population under study matters greatly. Columnist
Ann Landers once accepted a letter writer’s challenge to poll her readers on the question
of whether women find affection more important than sex. Her question: “Would you be
content to be held close and treated tenderly and forget about ‘the act’?” Of the more than
100,000 women who replied, 72% said yes. An avalanche of worldwide publicity followed.
In response to critics, Landers (1985, p. 45) granted that “the sampling may not be repre-
sentative of all American women. But it does provide honest—valuable—insights from a cross
section of the public. This is because my column is read by people from every walk of life,
approximately 70 million of them.” Still, one wonders, are the 70 million readers representa-
tive of the entire population? And are the 1 in 700 readers who took the trouble to reply
to the survey representative of the 699 in 700 who did not?
The importance of representativeness was famously demonstrated in 1936 when a
weekly newsmagazine, Literary Digest, mailed a postcard presidential election poll to 10
million Americans. Among the more than 2 million returns, Alf Landon won by a landslide
over Franklin D. Roosevelt. When the actual votes were counted a few days later, Landon
carried only two states. The magazine had sent the poll only to people whose names it
had obtained from telephone books and automobile registrations—thus ignoring the mil-
lions of voters during the Great Depression who could afford neither a telephone nor a
car (Cleghorn, 1980).
A sample can also be unrepresentative if few people respond to a poll—known as having
a low response rate—and the people who do not respond differ in important ways from those
who do. Some have speculated that this was why polls did not predict the 2016 presidential
election as accurately as past elections: Response rates to telephone polls, once at 36%,
have dropped to 9% (Keeter et al., 2017). Even so, the national polls, which predicted a
Hillary Clinton popular vote margin of 4%, were close to her actual 2% margin. It was
several smaller state-level polls in the Midwest that were the most affected, and those states
proved crucial to Donald Trump’s electoral college win. Fortunately, this issue of response
rate is not as common in the studies we will discuss here, as most psychology studies have
higher response rates than recent polls.
ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS
Researchers must also make sure that they have constructed their surveys or questionnaires
in a way that doesn’t bias responses. For example, the order of questions on a survey can
have a surprisingly big impact.
random sampling
Survey procedure in which
every person in the population
being studied has an equal
chance of inclusion.
16 Chapter 1 Introducing Social Psychology
Consider, too, the dramatic effects of response options.
When Joop van der Pligt and co-workers (1987) asked English
voters what percentage of Britain’s energy they wished came
from nuclear power, the average preference was 41%. They
asked other voters what percentage they wished came from (1)
nuclear, (2) coal, and (3) other sources. The average preference
for nuclear power among these respondents was 21%.
The precise wording of questions may also influence
answers. One poll found that only 23% of Americans thought
their government was spending too much “on assistance to
the poor.” Yet 53% thought the government was spending
too much “on welfare” (Time, 1994). Likewise, most people
favor decreasing “foreign aid” and increasing spending “to
help hungry people in other nations” (Simon, 1996).
Survey wording is a very delicate matter. Even subtle
changes in the tone of a question can have marked effects
(Krosnick & Schuman, 1988; Schuman & Kalton, 1985).
“Forbidding” something may be the same as “not allowing” it. But in 1940, 54% of Americans
said the United States should “forbid” speeches against democracy, and 75% said the United
States should “not allow” them. Even when people say they feel strongly about an issue, a
question’s form and wording may affect their answer.
Sometimes even very subtle wording differences can have striking effects. Asking people,
“How likely is it a randomly selected person will . . .” sounds the same as asking, “What
percentage of people will . . . .” But answers will differ, because the first wording draws
attention to the individual and a person’s moral conscience, whereas the second draws
attention to group-level influences, such as social norms (Critcher & Dunning, 2013). Like-
wise, saying that income inequality exists “because the rich make more money than the
poor” hardly sounds different from “because the poor make less money than the rich.” But
if given the first wording, conservative people become more supportive of higher taxes on
the rich (Chow & Galak, 2012).
Order, response, and wording effects enable political manipulators to use surveys to show
public support for their views. Consultants, advertisers, and physicians can have similar
disconcerting influences upon our decisions by how they frame our choices. No wonder
the meat lobby objected to a U.S. food labeling law that required declaring ground beef,
for example, as “30% fat,” rather than “70% lean, 30% fat.” To 9 in 10 college students, a
condom seems effective if its protection against the AIDS virus has a “95% success rate.”
Told that it has a “5% failure rate,” only 4 in 10 students say they find it effective (Linville
et al., 1992). “Gun control” efforts gain more public support
when framed as “gun safety” initiatives, such as requiring
background checks (Steinhauer, 2015). Many people who
don’t want to be “controlled” do support “safety.”
Framing research also has applications in the definition
of everyday default options. Without restricting people’s
freedom, thoughtfully framed options can “nudge” people
toward beneficial decisions (Benartzi & Thaler, 2013):
▯ Opting in or out of organ donation. In many countries,
people decide, when renewing their driver’s license,
whether they want to make their body available for
organ donation. In countries where the default option
is yes but one can “opt out,” nearly 100% of people
choose to be donors. In the United States, Britain, and
Germany, where the default option is no but one can
“opt in,” approximately 1 in 4 choose to be donors
(Johnson & Johnson, 2003).
▯ Opting in or out of retirement savings. For many years,
American employees who wanted to defer part of their
framing
The way a question or an issue
is posed; framing can influence
people’s decisions and
expressed opinions.
Exit polls require a random (and therefore representative) sample of voters.
©Steve Debenport/Getty Images
SRC’s Survey Services Laboratory at the University of Michigan’s Institute
for Social Research has interviewing carrels with monitoring stations.
Staff and visitors must sign a pledge to honor the strict confidentiality of
all interviews.
©NORC at the University of Chicago
Introducing Social Psychology Chapter 1 17
compensation to a 401(k) retirement plan had to elect
to lower their take-home pay. Most chose not to do so.
A 2006 pension law, influenced by framing research,
reframed the choice. Now companies are given an
incentive to enroll their employees automatically in the
plan and to allow them to opt out (and to raise their
take-home pay). The choice was preserved. But one
study found that with the “opt out” framing, enroll-
ments soared from 49 to 86% (Rosenberg, 2010).
The lesson of framing research is told in the story of a
sultan who dreamed he had lost all his teeth. Summoned to
interpret the dream, the first interpreter said, “Alas! The lost
teeth mean you will see your family members die.” Enraged,
the sultan ordered 50 lashes for this bearer of bad news.
When a second dream interpreter heard the dream, he
explained the sultan’s good fortune: “You will outlive your
whole clan!” Reassured, the sultan ordered his treasurer to
go and fetch 50 pieces of gold for this bearer of good news.
On the way, the bewildered treasurer observed to the second
interpreter, “Your interpretation was no different from that of the first interpreter.” “Ah
yes,” the wise interpreter replied, “but remember: What matters is not only what you say,
but how you say it.”
Correlational Research: Detecting Natural
Associations
Social psychological research can be laboratory research (a controlled situation) or field
research (everyday situations). And it varies by method—whether correlational (asking
whether two or more factors are naturally associated) or experimental (manipulating some
factor to see its effect on another). If you want to be a critical reader of psychological
research reported in the media, it helps to understand the difference between correlational
and experimental research.
Let’s first consider correlational research, which has both a major advantage (examining
important variables in natural settings) and a major disadvantage (ambiguous interpretation
of cause and effect). In search of possible links between wealth and health, Douglas Carroll
and his colleagues (1994) ventured into Glasgow, Scotland’s old graveyards and noted the
life spans of 843 individuals. As an indication of wealth, they measured the height of the
grave pillars, reasoning that height reflected cost and therefore affluence. As Figure 3
shows, wealth (taller grave markers) predicted longer lives—a key indicator of health.
Data from other sources has confirmed the wealth–health correlation: Scottish postal-
code regions with the least overcrowding and unemployment (the most affluent) also have
the longest average lifespans. In the United States, income correlates with longevity (poor
and lower-status people are more likely to die sooner). Another study followed 17,350 British
civil service workers over 10 years. Compared with high-status administrators, lower-status
administrators were 1.6 times more likely to have died. Even lower-status clerical workers
were 2.2 times more likely to have died, and laborers were 2.7 times more likely (Adler et
al., 1993, 1994). Across times and places, the wealth–health correlation seems reliable.
The wealth–health question illustrates the most irresistible thinking error made by both
amateur and professional social psychologists: When two factors such as wealth and health go
together, it is tempting to conclude that one causes the other. Wealth, we might presume, some-
how protects a person from health risks. But maybe it’s the other way around: Perhaps healthy
people are more likely to succeed economically, or people who live longer have more time to
accumulate wealth. A third variable might also cause both health and wealth—for example,
perhaps those of a certain race or religion are both healthier and more likely to become wealthy.
In other words: correlations indicate a relationship, but that relationship is not necessarily one
of cause and effect. Correlational research allows us to roughly predict one variable from another,
A young monk was once
rebuffed when asking if he
could smoke while he prayed.
Ask a different question,
advised a friend: Ask if you can
pray while you smoke (Crossen,
1993).
field research
Research done in natural, real-
life settings outside the
laboratory.
correlational research
The study of the naturally
occurring relationships among
variables.
experimental research
Studies that seek clues to
cause–effect relationships by
manipulating one or more
factors (independent variables)
while controlling others (holding
them constant).
Some companies and institutions are seeking to “nudge” employees to-
ward retirement savings by how they frame the options. By framing their
choice as whether or not to opt out of an automatic savings plan, more
people participate than when they must decide whether to opt in.
©rido/123RF
18 Chapter 1 Introducing Social Psychology
but it cannot tell us whether one variable (such as wealth) causes another (such as health).
When two variables (let’s call them X and Y) are correlated with each other, there are three
possibilities: X causes Y, Y causes X, or a third variable (Z) causes both.
The correlation–causation confusion is behind much muddled thinking in popular psy-
chology. Consider another very real correlation—between self-esteem and academic achieve-
ment. Children with high self-esteem tend also to have high academic achievement. (As
with any correlation, we can also state this the other way around: High achievers tend to
have high self-esteem.) Why do you suppose that is true (Figure 4)?
Some people believe self-esteem contributes to achievement. Thus, boosting a child’s self-
esteem may also boost school achievement. Believing so, 30 U.S. states have enacted more
than 170 self-esteem-promoting statutes.
But other people, including psychologists William Damon (1995), Robyn Dawes (1994),
Mark Leary (2012), Martin Seligman (1994, 2002), Roy Baumeister and John Tierney (2011),
and one of us (Twenge, 2013, 2014), doubt that self-esteem is really “the armor that protects
kids” from underachievement (or drug abuse and delinquency). Perhaps it is the other way
around: Perhaps doing well builds self-esteem. Some studies suggest this is true; children who
do well and are praised for it develop high self-esteem (Skaalvik & Hagtvet, 1990).
FIGURE 3
Correlating Wealth and
Longevity
Tall grave pillars, indicating
wealth, commemorated people
who also tended to live longer.
Source: Carroll, D., Davey Smith,
G., & Bennett, P. (1994).
Low
Age at death
66
65
64
63
62
61
60
59
58
Medium High
Height of grave pillars
Men
W omen
Commemorative markers in
Glasgow Cathedral graveyard.
©Jon Bower/AGE Fotostock
Social status
X
X
Z
(3)(2)(1)
Y YXX
Y
Self-esteem
Health
Y
Academic
achievement
Correlation
Possible explanations
FIGURE 4
Correlation and
Causations
When two variables correlate,
any combination of three expla-
nations is possible. Either one
may cause the other, or both
may be affected by an underly-
ing “third factor.”
Introducing Social Psychology Chapter 1 19
It is also possible that self-esteem and achievement correlate because both are linked to
underlying intelligence, family social status, or parental behavior. In one study of over 2,000
people, the correlation between self-esteem and achievement evaporated when researchers
mathematically removed the predictive power of intelligence and family status (Bachman &
O’Malley, 1977; Maruyama et al., 1981). In another study, the correlation between self-
esteem and delinquency disappeared when factors such as drug use by parents were con-
trolled (Boden et al., 2008). In other words, low self-esteem and poor behavior are both
caused by the same thing: An unfortunate home environment. Both may be symptoms of
a bad childhood rather than being caused by each other.
Using a coefficient known as r, correlations quantify the degree of relationship between
two factors, from −1.0 (as one factor score goes up, the other goes down) to 0 (indicating
no relationship) to +1.0 (as one factor goes up, the other also goes up). For example, self-
reports of self-esteem and depression correlate negatively (about −.60). Identical twins’
intelligence scores correlate positively (above +.80).
The great strength of correlational research is that it tends to occur in real-world settings
where we can examine factors such as race, gender, and social status—factors that we cannot
manipulate in the laboratory. Its great disadvantage lies in the ambiguity of the results. This
point is so important that even if it fails to impress people the first 25 times they hear it, it
is worth repeating a 26th time: Knowing that two variables change together (correlate) enables
us to predict one when we know the other, but correlation does not specify cause and effect.
Advanced correlational techniques can, however, suggest cause–effect relationships.
Time-lagged correlations reveal the sequence of events (for example, by indicating
whether changed achievement more often precedes or follows changed self-esteem).
Researchers can also use statistical techniques that extract the inf luence of third vari-
ables, as when the correlation between self-esteem and achievement evaporated after
extracting intelligence and family status (this is known as adding a control variable). As
another example, the Scottish research team wondered whether the status–longevity
relationship would still exist after removing the effect of cigarette smoking, which is
both less common among those of higher status and linked to dying earlier. The cor-
relation remained, suggesting that other factors related to low status may account for
poorer people’s earlier demise.
Experimental Research: Searching for Cause
and Effect
The difficulty of determining cause and effect in correlational studies often prompts social
psychologists to create laboratory simulations of everyday processes whenever this is fea-
sible and ethical. These simulations are akin to aeronautical wind tunnels. Aeronautical
engineers do not begin by observing how flying objects perform in various natural environ-
ments. The variations in both atmospheric conditions and flying objects are too complex.
Instead, they construct a simulated reality in which they can manipulate wind conditions
and wing structures. Due to their use of a simulated reality, experiments have two major
advantages over correlational studies: random assignment and control.
RANDOM ASSIGNMENT: THE GREAT EQUALIZER
Consider a research study finding that children who watched more violent TV shows were
more likely to behave aggressively in later life (Huesmann et al., 2003). However, that’s a
correlational finding, so it’s difficult to tell if violent TV causes aggression, children who
are already aggressive watch more violent TV, or a third variable causes violent TV watch-
ing and later aggressive behavior (see Table 1 for more examples). A survey researcher
might measure and statistically control for some possible third variables and see if the
correlations survive. But one can never control for all the factors that might distinguish
people who love violent TV and those who don’t. Maybe they differ in personality, intel-
ligence, self-control—or in dozens of ways the researcher has not considered.
In one fell swoop, random assignment eliminates all such extraneous factors. For exam-
ple, a researcher might randomly assign people to watch violent TV or nonviolent TV, and
random assignment
The process of assigning
participants to the conditions of
an experiment such that all
persons have the same chance of
being in a given condition. (Note
the distinction between random
assignment in experiments and
random sampling in surveys.
Random assignment helps us
infer cause and effect. Random
sampling helps us generalize to
a population.)
20 Chapter 1 Introducing Social Psychology
then measure their aggressive behavior. With random assignment, each person has an equal
chance of viewing the violent TV or the nonviolent TV. Thus, the people in both groups
would, in every conceivable way—family status, intelligence, education, initial aggressiveness,
hair color—average about the same. Highly aggressive people, for example, are equally likely
to appear in both groups. Because random assignment creates equivalent groups, any later
difference in aggressive behavior between the two groups will almost surely have something
to do with the only way they differ—whether or not they viewed violence (Figure 5).
CONTROL: MANIPULATING VARIABLES
Social psychologists experiment by constructing social situations that simulate important
features of our daily lives. By varying just one or two factors (called independent variables)
at a time the experimenter pinpoints their influence. As the wind tunnel helps the aeronauti-
cal engineer discover principles of aerodynamics, so the experiment enables the social psy-
chologist to discover principles of social thinking, social influence, and social relations.
How exactly is this done? Let’s continue with the example of violent TV and aggression.
To study this question using an experimental method, Chris Boyatzis and colleagues
(1995) showed some elementary schoolchildren, but not others, an episode of the most
popular—and violent—children’s television program of the 1990s, Power Rangers. Thus, the
researchers controlled the situation by having some children do one thing and other children
not, an example of how researchers manipulate variables through control. Whether the chil-
dren watched the Power Rangers show was the independent variable in this experiment.
Immediately after viewing the episode, the children who watched Power Rangers com-
mitted seven times as many aggressive acts as those who did not. The observed aggressive
TABLE 1 Recognizing Correlational and Experimental Research
Can Participants Be Randomly
Assigned to Condition?
Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Are early-maturing children more confident? No Correlational
Do students learn more in online or
classroom courses?
Yes Experimental Take class online or in
classroom
Learning
Do school grades predict vocational success? No Correlational
Do people cheer more loudly alone or when
in a crowd?
Yes Experimental Play violent or
nonviolent game
Aggressiveness
Do people find comedy funnier when alone
or with others?
(you answer)
Do wealthier people live longer? (you answer)
FIGURE 5
Random Assignment
Experiments randomly assign
people either to a condition that
receives the experimental treat-
ment or to a control condition
that does not. This gives the
researcher confidence that any
later difference is somehow
caused by the treatment.
Condition
Experimental
Control
Treatment
Violent
TV
Nonviolent
TV
Measure
Aggression
Aggression
People
independent variable
The experimental factor that a
researcher manipulates.
Introducing Social Psychology Chapter 1 21
acts were the dependent variable—the outcome being
measured—in this study. Such experiments indicate
that television can be one cause of children’s aggres-
sive behavior. (There’s more on this controversial
research topic in the “Aggression” chapter.)
REPLICATION: ARE THE RESULTS
REPRODUCIBLE?
A handful of unreliable findings, some from research-
ers who committed fraud by faking data, have raised
concerns about the reproducibility of medical and
psychological research. Although “mere replications”
of others’ research are unglamorous—they seldom
make headline news—today’s science is placing greater
value on replication studies. Researchers must pre-
cisely explain their stimuli and procedures so that oth-
ers can match them. Many now file their methods and
their detailed data in a public, online, “open science”
archive (Brandt et al., 2014; Miguel et al., 2014).
Additionally, teams of researchers have formed
international collaborative efforts to replicate the results of published research papers. One
such effort sought to replicate 100 studies published in three prominent psychology jour-
nals. About half of the replication studies produced effects similar in strength to the original
study (Open Science Collaboration, 2015). Another replication effort (the “Many Labs”
project) involving more studies on each question found more encouraging results, with 85%
of studies replicating (Klein et al., 2014). Such replication forms an essential part of good
science. Any single study provides some information—it’s one estimate. Better is the aggre-
gated data from multiple studies (Stanley & Spence, 2014). Replication = confirmation.
THE ETHICS OF EXPERIMENTATION
Our television example illustrates why experiments can raise ethical issues. Social psycholo-
gists would not, over long periods, expose one group of children to brutal violence. Rather,
they briefly alter people’s social experience and note the effects. Sometimes the experimen-
tal treatment is a harmless, perhaps even enjoyable, experience to which people give their
knowing consent. Occasionally, however, researchers find themselves operating in a gray
area between the harmless and the risky.
Social psychologists often venture into that ethical gray area when they design experi-
ments that engage intense thoughts and emotions. Experiments do not need to have
mundane realism (Aronson et al., 1985). That is, laboratory behavior need not be like
everyday behavior, which is typically mundane, or unimportant. But the experiment should
have experimental realism—it should engage the participants. Experimenters do not want
participants consciously play-acting or bored; they want to engage real psychological pro-
cesses. An example of such engagement would be delivering electric shocks as part of an
experiment on aggression. Forcing people to choose whether to give intense or mild electric
shock to someone else can be a realistic measure of aggression. It functionally simulates
real aggression, much as a wind tunnel simulates atmospheric wind.
Achieving experimental realism sometimes requires deceiving people with a plausible
cover story. If the person in the next room is actually not receiving the shocks, the experi-
menter does not want the participants to know that. That would destroy the experimental
realism. Thus, approximately one-third of social psychological studies in past decades used
deception (Korn & Nicks, 1993; Vitelli, 1988), in which participants did not know the
study’s true purpose.
Experimenters also seek to hide their predictions lest the participants, in their eagerness
to be “good subjects,” merely do what is expected (or, in an ornery mood, do the opposite).
Small wonder, says Ukrainian professor Anatoly Koladny, that only 15% of Ukrainian survey
respondents declared themselves “religious” while under Soviet communism in 1990 when
religion was oppressed by the government—but 70% declared themselves “religious” in
dependent variable
The variable being measured, so
called because it may depend on
manipulations of the independent
variable.
replication
Repeating a research study,
often with different participants
in different settings, to
determine whether a finding
could be reproduced.
mundane realism
Degree to which an experiment is
superficially similar to everyday
situations.
experimental realism
Degree to which an experiment
absorbs and involves its
participants.
deception
In research, a strategy by which
participants are misinformed or
misled about the study’s methods
and purposes.
Does viewing violence on TV or in other media lead to aggression, especially
among children? Experiments suggest that it does.
©Bill Aron/PhotoEdit
22 Chapter 1 Introducing Social Psychology
post-communist 1997 (Nielsen, 1998). In subtle ways, too, the experimenter’s words, tone
of voice, and gestures may call forth desired responses. Even search dogs trained to detect
explosives and drugs are more likely to bark false alerts in places where their handlers have
been misled into thinking such illegal items are located (Lit et al., 2011). To minimize such
demand characteristics—cues that seem to “demand” certain behavior—experimenters typi-
cally standardize their instructions or even use a computer to present them.
Researchers often walk a tightrope in designing experiments that will be involving yet
ethical. To believe that you are hurting someone, or to be subjected to strong social pres-
sure, may be temporarily uncomfortable. Such experiments raise the age-old question of
whether ends justify means. Do the risks exceed those we experience in everyday life (Fiske
& Hauser, 2014)? Social psychologists’ deceptions are usually brief and mild compared with
many misrepresentations in real life and in some of television’s reality shows. (One network
reality TV series—Joe Millionaire—deceived women into competing for the hand of a hand-
some supposed millionaire, who turned out to be an ordinary laborer.)
University ethics committees review social psychological research to ensure that it will
treat people humanely and that the scientific merit justifies any temporary deception or
distress. Ethical principles developed by the American Psychological Association (2017),
the Canadian Psychological Association (2017), and the British Psychological Society
(2010) mandate investigators to:
▯ Tell potential participants enough about the experiment to enable their informed
consent.
▯ Be truthful. Use deception only if essential and justified by a significant purpose
and not “about aspects that would affect their willingness to participate.”
▯ Protect participants (and bystanders, if any) from harm and significant discomfort.
▯ Treat information about the individual participants confidentially.
▯ Debrief participants. Fully explain the experiment afterward, including any decep-
tion. The only exception to this rule is when the feedback would be distressing,
such as by making participants realize they have been stupid or cruel.
The experimenter should be sufficiently informative and considerate that people leave
feeling at least as good about themselves as when they came in. Better yet, the partici-
pants should be compensated by having learned something (Sharpe & Faye, 2009).
When treated respectfully, few participants mind being deceived
(Epley & Huff, 1998; Kimmel, 1998). Indeed, say social psychology’s
advocates, professors provoke far greater anxiety and distress by giv-
ing and returning course exams than researchers provoke in their
experiments.
Generalizing from Laboratory to Life
As the research on television and violence illustrates, social psychology
mixes everyday experience and laboratory analysis. Throughout this book,
we do the same by drawing our data mostly from the laboratory and our
examples mostly from life. Social psychology displays a healthy interplay
between laboratory research and everyday life. Hunches gained from
everyday experience often inspire laboratory research, which deepens our
understanding of our experience.
This interplay appears in the children’s television experiment.
What people saw in everyday life suggested correlational research,
which led to experimental research. Network and government policy-
makers, those with the power to make changes, are now aware of the
results. In many areas, including studies of helping, leadership style,
depression, and self-efficacy, effects found in the lab have been mir-
rored by effects in the field, especially when the laboratory effects
have been large (Mitchell, 2012). “The psychology laboratory has
demand characteristics
Cues in an experiment that tell
the participant what behavior is
expected.
informed consent
An ethical principle requiring that
research participants be told
enough to enable them to choose
whether they wish to participate.
debriefing
In social psychology, the
postexperimental explanation of
a study to its participants.
Debriefing usually discloses any
deception and often queries
participants regarding their
understandings and feelings.
The majority of people in the world live in developing
countries, not in the Western industrialized nations in
which most psychology research is done.
©szefei/Shutterstock
Introducing Social Psychology Chapter 1 23
generally produced psychological truths rather than trivialities,” note Craig Anderson and
colleagues (1999).
We need to be cautious, however, in generalizing from laboratory to life. Although
the laboratory uncovers basic dynamics of human existence, it is still a simplified, con-
trolled reality. It tells us what effect to expect of variable X, all other things being
equal—which in real life they never are. Moreover, as you will see, the participants in
many experiments are college students. Although that may help you identify with them,
college students are hardly a random sample of all humanity (Henry, 2008a, 2008b).
And most participants are from WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and
Democratic) cultures that represent but 12% of humanity (Henrich et al., 2010). Would
we get similar results with people of different ages, educational levels, and cultures? That
is always an open question.
Nevertheless, we can distinguish between the content of people’s thinking and acting (for
example, their attitudes) and the process by which they think and act (for example, how
attitudes affect actions and vice versa). The content varies more from culture to culture
than does the process. People from various cultures may hold different opinions yet form
them in similar ways. Consider the following:
▯ College students in Puerto Rico report more loneliness than those on the U.S.
mainland. Yet in the two cultures, the ingredients of loneliness have been much the
same—shyness, uncertain purpose in life, and low self-esteem (Jones et al., 1985).
▯ Ethnic groups differ in school achievement and delinquency, but the differences
are
“no more than skin deep,” report David Rowe and colleagues (1994). Family
structure, peer influences, and parental education predict achievement or delin-
quency across all ethnic groups, and these are larger influences on outcomes than
ethnicity alone.
Although our behaviors may differ, we are influenced by the same social forces. Beneath
our surface diversity, we are more alike than different.
▯ Social psychologists organize their ideas and findings into
theories. A good theory will distill an array of facts into a
much shorter list of predictive principles. We can use
those predictions to confirm or modify the theory, to gen-
erate new research, and to suggest practical applications.
▯ Researchers must decide whom to study—their sample
of people. They also must make decisions about how to
word survey questions.
▯ Most social psychological research is either correla-
tional or experimental. Correlational studies discern the
relationship between variables, such as between amount
of education and amount of income. Knowing two
things are naturally related is valuable information, but
it is not a reliable indicator of what is causing what—or
whether a third variable is involved.
▯ When possible, social psychologists prefer to conduct
experiments that explore cause and effect. By construct-
ing a miniature reality that is under their control,
experimenters can vary one thing and then another and
discover how those things, separately or in combina-
tion, affect behavior. We randomly assign participants
to an experimental condition, which receives the experi-
mental treatment, or to a control condition, which does
not. We can then attribute any resulting difference be-
tween the two conditions to the independent variable
(Figure 6). By seeking to replicate findings, today’s psy-
chologists also assess their reproducibility.
▯ In creating experiments, social psychologists some-
times stage situations that engage people’s emotions. In
doing so, they are obliged to follow professional ethical
guidelines, such as obtaining people’s informed consent,
protecting them from harm, and fully disclosing after-
ward any temporary deceptions. Laboratory experi-
ments enable social psychologists to test ideas gleaned
from life experience and then to apply the principles
and findings to the real world.
SUMMING UP: Research Methods: How Do We Do
Social Psychology?
24 Chapter 1 Introducing Social Psychology
POSTSCRIPT:
Why We Wrote This Book
We write this text to offer social psychology’s powerful, hard-wrought principles. They have,
we believe, the power to expand your mind and enrich your life. If you finish this book
with sharpened critical thinking skills and with a deeper understanding of how we view and
affect one another—and why we sometimes like, love, and help one another and sometimes
dislike, hate, and harm one another—then we will be satisfied authors and you, we trust,
will be a rewarded reader.
We write knowing that many readers are in the process of defining their life goals,
identities, values, and attitudes. Novelist Chaim Potok recalls being urged by his mother to
forgo writing: “Be a brain surgeon. You’ll keep a lot of people from dying; you’ll make a
lot more money.” Potok’s response: “Mama, I don’t want to keep people from dying; I want
to show them how to live” (quoted by Peterson, 1992, p. 47).
Many of us who teach and write psychology are driven not only by a love for giving
psychology away but also by wanting to help students live better lives—wiser, more fulfilling,
more compassionate lives. In this we are like teachers and writers in other fields. “Why do
we write?” asked theologian Robert McAfee Brown. “I submit that beyond all rewards . . .
we write because we want to change things. We write because we have this [conviction
that we] can make a difference. The ‘difference’ may be a new perception of beauty, a new
insight into self-understanding, a new experience of joy, or a decision to join the revolution”
(quoted by Marty, 1988). Indeed, we write hoping to do our part to restrain intuition with
critical thinking, refine judgmentalism with compassion, and replace illusion with
understanding.
We conclude each chapter
with a brief reflection on
social psychology’s human
significance.
SUMMING UP:
FIGURE 6
Two Methods of Doing Research: Correlational and Experimental
Research methods
Disadvantage
Some important
variables cannot be
studied with
experiments
Advantage
Can explore cause and
ef fect by controlling
variables and by
random assignment
Disadvantage
Causation often
ambiguous
Advantage
Often uses real-
world settings
Correlational Experimental
Continued
©Adam Lubroth/Getty Images
Social
Thinking
P A R T O N E
C H A P T E R
2
Spotlights and
illusions: What do
they teach us about
ourselves?
Self-concept: Who
am I?
What is the nature
and motivating
power of
self-esteem?
What is self-serving
bias?
How do people
manage their
self-presentation?
What does it mean to
have “self-control”?
Postscript: Twin
truths—The perils of
pride, the powers of
positive thinking
The Self in a
Social World
This book unfolds around its definition of social psychology: the scientific study of how we think about (Part One), influence (Part Two), and relate to (Part
Three) one another. Part Four offers additional, focused examples of how the
research and the theories of social psychology are applied to real life.
Specifically, Part One examines the scientific study of how we think about one
another (also called social cognition). Each chapter in this part confronts some
overriding questions: How reasonable are our social attitudes, explanations, and
beliefs? Are our impressions of ourselves and others generally accurate? How does
our social thinking form? How is it prone to bias and error, and how might we bring
it closer to reality?
“There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to
know one’s self.”
—Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1750
26 Part One Social Thinking
At the center of our worlds, more pivotal for us than anything else, is ourselves.
As we navigate our daily lives, our sense of self continually engages the world.
Consider this example: One morning, you wake up to find your hair sticking up
at strange angles on your head. You can’t find a hat, so you smooth down the
random spikes of your hair and dash out the door to class. All morning, you are
acutely self-conscious about your very bad hair day. To your surprise, your friends
in class don’t say anything. Are they secretly laughing to themselves about how
ridiculous you look, or are they too preoccupied with themselves to notice your
spiky hair?
SPOTLIGHTS AND ILLUSIONS:
WHAT DO THEY TEACH US
ABOUT OURSELVES?
Describe the spotlight effect and its relation to the
illusion of transparency.
Why do we often feel that others are paying more attention to us than they really are? The
spotlight effect means seeing ourselves at center stage, thus intuitively overestimating the
extent to which others’ attention is aimed at us.
Timothy Lawson (2010) explored the spotlight effect by having college students change
into a sweatshirt emblazoned with “American Eagle” before meeting a group of peers. Nearly
40% were sure the observers would remember what the shirt said, but only 10% actually
did. Most observers did not even notice when the students changed sweatshirts after leaving
the room for a few minutes. In another experiment, even embarrassing clothes, such as a
T-shirt with singer Barry Manilow on it, provoked only 23% of observers to
notice—many fewer than the 50% estimated by the students sporting the
1970s warbler on their chests (Gilovich et al., 2000).
What’s true of our dorky clothes and bad hair is also true of our emo-
tions: our anxiety, irritation, disgust, deceit, or attraction to someone else
(Gilovich et al., 1998). Fewer people notice than we presume. Keenly aware
of our own emotions, we often suffer from an illusion of transparency. If
we’re happy and we know it, then our face will surely show it. And others,
we presume, will notice. Actually, we can be more opaque than we realize.
(See “Research Close-Up: On Being Nervous About Looking Nervous.”)
In addition to thinking our emotions are transparent, we also overestimate
the visibility of our social blunders and public mental slips. When we trigger
the library alarm or accidentally insult someone, we may be mortified (“Every-
one thinks I’m a jerk”). But research shows that what we agonize over, others
may hardly notice and soon forget (Savitsky et al., 2001).
The spotlight effect and the related illusion of transparency are just two
examples of the interplay between our sense of self and our social worlds.
Here are a few more:
▯ Social surroundings affect our self-awareness. When we are the only mem-
ber of our race, gender, or nationality in a group, we notice how we differ
and how others are reacting to our difference. A White American friend
once told me [DM] how self-consciously White he felt while living in a
rural village in Nepal; an hour later, an African-American friend told me
how self-consciously American she felt while in Africa.
spotlight effect
The belief that others are
paying more attention to our
appearance and behavior than
they really are.
illusion of transparency
The illusion that our concealed
emotions leak out and can be
easily read by others.
Due to the spotlight effect, this new college student
might think everyone is looking at her and feel em-
barrassed by her parents’ attention—even though
her peers don’t really notice.
©David Burch/Uppercut Images/Getty Images
The Self in a Social World Chapter 2 27
On Being Nervous About Looking Nervous
Have you ever felt self-conscious when approaching
someone you felt attracted to, concerned that your ner-
vousness was obvious? Or have you felt yourself trem-
bling while speaking before an audience and presumed
that everyone was noticing?
Kenneth Savitsky and Thomas Gilovich (2003) knew
from their own and others’ studies that people overesti-
mate the extent to which their internal states “leak out.”
People asked to tell lies presume that others will detect
their deceit, which feels so obvious. People asked to sam-
ple horrid-tasting drinks presume that others notice their
disgust, which they can barely suppress.
Many people who give a presentation report not just feel-
ing anxious, but anxious that others will notice their anxiety.
And if they feel their knees shaking and hands trembling,
their worry that others are noticing may compound and per-
petuate their anxiety. This is similar to fretting about not fall-
ing asleep, which further impedes falling asleep, or feeling
anxious about stuttering, which worsens the stuttering.
Savitsky and Gilovich wondered whether an “illusion of
transparency” might surface among inexperienced public
speakers—and whether it might disrupt their performance.
To find out, they invited 40 Cornell University students to
their laboratory in pairs. One person stood at the podium
and spoke for 3 minutes (on a topic such as “The Best and
Worst Things About Life Today”) as the other sat and lis-
tened. Then the two switched positions and the other per-
son gave a differ ent 3-minute impromptu talk. Afterward,
each rated how nervous they thought they appeared
while speaking (from 0, not at all, to 10, very) and how
nervous the other person seemed.
The results? People rated themselves as appearing
relatively nervous (6.65, on average). But to their partner
they appeared not so nervous (5.25), a difference great
enough to be statistically significant (meaning that a differ-
ence this great, for this sample of people, is very unlikely
to have been due to chance variation). Twenty-seven of
the 40 participants (68%) believed that they appeared
more nervous than did their partner.
research
CLOSE-UP
TABLE 1 Average Ratings of Speeches by Speakers and Observers on a 1 to 7 Scale
Type of Rating
Control
Condition Reassured Condition
Informed
Condition
Speakers’ self-ratings
Speech quality 3.04 2.83 3.50*
Relaxed appearance 3.35 2.69 4.20*
Observers’ rating
Speech quality 3.50 3.62 4.23*
Composed appearance 3.90 3.94 4.65*
*Each of these results differs by a statistically significant margin from those of the control and reassured conditions.
To check on the reliability of their finding, Savitsky and
Gilovich replicated (repeated) and extended the experi-
ment by having people speak before an audience of peo-
ple who weren’t going to be giving speeches themselves,
to rule out the possibility that this might explain the previ-
ous results. Again, speakers overestimated the transpar-
ency of their nervousness.
Savitsky and Gilovich next wondered whether informing
speakers that their nervousness isn’t so obvious might help
them relax and perform better. They invited 77 more Cornell
students to come to the lab and, after 5 minutes’ prepara-
tion, give a 3-minute videotaped speech on race relations at
their university. They divided the students into three groups.
Those in one group—the control condition—were given no
further instructions. Those in the second group—the reas-
sured condition—were told that it was natural to feel anxious
but that “You shouldn’t worry much about what other people
think. . . . With this in mind you should just relax and try to do
your best. Know that if you become nervous, you probably
shouldn’t worry about it.” To the third group, those in the in-
formed condition, they explained the illusion of transparency.
After telling them it was natural to feel anxious, the experi-
menters added, “Research has found that audiences can’t
pick up on your anxiety as well as you might expect. . . . Those
speaking feel that their nervousness is transparent, but in
reality their feelings are not so apparent. . . . With this in mind,
you should just relax and try to do your best. Know that if you
become nervous, you’ll probably be the only one to know.”
After the speeches, the speakers rated their speech
quality and their perceived nervousness (this time using a
7-point scale) and were also rated by the observers. As
Table 1 shows, those informed about the illusion-of-trans-
parency phenomenon felt better about their speeches
and their appearance than did those in the control and
reassurance conditions. What’s more, the observers con-
firmed the speakers’ self-assessments.
So, the next time you feel nervous about looking ner-
vous, pause to remember the lesson of these experiments:
Other people are noticing less than you might suppose.
28 Part One Social Thinking
▯ Self-interest colors our social judgment. When problems arise in a close relationship,
we usually attribute more responsibility to our partners than to ourselves. When
things go well at home or work or play, we see ourselves as more responsible.
▯ Self-concern motivates our social behavior. In hopes of making a positive impression,
we agonize about our appearance. Like savvy politicians, we also monitor others’
behavior and expectations and adjust our behavior accordingly.
▯ Social relationships help define our sense of self. In our varied relationships, we
have varying selves, note Susan Andersen and Serena Chen (2002). We may be
one self with Mom, another with friends, another with teachers. How we think of
ourselves is linked to the person we’re with at the moment. And when relation-
ships change, our self-concepts can change as well. College students who recently
broke up with a romantic partner shifted their self-perceptions and felt less certain
about who they were—one reason breakups can be so emotionally distressing
(Slotter et al., 2010).
As these examples suggest, the traffic between ourselves and others runs both ways.
Our sense of ourselves affects how we respond to others, and others help shape our sense
of self.
No topic in psychology today is more heavily researched than the self. In 2016, the word
“self” appeared in 26,016 book and article summaries in PsycINFO (the online archive of
psychological research)—25 times more than it appeared in 1970. Our sense of self organizes
our thoughts, feelings, and actions and enables us to remember our past, assess our present,
and project our future—and thus to behave adaptively.
In later chapters, you will see that much of our behavior is not consciously controlled
but, rather, automatic and unself-conscious. However, the self does enable long-term plan-
ning, goal setting, and restraint. It imagines alternatives, compares itself with others, and
manages its reputation and relationships. Moreover, as Mark Leary (2004a) noted in his
aptly titled The Curse of the Self, the self can sometimes be an impediment to a satisfying
life. That’s why religious or spiritual meditation practices seek to prune the self’s egocentric
preoccupations, by quieting the ego, reducing its attractions to material pleasures, and
redirecting it. “Mysticism,” adds psychologist Jonathan Haidt (2006), “everywhere and
always, is about losing the self, transcending the self, and merging with something larger
than the self.”
In the remainder of this chapter, we examine our self-concept (how we come to know
ourselves) and the self in action (how our sense of self drives our attitudes and actions).
“No topic is more interesting
to people than people. For
most people, moreover, the
most interesting is the self.”
—Roy F. Baumeister,
The Self in Social Psychology, 1999
▯ Concerned with the impression we make on others, we
tend to believe that others are paying more attention to
us than they are (the spotlight effect).
▯ We also tend to believe that our emotions are more ob-
vious than they are (the illusion of transparency).
SUMMING UP: Spotlights and Illusions: What Do They
Teach Us About Ourselves?
SELF-CONCEPT: WHO AM I?
Understand how, and how accurately, we know
ourselves and what determines our self-concept.
Try this: Complete the sentence “I am _____” in five different ways. Your answers provide
a glimpse of your self-concept.
self-concept
What we know and believe
about ourselves.
The Self in a Social World Chapter 2 29
At the Center of Our Worlds: Our Sense of Self
The most important aspect of yourself is your self. To discover where this sense of self
arises, neuroscientists have explored the brain activity that underlies our constant sense
of being oneself. Most studies suggest an important role for the right hemisphere (van
Veluw & Chance, 2014). Put yours to sleep (with an anesthetic to your right carotid
artery) and you may have trouble recognizing your own face. One patient with right
hemisphere damage failed to recognize that he owned and was controlling his left hand
(Decety & Sommerville, 2003). The “medial prefrontal cortex,” a neuron path located in
the cleft between your brain hemispheres just behind your eyes, seemingly helps stitch
together your sense of self. It becomes more active when you think about yourself (Farb
et al., 2007; Zimmer, 2005).
The elements of your self-concept, the specific beliefs by which you define yourself, are
your self-schemas (Markus & Wurf, 1987). Schemas are mental templates by which we
organize our worlds. Our self-schemas—our perceiving ourselves as athletic, overweight,
smart, or anything else—powerfully affect how we perceive, remember, and evaluate other
people and ourselves. If being an athlete is one of your self-schemas, then you will tend to
notice others’ bodies and skills, will quickly recall sports-related experiences, and will wel-
come information that is consistent with your self-schema as an athlete (Kihlstrom & Can-
tor, 1984). Because birthdays are often central pieces of information within self-schemas,
if your friend’s birthday is close to yours, you’ll be more likely to remember it (Kesebir &
Oishi, 2010). The self-schemas that make up our self-concepts help us organize and retrieve
our experiences.
SOCIAL COMPARISONS
How do we decide if we are rich, smart, or short? One way is through social comparisons
(Festinger, 1954). Others help define the standard by which we define ourselves as rich or poor,
smart or dumb, tall or short: we compare ourselves with them and consider how we differ.
Social comparison explains why high-school students tend to think of themselves as better
students if their peers are only average (Marsh et al., 2000; Wang, 2015) and how self-concept
can be threatened after graduation when a student who excelled in an average high school goes
on to an academically selective university. The “big fish” is no longer in a small pond.
Much of life revolves around social comparisons. We feel handsome when others seem
homely, smart when others seem dull, caring when others seem callous. More money
doesn’t always lead to more happiness, but having more money than those around you can
(Solnick & Hemenway, 1998). When we witness a peer’s performance, we cannot resist
implicitly comparing ourselves (Gilbert et al., 1995). We may, therefore, privately take some
pleasure in a peer’s failure, especially when it happens to someone we envy and when we
don’t feel vulnerable to such misfortune ourselves (Lockwood, 2002; Smith et al., 1996).
You might have heard the German word for this: Schadenfreude.
Sometimes social comparison is based on incomplete information. Have you ever been
on Facebook and thought, “All of my friends are having a lot more fun than I am”? If so,
you’re not alone. College students who spent more time on Facebook were more likely to
believe that other people were happier and had better lives than they did (Chou & Edge,
2012). Of course, it can’t be true that everyone is having more fun than everyone else—it’s
just that Facebook users feature the more exciting and positive aspects of their lives. Sure
enough, Facebook users who socially compared themselves to others on the site were more
likely to be depressed—a phenomenon the researchers called “seeing everyone else’s high-
light reels” (Steers et al., 2014). This biased social comparison might be one reason young
adults who used Facebook more often were more anxious, more lonely, and less satisfied
with their lives (Huang, 2017; Kross et al., 2013). An experiment found the same result:
People who were randomly assigned to give up Facebook for a week ended the week hap-
pier than those who kept using Facebook (Tromholt, 2016).
Social comparisons can also diminish our satisfaction in other ways. When we experience
an increase in affluence, status, or achievement, we “compare upward”—we raise the standards
by which we evaluate our attainments and compare ourselves with others doing even better.
self-schema
Beliefs about self that organize
and guide the processing of
self-relevant information.
social comparison
Evaluating one’s opinions and
abilities by comparing oneself
with others.
“Make no comparisons!”
—King Charles I (1600–1649)
30 Part One Social Thinking
When climbing the ladder of success, we tend to look up, not
down (Gruder, 1977; Suls & Tesch, 1978; Wheeler et al.,
1982). When facing competition, we often protect our shaky
self-concept by perceiving our competitor as advantaged. For
example, college swimmers believed that their competitors
had better coaching and more practice time (Shepperd &
Taylor, 1999). Even sexual activity is subject to social com-
parison. Adults who have sex more often are happier—you
might have guessed that! But then social comparison kicks in:
People who have a lot of sex are less happy if their peers are
having more sex than they are (Wadsworth, 2014). Appar-
ently, we judge not just how much fun we’re having—but how
it measures up to the fun everyone else is having.
OTHER PEOPLE’S JUDGMENTS
When people think well of us, we think well of ourselves. Chil-
dren whom others label as gifted, hardworking, or helpful tend
to incorporate such ideas into their self-concepts and behavior.
Children who are praised for “being a helper” (rather than
“helping”) later help more—it has become part of their identity (Bryan et al., 2014). If racial
minority students feel threatened by negative stereotypes of their academic ability, or women
feel threatened by low expectations for their math and science performance, they may “dis-
identify” with those realms. Rather than fight such prejudgments, they may identify their
interests elsewhere (Steele, 2010).
The looking-glass self was how sociologist Charles H. Cooley (1902) described our use of
how we think others perceive us as a mirror for perceiving ourselves. Fellow sociologist George
Herbert Mead (1934) refined this concept, noting that what matters for our self-concepts is
not how others actually see us but the way we imagine they see us. People generally feel freer
to praise than to criticize; they voice their compliments and restrain their insults. We may,
therefore, overestimate others’ appraisal, inflating our self-images. For example, people tend to
see themselves as more physically attractive than they actually are (Epley & Whitchurch, 2008).
Self and Culture
How did you complete the “I am _____” statement? Did you give information about your
personal traits, such as “I am honest,” “I am tall,” or “I am outgoing”? Or did you also describe
your social identity, such as “I am a Pisces,” “I am a MacDonald,” or “I am a Muslim”?
For some people, especially those in industrialized Western cultures, individualism pre-
vails. Identity is self-contained. Becoming an adult means separating from parents, becoming
self-reliant, and defining one’s personal, independent self. One’s identity—as a unique indi-
vidual with particular abilities, traits, values, and dreams—remains fairly constant.
Western culture assumes your life will be enriched by believing in your power of personal
control. Western literature, from The Iliad to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, celebrates
the self-reliant individual. Movie plots feature rugged heroes who buck the establishment.
Songs proclaim “I Gotta Be Me,” declare that “The Greatest Love of All” is loving oneself
(Schoeneman, 1994), or state without irony that “I Am a God” or “I Believe the World
Should Revolve Around Me.” Individualism flourishes when people experience affluence,
mobility, urbanism, economic prosperity, and mass media, and when economies shift away
from manufacturing and toward information and service industries (Bianchi, 2016; Gross-
mann & Varnum, 2015; Triandis, 1994). Such changes are occurring worldwide and, as we
might therefore expect, individualism is increasing globally (Santos et al., 2017).
Most cultures native to Asia, Africa, and Central and South America place a greater
value on collectivism, by respecting and identifying with the group. In these cultures, people
are more self-critical and focus less on positive self-views (Heine et al., 1999). Malaysians,
Indians, Koreans, Japanese, and traditional Kenyans such as the Maasai, for example, are
much more likely than Australians, Americans, and the British to complete the “I am”
individualism
The concept of giving priority to
one’s own goals over group
goals and defining one’s identity
in terms of personal attributes
rather than group identifications.
independent self
Construing one’s identity as an
autonomous self.
collectivism
Giving priority to the goals of
one’s group (often one’s
extended family or work group)
and defining one’s identity
accordingly.
Social comparison: Because people tend to highlight only the best and
most exciting parts of their lives on social media, social comparison
online is often based on incomplete information.
©Sam Edwards/Caiaimage/Getty Images
The Self in a Social World Chapter 2 31
statement with their group identities (Kanagawa
et al., 2001; Ma & Schoeneman, 1997). When
speaking, people using the languages of collec-
tivist countries say “I” less often (Kashima &
Kashima, 1998, 2003). Compared with U.S.
church websites, Korean church websites place
more emphasis on social connections and par-
ticipation and less on personal spiritual growth
and self-betterment (Sasaki & Kim, 2011).
Of course, pigeonholing cultures as solely
individualist or collectivist oversimplifies, because
within any culture individualism varies from per-
son to person (Oyserman et al., 2002a, 2002b).
There are individualist Chinese and collectivist
Americans, and most people behave communally
at some times and individualistically at others
(Bandura, 2004). Individualism–collectivism also
varies across a country’s political views and
regions. Conservatives tend to be economic indi-
vidualists (“don’t tax or regulate me”) and moral collectivists (“legislate against immorality”).
Liberals tend to be economic collectivists (“let’s pass universal health care”) and moral indi-
vidualists (“keep your laws off my body”). In the United States, Native Hawaiians and people
living in the deep South are more collectivistic than are those in states in the West such as
Oregon and Montana (Plaut et al., 2002; Vandello & Cohen, 1999). The rich are more indi-
vidualistic than the poor, males more than females, Whites more than nonWhites, and San
Franciscans more than Bostonians (Kraus et al., 2012; Markus & Conner, 2013; Plaut et al.,
2012). In China, people living in areas that grow rice (which requires more collective coopera-
tion) are more collectivistic than those in areas that grow wheat (Talhelm et al., 2014). Despite
individual and subcultural variations, researchers continue to regard individualism and col-
lectivism as genuine cultural variables (Schimmack et al., 2005).
GROWING INDIVIDUALISM WITHIN CULTURES
Cultures can also change over time, and many seem to be growing more individualistic.
One way to see this is using the Google Books Ngram Viewer, which shows the usage of
words and phrases in the full text of 5 million books since the 1800s (try it yourself; it’s
online and free). In the 2000s, compared to previous decades, books published in the
United States used the word “get” more and “give” less (Greenfield, 2013), and used “I,”
“me,” and “you” more and “we” and “us” a little less (Twenge et al., 2013; see Figure 1).
This pattern of increasing individualism also appears in books in eight other languages
worldwide (Yu et al., 2016).
Popular song lyrics also became more likely to use “I” and “me” and less likely to use
“we” and “us” between 1980 and 2007 (DeWall et al., 2011), with the norm shifting from
the sappy love song of the 1980s (“Endless Love,” 1981) to the self-celebration of the 2000s
(Justin Timberlake singlehandedly bringing “Sexy Back,” 2006).
Even your name might show the shift toward individualism: American parents are now
less likely to give their children common names and more likely to help them stand out
with an unusual name. Although nearly 20% of boys born in 1990 received one of the 10
most common names, less than 8% received such a common name by 2016, with the num-
bers similar for girls (Twenge et al., 2016). Today, you don’t have to be the child of a
celebrity to get a name as unique as North, Suri, or Apple.
Americans and Australians, most of whom are descended from those who struck out on
their own to emigrate, are more likely than Europeans to give their children uncommon names.
Parents in the western United States and Canada, descended from independent pioneers, are
also more likely than those in the more established East to give their children uncommon
names (Varnum & Kitayama, 2011). The more individualistic the time or the place, the more
children receive unique names.
Collectivistic cultures focus less on individual identity and more on group identity.
©xavierarnau/Getty Images
32 Part One Social Thinking
FIGURE 1
In the Google Books database,
American books in the 2000s
(vs. those from the 1960s–1970s)
used I, me, my, mine, and my-
self and you, your, yours, your-
self, and yourselves more often.
Source: Twenge et al., 2012.
19
6
0
19
6
3
19
6
6
19
6
9
19
72
19
75
19
78
19
8
1
19
8
4
19
8
7
19
9
0
19
9
3
19
9
6
19
9
9
2
0
0
2
2
0
0
5
2
0
0
8
0.9
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
0
I, me, my,
mine, myself
We, us, our,
ours, ourselves
You, your, yours,
yourself, yourselves
These changes demonstrate a principle that goes
deeper than a name: the interaction between individuals
and society. Did the culture focus on uniqueness first
and cause the parents’ name choices, or did individual
parents decide they wanted their children to be unique,
thus creating the culture? A similar chicken-and-egg
question applies to song lyrics: Did a more self-focused
population listen to more self-focused songs, or did lis-
tening to more self-focused songs make people more
self-focused? The answer, though not yet fully under-
stood, is probably both (Markus & Kitayama, 2010).
CULTURE AND COGNITION
In his book The Geography of Thought (2003), social psy-
chologist Richard Nisbett contends that collectivism also
results in different ways of thinking. When shown an animated underwater scene ( Figure 2),
Japanese spontaneously recalled 60% more background features than did Americans, and they
spoke of more relationships (the frog beside the plant). Americans look more at the focal
object, such as a single big fish, and less at the surroundings (Chua et al., 2005; Nisbett, 2003).
When shown drawings of groups of children, Japanese students took the facial expressions of
all of the children into account when rating the happiness or anger of an individual child,
whereas Americans focused only on the child they were asked to rate (Masuda et al., 2008).
Facebook profile pictures show a similar cultural effect: U.S. students’ selfies were more likely
to be close-ups of their faces, whereas Taiwanese students were more likely to choose a picture
with more background (Huang & Park, 2012). Nisbett and Takahiko Masuda (2003) conclude
from such studies that East Asians think more holistically—perceiving and thinking about
objects and people in relationship to one another and to their environment.
If you grew up in a Western culture, you were probably told to “express yourself”—through
writing, the choices you make, the products you buy, and perhaps through your tattoos or
In individualistic cultures, being
different and standing out is
seen as an asset. In collectivistic
cultures, it is seen as a
detriment.
©Carlos Arguelles/Shutterstock
The Self in a Social World Chapter 2 33
piercings. When asked about the purpose of language, American
students were more likely to explain that it allows self-expression,
whereas Korean students focused on how language allows com-
munication with others. American students were also more likely
to see their choices as expressions of themselves and to evaluate
their personal choices more favorably (Kim & Sherman, 2007).
The individualized latté—“decaf, single shot, skinny, extra hot”—
that seems just right at a North American coffee shop would seem
strange in Seoul, note Kim and Hazel Markus (1999). In Korea,
people place less value on expressing their uniqueness and more
on tradition and shared practices (Choi & Choi, 2002; Figure 3).
Korean advertisements tend to feature people together, whereas
American advertisements highlight personal choice or freedom
(Markus, 2001; Morling & Lamoreaux, 2008).
Collectivistic cultures also promote a greater sense of belonging
and more integration between the self and others. When Chinese
participants were asked to think about their mothers, a brain
region associated with the self became activated—an area that lit
up for Western participants only when they thought about them-
selves (Zhu et al., 2007). Interdependent selves have not one self
but many selves: self-with-parents, self-at-work, self-with-friends
(Cross et al., 1992). As Figure 4 and Table 2 suggest, the interde-
pendent self is embedded in social memberships. Conversation is
less direct and more polite (Holtgraves, 1997), and people focus
more on gaining social approval (Lalwani et al., 2006). Among
Chinese students, half said they would stop dating someone if their
parents disapproved, compared with less than one-third of American students (Zhang &
Kline, 2009). In a collectivistic culture, the goal of social life is to harmonize with and sup-
port one’s communities, not—as it is in more individualistic societies—to enhance one’s indi-
vidual self and make independent choices.
CULTURE AND SELF-ESTEEM
In collectivist cultures, self-esteem tends to be malleable (context-specific) rather than stable
(enduring across situations). In one study, 4 in 5 Canadian students agreed that they
remained essentially the same person in different situations, compared with only 1 in 3
Chinese and Japanese students (Tafarodi et al., 2004).
For those in individualistic cultures, self-esteem is more personal and less relational. If a
Westerner’s personal identity is threatened, she will feel angrier and sadder than
when her collective identity is threatened (Gaertner et al., 1999). Unlike Japanese,
who persist more on tasks when they are failing, people in individualistic countries
persist more when succeeding, because success elevates self-esteem (Heine et al.,
2001). Western individualists like to make comparisons with others that boost
their self-esteem. Asian collectivists make comparisons (often upward, with those
doing better) in ways that facilitate self-improvement (White & Lehman, 2005).
So when, do you suppose, are university students in collectivist Japan and
individualist United States most likely to report positive emotions such as hap-
piness and elation? For Japanese students, happiness comes with positive social
engagement—with feeling close, friendly, and respectful. For American students,
it more often comes with disengaged emotions—with feeling effective, superior,
and proud (Kitayama & Markus, 2000). Conflict in collectivist cultures often
takes place between groups; individualist cultures breed more conflict (and
crime and divorce) between individuals (Triandis, 2000).
When Shinobu Kitayama (1999), after 10 years of teaching and researching
in America, visited his Japanese alma mater, Kyoto University, graduate students
were “astounded” when he explained the Western idea of the individualistic
self. “I persisted in explaining this Western notion of self-concept—one that my
American students understood intuitively—and finally began to persuade them that,
“One needs to cultivate the
spirits of sacrificing the little
me to achieve the benefits of
the big me.”
—Chinese saying
FIGURE 2
Asian and Western Thinking
When shown an underwater scene, Americans focus on the big-
gest fish. Asians are more likely to reference the background,
such as the plants, bubbles, and rocks ( Nisbett, 2003).
FIGURE 3
Which Pen Would You Choose?
When Heejung Kim and Hazel Markus (1999) in-
vited people to choose one of these pens, 77%
of Americans but only 31% of Asians chose the
uncommon color (regardless of whether it was
orange, as here, or green). This result illustrates
differing cultural preferences for uniqueness
and conformity, note Kim and Markus.
34 Part One Social Thinking
FIGURE 4
Self-Construal as
Independent or
Interdependent
The independent self acknowl-
edges relationships with others.
But the interdependent self is
more deeply embedded in others
(Markus & Kitayama, 1991).
Co-worker
FatherMother
Friend
Friend
Sibling
Father
Mother
Friend
Friend
Sibling
Self
Co-worker
Self
Independent view of self Interdependent view of self
TABLE 2 Self-Concept: Independent or Interdependent
Independent
(Individualistic)
Interdependent
(Collectivist)
Identity is Personal, defined by individual
traits and goals
Social, defined by connec-
tions with others
What matters Me—personal achievement and
fulfillment; my rights and liberties
We—group goals and solidar-
ity; our social responsibilities
and relationships
Disapproves of Conformity Egotism
Illustrative motto “To thine own self be true” “No one is an island”
Cultures that support Individualistic Western Collectivistic Asian and
Third World
indeed, many Americans do have such a disconnected notion of self. Still, one of them,
sighing deeply, said at the end, ‘Could this really be true?’” (To read more about psychologi-
cal differences between cultures, see “The Inside Story: Hazel Markus and Shinobu Kitayama
on Cultural Psychology.”)
When East meets West, does the self-concept become more individualized? What hap-
pens when Japanese are exposed to Western advice to “believe in one’s own possibilities,”
and to movies featuring the heroic individual police officer catching the crook despite oth-
ers’ interference? As Steven Heine and co-researchers report (1999), they become more
individualistic. Being an exchange student has a similar effect: Personal self-esteem increased
among Japanese exchange students after spending seven months at the University of British
Columbia. In Canada, individual self-esteem is also higher among long-term Asian immi-
grants than among more recent immigrants (and higher than among those living in Asia).
Culture can shape self-views even in short periods of time.
Self-Knowledge
“Know thyself,” admonished an ancient Greek oracle. We certainly try. We readily form
beliefs about ourselves, and we in Western cultures don’t hesitate to explain why we feel
and act as we do. But how well do we actually know ourselves?
“There is one thing, and only one in the whole universe which we know more about
than we could learn from external observation,” noted C. S. Lewis (1952, pp. 18–19). “That
one thing is [ourselves]. We have, so to speak, inside information; we are in the know.”
Indeed. Yet sometimes we think we know, but our inside information is wrong. That is the
unavoidable conclusion of some fascinating research.
In collectivistic cultures, har-
mony comes from sameness
and agreement.
©Visage/Getty Images
The Self in a Social World Chapter 2 35
PREDICTING OUR BEHAVIOR
Consider two examples of how people’s self-predictions can err:
▯ Movie watching. Netflix at one time invited users to predict what films they later
wanted to watch. What they actually later watched, however, were lower-brow films.
“Faced with this disparity,” reported Seth Stephens-Davidowitz (2017), “Netflix
stopped asking people to tell them what they wanted to see in the future” and
instead offered them suggestions “based on millions of clicks and views from
similar customers. . . . The result: customers . . . watched more movies.”
“In sooth, I know not why I am
so sad.”
—William Shakespeare,
The Merchant of Venice, 1596
Hazel Markus and Shinobu Kitayama on Cultural
Psychology
THE inside
STORY
We began our collaboration by wondering out loud. Japa-
nese researcher Shinobu wondered why American life
was so weird. American researcher Hazel countered with
anecdotes about the strangeness of Japan. Cultural psy-
chology is about making the strange familiar and the fa-
miliar strange. Our shared cultural encounters astonished
us and convinced us that when it comes to psychological
functioning, culture matters.
After weeks of lecturing in Japan to students with a good
command of English, Hazel wondered why the students did
not say anything—no questions, no comments. She assured
students she was interested in ideas that were different
from hers, so why was there no response? Where were the
arguments, debates, and signs of critical thinking? Even if
she asked a straightforward question, “Where is the best
noodle shop?” the answer was invariably an audible intake
of air followed by, “It depends.” Didn’t Japanese students
have preferences, ideas, opinions, and attitudes? What is
inside a head if it isn’t these things? How could you know
someone if she didn’t tell you what she was thinking?
Shinobu was curious about why American students
shouldn’t just listen to a lecture and why they felt the need to
be constantly interrupting each other and talking over each
other and the professor. Why did the comments and ques-
tions reveal strong emotions and have a competitive edge?
What was the point of this arguing? Why did intelligence
seem to be associated with getting the best of another per-
son, even within a class where people knew each other well?
Shinobu expressed his amazement at American hosts
who bombard their guests with choices. Do you want
wine or beer, or soft drinks or juice, or coffee or tea? Why
burden the guest with trivial decisions? Surely the host
knew what would be good refreshment on this occasion
and could simply provide something appropriate.
Choice as a burden? Hazel wondered if this could be
the key to one particularly humiliating experience in Japan.
A group of eight—all native Japanese except for Hazel—
was in a French restaurant, and everyone was following the
universal restaurant script and studying the menu. The
waiter approached and stood nearby. Hazel announced
her choice of appetizer and entrée. Next was a tense con-
versation among the Japanese host and the Japanese
guests. When the meal was served, it was not what she had
ordered. Everyone at the table was served the same meal.
This was deeply disturbing. If you can’t choose your own
dinner, how could it be enjoyable? What was the point of
the menu if everybody is served the same meal?
Could a sense of sameness be a good or a desirable
feeling in Japan? When Hazel walked around the grounds
of a temple in Kyoto, there was a fork in the path and a
sign that read: “ordinary path.” Who would want to take
the ordinary path? Where was the special, less-traveled
path? Choosing the non-ordinary path may be an obvious
course for Americans, but in this case it led to the temple
dump outside the temple grounds. The ordinary path did
not denote the dull and unchallenging way, but meant the
appropriate and the good way.
These exchanges inspired our experimental studies and
remind us that there are ways of life beyond the ones that
each of us knows best. So far, most of psychology has been
produced by psychologists in middle-class White American
settings studying middle-class White American respondents.
In other sociocultural contexts, there can be different ideas
and practices about how to be a person and how to live a
meaningful life, and these differences have an influence on
psychological functioning. This realization fuels our continu-
ing interest in collaboration and in cultural psychology.
Shinobu Kitayama
University of Michigan
Courtesy Shinobu Kitayama
Hazel Rose Markus
Stanford University
©Hazel Rose Markus
36 Part One Social Thinking
▯ Dating and romance future. Inevitably, dating couples are optimistic about how long
their relationship will last. Their friends and family often know better, report Tara
MacDonald and Michael Ross (1997). Among University of Waterloo students, their
roommates were better predictors of whether their romances would survive than
they were. Medical residents weren’t very good at predicting whether they would do
well on a surgical skills exam, but peers in the program predicted each other’s per-
formance with startling accuracy (Lutsky et al., 1993). Observers predicted psychol-
ogy students’ exam grades better than the students themselves—mostly because they
relied on past performance rather than the student’s overly optimistic hopes for
acing the test (Helzer & Dunning, 2012). So if you’re in love and want to know
whether it will last, don’t listen to your heart—ask your roommate.
One of the most common errors in behavior prediction is underestimating how long it
will take to complete a task (called the planning fallacy). The Big Dig freeway construction
project in Boston was supposed to take 10 years and actually took 20 years. The Sydney
Opera House was supposed to be completed in 6 years; it took 16. Less than a third of
couples engaged to be married completed their wedding planning as quickly as they
expected, and only 4 out of 10 sweethearts bought a planned Valentine’s Day gift by their
self-imposed deadline (Min & Arkes, 2012). College students writing a senior thesis paper
finished 3 weeks later than their “most realistic” estimate—and a week later than their
“worst-case scenario” estimate (Buehler et al., 2002). However, friends and teachers were
able to predict how late these papers would be. Just as you should ask your friends how
long your relationship is likely to survive, if you want to know when you will finish your
term paper, ask your roommate or your mom. You could also do what Microsoft does:
Managers automatically add 30% onto a software developer’s estimate of completion—and
50% if the project involves a new operating system (Dunning, 2006).
So, how can you improve your self-predictions? The best way is to be more realistic about
how long tasks took in the past. Apparently, people underestimate how long something will
take because they misremember previous tasks as taking less time than they actually did
(Roy et al., 2005). Another useful strategy: Estimate how long each step in the project will
take. Engaged couples who described their wedding-planning steps in more detail more
accurately predicted how long the process would take (Min & Arkes, 2012).
Are people equally bad at predicting how much money they will spend? Johanna Peetz and
Roger Buehler (2009) found that the answer was yes. Canadian undergraduates predicted that
they would spend $94 over the next week but actually spent $122. Considering that they had
spent $126 in the week before the study, their guess should have been more accurate. When they
came back a week later, they still predicted they would spend only $85 in the coming week.
Students who said they wanted to save money were more likely to predict they would spend
less—but ended up spending the same amount as everyone else. U.S. homeowners renovating
their kitchens planned to spend $18,658, but instead spent $38,769 (Kahneman, 2011, p. 250).
So just as we think we will complete tasks quickly, we think we will save our money. The difficulty
lies in actually doing so. If Lao-tzu was right—“He who knows others is learned. He who knows
himself is enlightened”—then most people, it would seem, are more learned than enlightened.
PREDICTING OUR FEELINGS
Many of life’s big decisions involve predicting our future feelings. Would
marrying this person lead to lifelong contentment? Would entering this
profession make for satisfying work? Would going on this vacation produce
a happy experience? Or would the likelier results be divorce, job burnout,
and holiday disappointment?
Sometimes we know how we will feel—if we fail that exam, win that big
game, or soothe our tensions with a half-hour jog. We know what exhilarates
us and what makes us anxious or bored. Other times we may mispredict our
responses. Asked how they would feel if asked sexually harassing questions
on a job interview, most women studied by Julie Woodzicka and Marianne
LaFrance (2001) said they would feel angry. When actually asked such ques-
tions, however, women more often experienced fear.
planning fallacy
The tendency to underestimate
how long it will take to complete
a task.
When will you finish your term
paper? Your friends might have
a more accurate answer than
you do. Estimating each step
separately might help you esti-
mate more accurately.
©Dean Drobot/Shutterstock
The Self in a Social World Chapter 2 37
Studies of “affective forecasting” reveal that people have greatest dif-
ficulty predicting the intensity and the duration of their future emotions
(Wilson & Gilbert, 2003). People mispredict how they would feel some
time after a romantic breakup, receiving a gift, losing an election, winning
a game, and being insulted (Gilbert & Ebert, 2002; Loewenstein &
Schkade, 1999). Some examples:
▯ When young men are sexually aroused by erotic photographs, then
exposed to a passionate date scenario in which their date asks them
to “stop,” they admit that they might not stop. If not shown sexually
arousing pictures first, they are less likely to say they might be sexu-
ally aggressive. When not aroused, they easily mispredict how they
will feel and act when aroused—which can lead to unexpected profes-
sions of love during lust, to unintended pregnancies, and to repeat
offenses among sex abusers who have sincerely vowed “never again.”
▯ Hungry shoppers are more likely to impulse buy (“Those dough-
nuts would be delicious!”) than shoppers who have just enjoyed a
quarter-pound blueberry muffin (Gilbert & Wilson, 2000). When
you are hungry, you mispredict how gross those deep-fried dough-
nuts will seem when you are sated. When stuffed, you may
underestimate how yummy those doughnuts might be—a purchase whose appeal
quickly fades when you’ve eaten one or two.
▯ When natural disasters such as hurricanes occur, people predict that their sadness
will be greater if more people are killed. But after Hurricane Katrina struck in
2005, students’ sadness was similar when it was believed that 50 people had been
killed to when they believed 1,000 had been killed (Dunn & Ashton-James, 2008).
What did influence how sad people felt? Seeing pictures of victims. No wonder
poignant images of disasters on TV have so much influence on us.
▯ People overestimate how much their well-being would be affected both by bad events
(a romantic breakup, failing to reach an athletic goal [Eastwick et al., 2007; van Dijk
et al., 2008]) and good events (warmer winters, weight loss, more television chan-
nels, more free time). Even extreme events, such as winning a state lottery or suffer-
ing a paralyzing accident, impact long-term happiness less than most people suppose.
Our intuitive theory seems to be: We want. We get. We are happy. If that were true, this
chapter would have fewer words. In reality, note Daniel Gilbert and Timothy Wilson (2000),
we often “miswant.” People who imagine an idyllic desert island holiday with sun, surf, and
sand may be disappointed when they discover “how much they require daily structure,
intellectual stimulation, or regular infusions of Pop Tarts.” We think that if our candidate
or team wins, we will be delighted for a long while. But study after study reveals our vulner-
ability to impact bias—overestimating the enduring impact of emotion-causing events. Faster
than we expect, the emotional traces of such good tidings evaporate.
We are especially prone to impact bias after negative events. Let’s make this personal.
Gilbert and Wilson invite you to imagine how you might feel a year after losing your non-
dominant hand. Compared with today, how happy would you be?
You may have focused on what the calamity would mean: no clapping, no shoe tying, no
competitive basketball, no speedy keyboarding. Although you likely would forever regret the
loss, your general happiness some time after the event would be influenced by “two things:
(a) the event, and (b) everything else” (Gilbert & Wilson, 2000). In focusing on the negative
event, we discount the importance of everything else that contributes to happiness and thus
overpredict our enduring misery. “Nothing that you focus on will make as much difference
as you think,” write researchers David Schkade and Daniel Kahneman (1998).
Moreover, say Wilson and Gilbert (2003), people neglect the speed and the power of
their coping mechanisms, which include rationalizing, discounting, forgiving, and limiting
emotional trauma. Because we are unaware of the speed and strength of our coping, we
adapt to disabilities, romantic breakups, exam failures, layoffs, and personal and team
“When a feeling was there,
they felt as if it would never
go; when it was gone, they felt
as if it had never been; when
it returned, they felt as if it had
never gone.”
—George MacDonald,
What’s Mine’s Mine, 1886
impact bias
Overestimating the enduring
impact of emotion-causing
events.
“Weeping may tarry for the
night, but joy comes with the
morning.”
—Psalm 30:5
Predicting behavior, even one’s own, is no easy matter,
which may be why some people go to psychics and tarot
card readers in hope of help.
Reprinted with permission of Brett Pelham at brettpel@yahoo.com.
“I was hoping you could tell me something
mildly favorable—yet vague enough
to be believable.”
38 Part One Social Thinking
defeats more readily than we would expect. Ironically, as Gilbert and colleagues report
(2004), major negative events (which activate our psychological defenses) can be less endur-
ingly distressing than minor irritations (which don’t activate our defenses). We are, under
most circumstances, amazingly resilient.
THE WISDOM AND ILLUSIONS OF SELF-ANALYSIS
To a striking extent, then, our intuitions are often dead wrong about what has influenced us
and what we will feel and do. But let’s not overstate the case. When the causes of our behavior
are conspicuous and the correct explanation fits our intuition, our self-perceptions will be
accurate (Gavanski & Hoffman, 1987). When the causes of behavior are obvious to an observer,
they are usually obvious to us as well. Overall, the correlation between predicted feelings and
actual feelings was .28—a significant but far from perfect link (Mathieu & Gosling, 2012).
We are unaware of much that goes on in our minds. Perception and memory studies
show that we are more aware of the results of our thinking than of its process. Creative
scientists and artists often cannot report the thought processes that produced their insights,
although they have superb knowledge of the results.
Timothy Wilson (1985, 2002) offers a bold idea: Analyzing why we feel the way we do can
actually make our judgments less accurate. In nine experiments, Wilson and colleagues (1989,
2008) found that the attitudes people consciously expressed toward things or people usually
predicted their subsequent behavior reasonably well. Their attitude reports became useless,
however, if participants were first asked to analyze their feelings. For example, dating couples’
level of happiness with their relationship accurately predicted whether they would still be dating
several months later. But participants who first listed all the reasons why their relationship was
good or bad before rating their happiness were misled—their happiness ratings were useless in
predicting the future of the relationship! Apparently, the process of dissecting the relationship
drew attention to easily verbalized factors that were not as important as harder-to-verbalize
happiness. We are often “strangers to ourselves,” Wilson concluded (2002).
Such findings illustrate that we have a dual attitude system, say Wilson and colleagues
(2000). Our automatic implicit, unconscious attitudes regarding someone or something
often differ from our consciously controlled, explicit attitudes (Gawronski & Bodenhausen,
2006; Nosek, 2007). When someone says they make decisions by “trusting my gut,” they’re
referring to their implicit attitudes (Kendrick & Olson, 2012). Although explicit attitudes
may change with relative ease, notes Wilson, “implicit attitudes, like old habits, change
more slowly.” With repeated practice, however, new habitual attitudes can replace old ones.
This research on the limits of our self-knowledge has two practical implications. The first
is for psychological inquiry. Self-reports are often untrustworthy. Errors in self-understanding
limit the scientific usefulness of subjective personal reports.
The second implication is for our everyday lives. Even if people report and interpret
their experiences with complete honesty, that does not mean their reports are true. Personal
testimonies are powerfully persuasive (as discussed in more detail in the chapter titled
“Social Psychology in Court”). But they may also be wrong. Keeping this potential for error
in mind can help us feel less intimidated by others and become less gullible.
dual attitude system
Differing implicit (automatic) and
explicit (consciously controlled)
attitudes toward the same
object. Verbalized explicit
attitudes may change with
education and persuasion;
implicit attitudes change slowly,
with practice that forms new
habits.
▯ Our sense of self helps organize our thoughts and ac-
tions. When we process information with reference to
ourselves, we remember it well (using our self-schemas).
Self-concept consists of two elements: the self-schemas
that guide our processing of self-relevant information
and the possible selves that we dream of or dread.
▯ Cultures shape the self, too. Many people in individual-
istic Western cultures assume an independent self. Oth-
ers, often in collectivistic cultures, assume a more
interdependent self. These contrasting ideas contribute
to cultural differences in social behavior.
▯ Our self-knowledge is curiously flawed. We often do not
know why we behave the way we do. When influences
upon our behavior are not conspicuous enough for any
observer to see, we, too, can miss them. The uncon-
scious, implicit processes that control our behavior may
differ from our conscious, explicit explanations of it.
Self-Concept: Who Am I?SUMMING UP:
The Self in a Social World Chapter 2 39
WHAT IS THE NATURE AND
MOTIVATING POWER OF
SELF-ESTEEM?
Understand self-esteem and its implications for
behavior and cognition.
Everyone desires and seeks to bolster self-esteem. But can self-esteem be problematic?
First, we must decide how much self-esteem we have. Is self-esteem the sum of all our
self-views across various domains? If we see ourselves as attractive, athletic, smart, and
destined to be rich and loved, will we have high self-esteem? Yes, say Jennifer Crocker and
Connie Wolfe (2001)—when we feel good about the domains (looks, smarts, or whatever)
important to our self-esteem: “One person may have self-esteem that is highly contingent
on doing well in school and being physically attractive, whereas another may have self-
esteem that is contingent on being loved by God and adhering to moral standards.” Thus,
the first person will feel high self-esteem when made to feel smart and good-looking, the
second person when made to feel moral.
But Jonathon Brown and Keith Dutton (1994) argue that this “bottom-up” view of self-
esteem is not the whole story. The causal arrow, they believe, also goes the other way.
People who value themselves in a general way—those with high self-esteem—are more likely
to value their looks, abilities, and so forth. They are like new parents who, loving their
infant, delight in the baby’s fingers, toes, and hair: The parents do not first evaluate their
infant’s fingers or toes and then decide how much to value the whole baby.
Specific self-perceptions do have some influence, however. If you think you’re good at
math, you will be more likely to do well at math. Although general self-esteem does not predict
academic performance very well, academic self-concept—whether you think you are good in
school—does (Marsh & O’Mara, 2008). Of course, each causes the other: Doing well at math
makes you think you are good at math, which then motivates you to do even better. If you
want to encourage someone (or yourself!), it’s better if your praise is specific (“You’re good
at math”) instead of general (“You’re great”) and if your kind words reflect true ability and
performance (“You really improved on your last test”) rather than unrealistic optimism (“You
can do anything”). Feedback is best when it is true and specific (Swann et al., 2007).
One intriguing study examined the effects of very general feedback on self-esteem. Imag-
ine you’re getting your grade back for the first test in a psychology class. When you see
your grade, you groan—it’s a D–. But then you get an encouraging email with some review
questions for the class and this message: “Students who have high self-esteem not only get
better grades, but they remain self-confident and assured. . . . Bottom line: Hold your
head—and your self-esteem—high.” Another group of students instead get a message about
taking personal control of their performance, or receive review questions only. So which
group did better on the final exam? To the surprise of the researchers, the students whose
self-esteem was boosted did by far the worst on the final—in fact, they flunked it (Forsyth
et al., 2007). Struggling students told to feel good about themselves, the researchers muse,
may have thought, “I’m already great—why study?”
Self-Esteem Motivation
Most people are extremely motivated to maintain their self-esteem. In fact, college students
prefer a boost to their self-esteem to eating their favorite food, engaging in their favorite sexual
activity, seeing a best friend, drinking alcohol, or receiving a paycheck (Bushman et al., 2011).
So, somewhat incredibly, self-esteem was more important than pizza, sex, and beer!
What happens when your self-esteem is threatened—for example, by a failure or an unflat-
tering comparison with someone else? When brothers have markedly different ability levels—for
example, one is a great athlete and the other is not—they report not getting along well (Tesser
et al., 1988). Dutch university students who experienced negative feedback felt more
self-esteem
A person’s overall self-
evaluation or sense of
self-worth.
40 Part One Social Thinking
Schadenfreude (joy at another’s misfortune) when they watched a
young woman sing horribly out of tune in an audition for the Dutch
version of “American Idol” (van Dijk et al., 2012). Misery loves to
laugh at others’ misery.
Self-esteem threats also occur among friends, whose success can
be more threatening than that of strangers (Zuckerman & Jost, 2001).
Self-esteem level also makes a difference. People with high self-
esteem usually react to a self-esteem threat by compensating for it
(blaming someone else or trying harder next time). These reactions
help them preserve their positive feelings about themselves. People
with low self-esteem, however, are more likely to blame themselves
or give up (VanDellen et al., 2011).
What underlies the motive to maintain or enhance self-esteem?
Mark Leary (1998, 2004b, 2007) believes that self-esteem is simi-
lar to a fuel gauge. Relationships enable surviving and thriving,
so the self-esteem gauge alerts us to threatened social rejection,
motivating us to act with greater sensitivity to others’ expecta-
tions. Studies confirm that social rejection lowers self-esteem and
makes people more eager for approval. Spurned or jilted, we feel
unattractive or inadequate. Like a blinking dashboard light, this
pain can motivate action such as self-improvement or a search
for acceptance and inclusion elsewhere. Self-esteem can also
serve as a gauge of status with others, growing higher when we are respected as well as
liked (Gebauer et al., 2015).
Jeff Greenberg (2008) offers another perspective, called terror management theory,
which argues that humans must find ways to manage their overwhelming fear of death. If
self-esteem were only about acceptance, he counters, why do “people strive to be great
rather than to just be accepted”? The reality of our own death, he argues, motivates us to
gain recognition from our work and values. There’s a worm in the apple, however: Not
everyone can achieve such recognition, which is exactly why it is valuable, and why self-
esteem can never be wholly unconditional (or not based on anything, such as when parents
say, “You’re special just for being you”). To feel our lives are not in vain, Greenberg main-
tains, we must continually pursue self-esteem by meeting the standards of our societies.
However, actively pursuing self-esteem can backfire. Jennifer Crocker and colleagues
found that students whose self-worth was contingent on external sources (such as grades
or others’ opinions) experienced more stress, anger, relationship problems, drug and alcohol
use, and eating disorders than did those whose sense of self-worth was rooted more in
internal sources, such as personal virtues (Crocker, 2002; Crocker & Knight, 2005; Crocker
& Luhtanen, 2003; Crocker & Park, 2004).
Ironically, note Crocker and Lora Park (2004), those who pursue self-esteem, perhaps
by seeking to become beautiful, rich, or popular, may lose sight of what really makes
them feel good about themselves. University students who tried to impress their room-
mates by emphasizing their good qualities and hiding their bad ones found that their
roommates actually liked them less, which then undermined their self-esteem (Canevello
& Crocker, 2011). Pursuing self-esteem, Crocker explains, is like reaching into a small
hole in a barrel to grasp a delicious apple—and then getting stuck because your hand’s
tight grip has made it too big for the hole (Crocker, 2011). When we focus on boosting
our self-esteem, we may become less open to criticism, less likely to empathize with
others, and more pressured to succeed at activities rather than enjoy them. So instead
of reaching for the apple and failing, Crocker observes, it’s better to emulate Johnny
Appleseed, who altruistically planted seeds so others could eat apples—not so he could
eat them himself. For example, college students who embraced compassionate goals
toward their roommates (“I want to be supportive of my roommate”) achieved better
relationships with them and subsequently enjoyed higher self-esteem (Canevello & Crocker,
2011). A similar approach works for our own views of ourselves. Kristin Neff (2011) calls
it self-compassion—leaving behind comparisons with others and instead treating ourselves
terror management theory
Proposes that people exhibit
self-protective emotional and
cognitive responses (including
adhering more strongly to their
cultural worldviews and
prejudices) when confronted
with reminders of their mortality.
Among sibling relationships, the threat to self-esteem is
greatest for an older child with a highly capable younger
brother or sister.
©Hero/Corbis/Glow Images
The Self in a Social World Chapter 2 41
with kindness. As an Indian proverb puts it, “There is nothing noble
in being superior to some other person. The true nobility is in being
superior to your previous self.”
The Trade-Off of Low vs. High
Self-Esteem
People low in self-esteem are more vulnerable to anxiety, loneliness,
and eating disorders. When feeling bad or threatened, those low in
self-esteem often take a negative view of everything. They notice and
remember others’ worst behaviors and think their partners don’t
love them (Murray et al., 2002; Vorauer & Quesnel, 2013). Although
people with low self-esteem do not choose less-desirable partners,
they are quicker to believe that their partners are criticizing or reject-
ing them. Perhaps as a result, those low in self-esteem are less satis-
fied with their relationships (Fincham & Bradbury, 1993). They may
also be more likely to leave those relationships. Undergraduates with
low self-esteem decided not to stay with roommates who saw them in a positive light (Swann
& Pelham, 2002). Unfortunately, trying to boost low self-esteem through repeating positive
phrases (such as “I’m a loveable person”) backfires: It actually makes people low in self-
esteem feel worse (Wood et al., 2009). Those low in self-esteem also don’t want to hear
positive things about negative experiences (such as “at least you learned something”).
Instead, they prefer understanding responses, even if they are negative (such as “that really
sucks” [Marigold et al., 2014]).
People with low self-esteem also experience more problems in life—they make less money,
abuse drugs, and are more likely to be depressed and engage in acts of self-harm such as cut-
ting (Forrester et al., 2017; Orth & Robins, 2013; Salmela-Aro & Nurmi, 2007). Several studies
that followed people as they grew older (called a longitudinal study) found that people who
had low self-esteem as teens were more likely to later be depressed, suggesting that low self-
esteem causes depression instead of the other way around (Sowislo & Orth, 2013). However,
as you recall from the chapter “Introducing Social Psychology,” a correlation between two
variables is sometimes caused by a third factor. Maybe people low in self-esteem also faced
poverty as children, experienced sexual abuse, or had parents who used drugs—all possible
causes of later struggling. Sure enough, a study that controlled for these factors found that the
link between self-esteem and negative outcomes disappeared (Boden et al., 2008). Low self-
esteem was seemingly a symptom of an underlying disease—in this case, a tough childhood.
When good things happen, people with high self-esteem are more likely to savor and
sustain the good feelings (Wood et al., 2003). As research on depression and anxiety sug-
gests, self-serving perceptions can be useful. It may be strategic to believe we are smarter,
stronger, and more socially successful than we are. Belief in our superiority can also moti-
vate us to achieve—creating a self-fulfilling prophecy—and can sustain our hope through
difficult times (Willard & Gramzow, 2009).
High self-esteem has other benefits—it fosters initiative, resilience, and pleasant feelings
(Baumeister et al., 2003). Yet teen gang leaders, extreme ethnocentrists, terrorists, and men
in prison for committing violent crimes also tend to have higher than average self-esteem
(Bushman & Baumeister, 2002; Dawes, 1994, 1998). “Hitler had very high self-esteem,” note
Baumeister and coauthors (2003). Nor is self-esteem the key to success: Self-esteem does not
cause better academic achievement or superior work performance (Baumeister et al., 2003).
Can you guess which ethnic group in the United States has the lowest self-esteem? It’s Asian-
Americans, who achieve the most academically as students and earn the highest median
income as adults. As you learned earlier, Asian cultures place more emphasis on self-improve-
ment instead of on self-esteem, and that emphasis may pay off with better performance. “The
enthusiastic claims of the self-esteem movement mostly range from fantasy to hogwash,” says
Baumeister (1996), who suspects he has “probably published more studies on self-esteem than
anybody else. . . . The effects of self-esteem are small, limited, and not all good.” Folks with
high self-esteem, he reports, are more likely to be obnoxious, to interrupt, and to talk at people
longitudinal study
Research in which the same
people are studied over an
extended period of time.
“After all these years, I’m sorry
to say, my recommendation is
this: Forget about self-esteem
and concentrate more on self-
control and self-discipline. Re-
cent work suggests this would
be good for the individual and
good for society.”
—Roy Baumeister (2005)
©Mike Twohy. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
42 Part One Social Thinking
rather than with them (in contrast to the more shy, modest, folks with low self-esteem). “My
conclusion is that self-control is worth 10 times as much as self-esteem.”
NARCISSISM: SELF-ESTEEM’S CONCEITED SISTER
High self-esteem becomes especially problematic if it crosses over into narcissism, or having
an inflated sense of self. Most people with high self-esteem value both individual achieve-
ment and relationships with others. Narcissists usually have high self-esteem, but they are
missing the piece about caring for others (Campbell et al., 2007; Jones & Brunell, 2014).
Narcissism goes beyond just very high self-esteem—people high in self-esteem think they’re
worthy and good, but narcissists think they are better than others (Brummelman et al.,
2016). Although narcissists can be outgoing and charming early on, their self-centeredness
often leads to relationship problems in the long run (Campbell, 2005). The link between
narcissism and problematic social relations led Delroy Paulhus and Kevin Williams (2002)
to include narcissism in “The Dark Triad” of negative traits, along with Machiavellianism
(manipulativeness) and antisocial psychopathy.
In a series of experiments conducted by Brad Bushman and Roy Baumeister (1998),
undergraduate volunteers wrote essays and received rigged feedback that said, “This is one
of the worst essays I’ve read!” Those who scored high on narcissism were much more likely
to retaliate, blasting painful noise into the headphones of the student they believed had criti-
cized them. Narcissists weren’t aggressive toward someone who praised them (“great essay!”).
It was the insult that set them off. But what about self-esteem? Maybe only the “insecure”
narcissists—those low in self-esteem—would lash out. But that’s not how it turned out—instead,
the students high in both self-esteem and narcissism were the most aggressive. The same
was true in a classroom setting—those who were high in both self-esteem and narcissism were
the most likely to retaliate against a classmate’s criticism by giving him or her a bad grade
(Bushman et al., 2009; Figure 5). Narcissists are especially likely to lash out when the insult
is delivered publicly—and thus punctures their carefully constructed bubble of superiority.
For that, someone must pay (Ferriday et al., 2011). It’s true that narcissists can be charming
and entertaining. But as one wit has said, “God help you if you cross them.”
What about the idea that an overinflated ego is just a cover for deep-seated insecurity?
Do narcissistic people actually hate themselves “deep down inside”? Studies show that the
answer is no. People who score high on measures of narcissistic personality traits also score
high on measures of self-esteem. In case narcissists were claiming high self-esteem just for
show, researchers also asked undergraduates to play a computer game where they had to
press a key as quickly as possible to match the word “me” with positive words such as “good,”
“wonderful,” “great,” and “right,” and negative words such as “bad,” “awful,” “terrible,” and
“wrong.” High scorers on the narcissism scale were faster than others to associate themselves
FIGURE 5
Narcissism, Self-
Esteem, and Aggression
Narcissism and self-esteem inter-
act to influence aggression. In an
experiment by Brad Bushman
and colleagues (2009), the
recipe for retaliation against a
critical classmate required both
narcissism and high
self-esteem.
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
–0.5
Low narcissism High narcissism
A
g
g
re
ss
io
n
High self-esteem
Low self-esteem
The Self in a Social World Chapter 2 43
with positive words, and slower than others to pair them-
selves with negative words (Campbell et al., 2007). And
narcissists were even faster to identify with words such
as “outspoken,” “dominant,” and “assertive.” Although
it might be comforting to think that an arrogant class-
mate is just covering for his insecurity, chances are that
deep down inside he thinks he’s awesome.
That deep-seated feeling of superiority may originate
in childhood. In a longitudinal study, when parents
believed their children deserved special treatment, the
children scored higher on narcissism six months later.
In contrast, parents’ feelings of love and kindness to
their children were not linked to narcissism (Brummel-
man et al., 2015). This study suggests a straightforward
piece of advice for parents: Instead of telling your chil-
dren that they are special, tell them you love them.
Due to their self-confidence, narcissists are often ini-
tially popular with others. In one experiment, those
higher in narcissism were more likely to emerge as the
leader of a group of students they hadn’t met before (Brunell et al., 2008). However, once
groups meet more than a few times, the popularity of narcissistic leaders declines as the
group realizes the leader doesn’t have their best interests at heart (Rosenthal & Pittinsky,
2006). As time passes, narcissists’ antagonism and aggression toward others makes them
less and less popular with their peers (Leckelt et al., 2015). That can become particularly
problematic on social media, where narcissists are both more active (posting more status
updates and tweets) and more popular (having more friends and followers) (Gnambs &
Appel, 2017; Liu & Baumeister, 2016; McCain & Campbell, 2017).
Narcissists seem to be aware of their own narcissism. Simply asking people if they agree
with the statement “I am a narcissist” predicts narcissistic behavior nearly as well as the
standard 40-item measure (Konrath et al., 2014). Narcissists realize that they see themselves
more positively than others see them and admit that they are arrogant and exaggerate their
abilities (Carlson et al., 2011). They also recognize that they make good first impressions
but are often actively disliked in the long run (Paulhus, 1998; Paulhus et al., 2013). “Early
in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility,” observed Frank
Lloyd Wright. “I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change.”
Self-Efficacy
Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura (1997, 2000, 2008) captured the power of positive
thinking in his research and theorizing about self-efficacy (how competent we feel on a
task). Believing in our own competence and effectiveness pays dividends (Bandura et al.,
1999; Maddux & Gosselin, 2003). Children and adults with strong feelings of self-efficacy
are more persistent, less anxious, and less depressed. They also live healthier lives and are
more academically successful.
In everyday life, self-efficacy leads us to set chal-
lenging goals and to persist. More than 100 studies
show that self-efficacy predicts worker productivity
(Stajkovic & Luthans, 1998). The results of 241
studies show that performance self-efficacy is one
of the strongest predictors of students’ GPAs in
college (Richardson et al., 2012). When problems
arise, a strong sense of self-efficacy leads people to
stay calm and seek solutions rather than ruminate
on their inadequacy. Competence plus persistence
equals accomplishment. And with accomplish-
ment, self-confidence grows. Self-efficacy, like self-
esteem, grows with hard-won achievements.
self-efficacy
A sense that one is competent
and effective, distinguished
from self-esteem, which is
one’s sense of self-worth.
A sharpshooter in the military
might feel high self-efficacy
and low self-esteem.
Narcissistic people are more active and more popular on social media sites,
increasing their influence in these online communities.
©Maridav/Shutterstock
Someone who thinks, “If I work
hard, I can swim fast” has high
self-efficacy. Someone who
thinks, “I am a great swimmer”
has high self-esteem.
©Dean Drobot/Shutterstock
44 Part One Social Thinking
Self-efficacy and self-esteem sound similar but are different concepts. If you believe you
can do something, that’s self-efficacy. If you like yourself overall, that’s self-esteem. When you
were a child, your parents may have encouraged you by saying things such as, “You’re special!”
(intended to build self-esteem) or “I know you can do it!” (intended to build self-efficacy).
One study showed that self-efficacy feedback (“You tried really hard”) led to better perfor-
mance than self-esteem feedback (“You’re really smart”). Children told they were smart were
afraid to try again—maybe they wouldn’t look so smart next time. Those praised for working
hard, however, knew they could exert more effort again (Mueller & Dweck, 1998). If you
want to encourage someone, focus on her self-efficacy, not her self-esteem.
▯ Self-esteem is the overall sense of self-worth we use to
appraise our traits and abilities. Our self-concepts are
determined by multiple influences, including the roles
we play, the comparisons we make, our social identities,
how we perceive others appraising us, and our experi-
ences of success and failure.
▯ Self-esteem motivation influences our cognitive pro-
cesses: Facing failure, people high in self-esteem sustain
their self-worth by perceiving other people as failing,
too, and by exaggerating their superiority over others.
▯ Although high self-esteem is generally more beneficial
than low, researchers have found that people high in
both self-esteem and narcissism are the most aggressive.
Someone with a big ego who is threatened or deflated
by social rejection is potentially aggressive.
▯ Self-efficacy is the belief that one is effective and compe-
tent and can do something. Unlike high self-esteem,
high self-efficacy is consistently linked to success.
SUMMING UP: What Is the Nature and Motivating
Power of Self-Esteem?
WHAT IS SELF-SERVING BIAS?
Explain self-serving bias and its adaptive
and maladaptive aspects.
Most of us have a good reputation with ourselves. In studies of self-esteem, even low-scoring
people respond in the midrange of possible scores. (Someone with low self-esteem responds
to statements such as “I have good ideas” with a qualifying adjective, such as “somewhat”
or “sometimes.”) In a study including 53 nations, the average self-esteem score was above
the midpoint in every country (Schmitt & Allik, 2005). One of social psychology’s most
provocative yet firmly established conclusions is the potency of self-serving bias—a tendency
to perceive oneself favorably.
Explaining Positive and Negative Events
Many dozens of experiments have found that people accept credit when told they have
succeeded. They attribute the success to their ability and effort, but they attribute failure
to external factors, such as bad luck or the problem’s inherent “impossibility” (Campbell &
Sedikides, 1999; Wang et al., 2017). Similarly, in explaining their victories, athletes com-
monly credit themselves, but they attribute losses to something else: bad breaks, bad referee
calls, or the other team’s super effort or dirty play (Grove et al., 1991; Lalonde, 1992;
Mullen & Riordan, 1988). And how much responsibility do you suppose car drivers tend
to accept for their accidents? On insurance forms, drivers have described their accidents
by writing, “An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my car, and vanished”; “As I
reached an intersection, a hedge sprang up, obscuring my vision, and I did not see the
other car”; and “A pedestrian hit me and went under my car” (Toronto News, 1977).
Situations that combine skill and chance (games, exams, and job applications) are espe-
cially prone to the phenomenon. When you win at Scrabble, it’s because of your verbal
self-serving bias
The tendency to perceive
oneself favorably.
“Victory finds a hundred fa-
thers but defeat is an orphan.”
—Count Galeazzo Ciano,
The Ciano Diaries, 1938
The Self in a Social World Chapter 2 45
dexterity; when you lose, it’s because “Who could get anywhere with a Q
but no U?” Politicians similarly tend to attribute their wins to themselves
(hard work, constituent service, reputation, and strategy) and their losses
to factors beyond their control (their district’s party makeup, their oppo-
nent’s name, and political trends) (Kingdon, 1967). When corporate profits
are up, the CEOs welcome big bonuses for their managerial skill. When
profits turn to losses, well, what could you expect in a down economy? This
phenomenon of self-serving attributions (attributing positive outcomes to
oneself and negative outcomes to something else) is one of the most potent
of human biases (Mezulis et al., 2004). That might be for a good reason:
Making self-serving attributions activates brain areas associated with reward
and pleasure (Seidel et al., 2010).
Self-serving attributions contribute to marital discord, worker dissatisfac-
tion, and bargaining impasses (Kruger & Gilovich, 1999). Small wonder that
divorced people usually blame their partner for the breakup (Gray & Silver,
1990), or that managers often blame poor performance on workers’ lack of
ability or effort while workers blame external factors such as excessive work-
load or difficult co-workers (Imai, 1994; Rice, 1985). Small wonder, too,
that people evaluate pay raises as fairer when they receive a bigger raise
than most of their co-workers (Diekmann et al., 1997).
We help maintain our positive self-images by associating ourselves with success and
distancing ourselves from failure. For example, “I got an A on my econ test” versus
“The prof gave me a C on my history exam.” Blaming failure or rejection on something
external, even another’s prejudice, is less depressing than seeing oneself as undeserving
(Major et al., 2003). Journalists were more likely to write that “we” (people like them)
had a positive outcome but “they” (those different from them) had a negative one
(Sendén et al., 2014). Most people will, however, acknowledge their distant past fail-
ings—those by their “former” self, note Anne Wilson and Michael Ross (2001). Describ-
ing their old precollege selves, their University of Waterloo students offered nearly as
many negative as positive statements. When describing their present selves, they offered
three times more positive statements. “I’ve learned and grown, and I’m a better person
today,” most people surmise. Chumps yesterday, champs today.
Ironically, we are even biased against seeing our own bias. People claim they avoid self-
serving bias themselves but readily acknowledge that others commit this bias (Pronin et al.,
2002). This “bias blind spot” can have serious consequences during conflicts. If you’re
negotiating with your roommate over who does household chores, and you believe your
roommate has a biased view of the situation, you’re much more likely to become angry
(Pronin & Ross, 2006). Apparently we see ourselves as objective and everyone else as
biased. No wonder we fight, because we’re each convinced we’re “right” and free from bias.
As the T-shirt slogan says, “Everyone is entitled to my opinion.”
Is self-serving bias universal, or are people in collectivistic cultures immune? Those in
collectivistic cultures do associate themselves with positive words and valued traits (Gaertner
et al., 2008; Yamaguchi et al., 2007). However, in some studies, collectivists are less likely
to self-enhance by believing they are better than others (Church et al., 2014; Falk et al., 2009;
Heine & Hamamura, 2007), particularly in individualistic domains such as leadership or
individual achievement (Sedikides et al., 2003, 2005).
Can We All Be Better Than Average?
Self-serving bias also appears when people compare themselves with others. If the sixth-
century BC Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu was right that “at no time in the world will a
man who is sane over-reach himself, over-spend himself, over-rate himself,” then most of us
are a little insane. On subjective, socially desirable, and common dimensions, most people see
themselves as better than the average person. Compared with people in general, most people
see themselves as more ethical, more competent at their job, friendlier, more intelligent,
better looking, less prejudiced, healthier, and even more insightful and less biased in their
self-serving attributions
A form of self-serving bias; the
tendency to attribute positive
outcomes to oneself and negative
outcomes to other factors.
“I never blame myself when
I’m not hitting. I just blame the
bat and if it keeps up, I
change bats.”
—Yogi Berra
Self-serving bias at work: If his
team loses the game, the player
getting the penalty might blame
the referee’s call instead of his
own lackluster play.
©Corbis/VCG/Getty Images
46 Part One Social Thinking
self-assessments. Even men convicted of violent crimes rated themselves as more moral,
kind, and trustworthy than most people (Sedikides et al., 2014). (See “Focus On: Self-
Serving Bias—How Do I Love Me? Let Me Count the Ways.”)
Every community, it seems, is like the fictional Lake Wobegon, where “all the women are
strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” Many people
believe that they will become even more above average in the future—if I’m good now, I will
be even better soon, they seem to think (Kanten & Teigen, 2008). The phenomenon lurks in
Freud’s joke about the husband who told his wife, “If one of us dies, I shall move to Paris.”
The self-serving bias is also common in marriages. In a 2008 survey, 49% of married
men said they did half to most of the child care. But only 31% of wives said their husbands
did this much. In the same survey, 70% of women said they do most of the cooking, but
56% of the men said they do most of the cooking (Galinsky et al., 2009).
My wife and I [DM] used to pitch our laundry on the floor next to our bedroom clothes
hamper. In the morning, one of us would put it in. When she suggested that I take more
responsibility for this, I thought, “Huh? I already do it 75% of the time.” So I asked her how
often she thought she picked up the clothes. “Oh,” she replied, “about 75% of the time.”
Self-Serving Bias—How Do I Love Me? Let Me Count the Ways
focus
ON
“The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless
of age, gender, religion, economic status, or ethnic back-
ground,” notes columnist Dave Barry (1998), “is that deep
down inside, we all believe that we are above average
drivers.” We also believe we are above average on most
any other subjective and desirable trait. Among the many
faces of self-serving bias are these:
• Ethics. Most businesspeople see themselves as more
ethical than the average businessperson (Baumhart,
1968; Brenner & Molander, 1977). One national survey
asked, “How would you rate your own morals and val-
ues on a scale from 1 to 100 (100 being perfect)?” Fifty
percent of people rated themselves 90 or above; only
11% said 74 or less (Lovett, 1997).
• Professional competence. In one survey, 90% of
business managers rated their performance as su-
perior to their average peer (French, 1968). In Aus-
tralia, 86% of people rated their job performance as
above average, and only 1% as below average
(Headey & Wearing, 1987). Most surgeons believe
their patients’ mortality rate to be lower than aver-
age (Gawande, 2002).
• Virtues. In the Netherlands, most high school students
rate themselves as more honest, persistent, original,
friendly, and reliable than the average high school stu-
dent (Hoorens, 1993, 1995). Most people also see
themselves as more likely than others to donate blood,
give to charity, and give one’s bus seat to a pregnant
woman (Klein & Epley, 2017).
• Voting. When asked if they would vote in an upcoming
election, 90% of students said they would, but guessed
that only 75% of their peers would vote. The actual re-
sult? Sixty-nine percent voted (Epley & Dunning, 2006).
We are better at predicting others’ socially desirable
behaviors than our own.
• Intelligence. Most people perceive themselves as
more intelligent, better looking, and much less preju-
diced than their average peer (Public Opinion, 1984;
Watt & Larkin, 2010; Wylie, 1979). When someone out-
performs them, people tend to think of the other as a
genius (Lassiter & Munhall, 2001).
• Parental support. Most adults believe they support
their aging parents more than do their siblings (Lerner
et al., 1991).
• Health. Los Angeles residents view themselves as
healthier than most of their neighbors, and most col-
lege students believe they will outlive their actuarially
predicted age of death by approximately 10 years
(Larwood, 1978; Snyder, 1978).
• Attractiveness. Is it your experience, as it is mine [DM],
that most photos of you seem not to do you justice?
One experiment showed people a lineup of faces—
one their own, the others being their face morphed
into those of less and more attractive faces (Epley &
Whitchurch, 2008). When asked which was their actual
face, people tended to identify an attractively en-
hanced version of their face.
• Driving. Most drivers—even most drivers who have
been hospitalized for accidents—believe themselves
to be safer and more skilled than the average driver
(Guerin, 1994; McKenna & Myers, 1997; Svenson, 1981).
Dave Barry was right.
The Self in a Social World Chapter 2 47
The general rule: Group members’ estimates of how much they contribute
to a joint task typically sum to more than 100% (Savitsky et al., 2005). That’s
particularly true in large groups, a situation where people are unaware of the
contributions of many others (Schroe der et al., 2016).
Self-serving bias is usually stronger for traits that are more subjective or dif-
ficult to measure. Seventy-six percent of college students in 2016 believed they
were above average in “drive to achieve” (a more subjective attribute), but only
48% thought they were above average in the more quantifiable realm of math
ability (Twenge, 2017). Subjective qualities give us leeway in constructing our own
definition of success (Dunning et al., 1989, 1991). When I [JT] consider my
athletic ability, I can focus on my swimming ability and choose to forget about
the evenings I spent cowering in the softball outfield hoping no one would hit
the ball my way. In one College Entrance Examination Board survey of 829,000
high school seniors, none rated themselves below average in “ability to get along
with others” (a subjective, desirable trait), 60% rated themselves in the top 10%,
and 25% saw themselves among the top 1%! In a 2013 survey in Britain, 98% of
17- to 25-year-olds believed they were good drivers—even though 20% got into an
accident within six months of passing their driving test (AFP, 2013).
Researchers have wondered: Do people really believe their above-average
self-estimates? Is their self-serving bias partly a function of how the questions
are phrased (Krizan & Suls, 2008)? When Elanor Williams and Thomas
Gilovich (2008) had people bet real money when estimating their relative
performance on tests, they found that, yes, “people truly believe their self-
enhancing self-assessments.”
Unrealistic Optimism
Optimism predisposes a positive approach to life. “The optimist,” noted H. Jackson Brown
(1990, p. 79), “goes to the window every morning and says, ‘Good morning, God.’ The
pessimist goes to the window and says, ‘Good God, morning.’”
Studies of more than 90,000 people across 22 cultures reveal that most humans are more
disposed to optimism than pessimism (Fischer & Chalmers, 2008; Shepperd et al., 2013, 2015).
Indeed, many of us have what researcher Neil Weinstein (1980, 1982) terms “an unrealistic
optimism about future life events.” In a 2006–2008 worldwide poll, most people expected their
lives to improve more in the next 5 years than they did in the past 5 years (Deaton, 2009)—an
especially striking expectation considering the worldwide recession that followed. Partly because
of their relative pessimism about others’ fates (Hoorens et al., 2008; Shepperd, 2003), students
perceive themselves as far more likely than their classmates to get a good job, draw a good
salary, and own a home. They also see themselves as far less likely to experience negative
events, such as developing a drinking problem, having a heart attack before age 40, or being
fired. Adult women are much more likely to be unduly optimistic than pessimistic about their
relative risk of breast cancer (Waters et al., 2011). Football fans, on average, believe their
favorite team has a 70% chance of winning their next game (Massey et al., 2011).
Illusory optimism increases our vulnerability. Believing ourselves immune to misfortune,
we do not take sensible precautions. Sexually active undergraduate women who don’t con-
sistently use contraceptives perceived themselves, compared with other women at their uni-
versity, as much less vulnerable to unwanted pregnancy (Burger & Burns, 1988). People
trying to quit smoking who believe they are above average in willpower are more likely to
keep cigarettes around and stand near others who are smoking—behaviors likely to lead to
a relapse into smoking (Nordgren et al., 2009). Elderly drivers who rated themselves as
“above average” were four times more likely than more modest drivers to flunk a driving
test and be rated “unsafe” (Freund et al., 2005). Students who enter university with inflated
assessments of their academic ability often suffer deflating self-esteem and well-being and
are more likely to drop out (Robins & Beer, 2001). In perhaps the most wide-ranging exam-
ple, many home buyers, mortgage lenders, and investors in the mid-2000s displayed unreal-
istic optimism in their belief that “housing never goes down,” accumulating large amounts
“Views of the future are so
rosy that they would make
Pollyanna blush.”
—Shelley E. Taylor,
Positive Illusions, 1989
Who’s watching the kids? Dads think they do it
half the time, but moms disagree.
©Fabrice Lerouge/SuperStock
48 Part One Social Thinking
of debt. The eventual result was a wave of home
foreclosures that spawned the 2007–2009 reces-
sion, the most severe economic downturn since
the Great Depression. Even the seventeenth-cen-
tury economist Adam Smith, a defender of
human economic rationality, foresaw that people
would overestimate their chances of gain. This
“absurd presumption in their own good fortune,”
he said, arises from “the overweening conceit
which the greater part of men have of their own
abilities” (Spiegel, 1971, p. 243).
On the other hand, optimism definitely beats
pessimism in promoting self-efficacy, health, and
well-being (Armor & Taylor, 1996; Segerstrom,
2001). As natural optimists, most people believe
they will be happier with their lives in the
future—a belief that surely helps create happiness
in the present (Robinson & Ryff, 1999). Pessi-
mists even die sooner—apparently because they
are more likely to suffer unfortunate accidents
(Peterson et al., 2001). If our optimistic prehistoric ancestors were more likely than their
pessimistic neighbors to surmount challenges and survive, then small wonder that we are
disposed to optimism (Haselton & Nettle, 2006).
Yet a dash of realism—or what Julie Norem (2000) calls defensive pessimism—can some-
times save us from the perils of unrealistic optimism. Defensive pessimism anticipates
problems and motivates effective coping. As a Chinese proverb says, “Be prepared for
danger while staying in peace.” Students who exhibit excess optimism (as many students
destined for low grades do) benefit from some self-doubt, which motivates study (Prohaska,
1994; Sparrell & Shrauger, 1984). Students who are overconfident tend to underprepare,
whereas their equally able but less confident peers study harder and get higher grades
(Goodhart, 1986; Norem & Cantor, 1986; Showers & Ruben, 1987). Viewing things in a
more immediate, realistic way often helps. Students in one experiment were wildly optimis-
tic in predicting their test performance when the test was hypothetical, but they were sur-
prisingly accurate when the test was imminent (Armor & Sackett, 2006). Believing you’re
great when nothing can prove you wrong is one thing, but with an evaluation fast approach-
ing, it’s best not to look like a bragging fool.
It’s also important to listen to criticism. “One gentle rule I often tell my students,” writes
David Dunning (2006), “is that if two people independently give them the same piece of
negative feedback, they should at least consider the possibility that it might be true.” So, there
is a power to negative as well as positive thinking. The moral: Success in school and beyond
requires enough optimism to sustain hope and enough pessimism to motivate concern.
False Consensus and Uniqueness
We have a curious tendency to enhance our self-images by overestimating or underestimat-
ing how much others think and act as we do. On matters of opinion, we find support for
our positions by overestimating how much others agree—a phenomenon called the false
consensus effect (Krueger & Clement, 1994b; Marks & Miller, 1987; Mullen & Goethals,
1990). Facebook users were 90% accurate at estimating when they agreed with their friends
on political and other issues, but they were only 41% accurate in estimating disagreement
(Goel et al., 2010). In other words, they thought their friends agreed with them more than
they actually did. It goes beyond politics: When California college students thought about
their favorite celebrity, they significantly underestimated how much others would express
dislike for their idolized star (Bui, 2012). White Australians prejudiced against Aborigines
were more likely to believe that other Whites were also prejudiced (Watt & Larkin, 2010).
The sense we make of the world seems like common sense.
“O God, give us grace to
accept with serenity the things
that cannot be changed,
courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.”
—Reinhold Niebuhr,
“The Serenity Prayer,” 1943
defensive pessimism
The adaptive value of
anticipating problems and
harnessing one’s anxiety to
motivate effective action.
false consensus effect
The tendency to overestimate
the commonality of one’s
opinions and one’s undesirable
or unsuccessful behaviors.
Illusory optimism: Most couples marry feeling confident of
long-term love. Actually, in individualistic cultures, half of marriages fail.
©Studio Zanello/Streetstock Images/Blend Images/Getty Images
The Self in a Social World Chapter 2 49
When we behave badly or fail in a task, we reassure ourselves by thinking
that such lapses also are common. After one person lies to another, the liar
begins to perceive the other person as dishonest (Sagarin et al., 1998). If we feel
sexual desire toward another, we may overestimate the other’s reciprocal desire.
We guess that others think and act as we do: “I lie, but doesn’t everyone?” If
we cheat on our income taxes, smoke, or enhance our appearance, we are likely
to overestimate the number of other people who do likewise. As former Baywatch
actor David Hasselhoff said, “I have had Botox. Everyone has!” “We don’t see
things as they are,” says a proverb. “We see things as we are.”
Dawes (1990) proposes that this false consensus may occur because we
generalize from a limited sample, which prominently includes ourselves.
Lacking other information, why not “project” ourselves; why not impute our
own knowledge to others and use our responses as a clue to their likely
responses? Also, we’re more likely to spend time with people who share our
attitudes and behaviors and, consequently, to judge the world from the
people we know. Small wonder that Germans tend to think that the typical
European looks rather German, whereas the Portuguese see Europeans as
looking more Portuguese (Imhoff et al., 2011).
On matters of ability or when we behave well or successfully, however,
a false uniqueness effect more often occurs (Goethals et al., 1991). We serve
our self-image by seeing our talents and moral behaviors as relatively
unusual. Dutch college students preferred being part of a larger group in
matters of opinion such as politics (false consensus) but wanted to be part
of a smaller group in matters of taste such as musical preferences (false uniqueness;
Spears et al., 2009). After all, a band isn’t cool anymore if too many people like it. Female
college students who choose a designated driver underestimated how many other women
take the same precaution (Benton et al., 2008). Thus, we may see our failings as relatively
normal and our virtues as relatively exceptional.
To sum up, self-serving bias appears as self-serving attributions, self-congratulatory com-
parisons, illusory optimism, and false consensus for one’s failings (Figure 6).
Explaining Self-Serving Bias
Why do people perceive themselves in self-enhancing ways? Perhaps the self-serving bias
occurs because of errors in how we process and remember information about ourselves.
Comparing ourselves with others requires us to notice, assess, and recall their behavior
and ours. This creates multiple opportunities for flaws in our information processing
(Chambers & Windschitl, 2004). Recall that married people gave themselves credit for
false uniqueness effect
The tendency to underestimate
the commonality of one’s
abilities and one’s desirable or
successful behaviors.
“Always remember that you
are absolutely unique. Just
like everyone else.”
—Anonymous, sometimes
attributed to Jim Wright
Do you choose a designated
driver when you go out? The
false uniqueness effect might
lead you to think this virtue of
yours is exceptional, even if
it is not.
©Purestock/Alamy Stock Photo
Self-serving bias
Attributing one’s success to
ability and e
ort, failure to
luck and things external
Example
I got the A in history because I studied
hard. I got the D in sociology because the
exams were unfair.
Comparing oneself favorably
to others
I do more for my parents than my sister
does.
Unrealistic optimism
Even though 50% of marriages fail, I know
mine will be enduring joy.
False consensus and uniqueness
I know most people agree with me that
global warming threatens our future. FIGURE 6
How Self-Serving Bias
Works
50 Part One Social Thinking
doing more housework than their spouses did. That might occur because we remember
what we’ve done but not what our partner did (Kahneman & Deaton, 2010). I [DM] could
easily picture myself picking up the laundry off the bedroom floor, but I was less aware
of the times when I absentmindedly overlooked it.
Are biased perceptions, then, simply a perceptual error, an emotion-free glitch in how
we process information? Or are self-serving motives also involved? It’s now clear from
research that we have multiple motives. Questing for self-knowledge, we’re motivated to
assess our competence (Dunning, 1995). Questing for self-confirmation, we’re motivated to
verify our self-conceptions (Sanitioso et al., 1990; Swann, 1996, 1997). Questing for self-
affirmation, we’re especially motivated to enhance our self-image (Sedikides, 1993). Trying
to increase self-esteem, then, helps power our self-serving bias. As social psychologist Daniel
Batson (2006) surmises, “The head is an extension of the heart.”
“Others’ sins are before our
eyes; our own are behind our
back.”
—Seneca, De Ira, AD 43
▯ Contrary to the presumption that most people suffer from
low self-esteem or feelings of inferiority, researchers con-
sistently find that most people exhibit a self-serving bias.
In experiments and everyday life, we often take credit for
our successes while blaming failures on the situation.
▯ Most people rate themselves as better than average on
subjective, desirable traits and abilities.
▯ We exhibit unrealistic optimism about our futures.
▯ We overestimate the commonality of our opinions and
foibles (false consensus) while underestimating the com-
monality of our abilities and virtues (false uniqueness).
▯ Such perceptions arise partly from a motive to maintain
and enhance self-esteem—a motive that protects people
from depression but contributes to misjudgment and
group conflict.
▯ Self-serving bias can be adaptive in that it allows us
to savor the good things that happen in our lives.
When bad things happen, however, self-serving bias
can have the maladaptive effect of causing us to
blame others or feel cheated out of something we
“deserved.”
What Is Self-Serving Bias?SUMMING UP:
HOW DO PEOPLE MANAGE THEIR
SELF-PRESENTATION?
Define self-presentation and understand how
impression management can explain behavior.
So far, we have seen that the self is at the center of our social worlds, that self-esteem and
self-efficacy pay some dividends, and that self-serving bias influences self-evaluations. Per-
haps you have wondered: Are self-enhancing expressions always sincere? Do people have
the same feelings privately as they express publicly, or are they just putting on a positive
face even while living with self-doubt?
Self-Handicapping
Sometimes people sabotage their chances for success by creating impediments that make
success less likely—known as self-handicapping.
Imagine yourself in the position of the Duke University participants of Steven Berglas
and Edward Jones (1978). You guess answers to some difficult aptitude questions and are
told, “Yours was one of the best scores seen to date!” Feeling incredibly lucky, you are then
offered a choice between two drugs before answering more of these items. One drug will
aid intellectual performance and the other will inhibit it. Which drug do you want? Most
students wanted the drug that would supposedly disrupt their thinking, thus providing a
handy excuse for doing badly.
self-handicapping
Protecting one’s self-image with
behaviors that create a handy
excuse for later failure.
“If you try to fail, and succeed,
what have you done?”
—Anonymous
The Self in a Social World Chapter 2 51
Researchers have documented other ways people self-handicap. Fearing failure, people will
▯ reduce their preparation for important individual athletic events (Rhodewalt
et al., 1984).
▯ give their opponent an advantage (Shepperd & Arkin, 1991).
▯ perform poorly at the beginning of a task to not create unreachable expectations
(Baumgardner & Brownlee, 1987).
▯ not try as hard as they could during a tough, ego-involving task (Hormuth, 1986;
Pyszczynski & Greenberg, 1987; Riggs, 1992; Turner & Pratkanis, 1993).
Far from being deliberately self-destructive, such behaviors typically have a self-protective
aim (Arkin et al., 1986; Baumeister & Scher, 1988; Rhodewalt, 1987): “I’m really not a
failure—I would have done well except for this problem.” Unfortunately, this strategy usually
backfires: Students who self-handicap end up with lower GPAs (Schwinger et al., 2014).
Why would people handicap themselves with self-defeating behaviors? Recall that we eagerly
protect our self-images by attributing failures to external factors. Thus, fearing failure, people
might handicap themselves by partying half the night before a job interview or playing video
games instead of studying before a big exam. When self-image is tied up with performance, it
can be more self-deflating to try hard and fail than to procrastinate and have a ready excuse. If
we fail while handicapped in some way, we can cling to a sense of competence; if we succeed
under such conditions, it can only boost our self-image. Handicaps protect both self-esteem and
public image by allowing us to attribute failures to something temporary or external (“I was
feeling sick”; “I was out too late the night before”) rather than to lack of talent or ability.
Impression Management
Self-serving bias, false modesty, and self-handicapping reveal the depth of our concern for
self-image. To varying degrees, we are continually managing the impressions we create.
Whether we wish to impress, intimidate, or seem helpless, we are social animals, playing
to an audience. So great is the human desire for social acceptance that it can lead people
to risk harming themselves through smoking, binge eating, premature sex, or drug and
alcohol abuse (Rawn & Vohs, 2011).
Self-presentation refers to our wanting to present a desired image both to an external audience
(other people) and to an internal audience (ourselves). We work at managing the impressions
we create. We excuse, justify, or apologize as necessary to shore up our self-esteem and verify
our self-images (Schlenker & Weigold, 1992). Just as we preserve our self-esteem, we also must
make sure not to brag too much and risk the disapproval of others (Anderson et al., 2006). In
one study, students who were told to “put your best face forward” actually made a more negative
impression on people they just met than those who were not under self-presentational demands
(Human et al., 2012). One self-presentation strategy is the “humblebrag,” an attempt to disguise
bragging behind complaints or false humility (“I still can’t believe I was the
one who got the job out of 300 applicants!” “No makeup and I still get hit
on!”) One study found that humblebragging usually backfires, failing to
either convey humility or to impress others (Sezer et al., 2018).
Social interaction is a careful balance of looking good while not look-
ing too good. That seems to be particularly true in collectivistic cultures,
where modesty is a “default strategy” to avoid offending others. When
there was no risk of offense, Japanese participants self-enhanced as much
as Americans (Yamagishi et al., 2012).
In familiar situations, self-presentation happens without conscious
effort. In unfamiliar situations, perhaps at a party with people we would
like to impress or in conversation with a crush, we are acutely self-con-
scious of the impressions we are creating and we are therefore less modest
than when among friends who know us well (Leary et al., 1994; Tice et
al., 1995). Preparing to have our photographs taken, we may even try out
different faces in a mirror. We do this even though active self-presentation
depletes energy, which often leads to diminished effectiveness—for
“After losing to some younger
rivals, tennis great Martina
Navratilova confessed that
she was ‘afraid to play my
best. . . . I was scared to find
out if they could beat me
when I’m playing my best
because if they can, then I
am finished.’”
—Frankel & Snyder (1987)
self-presentation
The act of expressing oneself
and behaving in ways designed
to create a favorable impression
or an impression that
corresponds to one’s ideals.
In the age of the selfie, self-
presentation can be a nearly
constant concern.
©mindof/123RF
52 Part One Social Thinking
example, to less persistence on a tedious experimental
task or more difficulty stifling emotional expressions
(Vohs et al., 2005). The upside is that self-presentation
can unexpectedly improve mood. People felt significantly
better than they thought they would after doing their best
to “put their best face forward” and concentrate on mak-
ing a positive impression on their boyfriend or girlfriend.
Elizabeth Dunn and colleagues (2008) conclude that
“date nights” for long-term couples work because they
encourage active self-presentation, which improves mood.
Social networking sites such as Facebook provide a
new and sometimes intense venue for self-presentation.
They are, says communications professor Joseph Walther,
“like impression management on steroids” (Rosenbloom,
2008). Users make careful decisions about which pic-
tures, activities, and interests to highlight in their profiles.
Tinkering with self-presentation online apparently has
benefits: People who edit their own Facebook profile
subsequently report higher self-esteem (Gentile et al.,
2012; Gonzales & Hancock, 2011). Given the concern
with status and attractiveness on social networking sites, it is not surprising that people
high in narcissistic traits thrive on Facebook, tallying up more friends and choosing more
attractive pictures of themselves (Buffardi & Campbell, 2008).
Given the concern for self-presentation, it’s no wonder people will self-handicap when failure
might make them look bad. It’s no wonder that people take health risks—tanning their skin
with wrinkle- and cancer-causing radiation; having piercings or tattoos done without proper
hygiene; becoming anorexic; or yielding to peer pressures to smoke, get drunk, and do drugs
(Leary et al., 1994). It’s no wonder that people express more modesty when their self-flattery
is vulnerable to being debunked, perhaps by experts scrutinizing their self-descriptions (Arkin
et al., 1980; Riess et al., 1981; Weary et al., 1982). Professor Smith will likely express more
modesty about the significance of her work when presenting it to professional colleagues than
when presenting it to students—her colleagues will have the ammunition to shoot her down.
For some people, conscious self-presentation is a way of life. They continually monitor
their own behavior and note how others react, then adjust their social performance to gain
a desired effect. Those who score high on a scale of self-monitoring (who, for example,
agree that “I tend to be what people expect me to be”) act like social chameleons—they use
self-presentation to adjust their behavior in response to external situations (Gangestad &
Snyder, 2000; Snyder, 1987; Tyler et al., 2015). Having attuned their behavior to the situa-
tion, they are more likely to express attitudes they don’t really hold and less likely to express
or act on their own attitudes (Zanna & Olson, 1982). As Mark Leary (2004b) observed,
the self they know often differs from the self they show. As social chameleons, those who
score high in self-monitoring are also less committed to their relationships
and more likely to be dissatisfied in their marriages (Leone & Hawkins, 2006).
On the other hand, high self-monitors may rack up more connections online.
For example, they post more on Facebook and receive more “likes” from
friends (Hall & Pennington, 2013).
Those low in self-monitoring care less about what others think. They are
more internally guided and thus more likely to talk and act as they feel and
believe (McCann & Hancock, 1983). For example, if asked to list their
thoughts about gay couples, they simply express what they think, regardless
of the attitudes of their anticipated audience (Klein et al., 2004). As you
might imagine, someone who is extremely low in self-monitoring could come
across as an insensitive boor, whereas extremely high self-monitoring could
result in dishonest behavior worthy of a con artist. Most of us fall some-
where between those two extremes.
Presenting oneself in ways that create a desired impression is a delicate
balancing act. People want to be seen as capable but also as modest and
self-monitoring
Being attuned to the way one
presents oneself in social
situations and adjusting one’s
performance to create the
desired impression.
“Public opinion is always more
tyrannical towards those who
obviously fear it than towards
those who feel indifferent to it.”
—Bertrand Russell,
The Conquest of Happiness, 1930
Group identity. In Asian countries, self-presentation is restrained. Children
learn to identify themselves with their groups.
©imtmphoto/Shutterstock
“Hmmm…what shall I wear today…?”
©Mike Marland.
The Self in a Social World Chapter 2 53
honest (Carlston & Shovar, 1983). In most social situations, modesty creates a good
impression and unsolicited boasting creates a bad one. Hence the false modesty phenom-
enon: We often display lower self-esteem than we privately feel (Miller & Schlenker,
1985). But when we have obviously done extremely well, the insincerity of a disclaimer
(“I did well, but it’s no big deal”—a humblebrag) may be evident. To make good impres-
sions—to appear modest yet competent—requires social skill.
▯ As social animals, we adjust our words and actions to
suit our audiences. To varying degrees, we note our per-
formance and adjust it to create the impressions we
desire.
▯ Sometimes people self-handicap with self-defeating
behaviors that protect self-esteem by providing excuses
for failure.
▯ Self-presentation refers to our wanting to present a favor-
able image both to an external audience (other people)
and to an internal audience (ourselves). With regard to
an external audience, those who score high on a scale
of self-monitoring adjust their behavior to each situation,
whereas those low in self-monitoring may do so little
social adjusting that they seem insensitive.
SUMMING UP: How Do People Manage Their
Self-Presentation?
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO HAVE
“SELF-CONTROL”?
Understand self-control through examination of the
self in action.
The self’s capacity for action has limits, note Roy Baumeister and colleagues (1998, 2000;
Baumeister & Tierney, 2011; Muraven et al., 1998). Consider the following:
▯ People who exert self-control—by forcing themselves to eat radishes rather than
chocolates, or by suppressing forbidden thoughts—subsequently quit faster when
given unsolvable puzzles.
▯ People who have tried to control their emotional responses to an upsetting movie
exhibit decreased physical stamina—for example, letting go of a hand grip after less
time. They also become more aggressive and are more likely to fight with their
partners (DeWall et al., 2007; Finkel & Campbell, 2001).
▯ People who have exerted self-control on something
else also become less restrained in their sexual
thoughts and behaviors. When asked to express inti-
macy with their partner, those with depleted will-
power were more likely to passionately kiss their
partner and even remove some clothing right there in
the lab (Gailliot & Baumeister, 2007).
These failures of self-control are most likely to appear when
we have to do something taxing, difficult or unpleasant (which
unsolvable puzzles might certainly be). When people were
rewarded for a task or were personally invested in it, their
performance did not suffer after exerting self-control (Boksem
et al., 2006; Legault et al., 2009). Depleting self-control may
lead people to devote their limited resources to more pleasant
or meaningful activities. Self-control exertion leading to self-
control failure may also be a uniquely Western occurrence: In
The total loss of self-control.
©Andrew Olney/AGE Fotostock
54 Part One Social Thinking
▯ Self-control is like a muscle: It can get tired when you
use it too much. Willpower requires energy.
▯ But self-control can get stronger if it’s used more. Im-
proving self-control in one area leads to improvements
in others.
SUMMING UP: What Does It Mean to Have
“Self-Control”?
India, people who worked on a more strenuous task later showed increased self-control
instead of the decreased self-control found in U.S. participants (Savani & Job, 2017).
The principle of depleted self-control also has a flip side: Just as self-control can be
depleted, it can also be strengthened, much like a muscle (Baumeister & Exline,
2000; Muraven et al., 1999). In one experiment, college students learned a program of study
skills based on planning and self-control, such as creating a study schedule and keeping a
diary of their study time. Not surprisingly, these students studied for more hours than a
control group who didn’t learn these skills. But the students who learned how to plan reaped
the benefits of increased self-control in other ways as well: They were less likely to smoke
or drink alcohol, less likely to leave dirty dishes or laundry around, and more likely to eat
healthier food. In other words, practicing self-control in one area improved their self-control
overall (Oaten & Cheng, 2006). So if you’d like to increase your willpower, don’t make a
long list of New Year’s resolutions and tackle them all at once in January. A better strategy,
the research suggests, is to start with one area and then let your increased self-control spread
throughout your newly improved life. Another life hack is to stop doing things you shouldn’t
by reducing the possibility you’ll be tempted—don’t leave the cookies on the counter, and
keep your phone out of reach (Milyavskaya et al., 2015). As Roy Baumeister and John
Tierney write in their book Willpower, “The best way to reduce stress in your life is to stop
screwing up” (2011, p. 238). A little self-control now means you need less self-control later.
In one of psychology’s most famous studies, children who were able to resist eating a
marshmallow for a few minutes were later more successful in school and at work (Moffitt
et al., 2011). In other studies, self-control is one of the best predictors of healthy behaviors
(Raynor & Levine, 2009), living longer (Friedman et al., 2014), and good performance at
work (Barrick et al., 2001). Thus, increasing your self-control strength might be one of the
best ways to improve your life.
POSTSCRIPT:
Twin Truths—The Perils of Pride, the Powers
of Positive Thinking
This chapter offered two memorable truths: the truth of self-efficacy and the truth of self-
serving bias. The truth concerning self-efficacy encourages us not to resign ourselves to bad
situations. We need to persist despite initial failures and to exert effort without being overly
distracted by self-doubts. Likewise, secure self-esteem can be adaptive. When we believe in
our positive possibilities, we are less vulnerable to depression and we feel less insecure.
Thus, it’s important to think positively and try hard, but not to be so self-confident that
our goals are illusory or we alienate others with our narcissism. Taking self-efficacy too far
leads to blaming the victim: If positive thinking can accomplish anything, then we have
only ourselves to blame if we are unhappily married, poor, or depressed. For shame! If only
we had tried harder, been more disciplined, less stupid. This viewpoint fails to acknowledge
that bad things can happen to good people. Life’s greatest achievements, but also its great-
est disappointments, are born of the highest expectations.
These twin truths—self-efficacy and self-serving bias—remind us of what Pascal taught
300 years ago: No single truth is ever sufficient, because the world is complex. Any truth,
separated from its complementary truth, is a half-truth.
©PeopleImages/Getty Images
C H A P T E R
3
How do we judge our
social worlds,
consciously and
unconsciously?
How do we perceive
our social worlds?
How do we explain
our social worlds?
How do our social
beliefs matter?
What can we
conclude about
social beliefs and
judgments?
Postscript: Reflecting
on illusory thinking
Social Beliefs
and Judgments
There is curious power to partisanship. Consider American politics:
• Among Democrats, 86% trust the news media more than President Trump to tell
them the truth about “important issues.” But among Republicans, only 13% trust
the news media more (Malloy, 2017).
• When a Democrat is president, Democrats say presidents can’t do anything
about high gas prices. Republicans say the same when a Republican is president.
But when the president is from the opposing party, people in both parties believe
presidents can affect gas prices (Vedantam, 2012).
“Motivated reasoning”—such as a gut-level liking or disliking of certain politicians—
can powerfully influence how we interpret evidence and view reality. Partisanship
predisposes perceptions—and perceptions predict partisanship. As an old Chinese
proverb says, “Two-thirds of what we see is behind our eyes.”
56 Part One Social Thinking
The differing responses of those with different beliefs, findings replicated in
political perceptions throughout the world, illustrate how we construct social
perceptions and beliefs as we
• judge events, informed by implicit rules that guide our snap judgments, and by
our moods;
• perceive and recall events through the filters of our own assumptions;
• explain events by sometimes attributing them to the situation, sometimes to the
person; and
• expect certain events, thereby sometimes helping bring them about.
This chapter explores how we judge, perceive, and explain our social worlds
and why our expectations matter.
HOW DO WE JUDGE OUR SOCIAL
WORLDS, CONSCIOUSLY AND
UNCONSCIOUSLY?
Understand how judgments are influenced by both
unconscious and conscious systems.
We have two brain systems, notes Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman in Thinking, Fast
and Slow (2011). System 1 functions automatically and out of our awareness (often called
“intuition” or a “gut feeling”), whereas System 2 requires our conscious attention and effort.
The big lesson of recent research: System 1 influences more of our actions than we realize.
Priming
Things we don’t even consciously notice can subtly inf luence how we interpret and
recall events. Imagine wearing earphones and concentrating on ambiguous spoken sen-
tences such as “We stood by the bank.” When a pertinent word (river or money) is
simultaneously sent to your other ear, you don’t consciously hear it. Yet the unheard
word “primes” your interpretation of the sentence, much as reading this figure (left)
from top down or from left to right primes your interpretation of the central character
(Baars & McGovern, 1994).
Our memory system is a web of associations, and priming is the awakening or activating
of certain associations. Experiments show that priming one thought, even without aware-
ness, can influence another thought, or even an action (Herring et al., 2013). John Bargh
has likened primes to bells that only mental butlers (who manage the small unconscious
stuff) can hear (Bargh, 2017). In a host of studies, priming effects occur even when the
stimuli are presented subliminally—too briefly to be perceived consciously. What’s out of
sight may not be completely out of mind. An electric shock too slight to be felt may increase
the perceived intensity of a later shock. If the word “bread” is flashed so briefly that it’s
just below your conscious awareness, you’ll detect a related word like “butter” more quickly
than an unrelated word like “bubble” (Epley et al., 1999; Merikle et al., 2001). Religious
people subliminally exposed to words associated with religion are more likely to help others
(Shariff et al., 2016). In each case, an invisible image or word primes a response to a later
task. In another experiment, students were more likely to wobble on a balance beam in a
room with posters of beer and vodka as opposed to apple or orange juice (Cox et al., 2014).
Unnoticed events can also subtly prime our thinking and behavior. Rob Holland and col-
leagues (2005) observed that Dutch students exposed to the scent of an all-purpose cleaner
were quicker to identify cleaning-related words, recalled more cleaning-related activities when
System 1
The intuitive, automatic,
unconscious, and fast way of
thinking. Also known as
automatic processing.
System 2
The deliberate, controlled,
conscious, and slower way of
thinking. Also known as
controlled processing.
priming
Activating particular
associations in memory.
Social Beliefs and Judgments Chapter 3 57
describing their day, and even kept their desk cleaner while eating a crumbly cookie. Another
team of Dutch psychologists found that people exposed to the scent of a cleaning product
were less likely to litter (de Lange et al., 2012). And in a laboratory experiment, exposure
to a fishy smell caused people to be suspicious of each other and cooperate less—priming
notions of a shady deal as “fishy” (Lee & Schwarz, 2012). All these effects occurred without
the participants’ conscious awareness of the scent and its influence.
Priming experiments have their counterparts in everyday life, reports John Bargh (2006):
▯ Watching a scary movie alone at home can activate emotions that, without our
realizing it, cause us to interpret furnace noises as a possible intruder. I [JT] expe-
rienced a version of this: Returning to my New Orleans hotel room after a “ghost
tour,” a shadow I hadn’t noticed before looked ominous. Further inspection yielded
not a ghost but an end table at a strange angle.
▯ Depressed moods, as this chapter explains later, prime negative associations. But
put people in a good mood and suddenly their past seems more wonderful, their
future brighter.
▯ For many psychology students, reading about psychological disorders primes how they
interpret their own anxieties and gloomy moods. Reading about disease symptoms
similarly primes medical students to worry about their congestion, fever, or headache.
Studies of how implanted ideas and images can prime our interpretations and recall
illustrate one of this book’s take-home lessons: Much of our social information processing is
automatic. It is unintentional, out of sight, and happens without our conscious awareness—
relying on System 1. As John Bargh and Tanya Chartrand (1999) explain, “Most of a
person’s everyday life is determined not by their conscious intentions and deliberate choices
but by mental processes that are put into motion by features of the environment and that
operate outside of conscious awareness and guidance.”
Even physical sensations, thanks to our embodied cognition, prime our social judgments
and vice versa:
▯ After assessing a cold person, people judge the room as colder than do those who
instead assessed a warm person (Szymkow et al., 2013; Zhong & Leonardelli,
2008). People who ate alone judged room temperature as colder than those who
ate with others (Lee et al., 2014). Social exclusion literally feels cold.
▯ When holding a hard rather than soft ball, people judge the same face as more
likely to be Republican than Democrat, and more likely to be a physicist than a
historian (Slepian et al., 2012).
▯ People who feel hopeless perceive rooms to be darker—they don’t have a “ray of
hope” (Dong et al., 2015).
▯ When sitting in a wobbly chair, people rate other couples’
relationships as more unstable (Kille et al., 2013).
▯ Embodied cognition can also be social. When two people
synchronize their bodies, as when dancing, singing, or walking
together, they may also synchronize their spirits. As two walk-
ers together attend to their environment and coordinate their
steps, mutual rapport and empathy increases and conflicts
sometimes resolve (Webb et al., 2017).
The bottom line: Our social cognition is embodied. The brain
systems that process our bodily sensations communicate with the brain
systems responsible for our social thinking.
Intuitive Judgments
What are our powers of intuition—of immediately knowing something
without reasoning or analysis? Advocates of “intuitive management”
believe we should tune into our hunches—to use System 1. When judging
others, they say, we should plug into the nonlogical smarts of our “right
embodied cognition
The mutual influence of bodily
sensations on cognitive
preferences and social
judgments.
Walking together can lead to thinking and empathizing
together.
©McGraw-Hill Education
58 Part One Social Thinking
brain.” When hiring, firing, and investing, we should listen to our premonitions. In making
judgments, we should trust the force within.
Are the intuitionists right that important information is immediately available apart from
our conscious analysis? Or are the skeptics correct in saying that intuition is “our knowing
we are right, whether we are or not” and in finding that self-described “intuitive” people
are actually no better than others at tasks that assess intuition (Leach & Weick, 2018)?
THE POWERS OF INTUITION
“The heart has its reasons which reason does not know,” observed seventeenth-century philos-
opher-mathematician Blaise Pascal. Three centuries later, scientists have proved Pascal correct.
We know more than we know we know. Studies of our unconscious information processing
confirm our limited access to what’s going on in our minds (Bargh et al., 2012; Banaji &
Greenwald, 2013; Strack & Deutsch, 2004). Our thinking is partly automatic (impulsive, effort-
less, and without our awareness—System 1) and partly controlled (reflective, deliberate, and
conscious—System 2). Automatic, intuitive thinking occurs not “onscreen” but offscreen, out
of sight, where reason does not go. Consider these examples of automatic thinking:
▯ Schemas are mental concepts or templates that intuitively guide our perceptions
and interpretations. Whether we hear someone speaking of religious sects or sex
depends on how we automatically interpret the sound.
▯ Emotional reactions are often nearly instantaneous, happening before there is time for
deliberate thinking. One neural shortcut takes information from the eye or the ear to
the brain’s sensory switchboard (the thalamus) and out to its threat detection center
(the amygdala) before the thinking cortex has had any chance to intervene (LeDoux,
2002, 2014). Our ancestors who intuitively feared a sound in the bushes were usually
fearing nothing. But when they were right and the sound was made by a dangerous
predator, they became more likely to survive to pass their genes down to us.
▯ Given sufficient expertise, people may intuitively know the answer to a problem. Many
skills, from piano playing to swinging a golf club, begin as a controlled, deliberate
process and gradually become automatic and intuitive (Kruglanski & Gigerenzer,
2011). Master chess players intuitively recognize meaningful patterns that novices miss
and often make their next move with only a glance at the board, as the situation cues
information stored in their memory. Similarly, without knowing quite how, we
recognize a friend’s voice after the first spoken word of a phone conversation.
▯ Given but a very thin slice of someone—even just a fraction of a second glance at
their photo—people’s snap judgments do better than chance at guessing whether
someone is outgoing or shy, straight or gay (Rule, 2014).
Some things—facts, names, and past experiences—we remember explicitly (consciously)
using System 2. But other things—skills and conditioned dispositions—we remember implicitly
with System 1, without consciously knowing or declaring that we know. It’s true of us all but
most strikingly evident in people with brain damage who cannot form new explicit memories.
One such person never could learn to recognize her doctor, who would need to reintroduce
himself each day. One day, the doctor affixed a tack to his hand, causing the patient to jump
with pain when they shook hands. When the physician next returned, the patient still didn’t
explicitly recognize him. But, due to her implicit memory, she wouldn’t shake his hand.
Equally dramatic are the cases of blindsight. Having lost a portion of the visual cortex to
surgery or stroke, people may be functionally blind in part of their field of vision. Shown a series
of sticks in the blind field, they report seeing nothing. After guessing whether the sticks are verti-
cal or horizontal, the patients are astounded when told, “You got them all right.” Like the patient
who “remembered” the painful handshake, these people know more than they know they know.
Consider your own taken-for-granted capacity to recognize a face. As you look at it, your
brain breaks the visual information into subdimensions, such as color, depth, movement, and
form, and works on each aspect simultaneously before reassembling the components. Finally,
using automatic processing, your brain compares the perceived image with previously stored
automatic processing
“Implicit” thinking that is
effortless, habitual, and without
awareness; roughly corresponds
to “intuition.” Also known as
System 1.
controlled processing
“Explicit” thinking that is
deliberate, reflective, and
conscious. Also known as
System 2.
Social Beliefs and Judgments Chapter 3 59
images. Voilà! Instantly and effortlessly, you recognize your grandmother. If intuition is immedi-
ately knowing something without reasoned analysis, then perceiving is intuition par excellence.
So, many routine cognitive functions occur automatically, unintentionally, without aware-
ness. We might remember how automatic processing helps us get through life by picturing
our minds as functioning like large corporations. Our CEO—our controlled consciousness—
attends to many of the most important, complex, and novel issues, while subordinates deal
with routine affairs and matters requiring instant action. Like a CEO, consciousness sets
goals and priorities, often with little knowledge of operational activities in the underlying
departments. This delegation of resources enables us to react to many situations quickly
and efficiently. The bottom line: Our brain knows much more than it tells us.
THE LIMITS OF INTUITION
We have seen how automatic, intuitive thinking can “make us smart” (Gigerenzer, 2007,
2010). Elizabeth Loftus and Mark Klinger (1992) nevertheless spoke for other cognitive
scientists in having doubts about the brilliance of intuition. They reported “a general con-
sensus that the unconscious may not be as smart as previously believed.” For example,
although subliminal stimuli can trigger a weak, fleeting response—enough to evoke a feeling
if not conscious awareness—there is no evidence that (for example) subliminal audio record-
ings can “reprogram your unconscious mind” for success. In fact, a significant body of
evidence indicates that they can’t (Greenwald, 1992).
Social psychologists have explored not only our error-prone hindsight judgments but also
our capacity for illusion—for perceptual misinterpretations, fantasies, and constructed beliefs.
Michael Gazzaniga (1992, 1998, 2008) reports that patients whose brain hemispheres have
been surgically separated will instantly fabricate—and believe—explanations of their own puz-
zling behaviors. If the patient gets up and takes a few steps after the experimenter flashes
the instruction “walk” to the patient’s nonverbal right hemisphere, the verbal left hemisphere
will instantly provide the patient with a plausible explanation (“I felt like getting a drink”).
Illusory intuition also appears in how we take in, store, and retrieve social information.
As perception researchers study visual illusions for what they reveal about our normal
perceptual mechanisms, social psychologists study illusory thinking for what it reveals about
normal information processing. These researchers want to give us a map of everyday social
thinking, with the hazards clearly marked.
As we examine these efficient thinking patterns, remember this: Demonstrations of how
people create false beliefs do not prove that all beliefs are false (although to recognize
falsification, it helps to know how it’s done).
Overconfidence
So far we have seen that our cognitive systems process a vast amount of information effi-
ciently and automatically. But our efficiency has a trade-off; as we interpret our experiences
and construct memories, our automatic System 1 intuitions are sometimes wrong. Usually,
we are unaware of our errors—in other words, we display overconfidence.
Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky (1979) gave people factual statements and asked
them to fill in the blanks, as in the following sentence: “I feel 98% certain that the air
distance between New Delhi and Beijing is more than _____ miles but less than _____
miles.” Most people were overconfident: Approximately 30% of the time, the correct answers
lay outside the range they felt 98% confident about. Even when participants were offered
lottery tickets for a correct answer, they were still too overconfident, identifying too narrow
a range (also known as overprecision). “The consequences of overprecision are profound,”
note Albert Mannes and Don Moore (2013, p. 1196). “People frequently cut things too
close—arriving late, missing planes, [or] bouncing checks.” In thinking we know exactly
how something will go, we too often miss the window.
Ironically, incompetence feeds overconfidence. It takes competence to recognize competence,
noted Justin Kruger and David Dunning (1999). Students who score the lowest on tests of
grammar, humor, and logic are the most prone to overestimating their abilities. Those who
don’t know what good logic or grammar is are often unaware that they lack it. If you make
overconfidence
phenomenon
The tendency to be more
confident than correct—to
overestimate the accuracy of
one’s beliefs.
60 Part One Social Thinking
a list of all the words you can form out of the letters in
“psychology,” you may feel brilliant—but then stupid
when a friend starts naming the ones you missed. Deanna
Caputo and David Dunning (2005) re-created this phe-
nomenon in experiments, confirming that our ignorance
of our ignorance sustains our self-confidence. Follow-up
studies found that this “ignorance of one’s incompe-
tence” occurs mostly on relatively easy-seeming tasks. On
more obviously difficult tasks, poor performers more
often appreciate their lack of skill (Burson et al., 2006).
Robert Vallone and colleagues (1990) had college stu-
dents predict in September whether they would drop a
course, declare a major, elect to live off campus next year,
and so forth. Although the students felt, on average, 84%
sure of those self-predictions, they were wrong nearly
twice as often as they expected to be. Even when feeling
100% sure of their predictions, they were right only 85%
of the time. Ignorance of one’s incompetence helps
explain David Dunning’s (2005) startling conclusion
from employee assessment studies that “what others see in us . . . tends to be more highly
correlated with objective outcomes than what we see in ourselves.” If ignorance can beget false
confidence, then—yikes!—where, we may ask, are you and I unknowingly deficient?
One place may be in our opinions about public policies, where people often have
simplistic, polarized opinions. Ask people to explain the detailed workings of Iranian sanc-
tions or cap-and-trade climate protection and they may hem and haw. Discovering how little
they know may then moderate their opinion (Fernbach et al., 2013).
In estimating their chances for success on a task, such as a major exam, people’s con-
fidence runs highest when the moment of truth is off in the future. By exam day, the pos-
sibility of failure looms larger and confidence typically drops (Gilovich et al., 1993; Shepperd
et al., 2005). These students are not alone:
▯ Stockbroker overconfidence. Mutual fund portfolios selected by investment analysts
perform about as well as randomly selected stocks (Malkiel, 2016). The analysts
might think they can pick the best stocks, but everyone else does, too—stocks are a
confidence game. Worse, people who are overconfident invest more and more even
when things aren’t going well, digging in their heels after publicly declaring their
choices (Ronay et al., 2017).
▯ Political overconfidence. Overconfident decision makers can wreak havoc. It was a
confident Adolf Hitler who from 1939 to 1945 waged war against the rest of
Europe. It was a confident Lyndon Johnson who in the 1960s invested U.S. weap-
ons and soldiers in the effort to salvage democracy in South Vietnam. It was a
confident George W. Bush who asserted that Iraq had weapons of mass destruc-
tion in 2003, but none were ever found.
▯ Student overconfidence. In one study, students memorizing psychology terms for a test
predicted how much credit they expected to receive. The overconfident students—
those who thought they were more accurate than they actually were—did worse on
the test, mostly because they stopped studying (Dunlosky & Rawson, 2012).
Why does overconfidence persist? Perhaps because we like those who are confident: In
experiments, group members rewarded highly confident individuals with higher status—even
when their confidence was not justified by actual ability. Overconfident individuals spoke
first, talked longer, and used a more factual tone, making them appear more competent
than they actually were (Anderson et al., 2012). Even when groups worked together repeat-
edly and learned that the overconfident individuals were not as accurate as they presented
themselves, group members continued to accord them status (Kennedy et al., 2013). Over-
confident people are seen as more desirable as romantic partners than the less confident
(Murphy et al., 2015). If confidence, but not ability, helps people become leaders and attract
mates, pervasive overconfidence seems less surprising—but perhaps more distressing.
The air distance between
New Delhi and Beijing is
2,500 miles.
“The wise know too well their
weakness to assume infallibil-
ity; and he who knows most,
knows best how little he
knows.”
—Thomas Jefferson,
Writings, 1853
Regarding the atomic bomb:
“That is the biggest fool thing
we have ever done. The
bomb will never go off, and I
speak as an expert in
explosives.”
—Admiral William Leahy to
President Truman, 1945
The perils of overconfidence. Before its exploded drilling platform spewed oil
into the Gulf of Mexico, BP downplayed safety concerns, and then was over-
confident that the spill would be modest (Mohr et al., 2010; Urbina, 2010).
©U.S. Coast Guard/Getty Images
“When you know a thing, to
hold that you know it; and
when you do not know a
thing, to allow that you do not
know it; this is knowledge.”
—Confucius,
The Analects of Confucius
Social Beliefs and Judgments Chapter 3 61
CONFIRMATION BIAS
People also tend not to seek information that might disprove what they believe. We are eager
to verify our beliefs but less inclined to seek evidence that might disprove them, a phenom-
enon called the confirmation bias. For example, opponents of same-sex marriage gave up the
chance to win money to avoid hearing from those on the other side—and so did supporters
of same-sex marriage. Across a variety of political and social issues, both liberals and con-
servatives preferred not to learn more about the other side’s arguments (Frimer et al., 2017).
Thus, people often choose their news sources and Facebook friends to align with their
beliefs, a phenomenon known as “ideological echo chambers” (Del Vicario et al., 2017).
Confirmation bias appears to be a System 1 snap judgment, where our default reaction
is to look for information consistent with our presupposition. Stopping and thinking a little—
calling up System 2—makes us less likely to commit this error. For example, Ivan Hernandez
and Jesse Lee Preston (2013) had college students read an article arguing for the death
penalty. Those who read the article in a dark, standard font did not change their opinions.
But when the words were in light gray and italics, more shifted their beliefs—probably
because straining to read the words slowed down participants’ thinking enough for them
to consider both sides. Contemplation curtails confirmation.
Confirmation bias helps explain why our self-images are so remarkably stable. In experi-
ments at the University of Texas at Austin, William Swann and his colleagues (1981; Swann
et al., 1992a, 1992b, 2007) discovered that students seek, elicit, and recall feedback that
confirms their beliefs about themselves. People seek as friends and spouses those who bolster
their own self views—even if they think poorly of themselves (Swann et al., 1991, 2003).
Swann and Read (1981) compared this self-verification to the way a domineering person
might behave at a party. When she arrives, she seeks out those whom she knows will
acknowledge her dominance. In conversation, she presents her views in ways that elicit the
respect she expects. After the party, she has trouble recalling conversations in which her
influence was minimal and more easily recalls her persuasiveness in the conversations she
dominated. Thus, her experience at the party confirms her self-image.
REMEDIES FOR OVERCONFIDENCE
What lessons can we draw from research on overconfidence? One lesson is to be wary of
other people’s dogmatic statements. Even when people are sure they are right, they may be
wrong. Confidence and competence do not always coincide.
Two techniques have successfully reduced the overconfidence bias. One is prompt feed-
back (Koriat et al., 1980). In everyday life, weather forecasters and those who set the odds
in horse racing both receive clear, daily feedback. Perhaps as a result, experts in both groups
do quite well at estimating their probable accuracy (Fischhoff, 1982).
When people think about why an idea might be true, it begins to seem true (Koehler,
1991). Thus, a second way to reduce overconfidence is to get people to think of one good
reason why their judgments might be wrong; that is, force them to consider disconfirming
information (Koriat et al., 1980). Managers might foster more realistic judgments by insist-
ing that all proposals and recommendations include reasons why they might not work.
Still, we should be careful not to undermine people’s reasonable self-confidence or to
destroy their decisiveness. In times when their wisdom is needed, those lacking self-
confidence may shrink from speaking up or making tough decisions. Overconfidence can
cost us, but realistic self-confidence is adaptive.
Heuristics: Mental Shortcuts
With precious little time to process so much information, our cognitive system is fast and
frugal. It specializes in mental shortcuts. With remarkable ease, we form impressions, make
judgments, and invent explanations. We do so by using heuristics—simple, efficient thinking
strategies. Heuristics enable us to make routine decisions with minimal effort (Shah &
Oppenheimer, 2008). In most situations, our System 1 snap generalizations—“That’s danger-
ous!”—are adaptive. The speed of these intuitive guides promotes our survival. The biological
purpose of thinking is not to make us right—it’s to keep us alive. In some situations,
however, haste makes error.
confirmation bias
A tendency to search for
information that confirms one’s
preconceptions.
heuristic
A thinking strategy that enables
quick, efficient judgments.
62 Part One Social Thinking
THE REPRESENTATIVENESS HEURISTIC
University of Oregon students were told that a panel of psychologists interviewed 30 engi-
neers and 70 lawyers and summarized their impressions in thumbnail descriptions. The
following description, they were told, was drawn at random from the sample of 30 engineers
and 70 lawyers:
Twice divorced, James spends most of his free time hanging around the country club. His
clubhouse bar conversations often center on his regrets at having tried to follow his esteemed
father’s footsteps. The long hours he had spent at academic drudgery would have been better
invested in learning how to be less quarrelsome in his relations with other people.
Question: What is the probability that James is a lawyer rather than an engineer?
Asked to guess James’s occupation, more than 80% of the students surmised he was one
of the lawyers (Fischhoff & Bar-Hillel, 1984). Fair enough. But how do you suppose those
estimates changed when the sample description was given to another group of students,
modified to say that 70% were engineers? Not in the slightest. The students took no account
of the base rate of engineers (70%) and lawyers (30%); in their minds, James was more
representative of lawyers, and that was all that seemed to matter. Or consider John, a 23-year-
old White man who’s an atheist and abuses drugs. What kind of music does he like? Most
people guessed heavy metal, even though heavy metal fans are a very small minority of the
population (Lonsdale & North, 2012).
To judge something by intuitively comparing it to our mental representation of a category
is to use the representativeness heuristic. Representativeness (typicalness) usually reflects
reality. But, as we saw with “James” above, it doesn’t always. Consider Linda, who is 31,
single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy in college. As a student, she
was deeply concerned with discrimination and other social issues, and she participated in
antinuclear demonstrations. Based on that description, would you say it is more likely that
a. Linda is a bank teller.
b. Linda is a bank teller and active in the feminist movement.
Most people think b is more likely, partly because Linda better represents their image of
feminists (Mellers et al., 2001). But ask yourself: Is there a better chance that Linda is both
a bank teller and a feminist than that she’s a bank teller (whether feminist or not)? As
Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman (1983) reminded us, the conjunction of two events
cannot be more likely than either one of the events alone.
THE AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC
Consider the following: Do more people live in Iraq or in Tanzania?
You probably answered according to how readily Iraqis and Tanzanians come to mind. If
examples are readily available in our memory—as Iraqis tend to be—then we
presume that other such examples are commonplace. Usually this is true,
so we are often well served by this cognitive rule, called the availability
heuristic (Table 1). Said simply, the more easily we recall something, the
more likely it seems. (Answer: Tanzania’s 56 million people greatly outnumber
Iraq’s 37 million. Most people, having more vivid images of Iraqis, guess wrong.)
If people hear a list of famous people of one sex (Oprah Winfrey,
Lady Gaga, and Hillary Clinton) intermixed with an equal-size list of
unfamous people of the other sex (Donald Scarr, William Wood, and
Mel Jasper), the famous names will later be more cognitively available,
and people will believe they heard more women’s names (McKelvie,
1995, 1997; Tversky & Kahneman, 1973). Likewise, media attention
makes gays and lesbians cognitively available. Thus, the average U.S.
adult in a 2015 Gallup poll estimated that 23% of Americans are gay
or lesbian (Newport, 2015)—more than five times the number who
self-identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual in surveys (4.1% [Gates, 2017]).
Try ordering these four cities according to their crime rates: Atlanta, Los
Angeles, New York, St. Louis. If, with available images from TV crime
representativeness heuristic
The tendency to presume,
sometimes despite contrary
odds, that someone or
something belongs to a
particular group if resembling
(representing) a typical member.
availability heuristic
A cognitive rule that judges the
likelihood of things in terms of
their availability in memory. If
instances of something come
readily to mind, we presume it
to be commonplace.
Is Linda a bank teller, or a bank teller and a feminist?
©Image Source
Social Beliefs and Judgments Chapter 3 63
dramas in mind, you thought New York and Los Angeles were the most crime-ridden, guess
again; they each have about one-third the violent crime rate of Atlanta and St. Louis (FBI, 2017).
Our use of the availability heuristic highlights a basic principle of social thinking: People
are slow to deduce particular instances from a general truth, but they are remarkably quick
to infer general truth from a vivid instance. No wonder that after hearing and reading stories
of rapes, robberies, and beatings, 9 out of 10 Canadians overestimated—usually by a consider-
able margin—the percentage of crimes that involved violence (Doob & Roberts, 1988). No
wonder that South Africans, after a series of headline-grabbing gangland robberies and slay-
ings, estimated that violent crime had almost doubled between 1998 and 2004, when actually
it had decreased substantially (Wines, 2005). And no wonder the breakfast server at a hotel
for stranded airline passengers told me [DM] that, after hearing so many vivid stories of
flights delayed by weather and mechanical problems, she would never fly.
The availability heuristic explains why vivid, easy-to-imagine events, such as shark attacks
or diseases with easy-to-picture symptoms, may seem more likely to occur than harder-to-picture
events (MacLeod & Campbell, 1992; Sherman et al., 1985). Likewise, powerful anecdotes can
be more compelling than statistical information. We fret over extremely rare child abduction,
even if we don’t buckle children in their car seats every time. We dread terrorism but are
indifferent to global climate change—“Armageddon in slow motion.” Especially after the 2011
Japanese tsunami and nuclear power catastrophe, we have feared nuclear power, with little
concern for the many more deaths related to coal mining and burning (von Hippel, 2011). In
short, we worry about remote possibilities while ignoring higher probabilities, a phenomenon
that social scientists call our “probability neglect.”
Because news footage of airplane crashes is a readily available memory
for most of us, we often suppose we are more at risk traveling in com-
mercial airplanes than in cars. Actually, from 2010 through 2014 U.S. trav-
elers were nearly 2,000 times more likely to die in a car crash than on an
airplane trip covering the same distance (National Safety Council, 2017).
In 2017 there were no fatal commercial jet crashes anywhere in the entire
world (BBC, 2018). For most air travelers, the most dangerous part of the
journey is the drive to the airport.
Soon after 9/11, as many people abandoned air travel and took to the
roads, I [DM] estimated that if Americans flew 20% less and instead drove
half those unflown miles, we could expect an additional 800 traffic deaths in
the ensuing year (Myers, 2001). A curious German researcher checked that
prediction against accident data, which confirmed an excess of some 1595
traffic deaths in the ensuing year (Gigerenzer, 2004). The 9/11 terrorists
appear to have killed six times more people unnoticed—on America’s roads—
than they did with the 265 fatalities on those four planes.
The availability heuristic may also make us more sensitive to unfairness,
as our struggles are more memorable than our advantages. Democrats and
Republicans both believe that the U.S. electoral map works against their
party. Students think that their parents were harder on them than on their
“Most people reason dramati-
cally, not quantitatively.”
—Jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Jr. (1841–1935)
TABLE 1 Fast and Frugal Heuristics
Heuristic Definition Example But May Lead to
Representativeness Snap judgments of
whether someone or
something fits a
category
Deciding that Marie is a
librarian rather than a
trucker because she better
represents one’s image of
librarians
Discounting other
important
information
Availability Quick judgments of
likelihood of events
(how available in
memory)
Estimating teen violence
after school shootings
Overweighting vivid
instances and thus,
for example, fearing
the wrong things
©Dave Coverly/Speedbump.com
64 Part One Social Thinking
siblings. And academics believe that
they have had a more difficult time with
journal-article reviewers than average
(Davidai & Gilovich, 2016).
By now it is clear that our naive sta-
tistical intuitions, and our resulting fears,
are driven not by calculation and reason
but by emotions attuned to the availabil-
ity heuristic. After this book is published,
there likely will be another dramatic natu-
ral or terrorist event, which will again
propel our fears, vigilance, and resources
in a new direction. Terrorists, aided by
the media, may again achieve their objec-
tive of capturing our attention, draining
our resources, and distracting us from the
mundane, undramatic, insidious risks
that, over time, devastate lives, such as
the rotavirus (an intestinal infection) that each day claims the equivalent of four 747s filled
with children (Parashar et al., 2006). But then again, dramatic events can also serve to awaken
us to real risks. That, say some scientists, is what happens when extreme weather events remind
us that global climate change, by raising sea levels and spawning extreme weather, is destined
to become nature’s own weapon of mass destruction. For Australians and Americans, a hot
day can prime people to believe more in global warming (Li et al., 2011). Even feeling hot in
an indoor room increases people’s belief in global warming (Risen & Critcher, 2011).
Counterfactual Thinking
Easily imagined, cognitively available events also influence our experiences of guilt, regret, frus-
tration, and relief. If our team loses (or wins) a big game by one point, we can easily imagine
the other outcome, and thus we feel regret (or relief). Imagining worse alternatives helps us feel
better. When skier Lindsay Vonn lost a World Cup slalom event by just 0.03 seconds, she was
happy for her competitor but noted that “I’d rather she beat me by a second.” Imagining better
alternatives, and pondering what we might do differently next time, helps us prepare to do better
in the future (Epstude & Roese, 2008; Scholl & Sassenberg, 2014).
In Olympic competition, athletes’ emotions after an event reflect mostly how they did
relative to expectations, but also their counterfactual thinking—their mentally simulating
what might have been (McGraw et al., 2005; Medvec et al., 1995). Bronze medalists (for
whom an easily imagined alternative was finishing fourth—without a medal) exhibit more
joy than silver medalists (who could more easily imagine having won the gold). On the
medal stand, happiness is as simple as 1-3-2. Similarly, the higher a student’s score within
a grade category (such as B+), the worse they feel (Medvec & Savitsky, 1997). The B+
student who misses an A− by a point feels worse than the B+ student who actually did
worse and just made a B+ by a point. In sports games or TV game shows, near misses
are especially distressing when they occur near the end of the competition when there is
little chance for future success (Covey & Zhang, 2014).
Such counterfactual thinking—imagining what could have been—occurs when we can easily
picture an alternative outcome (Kahneman & Miller, 1986; Markman & McMullen, 2003;
Petrocelli et al., 2011):
▯ If we barely miss a plane or a bus, we imagine making it if only we had left at our
usual time, taken our usual route, or not paused to talk. If we miss our connection
by a half hour or after taking our usual route, it’s harder to simulate a different
outcome, so we feel less frustration.
▯ If we change an exam answer, then get it wrong, we will inevitably think “If
only . . .” and will vow next time to trust our immediate intuition—although,
“Testimonials may be more
compelling than mountains
of facts and figures (as
mountains of facts and figures
in social psychology so
compellingly demonstrate).”
—Mark Snyder (1988)
counterfactual thinking
Imagining alternative scenarios
and outcomes that might have
happened, but didn’t.
Vivid, memorable—and therefore cognitively available—events influence our perception of the
social world. The resulting “probability neglect” often leads people to fear the wrong things,
such as fearing flying or terrorism more than smoking, driving, or climate change. If four jumbo
jets filled with children crashed every day—approximating the number of childhood diarrhea
deaths resulting from the rotavirus—something would have been done about it.
Social Beliefs and Judgments Chapter 3 65
contrary to student lore, answer changes are more
often from incorrect to correct (Kruger et al., 2005).
▯ Students who chose a college major, but then thought
about the benefits of a major they didn’t choose, were
less satisfied with their choice and predicted they
would not perform as well (Leach & Patall, 2013).
▯ The team or the political candidate who barely loses
will simulate over and over how they could have won
(Sanna et al., 2003).
Counterfactual thinking underlies our feelings of luck.
When we have barely escaped a bad event—avoiding defeat
with a last-minute goal or standing near a falling icicle—we
easily imagine a negative counterfactual (losing, being hit) and
therefore feel “good luck” (Teigen et al., 1999). “Bad luck”
refers to bad events that did happen but easily might not have.
The more significant and unlikely the event, the more intense
the counterfactual thinking (Roese & Hur, 1997). Bereaved
people who have lost a spouse or a child in a vehicle accident,
or a child to sudden infant death syndrome, commonly report replaying and undoing the
event (Davis et al., 1995, 1996). One friend of mine [DM] survived a head-on collision with
a drunk driver that killed his wife, daughter, and mother. “For months,” he recalled, “I turned
the events of that day over and over in my mind. I kept reliving the day, changing the order
of events so that the accident wouldn’t occur” (Sittser, 1994).
Most people, however, live with more regret over things they didn’t do than what they
did, such as, “I should have told my father I loved him before he died” or “I wish I had
been more serious in college” (Gilovich & Medvec, 1994; Rajagopal et al., 2006). In one
survey of adults, the most common regret was not taking their education more seriously
(Kinnier & Metha, 1989). Would we live with less regret if we dared more often to reach
beyond our comfort zone—to venture out, risking failure, but at least having tried?
Illusory Thinking
Another influence on everyday thinking is our search for order in random events, a ten-
dency that can lead us down all sorts of wrong paths.
ILLUSORY CORRELATION
It is easy to see a correlation where none exists. When we expect to find significant rela-
tionships, we easily associate random events, perceiving an illusory correlation. William
Ward and Herbert Jenkins (1965) showed people the results of a hypothetical 50-day cloud-
seeding experiment. They told participants which of the 50 days the clouds had been seeded
and which days it rained. The information was nothing more than a random mix of results:
Sometimes it rained after seeding; sometimes it didn’t. Participants nevertheless became
convinced—in conformity with their ideas about the effects of cloud seeding—that they really
had observed a relationship between cloud seeding and rain.
Other experiments confirm this illusory correlation phenomenon: People easily misperceive
random events as confirming their beliefs (Crocker, 1981; Ratliff & Nosek, 2010; Trolier &
Hamilton, 1986). If we believe a correlation exists, we are more likely to notice and recall
confirming instances. If we believe that premonitions correlate with events, we notice and
remember any joint occurrence of the premonition and the event’s later occurrence. If we
believe that overweight women are less happy, we perceive that we have witnessed such a
correlation even when we have not (Viken et al., 2005). We ignore or forget all the times
unusual events do not coincide. If, after we think about a friend, the friend calls us, we
notice and remember that coincidence. We don’t notice all the times we think of a friend
without any ensuing call, or receive a call from a friend about whom we’ve not been
thinking.
People are more often
apologetic about actions
than inactions (Zeelenberg
et al., 1998).
illusory correlation
Perception of a relationship
where none exists, or
perception of a stronger
relationship than actually exists.
Counterfactual thinking. When The Price is Right contestants give the
wrong answer and lose out on a prize, they likely experience counter-
factual thinking—imagining what might have been.
©CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images
66 Part One Social Thinking
GAMBLING Compared with those given an assigned lottery
number, people who chose their own number demanded four
times as much money when asked if they would sell their ticket.
When playing a game of chance against an awkward and nervous
person, they bet significantly more than when playing against a
dapper, confident opponent (Langer, 1977). Being the person
who throws the dice or spins the wheel increases people’s con-
fidence (Wohl & Enzle, 2002). In these and other ways, dozens
of experiments have consistently found people acting as if they
can predict or control chance events (Stefan & David, 2013).
Observations of real-life gamblers confirm these experimental
findings (Orgaz et al., 2013). Dice players may throw softly for
low numbers and hard for high numbers (Henslin, 1967). The
gambling industry thrives on gamblers’ illusions. Gamblers attri-
bute wins to their skill and foresight. Losses become “near misses”
or “flukes,” or for the sports gambler, a bad call by the referee or
a freakish bounce of the ball (Gilovich & Douglas, 1986).
Stock traders also like the “feeling of empowerment” that
comes from being able to choose and control their own stock
trades, as if their being in control can enable them to outperform
the market average. One ad declared that online investing “is
about control.” Alas, the illusion of control breeds overconfidence and, frequently, losses
after stock market trading costs are subtracted (Barber & Odean, 2001a, 2001b).
People like feeling in control and so, when experiencing a lack of control, will act to create
a sense of predictability. In experiments, loss of control has led people to see illusory correla-
tions in stock market information, to perceive nonexistent conspiracies, and to develop supersti-
tions (Whitson & Galinsky, 2008).
REGRESSION TOWARD THE AVERAGE Tversky and Kahneman (1974) noted another
way by which an illusion of control may arise: We fail to recognize the statistical phenomenon
of regression toward the average. Because exam scores fluctuate partly by chance, most students
who get extremely high scores on an exam will get lower scores on the next exam. If their first
score is at the ceiling, their second score is more likely to fall back (“regress”) toward their
own average than to push the ceiling even higher. That is why a student who does consistently
good work, even if never the best, will sometimes end a course at the top of the class. Con-
versely, students who earn low scores on the first exam are likely to improve. If those who
scored lowest go for tutoring after the first exam, the tutors are likely to feel effective when
the student improves, even if the tutoring had no effect.
Indeed, when things reach a low point, we will try anything, and whatever we try—going
to a psychotherapist, starting a new diet-exercise plan, reading a self-help book—is more likely
to be followed by improvement than by further deterioration. Sometimes we recognize that
events are not likely to continue at an unusually good or bad extreme. Experience has taught
us that when everything is going great, something will go wrong, and that when life is dealing
us terrible blows, we can usually look forward to things getting better. Often, though, we fail
to recognize this regression effect. We puzzle at why baseball’s rookie of the year often has
a more ordinary second year—did he become overconfident? Self-conscious? We forget that
exceptional performance tends to regress toward normality.
By simulating the consequences of using praise and punishment, Paul Schaffner (1985)
showed how the illusion of control might infiltrate human relations. He invited Bowdoin
College students to train an imaginary fourth-grade boy, “Harold,” to come to school by
8:30 each morning. For each school day during a 3-week period, a computer displayed
Harold’s arrival time, which was always between 8:20 and 8:40. The students would then
select a response to Harold, ranging from strong praise to strong reprimand. As you might
expect, they usually praised Harold when he arrived before 8:30 and reprimanded him when
he arrived after 8:30. Because Schaffner had programmed the computer to display a random
sequence of arrival times, Harold’s arrival time tended to improve (to regress toward 8:30)
after he was reprimanded. For example, if Harold arrived at 8:39, he was almost sure to
regression toward
the average
The statistical tendency for
extreme scores or extreme
behavior to return toward their
average.
The odds of winning are the same whether you choose the numbers
or someone else does, but when they win, many people believe it
was due to their “lucky numbers”—an example of illusory correlation.
©Lipik Stock Media/Shutterstock
Social Beliefs and Judgments Chapter 3 67
be reprimanded, and his randomly selected next-day arrival time
was likely to be earlier than 8:39. Thus, even though their repri-
mands were having no effect, most students ended the experiment
believing that their reprimands had been effective.
This experiment demonstrates Tversky and Kahneman’s pro-
vocative conclusion: Nature operates in such a way that we often
feel punished for rewarding others and rewarded for punishing them.
In actuality, as you probably learned in introductory psychology,
positive reinforcement for doing things right is usually more effec-
tive and has fewer negative side effects.
Moods and Judgments
Social judgment involves efficient information processing. It also
involves our feelings: Our moods infuse our judgments. Unhappy
people—especially the bereaved or depressed—tend to be more self-
focused and brooding (Myers, 1993, 2000). But there is also a
bright side to sadness (Forgas, 2013). A depressed mood motivates intense thinking—a
search for information that makes one’s environment more memorable, understandable, and
controllable.
Happy people, by contrast, are more trusting, more loving, more responsive. If people are
made temporarily happy by receiving a small gift while shopping, they will report, a few moments
later on an unrelated survey, that their cars and phones are working beautifully—better, if you
took their word for it, than those belonging to folks who replied after not receiving gifts.
Moods pervade our thinking. From West Germans enjoying their team’s World Cup
soccer victory (Schwarz et al., 1987) to Australians emerging from a heartwarming movie
(Forgas & Moylan, 1987), people seem good-hearted; life seems wonderful. When we are
in a happy mood, the world seems friendlier, decisions are easier, and good news more
readily comes to mind (DeSteno et al., 2000; Isen & Means, 1983; Stone & Glass, 1986).
Let a mood turn gloomy, however, and thoughts switch onto a different track. Off come
the rose-colored glasses; on come the dark glasses. Now the bad mood primes our recol-
lections of negative events (Bower, 1987; Johnson & Magaro, 1987). Our relationships seem
to sour. Our self-images take a dive. Our hopes for the future dim. And other people’s
behavior seems more sinister (Brown & Taylor, 1986; Mayer & Salovey, 1987).
Joseph Forgas (1999, 2008, 2010, 2011) had often been struck by how people’s “memo-
ries and judgments change with the color of their mood.” Say you’re put in a good or a
bad mood and then watch a recording (made the day before) of you talking with someone.
If made to feel happy, you feel pleased with what you see, and you are able to detect many
instances of your poise, interest, and social skill. If you’ve been put in a bad mood, viewing
the same recording seems to reveal a quite different you—one who is stiff, nervous, and
inarticulate (Forgas et al., 1984; Figure 1). Given how your mood colors your judgments,
Regression to the average. When we are at an extremely low point,
anything we try will often seem effective. “Maybe a yoga class will
improve my life.” Events seldom continue at an abnormal low.
©Purestock/SuperStock
FIGURE 1
A temporary good or bad mood
strongly influenced people’s rat-
ings of their videotaped behav-
ior. Those in a bad mood
detected far fewer positive
behaviors.
Source: Forgas et al., 1984.
Negative
behaviors
detected
Positive
behaviors
detected
Percent perceived behaviors
People put in
a bad mood
People put in
a good mood
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
68 Part One Social Thinking
you feel relieved at how things brighten when the experimenter switches you to a happy
mood before leaving the experiment. Curiously, note Michael Ross and Garth Fletcher
(1985), we don’t attribute our changing perceptions to our mood shifts. Rather, the world
really seems different. (To read more about moods and memory, see “The Inside Story:
Joseph P. Forgas: Can Bad Weather Improve Your Memory?)”
Our moods color how we judge our worlds partly by bringing to mind past experiences
associated with the mood. When we are in a bad mood, we have more depressing thoughts.
Mood-related thoughts may distract us from complex thinking about something else. Thus,
when emotionally aroused—when either angry or in a very good mood—we become more
likely to make System 1 snap judgments and evaluate others based on stereotypes
( Bodenhausen et al., 1994; Paulhus & Lim, 1994).
Joseph P. Forgas: Can Bad Weather Improve
Your Memory?
THE inside
STORY
I noticed some time ago that I not only get into a worse
mood on cold, rainy days, but surprisingly, I also seem to
remember more clearly the details of what happens on
such days. Could it be that negative mood also influ-
ences how well we monitor our environment? Perhaps
negative mood works like a mild alarm signal, alerting
us to pay better attention to what is around us? I de-
cided to examine this possibility in a natural experiment.
We placed a number of small unusual trinkets around a
Sydney suburban news agency, and then checked how
well departing customers could remember these ob-
jects when they left the shop on cold, rainy days, or
warm sunny days (Forgas, Goldenberg, & Unkelbach,
2009). My hunch was confirmed: memory for objects in
the shop was significantly better when customers were
in a bad mood (on unpleasant days) than on pleasant
sunny days. It seems that moods subconsciously influ-
ence how closely we observe
the outside around us, with
negative mood improving at-
tention and memory.
Joseph P. Forgas
The University of New South Wales,
Australia
©Joseph P. Forgas
▯ We have an enormous capacity for automatic, efficient,
intuitive thinking (System 1). Our cognitive efficiency,
although generally adaptive, comes at the price of
occasional error. Because we are generally unaware of
those errors entering our thinking, it is useful to identify
ways in which we form and sustain false beliefs.
▯ Our preconceptions strongly influence how we inter-
pret and remember events. In a phenomenon called
priming, people’s prejudgments have striking effects on
how they perceive and interpret information.
▯ We often overestimate our judgments. This overconfidence
phenomenon stems partly from the much greater ease with
which we can imagine why we might be right than why we
might be wrong. Moreover, people are much more likely to
search for information that can confirm their beliefs than
for information that can disconfirm them.
▯ When given compelling anecdotes or even useless infor-
mation, we often ignore useful base-rate information.
This is partly due to the later ease of recall of vivid
information (the availability heuristic).
▯ We are often swayed by illusions of correlation and
personal control. It is tempting to perceive correla-
tions where none exist (illusory correlation) and to
think we can predict or control chance events (the
illusion of control).
▯ Moods infuse judgments. Good and bad moods trig-
ger memories of experiences associated with those
moods. Moods color our interpretations of current
experiences. And by distracting us, moods can also
influence how deeply or superficially we think when
making judgments.
How Do We Judge Our Social Worlds?SUMMING UP:
Social Beliefs and Judgments Chapter 3 69
HOW DO WE PERCEIVE OUR
SOCIAL WORLDS?
Understand how our assumptions and prejudgments
guide our perceptions, interpretations, and recall.
Our preconceptions guide how we perceive and interpret information. We construe the
world through belief-tinted glasses. “Sure, preconceptions matter,” people agree; yet they
fail to fully appreciate the impact of their own predispositions.
Let’s consider some provocative experiments. The first group examines how predisposi-
tions and prejudgments affect how we perceive and interpret information. The second group
plants a judgment in people’s minds after they have been given information to see how
after-the-fact ideas bias recall. The overarching point: We respond not to reality as it is but
to reality as we construe it.
Perceiving and Interpreting Events
Despite some startling biases and logical flaws in how we perceive and understand one
another, we’re mostly accurate (Jussim, 2012). Our first impressions of one another are
more often right than wrong. Moreover, the better we know people, the more accurately
we can read their minds and feelings.
But on occasion, our prejudgments err. The effects of prejudgments and expectations
are standard fare for psychology’s introductory course. Consider this phrase:
A
BIRD
IN THE
THE HAND
Did you notice anything wrong with it? There is more to perception than meets the eye.*
POLITICAL PERCEPTIONS
The same is true of political perception. Because political perceptions are very much in the
eye of the beholder, even a simple stimulus may strike two people quite differently. An
experiment by Robert Vallone, Lee Ross, and Mark Lepper (1985) revealed just how power-
ful preconceptions can be. They showed pro-Israeli and pro-Arab students six network news
segments describing the killing of civilian refugees at two
camps in Beirut, Lebanon. As Figure 2 illustrates, each
group perceived the networks as hostile to its side.
The phenomenon is commonplace: Sports fans perceive
referees as partial to the other side. Political candidates and
their supporters nearly always view the news media as
unsympathetic to their cause (Richardson et al., 2008).
When the Pew Research Center asked Americans “Would
you say your side has been winning or losing more?” the
majority in both parties believed that their side had been
losing more (Fingerhut, 2015).
It’s not just fans and politicians. People everywhere per-
ceive mediators and media as biased against their position.
“There is no subject about which people are less objective
than objectivity,” noted one media commentator (Poniewozik,
2003). Indeed, people’s perceptions of bias can be used to
assess their attitudes (Saucier & Miller, 2003). Tell me where
you see bias, and you will signal your attitudes.
“Once you have a belief, it in-
fluences how you perceive all
other relevant information.
Once you see a country as
hostile, you are likely to
interpret ambiguous actions
on their part as signifying
their hostility.”
—Political Scientist Robert Jervis
(1985)
*The word “the” appears twice.
Some circumstances make it difficult to be unbiased.
©Alex Gregory. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
“I’d like your honest, unbiased and possibly career-ending
opinion on something.”
70 Part One Social Thinking
Pro-Israeli
students
Pro-Arab
students
Perception of media bias
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
Pro-Israel
Anti-Israel
Neutral
Members of each side perceived
bias against their view
FIGURE 2
Pro-Israeli and pro-Arab
students who viewed network
news descriptions of the
“Beirut massacre” believed the
coverage was biased against
their point of view.
Source: Data from Vallone
et al., 1985.
Partisan perceptions. Supporters of candidates usually believe
their candidate won the debate.
©Win McNamee/Getty Images News/Getty Images
Is that why, in politics, religion, and science, ambiguous information often fuels conflict?
Presidential debates in the United States have mostly reinforced predebate opinions. By
nearly a 10-to-1 margin, those who already favored one candidate or the other perceived
their candidate as having won (Kinder & Sears, 1985). Thus, Geoffrey Munro and col-
leagues (1997) report that people on both sides may become even more supportive of their
respective candidates after viewing a presidential debate.
The bottom line: We view our social worlds through the spectacles of our beliefs, atti-
tudes, and values. That is one reason our beliefs are so important; they shape our interpreta-
tion of everything else.
Belief Perseverance
Imagine a babysitter who decides, during an evening with a crying infant, that bottle feeding
produces colicky babies: “Come to think of it, cow’s milk obviously suits calves better than
babies.” If the infant turns out to be suffering a high fever, will the sitter nevertheless persist in
believing that bottle feeding causes colic (Ross & Anderson, 1982)? To find out, Lee Ross, Craig
Anderson, and colleagues planted a falsehood in people’s minds and then tried to discredit it.
Their research reveals that it is surprisingly difficult to demolish a falsehood after the
person conjures up a rationale for it. Each experiment first implanted a belief, either by
proclaiming it to be true or by showing the participants some
anecdotal evidence. Then the participants were asked to explain
why it was true. Finally, the researchers totally discredited the
initial information by telling the participants the truth: The
information was manufactured for the experiment, and half the
participants in the experiment had received opposite informa-
tion. Nevertheless, the false belief survived approximately 75%
intact, presumably because the participants still retained their
invented explanations for the belief. Even though the belief was
false, the participants still held it tight. This phenomenon, called
belief perseverance, shows that beliefs can grow their own legs
and survive discrediting. In a time when “fake news” (false sto-
ries often designed to attract clicks and thus advertising profits)
spreads on social media (Fulgoni & Lipsman, 2017), it’s espe-
cially important to understand why people continue to believe
false information.
belief perseverance
Persistence of one’s initial
conceptions, such as when the
basis for one’s belief is
discredited but an explanation
of why the belief might be true
survives.
Social Beliefs and Judgments Chapter 3 71
Another example of belief perseverance: Anderson, Lepper, and Ross (1980) asked partici-
pants to decide whether individuals who take risks make good or bad firefighters. One group
considered a risk-prone person who was a successful firefighter and a cautious person who was
unsuccessful. The other group considered cases suggesting the opposite conclusion. After form-
ing their theory that risk-prone people make better (or worse) firefighters, the participants
wrote explanations for it—for example, that risk-prone people are brave or that cautious
people have fewer accidents. After each explanation was formed, it could exist independently
of the information that initially created the belief. When that information was discredited,
the participants nevertheless held to their self-generated explanations and therefore contin-
ued to believe that risk-prone people really do make better (or worse) firefighters.
These experiments suggest that the more we examine our theories and explain how they
might be true, the more closed we become to information that challenges our beliefs. When
we consider why an accused person might be guilty, why an offending stranger acts that
way, or why a favored stock might rise in value, our explanations may survive challenges
(Davies, 1997; Jelalian & Miller, 1984).
The evidence is compelling: Our beliefs and expectations powerfully affect how we mentally
construct events. Usually, we benefit from our preconceptions, just as scientists benefit from
creating theories that guide them in noticing and interpreting events. But the benefits some-
times entail a cost: We become prisoners of our own thought patterns. Thus, the supposed
Martian “canals” that twentieth-century astronomers delighted in spotting turned out to be
the product of intelligent life—but an intelligence on Earth’s side of the telescope.
Constructing Memories of Ourselves
and Our Worlds
Do you agree or disagree with this statement?
Memory can be likened to a storage chest in the brain into which we deposit material and
from which we can withdraw it later if needed. Occasionally, something is lost from the “chest,”
and then we say we have forgotten.
In one survey, 85% of college students agreed (Lamal, 1979). As one magazine ad put it,
“Science has proven the accumulated experience of a lifetime is preserved perfectly in your mind.”
Actually, psychological research has proved the opposite. Our memories are not exact
copies of experiences that remain on deposit in a memory bank. Rather, we construct
memories at the time of withdrawal. Like a paleontologist inferring the appearance of a
dinosaur from bone fragments, we reconstruct our distant past by using our current feelings
and expectations to combine information fragments. Thus, we can easily (although uncon-
sciously) revise our memories to suit our current knowledge. When one of my [DM] sons
complained, “The June issue of Cricket never came,” and was then shown where it was, he
delightedly responded, “Oh good, I knew I’d gotten it.”
When an experimenter or a therapist manipulates people’s presumptions about their
past, many people will construct false memories. Asked to imagine that, as a child, they
knocked over a punch bowl at a wedding, about one-fourth will later recall the fictitious
event as something that actually happened (Loftus & Bernstein, 2005). In its search for
truth, the mind sometimes constructs a falsehood.
In experiments involving more than 20,000 people, Elizabeth Loftus (2003, 2007, 2011a) and
collaborators have explored the mind’s tendency to construct memories. In the typical experi-
ment, people witness an event, receive misleading information about it (or not), and then take
a memory test. The results find a misinformation effect in which people incorporate the misin-
formation into their memories (Scoboria et al., 2017). They recall a yield sign as a stop sign,
hammers as screwdrivers, Vogue magazine as Mademoiselle, Dr. Henderson as “Dr. Davidson,”
breakfast cereal as eggs, and a clean-shaven man as a fellow with a mustache. Suggested misin-
formation may even produce false memories of supposed child sexual abuse, argues Loftus.
This process affects our recall of social as well as physical events. Jack Croxton and
colleagues (1984) had students spend 15 minutes talking with someone. Those who were
later informed that this person liked them recalled the person’s behavior as relaxed,
“We hear and apprehend only
what we already half know.”
—Henry David Thoreau,
In The Heart of Thoreau’s
Journals, 1961
“Memory isn’t like reading a
book: It’s more like writing a
book from fragmentary notes.”
—John F. Kihlstrom (1994)
misinformation effect
Incorporating “misinformation”
into one’s memory of the event
after witnessing an event and
receiving misleading
information about it.
72 Part One Social Thinking
comfortable, and happy. Those who heard the person disliked them recalled the person as
nervous, uncomfortable, and not so happy.
RECONSTRUCTING OUR PAST ATTITUDES
Five years ago, how did you feel about immigration? About your country’s president or prime
minister? About your parents? If your attitudes have changed, how much have they changed?
Experimenters have explored such questions, and the results have been unnerving. People
whose beliefs or attitudes have changed often insist that they have always felt much as they now
feel (Wolfe & Williams, 2018). Carnegie Mellon University students answered a long survey that
included a question about student control over the university curriculum. A week later, they
agreed to write an essay opposing student control. After doing so, their attitudes shifted toward
greater opposition to student control. When asked to recall how they had answered the question
before writing the essay, the students “remembered” holding the opinion that they now held and
denied that the experiment had affected them (Bem & McConnell, 1970).
After observing students similarly denying their former attitudes, researchers D. R. Wixon
and James Laird (1976) commented, “The speed, magnitude, and certainty” with which the
students revised their own histories “was striking.” As George Vaillant (1977) noted after fol-
lowing adults through time, “It is all too common for caterpillars to become butterflies and then
to maintain that in their youth they had been little butterflies. Maturation makes liars of us all.”
The construction of positive memories brightens our recollections. Terence Mitchell,
Leigh Thompson, and colleagues (1994, 1997) report that people often exhibit rosy
retrospection—they recall mildly pleasant events more favorably than they experienced them.
College students on a 3-week bike trip, older adults on a guided tour of Austria, and under-
graduates on vacation all reported enjoying their experiences as they were having them. But
they later recalled such experiences even more fondly, minimizing the unpleasant or boring
aspects and remembering the high points. Thus, the pleasant times during which I [DM]
have sojourned in Scotland, I now (back in my office, facing deadlines and interruptions)
romanticize as pure bliss. The drizzle and the pesky midge bugs are but dim memories.
The spectacular scenery and the fresh sea air and the favorite tea rooms are still with me.
With any positive experience, some of our pleasure resides in the anticipation, some in the
actual experience, and some in the rosy retrospection.
Cathy McFarland and Michael Ross (1985) found that as our relationships change, we
also revise our recollections of other people. They had university students rate their steady
dating partners. Two months later, they rated them again. Students who were still in love
had a tendency to overestimate their first impressions—it was “love at first sight.” Those
who had broken up were more likely to underestimate their earlier liking—recalling their ex
as somewhat selfish and bad-tempered.
Diane Holmberg and John Holmes (1994) discovered the
phenomenon also operating among 373 newlywed couples,
most of whom reported being very happy. When resurveyed
2 years later, those whose marriages had soured recalled that
things had always been bad. The results are “frightening,” said
Holmberg and Holmes: “Such biases can lead to a dangerous
downward spiral. The worse your current view of your partner
is, the worse your memories are, which only further confirms
your negative attitudes.”
It’s not that we are totally unaware of how we used to feel,
but when memories are hazy, current feelings guide our recall.
When widows and widowers try to recall the grief they felt on
their spouse’s death 5 years earlier, their current emotional state
colors their memories (Safer et al., 2001). When patients recall
their previous day’s headache pain, their current feelings sway
their recollections (Eich et al., 1985). Depressed people who
get Botox—which prevents them from frowning—recover from
depression more quickly, perhaps because they find it more dif-
ficult to remember why they were sad (Lewis & Bowler, 2009).
“A man should never
be ashamed to own that he
has been in the wrong, which
is but saying in other words,
that he is wiser today than he
was yesterday.”
—Jonathan Swift,
Thoughts on Various Subjects,
1711
“Travel is glamorous only in
retrospect.”
—Paul Theroux,
The Observer, 1979
Fight now, and you might falsely recall that your relationship was
never that happy.
©Tetra Images/Getty Images
Social Beliefs and Judgments Chapter 3 73
RECONSTRUCTING OUR PAST BEHAVIOR
Memory construction enables us to revise our own histories. In one study, University of
Waterloo students read a message about the benefits of toothbrushing. Later, in a suppos-
edly different experiment, these students recalled brushing their teeth more often during
the preceding 2 weeks than did students who had not heard the message (Ross, 1981).
Likewise, judging from surveys, people report smoking many fewer cigarettes than are actu-
ally sold (Hall, 1985). And they recall casting more votes than were actually recorded
(Bureau of the Census, 2013).
Social psychologist Anthony Greenwald (1980) noted the similarity of such findings in George
Orwell’s novel 1984—in which it was “necessary to remember that events happened in the desired
manner.” Indeed, argued Greenwald, we all have “totalitarian egos” that revise the past to suit
our present views. Thus, we underreport bad behavior and overreport good behavior.
Sometimes our present view is that we’ve improved—in which case we may misrecall our
past as more unlike the present than it actually was. This tendency resolves a puzzling pair
of consistent findings: Those who participate in psychotherapy and self-improvement pro-
grams for weight control, smoking cessation, and exercise show only modest improvement on
average. Yet they often claim considerable benefit. Michael Conway and Michael Ross (1986)
explain why: Having expended so much time, effort, and money on self-improvement, people
may think, “I may not be perfect now, but I was worse before; this did me a lot of good.”
Our social judgments are a mix of observation and expectation, reason and passion.
“Vanity plays lurid tricks with
our memory.”
—Joseph Conrad,
Lord Jim, 1900
▯ Experiments have planted judgments or false ideas in
people’s minds after they have been given information.
These experiments reveal that as before-the-fact judg-
ments bias our perceptions and interpretations, so after-
the-fact judgments bias our recall.
▯ Belief perseverance is the phenomenon in which people
cling to their initial beliefs and the reasons why a belief
might be true, even when the basis for the belief is
discredited.
▯ Far from being a repository for facts about the past, our
memories are actually formed when we retrieve them,
and they are subject to strong influence by the attitudes
and feelings we hold at the time of retrieval.
How Do We Perceive Our Social Worlds?SUMMING UP:
HOW DO WE EXPLAIN OUR
SOCIAL WORLDS?
Recognize how—and how accurately—we explain
others’ behavior.
People make it their business to explain other people, and social psychologists make it their
business to explain people’s explanations.
Our judgments of people depend on how we explain their behavior. Depending on our
explanation, we may judge killing as murder, manslaughter, self-defense, or heroism. Depend-
ing on our explanation, we may view a homeless person as lacking initiative or as victimized
by job and welfare cutbacks. Depending on our explanation, we may interpret someone’s
friendly behavior as genuine warmth or as ingratiation. Attribution theory helps us make
sense of how such explanations work.
Attributing Causality: To the Person
or the Situation
We endlessly analyze and discuss why things happen as they do, especially when we experience
something negative or unexpected (Weiner, 1985, 2008, 2010). If worker productivity declines,
74 Part One Social Thinking
do we assume the workers are getting lazier? Or has their workplace
become less efficient? Does a young boy who hits his classmates have
a hostile personality? Or is he responding to relentless teasing?
Researchers found that married people often analyze their
partners’ behaviors, especially their negative behaviors. Cold hos-
tility, more than a warm hug, is likely to leave the partner wonder-
ing “Why?” (Holtzworth & Jacobson, 1988). Spouses’ answers
correlate with marital satisfaction. Unhappy couples usually offer
internal explanations for negative acts (“She was late because she
doesn’t care about me”). Happy couples more often externalize
(“She was late because of heavy traffic”). Explanations for positive
acts similarly work either to maintain distress (“He brought me
flowers because he wants sex”) or to enhance the relationship (“He
brought me flowers to show he loves me”) (Hewstone & Fincham,
1996; McNulty et al., 2008; Weiner, 1995).
Antonia Abbey and colleagues (1987, 1991, 2011) have repeat-
edly found that men are more likely than women to attribute a
woman’s friendliness to sexual interest. Men’s misreading of wom-
en’s warmth as a sexual come-on—an example of misattribution—
can contribute to sexual harassment or even rape (Farris et al., 2008; Kolivas & Gross,
2007; Pryor et al., 1997). Many men believe women are flattered by repeated requests for
dates, which women more often view as harassment (Rotundo et al., 2001).
Misattribution is particularly likely when men are in positions of power. A manager may
misinterpret a subordinate woman’s submissive or friendly behavior and, full of himself, see
her in sexual terms (Bargh & Raymond, 1995). Men think about sex more often than do
women. Men also are more likely than women to assume that others share their feelings.
Thus, a man with sex on his mind may greatly overestimate the sexual significance of a
woman’s courtesy smile (Levesque et al., 2006; Nelson & LeBoeuf, 2002). Misattributions
help explain why, in one national survey, 23% of American women said they had been
forced into unwanted sexual behavior, but only 3% of American men said they had ever
forced a woman into a sexual act (Laumann et al., 1994).
Attribution theory analyzes how we explain people’s behavior and what we infer from it
(Gilbert & Malone, 1995; Heider, 1958). We sometimes attribute people’s behavior to internal
causes (for example, someone’s disposition or mental state) and sometimes to external causes
(for example, something about the situation). A teacher may wonder whether a child’s under-
achievement is due to lack of motivation and ability (an internal cause or a dispositional attribu-
tion) or to physical and social circumstances (an external cause or situational attribution). Also,
some people are more inclined to attribute behavior to stable personality, whereas others are
more likely to attribute behavior to situations (Bastian & Haslam, 2006; Robins et al., 2004).
INFERRING TRAITS
We often infer that other people’s actions are indicative of their intentions and dispositions
(Jones & Davis, 1965). If we observe Mason making a sarcastic comment to Ashley, we
infer that Mason is a hostile person. When are people more likely to infer that others’
behavior is caused by traits? For one thing, behavior that’s normal for a particular situation
tells us less about the person than does behavior unusual for that situation. If Samantha is
sarcastic in a job interview, a situation in which sarcasm is rare, that tells us more about
Samantha than if she is sarcastic with her siblings.
The ease with which we infer traits—a phenomenon called spontaneous trait inference—is
remarkable. In experiments at New York University, James Uleman (1989; Uleman et al.,
2008) gave students statements to remember, such as “The librarian carries the old woman’s
groceries across the street.” The students would instantly, unintentionally, and unconsciously
infer a trait. When later they were helped to recall the sentence, the most valuable clue
word was not “books” (to cue librarian) or “bags” (to cue groceries) but “helpful”—the
inferred trait that we suspect you, too, spontaneously attributed to the librarian. Just 1/10th
of a second exposure to someone’s face leads people to spontaneously infer some personal-
ity traits (Willis & Todorov, 2006).
misattribution
Mistakenly attributing a
behavior to the wrong source.
attribution theory
The theory of how people
explain others’ behavior—for
example, by attributing it either
to internal dispositions
(enduring traits, motives, and
attitudes) or to external
situations.
dispositional attribution
Attributing behavior to the
person’s disposition and traits.
situational attribution
Attributing behavior to the
environment.
An exception: Asians are less
likely to attribute people’s
behavior to their personality
traits (Na & Kitayama, 2011).
spontaneous trait inference
An effortless, automatic
inference of a trait after
exposure to someone’s
behavior.
A misattribution? Date rape sometimes begins with a man’s mis-
reading a woman’s warmth as a sexual come-on.
©PeopleImages/DigitalVision/Getty Images
Social Beliefs and Judgments Chapter 3 75
The Fundamental
Attribution Error
Social psychology’s most important lesson con-
cerns the influence of our social environment. At
any moment, our internal state, and therefore
what we say and do, depends on the situation as
well as on what we bring to the situation. In
experiments, a slight difference between two situ-
ations sometimes greatly affects how people
respond. As a professor, I [DM] have seen this
when teaching the same class at both 8:30 a.m.
and 7:00 p.m. Silent stares would greet me at
8:30; at 7:00, I had to break up a party. In each
situation, some individuals were more talkative
than others, but the difference between the two
situations exceeded the individual differences.
Attribution researchers have found a common
problem with our attributions. When explaining someone’s behavior, we often underestimate
the impact of the situation and overestimate the extent to which it reflects the individual’s
traits and attitudes. Thus, even knowing the effect of the time of day on classroom conversa-
tion, I found it terribly tempting to assume that the people in the 7:00 p.m. class were more
extraverted than the “silent types” who came at 8:30 a.m. Likewise, we may infer that people
fall because they’re clumsy rather than because they were tripped; that people smile because
they’re happy rather than faking friendliness; and that people speed past us on the highway
because they’re aggressive rather than late for an important meeting.
This discounting of the situation, called the fundamental attribution error (Ross, 1977),
appears in many experiments. In the first such study, Edward Jones and Victor Harris
(1967) had Duke University students read debaters’ speeches supporting or attacking Cuba’s
leader at the time, Fidel Castro. When told that the debater chose which position to take,
the students logically assumed it reflected the person’s own attitude. But what happened
when the students were told that the debate coach had assigned the position? Students still
inferred that the debater had the assigned leanings (Figure 3). People seemed to think, “I
know he was assigned that position, but I think he really believes it.”
fundamental attribution
error
The tendency for observers to
underestimate situational
influences and overestimate
dispositional influences upon
others’ behavior.
FIGURE 3
The Fundamental
Attribution Error
When people read a debate
speech supporting or attacking
Fidel Castro, they attributed cor-
responding attitudes to the
speechwriter, even when the
debate coach assigned the
writer’s position.
Source: Data from Forgas et al.,
1984.
Chose to give a
Castro speech
Attitude attributed
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
Pro-Castro
Anti-Castro
Assigned to give a
Castro speech
Pro-Castro speeches
Anti-Castro speeches
Anti-Castro attitudes attributed
to anti-Castro debaters
To what should we attribute a student’s sleepiness? To lack of sleep? To boredom?
Whether we make internal or external attributions depends on whether we notice her
consistently sleeping in this and other classes, and on whether other students react
as she does to this particular class.
©Wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock
76 Part One Social Thinking
Even when people know they are causing someone else’s behavior, they still
underestimate external influences. If individuals dictate an opinion that someone
else must then express, they still tend to see the person as actually holding that
opinion (Gilbert & Jones, 1986). If people are asked to be either self-enhancing
or self-deprecating during an interview, they are very aware of why they are acting
so. But they are unaware of their effect on another person. If Juan acts modestly,
his conversation partner Ethan is likely to exhibit modesty as well. Juan will
easily understand his own behavior, but he will think that poor Ethan suffers
from low self-esteem. In short, we tend to presume that others are the way they
act—even when we don’t make the same presumption about ourselves. Observing
Cinderella cowering in her oppressive home, people (ignoring the situation) infer
that she is meek; dancing with her at the ball, the prince sees a suave and glam-
orous person. Cinderella knows she is the same person in both situations.
One experiment re-created Lee Ross’s firsthand experience of moving from
graduate student to professor. His doctoral oral exam had proved a humbling
experience as his apparently brilliant professors quizzed him on topics they
specialized in. Six months later, Dr. Ross was himself an examiner, now able to
ask penetrating questions on his favorite topics. Ross’s hapless student later
confessed to feeling exactly as Ross had a half-year before— dissatisfied with his
ignorance and impressed with the apparent brilliance of the examiners.
In an experiment mimicking his student-to-professor experience, Ross set up
a simulated quiz game. He randomly assigned some Stanford University stu-
dents to play the role of questioner, some to play the role of contestant, and
others to observe. The researchers invited the questioners to make up difficult
questions that would demonstrate their wealth of knowledge. Any one of us can
imagine such questions using one’s own domain of competence: “Where is
Bainbridge Island?” “How did Mary, Queen of Scots, die?” “Which has the longer coastline,
Europe or Africa?” If even those few questions have you feeling a little uninformed, then
you will appreciate the results of this experiment (Ross et al., 1977).*
Everyone had to know that the questioners would have the advantage. Yet both contes-
tants and observers (but not the questioners) came to the erroneous conclusion that the
questioners really were more knowledgeable than the contestants (Figure 4). Follow-up
research shows that these misimpressions are hardly a reflection of low social intelligence.
If anything, college students and other intelligent and socially competent people are more
likely to make the attribution error (Bauman & Skitka, 2010; Block & Funder, 1986).
In real life, those with social power usually initiate and control conversations, which
often leads underlings to overestimate their knowledge and intelligence (Jouffre & Croizet,
2016). Medical doctors, for example, are often presumed to be experts on all sorts of ques-
tions unrelated to medicine. Similarly, students often overestimate the brilliance of their
teachers. (As in the experiment, teachers are questioners on subjects of their special exper-
tise.) When some of these students later become teachers, they are often amazed to discover
that teachers are not so brilliant after all.
To illustrate the fundamental attribution error, most of us need to look no further than
our own experiences. Determined to make some new friends, Nicole plasters a smile on
her face and anxiously plunges into a party. Everyone else seems quite relaxed and happy
as they laugh and talk with one another. Nicole wonders to herself, “Why is everyone always
so at ease in groups like this while I’m feeling shy and tense?” Actually, everyone else is
feeling nervous, too, and making the same attribution error in assuming that Nicole and
the others are as they appear— confidently convivial.
WHY DO WE MAKE THE ATTRIBUTION ERROR?
So far, we have seen a bias in the way we explain other people’s behavior: We often ignore
powerful situational determinants. Why do we tend to underestimate the situational deter-
minants of others’ behavior but not of our own?
When viewing a movie actor playing a “hero” or
“villain” role, we find it difficult to escape the illu-
sion that the scripted behavior reflects an inner
disposition. Glenn Close, who has played villain-
ous characters from the bunny-killing woman in
Fatal Attraction to the unethical lawyer in the TV
show Damages, is, in real life, a caring activist
who co-founded a nonprofit to raise awareness
of mental illness.
©Ga Fullner/Shutterstock
*Bainbridge Island is across Puget Sound from Seattle. Mary was ordered beheaded by her cousin Queen Elizabeth I. Although
the African continent is more than double the area of Europe, Europe’s coastline is longer. (It is more convoluted, with many
harbors and inlets, a geographical fact that contributed to its role in the history of maritime trade.)
Social Beliefs and Judgments Chapter 3 77
PERSPECTIVE AND SITUATIONAL AWARENESS Attribution theorists have pointed
out that we observe others from a different perspective than we observe ourselves (Jones,
1976; Jones & Nisbett, 1971). When we act, the environment commands our attention. When
we watch another person act, that person occupies the center of our attention and the envi-
ronment becomes relatively invisible. If I’m mad, it’s the situation that’s making me angry.
But someone else getting mad may seem like an ill-tempered person.
From his analysis of 173 studies, Bertram Malle (2006) concluded that the actor–
observer difference is often minimal. When our action feels intentional and admirable,
we attribute it to our own good reasons, not to the situation. It’s especially when we
behave badly that we tend to display our disposition and attribute our behavior to the
situation. Meanwhile, someone observing us may spontaneously infer a trait.
When people viewed a videotape of a suspect confessing during a police interview with a
camera focused on the suspect, they perceived the confession as genuine. If the camera was
instead focused on the detective, they perceived it as more
coerced (Lassiter et al., 2005, 2007; Lassiter & Irvine, 1986).
The camera perspective influenced people’s guilt judgments
even when the judge instructed them not to allow this to
happen (Lassiter et al., 2002).
In courtrooms, most confession videotapes focus on the
confessor. As we might expect, noted Daniel Lassiter and Kim-
berly Dudley (1991), such tapes yield a nearly 100% conviction
rate when played by prosecutors. Aware of Lassiter’s research
on the camera perspective bias, New Zealand and some parts
of Canada and the United States now require that police inter-
rogations be filmed with equal focus on the officer and the
suspect.
Consider this: Are you generally quiet, talkative, or does
it depend on the situation?
“Depends on the situation” is a common answer. Like-
wise, when asked to predict their feelings 2 weeks after
receiving grades or learning the outcome of their country’s
People often attribute keen intelligence to those, such as teachers and
quiz show hosts, who test others’ knowledge.
©PAUL HAWTHORNE/AP Images
FIGURE 4
Both contestants and observers
of a simulated quiz game as-
sumed that a person who had
been randomly assigned the
role of questioner was far more
knowledgeable than the contes-
tant. Actually, the assigned roles
of questioner and contestant
simply made the questioner
seem more knowledgeable. The
failure to appreciate this illus-
trates the fundamental
attribution error.
Source: Data from Vallone et al.,
1985.
Questioners
perceived as
knowledgeable
Contestants’
ratings
Rating of general knowledge
100
90
80
70
60
50
30
10
40
20
0
Observers’
ratings
Questioner
Average student
Contestant
78 Part One Social Thinking
national election, people expect the situation to rule
their emotions; they underestimate the importance of
their own sunny or dour dispositions (Quoidbach &
Dunn, 2010). But when asked to describe a friend—or
to describe what they were like 5 years ago—people
more often ascribe trait descriptions. When recalling
our past, we become like observers of someone else (Pro-
nin & Ross, 2006). For most of us, the “old you” is
someone other than today’s “real you.” We regard our
distant past selves (and our distant future selves)
almost as if they were other people occupying our
body.
All these experiments point to a reason for the attri-
bution error: We find causes where we look for them. To
see this in your own experience, consider this: Would
you say your social psychology instructor is a quiet or a
talkative person?
You may have guessed that he or she is fairly outgo-
ing. But consider: Your attention focuses on your
instructor while he or she behaves in a public context
that demands speaking. The instructor also observes
his or her own behavior in many situations—in the
classroom, in meetings, at home. “Me, talkative?” your instructor might say. “Well, it all
depends on the situation. When I’m in class or with good friends, I’m rather outgoing. But
at conferences and in unfamiliar situations I’m rather shy.” Because we are acutely aware of
how our behavior varies with the situation, we see ourselves as more variable than do other
people (Baxter & Goldberg, 1987; Kammer, 1982; Sande et al., 1988). We think, “Nigel is
uptight, but Fiona is relaxed. With me it varies.”
CULTURAL DIFFERENCES Cultures also influence attribution error (Ickes, 1980; Wat-
son, 1982). An individualistic Western worldview predisposes people to assume that people,
not situations, cause events. Internal explanations are more socially approved (Jellison &
Green, 1981). “You can do it!” we are assured by the pop psychology of positive-thinking
Western culture. You get what you deserve and deserve what you get.
As Western children grow up, they learn to explain other people’s behavior in terms of
their personal characteristics (Rholes et al., 1990; Ross, 1981). As a first-grader, one of my
[DM] sons unscrambled the words “gate the sleeve caught Tom on his” into “The gate caught
Tom on his sleeve.” His teacher, applying Western cultural assumptions, marked that
wrong. The “right” answer located the cause within Tom: “Tom caught his sleeve on
the gate.”
The fundamental attribution error occurs across varied cultures (Krull et al., 1999).
Yet people in Eastern Asian cultures are somewhat more sensitive than Westerners to
the importance of situations. Thus, when aware of the social context, they are less
inclined to assume that others’ behavior corresponds to their traits (Choi et al., 1999;
Farwell & Weiner, 2000; Masuda & Kitayama, 2004).
Some languages promote external attributions. Instead of “I was late,” Spanish
idiom allows one to say, “The clock caused me to be late.” In collectivistic cultures,
people less often perceive others in terms of personal dispositions (Lee et al., 1996;
Zebrowitz-McArthur, 1988). They are less likely to spontaneously interpret a behavior
as reflecting an inner trait (Newman, 1993). When told of someone’s actions, Hindus
in India are less likely than Americans to offer dispositional explanations (“She is
kind”) and more likely to offer situational explanations (“Her friends were with her”)
(Miller, 1984).
The fundamental attribution error is fundamental because it colors our explanations
in basic and important ways. Researchers in Britain, India, Australia, and the United
States have found that people’s attributions predict their attitudes toward the poor and
“And in imagination he began
to recall the best moments
of his pleasant life. . . . But the
child who had experienced
that happiness existed no
longer, it was like a
reminiscence of
somebody else.”
—Leo Tolstoy,
The Death of Ivan Ilyich, 1886
Focusing on the person. Would you
infer that your professor is naturally
outgoing?
©dotshock/Shutterstock
The fundamental attribution error: observers underestimating the situation.
Driving into a gas station, we may think the person parked at the second pump
(blocking access to the first) is inconsiderate. That person, having arrived
when the first pump was in use, attributes her behavior to the situation.
Courtesy of Kathryn Brownson
Social Beliefs and Judgments Chapter 3 79
the unemployed (Furnham, 1982; Pandey et al., 1982; Skitka, 1999; Wagstaff, 1983; Weiner
et al., 2011). Those who attribute poverty and unemployment to personal dispositions
(“They’re just lazy and undeserving”) tend to adopt political positions unsympathetic to
such people (Figure 5). This dispositional attribution ascribes behavior to the person’s dis-
position and traits. Those who make situational attributions (“If you or I were to live with
the same overcrowding, poor education, and discrimination, would we be any better off?”)
tend to adopt political positions that offer more direct support to the poor. Tell us your
attributions for poverty and we will guess your politics.
Can we benefit from being aware of the attribution error? I [DM] once assisted with
some interviews for a faculty position. One candidate was interviewed by six of us at once;
each of us had the opportunity to ask two or three questions. I came away thinking, “What
a stiff, awkward person he is.” The second candidate I met privately over coffee, and we
immediately discovered we had a close, mutual friend. As we talked, I became increasingly
impressed by what a “warm, engaging, stimulating person she is.” Only later did I remember
the fundamental attribution error and reassess my analysis. I had attributed his stiffness
and her warmth to their dispositions; in fact, I later realized, such behavior resulted partly
from the difference in their interview situations.
WHY WE STUDY ATTRIBUTION ERRORS
This chapter, like the one before it, explains some foibles and fallacies in our social think-
ing. Reading about these may make it seem, as one of my [DM] students put it, that “social
psychologists get their kicks out of playing tricks on people.” Actually, the experiments,
though sometimes amusing, are not designed to demonstrate “what fools these mortals be.”
Their serious purpose is to reveal how we think about ourselves and others.
If our capacity for illusion and self-deception is shocking, remember that our modes of
thought are generally adaptive. Illusory thinking is a by-product of our mind’s strategies for
simplifying complex information. It parallels our perceptual mechanisms, which generally
give us useful images of the world but sometimes lead us astray.
A second reason for focusing on thinking biases such as the fundamental attribution
error is humanitarian. One of social psychology’s “great humanizing messages,” note
Thomas Gilovich and Richard Eibach (2001), is that people should not always be blamed
for their problems: “More often than people are willing to acknowledge, failure, disability,
and misfortune are . . . the product of real environmental causes.”
Whether conservatives or
liberals offer more situational
attributions depends on the
topic. When explaining poverty,
liberals offer stronger situational
attributions. When explaining
U.S. Marines’ killing of Iraqi
civilians, conservatives offer
stronger situational attributions
(Morgan et al., 2010).
“Most poor people are not
lazy. . . . They catch the early
bus. They raise other people’s
children. They clean the
streets. No, no, they’re
not lazy.”
—The Reverend Jesse Jackson,
Address to the Democratic
National Convention, July, 1988
Under alcohol’s influence, people’s
attentional focus narrows and they
become more likely to attribute
someone’s action—perhaps a bump
at a bar—to intentionality (Begue
et al., 2010). Thinking that a jolt
or seeming insult was intentional
may then trigger an aggravated
reaction.
FIGURE 5
Attributions and
Reactions
How we explain someone’s neg-
ative behavior determines how
we feel about it.
(photo): ©Esbin-Anderson/The Image
Works
Negative behavior
(A man is rude to his
colleague.)
Dispositional attribution
(The man is a
hostile person.)
Situational attribution
(The man was unfairly
evaluated.)
Unfavorable
reaction
(I don’t like this man.)
Sympathetic
reaction
(I can understand.)
80 Part One Social Thinking
▯ Attribution theory involves how we explain people’s be-
havior. Misattribution—attributing a behavior to the
wrong source—is a major factor in sexual harassment, as
a person in power (typically male) interprets friendli-
ness as a sexual come-on.
▯ Although we usually make reasonable attributions, we
often commit the fundamental attribution error when
explaining other people’s behavior. We attribute their
behavior so much to their inner traits and attitudes
that we discount situational constraints, even when
those are obvious. We make this attribution error
partly because when we watch someone act, that per-
son is the focus of our attention and the situation
is relatively invisible. When we act, our attention is
usually on what we are reacting to—the situation is
more visible.
How Do We Explain Our Social Worlds?SUMMING UP:
A third reason for focusing on biases is that we are mostly unaware of them and can
benefit from greater awareness. As with other biases, such as the self-serving bias, people see
themselves as less susceptible than others to attribution errors (Pronin, 2008). You will prob-
ably find more surprises, more challenges, and more benefit in an analysis of errors and biases
than you would in a string of testimonies to the human capacity for logic and intellectual
achievement. That is also why world literature so often portrays pride and other human fail-
ings. Social psychology aims to expose us to fallacies in our thinking in the hope that we will
become more rational, more in touch with reality, and more receptive to critical thinking.
HOW DO OUR SOCIAL
BELIEFS MATTER?
Gain insight into how our expectations of our social
worlds matter.
Having considered how we explain and judge others—efficiently, adaptively, but sometimes
erroneously—we conclude this chapter by pondering the effects of our social judgments. Do
our social beliefs matter? Can they change reality?
Our social beliefs and judgments do matter. They influence how we feel and act, and by
so doing may help generate their own reality. When our ideas lead us to act in ways that
produce their apparent confirmation, they have become what sociologist Robert Merton
(1948) termed self-fulfilling prophecies—beliefs that lead to their own fulfillment. If, led to
believe that their bank is about to crash, its customers race to withdraw their money, their
false perceptions may create reality, noted Merton. If people are led to believe that stocks
are about to soar, they will indeed. (See “Focus On: The Self-Fulfilling Psychology of the
Stock Market.”)
In his well-known studies of experimenter bias, Robert Rosenthal (1985, 2006) found that
research participants sometimes live up to what they believe experimenters expect of them. In
one study, experimenters asked individuals to judge the success of people in various photo-
graphs. The experimenters read the same instructions to all their participants and showed them
the same photos. Nevertheless, experimenters who expected their participants to see the pho-
tographed people as successful obtained higher ratings than did those who expected their
participants to see the people as failures. Even more startling—and controversial—are reports
that teachers’ beliefs about their students similarly serve as self-fulfilling prophecies. If a teacher
believes a student is good at math, will the student do well in the class? Let’s examine this.
Teacher Expectations and Student Performance
Teachers do have higher expectations for some students than for others. Perhaps you have
detected this after having a brother or sister precede you in school, after receiving a label
self-fulfilling prophecy
A belief that leads to its own
fulfillment.
Rosenthal (2008) recalls
submitting a paper describing
his early experiments on
experimenter bias to a leading
journal and to an American
Association for the Advancement
of Science prize competition. On
the same day, some weeks later,
he received a letter from the
journal rejecting his paper and
one from the association
naming it the year’s best social
science research. In science, as
in everyday life, some people
appreciate what others do not,
which is why it often pays to try
and, when rebuffed, to try again.
Social Beliefs and Judgments Chapter 3 81
The Self-Fulfilling Psychology of the Stock Market
focus
ON
On the evening of January 6, 1981, Joseph Granville, a
popular Florida investment adviser, wired his clients:
“Stock prices will nosedive; sell tomorrow.” Word of
Granville’s advice soon spread, and January 7 became
the heaviest day of trading in the previous history of the
New York Stock Exchange. All told, stock values lost
$40 billion.
Nearly a half-century ago, John Maynard Keynes lik-
ened such stock market psychology to the popular beauty
contests then conducted by London newspapers. To win,
one had to pick the six faces out of a hundred that were,
in turn, chosen most frequently by the other newspaper
contestants. Thus, as Keynes wrote, “Each competitor has
to pick not those faces which he himself finds prettiest,
but those which he thinks likeliest to catch the fancy of the
other competitors.”
Investors likewise try to pick not the stocks that touch
their fancy but the stocks that other investors will favor.
The name of the game is predicting others’ behavior. As
one Wall Street fund manager explained, “You may or may
not agree with Granville’s view—but that’s usually beside
the point.” If you think his advice will cause others to sell,
you want to sell quickly, before prices drop more. If you
expect others to buy, you buy now to beat the rush.
The self-fulfilling psychology of the stock market
worked to an extreme on Monday, October 19, 1987, when
the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 20%. Part of what
happens during such crashes is that the media and the
rumor mill focus on whatever bad news is available to ex-
plain them. Once reported, the explanatory news stories
further diminish people’s expectations, causing declining
prices to fall still lower. The process also works in reverse
by amplifying good news when stock prices are rising.
In April of 2000, the volatile technology market again
demonstrated a self-fulfilling psychology, now called “mo-
mentum investing.” After 2 years of eagerly buying stocks
(because prices were rising), people started frantically
selling them (because prices were falling). Such wild mar-
ket swings—“irrational exuberance” followed by a crash—
are mainly self-generated, noted economist Robert Shiller
(2005). In 2008 and 2009, the market psychology headed
south again as another bubble burst.
such as “gifted” or “learning disabled,” or after taking “honors” classes. Perhaps conversa-
tion in the teachers’ lounge sent your reputation ahead of you. Or perhaps your new teacher
scrutinized your school file or discovered your family’s social status. It’s clear that teachers’
evaluations correlate with student achievement: Teachers think well of students who do
well. That’s mostly because teachers accurately perceive their students’ abilities and
achievements. “About 75% of the correlation between teacher expectations and student
future achievement reflects accuracy,” report Lee Jussim, Stacy Robustelli, and Thomas
Cain (2009).
But are teachers’ evaluations ever a cause as well as a consequence of student perfor-
mance? One correlational study of 4,300 British schoolchildren suggested yes; students
whose teachers expected them to perform well indeed performed well (Crano & Mellon,
1978). Not only is high performance followed by higher teacher evaluations, but the reverse
is true as well—teachers’ judgments predicted students’ later performance even beyond their
actual ability ( Sorhagen, 2013).
Could we test this “teacher-expectations effect” experimentally? Imagine we gave a teacher
the impression that Olivia, Emma, Ethan, and Manuel—four randomly selected students—are
unusually capable. Will the teacher give special treatment to these four and elicit superior
performance from them? In a now-famous experiment, Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson
(1968) reported precisely that. Randomly selected children in a San Francisco elementary
school who were said (on the basis of a fictitious test) to be on the verge of a dramatic intel-
lectual spurt did then spurt ahead in IQ score.
That dramatic result seemed to suggest that the school problems of “disadvantaged”
children might reflect their teachers’ low expectations. The findings were soon publicized
in the national media as well as in many college textbooks. However, further analysis—which
was not as highly publicized—revealed the teacher-expectations effect to be not as powerful
and reliable as this initial study had led many people to believe (Jussim et al., 2009; Spitz,
Self-presumed expectations
associated with one’s gender
(“women are bad at math”) or
race (“Blacks don’t do so well
on aptitude tests”) can create
anxiety that suppresses test
scores. Remove the “stereotype
threat” and performance may
improve.
82 Part One Social Thinking
1999). By Rosenthal’s own count, in only approxi-
mately 4 in 10 of the nearly 500 published experi-
ments did expectations significantly affect
performance (Rosenthal, 1991, 2002). Low expecta-
tions do not doom a capable child, nor do high
expectations magically transform a slow learner into
a valedictorian. Human nature is not so pliable.
High expectations do, however, seem to boost low
achievers, for whom a teacher’s positive attitude may
be a hope-giving breath of fresh air (Madon et al.,
1997). How are such expectations transmitted?
Rosenthal and other investigators report that teachers
look, smile, and nod more at “high-potential stu-
dents.” Teachers also may teach more to their “gifted”
students, set higher goals for them, call on them
more, and give them more time to answer (Cooper,
1983; Harris & Rosenthal, 1985, 1986; Jussim, 1986).
In one study, teachers were videotaped talking to,
or about, unseen students for whom they held high
or low expectations. A random 10-second clip of either the teacher’s voice or the teacher’s
face was enough to tell viewers—both children and adults—whether this was a good or a
poor student and how much the teacher liked the student. (You read that right: 10 seconds.)
Although teachers may think they can conceal their feelings and behave impartially toward
the class, students are acutely sensitive to teachers’ facial expressions and body movements
(Babad et al., 1991).
What about the effect of students’ expectations upon their teachers? You no doubt begin
many of your courses having heard “Professor Smith is interesting” and “Professor Jones
is a bore.” Robert Feldman and Thomas Prohaska (1979; Feldman & Theiss, 1982) found
that such expectations can affect both student and teacher. Students who expected to be
taught by an excellent teacher perceived their teacher (who was unaware of their expecta-
tions) as more competent and interesting than did students with low expectations. Further-
more, the students actually learned more. In a later experiment, women who were falsely
told that their male instructor was sexist had a less positive experience with him, performed
worse, and rated him as less competent than did women not given the expectation of sex-
ism (Adams et al., 2006).
Were these results due entirely to the students’ perceptions or also to a self-fulfilling
prophecy that affected the teacher? In a follow-up experiment, Feldman and Prohaska (1979)
videotaped teachers and had observers rate their performances. Teachers were judged most
capable when assigned a student who nonverbally conveyed positive expectations.
To see whether such effects might also occur in actual classrooms, a research team led
by David Jamieson (Jamieson et al., 1987) experimented with four Ontario high school
classes taught by a newly transferred teacher. During individual interviews, they told stu-
dents in two of the classes that both other students and the research team rated the teacher
very highly. Compared with the control classes, students who were given positive expecta-
tions paid better attention during class. At the end of the teaching unit, they also got better
grades and rated the teacher as clearer in her teaching. The attitudes that a class has toward
its teacher are as important, it seems, as the teacher’s attitude toward the students.
Getting from Others What We Expect
So the expectations of experimenters and teachers, although usually reasonably accurate,
occasionally act as self-fulfilling prophecies. Overall, our perceptions of others are more
accurate than biased (Jussim, 2012). Self-fulfilling prophecies have “less than extraordinary
power.” Yet sometimes, self-fulfilling prophecies do operate in work settings (with managers
who have high or low expectations), in courtrooms (as judges instruct juries), and in simu-
lated police contexts (as interrogators with guilty or innocent expectations interrogate and
To judge a teacher or
professor’s overall warmth and
enthusiasm also takes but a
thin slice of behavior—mere
seconds (Ambady & Rosenthal,
1992, 1993).
How much can a teacher’s expectations influence a student’s performance?
©Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock
Social Beliefs and Judgments Chapter 3 83
pressure suspects) (Kassin et al., 2003; Rosenthal, 2003, 2006).
Teens whose parents thought they’d tried marijuana—even though
they hadn’t—were more likely to subsequently try it (Lamb & Crano,
2014).
Do self-fulfilling prophecies color our personal relationships?
Sometimes, negative expectations of someone lead us to be extra
nice to that person, which induces him or her to be nice in return—
thus disconfirming our expectations. But a more common finding
in studies of social interaction is that, yes, we do to some extent
get what we expect (Olson et al., 1996).
In laboratory games, hostility nearly always begets hostility: If
someone believes an opponent will be noncooperative, the oppo-
nent often responds by becoming noncooperative (Kelley & Sta-
helski, 1970). Each party’s perception of the other as aggressive,
resentful, and vindictive induces the other to display those behav-
iors in self-defense, thus creating a vicious, self-perpetuating circle.
In another experiment, people anticipated interacting with another
person of a different race. When led to expect that the person
disliked interacting with someone of their race, they felt more anger and displayed more
hostility toward the person (Butz & Plant, 2006). Likewise, whether someone expects her
partner to be in a bad mood or in a loving mood may affect how she relates to him, thereby
inducing him to confirm her belief.
So, do intimate relationships prosper when partners idealize each other? Are positive
illusions of the other’s virtues self-fulfilling? Or are they more often self-defeating, by creat-
ing high expectations that can’t be met? Among University of Waterloo dating couples
followed by Sandra Murray and associates (1996a, 1996b, 2000), positive ideals of one’s
partner were good omens. Idealization helped buffer conflict, bolster satisfaction, and turn
self-perceived frogs into princes or princesses. When someone loves and admires us, it helps
us become more the person he or she imagines us to be.
When dating couples deal with conflicts, hopeful optimists and their partners tend to
perceive each other as engaging constructively. Compared to those with more pessimistic
expectations, they then feel more supported and more satisfied with the outcome (Srivas-
tava et al., 2006). Among married couples, too, those who worry that their partner doesn’t
love and accept them interpret slight hurts as rejections, which motivates them to devalue
the partner and distance themselves. Those who presume their partner’s love and accep-
tance respond less defensively, read less into stressful events, and treat the partner better
(Murray et al., 2003). Love helps create its presumed reality.
Several experiments conducted by Mark Snyder (1984) at the University of Minnesota
show how, once formed, erroneous beliefs about the social world can induce others to
confirm those beliefs, a phenomenon called behavioral confirmation. For example, male
students talked on the telephone with women they thought (from having been shown a
picture) were either attractive or unattractive. The supposedly attractive women spoke more
warmly than the supposedly unattractive women. The men’s erroneous beliefs had become
a self-fulfilling prophecy by leading them to act in a way that influenced the women to
fulfill the men’s stereotype that beautiful people are desirable people (Snyder et al., 1977).
Behavioral confirmation also occurs as people interact with partners holding mistaken
beliefs. People whom others believe are lonely behave less sociably (Rotenberg et al., 2002).
People who believe they are accepted and liked (rather than disliked) then behave warmly—
and do get accepted and liked (Stinson et al., 2009). Men whom others believe are sexist
behave less favorably toward women (Pinel, 2002). Job interviewees who are believed to be
warm behave more warmly.
Imagine yourself as one of the 60 young men or 60 young women in an experiment by
Robert Ridge and Jeffrey Reber (2002). Each man is to interview one of the women for a
teaching assistant position. Before doing so, he is told either that she feels attracted to him
(based on his answers to a biographical questionnaire) or not attracted. (Imagine being
told that someone you were about to meet reported considerable interest in getting to know
behavioral confirmation
A type of self-fulfilling prophecy
whereby people’s social
expectations lead them to
behave in ways that cause
others to confirm their
expectations.
“The more he treated her as
though she were really very
nice, the more Lotty expanded
and became really very nice,
and the more he, affected in
his turn, became really very
nice himself; so that they
went round and round, not
in a vicious but in a highly
virtuous circle.”
—Elizabeth Von Arnim,
The Enchanted April, 1922
According to Sandra Murray’s research, viewing your partner
through rose-colored glasses has benefits.
©IKO/123RF
84 Part One Social Thinking
Behavioral confirmation. If each of these people feels attracted to the
other, but presumes that feeling isn’t reciprocated, they may each act
cool to avoid feeling rejected—and decide that the other’s coolness
confirms the presumption. Danu Stinson and colleagues (2009) note
that such “self-protective inhibition of warmth” dooms some would-be
relationships.
©Alija/Getty Images
you and in dating you, or had no interest whatsoever.) The
result was behavioral confirmation: Applicants believed to
feel an attraction exhibited more flirtatiousness (without
being aware of doing so). Ridge and Reber believe that this
process, like the misattribution phenomenon discussed pre-
viously, may be one of the roots of sexual harassment. If a
woman’s behavior seems to confirm a man’s beliefs, he may
then escalate his overtures until they become sufficiently
overt for the woman to recognize and interpret them as
inappropriate or harassing.
Expectations influence children’s behavior, too. After
observing the amount of littering in three classrooms, Rich-
ard Miller and colleagues (1975) had the teacher and others
repeatedly tell one class that they should be neat and tidy.
This persuasion increased the amount of trash placed in
wastebaskets from 15 to 45%, but only temporarily. Another
class, which also had been placing only 15% of its trash in
wastebaskets, was repeatedly congratulated for being so neat
and tidy. After 8 days of hearing this, and still 2 weeks later,
these children were fulfilling the expectation by putting
more than 80% of their litter in wastebaskets. Tell children
they are hardworking and kind (rather than lazy and mean),
and they may live up to their labels.
Overall, these experiments help us understand how social beliefs, such as stereotypes
about people with disabilities or about people of a particular race or sex, may be self-
confirming. How others treat us reflects how we and others have treated them.
▯ Our beliefs sometimes take on lives of their own.
Usually, our beliefs about others have a basis in reality.
But studies of experimenter bias and teacher expecta-
tions show that an erroneous belief that certain people
are unusually capable (or incapable) can lead teachers
and researchers to give those people special treatment.
This may elicit superior (or inferior) performance and,
therefore, seem to confirm an assumption that is actu-
ally false.
▯ Similarly, in everyday life we often get behavioral confir-
mation of what we expect. Told that someone we are
about to meet is intelligent and attractive, we may come
away impressed with just how intelligent and attractive
he or she is.
How Do Our Social Beliefs Matter?SUMMING UP:
WHAT CAN WE CONCLUDE ABOUT
SOCIAL BELIEFS AND JUDGMENTS?
View human nature through cognitive
social psychology.
Social cognition studies reveal that our information-processing powers are impressive for
their efficiency and adaptiveness (“in apprehension how like a god!” exclaimed Shakespeare’s
Hamlet). Yet we are also vulnerable to predictable errors and misjudgments (“headpiece
filled with straw,” said T. S. Eliot). What practical lessons, and what insights into human
nature, can we take home from this research?
We have reviewed reasons why people sometimes form false beliefs. We cannot easily
dismiss these experiments: Most of their participants were intelligent people, often students
Social Beliefs and Judgments Chapter 3 85
at leading universities. Moreover, people’s intelligence scores are uncorrelated with their
vulnerability to many different thinking biases (Stanovich & West, 2008). One can be very
smart and exhibit seriously bad judgment.
Trying hard also doesn’t eliminate thinking biases. These predictable distortions and
biases occurred even when payment for right answers motivated people to think optimally.
As one researcher concluded, the illusions “have a persistent quality not unlike that of
perceptual illusions” (Slovic, 1972).
Research in cognitive social psychology thus mirrors the mixed review given humanity
in literature, philosophy, and religion. Many research psychologists have spent lifetimes
exploring the awesome capacities of the human mind. We are smart enough to have cracked
our own genetic code, to have invented talking computers, and to have sent people to the
moon. Three cheers for human reason.
Well, two cheers—because the mind’s premium on efficient judgment makes our intuition
more vulnerable to misjudgment than we suspect. With remarkable ease, we form and
sustain false beliefs. Led by our preconceptions, feeling overconfident, persuaded by vivid
anecdotes, perceiving correlations and control even where none may exist, we construct our
social beliefs and then influence others to confirm them. “The naked intellect,” observed
novelist Madeleine L’Engle, “is an extraordinarily inaccurate instrument.”
But have these experiments just been intellectual tricks played on hapless participants,
thus making them look worse than they are? Richard Nisbett and Lee Ross (1980) con-
tended that, if anything, laboratory procedures overestimate our intuitive powers. The
experiments usually present people with clear evidence and warn them that their reasoning
ability is being tested. Seldom does real life say to us: “Here is some evidence. Now put
on your thinking cap and answer these questions.”
Often our everyday failings are inconsequential, but not always so. False impressions,
interpretations, and beliefs can produce serious consequences. Even small biases can
have profound social effects when we are making important social judgments: Why are
so many people homeless? Unhappy? Homicidal? Does my friend love me or my money?
Cognitive biases even creep into sophisticated scientific thinking. Human nature has
hardly changed in the 3,000 years since the Old Testament psalmist noted that “no one
can see his own errors.”
Is this too cynical? Leonard Martin and Ralph Erber (2005) invite us to imagine
that an intelligent being swooped down and begged for information that would help
it understand the human species. When you hand it this social psychology text, the
alien says “thank you” and zooms back off into space. How would you feel about hav-
ing offered social psychology’s analysis of human life? Joachim Krueger and David
Funder (2003a, 2003b) wouldn’t feel very good. Social psychology’s preoccupation
with human foibles needs balancing with “a more positive view of human nature,” they
argue.
Fellow social psychologist Lee Jussim (2005, 2012) agrees, adding, “Despite the oft
demonstrated existence of a slew of logical flaws and systematic biases in lay judgment and
social perception, such as the fundamental attribution error, false consensus, over-reliance
on imperfect heuristics, self-serving biases, etc., people’s perceptions of one another are
surprisingly (though rarely perfectly) accurate.” The elegant analyses of the imperfections
of our thinking are themselves a tribute to human wisdom. Were one to argue that all
human thought is illusory, the assertion would be self-refuting, for it, too, would be but an
illusion. It would be logically equivalent to contending “All generalizations are false, includ-
ing this one.”
Just as medicine assumes that each body organ serves a function, behavioral scientists
assume our modes of thought and behavior are adaptive. The rules of thought that produce
false beliefs and deficient intuition usually serve us well. Frequently, the errors are a by-
product of our mental shortcuts that simplify the complex information we receive.
Nobel laureate psychologist Herbert Simon (1957) was among the researchers who first
described the bounds of human reason. Simon contends that to cope with reality, we sim-
plify it. Consider the complexity of a chess game: The number of possible games is greater
than the number of particles in the universe. How do we cope? We adopt some simplifying
“In creating these problems
we didn’t set out to fool
people. All our problems
fooled us, too.”
—Amos Tversky (1985)
“The purposes in the human
mind are like deep water,
but the intelligent will draw
them out.”
—Proverbs 20:5
“Cognitive errors . . . exist in
the present because they led
to survival and reproductive
advantages for humans in
the past.”
—Evolutionary Psychologists
Martie Haselton and David
Buss (2000)
86 Part One Social Thinking
rules—heuristics. These heuristics sometimes lead us to defeat. But they do enable us to
make efficient snap judgments.
Illusory thinking can likewise spring from useful heuristics that aid our survival. In
many ways, heuristics make us smart (Gigerenzer & Gaissmaier, 2011). The belief in our
power to control events helps maintain hope and effort. If things are sometimes subject
to control and sometimes not, we maximize our outcomes by positive thinking. Optimism
pays dividends. We might even say that our beliefs are like scientific theories—sometimes
in error, yet useful as generalizations. As social psychologist Susan Fiske (1992) says,
“Thinking is for doing.”
Might we reduce errors in our social thinking? In school, math teachers teach, teach,
teach until the mind is finally trained to process numerical information accurately and
automatically. We assume that such ability does not come naturally; otherwise, why bother
with the years of training? Research psychologist Robyn Dawes (1980a, 1980b)—who was
dismayed that “study after study has shown [that] people have very limited abilities to
process information on a conscious level, particularly social information”—suggested that
we should also teach, teach, teach how to process social information.
Richard Nisbett and Lee Ross (1980) have agreed that education could indeed reduce
our vulnerability to certain types of error. They offer the following recommendations:
▯ Train people to recognize likely sources of error in their own social intuition.
▯ Set up statistics courses geared to everyday problems of logic and social judgment.
Given such training, people do, in fact, reason better about everyday events
(Lehman et al., 1988; Nisbett et al., 1987).
▯ Make such teaching more effective by illustrating it richly with concrete, vivid anec-
dotes and examples from everyday life.
▯ Teach memorable and useful slogans, such as: It’s an empirical question. Where
did the sample come from? or You can lie with statistics, but a well-chosen exam-
ple does the job better.
“The spirit of liberty is the
spirit which is not too sure
that it is right; the spirit of lib-
erty is the spirit which
seeks to understand the
minds of other men and
women; the spirit of liberty is
the spirit which weighs their
interests alongside its own
without bias.”
—Learned Hand,
“The Spirit of Liberty,” 1952
POSTSCRIPT:
Reflecting on Illusory Thinking
Is research on cognitive errors too humbling? Surely we can acknowledge the hard truth of
our human limits and still sympathize with the deeper message that people are more than
machines. Our subjective experiences are the stuff of our humanity—our art and our music,
our enjoyment of friendship and love, our mystical and religious experiences.
The cognitive and social psychologists who explore illusory thinking are not out to
remake us into unfeeling logical machines. They know that emotions enrich human experi-
ence and that intuitions are an important source of creative ideas. They add, however,
the humbling reminder that our susceptibility to error also makes clear the need for
disciplined training of the mind. The American writer Norman Cousins (1978) called
this “the biggest truth of all about learning: that its purpose is to unlock the human mind
and to develop it into an organ capable of thought—conceptual thought, analytical thought,
sequential thought.”
“Rob the average man of his
life-illusion, and you rob him
also of his happiness.”
—Henrik Ibsen,
The Wild Duck, 1884
Research on social beliefs and judgments reveals how we
form and sustain beliefs that usually serve us well but
sometimes lead us astray. A balanced social psychology
will therefore appreciate both the powers and the perils of
social thinking.
SUMMING UP: What Can We Conclude About Social
Beliefs and Judgments?
Social Beliefs and Judgments Chapter 3 87
Research on error and illusion in social judgment reminds us to “judge not”—to remem-
ber, with a dash of humility, our potential for misjudgment. It also encourages us not to
feel intimidated by the arrogance of those who cannot see their own potential for bias
and error. We humans are wonderfully intelligent yet fallible creatures. We have dignity
but not deity.
Such humility and distrust of human authority is at the heart of both religion and sci-
ence. No wonder many of the founders of modern science were religious people whose
convictions predisposed them to be humble before nature and skeptical of human authority
(Hooykaas, 1972; Merton, 1938). Science always involves an interplay between intuition
and rigorous test, between creative hunch and skepticism. To sift reality from illusion
requires both open-minded curiosity and hard-headed rigor. This perspective could prove
to be a good attitude for approaching all of life: to be critical but not cynical, curious but
not gullible, open but not exploitable.
“The more powerful you are,
the more your actions will
have an impact on people, the
more responsible you are to
act humbly. If you don’t, your
power will ruin you, and you
will ruin the other.”
—Pope Francis,
TED talk, 2017
How well do our
attitudes predict our
behavior?
When does our
behavior affect our
attitudes?
Why does our
behavior affect our
attitudes?
Postscript: Changing
ourselves through
action
©JGI/Jamie Grill/Getty Images
C H A P T E R
4
Behavior and
Attitudes
“The ancestor of every action is a thought.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, First Series, 1841
How much does what we are (on the inside) predict what we do (on the out-side)? Philosophers, theologians, and educators speculate about the connec-
tions between attitude and action, character and conduct, private word and public
deed. Underlying most teaching, counseling, and parenting is a simple assumption:
Our private beliefs and feelings determine our public behavior; so if we want to
change behavior, we must first change hearts and minds.
In the beginning, social psychologists agreed: To know people’s attitudes is to
predict their actions. Genocidal killers and suicide terrorists have extreme attitudes
that can produce extreme behavior. Countries whose people detest another coun-
try’s leaders are more likely to produce terrorist acts against them (Krueger &
Malečková, 2009). Hateful attitudes spawn violent behavior.
Behavior and Attitudes Chapter 4 89
But in 1964, Leon Festinger observed that changing people’s attitudes often
hardly affects their behavior. Festinger believed the attitude–behavior relation
works the other way around, with our behavior as the horse and our attitudes as
the cart. As Robert Abelson (1972) put it, we are “very well trained and very good
at finding reasons for what we do, but not very good at doing what we find reasons
for.” This chapter explores the interplay of attitudes and behavior.
In social psychology, attitudes are defined as beliefs and feelings related to a
person or an event (Eagly & Chaiken, 2005). Thus, a person may have a negative
attitude toward coffee, a neutral attitude toward the French, and a positive attitude
toward the next-door neighbor.
Attitudes efficiently size up the world. When we have to respond quickly to
something, the way we feel about it can guide how we react. For example, a person
who believes a particular ethnic group is lazy and aggressive may feel dislike for
such people and therefore intend to act in a discriminatory manner. You can remem-
ber these three dimensions as the ABCs of attitudes: Affect (feelings), Behavior
tendency, and Cognition (thoughts) (Figure 1).
The study of attitudes is central to social psychology and was one of its first
concerns. For much of the last century, researchers wondered how much our atti-
tudes affect our actions.
HOW WELL DO OUR ATTITUDES
PREDICT OUR BEHAVIOR?
State the extent to which, and under what
conditions, our inner attitudes drive our outward
actions.
A blow to the supposed power of attitudes came when social psychologist Allan Wicker
(1969) reviewed several dozen research studies covering a variety of people, attitudes, and
behaviors. Wicker offered a shocking conclusion: People’s expressed attitudes hardly
predicted their varying behaviors.
▯ Student attitudes toward cheating bore little relation to the likelihood of their actu-
ally cheating.
▯ Attitudes toward the church were only modestly linked with weekly worship
attendance.
▯ Self-described racial attitudes provided little clue to behaviors in actual
situations. Many people say they are upset when someone makes racist
remarks; yet, when they hear racism (such as someone using the
N-word) many respond with indifference (Kawakami et al., 2009).
The disjuncture between attitudes and actions is what Daniel Batson and
his colleagues (1997, 2001, 2002; Valdesolo & DeSteno, 2007, 2008) call
“moral hypocrisy” (appearing moral while avoiding the costs of being so).
Their studies presented people with an appealing task with a possible $30 prize
and a dull task with no rewards. The participants had to do one of the tasks
and assign a supposed second participant to the other. Only 1 in 20 believed
that assigning the appealing task with the reward to themselves was the more
moral thing to do, yet 80% did so. In follow-up experiments, participants were
attitude
feelings, often influenced by our
beliefs, that predispose us to
respond favorably or
unfavorably to objects, people,
and events.
“All that we are is the result of
what we have thought.”
—Buddha,
Dhamma-Pada, BC 563–483
“Thought is the child of
action.”
—Benjamin Disraeli,
Vivian Gray, 1926
Behavior
A�ect Cognition
FIGURE 1
The ABCs of Attitudes
90 Part One Social Thinking
given coins they could flip privately if they wanted.
Even if they chose to flip, 90% assigned themselves
to the positive task! Was that because they could
specify the consequences of heads and tails after the
coin toss? In another experiment, Batson put a
sticker on each side of the coin, indicating what the
flip outcome would signify. Still, 24 of 28 people
who made the toss assigned themselves to the
appealing task. When morality and greed were put
on a collision course, greed usually won.
In 2017, U.S. Representative Tim Murphy of
Pennsylvania provided a shocking example of the
disconnect between stated attitudes and actual
behavior. Stridently anti-abortion from the beginning
of his political career, his behavior was different
when an unintended pregnancy affected him. When
the woman he was having an extramarital affair with
believed she was pregnant, he asked her to get an
abortion (Doubeck & Taylor, 2017). Murphy then
resigned. “Pro-life in the streets, pro-choice in the
sheets,” quipped one pundit (Weiner, 2017).
If people don’t walk the same line that they talk, it’s little wonder that attempts to
change behavior by changing attitudes often fail. Warnings about the dangers of smoking
barely affect people who already smoke. Sex education programs have often influenced
attitudes toward abstinence and condom use without affecting long-term abstinence and
condom use behaviors. Australians consume about the same energy, water, and housing
space whether they are committed to environmental awareness or skeptical of it (Newton
& Meyer, 2013). Well-ingrained habits and practices override attitudes. We are, it seems,
a population of hypocrites.
This surprising finding that what people say often differs from what they do sent social
psychologists scurrying to find out why. Surely, we reasoned, convictions and feelings
sometimes make a difference.
When Attitudes Predict Behavior
The reason why our behavior and our expressed attitudes differ is that both are subject to
other influences—many other influences. One social psychologist counted 40 factors that
complicate the relationship between attitudes and behavior (Triandis, 1982; see also Kraus,
1995). For an attitude to lead to a behavior, liking must become wanting, a goal must be
set, the goal must be important enough to overwhelm other demands, and a specific behav-
ior must be chosen (Kruglanski et al., 2015). Our attitudes do predict our behavior when
these other influences on what we say and do are minimal, when the attitude is specific to
the behavior, and when the attitude is potent.
WHEN SOCIAL INFLUENCES ON WHAT WE SAY ARE MINIMAL
Unlike a doctor measuring heart rate, social psychologists never get a direct reading on atti-
tudes. Rather, we measure expressed attitudes. Like other behaviors, expressions are subject
to outside influences. Sometimes, for example, we say what we think others want to hear,
much as legislators may vote for a popular war or tax reduction that they privately oppose.
Today’s social psychologists have some clever means at their disposal for minimizing
social influences on people’s attitude reports. Some of these are measures of implicit
(unconscious) attitudes—our often unacknowledged inner beliefs that may or may not cor-
respond to our explicit (conscious) attitudes.
The most widely used measure of implicit attitudes is the implicit association test (IAT),
which uses reaction times to measure how quickly people associate concepts (Banaji &
Greenwald, 2013). One can, for example, measure implicit racial attitudes by assessing
“I have opinions of my own,
strong opinions, but I don’t
always agree with them.”
—Former U.S. President George
H. W. Bush
implicit association
test (IAT)
A computer-driven assessment of
implicit attitudes. The test uses
reaction times to measure
people’s automatic associations
between attitude objects and
evaluative words. Easier pairings
(and faster responses) are taken
to indicate stronger unconscious
associations.
In 2017, New Jersey governor Chris Christie shut down the state’s beaches the
weekend before the July 4 holiday, citing a budget standoff. Christie and his fam-
ily were then photographed on one of the “closed” beaches—a clear conflict be-
tween behavior and attitude.
©Andrew Mills/AP Images
Behavior and Attitudes Chapter 4 91
whether White people take longer to associate positive words with Black faces than with
White faces. Implicit attitude researchers have offered various IAT assessments online
(projectimplicit.net), from the serious (do you implicitly associate men with careers and
women with home?) to the amusing (do you prefer Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings?). The
18 million completed tests since 1998 have, they report, shown that
▯ Implicit biases are pervasive. For example, 80% of people show more implicit dislike
for the elderly compared with the young.
▯ People differ in implicit bias. Depending on their group memberships, their con-
scious attitudes, and the bias in their immediate environment, some people exhibit
more implicit bias than others.
▯ People are often unaware of their implicit biases. Despite believing they are not preju-
diced, even researchers themselves show implicit biases against some social groups.
Do implicit biases predict behavior? A review of the available research (now several
hundred investigations) reveals that behavior is predicted best with a combination of both
implicit and explicit (self-report) measures (Greenwald et al., 2015; Nosek et al., 2011).
Both together predict behavior better than either alone (Karpen et al., 2012; Spence &
Townsend, 2007). The behavior predictions range from dental flossing to the fate of roman-
tic relationships to suicide attempts (Lee et al., 2010; Millar, 2011; Nock et al., 2010). In
one study, hiring managers received job applications matched on credential strength, but
on one, the applicants’ photos were digitally altered to make them appear obese. Several
months later, when 153 of the managers completed an IAT, those with an implicit bias
against the obese were less likely to invite the presumably obese applicants for interviews
(Agerström & Rooth, 2011).
For attitudes formed early in life—such as racial and gender attitudes—implicit atti-
tudes can predict behavior. For example, implicit racial attitudes have successfully pre-
dicted interracial roommate relationships and willingness to penalize other-race people
(Kubota et al., 2013; Towles-Schwen & Fazio, 2006). For other attitudes, such as those
related to consumer behavior and support for political candidates, explicit self-reports
are the better predictor.
Neuroscientists have identified brain centers that produce our automatic, implicit reac-
tions (Stanley et al., 2008). One area deep in the brain (the amygdala, a center for threat
perception) is active as we automatically evaluate social stimuli. For example, White people
who show strong unconscious racial bias on the IAT also exhibit high amygdala activation
when viewing unfamiliar Black faces.
Some words of caution: Despite excitement over these studies of implicit bias hiding
in the mind’s basement, the implicit association test has detractors (Blanton et al., 2006,
2015, 2016; Oswald et al., 2013). They note that, unlike an aptitude test, the IAT is not
reliable enough to assess and compare individuals. For
example, the race IAT has low test-retest reliability—unlike
most other personality or attitude tests, IAT scores often
differ widely from one session to another (Bar-Anan &
Nosek, 2014). Critics also dispute how well the race IAT
predicts discrimination (Oswald et al., 2015). Regardless,
the existence of distinct explicit and implicit attitudes con-
firms one of psychology’s biggest lessons: our “dual pro-
cessing” capacity for both automatic (effortless, habitual,
implicit, System 1) and controlled (deliberate, conscious,
explicit, System 2) thinking.
WHEN OTHER INFLUENCES ON
BEHAVIOR ARE MINIMAL
Of course, personal attitudes are not the only determinant of
behavior; the situation matters, too. As we will see again and
again, situational influences can be enormous—enormous
“There are still barriers out
there, often unconscious.”
—Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton,
Presidential Democratic Primary
Campaign Concession Speech,
2008
Studies using the IAT find that many people have an implicit bias favoring
their own race even if their explicitly stated attitudes are unprejudiced.
©Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock
92 Part One Social Thinking
enough to induce people to violate their deepest convictions. So, would averaging across many
situations enable us to detect more clearly the impact of our attitudes? Predicting people’s
behavior is like predicting a baseball or cricket player’s hitting. The outcome of any particular
turn at bat is nearly impossible to predict. But when we aggregate many times at bat, we can
compare their approximate batting averages.
For example, people’s general attitude toward religion doesn’t do a very good job at
predicting whether they will go to religious services during the coming week (because
attendance is also influenced by the weather, the religious leader, how one is feeling, and
so forth). But religious attitudes predict the total quantity of religious behaviors over time
across many situations (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1974; Kahle & Berman, 1979). So the answer
is yes. The findings define a principle of aggregation: the effects of an attitude become more
apparent when we look at a person’s aggregate or average behavior.
WHEN ATTITUDES ARE SPECIFIC TO THE BEHAVIOR
Other conditions further improve the predictive accuracy of attitudes. As Icek Ajzen and
Martin Fishbein (1977, 2005) pointed out, when the measured attitude is a general one—for
instance, an attitude toward Asians—and the behavior is very specific—for instance, a deci-
sion whether to help a particular Asian in a particular situation—we should not expect a
close correspondence between words and actions. Indeed, report Fishbein and Ajzen, atti-
tudes did not predict behavior in most studies. But attitudes did predict behavior in all 26
studies in which the measured attitude was specific to the situation. Thus, attitudes toward
the general concept of “health fitness” poorly predict specific exercise and dietary practices.
But an individual’s attitudes about the costs and benefits of jogging are a fairly strong pre-
dictor of whether he or she jogs regularly.
Further studies—more than 700 studies with 276,000 participants—confirmed that spe-
cific, relevant attitudes do predict intended and actual behavior (Armitage & Conner, 2001;
Six & Eckes, 1996; Wallace et al., 2005). For example, attitudes toward condoms strongly
predict condom use (Albarracin et al., 2001). And attitudes toward recycling (but not
general attitudes toward environmental issues) predict intention to recycle, which predicts
actual recycling (Nigbur et al., 2010; Oskamp, 1991). A practical lesson: To change habits
through persuasion, we must alter people’s attitudes toward specific practices.
Better yet for predicting behavior, says Ajzen and Fishbein’s “theory of planned behav-
ior,” is knowing people’s intended behaviors and their perceived self-efficacy and control
(Figure 2). Even asking people about their intentions to engage in a behavior often increases
its likelihood (Levav & Fitzsimons, 2006; Wood et al., 2016). Ask people if they intend to
floss their teeth in the next two weeks, and they will become more likely to do so. Ask
people if they intend to vote in an upcoming election, and most will answer yes and become
more likely to do so.
So far we have seen two conditions under which attitudes will predict behavior: (1) when
we minimize other influences upon our attitude statements and on our behavior, and (2) when
the attitude is specifically relevant to the observed behavior. A third condition also exists: An
attitude predicts behavior better when the attitude is potent.
WHEN ATTITUDES ARE POTENT
Much of our behavior is automatic. We act out familiar scripts without reflecting on what we’re
doing. We respond to people we meet in the hall with an automatic “Hi.” We answer the restau-
rant cashier’s question “How was your meal?” by saying, “Fine,” even if we found it only so-so.
Such mindlessness is adaptive. It frees our minds to work on other things. For habitual
behaviors—seat belt use, coffee consumption, class attendance—conscious intentions are
hardly activated (Wood, 2017). As the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1911, p. 61)
argued, “Civilization advances by extending the number of operations which we can per-
form without thinking about them.”
BRINGING ATTITUDES TO MIND If we were prompted to think about our attitudes
before acting, would we be truer to ourselves? Mark Snyder and William Swann (1976)
wanted to find out. Two weeks after 120 of their University of Minnesota students indicated
“Do I contradict myself? Very
well then I contradict myself.
(I am large, I contain
multitudes.)”
—Walt Whitman,
Song of Myself, 1855
“Thinking is easy, acting diffi-
cult, and to put one’s thoughts
into action, the most difficult
thing in the world.”
—German Poet Goethe
(1749–1832)
Behavior and Attitudes Chapter 4 93
their attitudes toward affirmative-action employment policies, Snyder and Swann invited
them to act as jurors in a sex-discrimination court case. Attitudes predicted behavior
(verdicts) only for those who were first induced to remember their attitudes—by giving them
“a few minutes to organize your thoughts and views on the affirmative-action issue.” Our
attitudes become potent if we think about them.
That suggests another way to induce people to focus on their inner convictions: Make
them self-aware, perhaps by having them act in front of a mirror (Carver & Scheier, 1981).
Maybe you, too, can recall suddenly being acutely aware of yourself upon entering a room
with a large mirror. Making people self-aware in this way promotes consistency between
words and deeds (Froming et al., 1982; Gibbons, 1978).
Edward Diener and Mark Wallbom (1976) noted that nearly all college students say
that cheating is morally wrong. But will they follow the advice of Shakespeare’s Polonius,
“To thine own self be true”? Diener and Wallbom had University of Washington students
work on an IQ test and told them to stop when a bell in the room sounded. Left alone,
71% cheated by working past the bell. Among students made self-aware—by working in
front of a mirror while hearing their own tape-recorded voices—only 7% cheated. Trick-
or-treating children asked to take only one candy from a bowl were more likely to do so
when the bowl was in front of a mirror (Beaman et al., 1979). It makes one wonder:
Would eye-level mirrors in stores make people more self-conscious of their attitudes about
shoplifting?
Remember Batson’s studies of moral hypocrisy? In a later experiment, Batson and his
colleagues (2002) found that mirrors did bring behavior into line with espoused moral
attitudes. When people flipped a coin while facing a mirror, the coin flipper became scru-
pulously fair. Exactly half of the self-conscious participants assigned the other person to
the appealing task. When being moral was a crucial part of people’s identities, they behaved
more morally (Hertz & Krettenauer, 2016).
FORGING STRONG ATTITUDES THROUGH EXPERIENCE The attitudes that best
predict behavior are accessible (easily brought to mind) as well as stable (Glasman &
Albarracin, 2006). If you can quickly say you are against the death penalty, and have always
felt that way, you might be more likely to sign a petition to end it. And when attitudes are
forged by experience, not just by hearsay, they are more accessible, more enduring, and
more likely to guide actions. In one study, university students all expressed negative attitudes
“Without doubt it is a delight-
ful harmony when doing and
saying go together.”
—Michel de Montaigne,
Essays, 1588
“It is easier to preach virtue
than to practice it.”
—Francois La Rochefoucauld,
Maxims, 1665
FIGURE 2
The Theory of Planned Behavior
Icek Ajzen, working with Martin Fishbein, has shown that one’s (a) attitudes, (b) perceived social norms, and (c) feelings of control together deter-
mine one’s intentions, which guide behavior. Compared with their general attitudes toward a healthy lifestyle, people’s specific attitudes regarding
jogging predict their jogging behavior much better.
©Jozef Polc/123RF
Attitude toward the
behavior
“I’m for physical fitness.”
Subjective norms
“My neighbors seem
to be jogging and
going to the gym.”
Perceived control
“I could easily do this.”
Behavior intention
“I’m going to start
next week.”
Behavior
94 Part One Social Thinking
about their school’s response to a housing shortage. But given opportunities to act—to sign
a petition, solicit signatures, join a committee, or write a letter—only those whose attitudes
grew from direct experience (who, for example, had to live off-campus because of the short-
age) actually acted (Regan & Fazio, 1977).
▯ How do our inner attitudes (evaluative reactions toward
some object or person, often rooted in beliefs) relate to
our external behavior? Although popular wisdom
stresses the impact of attitudes on behavior, in fact, at-
titudes are often poor predictors of behaviors. More-
over, changing people’s attitudes typically fails to
produce much change in their behavior. These findings
inspired social psychologists to find out why we so of-
ten fail to walk the walk we talk.
▯ The answer: Our expressions of attitudes and our be-
haviors are each subject to many influences. Our atti-
tudes will predict our behavior (1) if these “other
influences” are minimized, (2) if the attitude corre-
sponds very closely to the predicted behavior (as in vot-
ing studies), and (3) if the attitude is potent (because
something reminds us of it, or because we acquired it by
direct experience). Under these conditions, what we
think and feel predicts what we do.
SUMMING UP: How Well Do Our Attitudes Predict Our
Behavior?
WHEN DOES OUR BEHAVIOR
AFFECT OUR ATTITUDES?
Summarize evidence that we can act ourselves into a
way of thinking.
So, to some extent, our attitudes matter. We can think ourselves into a way of acting. Now
we turn to a more startling idea: that behavior determines attitudes. It’s true that we some-
times stand up for what we believe. But it’s also true that we come to believe in what we
stand up for. Social-psychological theories inspired much of the research that underlies that
conclusion. Instead of beginning with these theories, however, let’s first see what there is
to explain. As we think about the evidence that behavior affects attitudes, speculate about
why this is and then compare your ideas with social psychologists’ explanations.
Consider the following incidents:
▯ Sarah is hypnotized and told to take off her shoes when a book drops on the
floor. Fifteen minutes later a book drops, and Sarah quietly slips out of her loaf-
ers. “Sarah,” asks the hypnotist, “why did you take off your shoes?” “Well . . . my feet
are hot and tired,” Sarah replies. “It has been a long day.” The act produces the idea.
▯ George has electrodes temporarily implanted in the brain region that controls his
head movements. When neurosurgeon José Delgado (1973) stimulates the elec-
trodes by remote control, George always turns his head. Unaware of the remote
stimulation, he offers a reasonable explanation for his head turning: “I’m looking
for my slipper.” “I heard a noise.” “I’m restless.” “I was looking under the bed.”
▯ Carol’s severe seizures were relieved by surgically separating her two brain
hemispheres. Now, in an experiment, psychologist Michael Gazzaniga (1985)
f lashes a picture of a nude woman to the left half of Carol’s field of vision,
which projects to her nonverbal right brain hemisphere. A sheepish smile
spreads over her face, and she begins chuckling. Asked why, she invents—and
apparently believes—a plausible explanation: “Oh—that funny machine.” Frank,
another split-brain patient, has the word “smile” f lashed to his nonverbal right
hemisphere. He obliges and forces a smile. Asked why, he explains, “This
experiment is very funny.”
Behavior and Attitudes Chapter 4 95
The mental aftereffects of our behavior also appear in many social-psychological exam-
ples of self-persuasion. As we will see over and over, attitudes follow behavior.
Role Playing
The word role is borrowed from the theater and, as in the theater, refers to actions expected
of those who occupy a particular social position. When enacting new social roles, we may
at first feel phony. But our unease seldom lasts.
Think of a time when you stepped into some new role—perhaps your first days on a job
or at college. That first week on campus, for example, you may have been supersensitive
to your new social situation and tried valiantly to act mature and to suppress your high
school behavior. At such times you may have felt self-conscious. You observed your new
speech and actions because they weren’t natural to you. Then something amazing happened:
Your pseudo-intellectual talk no longer felt forced. The role began to fit as comfortably as
your old jeans and T-shirt.
In one famous and controversial study, college men volunteered to spend time in a simu-
lated prison constructed in Stanford’s psychology department by Philip Zimbardo (1971;
Haney & Zimbardo, 1998, 2009). Zimbardo wanted to find out: Is prison brutality a prod-
uct of evil prisoners and malicious guards? Or do the institutional roles of guard and
prisoner embitter and harden even compassionate people? Do the people make the place
violent, or does the place make the people violent?
By a flip of a coin, Zimbardo designated some students as guards. He gave them uni-
forms, billy clubs, and whistles and instructed them to enforce the rules. The other half,
the prisoners, were picked up by the police at their homes and then locked in cells and
made to wear humiliating hospital-gown-like outfits. After a jovial first day of “playing” their
roles, the guards and the prisoners, and even the experimenters, got caught up in the situ-
ation. The guards began to disparage the prisoners, and some devised cruel and degrading
routines. The prisoners broke down, rebelled, or became apathetic. There developed,
reported Zimbardo (1972), a “growing confusion between reality and illusion, between role-
playing and self-identity. . . . This prison which we had created . . . was absorbing us as
creatures of its own reality.” Observing the emerging social pathology, Zimbardo ended the
planned two-week simulation after only six days. In 2015, a movie (The Stanford Prison
Experiment) was released dramatizing the experiment (Dunn, 2016).
Critics have questioned the spontaneity and reliability of Zimbardo’s observations
(Griggs, 2014). Moreover, the point is not that we are powerless to resist imposed
roles. In Zimbardo’s prison simulation, in Abu Ghraib Prison (where guards degraded
Iraq war prisoners), and in other atrocity-producing situations, some people become
sadistic and others do not (Haslam & Reicher, 2007, 2012; Mastroianni & Reed, 2006;
Zimbardo, 2007). Salt dissolves in water and sand does not. So also, notes John
Johnson (2007), when placed in a rotten barrel, some people become bad apples and
others do not. Behavior is a product of both the individual person and the situation,
and the prison study appeared to have attracted volunteers who were prone to aggres-
siveness (McFarland & Carnahan, 2009).
The deeper lesson of studies on role-playing is not that we are powerless machines.
Rather, it concerns how what is unreal (an artificial role) can subtly morph into what
is real. In a new career—as teacher, soldier, or businessperson, for example—we enact
a role that shapes our attitudes. In one study, military training toughened German
males’ personalities. Compared to a control group, they were less agreeable, even 5
years after leaving the military (Jackson et al., 2012). And in one national study of
U.S. adolescents, sustained role playing of “risk-glorifying” video games was fol-
lowed by increased risky and deviant real-life behaviors (Hull et al., 2014). The moral:
When we act out a role, we slightly change our former selves into being more like
them.
Imagine playing the role of slave—not just for six days but for decades. If a few days
altered the behavior of those in Zimbardo’s “prison,” imagine the corrosive effects of
decades of subservient behavior. The master may be even more profoundly affected,
role
A set of norms that defines how
people in a given social position
ought to behave.
“No man, for any considerable
period, can wear one face to
himself and another to the
multitude without finally get-
ting bewildered as to which
may be true.”
—Nathaniel Hawthorne,
The Scarlet Letter, 1850
Guards and prisoners in the Stanford
prison simulation quickly absorbed the
roles they played.
©Philip Zimbardo
96 Part One Social Thinking
Saying Becomes Believing
People often adapt what they say to please their listeners. They
are quicker to tell people good news than bad, and they adjust
their message toward their listener’s views (Manis et al., 1974;
Tesser et al., 1972; Tetlock, 1983). When induced to give spoken
or written support to something they doubt, people will often
feel bad about their deceit. Nevertheless, they begin to believe what they are saying
(assuming they weren’t bribed or coerced into doing so). When there is no compelling
external explanation for one’s words, saying becomes believing (Klaas, 1978).
Tory Higgins and his colleagues (Hausmann et al., 2008; Higgins & McCann, 1984; Hig-
gins & Rholes, 1978) illustrated how saying becomes believing. They had university students
read a personality description of someone (let’s call her Emily) and then summarize it for
someone else (Helen), whom they believed either liked or disliked Emily. The students wrote
a more positive description when Helen liked Emily. Having said positive things about her,
they also then liked Emily more themselves. Asked to recall what they had read, they remem-
bered the description as more positive than it was. In short, people tend to adjust their
messages to their listeners, and, having done so, to believe the
altered message.
Evil and Moral Acts
The attitudes-follow-behavior principle also occurs for immoral acts.
Evil sometimes results from gradually escalating commitments. A
trifling evil act erodes one’s moral sensitivity, making it easier to
perform a worse act. To paraphrase La Rochefoucauld’s 1665 book
of Maxims, it is not as difficult to find a person who has never
succumbed to a given temptation as to find a person who has suc-
cumbed only once. After telling a “white lie” and thinking, “Well,
that wasn’t so bad,” the person may go on to tell a bigger lie.
Harmful acts change us in other ways, too. We tend not only
to hurt those we dislike but also to dislike those we hurt. Harming
an innocent victim—by uttering hurtful comments or delivering
supposed electric shocks—typically leads aggressors to disparage
their victims, thus helping them justify their cruel behavior
(Berscheid et al., 1968; Davis & Jones, 1960; Glass, 1964). This
is especially so when we are coaxed rather than coerced, and thus
feel responsible for our act.
The attitudes-follow-behavior phenomenon appears in wartime.
Prisoner-of-war camp guards would sometimes display good man-
ners to captives in their first days on the job. Soldiers ordered to
“Our self-definitions are not
constructed in our heads; they
are forged by our deeds.”
—Robert McAfee Brown,
Creative Dislocation:
The Movement of Grace, 1980
After the degradation of Iraqi prisoners, Philip Zimbardo (2004a,
2004b) noted “direct and sad parallels between similar behavior of
the ‘guards’ in the Stanford Prison Experiment.” Such behavior, he
contends, is attributable to a toxic situation that can make good peo-
ple into perpetrators of evil. “It’s not that we put bad apples in a good
barrel. We put good apples in a bad barrel. The barrel corrupts any-
thing that it touches.”
©Washington Post/Getty Images News/Getty Images
Saying becomes believing: In expressing our thoughts to others,
we sometimes tailor our words to what we think the others will
want to hear, and then come to believe our own words.
©Joseph Farris. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
“Good God! He’s giving the white-collar
voter’s speech to the blue collars..”
because the master’s role is chosen. Frederick Douglass, a former
slave, recalls his new owner’s transformation as she absorbed
her role:
My new mistress proved to be all she appeared when I first met her
at the door—a woman of the kindest heart and finest feelings. . . . I
was utterly astonished at her goodness. I scarcely knew how to behave
towards her. She was entirely unlike any other white woman I had
ever seen. . . . The meanest slave was put fully at ease in her presence,
and none left without feeling better for having seen her. Her face was
made of heavenly smiles, and her voice of tranquil music. But, alas!
this kind heart had but a short time to remain such. The fatal poison
of irresponsible power was already in her hands, and soon com-
menced its infernal work. That cheerful eye, under the influence of
slavery, soon became red with rage; that voice, made all of sweet
accord, changed to one of harsh and horrid discord; and that angelic
face gave place to that of a demon. (Douglass, 1845, pp. 57–58)
Behavior and Attitudes Chapter 4 97
kill may initially react with revulsion to the point of
sickness over their act. But not for long (Waller, 2002).
People tend to humanize their pets and dehumanize
their enemies.
Attitudes also follow behavior in peacetime. A group
that holds another in slavery will likely come to perceive
the slaves as having traits that justify their oppression.
Prison staff who participate in executions experience
“moral disengagement” by coming to believe (more
strongly than other prison staff) that their victims
deserve their fate (Osofsky et al., 2005). Actions and
attitudes feed each other, sometimes to the point of
moral numbness. The more one harms another and
adjusts one’s attitudes, the easier it becomes to do
harm. Conscience is corroded.
To simulate the “killing begets killing” process, Andy
Martens and his collaborators (2007, 2010, 2012) asked
University of Arizona students to kill some bugs. They
wondered: Would killing a few bugs in a “practice” trial
increase students’ willingness to kill more bugs later? To
find out, they asked some students to look at one small
bug in a container, then to dump it into the coffee grind-
ing machine shown in Figure 3, and then to press the “on” button for 3 seconds. (No bugs
were actually killed. An unseen stopper at the base of the insert tube prevented the bug
from actually entering the killing machine, which tore bits of paper to simulate the sound
of a killing.) Those who believed they killed five bugs went on to “kill” significantly more
bugs during an ensuing 20-second period.
Harmful acts shape the self, but so, thankfully, do moral acts. Our character is reflected
in what we do when we think no one is looking. Researchers have tested character by giving
children temptations when it seems no one is watching. Consider what happens when children
resist the temptation. In a dramatic experiment, Jonathan Freedman (1965) introduced ele-
mentary school children to an enticing battery-controlled robot, instructing them not to play
with it while he was out of the room. Freedman used a severe threat with half the children
and a mild threat with the others. Both were sufficient to deter the children.
Several weeks later a different researcher, with no apparent relation to the earlier events,
left each child to play in the same room with the same toys. Three-fourths of those who had
heard the severe threat now freely played with the robot; of those given the mild threat, only
a third played with it. Apparently, the mild threat was strong enough to elicit the desired
behavior yet mild enough to leave them with a sense of choice. Having earlier chosen con-
sciously not to play with the toy, the children who only heard the mild threat internalized their
decisions. Moral action, especially when chosen rather than coerced, affects moral thinking.
Moreover, positive behavior fosters liking for the person. Doing a favor for an experimenter
or another participant, or tutoring a student, usually increases liking of the person helped
(Blanchard & Cook, 1976). People who pray for a romantic partner (even in controlled experi-
ments) thereafter exhibit greater commitment and fidelity to the partner (Fincham et al., 2010).
It is a lesson worth remembering: If you wish to love someone more, act as if you do.
In 1793 Benjamin Franklin explored the idea that doing a favor engenders liking. As
clerk of the Pennsylvania General Assembly, he was disturbed by opposition from another
important legislator. So Franklin set out to win him over:
I did not . . . aim at gaining his favour by paying any servile respect to him but, after some
time, took this other method. Having heard that he had in his library a certain very scarce
and curious book I wrote a note to him expressing my desire of perusing that book and request-
ing he would do me the favour of lending it to me for a few days. He sent it immediately and
I return’d it in about a week, expressing strongly my sense of the favour. When we next met
in the House he spoke to me (which he had never done before), and with great civility; and
he ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great
friends and our friendship continued to his death. (Quoted by Rosenzweig, 1972, p. 769.)
“We do not love people so
much for the good they have
done us, as for the good we
have done them.”
—Leo Tolstoy,
War and Peace, 1867–1869
Cruel acts, such as the 1994 Rwandan genocide, tend to breed even crueler
and more hate-filled attitudes. “At first, killing was obligatory,” explained one
participant in the Rwandan genocide. “Afterward, we got used to it. We be-
came naturally cruel. We no longer needed encouragement or fines to kill, or
even orders or advice” (quoted by Hatzfeld, 2005, p. 71).
©Sayyid Azim/AP Images
FIGURE 3
Killing Begets Killing
Students who believed they
killed several bugs by dropping
them in this apparent killing ma-
chine, later killed more bugs
during a self-paced killing pe-
riod. (In reality, no bugs were
harmed.)
Courtesy of Andy Martens, University of
Canterbury
98 Part One Social Thinking
INTERRACIAL INTERACTION AND RACIAL ATTITUDES
If moral action feeds moral attitudes, will positive interactions between people of different
races reduce racial prejudice—much as mandatory seat belt use has produced more favorable
seat belt attitudes? That was part of social scientists’ testimony before the U.S. Supreme
Court’s 1954 decision to desegregate schools. Their argument ran like this: If we wait for
the heart to change—through preaching and teaching—we will wait a long time for racial
justice. But if we legislate moral action, we can, under the right conditions, indirectly affect
heartfelt attitudes.
That idea runs counter to the presumption that “you can’t legislate morality.” Yet attitude
change has, as social psychologists predicted, followed desegregation. Consider:
▯ Following the Supreme Court decision, the percentage of White Americans favor-
ing integrated schools jumped and now includes nearly everyone.
▯ In the 10 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the percentage of White Ameri-
cans who described their neighborhoods, friends, co-workers, or other students as
all-White declined by about 20% for each of those measures. Interracial interaction
was increasing. During the same period, the percentage of White Americans who
said that Blacks should be allowed to live in any neighborhood increased from 65%
to 87% (ISR Newsletter, 1975). Attitudes were changing, too.
▯ More uniform national standards against discrimination were followed by decreas-
ing differences in racial attitudes among people of differing religions, classes, and
geographic regions (Greeley & Sheatsley, 1971; Taylor et al., 1978). As Americans
came to act more alike, they came to think more alike.
Social Movements
We have seen that a society’s laws and, therefore, its behavior can have a strong influence
on its racial attitudes. But what if those laws and norms legitimize hate? For many Germans
during the 1930s, participation in Nazi rallies, displaying the Nazi flag, and especially the
public greeting “Heil Hitler” established a profound inconsistency between behavior and
belief. Historian Richard Grunberger (1971) reports that for those who had their doubts
about Hitler, “the ‘German greeting’ was a powerful conditioning device. Having once
decided to intone it as an outward token of conformity, many experienced . . . discomfort
at the contradiction between their words and their feelings. Prevented from saying what
they believed, they tried to establish their psychic equilibrium by consciously making them-
selves believe what they said” (p. 27).
The practice is not limited to totalitarian regimes.
Political rituals—the daily flag salute by schoolchildren,
singing the national anthem—use public conformity to
build private patriotism. I [DM] recall participating in
air-raid drills in my elementary school not far from the
Boeing Company in Seattle. After we acted repeatedly
as if we were the targets of Russian attack, we came to
fear the Russians.
Many people assume that the most potent social
indoctrination comes through brainwashing, a term
coined to describe what happened to American prison-
ers of war (POWs) during the 1950s Korean War.
Although the “thought-control” program was not as irre-
sistible as “brainwashing” suggests, the results still were
disconcerting. Hundreds of prisoners cooperated with
their captors. Twenty-one chose to remain after being
granted permission to return to America. And many of
those who did return came home believing that “although
communism won’t work in America, I think it’s a good
thing for Asia” (Segal, 1954).
“We become just by the
practice of just actions, self-
controlled by exercising self-
control, and courageous by
performing acts of courage.”
—Aristotle
Our political rituals—the daily flag salute by schoolchildren, singing the na-
tional anthem—use public conformity to build private allegiance.
©Andersen Ross/Getty Images
Behavior and Attitudes Chapter 4 99
Edgar Schein (1956) interviewed many of the POWs and reported that the captors’
methods included a gradual escalation of demands. The captors always started with trivial
requests and gradually worked up to more significant ones. “Thus after a prisoner had once
been ‘trained’ to speak or write out trivia, statements on more important issues were
demanded.” Moreover, they always expected active participation, whether it was just copy-
ing something or participating in group discussions, writing self-criticism, or uttering public
confessions. Once a prisoner had spoken or written a statement, he felt an inner need to
make his beliefs consistent with his acts. That often drove prisoners to persuade themselves
of what they had done wrong. The “start small and build” tactic continues to be used today
in the socialization of terrorists and torturers.
Now let us ask you, before reading further, to play theorist. Ask yourself: Why in these
studies and real-life examples did attitudes follow behavior? Why might playing a role or
making a speech influence your attitude?
“You can use small commit-
ments to manipulate a person’s
self-image; you can use them
to turn citizens into ‘public
servants,’ prospects into
‘customers,’ prisoners into
‘collaborators.’”
—Robert Cialdini,
Influence, 1988
▯ The attitude–action relation also works in the reverse
direction: We are likely not only to think ourselves into
action but also to act ourselves into a way of thinking.
When we act, we amplify the idea underlying what we
have done, especially when we feel responsible for it.
Many streams of evidence converge on this principle.
▯ Similarly, what we say or write can strongly influence
attitudes that we subsequently hold.
▯ Actions also affect our moral attitudes: That which we
have done, even if it is evil, we tend to justify as right.
▯ Similarly, our racial and political behaviors help shape
our social consciousness: We not only stand up for
what we believe, we also believe in what we have stood
up for.
▯ Political and social movements may legislate behavior
designed to lead to attitude change on a mass scale.
SUMMING UP: When Does Our Behavior Affect
Our Attitudes?
WHY DOES OUR BEHAVIOR
AFFECT OUR ATTITUDES?
State the theories that seek to explain the attitudes-
follow-behavior phenomenon. Discuss how the contest
between these competing theories illustrates the
process of scientific explanation.
We have seen that several streams of evidence merge to form a river: our behaviors influ-
ence our attitudes. Do these observations offer clues to why behavior affects attitude? Social
psychology’s detectives suspect three possible sources:
▯ Self-presentation theory assumes that for strategic reasons we express attitudes that
make us appear consistent.
▯ Cognitive dissonance theory assumes that to reduce discomfort, we justify our
actions to ourselves.
▯ Self-perception theory assumes that our actions are self-revealing: when uncertain
about our feelings or beliefs, we look to our behavior, much as anyone else would.
Self-Presentation: Impression Management
The first explanation begins as a simple idea: We all care about what other people think of
us. People spend billions on clothes, diets, cosmetics, and plastic surgery—all because of their
fretting over what others think. We see making a good impression as a way to gain social and
100 Part One Social Thinking
material rewards, to feel better about ourselves, even to
become more secure in our social identities (Leary, 1994,
2010, 2012).
No one wants to look foolishly inconsistent. To avoid
seeming so, we express attitudes that match our actions.
To appear consistent to others, we may automatically pre-
tend we hold attitudes consistent with our behaviors
(Leary et al., 2015; Tyler, 2012). Even a little insincerity
or hypocrisy can pay off in managing the impression we
are making—or so self-presentation theory suggests.
Does our feigning consistency explain why expressed
attitudes shift toward consistency with behavior? To some
extent, yes—people exhibit a much smaller attitude change
when a fake lie detector discourages them from trying to
make a good impression (Paulhus, 1982; Tedeschi et al.,
1987).
But there is more to attitudes than self-presentation, for
people express their changed attitudes even to someone
who has no knowledge of their earlier behavior. Two other theories explain why people
sometimes internalize their self-presentations as genuine attitude changes.
Self-Justification: Cognitive Dissonance
One theory is that our attitudes change because we are motivated to maintain consistency
among our thoughts (known as cognitions). That is the implication of Leon Festinger’s
(1957) famous cognitive dissonance theory. The theory is simple, but its range of application
is enormous, making “cognitive dissonance” part of the vocabulary of today’s educated
people. It assumes that we feel tension, or “dissonance,” when two of our thoughts or beliefs
(“cognitions”) are inconsistent. Festinger argued that to reduce this unpleasant arousal
caused by inconsistency, we often adjust our thinking. This simple idea, and some surprising
predictions derived from it, have spawned more than 2,000 studies (Cooper, 1999).
One inspiration for the theory was a participant-observation study by Festinger and his
colleagues (1956)—a study that an Association for Psychological Science president declared
as his all-time favorite psychological study (Medin, 2011). Festinger and his collaborators
read a news report of a UFO cult’s expecting to be rescued by flying saucers from a cata-
clysmic flood anticipated on December 21, 1954. The researchers’ response? They joined
the cult, and observed what happened next.
As December 21 approached, the most devoted followers quit their jobs and disposed
of their possessions, with some even leaving their spouses. So what happened “when proph-
ecy fails”? When December 21st passed uneventfully, the group coped with its massive
dissonance not by abandoning their beliefs, but with increased fervor for them. Their faith-
fulness had, they decided, persuaded God to spare the world—a message they now pro-
claimed boldly. In modern experiments, too, people whose confident beliefs are shaken will
often respond by seeking to persuade others. “When in doubt, shout!” concluded the
researchers (Gal & Rucker, 2010).
Another way people minimize dissonance, Festinger believed, is through selective
exposure to agreeable information. Studies have asked people about their views on various
topics, and then invited them to choose whether they wanted to view information support-
ing or opposing their viewpoint. Twice as many preferred supporting rather than challenging
information (Fischer & Greitemeyer, 2010; Hart et al., 2009; Sweeny et al., 2010). We prefer
news that affirms us over news that informs us.
People are especially keen on reading information that supports their political, religious,
and ethical views—a phenomenon that most of us can recognize from our own favorite news
and blog sources. Moreover, people who have strong views on some topic—for instance, gun
control, climate change, or economic policy—are prone to “identity-protective cognition”
(Kahan et al., 2011, 2014; Landrum et al., 2017). To minimize dissonance, their beliefs steer
cognitive dissonance
Tension that arises when one is
simultaneously aware of two
inconsistent cognitions. For
example, dissonance may occur
when we realize that we have,
with little justification, acted
contrary to our attitudes or
made a decision favoring one
alternative despite reasons
favoring another.
selective exposure
The tendency to seek
information and media that
agree with one’s views and to
avoid dissonant information.
©Jack Ziegler. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
“I see he finally got rid of the idiotic comb-over.”
Behavior and Attitudes Chapter 4 101
their reasoning and their evaluation of data. Shown the same data about
human-caused climate change, people will read it differently depending
on their preexisting views. On more practical and less values-relevant
topics, “accuracy motives” drive us. Thus, we welcome a home inspection
before buying or a second opinion before surgery.
Dissonance theory pertains mostly to discrepancies between behavior
and attitudes. We are aware of both. Thus, if we sense an inconsistency,
perhaps some hypocrisy, we feel pressure for change. That helps explain
why cigarette smokers are much more likely than nonsmokers to doubt
that smoking is dangerous (Eiser et al., 1979; Saad, 2002).
After the 2003 Iraq war, noted the director of the Program of Inter-
national Policy Attitudes, some Americans struggled to reduce their
“experience of cognitive dissonance” (Kull, 2003). The war’s main prem-
ise had been that Saddam Hussein, unlike most other brutal dictators,
had weapons of mass destruction. As the war began, only 38% of Ameri-
cans said the war was justified even if Iraq did not have weapons of mass
destruction (Gallup, 2003). Nearly four in five Americans believed their
invading troops would find such, and a similar percentage supported the
just-launched war (Duffy, 2003; Newport et al., 2003).
When no such weapons were found, the war-supporting majority expe-
rienced dissonance, which was heightened by their awareness of the war’s financial and
human costs, by scenes of Iraq in chaos, by surging anti-American attitudes in Europe and
in Muslim countries, and by inflamed pro-terrorist attitudes. To reduce their dissonance,
noted the Program of International Policy Attitudes, some Americans revised their memo-
ries of their government’s main rationale for going to war. The reasons now became liberat-
ing an oppressed people from tyrannical and genocidal rule and laying the groundwork for
a more peaceful and democratic Middle East. Three months after the war began, the once-
minority opinion became, for a time, the majority view: 58% of Americans now supported
the war even if there were none of the proclaimed weapons of mass destruction (Gallup,
2003). “Whether or not they find weapons of mass destruction doesn’t matter,” suggested
Republican pollster Frank Luntz (2003), “because the rationale for the war changed.”
In Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions,
and Hurtful Acts, social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson (2007, p. 7) illustrate
dissonance reduction by leaders of various political parties when faced with clear evidence
that a decision they made or a course of action they chose turned out to be wrong, even
disastrous. This human phenomenon is nonpartisan, note Tavris and Aronson: “A president
who has justified his actions to himself, believing that he has the truth, becomes impervious
to self-correction.” For example, Democratic President Lyndon Johnson’s biographer
described him as someone who held to his beliefs, even when sinking in the quagmire of
Vietnam, regardless “of the facts in the matter.” And Republican president George W. Bush,
in the years after launching the Iraq war, said that “knowing what I know today, I’d make
the decision again” (2005), that “I’ve never been more convinced that the decisions I made
are the right decisions” (2006), and that “this war has . . . come at a high cost in lives and
treasure, but those costs are necessary” (2008).
Cognitive dissonance theory offers an explanation for such self-persuasion, and it also
offers several surprising predictions. See if you can anticipate them.
INSUFFICIENT JUSTIFICATION
Imagine you are a participant in a famous experiment staged by the creative Festinger and
his student J. Merrill Carlsmith (1959). For an hour, you are required to perform dull tasks,
such as turning wooden knobs again and again. After you finish, the experimenter (Carl-
smith) explains that the study concerns how expectations affect performance. The next
participant, waiting outside, must be led to expect an interesting experiment. The seemingly
upset experimenter, whom Festinger had spent hours coaching until he became extremely
convincing, explains that the assistant who usually creates this expectation couldn’t make
this session. Wringing his hands, he pleads, “Could you fill in and do this?”
Selective exposure: Many people choose to read news
and opinion articles from sources that favor their politi-
cal viewpoint, while avoiding sources that oppose it.
©Marc Romanelli/Blend Images LLC
102 Part One Social Thinking
It’s for science and you are being paid, so you agree to tell the next participant (who is
actually the experimenter’s accomplice) what a delightful experience you have just had.
“Really?” responds the supposed participant. “A friend of mine was in this experiment a week
ago, and she said it was boring.” “Oh, no,” you respond, “it’s really very interesting. You get
good exercise while turning some knobs. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.” Finally, you complete a
questionnaire that asks how much you actually enjoyed your knob-turning experience.
Now for the prediction: Under which condition are you most likely to believe your little
lie and say that the dull experiment was indeed interesting? When paid $1 for fibbing, as
some of the participants were? Or when paid a then-lavish $20, as others were? Contrary
to the common notion that big rewards produce big effects, Festinger and Carlsmith made
an outrageous prediction: Those paid just $1 (hardly sufficient justification for a lie) would
be most likely to adjust their attitudes to their actions. Having insufficient justification for
their actions, they would experience more discomfort (dissonance) and thus be more moti-
vated to believe in what they had done. Those paid $20 had sufficient justification for what
they had done (so much money!) and hence should have experienced less dissonance. As
Figure 4 shows, the results confirmed this intriguing prediction.*
In dozens of later experiments, this attitudes-follow-behavior effect was strongest when people
felt some choice and when their actions had foreseeable consequences. One experiment had
people read disparaging lawyer jokes into a recorder (for example, “How can you tell when a
lawyer is lying? His lips are moving.”). The reading produced more negative attitudes toward
lawyers when it was a chosen rather than a coerced activity (Hobden & Olson, 1994). Other
experiments have engaged people to write essays for a measly $1.50 or so. When the essay
argues something they don’t believe in—for instance, a tuition increase—the underpaid writers
begin to feel somewhat greater sympathy with the policy. Pretense becomes reality.
Earlier we noted how the insufficient justification principle works with punishments.
Children were more likely to internalize a request not to play with an attractive toy if they
were given a mild threat that insufficiently justified their compliance. When a parent says,
“Clean up your room, Joshua, or I’ll take all of your toys away,” Joshua won’t need to
internally justify cleaning his room. The severe threat is justification enough.
insufficient justification
Reduction of dissonance by
internally justifying one’s
behavior when external
justification is “insufficient.”
FIGURE 4
Insufficient Justification
Dissonance theory predicts that
when our actions are not fully
explained by external rewards
or coercion, we will experience
dissonance, which we can
reduce by believing in what we
have done.
Source: Data from Festinger & Carlsmith,
1959.
+1.5
+1.0
+0.5
0
–0.5
–1.0
“How much I enjoyed the experiment“ (–5 to +5)
Condition: $1$20Control (no lie)
No
dissonance
Low
dissonance
High
dissonance
Dissonance
Theory:
”I said the dull experiment was
interesting. But I had su�cient
reason for doing so—$20.“
”I said the dull experiment was interesting. I
had insu�cient justification for doing so.
Hmm, maybe it was sort of interesting.“
*There is a seldom-reported final aspect of this 1950s experiment. Imagine yourself finally back with
the experimenter, who is truthfully explaining the whole study. Not only do you learn that you’ve been
duped, but also the experimenter asks for the $20 back. Do you comply? Festinger and Carlsmith note
that all their Stanford student participants willingly reached into their pockets and gave back the
money. This is a foretaste of some quite amazing observations on compliance and conformity. As we
will see, when the social situation makes clear demands, people usually respond accordingly.
Behavior and Attitudes Chapter 4 103
Note that cognitive dissonance theory focuses not on the relative effectiveness
of rewards and punishments administered after the act but, rather, on what induces
a desired action. It aims to have Joshua say, “I am cleaning up my room because
I want a clean room,” rather than, “I am cleaning up my room because my parents
will take away all my toys if I don’t.” The principle is this: Attitudes follow behaviors
for which we feel some responsibility.
Authoritarian management will be effective, the theory predicts, only when the
authority is present—because people are unlikely to internalize forced behavior. As
C. S. Lewis (1974) said of Bree, a formerly enslaved talking horse in The Horse
and His Boy, “One of the worst results of being a slave and being forced to do
things is that when there is no one to force you any more you find you have almost
lost the power of forcing yourself” (p. 193). Dissonance theory insists that encour-
agement and inducement should be enough to elicit the desired action (so that
attitudes may follow the behavior). But it suggests that managers, teachers, and
parents should use only enough incentive to elicit the desired behavior.
DISSONANCE AFTER DECISIONS
The emphasis on perceived choice and responsibility implies that decisions pro-
duce dissonance. When faced with an important decision—what college to attend,
whom to date, which job to accept—we are sometimes torn between two equally
attractive alternatives. Perhaps you can recall a time when, having committed yourself, you
became painfully aware of dissonant cognitions—the desirable features of what you had
rejected and the undesirable features of what you had chosen. If you decided to live on cam-
pus, you may have realized you were giving up the spaciousness and freedom of an apartment
in favor of cramped, noisy dorm quarters. If you elected to live off campus, you may have
realized that your decision meant physical separation from campus and friends, and having
to cook and clean for yourself.
After making important decisions, you can reduce dissonance by upgrading the chosen
alternative and downgrading the unchosen option. In the first published dissonance experiment
(1956), Jack Brehm brought some of his wedding gifts to his University of Minnesota lab and
had women rate eight products, such as a toaster, a radio, and a hair dryer. Brehm then showed
the women two objects they had rated similarly and told them they could have whichever they
chose. Later, when rerating the eight objects, the women increased their evaluations of the
item they had chosen and decreased their evaluations of the rejected item. It seems that after
we have made our choices, the grass does not then grow greener on the other side of the fence.
(Afterward, Brehm confessed he couldn’t afford to let them keep what they chose.)
With simple decisions, this deciding-becomes-
believing effect can breed overconfidence (Blanton et
al., 2001): “What I’ve decided must be right.” The
effect can occur very quickly. Robert Knox and James
Inkster (1968) found that racetrack bettors who had
just put down their money felt more optimistic about
their bets than did those who were about to bet. In the
few moments that intervened between standing in line
and walking away from the betting window, nothing
had changed—except the decisive action and the per-
son’s feelings about it.
Our preferences influence our decisions, which
then sharpen our preferences. This choices-influence-
preferences effect occurs even after people press a
button to choose what they think was a subliminally
presented vacation alternative (nothing was actually
shown them). They later tended to prefer the holiday
that they believed they had chosen (Sharot et al.,
2010, 2012). Moreover, once people chose a holiday
destination, they preferred it up to three years later.
Cognitive dissonance theory focuses on what
induces a desired action. Research suggests
that parents use “only enough” incentive to
elicit desired behavior.
©KidStock/Getty Images
Big decisions can produce big dissonance when one later ponders the negative
aspects of what is chosen and the positive aspects of what was not chosen.
©Thinkstock/Stockbyte/Getty Images
104 Part One Social Thinking
Decisions, once made, grow their own self-justifying legs of support. Often, these new legs
are strong enough that when one leg is pulled away—perhaps the original one, as in the Iraq
war case—the decision does not collapse. Rosalia decides to take a trip home if it can be done
for an airfare under $500. It can, so she makes her reservation and begins to think of additional
reasons why she will be glad to see her family. When she goes to buy the tickets, however, she
learns there has been a fare increase to $575. No matter; she is now determined to go. It rarely
occurs to people, reports Robert Cialdini (1984, p. 103), “that those additional reasons might
never have existed had the choice not been made in the first place.”
Self-Perception
Although dissonance theory has inspired much research, an even simpler theory also
explains its phenomena. Consider how we make inferences about other people’s attitudes.
We see how a person acts in a particular situation, and then we attribute the behavior either
to the person’s traits and attitudes or to environmental forces. If we see parents coercing
10-year-old Jaden into saying, “I’m sorry,” we attribute Jaden’s apology to the situation, not
to his personal regret. If we see Jaden apologizing with no coercion, we attribute the apol-
ogy to Jaden himself (Figure 5).
Self-perception theory (proposed by Daryl Bem, 1972) assumes that we make similar
inferences when we observe our own behavior. When our attitudes are weak or ambiguous,
it’s similar to someone observing us from the outside. Hearing myself talk informs me of
my attitudes; seeing my actions provides clues to how strong my beliefs are. If I observe
myself acting as a leader, I begin to think of myself as a leader (Miscenko et al., 2017).
When I smoke, I begin to think of myself as a smoker (Hertel & Mermelstein, 2016). This
is especially so when I can’t easily attribute my behavior to external constraints. The acts
we freely commit are self-revealing.
How much our behavior guides our self-perceptions was cleverly demonstrated by
researchers at Sweden’s Lund University (Lind et al., 2014). They wondered: What would
we experience if we said one thing but heard ourselves saying something else? Would we
believe our ears? Through a headset, people heard themselves name various font colors
such as “gray” when shown the word green in a gray color. But sometimes, the prankster
researchers substituted the participant’s own voice saying a previously recorded word, such
as “green.” Remarkably, two-thirds of the word switches went undetected. People experi-
enced the inserted word as self-produced!
More than a century ago, psychologist William James proposed a similar self-perception
process for our experienced emotion. We infer our emotions, James suggested, by observing
our bodies and our behaviors. A stimulus such as a growling bear confronts a woman in
the forest. She tenses, her heartbeat increases, adrenaline flows, and she runs away. Observ-
ing all this, she then experiences fear. At a college where I [DM] am to give a lecture, I
awake before dawn and am unable to get back to sleep. Noting my wakefulness, I conclude
that I must be anxious. One friend of mine was shaking while standing offstage waiting to
give a lecture and inferred he was really nervous. When he discovered the floor over the
air-handling system was vibrating, his self-perceived nervousness vanished.
“Every time you make a
choice you are turning the
central part of you, the part of
you that chooses, into some-
thing a little different from
what it was before.”
—C. S. Lewis,
Mere Christianity, 1942
self-perception theory
The theory that when we are
unsure of our attitudes, we infer
them much as would someone
observing us—by looking at our
behavior and the circumstances
under which it occurs.
“Self-knowledge is best
learned, not by contemplation,
but action.”
—Goethe (1749–1832)
Leon Festinger on Dissonance Reduction
THE inside
STORY
Following a 1934 earthquake in India, there were rumors
outside the disaster zone of worse disasters to follow. It
occurred to me that these rumors might be “anxiety-justi-
fying”—cognitions that would justify their lingering fears.
From that germ of an idea, I developed my theory of
Leon Festinger (1920–1989)
©Estate of Francis Bello/Science Source/ Photo
Researcher, Inc.
dissonance reduction—making your
view of the world fit with how you feel or
what you’ve done.
“I can watch myself and my
actions, just like an outsider.”
—Anne Frank,
The Diary of a Young Girl, 1947
Behavior and Attitudes Chapter 4 105
EXPRESSIONS AND ATTITUDE
You may be skeptical of the self-perception effect, as I [DM] initially was. Experiments on
the effects of facial expressions suggest a way for you to experience it. When James Laird
(1974, 1984) induced college students to frown while attaching electrodes to their faces—
“contract these muscles,” “pull your brows together”—they reported feeling angry. It’s more
fun to try Laird’s other finding: Those induced to make a smiling face felt happier and found
cartoons more humorous. Those induced to repeatedly practice happy (versus sad or angry)
expressions may recall more happy memories and find the happy mood lingering (Schnall
& Laird, 2003). A Japanese research team created similar expressions—and emotions—by
taping rubber bands to the sides of the face and then running them over either the top of
the head (raising the cheeks into a smile) or under the chin (Mori & Mori, 2009).
Clever follow-up studies have found more examples of this facial (and body) feedback effect:
▯ Botox smooths emotional wrinkles. If it’s hard for us to know what the frozen-
faced Botoxed are feeling, it’s also hard for them to know themselves. Paralyzing
the frowning muscles with Botox slows activity in people’s emotion-related brain
circuits and slows their reading of sadness- or anger-related sentences (Havas et al.,
2010; Hennenlotter et al., 2008). Botoxing the frowning muscles decreases psychiat-
ric patients’ depressive symptoms (Wollmer et al., 2012). (Increased frowning,
when facing the sun, fosters aggressive feeling [Marzoli et al., 2013].) Moreover,
being unable to mimic others’ expressions, it’s harder for them to understand oth-
ers’ emotions (Neal & Chartrand, 2011). Botox messes with embodied cognition.
▯ When people are instructed to sit straight and push out their chest, they feel more
confidence in their written ideas than when sitting slouched forward and with eyes
downcast (Briñol et al., 2009).
▯ Even word articulation movements come tinged with emotion. In a series of experi-
ments, both German- and English-speaking people preferred nonsense words and
names spoken with inward (swallowing-like) mouth movements—for example,
“ BENOKA”—rather than outward (spitting-like) motions, such as “KENOBA”
(Topolinski et al., 2014).
facial feedback effect
The tendency of facial
expressions to trigger
corresponding feelings such as
fear, anger, or happiness.
Self-justification
(cognitive dissonance)
Self-presentation
(impression management)
Self-perception
(self-observation)
I look like
a cool smoker.
Ah . . .
I’ve been waiting
all day for this.
Here I am smoking
again. I must like
smoking.
Why do actions a�ect attitudes?
I know smoking is
bad for me.
Oh well . . . the statistics
aren’t as awful as they say.
Anyway, I’m very healthy.
I won’t get sick.
FIGURE 5
Three Theories Explain Why Attitudes Follow Behavior
©Anton Dotsenko/123RF
106 Part One Social Thinking
We have all experienced this phenomenon. We’re feel-
ing crabby, but then we get a phone call or someone
comes to the door and elicits from us warm, polite behav-
ior. “How’s everything?” “Just fine, thanks. How are
things with you?” “Oh, not bad. . . .” If our crabbiness
was not intense, this warm behavior may change our atti-
tude. Putting on a happy face perks us up. It’s tough to
smile and feel grouchy. Motions trigger emotions.
Even your gait can affect how you feel. When you get
up from reading this chapter, walk for a minute taking
short, shuffling steps, with eyes downcast. It’s a great way
to feel depressed. “Sit all day in a moping posture, sigh,
and reply to everything with a dismal voice, and your mel-
ancholy lingers,” noted William James (1890, p. 463).
If our expressions influence our feelings, would imi-
tating others’ expressions help us know what they are
feeling? An experiment by Katherine Burns Vaughan
and John Lanzetta (1981) suggests it would. They asked
Dartmouth College students to observe someone receiv-
ing a supposed electric shock. They told some of the
observers to make a pained expression whenever the
shock came on. If, as Freud and others supposed,
expressing an emotion allows us to discharge it, then the pained expression should be
inwardly calming (Cacioppo et al., 1991). However, compared with other students who did
not act out the expressions, these grimacing students perspired more and had faster heart
rates whenever they saw the shock being delivered. Acting out the person’s emotion enabled
the observers to feel more empathy. So, to sense how other people are feeling, let your own
face and body mirror their expressions.
Actually, you hardly need to try. Observing others’ faces, postures, writing styles, and
voices, we naturally and unconsciously mimic them (Hatfield et al., 1992; Ireland &
Pennebaker, 2010). We synchronize our movements, postures, and tones of voice with theirs.
Doing so helps us tune in to what they’re feeling. It also makes for “emotional contagion,”
which helps explain why it’s fun to be around happy people and depressing to be around
depressed people.
Our facial expressions also influence our attitudes. In a clever experiment, Gary Wells
and Richard Petty (1980) had University of Alberta students “test headphone sets” by
making either vertical or horizontal head movements while listening to a radio opinion
piece. The students who made vertical head movements—who were nodding (a nonverbal
signal of agreement)—were most likely to later say they agreed with the opinion piece. Try
it yourself when listening to someone: Do you feel more agreeable when nodding (nonver-
bally saying “yes”) rather than shaking your head (nonverbally saying “no”)? Even being
seated in a left- rather than right-leaning chair has led people to lean more left in their
expressed political attitudes (Oppenheimer & Trail, 2010)!
OVERJUSTIFICATION AND INTRINSIC MOTIVATIONS
Recall the insufficient justification effect: The smallest incentive that induces people to do
something will most effectively get them to like it and keep on doing it. Cognitive disso-
nance theory explains this: When external inducements are insufficient to justify our behav-
ior, we reduce dissonance internally by justifying the behavior.
Self-perception theory offers a different explanation: People explain their behavior by noting
the conditions under which it occurs. Imagine hearing someone proclaim the wisdom of a
tuition increase because they were paid $20. Surely the statement would seem more sincere if
you thought the person was expressing those opinions for no pay. Perhaps we make similar
inferences when observing ourselves. We observe our uncoerced action and infer our attitude.
Self-perception theory goes a step further. Contrary to the notion that rewards always
increase motivation, unnecessary rewards can have a hidden cost. Rewarding people for
“The free expression by out-
ward signs of emotion intensi-
fies it. On the other hand, the
repression, as far as possible,
of all outward signs softens
our emotions.”
—Charles Darwin,
The Expression of the Emotions in
Man and Animals, 1897
All Nippon Airways employees, biting wooden chopsticks, beam during a
smile training session. Researchers report that people who use chopsticks to
activate smiling muscles during laboratory stress experiences also recover
more quickly (Kraft & Pressman, 2012).
©Kyodo News International, Inc.
Behavior and Attitudes Chapter 4 107
doing what they already enjoy may lead them to attribute their action to the reward. If so,
this would undermine their self-perception that they do it because they like it. Experiments
confirmed this overjustification effect (Deci & Ryan, 1991, 2012; Lepper & Greene, 1979).
Pay people for playing with puzzles, and they will later play with the puzzles less than will
those who play for no pay. Promise children a reward for doing what they intrinsically enjoy
(for example, playing with markers), and you will turn their play into work (Figure 6).
A folktale illustrates the overjustification effect: An old man lived alone on a street where
boys played noisily every afternoon. The din annoyed him, so one day he called the boys
to his door. He told them he loved the cheerful sound of children’s voices and promised
them each 50 cents if they would return the next day. Next afternoon the youngsters raced
back and played more lustily than ever. The old man paid them and promised another
reward the next day. Again they returned, whooping it up, and the man again paid them;
this time 25 cents. The following day they got only 15 cents, and the man explained that
his meager resources were being exhausted. “Please, though, would you come to play for
10 cents tomorrow?” The disappointed boys told the man they would not be
back. It wasn’t worth the effort, they said, to play all afternoon at his house
for only 10 cents.
As self-perception theory implies, an unanticipated reward does not diminish
intrinsic interest, because people can still attribute their actions to their own
motivation (Bradley & Mannell, 1984; Tang & Hall, 1995). And if compliments
for a good job make us feel more competent and successful, this can actually
increase our intrinsic motivation. When rightly administered, rewards may also
boost creativity (Eisenberger et al., 1999, 2003, 2009).
Many life tasks combine intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. A nurse takes sat-
isfaction in caring for patients and gets paid. A student learns and gets a good
grade. Ironically, report Amy Wrzesniewski, Barry Schwartz and their col-
leagues (2014a,b), helping people focus on the intrinsic meaning of their work
boosts both their work quality and their vocational and financial success.
The overjustification effect occurs when someone offers an unnecessary
reward beforehand in an obvious effort to control behavior. What matters is
what a reward implies: Rewards and praise that inform people of their achieve-
ments—that make them feel, “I’m very good at this”—boost intrinsic motiva-
tion. Rewards that seek to control people and lead them to believe it was the
reward that caused their effort—“I did it for the money”—diminish the intrinsic
appeal of an enjoyable task (Rosenfeld et al., 1980; Sansone, 1986).
How then can we cultivate people’s enjoyment of initially unappealing
tasks? Maria may find her first piano lessons frustrating. Toshi may not have
an intrinsic love of ninth-grade science. DeShawn may embark on a career
not looking forward to making those first sales calls. In such cases, the parent,
overjustification effect
The result of bribing people to
do what they already like doing;
they may then see their actions
as externally controlled rather
than intrinsically appealing.
No external
reward
Self-perception: “I do
this because I like it.”
Self-perception: “I do
this because I’m paid to.”
Extrinsic
motivation
Intrinsic
motivation
Enjoyable
activities
External
reward
(e.g., $)
FIGURE 6
Intrinsic and Extrinsic
Motivation
When people do something they
enjoy, without reward or coer-
cion, they attribute their behav-
ior to their love of the activity.
External rewards undermine in-
trinsic motivation by leading
people to attribute their behav-
ior to the incentive.
Self-perception at work.
©Ed Frascino. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
“I don’t sing because I am happy. I am
happy because I sing.”
108 Part One Social Thinking
the teacher, or the manager should probably use some incentives to coax the desired behav-
ior (Boggiano & Ruble, 1985; Cooke et al., 2011; Workman & Williams, 1980). After the
person complies, suggest an intrinsic reason for doing so: “I’m not surprised that sales call
went well, because you are so good at making a first impression.”
If we provide students with just enough justification to perform a learning task and use
rewards and labels to help them feel competent, we may enhance their enjoyment and their
eagerness to pursue the subject on their own. When there is too much justification—as
happens in classrooms where teachers dictate behavior and use rewards to control the
children—student-driven learning may diminish (Deci & Ryan, 1985, 1991, 2008). My
[DM’s] younger son eagerly consumed 6 or 8 library books a week—until our library started
a reading club that promised a party to those who read 10 books in three months. Three
weeks later he began checking out only 1 or 2 books during our weekly visits. Why?
“Because you only need to read 10 books, you know.”
Comparing the Theories
We have seen one explanation of why our actions might only seem to affect our attitudes
(self-presentation theory). And we have seen two explanations of why our actions genuinely
affect our attitudes: (1) the dissonance-theory assumption that we justify our behavior to
reduce our internal discomfort, and (2) the self-perception-theory assumption that we observe
our behavior and make reasonable inferences about our attitudes, much as we observe other
people and infer their attitudes.
These two explanations seem to contradict each other. Which is right? It’s difficult to find
a definitive test. In most instances they make the same predictions, and we can bend each
theory to accommodate most of the findings we have considered (Greenwald, 1975). Self-
perception theorist Daryl Bem (1972) even suggested it boils down to personal loyalties and
preferences. This illustrates the human element in scientific theorizing. Neither dissonance
theory nor self-perception theory has been handed to us by nature. Both are products of
human imagination—creative attempts to simplify and explain what we’ve observed.
It is not unusual in science to find that a principle, such as “attitudes follow behavior,” is
predictable from more than one theory. Physicist Richard Feynman (1967) marveled that “one
of the amazing characteristics of nature” is the “wide range of beautiful ways” in which we
can describe it: “I do not understand the reason why it is that the correct laws of physics seem
to be expressible in such a tremendous variety of ways” (pp. 53–55). Like different roads lead-
ing to the same place, different sets of assumptions can lead to the same principle. If anything,
this strengthens our confidence in the principle. It becomes credible not only because of the
data supporting it but also because it rests on more than one theoretical pillar.
DISSONANCE AS AROUSAL
Can we say that one of the theories is better? Dissonance theory wins out on one count:
having attitudes and behavior disagree does seem to produce arousal—especially if the behav-
ior has unwanted consequences for which the person feels responsible (Cooper, 1999; Elliot
& Devine, 1994). If, in the privacy of your room, you say something you don’t believe, your
dissonance will be minimal. It will be much greater if there are unpleasant results—if some-
one hears and believes you, if the statement causes harm and the negative effects are
irrevocable, and if the person harmed is someone you like. If, moreover, you feel responsible
for those consequences—if you can’t easily excuse your act because you freely agreed to it
and if you were able to foresee its consequences—then uncomfortable dissonance will be
aroused. Such dissonance-related arousal is detectable as increased perspiration and heart
rate (Cacioppo & Petty, 1986; Croyle & Cooper, 1983; Losch & Cacioppo, 1990).
Why is “volunteering” to say or do undesirable things so arousing? Because, as the self-
affirmation theory suggests, such acts are embarrassing (Steele, 1988). They make us feel foolish.
They threaten our sense of personal competence and goodness. Justifying our actions and deci-
sions is therefore self-affirming; it protects and supports our sense of integrity and self-worth.
When people engage in dissonance-generating actions, their thinking left frontal lobes buzz with
extra arousal (Harmon-Jones et al., 2008). This is the grinding gears of belief change at work.
self-affirmation theory
A theory that (a) people often
experience a self-image threat
after engaging in an undesirable
behavior; and (b) they can
compensate by affirming
another aspect of the self.
Threaten people’s self-concept
in one domain, and they will
compensate either by
refocusing or by doing good
deeds in some other domain.
Behavior and Attitudes Chapter 4 109
What do you suppose happens, then, if we offer people who have
committed self-contradictory acts a way to reaffirm their self-worth,
such as doing good deeds? In several experiments people whose self-
concepts were restored felt much less need to justify their acts (Steele
et al., 1993). People with high and secure self-esteem also engage in
less self-justification (Holland et al., 2002).
So, dissonance conditions do indeed arouse tension, especially
when they threaten positive feelings of self-worth. But is this arousal
necessary for the attitudes-follow-behavior effect? Steele and his col-
leagues (1981) believe the answer is yes. In one of their experiments,
they induced University of Washington students to write essays favor-
ing a big tuition increase. The students reduced their resulting disso-
nance by softening their antituition attitudes—unless after writing the
unpleasant essays they drank alcohol. Apparently, drinking relaxed
them enough to eliminate the arousal of dissonance.
SELF-PERCEIVING WHEN NOT
SELF-CONTRADICTING
Dissonance is uncomfortably arousing. That leads to self-persuasion after acting contrary
to one’s attitudes. But dissonance theory cannot explain the attitude changes that occur
without dissonance. When people argue a position that is in line with their opinion,
although a step or two beyond it, they don’t experience dissonance arousal yet still adjust
their attitudes toward what they’ve expressed (Fazio et al., 1977, 1979). Dissonance theory
also does not explain the overjustification effect, because being paid to do what you like
to do should not arouse great tension. And what about situations where the action does
not contradict any attitude—when, for example, people are induced to smile or grimace?
Here, too, there should be no dissonance. For these cases, self-perception theory has a
ready explanation.
In short, dissonance theory successfully explains what happens when we act contrary to
clearly defined attitudes: We feel tension, so we adjust our attitudes to reduce it. Dissonance
theory, then, explains attitude change. In situations where our attitudes are not well formed,
self-perception theory explains attitude formation. As we act and reflect, we develop more
readily accessible attitudes to guide our future behavior (Fazio, 1987; Roese & Olson, 1994).
“Rather amazingly, 40 years
after its publication, the theory
of cognitive dissonance looks
as strong and as interesting
as ever.”
—Social Psychologist Jack
W. Brehm (1999)
After doing something undesirable or embarrassing,
people can reaffirm their self-image by doing a good deed.
©Ariel Skelley/Blend Images LLC
Three different theories explain why our actions affect our
attitude reports.
▯ Self-presentation theory assumes that people, especially
those who self-monitor their behavior hoping to create
good impressions, will adapt their attitude reports to ap-
pear consistent with their actions. The available evidence
confirms that people do adjust their attitude statements
out of concern for what other people will think. But it
also shows that some genuine attitude change occurs.
Two of these theories propose that our actions trigger gen-
uine attitude change.
▯ Dissonance theory explains this attitude change by assum-
ing that we feel tension after acting contrary to our atti-
tudes or making difficult decisions. To reduce that arousal,
we internally justify our behavior. Dissonance theory fur-
ther proposes that the less external justification we have
for our undesirable actions, the more we feel responsible
for them, and thus the more dissonance arises and the
more attitudes change to come into line with our actions.
▯ Self-perception theory assumes that when our attitudes are
weak, we simply observe our behavior and its circum-
stances, then infer our attitudes. One interesting implica-
tion of self-perception theory is the “overjustification
effect”: Rewarding people to do what they like doing any-
way can turn their pleasure into drudgery (if the reward
leads them to attribute their behavior to the reward).
▯ Evidence supports predictions from both theories, sug-
gesting that each describes what happens under certain
conditions.
SUMMING UP: Why Does Our Behavior Affect Our
Attitudes?
110 Part One Social Thinking
POSTSCRIPT:
Changing Ourselves Through Action
To make anything a habit, do it.
To not make it a habit, do not do it.
To unmake a habit, do something else in place of it.
—Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus
This chapter’s attitudes-follow-behavior principle offers a powerful lesson for life: If we want
to change ourselves in some important way, it’s best not to wait for insight or inspiration.
Sometimes we need to act—to begin to write that paper, to make those phone calls, to see
that person—even if we don’t feel like acting. Jacques Barzun (1975) recognized the energiz-
ing power of action when he advised aspiring writers to engage in the act of writing even
if contemplation had left them feeling uncertain about their ideas:
If you are too modest about yourself or too plain indifferent about the possible reader and yet
are required to write, then you have to pretend. Make believe that you want to bring somebody
around to your opinion; in other words, adopt a thesis and start expounding it. . . . With a
slight effort of the kind at the start—a challenge to utterance—you will find your pretense disap-
pearing and a real concern creeping in. The subject will have taken hold of you as it does in
the work of all habitual writers. (pp. 173–174)
This attitudes-follow-behavior phenomenon is not irrational or magical. That which
prompts us to act may also prompt us to think. Writing an essay or role-playing an oppos-
ing view forces us to consider arguments we otherwise might have ignored. Also, we
remember information best after explaining it in our own terms. As one student wrote
me [DM], “It wasn’t until I tried to verbalize my beliefs that I really understood them.”
As a teacher and a writer, I must therefore remind myself to not always lay out finished
results. It is better to stimulate students to think through the implications of a theory, to
make them active listeners and readers. Even taking notes deepens the impression.
William James (1899) made the point a century ago: “No reception without reaction, no
impression without correlative expression—this is the great maxim which the teacher
ought never to forget.”
“If we wish to conquer unde-
sirable emotional tendencies
in ourselves we must . . . cold-
bloodedly go through the
outward motions of those
contrary dispositions we
prefer to cultivate.”
—William James, “What Is an
Emotion?” 1884
P A R T T W O
Genes, Culture,
and Gender
C H A P T E R
5
Social
Influence
©hadynyah/E+/Getty Images
The preceding chapters were about how we think about one another. The next chapters are about how we influence and relate to one another. We will probe
social psychology’s central concern: the powers of social influence. What are these
unseen social forces that push and pull us? How powerful are they? Research on
social influence helps illuminate the invisible strings by which our social worlds
move us about. In this chapter, we consider three related topics: genetic and evo-
lutionary influences, cultural influences, and gender differences.
Approaching Earth from light-years away, alien scientists assigned to study the
species Homo sapiens feel their excitement rising. Their plan: to observe two ran-
domly sampled humans. Their first subject, Jessica, is a verbally combative trial
lawyer who grew up in Nashville but moved west seeking the “California lifestyle.”
“By birth, the same; by custom, different.”
—Confucius, The Analects of Confucius
How are we
influenced by
biology?
How are we
influenced by
culture?
How are males and
females alike and
different?
What can we
conclude about
genes, culture, and
gender?
Postscript: Should
we view ourselves as
products of our
biology or our
culture?
112 Part Two Social Influence
After an affair and a divorce, Jessica is enjoying a second marriage. Friends
describe Jessica as an independent thinker who is self-confident, competitive, and
somewhat domineering.
Their second subject, Tomoko, lives with his wife and their two children in a rural
Japanese village, a short walk from the homes of both their parents. Tomoko is proud
of being a good son, a loyal husband, and a protective parent. Friends describe
Tomoko as kind, gentle, respectful, sensitive, and supportive of extended family.
From their small sample of two people of different genders and cultures, what
might our alien scientists conclude about human nature? Would they wonder
whether the two are from different subspecies? Or would they be struck by deeper
similarities beneath the surface differences?
The questions faced by our alien scientists are those faced by today’s earthbound
scientists: How do we humans differ? How are we alike? In a world struggling with
cultural differences, can we learn to accept our diversity, value our cultural identities,
yet recognize our human kinship? We believe so. To see why, let’s consider the
evolutionary, cultural, and social roots of our humanity. Then let’s see how each
influence might help us understand gender similarities and differences.
HOW ARE WE INFLUENCED
BY BIOLOGY?
Describe how the evolutionary perspective explains
human behavior, including gender differences.
In many important ways, Jessica and Tomoko are more alike than different. As members
of one great family with common ancestors, they share not only a common biology but
also common behavioral tendencies. Each of them sleeps and wakes, feels hunger and thirst,
and develops language through identical mechanisms. Jessica and Tomoko both prefer sweet
tastes to sour and fear snakes more than sparrows. They and their kin across the globe all
understand each other’s frowns and smiles.
Jessica and Tomoko, and all of us everywhere, are intensely social. We join groups, conform,
and recognize distinctions of social status. We return favors, punish offenses, and grieve a loved
one’s death. As children, beginning at about 8 months of age, we displayed fear of strangers,
and as adults we favor members of our own groups. Confronted by those with dissimilar atti-
tudes or attributes, we react warily or negatively. Anthropologist Donald Brown (1991, 2000)
identified several hundred such universal behavior and language patterns. To sample among just
those beginning with “v,” all human societies have verbs, violence, visiting, and vowels.
Even much of our morality is common across cultures and eras. Before they can walk, babies
will display a moral sense by disapproving of what’s wrong or naughty (Bloom, 2010). People
old and young, female and male, whether living in Tokyo, Tehran, or Toledo, all say “no” when
asked, “If a lethal gas is leaking into a vent and is headed toward a room with seven people, is
it okay to push someone into the vent—preventing the gas from reaching the seven but killing
the one?” And they are more likely to say “yes” when asked if it’s okay to allow someone to
fall into the vent, voluntarily sacrificing one life but saving seven (Hauser, 2006, 2009).
Our alien scientists could drop in anywhere and find humans conversing and arguing,
laughing and crying, feasting and dancing, singing and worshiping. Everywhere, humans
prefer living with others—in families and communal groups—to living alone. Everywhere,
the family dramas that entertain us—from Greek tragedies to Chinese fiction to Mexican
soap operas—portray similar plots (Dutton, 2006). Similar, too, are adventure stories in
Genes, Culture, and Gender Chapter 5 113
which strong and courageous men, supported by wise old people, overcome evil to the
delight of beautiful women or threatened children.
Such commonalities define our shared human nature. Although differences draw our
attention, we’re more alike than different. We’re all kin beneath the skin.
Genes, Evolution, and Behavior
The universal behaviors that define human nature arise from our biological similarity. We
may say, “My ancestors came from Ireland” or “My roots are in China” or “I’m Italian,”
but if we trace our ancestors back 100,000 or more years, we are all Africans (Shipman,
2003). In response to climate change and the availability of food, early hominids migrated
across Africa into Asia, Europe, the Australian subcontinent and, eventually, the Americas.
As they adapted to their new environments, early humans developed differences that, mea-
sured on anthropological scales, are recent and superficial. Those who stayed in Africa had
darker skin pigment—what Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker (2002) calls “sunscreen for
the tropics”—and those who went far north of the equator evolved lighter skins capable of
synthesizing vitamin D in less direct sunlight.
We were Africans recently enough that “there has not been much time to accumulate
many new versions of the genes,” notes Pinker (2002, p. 143). Indeed, biologists who study
our genes have found that we humans—even humans as seemingly different as Jessica and
Tomoko—are strikingly similar, like members of one tribe. We may be more numerous than
chimpanzees, but chimps are more genetically varied.
To explain the traits of our species, and all species, the British naturalist Charles Darwin
(1859) proposed an evolutionary process. Follow the genes, he advised. Darwin’s idea, to
which philosopher Daniel Dennett (2005) would give “the gold medal for the best idea
anybody ever had,” was that natural selection enables evolution.
The idea, simplified, is this:
▯ Organisms have many and varied offspring.
▯ Those offspring compete for survival in their environment.
▯ Certain biological and behavioral variations increase their chances of survival and
reproduction in that environment.
▯ Those offspring that do survive and reproduce are more likely to pass their genes
to ensuing generations.
▯ Thus, over time, population characteristics may change.
Natural selection implies that certain genes—those that predisposed traits that increased
the odds of surviving long enough to reproduce and nurture descendants—became more
abundant. In the snowy Arctic environment, for example, genes programming a thick coat
of camouflaging white fur have won the genetic competition in polar bears.
Natural selection, long an organizing principle of biology, is now
an important principle for psychology as well. Evolutionary psychology
studies how natural selection also predisposes psychological traits
and social behaviors that enhance the preservation and spread of
one’s genes (Buss, 2005, 2007, 2009; Lewis et al., 2017). We humans
are the way we are, say evolutionary psychologists, because nature
selected those who had advantageous traits—those who, for exam-
ple, preferred the sweet taste of nutritious, energy-providing foods
and who disliked the bitter or sour flavors of toxic foods. Those
lacking such preferences were less likely to survive to contribute
their genes to posterity.
As mobile gene machines, we carry not only the physical legacy
but also the psychological legacy of our ancestors’ adaptive prefer-
ences. We long for whatever helped our ancestors survive, repro-
duce, and nurture their offspring to survive and reproduce. Even
negative emotions—anxiety, loneliness, depression, anger—are
nature’s way of motivating us to cope with survival challenges. “The
natural selection
The evolutionary process by
which heritable traits that best
enable organisms to survive and
reproduce in particular
environments are passed to
ensuing generations.
evolutionary psychology
The study of the evolution of
cognition and behavior using
principles of natural selection.
Evolutionary psychology argues that modern human brains are a
product of what helped our hunter-gatherer ancestors survive.
©Sproetniek/Getty Images
114 Part Two Social Influence
purpose of the heart is to pump blood,” notes evolutionary psychologist David Barash
(2003). “The brain’s purpose,” he adds, is to direct our organs and our behavior “in a way
that maximizes our evolutionary success. That’s it.”
The evolutionary perspective highlights our universal human nature. We not only share
certain food preferences, but we also share answers to social questions, such as, Whom should
I trust? Whom should I help? When, and with whom, should I mate? Who may dominate
me, and whom may I control? Evolutionary psychologists contend that our emotional and
behavioral answers to those questions are the same answers that worked for our ancestors.
And what should we fear? Mostly, we fear dangers faced by our distant ancestors. We
fear foes, unfamiliar faces, and heights—and thus, possible terrorists, the ethnically different,
and airplanes. We fear what’s immediate and sudden more than greater, gradual harms
from historically newer threats, such as smoking or climate change.
Because our social tasks are common to people everywhere, humans everywhere tend
to agree on the answers. For example, all humans rank others by authority and status. And
all have ideas about economic justice (Fiske, 1992). Evolutionary psychologists highlight
these universal characteristics that have evolved through natural selection. Cultures, how-
ever, provide the specific rules for working out these elements of social life.
Biology and Gender
If you visit an elementary school playground at recess, you will probably notice that the
boys and girls behave differently. More of the boys will be running or jumping, and might
even physically fight with each other when the playground monitor isn’t looking. More of
the girls will be playing in small groups and talking to each other.
Here’s what you might wonder: Are these differences due to biology (and thus tied to
our evolutionary past) or instead a product of upbringing and culture (and thus something
that varies by region and era)? Gender differences are one of the most researched and
contentious areas of the nature vs. nurture debate, so we will use them as our primary
example to illustrate how biology and culture interact to make us who we are. We’ll begin
by discussing biology as it relates to gender differences.
TERMS FOR STUDYING SEX AND GENDER
First, let’s define some terms. Many people use the terms “sex” and “gender” interchange-
ably, but in psychology they refer to different things. Sex refers to males and females as
two biological categories based on chromosomes, genitals, and secondary sex characteristics
such as greater male muscle mass and female breasts.
Gender instead refers to the characteristics people associate with males and females that
can be rooted in biology, culture, or both, such as wearing dresses, liking sports, having
long hair, wanting more sexual partners, being more physically aggressive, or liking to shop.
The differences in behavior on the preschool playground are gendered behaviors; whether
each child is biologically male or female is their sex.
Not that long ago, gender and sex were seen as fairly rigid—there were only two sexes,
and if someone was born female, she stayed female, and enacted female gender roles. All
of these ideas are now being challenged in one way or another. Until very recently, most
cultures delivered a strong message: Everyone must be assigned a sex. When an intersex
child is born with a combination of male and female sex organs, physicians and the family
traditionally have felt compelled to assign the child a sex by diminishing the ambiguity
surgically. Between day and night there is dusk. Between hot and cold there is warm. But
between male and female there has been, socially speaking, essentially nothing (Sanz, 2017).
Now some people identify as gender fluid or as nonbinary, wishing to be identified as neither
male or female (Broussard et al., 2018).
In addition, some people are transgender—those whose sense of being male or female dif-
fers from their birth sex (APA, 2012). A trans person may feel like a woman in a man’s body
or a man in a woman’s body. Being transgender is not the same as having atypical gender
roles—for example, some women have short hair, don’t like to shop, and like sports, but still
have a fundamental belief that their sex is female. In contrast, a transgender person who is
“Psychology will be based on
a new foundation.”
—Charles Darwin,
On the Origin of Species, 1859
sex
The two biological categories of
male and female.
gender
In psychology, the
characteristics, whether
biological or socially influenced,
that we associate with males
and females.
transgender
Someone whose psychological
sense of being male or female
differs from their birth sex.
Genes, Culture, and Gender Chapter 5 115
born female might have any constellation of gender roles, but has a fundamental
sense of actually being male. When he is ready to transition, he may start living
as a man. Some transgender people choose to have surgery to change their sex
to fit their identity, but others do not change their bodies but instead present
socially as their chosen sex (Testa et al., 2017). Thomas Beatie, the “pregnant
man” who gained national attention in 2007, was born female. As an adult, he
lived as a man but kept his female reproductive organs, birthing three children
(Abbey, 2012). Current estimates suggest that about .4% (4 out of 1,000) Ameri-
cans are transgender, or about 1 million individuals (Meerwijk & Sevelius, 2017).
In this section, we’ll explore evolutionary and biological explanations for
sex differences. We’ll detail the research on sex differences later in the chapter.
For now, consider this well-researched difference: Men think about sex more,
masturbate more, and desire a greater number of sexual partners (Baumeister
et al., 2001; Petersen & Hyde, 2011). The question is: Why?
GENDER AND MATING PREFERENCES
Evolutionary psychology posits a fairly straightforward answer to this ques-
tion: Men have stronger sex drives because sex is a cheap investment for
men and a big commitment for women. Men and women, note evolutionary
psychologists, faced different adaptive challenges when it came to sex and
reproduction (Buss, 1995b, 2009). (These ideas are not without controversy;
later in this section, we’ll explore challenges to this point of view.)
Thus, say evolutionary psychologists, females invest their reproductive
opportunities carefully, by looking for signs of resources and commitment. Males compete
with other males for chances to win the genetic sweepstakes by sending their genes into
the future, and thus look for healthy, fertile soil in which to plant their seed. Women want
to find men who will help them tend the garden—resourceful and monogamous dads rather
than wandering cads. Women seek to reproduce wisely, men widely. Or so the theory goes.
Evolutionary psychology also suggests that those preschool boys fighting with each
other on the playground might be in a dress rehearsal for a more serious game. Over
much of human history, physically dominant males excelled in gaining access to females,
which over generations enhanced male aggression and dominance as the less-aggressive
males had fewer chances to reproduce. The genes that may have helped Montezuma II
to become Aztec king were also given to his offspring, with the help of the 4,000 women
in his harem (Wright, 1998). Genghis Khan, who led invasions that brought much of
Asia under his empire, is an ancestor of approximately 1 in 200
men worldwide ( Zerjal, 2003). Even today, men are more aggressive
toward other men when they are thinking about dating and mating
(Ainsworth & Maner, 2012, 2014). Underlying all these presump-
tions is a principle: Nature selects traits that help send one’s genes
into the future.
Little of this process is conscious. Few people in the throes of
passion stop to think, “I want to give my genes to posterity.” Rather,
say evolutionary psychologists, our natural yearnings are our genes’
way of making more genes. Emotions execute evolution’s disposi-
tions, much as hunger executes the body’s need for nutrients.
“Humans are living fossils—collections of mechanisms produced
by prior selections’ pressures,” says David Buss (1995a). And that,
evolutionary psychologists believe, helps explain not only male
aggression but also the differing sexual attitudes and behaviors of
females and males.
Evolutionary psychology also predicts that women will prefer men
with the resources to help with the labor-intensive and expensive
process of raising a child to full adulthood. Thus, men will strive to
offer what women will desire—external resources and physical
protection. Male peacocks strut their feathers; male humans, their
“A hen is only an egg’s way of
making another egg.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1901)
Born Bruce Jenner, Caitlyn Jenner lived most of
her life as a man before she transitioned to live
as a woman in 2015.
©Joe Seer/Shutterstock.com
What attracts you to someone? Both men and women value
kindness, but gender differences appear in valuing physical
appearance and status.
©Sam Edwards/AGE Fotostock
116 Part Two Social Influence
abs, Audis, and assets (Sundie et al., 2011). In one experiment, teen males rated “having
lots of money” as more important after they were put alone in a room with a teen female
(Roney, 2003). In one Cardiff, Wales, study, men rated a woman as equally attractive
whether she was at the wheel of a humble Ford Fiesta or a swanky Bentley; women found
the man more attractive if seen in the luxury car (Dunn & Searle, 2010). “Male achieve-
ment is ultimately a courtship display,” says Glenn Wilson (1994).
And what do men want? Evolutionary psychology posits that men favor fertility in
women, generally signaled by a youthful and healthy appearance. Men with these prefer-
ences, they note, were the most likely to have many offspring. That may not be the con-
scious desire of most men today, but their evolutionary history unconsciously pulls them
to prefer these characteristics. Evolutionary psychology studies note that sex differences in
mate preferences are very large compared to most other psychological sex differences
(Conroy-Beam et al., 2015). They are also fairly universal across cultures:
▯ Studies in 37 cultures, from Australia to Zambia, reveal that men everywhere feel
attracted to women whose physical features, such as youthful faces and forms, sug-
gest fertility. Women everywhere feel attracted to men whose wealth, power, and
ambition promise resources for protecting and nurturing offspring. But there are
gender similarities, too: Whether residing on an Indonesian island or in urban São
Paulo, both women and men desire kindness, love, and mutual attraction.
▯ Men everywhere tend to be most attracted to women whose age and features suggest
peak fertility. For teen boys, this is a woman several years older than themselves. For
men in their mid-20s, it’s women their own age. For older men, it’s younger women;
the older the man, the greater the age difference he prefers when selecting a mate
(Kenrick et al., 2009). This pattern appears worldwide, in European singles ads,
Indian marital ads, in online dating, and marriage records from the Americas, Africa,
and the Philippines (Singh, 1993; Singh & Randall, 2007), and—though to a some-
what lesser extent—among gays and lesbians, with many gay men preferring younger
partners and lesbian women preferring older partners (Conway et al., 2015). Women
of all ages prefer men just slightly older than themselves. Men married to physically
attractive wives reported higher martial satisfaction, whereas husbands’ physical
attractiveness had little impact on wives’ satisfaction (Meltzer et al., 2014). Again, say
the evolutionary psychologists, we see that natural selection predisposes men to feel
attracted to female features associated with fertility.
▯ Monthly fertility also matters. Women’s behaviors, scents, and voices provide subtle
clues to their ovulation, which men can detect (Haselton & Gildersleeve, 2011).
When at peak fertility, women express greater apprehensiveness of potentially
threatening men and greater ability to detect men’s sexual orientation (Gildersleeve
et al., 2014). They also behave more flirtatiously with men, particularly men who
are confident and socially dominant (Cantu et al., 2014).
Reflecting on those findings, Buss (1999) reports feeling somewhat aston-
ished “that men and women across the world differ in their mate preferences
in precisely the ways predicted by the evolutionists. Just as our fears of snakes,
heights, and spiders provide a window for viewing the survival hazards of our
evolutionary ancestors, our mating desires provide a window for viewing the
resources our ancestors needed for reproduction. We all carry with us today the
desires of our successful forebears.” Or as William Faulkner wrote, “The past is
never dead. In fact, it’s not even past.” Our ancestral past lives on, in us.
Gender and Hormones
Evolutionary psychology may explain why sex differences are rooted in bio-
logical processes, but it doesn’t explain how. One way that biology influences
sex differences is through hormones, chemicals in our bodies that can influ-
ence behavior and mood. For example, men on average have a higher level
of testosterone, a hormone linked to dominance and aggression.
testosterone
A hormone more prevalent in
males than females which is
linked to dominance and
aggression.
Donald Trump is 3 years older than his first wife
Ivana, 17 years older than his second wife Marla, and
24 years older than his current wife, Melania.
©Mark Reinstein/Shutterstock
Genes, Culture, and Gender Chapter 5 117
Hormones are important because genes by themselves cannot be the
source of sex differences: Genetically, males and females differ on only a
single chromosome out of 46, and the Y (male) chromosome is distinguished
primarily by one gene. That gene directs the formation of the testicles, which
begin to secrete testosterone. Girls exposed to excess testosterone during fetal
development tend to exhibit more tomboyish play behavior than other girls
(Hines, 2004) and resemble males in their career preferences, with greater
interest in things than people (Beltz et al., 2011). When asked to rotate
objects—a cognitive task processed differently by males and females—genetic
males who are insensitive to testosterone show brain activity more typical of
females (Van Hemmen et al., 2016). Overall, children exposed to more tes-
tosterone in the womb exhibit the psychological pattern more typical of males,
including less eye contact, lower language skill, and less empathy (Auyeung
et al., 2013). Other case studies have followed males born without penises
who are reared as girls (Reiner & Gearhart, 2004). Despite their being put
in dresses and treated as girls, most exhibit male-typical play and eventually—
in most cases, with some emotional distress—come to have a male identity.
The gender gap in aggression also seems influenced by testosterone. In
various animals, administering testosterone heightens aggressiveness. In
humans, violent male criminals, on average, have higher than normal tes-
tosterone levels; so do National Football League players, boisterous fraternity members,
and college men involved in a sport (Dabbs, 2000; Reed & Meggs, 2017). Moreover, for
both humans and monkeys, the gender difference in aggression appears early in life (before
culture has much effect) and wanes as testosterone levels decline during adulthood.
As people mature to middle age and beyond, a curious thing happens. Women become
more assertive and self-confident, and men become more empathic and less domineering
(Kasen et al., 2006; Pratt et al., 1990). Hormone changes are one possible explanation for
the shrinking gender differences. Role demands are another. Some speculate that during
courtship and early parenthood, social expectations lead both sexes to emphasize traits that
enhance their roles. While courting, providing, and protecting, men play up their macho
sides and forgo their needs for interdependence and nurturance (Gutmann, 1977). While
dating or rearing young children, young women restrain their impulses to assert and be
independent. As men and women graduate from these early adult roles, they supposedly
express more of their restrained tendencies. Each becomes more androgynous—capable of
both assertiveness and nurturance.
Reflections on Evolutionary Psychology
Without disputing natural selection—nature’s process of selecting physical and behavioral
traits that enhance gene survival—critics see a problem with evolutionary explanations.
Evolutionary psychologists sometimes start with a finding (such as the male-female differ-
ence in sexual initiative) and then work backward to construct an explanation for it. As
biologists Paul Ehrlich and Marcus Feldman (2003) have pointed out, the evolutionary
theorist can hardly lose when employing hindsight. Today’s evolutionary psychology is like
yesterday’s Freudian psychology, say such critics: Either theory can be retrofitted to what-
ever happens.
The way to overcome the hindsight bias is to imagine things turning out otherwise. Let’s
try it. Imagine that women were stronger and more physically aggressive than men. “But of
course!” someone might say, “all the better for protecting their young.” And if human males
were never known to have extramarital affairs, might we not see the evolutionary wisdom
behind their fidelity? There is more to bringing offspring to maturity than merely depositing
sperm, so men and women both gain by investing jointly in their children. Males who are
loyal to their mates and offspring are more likely to see their young survive to perpetuate
their genes. Monogamy also increases men’s certainty of paternity. (These are, in fact, evo-
lutionary explanations—again based on hindsight—for why humans, and certain other species
whose young require a heavy parental investment, tend to pair off and be monogamous).
“The finest people marry the
two sexes in their own
person.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Journals, 1843
androgynous
From andro (man) + gyn
(woman)—thus mixing both
masculine and feminine
characteristics.
Outside mainstream science,
other critics challenge the
teaching of evolution. (See
“Focus On: Evolutionary
Science and Religion.”)
The sex difference in risk-taking is at least partially
fueled by testosterone.
©Drpixel/Shutterstock
In species for which males
provide more parental
investment than females, notes
evolutionary psychologist David
Schmitt (2006), males have a
longer-term mating strategy,
are more discriminating among
potential mates, and die later.
118 Part Two Social Influence
Evolutionary psychologists argue that hindsight plays no less a role in cultural explanations:
Why do women and men differ? Because their culture socializes their behavior! When people’s
roles vary across time and place, “culture” describes those roles better than it explains them.
And far from being mere hindsight conjecture, say evolutionary psychologists, their field is
an empirical science that tests evolutionary predictions with data from animal behavior, cross-
cultural observations, and hormonal and genetic studies. As in many scientific fields, observa-
tions inspire a theory that generates new, testable predictions. The predictions alert us to
unnoticed phenomena and allow us to confirm, refute, or revise the theory.
Critics also worry that evolutionary explanations for gang violence, homicidal jealousy,
and rape might reinforce and justify male aggression as natural behaviors—and do the same
for men who cheat on their wives with younger women. But remember, reply the evolution-
ary psychologists, evolutionary wisdom is wisdom from the past. It tells us what behaviors
worked in our early history as a species. Whether such tendencies are still adaptive today
or much less socially acceptable is an entirely different question.
Evolutionary psychology’s critics acknowledge that evolution helps explain both our
commonalities and our differences (a certain amount of diversity aids survival). But they
contend that our common evolutionary heritage does not, by itself, predict the enormous
cultural variation in human marriage patterns (from one spouse to a succession of spouses
to multiple wives to multiple husbands to spouse swapping). Nor does it explain cultural
changes in behavior patterns over mere decades of time. The most significant trait that
nature has endowed us with, it seems, is the capacity to adapt—to learn and to change.
Evolution is not genetic determinism, say its defenders, because evolution has prepared us
Evolutionary Science and Religion
focus
ON
A century and a half after Charles Darwin wrote On the
Origin of Species, controversy continues over his big idea:
that every earthly creature is descended from another
earthly creature. The controversy rages most intensely in
the United States, where a Gallup survey reveals that half
of adults do not believe that evolution accounts for “how
human beings came to exist on Earth” and that 42% be-
lieve humans were created “within the past 10,000 years
or so” (Newport, 2014). This skepticism of evolution per-
sists despite evidence, including research showing spe-
cies’ genetic relatedness, which long ago persuaded 95%
of scientists that “human beings have developed over mil-
lions of years” (Gallup, 1996).
For most scientists, mutation and natural selection ex-
plain the emergence of life, including its ingenious de-
signs. For example, the human eye, an engineering marvel
that encodes and transmits a rich stream of information,
has its building blocks “dotted around the animal king-
dom,” enabling nature to select mutations that over time
improved the design (Dennett, 2005). Indeed, many sci-
entists are fond of quoting the famous dictum of geneticist
(and Russian Orthodox Church member) Theodosius
Dobzhansky, “Nothing makes sense in biology except in
the light of evolution.”
Alan Leshner (2005), the American Association for the
Advancement of Science’s former executive director,
lamented the polarization caused by zealots at both the
antiscience and the antireligious extremes. To resolve the
growing science-religion tension, he believes scientists
should communicate to the public that science and reli-
gion can co-exist, with each providing benefits to society.
Many scientists concur with Leshner, believing that sci-
ence offers answers to questions such as “when?” and
“how?” and that religion offers answers to “who?” and
“why?” In the fifth century, St. Augustine anticipated to-
day’s science-affirming people of faith: “The universe was
brought into being in a less than fully formed state, but
was gifted with the capacity to transform itself from un-
formed matter into a truly marvelous array of structures
and forms” (Wilford, 1999).
And the universe truly is marvelous, say cosmologists.
Had gravity been a tiny bit stronger or weaker, or had the
carbon proton weighed ever so slightly more or less, our
universe—which is so extraordinarily right for producing
life—would never have produced us. Although there are
questions beyond science (why is there something rather
than nothing?), this much appears true, concludes cosmol-
ogist Paul Davies (2004, 2007): Nature seems ingeniously
devised to produce self-replicating, information-processing
systems (us). Although we appear to have been created
over eons of time, the end result is our wonderfully
complex, meaningful, and hope-filled existence.
Genes, Culture, and Gender Chapter 5 119
▯ How are we humans alike, how do we differ—and why?
Evolutionary psychologists study how natural selection fa-
vors behavioral traits that promote the perpetuation of
one’s genes. Although part of evolution’s legacy is our hu-
man capacity to learn and adapt (and therefore to differ
from one another), the evolutionary perspective highlights
the kinship that results from our shared human nature.
▯ Evolutionary psychologists theorize how evolution
might have predisposed gender differences in behaviors
such as aggression and sexual initiative. Nature’s mat-
ing game favors males who take sexual initiative toward
females—especially those with physical features suggest-
ing fertility—and who seek aggressive dominance in
competing with other males. Females, who have fewer
reproductive chances, place a greater priority on select-
ing mates offering the resources to protect and nurture
their young.
▯ Hormonal influences on behavior may be one mecha-
nism by which sex differences are influenced by biology.
▯ Critics say that evolutionary explanations are some-
times after-the-fact conjectures that fail to account for
the reality of cultural diversity; they also question
whether enough empirical evidence exists to support
evolutionary psychology’s theories and are concerned
that these theories will reinforce troublesome
stereotypes.
SUMMING UP How Are We Influenced by Biology?
to adapt to varied environments (Confer et al., 2010). As everyone agrees, cultures vary
and cultures change—and that’s where we turn next.
HOW ARE WE INFLUENCED
BY CULTURE?
Understand how culture shapes behavior and
gender roles.
Imagine getting on a plane tonight, settling down to sleep, and waking up tomorrow in
another country. You immediately notice that people are speaking a different language,
greeting each other in different ways, and wearing different clothing than in the country
you inhabited just the day before. For all of our similarities as humans, we also exhibit a
breathtaking diversity in the way we live our lives around the world.
We’ll begin by discussing cultural influences in general and then, as we did in the previ-
ous section on biology, will use gender differences as a vehicle to explore cultural influences
on behavior.
Culture and Behavior
Perhaps our most important similarity, the hallmark of our species, is our capacity to learn
and adapt. Our genes enable an adaptive human brain—a cerebral hard drive that receives
the culture’s software. Evolution has prepared us to live creatively in a changing world and
to thrive in environments from equatorial jungles to arctic ice fields. Compared with bees,
birds, and bulldogs, nature has humans on a looser genetic leash. Ironically, our shared
human biology enables our cultural diversity. It enables those in one culture to value prompt-
ness, welcome frankness, or accept premarital sex, whereas those in another culture do not.
As social psychologist Roy Baumeister (2005, p. 29) observes, “Evolution made us for
culture.” (See “Focus On: The Cultural Animal.”)
It’s important to understand that biology and culture are not two completely separate
influences. More often than not, they interact to produce the diversity of behavior you see
around you. Genes are not fixed blueprints; their expression depends on the environment,
much as the taste of tea is not “expressed” until meeting a hot water environment. One
study of New Zealand young adults revealed a gene variation that put people at risk for
“Stand tall, Bipedal Ape. The
shark may outswim you, the
cheetah outrun you, the swift
outfly you, the redwood out-
last you. But you have the
biggest gifts of all.”
—Richard Dawkins,
The Devil’s Chaplain, 2003
culture
The enduring behaviors, ideas,
attitudes, and traditions shared
by a large group of people and
transmitted from one generation
to the next.
120 Part Two Social Influence
The Cultural Animal
focus
ON
We are, said Aristotle, the social animal. We humans have
at least one thing in common with wolves and bees: We
flourish by organizing ourselves into groups and working
together.
But more than that, notes Roy Baumeister, we are—as
he labels us in the title of his 2005 book—The Cultural
Animal. Humans more than other animals harness the
power of culture to make life better. “Culture is a better
way of being social,” he writes. We have culture to thank
for our communication through language, our driving
safely on one side of the road, our eating fruit in winter,
and our use of money to pay for our cars and fruit. Culture
facilitates our survival and reproduction, and nature has
blessed us with a brain that, like no other, enables
culture.
Other animals show the rudiments of culture and lan-
guage. Monkeys who learn new food-washing techniques
then pass them to future generations. And chimps exhibit
a modest capacity for language. But no species can ac-
cumulate progress across generations as smartly as hu-
mans. Your nineteenth-century ancestors had no cars, no
indoor plumbing, no electricity, no air conditioning, no In-
ternet, no smartphones, no Facebook pages, and no
Post-it notes—all things for which you can thank culture.
Intelligence enables innovation, and culture enables
dissemination—the transmission of information and inno-
vation across time and place.
The division of labor is “another huge and powerful
advantage of culture,” notes Baumeister. Few of us grow
food or build shelter, yet nearly everyone reading this
book enjoys food and shelter. Indeed, books themselves
are a tribute to the division of labor enabled by culture.
Although only two lucky people’s names go on this book’s
cover, the product is actually the work of a coordinated
team of researchers, reviewers, assistants, and editors.
Books and other media disseminate knowledge, provid-
ing the engine of progress.
“Culture is what is special about human beings,” con-
cludes Baumeister. “Culture helps us to become some-
thing much more than the sum of our talents, efforts, and
other individual blessings. In that sense, culture is the
greatest blessing of all. . . . Alone we would be but cun-
ning brutes, at the mercy of our surroundings. Together,
we can sustain a system that enables us to make life pro-
gressively better for ourselves, our children, and those
who come after.”
depression, but only if they had also experienced major life stresses such as their parents’
divorce (Caspi et al., 2003). Neither the stress nor the gene alone produced depression,
but the two interacting did. Such findings have spawned the science of epigenetics, which
considers how environments modify gene expression.
We humans have been selected not only for big brains and biceps but also for culture.
We come prepared to learn language and to bond and cooperate with others in securing
food, caring for young, and protecting ourselves. Nature therefore predisposes us to learn
whatever culture we are born into. The cultural perspective highlights human adaptability.
People’s “natures are alike,” said Confucius; “it is their habits that carry them far apart.”
And we are still far apart, note world culture researchers Ronald Inglehart and Christian
Welzel (2005). Despite increasing education, “we are not moving toward a uniform global
culture: cultural convergence is not taking place. A society’s cultural heritage is remarkably
enduring” (p. 46).
CULTURAL DIVERSITY
The diversity of our languages, customs, and expressive behaviors confirms that much of
our behavior is socially programmed, not hardwired. The genetic leash is long. As sociolo-
gist Ian Robertson (1987) has noted:
Americans eat oysters but not snails. The French eat snails but not locusts. The Zulus eat
locusts but not fish. The Jews eat fish but not pork. The Hindus eat pork but not beef. The
Russians eat beef but not snakes. The Chinese eat snakes but not people. The Jalé of New
Guinea find people delicious. (p. 67)
If we all lived as homogeneous ethnic groups in separate regions of the world, as some
people still do, cultural diversity would be less relevant to our daily living. In Japan,
epigenetics
The study of environmental
influences on gene expression
that occur without DNA change.
“Somehow the adherents of
the ‘nurture’ side of the argu-
ments have scared them-
selves silly at the power and
inevitability of genes and
missed the greatest lesson of
all: the genes are on their
side.”
—Matt Ridley,
Nature via Nurture, 2003
Genes, Culture, and Gender Chapter 5 121
where 98.5% of people are Japanese (CIA, 2017), internal cultural differ-
ences are minimal. In contrast, cultural differences abound in New York
City, where more than one-third of the 9 million residents are foreign born.
Increasingly, cultural diversity surrounds us. More and more we live in a
global village, connected to our fellow villagers by electronic social networks,
jumbo jets, and international trade. The mingling of cultures is nothing new.
“American” jeans were invented in 1872 by German immigrant Levi Strauss
by combining Genes, the trouser style of Genoese sailors, with denim cloth
from a French town (Legrain, 2003).
Confronting another culture is sometimes a startling experience. American
males may feel uncomfortable when Middle Eastern heads of state greet the
U.S. president with a kiss on the cheek. A German student, accustomed to
speaking to “Herr Professor” only on rare occasions, considers it strange that
at my [DM’s] institution, most faculty office doors are open and students
stop by freely. An Iranian student on her first visit to an American McDonald’s
restaurant fumbles around in her paper bag looking for the eating utensils
until she sees the other customers eating their french fries with, of all things,
their hands. In many areas of the globe, your best manners and mine are
serious breaches of etiquette. Foreigners visiting Japan often struggle to master
the rules of the social game—when to take off their shoes, how to pour the
tea, when to give and open gifts, how to act toward someone higher or lower
in the social hierarchy.
Migration and refugee evacuations are mixing cultures more than ever.
“East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,” wrote the
nineteenth-century British author Rudyard Kipling. But today, East and West,
and North and South, meet all the time. Italy is home to many Albanians,
Germany to Turks, England—where Mohammed in its various spellings is now
the most common boy’s name (Cohen, 2011)—to Pakistanis. The result is both
friendship and conflict. One in 5 Canadians and 1 in 8 Americans is an
immigrant. As we work, play, and live with people from diverse cultural back-
grounds, it helps to understand how our cultures influence us and how our
cultures differ. In a conflict-laden world, achieving peace requires appreciation
for both our genuine differences and our deep similarities.
NORMS: EXPECTED BEHAVIOR
As etiquette rules illustrate, all cultures have their accepted ideas about appro-
priate behavior. We often view these social expectations, or norms, as a nega-
tive force that imprisons people in a blind effort to perpetuate tradition. Norms
do restrain and control us—so successfully and so subtly that we hardly sense
their existence. Like fish in the ocean, we are all so immersed in our cultures
that we must leap out of them to understand their influence. “When we see
other Dutch people behaving in what foreigners would call a Dutch way,”
noted Dutch psychologists Willem Koomen and Anton Dijker (1997), “we
often do not realize that the behavior is typically Dutch.”
There is no better way to learn the norms of our native culture than to visit
another culture and see that its members do things that way, whereas we do
them this way. When living in Scotland, I [DM] acknowledged to my children
that, yes, Europeans eat meat with the fork facing down in the left hand. “But
we Americans consider it good manners to cut the meat and then transfer the
fork to the right hand. I admit it’s inefficient. But it’s the way we do it.”
To those who don’t accept them, such norms may seem arbitrary and
confining. To most in the Western world, the Muslim woman’s head covering (known as
the hijab) seems arbitrary and confining, but not to most in Muslim cultures. The Muslim
women students in my [JT’s] classes believe the hijab encourages men to see them as people
rather than as sexual objects. Just as a stage play moves smoothly when the actors know
their lines, so social behavior occurs smoothly when people know what to expect. Norms
norms
Standards for accepted and
expected behavior. Norms
prescribe “proper” behavior. (In
a different sense of the word,
norms also describe what most
others do—what is normal.)
Although some norms are universal, every culture
has its own norms—rules for accepted and ex-
pected social behavior.
©J. B. Handelsman. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
“Women kiss women good night. Men kiss
women good night. But men do not kiss
men good night—especially in Armonk.”
By holding his hand, former President George W.
Bush honored Saudi friendship norms when
strolling with the late King Abdullah in 2005. Many
heterosexual North American men were, however,
startled by the violation of their own norm of dis-
tance from other men.
©J. Scott Applewhite/AP Images
122 Part Two Social Influence
grease the social machinery. In unfamiliar situations, when the norms may be unclear,
we monitor others’ behavior and adjust our own accordingly.
Cultures vary in their norms for expressiveness, punctuality, rule breaking, and
personal space. Consider the following:
INDIVIDUAL CHOICES Cultures vary in how much they emphasize the individual
self (individualistic cultures) versus others and the society (collectivistic cultures). As
a result, Western (usually individualistic) countries allow people more latitude in
making their own decisions. When I [JT] was in college, my Pakistani-American
friend wanted to go to graduate school to study Latin. Her parents insisted she go
to medical school, saying they would cut off their financial support if she did not.
Having grown up in the United States, I was shocked that her parents would tell her
what profession to pursue, but in collectivistic cultures this type of obedience to one’s
parents is more widely accepted (Lum et al., 2016).
EXPRESSIVENESS To someone from a relatively formal northern European culture,
a person whose roots are in an expressive Latin American culture may seem “warm,
charming, inefficient, and time-wasting.” To the Latin American person, the northern
European may seem “efficient, cold, and overconcerned with time” (Beaulieu, 2004;
Triandis, 1981). And they might be right: northern Europeans walk faster on public streets
than those in Latin America, and northern European bank clocks are more accurate (Levine
& Norenzayan, 1999). North American tourists in Japan may wonder about the lack of eye
contact from passing pedestrians. (See “Research Close-Up: Passing Encounters, East and
West.”)
PUNCTUALITY Latin American business executives who arrive late for a dinner
e ngagement may be mystified by their time-obsessed North American counterparts.
RULE-BREAKING Norms are especially important in traditional, collectivistic cultures. In
one study, Koreans (compared to Americans) were more likely to avoid co-workers who were
vegetarians, a choice against the norm. To most Americans, being a vegetarian is a personal
choice; to a Korean, it signals standing out from the group and is thus undesirable (Kinias
et al., 2014). Many collectivistic cultures promote the belief that human suffering—such as
contracting a disease—is caused by violating social norms (Sullivan et al., 2012). Collectivistic
cultures are more likely to stigmatize people seen as different, whether through identity (gays
and lesbians, immigrants) or behavior (heavy drinkers, drug addicts [Shin et al., 2013]).
PERSONAL SPACE Personal space is a sort of portable bubble or buffer zone that we
like to maintain between ourselves and others. As the situation changes, the bubble varies
in size. With strangers, most Americans maintain a fairly large personal space, keeping
4 feet or more between us. On uncrowded buses, or in rest-
rooms or libraries, we protect our space and respect others’
space. We let friends come closer (Novelli et al., 2010).
Individuals differ: Some people prefer more personal space
than others (Perry et al., 2013). Groups differ, too: Adults main-
tain more distance than do children. Men keep more distance
from one another than women do. For reasons unknown, cul-
tures near the equator prefer less space and more touching and
hugging. Thus, the British and the Scandinavians prefer more
distance than the French and the Arabs; North Americans prefer
more space than Latin Americans (Sorokowska et al., 2017).
To see the effect of encroaching on another’s personal
space, play space invader. Stand or sit a foot or so from a friend
and strike up a conversation. Does the person fidget, look
away, back off, show other signs of discomfort? These are the
signs of arousal noted by space-invading researchers (Altman
& Vinsel, 1978).
personal space
The buffer zone we like to
maintain around our bodies. Its
size depends on our culture and
our familiarity with whoever is
near us.
“Some 30 inches from my
nose, the frontier of my per-
son goes.”
—W. H. Auden (1907–1973)
Norms—rules for accepted and expected behavior—vary by culture.
©georgeclerk/E+/Getty Images
Cultures mixing. As this family (with an
Asian American mother and an African
American father) illustrates, immigration
and globalization are bringing once-
distant cultures together.
©pixelheadphoto digitalskillet/Shutterstock
Genes, Culture, and Gender Chapter 5 123
Passing Encounters, East and West
On my [DM’s] Midwestern American campus and in my
town, sidewalk passersby routinely glance and smile at
one another. In Britain and China, where I have spent time,
I have rarely observed such microinteractions. To a
European, our greeting passing strangers might seem a
bit silly and disrespectful of privacy; to a Midwesterner,
avoiding eye contact—what sociologists have called “civil
inattention”—might seem aloof.
To quantify the culture difference in pedestrian interac-
tions, an international team led by Miles Patterson and
Yuichi Iizuka (2007) conducted a simple field experiment
both in the United States and in Japan with the unwitting
participation of more than 1,000 pedestrians. Their proce-
dure illustrates how social psychologists sometimes con-
duct unobtrusive research in natural settings (Patterson,
2008). As Figure 1 depicts, a confederate (an accomplice
of the experimenter) would initiate one of three behaviors
when within about 12 feet of an approaching pedestrian
on an uncrowded sidewalk: (1) avoidance (looking straight
ahead), (2) glancing at the person for less than a second,
and (3) looking at the person and smiling. A trailing ob-
server would then record the pedestrian’s reaction. Did
the pedestrian glance at the confederate? smile? nod?
verbally greet the confederate? (The order of the three
conditions was randomized and unknown to the trailing
observer, ensuring that the person recording the data was
“blind” to the experimental condition.)
As you might expect, the pedestrians were more likely to
look at someone who looked at them and to smile at, nod to,
or greet someone who also smiled at them. This was espe-
cially so when that someone was female rather than male.
But as Figure 2 shows, the culture differences were never-
theless striking. As the research team expected, in view of
Japan’s greater respect for privacy and cultural reserve
when interacting with outgroups, Americans were much
more likely to smile at, nod to, or greet the confederate.
In Japan, they conclude, “there is little pressure to re-
ciprocate the smile of the confederate because there is
no relationship with the confederate and no obligation to
respond.”
research
CLOSE-UP
FIGURE 1
Illustration of Passing Encounter
Source: Patterson, M. L., Iizuka, Y., Tubbs, M., Ansel, J., Tsutsumi, M., &
Anson, J. (2007).
Participant:
Solitary pedestrian
with no one close in
front or behind.
Confederate:
Initiates the
condition at
approximately 12 ft.
from the participant.
Observer:
Approximately 30 ft.
behind the
confederate.
Observer monitors
the participant once
the confederate
makes a hand signal
to start the condition.
FIGURE 2
American and Japanese Pedestrian Responses,
by Condition
Source: Adapted from Patterson, M. L., Iizuka, Y., Tubbs, M., Ansel, J.,
Tsutsumi, M., & Anson, J. (2007).
Avoid Glance
Condition
% Smiles
40
50
30
10
5
15
25
35
45
20
0
Look and
smile
US
Japan
124 Part Two Social Influence
Children learn many of their attitudes from their peers.
©wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock
Cultures differ not only in their norms for such behaviors, but
also in the strength of their norms. One 33-nation study asked
people to rate the appropriateness of various behaviors (such as
eating or crying) in different situations (such as at a bank or a
party). Societies with stronger, enforced norms for behaviors are
“tight” cultures, more likely to have been exposed to threats such
as territorial conflict or resource scarcity (Gelfand et al., 2011).
Peer-Transmitted Culture
Cultures, like ice cream, come in many flavors. On Wall Street,
men mostly wear suits, and women often wear skirts and dresses.
In Scotland, many men wear pleated skirts (kilts) as formal dress.
In some equatorial cultures, men and women wear virtually noth-
ing at all. How are such traditions preserved across generations?
The prevailing assumption is what Judith Rich Harris (1998,
2007) calls The Nurture Assumption: Parental nurture, the way
parents bring their children up, governs who their children become. On that much, Freud-
ians and behaviorists—and your next-door neighbor—agree. Comparing the extremes of loved
children and abused children suggests that parenting does matter. Moreover, children do
acquire many of their values, including their political affiliation and religious faith, at home.
But if children’s personalities likewise are molded by parental example and nurture, then
children who grow up in the same families should be noticeably alike, shouldn’t they?
That presumption is refuted by the most astonishing, agreed-upon, and dramatic finding
of developmental psychology. In the enduring words of behavior geneticists Robert Plomin
and Denise Daniels (1987), “Two children in the same family [are on average] as different
from one another as are pairs of children selected randomly from the population.”
The evidence from studies of twins and biological and adoptive siblings indicates that
genetic influences explain roughly 40% of individual variations in personality traits
(Vukasović & Bratko, 2015). Shared environmental influences—including the shared home
influence—account for only 0 to 1% of their personality differences. So what accounts for
the rest? Much of it is peer influence, Harris argues. What children and teens care about
most is not what their parents think but what their friends think. Children and youth learn
their culture—their games, their musical tastes, their accents, even their dirty words—mostly
from peers. Most teens therefore talk, act, and dress more like their peers than their parents.
In hindsight, that makes sense. It’s their peers with whom they play and eventually will
work and mate. Consider the following:
▯ Preschoolers will often refuse to try a certain food despite parents’ urgings—until
they are put at a table with a group of children who like it.
▯ Having friends who text while driving triples the odds of your doing so (Trivedi
et al., 2017).
▯ Young immigrant children whose families are transplanted into foreign cultures usu-
ally grow up preferring the language and norms of their new peer culture. A young
child who moves with her family from China to the United States will speak English
with an American accent—even if her parents never learn English or have heavy
accents. Youth may “code-switch” when they step back into their homes, but their
hearts and minds are with their peer groups. Likewise, deaf children of hearing par-
ents who attend schools for the deaf usually leave their parents’ culture and assimi-
late into deaf culture.
Therefore, if we left a group of children with their same schools, neighborhoods, and
peers but switched the parents around, says Harris (1996) in taking her argument to its
limits, they “would develop into the same sort of adults.” Parents have an important influ-
ence, but it’s substantially indirect; parents help define the schools, neighborhoods, and peers
that directly influence whether their children become delinquent, use drugs, or get pregnant.
Genes, Culture, and Gender Chapter 5 125
Moreover, children often take their cues from slightly older children, who get their cues from
older youth, who take theirs from young adults in the parents’ generation.
The links of influence from parental group to child group are loose enough that the
cultural transmission is never perfect. And in both human and primate cultures, change
comes from the young. When one monkey discovers a better way of washing food or when
people develop a new idea about fashion or gender roles, the innovation usually comes from
the young and is more readily embraced by younger adults. Thus, cultural traditions continue;
yet cultures change.
CULTURAL SIMILARITY
Thanks to human adaptability, cultures differ. Yet beneath the veneer of cultural differences,
cross-cultural psychologists see “an essential universality” (Lonner, 1980). As members of
one species, the processes that underlie our differing behaviors are much the same every-
where (Figure 3).
People everywhere have some common norms for friendship. From studies conducted
in Britain, Italy, Hong Kong, and Japan, Michael Argyle and Monika Henderson (1985)
noted several cultural variations in the norms that define the role of friend. For example,
in Japan it’s especially important not to embarrass a friend with public criticism. But there
are also some apparently universal norms: respect the friend’s privacy; make eye contact
while talking; don’t divulge things said in confidence. Across 75 nations, the most valued
traits were honesty, fairness, kindness, judgment, and curiosity—nearly all crucial virtues for
friendships and relationships (McGrath, 2015).
Around the world, people describe others with between two and five universal personal-
ity dimensions (McCrae & Costa, 2008; Saucier et al., 2014). Evaluating others as good or
bad appears across almost all cultures and languages. All cultures have norms, so all cul-
tures evaluate how well others follow those norms (Saucier et al., 2014).
Likewise, there are five universal dimensions of social beliefs (Leung & Bond, 2004).
Across 38 countries, people varied in cynicism, social complexity, reward for application,
spirituality, and fate control (Figure 4). People’s adherence to these social beliefs appears
to guide their living. Cynics express lower life satisfaction and favor assertive influence
tactics and right-wing politics. Those who believe in hard work (“reward for application”)
are inclined to invest themselves in study, planning, and competing.
Wherever people form status hierarchies, they also talk to higher-status people in the
respectful way they often talk to strangers. And they talk to lower-status people in the
more familiar, first-name way they speak to friends (Brown, 1965, 1987; Kroger & Wood,
1992). Patients call their physician “Dr. So and So”; the physician may reply using the
patients’ first names. Students and professors typically address one another in a similarly
nonmutual way.
Most languages have two forms of the English pronoun “you”: a respectful form and a
familiar form (for example, Sie and du in German, vous and tu in French, usted and tu in
Spanish). People typically use the familiar form with intimates and subordinates, with close
friends and family members, but also in speaking to children and pets. A German adoles-
cent receives a boost when strangers begin addressing him or her as “Sie” instead of “du.”
Culture and Gender
In the first part of this chapter we considered biological and evolutionary explanations for
why men and women differ. Yet biology is not the entire story: What it means to be a man
or woman, boy or girl, differs from one culture to another.
We can see the shaping power of culture in ideas about how men and women should
behave. And we can see culture in the disapproval men and women endure when they
violate those expectations (Kite, 2001). In countries everywhere, girls spend more time
helping with housework and child care, and boys spend more time in unsupervised play
(Edwards, 1991; Kalenkoski et al., 2009; United Nations, 2010). Even in contemporary,
dual-career, North American marriages, men do most of the household repairs, and women
“I am confident that [if] mod-
ern psychology had devel-
oped in, let us say, India, the
psychologists there would
have discovered most of the
principles discovered by the
Westerners.”
—Cross-cultural psychologist John
E. Williams (1993)
“At the United Nations, we
have always understood that
our work for development de-
pends on building a success-
ful partnership with the African
farmer and her husband.”
— Former Secretary-General Kofi
Annan, 2002
In The Female Eunuch,
published in 1970, Germaine
Greer noted how the language
of affection reduces women to
foods and baby animals—
honey, lamb, sugar, sweetie-pie,
kitten, chick.
126 Part Two Social Influence
arrange the child care (Bianchi et al., 2000; Fisher et al., 2007). When Ph.D. students in
economics discuss women in an online rumors forum, they are more likely to mention
personal information and physical appearance (using words such as “hot” and “gorgeous”).
When discussing men, they are more likely to mention professional topics, using words
such as “textbook” and “motivated” (Wu, 2017).
for_sharing
nice
laughter
fine
amazinglike well
thanks
lovelol thank
pretty
hope
!
gladok
laugh
enjoy
playing
kind
perfect
better_than
treat
i’m
you_so_much
truly
ha_ha
haha
loves
<3
awesome
beautiful
good
betterhappy
great
please
best
that_was
haha
that's
friend
fun
@justinbieber
thats
play
win
Imao
(:
:)
cute
okay
funny
true
hahaha
joke
ready
dear
smile
happy_new_year good_morning
so
god
honestly
welcome
friendship
cool
you
pretty_sure
happy_birthday
definitely
too
care
truth
blessed
appreciate
super
sweet
alright
it's
goodness
hehe
easy
loved
appreciated
For_the_follow
yeah
trust
wow
is
i
share
silly
:)
smiling
luck
friends
good_one
correlation strength relative frequency
a a a
played
okay
sweet
good_one
and
to_all
loving
shareokcool
lovely
you
wonderful
care
sure
better
that’s
laugh
for_sharing
haha !
very
hahaha
hehe
:d
:p
follow
Smile
cheers
trust
lol easy
winning
super
smiling
for_the
support
amazing
bless
truly
blessed
funnyfun
good_morning
enjoy
happy_birthday
have_a
beautiful
good_night
appreciated
hahahaha
holi
joy
prizes
god
happiness
......
my
glad
day
prize
loved
peace
success
lucky
welcome
bro
u
play
play
#nanobiddingwar
cute
award
pretty
:)
:-)
happy love
good
:)
friends
luck
like
best
thanks please
friend
hope
win
nice
awesomegreat
true
wow
well
ha
dear
new_year
(a)
(b)
FIGURE 3
Words used to express
positive emotion in (a)
India and (b) the U.S.
In a study of the language of
Facebook users, positive emo-
tion was expressed in similar
ways in India (top) and the U.S.
(bottom), with a few cultural dif-
ferences (such as the greater
use of “thanks” in India).
(a-b) Source: Kern, M. L., & Sap, M.
(2014, February).
Genes, Culture, and Gender Chapter 5 127
Gender socialization, it has been said, gives girls “roots” and boys “wings.” Such behavior
expectations for males and females—of who should cook, wash dishes, hunt game, and lead
companies and countries—define gender roles.
Does culture construct these gender roles? Or do gender roles merely reflect men’s and
women’s natural behavior tendencies? The variety of gender roles across cultures and over
time shows that culture indeed helps construct our gender roles.
Gender Roles Vary with Culture
Despite gender role inequalities, the majority of the world’s people would ideally like to
see more parallel male and female roles. A 2010 Pew Global Attitudes survey asked 25,000
people whether life was more satisfying when both spouses work and share child care, or
when women stay home and care for the children while the husband provides. In 21 of 22
countries, most chose both spouses working.
However, large country-to-country differences exist. Pakistanis disagreed with the
world majority opinion by 4 to 1, whereas the Spanish concurred by 13 to 1. When jobs
are scarce, should men have more right to a job? Yes, agreed about 1 in 8 people in
Britain, Spain, and the United States—and 4 in 5 people in Indonesia, Pakistan, and
Nigeria (Pew, 2010).
Overall, observe Wendy Wood and Alice Eagly (2000, 2002), culture often reinforces
gender roles that may have originated with biological demands. Women gathered because
they needed to stay close to home; men hunted because they didn’t. Cultural differences
may also begin with one difference between men and women influencing many others.
Men’s greater physical strength may have also led to patriarchy being the most common
system. Virtually all societies have men in positions of social power and assign different
gender role
A set of behavior expectations
(norms) for males and females.
FIGURE 4
Leung and Bond’s
Universal Social Belief
Dimensions
The Big Five Social Beliefs
Cynicism
Social complexity
Reward for application
Spirituality
Fate control
Sample Quvestionnaire Item
“Powerful people tend to exploit others.”
“One has to deal with matters according to the
specific circumstances.”
“One will succeed if he/she really tries.”
“Religious faith contributes to good mental health.”
“Fate determines one’s success and failures.”
In Western countries, gender roles are becoming more flexible. No longer is piloting necessarily men’s work or preschool teaching necessarily
women’s work.
(left): Source: U.S.Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Alfred A Gerloff Jr.; (right): ©Spencer Grant/PhotoEdit
128 Part Two Social Influence
roles to men and women. As a consequence, similarities across cultures might represent
male social power rather than evolved differences.
Gender Roles Vary over Time
In the past half-century—a thin slice of our long history—gender roles have changed dramati-
cally. In 1938, just 1 in 5 Americans approved “of a married woman earning money in
business or industry if she has a husband capable of supporting her.” By 1996, 4 in 5
approved (Niemi et al., 1989; NORC, 1996). Among U.S. 12th graders in the late 1970s,
59% agreed that “A preschooler is likely to suffer if the mother works,” but by 2015 only
20% agreed (Donnelly et al., 2015; Twenge, 2017). In the 1960s and 1970s, U.S. books used
four times as many male pronouns as female pronouns, but by 2008 the ratio had shrunk
to two to one (Twenge et al., 2012).
Behavioral changes have accompanied this attitude shift. In 1965 the Harvard Business
School had never granted a degree to a woman. In its 2016 class, 41% of students were
women. From 1960 to 2016, women rose from 6% to 47% of U.S. medical students and
from 3% to 51% of law students (AAMC, 2017; ABA, 2017; Hunt, 2000)—thus, the majority
of those studying to be lawyers are now women. Role models may be a crucial catalyst for
such shifts. When a law in India reserved leadership positions in some villages for women,
girls became more likely to aspire to higher education and careers compared to the villages
without female role models (Beaman et al., 2012).
Things have changed at home, too. In the mid-1960s American married women
devoted seven times as many hours to housework as did their husbands (Bianchi et al.,
2000). By 2013, the gender gap had shrunk, yet persisted: 22% of men and 50% of
women did housework in an average day, with women averaging 2.3 hours on their
housework days and men 1.4 hours on theirs (BLS, 2017). Mothers in 2011 still spent
twice as much time on child care as men did. Mothers spent three times as many hours
on paid work as they did in 1965, but still worked for pay only about half as many hours
as men (Pew Research, 2013).
The trends toward more gender equality appear across many cultures—for example,
women are increasingly represented in the parliaments of most nations (Inglehart & Welzel,
2005; IPU, 2017). Such changes, across cultures and over a remarkably short time, signal
that evolution and biology do not render gender roles unchangeable: Time also bends the
genders. Progressive gender roles may also bend cultures toward peace: Societies with more
gender equality are less likely to engage in war and are less violent (Caprioli & Boyer, 2001;
Melander et al., 2005).
Overall, gender roles have shifted considerably over the decades, yet many sex differences
still persist. The interplay of biology and culture will continue, and in the decades to come
gender roles may continue to evolve.
▯ The cultural perspective highlights human diversity—
the behaviors and ideas that define a group and that are
transmitted across generations. The differences in atti-
tudes and behaviors from one culture to another indi-
cate the extent to which we are the products of cultural
norms and roles. Yet cross-cultural psychologists also
examine the “essential universality” of all people. For
example, despite their differences, cultures have a num-
ber of norms in common, such as respecting privacy in
friendships and disapproving of incest.
▯ Much of culture’s influence is transmitted to children
by their peers.
▯ The most heavily researched of roles—gender roles—
reflect biological influence but also illustrate culture’s
strong impact. The universal tendency has been for
males, more than females, to occupy socially dominant
roles.
▯ Gender roles show significant variation from culture to
culture and from time to time.
SUMMING UP: How Are We Influenced by Culture?
Genes, Culture, and Gender Chapter 5 129
HOW ARE FEMALES AND MALES
ALIKE AND DIFFERENT?
Describe how males and females are alike, and how
they differ.
As we’ve seen, nowhere is the interplay of biology and culture more evident than in the
differences between men and women. So: What are those differences—not the popular
conceptions or stereotypes, but the actual differences found in research?
First, let’s consider how men and women are similar. “Of the 46 chromosomes in the
human genome, 45 are unisex,” noted Judith Rich Harris (1998). Females and males are
therefore similar in many physical traits and developmental milestones during infancy, such
as the age of sitting up, teething, and walking. They also are alike in many psychological
traits, such as overall vocabulary, creativity, intelligence, extraversion, and happiness.
Women and men feel the same emotions and longings, both dote on their children, and
they have similar-appearing brains. Indeed, noted Ethan Zell and his colleagues (2015) in
their review of 106 meta-analyses (each a statistical digest of dozens of studies), the com-
mon result for most variables studied is gender similarity (Hyde, 2018). On most psychologi-
cal attributes, the overlap between the sexes is larger than the difference (Carothers & Reis,
2013; Hyde, 2005). Your “opposite sex” is actually your similar sex.
Yet of course there are also pronounced sex differences. Compared to males, the average
female
▯ has 70% more fat, has 40% less muscle, is 5 inches shorter, and weighs 40 pounds less;
▯ is more sensitive to smells and sounds;
▯ is twice as likely to experience anxiety disorders or depression (Salk et al., 2017).
Compared to females, the average male is
▯ slower to enter puberty (by about two years) but quicker to die (by four years,
worldwide);
▯ three times more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD (attention deficit/hyperactivity
disorder), four times more likely to commit suicide, and five times more likely to
be killed by lightning;
▯ more capable of wiggling his ears.
During the 1970s, many scholars worried that studies of such gender differences might
reinforce stereotypes. Would gender differences be construed as women’s deficits? Although
the findings confirm some stereotypes of women—as less physically aggressive, more nurtur-
ing, and more socially sensitive—those traits are actually preferred by most people, whether
male or female (Prentice & Carranza, 2002; Swim, 1994). Small wonder, then, that most
people rate their beliefs and feelings regarding women as more favorable than their feelings
regarding men—a phenomenon some have labeled the “women are wonderful” effect (Eagly,
1994; Haddock & Zanna, 1994).
As we discuss the gender differences found in research, keep in mind they are differences
based on averages—they do not apply to every member of the group. Many of these differ-
ences may resonate with your own experiences. Others might not, but that doesn’t neces-
sarily mean they are incorrect. For example, despite being female, I [JT] am not particularly
interested in shopping. So if a study found that women are more interested in shopping, I
would be the exception. When I was younger, I didn’t like reading about gender differences
(like in shopping) that made women look frivolous. Slowly, I started to realize that just
because something was true of the average woman didn’t mean it had to be true of me.
For men, the equivalent might be reading about differences in undesirable acts such as
aggression and violence; even if it’s true on average, it doesn’t have to be true of you. Keep
that in mind as you read.
Even in physical traits,
individual differences among
men and among women far
exceed the average differences
between the sexes. Don
Schollander’s world-record-
setting 4 minutes, 12 seconds in
the 400-meter freestyle swim at
the 1964 Olympics trailed the
times of all eight women racing
in the 2012 Olympic finals for
that event.
“There should be no qualms
about the forthright study of
racial and gender differences;
science is in desperate need
of good studies that . . . inform
us of what we need to do to
help underrepresented peo-
ple to succeed in this society.
Unlike the ostrich, we cannot
afford to hide our heads for
fear of socially uncomfortable
discoveries.”
—Developmental Psychologist
Sandra Scarr (1988)
130 Part Two Social Influence
Independence versus Connectedness
Individual men display outlooks and behavior that vary from fierce competitiveness to
caring nurturance. So do individual women. Without denying that, several late-twentieth-
century feminist psychologists contended that women more than men give priority to close,
intimate relationships (Chodorow, 1978, 1989; Gilligan, 1982; Gilligan et al., 1990; Miller,
1986). Consider the evidence:
PLAY Compared to boys, girls talk more intimately and play less aggressively, noted Eleanor
Maccoby (2002) from her decades of research on gender development. They also play in smaller
groups, often talking with one friend. Boys more often engage in larger group activities (Rose
& Rudolph, 2006). And as boys play with boys and girls play with girls, sex differences grow
larger. These sex differences in play among youngsters appear in nonhuman primates such as
monkeys as well, suggesting fairly universal and perhaps biological roots (Lonsdorf, 2017).
FRIENDSHIP AND PEER RELATIONSHIPS As adults, women—at least in individualis-
tic cultures—are more likely than men to describe themselves in relational terms, welcome
help, experience relationship-linked emotions, and be attuned to others’ relationships (Addis
& Mahalik, 2003; Gabriel & Gardner, 1999; Tamres et al., 2002; Watkins et al., 1998, 2003).
On Facebook, women use more words about relationships (“friends,” “family,” “sister”),
and men use more words about specific activities and ideas (“political,” “football,” “battle”);
overall, women’s language on Facebook was warmer, more compassionate, and more polite,
while men’s was colder, more hostile, and more impersonal (Park et al., 2016). On average,
women are more aware of how their actions affect other people (You et al., 2011), and feel
closer attachment to their friends (Gorrese & Ruggieri, 2012). “Perhaps because of their
greater desire for intimacy,” report Joyce Benenson and colleagues (2009), during their first
year of college, women are twice as likely as men to change roommates.
Women’s phone conversations last longer, and girls send more than twice as many text
messages as do boys (Friebel & Seabright, 2011; Lenhart, 2010; Smoreda & Licoppe, 2000).
Women talk for longer when the goal is affiliation with others—though men actually talk
more overall and when the goal is asserting one’s opinions and giving information (Leaper
& Ayres, 2007). Women spend more time sending emails in which they express more emo-
tion (Crabtree, 2002; Thomson & Murachver, 2001), and they spend more time on social
networking sites, such as Facebook (Thompson & Lougheed, 2012). Boys and men instead
spend more time on online gaming (Lenhart, 2015).
When in groups, women share more of their lives and offer more support (Dindia &
Allen, 1992; Eagly, 1987). When facing stress, men tend to respond with “fight or flight”;
often, their response to a threat is combat. In nearly all studies, notes Shelley Taylor (2002),
women who are under stress more often “tend and befriend”; they turn to friends and fam-
ily for support. Among first-year college students, 72% of men, but 82% of women, say it
is very important to “help others who are in difficulty” (Eagan et al., 2017). The sex differ-
ence in independence vs. connectedness can readily be seen in a study of language use on
Facebook (Schwartz et al., 2013; Figure 5).
“In the different voice of
women lies the truth of an
ethic of care.”
—Carol Gilligan,
In a Different Voice, 1982
Girls’ play is often in small groups and imitates relationships. Boys’ play is more often competitive or aggressive.
(girls): ©FatCamera/iStock/Getty Images; (boys): ©Corbis-All Rights Reserved
Genes, Culture, and Gender Chapter 5 131
In writing, women tend to use more communal prepositions (“with”), fewer quantitative
words, and more present tense. Men use more complex language and women use more social
words and pronouns (Newman et al., 2008). One computer program, which taught itself to
recognize gender differences in word usage and sentence structure, successfully identified
the author’s gender in 80% of 920 British fiction and nonfiction works (Koppel et al., 2002).
In conversation, men’s style reflects their concern for independence, women’s for con-
nectedness. Men are more likely to act as powerful people often do—talking assertively,
interrupting intrusively, touching with the hand, staring more, smiling less (Leaper &
Robnett, 2011). On the U.S. Supreme Court, for example, women are disproportionately
interrupted by their male colleagues (Jacobi & Schweers, 2017). Stating the results from a
female perspective, women’s influence style tends to be more indirect—less interruptive,
more sensitive, more polite, less cocky, and more qualified and hedged.
So is it right to declare (in the title words of one 1990s bestseller), Men Are from Mars,
Women Are from Venus? Actually, note Kay Deaux and Marianne LaFrance (1998), men’s
and women’s conversational styles vary with the social context. Much of the style we
Female
Male
sister
mombirthday
loves_her
wonderfulmy_hair
can't_wait
sweet
hes cutest babies
puppy
aww awww
soooo he's
soo
lil
sooo
cute
adorable
baby
super
uber
sooooo
soooooo
soooo
sooo
satisfying
excitement
ridiculously
excited
tomorrow
yay
overly
tonightflippin
best_friend
i'm_soher_new
chocolate
with_my her
shopping
excited
love_you
so_happy
boyfriend
sooo
herself
so_much
i_missmommy
girlscute
much_fun
cleaning
wishes_she
yummy
soooo
omg
love_him
my_family
like_it_on
husband
loved
sooooo
VS
win
cod
league xbox
himself
f*cking world_cup
metal f*ckin
war
album
shave
my_girlfriend
black_opssh*t
f*ck
wishes_he
my_wife
360
modern_warfare
government
youtube.com
ps3
yay_!
:(
dress
hubby
lovely
soo
baby
am_so
proud_of
<3
ugh
she
ily
bestie
besties xoxo
xo
<3 babeboyfriend
par
=]
hacked
bestfriend
ar
bf
:)
happy
turns nephew
celebrate
years birthday
sister son
brother
niece
daughter special
wonderful
wishing st
football
league
playsports
players
game
team
season
nfi
baseball
fantasy
player
basketball
coach
playing
call_of_duty
hit_me_up
loves_his
holy_sh*t
think_he
beard
championship
arsenal
ftw
lebron
f*cked
his_mind
d*ck
fifa
teams
wins
his_life
http:/
nfl
engineering president
fans
match
team
creed
f*cking
f*ck
sake
bullsh*t
b*tchessh*t shut
f*ckers
haters
f*ck
outta
economy
tax taxes
budget
pay
country
income
government
public
debt
obama
state
cuts health
benefits
nba
halo
online
playing
games
xbox play
ps
live cod
playingaming
fifa pc
tag
wii
add
fight
fighting
battlewin
defeat war
enemy
defeated
victory
won
bands
fought
sword
meet
battlesgovernment
freedom
country
thomas
political democracy
rights
liberty
State
power
nation
human
civil
society
america
wonderful
amazing
family
friends
blessed
thankful
truely
boyfriend
daughter
husband
grateful licky
helped
loving
supportive
hun
girlies
love
sweetheart
inlove
mucho
sweetie
<3^.^
^ ^
– ;D
:)
correlation strength relative frequency prevalence in topic
a a a b b b
FIGURE 5
Words and phrases
with the largest
gender differences
among more than
70,000 Facebook
users
The gender difference in
independence vs. connect-
edness is readily apparent
in this natural language
study, as are other differ-
ences such as men’s
greater propensity to swear
and women’s greater focus
on shopping. The red clus-
ters show the specific top-
ics with the largest gender
differences.
(a-b): Source: Schwartz, H. A.,
Eichstaedt, J. C., Kern, M. L.,
Dziurzynski, L., Ramones, S.
M., Agarwal, M., Shah, A.,
Kosinski, M., Stillwell,
D., Seligman, M. E. P., & Ungar,
L. H. (2013).
132 Part Two Social Influence
attribute to men is typical of people (men and women) in posi-
tions of status and power (Hall et al., 2006; Pennebaker, 2011).
For example, students nod more when speaking with professors
than when speaking with peers, and women nod more than men
(Helweg-Larsen et al., 2004). Men—and people in high-status
roles—tend to talk louder and to interrupt more (Hall et al., 2005).
Moreover, individuals vary; some men are hesitant, some women
assertive. To suggest that women and men are from different plan-
ets greatly oversimplifies.
VOCATIONS In general, women are more interested in jobs
dealing with people (teachers, doctors), and men in jobs with
things (truck driver, engineer) (Diekman et al., 2010; Eagly, 2009,
2017; Lippa, 2010; Su et al., 2009). Females are less interested in
math-intensive careers than are males, even among those with a
talent for math (Lubinski & Benbow, 2006). Another distinction:
Men gravitate disproportionately to jobs that enhance inequalities
(prosecuting attorney, corporate advertising); women gravitate to
jobs that reduce inequalities (public defender, advertising work
for a charity [Pratto et al., 1997]). Studies of 640,000 people’s job preferences reveal that
men more than women value earnings, promotion, challenge, and power; women more than
men value good hours, personal relationships, and opportunities to help others (Konrad et
al., 2000; Pinker, 2008). Indeed, in most of the North American caregiving professions,
such as social worker, teacher, and nurse, women outnumber men. Recent years have seen
a few changes: Among Israeli young adults, men and women did not differ in their prefer-
ences for management careers in 2010 (vs. 1990, when men preferred these careers), but
men still preferred technical careers more than women did (Gati & Perez, 2014). As of
2012, 66% of young women agreed that being successful in a high-paying career was impor-
tant—higher than the 59% of young men who agreed (Patten & Parker, 2012).
FAMILY RELATIONS Women’s connections as mothers, daughters, sisters, and grandmoth-
ers bind families (Rossi & Rossi, 1990). Following their child’s birth, parents (women espe-
cially) become more traditional in their gender-related attitudes and behaviors ( Ferriman et al.,
2009; Katz-Wise et al., 2010). Women spend about twice as much time caring for children as
men (BLS, 2017). Compared with men, women buy three times as many gifts and greeting
cards, write two to four times as many personal letters, and make 10 to 20% more long-distance
calls to friends and family (Putnam, 2000). Among 500 randomly selected Facebook pages
around the world, women displayed more family photos and expressed more emotion, and men
were more likely to display status or risk taking (Tiffert & Vilnai-Yavetz, 2014).
SMILING Smiling, of course, varies with situations. Yet across more than 400 studies,
women’s greater connectedness has been expressed in their generally higher rate of smiling
(Fischer & LaFrance, 2015; LaFrance et al., 2003). For example, when Marianne LaFrance
(1985) analyzed 9,000 college yearbook photos, she found females more often smiling. So
did Amy Halberstadt and Martha Saitta (1987) in 1,100 magazine and newspaper photos
and 1,300 people in shopping malls, parks, and streets. Apparently, boys learn not to smile
as much by age 11: Boys and girls smile just as often in their elementary school pictures,
but by sixth grade, girls smile significantly more than boys (Wondergem & Friedmeier, 2012).
EMPATHY When surveyed, women are far more likely to describe themselves as having
empathy, or being able to feel what another feels—to rejoice with those who rejoice and
weep with those who weep (Chopik et al., 2017; O’Brien et al., 2013). To a lesser extent,
the empathy difference extends to laboratory studies:
▯ Shown pictures or told stories, girls react with more empathy (Hunt, 1990).
▯ Given upsetting experiences in the laboratory or in real life, women more than
men express empathy for others enduring similar experiences (Batson et al., 1996).
▯ Observing someone receiving supposed painful shocks, women’s empathy-related
brain circuits display elevated activity even when men’s do not (Singer et al., 2006).
Some gender differences do not
correlate with status and power.
For example, women at all
status levels tend to smile more
(Hall et al., 2005).
empathy
The vicarious experience of
another’s feelings; putting
oneself in another’s shoes.
With women more interested in jobs focusing on people, medi-
cine may eventually become a female-dominated profession.
©Rocketclips, Inc./Shutterstock
Genes, Culture, and Gender Chapter 5 133
All these differences help to explain why, compared with male friendships, both men
and women report friendships with women to be more intimate, enjoyable, and nurturing
(Rubin, 1985; Sapadin, 1988). When you want empathy and understanding, someone to
whom you can disclose your joys and hurts, to whom do you turn? Most men and women
usually turn to women.
One explanation for this male–female empathy difference is that women tend to outper-
form men at reading others’ emotions. In her analysis of 125 studies of men’s and women’s
sensitivity to nonverbal cues, Judith Hall (1984, 2006) discerned that women are generally
superior at decoding others’ emotional messages. For example, shown a 2-second silent film
clip of the face of an upset woman, women guess more accurately whether she is criticizing
someone or discussing her divorce. Women also are more often strikingly better than men
at recalling others’ appearance (Mast & Hall, 2006).
Finally, women are more skilled at expressing emotions nonverbally, says Hall. This
is especially so for positive emotion, report Erick Coats and Robert Feldman (1996).
They had people talk about times they had been happy, sad, and angry. When shown
5-second silent video clips of happy reports, observers could much more accurately
discern women’s than men’s emotions. Men, however, were slightly more successful in
conveying anger.
Social Dominance
Imagine two people: One is “adventurous, autocratic, coarse, dominant, forceful, inde-
pendent, and strong.” The other is “affectionate, dependent, dreamy, emotional, submis-
sive, and weak.” If the first person sounds more to you like a man and the second like
a woman, you are not alone, report John Williams and Deborah Best (1990, p. 15).
From Asia to Africa and Europe to Australia, people rate men as more dominant,
driven, and aggressive. Moreover, studies of nearly 80,000 people across 70 countries
show that men more than women rate power and achievement as important (Schwartz
& Rubel, 2005).
These perceptions and expectations correlate with reality. In essentially every society,
men are more socially dominant (Pratto, 1996). As Peter Hegarty and his colleagues (2010)
have observed, across time, men’s titles and names have come first: “King and Queen,” “his
and hers,” “husband and wife,” “Mr. and Mrs.,” “Bill and Hillary.” Shakespeare never wrote
plays with titles such as Juliet and Romeo or Cleopatra and Antony.
As we will see, gender differences vary greatly by culture, and gender differences are
shrinking in many industrialized societies as women assume more managerial and leader-
ship positions (Koenig et al., 2011). However:
▯ In 2017, women were but 24% of the world’s legislators (IPU, 2017).
▯ Men more than women are concerned with social dominance and are more likely
to favor conservative political candidates and programs that preserve group inequal-
ity (Eagly et al., 2004; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999).
▯ Men are half of all jurors but the vast majority of elected jury leaders; men are
also the leaders of most ad hoc laboratory groups (Colarelli et al., 2006;
Hastie et al., 2002).
▯ In Britain, men hold 74% of top-100 corporate board positions (BIS, 2015).
▯ Women in most countries earn an average of 60 to 75% of men’s wages, according
to the World Bank (World Bank, 2012). Only about one-fifth of this wage gap is
attributable to gender differences in education, work experience, or job characteris-
tics (World Bank, 2003).
Across many studies, people perceive leaders as having more culturally masculine traits—as
being more confident, forceful, independent, and outspoken (Koenig et al., 2011). When writ-
ing letters of recommendation, people more often use such “agentic” adjectives when describ-
ing male candidates, and more “communal” adjectives (helpful, kind, sympathetic, nurturing,
tactful) when describing women candidates (Madera et al., 2009). The net effect may be to
What do you think: Should
Western women become more
self-reliant and more attuned to
their culture’s individualism?
Or might women’s relational
approach to life help transform
power-oriented Western
societies (marked by high levels
of child neglect, loneliness, and
depression) into more caring
communities?
Because they are generally
empathic and skilled at reading
others’ emotions, girls are less
vulnerable to autism, which, to
Simon Baron-Cohen (2004),
represents an “extreme male
brain.”
Men also outnumber women
among the most powerless,
such as prisoners and the
homeless (Baumeister, 2010).
134 Part Two Social Influence
disadvantage women applying for leadership roles. And when
women do act in dominant ways, they are often seen as less likeable
(Williams & Tiedens, 2016), creating another barrier.
Men’s style of communicating undergirds their social power.
In leadership roles, men tend to excel as directive, task-focused
leaders; women excel more often in the “transformational” or
“relational” leadership that is favored by more and more organiza-
tions, with inspirational and social skills that build team spirit
(Pfaff et al., 2013). Men more than women place priority on
winning, getting ahead, and dominating others (Sidanius et al.,
1994). This may explain why people’s preference for a male
leader is greater for competitions between groups, such as when
countries are at war, than when conflicts occur within a group
(Van Vugt & Spisak, 2008).
Men’s greater social power is not entirely positive, as they may
fear losing it—a phenomenon known as precarious manhood
(Kroeper et al., 2014; Vandello & Bosson, 2013). In many cul-
tures, masculinity is seen as something that must be earned and
defended. As Joseph Vandello and Jennifer Bosson point out,
“We implore [men] to ‘man up’ in the face of difficulties and we
question whether someone is ‘man enough’ for the job . . . In contrast, one rarely if ever
encounters questions about whether a woman is a ‘real woman’ or ‘woman enough’” (2013,
p. 101). Men are much more concerned about being identified as feminine than women
are at being identified as masculine (Bosson & Michniewicz, 2013)—perhaps one reason
why men are more likely than women to be prejudiced against gay men (Carnaghi et al.,
2011; Glick et al., 2007). Men may also defend their masculinity when they have a female
boss, acting more assertively than they do toward a male boss (Netchaeva et al., 2015).
Men also act more impulsively and take more risks (Byrnes et al., 1999; Cross et al.,
2011; Petraitis et al., 2014), perhaps because they are trying to prove their masculinity
( Parent et al., 2017). One study of data from 35,000 stockbroker accounts found that “men
are more overconfident than women” and therefore made 45% more stock trades (Barber
& Odean, 2001a). Because trading costs money, and because men’s trades proved no more
successful, their results underperformed the stock market by 2.65%, compared with women’s
1.72% underperformance. The men’s trades were riskier—and the men were the poorer for
it. Even in Finland, a country with high gender equality, men take more risks in their stock-
market holdings (Halko et al., 2012). Men and women do not differ, however, in taking
social risks, such as expressing an unpopular opinion (Harris et al., 2006).
Aggression
By aggression, psychologists mean behavior intended to hurt. Throughout the world, hunt-
ing, fighting, and warring are primarily male activities (Wood & Eagly, 2007). In surveys,
men admit to more aggression than women do. In laboratory experiments, men indeed
exhibit more physical aggression, for example, by administering what they believe are hurtful
electric shocks (Knight et al., 2002). In Canada and the U.S., 8 times as many men as
women are arrested for murder (Statistics Canada, 2010; FBI, 2017). Almost all suicide
terrorists have been young men (Kruglanski & Golec de Zavala, 2005). So also are nearly
all battlefield deaths and death-row inmates.
But again, the gender difference fluctuates with the context. When people are provoked,
the gender gap shrinks (Bettencourt & Kernahan, 1997; Richardson, 2005). And within
less assaultive forms of aggression—for instance, slapping a family member, throwing some-
thing, or verbally attacking someone—women are no less aggressive than men, and may even
be more aggressive (Archer, 2000; Björkqvist, 1994; White & Kowalski, 1994). Women are
also slightly more likely to commit indirect aggressive acts, such as spreading malicious
gossip (Archer, 2009). But all across the world and at all ages, men much more often injure
others with physical aggression.
aggression
Physical or verbal behavior
intended to hurt someone. In
laboratory experiments, this
might mean delivering electric
shocks or saying something
likely to hurt another’s feelings.
“If women were in charge of
all the world’s nations there
would be—I sincerely believe
this—virtually no military con-
flicts, and when there was a
military conflict, everyone in-
volved would feel just awful
and there would soon be a
high-level exchange of
thoughtful notes . . . followed
by a Peace Luncheon.”
—Humorist Dave Barry (1997)
Males are more likely than females to take risks—both physical
and financial.
©Paul Cowan/Shutterstock
Genes, Culture, and Gender Chapter 5 135
Sexuality
In their physiological and subjective responses to sexual stimuli, women and men are “more
similar than different” (Griffitt, 1987). The differences lie in what happens beforehand.
Consider the following:
▯ Imagine you were walking on campus one day when an attractive member of the
other sex approaches you. “Hi, I’ve been noticing you around campus lately, and
I find you very attractive. Would you have sex with me tonight?” he or she asks.
What would you do? Not a single woman said yes, and 3 out of 4 of the men
said yes (Clark & Hatfield, 1989). When asked instead if they would go on a
date, about half of both men and women said yes (Clark, 1990; Clark & Hat-
field, 1989).
▯ “I can imagine myself being comfortable and enjoying ‘casual’ sex with different
partners,” agreed 48% of men and 12% of women in an Australian survey (Bailey
et al., 2000). One 48-nation study showed country-by-country variation in accep-
tance of unrestricted sexuality, ranging from relatively promiscuous Finland to
relatively monogamous Taiwan (Schmitt, 2005). But in every country studied, men
expressed more desire for unrestricted sex. These sex differences appear among
gay men and lesbian women as well (Howard & Periloux, 2017). Men and women
apparently have similar levels of self-control—but men’s sexual impulses are
stronger, resulting in men yielding to sexual temptation more often (Tidwell &
Eastwick, 2013).
▯ In a survey of 3,400 randomly selected 18- to 59-year-old Americans, half as many
men (25%) as women (48%) cited affection for the partner as a reason for losing
their virginity. In one sample of 18- to 25-year-old college students, the average man
thought about sex about once per hour, the average woman about once every two
hours—though there was lots of individual variation (Fisher et al., 2011). Another
study found that men also thought about food and sleep more than women, sug-
gesting they might just think about all needs more (Fisher et al., 2012). Men also
masturbate more often than women (Peterson & Hyde, 2011).
The gender difference in sexual attitudes carries over to behavior. “With few excep-
tions anywhere in the world,” reported cross-cultural psychologist Marshall Segall and
his colleagues (1990, p. 244), “males are more likely than females to initiate sexual
activity.”
Compared with lesbians, gay men also report more interest in uncommitted sex, more
frequent sex, more interest in pornography, more responsiveness to visual stimuli, and
more concern with partner attractiveness (Peplau & Fingerhut, 2007; Rupp & Wallen,
2008; Schmitt, 2007). Forty-seven percent of lesbians in the
United States are in committed relationships, double the
rate for gay men (24%) (Doyle, 2005). “It’s not that gay men
are oversexed,” observed Steven Pinker (1997). “They are
simply men whose male desires bounce off other male
desires rather than off female desires.”
Indeed, not only do men fantasize more about sex, have
more permissive attitudes, and seek more partners, they
also are more quickly aroused, desire sex more often, mas-
turbate more frequently, use more pornography, are less
successful at celibacy, refuse sex less often, take more risks,
expend more resources to gain sex, and prefer more sexual
variety (Baumeister et al., 2001; Baumeister & Vohs, 2004;
Petersen & Hyde, 2011). Figure 6 displays the large gender
difference in pornography use in one national survey
( Carroll et al., 2017).
Another survey asked 16,288 people from 52 nations how
many sexual partners they desired in the next month. Among
“Contrary to what many
women believe, it’s fairly easy
to develop a long-term, stable,
intimate, and mutually fulfilling
relationship with a guy. Of
course this guy has to be a
Labrador retriever.”
—Dave Barry,
Dave Barry’s Complete Guide to
Guys, 1997
©Alex Gregory. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
“Oh yeah, baby, I’ll listen to you—I’ll listen to you all night long.”
136 Part Two Social Influence
the unattached, 29% of men and 6% of women wanted more than one partner (Schmitt,
2003, 2005). These results were identical for straight and gay people (29% of gay men and
6% of lesbians desired more than one partner).
“Everywhere sex is understood to be something females have that males want,” offered
anthropologist Donald Symons (1979, p. 253). Small wonder, say Roy Baumeister and
Kathleen Vohs, that cultures everywhere attribute greater value to female than male sexual-
ity, as indicated in gender asymmetries in prostitution and courtship, where men generally
offer money, gifts, praise, or commitment in implicit exchange for a woman’s sexual engage-
ment. In human sexual economics, they note, women rarely if ever pay for sex. Like labor
unions opposing “scab labor” as undermining the value of their own work, most women
oppose other women offering “cheap sex,” which reduces the value of their own sexuality.
Across 185 countries, the fewer the available men, the higher is the teen pregnancy rate—
because when men are scarce “women compete against each other by offering sex at a lower
price in terms of commitment” (Barber, 2000; Baumeister & Vohs, 2004; Moss & Maner,
2016). Men are scarce on many college campuses these days (where they are only 43% of
students); perhaps that’s why more campuses now
have social norms favoring uncommitted hook-ups
(Wade, 2017). In contrast, where women are scarce,
as is increasingly the case in China and India, the
market value of their sexuality rises, and they are able
to command greater commitment.
Sexual fantasies, too, differ between men and
women (Ellis & Symons, 1990). In male-oriented
erotica, women are unattached and lust driven. In
romance novels, primarily read by women, a strong
male is emotionally consumed by his devoted passion
for the heroine. Social scientists aren’t the only ones
to have noticed. “Women can be fascinated by a four-
hour movie with subtitles wherein the entire plot con-
sists of a man and a woman yearning to have, but
never actually having a relationship,” observes humor-
ist Dave Barry (1995). “Men HATE that. Men can
take maybe 45 seconds of yearning, and they want
everybody to get naked. Followed by a car chase. A
movie called ‘Naked People in Car Chases’ would do
really well among men.”
FIGURE 6
The pornography gap.
A large national survey of het-
erosexual couples found a sub-
stantial gender gap in
pornography consumption.
Source: Carroll, J. S., Busby, D. M.,
Willoughby, B., J., Brown, C. C.
(2017).
Casually dating Seriously dating
P
e
rc
e
n
ta
g
e
u
si
n
g
p
o
rn
o
g
ra
p
h
y 40
50
30
10
5
15
25
35
45
20
0
Engaged Married
Men
Women
On many college campuses, sex is often pursued via hookups rather than
committed relationships, a system that research suggests should be especially
attractive for men.
©Ingram Publishing
Genes, Culture, and Gender Chapter 5 137
WHAT CAN WE CONCLUDE ABOUT
GENES, CULTURE, AND GENDER?
Explain how biology and culture interact.
We needn’t think of evolution and culture as competitors. Cultural norms subtly yet power-
fully affect our attitudes and behavior. But they don’t do so independent of biology. Every-
thing social and psychological is ultimately biological. If others’ expectations influence us,
that is part of our biological programming. Moreover, what our biological heritage initiates,
culture may accentuate. Genes and hormones predispose males to be more physically
aggressive than females. But culture amplifies that difference through norms that expect
males to be tough and females to be the kinder, gentler sex.
Biology and culture may also interact. Advances in
genetic science indicate how experience uses genes to change
the brain (Carlson et al., 2014; Quartz & Sejnowski, 2002).
Environmental stimuli can activate genes that produce new
brain cell-branching receptors. Visual experience activates
genes that develop the brain’s visual area. Parental touch
activates genes that help offspring cope with future stressful
events. Genes are not set in stone; they respond adaptively
to our experiences.
As we mentioned earlier in the chapter, the field of
epigenetics (meaning “in addition to” genetics) explores
the mechanisms by which environments trigger genetic
expression. Diet, drugs, and stress, including child abuse,
can all regulate gene expression (Champagne & Mashoodh,
2009; McGowan et al., 2010; Yang et al., 2013). Animal
studies suggest that epigenetic changes can be passed
down through several generations. When pregnant females
are exposed to toxins or unhealthy diets, for example,
the effects are seen not just in the babies but in their
interaction
A relationship in which the
effect of one factor (such as
biology) depends on another
factor (such as environment).
▯ Boys and girls, and men and women, are in many ways
alike. Yet their differences attract more attention than
their similarities.
▯ Social psychologists have explored gender differences
in independence versus connectedness. Women typi-
cally do more caring, express more empathy and emo-
tion, and define themselves more in terms of
relationships.
▯ Men and women also tend to exhibit differing social
dominance and aggression. In every known culture on
earth, men tend to have more social power and are more
likely than women to engage in physical aggression.
▯ Sexuality is another area of marked gender differences.
Men more often think about and initiate sex, whereas
women’s sexuality tends to be inspired by emotional
passion.
SUMMING UP: How Are Males and Females Alike
and Different?
Genes and environment interact. When families are calm and happy,
genetic variation in anxiety has more influence than it does in more
difficult environments.
©BJI/Blue Jean Images/Getty Images
Just as police detectives are more intrigued by crime than virtue, so psychological detec-
tives are more intrigued by differences than similarities. Let us therefore remind ourselves:
Individual differences far exceed gender differences. Females and males are hardly “opposite”
sexes. Rather, they differ like two folded hands—similar but not the same, fitting together
yet differing as they grasp each other.
138 Part Two Social Influence
offspring as well (the “grandchildren”) (De Assis et al., 2012). Thus far, studies
on humans have focused more on how the environment changes genetic tendencies.
For example, in families who fight frequently, the genetic prediction of anxiety is
reduced because everyone is anxious. But when families are fairly calm, only those
more genetically prone to anxiety are anxious, so genetics have more inf luence
(Jang et al., 2005). Overall, the science of epigenetics suggests that environmental
factors shape lifelong biological changes, showing that nature and nurture work
together—not independently.
Biology and experience also interact when biological traits influence how the envi-
ronment reacts. Men, being 8% taller and averaging almost double the proportion of
muscle mass, are bound to experience life differently from women. Or consider this:
A strong cultural norm dictates that males should be taller than their female mates,
and thus the man is taller than the woman in more couples than would be expected
by chance (Stulp et al., 2013). With hindsight, we can speculate a psychological
explanation: Perhaps being taller helps men perpetuate their social power over women.
But we can also speculate evolutionary wisdom that might underlie the cultural norm:
If people preferred partners of their own height, tall men and short women would
often be without partners. As it is, evolution dictates that men tend to be taller than
women, and culture dictates the same for couples. So the height norm might well be
a result of biology and culture.
Alice Eagly (2009, 2017) and Wendy Wood (Eagly & Wood, 2013; Wood & Eagly,
2007) theorize how biology and culture interact (Figure 7). They believe that a variety
of factors, including biological influences and childhood socialization, predispose a
sexual division of labor. In adult life the immediate causes of gender differences in
social behavior are the roles that reflect this sexual division of labor. Men, because
of their biologically endowed strength and speed, tend to be found in roles demanding
physical power. Women’s capacity for childbearing and breastfeeding inclines them
to more nurturant roles. Each sex then tends to exhibit the behaviors expected of those
who fill such roles and to have their skills and beliefs shaped accordingly. Nature and
nurture are a “tangled web.” As role assignments become more equal, Eagly predicts that
gender differences “will gradually lessen.”
Indeed, note Eagly and Wood, in cultures with greater equality of gender roles, the
gender difference in mate preferences (men seeking youth and domestic skill, women seek-
ing status and earning potential) is less. Likewise, as women’s employment in formerly male
It is still unusual to see a couple in which
the woman is taller than the man. That
might be due to biology, culture, or most
likely, both.
©Jasper Cole/Blend Images/Getty Images
Socialization
Other factors
(e.g., biological
influences)
Gender-role
expectations
Division of
labor between
the sexes
Gender di�erences
in behavior
Gender-related
skills and beliefs
FIGURE 7
A Social-Role Theory of Gender Differences in Social Behavior
Various influences, including childhood experiences and factors, bend males and females toward differing
roles. It is the expectations and the skills and beliefs associated with these differing roles that affect men’s
and women’s behavior.
Source: Adapted from Eagly, A. (1987).
Genes, Culture, and Gender Chapter 5 139
occupations has increased, the gender difference in self-reported assertiveness has decreased
(Twenge, 1997). As men and women enact more similar roles, some psychological differ-
ences shrink—though they may not disappear (see “The Inside Story: Alice Eagly on Gender
Similarities and Differences”).
But not all, report David Schmitt and his international colleagues (2008, 2016). Across
55 nations, women report more extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. These
gender differences are greatest in (surprise!) prosperous, educated, egalitarian countries. In
less fortunate economic and social contexts, suggests Schmitt, “the development of one’s
inherent personality traits is more restrained.”
Although biology predisposes men to strength tasks and women to infant care, Wood
and Eagly (2002) conclude that “the behavior of women and men is sufficiently malleable
that individuals of both sexes are fully capable of effectively carrying out organizational
roles at all levels.” For today’s high-status and often high-tech work roles, male size and
aggressiveness matter little. Moreover, lower birthrates mean that women are less con-
strained by pregnancy and nursing. The end result, when combined with competitive pres-
sures for employers to hire the best talent regardless of gender, is greater gender equality.
Alice Eagly on Gender Similarities and Differences
THE inside
STORY
I began my research on gender in the early 1970s. Like
many feminist psychologists of the day, I initially as-
sumed that, despite cultural gender stereotypes, women
and men are generally equivalent in their psychology
and social behavior. Over the years, my views have
evolved considerably. I have found that some social be-
haviors do differ between women and men, especially in
situations in which gender norms become salient. Also,
women and men differ substantially when scientists step
back from the specifics of narrowly defined psychologi-
cal variables and instead examine general themes in the
psychology of women and men. In particular, women
tend to manifest more communion than men do—that is,
warmth and concern for others; men tend to manifest
more agency than women do—that is, dominance and
competitiveness.
People should not assume that these thematic differ-
ences reflect unfavorably on women. Instead, these ten-
dencies to be more attuned to others’ concerns are
generally admired and can be assets in many situations. In
fact, the female stereotype is in general more positive than
the male stereotype. However, the qualities of niceness
and nurturance that are important in expectations about
women can decrease their
power and effectiveness in
situations that call for asser-
tive and competitive behavior.
Alice Eagly
Northwestern University
Courtesy of Alice Eagly
▯ Biological and cultural explanations need not be contra-
dictory. Indeed, they interact. Biological factors operate
within a cultural context, and culture builds on a
biological foundation. Emerging research in the field of
epigenetics shows that genes are expressed in some envi-
ronments and not others.
SUMMING UP: What Can We Conclude About Genes,
Culture, and Gender?
140 Part Two Social Influence
POSTSCRIPT:
Should We View Ourselves as Products of Our
Biology or Our Culture?
In considering whether biology or culture has the strongest influence on us, we might be
asking the wrong question. Instead, we can consider how biology and culture work together
to create who we are. Especially with the new science of epigenetics, the question is increas-
ingly not nature vs. nurture as if they were two teams playing against each other, but nature
and nurture as one team working together to shape us.
That is particularly true for differences between men and women. Sex differences may
begin in the biological demands of being male or female, but they do not end there. Culture
takes biological sex differences and molds them into both culturally universal and culturally
distinct gender roles and expectations. Even in an era of more gender equality and an
increasing focus on gender fluidity, gender—like biology and culture—still influences us.
Conformity and
Obedience
C H A P T E R
6
©VCG/Getty Images
As a music concert finishes, the adoring fans near the front leap to their feet, applauding. The approving folks just behind them follow their example and
join the standing ovation. Now the wave of people standing reaches people who,
unprompted, would merely be giving polite applause from their comfortable seats.
Seated among them, part of you wants to stay seated (“the concert was only
okay”). But as the wave of standing people sweeps by, will you alone stay seated?
It’s not easy being a minority of one. So probably you will rise to your feet, at
least briefly.
“Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it
may be called.”
—John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859
“The social pressures community brings to bear are a mainstay of
our moral values.”
—Amitai Etzioni, The Spirit of Community, 1993
What is conformity?
What are the classic
conformity and
obedience studies?
What predicts
conformity?
Why conform?
Who conforms?
Do we ever want to
be different?
Postscript: On being
an individual within a
community
142 Part Two Social Influence
Such scenes of conformity raise this chapter’s questions:
• Why, given our diversity, do we so often behave as social clones?
• Under what circumstances are we most likely to conform?
• Are certain people more likely than others to conform?
• Who resists the pressure to conform?
• Is conformity as bad as my image of a docile “herd” implies? Should I instead
be describing their “group solidarity” and “social sensitivity”?
WHAT IS CONFORMITY?
Define conformity, and compare compliance,
obedience, and acceptance.
Is conformity good or bad? That question has no scientific answer. Conformity is some-
times bad (when it leads someone to drive drunk or to join in racist behavior), sometimes
good (when it keeps people from cutting in line), and sometimes inconsequential (when it
directs tennis players to wear white).
In Western individualistic cultures, where submitting to peer pressure is discouraged, the
word “conformity” carries a negative connotation. How would you feel if you overheard
someone describing you as a “real conformist”? We suspect you would feel hurt. North
American and European social psychologists, reflecting their individualistic cultures, give
social influence negative labels (conformity, submission, compliance) rather than positive
ones (communal sensitivity, responsiveness, cooperative team play). In Japan, going along
with others is a sign not of weakness but of tolerance, self-control, and maturity (Markus &
Kitayama, 1994). “Everywhere in Japan,” observed Lance Morrow (1983), “one senses an
intricate serenity that comes to a people who know exactly what to expect from each other.”
Conformity is the overall term for acting differently due to the influence of others.
Conformity is not just acting as other people act; it is also being affected by how they act.
It is acting or thinking differently from the way you would act and think if you were alone.
Thus, conformity is a change in behavior or belief to accord with others. If you rise to cheer
a game-winning goal, drink coffee, or wear your hair in a certain style because you want
to, and not due to the influence of others, you are not conforming. But if you do those
things because other people do them,
that’s conformity.
Acceptance and compliance are two
varieties of conformity (Nail et al., 2000).
Acceptance occurs when you genuinely
believe in what the group has persuaded
you to do—you inwardly and sincerely
believe that the group’s actions are right.
For example, you might exercise because
you accept that exercise is healthy. You
stop at red lights because you accept that
not doing so is dangerous. You get a flu
shot because you believe that it will help
prevent you from getting sick.
In contrast, compliance is conforming
to an expectation or a request without
really believing in what you are doing.
You put on the necktie or the dress,
although you dislike doing so. You say
conformity
A change in behavior or belief
as the result of real or imagined
group pressure.
acceptance
Conformity that involves both
acting and believing in accord
with social pressure.
compliance
Conformity that involves publicly
acting in accord with an implied
or explicit request while
privately disagreeing.
obedience
A type of compliance involving
acting in accord with a direct
order or command.
©Dave Coverly, The Comic Strips
Conformity and Obedience Chapter 6 143
WHAT ARE THE CLASSIC
CONFORMITY AND OBEDIENCE
STUDIES?
Describe how social psychologists have studied
conformity in the laboratory. Explain what their findings
reveal about the potency of social forces and the
nature of evil.
Researchers who study conformity and obedience construct miniature social worlds—laboratory
microcultures that simplify and simulate important features of everyday social influence.
Some of these studies revealed such startling findings that they have been widely discussed
and replicated, making them “classic” experiments. We will consider three, each of which
provides a method for studying conformity—and plenty of food for thought.
Sherif’s Studies of Norm Formation
Muzafer Sherif (1935, 1937) wondered whether it was possible to observe the emergence
of a social norm in the laboratory. Like biologists seeking to isolate a virus so they can
experiment with it, Sherif wanted to isolate and then experiment with norm formation—to
figure out how people come to agree on something.
FIGURE 1
Types of Conformity
Conformity
Acceptance Compliance
Obedience
Conformity—changing one’s behavior or belief as a result of
group pressure—comes in two forms. Acceptance is believ-
ing in as well as acting in accord with social pressure.
Compliance is outwardly going along with the group while
inwardly disagreeing; a subset of compliance is obedience,
compliance with a direct command.
SUMMING UP: What Is Conformity?
you like your friends’ favorite band even though you don’t.
These acts of compliance are often to reap a reward or avoid a
punishment—for example, you might have followed your high
school’s dress code even though you thought it was dumb,
because that was better than detention. In other words, compli-
ance is an insincere, outward conformity.
Obedience, or complying with a direct command, is a varia-
tion on compliance. If your father tells you to clean up your
room and you do—even if you don’t want to—that’s obedience
(Figure 1). Obedience means doing something you wouldn’t do
otherwise because someone else says you need to. If you get a
flu shot because your mom tells you to—rather than because you
think it will help—that’s obedience.
Compliance and acceptance even differ in the brain: The
shorter-lived memories that underlie public compliance have a dif-
ferent neural basis than the memories that underlie longer-term
private acceptance (Edelson et al., 2011; Zaki et al., 2011). Brain
activity after obedience captures its nonvoluntary nature, leading to
the most cognitive arousal (Xie et al., 2016).
144 Part Two Social Influence
Imagine you are a participant in one of Sherif’s experiments. You find yourself seated
in a dark room. Fifteen feet in front of you, a pinpoint of light appears. At first, nothing
happens. Then for a few seconds it moves erratically and finally disappears. The experi-
menter asks you to guess how far it moved. The dark room gives you no way to judge
distance, so you offer an uncertain “six inches.” The experimenter repeats the procedure.
This time you say, “Ten inches.” With further repetitions, your estimates continue to average
about eight inches.
The next day you return to the darkened room, joined by two other participants who
had the same experience the day before. When the light goes off for the first time, the
other two people offer their best guesses from the day before. “One inch,” says one. “Two
inches,” says the other. A bit taken aback, you nevertheless say, “Six inches.” With repeti-
tions of this group experience, both on this day and for the next two days, will your
responses change? The results suggest they will: Sherif’s male student participants changed
their estimates markedly. As Figure 2 illustrates, a group norm typically emerged. (The
norm was false. Why? The light never moved! Sherif had taken advantage of an optical
illusion called the autokinetic phenomenon.)
Sherif and others have used this technique to answer questions about people’s suggest-
ibility. When people were retested alone a year later, would their estimates again diverge
or would they continue to follow the group norm? Remarkably, they continued to support
the group norm (Rohrer et al., 1954). (Does that suggest acceptance or compliance?)
Struck by culture’s seeming power to perpetuate false beliefs, Robert Jacobs and Donald
Campbell (1961) studied the transmission of false beliefs in their Northwestern University
laboratory. Using the autokinetic phenomenon, they had a confederate give an inflated esti-
mate of how far the light had moved. The confederate then left the experiment and was
replaced by another real participant, who was in turn replaced by a still newer member. The
inflated illusion persisted (although diminishing) for five generations of participants. These
people had become “unwitting conspirators in perpetuating a cultural fraud.” The lesson of
these experiments: Our views of reality are not ours alone. If you’ve ever accepted a story
on social media that later turned out to be “fake news,” you’ve experienced this firsthand.
In everyday life, the results of suggestibility are sometimes amusing. One person coughs,
laughs, or yawns, and others are soon doing the same. (See “Research Close-Up: Contagious
Yawning.”) One person checks her cell phone, and then others check theirs.
autokinetic phenomenon
Self (auto) motion (kinetic).
The apparent movement of a
stationary point of light in
the dark.
“Why doth one man’s yawning
make another yawn?”
—Robert Burton,
Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621
FIGURE 2
A Sample Group from
Sherif’s Study of Norm
Formation
Three individuals converge as
they give repeated estimates of
the apparent movement of a
point of light.
Source: Data from Sherif, M., &
Sherif, C. W. (1969).
Estimated movement, inches
First day Second day Third day
Individual
Group
Fourth day
Person 3
Person 2
Person 1
10
8
6
4
2
0
Conformity and Obedience Chapter 6 145
Contagious Yawning
Yawning is a behavior that we share with most verte-
brates. Primates do it. So do cats and crocodiles and birds
and turtles and even fish. But why, and when?
Sometimes, notes University of Maryland, Baltimore
County, psychologist Robert Provine (2005), scientific re-
search neglects commonplace behavior—including the
behaviors he loves to study, such as laughing and yawn-
ing. To study yawning by the method of naturalistic obser-
vation, notes Provine, one needs only a stopwatch, a
notepad, and a pencil. Yawning, he reports, is a “fixed
action pattern” that lasts about six seconds, with a long
inward breath and shorter climactic (and pleasurable) ex-
halation. It often comes in bouts, with just over a minute
between yawns. And it is equally common among men
and women. Even patients who are totally paralyzed and
unable to move their body voluntarily may yawn normally,
indicating that this is automatic behavior.
When do we yawn?
We yawn when we are bored or tense. When Provine
asked participants to watch a TV test pattern for 30 minutes,
they yawned 70% more often than others in a control group
who watched less-boring music videos. But tension can also
elicit yawning, which is commonly observed among para-
troopers before their first jump, Olympic athletes before
their event, and violinists waiting to go onstage. A friend of
mine [DM] says she has often been embarrassed when
learning something new at work, because her anxiety about
getting it right invariably causes her to have a “yawning fit.”
We yawn when we are sleepy. No surprise here, ex-
cept perhaps that people who kept a yawning diary for
Provine recorded even more yawns in the hour after wak-
ing than in the yawn-prone hour before sleeping. Often,
we awaken and yawn-stretch. And so do our dogs and
cats when they rouse from slumber.
We yawn when others yawn. To test whether yawn-
ing, like laughter, is contagious, Provine exposed peo-
ple to a 5-minute video of a man yawning repeatedly.
Sure enough, 55% of viewers yawned, as did only 21%
of those viewing a video of smiles. A yawning face acts
as a stimulus that activates a yawn’s fixed-action pat-
tern, even if the yawn is presented in black and white,
upside down, or as a mid-yawn still image. The discov-
ery of brain “mirror neurons”—neurons that rehearse or
mimic witnessed actions—suggests a biological mecha-
nism that explains why our yawns so often mirror others’
yawns—and why even dogs often yawn after observing
a human yawn (Joly-Mascheroni et al., 2008; Silva et al.,
2012).
To see what parts of the yawning face are most potent,
Provine had viewers watch a whole face, a face with the
mouth masked, a mouth with the face masked, or (as a
control condition) a nonyawning smiling face. As Figure 3
shows, the yawning faces triggered yawns even with the
mouth masked. Thus, covering your mouth when yawning
likely won’t suppress yawn contagion.
Just thinking about yawning usually produces yawns,
reports Provine—a phenomenon you may have noticed
while reading this box. While reading Provine’s research
on contagious yawning, I [DM] yawned four times (and felt
a little silly).
research
CLOSE-UP
FIGURE 3
What Facial Features Trigger Contagious Yawns?
Robert Provine (2005) invited 4 groups of 30 people each to watch 5-minute videotapes of a smiling adult or a yawning adult, parts of whose
face were masked for two of the groups. A yawning mouth triggered some yawns, but yawning eyes and head motion triggered even more.
©From Provine, Robert. “Yawning.” American Scientist, Volume 93, Fig. 6, page 536. Image courtesy, Dr. Robert R. Provine, Department of Psychology, University of Maryland,
Baltimore County.
146 Part Two Social Influence
Comedy-show laugh tracks capitalize on our suggestibil-
ity. Laugh tracks work especially well when we presume that
the laughing audience is made up of people similar to us—
“recorded here at La Trobe University” in one study by
Michael Platow and colleagues (2004)—rather than a group
that’s unlike us. Just being around happy people can help us
feel happier, a phenomenon that Peter Totterdell and his
colleagues (1998) call “mood linkage.” In their studies of
British nurses and accountants, people within the same work
groups tended to share positive and negative moods. People
within a social network also move toward sharing similar
obesity, sleep loss, loneliness, happiness, and drug use
(Christakis & Fowler, 2009; Kim et al., 2015). An ethically
controversial experiment manipulated 700,000 people’s
Facebook accounts, finding that when news feeds included
less positive emotion, users produced fewer positive posts and more negative posts—
although the effects were very small (Kramer et al., 2014). Nevertheless, friends function
as a social system.
Another form of social contagion is what Tanya Chartrand and John Bargh (1999) call
“the chameleon effect”—or mimicking someone else’s behavior. Picture yourself in one of
their experiments, working alongside a confederate who occasionally either rubbed her face
or shook her foot. Would you—like their participants—be more likely to rub your face when
around the face-rubber or shake your foot when around the foot-shaker? If so, it would quite
likely be an automatic behavior, done without any conscious intention to conform; this social
mimicry apparently develops in early childhood (Cracco et al., 2018; van Schaik & Hunnius,
2016). Brain scans confirm the automatic nature of mimicry: When women viewed avatars
with happy, sad, or angry facial expressions, they unconsciously made the same expressions,
and the brain regions responsible for these emotional expressions were activated (Likowski
et al., 2012). Behavior synchronizing includes speaking; people tend to mirror the grammar
that they read and hear (Ireland & Pennebaker, 2010). And, because our behavior influences
our attitudes and emotions, our natural mimicry inclines us to feel what the other feels
(Neumann & Strack, 2000).
An experiment in the Netherlands by Rick van Baaren and his colleagues (2004)
suggests that mimicry helps people look more helpful and likeable. People become more
likely to help for someone whose behavior has mimicked their own. Students whose
behavior was mimicked were later more likely to donate money to a charity. In a follow-
up experiment, an interviewer invited students to try a new sports drink while sometimes
mirroring the student’s postures and movements, with just enough delay to make it not
noticeable (Tanner et al., 2008). By the experiment’s end, the mimicked students became
more likely to consume the new drink and say they would
buy it. There is one exception to the imitation-fosters-
fondness rule: mimicking another’s anger fosters disliking
(Van der Velde et al., 2010).
Mimicry—also known as suggestibility—can also occur
on a large scale, known as mass hysteria. In August 2009,
a Lexus with four passengers suddenly accelerated past
100 miles per hour on a San Diego County freeway. The
driver called 911 but was unable to stop the car’s accelera-
tion, and it crashed and burst into flames, killing all four
passengers. The accident received widespread news cover-
age, and suddenly many people started reporting that their
vehicles were accelerating out of control. However, an
investigation later determined that the car that crashed, a
loaner from a repair shop, had a floor mat from a larger
vehicle that was too big and became lodged over the accel-
erator pedal. There was nothing wrong with Lexuses, no
“When people are free to do
as they please, they usually
imitate each other.”
—Eric Hoffer,
The Passionate State of Mind,
1955
mass hysteria
Suggestibility to problems that
spreads throughout a large
group of people.
©Mick Stevens. All rights reserved. Used
with permission.
“I don’t know why. I just suddenly felt like calling.”
The chameleon effect. Our natural mimicry of others’ postures and lan-
guage generally elicits liking—except when echoing others’ negative ex-
pressions, such as anger.
Pentland, Alex (Sandy), “To Signal is Human,” American Scientist, May–June, 2010, 207.
Copyright ©2010 American Scientist. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
Conformity and Obedience Chapter 6 147
issue with the car’s original floor mats, and no “demons” making the cars accelerate, as
some speculated. There were no runaway cars—just runaway news coverage that led to
“unintended acceleration” as a convenient explanation for any driving mishap. It was all
mass hysteria (Fumento, 2014).
Another disturbing case began with a mystery. One day in 2011, high school student
Katie Krautwurst woke up from a nap twitching uncontrollably, her arms flailing and head
thrashing, and continued to twitch every few seconds. A few weeks later her best friend
started twitching, too, and then more and more girls, until 18 girls at the school were
affected. Parents became concerned that some contaminant at the school was causing the
disorder, and two of the girls and their mothers told the Today Show they were desperately
seeking a cure. The next day, a neurologist who had treated several of the girls offered his
diagnosis: conversion disorder, or a form of mass hysteria caused when psychological stress
is unconsciously expressed in physical symptoms (Dominus, 2012). It then spread as a
social contagion. The case fit the usual profile for mass hysteria, which is more common
among young women.
Suicide and gun violence can also be socially contagious. When Marilyn Monroe
committed suicide in August 1962, 303 more people than average took their lives that
month (Stack, 2000). After Robin Williams committed suicide in 2014, calls to the
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline increased (Carroll, 2014). One study found that
copycat suicides were 14 times more likely when the victim was a celebrity and 87%
more common when the coverage was on television rather than in a newspaper (Stack,
2003). After the popular Netf lix series 13 Reasons Why, which portrays a teen girl’s
suicide, was released in late March 2017, Google searches for “how to commit suicide”
jumped 26% (Ayers et al., 2017).
In a study of mass shootings between 1997 and 2013, Sherry Towers and her colleagues
(2015) found that such incidents were contagious: shootings causing at least 4 deaths led
to a two-week period of increased gun violence. In light of such contagions, some psycholo-
gists have called for media outlets to stop identifying the perpetrators of shootings. If the
shooters don’t get media attention, the thinking goes, fewer people will be tempted to repeat
their violent acts (Perrin, 2016).
Asch’s Studies of Group Pressure
Participants in Sherif’s darkened-room autokinetic experiments, like those interpreting their
own mysterious symptoms, faced an ambiguous reality. Consider a less ambiguous percep-
tual problem faced by a young boy named Solomon Asch (1907–1996). While attending
the traditional Jewish Seder at Passover, Asch recalled,
I asked my uncle, who was sitting next to me, why the door was being opened. He replied,
“The prophet Elijah visits this evening every Jewish home and takes a sip of wine from the
cup reserved for him.”
I was amazed at this news and repeated, “Does he really come? Does he really take a sip?”
My uncle said, “If you watch very closely, when the door is opened you will see—you watch
the cup—you will see that the wine will go down a little.”
And that’s what happened. My eyes were riveted upon the cup of wine. I was determined to
see whether there would be a change. And to me it seemed . . . that indeed something was
happening at the rim of the cup, and the wine did go down a little. (Aron & Aron, 1989, p. 27)
Years later, social psychologist Asch re-created his boyhood experience in his laboratory.
Imagine yourself as one of Asch’s volunteer subjects. You are seated sixth in a row of seven
people. The experimenter explains that you will be in a study of perceptual judgments, and
then asks you to say which of the three lines in Figure 4 matches the standard line. You
can easily see that it’s line 2. So it’s no surprise when the five people responding before
you all say, “Line 2.”
The next comparison proves as easy, and you settle in for what seems like a simple test.
But the third trial startles you. Although the correct answer seems just as clear-cut, the first
person gives a wrong answer—“Line 1.” When the second person gives the same wrong
answer, you sit up in your chair and stare at the cards. The third person agrees with the
148 Part Two Social Influence
first two. Your jaw drops; you start to perspire. “What is this?” you ask your-
self. “Are they blind? Or am I?” The fourth and fifth people agree with the
others. Then the experimenter looks at you. Now you are experiencing an
epistemological dilemma: “What is true? Is it what my peers tell me or what
my eyes tell me?”
Dozens of college students experienced that conflict in Asch’s experiments.
Those in a control condition who answered alone were correct more than
99% of the time. Asch wondered: If confederates coached by the experimenter
gave identical wrong answers, would people declare what they would other-
wise have denied? Although some people never conformed by giving the
wrong answer, 75% did so at least once. All told, 37% of the responses were
conforming (or, from another perspective, “trusting of others”).
Of course, that means 63% of the time people did not conform (Griggs,
2015). The experiments show that most people “tell the truth even when oth-
ers do not,” noted Bert Hodges and Anne Geyer (2006). Despite the independence shown
by many of his participants, Asch’s (1955) feelings about the conformity were as clear as
the correct answers to his questions: “That reasonably intelligent and well-meaning young
people are willing to call white black is a matter of concern. It raises questions about our
ways of education and about the values that guide our conduct.”
Asch’s experiment was conducted in the 1950s, often considered a time of high confor-
mity in American culture. Sure enough, fewer students in the more individualistic times of
the 1970s and 1980s were willing to conform to the group judgment in experiments similar
to Asch’s. In addition, people in collectivistic countries were more willing to conform than
those in individualistic countries, those in more recently settled frontier states less than
nonfrontier states, and women more than men (Bond & Smith, 1996; Varnum, 2012). These
are precisely the results you’d expect if culture and gender shaped conformity, with recent,
individualistic cultures and maleness promoting the autonomy of the self, and established,
collectivistic cultures and femaleness encouraging fitting in with the group. Nevertheless,
even modern Internet-savvy citizens are not immune to conformity. Michael Rosander and
Oskar Eriksson (2012) showed Internet users questions such as “In what city can you find
Hollywood?” along with a graph showing most users thought it was San Francisco (it’s Los
Angeles). Fifty-three percent conformed to the incorrect “majority” answer on at least one
question—less than the 75% who conformed at least once in Asch’s line experiment in the
1950s, but still the majority.
Asch’s experiment and others like it lacked the “mundane realism” of everyday confor-
mity, but they did have “experimental realism.” People became emotionally involved in the
experience. The Sherif and Asch results are startling because they involved no obvious
pressure to conform—there were no rewards for “team play,” no punishments for individuality—
just the increased arousal of knowing you’re standing out (Hatcher et al., 2017). Other
experiments have explored conformity in everyday situations, such as these:
▯ Dental flossing. Sarah Schmiege and her cohorts (2010) told students either that
“Our studies show that [fellow] University of Colorado students your age floss
approximately [X] times per week,” where X was either the participant’s own
flossing rate, as reported in prior questioning, or five greater than that number.
Those given the inflated estimate flossed more often over the ensuing three
months.
▯ Cancer screening. Monika Sieverding and her colleagues (2010) approached middle-
aged German men on the street and invited them to sign up to receive information
about cancer screening. If led to believe few (“only 18%!”) of other men in
Germany had undergone the screening, a similar 18% signed up. But 39% signed
up after being told that most other men (“indeed 65%!”) had been screened.
Health education campaigns had best not publicize low participation rates,
surmised the researchers.
▯ Soccer referee decisions. In many sports, from figure skating to soccer football, referees
make instantaneous decisions amid noise from the crowd, which often erupts
“He who sees the truth, let him
proclaim it, without asking who
is for it or who is against it.”
—Henry George,
The Irish Land Question, 1881
Ethical note: Professional ethics
usually dictate explaining the
experiment afterward. Imagine
you were an experimenter who
had just finished a session with
a conforming participant. How
could you explain the deception
without making the person feel
gullible and dumb?
Standard line Comparison lines
1
2
3
FIGURE 4
Sample Comparison
from Solomon Asch’s
Conformity Procedure
The participants judged which
of three comparison lines
matched the standard.
Conformity and Obedience Chapter 6 149
when the opposing team (but not the home team) commits a foul.
Christian Unkelbach and Daniel Memmert (2010) examined 1,530
soccer matches across five seasons in Germany’s premier league. On
average, home teams received 1.89 penalty cards and opposing teams
2.35. Moreover, the difference was greater in louder soccer stadiums.
And in laboratory experiments, professional referees who judged
filmed scenes of fouls awarded more penalty cards when a scene was
accompanied by high-volume noise.
▯ Eating. Across 38 studies, people ate more when sitting with some-
one else who ate more, and ate less when their companion ate less
(Vartanian et al., 2015). Shovel in the food, and the other people at
your table might follow suit; eat little, and others are more likely to
pick at their plates.
If people are that conforming in response to such minimal pressure, how
compliant will they be if they are directly coerced? Could the average North
American or European be talked into committing cruel acts? We would have
guessed not: Their humane, democratic, individualistic values would make
them resist such pressure. Besides, the easy verbal pronouncements of those
experiments are a giant step away from actually harming someone; we would
never yield to coercion to hurt another. Or would we? Social psychologist
Stanley Milgram wondered.
Milgram’s Obedience Studies
Milgram’s (1965, 1974) studies—“the most famous, or infamous, stud[ies] in
the annals of scientific psychology” (Benjamin & Simpson, 2009)—tested
what happens when the demands of authority clash with the demands of
conscience. “Perhaps more than any other empirical contributions in the
history of social science,” noted Lee Ross (1988), Milgram’s obedience studies “have
become part of our society’s shared intellectual legacy—that small body of historical inci-
dents, biblical parables, and classic literature that serious thinkers feel free to draw on when
they debate about human nature or contemplate human history.”
Let’s go backstage and examine the studies in depth. Here is the scene staged by Mil-
gram, a creative artist who wrote stories and stage plays, and who used trial-and-error pilot
testing to hone this drama for maximum impact (Russell, 2011): Two men come to Yale
University’s psychology laboratory to participate in a study of learning and memory. A
stern experimenter in a lab coat explains that this is a pioneering study of the effect of
punishment on learning. The experiment requires one of them to teach a list of word pairs
to the other and to punish errors by delivering shocks of increasing intensity. To assign
the roles, they draw slips out of a hat. One of the men (a cheerful 47-year-old accountant
who is actually the experimenter’s confederate) says that his slip says “learner” and is
ushered into an adjacent room. The other man (a volunteer who has come in response to
a newspaper ad) is assigned to the role of “teacher.” He takes a mild sample shock and
then looks on as the experimenter straps the learner into a chair and attaches an electrode
to his wrist.
Teacher and experimenter then return to the main room, where the teacher takes his
place before a “shock generator” with switches ranging from 15 to 450 volts in 15-volt
increments. The switches are labeled “Slight Shock,” “Very Strong Shock,” “Danger: Severe
Shock,” and so forth. Under the 435- and 450-volt switches appears “XXX.” The experi-
menter tells the teacher to “move one level higher on the shock generator” each time the
learner gives a wrong answer. With each flick of a switch, lights flash, relay switches click,
and an electric buzzer sounds.
If the participant complies with the experimenter’s requests, he hears the learner grunt
at 75, 90, and 105 volts. At 120 volts the learner shouts that the shocks are painful. And
at 150 volts he cries out, “Experimenter, get me out of here! I won’t be in the experiment
anymore! I refuse to go on!” By 270 volts his protests have become screams of agony, and
Away teams receive more penalty cards, apparently
due to referees being influenced by the noise of the
home crowd expressing their opinions.
©Image Source/Getty Images
150 Part Two Social Influence
his pleas to be let out continue. At 300 and 315 volts, he screams his refusal to answer.
After 330 volts he falls silent. In answer to the teacher’s inquiries and pleas to end the
experiment, the experimenter states that the nonresponses should be treated as wrong
answers. To keep the participant going, he uses four verbal prods:
Prod 1: Please continue (or Please go on).
Prod 2: The experiment requires that you continue.
Prod 3: It is absolutely essential that you continue.
Prod 4: You have no other choice; you must go on.
How far would you go? Milgram described the study to 110 psychiatrists, college stu-
dents, and middle-class adults. People in all three groups guessed that they would disobey
by about 135 volts; none expected to go beyond 300 volts. Recognizing that self-estimates
may reflect self-serving bias, Milgram asked them how far they thought other people would
go. Virtually no one expected anyone to proceed to XXX on the shock panel. (The psychia-
trists guessed that only about 1 in 1,000 would.)
But when Milgram conducted the study with 40 men—20- to 50-year-olds with varying
jobs—26 of them (65%) progressed all the way to 450 volts. In other words, they followed
orders to hurt someone—just as Nazi soldiers did (see The Inside Story: Stanley Milgram
on Obedience). Those who stopped usually did so at the 150-volt point, when the learner’s
protestations became more compelling (Packer, 2008).
Wondering if people today would similarly obey, Jerry Burger (2009) replicated Mil-
gram’s study—though only to the 150-volt point. Burger found at that point, 70% of 2000
Burger and his colleagues
(2011) later analyzed their
participants’ spontaneous
comments. Whether people
stopped or obeyed was not
predictable from their
expressing concern for the
learner’s well-being, which most
did, but from their voicing
feelings of responsibility for
their actions.
Stanley Milgram on Obedience
THE inside
STORY
While working for Solomon E. Asch, I wondered whether
his conformity experiments could be made more humanly
significant. First, I imagined an experiment similar to Asch’s,
except that the group induced the person to deliver shocks
to a protesting victim. But a control was needed to see
how much shock a person would give in the absence of
group pressure. Someone, presumably the experimenter,
would have to instruct the subject to give the shocks. But
now a new question arose: Just how far would a person go
when ordered to administer such shocks? In my mind, the
issue had shifted to the willingness of people to comply
with destructive orders. It was an exciting moment for me.
I realized that this simple question was both humanly im-
portant and capable of being precisely answered.
The laboratory procedure gave scientific expression to
a more general concern about authority, a concern forced
upon members of my generation, in particular upon Jews
such as myself, by the atrocities of World War II. The im-
pact of the Holocaust on my own psyche energized my
interest in obedience and shaped the particular form in
which it was examined.
Abridged from the original for this book and from Milgram, 1977, with
permission of Alexandra Milgram.
Stanley Milgram (1933–1984)
Courtesy of Alexandra Milgram
Conformity and Obedience Chapter 6 151
participants were still obeying, less than Milgram’s result of 84%. (In Milgram’s study, most
who were obedient to this point continued to the end.) However, nearly twice as many men
in 2006 (33%) disobeyed as had in 1962 (18%). Cultural change toward more individualism
might have reduced obedience, but far from eliminated it. Even 54 years later, Milgram’s
obedience paradigm was powerful—just a little less so (Twenge, 2009). A recent replication
in Poland (a more collectivistic culture than the U.S.) found that 90% of participants obeyed
until 150 volts (Dolinski et al., 2018).
Having expected a low rate of obedience, Milgram was disturbed (A. Milgram, 2000).
He decided to make the learner’s protests even more compelling. As the learner was
strapped into the chair, the teacher heard him mention his “slight heart condition” and
heard the experimenter’s reassurance that “although the shocks may be painful, they cause
no permanent tissue damage.” The learner’s anguished protests were to little avail; of
40 men in this new study, 25 (63%) fully complied with the experimenter’s demands
( Figure 5). Ten later studies that included women found that women’s compliance rates
were similar to men’s (Blass, 1999).
It’s important to note that Milgram’s participants did not automatically obey the experi-
menter—nearly all stopped and expressed concern for the learner, at which point the experi-
menter prompted them to continue (“You have no other choice; you must go on.”). Many
argued back and forth with the experimenter over several rounds. Thus, some have main-
tained that Milgram’s study shows something more wide-ranging than mere obedience
(obeying a direct order)—it challenges participants’ feelings of control. In fact, many
Percent of participants still obedient
0 75
“Moderate”
150
“Strong”
225
Increasing intensity of shocks
300
“Intense”
375
“Very
strong”
“Danger
severe”
450
“XXX”
Learner complains of pain
Pleads to be let out
Screams and refuses
to answer
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
FIGURE 5
The Milgram Obedience
Study
Percentage of participants com-
plying despite the learner’s cries
of protest and failure to
respond.
Source: From Milgram, S. (1965).
152 Part Two Social Influence
The Ethics of Milgram’s Studies
The obedience of his subjects disturbed Milgram. The procedures he used disturbed many
social psychologists (Miller, 1986). The “learner” in these studies actually received no shock
(he disengaged himself from the electric chair and turned on a tape recorder that delivered
the protests). Nevertheless, some critics said that Milgram did to his participants what they
assumed they were doing to their victims: He stressed them against their will. Indeed, like
Nazi executioners in the early days of the Holocaust (Brooks, 2011), many of the “teachers”
did experience agony. They sweated, trembled, stuttered, bit their lips, groaned, or even
broke into uncontrollable nervous laughter. A New York Times reviewer complained that the
cruelty inflicted by the studies “upon their unwitting subjects is surpassed only by the
cruelty that they elicit from them” (Marcus, 1974). Others have argued that Milgram’s
studies were unethical because the participants were deceived about their purpose, and thus
could not give truly informed consent (Baumrind, 1964, 2015).
Critics also argued that the participants’ self-concepts may have been altered. One par-
ticipant’s wife told him, “You can call yourself Eichmann” (referring to Nazi death camp
administrator Adolf Eichmann). Some scholars, after delving into Milgram’s archives,
report that his debriefing was less extensive and his participants’ distress greater than he
had suggested (Nicholson, 2011; Perry, 2013). Others, after analyzing participant interviews,
report that some participants justified their obedience by doubting that anyone had actually
been hurt (Hollander & Turowetz, 2017).
In his own defense, Milgram pointed to the important lessons taught by his nearly two-
dozen studies with more than 1,000 participants. He also reminded critics of the support
he received from the participants after the deception was revealed and the study explained.
When surveyed afterward, 84% said they were glad to have participated; only 1% regretted
volunteering. A year later, a psychiatrist interviewed 40 of those who had suffered most
and concluded that, despite the temporary stress, none was harmed.
Milgram believed that the ethical controversy was “terribly overblown”:
There is less consequence to subjects in this experiment from the standpoint of effects on
self-esteem, than to university students who take ordinary course examinations, and who do
not get the grades they want. . . . It seems that [in giving exams] we are quite prepared to
accept stress, tension, and consequences for self-esteem. But in regard to the process of generat-
ing new knowledge, how little tolerance we show. (quoted by Blass, 1996)
What Breeds Obedience?
Milgram did more than reveal that people will obey an authority; he also examined the condi-
tions that breed obedience. When he varied the social conditions, compliance ranged from
0 to 93% fully obedient. Four factors determined obedience: the victim’s emotional distance,
the authority’s closeness and legitimacy, whether the authority was part of a respected institu-
tion, and the liberating effects of a disobedient fellow participant.
In a virtual reality re-creation
of the Milgram studies,
participants responded—when
shocking a virtual onscreen
woman—much as did
Milgram’s participants, with
perspiration and racing heart
(Slater et al., 2006).
Recent replications of Milgram’s
obedience study have shown
levels of obedience somewhat
lower than in the 1960s, but
two-thirds of men still adminis-
ter high levels of shock.
©Jerry Burger
participants stopped after they argued that they did have a
choice about whether to continue (Gibson, 2013).
Further, notes Burger (2014), Milgram’s results were not
as surprising as they first seem. Four features of Milgram’s
study design, he argues, mirror well-documented psycho-
logical effects:
▯ the “slippery slope” of small requests that escalate
into large ones,
▯ the framing of shock-giving as the social norm for
the situation,
▯ the opportunity to deny responsibility, and
▯ the limited time to reflect on the decision.
All of these, in Milgram’s studies and in other research,
increase compliance and obedience.
Conformity and Obedience Chapter 6 153
THE VICTIM’S DISTANCE
Milgram’s participants acted with greatest obedience and least compas-
sion when the “learners” could not be seen (and could not see the
“teachers”). When the victim was remote and the “teachers” heard no
complaints, nearly all obeyed calmly to the end. But when the learner
was in the same room, “only” 40% obeyed to 450 volts. Full compliance
dropped to a still-astonishing 30% when teachers were required to force
the learner’s hand into contact with a shock plate. In a reenacted Mil-
gram study—with videotaped actors who were either hidden or seen
appearing in pain on a computer screen—participants were, again, much
less obedient when the victim was visible (Dambrun & Vatiné, 2010).
Close relationships mattered, too: In a study Milgram conducted but
never published, only 15% of participants asked to shock a relative,
friend, or neighbor complied (Perry, 2013). Known and seen victims
are more difficult to hurt than unknown and unseen victims.
In everyday life, too, it is easiest to abuse someone who is distant
or depersonalized. People who might never be cruel to someone face-
to-face may be nasty when posting comments about that same person
online or on social media. Throughout history, executioners have often
depersonalized those being executed by placing hoods over their heads.
The ethics of war allow soldiers to bomb a helpless village from 40,000
feet but not to shoot an equally helpless villager. In combat with an
enemy they can see, many soldiers either do not fire or do not aim.
Such disobedience is rare among those given orders to kill with the more distant artillery or
aircraft weapons (Padgett, 1989). It may even be true for nuclear war (see Focus On: Person-
alizing the Victims). In recent years, distance from victims has further lengthened with the
use of unmanned flying drones that can drop bombs, with the controller sitting at a console
many miles away from the destruction and death on the ground.
“Distance negates
responsibility.”
—Guy Davenport,
“The Master Builder,” 1966
An obedient participant in Milgram’s “touch” condition forces
the victim’s hand onto the shock plate. Usually, however,
“teachers” were more merciful to victims who were this close
to them.
©Stanley Milgram, 1965, from the film Obedience, distributed by Alexandra
Street Press.
Personalizing the Victims
focus
ON
Innocent victims trigger more compassion if personalized.
In a week when a soon-forgotten earthquake in Iran killed
3,000 people, one small boy died, trapped in a well shaft
in Italy, and the whole world grieved. Concerned that the
projected death statistics of a nuclear war are impersonal
to the point of being incomprehensible, international law
professor Roger Fisher proposed a way to personalize the
victims:
It so happens that a young man, usually a navy
officer, accompanies the president wherever he
goes. This young man has a black attachè case
which contains the codes that are needed to fire
nuclear weapons.
I can see the president at a staff meeting
considering nuclear war as an abstract ques-
tion. He might conclude, “On SIOP Plan One, the
decision is affirmative. Communicate the Alpha
line XYZ.” Such jargon keeps what is involved at
a distance.
My suggestion, then, is quite simple. Put that
needed code number in a little capsule and
implant that capsule right next to the heart of
a volunteer. The volunteer will carry with him
a big, heavy butcher knife as he accompanies
the president. If ever the president wants to fire
nuclear weapons, the only way he can do so is
by first, with his own hands, killing one human
being.
“George,” the president would say, “I’m sorry,
but tens of millions must die.” The president then
would have to look at someone and realize what
death is—what an innocent death is. Blood on the
White House carpet: it’s reality brought home.
When I suggested this to friends in the Penta-
gon, they said, “My God, that’s terrible. Having to
kill someone would distort the president’s judg-
ment. He might never push the button.”
Source: Adapted from “Preventing Nuclear War” by Roger Fisher,
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March 1981, pp. 11–17.
154 Part Two Social Influence
CLOSENESS AND LEGITIMACY OF THE AUTHORITY
The physical presence of the experimenter also affected obedience. When Milgram’s experi-
menter gave the commands by telephone, full obedience dropped to 21% (although many
lied and said they were obeying). Other studies confirm that when the one making the
command is physically close, compliance increases. Given a light touch on the arm, people
are more likely to lend a dime, sign a petition, or sample a new pizza (Kleinke, 1977; Smith
et al., 1982; Willis & Hamm, 1980).
The authority, however, must be perceived as legitimate. In another twist on the basic
Milgram study, the researcher received a rigged telephone call that required him to leave
the laboratory. He said that since the equipment recorded data automatically, the “teacher”
should just go ahead. After the researcher left, an assistant (actually a second confederate),
assumed command. The assistant “decided” that the shock should be increased one level
for each wrong answer and instructed the teacher accordingly. Now 80% of the teachers
refused to comply fully. The assistant, feigning disgust at this defiance, sat down in front
of the shock generator and tried to take over the teacher’s role. At that point most of the
defiant participants protested. Some tried to unplug the generator. One large man lifted the
zealous assistant from his chair and threw him across the room. This rebellion against an
illegitimate authority contrasted sharply with the deferential politeness usually shown the
experimenter. In a later reanalysis of the Milgram studies, Stephen Reicher and his col-
leagues (2012, Haslam et al., 2015) found that participants were significantly more obedient
when they identified with the researcher or the scientific community he represented. They
obeyed orders because they believed they were making a contribution to science and were
thus doing something worthy and noble. “Followers do not lose their moral compass so
much as choose particular authorities to guide them through the dilemmas of everyday life,”
they noted (Reicher & Haslam, 2011, p. 61).
In another study, hospital nurses were called by an unknown physician and ordered
to administer an obvious drug overdose (Hof ling et al., 1966). When told about the
experiment, everyone in a group of nurses said they would not have followed the order.
Nevertheless, when 22 other nurses were actually given the phoned-in overdose order, all
but one obeyed without delay (until being intercepted on their way to the patient).
Although not all nurses are so compliant (Krackow & Blass, 1995; Rank & Jacobson,
1977), these nurses were following a familiar script: Doctor (a legitimate authority)
orders; nurse obeys.
Compliance with legitimate authority was also apparent in the strange case of the “rectal
ear ache” (Cohen & Davis, 1981). A doctor ordered eardrops for a patient suffering infec-
tion in the right ear. On the prescription, the doctor abbreviated “place in right ear” as
“place in R ear.” Reading the order, the compliant nurse put the required drops in the
compliant patient’s rectum.
INSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY
If the prestige of the authority is that important,
then perhaps the institutional prestige of Yale
University legitimized the Milgram experiment
commands. In postexperimental interviews,
many participants said that had it not been for
Yale’s reputation, they would not have obeyed.
To see whether that was true, Milgram moved the
study to less prestigious Bridgeport, Connecticut.
He set himself up in a modest commercial build-
ing as the “Research Associates of Bridgeport.”
When the “learner-has-a-heart-condition” study
was run with the same personnel, what percent-
age of the men do you suppose fully obeyed?
Although the obedience rate (48%) was still
remarkably high, it was lower than the 65% rate
at Yale.
Given orders, most soldiers will torch people’s homes or kill—behaviors that in other
contexts they would consider immoral.
©STR/AP Images
Imagine you had the power to
prevent either a tsunami that
would kill 25,000 people on the
planet’s other side, a crash that
would kill 250 people at your
local airport, or a car accident
that would kill a close friend.
Which would you prevent?
Conformity and Obedience Chapter 6 155
In everyday life, too, authorities backed by institutions wield social power. Robert
Ornstein (1991) tells of a psychiatrist friend who was called to the edge of a cliff above
San Mateo, California, where one of his patients, Alfred, was threatening to jump. When
the psychiatrist’s reasoned reassurance failed to dislodge Alfred, the psychiatrist could only
hope that a police crisis expert would soon arrive.
Although no expert came, another police officer, unaware of the drama, happened onto
the scene, took out his power bullhorn, and yelled at the assembled cliffside group: “Who’s
the ass who left that Pontiac station wagon double-parked out there in the middle of the
road? I almost hit it. Move it now, whoever you are.” Hearing the message, Alfred obediently
got down at once, moved the car, and then without a word got into the police cruiser for
a trip to a nearby hospital.
THE LIBERATING EFFECTS OF GROUP INFLUENCE
These classic experiments give us a negative view of conformity. But conformity can also
be constructive. The heroic firefighters who rushed into the flaming World Trade Center
towers on 9/11 were “incredibly brave,” note social psychologist Susan Fiske and her col-
leagues (2004), but they were also “partly obeying their superiors, partly conforming to
extraordinary group loyalty.” Consider, too, the occasional liberating effect of conformity.
Perhaps you can recall a time you felt justifiably angry at an unfair teacher but you hesitated
to object. Then one or two other students spoke up about the unfair practices, and you
followed their example, which had a liberating effect. Milgram captured this liberating effect
of conformity by placing the teacher with two confederates who were to help conduct the
procedure. During the study, both confederates defied the experimenter, who then ordered
the real participant to continue alone. Did he? No. Ninety percent liberated themselves by
conforming to the defiant confederates.
Reflections on the Classic Studies
The common response to Milgram’s results is to note their counterparts in the “I was only
following orders” defenses of Adolf Eichmann, in Nazi Germany; of American Lieutenant
William Calley, who in 1968 directed the unprovoked slaughter of hundreds of Vietnamese
in the village of My Lai; and of the “ethnic cleansings” that occurred in Iraq, Rwanda,
Bosnia, and Kosovo.
Soldiers are trained to obey superiors. Thus, one participant in the My Lai massacre recalled:
[Lieutenant Calley] told me to start shooting. So I started shooting, I poured about four clips
into the group. . . . They were begging and saying, “No, no.” And the mothers were hugging
their children and. . . . Well, we kept right on firing. They was waving their arms and begging.
(Wallace, 1969)
The “safe” scientific contexts of the obedience experiments differ from the wartime con-
texts. Moreover, much of the brutality of war and genocide goes beyond obedience (Miller,
2004). George Mastroianni (2015) and Allan Fenigstein (2015) both argue that most Ger-
man soldiers killed willingly—not because they were obeying orders or because they were
inherently evil, but because they had been indoctrinated to the Nazi view so thoroughly that
they no longer saw Jews as human and thus deserving of empathy. The Holocaust, Mastroi-
anni believes, is better explained by theories of socialization and interpersonal influence than
by obedience. “The idea that any of us could be transformed into genocidaires [people who
propagate genocide] in a few hours in a social psychology laboratory is wrong,” he maintains.
In contrast, “growing up a certain way, in a particular culture, steeped in destructive ideolo-
gies can produce people who will commit terrible acts of destruction.”
The Milgram obedience studies also differ from other conformity studies in the strength
of the social pressure: Obedience is explicitly commanded. Yet the Asch and the Milgram
studies share four similarities:
▯ They show how compliance can take precedence over moral sense.
▯ They succeed in pressuring people to go against their own consciences.
The United States military now
trains soldiers to disobey
inappropriate, unlawful orders.
156 Part Two Social Influence
▯ They sensitize us to moral conflicts in our own lives.
▯ They affirm two familiar social psychological principles: the link between behavior
and attitudes and the power of the situation.
BEHAVIOR AND ATTITUDES
When external influences override inner convictions, attitudes fail to determine behavior.
These experiments vividly illustrate that principle. When responding alone, Asch’s partici-
pants nearly always gave the correct answer. It was another matter when they stood alone
against a group.
In the obedience experiments, a powerful social pressure (the experimenter’s commands)
overcame a weaker one (the remote victim’s pleas). Torn between the pleas of the victim
and the orders of the experimenter, between the desire to avoid doing harm and the desire
to be a good participant, a surprising number of people chose to obey.
Why were the participants unable to disengage themselves? Imagine yourself as the
teacher in a hypothetical version of Milgram’s experiment. Assume that when the learner
gives the first wrong answer, the experimenter asks you to zap him with 330 volts. After
flicking the switch, you hear the learner scream, complain of a heart disturbance, and plead
for mercy. Do you continue?
Perhaps not. In Milgram’s real experiment, their first commitment was mild—15 volts—
and it elicited no protest. By the time they delivered 75 volts and heard the learner’s first
groan, they already had complied 5 times, and the next request was to deliver only slightly
more. By the time they delivered 330 volts, the participants had complied 22 times and
reduced some of their dissonance. They were therefore in a different psychological state
from that of someone beginning the experiment at that point—it was a “slippery slope” of
obedience, and once they started down it was difficult to stop. A recent experiment on
cheating captured the effects of the slippery slope. Some participants received 25 cents for
a correct answer in the first round, $1 in the second, and $2.50 in the third, while others
were paid $2.50 for each answer from the beginning. Those with the progressive incentives
were more likely to cheat and say they got more answers correct, possibly because
their infraction started out small—what’s 25 cents?—and then grew (Welch et al.,
2015). However, this principle doesn’t work perfectly: When asked to administer
a painful but not extreme amount of shock (150 volts), nearly all participants
complied—more than those who worked up to that level through 10 trials (Dolin-
ski & Grzyb, 2016). They had not yet heard the learner protest, so at this point
one request might have been easier to follow than 10.
External behavior and internal disposition can also feed each other, some-
times in an escalating spiral. Thus, reported Milgram (1974, p. 10):
Many subjects harshly devalue the victim as a consequence of acting against him.
Such comments as, “He was so stupid and stubborn he deserved to get shocked,”
were common. Once having acted against the victim, these subjects found it neces-
sary to view him as an unworthy individual, whose punishment was made inevitable
by his own deficiencies of intellect and character.
During the early 1970s, Greece’s military junta used this “blame-the-victim”
process to train torturers (Haritos-Fatouros, 1988, 2002; Staub, 1989, 2003). There,
as in the earlier training of SS officers in Nazi Germany, the military selected
candidates based on their respect for and submission to authority. But such tenden-
cies alone do not a torturer make. Thus, they would first assign the trainee to guard
prisoners, then to participate in arrest squads, then to hit prisoners, then to observe
torture, and only then to practice it. Step by step, an obedient but otherwise decent
person evolved into an agent of cruelty. Compliance bred acceptance. If we focus
on the end point—450 volts of torture administered—we are aghast at the evil
conduct. If we consider how one gets there—in tiny steps—we understand.
As a Holocaust survivor, University of Massachusetts social psychologist
Ervin Staub knows too well the forces that can transform citizens into agents
of death. From his study of human genocide across the world, Staub (2003)
“Men’s actions are too strong
for them. Show me a man who
had acted and who had not
been the victim and slave of
his action.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Representative Men: Goethe, 1850
Compliance breeds acceptance. Ex-torturer
Jeffrey Benzien demonstrates the “wet bag”
technique of almost asphyxiating someone
to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation
Commission. “I did terrible things,” Benzien
admitted with apologies to his victims, though
he claimed only to be following orders.
©Benny Gool/Capetown Independent Newspaper
Conformity and Obedience Chapter 6 157
shows where gradually increasing aggression can lead. Too often, criticism produces
contempt, which licenses cruelty, which, when justified, leads to brutality, then killing,
then systematic killing. Evolving attitudes both follow and justify actions. Staub’s disturb-
ing conclusion: “Human beings have the capacity to come to experience killing other
people as nothing extraordinary” (1989, p. 13).
But humans also have a capacity for heroism. During the Nazi Holocaust, the French
village of Le Chambon sheltered 5,000 Jews and other refugees destined for deportation
to Germany. The villagers were mostly Protestants whose own authorities, their pastors,
had taught them to “resist whenever our adversaries will demand of us obedience contrary
to the orders of the Gospel” (Rochat, 1993; Rochat & Modigliani, 1995). Ordered to divulge
the locations of sheltered Jews, the head pastor modeled disobedience: “I don’t know of
Jews, I only know of human beings.” Without knowing how terrible the war would be, the
resisters, beginning in 1940, made an initial commitment and then—supported by their
beliefs, by their own authorities, and by one another—remained defiant until the village’s
liberation in 1944. Here and elsewhere, the ultimate response to Nazi occupation came
early. Their initial helping heightened commitment, leading to more helping.
THE POWER OF SOCIAL NORMS
Imagine violating some minor norms: standing up in the middle of a class; singing out loud
in a restaurant; playing golf in a suit. In trying to break with social constraints, we suddenly
realize how strong they are.
The students in one Pennsylvania State University experiment found it surprisingly difficult
to violate the social norm of being “nice” rather than confrontational—even
when they were thoroughly provoked. Participants imagined themselves dis-
cussing with three others whom to select for survival on a desert island. They
were asked to imagine one of the others, a man, injecting three sexist com-
ments, such as, “I think we need more women on the island to keep the men
satisfied.” How would they react to such sexist remarks? Only 5% predicted
they would ignore the comments or wait to see how others reacted. But
when other students were actually in the situation and heard a male con-
federate make these comments, 55% (not 5%) said nothing (Swim & Hyers,
1999). Likewise, although people predict they would be upset by witnessing
a person making a racial slur and would reject that person, those actually
experiencing such an event typically exhibit indifference (Kawakami et al.,
2009). These experiments demonstrate the power of social norms and
show how hard it is to predict behavior, even our own behavior.
How ironic that in 2011, the human struggle with confrontation should
play out at Swim and Hyers’ university—Penn State—in a public debate
about how its revered football coach and other university officials should
have responded to learning that a fellow coach had sexually abused boys.
(The coaches reportedly did pass on the reports to superiors, but allowed
the alleged abuser to continue using university facilities.) Commentators
were outraged; they presumed that they themselves would have acted more
strongly. These experiments remind us that saying what we would do in
a hypothetical situation is often easier than doing it in a real situation.
Milgram’s studies also offer a lesson about evil. In horror movies and
suspense novels, evil results from a few bad apples, a few depraved killers.
In real life we think of Hitler’s extermination of Jews or of Osama bin
Laden’s terrorist plot. But evil also results from social forces—from the
powerful situations that help make a whole barrel of apples go bad. The
American military police, whose abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib
prison horrified the world, were under stress, taunted by many they had
come to save, angered by comrades’ deaths, overdue to return home, and
under lax supervision—an evil situation that produced evil behavior (Fiske,
2004; Lankford, 2009). Situations and strong beliefs can induce ordinary
people to capitulate to cruelty.
“The social psychology of this
century reveals a major les-
son: Often it is not so much
the kind of person a man is as
the kind of situation in which
he finds himself that deter-
mines how he will act.”
—Stanley Milgram,
Obedience to Authority, 1974
Even in an individualistic culture, few of us desire to
challenge our culture’s clearest social norms, as did
Stephen Gough while walking the length of Britain
naked (apart from hat, socks, boots, and a rucksack).
Starting in June 2003, he made it to the length of
Britain, from Lands’ End in England’s southwest to John
o’Groats, in Scotland’s northeast. During his 7-month,
847-mile trek he was arrested 15 times and spent
about five months behind bars. “My naked activism is
firstly and most importantly about me standing up for
myself, a declaration of myself as a beautiful human
being,” Gough (2003) declared from his website.
©Daily Mail/Rex/Alamy Stock Photo
158 Part Two Social Influence
This is especially true when, as happens often in large societies, the most terrible evil
evolves from a sequence of small evils. German civil servants surprised Nazi leaders with
their willingness to handle the paperwork of the Holocaust. They were not killing Jews, of
course; they were merely pushing paper (Silver & Geller, 1978). When fragmented, evil
becomes easier. Milgram studied this compartmentalization of evil by involving yet another
40 men more indirectly. With someone else triggering the shock, they had only to admin-
ister the learning test. Now, 37 of the 40 fully complied.
So it is in our everyday lives: The drift toward evil usually comes in small increments,
without any conscious intent to do evil. Procrastination involves a similar unintended drift,
toward self-harm (Sabini & Silver, 1982). A student knows the deadline for a term paper
weeks ahead. Each diversion from work on the paper—a video game here, a TV show
there—seems harmless enough. Yet gradually the student veers toward not doing the paper
without ever consciously deciding not to do it.
Under the sway of evil forces, even nice people are sometimes corrupted as they con-
struct moral rationalizations for immoral behavior (Tsang, 2002). So it is that ordinary
soldiers may, in the end, follow orders to shoot defenseless civilians; admired political
leaders may lead their citizens into ill-fated wars; ordinary employees may follow instruc-
tions to produce and distribute harmful, degrading products; and ordinary group members
may heed commands to brutally haze initiates.
So, does a situational analysis of harm-doing exonerate harm-doers? Does it absolve them
of responsibility? In laypeople’s minds, the answer is, to some extent, yes, notes Arthur
Miller (2006). But the psychologists who study the roots of evil insist otherwise. To explain
is not to excuse. To understand is not to forgive. You can forgive someone whose behavior
you don’t understand, and you can understand someone whom you do not forgive. More-
over, adds James Waller (2002), “When we understand the ordinariness of extraordinary
evil, we will be less surprised by evil, less likely to be unwitting contributors to evil, and
perhaps better equipped to forestall evil.” Jerry Burger’s (2009) replication of the famous
Milgram study excluded those familiar with it. Had such people—with the knowledge you
now have—been included, might the obedience rate have been much lower (Elms, 2009)?
Finally, a comment on the experimental method used in conformity research: Confor-
mity and obedience situations in the laboratory differ from those in everyday life. How
often are we asked to judge line lengths or administer shock? But just as a match and a
forest fire both burn, we assume that psychological processes in the laboratory and in
everyday life are similar (Milgram, 1974). We must be careful in generalizing from the
simplicity of a burning match to the complexity of a forest fire. Yet controlled experiments
on burning matches can give us insights into combustion that we cannot gain by observing
forest fires. So, too, the social-psychological experiment offers insights into behavior not
readily revealed in everyday life. The experimental situation is unique, but so is every social
situation. By testing with a variety of unique tasks, and by repeating experiments at different
times and places, researchers probe for the common principles that lie beneath the surface
diversity. For a summary of these classic obedience studies, review Table 1.
TABLE 1 Summary of Classic Obedience Studies
Topic Researcher Method Real-Life Example
Norm formation Sherif Assessing suggestibility
regarding seeming
movement of light
Interpreting events differently
after hearing from others;
appreciating a tasty food that
others love
Conformity Asch Agreement with others’
obviously wrong
perceptual judgments
Doing as others do; fads such
as tattoos
Obedience Milgram Complying with
commands to shock
another
Soldiers or employees
following questionable orders
Conformity and Obedience Chapter 6 159
The classic conformity experiments answered some questions but raised others: Some-
times people conform; sometimes they do not. Given that, we can ask: (1) When do they
conform? (2) Why do people conform? Why don’t they ignore the group and “to their own
selves be true”? (3) Is there a type of person who is likely to conform? In the next sections
we will take these questions one at a time.
Three classic sets of experiments illustrate how researchers
have studied conformity.
▯ Muzafer Sherif observed that others’ judgments influ-
enced people’s estimates of the movement of a point of
light that actually did not move. Norms for “proper”
answers emerged and survived both over long periods
of time and through succeeding generations of research
participants.
▯ Solomon Asch had people listen to others’ judgments
of which of three comparison lines was equal to a stan-
dard line and then make the same judgment themselves.
When the others unanimously gave a wrong answer, the
participants conformed 37% of the time.
▯ Stanley Milgram’s studies of obedience elicited an
extreme form of compliance. Under optimum conditions—
a legitimate, close-at-hand commander, a remote vic-
tim, and no one else to exemplify disobedience—65% of
his adult male participants fully obeyed instructions to
deliver what were supposedly traumatizing electric
shocks to a screaming, innocent victim in an adjacent
room.
▯ Behavior and attitudes are mutually reinforcing, enabling
a small act of evil to foster the attitude that leads to a
bigger evil act.
SUMMING UP: What Are the Classic Conformity and
Obedience Studies?
WHAT PREDICTS CONFORMITY?
Identify situations that trigger much—and
little—conformity.
Social psychologists wondered: If even Asch’s noncoercive, unambiguous situation could
elicit a 37% conformity rate, would other settings produce even more? Researchers soon
discovered that conformity did grow if the judgments were difficult or if the participants
felt incompetent. The more insecure we are about our judgments, the more influenced we
are by others.
Group attributes also matter. Conformity is highest when the group has three or more
people and is unanimous, cohesive, and high in status. Conformity is also highest when
the response is public and made without prior commitment. Let’s look at each of these
conditions.
Group Size
Asch and other researchers found that 3 to 5 people will elicit much more conformity than
just 1 or 2. Increasing the number of people beyond 5 yields diminishing returns (Gerard
et al., 1968; Rosenberg, 1961)—a small group can have a big effect. In a field experiment,
Milgram and his colleagues (1969) had 1, 2, 3, 5, 10, or 15 people pause on a busy New
York City sidewalk and look up. As Figure 6 shows, the percentage of passersby who also
looked up increased as the number looking up increased from 1 to 5 persons. Try this on
your campus—get a few friends to stand with you looking up at the sky, and you’ll find that
almost everyone who walks by does the same. I [JT] did this with my students when I was
a teaching assistant at the University of Michigan. When only one or two volunteers stood
outside the classroom building, a few people glanced at them but no one looked up. But
when 4 or 5 students stood outside the door, staring up at the sky, nearly every student
160 Part Two Social Influence
stepping out of the building instantly lifted their head skyward. My students and I laughed
so hard we embarrassed ourselves.
The way the group is “packaged” also makes a difference. Rutgers University researcher
David Wilder (1977) gave students a jury case. Before giving their own judgments, the
students watched videotapes of four confederates giving their judgments. When the confed-
erates were presented as two independent groups of two people, the participants conformed
more than when the four confederates presented their judgments as a single group. Simi-
larly, two groups of three people elicited more conformity than one group of six, and three
groups of two people elicited even more. The agreement of independent small groups makes
a position more credible.
Unanimity
Imagine yourself in a conformity experiment in which all but one of the people responding
before you give the same wrong answer. Would the example of this one nonconforming
confederate be as liberating as it was for the individuals in Milgram’s obedience study?
Several experiments reveal that someone who punctures a group’s unanimity deflates its
social power (Allen & Levine, 1969; Asch, 1955; Morris & Miller, 1975). As Figure 7
illustrates, people will usually voice their own convictions if just one other person has also
differed from the majority. The participants in such experiments often later say they felt
warm toward and close to their nonconforming ally. Yet they deny that the ally influenced
them: “I would have answered just the same if he weren’t there.”
It’s difficult to be a minority of one; few juries are hung because of one dissenting juror.
Only 1 in 10 U.S. Supreme Court decisions during the late-twentieth century had a lone
dissenter; most have been unanimous or a 5–4 split (Granberg & Bartels, 2005). Lindsey
Levitan and Brad Verhulst (2016) asked college students to privately state their views on
issues such as gun control, the death penalty, and abortion. When they later restated their
views before others who thought differently, they were less likely to change their position
if they had even one ally.
Conformity experiments teach the practical lesson that it is easier to stand up for some-
thing if you can find someone else to stand up with you. Many religious groups recognize
this. Following the example of Jesus, who sent his disciples out in pairs, the Mormons send
“My opinion, my conviction,
gains infinitely in strength and
success, the moment a sec-
ond mind has adopted it.”
—Novalis, Fragment
FIGURE 6
Group Size and Conformity
The percentage of passersby who imitated a group looking upward increased as group size increased to 5 persons.
Source: Data from Milgram, S., Bickman, L., & Berkowitz, L. (1969).
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
1 0
0
Percent passersby
0 1 2 3 5 1 0 1 5
Size of stimulus crowd
Conformity and Obedience Chapter 6 161
two missionaries into a neighborhood together. The support of the one comrade greatly
increases a person’s social courage.
Observing someone else’s dissent—even when it is wrong—can increase our own indepen-
dence. Charlan Nemeth and Cynthia Chiles (1988) discovered this after having people
observe a lone individual in a group of four misjudge blue stimuli as green. Although the
dissenter was wrong, after they had observed him the observers were more likely to exhibit
their own form of independence: 76% of the time they correctly labeled red slides “red” even
when everyone else was incorrectly calling them “orange.” Participants who had no oppor-
tunity to observe the “green” dissenter gave the correct answer only 30% of the time (and
thus conformed 70% of the time).
Cohesion
A minority opinion from someone outside the groups we identify with—from someone at
another college or of a different religion—sways us less than the same minority opinion
from someone within our group (Clark & Maass, 1988). A heterosexual arguing for gay
rights sways heterosexuals more effectively than
does a homosexual. People even comply more read-
ily with requests from those said to share their
birthday, their first name, or features of their fin-
gerprint (Burger et al., 2004; Silvia, 2005).
The more cohesive a group is, the more power it
gains over its members. In other words, a group of
your closest friends would influence you more than
a group of acquaintances you don’t feel very close
to. In college sororities, for example, friends tend to
share binge-eating tendencies, especially as they
grow closer (Crandall, 1988). High school, often a
time of cohesive groups, often leads students to
drink as much alcohol as their peers in order to
become (or stay) popular (Balsa et al., 2010). People
within an ethnic group may feel a similar “own-group
conformity pressure”—to talk, act, and dress just as
everyone else does in their own group. In fact,
Blacks who “act White” or Whites who “act Black”
may be mocked by their peers for not conforming to
their own ethnic group (Contrada et al., 2000).
cohesiveness
A “we feeling”; the extent to
which members of a group are
bound together, such as by
attraction to one another.
Correct estimates (percent)
1 21 11 098765
Critical trials
4321
1 00
80
60
40
20
0
FIGURE 7
The Effect of Unanimity
on Conformity
When someone giving correct
answers punctures the group’s
unanimity, individuals conform
only one-fourth as often.
Source: Data from Asch, 1955.
It is difficult to stand alone as a minority of one. But doing so sometimes makes a
hero, as was the lone dissenting jury member in the 1957 movie 12 Angry Men
(remade in 1997).
©United Archives GmbH/Alamy Stock Photo
162 Part Two Social Influence
Our inclination to go with our group—to think what it thinks
and do what it does— surfaced in one experiment as people
reported greater liking for a piece of music that was said to be
liked by people akin to themselves (but disliked the music more
when it was liked by someone unlike themselves [Hilmert et
al., 2006]). Likewise, when university students compare them-
selves with alcohol drinkers who are dissimilar from them-
selves, they become less likely to drink alcohol (Lane et al.,
2011). And after observing cheating by someone wearing a
T-shirt from their own university, participants in another exper-
iment became more likely to cheat. But if the cheater wore a
T-shirt from a competing university, it had the opposite effect:
the participants became more honest (Gino et al., 2009).
Cohesion-fed conformity also appears in college dorms, where
students’ attitudes become more similar to those living near
them (Cullum & Harton, 2007).
Status
As you might suspect, higher-status people tend to have more
impact (Driskell & Mullen, 1990). Junior group members—even
junior social psychologists—acknowledge more conformity to
their group than do senior group members (Jetten et al., 2006). Chinese consumers who felt
more powerful were less likely to conform by choosing popular products and came up with
advertising slogans more focused on uniqueness (Zou et al., 2014). Jeff Galak and his col-
leagues (2016) found a creative way to test status and conformity, examining 16,000 purchases
of women’s shoes. Women who recently moved to a neighborhood higher in status than the
one they left were more likely to buy the type of shoes favored in the new neighborhood, but
those who moved to a lower-status neighborhood were more likely to ignore the local norms.
Even chimps are more likely to imitate the behaviors of high-ranking group members (Horner
et al., 2010). Among both humans and other primates, prestige begets influence.
Milgram (1974) reported that in his obedience studies, people of lower status accepted the
experimenter’s commands more readily than people of higher status. After delivering 450 volts,
a 37-year-old welder turned to the higher-status experimenter and deferentially asked, “Where
do we go from here, Professor?” (p. 46). Another participant, a divinity school professor who
disobeyed at 150 volts, said, “I don’t understand why the experiment is placed above this per-
son’s life” and plied the experimenter with questions about “the ethics of this thing” (p. 48).
Public Response
One of conformity researchers’ first questions was this: Would people conform more in
their public responses than in their private opinions? Or would they wobble more in their
private opinions but be unwilling to conform publicly, lest they appear wishy-washy?
The answer is now clear: In experiments, people conform more when they must respond
in front of others rather than writing their answers privately. Asch’s participants, after hearing
others respond, were less influenced by group pressure if they could write answers that only
the experimenter would see. As shown in a study in China, adolescents are more likely than
children to change their answers when they are displayed publicly to their peers, suggesting
adolescents feel more group pressure to conform (Zhang et al., 2018). Thus, when college
instructors ask controversial questions, students express more diverse opinions when answer-
ing anonymously, with clickers, than when raising hands (Stowell et al., 2010). It is much
easier to stand up for what we believe in the privacy of the voting booth than before a group.
Prior Commitment
In 1980, Genuine Risk became the second filly ever to win the Kentucky Derby. In her
next race, the Preakness, she came off the last turn gaining on the leader, Codex, a colt.
People are more likely to jaywalk when someone else does, and not
jaywalk when someone else doesn’t, especially when the other
person is well-dressed and thus appears to be high in status
(Mullen et al., 1990).
©Image Source, all rights reserved.
Conformity and Obedience Chapter 6 163
As they came out of the turn neck and neck, Codex
moved sideways toward Genuine Risk, causing her
to hesitate and giving him a narrow victory. Had
Codex brushed Genuine Risk? Had his jockey even
whipped Genuine Risk in the face? The race referees
huddled. After a brief deliberation they judged that
no foul had occurred and confirmed Codex as the
winner. The decision caused an uproar. Televised
instant replays showed that Codex had indeed
brushed Genuine Risk, the sentimental favorite. A
protest was filed. The officials reconsidered their
decision, but they did not change it.
Did their declared judgment immediately after
the race affect officials’ openness toward reaching a
different decision later? We will never know for sure.
We can, however, put people through a laboratory
version of this event—with and without the immedi-
ate public commitment—and observe whether the
commitment makes a difference. Again, imagine
yourself in an Asch-type experiment. The experi-
menter displays the lines and asks you to respond
first. After you give your judgment and then hear
everyone else disagree, the experimenter offers you an opportunity to reconsider. In the
face of group pressure, do you now back down?
People almost never do (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955). After having made a public commit-
ment, they stick to it. At most, they will change their judgments in later situations ( Saltzstein
& Sandberg, 1979). We may therefore expect that judges of diving or gymnastic competi-
tions, for example, will seldom change their ratings after seeing the other judges’ ratings,
although they might adjust their later performance ratings. When people apologize and
admit they are wrong, they often feel less in control (Okimoto et al. 2013).
Prior commitments restrain persuasion, too. When simulated juries make decisions, hung
verdicts are more likely in cases when jurors are polled by a show of hands rather than by
secret ballot (Kerr & MacCoun, 1985). Making a public commitment makes people hesitant
to back down.
Smart persuaders know this. Salespeople ask questions that prompt us to make statements
for, rather than against, what they are marketing. Environmentalists ask people to declare their
commitment to recycling, energy conservation, or bus riding. That’s because behavior changes
more when people declare their commitment to environmental sustainability than when they
merely hear an appeal for it (Katzev & Wang, 1994). This principle works for health behaviors
as well: Compared to those who only received education about alcohol and drugs, Spanish
teens who publicly pledged not to drink alcohol or do drugs were less likely to do so (Hernán-
dez-Serrano et al., 2013). People who publicly pledged to lose weight were not only more
motivated to lose weight, but actually did drop more pounds (Nyer & Dellande, 2010).
“Those who never retract their
opinions love themselves
more than they love truth.”
—J. Joubert,
Pensèes, 1877
Prior commitment: Once they commit themselves to a position, people seldom
yield to social pressure. Did Codex, the front horse closest to the inside, brush
against Genuine Risk? After race referees publicly announced their decision, no
amount of evidence from replays of the race could budge them.
©IRA SCHWARZ/AP Images
▯ Certain situations appear to be especially powerful for
eliciting conformity. For example, people conform
most when three or more people model the behavior or
belief.
▯ Conformity is reduced if the modeled behavior or belief
is not unanimous—if one or more people dissent.
▯ Conformity is enhanced by group cohesion.
▯ The higher the status of those modeling the behavior or
belief, the greater likelihood of conformity.
▯ People also conform most when their responses are
public (in the presence of the group).
▯ A prior commitment to a certain behavior or belief in-
creases the likelihood that a person will stick with that
commitment.
SUMMING UP: What Predicts Conformity?
164 Part Two Social Influence
WHY CONFORM?
Identify and understand the two forms of social
influence that explain why people will conform to others.
“Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in the shape of a camel?” asks Shakespeare’s
Hamlet of Polonius. “’Tis like a camel indeed,” replies Polonius. “Methinks it is a weasel,”
says Hamlet a moment later. “It is backed like a weasel,” acknowledges Polonius. “Or like
a whale?” wonders Hamlet. “Very like a whale,” agrees Polonius. Question: Why does
Polonius so readily agree every time Hamlet changes his mind?
Or consider this situation: There I [DM] was, an American attending my first lecture
during an extended visit at a German university. As the lecturer finished, I lifted my hands
to join in the clapping. But rather than clap, the other people began rapping the tables with
their knuckles. What did this mean? Did they disapprove of the speech? Surely, not everyone
would be so openly rude to a visiting dignitary. Nor did their faces express displeasure. No,
I realized, this must be a German ovation. So I added my knuckles to the chorus.
What prompted this conformity? Why had I not clapped even while the others rapped?
Why did Polonius so readily echo Hamlet’s words? There are two possibilities: A person
may bow to the group (a) to be accepted and avoid rejection or (b) to obtain important
information. Morton Deutsch and Harold Gerard (1955) named these two possibilities
normative influence and informational influence. The first springs from our desire to be
liked, and the second from our desire to be right.
Normative influence is “going along with the crowd” to avoid rejection, to stay in peo-
ple’s good graces, or to gain their approval. Perhaps the subordinate Polonius agreed with
Hamlet, the higher-status Prince of Denmark, to curry favor. Informational influence cap-
tures how beliefs spread. Just as people look up when they see others looking up, they use
the same fork others are using at a fancy dinner party.
In the laboratory and in everyday life, groups often reject consistent nonconformers
(Miller & Anderson, 1979; Schachter, 1951). That’s a lesson learned by a media studies
professor who became an outcast while playing the online game “City of Heroes” (Vargas,
2009). The professor, with whom I [DM] empathize because we share the same name—
David Myers—played by the rules but did not conform to the customs. Myers was derided
with instant messages: “I hope your mother gets cancer.” “EVERYONE HATES YOU.” “If
you kill me one more time I will come and kill you for real and I am not kidding.”
As most of us know, social rejection is painful; when we deviate from group norms, we
often pay an emotional price. Gerard (1999) recalls that in one of his conformity experiments,
an initially friendly participant became upset, asked to leave the room, and returned looking
sick and visibly shaken. I became worried and suggested that we discontinue the session. He
absolutely refused to stop and continued through all 36 trials, not yielding to the others on a
single trial. After the experiment was over and I explained the subterfuge to him, his entire
body relaxed and he sighed with relief. Color returned to his face. I asked him why he had
left the room. “To vomit,” he said. He did not yield, but at what a price! He wanted so much
to be accepted and liked by the others and was afraid he would not be because he had stood
his ground against them. There you have normative pressure operating with a vengeance.
Sometimes the high price of deviation compels people to support what they do not believe
in or at least to suppress their disagreement. In one experiment, participants who were
ostracized by others were more likely to obey an experimenter’s command to go outside in
freezing weather to take 39 photographs (Riva et al., 2014). When we experience or even
fear rejection, we’re more likely to follow along. “I was afraid that Leideritz and others would
think I was a coward,” reported one German officer, explaining his reluctance to dissent
from mass executions (Waller, 2002). Normative influence leads to compliance, especially
for people who have recently seen others ridiculed or who are seeking to climb a status
ladder (Hollander, 1958; Janes & Olson, 2000). As John F. Kennedy (1956) recalled, “‘The
way to get along,’ I was told when I entered Congress, ‘is to go along’” (p. 4).
normative influence
Conformity based on a person’s
desire to fulfill others’
expectations, often to gain
acceptance.
informational influence
Conformity occurring when
people accept evidence about
reality provided by other
people.
“If you worry about missing
the boat—remember the
Titanic.”
—Anonymous
Conformity and Obedience Chapter 6 165
Normative influence—information about the average behavior of other people—often
sways us without our awareness. Administrators at Northern Illinois University wanted to
reduce students’ dangerous binge drinking at parties. At first they tried warning students
about the consequences of binge drinking, but binge-drinking rates stayed about the same.
Then they spread information about the norm, telling them that “most students drink
moderately.” That technique was successful: Binge drinking was cut in half over 10 years
(Haines, 1996). Teens are much more likely to smoke when their friends smoke and thus
they see smoking as the norm (Liu et al., 2017). People follow others’ lead when deciding
what to eat, too. In one study, customers at a bakery ate significantly more chocolates when
20 candy wrappers were left next to the bowl (Prinsen et al., 2013).
Informational influence, on the other hand, leads people to privately accept others’ influ-
ence as a source of information. Viewing a changing cloud shape, Polonius may actually
see what Hamlet helps him see. When reality is ambiguous, as it was for participants in
Sherif’s autokinetic situation, other people can be a valuable source of information. The
individual may reason, “I can’t tell how far the light is moving. But this guy seems to know.”
The same is true while you’re reading the restaurant reviews on Yelp or the hotel reviews
on TripAdvisor: If you haven’t been there before, other people’s experiences can provide
important information. These types of reviews are good examples of informational influence
(Chen et al., 2016).
Your friends have extra inf luence on you for informational as well as normative rea-
sons (Denrell, 2008; Denrell & Le Mens, 2007). If your friend buys a particular car or
takes you to a particular restaurant, you will gain information that may lead you to like
what your friend likes—even if you don’t care what your friend likes. Our friends inf lu-
ence the experiences that inform our attitudes. However, that inf luence doesn’t last
forever: In one study, conformity to others’ opinions lasted no more than three days
(Huang et al., 2014).
To discover what the brain is doing when people experience an Asch-type conformity
experiment, an Emory University neuroscience team put participants in a functional
magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scanner while having them answer questions
after hearing others’ responses (Berns et al., 2005). When the participants conformed to
a wrong answer, the brain regions dedicated to perception became active. And when they
went against the group, brain regions associated with emotion became active. These
results suggest that conformity may genuinely shape perceptions—people may conform
because they are afraid of being wrong. Follow-up fMRI studies found that a brain area
active when people are anxious about social rejection was activated during normative
influence and an area associated with judgment was activated during informational influ-
ence (Zaki et al., 2011).
So, concern for social image produces normative
influence. The desire to be correct produces informa-
tional influence. In day-to-day life, normative and
informational inf luence often occur together. I
[DM] was not about to be the only person in that
German lecture hall clapping (normative influence).
Yet the others’ behavior also showed me the appro-
priate way to express my appreciation (informa-
tional influence).
Conformity experiments have sometimes isolated
either normative or informational influence. Confor-
mity is greater when people respond publicly before
a group; this surely reflects normative influence
(because people receive the same information
whether they respond publicly or privately). On the
other hand, conformity is greater when participants
feel incompetent, when the task is difficult, and
when the individuals care about being right—all
signs of informational influence.
“A lot of our thinking is for
bonding, not truth-seeking, so
most of us are quite willing to
think or say anything that will
help us be liked by our
group.”
David Brooks,
“The Art of Thinking Well,” 2017
When you’re deciding where to go next, online reviews can provide informational
influence. So can your friend who has been there before.
©Antonio Diaz/123RF
166 Part Two Social Influence
WHO CONFORMS?
Describe how conformity varies not only with
situations but also with persons.
Are some people generally more susceptible (or should we say, more open) to social influ-
ence? Among your friends, can you identify some who are “conformists” and others who
are “independent”? In their search for the conformer, researchers have focused on three
predictors: personality, culture, and social roles.
Personality
In Milgram’s time, the personality factors predicting greater conformity were unknown. As
Milgram (1974) concluded: “I am certain that there is a complex personality basis to obedi-
ence and disobedience. But I know we have not found it” (p. 205). Yet individual differences
clearly existed: Recall that not all of Milgram’s participants obeyed the experimenter to the
end. Generally speaking, people higher in agreeableness (who value getting along with oth-
ers) and conscientiousness (who follow social norms for neatness and punctuality) are more
likely to conform (Begue et al., 2015; DeYoung et al., 2002; Fürst et al., 2014; Roccas et al.,
2002). People who want to please others eat more candy when a peer eats some and then
hands them the bowl, apparently conforming to help the other person feel more comfort-
able (Exline et al., 2012). In other words, “hold the extra burgers and fries when people
pleasers arrive” (Griffith, 2012).
In contrast, people high in openness to experience—a personality trait connected to cre-
ativity and socially progressive thinking—are less likely to conform (Jugert et al., 2009).
Novelty seekers, who leap into experiences seeking stimulation, are also less likely to conform
(Athota & O’Connor, 2014). Two studies found that stu-
dents with a strong belief in their own free will and per-
sonal control were less likely to conform to the group
(Alquist et al., 2013; Fennis & Aarts, 2012), as were those
with more liberal and less conservative political beliefs
(Begue et al., 2015). So if you’re someone who favors
smooth social experiences over disagreements, follows
the rules, has traditional beliefs, and doubts the existence
of free will, you may be more likely to conform.
These individual variations help explain instances
when people chose not to conform to the group. An
Army report on the Abu Ghraib prison abuse praised
three men who, despite threats of ridicule and court-
martial, stood apart from their comrades (O’Connor,
2004). Lt. David Sutton terminated one incident and
alerted his commanders. “I don’t want to judge, but yes,
I witnessed something inappropriate and I reported it,”
said Sutton. Navy dog handler William Kimbro resisted
“significant pressure” to participate in “improper inter-
rogations.” And Specialist Joseph Darby blew the
▯ Experiments reveal two reasons people conform. Norma-
tive influence results from a person’s desire for acceptance:
We want to be liked. The tendency to conform more
when responding publicly reflects normative influence.
▯ Informational influence results from others’ providing
evidence about reality. The tendency to conform more
on difficult decision-making tasks reflects informa-
tional influence: We want to be right.
SUMMING UP Why Conform?
Personality effects loom larger when we note people’s differing reactions to
the same situation, as when one person reacts with terror and another with
delight to a roller coaster ride.
©Zia Soleil/Getty Images
Conformity and Obedience Chapter 6 167
whistle, giving military police the evidence that raised the alarm. Darby, called a “rat” by
some, received death threats for his dissent and was given military protection. But back
home, his mother joined others in applauding: “Honey, I’m so proud of you because you
did the good thing and good always triumphs over evil, and the truth will always set you
free” (ABC News, December 2004). In the end, both personality and the situation shape
behavior.
Culture
When researchers in Australia, Austria, Germany, Italy, Jordan, South Africa, Spain, and
the United States repeated the obedience experiments, how do you think the results com-
pared with those with American participants? The obedience rates were similar, or even
higher—85% in Munich (Blass, 2000). As a general rule, conformity rates are higher in
collectivistic countries and more conformist times such as the 1950s (Bond & Smith, 1996).
In collectivist Japan, Western observers were struck by the absence of looting and law-
lessness following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami; respect for social norms prevailed
(Cafferty, 2011). In individualistic countries, university students are more likely to see
themselves as less conforming than others in their consumer purchases and political views—
as individuals amid the sheep (Pronin et al., 2007). U.S. participants believed that children
who conformed were less intelligent, whereas Pacific Islanders thought conforming children
were more intelligent (Clegg et al., 2017).
There may be some biological wisdom to cultural differences in conformity. Although
nonconformity supports creative problem solving, groups thrive when coordinating their
responses to threats. Thus, note Damian Murray and his co-workers (2011), countries that
have a high risk of diseases such as malaria, typhus, and tuberculosis tend to have cultures
with relatively high conformity levels, and those with a low risk of disease promote less con-
formity and thus encourage innovation and new ideas in science, technology, and business
(Murray, 2014). Similarly, people living in U.S. states with higher pathogen prevalence are
less likely to vote for third-party candidates—a nonconformist action (Varnum, 2013). Confor-
mity supports social norms regarding food preparation, hygiene, public health, and contact
with unknown people, report the researchers. Thinking of pathogens can actually cause con-
formity: Students randomly assigned to see pathogen-related pictures or to talk about a time
when they felt vulnerable to germs were more likely to conform to the majority’s views than
those who saw pictures of accidents or talked about a threat to their physical safety (Murray
& Schaller, 2012; Wu & Chang, 2012). When we
think about getting sick, we embrace the per-
ceived safety of fitting in with the group.
Cultural differences also exist within social
classes. For example, in five studies, Nicole
Stephens and her co-researchers (2007) found
that working-class people tended to prefer simi-
larity to others, whereas middle-class people
more strongly preferred to see themselves as
unique. In one of her experiments, people chose
a pen from among five green and orange pens
(with three or four of one color). Of university
students from working-class backgrounds, 72%
picked one from the majority color, compared
with only 44% of those from middle-class back-
grounds. Those from working-class backgrounds
also came to like their chosen pen more after
seeing someone else make the same choice. They
responded more positively to a friend’s know-
ingly buying the same car they had just bought.
And they were also more likely to prefer visual
images that they knew others had chosen.
Social class as cultural influence: People from blue collar backgrounds are more likely
to prefer to fit in, while those from white collar backgrounds are more likely to want to
stand out.
©Dwight Smith/Shutterstock
168 Part Two Social Influence
Social Roles
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.
—William Shakespeare
Role theorists have assumed, as did William Shakespeare’s character Jaques in As You Like
It, that social life is like acting on a theatrical stage, with all its scenes, masks, and scripts.
And those roles have much to do with conformity. Social roles allow some freedom of
interpretation to those who act them out, but some aspects of any role must be performed.
A student must at least show up for exams, turn in papers, and maintain some minimum
grade point average.
When only a few norms are associated with a social category (for example, riders on an
escalator should stand to the right and walk to the left), we do not regard the position as
a social role. It takes a whole cluster of norms to define a role. My [DM’s] roles as a
professor or as a father compel me to honor a whole set of norms. Although I may acquire
my particular image by violating the least important norms (valuing efficiency, I rarely
arrive early for anything), violating my role’s most important norms (not showing up for
class, abusing my children) could have led to my being fired or having my children removed
from my care.
Roles have powerful effects. On a first date or on a new job, you may act the role self-
consciously. As you internalize the role, self-consciousness subsides. What felt awkward now
feels genuine.
That is the experience of many immigrants, Peace Corps workers, international students,
and executives. After arriving in a new country, it takes time to learn how to talk and act
appropriately in the new context—to conform, as I [DM] did with the Germans who rapped
their knuckles on their desks. And the almost universal experience of those who repatriate
back to their home country is reentry distress (Sussman, 2000). In ways one may not have
been aware of, the process of conforming will have shifted one’s behavior, values, and
identity to accommodate a different place. One must “re-conform” to one’s former roles
before being back in sync.
As we saw earlier in this chapter, our actions depend not only on the power of the situ-
ation but also on our personalities. Not everyone responds in the same way to pressure to
conform. Nevertheless, we have seen that social situations can move most “normal” people
to behave in “abnormal” ways. This is clear from those experiments that put well-intentioned
people in bad situations to see whether good or
evil prevails. To a dismaying extent, evil wins. Nice
guys often don’t finish nice.
Role playing can also be a positive force. By
intentionally playing a new role and conforming to
its expectations, people sometimes change them-
selves or empathize with people whose roles differ
from their own.
Roles often come in pairs defined by relation-
ships—parent and child, teacher and student, doc-
tor and patient, employer and employee. Role
reversals can help each understand the other. A
negotiator or a group leader can therefore create
better communication by having the two sides
reverse roles, with each arguing the other’s posi-
tion. Or each side can be asked to restate the other
party’s point (to the other’s satisfaction) before
replying. The next time you get into a difficult
argument with a friend or parent, try to restate the
“Great Spirit, grant that I may
not criticize my neighbor until
I have walked for a moon in
his moccasins.”
—Native American Prayer
Moving from one culture to another—for example, from a rural location to an urban
one—shows how the social roles we conform to depend on the culture around us.
©Diego Cervo/Shutterstock
Conformity and Obedience Chapter 6 169
other person’s perceptions and feelings before going on with your own. This intentional,
temporary conformity may repair your relationship.
So far in this chapter, we have discussed classic studies of conformity and obedience,
identified the factors that predict conformity, and considered who conforms and why.
Remember that our primary quest in social psychology is not to catalog differences but to
identify universal principles of behavior.
Social roles will always vary with culture, but the processes by which those roles influ-
ence behavior vary much less. People in Nigeria and Japan define teen roles differently
from people in Europe and North America, but in all cultures role expectations guide the
conformity found in social relations.
▯ People who seek to please others and are comfortable
following social rules (those high in agreeableness and
conscientiousness) are the most likely to conform.
▯ Although conformity and obedience are universal,
different cultures socialize people to be more or less
socially responsive.
▯ Social roles involve a certain degree of conformity, and
conforming to expectations is an important task when
stepping into a new social role.
SUMMING UP: Who Conforms?
DO WE EVER WANT TO
BE DIFFERENT?
Explain what can motivate people to actively resist
social pressure—by doing Z when pressured to do A.
This chapter emphasizes the power of social forces. It is therefore fitting that we conclude
by again reminding ourselves of the power of the person. We are not just billiard balls
moving where pushed. We may act according to our own values, independently of the forces
that push upon us. Knowing that someone is trying to coerce us may even prompt us to
react in the opposite direction.
Reactance
Individuals value their sense of freedom and self-efficacy. When blatant social pressure
threatens their sense of freedom, they often rebel. Think of Romeo and Juliet, whose love
was intensified by their families’ opposition. Or think of children asserting their freedom
and independence by doing the opposite of what their parents ask. Savvy parents therefore
offer their children limited choices instead of commands: “It’s time to get clean: Do you
want a bath or a shower?”
The theory of psychological reactance—that people act to protect their sense of freedom—
is supported by experiments showing that attempts to restrict a person’s freedom often
produce an anticonformity “boomerang effect” (Brehm & Brehm, 1981; Nail et al., 2000;
Rains, 2013). Reaching young adults with anti-drinking messages or smokers with anti-
smoking messages might not work: people with the highest risk are often the least likely to
respond to programs designed to protect them, possibly due to their reactance (Noguchi
et al., 2007; Wehbe et al., 2017).
Reactance might also explain why most people find it so difficult to eat right and exer-
cise. For example, 78% of the population does not exercise regularly. As Seppo Iso-Ahola
“To do just the opposite is
also a form of imitation.”
—Lichtenberg,
Aphorismen, 1764–1799
reactance
A motive to protect or restore
one’s sense of freedom.
Reactance arises when
someone threatens our freedom
of action.
170 Part Two Social Influence
(2013) explains, “Exercise has become a
‘must’ or ‘should’ activity that sets up a
confrontation between fitness activity and
freedom” (p. 100). When teens were told
that others believed eating fruit was healthy,
they said they intended to eat less fruit. But
when they heard that most other teens
made an effort to eat sufficient fruit, they
ate more fruit over the next two days (Stok
et al., 2014). Because we know we should
do something that’s healthy, it becomes dif-
ficult to actually do it without feeling our
freedom is compromised. If we know others
are doing it (normative influence again),
we’re more likely to do it too, due to the
principles of conformity. The lesson seems
to be: Do what I do, not what I say is right.
Asserting Uniqueness
Imagine a world of complete conformity, where there were no differences among people.
Would such a world be a happy place? If nonconformity can create discomfort, can same-
ness create comfort?
People feel uncomfortable when they appear too different from others. But, especially
in individualistic Western cultures, they also feel uncomfortable when they appear exactly
like everyone else. That might be because nonconformity has become associated with high
status. “I have a number of super-successful Silicon Valley clients who dress in ripped
denim, Vans shoes, and T-shirts,” business consultant Tom Searcy wrote in CBS Moneywatch
(2011). “They are worth hundreds of millions, even more, but it’s a status symbol to dress
like you’re homeless to attend board meetings.” In a series of experiments, Silvia Bellezza
and colleagues (2014) found that people wearing nonconformist clothing—such as a pair of
red sneakers—were perceived by others as higher in status. And if someone copies our
clothing or other aspects of our self-presentation, we’re likely to be angry at the copycat
(Reysen et al., 2012), especially if we see them as part of an outgroup. In one field experi-
ment, many students stopped wearing a “Livestrong” wristband when geeky students started
wearing the band (Berger & Heath, 2008). Likewise, rich Brits stopped wearing Burberry
caps after the caps caught on among soccer hooligans (Clevstrom & Passariello, 2006).
Overall, people feel better when they see themselves as moderately unique and act in
ways that will assert their individuality. For example, students in one study believed that
their first names were less common than their peers did. Apparently, people with common
names wanted to believe their names—and thus, they—were more unique. In addition, stu-
dents who thought about changing their names usually chose more unique names (Kulig,
2012). In an experiment, Snyder (1980) led Purdue University students to believe that their
“10 most important attitudes” were either distinct from or nearly identical to the attitudes
of 10,000 other students. When they next participated in a conformity experiment, those
deprived of their feeling of uniqueness were the ones most likely to assert their individuality
via nonconformity. Overall, individuals who have the highest “need for uniqueness” tend
to conform the least (Imhoff & Erb, 2009).
Both social influence and the desire for uniqueness appear in popular baby names.
People seeking less commonplace names often hit upon the same ones at the same time.
In 2016, among the top 10 U.S. baby names for girls were Emma (#1), Ava (#3), and
Mia (#6). Those who in the 1960s broke out of the pack by naming their baby Rebecca,
soon discovered their choice was part of a new pack, noted Peggy Orenstein (2003).
Hillary, a popular late 1980s, early 1990s name, became less original-seeming and less
When body tattoos come to be
perceived as pack behavior—as
displaying conformity rather
than individuality—will their
popularity decline?
“When I’m in America, I have
no doubt I’m a Jew, but I have
strong doubts about whether
I’m really an American. And
when I get to Israel, I know I’m
an American, but I have strong
doubts about whether I’m a
Jew.”
—Leslie Fiedler,
Fiedler on the Roof, 1991
We’re more likely to eat healthy when others do (normative influence)—but not when we’re
lectured about how healthy it is (reactance).
©michaeljung/123RF
Conformity and Obedience Chapter 6 171
frequent (even among her admirers) after Hillary Clinton
became well-known. Although the popularity of such
names then fades, observes Orenstein, it may resurface
with a future generation. Max, Rose, and Sophie sound like
the roster of a retirement home—or an elementary school.
These trends seem to be driven by a nonconformist urge.
In one large study of names in the United States and
France, when names become popular quickly, they also
faded from popularity more quickly—perhaps because they
were seen as fads (Berger & Le Mens, 2009).
Seeing oneself as unique also appears in people’s
“spontaneous self-concepts.” William McGuire and his
Yale University colleagues (McGuire et al., 1979; McGuire
& Padawer-Singer, 1978) invited children to “tell us about
yourself.” In reply, the children mostly mentioned their
distinctive attributes. Foreign-born children were more
likely than others to mention their birthplace. Redheads
were more likely than black- and brown-haired children to
volunteer their hair color. Thin and overweight children
were the most likely to refer to their body weight. Minor-
ity children were the most likely to mention their race.
Likewise, we become more keenly aware of our gender when we are with people of the
other gender (Cota & Dion, 1986). When I [DM] attended an American Psychological
Association meeting with 10 others—all women, as it happened—I immediately was aware
of my gender. As we took a break at the end of the second day, I joked that the line would
be short at my bathroom, triggering the woman sitting next to me to notice what hadn’t
crossed her mind—the group’s gender makeup.
The principle, says McGuire, is that “one is conscious of oneself insofar as, and in
the ways that, one is different.” Thus, “If I am a Black woman in a group of White women,
I tend to think of myself as a Black; if I move to a group of Black men, my blackness
loses salience and I become more conscious of being a woman” (McGuire et al., 1978).
This insight helps us understand why White people who grow up amid non-White people
tend to have a strong White identity, why gays may be more conscious of their sexual
identity than straights, and why any minority group tends to be conscious of its distinc-
tiveness and how the surrounding culture relates to it (Knowles & Peng, 2005). Asian-
Americans are less conscious of their ethnic identity when living in Hawaii, where they
are the majority, and more conscious of it in other U.S. states (Xu et al., 2015). The
majority group, being less conscious of race, may see the minority group as hypersensi-
tive. When occasionally living in Scotland, where my [DM’s] American accent marks me
as a foreigner, I become conscious of my national identity and sensitive to how others
react to it.
When the people of two cultures are nearly identical, they still will notice their differ-
ences, however small. Even trivial distinctions may provoke scorn and conflict. Jonathan
Swift satirized the phenomenon in Gulliver’s Travels with the story of the Little-Endians’
war against the Big-Endians. Their difference: The Little-Endians preferred to break their
eggs on the small end, the Big-Endians on the large end. On a world scale, the differences
may not seem great between Sunni and Shia. But anyone who reads the news knows that
these small differences have meant big conflicts. Rivalry is often most intense when the
other group closely resembles you. So, although we do not like being greatly deviant, we
are, ironically, all alike in wanting to feel distinctive and in noticing how we are distinctive.
(In thinking you are different, you are like everyone else.) But as research on the self-
serving bias makes clear, it is not just any kind of distinctiveness we seek but distinctive-
ness in the right direction. Our quest is not merely to be different from the average, but
better than average.
“Self-consciousness, the rec-
ognition of a creature by itself
as a ‘self,’ [cannot] exist except
in contrast with an ‘other,’ a
something which is not the
self.”
——C. S. Lewis,
The Problem of Pain, 1940
Asserting our uniqueness. Although not wishing to be greatly deviant,
most of us express our distinctiveness through our personal styles
and dress.
©Image Source, all rights reserved.
172 Part Two Social Influence
▯ Social psychology’s emphasis on the power of social
pressure must be joined by a complementary emphasis
on the power of the person. We are not puppets. When
social coercion becomes blatant, people often experi-
ence reactance—a motivation to defy the coercion in or-
der to maintain their sense of freedom.
▯ We are not comfortable being greatly different from a
group, but neither do we want to appear the same as
everyone else. Thus, we act in ways that preserve our
sense of uniqueness and individuality. In a group, we
are most conscious of how we differ from the others.
SUMMING UP: Do We Ever Want to Be Different?
POSTSCRIPT:
On Being an Individual Within a Community
Do your own thing. Question authority. If it feels good, do it. Follow your bliss. Don’t
conform. Think for yourself. Be true to yourself. You owe it to yourself.
We hear phrases like those over and again if we live in an individualistic Western nation,
such as those of Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, or, especially, the
United States. Our mythical cultural heroes—from Sherlock Holmes to Luke Skywalker—
often stand up against institutional rules. Individualists assume the preeminence of indi-
vidual rights and celebrate the one who stands against the group.
In 1831 the French writer Alexis de Tocqueville coined the term “individualism” after
traveling in America. Individualists, he noted, owe no one “anything and hardly expect
anything from anybody. They form the habit of thinking of themselves in isolation and
imagine that their whole destiny is in their hands.” Psychologist Carl Rogers (1985) agreed:
“The only question which matters is, ‘Am I living in a way which is deeply satisfying to
me, and which truly expresses me?’”
That is hardly the only question that matters to people in many other cultures, including
those of Asia, South America, and most of Africa. Where community is prized, conformity
is accepted. Schoolchildren often display their solidarity by wearing uniforms; many workers
do the same. To maintain harmony, confrontation and dissent are muted. “The nail that
stands out gets pounded down,” say the Japanese. South Africans have a word that expresses
human connection. Ubuntu, explained Desmond Tutu (1999), conveys the idea that “my
humanity is caught up by, is inextricably bound up in, yours.” Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu,
says a Zulu maxim: “A person is a person through other persons.”
Amitai Etzioni (1993), a past president of the American Sociological Association, urges
us toward a “communitarian” individualism that balances our nonconformist individualism
with a spirit of community. Fellow sociologist Robert Bellah (1995/1996) concurs. “Com-
munitarianism is based on the value of the sacredness of the individual,” he explains. But
it also “affirms the central value of solidarity . . . that we become who we are through our
relationships.”
As Westerners in various nations, most readers of this book enjoy the benefits of non-
conformist individualism. Communitarians remind us that we also are social creatures hav-
ing a basic need to belong. Conformity is neither all bad nor all good. We therefore do
well to balance our “me” and our “we,” our needs for independence and for attachment,
our individuality and our social identity.
Persuasion
C H A P T E R
7
©Heidi Besen/Shutterstock
Many of life’s powers can either harm or help us. Nuclear power enables light-ing up homes or wiping out cities. Sexual power helps us express committed
love or seek selfish gratification. Similarly, persuasionʼs power enables us to pro-
mote health or to sell addiction, to advance peace or stir up hate, to enlighten or
deceive. And such powers are great. Consider the following:
• The spread of false beliefs: About 1 in 4 Americans and 1 in 3 Europeans thinks
the sun revolves around the earth (Grossman, 2014). Others deny that the moon
landing or the Holocaust occurred. In 2016, a man who believed a false online
claim that a pizzeria in Washington, DC, was the center of a pedophilia ring burst
into the restaurant and began shooting. The man was sentenced to four years
in prison on assault charges (Bendix, 2017).
“To swallow and follow, whether old doctrine or new propaganda,
is a weakness still dominating the human mind.”
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Human Work, 1904
“Remember that to change thy mind and to follow him that sets
thee right, is to be none the less a free agent.”
—Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Meditations, viii. 16, 121–180
What paths lead to
persuasion?
What are the
elements of
persuasion?
How can persuasion
be resisted?
Postscript: Being
open but not naïve
174 Part Two Social Influence
• Attitudes around equality: In the space of 50 years, the U.S. went from a country
that asked its Black citizens to sit in the back of the bus to one that elected an
African American president—twice. In less than 30 years, the U.S. went from
being a place where only 12% of adults believed that two people of the same
sex should be able to get married to a place where 59% supported same-sex
marriage (NORC, 2017). Civil rights campaigns, news stories, and positive media
portrayals of racial minorities and LGBT individuals have been powerful
persuaders.
• Climate change skepticism: The scientific community, represented by various
national academies of science and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, is in a virtual consensus about three facts: (1) Atmospheric greenhouse
gases are accumulating; (2) rising temperatures and diminishing sea ice confirm
the world’s warming; and (3) this climate change will almost certainly produce
rising sea levels and more extreme weather, including record floods, tornadoes,
droughts, and high temperatures. Nevertheless, climate skepticism has 60% of
Americans in 2014 believing that reports were “generally exaggerated” going up
(Dugan, 2014). Researchers wondered: Why is the scientific consensus failing to
persuade and to motivate action? And what might be done? Their persuasion
efforts have begun to succeed: By 2017, 45% of Americans said they “worry a
great deal” about global warming, up from 25% in 2011 (Saad, 2017; see also
Figure 1).
• Promoting healthier living: Due partly to health-promotion campaigns, the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that only 15% of Americans
smoke cigarettes, half the rate of 40 years ago. Statistics Canada reports a
similar smoking decline. Fewer high school seniors drink alcohol—while
only 21% never drank alcohol in 2000, 39% never did in 2016 (Twenge &
Park, 2018).
As these examples show, efforts to persuade are sometimes diabolical, sometimes contro-
versial, and sometimes beneficial. Persuasion is neither inherently good nor bad. Instead,
a message’s purpose and content elicit judgments of good or bad. The bad we call “propa-
ganda.” The good we call “education.” Education is more factually based and less coercive
“Speech has power. Words do
not fade. What starts out as a
sound ends in a deed.”
—Rabbi Abraham Heschel
(1907–1972)
1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 2015 2017%
W
h
o
w
o
rr
y
a
g
re
at
d
ea
l
ab
o
u
t
g
lo
b
al
w
ar
m
in
g
20
30
40
50
FIGURE 1
Americansʼ fears of climate change, 1997 to 2017.
(Gallup data reported by Saad, 2017.)
persuasion
The process by which a
message induces change in
beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors.
Persuasion Chapter 7 175
than propaganda. Yet generally we call it “education” when we
believe it, “propaganda” when we don’t (Lumsden et al., 1980).
Persuasion, whether it’s education or propaganda, is everywhere—
at the heart of politics, marketing, dating, parenting, negotiation,
religion, and courtroom decision making. Social psychologists there-
fore seek to understand what leads to effective, long-lasting attitude
change. What factors affect persuasion? As persuaders, how can we
most effectively “educate” others?
Imagine that you are a marketing or advertising executive. Or imag-
ine that you are a preacher, trying to increase love and charity among
your parishioners. Or imagine that you want to reduce climate change,
encourage breast-feeding, or campaign for a political candidate. What
can you do to make yourself and your message persuasive? And if you
are wary of being influenced, to what tactics should you be alert?
To answer such questions, social psychologists usually study
persuasion the way some geologists study erosion—by observing the
effects of various factors in brief, controlled experiments.
WHAT PATHS LEAD TO
PERSUASION?
Identify two paths leading to persuasion. Describe the
type of cognitive processing each involves—and its
effects.
Persuasion entails clearing several hurdles (see Figure 2). Any factors that help people clear
the persuasion hurdles will increase persuasion. For example, if an attractive source increases
your attention to a message, the message should have a better chance of persuading you.
The Central Route
Richard Petty and John Cacioppo (Cass-ee-OH-poh) (1986; Petty et al., 2009) and Alice
Eagly and Shelly Chaiken (1993, 1998) took this one step further. They theorized that
persuasion is likely to occur via one of two routes. When people are motivated and able to
think about an issue, they are likely to take the central route to persuasion—focusing on the
“Ads are propaganda by
definition. We are in the
persuasion business, the
propaganda business.”
—A U.S. Presidential Candidate’s
Staff Executive, 2011 (Quoted by
Edsall, 2011)
central route to persuasion
Occurs when interested people
focus on the arguments and
respond with favorable thoughts.
Persuasion is everywhere. When we approve of it, we may
call it “education.”
©Mick Sinclair/Alamy Stock Photo
“A fanatic is one who can’t
change his mind and won’t
change the subject.”
—Attributed to Winston Churchill
(1874–1965)
FIGURE 2
The Hurdles of the Persuasion Process
To elicit action, a persuasive message must clear several hurdles. What is crucial, however, is not so much remembering the message itself as
remembering one’s own thoughts in response.
Source: Adapted from McGuire, W. J. (1978).
Pay
attention
to the
message?
Comprehend it?
No action
Believe it?
No action
Remember it?
No action
Behave
accordingly?
No action
Action
No action
YE
S
NO
YE
S
NO
YE
S
NO
YE
S
NO
YE
S
NO
176 Part Two Social Influence
arguments. If those arguments are strong and compelling, persuasion
is likely. If the message offers only weak arguments, thoughtful peo-
ple will notice that the arguments aren’t very compelling and will
counterargue against them.
The Peripheral Route
However, when we’re not motivated or able to think carefully, the
strength of the arguments might not matter. If we’re distracted, unin-
volved, or just plain busy, we may not take the time to reflect on the
message’s content. Rather than analyzing whether the arguments are
compelling, we might follow the peripheral route to persuasion—focusing
on cues that trigger automatic acceptance without much thinking. In
these situations, easily understood, familiar statements are more
persuasive than novel statements with the same meaning. Thus, for
uninvolved or distracted people, “Don’t put all your eggs in one
basket” has more impact than “Don’t risk everything on a single
venture” (Howard, 1997).
Smart advertisers adapt ads to their consumers’ thinking. They do
so for good reason. Much of consumer behavior—such as a spontaneous decision to buy ice
cream of a particular brand—is made without thinking (Dijksterhuis et al., 2005). Ambient
German music in a store may lead customers to buy German wine, and those hearing French
music may reach for French wine (North et al., 1997). Billboards and television commercials—
media that consumers are able to take in for only brief amounts of time—often use the
peripheral route, with visual images as peripheral cues. Instead of providing arguments in
favor of smoking, cigarette ads associate the product with images of beauty and pleasure. So
do soft-drink ads that declare “America Is Beautiful” with images of happy people and fun
outdoor activities. On the other hand, magazine prescription drug ads (which interested,
logical consumers may pore over for some time) seldom feature Hollywood stars or great
athletes. Instead, they offer customers information on benefits and side effects.
These two routes to persuasion—one explicit and reflective, the other more implicit and
automatic—were a forerunner to today’s “dual processing” models of the human mind.
Central route processing often swiftly changes explicit attitudes. Peripheral route processing
more slowly builds implicit attitudes through repeated associations
between an attitude and an emotion (Jones et al., 2009; Petty & Briñol,
2008; Walther et al., 2011).
Different Paths for Different Purposes
The ultimate goal of the advertiser, the preacher, and even the teacher
is not just to have people pay attention to the message and move on.
Typically, the goal is behavior change (buying a product, loving one’s
neighbor, or studying more effectively). Are the two routes to persuasion
equally likely to fulfill that goal? Petty and colleagues (1995, 2009) note
that central route processing can lead to more enduring change than the
peripheral route. When people are thinking carefully, they rely not only
on the strength of persuasive appeals but on their own thoughts in
response. It’s not so much the arguments that are persuasive as the way
they get people thinking. And when people think deeply rather than
superficially, any changed attitude will more likely persist, resist attack,
and influence behavior (Petty et al., 1995, 2009; Verplanken, 1991).
None of us have the time to thoughtfully analyze all issues. Often
we take the peripheral route, by using simple rule-of-thumb heuristics,
such as “trust the experts” or “long messages are credible” (Chaiken &
Maheswaran, 1994). Residents of my [DM’s] community once voted
on a complicated issue involving the legal ownership of our local hos-
pital. I didn’t have the time or the interest to study that question myself
peripheral route to
persuasion
Occurs when people are
influenced by incidental cues,
such as a speaker’s
attractiveness.
“All effective propaganda
must be limited to a very few
points and must harp on these
in slogans until the last mem-
ber of the public
understands.”
—Adolf Hitler,
Mein Kampf, 1926
Peripheral route processing. “Product placements” on TV
and in movies aim to influence implicit attitudes.
©Featureflash Photo Agency/Shutterstock
Decisions in the voting booth: When careful central route
processing takes too much time and effort, we may rely
on peripheral route processing to make a quick judgment.
©Blend Images/Image Source
Persuasion Chapter 7 177
(I had this book to write). But I noted that referendum supporters were all people I either
liked or regarded as experts. So I used a simple heuristic—friends and experts can be
trusted—and voted accordingly. We all make snap judgments using such heuristics: If a
speaker is articulate and appealing, has apparently good motives, and has several arguments
(or better, if the different arguments come from different sources), we usually take the easy
peripheral route and accept the message without much thought.
Central route appeals seem to have dwindled in recent years, most likely because adver-
tisers have found that peripheral, emotion-based appeals are more effective across a variety
of products. In one study, researchers recorded viewers’ facial expressions while they
watched recent TV commercials. These facial expressions—particularly those indicating hap-
piness—were better predictors of product sales than viewers’ survey responses about how
persuasive they found the ad, how closely the ad was linked to the brand, or how the ad
conveyed the brand’s key message (Wood, 2012). Emotion, not reason, sold the goods.
WHAT ARE THE ELEMENTS
OF PERSUASION?
Describe how the factors that compose persuasion
affect the likelihood that we will take either the central
or the peripheral route to persuasion.
Among the ingredients of persuasion explored by social psychologists are these four: (1)
the communicator, (2) the message, (3) how the message is communicated, and (4) the
audience. In other words, who says what, by what method, to whom?
Who Says? The Communicator
Two devout identical twins, Alastair and Angus, visit London and hear the same words
spoken from a speaker’s soapbox: “Sell what you possess and give to the poor. Hold all
things in common, and distribute the proceeds to all, as any has need.”
Alastair, understanding these words to come from the British Socialist Party platform,
shakes his head in dismay. Simultaneously Angus, understanding (correctly) that the words
come almost verbatim from the Bible,* nods his head in agreement with the generous spirit.
The reactions of Alastair and Angus illustrate what social psychologists have often
found—that it’s not just the content of a message that affects an audience’s response, but
also the presumed source.
In one experiment, when the Socialist and Liberal leaders in the Dutch parliament
argued identical positions using the same words, each was most effective with members of
his own party (Wiegman, 1985). Just like Angus, people are more willing to agree with
▯ Sometimes persuasion occurs as people focus on argu-
ments and respond with favorable thoughts. Such sys-
tematic, or central route, persuasion occurs when people
are naturally analytical or involved in the issue.
▯ When issues don’t engage systematic thinking, persua-
sion may occur through a faster, peripheral route, as
people use heuristics or incidental cues to make snap
judgments.
▯ Central route persuasion, being more thoughtful and
less superficial, is more durable and more likely to
influence behavior.
SUMMING UP: What Paths Lead to Persuasion?
*Matthew 19:21 and Acts 4:32
178 Part Two Social Influence
statements made by leaders in the political party they iden-
tify with (Verkuyten & Maliepaard, 2013). Republicans told
that Donald Trump endorsed universal health care were
more likely to support the idea than when told it was Barack
Obama’s idea; Democrats were less likely to support univer-
sal health care when told it was Trump’s idea (Edwards-
Levy, 2015). It’s not just the message that matters, but also
who says it. So: What makes one communicator more
persuasive than another?
CREDIBILITY
Any of us would find a statement about the benefits of
exercise more believable if it came from the Royal Society
or National Academy of Sciences rather than from a tabloid
newspaper. But the effects of source credibility (perceived
expertise and trustworthiness) diminish after a month or so.
If a credible person’s message is persuasive, its impact may
fade as its source is forgotten or dissociated from the mes-
sage. And the impact of a noncredible person may correspondingly increase over time if
people remember the message better than the reason for discounting it (Kumkale & Albar-
racin, 2004; Pratkanis et al., 1988). This delayed persuasion, after people forget the source
or its connection with the message, is called the sleeper effect.
PERCEIVED EXPERTISE How do you become an authoritative “expert”? One way is to
begin by saying things the audience agrees with, which makes you seem smart. One reason
the “scientific consensus” about climate change fails to persuade is that people count as
“expert” someone whose conclusions support their own preexisting values and views.
Researchers have observed this “congenial views seems more expert” phenomenon on top-
ics ranging from climate change to nuclear waste to gun laws (Kahan et al., 2010). It also
helps to be seen as knowledgeable on the topic. A message about toothbrushing from
“Dr. James Rundle of the Canadian Dental Association” is more convincing than the same
message from “Jim Rundle, a local high school student who did a project with some of his
classmates on dental hygiene” (Olson & Cal, 1984). Celebrity communicators are more
persuasive when they are perceived as expert users of the product—when they are not, these
appeals are very ineffective (Rossiter & Smidts, 2012).
SPEAKING STYLE Another way to appear credible is to speak confidently and fluently.
Whether pitching a business plan or giving advice, a charismatic, energetic, confident-
seeming person who speaks fluently (without saying “you know” or “uh”) is often more
convincing (Moore & Swift, 2011; Pentland, 2010). Speakers who stumble over their words
are perceived as less credible, which then leads people to question their message, which
then makes them less likely to accept what the speaker is saying (Carpenter, 2012). Bonnie
Erickson and collaborators (1978) had University of North Carolina students evaluate
courtroom testimony given in a straightforward manner or in a more hesitant, disfluent
way. For example:
Question: Approximately how long did you stay there before the ambulance arrived?
Answer: [Straightforward] Twenty minutes. Long enough to help get Mrs. David
straightened out.
[Hesitating] Oh, it seems like it was about uh, 20 minutes. Just long enough
to help my friend Mrs. David, you know, get straightened out.
The students found the straightforward, fluent witnesses much more competent and
credible, suggesting that juries can be swayed by how a witness speaks and not just what
the witness says (Kaminski & Sporer, 2018).
On the other hand, it’s not good to speak too much and not listen. Telemarketers who
take this approach are less successful. The best approach? A balance between talking and
listening (Grant, 2013).
credibility
Believability. A credible
communicator is perceived as
both expert and trustworthy.
sleeper effect
A delayed impact of a message
that occurs when an initially
discounted message becomes
effective, such as we remember
the message but forget the
reason for discounting it.
“Believe an expert.”
—Virgil,
Aeneid, BC 19
Is this politician a Republican or Democrat? That might heavily influence
whether you believe him.
©Hill Street Studios/Blend Images LLC/Glow Images
Persuasion Chapter 7 179
PERCEIVED TRUSTWORTHINESS We are more willing to
listen to a communicator we trust. A recent experiment by the
Media Insight Project (2017) found that Facebook users were
more willing to believe an article shared by a trusted friend com-
pared to one shared by someone they didn’t trust. Surprisingly,
who shared the article made a bigger difference than whether the
news source was the established, well-respected Associated Press
or the made-up “DailyNewsReview.com.” This might explain why
“fake news” spreads so quickly on social media sites.
The same is true for evaluating products. People preferred a
product more if the same description came from a consumer pro-
tection board rather than a company promoting its product after
a recall (Smith et al., 2013). Online reviews of products are seen
as more trustworthy if they are negative—at least for practical prod-
ucts such as cameras (Hong & Park, 2012; Sen & Lerman, 2007).
Apparently, we’re more willing to believe that negative comments
are honest than positive comments.
Trustworthiness is also higher if the audience believes the com-
municator is not trying to persuade them. Researchers showed British
adults fake newspaper articles suggesting either that most scientists just want to inform the
public about climate change, or that most scientists aim to persuade the public and governments
to take action to stop climate change. Those who heard scientists aim only to inform were more
likely to report more trust in climate scientists and say they would take action to help the
environment by reducing water use or joining community environmental activities (Rabinovich
et al., 2012). If you want to persuade someone, start with information, not arguments.
Another effective strategy is to have someone else convey your expertise. In one study,
customers calling a real estate agency were told, truthfully, “I’m going to put you through
to Peter. He is our head of sales and has 20 years of experience selling properties in this
area.” Compared to a simple call transfer, 20% more customers came in for in-person meet-
ings and 15% more decided to use the agency (Martin et al., 2014).
Some television ads are obviously constructed to make the communicator appear both
expert and trustworthy. A drug company may peddle its pain reliever using a speaker in a
white lab coat, who declares confidently that most doctors recommend the product’s key
ingredient (which is merely aspirin). Given such peripheral cues, people may automatically
infer that the product is special.
Thus, communicators gain credibility if they appear to be expert and trustworthy
( Pornpitakpan, 2004). When we know in advance that a source is credible, we think more
favorable thoughts in response to the message. If we learn the source after a message
generates favorable thoughts, high credibility strengthens our confidence in our thinking,
which also strengthens the persuasive impact of the message (Briñol et al., 2002, 2004;
Tormala et al., 2006).
Is there any way to overcome people’s resistance to
communicators they don’t trust? One study told students
a supermarket manager who cared only about making
money was planning to target them with emails and
texts. Not surprisingly, students were resistant to hearing
anything from such a distrusted source. But if they then
received 15 humorous texts (for example, “There are 10
types of people that understand binary. Those that do
and those that don’t”), their negative views of the dis-
trusted brand disappeared (Strick et al., 2012). Humor
can distract from distrust.
One thing that—surprisingly—does not improve persua-
sion is direct eye contact between the communicator and
the audience. German students watched videos of speak-
ers advocating opinions they disagreed with. They were
When you read a news article online, how do you decide whether
to believe it? It might depend on whether it was shared on social
media by a trusted friend.
©Marc Romanelli/Blend Images LLC
“If I seem excited, Mr. Bolling, it’s only because I know that
I can make you a very rich man.”
Effective persuaders know how to convey a message effectively.
©Charles Barsotti. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
180 Part Two Social Influence
asked to keep their gaze fixed on either the speaker’s eyes or mouth.
Those who focused on the eyes were less likely to change their attitudes
toward the speakers. The same result occurred in a correlational study:
Students who chose to look at a speaker’s eyes were less persuaded by
her arguments (Chen et al., 2013).
ATTRACTIVENESS AND LIKING
Most of us deny that endorsements by star athletes and entertainers
affect us. We know that stars are seldom knowledgeable about the prod-
ucts they endorse. Besides, we know the intent is to persuade us; we
don’t just accidentally eavesdrop on Beyoncé discussing clothes or fra-
grances. Such ads are based on another characteristic of an effective
communicator: attractiveness.
We may think we are not influenced by attractiveness or likability,
but researchers have found otherwise. We’re more likely to respond to
those we like, a phenomenon well known to those organizing chari-
table solicitations and candy sales. Sure, Girl Scout cookies are tasty,
but a lot fewer people would buy them if they were sold by unattractive
middle-aged men instead of cute little girls. Even a fleeting conversa-
tion with someone is enough to increase our liking for that person
and our responsiveness to his or her influence (Burger et al., 2001).
Our liking may open us up to the communicator’s arguments (central
route persuasion), or it may trigger positive associations when we see
the product later (peripheral route persuasion). As with credibility, the
liking-begets-persuasion principle suggests applications (Table 1).
Attractiveness comes in several forms. Physical attractiveness is
one. Arguments, especially emotional ones, are often more inf luen-
tial when they come from people we consider beautiful (Chaiken,
1979; Dion & Stein, 1978; Pallak et al., 1983). Attractiveness and
fame often matter most when people are making superficial judg-
ments. In ads on Instagram, young adults were more persuaded by
attractiveness
Having qualities that appeal to
an audience. An appealing
communicator (often someone
similar to the audience) is most
persuasive on matters of
subjective preference.
Attractive communicators, such as David Beckham and
Victoria Beckham endorsing their fragrances, often trigger
peripheral route persuasion. We associate their message
or product with our good feelings toward the
communicators, and we approve and believe.
©Everett Collection/Shutterstock
TABLE 1 Six Persuasion Principles
In his book Influence: Science and Practice, persuasion researcher Robert Cialdini (2008)
illustrates six principles that underlie human relationships and human influence. (This
chapter describes the first two.)
Principle Application
Authority: People defer to credible experts. Establish your expertise; identify problems
you have solved and people you have served.
Liking: People respond more affirmatively to
those they like.
Win friends and influence people. Create
bonds based on similar interest, praise freely.
Social proof: People allow the example of others
to validate how to think, feel, and act.
Use “peer power”—have respected others
lead the way.
Reciprocity: People feel obliged to repay in kind
what they’ve received.
Be generous with your time and resources.
What goes around, comes around.
Consistency: People tend to honor their public
commitments.
Instead of telling restaurant reservation
callers “Please call if you change your
plans,” ask, “Will you call if you change
your plans?” and no-shows will drop.
Scarcity: People prize what’s scarce. Highlight genuinely exclusive information
or opportunities.
Persuasion Chapter 7 181
ads for e-cigarettes when the products were endorsed
by celebrities compared to noncelebrities (Phua et
al., 2018).
Similarity also makes for attractiveness. We tend to
like people who are like us. That’s one reason
consumer-generated ads—those generated by regular
people instead of ad companies—can be persuasive.
One experiment found that consumer-generated ads
were more effective when the ad creator was seen as
similar to the participant (Thompson & Malaviya,
2013). People who act as we do, subtly mimicking our
postures, are likewise more influential. Thus, sales-
people are sometimes taught to “mimic and mirror”:
If the customer’s arms or legs are crossed, cross yours;
if she smiles, smile back. (See “Research Close-Up:
Experimenting with a Virtual Social Reality.”)
Are ads made by consumers, such as this one for Doritos, more persuasive?
If viewers of the ad see the ad creator as similar to them, yes.
©Minneapolis Star Tribune/ZUMA Press/Newscom
Experimenting with a Virtual Social Reality
University of California, Santa Barbara, social psychologist
Jim Blascovich developed a new interest soon after walk-
ing into a colleague’s virtual reality lab. Wearing a head-
set, Blascovich found himself facing a plank across a
virtual deep pit. Although he knew that the room had no
pit, he couldn’t suppress his fear and bring himself to walk
the plank.
The experience triggered a thought: Might social
psychologists have a use for virtual environments? The
experimental power of virtual human interaction is shown
in an experiment by Blascovich’s former associate, Jer-
emy Bailenson, in collaboration with graduate student
Nick Yee. At Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interac-
tion Lab, 69 student volunteers fitted with a 3D virtual-
reality headset found themselves across the table from a
virtual human—a computer-generated man or woman
who delivered a 3-minute pitch for a university security
policy that required students to carry an ID at all times.
The digital person featured realistic-looking lips that
moved, eyes that blinked, and a head that swayed. For
half the participants, those movements mimicked, with a
4-second delay, the student’s movements. If the student
tilted her head and looked up, the digital chameleon
would do the same. Earlier experiments with real humans
had found that such mimicry fosters liking, by suggesting
empathy and rapport. In Bailenson and Yee’s (2005)
experiment, students with a mimicking rather than a non-
mimicking digital companion similarly liked the partner
more. They also found the mimicker more interesting,
honest, and persuasive; they paid better attention to it
(looking away less often); and they were somewhat more
likely to agree with the message.
For Blascovich and Bailenson (2011), such studies illus-
trate the potential of virtual social realities. Creating stim-
uli that imply others’ presence costs less, requires less
effort, and provides more experimental control than creat-
ing stimuli with others’ actual presence. People, even
trained confederates, are difficult to control. Digital people
can be perfectly controlled. And exact replications be-
come possible.
research
CLOSE-UP
Experimenting with a virtual social reality.
©Jeremy Bailenson
182 Part Two Social Influence
What Is Said? The Message Content
It matters not only who says something but also what that person says. If you were to help
organize an appeal to get people to vote for school taxes or to stop smoking or to give
money to world hunger relief, you might wonder how best to persuade.
▯ Is a logical message more persuasive—or one that arouses emotion?
▯ How should you present your message?
▯ Should the message express your side only, or should it acknowledge and refute the
opposing views?
▯ If people are to present both sides—say, in successive talks at a community meeting
or in a political debate—is there an advantage to going first or last?
▯ How much information should you include?
Let’s take these questions one at a time.
REASON VERSUS EMOTION
Suppose you were campaigning in support of world hunger relief. Would you best itemize
your arguments and cite an array of impressive statistics? Or would you be more effective
presenting an emotional approach—perhaps the compelling story of one starving child? Of
course, an argument can be both reasonable and emotional. You can marry passion and
logic. Still, which is more influential—reason or emotion? Was Shakespeare’s Lysander right:
“The will of man is by his reason sway’d”? Or was Lord Chesterfield’s advice wiser: “Address
yourself generally to the senses, to the heart, and to the weaknesses of mankind, but rarely
to their reason”?
The answer: It depends on the audience. Well-educated or analytical
people are responsive to rational appeals (Cacioppo et al., 1983, 1996;
Hovland et al., 1949). So are audiences that have the time and motivation
to think through an issue (Petty & Briñol, 2015). Thus, thoughtful, involved
audiences often travel the central route to persuasion; they are more
responsive to reasoned arguments. Uninterested audiences more often
travel the peripheral route; they are more affected by their liking of the
communicator (Chaiken, 1980; Petty et al., 1981).
It also matters how people’s attitudes were formed. When people’s ini-
tial attitudes are formed primarily through the peripheral route, they are
more persuaded by later peripheral, emotional appeals; when their initial
attitudes are formed primarily through the central route, they are more
persuaded by later information-based, central route arguments (Edwards,
1990; Fabrigar & Petty, 1999). For example, many people who distrust
vaccines developed their attitudes through the emotion-laden idea that their
children might be harmed. Informing them that this attitude was wrong—
that vaccines do not harm children—did little to change attitudes. But when
they read a mother’s emotional story about her unvaccinated child con-
tracting measles and saw pictures of children with the disease, their atti-
tudes toward vaccines became markedly more positive (Horne et al., 2015).
New emotions may sway an emotion-based attitude. But to change an
information-based attitude, more information may be needed.
THE EFFECT OF GOOD FEELINGS Messages also become more per-
suasive through association with good feelings, such as what often accom-
panies munching food or hearing pleasant music. Receiving money or free
samples often induces people to donate money or buy something (Cialdini,
2008). That might be why so many charities include address labels, stick-
ers, and even coins in their mailings.
Good feelings often enhance persuasion, partly by enhancing positive
thinking and partly by linking good feelings with the message (Petty et al.,
1993). People who are in a good mood view the world through rose-colored
“The truth is always the
strongest argument.”
—Sophocles,
Phaedra, BC 496–406
“Opinion is ultimately
determined by the feelings
and not the intellect.”
—Herbert Spencer,
Social Statics, 1851
Attitude matching: To convince parents worried about
vaccines to vaccinate their children, provide vivid ex-
amples of unvaccinated children who got sick, using
the same peripheral route that formed their initially
distrustful attitude.
©Brand X Pictures/PunchStock
Persuasion Chapter 7 183
glasses. But they also make faster, more impulsive decisions;
they rely more on peripheral cues (Bodenhausen, 1993;
Braverman, 2005; Moons & Mackie, 2007). Unhappy people
ruminate more before reacting, so they are less easily swayed
by weak arguments. (They also produce more cogent persua-
sive messages [Forgas, 2007].) Thus, if you can’t make a
strong case, you might want to put your audience in a good
mood and hope they’ll feel good about your message without
thinking too much about it.
Knowing that humor can put people in a good mood, a
Dutch research team led by Madelijn Strick (Strick et al.,
2009) invited people to view ads in the vicinity of either funny
cartoons or the same cartoons altered to be unfunny. Their
finding: Products associated with humor were liked more and
chosen more often.
THE EFFECT OF AROUSING FEAR Messages can also be
effective by evoking negative emotions. When persuading peo-
ple to cut down on smoking, get a tetanus shot, or drive care-
fully, a fear-arousing message can be potent (de Hoog et al.,
2007; Muller & Johnson, 1990). Young adults who saw warn-
ing labels with graphic images of blackened lungs and stained teeth (vs. text-only warnings)
were more likely to correctly remember the messages (Strasser et al., 2012), experienced
more fear, and were less inclined to smoke (Cameron et al., 2015). Most important, 50%
more of those who saw the graphic images (vs. text-only) quit smoking within a month
(Brewer et al., 2016). When Australia added graphic images of sick and dying smokers to
cigarette packages in 2012, smoking rates fell nearly 5% (Innis, 2014). Dozens of countries
around the world, including Canada, Egypt, and Bangladesh, have added graphic, fear-inducing
images to cigarette packaging (Cohen, 2016). In 2012, a judge blocked the graphic warnings
from being placed on cigarette packages in the United States (AP, 2012), and as of 2017
U.S. cigarette packs only carry text warnings.
But how much fear should you arouse? Should you evoke just a little fear, lest people
become so frightened that they tune out your painful message? Or should you try to scare
the daylights out of them? Experiments show that, often, the more frightened and vulner-
able people feel, the more they respond (de Hoog et al., 2007; Robberson & Rogers, 1988).
In a meta-analysis of 127 articles including 27,372 people, Melanie Tannenbaum and her
colleagues (2015) concluded that “fear appeals are effective . . . there are no identified
circumstances under which they backfire and lead to undesirable outcomes.”
The effectiveness of fear-arousing communications has been applied in ads discouraging
not only smoking but also risky sexual behaviors and drinking and driving. When Claude
Levy-Leboyer (1988) found that French youth drank less alcohol after seeing fear-arousing
pictures, the French government incorporated such pictures into its TV spots.
Fear-arousing communications have also been used to increase breast cancer detection
behaviors, such as getting mammograms or doing breast self-exams. Sara Banks, Peter
Salovey, and colleagues (1995) had women aged 40–66 years who had not obtained
mammograms view an educational video on mammography. Of those who received a
positively framed message (emphasizing that getting a mammogram can save your life
through early detection), only half got a mammogram within 12 months. Of those who
received a fear-framed message (emphasizing that not getting a mammogram can cost
you your life), two-thirds got a mammogram within 12 months. People who see ultravio-
let photographs of sun damaged faces—showing all of the freckles and spots destined to
appear as they age—are significantly more likely to use sunscreen. In this case, the
intervention focuses not just on the fear of getting cancer, but the fear of looking unat-
tractive (Williams et al., 2013).
Playing on fear works best if a message leads people not only to fear but also to perceive
a solution and feel capable of implementing it (Devos-Comby & Salovey, 2002; Maddux &
A proposed U.S. cigarette warning,
shown here, uses fear arousal. In
2012, a judge blocked the
requirement for such warnings.
©Handout/Getty Images
“If the jury had been sequestered in a nicer hotel, this would
probably never have happened.”
Good feelings help create positive attitudes.
©Frank Cotham. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
184 Part Two Social Influence
Rogers, 1983; Ruiter et al., 2001). Many ads designed to reduce sexual risks will aim to
both arouse fear—“AIDS kills”—and to offer a protective strategy: Abstain, wear a condom,
or save sex for a committed relationship. These types of appeals tell people not just to be
scared, but to do something about it, increasing their sense of efficacy (Ruiter et al., 2014;
Salomon et al., 2017).
Appeals can also focus on what you can gain by using the preventative product (“If you
wear sunscreen, you’ll have attractive skin”) instead of focusing on what you lose (“If you
don’t wear sunscreen, you’ll have unattractive skin”; O’Keefe & Jensen, 2011). Gain-framed
messages focusing on the advantages of healthy behavior (not smoking, exercising, wearing
sunscreen) are more effective than those framed in terms of loss (Gallagher & Updegraff,
2012). The principle applies in other realms as well: A global climate change article that
ends by discussing possible solutions is more persuasive than one describing future cata-
strophic consequences (Feinberg & Willer, 2011). Gain messages are especially effective
when they appeal to consumers’ individual needs; for example, participants high in anxiety
were most persuaded by a cell phone ad with the slogan “Stay safe and secure with the
XPhone” (Hirsh et al., 2012).
MESSAGE CONTEXT
The context of your message—especially what immediately precedes it—can make a big dif-
ference in how persuasive it is. In one study, a confederate approached a passerby at a
Polish train station and said, “Excuse me . . . Haven’t you lost your wallet?” Everyone
immediately checked their pockets or bags to find, to their relief, that their wallet was still
in place. The confederate then explained she was selling Christmas cards for a charity.
Nearly 40% bought the cards, compared to only 10% who heard the appeal but had not felt
the relief of still having their wallets. The researchers named this highly effective approach
fear-then-relief (Dolinski & Szczucka, 2012).
Other persuasion techniques rely on the size of the request being made. Experiments
suggest that if you want people to do a big favor for you, you should get them to do a small
favor first. In the best-known demonstration of this foot-in-the-door phenomenon, researchers
posing as volunteers asked Californians to permit the installation of huge, poorly lettered
“Drive Carefully” signs in their front yards. Only 17% consented. Others were first
approached with a small request: Would they display three-inch “Be a safe driver” window
signs? Nearly all readily agreed. When approached two weeks later to allow the large, ugly
signs in their front yards, 76% consented (Freedman & Fraser, 1966).
foot-in-the-door
phenomenon
The tendency for people who
have first agreed to a small
request to comply later with a
larger request.
People who see ultraviolet filtered photographs showing skin damage caused by the sun are more likely to
use sunscreen.
©National News/ZUMA Press/Newscom
Persuasion Chapter 7 185
In this and many of the 100+ other foot-in-the-door
experiments, the initial compliance—wearing a lapel pin,
giving directions, signing a petition—was voluntary (Burger
& Guadagno, 2003). When people commit themselves to
public behaviors and perceive those acts to be their own
doing, they come to believe more strongly in what they
have done.
Social psychologist Robert Cialdini is a self-described
“patsy.” “For as long as I can recall, I’ve been an easy mark
for the pitches of peddlers, fund-raisers, and operators of
one sort or another.” To better understand why one person
says yes to another, he spent three years as a trainee in
sales, fund-raising, and advertising organizations, discover-
ing how they exploit “the weapons of influence.” He also
put those weapons to the test in simple experiments. In
one, Cialdini and his collaborators (1978) explored a varia-
tion of the foot-in-the-door phenomenon by experimenting
with the lowball technique. After the customer agrees to
buy a new car with a bargain price and begins completing
the sales forms, the salesperson removes the price advan-
tage by charging for options or by checking with a boss
who disallows the deal. Folklore has it that more lowballed customers now stick with the
higher-priced purchase than would have agreed to it at the outset. Airlines and hotels use
the tactic by attracting inquiries with great deals available on only a few seats or rooms;
then, when those aren’t available, they hope the customer will agree to a higher-priced
option. Later experiments found that this works only if people verbally commit to their
choice (Burger & Cornelius, 2003).
Marketing researchers and salespeople have found that the lowball technique works even
when we are aware of a profit motive (Cialdini, 1988). A harmless initial commitment—return-
ing a postcard for more information and a “free gift,” agreeing to listen to an investment
possibility—often moves us toward a larger commitment. Because salespeople sometimes
exploited the power of those small commitments by trying to hold people to purchase agree-
ments, many states now have laws that allow customers a few days to think over their pur-
chases and cancel. To counter the effect of these laws, many companies use what the
sales-training program of one company calls “a very important psychological aid in preventing
customers from backing out of their contracts” (Cialdini, 1988, p. 78). They simply have the
customer, rather than the salesperson, fill out the agreement. Having written it themselves,
people usually live up to their commitment.
The foot-in-the-door phenomenon is a lesson worth
remembering. Someone trying to seduce us—financially,
politically, or sexually—will often sneak their foot in the
door to create a momentum of compliance. The practical
lesson: Before agreeing to a small request, think about
what may follow.
And think, too, about what you might do next if you refuse
a large request, known as the door-in-the-face technique. When
Cialdini and his colleagues (1975) asked some of their Arizona
State University students to chaperone delinquent children on
a zoo trip, only 32% agreed to do so. With other students,
though, the questioner asked if the students would commit
2 years as volunteer counselors to delinquent children. All
refused (the equivalent of shutting a door in a salesperson’s
face). The questioner then counteroffered by asking if they
would take the children on the zoo trip, saying, in effect, “OK,
if you won’t do that, would you do just this much?” With this
lowball technique
A tactic for getting people to
agree to something. People who
agree to an initial request will
often still comply when the
requester ups the ante. People
who receive only the costly
request are less likely to comply
with it.
door-in-the-face technique
A strategy for gaining a
concession. After someone first
turns down a large request (the
door-in-the-face), the same
requester counteroffers with a
more reasonable request.
Would you allow a campaign worker to put this large sign in your yard?
Research suggests you’d be more likely to do so if you had first been
asked to display a small sign or window sticker.
©Aaron Roeth Photography
If a customer has already publicly committed by filling out the sales
paperwork, they are more likely to agree to a higher price, an example
of the lowball technique.
©yacobchuk/iStockphoto/Getty Images
186 Part Two Social Influence
technique, nearly twice as many—56%—agreed to help. Similarly, if students were first asked
to participate in a long-term blood donor program and then to donate blood that day, they
were more likely to comply than if they were simply asked to give blood (Guéguen, 2014).
Or consider finishing a meal in a restaurant when the server suggests dessert. When you say
no, she offers coffee or tea. Customers first offered dessert were more likely to say yes to the
next offer (Guéguen et al., 2011).
ONE-SIDED VERSUS TWO-SIDED APPEALS
Supporters of my [DM’s] community’s gay rights initiative faced a strategic question:
Should they acknowledge and seek to refute each of the opposition’s arguments? Or would
that likely backfire, by planting ideas that people would remember long after forgetting the
discounting? Again, common sense offers no clear answer. Acknowledging the opposing
arguments might confuse the audience and weaken the case. On the other hand, a message
might seem fairer and be more disarming if it recognizes the opposition’s arguments.
Carol Werner and colleagues (2002) showed the disarming power of a simple two-sided
message in an experiment on aluminum-can recycling. Signs added to wastebaskets in a
University of Utah classroom building said, for example, “No Aluminum Cans Please!!!!!
Use the Recycler Located on the First Floor, Near the Entrance.” When a final persuasive
message acknowledged and responded to the main counterargument—“It May Be Inconve-
nient. But It Is Important!!!!!!!!!!!”—recycling reached 80%.
In simulated trials, a defense case becomes more credible when the defense brings up
damaging evidence before the prosecution does (Williams et al., 1993). Thus, a political
candidate speaking to a politically informed group, or a community group advocating for or
against gay rights, would indeed be wise to respond to the opposition. So, if your audience
will be exposed to opposing views, offer a two-sided appeal. Two-sided appeals have another
advantage: They can make the communicator seem more honest. When a salesperson men-
tioned a negative attribute of a product that was unimportant to the customer, the customer
trusted the salesperson more and became more likely to buy the product (Pizzutti et al., 2016).
PRIMACY VERSUS RECENCY
Imagine that you are a consultant to a politician who must soon debate another politician
over a ballot proposition on bilingual education. Three weeks before the vote, each politi-
cian is to appear on the nightly news and present a prepared statement. By the flip of a
coin, your side receives the choice of whether to speak first or last. Knowing that you are
a former social psychology student, everyone looks to you for advice.
You mentally scan your old books and lecture notes. Would first be better? People’s
preconceptions control their interpretations. Moreover, a belief, once formed, is difficult to
discredit, so going first could give voters ideas that would favorably bias how they perceive
and interpret the second speech. Besides, people may pay more attention to what comes
first. Then again, people remember recent things better. Might it really be more effective
to speak last?
Your first line of reasoning predicts what is most common, a primacy effect: Information
presented early is most persuasive. First impressions are important. For example, can you
sense a difference between these two descriptions?
▯ John is intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, and envious.
▯ John is envious, stubborn, critical, impulsive, industrious, and intelligent.
When Solomon Asch (1946) gave these sentences to college students in New York City,
those who read the adjectives in the intelligent-to-envious order rated the person more posi-
tively than did those given the envious-to-intelligent order. The earlier information seemed
to color their interpretation of the later information, producing the primacy effect.
Some other primacy effect examples:
▯ Students who read positive TripAdvisor.com reviews of a hotel before the negative
reviews liked the hotel more than those who read the negative reviews first
(Coker, 2012).
“Opponents fancy they refute
us when they repeat their own
opinion and pay no attention
to ours.”
—Goethe,
Maxims and Reflections, 1829
primacy effect
Other things being equal,
information presented first
usually has the most influence.
Persuasion Chapter 7 187
▯ In political polls and in primary election voting,
candidates benefit from being listed first on the
ballot (Moore, 2004b).
▯ Super Bowl viewers were more likely to remember
brands when the commercial advertising was first in
the block of commercials (Li, 2010).
▯ Norman Miller and Donald Campbell (1959) gave
Northwestern University students a condensed
transcript from an actual civil trial. They placed the
plaintiff’s testimony and arguments in one section
and those for the defense in another. The students
read both sections. When they returned a week later
to declare their opinions, most sided with the
information they had read first.
What about the opposite possibility? Would our better
memory of recent information ever create a recency effect?
We have all experienced what the book of Proverbs observed: “The one who first states a
case seems right, until the other comes and cross-examines.” We know from our experience
(as well as from memory experiments) that today’s events can temporarily outweigh signifi-
cant past events. Today’s blizzard makes long-term global warming seem less a threat, just
as today’s sweltering heat makes it seem more a threat.
To test for a possible recency effect, Miller and Campbell gave another group of students
a section of testimony to read. A week later, the researchers had them read another section
and then immediately state their opinions. The results were the reverse of the other
experiment—a recency effect. Apparently the first section of arguments had largely faded
from memory in the ensuing week.
Forgetting creates the recency effect (1) when enough time separates the two messages
and (2) when the audience commits itself soon after the second message. When the two
messages are back-to-back, followed by a time gap, the primacy effect usually occurs
( Figure 3). This is especially so when the first message stimulates thinking (Haugtvedt &
Wegener, 1994). What advice would you now give to the political debater?
Dana Carney and Mahzarin Banaji (2008) discovered that order can also affect simple
preferences. When encountering two people or products, people tend to prefer the first
presented option. For example, when offered two similar-looking pieces of bubble gum, one
placed after the other on a white clipboard, 62%, when asked to make a snap judgment,
chose the first-presented piece. Across four experiments, the findings were consistent: “First
is best.”
recency effect
Information presented last
sometimes has the most
influence. Recency effects are
less common than primacy
effects.
Would you stay in this hotel? Your decision might depend on whether
you read the positive or negative online reviews first.
©ivanastar/Getty Images
Message #1
Primacy
e�ect
predicted:
Recency
e�ect
predicted:
Message #2
Response
Message #1
accepted
Message #1
(time)
(time)
Message #2
Response
Message #2
accepted
FIGURE 3
Primacy Effect Versus Recency Effect
When two persuasive messages are back-to-back and the audience then responds at some later time, the first message has the advantage (primacy
effect). When the two messages are separated in time and the audience responds soon after the second message, the second message has the
advantage (recency effect).
188 Part Two Social Influence
In answer to the list of questions at the beginning of this section, the best advice for
persuasion is the following:
▯ Use logic or emotion, depending on the audience and the message.
▯ Ask a small favor before making a big request.
▯ Offer two-sided messages that challenge arguments against your message.
▯ Go first or last—not in the middle—for best results.
How Is It Said? The Channel of Communication
For persuasion, there must be communication. And for communication, there must be a
channel: a face-to-face appeal, a written sign or document, a media advertisement.
Commonsense psychology places faith in the power of written words. How do we try to
get people to attend a campus event? We post notices. How do we get drivers to slow down
and keep their eyes on the road? We put “Drive Carefully” messages on billboards. How
do we discourage students from dropping trash on campus? We post antilitter messages on
campus bulletin boards.
ACTIVE EXPERIENCE OR PASSIVE RECEPTION?
Are spoken appeals more persuasive? Not necessarily. Those of us who speak publicly, as
teachers or persuaders, often become so enamored of our spoken words that we overesti-
mate their power. Ask college students what aspect of their college experience has been
most valuable or what they remember from their first year, and few, we are sad to say, recall
the brilliant lectures that we faculty remember giving.
Written and visual appeals are both passive, and thus have similar hurdles to overcome.
Many are relatively ineffective. For example, only 1 out of 1,000 online ads results in
someone clicking on the link. Yet the ads do have an effect: When a website was advertised,
traffic increased 65% over the week (Fulgoni & Mörn, 2009).
With such power, can the media help a wealthy political candidate buy an election? In
the United States, the candidate with more money wins 91% of the time. Winning candi-
dates for Congress outspent their opponents 2 to 1—$2.3 million compared to $1.1 million
(Lowery, 2014). Advertising exposure helps make an unfamiliar candidate into a familiar
one. Mere exposure to unfamiliar stimuli breeds liking. Moreover, mere repetition can make
things believable (Dechêne et al., 2010; Moons et al., 2009).
Researcher Hal Arkes (1990) calls such findings “scary.” As political manipulators
know, believable lies can displace hard truths. Repeated clichés can cover complex realities.
channel of communication
The way the message is
delivered—whether face-to-
face, in writing, on film, or in
some other way.
“If they just repeat attacks
enough, and outright lies over
and over again . . . people
start believing it.”
Barack Obama, Speaking at the
University of Michigan, July, 2016
In 2016, the U.S. Republican Party convention was immediately followed by the Democratic Party convention,
after which there was a 3-month time gap before the election. If experiments on primacy and recency are
applicable, which party would benefit most from this timing?
©mark reinstein/Shutterstock
Persuasion Chapter 7 189
In the political realm, even correct information may fail to discount implanted misinforma-
tion (Bullock, 2006; Nyhan & Reifler, 2008). When, during the 2016 Presidential cam-
paign, Donald Trump repeatedly claimed violent crime was increasing, media stories
consistently rebutted his statements with FBI statistics showing crime had actually declined
markedly since 2008. Nevertheless, 78% of Trump supporters continued to believe crime
was increasing (Gramlich, 2016). Such politically biased information processing is bipar-
tisan, report Peter Ditto and his colleagues (2018). They found “clear evidence of partisan
bias in both liberals and conservatives, and at virtually identical levels.” When evidence
supports our views, we find it cogent; when the same evidence contradicts our views, we
fault it.
Overall, retractions of previously provided information rarely work—people tend to
remember the original story, not the retraction (Ecker et al., 2011; Lewandowsky et al.,
2012). In the romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally, Harry says he’ll take back a state-
ment that offended Sally. “You can’t take it back—it’s already out there,” Sally replies.
Courtroom lawyers understand this, which is why they will take the risk of saying something
that might be retracted, knowing the jury will remember it anyway. If you’re trying to
counteract a falsehood, research suggests you should provide an alternative story that’s
simple—and repeat it several times (Ecker et al., 2011; Schwarz et al., 2007).
Mere repetition of a statement also serves to increase its fluency—the ease with which
it spills off our tongue—which increases believability (McGlone & Tofighbakhsh, 2000).
Other factors, such as rhyming, further increase fluency and believability. “Haste makes
waste” may say essentially the same thing as “rushing causes mistakes,” but it seems more
true. Whatever makes for fluency (familiarity, rhyming) also makes for credibility.
Because passively received appeals are sometimes effective and sometimes not, can we
specify in advance the issues most amenable to persuasion? There is a simple rule: The more
familiar people are with an issue, the less persuadable they are. On minor issues, such as
which brand of aspirin to buy, it’s easy to demonstrate the media’s power. On more familiar
and important issues, such as attitudes about a lengthy and controversial war, persuading
people is like trying to push a piano uphill. It is not impossible, but one shove won’t do it.
Active experience also strengthens attitudes. When we act, we amplify the idea behind
what we’ve done, especially when we feel responsible. In addition, attitudes more often
endure and influence our behavior when rooted in our own experience. Compared with
attitudes formed passively, experience-based attitudes are more confident, more stable, and
less vulnerable to attack. That’s one reason why so many companies now aim to advertise
through consumer-generated ads, viral videos, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, and online games—
consumers who have interactive experiences with brands and products are more engaged
than those who merely see or hear advertisements (Huang et al., 2013). Someone who
shares a viral video with others will remember the experience much longer than someone
who saw the same video as a TV commercial. Interactive websites also seem to be more
effective. In one study, Dutch students viewed one of two websites for the fictional company
HappyBev: one that simply displayed its corporate message and another that allowed users
to comment on the message and then displayed those comments. Those who appreciated
the interactivity of the comment-enabled site saw the company as more credible and identi-
fied with it more (Eberle et al., 2013).
PERSONAL VERSUS MEDIA INFLUENCE
Persuasion studies demonstrate that the major influence on us is not the media but our
contact with people. Modern selling strategies seek to harness the power of word-of-
mouth personal influence through “viral marketing,” “creating a buzz,” and “seeding”
sales (Walker, 2004). The Harry Potter series was not expected to be a best seller (the
first book in the series had a first printing of 500 copies). It was kids talking to other
kids that made it so.
During the 2010 midterm elections, people who saw photos of their friends voting on
Facebook were more likely to vote (Bond et al., 2012). In the 2012 election, campaign
contacts such as knocking on doors and calling voters increased turnout by 7 to 8 percent-
age points in heavily targeted areas (Enos & Fowler, 2016). In Kenya, untreated tap water
“Ah, that is always the way
with you men; you believe
nothing the first time, and it is
foolish enough to let mere
repetition convince you of
what you consider in itself
unbelievable.”
—George MacDonald,
Phantastes, 1858
“You do realize, you will never
make a fortune out of writing
children’s books?”
—J. K. Rowling’s Literary Agent
before Release of Harry Potter
and the Sorcerer’s Stone, 1998
190 Part Two Social Influence
causes disease and death, especially among chil-
dren. Yet few families treated their water until a
nonprofit organization enlisted one person in each
community to refill the communal chlorine tank
and teach everyone about the importance of treat-
ing their water (Coster, 2014). Personal contact
persuades.
In a field experiment, researchers tried to reduce
the frequency of heart disease among middle-aged
adults in three small California cities. To check the
relative effectiveness of personal and media influ-
ence, they examined 1,200 participants before the
project began and at the end of each of the follow-
ing 3 years. Residents of Tracy, California, received
no persuasive appeals other than those occurring in
their regular media. In Gilroy, California, a 2-year
multimedia campaign used TV, radio, newspapers,
and direct mail to teach people about coronary risk
and what they could do to reduce it. In Watsonville, California, this media campaign was
supplemented by personal contacts with two-thirds of those participants whose blood pres-
sure, weight, and age put them in a high-risk group. Using behavior-modification principles,
the researchers helped the Watsonville participants set specific goals and reinforced their
successes (Farquhar et al., 1977; Maccoby, 1980; Maccoby & Alexander, 1980).
As Figure 4 shows, after 1, 2, and 3 years, the high-risk participants in Tracy (the control
town) were at about as much at risk as before. High-risk participants in Gilroy, who were
deluged with media appeals, improved their health habits and decreased their risk. Those
in Watsonville, who received personal contacts as well as the media campaign, changed
the most.
Personal contact can increase voter turnout.
©Ariel Skelley/Blend Images
Percent change in risk
0 321
Year of study
Gilroy
(mass media)
Tracy
(control)
Watsonville
(mass media
and face-to-face)
+1 0
–1 0
–5
0
+5
–1 5
–20
–25
–30
–35
FIGURE 4
Percentage change from baseline (0) in coronary risk after 1, 2, or 3 years of
health education
Source: Data from Maccoby, 1980.
Persuasion Chapter 7 191
MEDIA INFLUENCE: THE TWO-STEP FLOW Although face-to-face influence is usu-
ally greater than media influence, we should not underestimate the media’s power. Those
who personally influence our opinions must get their ideas from some source, and often
their sources are the media. Elihu Katz (1957) observed that many of the media’s effects
operate in a two-step flow of communication: from media to opinion leaders to everyone
else. In any large group, it is these opinion leaders and trendsetters—“the influentials”—that
marketers and politicians seek to woo (Keller & Berry, 2003). Opinion leaders are individu-
als perceived as experts. They may include talk show hosts and editorial columnists; doctors,
teachers, and scientists; and people in all walks of life who have made it their business to
absorb information and to inform their friends and family. If I [DM] want to evaluate
computer equipment, I defer to the opinions of my sons, who get many of their ideas from
what they read online. Sell them and you will sell me.
The two-step flow of information influences the drugs your doctor describes, reports a
Stanford School of Business research team (Nair et al., 2008). Doctors look to opinion
leaders within their social network—often a university hospital-based specialist—when decid-
ing what drugs to favor. For more than 9 in 10 doctors, this influence comes through per-
sonal contact. The largest drug companies know that opinion leaders drive sales, and
therefore they target about one-third of their marketing dollars on these influential people.
The two-step flow model reminds us that media influences penetrate the culture in subtle
ways. Even if the media had little direct effect on people’s attitudes, they could still have a major
indirect effect. Those rare children who grow up without watching television do not grow up
beyond television’s influence. Unless they live as hermits, they will join in TV-imitative play on
the schoolground. They will ask their parents for the TV-related toys their friends have. They
will beg or demand to watch their friends’ favorite programs, and they will do so when visiting
friends’ homes. Parents can just say no, but they cannot switch off television’s influence.
COMPARING MEDIA Lumping together all media, from mass mailings to television to
social networking, oversimplifies. Studies comparing different media find that the more
lifelike the medium, the more persuasive its message. Thus, the order of persuasiveness
seems to be: live (face-to-face), videotaped, audiotaped, and written. If you want to persuade
someone who disagrees with you, it’s better to speak than to write to them. Your voice
humanizes you (Schroeder et al., 2018).
However, messages are best comprehended and recalled when written. Comprehension is
one of the first steps in the persuasion process (recall Figure 2). So Shelly Chaiken and
Alice Eagly (1976) reasoned that if a message is difficult to comprehend, persuasion should
be greatest when the message is written, because readers will be able to work through the
message at their own pace. The researchers gave University of Massachusetts students easy
or difficult messages in writing, on audiotape, or on videotape. Figure 5 displays their
two-step flow of
communication
The process by which media
influence often occurs through
opinion leaders, who in turn
influence others.
In study after study, most
people agree that mass media
influence attitudes—other
people’s attitudes, but not their
own (Duck et al., 1995).
FIGURE 5
Easy-to-understand messages
are most persuasive when vid-
eotaped. Difficult messages are
most persuasive when written.
Thus, the difficulty of the mes-
sage interacts with the medium
to determine persuasiveness.
Source: Data from Chaiken & Eagly,
1976.
Opinion change
Written Video tapeAudio tape
Medium
Easy message
Di�cult message
5
4
3
2
192 Part Two Social Influence
results: Difficult messages were indeed most persuasive when written; easy messages, when
videotaped. The TV medium takes control of the pacing of the message away from the
recipients. By drawing attention to the communicator and away from the message itself,
TV also encourages people to focus on peripheral cues, such as the communicator’s attrac-
tiveness (Chaiken & Eagly, 1983).
THE INFLUENCE OF ADULTS ON CHILDREN Communication flows from adults to
children—although as most parents and teachers can tell you, getting them to listen is not
always easy. Your parents likely taught you which foods are healthy and which aren’t. But
how effective were their appeals? In one experiment, children read one of three versions
of a story about a girl who ate wheat crackers—one in which she “felt strong and healthy,”
another in which she “thought the crackers were yummy, and she was happy,” and a third
with no additional description. The children then had the opportunity to eat some of the
crackers. Guess who ate the most? Surprisingly, it was the children who read that the girl
ate them—and nothing else. Those who heard they were yummy ate fewer, and those who
heard they were healthy ate less than half as many. The same was true for younger children
given messages about carrots (Maimaran & Fishbach, 2014). The lesson: When you’re trying
to get children to eat healthy food, just give it to them, and forget about saying anything
else. If you have to say something, say it’s yummy, not healthy.
To Whom Is It Said? The Audience
Persuasion varies with who . . . says what . . . by what medium . . . to whom. Let’s consider
two audience characteristics: age and thoughtfulness.
HOW OLD ARE THEY?
As was evident during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign—with Donald Trump the decided
favorite of older voters and Bernie Sanders of younger voters—people’s social and political
attitudes correlated with their age. Social psychologists offer two possible explanations for
age differences:
▯ A life cycle explanation: Attitudes change (for example, become more conservative)
as people grow older.
▯ A generational explanation: Attitudes do not change; older people largely hold onto
the attitudes they adopted when they were young. Because these attitudes are differ-
ent from those being adopted by young people today, a generation gap develops.
(Figure 6 offers one example of a large generation gap.)
Percent favoring gay marriage, by age
90
40
65+
53%
50
60
70
80
30
20
1 0
0
83%
1 8–29
FIGURE 6
A generation gap in 2016 U.S.
attitudes regarding same-sex
marriage, as reported by Gallup.
A “life cycle” explanation of
generational differences in
attitudes suggests that people
become more conservative with
age. A “generational explanation”
suggests that each generation
tends to hold on to attitudes
formed during the adolescent
and early adult years.
Adapted from http://www.gallup.
com/poll/169640/sex-marriage-
support-reaches-newhigh.aspx.
Persuasion Chapter 7 193
The evidence mostly supports the generational explanation. In surveys and resurveys of
groups of younger and older people over several years, the attitudes of older people usually
show less change than do those of young people. As David Sears (1979, 1986) put it,
researchers have “almost invariably found generational rather than life cycle effects.”
The teens and early twenties are important formative years (Koenig et al., 2008; Krosnick
& Alwin, 1989). Attitudes are changeable then, and the attitudes formed tend to stabilize
through middle adulthood. Gallup interviews of more than 120,000 people suggest that
political attitudes formed at age 18—relatively Republican-favoring during the popular Rea-
gan era, and more Democratic-favoring during the unpopular George W. Bush era—tend to
last (Silver, 2009). Young adulthood is also the time when people are more susceptible to
joining cults—entities also influenced by several other elements of persuasion (See Focus
On: Cults and Persuasion).
Young people might therefore be advised to choose their social influences—the groups
they join, the media they imbibe, the roles they adopt—carefully. James Davis (2004) dis-
covered, for example, that Americans reaching age 16 during the 1960s have, ever since,
been more politically liberal than average. Much as tree rings can, years later, reveal the
telltale marks laid down by a drought, so attitudes decades later may reveal the events, such
as the Vietnam War and civil rights era of the 1960s, that shaped the adolescent and early
twenties mind. For many people, these years are a critical period for the formation of
attitudes and values.
Adolescent and early adult experiences are formative partly because they make deep and
lasting impressions. When Howard Schuman and Jacqueline Scott (1989) asked people to
name the one or two most important national or world events of the previous half-century,
most recalled events from their teens or early twenties. Political views are also formed
around this time: One extensive analysis of voting patterns found that the popularity of the
U.S. President when a voter was 18 influenced whether they voted Democrat or Republican
throughout their lives (Ghitza & Gelman, 2014).
That is not to say that older adults are inflexible. People born in the 1930s (often known
as the Silent Generation for their conservative outlook) increased their approval of modern
cultural ideas such as premarital sex and working mothers as they aged from their 40s to
their 70s (Donnelly et al., 2015; Twenge et al., 2015). These middle-aged people had appar-
ently changed with the times. Few of us are utterly uninfluenced by changing cultural
norms.
WHAT ARE THEY THINKING?
The crucial aspect of central route persuasion is not the message but the responses it evokes
in a person’s mind. Our minds are not sponges that soak up whatever pours over them. If
a message summons favorable thoughts, it persuades us. If it provokes us to think of con-
trary arguments, we remain unpersuaded.
FOREWARNED IS FOREARMED—IF YOU CARE ENOUGH TO COUNTERARGUE
What circumstances breed counterargument? One is knowing that someone is going to try
to persuade you. If you had to tell your family that you wanted to drop out of school, you
would likely anticipate their pleading with you to stay. So you might develop a list of argu-
ments to counter every conceivable argument they might make—and you’d then be less likely
to be persuaded by them (Freedman & Sears, 1965). In courtrooms, too, defense attorneys
sometimes forewarn juries about prosecution evidence to come. With mock juries, such
“stealing thunder” neutralizes its impact (Dolnik et al., 2003).
DISTRACTION DISARMS COUNTERARGUING Persuasion is also enhanced by a dis-
traction that keeps people from thinking about counterarguments (Festinger & Maccoby,
1964; Keating & Brock, 1974; Osterhouse & Brock, 1970). Participants who read a message
while also watching a video (and thus “multitasking”) were less likely to counterargue
(Jeong & Hwang, 2012). Political ads often use this technique. The words promote the
candidate, and the visual images keep us occupied so we don’t analyze the words. Distrac-
tion is especially effective when the message is simple (Harkins & Petty, 1982; Regan &
Cheng, 1973). Sometimes, though, distraction keeps us from processing an ad. That helps
“To be forewarned and there-
fore forearmed . . . is emi-
nently rational if our belief is
true; but if our belief is a delu-
sion, this same forewarning
and forearming would obvi-
ously be the method whereby
the delusion rendered itself
incurable.”
—C. S. Lewis,
Screwtape Proposes a Toast,
1965
194 Part Two Social Influence
Cults and Persuasion
focus
ON
On March 22, 1997, Marshall Herff Applewhite and 37 of
his disciples decided the time had come to shed their
bodies—mere “containers”—and be whisked up to a UFO
trailing the Hale-Bopp Comet, en route to heaven’s gate.
So they put themselves to sleep by mixing phenobarbital
into pudding or applesauce, washing it down with vodka,
and then fixing plastic bags over their heads so they
would suffocate in their slumber. Previous years saw
other cults gather followers, often to fatal ends, including
David Koresh’s Waco compound that burned to the
ground in 1993 and the Unification Church disciples of
Jim Jones who killed themselves with cyanide-laced
Kool-Aid in 1978.
What persuades people to leave behind their former
beliefs and join a cult? Many people might guess that cult
members are gullible, unbalanced people, but the social
psychological principles of persuasion offer a different
perspective—suggesting that the same strategies used
by politicians and advertisers work, with larger conse-
quences, in recruiting people to cults. Consider the
following:
• Unification Church recruiters would invite people to a
dinner and then to a weekend of warm fellowship and
discussions of philosophies of life. At the weekend
retreat, they would encourage the attendees to join
them in songs, activities, and discussion. Potential
converts were then urged to sign up for longer train-
ing retreats. The pattern in cults is for the activities to
become gradually more arduous, culminating in
having recruits solicit contributions and attempt to
convert others. In other words, they used the foot-in-
the-door technique.
• Successful cults typically have a charismatic leader—
someone who attracts and directs the members. As in
experiments on persuasion, a credible communicator
is someone the audience perceives as expert and
trustworthy—for example, as “Father” Moon. Jim
Jones used “psychic readings” to establish his credi-
bility. Newcomers were asked to identify themselves
as they entered the church before services. Then one
of his aides would quickly call the person’s home and
say, “Hi. We’re doing a survey, and we’d like to ask
you some questions.” During the service, one ex-
member recalled, Jones would call out the person’s
name and say:
Have you ever seen me before? Well, you live in such
and such a place, your phone number is such and
such, and in your living room you’ve got this, that, and
the other, and on your sofa you’ve got such and such
a pillow. . . . Now do you remember me ever being in
your house? (Conway & Siegelman, 1979, p. 234)
• The audience matters. Potential converts are often at
turning points in their lives, facing personal crises, or
vacationing or living away from home. They have
needs; the cult offers them an answer (Lofland & Stark,
1965; Singer, 1979). Gail Maeder joined Heaven’s Gate
after her T-shirt shop had failed. David Moore joined
when he was 19, just out of high school, and searching
for direction. Times of social and economic upheaval
are especially conducive to someone who can make
apparent simple sense out of the confusion (O’Dea,
1968; Sales, 1972).
Most of those who have carried out suicide bombings
in the Middle East (and other places such as Bali, Madrid,
and London) were, likewise, young men at the transition
between adolescence and adult maturity. Like cult
recruits, they come under the influence of authoritative,
religiously-oriented communicators. These compelling
voices indoctrinate them into seeing themselves as “liv-
ing martyrs” whose fleeting moment of self-destruction
will be their portal into bliss and heroism. To overcome
the will to survive, each candidate makes public
commitments— creating a will, writing good-bye letters,
making a farewell video—that create a psychological
point of no return (Kruglanski & Golec de Zavala, 2005).
All of this typically transpires in the relative isolation of
small terrorist cells, with group influences that fan hatred
for the enemy.
One of 37 suicide victims seeking heaven’s gate.
©AP Images
Persuasion Chapter 7 195
explain why ads viewed during violent or sexual TV programs are so often forgotten and
ineffective (Bushman, 2005, 2007).
UNINVOLVED AUDIENCES USE PERIPHERAL CUES Recall the two routes to per-
suasion—the central route of systematic thinking and the peripheral route of heuristic
cues. Like a road that winds through a small town, the central route has starts and
stops as the mind analyzes arguments and formulates responses. Like the freeway that
bypasses the town, the peripheral route speeds people to their destination. Analytical
people—those with a high need for cognition—enjoy thinking carefully and prefer central
routes (Cacioppo et al., 1996). People who like to conserve their mental resources—
those with a low need for cognition—are quicker to respond to such peripheral cues as
the communicator’s attractiveness and the pleasantness of the surroundings. In one
study, students were asked to imagine they were planning a spring break trip and were
trying to decide on a destination. They then looked at the tourism websites of the five
most-visited U.S. cities (Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Orlando, and Miami).
Students who were more interested in a particular destination were more persuaded by
the focus on the information provided on the website (the central route), while those
who were less interested focused more on the website’s design (the peripheral route)
(Tang et al., 2012).
This simple theory—that what we think in response to a message is crucial, especially if
we are motivated and able to think about it—has generated many predictions, most of which
have been confirmed (Axsom et al., 1987; Haddock et al., 2008; Harkins & Petty, 1987).
Many experiments have explored ways to stimulate people’s thinking,
▯ by using rhetorical questions;
▯ by presenting multiple speakers (for example, having each of three speakers give one
argument instead of one speaker giving three);
▯ by making people feel responsible for evaluating or passing along the message;
▯ by repeating the message; or
▯ by getting people’s undistracted attention.
need for cognition
The motivation to think and
analyze. Assessed by
agreement with items such as
“The notion of thinking
abstractly is appealing to me”
and disagreement with items
such as “I only think as hard as I
have to.”
Are you more focused on the information on this website or its design? Your answer might depend on how
interested you are in visiting San Francisco.
©NetPhotos/Alamy Stock Photo
196 Part Two Social Influence
The consistent finding with each of these techniques: Stimulating thinking makes strong
messages more persuasive and (because of counterarguing) weak messages less persuasive.
The theory also has practical implications. Effective communicators care not only about
their images and their messages but also about how their audience is likely to react. The
best instructors get students to think actively. They ask rhetorical questions, provide intrigu-
ing examples, and challenge students with difficult problems. Such techniques foster the
central route to persuasion. In classes in which the instruction is less engaging, you can
still provide your own central processing. If you think about the material and elaborate on
the arguments, you are likely to do better in the course.
▯ What makes persuasion effective? Researchers have
explored four factors: the communicator (who says it),
the message (what is said), the channel (how it is said),
and the audience (to whom it is said).
▯ Credible communicators tend to be persuasive. People
who speak unhesitatingly and who talk fast seem more
credible. So do people who argue against their own self-
interest. An attractive communicator is especially effec-
tive on matters of taste and personal values.
▯ Associating a message with good feelings makes it more
convincing. People often make quicker, less reflective
judgments while in good moods. Fear-arousing mes-
sages can also be effective, especially if the recipients
feel vulnerable but can take protective action.
▯ People are more likely to do a small favor if they are
asked to do a big favor first (the door-in-the-face tech-
nique) and are more likely to agree to a big favor if they
agree to a small favor first (the foot-in-the-door phenom-
enon). A variation on the foot-in-the-door phenomenon
is the lowball technique, in which a salesperson offers a
low price, elicits a commitment from the buyer, and
then increases the price.
▯ How discrepant a message should be from an audience’s
existing opinions depends on the communicator’s cred-
ibility. And whether a one- or two-sided message is more
persuasive depends on whether the audience already
agrees with the message, is unaware of opposing argu-
ments, and is unlikely later to consider the opposition.
▯ When two sides of an issue are presented separately, the
primacy effect often makes the first message more
persuasive. If a time gap separates the presentations,
the more likely result will be a recency effect in which
the second message prevails.
▯ Another important consideration is how the message is
communicated. Usually, face-to-face appeals work best.
Print media can be effective for complex messages. The
mass media can be effective when the issue is minor or
unfamiliar, and when the media reach opinion leaders.
▯ Finally, it matters who receives the message. The age of
the audience makes a difference; young people’s atti-
tudes are more subject to change. What does the audi-
ence think while receiving a message? Do they think
favorable thoughts? Do they counterargue? Were they
forewarned?
SUMMING UP: What Are the Elements of Persuasion?
HOW CAN PERSUASION
BE RESISTED?
Identify some tactics for resisting influence. How might
we prepare people to resist unwanted persuasion?
Martial arts trainers devote as much time teaching defensive blocks, deflections, and parries
as they do teaching attack. “On the social influence battlefield,” note Brad Sagarin and
colleagues (2002), researchers have focused more on persuasive attack than on defense.
Being persuaded comes naturally, Daniel Gilbert and colleagues (1990, 1993) report. It is
easier to accept persuasive messages than to doubt them. To understand an assertion (say,
that lead pencils are a health hazard) is to believe it—at least temporarily, until one actively
undoes the initial, automatic acceptance. If a distracting event prevents the undoing, the
acceptance lingers.
Persuasion Chapter 7 197
Still, blessed with logic, information, and motivation, we do resist falsehoods. If the
repair person’s uniform and the doctor’s title have intimidated us into unthinking agree-
ment, we can rethink our habitual responses to authority. We can seek more information
before committing time or money. We can question what we don’t understand.
Attitude Inoculation
William McGuire wondered: Could we inoculate people against persuasion much as we
inoculate them against a virus? Is there such a thing as attitude inoculation? He found there
was: When participants were “immunized” by writing an essay refuting a mild attack on a
belief, they were better able to resist a more powerful attack later (McGuire, 1964).
DEVELOPING COUNTERARGUMENTS
One way inoculation can occur is by leading people to consider counterarguments—reasons
why a persuasive message is wrong. Robert Cialdini and colleagues (2003) wondered how
to bring counterarguments to mind in response to an opponent’s ads. The answer, they
suggest, is a “poison parasite” defense—one that combines a poison (strong counterargu-
ments) with a parasite (similarities to an opponent’s ads). In their studies, participants who
viewed a familiar political ad were least persuaded by it when they had earlier seen coun-
terarguments overlaid on a replica of the ad. Seeing the ad again thus also brought to mind
the puncturing counterarguments. Antismoking ads have effectively done this, for example,
by re-creating a “Marlboro Man” ad set in the rugged outdoors but instead showing a
coughing, decrepit cowboy. These ads use images similar to the real ones but feature the
powerful counterargument that smoking harms health.
Counterarguments also came into play when psychologist Christopher Bryan and his
colleagues (2016) wondered how teens could be persuaded to choose healthier snacks. In
a Texas middle school, one group of 8th graders received the usual health-class appeal for
healthier eating. But another group learned that the food industry used manipulative and
deceptive strategies to sell junk food to young people, describing industry executives as
“controlling, hypocritical adults.” When later given the chance to choose snacks for a class
party, teens who had learned the counterargument that junk food was a profit-grab by older
people were more likely to favor carrots and water over cookies and soda. The lesson? Teens
might be more likely to eat healthy food if it’s framed as a rebellion.
Could attitude inoculation help counter the growing problem of “fake news” (false online
news stories often shared via social media)? Sander van der Linden and his colleagues
(2017) exposed participants to a fake news story claiming that scientists have yet to reach
a consensus about whether global warming is caused by humans (a false claim; 97% of
climate scientists agree it is). Those who saw the false claim were later more likely to believe
no consensus had been reached. But if readers were warned that “politically motivated
groups” use “misleading tactics” to claim that there is no consensus—helping them develop
attitude inoculation
Exposing people to weak
attacks upon their attitudes so
that when stronger attacks
come, they will have refutations
available.
counterarguments
Reasons why a persuasive
message might be wrong.
A “poison parasite” ad.
©Rachel Epstein/The Image Works
198 Part Two Social Influence
a counterargument—they were less likely to believe the false claim. In a meta-analysis of
52 studies, researchers found that false claims were more likely to persist if people were
simply told they were wrong. But if people learned detailed counterarguments, false beliefs
were more likely to be debunked (Chan et al., 2017). So if your Facebook friend spreads
a fake news story, don’t just tell her it’s wrong—link to a story that debunks it in detail.
INOCULATING CHILDREN AGAINST PEER PRESSURE TO SMOKE
Consider how laboratory research findings can lead to practical applications. One research
team had high school students “inoculate” seventh-graders against peer pressures to
smoke (McAlister et al., 1980). The seventh-graders were taught to respond to advertise-
ments with counterarguments. They also acted in role plays in which, after being called
“chicken” for not taking a cigarette, they answered with statements such as “I’d be a real
chicken if I smoked just to impress you.” After several of these sessions during the seventh
and eighth grades, the inoculated students were half as likely to begin smoking as were
uninoculated students at another middle school—one that had an identical parental smok-
ing rate (Figure 7).
Other research teams have confirmed that inoculation procedures reduce teen smoking
(Botvin et al., 1995, 2008; Evans et al., 1984; Flay et al., 1985). Most newer efforts empha-
size strategies for resisting social pressure. One study exposed sixth- to eighth-graders to
antismoking films or to information about smoking, together with role plays of student-
generated ways of refusing a cigarette (Hirschman & Leventhal, 1989). A year and a half
later, 31% of those who watched the antismoking films had taken up smoking. Among those
who role-played refusing, only 19% had begun smoking.
Antismoking and drug education programs apply other persuasion principles, too. They
use attractive peers to communicate information. They trigger the students’ own cognitive
processing (“Here’s something you might want to think about”). They get the students to
make a public commitment (by making a rational decision about smoking and then announc-
ing it, along with their reasoning, to their classmates). These appeals and others seem to
have worked: Only 10.5% of 12th graders in the United States reported smoking tobacco
cigarettes in the last month in 2016, down from 38% in 1976. The new concern is e-cigarettes,
which 13% of 12th graders used in the last month in 2016 (Johnston et al., 2017).
INOCULATING CHILDREN AGAINST THE INFLUENCE
OF ADVERTISING
Belgium, Denmark, Greece, Ireland, Italy, and Sweden all restrict advertising that targets
children (McGuire, 2002). In the United States, notes Robert Levine in The Power of
FIGURE 7
The percentage of cigarette
smokers at an “inoculated”
middle school was much less
than at a matched control
school using a more typical
smoking education program.
Source: Data from McAlister et al.,
1980; Telch et al., 1981.
Percent smoking
4
Seventh grade Ninth gradeEighth grade
Months of study
90 1 6 2 11 2 33
Control school
Inoculated school
20
1 5
1 0
5
0
Persuasion Chapter 7 199
Persuasion: How We’re Bought and Sold, the average child sees more than 10,000 commer-
cials a year. “Two decades ago,” he notes, “children drank twice as much milk as soda.
Thanks to advertising, the ratio is now reversed” (2003, p. 16).
Hoping to restrain advertising’s influence, researchers have studied how to immunize
young children against the effects of television commercials. Their research was prompted
partly by studies showing that children, especially those under age 8 years, (1) have trouble
distinguishing commercials from programs and fail to grasp their persuasive intent, (2) trust
television advertising rather indiscriminately, and (3) badger their parents for advertised
products (Adler et al., 1980; Feshbach, 1980; Palmer & Dorr, 1980). Children, it seems,
are an advertiser’s dream: gullible, vulnerable, and an easy sell.
Armed with these findings, citizens’ groups have given the advertisers of such products
a chewing out (Moody, 1980): “When a sophisticated advertiser spends millions to sell
unsophisticated, trusting children an unhealthy product, this can only be called exploita-
tion.” In “Mothers’ Statement to Advertisers” (Motherhood Project, 2001), a broad coali-
tion of women echoed this outrage:
For us, our children are priceless gifts. For you, our children are customers, and childhood is
a “market segment” to be exploited. . . . The line between meeting and creating consumer needs
and desire is increasingly being crossed, as your battery of highly trained and creative experts
study, analyze, persuade, and manipulate our children. . . . The driving messages are “You
deserve a break today,” “Have it your way,” “Follow your instincts. Obey your thirst,” “Just Do
It,” “No Boundaries,” “Got the Urge?” These [exemplify] the dominant message of advertising
and marketing: that life is about selfishness, instant gratification, and materialism.
With much advertising moving online, new concerns arise. For example, young children
may not recognize that online games they play (such as “Treasure Map Hunt” for Fruit
Loops cereal or “Happy Sounds” on the MacDonald’s website) are actually advertising—
often for unhealthy food (An & Kang, 2013). In one experiment, 7- and 8-year-old children
who played these “advergames” were more likely to choose foods higher in sugar and fat
than those who did not play the games (Mallinckrodt & Mizerski, 2007).
On the other side are the commercial interests. They claim that ads allow parents to
teach their children consumer skills and, more important, finance children’s television
programs. In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission has been in the middle,
pushed by research findings and political pressures while trying to decide whether to
place new constraints on TV ads for unhealthy foods and for R-rated movies aimed at
underage youth.
Meanwhile, researchers have found that inner-city
seventh-graders who are able to think critically about
ads—who have “media resistance skills”—also better
resist peer pressure as eighth-graders and are less likely
to drink alcohol as ninth-graders (Epstein & Botvin,
2008). Researchers have also wondered whether chil-
dren can be taught to resist deceptive ads. In one such
effort, Los Angeles–area elementary schoolchildren
received three half-hour lessons in analyzing commer-
cials. The children were inoculated by viewing ads and
discussing them. For example, after viewing a toy ad,
they were immediately given the toy and challenged to
make it do what they had just seen in the commercial
(Feshbach, 1980; S. Cohen, 1980). Such experiences
helped breed a more realistic understanding of
commercials.
Consumer advocates worry that inoculation may be
insufficient. Better to clean the air than to wear gas
masks. It is no surprise, then, that parents resent it when
advertisers market products to children, then place them
on lower store shelves where kids will see them, pick
“In general, my children refuse
to eat anything that hasn’t
danced on television.”
—Erma Bombeck
“When it comes to targeting
kid consumers, we at General
Mills follow the Procter and
Gamble model of ‘cradle to
grave.’ . . . We believe in get-
ting them early and having
them for life.”
—Wayne Chilicki, General Mills
(Quoted by Motherhood Project,
2001)
Children are the advertiser’s dream. Researchers have therefore studied ways to
inoculate children against the more than 10,000 ads they see each year, many as
they are glued to a TV set.
©BananaStock/Getty Images
200 Part Two Social Influence
them up, and nag and beg for them. For that rea-
son, urges the “Mothers’ Code for Advertisers,”
there should be no advertising in schools, no target-
ing children under 8 years, no product placements
in movies and programs targeting children and ado-
lescents, and no ads directed at children and ado-
lescents “that promote an ethic of selfishness and
a focus on instant gratification” (Motherhood
Project, 2001).
Implications of Attitude
Inoculation
The best way to build resistance to brainwashing
probably is not just stronger indoctrination into
one’s current beliefs. If parents are worried that
their children might start smoking, they might bet-
ter teach their children how to counter persuasive
appeals about smoking.
For the same reason, educators should be wary of creating a “germ-free ideological
environment” in their churches and schools. People who live amid diverse views become
more discerning and more likely to modify their views only in response to credible argu-
ments (Levitan & Visser, 2008). Also, a challenge to one’s views, if refuted, is more likely
to solidify one’s position than to undermine it, particularly if the threatening material can
be examined with like-minded others (Visser & Mirabile, 2004). Cults apply this principle
by forewarning members of how families and friends will attack the cult’s beliefs. When
the expected challenge comes, the member is armed with counterarguments.
Children may not realize that online games are actually advertisements—or that
cereal with the word “fruit” in its name doesn’t actually contain any fruit.
POSTSCRIPT:
Being Open but Not Naïve
As recipients of persuasion, our human task is to live in the land between gullibility and
cynicism. Some people say that being persuadable is a weakness. “Think for yourself,” we
are urged. But is being closed to informational influence a virtue, or is it the mark of a
fanatic? How can we live with humility and openness to others and yet be critical consum-
ers of persuasive appeals?
To be open, we can assume that every person we meet is, in some ways, our superior.
Each person we encounter has some expertise that exceeds our own and thus has something
to teach us. As we connect, we can hope to think critically, yet also to learn from this
person and to reciprocate by sharing our knowledge.
▯ How do people resist persuasion? Developing counter-
arguments can help.
▯ A mild attack can also serve as an inoculation, stimulat-
ing one to develop counterarguments that will then be
available if and when a strong attack comes.
▯ This implies, paradoxically, that one way to strengthen
existing attitudes is to challenge them, although the
challenge must not be so strong as to overwhelm them.
SUMMING UP: How Can Persuasion Be Resisted?
We live in groups. Our world contains not only 7.5 billion individuals, but also 195 countries and hundreds of millions of other formal and informal groups—
couples having dinner, roommates hanging out, business teams plotting strategy.
How do such groups influence us? And how do individuals influence groups?
We will examine several intriguing phenomena of group influence. But first things
first: What is a group and why do groups exist?
WHAT IS A GROUP?
Define group.
The answer to this question seems self-evident—until several people compare their defini-
tions. Are jogging partners a group? Are airplane passengers a group? Is a group those who
identify with one another, who sense they belong together? Is a group those who share
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens
can change the world.”
—Attributed to anthropologist Margaret Mead
©Peter Muller/Image Source
8
Group Influence
C H A P T E R
What is a group?
Social facilitation:
How are we affected
by the presence of
others?
Social loafing: Do
individuals exert less
effort in a group?
Deindividuation:
When do people lose
their sense of self in
groups?
Group polarization:
Do groups intensify
our opinions?
Groupthink: Do
groups hinder or
assist good
decisions?
The influence of the
minority: How do
individuals influence
the group?
Postscript: Are
groups bad for us?
202 Part Two Social Influence
common goals and rely on one another? Does a group form when
individuals become organized? When their relationships with one
another continue over time? These are among the social psycho-
logical definitions of a group (McGrath, 1984).
Group dynamics expert Marvin Shaw (1981) argued that all
groups have one thing in common: Their members interact. There-
fore, he defines a group as two or more people who interact and
who influence one another. A pair of jogging companions, then,
would indeed constitute a group.
Different groups help us meet different human needs—to affili-
ate (to belong to and connect with others), to achieve, and to gain
a social identity (Johnson et al., 2006). Unlike the great apes, we
humans are “the cooperative animal”—“the ultra-social animal”
(Tomasello, 2014). From our early ancestors to the present, we
have intentionally collaborated to forage and hunt.
By Shaw’s definition, students working individually in a com-
puter room would not be a group. Although physically together,
they are more a collection of individuals than an interacting group
(though each may be part of a group with dispersed others in an
online chat room). The distinction between unrelated individuals
in a computer lab and interacting individuals sometimes blurs.
People who are merely in one another’s presence do sometimes,
as we will see, influence one another. And at a football game, we may perceive ourselves
as “us” fans in contrast with “them”—the opposing fans.
In this chapter, we consider three effects of others’ mere presence: social facilitation,
social loafing, and deindividuation. These three phenomena can occur with minimal interac-
tion (in “minimal group situations”). Then we consider three examples of social influence
in interacting groups: group polarization, groupthink, and minority influence.
group
Two or more people who, for
longer than a few moments,
interact with and influence one
another and perceive one
another as “us.”
Given what you’ve just learned, do you think this is a group?
What questions could you ask to find out?
©Hill Street Studios/Tobin Rogers/Blend Images
▯ A group exists when two or more people interact for more than a few moments, affect one another in some way, and
think of themselves as “us.”
SUMMING UP: What Is a Group?
SOCIAL FACILITATION: HOW ARE
WE AFFECTED BY THE PRESENCE
OF OTHERS?
Describe how we are affected by the mere presence
of another person—by people who are merely present
as a passive audience or as co-actors.
The Mere Presence of Others
More than a century ago, Norman Triplett (1898), a psychologist interested in bicycle rac-
ing, noticed that cyclists’ times were faster when they raced together than when each raced
alone against the clock. Before he peddled his hunch (that others’ presence boosts
co-actors
Co-participants working
individually on a noncompetitive
activity.
Group Influence Chapter 8 203
performance), Triplett conducted one of social psychology’s first
laboratory experiments. Children told to wind string on a fishing
reel as rapidly as possible wound faster when they worked with
competing co-actors than when they worked alone. “The bodily
presence of another contestant . . . serves to liberate latent energy,”
concluded Triplett.
A modern reanalysis of Triplett’s data revealed that the differ-
ence did not reach statistical significance (Stroebe, 2012; Strube,
2005). But ensuing experiments did find that others’ presence led
people to do simple multiplication problems and cross out desig-
nated letters faster. It also improves accuracy on simple motor
tasks, such as keeping a metal stick in contact with a dime-sized
disk on a moving turntable (F. H. Allport, 1920; Dashiell, 1930;
Travis, 1925). This social facilitation effect also occurs with ani-
mals. In the presence of others of their species, ants excavate
more sand, chickens eat more grain, and sexually active rat pairs
mate more often (Bayer, 1929; Chen, 1937; Larsson, 1956).
But wait: On other tasks, the presence of others instead hinders
performance. Cockroaches, parakeets, and green finches learn
mazes more slowly when in the presence of others (Allee &
Masure, 1936; Gates & Allee, 1933; Klopfer, 1958). This disrup-
tive effect also occurs with people. Others’ presence diminishes
efficiency at learning nonsense syllables, completing a maze, and
performing complex multiplication problems (Dashiell, 1930;
Pessin, 1933; Pessin & Husband, 1933).
Saying that others’ presence sometimes facilitates performance and sometimes hinders
it is about as satisfying as the typical Scottish weather forecast—predicting that it might be
sunny but then again it might rain. By 1940, social facilitation research ground to a halt,
and it lay dormant for 25 years until awakened by the touch of a new idea.
Social psychologist Robert Zajonc (1923–2008, pronounced Zy-ence, rhymes with sci-
ence) wondered whether these seemingly contradictory findings could be reconciled. As
often happens at creative moments in science, Zajonc (1965) used one field of research
to illuminate another. The illumination came from a well-established experimental psy-
chology principle: Arousal enhances whatever response tendency is dominant. Increased
arousal enhances performance on easy tasks for which the most likely—“dominant”—
response is correct. People solve easy anagrams, such as akec, fastest when aroused. On
complex tasks, for which the correct answer is not dominant, increased arousal promotes
incorrect responding. On more difficult anagrams, such as theloacco, people do worse
when aroused.
Could this principle solve the mystery of social facilitation? It seemed reasonable to
assume that others’ presence will arouse or energize people (Mullen et al., 1997); most of
us can recall feeling tense or excited in front of an audience. If social arousal facilitates
dominant responses, it should boost performance on easy tasks and hurt performance on
difficult tasks.
With that explanation, the confusing results made sense. Winding fishing reels, doing
simple multiplication problems, and eating were all easy tasks, with well-learned or naturally
dominant responses. Sure enough, having others around boosted performance.
Learning new material, doing a maze, and solving complex math problems were more
difficult tasks with initially less probable correct responses. In these cases, the presence of
others increased the number of incorrect responses on these tasks.
So, the same general rule—arousal facilitates dominant responses—worked in both cases
(Figure 1). Suddenly, what had looked like contradictory results no longer seemed
contradictory.
Zajonc’s solution, so simple and elegant, left other social psychologists thinking what
Thomas H. Huxley thought after first reading Darwin’s On the Origin of Species: “How
extremely stupid not to have thought of that!” It seemed obvious—once Zajonc had pointed
social facilitation
(1) Original meaning: the
tendency of people to perform
simple or well-learned tasks
better when others are present.
(2) Current meaning: the
strengthening of dominant
(prevalent, likely) responses in
the presence of others.
“Mere social contact begets . . .
a stimulation of the animal
spirits that heightens the
efficiency of each individual
workman.”
—Karl Marx,
Das Kapital, 1867
Social facilitation: Do you ride faster when bicycling with others?
©Tetra Images - Shawn O’Connor/Brand X Pictures/Getty Images
204 Part Two Social Influence
it out. Perhaps, however, the pieces fit so neatly only through the spectacles of hindsight.
Would the solution survive direct experimental tests?
After almost 300 studies of more than 25,000 people, the solution has survived (Bond &
Titus, 1983; Guerin, 1993, 1999). Social arousal facilitates dominant responses, whether
right or wrong. For example, Peter Hunt and Joseph Hillery (1973) found that in others’
presence, students took less time to learn a simple maze and more time to learn a complex
one (just as the cockroaches did!). And James Michaels and collaborators (1982) found
that good pool players in a student union (who had made 71% of their shots while being
unobtrusively observed) did even better (80% when four observers came up to watch them
play). Poor shooters (who had previously averaged 36%) did even worse (25%) when closely
observed.
Eating is a simple, natural behavior. And have you noticed that you tend to scarf more
food when eating with a group? At a party, do you sometimes overeat? If so, you are not
alone—as research from diary studies, observational studies, and experimental studies con-
firms (Herman, 2015, 2017). When sharing an eating pleasure—tasting chocolates—people
find the treat more enjoyable and flavorful (Boothby et al., 2014, 2016).
Athletes, actors, and musicians perform well-practiced skills, which helps explain why
they often perform best when energized by the responses of a supportive audience. Studies
of more than a quarter million college and professional athletic events worldwide reveal
that home teams win approximately 6 in 10 games, with the home advantage larger for
teamwork-focused sports (Jones, 2015) (Table 1). The home advantage is amazingly con-
stant over time and across sports. NBA basketball teams, NHL hockey teams, and interna-
tional soccer football league teams have won more home games every year, without exception
(Moskowitz & Wertheim, 2011).
Social facilitation—a home audience energizing performance on well-learned skills—is an
obvious explanation of the home advantage. Indeed, British soccer players’ stress-hormone
levels (indicating arousal) are greater after home than away matches (Fothergill et al., 2017).
FIGURE 1
The Effects of Social
Arousal
Robert Zajonc reconciled
apparently conflicting findings
by proposing that arousal from
others’ presence strengthens
dominant responses (the correct
responses only on easy or
well-learned tasks).
Others’
presence Arousal
Strengthens
dominant
responses
Enhancing
easy behavior
Impairing
di�cult behavior
TABLE 1 Home Advantage in Major Team Sports
Sport Games Studied
Percentage of Home
Games Won
Baseball 120,576 55.6
American football 11,708 57.3
Ice hockey 50,739 56.5
Basketball 30,174 63.7
Soccer 40,380 67.4
Source: Jeremy Jamieson (2010).
“Discovery consists of seeing
what everybody has seen and
thinking what nobody had
thought.”
—Albert von Szent-Györgyi,
The Scientist Speculates, 1962
Group Influence Chapter 8 205
Can you imagine other possible contributing factors? Mark Allen and Marc Jones (2014)
include these possibilities:
▯ Officiating bias: In one analysis of 1,530 German soccer football matches, referees
awarded an average 1.80 yellow cards to home teams and 2.35 to away teams
(Unkelbach & Memmert, 2010).
▯ Travel fatigue: When flying to the East coast, West coast NFL football teams do
better in night games than when playing 1 p.m. games.
▯ Familiarity with the home context, which, depending on the locale, may include cold,
rain, or high altitude.
▯ Home-team crowd noise disruption may disrupt visiting players’ hearing plays or
shooting free throws.
Crowding: The Presence of
Many Others
The effect of others’ presence increases with their
number (Jackson & Latané, 1981; Knowles, 1983).
Sometimes the arousal and self-conscious atten-
tion created by a large audience interferes even
with well-learned, automatic behaviors, such as
speaking. Given extreme pressure, we’re vulnerable
to “choking.” Stutterers tend to stutter more in
front of larger audiences than when speaking
to just one or two people (Mullen, 1986b). Over
28 years of major tournaments, professional golfers’
scores have tended to be worse in the final day’s
round than on the previous day, especially so for
golfers close to the tournament lead (Wells &
Skowronski, 2012).
Being in a crowd also intensifies positive or
negative reactions. When they sit close together,
friendly people are liked even more, and unfriendly
people are disliked even more (Schiffenbauer &
Schiavo, 1976; Storms & Thomas, 1977). In experiments with Columbia University students
and with Ontario Science Center visitors, Jonathan Freedman and co-workers (1979, 1980)
had people listen to a humorous tape or watch a movie with other participants. When they
all sat close together, an accomplice could more readily induce the individuals to laugh and
clap. As theater directors and sports fans know, and as researchers have confirmed, a “good
house” is a full house (Aiello et al., 1983; Worchel & Brown, 1984). As recent experiments
confirm, fun shared with others is more energizing—and fun (Reis et al., 2017).
Perhaps you’ve noticed that a class of 35 students feels more warm and lively in a room
that seats just 35 than when spread around a room that seats 100. When others are close
by, we are more likely to notice and join in their laughter or clapping. But crowding also
enhances arousal, as Gary Evans (1979) found. He tested 10-person groups of University
of Massachusetts students, either in a room 20 by 30 feet or in one 8 by 12 feet. Compared
with those in the large room, those densely packed had higher pulse rates and blood pres-
sure (indicating arousal). On difficult tasks they made more errors, an effect of crowding
replicated by Dinesh Nagar and Janak Pandey (1987) with university students in India.
Crowding, then, has a similar effect to being observed by a crowd: it enhances arousal,
which facilitates dominant responses.
Why Are We Aroused in the Presence of Others?
What you do well, you will be energized to do best in front of others (unless you become
hyperaroused and self-conscious and choke). What you find difficult may seem impossible
Heightened arousal in crowded
homes also tends to increase
stress. Crowding produces less
distress in homes divided into
many spaces, however, enabling
people to withdraw in privacy
(Evans et al., 1996, 2000).
A good house is a full house, as James Maas’s Cornell University introductory
psychology students experienced in this 2000-seat auditorium. If the class had
100 students meeting in this large space, it would feel much less energized.
©Mike Okoniewski
206 Part Two Social Influence
in the same circumstances. What is it about other people that
creates arousal? Evidence supports three possible factors (Aiello
& Douthitt, 2001; Feinberg & Aiello, 2006): evaluation apprehen-
sion, distraction, and mere presence.
EVALUATION APPREHENSION
Nickolas Cottrell surmised that observers make us apprehensive
because we wonder how they are evaluating us. To test whether
evaluation apprehension exists, Cottrell and associates (1968)
blindfolded observers, supposedly in preparation for a perception
experiment. In contrast to the effect of a watching audience, the
mere presence of these blindfolded people did not boost a
performer’s well- practiced responses.
Other experiments confirmed that the enhancement of
dominant responses is strongest when people think they are
being evaluated. In one experiment, individuals running on a
jogging path sped up as they came upon a woman seated on
the grass—if she was facing them rather than sitting with her back turned (Worringham
& Messick, 1983).
The self-consciousness we feel when being evaluated can also interfere with behaviors
that we perform best automatically (Mullen & Baumeister, 1987). If self-conscious basket-
ball players analyze their body movements while shooting critical free throws, they are more
likely to miss. We perform some well-learned behaviors best without overthinking them.
DRIVEN BY DISTRACTION
Glenn Sanders, Robert Baron, and Danny Moore (1978; Baron, 1986) carried evaluation
apprehension a step further. They theorized that when we wonder how co-actors are doing
or how an audience is reacting, we become distracted. This conflict between paying attention
to others and paying attention to the task overloads our cognitive system, causing arousal.
We are “driven by distraction.” This arousal comes not just from the presence of another
person but also from other distractions, such as bursts of light (Sanders, 1981a,b).
MERE PRESENCE
Zajonc, however, believed that the mere presence of others produces some arousal even
without evaluation apprehension or arousing distraction. Recall that facilitation effects
also occur with nonhuman animals. This hints at an innate social arousal mechanism
common to much of the zoological world. (Animals probably are not consciously worry-
ing about how other animals are evaluating them.) At the human level, most runners are
energized when running with someone else, even one who neither competes nor evaluates.
University rowing team members, perhaps aided by an endorphin boost from the com-
munal activity, tolerate twice as much pain after rowing together than when rowing solo
(Cohen et al., 2009).
This is a good time to remind ourselves that a good theory is a scientific shorthand: It
simplifies and summarizes a variety of observations. Social facilitation theory does this
well. It is a simple summary of many research findings. A good theory also offers clear
predictions that (1) help confirm or modify the theory, (2) guide new exploration, and (3)
suggest practical applications. Social facilitation theory has definitely generated the first
two types of prediction: (1) Its basic idea (that the presence of others is arousing, and that
this arousal enhances dominant responses) has been confirmed, and (2) the theory brought
new life to a long-dormant field of research.
Are there (3) some practical applications? We can make some educated guesses.
Many new office buildings have replaced private offices with large, open areas. Might the
resulting awareness of others’ presence help boost the performance of well-learned tasks
but disrupt creative thinking on complex tasks? Can you think of other possible
applications?
evaluation apprehension
Concern for how others are
evaluating us.
A large, engaged crowd audience can be highly arousing—
energizing well-learned behaviors, but sometimes creating
self-conscious choking.
©Lynne Powe
Group Influence Chapter 8 207
SOCIAL LOAFING: DO INDIVIDUALS
EXERT LESS EFFORT IN A GROUP?
Assess the level of individual effort we can expect
from members of work groups. In a team tug-of-war,
will eight people on a side exert as much force as the
sum of their best efforts in individual tugs-of-war? If
not, why not?
Social facilitation usually occurs when people work toward individual goals and when their
efforts, whether winding fishing reels or solving math problems, can be individually evalu-
ated. These situations parallel some everyday work situations. But what happens when
people pool their efforts toward a common goal and individuals are not accountable for
their efforts? A team tug-of-war provides one such example. Organizational fundraising—
using candy sale proceeds to pay for the class trip—provides another. So does a class group
project on which all students get the same grade. On such “additive tasks”—tasks where the
In the “open-office plan,” people work in the presence of others. Office environ-
ments increasingly provide their workers with “collaborative spaces” (Arieff, 2011).
©stockbroker/123RF
▯ Social psychology’s most elementary issue concerns the
mere presence of others. Some early experiments on this
question found that performance improved with observ-
ers or co-actors present. Others found that the presence of
others can hurt performance. Robert Zajonc reconciled
those findings by applying a well-known principle from
experimental psychology: Arousal facilitates dominant
responses. Because the presence of others is arousing,
the presence of observers or co-actors boosts perfor-
mance on easy tasks (for which the correct response is
dominant) and hinders performance on difficult tasks
(for which incorrect responses are dominant).
▯ Being in a crowd, or in crowded conditions, is similarly
arousing and facilitates dominant responses. That helps
explain the home-field advantage in sports.
▯ But why are we aroused by others’ presence? Experi-
ments suggest that the arousal stems partly from evalu-
ation apprehension and partly from distraction—a
conflict between paying attention to others and con-
centrating on the task. Other experiments, including
some with animals, suggest that the presence of others
can be arousing even when we are not evaluated or
distracted.
SUMMING UP: Social Facilitation: How Are We Affected
by the Presence of Others?
208 Part Two Social Influence
group’s achievement depends on the sum of the indi-
vidual efforts—will team spirit boost productivity?
Will bricklayers lay bricks faster when working as a
team than when working alone? Laboratory simula-
tions provide answers.
Many Hands Make
Light Work
Nearly a century ago, French engineer Max Ringel-
mann (reported by Kravitz & Martin, 1986) found
that the collective effort of tug-of-war teams was but
half the sum of the individual efforts. Contrary to
the presumption that “in unity there is strength,” this
suggested that group members may actually be less
motivated when performing additive tasks. Maybe,
though, poor performance stemmed from poor coor-
dination—people pulling a rope in slightly different
directions at slightly different times. A group of Mas-
sachusetts researchers led by Alan Ingham (1974)
cleverly eliminated that problem by making individu-
als think others were pulling with them, when, actually, they were pulling alone. Blindfolded
participants were assigned the first position in the apparatus shown in Figure 2 and told,
“Pull as hard as you can.” They pulled 18% harder when they knew they were pulling alone
than when they believed people behind them were also pulling.
Researchers Bibb Latané, Kipling Williams, and Stephen Harkins (1979; Harkins et al.,
1980) kept their ears open for other ways to investigate this diminished effort, which they
labeled social loafing. They observed that the noise produced by six people shouting or clap-
ping “as loud as you can” was less than three times that produced by one person alone. Like
the tug-of-war task, however, noisemaking is vulnerable to group inefficiency. So Latané and
associates followed Ingham’s example by leading their Ohio State University participants to
believe others were shouting or clapping with them, when in fact they were doing so alone.
Their clever method was to blindfold six people, seat them in a semicircle, and have
them put on headphones, over which they were blasted with noise. People could not hear
their own shouting or clapping, much less that of others in the semicircle. On various trials
they were instructed to shout or clap either
alone or along with the group. People who were
told about this experiment guessed the partici-
pants would shout louder when with others,
because they would be less inhibited (Harkins
& Petty, 1982). The actual result? Social loaf-
ing: When the participants believed five others
were also either shouting or clapping, they pro-
duced one-third less noise than when they
thought themselves alone. Social loafing
occurred even when the participants were high
school cheerleaders who believed themselves to
be cheering together rather than alone (Hardy
& Latané, 1986).
Curiously, those who clapped both alone and
in groups did not view themselves as loafing; they
perceived themselves as clapping equally in both
situations. This parallels what happens when stu-
dents work on group projects for a shared grade.
Williams reports that all agree loafing occurs—
but no one admits to doing the loafing.
social loafing
The tendency for people to
exert less effort when they pool
their efforts toward a common
goal than when they are
individually accountable.
FIGURE 2
The Rope-Pulling Apparatus
People in the first position pulled less hard when they thought people behind
them were also pulling.
Source: Alan G. Ingham
Due to social loafing, people make less noise clapping and shouting when in a crowd
than when alone.
©Ingram Publishing/SuperStock
Group Influence Chapter 8 209
Political scientist John Sweeney (1973) observed social loafing in a cycling experiment.
University of Texas students pumped exercise bicycles more energetically (as measured by
electrical output) when they knew they were being individually monitored than when they
thought their output was being pooled with that of other riders. In the group condition, people
were tempted to free-ride on the group effort.
In this and 160 other studies (Karau & Williams, 1993; Figure 3), we see a twist on one
of the psychological forces that makes for social facilitation: evaluation apprehension. In the
social loafing experiments, individuals believed they were evaluated only when they acted
alone. The group situation (rope pulling, shouting, and so forth) decreased evaluation appre-
hension. When people are not accountable and cannot evaluate their own efforts, responsibil-
ity is diffused across all group members (Harkins & Jackson, 1985; Kerr & Bruun, 1981).
By contrast, the social facilitation experiments increased exposure to evaluation. When made
the center of attention, people self-consciously monitor their behavior (Mullen & Baumeister,
1987). So, when being observed increases evaluation concerns, social facilitation occurs;
when being lost in a crowd decreases evaluation concerns, social loafing occurs (Figure 4).
To motivate group members, one strategy is to make individual performance identifiable.
Some football coaches do this by filming and evaluating each player individually. Whether in
a group or not, people exert more effort when their outputs are individually identifiable: Uni-
versity swim team members swim faster in intrasquad relay races when someone monitors and
announces their individual times (Williams et al., 1989).
Social Loafing in Everyday Life
How widespread is social loafing? In the laboratory, the phenomenon occurs not only
among people who are pulling ropes, cycling, shouting, and clapping but also among those
who are pumping water or air, evaluating poems or editorials, producing ideas, typing, and
detecting signals. Do these consistent results generalize to everyday worker productivity?
In workplace group experiments, employees have produced more when their individual
performance was posted (Lount & Wilk, 2014). In one such experiment, assembly-line
workers produced 16% more product when their individual output was identified, even
though they knew their pay would be unaffected (Faulkner & Williams, 1996). Consider
the example of workers in a pickle factory who were supposed to put only the big pickles
into jars. But because the jars were then merged (and their individual work unchecked),
the workers just stuffed in any size pickle. Williams, Harkins, and Latané (1981) note that
research on social loafing suggests “making individual production identifiable, and raises
the question: ‘How many pickles could a pickle packer pack if pickle packers were only
paid for properly packed pickles?’”
free riders
People who benefit from the
group but give little in return.
Percent of individual performance
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 10 15
Group size
16
100
90
95
85
80
75
70
FIGURE 3
Effort Decreases as
Group Size Increases
A statistical digest of 49 studies,
involving more than 4000 par-
ticipants, revealed that effort
decreases (loafing increases) as
the size of the group increases.
Each dot represents the aggre-
gate data from one of these
studies.
Source: Williams et al., 1992.
210 Part Two Social Influence
Individual e�orts
evaluated
Evaluation
apprehension
Arousal
Social facilitation
Individual e�orts
pooled and
NOT evaluated
No evaluation
apprehension
Social loafing
Less arousal
Others’
presence
FIGURE 4
Social Facilitation or Social Loafing?
When individuals cannot be evaluated or held accountable, loafing becomes more likely. An individual swimmer is evaluated on her ability to win
the race. In tug-of-war, no single person on the team is held accountable, so any one member might relax or loaf.
swimmers: ©imagenavi/Getty Images; tug-of-war: ©Thinkstock Images/Getty Images
Researchers have also found evidence of social loafing in varied cultures, such as by
assessing agricultural output in formerly communist countries. On their collective farms
under communism, Russian peasants worked one field one day, another field the next, with
little direct responsibility for any given plot. For their own use, they were given small private
plots. One analysis found that the private plots occupied 1% of the agricultural land, yet
produced 27% of the Soviet farm output (H. Smith, 1976). In communist Hungary, private
plots accounted for only 13% of the farmland but produced one-third of the output (Spivak,
1979). When China began allowing farmers to sell food grown in excess of that owed to
the state, food production jumped 8% per year—2.5 times the annual increase in the preced-
ing 26 years (Church, 1986). In an effort to tie rewards to productive effort, modern Russia
“decollectivized” many of its farms (Kramer, 2008).
What about noncommunist collectivistic cultures? Latané and co-researchers (Gabrenya
et al., 1985) repeated their sound-production experiments in Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, India,
and Malaysia. Their findings? Social loafing was evident in all those countries, too. Seven-
teen later studies in Asia reveal that people in collectivistic cultures do, however, exhibit
less social loafing than do people in individualistic cultures (Karau & Williams, 1993;
Kugihara, 1999). As we noted in earlier chapters, loyalty to family and work groups runs
strong in collectivistic cultures. Likewise, women tend to be less individualistic than men—
and to exhibit less social loafing.
Social loafing also appears in donations of money and time. In North America, workers
who do not pay dues or volunteer time to their unions or professional associations neverthe-
less are usually happy to accept the associations’ benefits. So, too, are public radio listeners
and television viewers who don’t respond to their station’s fund drives. This hints at another
possible explanation of social loafing: When rewards are divided equally, regardless of how
much one contributes to the group, any individual gets more reward per unit of effort by
free-riding on the group. Thus, people may slack off when their efforts are not individually
Group Influence Chapter 8 211
monitored and rewarded—which may also enable them to overesti-
mate their own relative contribution (Schroeder et al., 2016). Situ-
ations that welcome free riders can therefore be, in the words of
one commune member, a “paradise for parasites.”
But surely collective effort does not always lead to slacking off.
Sometimes the goal is so compelling and maximum output from
everyone is so essential that team spirit maintains or intensifies
effort. In an Olympic crew race, will the individual rowers in an
eight-person crew pull their oars with less effort than those in a
one- or two-person crew?
The evidence assures us they will not. People in groups loaf
less when the task is challenging, appealing, or involving (Karau &
Williams, 1993; Tan & Tan, 2008). On challenging tasks, people
may perceive their efforts as indispensable (Harkins & Petty,
1982; Kerr, 1983; Kerr et al., 2007). When swimming the last leg
of a relay race with a medal at stake, swimmers tend to swim even
faster than in individual competition (Hüffmeier et al., 2012).
Groups also loaf less when their members are friends or they
feel identified with or indispensable to their group (Davis & Greenlees, 1992; Gockel et al.,
2008; Karau & Williams, 1997; Worchel et al., 1998). Even just expecting to interact with
someone again serves to increase effort on team projects (Groenenboom et al., 2001).
Collaborate on a class project with others you’ll see often and you will feel more motivated
than if you never expect to see them again. Cohesiveness intensifies effort.
These findings parallel those from studies of everyday work groups. When groups are
given challenging objectives, when they are rewarded for group success, and when there is
a spirit of commitment to the “team,” group members work hard (Hackman, 1986). Keeping
work groups small can also help members believe their contributions are indispensable
(Comer, 1995).
Teamwork at the Charles River regatta in Boston. Social loafing
occurs when people work in groups but without individual
accountability—unless the task is challenging, appealing, or
involving, and the group members are friends.
©leezsnow/E+/Getty Images
▯ Social facilitation researchers study people’s perfor-
mance on tasks where they can be evaluated individu-
ally. However, in many work situations, people pool
their efforts and work toward a common goal without
individual accountability.
▯ Group members often work less hard when performing
such “additive tasks.” This finding parallels everyday
situations in which diffused responsibility tempts indi-
vidual group members to free-ride on the group’s
effort.
▯ People may, however, put forth even more effort in a
group when the goal is important, rewards are signifi-
cant, and team spirit exists.
SUMMING UP: Social Loafing: Do Individuals Exert Less
Effort in a Group?
DEINDIVIDUATION: WHEN DO
PEOPLE LOSE THEIR SENSE OF
SELF IN GROUPS?
Define “deindividuation” and identify circumstances
that trigger it.
In April 2003, in the wake of American troops entering Iraq’s cities, looters—“liberated”
from the scrutiny of police—ran rampant. Hospitals lost beds. The National Library lost tens
of thousands of old manuscripts and lay in smoldering ruins. Universities lost computers,
212 Part Two Social Influence
chairs, even lightbulbs. The National Museum in Baghdad lost
15,000 precious objects (Burns, 2003a, 2003b; Lawler, 2003c;
Polk & Schuster, 2005). “Not since the Spanish conquistadors
ravaged the Aztec and Inca cultures has so much been lost so
quickly,” reported Science (Lawler, 2003a). “They came in mobs:
A group of 50 would come, then would go, and another would
come,” explained one university dean (Lawler, 2003b).
Such reports—and those of the 2011 arson and looting that
occurred in London, the 2014 looting in Ferguson, Missouri, and
the mob sexual assaults in Germany as 2016 dawned—had the rest
of the world wondering: What happened to people’s sense of
morality? Why did such behavior erupt? And why was it not
anticipated?
Their behavior even left many of the rioters later wondering
what had possessed them. In court, some of the arrested London
rioters seemed bewildered by their behavior (Smith, 2011). The
mother of one of them, a recent university graduate, explained
that her daughter had been sobbing in her bedroom since her
arrest over a stolen television. “She doesn’t even know why she
took it. She doesn’t need a telly.” An engineering student, arrested after looting a super-
market while he was walking home, was said by his lawyer to having “got caught up in the
moment” and was now “incredibly ashamed” (Somaiya, 2011).
Doing Together What We Would Not Do Alone
Social facilitation experiments show that groups can arouse people, and social loafing experi-
ments show that groups can diffuse responsibility. When arousal and diffused responsibility
combine, and normal inhibitions diminish, the results may be startling. People may commit
acts that range from a mild lessening of restraint (throwing food in the dining hall, snarling
at a referee, screaming during a rock concert) to impulsive self-gratification (group vandal-
ism, orgies, thefts) to destructive social explosions (police brutality, riots, lynchings).
These unrestrained behaviors have something in common: They are provoked by the
power of being in a group. Groups can generate a sense of excitement, of being caught up
in something bigger than one’s self. It is hard to imagine a single rock fan screaming deliri-
ously at a private rock concert, or a single rioter setting a car on fire. It’s in group situations
that people are more likely to abandon normal restraints, to forget their individual identity,
to become responsive to group or crowd norms—in a word, to become what Leon Festinger,
Albert Pepitone, and Theodore Newcomb (1952) labeled deindividuated. What circum-
stances elicit this psychological state?
GROUP SIZE
A group has the power not only to arouse its members but also to render them unidentifi-
able. The snarling crowd hides the snarling basketball fan. A lynch mob enables its members
to believe they will not be prosecuted; they perceive the action as the group’s. Looters, made
faceless by the mob, are freed to loot. One researcher analyzed 21 instances in which crowds
were present as someone threatened to jump from a building or a bridge (Mann, 1981).
When the crowd was small and exposed by daylight, people usually did not try to bait the
person with cries of “Jump!” But when a large crowd or the cover of night gave people
anonymity, the crowd usually did bait and jeer.
Lynch mobs produce a similar effect: The bigger the mob, the more its members lose
self-awareness and become willing to commit atrocities, such as burning, lacerating, or
dismembering the victim (Leader et al., 2007; Mullen, 1986a).
In each of these examples, from sports crowds to lynch mobs, evaluation apprehension
plummets. People’s attention is focused on the situation, not on themselves. And because
“everyone is doing it,” all can attribute their behavior to the situation rather than to their
own choices.
deindividuation
Loss of self-awareness and
evaluation apprehension; occurs
in group situations that foster
responsiveness to group norms,
good or bad.
Deindividuation: During England’s 2011 riots and looting, rioters
were disinhibited by social arousal and by the anonymity pro-
vided by darkness and their hoods and masks. Later, some of
those arrested expressed bewilderment over their own behavior.
©Lewis Whyld/AP Images
Group Influence Chapter 8 213
ANONYMITY
How can we be sure that crowds offer anonymity? We can’t. But we can experiment with
anonymity to see if it actually lessens inhibitions. Philip Zimbardo (1970, 2002) got the
idea for such an experiment from his undergraduate students, who questioned how good
boys in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies could so suddenly become monsters after paint-
ing their faces. To experiment with such anonymity, he dressed New York University women
in identical white coats and hoods, rather like Ku Klux Klan members (Figure 5). Asked
to deliver electric shocks to a woman, they pressed the shock button twice as long as did
women who were unconcealed and wearing large name tags. Even dimmed lighting or
wearing sunglasses increases people’s perceived anonymity, and thus their willingness to
cheat or behave selfishly (Zhong et al., 2010).
The Internet offers similar anonymity. Millions of those who were aghast at the looting
by the Baghdad mobs were on those very days anonymously pirating music tracks using
file-sharing software. With so many doing it, and with so little concern about being caught,
downloading someone’s copyrighted property and then offloading it to an MP3 player just
didn’t seem terribly immoral. Internet bullies who would never say, “Get a life, you phony,”
to someone’s face will hide behind their anonymity online. Most social media sites, to their
credit, require people to use their real names, which constrains hate-filled comments.
On several occasions, anonymous online bystanders have egged on people threatening
suicide, sometimes with live video feeding the scene to scores of people. Online communities
“are like the crowd outside the building with the guy on the ledge,” noted one analyst of
technology’s social effects (quoted by Stelter, 2008). Sometimes a caring person tried to talk
the person down, while others, in effect, chanted, “Jump, jump.” “The anonymous nature of
these communities only emboldens the meanness or callousness of the people on these sites.”
Testing deindividuation on the streets, Patricia Ellison, John Govern, and their col-
leagues (1995) had a driver stop at a red light and wait for 12 seconds whenever she was
followed by a convertible or a 4 × 4 vehicle. During the wait, she recorded horn-honking
(a mild aggressive act) by the car behind. Compared with drivers of convertibles and 4 ×
4s with the car tops down, those who were relatively anonymous (with the tops up) honked
one-third sooner, twice as often, and for nearly twice as long. Anonymity feeds incivility.
A research team led by Ed Diener (1976) cleverly demonstrated the effect both of being
in a group and of being physically anonymous. At Halloween, they observed 1,352 Seattle
children trick-or-treating. As the children, either alone or in groups, approached 1 of
27 homes scattered throughout the city, an experimenter greeted them warmly, invited them
to “take one of the candies,” and then left the candy unattended. Hidden observers noted
that children in groups were more than twice as likely to take extra candy than were solo
children. Also, children who had been asked their names and where they lived were less
than half as likely to transgress as those who were left anonymous. As Figure 6 shows,
when they were deindividuated both by group immersion and by anonymity, most children
stole extra candy.
FIGURE 5
In Philip Zimbardo’s deindividu-
ation research, anonymous
women delivered more shock to
helpless victims than did identi-
fiable women.
©Philip Zimbardo
214 Part Two Social Influence
Those studies make us wonder about the effect of wearing uniforms. Preparing for battle,
warriors in some tribal cultures (like some rabid sports fans) depersonalize themselves with
body and face paints or special masks. Robert Watson (1973) scrutinized anthropological
files and discovered this: The cultures with depersonalized warriors were also the cultures
that brutalized their enemies. In Northern Ireland, 206 of 500 violent attacks studied by
Andrew Silke (2003) were conducted by attackers who wore masks, hoods, or other face
disguises. Compared with undisguised attackers, these anonymous attackers inflicted more
serious injuries, attacked more people, and committed more vandalism.
Does becoming physically anonymous always unleash our worst impulses? Fortunately,
no. In all these situations, people were responding to clear antisocial cues. Robert Johnson
and Leslie Downing (1979) point out that the Klan-like outfits worn by Zimbardo’s partici-
pants may have been stimulus cues for hostility. In an experiment at the University of
Georgia, women put on nurses’ uniforms before deciding how much shock someone should
receive. When those wearing the nurses’ uniforms were made anonymous, they became less
aggressive in administering shocks. From their analysis of 60 deindividuation studies, Tom
Postmes and Russell Spears (1998; Reicher et al., 1995) concluded that being anonymous
makes one less self-conscious, more group-conscious, and more responsive to situational cues,
whether negative (Klan uniforms) or positive (nurses’ uniforms).
AROUSING AND DISTRACTING ACTIVITIES
Aggressive outbursts by large groups are often preceded by minor actions that arouse and
divert people’s attention. Group shouting, chanting, clapping, or dancing serve both to hype
people up and to reduce self-consciousness.
Experiments have shown that activities such as throwing rocks and group singing can
set the stage for more disinhibited behavior (Diener, 1976, 1979). There is a self-reinforcing
pleasure in acting impulsively while seeing others do likewise. When we see others act as
we are acting, we think they feel as we do, which reinforces our own feelings (Orive, 1984).
Moreover, impulsive group action absorbs our attention. When we yell at the referee, we
are not thinking about our values; we are reacting to the immediate situation. Later, when
we stop to think about what we have done or said, we sometimes feel chagrined. Sometimes.
At other times we seek deindividuating group experiences—dances, worship experiences,
team sports—where we enjoy intense positive feelings and closeness to others.
Diminished Self-Awareness
Group experiences that diminish self-consciousness tend to disconnect behavior from atti-
tudes. Research by Ed Diener (1980) and Steven Prentice-Dunn and Ronald Rogers (1980,
“Attending a service in the
Gothic cathedral, we have the
sensation of being enclosed
and steeped in an integral uni-
verse, and of losing a prickly
sense of self in the community
of worshipers.”
—Yi-Fu Tuan,
Segmented Worlds and Self, 1982
FIGURE 6
Children were more likely to
transgress by taking extra
Halloween candy when in a
group, when anonymous, and,
especially, when deindividuated
by the combination of group
immersion and anonymity.
Source: Data from Diener et al.,
1976.
Alone
Percent transgressing
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
In groups
Identified
Anonymous
Group Influence Chapter 8 215
1989) revealed that unself-conscious, deindividuated people are less
restrained, less self- regulated, more likely to act without thinking
about their own values, and more responsive to the situation. These
findings complement and reinforce the experiments on
self-awareness.
Self-awareness is the opposite of deindividuation. Those made
self-aware, by acting in front of a mirror or a TV camera, exhibit
increased self-control, and their actions more clearly reflect their
attitudes. In front of a mirror, people taste-testing cream cheese
varieties ate less of the high-fat variety (Sentyrz & Bushman,
1998).
People made self-aware are also less likely to cheat (Beaman
et al., 1979; Diener & Wallbom, 1976). So are those who gener-
ally have a strong sense of themselves as distinct and indepen-
dent (Nadler et al., 1982). In Japan, where people more often
imagine how they might look to others, the presence of a mirror
had no effect on cheating (Heine et al., 2008). The principle:
People who are self-conscious, or who are temporarily made so,
exhibit greater consistency between their words outside a situation and their deeds in it.
We can apply those findings to many situations in everyday life. Circumstances that
decrease self-awareness, as alcohol consumption does, increase deindividuation (Hull et al.,
1983). Deindividuation decreases in circumstances that increase self-awareness: mirrors and
cameras, small towns, bright lights, large name tags, undistracted quiet, individual clothes
and houses (Ickes et al., 1978). When a teenager leaves for a party, a parent’s parting advice
could well be “Have fun, and remember who you are.” In other words, enjoy being with
the group, but be self-aware; maintain your personal identity; be wary of deindividuation.
self-awareness
A self-conscious state in which
attention focuses on oneself. It
makes people more sensitive to
their own attitudes and
dispositions.
Looking in a mirror or being on camera increases self-awareness,
making us think about our individual actions more carefully.
©Syda Productions/Shutterstock
▯ When high levels of social arousal combine with diffused
responsibility, people may abandon their normal re-
straints and lose their sense of individuality.
▯ Such deindividuation is especially likely when people
are in a large group, are physically anonymous, and are
aroused and distracted.
▯ The resulting diminished self-awareness and self-
restraint tend to increase people’s responsiveness to the
immediate situation, be it negative or positive. Deindi-
viduation is less likely when self-awareness is high.
SUMMING UP: Deindividuation: When Do People Lose
Their Sense of Self in Groups?
GROUP POLARIZATION: DO GROUPS
INTENSIFY OUR OPINIONS?
Describe and explain how interaction with like-minded
people tends to amplify preexisting attitudes.
Do group interactions more often have good or bad outcomes? Police brutality and mob
violence demonstrate the destructive potential of groups. Yet support-group leaders, work-
group consultants, and educational theorists proclaim the beneficial effects of group interac-
tion. And self-help group members and religious adherents strengthen their identities by
fellowship with like-minded others.
Studies of small groups have produced a principle that helps explain both bad and good
outcomes: Group discussion often strengthens members’ initial inclinations. The unfolding
216 Part Two Social Influence
of this research on group polarization illustrates the process of inquiry—how an interesting
discovery often leads researchers to hasty and erroneous conclusions, which get replaced
with more accurate conclusions. This is a scientific mystery I [DM] can discuss firsthand,
having been one of the detectives.
The Case of the “Risky Shift”
More than 300 studies began with a surprising finding by James Stoner (1961), then an MIT
graduate student. For his master’s thesis in management, Stoner tested the commonly held
belief that groups are more cautious than individuals. He posed decision dilemmas in which
the participant’s task was to advise imagined characters how much risk to take. Put yourself
in the participant’s shoes: What advice would you give the character in this situation?1
Helen is a writer who is said to have considerable creative talent but who so far has been
earning a comfortable living by writing cheap westerns. Recently she has come up with an idea
for a potentially significant novel. If it could be written and accepted, it might have consider-
able literary impact and be a big boost to her career. On the other hand, if she cannot work
out her idea or if the novel is a flop, she will have expended considerable time and energy
without remuneration.
Imagine that you are advising Helen. Please check the lowest probability that you would
consider acceptable for Helen to attempt to write the novel.
Helen should attempt to write the novel if the chances that the novel will be a success are
at least
_____ 1 in 10
_____ 2 in 10
_____ 3 in 10
_____ 4 in 10
_____ 5 in 10
_____ 6 in 10
_____ 7 in 10
_____ 8 in 10
_____ 9 in 10
_____ 10 in 10 (Place a check here if you think Helen should attempt the novel only if it is
certain that the novel will be a success.)
After making your decision, guess what this book’s average reader would advise.
Having marked their advice on a dozen items, five or so individuals would then discuss
and reach agreement on each item. How do you think the group decisions compared with
the average decision before the discussions? Would the groups be likely to take greater risks,
be more cautious, or stay the same?
To everyone’s amazement, the group decisions were usually
riskier. This “risky shift phenomenon” set off a wave of group
risk-taking studies. These revealed that risky shift occurs not
only when a group decides by consensus; after a brief discus-
sion, individuals, too, will alter their decisions. What is more,
researchers successfully repeated Stoner’s finding with people
of varying ages and occupations in a dozen nations.
During discussion, opinions converged. Curiously, however,
the point toward which they converged was usually a lower
(riskier) number than their initial average. Here was an intrigu-
ing puzzle. The small risky shift effect was reliable, unexpected,
and without any immediately obvious explanation. What group
influences produce such an effect? And how widespread is it?
Do discussions in juries, business committees, and military
organizations also promote risk taking? Does this explain why
teenage reckless driving, as measured by death rates, nearly
doubles when a 16- or 17-year-old driver has two teenage
group polarization
Group-produced enhancement
of members’ preexisting
tendencies; a strengthening of
the members’ average tendency,
not a split within the group.
1This item, constructed for my [DM’s] own research, illustrates the sort of decision dilemma posed by Stoner.
The risky shift: Groups of people, like these teens in a car together,
may make more risky decisions than individuals alone.
©Big Cheese Photo/Superstock
Group Influence Chapter 8 217
Before
discussion
After
discussion
0Neutral
Oppose
Favor
Group A
Group B
–
+
FIGURE 7
Group Polarization
The group polarization hypothesis predicts that
discussion will strengthen an attitude shared by
group members.
passengers rather than none (Chen et al., 2000)? Does it explain stock bubbles, as people
discuss why stocks are rising, thus creating an informational cascade that drives stocks even
higher (Sunstein, 2009)?
After several years of study, my [DM’s] colleagues and I discovered that the risky shift
was not universal. We could write decision dilemmas on which people became more cautious
after discussion. One of these featured “Roger,” a young married man with two school-age
children and a secure but low-paying job. Roger can afford life’s necessities but few of its
luxuries. He hears that the stock of a relatively unknown company may soon triple in value
if its new product is favorably received or decline considerably if it does not sell. Roger has
no savings. To invest in the company, he is considering selling his life insurance policy.
Can you see a general principle that predicts both the tendency to give riskier advice
after discussing Helen’s situation and more cautious advice after discussing Roger’s? If you
are like most people, you would advise Helen to take a greater risk than Roger, even before
talking with others. It turns out there is a strong tendency for discussion to accentuate
these initial leanings. Thus, groups discussing the “Roger” dilemma became more risk-averse
than they were before discussion (Myers, 2010).
Do Groups Intensify Opinions?
Realizing that this group phenomenon was not a consistent shift toward increased risk, we
reconceived the phenomenon as a tendency for group discussion to enhance group mem-
bers’ initial leanings. Similar minds polarize. This idea led investigators to propose what
French researchers Serge Moscovici and Marisa Zavalloni (1969) called group polarization:
Discussion typically strengthens the average inclination of group members.
GROUP POLARIZATION EXPERIMENTS
This new view of the group-induced changes prompted experimenters to have people discuss
attitude statements that most of them favored, or that most of them opposed. Would talking
in groups enhance their shared initial inclinations? In groups, would risk takers take bigger
risks, bigots become more hostile, and givers become more generous? That’s what the group
polarization hypothesis predicts (Figure 7).
Dozens of studies confirm group polarization. Three examples:
▯ Moscovici and Zavalloni (1969) observed that discussion enhanced French
students’ initially positive attitude toward their president and negative attitude
toward Americans.
▯ Mititoshi Isozaki (1984) found that Japanese university students gave
more pronounced judgments of “guilty” after discussing a traffic case.
When jury members are inclined to award damages, the group award
tends to exceed that preferred by the median jury member (Sunstein,
2007a).
▯ When people believed they were watching an online video of a political
speech at the same time as many other viewers (vs. with no other
viewers), their judgments of the speech were more extreme (Shteynberg
et al., 2016).
▯ Markus Brauer and co-workers (2001) found that French students were
more adamant in their dislike of someone after discussing their shared
negative impressions with others. If some individuals dislike you, together
they may dislike you more.
Another research strategy has been to pick issues on which opinions are
divided and then isolate people who hold the same view. Does discussion with
like-minded people strengthen shared views? Does it magnify the attitude gap
that separates the two sides?
George Bishop and I [DM] wondered. So we set up groups of relatively preju-
diced and unprejudiced high school students and asked them to respond—before
and after discussion—to issues involving racial attitudes (Myers & Bishop, 1970).
218 Part Two Social Influence
For example, they responded to a case involving the property right to rent only to
one’s race versus the civil right to not face discrimination. We found that the
discussions among like-minded students did indeed increase the initial gap between
the two groups (Figure 8). Moreover, Jessica Keating and her collaborators (2016)
report that people are unaware of the phenomenon in their own lives. When small
groups of like-minded people discussed whether Barack Obama or George W. Bush
was the better president, participants underestimated how much the discussion
polarized their attitudes, misremembering their earlier attitudes as less extreme
than they actually were.
Studies in Britain and Australia confirm that group discussion can magnify
both negative and positive tendencies. When people share negative impressions
of a group, such as an immigrant group, discussion supports their negative views
and increases their willingness to discriminate (Smith & Postmes, 2011). And
when people share concern about an injustice, discussion amplifies their moral
concern (Thomas & McGarty, 2009). Like hot coals together, like minds
strengthen one another.
GROUP POLARIZATION IN EVERYDAY LIFE
In everyday life, people associate mostly with others whose attitudes are similar
to their own. (See the Attraction chapter, or just look at your own circle of
friends.) So, outside the laboratory, do everyday group interactions with like-
minded friends intensify shared attitudes? Do the nerds become nerdier, the
jocks jockier, and the rebels more rebellious?
It happens. The self-segregation of boys into all-male groups and of girls into
all-female groups increases their initially modest gender differences, noted Eleanor
Maccoby (2002). Boys with boys become gradually more competitive and action oriented
in their play and fictional fare. Girls with girls become more relationally oriented.
On U.S. federal appellate court cases, judges appointed by Republican presidents tend
to vote like Republicans and judges appointed by Democratic presidents tend to vote like
Democrats. No surprise there. But such tendencies are accentuated when among like-
minded judges, report David Schkade and Cass Sunstein (2003): “A Republican appointee
sitting with two other Republicans votes far more conservatively than when the same judge
sits with at least one Democratic appointee. A Democratic appointee, meanwhile, shows
the same tendency in the opposite ideological direction.”
GROUP POLARIZATION IN SCHOOLS Another real-life parallel to the laboratory phe-
nomenon is what education researchers have called the “accentuation” effect: Over time,
initial differences among groups of college students become accentuated. If the first-year
students at Big Brain College are initially more intellectual than the students at Party School
College, that gap is likely to increase by the time they graduate. Likewise, compared with
fraternity and sorority members, nonmembers have tended to have more liberal political
attitudes, a difference that grows with time in college (Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991).
Researchers believe this results partly from group members reinforcing shared inclinations.
GROUP POLARIZATION IN COMMUNITIES Polarization also occurs in communities,
as people self-segregate. “Crunchy places . . . attract crunchy types and become crunchier,”
observes David Brooks (2005). “Conservative places . . . attract conservatives and become
more so.” Neighborhoods can become echo chambers, with opinions ricocheting off
kindred-spirited friends.
Show social psychologists a like-minded group that interacts mostly among themselves
and they will show you a group that may become more extreme. While diversity moderates
us, like minds polarize.
One experiment assembled small groups of Coloradoans in liberal Boulder and conserva-
tive Colorado Springs. The discussions increased agreement within small groups about global
warming, affirmative action, and same-sex unions. Nevertheless, those in Boulder generally
converged further left and those in Colorado Springs further right (Schkade et al., 2007).
“What explains the rise of
fascism in the 1930s? The
emergence of student
radicalism in the 1960s? The
growth of Islamic terrorism in
the 1990s? . . . The unifying
theme is simple: When people
find themselves in groups of
like-minded types, they are
especially likely to move to
extremes. [This] is the
phenomenon of group
polarization.”
—Cass Sunstein,
Going to Extremes, 2009
Prejudice
Before
discussion
After
discussion
High-prejudice groups
Low-prejudice groups
4
2
0
3
1
–4
–3
–2
–1
FIGURE 8
Discussion increased polarization between ho-
mogeneous groups of high- and low- prejudice
high school students. Talking over racial issues
increased prejudice in a high-prejudice group
and decreased it in a low-prejudice group.
Source: Data from Myers & Bishop, 1970.
Group Influence Chapter 8 219
In laboratory studies, the competitive relationships and mistrust that individuals often
display when playing games with one another often worsen when the players are groups
(Winquist & Larson, 2004). During actual community conflicts, like-minded people associ-
ate increasingly with one another, amplifying their shared tendencies. Gang delinquency
emerges from a process of mutual reinforcement within neighborhood gangs, whose mem-
bers share attributes and hostilities (Cartwright, 1975). If “a second out-of-control 15-year-
old moves in [on your block],” surmises David Lykken (1997), “the mischief they get into
as a team is likely to be more than merely double what the first would do on his own. . . .
A gang is more dangerous than the sum of its individual parts.” (Or, as one friend of mine
[JT] put it when we were in college and had witnessed a few too many drunken antics,
“Boys do dumb things when they get together in groups.”) Indeed, “unsupervised peer
groups” are “the strongest predictor” of a neighborhood’s crime victimization rate, report
Bonita Veysey and Steven Messner (1999). Moreover, experimental interventions that take
delinquent adolescents and group them with other delinquents—no surprise to any group
polarization researcher—increase the rate of problem behavior (Dishion et al., 1999).
GROUP POLARIZATION IN POLITICS With like-minded communities serving as politi-
cal echo chambers, the United States offers a case example of an urgent social problem—political
polarization. As more and more people view their party as morally superior and the opposi-
tion as corrupt, cooperation and shared goals get replaced by gridlock. Consider:
▯ Like-minded counties. The percentage of Americans living in “landslide counties”—
those in which 60% or more voted for the same Presidential candidate—rose from
38% in 1992 to 60% in 2016 (Aisch et al., 2016).
▯ Minimized middle ground. The percentage of entering collegians declaring them-
selves as politically “middle of the road” dropped from 60% in 1983 to 42% in
2016, and those identifying as “far left” or “far right” has increased (Eagan et al.,
2017; Twenge et al., 2016).
▯ Increasing partisan divide. The gap between Republicans and Democrats, as
expressed in congressional speeches and in citizen attitudes, has never been greater
(Figure 9) (Gentzkow et al., 2017; Pew, 2017).
▯ Antagonism. In 2016, most Republicans and Democrats for the first time acknowl-
edged having “very unfavorable” views of the other party (Doherty & Kiley, 2016).
In 1960, just 5% of Republicans and 4% of Democrats said they would be upset if
their son or daughter was going to marry someone from the other political party.
By 2010, 49% of Republicans and 33% of Democrats said they would be upset
(Iyengar et al., 2012).
▯ Persistent partisanship. The rate of
Americans’ voting for the same party
across successive presidential elections
has never been higher (Smidt, 2017).
This worsening divide is increasingly
apparent to all, with a record 77% of Ameri-
cans perceiving their nation as divided
(Jones, 2016).
GROUP POLARIZATION ON THE
INTERNET From the long-ago invention
of the printing press to today’s Internet, the
amount of available information has mush-
roomed. Where once people shared the
same information from a few networks and
national news magazines, today we choose
from a myriad of sources. With so many
choices, we naturally “selectively expose”
ourselves to like-minded media (Dylko et al.,
In two trials, South African
courts reduced sentences after
learning how social
psychological phenomena,
including deindividuation and
group polarization, led crowd
members to commit murderous
acts (Colman, 1991). What do
you think: Should courts
consider social psychological
phenomena as possible
extenuating circumstances?
Groups often exceed individuals. A gang is more dangerous than the sum of its parts, much
as “the pack is greater than the wolf.”
©Raimund Linke/Getty Images
220 Part Two Social Influence
Percent agreeing
1994 2017
Democrat
Republican
60
40
70
50
0
10
20
30
FIGURE 9
A polarizing society. Democrats have increas-
ingly agreed that “Racial discrimination is the
main reason why many Black people can’t get
ahead these days” (Pew, 2017). Republicans
have become less likely to agree.
2017). We embrace media feeds that support our views and slam those we
despise. (Tell us which media you consume and we’ll guess your political
ideology.)
As people selectively read blogs and visit chat rooms, does the Internet herd
them into “tribes of common thought” (or do we have more—and more diverse—
friends on Facebook than in daily life)? Do people (do you?) tend to click on
content they (you?) agree with and block what’s disagreeable? Do progressives
tend to friend progressives and share links with them, and likewise conserva-
tives? Do the Internet’s segregated communities, with news feeds catering to
their interests, amplify social fragmentation and political polarization?
The Internet’s countless virtual groups enable peacemakers and neo-Nazis,
geeks and goths, conspiracy schemers and cancer survivors to isolate themselves
with like-minded others and find support for their shared concerns, interests,
and suspicions (Gerstenfeld et al., 2003; McKenna & Bargh, 1998, 2000; Sunstein,
2009, 2016). With retweets, customized news feeds, and self-selections from
the news buffet, like minds feed one another valuable information—and toxic
misinformation: untruths that, after many retellings, get accepted as fact
(Barberá et al., 2015). Thus, disagreements become demonization and suspi-
cions escalate to paranoia.
Research confirms that most of us read blogs that reinforce rather than
challenge our views, and those blogs link mostly to like-minded blogs—connecting
liberals with liberals, conservatives with conservatives—like having conversa-
tions with the bathroom mirror (Lazer et al., 2009). The net result is that in
today’s world, political polarization—despising people of opposing political
views—has become considerably more intense than racial polarization (Iyengar & West-
wood, 2014). More information deepens rather than moderates partisan divisions. E-mail,
Google, and chat rooms “make it much easier for small groups to rally like-minded people,
crystallize diffuse hatreds, and mobilize lethal force,” observed Robert Wright (2003).
Peacemakers become more pacifistic and militia members more terror prone. According
to one analysis, terrorist websites—which grew from a dozen in 1997 to some 4,700 at the
end of 2005—increased more than four times faster than the total number of websites
(Ariza, 2006). Moreover, the longer people spend in segregated “Dark Web” forums, the
more violent their messages (Chen, 2012). The Boston Marathon bombers Tamerland and
Dozhokhar Tsarnaev reportedly were “self-radicalized” through their Internet exposure
(Wilson et al., 2013).
The bottom line: On our list of the future’s great challenges, somewhere not far below
restraining climate change, is learning how to harness the great benefits of the digital future
and its more connected world, but without exacerbating group polarization.
GROUP POLARIZATION IN TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS From their analysis of
terrorist organizations throughout the world, Clark McCauley and his colleagues (2002;
McCauley & Moskalenko, 2017) note that terrorism does not erupt suddenly: “Lone-wolf
terrorists are rare.” Rather, it arises among people whose shared grievances bring them
together and fan their fire. As they interact in isolation from moderating influences, they
become progressively more extreme. The social amplifier brings the signal in more strongly.
The result is violent acts that the individuals, apart from the group, would never have
committed (see Focus On: Group Polarization).
For example, the September 11, 2001, terrorists were bred by a long process that engaged
the polarizing effect of interaction among the like-minded. The process of becoming a ter-
rorist, noted a National Research Council panel, isolates individuals from other belief sys-
tems, dehumanizes potential targets, and tolerates no dissent (Smelser & Mitchell, 2002).
Group members come to categorize the world as “us” and “them” (Moghaddam, 2005;
Qirko, 2004). Ariel Merari (2002), an investigator of Middle Eastern and Sri Lankan sui-
cide terrorism, believes the key to creating a terrorist suicide is the group process. “To the
best of my knowledge, there has not been a single case of suicide terrorism which was done
on a personal whim.”
“We thought Internet would
give us access to ppl w differ-
ent points of view. Instead it
gives us access to many ppl w
the same point of view.”
Comedian Kumail Nanjiani,
2016 tweet
Group Influence Chapter 8 221
According to one analysis of terrorists who were members of the Salafi Jihad—an
Islamic fundamentalist movement, including al Qaeda—70% joined while living as expatri-
ates. After moving to foreign places in search of jobs or education, they became keenly
mindful of their Muslim identity and often gravitated to mosques and moved in with other
expatriate Muslims, who sometimes recruited them into cell groups that provided “mutual
emotional and social support” and “development of a common identity” (Reicher &
Haslam, 2016; Sageman, 2004). One of the Islamic State’s senior militants reported that
his movement was born inside an American prison in Iraq: “If there was no American
prison in Iraq, there would be no IS now. [The prison] was a factory. It made us all. It
built our ideology. . . . We had so much time to sit and plan. It was the perfect environ-
ment” (quoted by Chulov, 2014).
Massacres, similarly, are group phenomena. The violence is enabled and escalated by
the killers egging one another on, noted Robert Zajonc (2000), who knew violence as a
survivor of a World War II Warsaw air raid that killed both his parents (Burnstein, 2009).
It is difficult to influence someone once “in the pressure cooker of the terrorist group,”
noted Jerrold Post (2005) after interviewing many accused terrorists. “In the long run, the
most effective antiterrorist policy is one that inhibits potential recruits from joining in the
first place.”
Explaining Group Polarization
Why do groups adopt stances that are more exaggerated than that of their average individual
member? Researchers hoped that solving the mystery of group polarization might provide
some insights into group influence. Solving small puzzles sometimes provides clues for
solving larger ones.
Among several proposed theories of group polarization, two have survived scientific
scrutiny. One deals with the arguments presented during a discussion and is an example of
informational influence (influence that results from accepting evidence about reality). The
other concerns how members of a group view themselves vis-à-vis the other members, an
example of normative influence (influence based on a person’s desire to be accepted or
admired by others).
INFORMATIONAL INFLUENCE
According to the best-supported explanation, group discussion elicits a pooling of ideas,
most of which favor the dominant viewpoint. Some discussed ideas are common knowledge
to group members (Gigone & Hastie, 1993; Larson et al., 1994; Stasser, 1991). Other ideas
may include persuasive arguments that some group members had not previously considered.
When discussing Helen the writer, someone may say, “Helen should go for it, because she
“If you have an apple and I
have an apple and we ex-
change apples, then you and I
will still each have one apple.
But if you have an idea and I
have an idea and we ex-
change these ideas, then
each of us will have two
ideas.”
—Charles F. Brannan, Secretary
of Agriculture, NBC broadcast,
April 3, 1949
Group Polarization
focus
ON
Shakespeare portrayed the polarizing power of the like-
minded group in this dialogue of Julius Caesar’s followers:
Antony: Kind souls, what weep you when you but
behold Our Caesar’s vesture wounded?
Look you here. Here is himself, marr’d, as
you see, with traitors.
First Citizen: O piteous spectacle!
Second Citizen: O noble Caesar!
Third Citizen: O woeful day!
Fourth Citizen: O traitors, villains!
First Citizen: O most bloody sight!
Second Citizen: We will be revenged!
All: Revenge! About! Seek! Burn! Fire! Kill! Slay! Let not
a traitor live!
Source: From Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, Act III, Scene ii,
lines 199–209.
222 Part Two Social Influence
has little to lose. If her novel flops, she can always go back to writing cheap
westerns.” Such statements often entangle information about the person’s
arguments with cues concerning the person’s position on the issue. But
when people hear relevant arguments without learning the specific stands
other people assume, they still shift their positions (Burnstein & Vinokur,
1977; Hinsz et al., 1997). Arguments, in and of themselves, matter.
But there’s more to attitude change than merely hearing someone
else’s arguments. Active participation in discussion produces more attitude
change than does passive listening. Participants and observers hear the
same ideas. But when participants express them in their own words, the
verbal commitment magnifies the impact. The more group members
repeat one another’s ideas, the more they rehearse and validate them
(Brauer et al., 1995).
People’s minds are not just blank tablets for persuaders to write upon.
With central route persuasion, what people think in response to a mes-
sage is crucial. Indeed, just thinking about an issue for a couple of minutes can strengthen
opinions (Tesser et al., 1995). (Perhaps you can recall your feelings becoming polarized as
you merely ruminated about someone you disliked, or liked.)
NORMATIVE INFLUENCE
A second explanation of polarization involves comparison with others. As Leon Festinger
(1954) argued in his influential theory of social comparison, we humans want to evaluate
our opinions and abilities by comparing our views with others’. We are most persuaded by
people in our “reference groups”—groups we identify with (Abrams et al., 1990; Hogg
et al., 1990). Moreover, we want people to like us, so we may express stronger opinions
after discovering that others share our views.
When we ask people (as we asked you earlier) to predict how others would respond to
items such as the “Helen” dilemma, they typically exhibit pluralistic ignorance: They don’t
realize how strongly others support the socially preferred tendency (in this case, writing
the novel). A typical person will advise writing the novel even if its chance of success is
only 4 in 10 but will estimate that most other people would require 5 or 6 in 10. (This
finding is reminiscent of the self-serving bias: People tend to view themselves as better-than-
average embodiments of socially desirable traits and attitudes.) When the discussion begins,
most people discover they are not outshining the others as they had supposed. In fact,
others are ahead of them, having taken an even stronger
position in favor of writing the novel. No longer restrained
by a misperceived group norm, they are liberated to voice
their preferences more strongly.
Perhaps you can recall a time when you and someone
else wanted to date each other but each of you feared to
make the first move, presuming the other was not inter-
ested. Such pluralistic ignorance impedes the start-up of
relationships (Vorauer & Ratner, 1996).
Or perhaps you can recall when you and others were
guarded and reserved in a group, until someone broke the ice
and said, “Well, to be perfectly honest, I think. . . .” Soon you
were all surprised to discover strong support for your shared
views. Sometimes when a professor asks if anyone has any
questions, no one will respond, leading each student to infer
that he or she is the only one confused. All presume that fear
of embarrassment explains their own silence but that everyone
else’s silence means they understand the material.
Social comparison theory prompted experiments that
exposed people to others’ positions but not to their argu-
ments. This is roughly the experience we have when reading
the results of an opinion poll or of exit polling on election
social comparison
Evaluating one’s opinions and
abilities by comparing oneself
with others.
pluralistic ignorance
A false impression of what most
other people are thinking or
feeling, or how they are
responding.
Pluralistic ignorance: Sometimes a false presumption of
another’s disinterest may prevent two people with a mu-
tual romantic interest from connecting.
©visualspace/E+/Getty Images
An Economist cover about a stock market crash.
Reprinted by permission of Kevin Kal Kallaugher, The Economist, Kaltoons.com
Group Influence Chapter 8 223
Risk
No exposure
Mere exposure to others’ judgments
Exposure
Cautious items
Risky items
10-in-10
9-in-10
8-in-10
7-in-10
6-in-10
5-in-10
4-in-10
3-in-10
2-in-10
1-in-10
FIGURE 10
On “risky” dilemma items (such
as the case of Helen), mere
exposure to others’ judgments
enhanced individuals’ risk-prone
tendencies. On “cautious”
dilemma items (such as the case
of Roger), exposure to others’
judgments enhanced their
cautiousness.
Source: Data from Myers, 1978.
day. When people learn others’ positions—without prior commitment and without discussion
or sharing of arguments—will they adjust their responses to maintain a socially favorable
position? As Figure 10 illustrates, they will. This comparison-based polarization is usually
less than that produced by a lively discussion. Still, it’s surprising that instead of simply
conforming to the group average, people often go it one better.
Merely learning others’ choices also contributes to the bandwagon effect that creates
blockbuster songs, books, and movies. One experiment engaged 14,341 Internet partici-
pants in listening to and, if they wished, downloading previously unknown songs (Salganik
et al., 2006). The researchers randomly assigned some participants to a condition that
disclosed previous participants’ download choices. Among those given that information,
popular songs became more popular and unpopular songs became less popular.
Group polarization research illustrates the complexity of social-psychological inquiry.
Much as we like our explanations of a phenomenon to be simple, one explanation seldom
accounts for all the data. Because people are complex, more than one factor frequently
influences an outcome. In group discussions, persuasive arguments predominate on issues
that have a factual element (“Is she guilty of the crime?”). Social comparison sways responses
on value-laden judgments (“How long a sentence should she serve?”) (Kaplan, 1989). On
the many issues that have both factual and value-laden aspects, the two factors work together.
Discovering that others share one’s feelings (social comparison) unleashes arguments (infor-
mational influence) supporting what everyone secretly favors.
▯ Potentially positive and negative results arise from
group discussion. While trying to understand the curi-
ous finding that discussion increased risk taking, inves-
tigators discovered that discussion actually tends to
strengthen whatever is the initially dominant point of
view, whether risky or cautious.
▯ In everyday situations, too, group interaction tends to
intensify opinions. This group polarization phenomenon
provided a window through which researchers could
observe group influence.
▯ Experiments confirmed two group influences: informa-
tional and normative. The information gleaned from a
discussion mostly favors the initially preferred alterna-
tive, thus reinforcing support for it.
SUMMING UP: Group Polarization: Do Groups Intensify
Our Opinions?
224 Part Two Social Influence
GROUPTHINK: DO GROUPS HINDER
OR ASSIST GOOD DECISIONS?
Describe when and why group influences often hinder
good decisions. Describe also when groups promote
good decisions and how we can lead groups to make
optimal decisions.
Do the social psychological phenomena we have been considering occur in sophisticated
groups such as corporate boards or a president’s cabinet? Is there likely to be self-justifica-
tion? Self-serving bias? A cohesive “we feeling” promoting conformity which stifles dissent?
Public commitment producing resistance to change? Group polarization?
Social psychologist Irving Janis (1971, 1982) wondered whether such phenomena might
help explain good and bad group decisions made by some twentieth-century American
presidents and their advisers. To find out, he analyzed the decision-making procedures
behind several major fiascos:
▯ Pearl Harbor. In the weeks before the December 1941 attack that brought the
United States into World War II, military commanders in Hawaii received a stream
of information about Japan’s preparations for an attack on the United States some-
where in the Pacific. Military intelligence then lost radio contact with Japanese air-
craft carriers, which had begun moving straight for Hawaii. Air reconnaissance
could have spotted the carriers or at least provided a few minutes’ warning. But
complacent commanders decided against such precautions. The result: No alert was
sounded until the attack on a virtually defenseless base was under way. The loss:
18 ships, 170 planes, and 2,400 lives.
▯ The Bay of Pigs Invasion. In 1961, President John Kennedy and his advisers tried to
overthrow Fidel Castro by invading Cuba with 1,400 CIA-trained Cuban exiles.
Nearly all the invaders were soon killed or captured, the United States was humili-
ated, and Cuba allied itself more closely with the former U.S.S.R. After learning
the outcome, Kennedy wondered aloud, “How could we have been so stupid?”
▯ The Vietnam War. From 1964 to 1967, President Lyndon Johnson and his “Tuesday
lunch group” of policy advisers escalated the war in Vietnam on the assumption
that U.S. aerial bombardment, defoliation, and search-and-destroy missions would
bring North Vietnam to the peace table with the appreciative support of the South
Vietnamese populace. They continued the escalation despite warnings from govern-
ment intelligence experts and nearly all U.S. allies. The resulting disaster cost more
than 58,000 American and 1 million Vietnamese lives, polarized Americans, drove
The USS Arizona burning after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
©National Archives and Records Administration (NLR-PHOCO-A-8150(29)
the president from office, and created huge budget
deficits that helped fuel inflation in the 1970s.
Janis believed those blunders were bred by the tendency of
decision-making groups to suppress dissent in the interest of
group harmony, a phenomenon he called groupthink. (See “The
Inside Story: Irving Janis on Groupthink.”) In work groups, team
spirit is good for morale and boosts productivity (Mellers et al.,
2014; Mullen & Copper, 1994). A shared group identity moti-
vates people to persist on a project (Haslam et al., 2014). But
when making decisions, close-knit groups may pay a price. Janis
believed that the soil from which groupthink sprouts includes
▯ an amiable, cohesive group;
▯ relative isolation of the group from dissenting view-
points; and
▯ a directive leader who signals what decision he or she
favors.
groupthink
“The mode of thinking that
persons engage in when
concurrence-seeking becomes so
dominant in a cohesive in-group
that it tends to override realistic
appraisal of alternative courses of
action.”
—Irving Janis,
“Groupthink,” 1971
Group Influence Chapter 8 225
Irving Janis on Groupthink
THE inside
STORY
The idea of groupthink hit me while reading Arthur
Schlesinger’s account of how the Kennedy administra-
tion decided to invade the Bay of Pigs. At first, I was
puzzled: How could bright, shrewd people like John F.
Kennedy and his advisers be taken in by the CIA’s
stupid, patchwork plan? I began to wonder whether
some kind of psychological contagion had interfered,
such as social conformity or the concurrence-seeking
that I had observed in cohesive small groups. Further
study (initially aided by my daughter Charlotte’s work
on a high school term paper)
convinced me that subtle group
processes had hampered their
carefully appraising the risks
and debating the issues. When
I then analyzed other U.S.
foreign policy fiascos and the
Watergate cover-up, I found
the same detrimental group
processes at work. Irving Janis (1918–1990)
Courtesy of Irving Janis
When planning the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion, for example, the newly elected President
Kennedy and his advisers enjoyed a strong esprit de corps. Arguments critical of the plan
were suppressed or excluded, and the president soon endorsed the invasion.
Symptoms of Groupthink
From historical records and the memoirs of participants and observers, Janis identified
eight groupthink symptoms. The symptoms are a collective form of dissonance reduction
as group members, when facing a threat, try to maintain their positive group feeling (Turner &
Pratkanis, 1994; Turner et al., 1992).
The first two groupthink symptoms lead group members to overestimate their group’s
might and right.
▯ An illusion of invulnerability. The groups Janis studied all developed an excessive
optimism that blinded them to warnings of danger. Told that his forces had lost
radio contact with the Japanese carriers,
Admiral Kimmel, the chief naval officer at
Pearl Harbor, joked that maybe the Japanese
were about to round Honolulu’s Diamond
Head. They actually were, but Kimmel’s
laughing at the idea dismissed the very possi-
bility of its being true.
▯ Unquestioned belief in the group’s morality.
Group members assume the inherent morality
of their group and ignore ethical and moral
issues. The Kennedy group knew that adviser
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Senator J. William
Fulbright had moral reservations about
invading a small, neighboring country. But
the group never entertained or discussed
those moral qualms.
Group members also become closed-minded.
▯ Rationalization. The groups discount chal-
lenges by collectively justifying their deci-
sions. President Johnson’s Tuesday lunch
group spent far more time rationalizing
(explaining and justifying) than reflecting
Self-censorship contributes to an illusion of unanimity.
©Henry Martin. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
226 Part Two Social Influence
upon and rethinking prior decisions to escalate. Each initiative became an action
to defend and justify.
▯ Stereotyped view of opponent. Groupthinkers consider their enemies too evil to nego-
tiate with or too weak and unintelligent to defend themselves against the planned
initiative. The Kennedy group convinced itself that Castro’s military was so weak
and his popular support so shallow that a single brigade could easily overturn his
regime.
Finally, the group suffers from pressures toward uniformity.
▯ Conformity pressure. Group members rebuffed those who raised doubts about the
group’s assumptions and plans, at times by personal sarcasm. Once, when Presi-
dent Johnson’s assistant Bill Moyers arrived at a meeting, the president derided
him with, “Well, here comes Mr. Stop-the-Bombing.” Faced with such ridicule,
most people fall into line. As with social loafing and deindividuation, groupthink
debilitates performance when the individual self is submerged to a group
( Baumeister et al., 2016).
▯ Self-censorship. To avoid uncomfortable disagreements, members withheld or
discounted their misgivings. In the months following the Bay of Pigs invasion,
Arthur Schlesinger (1965, p. 255) reproached himself “for having kept so silent
during those crucial discussions in the Cabinet Room, though my feelings of guilt
were tempered by the knowledge that a course of objection would have accom-
plished little save to gain me a name as a nuisance.” It’s not just politicians. Both
online and in person, people are less willing to share their view when they think
others disagree (Hampton et al., 2014).
▯ Illusion of unanimity. Self-censorship and pressure not to puncture the consen-
sus create an illusion of unanimity. What is more, the apparent consensus
confirms the group’s decision. This appearance of consensus was evident in
the Pearl Harbor, Bay of Pigs, and Vietnam fiascos and in other fiascos
before and since. Albert Speer (1971), an
adviser to Adolf Hitler, described the
atmosphere around Hitler as one where
pressure to conform suppressed all devia-
tion. The absence of dissent created an
illusion of unanimity:
In normal circumstances people who turn
their backs on reality are soon set straight by
the mockery and criticism of those around
them, which makes them aware they have lost
credibility. In the Third Reich there were no
such correctives. . . . No external factors dis-
turbed the uniformity of hundreds of unchang-
ing faces, all mine. (p. 379)
▯ Mindguards. Some members protect the
group from information that would call into
question the effectiveness or morality of its
decisions. Before the Bay of Pigs invasion,
Robert Kennedy took Schlesinger aside and
told him, “Don’t push it any further.” Sec-
retary of State Dean Rusk withheld diplo-
matic and intelligence experts’ warnings
against the invasion. They thus served as
the president’s “ mindguards,” protecting
him from disagreeable facts rather than
physical harm.
People “are never so likely to
settle a question rightly as
when they discuss it freely.”
—John Stuart Mill,
On Liberty, 1859
Groupthink on a Titanic scale. Despite four messages of possible icebergs ahead,
Captain Edward Smith—a directive and respected leader—kept his ship sailing at full
speed into the night. There was an illusion of invulnerability (many believed the ship
to be unsinkable). There was conformity pressure (crew mates chided the lookout for
not being able to use his naked eye and dismissed his misgivings). And there was
mindguarding (a Titanic telegraph operator failed to pass the last and most complete
iceberg warning to Captain Smith).
©Everett Historical/Shutterstock
Group Influence Chapter 8 227
FIGURE 11
Theoretical Analysis of
Groupthink
Source: Adapted from Janis & Mann, 1977,
p. 132.
Seeking
Concurrence
1 Feeling invulnerable
2 Belief in group’s morality
3 Shared rationalization
4 Stereotyping outgroup
5 Self-censorship
6 Pressuring dissenters
7 Unanimity illusion
8 Mind guards
1 Objectives & alternatives
not completely surveyed
2 Ignoring risks
3 Meagre information search
4 Biased information
processing
5 Alternatives not
reappraised
6 No contingency planning
1 Insulated group
2 Cohesive group
3 No appraisal procedures
4 High stress/low hope
5 Autocratic leadership
Groupthink-breeding
Situation
Groupthink Symptoms Defective decision making
Groupthink symptoms can produce a failure to seek and discuss contrary information
and alternative possibilities (Figure 11). When a leader promotes an idea and when a
group insulates itself from dissenting views, groupthink may produce defective decisions
( McCauley, 1989).
British psychologists Ben Newell and David Lagnado (2003) believe groupthink symp-
toms may have also contributed to the Iraq war. They and others contended that both
Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush surrounded themselves with like-minded advisers and
intimidated opposing voices into silence. Moreover, they each received filtered information
that mostly supported their assumptions—Iraq’s expressed assumption that the invading
force could be resisted; and the United States’ assumption that Iraq had weapons of mass
destruction, that its people would welcome invading soldiers as liberators, and that a short,
peaceful occupation would soon lead to a thriving democracy.
Critiquing Groupthink
Despite the power and fame of the groupthink concept, some researchers have been skeptical
(Fuller & Aldag, 1998; t’Hart, 1998). The evidence was retrospective, so Janis could pick
supporting cases. Follow-up experiments have, however, supported aspects of Janis’s theory:
▯ Directive leadership is indeed associated with poorer decisions, because subordi-
nates sometimes feel too weak or insecure to speak up (Granstrom & Stiwne, 1998;
McCauley, 1998).
▯ Groups do prefer supporting over challenging information (Schulz-Hardt et al., 2000).
▯ When members look to a group for acceptance, approval, and social identity, they
may suppress disagreeable thoughts (Hogg & Hains, 1998; Turner & Pratkanis, 1997).
▯ Groups that make smart decisions have widely distributed conversation, with
socially attuned members who take turns speaking (Woolley et al., 2010).
▯ Groups with diverse perspectives outperform groups of like-minded experts
(Nemeth & Ormiston, 2007; Page, 2007). Engaging people who think differently
from you can make you feel uncomfortable. But compared with comfortably homo-
geneous groups, diverse groups tend to produce more ideas and greater creativity.
▯ Group success depends both on what group members know and how effectively
they can share that information (Bonner & Baumann, 2012). In discussion,
unshared information often gets suppressed as discussion focuses on what group
members all know already (Sunstein & Hastie, 2008).
Yet friendships need not breed groupthink (Esser, 1998; Mullen et al., 1994). In a secure,
highly cohesive group (say, a family), committed members will often care enough to voice
disagreement (Packer, 2009). The norms of a cohesive group can favor either consensus,
228 Part Two Social Influence
which can lead to groupthink, or critical analysis, which prevents it (Postmes et al., 2001).
When academic colleagues in a close-knit department share their draft manuscripts with
one another, they want critique: “Do what you can to save me from my own mistakes.” In
a free-spirited atmosphere, cohesion can enhance effective teamwork, too.
Moreover, when Philip Tetlock and colleagues (1992) looked at a broader sample of
historical episodes, it became clear that even good group procedures sometimes yield ill-
fated decisions. As President Carter and his advisers plotted their humiliating attempt to
rescue American hostages in Iran in 1980, they welcomed different views and realistically
considered the perils. Had it not been for helicopter problems, the rescue might have
succeeded. (Carter later reflected that had he sent in one more helicopter, he would have
been reelected president.) Sometimes good groups suffer bad outcomes.
Preventing Groupthink
Flawed group dynamics help explain many failed decisions; sometimes too many cooks
spoil the broth. However, given open leadership, a cohesive team spirit can improve
decisions. Sometimes two or more heads are better than one.
In search of conditions that breed good decisions, Janis also analyzed two successful
ventures: the Truman administration’s formulation of the Marshall Plan for getting Europe
back on its feet after World War II and the Kennedy administration’s successful challenge
of the Soviet Union’s 1962 attempt to install missile bases in Cuba. Janis’s (1982) recom-
mendations for preventing groupthink incorporate many of the effective group procedures
used in both cases:
▯ Be impartial—do not endorse any position. Don’t start group discussions by having
people state their positions; doing so suppresses information sharing and degrades
the quality of decisions (Mojzisch & Schulz-Hardt, 2010).
▯ Encourage critical evaluation; assign a “devil’s advocate.” Better yet, welcome the input
of a genuine dissenter, which does even more to stimulate original thinking and to
open a group to opposing views, report Charlan Nemeth and colleagues (2001a,b).
▯ Occasionally subdivide the group, then reunite to air differences.
▯ Welcome critiques from outside experts and associates.
▯ Before implementing, call a “second-chance” meeting to air any lingering doubts.
When such steps are taken, group decisions may take longer to make, yet ultimately
prove less defective and more effective.
Group Problem Solving
Multiple heads are often better than one. Not every group
decision is flawed by groupthink. In work settings such as
operating rooms and executive boardrooms, team decisions
surpass individual decisions when the discussion values
each person’s skills and knowledge and draws out their var-
ied information (Mesmer-Magnus & DeChurch, 2009).
Patrick Laughlin and John Adamopoulos (1980; Laugh-
lin, 1996; Laughlin et al., 2003) have shown the wisdom of
groups with various intellectual tasks. Consider one of their
analogy problems:
Assertion is to disproved as action is to
a. hindered
b. opposed
c. illegal
d. precipitate
e. thwarted
Most college students miss this question when answering
alone, but answer correctly (thwarted) after discussion.
“Truth springs from argument
amongst friends.”
—Attributed to Philosopher David
Hume (1711–1776)
“One of the dangers in the
White House, based on my
reading of history, is that you
get wrapped up in groupthink
and everybody agrees with
everything and there’s no
discussion and there are no
dissenting views. So I’m going
to be welcoming a vigorous
debate inside the White
House.”
—Barack Obama, at a December 1,
2008, Press Conference
Should some ideas not be heard? Groupthink suggests that groups come
to better decisions when disagreement is encouraged rather than disen-
couraged—something to keep in mind when discussing issues on campus.
©Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock
Group Influence Chapter 8 229
Contrary to popular belief, brainstorming sessions with groups do not
generate better ideas or more creative ones.
©wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock
Moreover, Laughlin found that if just two members of a six-
person group are initially correct, two-thirds of the time they
convince all the others. If only one person is correct, this
“minority of one” almost three-fourths of the time fails to con-
vince the group. And when given tricky logic problems, three,
four, or five heads are better than two (Laughlin et al., 2006).
Studies of the accuracy of eyewitness reports of a videotaped
crime or job interview confirm that several heads can be better
than one (Hinsz, 1990; Warnick & Sanders, 1980). Interacting
groups of eyewitnesses give accounts that are much more accu-
rate than those provided by the average isolated individual. Two
heads are better than one even for simple perceptual judgments
made by similarly capable people (Bahrami et al., 2010; Ernst,
2010). When unsure of what they’ve seen, sports referees are
smart to confer before making their call.
Several heads critiquing one another can also allow the
group to avoid some forms of cognitive bias and produce
higher quality ideas (McGlynn et al., 1995; Wright et al.,
1990). Out of the arguments of the Wright brothers came the first airplane. Out of the
incessant debates between Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak came the first Apple computer
(Grant, 2017). In science, the benefits of diverse minds collaborating has led to more and
more “team science”—to an increasing proportion of scientific publication, especially highly
cited publication, by multi-author teams (Cacioppo, 2007). Teams also have surpassed indi-
viduals in predicting world political events (Mellers et al., 2014, 2015).
The limits of brainstorming. But contrary to the popular idea that face-to-face brainstorm-
ing generates more creative ideas than do the same people working alone, researchers agree
it isn’t so (Paulus et al., 1995, 2000, 2011; Stroebe & Diehl, 1994). And contrary to the
popular idea that brainstorming is most productive when the brainstormers are admonished
“not to criticize,” encouraging people to debate stimulates ideas and extends creative think-
ing beyond the brainstorming session (Nemeth et al., 2004).
People feel more productive when generating ideas in groups (partly because people
disproportionately credit themselves for the ideas that come out). But time and again
researchers have found that people working alone usually will generate more good ideas than
will the same people in a group (Nijstad et al., 2006; Rietzschel et al., 2006). Large brain-
storming groups are especially inefficient. Better to have people generate ideas individually,
then stimulate each other in small groups (Paulus & Korde, 2014). In accord with social
loafing theory, large groups cause some individuals to free-ride on others’ efforts. They cause
others to feel apprehensive about voicing oddball ideas. And they cause “production blocking”—
losing one’s ideas while awaiting a turn to speak (Nijstad & Stroebe, 2006).
As James Watson and Francis Crick demonstrated in discovering DNA, challenging
two-person conversations can effectively engage creative thinking. Watson later recalled that
he and Crick benefited from not being the most brilliant people seeking to crack the genetic
code. The most brilliant researcher “was so intelligent that she rarely sought advice” (quoted
by Cialdini, 2005). If you are (and regard yourself as) the most gifted person, why seek
others’ input? Like Watson and Crick, psychologists Daniel Kahneman and the late Amos
Tversky similarly collaborated in their exploration of intuition and its influence on economic
decision making. (See “The Inside Story: Behind a Nobel Prize.”)
Vincent Brown and Paul Paulus (2002) have identified three ways to enhance group
brainstorming:
▯ Combine group and solitary brainstorming. Group brainstorming is most productive
when it precedes solo brainstorming. With new categories primed by the group
brainstorming, individuals’ ideas can continue flowing without being impeded by
the group context that allows only one person to speak at a time. Creative work
teams also tend to be small and to alternate working alone, working in pairs, and
meeting as a circle (Paulus & Coskun, 2012).
“Iron sharpens iron, and one
person sharpens the wits of
another.”
—Proverbs 27:17
“If you want to go quickly, go
alone. If you want to go far, go
together.”
—African Proverb
230 Part Two Social Influence
▯ Have group members interact by writing. Another way to take advantage of group
priming, without being impeded by the one-at-a-time rule, is to have group members
write and read, rather than speak and listen. Moreover, when leaders urge people to
generate lots of ideas (rather than just good ideas), they generate both more ideas
and more good ideas (Paulus et al., 2011). So whatever comes to mind, put it down.
▯ Incorporate electronic brainstorming. There is a potentially more efficient way to
avoid the verbal traffic jams of traditional group brainstorming in larger groups:
Let individuals produce and read ideas on networked computers.
So, when group members freely combine their creative ideas and varied insights, the
frequent result is not groupthink but group problem solving. The wisdom of groups is
evident in everyday life as well as in the laboratory:
▯ Weather forecasting. “Two forecasters will come up with a forecast that is more
accurate than either would have come up with working alone,” reported Joel Myers
(1997), president of the largest private weather forecasting service. In 2010, scien-
tists’ predictions of the summer’s minimum Arctic sea ice ranged from 2.5 million
to 5.6 million square kilometers. The average prediction—4.8 million—almost exactly
matched the actual result (Wiltze, 2010).
▯ Google. Google has become a dominant search engine by harnessing what James
Surowiecki (2004) calls The Wisdom of Crowds. Google interprets a link to Page X
as a vote for Page X, and weights most heavily links from pages that are them-
selves highly ranked.
▯ The “crowd within.” Likewise, the average of different guesses from the same persons
tends to surpass the person’s individual guesses (Herzog & Hertwig, 2009). Edward
Vul and Harold Pashler (2008) discovered this when asking people to guess the
correct answers to factual questions such as “What percentage of the world’s airports
are in the United States?” Then the researchers asked their participants to make a
second guess, either immediately or three weeks later. The result? “You can gain
Behind a Nobel Prize: Two Minds Are Better Than One
THE inside
STORY
In the spring of 1969, Amos Tversky, my younger colleague
at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and I met over
lunch and shared our own recurrent errors of judgment.
From there were born our studies of human intuition.
I had enjoyed collaboration before, but this was magi-
cal. Amos was very smart, and also very funny. We could
spend hours of solid work in continuous mirth. His work
was always characterized by confidence and by a crisp
elegance, and it was a joy to find those characteristics
now attached to my ideas as well. As we were writing our
first paper, I was conscious of how much better it was than
the more hesitant piece I would have written by myself.
All our ideas were jointly owned. We did almost all the
work on our joint projects while physically together,
including the drafting of questionnaires and papers. Our
principle was to discuss every disagreement until it had
been resolved to our mutual satisfaction.
Some of the greatest joys of our collaboration—and
probably much of its success—came from our ability to
elaborate on each other’s nascent thoughts: If I expressed
a half-formed idea, I knew that Amos would be there to
understand it, probably more clearly than I did, and that if
it had merit, he would see it.
Amos and I shared the wonder of together owning a
goose that could lay golden
eggs—a joint mind that was
better than our separate minds.
We were a team, and we re-
mained in that mode for well
over a decade. The Nobel Prize
was awarded for work that we
produced during that period of
intense collaboration.
Daniel Kahneman
Princeton University,
Nobel Laureate, 2002
Courtesy of Daniel Kahneman
Group Influence Chapter 8 231
▯ Analysis of several international fiascos indicates that
group cohesion can override realistic appraisal of a situa-
tion. This is especially true when group members strongly
desire unity, when they are isolated from opposing ideas,
and when the leader signals what he or she wants from
the group.
▯ Symptomatic of this overriding concern for harmony,
labeled groupthink, are (1) an illusion of invulnerability,
(2) rationalization, (3) unquestioned belief in the
group’s morality, (4) stereotyped views of the opposi-
tion, (5) pressure to conform, (6) self-censorship of
misgivings, (7) an illusion of unanimity, and (8) “mind-
guards” who protect the group from unpleasant infor-
mation. Critics have noted that some aspects of Janis’s
groupthink model (such as directive leadership) seem
more implicated in flawed decisions than others (such
as cohesiveness).
▯ Both in experiments and in actual history, however,
groups sometimes decide wisely. These cases suggest
ways to prevent groupthink: upholding impartiality, en-
couraging “devil’s advocate” positions, subdividing and
then reuniting to discuss a decision, seeking outside
input, and having a “second-chance” meeting before
implementing a decision.
▯ Research on group problem solving suggests that
groups can be more accurate than individuals; groups
also generate more and better ideas if the group is small
or if, in a large group, individual brainstorming follows
the group session.
SUMMING UP: Groupthink: Do Groups Hinder or Assist
Good Decisions?
THE INFLUENCE OF THE MINORITY:
HOW DO INDIVIDUALS INFLUENCE
THE GROUP?
Explain when—and how—individuals influence their
groups. Identify what makes some individuals effective.
Each chapter in this social influence unit concludes with a reminder of our power as indi-
viduals. We have seen that
▯ cultural situations mold us, but we also help create and choose these situations.
▯ pressures to conform sometimes overwhelm our better judgment, but blatant
pressure motivates reactance as we assert our individuality and freedom.
about 1/10th as much from asking yourself the same question twice as you can from
getting a second opinion from someone else, but if you wait three weeks, the benefit
of re-asking yourself the same question rises to 1/3 the value of a second opinion.”
▯ Prediction markets. In U.S. presidential elections since 1988, the final public opin-
ion polls have provided a good gauge to the election result. An even better predic-
tor, however, have been the election betting markets. Taking everything (including
polls) into account, people buy and sell shares in candidates.
▯ Combining expert predictions. In one study conducted in 2010, people worldwide
estimated the odds of 199 events, such as Italy’s leader leaving office before
January 1, 2012. When forecasters were trained to be wary of cognitive biases and
shared information in teams—especially elite teams of previously successful
“ superforecasters”—they excelled (Mellers et al., 2014; Mannes et al., 2014).
Thus, we can conclude that when information from many, diverse people is combined, all
of us together can become smarter than almost any of us alone. We’re in some ways like a
flock of geese, no one of which has a perfect navigational sense. Nevertheless, by staying close
to one another, a group of geese can navigate accurately. The flock is smarter than the bird.
232 Part Two Social Influence
▯ persuasive forces are powerful, but we can resist persuasion by making public com-
mitments and by anticipating persuasive appeals.
This chapter has emphasized group influences on the individual, so we conclude by
seeing how individuals can influence their groups.
In the classic film 12 Angry Men, a lone juror eventually wins over 11 others. In a jury
room, that’s a rare occurrence. Yet in most social movements, a small minority will sway,
and then eventually become, the majority. “All history,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, “is
a record of the power of minorities, and of minorities of one.” Think of Copernicus and
Galileo, of Martin Luther King, Jr., of Susan B. Anthony, of Nelson Mandela. The American
civil rights movement was ignited by the refusal of one African American woman, Rosa
Parks, to relinquish her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus. Technological history has
also been made by innovative minorities. As Robert Fulton developed his steamboat—
“Fulton’s Folly”—he endured constant derision: “Never did a single encouraging remark, a
bright hope, a warm wish, cross my path” (Cantril & Bumstead, 1960). Indeed, if minority
viewpoints never prevailed, history would be static and nothing would ever change.
What makes a minority persuasive? What might Arthur Schlesinger have done to get
the Kennedy group to consider his doubts about the Bay of Pigs invasion? Experiments
initiated by Serge Moscovici in Paris identified several determinants of minority influence:
consistency, self-confidence, and defection.
Consistency
More influential than a minority that wavers is a minority that sticks to its position. Mosco-
vici and associates (1969; Moscovici, 1985) found that if a minority of participants consis-
tently judges blue slides as green, members of the majority will occasionally agree. But if
the minority wavers, saying “blue” to one-third of the blue slides and “green” to the rest,
virtually no one in the majority will ever agree with “green.”
Experiments show—and experience confirms—that nonconformity, especially persistent
nonconformity, is often painful, and that being a minority in a group can be unpleasant
(Levine, 1989; Lücken & Simon, 2005). That helps explain a minority slowness effect—a
tendency for people with minority views to express those views less quickly than do people
in the majority (Bassili, 2003). If you set out to be a minority of one, prepare yourself for
ridicule—especially when you argue an issue that’s personally relevant to the majority and
when the group wants to settle an issue by reaching consensus (Kameda &
Sugimori, 1993; Kruglanski & Webster, 1991; Trost et al., 1992).
Even when people in the majority know that the disagreeing person is
factually or morally right, they may still, if refusing to change, dislike the
person (Chan et al., 2010). When Charlan Nemeth (1979, 2011) planted a
minority of two within a simulated jury and had them oppose the majority’s
opinions, the duo was inevitably disliked. Nevertheless, the majority acknowl-
edged that the persistence of the two did more than anything else to make
them rethink their positions. Compared to majority influence that often trig-
gers unthinking agreement, minority influence stimulates a deeper processing
of arguments, often with increased creativity (Kenworthy et al., 2008; Martin
et al., 2007, 2008). Minority views may get you disliked, especially if you are
on the fringe of a group, but they can also increase creative innovation
(Rijnbout & McKimmie, 2012).
Some successful companies have recognized that minority perspec-
tives can feed creativity and innovation. 3M, which has been famed for
valuing “respect for individual initiative,” has welcomed employees spend-
ing time on wild ideas. The Post-it note’s adhesive was a failed attempt
by Spencer Silver to develop a super-strong glue. Art Fry, after having
trouble marking his church choir hymnal with pieces of paper, thought,
“What I need is a bookmark with Spence’s adhesive along the edge.” His
was a minority view that eventually won over a skeptical marketing
department (Nemeth, 1997).
Note: “Minority influence”
refers to minority opinions, not
to ethnic minorities.
“If the single man plant him-
self indomitably on his in-
stincts, and there abide, the
huge world will come round to
him.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Nature, Address, and Lectures:
The American Scholar, 1849
Over a period of time, a few people at 3M were
consistent, self-confident, and persistent about the
usefulness of the glue used on Post-it notes. These
are three factors that may influence a majority
group.
©BananaStock
Group Influence Chapter 8 233
Self-Confidence
Consistency and persistence convey self-confidence. Furthermore, Nemeth and Joel
Wachtler (1974) reported that any behavior by a minority that conveys self-confidence—for
example, taking the head seat at the table—tends to raise self-doubts among the majority.
By being firm and forceful, the minority’s apparent self-assurance may prompt the majority
to reconsider its position. This is especially so on matters of opinion (“from which country
should Italy import most of its raw oil?”), rather than fact (“from which country does Italy
import most of its raw oil?”) (Maass et al., 1996).
Defections from the Majority
A persistent minority punctures any illusion of unanimity. When a minority consistently
doubts the majority wisdom, majority members become freer to express their own doubts
and may even switch to the minority position. But what about a lone defector, someone
who initially agreed with the majority but then reconsidered and dissented? In research
with University of Pittsburgh students, John Levine (1989) found that a person who had
defected from the majority was even more persuasive than a consistent minority voice.
Nemeth’s jury-simulation experiments found that—not unlike the 12 Angry Men scenario—
once defections begin, others often soon follow, initiating a snowball effect.
There is a delightful irony in this new emphasis on how individuals can influence the
group. Until recently, the idea that the minority could sway the majority was itself a minor-
ity view in social psychology. Nevertheless, by arguing consistently and forcefully, Mosco-
vici, Nemeth, Maass, and others convinced the majority of group influence researchers that
minority influence is a phenomenon worthy of study. And the way that several of these
minority influence researchers came by their interests should, perhaps, not surprise us.
Anne Maass (1998) became interested in how minorities could effect social change after
growing up in postwar Germany and hearing her grandmother’s personal accounts of fas-
cism. Charlan Nemeth (1999) developed her interest while she was a visiting professor in
Europe “working with Henri Tajfel and Serge Moscovici. The three of us were ‘outsiders’—I
an American Roman Catholic female in Europe, they having survived World War II as
Eastern European Jews. Sensitivity to the value and the struggles of the minority perspec-
tive came to dominate our work.”
Is Leadership Minority Influence?
In 1910, the Norwegians and the English engaged in an epic race to the South Pole. The
Norwegians, effectively led by Roald Amundsen, made it. The English, ineptly led by Robert
Falcon Scott, did not; Scott and three team members died. Amundsen illustrated the power
of leadership, the process by which individuals mobilize and guide groups.
Some leaders are formally appointed or elected; others emerge informally as the group
interacts. What makes for good leadership often depends on the situation. The best person
to lead the engineering team may not make the best leader of the sales force. Some people
excel at task leadership—at organizing work, setting standards, and focusing on goal attain-
ment. Others excel at social leadership—at building teamwork, mediating conflicts, and being
supportive.
Task leaders generally have a directive style—one that can work well if the leader is bright
enough to give good orders (Fiedler, 1987). Being goal oriented, such leaders also keep the
group’s attention and effort focused on its mission. Experiments show that the combination
of specific, challenging goals and periodic progress reports helps motivate high achievement
(Locke & Latham, 1990, 2002, 2009). Men who have the traits associated with ancestral
male leadership—fitness, height, masculine (wide) faces—tend to be perceived as dominant
leaders and to succeed as CEOs (Blaker et al., 2013; Wong et al., 2011).
Social leaders generally have a democratic style—one that delegates authority, welcomes
input from team members, and, as we have seen, helps prevent groupthink. Data amassed
from 118 studies reveal that women are much more egalitarian than men; they are more
opposed to social hierarchies (Lee et al., 2011). Many experiments reveal that social
leadership
The process by which certain
group members motivate and
guide the group.
task leadership
Leadership that organizes work,
sets standards, and focuses on
goals.
social leadership
Leadership that builds
teamwork, mediates conflict,
and offers support.
234 Part Two Social Influence
Transformational Community Leadership
focus
ON
As a striking example of transformational (consistent, self-
confident, inspirational) leadership, consider Walt and Mil-
dred Woodward. During World War II and in the two
decades after, they owned and edited the Bainbridge Is-
land, Washington, newspaper. It was from Bainbridge that,
on March 30, 1942, the first of nearly 120,000 West Coast
people of Japanese descent were relocated to internment
camps. With 6 days’ notice and under armed guard, they
boarded a ferry and were sent away, leaving behind on the
dock tearful friends and neighbors (one of whom was their
insurance agent, my [DM’s] father). “Where, in the face of
their fine record since December 7 [Pearl Harbor Day], in
the face of their rights of citizenship, in the face of their
own relatives being drafted and enlisting in our Army, in
the face of American decency, is there any excuse for this
high-handed, much-too-short evacuation order?” editorial-
ized the Woodwards (1942) in their Bainbridge Review.
Throughout the war, the Woodwards, alone among West
Coast newspaper editors, continued to voice opposition to
the internment. They also recruited their former part-time
employee, Paul Ohtaki, to write a weekly column bringing
news of the incarcerated islanders. Stories by Ohtaki and
others of “Pneumonia Hits ‘Grandpa Koura’” and “First Is-
land Baby at Manzanar Born” reminded those back home
of their absent neighbors and prepared the way for their
eventual welcome home—a contrast to the prejudice that
greeted their return to other West Coast communities
where newspapers supported the internment and fostered
hostility toward the Japanese.
After enduring some vitriolic opposition, the Woodwards
lived to be honored for their courage, which was drama-
tized in the book and movie Snow Falling on Cedars. At the
March 30, 2004, groundbreaking for a national memorial
on the ferry departure site, former internee and Bainbridge
Island Japanese American Community president Frank
Kitamoto declared that “this memorial is also for Walt and
Millie Woodward, for Ken Myers, for Genevive Williams . . .
and the many others who supported us,” and who chal-
lenged the forced removal at the risk of being called unpa-
triotic. “Walt Woodward said if we can suspend the Bill of
Rights for Japanese Americans it can be suspended for fat
Americans or blue-eyed Americans.” Reflecting on the
Woodwards’ transformational leadership, cub reporter
Ohtaki (1999) observed that “on Bainbridge Island there
was none of the hostility to the returning Japanese that you
saw in other places, and I think that’s in large part because
of the Woodwards.” When, later, he asked the Woodwards,
“Why did you do this, when you could have dropped it and
not suffered the anger of some of your readers?” they
would always answer, “It was the right thing to do.”
In March 1942, 274 Bainbridge Islanders became the first of some
120,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese immigrants interned
during World War II. Sixty-two years later, ground was broken for a
national memorial (Nidoto Nai Yoni—Let It Not Happen Again),
remembering the internees and the transformational leaders who
supported them and prepared for their welcome home.
©Library of Congress/Corbis Historical/Getty Images
leadership is good for morale. Group members usually feel more satisfied when they par-
ticipate in making decisions (Spector, 1986; Vanderslice et al., 1987). Given control over
their tasks, workers also become more motivated to achieve (Burger, 1987).
The once-popular “great person” theory of leadership—that all great leaders share cer-
tain traits—has fallen into disrepute. Effective leadership styles, we now know, are less
Group Influence Chapter 8 235
about the big “I” than the big “we.” Effective leaders
represent, enhance, and champion a group’s identity
(Haslam et al., 2010). Effective leadership also var-
ies with the situation. Subordinates who know what
they are doing may resent working under task lead-
ership, whereas those who don’t may welcome it.
However, social psychologists have again wondered
if there might be qualities that mark a good leader
in many situations (Hogan et al., 1994). British
social psychologists Peter Smith and Monir Tayeb
(1989) report that studies done in India, Taiwan,
and Iran have found that the most effective supervi-
sors in coal mines, banks, and government offices
scored high on tests of both task and social leader-
ship. They are actively concerned with how work is
progressing and sensitive to the needs of their
subordinates.
Studies also reveal that many effective leaders
of laboratory groups, work teams, and large cor-
porations not only avoid groupthink by welcoming
diverse views, they also exhibit the behaviors that help make a minority view persuasive.
Such leaders engender trust by consistently sticking to their goals. And they often exude
a self-confident charisma that kindles the allegiance of their followers (Bennis, 1984;
House & Singh, 1987). Effective leaders typically have a compelling vision of some
desired state of affairs, especially during times of collective stress (Halevy et al., 2011).
They also have an ability to communicate that vision to others in clear and simple
language, and enough optimism and faith in their group to inspire others to follow.
Socially dominant, inf luential individuals also seem competent (whether they are or
not) because they act as if they were—by talking a lot (Anderson & Kilduff, 2009).
In one analysis of 50 Dutch companies, the highest morale was at firms with chief
executives who most inspired their colleagues “to transcend their own self-interests for the
sake of the collective” (de Hoogh et al., 2004). Leadership of this kind—transformational
leadership—motivates others to identify with and commit themselves to the group’s mission.
Transformational leaders—many of whom are charismatic, energetic, self-confident extra-
verts—articulate high standards, inspire people to share their vision, and offer personal
attention (Bono & Judge, 2004). In organizations, the frequent result of such leadership is
a more engaged, trusting, and effective workforce
(Turner et al., 2002).
To be sure, groups also influence their leaders. Some-
times those at the front of the herd have simply sensed
where it is already heading. Political candidates know
how to read the opinion polls. Someone who typifies
the group’s views is more likely to be selected as a
leader; a leader who deviates too radically from the
group’s standards may be rejected (Hogg et al., 1998).
Smart leaders usually remain with the majority and
spend their influence prudently. In rare circumstances,
the right traits matched with the right situation yield
history-making greatness, notes Dean Keith Simonton
(1994). To have a Winston Churchill or a Thomas Jef-
ferson, an Abraham Lincoln or a Martin Luther King,
Jr., takes the right person in the right place at the right
time. When an apt combination of intelligence, skill,
determination, self-confidence, and social charisma
meets a rare opportunity, the result is sometimes a
championship, a Nobel Prize, or a social revolution.
transformational leadership
Leadership that, enabled by a
leader’s vision and inspiration,
exerts significant influence.
Participative management, illustrated in this “quality circle,” requires democratic
rather than autocratic leaders.
©Yuri_Arcurs/E+/Getty Images
Transformational leadership: Charismatic, energetic, self-confident people
will sometimes change organizations or societies by inspiring others to
embrace their vision. Martin Luther King, Jr. was this type of leader.
Source: Lei Yixin/U.S. National Park Service
236 Part Two Social Influence
POSTSCRIPT:
Are Groups Bad for Us?
A selective reading of this chapter could, we must admit, leave readers with the impression
that, on balance, groups are bad. In groups we become more aroused, more stressed, more
tense, more error-prone on complex tasks. Submerged in a group that gives us anonymity,
we have a tendency to loaf or have our worst impulses unleashed by deindividuation. Police
brutality, lynchings, gang destruction, and terrorism are all group phenomena. Discussion
in groups often polarizes our views, enhancing mutual racism or hostility. It may also sup-
press dissent, creating a homogenized groupthink that produces disastrous decisions. No
wonder we celebrate those individuals—minorities of one—who, alone against a group, have
stood up for truth and justice. Groups, it seems, are ba-a-a-d.
All that is true, but it’s only half the truth. The other half is that, as social animals, we
are group-dwelling creatures. Like our distant ancestors, we depend on one another for
sustenance, support, and security. Moreover, when our individual tendencies are positive,
group interaction accentuates our best. In groups, runners run faster, audiences laugh
louder, and givers become more generous. In support groups, people strengthen their
resolve to stop drinking, lose weight, and study harder. In kindred-spirited groups, people
expand their spiritual consciousness. “A devout communing on spiritual things sometimes
greatly helps the health of the soul,” observed fifteenth-century cleric Thomas à Kempis,
especially when people of faith “meet and speak and commune together.”
Depending on which tendency a group is magnifying or disinhibiting, groups can be very,
very bad or very, very good. So we had best choose our groups wisely and intentionally.
▯ Although a majority opinion often prevails, sometimes
a minority can influence and even overturn a majority
position. Even if the majority does not adopt the minor-
ity’s views, the minority’s speaking up can increase the
majority’s self-doubts and prompt it to consider other
alternatives, often leading to better, more creative
decisions.
▯ In experiments, a minority is most influential when it is
consistent and persistent in its views, when its actions
convey self-confidence, and after it begins to elicit some
defections from the majority. Such minority influence
can enable creative motivation.
▯ Through their task and social leadership, formal and in-
formal group leaders exert disproportionate influence.
Those who consistently press toward their goals and
exude a self-confident charisma often engender trust
and inspire others to follow.
SUMMING UP: The Influence of the Minority: How Do
Individuals Influence the Group?
©Rena Schild/Shutterstock
Social
Relations
Prejudice
C H A P T E R
9
We have now explored how we think about (Part One) and how we influence one another (Part Two). In these chapters, we consider how we relate to one
another (Part Three). Why do we sometimes dislike, even despise, one another?
Why and when do we hurt one another? Why do we like or love particular people?
When will we offer help to friends or strangers? How do social conflicts develop,
and how they can be justly and amicably resolved?
Prejudice comes in many forms—for our own group and against some other
group. Researchers, as we will see, have explored race, gender, and sexual orienta-
tion prejudice, but also prejudices involving:
• Religion. In the aftermath of 9/11 and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Americans
with a strong national identity expressed the most disdain for Arab immigrants
(Lyons et al., 2010). If told a job applicant is Muslim, many managers have not
been inclined to hire or pay well (Park et al., 2009). In Europe, most non-Muslims
have expressed concern about “Islamic extremism,” and unfavorable views of
Muslims increased between 2014 and 2016 (Pew, 2011; Wike et al., 2016).
P A R T T H R E E
What is the nature
and power of
prejudice?
What are the social
sources of prejudice?
What are the
motivational sources
of prejudice?
What are the
cognitive sources of
prejudice?
What are the
consequences of
prejudice?
Postscript: Can we
reduce prejudice?
238 Part Three Social Relations
• Obesity. Fat isn’t fun. One analysis of 2.2 million social media posts containing
“obese” or “fat” revealed a stream of shaming and flaming—insults, criticisms,
and derogatory jokes (Chou et al., 2014). When seeking love and employment,
overweight people—especially White women—face slim prospects. Overweight
people marry less often, gain entry to less-desirable jobs, and make less money
(Swami et al., 2008). Weight discrimination, in fact, exceeds racial or gender
discrimination and occurs at every employment stage—hiring, placement, promo-
tion, compensation, discipline, and discharge (Roehling, 2000). It also is at the
root of much child bullying (Brody, 2017; Reece, 2017).
• Age. People’s perceptions of the elderly—as generally kind but frail, incompe-
tent, and unproductive—predispose patronizing behavior. Baby-talk speech, for
example, leads elderly people to feel less competent and act less capably
(Bugental & Hehman, 2007).
• Immigrants. Research documents anti-immigrant prejudice among Germans
toward Turks, the French toward North Africans, the British toward West Indians
and Pakistanis, and Americans toward Latin American immigrants, especially
unauthorized immigrants (Murray & Marx, 2013; Pettigrew, 2006). In the aftermath
of the refugee surge into Europe, Europeans are less likely than Americans to
say that growing ethnic diversity makes their country “a better place to live”
(Drake & Poushter, 2016).
• Politics. Liberals and conservatives dislike, and sometimes detest, one another—and
to roughly equal degrees (Crawford et al., 2017). They also display “virtually identical”
amounts of bias toward their side (Ditto et al., 2018). When processing political
information, each side is more accepting of information that supports its views.
WHAT IS THE NATURE AND POWER
OF PREJUDICE?
Understand the nature of prejudice and the
differences between prejudice, stereotypes, and
discrimination.
Prejudice, stereotyping, discrimination, racism, sexism—the terms often overlap. Let’s
clarify them.
Defining Prejudice
Each of the situations just described involved a negative evaluation of some group. And
that is the essence of prejudice: a preconceived negative judgment of a group and its indi-
vidual members. (Some prejudice definitions include positive judgments, but nearly all uses
of “prejudice” refer to negative ones.)
Prejudice is an attitude—a combination of feelings, inclinations to act, and beliefs. It can be
easily remembered as the ABCs of attitudes: affect (feelings), behavior tendency (inclination
to act), and cognition (beliefs). A prejudiced person may dislike those different from self and
behave toward them in a discriminatory manner, believing them ignorant and dangerous.
The negative evaluations that mark prejudice often are supported by social beliefs, called
stereotypes. To stereotype is to generalize. To simplify the world, we generalize: The British
prejudice
A preconceived negative
judgment of a group and its
individual members.
stereotype
A belief about the personal
attributes of a group of people.
Stereotypes are sometimes
overgeneralized, inaccurate,
and resistant to new information
(and sometimes accurate).
Prejudice Chapter 9 239
are reserved; Americans are outgoing. Women love
children; men love sports. Professors are absent-
minded. The elderly are frail.
Such generalizations can be more or less true
(and are not always negative). The elderly are gener-
ally more frail. People may stereotype Asians as good
at math, and those of African heritage as superior
athletes (Kay et al., 2013). Such stereotypes often
arise from the occupational roles we observe people
playing (Koenig & Eagly, 2014). Black men are about
40 times more likely than White men to play basket-
ball in the NBA (Stephens-Davidowitz, 2017).
So stereotypes may be accurate (they may reflect
sensitivity to diversity). People perceive Australians
as having a wilder culture than Britons—and they do
use more profanity in their millions of Facebook
posts (Kramer & Chung, 2011). To stereotype the
British as more concerned about punctuality than
Mexicans is to understand what to expect and how to get along with others in each culture.
“Accuracy dominates bias,” notes Lee Jussim (2012, 2017). “The social perception glass (of
people judging others) is about 90% full.”
The 10% problem with stereotypes arises when they are overgeneralized or just plain
wrong, as when liberals and conservatives overestimate the extremity of the others’ views,
or when people believe Black men are taller, more muscular, and thus potentially more
threatening than same-sized White men (Graham et al., 2012; Wilson et al., 2017). To
presume that most American welfare clients are African American is to overgeneralize,
because it just isn’t so. To presume that single people are less conscientious and more
neurotic than partnered people, as did people in one German study, was wrong, because
it just isn’t so (Greitemeyer, 2009c). To presume that people with disabilities are incompe-
tent and asexual, as did Oregonians in another study, misrepresents reality (Nario-Redmond,
2010). To stigmatize the obese as slow, lazy, and undisciplined is inaccurate (Puhl & Heuer,
2009, 2010). To presume that Muslims are terrorists, priests are pedophiles, and evangeli-
cals hate homosexuals overgeneralizes from the worst examples of each. And it’s especially
when we have strong views about group differences—say, that women have superior empathic
skill at reading others’ minds—that our beliefs exaggerate reality (Eyal & Epley, 2017).
Prejudice is a negative attitude; discrimination is negative behavior. Discriminatory behav-
ior often has its source in prejudicial attitudes (Dovidio et al., 1996; Wagner et al., 2008).
Such was evident when researchers analyzed the responses to 1,115 identically worded
e-mails sent to Los Angeles area landlords regarding vacant apartments. Encouraging replies
came back to 89% of notes signed “Patrick McDougall,” to 66% from “Said Al-Rahman,”
and to 56% from “Tyrell Jackson” (Carpusor & Loges, 2006). When 4,859 U.S. state legisla-
tors received e-mails shortly before the 2008 election asking how to register to vote, “Jake
Mueller” received more replies than “DeShawn Jackson” (Butler & Broockman, 2011).
Likewise, Jewish Israeli students were less likely to alert the sender to a misaddressed e-mail
that came from an Arab name and town (“Muhammed Yunis of Ashdod”) than from one
of their own group (“Yoav Marom of Tel Aviv”) (Tykocinski & Bareket-Bojmel, 2009).
However, attitudes and behavior are often loosely linked. Prejudiced attitudes need not
breed hostile acts, nor does all oppression spring from prejudice. Racism and sexism are
institutional practices that discriminate, even when there is no prejudicial intent. There can
be racism without racists and sexism without sexists. Consider: If word-of-mouth hiring
practices in an all-White business have the effect of excluding potential non-White employ-
ees, the practice could be called racism—even if an employer intended no discrimination.
Much discrimination reflects no intended harm; it’s simply favoritism toward people like
oneself (Greenwald & Pettigrew, 2014). And that perhaps explains why 1,000 recent popular
fictional films (the top 100 each year from 2007 through 2016) have had one female direc-
tor for every 24 male directors (Smith et al., 2017).
Familiar stereotypes: “Heaven
is a place with an American
house, Chinese food, British
police, a German car, and
French art. Hell is a place with
a Japanese house, Chinese
police, British food, German
art, and a French car.”
—Anonymous, As Reported by
Yueh-Ting Lee, 1996.
Psychologists usually capitalize
Black and White to emphasize
that these are socially applied
race labels, not literal color
labels for persons of African
and European ancestry.
discrimination
Unjustified negative behavior
toward a group or its members.
racism
(1) An individual’s prejudicial
attitudes and discriminatory
behavior toward people of a
given race, or (2) institutional
practices (even if not motivated
by prejudice) that subordinate
people of a given race.
sexism
(1) An individual’s prejudicial
attitudes and discriminatory
behavior toward people of a
given sex, or (2) institutional
practices (even if not motivated
by prejudice) that subordinate
people of a given sex.
What stereotypes might each of these people hold about the others? Even if
stereotypes are somewhat accurate of a group as a whole, they are often not
accurate for a particular individual.
©Adam Hester/Blend Images
240 Part Three Social Relations
Consider this: Job ads for male-dominated vocations feature words asso-
ciated with male stereotypes (“We are a dominant engineering firm seeking
individuals who can perform in a competitive environment”). And job ads
for female-dominated vocations feature the opposite (“We seek people who
will be sensitive to clients’ needs and can develop warm client relation-
ships”). The result of such ads may be institutional sexism. Without intend-
ing any prejudice, the gendered wording helps sustain gender inequality
(Gaucher et al., 2011).
Prejudice: Implicit and Explicit
Prejudice illustrates our dual attitude system. As hundreds of studies
using the Implicit Association Test (IAT) have shown, we can have dif-
ferent explicit (conscious) and implicit (automatic) attitudes toward the
same target (Benaji & Greenwald, 2013). As we explained in Chapter 4,
the test, which as of 2018 had been completed more than 20 million
times, assesses “implicit cognition”—what you know without knowing
that you know. It does so by measuring people’s speed of associations.
Much as we more quickly associate a hammer with a nail than with a
pail, so the test can measure how speedily we associate “White” with
“good” versus “Black” with “good.” Thus, people may retain from childhood a habitual,
automatic fear or dislike of people for whom they now express respect and admiration.
Although explicit attitudes may change dramatically with education, implicit attitudes may
linger, changing only as we form new habits through practice (Kawakami et al., 2000).
Critics contend that the Implicit Association Test (IAT) does not predict behavior well
enough to assess or label individuals (Blanton et al., 2006, 2009, 2015; Oswald et al., 2013,
2015). Perhaps the test’s modest predictive power reflects its merely revealing common
cultural associations, much as your associating bread with butter faster than bread with
carrot need not reveal a vegetable prejudice.
The test is more appropriate for research, which has shown, for example, that implicit
biases modestly predict behaviors ranging from acts of friendliness to work evaluations.
In the 2008 U.S. presidential election, both implicit and explicit prejudice predicted
voters’ support for Barack Obama, and his election in turn led to some reduction in
implicit prejudice (Bernstein et al., 2010; Columb & Plant, 2016; Goldman, 2012; Payne
et al., 2010). And, as in elections, even a small effect of implicit prejudice may, over
time and across people, accumulate to a large societal effect (Greenwald et al., 2015).
Thus, while the IAT, like most psychological measures, only modestly predicts individual
acts, it better predicts average outcomes. For example, metro areas with higher implicit
bias scores have also had larger racial differences in police shootings (Heyman
et al., 2018).
A raft of other experiments converge in pointing to one of social psychology’s big les-
sons: prejudiced and stereotypic evaluations can occur outside people’s awareness. Some of
these studies briefly flash words or faces that “prime” (automatically activate) stereotypes
for some racial, gender, or age group. Without their awareness, the participants’ activated
stereotypes may then bias their behavior. Having been primed with images associated with
African Americans, for example, they may then react with more hostility to an experi-
menter’s (intentionally) annoying request.
Keeping in mind the distinction between conscious, explicit prejudice and unconscious,
implicit prejudice, let’s examine three common forms of prejudice: racial prejudice, gender
prejudice, and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) prejudice. In each case, we
will look first at explicit prejudice, which is the greater (though not the only) predictor of
discriminatory acts.
Racial Prejudice
In the context of the world, every race is a minority. Non-Hispanic Whites, for example,
are one-fifth of the world’s people and will be one-eighth within another half-century.
“Although our [conscious]
minds are in the right places,
and we may truly believe we
are not prejudiced, our hearts
aren’t quite there yet.”
—Prejudice Researcher John
Dovidio, Time, 2009
©2009 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Prejudice Chapter 9 241
Thanks to mobility and migration over the past two centuries, the world’s races now inter-
mingle, in relations that are sometimes hostile, sometimes amiable.
To a molecular biologist, skin color is a trivial human characteristic, one controlled by
a minuscule genetic difference. Moreover, nature doesn’t cluster races in neatly defined
categories. It is people, not nature, who label Barack Obama (the son of a White woman
and Black man) and Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle (the daughter of a Black woman
and White man) as “Black.” (To people whose exposure has been mostly to Black faces,
mixed-race people are somewhat more likely to be categorized as White [Lewis, 2016].)
IS RACIAL PREJUDICE DISAPPEARING?
Explicit prejudicial attitudes can change very quickly.
▯ In 1942, most Americans agreed, “There should be separate sections for Negroes
on streetcars and buses” (Hyman & Sheatsley, 1956). Today the question would
seem bizarre, because such blatant prejudice has nearly disappeared.
▯ In 1942, fewer than a third of all U.S. Whites (only 1 in 50 in the South) sup-
ported school integration; by 1980, support for it was 90%.
▯ “It’s all right for Blacks and Whites to date each other,” agreed 48% of Americans
in 1987 and 86% in 2012 (Pew, 2012). “Marriage between Blacks and Whites” was
approved by 4% of Americans in 1958 and 87% in 2013 (Newport, 2013).
Considering what a thin slice of history is covered by the years since 1942, or even since
slavery was practiced, the changes are dramatic. In Britain, overt racial prejudice, as
expressed in opposition to interracial marriage or having an ethnic minority boss, has simi-
larly plummeted, especially among younger adults (Ford, 2008).
African Americans’ attitudes also have changed since the 1940s, when Kenneth Clark
and Mamie Clark (1947) demonstrated that many African Americans held anti-Black preju-
dices. In making its historic 1954 decision declaring segregated schools unconstitutional,
the Supreme Court found it noteworthy that when the Clarks gave African American
children a choice between Black dolls and White dolls, most chose the White. In studies
from the 1950s through the 1970s, Black children were increasingly likely to prefer Black
dolls. And adult Blacks came to view Blacks and Whites as similar in such traits as intel-
ligence, laziness, and dependability (Jackman & Senter, 1981; Smedley & Bayton, 1978).
But even in the twenty-first century, when shown pictures of children and asked to point
to who they’d like, Black South African children in
a multiracial school preferred a White child (Shutts
et al., 2011).
Shall we conclude, then, that racial prejudice is
nearing extinction in countries such as the United
States, Britain, and Canada? Not if we consider
the growing share of Americans who say racism is
a big problem—from 28% in 2009 to 50% in 2015
(Drake, 2016). Not if we consider the recent
increase in reported hate crime incidents—6,121
during 2016 (FBI, 2017). Not if we consider the
4% of American Whites who, as Figure 1 shows,
would not vote for a Black presidential candidate—
and who are surely among the 31% who agree that
the country needs to “protect and preserve its
White European heritage” (Reuters, 2017). Not if
we consider the 6% greater support that
Obama would likely have received in 2008, accord-
ing to one statistical analysis of voter racial and
political attitudes, if there had been no White
racial prejudice (Fournier & Tompson, 2008). And
In 1962, riots erupted when African-American James Meredith attended the Uni-
versity of Mississippi after winning a court ruling. He became the school’s first
Black graduate in August 1963.
Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division [LC-DIG-ppmsca-04292]
242 Part Three Social Relations
not if we consider that people tend to under-report their negative stereotypes and feelings
(Bergsieker et al., 2012).
So, how great is the progress toward racial equality? In the United States, Whites have
tended to contrast the present with the oppressive past, perceiving swift and radical prog-
ress. Blacks have tended to contrast the present with an equally fair world, which has not
yet been realized, and perceive somewhat less progress (Eibach & Ehrlinger, 2006).
SUBTLE RACIAL PREJUDICE
Despite lingering animosities, the bigger problem in today’s world is not overt, conscious
prejudice. Most people support racial equality and deplore discrimination. Yet 3 in 4 people
who take the Implicit Association Test display an automatic, unconscious tendency to
associate White, more than Black, with favorable words (Banaji & Greenwald, 2013). Mod-
ern prejudice also appears subtly, in our preferences for what is familiar, similar, and com-
fortable (Dovidio et al., 1992; Esses et al., 1993a; Gaertner & Dovidio, 2005).
Prejudiced attitudes and discriminatory behavior surface when they can hide behind the
screen of some other motive. In Australia, Britain, France, Germany, and the Netherlands,
blatant prejudice has been replaced by subtle prejudice (exaggerating ethnic differences,
feeling less admiration and affection for immigrant minorities, rejecting them for supposedly
nonracial reasons) (Pedersen & Walker, 1997; Tropp & Pettigrew, 2005a). Some researchers
call such subtle prejudice “modern racism” or “cultural racism.”
We can also detect bias in behaviors:
▯ Employment discrimination. M.I.T. researchers sent 5,000 résumés out in response
to 1,300 varied employment ads (Bertrand & Mullainathan, 2004). Applicants who
were randomly assigned White names (Emily, Greg) received one callback for every
10 résumés sent. Those given Black names (Lakisha, Jamal) received one callback
for every 15 résumés sent. As if aware of the result, Barack Obama (2015)
reminded Americans to guard “against the subtle impulse to call Johnny back for a
job interview but not Jamal.”
▯ Favoritism galore. Similar experiments have found
– Airbnb hosts less likely to accept applications from would-be guests with
African-American names (Edelman et al., 2017),
“Explicit bias is infrequent;
implicit bias is pervasive.”
—Mahzarin Banaji and
Anthony Greenwald,
Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good
People, 2013
Although prejudice dies last in so-
cially intimate contacts, interracial
marriage has increased in most
countries, and 87% of Americans
now approve of “marriage be-
tween Blacks and Whites”—a
sharp increase from the 4% who
approved in 1958 ( Newport, 2013).
©Design Pics/Darren Greenwood
FIGURE 1
Changing Racial Attitudes of White Americans from 1958 to 2012
Abraham Lincoln’s ghostly embrace of Barack Obama visualized the Obama mantra: “Change we can believe in.” Two days later, Obama stood on
steps built by the hands of slaves, placed his hand on a Bible last used in Lincoln’s own inauguration, and spoke “a most sacred oath”—in a place,
he reflected, where his “father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant.”
Source: Data from Gallup Polls (brain.gallup.com). (photo): ©Charles Dharapak/AP Images
1958 1959 1961 1963 1965 1967 1969
Year
1971 1978 1983 1984 1987 1997 1999 2003 20072012
P
e
rc
e
n
t
Yes
No
100
50
60
70
90
80
40
30
20
10
0
Would you vote for a well-qualified Black
candidate whom your party nominated?
Prejudice Chapter 9 243
– longer Uber and Lyft wait times and more cancellations for passengers with
African-American names (Ge et al., 2016), and
– half as much willingness of Australian bus drivers to admit dark-skinned people
with an empty fare card (Mujcic & Frijters, 2014).
▯ Traffic stops. In one analysis, African Americans and Latinos were four times more
likely than Whites to be searched, twice as likely to be arrested, and three times
more likely to be handcuffed and to have excessive force used against them
( Lichtblau, 2005). Another analysis found that African Americans were more likely
than Whites to be stopped and physically grabbed or pushed to the ground during
encounters with the police (Fryer, 2016). And in an analysis of body camera foot-
age of 918 Oakland Police traffic stops, officers of all races showed less respect for
Black than for White drivers (Voigt et al., 2017).
▯ Patronization. Modern prejudice even appears as a race sensitivity that leads to
exaggerated reactions to isolated minority persons—overpraising their accomplish-
ments, overcriticizing their mistakes, and failing to warn Black students, as they
would White students, about potential academic difficulty (Crosby & Monin, 2007;
Fiske, 1989; Hart & Morry, 1997; Hass et al., 1991). At Stanford University, Kent
Harber (1998) gave White students a poorly written essay to evaluate. When the
students thought the writer was Black, they rated it higher than when they were led
to think the author was White, and they rarely offered harsh criticisms. The
evaluators, perhaps wanting to avoid the appearance of bias, patronized the Black
essayists with lower standards. Such “inflated praise and insufficient criticism” may
hinder minority student achievement, Harber noted. In follow-up research, Harber
and his colleagues (2010) found that Whites concerned about appearing biased not
only rated and commented more favorably on weak essays attributed to Black
students, they also recommended less time for skill development. To protect their
own self-image as unprejudiced, they bent over backward to give positive and
unchallenging feedback.
AUTOMATIC RACIAL PREJUDICE
Does automatic (implicit) prejudice, like explicit prejudice, matter? Critics note that uncon-
scious associations may only indicate cultural assumptions, perhaps without prejudice (which
involves negative feelings and action tendencies). Or perhaps people’s knee-jerk responses
relate to familiarity, or to actual race differences (Tetlock, 2007). But some studies find
that implicit bias can leak into behavior. Those who display implicit prejudice on the
IAT—by taking longer to identify positive words such as peace and paradise as “good” when
associated with Black rather than White faces—also have been observed to judge White job
applicants more favorably, to recommend better treatment for White than Black emergency
room patients, and more quickly to perceive anger in Black faces (Green et al., 2007; Hugen-
berg & Bodenhausen, 2003; Rooth, 2007).
In some situations, automatic, implicit prejudice can have life or death consequences.
In separate experiments, Joshua Correll and his co-workers (2002, 2007, 2015; Sadler et al.,
2012) and Anthony Greenwald and his co-workers (2003) invited people to press buttons
quickly to “shoot” or “not shoot” men who suddenly appeared onscreen holding either a
gun or a harmless object such as a flashlight or a bottle. The participants (both Blacks and
Whites, in one of the studies) more often misperceived the object and mistakenly shot
harmless targets who were Black. (Follow-up computerized simulations revealed that it’s
Black male suspects—not females, whether Black or White—that are more likely to be associ-
ated with threat and to be shot [Plant et al., 2011].)
Other studies have found that when primed with a Black rather than a White face, people
think guns: They more quickly recognize a gun and they more often mistake a tool, such
as a wrench, for a gun (Judd et al., 2004; Payne, 2001, 2006). Even when race does not
bias perception, it may bias reaction—as people require less evidence before firing (Klauer &
Voss, 2008).
“If we can’t help our latent
biases, we can help our
behavior in response to those
instinctive reactions, which is
why we work to design
systems and processes that
overcome that very human
part of us all.”
—FBI Director James B. Comey,
Hard Truths: Law Enforcement
and Race, 2015
Some people more quickly
learn positive associations (and
more slowly learn negative
associations) to neutral stimuli.
Such people tend to exhibit
little implicit racial bias
(Livingston & Drwecki, 2007).
“I cannot totally grasp all that I
am. . . . For that darkness is
lamentable in which the possi-
bilities in me are hidden from
myself.”
—St. Augustine,
Confessions, AD 398
244 Part Three Social Relations
When people are fatigued or feeling threatened by a dan-
gerous world, they become even more likely to mistakenly
shoot a minority person (Ma et al., 2013; Miller et al.,
2012). Brain activity in the amygdala, a region that underlies
fear and aggression, facilitates such automatic responding
(Eberhardt, 2005; Harris & Fiske, 2006). These studies help
explain why in 1999, Amadou Diallo (a Black immigrant in
New York City) was shot 41 times by police officers for
removing his wallet from his pocket. The good news is that
implicit-bias training is now part of modern police educa-
tion, and that, when trained to overcome the influence of
stereotypes, police are less racially influenced than most
people in the decision to shoot (Correll et al., 2014).
These studies of implicit bias have entered the political
arena. After a police killing of an unarmed African-American
whose car had stalled, Democratic presidential candidate
Hillary Clinton declared that “We have got to do everything
possible to . . . go right at implicit bias” (September 20,
2016). Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Mike Pence
disagreed: “Enough of this seeking every opportunity to demean law enforcement broadly
by making the accusation of implicit bias every time tragedy occurs” (October 4, 2016).
Even the social scientists who study prejudice seem vulnerable to automatic prejudice, note
Anthony Greenwald and Eric Schuh (1994). They analyzed biases in authors’ citations of
social science articles by people with selected non-Jewish names (Erickson, McBride, etc.)
and Jewish names (Goldstein, Siegel, etc.). Their analysis of nearly 30,000 citations, including
17,000 citations of prejudice research, found something remarkable: Compared with Jewish
authors, non-Jewish authors had 40% higher odds of citing non-Jewish names. (Greenwald
and Schuh could not determine whether Jewish authors were overciting their Jewish col-
leagues or whether non-Jewish authors were overciting their non-Jewish colleagues, or both.)
Gender Prejudice
How pervasive is prejudice against women? In another chapter we examined gender-role
norms—people’s ideas about how women and men ought to behave. Here we consider gender
stereotypes—people’s beliefs about how women and men do behave. Norms are prescriptive;
stereotypes are descriptive.
GENDER STEREOTYPES
From research on stereotypes, two conclusions are indisputable: Strong gender stereotypes
exist, and, as often happens, members of the stereotyped group accept them. Men and
women agree that you can judge the book by its gendered cover. In a 2017 Pew survey, 87%
of Americans agreed that men and women are “basically different” in “how they express
their feelings” (Parker et al., 2017).
Remember that stereotypes are generalizations about a group of people and may be true,
false, or overgeneralized from a kernel of truth. In another chapter we noted that the aver-
age man and woman do differ somewhat in social connectedness, empathy, social power,
aggressiveness, and sexual initiative (though not in intelligence). Do we then conclude that
gender stereotypes are accurate? Sometimes stereotypes exaggerate differences. But not
always, observed Janet Swim (1994). She found that Pennsylvania State University students’
stereotypes of men’s and women’s restlessness, nonverbal sensitivity, aggressiveness, and so
forth were reasonable approximations of actual gender differences.
Gender stereotypes have persisted across time and culture. Over decades, while
Americans have become more supportive of equal work roles for women and men, their
beliefs about the differing traits of women and men have endured (Donnelly et al.,
2016; Haines et al., 2016). Averaging data from 27 countries, John Williams and his
colleagues (1999, 2000) found that people everywhere perceive women as more agree-
able, and men as more outgoing. The persistence and omnipresence of gender
“We may not realize it, but we
are all affected by uncon-
scious bias.”
Facebook Chief Operating Officer,
Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook post,
June 16, 2017
Google’s diversity training
workshops aim to inform people
about and restrain the implicit
biases uncovered by social
psychologists (Manjoo, 2014).
“All the pursuits of men are
the pursuits of women also,
and in all of them a woman is
only a lesser man.”
—Plato,
Republic, BC 360
Automatic prejudice. When Joshua Correll and his colleagues invited
people to react quickly to people holding either a gun or a harmless
object, race influenced perceptions and reactions.
©Pawel Radomski/Shutterstock
©Pawel Radomski/Shutterstock
Prejudice Chapter 9 245
stereotypes have led some evolutionary psychologists to believe they ref lect innate,
stable reality (Lueptow et al., 1995).
Stereotypes (beliefs) are not prejudices (attitudes). Stereotypes may support prejudice.
Yet one might believe, without prejudice, that men and women are “different yet equal.”
Let us therefore see how researchers probe for gender prejudice.
SEXISM: BENEVOLENT AND HOSTILE
Judging from what people tell survey researchers, attitudes toward women have changed as rapidly
as racial attitudes. As Figure 2 shows, the percentage of Americans willing to vote for a female
presidential candidate has roughly paralleled the increased percentage willing to vote for a Black
candidate. In 1967, 67% of first-year American college students agreed that “the activities of mar-
ried women are best confined to the home and family”; by 2002, only 22% agreed (Sax et al.,
2002). Thereafter, the home–family question no longer seemed worth asking.
Alice Eagly and her associates (1991) and Geoffrey Haddock and Mark Zanna (1994)
also report that people don’t respond to women with gut-level negative emotions as they
do to certain other groups. Most people like women more than men. They perceive women
as more understanding, kind, and helpful. Eagly (1994) dubbed this favorable stereotype
the women-are-wonderful effect.
But gender attitudes often are ambivalent, reported Peter Glick, Susan Fiske, and their
colleagues (1996, 2007, 2011) from their surveys of 15,000 people in 19 nations. Gender
attitudes frequently mix a benevolent sexism (“Women have a superior moral sensibility”) with
hostile sexism (“Once a man commits, she puts him on a tight leash”). Moreover, in one
57-nation study, hostile sexists beliefs (“On the whole, men make better political leaders than
women do”) predicted increased future gender inequality (Brandt, 2011). In the United States,
overtly negative hostile sexism predicted voting against Hillary Clinton, the first female presi-
dential candidate of a major party (Bock et al., 2017). Benevolent sexism, though sounding
positive (“women deserve protection”), may still impede gender equity by discouraging the
hiring of women in traditionally male-dominated occupations (Hideg & Ferris, 2016).
GENDER DISCRIMINATION
Being male isn’t all roses. Compared to women, men are three times more likely to commit
suicide and be murdered. They are nearly all the battlefield and death row casualties. They die
five years sooner. And males are most of those with intellectual disability or autism, as well as
students in special education programs (Baumeister, 2007; Brunner et al., 2013; S. Pinker, 2008).
But one publicized finding of seeming pro-male bias came from a 1968 study in which
women students were given several short articles and asked to judge the value of each. Some-
times a given article was attributed to a male author (for example, John T. McKay) and
sometimes to a female author (for example, Joan T. McKay). In general, the articles received
lower ratings when attributed to a female. That’s right: Women discriminated against women.
“Women are wonderful
primarily because they are
[perceived as] so nice. [Men
are] perceived as superior to
women in agentic
[competitive, dominant]
attributes that are viewed as
equipping people for success
in paid work, especially in
male-dominated occupations.”
—Alice Eagly,
Are People Prejudiced Against
Women?, 1994
FIGURE 2
Changing Gender
Attitudes from 1958 to
2012
Source: Data from Gallup Polls.
Would you vote for a well-qualified woman
candidate whom your party nominated?
Year
P
e
rc
e
n
t
Yes
No
100
50
60
70
90
80
40
30
20
10
0
1937 1945 1949 1955 1958 1959 1963 1967 1969 1971 1975 1978 1983 1984 1987 1999 2003 2007 2012
246 Part Three Social Relations
Eager to demonstrate the subtle reality of gender discrimination, in 1980, I [DM]
obtained the materials from the 1968 study and repeated the experiment with my own
students. They (women and men) showed no such tendency to deprecate women’s work.
So Janet Swim, Eugene Borgida, Geoffrey Maruyama, and I (1989) searched the literature
and corresponded with investigators to learn all we could about studies of gender bias in
the evaluation of men’s and women’s work. To our surprise, the biases that occasionally
surfaced were as often against men as women. But the most common result across 104
studies involving almost 20,000 people was no difference. On most comparisons, judgments
of someone’s work were unaffected by whether the work was attributed to a female or a
male. Summarizing other studies of people’s evaluations of women and men as leaders,
professors, and so forth, Alice Eagly (1994) concluded, “Experiments have not demon-
strated any overall tendency to devalue women’s work.” Moreover, as Stephen Ceci and
Wendy Williams (2015) report, in the academic sciences, five national studies reveal that
“faculty prefer female job candidates over identically qualified male ones.”
So, is gender bias fast becoming extinct in Western countries? Has the women’s move-
ment nearly completed its work?
Bias lives on, sometimes in more subtle forms. Violate gender stereotypes, and people
may react. People take notice of a cigar-smoking woman and a tearful man (Phelan &
Rudman, 2010). A woman whom people see as power hungry suffers more voter backlash
than does a similarly power-hungry man (Okimoto & Brescoll, 2010).
In the non-Western world, gender discrimination is less subtle. Although 86% of Euro-
peans say it “is very important that women have the same rights as men,” only 48% of
Middle Easterners agree (Zainulbhai, 2016). Women are two-thirds of the world’s illiterate
(UN, 2015). And worldwide, some 30% of women have experienced intimate partner vio-
lence (Devries et al., 2013). Such tendencies are especially likely among men who objectify
women by implicitly associating them with animals or objects (Rudman & Mescher, 2012).
Labels some use for women—like “honey,” “sweetie,” and “chick”—are both infantalizing and
focused on food and animals.
But the biggest violence against women may occur prenatally. Around the world, people
tend to prefer having baby boys. In the United States, in 1941, 38% of expectant parents
said they preferred a boy if they could have only one child; 24% preferred a girl; and 23%
said they had no preference. In 2011, the answers were virtually unchanged, with 40% still
preferring a boy (Newport, 2011).
With the widespread use of ultrasound to determine the sex of a fetus and the growing
availability of abortion, these preferences are, in some countries, affecting the number of
boys and girls. With 108 males for every 100 girls, India has 63 million “missing women”
(Subramanian, 2018; United Nations, 2017). China, where 95% of orphanage children
have been girls (Webley, 2009), has 106 males for every 100 females. The 32 million
missing women in China have created an excess of 32 million under-20 males. These are
tomorrow’s “bare branches”—bachelors who will have trouble finding mates (Hvistendahl,
2009, 2010, 2011; Zhu et al., 2009). This female shortage also contributes to increased
violence, crime, prostitution, and trafficking of women (Brooks, 2012). In response,
China has made sex-selective abortions a criminal offense. And in South Korea, which
also for many years had experienced a deficit of girl births, the child sex ratio has
returned to normal (Gupta, 2017).
Aggregate data from Google searches reveal parents’ hopes for their children are also
not gender neutral (Stephens-Davidowitz, 2014). Many parents seem eager to have smart
sons and slender, beautiful daughters—and to perceive their fathers and sons as smarter
than their mothers and daughters (Furnham, 2016). You can see the search data for your-
self. Google (with quotation marks) and note the number of results:
▯ “Is my daughter smart?”
▯ “Is my son smart?”
▯ “Is my son overweight?”
▯ “Is my daughter overweight?”
To conclude, overt prejudice against people of color and against women is far less com-
mon today than it was in the mid-twentieth century. Nevertheless, techniques that are
Prejudice Chapter 9 247
sensitive to subtle prejudice still detect widespread bias. And in parts of
the world, gender prejudice makes for misery.
LGBT Prejudice
Most of the world’s gay and lesbian people cannot comfortably disclose who
they are and whom they love (Katz-Wise & Hyde, 2012; United Nations,
2011). In many countries, same-sex relationships are a criminal offense. But
cultures vary—from the mere 6% in Spain who agree that “homosexuality is
morally unacceptable” to 98% in Ghana (Pew, 2014). In a surveys across
23 countries, support of transgender rights was lowest in Russia and highest
in Spain (Flores et al., 2016). Anti-gay attitudes worldwide are strongest
among those who are older, less educated, and male (Jäckle & Wenzelburger,
2015). Similarly, heterosexual men who value masculinity express the most
prejudice against transgender individuals (Anderson, 2017).
In Western countries, anti-gay prejudice, though rapidly diminishing,
endures:
▯ Job discrimination. Experiments have submitted many hundreds of
fictitious pairs of women’s or men’s résumés to Austrian, Greek,
and American job openings (Drydakis, 2009; Tilcsik, 2011; Weich-
selbaumer, 2003). By random assignment, one applicant in each
pair acknowledged, among other activities, volunteering in a gay-lesbian organization.
In response, callbacks were much less likely to the gay-associated applicants. In the
American experiment, for example, 7.2% of applicants whose activities included
being “Treasurer, Gay and Lesbian Alliance,” received replies, as did 11.5% of those
associated with a different left-seeming group (“ Treasurer, Progressive and Socialist
Alliance”). Job discrimination is even more pronounced for transgender people, 90%
of whom report being harassed or mistreated at work (Grant et al., 2011), with
many saying they have been fired for their gender preference (Mizock et al., 2017).
▯ Gay marriage support is mixed but increasing. In Western countries, support for
same-sex marriage has soared over the past two decades—in the United States, for
example, from 27% in 1996 to 64% in 2017 (Gallup, 2017).
▯ Harassment hurts. In a National School climate survey, 8 out of 10 gay-lesbian
adolescents reported experiencing sex-related harassment in the prior year (GLSEN,
2012). More than any other group, the U.S. LGBTQ community is victimized by
hate crimes, most visibly in the 2016 Orlando gay nightclub massacre of 49 victims
(Sherman, 2016). Two-thirds of British gay youth report experiencing homophobic
bullying (Hunt & Jensen, 2007).
▯ Rejection happens. In national surveys, 40% of gay and lesbian
Americans have said it would be difficult for someone in
their community “to live openly as gay or lesbian” (Jones,
2012). Thirty-nine percent report having “a friend or family
member” reject them because of their sexual orientation or
gender identity (Pew, 2013). A majority (54%) of transgender
people report being harassed at school, and 8% were kicked
out of the house for being transgender (James et al., 2016).
But do disparaging attitudes and discriminatory practices against
gay and lesbian people cause actual harm? Do they increase LGBT
people’s risk of ill health and psychological disorder? Consider (from
U.S. research summarized by Hatzenbuehler, 2014):
▯ State policies predict gay folks’ health and well-being. In U.S.
states without gay-lesbian hate crime and nondiscrimination
protection, LGBT people experience substantially higher
mood disorder rates, even after controlling for state
differences in education and income.
As the public’s support for same-sex marriage has increased,
more countries have legalized marriages between two men
or two women.
©Lisa F. Young/Shutterstock
Although rapidly diminishing, anti-gay prejudice
endures—in some cultures much more than others.
©phototravelua/Shutterstock
248 Part Three Social Relations
▯ Community attitudes also predict LGBT health. Communities where anti-gay preju-
dice is commonplace are communities with high rates of gay-lesbian suicide and
cardiovascular death. Moreover, gay and lesbian individuals who experience dis-
crimination are at increased risk of depression and anxiety (Schmitt et al., 2014).
Overall, the suicide rate among gay and lesbian teens—who often experience
bullying—is three times higher than the general rate for teens in the U.S. (Raifman
et al., 2017). In one survey, more than 40% of transgender Americans reported
having attempted suicide (Haas et al., 2014), but were less likely to do so if their
families supported them (Klein & Golub, 2016).
▯ Two quasi-experiments confirm the toxicity of gay stigma and the benefits of its
removal. Between 2001 and 2005, sixteen states banned same-sex marriage. In those
states, gays and lesbians (but not heterosexuals) experienced a 37% increase in
mood disorders, a 42% increase in alcohol use disorders, and a 248% increase in
general anxiety disorders (Hatzenbuehler, 2014). In other states, gays and lesbians
experienced no such increases in psychiatric disorder. And when the tide turned
and some states legalized same-sex marriage between 2004 and 2015, fewer teens in
those states attempted suicide in the years afterward (Raifman et al., 2017).
▯ Prejudice is a preconceived negative attitude. Stereotypes
are beliefs about another group—beliefs that may be
accurate, inaccurate, or overgeneralized but based on a
kernel of truth. Discrimination is unjustified negative
behavior. Racism and sexism may refer to individuals’
prejudicial attitudes or discriminatory behavior, or to
oppressive institutional practices (even if not intention-
ally prejudicial).
▯ Prejudice exists in subtle and unconscious guises as
well as overt, conscious forms. Researchers have
devised subtle survey questions and indirect methods
for assessing people’s attitudes and behavior to detect
unconscious prejudice.
▯ Racial prejudice against Blacks in the United States was
widely accepted until the 1960s; since that time it has
become far less prevalent, but it still exists.
▯ Similarly, prejudice against women and gays and lesbi-
ans has lessened in recent decades. Nevertheless, strong
gender stereotypes and a fair amount of gender and sex-
ual orientation bias are still found in the United States
and, to a greater degree, elsewhere around the world.
SUMMING UP: What Is the Nature and Power
of Prejudice?
WHAT ARE THE SOCIAL SOURCES
OF PREJUDICE?
Understand and examine the influences that give rise
to and maintain prejudice.
Prejudice springs from several sources. It may arise from people differing in social status
and in their desire to justify and maintain those differences. It may also be learned from
our parents as they socialize us about what differences they believe matter between people.
Our social institutions, too, may maintain and support prejudice. Consider first how preju-
dice can function to defend one’s social position.
Social Inequalities: Unequal Status and Prejudice
A principle to remember: Unequal status breeds prejudice. Slave masters viewed slaves as lazy,
irresponsible, lacking ambition—as having exactly those traits that justified the slavery. Histo-
rians debate the forces that create unequal status. But after those inequalities exist, prejudice
helps justify the economic and social superiority of those who have wealth and power. Tell
us the economic relationship between two groups, and we’ll predict the intergroup attitudes.
Prejudice Chapter 9 249
Upper-class individuals are more likely than those in poverty to
see people’s fortunes as the outcomes they have earned—thanks
to skill and effort, and not as the result of connections, money,
and luck (Costa-Lopes et al., 2013; Kraus & Keltner, 2013).
Historical examples abound. Where slavery was practiced,
prejudice ran strong. Nineteenth-century politicians justified
imperial expansion by describing exploited colonized people as
“inferior,” “requiring protection,” and a “burden” to be borne
(G. W. Allport, 1958, pp. 204–205). Sociologist Helen Mayer
Hacker (1951) noted how stereotypes of Blacks and women
helped rationalize the inferior status of each: Many people
thought both groups were mentally slow, emotional and primi-
tive, and “contented” with their subordinate role. Blacks were
“inferior”; women were “weak.” Blacks were all right in their
place; women’s place was in the home.
Theresa Vescio and her colleagues (2005) tested that reason-
ing. They found that powerful men who stereotyped their female
subordinates also gave them plenty of praise, but fewer resources,
thus undermining their performance and allowing the men to maintain their power. In the
laboratory, too, patronizing benevolent sexism (statements implying that women, as the
weaker sex, need support) has undermined women’s cognitive performance by planting intru-
sive thoughts—self-doubts, preoccupations, and decreased self-esteem (Dardenne et al., 2007).
Peter Glick and Susan Fiske’s distinction between “hostile” and “benevolent” sexism
extends to other prejudices. We see other groups as competent or as likable, but often not
as both. These two culturally universal dimensions of social perception—competence and
likability (warmth)—were illustrated by one European’s comment that “Germans love Ital-
ians, but don’t admire them. Italians admire Germans, but don’t love them” (Cuddy et al.,
2009). We typically respect the competence of those high in status and like those who
agreeably accept a lower status. Depending on the situation, we may seek to impress people
with either our competence or warmth. When wanting to appear competent, people will
often downplay their warmth. And when wanting to appear warm and likable, people will
downplay their competence (Holoien & Fiske, 2013).
Some people, more than others, notice and justify status differences. Those high in social
dominance orientation tend to view people in terms of hierarchies. They like their own social
groups to be high status—they prefer being on the top. Being in a dominant, high-status
position also tends to promote this orientation (Guimond et al., 2003). Jim Sidanius, Felicia
Pratto, and their colleagues (Bratt et al., 2016; Ho et al., 2015; Pratto et al., 1994) argue
that this desire to be on top leads people high in social dominance to embrace prejudice
and to support political positions that justify prejudice.
Indeed, people high in social dominance orientation often support policies that maintain
hierarchies, such as tax cuts for the well-off. They tend to prefer professions, such as politics
and business, that increase their status and maintain hierarchies. They typically avoid jobs,
such as social work, that, by virtue of their aid to disadvantaged groups, undermine hierar-
chies. And they frequently express more negative attitudes toward minority persons, espe-
cially those who exhibit strong racial identities (Kaiser & Pratt-Hyatt, 2009; Meeusen et al.,
2017). Status breeds prejudice, especially for people high in social dominance orientation.
Socialization
Prejudice springs from unequal status and from other social sources, including our acquired
values and attitudes. The influence of family socialization appears in children’s prejudices,
which often mirror those perceived in their mothers (Castelli et al., 2007). For example,
Swedish teens display increasing anti-immigrant prejudice over time if their parents voice
such prejudice (Miklikowska, 2017). Even children’s implicit racial attitudes reflect their
parents’ explicit prejudice (Sinclair et al., 2004). Our families and cultures pass on all kinds
of information—how to find mates, drive cars, and divide the household labors, and whom
to distrust and dislike. Parental attitudes assessed shortly after their babies are born predict
their children’s attitudes 17 years later (Fraley et al., 2012).
“Prejudice is never easy
unless it can pass itself off for
reason.”
—Hazlitt, William. (1903).
On Prejudice. Sketches and
Essays.
social dominance
orientation
A motivation to have one’s
group dominate other social
groups.
As the #MeToo movement around sexual harassment has shown,
liking women doesn’t always mean seeing women as competent.
©Photographee.eu/Shutterstock
250 Part Three Social Relations
THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
In the 1940s, University of California, Berkeley, researchers—two of whom had fled Nazi
Germany—set out on an urgent research mission: to uncover the psychological roots of the
poisonous anti-Semitism that caused the slaughter of millions of Jews. In studies of Ameri-
can adults, Theodor Adorno and his colleagues (1950) discovered that hostility toward Jews
often coexisted with hostility toward other minorities. In those who were strongly preju-
diced, prejudice appeared to be an entire way of thinking about those who are “different”
or marginalized. These ethnocentric people shared certain tendencies: an intolerance for
weakness, a punitive attitude, and a submissive respect for their group’s authorities, as
reflected in their agreement with such statements as “Obedience and respect for authority
are the most important virtues children should learn.” Adorno and his colleagues (1950)
surmised that these tendencies define a prejudice-prone authoritarian personality.
Still today, prejudices coexist: antigay, anti-immigrant, anti-Black, anti-Muslim, and anti-
women sentiments often live inside the same skin (Akrami et al., 2011; Zick et al., 2008).
People intuitively know this. Thus, White women often feel threatened by someone who
displays racism, and men of color by sexism (Sanchez et al., 2017).
Studies of authoritarian people’s early lives have revealed that, as children, they often faced
harsh discipline. Extremism, on both the political left and the right, shares some common
themes, such as catastrophizing, desiring vengeance, dehumanizing the enemy, and seeking a
sense of control (Kay & Eibach, 2013; Saucier et al., 2009). Moreover, people on both the
left and right express similar intolerance of groups with values and beliefs unlike their own
(Brandt & Van Tongeren, 2017; Kossowska et al., 2017; Toner et al., 2013; van Prooijen et al.,
2015). Ironically, people who strongly support ethnic tolerance can display considerable intol-
erance and discrimination toward those who disagree (Bizumic et al., 2017).
Research also suggests that the insecurity of authoritarian individuals predisposes them
toward an excessive concern with power and status and an inflexible right-wrong way of
thinking that makes ambiguity difficult to tolerate. Authoritarian people therefore tend to
be submissive to those with power over them and aggressive or punitive toward those whom
they consider lower in status than themselves (Altemeyer, 1988, 1992). “My way or the
highway.” Authoritarians’ feelings of moral superiority may go hand in hand with brutality
toward perceived inferiors, and with support for politicians who channel dominance and
promise to restore hierarchies (Choma & Hanoch, 2017; McAdams, 2017; Taub, 2016).
RELIGION AND RACIAL PREJUDICE
Consider those who benefit from social inequalities while avowing that “all are created
equal.” They need to justify keeping things the way they are. And what could be a more
powerful justification than to believe that God has ordained the existing social order? For
all sorts of cruel deeds, noted William James, “piety is the mask” (1902, p. 264).
In almost every country, leaders invoke religion to sanctify the present order. The use
of religion to support injustice helps explain a consistent pair of findings concerning North
American Christianity: (1) White church members have expressed more racial prejudice
than nonmembers, and (2) those professing fundamentalist beliefs have expressed more
prejudice than those professing progressive beliefs (Hall et al., 2010; Johnson et al., 2011).
Knowing the correlation between two variables—religion and prejudice—tells us little
about their causal connection. Consider three possibilities:
▯ There may be no causal connection. Perhaps people with less education are both
more fundamentalist and more prejudiced. (In one study of 7,070 Brits, those
scoring high on IQ tests at age 10 expressed more nontraditional and antiracist
views at age 30 [Deary et al., 2008].)
▯ Perhaps prejudice causes religion, by leading some people to create religious ideas to
support their prejudices. People who feel hatred may use religion, even God, to
justify their contempt for the other.
▯ Perhaps religion causes prejudice, such as by leading people to believe that because
all individuals possess free will, impoverished minorities have themselves to blame
for their status, and that gays and lesbians choose their orientation.
ethnocentric
Believing in the superiority of
one’s own ethnic and cultural
group, and having a
corresponding disdain for all
other groups.
authoritarian personality
A personality that is disposed to
favor obedience to authority
and intolerance of outgroups
and those lower in status.
Prejudice Chapter 9 251
If indeed religion causes prejudice, then more religious church members should also be
more prejudiced. But three other findings consistently indicate otherwise.
▯ Faithful attenders are less prejudiced. Among church members, faithful church
attenders were, in 24 out of 26 mid-20th-century comparisons, less prejudiced than
occasional attenders (Batson & Ventis, 1982).
▯ Intrinsically religious are less prejudiced. Gordon Allport and Michael Ross (1967)
compared “intrinsic” and “extrinsic” religiosity. They found that those for whom
religion is an intrinsic end in itself (those who agree, for example, with the state-
ment “My religious beliefs are what really lie behind my whole approach to life”)
express less prejudice than those for whom religion is more a means to other ends
(who agree “A primary reason for my interest in religion is that my church is a
congenial social activity”). Faced with reminders of their mortality, such as people
experience during terrorist threats, intrinsic religiosity also has predicted decreased
outgroup hostility among American Christians and Jews, Iranian Muslims, and
Polish Christians (de Zavala et al., 2012). And those who scored highest on
Gallup’s “spiritual commitment” index were more welcoming of a person of
another race moving in next door (Gallup & Jones, 1992).
▯ Clergy are less prejudiced. Protestant ministers and Roman Catholic priests gave
more support to the U.S. civil rights movement than did laypeople (Fichter, 1968;
Hadden, 1969). In Germany, 45% of clergy in 1934 had aligned themselves with
the Confessing Church, which was organized to oppose Nazi influence on the
German Protestant Church (Reed, 1989).
What, then, is the relationship between religion and racial prejudice? The answer we
get depends on how we ask the question. If we define religiousness as church membership
or willingness to agree at least superficially with traditional religious beliefs, then the more
religious people have been the more racially prejudiced. Bigots often rationalize bigotry
with religion. But if we assess depth of religious commitment in any of several other ways,
then the very devout are less prejudiced—hence the religious roots of the modern civil
rights and anti-apartheid movements, among whose leaders were many ministers and
priests. It was Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce’s faith-inspired values (“Love
your neighbor as yourself”) that, two centuries ago, motivated their successful campaign
to end the British Empire’s slave trade and the practice of slavery. As Gordon Allport
concluded, “The role of religion is paradoxical. It makes prejudice and it unmakes preju-
dice” (1958, p. 413).
CONFORMITY
Once established, prejudice is maintained largely by inertia. If prejudice is socially accepted,
many people will follow the path of least resistance and conform to the fashion. They will
act not so much out of a need to hate as out of a need to be liked and accepted. Thus,
people become more likely to favor (or oppose) discrimination after hearing someone else
do so, and they are less supportive of women after hearing sexist humor (Ford et al., 2008;
Zitek & Hebl, 2007).
During the 1950s, Thomas Pettigrew (1958) studied Whites in South Africa and the
American South. His discovery: Those who conformed most to other social norms were
also most prejudiced; those who were less conforming mirrored less of the surrounding
prejudice.
The price of nonconformity was painfully clear to the ministers of Little Rock, Arkansas,
where the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 school desegregation decision was implemented.
Most ministers privately favored integration but feared that advocating it openly would
decrease membership and financial contributions (Campbell & Pettigrew, 1959). Or con-
sider the Indiana steelworkers and West Virginia coal miners of the same era. In the mills
and the mines, the workers accepted integration. In the neighborhoods, the norm was rigid
segregation (Minard, 1952; Reitzes, 1953). Prejudice was clearly not a manifestation of
“sick” personalities but simply of the social norms.
“We have just enough religion
to make us hate, but not
enough to make us love one
another.”
—Jonathan Swift,
Thoughts on Various Subjects,
1706
252 Part Three Social Relations
So, if a country’s president expressed contempt for immi-
grants, Muslims, and ethnic minorities, would that matter? Fol-
lowing the 2016 election of Donald Trump, and his declaring
in August 2017 that White supremacist marchers included “very
fine people,” the Southern Poverty Law Center (2017) reported,
based on anecdotes of bullying and harassment, that hate-
mongering had been “emboldened” and “energized.”
Still, we might wonder: Does prejudicial political speech sim-
ply give voice to existing attitudes? Or does it normalize
prejudice?
Two large surveys plus an experiment confirm that hate
speech can be socially toxic. University of Warsaw psychologist
Wiktor Soral and his colleagues (2018) report that “frequent and
repetitive exposure to hate speech leads to desensitization” to
such speech and to “increasing outgroup prejudice.” Moreover,
the U.S. FBI’s (2017) annual hate crimes report confirms that,
yes, 2016 saw a 5% increase in hate crime incidents. Despite increased overall American
acceptance of LGBT people, they—as well as ethnic and religious minorities—experienced an
uptick in hate crime incidents. Likewise, the United Kingdom experienced a jump in
reported hate crimes following passage of the Brexit vote, fueled partly by anti-immigrant
sentiments (Kenyon, 2016).
Should we be surprised? As social psychologists Chris Crandall and Mark White (2016)
remind us: Presidents have the power to influence norms, and norms matter. “People
express the prejudices that are socially acceptable and they hide the ones that are not.”
Conformity also maintains gender prejudice. “If we have come to think that the nursery
and the kitchen are the natural sphere of a woman,” wrote George Bernard Shaw in an
1891 essay, “we have done so exactly as English children come to think that a cage is the
natural sphere of a parrot—because they have never seen one anywhere else.” Children who
have seen women elsewhere—children of employed women—have expressed less stereotyped
views of men and women (Hoffman, 1977). Women students exposed to female sci-
ence, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) experts likewise express more
positive implicit attitudes toward STEM studies and display more effort on STEM tests
(Stout et al., 2011).
In all this, there is a message of hope. If prejudice is not deeply ingrained in personality,
then as fashions change and new norms evolve, prejudice can diminish. And so it has. After
U.S. Supreme Court decisions affirmed nationwide interracial marriage (in 1967) and same-
sex marriage (in 2015), Americans perceived that social norms had shifted accordingly
(Tankard & Paluck, 2017).
Institutional Supports
Social institutions (schools, government, media, families) may bolster prejudice through
overt policies such as segregation, or by passively reinforcing the status quo. Until the 1970s,
many banks routinely denied mortgages to unmarried women and to minority applicants,
with the result that most homeowners were White married couples.
Media may also strengthen stereotypes. In several studies, exposure to news portrayals
of Muslims as terrorists was associated with increased perceptions of Muslims as aggressive,
and increased support for military action in Muslim territories and for Muslim-harming
policies (Saleem et al., 2017).
Institutional supports for prejudice are often unintended and unnoticed. Here is one
that most of us failed to notice, although it was right before our eyes: By examining 1,750
photographs of people in magazines and newspapers, Dane Archer and his associates
(1983) discovered that about two-thirds of the average male photo, but less than half of
the average female photo, was devoted to the face. As Archer widened his search, he
discovered that such “face-ism” is common. He found it in the periodicals of 11 other
countries, in 920 portraits gathered from the artwork of six centuries, and in the amateur
©Benjamin Schwartz. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
“Use your White Privilege, Luke.”
Unintended bias: Is lighter skin
“normal”?
©Chris Smith/PhotoEdit
Prejudice Chapter 9 253
drawings of students at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Follow-up studies have
confirmed the face-ism phenomenon in magazines (including in the feminist Ms. maga-
zine) and in website photos of male and female politicians even in countries with relative
gender equality ( Konrath et al., 2012; Nigro et al., 1988). The researchers suspect that the
visual prominence given men’s faces and women’s bodies both reflects and perpetuates
gender bias.
▯ The social situation breeds and maintains prejudice in
several ways. A group that enjoys social and economic
superiority will often use prejudicial beliefs to justify its
privileged position.
▯ Children are also brought up in ways that foster or reduce
prejudice. Those with authoritarian personalities are said
to be socialized into obedience and intolerance. The
family, religious communities, and the broader society
can sustain or reduce prejudices.
▯ Social institutions (government, schools, media) also
support prejudice, sometimes through overt policies
and sometimes through unintentional inertia.
SUMMING UP: What Are the Social Sources
of Prejudice?
WHAT ARE THE MOTIVATIONAL
SOURCES OF PREJUDICE?
Identify and examine the motivational sources
of prejudice.
Various motivations underlie prejudice. But motivations can also lead people to avoid
prejudice.
Frustration and Aggression: The Scapegoat
Theory
Frustration (from the blocking of a goal) feeds hostility. When the cause of our frustration
is intimidating or unknown, we often redirect our hostility. This phenomenon of “displaced
aggression” (scapegoating) contributed to the lynchings of African Americans in the South
after the Civil War. Between 1882 and 1930, more lynchings occurred in years when cotton
prices were low and economic frustration was therefore presumably high (Hepworth &
West, 1988; Hovland & Sears, 1940). When living standards are rising, societies tend to be
more open to diversity and to the passage and enforcement of antidiscrimination laws
(Frank, 1999). Ethnic peace is easier to maintain during prosperous times.
Targets for displaced aggression vary. Following their defeat in World War I and their
country’s subsequent economic chaos, many Germans saw Jews as villains. Long before Hitler
came to power, one German leader explained: “The Jew is just convenient. . . . If there were
no Jews, the anti-Semites would have to invent them” (quoted by Allport, 1958, p. 325).
More recently, Americans who reacted to the 9/11 attack with more anger than fear
expressed greater intolerance toward immigrants and Middle Easterners (Skitka et al.,
2004). As 21st-century Greece sank into economic misery, rage against foreign immigrants
increased (Becatoros, 2012). Even threats from distant groups, such as terrorist acts, can
heighten local prejudices (Bouman et al., 2014; Greenaway et al., 2014). Passions provoke
prejudice.
By contrast, individuals who experience no negative emotional response to social
threats—namely, children with the genetic disorder called Williams syndrome—display a
254 Part Three Social Relations
notable lack of racial stereotypes and prejudice (Santos et al., 2010). No passion, no
prejudice.
Competition is an important source of frustration that can fuel prejudice. When two
groups compete for jobs, housing, or social prestige, one group’s goal fulfillment can
become the other group’s frustration. Thus, the realistic group conflict theory suggests that
prejudice arises when groups compete for scarce resources (Maddux et al., 2008; Pereira
et al., 2010; Sassenberg et al., 2007). In evolutionary biology, Gause’s law states that maxi-
mum competition will exist between species with identical needs.
Consider how this has played out across the world:
▯ In Western Europe, economically frustrated people express relatively high levels of
blatant prejudice toward ethnic minorities (Pettigrew et al., 2008, 2010).
▯ In Canada, opposition to immigration since 1975 went up and down with the
unemployment rate (Palmer, 1996).
▯ In the United States, concerns about immigrants taking jobs are greatest among
those with the lowest incomes (AP/Ipsos, 2006; Pew, 2006).
▯ In South Africa, dozens of African immigrants were killed by mobs and 35,000 people
were hounded from squatter camps by poor South Africans who resented the economic
competition. “These foreigners have no IDs, no papers, and yet they get the jobs,” said
one unemployed South African, noting that “They are willing to work for 15 rand
[about $2] a day” (Bearak, 2010). When interests clash, prejudice often results.
Social Identity Theory: Feeling Superior to Others
Humans are a social species. Our ancestral history prepares us to feed and protect our-
selves—to live—in groups. Humans cheer for their groups, kill for their groups, die for their
groups. Evolution prepares us, when encountering strangers, to make a quick judgment:
friend or foe? Those from our group, those who look like us, even those who sound like
us—with accents like our own—we instantly tend to like (Gluszek & Dovidio, 2010; Kinzler
et al., 2009).
Not surprisingly, as noted by social psychologists John Turner (1981, 2000), Michael
Hogg (1992, 2010, 2014), and their colleagues, we also define ourselves by our groups.
Self-concept—our sense of who we are—contains not just a personal identity (our sense of
our personal attributes and attitudes) but also a social identity (Chen et al., 2006; Haslam,
2014). Fiona identifies herself as a woman, an Aussie, a Labourite, a University of New
South Wales student, a MacDonald family member.
Working with British social psychologist Henri Tajfel, a Polish native who
lost family and friends in the Holocaust and then devoted much of his career
to studying ethnic hatred, Turner (1947–2011) proposed social identity theory.
Turner and Tajfel observed that
▯ We categorize: We find it useful to put people, ourselves included,
into categories. To label someone as a Hindu, a Scot, or a bus driver
is a shorthand way of saying some other things about the person.
▯ We identify: We associate ourselves with certain groups (our
ingroups) and gain self-esteem by doing so.
▯ We compare: We contrast our groups with other groups (outgroups),
with a favorable bias toward our own group.
Beginning in our preschool years, we humans naturally divide others into
those inside and those outside our group (Buttelmann & Böhm, 2014; Dun-
ham et al., 2013). We also evaluate ourselves partly by our group member-
ships. Having a sense of “we-ness” strengthens our self-concepts. It feels good.
We seek not only respect for ourselves but also pride in our groups (Green-
away et al., 2016; Sani et al., 2012). Moreover, seeing our groups as superior
helps us feel even better. It’s as if we all think, “I am an X [name your group].
X is good. Therefore, I am good.”
realistic group conflict
theory
The theory that prejudice arises
from competition between
groups for scarce resources.
social identity
The “we” aspect of our self-
concept; the part of our answer
to “Who am I?” that comes from
our group memberships.
ingroup
“Us”—a group of people who
share a sense of belonging, a
feeling of common identity.
outgroup
“Them”—a group that people
perceive as distinctively
different from or apart from
their ingroup.
What group does she belong to? Social identity
theory suggests that people automatically seek to
categorize others, partially to determine whether
they belong to the same group as themselves (the
ingroup) or not (the outgroup).
©Juanmonino/Getty Images
Prejudice Chapter 9 255
Lacking a positive personal identity, people often seek self-esteem by identifying with a
group. Thus, many disadvantaged youths find pride, power, security, and identity in gang
affiliations. Much as dissonance motivates its reduction and insecurity feeds authoritarian-
ism, so also uncertainty motivates people’s seeking social identity. Their uncertainty subsides
as they perceive who “we” and “they” are. Especially in a chaotic or an uncertain world,
being part of a zealous, tightly knit group feels good; it validates who one is (Hogg et al.,
2017). And that explains part of the appeal of extreme, radical groups in today’s world.
When people’s personal and social identities become fused—when the boundary between
self and group blurs—they become more willing to fight or die for their group (Gómez et al.,
2011; Swann et al., 2012, 2014a,b). Many patriotic individuals, for example, define them-
selves by their national identities (Staub, 1997a, 2005a). And many people at loose ends
find identity in their associations with new religious movements, self-help groups, or frater-
nal clubs (Figure 3).
Because of our social identifications, we conform to our group norms. We sacrifice
ourselves for team, family, and nation. The more important our social identity, the more
we react prejudicially to threats from another group (Crocker & Luhtanen, 1990; Hinkle
et al., 1992).
INGROUP BIAS
The group definition of who you are—your gender, race, religion, marital status, academic
major—implies a definition of who you are not. The circle that includes “us” (the ingroup)
excludes “them” (the outgroup). The more that ethnic Turks in the Netherlands see
themselves as Turks or as Muslims, the less they see themselves as Dutch (Verkuyten &
Yildiz, 2007).
The mere experience of being formed into groups may promote ingroup bias. Ask chil-
dren, “Which are better, the children in your school or the children at [another school
nearby]?” Virtually all will say their own school has the better children.
INGROUP BIAS SUPPORTS A POSITIVE SELF-CONCEPT Ingroup bias is one more
example of the human quest for a positive self-concept. When our group has been success-
ful, we can make ourselves feel better by identifying more strongly with it. College students
whose team has just been victorious frequently report, “We won.” After their team’s defeat,
students are more likely to say, “They lost.” Basking in the reflected glory of a successful
ingroup is strongest among those who have just experienced an ego blow, such as learning
“Whoever is dissatisfied with
himself is continually ready for
revenge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Gay Science, 1882
ingroup bias
The tendency to favor one’s
own group.
“There is a tendency to define
one’s own group positively in
order to evaluate oneself
positively.”
—John C. Turner,
“Social Identity,” 1984
Individual
achievement
Self-serving
bias
Group
achievement
In-group
bias
Self-esteem
Personal identity
and pride
Social identity
and pride
FIGURE 3
Personal identity and
social identity together
feed self-esteem
(photo, top): ©Sam Edwards/AGE
Fotostock; (photo, bottom): ©Digital
Vision/Punchstock
256 Part Three Social Relations
they did poorly on a “creativity test” (Cialdini et al., 1976). We can also bask in
the reflected glory of a friend’s achievement—except when the friend outperforms
us on something pertinent to our identity (Tesser et al., 1988). If you think of
yourself as an outstanding psychology student, you will likely take more pleasure in
a friend’s excellence in mathematics.
INGROUP BIAS FEEDS FAVORITISM We are so group conscious that, given
any excuse to think of ourselves as a group, we will do so—and we will then exhibit
ingroup bias. Even forming conspicuous groups on no logical basis—for instance,
merely by composing groups X and Y with the flip of a coin—will produce some
ingroup bias (Billig & Tajfel, 1973; Brewer & Silver, 1978; Locksley et al., 1980). In
Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slapstick, computers gave everyone a new middle name; all
“Daffodil-11s” then felt unity with one another and distance from “Raspberry-13s.”
The self-serving bias rides again, enabling people to achieve a more positive social
identity: “We” are better than “they,” even when “we” and “they” are defined
randomly!
In experiments, Tajfel and Michael Billig (1974; Tajfel, 1970, 1981, 1982) fur-
ther explored how little it takes to provoke favoritism toward us and unfairness
toward them. In one study, Tajfel and Billig had individual British teenagers evalu-
ate modern abstract paintings and then told them that they and some other teens
had favored the art of Paul Klee over that of Wassily Kandinsky, while others
favored Kandinsky. Finally, without ever meeting the other members of their Klee-
favoring group, each teen divided some money among members of the Klee- and
Kandinsky-favoring groups. In this and other experiments, defining groups even
in this trivial way produced ingroup favoritism. David Wilder (1981) summarized
the typical result: “When given the opportunity to divide 15 points [worth money],
subjects generally award 9 or 10 points to their own group and 5 or 6 points to
the other group.”
We are more prone to ingroup bias when our group is small and differs in status
relative to the outgroup (Ellemers et al., 1997; Moscatelli et al., 2014). When we’re part of
a small group surrounded by a larger group, we are more conscious of our group member-
ship. When our ingroup is the majority, we think less about it. To be a foreign student, to
be gay or lesbian, or to be of a minority race or gender is to feel one’s social identity more
keenly and to react accordingly.
MUST INGROUP LIKING FOSTER OUTGROUP DISLIKING? Does ingroup bias
reflect liking for one’s ingroup, dislike for the outgroup, or both? Does ethnic pride cause
prejudice? Does a strong feminist identity lead feminists to dislike nonfeminists? Does
loyalty to a particular fraternity or sorority lead its members to deprecate independents
and members of other fraternities and sororities? Or do people merely favor their own
group without any animosity toward others?
Experiments reveal both ingroup liking and outgroup disliking. Sometimes, love and hate
are opposite sides of the same coin. If you love the Boston Red Sox, you may hate the New
York Yankees. A patriot’s love of tribe or country motivates dying to defend it against
enemies. To the extent that we see virtue in us, we likely see evil in them. Moreover, out-
group stereotypes prosper when people feel their ingroup identity most keenly (Wilder &
Shapiro, 1991).
We also ascribe uniquely human emotions (love, hope, contempt, resentment) to ingroup
members, and are more reluctant to see such human emotions in outgroup members
(Demoulin et al., 2008; Kteily et al., 2016; Leyens et al., 2003, 2007). There is a long his-
tory of denying human attributes to outgroups—a process called “infrahumanization.” Euro-
pean explorers pictured many of the peoples they encountered as savages ruled by animal
instinct. “Africans have been likened to apes, Jews to vermin, and immigrants to parasites,”
noted Australian social psychologists Stephen Loughman and Nick Haslam (2007). We
humanize pets and dehumanize outgroups.
Yet ingroup bias and discrimination result less from outgroup hostility than from ingroup
favoritism (Balliet et al., 2014; Greenwald & Pettigrew, 2014). Bias is less a matter of dislike
“Father, mother, and me, sister
and auntie say all the people
like us are We, and every one
else is they.
And they live over the sea,
while we live over the way.
But would you believe it?
They look upon we as only a
sort of they!”
—Rudyard Kipling,
“We and They,” in Debits and
Credits, 1926
Basking in reflected glory. After Jamaican-
Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson won the
Olympic 100-meter race, Canadian media
described his victory as that of a
“ Canadian.” After Johnson’s gold medal
was taken away because of steroid use,
Canadian media then emphasized his
“Jamaican” identity (Stelzl et al., 2008).
©DIETER ENDLICHER/AP Images
Prejudice Chapter 9 257
toward those who are different than of networking and mutual support among those in
one’s group. Even when there is no “them” (imagine yourself bonding with a handful of
fellow survivors on a deserted island), one can come to love “us” (Gaertner et al., 2006).
Thus, positive feelings for our own groups need not be mirrored by equally strong negative
feelings for outgroups.
NEED FOR STATUS, SELF-REGARD, AND BELONGING
Status is relative: To perceive ourselves as having status, we need people below us. Thus,
one psychological benefit of prejudice, or of any status system, is a feeling of superiority.
Most of us can recall a time when we took secret satisfaction in another’s failure—perhaps
seeing a sibling punished or a classmate failing a test. In Europe and North America, preju-
dice is often greater among those who are low or slipping on the socioeconomic ladder
and among those whose positive self-image is threatened (Lemyre & Smith, 1985; Pettigrew
et al., 1998; Thompson & Crocker, 1985). In one study, members of lower-status sororities
were more disparaging of competing sororities than were members of higher-status sororities
(Crocker et al., 1987). If our status is secure—if we feel “authentic pride” that’s rooted in
accomplishment, not just self-aggrandizement—we have less need to feel superior, and we
express less prejudice (Ashton-James & Tracy, 2012).
In study after study, thinking about your own mortality—by writing a short essay on dying
and the emotions aroused by thinking about death—provokes enough insecurity to intensify
ingroup favoritism and outgroup prejudice (Greenberg et al., 1990, 2013; Schimel et al.,
1999). One study found that among Whites, thinking about death can even promote liking
for racists who argue for their group’s superiority (Greenberg et al., 2001, 2008). With
death on their minds, people exhibit terror management. They shield themselves from the
threat of their own death by derogating those whose challenges to their worldviews further
arouse their anxiety. When people are already feeling vulnerable about their mortality,
prejudice helps bolster a threatened belief system. But thinking about death can also
heighten communal feelings, such as ingroup identification, togetherness, and altruism
(McGregor et al., 2001; Sani et al., 2009).
Reminding people of their death can also affect support for important public policies.
Before the 2004 presidential election, giving people cues related to death—including
asking them to recall their emotions related to the 9/11 attack, or subliminally exposing
them to 9/11 related pictures—increased support for President George W. Bush and his
antiterrorism policies (Landau et al., 2004). In Iran, reminders of death increased col-
lege students’ support for suicide attacks against the United States (Pyszczynski et al.,
2006).
The need for status and security suggests that a man who doubts his own strength and
independence might, by proclaiming women to be weak and dependent, boost his masculine
image. Indeed, when Washington State University men viewed young women’s videotaped
job interviews, men with low self-acceptance disliked strong, nontraditional women. Men
with high self-acceptance preferred them (Grube et al., 1982). Experiments confirm the
connection between self-image and prejudice: Affirm people and they will evaluate an out-
group more positively; threaten their self-esteem and they will restore it by denigrating an
outgroup (Fein & Spencer, 1997; Spencer et al., 1998).
Despising outgroups strengthens the ingroup. School spirit is seldom so strong as when
the game is with the archrival. The sense of comradeship among workers is often highest
when they all feel a common antagonism toward management. To solidify the Nazi hold
over the Germany people, Hitler threatened them with the “Jewish menace.”
When the need to belong is met, people become more accepting of outgroups, report
Mario Mikulincer and Phillip Shaver (2001). They subliminally primed some Israeli stu-
dents with words that fostered a sense of belonging (love, support, hug) and primed others
with neutral words. The students then read an essay that was supposedly written by a fellow
Jewish student and another by an Arab student. When primed with neutral words, the
Israeli students evaluated the supposed Israeli student’s essay as superior to the supposed
Arab student’s essay. When the participants were primed with a sense of belonging, that
bias disappeared.
“By exciting emulation and
comparisons of superiority,
you lay the foundation of
lasting mischief; you make
brothers and sisters hate each
other.”
—Samuel Johnson,
Quoted in James Boswell’s Life of
Samuel Johnson, 1791
terror management
According to “terror
management theory,” people’s
self-protective emotional and
cognitive responses (including
adhering more strongly to their
cultural worldviews and
prejudices) when confronted
with reminders of their mortality.
258 Part Three Social Relations
Motivation to Avoid Prejudice
Motivations not only lead people to be prejudiced but also to avoid prejudice. But try as
we might to suppress unwanted thoughts—thoughts about food, thoughts about romance
with a friend’s partner, judgmental thoughts about another group—they sometimes refuse
to go away (Macrae et al., 1994; Wegner & Erber, 1992). This is especially so for older
adults, and people under alcohol’s influence who lose some of their ability to inhibit
unwanted thoughts and therefore to suppress old stereotypes (Bartholow et al., 2006; von
Hippel et al., 2000). Patricia Devine and her colleagues (1989, 2012; Forscher et al., 2015)
report that people low and high in prejudice sometimes have similar automatic (uninten-
tional) prejudicial responses. The result: Unwanted (dissonant) thoughts and feelings often
persist. Breaking the prejudice habit is not easy.
In real life, a majority person’s encountering a minority person may trigger a knee-jerk
stereotype. Those with accepting and those with disapproving attitudes toward homosexuals
may both feel uncomfortable sitting with a gay male on a bus seat (Monteith, 1993).
Encountering an unfamiliar Black male, people—even those who pride themselves on not
being prejudiced—may respond warily. Seeking not to appear prejudiced, they may divert
their attention away from the person (Richeson & Trawalter, 2008).
Researchers who study stereotyping contend, however, that prejudicial reactions are not
inevitable (Crandall & Eshleman, 2003; Kunda & Spencer, 2003). The motivation to avoid
prejudice can lead people to modify their thoughts and actions. Aware of the gap between
how they should feel and how they do feel, self-conscious people will feel guilt and try to
inhibit their prejudicial response (Bodenhausen & Macrae, 1998; Dasgupta & Rivera,
2006; Zuwerink et al., 1996). Even automatic prejudices subside, note Devine and her
colleagues (2005), when people’s motivation to avoid prejudice is internal (because they
believe prejudice is wrong) rather than external (because they don’t want others to think
badly of them).
The moral: Overcoming what Devine calls “the prejudice habit” isn’t easy. But it can
be done. One team of 24 researchers held a “research contest” that compared 17 inter-
ventions for reducing unintended prejudice among more than 17,000 individuals
(Lai et al., 2014). Eight of the interventions proved effective, especially giving people
experiences with vivid, positive examples of Black people who countered stereotypes. A
similar technique, with people going door-to-door and having 10-minute nonjudgmental
conversations, also worked to reduce prejudice against transgender individuals (Broock-
man & Kalla, 2016). In another study, Devine and her colleagues (2012) raised the
awareness and concern of willing volunteers and trained them to replace biased with
unbiased knee-jerk responses. Throughout the two-year study follow-up period, partici-
pants in the experimental intervention condition displayed reduced implicit prejudice.
If you find yourself reacting with knee-jerk presumptions or feelings, don’t despair; that’s
not unusual. It’s what you do with that awareness that matters. Do you let those feelings
hijack your behavior? Or do you compensate by monitoring and correcting your behavior
in future situations?
Many companies, such as
Google and Starbucks, have
offered diversity training that
aims to make employees aware
of unintentional, reflexive
biases.
▯ People’s motivations affect prejudice. Frustration
breeds hostility, which people sometimes vent on scape-
goats and sometimes express more directly against com-
peting groups.
▯ People also are motivated to view themselves and their
groups as superior to other groups. Even trivial group
memberships lead people to favor their group over oth-
ers. A threat to self-image heightens such ingroup favor-
itism, as does the need to belong.
▯ On a more positive note, if people are motivated to
avoid prejudice, they can break the prejudice habit.
SUMMING UP: What Are the Motivational Sources
of Prejudice?
Prejudice Chapter 9 259
WHAT ARE THE COGNITIVE
SOURCES OF PREJUDICE?
Describe the different cognitive sources of prejudice.
How does the way we think about the world influence our stereotypes? And how do our
stereotypes affect our everyday judgments? Stereotyped beliefs and prejudiced attitudes exist
not only because of socialization and because they displace hostilities, but also as by-
products of normal thinking processes. Stereotypes spring less from malice of the heart
than from the machinery of the mind. Like perceptual illusions, which are by-products of
our knack for interpreting the world, stereotypes can be by-products of how we simplify
our complex worlds.
Categorization: Classifying People into Groups
One way we simplify our environment is to categorize—to organize the world by clustering
objects into groups (Macrae & Bodenhausen, 2000, 2001). A biologist classifies plants and
animals. A human classifies people. Having done so, we think about them more easily. If
persons in a group share some similarities—if most MENSA members are smart, and most
basketball players are tall—knowing their group memberships can provide useful information
with minimal effort (Macrae et al., 1994). Stereotypes sometimes offer “a beneficial ratio
of information gained to effort expended” (Sherman et al., 1998). Stereotypes represent
cognitive efficiency. They are energy-saving schemes for making speedy judgments and
predicting how others will think and act. We judge people in outgroups quickly; when
assessing ingroup individuals, we take longer to form impressions (Vala et al., 2012). Thus,
stereotypes and outgroup bias may have served evolutionary functions, by enabling our
ancestors to cope and survive (Navarrete et al., 2010).
SPONTANEOUS CATEGORIZATION
We find it especially easy and efficient to rely on stereotypes when we are
▯ pressed for time (Kaplan et al., 1993);
▯ preoccupied (Gilbert & Hixon, 1991);
▯ tired (Bodenhausen, 1990; Ghumman & Barnes, 2013); or
▯ emotionally aroused (Esses et al., 1993b; Stroessner & Mackie, 1993).
Ethnicity and sex are powerful ways of categorizing people. Imagine Julius, a 45-year-old
African American real-estate agent in Atlanta. We suspect that your image of “Black male”
predominates over the categories “middle-aged,” “businessperson,” and “American
southerner.”
Experiments expose our quick, spontaneous categorization of people by race. Much as
we organize what is actually a color continuum into what we perceive as distinct colors,
such as red, blue, and green, so our “discontinuous minds” (Dawkins, 1993) cannot resist
categorizing people into groups. We label people of widely varying ancestry as simply
“Black” or “White,” as if such categories were black and white. By itself, such categorization
is not prejudice, but it does provide a foundation for prejudice.
PERCEIVED SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES
Picture the following objects: apples, chairs, pencils.
There is a strong tendency to see objects within a group as being more uniform than
they really are. Were your apples all red? Your chairs all straight-backed? Your pencils all
yellow? Once we classify two days as in the same month, they seem more alike, temperature-
wise, than the same interval across months. People guess the 8-day average temperature
difference between, for instance, November 15 and 23 to be less than the 8-day difference
between November 30 and December 8 (Krueger & Clement, 1994a).
260 Part Three Social Relations
It’s the same with people. When we assign people to groups—athletes, drama majors,
math professors—we are likely to exaggerate the similarities within the groups and the dif-
ferences between them (S. E. Taylor, 1981; Wilder, 1978). We assume that other groups are
more homogeneous than our own. Mere division into groups can create an outgroup
homogeneity effect—a sense that they are “all alike” and different from “us” and “our” group
(Ostrom & Sedikides, 1992). Consider :
▯ Many non-Europeans see the Swiss as a fairly homogeneous people. But to the peo-
ple of Switzerland, the Swiss are diverse, encompassing French-, German-, Italian-,
and Romansh-speaking groups.
▯ Many non-Latino Americans lump “Latinos” together. Mexican Americans, Cuban
Americans, and Puerto Ricans—among others—see important differences (Huddy &
Virtanen, 1995).
▯ Sorority sisters perceive the members of any other sorority as less diverse than the
members of their own (Park & Rothbart, 1982).
In general, the greater our familiarity with a social group, the more we see its diversity
(Brown & Wootton-Millward, 1993; Linville et al., 1989). The less our familiarity, the more
we stereotype.
Perhaps you have noticed: They—the members of any racial group other than your own—
even look alike. Many people can recall embarrassing ourselves by confusing two people of
another racial group, prompting the person we’ve misnamed to say, “You think we all look
alike.” Experiments in the United States, Scotland, and Germany reveal that people of other
races do in fact seem to look more alike than do people of one’s own race (Chance &
Goldstein, 1981, 1996; Ellis, 1981; Meissner & Brigham, 2001; Sporer & Horry, 2011).
When White students are shown faces of a few White and a few Black individuals and then
asked to pick those individuals out of a photographic lineup, they show an own-race bias:
They more accurately recognize the White faces than the Black ones, and they often falsely
recognize Black faces never before seen. (Individuals do differ, however, with some showing
no own-race bias while others have an extreme inability to recognize other-race faces [Wan
et al., 2017].)
As Figure 4 illustrates, Blacks more easily recognize another Black than they do a White
(Bothwell et al., 1989). Hispanics, Blacks, and Asians all recognize faces from their own
races better than from one another’s (Gross, 2009). Likewise, British South Asians are
quicker than White Brits to recognize South Asian faces (Walker & Hewstone, 2008). And
10- to 15-year-old Turkish children are quicker than Austrian children to recognize Turkish
faces (Sporer et al., 2007). Even infants as young as 9 months display better own-race
recognition of faces (Kelly et al., 2005, 2007; Sugden & Marquis, 2017).
It’s not that we cannot perceive differences among faces of another group.
Rather, when looking at a face from another racial group we often attend,
first, to group (“that man is Black”) rather than to individual features. When
viewing someone of our own group, we are less attentive to the race category
and more attentive to individual details such as the eyes (Kawakami et al.,
2014; Shriver et al., 2008; Van Bavel & Cunningham, 2012; Young et al., 2010).
Our attending to someone’s being in a different social category also con-
tributes to a parallel own-age bias—the tendency for both children and older
adults to more accurately identify faces from their own age groups (He et al.,
2011; Rhodes & Anastasi, 2012; Wright & Stroud, 2002). (Perhaps you have
noticed that senior citizens look more alike than do your fellow students?)
Distinctiveness: Perceiving People Who
Stand Out
In other ways, too, our normal social perceptions breed stereotypes. Distinc-
tive people and vivid or extreme occurrences often capture attention and dis-
tort judgments.
outgroup homogeneity
effect
Perception of outgroup
members as more similar to one
another than are ingroup
members. Thus “they are alike;
we are diverse.”
“Women are more like each
other than men [are].”
—Lord (not Lady) Chesterfield
To a human cartoonist, all penguins look alike. To
a penguin, they differ.
©Dave Coverly. Speedbump.com
own-race bias
The tendency for people to
more accurately recognize faces
of their own race. (Also called
the cross-race effect or other-
race effect.)
Prejudice Chapter 9 261
DISTINCTIVE PEOPLE
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you were the only person of your gender,
race, or nationality? If so, your difference from the others probably made you more notice-
able and the object of more attention. A Black person in an otherwise White group, a man
in an otherwise female group, or a woman in an otherwise male group seems more promi-
nent and influential and to have exaggerated good and bad qualities (Crocker & McGraw,
1984; S. E. Taylor et al., 1979). When someone in a group is made conspicuous, we tend
to see that person as causing whatever happens (Taylor & Fiske, 1978). If we are positioned
to look at Joe, even if Joe is merely an average group member, Joe will seem to have a
greater-than-average influence on the group.
Have you noticed that people also define you by your most distinctive traits and behav-
iors? Tell people about someone who is a skydiver and a tennis player, report Lori Nelson
and Dale Miller (1995), and they will think of the person as a skydiver. Asked to choose
a gift book for the person, they will pick a skydiving book over a tennis book. A person
who has both a pet snake and a pet dog is seen more as a snake owner than a dog owner.
Ellen Langer and Lois Imber (1980) cleverly demonstrated the attention paid to distinc-
tive people. They asked Harvard students to watch a video of a man reading. The students
paid closer attention when they were led to think he was out of the ordinary—a cancer
patient, a homosexual, or a millionaire. They noticed characteristics
that other viewers ignored, and their evaluation of him was more
extreme. Those who thought the man was a cancer patient noticed
distinctive facial characteristics and bodily movements and thus per-
ceived him to be much more “different from most people” than did
the other viewers. The extra attention we pay to distinctive people
creates an illusion that they differ from others more than they really
do. If people thought you had the IQ of a genius, they would probably
notice things about you that otherwise would pass unnoticed.
DISTINCTIVENESS FEEDS SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS When sur-
rounded by Whites, Blacks sometimes detect people reacting to their
distinctiveness. Many have reported being stared or glared at, being
subject to insensitive comments, and receiving bad service (Swim
et al., 1998). Whites, when alone amid those of another race, may be
similarly sensitive to others’ reactions. Sometimes, however, we misper-
ceive others as reacting to our distinctiveness. Researchers Robert
Kleck and Angelo Strenta (1980) discovered this when they led
Dartmouth College women to feel disfigured. The women thought the
purpose of the experiment was to assess how someone would react to
a facial scar created with theatrical makeup; the scar ran down their
face from the ear to the mouth. Actually, the purpose was to see how
the women themselves, when made to feel deviant, would perceive
FIGURE 4
The Own-Race Bias
White subjects more accurately
recognize the faces of Whites
than of Blacks; Black subjects
more accurately recognize the
faces of Blacks than of Whites.
Source: Devine & Malpass, 1985.
Recognition accuracy
Black
Race of photos
White
White subjects
Black subjects
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.0
Distinctive people, such as Houston Rockets 7'6" former
player Yao Ming, draw attention.
©Eugene Hoshiko/AP Images
262 Part Three Social Relations
others’ behavior toward them. After applying the makeup, the experimenter gave each
woman a small hand mirror so she could see the authentic-looking scar. When she put the
mirror down, he then applied some “moisturizer” to “keep the makeup from cracking.”
What the “moisturizer” really did was remove the scar.
The scene that followed was poignant. A young woman, feeling terribly self-conscious
about her supposedly disfigured face, talked with another woman who saw no such disfig-
urement and knew nothing of what had gone on before. If you have ever felt similarly
self-conscious—perhaps about a physical handicap, acne, even just a bad hair day—then
perhaps you can sympathize with the self-conscious woman. Compared with women who
were led to believe their conversational partners merely thought they had an allergy, the
“disfigured” women became acutely sensitive to how their partners were looking at them.
They rated their partners as more tense, distant, and patronizing. Observers who later
analyzed videotapes of how the partners treated “disfigured” persons could find no such
differences in treatment. Self-conscious about being different, the “disfigured” women had
misinterpreted mannerisms and comments they would otherwise not have noticed.
Self-conscious interactions between a majority and a minority person can therefore feel
tense even when both are well intentioned (Devine et al., 1996). Tom, who is known to be
gay, meets tolerant Bill, who is straight and wants to respond without prejudice. But feeling
unsure of himself, Bill holds back a bit. Tom, expecting negative attitudes from most people,
misreads Bill’s hesitancy as hostility and responds with a seeming chip on his shoulder.
Anyone can experience this phenomenon. Majority group members (in one study, White
residents of Manitoba) often have beliefs—“meta-stereotypes”—about how minorities stereo-
type them (Vorauer et al., 1998). Even relatively unprejudiced Canadian Whites, Israeli
Jews, or American Christians may sense that outgroup minorities stereotype them as preju-
diced, arrogant, or patronizing. If George worries that Gamal perceives him as “your typical
educated racist,” he may be self-consciously on guard when talking with Gamal.
VIVID CASES Our minds also use distinctive cases as a shortcut to judging groups. Are
the Japanese good baseball players? “Well, there’s Ichiro Suzuki and Hideki Matsui and Yu
Darvish. Yeah, I’d say so.” Note the thought processes at work here: Given limited experi-
ence with a particular social group, we recall examples of it and generalize from those
(Sherman, 1996). Moreover, encountering an example of a negative stereotype (for instance,
a hostile Black person) can prime the stereotype, leading some people to minimize contact
with the group (Henderson-King & Nisbett, 1996).
Such generalizing from a single case can cause problems. Vivid instances, though more
available in memory, seldom represent the larger group. Exceptional athletes, though distinctive
and memorable, are not the best basis for judging the distribution of athletic talent among an
entire group.
Those in a numerical minority, being more distinc-
tive, also may be numerically overestimated by the
majority. What proportion of your country’s popula-
tion would you say is Muslim? People in non-Muslim
countries often overestimate this proportion.
Consider a 2011 Gallup survey, in which the average
American guessed that 25% of people are exclusively
homosexual (Morales, 2011). The best evidence suggests
that 4% or fewer have a same-sex orientation (Chandra
et al., 2011; Gates, 2017; Herbenick et al., 2010).
Myron Rothbart and his colleagues (1978) showed
how distinctive cases also fuel stereotypes. They had
University of Oregon students view 50 slides, each of
which stated a man’s height. For one group of stu-
dents, they were told 10 of the men were slightly over
6 feet (up to 6 feet, 4 inches). For other students,
they were told these 10 men were well over 6 feet (up
to 6 feet, 11 inches). When asked later how many of
What percentage of the U.S. population would you guess is Muslim? On average,
Americans guess 15%, but actually only about 1% of the U.S. population is Muslim.
©Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock
Prejudice Chapter 9 263
the men were over 6 feet, those given the moderately tall examples recalled 5% too many.
Those given the extremely tall examples recalled 50% too many. In a follow-up experiment,
students read descriptions of the actions of 50 men, 10 of whom had committed either
nonviolent crimes, such as forgery, or violent crimes, such as rape. Of those shown the list
with the violent crimes, most overestimated the number of criminal acts. Vivid cases distort
judgments and create stereotypes.
DISTINCTIVE EVENTS FOSTER ILLUSORY CORRELATIONS
Stereotypes assume a correlation between group membership and individuals’ presumed
characteristics (“Italians are emotional,” “Jews are shrewd,” “Accountants are perfection-
ists”). Often, people’s stereotypes are accurate (Jussim, 2012). But sometimes our attentive-
ness to unusual occurrences creates illusory correlations. Because we are sensitive to
distinctive events, the co-occurrence of two such events is especially noticeable—more
noticeable than each of the times the unusual events do not occur together.
In a classic experiment, David Hamilton and Robert Gifford (1976) demonstrated illu-
sory correlation. They showed students slides in which various people, members of “Group
A” or “Group B,” were said to have done something desirable or undesirable. For example,
“John, a member of Group A, visited a sick friend in the hospital.” Twice as many state-
ments described members of Group A as Group B. But both groups did nine desirable acts
for every four undesirable behaviors. Since both Group B and the undesirable acts were
less frequent, their co-occurrence—for example, “Allen, a member of Group B, dented the
fender of a parked car and didn’t leave his name”—was an unusual combination that caught
people’s attention. The students therefore overestimated the frequency with which the
“minority” group (B) acted undesirably, and they judged Group B more harshly.
Remember, Group A members outnumbered Group B members two to one, and Group
B members committed undesirable acts in the same proportion as Group A members. More-
over, the students had no preexisting biases for or against Group B, and they received the
information more systematically than daily experience ever offers it. Although researchers
debate why it happens, they agree that illusory correlation occurs and provides yet another
source for the formation of racial stereotypes (Berndsen et al., 2002). Thus, the features
that most distinguish a minority from a majority are those that become associated with it
(Sherman et al., 2009). Your ethnic or social group may in most ways be like other groups,
but people will notice how it differs.
In experiments, even single co-occurrences of an unusual act by someone in an atypical
group—“Ben, a Jehovah’s Witness, owns a pet sloth”—can embed illusory correlations in
people’s minds (Risen et al., 2007). This enables the mass media to feed illusory correla-
tions. When a self-described homosexual person murders or sexually abuses someone,
homosexuality is often mentioned. When a heterosexual does the same, the person’s sexual
orientation is seldom mentioned. Such reporting adds to the illusion of a large correlation
between (1) violent tendencies and (2) homosexuality or mental hospitalization.
Unlike the students who judged Groups A and B, we often have preexisting biases. David
Hamilton’s further research with Terrence Rose (1980) revealed that our preexisting stereo-
types can lead us to “see” correlations that aren’t there. The researchers had University of
California at Santa Barbara students read sentences in which various adjectives described
the members of different occupational groups (“Juan, an accountant, is timid and thought-
ful”). In actuality, each occupation was described equally often by each adjective; accoun-
tants, doctors, and salespeople were equally often timid, wealthy, and talkative. The students,
however, thought they had more often read descriptions of timid accountants, wealthy doc-
tors, and talkative salespeople. Their stereotyping led them to perceive correlations that
weren’t there, thus helping to perpetuate the stereotypes.
Likewise, guess what happened when Vaughn Becker and his colleagues (2010) invited
university students to view a White and a Black face—one angry, one not—for one-tenth of
a second (as in Figure 5). The participants’ subsequent recollections of what they had
viewed revealed racial bias. “White anger flowed to neutral Black faces (34% likelihood)
more readily than Black anger flowed to neutral White faces (19% likelihood),” the research-
ers reported.
264 Part Three Social Relations
Attribution: Is It a Just World?
In explaining others’ actions, we frequently commit the fun-
damental attribution error: We attribute others’ behavior so
much to their inner dispositions that we discount important
situational forces. The error occurs partly because our atten-
tion focuses on the person, not on the situation. A person’s
race or sex is vivid and gets attention; the situational forces
working upon that person are usually less visible. Slavery was
often overlooked as an explanation for slave behavior; the
behavior was instead attributed to the slaves’ own nature.
Until recently, the same was true of how we explained the
perceived differences between women and men. Because gen-
der-role constraints were hard to see, we attributed men’s and
women’s behavior solely to their presumed innate disposi-
tions. The more people assume that human traits are fixed
dispositions, the stronger are their stereotypes and the greater
their acceptance of racial inequities (Levy et al., 1998;
Williams & Eberhardt, 2008).
GROUP-SERVING BIAS
Thomas Pettigrew (1979, 1980) showed how attribution errors bias people’s explanations
of group members’ behaviors. We grant members of our own group the benefit of the doubt:
“She donated because she has a good heart; he refused because he’s using every penny to
help support his mother.” When explaining acts by members of other groups, we more
often assume the worst: “She donated to gain favor; he refused because he’s selfish.” In
one classic study, the light shove that Whites perceived as mere “horsing around” when
done by another White person became a “violent gesture” when done by a Black person
(Duncan, 1976).
Positive behavior by outgroup members is more often dismissed. It may be seen as a
“special case” (“He is certainly bright and hardworking—not at all like other . . .”), as
owing to luck or some special advantage (“She probably got admitted just because her
med school had to fill its quota for women applicants”), as demanded by the situation
(“Under the circumstances, what could the cheap Scot do but pay the whole check?”),
or as attributable to extra effort (“Asian students get better grades because they’re so
compulsive”).
Disadvantaged groups and groups that stress modesty (such as the Chinese) exhibit
less of this group-serving bias (Fletcher & Ward, 1989; Heine & Lehman, 1997; Jackson
et al., 1993). By contrast, immodest groups that are invested in their own greatness
react to threats with group-serving bias and hostility (de Zavala et al., 2013). Social
psychologists Jacquie Vorauer and Stacey Sasaki (2010, 2011) note that multicultural-
ism’s focus on differences, which can be positive in the absence of conf lict (making
intergroup exchanges seem interesting and stimulating), sometimes comes at a cost.
When there is conf lict or threat, a focus on differences can foster group-level attribu-
tions and increased hostility.
The group-serving bias can subtly color our language. A team of University of Padua
(Italy) researchers led by Anne Maass (Maass, 1999; Maass et al., 1995) has found that
positive behaviors by another ingroup member are often described as general dispositions
(for example, “Karen is helpful”). When performed by an outgroup member, the same
behavior is often described as a specific, isolated act (“Carmen opened the door for the
man with the cane”). With negative behavior, the specificity reverses: “Eric shoved her”
(an isolated act by an ingroup member) but “Enrique was aggressive” (an outgroup mem-
ber’s general disposition).
Earlier we noted that blaming the victim can justify the blamer’s own superior status
(see Table 1). Blaming occurs as people attribute an outgroup’s failures to its members’
group-serving bias
Explaining away outgroup
members’ positive behaviors;
also attributing negative
behaviors to their dispositions
(while excusing such behavior
by one’s own group).
“For if [people were] to
choose out of all the customs
in the world such as seemed
to them the best, they would
examine the whole number,
and end by preferring their
own.”
—Greek Historian Herodotus,
The Histories, Book III, BC 440
FIGURE 5
Ingroup biases influence perceptions. When briefly shown two faces,
one neutral, one angry, people more often misrecalled the Black
rather than the White face as angry (Becker et al., 2010).
(left): ©Paul Burns/Getty Images; (right): ©Cordelia Molloy/Science Source
Prejudice Chapter 9 265
TABLE 1 How Self-Enhancing Social Identities Support Stereotypes
Ingroup Outgroup
Attitude Favoritism Denigration
Perceptions Heterogeneity (we differ) Homogeneity (they’re alike)
Attributions for negative behavior To situations To dispositions
Just-world thinking? Some people argued against giving legal rights to prison-
ers in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp that housed alleged combatants
from Afghanistan and Iraq. One argument was that these people would not be
confined there if they had not done horrendous things, so why allow them to
argue their innocence in U.S. courts?
©Lynne Sladky/AP Images
flawed dispositions, notes Miles Hewstone (1990): “They fail because they’re stupid; we
fail because we didn’t try.” If women, Blacks, or Jews have been abused, they must some-
how have brought it on themselves. When the British made a group of German civilians
walk through the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at the close of World War II, one
German responded: “What terrible criminals these prisoners must have been to receive
such treatment.” (Such group-serving bias illustrates the motivations that underlie preju-
dice, as well as the cognition. Motivation and cognition, emotion and thinking, are
inseparable.)
THE JUST-WORLD PHENOMENON
In a famous series of experiments, Melvin Lerner and his colleagues (Lerner, 1980; Lerner
& Miller, 1978) discovered that merely observing another innocent person being victimized
is enough to make the victim seem less worthy.
Lerner (1980) noted that such disparaging of hapless victims results from the need
to believe that “I am a just person living in a just world, a world where people get
what they deserve.” From early childhood, he argues, we are taught that good is
rewarded and evil punished. Hard work and virtue pay
dividends; laziness and immorality do not. From this
it is but a short leap to assuming that those who f lour-
ish must be good and those who suffer must deserve
their fate.
Numerous studies have confirmed this just-world phe-
nomenon (Hafer & Rubel, 2015). Imagine that you, along
with some others, are participating in one of Lerner’s
studies—supposedly on the perception of emotional cues
(Lerner & Simmons, 1966). One of the participants, a
confederate, is selected by lottery to perform a memory
task. This person receives painful shocks whenever she
gives a wrong answer. You and the others note her emo-
tional responses.
After watching the victim receive these apparently
painful shocks, the experimenter asks you to evaluate
her. How would you respond? With compassionate sym-
pathy? We might expect so. As Ralph Waldo Emerson
wrote, “The martyr cannot be dishonored.” On the con-
trary, in these experiments the martyrs were dishon-
ored. When observers were powerless to alter the
victim’s fate, they often rejected and devalued the vic-
tim. Juvenal, the Roman satirist, anticipated these
results: “The Roman mob follows after Fortune . . . and
hates those who have been condemned.” And the more
ongoing the suffering, as with Jews even after the Holo-
caust, the greater the dislike of the victims (Imhoff &
Banse, 2009).
just-world phenomenon
The tendency of people to
believe that the world is just and
that people therefore get what
they deserve and deserve what
they get.
The classic illustration of “just-
world thinking” comes from the
Old Testament story of Job, a
good person who suffers terrible
misfortune. Job’s friends
surmise that, this being a just
world, Job must have done
something wicked to elicit such
terrible suffering.
266 Part Three Social Relations
Linda Carli and her colleagues (1989, 1999)
reported that the just-world phenomenon colors
our impressions of rape victims. Carli had people
read detailed descriptions of interactions between
a man and a woman. In one scenario, a woman
and her boss meet for dinner, go to his home, and
each have a glass of wine. Some read this scenario
with a happy ending: “Then he led me to the
couch. He held my hand and asked me to marry
him.” In hindsight, people find the ending unsur-
prising and admire the man’s and woman’s char-
acter traits. Others read the same scenario with a
terrible ending: “But then he became very rough
and pushed me onto the couch. He held me down
on the couch and raped me.” Given this ending,
people see the rape as inevitable and blame the
woman for provocative behavior that seems fault-
less in the first scenario.
This line of research suggests that people are
indifferent to social injustice not because they have no concern for justice but because they
see no injustice. Those who assume a just world believe that:
▯ rape victims must have behaved seductively (Borgida & Brekke, 1985),
▯ battered spouses must have provoked their beatings (Summers & Feldman, 1984),
▯ poor people don’t deserve better (Furnham & Gunter, 1984),
▯ sick people are responsible for their illnesses (Gruman & Sloan, 1983).
▯ teens who are bullied online deserve it (Chapin & Coleman, 2017).
Such beliefs enable successful people to reassure themselves that they, too, deserve what
they have. The wealthy and healthy can see their own good fortune, and others’ misfortune,
as justly deserved. Linking good fortune with virtue and misfortune with moral failure
enables the fortunate to feel pride and to avoid responsibility for the unfortunate. But on
the positive side, believing the world is just also motivates us to invest our energies in
long-term goals (Hafer & Sutton, 2016).
People loathe a loser even when the loser’s misfortune quite obviously stems sub-
stantially from bad luck. Children, for example, tend to view lucky others—such as
someone who has found money on a sidewalk—as more likely than unlucky children to
do good things and be a nice person (Olson et al., 2008). Adults know that gambling
outcomes are just good or bad luck and should not affect their evaluations of the gam-
bler. Still, they can’t resist playing Monday-morning quarterback—judging people by
their results. Ignoring the fact that reasonable decisions can bring bad results, they
judge losers as less competent (Baron & Hershey, 1988). Lawyers and stock market
investors may similarly judge themselves by their outcomes, becoming smug after suc-
cesses and self-reproachful after failures. Talent and initiative matter. But the just-world
assumption discounts the uncontrollable factors that can derail good efforts even by
talented people.
Just-world thinking also leads people to justify their culture’s familiar social systems (Jost
et al., 2009; Kay et al., 2009; Osborne & Sibley, 2013). From childhood on, the way things
are, we’re inclined to think, is the way things essentially are and ought to be (Brescoll et al.,
2013; Hussak & Cimpian, 2015). Such natural conservatism makes it difficult to pass new
social policies, such as voting rights laws or tax or health care reform. But after a new
policy is in place, our “system justification” works to sustain it. Thus, Canadians mostly
approve of their government policies, such as national health care, strict gun control, and
no capital punishment, whereas Americans likewise mostly support differing policies to
which they are accustomed.
“If you don’t have a job and
you’re not rich, blame
yourself!”
—U.S. Presidential Candidate
Herman Cain, in an Interview with
The Wall Street Journal,
October 5, 2011
The just-world phenomenon.
©Robert Mankoff. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
Prejudice Chapter 9 267
WHAT ARE THE CONSEQUENCES
OF PREJUDICE?
Identify and understand the consequences
of prejudice.
How can stereotypes create their own reality? How can prejudice impede performance?
Prejudice has consequences as well as causes.
Self-Perpetuating Prejudgments
Prejudice involves preconceived judgments. Prejudgments are inevitable: None of us is a
dispassionate bookkeeper of social happenings, tallying evidence for and against our biases.
And prejudgments matter.
Prejudgments guide our attention and our memories. People who accept gender stereotypes
often misrecall their own school grades in stereotype-consistent ways. For example, women
often recall receiving worse math grades and better arts grades than were actually the case
(Chatard et al., 2007).
Moreover, after we judge an item as belonging to a category such as a particular race
or sex, our memory for it later shifts toward the features we associate with that category.
In one experiment, Belgian university students viewed a face that was a blend of 70% of
the features of a typical male and 30% female (or vice versa). Later, those shown the 70%
male face recalled seeing a male (as you might expect), but misrecalled the face as being
even more prototypically male—as, for example, an 80% male face (Huart et al., 2005).
Prejudgments are self-perpetuating. Whenever a group member behaves as expected, we
duly note the fact; our prior belief is confirmed. When a group member violates our expec-
tation, we may interpret or explain away the behavior as due to special circumstances
(Crocker et al., 1983).
Perhaps you can recall a time when, try as you might, you could not overcome someone’s
opinion of you, when your actions were misinterpreted no matter what you did. Misinter-
pretations are likely when someone expects an unpleasant encounter with you (Wilder &
Shapiro, 1989). William Ickes and his colleagues (1982) demonstrated this in an experiment
with pairs of college-age men. As the men arrived, the experimenters falsely forewarned
one member of each pair that the other person was “one of the unfriendliest people I’ve
talked to lately.” The two were then introduced and left alone together for five minutes.
Students in another experimental condition were led to think the other participant was
exceptionally friendly.
▯ Recent research shows how the stereotyping that under-
lies prejudice is a by-product of our thinking—our ways
of simplifying the world. Clustering people into catego-
ries exaggerates the uniformity within a group and the
differences between groups.
▯ A distinctive individual, such as a lone minority person,
has a compelling quality that makes us aware of differ-
ences that would otherwise go unnoticed. The occur-
rence of two distinctive events (for example, a minority
person committing an unusual crime) helps create an
illusory correlation between people and behavior.
Attributing others’ behavior to their dispositions can
lead to the group-serving bias: assigning outgroup mem-
bers’ negative behavior to their natural character while
explaining away their positive behaviors.
▯ Blaming the victim results from the common presump-
tion that because this is a just world, people get what
they deserve.
SUMMING UP: What Are the Cognitive Sources
of Prejudice?
268 Part Three Social Relations
Those who expected him to be unfriendly went out of their way to
be friendly, and their friendly behavior elicited a warm response. But
unlike the positively biased students, their expecting an unfriendly per-
son led them to attribute this reciprocal friendliness to their own “kid-
gloves” treatment of him. They afterward expressed more mistrust and
dislike for the person and rated his behavior as less friendly. Despite
their partner’s actual friendliness, the negative bias induced these stu-
dents to “see” hostilities lurking beneath his “forced smiles.” They
would never have seen it if they hadn’t believed it.
We do notice information that is strikingly inconsistent with a stereo-
type, but even that information has less impact than we might expect.
When we focus on an atypical example, we can salvage the stereotype by
splitting off a new category (Brewer & Gaertner, 2004; Hewstone, 1994;
Kunda & Oleson, 1995, 1997). The positive image that British school-
children form of their friendly school police officers (whom they perceive
as a special category) doesn’t improve their image of police officers in
general (Hewstone et al., 1992). This subtyping—seeing people who devi-
ate as exceptions—helps maintain the stereotype that police officers are
unfriendly and dangerous. High-prejudice people tend to subtype positive
outgroup members (seeing them as atypical exceptions); low-prejudice
people more often subtype negative outgroup members (Riek et al., 2013).
A different way to accommodate the inconsistent information is to
form a new stereotype for those who don’t fit. Recognizing that the
stereotype does not apply for everyone in the category, homeowners
who have “desirable” Black neighbors can form a new and different
stereotype of “professional, middle-class Blacks.” This subgrouping—
forming a subgroup stereotype—tends to lead to modest change in the stereotype as the
stereotype becomes more differentiated (Richards & Hewstone, 2001). Subtypes are excep-
tions to the group; subgroups are acknowledged as a part of the overall diverse group.
Discrimination’s Impact: The Self-Fulfilling
Prophecy
Attitudes may coincide with the social hierarchy not only as a rationalization for it but also
because discrimination affects its victims. “One’s reputation,” wrote Gordon Allport, “can-
not be hammered, hammered, hammered into one’s head without doing something to one’s
character” (1958, p. 139). If we could snap our fingers and end all discrimination, it would
be naive for the White majority to say to Black people, “The tough times are over, folks!
You can now all be attaché-carrying executives and professionals.” When the oppression
ends, its effects linger, like a societal hangover.
In The Nature of Prejudice, Allport catalogued 15 possible effects of victimization. Allport
believed these reactions were reducible to two basic types—those that involve blaming oneself
(withdrawal, self-hate, aggression against one’s own group) and those that involve blaming
external causes (fighting back, suspiciousness, increased group pride). If victimization takes
a toll—for instance, higher crime rates—people can use the result to justify the discrimina-
tion: “If we let those people in our nice neighborhood, property values will plummet.”
Does discrimination indeed affect its victims? Social beliefs can be self-confirming, as
demonstrated in a clever pair of experiments by Carl Word, Mark Zanna, and Joel Cooper
(1974). In the first experiment, Princeton University White male volunteers interviewed
White and Black research assistants posing as job applicants. When the applicant was
Black, the interviewers sat farther away, ended the interview 25% sooner, and made 50%
more speech errors than when the applicant was White. Imagine being interviewed by
someone who sat at a distance, stammered, and ended the interview rather quickly. Would
it affect your performance or your feelings about the interviewer?
To find out, the researchers conducted a second experiment in which trained interview-
ers treated people as the interviewers in the first experiment had treated either the White
subtyping
Accommodating individuals who
deviate from one’s stereotype
by thinking of them as
“exceptions to the rule.”
subgrouping
Accommodating individuals who
deviate from one’s stereotype
by forming a new stereotype
about this subset of the group.
“It is understandable that the
suppressed people should
develop an intense hostility
towards a culture whose exis-
tence they make possible by
their work, but in whose
wealth they have too small a
share.”
—Sigmund Freud,
The Future of an Illusion, 1927
When people violate our stereotypes, we salvage the ste-
reotype by splitting off a new subgroup stereotype, such as
“senior Olympians.”
©Shih-Hao Liao/123RF
Prejudice Chapter 9 269
or the Black applicants. When videotapes of the interviews were later rated, those who were
treated like the Blacks in the first experiment seemed more nervous and less effective.
Moreover, the interviewees could themselves sense a difference; those treated the way the
Blacks had been treated judged their interviewers to be less adequate and less friendly. The
experimenters concluded that part of “the ‘problem’ of Black performance resides . . .
within the interaction setting itself.” As with other self-fulfilling prophecies, prejudice affects
its targets.
Stereotype Threat
Just being sensitive to prejudice is enough to make us self-conscious when living as a
numerical minority—perhaps as a Black person in a White community or as a White person
in a Black community. As with other circumstances that siphon off our mental energy and
attention, the result can be diminished mental and physical stamina (Inzlicht et al., 2006,
2012). Placed in a situation where others expect you to perform poorly, your anxiety may
also cause you to confirm the belief. I [DM] am a short guy in my mid 70s. When I join
a pickup basketball game with bigger, younger players, I presume that they expect me to
be a detriment to their team, and that tends to undermine my confidence and performance.
Claude Steele and his colleagues call this phenomenon stereotype threat—a self-confirming
apprehension that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype (Steele, 2010; Steele
et al., 2002; see also reducingstereotypethreat.org).
In several experiments, Steven Spencer, Claude Steele, and Diane Quinn (1999) gave a
very difficult math test to men and women students who had similar math backgrounds.
When told that there were no gender differences in test scores and no evaluation of any
group stereotype, the women’s performance consistently equaled the men’s. Told that there
was a gender difference, the women dramatically confirmed the stereotype (Figure 6).
Frustrated by the extremely difficult test questions, they apparently felt added apprehension,
which undermined their performances. For female engineering students, interacting with a
sexist man likewise undermines test performance (Logel et al., 2009). Even before exams,
stereotype threat can also hamper women’s learn-
ing math rules and operations (Rydell et al.,
2010). The same is true for older people, for
whom age-related stereotype threats (and result-
ing underperformance) have appeared across
nearly three dozen studies (Lamont et al., 2015).
Ditto in 19 more experiments which reveal ste-
reotype threat’s influence on immigrants’ perfor-
mance (Appel et al., 2015).
Might racial stereotypes be similarly self-
fulfilling? Steele and Joshua Aronson (1995)
gave difficult verbal abilities tests to Whites and
Blacks. Blacks underperformed Whites only
when taking the tests under conditions high in
stereotype threat. A similar stereotype threat
effect has occurred with Hispanic Americans
(Nadler & Clark, 2011).
Jeff Stone and his colleagues (1999) report
that stereotype threat affects athletic perfor-
mance, too. Blacks did worse than usual when a
golf task was framed as a test of “sports intelli-
gence,” and Whites did worse when it was a test
of “natural athletic ability.” “When people are
reminded of a negative stereotype about them-
selves—‘White men can’t jump’ or ‘Black men
can’t think’—it can adversely affect performance,”
Stone (2000) surmised. The same is true for
“If we foresee evil in our
fellow man, we tend to
provoke it; if good, we elicit it.”
—G. W. Allport,
The Nature of Prejudice, 1958
stereotype threat
A disruptive concern, when
facing a negative stereotype,
that one will be evaluated
based on a negative stereotype.
Unlike self-fulfilling prophecies
that hammer one’s reputation
into one’s self-concept,
stereotype threat situations
have immediate effects.
“Math class is tough!”
—“Teen Talk” Barbie Doll (Later
Removed from the Market)
FIGURE 6
Stereotype Vulnerability and Women’s Math Performance
Steven Spencer, Claude Steele, and Diane Quinn (1999) gave equally capable men
and women a difficult math test. When participants were led to believe there were
gender differences in test scores, women scored lower than men. When the threat
of confirming the stereotype was removed (when gender differences were not
expected), women did just as well as men.
Source: Spencer, S. J., Steele, C. M., & Quinn, D. M. (1999).
Gender di�erence large
when expected
Math score (0 to 100)
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Gender di�erence
not expected
Men
Women
270 Part Three Social Relations
people with disabilities, for whom concern about others’ negative stereotypes can hinder
achievement (Silverman & Cohen, 2014).
If you tell students they are at risk of failure (as is often suggested by minority sup-
port programs), the stereotype may erode their performance, says Steele (1997). It may
cause them to “disidentify” with school and seek self-esteem elsewhere (Figure 7, and
see “The Inside Story, Claude Steele on Stereotype Threat”). Indeed, as African American
students move from eighth to tenth grade, their school performance becomes more
weakly linked to their self-esteem (Osborne, 1995). Moreover, students who are led to
think they have benefited from gender- or race-based preferences in gaining admission
to a college or an academic group tend to underperform those who are led to feel
competent (Brown et al., 2000).
Better, therefore, to challenge students to believe in their potential, observes Steele. In
another of his research team’s experiments, Black students responded well to criticism of
their writing when also told, “I wouldn’t go to the trouble of giving you this feedback if I
didn’t think, based on what I’ve read in your letter, that you are capable of meeting the
higher standard that I mentioned” (Cohen et al., 1999).
“Values affirmation”—getting people to affirm who they are—also helps (Walton, 2014).
A Stanford research team invited African American seventh graders to write about their
most important values several times. Compared to their peers, they earned higher grades
over the next two years (Cohen et al., 2006, 2009). Ensuing studies have extended the
values affirmation effect (such as by getting people to recall times they felt successful or
proud) to populations ranging from female college physics students to soup kitchen clients
(Bowen et al., 2013; Hall et al., 2014; Miyake et al., 2010; Sherman et al., 2013).
How does stereotype threat undermine performance? It does so in three ways (Schmader
et al., 2008):
▯ Stress. fMRI brain scans suggest that the stress of stereotype threat impairs brain
activity associated with mathematical processing and increases activity in areas
associated with emotion processing (Derks et al., 2008; Krendl et al., 2008;
Wraga et al., 2007).
▯ Self-monitoring. Worrying about making mistakes disrupts focused attention
(Keller & Dauenheimer, 2003; Seibt & Forster, 2004).
▯ Suppressing unwanted thoughts and emotions. The effort required to regulate one’s
thinking takes energy and disrupts working memory (Bonnot & Croizet, 2007).
If stereotype threats can disrupt performance, could positive stereotypes enhance it? Margaret
Shih, Todd Pittinsky, and Nalini Ambady (1999) confirmed that possibility. When Asian
American females were asked biographical questions that reminded them of their gender
identity before taking a math test, their performance plunged (compared with a control
group). When similarly reminded of their Asian identity, their performance rose. Negative
Stereotype threat
(Female student
might fail a math test.)
Performance deficits
(Female student does
not do well on math test.)
Disidentification with
stereotyped domain
(Math isn't important
for my future work.)
Cultural stereotypes
(Women do not
do well in math.)
FIGURE 7
Stereotype Threat
Threat from facing a negative
stereotype can produce perfor-
mance deficits and
disidentification.
Prejudice Chapter 9 271
stereotypes disrupt performance, and positive stereotypes, it seems, facilitate performance
(Rydell et al., 2009).
Do Stereotypes Bias Judgments of Individuals?
Yes, stereotypes bias judgments, but here is some good news: First, our stereotypes mostly
reflect (though sometimes distort) reality. As multiculturalism recognizes, people differ—and
can perceive and appreciate those differences. “Stereotype accuracy is one of the largest
effects in all of social psychology,” argues Lee Jussim (2012).
Second, people often evaluate individuals more positively than the individuals’ groups (Miller
& Felicio, 1990). Anne Locksley, Eugene Borgida, and Nancy Brekke found that after
someone knows a person, “stereotypes may have minimal, if any, impact on judgments
about that person” (Borgida et al., 1981; Locksley et al., 1980, 1982). They discovered this
by giving University of Minnesota students anecdotal information about recent incidents in
the life of “Nancy.” In a supposed transcript of a telephone conversation, Nancy told a
friend how she responded to three different situations (for example, being harassed by a
seedy character while shopping). Some of the students read transcripts portraying Nancy
responding assertively (telling the seedy character to leave); others read a report of passive
responses (simply ignoring the character until he finally drifts away). Still other students
received the same information, except that the person was named “Paul” instead of Nancy.
A day later the students predicted how Nancy (or Paul) would respond to other
situations.
Did knowing the person’s gender have any effect on those predictions? None at all.
Expectations of the person’s assertiveness were influenced solely by what the students had
learned about that individual the day before. Even their judgments of masculinity and femi-
ninity were unaffected by knowing the person’s gender. Gender stereotypes had been left
on the shelf; the students evaluated Nancy and Paul as individuals.
Given both general (base-rate) information about a group and trivial but vivid informa-
tion about a particular group member, the vivid information usually overwhelms the effect
of the general information. This is especially so when the person doesn’t fit our image of
Claude Steele on Stereotype Threat
THE inside
STORY
During a committee meeting on campus diversity at the
University of Michigan in the late 1980s, I noticed an inter-
esting fact: At every ability level (as assessed by SAT
scores), minority students were getting lower college
grades than their nonminority counterparts. Soon, Steven
Spencer, Joshua Aronson, and I found that this was a na-
tional phenomenon; it happened at most colleges and it
happened to other groups whose abilities were nega-
tively stereotyped, such as women in advanced math
classes. This underperformance wasn’t caused by group
differences in preparation. It happened at all levels of
preparation (as measured by SATs).
Eventually, we produced this underperformance in the
laboratory by simply having motivated people perform a
difficult task in a domain where their group was negatively
stereotyped. We also found that we could eliminate this
underperformance by making the same task irrelevant to
the stereotype, by removing the “stereotype threat,” as
we had come to call it. This latter finding spawned more
research: figuring out how to reduce stereotype threat
and its ill effects. Through this work, we have gained an
appreciation for two big things: first, the importance of life
context in shaping psychological functioning, and second,
the importance of social identities such as age, race, and
gender in shaping that context.
Claude Steele
Stanford University
Courtesy of Claude Steele
People sometimes maintain
general prejudices (such as
against gays and lesbians) with-
out applying their prejudice to
particular individuals whom they
know and respect, such as Neil
Patrick Harris.
©Tinseltown/Shutterstock
272 Part Three Social Relations
the typical group member (Fein & Hilton, 1992; Lord et al., 1991). For example, imagine
yourself being told how most people in a conformity experiment actually behaved and then
viewing a brief interview with one of the supposed participants. Would you, like the typical
viewer, guess the person’s behavior solely from the interview? Would you ignore the base-
rate information on how most people actually behaved?
People often believe stereotypes, yet ignore them when given personalized, anecdotal
information. Thus, many people believe “politicians are crooks” but “our Senator Jones has
integrity.” No wonder many people have a low opinion of politicians yet usually vote to reelect
their own representatives. These findings resolve a puzzling set of findings considered early in
this chapter. We know that gender stereotypes are strong, yet they have little effect on people’s
judgments of work attributed to a man or a woman. Now we see why. People may have strong
gender stereotypes, but ignore them when judging an individual they meet or learn about.
STRONG STEREOTYPES MATTER
However, stereotypes, when strong, do color our judgments of individuals (Krueger & Roth-
bart, 1988). When researchers had students estimate the heights of individually pictured
men and women, they judged the individual men as taller than the women—even when their
heights were equal, even when they were told that sex didn’t predict height in this sample,
and even when they were offered cash rewards for accuracy (Nelson et al., 1990).
In a follow-up study, University of Michigan students viewed photos of other students
from the university’s engineering and nursing schools, along with descriptions of each
student’s interests (Nelson et al., 1996). Even when informed that the sample contained an
equal number of males and females from each school, a description attached to a female
face was judged more likely to come from a nursing student. Thus, even when a strong
gender stereotype is known to be irrelevant, it has an irresistible force.
Outside the laboratory, strong stereotypes affect everyday experience. For example, men
who endorse “hostile sexism” behave more negatively toward their female partners and
experience less relationship satisfaction (Hammond & Overall, 2013).
STEREOTYPES BIAS INTERPRETATION
Stereotypes also color how we interpret events, note David Dunning and David Sherman
(1997). If people are told, “Some felt the politician’s statements were untrue,” they will
infer that the politician was lying. If told, “Some felt the physicist’s statements were untrue,”
they infer only that the physicist was mistaken. When told two people had an altercation,
people perceive it as a fistfight if told it involved two lumberjacks, but as a verbal spat if
told it involved two marriage counselors. A person concerned about her physical condition
seems vain if she is a model but health conscious if she is a triathlete. Like a prison guid-
ing and constraining its inmates, conclude Dunning and Sherman, the “cognitive prison”
of our stereotypes guides and constrains our impressions.
Sometimes we make judgments or begin interacting with someone with little to go on
but our stereotype. In such cases, stereotypes can strongly bias our interpretations and
memories of people. For example, Charles Bond and his colleagues (1988) found that after
getting to know their patients, White psychiatric nurses put Black and White patients in
physical restraints equally often. But they restrained incoming Black patients more often
than their White counterparts. With little else to go on, stereotypes mattered.
Stereotypes can also operate subtly. In an experiment by John Darley and Paget Gross
(1983), Princeton University students viewed a videotape of a fourth-grade girl, Hannah.
The tape depicted her either in a depressed urban neighborhood, supposedly the child of
lower-class parents, or in an affluent suburban setting, the child of professional parents.
Asked to guess Hannah’s ability level in various subjects, both groups of viewers refused to
use Hannah’s class background to prejudge her ability level; each group rated her ability
level at her grade level.
Two additional groups of Princeton students also viewed a second videotape, showing
Hannah taking an oral achievement test in which she got some questions right and some
wrong. Those who had previously been introduced to professional-class Hannah judged her
Prejudice Chapter 9 273
answers as showing high ability and later recalled her getting most
questions right; those who had met lower-class Hannah judged her
ability as below grade level and recalled her missing almost half
the questions. But remember: The second videotape was identical
for the two groups. So, when stereotypes are strong and the infor-
mation about someone is ambiguous (unlike the cases of Nancy
and Paul), stereotypes can subtly bias our judgments of
individuals.
Finally, we evaluate people more extremely when their behavior
violates our stereotypes (Bettencourt et al., 1997). A woman who
rebukes someone cutting in front of her in a movie line (“Shouldn’t
you go to the end of the line?”) may seem more assertive than a
man who reacts similarly (Manis et al., 1988). Aided by the tes-
timony of social psychologist Susan Fiske and her colleagues
(1991), the U.S. Supreme Court saw such stereotyping at work
when Price Waterhouse, one of the nation’s top accounting firms,
denied Ann Hopkins’s promotion to partner. Among the 88 can-
didates for promotion, Hopkins, the only woman, was number one
in the amount of business she brought in to the company and,
according to testimony, was hardworking and exacting. But others
testified that Hopkins needed a “course at charm school,” where she could learn to “walk
more femininely, talk more femininely, dress more femininely. . . .” After reflecting on the
case and on stereotyping research, the Supreme Court in 1989 decided that encouraging
men, but not women, to be aggressive, is to act “on the basis of gender”:
We sit not to determine whether Ms. Hopkins is nice, but to decide whether the partners
reacted negatively to her personality because she is a woman. . . . An employer who objects
to aggressiveness in women but whose positions require this trait places women in an intoler-
able Catch 22: out of a job if they behave aggressively and out of a job if they don’t.
Assertive or aggressive? Perceptions can be influenced by
gender.
©Hero Images/Getty Images
▯ Prejudice and stereotyping have important conse-
quences, especially when strongly held, when judging
unknown individuals, and when deciding policies re-
garding whole groups.
▯ Once formed, stereotypes tend to perpetuate them-
selves and resist change. They also create their own re-
alities through self-fulfilling prophecies.
▯ Prejudice can also undermine people’s performance
through stereotype threat, by making people apprehen-
sive that others will view them stereotypically.
▯ Stereotypes, especially when strong, can predispose
how we perceive people and interpret events.
SUMMING UP: What Are the Consequences
of Prejudice?
POSTSCRIPT:
Can We Reduce Prejudice?
Social psychologists have been more successful in explaining prejudice than in alleviating
it. Because the waters of prejudice are fed by many streams, no simple remedy exists. Nev-
ertheless, we can now anticipate techniques for reducing prejudice:
▯ If unequal status breeds prejudice, we can seek to create cooperative, equal-status
relationships.
▯ If prejudice rationalizes discriminatory behavior, we can mandate
nondiscrimination.
274 Part Three Social Relations
▯ If social institutions support prejudice, we can pull out those supports (for exam-
ple, with media that model interracial harmony and acceptance of LGBT
individuals).
▯ If outgroups seem more homogeneous than they really are, we can make efforts to
personalize their members.
▯ If our automatic prejudices lead us to feel guilt, we can use that guilt to motivate
ourselves to break the prejudice habit.
Since the end of World War II in 1945, a number of those antidotes have been applied,
and racial, gender, and sexual orientation prejudices have indeed diminished. Social-psycho-
logical research also has helped break down discriminatory barriers. The social psychologist
Susan Fiske (1999), who testified on behalf of Ann Hopkins, the Price Waterhouse execu-
tive denied promotion to partner, later wrote:
We risked a lot by testifying on Ann Hopkins’s behalf, no doubt about it . . . As far as we
knew, no one had ever introduced the social psychology of stereotyping in a gender case
before. . . . If we succeeded, we would get the latest stereotyping research out of the dusty
journals and into the muddy trenches of legal debate, where it might be useful. If we failed,
we might hurt the client, slander social psychology, and damage my reputation as a scientist.
At the time I had no idea that the testimony would eventually make it successfully through
the Supreme Court.
It now remains to be seen whether, during this century, progress will continue, or
whether, as could easily happen in a time of increasing population and competition for
diminishing resources, antagonisms will increase.
©PACIFIC PRESS/Alamy stock photo
Aggression
C H A P T E R
10
What is aggression?
What are some
theories of
aggression?
What are some
influences on
aggression?
How can aggression
be reduced?
Postscript: Reforming
a violent culture
During the past century and into the first part of this century, some 250 wars killed 110 million people, enough to populate a “nation of the dead” with more
than the combined population of France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Fin-
land, Norway, and Sweden. The tolls came not only from the two world wars but
also from genocides, including the 1915 to 1923 genocide of 1 million Armenians by
the Ottoman Empire, the 1937 slaughter of some 250,000 Chinese in Nanking after
its surrender to Japanese troops, the 1.5 million Cambodians murdered between
1975 and 1979, the murder of 1 million in Rwanda in 1994 (Sternberg, 2003), and the
more than one-half million killed in Syria since 2011 (SOHR, 2018). As Hitler’s genocide
of millions of Jews, Stalin’s killing of millions of Russians, Mao’s genocide of millions
“Our behavior toward each other is the strangest, most unpredictable,
and most unaccountable of all the phenomena with which we are
obliged to live. In all of nature, there is nothing so threatening to
humanity as humanity itself.”
—Lewis Thomas, Notes of a Biology Watcher, 1981
276 Part Three Social Relations
of Chinese, and the deaths of millions of Native Americans from the time of Colum-
bus through the nineteenth century make plain, the human potential for extraordi-
nary cruelty crosses cultures and races.
Even outside of war, human beings have an extraordinary capacity for harming one
another. Mass shootings at schools, campuses, and concerts over the past few years
have brought public attention to gun violence. More Americans have been killed by
guns from 1968 to now than died in all of the wars in American history combined
(Jacobson, 2013). In 2016, 17,250 people were murdered in the United States; 130,603
were raped; and an incredible 803,007—three-quarters of a million people—were
shot, stabbed, or assaulted with another weapon (FBI, 2017). These numbers may be
only the tip of the iceberg, because many rapes and assaults go unreported. An
extensive, anonymous survey found that nearly 1 in 5 women in the United States say
they have been sexually assaulted, and 1 out of 4 have been hit, beaten, or slammed
against something by an intimate partner (Black et al., 2011). Worldwide, 30% of women
have experienced violence at the hands of an intimate partner (WHO, 2016).
Less severe aggression is even more common. One study found that 90% of
young couples are verbally aggressive toward each other, including yelling, scream-
ing, and insults (Munoz-Rivas et al., 2007). In a survey of children across 35 countries,
more than 1 out of 10 reported being bullied at school (Craig & Harel, 2004). Half of
Canadian middle- and high-school students said they had been bullied online in the
previous three months. Their experiences included being called names, having
rumors spread about them, or having their private pictures distributed without their
consent (Mishna et al., 2010). Seventy-five percent of children and adolescents have
experienced cyberbullying, defined as intentional and repeated aggression via
e-mail, texts, social networking sites, and other electronic media (Katzer et al., 2009).
Cyberbullying often results in negative outcomes such as depression, fear, drug
abuse, dropping out of school, poor physical health, and suicide—even years after
the bullying occurred (Kowalski et al., 2014; Ortega et al., 2012; Sigurdson et al., 2014).
Are we like the mythical Minotaur—half human, half beast? What explains that
midsummer day in 1941 when the non-Jewish half of the Polish town of Jebwabne
murdered the other half in a macabre frenzy of violence, leaving only a dozen or
so survivors among the 1,600 Jews (Gross, 2001)? Why would a college student
broadcast his gay roommate’s sexual encounter, driving him to suicide, as happened
at Rutgers University in 2010? Why would middle school students bully 13-year-old
Hailee Lamberth so cruelly and relentlessly (“Why don’t you die?”) that she commit-
ted suicide in December 2013 (Wagner, 2014)? Why, in 2011, would a gunman in
peaceful Norway bomb government buildings and then shoot and kill 69 people,
mostly teenagers? Why would a gunman kill 58 concert-goers in Las Vegas in 2017?
What explains such monstrous behavior? In this chapter we ask these questions:
• Is aggression biologically predisposed, or do we learn it?
• What circumstances prompt hostile outbursts?
• Do the media influence aggression?
• How might we reduce aggression?
First, however, we need to clarify the term “aggression.”
“Every gun that is made, every
warship launched, every
rocket fired signifies, in the fi-
nal sense, a theft from those
who hunger and are not fed,
those who are cold and are
not clothed.”
—President Dwight Eisenhower,
Speech to the American Society
of Newspaper Editors, 1953
cyberbullying
Bullying, harassing, or
threatening someone using
electronic communication such
as texting, online social
networks, or e-mail.
“Is there any way of delivering
mankind from the menace of
war?”
—Albert Einstein,
Letter to Sigmund Freud, 1932
Aggression Chapter 10 277
WHAT IS AGGRESSION?
Define aggression and describe its different forms.
The original Thugs, members of a sect in northern India, were aggressing when between 1550
and 1850 they strangled more than 2 million people, which they claimed to do in the service
of the goddess Kali. But people also use “aggressive” to describe a dynamic salesperson. Social
psychologists distinguish such self-assured, energetic, go-getting behavior as the salesperson’s
from behavior that hurts, harms, or destroys. The former is assertiveness, the latter aggression.
To a social psychologist, aggression is physical or verbal behavior intended to cause
harm. This definition excludes unintentional harm, such as auto accidents or sidewalk col-
lisions; it also excludes actions that may involve pain as an unavoidable side effect of helping
someone, such as dental treatments or—in the extreme—assisted suicide.
The definition of aggression includes kicks and slaps, threats and insults, gossip or snide
“digs,” and “trolling” behavior such as online name-calling and harassment (Cheng et al.,
2017). It includes ugly confrontational rudeness, such as giving the finger to another driver or
yelling at someone who is walking too slow (Park et al., 2014). It includes decisions during
experiments about how much to hurt someone, such as how much electric shock to impose.
It also includes destroying property, lying, and other behavior that aims to hurt. As these
examples illustrate, aggression includes both physical aggression (hurting someone’s body) and
social aggression (such as bullying and cyberbullying, insults, harmful gossip, or social exclu-
sion that hurts feelings [Dehue et al., 2008]). Social aggression can have serious consequences,
with victims suffering from depression and sometimes—as has happened in several well-publi-
cized cases—committing suicide. Dan Olweus and Kyrre Breivik (2013), who research bullying,
describe the consequences of bullying as “the opposite of well-being.”
However, the social psychology definition of aggression does not include microaggres-
sions, usually defined as words or actions that unintentionally convey prejudice toward
marginalized groups; to fit the definition aggression must be intentional. For that reason
and others, some have recommended abandoning the term “microaggressions” and replac-
ing it with another term that better captures their unintentional nature, such as “inadvertent
racial slights” (Lilienfeld, 2017).
Psychologists also make a distinction between hostile aggression (which springs from anger
and aims to injure) and instrumental aggression (which aims to injure, too—but is committed
in the pursuit of another goal). Both physical and social aggression can be either hostile or
instrumental. For example, bullying can be hostile (one teen is angry at another for stealing
her boyfriend) or instrumental (a high school student believes she can become popular by
rejecting an unpopular girl [Juvonen & Graham, 2014; Prinstein & Cillessen, 2003]).
Most terrorism is instrumental aggression. “What nearly all suicide terrorist campaigns
have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal,” concludes Robert Pape (2003) after
studying all suicide bombings from 1980 to 2001. That goal is “to compel liberal democracies
to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to
be their homeland.” Terrorism is rarely committed by someone with a
mental illness, noted Arie Kruglanski and his colleagues (2009); instead,
terrorists seek personal significance through, for example, attaining hero
or martyr status. Terrorism is also a strategic tool used during conflict.
In explaining the aim of the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden noted that
for a cost of only $500,000 they inflicted $500 billion worth of damage
to the American economy (Zakaria, 2008).
Most wars are instrumental aggression. In 2003, American and Brit-
ish leaders justified attacking Iraq not as a hostile effort to kill Iraqis
but as an instrumental act of liberation and of self-defense against pre-
sumed weapons of mass destruction. Adolescents who bully others—
either verbally or physically—are also engaged in instrumental aggression,
because they often seek to demonstrate their dominance and high sta-
tus. In the strange hierarchy of adolescence, being mean and disliked
can sometimes make you popular and revered (Salmivalli, 2009).
aggression
Physical or verbal behavior
intended to hurt someone. In
laboratory experiments, this
might mean delivering electric
shocks or saying something
likely to hurt another’s feelings.
physical aggression
Hurting someone else’s body.
social aggression
Hurting someone else’s
feelings or threatening their
relationships. Sometimes called
relational aggression, it includes
cyberbullying and some forms
of in-person bullying.
hostile aggression
Aggression that springs from
anger; its goal is to injure.
instrumental aggression
Aggression that aims to injure,
but only as a means to some
other end.
Because it is intended to hurt, online bullying is aggression
even though its harm is emotional rather than physical.
©oliveromg/Shutterstock
278 Part Three Social Relations
Most murders are hostile aggression. Approximately half erupt from arguments, and others
result from romantic triangles or from brawls that involve the influence of alcohol or drugs
(Ash, 1999). Such murders are impulsive, emotional outbursts, which helps explain why data
from 110 nations show that a death penalty has not resulted in fewer homicides (Costanzo,
1998; Wilkes, 1987). Some murders and many other violent acts of retribution and sexual
coercion, however, are instrumental (Felson, 2000). Most of Chicago’s more than 1,000 murders
carried out by organized crime during the prohibition era and the years following were cool and
calculated instrumental aggression intended for a specific purpose such as eliminating a rival.
WHAT ARE SOME THEORIES
OF AGGRESSION?
Understand and evaluate the important theories
of aggression.
In analyzing the causes of aggression, social psychologists have focused on three big ideas:
biological influences, frustration, and learned behavior.
Aggression as a Biological Phenomenon
Philosophers have debated whether our human nature is fundamentally that of a benign,
contented, “noble savage” or that of a brute. The first view, argued by the eighteenth-century
French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), blames society, not human nature,
for social evils. The second idea, associated with the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes
(1588–1679), credits society for restraining the human brute. In the twentieth century, the
“brutish” view—that aggressive drive is inborn and thus inevitable—was argued by Sigmund
Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, in Vienna, and Konrad Lorenz, an animal behavior
expert, in Germany.
INSTINCTIVE BEHAVIOR AND EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY
Freud speculated that human aggression springs from a self-destructive impulse. It redirects
toward others the energy of a primitive death urge (the “death instinct”). Lorenz, an animal
behavior expert, saw aggression as adaptive rather than self-destructive. The two agreed that
aggressive energy is instinctive (innate, unlearned, and universal). If not discharged, it
supposedly builds up until it explodes or until an appropriate stimulus “releases” it, like a
mouse releasing a mousetrap.
The idea that aggression is an instinct collapsed as the list of supposed human instincts
grew to include nearly every conceivable human behavior. Nearly 6,000 supposed instincts
were enumerated in one 1924 survey of social science books (Barash, 1979). The social
scientists had tried to explain social behavior by naming it. It’s tempting to play this
explaining-by-naming game: “Why do sheep stay together?” “Because of their herd
instinct.” “How do you know they have a herd instinct?” “Just look at them: They’re
always together!”
The idea that aggression is instinctive also fails to account for the variations in aggressive-
ness from person to person and culture to culture. How would a shared human instinct for
aggression explain the difference between the peaceful Iroquois before White invaders came
and the hostile Iroquois after the invasion (Hornstein, 1976)? Although aggression is biologi-
cally influenced, the human propensity to aggress does not qualify as instinctive behavior.
However, aggression is sometimes rooted in basic evolutionary impulses. Throughout
much of human history, men especially have found aggression adaptive, noted evolutionary
psychologists such as John Archer (2006) and Francis McAndrew (2009). Purposeful
aggression improved the odds of survival and reproduction. The losers, noted McAndrew,
“ran the risk of genetic annihilation.”
Humanity has armed its
capacity for destruction without
comparably arming its capacity
for the inhibition of aggression.
instinctive behavior
An innate, unlearned behavior
pattern exhibited by all
members of a species.
Aggression Chapter 10 279
Mating-related aggression often occurs when males are competing
with other males. In one study, men primed to think about mating
delivered louder and longer bursts of painful noise against another man
who provoked them. Evolutionary psychologists also posit a “selfish
gene” theory of the relationship between genetic relatedness and aggres-
sion, including the unfortunate statistic that men are much more likely
to harm stepchildren than their genetic children (Archer, 2013).
Men may also become aggressive when their social status is chal-
lenged. “Violence committed against the right people at the right
time was a ticket to social success,” McAndrew observes. Consider
professional basketball player Charles Barkley, who was drinking in
a bar in 1997 when a man threw a glass of water at him. Barkley
promptly hurled the man through a plate-glass window—even though
Barkley was not hurt by the water, even though the man might have
retaliated, and even though Barkley was arrested within minutes of
the assault. Nevertheless, witnesses praised Barkley in news reports,
seemingly impressed by his aggression. When Barkley was asked if
he regretted throwing the man through the window, he replied, “I regret we weren’t on a
higher floor” (Griskevicius et al., 2009).
Apparently, Barkley is not an isolated example. Across three experiments, college men
motivated to increase their status were more aggressive toward others in face-to-face con-
frontations (Griskevicius et al., 2009). Status-based aggression also helps explain why
aggression is highest during adolescence and early adulthood, when the competition for
status and mates is the most intense. Although violence is less rewarded than it once was,
young men scuffling for status and mates are still very much in evidence at many bars and
campuses around the world. Sometimes that struggle for status is taken to extremes; as Jill
Filipovic (2017) writes, “Another mass shooting in America, another round of questions:
Did he have a political agenda? Was he mentally ill? . . . A question we never ask: Was the
shooter a man? The answer is always the same.” Ninety-eight percent of mass shooters have
been male, a 24 to 1 ratio (Stone, 2015).
NEURAL INFLUENCES
Because aggression is a complex behavior, no one spot in the brain controls it. But researchers
have found brain neural systems in both animals and humans that facilitate aggression. When
the scientists activate these brain areas, hostility increases; when they deactivate them, hostil-
ity decreases. Docile animals can thus be provoked into rage, and raging animals into submis-
sion, usually by stimulating the hypothalamus (Falkner et al., 2016; Falkner & Lin, 2014).
In one experiment, researchers placed an electrode in an aggression-inhibiting area of a
domineering monkey’s brain. A smaller monkey, given a button that activated the electrode,
learned to push it every time the tyrant monkey became intimidating. Brain activation works
with humans, too. After receiving painless electrical stimulation in her amygdala (a brain
core area involved with emotion), one woman became enraged and smashed her guitar
against the wall, barely missing her psychiatrist’s head (Moyer, 1976, 1983).
Does this mean that violent people’s brains are in some way abnormal? To find out,
Adrian Raine and his colleagues (1998, 2000, 2005, 2008) used brain scans to measure
brain activity in murderers and to measure the amount of gray matter in men with antisocial
conduct disorder. They found that the prefrontal cortex, which acts like an emergency brake
on deeper brain areas involved in aggressive behavior, was 14% less active than normal in
murderers (excluding those who had been abused by their parents) and 15% smaller in the
antisocial men. Another study found that more aggressive and violent men had smaller
amygdalas (Pardini et al., 2014). As other studies of murderers and death-row inmates con-
firm, abnormal brains can contribute to abnormally aggressive behavior (Davidson et al.,
2000; Lewis, 1998; Pincus, 2001). Situational factors can also play a role: Sleep deprivation
reduces activity in the prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain responsible for self-control. In
aggression-prone individuals, poor sleep can lead to violent and aggressive behavior
( Kamphuis et al., 2012). Even in a sample of 425 normal German college students, those
Male aggression can be heightened in the context of dating
and mating.
©Valua Vitaly/Shutterstock
280 Part Three Social Relations
who slept for fewer hours were more physically and verbally aggres-
sive (Randler & Vollmer, 2013).
What about mental illness? When news of a mass shooting
breaks, politicians often blame mental illness (“Mental-health
reform is the critical ingredient to making sure that we can try
and prevent” mass shootings, U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan
said in 2017 [Fuller, 2017]). In fact, being young, male, or drunk
is a better predictor of being violent than being mentally ill
(Corrigan et al., 2005; Metzl & MacLeish, 2014), and 78% of
mass shooters are not mentally ill (Stone, 2015). If someone
magically cured schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression
overnight, violent crime in the U.S. would fall by only 4%,
according to Duke University professor Jeffrey Swanson (Swan-
son, 2016). People with mental illnesses are more likely to be
the victims of violence than be the perpetrators (Brekke et al.,
2001).
GENETIC INFLUENCES
Heredity influences the neural system’s sensitivity to aggressive cues. It has long been
known that animals can be bred for aggressiveness. Sometimes this is done for practical
purposes (the breeding of fighting cocks). Sometimes breeding is done for research. Finnish
psychologist Kirsti Lagerspetz (1979) took normal albino mice and bred the most aggressive
ones together; she did the same with the least aggressive ones. After repeating the procedure
for 26 generations, she had one set of fierce mice and one set of placid mice.
Aggressiveness also varies among individuals (Asher, 1987; Bettencourt et al., 2006;
Denson et al., 2006; Olweus, 1979). Our temperaments—how intense and reactive we are—
are partly brought with us into the world, influenced by our sympathetic nervous system’s
reactivity (Kagan, 1989; Wilkowski & Robinson, 2008). A person’s temperament, observed
in infancy, usually endures (Larsen & Diener, 1987; Wilson & Matheny, 1986). A 3-year-old
with low self-control is more vulnerable to substance abuse and arrest by age 32 (Moffitt
et al., 2011). A child who is nonaggressive at age 8 will very likely still be a nonaggressive
person at age 48 (Huesmann et al., 2003). Thus, identical twins, when asked separately,
are more likely than fraternal twins to agree on whether they have “a violent temper” or
have gotten into fights (Rowe et al., 1999; Rushton et al., 1986). Of convicted criminals
who are twins, fully half of their identical twins (but only one in five fraternal twins) also
have criminal records (Raine, 1993, 2008).
In a study examining 12.5 million residents of Sweden, those with a genetic sibling
convicted of a violent crime were 4 times as likely to be convicted themselves. Rates were
much lower for adopted siblings, suggesting a strong genetic component and a more modest
environmental influence (Frisell et al., 2011). Recent research has identified a specific gene
(MAOA-L) linked to aggression; some even call it the “warrior gene” or the “violence gene.”
Among 900 criminals in Finland, those with the gene were 13 times more likely to have
repeatedly committed violent crimes, explaining up to 10% of severe violent crime in the
country (Tiihonen et al., 2015). In several lab studies, people with the gene were more likely
to act aggressively when provoked (Ficks & Waldman, 2014; McDermott et al., 2009).
Long-term studies following several hundred New Zealand children reveal that a recipe for
aggressive behavior combines the MAOA-L gene with childhood maltreatment (Caspi et al.,
2002; Moffitt et al., 2003). Neither “bad” genes nor a “bad” environment alone predispose
later aggressiveness and antisocial behavior; rather, genes predispose some children to be
more sensitive and responsive to maltreatment. Nature and nurture interact.
BIOCHEMICAL INFLUENCES
Blood chemistry also influences neural sensitivity to aggressive stimulation.
ALCOHOL Both laboratory experiments and police data indicate that alcohol unleashes
aggression when people are provoked (Bushman, 1993; Taylor & Chermack, 1993; Testa,
Another reason to get enough sleep: Aggressive people are
often tired people.
©Lorena Fernandez/Shutterstock
Aggression Chapter 10 281
2002). A huge analysis of studies confirmed that alcohol consumption is
associated with higher levels of aggression, especially among men (Duke
et al., 2018). Consider the following:
▯ When asked to think back on relationship conflicts, intoxicated
people administer stronger shocks and feel angrier than do sober
people during lab experiments (MacDonald et al., 2000).
▯ College students primed to think about alcohol responded more
aggressively to ambiguous insults (Pedersen et al., 2014). Appar-
ently, alcohol led to interpreting neutral statements as hostile.
▯ Forty percent of all violent crimes in the U.S., and 50% of murders
worldwide involve alcohol (Kuhns et al., 2014). Thirty-seven percent
of U.S. rapes and sexual assaults involved alcohol (NCADD, 2014).
States with more restrictive laws for alcohol sales also have lower
rates of alcohol-involved murder (Naimi et al., 2017).
▯ College students followed for two months using electronic diaries
showed a clear pattern: Those who drank alcohol were more likely
to act aggressively toward their dating partners. With each drink,
rates of abuse went up (Moore et al., 2011).
▯ Heavy men who drank alcohol were significantly more aggressive
after drinking alcohol, but alcohol had little effect on women’s or
smaller men’s aggression. Alcohol, note the researchers, seemed to
encourage “heavy men to ‘throw their weight around’ and intimidate
others by behaving aggressively” (DeWall et al., 2010). Apparently,
people really are wise to avoid the “big, drunk guy” in the bar.
Alcohol enhances aggressiveness by reducing people’s self-awareness, by focusing their
attention on a provocation, and by people’s mentally associating alcohol with aggression
(Bartholow & Heinz, 2006; Giancola & Corman, 2007; Ito et al., 1996). Alcohol also
predisposes people to interpret ambiguous acts (such as a bump in a crowd) as provocations
(Begue et al., 2010). Alcohol deindividuates, and it disinhibits.
TESTOSTERONE Hormonal influences appear to be much stronger in other animals
than in humans. But human aggressiveness does correlate with the male sex hormone
testosterone. Consider the following:
▯ Drugs that diminish testosterone levels in violent human males will subdue their
aggressive tendencies.
▯ After men reach age 25, their testosterone levels and rates of violent crime
decrease together.
▯ Testosterone levels are higher among prisoners convicted of planned and unpro-
voked violent crimes compared with those convicted of nonviolent crimes (Dabbs,
1992; Dabbs et al., 1995, 1997, 2001).
▯ Among the normal range of boys and men, those with high testosterone levels are
more prone to delinquency, hard drug use, and aggressive responses to provocation
(Archer, 1991; Barzman et al., 2013).
▯ Men high in dominance or low in self-control who received an administration of
testosterone became more aggressive after being provoked (Carré et al., 2017).
▯ College students reporting higher levels of anger after being ostracized had higher
levels of testosterone in their saliva (Peterson & Harmon-Jones, 2012).
▯ After handling a gun, men’s testosterone levels rise; and the more their testosterone
rises, the more aggressive they are toward others (Klinesmith et al., 2006).
▯ People with brain structures indicative of greater testosterone exposure were more
aggressive from childhood to adulthood (Nguyen et al., 2016).
POOR DIET When British researcher Bernard Gesch first tried to study the effect of diet
on aggression, he stood in front of hundreds of inmates at an English prison—but no matter
Some violent sex offenders,
wishing to free themselves of
persistent, damaging impulses
and to reduce their prison
terms, have requested
castration. Should their
requests be granted? If so, and
if they are deemed no longer at
risk to commit sexual violence,
should their prison terms be
reduced or eliminated?
“We could avoid two-thirds of
all crime simply by putting all
able-bodied young men in
cryogenic sleep from the age
of 12 through 28.”
—David Lykken,
The Antisocial Personalities, 1995
Alcohol and sexual assault. One in five college-age
women experiences a sexual assault, and many of
these crimes involve alcohol.
©ZUMA Press Inc/Alamy Stock Photo
282 Part Three Social Relations
how loudly he talked, none of them would lis-
ten. Finally, he talked privately to the “daddy”—
the inmates’ “tough guy” leader—and 231
inmates signed on to receive nutritional supple-
ments or a placebo. Prisoners who got the extra
nutrition were involved in 35% fewer violent
incidents (Gesch et al., 2002; Zaalberg et al.,
2010). Such programs may eventually help peo-
ple outside of prison as well, because many
people have diets deficient in important nutri-
ents, such as omega-3 fatty acids (found in fish
and important for brain function) and calcium
(which guards against impulsivity).
In another study, researchers surveyed Boston
public high school students about their diets
and their aggressive or violent actions. Those
who drank more than five cans of nondiet soda
a week were more likely to have been violent
toward peers, siblings, or dating partners and
more likely to have carried a weapon, such as a
gun or knife. This was true even after the
researchers accounted for eight other possible
factors (Solnick & Hemenway, 2012). Another correlational study found that men and
women who consumed more trans fat—also known as hydrogenated oils—were more aggres-
sive, even after adjusting for third factors (Golomb et al., 2012). Thus, perhaps surprisingly,
there may have been at least some truth to the classic “Twinkie Defense,” in which an
accused murderer’s attorneys argued he had been eating a junk food diet of Twinkies and
Coca-Cola. The upshot: To lower aggression, eat a diet high in omega-3 fatty acids, low in
trans fat, and without sweetened drinks.
BIOLOGY AND BEHAVIOR INTERACT The traffic between biology and behavior flows
both ways. For example, higher levels of testosterone may cause dominant and aggressive
behavior, but dominant and aggressive behavior can also lead to higher testosterone levels
(Mazur & Booth, 1998). After a World Cup soccer match or a big basketball game between
archrivals, testosterone levels rise in the winning fans and fall in the losing fans (Bernhardt
et al., 1998). Similar results occurred among men who voted for the winning U.S. presidential
candidate in 2008 (Barack Obama) versus the losing candidate (John McCain) (Stanton
et al., 2009). The phenomenon also occurs in the laboratory, where socially anxious men
exhibit a pronounced drop in their testosterone level after losing a rigged face-to-face com-
petition (Maner et al., 2008). Testosterone surges, plus celebration-related drinking, probably
explain the finding of Cardiff University researchers that fans of winning rather than losing
soccer and rugby teams commit more postgame assaults (Sivarajasingam et al., 2005).
So, neural, genetic, and biochemical influences predispose some people to react aggressively
to conflict and provocation. But is aggression so much a part of human nature that it makes
peace unattainable? The American Psychological Association and the International Council of
Psychologists endorse a statement on violence developed by scientists from a dozen nations
(Adams, 1991): “It is scientifically incorrect [to say that] war or any other violent behavior is
genetically programmed into our human nature [or that] war is caused by ‘instinct’ or any
single motivation.” Thus, there are, as we will see, ways to reduce human aggression.
Aggression as a Response to Frustration
It is a warm evening. Tired and thirsty after two hours of studying, you borrow some change
from a friend and head for the nearest soft-drink machine. As the machine devours the
change, you can almost taste the cold, refreshing cola. But when you push the button,
nothing happens. You push it again. Then you flip the coin return button. Still nothing.
Again, you hit the buttons. You slam the machine. Alas, no money and no drink. You
Young, male, and restless. In the 2011 riots that swept English cities, those arrested
overwhelmingly shared one genetic characteristic—a Y chromosome—and were
testosterone-fueled teens or people in their early 20s (The Guardian, 2011).
©Matt Dunham/AP Images
Aggression Chapter 10 283
stomp back to your studies, empty-handed and shortchanged.
Should your roommate beware? Are you now more likely to say
or do something hurtful?
One of the first psychological theories of aggression, the popular
frustration-aggression theory, answered yes (Dollard et al., 1939).
Frustration is anything (such as the malfunctioning vending machine)
that blocks us from attaining a goal. Frustration grows when our
motivation to achieve a goal is very strong, when we expected grati-
fication, and when the blocking is complete. When Rupert Brown
and his colleagues (2001) surveyed British ferry passengers heading
to France, they found more aggressive attitudes on a day when
French fishing boats blockaded the port, preventing their travel.
Blocked from obtaining their goal, the passengers became more likely
(in responding to various vignettes) to agree with an insult toward a
French person who had spilled coffee. College students who were
frustrated by losing a multiplayer video soccer game blasted their
opponents with longer and louder bursts of painful noise (Breuer
et al., 2014). Cyberbullying is often rooted in frustration, such as after
a breakup. Some cyberbullies direct their aggression against the per-
son now dating their ex-partner. One woman described her experi-
ence this way: “A girl was upset that I was dating her ex-boyfriend. She would harass me with
text messages telling me I was a bad friend and a slut” (Rafferty & Vander Ven, 2014).
The aggressive energy need not explode directly against its source. Most people learn to
inhibit direct retaliation, especially when others might disapprove or punish; instead, we
displace, or redirect, our hostilities to safer targets. Displacement occurs in an old anecdote
about a man who, humiliated by his boss, berates his wife, who yells at their son, who kicks
the dog, which bites the mail carrier (who goes home and berates his wife . . .). In experi-
ments and in real life, displaced aggression is most likely when the target shares some
similarity to the instigator and does some minor irritating act that unleashes the displaced
aggression (Marcus-Newhall et al., 2000; Miller et al., 2003; Pedersen et al., 2000, 2008).
When someone is harboring anger from a prior provocation, even a trivial offense may
elicit an explosive overreaction (as you may realize if you have ever yelled at your roommate
after losing money in a malfunctioning vending machine).
In one experiment, Eduardo Vasquez and his co-researchers (2005) provoked some
University of Southern California students (but not others) by having an experimenter insult
their performance on an anagram-solving test. Shortly afterward, the students had to decide
how long another supposed student should be required to immerse his or her hand in pain-
ful cold water while completing a task. When the supposed student committed a trivial
offense—by giving a mild insult—the previously provoked participants responded punitively,
by recommending a longer cold-water treatment than did the unprovoked participants. This
phenomenon of displaced aggression helps us understand, noted Vasquez, why a previously
provoked and still-angry person might respond to mild highway offenses with road rage, or
react to spousal criticism with spouse abuse. It also helps explain why frustrated Major
League Baseball pitchers, in one analysis of nearly 5 million at-bats from 74,197 games
since 1960, were most likely to hit batters after the batter hit a home run the last time at
bat, or after the previous batter did so (Timmerman, 2007).
Outgroup targets are especially vulnerable to displaced aggression (Pedersen et al.,
2008). Opposites attack. Various commentators have observed that the understandably
intense American anger over 9/11 contributed to the eagerness to attack Iraq. Americans
were looking for an outlet for their rage and found one in an evil tyrant, Saddam Hussein,
who was once their ally. The actual reason for the Iraq war, noted Thomas Friedman
(2003), “was that after 9/11 America needed to hit someone in the Arab-Muslim world. . . .
We hit Saddam for one simple reason: because we could, and because he deserved it, and
because he was right in the heart of that world.” One of the war’s advocates, Vice President
Richard Cheney (2003), seemed to concur. When asked why most others in the world
disagreed with America’s war, he replied, “They didn’t experience 9/11.”
frustration-aggression
theory
The theory that frustration
triggers a readiness to aggress.
frustration
The blocking of goal-directed
behavior.
displacement
The redirection of aggression to
a target other than the source of
the frustration. Generally, the
new target is a safer or more
socially acceptable target.
Note that frustration-aggression
theory is designed to explain
hostile aggression, not
instrumental aggression.
Frustration-triggered aggression sometimes appears as road rage.
Road rage is fed by perceptions of hostile intentions from other
drivers, as when one is cut off in traffic (Britt & Garrity, 2006).
©O. Burriel/Science Source
284 Part Three Social Relations
FRUSTRATION-AGGRESSION THEORY REVISED
Laboratory tests of the frustration-aggression theory have produced mixed results: Sometimes
frustration increased aggressiveness, sometimes not. For example, if the frustration was
understandable—if, as in one experiment, a confederate disrupted a group’s problem solving
because his hearing aid malfunctioned (rather than just because he wasn’t paying atten-
tion)—frustration led to irritation, not aggression (Burnstein & Worchel, 1962).
Leonard Berkowitz (1978, 1989) realized that the original theory overstated the frustration-
aggression connection, so he revised it. Berkowitz theorized that frustration produces aggres-
sion only when people become upset—for instance, when someone who frustrated them could
have chosen to act otherwise, leading to feelings of anger (Averill, 1983; Weiner, 1981). For
example, many people are frustrated in their goals while playing sports, but they usually aren’t
aggressive unless they are angered by a deliberate, unfair act by an opposing player.
A frustrated person is especially likely to lash out when aggressive cues pull the cork,
releasing bottled-up anger (Figure 1). Sometimes the cork will blow without such cues. But,
as we will see, cues associated with aggression amplify aggression (Carlson et al., 1990).
RELATIVE DEPRIVATION
Frustration is not only caused by complete deprivation; more often, frustration arises from
the gap between expectations and attainments. The most economically frustrated people may
not be the impoverished residents of African shantytowns, who might know no other way
of life, but middle-class Americans who aspire to be rich—or at least upper-middle class.
When your expectations are fulfilled by your attainments, and when your desires are
reachable at your income, you feel satisfied rather than frustrated (Solberg et al., 2002).
But when being rich feels just out of reach, aggression might be the result.
Such feelings, called relative deprivation, explain why happiness tends to be lower and
crime rates higher in countries with more income inequality (a larger gap between the rich
and poor [Coccia, 2018]). The greater the income gap, the higher the sense that others are
getting something you’re not (Cheung & Lucas, 2016). British low-income boys with rich
neighbors—those most aware of what they were missing—were more aggressive than boys
surrounded by concentrated poverty (Odgers et al., 2015). Among college students, those
who reported experiencing stress during an economic recession were more aggressive, and
those randomly assigned to watch a news story about the poor economy reported feeling
more hostile (Barlett & Anderson, 2014). People who saw themselves as lower in socioeco-
nomic status—whether they actually were or not—were more aggressive, as were those assigned
to feel they were relatively deprived compared to others (Greitemeyer & Sagioglou, 2016).
The term relative deprivation was coined by researchers studying the satisfaction felt by
American soldiers in World War II (Merton & Kitt, 1950; Stouffer et al., 1949). Ironically,
those in the Air Corps felt more frustrated about their own rate of promotion than those
in the military police, for whom promotions were actually slower. The Air Corps’ promotion
rate was rapid, and most Air Corps personnel probably perceived themselves as better than
the average Air Corps member (the self-serving bias). Thus, their aspirations soared higher
than their achievements. The result? Frustration.
One possible source of such frustration today is the affluence depicted in television
programs and commercials. In cultures where television is a universal appliance, it helps turn
absolute deprivation (lacking what others have) into relative deprivation (feeling deprived).
Karen Hennigan and her co-workers (1982) analyzed crime rates in American cities around
the time television was introduced. In 34 cities where television ownership became widespread
relative deprivation
The perception that one is less
well off than others with whom
one compares oneself.
“Comparison is the thief
of joy.”
—Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919)
“A house may be large or
small; as long as the surround-
ing houses are equally small,
it satisfies all social demands
for a dwelling. But let a palace
arise beside the little house,
and it shrinks from a little
house into a hut.”
—Karl Marx,
“Wage Labor and Capital,” 1847
FIGURE 1
A Simplified Synopsis of
Leonard Berkowitz’s
Revised Frustration-
Aggression Theory
Unjustified
frustration
Anger
+
Aggression
cues
Aggression
Aggression Chapter 10 285
in 1951, the 1951 larceny theft rate (for crimes such as shoplifting and bicycle stealing) took
an observable jump. In 34 other cities, where a government freeze had delayed the introduc-
tion of television until 1955, a similar jump in the theft rate occurred—in 1955.
Aggression as Learned Social Behavior
Theories of aggression based on instinct and frustration assume that hostile urges erupt
from inner emotions, which naturally “push” aggression from within. Social psychologists
also contend that learning “pulls” aggression out of us.
THE REWARDS OF AGGRESSION
Aggression as revenge can feel satisfying: most people report feeling good after they stick
pins in a voodoo doll representing a hated person (Chester et al., 2017). There are other
rewards as well; by experience and by observing others, we learn that aggression often pays.
A child who successfully intimidates other children by being aggressive will likely become
increasingly aggressive (Patterson et al., 1967). Aggressive hockey players—the ones sent
most often to the penalty box for rough play—score more goals than nonaggressive players
(McCarthy & Kelly, 1978a,b). Canadian teenage hockey players whose fathers applaud
physically aggressive play show the most aggressive attitudes and style of play (Ennis &
Zanna, 1991). In the waters off Somalia, paying ransom to hijackers of ships—a reported
$150 million in 2008 (BBC, 2008)—rewarded the pirates, thus fueling further hijackings. In
such cases, aggression is instrumental in achieving certain rewards.
The same is true of terrorist acts, which enable powerless people to garner widespread
attention. “The primary targets of suicide-bombing attacks are not those who are injured
but those who are made to witness it through media coverage,” noted Paul Marsden and
Sharon Attia (2005). Terrorism’s purpose is, with the help of media amplification, to ter-
rorize. “Kill one, frighten ten thousand,” asserts an ancient Chinese proverb. Deprived of
what former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher called “the oxygen of publicity,”
terrorism would surely diminish, concluded Jeffrey Rubin (1986). It’s like the 1970s inci-
dents of naked spectators “streaking” onto football fields for a few seconds of television
exposure. After the networks decided not to air the incidents, the phenomenon ended.
OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING
Albert Bandura (1997) proposed a social learning theory of aggression. He believes that we
learn aggression not only by experiencing its payoffs but also by observing others. As with
most social behaviors, we acquire aggression by watching others act and noting the
consequences.
Picture this scene from one of Bandura’s experiments (Bandura et al., 1961). A preschool
child is put to work on an interesting art activity. An adult is in another part of the room,
where there are Tinker Toys, a mallet, and a big, inflated “Bobo” doll. After a minute of
working with the Tinker Toys, the adult gets up and for almost 10 minutes attacks the
inflated doll. She pounds it with the mallet, kicks it, and throws it, while yelling, “Sock
him in the nose. . . . Knock him down. . . . Kick him.”
social learning theory
The theory that we learn social
behavior by observing and
imitating and by being rewarded
and punished.
In Bandura’s famous experi-
ment, children exposed to an
adult’s aggression against a
Bobo doll became likely to
reproduce the observed
aggression.
Courtesy of Albert Bandura
286 Part Three Social Relations
After observing this outburst, the child is taken to a different room with many very
attractive toys. But after two minutes the experimenter interrupts, saying these are her best
toys and she must “save them for the other children.” The frustrated child now goes into
yet another room with various toys designed for aggressive and nonaggressive play, two of
which are a Bobo doll and a mallet.
Children who were not exposed to the aggressive adult model rarely displayed any aggres-
sive play or talk. Although frustrated, they nevertheless played calmly. Those who had
observed the aggressive adult were many times more likely to pick up the mallet and lash
out at the doll. Watching the adult’s aggressive behavior lowered their inhibitions. Moreover,
the children often reproduced the model’s specific acts and said her words. Observing
aggressive behavior had both lowered their inhibitions and taught them ways to aggress.
Bandura (1979) believed that everyday life exposes us to aggressive models in the family,
in one’s subculture, and, as we will see, in the mass media.
THE FAMILY Physically aggressive children tend to have had physically punitive parents,
who disciplined them by modeling aggression with screaming, slapping, and beating (Patterson
et al., 1982). These parents often had parents who were themselves physically punitive ( Bandura
& Walters, 1959; Straus & Gelles, 1980). Such punitive behavior may escalate into abuse, and
although most abused children do not become criminals or abusive parents, 30% do later abuse
their own children—4 times the rate of the general population (Kaufman & Zigler, 1987;
Widom, 1989). Even more mild physical punishment, such as spanking, is linked to later
aggression (Gershoff, 2002; MacKenzie et al., 2015). Violence often begets violence.
THE CULTURE The social environment outside the home also provides models. In com-
munities where “macho” images are admired, aggression is readily transmitted to new
generations (Cartwright, 1975; Short, 1969). The violent subculture of teenage gangs, for
instance, provides its junior members with aggressive models. Among Chicago adolescents
who are otherwise equally at risk for violence, those who have observed gun violence were
twice as likely to be violent (Bingenheimer et al., 2005).
The broader culture also matters. Men from cultures that are nondemocratic, high in income
inequality, focused on teaching men to be warriors, and have gone to war are more likely to
behave aggressively than those from cultures with the opposite characteristics (Bond, 2004).
Richard Nisbett (1990, 1993) and Dov Cohen (1996, 1998) explored the effect of a
subculture on attitudes toward violence. They reported that the American South, settled by
Scots-Irish sheep herders ever wary of threats to their flocks, has a “culture of honor,”
which maintains that insults deserve retaliation (Henry, 2009). After squeezing by another
man in a hallway and hearing him mutter an insult, White Southern men expressed more
aggressive thoughts and experienced a surge in testosterone. White Northern men were
more likely to find the encounter funny (Cohen
et al., 1996). To the present day, American cities
populated by Southerners have higher than
average White homicide rates (Vandello et al.,
2008). More students in “culture of honor”
states bring weapons to school, and these states
have had three times as many school shootings
as others (Brown et al., 2009).
People learn aggressive responses both by
experience and by observing aggressive models.
But when will aggressive responses actually
occur? Bandura (1979) contended that aggres-
sive acts are motivated by a variety of aversive
experiences—frustration, pain, insults ( Figure 2).
Such experiences arouse us emotionally. But
whether we act aggressively depends on the con-
sequences we anticipate. Aggression is most
likely when we are aroused and it seems safe
and rewarding to aggress.
A peaceable kingdom. In 2008, a man was convicted of murder in Scotland’s Orkney
Islands—only the second murder conviction there since the 1800s.
©Nicola Colombo/123RF
Aggression Chapter 10 287
WHAT ARE SOME INFLUENCES
ON AGGRESSION?
Identify the influences on aggression and describe
how they work.
Consider some specific influences: aversive incidents, arousal, the media, and group context.
Aversive Incidents
Recipes for aggression often include some type of aversive experience. These include pain,
uncomfortable heat, an attack, or overcrowding.
PAIN
Researcher Nathan Azrin (1967) was doing experiments with laboratory rats in a cage wired
to deliver electric shocks to the animals’ feet. Azrin wanted to know if switching off the
shocks would reinforce two rats’ positive interactions with each other. He planned to turn
Aversive
experiences
Emotional
arousal
+
Anticipated
consequences
Rewards
and costs
Dependency
Achievement
Withdrawal and resignation
Aggression
Bodily symptoms
Self-anesthetization with
drugs and alcohol
Constructive problem solving
FIGURE 2
The Social Learning
View of Aggression
The emotional arousal stem-
ming from an aversive experi-
ence motivates aggression.
Whether aggression or some
other response actually occurs
depends on what consequences
we have learned to expect.
Source: Based on Bandura, 1979,
1997.
▯ Aggression (defined as behavior intended to cause
harm) can be physical (hurting someone’s body) or so-
cial (hurting their feelings or status). Social aggression
includes bullying and cyberbullying (bullying carried
out online or through texting).
▯ Aggression (either physical or social) can be hostile ag-
gression, which springs from emotions such as anger,
and instrumental aggression, which aims to injure as a
means to some other end.
▯ There are three broad theories of aggression. The first,
the instinct view, most commonly associated with Sig-
mund Freud and Konrad Lorenz, contended that ag-
gressive energy will accumulate from within, like water
accumulating behind a dam. Although the available
evidence offers little support for that view, it is true that
aggression is biologically influenced by heredity, blood
chemistry, and the brain.
▯ According to the second view, frustration causes anger
and hostility. Given aggressive cues, that anger may
provoke aggression. Frustration stems not from depri-
vation itself but from the gap between expectations and
achievements.
▯ The social learning view presents aggression as learned
behavior. By experience and by observing others’ suc-
cess, we sometimes learn that aggression pays. Social
learning enables family and subcultural influences on
aggression, as well as media influences (which we will
discuss in the next section).
SUMMING UP: What Are Some Theories of Aggression?
288 Part Three Social Relations
on the shock and then, when the rats approached each other, cut off the
pain. To his great surprise, the experiment proved impossible. As soon as
the rats felt pain, they attacked each other, before the experimenter could
switch off the shock. The greater the shock (and pain), the more violent
the attack. The same effect occurred across a long list of species, including
cats, turtles, and snakes. The animals were not selective about their tar-
gets. They would attack animals of their own species and those of a dif-
ferent species, or stuffed dolls, or even tennis balls.
The researchers also varied the source of pain. They found that not
only shocks induced attack; intense heat and “psychological pain”—for
example, suddenly not rewarding hungry pigeons that have been trained
to expect a grain reward after pecking at a disk—brought the same reaction
as shocks. This “psychological pain” is, of course, frustration.
Pain heightens aggressiveness in humans, too. Many of us can recall
such a reaction after stubbing a toe or suffering a headache. Leonard
Berkowitz and his associates demonstrated this by having University of
Wisconsin students hold one hand in either lukewarm water or painfully
cold water. Those whose hands were submerged in the cold water reported
feeling more irritable and more annoyed, and they were more willing to
blast another person with unpleasant noise. In view of such results,
Berkowitz (1983, 1989, 1998) proposed that aversive stimulation rather
than frustration is the basic trigger of hostile aggression. Frustration is
certainly one important type of unpleasantness. But any aversive event,
whether a dashed expectation, a personal insult, or physical pain, can incite an emotional
outburst. Even the torment of a depressed state increases the likelihood of hostile, aggres-
sive behavior.
HEAT
Temporary climate variations can affect behavior. Offensive odors, cigarette smoke, and air
pollution have all been linked with aggressive behavior (Rotton & Frey, 1985). But the
most-studied environmental irritant is heat. William Griffitt (1970; Griffitt & Veitch, 1971)
found that compared with students who answered questionnaires in a room with a normal
temperature, those who did so in an uncomfortably hot room (over 90 degrees F/32 degrees
C) reported feeling more tired and aggressive and expressed more hostility toward a stranger.
Follow-up experiments revealed that heat also triggers retaliation in response to an attack
or injury (Bell, 1980; Rule et al., 1987) and that heat leads to aggression only after sensitive
people are socially rejected (Fay & Maner, 2014).
Does uncomfortable heat increase aggression in the real world as well as in the labora-
tory? Consider the following:
▯ In heat-stricken Phoenix, Arizona, the drivers of cars without air-conditioning were
more likely to honk at a stalled car (Kenrick & MacFarlane, 1986).
▯ In an analysis of 57,293 Major League Baseball games since 1952, batters were
more likely to be hit by a pitch during hot weather—nearly 50% more likely when
the temperature was 90 degrees or above (versus 59 degrees or below) and when
three of the pitcher’s teammates had previously been hit (Larrick et al., 2011). This
wasn’t due to reduced accuracy: Pitchers had no more walks or wild pitches. They
just clobbered more batters.
▯ Studies in six cities have found that when the weather is hot, violent crimes are
more likely (Anderson & Anderson, 1984; Cohn, 1993; Cotton, 1981, 1986;
Harries & Stadler, 1988; Rotton & Cohn, 2004).
▯ Across the Northern Hemisphere, it is not only hotter days that have more violent
crimes, but also hotter seasons of the year, hotter summers, hotter years, hotter
cities, and hotter regions (Anderson & Delisi, 2010). Anderson and his colleagues
project that if a 4-degree-Fahrenheit (about 2 degrees C) global warming occurs,
the United States alone will see at least 50,000 more serious assaults annually.
Today’s ethical guidelines
restrict researchers’ use of
painful stimuli.
“I pray thee, good Mercutio,
let’s retire; The day is hot, the
Capulets abroad, And, if we
meet, we shall not ’scape a
brawl, For now, these hot
days, is the mad blood
stirring.”
—Shakespeare,
Romeo and Juliet, 1597.
Pain attack. Frustrated after losing the first two rounds of
his 1997 heavyweight championship fight with Evander
Holyfield, and feeling pain from an accidental head butt,
Mike Tyson reacted by biting off part of Holyfield’s ear.
©JACK SMITH/AP Images
Aggression Chapter 10 289
Do these real-world findings show that heat discom-
fort directly fuels aggressiveness? Although the conclu-
sion appears plausible, these correlations between
temperature and aggression don’t prove it. People cer-
tainly could be more irritable in hot, sticky weather. And
in the laboratory, hot temperatures do increase arousal
and hostile thoughts and feelings (Anderson & Anderson,
1998). Other factors may contribute, though. Perhaps hot
summer evenings drive people into the streets, where
other influences may well take over. Then again (research-
ers have debated this), there may come a point where
stifling heat suppresses violence—when it’s too hot to do
anything, much less hurt someone (Bell, 2005; Bushman
et al., 2005a,b; Cohn & Rotton, 2005).
ATTACKS
Being attacked or insulted is especially conducive to
aggression. Several experiments confirm that intentional
attacks breed retaliatory attacks. In most of these experi-
ments, one person competes with another in a reaction-time contest. After each test trial,
the winner chooses how much shock to give the loser. Actually, each person is playing a
programmed opponent who steadily escalates the amount of shock. Do the real participants
respond charitably? Hardly. Extracting “an eye for an eye” is the more likely response
(Ohbuchi & Kambara, 1985).
Arousal
So far, we have seen that various aversive stimulations can arouse anger. Do other types of
arousal, such as during exercise or sexual excitement, have a similar effect? Imagine that
Lourdes, having just finished a stimulating short run, comes home to discover that her date
for the evening has called and left word that he has made other plans. Will Lourdes be
more likely to explode in fury after her run than if she discovered the same message after
awakening from a nap? Or, because she has just exercised, will her aggression be exorcised?
To discover the answer, consider how we interpret and label our bodily states.
In a famous experiment, Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer (1962) found we can
experience an aroused bodily state in different ways. They aroused University of Minnesota
men by injecting them with adrenaline. The drug produced body flushing, heart palpitation,
and more rapid breathing. When forewarned that the drug would produce those effects, the
men felt little emotion, even when sitting next to either a hostile or a euphoric person. Of
course, they could readily attribute their bodily sensations to the drug. Schachter and Singer
led another group of men to believe the drug produced no such side effects. Then they,
too, were placed in the company of either a hostile or a euphoric person. How did they
feel and act? They were angry with the hostile person and amused by the euphoric person.
The principle seemed to be: A state of arousal can be interpreted in different ways depending
on the context.
Other experiments indicate that arousal is not as emotionally undifferentiated as
Schachter believed. Yet being physically stirred up does intensify just about any emotion
(Reisenzein, 1983). For example, people find radio static unpleasant, especially when they
are aroused by bright lighting (Biner, 1991). People who have just pumped an exercise bike
or watched a film of a rock concert find it easy to misattribute their arousal to a provoca-
tion and then retaliate with heightened aggression (Zillmann et al., 1988). Although com-
mon sense might lead us to assume that Lourdes’s run would have drained her aggressive
tensions, it’s more likely she would react with more anger and aggression. As these studies
show, arousal fuels emotions.
Sexual arousal and other forms of arousal, such as anger, can therefore amplify one
another (Zillmann, 1989). Love is never so passionate as after a fight or a fright—one reason
Ferguson, Missouri, August 2014. Riots and looting occur more often during
hot summer weather.
©Scott Olson/Getty Images
290 Part Three Social Relations
why it’s so popular to take a hot date to a horror movie. In the laboratory, erotic stimuli
are more arousing to people who have just been frightened. Similarly, the arousal of a
roller-coaster ride may spill over into romantic feeling for one’s partner.
A frustrating or insulting situation heightens arousal. When it does, the arousal, combined
with hostile thoughts and feelings, may form a recipe for aggressive behavior (Figure 3).
Aggression Cues
As we noted when considering the frustration-aggression hypothesis, violence is more likely
when aggressive cues release pent-up anger. Leonard Berkowitz (1968, 1981, 1995) and
others found that the sight of a weapon is such a cue. In one experiment, children who
had just played with toy guns became more willing to knock down another child’s blocks.
In another, angered University of Wisconsin men gave more electric shocks to their tor-
menter when a rifle and a revolver (supposedly left over from a previous experiment) were
nearby than when badminton rackets had been left behind (Berkowitz & LePage, 1967). In
a more recent experiment, people who used a driving simulator while a gun (vs. a tennis
racket) was on the passenger seat drove more aggressively (Bushman et al., 2017). In a
meta-analysis of 78 independent studies, the mere presence of weapons increased aggressive
thoughts and behaviors, known as the “weapons effect” (Benjamin et al., 2018). What’s
within sight is within mind.
The weapons effect might be why in the United States, home
to about 300 million privately owned guns, half of all murders are
committed with handguns, or that handguns in homes are far
more likely to kill household members than intruders. “Guns not
only permit violence,” Berkowitz reported, “they can stimulate it
as well. The finger pulls the trigger, but the trigger may also be
pulling the finger.”
Berkowitz was further unsurprised that countries that ban
handguns have lower murder rates. Compared with the United
States, Britain has one-fifth as many people and 1/26th as many
murders. The U.S. has the most firearms per capita in the world,
and the rate of gun murders in the U.S. is 25 times higher than
that of other high-income countries (Grinshteyn & Hemenway,
2016). Among 26 high-income countries, those with the most guns
were also those with the highest murder rates (Hemenway &
Miller, 2000). When Washington, D.C., adopted a law restricting
FIGURE 3
Elements of Hostile
Aggression
An aversive situation can trigger
aggression by provoking hostile
cognitions, hostile feelings, and
arousal. These reactions make
us more likely to perceive harm-
ful intent and to react
aggressively.
Source: Simplified from Anderson,
Deuser, & DeNeve, 1995. For an
updated but more complex version,
see Anderson & Bushman, 2018.
Hostile thoughts
and memories Angry feeling
Aggressive
reactions
Aversive situation
Pain or discomfort
Frustration
Attack or insult
Crowding
Arousal
Even if it’s not touched or used, the mere presence of a gun,
such as on a car’s passenger seat, can lead to aggression.
©KenTannenbaum/Getty Images
Aggression Chapter 10 291
handgun possession, the number of gun-related murders and suicides each abruptly dropped
about 25%. No changes occurred in other methods of murder and suicide, and nearby cities
did not show any changes in gun crimes (Loftin et al., 1991). In 130 studies across 10
countries, laws restricting firearms sales were followed by reductions in gun crimes (San-
taella-Tenorio et al., 2016). When Australia instituted stricter gun laws and bought back
700,000 guns after a 1996 mass shooting, gun-related murders fell 59%, and no mass shoot-
ings have occurred since (Howard, 2013). States with higher gun-ownership rates also have
higher firearm homicide rates (Siegel et al., 2013). Although some have argued that armed
citizens might prevent gun violence, more violent crimes—not fewer—occurred in 11 states
after they passed “right-to-carry” laws allowing people to carry concealed weapons ( Donohue
et al., 2017).
Researchers also have examined risks of violence in homes with and without guns. This is
controversial research because such homes may differ in many ways. One study sponsored by
the Centers for Disease Control compared gun owners and nonowners of the same gender,
race, age, and neighborhood. The ironic and tragic result was that those who kept a gun in
the home (often for protection) were 2.7 times as likely to be murdered—nearly always by a
family member or a close acquaintance (Kellermann, 1997; Kellermann et al., 1993). A meta-
analysis found that those with guns in their homes were three times more likely to be murdered
and twice as likely to commit suicide (Anglemyer et al., 2014). Even after controlling for gender,
age, and race, people with guns at home were 41% more likely to be murdered and 3 times as
likely to commit suicide (Wiebe, 2003). A gun in the home is 12 times more likely to kill a
household member than an intruder (Narang et al., 2010). A gun in the home has often meant
the difference between a fight and a funeral, or between temporary suffering and suicide.
Guns not only serve as aggression cues but also put psychological distance between
aggressor and victim. As Milgram’s obedience studies taught us, remoteness from the victim
facilitates cruelty. A knife can kill someone, but a knife attack requires a great deal more
personal contact than pulling a trigger from a distance (Figure 4).
Media Influences: Pornography
and Sexual Violence
Pornography is now a bigger business in the United States than professional football,
basketball, and baseball combined, thanks to some $13 billion a year spent on the industry’s
cable and satellite networks, theaters and pay-per-view movies, and in-room hotel movies,
phone sex, sex magazines, and Internet sites (D’Orlando, 2011). The easy availability of
2014 Gallup survey of
Americans: “Do you think
having a gun in the house
makes it a safer place to be or
a more dangerous place to be?”
Safer: 63%
More dangerous: 30%
Depends, or no opinion: 6%
FIGURE 4
Weapons Used to
Commit Murder in the
United States in 2013
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reports.
Hands, feet
6%
Other weapons
13%
Firearms
69%
Knives
12%
292 Part Three Social Relations
pornography on the Internet has accelerated its popularity. In a recent survey of 18- to
26-year-old American men, 87% said they viewed pornography at least once a month, and
nearly half viewed it at least once a week. However, only 31% of women reported viewing
pornography at all (Carroll et al., 2008). Pornography use is more common among men
who are younger, less religious, and who have had more sexual partners than average. Men’s
pornography use in the United States increased between 1993 and 2010 (Wright, 2013).
Social psychological research on pornography has focused mostly on depictions of sexual
violence, which is commonplace in pornography videos (Sun et al., 2008). A typical sexu-
ally violent episode finds a man forcing himself upon a woman. She at first resists and tries
to fight off her attacker. Gradually, as she resists and he persists, she becomes sexually
aroused, and her resistance melts. By the end she is in ecstasy, pleading for more. The
problem, of course, is that women do not actually respond this way to rape or sexual harass-
ment—this scenario is pure fantasy.
Social psychologists report that viewing such fictional scenes of a man overpowering and
arousing a woman can (a) distort men’s (and possibly women’s) perceptions of how women
actually respond to sexual coercion and (b) increase men’s aggression against women.
DISTORTED PERCEPTIONS OF SEXUAL REALITY
Does viewing sexual violence reinforce the “rape myth”—that some women would welcome
sexual assault and that “no doesn’t really mean no”? Researchers have observed a correla-
tion between the amount of TV viewing and rape-myth acceptance (Kahlor & Morrison,
2007). To explore the relationship experimentally, Neil Malamuth and James Check (1981)
showed University of Manitoba men either two nonsexual movies or two movies depicting
a man sexually overcoming a woman. A week later, when surveyed by a different experi-
menter, those who saw the films with mild sexual violence were more accepting of violence
against women. This was especially true if they were aroused by the films (Hald & Mala-
muth, 2015).
Other studies confirm that exposure to pornography increases acceptance of the rape
myth (Oddone-Paolucci et al., 2000). For example, while spending three evenings watching
sexually violent movies, men became progressively less bothered by the raping and slashing
(Mullin & Linz, 1995). Compared with men not exposed to the films, the men expressed
less sympathy for domestic violence victims and rated the victims’ injuries as less severe—
even three days later. In fact, noted the researchers, what better way for an evil character
to get people to react calmly to the torture and mutilation of women than to show a gradu-
ally escalating series of such films (Donnerstein et al., 1987)?
AGGRESSION AGAINST WOMEN
Evidence also suggests that pornography contributes to men’s actual aggression toward
women. Boys and girls age 10 to 15 who had seen movies, magazines, or websites with
violent sexual content were 6 times more likely to be sexually aggressive toward others
(defined as “kissed, touched, or done anything sexual with another person when that person
did not want you to do so”), even after adjusting for factors such as gender, aggressive traits,
and family background (Ybarra et al., 2011). Across 43 studies, teens and young adults who
consumed more sexually explicit and sexually violent media were more likely to have been
involved in dating violence and sexual violence (Rodenhizer & Edwards, 2017). A meta-
analysis of 22 studies found that people who watch pornography often were more likely to
be sexually aggressive, including both physical force and verbal coercion and harassment
(Wright et al., 2016).
Canadian and American sexual offenders commonly acknowledge pornography use.
Among 155 men arrested for Internet-based child pornography, 85% admitted they had
molested a child at least once, and the average offender had 13 victims (Bourke & Hernan-
dez, 2009). The reverse is also true: rapists, serial killers, and child molesters report using
pornography at unusually high rates (Bennett, 1991; Kingston et al., 2008).
But perhaps pornography doesn’t actually cause violence; instead, violent men like vio-
lent pornography. To rule out this explanation, it is necessary to perform an experiment—for
example, to randomly assign some people to watch pornography. In one such experiment,
“Pornography that portrays
sexual aggression as pleasur-
able for the victim increases
the acceptance of the use of
coercion in sexual relations.”
—Social Science Consensus at
Surgeon General’s Workshop
on Pornography and Public
Health, 1987
Repeated exposure to erotic
films featuring quick,
uncommitted sex also tends to
▯ decrease attraction for one’s
partner;
▯ increase acceptance of
extramarital sex and of
women’s sexual submission
to men;
▯ increase men’s perceiving
women in sexual terms.
(Source: Myers, 2000a)
Aggression Chapter 10 293
120 University of Wisconsin men watched a neutral, an erotic, or an aggressive-erotic (rape)
film. Then the men, supposedly as part of another experiment, “taught” a male or female
confederate some nonsense syllables by choosing how much shock to administer for incor-
rect answers. The men who had watched the rape film administered markedly stronger
shocks (Figure 5), particularly to women, and particularly when angered (Donnerstein,
1980). A consensus statement by 21 leading social scientists summed up the results of
experiments in this area: “Exposure to violent pornography increases punitive behavior
toward women” (Koop, 1987).
If the ethics of conducting such experiments trouble you, rest assured that these
researchers appreciate the controversial and powerful experience they are giving partici-
pants. Only after giving their knowing consent do people participate. Moreover, after the
experiment, researchers effectively debunk any myths the films communicated (Check &
Malamuth, 1984).
Media Influences: Television, Movies,
and the Internet
We have seen that watching an aggressive person modeling an attack on a Bobo doll can
unleash children’s aggressive urges and teach them new ways to aggress. We have also seen
that after viewing movies depicting sexual violence, many angry men will act more violently
toward women. Does everyday television viewing have any similar effects?
Today, in much of the industrialized world, nearly all households (99.2% in Australia,
for example) have a TV set. The average U.S. home in 2009 had 3 TV sets, which helps
explain why parents and children often give differing reports of what the children are watch-
ing (Nielsen, 2010). In some households these days, each member of the family has his or
her own computer tablet, making it even more difficult for parents to monitor children’s
media use.
In the average U.S. home, the TV is on 7 hours a day, with teens watching about 3 hours
and adults 6 hours a day on average (Nielsen, 2011). Teens make up some of the difference
by watching video on their phones more often. Thanks to digital video recorders (DVRs)
that allow people to “time shift” their TV watching, Americans in the 2010s watched more
TV than ever before (Nielsen, 2011).
All told, television beams its electromagnetic waves into children’s eyeballs for more
growing-up hours than they spend in school—more hours, in fact, than they spend in any
Mean (Average) shock intensity
Neutral Erotic
Film conditions
Aggressive
erotic
Female target
Male target
5.0
4.0
3.0
2.0
1.0
FIGURE 5
After viewing an aggressive-
erotic film, college men deliv-
ered stronger shocks than
before, especially to a woman.
Source: Data from Donnerstein,
1980.
294 Part Three Social Relations
other waking activity. In one content analysis of TV dramas airing in 2012–2013, a gun,
knife, or sword appeared on screen every 3 minutes. Children watching four episodes of
the show “Criminal Minds” in Fall 2012 were exposed to nearly 53 acts of violence per
episode—one every minute and 8 seconds (PTC, 2013). Social aggression (such as bullying
and social exclusion) is just as frequent; in the 50 most popular TV shows among 2- to
11-year-olds, 92% featured at least some social aggression. This bullying often came from
an attractive perpetrator, was portrayed as funny, and was neither rewarded nor punished
(Martins & Wilson, 2012a).
Studies of television viewing and aggression aim to identify effects more subtle and
pervasive than the occasional “copycat” murders that capture public attention. They ask:
How does television affect viewers’ behavior and viewers’ thinking?
MEDIA’S EFFECTS ON BEHAVIOR
Do viewers imitate violent models? Examples of children reenacting TV violence abound,
from the 13-year-old who killed his 5-year-old sister imitating wrestling moves he’d seen on
TV (AP, 2013) to an Indian boy who died when his brothers imitated a hanging they’d seen
in a cartoon (Indo-Asian News Service, 2013).
CORRELATING MEDIA VIEWING AND BEHAVIOR Single anecdotes of TV-inspired
violence are not scientific evidence. Researchers therefore use correlational and experi-
mental studies to examine the effects of viewing violence. One technique, commonly used
with schoolchildren, correlates their TV watching with their aggressiveness. The frequent
result: The more violent the content of the child’s TV viewing, the more aggressive the
child (Eron, 1987; Turner et al., 1986). For example, a longitudinal study of 1,715 Ger-
man adolescents found that those who viewed more violent media were more aggressive
two years later, even with important other factors controlled (Krahé et al., 2012). The
relationship is modest but consistently found in North America, Europe, Asia and Aus-
tralia and appears among adults as well (Anderson et al., 2017). And it extends to social
aggression. British girls who watched more shows featuring gossiping, backbiting, and
social exclusion more often displayed such behavior (Coyne & Archer, 2005), as did
elementary school girls in Illinois who watched shows featuring social aggression (Martins &
Wilson, 2012b).
Can we conclude, then, that a diet of violent TV fuels aggression? Perhaps you are
already thinking that because this is a correlational study, the cause-effect relationship could
also work in the opposite direction. Maybe aggressive children prefer aggressive programs.
Or maybe some underlying third factor, such as lower intelligence, predisposes some chil-
dren to prefer both aggressive programs and aggressive behavior.
Researchers have developed ways to test these alternative explanations, reducing hidden
third factors by statistically pulling out their influence. For example, William Belson (1978;
Muson, 1978) studied 1,565 London boys. Compared with those who watched little vio-
lence, those who watched a great deal (especially realistic rather than cartoon violence)
admitted to 50% more violent acts during the preceding six months. Belson also examined
22 likely third factors, such as family size. The “heavy violence” and “light violence” viewers
still differed after these third factors were included. Belson surmised that the heavy viewers
were indeed more violent because of their TV exposure.
Similarly, Leonard Eron and Rowell Huesmann (1980, 1985) found that violence viewing
among 875 8-year-olds correlated with aggressiveness even after statistically pulling out
several obvious possible third factors. Moreover, when they restudied those individuals as
19-year-olds, they discovered that viewing violence at age 8 modestly predicted aggressive-
ness at age 19, but that aggressiveness at age 8 did not predict viewing violence at age 19.
Aggression followed viewing, not the reverse. Moreover, by age 30, those who had watched
the most violence in childhood were more likely than others to have been convicted of a
crime. Another longitudinal study followed 1,037 New Zealand children from age 5 to age
26. Children and teens who spent more time watching TV were more likely to become
young adults convicted of crimes, diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, and high
Aggression Chapter 10 295
in aggressive personality traits. This was true even when the researchers controlled for pos-
sible third variables such as sex, IQ, socioeconomic status, previous antisocial behavior, and
parenting style (Robertson et al., 2013; see Figure 6). Researchers are not saying that every-
one who watches violent media becomes aggressive in real life—instead, they find it is one
of several risk factors for aggressive behavior, combined with family troubles, gender, and
being the victim of someone else’s aggression. Even taking these factors into account, though,
exposure to violent media is a significant predictor of aggression (Gentile & Bushman, 2012).
Many people now spend more screen time in front of their computers than in front of the
television. In many ways, the Internet allows an even greater variety of options for viewing
violence than television does, including violent videos, violent pictures, and hate-group websites
(Donnerstein, 2011). It also allows people to create and distribute violent media themselves,
and to bully others through e-mail, instant messaging, or social networking websites (Donner-
stein, 2011). In a survey of European adolescents, one-third reported seeing violent or hateful
content online (Livingstone & Haddon, 2009). Among U.S. youth, those who frequently visited
violent websites were 5 times more likely to report engaging in violent behavior (Ybarra et al.,
2008). Even books influence people: Middle-school students who read more books featuring
aggression and violence were more likely to behave aggressively (Stockdale et al., 2013).
Other studies have confirmed these results in various ways, finding the following:
▯ Eight-year-olds’ violence viewing predicted spouse abuse as an adult (Huesmann
et al., 1984, 2003).
▯ Adolescents’ violence viewing predicted engaging in assault, robbery, and threats of
injury (Johnson et al., 2002).
▯ Elementary schoolchildren’s violent media exposure predicted how often they got
into fights 2 to 6 months later (Gentile et al., 2004).
In all these studies, the investigators were careful to adjust for likely third factors, such
as intelligence or hostility. Nevertheless, an infinite number of possible third factors could
be creating a merely coincidental relation between viewing violence and practicing aggres-
sion. Fortunately, the experimental method can control these extraneous factors. If we ran-
domly assign some people to watch a violent film and others a nonviolent film, any later
aggression difference between the two groups will be due to the only factor that distinguishes
them: what they watched. In the next section, we discuss studies using the experimental
method that can prove causation more definitively than correlational studies.
FIGURE 6
TV Viewing and Later
Criminal Behavior
Television viewing between
ages 5 and 15 predicted having
a criminal conviction by age 26.
< 2
Later criminal convictions
40%
35%
30%
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
2 to 3 > 3
Mean weekday television viewing hours
Boys
Girls
296 Part Three Social Relations
MEDIA-VIEWING EXPERIMENTS The trailblazing Bobo-doll experi-
ments by Albert Bandura and Richard Walters (1963) sometimes had
young children view the adult pounding the inflated doll on film instead
of observing it live—with much the same effect. Then Leonard Berkowitz
and Russell Geen (1966) found that angered college students who viewed
a violent film acted more aggressively than did similarly angered students
who viewed nonaggressive films. More than 100 experiments confirm the
finding that viewing violence amplifies aggression (Anderson et al., 2003).
In one experiment, 8- to 12-year-old children were randomly assigned to
watch 20 minutes of a PG-rated movie, either in its original version with
some characters using guns, or in a modified version that edited out the
guns. The children then played in a room with a cabinet containing Legos,
games, Nerf guns, and, in a drawer, a real 9-mm handgun that was modified
so it could not fire. However, the trigger could still be pulled, and a sensor
recorded how many times the trigger was pulled. In both experimental
conditions, most children found the real gun, and 42% picked it up. The
difference came afterward: Hardly any of the children who watched the
movie clip without guns pulled the trigger, but children who watched the
movie clip that featured guns pulled the trigger of the gun an average of 3
times. One of the children put the real (but thankfully disabled) gun to
another child’s temple and pulled the trigger (Dillon & Bushman, 2017).
The effects appear among adults as well. In another experiment, female
college students were randomly assigned to watch portions of a physically
aggressive film (Kill Bill), a relationally aggressive film (Mean Girls), or a
nonaggressive control film (What Lies Beneath). Compared to the control
group, those who watched the aggressive films were more aggressive toward an innocent
person, blasting her headphones with loud, uncomfortable noise. They were also more
subtly aggressive, giving negative evaluations to another participant (actually a confederate)
who annoyed them (Coyne et al., 2008). Even reading about physical or relational aggres-
sion produced the same results (Coyne et al., 2012). Dolf Zillmann and James Weaver
(1999) similarly exposed men and women, on four consecutive days, to violent or nonvio-
lent feature films. When participating in a different project on the fifth day, those exposed
to the violent films were more hostile to the research assistant. Fifth graders who watched
a tween sitcom featuring social aggression (compared with those watching a control show)
were more likely to agree that a student from a different group should be excluded from
joining their team for a school competition (Mares & Braun, 2013).
“The irrefutable conclusion,” said a 1993 American Psychological Association youth
violence commission, is “that viewing violence increases violence.” This is especially so
among people with aggressive tendencies and when an attractive person commits justified,
realistic violence that goes unpunished and that shows no pain or harm (Comstock, 2008;
Gentile et al., 2007; Zillmann & Weaver, 2007). That description is, of course, consistent
with much of the violence shown on TV and in movies.
If increased exposure to media violence causes aggression, would less exposure lead to
less aggression? One group of researchers found that the answer was yes. German middle
school students were randomly assigned to either a control group or an intervention group
encouraged to reduce their media use and critically question it. Among those already high
in aggressive behavior, the intervention group later reported less aggressive behavior than
the control group (Krahé & Busching, 2015; Moller et al., 2012).
All in all, conclude researchers Brad Bushman and Craig Anderson (2001), the evidence
for media effects on aggression is now “overwhelming.” The research base is large, the
methods diverse, and the overall findings consistent, agreed a National Institute of Mental
Health task force of leading media violence researchers (Anderson et al., 2003). “Our in-
depth review . . . reveals unequivocal evidence that exposure to media violence can increase
the likelihood of aggressive and violent behavior in both immediate and long-term contexts.”
This conclusion has been questioned by some critics (Elson & Ferguson, 2014), but is
endorsed by the researchers with the most expertise in the field (Bushman & Huesmann,
“Then shall we simply allow
our children to listen to any
story anyone happens to
make up, and so receive into
their minds ideas often the
very opposite of those we
shall think they ought to have
when they are grown up?”
—Plato,
The Republic, BC 360
Watching violent media leads to social and physical
aggression in real life.
©Maica/Getty Images
Aggression Chapter 10 297
2014), and a broad consensus of media researchers, pediatricians, and parents (Bushman
et al., 2015). Although viewing violent media is of course only one among many causes of
aggression (and thus not the cause of aggression), experiments do show that it is a cause
(Bushman & Anderson, 2015).
WHY DOES MEDIA VIEWING AFFECT BEHAVIOR? Given the convergence of cor-
relational and experimental evidence, researchers have explored why viewing violence has
this effect. Consider three possibilities (Geen & Thomas, 1986). One is the arousal it
produces (Mueller et al., 1983; Zillmann, 1989). As we noted earlier, arousal tends to spill
over: one type of arousal energizes other behaviors.
Other research shows that viewing violence disinhibits. In Bandura’s experiment, the
adult’s punching of the Bobo doll seemed to make outbursts legitimate and to lower the
children’s inhibitions. Viewing violence primes the viewer for aggressive behavior by activat-
ing violence-related thoughts (Berkowitz, 1984; Bushman & Geen, 1990; Josephson, 1987).
Listening to music with sexually violent lyrics seems to have a similar effect (Barongan &
Hall, 1995; Johnson et al., 1995; Pritchard, 1998).
Media portrayals also evoke imitation. The children in Bandura’s experiments reenacted
the specific behaviors they had witnessed. The commercial television industry is hard
pressed to dispute that television leads viewers to imitate what they have seen: Its advertis-
ers model consumption. Are media executives right, however, to argue that TV merely holds
a mirror to a violent society, that art imitates life, and that the “reel” world therefore shows
us the real world? Actually, on TV programs, acts of assault outnumber affectionate acts
four to one. In other ways as well, television models an unreal world.
But there is good news here, too. If the ways of relating and problem solving modeled
on television do trigger imitation, especially among young viewers, then TV modeling of
prosocial behavior should be socially beneficial. A character who helps others (like Dora
or Doc McStuffins) can teach children prosocial behavior.
MEDIA’S EFFECTS ON THINKING
We have focused on television’s effect on behavior, but researchers have also examined the
cognitive effects of viewing violence: Does prolonged viewing desensitize us to cruelty? Does
prime time crime give us mental scripts for how to act? Does it distort our perceptions of
reality? Does it prime aggressive thoughts?
DESENSITIZATION Repeat an emotion-arousing stimulus, such as an obscene word,
over and over. What happens? The emotional response will “extinguish.” After witnessing
thousands of acts of cruelty, there is good reason to expect a similar emotional numbing.
The most common response might well become,
“Doesn’t bother me at all.” Such a response is pre-
cisely what Barbara Krahé and her colleagues (2010)
observed when they measured the physiological
arousal of 303 college students who watched a clip
from a violent movie. Regular viewers of violence on
TV and movies showed a lessened response, com-
pared to infrequent viewers, reacting to violence with
a shrug rather than concern. A longitudinal study of
German adolescents found the same thing: media
violence exposure decreased feelings of empathy for
others (Krahé & Moller, 2010).
In a clever experiment, Brad Bushman and Craig
Anderson (2009) had a young woman with a taped-
up ankle drop her crutches while outside a movie
theater and then struggle to retrieve them. Moviego-
ers who had just seen a violent film (The Ruins) took
longer to help than those who had just seen a non-
violent film (Nim’s Island). When the woman
dropped her crutches before the movie, however,
prosocial behavior
Positive, constructive, helpful
social behavior; the opposite of
antisocial behavior.
“Fifty years of research on the
effect of TV violence on chil-
dren leads to the inescapable
conclusion that viewing media
violence is related to in-
creases in aggressive atti-
tudes, values, and behaviors.”
—John P. Murray,
“Media Violence: The Effects are
Both Real and Strong,” 2008
Children who watch more violent media can become desensitized to cruelty and
feel less empathy for others.
©MachineHeadz/iStockphoto/Getty Images
298 Part Three Social Relations
there was no difference in helping—suggesting it was the violent film itself, and not the type
of people who watch violent films, that desensitized moviegoers to her dilemma.
SOCIAL SCRIPTS When we find ourselves in new situations, uncertain how to act, we
rely on social scripts—culturally provided mental instructions for how to act. After so many
action films, youngsters may acquire a script that is played when they face real-life conflicts.
Challenged, they may “act like a man” by intimidating or eliminating the threat. Likewise,
after witnessing innumerable sexual innuendoes and acts on TV and in music lyrics—mostly
involving impulsive or short-term relationships—youths may acquire sexual scripts they later
enact in real-life relationships (Escobar-Chaves & Anderson, 2008; Fischer & Greitemeyer,
2006; Kunkel, 2001). Thus, the more sexual content that adolescents view (even when
controlling for other predictors of early sexual activity), the more likely they are to perceive
their peers as sexually active, to develop sexually permissive attitudes, and to experience
early intercourse (Escobar-Chaves et al., 2005; Martino et al., 2005). Media portrayals
implant social scripts.
ALTERED PERCEPTIONS Does television’s fictional world also mold our conceptions
of the real world? George Gerbner and his University of Pennsylvania associates (1979,
1994) suspected this is television’s most potent effect. Their surveys of both adolescents
and adults showed that heavy viewers (4 hours a day or more) are more likely than light
viewers (2 hours or fewer) to exaggerate the frequency of violence in the world around
them and to fear being personally assaulted. Similar feelings of vulnerability have been
expressed by South African women after viewing video violence against women (Reid &
Finchilescu, 1995). A national survey of American 7- to 11-year-old children found that
heavy viewers were more likely than light viewers to admit fears “that somebody bad might
get into your house” or that “when you go outside, somebody might hurt you” (Peterson
& Zill, 1981). For those who watch much television, the world becomes a scary place.
Media portrayals shape perceptions of reality.
COGNITIVE PRIMING Research also reveals that watching violent television primes
aggression-related ideas (Bushman, 1998). After viewing violence, people offer more hostile
explanations for others’ behavior (was the shove intentional?). They interpret spoken hom-
onyms with the more aggressive meaning (interpreting “punch” as a hit rather than a drink).
And they recognize aggressive words more quickly. Media portrayals prime thinking.
Another Media Influence: Video Games
The scientific debate over the effects of TV and movie violence “is basically over,” contend
Douglas Gentile and Craig Anderson (2003; Anderson & Gentile, 2008). Researchers are
now shifting their attention to video games, which are extremely popular among teens and
many adults and can be extremely violent. Educational research shows that “video games
are excellent teaching tools,” noted Gentile and Anderson. “If health video games can
successfully teach health behaviors, and flight simulator video games can teach people how
to fly, then what should we expect violent murder-simulating games to teach?”
Since the first video game in 1972, we have moved from electronic ping-pong to splatter
games (Anderson et al., 2007). In a 2015 U.S. poll, 2 out of 3 18- to 29-year-olds said they
play video games: 77% of men, and 57% of women (Duggan, 2015). Half had played a video
game the day before. In an earlier poll of teens, 97% said they played video games. Half said
they played first-person shooter games, such as Halo or Counter-Strike, and 2 out of 3 played
action games that often involve violence, such as Grand Theft Auto (Lenhart et al., 2008).
Younger children are also playing violent games: In one survey of fourth-graders, 59% of girls
and 73% of boys reported that their favorite games were violent ones (Anderson, 2003, 2004).
In the popular Grand Theft Auto, youth are invited to play the role of a psychopath,
noted Gentile (2004). “You can run down pedestrians with the car, you can do carjackings,
you can do drive-by shootings, you can run down to the red-light district, pick up a prosti-
tute, have sex with her in your car, and then kill her to get your money back.” In effective
3D graphics, you can knock people over, stomp on them until they cough up blood, and
watch them die.
social scripts
Culturally provided mental
instructions for how to act in
various situations.
“The more fully that any given
generation was exposed to
television in its formative
years, the lower its civic en-
gagement [its rate of voting,
joining, meeting, giving, and
volunteering].”
—Robert Putnam,
Bowling Alone, 2000
Aggression Chapter 10 299
Effects of Video Games
Concerns about violent video games heightened after teen assassins in several mass shoot-
ings enacted the horrific violence they had so often played onscreen. Adam Lanza, who
shot 20 first-graders and 6 teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut in 2012,
spent many hours playing the warfare game Call of Duty (Kleinfield et al., 2013). In 2013,
an 8-year-old boy shot and killed a 90-year-old woman after playing Grand Theft Auto IV
(Stegall, 2013). People wondered: What do youth learn from endless hours of role-playing
attacking and dismembering people? And was anything accomplished when some Norwe-
gian stores responded to the 2011 killing of teens by a game-addicted shooter by pulling
violent games from their shelves (Anderson, 2011)?
Most smokers don’t die of lung cancer. Most abused children don’t become abusive.
And most people who spend hundreds of hours rehearsing human slaughter live gentle
lives. “I play violent video games,” some may protest, “And I’m not aggressive.” This
enables video-game defenders, like tobacco and TV interests, to say their products are
harmless. The problem with this common argument is that one isolated example proves
nothing—it’s not a scientific study. Just as a mass shooter playing video games doesn’t
show that video games cause aggression, a nonviolent person playing video games
doesn’t show that video games don’t cause aggression. A better approach is to examine
large samples of people to find out if, on average, violent video games increase
aggression.
Gentile and Anderson (2003) offer some reasons why violent game playing might have
a more toxic effect than watching violent television. With game playing, players
▯ identify with, and play the role of, a violent character;
▯ actively rehearse violence, instead of passively watching it;
▯ engage in the whole sequence of enacting violence—selecting victims, acquiring weap-
ons and ammunition, stalking the victim, aiming the weapon, pulling the trigger;
▯ are engaged with continual violence and threats of attack;
▯ repeat violent behaviors over and over;
▯ are rewarded for violent acts.
For such reasons, military organizations often prepare soldiers to fire in combat by
engaging them with attack-simulation games.
Research that examines large samples of people shows that playing violent video games
does, on average, increase aggressive behavior, thoughts, and feelings outside the game.
Combining data from 381 studies with 130,296 participants, Craig Anderson and his
colleagues (2010) found a clear effect: Violent video-game playing increased aggression—
for children, adolescents, and young adults; in North America, Japan, and Western
Europe; and across three research designs (correlational, experi-
mental, and longitudinal). That means violent video games
caused aggression even when participants were randomly
assigned to play them (vs. a nonviolent game), which rules out
the possibility that (for example) aggressive people like to play
aggressive games. Violent games lead to aggressive actions—
though the size of the effect is a matter of debate (Hilgard et al.,
2017; Kepes et al., 2017).
In one experiment, for example, French university students
were randomly assigned to play either a violent video game (Con-
demned 2, Call of Duty 4, The Club) or a nonviolent video game
(S3K Superbike, Dirt 2, or Pure) for 20 minutes each day for
3 days. Those randomly assigned to play a violent game blasted
longer and louder unpleasant noise into the headphones of an
innocent person than those who played the nonviolent game, with
their aggression increasing each day they played the violent game
(Hasan et al., 2013).
First-person shooter games teach and reward aggression, lead-
ing to increased aggression after the game is over.
©Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock
300 Part Three Social Relations
Studies examining real-world aggression find similar results. Among 3,372 Finnish ado-
lescents, those who spent more time playing violent video games were more likely to commit
real-world aggressive acts such as attacking someone with the intention of seriously hurting
them or threatening someone with a weapon (Exelmans et al., 2015). Longitudinal studies,
which follow people over time, produce similar results: among German adolescents, today’s
violent game playing predicted later aggression, but today’s aggression did not predict future
violent game playing (Moller & Krahé, 2008). The same was true for Canadian adolescents
followed for four years (Willoughby et al., 2012). In 2015, an American Psychological Asso-
ciation task force reviewing 300 studies between 2005 and 2013 concluded that the evidence
linking violent video-games and aggression was strong enough to warrant recommending that
the video-game industry include violence in its game rating system (APA, 2015).
Playing violent video games has an array of effects, including the following:
▯ Increases in aggressive behaviors: After violent game play, children and youth play
more aggressively with their peers, get into more arguments with their teachers, and
participate in more fights. The effect occurs inside and outside the laboratory, across
self-reports, teacher reports, and parent reports, and for the reasons illustrated in
Figure 7. Even among young adolescents usually low in hostility, 10 times more of
the heavy violent gamers got into fights compared with their nongaming counterparts.
And after they started playing the violent games, previously nonhostile kids became
more likely to have fights (Gentile et al., 2004). In Japan, too, playing violent video
games early in a school year predicted physical aggressiveness later in the year, even
after controlling for gender and prior aggressiveness ( Anderson et al., 2008).
▯ Increases in aggressive thoughts. After playing a violent game, students became more
likely to guess that a man whose car was just rear-ended would respond aggressively
by using abusive language, kicking out a window, or starting a fight (Bushman &
Anderson, 2002; Gentile et al., 2017). Those who played violent games were also
more likely to have a hostile attribution bias—they expected other people to act
aggressively when provoked, and the greater this bias, the more aggressively they
behaved themselves. Those who play violent games, conclude the researchers, see
the world through “blood-red tinted glasses” (Hasan et al., 2012).
▯ Increases in aggressive feelings, including hostility, anger, or revenge. Students who
played a violent video game had more aggressive thoughts and feelings than those
FIGURE 7
Violent Video-Game Influences on Aggressive Tendencies
Source: Adapted from Anderson & Bushman, 2001.
Repeated violent game playing
Aggressive
behavior scripts
Aggressive
expectations
Aggressive
perceptions
Aggressive beliefs
and attitudes
Increased aggressive
personality
Aggressive
desensitization
Aggression Chapter 10 301
who watched a recording of someone else playing the same game or watched a
violent film, suggesting that violent video games heighten aggression even more
than other violent media—most likely because people actually act aggressively when
they play video games instead of acting as passive observers (Lin, 2013). Those
randomly assigned to play a violent video game also reported feeling less happy
than those who played prosocial or neutral games (Saleem et al., 2012).
▯ Habituation in the brain. Compared with those who did not play violent games,
frequent gamers’ brains reacted less strongly to negative images. Apparently, their
brains have become habituated to violence, numbing their reactions (Montag et al.,
2012).
▯ Greater likelihood of carrying a weapon. Among 9- to 18-year-olds in a U.S. national
longitudinal study, those who played violent video games in the past year were 5
times more likely to carry a weapon to school, even when adjusted for third factors
(Ybarra et al., 2014).
▯ Decreases in self-control and increases in antisocial behavior. High school students
who played a violent video game (compared with a control group who played a
nonviolent game) ate 4 times more M&M’s out of a bowl next to the computer,
suggesting lowered self-control. They were also more likely to steal, taking more
raffle tickets for attractive prizes than they actually earned (Gabbiadini et al.,
2014). A correlational study found that youth who played violent video games were
more likely to have stolen, vandalized property, or sold drugs (DeLisi et al., 2013).
▯ Decreases in helping others and in empathy for others. Students randomly assigned to
play a violent or nonviolent video game later overheard a loud fight that ended
with one person writhing on the floor in pain from a sprained ankle. Students who
had just played a violent game took more than 1 minute on average to come to the
person’s aid, almost 4 times as long as those who had played a nonviolent game
(Bushman & Anderson, 2009).
After violent video-game playing, people become more likely to exploit rather than to
trust and cooperate with a partner (Sheese & Graziano, 2005). They also become desensi-
tized to violence, showing decreased brain activity associated with emotion (Bartholow
et al., 2006; Carnagey et al., 2007). Tobias Greitemeyer and Neil McLatchie (2011) explored
a specific kind of desensitization: seeing other people as less human. Among British uni-
versity students, those randomly assigned to play a violent game were more likely to describe
in nonhuman terms someone who had insulted them. And the less human they saw the
person, the more aggressive they were. In another study, students who played a violent game
saw themselves as less human as well (Bastian et al., 2012). The intense violence of video
games may also make unambiguous real-life aggression (such as shoving) seem less harmful
in comparison. Thus, when someone claims that playing violent video games does not make
them more aggressive, that might be because their perception of what counts as “aggressive”
no longer includes less severe, but still harmful, acts ( Greitemeyer, 2014).
Moreover, the more violent the games that are played, the bigger the effects. The bloodier
the game (for example, the higher the blood-level setting in one experiment with Mortal
Combat players) the greater the gamer’s after-game hostility and arousal (Barlett et al.,
2008). More realistic games—showing violence more likely to happen in real life—also pro-
duced more aggressive feelings than less realistic games (Bartlett & Rodeheffer, 2009).
Although much remains to be learned, these studies challenge the catharsis hypothesis—the
idea that violent games allow people to safely express their aggressive tendencies and “get
their anger out” (Kutner & Olson, 2008). Practicing violence breeds rather than releases
violence, say catharsis critics. Yet the idea that games might relieve angry feelings is one
of the main draws of violent video games for angry people (Bushman & Whitaker, 2010).
Unfortunately, say critics, this strategy is likely to backfire, leading to more anger and
aggression.
In 2005, California State Senator Leland Yee proposed a law banning the sale of violent
video games to those under 18. The bill was signed into law, but video game manufacturers
immediately sued, and it never went into effect. The U.S. Supreme Court heard the case
catharsis
Emotional release. The catharsis
view of aggression is that the
aggressive drive is reduced
when one “releases” aggressive
energy, either by acting
aggressively or by fantasizing
aggression.
302 Part Three Social Relations
in 2010, and more than 100 social scientists signed a statement
in support of the law, writing that “Overall, the research data
conclude that exposure to violent video games causes an increase
in the likelihood of aggressive behavior.”
But Christopher Ferguson and John Kilburn (2010) signed a
statement to the Supreme Court criticizing the California law.
They pointed out that from 1996 to 2006, when violent video
game sales were increasing, real-life youth violence was decreas-
ing (Markey et al., 2015). Ferguson and Kilburn also argued that
the effects of violent video games on aggression are small—only
some people who play violent video games will act aggressively
in real life. In return, Craig Anderson and his colleagues (2010)
argued that the violent gaming effect is larger than the toxic
effects of asbestos or the effect of secondhand smoke on lung
cancer. Not everyone exposed to asbestos or secondhand smoke
will develop cancer, they pointed out, but they are still considered
public health dangers. Other critics pointed out that most experi-
ments on violent video games have not used control games similar in competitiveness or
pace of action, creating the possibility that these factors increase aggression rather than
the violence in the games per se (Adachi & Willoughy, 2011).
In 2011, the Supreme Court struck down the law, primarily citing the First Amendment’s
guarantee of free speech but also expressing doubts that the research showed “a direct
causal link between playing violent video games and actual harm to minors” (Scalia, 2011).
Video games are not all bad—not all of them are violent, and even the violent games
improve hand-eye coordination, reaction time, spatial ability, and selective attention (Dye
et al., 2009; Sanchez, 2012; Wu et al., 2012), though these effects are limited to those
who play frequently and for many hours (Unsworth et al., 2015). Moreover, game playing
is focused fun that helps satisfy basic needs for a sense of competence, control, and social
connection. No wonder an experiment that randomly assigned 6- to 9-year-old boys to
receive a game system found them spending an average of 40 minutes a day on it over the
next few months. The downside: They spent less time on schoolwork, resulting in lower
reading and writing scores than the control group that did not get a game system (Weis
& Cerankosky, 2010).
What about playing prosocial games in which people help each other—the conceptual
opposite of violent games? In three studies with children and adults in Singapore, Japan,
and the United States, those who played prosocial video games helped others, shared,
and cooperated more in real-life situations (Gentile et al., 2009). German students ran-
domly assigned to play a prosocial (vs. neutral) game were less physically and socially
aggressive toward someone who had insulted them (Greitemeyer et al., 2012). A meta-
analysis of 98 studies found the same: Violent video games are linked to more antisocial
acts and fewer prosocial acts, and prosocial games are linked to fewer antisocial acts
and more prosocial acts (Greitemeyer & Mugge, 2014). As Douglas Gentile and Craig
Anderson (2011) conclude, “Video games are excellent teachers.” Educational games
teach children reading and math, prosocial games teach prosocial behavior, and violent
games teach violence, they note. We do what we’re taught to do, whether that’s to help
or to hurt.
As a concerned scientist, Craig Anderson (2003, 2004) (see “The Inside Story: Craig
Anderson on Video-Game Violence”) therefore encourages parents to discover what their
kids are ingesting and to ensure that their media diet, as least in their own home, is healthy.
Parents may not be able to control what their child watches, plays, and eats in someone
else’s home. Nor can they control the media’s effect on their children’s peer culture. (That
is why advising parents to “just say no” is naive.) But parents can oversee consumption in
their own home and provide increased time for alternative activities. Networking with other
parents can build a kid-friendly neighborhood. And schools can help by providing media-
awareness education.
“What sense does it make to
forbid selling to a 13-year-old
a magazine with an image of a
nude woman, while protecting
the sale to that 13-year-old of
an interactive video game in
which he actively, but virtually,
binds and gags the woman,
then tortures and kills her?”
—U.S. Supreme Court Justice
Stephen Breyer, in Dissent, 2011
“It is hard to measure the
increasing acceptance of
brutality in American life, but
its evidence is everywhere,
starting with the video games
of killing that are a principal
entertainment of boys.”
—Susan Sontag,
Regarding the Torture of Others,
2004
Is violent video game-playing cathartic? toxic? or neutral? Experi-
ments offer some answers.
©James Woodson/Getty Images
Aggression Chapter 10 303
Group Influences
We have considered what provokes individuals to aggress. If frustrations, insults, and aggres-
sive models heighten the aggressive tendencies of isolated people, such factors are likely to
prompt the same reaction in groups. As a riot begins, aggressive acts often spread rapidly
after the “trigger” example of one antagonistic person. Seeing looters freely helping themselves
to TV sets, normally law-abiding bystanders may drop their moral inhibitions and imitate.
Groups can amplify aggressive reactions partly by diffusing responsibility. Decisions to
attack in war typically are made by strategists remote from the front lines. They give orders,
but others carry them out. Does such distancing make it easier to recommend aggression?
In one experiment, students either shocked someone or simply advised someone else how
much shock to administer. When the recipient had not done anything to provoke the aggres-
sor, characteristic of most victims of mass aggression, the advisers recommended more
shock than given by the frontline participants, who felt more directly responsible for any hurt
(Gaebelein & Mander, 1978).
Diffusion of responsibility increases not only with distance but also with numbers. Brian
Mullen (1986) analyzed information from 60 lynchings between 1899 and 1946 and made
an interesting discovery: The greater the number of people in a lynch mob, the more vicious
the murder and mutilation.
Through social “contagion,” groups magnify aggressive tendencies, much as they polarize
other tendencies. Examples are youth gangs, soccer fans, rapacious soldiers, urban rioters, and
what Scandinavians call “mobbing”—schoolchildren in groups repeatedly harassing or attacking
an insecure, weak schoolmate (Lagerspetz et al., 1982). Mobbing is a group activity.
Youths sharing antisocial tendencies and lacking close family bonds and expectations
of academic success may find social identity in a gang. As group identity develops, con-
formity pressures and deindividuation increase (Staub, 1996). Self-identity diminishes as
members give themselves over to the group, often feeling a satisfying oneness with the
Craig Anderson on Video-Game Violence
THE inside
STORY
Understanding the clearly harmful effects being docu-
mented by TV/film violence researchers, I was disturbed
as I noticed the increasing violence in video games. With
one of my graduate students, Karen Dill, I therefore
began correlational and experimental investigations that
intersected with growing public concern and led to my
testifying before a U.S. Senate subcommittee and
consulting for a wide array of government and public
policy groups, including parent and child advocacy
organizations.
Although it is gratifying to see one’s research have a
positive impact, the video-game industry has gone to
great lengths to dismiss the research, much as 30 years
ago cigarette manufacturers ridiculed basic medical re-
search by asking how many Marlboros a lab rat had to
smoke before contracting cancer. I also get some pretty
nasty mail from gamers, and the volume of requests for
information led me to offer resources and answers at
www.psychology.iastate.edu/faculty/caa.
Many people believe that the best way to enhance un-
derstanding of a complicated topic is to find people who
will give opposite views and give each “side” equal time.
Media violence news stories typically give equal time to
industry representatives and their preferred “experts”
along with reassuring words from a carefree 4-year-old,
which can leave the impression that we know less than we
do. If all the experts in a given
area agree, does this idea of
“fairness” and “balance” make
sense? Or should we expect
that legitimate experts will have
published peer-reviewed origi-
nal research articles on the is-
sue at hand?
Craig A. Anderson
Iowa State University
©Iowa State University
304 Part Three Social Relations
others. The frequent result is social contagion—group-fed arousal,
disinhibition, and polarization. As gang expert Arnold Goldstein
(1994) observed, until gang members marry out, age out, get a
job, go to prison, or die, they hang out. They define their turf,
display their colors, challenge rivals, and sometimes commit
delinquent acts and fight over drugs, territory, honor, women,
or insults.
The twentieth-century massacres that claimed more than 150
million lives were “not the sums of individual actions,” noted
Robert Zajonc (2000). “Genocide is not the plural of homicide.”
Massacres are social phenomena fed by “moral imperatives”—a
collective mentality (including images, rhetoric, and ideology)
that mobilizes a group or a culture to extraordinary actions. The
massacres of Rwanda’s Tutsis, of Europe’s Jews, and of America’s
native population were collective phenomena requiring wide-
spread support, organization, and participation. Before launching
the genocidal initiative, Rwanda’s Hutu government and business
leaders bought and distributed 2 million Chinese machetes. Over
3 months, the Hutu attackers reportedly would get up, eat a
hearty breakfast, gather together, and then go hunt their former
neighbors who had fled. They would hack to death anyone they
found, then return home, wash, and socialize over a few beers
(Dalrymple, 2007; Hatzfeld, 2007).
Experiments in Israel by Yoram Jaffe and Yoel Yinon (1983) confirm that groups can
amplify aggressive tendencies. In one, university men angered by a supposed fellow partici-
pant retaliated with decisions to give much stronger shocks when in groups than when alone.
In another experiment (Jaffe et al., 1981), people decided, either alone or in groups, how
much punishing shock to give someone for incorrect answers on a task. As Figure 8 shows,
individuals gave progressively more of the assumed shock as the experiment proceeded, and
group decision making magnified this individual tendency. When circumstances provoke an
individual’s aggressive reaction, the addition of group interaction will often amplify it. (See
“Research Close-Up: When Provoked, Are Groups More Aggressive Than Individuals?”)
Perhaps you can remember a time in middle school or high school when you or someone
you knew was bullied—either verbally or physically. Much of the time, other students watch
“The worst barbarity of war is
that it forces men collectively
to commit acts against which
individually they would revolt
with their whole being.”
—Ellen Key,
War, Peace, and the Future, 1916
“As Reinhold Niebuhr has
reminded us, groups tend to
be more immoral than
individuals.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.,
“Letter from Birmingham Jail,”
April 13, 1963
Shock intensity
432
Phase of experiment
1
Individual decisions
Group decisions
8.00
7.00
6.00
5.00
0.00
FIGURE 8
Group-Enhanced Aggression
When individuals chose how much shock to administer as punishment for wrong answers, they escalated the
shock level as the experiment proceeded. Group decision making further polarized this tendency.
Source: Data from Jaffe et al., 1981.
Social contagion. When 17 juvenile, orphaned male bull elephants
were relocated during the mid-1990s to a South African park,
they became an out-of-control adolescent gang and killed 40
white rhinoceroses. In 1998, concerned park officials relocated
6 older, stronger bull elephants into their midst. The result: The
rampaging soon quieted down (Slotow et al., 2000). One of
these dominant bulls, at left, faces down several of the juveniles.
©Gus van Dyk
Aggression Chapter 10 305
bullying as it happens, or even join in. These bystanders can play an active role in the
aggressive act of bullying—for example, by contributing to the humiliation by laughing or
cheering (Salmivalli et al., 1999). Or they may defend the victim. An effective antibullying
program used in Finland found that when bystanders stop rewarding bullies with positive
feedback and status, bullying declined (Karna et al., 2011).
Aggression studies provide an apt opportunity to ask how well social psychology’s labora-
tory findings generalize to everyday life. Do the circumstances that trigger someone to
deliver electric shock or allocate hot sauce really tell us anything about the circumstances
that trigger verbal abuse or a punch in the face? Craig Anderson and Brad Bushman (1997;
Bushman & Anderson, 1998) noted that social psychologists have studied aggression in
When Provoked, Are Groups More Aggressive
Than Individuals?
Aggression researchers are noted for their creative meth-
ods for measuring aggression, which in various experi-
ments has involved such tactics as administering shock,
blasting sound, and hurting people’s feelings. Holly
Mcgregor and her colleagues (1999) took their cue from a
cook’s arrest for assault after lacing two police officers’
food with Tabasco sauce, and from child abuse cases in
which parents have force-fed hot sauce to their children.
This inspired the idea of measuring aggression by having
people decide how much hot sauce someone else must
consume.
That is what Bruce Meier and Verlin Hinsz (2004) did
when comparing aggressive behavior by groups and indi-
viduals. They told participants, either as individuals or in
groups of three, that they were studying the relationship
between personality and food preferences, and that they
would be tasting and rating hot sauce. The experimenter
explained that he needed to remain blind as to how much
hot sauce each individual or group would be consuming
and so needed the participants to choose the portion.
After having the participants sample the intense hot sauce
using a wooden stick, the experimenter left to collect the
hot sauce that another individual or group had suppos-
edly selected. He returned with a cup filled with 48 grams
of the sauce, which each participant expected later to
consume. The participants, in turn, were now to spoon as
much or as little hot sauce as they wished into a cup for
the supposed other people to consume. (In reality, no par-
ticipant was forced to consume anything.)
The striking result, seen in Figure 9, was that groups
retaliated by dishing out 24% more hot sauce than did
individuals, and that group targets were given 24% more
than were individuals. Thus, given toxic circumstances,
interaction with a group (as a source or target) amplifies
individual aggressive tendencies. This finding was particu-
larly evident in the intergroup condition. Group members,
after each receiving a nasty 48 grams of hot sauce, retali-
ated by dishing out 93 grams of hot sauce for each mem-
ber of the group that had given them hot sauce. Apparently,
surmised Meier and Hinsz, groups not only respond more
aggressively to provocation but also perceive more hostil-
ity from other groups than they do from individuals.
research
CLOSE-UP
FIGURE 9
Mean Amount of Hot
Sauce Dished Out
(grams)
Source: Meier & Hinsz, 2004.
Grams
A
m
o
u
n
t
o
f
h
o
t
sa
u
ce
Individual Group
Individual
Group
100
80
90
70
50
60
0
Target
306 Part Three Social Relations
both the laboratory and everyday worlds, and the findings are strikingly consistent. In both
contexts, increased aggression is predicted by the following:
▯ Being male
▯ Aggressive or anger-prone personalities
▯ Alcohol use
▯ Violence viewing
▯ Anonymity
▯ Provocation
▯ The presence of weapons
▯ Group interaction
The laboratory allows us to test and revise theories under controlled conditions. Real-
world events inspire ideas and provide the venue for applying our theories. Aggression
research illustrates how the interplay between studies in the controlled lab and the complex
real world advances psychology’s contribution to human welfare. Hunches gained from
everyday experience inspire theories, which stimulate laboratory research, which then deep-
ens our understanding and our ability to apply psychology to real problems.
▯ Many factors exert influence on aggression. One factor
is aversive experiences, which include not only frustra-
tions but also discomfort, pain, and personal attacks,
both physical and verbal.
▯ Arousal from almost any source, even physical exercise
or sexual stimulation, can be transformed into other
emotions, such as anger.
▯ Aggression cues, such as the presence of a gun, increase
the likelihood of aggressive behavior.
▯ Viewing violence (1) breeds a modest increase in ag-
gressive behavior, especially in people who are pro-
voked, (2) desensitizes viewers to aggression, and (3)
alters their perceptions of reality. These findings paral-
lel the results of research on the effects of viewing vio-
lent pornography, which can increase men’s aggression
against women and distort their perceptions of wom-
en’s responses to sexual coercion.
▯ Television permeates the daily life of millions of people
and portrays considerable violence. Correlational and
experimental studies converge on the conclusion that
heavy exposure to televised violence correlates with ag-
gressive behavior.
▯ Playing violent video games may increase aggressive
thinking, feelings, and behavior even more than televi-
sion or movies do, because the experience involves much
more active participation than those other media.
▯ Much aggression is committed by groups. Circum-
stances that provoke individuals may also provoke
groups. By diffusing responsibility and polarizing ac-
tions, group situations amplify aggressive reactions.
SUMMING UP: What Are Some Influences on
Aggression?
HOW CAN AGGRESSION
BE REDUCED?
Examine how we might counteract the factors that
provoke aggression.
Can we reduce aggression? Here we look at how theory and research suggest ways to control
aggression.
Catharsis?
In New York City, those who want to vent their anger can pay for the privilege of smashing
dishes, laptops, and TVs with a metal bat at an establishment called the Wrecking Club.
Aggression Chapter 10 307
Dallas, instead, has an Anger Room, and Toronto, Budapest, Sin-
gapore, Australia, and Britain feature Rage Rooms (Green, 2017).
Some believe that these expressions of anger should serve to
reduce aggression afterward. If a person “bottles up his rage, we
have to find an outlet. We have to give him an opportunity of
letting off steam,” asserted psychiatrist Fritz Perls (1973). After
violent video games were implicated in a 2012 mass shooting, one
defender of the games wrote, “Could it be that violent video games
are an important outlet for aggression? That, on the whole, these
games and ‘play violence’ let us express anger and aggression in
a safe way?” (Gilsdorf, 2013). Such statements assume the
“hydraulic model,” which implies accumulated aggressive energy,
like dammed-up water, needs a release.
The concept of catharsis is usually credited to Aristotle.
Although Aristotle said nothing about aggression, he did argue
that we can purge emotions by experiencing them and that
viewing the classic tragedies therefore enabled a catharsis
(purging) of pity and fear. To have an emotion excited, he believed, is to have that
emotion released (Butcher, 1951). The catharsis hypothesis has been extended to
include the emotional release supposedly obtained not only by observing drama but
also through our recalling and reliving past events, through our expressing emotions,
and through our actions.
Assuming that aggressive action or fantasy drains pent-up aggression, some therapists
and group leaders have encouraged people to ventilate suppressed aggression by acting it
out—by whopping one another with foam bats or beating a bed with a tennis racket while
screaming. If led to believe that catharsis effectively vents emotions, people will react more
aggressively to an insult as a way to improve their mood (Bushman et al., 2001). Some
psychologists, believing that catharsis is therapeutic, advise parents to encourage children’s
release of emotional tension through aggressive play. As you saw earlier, it is also a com-
mon argument to defend violent video games. But does catharsis work? Do those who vent
their anger become less aggressive—or more aggressive?
In laboratory tests of catharsis, angered participants hit a punching bag while either
ruminating about someone who angered them or thinking about becoming physically fit.
A third group did not hit the punching bag. When given a chance to administer loud blasts
of noise to the person who angered them, people in the punching bag plus rumination
condition felt angrier and were most aggressive. Moreover, doing nothing at all more effec-
tively reduced aggression than did “blowing off steam” by hitting the bag (Bushman, 2002).
Venting anger caused more aggression, not less.
Real-life experiments have produced similar results. One study examined Internet users
who frequently visit “rant” sites where people are encouraged to express their anger. Did
the opportunity to express their hostility reduce it? No. Their hostility and anger increased
and their happiness decreased (Martin et al., 2013). Expressing hostility bred more hostility.
Several studies have found that Canadian and American spectators of football, wrestling,
and hockey games exhibit more hostility after viewing the event than before (Arms et al.,
1979; Goldstein & Arms, 1971; Russell, 1983). Instead of reducing their anger, viewing
these aggressive sports instead increased their anger. As Brad Bushman (2002) noted,
“Venting to reduce anger is like using gasoline to put out a fire.”
Cruel acts beget cruel attitudes. Furthermore, little aggressive acts can breed their own
justification. People derogate their victims, rationalizing further aggression.
Retaliation may, in the short run, reduce tension and even provide pleasure (Ramirez
et al., 2005). But in the long run it fuels more negative feelings. When people who have
been provoked hit a punching bag, even when they believe it will be cathartic, the effect is
the opposite—leading them to exhibit more cruelty, reported Bushman and his colleagues
(1999, 2000, 2001). “It’s like the old joke,” reflected Bushman (1999). “How do you get
to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice. How do you become a very angry person?
The answer is the same. Practice, practice, practice.”
“He who gives way to violent
gestures will increase his
rage.”
—Charles Darwin,
The Expression of the Emotions in
Man and Animals, 1872
Does venting your anger online reduce or increase aggression?
Studies find it increases it.
©Lisa S./Shutterstock
308 Part Three Social Relations
Should we therefore bottle up anger and aggressive urges? Silent sulking is hardly more
effective, because it allows us to continue reciting our grievances as we conduct conversa-
tions in our heads. Bushman and his colleagues (2005) experimented with the toxic effect
of such rumination. After being provoked by an obnoxious experimenter with insults such
as, “Can’t you follow directions? Speak louder!” half were given a distraction (by being
asked to write an essay about their campus landscape), and half were induced to ruminate
(by writing an essay about their experiences as a research participant). Next, they were
mildly insulted by a supposed fellow participant (actually a confederate), to whom they
responded by prescribing a hot sauce dose this person would have to consume. The dis-
tracted participants, their anger now abated, prescribed only a mild dose. The still-seething
ruminators displaced their aggressive urge and prescribed twice as much.
Fortunately, there are nonaggressive ways to express our feelings and to inform others
how their behavior affects us. Across cultures, those who reframe accusatory “you” mes-
sages as “I” messages—“I feel angry about what you said,” or, “I get irritated when you leave
dirty dishes”—communicate their feelings in a way that better enables the other person to
make a positive response (Kubany et al., 1995). We can be assertive without being
aggressive.
A Social Learning Approach
If aggressive behavior is learned, then there is hope for its control. Let us briefly review
factors that influence aggression and speculate how to counteract them.
Aversive experiences such as frustrated expectations and personal attacks predispose
hostile aggression. So it is wise to refrain from planting false, unreachable expectations in
people’s minds. Anticipated rewards and costs influence instrumental aggression. This sug-
gests that we should reward cooperative, nonaggressive behavior.
Threatened punishment can deter aggression but only under ideal conditions: when the
punishment is strong, prompt, and sure; when it is combined with reward for the desired
behavior; and when the recipient is not angry (R. A. Baron, 1977). Generally, punishment
for children who engage in aggressive behavior should focus not on physical punishment
(which may simply teach more aggression) but instead on strategies such as taking away
privileges (Fletcher, 2012).
However, there are limits to punishment’s effectiveness. Most homicides are impulsive,
hot aggression—the result of an argument, an insult, or an attack. If mortal aggression were
cool and instrumental, we could hope that waiting until it happens and severely punishing
the criminal afterward would deter such acts. In that world, states that impose the death
penalty might have a lower murder rate than states without the death penalty. But in our
world of hot homicide, that is not so (Costanzo, 1998). As John Darley and Adam Alter
(2009) noted, “A remarkable amount of crime is committed by impulsive individuals, fre-
quently young males, who are frequently drunk or high on drugs,
and who often are in packs of similar and similarly mindless
young men.” No wonder, they said, that trying to reduce crime by
increasing sentences has proven so fruitless, whereas on-the-street
policing that produces more arrests has produced encouraging
results, such as a 50% drop in gun-related crimes in some cities.
Thus, we must prevent aggression before it happens. We must
teach nonaggressive conflict-resolution strategies. When psycholo-
gists Sandra Jo Wilson and Mark Lipsey (2005) assembled data
from 249 studies of school violence prevention programs, they
found encouraging results, especially for programs focused on
selected “problem” students. After being taught problem-solving
skills, emotion-control strategies, and conflict resolution tech-
niques, the typical 20% of students engaging in some violent or
disruptive behavior in a school year was reduced to 13%. Children
whose parents were more permissive (and thus rarely set limits
on behavior and did not enforce rules) grew into more aggressive
Educating children about bullying and monitoring them more
closely can help reduce cyberbullying.
©SpeedKingz/Shutterstock
Aggression Chapter 10 309
adolescents (Ehrenreich et al., 2014), suggesting that more authoritative parenting can pre-
vent aggression. Bullying (including cyberbullying) is reduced when parents or teachers
monitor children closely (Campbell, 2005; Wingate et al., 2013) and when children are
educated about what behaviors are considered bullying (Mishna, 2004). Other programs
focus on teaching empathy and encourage children not to ignore bullying but instead to
step in and say something (Noble, 2003).
To foster a gentler world, we could model and reward sensitivity and cooperation from
an early age, perhaps by training parents how to discipline without violence. Training pro-
grams encourage parents to reinforce desirable behaviors and to frame statements positively
(“When you finish cleaning your room, you can go play,” rather than, “If you don’t clean
your room, you’re grounded”). One “aggression-replacement program” has kept many juve-
nile offenders and gang members from being arrested again by teaching the youths and
their parents communication skills, training them to control anger, and raising their level
of moral reasoning (Goldstein et al., 1998). Aggressive behavior also spreads in social
groups through modeling: American adolescents were significantly more likely to get in
physical fights, badly hurt someone else, or brandish a weapon if their friend (or even
friend of a friend) had done so (Bond & Bushman, 2017).
If observing aggressive models lowers inhibitions and elicits imitation, we might also reduce
brutal, dehumanizing portrayals in media—steps comparable to those already taken to reduce
racist and sexist portrayals. We can also inoculate children against the effects of media vio-
lence. Wondering if the TV networks would ever “face the facts and change their program-
ming,” Eron and Huesmann (1984) taught 170 Oak Park, Illinois, children that television
portrays the world unrealistically, that aggression is less common and less effective than TV
suggests, and that aggressive behavior is undesirable. (Drawing upon attitude research, Eron
and Huesmann encouraged children to draw these inferences themselves and to attribute their
expressed criticisms of television to their own convictions.) When restudied two years later,
these children were less influenced by TV violence than were untrained children.
In a more recent study, Stanford University used 18 classroom lessons to persuade chil-
dren to simply reduce their TV watching and video game-playing (Robinson et al., 2001).
They reduced their TV viewing by a third—and the children’s aggressive behavior at school
dropped 25% compared with children in a control school. Even music can help reduce
aggression when it models the right attitude: German students who were randomly assigned
to hear prosocial music like “We Are the World” and “Help” behaved less aggressively than
those who heard neutral music (Greitemeyer, 2011).
Other ideas for how to prevent aggression come from studies of differences among
people. For example, people who are sensitive to disgust are less aggressive (Pond et al.,
2012), suggesting that emphasizing the disgusting aspects of violence might help prevent
aggression. People who see moral rules as negotiable (agreeing, for example, “Cheating is
appropriate behavior because no one gets hurt”) are more aggressive (Gini et al., 2014),
suggesting that teaching some non-negotiable rules and moral reasoning (“It’s never okay
to hit,” “Cheating hurts everyone”) might reduce aggressive behavior.
Suggestions such as these can help us minimize aggression. But given the complexity of
aggression’s causes and the difficulty of controlling them, who can feel the optimism
expressed by Andrew Carnegie’s forecast that in the twentieth century, “To kill a man will
be considered as disgusting as we in this day consider it disgusting to eat one?” Since
Carnegie uttered those words in 1900, some 200 million human beings have been killed.
It is a sad irony that although today we understand human aggression better than ever
before, humanity’s inhumanity endures.
Culture Change and World Violence
Nevertheless, cultures can change. “The Vikings slaughtered and plundered,” notes science
writer Natalie Angier. “Their descendants in Sweden haven’t fought a war in nearly 200
years.” Indeed, as psychologist Steven Pinker (2011) documents, all forms of violence—
including wars, genocide, and murders—are less common in recent years than in past eras.
We’ve graduated from plundering neighboring tribes to economic interdependence, from a
310 Part Three Social Relations
world in which Western European countries initiated two new wars per year over 600 years
to, for the past seven decades, zero wars. Surprisingly, to those of us who love modern
British murder mysteries, “a contemporary Englishman has about a 50-fold less chance of
being murdered than his compatriot in the Middle Ages,” notes Pinker. In all but one
western democracy, the death penalty has been abolished. And the sole exception—the
United States—no longer practices it for witchcraft, counterfeiting, and horse theft. In fact,
the United States has seen declines in, or the disappearance of, aggressive and violent acts
such as
▯ lynchings,
▯ rapes,
▯ corporal punishment, and
▯ antigay attitudes and intimidation.
We can, Pinker concludes, be grateful “for the institutions of civilization and enlighten-
ment [economic trade, education, government policing and justice] that have made it
possible.”
▯ How can we minimize aggression? Contrary to the
catharsis hypothesis, expressing aggression by catharsis
tends to breed further aggression, not reduce it.
▯ The social learning approach suggests controlling aggres-
sion by counteracting the factors that provoke it: by
reducing aversive stimulation, by rewarding and modeling
nonaggression, and by eliciting reactions incompatible
with aggression.
SUMMING UP: How Can Aggression Be Reduced?
POSTSCRIPT:
Reforming a Violent Culture
In 1960, the United States (apologies to readers elsewhere, but we Americans do have a
special problem with violence) had 3.3 police officers for every reported violent crime. In
1993 we had 3.5 crimes for every police officer (Walinsky, 1995). Since then, the crime
rate has lessened, but it remains unacceptably high. Still, my [DM’s] small campus, which
required no campus police in 1960, now employs 9 full-time and 6 part-time officers, and
offers a nightly shuttle service to transport students around campus.
Americans’ ideas for protecting ourselves abound:
▯ Buy a gun for self-protection—the reason mentioned by two-thirds of gun owners
(Parker et al., 2017). (We have about 300 million guns, which puts one at tripled
risk of being murdered, often by a family member, and at doubled risk of suicide
[Anglemyer et al., 2014].) In assaults where someone had some chance to resist,
those who had a gun were more than 5 times more likely to be shot (Branas et al.,
2009). Handgun-restricting nations, such as Britain and Canada, are safer.
▯ Build more prisons. (We have, but until recently, crime continued to escalate.
Moreover, the social and fiscal costs of incarcerating more than 2 million people,
mostly men, are enormous.)
▯ Impose a “three strikes and you’re out” requirement of lifetime incarceration for
those convicted of three violent crimes. (But are we really ready to pay for all the
new prisons—and prison hospitals and nursing homes—we would need to house and
Aggression Chapter 10 311
care for aging former muggers? Prisons in cash-strapped California, where three
strikes has been the law since the 1990s, are perpetually overcrowded.)
▯ Deter brutal crime and eliminate the worst offenders as some countries do—by
executing the offenders. To show that killing people is wrong—kill people who kill
people. (But nearly all the cities and states with the dozen highest violent-crime
rates already have the death penalty. Because most homicide is impulsive or under
the influence of drugs or alcohol, murderers rarely calculate consequences.)
An alternative approach is suggested by a story about the rescue of a drowning person
from a rushing river. Having successfully administered first aid, the rescuer spots another
struggling person and pulls her out, too. After a half dozen repetitions, the rescuer suddenly
turns and starts running away while the river sweeps yet another floundering person into
view. “Aren’t you going to rescue that fellow?” asks a bystander. “Heck no,” the rescuer
shouts. “I’m going upstream to find out what’s pushing all these people in.”
To be sure, we need police, prisons, and social workers, all of whom help us deal with
the social pathologies that plague us. It’s fine to swat the mosquitoes but better if we can
drain the swamps—by infusing our culture with nonviolent ideals, making the most lethal
weapons less available, challenging the social toxins that corrupt youth, and renewing the
moral roots of character.
©Jack Hollingsworth/Blend Images LLC
11
Attraction and
Intimacy
C H A P T E R
How important is the
need to belong?
What leads to
friendship and
attraction?
What is love?
What enables close
relationships?
How do relationships
end?
Postscript: Making
love
Our lifelong dependence on one another puts relationships at the core of our existence. In your beginning, there very likely was an attraction—the attraction
between a particular man and a particular woman. Aristotle called humans “the
social animal.” Indeed, we have what today’s social psychologists call a need to
belong—to connect with others in enduring, close relationships. This need forms
the basis for what we explore in this chapter: How and why we like and love others,
both romantically and as friends.
“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen
nor even touched, but just felt in the heart.”
—Letter from 11-year-old Helen Keller, 1891
Attraction and Intimacy Chapter 11 313
Social psychologists Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary (1995; Leary, 2010) illustrate
the power of social attachments:
• For our ancestors, mutual attachments enabled group survival. When hunting
game or erecting shelter, 10 hands were better than 2.
• The bonds of love can lead to children, whose survival chances are boosted by
the nurturing of two bonded parents who support each other (Fletcher et al., 2015).
• Relationships consume much of life. How much of your waking life is spent talk-
ing with people? One sampling of 10,000 tape recordings of half-minute slices
of university students’ waking hours (using belt-worn recorders) found them talk-
ing to someone 28% of the time—and that doesn’t count the time they spent
listening to someone (Mehl & Pennebaker, 2003).
• When not face-to-face, most of the world’s 7 billion people connect by voice and
texting or through social networks such as Facebook. In the United States, 96%
of entering college students use social media, with 41% spending 6 or more
hours a week on them (Eagan et al., 2017). The average 18-year-old in the U.S.
spends about two hours a day sending texts and just under two hours on social
media (Twenge, 2017). Our need to belong motivates our investment in being
continuously connected.
• For people everywhere, actual and hoped-for close relationships can dominate
thinking and emotions. Finding a supportive person in whom we can confide,
we feel accepted and prized. Falling in love, we feel irrepressible joy. When
relationships with partners, family, and friends are healthy, self-esteem—a barom-
eter of our relationships—rides high (Denissen et al., 2008). Longing for accep-
tance and love, we spend billions on cosmetics, clothes, and diets. Even
seemingly dismissive people relish being accepted (Carvallo & Gabriel, 2006).
• Exiled, imprisoned, or in solitary confinement, people ache for their own people
and places. Rejected, we are at risk for depression (Nolan et al., 2003). Time
passes more slowly and life seems less meaningful (Twenge et al., 2003). When
queried 3 months after arriving on a large university campus, many international
students, like some homesick domestic students, report feeling sad and lonely
(Cemalcilar & Falbo, 2008).
• For the jilted, the widowed, and the sojourner in a strange place, the loss of
social bonds triggers pain, loneliness, or withdrawal. Losing a close relationship,
adults feel jealous, distraught, or bereaved, as well as mindful of death and life’s
fragility. After relocating, people—especially those with the strongest need to
belong—typically feel homesick (Watt & Badger, 2009).
• Reminders of death in turn heighten our need to belong, to be with others, and
to hold close those we love (Mikulincer et al., 2003; Wisman & Koole, 2003).
Facing the terror of 9/11, millions of Americans called and connected with loved
ones. Likewise, the shocking death of a classmate, a co-worker, or a family
member brings people together, their differences no longer mattering.
As Pope Francis said in 2017, “Each and everyone’s existence is deeply tied to
that of others: Life is not time merely passing by—life is about interactions.” Social
bonds are, in many ways, what make life worth living.
“There’s no question in my
mind about what stands at the
heart of the communication
revolution—the human desire
to connect.”
—Josh Silverman,
President of Skype, 2009
need to belong
A motivation to bond with
others in relationships that
provide ongoing, positive
interactions.
314 Part Three Social Relations
How important is the need
to belong?
Explain why being rejected or ostracized hurts.
Humans are, as the saying goes, social animals. We need to belong. As with other motiva-
tions, we pursue belonging when we don’t have it, and seek less when our needs are fulfilled
(Baumeister & Leary, 1995; DeWall et al., 2009, 2011). When we do belong—when we feel
supported by close, intimate relationships—we tend to be healthier and happier. Satisfy the
need to belong in balance with two other human needs—to feel autonomy and competence—
and the typical result is a deep sense of well-being (Deci & Ryan, 2002; Milyavskaya et al.,
2009; Sheldon & Niemiec, 2006). Happiness is feeling connected, free, and capable.
Social psychologist Kipling Williams (2001, 2011; Wesselmann & Williams, 2017) has
explored what happens when our need to belong is thwarted by ostracism (acts of excluding
or ignoring). Humans in all cultures, whether in schools, workplaces, or homes, use ostracism
to regulate social behavior. Some of us know what it is like to be shunned—to be avoided,
met with averted eyes, or given the silent treatment. The silent treatment is “emotional abuse”
and “a terrible, terrible weapon to use,” say those who have experienced it from a family
member or a co-worker. In experiments, people who are left out of a simple game of ball
tossing feel deflated and stressed. Ostracism hurts, and the social pain is keenly felt—more
than those who are not ostracized ever know (Nordgren et al., 2011). Ostracism may be even
worse than bullying: Bullying, though extremely negative, at least acknowledges someone’s
existence and importance, whereas ostracism treats a person as if she doesn’t exist at all
(Williams & Nida, 2009). In one study, children who were ostracized but not bullied felt
worse than those who were bullied but not ostracized (Carpenter et al., 2012). If only we
better empathized with those rejected, there might be less tolerance of ostracism.
Sometimes deflation turns nasty, as when people lash out at the very people whose
acceptance they desire (Reijntjes et al., 2011) or engage in self-defeating behavior. In several
experiments, students randomly assigned to be rejected by their peers (versus those who
were accepted) became more likely to engage in self-defeating behaviors (such as procras-
tinating by reading magazines) and less able to regulate their behavior (such as eating
cookies [Baumeister et al., 2005; Twenge et al., 2002]). Apparently the stereotype of some-
one eating lots of ice cream after a breakup isn’t far off. Nor
is the trope of the rejected person drowning his sorrows in
alcohol: People who were socially rejected by those close to
them subsequently drank more alcohol (Laws et al., 2017).
Such overeating and alcohol use might result from a self-
control breakdown: Ostracized people show deficits in brain
mechanisms that inhibit unwanted behavior (Otten & Jonas,
2013). Outside of the laboratory, rejected children were, two
years later, more likely to have self-regulation issues, such as
not finishing tasks and not listening to directions (Stenseng
et al., 2014), and were more likely to act aggressively
(Stenseng et al., 2014). In lab experiments, socially rejected
people also became more likely to disparage or blast unpleas-
ant noise at someone who had insulted them, were less
likely to help others, and were more likely to cheat and steal
(Kouchaki & Wareham, 2015; Poon et al., 2013; Twenge
et al., 2001, 2007). If a small laboratory experience of being
“voted off the island” could produce such aggression, noted
the researchers, one wonders what aggressive and antisocial
tendencies “might arise from a series of important rejections
or chronic exclusion.”
Williams and Steve Nida (2011) were surprised to discover
that even “cyber-ostracism” by faceless people whom one will
“A man’s Social Self is the
recognition he gets from his
mates. . . . If no one turned
round when we entered,
answered when we spoke, or
minded what we did, but if
every person . . . acted as if
we were non-existing things, a
kind of rage and impotent
despair would ere long well
up in us.”
—William James,
Principles of Psychology, 1890
A recipe for violence: A review of 126 school shootings in 13 countries
found that 88% of the shooters experienced social rejection or social
conflict at school (Sommer et al., 2014). In a chilling video made before
he killed 7 people near the University of California, Santa Barbara, in
2014, Elliot Rodger described his rejection by women.
©ROBYN BECK/Getty Images
Attraction and Intimacy Chapter 11 315
never meet still takes a toll. Their experimental procedure was inspired by Williams’ experi-
ence at a park picnic. When a Frisbee landed near his feet, and Williams threw it back to
two others, they then included him in the tossing for awhile. When suddenly they stopped
tossing the Frisbee his way, Williams was “amazed” at how hurt he felt by the ostracism
(Storr, 2018).
Taking this experience into the laboratory, the researchers had more than 5,000 participants
from dozens of countries play a Web-based game of throwing a ball with two others (actually
computer-generated fellow players). Those ostracized by the other players experienced poorer
moods and became more likely to conform to others’ wrong judgments on a subsequent per-
ceptual task. Exclusion, whether it’s cyberostracism or in the real world, hurts longest for
anxious people (Zadro et al., 2006). It hurts more for younger than older adults (Hawkley
et al., 2011). And it hurts no less when it comes from a group that the rest of society spurns—
Australian KKK members in one experiment (Gonsalkorale & Williams, 2006). Exclusion even
hurts when the rejection comes from a robot instead of a person (Nash et al., 2018).
Cyberostracism can also occur when you feel ignored on social media. Wouter Wolf and
his colleagues (2015) created an experimental paradigm to test this type of ostracism online,
having participants create a personal profile (“write a paragraph [to] introduce yourself to
the group”) and then, in the ostracism condition, receiving a very low number of “likes.”
Participants ostracized in this way reported just as much negative mood and lack of meaning
as those excluded during the online ball-toss game. So the next time you feel hurt because
you didn’t get many likes, realize you’re not the only one who sometimes feels that way.
Williams and his university department colleagues (2001) found ostracism stressful even
when each was ignored for an agreed-upon day by the unresponsive four others. Contrary
to their expectations that this would be a laughter-filled role-playing game, the simulated
ostracism disrupted work, interfered with pleasant social functioning, and “caused tempo-
rary concern, anxiety, paranoia, and general fragility of spirit.” To thwart our deep need to
belong is to unsettle our life.
Ostracized people exhibit heightened activity in a brain cortex area that also activates
in response to physical pain (Rotge et al., 2015). Ostracism’s social pain, much like physical
pain, increases aggression (Riva et al., 2011). Hurt feelings are also embodied in a depressed
heart rate (Moor et al., 2010). Heartbreak makes for heart brake.
Indeed, the pain of social rejection is so real in the brain that a pain-relieving Tylenol
can reduce hurt feelings (DeWall et al., 2010), as can sending a light electrical current to
the brain region in which rejection is felt (Riva et al., 2012). Ostracism’s opposite—feeling
love—activates brain reward systems. When looking at their beloved’s picture, university
students feel markedly less pain when immersing their hands in cold water (Younger et al.,
2010). Ostracism is a real pain, and love is a natural painkiller.
Asked to recall a time when they were socially excluded—perhaps left alone in the dorm
when others went out—people in one experiment even perceived the room temperature as
five degrees colder than did those asked to recall a social acceptance experience (Zhong
& Leonardelli, 2008). Such recollections come easily: People remember and relive past
social pain more easily than past physical pain (Chen et al., 2008). The effect moves the
other way as well: Students who were ordered to ostracize others were just as distressed as
those who were ostracized (Legate et al., 2013) and felt less human (Bastian et al., 2012).
Roy Baumeister (2005) finds a silver lining in the rejection research. When recently
excluded people experience a safe opportunity to make a new friend, they “seem willing
and even eager to take it.” They become more attentive to smiling, accepting faces (DeWall
et al., 2009). An exclusion experience also triggers increased mimicry of others’ behavior
in an unconscious attempt to build rapport (Lakin et al., 2008). And at a societal level,
notes Baumeister (2005), meeting the need to belong should pay dividends:
My colleagues in sociology have pointed out that minority groups who feel excluded show
many of the same patterns that our laboratory manipulations elicit: high rates of aggression
and antisocial behavior, decreased willingness to cooperate and obey rules, poorer intellectual
performance, more self-destructive acts, short-term focus, and the like. If we could promote a
more inclusive society, in which more people feel themselves accepted as valued members,
some of these tragic patterns might be reduced.
Given the dramatic effects of
rejection in experiments, what
do you expect are the long-term
effects of chronic rejection?
316 Part Three Social Relations
WHAT LEADS TO FRIENDSHIP
AND ATTRACTION?
Explain how proximity, physical attractiveness,
similarity, and feeling liked nurture liking and loving.
What predisposes one person to like, or to love, another? Few questions about human
nature arouse greater interest. The ways affections flourish and fade form the stuff and fluff
of soap operas, popular music, novels, and much of our everyday conversation. Long before
I [DM] knew there was a field such as social psychology, I had memorized Dale Carnegie’s
recipe for How to Win Friends and Influence People.
So much has been written about liking and loving that almost every conceivable
explanation—and its opposite—has already been proposed. For most people—and for you—
what factors nurture liking and loving?
▯ Does absence make the heart grow fonder? Or is someone who is out of sight also
out of mind?
▯ Do likes attract? Or opposites?
▯ How much do good looks matter?
▯ What has fostered your close relationships?
Let’s start with those factors that lead to friendship and then consider those that sustain
and deepen a relationship.
Proximity
One powerful predictor of whether any two people are friends is sheer proximity. Proximity
can also breed hostility; most assaults and murders involve people who live close to each
other. But much more often, proximity prompts liking.
Mitja Back and his University of Leipzig colleagues
(2008) confirmed this by randomly assigning students
to seats at their first class meeting and then having each
make a brief self-introduction to the whole class. One
year after this one-time seating assignment, students
reported greater friendship with those who happened to
be seated next to or near them during that first class
gathering. In baseball, umpires are less likely to call a
strike on batters they have stood closer to throughout
the game (Mills, 2014).
Though it may seem trivial to those pondering the
mysterious origins of romantic love, sociologists long
ago found that most people marry someone who lives
in the same neighborhood, or works at the same com-
pany or job, or sits in the same class, or visits the same
favorite place (Bossard, 1932; Burr, 1973; Clarke, 1952;
“I cannot tell how my ankles
bend, nor whence the cause
of my faintest wish, nor the
cause of the friendship I emit,
nor the cause of the friend-
ship I take again.”
—Walt Whitman,
Song of Myself, 1855
proximity
Geographical nearness.
Proximity (more precisely,
“functional distance”)
powerfully predicts liking.
▯ Humans have a fundamental need to belong. When it is
thwarted, such as through exclusion or ostracism, peo-
ple feel stressed and lose self-control. Social pain mim-
ics physical pain.
▯ Ostracism hurts even when it comes from a despised
group, even when it’s expected, and even when it’s
online or via social media.
SUMMING UP: How Important Is the Need to Belong?
Close relationships with friends and family contribute to health and happiness.
©Don Hammond/Design Pics
Attraction and Intimacy Chapter 11 317
McPherson et al., 2001). In a Pew survey (2006) of people married or in long-term relation-
ships, 38% met at work or at school, and some of the rest met when their paths crossed
in their neighborhood, church, or gym, or while growing up. Look around. If you marry, it
may well be to someone who has lived or worked or studied within walking distance.
INTERACTION
Even more significant than geographic distance is “functional distance”—how often people’s
paths cross. We become friends with those who use the same entrances, parking lots, and
recreation areas. Randomly assigned college roommates who interact frequently are far
more likely to become good friends than enemies (Newcomb, 1961). At the college where
I [DM] teach, men and women once lived on opposite sides of the campus. Unsurprisingly,
cross-sex friendships were uncommon. Now that they live in gender-integrated residence
halls and share common sidewalks, lounges, and laundry facilities, friendships between men
and women are far more frequent. Interaction enables people to explore their similarities,
to sense one another’s liking, to learn more about each other, and to perceive themselves
as part of a social unit (Arkin & Burger, 1980). In one study, strangers liked each other
more the longer they talked (Reis et al., 2011).
So if you’re new in town and want to make friends, try to get an apartment near the
mailboxes, a desk near the coffeepot, a parking spot near the main buildings, or a room in
a dormitory with shared bathroom facilities (Easterbrook & Vignoles, 2015). Such is the
architecture of friendship.
The chance nature of such contacts helps explain a surprising finding. Consider this: If you
had an identical twin who became engaged to someone, wouldn’t you (being in so many ways
similar to your twin) expect to share your twin’s attraction to that person? But no, reported
researchers David Lykken and Auke Tellegen (1993); only half of identical twins recall really
liking their twin’s selection, and only 5% said, “I could have fallen for my twin’s fiancé.”
Romantic love is often rather like ducklings’ imprinting, surmised Lykken and Tellegen. With
repeated exposure to and interaction with someone, our infatuation may fix on almost anyone
who has roughly similar characteristics and who reciprocates our affection.
Why does proximity breed liking? One factor is availability; obviously, there are fewer
opportunities to get to know someone who attends a different school or lives in another
town. But there is more to it. Most people like their roommates, or those one door away,
better than those two doors away. Those just a few doors away, or even a floor below, hardly
live at an inconvenient distance. Moreover, those close by are potential enemies as well as
friends. So why does proximity encourage affection more often than animosity?
ANTICIPATION OF INTERACTION
Proximity enables people to discover commonalities and
exchange rewards. But merely anticipating interaction also boosts
liking. John Darley and Ellen Berscheid (1967) discovered this
when they gave University of Minnesota women ambiguous
information about two other women, one of whom they expected
to talk with intimately. Asked how much they liked each one,
the women preferred the person they expected to meet. Expect-
ing to date someone also boosts liking (Berscheid et al., 1976).
Even voters on the losing side of an election will find their
opinions of the winning candidate—whom they are now stuck
with—rising (Gilbert et al., 1998).
The phenomenon is adaptive. Anticipatory liking—expecting
that someone will be pleasant and compatible—increases the
chance of forming a rewarding relationship (Klein & Kunda, 1992;
Knight & Vallacher, 1981; Miller & Marks, 1982). How good that
we are biased to like those we often see, for our lives are filled
with relationships with people whom we may not have chosen but
with whom we need to have continuing interactions—roommates,
“I do not believe that friends
are necessarily the people you
like best, they are merely the
people who got there first.”
—Sir Peter Ustinov,
Dear Me, 1979
WHAT LEADS TO FRIENDSHIP
AND ATTRACTION?
Explain how proximity, physical attractiveness,
similarity, and feeling liked nurture liking and loving.
What predisposes one person to like, or to love, another? Few questions about human
nature arouse greater interest. The ways affections flourish and fade form the stuff and fluff
of soap operas, popular music, novels, and much of our everyday conversation. Long before
I [DM] knew there was a field such as social psychology, I had memorized Dale Carnegie’s
recipe for How to Win Friends and Influence People.
So much has been written about liking and loving that almost every conceivable
explanation—and its opposite—has already been proposed. For most people—and for you—
what factors nurture liking and loving?
▯ Does absence make the heart grow fonder? Or is someone who is out of sight also
out of mind?
▯ Do likes attract? Or opposites?
▯ How much do good looks matter?
▯ What has fostered your close relationships?
Let’s start with those factors that lead to friendship and then consider those that sustain
and deepen a relationship.
Proximity
One powerful predictor of whether any two people are friends is sheer proximity. Proximity
can also breed hostility; most assaults and murders involve people who live close to each
other. But much more often, proximity prompts liking.
Mitja Back and his University of Leipzig colleagues
(2008) confirmed this by randomly assigning students
to seats at their first class meeting and then having each
make a brief self-introduction to the whole class. One
year after this one-time seating assignment, students
reported greater friendship with those who happened to
be seated next to or near them during that first class
gathering. In baseball, umpires are less likely to call a
strike on batters they have stood closer to throughout
the game (Mills, 2014).
Though it may seem trivial to those pondering the
mysterious origins of romantic love, sociologists long
ago found that most people marry someone who lives
in the same neighborhood, or works at the same com-
pany or job, or sits in the same class, or visits the same
favorite place (Bossard, 1932; Burr, 1973; Clarke, 1952;
“I cannot tell how my ankles
bend, nor whence the cause
of my faintest wish, nor the
cause of the friendship I emit,
nor the cause of the friend-
ship I take again.”
—Walt Whitman,
Song of Myself, 1855
proximity
Geographical nearness.
Proximity (more precisely,
“functional distance”)
powerfully predicts liking.
Feeling close to those close by: People often become attached to, and
sometimes fall in love with, those with whom they share activities.
©Isaac Koval/Getty Images
318 Part Three Social Relations
siblings, grandparents, teachers, classmates, co-workers. Liking such people is surely condu-
cive to better relationships and to happier, more productive living.
MERE EXPOSURE
Proximity leads to liking not only because it enables interaction and anticipatory liking but
also for a simpler reason: More than 200 experiments reveal that, contrary to an old prov-
erb, familiarity does not breed contempt. Rather, it fosters fondness (Bornstein, 1989,
1999). Mere exposure to all sorts of novel stimuli—nonsense syllables, Chinese calligraphy
characters, musical selections, faces—boosts people’s ratings of them. Do the “words” nan-
soma, saricik, and afworbu mean something better or something worse than the words iktitaf,
biwojni, and kadirga? Told these were words in Turkish (they are not), University of Michigan
students tested by Robert Zajonc (1968, 1970) preferred whichever of these words they had
seen most frequently. The more times they had seen a meaningless word or a Chinese
ideograph, the more likely they were to say it meant something good (Figure 1). I’ve [DM]
tested this idea with my own students. Periodically flash certain nonsense words on a
screen. By the end of the semester, students will rate those “words” more positively than
other nonsense words they have never before seen. When hurricanes do significant damage—
and thus the hurricane name is mentioned frequently—babies are more likely to receive
names starting with that letter, presumably due to mere exposure (Berger et al., 2012).
Attitudes toward social groups can also be changed by mere exposure: When people read
stories about transgender individuals accompanied by pictures, they become more comfort-
able and less afraid of transgender people (Flores et al., 2018).
Or consider this: What are your favorite letters of the alphabet? People of differing
nationalities, languages, and ages prefer the letters appearing in their own names and those
that frequently appear in their own languages (Hoorens et al., 1990; Hoorens & Nuttin,
1993; Kitayama & Karasawa, 1997; Nuttin, 1987). French students rate capital W, the least
frequent letter in French, as their least favorite letter. In a stock market simulation study,
American business students preferred to buy stocks that shared the same first letter as their
name (Knewtson & Sias, 2010). Japanese students prefer not only letters from their names
but also numbers corresponding to their birth dates. Consumers prefer products whose
mere-exposure effect
The tendency for novel stimuli
to be liked more or rated more
positively after the rater has
been repeatedly exposed to
them.
How much do you like your
name? In six studies, Jochen
Gebauer and colleagues (2008)
report that liking of one’s own
name is a reliable indicator of
both implicit and explicit
self-esteem.
FIGURE 1
The Mere-Exposure Effect
Students rated stimuli—a sample of which is shown here—more positively after being shown them repeatedly.
Source: Zajonc, 1968.
1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5
Average rated
“goodness” of meaning
Favorability of attitude Average rated
“goodness” of meaning
Chinese-like characters Men’s faces Turkish words
Jandara
Zabulon
Dilikli
Kadirga
Nansoma
Saricik
Afworbu
Low-frequency exposureHigh-frequency exposure
Attraction and Intimacy Chapter 11 319
prices remind them of their birth dates ($49.15 for a birthday on the 15th) and their names
(fifty-five dollars for a name starting with F). The preference persists even when the price
is higher (Coulter & Grewal, 2014). This “name letter effect” reflects more than mere
exposure, however—see “Focus On: Liking Things Associated with Oneself.”
The mere-exposure effect violates the commonsense prediction of boredom—decreased
interest—regarding repeatedly heard music or tasted foods (Kahneman & Snell, 1992).
When completed in 1889, the Eiffel Tower in Paris was mocked as grotesque (Harrison,
1977). Today, it is the beloved symbol of Paris. Familiarity usually doesn’t breed contempt,
it increases liking.
However, there is such a thing as too much exposure—if repetitions are incessant, liking
eventually drops (Montoya et al., 2017). Music provides a vivid example: You may grow to
like a popular song as you hear it more often, but there eventually comes a point—ugh—when
you’ve heard it too much. “Even the best song becomes tiresome if heard too often,” says
a Korean proverb.
Liking Things Associated with Oneself
focus
ON
We humans love to feel good about ourselves, and gener-
ally we do. Not only are we prone to self-serving bias, we
also exhibit what Brett Pelham, Matthew Mirenberg, and
John Jones (2002) call implicit egotism: We like what we
associate with ourselves.
That includes the letters of our name and also the peo-
ple, places, and things that we unconsciously connect
with ourselves (Jones et al., 2002; Koole et al., 2001). If a
stranger’s or politician’s face is morphed to include fea-
tures of our own, we like the new face better (Bailenson
et al., 2009; DeBruine, 2004). We are also more attracted
to people whose arbitrary experimental code number
resembles our birth date, and we are even disproportion-
ately likely to marry someone whose first or last name
resembles our own, such as by starting with the same
letter (Jones et al., 2004).
Such preferences appear to subtly influence other major
life decisions as well, including our locations and careers.
Philadelphia, which has more people than Jacksonville,
has 2.2 times as many men named Jack. But it has 10.4
times as many people named Philip. Likewise, Virginia
Beach has a disproportionate number of people named
Virginia.
Does this merely reflect the influence of one’s place
when naming one’s baby? Are people in Georgia, for ex-
ample, more likely to name their babies George or
Georgia? That may be so, but it doesn’t explain why states
tend to have a relative excess of people whose last names
are similar to the state names. California, for example, has
a disproportionate number of people whose names begin
with Cali (as in Califano). Likewise, Toronto has a marked
excess of people whose names begin with Tor.
Compared to the national average, St. Louis has 49%
more men named Louis. People named Hill, Park, Beach,
Lake, or Rock are disproportionately likely to live in cities
with names (such as Park City) that include their names.
“People are attracted to places that resemble their
names,” surmise Pelham, Mirenberg, and Jones (2002).
Weirder yet—we are not making this up—people seem
to prefer careers related to their names. Across the United
States, Jerry, Dennis, and Walter are equally popular
names (0.42% of people carry each of these names). Yet
America’s dentists are almost twice as likely to be named
Dennis as Jerry or Walter. There also are 2.5 times as many
dentists named Denise as there are with the equally
popular names Beverly or Tammy. People named George
or Geoffrey are overrepresented among geoscientists
( geologists, geophysicists, and geochemists). And in the
2000 presidential campaign, people with last names be-
ginning with B and G were disproportionately likely to con-
tribute to the campaigns of Bush and Gore, respectively.
The implicit egotism phenomenon does have its
skeptics. Uri Simonsohn (2011a,b) acknowledges that
implicit egotism occurs in the laboratory, and he was able
to replicate the associations between people’s names,
occupations, and places. But he argues that “reverse cau-
sality” sometimes is the explanation. For example, streets
are often named after their residents, and towns are often
named after their founders (Williams founded Williams-
burg). And founders’ descendants may stick around. In
reply, Pelham and Mauricio Carvallo (2011) grant that some
of the effects—especially for career choice—are modest.
But they contend that implicit egotism is a real, though
subtle, unconscious judgmental bias.
Reading about implicit egotism–based preferences
gives me [DM] pause: Has this anything to do with why I
enjoyed that trip to Fort Myers? Why I’ve written about
moods, the media, and marriage? Why I collaborated with
Professor Murdoch? If so, does this also explain why it was
Suzie who sold seashells by the seashore?
320 Part Three Social Relations
So, do visitors to the Louvre in Paris really adore the Mona Lisa for the artistry it displays,
or are they simply delighted to find a familiar face? It might be both: To know her is to like
her. Eddie Harmon-Jones and John Allen (2001) explored this phenomenon experimentally.
When they showed people a woman’s face, their cheek (smiling) muscles typically became
more active with repeated viewings. Mere exposure breeds pleasant feelings.
Mere exposure has an even stronger effect when people receive stimuli without awareness
(Bornstein & D’Agostino, 1992; Hansen & Wänke, 2009; Kunst-Wilson & Zajonc, 1980;
Willems et al., 2010). In one experiment, women heard music in one headphone and words
in the other; they were asked to repeat the words out loud, focusing attention toward the
words and away from the tunes. Later, when the women heard the tunes interspersed among
similar ones not previously played, they did not recognize them. Nevertheless, they liked best
the tunes they had previously heard. Even patients with amnesia—who can consciously recall
very little of what they experience—prefer faces they saw recently (Marin-Garcia et al., 2013).
Note that conscious judgments about the stimuli in these experiments provided fewer
clues to what people had heard or seen than did their instant feelings. You can probably
recall immediately and intuitively liking or disliking something or someone without con-
sciously knowing why. Zajonc (1980) argues that emotions are often more instantaneous than
thinking. Zajonc’s rather astonishing idea—that emotions are semi-independent of thinking
(“affect may precede cognition”)—has found support in recent brain research. Emotion and
cognition are enabled by distinct brain regions. Lesion a monkey’s amygdala (an emotion-
related brain structure) and its emotional responses will be impaired, but its cognitive
functions will be intact. Lesion its hippocampus (a memory-related structure) and its cogni-
tion will be impaired, but its emotional responses remain intact (Zola-Morgan et al., 1991).
The mere-exposure effect has “enormous adaptive significance,” notes Zajonc (1998). It
is a “hardwired” phenomenon that predisposes our attractions and attachments. It helped
our ancestors categorize things and people as either familiar and safe or unfamiliar and
possibly dangerous. The more two strangers interact, the more attractive they tend to find
each other (Reis et al., 2011). The mere-exposure effect colors our evaluations of others:
We like familiar people (Swap, 1977), and perceive them as happier (Carr et al., 2017) and
more trustworthy (Sofer et al., 2015). “If it’s familiar, it has not eaten you yet,” Zajonc used
to say (Bennett, 2010). It works the other way around, too: People we like (for example,
smiling rather than unsmiling strangers) seem more familiar (Garcia-Marques et al., 2004).
Mere exposure’s negative side is our wariness of the unfamiliar—which may explain the
automatic, unconscious prejudice people often feel when confronting those who are differ-
ent. Infants as young as 3 months exhibit an own-race preference: If they are being raised
by others of their race, they prefer to gaze at faces of their own familiar race (Bar-Haim
et al., 2006; Kelly et al., 2005, 2007).
We even like ourselves better the way we’re used to seeing ourselves. In a delightful
experiment, researchers showed women pictures of themselves and their mirror images.
Asked which picture they liked better, most preferred their mirror image—the image they
were used to seeing in the mirror. (No wonder our photographs never look quite right.)
When close friends of the women were shown the same two pictures, they preferred the
true picture—the image they were used to seeing (Mita et al., 1977). Now that we see our
own selfie photos so frequently, do you think the results would be different?
The mere-exposure effect. If she
is like most of us, German chan-
cellor Angela Merkel may prefer
her familiar mirror-image (left),
which she sees every morning
while brushing her teeth, to her
actual image (right).
©MICHAEL SOHN/AP Images
Attraction and Intimacy Chapter 11 321
Advertisers and politicians exploit this phenomenon. When people have no strong
feelings about a product or a candidate, repetition alone can increase sales or votes
(McCullough & Ostrom, 1974; Winter, 1973). After endless repetition of a commercial,
shoppers often have an unthinking, automatic, favorable response to the product. Students
who saw pop-up ads for brand-name products on web pages had a more positive attitude
toward the brand, even when they didn’t remember seeing the ads (Courbet et al., 2014).
If candidates are relatively unknown, those with the most media exposure usually win
( Patterson, 1980; Schaffner et al., 1981). Political strategists who understand the mere-
exposure effect have replaced reasoned argument with brief ads that hammer home a
candidate’s name and sound-bite message.
The respected chief of the Washington State Supreme Court, Keith Callow, learned this
lesson when in 1990 he lost to a seemingly hopeless opponent, Charles Johnson. Johnson, an
unknown attorney who handled minor criminal cases and divorces, filed for the seat on the
principle that judges “need to be challenged.” Neither man campaigned, and the media ignored
the race. On election day, the two candidates’ names appeared without any identification—just
one name next to the other. The result: a 53% to 47% Johnson victory. “There are a lot more
Johnsons out there than Callows,” offered the ousted judge afterward to a stunned legal com-
munity. Indeed, the state’s largest newspaper counted 27 Charles Johnsons in its local phone
book. Forced to choose between two unknown names, many voters preferred the comfortable,
familiar name of Charles Johnson (one of whom was a TV anchor person).
Physical Attractiveness
What do (or did) you seek in a potential date? Sincerity? Character? Humor? Good looks?
Sophisticated, intelligent people are unconcerned with such superficial qualities as good
looks; they know “beauty is only skin deep” and “you can’t judge a book by its cover.” At
least, they know that’s how they ought to feel. As Cicero counseled, “Resist appearance.”
The belief that looks are unimportant may be another instance of how we deny real
influences upon us, for there is now a file cabinet full of research studies showing that
appearance matters. The consistency and pervasiveness of this effect is astonishing. Good
looks are an asset.
ATTRACTIVENESS AND DATING
Like it or not, a young woman’s physical attractiveness is a moderately good predictor of
how frequently she dates, and a young man’s attractiveness is a modestly good predictor of
how frequently he dates (Berscheid et al., 1971; Reis et al., 1980, 1982; Walster et al., 1966).
However, women more than men say they would prefer a mate who’s homely and warm over
one who’s attractive and cold (Fletcher et al., 2004). In a worldwide BBC Internet survey
of nearly 220,000 people, men more than women ranked attractiveness as important in a
“We should look to the mind,
and not to the outward
appearances.”
—Aesop,
Fables
Maxine!Comix ©Marian Henley.
Reprinted by permission of the artist.
322 Part Three Social Relations
mate, whereas women more than men assigned impor-
tance to honesty, humor, kindness, and dependability
(Lippa, 2007). In a longitudinal study following hetero-
sexual married couples for four years, the wife’s physical
attractiveness predicted the husband’s marital satisfac-
tion better than the husband’s physical attractiveness
predicted the wife’s satisfaction. In other words, attrac-
tive wives led to happier husbands, but attractive
husbands had less effect on wives’ happiness (Meltzer
et al., 2014). Gay men and lesbian women display these
sex differences as well, with gay and straight men both
valuing appearance more than lesbian or straight women
do (Ha et al., 2012).
Do such self-reports imply, as many have surmised,
that women are better at following Cicero’s advice? Or
that nothing has changed since 1930, when the English
philosopher Bertrand Russell (1930, p. 139) wrote, “On
the whole women tend to love men for their character
while men tend to love women for their appearance”? Or does this occur because it’s more
often men who do the inviting? If women were to indicate their preferences among various
men, would looks be as important to them as they are to men?
In one classic study, Elaine Hatfield and co-workers (1966) matched 752 University of
Minnesota first-year students for a “Welcome Week” matching dance. The researchers gave
each student personality and aptitude tests but then matched the couples randomly. On the
night of the dance, the couples danced and talked for 2½ hours and then evaluated their
dates. How well did the personality and aptitude tests predict attraction? Did people like
someone better who was high in self-esteem, or low in anxiety, or different from themselves
in outgoingness? The researchers examined a long list of possibilities. But so far as they
could determine, only one thing mattered: how physically attractive the person was (as
previously rated by the researchers). The more attractive a woman was, the more the man
liked her and wanted to date her again. And the more attractive the man was, the more
the woman liked him and wanted to date him again. Pretty pleases.
More recent studies have gathered data from speed-dating evenings, during which people
interact with a succession of potential dates for only a few minutes each and later indicate
which ones they would like to see again (mutual “yeses” are given contact information).
The procedure is rooted in research showing that we can form durable impressions of others
based on seconds-long “thin slices” of their social behavior (Ambady et al., 2000). In speed-
dating research, men (vs. women) thought they would care more about a potential date’s
physical attractiveness, but when it came time to decide whom to date, a prospect’s attrac-
tiveness was similarly important to both men and women (Eastwick & Finkel, 2008a,b).
A recent meta-analysis of 97 studies found that men and women placed about the same,
fairly high importance on physical attractiveness and about the same, lower importance on
earning prospects (Eastwick et al., 2014). As you saw earlier, other studies have found oth-
erwise. Thus, whether men value physical attractiveness more than women is debated, but
the overall importance of physical attractiveness in dating is fairly large—especially when
dates stem from first impressions. However, once people have gotten to know each other
over months or years through jobs or friendships, they focus more on each person’s unique
qualities rather than their physical attractiveness and status. In several studies examining
liking over time among friends, the more time that went by, the more the friends diverged
over who was most attractive as a mate. Among 167 couples, those who knew each other
for longer and were friends before dating were less similar in physical attractiveness than
those who had known each other a shorter time and were not friends before they dated
(Hunt et al., 2015). In a 2012 survey, 43% of women and 33% of men said they had fallen
in love with someone they were not initially attracted to (Fisher & Garcia, 2013). In other
words, there’s someone for everyone—once you get to know them (Eastwick & Hunt, 2014).
Pretty pleases, but perhaps only for a puny period.
“Personal beauty is a greater
recommendation than any let-
ter of introduction.”
—Aristotle,
Diogenes Laertius
Attractiveness and dating. For Internet dating customers, looks are part of
what is offered and sought.
©Wavebreak Media Ltd/123RF
Attraction and Intimacy Chapter 11 323
Looks even influence voting, or so it seems from a
study by Alexander Todorov and colleagues (2005; Todorov,
2011). They showed Princeton University students photo-
graphs of the two major candidates in 95 U.S. Senate races
since 2000 and in 600 U.S. House of Representatives
races. Based on looks alone, the students (who preferred
competent-looking over more baby-faced candidates) cor-
rectly guessed the winners of 72% of the Senate and 67%
of the House races. Follow-up studies have confirmed the
finding that voters prefer competent-looking candidates
(Antonakis & Dalgas, 2009; Chiao et al., 2008). But gen-
der also mattered: Men were more likely to vote for physi-
cally attractive female candidates, and women were more
likely to vote for approachable-looking male candidates.
Likewise, heterosexual people display a positive bias toward
attractive job candidates and university applicants—if they
are of the other sex (Agthe et al., 2011).
THE MATCHING PHENOMENON
Not everyone can end up paired with someone stunningly attractive. So how do people pair
off? Judging from research by Bernard Murstein (1986) and others, they get real. They pair
off with people who are about as attractive as they are. Studies have found a strong cor-
respondence between the rated attractiveness of husbands and wives, of dating partners,
and even of those within particular fraternities (Feingold, 1988; Montoya, 2008). People
tend to select as friends, and especially to marry, those who are a “good match” not only
to their level of intelligence, popularity, and self-worth but also to their level of attractive-
ness (McClintock, 2014; Taylor et al., 2011).
Experiments confirm this matching phenomenon. When choosing whom to approach,
knowing the other is free to say yes or no, people often approach and invest more in pursu-
ing someone whose attractiveness roughly matches their own (Berscheid et al., 1971; van
Straaten et al., 2009). They seek out someone who seems desirable, but they are mindful of
the limits of their own desirability. Good physical matches may be conducive to good rela-
tionships, reported Gregory White (1980) from a study of UCLA dating couples. Those who
were most similar in physical attractiveness were most likely, 9 months later,
to have fallen more deeply in love. When couples are instead dissimilar in
attractiveness, they are more likely to consider leaving the relationship for
someone else (Davies & Shackelford, 2017).
Perhaps this research prompts you to think of happy couples who differ
in perceived “hotness.” In such cases, the less-attractive person often has
compensating qualities. Each partner brings assets to the social marketplace,
and the value of the respective assets creates an equitable match. Personal
advertisements and self-presentations to online dating services exhibit this
exchange of assets (Cicerello & Sheehan, 1995; Hitsch et al., 2006; Koestner
& Wheeler, 1988; Rajecki et al., 1991). Men typically offer wealth or status
and seek youth and attractiveness; women more often do the reverse: “Attrac-
tive, bright woman, 26, slender, seeks warm, professional male.” Men who
advertise their income and education, and women who advertise their youth
and looks, receive more responses to their ads (Baize & Schroeder, 1995).
The asset-matching process helps explain why beautiful young women often
marry older men of higher social status (Elder, 1969; Kanazawa & Kovar,
2004). The richer the man, the younger and more beautiful the woman.
THE PHYSICAL-ATTRACTIVENESS STEREOTYPE
Does the attractiveness effect spring entirely from sexual attractiveness?
Clearly not, as researchers discovered when they used a makeup artist to
“If you would marry wisely,
marry your equal.”
—Ovid
(BC 43–AD 17)
matching phenomenon
The tendency for men and
women to choose as partners
those who are a “good match”
in attractiveness and other
traits.
Physical appearance matters less among couples who were friends before
they started dating.
©Cathy Yeulet/123RF
Asset matching. High-status Rolling Stones guitarist
Keith Richards has been married to supermodel Patti
Hansen, 19 years his junior, since 1983.
©s_bukley/Shutterstock
324 Part Three Social Relations
give an otherwise attractive accomplice a scarred, bruised, or birthmarked face. Glasgow
train commuters of both sexes avoided sitting next to an apparently facially disfigured
accomplice (Houston & Bull, 1994). In one experiment, two groups of observers were asked
to surmise people’s traits based on their photographs. Those seeing photos of facially dis-
figured people judged them as less intelligent, emotionally stable, and trustworthy than did
those seeing photos of those same people after plastic surgery (Jamrozik et al., 2018).
Moreover, much as adults are biased toward attractive adults, young children are biased
toward attractive children (Dion & Berscheid, 1974; Langlois et al., 2000). Judging by how
long they gaze at someone, even 3-month-old infants prefer attractive faces (Langlois et al.,
1987).
Adults show a similar bias when judging children. Missouri fifth-grade teachers were
given identical information about a boy or a girl but with the photograph of an attractive
or an unattractive child attached. The teachers perceived the attractive child as more intel-
ligent and successful in school (Clifford & Walster, 1973). Imagine being a playground
supervisor having to discipline an unruly child. Might you, like the women studied by Karen
Dion (1972), show less warmth and tact to an unattractive child? The sad truth is that
most of us assume that homely children are less able and socially competent than their
beautiful peers (see “The Inside Story: Ellen Berscheid on Attractiveness”).
What is more, we assume that beautiful people possess certain desirable traits. Other
things being equal, we guess beautiful people are happier, sexually warmer, and more outgo-
ing, intelligent, and successful—although not more honest (Eagly et al., 1991; Feingold,
1992b; Jackson et al., 1995). In one study, students judged attractive women as more agree-
able, open, outgoing, ambitious, and emotionally stable (Segal-Caspi et al., 2012). We are
more eager to bond with attractive people, which motivates our projecting desirable attri-
butes such as kindness and reciprocal interest into them (Lemay et al., 2010). When attrac-
tive CEOs of companies appear on television, the stock price of their companies rise—but
being quoted in a newspaper, without a photo, has no effect (Halford & Hsu, 2014).
Added together, the findings define a physical-attractiveness stereotype: What is beautiful
is good. Children learn the stereotype quite early—often through stories told to them by adults.
“Disney movies promote the stereotype that what is beautiful is good,” report Doris Bazzini
and colleagues (2010) from an analysis of human characters in 21 animated films. Snow
White and Cinderella are beautiful—and kind. The witch and the stepsisters are ugly—and
wicked. “If you want to be loved by somebody who isn’t already in your family, it doesn’t hurt
“If I weren’t beautiful, do you
think he’d be with me?”
—Melania Trump, When Asked
“If [Donald Trump] weren’t rich,
would you be with him?,”
Glamour, 2005
physical-attractiveness
stereotype
The presumption that physically
attractive people possess other
socially desirable traits as well:
What is beautiful is good.
Ellen Berscheid on Attractiveness
THE inside
STORY
I vividly remember the afternoon I began to appreciate the
far-reaching implications of physical attractiveness. Grad-
uate student Karen Dion (now a professor at the Univer-
sity of Toronto) learned that some researchers at our
Institute of Child Development had collected popularity
ratings from nursery school children and taken a photo of
each child. Although teachers and caregivers of children
had persuaded us that “all children are beautiful” and no
physical-attractiveness discriminations could be made,
Dion suggested we instruct some people to rate each
child’s looks and that we correlate these with popularity.
After doing so, we realized our long shot had hit home:
Attractive children were popular children. Indeed, the
effect was far more potent than
we and others had assumed,
with a host of implications that
investigators are still tracing.
Source: Berscheid, E., University
of Minnesota.
Ellen Berscheid
University of Minnesota
©Ellen Berscheid
Attraction and Intimacy Chapter 11 325
to be beautiful,” surmised one 8-year-old girl. Or as one kindergarten girl put it when asked
what it means to be pretty, “It’s like to be a princess. Everybody loves you” (Dion, 1979).
If physical attractiveness is that important, then permanently changing people’s attrac-
tiveness should change the way others react to them. But is it ethical to alter someone’s
looks? Such manipulations are performed millions of times a year by cosmetic surgeons
and orthodontists. With teeth straightened and whitened, hair replaced and dyed, face lifted,
fat liposuctioned, and breasts enlarged, lifted, or reduced, most self-dissatisfied people do
express satisfaction with the results of their procedures, though some unhappy patients seek
out repeat procedures (Honigman et al., 2004).
To examine the effect of such alterations on others, Michael Kalick (1977) had Harvard
students rate their impressions of eight women based on profile photographs taken before
or after cosmetic surgery. Not only did they judge the women as more physically attractive
after the surgery but also as kinder, more sensitive, more sexually warm and responsive,
more likable, and so on.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS To say that attractiveness is important, other things being equal,
is not to say that physical appearance always outranks other qualities. Some people more
than others judge people by their looks (Livingston, 2001). Moreover, attractiveness most
affects first impressions. But first impressions are important—and have become more so as
societies become increasingly mobile and urbanized and as contacts with people become
more fleeting (Berscheid, 1981). Your Facebook self-presentation starts with your face. In
speed-dating experiments, the attractiveness effect is strongest when people’s choices are
superficially made—when meeting lots of people quickly (Lenton & Francesconi, 2010).
That helps explain why attractiveness better predicts happiness and social connections for
those in urban rather than rural settings (Plaut et al., 2009).
Though interviewers may deny it, attractiveness and grooming affect first impressions in
job interviews—especially when the evaluator is of the other sex (Agthe et al., 2011; Cash
& Janda, 1984; Mack & Rainey, 1990; Marvelle & Green, 1980). People rate new products
more favorably when they are associated with attractive inventors (Baron et al., 2006). Such
impressions help explain why attractive people and tall people have more prestigious jobs
and make more money (Engemann & Owyang, 2003; Persico et al., 2004).
Patricia Roszell and colleagues (1990) looked at the incomes of Canadians whom inter-
viewers had rated on a 1 (homely) to 5 (strikingly attractive) scale. They found that for each
additional scale unit of rated attractiveness, people earned, on average, an additional $1,988
annually. Irene Hanson Frieze and associates (1991) did the same analysis with 737 MBA
graduates after rating them on a similar 1-to-5 scale, using student yearbook photos. For
each additional scale unit of rated attractiveness, men earned an added $2,600 and women
earned an added $2,150. In Beauty Pays, economist Daniel Hamermesh (2011) argues that,
for a man, good looks have the earnings effect of another year and a half of schooling.
The speed with which first impressions form, and their influence on thinking, helps
explain why pretty prospers. Even a .013-second exposure—too brief to discern a face—is
enough to enable people to guess a face’s attractiveness (Olson & Marshuetz, 2005). More-
over, when categorizing subsequent words as either good or bad, an attractive flashed face
predisposes people to categorize good words faster. Pretty is perceived promptly and primes
positive processing.
IS THE “BEAUTIFUL IS GOOD” STEREOTYPE ACCURATE? Do beautiful people
indeed have desirable traits? For centuries, those who considered themselves serious scientists
thought so when they sought to identify physical traits (shifty eyes, a weak chin) that would
predict criminal behavior. On the other hand, was Leo Tolstoy correct when he wrote that it’s
“a strange illusion . . . to suppose that beauty is goodness”? Despite others’ perceptions, physi-
cally attractive people do not differ from others in basic personality traits such as agreeableness,
openness, extraversion, ambition, or emotional stability (Segal-Caspi et al., 2012). However,
there is some truth to the stereotype. Attractive children and young adults are somewhat more
relaxed, outgoing, and socially polished (Feingold, 1992b; Langlois et al., 2000).
In one study, 60 University of Georgia men called and talked for 5 minutes with each
of three women students. Afterward, the men and women rated their telephone partners
“Even virtue is fairer in a fair
body.”
—Virgil,
Aeneid, BC 1st Century
326 Part Three Social Relations
on social skill and likability. Those who were attractive (even though unseen) were rated
higher (Goldman & Lewis, 1977). The same is true online: Even when they hadn’t seen
the men’s photos, women rated the text of attractive men’s dating website profiles as more
desirable and confident. What is beautiful is good, even online (Brand et al., 2012). Physi-
cally attractive individuals tend also to be more popular, more outgoing, and more gender
typed—more traditionally masculine if male, more feminine if female (Langlois et al., 1996).
These small average differences between attractive and unattractive people probably
result from self-fulfilling prophecies. Attractive people are valued and favored, so many
develop more social self-confidence. (Recall from an earlier chapter an experiment in which
men evoked a warm response from unseen women they thought were attractive.) By that
analysis, what’s crucial to your social skill is not how you look but how people treat you
and how you feel about yourself—whether you accept yourself, like yourself, and feel com-
fortable with yourself.
WHO IS ATTRACTIVE?
We have described attractiveness as if it were an objective quality like height, which some
people have more of, some less. Strictly speaking, attractiveness is whatever the people of
any given place and time find attractive. This, of course, varies. The beauty standards by
which Miss Universe is judged hardly apply to the whole planet. People in various places
and times have pierced noses, lengthened necks, dyed hair, whitened teeth, painted skin,
gorged themselves to become voluptuous, starved to become thin, and bound themselves
with leather corsets to make their breasts seem small—or used silicone and padded bras to
make them seem big. For cultures with scarce resources and for poor or hungry people,
plumpness seems attractive; for cultures and individuals with abundant resources, beauty
more often equals slimness (Nelson & Morrison, 2005). Moreover, attractiveness influences
life outcomes less in cultures where relationships are based more on kinship or social
arrangement than on personal choice (Anderson et al., 2008). Despite such variations, there
remains “strong agreement both within and across cultures about who is and who is not
attractive,” note Judith Langlois and colleagues (2000).
To be really attractive is, ironically, to be perfectly average (Rhodes, 2006). Researchers
have digitized multiple faces and averaged them using a computer. Inevitably, people find the
composite faces more appealing than almost all the actual faces (Langlois & Roggman, 1990;
Langlois et al., 1994; Perrett, 2010; Figure 2). Across 27 nations, an average leg-length-to-body
ratio looks more attractive than very short or long legs (Sorokowski et al., 2011). With both
humans and animals, averaged looks best embody prototypes (for your typical man, woman,
dog, or whatever) and thus are easy for the brain to process and categorize, notes Jamin
Halberstadt (2006). Let’s face it: Perfectly average is easy on the eyes (and brain).
Standards of beauty differ from culture to culture. Yet some people are considered attractive throughout most of the world.
(left to right): ©2009 Jupiterimages Corporation; ©John Lund/Getty Images; Courtesy of Catherine Karnow; ©Marc Romanelli/Getty Images
Attraction and Intimacy Chapter 11 327
Computer-averaged faces and bodies also tend to be perfectly symmetrical—another char-
acteristic of strikingly attractive (and reproductively successful) people (Brown et al., 2008;
Gangestad & Thornhill, 1997). If you could merge either half of your face with its mirror
image—thus forming a perfectly symmetrical new face—you would boost your looks (Penton-
Voak et al., 2001; Rhodes, 2006; Rhodes et al., 1999). With a few facial features excepted,
averaging a number of such attractive, symmetrical faces produces an even better looking
face (Said & Todorov, 2011).
EVOLUTION AND ATTRACTION Psychologists working from the evolutionary perspec-
tive explain the human preference for attractive partners in terms of reproductive strategy.
They assume that beauty signals biologically important information: health, youth, and
fertility. And so it does. Men with attractive faces have higher quality sperm. Women with
hourglass figures have more regular menstrual cycles and are more fertile (Gallup et al.,
2008). Over time, men who preferred fertile-looking women out-reproduced those who were
as happy to mate with postmenopausal females. That biological outcome of human history,
David Buss (1989) believes, explains why males in 37 cultures—from Australia to Zambia—
did indeed prefer youthful female characteristics that signify reproductive capacity.
Evolutionary psychologists also assume that evolution predisposes women to favor male
traits that signify an ability to provide and protect resources. In screening potential mates,
report Norman Li and fellow researchers (2002), men require a modicum of physical
attractiveness, women require status and resources, and both welcome kindness and intel-
ligence. Women’s emphasis on men’s physical attractiveness may also depend on their goals:
Those focused on short-term relationships prefer more symmetrical and thus attractive men,
whereas those focused on the long term find this less important, perhaps because physical
attractiveness may come with more negative qualities such as infidelity (Quist et al., 2012).
Evolutionary psychologists have also explored men’s and women’s response to other cues
to reproductive success. Men everywhere are most attracted to women whose waists are
“Power is the great
aphrodisiac.”
—Henry Kissinger, Quoted in The
New York Times, January 19, 1971
FIGURE 2
Who’s the Fairest of Them All?
Each year’s selection of “Miss Germany” provides one country’s answer. A University of Regensburg student
research team, working with a German television channel, offered an alternative. Christoph Braun and his
compatriots (Gruendl, 2005) photographed the twenty-two 2002 “Queen of Beauty” finalists, without makeup
and with hair tied back, and then created a “Virtual Miss Germany” that was the blended composite of them
all. When adults in a local shopping mall were shown the finalists and the Virtual Miss Germany, they easily
rated Virtual Miss Germany as the most attractive of them all. Although the winning real Miss Germany (left)
may have been disappointed by the news that everyone preferred her virtual competitor to herself, she can
reassure herself that she will never meet her virtual competitor.
left: ©Oliver Bodmer/Action Press/ZUMAPRESS.com; right: ©Dr. Martin Gruendl
328 Part Three Social Relations
30% narrower than their hips—a shape associated with peak sexual fertility (Karremans
et al., 2010; Perilloux et al., 2010; Platek & Singh, 2010; Zotto & Pegna, 2017). Circum-
stances that reduce a woman’s fertility—malnutrition, pregnancy, menopause—also change
her shape.
When judging males as potential marriage partners, women, too, prefer a male waist-
to-hip ratio suggesting health and vigor. They rate muscular men as sexier, and muscular
men do feel sexier and report more lifetime sex partners (Frederick & Haselton, 2007).
This makes evolutionary sense, notes Jared Diamond (1996): A muscular hunk was
more likely than a scrawny fellow to gather food, build houses, and defeat rivals. But
today’s women prefer men with high incomes even more (Muggleton & Fincher, 2017;
Singh, 1995).
During ovulation, women show increased accuracy in judging male sexual orientation
(Rule et al., 2011) and display increased wariness of out-group men (McDonald et al., 2011).
One study found that, when ovulating, young women tend to wear and prefer more revealing
outfits than when they are not fertile (Durante et al., 2008). In another study, ovulating
lap dancers averaged $70 in tips per hour—double the $35 of those who were menstruat-
ing (Miller et al., 2007).
We are, evolutionary psychologists suggest, driven by primal attractions. Like eating and
breathing, attraction and mating are too important to leave to the whims of culture.
SOCIAL COMPARISON Although our mating psychology has biological wisdom, attrac-
tion is not all hardwired. What’s attractive to you also depends on your comparison
standards.
To men who have recently been gazing at centerfolds, average women or even their
own wives tend to seem less attractive (Kenrick et al., 1989). Viewing pornographic films
simulating passionate sex similarly decreases satisfaction with one’s own partner (Zill-
mann, 1989). Being sexually aroused may temporarily make a person of the other sex
seem more attractive. But the lingering effect of exposure to perfect “10s,” or of unreal-
istic sexual depictions, is to make one’s own partner seem less appealing—more like a “6”
than an “8.”
It works the same way with our self-perceptions. After viewing a very attractive person
of the same gender, people rate themselves as being less attractive than after viewing a
homely person (Brown et al., 1992; Thornton & Maurice, 1997). Men’s self-rated desir-
ability is also deflated by exposure to more dominant, successful men. Thanks to modern
media, we may see in an hour “dozens of individuals who are more attractive and more
successful than any of our ancestors would have seen in a year, or even a lifetime,” noted
Sara Gutierres and her co-researchers (1999). Moreover, we often see slim, wrinkle-free,
photoshopped people who don’t exist. Such extraordinary comparison standards trick us
into devaluing our potential mates and ourselves and spending billions on cosmetics, diet
aids, and plastic surgery. But even after another 17 million annual cosmetic procedures in
just the U.S., there may be no net gain in human satisfaction. If others get their teeth
straightened, capped, and whitened, and you don’t, the social comparison may leave you
more dissatisfied with your normal, natural teeth than you would have been if you were
surrounded by peers whose teeth were also natural.
THE ATTRACTIVENESS OF THOSE WE LOVE Let’s conclude our discussion of attrac-
tiveness on an upbeat note. First, a 17-year-old girl’s facial attractiveness is a surprisingly
weak predictor of her attractiveness at ages 30 and 50. Sometimes an average-looking
adolescent, especially one with a warm, attractive personality, becomes a quite attractive
middle-aged adult (Zebrowitz et al., 1993, 1998).
Second, not only do we perceive attractive people as likable, but also we perceive
likable people as attractive. Perhaps you can recall individuals who, as you grew to like
them, became more attractive. Their physical imperfections were no longer so noticeable.
Alan Gross and Christine Crofton (1977; see also Lewandowski et al., 2007) had students
view someone’s photograph after reading a favorable or an unfavorable description of
the person’s personality. Those portrayed as warm, helpful, and considerate also looked
more attractive. Democrats rated fellow Democrat Barack Obama as more physically
“Love is only a dirty trick
played on us to achieve a
continuation of the species.”
—Novelist W. Somerset Maugham
(1874–1965)
Evolutionary psychology theo-
rizes that strong men would
have been more likely to survive
and reproduce over the course
of human history, explaining
women’s preference for muscu-
lar men.
©dash/123RF
Attraction and Intimacy Chapter 11 329
attractive than Republicans did; Republicans rated fellow Republican Sarah Palin more
physically attractive than Democrats did (Kniffin et al., 2014). It may be true, then, that
“handsome is as handsome does,” and that “what is good is beautiful.” Discovering
someone’s similarities to us also makes the person seem more attractive (Beaman &
Klentz, 1983; Klentz et al., 1987).
Moreover, love sees loveliness: The more in love a woman is with a man, the more
physically attractive she finds him (Price et al., 1974). And the more in love people are,
the less attractive they find all others of the opposite sex (Johnson & Rusbult, 1989; Simp-
son et al., 1990). “The grass may be greener on the other side,” note Rowland Miller and
Jeffry Simpson (1990), “but happy gardeners are less likely to notice.” Beauty really is, to
some extent, in the eye of the beholder.
Similarity versus Complementarity
From our discussion so far, one might surmise Leo Tolstoy was entirely correct: “Love
depends . . . on frequent meetings, and on the style in which the hair is done up, and on
the color and cut of the dress.” Given time, however, other factors influence whether
acquaintance develops into friendship.
DO BIRDS OF A FEATHER FLOCK TOGETHER?
Of this much we may be sure: Birds that flock together are of a feather. Friends, engaged
couples, and spouses are far more likely than randomly paired people to share common
attitudes, beliefs, values, and personality traits (Youyou et al., 2017). Furthermore, the
greater the similarity between husband and wife, the happier they are and the less likely
they are to divorce (Byrne, 1971; Caspi & Herbener, 1990). Dating couples with more
similar political and religious attitudes were more likely to still be together after 11 months
(Bleske-Rechek et al., 2009). Such correlational findings are intriguing. But cause and effect
remain an enigma. Does similarity lead to liking? Or does liking lead to similarity?
LIKENESS BEGETS LIKING To discern cause and effect, we experiment. Imagine that at
a campus party Lakesha gets involved in a long discussion of politics, religion, and personal
likes and dislikes with Les and Lon. She and Les discover they agree on almost everything,
she and Lon on few things. Afterward, she reflects: “Les is really intelligent . . . and so lik-
able. I hope we meet again.” In experiments, Donn Byrne (1971) and his colleagues captured
the essence of Lakesha’s experience. Over and over again, they found that the more similar
someone’s attitudes are to your own, the more you will like the person.
Recent studies have replicated these effects, finding that students like others with similar
attitudes (Montoya & Horton, 2012; Reid et al., 2013). Facebook friends and fraternity
co-members tend to share facial similarities (Hehman et al., 2018). Likeness produces liking
not only for college students but also for children and the elderly, for people of various
occupations, and for those in various cultures.
The likeness-leads-to-liking effect has been tested in real-life situations:
▯ Roommates and speed daters. At two of Hong Kong’s universities, Royce Lee and
Michael Bond (1996) found that roommate friendships flourished when roommates
shared values and personality traits, but more so when they perceived their room-
mates as similar. Perceived similarity also mattered more than actual similarity during
speed-dating (Tidwell et al., 2013). Reality matters, but perception matters more.
▯ Strangers. In various settings, people entering a room of strangers sit closer to
those like themselves (Mackinnon et al., 2011). People with glasses sit closer to
others with glasses. Long-haired people sit closer to people with long hair. Dark-
haired people sit closer to people with dark hair (even after controlling for race
and sex).
▯ Babies. Eleven-month-old infants were more likely to choose a stuffed animal that
pretended to eat the same food or wore the same color mittens that they did. This
suggests that the preference for similar others develops very early, even before
babies can talk (Mahajan & Wynn, 2012).
“Can two walk together
except they be agreed?”
—Amos 3:3
“And they are friends who
have come to regard the
same things as good and the
same things as evil, they who
are friends of the same people,
and they who are the enemies
of the same people. . . . We
like those who resemble us,
and are engaged in the same
pursuits.”
—Aristotle,
Rhetoric, BC 4th Century
Henry James’s description of
novelist George Eliot (the pen
name of Mary Ann Evans): “She
is magnificently ugly—deliciously
hideous. She has a low fore-
head, a dull grey eye, a vast
pendulous nose, a huge mouth,
full of uneven teeth. . . . Now in
this vast ugliness resides a most
powerful beauty which, in a very
few minutes, steals forth and
charms the mind, so that you
end as I ended, in falling in love
with her.”
©London Stereoscopic Company/Hulton
Archive/Getty Images
330 Part Three Social Relations
▯ Mimicry as behavioral similarity. People like not only those who think as they do
but also those who act as they do. Subtle mimicry fosters fondness. Have you
noticed that when someone nods his or her head as you do and echoes your
thoughts, you feel a certain rapport and liking? That’s a common experience,
report Rick van Baaren and colleagues (2003a,b), and one result is higher tips for
Dutch restaurant servers who mimic their customers by merely repeating their
order. Natural mimicry increases rapport, note Jessica Lakin and Tanya Chartrand
(2003), and desire for rapport increases mimicry.
▯ Asia, too. Whether in China or the Western world, similar attitudes, traits, and
values help bring couples together and predict their satisfaction (Chen et al., 2009;
Gaunt, 2006; Gonzaga et al., 2007).
So similarity breeds content. Birds of a feather do flock together. Surely you have noticed
this upon discovering a person who shares your ideas, values, and desires, a special someone
who likes the same foods, the same activities, the same music you do. (When liking the
same music as another, people infer similar values as well [Boer et al., 2011].)
The principle that similarity attracts is a key selling point for online dating sites such
as chemistry.com and eHarmony.com that match users with similar others via secret for-
mulas. With that in mind, Samantha Joel and her co-authors (2017) gave college students
an exhaustive battery of 100 personality and attitude questionnaires and fed the results into
a sophisticated computer program. However, the program couldn’t predict who would like
each other after they actually met during a series of four-minute speed dates. So why do
so many people not only use online dating sites but find long-term partners on them?
Probably because the sites expand your pool of potential dates (Finkel et al., 2012). What
happens afterward is much more unpredictable.
DISSIMILARITY BREEDS DISLIKE We have a bias—the false consensus bias—toward
assuming that others share our attitudes. We also tend to see those we like as being like us
(Castelli et al., 2009). Getting to know someone—and discovering that the person is actually
dissimilar—tends to decrease liking (Norton et al., 2007). If those dissimilar attitudes pertain
to our strong moral convictions, we dislike and distance ourselves from them all the more
(Skitka et al., 2005). People in one political party often are not so much fond of fellow party
members as they are disdainful of the opposition (Hoyle, 1993; Rosenbaum, 1986).
In general, dissimilar attitudes depress liking more than similar attitudes enhance it
(Singh & Ho, 2000; Singh & Teob, 1999). Within their own groups, where they expect
similarity, people find it especially difficult to like someone with dissimilar views (Chen &
Kenrick, 2002). That perhaps explains why dating partners and roommates become more
similar over time in their emotional responses to events and in their attitudes (Anderson
et al., 2003; Davis & Rusbult, 2001). “Attitude alignment” helps promote and sustain close
relationships, a phenomenon that can also lead partners to overestimate their attitude simi-
larities (Kenny & Acitelli, 2001; Murray et al., 2002).
Whether people perceive those of another race as similar or dissimilar influences their
racial attitudes. Whenever one group regards another as “other”—as creatures that speak
differently, live differently, think differently—the potential for conflict is high. In fact, except
for intimate relationships such as dating, the perception of like minds is more important
for attraction than like skins. In one study, liberals expressed dislike of conservatives and
conservatives of liberals, but race did not affect liking (Chambers et al., 2012).
“Cultural racism” persists, argues social psychologist James Jones (1988, 2003, 2004),
because cultural differences are a fact of life: Black culture tends to be present-oriented,
spontaneously expressive, spiritual, and emotionally driven. White culture tends to be
more future-oriented, materialistic, and achievement driven. Rather than trying to elimi-
nate such differences, says Jones, we might better appreciate what they “contribute to
the cultural fabric of a multicultural society.” There are situations in which expressiveness
is advantageous and situations in which future orientation is advantageous. Each culture
has much to learn from the other. In countries such as Canada, Britain, and the United
States, where migration and differing birthrates make for growing diversity, educating
people to respect and enjoy those who differ is a major challenge. Given increasing
Attraction and Intimacy Chapter 11 331
cultural diversity and given our natural wariness of differences,
this may be the major social challenge of our time.
DO OPPOSITES ATTRACT?
Are we not also attracted to people who in some ways differ
from ourselves? We are physically attracted to people whose
scent suggests dissimilar enough genes to prevent inbreeding
(Garver-Apgar et al., 2006). But what about attitudes and behav-
ioral traits? Researchers have explored that question by compar-
ing not only friends’ and spouses’ attitudes and beliefs but also
their ages, religions, races, smoking behaviors, economic levels,
educations, height, intelligence, and appearance. In all these
ways and more, similarity still prevails (Buss, 1985; Kandel,
1978). Among 410 7th graders, those who were similar in popu-
larity, aggressiveness, and academic performance were more
likely to still be friends a year later (Hartl et al., 2015). Smart
birds flock together. So do rich birds, Protestant birds, tall
birds, pretty birds.
Still we resist: Are we not attracted to people whose needs
and personalities complement our own? Would a sadist and a
masochist find true love? The Reader’s Digest has told us that
“opposites attract. . . . Socializers pair with loners, novelty-
lovers with those who dislike change, free spenders with scrimpers, risk-takers with the
very cautious” (Jacoby, 1986). Sociologist Robert Winch (1958) reasoned that the needs
of an outgoing and domineering person would naturally complement those of someone
who is shy and submissive. The logic seems compelling, and most of us can think of
couples who view their differences as complementary: “My husband and I are perfect for
each other. I’m Aquarius—a decisive person. He’s Libra—can’t make decisions. But he’s
always happy to go along with arrangements I make.”
Given the idea’s persuasiveness, the inability of researchers to confirm it is astonishing.
For example, most people feel attracted to expressive, outgoing people (Friedman et al.,
1988; Watson et al., 2014). Would this be especially so when one is down in the dumps?
Do depressed people seek those whose gaiety will cheer them up? To the contrary, it is
nondepressed people who most prefer the company of happy people (Locke & Horowitz,
1990; Rosenblatt & Greenberg, 1988, 1991; Wenzlaff & Prohaska, 1989). When you’re
feeling blue, another’s bubbly personality can be aggravating. The contrast effect that makes
average people feel homely in the company of beautiful people also makes sad people more
conscious of their misery in the company of cheerful people.
Some complementarity may evolve as a relationship progresses. Yet people seem slightly
more prone to like and to marry those whose needs, attitudes, and personalities are similar
(Botwin et al., 1997; Buss, 1984; Rammstedt & Schupp, 2008; Watson et al., 2004). Perhaps
one day we will discover some ways in which differences commonly breed liking. Dominance/
submissiveness may be one such way (Dryer & Horowitz, 1997; Markey & Kurtz, 2006).
But as a general rule, opposites do not attract.
Liking Those Who Like Us
Liking is usually mutual. Proximity and attractiveness influence our initial attraction to
someone, and similarity influences longer term attraction as well. If we have a deep need
to belong and to feel liked and accepted, would we not also take a liking to those who like
us? Are the best friendships mutual admiration societies? Indeed, one person’s liking for
another does predict the other’s liking in return (Kenny & Nasby, 1980; Montoya & Insko,
2008). One common way to show interest in someone—asking them questions—is especially
effective in increasing liking (Huang et al., 2017).
But does one person’s liking another cause the other to return the appreciation? People’s
reports of how they fell in love suggest so (Aron et al., 1989). Discovering that an appealing
someone really likes you seems to awaken romantic feelings. Experiments confirm it: Those
complementarity
The popularly supposed
tendency, in a relationship
between two people, for each
to complete what is missing in
the other.
“The average man is more in-
terested in a woman who is in-
terested in him than he is in a
woman with beautiful legs.”
—Actress Marlene Dietrich,
The Quotable Woman,
1800–1975, 1978
Despite the popular theory that opposites (for example, quiet and
loud people) complement each other (complementarity), similar
people are more likely to be romantically attracted to one another.
©Sunshine Pics/Alamy Stock Photo
332 Part Three Social Relations
told that certain others like or admire them usually feel a reciprocal affection (Berscheid
& Walster, 1978). And all the better, one speed-dating experiment suggests, when someone
likes you especially (Eastwick et al., 2007). A dash of uncertainty can also fuel desire.
Thinking that someone probably likes you—but you aren’t sure—tends to increase your think-
ing about, and feeling attracted to, another (Whitechurch et al., 2011).
And consider this finding: Students like another student who says eight positive things
about them better than one who says seven positive things and one negative thing ( Berscheid
et al., 1969). We are sensitive to the slightest hint of criticism. Writer Larry L. King speaks
for many in noting, “I have discovered over the years that good reviews strangely fail to
make the author feel as good as bad reviews make him feel bad.”
Whether we are judging ourselves or others, negative information carries more weight
because, being less usual, it grabs more attention (Yzerbyt & Leyens, 1991). People’s votes
are more influenced by their impressions of presidential candidates’ weaknesses than by
their impressions of strengths, a phenomenon quickly grasped by those who design negative
campaigns (Klein, 1991). It’s a general rule of life: Bad is stronger than good (Baumeister
et al., 2001). (See “Focus On: Bad Is Stronger Than Good.”)
“I like the pope unless the
pope doesn’t like me. Then I
don’t like the pope.”
—Donald Trump tweet,
February 18, 2016
Bad Is Stronger Than Good
focus
ON
Dissimilar attitudes, we have noted, turn us off to others
more than similar attitudes turn us on. And others’ criti-
cism captures our attention and affects our emotions
more than does their praise. Roy Baumeister, Ellen
Bratslavsky, Catrin Finkenauer, and Kathleen Vohs (2001)
say this is just the tip of an iceberg: “In everyday life, bad
events have stronger and more lasting consequences
than comparable good events.” Consider the following:
• Destructive acts harm close relationships more than
constructive acts build them. (Cruel words linger after
kind ones have been forgotten.)
• Bad moods affect our thinking and memory more than
do good moods. (Despite our natural optimism, it’s eas-
ier to recall past bad emotional events than good ones.)
• There are more words for negative than positive emo-
tions, and people asked to think of emotion words
mostly come up with negative words. (Sadness, anger,
and fear are the three most common.)
• Bad events tend to evoke more misery than good
events evoke joy. (In one analysis by Randy Larsen
[2009], negative emotional experiences exceeded the
intensity of positive emotional experiences by a factor
that, coincidentally, equaled pi: 3.14.)
• Single bad events (traumas) have more lasting effects
than single very good events. (A death triggers more
search for meaning than does a birth.)
• Routine bad events receive more attention and trigger
more rumination than do routine good events.
• Losing money upsets people more than gaining the
same amount of money makes them happy. Income
losses have a bigger influence on life satisfaction and
happiness than do income gains (Boyce et al., 2013).
• Very bad family environments override the genetic in-
fluence on intelligence more than do very good family
environments. (Bad parents can make their genetically
bright children less intelligent; good parents are less
able to make their unintelligent children smarter.)
• A bad reputation is easier to acquire, and harder to
shed, than a good one. (A single act of lying can de-
stroy one’s reputation for integrity.)
• Poor health decreases happiness more than good
health increases it. (Pain produces misery far more
than comfort produces joy.)
The power of the bad prepares us to deal with threats
and protects us from death and disability. For survival, bad
can be more bad than good is good. The importance of
the bad is one likely reason why the first century of psy-
chology focused so much more on the bad than on the
good. From its start through 2017, PsycINFO (a guide to
psychology’s literature) had 31,060 articles mentioning
anger, 238,157 mentioning anxiety, and 292,136 mention-
ing depression. There were 10 articles on these topics for
every 1 dealing with the positive emotions of joy (9,299),
life satisfaction (14,781), or happiness (17,395). Similarly,
“fear” (74,250 articles) has triumphed over “courage”
(3,648). The strength of the bad is “perhaps the best rea-
son for a positive psychology movement,” Baumeister and
colleagues surmise. To overcome the strength of individ-
ual bad events, “human life needs far more good than
bad.”
Attraction and Intimacy Chapter 11 333
Our liking for those we perceive as liking us was recognized long ago. Observers from
the ancient philosopher Hecato (“If you wish to be loved, love”) to Ralph Waldo Emerson
(“The only way to have a friend is to be one”) to Dale Carnegie (“Dole out praise lavishly”)
anticipated the findings. What they did not anticipate was the precise conditions under
which the principle works.
ATTRIBUTION
As we’ve seen, flattery will get you somewhere. But not everywhere. If praise clearly violates
what we know is true—if someone says, “Your hair looks great,” when we haven’t washed
it in 3 days—we may lose respect for the flatterer and wonder whether the compliment
springs from ulterior motives (Shrauger, 1975). Thus, we often perceive criticism to be more
sincere than praise (Coleman et al., 1987). In fact, when someone prefaces a statement
with “To be honest,” we know we are about to hear a criticism.
Laboratory experiments reveal something we’ve noted in previous chapters: Our reac-
tions depend on our attributions. Do we attribute the flattery to ingratiation—to a self-
serving strategy? Is the person trying to get us to buy something, to acquiesce sexually, to
do a favor? If so, both the flatterer and the praise lose appeal (Gordon, 1996; Jones,
1964). But if there is no apparent ulterior motive, then we warmly receive both flattery
and flatterer.
Aronson (1988) speculated that constant approval can lose value. When a husband says
for the five-hundredth time, “Gee, honey, you look great,” the words carry far less impact
than were he now to say, “Gee, honey, you look awful in that dress.” A loved one you’ve
doted on is hard to reward but easy to hurt. This suggests that an open, honest relationship—
one where people enjoy one another’s esteem and acceptance yet are honest—is more likely
to offer continuing rewards than one dulled by the suppression of unpleasant emotions, one
in which people try only, as Dale Carnegie advised, to “lavish praise.” Aronson (1988) put
it this way:
As a relationship ripens toward greater intimacy, what becomes increasingly important is
authenticity—our ability to give up trying to make a good impression and begin to reveal things
about ourselves that are honest even if unsavory. . . . If two people are genuinely fond of each
other, they will have a more satisfying and exciting relationship over a longer period of time
if they are able to express both positive and negative feelings than if they are completely “nice”
to each other at all times. (p. 323)
In most social interactions, we self-censor our negative
feelings. Thus, note William Swann and colleagues (1991),
some people receive no corrective feedback. Living in a
world of pleasant illusion, they continue to act in ways that
alienate their would-be friends. A true friend is one who
can let us in on bad news—nicely.
Someone who really loves us will be honest with us but
will also tend to see us through rose-colored glasses. The
happiest dating and married couples (and those who
became happier with time) were those who saw their part-
ners more positively than their partners saw themselves
(Murray & Holmes, 1997; Murray et al., 1996a,b). When
we’re in love, we’re biased to find those we love not only
physically attractive but also socially attractive, and we’re
happy to have our partners view us with a similar positive
bias (Boyes & Fletcher, 2007). Moreover, the most satis-
fied married couples tend to have idealized one another
as newlyweds and to approach problems without immedi-
ately criticizing their partners and finding fault (Karney
& Bradbury, 1997; Miller et al., 2006; Murray et al., 2011).
“If 60,000 people tell me they
loved a show, then one walks
past and says it sucked, that’s
the comment I’ll hear.”
—Musician Dave Matthews,
Quoted by P. Tolme in Rock Star
Longs for Simple Life, 2000
ingratiation
The use of strategies, such as
flattery, by which people seek to
gain another’s favor.
“It takes your enemy and your
friend, working together, to
hurt you to the heart; the
enemy to slander you and the
friend to get the news to you.”
—Mark Twain,
Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New
Calendar, 1897
“No one is perfect until you
fall in love with them.”
— Television personality
Andy Rooney
The wife’s comment may not show ingratiation toward her husband, but
it does demonstrate authenticity.
©Robert Mankoff. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
“Well—and I’m not just saying this
because you’re my husband—it stinks.”
334 Part Three Social Relations
Honesty has its place in a good relationship, but so does a presumption of the other’s
basic goodness.
Relationship Rewards
Asked why they are friends with someone or why they were attracted to their partners,
most people can readily answer. “I like Carol because she’s warm, witty, and well-read.”
What that explanation leaves out—and what social psychologists believe is most important—
is ourselves. Attraction involves the one who is attracted as well as the attractor. Thus, a
more psychologically accurate answer might be, “I like Carol because of how I feel when
I’m with her.” We are attracted to those we find satisfying and gratifying to be with. Attrac-
tion is in the eye (and brain) of the beholder.
The point can be expressed as a simple reward theory of attraction: Those who reward
us, or whom we associate with rewards, we like. If a relationship gives us more rewards
than costs, we will like it and will want it to continue. Canadian children randomly
assigned to perform three acts of kindness (versus visit three places) became more
socially accepted and were less likely to be bullied—they gained friends as they helped
others (Layous et al., 2012). In his 1665 book of Maxims, La Rochefoucauld conjectured,
“Friendship is a scheme for the mutual exchange of personal advantages and favors
whereby self-esteem may profit.”
We not only like people who are rewarding to be with but also, according to the second
version of the reward principle, like those we associate with good feelings. Conditioning
creates positive feelings toward things and people linked with rewarding events (Byrne &
Clore, 1970; De Houwer et al., 2001; Lott & Lott, 1974). When, after a strenuous week,
we relax in front of a fire, enjoying good food, drink, and music, we will likely feel a special
warmth toward those around us. We are less likely to take a liking to someone we meet
while suffering a splitting headache.
Experiments confirm this phenomenon of liking—and disliking—by association
( Hofmann et al., 2010). When an experimenter was friendly, participants chose to interact
with someone who looked similar to her, but if she was unfriendly, they avoided the
similar-looking woman (Lewicki, 1985). Elaine Hatfield and William Walster (1978)
found a practical tip in these research studies: “Romantic dinners, trips to the theatre,
evenings at home together, and vacations never stop being important. . . . If your relation-
ship is to survive, it’s important that you both continue to associate your relationship
with good things.”
This simple theory of attraction—we like those who reward
us and those we associate with rewards—helps us understand
why people everywhere feel attracted to those who are warm,
trustworthy, and responsive (Fletcher et al., 1999; Regan,
1998; Wojciszke et al., 1998). The reward theory also helps
explain some of the influences on attraction:
▯ Proximity is rewarding. It costs less time and effort to
receive friendship’s benefits with someone who lives
or works close by.
▯ We like attractive people because we perceive that
they offer other desirable traits and because we
benefit by associating with them.
▯ If others have similar opinions, we feel rewarded
because we presume that they like us in return.
Moreover, those who share our views help validate
them. We especially like people if we have successfully
converted them to our way of thinking (Lombardo
et al., 1972; Riordan, 1980; Sigall, 1970).
▯ We like to be liked and love to be loved. Thus, liking
is usually mutual. We like those who like us.
reward theory of attraction
The theory that we like those
whose behavior is rewarding to
us or whom we associate with
rewarding events.
The reward theory of attraction suggests that when we associate our
partners with pleasant activities, relationships last.
©Ryan McVay/Getty Images
Attraction and Intimacy Chapter 11 335
WHAT IS LOVE?
Describe the varieties and components of love.
Loving is more complex than liking and thus more difficult to measure, more perplexing
to study. People yearn for it, live for it, die for it.
Most attraction researchers have studied what is most easily studied—responses during
brief encounters between strangers. The influences on our initial liking of another—proxim-
ity, attractiveness, similarity, being liked, and other rewarding traits—also influence our
long-term, close relationships. The impressions that dating couples quickly form of each
other therefore provide a clue to their long-term future (Berg, 1984; Berg & McQuinn,
1986). Indeed, if North American romances flourished randomly, without regard to proximity
and similarity, then most Catholics (being a minority) would marry Protestants, most
Blacks would marry Whites, and college graduates (also a minority) would be as apt to
marry high school dropouts as to marry fellow graduates.
So first impressions are important. Nevertheless, long-term loving is not merely an inten-
sification of initial liking. Social psychologists therefore study enduring, close
relationships.
Passionate Love
The first step in scientifically studying romantic love, as in studying any variable, is to decide
how to define and measure it. We have ways to measure aggression, altruism, prejudice, and
liking—but how do we measure love?
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways,” wrote Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Social
scientists have counted various ways. Psychologist Robert Sternberg (1998) views love as
a triangle consisting of three components: passion, intimacy, and commitment (Figure 3).
Some elements of love are common to all loving relationships: mutual understanding, giv-
ing and receiving support, enjoying the loved one’s company. Some elements are distinctive.
If we experience passionate love, we express it physically, we expect the relationship to be
exclusive, and we are intensely fascinated with our partner. You can see it in our eyes.
Zick Rubin (1973) confirmed this. He administered a love scale to hundreds of Univer-
sity of Michigan dating couples. Later, from behind a one-way mirror in a laboratory waiting
room, he clocked eye contact among “weak-love” and “strong-love” couples (mutual gaze
conveys liking and averted eye gaze conveys ostracism [Wirth et al., 2010]). So Rubin’s
result will not surprise you: The strong-love couples gave themselves away by gazing long
into each other’s eyes. When talking, they also nod their head, smile naturally, and lean
forward (Gonzaga et al., 2001). When observing speed-daters, it takes but a few seconds
▯ The best predictor of whether any two people are
friends is their sheer proximity to each other. Proximity
is conducive to repeated exposure and interaction,
which enables us to discover similarities and to feel
each other’s liking.
▯ A second determinant of initial attraction is physical
attractiveness. Both in laboratory studies and in field
experiments involving blind dates, college students tend
to prefer attractive people. In everyday life, however,
people tend to choose someone whose attractiveness
roughly matches their own (or who, if less attractive,
has other compensating qualities). Positive attributions
about attractive people define a physical-attractiveness
stereotype—an assumption that what is beautiful is good.
▯ Liking is greatly aided by similarity of attitudes, beliefs,
and values. Likeness leads to liking; opposites rarely
attract.
▯ We are also likely to develop friendships with people
who like us.
▯ According to the reward theory of attraction, we like
people whose behavior we find rewarding, or whom we
associate with rewarding events.
SUMMING UP: What Leads to Friendship and Attraction?
336 Part Three Social Relations
to make a reasonably accurate guess as to whether one person is interested in another
(Place et al., 2009).
Passionate love is emotional, exciting, intense. Elaine Hatfield (1988) defined it as
“a state of intense longing for union with another” (p. 193). If reciprocated, one feels fulfilled
and joyous; if not, one feels empty or despairing. Like other forms of emotional excitement,
passionate love involves a roller coaster of elation and gloom, tingling exhilaration and
dejected misery. “We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love,” observed
Freud. Passionate love preoccupies the lover with thoughts of the other, involving the same
reward pathways in the brain as addictions to substances (Fisher et al., 2016; Takahashi
et al., 2015).
Passionate love is what you feel when you not only love someone but also are “in love”
with him or her. As Sarah Meyers and Ellen Berscheid (1997) note, we understand that
someone who says, “I love you, but I’m not in love with you,” means to say, “I like you.
I care about you. I think you’re marvelous. But I don’t feel sexually attracted to you.” I feel
friendship but not passion.
A THEORY OF PASSIONATE LOVE
To explain passionate love, Hatfield notes that a
given state of arousal can be steered into any of
several emotions, depending on how we attribute
the arousal. An emotion involves both body and
mind—both arousal and the way we interpret and
label that arousal. Imagine yourself with pounding
heart and trembling hands: Are you experiencing
fear, anxiety, joy? Physiologically, one emotion is
quite similar to another. You may therefore experi-
ence the arousal as joy if you are in a euphoric situ-
ation, anger if your environment is hostile, and
passionate love if the situation is romantic. In this
view, passionate love is the psychological experi-
ence of being biologically aroused by someone we
find attractive.
If indeed passion is a revved-up state that’s labeled
“love,” then whatever revs one up should intensify
feelings of love. In several experiments, college men
aroused by reading or viewing erotic materials had a
heightened response to a woman—for example, by
passionate love
A state of intense longing for
union with another. Passionate
lovers are absorbed in each
other, feel ecstatic at attaining
their partner’s love, and are
disconsolate on losing it.
Although this kiss appears to be purely passionate love, Scott Jones was instead
trying to calm his panicked girlfriend Alexandra Thomas, who had been knocked
to the ground amidst riots in Vancouver in 2011 (Tran, 2015)—an act of consum-
mate love combining intimacy, passion, and commitment.
©Rich Lam/Getty Images
FIGURE 3
Robert Sternberg’s
(1988) Conception of
Kinds of Loving as
Combinations of Three
Basic Components of
Love Romantic love
(intimacy + passion)
Passion
(infatuation) Fatuous love
(passion + commitment)
Decision/
commitment
(empty love)
Companionate love
(intimacy + commitment)
Consummate
love
(intimacy + passion +
commitment)
Intimacy
(liking)
Attraction and Intimacy Chapter 11 337
scoring much higher on a love scale when describing their girl-
friend (Carducci et al., 1978; Dermer & Pyszczynski, 1978). Pro-
ponents of the two-factor theory of emotion, developed by Stanley
Schachter and Jerome Singer (1962), argue that when the revved-
up men responded to a woman, they easily misattributed some
of their own arousal to her.
According to this theory, being aroused by any source
should intensify passionate feelings—provided that the mind
is free to attribute some of the arousal to a romantic stimulus.
In a dramatic and famous demonstration of this phenome-
non, Donald Dutton and Arthur Aron (1974) had an attrac-
tive young woman approach individual young men as they
crossed a narrow, wobbly, 450-foot-long suspension walkway
hanging 230 feet above British Columbia’s rocky Capilano
River. The woman asked each man to help her fill out a class
questionnaire. When he had finished, she scribbled her name
and phone number and invited him to call if he wanted to
hear more about the project. Most accepted the phone num-
ber, and half who did so called. By contrast, men approached
by the woman on a low, solid bridge rarely called. Once again,
physical arousal accentuated romantic responses.
Scary movies, roller-coaster rides, and physical exercise have the same effect, especially
with those we find attractive (Foster et al., 1998; White & Kight, 1984). The effect holds
true with married couples, too. Those who do exciting activities together report the best
relationships. And after doing an arousing rather than a mundane laboratory task (roughly
the equivalent of a three-legged race on their hands and knees), couples also reported higher
satisfaction with their overall relationship (Aron et al., 2000). Adrenaline makes the heart
grow fonder.
As this suggests, passionate love is a biological as well as a psychological phenomenon.
Research by social psychologist Arthur Aron and colleagues (2005) indicates that passion-
ate love engages dopamine-rich brain areas associated with reward (Figure 4).
Love is also a social phenomenon. Love is more than lust, notes Ellen Berscheid (2010).
Supplement sexual desire with a deepening friendship and the result is romantic love.
Passionate love = lust + attachment.
VARIATIONS IN LOVE: CULTURE AND GENDER
There is always a temptation to assume that
most others share our feelings and ideas. We
assume, for example, that love is a precondi-
tion for marriage. Most cultures—89% in one
analysis of 166 cultures—do have a concept
of romantic love, as reflected in flirtation or
couples running off together (Jankowiak &
Fischer, 1992). But in some cultures, notably
those practicing arranged marriages, love
tends to follow rather than to precede mar-
riage. Even many people in the United States
disconnected love and marriage just a half-
century ago: In the 1960s, only 24% of col-
lege women and 65% of college men
considered love to be the basis of marriage.
In more recent years, nearly all college stu-
dents believe this (Reis & Aron, 2008).
Do males and females differ in how they
experience passionate love? Studies of men
and women falling in and out of love reveal
two-factor theory of
emotion
Arousal × its label = emotion.
“The ‘adrenaline’ associated
with a wide variety of highs
can spill over and make pas-
sion more passionate. (Sort of
a ‘Better loving through
chemistry’ phenomenon.)”
—Elaine Hatfield and Richard
Rapson,
Passionate Love, 1987
According to the two-factor theory of emotion, emotional arousal
caused by an exciting experience such as an amusement park ride
may be confused for sexual attraction.
©Trevor Adeline/Media Bakery
FIGURE 4
This Is Your Brain
on Love
MRI scans from young adults
intensely in love revealed areas,
such as the caudate nucleus,
that became more active when
gazing at the loved-one’s photo
(but not when gazing at the
photo of another acquaintance).
©From Aron, A., Fisher, H., Mashek, D. J.,
Strong, G., Li, H., & Brown, L. L. (2005).
Reward, motivation, and emotion systems
associated with early-stage intense
romance love. Journal of
Neurophysiology, 94, 327–337. Image
courtesy of Lucy L. Brown.
Caudate
338 Part Three Social Relations
some surprises. Most people, including the writer of the following letter to a newspaper
advice columnist, suppose that women fall in love more readily:
Dear Dr. Brothers:
Do you think it’s effeminate for a 19-year-old guy to fall in love so hard it’s like the whole world’s
turned around? I think I’m really crazy because this has happened several times now and love
just seems to hit me on the head from nowhere. . . . My father says this is the way girls fall in
love and that it doesn’t happen this way with guys—at least it’s not supposed to. I can’t change
how I am in this way but it kind of worries me.—P.T. (quoted by Dion & Dion, 1985)
P.T. would be reassured by the repeated finding that it is actually men who tend to fall in
love more readily (Ackerman et al., 2011; Dion & Dion, 1985). Men also seem to fall out
of love more slowly and are less likely than women to break up a premarital romance.
Surprisingly to most people, in heterosexual relationships, it’s men, not women, who most
often are first to say “I love you” (Ackerman et al., 2011).
Once in love, however, women are typically as emotionally involved as their partners, or
more so. They are more likely to report feeling euphoric and “giddy and carefree,” as if
they were “floating on a cloud.” Women are also somewhat more likely than men to focus
on the intimacy of the friendship and on their concern for their partner. Men are more
likely than women to think about the playful and physical aspects of the relationship
( Hendrick & Hendrick, 1995).
Companionate Love
Although passionate love burns hot, like a relationship booster rocket, it eventually simmers
down once the relationship reaches a stable orbit. The high of romance may be sustained
for a few months, even a couple of years. But no high lasts forever. “When you’re in love
it’s the most glorious two-and-a-half days of your life,” jested comedian Richard Lewis. The
novelty, the intense absorption in the other, the tingly thrill of the romance, the giddy “float-
ing on a cloud” feeling fades. After 2 years of marriage, spouses express affection about half
as often as when they were newlyweds (Huston & Chorost, 1994). About 4 years after mar-
riage, the divorce rate peaks in cultures worldwide (Fisher, 1994). If a close relationship is
to endure, it will settle to a steadier but still warm afterglow called
companionate love. The passion-facilitating hormones (testosterone,
dopamine, adrenaline) subside, while the hormone oxytocin sup-
ports feelings of attachment and trust (Taylor et al., 2010).
Unlike the wild emotions of passionate love, companionate love
is lower key; it’s a deep, affectionate attachment. It activates differ-
ent parts of the brain (Aron et al., 2005). And it is just as real.
Nisa, a !Kung San woman of the African Kalahari Desert, explains:
“When two people are first together, their hearts are on fire and
their passion is very great. After a while, the fire cools and that’s
how it stays. They continue to love each other, but it’s in a different
way—warm and dependable” (Shostak, 1981).
The flow and ebb of romantic love follows the pattern of addic-
tions to caffeine, alcohol, and other drugs (Burkett & Young, 2012).
At first, a drug gives a big kick, a high. With repetition, opponent
emotions gain strength and tolerance develops. An amount that
once was highly stimulating no longer gives a thrill. Stopping the
substance, however, does not return you to where you started.
Rather, it triggers withdrawal symptoms—malaise, depression, the
blahs. The same often happens in love. The passionate high is fated
to become lukewarm. The no-longer-romantic relationship becomes
taken for granted—until it ends. Then the jilted lover, the widower,
the divorcé, are surprised at how empty life now seems without the
person they long ago stopped feeling passionately attached to. Hav-
ing focused on what was not working, they stopped noticing what
was (Carlson & Hatfield, 1992).
companionate love
The affection we feel for those
with whom our lives are deeply
intertwined.
Unlike passionate love, companionate love can last a lifetime.
©Jae C. Hong/AP Images
Attraction and Intimacy Chapter 11 339
The cooling of passionate love over time and the growing importance of other factors,
such as shared values, can be seen in the feelings of those who enter arranged versus love-
based marriages in India. Those who married for love reported diminishing feelings of love
after a 5-year newlywed period. By contrast, those in arranged marriages reported more love
after 5 years (Gupta & Singh, 1982; Figure 5; for other data on the seeming success of
arranged marriages, see J. E. Myers et al., 2005, Thakar & Epstein, 2011, and Yelsma &
Athappilly, 1988).
The cooling of intense romantic love often triggers a period of disillusion, especially
among those who believe that romantic love is essential both for a marriage and for its
continuation. Compared with North Americans, Asians tend to focus less on personal feel-
ings and more on the practical aspects of social attachments (Dion & Dion, 1988; Sprecher
& Toro-Morn, 2002; Sprecher et al., 1994b). Thus, they are less vulnerable to disillusion-
ment. Asians are also less prone to the self-focused individualism that in the long run can
undermine a relationship and lead to divorce (Dion & Dion, 1991; Triandis et al., 1988).
The decline in intense mutual fascination may be natural and adaptive for species sur-
vival. The result of passionate love is often children, whose survival is aided by the parents’
waning obsession with each other (Kenrick & Trost, 1987). Nevertheless, for those married
more than 20 years, some of the lost romantic feeling is often renewed as the family nest
empties and the parents are once again free to focus their attention on each other (Hatfield
& Sprecher, 1986; White & Edwards, 1990). “No man or woman really knows what love
is until they have been married a quarter of a century,” said Mark Twain. If the relationship
has been intimate, mutually rewarding, and rooted in a shared life history, companionate
love deepens.
“Grow old along with me! The
best is yet to be.”
—Robert Browning,
“Rabbi ben Ezra,” in Dramatis
Personae, 1864
▯ Researchers have characterized love as having compo-
nents of intimacy, passion, and commitment. Passion-
ate love is experienced as a bewildering confusion of
ecstasy and anxiety, elation and pain. The two-factor
theory of emotion suggests that in a romantic context,
arousal from any source, even painful experiences, can
be steered into passion.
▯ In the best of relationships, the initial passionate high
settles to a steadier, more affectionate relationship
called companionate love.
SUMMING UP: What Is Love?
FIGURE 5
Romantic Love Between
Partners in Arranged or
Love Marriages in
Jaipur, India
Source: Data from Gupta & Singh,
1982.
Scores on Rubin’s love scale
(9-item version, possible range 9 to 91)
Years of marriage
0–1 1–2 2–5 5–10
Arranged
marriages
Love marriages
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
10+
340 Part Three Social Relations
WHAT ENABLES CLOSE
RELATIONSHIPS?
Explain how attachment styles, equity, and self-disclosure
influence the ups and downs of our close relationships.
Attachment
Love is a biological imperative. We are social creatures, destined to bond with others. Our
need to belong is adaptive. Cooperation promotes survival. In solo combat, our early ances-
tors were not the toughest predators; but as hunter–gatherers, and in fending off predators,
they gained strength from numbers. Because group dwellers survived and reproduced, we
today carry genes that predispose us to form such bonds.
Researchers have found that different forms of a particular gene predict mammalian pair
bonding. In the mouselike prairie vole, and in humans, injections of hormones such as
oxytocin (which is released in females during nursing and during mating) and vasopressin
produce good feelings that trigger male–female bonding (Donaldson & Young, 2008; Young,
2009). In humans, genes associated with vasopressin activity predict marital stability
(Walum et al., 2008). Such is the biology of enduring love.
Our dependence as infants strengthens our human bonds. Soon after birth we exhibit
various social responses—love, fear, anger. But the first and greatest of these is love. As
babies, we almost immediately prefer familiar faces and voices. We coo and smile when our
parents give us attention. By approximately 8 months, we crawl toward mother or father
and typically let out a wail when separated from them. Reunited, we cling. By keeping
infants close to their caregivers, strong social attachment serves as a powerful survival
impulse.
Deprived of familiar attachments, sometimes under conditions of extreme neglect, chil-
dren may become withdrawn, frightened, silent. After studying the mental health of aban-
doned children for the World Health Organization, psychiatrist John Bowlby (1980, p. 442)
reflected, “Intimate attachments to other human beings are the hub around which a per-
son’s life revolves. . . . From these intimate attachments [people draw] strength and enjoy-
ment of life.”
Researchers have compared attachment and love in various close relationships—between
parents and children, between friends, and between spouses or lovers (Davis, 1985; Maxwell,
1985; Sternberg & Grajek, 1984). Some elements are common to all loving attachments:
mutual understanding, giving and receiving support, valuing and enjoying being with the
loved one. The same brain areas associated with maternal
attachment are also activated when adults think about their
romantic partner (Acevedo et al., 2012). Passionate love is, how-
ever, spiced with some added features: physical affection, an
expectation of exclusiveness, and an intense fascination with the
loved one.
Passionate love is not just for lovers. The intense love of
parent and infant for each other qualifies as a form of passion-
ate love. Year-old infants, like young adult lovers, welcome physi-
cal affection, feel distress when separated, express intense
affection when reunited, and take great pleasure in the signifi-
cant other’s attention and approval (Shaver & Mikulincer,
2011). Of course, infants vary in how they relate to caregivers,
and so do adults in how they relate to their romantic partners.
This made Phillip Shaver and Cindy Hazan (1993, 1994) won-
der whether infant attachment styles might carry over to adult
relationships.
Attachment, especially to caretakers, is a powerful survival impulse.
©Juice Images/Alamy Stock Photo
Attraction and Intimacy Chapter 11 341
ATTACHMENT STYLES
Approximately 7 in 10 infants, and nearly that many adults, exhibit secure attachment
(Baldwin et al., 1996; Jones & Cunningham, 1996; Mickelson et al., 1997). When placed
as infants in a strange situation (usually a laboratory playroom), they play comfortably in
their mother’s presence, happily exploring this strange environment. If she leaves, they
become distressed; when she returns, they run to her, hold her, then relax and return to
exploring and playing (Ainsworth, 1973, 1979). This trusting attachment style, many
researchers believe, forms a working model of intimacy—a blueprint for one’s adult intimate
relationships, in which underlying trust sustains relationships through times of conflict
(Miller & Rempel, 2004; Oriña et al., 2011; Salvatore et al., 2011). Securely attached adults
find it easy to get close to others and don’t fret about getting too dependent or being
abandoned. As lovers, they enjoy sexuality within the context of a secure, committed rela-
tionship. And their relationships tend to be satisfying and enduring (Feeney, 1996; Feeney &
Noller, 1990; Simpson et al., 1992).
Approximately 2 in 10 infants and adults exhibit avoidant attachment, one of the two
types of insecure attachment. Although internally aroused, avoidant infants reveal little
distress during separation and little clinging upon reunion. Avoiding closeness, avoidant
adults tend to be less invested in relationships and more likely to leave them. They also
are more fearful to engage in uncommitted hookups (Garneau et al., 2013) and are more
likely to be sexually unfaithful to their partners in both straight (DeWall et al., 2011) and
gay (Starks & Parsons, 2014) relationships. Avoidant individuals may be either fearful
(“I am uncomfortable getting close to others”) or dismissing (“It is very important to me
to feel independent and self-sufficient” [Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991]). More college
students in the United States had a dismissing attachment style in the 2010s (vs. the
1980s), and fewer had a secure attachment style. The researchers speculate that this shift
may be rooted in changing family structures and an increasing emphasis on individualism
(Konrath et al., 2014).
Approximately 1 in 10 infants and adults exhibit the anxiousness and ambivalence that
mark anxious attachment, the second type of insecure attachment. In the strange situation,
infants are more likely to cling anxiously to their mother. If she leaves, they cry; when she
returns, they may be indifferent or hostile. As adults, insecure individuals are less trusting,
more fearful of a partner’s becoming interested in someone else, and therefore more pos-
sessive and jealous. They may break up repeatedly with the same person. When discussing
conflicts, they get emotional and often angry (Cassidy, 2000; Simpson et al., 1996), and
their self-esteem fluctuates more based on feedback from others, especially romantic part-
ners (Hepper & Carnelley, 2012). Their eagerness to form relationships can hamper their
efforts because others perceive their anxiety and the interaction becomes awkward (McClure &
Lydon, 2014). Anxiously attached people can even transfer their anxious attachment style
to their smartphones, causing them to rely on their phones more and check their phones
more often—even while driving (Bodford et al., 2017).
Some researchers attribute these varying attachment styles, which have been studied
across 62 cultures, to parental responsiveness (Schmitt et al., 2004). Cindy Hazan (2004)
sums up the idea: “Early attachment experiences form the basis of internal working models
or characteristic ways of thinking about relationships.” Thus, sensitive, responsive mothers—
mothers who engender a sense of basic trust in the world’s reliability—typically have securely
attached infants, observed Mary Ainsworth (1979) and Erik Erikson (1963). In fact, one
study of 100 Israeli grandmother–daughter–granddaughter threesomes found inter-
generational consistency of attachment styles (Besser & Priel, 2005). Youths who have
experienced nurturant and involved parenting tend later to have warm and supportive rela-
tionships with their romantic partners (Conger et al., 2000). However, young adults whose
parents were divorced did not differ in attachment style from those whose parents were
still married (Washington & Hans, 2013). Attachment styles may be partially based in
inherited temperament (Gillath et al., 2008; Harris, 1998). A gene that predisposes prairie
voles to cuddle and mate for life (and has the same effect on laboratory mice genetically
engineered to have the gene) has varying human forms. This gene is more commonly found
secure attachment
Attachments rooted in trust and
marked by intimacy.
avoidant attachment
Attachments marked by
discomfort over, or resistance
to, being close to others. An
insecure attachment style.
anxious attachment
Attachments marked by anxiety
or ambivalence. An insecure
attachment style.
342 Part Three Social Relations
in faithful, married men, another gene in those who are unmarried
or unfaithful (Caldwell et al., 2008; Walum et al., 2008).
The effects of attachment can last a lifetime: In a 22-year lon-
gitudinal study, infants who were insecurely attached to their
mothers became adults who struggled to feel more positive emo-
tions (Moutsiana et al., 2014). Attachment styles also have obvi-
ous impacts on adult relationships: In an analysis of 188 studies,
avoidantly attached people were less satisfied and supported in
their relationships, and anxiously attached people experienced
more relationship conflict (Li & Chan, 2012).
Which attachment style combinations are the best—and worst?
Two securely attached partners would seem to be ideal, and pair-
ings in which at least one partner is insecurely attached may have
more issues. The most difficult pairing appears to be an anxious
woman and an avoidant man; these couples showed the highest
levels of stress hormone when they anticipated talking over a con-
flict, and found it more difficult to give and seek care from their partner (Beck et al., 2013).
This makes sense: The anxious woman, uncertain of her partner’s love, seeks closeness,
while the avoidant man, uncomfortable with closeness, distances himself. For better or for
worse, early attachment styles do seem to lay a foundation for future relationships.
Equity
If each partner pursues his or her personal desires willy-nilly, the relationship will die.
Therefore, our society teaches us to exchange rewards by the equity principle of attraction:
What you and your partner get out of a relationship should be proportional to what you
each put into it (Hatfield et al., 1978). If two people receive equal outcomes, they should
contribute equally; otherwise one or the other will feel it is unfair. If both feel their out-
comes correspond to the assets and efforts each contributes, then both perceive equity.
Strangers and casual acquaintances maintain equity by exchanging benefits: You lend
me your class notes; later, I’ll lend you mine. I invite you to my party; you invite me to
yours. Those in an enduring relationship, including roommates and those in love, do not
feel bound to trade similar benefits—notes for notes, parties for parties (Berg, 1984). They
feel freer to maintain equity by exchanging a variety of benefits (“When you drop by to
lend me your notes, why don’t you stay for dinner?”) and eventually to stop keeping track
of who owes whom. A sense of equity underlies nearly all of the qualities that a group of
college students identified as “deal-breakers” in considering long-term partners. Most said
they would not consider being with someone who was inattentive or uncaring, was dismis-
sive of their interests, or was already in a relationship or married (Jonason et al., 2015).
LONG-TERM EQUITY
Is it crass to suppose that friendship and love are rooted in an equitable exchange of
rewards? Don’t we sometimes give in response to a loved one’s need, without expecting
anything in return? Indeed, those involved in an equitable, long-term relationship are uncon-
cerned with short-term equity. Margaret Clark and Judson Mills (1979, 1993; Clark, 1984,
1986) have argued that people even take pains to avoid calculating any exchange benefits.
When we help a good friend, we do not want instant repayment. If someone invites us for
dinner, we wait before reciprocating, lest the person attribute the motive for our return
invitation to be merely paying off a social debt. True friends tune into one another’s needs
even when reciprocation is impossible (Clark et al., 1986, 1989). Similarly, happily married
people tend not to keep score of how much they are giving and getting (Buunk & Van
Yperen, 1991; Clark et al., 2010). As people observe their partners being self-giving, their
sense of trust grows (Wieselquist et al., 1999).
In experiments with University of Maryland students, Clark and Mills confirmed that not
being calculating is a mark of friendship. Tit-for-tat exchanges boosted people’s liking when
the relationship was relatively formal but diminished liking when the two sought friendship.
equity
A condition in which the
outcomes people receive from a
relationship are proportional to
what they contribute to it. Note:
Equitable outcomes needn’t
always be equal outcomes.
“Love is the most subtle kind
of self-interest.”
—Holbrook Johnson
Couples with an anxiously attached woman and an avoidantly
attached man experience more stress.
©wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock
Attraction and Intimacy Chapter 11 343
Clark and Mills surmise that marriage contracts, in which each
partner specifies what is expected from the other, would more
likely undermine than enhance love. Only when the other’s posi-
tive behavior is voluntary can we attribute it to love.
Previously we noted an equity principle at work in the matching
phenomenon: People usually bring equal assets to romantic rela-
tionships. Often, they are matched for attractiveness, status, and
so forth. If they are mismatched in one area, such as attractiveness,
they tend to be mismatched in some other area, such as status.
But in total assets, they are an equitable match. No one says, and
few even think, “I’ll trade you my good looks for your big income.”
But especially in relationships that last, equity is the rule.
PERCEIVED EQUITY AND SATISFACTION
In one survey, “sharing household chores” ranked third (after
“faithfulness” and a “happy sexual relationship”) among nine
things that people saw as marks of successful marriages (Pew
Research Center, 2007b). Indeed, those in an equitable relation-
ship are typically content (Fletcher et al., 1987; Hatfield et al., 1985; Van Yperen & Buunk,
1990). Those who perceive their relationship as inequitable feel discomfort: The one who
has the better deal may feel guilty and the one who senses a raw deal may feel strong irrita-
tion. (Given the self-serving bias—most husbands perceive themselves as contributing more
housework than their wives credit them for—the person who is “overbenefited” is less sensi-
tive to the inequity.)
Robert Schafer and Patricia Keith (1980) surveyed several hundred married couples
of all ages, noting those who felt their marriages were somewhat unfair because one
spouse contributed too little to the cooking, housekeeping, parenting, or providing. Ineq-
uity took its toll: Those who perceived inequity also felt more distressed and depressed.
During the child-rearing years, when wives often feel underbenefited and husbands over-
benefited, marital satisfaction tends to dip. During the hon-
eymoon and empty-nest stages, spouses are more likely to
perceive equity and to feel satisfaction with their marriages
(Feeney et al., 1994). When both partners freely give and
receive, and make decisions together, the odds of sustained,
satisfying love are good.
Perceived inequity triggers marital distress, agreed Nancy
Grote and Margaret Clark (2001) from their tracking of mar-
ried couples over time. But they also report that the traffic
between inequity and distress runs both ways: Marital distress
exacerbates the perception of unfairness (Figure 6).
Self-Disclosure
Deep, companionate relationships are intimate. They enable us to be known as we truly
are and to feel accepted. We discover this delicious experience in a good marriage or a
close friendship—a relationship where trust displaces anxiety and where we are free to open
ourselves without fear of losing the other’s affection (Holmes & Rempel, 1989). Such
relationships are characterized by self-disclosure (Derlega et al., 1993). As a relationship
grows, self-disclosing partners reveal more and more of themselves to each other; their
knowledge of each other penetrates to deeper levels. In relationships that flourish, much
of this self-disclosure shares successes and triumphs, and mutual delight over good happen-
ings (Gable et al., 2006). When a friend rejoices with us over good news, it not only
increases our joy about the happy event but also helps us feel better about the friendship
(Reis et al., 2010).
Most of us enjoy intimacy. It’s gratifying to be singled out for another’s disclosure. We
feel pleased when a normally reserved person says that something about us “made me feel
self-disclosure
Revealing intimate aspects of
oneself to others.
Couples who share household work equitably enjoy better rela-
tionships. If one person feels he or she is doing more of the
heavy lifting, trouble can follow.
©IPGGutenbergUKLtd/Getty Images
Marital
distress
Perceived
inequity
FIGURE 6
Perceived inequities
trigger marital distress,
which fosters the
perception of inequities.
Source: Adapted from Grote & Clark,
2001.
344 Part Three Social Relations
like opening up” and shares confidential information (Archer &
Cook, 1986; D. Taylor et al., 1981).
Not only do we like those who disclose, we also disclose to
those whom we like. And after disclosing to them, we like them
more (Collins & Miller, 1994). One way to feed intimacy and love
is by talking about your emotions and views. Couples who dis-
cussed questions such as “Given the choice of anyone in the world,
whom would you want as a dinner guest?” and “What is the great-
est accomplishment of your life?” later felt more passionate love
for each other (Welker et al., 2014). Lacking opportunities for
intimate disclosure or concealing distressing information, we expe-
rience the pain of loneliness (Berg & Peplau, 1982; Solano et al.,
1982; Uysal et al., 2010).
Experiments have probed both the causes and the effects of
self-disclosure. When are people most willing to disclose intimate
information concerning “what you like and don’t like about your-
self” or “what you’re most ashamed and most proud of”? And what effects do such revela-
tions have on those who reveal and receive them?
The most reliable finding is the disclosure reciprocity effect: Disclosure begets disclosure
(Berg, 1987; Miller, 1990; Reis & Shaver, 1988). We reveal more to those who have been
open with us. But intimate disclosure is seldom instant. (If it is, the person may seem
indiscreet and unstable.) Appropriate intimacy progresses like a dance: I reveal a little, you
reveal a little—but not too much. You then reveal more, and I reciprocate.
For those in love, deepening intimacy is exciting. “Rising intimacy will create a strong
sense of passion,” note Roy Baumeister and Ellen Bratslavsky (1999). This helps explain
why those who remarry after the loss of a spouse tend to begin the new marriage with an
increased frequency of sex, and why passion often rides highest when intimacy is restored
following severe conflict.
Some people—most of them women—are especially skilled “openers”; they easily elicit
intimate disclosures from others, even from those who normally don’t reveal very much of
themselves (Pegalis et al., 1994; Shaffer et al., 1996). Such people tend to be good listeners.
During conversation, they maintain attentive facial expressions and appear to be comfort-
ably enjoying themselves (Purvis et al., 1984). They may also express interest by uttering
supportive phrases while their conversational partner is speaking. They are what psycholo-
gist Carl Rogers (1980) called “growth-promoting” listeners—people who are genuine in
revealing their own feelings, who are accepting of others’ feelings, and who are empathic,
sensitive, reflective listeners.
What are the effects of such self-disclosure? Humanistic psychologist Sidney Jourard
(1964) argued that dropping our masks, letting ourselves be known as we are, nurtures
love. He presumed that it is gratifying to open up to another and then to receive the trust
another implies by being open with us. People feel better on days when they have disclosed
something significant about themselves, such as their being lesbian or gay, and feel worse
when concealing their identity (Beals et al., 2009). Those whose days include more deep
or substantive discussions, rather than just small talk, tend to be happier. That’s what
Mathias Mehl and co-researchers (2010) found after equipping 70 undergraduates with
recording devices that snatched 30-second conversational snippets five times each hour
over 4 days.
Having an intimate friend with whom we can discuss threats to our self-image seems to
help us survive stress (Swann & Predmore, 1985). A true friendship is a special relationship
that helps us cope with our other relationships. “When I am with my friend,” reflected the
Roman playwright Seneca, “methinks I am alone, and as much at liberty to speak anything
as to think it.” At its best, marriage is such a friendship, sealed by commitment.
Intimate self-disclosure is also one of companionate love’s delights. The most self-
revealing dating and married couples tend to enjoy the most satisfying and enduring rela-
tionships (Berg & McQuinn, 1986; Hendrick et al., 1988; Sprecher, 1987). For example, in
a study of newlywed couples who were all equally in love, those who most deeply and
disclosure reciprocity
The tendency for one person’s
intimacy of self-disclosure to
match that of a conversational
partner.
“What is a friend? I will tell
you. It is a person with whom
you dare to be yourself.”
—Writer Frank Crane,
“A Definition of Friendship,” Four
Minute Essays, 1919
Self-disclosure is an effective way to build intimacy.
©Dmytro Zinkevych/Shutterstock
Attraction and Intimacy Chapter 11 345
accurately knew each other were most likely to enjoy enduring love (Neff & Karney, 2005).
Married partners who most strongly agree that, “I try to share my most intimate thoughts
and feelings with my partner” tend to have the most satisfying marriages (Sanderson &
Cantor, 2001). For very reticent people, marriage may not be as satisfying as it is for those
more willing to share their feelings (Baker & McNulty, 2010). When the inevitable disagree-
ments occur, couples who believe that their partner understands their perspective—even if
they don’t agree with it—report more relationship satisfaction (Gordon & Chen, 2016).
In a Gallup U.S. marriage survey, 75% of those who prayed with their spouses (and
57% of those who didn’t) reported their marriages as very happy. Those who pray
together also more often say they discuss their marriages together, respect their spouses,
and rate their spouses as skilled lovers. (Greeley, 1991). Couples who engaged in mutual
prayer felt more unity and trust with their partner (Lambert et al., 2012). Among believ-
ers, shared prayer from the heart is a humbling, intimate, soulful exposure (Beach et al.,
2011).
Researchers have also found that women are often more willing to disclose their fears
and weaknesses than are men (Cunningham, 1981). As feminist writer Kate Millett (1975)
put it, “Women express, men repress.” Small wonder that both men and women report
friendships with women to be more intimate, enjoyable, and nurturing, and that on social
networks, both males and females seem to prefer female friends (Thelwall, 2008).
Nevertheless, men today, particularly men with egalitarian gender-role attitudes, seem
increasingly willing to reveal intimate feelings
and to enjoy the satisfactions that accompany
a relationship of mutual trust and self-
disclosure. And that, say Arthur Aron and
Elaine Aron (1994), is the essence of love—two
selves connecting, disclosing, and identifying
with each other; two selves, each retaining
their individuality, yet sharing activities,
delighting in similarities, and mutually sup-
porting. The result for many romantic partners
is “self–other integration”: intertwined self-
concepts (Slotter & Gardner, 2009; Figure 7).
That being so, might we cultivate closeness by experiences that mirror the escalating
closeness of budding friendships? The Arons and their collaborators (1997) wondered. They
paired volunteer students who were strangers to each other to interact for 45 minutes. For
the first 15 minutes, they shared thoughts on a list of personal but low-intimacy topics such
as “When did you last sing to yourself?” The next 15 minutes were spent on more intimate
topics such as “What is your most treasured memory?” The last 15 minutes invited even
more self-disclosure, with questions such as “Complete this sentence: ‘I wish I had someone
with whom I could share . . .’” and “When did you last cry in front of another person? By
yourself?”
Compared with control participants who spent the 45 minutes in small talk (“What was
your high school like?” “What is your favorite holiday?”), those who experienced the esca-
lating self-disclosure ended the hour feeling remarkably close to their conversation partners—
in fact, “closer than the closest relationship in the lives of 30% of similar students,” reported
the researchers. These relationships surely were not yet marked by the loyalty and commit-
ment of true friendship. Nevertheless, the experiment provides a striking demonstration of
how readily a sense of closeness to others can grow, given open self-disclosure—which can
also occur via the Internet. (See “Focus On: Does the Internet Create Intimacy or
Isolation?”)
To promote self-disclosure in ongoing dating relationships, Richard Slatcher and James
Pennebaker (2006) invited one member of 86 couples to spend 20 minutes on each of 3
days writing their deepest thoughts and feelings about the relationship (or, in a control
condition, writing merely about their daily activities). Those who wrote about their feelings
expressed more emotion to their partners in the days following. Three months later, 77%
were still dating (compared with 52% in the control group).
FIGURE 7
Love: An Overlapping of
Selves—You Become
Part of Me, I Part of You
Source: Weber & Harvey, 1994.Self Other
346 Part Three Social Relations
Does the Internet Create Intimacy or Isolation?
focus
ON
As a reader of this college text, you are almost surely one
of the world’s 3.7 billion (as of 2017) Internet users. It took
the telephone 7 decades to go from 1% to 75% penetra-
tion of North American households. Internet access
reached 75% penetration in approximately 7 years
( Putnam, 2000). You enjoy social networking, Web surf-
ing, texting, and perhaps participating in listservs or chat
rooms.
What do you think: Is computer-mediated communica-
tion within virtual communities a poor substitute for in-
person relationships? Or is it a wonderful way to widen
our social circles? Does the Internet do more to connect
people or to drain time from face-to-face relationships?
Consider the debate.
Point: The Internet, like the printing press and the tele-
phone, expands communication, and communication en-
ables relationships. Printing reduced face-to-face
storytelling, and the telephone reduced face-to-face
chats, but both enable us to communicate with people
without limitations of time and distance. Social relations
involve networking, and the Internet is the ultimate net-
work. It enables efficient networking with family, friends,
and kindred spirits—including people we otherwise never
would have found, be they fellow MS patients, St. Nicholas
collectors, or Star Trek fans.
Counterpoint: True, but computer communication is
impoverished. It lacks the nuances of eye-to-eye contact
punctuated with nonverbal cues and physical touches.
Outside of a few emoticons, electronic messages are de-
void of gestures, facial expressions, and tones of voice.
No wonder it’s so easy to misread them. The absence of
expressive emotion makes for ambiguous emotion.
For example, vocal nuances can signal whether a
statement is serious, kidding, or sarcastic. Communicators
often think their “just kidding” intent is equally clear
whether e-mailed or spoken. However, when e-mailed,
the intent often isn’t clear (Kruger et al., 2006). Thanks
also to one’s anonymity in virtual discussions, the result is
sometimes a hostile “flame war.”
A survey of 4,000 late-1990s Internet users found that
25% reported that their time online had reduced time
spent in person and on the phone with family and friends
(Nie & Erbring, 2000)—a number that might be consider-
ably higher now. The Internet, like television, diverts time
from real relationships. Internet discussions are not the
same as in-person intimate conversations. Cybersex is ar-
tificial intimacy. Individualized web-based entertainment
displaces getting together to play games. Such artificiality
and isolation is regrettable because our ancestral history
predisposes our needing real-time relationships, replete
with smirks and smiles.
Point: But most folks don’t perceive the Internet to be
isolating. Two-thirds of U.S. Internet users in 2014 said
online communication has strengthened their relation-
ships with family and friends (Pew Research Center, 2014).
Internet use may displace in-person intimacy, but it also
displaces television watching. If one-click cyber-shopping
is bad for your local bookstore, it frees time for relation-
ships. Telecommuting does the same, enabling people to
work from home and thereby spend more time with their
families.
And why say that computer-formed relationships are
unreal? On the Internet, your looks and location cease to
matter. Your appearance, age, and race don’t deter peo-
ple from relating to you based on what’s more genuinely
important—your shared interests and values. In workplace
and professional networks, computer-mediated discus-
sions are less influenced by status and are therefore more
candid and equally participatory. Computer-mediated
communication fosters more spontaneous self-disclosure
than face-to-face conversation (Joinson, 2001), and these
disclosures are perceived as more intimate (Jiang et al.,
2013).
Most Internet flirtations go nowhere. “Everyone I know
who has tried online dating . . . agrees that we loathe
spending (wasting?) hours gabbing to someone and then
meeting him and realizing that he is a creep,” observed
one Toronto woman (Dicum, 2003). This experience
would not surprise Eli Finkel and his fellow social psy-
chologists (2012). Nearly a century of research on roman-
tic compatibility leads them to conclude that the formulas
of online matchmaking sites are unlikely to do what they
claim. The best predictors of relationship success, such as
communication patterns and other indications of compat-
ibility, emerge only after people meet and get to know
one another.
Nevertheless, married couples who met online were
less likely to break up and more likely to be satisfied with
their marriages (Cacioppo et al., 2013). Friendships and
romantic relationships that form on the Internet are more
likely than in-person relationships to last for at least
2 years (Bargh et al., 2002; Bargh & McKenna, 2004;
McKenna et al., 2002; McKenna & Bargh, 1998, 2000). In
one experiment, people disclosed more, with greater
honesty and less posturing, when they met people online.
They also felt more liking for people with whom they con-
versed online for 20 minutes than for those met for the
same time face-to-face. This was true even when they
Attraction and Intimacy Chapter 11 347
HOW DO RELATIONSHIPS END?
Summarize the factors that predict marital dissolution
and describe the detachment process.
In 1971, a man wrote a love poem to his bride, slipped it into a bottle, and dropped it into
the Pacific Ocean between Seattle and Hawaii. A decade later, a jogger found it on a Guam
beach:
If, by the time this letter reaches you, I am old and gray, I know that our love will be as fresh
as it is today.
It may take a week or it may take years for this note to find you. . . . If this should never
reach you, it will still be written in my heart that I will go to extreme means to prove my love
for you. Your husband, Bob.
unknowingly met the very same person in both contexts.
People surveyed similarly feel that Internet friendships are
as real, important, and close as offline relationships.
Counterpoint: The Internet allows people to be who
they really are, but also to feign who they really aren’t,
sometimes in the interest of sexual exploitation. Internet
sexual media, like other forms of pornography, may distort
people’s perceptions of sexual reality, decrease the
attractiveness of their real-life partner, prime men to per-
ceive women in sexual terms, make sexual coercion seem
more trivial, provide mental scripts for how to act in sexual
situations, increase arousal, and lead to disinhibition and
imitation of loveless sexual behaviors.
Finally, suggests Robert Putnam (2000), the social ben-
efits of computer-mediated communication are con-
strained by “cyberbalkanization.” The Internet enables
those of us with hearing loss to network, but it also en-
ables White supremacists to find one another and thus
contributes to social and political polarization.
As the debate over the Internet’s social consequences
continues, “the most important question,” says Putnam
(p. 180), will be “not what the Internet will do to us, but
what we will do with it? . . . How can we harness this prom-
ising technology for thickening community ties? How can
we develop the technology to enhance social presence,
social feedback, and social cues? How can we use the
prospect of fast, cheap communication to enhance the
now fraying fabric of our real communities?”
The Internet allows people to feign who they really aren’t.
©Peter Steiner. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
“On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”
▯ From infancy to old age, attachments are central to hu-
man life. Secure attachments, as in an enduring mar-
riage, mark happy lives.
▯ Companionate love is most likely to endure when both
partners feel the partnership is equitable, with both per-
ceiving themselves receiving from the relationship in
proportion to what they contribute to it.
▯ One reward of companionate love is the opportunity
for intimate self-disclosure, a state achieved gradually as
each partner reciprocates the other’s increasing open-
ness (disclosure reciprocity).
SUMMING UP: What Enables Close Relationships?
348 Part Three Social Relations
The woman to whom the love note was addressed was reached by phone. When the
note was read to her, she burst out laughing. And the more she heard, the harder she
laughed. “We’re divorced,” she finally said, and slammed down the phone.
So it often goes. Comparing their unsatisfying relationship with the support and affection
they imagine are available elsewhere, many relationships end. Each year, Canada and the
United States record one divorce for every two marriages. As economic and social barriers
to divorce weakened during the 1960s and 1970s, divorce rates rose. “We are living longer,
but loving more briefly,” said Os Guiness (1993, p. 309).
Divorce
To predict a culture’s divorce rates, it helps to know its values (Triandis, 1994). Individu-
alistic cultures (where love is a feeling and people ask, “What does my heart say?”) have
more divorce than do communal cultures (where love entails obligation and people ask,
“What will other people say?”). Individualists marry “for as long as we both shall love,”
collectivists more often for life. Individualists expect more passion and personal fulfillment
in a marriage, which puts greater pressure on the relationship (Dion & Dion, 1993). In
one pair of surveys, “keeping romance alive” was rated as important to a good marriage by
78% of American women and 29% of Japanese women (American Enterprise, 1992). Eli
Finkel and his colleagues (2014, 2017) argue that marriage has become more challenging
in individualistic recent times as couples expect more fulfillment from marriage but invest
fewer resources in it—a potentially impossible equation.
Even in Western society, however, those who enter relationships with a long-term
orientation and an intention to persist do experience healthier, less turbulent, and more
durable partnerships (Arriaga, 2001; Arriaga & Agnew, 2001). Enduring relationships are
rooted in enduring love and satisfaction, but also in fear of the termination cost, a sense
of moral obligation, and inattention to possible alternative partners (Adams & Jones,
1997; Maner et al., 2009; Miller, 1997). For those determined that their marriage last, it
usually does.
Those whose commitment to a union outlasts the desires that gave birth to it will endure
times of conflict and unhappiness. One national survey found that 86% of those who were
unhappily married but who stayed with the marriage were, when reinterviewed 5 years later,
now mostly “very” or “quite” happy with their marriages (Popenoe, 2002). By contrast,
narcissistic people enter relationships with less commitment and less likelihood of long-term
relational success (Campbell & Foster, 2002).
Risk of divorce also depends on who marries whom (Fergusson et al., 1984; Myers,
2000a; Tzeng, 1992). People usually stay married if they
▯ married after age 20,
▯ both grew up in stable, two-parent homes,
▯ dated for a long while before marriage,
▯ are well and similarly educated,
▯ enjoy a stable income from a good job,
▯ live in a small town or on a farm,
▯ did not cohabit or become pregnant before marriage,
▯ are religiously committed,
▯ are of similar age, faith, and education.
None of those predictors, by itself, is essential to a stable marriage. Moreover, they
are correlates of enduring marriages, not necessarily causes. But if none of those things
is true for someone, marital breakdown is an almost sure bet. If all are true, they are
very likely to stay together until death. The English perhaps had it right when, several
centuries ago, they presumed that the temporary intoxication of passionate love was a
foolish basis for permanent marital decisions. Better, they felt, to choose a mate based
on stable friendship and compatible backgrounds, interests, habits, and values (Stone,
1977).
“When I was a young man, I
vowed never to marry until I
found the ideal woman. Well I
found her—but alas, she was
waiting for the ideal man.”
—French Statesman Robert
Schuman (1886–1963)
“Passionate love is in many
ways an altered state of
consciousness. . . . In many
states today, there are laws
that a person must not be in
an intoxicated condition when
marrying. But passionate love
is a kind of intoxication.”
—Roy Baumeister,
Meanings of Life, 1991
Attraction and Intimacy Chapter 11 349
The Detachment Process
Our close relationships help define the social identity that shapes our self-concept (Slotter
et al., 2010). Thus, much as we experience life’s best moments when relationships begin—
when having a baby, making a friend, falling in love—so we experience life’s worst moments
when relationships end, with death or a broken bond (Jaremka et al., 2011). Severing bonds
produces a predictable sequence of agitated preoccupation with the lost partner, followed
by deep sadness and, eventually, the beginnings of emotional detachment, a letting go of
the old while focusing on someone new, and a renewed sense of self (Hazan & Shaver,
1994; Lewandowski & Bizzoco, 2007; Spielmann et al., 2009). Because humans often mate
with more than one partner, we must have evolved psychological processes for cutting ties,
a mechanism evolutionary psychologists dubbed the “mate ejection module” (Boutwell
et al., 2015). However, deep and long-standing attachments seldom break quickly; detaching
is a process, not an event.
Among dating couples, the closer and longer the relationship and the fewer the available
alternatives, the more painful the breakup (Simpson, 1987). Surprisingly, Roy Baumeister
and Sara Wotman (1992) report that, months or years later, people recall more pain over
spurning someone’s love than over having been spurned. Their distress arises from guilt
over hurting someone, from upset over the heartbroken lover’s persistence, or from uncer-
tainty over how to respond. Among married couples, breakup has additional costs: shocked
parents and friends, guilt over broken vows, anguish over reduced household income, and
possibly less time with children. Still, each year millions of couples are willing to pay such
costs to extricate themselves from what they perceive as the greater costs of continuing a
painful, unrewarding relationship. Such costs include, in one study of 328 married couples,
a 10-fold increase in depression symptoms when a marriage is marked by discord rather
than satisfaction (O’Leary et al., 1994). When, however, a marriage is “very happy,” life as
a whole usually seems “very happy” (Figure 8).
When relationships suffer, those without better alternatives or who feel invested in a
relationship (through time, energy, mutual friends, possessions, and perhaps children) will
seek alternatives to exiting the relationship. Caryl Rusbult and colleagues (1986, 1987,
1998) explored three ways of coping with a failing relationship (Table 1). Some people
exhibit loyalty—by waiting for conditions to improve. The problems are too painful to con-
front and the risks of separation are too great, so the loyal partner perseveres, hoping the
good old days will return. Others (especially men) exhibit neglect; they ignore the partner
and allow the relationship to deteriorate. With painful dissatisfactions ignored, an insidious
emotional uncoupling ensues as the partners talk less and begin redefining their lives
Marriage
very happy
Percent very happy with life as a whole
57.9%
11.5%
5.1%
60
50
70
40
30
20
10
0
Marriage
pretty happy
Marriage not
too happy
FIGURE 8
National Opinion
Research Center
Surveys of 33,555
Married Americans,
1972–2016
350 Part Three Social Relations
without each other. Still others will voice their concerns and take active steps to improve
the relationship by discussing problems, seeking advice, and attempting to change.
Study after study—in fact, 115 studies of 45,000 couples—reveal that unhappy couples
disagree, command, criticize, and put down. Happy couples more often agree, approve,
assent, and laugh (Karney & Bradbury, 1995; Noller & Fitzpatrick, 1990). After observing
2,000 couples, John Gottman (1994, 1998, 2005) noted that healthy marriages were not
necessarily devoid of conflict. Rather, they were marked by an ability to reconcile differ-
ences and to overbalance criticism with affection. In successful marriages, positive interac-
tions (smiling, touching, complimenting, laughing) outnumbered negative interactions
(sarcasm, disapproval, insults) by at least a 5-to-1 ratio.
It’s not distress and arguments that predict divorce, add Ted Huston and col-
leagues (2001) from their following of newlyweds through time. (Most newlyweds
experience conflict.) Rather, it’s coldness, disillusionment, and hopelessness that
predict a dim marital future. This is especially so, observed William Swann and
associates (2003, 2006), when inhibited men are coupled with critical women.
Successful couples have learned, sometimes aided by communication train-
ing, to restrain the poisonous put-downs and gut-level reactions and to think
and behave more positively (McNulty, 2010). They fight fairly (by stating feel-
ings without insulting). They depersonalize conflict with comments such as,
“I know it’s not your fault” (Markman et al., 1988; Notarius & Markman, 1993;
Yovetich & Rusbult, 1994). Couples randomly assigned to think less emotion-
ally and more like an observer during fights were later more satisfied with
their marriages (Finkel et al., 2013). Would unhappy relationships get better
if the partners agreed to act more as happy couples do—by complaining and
criticizing less? By affirming and agreeing more? By setting aside times to
voice their concerns and doing so calmly? By praying or playing together daily?
As attitudes trail behaviors, do affections trail actions?
Joan Kellerman, James Lewis, and James Laird (1989) wondered. They
knew that among couples passionately in love, eye gazing is typically prolonged
and mutual (Rubin, 1973). Would intimate eye gazing similarly stir feelings
between those not in love (much as 45 minutes of escalating self-disclosure
evoked feelings of closeness among those unacquainted students)? To find out,
they asked unacquainted male–female pairs to gaze intently for 2 minutes either
at each other’s hands or into each other’s eyes. When they separated, the eye
gazers reported a tingle of attraction and affection toward each other. Simulating love had
begun to stir it.
By enacting and expressing love, researcher Robert Sternberg (1988) believes the passion
of initial romance can evolve into enduring love:
“Living happily ever after” need not be a myth, but if it is to be a reality, the happiness must
be based upon different configurations of mutual feelings at various times in a relationship.
Couples who expect their passion to last forever, or their intimacy to remain unchallenged, are
in for disappointment. . . . We must constantly work at understanding, building, and rebuilding
our loving relationships. Relationships are constructions, and they decay over time if they are
not maintained and improved. We cannot expect a relationship simply to take care of itself,
any more than we can expect that of a building. Rather, we must take responsibility for making
our relationships the best they can be.
TABLE 1 Responses to Relationship Distress
Passive Active
Constructive Loyalty: Await improvement Voice: Seek to improve
relationships
Destructive Neglect: Ignore the partner Exit: End the relationship
Source: Rusbult et al., 1986, 1987, 1998, 2001.
Coldness, disillusionment, and hopelessness are
better predictors of divorce than arguing.
©Image Source/Getty Images
Attraction and Intimacy Chapter 11 351
POSTSCRIPT:
Making Love
Two facts of contemporary life seem beyond dispute: First, close, enduring relationships are
hallmarks of a happy life. One example of a close relationship is marriage. In National
Opinion Research Center surveys of 57,731 Americans since 1972, 40% of married adults,
23% of those never married, 20% of the divorced, and 17% of the separated declared their
lives “very happy.” Similar results have come from national surveys in Canada and Europe
(Inglehart, 1990).
Second, close, enduring relationships are in decline. Increased migration and mobility
mean that more people are disconnected from extended family and childhood relationships.
Compared with a half-century ago, people today more often move, live alone, divorce, and
have a succession of relationships.
Given the psychological ingredients of marital happiness—kindred minds, social and
sexual intimacy, equitable giving and receiving of emotional and material resources—it
becomes possible to contest the French saying “Love makes the time pass and time makes
love pass.” But it takes effort to stem love’s decay. It takes effort to carve out time each
day to talk over the day’s happenings. It takes effort to forgo nagging and bickering and
instead to disclose and hear each other’s hurts, concerns, and dreams. It takes effort to
make a relationship into “a classless utopia of social equality” (Sarnoff & Sarnoff, 1989),
in which both partners freely give and receive, share decision making, and enjoy life together.
By minding our close relationships, sustained satisfaction is possible, note John Harvey
and Julia Omarzu (1997). Australian relationships researcher Patricia Noller (1996) con-
curs: “Mature love . . . love that sustains marriage and family as it creates an environment
in which individual family members can grow . . . is sustained by beliefs that love involves
acknowledging and accepting differences and weaknesses; that love involves an internal
decision to love another person and a long-term commitment to maintain that love; and
finally that love is controllable and needs to be nurtured and nourished by the lovers.”
For those who commit themselves to creating an equitable, intimate, mutually supportive
relationship, there may come the security, and the joy, of enduring, companionate love.
This is echoed in the classic children’s story The Velveteen Rabbit. When someone “loves
you for a long, long time,” explained the wise, old Skin Horse to the Velveteen Rabbit, “not
just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real. . . .”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” [the rabbit] asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time.
That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who
have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved
off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things
don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t
understand.”
▯ Often love does not endure. As divorce rates rose in the
twentieth century, researchers discerned predictors of
marital dissolution. One predictor is an individualistic
culture that values feelings over commitment; other fac-
tors include the couple’s age, education, values, and
similarity.
▯ Researchers are also identifying the process through
which couples either detach or rebuild their relation-
ships. And they are identifying the positive and nonde-
fensive communication styles that mark healthy, stable
marriages.
SUMMING UP: How Do Relationships End?
©Ariel Skelley/Blend Images/Getty Images
12
Helping
C H A P T E R
Why do we help?
When will we help?
Who will help?
How can we increase
helping?
Postscript: Taking
social psychology
into life
On a hillside in Jerusalem, some 2000 trees form the Garden of the Righteous. Beneath each tree is a plaque with the name of those who gave refuge to
one or more Jews during the Nazi Holocaust. These “righteous Gentiles” knew that
if the refugees were discovered, Nazi policy dictated that host and refugee would
suffer a common fate. Many did (Hellman, 1980; Wiesel, 1985).
One hero who did not survive was Jane Haining, a Church of Scotland mission-
ary who was matron at a school for 400 mostly Jewish girls. On the eve of war,
the church, fearing her safety, ordered her to return home. She refused, saying, “If
these children need me in days of sunshine, how much more do they need me in
days of darkness?” (Barnes, 2008; Brown, 2008). She reportedly cut up her leather
luggage to make soles for her girls’ shoes. In April 1944, Haining accused a cook
of eating sparse food rations intended for her girls. The cook, a Nazi party member,
denounced her to the Gestapo, who arrested her for having worked among the
“Love cures people—both the ones who give it and the ones who
receive it.”
—Psychiatrist Karl Menninger, “An Autumn Visit with Dr. Karl,” 1969
Helping Chapter 12 353
Jews and having wept to see her girls forced to wear yellow
stars. A few weeks later, she was sent to Auschwitz, where
she suffered the same fate as millions of Jews.
Less dramatic acts of comforting, caring, and compassion
abound: Without asking anything in return, people offer
directions, donate money, give blood, volunteer time.
• Why, and when, will people help?
• Who will help?
• What can be done to lessen indifference and increase
helping?
These are this chapter’s primary questions.
Altruism is selfishness in reverse. An altruistic person is
concerned and helpful even when no benefits are offered
or expected in return. Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan
provides the classic illustration:
A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and
fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him,
and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a
priest was going down that road; and when he saw him,
he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite,
when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But
a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was
moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured
oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an
inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them
to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of him; and when I come back, I will
repay you whatever more you spend.” (Luke 10:30–35, NRSV)
The Samaritan story illustrates altruism. Filled with compassion, he is motivated
to give a stranger time, energy, and money while expecting neither repayment nor
appreciation.
WHY DO WE HELP?
Explain psychology’s theories of what motivates
helping—and the type of helping each theory seeks
to explain.
Social Exchange and Social Norms
Several theories of helping agree that, in the long run, helping behavior benefits the helper
as well as the helped. Why? One explanation assumes that human interactions are guided
by “social economics.” We exchange not only material goods and money but also social
goods—love, services, information, status (Foa & Foa, 1975). In doing so, we aim to mini-
mize costs and maximize rewards. Social-exchange theory does not contend that we con-
sciously monitor costs and rewards, only that such considerations predict our behavior.
social-exchange theory
The theory that human
interactions are transactions
that aim to maximize one’s
rewards and minimize one’s
costs.
Good Samaritan, Fernand Schultz-Wettel
Permission of the Trustees of the National Gallery, London
©Freedom Studio/Shutterstock
altruism
A motive to increase another’s
welfare without conscious
regard for one’s self-interests.
354 Part Three Social Relations
Suppose your campus is having a blood drive and someone asks you to participate. You
might implicitly weigh the costs of donating (needle prick, time, fatigue) against those of
not donating (guilt, disapproval). You might also weigh the benefits of donating (feeling
good about helping someone, free refreshments) against those of not donating (saving the
time, discomfort, and anxiety). According to social-exchange theory, such subtle calcula-
tions precede decisions to help or not.
INCREASING POSITIVE EMOTION
Rewards that motivate helping may be external or internal. The New Yorker who jumped
onto subway tracks to save a man who had fainted (“I was thinking, if he gets hit, I can’t
go to work”), was motivated by the external rewards of his time-and-a-half Sunday pay
(Weischelbaum et al., 2010). When businesses donate money to improve their corporate
images or when someone offers a ride hoping to receive appreciation or friendship, the
reward is external. We give to get. Thus, we are most eager to help someone attractive to
us, someone whose approval we desire (Krebs, 1970; Unger, 1979). In experiments, and in
everyday life, public generosity boosts one’s status, while selfish behavior can lead to pun-
ishment (Hardy & Van Vugt, 2006; Henrich et al., 2006). It can even lead to sex: One study
found that altruistic people, especially men, had more sex partners and had sex more
frequently within relationships (Arnocky et al., 2017).
Rewards may also be internal, often focused on increasing positive emotions. Nearly all
blood donors agree that giving blood “makes you feel good about yourself” and “gives you
a feeling of self-satisfaction” (Piliavin, 2003; Piliavin et al., 1982). “Give blood,” advises an
old Red Cross poster. “All you’ll feel is good.” Feeling good helps explain why people far
from home will do kindnesses for strangers whom they will never see again.
Helping’s boost to self-worth explains this do-good/feel-good effect. One month-long study
of 85 couples found that giving emotional support to one’s partner was positive for the
giver; giving support boosted the giver’s mood (Gleason et al., 2003). Bereaved spouses
recover from their depressed feelings faster when they are engaged in helping others (Brown
et al., 2008, 2009). People who volunteer and help others report finding more meaning in
life (Klein, 2017). Some have even suggested that health care providers should actually
prescribe volunteering to improve mood and physical health (Johnson & Post, 2017).
Jane Piliavin (2003) and Susan Andersen (1998) reviewed studies that showed that youth
who engaged in community service projects, participated in school-based “service learning,” or
tutored children developed social skills and positive social values. Such young people are at
markedly less risk for delinquency, pregnancy, and school dropout and are more likely to become
engaged citizens. Volunteering likewise benefits morale and health, especially when self-initiated
rather than required (Weinstein & Ryan, 2010). Those who do good tend to do well.
Ditto for giving money. Making donations activates
brain areas linked with reward ( Harbaugh et al., 2007).
Generous people are happier than those whose spending
is self-focused. In one experiment, some people given an
envelope of cash were told to spend it on themselves,
while others were directed to spend the money on other
people. At the day’s end, those who spent their money
on others were happier (Dunn et al., 2008, 2013; Geenen
et al., 2014). People instructed to help others experienced
an immune system boost, while those asked to engage in
self-focused kindness did not (Nelson-Coffey et al., 2017).
Other research confirms that giving increases happiness:
▯ A survey of more than 200,000 people in 136
countries found that, virtually everywhere, people
report feeling happier after spending money on oth-
ers rather than on themselves (Aknin et al., 2013,
2015). Givers are also less prone to depression
than nongivers (Smith & Davidson, 2014).
Giving to others feels better than spending money on ourselves.
©Blue Jean Images/Alamy Stock Photo
Helping Chapter 12 355
▯ Giving employees “prosocial bonuses”—charitable donations to spend on others, or
on teammates rather than themselves—produces “happier and more satisfied
employees” and higher-performing work teams (Anik et al., 2013).
▯ Purchasing a goody bag for a sick child improved people’s mood enough for others
to notice their increased happiness (Aknin et al., 2014).
This cost–benefit analysis can seem demeaning. In defense of the theory, however, it is
a credit to humanity that helping can be inherently rewarding, that much of our behavior
is not antisocial but “prosocial,” and that we can find fulfillment in the giving of love. The
human race would likely be worse off if we gained pleasure only by serving ourselves.
REDUCING NEGATIVE EMOTION
The benefits of helping also include reducing or avoiding negative emotions. Near someone
in distress, we may feel distress. A woman’s scream outside your window arouses and dis-
tresses you. Horror movies distress us as we empathize with the frightened victims. If you
cannot reduce your arousal by interpreting the scream as a playful shriek, then you may
investigate or give aid, thereby reducing your distress (Piliavin & Piliavin, 1973). Altruism
researcher Dennis Krebs (1975; see The Inside Story: Dennis Krebs on Life Experience and
the Study of Altruism) found that Harvard University men whose physiological responses and
self-reports revealed the most arousal in response to another’s distress also gave the most help
to the person. Sure enough, the brains of “extraordinary altruists”—people who donated a
kidney to a stranger—reacted more strongly to images of fearful faces. Their amygdala (the
part of the brain that reacts to fear) was also larger than average (Marsh et al., 2014).
GUILT
Distress is not the only negative emotion we act to reduce. Throughout recorded history,
guilt has been a painful emotion that people avoid and seek to relieve (Ty et al., 2017). As
Everett Sanderson remarked after heroically saving a child who had fallen onto subway
tracks in front of an approaching train, “If I hadn’t tried to save that little girl, if I had just
“Men do not value a good
deed unless it brings a
reward.”
—Ovid,
Epistulae ex Ponto, AD 10
“For it is in giving that we
receive.”
—Saint Francis of Assisi
(1181–1226)
Dennis Krebs on Life Experience and the Study
of Altruism
THE inside
STORY
At age 14, I was traumatized when my family moved from
Vancouver, B.C., to California. I fell from president of my
junior high school to an object of social ridicule because
of my clothes, accent, and behavior. The fighting skills I
had acquired boxing soon generated a quite different
reputation from the one I enjoyed in Canada. I sank lower
and lower until, after several visits to juvenile detention
homes, I was arrested and convicted for driving under the
influence of drugs. I escaped from jail, hitchhiked to a log-
ging camp in Oregon, and eventually made my way back
to British Columbia. I was admitted to university on proba-
tion, graduated at the top of my class, won a Woodrow
Wilson Fellowship, and was accepted to a psychology
doctoral program at Harvard.
Attending Harvard required moving back to the United
States. Concerned about my escapee record in California,
I turned myself in and suffered through the ensuing pub-
licity. I was pardoned, in large part because of the
tremendous support I received from many people. After
3 years at Harvard, I was hired as an assistant professor.
Eventually I returned to British Columbia to chair the
Psychology Department at Simon Fraser University.
Though it makes me somewhat uncomfortable, I disclose
this history as a way of encouraging people with two strikes
against them to remain in the game. A great deal of the en-
ergy I have invested in under-
standing morality has stemmed
from a need to understand why
I went wrong, and my interest in
altruism has been fueled by the
generosity of those who helped
me overcome my past.
Dennis Krebs
Simon Fraser University
Courtesy of Dennis Krebs
356 Part Three Social Relations
stood there like the others, I would have died inside. I would have been
no good to myself from then on.”
Cultures have institutionalized ways to relieve guilt: animal and human
sacrifices, offerings of grain and money, penitent behavior, confession,
denial. In ancient Israel, the sins of the people were periodically laid on a
“scapegoat” animal that was then led into the wilderness to carry away the
people’s guilt.
To examine the consequences of guilt, social psychologists have induced
people to transgress: to lie, to deliver shock, to knock over a table loaded
with alphabetized cards, to break a machine, to cheat. Afterward, the guilt-
laden participants may be offered a way to relieve their guilt: by confessing,
by disparaging the one harmed, or by doing a good deed to offset the bad
one. The results are remarkably consistent: People will do whatever can be
done to expunge the guilt, relieve their bad feelings, and restore their self-
image (Ding et al., 2016; Ilies et al., 2013; Sachdeva et al., 2009; Xu et al.,
2011).
Picture yourself as a participant in one such experiment conducted with
Mississippi State University students (McMillen & Austin, 1971). You and
another student, each seeking to earn credit toward a course requirement, arrive for the
experiment. Soon after, a confederate enters, portraying himself as a previous participant
looking for a lost book. He mentions that the experiment involves taking a multiple-choice
test and that most of the correct answers are “B.” After the accomplice departs, the
experimenter arrives, explains the experiment, and then asks, “Have you been in this
experiment before or heard anything about it?”
Would you lie? The behavior of those who have gone before you in this experiment—100%
of whom told the little lie by answering “no”—suggests that you would. After you have
taken the test (without receiving any feedback on it), the experimenter says: “You are free
to leave. However, if you have some spare time, I could use your help in scoring some
questionnaires.” Assuming you have told the lie, do you think you would now be more or
less willing to volunteer some time? On average, those who had not been induced to lie
volunteered only 2 minutes of time. Those who had lied were apparently eager to redeem
their self-images; on average they offered a whopping 63 minutes. One moral of this experi-
ment was well expressed by a 7-year-old girl, who, in one of my [DM] own experiments,
wrote: “Don’t Lie or youl Live with gilt” (and you will feel a need to relieve it).
Our eagerness to do good after doing bad reflects our need to reduce private guilt and
restore a shaken self-image. It also reflects our desire to reclaim a positive public image.
We are more likely to redeem ourselves with helpful behavior when other people know
about our misdeeds (Carlsmith & Gross, 1969).
All in all, guilt leads to much good. By motivating people to confess, apologize, help,
and avoid repeated harm, guilt boosts sensitivity and sustains close relationships.
EXCEPTIONS TO THE FEEL-BAD/DO-GOOD SCENARIO Among well-socialized
adults, should we always expect to find the “feel-bad/do-good” phenomenon? No. One
negative mood, anger, produces anything but compassion. Another exception is profound
grief. People who suffer the loss of a spouse or a child, whether through death or separa-
tion, often undergo a period of intense self-preoccupation, which restrains giving to others
(Aderman & Berkowitz, 1983; Gibbons & Wicklund, 1982).
In a powerful laboratory simulation of self-focused grief, William Thompson, Claudia
Cowan, and David Rosenhan (1980) had Stanford University students listen privately
to a taped description of a person (whom they were to imagine was their best friend)
dying of cancer. The experiment focused some students’ attention on their own worry
and grief:
He (she) could die and you would lose him, never be able to talk to him again. Or worse, he
could die slowly. You would know every minute could be your last time together. For months
you would have to be cheerful for him while you were sad. You would have to watch him die
in pieces, until the last piece finally went, and you would be alone.
Schoolchildren packing toy donations for the needy.
As children mature, they usually come to take plea-
sure in helping others.
©Pamela Moore/Getty Images
Helping Chapter 12 357
For others, it focused their attention on the friend:
He spends his time lying in bed, waiting those interminable hours, just waiting and hoping for
something to happen. Anything. He tells you that it’s not knowing that is the hardest.
When given a chance to help a graduate student with her research, 25% of those whose
attention had been self-focused helped. Of those whose attention was other-focused, 83%
helped. The two groups were equally touched, but only the other-focused participants found
helping someone especially rewarding. In short, the feel-bad/do-good effect occurs with
people whose attention is on others—a state of mind that apparently makes altruism more
rewarding (Barnett et al., 1980; McMillen et al., 1977). If they are not self-preoccupied by
depression or grief, sad people are sensitive, helpful people.
FEEL GOOD, DO GOOD So, are happy people unhelpful? Quite the contrary. There are
few more consistent findings in psychology: Happy people are helpful people. This effect
occurs with both children and adults, regardless of whether the good mood comes from a
success, from thinking happy thoughts, or from any of several other positive experiences
(Salovey et al., 1991). One woman recalled her experience after falling in love:
At the office, I could hardly keep from shouting out how deliriously happy I felt. The work
was easy; things that had annoyed me on previous occasions were taken in stride. And I had
strong impulses to help others; I wanted to share my joy. When Mary’s typewriter broke down,
I virtually sprang to my feet to assist. Mary! My former “enemy”! (Tennov, 1979, p. 22)
In experiments on happiness and helpfulness, the person who is helped may be someone
seeking a donation, an experimenter seeking help with paperwork, or a woman who drops
papers. Here are three examples.
In Sydney, Australia, Joseph Forgas and colleagues (2008) had a confederate offer either
a mood-boosting compliment or a mood-deflating criticism to a salesperson. Moments later,
a second confederate, who was “blind” to the mood-induction condition, sought the employ-
ee’s help in locating a nonexistent item. Those receiving the mood boost made the greatest
effort to help.
In Opole, Poland, Dariusz Dolinski and Richard Nawrat (1998) found that a positive
mood of relief can dramatically boost helping. Imagine yourself as one of their unwitting
subjects. After illegally parking your car for a few moments, you return to discover what
looks like a ticket under your windshield wiper (where parking tickets are placed). Groaning
inwardly, you pick up the apparent ticket and then are much relieved to discover it is only
an ad. Moments later, a university student approaches you and asks you to spend 15 minutes
answering questions—to “help me complete my M.A. thesis.” Would your positive, relieved
mood make you more likely to help? Indeed, 62% of people whose fear had just turned to
relief agreed willingly. That was nearly double the number who did so when no ticket-like
paper was left or when it was left on the car door (not a place for a ticket).
In the United States, back when pay phones were used, Alice Isen, Margaret Clark, and
Mark Schwartz (1976) had a confederate call people who had received a free sample of
stationery 0 to 20 minutes earlier. The confederate said she had used her last dime to dial
this (supposedly wrong) number and asked each person to relay a message by phone. As
Figure 1 shows, the individuals’ willingness to relay the phone message rose during the
5 minutes afterward. Then, as the good mood wore off, helpfulness dropped.
If sad people are sometimes extra helpful, how can it be that happy people are also
helpful? Experiments reveal several factors at work (Carlson et al., 1988). Helping softens
a bad mood and sustains a good mood. (Perhaps you can recall feeling good after giving
someone directions.) A positive mood is, in turn, conducive to positive thoughts and posi-
tive self-esteem, which predispose us to positive behavior (Berkowitz, 1987; Cunningham
et al., 1990; Isen et al., 1978). In a good mood—after receiving a gift or while feeling the
warm glow of success—people are more likely to have positive thoughts. And positive think-
ers are likely to be positive actors . . . which helps explain why, even after controlling for
other demographic factors, extraordinary acts of altruism tend to come from happy places.
The areas of the United States with the happiest people are also the places with the highest
rates of kidney donation (Brethel-Haurwitz & Marsh, 2014). Sunny days in New York
“It’s curious how, when you’re
in love, you yearn to go about
doing acts of kindness to
everybody.”
—P. G. Wodehouse,
The Mating Season, 1949
358 Part Three Social Relations
City—when people were presumably in sunnier moods—were also days when riders tipped
their taxi drivers more (Deveraj & Patel, 2017).
SOCIAL NORMS
Often, we help others not because we have calculated consciously that such behavior is in
our self-interest but because of a subtler form of self-interest: because something tells us
we ought to. We ought to help a new neighbor move in. We ought to return the wallet we
found. We ought to protect our combat buddies from harm. Norms, the oughts of our lives,
are social expectations. They prescribe proper behavior. Researchers who study helping
behavior have identified two social norms that motivate altruism: the reciprocity norm and
the social-responsibility norm.
THE RECIPROCITY NORM One universal moral code is a reciprocity norm: To those who
help us, we should return help, not harm (Gouldner, 1960). We “invest” in others and expect
dividends. Politicians know that the one who gives a favor can later expect a favor. Mail
surveys and solicitations sometimes include a little gift of money or personalized address
labels, assuming some people will reciprocate the favor. Even 21-month-old infants display
reciprocity by being more willing to help someone who has tried to give them a toy (Dunfield
& Kuhlmeier, 2010). The reciprocity norm also applies within a marriage. At times, you may
give more than you receive, but in the long run, the exchange should balance out. In all such
interactions, to receive without giving in return violates the reciprocity norm.
Reciprocity within social networks helps define the social capital—the supportive con-
nections, information flow, trust, and cooperative actions—that keep a community healthy.
Neighbors keeping an eye on one another’s homes is social capital in action.
The norm operates most effectively as people respond publicly to deeds earlier done to
them. In laboratory games as in everyday life, fleeting one-shot encounters produce greater
selfishness than sustained relationships. But even when people respond anonymously, they
sometimes do the right thing and repay the good done to them (Burger et al., 2009). In
one experiment, university students more willingly made a charity pledge when they were
asked by someone who had previously bought them some candy (Whatley et al., 1999;
Figure 2).
When people cannot reciprocate, they may feel threatened and demeaned by accepting
aid. Thus, proud, high-self-esteem people are often reluctant to seek help (Nadler & Fisher,
1986). Receiving unsolicited help can take one’s self-esteem down a notch (Schneider et al.,
1996; Shell & Eisenberg, 1992). Studies have found this can happen to beneficiaries of
affirmative action, especially when affirmative action fails to affirm the person’s competence
reciprocity norm
An expectation that people will
help, not hurt, those who have
helped them.
social capital
The mutual support and
cooperation enabled by a social
network.
“If you don’t go to somebody’s
funeral, they won’t come to
yours.”
—Yogi Berra
Percent helping
0 2 4 6 8 10
Time, minutes
12 14 16 18 20
Study 1
Study 2
100
70
80
90
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
FIGURE 1
Percentage of Those
Willing to Relay a
Phone Message 0 to
20 Minutes after
Receiving a Free
Sample
Of control subjects who did not
receive a gift, only 10% helped.
Source: Data from Isen et al., 1976.
Helping Chapter 12 359
and chances for future success (Pratkanis & Turner,
1996). Asians, for whom social ties and the reci-
procity norm are stronger than for North Ameri-
cans, are therefore more likely to refuse a gift from
a casual acquaintance to avoid the perceived need
to reciprocate (Shen et al., 2011).
The practical moral is that we should offer our
children and our friends needed support but not
provide so much support that we undermine their
sense of competence (Finkel & Fitzsimmons,
2013). Support should supplement, rather than
substitute for, others’ actions.
THE SOCIAL-RESPONSIBILITY NORM The
reciprocity norm reminds us to balance giving and
receiving. If the only norm were reciprocity, how-
ever, the Samaritan would not have been the Good
Samaritan. In the parable, Jesus obviously had
something more humanitarian in mind, something
made explicit in another of his teachings: “If you
love those who love you [the reciprocity norm],
what right have you to claim any credit? . . . I say
to you, love your enemies” (Matthew 5:46, 44).
With people who clearly are dependent and unable to reciprocate, such as children, the
severely impoverished, and those with disabilities, another social norm motivates our
helping. The social-responsibility norm decrees that people should help those who need help,
without regard to future exchanges (Berkowitz, 1972; Schwartz, 1975). This social respon-
sibility norm has a long history, as evident from archeological discoveries of 7,500-year-old
skeletons of people who were severely crippled and unable to feed or care for themselves,
yet able to survive thanks to others’ compassionate care (Gorman, 2012). If a person on
crutches drops a book, you honor the social responsibility norm as you pick it up. In India,
a relatively collectivistic culture, people support the social-responsibility norm more strongly
than in the individualistic West (Baron & Miller, 2000). They voice an obligation to help
even when the need is not life threatening or the needy person— perhaps a stranger needing
a bone marrow transplant—is outside their family circle.
Even when helpers in Western countries remain anonymous and have
no expectation of any reward, they often help needy people (Shotland &
Stebbins, 1983). However, they usually apply the social-responsibility
norm selectively to those whose need appears not to be due to their own
negligence. Especially among political conservatives (Skitka & Tetlock,
1993), the norm seems to be: Give people what they deserve. If they are
victims of circumstance, such as natural disaster, then by all means be
compassionate (Goetz et al., 2010; Zagefka et al., 2011). If they seem to
have created their own problems (by laziness, immorality, or lack of
foresight, for example), then, the norm suggests, they don’t deserve help.
Responses are thus closely tied to attributions. If we attribute the need
to an uncontrollable predicament, we help. If we attribute the need to
the person’s choices, fairness does not require us to help; we say it’s the
person’s own fault (Weiner, 1980). Attributions affect public policy as
well as individual helping decisions.
The key, say Udo Rudolph and colleagues (2004) from their review
of more than three dozen pertinent studies, is whether your attributions
evoke sympathy, which in turn motivates helping (Figure 3).
Imagine yourself as one of the University of Wisconsin students receiv-
ing a call from “Tony Freeman,” who explains that he is in your introduc-
tory psychology class (Barnes et al., 1979). He says that he needs help
social-responsibility norm
An expectation that people will
help those needing help.
FIGURE 2
Private and Public
Reciprocation of a
Favor
People were more willing to
pledge to an experimental
confederate’s charity if the
confederate had done a small
favor for them earlier, especially
when their reciprocation was
made known to the
confederate.
Source: Whatley et al., 1999.
Private
Percent pledging money
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Public
Level of publicity
No favor
Favor
Blood donors respond to the social responsibility norm.
©choja/Getty Images
360 Part Three Social Relations
for the upcoming exam and that he has gotten your name from the class roster. “I don’t
know. I just don’t seem to take good notes in there,” Tony explains. “I know I can, but
sometimes I just don’t feel like it, so most of the notes I have aren’t very good to study
with.” How sympathetic would you feel toward Tony? How much of a sacrifice would you
make to lend him your notes? If you are like the students in this experiment, you would
probably be much less inclined to help than if Tony had explained that his troubles were
beyond his control—such as missing classes due to illness. Thus, the social- responsibility
norm compels us to help those most in need and those most deserving.
GENDER AND RECEIVING HELP If, indeed, perception of another’s need strongly
determines one’s willingness to help, will women receive more help than men? That is
indeed the case. Alice Eagly and Maureen Crowley (1986) located 35 studies that compared
help received by male or female victims. (Virtually all the studies involved short-term
encounters with strangers in need—the very situations in which people expect males to be
chivalrous, note Eagly and Crowley.)
Women offered help equally to males and females, whereas men offered more help when
the persons in need were females. Several experiments in the 1970s found that women with
disabled cars (for example, with a flat tire) got many more offers of help than did men
(Penner et al., 1973; Pomazal & Clore, 1973; West et al., 1975). Similarly, solo female
hitchhikers received far more offers of help than solo males or couples (Pomazal & Clore,
1973; M. Snyder et al., 1974). Of course, men’s chivalry toward lone women may have been
motivated by something other than altruism. Not surprisingly, men more frequently helped
attractive than unattractive women (Mims et al., 1975; Pazhoohi & Burriss, 2016; Stroufe
et al., 1977; West & Brown, 1975).
FIGURE 3
Attributions and
Helping
In this model, proposed by
German researcher Udo
Rudolph and colleagues (2004),
helping is mediated by people’s
explanations of the predicament
and their resulting degree of
sympathy.
External:
uncontrollable
by person
Internal:
controllable
by person
Sympathy
No sympathy
Helping
No helping
Stimulus Attribution Emotion Action
Person in
need of help
When the Titanic sank, 70% of
the females and 20% of the
males survived. The chances of
survival were 2.5 times better
for a first- than a third-class
passenger. Yet, thanks to
gender norms for altruism, the
survival odds were better for
third-class passengers who
were women (47%) than for
first-class passengers who were
men (31%).
©Everett Historical/Shutterstock
Helping Chapter 12 361
Women not only receive more offers of help in certain situations but also seek more
help (Addis & Mahalik, 2003). They are twice as likely to seek medical and psychiatric
help. They are the majority of callers to radio counseling programs and clients of college
counseling centers. They more often welcome help from friends. Arie Nadler (1991), a
Tel Aviv University expert on help seeking, attributes this to gender differences in indi-
vidualism versus collectivism—women are more collectivistic and thus more willing to ask
others to help.
Evolutionary Psychology
Another explanation of helping comes from evolutionary theory. Evolutionary psychology
contends that life’s essence is gene survival. Our genes drive us in adaptive ways that have
maximized their chance of survival. When our ancestors died, their genes lived on, predis-
posing us to behave in ways that will spread them into the future.
As suggested by the title of Richard Dawkins’s (1976) popular book The Selfish Gene,
evolutionary psychology offers a humbling human image—one that psychologist Donald
Campbell (1975a,b) called a biological reaffirmation of a deep, self-serving “original sin.”
Genes that predispose individuals to self-sacrifice in the interests of strangers’ welfare would
not survive in the evolutionary competition. Evolutionary success does, however, come from
cooperation. And humans are the animal kingdom’s super-cooperators because we exhibit
multiple mechanisms for overcoming selfishness (Nowak & Highfield, 2011; Pfaff, 2014),
including the following:
▯ Kin selection: If you carry my genes, I’ll favor you.
▯ Direct reciprocity: We scratch each other’s backs.
▯ Indirect reciprocity: I’ll scratch your back, you scratch someone’s, and someone will
scratch mine.
▯ Group selection: Back-scratching groups survive.
KIN SELECTION
Our genes dispose us to care for relatives. Thus, one form of self-sacrifice that would
increase gene survival is devotion to one’s children, a primal form of altruism embedded
in parents’ brains (Preston, 2013). Compared with neglectful parents, parents who priori-
tize their children’s welfare are more likely to pass their genes on. As evolutionary psy-
chologist David Barash (1979, p. 153) wrote, “Genes help themselves by being nice to
themselves, even if they are enclosed in different bodies.” Genetic egoism (at the biological
level) fosters parental altruism (at the psychological level). Although evolution favors self-
sacrifice for one’s children, children have less at stake in the survival of their parents’
genes. Thus, parents will generally be more devoted to their children than their children
are to them.
Other relatives share genes in proportion to their biological closeness. You share one-
half of your genes with your brothers and sisters, one-eighth with your cousins. Kin selection—
favoritism toward those who share our genes—led the evolutionary biologist J. B. S.
Haldane to jest that although he would not give up his life for his brother, he would
sacrifice himself for three brothers—or for nine cousins. Haldane would not have been
surprised that genetic relatedness predicts helping and that genetically identical twins are
noticeably more mutually supportive than fraternal twins (Segal, 1984; Stewart-Williams,
2007). In one laboratory game experiment, identical twins were twice as likely as fraternal
twins to cooperate with their twin for a shared gain when playing for money (Segal &
Hershberger, 1999).
The kin selection principle implies that nature (as well as culture) programs us to care
about close relatives. When Carlos Rogers of the Toronto Raptors NBA basketball team
volunteered to end his career and donate a kidney to his sister (who died before she could
receive it), people applauded his self-sacrificial love. But such acts for close kin are not
totally unexpected. What we do not expect (and therefore honor) is the altruism of those
who risk themselves to save a stranger.
“Fallen heroes do not have
children. If self-sacrifice re-
sults in fewer descendants,
the genes that allow heroes to
be created can be expected
to disappear gradually from
the population.”
—E. O. Wilson,
On Human Nature, 1978
“When people ask me how I’m
doing, I say, ‘I’m only as good
as my most sad child.’”
—Michelle Obama,
October 24, 2008
kin selection
The idea that evolution has
selected altruism toward one’s
close relatives to enhance the
survival of mutually shared
genes.
362 Part Three Social Relations
Also, in evolutionary history, genes were shared more with neighbors than with foreigners.
In the aftermath of natural disasters and other life-and-death situations, the order of who gets
helped would not surprise an evolutionary psychologist: the children before the old, family
members before friends, neighbors before strangers (Burnstein et al., 1994; Form & Nosow,
1958). We feel more empathy for a distressed or tortured person in our ingroup, and even
Schadenfreude (secret pleasure at another’s misfortune) for rival or outgroup members (Batson
et al., 2009; Cikara et al., 2011; Tarrant et al., 2009). Helping stays close to home.
Some evolutionary psychologists note that kin selection predisposes ethnic ingroup
favoritism—the root of countless historical and contemporary conflicts (Rushton, 1991).
E. O. Wilson (1978) noted that kin selection is “the enemy of civilization. If human beings
are to a large extent guided . . . to favor their own relatives and tribe, only a limited amount
of global harmony is possible” (p. 167).
RECIPROCITY
Genetic self-interest also predicts reciprocity. An organism helps another, biologist Robert
Trivers argued, because it expects help in return (Binham, 1980). The giver expects later
to be the getter. Failure to reciprocate gets punished. People despise the cheat, the turncoat,
and the traitor.
Reciprocity works best in small, isolated groups in which one will often see the people for
whom one does favors. Sociable female baboons—those who groom and stay in close contact
with their peers—gain a reproductive advantage: Their infants more often live to see a first
birthday (Silk et al., 2003). If a vampire bat has gone a day or two without food, a well-fed
nestmate will regurgitate food for a meal (Wilkinson, 1990). The donor bat does so willingly,
losing fewer hours till starvation than the recipient gains. But such favors occur only among
familiar nestmates who share in the give-and-take. Those who always take and never give, and
those who have no relationship with the donor bat, go hungry. It pays to have friends.
For similar reasons, reciprocity among humans is stronger in rural villages than in big cities.
Small schools, towns, churches, work teams, and dorms are all conducive to a community
spirit in which people care for one another. Compared to people in small-town or rural envi-
ronments, those in big cities are less willing to relay a phone message, less likely
to mail “lost” letters, less cooperative with survey interviewers, less helpful to a lost
child, and less willing to do small favors (Hedge & Yousif, 1992; Steblay, 1987).
GROUP SELECTION
If individual self-interest inevitably wins in genetic competition, then why will
we help strangers? Why will we help those whose limited resources or abilities
preclude their reciprocating? And what causes soldiers to throw themselves on
grenades? One answer, initially favored by Darwin, is group selection: Groups of
mutually supportive altruists outlast groups of non-altruists (Krebs, 1998;
McAndrew, 2002; Wilson, 2015). This is most dramatically evident with the
social insects, which function like cells in a body. Bees and ants will labor
sacrificially for their colony’s survival.
To a much lesser extent, humans exhibit ingroup loyalty by sacrificing to
support “us,” sometimes against “them.” We are like employees who compete
with one another to move up the corporate ladder, while cooperating to enable
their business to surpass competitors (Nowak, 2012). Natural selection is there-
fore “multilevel,” say some researchers (Mirsky, 2009). It operates at both indi-
vidual and group levels.
Donald Campbell (1975a,b) offered another basis for unreciprocated altru-
ism: Human societies evolved ethical and religious rules that serve as brakes on
the biological bias toward self-interest. Commandments such as “love your neigh-
bor as yourself” admonish us to balance self-concern with concern for the group,
and so contribute to the survival of the group. Richard Dawkins (1976) offered
a similar conclusion: “Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we
are born selfish. Let us understand what our selfish genes are up to, because
we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something no other
species has ever aspired to” (p. 3).
“Let’s say you’re walking by a
pond and there’s a drowning
baby. If you said, ‘I’ve just paid
$200 for these shoes and the
water would ruin them, so I
won’t save the baby,’ you’d be
an awful, horrible person. But
there are millions of children
around the world in the same
situation, where just a little
money for medicine or food
could save their lives. And yet
we don’t consider ourselves
monsters for having this
dinner rather than giving the
money to Oxfam. Why is that?”
—Philosopher-psychologist
Joshua Greene, Quoted by
C. Zimmer in “The Neurobiology
of the Self,” 2005.
Reciprocity: If you help me, I will help you.
©Westend61/SuperStock
“Just as nature is said to abhor
a vacuum, so it abhors true
altruism. Society, on the other
hand, adores it.”
—David Barash,
“The Conflicting Pressures of
Selfishness and Altruism,” 2003
Helping Chapter 12 363
Comparing and Evaluating Theories of Helping
By now, you perhaps have noticed similarities among the social-exchange, social norm, and
evolutionary views of altruism. As Table 1 shows, each proposes two types of prosocial
behavior: a tit-for-tat reciprocal exchange and a more unconditional helpfulness. They do
so at three complementary levels of explanation. If the evolutionary view is correct, then
our genetic predispositions should manifest themselves in psychological and sociological
phenomena.
Each theory appeals to logic. Yet each is vulnerable to charges of being speculative and
after the fact. When we start with a known effect (the give-and-take of everyday life) and
explain it by conjecturing a social-exchange process, a “reciprocity norm,” or an evolution-
ary origin, we might merely be explaining-by-naming. The argument that a behavior occurs
because of its survival function is hard to disprove. With hindsight it’s easy to think it had
to be that way. If we can explain any conceivable behavior after the fact as the result of a
social exchange, a norm, or natural selection, then we cannot disprove the theories. Each
theory’s task is therefore to generate predictions that enable us to test it.
An effective theory also provides a coherent scheme for summarizing a variety of obser-
vations. On this criterion, our three altruism theories get higher marks. Each offers us a
broad perspective that illuminates both enduring commitments and spontaneous help.
Genuine Altruism
My [DM’s] town, Holland, Michigan, has a corporation with several thousand employees
that, for most of the last half-century, annually gave away 10% of its pretax profits with one
stipulation: The gift was always anonymous. In nearby Kalamazoo, anonymous donors in
2005 pledged to provide Michigan public university or community college costs—ranging
from 65 to 100% depending on length of residence—for all the city’s public school gradu-
ates. Are such anonymous benefactors—along with lifesaving heroes, everyday blood donors,
and Peace Corps volunteers—ever motivated by an ultimate goal of selfless concern for
others? Or is their ultimate goal some form of self-benefit, such as gaining a reward, avoid-
ing punishment and guilt, or relieving distress?
Abraham Lincoln illustrated the philosophical issue while conversing with another passen-
ger in a horse-drawn coach. After Lincoln argued that selfishness prompts all good deeds, he
noticed a sow making a terrible noise. Her piglets had gotten into a marshy pond and were in
danger of drowning. Lincoln called the coach to a halt, jumped out, ran back, and lifted the
little pigs to safety. Upon his return, his companion remarked, “Now, Abe, where does selfish-
ness come in on this little episode?” Lincoln replied, “Why, bless your soul, Ed, that was the
very essence of selfishness. I should have had no peace of mind all day had I gone and left
that suffering old sow worrying over those pigs. I did it to get peace of mind, don’t you see?”
(Batson et al., 1986). Until recently, psychologists would have sided with Lincoln.
Helpfulness so reliably makes helpers feel better that Daniel Batson (2011) devoted much
of his career to discerning whether helpfulness also contains a streak of genuine altruism.
Batson theorized that our willingness to help is influenced by both self-serving and selfless
considerations (Figure 4). Distress over someone’s suffering motivates us to relieve our
upset, either by escaping the distressing situation (like the priest and the Levite) or by
helping (like the Samaritan, or Lincoln). But especially when we feel securely attached to
someone, reported both Batson and a team of attachment researchers led by Mario
TABLE 1 Comparing Theories of Altruism
How Is Altruism Explained?
Theory Level of Explanation Externally Rewarded Helping Intrinsic Helping
Social-exchange Psychological External rewards for helping Distress → inner rewards for helping
Social norms Sociological Reciprocity norm Social-responsibility norm
Evolutionary Biological Reciprocity Kin selection
364 Part Three Social Relations
Mikulincer (2005), we also feel empathy. Loving parents suffer when their children suffer
and rejoice over their children’s joys.
When we feel empathy, we focus not so much on our own distress as on the sufferer.
Genuine sympathy and compassion motivate us to help others for their own sakes. When
we value another’s welfare, perceive the person as in need, and take the person’s perspec-
tive, we feel empathic concern (Batson et al., 2007). When empathic people identify with
someone else’s distress, they want to help them; when they identify with others’ positive
emotions, they also want to help them feel happier—the “random acts of kindness” approach
to altruism (Andreychik & Migliaccio, 2015).
To increase empathy, it helps to get a small dose of what another feels. A specific torture
technique becomes less acceptable when people experience even a small dose of it. For
example, people become more likely to say that, yes, extreme sleep deprivation is torture
when they are moderately sleep-deprived themselves (Nordgren et al., 2011).
In humans, empathy comes naturally. Even day-old
infants cry more when they hear another infant cry
( Hoffman, 1981). In hospital nurseries, one baby’s crying
sometimes evokes a chorus of crying. Most 18-month-old
infants, after observing an unfamiliar adult accidentally drop
a marker or clothespin and have trouble reaching it, will
readily help (Tomasello, 2009). Two-year-olds display arousal
when observing someone who needs help (Hepach et al.,
2012). And with six- to nine-year-olds, the greater their
empathy, the greater their helpfulness (Li et al., 2013). To
some, all this suggests that humans are hardwired for
empathy.
Primates, elephants, dogs, rats, and even mice also dis-
play empathy, indicating that the building blocks of altruism
predate humanity (de Waal, 2014a,b; Langford et al., 2006).
Chimpanzees will share banana pellets, or choose a token
that gives both themselves and another chimp a food treat
over a token that gratifies only themselves (Horner et al.,
2011; Schmelz et al., 2018).
empathy
The vicarious experience of
another’s feelings; putting
oneself in another’s shoes.
FIGURE 4
Egoistic and Altruistic Routes to Helping
Viewing another’s distress can evoke a mixture of self-focused distress and other-focused empathy. Researchers agree that distress triggers egoistic
motives. But they debate whether empathy can trigger a pure altruistic motive.
Source: Adapted from Batson et al., 1987.
Emotion
Distress
(upset, anxious,
disturbed)
Empathy
(sympathy and
compassion
for other)
Motive
Egoistic
motivation to
reduce own
distress
Altruistic
motivation to
reduce other’s
distress
Behavior
Behavior (possibly
helping) to achieve
reduction of own
distress
Behavior
(helping) to
achieve reduction
of other’s distress
Viewing
another’s
distress
Might genuine altruism motivate a health educator leading exercise with
children in Uganda? Daniel Batson believes it might.
©Laura Myers
Helping Chapter 12 365
To separate egoistic distress reduction from empathy-based altruism, Batson’s research
group conducted studies that aroused empathy. Then the researchers noted whether the
aroused people would reduce their own distress by escaping the situation, or whether they
would go out of their way to aid the person. The results were consistent: With their empathy
aroused, people usually helped.
In one of these experiments, Batson and associates (1981) had University of Kansas
women observe a young woman suffering while she supposedly received electric shocks.
During a pause in the experiment, the obviously upset victim explained to the experimenter
that a childhood fall against an electric fence left her acutely sensitive to shocks. The
experimenter suggested that perhaps the observer (the actual participant in this experiment)
might trade places and take the remaining shocks for her. Previously, half of these actual
participants had been led to believe the suffering person was similar to them in values and
interests (thus arousing their empathy). Some also were led to believe that their part in the
experiment was completed, so that in any case they were done observing the woman’s suf-
fering. Nevertheless, their empathy aroused, virtually all willingly offered to substitute for
the victim.
Is this genuine altruism? Mark Schaller and Robert Cialdini (1988) doubted it. Feel-
ing empathy for a sufferer makes one sad, they noted. In one of their experiments, they
led people to believe that their sadness was going to be relieved by a different sort of
mood-boosting experience—listening to a comedy tape. Under such conditions, people
who felt empathy were not especially helpful. Schaller and Cialdini concluded that if we
feel empathy but know that something else will make us feel better, we aren’t as likely
to help.
But other findings suggest that genuine altruism does exist: With their empathy aroused,
people will help even when they believe no one will know about their helping. Their concern
continues until someone has been helped (Fultz et al., 1986). If their efforts to help are
unsuccessful, they feel bad even if the failure is not their fault (Batson & Weeks, 1996).
And people will sometimes persist in wanting to help a suffering person even when they
believe their own distressed mood arises from a “mood-fixing” drug (Schroeder et al., 1988).
After 25 such experiments testing egoism versus altruistic empathy, Batson (2001, 2006,
2011) and others (Dovidio, 1991; Staub, 2015; Stocks et al., 2009) believe that sometimes
people do focus on others’ welfare, not on their own. Batson, a former philosophy and
theology student, had begun his research feeling “excited to think that if we could ascertain
whether people’s concerned reactions were genuine, and not simply a subtle form of selfish-
ness, then we could shed new light on a basic issue regarding human nature” (1999a). Two
decades later, he believes he has his answer: Genuine “empathy-induced altruism is part of
human nature” (1999b). And that, says Batson, raises the hope—confirmed by research—that
inducing empathy might improve attitudes toward stigmatized people: people with AIDS,
the homeless, the imprisoned, and other minorities. (See “Focus On: The Benefits—and the
Costs—of Empathy-Induced Altruism.”)
“The measure of our character
is what we would do if we
were never found out.”
—Attributed To and Paraphrased
from British Historian Thomas
Macaulay (1800–1859)
“As I see it, there are two
great forces of human nature:
self-interest, and caring for
others.”
—Bill Gates,
A New Approach to Capitalism in
the 21st Century, 2008
The Benefits—and the Costs—of Empathy-Induced Altruism
focus
ON
People do most of what they do, including much of what
they do for others, for their own benefit, acknowledges
altruism researcher Daniel Batson (2011). But egoism is
not the whole story of helping, he believes; there is also a
genuine altruism rooted in empathy, in feelings of sympa-
thy and compassion for others’ welfare. We are supremely
social creatures. Consider:
Empathy-induced altruism
• produces sensitive helping. Where there is empathy,
it’s not just the thought that counts—it’s alleviating the
other’s suffering.
• inhibits aggression. Show Batson someone who feels
empathy for a target of potential aggression and he’ll
366 Part Three Social Relations
show you someone who’s unlikely to favor attack—
someone who’s as likely to forgive as to harbor anger.
In general, women report more empathic feelings than
men, and they are less likely to support war and other
forms of aggression (Jones, 2003).
• increases cooperation. In laboratory experiments,
Batson and Nadia Ahmad found that people in poten-
tial conflict are more trusting and cooperative when
they feel empathy for the other. Personalizing an out-
group, by getting to know people in it, helps people
understand their perspective.
• improves attitudes toward stigmatized groups. Take
others’ perspective, allow yourself to feel what they
feel, and you may become more supportive of others
like them (the homeless, those with AIDS, or even
convicted criminals).
But empathy-induced altruism comes with liabilities,
notes Batson and colleagues.
• It can be harmful. People who risk their lives on behalf
of others sometimes lose them. People who seek to do
good can also do harm, sometimes by unintentionally
humiliating or demotivating the recipient.
• It can’t address all needs. It’s easier to feel empathy for
a needy individual than, say, for Mother Earth, whose
environment is being stripped and warmed at the peril
of our descendants.
• It burns out. Feeling others’ pain is painful, which
may cause us to avoid situations that evoke our em-
pathy, or to experience “burnout” or “compassion
fatigue.”
• It can feed favoritism, injustice, and indifference to the
larger common good (Decety & Cowell, 2014). Empa-
thy, being particular, produces partiality—toward a
single child or family or pet. When their empathy for
someone is aroused, people will violate their own
standards of fairness and justice by giving that person
favored treatment (Batson et al., 1997; Oceja, 2008).
For example, people give more money to a needy
child if they see her name and picture—even if that
means giving less to eight unnamed and unseen chil-
dren (Kogut & Ritov, 2005). Ironically, note Batson and
colleagues (1999), empathy-induced altruism can
therefore “pose a powerful threat to the common
good [by leading] me to narrow my focus of concern to
those for whom I especially care—the needing friend—
and in so doing to lose sight of the bleeding crowd.”
No wonder charity so often stays close to home. In-
stead, authors such as Paul Bloom (2016) suggest a
strategy of “rational compassion” that helps others
more equally.
▯ Three theories explain helping behavior. The social-
exchange theory assumes that helping, like other social
behaviors, is motivated by a desire to maximize rewards,
which may be external or internal. Thus, after wrong-
doing, people often become more willing to offer help.
Sad, but not depressed, people also tend to be helpful.
Finally, there is a striking feel-good/do-good effect:
Happy people are helpful people. Social norms also
mandate helping. The reciprocity norm stimulates us to
help those who have helped us. The social-responsibility
norm beckons us to help needy people, even if they can-
not reciprocate, as long as they are deserving. Women
in crisis, partly because they may be seen as more
needy, receive more offers of help than men, especially
from men.
▯ Evolutionary psychology assumes two types of helping:
devotion to kin and reciprocity. Most evolutionary
psychologists, however, believe that the genes of selfish
individuals are more likely to survive than the genes of
self-sacrificing individuals. Thus, selfishness is our natu-
ral tendency and society must therefore teach helping.
▯ We can evaluate these three theories according to the ways
in which they characterize prosocial behavior as based on
tit-for-tat exchange and/or unconditional helpfulness. Each
can be criticized for using speculative or after-the-fact rea-
soning, but they do provide a coherent scheme for sum-
marizing observations of prosocial behavior.
▯ In addition to helping that is motivated by external and
internal rewards, and the evading of punishment or dis-
tress, there appears also to be a genuine, empathy-based
altruism. With their empathy aroused, many people are
motivated to assist others in need or distress, even when
their helping is anonymous or their own mood will be
unaffected.
SUMMING UP: Why Do We Help?
Helping Chapter 12 367
WHEN WILL WE HELP?
Identify circumstances that prompt people to help, or
not to help. Explain how and why helping is influenced
by the number and behavior of other bystanders, by
mood states, and by traits and values.
On March 13, 1964, 28-year-old bar manager Kitty Genovese was
attacked by a man with a knife as she returned from work to her Queens,
New York, apartment house at 3:00 a.m. Her screams of terror and pleas
for help—“Oh my God, he stabbed me! Please help me! Please help
me!”—aroused some of her neighbors. Some supposedly came to their
windows and caught fleeting glimpses as the attacker left and then
returned to attack again. Not until her attacker departed for the second
time did anyone call the police. Soon after, Kitty Genovese died.
Later analyses disputed the initial New York Times report that 38
witnesses observed the murder yet remained inactive—it was probably
closer to a dozen, and two actually did call the police (Cook, 2014;
Pelonero, 2014). Nevertheless, the initial story helped inspire research
on bystander inaction, which is illustrated in other incidents. Eleanor
Bradley tripped and broke her leg while shopping. Dazed and in pain,
she pleaded for help. For 40 minutes, the stream of sidewalk pedestri-
ans simply parted and flowed around her. Finally, a cab driver helped
her to a doctor (Darley & Latané, 1968). In March 2017, a group of Chicago men used
Facebook to live stream their gang-rape of a 15-year-old girl. Forty people watched it in real
time, but no one called the police (Haberman, 2017).
Or consider how you might respond if you saw someone topple from a subway platform
onto the tracks below, with a train approaching. Would you react like those on a crowded
New York subway platform who, in 2012, did nothing when a man was pushed onto the
tracks and then was killed by a train? Or like David Capuzzo—who in 2017 saw a man fall
onto the tracks and jumped down to help him? Capuzzo later said he’d remembered an
old public service announcement that evokes the Kitty Genovese case: “Twenty people are
thinking someone else called about the gas leak” (Wilson, 2017).
Social psychologists were curious and concerned about bystanders’ inaction. So they
undertook experiments to identify when people will help in an emergency. Then they broad-
ened the question to “Who is likely to help in non-emergencies—by such deeds as giving
money, donating blood, or contributing time?” Let’s see what they have learned, looking
first at the circumstances that enhance helpfulness and then at the people who help.
Number of Bystanders
Bystander passivity during emergencies prompted social commentators to lament people’s
“alienation,” “apathy,” “indifference,” and “unconscious sadistic impulses.” By attributing
the nonintervention to the bystanders’ dispositions, we can reassure ourselves that, as
caring people, we would have helped. But were the bystanders such inhuman
characters?
Social psychologists Bibb Latané and John Darley (1970) were unconvinced (see The
Inside Story: John M. Darley on Bystander Reactions). They staged ingenious emergencies
and found that a single situational factor—the presence of other bystanders—greatly decreased
intervention. By 1980, they had conducted four dozen experiments that compared help
given by bystanders who perceived themselves to be either alone or with others. A person
was as likely to be helped by a lone bystander as when observed by several bystanders
(Latané & Nida, 1981; Stalder, 2008). In Internet communication, too, people are more
likely to respond helpfully to a request for help (such as from someone seeking the link to
the campus library) if they believe the request has come to them alone, and not to several
others as well (Blair et al., 2005).
The only thing necessary for
the triumph of evil is that good
men do nothing.
—Attributed to Reverend Charles
F. Aked and Edmund Burke
Bystander inaction. What influences our interpretations of a
scene such as this and our decisions to help or not to help?
©Janine Wiedel Photolibrary/Alamy Stock Photo
368 Part Three Social Relations
Sometimes the victim was actually less likely to get help when many people were around.
When Latané, James Dabbs (1975), and 145 collaborators “accidentally” dropped coins or
pencils during 1,497 elevator rides, they were helped 40% of the time when one other person
was on the elevator and less than 20% of the time when there were six passengers. In a
meta-analysis of 105 studies, the presence of more people during critical situations lowered
the chances that people would help (Fischer et al., 2011). Even children as young as 5 are
less likely to help when other children are present (Plötner et al., 2015).
Why does the presence of other bystanders sometimes inhibit helping? Latané and Darley
surmised that as the number of bystanders increases, any given bystander is less likely to notice
the incident, less likely to interpret the incident as a problem or an emergency, and less likely
to assume responsibility for taking action (Figure 5).
NOTICING
Twenty minutes after Eleanor Bradley has fallen and broken her leg on a crowded city side-
walk, you come along. Your eyes are on the backs of the pedestrians in front of you (it is
bad manners to stare at those you pass) and your private thoughts are on the day’s events.
Would you therefore be less likely to notice the injured woman than if the sidewalk were virtu-
ally deserted?
To find out, Latané and Darley (1968) had Columbia University men fill out a question-
naire in a room, either by themselves or with two strangers. While they were working (and
being observed through a one-way mirror), there was a staged emergency: Smoke poured into
the room through a wall vent. Solitary students, who often glanced idly about the room while
working, noticed the smoke almost immediately—usually in less than 5 seconds. Those in
Try to
help
Notice
the incident?
No
help
No
help
No
help
Interpret as
emergency?
Assume
responsibility?
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
No
No
FIGURE 5
Latané and Darley’s
Decision Tree
Only one path up the tree leads
to helping. At each fork of the
path, the presence of other
bystanders may divert a person
down a branch toward not
helping.
Source: Adapted from Darley &
Latané, 1968.
John M. Darley on Bystander Reactions
THE inside
STORY
Shocked by the Kitty Genovese murder, Bibb Latané and I
met over dinner and began to analyze the bystanders’
reactions. Being social psychologists, we thought not
about the personality flaws of the “apathetic” individuals
but rather about how anyone in that situation might react
as did these people. By the time we finished our dinner,
we had formulated several factors that together could
lead to the surprising result: no one helping. Then we set
about conducting experiments
that isolated each factor and
demonstrated its importance in
an emergency situation.
John M. Darley
Princeton University
Courtesy of John M. Darley, Princeton University
Helping Chapter 12 369
groups kept their eyes on their work. It typically
took them about 20 seconds to notice the smoke.
INTERPRETING
Once we notice an ambiguous event, we must
interpret it. Put yourself in the room filling with
smoke. Though worried, you don’t want to embar-
rass yourself by appearing flustered. You glance
at the others. They look calm, indifferent. Assum-
ing everything must be okay, you shrug it off and
go back to work. Then one of the others notices
the smoke and, noting your apparent unconcern,
reacts similarly. This is yet another example of
informational influence. Each person uses others’
behavior as clues to reality. Such misinterpreta-
tions can contribute to a delayed response to
actual fires in offices, restaurants, and other
multiple-occupancy settings ( Canter et al., 1980).
The misinterpretations are fed by what Thomas Gilovich, Kenneth Savitsky, and Victoria
Husted Medvec (1998) call an illusion of transparency—a tendency to overestimate others’
ability to “read” our internal states. In their experiments, people facing an emergency pre-
sumed their concern was more visible than it was. More than we usually suppose, our
concern or alarm is opaque. Keenly aware of our emotions, we presume they leak out and
that others see right through us. Sometimes others do read our emotions, but often we
effectively keep our cool. The result is “pluralistic ignorance”—ignorance that others are
thinking and feeling what we are. In emergencies, each person may think, “I’m very con-
cerned,” but perceive others as calm—“so maybe it’s not an emergency.”
So it happened in Latané and Darley’s experiment. When those working alone noticed
the smoke, they usually hesitated a moment, then got up, walked over to the vent, felt,
sniffed, and waved at the smoke, hesitated again, and then went to report it. In dramatic
contrast, those in groups of 3 did not move. Among the 24 men in eight groups, only
1 person reported the smoke within the first 4 minutes (Figure 6). By the end of the
6-minute experiment, the smoke was so thick it was obscuring the men’s vision and they
were rubbing their eyes and coughing. Still, in only three of the eight groups did even a
single person leave to report the problem.
Equally interesting, the group’s passivity affected its members’ interpretations. What
caused the smoke? “A leak in the air conditioning.” “Chemistry labs in the building.” “Steam
Fire or fog? Wildfire or safe controlled burn? If you saw this scene from the highway,
would you call 911 if everyone else was just driving by, seemingly unconcerned?
©WeatherVideoHD.TV
FIGURE 6
The Smoke-Filled-Room
Experiment
Smoke pouring into the testing
room was much more likely to
be reported by individuals
working alone than by three-
person groups.
Source: Data from Darley & Latané,
1968.
Percent reporting smoke
0 6543
Time from start of smoke infusion, minutes
21
Alone
Three-person
group
80
50
60
70
40
30
20
10
0
370 Part Three Social Relations
pipes.” “Truth gas.” Not one said, “Fire.” The group members, by serving as nonresponsive
models, influenced one another’s interpretation of the situation.
That experimental dilemma parallels real-life dilemmas we all face. Are the shrieks out-
side merely playful antics or the desperate screams of someone being assaulted? Is the boys’
scuffling a friendly tussle or a vicious fight? Is the person slumped in the doorway sleeping,
high on drugs, or seriously ill, perhaps in a diabetic coma? That surely was the question
confronting those who passed by Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax as he lay on a Queens, New York,
sidewalk, facedown and bleeding to death from multiple stab wounds. A surveillance video
showed that for more than an hour, people walked by the homeless man, until finally one
passerby shook him and then turned him over to reveal his wounds (The New York Times,
2010).
Unlike the smoke-filled-room experiment, each of these everyday situations involves
the desperate need of another person. In such situations, a bystander effect occurs: people
are less likely to help someone when other bystanders are present. Latané and Judith
Rodin (1969) staged an experiment around a woman in distress. A female researcher set
Columbia University men to work on a questionnaire and then left through a curtained
doorway to work in an adjacent office. Four minutes later, she could be heard (from a
tape recorder) climbing on a chair to reach some papers. This was followed by a scream
and a loud crash as the chair collapsed and she fell to the floor. “Oh, my God, my
foot . . . I . . . I . . . can’t move it,” she sobbed. “Oh . . . my ankle . . . I . . . can’t get
this . . . thing . . . off me.” Only after 2 minutes of moaning did she manage to make it
out her office door.
Seventy percent of those who were alone when they overheard the “accident” came into
the room or called out to offer help. Among pairs of strangers confronting the emergency,
only 40% of the time did either person offer help. Those who did nothing apparently inter-
preted the situation as a nonemergency. “A mild sprain,” said some. “I didn’t want to
embarrass her,” explained others. This again demonstrates the bystander effect. As the
number of people known to be aware of an emergency increases, any given person becomes
less likely to help. For the victim, there is no safety in numbers.
People’s interpretations also affect their reactions to street crimes. In staging physical
fights between a man and a woman, Lance Shotland and Margaret Straw (1976) found that
bystanders intervened 65% of the time when the woman shouted, “Get away from me; I
don’t know you,” but only 19% of the time when she shouted, “Get away from me; I don’t
know why I ever married you.” Assumed spouse abuse, it seems, triggers less intervention
than stranger abuse.
In such dangerous situations with a perpetrator present and intervention
requiring physical risk, the bystander effect is less (Fischer et al., 2011).
Indeed, sometimes bystanders provide physical support in intervening. This
was dramatically evident on 9/11 as passengers, led by Todd Beamer (“Let’s
roll!”), collectively intervened as four al Qaeda hijackers headed United
Flight 93 toward its presumed target of the U.S. Capitol.
ASSUMING RESPONSIBILITY
Failing to notice and misinterpretation are not the bystander effect’s only
causes. Sometimes an emergency is obvious. According to initial reports,
those who saw and heard Kitty Genovese’s pleas for help correctly inter-
preted what was happening. But the lights and silhouetted figures in neigh-
boring windows told them that others were also watching. That diffused
the responsibility for action.
Few of us have observed a murder. But all of us have at times been
slower to react to a need when others were present. Passing a stranded
motorist on a busy highway, we are less likely to offer help than if on a
country road. To explore bystander inaction in clear emergencies, Darley
and Latané (1968) simulated the Genovese drama. They placed people in
separate rooms from which the participants would hear a victim crying for
help. To create that situation, Darley and Latané asked some New York
bystander effect
The finding that a person is less
likely to provide help when
there are other bystanders.
Interpretations matter. Is this man locked out of his
car or is he a burglar? Our interpretation affects our
response.
©Peter Dazeley/Photographer’s Choice/Getty Images
Helping Chapter 12 371
University students to discuss their problems with university life over a
laboratory intercom. The researchers told the students that to guarantee
their anonymity, no one would be visible, nor would the experimenter
eavesdrop. During the ensuing discussion, the participants heard one
person, after his microphone was turned on, lapse into a seizure. With
increasing intensity and speech difficulty, he pleaded for someone to
help.
Of those led to believe there were no other listeners, 85% left their
room to seek help. Of those who believed four others also overheard
the victim, only 31% went for help. Were those who didn’t respond
apathetic and indifferent? When the experimenter came in to end the
experiment, most immediately expressed concern. Many had trembling
hands and sweating palms. They believed an emergency had occurred
but were undecided whether to act.
After the smoke-filled room, the woman-in-distress, and the seizure
experiments, Latané and Darley asked the participants whether the
presence of others had influenced them. We know their presence had
a dramatic effect. Yet the participants almost invariably denied the
influence. They typically replied, “I was aware of the others, but I would
have reacted just the same if they weren’t there.” That response rein-
forces a familiar point: We often do not know why we do what we do.
That is why experiments are revealing. A survey of uninvolved bystand-
ers following a real emergency would have left the bystander effect
hidden.
In the Conformity and Obedience chapter, we noted other examples
of people’s inability to predict their own actions. Although university
students predicted they would respond with moral courage to sexist
remarks, a racial slur, or a theft of someone’s phone, few of their com-
parable classmates (when facing the actual situations) did so. Thus, it
takes research to see how people in fact behave.
Urban dwellers are seldom alone in public places, which helps account for why city
people often are less helpful than country people. “Compassion fatigue” and “sensory
overload” from encountering so many needy people further restrain helping in large cities
across the world (Levine et al., 1994; Yousif & Korte, 1995). In large cities, bystanders are
also more often strangers—whose increasing numbers depress helping. When bystanders are
friends or people who share a group identity, increased numbers may, instead, increase
helping (Levine & Crowther, 2008). When college undergraduates imagined witnessing
someone lead a drunk woman into a bedroom at a party, they were more willing to intervene
when the woman was a friend instead of a stranger (Katz et al., 2015).
Training programs can also change attitudes toward intervening in situations of sexual
assault or harassment (Katz & Moore, 2013). As the #MeToo movement that began in
2017 demonstrated, sexual harassment can often continue for years when bystanders do
nothing. When college students learned about how to intervene in these situations
through a “Bringing in the Bystander” program, they became more positive about step-
ping in when they witnessed behavior that might lead to sexual violence (such as watch-
ing a drunk person be led into a bedroom by a group of people [Cares et al., 2015]).
The same program was also effective in the military, with soldiers who participated more
likely than a control group to take action to stop sexual assault or stalking (Potter &
Moynihan, 2011).
Even when bystanders don’t intervene directly, they can make a difference by reporting
the incident immediately, by interrupting the interaction by talking to the potential victim,
or by just being very distracting. One man on a New York subway used distraction to great
effect: He stood between a man and woman who were fighting, calmly munching on chips—
earning him the nickname “The Snackman” (Dwyer, 2012).
In 2015, three New Orleans police officers watched as their fellow officer Alfred Moran
repeatedly hit a handcuffed man who had been arrested for public drunkenness. The
Nations have also been
bystanders—to genocide.
“With many potential actors,
each feels less responsible,”
observed Ervin Staub (1997b).
Peter Suedfeld (2000)—like
Staub a Holocaust survivor
who became a psychologist—
notes that diffusion of respon-
sibility helps explain why most
Europeans “stood idly by
during the persecution,
removal, and killing of their
Jewish compatriots.”
Responsibility diffusion. The nine paparazzi photogra-
phers on the scene immediately after Princess Diana’s
fatal car accident all had cell phones. Only one called for
help. Nearly all said they assumed “someone else” had
already called (Sancton, 1997).
©Pierre Boussel/Getty Images
372 Part Three Social Relations
bystander officers did nothing to stop the incident and did not report it to their super-
visors; two of them, along with Moran, were fired (Bullington, 2016). In response to this
and other incidents, the New Orleans Police Department began educating officers about
bystander intervention, teaching them techniques to intervene when their fellow officers
might be on the verge of violence (Robertson, 2016)—a strategy known as “active bystand-
ership” (Novotney, 2017). It seemed to work: When New Orleans police confronted
screaming demonstrators supporting a Confederate monument in 2017, officers intervened
when they observed another about to erupt in anger, reports altruism researcher, Ervin
Staub, who helped design the training (Staub, 2018).
REVISITING RESEARCH ETHICS
These experiments raise an ethical issue. Is it right to force unwitting people to overhear
someone’s apparent collapse? Were the researchers in the seizure experiment ethical when
they forced people to decide whether to interrupt their discussion to report the problem?
Would you object to being in such a study? Note that it would have been impossible to get
your “informed consent”; doing so would have destroyed the experiment’s cover.
The researchers were always careful to debrief the laboratory participants. After
explaining the seizure experiment, probably the most stressful, the experimenter gave the
participants a questionnaire. One hundred percent said the deception was justified and
that they would be willing to take part in similar experiments in the future. None reported
feeling angry at the experimenter. Other researchers confirm that the overwhelming
majority of participants in such experiments say that their participation was both instruc-
tive and ethically justified (Schwartz & Gottlieb, 1981). In field experiments, an accom-
plice assisted the victim if no one else did, thus reassuring bystanders that the problem
was being dealt with.
Remember that the social psychologist has a twofold ethical obligation: to protect the
participants and to enhance human welfare by discovering influences upon human behavior.
Such discoveries can alert us to unwanted influences and show us how we might exert
positive influences. The ethical principle seems to be: After protecting participants’ welfare,
social psychologists fulfill their responsibility to society by giving us insight into our
behavior.
Helping When Someone Else Does
If observing aggressive models can heighten aggression and if unresponsive models
can heighten nonresponding, then will helpful models promote helping? Imagine hearing
a crash followed by sobs and moans. If another
bystander said, “Uh-oh. This is an emergency!
We’ve got to do something,” would it stimulate
others to help?
The evidence is clear: Prosocial models do pro-
mote altruism. In several studies,
▯ Los Angeles drivers were more likely to offer
help to a female driver with a flat tire if a
quarter mile earlier they had witnessed
someone helping another woman change a
tire (Bryan & Test, 1967). Bryan and Test
also observed that New Jersey Christmas
shoppers were more likely to drop money in
a Salvation Army kettle if they had just seen
someone else do the same.
▯ British adults were more willing to donate
blood if they were approached after
observing someone else consent to donating
(Rushton & Campbell, 1977).
Everybody’s doing it: Seeing other people helping often spurs people to help.
©Jupiterimages/Brand X/Alamy Stock Photo
Helping Chapter 12 373
▯ A glimpse of extraordinary human kindness and charity—such as we gave you in
the examples of heroic altruism at this chapter’s outset—often triggers what
Jonathan Haidt (2003) calls elevation, “a distinctive feeling in the chest of warmth
and expansion” that may provoke chills, tears, and throat clenching. Such elevation
often inspires people to become more self-giving (Schnall et al., 2010).
However, people don’t always practice what they preach. Parents may tell their children,
“Do as I say, not as I do.” Experiments show that children learn moral judgments both
from what they hear preached and from what they see practiced (Rice & Grusec, 1975;
Rushton, 1975). When exposed to hypocrites, they imitate: They say what the model says
and do what the model does.
Time Pressures
Darley and Batson (1973) discerned another determinant of helping in the Good Samaritan
parable. The priest and the Levite were both busy, important people, probably hurrying to
their duties. The lowly Samaritan surely was less pressed for time. To see whether people
in a hurry would behave as the priest and the Levite did, Darley and Batson cleverly staged
the situation described in the parable.
After collecting their thoughts before recording a brief extemporaneous talk (which, for
half the participants, was actually about the Good Samaritan parable), Princeton Theologi-
cal Seminary students were directed to a recording studio in an adjacent building. En route,
they passed a man sitting slumped in a doorway, head down, coughing and groaning. Some
of the students had been sent off nonchalantly: “It will be a few minutes before they’re
ready for you, but you might as well head on over.” Of those, almost two-thirds stopped to
offer help. Others were told, “Oh, you’re late. They were expecting you a few minutes
ago . . . so you’d better hurry.” Of these, only 10% offered help.
Reflecting on these findings, Darley and Batson noted that the hurried participants
passed on by the person in distress even when en route “to speak on the parable of the
Good Samaritan, thus inadvertently confirming the point of the parable. (Indeed, on several
occasions, a seminary student going to give his talk on the parable of the Good Samaritan
literally stepped over the victim as he hurried on his way!)”
Are we being unfair to the seminary students, who were, after all, hurrying to help the
experimenter? Perhaps they keenly felt the social-responsibility norm but found it pulling
them two ways—toward the experimenter and toward the victim. In another enactment of
the Good Samaritan situation, Batson and associates (1978) directed 40 University of
Kansas students to an experiment in another building. Half were told they were late, half
that they had plenty of time. Half of each of these groups thought their participation was
vitally important to the experimenter; half thought it was not essential. The results: Those
leisurely on their way to an unimportant appointment usually stopped to help. But people
seldom stopped to help if, like the White Rabbit in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, they
were late for a very important date.
Can we conclude that those who were rushed were callous? Did the seminarians notice
the victim’s distress and then consciously choose to ignore it? No. Harried, preoccupied,
rushing to help the experimenter, they simply did not take time to tune in to a person in
need. As social psychologists have so often observed, their behavior was influenced more
by context than by conviction.
Similarity
Because similarity is conducive to liking, and liking is conducive to helping, we are more
empathic and helpful toward those similar to us (Miller et al., 2001). The similarity bias applies
to both dress and beliefs. Tim Emswiller and his fellow researchers (1971) had confederates,
dressed either conservatively or in the disheveled garb favored by hippies of the time, approach
“conservative” and “hip” Purdue University students seeking a dime for a phone call. Fewer than
half the students did the favor for those dressed differently from themselves. Two-thirds did so
for those dressed similarly. (See “Research Close-Up: Ingroup Similarity and Helping.”)
“We are, in truth, more than
half what we are by imitation.
The great point is, to choose
good models and to study
them with care.”
—Lord Chesterfield,
Quoted in The Best Letters of
Lord Chesterfield, 1890
374 Part Three Social Relations
Ingroup Similarity and Helping
Likeness breeds liking, and liking elicits helping. So, do
people offer more help to others who display similarities
to themselves? To explore the similarity-helping relation-
ship, Mark Levine, Amy Prosser, and David Evans at
Lancaster University joined with Stephen Reicher at
St. Andrews University (2005) to study the behavior of
Manchester United soccer football team fans. Taking their
cue from John Darley and Daniel Batson’s (1973) famous
Good Samaritan experiment, they directed each newly ar-
rived student participant to the laboratory in an adjacent
building. En route, a confederate jogger—wearing a shirt
from either nearby Manchester United or rival Liverpool—
seemingly slipped on a grass bank just in front of them,
grasped his ankle, and groaned in apparent pain. As
Figure 7 shows, the Manchester fans routinely paused to
offer help to their fellow Manchester supporter but usually
did not offer such help to a supposed Liverpool
supporter.
But, the researchers wondered, what if we remind
Manchester fans of the identity they share with Liverpool
supporters—as football fans rather than as those who
dislike football fans? So they repeated the experiment,
but with one difference: Before participants witnessed the
jogger’s fall, the researcher explained that the study con-
cerned the positive aspects of being a football fan. Given
that only a small minority of fans are troublemakers, this
research aimed to explore what fans get out of their love
for “the beautiful game.” Now a jogger wearing a football
club shirt, whether for Manchester or Liverpool, became
one of “us fans.” And as Figure 8 shows, the grimacing
jogger was helped regardless of which team he sup-
ported—and more so than if wearing a plain shirt.
The principle in the two cases is the same, noted the
researchers. People are predisposed to help their fellow
group members, whether those are defined more nar-
rowly (as “us Manchester fans”) or more inclusively (as “us
football fans”). If even rival fans can be persuaded to help
one another by thinking about what unites them, then
surely other antagonists can as well. One way to increase
people’s willingness to help others is to promote social
identities that are inclusive rather than exclusive.
research
CLOSE-UP
FIGURE 7
Percentage of Manchester United Fans
Who Helped Victim Wearing Manchester
or Liverpool Shirt
Manchester
shirt
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
Liverpool
shirt
FIGURE 8
Common Fan Identity Condition: Percentage of
Manchester United Fans Who Helped Victim Wearing
Manchester or Liverpool Shirt
Manchester
shirt
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
Liverpool
shirt
Plain
shirt
Like similarity, familiarity breeds compassion. The more people know about disaster vic-
tims and where they live, the more they donate (Zagefka et al., 2013). No face is more familiar
than one’s own. That explains why, when Lisa DeBruine (2002) had McMaster University
students play an interactive game with a supposed other player, they were more trusting and
generous when the other person’s pictured face had some features of their own face morphed
into it (Figure 9). In me I trust. Even just sharing a birthday, a first name, or a fingerprint
pattern leads people to respond more to a request for help (Burger et al., 2004).
Helping Chapter 12 375
Does the similarity bias extend to race? During the 1970s, researchers explored that ques-
tion with confusing results—some studies found that people were more willing to help those
of the same race, some that people were more willing to help those of a different race, and
some found no effect (Benson et al., 1976; Dutton & Lake, 1973; Lerner & Frank, 1974).
Is there a general rule that resolves these seemingly contradictory findings?
Few people want to appear prejudiced. Perhaps, then, people favor their own race but
keep that bias secret to preserve a positive image. If so, the same-race bias should appear
only when people can attribute failure to help to nonrace factors. That is what happened
in experiments by Samuel Gaertner and John Dovidio (1977, 1986). For example, Univer-
sity of Delaware White women were less willing to help a Black than a White woman in
distress if their responsibility could be diffused among the bystanders (“I didn’t help the
Black woman because there were others who could”). When there were no other bystanders,
the women were equally helpful to the Black and the White women. The rule seems to be:
When norms for appropriate behavior are well-defined, Whites don’t discriminate; when
norms are ambiguous or conflicting and providing help is more difficult or riskier, racial
similarity may bias responses (Saucier et al., 2005).
For me [DM], the laboratory came to life one night as I walked from a dinner meeting
in Washington, D.C., to my hotel. On a deserted sidewalk, a well-dressed, distraught-seeming
man about my age approached me and begged for a dollar. He explained that he had just
come over from London and, after visiting the Holocaust Museum, had accidentally left
his wallet in a taxi. So here he was, stranded and needing a $24 taxi fare to a friend’s home
in suburban D.C.
“So how’s one dollar going to get you there?” I asked.
“I asked people for more, but no one would help me,” he nearly sobbed, “so I thought
maybe if I asked for less I could collect taxi fare.”
“But why not take the Metro?” I challenged.
“It stops about 5 miles from Greenbriar, where I need to go,” he explained. “Oh my,
how am I ever going to get there? If you could help me out, I will mail you back the money
on Monday.”
Here I was, as if a participant in an on-the-street altruism experiment. Having grown up
in a city, and as a frequent visitor to New York and Chicago, I am accustomed to panhan-
dling and have never rewarded it. But I also consider myself a caring person. Moreover,
this fellow was unlike any panhandler I had ever met. He was dressed sharply. He was
intelligent. He had a convincing story. And he looked like me! If he’s lying, he’s a slimeball,
I said to myself, and giving him money would be stupid, naive, and rewarding slimeballism.
If he’s a truth-teller and I turn my back on him, then I’m a slimeball.
He had asked for $1. I gave him $30, along with my name and address, which he took
gratefully, and disappeared into the night.
As I walked on, I began to suspect—correctly as it turned out—that I had been a patsy.
Having lived in Britain, why had I not tested his knowledge of England? Why had I not
taken him to a phone booth to call his friend? Why had I at least not offered to pay a taxi
FIGURE 9
Similarity Breeds
Cooperation
Lisa DeBruine (2002) morphed
participants’ faces (left) with
strangers’ faces (right) to make
the composite center faces—
toward whom the participants
were more generous than
toward the stranger.
Courtesy of Lisa DeBruine
376 Part Three Social Relations
driver and send him on his way, rather than give him the money? And why, after a lifetime
of resisting scams, had I succumbed to this one?
Sheepishly, because I like to think myself not influenced by ethnic stereotypes, I had to
admit that it was not only his socially skilled, personal approach, but also the mere fact of
his similarity to me.
▯ Several situational influences work to inhibit or to encour-
age altruism. As the number of bystanders at an emer-
gency increases, any given bystander is (1) less likely to
notice the incident, (2) less likely to interpret it as an emer-
gency, and (3) less likely to assume responsibility—a phe-
nomenon called the bystander effect. Experiments on
helping behavior pose an ethical dilemma but fulfill the
researcher’s mandate to enhance human life by uncover-
ing important influences on behavior.
▯ When are people most likely to help? One circum-
stance is when they have just observed someone else
helping.
▯ Another circumstance that promotes helping is having
at least a little spare time; those in a hurry are less likely
to help.
▯ We tend to help those whom we perceive as being
similar to us.
SUMMING UP: When Will We Help?
WHO WILL HELP?
Identify some traits and values that predict helping.
We have considered internal influences on the decision to help (such as guilt and mood)
and external influences as well (such as social norms, number of bystanders, time pressures,
and similarity). We also need to consider the helpers’ dispositions, including, for example,
their personality traits, gender, and religious values.
Personality Traits and Status
Surely some traits must distinguish the Mother Teresa types from others. Faced with identi-
cal situations, some people will respond helpfully, while others won’t bother. Who are the
likely helpers?
For many years, social psychologists were unable to discover a single personality trait
that predicted helping with anything close to the predictive power of situational, guilt, and
mood factors. Modest relationships were found between helping and certain personality
variables, such as a need for social approval. But by and large, personality tests were unable
to identify the helpers. Studies of rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe reveal a similar conclu-
sion: Although the social context clearly influenced willingness to help, there was no defin-
able set of altruistic personality traits (Darley, 1995).
If that finding has a familiar ring, it could be from a similar conclusion by conformity
researchers: Conformity, too, seemed more influenced by the situation than by measurable
personality traits. Perhaps, though, who we are does affect what we do. Attitude and trait
measures seldom predict a specific act, which is what most experiments on altruism measure
(in contrast with the lifelong altruism of a Mother Teresa). But they predict average behav-
ior across many situations more accurately.
Personality researchers have responded to the challenge and summarize the effect of
personality on altruism in three ways:
▯ They have found individual differences in helpfulness and shown that those differ-
ences persist over time and are noticed by one’s peers (Hampson, 1984; Penner,
2002; Rushton et al., 1981). In one study, five-year-olds who most readily shared
their treats were, at ages 23 and 32, most socially progressive in their political
views (Dunkel, 2014). Some people are reliably more helpful.
“There are . . . reasons why
personality should be rather
unimportant in determining
people’s reactions to the
emergency. For one thing, the
situational forces affecting a
person’s decision are so
strong.”
—Bibb Latané and John Darley,
The Unresponsive Bystander,
1970
Helping Chapter 12 377
▯ Researchers are gathering clues to the network
of traits that predispose a person to helpfulness.
Those high in positive emotionality, empathy,
and self-efficacy are most likely to be concerned
and helpful (Eisenberg et al., 1991; Krueger
et al., 2001; Walker & Frimer, 2007). Overall,
the personality trait that best predicts willingness
to help is agreeableness, indicative of someone
who highly values getting along with others
(Habashi et al., 2016). Not surprisingly, those
with callous traits (such as psychopathy) are less
helpful and empathic (Beussink et al., 2017).
▯ Personality influences how particular people react
to particular situations (Carlo et al., 1991; Romer
et al., 1986; Wilson & Petruska, 1984). Those high
in self-monitoring are attuned to others’ expecta-
tions and are therefore helpful if they think helpful-
ness will be socially rewarded (White & Gerstein,
1987). Others’ opinions matter less to internally
guided, low-self-monitoring people. Sensitivity matters as well. People who are more
sympathetic to the victims in emergency situations respond faster when they are the
only ones there, but slower when there are other bystanders (Hortensius et al., 2016).
Status and social class also affect altruism. In four studies, Paul Piff and his colleagues
(2010) found that less privileged people were more generous, trusting, and helpful than
more privileged people, likely because they felt more compassion for others and felt less
entitled to special treatment (Piff, 2014; Stellar et al., 2012). Especially in private situations—
when no one was “looking”—those lower in social class were more likely to help others
(Kraus & Callaghan, 2016). People lower in social status showed more reaction in brain
areas linked to sensitivity to others (Muscatell et al., 2016) and were better at judging oth-
ers’ emotions (Kraus et al., 2010). Even people randomly assigned to feel more powerful
showed brain activity suggesting lower empathy (Hogeveen et al., 2014). This research
suggests that the stereotype of the callous rich person might have some truth to it.
Gender
The interaction of person and situation also appears in 172 studies that have compared the
helpfulness of nearly 50,000 male and female individuals. After analyzing these results,
Alice Eagly and Maureen Crowley (1986) reported that when faced with potentially danger-
ous situations in which strangers need help (such as with a flat tire or a fall in a subway),
men more often help. Eagly (2009) also reported that among recipients of the Carnegie
medal for heroism in saving human life, 91% have been men.
Would gender norms—“women and children first”—more likely come into play in situa-
tions when people have time to reflect on social norms (as opposed to acting instinctively,
on impulse)? To explore this possibility, some fiendish experimenter might wish to assign
passengers to fast- or slow-sinking ships and observe behavior. Actually, note Zurich
researcher Bruno Frey and his colleagues (2010), the course of human events has conducted
this experiment. In 1915, a German U-boat sank the passenger liner, the Lusitania, in a
panicked 18 minutes, with women on board being 1% less likely to survive than men. In
1912, the Titanic, carrying a similar mix of passengers, hit an iceberg and took nearly
3 hours to sink—and women were 53% more likely to survive than men. In this natural
experiment, time enabled prosocial behavior and the activation of gender norms.
In safer situations, such as volunteering to help with an experiment or spend time with
children with developmental disabilities, women are slightly more likely to help. In a 2016
national survey of 137,456 entering American collegians, 72% of men—and 82% of women—
rated “helping others in difficulty” as “very important” or “essential” (Eagan et al., 2017).
Outgoing, friendly people who value harmonious social relationships are the
most likely to help others.
©Steve Debenport/Getty Images
378 Part Three Social Relations
Women are more likely to describe themselves as helpful (Nielson et al., 2017). Women
also have been as likely as, or more likely than, men to risk death as Holocaust rescuers,
to donate a kidney, and to volunteer with the Peace Corps and Doctors of the World
(Becker & Eagly, 2004). Thus, the gender difference interacts with (depends on) the situ-
ation. Faced with a friend’s problems, women respond with greater empathy and spend
more time helping (George et al., 1998).
Finally, women tend to be more generous. They are more supportive of government pro-
grams that distribute wealth and are more likely to distribute their own wealth. Indiana
University’s Women’s Philanthropy Institute reports that: (1) single women donate more than
single men, (2) men donate more if married to a woman, and (3) at every income level,
female-headed households donate more than male-headed households (Mesch & Pactor,
2015). Small wonder, notes Adam Grant (2013), that twenty years ago, philanthropist Bill
Gates rejected advice to set up a charitable foundation—until marrying, having two daughters,
and recalling his mother who “never stopped pressing me to do more for others.”
Religious Faith
In 1943, with Nazi submarines sinking ships faster than the Allied forces could replace them,
the troop ship SS Dorchester steamed out of New York harbor with 902 men headed for Green-
land (Elliott, 1989; Kurzman, 2004; Parachin, 1992). Among those leaving anxious families
behind were four chaplains: Methodist preacher George Fox, Rabbi Alexander Goode, Catholic
priest John Washington, and Reformed Church minister Clark Poling. Some 150 miles from
their destination, on a moonless night, U-boat 456 caught the Dorchester in its crosshairs. Within
moments of the torpedo’s impact, stunned men were pouring out of their bunks as the ship
began listing. With power cut, the ship’s radio was useless; its escort vessels, unaware of the
unfolding tragedy, pushed on in the darkness. On board, chaos reigned as panicky men came
up from the hold without life jackets and leapt into overcrowded lifeboats.
As the four chaplains arrived on the steeply sloping deck, they began guiding the men
to their boat stations. They opened a storage locker, distributed life jackets, and coaxed the
men over the side. When Petty Officer John Mahoney turned back to retrieve his gloves,
Rabbi Goode responded, “Never mind. I have two pairs.” Only later did Mahoney realize
that the Rabbi was not conveniently carrying an extra pair; he was giving up his own.
In the icy, oil-smeared water, as Private William Bednar heard the chaplains preaching cour-
age, he found the strength to swim out from under the ship until reaching a life raft. Still on
board, Grady Clark watched in awe as the chaplains
handed out the last life jacket and then, with ultimate
selflessness, gave away their own. As Clark slipped
into the waters, he looked back at an unforgettable
sight: The four chaplains were standing—their arms
linked—praying, in Latin, Hebrew, and English. Other
men joined them in a huddle as the Dorchester slid
beneath the sea. “It was the finest thing I have ever
seen or hope to see this side of heaven,” said John
Ladd, another of the 230 survivors.
Does the chaplains’ heroic example rightly
imply that faith promotes courage and caring? The
world’s four largest religions—Christianity, Islam,
Hinduism, and Buddhism—all teach compassion
and charity (Steffen & Masters, 2005). But do their
followers walk the talk? Religiosity is a mixed bag,
report Ariel Malka and colleagues (2011). It is
often associated with conservative opposition to
government initiatives, including support for the
poor, yet it also promotes prosocial values.
Consider what happens when people are subtly
“primed” with spiritual thoughts. With God on
The four chaplains’ ultimate selflessness inspired this painting, which hangs in
Valley Forge, Pennsylvania’s Chapel of the Four Chaplains.
©Lynn Burkholder/First Impressions
Helping Chapter 12 379
their minds—after unscrambling sentences with words such as spirit, divine, God, and sacred—
people become much more generous in their donations (Pichon et al., 2007; Schumann
et al., 2014; Shariff et al., 2015). Follow-up studies have found that religious priming increases
other “good” behaviors, such as persistence on an assigned task and actions consistent with
one’s moral beliefs (Carpenter & Marshall, 2009; Toburen & Meier, 2010). But “religion”
and “God” have somewhat different priming effects. “Religion” primes helpfulness toward
ingroup members and “God” toward outgroup members (Preston & Ritter, 2013).
In studies of college students and the general public, the religiously committed have
reported volunteering more hours—as tutors, relief workers, and campaigners for social justice—
than have the religiously uncommitted (Benson et al., 1980; Hansen et al., 1995; Penner,
2002). Those who feel more spiritually connected to other congregants provide more help
(including giving time or money) to family and strangers (Krause & Hayward, 2014). Among
Americans engaged with a faith community, the median person has reported volunteering
2 hours per week; the median religiously disengaged person reported volunteering 0 hours
per week (Winseman, 2005). Worldwide surveys confirm the correlation between faith
engagement and volunteering. One analysis of 117,007 people responding to World Values
Surveys in 53 countries reported that twice-weekly religious attenders “are more than five
times more likely to volunteer” than nonattenders (Ruiter & De Graaf, 2006).
Moreover, Sam Levenson’s jest—“When it comes to giving, some people stop at nothing”—
is seldom true of those who are most actively religious. A massive Gallup World Poll sur-
veyed 2,000 or more people in each of 140 countries. Despite having lower incomes, highly
religious people (who reported that religion is important to their daily lives and that they
had attended a religious service in the prior week) reported markedly higher than average
rates of charitable giving, volunteerism, and helping a stranger in the previous month
( Figure 10).
One might wonder if this occurs because religious people have a ready outlet for their
donations and volunteer opportunities via their churches, synogogues, or mosques. How-
ever, religious people were also more likely to be generous with others in an online game
(Everett et al., 2016) or by agreeing to spend 30 minutes filling out a questionnaire to help
a student with her thesis project (Blogowska et al., 2013).
In addition, the links between religion and planned helping seem to be relatively unique
among communal organizations. Robert Putnam (2000) analyzed national survey data from
“Religion is the mother of
philanthropy.”
—Frank Emerson Andrews,
Attitudes Toward Giving, 1953
FIGURE 10
Helping and Religious
Engagement
Worldwide, reported Gallup
researchers Brett Pelham and
Steve Crabtree (2008), highly
religious people are—despite
averaging lower incomes—more
likely to report having given
away money in the last month
and also to report having volun-
teered and helped a stranger.
Highly religious people said
religion is important in their
daily life and attended a service
in the last week. Less religious
are all others.
Europe
40
45
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Americas Africa Asia
Have you done any of the following in the
last month: Donate to charity
P
er
ce
n
t
Less religious
Highly religious
380 Part Three Social Relations
22 types of organizations, including hobby clubs, professional associations, self-help groups,
and service clubs. “It was membership in religious groups,” he reports, “that was most
closely associated with other forms of civic involvement, like voting, jury service, commu-
nity projects, talking with neighbors, and giving to charity” (p. 67).
A newer analysis across 70 countries confirmed that “religious individuals were more
likely to be members of charitable organizations” and less likely to engage in self-serving
lies or fraud. But this seeming prosocial effect of religiosity was strongest “in countries in
which religious behavior is a matter of personal choice” rather than imposed by strong
social norms (Stavrova & Siegers, 2014).
▯ In contrast with altruism’s potent situational and mood
determinants, personality test scores have served as
only modest predictors of helping. However, new
evidence indicates that some people are consistently
more helpful than others.
▯ The effect of personality or gender may depend on the
situation. Men, for example, have been observed to help
more in dangerous situations, women as volunteers and
charitable givers.
▯ Religious faith predicts long-term altruism, as reflected
in volunteerism and charitable contributions.
SUMMING UP: Who Will Help?
HOW CAN WE INCREASE HELPING?
Suggest how helping might be increased by reversing
the factors that inhibit helping, by teaching norms of
helping, and by socializing people to see themselves
as helpful.
As social scientists, our goal is to understand human behavior, thus also suggesting ways
to improve it. One way to promote altruism is to reverse those factors that inhibit it. Given
that hurried, preoccupied people help less, can we think of ways to slow people down and
turn their attention outward? If the presence of others diminishes each bystander’s sense
of responsibility, how can we enhance responsibility?
Reduce Ambiguity, Increase Responsibility
If Latané and Darley’s decision tree (see Figure 5) describes the dilemmas bystanders face,
then helping should increase if we can prompt people to correctly interpret an incident and
to assume responsibility. Leonard Bickman and colleagues (Bickman, 1975, 1979; Bickman &
Green, 1977) tested that presumption in a series of experiments on crime reporting. In
each, they staged a shoplifting incident in a supermarket or bookstore. In some of the
stores, they placed signs aimed at sensitizing bystanders to shoplifting and informing them
how to report it. The researchers found that the signs had little effect. In other cases, wit-
nesses heard a bystander interpret the incident: “Say, look at her. She’s shoplifting. She put
that into her purse.” Still others heard this person add, “We saw it. We should report it.
It’s our responsibility.” Both comments substantially boosted reporting of the crime. Train-
ing programs that aim to help college students intervene in possible situations of sexual
assault or sexual harassment teach similar techniques, such as learning how to interpret
situations and speaking up (Katz & Moore, 2013).
PERSONALIZED APPEAL
The potency of personal influence is no longer in doubt. New blood donors, unlike repeat
donors, were usually there at someone’s personal invitation (Foss, 1978). Leonard Jason
and collaborators (1984) confirmed that personal appeals for blood donation are much
Helping Chapter 12 381
more effective than posters and media announcements—if the personal appeals come from
friends.
Personalized nonverbal appeals can also be effective. Mark Snyder and co-workers (1974;
Omoto & Snyder, 2002) found that hitchhikers doubled their number of ride offers by
looking drivers straight in the eye, and that most AIDS volunteers got involved through
someone’s personal influence. A personal approach, as my [DM’s] panhandler knew, makes
one feel less anonymous, more responsible.
To reduce anonymity, researchers have had bystanders identify themselves to one another—
by name, age, and so forth—after which, they were more likely to offer aid to a sick person
(Solomon & Solomon, 1978; Solomon et al., 1981). Similarly, when a female experimenter
caught the eye of another shopper and gave her a warm smile before stepping on an elevator,
that shopper was far more likely than other shoppers to offer help when the experimenter
later said, “Damn. I’ve left my glasses. Can anyone tell me what floor the umbrellas are on?”
Even a trivial momentary conversation with someone (“Excuse me, aren’t you Suzie Spear’s
sister?” “No, I’m not”) dramatically increased the person’s later helpfulness.
Helpfulness also increases when one expects to meet the victim and other witnesses
again. Using a laboratory intercom system, Jody Gottlieb and Charles Carver (1980) led
University of Miami students to believe they were discussing problems of college living with
other students. (Actually, the other discussants were tape-recorded.) When one of the sup-
posed fellow discussants had a choking fit and cried out for help, students who believed
they would soon be meeting her face-to-face more quickly rushed to help. In short, anything
that personalizes bystanders—a personal request, eye contact, stating one’s name, anticipating
interaction—increases willingness to help. In experiments, restaurant patrons have tipped
more when their servers introduced themselves by name, wrote friendly messages on checks,
touched guests on the arm or shoulder, or squatted at the table during the service encounter
(Leodoro & Lynn, 2007; Schirmer et al., 2011).
Personal treatment makes bystanders more self-aware. And self-aware people are more
attuned to their own altruistic ideals. Note that people made self-aware by acting in front of a
mirror or a TV camera exhibit increased consistency between attitudes and actions. By contrast,
“deindividuated” people are less responsible. Thus, circumstances that promote self-awareness—
name tags, being watched and evaluated, undistracted quiet—should also increase helping.
Shelley Duval, Virginia Duval, and Robert Neely (1979) confirmed this. They showed
some University of Southern California women their own images on a TV screen or had them
complete biographical questionnaires just before giving them a chance to contribute time and
money to people in need. Those made self-aware contributed more. Similarly, pedestrians who
have just had their pictures taken by someone became more likely to help another pedestrian
pick up dropped envelopes (Hoover et al., 1983). And among Italian pedestrians who had
just seen themselves in a mirror, 70% helped a stranger by mailing a postcard, as did 13% of
others approached (Abbate et al., 2006). Self-aware people more often live out their ideals.
Guilt and Concern for Self-Image
Previously, we noted that people who feel guilty will act to reduce guilt and restore their
self-worth. Can awakening people’s guilt therefore increase their desire to help?
A Reed College research team led by Richard Katzev (1978) experimented with guilt-
induced helping. When visitors to the Portland Art Museum disobeyed a “Please do not
touch” sign, experimenters reprimanded some of them: “Please don’t touch the objects. If
everyone touches them, they will deteriorate.” Likewise, when visitors to the Portland Zoo
fed unauthorized food to the bears, some of them were admonished with, “Hey, don’t feed
unauthorized food to the animals. Don’t you know it could hurt them?” In both cases, 58%
of the now guilt-laden individuals shortly thereafter offered help to another experimenter
who had “accidentally” dropped something. Of those not reprimanded, only one-third
helped. Guilt-laden people are helpful people.
That was my [DM’s] experience recently, after passing a man struggling to get up from
a busy city sidewalk as I raced to catch a train. His glazed eyes brought to mind the many
drunken people I had assisted during my college days as an emergency room attendant.
382 Part Three Social Relations
Or . . . I wondered after walking by . . . was he actually expe-
riencing a health crisis? Plagued by guilt, I picked up sidewalk
litter, offered my train seat to an elderly couple looking for
seats together, and vowed that the next time I faced uncer-
tainty in an unfamiliar city I would think to call 911.
Cialdini and David Schroeder (1976) offer another prac-
tical way to trigger concern for self-image: Ask for a con-
tribution so small that it’s hard to say no without feeling
like a Scrooge. Cialdini (1995) discovered this when a
United Way canvasser came to his door. As she solicited
his contribution, he was mentally preparing his refusal—
until she said magic words that demolished his financial
excuse: “Even a penny will help.” “I had been neatly
finessed into compliance,” recalled Cialdini. “And there
was another interesting feature of our exchange as well.
When I stopped coughing (I really had choked on my
attempted rejection), I gave her not the penny she had men-
tioned but the amount I usually allot to legitimate charity solicitors. At that, she thanked
me, smiled innocently, and moved on.”
Was Cialdini’s response atypical? To find out, he and Schroeder had a solicitor approach
suburbanites. When the solicitor said, “I’m collecting money for the American Cancer
Society,” 29% contributed an average of $1.44 each. When the solicitor added, “Even a
penny will help,” 50% contributed, and gave an average of $1.54 each. When James Weyant
(1984) repeated this experiment, he found similar results: The “even a penny will help”
boosted the number contributing from 39 to 57%. And when 6,000 people were solicited
by mail for the American Cancer Society, those asked for small amounts were more likely
to give—and gave no less on average—than those asked for larger amounts (Weyant & Smith,
1987). A qualification: when previous donors are approached, bigger requests (within rea-
son) do elicit bigger donations (Doob & McLaughlin, 1989). But with door-to-door solicita-
tion, there is more success with requests for small contributions, which are difficult to turn
down and still allow the person to maintain an altruistic self-image.
Labeling people as helpful can also strengthen a helpful self-image. After they had made
charitable contributions, Robert Kraut (1973) told some Connecticut women, “You are a
generous person.” Two weeks later, these women were more willing than those not so
labeled to contribute to a different charity.
Socializing Altruism
How might we socialize altruism? Here are five ways (Figure 11).
The guilt many people feel after passing by this homeless man might
motivate them to help someone in the next situation they encounter.
©Ruben Sanchez @lostintv/Getty Images
FIGURE 11
Practical Ways to Increase Helping
How can we increase helping?
Undo the
restraints on helping
Socialize altruism
Enable guilt
and concern
for self-image
Personalized
appeals
Enable guilt
and concern
for self-image
Enable guilt
and concern
for self-image
Reduce
ambiguity
and increase
responsibility
Model
altruism
Teach
moral
inclusion
Attribute
helping
behavior
to altruism
Learn by
doing
Learn about
altruism
Helping Chapter 12 383
TEACHING MORAL INCLUSION
Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe, leaders of the antislavery movement, and medical mis-
sionaries shared at least one common trait: They were morally inclusive. Their moral con-
cern encircled diverse people. One rescuer faked a pregnancy on behalf of a pregnant
hidden Jew—thus including the soon-to-be-born child within the circle of her own children’s
identities (Fogelman, 1994).
Moral exclusion—omitting certain people from one’s circle of moral concern—has the
opposite effect. It justifies all sorts of harm, from discrimination to genocide (Opotow,
1990; Staub, 2005a; Tyler & Lind, 1990). Exploitation or cruelty becomes acceptable, even
appropriate, toward those whom we regard as undeserving or as nonpersons. The Nazis
excluded Jews from their moral community. Anyone who participates in enslavement, death
squads, or torture practices a similar exclusion. To a lesser extent, moral exclusion describes
those of us who concentrate our concerns, favors, and financial inheritance upon “our
people” (for example, our children) to the exclusion of others.
More exclusion also describes restrictions in the public empathy for the human costs of
war. Reported war deaths are typically “our deaths.” Many Americans, for example, know
that more than 58,000 Americans died in the Vietnam War (their 58,248 names are
inscribed on the Vietnam War Memorial). But few Americans know that the war also left
some 2 million Vietnamese dead. During the Iraq war, news of American fatalities—nearly
4,500—caused much more concern than the little-known number of Iraqi deaths, for which
a low range of estimates published by leading medical journals was more than 150,000
(Alkhuzai et al., 2008).
We easily become numbed by impersonal big numbers of outgroup fatalities (Dunn &
Ashton-James, 2008; Slovic, 2007). People presume that they would be more upset about a
hurricane that killed 5,000 rather than 50 people. But whether people heard that Hurricane
Katrina claimed 50, 500, 1,000, or 5,000 lives, their sadness was unaffected by the number.
Ditto for the scale of other tragedies, including a forest fire in Spain and the refugees fleeing
Syria. When a heartbreaking photograph of a drowned Syrian toddler flashed around the
world in 2015, donations to help refugees suddenly spiked—even though the crisis had been
going on for four years and had already cost 250,000 lives (Slovic et al., 2017). “If I look
at the mass I will never act,” said Mother Teresa. “If I look at the one, I will.” Shown a
single victim, a 7-year-old girl named Rokia, people responded with
more money for a hunger charity than when told the organization
was working to save millions (Slovic & Västfjäll, 2010). People are
more willing to donate money to help one child than to help two
children (Västfjäll et al., 2014). Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton
(1967) called this “psychic numbing,” a term he coined after study-
ing survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki in 1945.
A first step toward socializing altruism is therefore to counter
the natural ingroup bias favoring kin and tribe by personalizing
and broadening the range of people whose well-being should con-
cern us. Daniel Batson (1983) notes how religious teachings do
this. They extend the reach of kin-linked altruism by urging “broth-
erly and sisterly” love toward all “children of God” in the whole
human “family.” As research with an “Identification with All
Humanity Scale” shows, if everyone is part of our family, then
everyone is in the same group (McFarland et al., 2013). The bound-
aries between “we” and “they” fade. Inviting advantaged people to
put themselves in others’ shoes, to imagine how they feel, also
helps (Batson et al., 2003). To “do unto others as you would have
them do unto you,” one must take the others’ perspective.
MODELING ALTRUISM
Previously, we noted that seeing unresponsive bystanders makes
us less likely to help. People reared by extremely punitive parents,
moral exclusion
The perception of certain
individuals or groups as outside
the boundary within which one
applies moral values and rules
of fairness. Moral inclusion is
regarding others as within one’s
circle of moral concern.
“We consider humankind our
family.”
—Parliament of the World
Religions,
Towards a Global Ethic, 1993
One way to practice moral inclusion is to believe “all humanity is
my ingroup” (McFarland et al., 2012).
©John Lund/Blend Images LLC
384 Part Three Social Relations
as were many delinquents and chronic criminals, also show much less of the empathy and
principled caring that typify altruists.
REAL-LIFE MODELING If, however, we see or read about someone helping, we become
more likely to offer assistance. If they had earlier witnessed someone helping a woman
who’d dropped books, female shoppers in a real life experiment then became more likely
to assist someone who had dropped a dollar (Burger et al., 2014).
It’s better, noted Robert Cialdini and co-workers (2003), not to publicize rampant tax
cheating, littering, and teen drinking, and instead to emphasize—to define a norm of—
people’s widespread honesty, cleanliness, and abstinence. Tell people of others recycling,
voting, paying taxes on time, reusing hotel towels, or not littering, and more will do the
same. In one of many experiments, they asked visitors not to remove petrified wood from
along the paths of the Petrified Forest National Park. Some were also told that “past visi-
tors have removed the petrified wood.” Other people who were told that “past visitors have
left the petrified wood” to preserve the park were much less likely to pick up samples placed
along a path. Better yet, tell people how norms are favorably changing. Given a “dynamic
norm”—told that 30% of people have begun eating less meat in the last five years—people
express more interest in doing the same than if given a “static norm” of a steady 30% trying
to eat less meat (Sparkman & Walton, 2018).
Modeling effects were also apparent within the families of European Christians who
risked their lives to rescue Jews, and of American civil rights activists. These exceptional
altruists typically reported having warm and close relationships with at least one parent
who was, similarly, a strong “moralist” or committed to humanitarian causes (London,
1970; Oliner & Oliner, 1988; Rosenhan, 1970). Their families—and often their friends and
churches—had taught them the norm of helping and caring for others. This “prosocial value
orientation” led them to include people from other groups in their circle of moral concern
and to feel responsible for others’ welfare (Staub, 1989, 1991, 2015).
Staub (1999) knows of what he speaks: “As a young Jewish child in Budapest I survived
the Holocaust, the destruction of most European Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies. My
life was saved by a Christian woman who repeatedly endangered her life to help me and
my family, and by Raoul Wallenberg, the Swede who came to Budapest and with courage,
brilliance, and complete commitment saved the lives of tens of thousands of Jews destined
for the gas chambers. These two heroes were not passive bystanders, and my work is one
of the ways for me not to be one.” (See “Focus On: Behavior and Attitudes Among Rescu-
ers of Jews.”)
MEDIA MODELING Do television’s positive models promote helping, much as its
aggressive portrayals promote aggression? Prosocial TV models have actually had even
greater effects than antisocial models. Susan Hearold (1986) statistically combined 108
comparisons of prosocial programs with neutral programs or no program. She found that,
on average, “If the viewer watched prosocial programs instead of neutral programs, he
would [at least temporarily] be elevated from the 50th to the 74th percentile in prosocial
behavior—typically altruism.”
In one such study, researchers Lynette Friedrich and Aletha Stein (1973; Stein & Fried-
rich, 1972) showed preschool children Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood episodes each day for 4
weeks as part of their nursery school program. (Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood aimed to
enhance young children’s social and emotional development.) During the viewing period,
children from less-educated homes became more cooperative, helpful, and likely to state
their feelings. In a follow-up study, kindergartners who viewed four Mister Rogers’ programs
were able to state the show’s prosocial content, both on a test and in puppet play (Coates
et al., 1976; Friedrich & Stein, 1975).
Other media also effectively model prosocial behavior, partly by increasing empathy.
Recent studies from across the world show positive effects on attitudes or behavior from
prosocial media, including playing prosocial video games and listening to prosocial
music lyrics (Gentile et al., 2009; Greitemeyer et al., 2010; Prot et al., 2014). For
example, playing Lemmings, where the goal is to help others, increases later real-life
empathy and helping in response to another’s misfortune (Greitemeyer & Osswald, 2010;
“Children can learn to be
altruistic, friendly, and self-
controlled by looking at
television programs depicting
such behavior patterns.”
—National Institute of Mental
Health,
Television and Behavior, 1982
Helping Chapter 12 385
Greitemeyer et al., 2010). Listening to prosocial songs, such as Michael
Jackson’s “Heal the World,” made listeners more likely to help someone
pick up dropped pencils and less likely to say harsh things about a job
candidate or give someone a large dose of disliked chili sauce (Greite-
meyer, 2009a,b, 2011).
LEARNING BY DOING
Ervin Staub (2005b, 2015) has shown that just as immoral behavior fuels
immoral attitudes, helping increases future helping. Children and adults learn
by doing. In a series of studies with children near age 12, Staub and his
students found that after children were induced to make toys for hospitalized
children or for an art teacher, they became more helpful. So were children
after teaching younger children to make puzzles or use first aid.
When children act helpfully, they develop helping-related values,
beliefs, and skills, notes Staub. Helping also helps satisfy their needs for
a positive self-concept. On a larger scale, “service learning” and volunteer
programs woven into a school curriculum have been shown to increase
later citizen involvement, social responsibility, cooperation, and leader-
ship (Andersen, 1998; Putnam, 2000). Attitudes follow behavior. Helpful
actions therefore promote the self-perception that one is caring and help-
ful. And that compassionate positive self-perception in turn promotes
further helping.
Behavior and Attitudes Among Rescuers of Jews
focus
ON
Goodness, like evil, often evolves in small steps. The
Gentiles who saved Jews often began with a small com-
mitment—to hide someone for a day or two. Having
taken that step, they began to see themselves differ-
ently, as people who help. Then they became more in-
tensely involved. Given control of a confiscated
Jewish-owned factory, Oskar Schindler began by doing
small favors for his Jewish workers, who were earning
him handsome profits. Gradually, he took greater and
greater risks to protect them. He got permission to set
up workers’ housing next to the factory. He rescued indi-
viduals separated from their families and reunited loved
ones. Finally, as the Russians advanced, he saved some
1,200 Jews by setting up a fake factory in his hometown
and taking along his entire group of “skilled workers” to
staff it.
Others, such as Raoul Wallenberg, began by agreeing
to a personal request for help and ended up repeatedly
risking their lives. Wallenberg became Swedish ambassa-
dor to Hungary, where he saved tens of thousands of
Hungarian Jews from extermination at Auschwitz. One of
those given protective identity papers was 6-year-old
Ervin Staub, who became a University of Massachusetts
social psychologist whose experience set him on a
lifelong mission to understand why some people perpe-
trate evil, some stand by, and some help.
Munich, 1948. Oskar Schindler with some of the Jews he saved
from the Nazis during World War II.
Source: Leopold Page Photographic Collection, Courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives
Children who help usually learn to like helping and
are more likely to be helpful in the future.
©Eric Audras/SuperStock
386 Part Three Social Relations
ATTRIBUTING HELPFUL BEHAVIOR TO ALTRUISTIC MOTIVES
Another clue to socializing altruism comes from research on the overjustification effect:
When the justification for an act is more than sufficient, the person may attribute their act
to the extrinsic justification rather than to an inner motive. For example, if you pay a child
to help you in the kitchen, she might come to believe she helped for the money rather than
because she wanted to. Rewarding people for doing what they would do anyway therefore
undermines intrinsic motivation. We can state the principle positively: By providing people
with just enough justification to prompt a good deed (weaning them from bribes and
threats), we may increase their pleasure in doing such deeds on their own.
Daniel Batson and associates (1978, 1979) put the overjustification phenomenon to
work. In several experiments, they found that University of Kansas students felt most altru-
istic after they agreed to help someone without payment or implied social pressure. When
pay had been offered or social pressures were present, people felt less altruistic after
helping.
In another experiment, the researchers led students to attribute a helpful act to compli-
ance (“I guess we really don’t have a choice”) or to compassion (“The guy really needs
help”). Later, when the students were asked to volunteer their time to a local service agency,
25% of those who had been led to perceive their previous helpfulness as mere compliance
now volunteered; of those led to see themselves as compassionate, 60% volunteered. The
moral? When people wonder, “Why am I helping?” it’s best if the circumstances enable
them to answer, “Because help was needed, and I am a caring, giving, helpful person.”
To predispose more people to help in situations in which most don’t, it can also pay to
induce a tentative positive commitment, from which people may infer their own helpfulness.
Delia Cioffi and Randy Garner (1998) observed that only about 5% of students responded
to a campus blood drive after receiving an e-mail announcement a week ahead. They asked
other students to reply to the announcement with a yes “if you think you probably will
donate.” Of those, 29% did reply and the actual donation rate was 8%. They asked a third
group to reply with a no if they did not anticipate donating. Now 71% implied they might
give (by not replying). Imagine yourself in this third group. Might you have decided not to
say no because, after all, you are a caring person so there’s a chance you might give? And
might that thought have opened you to persuasion as you encountered campus posters and
flyers during the ensuing week? That apparently is what happened, because 12% of these
students—more than twice the normal rate—showed up to offer their blood.
Inferring that one is a helpful person seems also to have happened when Dariusz
Dolinski (2000) stopped pedestrians on the streets of Wroclaw, Poland, and asked them
for directions to a nonexistent “Zubrzyckiego Street” or to an illegible address. Everyone
tried unsuccessfully to help. After doing so, about two-thirds (twice the number of those
not given the opportunity to try to help) agreed when asked by someone 100 meters farther
down the road to watch their bag or bicycle for 5 minutes.
LEARNING ABOUT ALTRUISM
Researchers have found another way to boost altruism, one that provides a happy chapter
conclusion. Some social psychologists worry that as people become more aware of social
psychology’s findings, their behavior may change, thus invalidating the findings (Gergen,
1982). Will learning about the factors that inhibit altruism reduce their influence? Philip
Zimbardo, whose “Heroism Project” aims to strengthen people’s courage and compassion,
contends that the first step to becoming a hero is recognizing social pressures that might
deter your bystander action (Miller, 2011).
Experiments with University of Montana students by Arthur Beaman and colleagues
(1978) revealed that once people understand why the presence of bystanders inhibits help-
ing, they become more likely to help in group situations. The researchers used a lecture
to inform some students how bystander inaction can affect the interpretation of an emer-
gency and feelings of responsibility. Other students heard either a different lecture or no
lecture at all. Two weeks later, as part of a different experiment in a different location,
the participants found themselves walking (with an unresponsive confederate) past
overjustification effect
The result of bribing people to
do what they already like doing;
they may then see their actions
as externally controlled rather
than intrinsically appealing.
Helping Chapter 12 387
someone slumped over or past a person sprawled beneath a bicycle. Of those who had
not heard the helping lecture, one-fourth paused to offer help; twice as many of those
“enlightened” did so.
Having read this chapter, perhaps you, too, have changed. As you come to understand
what influences people’s responses, will your attitudes and your behavior be the same?
Research suggests that we can enhance helpfulness in
three ways.
▯ First, we can reverse those factors that inhibit helping.
We can take steps to reduce the ambiguity of an emer-
gency, to make a personal appeal, and to increase feel-
ings of responsibility.
▯ Second, we can teach altruism. Research into televi-
sion’s portrayals of prosocial models shows the medi-
um’s power to teach positive behavior. Children who
view helpful behavior tend to act helpfully. If we want to
promote altruistic behavior, we should remember the
overjustification effect: When we coerce good deeds,
intrinsic love of the activity often diminishes. If we
provide people with enough justification for them to
decide to do good, but not much more, they will attri-
bute their behavior to their own altruistic motivation
and henceforth be more willing to help. Learning about
altruism, as you have just done, can also prepare people
to perceive and respond to others’ needs.
SUMMING UP: How Can We Increase Helping?
POSTSCRIPT:
Taking Social Psychology into Life
Those of us who research, teach, and write about social psychology do so believing that
our work matters. It engages humanly significant phenomena. Studying social psychology
can therefore expand our thinking and prepare us to live and act with greater awareness
and compassion, or so we presume.
How good it feels, then, when students and former students confirm our presumptions
with stories of how they have related social psychology to their lives. As it turns out, both
of us authors have had this experience. After I [JT] taught a social psychology class about
this research, a student e-mailed me to say he’d seen a young woman collapse right outside
the classroom. Remembering from the lecture that no one else might help, he called 911
and stayed with her. Shortly before I [DM] wrote the last paragraph, a former student, now
living in Washington, D.C., stopped by. She mentioned that she recently found herself part
of a stream of pedestrians striding past a man lying unconscious on the sidewalk. “It took
my mind back to our social psych class and the accounts of why people fail to help in such
situations. Then I thought, ‘Well, if I just walk by, too, who’s going to help him?’” So she
made a call to an emergency help number and waited with the victim—and other bystanders
who now joined her—until help arrived.
©MATJAZ SLANIC/iStock/Getty Images
13
Conflict and
Peacemaking
C H A P T E R
What creates
conflict?
How can peace be
achieved?
Postscript: The
conflict between
individual and
communal rights
There is a speech that has been spoken in many languages by the leaders of many countries. It goes like this: “The intentions of our country are entirely
peaceful. But other nations threaten us. Thus we must defend ourselves against
attack. By so doing, we shall protect our way of life and preserve the peace”
( Richardson, 1960). Almost every nation claims concern only for peace but, mistrust-
ing other nations, arms itself in self-defense. The result is a world that has been
spending nearly $5 billion per day on arms and armies while millions die of
malnutrition and untreated disease (SIPRI, 2017).
The elements of such conflict (a perceived incompatibility of actions or goals)
are similar at many levels, from nations to individuals. People in conflict perceive
that one side’s gain is the other’s loss:
“If you want peace, work for justice.”
—Pope Paul VI, Message for the Celebration of the Day of Peace, 1972
Conflict and Peacemaking Chapter 13 389
• “We want peace and security.” “So do
we, but you threaten us.”
• “We want more pay.” “We can’t afford it.”
• “I’d like the music off.” “I’d like it on.”
An organization or a relationship with-
out conflict is probably apathetic. Conflict
signifies involvement, commitment, and
caring. If conflict is understood and recog-
nized, it can end oppression and stimulate
renewed relationships. Without conflict,
people seldom face and resolve their
problems.
Genuine peace is more than the sup-
pression of open conflict, more than a
fragile, superficial calm. Peace is the out-
come of a creatively managed conflict.
Peace is the parties reconciling their per-
ceived differences and reaching genuine accord. “We got our increased pay. You
got your increased profit. Now each of us is helping the other achieve the organi-
zation’s goals.”
WHAT CREATES CONFLICT?
Explain what creates conflict.
Social-psychological studies have identified several ingredients of conflict. What’s striking
(and what simplifies our task) is that these ingredients are common to all levels of social
conflict, whether intergroup (us versus them) or interpersonal (me versus us).
Social Dilemmas
Many problems that threaten our future—nuclear arms, climate change, overpopulation, low
stocks of ocean fish—arise as various parties pursue their self-interests—but, ironically, to
their collective detriment. One individual may think, “It would cost me a lot to buy expen-
sive greenhouse emission controls. Besides, the greenhouse gases I personally generate are
trivial.” Many others reason similarly, and the result is a warming climate, melting ice cover,
rising seas, and more extreme weather.
When individually rewarding choices become collectively punishing, we have a dilemma:
How can we reconcile individual self-interest with communal well-being?
To isolate and study that dilemma, social psychologists have used laboratory games that
expose the heart of many real social conflicts. “Social psychologists who study conflict are
in much the same position as the astronomers,” noted conflict researcher Morton Deutsch
(1999). “We cannot conduct true experiments with large-scale social events. But we can
identify the conceptual similarities between the large scale and the small, as the astronomers
have between the planets and Newton’s apple. That is why the games people play as subjects
in our laboratory may advance our understanding of war, peace, and social justice.”
Let’s consider two examples of a social trap (a situation when conflicting parties are
caught in mutually destructive behavior): the Prisoner’s Dilemma and the Tragedy of the
Commons.
social trap
A situation in which the
conflicting parties, by each
rationally pursuing its self-
interest, become caught in
mutually destructive behavior.
Examples include the Prisoner’s
Dilemma and the Tragedy of the
Commons.
As civil rights leaders know, cre-
atively managed conflicts can
have constructive outcomes.
©ANONYMOUS/AP Images
conflict
A perceived incompatibility
of actions or goals.
peace
A condition marked by low
levels of hostility and
aggression and by mutually
beneficial relationships.
390 Part Three Social Relations
THE PRISONER’S DILEMMA
The prisoner’s dilemma originated from a story about two suspects questioned separately
by the district attorney (DA), the lawyer who can bring charges against suspects (Rapoport,
1960). The DA knows they are jointly guilty but has only enough evidence to convict them
of a lesser offense. So the DA creates an incentive for each one to confess privately:
▯ If Prisoner A confesses and Prisoner B doesn’t, the DA will grant immunity to A
and will use A’s confession to convict B of a maximum offense (and vice versa if B
confesses and A doesn’t).
▯ If both confess, each will receive a moderate sentence.
▯ If neither prisoner confesses, each will be convicted of a lesser crime and receive a
light sentence.
The matrix of Figure 1 summarizes the choices. If you were a prisoner faced with such
a dilemma, with no chance to talk to the other prisoner, would you confess?
Many people say they would confess, even though mutual nonconfession elicits lighter
sentences than mutual confession. Perhaps this is because (as shown in the Figure 1 matrix)
no matter what the other prisoner decides, each is better off confessing than being con-
victed individually.
University students have considered variations of the Prisoner’s Dilemma in lab experi-
ments, with the choices being to defect (choosing not to cooperate) or to cooperate, and the
outcomes being chips, money, or grade points. As Figure 2 illustrates, on any given decision,
a person is better off defecting (because such behavior exploits the other’s cooperation or
protects against the other’s exploitation). However—and here’s the rub—by not cooperating,
both parties end up far worse off than if they had trusted each other and thus had gained a
joint profit. This dilemma often traps each one in a maddening predicament in which both
realize they could mutually profit. But unable to communicate, and mistrusting each other,
they often become “locked in” to not cooperating. Outside the university, examples abound:
seemingly intractable and costly conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians over borders,
political parties over taxation and deficits, and employers and striking employees over pay.
Punishing another’s lack of cooperation might seem like a smart strategy, but in the
laboratory it can be counterproductive (Dreber et al., 2008). Punishment typically triggers
retaliation, which means that those who punish tend to escalate conflict, worsening their
outcomes, while nice guys finish first. What punishers see as a defensive reaction, recipients
FIGURE 1
The Classic Prisoner’s
Dilemma
In each box, the number above
the diagonal is prisoner A’s
outcome. Thus, if both prisoners
confess, both get five years. If
neither confesses, each gets a
year. If one confesses, that
prisoner is set free in exchange
for evidence used to convict the
other of a crime bringing a
10-year sentence. If you were
one of the prisoners, unable to
communicate with your fellow
prisoner, would you confess?
Confesses
Doesn’t
confess
5 years 0 years
0 years 1 year
5 years 10 years
10 years 1 year
Confesses
Doesn’t
confess
Prisoner B
Prisoner A
Conflict and Peacemaking Chapter 13 391
see as an aggressive escalation (Anderson et al., 2008). When hitting back, they may hit
harder while seeing themselves as merely returning tit for tat. In one experiment, volunteers
used a mechanical device to press back on someone else’s finger after receiving pressure
on their own. Although they tried to reciprocate with the same degree of pressure, they
typically responded with 40% more force. Thus, touches soon escalated to hard presses,
much like a child saying “I just touched him, and then he hit me!” (Shergill et al., 2003).
THE TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS
Many social dilemmas involve more than two parties. Climate change stems from deforesta-
tion and from the carbon dioxide emitted by vehicles, furnaces, and coal-fired power plants.
Each car contributes infinitesimally to the problem, and the harm is diffused over many
people. To model such social predicaments, researchers have developed laboratory dilemmas
that involve multiple people.
A metaphor for the insidious nature of social dilemmas is what ecologist Garrett Hardin
(1968) called the Tragedy of the Commons. He derived the name from the centrally located
grassy pasture in old English towns. Imagine 100 farmers surrounding a commons capable
of sustaining 100 cows. When each grazes one cow, the common feeding ground is opti-
mally used. But then a farmer reasons, “If I put a second cow in the pasture, I’ll double
my output, minus the mere 1% overgrazing” and adds a second cow. So does each of the
other farmers. The inevitable result? The Tragedy of the Commons—a mud field and fam-
ished cows.
In today’s world the “commons” can be air, water, fish, cookies, or any shared and
limited resource. If all use the resource in moderation, it may replenish itself as rapidly as
it’s harvested. The grass will grow, the fish will reproduce, and the cookie jar will be
restocked. If not, there occurs a tragedy of the commons.
Likewise, environmental pollution is the sum of many minor pollutions, each of which
benefits the individual polluters much more than they could benefit themselves (and the
environment) if they stopped polluting. We litter public places—dorm lounges, parks, zoos—
while keeping our personal spaces clean. We deplete our natural resources because the
immediate personal benefits of, for instance, taking a long, hot shower outweigh the seem-
ingly inconsequential costs. Whalers knew others would exploit the whales if they didn’t,
and that taking a few whales would hardly diminish the species. Therein lies the tragedy.
Everybody’s business (conservation) becomes nobody’s business.
Is such individualism uniquely American? Kaori Sato (1987) gave students in a more
collective culture, Japan, opportunities to harvest—for actual money—trees from a simulated
Tragedy of the Commons
The “commons” is any shared
resource, including air, water,
energy sources, and food
supplies. The tragedy occurs
when individuals consume more
than their share, with the cost of
their doing so dispersed among
all, causing the ultimate
collapse—the tragedy—of the
commons.
FIGURE 2
Laboratory Version of
the Prisoner’s Dilemma
The numbers represent some
reward, such as money. In each
box, the number above the
diagonal lines is the outcome
for person A. Unlike the classic
Prisoner’s Dilemma (a one-shot
decision), most laboratory
versions involve repeated plays.
Response 1
(defect)
Response 2
(cooperate)
0 –6
12 6
0 12
–6 6
Response 1
(defect)
Response 2
(cooperate)
P
er
so
n
B
Person A
392 Part Three Social Relations
forest. The students shared equally the costs of planting the forest.
The result was like those in Western cultures. More than half
the trees were harvested before they had grown to the most profit-
able size.
Sato’s forest reminds me [DM] of my family’s cookie jar, which
was restocked once a week. What we should have done was con-
serve cookies so that each day we could each enjoy two or three.
But lacking regulation and fearing that other family members would
soon deplete the resource, what we actually did was maximize our
individual cookie consumption by downing one after the other. The
result: Within 24 hours the cookie glut would end, the jar sitting
empty for the rest of the week.
When resources are not partitioned, people often consume more
than they realize (Herlocker et al., 1997). As a bowl of mashed
potatoes is passed around a table of 10, the first few diners are
more likely to scoop out a disproportionate share than when a
platter of 10 chicken drumsticks is passed.
The Prisoner’s Dilemma and the Tragedy of the Commons
games have several similar features.
THE FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR
First, both games tempt people to explain their own behavior situation-
ally (“I had to protect myself against exploitation by my opponent”)
and to explain their partners’ behavior dispositionally (“she was
greedy,” “he was untrustworthy”). Most never realize that their coun-
terparts are viewing them with the same fundamental attribution
error (Gifford & Hine, 1997; Hine & Gifford, 1996).
When Muslims have killed Americans, Western media have attributed the killings to evil
dispositions—to the primitive, fanatical, hateful terrorists. When an American soldier killed
16 Afghans, including 9 children, he was said to be experiencing financial stress, suffering
marital problems, and frustrated by being passed over for a promotion (Greenwald, 2012).
Violence explanations vary by whether the act is by or toward one’s side.
EVOLVING MOTIVES
Second, motives often change. At first, people are eager to make some easy money, then to
minimize their losses, and finally to save face and avoid defeat (Brockner et al., 1982; Teger,
1980). These shifting motives are strikingly similar to the shifting motives during the
buildup of the 1960s Vietnam War. At first, President Johnson’s speeches expressed con-
cern for democracy, freedom, and justice. As the conflict escalated, his concern became
protecting America’s honor and avoiding the national humiliation of losing a war. The same
happened in the Iraq war, which initially was justified as destroying Saddam Hussein’s
weapons of mass destruction and then (when none were found) as deposing Hussein.
OUTCOMES NEED NOT SUM TO ZERO
Third, most real-life conflicts, like the Prisoner’s Dilemma and the Tragedy of the Commons,
are non-zero-sum games. The two sides’ profits and losses need not add up to zero. Both
can win; both can lose. Each game pits the immediate interests of individuals against the
well-being of the group. Each is a diabolical social trap that shows how, even when each
individual behaves rationally, harm can result. No malicious person planned for the earth’s
atmosphere to be warmed by a carbon dioxide blanket.
Not all self-serving behavior leads to collective doom. In a plentiful commons—as in the
world of the eighteenth-century capitalist economist Adam Smith (1776, p. 18)—individuals
who seek to maximize their own profit may also give the community what it needs: “It is
not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our
dinner,” he observed, “but from their regard to their own interest.”
non-zero-sum games
Games in which outcomes
need not sum to zero. With
cooperation, both can win; with
competition, both can lose (also
called mixed-motive situations).
It’s tempting to hoard a resource that other people will also
want. But if everyone hoards, the resource is soon depleted.
You’re not going to be able to carry all of those cookies
anyway.
©Corbis Premium/Alamy Stock Photo
Conflict and Peacemaking Chapter 13 393
RESOLVING SOCIAL DILEMMAS
In real-life situations, many people approach commons dilemmas with a cooperative outlook
and expect similar cooperation from others, thus enabling their collective betterment (Krueger
et al., 2012; Ostrom, 2014). Research with laboratory dilemmas has identified several ways to
further encourage such mutual betterment (Gifford & Hine, 1997; Nowak, 2012).
REGULATION If taxes were entirely voluntary, how many would pay their full share?
Modern societies do not depend on charity to pay for schools, parks, and social and military
security. We also develop rules to safeguard our common good. Fishing and hunting have
long been regulated by local seasons and limits; at the global level, an International Whaling
Commission sets an agreed-upon “harvest” that enables whales to regenerate. Likewise,
where fishing industries, such as the Alaskan halibut fishery, have implemented “catch
shares”—guaranteeing each fisher a percentage of each year’s allowable catch—overfishing
has been greatly reduced (Costello et al., 2008).
In everyday life, however, regulation has costs—costs of administering and enforcing the
regulations, costs of diminished personal freedom. A volatile political question thus arises:
At what point does a regulation’s cost exceed its benefits?
SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL There is another way to resolve social dilemmas: Make the group
small. In a small commons, each person feels more responsible and effective (Kerr, 1989).
As a group grows larger, people become more likely to think, “I couldn’t have made a dif-
ference anyway”—a common excuse for noncooperation (Kerr & Kaufman-Gilliland, 1997).
In small groups, people also feel more identified with a group’s success. Residential
stability—when the same families stay in a neighborhood—also strengthens communal iden-
tity and procommunity behavior (Oishi et al., 2007). On the Pacific Northwest island where
I [DM] grew up, our small neighborhood shared a communal water supply. On hot summer
days when the reservoir ran low, a light came on, signaling our 15 families to conserve.
Recognizing our responsibility to one another, and feeling that our conservation really mat-
tered, each of us conserved. The reservoir never ran dry.
In a much larger commons—say, a city—voluntary conservation is less successful. As
Cape Town was facing becoming the world’s first major city to run out of water in 2018,
its nearly 4 million people were admonished to take extreme measures to conserve. Yet it
was easy for any individual to think, “my flushing the toilet or taking a shower won’t make
“Like the old buffalo hunters,
fishermen have a personal
incentive to make as much as
they can this year, even if
they’re destroying their own
profession in the process.”
—John Tierney,
“Where the Tuna Roam,” 2006
“For that which is common to
the greatest number has the
least care bestowed upon it.”
—Aristotle (BC 384–322)
Small is cooperative. On Scotland’s Isle of Muck, Constable Lawrence MacEwan has had an easy time policing
the island’s 33 residents. Over his 40 years on the job, there was never a crime (Scottish Life, 2001). In 2010, a
row between two friends who had been drinking at a wedding became the first recorded crime in 50 years,
but the next morning, they shook hands and all was well (Cameron, 2010). In 2015, the nearby island of Canna
experienced its “crime of the century” (its first crime since the 1960s) when thieves stole crafts, food, and
money from its shop. The shop was left unlocked so that fishing people resting at the pier overnight could buy
what they needed, paying via an “honesty box.”
©Catherine Karnow
394 Part Three Social Relations
a noticeable difference in the city’s reservoir.” Thus, residents and businesses did not con-
serve as much as anticipated, hastening the reservoir depletion (Maxmen, 2018).
Evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar (1992, 2010) notes that tribal villages and clans
often have averaged about 150 people—enough to afford mutual support and protection but
not more people than one can monitor. This seemingly natural group size is also, he
believes, the optimum size for business organizations, religious congregations, and military
fighting units.
COMMUNICATION To resolve a social dilemma, people must communicate. In the labo-
ratory as in real life, group communication sometimes degenerates into threats and name-
calling (Deutsch & Krauss, 1960). More often, communication enables cooperation
(Bornstein et al., 1988, 1989). Discussing the dilemma forges a group identity, which
enhances concern for everyone’s welfare. It devises group norms and expectations and
pressures members to follow them. It enables them to commit themselves to cooperation
(Bouas & Komorita, 1996; Drolet & Morris, 2000; Kerr et al., 1994, 1997; Pruitt, 1998).
Humans, thanks to full-blown language, are the most cooperative, reciprocally helpful
species (Nowak, 2012).
A clever experiment by researcher Robyn Dawes (1980a, 1994) illustrates the importance
of communication. Imagine that an experimenter offered you and six strangers a choice:
You can each have $6, or you can donate your $6 to the other six. If you give away your
money, the experimenter will double your gift. No one will be told whether you chose to
give or keep your $6. Thus, if all seven give, everyone pockets $12. If you alone keep your
$6 and all the others give theirs, you pocket $18. If you give and all the others don’t, you
pocket nothing. In this experiment, cooperation is mutually advantageous, but it requires
risk. Dawes found that, without discussion, about 30% of people gave. With discussion, in
which they could establish trust and cooperation, about 80% gave.
Open, clear, forthright communication between two parties reduces mistrust. Without
communication, those who expect others not to cooperate will usually refuse to cooperate
themselves (Messé & Sivacek, 1979; Pruitt & Kimmel, 1977). One who mistrusts is almost
sure to be uncooperative (to protect against exploitation). Noncooperation, in turn, feeds
further mistrust (“What else could I do? It’s a dog-eat-dog world”). In experiments,
communication reduces mistrust, enabling people to reach agreements that lead to their
common betterment.
CHANGING THE PAYOFFS Laboratory cooperation rises when experimenters change
the payoff matrix to reward cooperation and punish exploitation (Balliet et al., 2011).
Changing payoffs also helps resolve actual
dilemmas. In some cities, freeways clog and
skies smog because people prefer the conve-
nience of driving to work by themselves. Each
knows that one more car does not add notice-
ably to the congestion and pollution. To alter
the personal cost-benefit calculations, many
cities now give carpoolers and electric cars
incentives, such as designated freeway lanes or
reduced tolls.
APPEALING TO ALTRUISTIC NORMS We
have seen that increasing bystanders’ feelings of
responsibility for others boosts altruism. Will
appeals to altruistic motives similarly prompt
people to act for the common good?
The evidence is mixed. On the one hand, just
knowing the dire consequences of noncoopera-
tion has little effect. People may realize that their
self-serving choices are mutually destructive, yet
continue to make them. People know that
“My own belief is that Russian
and Chinese behavior is as
much influenced by suspicion
of our intentions as ours is by
suspicion of theirs. This would
mean that we have great influ-
ence on their behavior—that,
by treating them as hostile, we
assure their hostility.”
—U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright,
A New Internationalism, 1971
To change behavior, many cities have changed the payoff matrix. Fast carpool-only lanes
increase the benefits of carpooling and clean air vehicles, and the costs of driving alone.
©Ted Foxx/Alamy Stock Photo
Conflict and Peacemaking Chapter 13 395
climate change is under way, yet continue buy-
ing gas-slurping SUVs. As we have seen many
times in this book, attitudes sometimes fail to
influence behavior. Knowing what is good does
not necessarily lead to doing what is good.
Still, most people do adhere to norms of
social responsibility, reciprocity, equity, and
keeping one’s commitments (Kerr, 1992). The
problem is how to tap such feelings. One way
is through the influence of a charismatic leader
who inspires others to cooperate (De Cremer,
2002). In China, those who were educated dur-
ing Mao’s “planned economy” era—an era that
emphasized equal wealth distribution—make
more cooperative social dilemma game choices
than those who were not (Zhu et al., 2013).
Another way is by defining situations in ways
that invoke cooperative norms. In one experi-
ment, only a third of participants cooperated in
a simulation labeled the “Wall Street Game.”
Two-thirds did so when the same social dilemma
was labeled the “Community Game” (Liberman et al., 2004).
Communication can also activate altruistic norms. When permitted to communicate,
participants in laboratory games frequently appeal to the social-responsibility norm: “If
you defect on the rest of us, you’re going to have to live with it for the rest of your life”
(Dawes et al., 1977). So Robyn Dawes (1980a) and his associates gave participants a short
sermon about group benefits, exploitation, and ethics. Then the participants played a
dilemma game. The sermon worked: People chose to forgo immediate personal gain for
the common good.
Could such appeals work in large-scale dilemmas? In the 1960s struggle for civil rights,
many marchers willingly agreed, for the sake of the larger group, to suffer harassment,
beatings, and jail. In wartime, people make great personal sacrifices for the good of their
group. As Winston Churchill said of the Battle of Britain, the actions of the Royal Air
Force pilots were genuinely altruistic: A great many people owed a great deal to those who
flew into battle knowing there was a high probability—70% for those on a standard tour of
duty—that they would not return (Levinson, 1950).
To summarize, we can minimize destructive entrapment in social dilemmas by establish-
ing rules that regulate self-serving behavior, by keeping groups small, by enabling people to
communicate, by changing payoffs to make cooperation more rewarding, and by invoking
compelling altruistic norms.
Competition
Hostilities often arise when groups compete for scarce jobs, housing, or
resources. When interests clash, conf lict erupts. Feeling threatened, such
as by economic or terrorist threats, predicts Dutch citizens’ increased
right-wing authoritarianism (Onraet et al., 2014). London terrorist bomb-
ings similarly increased British anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiments
(Van de Vyver et al., 2016). Even perceived distant threats—from another
ethnic group’s population growth or a pandemic disease—can increase
people’s intolerance (Beall et al., 2016; Bouman et al., 2015). Moreover, not only do
perceived threats feed prejudice and conf lict, prejudice—in a vicious cycle—also amplifies
the perception of a threat (Bahns, 2017).
To experiment on competition’s effect, we could randomly divide people into two groups,
have the groups compete for a scarce resource, and note what happens. That is precisely
what Muzafer Sherif (1966) and his colleagues did in a famous series of experiments with
“Never in the field of human
conflict was so much owed by
so many to so few.”
—Sir Winston Churchill,
House of Commons,
August 20, 1940
Perceived
threat
Prejudice
+
Conflict
Norms and expectations matter: Cooperation is not usually emphasized on the stock
market trading floor, but is in many community groups and other workplaces.
©Geber86/Getty Images
396 Part Three Social Relations
typical 11- and 12-year-old boys. The inspiration for those experiments dated back to Sherif’s
witnessing, as a teenager, Greek troops invading his Turkish province in 1919.
They started killing people right and left. [That] made a great impression on me. There and
then I became interested in understanding why these things were happening among human
beings. . . . I wanted to learn whatever science or specialization was needed to understand this
intergroup savagery. (Quoted by Aron & Aron, 1989, p. 131.)
After studying the social roots of savagery, Sherif introduced the seeming essentials into
several three-week summer camping experiences. In one study, he divided 22 unacquainted
Oklahoma City boys into two groups, took them to a Boy Scout camp in separate buses,
and settled them in bunkhouses about a half-mile apart at Oklahoma’s Robber’s Cave State
Park. For most of the first week, each group was unaware of the other’s existence. By coop-
erating in various activities—preparing meals, camping out, fixing up a swimming hole, build-
ing a rope bridge—each group soon became close-knit. They gave themselves names: “Rattlers”
and “Eagles.” Typifying the good feeling, a sign appeared in one cabin: “Home Sweet Home.”
Group identity thus established, the stage was set for the conflict. Near the first week’s
end, the Rattlers discovered the Eagles “on ‘our’ baseball field.” When the camp staff then
proposed a tournament of competitive activities between the two groups (baseball games,
tugs-of-war, cabin inspections, treasure hunts, and so forth), both groups responded enthu-
siastically. This was win-lose competition. The spoils (medals, knives) would all go to the
tournament victor.
The result? The camp degenerated into open warfare. It was like a scene from William
Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies, which depicts the social disintegration of boys marooned
on an island. In Sherif’s study, the conflict began with each side calling the other names
during the competitive activities. Soon it escalated to dining hall “garbage wars,” flag burn-
ings, cabin ransackings, even fistfights. Asked to describe the other group, the boys said
they were “sneaky,” “smart alecks,” “stinkers,” but referring to their own group as “brave,”
“tough,” “friendly.” It was a tough experience, driving some of the boys to bedwetting, run-
ning away, homesickness, and later recollections of an unhappy experience (Perry, 2014).
The win-lose competition had produced intense conflict, negative images of the out-
group, and strong ingroup cohesiveness and pride. Group polarization no doubt exacerbated
the conflict. In competition-fostering situations, groups behave more competitively than do
individuals (Wildschut et al., 2003, 2007). Even after hearing tolerance-advocating mes-
sages, ingroup discussion often exacerbates dislike of the conflicting group (Paluck, 2010).
All this occurred without any cultural, physical, or economic differences between the
two groups, and with boys who were their communities’ “cream of the crop.” Sherif noted
that, had we visited the camp at that point, we would have concluded these “were wicked,
disturbed, and vicious bunches of youngsters” (1966, p. 85). Actually, their evil behavior
was triggered by an evil situation. Fortunately, as we will see, Sherif not only made strang-
ers into enemies; he then also made the enemies into friends.
Little-known fact: How did
Sherif unobtrusively observe
the boys without inhibiting their
behavior? He became the camp
maintenance man (Williams,
2002). Critics contend that
Sherif and his team
encouraged the conflict to
confirm their expectations
about the toxicity of
competition and the benefits of
cooperation (Perry, 2018).
Competition kindles conflict. In
competition-fostering situations,
groups act more competitively,
as in this raid, than do
individuals.
Source: Muzafer Sherif
Conflict and Peacemaking Chapter 13 397
Perceived Injustice
“That’s unfair!” “What a ripoff!” “We deserve better!” Such comments typify conflicts bred
by perceived injustice.
But what is “justice”? According to some social-psychological theorists, people perceive
justice as equity—the distribution of rewards in proportion to individuals’ contributions
(Starmans et al., 2017; Walster et al., 1978). If you and “Jamie” have a relationship
(employer–employee, teacher–student, husband–wife, colleague–colleague), it is equitable if
Your outcomes
=
Jamie’s outcomes
Your inputs Jamie’s inputs
If you contribute more and benefit less than Jamie does, you will feel exploited and irritated;
Jamie may feel exploitative and guilty. Chances are, though, that you will be more sensitive
to the inequity than Jamie will be (Greenberg, 1986; Messick & Sentis, 1979).
We may agree with the equity principle’s definition of justice yet disagree on whether
our relationship is equitable. If two people are colleagues, what will each consider a relevant
input? The older person may favor basing pay on seniority, the younger on current produc-
tivity. Given such a disagreement, whose definition is likely to prevail? Those with social
power usually convince themselves and others that they deserve what they’re getting (Gui-
note, 2017; Mikula, 1984). This has been called a “golden” rule: Whoever has the gold
makes the rules.
Critics argue that equity is not the only conceivable definition of justice. (Pause a
moment: Can you imagine any other?) Edward Sampson (1975) argued that equity theorists
wrongly assume that the economic principles that guide Western, capitalist nations are
universal. Some noncapitalist cultures define justice not as equity but as equality or even
fulfillment of need: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs”
(Karl Marx). Compared with individualistic Americans, children and adults socialized
under the influence of collectivist cultures, such as in China, India, and rural Africa, have
defined justice more as equality or need fulfillment (Hui et al., 1991; Leung & Bond, 1984;
Schäfer et al., 2015).
On what basis should rewards be distributed? Merit? Equality? Need? Some combination
of those? Political philosopher John Rawls (1971) invited us to consider a future in which our
own place on the economic ladder is unknown. Which standard of justice would we prefer?
Misperception
Recall that conflict is a perceived incompatibility of actions or goals. Many conflicts contain
but a small core of truly incompatible goals; the bigger problem is the misperceptions of
the other’s motives and goals. The Eagles and the Rattlers did indeed have some genuinely
incompatible aims. But their perceptions subjectively magnified their differences (Figure 3).
In earlier chapters we considered the seeds of such misperception:
▯ Self-serving bias leads individuals and groups to accept credit for their good deeds
and shirk responsibility for bad deeds.
▯ A tendency to self-justify inclines people to deny the wrong of their evil acts. (“You
call that hitting? I hardly touched him!”)
▯ Thanks to the fundamental attribution
error, each side sees the other’s hostility as
reflecting an evil disposition.
▯ One then filters the information and inter-
prets it to fit one’s preconceptions.
▯ Groups frequently polarize these self-
serving, self-justifying, biasing tendencies.
▯ One symptom of groupthink is the ten-
dency to perceive one’s own group as
moral and strong, and the opposition as
“Do unto others 25 percent
better than you would expect
them to do unto you, to cor-
rect for subjective error.”
—Linus Pauling, Response to
Audience Question at Monterey
Peninsula College, 1961
Equality = same outcomes
Equity = outcomes proportional
to people’s contributions
FIGURE 3
Many conflicts contain a
core of truly incompatible
goals surrounded by a
larger exterior of
misperceptions.
Misperceptions
True
incompatibility
398 Part Three Social Relations
evil and weak. Acts of terrorism that in most people’s eyes are despicable brutality
are seen by others as “holy war.”
▯ Indeed, the mere fact of being in a group triggers an ingroup bias.
▯ Negative stereotypes of the outgroup, once formed, are often resistant to contradic-
tory evidence.
So it should not surprise us, though it should sober us, to discover that people in conflict
form distorted images of one another. Wherever in the world you live, was it not true that
when your country was last at war it clothed itself in moral virtue? that it prepared for war
by demonizing the enemy? that most of its people accepted their government’s case for war
and rallied ’round its flag? Show social psychologists Ervin Staub and Daniel Bar-Tal (2003)
a group in intractable conflict and they will show you a group that
▯ sees its own goals as supremely important,
▯ takes pride in “us” and devalues “them,”
▯ believes itself victimized,
▯ elevates patriotism, solidarity, and loyalty to their group’s needs, and
▯ celebrates self-sacrifice, and
▯ suppresses criticism.
Although one side to a conflict may indeed be acting with greater moral virtue, the point
is that enemy images are predictable. Even the types of misperception are intriguingly
predictable.
MIRROR-IMAGE PERCEPTIONS
To a striking degree, the misperceptions of those in conflict are mutual. People in conflict
attribute similar virtues to themselves and vices to the other. When the American psycholo-
gist Urie Bronfenbrenner (1961) visited the Soviet Union in 1960 and conversed with many
ordinary citizens in Russian, he was astonished to hear them saying the same things about
America that Americans were saying about Russia. The Russians said that the U.S. govern-
ment was militarily aggressive; that it exploited and deluded the American people; that in
diplomacy, it was not to be trusted. “Slowly and painfully, it forced itself upon one that the
Russians’ distorted picture of us was curiously similar to our view of them—a mirror image.”
When two sides have clashing perceptions, at least one is misperceiving the other. And
when such misperceptions exist, noted Bronfenbrenner, “It is a psychological phenomenon
without parallel in the gravity of its consequences . . . for it is characteristic of such images
that they are self-confirming.” If A expects B to be hostile, A may treat B in such a way that
B fulfills A’s expectations, thus beginning a vicious circle (Kennedy & Pronin, 2008).
Morton Deutsch (1986) explained:
You hear the false rumor that a friend is saying nasty things about you; you snub him; he then
badmouths you, confirming your expectation. Similarly, if the policymakers of East and West
believe that war is likely and either attempts to increase its military security vis-à-vis the other,
the other’s response will justify the initial move.
Negative mirror-image perceptions have been an obstacle to peace in many places:
▯ Middle East perceptions. Both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict insisted that “we” are
motivated by our need to protect our security and our territory, whereas “they” want
to obliterate us and gobble up our land. “We” are the indigenous people here, “they”
are the invaders. “We” are the victims; “they” are the aggressors (Bar-Tal, 2004, 2013;
Heradstveit, 1979; Kelman, 2007). Given such intense mistrust, negotiation is difficult.
▯ What defines terrorism? Terrorism is in the eye of the beholder. In the Middle East, a
public opinion survey found 98% of Palestinians agreeing that the killing of 29 Pales-
tinians by an assault-rifle-bearing Israeli at a mosque constituted terrorism, and 82%
disagreed that the killing of 21 Israeli youths by a Palestinian suicide-bombing consti-
tuted terrorism (Kruglanski & Fishman, 2006). Israelis likewise have responded to
violence with intensified perceptions of Palestinian evil intent ( Bar-Tal, 2004, 2013).
“Aggression breeds patriotism,
and patriotism curbs dissent.”
—Maureen Dowd,
“The Iceman Cometh,” 2003
mirror-image perceptions
Reciprocal views of each other
often held by parties in conflict;
for example, each may view itself
as moral and peace-loving and
the other as evil and aggressive.
Conflict and Peacemaking Chapter 13 399
▯ Myside bias. People, regardless of their
intelligence, also display a myside bias.
In one experiment, American students were
much more likely to favor banning an
accident-prone German car from American
roads than a comparably accident-prone
American car from German roads
( Stanovich et al., 2013). Even torture seems
more morally justified when “we” rather
than “they” do it (Tarrant et al., 2012).
▯ Political polarization. In the polarized
United States, both Democrats and
Republicans see love and benevolence on
their side, and hatred and evil on the other
(Waytz et al., 2014).
Such conflicts, noted Philip Zimbardo (2004),
engage “a two-category world—of good people, like
US, and of bad people, like THEM.” “In fact,”
noted Daniel Kahneman and Jonathan Renshon
(2007), all the biases uncovered in 40 years of psychological research are conducive to war.
They “incline national leaders to exaggerate the evil intentions of adversaries, to misjudge
how adversaries perceive them, to be overly sanguine when hostilities start, and overly
reluctant to make necessary concessions in negotiations.”
Opposing sides in a conflict tend to exaggerate their differences. On issues related to
abortion and politics, partisans perceive exaggerated differences from their adversaries—who
actually agree with them more often than they guess (Chambers et al., 2006). On immigra-
tion and affirmative action, proponents aren’t as liberal and opponents aren’t as conserva-
tive as their adversaries suppose (Sherman et al., 2003). Opposing sides also tend to have
a “bias blind spot,” notes Cynthia McPherson Frantz (2006). They see their own under-
standings as not biased by their liking or disliking for others, but those who disagree with
them seem unfair and biased.
Group conflicts are often fueled by an illusion that the enemy’s top leaders are evil but
their people, though controlled and manipulated, are pro-us. This evil leader–good people per-
ception characterized Americans’ and Russians’ views of each other during the Cold War. The
United States entered the Vietnam War believing that in areas dominated by the Communist
Vietcong “terrorists,” many of the people were allies-in-waiting. As suppressed information later
revealed, those beliefs were mere wishful thinking. In 2003 the United States began the Iraq
war presuming the existence of “a vast underground network that would rise in support of
coalition forces to assist security and law enforcement” (Phillips, 2003). Alas, the network
didn’t materialize, and the resulting postwar security vacuum enabled looting, sabotage, and
persistent attacks on American forces. (See Research Close-Up: Misperceptions and War.)
SIMPLISTIC THINKING
When tension rises—as happens during an international crisis—rational thinking becomes
more difficult (Janis, 1989). Views of the enemy become more simplistic and stereotyped,
and seat-of-the-pants judgments become more likely. Even the mere expectation of conflict
can serve to freeze thinking and impede creative problem solving (Carnevale & Probst,
1998). Social psychologist Philip Tetlock (1988) observed inflexible thinking when he ana-
lyzed the complexity of Russian and American rhetoric since 1945. During the Berlin
blockade, the Korean War, and the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, political statements
became simplified into stark, good-versus-bad terms.
Researchers have also analyzed political rhetoric preceding the outset of major wars,
surprise military attacks, Middle Eastern conflicts, and revolutions (Conway et al., 2001).
In nearly every case, attacking leaders displayed increasingly simplistic we-are-good/they-
are-bad thinking immediately prior to their aggressive action. But shifts away from simplistic
“The American people are
good, but the leaders are bad.”
—Baghdad grocer Adul Gesan
after 1998 American bombing
of Iraq
Self-confirming, mirror-image perceptions are a hallmark of intense conflict.
©asiseeit/E+/Getty Images
400 Part Three Social Relations
rhetoric typically preceded new U.S.-Russian agreements, reported Tetlock. His optimism
was confirmed when President Reagan in 1988 traveled to Moscow to sign the American-
Russian intermediate-range nuclear force (INF) treaty, and then Gorbachev visited New York
and told the United Nations that he would remove 500,000 Soviet troops from Eastern
Europe:
I would like to believe that our hopes will be matched by our joint effort to put an end to an
era of wars, confrontation and regional conflicts, to aggressions against nature, to the terror
of hunger and poverty as well as to political terrorism. This is our common goal and we can
only reach it together.
SHIFTING PERCEPTIONS
If misperceptions accompany conflict, they should appear and disappear as conflicts wax
and wane. And they do, with startling regularity. The same processes that create the enemy’s
image can reverse that image when the enemy becomes an ally. Thus, the “bloodthirsty,
cruel, treacherous, buck-toothed little Japs” of World War II soon became—in North American
minds and in the media—our “intelligent, hard-working, self-disciplined, resourceful allies”
(Gallup, 1972).
The Germans, who after two world wars were hated, then admired, and then again hated,
were once again admired—apparently no longer plagued by what earlier was presumed to
be cruelty in their national character. So long as Iraq was attacking unpopular Iran, even
while using chemical weapons to massacre its own Kurds, many nations supported it. Our
enemy’s enemy is our friend. When Iraq ended its war with Iran and invaded oil-rich
Kuwait, Iraq’s behavior suddenly became “barbaric.” Images of our enemies change with
amazing ease.
Misperception and War
Most research that we report in this book offers numerical
data drawn from laboratory or survey observations of
people’s behavior, thoughts, and attitudes. But there are
other ways to do research. Some social psychologists,
especially in Europe, analyze natural human discourse;
they study written texts or spoken conversation to glimpse
how people interpret and construct the events of their
lives (Edwards & Potter, 2005). Others have analyzed
human behavior in historical contexts, as did Irving Janis
(1972) in exploring groupthink in historical fiascoes and
Philip Tetlock (2005) in exploring the judgment failures of
supposed political experts.
In what was arguably social psychology’s longest ca-
reer, Ralph K. White, legendary for his late 1930s studies
of democratic versus autocratic leadership (with pioneer-
ing social psychologists Kurt Lewin and Ronald Lippitt),
published in 2004—at age 97—a capstone article
summarizing his earlier analyses (1968, 1984, 1986) of how
misperceptions feed war. In reviewing 10 wars from the
past century, White reported that each was marked by at
least one of three misperceptions: underestimating the
strength of one’s enemy, rationalizing one’s own motives
and behavior, and, especially, demonizing the enemy.
Underestimating one’s adversary, he observed, em-
boldened Hitler to attack Russia, Japan to attack the
United States, and the United States to enter the Korean
and Vietnam wars. And rationalization of one’s own
actions and demonization of the adversary are the hall-
mark of war. In the early twenty-first century, as the
United States and Iraq talked of war, each said the other
was “evil.” To George W. Bush, Saddam Hussein was a
“murderous tyrant” and a “madman” who threatened
the civilized world with weapons of mass destruction. To
Iraq’s government, the Bush government was a “gang of
evil” (Preston, 2002). In 2017, Donald Trump and North
Korea’s Kim Jong-un were similarly hurling insults at
each other.
The truth need not lie midway between such clash-
ing perceptions. Yet “valid perception is an antidote to
hate,” concluded White as he reflected on his lifetime
as a peace psychologist. Empathy—accurately perceiv-
ing the other’s thoughts and feelings—is “one of the
most important factors for preventing war. . . . Empathy
can help two or more nations avoid the dangers of
misperception that lead to the wars most would prefer
not to fight.”
research
CLOSE-UP
Conflict and Peacemaking Chapter 13 401
The extent of misperceptions during conflict provides a chilling reminder that people
need not be insane or abnormally malicious to form distorted images of their antagonists.
When we experience conflict with another nation, another group, or simply a roommate
or a parent, we readily misperceive our own motives as good and the other’s as evil. And
just as readily, our antagonists form a mirror-image perception of us.
So, with antagonists trapped in a social dilemma, competing for scarce resources, or
perceiving injustice, the conflict continues until something enables both parties to peel away
their misperceptions and work at reconciling their actual differences. Good advice, then, is
this: When in conflict, do not assume that the other fails to share your values and morality.
Rather, share and compare perceptions, assuming that the other perceives the situation
differently.
▯ Whenever two or more people, groups, or nations inter-
act, their perceived needs and goals may conflict. Many
social dilemmas arise as people pursue individual self-
interest to their collective detriment. Two non-zero sum
laboratory games, the Prisoner’s Dilemma and the Tragedy
of the Commons, exemplify such dilemmas. In real life we
can avoid such traps by establishing rules that regulate
self-serving behavior; by keeping social groups small so
people feel responsibility for one another; by enabling
communication, thus reducing mistrust; by changing
payoffs to make cooperation more rewarding; and by in-
voking altruistic norms.
▯ When people compete for scarce resources, human
relations often sink into prejudice and hostility. In his
famous experiments, Muzafer Sherif found that win-
lose competition quickly made strangers into enemies,
triggering outright warfare even among normally up-
standing boys.
▯ Conflicts also arise when people perceive injustice.
According to equity theory, people define justice as the
distribution of rewards in proportion to one’s contribu-
tions. Conflicts occur when people disagree on the ex-
tent of their contributions and thus on the equity of
their outcomes.
▯ Conflicts frequently contain a small core of truly
incompatible goals, surrounded by a thick layer of misper-
ceptions of the adversary’s motives and goals. Often,
conflicting parties have mirror-image perceptions. When
both sides believe “We are peace-loving—they are hostile,”
each may treat the other in ways that provoke confirma-
tion of its expectations. International conflicts are some-
times also fed by an evil leader–good people illusion.
SUMMING UP: What Creates Conflict?
HOW CAN PEACE BE ACHIEVED?
Explain the processes that enable the achievement
of peace.
We have seen how conflicts are ignited by social traps, competition, perceived injustices,
and misperceptions. Although the picture is grim, it is not hopeless. Sometimes hostilities
transform into friendship. To explore the transition from closed fists to open arms, social
psychologists have focused on four peacemaking strategies. We can remember these as the
four Cs of peacemaking: contact, cooperation, communication, and conciliation.
Contact
Might putting two conflicting individuals or groups into close contact enable them to know
and like each other? Perhaps not: We have seen how negative expectations can bias judg-
ments and create self-fulfilling prophecies. When tensions run high, contact may fuel a fight.
But we have also seen that proximity—and the accompanying interaction, anticipation of
interaction, and mere exposure—boosts liking. And we noted how blatant racial prejudice
declined following desegregation, showing that attitudes follow behavior. If this social-
psychological principle now seems obvious, remember: That’s how things usually seem after
you know them. To the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896, the idea that desegregated behavior
“We know more about war
than we do about peace—
more about killing than we
know about living.”
—General Omar Bradley
(1893–1981), Former U.S. Army
Chief of Staff
402 Part Three Social Relations
might reduce prejudicial attitudes was anything but obvious. What seemed obvious at the
time was “that legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts” (Plessy v. Ferguson).
DOES CONTACT PREDICT ATTITUDES?
In general, contact predicts tolerance. In a painstaking analysis, researchers assembled data
from 516 studies of 250,555 people in 38 nations (Tropp & Pettigrew, 2005a; Pettigrew &
Tropp, 2008, 2011). In 94% of studies, increased contact predicted decreased prejudice. This
is especially so for majority group attitudes toward minorities (Durrheim et al., 2011;
Gibson & Claassen, 2010).
Newer studies—in Bosnia, Israel/Palestine, Turkey, Northern Ireland, Lebanon, Liberia,
South Africa, and Britain (Wright et al., 2017)—extend other studies of the correlation
between contact and positive attitudes:
▯ South Africa. The more interracial contact South African Blacks and Whites have,
the less prejudice they feel, and the more sympathetic their political attitudes
(Dixon et al., 2007, 2010; Tredoux & Finchilescu, 2010).
▯ Sexual orientation and transgender identity. The more contact straight people have
with gays and lesbians, the more accepting they become (Collier et al., 2012;
Górska et al., 2017; Smith et al., 2009). The more contact people have had with
transgender individuals, the less trans-prejudice they express (Norton & Herek,
2013). What matters is not just what you know about gay or transgender people,
but who you know.
▯ Muslims. The more contact Dutch adolescents have with Muslims, the more
accepting of Muslims they are (González et al., 2008).
▯ Roommates and family. For White students, having a Black roommate improves
racial attitudes and leads to greater comfort with those of another race (Gaither &
Sommers, 2013). Other potent connections with a single outgroup member, such as
an interracial adoption or having a gay child, similarly link people with the outgroup
and reduce implicit prejudice (Gulker & Monteith, 2013).
▯ Intergenerational. The more contact younger people have with older adults, the
more favorable their attitudes toward older people (Drury et al., 2016).
▯ Indirect contact. Even vicarious indirect contact, via story reading or imagination, or
through a friend’s having an outgroup friend, tends to reduce prejudice (Bilewicz &
Kogan, 2014; Crisp et al., 2011; Turner et al., 2007a,b, 2008, 2010). Those who
read the Harry Potter books—with their themes of supportive contacts with
stigmatized groups—have better attitudes toward immigrants, homosexuals, and
refugees (Vezzali et al., 2014). This indirect contact effect, also called the extended-
contact effect, can spread more positive attitudes through a peer group (Christ
et al., 2010).
In the United States, segregation and expressed prejudice have diminished together since
the 1960s. But was interracial contact the cause of these improved attitudes? Were those
who actually experienced desegregation affected by it?
DOES DESEGREGATION IMPROVE RACIAL ATTITUDES?
School desegregation produced measurable benefits, such as leading more Blacks to attend
and succeed in college (Stephan, 1988). Does desegregation of schools, neighborhoods, and
workplaces also produce favorable social results? The evidence is mixed.
On the one hand, many studies conducted during and shortly after desegregation found
Whites’ attitudes toward Blacks improving markedly. Among department store clerks and
customers, merchant marines, government workers, police officers, neighbors, and students,
racial contact led to diminished prejudice (Amir, 1969; Pettigrew, 1969). For example, near
the end of World War II, the U.S. Army partially desegregated some of its rifle companies
(Stouffer et al., 1949). When asked their opinions of such desegregation, 11% of the White
soldiers in segregated companies approved. Of those in desegregated companies, 60% approved.
They exhibited “system justification”—the human tendency to approve the way things are.
Conflict and Peacemaking Chapter 13 403
When Morton Deutsch and Mary Collins (1951)
took advantage of a made-to-order natural experiment,
they observed similar results. In accord with state law,
New York City desegregated its public housing units; it
assigned families to apartments without regard to race.
In a similar development across the river in Newark,
New Jersey, Blacks and Whites were assigned to separate
buildings. When surveyed, White women in the desegre-
gated development were far more likely to favor inter-
racial housing and to say their attitudes toward Blacks
had improved. Exaggerated stereotypes had wilted in the
face of reality. As one woman put it, “I’ve really come
to like it. I see they’re just as human as we are.”
Such findings influenced the Supreme Court’s 1954
decision to desegregate schools and helped fuel the 1960s
civil rights movement (Pettigrew, 1986, 2004). Yet initial
studies of the effects of school desegregation were less
encouraging. After reviewing all the available studies, Wal-
ter Stephan (1986) concluded that racial attitudes had
been little affected by desegregation. For Blacks, the noticeable effect of desegregated schooling
was less on attitudes than on their increased likelihood of attending integrated (or predominantly
White) colleges, living in integrated neighborhoods, and working in integrated settings.
Thus, we can see that sometimes desegregation improves racial attitudes, and sometimes—
especially when there is anxiety or perceived threat (Pettigrew, 2004)—it doesn’t. Such
disagreements excite the scientist’s detective spirit. What explains the difference? So far,
we’ve been lumping all kinds of desegregation together. Actual desegregation occurs in
many ways and under vastly different conditions.
WHEN DOES DESEGREGATION IMPROVE RACIAL ATTITUDES?
WHEN IT MIGHT NOT: SELF-SEGREGATION Given that “mere exposure” can pro-
duce liking (recall the Attraction chapter), might exposure to other-race faces produce
increased liking for other-race strangers? Indeed yes, Leslie Zebrowitz and her colleagues
(2008) discovered, when exposing White participants to Asian and Black faces.
Researchers have gone into dozens of desegregated schools and observed with whom
children of a given race eat, talk, and loiter. Race influences contact. Whites have dispro-
portionately associated with Whites, Blacks with Blacks (Schofield, 1982, 1986). The same
self-imposed segregation was evident in a South African desegregated beach, as John Dixon
and Kevin Durrheim (2003) discovered when they recorded the location of Black, White,
and Indian beachgoers one midsummer (December 30th) afternoon (Figure 4).
Desegregated neighborhoods, cafeterias, and restaurants may likewise fail to produce
integrated interactions (Clack et al., 2005; Dixon et al., 2005a,b). In school cafeterias,
people may wonder, “Why are all the Black kids sitting together?” (a question that could
as easily be asked of the White kids). One naturalistic study observed 119 class sessions
of 26 University of Cape Town tutorial groups, which averaged 6 Black and 10 White
students per group (Alexander & Tredoux, 2010). On average, the researchers calculated,
71% of Black students would have needed to change seats to achieve a fully integrated
seating pattern.
Even within the same race, likes tend to self-segregate. That’s what University of Ulster
(Northern Ireland) researchers discerned when noting the lecture hall seating patterns of
Catholic and Protestant students (Orr et al., 2012).
In one study that tracked the attitudes of more than 1,600 European students, contact
reduced prejudice. But prejudice also minimized contact (Binder et al., 2009). Prejudice,
however, is not the only obstacle to contact. Anxiety also explains why those placed in
interracial relationships (when students are paired as roommates or as partners in an experi-
ment) may engage in less intimate self-disclosure than those in same-race relationships
(Johnson et al., 2009; Trail et al., 2009).
In some studies, but not others, school desegregation improved racial attitudes.
Further research (read on) identified interracial situations that produce positive
outcomes.
©lisegagne/E+/Getty Images
404 Part Three Social Relations
Efforts to facilitate contact sometimes help, but sometimes fall flat. “We had one day when
some of the Protestant schools came over,” explained one Catholic youngster after a Northern
Ireland school exchange (Cairns & Hewstone, 2002). “It was supposed to be like . . . mixing,
but there was very little mixing. It wasn’t because we didn’t want to; it was just really awk-
ward.” The lack of mixing stems partly from pluralistic ignorance. Many Whites and Blacks
say they would like more contact but misperceive that the other does not reciprocate their
feelings. (See “Research Close-Up: Relationships That Might Have Been,” and “The Inside
Story: Nicole Shelton and Jennifer Richeson on Cross-Racial Friendships.”)
FRIENDSHIP The encouraging older studies of store clerks, soldiers, and housing project
neighbors involved considerable interracial contact, more than enough to reduce the anxiety
that marks initial intergroup contact. Other studies show similar benefits when they involve
prolonged, personal contact—between Black and White prison inmates, between Black and
White girls in an interracial summer camp, between Black and White university roommates,
between Black, Coloured, and White South Africans, and between U.S.-born people and
immigrants (Al Ramiah & Hewstone, 2013; Beelmann & Heinemann, 2014; Tropp et al.,
2018). The same has been true of intergroup contact programs in Northern Ireland, Cyprus,
and Bosnia (Hewstone et al., 2014). One program that brought Israeli and Palestinian youth
to a 3-week camp in the United States produced significant and sustained improvement in
intergroup attitudes (Schroeder & Risen, 2014).
So how does intergroup contact reduce prejudice and increase support for racial equal-
ity? It does so, report contact researchers (Al Ramiah & Hewstone, 2013; Tropp & Barlow,
2018) by
▯ reducing anxiety (more contact brings greater comfort),
▯ increasing empathy (contact helps people put themselves in the others’ shoes),
▯ humanizing others (enabling people to discover their similarities), and
▯ decreasing perceived threats (alleviating overblown fears and increasing trust).
Among American students who have studied in Germany or in Britain, the more their
contact with host country people, the more positive their attitudes (Stangor et al., 1996).
FIGURE 4
Desegregation Needn’t
Mean Contact
After this Scottburgh, South
Africa, beach became “open”
and desegregated in the new
South Africa, Blacks (represented
by red dots), Whites (blue dots),
and Indians (yellow dots) tended
to cluster with their own race.
Source: From Dixon & Durrheim,
2003.
Conflict and Peacemaking Chapter 13 405
Relationships That Might Have Been
Perhaps you can recall a time when you really would have
liked to reach out to someone. Maybe it was someone to
whom you felt attracted. But doubting that your feelings
were reciprocated, you didn’t risk rebuff. Or maybe it was
someone of another race whom you wanted to welcome
to the open seat at your dining hall or library table. But you
worried that the person might be wary of sitting with you.
On some such occasions the other person shared your
wish to connect but assumed that your distance signified
indifference or even prejudice. Alas, thanks to pluralistic
ignorance—shared false impressions of another’s feelings—
you passed like ships in the night.
Studies by University of Manitoba psychologist Jacquie
Vorauer (2001, 2005; Vorauer & Sakamoto, 2006) illumi-
nate this phenomenon. In new relationships, people often
overestimate the transparency of their feelings, Vorauer
reported. Presuming that their feelings are leaking out,
they experience the illusion of transparency. Thus, they
may assume that their body language conveys their ro-
mantic interest, when actually the intended recipient never
gets the message. If the other person shares the positive
feelings, and is similarly overestimating his or her own
transparency, then the possible relationship is quenched.
The same phenomenon, Vorauer reported, often
occurs with low-prejudice people who would love more
friendships with those outside their racial or social group.
If Whites presume that Blacks think them prejudiced, and
if Blacks presume that Whites stereotype them, both will
feel anxious about making the first move. Such anxiety is
“a central factor” in South Africa’s “continuing informal
segregation,” reported Gillian Finchilescu (2005). Seeking
to replicate and extend Vorauer’s work, Nicole Shelton
and Jennifer Richeson (2005; Richeson & Shelton, 2012)
undertook a coordinated series of surveys and behavioral
tests.
In their first study, University of Massachusetts White
students viewed themselves as having more-than-average
interest in cross-racial contacts and friendships, and they
perceived White students in general as more eager for
such than were Black students. Black students had mirror-
image views—seeing themselves as more eager for cross-
racial friendships than were White students. “I want to
have friendships across racial lines,” thought the typical
student. “But those in the other racial group don’t share
my desire.”
Would this pluralistic ignorance generalize to a specific
setting? To find out, Shelton and Richeson’s second study
asked White Princeton students to imagine how they would
react upon entering their dining hall and noticing several
Black (or White) “students who live near you sitting to-
gether.” How interested would you be in joining them? And
how likely is it that one of them would beckon you to join
them? Again, Whites believed that they, more than those of
the other race, would be interested in the contact.
And how do people explain failures to make interracial
contact? In their third study, Shelton and Richeson invited
Princeton White and Black students to contemplate a
dining hall situation in which they notice a table with familiar-
looking students of the other race, but neither they nor
the seated students reach out to the other. The study
participants, regardless of race, attributed their own
inaction in such a situation primarily to fear of rejection,
and more often attributed the seated students’ inaction to
lack of interest. In a fourth study at Dartmouth University,
Shelton and Richeson replicated this study with similar
results.
Would this pluralistic ignorance phenomenon extend
to other real-life settings, and to contact with a single
other person? In Study 5, Shelton and Richeson invited
Princeton students, both Black and White, to a study of
“friendship formation.” After participants had filled out
some background information, the experimenter took
their picture, attached it to background information, os-
tensibly took it to the room of a supposed fellow partici-
pant, and then returned with the other person’s sheet and
photo—showing a person of the same sex but the other
race. The participants were then asked, “To what extent
are you concerned about being accepted by the other
participant?” and “How likely is it that the other person
won’t want you as a friend?” Regardless of their race, the
participants guessed that they, more than the other-race
fellow participant, were interested in friendship but
worried about rejection.
Do these social misperceptions constrain actual inter-
racial contact? In a sixth study, Shelton and Richeson con-
firmed that White Princeton students who were most
prone to pluralistic ignorance—to presuming that they
feared interracial rejection more than did Black students—
were also the most likely to experience diminishing cross-
racial contacts in the ensuing seven weeks.
Vorauer, Shelton, and Richeson were not contending
that misperceptions alone impede romances and cross-
racial friendships. But misperceptions do restrain people
from risking an overture. Understanding this phenomenon—
recognizing that others’ coolness may actually reflect
motives and feelings similar to our own—may help us
reach out to others, and sometimes to transform potential
friendships into real ones.
research
CLOSE-UP
406 Part Three Social Relations
Exchange students’ hosts also are changed by the experience; they become more open to
new experiences and more likely to see things from the visitor’s cultural perspective (Spark-
man et al., 2016; Vollhardt, 2010).
Group salience (visibility) also helps bridge divides between people. If you forever think
of that friend solely as an individual, your affective ties may not generalize to other members
of the friend’s group (Miller, 2002). Ideally, then, we should form trusting friendships
across group lines but also recognize that the friend represents those in another group
(Brown et al., 2007; Davies & Aron, 2016).
We are especially likely to befriend dissimilar people when their
outgroup identity is initially minimized. If our liking for our new
friends is then to generalize to others, their group identity must at
some point become salient. So, to reduce prejudice and conflict,
we had best initially minimize group diversity, then acknowledge it,
then transcend it.
Surveys of nearly 4,000 Europeans reveal that friendship is a key
to successful contact: If you have a minority group friend, you
become much more likely to express sympathy and support for the
friend’s group, and even somewhat more support for immigration by
that group. It’s true of West Germans’ attitudes toward Turks, French
people’s attitudes toward Asians and North Africans, Netherlanders’
attitudes toward Surinamers and Turks, British attitudes toward West
Indians and Asians, and Northern Ireland Protestants’ and Catholics’
attitudes toward each other (Brown et al., 1999; Hamberger & Hew-
stone, 1997; Paolini et al., 2004; Pettigrew, 1997).
EQUAL-STATUS CONTACT The social psychologists who advo-
cated desegregation never claimed that all contact would improve
attitudes. Much as positive contact boosts liking, negative contact
increases disliking (Guffler & Wagner, 2017; Hayward et al., 2017,
2018; McKeown & Psaltis, 2017). Positive contact is more com-
monplace, but negative experiences have greater effect (Graf et al.,
2014; Paolini et al., 2014).
Social psychologists had expected poor results when contacts
were competitive, unsupported by authorities, and unequal
Nicole Shelton and Jennifer Richeson on Cross-Racial
Friendships
THE inside
STORY
We noticed that both White and ethnic minority students
in our classes often indicated that they genuinely wanted
to interact with people outside of their ethnic group but
were afraid that they would not be accepted. However,
they assumed that members of other groups simply did
not want to connect. This sounded very much like Dale
Miller’s work on pluralistic ignorance. Over the course of a
few weeks, we designed a series of studies to explore
pluralistic ignorance during interracial interactions.
Since the publication of our article, we have had
researchers tell us that we should use our work in new
student orientation sessions in order to reduce students’
fears about reaching across racial lines. We are delighted
that when we present this work in our courses, students of
all racial backgrounds tell us that it indeed has opened
their eyes about making the first move to develop inter-
racial friendships.
Nicole Shelton
Princeton University
Courtesy of Nicole Shelton
Jennifer Richeson
Yale University
Courtesy of Jennifer Richeson
Cross-racial friendships can reduce prejudice if people see
their friends both as individuals and as members of their
groups. Saying “I don’t see color” is both inaccurate and often
counterproductive.
©Felix Sanchez/Blend Images LLC
Conflict and Peacemaking Chapter 13 407
(Pettigrew, 1988; Stephan, 1987). Before 1954 many prejudiced Whites had frequent contacts
with Blacks—as shoeshine men and domestic workers. As we have seen, such unequal con-
tacts breed attitudes that merely justify the continuation of inequality. So it’s important that
the contact be equal-status contact, like that between the store clerks, the soldiers, the neigh-
bors, the prisoners, and the summer campers.
Cooperation
Although equal-status contact can help, it is sometimes not enough. It didn’t help when
Muzafer Sherif stopped the Eagles versus Rattlers competition and brought the groups
together for noncompetitive activities, such as watching movies, shooting off fireworks, and
eating. By that time, their hostility was so strong that mere contact only provided oppor-
tunities for taunts and attacks. When an Eagle was bumped by a Rattler, his fellow Eagles
urged him to “brush off the dirt.” Desegregating the two groups hardly promoted their
social integration.
Given entrenched hostility, what can a peacemaker do? Think back to the successful
and the unsuccessful desegregation efforts. The army’s racial mixing of rifle companies
didn’t just bring Blacks and Whites into equal-status contact, it made them interdependent.
Together, they were fighting a common enemy, striving toward a shared goal.
Does that suggest a second factor that predicts whether the effect of desegregation will
be favorable? Does competitive contact divide and cooperative contact unite? Consider what
happens to people who together face a common predicament. In conflicts at all levels, from
couples to rival teams to nations, shared threats and common goals breed unity.
COMMON EXTERNAL THREATS BUILD COHESIVENESS
Together with others, have you ever been caught in a blizzard, punished by a teacher, or
persecuted and ridiculed because of your social, racial, or religious identity? If so, you may
recall feeling close to those with whom you shared the predicament. Perhaps previous social
barriers fell as you helped one another dig out of the snow or struggled to cope with your
common enemy. Survivors of shared pain or more extreme crises, such as a bombing, also
often report a spirit of cooperation and solidarity rather than all-for-themselves panic
( Bastian et al., 2014; Drury et al., 2009).
Such friendliness is common among those who experience a shared threat. John Lan-
zetta (1955) observed this when he put four-man groups of naval ROTC cadets to work on
problem-solving tasks and then began informing them over a loudspeaker that their answers
were wrong, their productivity inexcusably low, their thinking stupid. Other groups did not
receive this harassment. Lanzetta observed that the group members under duress became
friendlier to one another, more cooperative, less argumentative,
less competitive. They were in it together. And the result was a
cohesive spirit. Recent experiments confirm a silver lining of
mistreatment by a boss: those mistreated become more cohesive
(Stoverink et al., 2014). Misery loves company.
Having a common enemy unified the groups of competing boys
in Sherif’s camping experiments—and in many subsequent experi-
ments (Dion, 1979). Just being reminded of an outgroup (say, a
rival school) heightens people’s responsiveness to their own group
(Wilder & Shapiro, 1984). To perceive discrimination against
one’s racial or religious group is to feel more bonded and identi-
fied with such (Craig & Richeson, 2012; Martinovic & Verkuyten,
2012; Ramos et al., 2012). Recognizing that one’s group and
another group have shared discrimination experiences boosts rela-
tions between them (Cortland et al., 2017). When keenly con-
scious of who “they” are, we also know who “we” are.
When facing a well-defined external threat during wartime, we-
feeling soars. The membership of civic organizations mushrooms
(Putnam, 2000). Shared threats also produce a political “rally ’round
equal-status contact
Contact on an equal basis. Just
as a relationship between people
of unequal status breeds
attitudes consistent with their
relationship, so do relationships
between those of equal status.
Thus, to reduce prejudice,
interracial contact should ideally
be between persons equal in
status.
“I couldn’t help but say to [Mr.
Gorbachev], just think how
easy his task and mine might
be in these meetings that we
held if suddenly there was a
threat to this world from some
other species from another
planet. [We’d] find out once
and for all that we really are all
human beings here on this
earth together.”
—Ronald Reagan,
December 4, 1985, Speech
Shared predicaments trigger cooperation, as these Walmart
workers on strike in Germany demonstrate.
©FRANK AUGSTEIN/AP Images
408 Part Three Social Relations
the flag” effect (Lambert et al., 2011),
Children and youth who survive war
exposure later display a more coopera-
tive spirit toward their ingroup (Bauer
et al., 2014). After September 11, 2001,
“old racial antagonisms . . . dissolved,”
reported the New York Times (Sengupta,
2001). “I just thought of myself as
Black,” said 18-year-old Louis Johnson,
reflecting on life before 9/11. “But now
I feel like I’m an American, more than
ever.” In New York City, even divorce
rates dropped in the aftermath of 9/11
(Hansel et al., 2011). One sampling of
conversation on 9/11, and another of
New York Mayor Giuliani’s press confer-
ences before and after 9/11, found a
doubled rate of the word “we” (Liehr
et al., 2004; Pennebaker & Lay, 2002).
George W. Bush’s job-performance ratings reflected this threat-bred spirit of unity. In
the public eye, the mediocre-seeming president of 9/10 had become the exalted president
of 9/12—“our leader” in the fight against “those who hate us.” Thereafter, his ratings gradu-
ally declined but then jumped again as the war in Iraq began (Figure 5).
Even just imagining or fearing the extinction of one’s group often serves to strengthen
ingroup solidarity (Wohl et al., 2010). Likewise, just imagining the shared climate change
threat reduced international antagonisms (Pyszczynski et al., 2012). Leaders may therefore
create a threatening external enemy as a technique for building group cohesiveness. George
Orwell’s novel 1984 illustrates the tactic: The leader of the protagonist nation uses border
conflicts with the other two major powers to lessen internal strife. From time to time the
enemy shifts, but there is always an enemy. Indeed, the nation seems to need an enemy.
For the world, for a nation, for a group, having a common enemy is powerfully unifying.
Sunni and Shia Islamic differences that feel great in Iraq will not seem so great to Muslims
in countries where both must cope with anti-Muslim attitudes.
Might the world likewise find unity if facing a common enemy? In 1987, U.S. President
Ronald Reagan observed, “In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget
how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal
threat to recognize this common bond.” Two decades later, Al Gore (2007) agreed, suggest-
ing that, with the specter of climate change, “We—all of us—now face a universal threat.
Though it is not from outside this world, it is nevertheless cosmic in scale.” (To consider
these social dynamics in sports rivalries, see “Focus on: Why Do We Care Who Wins?”)
60
100
70
80
90
50
40
30
20
10
0
Pre 9/11
51%
90%
Post 9/11
Percent
FIGURE 5
External Threats Breed
Internal Unity
As President George W. Bush’s
approval ratings illustrate,
national conflicts mold public
attitudes.
Source: Gallup, 2006.
Why Do We Care Who Wins?
focus
ON
Why, for sports fans everywhere, does it matter who wins?
During the annual NCAA basketball “March Madness,”
why do perfectly normal adults become insanely support-
ive of their team, and depressed when it loses? And why
for that ultimate sporting event, World Cup Football, do
soccer fans worldwide dream of their country victorious?
The roots of rivalry run deep. There’s something primal
at work when the crowd erupts as the two rivals take the
field or the floor. There’s something tribal at work during
the ensuing passion, all in response to the flights of a
mere leather sphere. Our ancestors, living in a world
where neighboring tribes occasionally raided and pil-
laged one another’s camps, knew that there was safety in
solidarity. (Those who didn’t band together left fewer de-
scendants.) Whether hunting, defending, or attacking,
more hands were better than two. Dividing the world into
Conflict and Peacemaking Chapter 13 409
“us” and “them” entails significant costs, such as racism
and war, but also provides the benefits of communal soli-
darity. To identify us and them, our ancestors—not so far
removed from today’s rabid fans—dressed or painted
themselves in group-specific costumes and colors. Sports
and warfare, notes evolutionary psychologist Benjamin
Winegard (2010), are mostly done by males associated
with geographical areas and wearing group-identifying
uniforms. Both use war-relevant skills (running, tackling,
throwing). And both offer rewards to the victors.
As social animals, we live in groups, cheer on our
groups, kill for our groups, die for our groups. We also
define ourselves by our groups. Our self-concept—our
sense of who we are—consists not only of our personal
attributes and attitudes but also of our social identity. Our
social identities—our knowing who “we” are—strengthens
self-concept and pride, especially when perceiving that
“we” are superior. Lacking a positive individual identity,
many youths find pride, power, and identity in gangs.
Many patriots define themselves by their national
identities.
The group definition of who we are also implies who
we are not. Social-psychological experiments reveal that
being formed into groups—even arbitrary groups—
promotes ingroup bias. Cluster people into groups
defined by nothing more than their birth date or even the
last digit of their driver’s license and they’ll feel a certain
kinship with their number mates and will show them favor-
itism. So strong is our group consciousness that “we”
seem better than “they” even when “we” and “they” are
defined randomly.
Group solidarity soars when people face a common
enemy. As Muzafer Sherif’s Robber’s Camp experiment
vividly demonstrated, competition creates enemies. Fu-
eled by competition and unleashed by the anonymity of a
crowd, passions can culminate in sport’s worst moments—
fans taunting opponents, screaming at umpires, even
pelting referees with beer bottles.
Group identification soars further with success. Fans
find self-respect, in at least small measure, by their asso-
ciation with the victorious athletes when their team wins.
Queried after a big football victory, university students
commonly report that “we won” (Cialdini et al., 1976). They
bask in reflected glory. Asked the outcome after a defeat,
students more often distance themselves from the team
by saying, “They lost.”
Ironically, we often reserve our most intense passions
for rivals most similar to us. Freud long ago recognized
that animosities formed around small differences: “Of two
neighbouring towns, each is the other’s most jealous rival;
every little canton looks down upon the others with con-
tempt. Closely related races keep one another at arm’s
length; the South German cannot endure the North Ger-
man, the Englishman casts every kind of aspersion upon
the Scot, the Spaniard despises the Portuguese.”
To today’s non-Muslims, antagonist Sunni and Shia
Muslims seem pretty similar (both revere the Qur’an, fol-
low Muhammad, and pray to Allah). Likewise, to non-
Christians, Northern Ireland’s formerly combative
Protestants and Catholics (both followers of the same
Prince of Peace) seemed religiously and ethnically so sim-
ilar. But with those near us, our attention focuses not on
our considerable similarities but on our differences.
As an occasional resident of Scotland, I’ve witnessed
many examples of the Xenophobe’s Guide to the Scots
observation—that Scots divide non-Scots “into two main
groups: (1) The English; (2) The Rest.” As rabid Chicago
Cubs fans are happy if either the Cubs win or the White
Sox lose, so ardent New Zealand soccer fans root for New
Zealand and whoever is playing Australia (Halberstadt
et al., 2006). Fervent fans of Scottish soccer likewise re-
joice in either a Scotland victory or an England defeat.
“Phew! They Lost,” rejoiced one Scottish tabloid front-
page headline after England’s 1996 Euro Cup defeat—by
Germany. To a sports fan, few things are so sweet as an
archrival’s misfortune. Both a rival’s failure and a favored
team’s success activate pleasure-associated brain areas
(Cikara et al., 2011).
Numerical minorities, such as the Scots in Britain,
are especially conscious of their social identities. The
5 million Scots and their descendants are more con-
scious of their national identity vis-à-vis the neighbor-
ing 53 million English than vice versa. (The U.S. and
Canada have but nine English social organizations and
111 Scottish ones [Watson, 2015].) Likewise, the 5 million
New Zealanders are more conscious of their identity
vis-à-vis the 24 million Australians, and they are more
likely to root for Australia’s sports opponents
( Halberstadt et al., 2006).
Group identity feeds, and is fed by, competition.
©MARTIN MEISSNER/AP Images
410 Part Three Social Relations
SUPERORDINATE GOALS FOSTER COOPERATION
Closely related to the unifying power of an external threat is the unifying power of
superordinate goals, goals that unite all in a group and require cooperative effort. To pro-
mote harmony among his warring campers, Sherif introduced such goals. He created a
problem with the camp water supply, necessitating both groups’ cooperation to restore the
water. Given an opportunity to rent a movie, one expensive enough to require the joint
resources of the two groups, they again cooperated. When a truck “broke down” on a camp
excursion, a staff member casually left the tug-of-war rope nearby, prompting one boy to
suggest that they all pull the truck to get it started. When it started, a backslapping celebra-
tion ensued over their victorious “tug-of-war against the truck.”
After working together to achieve such superordinate goals, the boys ate together and enjoyed
themselves around a campfire. Friendships sprouted across group lines. Hostilities plummeted
(Figure 6). On the last day, the boys decided to travel home together on one bus. During the
trip they no longer sat by groups. As the bus approached Oklahoma City and home, they, as
one, spontaneously sang “Oklahoma” and then bade their friends farewell. With isolation and
competition, Sherif made strangers into bitter enemies. With superordinate goals, he made
enemies into friends.
Are Sherif’s experiments mere child’s play? Or can pulling together to achieve superor-
dinate goals be similarly beneficial with conflicting adults? Robert Blake and Jane Mouton
(1979) wondered. So in a series of two-week experiments involving more than 1,000 execu-
tives in 150 different groups, they re-created the essential features of the situation experi-
enced by the Rattlers and the Eagles. Each group first engaged in activities by itself, then
competed with another group, and then cooperated with the other group in working toward
jointly chosen superordinate goals. Their results provided “unequivocal evidence that adult
reactions parallel those of Sherif’s younger subjects.” The same rivalry-becomes-unity phe-
nomenon occurs in national elections. Intense rivalries between competing candidates
within a party largely disappear when their chosen nominee faces an election contest with
the rival party’s nominee.
Extending those findings, John Dovidio, Samuel Gaertner, and their collaborators (2005,
2009) reported that working cooperatively has especially favorable effects under conditions
that lead people to define a new, inclusive group that dissolves their former subgroups. Old
feelings of bias against another group diminish when members of the two groups sit alternately
around a table (rather than on opposite sides), give their new group a single name, and then
work together under conditions that foster a good mood. “Us” and “them” become “we.”
To combat Germany, Italy, and Japan during World War II, the United States and the
former USSR, along with other nations, formed one united group named the Allies. So
superordinate goal
A shared goal that necessitates
cooperative effort; a goal that
overrides people’s differences
from one another.
FIGURE 6
After competition, the Eagles
and the Rattlers rated each
other unfavorably. After they
worked cooperatively to achieve
superordinate goals, hostility
dropped sharply.
Source: Data from Sherif, M. (1966).
In common predicament: Social
psychology of intergroup conflict
and cooperation. Boston, MA:
Houghton Mifflin, p. 84.
Ratings of outgroup, percent totally unfavorable
After victory or
defeat in conflict
Time
After series of
superordinate goals
Ratings made by
losing group
Ratings made by
winning group
80
90
100
50
60
70
40
30
20
10
0
Conflict and Peacemaking Chapter 13 411
long as the superordinate goal of defeating a common enemy lasted, so
did supportive U.S. attitudes toward the Russians. From Amazon tribes
to European countries, peace arises when groups become intercon-
nected and interdependent and develop an overarching social identity
(Fry, 2012). To reduce Muslim-Christian tension in the Central African
Republic, Catholic Relief Services has paid people to dig drainage
ditches, with one condition: Muslims and Christians work together
(Kristof, 2018).
Economic interdependence through international trade also moti-
vates peace. “Where goods cross frontiers, armies won’t,” noted Michael
Shermer (2006). With so much of China’s economy now interwoven
with Western economies, their economic interdependence diminishes
the likelihood of war between China and the West.
The cooperative efforts by the Rattlers and the Eagles ended in suc-
cess. Would the same harmony have emerged if the water had remained
off, the movie unaffordable, the truck still stalled? Likely not. Experi-
ments with university students confirmed that successful cooperation
between two groups boosts their attraction for each other. If previously
conflicting groups fail in a cooperative effort, however, and if condi-
tions allow them to attribute their failure to each other, the conflict
may worsen (Worchel et al., 1977, 1978, 1980). Sherif’s groups were
already feeling hostile to each other. Thus, failure to raise sufficient
funds for the movie might have been attributed to one group’s “stinginess” and “selfishness.”
That would have exacerbated rather than alleviated their conflict. Unity is fed by striving
for and reaching superordinate goals.
COOPERATIVE LEARNING IMPROVES RACIAL ATTITUDES
So far we have noted the modest social benefits when desegregation is unaccompanied by
the emotional bonds of friendship and by equal-status relationships. And we have noted
the dramatic social benefits of successful, cooperative contacts between members of rival
groups. Several research teams therefore wondered: Without compromising academic
achievement, could we promote interracial friendships by replacing competitive learning
situations with cooperative ones? Given the diversity of their methods—all involving students
on integrated study teams, sometimes in competition with other teams—the results are strik-
ing and heartening.
Are students who participate in existing cooperative activities, such as interracial athletic
teams and class projects, less prejudiced? In one experiment, White youth on two- to three-
week Outward Bound expeditions (involving intimate contact and cooperation) expressed
improved attitudes toward Blacks a month after the expedition if they had been randomly
assigned to an interracial expedition group (Green & Wong, 2008).
Robert Slavin and Nancy Madden (1979) analyzed survey data from 2,400 students in 71
American high schools and found similarly encouraging results. Those of different races who
play and work together are more likely to report having friends of another race and to express
positive racial attitudes. Charles Green and his colleagues (1988) confirmed this in a study of
3,200 Florida middle-school students. Compared with students at traditional, competitive
schools, those at schools with interracial “learning teams” had more positive racial attitudes.
From such correlational findings, can we conclude that cooperative interracial activity
improves racial attitudes? To find out, we experiment. Randomly designate some students,
but not others, to work together in racially mixed groups. Slavin (1985; Slavin et al., 2003,
2009) and his colleagues divided classes into interracial teams, each composed of four or
five students from all achievement levels. Team members sat together, studied a variety of
subjects together, and at the end of each week competed with the other teams in a class
tournament. All members contributed to their team’s score by doing well, sometimes by
competing with other students whose recent achievements were similar to their own, some-
times by competing with their own previous scores. Everyone had a chance to succeed.
Moreover, team members were motivated to help one another prepare for the weekly
Promoting “common ingroup identity.” The banning of
gang colors and the common European practice of school
uniforms—an increasing trend in the United States, as
well—aim to change “us” and “them” to “we.”
©Ian Shaw/Getty Images
412 Part Three Social Relations
tournament—by drilling each other on fractions,
spelling, or historical events—whatever was the next
event. Rather than isolating students from one
another, team competition brought them into
closer contact and drew out mutual support.
Another research team, led by Elliot Aronson
(2004; Aronson & Gonzalez, 1988), elicited similar
group cooperation with a “jigsaw” technique. In
experiments in Texas and California elementary
schools, the researchers assigned children to racially
and academically diverse 6-member groups. The
subject was then divided into six parts, with each
student becoming the expert on his or her part. In
a unit on Chile, one student might be the expert on
Chile’s history, another on its geography, another
on its culture. First, the various “historians,” “geog-
raphers,” and so forth got together to master their
material. Then they returned to the home groups
to teach it to their classmates. Each group member
held, so to speak, a piece of the jigsaw.
Self-confident students therefore had to listen to
and learn from reticent students who, in turn, soon
realized they had something important to offer their peers. Other research teams have
devised additional methods for cooperative learning. Studies (148 of them across eleven
countries) show that adolescents, too, have more positive peer relationships and may even
achieve more when working cooperatively rather than competitively (Lemmer & Wagner,
2015; Roseth et al., 2008).
What can we conclude from all this research? With cooperative learning, students learn
not only the material but other lessons. Cooperative learning, said Slavin and Cooper
(1999), promotes “the academic achievement of all students while simultaneously improving
intergroup relations.” Aronson reported that “children in the interdependent, jigsaw class-
rooms grow to like each other better, develop a greater liking for school, and develop greater
self-esteem than children in traditional classrooms” (1980, p. 232).
Cross-racial friendships also begin to blossom. The
exam scores of minority students improve (perhaps
because academic achievement is now peer supported).
After the experiments were over, many teachers contin-
ued using cooperative learning (D. W. Johnson et al.,
1981; Slavin, 1990). “It is clear,” wrote race-relations
expert John McConahay (1981), that cooperative learn-
ing “is the most effective practice for improving race rela-
tions in desegregated schools that we know of to date.”
Should we have “known it all along”? At the time of
the 1954 Supreme Court decision, Gordon Allport spoke
for many social psychologists in predicting that “Preju-
dice . . . may be reduced by equal status contact between
majority and minority groups in the pursuit of common
goals” (1954, p. 281). Cooperative learning experiments
confirmed Allport’s insight, making Robert Slavin and
his colleagues (1985, 2003) optimistic: “Thirty years
after Allport laid out the basic principles operationalized
in cooperative learning methods, we finally have practi-
cal, proven methods for implementing contact theory in
the desegregated classroom. . . . Research on cooperative
learning is one of the greatest success stories in the his-
tory of educational research.”
“This was truly an exciting
event. My students and I had
found a way to make desegre-
gation work the way it was in-
tended to work!”
—Elliot Aronson,
“Drifting My Own Way,” 2003
For an example of effective
desegregation, see “Focus On:
Branch Rickey, Jackie Robinson,
and the Integration of Baseball.”
Interracial cooperation—on athletic teams, in class projects and extracurricular
activities—melts differences and improves racial attitudes. White teen athletes who
play cooperative team sports (such as basketball) with Black teammates express
more liking and support for Blacks than do their counterparts involved in individual
sports (such as wrestling) (Brown et al., 2003).
©sirtravelalot/Shutterstock
Cooperation and peace. Researchers have identified more than 40 peaceful
societies—societies where people live with no, or virtually no, recorded in-
stances of violence. An analysis of 25 of these societies, including the coop-
erative barn-building of Amish folks shown here, reveals that most base
their worldviews on cooperation rather than competition (Bonta, 1997).
©George Sheldon/Shutterstock
Conflict and Peacemaking Chapter 13 413
Branch Rickey, Jackie Robinson, and the Integration of Baseball
focus
ON
On April 10, 1947, a nineteen-word announcement forever
changed the face of baseball and put social-psychological
principles to the test: “The Brooklyn Dodgers today pur-
chased the contract of Jackie Roosevelt Robinson from the
Montreal Royals. He will report immediately.” Five days
later, Robinson became the first African American since
1887 to play major league baseball. In the fall, Dodger fans
realized their dreams of going to the World Series. Robin-
son, after enduring racial taunts, beanballs, and spikes,
was voted Sporting News rookie of the year, and in a poll
finished second to Bing Crosby as the most popular man in
America. Baseball’s racial barrier was forever broken.
Motivated by both his Methodist morality and a drive
for baseball success, Major League Baseball executive
Branch Rickey had been planning the move for some
time, reported social psychologists Anthony Pratkanis and
Marlene Turner (1994a,b). Three years earlier, Rickey had
been asked by the sociologist-chair of the Mayor’s Com-
mittee on Unity to desegregate his team. His response
was to ask for time (so the hiring would not be attributed
to pressure) and for advice on how best to do it. In 1945
Rickey was the only owner voting against keeping Blacks
out of baseball. In 1947 he made his move using these
principles identified by Pratkanis and Turner:
• Create a perception that change is inevitable. Leave
little possibility that protest or resistance can turn back
the clock. The team’s radio announcer, Red Barber, a
traditional southerner, recalled that in 1945 Rickey took
him to lunch and explained very slowly and strongly
that his scouts were searching for “the first black player
I can put on the white Dodgers. I don’t know who he is
or where he is, but he is coming.” An angered Barber at
first intended to quit, but in time decided to accept the
inevitable and keep the world’s “best sports announc-
ing job.” Rickey was equally matter-of-fact with the
players in 1947, offering to trade any player who didn’t
want to play with Robinson.
• Establish equal-status contact with a superordinate
goal. One sociologist explained to Rickey that when
relationships focus on an overarching goal, such as
winning the pennant, “the people involved would
adjust appropriately.” One of the players who had been
initially opposed later helped Robinson with his hitting,
explaining, “When you’re on a team, you got to pull
together to win.”
• Puncture the norm of prejudice. Rickey led the way, but
others helped. Team leader shortstop Pee Wee Reese, a
southerner, set a pattern of sitting and eating with
Robinson. One day in Cincinnati, as the crowd was hurl-
ing slurs—“get the nigger off the field”—Reese left his
shortstop position, walked over to Robinson at first base,
smiled and spoke to him, and then—with a hushed crowd
watching—put his arm around Robinson’s shoulder.
• Cut short the spiral of violence by practicing nonvio-
lence. Rickey, wanting “a ballplayer with guts enough
not to fight back,” role-played for Robinson the kind of
insults and dirty play he would experience and gained
Robinson’s commitment not to return violence with
violence. When Robinson was taunted and spiked, he
left the responses to his teammates. Team cohesion
was thereby increased.
Robinson and Bob Feller later became the first players
in baseball history elected to the Hall of Fame in their first
year of eligibility. As he received the award, Robinson
asked three persons to stand beside him: his mother, his
wife, and his friend Branch Rickey.
Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey
©JH/AP Images
To sum up, cooperative, equal-status contacts exert a positive influence on boy campers,
industrial executives, college students, and schoolchildren. Does the principle extend to all
levels of human relations? Are families unified by pulling together to farm the land, restore
an old house, or sail a sloop? Are communal identities forged by barn raisings, group sing-
ing, or cheering on the football team? Is international understanding bred by international
414 Part Three Social Relations
collaboration in science and space, by joint efforts to feed the world and conserve resources,
by friendly personal contacts between people of different nations? Indications are that the
answer to all of those questions is yes (Brewer & Miller, 1988; Desforges et al., 1991, 1997;
Deutsch, 1985, 1994). Thus, an important challenge facing our divided world is to identify
and agree on our superordinate goals and to structure cooperative efforts to achieve them.
GROUP AND SUPERORDINATE IDENTITIES
In everyday life, we often reconcile multiple identities (Gaertner et al., 2000, 2001). We
acknowledge our subgroup identity (as parent or child) and then transcend it (sensing our
superordinate identity as a family). Pride in our ethnic heritage can complement our larger
communal or national identity. Being mindful of our multiple social identities enables social
cohesion (Brewer & Pierce, 2005; Crisp & Hewstone, 1999, 2000). “I am many things,
some of which you are, too.”
But in ethnically diverse cultures, how do people balance their ethnic identities with
their national identities? They may have a “bicultural” or “omnicultural” identity, one that
identifies with both the larger culture and one’s own ethnic and religious culture (Moghad-
dam, 2009, 2010; Phinney, 1990). “In many ways, I am like everyone around me, but I also
affirm my own cultural heritage.” Thus, ethnically conscious Asians living in England may
also feel strongly British (Hutnik, 1985). French Canadians who identify with their ethnic
roots may or may not also feel strongly Canadian (Driedger, 1975). Americans who retain
a strong sense of their “Cubanness” (or of their Mexican or Puerto Rican heritage) may
also feel strongly American (Roger et al., 1991). As W. E. B. DuBois (1903, p. 17) explained
in The Souls of Black Folk, “The American Negro [longs] . . . to be both a Negro and an
American.”
Over time, identification with a new culture often grows. Former East and West Germans
come to see themselves as “German” (Kessler & Mummendey, 2001). The children of
Chinese immigrants to Australia and the United States feel their Chinese identity somewhat
less keenly, and their new national identity more strongly, than do immigrants who were
born in China (Rosenthal & Feldman, 1992). Often, however, the grandchildren of immi-
grants feel more comfortable identifying with their ethnicity (Triandis, 1994).
Researchers have wondered whether pride in one’s group competes with identification
with the larger culture. We evaluate ourselves partly in terms of our social identities. Seeing
our own group (our school, our employer, our family, our race, our nation) as good helps
us feel good about ourselves. A positive ethnic identity can therefore contribute to positive
self-esteem. So can a positive mainstream culture identity. “Marginal” people, who have
neither a strong ethnic nor a strong mainstream cultural identity (Table 1), often have low
self-esteem. Bicultural people, who affirm both identities, typically have a strongly positive
self-concept (Phinney, 1990; Sam & Berry, 2010). Often, they alternate between their two
cultures, adapting their language and behavior to whichever group they are with (LaFrom-
boise et al., 1993).
Is it better to recognize and affirm group differences or to look beyond them (Hahn
et al., 2015)? Debate continues over the ideals of multiculturalism (celebrating diversity)
versus colorblind assimilation (meshing one’s values and habits with the prevailing culture).
Compared with university minority students, those in the majority racial group—whether
White or Black—have been more likely to favor assimilation. They more often agree, for
example, that “there should be a single center on campus for all students, rather than
“Most of us have overlapping
identities which unite us with
very different groups. We can
love what we are, without
hating what—and who—we
are not. We can thrive in our
own tradition, even as we
learn from others, and come
to respect their teachings.”
—Kofi Annan,
Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, 2001
TABLE 1 Ethnic and Cultural Identity
Ethnic Group Identification
Majority Group Identification Strong Weak
Strong Bicultural Assimilated
Weak Separated Marginal
Source: Adapted from Phinney, J. S. (1990). Ethnic identity in adolescents and adults: Review of research. Psychological Bulletin, 108, 499–514.
Conflict and Peacemaking Chapter 13 415
separate cultural centers for students of different
racial groups” (Hehman et al., 2012).
On one side of the multiculturalism vs. assimila-
tion debate are those who believe, as the Department
of Canadian Heritage (2006) has declared, that
“multiculturalism ensures that all citizens can keep
their identities, can take pride in their ancestry and
have a sense of belonging. Acceptance gives
Canadians a feeling of security and self-confidence,
making them open to and accepting of diverse
cultures.”
On the other side are those who concur with Brit-
ain’s Commission for Racial Equality chair, Trevor
Phillips (2004), in worrying that multiculturalism
separates people. Experiments by Jacquie Vorauer
and Stacey Sasaki (2011) showed that in threatening
situations, highlighting multicultural differences
enhanced hostility. Focusing on differences prompted
people to attend and attach meaning to outgroup
members’ threatening behaviors. Likewise, highlight-
ing genetic differences between ethnic groups con-
tributes to violence risk, while learning about genetic
similarities helps foster peace (Kimel et al., 2016). Thus, an alternative common-values view
inspired the Rwandan government to declare “there is no ethnicity here. We are all Rwandan.”
In the aftermath of Rwanda’s ethnic bloodbath, government documents and government-
controlled radio and newspapers have ceased mentioning Hutu and Tutsi (Lacey, 2004).
In the space between multiculturalism and assimilation lies “diversity within unity,” an
omnicultural perspective advocated by cultural psychologist Fathali Moghaddam (2009,
2010) and by sociologist Amitai Etzioni and others (2005): “It presumes that all members
of a given society will fully respect and adhere to those basic values and institutions that
are considered part of the basic shared framework of the society. At the same time, every
group in society is free to maintain its distinct subculture—those policies, habits, and institu-
tions that do not conflict with the shared core.”
By forging unifying ideals, immigrant countries such as the United States, Canada, and
Australia have avoided ethnic wars. In these countries, Irish and Italians, Swedes and Scots,
Asians and Africans seldom kill in defense of their ethnic identities. Nevertheless, even the
immigrant nations struggle between separation and wholeness, between people’s pride in
their distinct heritage and unity as one nation, between acknowledging the reality of diver-
sity and the quest for shared values and identity. The ideal of diversity within unity forms
the United States motto: E pluribus unum. Out of many, one.
Communication
Conflicting parties have other ways to resolve their differences. When husband and wife,
or labor and management, or nation X and nation Y disagree, they can bargain with each
other directly. They can ask a third party to mediate by making suggestions and facilitating
their negotiations. Or they can arbitrate by submitting their disagreement to someone who
will study the issues and impose a settlement.
BARGAINING
If you want to buy or sell a new car, are you better off adopting a tough bargaining stance—
opening with an extreme offer so that splitting the difference will yield a favorable result?
Or are you better off beginning with a sincere “good-faith” offer?
Experiments suggest no simple answer. On the one hand, those who demand more will
often get more. Robert Cialdini, Leonard Bickman, and John Cacioppo (1979) provide a
typical result: In a control condition, they approached various Chevrolet dealers and asked
“Nothing inspires greater tol-
erance from the intolerant
than an abundance of com-
mon and unifying beliefs,
practices, rituals, institutions,
and processes.”
—Jonathan Haidt,
When and Why Nationalism Beats
Globalism, 2016
bargaining
Seeking an agreement to a
conflict through direct negotiation
between parties.
mediation
An attempt by a neutral third
party to resolve a conflict by
facilitating communication and
offering suggestions.
arbitration
Resolution of a conflict by a
neutral third party who studies
both sides and imposes a
settlement.
Diversity within unity: Scottish and British. With the establishment of its own
Parliament and the rise of the Scottish National Party, Scottish identity has
strengthened. Yet in 2014, Scots voted also to retain their British identity, as part
of the United Kingdom.
©Rex Features
416 Part Three Social Relations
the price of a new Monte Carlo sports coupe. In an experimental condition, they approached
other dealers and first struck a tougher bargaining stance, asking for and rejecting a price
on a different car (“I need a lower price than that. That’s a lot.”). When they then asked
the price of the Monte Carlo, exactly as in the control condition, they received offers that
averaged some $200 lower.
Tough bargaining may lower the other party’s expectations, making the other side willing
to settle for less (Yukl, 1974). But toughness can sometimes backfire. Many a conflict is
not over a pie of fixed size but over a pie that shrinks if the conflict continues. A time
delay is often a lose-lose scenario. When a strike is prolonged, labor loses wages and man-
agement loses income. Being tough is therefore a potential lose-lose scenario. If the other
party responds with an equally tough stance, both may be locked into positions from which
neither can back down without losing face.
In the weeks before the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the first President Bush threatened, in
the full glare of publicity, to “kick Saddam’s ass.” Saddam Hussein, no less macho, threat-
ened to make “infidel” Americans “swim in their own blood.” After such belligerent state-
ments, it was difficult for each side to evade war and save face.
MEDIATION
A third-party mediator may offer suggestions that enable conflicting parties to make conces-
sions and still save face (Pruitt, 1998). If my concession can be attributed to a mediator,
who is gaining an equal concession from my antagonist, neither of us will be viewed as
weakly caving in.
TURNING WIN-LOSE INTO WIN-WIN Mediators also help resolve conflicts by facilitat-
ing constructive communication. Their first task is to help the parties rethink the conflict
and gain information about the others’ interests. Typically, people on both sides have a
competitive “win-lose” orientation: They are successful if their opponent is unhappy with
the result, and unsuccessful if their opponent is pleased (Thompson et al., 1995). The
mediator aims to replace this win-lose orientation with a cooperative “win-win” orientation,
by prodding both sides to set aside their conflicting demands and instead to think about
each other’s underlying needs, interests, and goals.
A classic win-win story concerns two sisters who quarreled over an orange (Follett, 1940).
Finally they compromised and split the orange in half, whereupon one sister squeezed her
half for juice while the other used the peel on her half to make a cake. If the sisters had
each explained why they wanted the orange, they very likely would have agreed to share it,
giving one sister all the juice and the other all the peel. This is an example of an integrative
agreement (Pruitt & Lewis, 1975, 1977). Compared with compromises, in which each party
sacrifices something important, integrative agreements are more enduring. Because they are
mutually rewarding, they also lead to better ongoing relationships (Pruitt, 1986).
UNRAVELING MISPERCEPTIONS WITH CONTROLLED COMMUNICATIONS
Communication often helps reduce self-fulfilling misperceptions. Perhaps you can recall
experiences similar to that of this college student:
Often, after a prolonged period of little communication, I perceive Martha’s silence as a sign
of her dislike for me. She, in turn, thinks that my quietness is a result of my being mad at her.
My silence induces her silence, which makes me even more silent . . . until this snowballing
effect is broken by some occurrence that makes it necessary for us to interact. And the com-
munication then unravels all the misinterpretations we had made about one another.
The outcome of such conflicts often depends on how people communicate their feelings.
Psychologists Ian Gotlib and Catherine Colby (1988) offered advice to couples on how to
avoid destructive quarrels and how to have good quarrels (Table 2). Children, for example,
can learn that conflict is normal, that people can learn to get along with those who are dif-
ferent, that most disputes can be resolved with two winners, and that nonviolent communica-
tion strategies are an alternative to a world of bullies and victims. This “violence prevention
curriculum . . . is not about passivity,” noted Deborah Prothrow-Stith (1991, p. 183). “It is
about using anger not to hurt oneself or one’s peers, but to change the world.”
integrative agreements
Win-win agreements that
reconcile both parties’ interests
to their mutual benefit.
Conflict and Peacemaking Chapter 13 417
David Johnson and Roger Johnson (1995, 2000,
2003) put first- through ninth-grade children through
about a dozen hours of conflict resolution training in
six schools, with heartening results. Before the training,
most students were involved in daily conflicts—put-downs
and teasing, playground turn-taking conflicts, conflicts
over possessions—conflicts that nearly always resulted in
a winner and a loser. After training, the children more
often found win-win solutions, better mediated friends’
conflicts, and retained and applied their new skills in
and out of school throughout the school year. When
implemented with a whole student body, the result is
a more peaceful student community and increased aca-
demic achievement.
Conflict researchers report that a key factor is trust
(Balliet & Van Lange, 2013). If you believe the other
person is well intentioned, you are more likely to divulge
your needs and concerns. Lacking trust, you may fear
that being open will give the other party information
that might be used against you. Even simple behaviors
can enhance trust. In experiments, negotiators who were instructed to mimic the others’
mannerisms, as naturally empathic people often do, elicited more trust and greater discov-
ery of compatible interests and mutually satisfying deals (Maddux et al., 2008). Meeting
people face to face, and hearing their views in their own voice (rather than in writing) also
helps to humanize them (Schroeder et al., 2018).
When the two parties mistrust each other and communicate unproductively, a third-party
mediator—a marriage counselor, a labor mediator, a diplomat—sometimes helps. Often the
mediator is someone trusted by both sides. In the 1980s it took an Algerian Muslim to
mediate the conflict between Iran and Iraq, and the Pope to resolve a geographical dispute
between Argentina and Chile (Carnevale & Choi, 2000).
After coaxing the conflicting parties to rethink their perceived win-lose conflict, the
mediator often has each party identify and rank its goals. When goals are compatible, the
“[There is] a psychological
barrier between us, a barrier
of suspicion, a barrier of rejec-
tion; a barrier of fear, of de-
ception, a barrier of
hallucination. . . ”
—Egyptian President Anwar Al-
Sadat to the Israeli Knesset, 1977
TABLE 2 How Couples Can Argue Constructively
Do Not Do
• evade the argument, give the silent
treatment, or walk out on it
• clearly define the issue and repeat the other’s
arguments in your own words
• use your intimate knowledge of the
other person to hit below the belt and
humiliate
• divulge your positive and negative feelings
• bring in unrelated issues • welcome feedback about your behavior
• feign agreement while harboring
resentment
• clarify where you agree and disagree and
what matters most to each of you
• tell the other party how she or he is
feeling
• ask questions that help the other find words
to express the concern
• attack indirectly by criticizing someone
or something the other person values
• wait for spontaneous explosions to subside,
without retaliating
• undermine the other by intensifying
his or her insecurity or threatening
disaster
• offer positive suggestions for mutual
improvement
Communication facilitators work to break down barriers, as in this diversity
training exercise. In work organizations, too, diversity training can improve
attitudes (Kalinoski et al., 2013).
©Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock
418 Part Three Social Relations
ranking procedure makes it easier for each to con-
cede on less-important goals so that both achieve
their chief goals (Erickson et al., 1974; Schulz &
Pruitt, 1978). South Africa achieved internal peace
when Black and White South Africans granted
each other’s top priorities—replacing apartheid
with majority rule and safeguarding the security,
welfare, and rights of Whites (Kelman, 1998).
When labor and management both believe that
management’s goal of higher productivity and
profit is compatible with labor’s goal of better
wages and working conditions, they can begin to
work for an integrative win-win solution. If workers
will forgo benefits that are moderately beneficial
to them but very costly to management (perhaps
company-provided dental care), and if management
will forgo moderately valuable arrangements that
workers very much resent (perhaps inflexible work-
ing hours), both sides may gain (Ross & Ward, 1995). Rather than seeing itself as making
a concession, each side can see the negotiation as an effort to exchange bargaining chips
for things more valued.
When the parties then convene to communicate directly, they are usually not set loose
in the hope that, eyeball-to-eyeball, the conflict will resolve itself. In the midst of a threaten-
ing, stressful conflict, emotions often disrupt the ability to understand the other party’s
point of view. Although happiness and gratitude can increase trust, anger decreases it
(Dunn & Schweitzer, 2005). Communication may thus become most difficult just when it
is most needed (Tetlock, 1985).
The mediator will often structure the encounter to help each party understand and feel
understood by the other. The mediator may ask the conflicting parties to restrict their
arguments to statements of fact, including statements of how they feel and how they respond
when the other acts in a given way: “I enjoy music. But when you play it loud, I find it
hard to concentrate. That makes me crabby.” To increase empathy, the mediator may ask
people to reverse roles and argue the other’s position or to imagine and explain what the
other person is experiencing (Yaniv, 2012). The mediator may have them restate one
another’s positions before replying with their own: “It annoys you when I play my music
and you’re trying to study.”
Experiments show that taking the other’s perspective and inducing empathy decreases
stereotyping and increases cooperation (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000; Gutenbrunner &
Wagner, 2016; Todd et al., 2011). Hearing an outgroup person criticizing their own group—
as when Israeli Jews heard a Palestinian criticizing Palestinians—opens people to the out-
group’s perspective (Saguy & Halperin, 2014). It helps to humanize rather than demonize
the other. Older people often find that easier to do, by having the wisdom to appreciate
multiple perspectives and the limits of knowledge (Grossmann et al., 2010). Sometimes our
elders are older, wiser, and better able to navigate social conflicts.
When parties—perhaps two colleagues or two partners—are at an impasse and need to
move on from their standstill, one simple strategy is literally to take steps forward together . . .
to go for a walk. Walking together, like other forms of movement synchrony, engages people
in jointly attending to their environment and coordinating their steps. Doing so increases
their empathy and rapport, softens the boundary between them, and engenders cooperation
(Good et al., 2017; Webb et al., 2017).
Neutral third parties may also suggest mutually agreeable proposals that would be dis-
missed—“reactively devalued”—if offered by either side. A nuclear disarmament proposal
that Americans dismissed when attributed to the former Soviet Union seemed more accept-
able when attributed to a neutral third party (Stillinger et al., 1991). Likewise, people will
often reactively devalue a concession offered by an adversary (“they must not value it”);
Trust, like other social behav-
iors, is also a biological phe-
nomenon. Social neuroscientists
have found that individuals with
lowered levels of serotonin, the
brain neurotransmitter, become
more likely to see a low offer in
a laboratory game as unfair, and
to reject it (Bilderbeck et al.,
2014; Colzato et al., 2013;
Crockett et al., 2008). Infusions
of the hormone oxytocin have
something of an opposite effect,
increasing people’s trust of
strangers in laboratory games
(Zak, 2008).
©hidesy/Shutterstock
Conflict and Peacemaking Chapter 13 419
the same concession may seem more than a
token gesture when suggested by a third party.
These peacemaking principles—based partly
on laboratory experiments, partly on practical
experience—have helped mediate both interna-
tional and industrial conflicts (Blake & Mou-
ton, 1962, 1979; Fisher, 1994; Wehr, 1979). One
small team of Arab and Jewish Americans, led
by social psychologist Herbert Kelman (1997,
2010), has conducted workshops bringing
together influential Arabs and Israelis. Kelman
and colleagues counter misperceptions and have
participants seek creative solutions for their
common good. Isolated, the participants are
free to speak directly to their adversaries with-
out fear that their constituents are second-guess-
ing what they are saying. The result? Those
from both sides typically come to understand
the other’s perspective and how the other side
responds to their own group’s actions.
ARBITRATION
Some conflicts are so intractable, the underlying interests so divergent, that a mutually
satisfactory resolution is unattainable. In a divorce dispute over custody of a child, both
parents cannot enjoy full custody. In such cases (disputes over tenants’ repair bills, athletes’
wages, and national territories), a third-party mediator may—or may not—help resolve the
conflict.
If not, the parties may turn to arbitration by having the mediator or another third party
impose a settlement. Disputants usually prefer to settle their differences without arbitration
so that they retain control over the outcome. Neil McGillicuddy and others (1987) observed
this preference in an experiment involving disputants coming to a dispute settlement center.
When people knew they would face an arbitrated settlement if mediation failed, they tried
harder to resolve the problem, exhibited less hostility, and thus were more likely to reach
agreement.
In cases where differences seem large and irreconcilable, the prospect of arbitration may
cause the disputants to freeze their positions, hoping to gain an advantage when the arbitra-
tor chooses a compromise. To combat that tendency, some disputes, such as those involving
salaries of individual baseball players, are settled with “final-offer arbitration,” in which the
third party chooses one of the two final offers. Final-offer arbitration motivates each party
to make a reasonable proposal.
Typically, however, the final offer is not as reasonable as it would be if each party,
free of self-serving bias, saw its own proposal through others’ eyes. Negotiation research-
ers report that most disputants are made stubborn by “optimistic overconfidence” (Kahn-
eman & Tversky, 1995). Successful mediation is hindered when, as often happens, both
parties believe they have a two-thirds chance of winning a final-offer arbitration (Bazer-
man, 1986, 1990).
Conciliation
Sometimes tension and suspicion run so high that even communication, let alone resolu-
tion, becomes all but impossible. Each party may threaten, coerce, or retaliate against the
other. Unfortunately, such acts tend to be reciprocated, escalating the conflict. So, would
a strategy of appeasing the other party by being unconditionally cooperative produce a
satisfying result? Often not. In laboratory games, those who are 100% cooperative often are
exploited. Politically, a one-sided pacifism is usually out of the question.
“Adversarial collaboration”—turning rivals into teammates. Groups with conflicting
ideas may want to lay out where they agree, identify points of disagreement, and
jointly propose solutions to those points.
©Photononstop/Alamy Stock Photo
420 Part Three Social Relations
GRIT
Social psychologist Charles Osgood (1962, 1980) advocated a third alternative, one that is
conciliatory yet strong enough to discourage exploitation. Osgood called it “graduated and
reciprocated initiatives in tension reduction.” He nicknamed it GRIT, a label that suggests
the determination it requires. GRIT aims to reverse the “conflict spiral” by triggering recip-
rocal de-escalation. To do so, it draws upon social-psychological concepts, such as the norm
of reciprocity and the attribution of motives.
GRIT requires one side to initiate a few small de-escalatory actions, after announcing a
conciliatory intent. The initiator states its desire to reduce tension, declares each conciliatory
act before making it, and invites the adversary to reciprocate. Such announcements create
a framework that helps the adversary correctly interpret what otherwise might be seen as
weak or tricky actions. They also bring public pressure to bear on the adversary to follow
the reciprocity norm.
Next, the initiator establishes credibility and genuineness by carrying out, exactly as
announced, several verifiable conciliatory acts. This intensifies the pressure to reciprocate.
Making conciliatory acts diverse—perhaps offering medical help, closing a military base,
and lifting a trade ban—keeps the initiator from making a significant sacrifice in any one
area and leaves the adversary freer to choose its own means of reciprocation. If the adver-
sary reciprocates voluntarily, its own conciliatory behavior may soften its attitudes.
GRIT is conciliatory. But it is not “surrender on the installment plan.” The remaining
aspects of the plan protect each side’s self-interest by maintaining retaliatory capability. The
initial conciliatory steps entail some small risk but do not jeopardize either one’s security;
rather, they are calculated to begin edging both sides down the tension ladder. If one side
takes an aggressive action, the other side reciprocates in kind, making clear it will not toler-
ate exploitation. Yet the reciprocal act is not an overresponse that would re-escalate the
conflict. If the adversary offers its own conciliatory acts, these, too, are matched or even
slightly exceeded. Morton Deutsch (1993) captured the spirit of GRIT in advising negotia-
tors to be “‘firm, fair, and friendly’: firm in resisting intimidation, exploitation, and dirty
tricks; fair in holding to one’s moral principles and not reciprocating the other’s immoral
behavior despite his or her provocations; and friendly in the sense that one is willing to
initiate and reciprocate cooperation.”
Does GRIT really work? In a lengthy series of experiments at Ohio University, Svenn
Lindskold and his associates (1976, 1986, 1988) found “strong support for the various steps
in the GRIT proposal.” In laboratory games, announcing cooperative intent does boost
cooperation. Repeated conciliatory or generous acts do breed greater trust (Klapwijk & Van
Lange, 2009; Shapiro, 2010). Maintaining an equality of power does protect against
exploitation.
Lindskold was not contending that the world of the laboratory experiment mirrors the
more complex world of everyday life. Rather, experiments enable us to formulate and verify
powerful theoretical principles, such as the reciprocity norm and the self-serving bias. As
Lindskold (1981) noted, “It is the theories, not the individual experiments, that are used
to interpret the world.”
REAL-WORLD APPLICATIONS
GRIT-like strategies have occasionally been tried outside the laboratory, with promising
results. During the Berlin crisis of the early 1960s, U.S. and Russian tanks faced each other
barrel to barrel. The crisis was defused when the Americans pulled back their tanks step-
by-step. At each step, the Russians reciprocated. Similarly, in the 1970s, small concessions
by Israel and Egypt (for example, Israel allowing Egypt to open up the Suez Canal, Egypt
allowing ships bound for Israel to pass through) helped reduce tension to a point where
the negotiations became possible (Rubin, 1981).
To many, the most significant attempt at GRIT was the so-called Kennedy experiment
(Etzioni, 1967). On June 10, 1963, President Kennedy gave a major speech, “A Strategy
for Peace.” He noted that “Our problems are man-made . . . and can be solved by man,”
and then announced his first conciliatory act: The United States was stopping all
GRIT
Acronym for “graduated and
reciprocated initiatives in tension
reduction”—a strategy designed
to de-escalate international
tensions.
“I am not suggesting that prin-
ciples of individual behavior
can be applied to the behav-
ior of nations in any direct,
simpleminded fashion. What I
am trying to suggest is that
such principles may provide
us with hunches about inter-
national behavior that can be
tested against experience in
the larger arena.”
—Charles E. Osgood, Our Crisis in
Perspective, 1966
Conflict and Peacemaking Chapter 13 421
atmospheric nuclear tests and would not resume them unless another country did. Kennedy’s
entire speech was published in the Soviet press. Five days later Premier Khrushchev recip-
rocated, announcing he had halted production of strategic bombers. There soon followed
further reciprocal gestures: The United States agreed to sell wheat to Russia, the Russians
agreed to a “hot line” between the two countries, and the two countries soon achieved a
test-ban treaty. For a time, these conciliatory initiatives eased relations between the two
countries.
Might conciliatory efforts also help reduce tension between individuals? There is every
reason to expect so. When a relationship is strained and communication nonexistent, it
sometimes takes only a conciliatory gesture—a soft answer, a warm smile, a gentle touch—for
both parties to begin easing down the tension ladder, to a rung where contact, cooperation,
and communication again become possible.
▯ Although conflicts are readily kindled and fueled by
social dilemmas, competition, and misperceptions,
some equally powerful forces, such as contact, coopera-
tion, communication, and conciliation, can transform
hostility into harmony. Despite some encouraging early
studies, other studies show that mere contact (such as
mere desegregation in schools) has little effect upon
racial attitudes. But when contact encourages emo-
tional ties with individuals identified with an outgroup,
and when it is structured to convey equal status, hostili-
ties often lessen.
▯ Contacts are especially beneficial when people work
together to overcome a common threat or to achieve a
superordinate goal. Taking their cue from experiments
on cooperative contact, several research teams have re-
placed competitive classroom learning situations with
opportunities for cooperative learning, with heartening
results.
▯ Conflicting parties often have difficulty communicat-
ing. A third-party mediator can promote communica-
tion by prodding the antagonists to replace their
competitive win-lose view of their conflict with a more
cooperative win-win orientation, leading to an integra-
tive agreement. Mediators can also structure communi-
cations that will peel away misperceptions and increase
mutual understanding and trust. When a negotiated
settlement is not reached, the conflicting parties may
defer the outcome to an arbitrator, who either dictates a
settlement or selects one of the two final offers.
▯ Sometimes tensions run so high that genuine communi-
cation is impossible. In such cases, small conciliatory
gestures by one party may elicit reciprocal conciliatory
acts by the other party. One such conciliatory strategy,
graduated and reciprocated initiatives in tension reduc-
tion (GRIT), aims to alleviate tense international situa-
tions. Those who mediate tense labor-management and
international conflicts sometimes use another peace-
making strategy. They instruct the participants, as this
chapter instructed you, in the dynamics of conflict and
peacemaking in the hope that understanding can help
former adversaries establish and enjoy peaceful, reward-
ing relationships.
SUMMING UP: How Can Peace Be Achieved?
POSTSCRIPT:
The Conflict Between Individual
and Communal Rights
Many social conflicts are a contest between individual and collective rights. One person’s
right to smoke conflicts with others’ rights to a smoke-free environment. One industrialist’s
right to do unregulated business conflicts with a community’s right to clean air. One per-
son’s right to own handguns conflicts with a neighborhood’s right to safe schools.
Hoping to blend the best of individualist and collectivist values, some social scientists
have advocated a communitarian synthesis that aims to balance individual rights with the
collective right to communal well-being. Communitarians welcome incentives for individual
initiative and appreciate why Marxist economies have crumbled. “If I were, let’s say, in
Albania at this moment,” said communitarian sociologist Amitai Etzioni (1991), “I probably
“This is the age of the
individual.”
—President Ronald Reagan,
Address on Wall Street, 1982
422 Part Three Social Relations
would argue that there’s too much community and not enough individual rights.” But com-
munitarians also question the other extreme—rugged individualism and self-indulgence of
the 1960s (“Do your own thing”), the 1970s (the “Me decade”), the 1980s (“Greed is
good”), the 1990s (“Follow your bliss”), the 2000s (“An Army of One”), and the 2010s
(“Never compromise”). Unrestrained personal freedom, they say, destroys a culture’s social
fabric; unregulated commercial freedom, they add, has plundered our shared
environment.
During the last half-century, Western individualism has intensified. Parents have become
more likely to prize independence and self-reliance in their children and are less concerned
with obedience (Alwin, 1990; Remley, 1988; Park et al., 2014). Children more often have
uncommon names (Twenge et al., 2010). Clothing and grooming styles have become more
diverse, personal freedoms have increased, and common values have waned (Putnam, 2000;
Schlesinger, 1991).
Communitarians are not advocating a nostalgia trip—a return, for example, to the more
restrictive and unequal gender roles of the 1950s. Rather, they propose a middle ground
between the individualism of the West and the collectivism of the East, between the macho
independence traditionally associated with males and the caregiving connectedness tradi-
tionally associated with females, between concerns for individual rights and for communal
well-being, between liberty and fraternity, between me-thinking and we-thinking.
As with luggage searches at airports, smoking bans on planes, and sobriety checkpoints
and speed limits on highways, societies accept some adjustments to individual rights in
order to protect the public good. Environmental restraints on individual freedoms (to spew
greenhouse gases, to hunt whales, to deforest) similarly exchange certain short-term liberties
for long-term communal gain. Some individualists warn that such constraints on individual
liberties may plunge us down a slippery slope leading to the loss of more important liber-
ties. (If today we let them search our luggage, tomorrow they’ll be knocking down the doors
of our houses. If today we censor cigarette ads or pornography on television, tomorrow
they’ll be removing books from our libraries. If today we ban assault rifles, tomorrow they’ll
take our hunting rifles.) In protecting the interests of the majority, do we risk suppressing
the basic rights of minorities? Communitarians reply that if we don’t balance concern for
individual rights with concern for our collective well-being, we risk worse civic disorder,
which in turn will fuel cries for an autocratic crackdown.
This much is sure: As the conflict between individual and collective rights continues,
cross-cultural and gender scholarship can illuminate alternative cultural values and make
visible our own assumed values.
Applying Social
Psychology
©wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock
Social Psychology
in the Clinic
C H A P T E R
14
Throughout this book, we have linked laboratory and life by relating social psychology’s principles and findings to everyday happenings. In these chap-
ters, we recall many of these principles and apply them in practical contexts. “Social
Psychology in the Clinic” applies social psychology to evaluating and promoting
mental and physical health. “Social Psychology in Court” explores the social think-
ing of, and social influences on, jurors and juries. “Social Psychology and the
Sustainable Future” explores how social psychological principles might help avert
the ecological crisis that threatens to engulf us as a result of increasing population,
consumption, and climate change.
P A R T F O U R
What influences the
accuracy of clinical
judgments?
What cognitive
processes
accompany behavior
problems?
What are some
social-psychological
approaches to
treatment?
How do social
relationships support
health and
well-being?
Postscript:
Enhancing happiness
“Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts and happenings.
It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that are forever blowing
through one’s mind.”
—Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Autobiography, 1924
424 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
If you are a typical college student, you occasionally feel mildly depressed.
Perhaps you have at times felt dissatisfied with life, discouraged about the future,
sad, lacking appetite and energy, unable to concentrate, perhaps even wondering
if life is worth living. Maybe disappointing grades have jeopardized your career
goals. Perhaps the breakup of a relationship has left you downcast. At such times,
you may fall into self-focused brooding that only worsens your feelings. In one
survey of American collegians, 41% reported that during the last school year they
had at some point felt “so depressed it was difficult to function” (ACHA, 2017), and,
in another, 41% said they “felt overwhelmed by all I had to do” (Eagan et al., 2017).
These are both markedly higher than in 2010, suggesting that more college students
are experiencing anxiety and depression (Twenge, 2017). For 13% of adult American
men and 22% of women, life’s down times are not just temporary blue moods in
response to bad events; rather, they define a major depressive episode that lasts
for weeks without any obvious cause—and thus a diagnosis of depression (Pelham,
2009).
Among the many thriving areas of applied social psychology is one that relates
social psychology’s concepts to depression; to other problems, such as loneliness,
anxiety, and physical illness; and to happiness and well-being. This bridge-building
research between social psychology and clinical psychology seeks answers to four
important questions:
• As laypeople or as professional psychologists, how can we improve our
judgments and predictions about others?
• How do the ways in which we think about self and others fuel problems such
as depression, loneliness, anxiety, and ill health?
• How might people reverse these maladaptive thought patterns?
• What part do close, supportive relationships play in health and happiness?
WHAT INFLUENCES THE ACCURACY
OF CLINICAL JUDGMENTS?
Identify influences on social judgment that affect
clinicians’ judgments of clients. Describe biases that
clinicians and their clients should be wary of.
A parole board talks with a convicted rapist and ponders whether to release him. A clinical
psychologist considers whether her patient is seriously suicidal. A physician notes a patient’s
symptoms and decides whether to recommend an invasive test. A school social worker
wonders if a child’s overheard threat was a macho joke, a onetime outburst, or a signal
indicating a potential school assassin.
All these professionals must decide whether to make their judgments subjectively or
objectively. Should they listen to their subjective gut instincts, their hunches, their inner
wisdom? Or should they rely on the objective wisdom embedded in formulas, statistical
analyses, and computerized predictions?
In the contest between heart and head, most psychological clinicians vote with their
hearts. They listen to the whispers from their experience, a still small voice that clues them.
They prefer not to let cold calculations decide the futures of warm human beings. As
clinical psychology
The study, assessment, and
treatment of people with
psychological difficulties.
Social Psychology in the Clinic Chapter 14 425
Figure 1 indicates, they are far more likely than nonclinical (and more research-oriented)
psychologists to welcome nonscientific “ways of knowing.” Feelings trump formulas.
Clinical judgments are also social judgments, noted social-clinical psychologist James
Maddux (2008). The social construction of mental illness works like this, he said: Someone
observes a pattern of atypical or unwanted thinking and acting. A powerful group sees the
desirability or profitability of diagnosing and treating this problem, and thus gives it a name.
News about this “disease” spreads, and people begin seeing it in themselves or family
members. And thus is born Body Dysmorphic Disorder (for those preoccupied with an
appearance defect), Oppositional Defiant Disorder (for toddlers throwing tantrums),
Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (for those not wanting sex often enough), or Orgasmic
Disorder (for those having orgasms too seldom or too soon). “The science of medicine is
not diminished by acknowledging that the notions of health and illness are socially con-
structed,” noted Maddux, “nor is the science of economics diminished by acknowledging
that the notions of poverty and wealth are socially constructed.”
As social phenomena, clinical judgments are vulnerable to illusory correlations, overcon-
fidence bred by hindsight, and self-confirming diagnoses (Garb, 2005; Maddux, 1993). For
example, in one survey of 129 practicing clinicians, most believed that their performance was
at the 80th percentile, and none believed they were below the 50th percentile—a classic
example of social psychological concepts such as overconfidence and self-serving bias ( Walfish
et al., 2012). Let’s see why alerting mental health workers to how people form impressions
(and misimpressions) might help avert serious misjudgments (McFall, 1991, 2000).
Illusory Correlations
It’s tempting to see illusory correlations where none exist. If we expect two things to be
associated—if, for example, we believe that premonitions predict events—it’s easy to perceive
illusory correlations. Even when shown random data, we may notice and remember instances
when premonitions and events are coincidentally related and soon forget all the instances
when premonitions aren’t borne out and when events happen without a prior premonition.
Clinicians, like all of us, may perceive illusory correlations. Imagine that Mary, a therapist,
expects people with sexual disorders to give certain responses to the Rorschach inkblots. In
thinking about her own experience with clients, she might believe she has witnessed such
an association—but she might be forgetting those times that did not fit her expectation.
To discover when such a perception is an illusory correlation, psychological science
offers a simple method: Have one clinician administer and interpret the test. Have another
clinician assess the same person’s traits or symptoms. Repeat this process with many peo-
ple. Are test outcomes in fact correlated with reported symptoms? Some tests are indeed
“To free a man of error is to
give, not to take away.
Knowledge that a thing is
false is a truth.”
—Arthur Schopenhauer,
On Logic and DIalectic, 1851
FIGURE 1
Clinical Intuition
When Narina Nunez, Debra
Ann Poole, and Amina Memon
(2003) surveyed a national
sample of clinical and nonclini-
cal psychologists, they discov-
ered “two cultures”—one mostly
skeptical of “alternative ways
of knowing,” the other mostly
accepting.
Source: From Nunez, Poole, &
Memon, 2003.
Percent
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
AgreeDisagree
Nonclinical
psychologists
Clinical
psychologists
50
45
35
25
15
5
40
30
20
10
0
“There are alternative ways of
knowing, for which the scientific
method is irrelevant, that should be
valued and supported in the practice
of clinical psychology.”
426 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
predictive. Others, such as the Rorschach inkblots and the Draw-a-Person test, have correla-
tions far weaker than their users suppose (Lilienfeld et al., 2000, 2005).
Why, then, do clinicians continue to express confidence in uninformative or ambiguous
tests? Pioneering experiments by Loren Chapman and Jean Chapman (1969, 1971) helped
us see why. They invited college students and professional clinicians to study some test
performances and diagnoses. If the students or clinicians expected a particular association,
they generally perceived it. For example, clinicians who believed that only suspicious people
draw peculiar eyes on the Draw-a-Person test perceived such a relationship—even when shown
cases in which suspicious people drew peculiar eyes less often than nonsuspicious people.
If they believed in a connection, they were more likely to notice confirming instances.
In fairness to clinicians, illusory thinking also occurs among political analysts, historians,
sportscasters, personnel directors, stockbrokers, and many other professionals, including
research psychologists. As researchers, we have often been unaware of the shortcomings of
our theoretical analyses. We so eagerly presume that our idea of truth is the truth that, no
matter how hard we try, we cannot see our own errors. We authors have read dozens of
reviews of our own manuscripts and have been reviewers for dozens of others. Our experi-
ence is that it is far easier to spot someone else’s sloppy thinking than to perceive our own.
Hindsight and Overconfidence
If someone we know commits suicide, how do we react? One common reaction is to think
that we, or those close to the person, should have been able to predict and therefore to
prevent the suicide: “We should have known!” In hindsight, we can see the suicidal signs
and the pleas for help. One experiment gave participants a description of a depressed person.
Some participants were told that the person subsequently committed suicide; other partici-
pants were not told this. Compared with those not informed of the suicide, those who had
been informed became more likely to say they “would have expected” it (Goggin & Range,
1985). Moreover, they viewed the victim’s family more negatively. After a tragedy, an I-should-
have-known-it-all-along phenomenon can leave family, friends, and therapists feeling guilty.
David Rosenhan (1973) and seven associates provided a striking example of error-prone
after-the-fact explanations. To test mental health workers’ clinical insights, they each made
an appointment with a different mental hospital admissions office and complained of “hear-
ing voices.” Apart from giving false names and vocations, they reported their life histories
and emotional states honestly and exhibited no further symptoms. Most were diagnosed
with schizophrenia and remained hospitalized for two to three weeks.
Hospital clinicians then searched for early incidents in the pseudopa-
tients’ life histories and hospital behavior that “confirmed” and
“explained” the diagnosis. Rosenhan tells of one pseudopatient who
truthfully explained to the interviewer that he had a close childhood
relationship with his mother but was rather remote from his father.
During adolescence and beyond, however, his father became a close
friend while his relationship with his mother cooled. His present rela-
tionship with his wife was characteristically close and warm. Apart
from occasional angry exchanges, friction was minimal. The children
had rarely been spanked.
The interviewer, “knowing” the person suffered schizophrenia,
explained the problem this way:
This white 39-year-old male . . . manifests a long history of considerable
ambivalence in close relationships, which begins in early childhood. A
warm relationship with his mother cools during his adolescence. A
distant relationship to his father is described as becoming very intense.
Affective stability is absent. His attempts to control emotionality with
his wife and children are punctuated by angry outbursts and, in the
case of the children, spankings. And while he says that he has several
good friends, one senses considerable ambivalence embedded in those
relationships also.
“No one can see his own
errors.”
—Psalm 19:12
What does this drawing of a
person say about the child who
drew it? According to research,
not much.
Courtesy of Elizabeth Louden
20/20 hindsight. After school shootings, people look back
and see signs of the coming violence—the drug use, the
easy access to guns, the social isolation, the ill-temper.
Before the blood is spilled, as when Adam Lanza was a few
years away from killing 20 Connecticut schoolchildren and
six adults, it’s nearly impossible to pick the to-be-violent
youth out from among the hordes of similarly troubled teens.
©Kateleen Foy/Getty Images
Social Psychology in the Clinic Chapter 14 427
Rosenhan later told some staff members (who had heard about his controversial experi-
ment but doubted such mistakes could occur in their hospital) that during the next three
months one or more pseudopatients would seek admission to their hospital. After the three
months, he asked the staff to guess which of the 193 patients admitted during that time
were really pseudopatients. Of the 193 new patients, 41 were believed by at least one staff
member to be pseudopatients. Actually, there were none.
Self-Confirming Diagnoses
So far we’ve seen that mental health clinicians sometimes perceive illusory correlations and
that hindsight explanations can err. A third possible problem with clinical judgment is that
patients may supply information that fulfills clinicians’ expectations. To get a feel for how
this phenomenon might be tested experimentally, imagine yourself on a blind date with
someone who has been told that you are an uninhibited, outgoing person. To see whether
this is true, your date slips questions into the conversation, such as “Have you ever done
anything crazy in front of other people?” As you answer such questions, will you reveal a
different “you” than if your date thought you were shy and reserved?
In a clever series of experiments, Mark Snyder (1984), in collaboration with William
Swann and others, gave University of Minnesota students some hypotheses to test concern-
ing individuals’ traits. Their finding: People often test for a trait by looking for information
that confirms it. As in the blind-date example, if people are trying to find out if someone
is an extravert, they often solicit instances of extraversion (“What would you do if you
wanted to liven things up at a party?”). Testing for introversion, they are more likely to ask,
“What factors make it hard for you to really open up to people?” In response, those probed
for extraversion seem more sociable, and those probed for introversion seem more shy. Our
assumptions about another help elicit the behavior we expect.
At Indiana University, Russell Fazio and his colleagues (1981) discovered that people
asked the “extraverted” questions not only seemed more extraverted to their conversation
partner but also started to see themselves as more extraverted than those asked the intro-
verted questions. Even after the conversation was over, an accomplice of the experimenter
was able to guess which condition they’d been assigned to 70% of the time.
Given such experiments, can you see why confirmation bias can lead to misdiagnoses,
and the behaviors of people undergoing psychotherapy come to fit their therapists’ theories
(Mendel et al., 2011; Whitman et al., 1963)? When Harold Renaud and Floyd Estess (1961)
conducted life-history interviews of 100 healthy, successful adult men, they were startled to
discover that their subjects’ childhood experiences were loaded with “traumatic events,”
tense relations with certain people, and bad decisions by their parents—the very factors
usually used to explain psychiatric problems. If therapists go fishing for traumas in early
childhood experiences, they will often find them.
Clinical Intuition versus Statistical Prediction
Given these hindsight- and diagnosis-confirming tendencies, most clinicians and interview-
ers express more confidence in their intuitive assessments than in statistical data (such as
using past grades and aptitude scores to predict success in graduate or professional school).
Yet when researchers pit statistical prediction against intuitive prediction, the statistics usu-
ally win. Statistical predictions are indeed unreliable. But human intuition—even expert
intuition—is even more unreliable (Faust & Ziskin, 1988; Meehl, 1954; Swets et al., 2000).
In a meta-analysis of 36 studies of clinician’s judgments, there was only a weak correlation
between the confidence they had in their judgments and their accuracy (Miller et al., 2015).
Three decades after demonstrating the superiority of statistical over intuitive prediction,
Paul Meehl (1986) found the evidence stronger than ever:
There is no controversy in social science which shows [so many] studies coming out so uni-
formly in the same direction as this one. . . . When you are pushing 90 investigations, predicting
everything from the outcome of football games to the diagnosis of liver disease and when you
can hardly come up with a half dozen studies showing even a weak tendency in favor of the
clinician, it is time to draw a practical conclusion.
“As is your sort of mind, so is
your sort of search: You’ll find
what you desire.”
—Robert Browning, “Christmas-
Eve and Easter-Day,” 1850
428 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
One University of Minnesota research team conducted a meta-analysis of 134 studies in
which practitioners tried to predict human behavior or make psychological or medical
diagnoses (Grove et al., 2000). In only 8 of the studies did clinical prediction surpass
“mechanical” (statistical) prediction. In 8 times as many (63 studies), statistical prediction
fared better. (The rest were a virtual draw.) Ah, but would clinicians fare differently when
given the opportunity for a firsthand clinical interview? Yes, reported the researchers:
Allowed interviews, the clinicians fared substantially worse. “It is fair to say that ‘the ball
is in the clinicians’ court,’” the researchers concluded. “Given the overall deficit in clini-
cians’ accuracy relative to mechanical prediction, the burden falls on advocates of clinical
prediction to show that clinicians’ predictions are more [accurate or cost-effective].”
Daniel Kahneman (2011, p. 223) notes that we now have some 200 studies comparing
clinical and statistical prediction, most of which favor the statistical prediction, the rest a
draw. These include efforts to predict
▯ medical outcomes—cancer patients’ longevity, hospital stays, cardiac diagnoses,
babies’ susceptibility to sudden infant death syndrome,
▯ economic outcomes—new business success, credit risks, career satisfaction,
▯ government agency outcomes—foster parent assessments, juvenile offender re-offense,
violent behavior, and
▯ miscellaneous other outcomes—football winners, Bordeaux wine prices.
What if we combined statistical prediction with clinical intuition? What if we gave pro-
fessional clinicians the statistical prediction of someone’s future academic performance or
risk of parole violation or suicide and asked them to refine or improve on the prediction?
Alas, in the few studies where that has been done, prediction was better if the “improve-
ments” were ignored (Dawes, 1994).
Why then do so many clinicians continue to interpret Rorschach inkblot tests and offer
intuitive predictions about parolees, suicide risks, and likelihood of child abuse? Partly out
of sheer ignorance, said Meehl, but also partly out of “mistaken conceptions of ethics”:
If I try to forecast something important about a college student, or a criminal, or a depressed patient
by inefficient rather than efficient means, meanwhile charging this person or the taxpayer 10 times
as much money as I would need to achieve greater predictive accuracy, that is not a sound ethical
practice. That it feels better, warmer, and cuddlier to me as predictor is a shabby excuse indeed.
Such words are shocking. Did Meehl (who did not completely dismiss clinical expertise)
underestimate experts’ intuitions? To see why his findings are apparently valid, consider the
assessment of human potential by graduate admissions interviewers. Dawes (1976) explained
why statistical prediction is so often superior to an interviewer’s intuition when predicting
certain outcomes such as graduate school success:
“A very bright young man who
is likely to succeed in life. He
is intelligent enough to
achieve lofty goals as long as
he stays on task and remains
motivated.”
—Probation Officer’s Clinical Intu-
ition in Response to Eric Harris’s
“Homicidal Thoughts”—2½
Months Before He Committed the
Columbine High School Massacre
“The effect of Meehl’s work
on clinical practice in the
mental health area can be
summed up in a single word:
Zilch. He was honored,
elected to the presidency of
[the American Psychological
Association] at a very young
age in 1962, recently elected
to the National Academy of
Sciences, and ignored.”
—Robyn M. Dawes, Resignation
Letter to the American
Psychological Association, 1989
Many studies show that therapy is effective (Duncan & Reese,
2013). However, for predicting behavior, statistical techniques
win over clinical intuition.
©Wavebreak Media Ltd /123RF
What makes us think that we can do a better job of selection by
interviewing (students) for a half hour, than we can by adding together
relevant (standardized) variables, such as undergraduate GPA, GRE
score, and perhaps ratings of letters of recommendation? The most
reasonable explanation to me lies in our overevaluation of our cogni-
tive capacity. And it is really cognitive conceit. Consider, for example,
what goes into a GPA. Because for most graduate applicants it is
based on at least 3½ years of undergraduate study, it is a composite
measure arising from a minimum of 28 courses and possibly, with the
popularity of the quarter system, as many as 50. . . . Yet you and I,
looking at a folder or interviewing someone for a half hour, are sup-
posed to be able to form a better impression than one based on 3½
years of the cumulative evaluations of 20–40 different professors. . . .
Finally, if we do wish to ignore GPA, it appears that the only reason
for doing so is believing that the candidate is particularly brilliant even
though his or her record may not show it. What better evidence for
such brilliance can we have than a score on a carefully devised apti-
tude test? Do we really think we are better equipped to assess such
aptitude than is the Educational Testing Service, whatever its faults?
Social Psychology in the Clinic Chapter 14 429
The bottom line, contended Dawes (2005) after three decades pressing his point, is that,
lacking evidence, using clinical intuition rather than statistical prediction “is simply
unethical.”
However, psychologists can offer useful predictions based on research studies examin-
ing specific past behaviors. Such was the case when psychologists Melissa Dannelet and
Carl Redick assessed Maurice Clemmon, who was in a Tacoma, Washington, jail on rape
and assault charges. Based
partly on “previous violence,
young age at first violent inci-
dent, relationship instability
and prior supervision failure,”
Dannelet and Redick predicted
that Clemmons was at “risk for
future dangerous behavior and
for committing future criminal
acts jeopardizing public safety
and security due to past illicit
behaviors” (AP, 2009; Logan,
2016). Six weeks later, after
being released on bond, Clem-
mons came upon four police
officers working on their lap-
tops in a coffee shop, and shot
and killed them.
“‘I beseech ye in the bowels
of Christ, think that ye may be
mistaken.’ I should like to have
that written over the portals of
every church, every school,
and every courthouse, and,
may I say, of every legislative
body in the United States.”
—Judge Learned Hand,
Morals in Public Life, 1951,
Echoing Oliver Cromwell’s 1650
Plea to the Church of Scotland
A Physician’s View: The Social Psychology of Medicine
focus
ON
Reading this text helped me understand the human be-
haviors I observe in my work as a cancer specialist and as
medical director of a large staff of physicians. A few
examples:
Reviews of medical records illustrate the “I-knew-it-all-
along phenomenon.” Physician reviewers who assess the
medical records of their colleagues often believe, in hind-
sight, that problems such as cancer or appendicitis should
clearly have been recognized and treated much more
quickly. Once you know the correct diagnosis, it’s easy to
look back and interpret the early symptoms accordingly.
For many physicians I have known, the intrinsic motives
behind their entering the profession—to help people, to
be scientifically stimulated—soon become “overjustified”
by the high pay. Before long, the joy is lost. The extrinsic
rewards become the reason to practice, and the physi-
cian, having lost the altruistic motives, works to increase
“success,” measured in income.
“Self-serving bias” is ever present. We physicians
gladly accept personal credit when things go well. When
they don’t—when the patient is misdiagnosed or doesn’t
get well or dies—we attribute the failure elsewhere. We
were given inadequate information or the case was ill-
fated from the beginning.
I also observe many examples of “belief persever-
ance.” Even when presented with the documented facts
about, say, how AIDS is transmitted, people will strangely
persist in wrongly believing that it is just a “gay” disease
or that they should fear catching it from mosquito bites. It
makes me wonder: How can I more effectively persuade
people of what they need to know and act upon?
Indeed, as I observe medical attitudes and decision
making I feel myself submerged in a giant practical
laboratory of social psychology.
To understand the goings-on
around me, I find social psycho-
logical insights invaluable and
would strongly advise premed
students to study the field.
Burton F. VanderLaan
Grand Rapids, Michigan
Courtesy of Dr. Burton F. VanderLaan
When evaluating clients, mental
health workers, like all of us, are
vulnerable to cognitive illusions.
©wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock
430 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
Implications for Better Clinical Practice
Professional clinicians are human; they are “vulnerable to insidious errors and biases,”
concluded James Maddux (1993). They are, as we have seen,
▯ frequently the victims of illusory correlation.
▯ too readily convinced of their own after-the-fact analyses.
▯ unaware that erroneous diagnoses can be self-confirming.
▯ likely to overestimate their clinical intuition.
The implications for mental health workers are easily stated: Be mindful that clients’ verbal
agreement with what you say does not prove its validity. Beware of the tendency to see rela-
tionships that you expect to see or that are supported by striking examples readily available
in your memory. Rely on your notes more than on your memory. Recognize that hindsight
is seductive: It can lead you to feel overconfident and sometimes to judge yourself too harshly
for not having foreseen outcomes. Guard against the tendency to ask questions that assume
your preconceptions are correct; consider opposing ideas and test them, too (Garb, 1994).
▯ As psychiatrists and clinical psychologists diagnose and
treat their clients, they may perceive illusory correlations.
▯ Hindsight explanations of people’s difficulties are
sometimes too easy. Indeed, after-the-fact explaining
can breed overconfidence in clinical judgment.
▯ In interaction with clients, erroneous diagnoses are
sometimes self-confirming because interviewers tend to
seek and recall information that verifies what they are
looking for.
▯ Research on the errors that so easily creep into intuitive
judgments illustrates the need for rigorous testing of
intuitive conclusions and the use of statistics to make
predictions.
▯ The scientific method cannot answer all questions and
is itself vulnerable to bias. Thankfully, however, it can
help us sift truth from falsehood if we are aware of the
biases that tend to cloud judgments that are made
“from the heart.”
SUMMING UP: What Influences the Accuracy of Clinical
Judgments?
WHAT COGNITIVE PROCESSES
ACCOMPANY BEHAVIOR
PROBLEMS?
Describe the cognitive processes that accompany
psychological disorders.
Let’s next consider how people’s thinking affects their feelings. What are the memories,
attributions, and expectations of depressed, lonely, shy, or illness-prone people?
Depression
People who feel depressed tend to think in negative terms. They view life through the dark
glasses of low self-esteem (Kuster et al., 2012; Sowislo & Orth, 2012). With seriously depressed
people—those who are feeling worthless, lethargic, indifferent toward friends and family, and
unable to sleep or eat normally—the negative thinking is self-defeating. Their intensely pessi-
mistic outlook leads them to magnify every bad experience and minimize every good one. They
may view advice to “count your blessings” or “look on the bright side” as hopelessly unrealistic.
Social Psychology in the Clinic Chapter 14 431
As one depressed young woman reported, “The real me is worthless and inadequate. I can’t
move forward with my work because I become frozen with doubt” (Burns, 1980, p. 29).
DISTORTION OR REALISM?
Are all depressed people unrealistically negative? To find out, Lauren Alloy and Lyn Abramson
(1979; Alloy et al., 2004) studied college students who were either mildly depressed or not
depressed. They had the students press a button and observe whether the button controlled
a light coming on. Surprisingly, the depressed students were quite accurate in estimating their
degree of control. It was the nondepressives whose judgments were distorted; they exaggerated
their control. Despite their self-preoccupation, mildly depressed people also are more attuned
to others’ feelings and often more accurate in their memories and judgments (Forgas, 2014;
Harkness et al., 2005). They even excel at estimating time intervals (Kornbrot et al., 2013).
This surprising phenomenon of depressive realism, nicknamed the “sadder-but-wiser
effect,” shows up in various judgments of one’s control or skill (Ackermann & DeRubeis,
1991; Alloy et al., 1990). Shelley Taylor (1989, p. 214; see also The Inside Story: Shelley
Taylor on Positive Illusions) explained:
Normal people exaggerate how competent and well liked they are. Depressed people do not.
Normal people remember their past behavior with a rosy glow. Depressed people [unless
severely depressed] are more evenhanded in recalling their successes and failures. Normal people
describe themselves primarily positively. Depressed people describe both their positive and their
negative qualities. Normal people take credit for successful outcomes and tend to deny respon-
sibility for failure. Depressed people accept responsibility for both success and failure. Normal
people exaggerate the control they have over what goes on around them. Depressed people are
less vulnerable to the illusion of control. Normal people believe to an unrealistic degree that
the future holds a bounty of good things and few bad things. Depressed people are more realistic
in their perceptions of the future. In fact, on virtually every point on which normal people show
enhanced self-regard, illusions of control, and unrealistic visions of the future, depressed people
fail to show the same biases. “Sadder but wiser” does indeed appear to apply to depression.
Depressed people are also more likely to believe that they are to blame for negative
events. For example, if you fail an exam and blame yourself, you may conclude that you
are stupid or lazy; consequently, you may feel depressed. If you attribute the failure to
“Life is the art of being well
deceived.”
—William Hazlitt,
The Round Table: A Collection
of Essays, 1817
depressive realism
The tendency of mildly
depressed people to make
accurate rather than self-serving
judgments, attributions, and
predictions.
Shelley Taylor on Positive Illusions
THE inside
STORY
Some years ago, I was conducting interviews with people
who had cancer for a study on adjustment to intensely
stressful events. I was surprised to learn that, for some peo-
ple, the cancer experience actually seemed to have brought
benefits, as well as the expected liabilities. Many people told
me that they thought they were better people for the experi-
ence, they felt they were better adjusted to cancer than
other people, they believed that they could exert control
over their cancer in the future, and they believed their futures
would be cancer-free, even when we knew from their medi-
cal histories that their cancers were likely to recur.
As a result, I became fascinated by how people can
construe even the worst of situations as good, and I’ve
studied these “positive illusions” ever since. Through our
research, we learned quickly that you don’t have to expe-
rience a trauma to demonstrate positive illusions. Most
people, including the majority of college students, think of
themselves as somewhat better than average, as more in
control of the circumstances around them than may actu-
ally be true, and as likely to experience more positive
future outcomes in life than may be realistic. These illusions
are not a sign of maladjustment—
quite the contrary. Good mental
health may depend on the ability
to see things as somewhat better
than they are and to find benefits
even when things seem most
bleak.
Shelley Taylor
UCLA
Courtesy of Shelley Taylor
432 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
an unfair exam or to other circumstances beyond your control, you may instead feel angry.
In more than 100 studies of 15,000 participants, depressed people have been more likely
than nondepressed people to exhibit a negative explanatory style (Haeffel et al., 2008; Peterson
& Steen, 2002; Sweeney et al., 1986). As shown in Figure 2, this explanatory style attributes
failure and setbacks to causes that are stable (“It’s going to last forever”), global (“It’s going
to affect everything I do”), and internal (“It’s all my fault”). The result of this pessimistic,
overgeneralized, self-blaming thinking, said Abramson and her colleagues (1989), is a
depressing sense of hopelessness.
IS NEGATIVE THINKING A CAUSE OR A RESULT OF DEPRESSION?
The cognitive accompaniments of depression raise a chicken-and-egg question: Do depressed
moods cause negative thinking, or does negative thinking cause depression?
DEPRESSED MOODS CAUSE NEGATIVE THINKING Our moods color our thinking.
When we feel happy, we think happy. We see and recall a good world. But let our mood
turn gloomy, and our thoughts switch to a different track. Off come the rose-colored glasses;
on come the dark glasses. Now the bad mood primes our recollections of negative events
(Bower, 1987; Johnson & Magaro, 1987). Our relationships seem to sour, our self-images
tarnish, our hopes dim, others seem more sinister (Brown & Taylor, 1986; Mayer & Salovey,
1987). As depression increases, memories and expectations plummet.
When depression lifts, thinking brightens (Barnett & Gotlib, 1988; Kuiper & Higgins,
1985). Thus, currently depressed people recall their parents as having been rejecting and
punitive. But formerly depressed people recall their parents in the same positive terms that
never-depressed people do (Lewinsohn & Rosenbaum, 1987). Thus, when you hear depressed
people trashing their parents, remember: Moods modify memories.
By studying Indiana University basketball fans, Edward Hirt and his colleagues (1992)
demonstrated that even a temporary bad mood can darken our thinking. After the fans
were either depressed by watching their team lose or elated by a victory, the researchers
asked them to predict the team’s future performance, and their own. After a loss, people
offered bleaker assessments not only of the team’s future but also of their own likely per-
formance at throwing darts, solving anagrams, and getting a date. When things aren’t going
our way, it may seem as though they never will.
A depressed mood also affects behavior. When depressed, we tend to be withdrawn,
glum, and quick to complain. Depressed people are somewhat realistic in thinking that
others don’t appreciate their behavior; their pessimism and bad moods can trigger social
rejection (Carver et al., 1994; Strack & Coyne, 1983).
Depressed behavior can also trigger depression in others. College students who have
depressed roommates tend to become a little depressed themselves (Burchill & Stiles, 1988;
explanatory style
One’s habitual way of explaining
life events. A negative,
pessimistic, depressive
explanatory style attributes
failure to stable, global, and
internal causes.
“To the man who is enthusias-
tic and optimistic, if what is to
come should be pleasant, it
seems both likely to come
about and likely to be good,
while to the indifferent or
depressed man it seems the
opposite.”
—Aristotle,
The Art of Rhetoric, BC 4th century
FIGURE 2
Depressive Explanatory Style
Depression is linked with a negative, pessimistic way of explaining and interpreting failures.
“No, it’s a temporary setback.” “Yes, it’s going to last.”
“Yes, it’s going to ruin me.”
“Yes, I’m to blame.”
Stable?
Global?
Internal?
Optimistic
attributional style
Is this
failure . . .
Depressive
attributional style
No
depression
Depression
“No, it wasn’t my fault.”
“No, everything else is ok.”
Social Psychology in the Clinic Chapter 14 433
Joiner, 1994; Sanislow et al., 1989). In dating couples, too, depression
is often contagious (Katz et al., 1999). Better news comes from a study
that followed nearly 5,000 residents of one Massachusetts city for
20 years: Happiness is also contagious. When surrounded by happy
people, people often become happier (Fowler & Christakis, 2008).
We can see, then, that being depressed has cognitive and behavioral
effects. Does it also work the other way around: Does depression have
cognitive origins?
NEGATIVE THINKING CAUSES DEPRESSED MOODS Depres-
sion is natural when experiencing severe stress—losing a job, getting
divorced or rejected, or suffering any experience that disrupts our sense
of who we are and why we are worthy human beings. The brooding
that comes with this short-term depression can be adaptive. Much as
nausea and pain protect the body from toxins, so depression protects
us, by slowing us down, causing us to reassess, and then redirecting
our energy in new ways (Andrews & Thomson, 2009, 2010; Watkins,
2008). Insights gained during times of depressed inactivity may later
result in better strategies for interacting with the world.
Although all of us may be temporarily depressed by bad events,
some people are more enduringly depressed. Depression-prone peo-
ple respond to bad events with intense rumination and self-blame
(Mor & Winquist, 2002; Pyszczynski et al., 1991). Their self-esteem
f luctuates more rapidly up with boosts and down with threats (Butler
et al., 1994).
Why are some people so affected by minor stresses? Evidence suggests that when stress-
induced rumination is filtered through a negative explanatory style, the frequent outcome is
depression (Robinson & Alloy, 2003). Colin Sacks and Daphne Bugental (1987) asked some
young women to get acquainted with a stranger who sometimes acted cold and unfriendly,
creating an awkward social situation. Unlike optimistic women, those with a pessimistic explan-
atory style—who characteristically offer stable, global, and internal attributions for bad events—
reacted to the social failure by feeling depressed. Moreover, they then behaved more
antagonistically toward the next people they met. Their negative thinking led to a negative
mood, which led to negative behavior.
Such depressing rumination is more common among women, reported Susan Nolen-
Hoeksema (2003). When trouble strikes, men tend to act, women tend to think—and often
to “overthink,” she observed. And that helps explain why, beginning in adolescence, women
worldwide have, compared with men, a nearly doubled risk of depression (Bromet et al.,
2011; CDC, 2018).
Outside the laboratory, studies of children, teenagers, and adults confirm that those
with the pessimistic explanatory style more often become depressed when bad things hap-
pen. One study monitored university students every six weeks for two-and-a-half years
(Alloy et al., 1999). Seventeen percent of those with pessimistic explanatory styles became
depressed, compared to only 1% of those with optimistic thinking styles. “A recipe for
severe depression is preexisting pessimism encountering failure,” noted Martin Seligman
(1991, p. 78).
Researcher Peter Lewinsohn and his colleagues (1985) assembled these findings into a
coherent psychological understanding of depression. The negative self-image, attributions,
and expectations of a depressed person are, they reported, an essential link in a vicious
circle that is triggered by negative experience—perhaps academic or vocational failure, family
conflict, or social rejection (Figure 3). Such ruminations create a depressed mood that
alters how a person thinks and acts, which then fuels further negative experiences, self-
blame, and depressed mood. In experiments, mildly depressed people’s moods brighten
when a task diverts their attention to something external (Nix et al., 1995). Depression is
therefore both a cause and a result of negative cognitions.
Martin Seligman (1991, 1998, 2002) believes that self-focus and self-blame help explain
the high levels of depression in today’s Western world. He contends that the decline of
Stresses challenge some people and defeat others.
Researchers have sought to understand the “explanatory
style” that makes some people more vulnerable to
depression.
©Sean Prior/Alamy Stock photo
434 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
religion and family, plus the
growth of individualism, breeds
hopelessness and self-blame
when things don’t go well. Failed
classes, careers, and marriages
produce despair when we stand
alone, with nothing and no one
to fall back on. If, as a macho
Fortune ad declared, you can
“make it on your own,” on “your
own drive, your own guts, your
own energy, your own ambition,”
then whose fault is it if you don’t
make it? In non-Western cultures, where close-knit relationships and cooperation are the
norm, major depression is less common and less tied to guilt and self-blame over perceived
personal failure. In Japan, for example, depressed people instead tend to report feeling
shame over letting down their family or co-workers (Draguns, 1990).
These insights into the thinking style linked with depression have prompted social psycholo-
gists to study thinking patterns associated with other problems. How do those who are plagued
with excessive loneliness, shyness, or substance abuse view themselves? How well do they recall
their successes and their failures? And to what do they attribute their ups and downs?
Loneliness
If depression is the common cold of psychological disorders, then loneliness is the head-
ache. Loneliness is a painful awareness that our social relationships are less numerous or
meaningful than we desire. With the loss of loved ones, loneliness increases in later life,
yet is more emotionally painful in earlier adulthood (Böger & Huxhold, 2018; Russo, 2018).
Social connectedness and identity help protect people from depression (Cruwys et al.,
2014). Yet in modern cultures, close social relationships are less numerous. One national
survey revealed a one-third drop, over two decades, in the number of people with whom
Americans can discuss “important matters.” Moreover, the number of one-person American
households increased from 5% in the 1920s to 27% in 2013 (Henderson, 2014). Canada,
Australia, and the European countries have experienced a similar multiplication of one-
person households (Charnie, 2017). In 2018, the British prime minister responded to a report
of 9 million lonely Brits by appointing a government “Minister for Loneliness” (BBC, 2018).
Like depression, loneliness is also genetically influenced; identical twins are much more
likely than fraternal twins to share moderate to extreme loneliness (Bartels et al., 2008;
Boomsma et al., 2006).
FEELING LONELY AND EXCLUDED
But loneliness need not coincide with aloneness. One can feel lonely in the middle of a
party. “In America, there is loneliness but no solitude,” lamented Mary Pipher (2003).
“There are crowds but no community.” In Los Angeles, observed Pipher’s daughter, “There
are 10 million people around me but nobody knows my name.” Lacking social connections,
and feeling lonely (or when made to feel so in an experiment), people may compensate by
seeing humanlike qualities in things, animals, and supernatural beings, with which they find
companionship (Epley et al., 2008).
One can be utterly alone—as I [DM] am while writing these words in the solitude of an
isolated turret office at a British university 5,000 miles from home—without feeling lonely.
To feel lonely is to feel excluded from a group, unloved by those around you, unable to
share your private concerns, different and alienated from those in your surroundings (Beck
& Young, 1978; Davis & Franzoi, 1986). Having lonely acquaintances increases the chance
that you feel lonely (Cacioppo et al., 2009). Loneliness tends to run in social clusters, as
its negative thoughts and behaviors spread. Small wonder, then, that loneliness increases
one’s risk of future depression, pain, and fatigue (Jaremka et al., 2013).
FIGURE 3
The Vicious Cycle of
Depression
Source: Lewinsohn, P. M., Hoberman,
H., Teri, L., & Hautziner, M. (1985).
Negative
experiences
Depressed
mood
Self-focus
and
self-blame
Cognitive and
behavioral
consequences
Social Psychology in the Clinic Chapter 14 435
Loneliness also increases the risk of health
problems. Loneliness affects stress hormones,
immune activity, and inflammation. Loneliness
therefore puts people at increased risk not only
for depression and suicide, but also high blood
pressure, heart disease, cognitive decline, and
sleep impairment (Cacioppo et al., 2014). A
digest of data from more than 300,000 people
in 148 studies showed that social isolation
increased the risk of death about as much as
smoking, and more than obesity or inactivity
(Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010).
Loneliness—which may be evoked by an icy
stare or a cold shoulder—feels, quite literally,
cold. When recalling an experience of exclusion,
people estimate a lower room temperature than
when thinking of being included. After being
excluded in a little ball game, people show a
heightened preference for warm foods and
drinks (Zhong & Leonardelli, 2008). Such feel-
ings can be adaptive. Loneliness signals people to seek social connections, which facilitate
survival. Even when loneliness triggers nostalgia—a longing for the past—it serves to remind
people of their social connections (Zhou et al., 2008).
Face-to-face social interaction appears to better relieve loneliness than the electronic
connection of social media, which may actually increase loneliness. People who spent more
time on Facebook also felt more socially isolated and lonelier (Primack et al., 2017; Song
et al., 2014). A longitudinal study found that Facebook use led to loneliness, rather than
loneliness leading to Facebook use (Kross et al., 2013). When friends communicate in
person, they feel significantly more emotional closeness than when communicating elec-
tronically (Sherman et al., 2013). As high school students began to spend less time with
each other in person and more time on social media during the 2010s, their feelings of
loneliness spiked (Twenge & Campbell, 2018).
PERCEIVING OTHERS NEGATIVELY
Like depressed people, chronically lonely people seem caught in a vicious circle of self-
defeating social thinking and social behaviors. They have some of the negative explanatory
style of the depressed; they perceive their interactions as making a poor impression, blame
themselves for their poor social rela-
tionships, and see most things as
beyond their control (Anderson
et al., 1994; Christensen & Kashy,
1998; Snodgrass, 1987). Moreover,
they perceive others in negative ways.
When paired with a stranger of the
same gender or with a first-year col-
lege roommate, lonely students are
more likely to perceive the other per-
son negatively (Jones et al., 1981;
Wittenberg & Reis, 1986). Ironically,
report Danu Stinson and her co-
researchers (2011), socially insecure
people therefore often behave in
ways that produce the very social
rejection they fear. As Figure 4 illus-
trates, loneliness, depression, and
shyness sometimes feed one another.
Ignoring someone else while looking at your phone—known as “phubbing” (a new
term combining the words “phone” and “snubbing”) increases feelings of social
exclusion (David & Roberts, 2017) and depression (Roberts & David, 2016) among
those who are being ignored.
©IKO/123RF
FIGURE 4
The Interplay of Chronic
Shyness, Loneliness,
and Depression
Solid arrows indicate primary
cause-effect direction, as sum-
marized by Jody Dill and Craig
Anderson (1999). Dotted lines
indicate additional effects.
Shyness Loneliness
Depression
436 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
These negative views may both reflect and color the
lonely person’s experience. Believing in their social unwor-
thiness and feeling pessimistic about others inhibit lonely
people from acting to reduce their loneliness. Lonely peo-
ple often find it hard to introduce themselves, make phone
calls, and participate in groups (Nurmi et al., 1996, 1997;
Rook, 1984; Spitzberg & Hurt, 1987). Once someone
becomes lonely, it can become a spiral, with lonely people
more anxious about social interaction and thus more likely
to “choke” in social situations (Cacioppo & Cacioppo,
2015; Knowles et al., 2015). Yet, like mildly depressed
people, they are attuned to others and skilled at recogniz-
ing emotional expression (Gardner et al., 2005).
Anxiety and Shyness
Shyness is social anxiety marked by self-consciousness and
worry about what others think (Anderson & Harvey, 1988;
Asendorpf, 1987; Carver & Scheier, 1986). Being inter-
viewed for a much-wanted job, dating someone for the first
time, stepping into a roomful of strangers, performing before an important audience, or
giving a speech (one of the most common phobias) can make almost anyone feel anxious.
But some people feel anxious in almost any situation in which they may feel they are being
evaluated, even having lunch with a co-worker. For these people, anxiety is more a personal-
ity trait than a temporary state.
DOUBTING OUR ABILITY IN SOCIAL SITUATIONS
What causes us to feel anxious in social situations? Why are some people shackled in the
prison of their own social anxiety? Barry Schlenker and Mark Leary (1982, 1985; Leary &
Kowalski, 1995) answer those questions by applying self-presentation theory. Self-presentation
theory assumes that we are eager to present ourselves in ways that make a good impression.
Thus, we feel social anxiety when we are motivated to impress others but have self-doubts. This
simple principle helps explain a variety of research findings, each of which may ring true
in your experience. We feel most anxious when we are
▯ with powerful, high-status people—people whose impressions of us matter.
▯ in an evaluative context, such as when making a first interview.
▯ self-conscious (as shy people often are), with our attention focused on ourselves
and how we are coming across.
▯ focused on something central to our self-image, as when
a college professor presents research before peers at a
professional convention.
▯ in novel or unstructured situations, such as a first
school dance or first formal dinner, where we are
unsure of the social rules.
For most people, the tendency in all such situations is to be
cautiously self-protective: to talk less; to avoid topics that reveal
one’s ignorance; to be guarded about oneself; to be unassertive,
agreeable, and smiling. Ironically, such anxious concern with
making a good impression often makes a bad impression
(Broome & Wegner, 1994; Meleshko & Alden, 1993). With
time, however, shy people often become well-liked. Their lack
of egotism, their modesty, sensitivity, and discretion wear well
(Gough & Thorne, 1986; Paulhus & Morgan, 1997; Shepperd
et al., 1995).
self-presentation theory
A theory positing that we are
eager to present ourselves in
ways that make a good
impression.
Shyness (self-consciousness in social situations) is a form of social
anxiety.
©Rommel Canlas/Shutterstock
When a person is eager to impress important people, social
anxiety is natural.
©Katarzyna Bialasiewicz/123RF
Social Psychology in the Clinic Chapter 14 437
OVERPERSONALIZING SITUATIONS
Compared with outgoing people, shy, self-conscious people (whose numbers include many
adolescents) see incidental events as somehow relevant to themselves (Fenigstein, 1984;
Fenigstein & Vanable, 1992). Shy, anxious people overpersonalize situations, a tendency
that breeds anxious concern and, in extreme cases, paranoia. They are especially prone to
the spotlight effect—they overestimate the extent to which other people are watching and
evaluating them. If their hair won’t comb right or they have a facial blemish, they assume
everyone else notices and judges them accordingly. Shy people may even be conscious of
their self-consciousness. They wish they could stop worrying about blushing, about what
others are thinking, or about what to say next.
To reduce social anxiety, some people turn to alcohol. Alcohol lowers anxiety and
reduces self-consciousness (Hull & Young, 1983). Thus, chronically self-conscious people
are especially likely to drink following a failure. If recovering from alcoholism, they are
more likely than those low in self-consciousness to relapse when they again experience stress
or failure.
Symptoms as diverse as anxiety and alcohol abuse can serve a self-handicapping func-
tion. Labeling oneself as anxious, shy, depressed, or under the influence of alcohol can
provide an excuse for failure (Snyder & Smith, 1986). Behind a barricade of symptoms, the
person’s ego stands secure. “Why don’t I date? Because I’m shy, so people don’t easily get
to know the real me.” The symptom is an unconscious strategic ploy to explain away nega-
tive outcomes.
What if we were to remove the need for such a ploy by providing people with a handy
alternative explanation for their anxiety and therefore for possible failure? Would a shy
person no longer need to be shy? That is precisely what Susan Brodt and Philip Zimbardo
(1981) found when they brought shy and not-shy college women to the laboratory and had
them converse with a handsome man who posed as another participant. Before the conver-
sation, the women were cooped up in a small chamber and blasted with loud noise. Some
of the shy women (but not others) were told that the noise would leave them with a pound-
ing heart, a common symptom of social anxiety. Thus, when these women later talked with
the man, they could attribute their pounding hearts and any conversational difficulties to
the noise, not to their shyness or social inadequacy. Compared with the shy women who
were not given this handy explanation for their pounding hearts, these women were no
longer so shy. They talked fluently once the conversation got going and asked questions of
the man. In fact, unlike the other shy women (whom the man could easily spot as shy),
these women were to him indistinguishable from the not-shy women.
Health, Illness, and Death
In the industrialized world, at least half of all deaths are linked with behavior—with
consuming cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, and harmful foods; with reactions to stress; with
lack of exercise and not following a doctor’s advice. The interdisciplinary field of
behavioral medicine studies these behavioral contributions to illness. Psychology’s con-
tribution to this interdisciplinary science is its subfield, health psychology. Health psy-
chologists study how people respond to illness symptoms and how emotions and
explanations inf luence health.
REACTIONS TO ILLNESS
How do people decide whether they are ill? How do they explain their symptoms? What
influences their willingness to seek and follow treatment?
NOTICING SYMPTOMS Chances are you have recently experienced at least one of these
physical complaints: headache, stomachache, nasal congestion, sore muscles, ringing in the
ears, excess perspiration, cold hands, racing heart, dizziness, stiff joints, and diarrhea or
constipation (Pennebaker, 1982). Are such symptoms meaningless? Or are you coming
down with something that requires medical attention? Hardly a week goes by without our
playing doctor by self-diagnosing some symptom.
behavioral medicine
An interdisciplinary field that
integrates and applies
behavioral and medical
knowledge about health and
disease.
health psychology
The study of the psychological
roots of health and illness.
Offers psychology’s contribution
to behavioral medicine.
438 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
Noticing and interpreting our body’s signals is like noticing and interpreting how a car
is running. Most of us cannot tell whether a car needs an oil change merely by listening
to its engine. Similarly, most of us are not astute judges of our heart rate, blood-sugar
level, or blood pressure. People guess their blood pressure based on how they feel, which
often is unrelated to their actual blood pressure (Baumann & Leventhal, 1985). Further-
more, the early signs of many illnesses, including cancer and heart disease, are subtle and
easy to miss.
EXPLAINING SYMPTOMS: AM I SICK? With more serious aches and pains, the ques-
tions become more specific—and more critical. Does the small cyst match our idea of a
malignant lump? Is the abdominal ache bad enough to be appendicitis? Is the pain in the
chest area merely—as many heart attack victims suppose—a muscle spasm? Indeed, reports
the National Institutes of Health, most heart attack victims wait too long before seeking
medical help. What factors influence how we explain symptoms?
After we notice symptoms, we interpret them using familiar disease schemas (Bishop,
1991). In medical schools, this can have amusing results. As part of their training, medical
students learn the symptoms associated with various diseases. Because they also experience
various symptoms, they sometimes attribute their symptoms to recently learned disease
schemas. (“Maybe this wheeze is the beginning of pneumonia.”) Psychology students (as
you may have experienced) are likewise prone to this effect as they read about psychological
disorders.
DO I NEED TREATMENT? When people notice a symptom and interpret it as possibly
serious, several factors influence their decision to seek medical care. People more often
seek treatment if they believe their symptoms have a physical rather than a psychological
cause (Bishop, 1987). They may delay seeking help, however, if they feel embarrassed, if
they think the likely benefits of medical attention won’t justify the cost and inconvenience,
or if they want to avoid a possibly devastating diagnosis.
The U.S. National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) reports a gender difference in
decisions to seek medical treatment: Compared with men, women report more symptoms,
use more prescription and nonprescription drugs, and visit physicians 67% more often for
preventive care (NCHS, 2008, 2010). Women also visit psychotherapists 50% more often
(Olfson & Pincus, 1994) and are more likely to seek help from medical doctors for anxiety,
partially because they are more likely to see doctors for routine visits than men are (Susukida
et al., 2015).
So, are women more often sick? Apparently not. In fact, men may be more disease
prone. Among other problems, men have higher rates of hypertension, ulcers, and cancer,
as well as shorter life expectancies. So why are women more likely to see a doctor? Perhaps
women are more attentive to their internal states. Perhaps they are less reluctant to admit
“weakness” and seek help (Bishop, 1984).
Patients are more willing to follow treatment instructions when they have warm relation-
ships with their doctors, when they help plan their treatment, and when options are framed
attractively. People are more likely to elect an operation when given “a 40% chance of
surviving” than when given “a 60% of not surviving” (Rothman & Salovey, 1997; Wilson
et al., 1987). Such “gainframed” messages also persuade more people to use sunscreen,
eschew cigarettes, and get HIV tests (Detweiler et al., 1999; Salovey et al., 2002; Schneider
et al., 2000). Better to tell people that “sunscreen maintains healthy, young-looking skin”
than to tell them that “not using sunscreen decreases your chances of healthy, young-looking
skin.” Framing a desired exercise program as minutes per day, rather than hours per week,
similarly increases people’s willingness to commit to it (Peetz et al., 2011).
EMOTIONS AND ILLNESS
Do our emotions predict our susceptibility to heart disease, stroke, cancer, and other ail-
ments (Figure 5)? Consider the following.
Heart disease has been linked with a competitive, impatient, and—the aspect that matters
most—anger-prone personality (Chida & Steptoe, 2009; Kupper & Denollet, 2007). Under
stress, reactive, anger-prone Type A people secrete more of the stress hormones believed to
Social Psychology in the Clinic Chapter 14 439
accelerate the buildup of plaque in the heart’s arteries. It’s the impatient anger of some
Type A people, not their drive to achieve, that is linked to heart disease.
Depression also increases the risk of various ailments. Depressed people are more vul-
nerable to heart disease, even after controlling for differences in smoking and other disease-
related factors (Boehm et al., 2011; Whang et al., 2009). The year after a heart attack,
depressed people have a doubled risk of further heart problems (Frasure-Smith et al., 1995,
1999, 2005). The association between depression and heart disease may result from stress-
related inflammation of the arteries (O’Donovan et al., 2012). Stress hormones enhance
protein production that contributes to inflammation, which helps fight infections. But
inflammation also can exacerbate asthma, clogged arteries, and depression, which is linked
to health issues. The bottom line: Anger, depression, and stress are heartfelt emotions.
George Vaillant (1997) witnessed the effect of distress when he followed a group of male
Harvard alumni from midlife (age 52) into old age. Of those who never abused alcohol,
used tranquilizers, or saw a psychiatrist, only 5% had died by age 75. Of those who had
done any of the three, 38% had died.
OPTIMISM AND HEALTH
Stories abound of people who take a sudden turn for the worse when something makes
them lose hope, or who suddenly improve when hope is renewed. As cancer attacks the
liver of 9-year-old Jeff, his doctors fear the worst. But Jeff remains optimistic. He is deter-
mined to grow up to be a cancer research scientist. One day Jeff is elated. A specialist who
has taken a long-distance interest in his case is planning to stop off while on a cross-country
trip. There is so much Jeff wants to tell the doctor and to show him from the diary he has
kept since he got sick. On the anticipated day, fog blankets his city. The doctor’s plane is
diverted to another city, from which the doctor flies on to his final destination. Hearing
the news, Jeff cries quietly. The next morning, pneumonia and fever have developed, and
Jeff lies listless. By evening he is in a coma. The next afternoon he dies (Visintainer &
Seligman, 1983).
Understanding the links between attitudes and disease requires more than dramatic true
stories. If hopelessness coincides with cancer, we are left to wonder: Does cancer breed
hopelessness, or does hopelessness also hinder resistance to cancer? To resolve this chicken-
and-egg riddle, researchers have (1) experimentally created hopelessness by subjecting
organisms to uncontrollable stresses and (2) correlated a hopeless explanatory style with
future illnesses.
STRESS AND ILLNESS The clearest indication of the effects of hopelessness—learned
helplessness—comes from experiments that subject animals to mild but uncontrollable
FIGURE 5
Stress-caused negative emo-
tions may have various effects
on health. This is especially so
for depressed or anger-prone
people.
Immune
suppression
Autonomic nervous
system e�ects (ulcers,
headaches, hypertension)
Heart
disease
Stress
hormones
Negative
emotions
440 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
electric shocks, loud noises, or crowding. Such experiences do not
cause diseases such as cancer, but they do lower the body’s resis-
tance. Rats injected with live cancer cells more often develop and
die of tumors if they also receive inescapable shocks (rather than
escapable shocks or no shocks). Moreover, compared with juve-
nile rats given controllable shocks, those given uncontrollable
shocks are twice as likely in adulthood to develop tumors if given
cancer cells and another round of shocks (Visintainer & Seligman,
1985). Animals that have learned helplessness react more pas-
sively, and blood tests reveal a weakened immune response.
It’s a big leap from rats to humans. But a growing body of
evidence reveals that people who undergo highly stressful experi-
ences become more vulnerable to disease (Segerstrom & Miller,
2004). Stress doesn’t make us sick, but it does divert energy from
our disease-fighting immune system, leaving us more vulnerable
to infections and malignancy (Cohen, 2002, 2004). The death of
a spouse, the stress of a space flight landing, even the strain of
an exam week have all been associated with depressed immune defenses ( Jemmott &
Locke, 1984).
Consider the following:
▯ Stress magnifies the severity of respiratory infections and of symptoms experienced
by volunteers who are knowingly infected with a cold virus (Cohen et al., 2003,
2006, 2012; Pedersen et al., 2010).
▯ Newlywed couples who became angry while discussing problems suffered more
immune system suppression the next day (Kiecolt-Glaser et al., 1993). When
people are stressed by marital conflict, puncture wounds inflicted in the laboratory
take a day or two longer to heal (Kiecolt-Glaser et al., 2005). Studies in eleven
countries following 6.5 million lives through time reveal that, among men and
younger adults, divorce increases the later risk of early death (Sbarra et al., 2011).
▯ Work stress can literally be disheartening. In one study that followed 17,415 middle-
aged American women, researchers found that significant work stress predicted an
88% increased risk of heart attacks (Slopen et al., 2010). In Denmark, a study of
12,116 female nurses found that those reporting “much too high” work pressures
had a 40% increased risk of heart disease (Allesøe et al., 2010).
▯ Stress increases the production of inflammation-producing proteins. Those who
experience social stress, including children reared in abusive families, are therefore
more prone to inflammation responses (Dickerson et al., 2009; Miller et al., 2011).
Inflammation fights infections, but persistent inflammation contributes to asthma,
clogged arteries, and depression. Researchers have even discovered molecular,
epigenetic mechanisms by which stress, in some people, activates genes that control
inflammation (Cole et al., 2010).
EXPLANATORY STYLE AND ILLNESS If uncontrollable stress affects health, depresses
immune functioning, increases inflammation, and generates a passive, hopeless resignation,
then will people who exhibit such pessimism be more vulnerable to illness? Indeed, a pes-
simistic style of explaining bad events (saying, “It’s going to last, it’s going to undermine
everything, and it’s my fault”) makes illness more likely (Carver et al., 2010). Christopher
Peterson and Martin Seligman (1987) studied the press quotations of 94 members of base-
ball’s Hall of Fame and gauged how often they offered pessimistic (stable, global, internal)
explanations for bad events, such as losing big games. Those who routinely did so tended
to die at somewhat younger ages. Optimists—who offered stable, global, and internal expla-
nations for good events—usually outlived the pessimists.
Other studies have followed lives through time:
▯ Harvard graduates who expressed the most optimism in 1946 were the healthiest
when restudied 34 years later (Peterson et al., 1988).
Have you ever noticed you’re more likely to get sick right after
final exams? That might be because stress can compromise the
immune system.
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Social Psychology in the Clinic Chapter 14 441
▯ One Dutch research team followed 941 older adults for
nearly a decade (Giltay et al., 2004, 2007). Among those
in the upper optimism quartile only 30% died, compared
with 57% of those in the lower optimism quartile.
▯ Catholic nuns who expressed the most positive feelings at
an average age of 22 outlived their more dour counter-
parts by an average 7 years over the ensuing half- century
and more (Danner et al., 2001).
The healing power of positive belief is evident in the well-
known placebo effect, referring to the healing power of believing
that one is getting an effective treatment. (If you think a treatment
is going to be effective, it just may be—even if it’s actually inert.)
But every silver lining has a cloud. Optimists may see themselves
as invulnerable and thus fail to take sensible precautions; for
example, those who smoke cigarettes optimistically underestimate
the risks involved (Segerstrom et al., 1993). And when things go
wrong in a big way—when the optimist encounters a devastating
illness—adversity can be shattering. Optimism is good for health.
But even optimists have a mortality rate of 100%.
The Delany sisters, who lived to 104 and 106, attributed their
l ongevity to a positive outlook on life.
©Marianne Barcellona/Getty Images
▯ Social psychologists are actively exploring the attribu-
tions and expectations of depressed, lonely, socially anx-
ious, and physically ill people. Depressed people have a
negative explanatory style, interpreting negative events as
being stable, global, and internally caused. Despite their
more negative judgments, mildly depressed people in
laboratory tests tend to be surprisingly realistic. Depres-
sion can be a vicious circle in which negative thoughts
elicit self-defeating behaviors, and vice versa.
▯ Loneliness involves feelings of isolation or not fitting
in, and is common in individualistic societies. Like de-
pression, it can be a vicious circle in which feelings of
aloofness lead to socially undesirable behaviors.
▯ Most people experience anxiety in situations where
they are being evaluated, but shy individuals are ex-
tremely prone to anxiety even in friendly, casual situa-
tions. This can be another vicious circle in which
anxious feelings elicit awkward, off-putting behavior.
▯ The mushrooming field of health psychology is explor-
ing how people decide they are ill, how they explain
their symptoms, and when they seek and follow treat-
ment. It also is exploring the effects of negative emo-
tions and the links among illness, stress, and a
pessimistic explanatory style.
SUMMING UP: What Cognitive Processes Accompany
Behavior Problems?
WHAT ARE SOME SOCIAL-
PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACHES
TO TREATMENT?
Describe treatments that aim to undo the maladaptive
thought patterns we have considered to be linked
with problems ranging from serious depression to
extreme shyness to physical illness.
There is no social-psychological therapy. But therapy is a social encounter, and social
psychologists have suggested how their principles might be integrated into existing
442 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
treatment techniques (Forsyth & Leary, 1997; Strong et al., 1992). Consider three
approaches:
▯ To promote internal changes, change one’s external behavior.
▯ Break negative, self-defeating thought-behavior cycles.
▯ Attribute improvements to one’s own self-control, rather than the treatment.
Inducing Internal Change Through External Behavior
Our actions affect our attitudes. The roles we play, the things we say and do, and the deci-
sions we make influence who we are.
Consistent with this attitudes-follow-behavior principle, several psychotherapy techniques
prescribe action:
▯ Behavior therapists try to shape behavior on the theory that the client’s inner dis-
position will also change after the behavior changes.
▯ Across varied studies, people who were asked to publicly advocate some healthy
behavior (such as exercise or restrained eating and drinking) and were reminded of
their own unhealthy behaviors experienced dissonance and later changed their
behavior (Freijy & Kothe, 2013).
▯ In assertiveness training, people first first role-play assertiveness in a supportive
context, then gradually implement assertive behaviors in everyday life.
▯ Rational-emotive behavior therapy assumes that we generate our own emotions;
clients receive “homework” assignments to talk and act in new ways that will
generate new emotions: Challenge that overbearing relative. Stop telling yourself
you’re an unattractive person and ask someone out.
▯ Self-help groups subtly induce participants to behave in new ways in front of the
group—to express anger, cry, act with high self-esteem, express positive feelings.
All these techniques share a common assumption: If we cannot directly control our
feelings by sheer willpower, we can influence them indirectly through our behavior.
Experiments confirm that what we say about ourselves can affect how we feel. Those
who performed kind acts for a month become happier (Alden & Trew, 2013). Those
induced to present themselves in self-enhancing (rather than self-deprecating) ways later
feel better about themselves (Jones et al., 1981; Rhodewalt & Agustsdottir, 1986). Public
displays—whether upbeat or downbeat—carry over to later self-esteem. Saying is believing,
even when we talk about ourselves.
In experiments, people internalized their behavior most when they perceive some choice.
For example, Pamela Mendonca and Sharon Brehm (1983) invited one group of overweight
children who were about to begin a weight-loss program to choose the treatment they pre-
ferred. Then they reminded them periodically that they had chosen their treatment. Other
children who simultaneously experienced the same 8-week program were given no choice.
Those who felt responsible for their treatment had lost more weight both at the end of the
8-week program and 3 months later.
Breaking Vicious Cycles
If depression, loneliness, and social anxiety maintain themselves through a vicious cycle of
negative experiences, negative thinking, and self-defeating behavior, it should be possible to
break the cycle at any of several points—by changing the environment, by training the person
to behave more constructively, or by reversing negative thinking. And it is. Several therapy
methods help free people from depression’s vicious cycle.
SOCIAL SKILLS TRAINING
Depression, loneliness, and shyness are not just problems in someone’s mind. Being around
a depressed person can be irritating and depressing. As lonely and shy people suspect, they
Social Psychology in the Clinic Chapter 14 443
may indeed come across poorly in social situations.
How ironic that the more that self-preoccupied people
seek to make a good impression, the more their effort
may backfire (Lun et al., 2011). Those who instead
focus on supporting others often enjoy others’ regard
in return.
In these cases, social skills training may help. By
observing and then practicing new behaviors in safe
situations, the person may develop the confidence to
behave more effectively in other situations. As the per-
son begins to enjoy the rewards of behaving more skill-
fully, a more positive self-perception develops. Frances
Haemmerlie and Robert Montgomery (1982, 1984,
1986) demonstrated this in several heartwarming stud-
ies with shy, anxious college students. Those who were
inexperienced and nervous around those of the other
sex may say to themselves, “I don’t date much, so I
must be socially inadequate, so I shouldn’t try reach-
ing out to anyone.” To reverse this negative sequence, Haemmerlie and Montgomery enticed
such students into pleasant interactions with people of the other sex.
In one experiment, college men completed social anxiety questionnaires and then came
to the laboratory on two different days. Each day they enjoyed 12-minute conversations
with each of six young women. The men thought the women were also participants. Actu-
ally, the women were confederates who had been asked to carry on a natural, positive,
friendly conversation with each of the men.
The effect of these two-and-a-half hours of conversation was remarkable. As one partici-
pant wrote afterward, “I had never met so many girls that I could have a good conversation
with. After a few girls, my confidence grew to the point where I didn’t notice being nervous
like I once did.” Such comments were supported by a variety of measures. Unlike men in
a control condition, those who experienced the conversations reported considerably less
anxiety around women when retested one week and six months later. Placed alone in a
room with an attractive female stranger, they also became much more likely to start a
conversation. Outside the laboratory they began dating occasionally.
Haemmerlie and Montgomery note that not only did all this occur without any counsel-
ing, it may very well have occurred because there was no counseling. Having behaved suc-
cessfully on their own, the men could now perceive themselves as socially competent.
Although 7 months later the researchers did debrief the participants, by that time the men
had presumably enjoyed enough social success to maintain their internal attributions for
success. “Nothing succeeds like success,” concluded Haemmerlie (1987)—“as long as there
are no external factors present that the client can use as an excuse for that success!”
EXPLANATORY STYLE THERAPY
The vicious circles that maintain depression, loneliness, and shyness can be broken by social
skills training, by positive experiences that alter self-perceptions, and by changing negative
thought patterns. Some people have good social skills, but their experiences with hypercriti-
cal friends and family have convinced them otherwise. For such people it may be enough
to help them reverse their negative beliefs about themselves and their futures. Among the
cognitive therapies with this aim is an explanatory style therapy proposed by social psycholo-
gists (Abramson, 1988; Gillham et al., 2000; Masi et al., 2011).
One such program taught depressed college students to change their typical attributions.
Mary Anne Layden (1982) first described the advantages of explaining outcomes as does
the typical nondepressed person (by accepting credit for successes and seeing how circum-
stances can make things go wrong). After assigning a variety of tasks, she helped the stu-
dents see how they typically interpreted success and failure. Then came the treatment phase:
Layden instructed them to keep a diary of daily successes and failures, noting how they
contributed to their own successes and noting external reasons for their failures. When
The most effective treatment for phobias, including social phobia, is exposure:
doing the activity in a safe environment and learning that it can be pleasant.
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444 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
retested after a month of this attributional retrain-
ing and compared with an untreated control group,
their self-esteem had risen and their attributional
style had become more positive. The more their
explanatory style improved, the more their depres-
sion lifted. By changing their attributions, they had
changed their emotions.
Maintaining Change
Through Internal
Attributions for Success
Two of the principles considered so far—that inter-
nal change may follow behavior change and that
changed self-perceptions and self-attributions can
help break a vicious circle—converge on a corollary
principle: After improvement is achieved, it endures
best if people attribute it to factors under their own
control rather than to a treatment program.
As a rule, coercive techniques trigger the most
dramatic and immediate behavior changes (Brehm
& Smith, 1986). By making the unwanted behavior
extremely costly or embarrassing and the healthier behavior extremely rewarding, a therapist
may achieve impressive results. The problem, as 50 years of social-psychological research
reminds us, is that coerced changes in behavior soon fade.
Consider the experience of Marta, who is concerned with her mild obesity and frustrated
with her inability to do anything about it. Marta is considering several commercial weight-
control programs. Each claims it achieves the best results. She chooses one and is ordered
onto a strict 1,200-calorie-a-day diet. Moreover, she is required to record and report her
calorie intake each day and to come in once a week and be weighed so she and her instruc-
tor can know precisely how she is doing. Confident of the program’s value and not wanting
to embarrass herself, Marta adheres to the program and is delighted to find the unwanted
pounds gradually disappearing. As she reaches her target weight, Marta thinks, “This unique
program really does work!”
Sadly, however, after graduating from the program, Marta experiences the fate of most
weight-control graduates (Jeffery et al., 2000): She regains the lost weight. On the street,
she sees her instructor approaching. Embarrassed, she moves to the other side of the
sidewalk and looks away. Alas, she is recognized by the instructor, who warmly invites her
back into “the program.” Admitting that the program achieved good results for her the
first time, Marta grants her need of it and agrees to return, beginning a second round of
yo-yo dieting.
Marta’s experience typifies that of the participants in several weight-control experiments,
including one by Janet Sonne and Dean Janoff (1979). Half the participants were led, like
Marta, to attribute their changed eating behavior to the program. The others were led to
credit their own efforts. Both groups lost weight during the program. But when reweighed
11 weeks later, those in the self-credit condition had maintained the weight loss better.
These people, like those in the shy-man-meets-women study described earlier, illustrate the
benefits of self-efficacy. Having learned to cope successfully and believing that they did it,
they felt more confident and were more effective.
Having emphasized what changed behavior and thought patterns can accomplish, we do
well to remind ourselves of their limits. Social skills training and positive thinking cannot
transform us into consistent winners who are always loved and admired. Bad things will
still happen, and temporary depression, loneliness, and shyness are perfectly appropriate
responses to bad events. It is when such feelings exist chronically and without any
Coercive weight-loss techniques, like those used in reality TV shows, work quickly
but do not last. Six years after being on “The Biggest Loser,” most participants
gained nearly all of the weight back (Fothergill et al., 2016). Weight loss programs
tend to work better if people feel more in control of their actions.
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Social Psychology in the Clinic Chapter 14 445
discernible cause that there is reason for concern and a need to change the self-defeating
thoughts and behaviors.
Using Therapy as Social Influence
Psychologists more and more accept the idea that social influence—one person affecting
another—is at the heart of therapy. Stanley Strong (1991) offered a prototypical example:
A thirtyish woman comes to a therapist saying she feels depressed. The therapist gently
probes her feelings and her situation. She explains her helplessness and her husband’s
demands. Although admiring her devotion, the therapist helps her see how she takes respon-
sibility for her husband’s problems. She protests. But the therapist persists. In time, she
realizes that her husband may not be as fragile as she presumed. She begins to see how
she can respect both her husband and herself. With the therapist, she plans strategies for
each new week. At the end of a long stream of reciprocal influences between therapist and
client, she emerges no longer depressed and equipped with new ways of behaving.
Analyses of psychotherapeutic influence have focused on how therapists establish cred-
ible expertise and trustworthiness, how their credibility enhances their influence, and how
the interaction affects the client’s thinking (McNeill & Stoltenberg, 1988; Neimeyer et al.,
1991; Strong, 1968). Peripheral cues, such as therapist credibility, may open the door for
ideas that the therapist can now get the client to think about. But the thoughtful central
route to persuasion provides the most enduring attitude and behavior change. Therapists
should therefore aim not to elicit a client’s superficial agreement with their expert judgment
but to help clients change their own thinking.
Fortunately, most clients entering therapy are motivated to take the central route—to
think deeply about their problems under the therapist’s guidance. The therapist’s task is to
offer arguments and raise questions that elicit favorable thoughts. The therapist’s insights
matter less than the thoughts they evoke in the client. Questions such as “How do you
respond to what I just said?” can stimulate the client’s thinking.
Martin Heesacker (1989) illustrated how a therapist can help a client reflect with the
case of Dave, a 35-year-old male graduate student. Having seen what Dave denied—an
underlying substance abuse problem—the counselor drew on his knowledge of Dave, an
intellectual person who liked hard evidence, in persuading him to accept the diagnosis and
join a treatment-support group. The counselor said, “OK, if my diagnosis is wrong, I’ll be
glad to change it. But let’s go through a list of the characteristics of a substance abuser to
check out my accuracy.” The counselor then went through each criterion slowly, giving
Dave time to think about each point. As he finished, Dave sat back and exclaimed, “I don’t
believe it: I’m a damned alcoholic.”
In his 1620 Pensées, the philosopher Pascal foresaw this principle: “People are usually
more convinced by reasons they discover themselves than by those found by others.” It’s a
principle worth remembering.
▯ Changes in external behavior can trigger internal change.
▯ A self-defeating cycle of negative attitudes and behav-
iors can be broken by training more skillful behavior, by
positive experiences that alter self-perceptions, and by
changing negative thought patterns.
▯ Improved states are best maintained after treatment if
people attribute their improvement to internal factors
under their continued control rather than to the treat-
ment program itself.
▯ Mental health workers, aided by their image as expert,
trustworthy communicators, also are recognizing that
changing clients’ attitudes and behaviors requires per-
suasion that stimulates healthier thinking by offering
cogent arguments and raising questions.
SUMMING UP: What Are Some Social-Psychological
Approaches to Treatment?
446 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
HOW DO SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS
SUPPORT HEALTH AND
WELL-BEING?
Identify evidence suggesting that supportive, close
relationships—feeling liked, affirmed, and encouraged
by intimate friends and family—predict both health and
happiness.
Our relationships are fraught with stress. “Hell is other people,” wrote Jean-Paul Sartre.
When Peter Warr and Roy Payne (1982) asked a representative sample of British adults
what, if anything, had emotionally strained them the day before, “family” was their most
frequent answer. And stress, as we have seen, aggravates health problems such as coronary
heart disease, hypertension, and suppression of our disease-fighting immune system.
Still, on balance, close relationships are more likely to lead to health and happiness than
to illness. Asked what prompted yesterday’s times of pleasure, the same British sample, by
an even larger margin, again answered “family.” Close relationships provide our greatest
heartaches, but also our greatest joys. As social animals, people need people.
Close Relationships and Health
Extensive investigations, each interviewing thousands of people across years, have reached
a common conclusion: Close relationships predict health (Berkman, 1995; Pantell et al.,
2013; Ryff & Singer, 2000). In one digest of 148 studies worldwide, researchers found that
social connections predicted longer life. Those with ample social connections had survival
rates (across the average 7.5-year study period) about 50% greater than those with meager
connections (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010). People who are socially isolated, live alone, or who
are lonely are 30% to 70% more likely to die prematurely (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2015; Smith
et al., 2018). “It takes a village to raise a centenarian,” notes Susan Pinker (2014). “Longev-
ity is a team sport.”
Across 139 countries worldwide, people who “have friends or family you can count on”
are also much more likely to report being satisfied with their personal health (Kumar et al.,
2012). In experiments, highly sociable people are even less susceptible to cold viruses
(Cohen et al., 1997, 2003; Figure 6). (If you’re wondering how this study was done, people
volunteered to get a solution including a cold virus
sprayed up their noses, and the researchers then saw who
got sick and who didn’t over the coming days.)
Married people likewise tend to live healthier, longer
lives than their unmarried counterparts. The National
Center for Health Statistics (2004) reports that people,
regardless of age, sex, race, and income, tend to be
healthier if married. Living alone, which is more com-
mon among unmarried people, is one of the primary
predictors of loneliness (Lasgaard et al., 2016). Married
folks experience less pain from headaches and back-
aches, suffer less stress, and drink and smoke less. One
experiment subjected married women to the threat of
electric shocks to their lower leg as they lay in an fMRI
brain scanning machine (Coan et al., 2006). Meanwhile,
some of the women held their husband’s hand, some
held an anonymous person’s hand, and some held no hand
at all. While awaiting the shocks, the threat-responsive
areas of the women’s brains were less active if they held
The need to belong—to have close social relationships—is a fundamental
human motivation linked to health (Baumeister & Leary, 1995).
©Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock
Social Psychology in the Clinic Chapter 14 447
their husband’s hand. Consistent with findings that it’s happy and supportive marriages
that are conducive to health (De Vogli et al., 2007), the soothing hand-holding benefit was
greatest for those reporting the happiest marriages.
More than marriage per se, it’s marital quality that predicts health. One study found
that at age 50, a person’s good marriage predicted healthy aging better than low cholesterol
levels did (Vaillant, 2002). And divorce increases risk of ill health, as evident in 32 studies
of 6.5 million people (Sbarra et al., 2011). A recent summary of all available research
concluded that the association between marriage quality and physical health “is similar in
size to associations between health behaviors (diet, physical activity) and health outcomes”
(Robles, 2015; Robles et al., 2014). Moreover, over time, marital quality predicts future
health (rather than the reverse).
But why? What mediates and explains an effect of marriage quality on health? Theodore
Robles and others offer some possibilities:
▯ Biological mediators: our cardiovascular, hormonal, and immune systems respond
negatively to marital strain (Uchino et al., 2014). By contrast, social support calms
us and reduces stress (Hostinar et al., 2014).
▯ Social-cognitive mediators: how spouses think about each other influences their
emotional control and their anxiety and sadness.
▯ Health mediators: social support promotes healthier eating and better sleep,
whereas marital tension increases unhealthy eating and substance use.
Giving social support also helps. In one five-year study of 423 elderly married couples,
those who gave the most social support (from rides and errands for friends and neighbors
to emotional support of their spouse) enjoyed greater longevity, even after controlling for
age, sex, initial health, and economic status (Brown et al., 2003). Especially among women,
suggested a Finnish study that tracked more than 700 people’s illnesses, it is better to give
than only to receive (Väänänen et al., 2005).
Moreover, losing social ties heightens the risk of disease:
▯ A Finnish study of 96,000 newly widowed people found their risk of death doubled
in the week following their partner’s death (Kaprio et al., 1987). Some call this
“broken heart syndrome.”
▯ A National Academy of Sciences study revealed that recently widowed people
become more vulnerable to disease and death (Dohrenwend et al., 1982).
▯ A study of 30,000 men revealed that when a marriage ends, men drink and smoke
more and eat fewer vegetables and more fried foods (Eng et al., 2001).
FIGURE 6
Rate of Colds by
Sociability
After a cold virus injection,
highly sociable people were
less vulnerable to catching
colds.
Source: Cohen et al., 2003.
Low
Percent vulnerable to catching a cold
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Medium High
Sociability
448 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
CONFIDING AND HEALTH
So there is a link between social support and health. Why? Perhaps those who enjoy close
relationships eat better, exercise more, and smoke and drink less. Perhaps friends and family
help bolster our self-esteem. Perhaps a supportive network helps us evaluate and overcome
stressful events (Taylor et al., 1997). In more than 80 studies, social support has been linked
with better-functioning cardiovascular and immune systems (Uchino et al., 1996). Thus,
when we are wounded by someone’s dislike or the loss of a job, a friend’s advice, help, and
reassurance may indeed be good medicine (Cutrona, 1986; Rook, 1987). Even when the
problem isn’t mentioned, friends provide us with distraction and a sense that we’re accepted,
liked, and respected.
With someone we consider a close friend, we also may confide painful feelings. In one
study, James Pennebaker and Robin O’Heeron (1984) contacted the surviving spouses of
suicide or car accident victims. Those who bore their grief alone had more health problems
than those who expressed it openly. When Pennebaker (1990) surveyed more than 700
college women, he found 1 in 12 reported a traumatic sexual experience in childhood.
Compared with women who had experienced nonsexual traumas, such as parental death
or divorce, the sexually abused women reported more headaches, stomach ailments, and
other health problems, especially if they had kept their abuse history secret.
To isolate the confiding, confessional side of close relationships, Pennebaker asked the
bereaved spouses to relate the upsetting events that had been preying on their minds. Those
they first asked to describe a trivial event were physically tense. They stayed tense until
they confided their troubles. Then they relaxed. Writing about personal traumas in a journal
also seems to help. When volunteers in another experiment did so, they had fewer health
problems during the next six months. One participant explained, “Although I have not
talked with anyone about what I wrote, I was finally able to deal with it, work through the
pain instead of trying to block it out. Now it doesn’t hurt to think about it.” Even if it’s
only “talking to my diary,” and even if the writing is about one’s future dreams and life
goals, it helps to be able to confide (Burton & King, 2008; Lyubomirsky et al., 2006). In
one experiment, writing therapy was as effective for 633 trauma victims as psychotherapy
(van Emmerick et al., 2013). In everyday life, self-disclosures—when public and to accepting
people—are healing (Kelly & Macready, 2009).
POVERTY, INEQUALITY, AND HEALTH
We have seen connections between health and a positive explanatory style. And we have
seen connections between health and social support. Positive thinking and support, together
with health care and nutritional factors, help
explain why economic status correlates with
longevity. In Scotland, the United States,
Canada, and elsewhere, poorer people are at
greater risk for premature death (Wilkinson &
Pickett, 2009). In a 23-year longitudinal study,
women living in poor neighborhoods were
39% more likely to die of cancer than those in
better-off areas (Marcus et al., 2017). At age
55, a rich American with an income in the top
10% has a 10-year longer life expectancy than
a poor American in the bottom income decile
(Zumbrun, 2014). Poverty predicts perishing.
Wealthy predicts healthy.
The correlation between poverty and ill
health could run either way. Bad health isn’t
good for one’s income. But most evidence
indicates that the arrow runs from poverty
toward ill health (Major et al., 2013; Sapolsky,
2005). So how does poverty “get under the
“Friendship is a sovereign an-
tidote against all calamities.”
—Seneca, BC 5–AD 65
Wealthy and healthy. A 2008 Scotsman article illustrated the striking disparity in life
expectancy in lower-income Calton, on the east end of Glasgow, and in affluent Lenzie,
eight miles away.
©Spindrift Photo Agency
Social Psychology in the Clinic Chapter 14 449
skin”? The answers include (a) reduced access to quality health care, (b) unhealthier life-
styles (smoking is much more common among less-educated and lower-income people),
and, to a striking extent, (c) increased stress. To be poor is to be at risk for increased stress,
negative emotions, and a toxic environment (Adler & Snibbe, 2003; Chen, 2004; Gallo &
Matthews, 2003). To be poor is to more often be sleep-deprived after working a second
job, earning paychecks that don’t cover the bills, commuting on crowded public transit,
living in a high-pollution area, and doing hard labor that’s controlled by someone else.
People also die younger in regions with great income inequality (Kawachi et al., 1999;
Lynch et al., 1998; see Figure 7). People in Britain and the United States have larger income
disparities and lower life expectancies than people in Japan and Sweden. Within the U.S.,
states and cities with more income inequality have higher rates of death from suicide and
heart disease, with each $250 spent on welfare and education linked to a 1.6 percentage
point reduction in deaths from heart disease (Kim, 2016). Where inequality has grown over
the last decade, as in Eastern Europe and Russia, life expectancy has been at the falling
end of the teeter-totter. Since 2000, as income inequality continued to rise in the U.S.,
deaths during midlife increased among White Americans; at the same time they declined
in countries with less income discrepancy such as Sweden and Canada. Many of these
excess deaths were due to suicide and drug overdoses (Case & Deaton, 2015).
Is inequality merely an indicator of greater poverty? The mixed evidence indicates that
poverty matters but that inequality matters, too. John Lynch and his colleagues (1998,
2000) report that people at every income level are at greater risk of early death if they live
in a community with great income inequality. It’s not just being poor, it’s also feeling poor
relative to one’s surroundings, that proves toxic. And that, Robert Sapolsky (2005) suggests,
helps explain why the United States, which has the greatest income inequality of Western-
ized nations, has simultaneously ranked number 1 in the world on health care expenditures,
yet number 29 on life expectancy.
Close Relationships and Happiness
Confiding painful feelings is good not only for the body but for the soul. That’s the conclu-
sion of studies showing that people are happier when supported by a network of friends
and family.
FIGURE 7
Social and physical health
problems are greater in
countries with higher income
inequality. This health problems
index is a composite of lower
life expectancy, infant mortality,
obesity, teen births, mental
illness, imprisonment, and lower
levels of literacy, social trust,
and social mobility.
Source: Wilkinson & Pickett, 2011.
Low
In
d
ex
o
f
h
ea
lt
h
a
n
d
s
o
ci
al
p
ro
b
le
m
s
Income inequality
Worse
Better
High
Finland
Sweden
Norway
Germany
Spain
Canada Italy
Australia
Netherlands
Denmark
Austria
France
Ireland
Greece
Portugal
USA
UK
New Zealand
Belgium
Switzerland
Japan
450 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
Some studies, summarized in the “Self in a Social World” chapter, compare people in
a competitive, individualistic culture, such as the United States, Canada, and Australia, with
those in collectivist cultures, such as Japan and many developing countries. Individualistic
cultures offer independence, privacy, and pride in personal achievements. Collectivist cul-
tures, with their tighter social bonds, offer protection from loneliness, alienation, divorce,
and stress-related diseases.
FRIENDSHIPS AND HAPPINESS
Other studies compare individuals with few or many close relationships. Being attached to
friends with whom we can share intimate thoughts has two effects, observed the
seventeenth-century philosopher Francis Bacon. “It redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in
half.” So it seems from answers to a question asked of Americans by the National Opinion
Research Center: “Looking back over the last six months, who are the people with whom
you discussed matters important to you?” Compared with those who could name five or
six such intimates, those who could name no such person were twice as likely to report
being “not very happy.”
Other findings confirm the importance of social networks—the in-person kind, not the
online kind. The happiest teens are those who spend more time than average with their friends
face-to-face, and less time than average on social media (Twenge et al., 2018). In a longitudinal
study of Facebook users, those who interacted with their friends face-to-face later reported
feeling happier, but those who spent more time on Facebook felt less happy (Shakya &
Christakis, 2017). Real-life friends bring many benefits; Facebook friends may not.
MARITAL ATTACHMENT AND HAPPINESS
For the nearly 9 in 10 people who are married or eventually will marry, a primary example
of a close relationship is marriage. Does marriage correlate positively with happiness? Or
is there more happiness in the pleasure-seeking single life than in the “bondage,” “chains,”
and “yoke” of marriage?
A mountain of data reveals that most people are happier attached than unattached.
Survey after survey of many tens of thousands of Europeans and Americans have produced
a consistent result: Compared with those single or widowed, and especially compared with
those divorced or separated, married people report being happier and more satisfied with
life (Gove et al., 1990; Inglehart, 1990). In National Opinion Research Center surveys of
more than 50,000 Americans since 1972, for example, 23% of never-married adults, but
40% of married adults, have reported being “very happy.” Lesbian couples, too, report
greater well-being than those who are unpartnered (Peplau & Fingerhut, 2007). There are
multiple ways to satisfy the human need to belong (DePaulo, 2006). Nevertheless, there
are few stronger predictors of happiness than a close, nurturing, equitable, intimate, lifelong
companionship with a romantic partner.
More important than being married, however, is the marriage’s quality. People who say
their marriages are satisfying—who find themselves still in love with their partners—rarely
report being unhappy, discontented with life, or depressed (Robles, 2015). Fortunately, most
married people do declare their marriages happy ones. In the National Opinion Research
Center surveys, almost two-thirds say their marriages are “very happy.” Three out of four say
their spouses are their best friends. Four out of five people say they would marry the same
people again. As a consequence, most such people feel quite happy with life as a whole.
Why are married people generally happier (as well as healthier)? Does marriage promote
happiness, or does happiness promote marriage? Are happy people more appealing as marriage
partners? Do depressed people more often stay single or suffer divorce (Figure 8)? Certainly,
happy people are more fun to be with. They are also more outgoing, trusting, compassionate,
and focused on others (Myers, 1993). Unhappy people, as we have noted, are more often
socially rejected. Depression often triggers marital stress, which deepens the depression (Davila
et al., 1997). So, positive, happy people do more readily form happy relationships.
But “the prevailing opinion of researchers,” reported University of Oslo sociologist Arne
Mastekaasa (1995), is that the marriage-happiness connection is “mainly due” to the
“Woe to him who is alone
when he falls and has not
another to lift him up.”
—Ecclesiastes 4:10b
“The sun looks down on
nothing half so good as a
household laughing together
over a meal.”
—C. S. Lewis,
“Membership,” 1949
Social Psychology in the Clinic Chapter 14 451
beneficial effects of marriage. For example, a Rutgers University team that followed 1,380
New Jersey adults over 15 years concurs (Horwitz et al., 1997). The tendency for married
people to be less depressed occurs even after controlling for premarital happiness.
Marriage enhances happiness for at least two reasons. First, married people are more
likely to enjoy an enduring, supportive, intimate relationship and are less likely to suffer
loneliness. No wonder male medical students in a study by UCLA’s Robert Coombs sur-
vived medical school with less stress and anxiety if they were married (Coombs, 1991). A
good marriage gives each partner a dependable companion, a lover, a friend.
There is a second, more prosaic, reason why marriage promotes happiness, or at least
buffers us from misery. Marriage offers the roles of spouse and parent, which can provide
additional sources of self-esteem and social identity (Crosby, 1987; Cruwys et al., 2014). It
is true that multiple roles can multiply stress. Our circuits can and do overload. Yet each
role also provides rewards, status, avenues to enrichment, and escape from stress faced in
other parts of one’s life. A self with many identities is like a mansion with many rooms.
When fire struck one wing of Windsor Castle, most of the castle still remained for royals
and tourists to enjoy. When our personal identity stands on several legs, it, too, holds up
under the loss of any one. If we [DM and JT] mess up at work, well, we can tell ourselves
that we’re still good spouses and parents, and, in the final analysis, these parts of our
identities are what matter most.
FIGURE 8
Marital Status and
Depression
A National Institute of Mental
Health survey of psychological
disorders found depression
rates two to four times greater
for adults not married.
Source: Data from Robins & Regier,
1991, p. 72.
Married
(never divorced)
Never
married
Annual depression rate (per 100)
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Divorced
once
Cohabiting Divorced
twice
▯ Health and happiness are influenced not only by social
cognition but also by social relations. People who enjoy
close, supportive relationships are at less risk for illness
and premature death. Such relationships help people
cope with stress, especially by enabling people to con-
fide their intimate emotions.
▯ Close relationships also foster happiness. People who
have intimate, long-term attachments with friends and
family members cope better with loss and report greater
happiness. Compared with unmarried adults, those
who are married, for example, are much more likely to
report being very happy and are at less risk for depres-
sion. This appears due both to the greater social success
of happy people and to the well-being engendered by a
supportive life companion.
SUMMING UP: How Do Social Relationships Support
Health and Well-Being?
452 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
POSTSCRIPT:
Enhancing Happiness
Several years ago I [DM] wrote a book, The Pursuit of Happiness, that reported key findings
from new research studies of happiness. When the editors wanted to subtitle the book What
Makes People Happy? I cautioned them: That’s not a question this or any book can answer.
What we have learned is simply what correlates with—and therefore predicts—happiness.
Thus, the book’s eventual subtitle was Who Is Happy—and Why?
Nevertheless, in 400+ subsequent media interviews concerning happiness, the most
frequent question has been “What can people do to be happy?” Without claiming any easy
formula for health and happiness, I assembled 10 research-based points to ponder:
1. Realize that enduring happiness doesn’t come from “making it.” People adapt to chang-
ing circumstances—even to wealth or a disability. Thus, wealth is like health: Its utter
absence breeds misery, but having it (or any circumstance we long for) doesn’t guar-
antee happiness.
2. Take control of your time. Happy people feel in control of their lives, often aided by
mastering their use of time. It helps to set goals and break them into daily aims.
Although we often overestimate how much we will accomplish in any given day
(leaving us frustrated), we generally underestimate how much we can accomplish in
a year, given just a little progress every day.
3. Act happy. We can sometimes act ourselves into a frame of mind. Manipulated into a
smiling expression, people feel better; when they scowl, the whole world seems to
scowl back. So put on a happy face. Talk as if you feel positive self-esteem, are opti-
mistic, and are outgoing. Going through the motions can trigger the emotions.
4. Seek work and leisure that engage your skills. Happy people often are in a zone called
flow—absorbed in a task that challenges them without overwhelming them. The most
expensive forms of leisure (sitting on a yacht) often provide less flow experience
than gardening, socializing, or craft work.
5. Join the “movement” movement. An avalanche of research reveals that aerobic exercise
not only promotes health and energy but also is an antidote for mild depression and
anxiety. Sound minds reside in sound bodies.
6. Give your body the sleep it wants. Happy people live active, vigorous lives yet reserve
time for renewing sleep and solitude. Many people suffer from a sleep debt, with
resulting fatigue, diminished alertness, and gloomy moods.
7. Give priority to close relationships. Intimate friendships with those who care deeply
about you can help you weather difficult times. Confiding is good for soul and body.
Resolve to nurture your closest relationships: to not take those closest to you for
granted, to display to them the sort of kindness that you display to others, to affirm
them, to share, and to play together. To rejuvenate your affections, resolve in such
ways to act lovingly.
8. Focus beyond the self. Reach out to those in need. Happiness increases helpfulness.
(Those who feel good do good.) But doing good also makes one feel good.
9. Keep a gratitude journal. Those who pause each day to reflect on some positive
aspect of their lives (their health, friends, family, freedom, education, senses, natural
surroundings, and so on) experience heightened well-being.
10. Nurture your spiritual self. For many people, faith provides a support community, a
reason to focus beyond self, and a sense of purpose and hope. Study after study
finds that actively religious people are happier and that they cope better with crises.
©Fuse/Corbis/Getty Images
Social Psychology
in Court
C H A P T E R
15
How reliable is
eyewitness
testimony?
What other factors
influence juror
judgments?
What influences the
individual juror?
How do group
influences affect
juries?
Postscript: Thinking
smart with
psychological
science
On August 9, 2014, police officer Darren Wilson shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Peaceful protests over Brown’s death
soon became heated, and Ferguson erupted into violence and rioting. At the center
of the unrest was a question: Was Wilson justified in shooting Brown?
A grand jury convened in Ferguson in December 2014 did not indict Wilson, so
he did not stand trial. The case featured several issues addressed in social
psychology studies:
• Eyewitnesses provided varying accounts of Brown’s behavior before he was
shot. How influential is eyewitness testimony? How trustworthy are eyewitness
recollections? What makes a credible witness?
“A courtroom is a battleground where lawyers compete for the minds
of jurors.”
—James Randi, Commentary: Science in the Courts, 1999
454 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
• Darren Wilson is White and Michael Brown was Black. What impact do victims’
and defendants’ race, attractiveness, and social status have on jury
judgments?
• The grand jury included three Blacks and nine Whites, and seven men and five
women. Do jurors’ characteristics bias their verdicts? If so, can lawyers use the
jury selection process to stack a jury in their favor?
• During deliberations, how do jurors influence one another? Can a minority win over
the majority? Do 12-member juries reach the same decisions as 6-member juries?
Such questions fascinate lawyers, judges, and defendants. They are questions
to which social psychology can suggest answers, as law schools recognize by
hiring professors of “law and social science,” and as trial lawyers recognize when
hiring psychological consultants.
We can think of a courtroom as a miniature social world, one that magnifies
everyday social processes with major consequences for those involved. In criminal
cases, psychological factors may influence decisions involving arrest, interrogation,
prosecution, plea bargaining, sentencing, and parole. Whether or not a case reaches
a jury verdict, the social dynamics of the courtroom matter. Let’s therefore con-
sider two sets of factors: (1) eyewitness testimony and its influence on jurors, and
(2) characteristics of jurors as individuals and as a group.
HOW RELIABLE IS EYEWITNESS
TESTIMONY?
Explain the accuracy of eyewitness testimony, its
association (or not) with eyewitness confidence, its
contamination by misinformation effects, and ways
to increase eyewitness accuracy and educate jurors.
As the courtroom drama unfolds, jurors hear testimony, form impressions of the defendant,
listen to instructions from the judge, and render a verdict. Let’s take these steps one at a
time, starting with eyewitness testimony.
Although never in trouble with the law, Kirk Bloodsworth was convicted for the sexual
assault and slaying of a 9-year-old girl after five eyewitnesses identified him at his trial.
During his 2 years on death row and 7 more under a sentence of life imprisonment, he
maintained his innocence. Then DNA testing proved it was not his semen on the girl’s
underwear. Released from prison, he still lived under a cloud of doubt until in 2003, 19 years
after his conviction, DNA testing identified the actual killer (Wells et al., 2006). Mistaken
identification by confident witnesses is involved in nearly 3 out of 4 cases of innocent
people exonerated by DNA evidence (Smalarz & Wells, 2015).
The Power of Persuasive Eyewitnesses
Vivid anecdotes and personal testimonies can be powerfully persuasive, often more so than
compelling but abstract information. There’s no better way to end an argument than to say,
“I saw it with my own eyes!”
Memory researcher Elizabeth Loftus (1974, 1979a, 2011b) found that those who had
“seen” were indeed believed, even when their testimony was shown to be useless. When
students were presented with a hypothetical robbery–murder case with circumstantial
Social Psychology in Court Chapter 15 455
evidence but no eyewitness testimony, only 18% voted for conviction.
Other students received the same information but with the addition of a
single eyewitness. Now, knowing that someone had declared, “That’s the
one!” 72% voted for conviction. For a third group, the defense attorney
discredited the eyewitness testimony (the witness had 20/400 vision and
was not wearing glasses). Did that discrediting reduce the effect of the
testimony? In this case, not much: 68% still voted for conviction.
Later experiments revealed that discrediting may reduce somewhat the
number of guilty votes (Whitley, 1987). But unless contradicted by another
eyewitness, a vivid eyewitness account is difficult to erase from jurors’
minds (Leippe, 1985). That helps explain why, compared with criminal
cases lacking eyewitness testimony, those that have eyewitness testimony
are more likely to produce convictions (Visher, 1987).
Can’t jurors spot erroneous testimony? To find out, researchers staged
hundreds of eye-witnessed thefts of a calculator. Afterward, they asked
each eyewitness to identify the culprit from a photo lineup. Other people,
acting as jurors, observed the eyewitnesses being questioned and then
evaluated their testimony. Are incorrect eyewitnesses believed less often
than those who are accurate? As it happened, both correct and incorrect
eyewitnesses were believed 80% of the time (Wells et al., 1979). That led the researchers
to speculate that “human observers have absolutely no ability to discern eyewitnesses who
have mistakenly identified an innocent person” (Wells et al., 1980).
In a follow-up experiment, the staged theft sometimes allowed witnesses a good long
look at the thief and sometimes didn’t. The jurors believed the witnesses more when condi-
tions were good. But even when conditions were so poor that two-thirds of the witnesses
had actually misidentified an innocent person, 62% of the jurors still usually believed the
witnesses (Lindsay et al., 1981).
Later studies found that jurors are more skeptical of eyewitnesses whose memory of
trivial details is poor—though these tend to be the most accurate witnesses (Wells & Leippe,
1981). Jurors think a witness who can remember that there were three pictures hanging in
the room must have “really been paying attention” (Bell & Loftus, 1988, 1989). Actually,
those who pay attention to surrounding details are less likely to attend to the culprit’s face.
The persuasive power of three eyewitnesses sent Chicagoan James Newsome, who had
never been arrested before, to prison on a life sentence for supposedly gunning down a
convenience store owner. Fifteen years later he was released, after fingerprint technology
revealed the real culprit to be Dennis Emerson, a career criminal who was 3 inches taller
and had longer hair (Chicago Tribune, 2002).
When Eyes Deceive
Is eyewitness testimony often inaccurate? Stories abound of innocent people who have
wasted away for years in prison because of the testimony of eyewitnesses who were sincerely
wrong (Brandon & Davies, 1973; Doyle, 2005; Wells et al.,
2006). Among the first 250 convictions overturned by DNA
evidence, 76% were wrongful convictions influenced by mis-
taken eyewitnesses (Garrett, 2011a).
To assess the accuracy of eyewitness recollections, we need to
learn their overall rates of “hits” and “misses.” One way for
researchers to gather such information is to stage crimes compa-
rable to those in everyday life and then solicit eyewitness reports.
During the past century, this has been done many times,
sometimes with disconcerting results (Sporer, 2008). For
example, 141 students witnessed an “assault” on a professor at
California State University, Hayward. Seven weeks later, when
Robert Buckhout (1974) asked them to identify the assailant
from a group of six photographs, 60% chose an innocent
Lie-detection brain scans
have, as yet, marginal validity.
But such high-tech-seeming
evidence can nevertheless seem
credible to jurors (Gazzaniga,
2011; McCabe et al., 2011).
“As it turned out, my battery of lawyers was
no match for their battery of eyewitnesses.”
©Joseph Mirachi. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
The innocent James Newsome (left) mistakenly identified by
eyewitnesses, and the actual culprit (right).
(both): Source: Illinois Department of Corrections
456 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
person. No wonder eyewitnesses to actual crimes sometimes disagree about what they saw.
Later studies have confirmed that eyewitnesses often are more confident than correct. In
one study, students felt, on average, 74% sure of their later recollections of a classroom
visitor but were only 55% correct (Bornstein & Zickafoose, 1999).
Three studies of live lineups conducted in England and Wales show remarkable consis-
tency. Roughly 40% of witnesses identified the suspect, and another 40% made no identi-
fication. Despite having been cautioned that the person they witnessed might not be in the
lineup, 20% chose an innocent person (Valentine et al., 2003). Young adult (vs. older)
eyewitnesses, and those who had viewed the culprit for more than 1 minute at a distance
of less than 5 meters (about 16 feet), were also more accurate than older eyewitnesses and
those who viewed the person more briefly and from farther away (Horry et al., 2014). Child
witnesses are more likely to choose an innocent person in a lineup, especially if the culprit
is not in the lineup (Fitzgerald & Price, 2015).
Jurors find confident witnesses the most believable (Wells et al., 2002, 2006). Unless
their credibility is punctured by an obvious error, confident witnesses seem more credible
(Jules & McQuiston, 2013; Tenney et al., 2007). Confident witnesses are somewhat more
accurate, especially when making quick and confident identifications soon after the event
(Sauer et al., 2010; Sauerland & Sporer, 2009). In 57% of DNA exoneration cases that
included eyewitness testimony, the eyewitnesses were initially uncertain (Garrett, 2011b).
Jurors also have a difficult time interpreting statements of confidence—for example, what
does “I’m fairly certain it’s him?” mean? (Dodson & Dobolyi, 2015). Still, the overcon-
fidence phenomenon affects witnesses, too. Under many conditions, witnesses that feel
90 to 100% confident tend to be approximately 75 to 90% accurate (Brewer & Wells,
2011).
However, note psychologists John Wixted and Gary Wells (2017), eyewitness confidence
does predict accuracy when police follow certain procedures for the initial identification,
such as including only one suspect per lineup and cautioning that the offender might not
be in the lineup. Under these conditions, the witness who is confident in her first judgment
is more accurate (Wixted et al., 2015).
When these conditions are not met, however, an unconfident identification can become
a confident—and often inaccurate—one by the time of the trial as it is reinforced over and
over. For example, being told “Good, you picked the suspect” increases witnesses’ confidence—
even if they actually picked the wrong person. By the trial, witnesses could be fully confident
in their incorrect judgment (Smalarz & Wells, 2015; Steblay et al., 2014). To guard against
the officer influencing the witness’s identification or memory, the U.S. Department of
Justice now recommends that witness confidence during the initial identification should be
documented and that the officer who shows the lineup to the witness should not know who
the suspect is (Johnson, 2017).
Why can eyewitness identifications be inaccurate? Errors sneak into our perceptions and
our memories because our minds are not video recorders. Many errors are understandable,
as revealed by change blindness experiments in which people fail to detect that an innocent
person entering a scene differs from another person exiting the scene (Davis et al., 2008).
People are quite good at recognizing a pictured face when
later shown the same picture alongside a new face. But
researcher Vicki Bruce (1998) was surprised to discover
that subtle differences in views, expressions, or lighting
“are hard for human vision to deal with.” We construct
our memories based partly on what we perceived at the
time and partly on our expectations, beliefs, and current
knowledge (Figure 1).
The strong emotions that accompany witnessed
crimes and traumas may further corrupt eyewitness
memories. In one experiment, visitors wore heart rate
monitors while in the London Dungeon’s Horror
Labyrinth. Those exhibiting the most emotion later
made the most mistakes in identifying someone they
had encountered (Valentine & Mesout, 2009).
“Certitude is not the test of
certainty.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Collected Legal Papers
Eyewitness recall of detail is
sometimes impressive. When
John Yuille and Judith Cutshall
(1986) studied accounts of a
midafternoon murder on a
busy Burnaby, British
Columbia, street, they found
that eyewitnesses’ recall for
detail was 80% accurate.
FIGURE 1
Expectations Affect
Perception
People will see what they
expect in this image—either an
old or a young woman.
©New York Public Library/Science
Source
Social Psychology in Court Chapter 15 457
One study documented the effect of stress on memory with more than 500 soldiers at
survival schools—mock prisoner of war camps that were training the soldiers to withstand
deprivation of food and sleep, combined with intense, confrontational interrogation, result-
ing in a high heart rate and a flood of stress hormones. A day after release from the camp,
when the participants were asked to identify their intimidating interrogators from a 15-person
lineup, only 30% could do so, although 62% could recall a low-stress interrogator. Thus, con-
cluded the researchers, “contrary to the popular conception that most people would never
forget the face of a clearly seen individual who had physically confronted them and threat-
ened them for more than 30 minutes, [many] were unable to correctly identify their perpe-
trator” (Morgan et al., 2004). We are most at risk for false recollections made with high
confidence with faces of another race (Brigham et al., 2006; Meissner et al., 2005).
Research also indicates that harsh “enhanced” interrogation techniques, sometimes using
torture, are ineffective (Vrij et al., 2017). With uncooperative terrorist suspects, brutal inter-
rogation increases resistance, impedes accurate information retrieval, and makes lie detec-
tion more difficult.
The Misinformation Effect
Can false memories be created? In a pioneering study on that question, Elizabeth Loftus
and associates (1978) showed University of Washington students 30 slides depicting suc-
cessive stages of an automobile–pedestrian accident. One critical slide showed a red Datsun
stopped at a stop sign or a yield sign. Afterward they asked half the students, among other
questions, “Did another car pass the red Datsun while it was stopped at the stop sign?”
They asked the other half the same question, but with the words “stop sign” replaced by
“yield sign.” Later, all viewed both slides in Figure 2 and recalled which one they had seen
previously. Those who had been asked the question consistent with what they had seen
were 75% correct. Those previously asked the misleading question were only 41% correct;
more often than not, they denied seeing what they had actually seen and instead “remem-
bered” the picture they had never seen!
Other studies of this misinformation effect found that after suggestive questions, witnesses
may believe that a red light was actually green or that a robber had a mustache when he
didn’t (Loftus, 1979a,b, 2001). When questioning eyewitnesses, police and attorneys com-
monly ask questions framed by their own understanding of what happened. So it is troubling
to discover how easily witnesses incorporate misleading information into their memories,
especially when they believe the questioner is well informed, when shown fabricated evi-
dence, when suggestive questions are repeated, or when they have discussed events with
other witnesses (Frenda et al., 2011; Wade et al., 2010; Wright et al., 2009; Zaragoza &
Mitchell, 1996). Fortunately, the misinformation effect can be reduced by warning
misinformation effect
Incorporating “misinformation”
into one’s memory of the event
after witnessing an event and
receiving misleading
information about it.
FIGURE 2
The Misinformation Effect
When shown one of these two pictures and then asked a question suggesting the sign from the other photo, most people later “remembered”
seeing the sign they had never actually seen.
Source: From Loftus et al., 1978. (photos): Courtesy of Elizabeth Loftus
458 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
witnesses, by explicitly saying that a piece of information was incorrect (“there was no stop
sign”) or implying it might be (“the police cadet was inexperienced at detailing observed
crimes”) (Blank & Launay, 2014; Echterhoff et al., 2005; Greene et al., 1982).
It also is troubling to realize that false memories feel and look like real memories.
They can be as persuasive as real memories—convincingly sincere, yet sincerely wrong.
This is true of young children (who are especially susceptible to misinformation) as well
as adults. In one study, children were told once a week for 10 weeks, “Think real hard,
and tell me if this ever happened to you: Can you remember going to the hospital with
the mousetrap on your finger?” Remarkably, when later interviewed by a new adult who
asked the same question, 58% of preschoolers produced false and often detailed stories
about the fictitious event (Ceci & Bruck, 1993a,b, 1995). One boy explained that his
brother had pushed him into a basement woodpile, where his finger got stuck in the
trap. “And then we went to the hospital, and my mommy, daddy, and Colin drove me
there, to the hospital in our van, because it was far away. And the doctor put a bandage
on this finger.”
Given such vivid stories, professional psychologists were often fooled. They could not
reliably separate real from false memories—nor could the children. Told the incident never
actually happened, some protested, “But it really did happen. I remember it!” Such findings
raise the possibility of false accusations, as in alleged child sex abuse cases in which chil-
dren’s memories may have been contaminated by repeated suggestive questioning and in
which there is no corroborating evidence. Given suggestive interview questions, most pre-
schoolers and many older children will produce false reports, such as seeing a thief steal
food in their day-care center (Bruck & Ceci, 1999, 2004).
In other studies, university students were asked to imagine childhood events, such as
breaking a window or having a nurse remove a skin sample. This led one-fourth to recall
that the imagined event actually happened (Garry et al., 1996; Mazzoni & Memom, 2003).
This imagination inflation happens partly because visualizing something activates similar
areas in the brain as does actually experiencing it (Gonsalves et al., 2004). Imagining inputs
incorrect information.
Misinformation-induced false memories provide one explanation for a peculiar phenome-
non: false confessions (Kassin et al., 2010, 2018; Lassiter, 2010; Loftus, 2011a). Among 250
closely studied cases in which DNA evidence cleared wrongfully convicted people, 16% involved
false confessions (Garrett, 2011b). Many of these were compliant confessions—people who con-
fessed when worn down and often sleep deprived (“If you will just tell us you accidentally
rather than deliberately set the fire, you can go home”).
Others were internalized confessions—ones apparently
believed after people were fed misinformation. Confes-
sions, even when coerced, can set off a chain reaction
in a case. Police make more errors with evidence and
eyewitness identifications when a suspect has confessed
(Kassin, 2014; Kassin et al., 2012). Sixty percent of
judges will vote to convict a suspect who confessed, even
if the confession was given under pressure and other
evidence is weak (Wallace & Kassin, 2012). It is often
difficult for people to believe that people would confess
to a crime they didn’t commit (Kassin, 2017).
It’s tempting to believe that false confessions hap-
pen to other people, and that we ourselves would
never do such a thing. Research suggests otherwise.
In one experiment, researchers told students they had
committed a crime, such as assault or theft as a young
teen (in reality, none had ever had any police con-
tact). After three interviews using memory-enhancing
techniques such as visualization, an incredible 70%
believed that they had actually committed a crime
(Shaw & Porter, 2015).
After 43 hours of questioning by Italian police, the last 8 hours conducted
overnight without food, water, or sleep, American exchange student Amanda
Knox confessed to killing her roommate Meredith Kercher. She later recanted,
and no physical evidence tied her to the crime. After 4 years in jail in Italy, she
was acquitted in 2011 and returned home to the United States.
©AFP/Getty Images
Social Psychology in Court Chapter 15 459
Retelling
Retelling events commits people to their recollections, accurate or not. An accurate retelling
helps them later resist misleading suggestions (Bregman & McAllister, 1982). Other times,
the more we retell a story, the more we convince ourselves of a falsehood. Another study had
eyewitnesses to a staged theft rehearse their answers to questions before taking the witness
stand. Doing so increased the confidence of those who were wrong and thus made jurors
who heard their false testimony more likely to convict the innocent person (Wells et al., 1981).
We often adjust what we say to please our listeners. Moreover, having done so, we come
to believe the altered message. Imagine witnessing an argument that erupts into a fight in
which one person injures the other. Afterward, the injured party sues. Before the trial, a
smooth lawyer for one of the two parties interviews you. Might you slightly adjust your
testimony, giving a version of the fight that supports this lawyer’s client? If you did so,
might your later recollections in court be similarly slanted?
Blair Sheppard and Neil Vidmar (1980) report that the answer to both questions is yes.
At the University of Western Ontario, they had some students serve as witnesses to a fight
and others as lawyers and judges. When interviewed by lawyers for the defendant, the wit-
nesses later gave the judge testimony that was more favorable to the defendant. In a follow-
up experiment, witnesses did not omit important facts from their testimony; they just
changed their tone of voice and choice of words depending on whether they thought they
were witnesses for the defendant or for the plaintiff (Vidmar & Laird, 1983). Even this was
enough to bias the impressions of those who heard the testimony. So it’s not only suggestive
questions that can distort eyewitness recollections but also their own retellings, which may
be adjusted subtly to suit their audience. How police officers and others respond to witness
statements can also have an impact (see Research Close-up: Feedback to Witnesses).
Reducing Error
One survey of British law enforcement professionals found that even experienced police
officers harbor misconceptions about interrogation and eyewitness memory (Chaplin &
“Witnesses probably ought to
be taking a more realistic
oath: ‘Do you swear to tell the
truth, the whole truth, or what-
ever it is you think you
remember?’”
—Elizabeth F. Loftus,
“Memory In Canadian Courts of
Law,” 2003
Feedback to Witnesses
Eyewitness to a crime on viewing a lineup: “Oh, my
God . . . I don’t know . . . It’s one of those two . . .
but I don’t know . . . Oh, man . . . the guy a little bit
taller than number two . . . It’s one of those two, but
I don’t know. . . .”
Months later at trial: “You were positive it was
number two? It wasn’t a maybe?”
Eyewitness’s answer: “There was no maybe
about it . . . was absolutely positive.”
(Missouri v. Hutching, 1994, reported by Wells & Bradfield,
1998)
What explains witnesses misrecalling their original uncer-
tainty? Gary Wells and Amy Bradfield (1998, 1999) won-
dered. Research had shown that one’s confidence gains a
boost from (a) learning that another witness has fingered
the same person, (b) being asked the same question re-
peatedly, and (c) preparing for cross- examination (Lüüs &
Wells, 1994; Shaw, 1996; Wells et al., 1981). Might the
lineup interviewer’s feedback also influence not just
confidence but also recollections of earlier confidence
(“I knew it all along”)?
To find out, Wells and Bradfield conducted two experi-
ments in which 352 Iowa State University students viewed
a grainy security camera video of a man entering a store.
Moments later, off camera, he murders a security guard.
The students then viewed the photo spread from the ac-
tual criminal case, minus the gunman’s photo, and were
asked to identify the gunman. All 352 students made a
false identification, following which the experimenter
gave confirming feedback (“Good. You identified the ac-
tual suspect”), disconfirming feedback (“Actually, the sus-
pect was number _____”), or no feedback. Finally, all
were later asked, “At the time that you identified the per-
son in the photo spread, how certain were you that the
person you identified from the photos was the gunman
that you saw in the video?” (from 1, not at all certain, to 7,
totally certain).
The experiment produced two striking results: First,
the effect of the experimenter’s casual comment was
research
CLOSE-UP
460 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
huge. In the confirming feedback condition, 58% of the
eyewitnesses rated their certainty as 6 or 7 when making
their initial judgments. This was 4 times the 14% who said
the same in the no-feedback condition and 11 times the
5% in the disconfirming condition. What’s striking is that
those were their confident recollections before they
received any feedback.
It wasn’t obvious to the participants that their judg-
ments were affected, because the second rather amazing
finding is that when asked if the feedback had influenced
their answers, 58% said no. Moreover, as a group, those
who felt uninfluenced were influenced just as much as
those who said they were (Figure 3).
This phenomenon—increased witness confidence after
supportive feedback—is both big and reliable enough,
across 21 studies of 7,000 participants, to have gained a
name: the post-identification feedback effect (Douglass &
Steblay, 2006; Smalarz & Wells, 2014; Steblay et al., 2014).
It is understandable that eyewitnesses would be curious
about the accuracy of their recollections, and that interro-
gators would want to satisfy their curiosity (“you did iden-
tify the actual suspect”). But the possible later effect of
inflated eyewitness confidence points to the need to keep
interrogators blind (ignorant) of which person is the
suspect. Alternatively, witness certainty can be assessed
before any feedback is given (Steblay et al., 2014).
The inability of eyewitnesses to appreciate the post-
identification feedback effect points to a lesson that runs
deeper than jury research. Again, we see why we need
social psychological research. As social psychologists have
so often found—recall Milgram’s obedience experiments—
simply asking people how they would act, or asking what
explains their actions, sometimes gives us wrong an-
swers. Benjamin Franklin was right: “There are three
things extremely hard, steel, a diamond, and to know
one’s self.” That is why we need not only surveys that ask
people to explain themselves but also experiments in
which we see what they actually do.
Participants who said
feedback did not
influence them were
influenced no less.
“Feedback
influenced me”
“Feedback did
not influence me”
Amount of certainty
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
Not at all
certain
Totally
certain
0
Disconfirming
Confirming
FIGURE 3
Recalled Certainty of Eyewitnesses’
False Identification After Receiving
Confirming or Disconfirming
Feedback (Experiment 2)
Source: Data from Wells & Bradfield, 1998.
Shaw, 2016). Given these error-prone tendencies, what constructive steps can be taken to
increase the accuracy of eyewitnesses and jurors? The U.S. Department of Justice convened
a panel of researchers, attorneys, and law enforcement officers to hammer out Eyewitness
Evidence: A Guide for Law Enforcement (Technical Working Group for Eyewitness Evidence,
1999; Wells et al., 2000). Their suggestions parallel many of those from a Canadian review
of eyewitness identification procedures (Yarmey, 2003a). They include ways to (a) train
police interviewers and (b) administer lineups. This “forensic science of mind” seeks to
preserve rather than contaminate the eyewitness memory aspect of the crime scene.
TRAIN POLICE INTERVIEWERS
When Ronald Fisher and colleagues (1987, 1989, 2011) examined tape-recorded interviews
of eyewitnesses conducted by experienced Florida police detectives, they found a typical
Social Psychology in Court Chapter 15 461
pattern. Following an open-ended beginning (“Tell me what
you recall”), the detectives would occasionally interrupt with
follow-up questions, including questions eliciting terse answers
(“How tall was he?”).
The Eyewitness Evidence guide instructs interviewers to
begin by allowing eyewitnesses to offer their own unprompted
recollections. The recollections will be most complete if the
interviewer jogs the memory by first guiding people to recon-
struct the setting. Have them visualize the scene and what
they were thinking and feeling at the time. Even showing pic-
tures of the setting—of, say, the store checkout lane with a
clerk standing where she was robbed—can promote accurate
recall (Cutler & Penrod, 1988). After giving witnesses ample,
uninterrupted time to report everything that comes to mind,
the interviewer then jogs their memory with evocative ques-
tions (“Was there anything unusual about the voice? Was
there anything unusual about the person’s appearance or
clothing?”). Such open-ended questions are better than those
asking witnesses to focus on particular characteristics (such as hair color), which can lead
them to forget other details (Camp et al., 2012).
When detectives were trained to question in this way, the eyewitnesses’ information
increased 25 to 50% without increasing the false memory rate (Fisher et al., 1989, 1994,
2011). A later meta-analysis of 46 published studies confirmed that this “cognitive inter-
view” substantially increases details recalled, with no loss in accuracy (Memon et al., 2011).
In response to such results, most police agencies in North America and Britain have
adopted the cognitive interview procedure (Dando et al., 2009). (The procedure also shows
promise for enhancing information gathered in oral histories and medical surveys.)
Accurate identifications tend to be automatic and effortless (Sauer et al., 2010). The
right face just pops out. Eyewitnesses who made their identifications in fewer than 10 to
12 seconds were nearly 90% accurate; those taking longer were only about 50% accurate
(Dunning & Perretta, 2002). Although other studies challenge a neat 10- to 12-second rule,
they confirm that quicker identifications are generally more accurate (Weber et al., 2004).
In an analysis of 640 eyewitness viewings of London police lineups, nearly 9 in 10 “fast”
identifications were of the actual suspect, as were fewer than 4 in 10 slower identifications
(Valentine et al., 2003). Similarly, witnesses who viewed a sequential lineup more than once
were more likely to choose a “filler” photograph of an innocent person (Horry et al.,
2012a). (Filler photographs are known as “foils.”)
MINIMIZE FALSE LINEUP IDENTIFICATIONS
After a suburban Toronto department store robbery, the cashier involved could recall only that
the culprit was not wearing a tie and was “very neatly dressed and rather good looking.” When
police put the good-looking Ron Shatford in a lineup with 11 unattractive men, the cashier
readily identified him as the culprit. Only after he had served 15 months of a long sentence
did another person confess, allowing Shatford to be retried and found not guilty (Doob &
Kirshenbaum, 1973). In another case, a witness said the perpetrator had curly hair and a beard.
When the lineup included a man, Leonard Callace, with straight hair and a beard and 5 men
with only mustaches, the witness confidently identified the bearded Callace. Callace spent 6
years in prison before being exonerated by DNA evidence (Coloff et al., 2016). Stacking the
police lineup with dissimilar people can clearly promote misidentification.
If a suspect has a distinguishing feature—a tie, a tattoo, or an eye patch—false identifications
are reduced by putting a similar feature on other lineup foils (Zarkadi et al., 2009) or by obscur-
ing the feature (Colloff et al., 2016). Suspects with angry expressions are also identified as the
culprit more often, particularly if the foils have neutral or happy expressions (Flowe et al., 2014).
Another way to reduce misidentifications is to remind witnesses that the person they saw may
or may not be in the lineup—that reminder reduced wrong choices by 45% (Wells, 1984, 1993,
2005, 2008). Alternatively, give eyewitnesses a “blank” lineup that contains only foil pictures
Eyewitness recollections are the most accurate when witnesses are
asked open-ended questions that allow them to recall details.
©Aaron Roeth Photography
462 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
and screen out those who make false identifications.
Those who do not make such errors turn out to be
more accurate when they later face the actual lineup.
Mistakes also subside when witnesses make indi-
vidual yes or no judgments in response to a sequence
of people, as shown in dozens of studies in Europe,
North America, Australia, and South Africa (Lindsay
& Wells, 1985; Meissner et al., 2005; Steblay et al.,
2001). A simultaneous lineup tempts people to pick
the person who, among the lineup members, most
resembles the perpetrator. Witnesses viewing just one
suspect at a time are less likely to make false identi-
fications, especially if they are not told in advance
how many photos they will view (Horry et al., 2012b).
If witnesses view several photos or people simul-
taneously, they are more likely to choose whoever
most resembles the culprit. (When not given a same-
race lineup, witnesses may pick someone of the cul-
prit’s race, especially when it’s a race different from
their own [Wells & Olson, 2001].) With a “sequential
lineup,” eyewitnesses compare each person with their
memory of the culprit and make an absolute decision—
match or no-match (Goodsell et al., 2010; Gronlund,
2004a, b). One experiment randomly assigned crime eyewitnesses to view lineups simultane-
ously or sequentially. The sequential lineup reduced the misidentification of foils from 18 to
12%, with no reduction in accurate identifications of suspects (Wells et al., 2015).
These no-cost procedures make police lineups more like good experiments. They contain
a control group (a no-suspect lineup or a lineup in which mock witnesses try to guess the
suspect based merely on a general description). They have an experimenter who is blind to
the hypothesis, and who therefore won’t subtly influence witnesses or challenge the identi-
fication of someone who is not the favored suspect (Kovera & Evelo, 2017). Questions are
scripted and neutral, so they don’t subtly demand a particular response (the procedure doesn’t
imply the culprit is in the lineup). And they prohibit confidence-inflating post-lineup com-
ments (“you got him”) prior to trial testimony. Such procedures greatly reduce the natural
human confirmation bias (having an idea and seeking confirming evidence). Lineups can
also be effectively administered by computers (MacLin et al., 2005; Wells et al., 2015).
Although procedures such as double-blind testing are common in psychological science,
they are still uncommon in criminal procedures (Wells & Olson, 2003). So it was when
Troy Davis was arrested for the 1989 killing of a Georgia police officer. The police showed
some of the witnesses Davis’s photo before they viewed the lineup. His lineup picture had
a different background than the other photos. The lineup was administered by an officer
who knew that Davis was the suspect. Later, 7 of the 9 witnesses against Davis recanted,
with 6 saying the police threatened them if they did not identify Davis. The man who first
told police that Davis was the shooter later confessed to the crime. Despite court appeals
and pleas from the Pope, a former FBI director, and 630,000 others, in 2011, Georgia
executed Troy Davis (The New York Times, 2011).
Mindful of all this research, New Jersey’s attorney general has mandated statewide blind
testing (to avoid steering witnesses toward suspects) and sequential lineups (to minimize
simply comparing people and choosing the person who most resembles the one they saw
commit a crime) (Kolata & Peterson, 2001; Wells et al., 2002). In 2011, the New Jersey
Supreme Court, in response to research on eyewitness identification procedures, overhauled
its state’s rule for treating lineup evidence. By making it easier for defendants to challenge
flawed evidence, the court attached consequences to the use of lineup procedures that are
most likely to produce mistaken identifications (Goode & Schwartz, 2011). Oregon followed
suit in 2012, requiring that judges consider factors that might limit an eyewitness’s reliability
and mandating that they rule out unreliable eyewitness evidence. The new rules followed a
Researchers are also exploring
the conditions under which
“earwitness” testimony, based
on voice recognition, is also
vulnerable to error (Mullenix
et al., 2011; Stevenage et al.,
2011).
Simultaneous suspect lineups like this one may increase the chance of false
identifications. For example, if the perpetrator had glasses and a beard, a wit-
ness might choose #2 even if he is not actually the perpetrator.
©RichLegg/Getty Images
Troy Davis (1968–2011). Despite
error-prone procedures for
screening eyewitness
testimonies, the State of
Georgia argued that Davis, who
maintained his innocence to his
last breath, was guilty of
murder.
©Columbus Ledger-Enquirer/Getty
Images
Social Psychology in Court Chapter 15 463
case in which Samuel Lawson was convicted of murdering a man and shooting that man’s
wife. Immediately after the shooting, the woman said she had not seen the shooter’s face,
and she did not identify Lawson in a photo lineup. Two years later, police told her that
Lawson had been arrested for the shooting, and she then identified him. Lawson was con-
victed of the murder. After reviewing the research on eyewitness identification, however,
the court (Oregon v. Lawson) overturned Lawson’s conviction.
EDUCATE JURORS
Do jurors evaluate eyewitness testimony rationally? Do they understand how the circum-
stances of a lineup determine its reliability? Do they know whether or not to take an eye-
witness’s self-confidence into account? Do they realize how memory can be influenced—by
earlier misleading questions, by stress at the time of the incident, by the interval between
the event and the questioning, by whether the suspect is the same or a different race, by
whether recall of other details is sharp or hazy? Studies in Canada, Great Britain, Norway,
and the United States reveal that although juror knowledge seems on the increase, jurors
fail to fully appreciate some of these factors, all of which are known to influence eyewitness
testimony (Desmarais & Read, 2011; Magnussen et al., 2010; Wise & Safer, 2010). In one
national survey, more than half falsely believed that, “Human memory works like a video
camera, accurately recording the events we see and hear so that we can review and inspect
them later” (Loftus, 2011a).
To educate jurors, experts now are asked frequently (usually by defense attorneys) to
testify about eyewitness testimony (Cutler & Kovera, 2011). Starting in 2012, New Jersey
requires that jurors be instructed on factors that can influence eyewitness testimony: “Human
memory is not foolproof. Research has shown that human memory is not at all like a video
recording . . . people may have greater difficulty identifying members of a different race . . .
high levels of stress can reduce an eyewitness’s ability to recall and make an accurate iden-
tification” (quoted in Schacter & Loftus, 2013). The aim is to offer jurors the sort of
information you have been reading about to help them evaluate the testimony of both
prosecution and defense witnesses. Table 1, drawn from a survey of 64 researchers on
TABLE 1 Influences on Eyewitness Testimony
Phenomenon
Eyewitness Experts
Agreeing* Jurors Agreeing*
Question wording. An eyewitness’s testimony about an event can be affected by
how the questions put to that eyewitness are worded.
98% 85%
Lineup instructions. Police instructions can affect an eyewitness’s willingness to
make an identification.
98% 41%
Confidence malleability. An eyewitness’s confidence can be influenced by factors
that are unrelated to identification accuracy.
95% 50%
Mug-shot-induced bias. Exposure to mug shots of a suspect increases the likeli-
hood that the witness will later choose that suspect in a lineup.
95% 59%
Postevent information. Eyewitnesses’ testimony about an event often reflects not
only what they actually saw but also information they obtained later on.
94% 60%
Attitudes and expectations. An eyewitness’s perception and memory of an event
may be affected by his or her attitudes and expectations.
92% 81%
Cross-race bias. Eyewitnesses are more accurate when identifying members of
their own race than members of other races.
90% 47%
Accuracy versus confidence. An eyewitness’s confidence is not a good predictor of
his or her identification accuracy.
87% 38%
*“This phenomenon is reliable enough for psychologists to present it in courtroom testimony.”
Source: Experts from S. M. Kassin, V. A. Tubb, H. M. Hosch, & A. Memon (2001). Jurors from T. R. Benton, D. F. Ross, E. Bradshaw, W. N. Thomas, &
G. S. Bradshaw (2006).
464 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
eyewitness testimony, lists some of the most agreed-upon phenomena. A follow-up survey
compared their understandings with those of 111 jurors sampled in Tennessee.
When taught the conditions under which eyewitness accounts are trustworthy, jurors
become more discerning (Devenport et al., 2002; Pawlenko et al., 2013) and more likely
to convict on the basis of eyewitness evidence collected using unbiased, scientifically vali-
dated techniques (Safer et al., 2016). Moreover, attorneys and judges are recognizing the
importance of some of these factors when deciding when to ask for or permit suppression
of lineup evidence (Stinson et al., 1996, 1997).
▯ In hundreds of experiments, social psychologists have
found that the accuracy of eyewitness testimony can be
impaired by a host of factors involving the ways people
form judgments and memories.
▯ Some eyewitnesses express themselves more assertively
than others. The assertive witness is more likely to be
believed, although assertiveness is actually a trait of the
witness that does not reflect the certainty of the
information.
▯ When false information is given to a witness, the misin-
formation effect may result in the witness coming to
believe that the false information is true.
▯ As the sequence of events in a crime is told repeatedly,
errors may creep in and become embraced by the
witness as part of the true account.
▯ To reduce such errors, interviewers are advised to let
the witness tell what he or she remembers without inter-
ruption and to encourage the witness to visualize the
scene of the incident and the emotional state the
witness was in when the incident occurred.
▯ Educating jurors about the pitfalls of eyewitness testi-
mony can improve the way testimony is received and,
ultimately, the accuracy of the verdict.
SUMMING UP: How Reliable Is Eyewitness Testimony?
WHAT OTHER FACTORS INFLUENCE
JUROR JUDGMENTS?
Explain how defendants’ attractiveness and similarity
to jurors may bias jurors, and how faithfully jurors
follow judges’ instructions.
The Defendant’s Characteristics
According to the famed trial lawyer Clarence Darrow (1933), jurors seldom convict a per-
son they like or acquit one they dislike. He argued that the main job of the trial lawyer is
to make a jury like the defendant. Was he right? And is it true, as Darrow also said, that
“facts regarding the crime are relatively unimportant”?
Darrow overstated the case. One classic study of more than 3,500 criminal cases and
4,000 civil cases found that 4 times in 5 the judge agreed with the jury’s decision (Kalven &
Zeisel, 1966). In the first three years of a jury trial system in South Korea, judges and
juries agreed on the verdict 91% of the time (Kim et al., 2013). Although it’s possible both
the jury and the judge may have been wrong, the evidence usually is clear enough that
jurors can set aside their biases, focus on the facts, and agree on a verdict (Saks & Hastie,
1978; Visher, 1987). Facts matter.
But facts are not all that matter. Communicators are more persuasive if they seem cred-
ible and attractive. Likewise, in courtrooms, high-status defendants often receive more
leniency (McGillis, 1979). In 2016, Stanford athlete Brock Turner was sentenced to only
Social Psychology in Court Chapter 15 465
6 months after sexually assaulting an unconscious
woman, prompting widespread outrage on the
belief that his higher status led to leniency (Stack,
2016). In one study, mock jurors perceived sexual
assault victims as having more control over the
situation—a version of saying “she asked for it”—
when the accused perpetrator was a star quarter-
back (Pica et al., 2018).
Actual cases vary in so many ways—in the type
of crime, in the status, age, gender, and race of the
defendant—that it’s difficult to isolate the factors
that influence jurors. So experimenters have con-
trolled such factors by giving mock jurors the same
basic facts of a case while varying, for instance, the
defendant’s attractiveness or similarity to the jurors.
PHYSICAL APPEARANCE
The physical attractiveness stereotype holds that
beautiful people seem like good people. Michael
Efran (1974) wondered whether that stereotype
would bias students’ judgments of someone accused of cheating. He asked some of his
University of Toronto students whether attractiveness should affect presumption of guilt.
They answered, “No, it shouldn’t.” But did it? Yes. When Efran gave other students a descrip-
tion of the case with a photograph of either an attractive or an unattractive defendant, they
judged the more attractive as less guilty and recommended a lesser punishment.
Other experimenters have confirmed that when the evidence is meager or ambiguous,
justice is not blind to a defendant’s looks (Maeder et al., 2015; Mazzella & Feingold, 1994).
Baby-faced adults (people with large, round eyes and small chins) are judged as more naive
and are found guilty more often of crimes of mere negligence but less often of intentional
criminal acts (Berry & Zebrowitz-McArthur, 1988). If found guilty, unattractive people also
strike people as more dangerous, especially if they are sexual offenders (Esses & Webster,
1988). When researchers asked people to rate the trustworthiness of 742 convicted murder-
ers from photographs of their faces, they found that these ratings predicted which defen-
dants had received the death penalty instead of life in prison—suggesting the defendants’
appearance significantly influenced the jurors who had sentenced them to death (Wilson &
Rule, 2015).
In a mammoth experiment conducted with BBC Television, Richard Wiseman (1998)
showed viewers evidence about a burglary, with just one variation. Some viewers saw the
defendant played by an actor who fit what a panel of 100 people judged as the stereotypical
Defendants seen as high-status or attractive are less likely to be found guilty and
more likely to escape harsh punishment.
©Hero Images/Image Source
FIGURE 4
Attractiveness and
Legal Judgments
Texas Gulf Coast judges set
higher bails and fines for less
attractive defendants.
Source: Data from Downs &
Lyons, 1991.
Bail/fine amounts, in dollars
1 2 3 4 5
AttractivenessLow High
Minor misdemeanors
Moderate misdemeanors
Serious misdemeanors
1400
1000
1200
800
600
400
200
0
466 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
criminal—unattractive, crooked nose, small eyes. Among 64,000 people phoning in their
verdict, 41% judged him guilty. British viewers elsewhere saw an attractive, baby-faced defen-
dant with large blue eyes. Only 31% found him guilty.
To see if these findings extend to the real world, one study had police officers rate the
physical attractiveness of 1,742 defendants appearing before 40 Texas judges in misde-
meanor cases that were serious (such as forgery), moderate (such as harassment), or minor
(such as public intoxication). In each type of case, the judges set higher bails and fines for
less attractive defendants (Downs & Lyons, 1991; Figure 4). What explains this dramatic
effect? Are unattractive people also lower in status? Are they more likely to flee or to com-
mit another crime, as the judges perhaps suppose? Or do judges simply ignore the Roman
statesman Cicero’s advice: “The final good and the supreme duty of the wise man is to
resist appearance.”
SIMILARITY TO THE JURORS
If Clarence Darrow was even partly right in his declaration that liking or disliking a defendant
colors judgments, other factors that influence liking may also matter. Among such influences
is the principle that similarity leads to liking. When people pretend they are jurors, they are
indeed more sympathetic to a defendant who shares their attitudes, religion, race, or (in cases
of sexual assault) gender (Selby et al., 1977; Towson & Zanna, 1983; Ugwuegbu, 1979).
Some examples:
▯ In 1,748 small claims court cases in Israel, Jewish plaintiffs received more favorable
outcomes when their cases were randomly assigned to Jewish judges, and Arab
plaintiffs received more favorable outcomes when assigned to Arab judges (Shayo &
Zussman, 2011).
▯ When a defendant’s race fits a crime stereotype—say, a White defendant charged
with embezzlement or a Black defendant charged with auto theft—mock jurors offer
more negative verdicts and punishments (Jones & Kaplan, 2003; Mazzella &
Feingold, 1994). Whites who espouse nonprejudiced views are more likely to
demonstrate racial bias in trials in which race issues are not blatant (Sommers &
Ellsworth, 2000, 2001).
▯ Australian students read evidence concerning a left- or right-wing person accused
of a politically motivated burglary. The students judged less guilt when the defen-
dant’s political views were similar to their own (Amato, 1979).
▯ English-speaking participants were more likely to think someone accused of assault
was not guilty if the defendant’s testimony was in English rather than translated
from Spanish or Thai (Stephan & Stephan, 1986).
▯ In one Louisiana court system, predominantly White judges handed down longer
sentences to Black defendants the week after the judges’ alma mater’s football team
lost a game (Eren & Mocan, 2016).
A U.S. Sentencing Commission analysis of criminal convictions between 2007 and 2011
found that Black men received sentences 20% longer than those of White men in cases
with the same seriousness and criminal history. Judges were also 25% less likely to show
Black (vs. White) defendants leniency by giving a sentence shorter than suggested by federal
sentencing guidelines (Palazzolo, 2013). In South Carolina, sentences for Black juveniles
were more punitive than those for White juveniles—especially in counties with larger Black
populations and larger populations of adolescents, creating a heightened perception of
threat ( Lowery et al., 2018).
An analysis by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune found that Blacks were sentenced to 68%
more prison time than Whites in first-degree felony cases in Florida, even when factors
such as the defendant’s prior criminal record and the severity of the crime were equal. In
one Florida county, sentences were three times as long for Black defendants as White
defendants convicted of armed robbery. “That’s like running a red light in a white car and
your ticket is $100 and running a red light in a black car and your ticket is $300,” observed
a former city commissioner (Salman et al., 2016).
Social Psychology in Court Chapter 15 467
Likewise, Blacks who kill Whites are more often sentenced to death than Whites who
kill Blacks (Butterfield, 2001). Compared with killing a Black person, killing a White person
is also three times as likely to lead (in one U.S. study) to a death sentence (Radelet &
Pierce, 2011). As Craig Haney (1991) put it, “Blacks are overpunished as defendants or
undervalued as victims, or both.”
In two studies, harsher sentences were also given to those who look more stereotypically
Black. Given similar criminal histories, Black and White inmates in Florida receive similar
sentences—but within each race, those with more “Afrocentric” facial features are given
longer sentences (Blair et al., 2004). Among Blacks convicted of murdering White victims
over a 20-year period in Philadelphia, defendants whose appearance was more stereotypi-
cally Black were more likely to be sentenced to death (Eberhardt et al., 2006).
Ideally, jurors would leave their biases outside the courtroom and begin a trial with open
minds. So implies the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: “The accused shall enjoy
the right to a speedy and public trial by impartial jury.” In its concern for objectivity, the
judicial system is similar to science. Both scientists and jurors are supposed to sift and
weigh the evidence. Both the courts and science have rules about what evidence is relevant.
Both are to keep careful records and assume that others given the
same evidence would decide similarly.
When the evidence is clear and individuals focus on it (as when
they reread and debate the meaning of testimony), their biases are
indeed minimal (Kaplan & Schersching, 1980; Lieberman, 2011).
The quality of the evidence matters more than the prejudices of
the individual jurors.
The Judge’s Instructions
All of us can recall courtroom dramas in which an attorney
exclaimed, “Your honor, I object!” whereupon the judge sustains
the objection and instructs the jury to ignore the other attorney’s
suggestive question or the witness’s remark. How effective are
such instructions?
Nearly all states in the United States now have “rape shield”
statutes that prohibit or limit testimony concerning the victim’s
When neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman (standing) fatally shot Black teen Trayvon Martin
during a scuffle in 2012, he claimed self-defense and was not arrested until 6 weeks after the shooting
following a public outcry. Polls showed that 73% of Blacks believed Zimmerman would have been arrested
sooner if Martin had been White, a view shared by only 35% of non-Blacks (Gallup, 2012). At his trial in 2013,
Zimmerman was found not guilty, a verdict that 86% of Blacks, but only 30% of Whites, found dissatisfactory
(Pew Research Center, 2013).
©Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service/Getty Images
“You look like this sketch of someone who’s
thinking about committing a crime.”
©David Sipress. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
468 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
prior sexual activity. Such testimony, though irrelevant to the case at hand, tends to make
jurors more sympathetic to the accused rapist’s claim that the woman consented to sex
(Borgida, 1981; Cann et al., 1979). If such reliable, illegal, or prejudicial testimony is nev-
ertheless slipped in by the defense or blurted out by a witness, will jurors follow a judge’s
instruction to ignore it? And is it enough for the judge to remind jurors, “The issue is not
whether you like or dislike the defendant but whether the defendant committed the offense”?
Very possibly not. Several experimenters report that jurors show concern for due process
(Fleming et al., 1999) but that they find it difficult to ignore inadmissible evidence, such
as the defendant’s previous convictions. In one study, University of Washington students
heard a description of a grocery store robbery–murder and a summary of the prosecution’s
case and the defense’s case. When the prosecution’s case was weak, no one judged the
defendant guilty. When a tape recording of an incriminating phone call made by the defen-
dant was added to the weak case, approximately one-third judged the person guilty. The
judge’s instructions that the tape was not legal evidence and should be ignored did nothing
to erase the effect of the damaging testimony (Sue et al., 1973).
Indeed, a judge’s order to ignore testimony—“It must play no role in your consideration
of the case. You have no choice but to disregard it”—can even boomerang, adding to the
testimony’s impact (Wolf & Montgomery, 1977). Perhaps such statements create reactance
in the jurors. Or perhaps they sensitize jurors to the inadmissible testimony, as when
we warn you not to notice your nose as you finish this sentence. Judges can more easily
strike inadmissible testimony from the court records than from the jurors’ minds. As trial
lawyers sometimes say, “You can’t unring a bell.”
This is especially so with emotional information (Edwards & Bryan, 1997). Jurors are
less able to ignore an emotionally provocative description of a defendant’s record (“hacking
up a woman”) compared to a less emotional, dry legal description (“assault with a deadly
weapon”). Even if jurors later claim to have ignored the inadmissible information, it may
alter how they construe other information.
Pretrial publicity is also difficult for jurors to ignore (Steblay et al., 1999). In one large-
scale experiment, 800 mock jurors saw incriminating news reports about the criminal record
of a man accused of robbing a supermarket. Some heard the judge’s instructions to disre-
gard the pretrial publicity, and others did not. The effect of the judicial admonition? Nil.
Those told to ignore it were just as likely to vote to convict (Kramer et al., 1990).
People whose opinions are biased by pretrial publicity typically deny its effect on them, and
that denial makes it difficult to eliminate biased jurors (Moran & Cutler, 1991). In experiments,
even getting mock jurors to pledge their impartiality and their willingness to disregard prior
information has not eliminated the pretrial publicity
effect (Dexter et al., 1992; Ruva & Guenther, 2015).
Judges can hope, with some support from avail-
able research, that during deliberation, jurors who
bring up inadmissible evidence will be chastised for
doing so, thus limiting its influence on jury verdicts
(London & Nunez, 2000). To minimize the effects
of inadmissible testimony, judges also can forewarn
jurors that certain types of evidence, such as a rape
victim’s sexual history, are irrelevant. Once jurors
form impressions based on such evidence, a judge’s
admonitions have much less effect (Borgida &
White, 1980; Kassin & Wrightsman, 1979). Thus,
reports Vicki Smith (1991), a pretrial training ses-
sion pays dividends. Teaching jurors legal proce-
dures and standards of proof improves their
understanding of the trial procedure and their will-
ingness to withhold judgment until after they have
heard all the trial information.
Better yet, judges could cut inadmissible testi-
mony before the jurors hear it—by videotaping
reactance
A motive to protect or restore
one’s sense of freedom.
Reactance arises when someone
threatens our freedom of action.
With a 24-hour news cycle, pretrial publicity often occurs before a jury is selected.
Will jurors be biased by what they learned before they entered the courtroom?
Although they deny being influenced, experiments have shown otherwise.
©cdrin/Shutterstock
Social Psychology in Court Chapter 15 469
testimonies and removing the inadmissible parts. Live and videotaped testimonies have
much the same impact as do live and videotaped lineups (Cutler et al., 1989; Miller &
Fontes, 1979). Videotaping not only enables the judge to edit out inadmissible testimony
but also speeds up the trial and allows witnesses to talk about crucial events before memo-
ries fade.
Additional Factors
We have considered three courtroom factors—eyewitness testimony, the defendant’s char-
acteristics, and the judge’s instructions. Researchers also study the influence of other
factors. For example, does a severe potential punishment (for example, a death penalty)
make jurors less willing to convict? Do experienced jurors’ judgments differ from those of
novice jurors? Are defendants judged more harshly when the victim is attractive or has
suffered greatly? Research suggests that the answer to all three questions is yes (Kerr,
1978, 1981).
Experiments confirm that jurors’ judgments of blame and punishment can be affected
by the victim’s characteristics—even when the defendant is unaware of them (Alicke &
Davis, 1989; Enzle & Hawkins, 1992). Consider the 1984 case of the “subway vigilante”
Bernard Goetz. When four teens asked Goetz for $5 on a New York subway, the frightened
Goetz pulled out a loaded gun and shot each of them, leaving one partly paralyzed. When
Goetz was charged with attempted homicide, there was an outcry of public support for
him partially because the youths had extensive criminal records and were carrying con-
cealed, sharpened screwdrivers. Although Goetz didn’t know any of this, he was acquitted
of the attempted homicide charge and convicted only of illegal firearm possession.
▯ The facts of a case are usually compelling enough that
jurors can lay aside their biases and render a fair judg-
ment. When the evidence is ambiguous, however, jurors
are more likely to interpret it with their preconceived
biases and to feel sympathetic to a defendant who is at-
tractive or similar to themselves.
▯ When jurors are exposed to damaging pretrial publicity
or to inadmissible evidence, will they follow a judge’s
instruction to ignore it? In simulated trials, the judge’s
orders were sometimes followed, but often, especially
when the judge’s admonition came after an impression
was made, they were not.
▯ Researchers have also explored the influence of other
factors, such as the severity of the potential sentence
and various characteristics of the victim.
SUMMING UP: What Other Factors Influence
Juror Judgments?
WHAT INFLUENCES
THE INDIVIDUAL JUROR?
Describe how verdicts depend on how the individual
jurors process information.
Courtroom influences on “the average juror” are worth pondering. But no juror is the aver-
age juror; each carries into the courthouse individual attitudes and personalities. And when
they deliberate, jurors influence one another. So two key questions are (1) How are verdicts
influenced by individual jurors’ characteristics? and (2) How are verdicts influenced by
jurors’ deliberations with each other?
470 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
Juror Comprehension
To gain insight into juror comprehension, researchers had mock jurors, sampled from
courthouse jury pools, view reenactments of actual trials. In making their decisions, the
jurors first constructed a story that made sense of all the evidence. After observing one
murder trial, for example, some jurors concluded that a quarrel had made the defendant
angry, triggering him to get a knife, search for the victim, and stab him to death. Others
surmised that the frightened defendant picked up a knife that he used to defend himself
when he later encountered the victim. When jurors begin deliberating, they often dis-
cover that others have constructed different stories (Pennington & Hastie, 1993). This
implies—and research confirms—that jurors are best persuaded when attorneys present
evidence in narrative fashion—a story. In felony cases, where the national conviction rate
is 80%, the prosecution case more often than the defense case follows a narrative
structure.
UNDERSTANDING INSTRUCTIONS
Next, the jurors must grasp the judge’s instructions concerning the available verdict catego-
ries. For those instructions to be effective, jurors must first understand them. Study after
study has found that many people do not understand the standard legalese of judicial
instructions (Baguley et al., 2017). Depending on the type of case, a jury may be told that
the standard of proof is a “preponderance of the evidence,” “clear and convincing evidence,”
or “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Such statements may have one meaning for the legal com-
munity and different meanings in the minds of jurors (Kagehiro, 1990; Mueller-Johnson
et al., 2018; Wright & Hall, 2007).
A judge may also remind jurors to avoid premature conclusions as they weigh each new
item of presented evidence. But research with both college students and mock jurors chosen
from prospective jury pools shows that warm-blooded human beings do form premature
opinions, and those leanings do influence how they interpret new information (Carlson &
Russo, 2001).
After observing actual cases and later interviewing the jurors, Stephen Adler (1994)
found “lots of sincere, serious people who—for a variety of reasons—were missing key points,
focusing on irrelevant issues, succumbing to barely recognized prejudices, failing to see
through the cheapest appeals to sympathy or hate, and generally botching the job.”
INCREASING JURORS’ UNDERSTANDING
Understanding how jurors misconstrue judicial instructions is a first step toward better
decisions. A next step might be giving jurors access to transcripts rather than forcing them
to rely on their memories in processing complex information (Bourgeois et al., 1993). A
further step would be devising and testing clearer, more effective ways to present information—
a task on which several social psychologists have worked. For example, when a judge
quantifies the required standard of proof (as, for instance, 51, 71, or 91% certainty), jurors
understand and respond appropriately (Kagehiro, 1990). And surely there must be a simpler
way to tell jurors, as required by the Illinois Death Penalty Act, not to impose the death
sentence in murder cases when there are justifying circumstances: “If you do not unani-
mously find from your consideration of all the evidence that there are no mitigating factors
sufficient to preclude imposition of a death sentence, then you should sign the verdict
requiring the court to impose a sentence other than death” (Diamond, 1993). When jurors
are given instructions rewritten into simple language, they are less susceptible to the judge’s
biases (Halverson et al., 1997; Smith & Haney, 2011).
Phoebe Ellsworth and Robert Mauro (1998) summed up the dismal conclusions of jury
researchers: “Legal instructions are typically delivered in a manner likely to frustrate the
most conscientious attempts at understanding. . . . The language is technical and . . . no
attempt is made either to assess jurors’ mistaken preconceptions about the law or to provide
any kind of useful education.” When jury instructions are instead written in more under-
standable “plain language,” comprehension increases. Even better are instructions that
Social Psychology in Court Chapter 15 471
define key terms, eliminate information irrelevant to the particular
case, and use names instead of terms such as “the defendant” (Smith &
Haney, 2011).
Jury Selection
Given the variations among individual jurors, can trial lawyers use the
jury-selection process to stack juries in their favor? Legal folklore sug-
gests that sometimes they can. One president of the Association of
Trial Lawyers of America boldly proclaimed, “Trial attorneys are
acutely attuned to the nuances of human behavior, which enables them
to detect the minutest traces of bias or inability to reach an appropri-
ate decision” (Bigam, 1977). In actuality, attorneys, like all of us, are
vulnerable to overconfidence. For example, they overestimate the like-
lihood of their meeting their goals (such as acquittal) in trial cases,
and likely also of their ability to “read” jurors (Goodman-Delahunty
et al., 2010).
Mindful that people’s assessments of others are error prone,
social psychologists doubt that attorneys come equipped with fine-
tuned social Geiger counters. In some 6,000 American trials a year,
consultants—some of them social scientists—help lawyers pick juries and
plot strategy (Gavzer, 1997; Hutson, 2007; Miller, 2001).
Many trial attorneys have now used scientific jury selection to identify questions they
can use to exclude those biased against their clients, and most have reported satisfaction
with the results (Gayoso et al., 1991; Moran et al., 1994). Most jurors, when asked by a
judge to “raise your hand if you’ve read anything about this case that would prejudice you,”
don’t directly acknowledge their preconceptions. But if, for example, the judge allows an
attorney to check prospective jurors’ attitudes toward drugs, the attorney can often guess
their verdicts in a drug-trafficking case (Moran et al., 1990). Likewise, people who acknowl-
edge they “don’t put much faith in the testimony of psychiatrists” are less likely to accept
an insanity defense (Cutler et al., 1992).
Individuals react differently to specific case features. Racial prejudice becomes relevant
in racially charged cases; gender seems linked with verdicts only in rape and battered-woman
cases; belief in personal responsibility versus corporate responsibility relates to personal
injury awards in suits against businesses (Ellsworth & Mauro, 1998).
Despite the excitement—and ethical concern—about scientific jury selection, experiments
reveal that attitudes and personal characteristics are weak verdict predictors (Lieberman,
2011). There are “no magic questions to be asked of prospective jurors,” cautioned Steven
Penrod and Brian Cutler (1987). Researchers Michael Saks and Reid Hastie (1978) agreed:
“The studies are unanimous in showing that evidence is a substantially more potent deter-
minant of jurors’ verdicts than the individual characteristics of jurors” (p. 68).
“Death-Qualified” Jurors
A close case can, however, be decided by who is selected for the jury. In criminal cases,
people who do not oppose the death penalty—and who therefore are eligible to serve when
a death sentence is possible—are more prone to favor the prosecution, to feel that courts
coddle criminals, and to oppose protecting the constitutional rights of defendants (Bersoff,
1987). Simply put, these “death-qualified” jurors are more concerned with crime control
and less concerned with due process of law. When a court dismisses potential jurors who
have moral scruples against the death penalty, it constructs a jury that is more likely to
vote guilty.
On this issue, social scientists are in “virtual unanimity . . . about the biasing effects of
death qualification,” reported Craig Haney (1993). The research record is “unified,” reported
“Beware of the Lutherans,
especially the Scandinavians;
they are almost always sure to
convict.”
—Clarence Darrow,
“How to Pick a Jury,” 1936
“The kind of juror who would
be unperturbed by the pros-
pect of sending a man to his
death . . . is the kind of juror who
would too readily ignore the
presumption of the defendant’s
innocence, accept the prose-
cution’s version of the facts,
and return a verdict of guilty.”
—U.S. Supreme Court,
Witherspoon v. Illinois, 1968
©Dave Coverly. Speedbump.com
472 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
Phoebe Ellsworth (1985, p. 46): “Defendants in capital-punishment cases do assume the extra
handicap of juries predisposed to find them guilty.” What is more, conviction-prone jurors
tend also to be more authoritarian—more rigid, punitive, closed to mitigating circumstances,
and contemptuous of those of lower status (Gerbasi et al., 1977; Luginbuhl & Middendorf,
1988; Moran & Comfort, 1982, 1986; Werner et al., 1982).
Because the legal system operates on tradition and precedent, such research findings
only slowly alter judicial practice. In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a split decision,
overturned a lower court ruling that death-qualified jurors are indeed a biased sample.
Ellsworth (1989) believed the Court in this case disregarded the compelling and consistent
evidence partly because of its “ideological commitment to capital punishment” and partly
because of the havoc that would result if the convictions of thousands of people on death
row had to be reconsidered. The solution, should the Court ever wish to adopt it for future
cases, is to convene separate juries to (a) decide guilt in capital murder cases, and, given
a guilty verdict, to (b) hear additional evidence on factors motivating the murder and to
decide between death or imprisonment.
But a deeper issue is at stake here: whether the death penalty itself falls under the U.S.
Constitution’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment.” Canada, Australia, New Zealand,
Western Europe, and most countries in South America prohibit capital punishment. There,
as in the United States, public attitudes tend to support the prevailing practice (Costanzo,
1997). But American pro-capital punishment attitudes seem to be softening. After reaching
80% in 1994, support fell to 63% in 2011 (Gallup, 2014).
In wrestling with the punishment, U.S. courts have considered whether courts inflict the
penalty arbitrarily, whether they apply it with racial bias, and whether legal killing deters
illegal killing. The social science answers to these questions are clear (Costanzo, 1997;
Haney & Logan, 1994). Consider the deterrence issue. States with a death penalty do not
have lower homicide rates. Homicide rates have not dropped when states have initiated the
death penalty, and they have not risen when states have abolished it. When committing a
crime of passion, people don’t pause to calculate the consequences (which include life in
prison without parole as another potent deterrent). Moreover, the death penalty is applied
inconsistently (in Texas 40 times as often as in New York). And it is applied more often
with poor defendants, who often receive a weak defense (Johnson & Johnson, 2001; The
Economist, 2000). Nevertheless, the Supreme Court has determined that admitting only
death-qualified jurors provides a representative jury of one’s peers and that “the death
penalty undoubtedly is a significant deterrent.”
Humanitarian considerations aside, say the appalled social scientists, what is the ratio-
nale for clinging to cherished assumptions and intuitions in the face of contradictory evi-
dence? Why not put our cultural ideas to the test? If they find support, so much the better
for them. If they crash against a wall of contradictory evidence, so much the worse for
them. Such are the ideals of critical thinking that fuel both psychological science and civil
democracy.
▯ Social psychologists are interested in not only the inter-
actions among witnesses, judges, and juries but also
what happens within and between individual jurors. One
major concern is jurors’ ability to comprehend evidence,
especially when it involves statistics indicating the prob-
ability that a given person committed the crime.
▯ Trial lawyers often use jury consultants to help them
select jurors most sympathetic to their case. People who
are aware of pretrial publicity, for example, may be dis-
qualified from serving.
▯ In cases in which the death penalty may be applied, law-
yers can disqualify any prospective juror who opposes
the death penalty on principle. Social psychology re-
search argues that this in itself produces a biased jury,
but the Supreme Court has ruled otherwise.
SUMMING UP: What Influences the Individual Juror?
Social Psychology in Court Chapter 15 473
HOW DO GROUP INFLUENCES
AFFECT JURIES?
Explain how individual jurors’ prejudgments coalesce
into a group decision and what can influence the
outcome.
Imagine a jury that has just finished a trial and has entered the jury room to begin its
deliberations. Chances are approximately two in three that the jurors will not agree initially
on a verdict. Yet, after discussion, 95% emerge with a consensus (Kalven & Zeisel, 1966).
One-third of jurors say that they would have voted against their jury’s decision had they
been a jury of one (Waters & Hans, 2009). Group influence has occurred.
Are juries subject to the social influences that mold other decision groups—to patterns
of majority and minority influence? To group polarization? To groupthink? Let’s start with
a simple question: If we knew the jurors’ initial leanings, could we predict their verdict?
The law prohibits observing actual jury deliberations, so researchers simulate the jury
process. They present cases to mock juries and have them deliberate as a real jury would.
In a series of such studies, researchers tested various mathematical schemes for predicting
group decisions, including decisions by mock juries (Davis et al., 1975, 1977, 1989; Kerr
et al., 1976). Will some mathematical combination of initial decisions predict the final group
decision? Across several experiments, a “two-thirds-majority” scheme fared best: The group
verdict was usually the alternative favored by at least two-thirds of the jurors at the outset.
Without such a majority, a hung jury was likely.
Likewise, in a survey of juries, 9 in 10 reached the verdict favored by the majority on the
first ballot (Kalven & Zeisel, 1966). Although we might fantasize about someday being the
courageous lone juror who sways the majority, it seldom happens.
Minority Influence
A typical 12-person jury is like a typical small college class: The three quietest people rarely
talk, and the three most vocal people contribute more than half the talking (Hastie et al.,
1983). In one trial, the four jurors who favored acquittal persisted, were vocal, and eventu-
ally prevailed. From the research on minority influence, we know that jurors in the minority
will be most persuasive when they are consistent, persistent, and self-confident. This is
especially so if they can begin to trigger some defections from the majority (Gordijn et al.,
2002; Kerr, 1981b).
Group Polarization
Jury deliberation shifts people’s opinions in other intriguing ways as well. In experiments,
deliberation often magnifies initial sentiments (Takada & Murata, 2014). For example,
University of Kentucky students listened to a 30-minute tape of a murder trial and were
asked to recommend a prison sentence. Groups with several students high in authoritarian
attitudes initially recommended strong punishments (56 years) and were even more puni-
tive after deliberation (68 years). Groups with fewer authoritarians were initially more
lenient (38 years) and after deliberation became even more lenient (29 years) (Bray &
Noble, 1978). By contrast, group diversity often moderates judgments. Compared with
Whites who judge Black defendants on all-White mock juries, those serving on racially
mixed mock juries enter deliberation expressing more leniency and exhibit openness to a
wider range of information (Sommers, 2006).
Confirmation of group polarization in juries comes from an ambitious study of 69
twelve-person mock juries. Each was shown a reenactment of an actual murder case, with
roles played by an experienced judge and actual attorneys. Then they were given unlimited
time to deliberate the case in a jury room. As Figure 5 shows, the evidence was incriminat-
ing: Before deliberation, four out of five jurors voted guilty but felt unsure enough that a
474 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
weak verdict of manslaughter was their most popular preference. After deliberation, nearly
all agreed the accused was guilty, and most now preferred a stronger verdict—second-degree
murder (Hastie et al., 1983). Through deliberation, the jury’s initial leanings had grown
stronger—a classic example of group polarization. (For another example, see Research
Close-up: Group Polarization in a Natural Court Setting.)
Leniency
In many experiments, another curious effect of deliberation has surfaced: Especially when
the evidence is not highly incriminating, jurors often become more lenient over the course
of deliberations, becoming more likely to render a not guilty verdict (MacCoun & Kerr,
1988). Even if only a bare majority initially favors finding the defendant not guilty, that
bare majority will usually prevail (Stasser et al., 1981). Moreover, a minority that favors a
not-guilty verdict stands a better chance of prevailing than one that favors conviction
(Tindale et al., 1990).
Again, a survey of actual juries confirms the laboratory results. When the majority does
not prevail, the shift is usually from guilty to not guilty (Kalven & Zeisel, 1966). When a
judge disagrees with the jury’s decision, it is usually because the jury acquits someone the
judge would have convicted.
Might informational influence (stemming from others’ persuasive arguments) account
for the increased leniency? The “innocent-unless-proved-guilty” and “proof-beyond-a-
reasonable-doubt” rules put the burden of proof on those who favor conviction. Perhaps
this makes evidence of the defendant’s innocence more persuasive. Or perhaps normative
influence creates the leniency effect, as jurors who view themselves as fair-minded con-
front other jurors who are even more concerned with protecting a possibly innocent
defendant.
Are Twelve Heads Better Than One?
When a problem has an objective right answer, group judgments surpass those by most
individuals. Does the same hold true in juries? When deliberating, jurors exert normative
pressure by trying to shift others’ judgments by the sheer weight of their own. But they also
share information, thus enlarging one another’s understanding. So, does informational influ-
ence produce superior collective judgment?
The evidence, though meager, is encouraging. Groups recall information from a trial
better than do their individual members (Vollrath et al., 1989). Deliberation also tends to
cancel out certain biases and draws jurors’ attention away from their own prejudgments
and to the evidence. Twelve heads can be, it seems, better than one.
“It is better that ten guilty
persons escape than one
innocent suffer.”
—William Blackstone,
Commentaries on the Laws of
England, 1769
Undecided
Proportion of jurors favoring
.60
.50
.40
.30
.20
.10
0
Not guilty Manslaughter Second-degree
murder
First-degree
murder
Verdict preferences at the
start of deliberation
Verdict preferences at the
end of deliberation
FIGURE 5
Group Polarization
in Juries
In highly realistic simulations of
a murder trial, 828 Massachu-
setts jurors stated their initial
verdict preferences, then
deliberated the case for periods
ranging from 3 hours to 5 days.
Deliberation strengthened initial
tendencies that favored the
prosecution.
Source: From Hastie et al., 1983.
Social Psychology in Court Chapter 15 475
Group Polarization in a Natural Court Setting
In simulated juries, deliberation often amplifies jurors’ indi-
vidual inclinations. Does such group polarization occur in
actual courts? Cass Sunstein, David Schkade, and Lisa
Ellman (2004) show us how researchers can harvest data
from natural settings when exploring social psychological
phenomena. Their data were 14,874 votes by judges on
4,958 three-judge U.S. circuit court panels. (On these fed-
eral “Courts of Appeals,” an appeal is almost always heard
by three of the court’s judges.)
Sunstein and his colleagues first asked whether judges’
votes tended to reflect the ideology of the Republican or
Democratic president who appointed them. Indeed, when
voting on ideologically tinged cases involving affirmative
action, environmental regulation, campaign finance, and
abortion, Democratic-appointed judges more often sup-
ported the liberal position than did Republican-appointed
judges. No surprise there. That’s what presidents and their
party members assume when seeking congressional ap-
proval of their kindred-spirited judicial nominees.
Would such tendencies be amplified when the panel
had three judges appointed by the same party? Would
three Republican-appointed judges be even more often
conservative than the average Republican appointee?
And would three Democratic-appointed judges be more
often liberal than the average Democrat appointee? Or
would judges vote their convictions uninfluenced by their
fellow panelists? Table 2 presents their findings.
Note that when three appointees from the same party
formed a panel (RRR or DDD), they became more likely to
vote their party’s ideological preference than did the
average individual judge. The polarization exhibited by like-
minded threesomes was, the Sunstein team reported, “con-
firmed in many areas, including affirmative action, campaign
finance, sex discrimination, sexual harassment, piercing the
corporate veil, disability discrimination, race discrimination,
and review of environmental regulations” (although not in
the politically volatile cases of abortion and capital punish-
ment, where judges voted their well-formed convictions).
Sunstein and colleagues offered an example: If all three
judges “believe that an affirmative action program is uncon-
stitutional, and no other judge is available to argue on its
behalf, then the exchange of arguments in the room will sug-
gest that the program is genuinely unconstitutional.” This is
group polarization in action, they concluded—an example of
“one of the most striking findings in modern social science:
Groups of like-minded people tend to go to extremes.”
research
CLOSE-UP
Are Six Heads as Good as Twelve?
In keeping with their British heritage, juries in the United States and Canada have tradition-
ally been composed of 12 people whose task is to reach consensus—a unanimous verdict.
However, in civil cases and state criminal cases not potentially involving a death penalty,
the Supreme Court ruled in the early 1970s that courts could use 6-person juries. Do such
juries operate the same as 12-person juries?
Many legal scholars and social psychologists argue that the answer is no (Saks, 1974,
1996). First, consider the statistics. For example, if 10% of a community’s total jury pool is
Black, then 72% of 12-member juries but only 47% of 6-member juries may be expected to
TABLE 2 Proportion of “Liberal” Voting by Individual Judges and by Three-Judge Panels
Individual Judges’ Votes Individual Judges’ Votes, by Panel Composition
Party
Examples of Case Type R D RRR RRD RDD DDD
Campaign finance .28 .46 .23 .30 .35 .80
Affirmative action .48 .74 .37 .50 .83 .85
Environmental .46 .64 .27 .55 .62 .72
Sex discrimination .35 .51 .31 .38 .49 .75
Average across 13 case types .38 .51 .34 .39 .50 .61
D, Democratic appointee; R, Republican appointee.
476 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
have at least one Black person. So smaller
juries may be less likely to include a com-
munity’s diversity.
And if, in a given case, one-sixth of the
jurors initially favor acquittal, that would
be a single individual in a 6-member jury
and 2 people in a 12-member jury. The
Court assumed that, psychologically, the
two situations would be identical. But as
you may recall from our discussion of con-
formity, resisting group pressure is far more
difficult for a minority of one than for a
minority of two. Psychologically speaking,
a jury split 10 to 2 is not equivalent to a jury
split 5 to 1. Not surprisingly, then, 12-person
juries are twice as likely as 6-person juries
to have hung verdicts (Ellsworth & Mauro,
1998; Saks & Marti, 1997).
Jury researcher Michael Saks (1998) sums up the research findings: “Larger juries are
more likely than smaller juries to contain members of minority groups, more accurately
recall trial testimony, give more time to deliberation, hang [become a hung jury] more
often, and appear more likely to reach ‘correct’ verdicts.”
In 1978, after some of these studies were reported, the Supreme Court rejected Georgia’s
5-member juries. Announcing the Court’s decision, Justice Harry Blackmun drew upon both
the logical and the experimental data to argue that 5-person juries would be less representa-
tive, less reliable, and less accurate (Grofman, 1980). Ironically, many of these data actually
involved comparisons of 6- versus 12-member juries and thus also argued against the 6-member
jury. But having made and defended a public commitment to the 6-member jury, the Court
was not convinced that the same arguments applied (Tanke & Tanke, 1979).
From Lab to Life: Simulated and Real Juries
Perhaps while reading this chapter, you have wondered what some critics (Tapp, 1980;
Vidmar, 1979) have wondered: Isn’t there an enormous gulf between college students dis-
cussing a hypothetical case and real jurors deliberating a real person’s fate? Indeed there
is. It is one thing to ponder a pretend decision with minimal information, and quite another
to agonize over the complexities and profound consequences of an actual case. So Reid
Hastie, Martin Kaplan, James Davis, Eugene Borgida, and others asked their participants,
who sometimes were drawn from actual juror pools, to view enactments of actual trials.
The enactments were so realistic that sometimes participants forgot the trial they were
watching on television was staged (Thompson et al., 1981).
Student mock jurors become engaged, too. “As I eavesdropped on the mock juries,”
recalled researcher Norbert Kerr (1999), “I became fascinated by the jurors’ insightful
arguments, their mix of amazing recollections and memory fabrications, their prejudices,
their attempts to persuade or coerce, and their occasional courage in standing alone. Here
brought to life before me were so many of the psychological processes I had been studying!
Although our student jurors understood they were only simulating a real trial, they really
cared about reaching a fair verdict.”
The U.S. Supreme Court (1986) debated the usefulness of jury research in its decision
regarding the use of death-qualified jurors in capital punishment cases. Defendants have a
constitutional “right to a fair trial and an impartial jury whose composition is not biased
toward the prosecution.” The dissenting judges argued that this right is violated when jurors
include only those who accept the death penalty. Their argument, they said, was based
chiefly on “the essential unanimity of the results obtained by researchers using diverse sub-
jects and varied methodologies.” The majority of the judges, however, declared their “serious
doubts about the value of these studies in predicting the behavior of actual jurors.”
Hung juries are rarely a
problem. Among 59,511 U.S.
federal court criminal trials
during one 13-year period, 2.5%
ended in a hung jury, as did a
mere 0.6% of 67,992 federal
civil trials (Saks, 1998).
“We have considered [the so-
cial science studies] carefully
because they provide the only
basis, besides judicial hunch,
for a decision about whether
smaller and smaller juries will
be able to fulfill the purposes
and functions of the Sixth
Amendment.”
—Justice Harry Blackmun,
Ballew v. Georgia, 1978
12-member juries are more diverse and deliberate longer than 6-member juries.
©bikeriderlondon/Shutterstock
Social Psychology in Court Chapter 15 477
The dissenting judges replied that the courts have
not allowed experiments with actual juries; thus,
“defendants claiming prejudice from death qualifi-
cation should not be denied recourse to the only
available means of proving their case.”
Researchers also defend the laboratory simula-
tions by noting that the laboratory offers a practi-
cal, inexpensive method of studying important
issues under controlled conditions (Dillehay &
Nietzel, 1980; Kerr & Bray, 2005). As researchers
have begun testing them in more realistic situa-
tions, findings from the laboratory studies have
often held up quite well. No one contends that the
simplified world of the jury experiment mirrors
the complex world of the real courtroom. Rather,
the experiments help us formulate theories with
which we interpret the complex world.
Come to think of it, are these jury simulations
any different from social psychology’s other experi-
ments, all of which create simplified versions of
complex realities? By varying just one or two factors
at a time in this simulated reality, the experimenter
pinpoints how changes in one or two aspects of a
situation can affect us. And that is the essence of
social psychology’s experimental method.
Attorneys are using new technology to present crime stories in ways jurors can
easily grasp, as in this computer simulation of a homicide generated on the basis
of forensic evidence.
©Alexander Jason
▯ Juries are groups, and they are swayed by the same in-
fluences that bear upon other types of groups. For ex-
ample, the most vocal members of a jury tend to do
most of the talking, and the quietest members say
little.
▯ As a jury deliberates, opposing views may become more
entrenched and polarized.
▯ Especially when evidence is not highly incriminating,
deliberation may make jurors more lenient than they
originally were.
▯ The 12-member jury is a tradition stemming from English
Common Law. Researchers find that a jury this size allows
for reasonable diversity among jurors, a mix of opinions
and orientations, and better recall of information.
▯ Researchers have also examined and questioned the
assumptions underlying several U.S. Supreme Court
decisions permitting smaller juries and non-unanimous
juries.
▯ Simulated juries are not real juries, so we must be cau-
tious in generalizing research findings to actual court-
rooms. Yet, like all experiments in social psychology,
laboratory jury experiments help us formulate theories
and principles that we can use to interpret the more
complex world of everyday life.
SUMMING UP: How Do Group Influences Affect Juries?
POSTSCRIPT:
Thinking Smart with Psychological Science
An intellectually fashionable idea, sometimes called “postmodernism,” contends that truth
is socially constructed; knowledge always reflects the cultures that form it. Indeed, as we
have often noted in this book, we do often follow our hunches, our biases, our cultural
bent. Social scientists are not immune to confirmation bias, belief perseverance, overcon-
fidence, and the biasing power of preconceptions. Our preconceived ideas and values guide
our theory development, our interpretations, our topics of choice, and our language.
478 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
Being mindful of hidden values within psychological science should motivate us to clean
the cloudy spectacles through which we view the world. Mindful of our vulnerability to bias
and error, we can steer between the two extremes—of being naive about a value-laden psy-
chology that pretends to be value-neutral or of being tempted to an unrestrained subjectiv-
ism that dismisses evidence as nothing but collected biases. In the spirit of humility, we
can put testable ideas to the test. If we think capital punishment does (or does not) deter
crime more than other available punishments, we can utter our personal opinions and we
can ask whether states with a death penalty have lower homicide rates, whether their rates
have dropped after instituting the death penalty, and whether they have risen when aban-
doning the penalty.
As we have seen, the Court considered pertinent social science evidence when disallow-
ing 5-member juries and ending school desegregation. But it has discounted research when
offering opinions as to whether the death penalty deters crime, whether society views execu-
tion as what the U.S. Constitution prohibits (“cruel and unusual punishment”), whether
courts inflict the penalty arbitrarily, whether they apply it with racial bias, and whether
potential jurors selected by virtue of their accepting capital punishment are biased toward
conviction.
Beliefs and values do guide the perceptions of judges as well as scientists and laypeople.
And that is why we need to think smarter—to rein in our hunches and biases by testing
them against available evidence. If our beliefs find support, so much the better for them.
If not, so much the worse for them. That’s the humble spirit that underlies both psychologi-
cal science and everyday critical thinking.
©maxstockphoto/Shutterstock
Social Psychology
and the Sustainable
Future
C H A P T E R
16
Psychology and
climate change
Enabling sustainable
living
The social
psychology of
materialism and
wealth
Postscript: How does
one live responsibly
in the modern world?
“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from
our children.”
—Haida (Native North American) proverb
480 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
Imagine yourself on a huge spaceship traveling through our galaxy. To sustain your community, a spacecraft biosphere grows plants and breeds animals. By
recycling waste and managing resources, the mission has, until recently, been sus-
tainable over time and across generations of people born onboard.
The spaceship’s name is Planet Earth, and its expanding crew now numbers
7.6 billion. Alas, it increasingly consumes its resources at an unsustainable rate—
50% beyond the spaceship’s capacity. Thus, it takes the Earth a year and a half to
regenerate what we use in a year (FootPrintNetwork.org, 2014). With the growing
population and consumption have come deforestation, depletion of wild fish stocks,
and climate destabilization. Some crew members are especially demanding. For all
7.6 billion to live the average American lifestyle would require four Planet Earths.
In 1960, the spaceship Earth carried 3 billion people and 127 million motor vehi-
cles. Today, with more than 7 billion people, it has more than 1 billion motor vehi-
cles. The greenhouse gases emitted by motor vehicles, along with the burning of
coal and oil to generate electricity and heat homes and buildings, are changing
the Earth’s climate. To ascertain how much and how fast climate change is occur-
ring, several thousand scientists worldwide have collaborated to create and review
the evidence via the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The past
chair of its scientific assessment committee, John Houghton (2011), reports that their
conclusions—supported by the national academies of science of the world’s 11 most
developed countries—are undergirded by the most “thoroughly researched and
reviewed” scientific effort in human history.
The IPCC (2014), the American Association for the Advancement of Science
(2014), and the U.S. government Climate Science Special Report (Wuebbles et al.,
2017) offer massive evidence of climate change, as illustrated in Figure 1:
FIGURE 1
A synopsis of scientific indica-
tors of global climate change.
Source: Adapted from Cook, J.
(2010, December 30). The many
lines of evidence for global
warming in a single graphic.
www.SkepticalScience.com
Humidity
Temperature over oceans
Temperature over land
Snow cover
Glaciers
Air temperature near
surface (troposphere)
Tree-lines shifting
poleward and upward
Sea ice
Sea surface temperature
Ice sheets
Ocean heat content
Species migrating
poleward and upward
Spring coming
earlierSea level
Social Psychology and the Sustainable Future Chapter 16 481
• A warming greenhouse gas blanket is growing. About half the carbon dioxide
emitted by human activity since the Industrial Revolution (since 1750) remains in
the atmosphere (Royal Society, 2010). There is now 45% more atmospheric car-
bon dioxide and 157% more atmospheric methane than before industrial times
(World Meteorological Organization, 2017). As the permafrost thaws, methane
gas release threatens to compound the problem (Carey, 2012).
• Sea and air temperatures are rising. The numbers—the facts—have no political
leanings. Since 1901, reports the new U.S. summary, the global air temperature
has increased 1.8° F (1.0° C). The sixteen warmest years have occurred during
the past seventeen years, with each recent year setting a new record (Figure 2).
If the world were not warming, random weather variations should produce equal
numbers of record-breaking high and low temperatures. In reality, record highs
“The evidence is overwhelm-
ing: levels of greenhouse gases
in the atmosphere are rising.
Temperatures are going up.
Springs are arriving earlier. Ice
sheets are melting. Sea level is
rising. The patterns of rainfall
and drought are changing. Heat
waves are getting worse as is
extreme precipitation. The
oceans are acidifying.”
—American Association for the
Advancement of Science (AAAS),
What We Know: The Reality, Risks
and Response to Climate
Change, 2014
FIGURE 2
Global Climate on Steroids
As atmospheric CO2 has risen, so have global temperatures.
Sources: Top: NOAA (2018); Bottom: NASA (2018).
Global mean estimates based on land and ocean data
Year
Te
m
p
er
at
u
re
a
n
o
m
al
y
(C
)
–0.6
–0.4
–0.2
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
1880 1900
Annual mean
1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020
0
Lowess smoothing
320
340
360
380
400
Atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa observatory
P
ar
ts
p
er
m
ill
io
n
1960 1970 1980 1990
Year
2000 2010 2020
Scripps Institution of Oceanography; NOAA Earth System
Research Laboratory
482 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
have been greatly outnumbering record lows—by nearly 6 to 1 in the United
States in 2016 (Wuebbles et al., 2017). Australia has similarly experienced many
more record hot than cold days (Siegel, 2013).
• Various plant and animal species are migrating. In response to the warming
world, they are creeping toward higher elevations and the Earth’s poles, with
anticipated loss of biodiversity (Harley, 2011; Houghton, 2011).
• Ice and snow packs are melting. As polar bears know, the late-summer Arctic
ice cover has shrunk substantially (Figure 3). Most of the glaciers of Glacier
National Park are now gone and Greenland’s are shrinking. As glaciers and snow
pack shrink, so does summer melt and runoff for irrigation.
• The seas are rising. Projections of rising sea levels portend large problems for
Arctic villages and for coastal and low-lying areas, including Pakistan, southern
China, and Indian and Pacific Ocean islands (Cornwall, 2016; Houghton, 2011;
Nerem et al., 2018). In the U.S., daily tidal flooding is accelerating in 25 Atlantic
and Gulf cities (Wuebbles et al., 2017).
• Extreme weather is increasing. Any single weather event—a heat wave here, a
hurricane there—cannot be attributed to climate change. Weird weather hap-
pens. But it is happening more often and is now “beyond the bounds of natural
variability” (AMS, 2017; NAP, 2016). 2017 set a record for the most billion+ dollar
weather-related U.S. disasters (NCDC, 2017). Worldwide, increasing extreme
weather events have contributed to increasing insurance losses from natural
catastrophes (iii, 2017). Moreover, climate scientists report that global warming
is making heat waves, droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, and floods more intense,
causing losses to crops and livestock—and to human lives (National Academies
of Sciences, 2016). With more than 600,000 humans dead from weather disasters
since 1995 and the number increasing (UN, 2015), climate change is justifiably
a greater right-to-life concern than terrorism.
“If present trends continue,
this century may well witness
extraordinary climate change
and an unprecedented de-
struction of ecosystems, with
serious consequences for all
of us.”
—Pope Francis,
Laudato Si, 2015
FIGURE 3
The Shrinking Ice Cap
The National Snow and Ice Data Center and NASA show the September 2017 minimum Arctic ice sheet, compared with the average 1981–2010
minimum ice sheet. The graph depicts the shrinking September ice sheet year by year.
(photo): Source: NASA; Source: Right: NASA (2018).
1980 1985
Slope = –13.3% ± 2.6% per decade
1979–2016 mean = 2.42 million sq. miles
1995 2005 2010 201520001990
0.5
1.0
1.5
2.0
2.5
3.0
3.5
0.0
Year
S
ep
te
m
b
er
s
ea
ic
e
ex
te
n
t
(m
ill
io
n
s
q
. m
ile
s)
Social Psychology and the Sustainable Future Chapter 16 483
PSYCHOLOGY AND
CLIMATE CHANGE
Identify psychological consequences of climate
change. Summarize and explain the gap between
scientific and public understandings of climate change.
Throughout its history, social psychology has responded to current events—to the civil rights
era with studies of stereotyping and prejudice, to civil unrest and crime with studies of
aggression, to the women’s movement with studies of gender and gender-related attitudes.
Now that global climate change is “the greatest problem the world faces” (Houghton, 2011),
psychological science is studying (a) its effects on human behavior, (b) public opinion about
climate change, and (c) ways to modify the human sources of climate change (Clayton
et al., 2016).
Psychological Effects of Climate Change
It’s a national security issue, say some: Terrorist bombs and climate change are both weap-
ons of mass destruction. “If we learned that al Qaeda was secretly developing a new terrorist
technique that could disrupt water supplies around the globe, force tens of millions from
their homes and potentially endanger our entire planet, we would be aroused into a frenzy
and deploy every possible asset to neutralize the threat,” observed essayist Nicholas Kristof
(2007). “Yet that is precisely the threat that we’re creating ourselves, with our greenhouse
gases.” Consider the human consequences.
DISPLACEMENT AND TRAUMA
If temperatures increase by the expected 2° to 4° Celsius (3.5° to 7° Farenheit) this century,
the resulting changes in water availability, agriculture, disaster risk, and sea level will neces-
sitate massive resettlement (de Sherbinin et al., 2011). When drought or floods force people
to leave their land, shelter, and work, as when sub-Saharan African farming and grazing
lands become desert, the frequent result is increased poverty and hunger, earlier death, and
loss of cultural identity. If an extreme weather
event or climate change disrupted your ties to
a place and its people, you could expect to feel
grief, anxiety, and a sense of loss (Doherty &
Clayton, 2011; Henderson & Mulder, 2015).
For social and mental health, climate matters.
CLIMATE AND CONFLICT
Got war? Blame the climate. Such is often the
case. Many human maladies—from economic
downturns to wars—have been traced to cli-
mate fluctuations (Zhang et al., 2011). When
the climate changes, agriculture often suffers,
leading to increased famine, epidemics, and
overall misery. Poorer countries, with fewer
resources, are especially vulnerable (Fischer &
Van de Vliert, 2011). And when miserable,
people become more prone to anger with their
governments and with one another, leading to
war. For social stability, climate matters.
One analysis of 60 quantitative studies
revealed conflict spikes throughout history
and across the globe in response to climate
events. The conclusion: higher temperatures
Is the weather getting weirder? In 2011, reported NOAA, the United States experienced
a dozen billion-dollar weather disasters, sharply up from the more typical three or four.
No single weather event, such as the massive Joplin, Missouri, tornado can be attributed
to climate change. But climate scientists warn that global warming is producing increas-
ing extreme weather events and increased human displacement—as is happening with
many migrants fleeing Central American droughts (Markham, 2018).
©AMFPhotography/Shutterstock
484 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
and rainfall extremes, such as drought and flood, predicted increased domestic violence,
ethnic aggression, land invasions, and civil conflicts (Hsiang et al., 2013). The researchers
project that a 2° Celsius temperature rise—as is predicted by 2040—could increase intergroup
conflicts by more than 50% (see Figure 4).
Studies both in the laboratory and in everyday life reveal that heat also amplifies short-
term aggression. On hot days, neighborhood violence, and even batters hit by pitches in
baseball games, become more frequent. Violence is also more common in hotter seasons
of the year, hotter summers, hotter years, hotter cities, and hotter regions (Anderson &
Delisi, 2011; Rinderu et al., 2018). Craig Anderson and his colleagues project that if a
4° Fahrenheit (>2°C) warming occurs, the United States will suffer at least 50,000 more
serious assaults each year.
Public Opinion About Climate Change
Is the Earth getting hotter? Are humans responsible? Will it matter to our grandchildren?
Yes, yes, and yes, say published climate scientists—97% of whom agree, in repeated sur-
veys, that climate change is occurring and is human caused (Cook, 2016; actually 99.9%,
according to an analysis of 24,210 climate science articles—Powell, 2015). As one report
in Science explained, “Almost all climate scientists are of one mind about the threat of
global warming: It’s real, it’s dangerous, and the world needs to take action immediately”
(Kerr, 2009).
Yet many folks don’t know about that scientific consensus. In 2013, only 42% of
Americans understood that “most scientists think global warming is happening” (AAAS,
2014), and 44% agreed that there is “solid evidence” of human-caused global warming (Pew,
2014). By 2017, 62% agreed that the effects of global warming have already begun, though
only 68% attributed the warming to human activity (Saad, 2017).
The enormous gulf between the scientific and U.S. public understandings of climate
change intrigues social psychologists. Why the gap? Why is global warming not a hotter
topic? And what might be done to align scientific and public understandings?
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AND THE AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC
By now, it’s a familiar lesson: vivid and recent experiences often overwhelm abstract statis-
tics. Despite knowing the statistical rarity of shark attacks and plane crashes, vivid images
Global warming
Increased heat,
drought,
extreme weather,
sea level rise,
flooding…
Direct heat
e�ect (e.g.,
irritability)
Failed crops,
natural disasters,
economic
instability,
poverty,
eco-migration
Violence-prone
adults:
Prenatal and
postnatal
development
problems
Intergroup
conflict:
Civic/political
unrest, refugees
and internally
displaced persons,
resource
competition
Intergroup conflict:
Crime, intergroup
violence, civil war,
terrorism,
international war
FIGURE 4
Three Routes via Which Climate Change May Increase Violence and Conflict.
Source: From Miles-Novelo & Anderson, 2018.
Social Psychology and the Sustainable Future Chapter 16 485
of such—being readily available in memory—often hijack our emotions and
distort our judgments. We make our intuitive judgments under the influ-
ence of the availability heuristic—and thus we often focus on the wrong
things. If an airline misplaces our bag, we likely will overconsider our
immediate experience. Ignoring data on the airline’s overall lost-bag rate,
we belittle the airline. Our ancient brains come designed to attend to the
immediate situation, not out-of-sight data and beyond-the-horizon dangers
(Gifford, 2011). Experience overrides analysis.
Likewise, people often confuse temporary local weather with long-term
global climate change. One climate skeptic declared a record East Coast
blizzard “a coup de grace” for global warming (Breckler, 2010). In a May
2011 survey, 47% of Americans agreed that “The record snowstorms this
winter in the eastern United States make me question whether global
warming is occurring” (Leiserowitz et al., 2011b). But then after the
ensuing blistering summer, 67% of Americans agreed that global warming
worsened the “record high summer temperatures in the U.S. in 2011”
(Leiserowitz, 2011).
In studies in the United States and Australia, people have expressed
more belief in global warming, and more willingness to donate to a global
warming charity, on warmer-than-usual days than on cooler-than-usual
days (Li et al., 2011; Zaval et al., 2014). After their vivid experiences with Hurricane Irene,
New Jersey residents became more likely to agree with statements such as, “When humans
interfere with nature it often produces disastrous consequences” (Rudman et al., 2013). As
in so many life realms, our local experience distorts our global judgments. But as you’ve
learned in this book, representative data are more accurate than our own individual and
sometimes distorted perceptions.
PERSUASION
Today’s local weather biases people’s understanding of tomorrow’s global warming. But that
just begins to explain public skepticism about climate change. Resistance to climate science
also stems from simple misinformation and from motivated reasoning.
MISINFORMATION People may discount climate threat because they are natural opti-
mists or because they misinterpret uncertainty about the extent of temperature and sea level
rise as uncertainty about the fact of climate change (Gifford, 2011). Especially in the United
States, some groups seek to sow doubt about climate action by discrediting scientists and
emphasizing the short-term costs of action rather than the long-term costs of inaction
(CRED, 2014). People who doubt other sorts of scientific findings also tend to doubt the
climate science consensus (Lewandowsky et al., 2013).
Journalistic “false balance” can further distort public perceptions (Koehler, 2016). In
one study, citizens were told (correctly) that expert economists agree—by nearly a 50 to 1
margin—that a carbon tax would control CO2 emissions less expensively than would an
automotive fuel economy standard. But if also given an argument from “both sides,” people
then remembered a more ambiguous expert consensus. Likewise, imagine that people read
that medical experts agree that vaccines do not cause autism, but then also read an argu-
ment from both a pro- and an anti-vaccine person. We can expect that the “false balance”
will weaken their perception of the medical consensus.
MOTIVATED REASONING Our desire to avoid negative emotions such as fear may
motivate denial of climate threat. Moreover, we have a natural tendency to believe in
and justify the way things are. We like our habitual ways of traveling, eating, and heat-
ing and cooling our spaces. When comfortable, we’re motivated not to change what’s
familiar (Feygina et al., 2010; Kahan, 2014). And our natural confirmation bias may
lead us to attend more to data that confirms our preexisting views. Thus, if a solution
to a climate problem is costly, people will tend to deny the problem itself (Campbell
& Kay, 2014).
“Global warming isn’t real be-
cause I was cold today! Also
great news: world hunger is
over because I just ate.”
—Stephen Colbert Tweet,
November 18, 2014
“In the East, it could be the
COLDEST New Year’s Eve on
record. Perhaps we could use
a little bit of that good old
Global Warming. . . .”
—Donald Trump Tweet,
December 28, 2017
For a compelling and graphic
7-minute synopsis of “Why
People Don’t Believe in Cli-
mate Change” see tinyurl.
com/ClimateBeliefs
“Well, yes, Jason, there’s always a very small
risk it will still be dry land in 100 years, but if
we’re going to base our long term investments
on the data, it’s hard to find a safer bet for
ocean growth.”
Reprinted with permission of Brett Pelham at brettpel@yahoo.com.
486 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
So, to overcome misinformation, motivated reasoning, and the human tendency to con-
sider personal experience before analysis, how might climate educators apply social psychol-
ogy’s principles?
▯ Connect the message to the audience’s values. Political values color people’s views.
In 2015, 68% of U.S. Democrats and 20% of Republicans viewed “global climate
change” as a “very serious problem” (Stokes, 2015). And in 2016, 72% of
Democrats but only 27% of Republicans attributed 2015’s record heat to human
causes (Gallup, 2016). So how might one persuade a Democrat versus a Republican?
A Democrat-leaning audience might respond more to information about climate
effects on the world’s poor, and a Republican-leaning audience to information
about how clean energy boosts national security by diminishing dependence on
foreign energy.
▯ Use credible communicators. People are more open to messengers whose identities
and affiliations are like their own—someone they trust and respect (CRED, 2014).
Mothers Against Drunk Driving succeeds by having mothers communicate with
other mothers.
▯ Think local. Although climate change is a global issue, people respond more
to threats that are near in place or time. In Australia, Texas, or California, the
prospects of worsening drought may awaken concern. In Florida or the Netherlands,
rising seas will seem more pertinent.
▯ Make communications vivid and memorable. Mindful of the availability heuristic, and
of the effectiveness of cigarette warnings with graphic photos, make messages vivid.
Rather than warn of “future climate change” explain that “the Earth has a fever.”
▯ Nudge people by using “green defaults.” Set printers to double-sided printing unless
single-sided is chosen. Have building lights turn off when motion sensors do not
detect a human presence. Offer a vegetarian entrée, with a meat option for those
who wish (Scott et al., 2015).
▯ Frame the risks effectively (Bertolotti & Catellani, 2014). Rather than describe “a
greenhouse effect,” describe “a heat trapping blanket.” Instead of a “theory” of
climate change, offer “an understanding of how this works” (CRED, 2014). Instead
of proposing a politically unpopular “carbon tax,” suggest “carbon offsets.” Liken
the risk management to people’s own decisions—buying fire insurance on their
dwelling and liability insurance on their driving, and putting on seat belts—to spare
themselves worst-case outcomes.
▯ Frame energy savings in attention-getting ways. An information sheet about energy
savings might use long time periods. Instead of saying, “This Energy Star refrigerator
will save you $120 a year on your electric bills,” say, “It will save you $2,400 in
wasted energy bills over the next 20 years” (Hofmeister, 2010).
Vivid images, such as polar
bears on melting ice, often
make a bigger impression than
statistics.
©Chase Dekker Wild-Life Images/Getty
Images
Social Psychology and the Sustainable Future Chapter 16 487
ENABLING SUSTAINABLE LIVING
Identify new technologies and strategies for reducing
consumption that together may enable sustainable living.
What shall we do? Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow is doom? Behave as do so many
in prisoners’ dilemma games, by pursuing self-interest to our collective detriment? (“Heck,
on a global scale, my consumption is teeny; it makes my life comfortable and costs the
world practically nothing.”) Wring our hands, dreading that fertility plus prosperity equals
calamity, and vow never to bring children into a doomed world?
Those more optimistic about the future see two routes to sustainable lifestyles: (a) increas-
ing technological efficiency and agricultural productivity, and (b) moderating consumption
and population.
New Technologies
With the world’s population expected to grow another 2.5 billion by 2050—and with more
and more people wanting to drive, eat, and live like North Americans—one of the world’s
great challenges is how to power our human future without further polluting and warming it.
One component in a sustainable future is improved technologies. We have not only
replaced incandescent bulbs with energy-saving ones, but replaced printed letters and cata-
logs with e-mail and e-commerce, and replaced commuter miles with telecommuting.
Today’s middle-aged adults drive cars that get twice
the mileage and produce a twentieth of the pollution of
the ones they drove as teenagers, and new hybrid and
battery-powered cars offer even greater efficiency.
Plausible future technologies include diodes that emit
light for 20 years; ultrasound washing machines that con-
sume no water, heat, or soap; reusable and compostable
plastics; cars running on fuel cells that combine hydrogen
and oxygen and produce water exhaust; lightweight mate-
rials stronger than steel; roads that double as solar energy
collectors; and heated and cooled chairs that provide
personal comfort with less room heating and cooling
(N. Myers, 2000; Zhang et al., 2007).
Reducing Consumption
The second component of a sustainable future is con-
trolling consumption. As today’s poorer countries
develop, their consumption will increase. As it does,
developed countries must consume less.
“No one made a greater mis-
take than he who did nothing
because he could only do a
little.”
—British Statesman Edmund
Burke (1730–1797)
▯ Scientists report that exploding population and increas-
ing consumption and greenhouse gas emissions have to-
gether exceeded the Earth’s carrying capacity. We now
are seeing the predicted global warming, melting polar
ice, rising seas, and more extreme weather.
▯ Expected social consequences of climate change in-
clude human displacement, trauma, and conflict stem-
ming from competition over scarce resources.
▯ Social psychologists are also exploring the gap between
scientific and public understandings of climate change.
And they are suggesting ways to educate and persuade
the public to support a sustainable future.
SUMMING UP: Psychology and Climate Change
Capturing light in a bottle. Illac Diaz inspects a new solar light bulb sealed
into the corrugated roof of a Manila apartment.
©JAY DIRECTO/Getty Images
488 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
Thanks to family-planning efforts, the
world’s population growth rate has deceler-
ated, especially in developed nations. Even in
less-developed countries, when food security
has improved and women have become edu-
cated and empowered, birth rates have fallen.
But if birth rates everywhere instantly fell to
a replacement level of 2.1 children per
woman, the lingering momentum of popula-
tion growth, fueled by the bulge of younger
humans, would continue for years. In 1960,
after tens of thousands of years on the space-
ship Earth, there were 3 billion people—
which is a tad less than the population
growth that demographers expect in just this
century.
With this population size, humans have
already overshot the Earth’s carrying capac-
ity, so consumption must become more sus-
tainable. With our material appetites
swelling—as more people seek personal computers, refrigeration, air-conditioning, jet travel—
what can be done to moderate consumption by those who can afford to overconsume?
INCENTIVES
One way is through public policies that harness the motivating power of incentives (Swim
et al., 2014). As a general rule, we do less of what is taxed, and more of what is rewarded.
On jammed highways, vehicle lanes reward carpooling and penalize driving solo. Europe
leads the way in incentivizing mass transit and bicycle use over personal vehicle use. In
addition to the small vehicles incentivized by high fuel taxes, cities such as Vienna, Munich,
Zurich, and Copenhagen have closed many city center streets to car traffic. London, Stock-
holm, Singapore, and Milan drivers pay congestion fees when entering the heart of the city.
Amsterdam is a bicycle haven. Dozens of German cities have “environmental zones” where
only low CO2 cars may enter (Rosenthal, 2011).
Some free-market proponents object to carbon taxes because they are taxes. Others
respond that carbon taxes are simply payment for external damage to today’s health and
tomorrow’s environment. If not today’s CO2 emitters, who should pay for the cost of tomor-
row’s more threatening floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, droughts, and sea rise? “ Markets are
truly free only when everyone pays the full price for his or her actions,” contends Environ-
mental Defense Fund economist Gernot Wagner (2011). “Anything else is socialism.” (See
“The Inside Story: Janet Swim on Psychology’s Response to Climate Change.”)
FEEDBACK
Another way to encourage greener homes and businesses is to harness the power of imme-
diate feedback to the consumer by installing “smart meters” that provide a continuous
readout of electricity use and its cost. Turn off a computer monitor or the lights in an
empty room, and the meter displays the decreased wattage. Turn on the air-conditioning,
and you immediately know the usage and cost. Studies have shown that when an energy
supplier sticks a “smiley” or “frowny” face on home energy bills when the consumer’s
energy use is less or more than the neighborhood average, energy use is reduced (Karlin
et al., 2015). Applying such social psychological findings, one company now gives energy
reports with personalized, neighborhood-comparing feedback to more than 60 million
households worldwide (Schultz et al., 2018).
IDENTITY
In one survey, the top reason people gave for buying a Prius hybrid car was that it “makes
a statement about me” (Clayton & Myers, 2009, p. 9). Indeed, argue Tom Crompton and
Carpooling seems more attractive if it means bypassing traffic in congested urban areas
such as Los Angeles.
©P_Wei/Getty Images
Social Psychology and the Sustainable Future Chapter 16 489
Tim Kasser (2010), our sense of who we are—our identity—has profound implications for
our climate-related behaviors. Does our social identity, the ingroup that defines our circle
of concern, include only those around us now? Or does it encompass vulnerable people in
places unseen, our descendants and others in the future, and even the creatures in the
planet’s natural environment?
Support for new energy policies will require a shift in public consciousness on the scale
of the 1960s civil rights movement and the 1970s women’s movement. Yale University
environmental science dean James Gustave Speth (2008, 2012) has called for an enlarged
identity—a “new consciousness”—in which people
▯ see humanity as part of nature;
▯ see nature as having intrinsic value that we must steward;
▯ value the future and its inhabitants as well as our present;
▯ appreciate our human interdependence, by thinking “we” and not just “me”;
▯ define quality of life in relational and spiritual
rather than materialistic terms;
▯ value equity, justice, and the human community.
Is there any hope that human priorities might shift
from accumulating money to finding meaning, and from
aggressive consumption to nurturing connections? The
British government’s plan for achieving sustainable
development includes an emphasis on promoting per-
sonal well-being and social health (Figure 5).
Social psychology can help by
▯ suggesting ways to reduce consumption;
▯ tracking materialism and informing people that
economic growth does not automatically improve
human morale;
▯ helping people understand why materialism and
money fail to satisfy; and
▯ encouraging alternative, intrinsic values.
Janet Swim on Psychology’s Response to Climate Change
THE inside
STORY
While watching Al Gore’s climate change movie, I had an
epiphany. As I reflected on its message—that we must
take action to avert impending climate change—I realized
that psychology could help explain people’s denial of
climate change and could help motivate action. I then led
an American Psychological Association task force that
connected psychological research to understanding the
human causes and responses to climate change. I was
stunned by the attention given our report by the national
press, government officials, and scholars worldwide.
What I learned refocused my career, with support from
like-minded psychologists and fellow Pennsylvania State
University researchers who study climate change and
how we might avert or adapt to it. We have found, for ex-
ample, that men are more open to masculine-framed
policy persuasion; they prefer arguments that reference
leadership over arguments that reference care for the
planet. Our interdisciplinary team is also helping zoo and
aquarium educators to
communicate effectively
about climate science.
Janet K. Swim
Pennsylvania State University
Courtesy of Janet Swim
As climate change affects the environment, we can consider that the future
of humans and the future of the planet go hand in hand.
©NANTa SamRan/Shutterstock
490 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
FIGURE 5
“Five Principles of Sustainable Development” in the U.K. government’s Framework
for Sustainable Development
The British government defines sustainable development as development that meets present needs without
compromising future generations’ abilities to meet their needs. “We want to live within environmental limits
and achieve a just society, and we will do so by means of sustainable economy, good governance, and sound
science.” Social psychology’s contribution will be to help influence behaviors that enable people to live within
environmental limits and to enjoy personal and social well-being.
Source: www.sd-commission.org.uk.
Living within environmental limits
Respecting the limits of the planet’s
environment, resources and biodiversity—
to improve our environment and ensure
that the natural resources needed for life
are unimpaired and remain so for
future generations.
Ensuring a strong, healthy and just
society
Meeting the diverse needs of all people
in existing and future communities,
promoting personal wellbeing, social
cohesion and inclusion, and creating
equal opportunity.
Achieving a sustainable
economy
Building a strong, stable and
sustainable economy which
provides prosperity and
opportunities for all, and in
which environmental and
social costs fall on those who
impose them (polluter pays),
and e�cient resource use is
incentivized.
Using sound science
responsibly
Ensuring policy is
developed and
implemented on the
basis of strong scientific
evidence, whilst taking
into account scientific
uncertainty (through the
precautionary principle)
as well as public attitudes
and values.
Promoting good governance
Actively promoting e�ective,
participative systems of
governance in all levels of
society—engaging people’s
creativity, energy, and diversity.
▯ Humanity can prepare for a sustainable future by in-
creasing technological efficiency.
▯ We can also create incentives, give feedback, and pro-
mote identities that will support more sustainable
consumption. Rapid cultural change has happened in
the past 40 years, and there is hope that in response to
the global crisis it can happen again.
SUMMING UP: Enabling Sustainable Living
THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
OF MATERIALISM AND WEALTH
Explain social psychology’s contribution to our
understanding of materialism: To what extent do
money and consumption buy happiness? And why do
materialism and economic growth not bring enduringly
greater satisfaction?
Despite the recent economic recession, life for most people in Western countries is good.
Today the average North American and Western European enjoys luxuries unknown even
Social Psychology and the Sustainable Future Chapter 16 491
to royalty in centuries past: hot showers, flush toilets, central air-conditioning, microwave
ovens, jet travel, wintertime fresh fruit, big-screen digital television, e-mail, smartphones and
Post-it notes. Does money—and its associated luxuries—buy happiness? Few of us would
answer yes. But ask a different question—“Would a little more money make you a little
happier?”—and most of us will say yes. There is, we believe, some connection between
wealth and well-being.
Increased Materialism
Although the Earth asks that we live more lightly upon it, materialism—a focus on money
and possessions—undermines pro-environmental attitudes (Hurst et al., 2013; Kasser, 2016,
2018). Materialism also erodes empathy and inclines people to treat others as objects
(Wang & Krumhuber, 2017).
Nevertheless, materialism has surged, most clearly in the United States. Think of it as
today’s American dream: life, liberty, and the purchase of happiness. Evidence of rising
materialism comes from the Higher Education Research Institute annual survey of nearly
a quarter million entering collegians. The proportion considering it “very important or
essential” that they become “very well-off financially” rose from 39% in 1970 to 82% in
2016 (Figure 6). Those proportions virtually flip-flopped with those who considered it
very important to “develop a meaningful philosophy of life.” Materialism was up, spiritual-
ity down.
What a change in values! Among 19 listed objectives, Americans entering college in
most recent years have ranked becoming “very well-off financially” number 1. That outranks
not only developing a life philosophy but also “becoming an authority in my own field,”
“helping others in difficulty,” and “raising a family.” The desire for material goods has also
increased: Compared to those in the 1970s, recent high school students were more likely
to believe it was important to own one’s own home and have a new car every 2 to 3 years
(Twenge & Kasser, 2013).
FIGURE 6
Changing materialism, from annual surveys of more than 200,000 entering U.S. collegians (total sample 13 million students).
Source: Data from Dey et al., 1991, and subsequent annual reports.
0
1965 1970 1980 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 201619851975
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
Percent considering it “very important or essential”
Be very well o� financially
Develop a meaningful philosophy of life
492 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
Wealth and Well-Being
Does unsustainable consumption indeed enable “the good life”? Does being well-off enable—
or at least correlate with—psychological well-being? Would people be happier if they could
exchange a simple lifestyle for one with palatial surroundings, ski vacations in the Alps,
and executive-class travel? Would you be happier if you won a sweepstakes and could choose
from its suggested indulgences: a 40-foot yacht, deluxe motor home, designer wardrobe,
luxury car, or private housekeeper? Social-psychological theory and evidence offer some
answers.
ARE WEALTHY COUNTRIES HAPPIER?
We can observe the traffic between wealth and well-being by asking, first, if rich nations
are happier places. There is, indeed, some correlation between national wealth and well-
being (measured as self-reported happiness and life satisfaction). The Scandinavians have
been mostly prosperous and satisfied; the Bulgarians are neither (Diener & Tay, 2015;
Figure 7). People in richer countries and postal code regions also live longer (Payne, 2017).
But after nations reach above $20,000 GDP per person, higher levels of national wealth
are not predictive of increased life satisfaction.
ARE WEALTHIER INDIVIDUALS HAPPIER?
We can ask, second, whether within any given nation, rich people are happier. Are people
who drive their BMWs to work happier than those who take the bus?
In poor countries—where low income threatens basic needs—being relatively well-off does
predict greater well-being (Howell & Howell, 2008). In affluent countries, where most can
afford life’s necessities, affluence (and financial satisfaction) still matters—partly because
people with more money perceive more control over their lives (Johnson & Krueger, 2006).
Yet after a comfortable income level is reached, more and more money produces dimin-
ishing long-term returns (Figure 8). In Gallup surveys of more than 450,000 Americans
during 2008 and 2009, daily positive feelings (the average of self-reported happiness, enjoy-
ment, and frequent smiling and laughter) increased with income up to, but not beyond,
$75,000 (Kahneman & Deaton, 2010). Once a millionaire, accumulating more millions
provides little additional boost to happiness (Donnelly et al., 2018). Even the super-rich—the
FIGURE 7
National Wealth and
Well-Being
Life satisfaction (on a 0 to
10 ladder) across 132 countries,
as a function of national wealth
(2005 gross domestic product
[GDP], adjusted to the 2000 U.S.
dollar value).
Source: Di Tella & MacCulloch, 2010.
(Technical note to economics stu-
dents: Some economists prefer to
display income on a log scale, which
then indicates a more linear rela-
tionship between national income
and happiness.)
Mean life satisfaction ladder
0
3
4
5
6
7
8
10000
GDP per capita in 2005 (constant 2000 US$)
CRI
MEX
BRA
BLR
POLLTUSVNHRA
THACOLDZAINDCTM
MYSPAK PAN
JAMJOR CHLARG
CZE GRC
CYP
SVN
HTI
ARM
SEN
ALBCHNWBGNICNGAPHLMOZKGZNPLMARTJKNPLYEMMKDAGOBDIKENLKARWABGD
MWITZAUGAMDGMLICMRSLEETHNERBFAZWEBGR
KHMGEOBENTCD
AZEGHAPRYUKR
BWATURLVA
MDAZMBPERIDNRUS
BIHLAODOMECU
MRTUZBEGYROMIRNHND
TGO
VNM
SVKHUN
ESTZAFKAZ
SLV LBNURY PRT
KORTTO
SAU
NZL
ISRESP AUT
FRA GBR
ARE
DEUSGP
ITA
DNK
FINNLD
BELAUS NORCHESWE
IRL USA
JPN
HKG
KWT
3000020000 40000 50000
Social Psychology and the Sustainable Future Chapter 16 493
Forbes 100 wealthiest Americans—have reported only slightly greater happiness than average
(Diener et al., 1985).
Part of the happiness–income correlation is attributable to happier (and more optimistic
and outgoing) people being more likely to graduate from college, get hired and promoted,
and have higher incomes (De Neve & Oswald, 2012). Moreover, having one’s psychological
needs met (for respect, relationship, and empowerment) predicts positive, happy feelings
better than does income (Fischer & Boer, 2011; Ng & Diener, 2014; Tay & Diener, 2011).
DOES ECONOMIC GROWTH INCREASE HAPPINESS?
We can ask, third, whether, over time, a culture’s happiness rises with its affluence. Does
our collective well-being float upward with a rising economic tide?
In 1957, as economist John Kenneth Galbraith was describing the United States as
The Affluent Society, Americans’ per-person income was (in 2009 dollars) less than
$12,000. Today, as Figure 9 indicates, the United States is a triply affluent society. With
increasing inequality, this rising tide has lifted the yachts faster than the dinghies. Yet,
nearly all boats have risen. With double the spending power, thanks partly to the surge
in married women’s employment, we now own twice as many cars per person, eat out
twice as often, and are supported by a whole new world of technology. Since 1960 we
have also seen the proportion of households with dishwashers rise from 7 to 69%, with
clothes dryers rise from 20 to 83%, and with air-conditioning rise from 15 to 89% (Bureau
of the Census, 2013).
So, believing that it’s “very important” to “be very well-off financially,” and having
become better off financially, are today’s Americans happier?
They are not. Since 1957, the number of Americans who say they are “very happy” has
declined slightly: from 35 to 30%. Twice as rich and apparently no happier. The same has
been true of many other countries as well (Easterlin et al., 2010). After a decade of extraor-
dinary economic growth in China—from few owning a phone and 40% owning a color televi-
sion to most people now having such things—Gallup surveys revealed a decreasing proportion
of people satisfied “with the way things are going in your life today” (Burkholder, 2005;
Davey & Rato, 2012; Easterlin et al., 2012).
The findings are startling because they challenge modern materialism: Economic growth
has provided no apparent boost to human morale. We excel at making a living but often fail
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
10,000 20,000 40,000 80,000 160,000
Annual income
Fraction of population experiencing
Low stress
Absence of
negative
emotion
Positive emotion
FIGURE 8
The Diminishing Effects
of Increasing Income
on Positive and
Negative Feelings
Data from Gallup surveys of
more than 450,000 Americans
(Kahneman & Deaton, 2010).
(Note: income is reported
on a log scale, which tends to
accentuate the appearance of
correlation between income
and well-being.)
494 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
at making a life. We celebrate our prosperity but yearn for purpose. We cherish our free-
doms but long for connection.
Materialism Fails to Satisfy
It is striking that economic growth in affluent countries has failed to increase life satisfac-
tion and happiness. It is further striking that individuals who strive most for wealth tend
to live with lower well-being (Dittmar et al., 2014). This materialism–dissatisfaction correla-
tion has been replicated in China (Wang et al., 2017) and “comes through very strongly in
every culture I’ve looked at,” reported Richard Ryan (1999).
Seek extrinsic goals—wealth, beauty, popularity, prestige, or anything else centered on
external rewards or approval—and you may experience anxiety, depression, and psychoso-
matic ills (Eckersley, 2005; Sheldon et al., 2004). Focusing on money makes people less
attuned to others, less caring and warm (Vohs, 2015).
Those who instead strive for intrinsic goals such as
“intimacy, personal growth, and contribution to the
community” experience a higher quality of life, con-
cluded Tim Kasser (2000, 2002). Intrinsic values,
Kasser (2011, 2016) adds, promote personal and social
well-being and help immunize people against material-
istic values. Those focused on close relationships, mean-
ingful work, and concern for others enjoy inherent
rewards that often prove elusive to those more focused
on things or on their status and image.
Pause a moment and think: What was the most per-
sonally satisfying event that you experienced in the last
month? Kennon Sheldon and his colleagues (2001) put
that question (and similar questions about the last week
and semester) to samples of university students. Then
they asked them to rate the extent to which 10 different
needs were met by the satisfying event. The students
rated self-esteem, relatedness (feeling connected with
others), and autonomy (feeling in control) as the
$30,000
$35,000
$40,000
$20,000
$25,000
$10,000
$15,000
$5,000
$0
100%
90%
70%
80%
60%
40%
50%
30%
10%
20%
0%
1957 1967 1977 1987 1997
Personal income,
2009 dollars
Percent “very happy”
2007 2017
FIGURE 9
Has Economic Growth
Advanced Human
Morale?
While inflation-adjusted income
has risen, self-reported happi-
ness has not.
Source: Happiness data from Gen-
eral Social Surveys, National Opin-
ion Research Center, University of
Chicago (and Niemi et al., 1989 for
pre-1972 data). Income data from
Bureau of the Census (1975) and
Economic Indicators.
People shopping for more and more valuable goods in China. Although living
standards have risen, life satisfaction has not.
©Sorbis/Shutterstock
Social Psychology and the Sustainable Future Chapter 16 495
emotional needs that most strongly accompanied the satisfying event. At the bottom of the
list of factors predicting satisfaction were money and luxury.
Materialists tend to report a relatively large gap between what they want and what they
have, and to enjoy fewer close, fulfilling relationships. Wealthier people and world travelers
also tend to savor life’s simpler pleasures less (Quoidbach et al., 2010, 2015). Next to the
occasional pleasures enabled by wealth, simple pleasures—sipping tea with a friend, savoring
a chocolate, or finishing a project—may pale.
People focused on extrinsic and material goals also “focus less on caring for the Earth,”
reports Kasser (2011). “As materialistic values go up, concern for nature tends to go down. . . .
When people strongly endorse money, image, and status, they are less likely to engage in
ecologically beneficial activities like riding bikes, recycling, and re-using things in new ways.”
But why do yesterday’s luxuries, such as air-conditioning, so quickly become today’s
requirements? Two principles drive this psychology of consumption: our ability to adapt
and our need to compare.
OUR HUMAN CAPACITY FOR ADAPTATION
The adaptation-level phenomenon is our tendency to judge our experience (for example, of
sounds, temperatures, or income) relative to a neutral level defined by our prior experience.
We adjust our neutral levels—the points at which sounds seem neither loud nor soft, tem-
peratures neither hot nor cold, events neither pleasant nor unpleasant—on the basis of our
experience. We then notice and react to up or down changes from those levels.
Thus, as our achievements rise above past levels, we feel successful and satisfied. As our
social prestige, income, or in-home technology improves, we feel pleasure. Before long,
however, we adapt. What once felt good comes to register as neutral, and what formerly
was neutral now feels like deprivation.
Would it ever, then, be possible to create a social paradise? Donald Campbell (1975b)
answered no: If you woke up tomorrow to your utopia—perhaps a world with no bills, no
ills, someone who loves you unreservedly—you would feel euphoric, for a time. Yet before
long, you would recalibrate your adaptation level and again sometimes feel gratified (when
achievements surpass expectations), sometimes feel deprived (when they fall below), and
sometimes feel neutral.
To be sure, adaptation to some events, such as the death of a spouse, may be incomplete,
as the sense of loss lingers (Diener et al., 2006). Yet, we generally underestimate our adaptive
capacity. People have difficulty predicting the intensity and duration of their future positive
and negative emotions (Wilson & Gilbert, 2003; Figure 10). The anguish of those paralyzed
“Why do you spend your
money for that which is not
bread, and your labor for that
which does not satisfy?”
—Isaiah 55:2
adaptation-level
phenomenon
The tendency to adapt to a given
level of stimulation and thus to
notice and react to changes from
that level.
“From time to time in the
years to come, I hope you will
be treated unfairly, so that you
will come to know the value of
justice. I hope that you will
suffer betrayal because that
will teach you the importance
of loyalty. Sorry to say, but I
hope you will be lonely from
time to time so that you don’t
take friends for granted . . .
and I hope you will have just
enough pain to learn
compassion.”
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice
John Roberts, Address to His
Son’s 9th Grade Graduating
Class, 2017
Our actual emotions
Our actual emotions
Our anticipated emotions after a major positive event
Our anticipated emotions after a major negative event
Time
H
ap
p
in
e
ss
FIGURE 10
The Impact Bias
People generally overestimate
the enduring impact of signifi-
cant positive and negative life
events.
Source: Figure inspired by de
Botton, 2004.
496 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
by spinal cord injuries returns to a near normal mix of joy with occasional
sadness or frustration (Boyce & Wood, 2011; Hall et al., 1999). The elation
from getting what we want—riches, top exam scores, our national team win-
ning the World Cup—evaporates more rapidly than we expect.
We also sometimes “miswant.” When first-year university students pre-
dicted their satisfaction with various housing possibilities shortly before
entering their school’s housing lottery, they focused on physical features.
“I’ll be happiest in a beautiful and well-located dorm,” many students
seemed to think. But they were wrong. When contacted a year later, it
was the social features, such as a sense of community, that predicted hap-
piness, reported Elizabeth Dunn and her colleagues (2003).
Other surveys and experiments have repeatedly confirmed that positive
experiences leave us happier, especially experiences that build relation-
ships, foster meaning and identity, and are not deflated by comparisons
(Dunn & Norton, 2013; Gilovich & Kumar, 2015; Pchelin & Howell, 2014).
More than our material purchases, experiences give us something to talk
about with others (Kumar & Gilovich, 2015). Even buying time (a cab ride,
paying someone to run an errand) brings more happiness than material
purchases (Whillans et al., 2017). The best things in life are not things.
OUR WANTING TO COMPARE
Much of life revolves around social comparison, a point made by the old joke about two
hikers who meet a bear. One reaches into his backpack and pulls out a pair of sneakers.
“Why bother putting those on?” asks the other. “You can’t outrun a bear.” “I don’t have to
outrun the bear,” answers the first. “I just have to outrun you.”
Similarly, happiness is relative to our comparisons with others, especially those within
our own groups (Lyubomirsky, 2001; Zagefka & Brown, 2005). As the satirist H. L.
Mencken (1916) jested, a wealthy man is one whose income “is at least $100 more a year”
than that of “his wife’s sister’s husband.”
Whether we feel good or bad depends on whom we’re comparing ourselves with. We
are slow-witted or clumsy only when others are smart or agile. Let one professional athlete
sign a new contract for $15 million a year and an $8-million-a-year teammate may now feel
less satisfied. “Our poverty became a reality. Not because of our having less, but by our
neighbors having more,” recalled Will Campbell in Brother to a Dragonfly. Perhaps
you can recall being on a stationary train (or boat) when an adjacent train
departed, giving you a sense that you were moving backward. That perceptual
phenomenon parallels the experience of fixed income people who feel poorer
when seeing others around them becoming richer (Payne, 2017).
Further feeding our luxury fever is the tendency to compare upward: as we
climb the ladder of success or affluence, we mostly compare ourselves with peers
who are at or above our current level, not with those who have less (Gerber et al.,
2018). People living in communities where some residents are very wealthy tend
to feel envy and less satisfaction as they compare upward (Fiske, 2011b). The
saying that “comparison is the thief of joy” applies to upward comparison—as
perhaps you have noticed when comparing your everyday life to friends’ happy
Facebook posts (Steers et al., 2014).
In developed and emerging economies worldwide, inequality has been growing.
In the 34 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 2014 coun-
tries, the richest 10% average 9.5 times the income of the poorest 10%. Countries
with greater inequality not only have greater health and social problems, but also
higher rates of dissatisfaction and mental illness (Burkhauser et al., 2016; Payne,
2017; Wilkinson & Pickett, 2017a,b). Likewise, U.S. states with greater inequality
have higher rates of depression (Messias et al., 2011). And over time, years with
more income inequality—and associated increases in perceived unfairness and lack
of trust—correlate with less happiness among those with lower incomes (Oishi
et al., 2011).
social comparison
Evaluating one’s abilities and
opinions by comparing oneself
with others.
“O.K., if you can’t see your way to
giving me a pay raise, how about giving
Parkerson a pay cut?”
Social comparisons foster feelings.
©Barbara Smaller. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
Times of increased inequality tend, for many,
to be times of diminished perceived fairness
and happiness.
©Glynnis Jones/Shutterstock
Social Psychology and the Sustainable Future Chapter 16 497
A miniature world of such inequality is today’s commercial flying, with its boarding
priorities and seating tiers. Who commit acts of air rage? Most often, say researchers who
have combed through millions of flights, it’s coach passengers on planes with first class
sections—and especially for which the coach passengers must pass through the seated first
class section to their more cramped seating (DeCelles & Norton, 2016). For those of lower
status, inequality + comparison = dissatisfaction.
Although people often prefer the economic policies in place, a national survey found
that Americans overwhelmingly preferred the income distribution on the right of Figure 11
(which, unbeknownst to the respondents, happened to be Sweden’s income distribution) to
the one on the left (which happened to be the United States’ income distribution). More-
over, people preferred (in an ideal world) a top 20% income share of about 30 and 40%
(rather than the actual 84%). And there was general agreement about this among Republi-
cans and Democrats, and among those making less than $50,000 and more than $100,000
(Norton & Ariely, 2011).
In a follow-up study that framed different questions—for example, asking Americans what
percentage of people make less than $35,000—a different research team found them over-
estimating both poverty and inequality (Chambers et al., 2014). But the story continues:
Another study of 55,238 people in 40 countries once again found that people vastly under-
estimated inequality (Kiatpongsan & Norton, 2014). Wealthy people, who often live in
wealthy enclaves, are especially likely to underestimate poverty and to oppose policies that
aim to reduce inequality (Dawtry et al., 2015).
Moreover, people’s ideal pay gaps between big company CEOs and unskilled workers
are much smaller than actually exist. In the United States, for example, the actual pay ratio
of S&P 500 CEOs to their unskilled workers (354:1) far exceeds the estimated ratio (30:1)
and the ideal ratio (7:1). The researchers’ conclusion: “People all over the world and from
all walks of life would prefer smaller pay gaps between the rich and poor.” Informing people
about the extent of income inequality increases their concern for the growing gaps, though
less so their support for income redistribution (Kuziemko et al., 2015).
Even in China, income inequality has grown. This helps explain why rising affluence
has not produced increased happiness—there or elsewhere (Easterlin et al., 2012; Helliwell
et al., 2013). Rising income inequality makes for more people having rich neighbors, and
that helps explain why economic growth has not increased overall happiness (Cheung &
Lucas, 2016; Hagerty, 2000; Oishi & Kesebir, 2015).
FIGURE 11
In an Ideal Society, What Would Be the Level of Income Inequality?
A survey of Americans provided a surprising consensus that a more equal distribution of wealth—like that shown on the right (which happened to be
Sweden’s distribution) would be preferable to the American status quo (shown on the left).
Source: Norton & Ariely, 2011.
8% prefer this 92% prefer this
Top 20%
2nd 20%
3rd 20%
4th 20%
5th 20%
Top 20%
2nd 20%
3rd 20%
4th 20%
5th 20%
84%
36%
21%
18%
15%
11%
11%
4% 0.20% 0.10%
498 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
The adaptation-level and social-comparison phenomena give us pause. They imply that
the quest for happiness through material achievement requires continually expanding afflu-
ence. They also help us understand why rich people have repeatedly been found to be
proportionately less generous, and also less compassionate and empathic (Marsh, 2012;
Mathewes & Sandsmark, 2017). (People with little money are, relative to their incomes, the
most generous to people with little money.)
But the good news is that adaptation to simpler lives can also happen. If we shrink our
consumption by choice or by necessity, we will initially feel a pinch, but the pain likely will
pass. “Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning,” reflected the
Psalmist. Indeed, thanks to our capacity to adapt and to adjust comparisons, the emotional
impact of significant life events—losing a job or even a disabling accident—dissipates sooner
than most people suppose (Gilbert et al., 1998).
Toward Sustainability and Survival
As individuals and as a global society, we face difficult social and political issues. How
might a democratic society induce people to adopt values that emphasize psychological
well-being over materialism? How might a thriving market economy mix incentives for
prosperity with restraints that preserve a habitable planet? To what extent can technologi-
cal innovations, such as alternative energy sources, reduce our ecological footprints? And
to what extent does the superordinate goal of preserving the Earth for our grandchildren
call us each to limit our own liberties—our freedom to drive, burn, and dump whatever
we wish?
A shift to postmaterialist values will gain momentum as people, governments, and cor-
porations take these steps:
▯ Face the implications of population and consumption growth for climate change
and environmental destruction.
▯ Realize that extrinsic, materialist values make for less happy lives.
▯ Identify and promote the things in life that can enable sustainable human
flourishing.
“If the world is to change for the better it must have a change in human consciousness,”
said Czech poet-president Vaclav Havel (1990). We must discover “a deeper sense of respon-
sibility toward the world, which means responsibility toward something higher than self.”
If people were to believe that ever-bigger houses, closets full of seldom-worn clothes, and
garages with luxury cars do not define the good life, then might a shift in consciousness
become possible? Instead of being an indicator of social status, might conspicuous con-
sumption become gauche?
Social psychology’s contribution to a sustainable, flourishing future will come partly
through its consciousness-transforming insights into adaptation and comparison. These
insights also come from experiments that lower people’s comparison standards and thereby
cool luxury fever and renew contentment. In two such experiments, Marshall Dermer and
his colleagues (1979) put university women through imaginative exercises in deprivation.
After viewing depictions of the grimness of Milwaukee life in 1900, or after imagining and
writing about being burned and disfigured, the women expressed greater satisfaction with
their own lives.
In another experiment, Jennifer Crocker and Lisa Gallo (1985) found that people who
five times completed the sentence “I’m glad I’m not a . . .” afterward felt less depressed
and more satisfied with their lives than did those who completed sentences beginning
“I wish I were a. . . .” Realizing that others have it worse helps us count our blessings.
“I cried because I had no shoes,” says a Persian proverb, “until I met a man who had no
feet.” Downward social comparison facilitates contentment.
Downward comparison to a hypothetical worse-off self also enhances contentment.
Minkyung Koo and her colleagues (2008) invited people to write about how they might
never have met their romantic partner. Compared to others who wrote about meeting their
partner, those who imagined not having the relationship expressed more satisfaction with
“All our wants, beyond those
which a very moderate in-
come will supply, are purely
imaginary.”
—Henry St. John,
Letter to Swift, 1719
Social Psychology and the Sustainable Future Chapter 16 499
it. Can you likewise imagine how some good things in your life might never
have happened? It’s very easy for me [DM] to imagine not having chanced
into an acquaintance that led to an invitation to author this book. Just
thinking about that reminds me to count my blessings.
Social psychology also contributes to a sustainable and survivable future
through its explorations of the good life. If materialism does not enhance
life quality, what does?
▯ Close, supportive relationships. Our deep need to belong is satisfied
by close, supportive relationships. People who are supported by
intimate friendships or a committed marriage are much more likely
to declare themselves “very happy.”
▯ Faith communities and voluntary organizations are often a source
of such connections, as well as of meaning and hope. That helps
explain a finding from National Opinion Research Center surveys
of more than 50,000 Americans since 1972: 26% of those rarely
or never attending religious services declared themselves very
happy, as did 48% of those attending multiple times weekly. The
high religiosity of most poor countries also enables their people
to live with surprisingly high levels of meaning in life (Oishi &
Diener, 2014).
▯ Positive thinking habits. Optimism, self-esteem, perceived control,
and extraversion also mark happy experiences and happy lives. One
analysis of 638 studies of 420,000+ people in 63 countries found
that a sense of autonomy—feeling free and independent—consistently
influences people’s sense of well-being more than does wealth
(Fischer & Boer, 2011).
▯ Experiencing nature. University students randomly assigned to a
nature walk near their campus ended up (to their and others’
surprise) happier, less anxious, and more focused than students
who took a similar-length walk through campus walking tunnels or
on a busy street (Bratman et al., 2015; Nisbet & Zelenski, 2011).
Japanese researchers report that “forest bathing”—walks in the
woods—also helps lower stress hormones and blood pressure
( Phillips, 2011).
▯ Flow. Work and leisure experiences that engage one’s skills mark happy lives.
Between the anxiety of being overwhelmed and stressed, and the apathy of being
underwhelmed and bored, notes Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990, 1999), lies a
zone in which people experience flow. Flow is an optimal state in which, absorbed
in an activity, we lose consciousness of self and time. When people’s experience is
sampled using electronic pagers, they report greatest enjoyment not when they are
mindlessly passive but when they are unself-consciously absorbed in a mindful
challenge. In fact, the less expensive (and generally more involving) a leisure activity,
the happier people are while doing it. Most people are happier gardening than
powerboating, talking to friends than watching TV. Low-consumption recreations
prove most satisfying.
That is good news indeed. Those things that make for the genuinely good life—close
relationships, social networks based on belief, positive thinking habits, engaging activity—are
enduringly sustainable. And that is an idea close to the heart of Jigme Singye Wangchuk,
former King of Bhutan. “Gross national happiness is more important than gross national
product,” he said. Writing from the Center of Bhutan Studies in Bhutan, Sander Tideman
(2003) explained: “Gross National Happiness . . . aims to promote real progress and sus-
tainability by measuring the quality of life, rather than the mere sum of production and
consumption.” Now other nations, too, are assessing national quality of life. (See “Research
Close-Up: Measuring National Well-Being.”)
“We have failed to see how
our economy, our environ-
ment and our society are all
one. And that delivering the
best possible quality of life for
us all means more than con-
centrating solely on economic
growth.”
—British Prime Minister Tony Blair,
Foreword to A Better Quality
of Life, 1999
The best things in life are not things. Research indi-
cates that happiness grows more from spending on
experiences than on stuff—especially when spent on
anticipated then recollected experiences that foster
relationships and identity, such as my hiking Scotland’s
West Highland Way with two of my children [DM] or
spending time at the beach with mine [JT].
(top): ©Dave Myers; (bottom): Courtesy of Pamela Davis
500 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
Measuring National Well-Being
“A city is successful not when it’s rich, but when its people
are happy.” So said Bogotá, Colombia, former mayor En-
rique Peñalosa, in explaining his campaign to improve his
city’s quality of life—by building schools and increasing
school enrollment 34%, building or rebuilding more than
1,200 parks, creating an effective transit system, and
reducing the murder rate dramatically (Gardner &
Assadourian, 2004).
Peñalosa’s idea of national success is shared by a
growing number of social scientists and government plan-
ners. In Britain, the New Economics Foundation (2009,
2011) has developed “National Accounts of Well-Being”
that track national social health and has published a
Well-Being Manifesto for a Flourishing Society. The foun-
dation’s motto: “We believe in economics as if people and
the planet mattered.” To assess national progress, they
urge, we should measure not just financial progress but
also the kinds of growth that enhance people’s life satis-
faction and happiness.
Andrew Oswald (2006), one of a new breed of econo-
mists who study the relationships between economic and
psychological well-being, noted that “economists’ faith in
the value of growth is diminishing. That is a good thing
and will slowly make its way into the minds of tomorrow’s
politicians.”
Leading the way toward new ways of assessing human
progress are the newly developed “Guidelines for
National Indicators of Subjective Well-Being and Ill-Being”
developed by University of Illinois psychologist Ed Diener
(2005, 2013; Diener et al., 2008, 2009, 2015) and signed
by four dozen of the world’s leading researchers
( Figure 12). It notes that “global measures of subjective
well-being, such as assessments of life satisfaction and
happiness, can be useful for policy debates,” such as by
detecting the human effects of any policy interventions.
More specifically, questions are now available for assess-
ing these indicators:
• Positive emotions, including those involving low
arousal (contentment), moderate arousal (pleasure),
and high arousal (euphoria), and those involving
positive responses to others (affection) and to activities
(interest and engagement).
• Negative emotions, including anger, sadness, anxiety,
stress, frustration, envy, guilt and shame, loneliness,
and helplessness. Measures may ask people to recall
or record the frequency of their experiencing positive
and negative emotions.
• Happiness, which often is taken to mean a general
positive mood, such as indicated by people’s answers
to a widely used survey question: “Taking all things to-
gether, how would you say things are these days—
would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or
not too happy?”
research
CLOSE-UP
FIGURE 12
Components of Well-Being
In its 2009 National Accounts of Well-Being report, Britain’s New Economics Foundation urged governments to “directly measure people’s
subjective well-being: their experiences, feelings and perceptions of how their lives are going.” What matters, this think tank argued, is not
so much the overall size of the economy as people’s experienced quality of life. Categories for assessing national well-being include
personal well-being, social well-being, and work-related well-being.
©2009 NEF. Reprinted by permission.
Personal
well-being
Emotional
well-being
Positive
feelings
Absence of
negative
feelings
Social
well-being
Well-being
at work
Supportive
relationships
Trust and
belonging
Self-esteem Optimism Resilience Competence Autonomy Engagement
Meaning
and
purpose
Satisfying
life Vitaility
Resilience
and
self-esteem
Positive
function
Social Psychology and the Sustainable Future Chapter 16 501
• Life satisfaction, which engages people in appraising
their life as a whole.
• Domain satisfactions, which invites people to indicate
their satisfaction with their physical health, work, lei-
sure, relationships, family, and community.
• Quality of life, a broader concept that includes one’s
environment and health, and one’s perceptions of
such.
Such well-being measures can assist governments as
they debate economic and tax policies, family protection
laws, health care, and community planning—a point now af-
firmed by more than 40 nations that now are assessing citi-
zen well-being (Diener et al., 2015; Krueger & Stone, 2014).
Well-being indicators are also part of worldwide Gallup
surveys in more than 150 countries encompassing more
than 98% of the world’s people. The surveys compare
countries (revealing, for example, that people in some
high-income countries such as Israel and Saudi Arabia
have reported lower levels of positive emotion than peo-
ple in some low-income countries such as Kenya and
India).
Gallup is also conducting a massive 25-year survey of
the health and well-being of U.S. residents, with 250 inter-
viewers conducting a thousand surveys a day, seven days
a week. The result is a daily snapshot of American well-
being—of people’s happiness, stress, anger, sleep, money
worries, laughter, socializing, work, and much more.
Although the project was recently launched, researchers
have already identified the best days of the year (week-
ends and holidays) and monitored the short-term emo-
tional impact of economic ups and downs. And with some
350,000 respondents a year, any subgroup of 1% of the
population will have 3,000+ respondents included, thus
enabling researchers to compare people in very specific
occupations, locales, religions, and ethnic groups.
▯ To judge from the expressed values of college students
and the “luxury fever” that marked late-twentieth-
century America, today’s Americans—and to a lesser
extent people in other Western countries—live in a
highly materialistic age.
▯ People in rich nations report greater happiness and life
satisfaction than those in poor nations (though with
diminishing returns as one moves from moderately to
very wealthy countries). Rich people within a country
are somewhat happier than working-class people,
though again more and more money provides diminish-
ing returns (as evident in studies of the super-rich and
of lottery winners). Does economic growth over time
make people happier? Not at all, it seems, from the
slight decline in self-reported happiness and the
increasing rate of depression during the post-1960 years
of increasing affluence.
▯ Two principles help explain why materialism fails
to satisfy: the adaptation-level phenomenon and social
comparison. When incomes and consumption rise, we
soon adapt. And comparing ourselves with others, we
may find our relative position unchanged. Comparing
upward breeds dissatisfaction, which helps explain the
more frequent sense of unfairness and unhappiness in
times and places of great inequality.
▯ To build a sustainable and satisfying future, we can indi-
vidually seek and, as a society, promote close relation-
ships, supportive social networks, positive thinking
habits, and engaging activity.
SUMMING UP: The Social Psychology of Materialism
and Wealth
POSTSCRIPT:
How Does One Live Responsibly
in the Modern World?
We must recognize that . . . we are one human family and one Earth community with a com-
mon destiny. We must join together to bring forth a sustainable global society founded on
respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace. Towards
this end, it is imperative that we, the peoples of the Earth, declare our responsibility to one
another, to the greater community of life, and to future generations.
—Preamble, The Earth Charter, www.earthcharter.org
502 Part Four Applying Social Psychology
Reading and writing about population growth, climate change, materialism, consumption,
adaptation, comparison, and sustainability provokes my [DM’s] reflection: Am I part of
the answer or part of the problem? I can talk a good line. But do I walk my own talk?
If I’m to be honest, my record is mixed.
I ride a bike to work year-round. But I also flew 100,000 miles last year on fuel-guzzling jets.
I have insulated my 114-year-old home, installed an efficient furnace, and turned the
winter daytime thermostat down to 68. But having grown up in a cool summer climate,
I can’t imagine living without my air-conditioning on sweltering summer days.
To control greenhouse gas production, I routinely turn off lights and the computer moni-
tor when away from my office and have planted trees around my house. But I’ve helped
finance South American deforestation with the coffee I’ve sipped.
I applauded in 1973 when the United States established an energy-conserving 55 mph
national maximum speed limit and was disappointed when it was abandoned in 1995. But now
that speed limits on the highway around my town are back up to 70 mph, I drive 70 mph—even
with (blush) no other cars in sight.
At my house we recycle all our home paper, cans, and bottles. But each week we receive
enough mail, newspapers, and periodicals to fill a 3-cubic-foot paper recycling bin.
It’s hardly a bold response to the looming crisis. Our great-grandchildren will not thrive
on this planet if all of today’s 7.6 billion humans demand a similar-sized ecological
footprint.
How, then, does one participate in the modern world, welcoming its beauties and con-
veniences, yet remain mindful of our environmental legacy? Even the leaders of the simpler-
living movement—who, like me, flew gas-guzzling jets to our three conferences in luxurious
surroundings—struggle with how to live responsibly in the modern world.
So what do you think? What regulations do you favor or oppose? Higher fuel-efficiency
requirements for cars and trucks? Auto-pollution checks? Leaf-burning bans to reduce
smog? If you live in a country where high fuel taxes motivate people to drive small, fuel-
efficient cars, do you wish you could have the much lower fuel taxes and cheaper petrol
that have enabled Americans to drive big cars? If you are an American, would you favor
higher gasoline and oil taxes to help conserve resources and restrain climate change?
How likely is it that humanity will be able to curb climate change and resource deple-
tion? If the biologist E. O. Wilson (2002) was right to speculate that humans evolved to
commit themselves only to their own small piece of geography, their own kin, and their
own time, can we hope that our species will exhibit “extended altruism” by caring for our
distant descendants? Will today’s envied “lifestyles of the rich and famous” become gauche
in a future where sustainability becomes necessity? Or will people’s concern for themselves
and for displaying the symbols of success always trump their concerns for their unseen
great-grandchildren?
“The best time to plant a tree
is 20 years ago. The second
best time is now.”
Chinese proverb
“The great dilemma of envi-
ronmental reasoning stems
from this conflict between
short-term and long-term
values.”
—E. O. Wilson,
The Future of Life, 2002
503
Epilogue
If you have read this entire book, your introduction to social psychology is complete.
As we wrote at the beginning of this book, we hoped the book would be at once solidly
scientific and warmly human, factually rigorous and intellectually provocative. You are
the judge of whether that goal has been achieved. But we can tell you that sharing the
discipline has been a joy for us as your authors. If receiving our gift has brought you
any measure of pleasure, stimulation, and enrichment, then our joy is multiplied.
A knowledge of social psychology, we do believe, has the power to restrain intuition
with critical thinking, illusion with understanding, and judgmentalism with compassion.
In these 16 chapters, we have assembled social psychology’s insights into belief and
persuasion, love and hate, conformity and independence. We have glimpsed incomplete
answers to intriguing questions: How do our attitudes feed and get fed by our actions?
What leads people sometimes to hurt and sometimes to help one another? What
kindles social conflict, and how can we transform closed fists into helping hands?
Answering such questions expands our minds. And “once expanded to the dimen-
sions of a larger idea,” noted Oliver Wendell Holmes, the mind “never returns to its
original size.” Such has been our experience, and perhaps yours, as you, through this
and other courses, become an educated person.
David G. Myers
davidmyers.org
Jean M. Twenge
jeantwenge.com
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A
AAAS. See American Association
for the Advancement of Science
AAMC. See American Association
of Medical Colleges
Aarts, H., 166
ABA. See American Bar
Association
Abbate, C. S., 381
Abbey, A., 74, 115
ABC News, 167
Abelson, R., 89
Abrams, D., 222
Abramson, L. Y., 431, 432, 443
Acevedo, B. P., 340
ACHA. See American College
Health Association
Acitelli, L. K., 330
Ackerman, J. M., 338
Ackermann, R., 431
Adachi, P. J. C., 302
Adamopoulos, J., 228
Adams, D., 282
Adams, G., 82
Adams, J. M., 348
Addis, M. E., 130, 361
Aderman, D., 356
Adler, N. E., 17, 449, 470
Adler, R. P., 199
Adorno, T., 250
Aesop, 321
AFP Relaxnews, 47
Agarwal, M., 131
Agerström, J., 91
Agnew, C. R., 348
Agthe, M., 323, 325
Agustsdottir, S., 442
Ahmad, N., 366
Aiello, J. R., 206
Ainsworth, M. D. S., 115, 341
Ainsworth, S. E., 279
Aisch, G., 219
Ajzen, I., 92, 93
Aked, C. F., 367
Aknin, L. B., 354, 355
Akrami, N., 250
Albarracin, D., 92, 93, 178
Aldag, R. J., 227
Alden, L. E., 436, 442
Alexander, J., 190
Alexander, L., 403
Alicke, M. D., 469
Alkhuzai, A. H., 383
Allee, W. C., 203
Allen, J. J. B., 320
Allen, M., 130
Allen, M. S., 205
Allen, V. L., 160
Allesøe, K., 440
Allik, J., 44
Alloy, L. B., 431, 433
Allport, F. H., 203
Allport, G. W., 249, 251, 253, 268,
269, 412
Alquist, J. L., 166
Al Ramiah, A., 404
Al-Sadat, A., 417
Altemeyer, R., 250
Alter, A., 308
Altman, I., 122
Alwin, D. F., 193, 422
Amato, P. R., 466
Ambady, N., 82, 270, 322
American Association for the
Advancement of Science
(AAAS), 14, 480, 481, 484
American Association of Medical
Colleges (AAMC), 128
American Bar Association (ABA),
128
American College Health
Association (ACHA), 424
American Enterprises, 348
American Meteorological Society
(AMS), 482
American Psychiatric Association
(APA), 114
American Psychological
Association (APA), 22, 296,
300, 489
Amir, Y., 402
Amundsen, R., 233
An, S., 199
Anastasi, J. S., 260
Andersen, S. M., 28, 354, 385
Anderson, C. A., 23, 51, 60, 70, 235,
284, 288, 289, 290, 294, 296,
297, 298, 299, 300, 301, 302, 303,
305, 326, 330, 391, 435, 436, 484
Anderson, D. C., 288, 289
Anderson, P. D., 164
Anderson, V. N., 247
Andrews, D. S., 3
Andrews, F. E., 379
Andrews, P. W., 433
Andreychik, M. R., 364
Angier, N., 309
Anglemyer, A., 291, 310
Anik, L., 355
Annan, K., 125, 414
Ansel, J., 123
Anson, J., 123
Anthony, S. B., 232
Antonakis, J., 323
Appel, M., 43, 269
Applewhite, M. H., 194
Archer, D., 252
Archer, J., 134, 278–279, 281, 294
Archer, R. L., 344
Argyle, M., 125
Ariely, D., 497
Aristotle, 5, 98, 120, 307, 312, 322,
393, 432
Ariza, L. M., 220
Arkes, H. R., 36, 188
Arkin, R. M., 51, 52, 317
Armitage, C. J., 92
Armor, D. A., 48
Arms, R. L., 307
Arnocky, S., 354
Aron, A., 147, 331, 337, 338, 345,
406
Aron, E., 147, 345
Aronson, E., 21, 101, 333, 412
Aronson, J., 269
Arriaga, X. B., 348
Asch, S. E., 147, 148, 150, 155,
156, 159, 160, 161, 186
Asendorpf, J. B., 436
Ash, R., 278
Asher, J., 280
Ashton-James, C., 37, 257, 383
Assadourian, E., 500
Associated Press (AP), 179, 183,
294, 429
Associated Press/Ipsos Poll, 254
Association of Trial Lawyers of
America, 471
Athappilly, K., 339
Athota, V. S., 166
Attia, S., 285
Auden, W. H., 122
Augustine, Saint, 118, 243
Austin, J. B., 356
Auyeung, B., 117
Averill, J. R., 284
Axsom, D., 195
Ayers, J. W., 147
Ayres, M. M., 130
Azrin, N. H., 287
B
Baars, B. J., 56
Babad, E., 82
Bachman, J. G., 19
Back, M. D., 316
Bacon, F., 450
Badger, A. J., 313
Baguley, C. M., 470
Bahns, A. J., 395
Bahrami, B., 229
Bailenson, J. N., 181, 319
Bailey, J. M., 135
Baize, H. R., Jr., 323
Baker, L., 345
Baldwin, M. W., 341
Balliet, D., 256, 394, 417
Balsa, A. I., 161
Banaji, M. R., 58, 90, 187, 242
Bandura, A., 31, 43, 285, 286, 296
Banks, S. M., 183
Banse, R., 265
Bar-Anan, Y., 91
Barash, D., 114, 278, 361, 362
Barber, B. M., 66, 134
Barber, N., 136
Barber, R., 413
Barberá, P., 220
Bareket-Bojmel, L., 239
Bargh, J. A., 56, 57, 58, 74, 146,
220, 346
Bar-Haim, Y., 320
Bar-Hillel, M., 62
Barkley, C., 279
Barlett, C. P., 284
Barlow, F. K., 404
Barnes, C. M., 259
Barnes, E., 352
Barnes, R. D., 359
Barnett, M. A., 357
Barnett, P. A., 432
Baron, J., 266, 359
Baron, R. A., 308, 325
Baron, R. S., 206
Baron-Cohen, S., 133
Barongan, C., 297
Barrick, M. R., 54
Barry, D., 46, 134, 135, 136
Bar-Tal, D., 398
Bartels, B., 160
Bartels, M., 434
Bartholomew, K., 341
Bartholow, B. C., 281
Bartholow, B. D., 258, 301
Bartlett, C. P., 301
Barzman, D. H., 281
Barzun, J., 109
Bassili, J. N., 232
Bastian, B., 74, 301, 315, 407
Batson, C. D., 89, 93, 132, 251,
362, 363, 364, 365, 366, 373,
374, 383, 386
Batson, D., 50
Bauer, M., 408
Bauman, C. W., 76
Baumann, L. J., 438
Baumann, M. R., 227
Baumeister, R. F., 18, 28, 41, 42,
43, 51, 53, 54, 115, 119, 120, 133,
135, 136, 206, 209, 226, 245,
313, 314, 315, 332, 344, 349, 446
Baumgardner, A. H., 51
Baumhart, R., 46
Baumrind, D., 152
Baxter, T. L., 78
Bayer, E., 203
Bayton, J. A., 241
Bazerman, M. H., 419
Bazzini, D., 324
BBC, 63, 285, 434
Beach, S. R. H., 345
Beall, A. T., 395
Beals, K. P., 344
Beaman, A. L., 93, 215, 329, 386
Beaman, L., 128
Beamer, T., 370
Bearak, B., 254
Beaulieu, C. M. J., 122
Becatoros, E., 253
Beck, A. T., 434
Beck, L. A., 342
Becker, D. V., 263, 264
Becker, S. W., 378
Bednar, W., 378
Beelmann, A., 404
Beer, J. S., 47
Begue, L., 78, 79, 166, 281
Bell, B. E., 455
Bell, P. A., 288, 289
Bellah, R. N., 172
Bellezza, S., 170
Belson, W. A., 294
Beltz, A. M., 117
Bem, D. J., 72, 104, 108
Benaji, M. R., 240
Benartzi, S., 16
Benbow, C. P., 132
Bendix, A., 173
Benenson, J. F., 130
Benjamin, A. J., 290
Benjamin, Jr., L. T., 149–152
Bennett, D., 320
Bennett, P., 18
Bennett, R., 292
Bennis, W., 235
Benson, P. L., 375, 379
Benton, S. L., 49
Benton, T. R., 463
Benzien, J., 156
Berg, J. H., 335, 342, 344
Berger, J., 170, 171, 318
Berglas, S., 50
Bergsieker, H. B., 242
Berkman, L. F., 446
Berkowitz, L., 160, 284, 288, 290,
296, 297, 356, 357, 359
Name Index
NI
Name Index NI-1
Cain, T. R., 81
Cairns, E., 404
Cal, A. V., 178
Calanchini, J., 240
Caldwell, H. K., 342
Callace, L., 461
Callaghan, B., 377
Calley, W., 155
Callow, K., 321
Cameron, G., 393
Cameron, L. D., 183
Camp, G., 461
Campbell, A. C., 372
Campbell, D. T., 8, 144, 187, 361,
362, 495
Campbell, E. Q., 251
Campbell, L., 63
Campbell, M. A., 309
Campbell, T. H., 485
Campbell, W. D., 496
Campbell, W. K., 42, 43, 44, 52,
53, 348, 435
Canadian Psychological
Association, 22
Canevello, A., 40
Cann, A., 468
Canter, D., 369
Cantor, N., 29, 48, 345
Cantril, H., 232
Cantu, S. M., 116
Caprioli, M., 128
Caputo, D., 60
Capuzzo, D., 367
Carducci, B. J., 337
Cares, A. C., 371
Carey, J., 481
Carli, L. L., 266
Carlo, G., 377
Carlsmith, J. M., 101–102, 356
Carlson, E. N., 43
Carlson, J., 338
Carlson, K. A., 470
Carlson, L., 137
Carlson, M., 284, 357
Carlston, D. E., 53
Carnagey, N. L., 301
Carnaghi, A., 134
Carnahan, T., 95
Carnegie, A., 309
Carnegie, D., 316, 333
Carnelley, K. B., 341
Carnevale, P. J., 399, 417
Carney, D. R., 187
Carothers, B. J., 129
Carpenter, J., 178, 314
Carpenter, T. F., 379
Carpusor, A. G., 239
Carr, E. W., 320
Carranza, E., 129
Carré, J. M., 281
Carroll, D., 17, 18
Carroll, J. S., 135, 136, 292
Carroll, L., 147
Carter, J., 228
Cartwright, D. S., 219, 286
Carvallo, M., 313, 319
Carver, C. S., 93, 381, 432, 436, 440
Case, A., 449
Cash, T. F., 325
Caspi, A., 120, 280, 329
Cassidy, J., 341
Castelli, L., 249, 330
Castro, F., 75, 224, 226
Catellani, P., 486
Ceci, S. J., 246, 458
Cemalcilar, Z., 313
Center for Bhutan Studies, 499
Center for Research on
Environmental Decisions
(CRED), 485, 486
Brown, R., 125, 260, 283, 406, 496
Brown, R. M., 24, 96
Brown, R. P., 270
Brown, S. L., 286, 354, 412, 447
Brown, T. J., 360
Brown, V. R., 229
Brown, W. M., 327
Browning, E. B., 335
Browning, R., 339, 427
Brownlee, E. A., 51
Bruce, V., 456
Bruck, M., 458
Brummelman, E., 42, 43
Brunell, A. B., 42, 43
Brunner, M., 245
Bruun, S. E., 209
Bryan, C. J., 30, 197
Bryan, J. H., 372
Bryan, T. S., 468
Buckhout, R., 455
Buddha, 89
Buehler, R., 36
Buffardi, L. E., 52
Bugental, D. B., 238
Bugental, D. P., 433
Bui, N. H., 48
Bui, Q., 243
Bull, R., 324
Bullington, J., 372
Bullock, J., 189
Bumstead, C. H., 232
Burchill, S. A. L., 432
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS),
128, 132
Bureau of the Census, 73, 493, 494
Burger, J. M., 47, 150–151, 158, 161,
180, 185, 234, 317, 358, 374, 384
Burke, E., 367, 487
Burkett, J. P., 338
Burkhauser, R. V., 496
Burkholder, R., 493
Burns, D. D., 431
Burns, J. F., 212
Burns, L., 47
Burnstein, E., 221, 222, 284, 362
Burr, W. R., 316
Burriss, R. P., 360
Burson, K. A., 60
Burton, C. M., 448
Burton, R., 144
Busby, D. M., 136
Busching, R., 296
Bush, G. H. W., 90, 416
Bush, G. W., 60, 101, 125, 193,
218, 227, 257, 400, 408
Bushman, B. J., 39, 41, 42, 195, 215,
280, 289, 290, 295, 296, 297,
298, 300, 301, 305, 307, 308, 309
Buss, D. M., 85, 113, 115, 116,
327, 331
Butcher, S. H., 307
Butler, A. C., 433
Butler, D. M., 239
Butler, S., 115
Buttelmann, D., 254
Butterfield, F., 467
Butz, D. A., 83
Buunk, B. P., 342, 343
Byrne, D., 329, 334
Byrnes, J. P., 134
C
Cacioppo, J. T., 6, 106, 108, 175,
182, 195, 229, 346, 415, 434,
435, 436
Cacioppo, S., 6, 436
Cafferty, J., 167
Cain, H., 266
Bornstein, R. F., 318, 320
Bos, P. A., 6
Bossard, J. H. S., 316
Bosson, J. K., 134
Bothwell, R. K., 260
Botvin, G. J., 198, 199
Botwin, M. D., 331
Bouas, K. S., 394
Bouman, T., 253, 395
Bourgeois, M. J., 470
Bourke, M. L., 292
Boutwell, B. B., 349
Bowen, E., 3
Bowen, N. K., 270
Bower, G. H., 67, 432
Bowlby, J., 340
Bowler, P. J., 72
Boyatzis, C. J., 20
Boyce, C. J., 332, 496
Boyer, M. A., 128
Boyes, A. D., 333
Bradbury, T. N., 41, 333, 350
Bradfield, A. L., 459, 460
Bradley, E., 367, 368
Bradley, O., 401
Bradley, W., 107
Bradshaw, E., 463
Bradshaw, G. S., 463
Branas, C. C., 310
Brand, R. J., 326
Brandon, R., 455
Brandt, M. J., 21, 245, 250
Brannan, C. F., 221
Bratko, D., 124
Bratman, G. N., 499
Bratslavsky, E., 332, 344
Brauer, M., 217, 222
Braun, C., 327
Braun, M. T., 296
Braverman, J., 183
Bray, R. M., 473, 477
Breckler, S. J., 485
Bregman, N. J., 459
Brehm, J. W., 103, 109, 169
Brehm, S. S., 169, 442, 444
Breivik, K., 277
Brekke, J. S., 280
Brekke, N., 266, 271
Brenner, S. N., 46
Brescoll, V. L., 246, 266
Brethel-Haurwitz, K., 357
Breuer, J., 283
Brewer, M. B., 256, 268, 414
Brewer, N., 456
Brewer, N. T., 183
Breyer, S., 298
Brigham, J. C., 260, 457
Briñol, P., 105, 176, 179, 182
British Psychological Society, 22
Britt, T. W., 283
Brock, T. C., 193
Brockner, J., 392
Brodt, S. E., 437
Brody, J., 238
Bromet, E., 433
Bronfenbrenner, U., 398
Broockman, D., 258
Broockman, D. E., 239
Brooks, D., 152, 165, 218
Brooks, R., 246
Broome, A., 436
Broussard, K. A., 114
Brown, C. C., 136
Brown, D., 112
Brown, E. H., 205
Brown, G., 352
Brown, H. J., Jr., 47
Brown, J. D., 39, 67, 328, 432
Brown, L. L., 337
Brown, M., 453–454
Berman, J., 92
Berndsen, M., 263
Bernhardt, P. C., 282
Berns, G. S., 165
Bernstein, D. M., 71
Bernstein, M. J., 240
Berra, Y., 45, 358
Berry, B., 191
Berry, D. S., 465
Berry, J. W., 414
Berscheid, E., 96, 317, 321, 323,
324, 325, 332, 336, 337
Bersoff, D. N., 471
Bertolotti, M., 486
Bertrand, M., 242
Besser, A., 341
Best, D. L., 133
Bettencourt, B. A., 134, 273, 280
Beussink, C. N., 377
Bianchi, E., 30
Bianchi, S. M., 126, 128
Bickman, L., 160, 380, 415
Bigam, R. G., 471
Bilderbeck, A. C., 418
Bilewicz, M., 402
Billig, M., 256
Binder, J., 403
Biner, P. M., 289
Bingenheimer, J. B., 286
Binham, R., 362
bin Laden, O., 157, 277
Bishop, G. D., 217, 218, 438
Bizumic, B., 250
Bizzoco, N. M., 349
Björkqvist, K., 134
Black, M. C., 276
Blackmun, H., 476
Blackstone, W., 474
Blair, C. A., 367
Blair, I. V., 467
Blair, T., 499
Blake, R. R., 410, 419
Blaker, N. M., 233
Blanchard, F. A., 97
Blank, H., 11, 458
Blanton, H., 91, 103, 240
Blascovich, J., 181
Blass, T., 151, 152, 154, 167
Bleske-Rechek, A., 329
Block, J., 76
Blogowska, J., 379
Bloodsworth, K., 454
Bloom, P., 112, 366
BLS. See Bureau of Labor Statistics
Bock, J., 245
Boden, J. M., 19, 41
Bodenhausen, G. V., 38, 68, 183,
243, 258, 259
Bodford, J. E., 341
Boehm, J. K., 439
Boer, D., 330, 493, 499
Böger, A., 434
Boggiano, A. K., 108
Böhm, R., 254
Boksem, M. S., 53
Bombeck, E., 199
Bond, C. F., Jr., 204, 272
Bond, M. H., 125, 286, 329, 397
Bond, R., 148, 167
Bond, R. M., 189, 309
Bonner, B. L., 227
Bonnot, V., 270
Bono, J. E., 235
Bonta, B. D., 412
Boomsma, D. I., 434
Boothby, E. J., 204
Bootzin, R., 434
Borgida, E., 246, 266, 271, 468
Bornstein, B. H., 456
Bornstein, G., 394
NI-2 Name Index
Dasgupta, N., 258
Dashiell, J. F., 203
Dauenheimer, D., 270
Davenport, G., 153
Davey, G., 493
Davey Smith, G., 18
David, D., 66
David, M. E., 435
Davidai, S., 64
Davidson, H., 354
Davidson, R. J., 279
Davies, A. C., 323
Davies, C., 455
Davies, K., 406
Davies, M. F., 75
Davies, P., 118
Davies, T. L., 469
Davila, J., 450
Davis, B. M., 133
Davis, C. G., 65
Davis, D., 456
Davis, J. A., 193
Davis, J. H., 473
Davis, J. L., 330
Davis, K. E., 74, 96, 340
Davis, L., 211
Davis, M. H., 434
Davis, N., 154
Davis, T., 462
Dawes, R. M., 18, 41, 49, 86, 394,
395, 428, 429
Dawkins, R., 119, 259, 361, 362
Dawson, N. V., 12
Dawtry, R. J., 497
Deary, I. J., 250
De Assis, S., 138
Deaton, A., 47, 449, 492, 493
Deaux, K., 131
de Botton, A., 495
DeBruine, L. M., 319, 374, 375
DeCelles, K. A., 497
Decety, J., 29, 366
Dechêne, A., 188
DeChurch, L. A., 228
Deci, E. L., 107, 108, 314
De Cremer, D., 395
De Graaf, N. D., 379
de Hoog, N., 183
de Hoogh, A. H. B., 235
De Houwer, J., 334
Dehue, F., 277
de Lange, M. A., 57
Delgado, J., 94
DeLisi, M., 288, 301, 484
Dellande, S., 163
Del Vicario, M., 60
Demoulin, S., 256
De Neve, J., 493
DeNeve, K. M., 290
Denissen, J. J. A., 313
Dennett, D., 113, 118
Denollet, J., 438
Denrell, J., 165
Denson, T. F., 280
Department of Canadian
Heritage, 415
DePaulo, B., 450
Derks, B., 270
Derlega, V., 343
Dermer, M., 337, 498
DeRubeis, R. J., 431
Desforges, D. M., 414
de Sherbinin, A., 483
Desmarais, S. L., 463
DeSteno, D., 67, 89
Detweiler, J. B., 438
Deuser, W. E., 290
Deutsch, M., 163, 389, 394, 398,
403, 414, 420
Deutsch, R., 58
Costa, P. T., Jr., 125
Costa-Lopes, R., 249
Costanzo, M., 278, 308, 472
Costello, C., 393
Coster, H., 190
Cota, A. A., 171
Cotton, J. L., 288
Cottrell, N. B., 206
Coulter, K. S., 319
Courbet, D., 321
Cousins, N., 86
Covey, J., 64
Cowan, C. L., 356
Cowell, J. M., 366
Cox, A., 243
Cox, C. R., 56
Coyne, J. C., 432
Coyne, S. M., 294, 296
Crabtree, S., 130, 379
Cracco, E., 146
Craig, M. A., 407
Craig, W., 276
Crandall, C. S., 161, 252, 258
Crane, F., 344
Crano, W. D., 81, 83
Crawford, J. T., 238
CRED. See Center for Research
on Environmental Decisions
Crick, F., 229
Crisp, R. J., 402, 414
Critcher, C. R., 16, 64
Crocker, J., 39, 40, 65, 255, 257,
261, 267, 498
Crockett, M. J., 418
Crofton, C., 328
Croizet, J-C., 76, 270
Crompton, T., 488
Cromwell, O., 429
Crosby, B., 413
Crosby, F. J., 451
Crosby, J. R., 243
Cross, C. P., 134
Cross, S. E., 33
Crossen, C., 17
Crowley, M., 360, 377
Crowther, S., 371
Croxton, J. S., 71
Croyle, R. T., 108
Cruwys, T., 434, 451
Csikszentmihalyi, M., 499
Cuddy, A. J. C., 249
Cullum, J., 162
Cunningham, J. D., 341, 345
Cunningham, M. R., 357
Cunningham, W. A., 260
Cutler, B. L., 461, 463, 468, 469, 471
Cutrona, C. E., 448
D
Dabbs, J. M., Jr., 117, 281, 368
D’Agostino, P. R., 320
Dalgas, O., 323
Dalrymple, T., 304
Dambrun, M., 8, 153
Damon, W., 18
Dando, C., 461
Daniels, D., 124
Dannelet, M., 429
Danner, D. D., 441
Darby, J., 166–167
Dardenne, B., 249
Darley, J. M., 272, 308, 317, 367,
368, 369, 371, 373, 374,
376, 380
Darrow, C., 464, 466, 471
Darvish, Y., 262
Darwin, C., 14, 106, 113, 114, 118,
203, 307, 362
Claassen, C., 402
Clack, B., 403
Clark, G., 378
Clark, K., 241
Clark, M., 241, 342, 357
Clark, M. H., 269
Clark, M. S., 342, 343
Clark, R. D., 135, 161
Clarke, A. C., 316
Clarkson, T., 251
Clayton, S., 483, 488
Clegg, J. M., 167
Cleghorn, R., 15
Clement, R. W., 48, 259
Clemmon, M., 429
Clevstrom, J., 170
Clifford, M. M., 324
Clinton, H. R., 91, 244, 245
Clinton, W. J., 15
Clore, G. L., 334, 360
Close, G., 76
Coan, J. A., 446
Coates, B., 384
Coats, E. J., 133
Coccia, M., 284
Cohen, D., 31, 286
Cohen, G. L., 206, 270
Cohen, J., 183
Cohen, M., 154
Cohen, R., 121
Cohen, S., 199, 440, 446, 447
Cohn, E. G., 288, 289
Coker, B., 186
Colarelli, S. M., 133
Colbert, S., 485
Colby, C. A., 416
Cole, S. W., 440
Coleman, G., 266
Coleman, L. M., 333
Collier, K. L., 402
Collins, M. E., 403
Collins, N. L., 344
Colman, A. M., 219
Coloff, M. F., 461
Columb, C., 240
Colzato, L. S., 418
Comer, D. R., 211
Comey, J. B., 243
Comfort, J. C., 472
Comstock, G., 296
Confer, J. C., 119
Confucius, 60, 111, 120
Conger, R. D., 341
Conner, A., 31
Conner, M., 92
Conrad, J., 73
Conroy-Beam, D., 116
Contrada, R. J., 161
Conway, F., 194
Conway, J. R., 116
Conway, L. G., III, 399
Conway, M., 73
Cook, C. E., 344
Cook, J., 480, 484
Cook, K., 367
Cook, S. W., 97
Cooke, L., 108
Cooley, C. H., 30
Coombs, R. H., 451
Cooper, J., 82, 100, 108, 268
Cooper, R., 412
Copernicus, 232
Copper, C., 224
Corman, M. D., 281
Cornelius, T., 185
Cornwall, W., 482
Correll, J., 243, 244
Corrigan, P. W., 280
Cortland, C. I., 407
Coskun, H., 229
Centers for Disease Control
(CDC), 174, 291, 433
Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA), 121
Cerankosky, B. C., 302
Chaiken, S., 89, 175, 176, 180, 182,
191, 192
Chalmers, A., 47
Chambers, J. R., 49, 330, 399, 497
Champagne, F. A., 137
Chan, D. K-S., 342
Chan, M. K. H., 232
Chan, M. S., 198
Chance, J. E., 260
Chance, S. A., 29
Chandra, A., 262
Chang, L., 167
Chapin, J., 266
Chaplin, C., 459–460
Chapman, J. P., 426
Chapman, L. J., 426
Charles I, King, 29
Charman, S. D., 456
Charnie, J., 434
Chartrand, T. L., 57, 105, 146, 330
Chatard, A., 267
Check, J., 293
Check, J. V. P., 292
Chen, E., 449
Chen, F. F., 330
Chen, F. S., 180
Chen, H., 220, 330
Chen, J., 165
Chen, L-H., 217
Chen, S., 28, 254, 345
Chen, S. C., 203
Chen, Z., 315
Cheney, R., 283
Cheng, J., 277
Cheng, J. B., 193
Cheng, K., 54
Chermack, S. T., 280
Chester, D. S., 285
Chesterfield, Lord, 182, 260, 373
Cheung, F., 284
Chiao, J. Y., 323
Chida, Y., 438
Chiles, C., 161
Chilicki, W., 199
Chodorow, N. J., 130
Choi, D-W., 417
Choi, I., 33, 78
Choi, Y., 33
Choma, B. L., 250
Chopik, W. J., 132
Chorost, A. F., 338
Chou, H. G., 29
Chou, W. S., 238
Chow, R. M., 16
Christ, O., 402
Christakis, N. A., 146, 433, 450
Christensen, P. N., 435
Chua, H. F., 32
Chulov, M., 221
Chung, C. K., 239
Church, A. T., 45
Church, G. J., 210
Churchill, W., 175, 235, 395
CIA. See Central Intelligence
Agency
Cialdini, R. B., 98, 104, 180, 182,
185, 197, 229, 256, 365, 382,
384, 409, 415
Ciano, G., 44
Cicerello, A., 323
Cicero, 322, 465
Cikara, M., 6, 362, 409
Cillessen, A. N., 277
Cimpian, A., 266
Cioffi, D., 386
Name Index NI-3
Feinberg, J. M., 206
Feinberg, M., 184
Feingold, A., 323, 324, 325, 465,
466
Feldman, M., 117
Feldman, N. S., 266
Feldman, R. S., 82, 133
Feldman, S. S., 414
Felicio, D. M., 271
Feller, B., 413
Felson, R. B., 278
Fenigstein, A., 155, 437
Fennis, B. M., 166
Ferguson, C. J., 296, 302
Fergusson, D. M., 19, 348
Fernbach, P. M., 60
Ferriday, C., 42
Ferriman, K., 132
Ferris, D. L., 245
Feshbach, S., 199
Festinger, L., 29, 89, 100, 101–102,
104, 193, 212, 222
Feygina, I., 485
Feynman, R., 108
Fichter, J., 251
Ficks, C. A., 280
Fiedler, F. E., 233
Fiedler, L., 170
Filipovic, J., 279
Fincham, F. D., 41, 74, 97
Fincher, C. L., 328
Finchilescu, G., 298, 402, 405
Fingerhut, A. W., 135, 450
Fingerhut, H., 69
Finkel, E. J., 53, 322, 330, 346,
348, 350, 359
Finkenauer, C., 332
Fischer, A., 132
Fischer, E. F., 337
Fischer, P., 100, 298, 368, 370
Fischer, R., 47, 483, 493, 499
Fischhoff, B., 11, 60, 62
Fishbach, A., 192
Fishbein, M., 92
Fisher, H., 322, 336, 337, 338, 419
Fisher, J. D., 358
Fisher, K., 126
Fisher, R., 153
Fisher, R. P., 460, 461
Fisher, T. D., 135
Fishman, S., 398
Fiske, S. T., 8, 22, 86, 114, 155,
157, 243, 244, 245, 249, 261,
273, 274, 496
Fitzgerald, R. J., 456
Fitzpatrick, M. A., 350
Fitzsimmons, G., 359
Fitzsimons, G. J., 92
Flake, J. K., 240
Flay, B. R., 198
Fleming, M. A., 468
Fletcher, G. J. O., 68, 264, 313,
321, 333, 334, 343
Flores, A. R., 247, 318
Flowe, H. D., 461
Foa, E. B., 353
Foa, U. G., 353
Fogelman, E., 383
Follett, M. P., 416
Fontes, N. E., 469
FootPrintNetwork.org, 480
Ford, R., 241
Ford, T. E., 251
Forgas, J. P., 67, 68, 183, 357, 431
Form, W. H., 362
Forrester, R. L., 41
Forscher, P. S., 258
Forster, J., 270
Forsyth, D. R., 39, 442
Foss, R. D., 380
Eisenberg, N., 6, 358, 377
Eisenberger, R., 107
Eisenhower, D., 276
Eiser, J. R., 101
Elder, G. H., Jr., 323
Eliot, G., 329
Eliot, T. S., 84
Ellemers, N., 256
Elliot, A. J., 108
Elliott, L., 378
Ellis, B. J., 136
Ellis, H. D., 260
Ellison, P. A., 213
Ellman, L. M., 475
Ellsworth, P., 466, 470, 471,
472, 476
Elms, A. C., 158
Elson, M., 296
Emerson, D., 455
Emerson, R. W., 88, 117, 156, 232,
265, 333
Emswiller, T., 373
Eng, P. M., 447
Engemann, K. M., 325
Ennis, R., 285
Enos, R. D., 189
Enzle, M. E., 66, 469
Epictetus, 110
Epley, N., 22, 26, 30, 46, 56, 239,
434
Epstein, J. A., 199
Epstein, M., 339
Epstude, K., 64
Erb, H., 170
Erber, R., 85, 258
Erbring, L., 346
Eren, O., 466
Erickson, B., 178, 418
Erikson, E. H., 341
Eriksson, O., 148
Ernst, M. O., 229
Eron, L. D., 294, 309
Eschleman, A., 258
Escobar-Chaves, S. L., 298
Esser, J. K., 227
Esses, V. M., 242, 259, 465
Estess, F., 427
Etzioni, A., 141, 172, 415, 420,
421–422
Evans, D., 374
Evans, G. W., 205
Evans, R. I., 198
Evelo, A. J., 462
Everett, J. A. C., 379
Exelmans, L., 300
Exline, J. J., 54, 166
Eyal, T., 239
F
Fabrigar, L. R., 182
Falbo, T., 313
Falk, C. F., 45
Falkner, A., 279
Farb, N. A. S., 29
Farquhar, J. W., 190
Farris, C., 74
Farwell, L., 78
Faulkner, S. L., 209
Faulkner, W., 116
Faust, D., 427
Fay, A. J., 288
Faye, C., 22
Fazio, R. H., 91, 94, 109, 427
Feather, N. T., 8
Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI), 63, 134, 241, 252, 276
Feeney, J. A., 341, 343
Fein, S., 257, 272
Driskell, J. E., 162
Drolet, A. L., 394
Drury, J., 407
Drury, L., 402
Drwecki, B. B., 243
Drydakis, N., 247
Dryer, D. C., 331
DuBois, W. E. B., 414
Duck, J. M., 191
Dudley, K. A., 77
Duffy, M., 101
Dugan, A., 174
Duggan, M., 298
Duke, A. A., 281
Dunbar, G., 64
Dunbar, R., 394
Duncan, B. L., 264
Dunfield, K. A., 358
Dunham, Y., 254
Dunkel, C. S., 376
Dunlosky, J., 60
Dunn, D. S., 95
Dunn, E. W., 37, 52, 78, 354,
383, 496
Dunn, J. R., 418
Dunn, M., 116
Dunning, D., 16, 36, 46, 47, 48, 50,
59, 272, 461
Durante, K. M., 328
Durrheim, K., 402, 403, 404
Dutton, D., 337
Dutton, D. G., 112, 275, 375
Dutton, K. A., 39
Duval, S., 381
Dweck, C. S., 44
Dwyer, J., 371
Dye, M. W. G., 302
Dylko, I., 219
Dziurzynski, L., 131
E
Eagan, K., 130, 219, 313, 377, 424
Eagly, A. H., 89, 127, 129, 130,
132, 133, 134, 138–139, 175,
191, 192, 239, 245, 246, 324,
360, 377, 378
Earthcharter.org, 501
Easterbrook, M., 317
Easterlin, R. A., 493, 497
Eastwick, P. W., 37, 135, 322, 332
Eberhardt, J. L., 244, 264, 467
Eberle, D., 189
Ebert, J. E. J., 37
Echterhoff, G., 458
Ecker, U. K. H., 189
Eckersley, R., 494
Eckes, T., 92
Edelman, B., 242
Edelson, M., 143
Edge, N., 29
Edsall, T. B., 175
Edwards, C. P., 125
Edwards, D., 400
Edwards, J., 339
Edwards, K., 182, 468
Edwards, K. M., 292
Edwards-Levy, A., 178
Efran, M. G., 465
Egloff, B., 11
Ehrenreich, S. E., 308
Ehrlich, P., 117
Ehrlinger, J., 242
Eibach, R., 79
Eibach, R. P., 242, 250
Eich, E., 72
Eichmann, A., 152, 155
Eichstaedt, J. C., 131
Einstein, A., 276
Devenport, J. L., 464
Deveraj, S., 358
Devine, P. A., 258
Devine, P. G., 108, 258, 261, 262
De Vogli, R., 447
Devos-Comby, L., 183
Devries, K. M., 246
de Waal, F., 364
DeWall, C. N., 31, 53, 281, 314,
315, 341
Dexter, H. R., 468
Dey, E. L., 491
DeYoung, C. G., 166
De Zavala, A. G., 251
Diallo, A., 244
Diamond, J., 328
Diamond, S. S., 470
Diaz, I., 487
Dickerson, S. S., 440
Dicum, J., 346
Diehl, M., 229
Diekman, A. B., 132
Diekmann, K. A., 45
Diener, E., 93, 213, 214, 215, 280,
492, 493, 495, 499, 500, 501
Dietrich, M., 331
Dijker, A. J., 121
Dijksterhuis, A., 176
Dill, J. C., 435
Dill, K., 303
Dillehay, R. C., 477
Dillon, K. P., 296
Dindia, K., 130
Ding, W., 356
Dion, K. K., 180, 324, 338,
339, 348
Dion, K. L., 171, 325, 338, 339,
348, 407
Dishion, T. J., 219
Disraeli, B., 89
Di Tella, R., 492
Dittmar, H., 494
Ditto, P. H., 189, 238
Dixon, J., 402, 403, 404
Dobolyi, D. G., 456
Dobzhansky, T., 118
Dodson, C. S., 456
Doherty, C., 219
Doherty, T. J., 483
Dohrenwend, B., 447
Dolinski, D., 151, 156, 184,
357, 386
Dollard, J., 283
Dolnik, L., 193
Dominus, S., 147
Donaldson, Z. R., 340
Dong, P., 57
Donnelly, K., 128, 193, 244, 492
Donnerstein, E., 292, 293, 295
Donohue, J. J., 291
Doob, A. N., 63, 461
D’Orlando, F., 291
Dorr, A., 199
Doubek, J., 90
Douglas, C., 66
Douglass, A. B., 460
Douglass, F., 96
Douthitt, E. Z., 206
Dovidio, J. F., 240, 242, 254, 365,
375, 410
Dovidio, J. R., 239
Dowd, M., 398
Downing, L. L., 214
Downs, A. C., 465, 466
Doyle, A. C., 12
Doyle, J. M., 135, 455
Draguns, J. G., 434
Drake, B., 238, 241
Dreber, A., 390
Driedger, L., 414
NI-4 Name Index
Greenaway, K. H., 253, 254
Greenberg, J., 40, 51, 257,
331, 397
Greene, D., 107
Greene, E., 458
Greene, J., 362
Greenfield, P. M., 31
Greenlees, C., 211
Greenwald, A. G., 58, 59, 73,
90, 108, 239, 240, 242, 243,
244, 256
Greenwald, G., 392
Greer, G., 128
Greitemeyer, T., 100, 239, 284,
298, 301, 302, 309, 384, 385
Grewal, D., 319
Griffith, S., 166
Griffitt, W., 135, 288
Griggs, R. A., 95, 148
Grinshteyn, E., 290
Griskevicius, V., 279
Groenenboom, A., 211
Grofman, B., 476
Gronlund, S. D., 462
Gross, A. E., 328, 356
Gross, A. M., 74
Gross, J. T., 276
Gross, P. H., 272
Gross, T. F., 260
Grossman, S., 173
Grossmann, I., 30, 418
Grote, N. K., 343
Grove, J. R., 44, 428
Grube, J. W., 257
Gruder, C. L., 30
Gruendl, M., 327
Gruman, J. C., 266
Grunberger, R., 98
Grusec, J. E., 373
Grzyb, T., 156
Guadagno, R. E., 185
Guéguen, N., 186
Guenther, C. C., 468
Guerin, B., 46, 204
Guffler, K., 406
Guimond, S., 249
Guiness, O., 348
Guinote, A., 397
Gulker, J. E., 402
Gunter, B., 266
Gupta, M. D., 246
Gupta, U., 339
Gutenbrunner, L., 418
Gutierres, S. E., 328
Gutmann, D., 117
H
Ha, T., 322
Haas, A. P., 248
Habashi, M. M., 377
Haberman, C., 367
Hacker, H. M., 249
Hackman, J. R., 211
Hadden, J. K., 251
Haddock, G., 129,
195, 245
Haddon, L., 295
Haeffel, G. J., 432
Haemmerlie, F. M., 443
Hafer, C. L., 265, 266
Hagerty, M. R., 497
Hagtvet, K. A., 18
Hahn, A., 414
Haidt, J., 8, 28, 373, 415
Haines, E. L., 244
Haines, M. P., 165
Hains, S. C., 227
Halberstadt, A. G., 132
Glasman, L. R., 93
Glass, C. R., 67
Glass, D. C., 96
Gleason, M. E. J., 354
Glick, P., 134, 245, 249
GLSEN. See Gay, Lesbian &
Straight Education Network
Gluszek, A., 254
Gnambs, T., 43
Gockel, C., 211
Goel, S., 48
Goethals, G. R., 48, 49
Goethe, J. W. von, 93, 104, 186
Goetz, B., 469
Goetz, J. L., 359
Goggin, W. C., 426
Goldberg, L. R., 78
Goldenberg, L., 68
Golding, W., 213, 396
Goldman, S. K., 240
Goldman, W., 326
Goldstein, A. G., 260
Goldstein, A. P., 304, 309
Goldstein, J. H., 307
Golec de Zavala, A., 134, 194
Golomb, B. A., 282
Golub, S. A., 248
Gómez, Á., 255
Gonsalkorale, K., 315
Gonsalves, B., 458
Gonzaga, G. C., 330, 335
Gonzales, A. L., 52
Gonzalez, A., 412
González, K. V., 402
Good, A., 418
Goode, A., 378
Goode, E., 462
Goodhart, D. E., 48
Goodman-Delahunty, J., 471
Goodsell, C. A., 462
Gorbachev, M., 400, 407
Gordijn, E. H., 473
Gordon, A. M., 345
Gordon, R. A., 333
Gore, A., 408, 489
Gorman, J., 359
Gorrese, A., 130
Górska, P., 402
Gosling, S. D., 38
Gosselin, J. T., 43
Gotlib, I. H., 416, 432
Gottlieb, A., 372
Gottlieb, J., 381
Gottman, J., 350
Gough, H. G., 436
Gough, S., 157
Gouldner, A. W., 358
Gove, W. R., 450
Govern, J. M., 213
Graf, S., 406
Graham, J., 239
Graham, S., 277
Grajek, S., 340
Gramlich, J., 189
Gramzow, R. H., 41
Granberg, D., 160
Granstrom, K., 227
Grant, A., 178, 229, 378
Grant, J. M., 247
Granville, J., 81
Gray, J. D., 45
Graziano, W. G., 301
Greeley, A. M., 98, 345
Green, A. R., 243
Green, C. W., 411
Green, D. P., 411
Green, J., 78
Green, P., 307
Green, S., 325
Green, S. K., 380
Gallup, G. G., Jr., 327
Gallup, G. H., Jr., 251
Gangestad, S. W., 52, 327
Garb, H. N., 425, 430
Garcia, J. R., 322
Garcia-Marques, T., 320
Gardner, G., 500
Gardner, W. L., 130, 345, 436
Garneau, C., 341
Garner, R., 386
Garrett, B. L., 455, 456, 458
Garrity, M. J., 283
Garry, M., 458
Garver-Apgar, C. E., 331
Gates, B., 365
Gates, G. J., 62, 262
Gates, M. F., 203
Gati, I., 132
Gaucher, D., 240
Gaunt, R., 330
Gavanski, I., 38
Gavzer, B., 471
Gawande, A., 46
Gawronski, B., 38
Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education
Network (GLSEN), 247
Gayoso, A., 471
Gazzaniga, M. S., 59, 94, 455
Ge, Y., 243
Gearhart, J. P., 117
Gebauer, J. E., 40, 318
Geen, R. G., 296, 297
Geenen, N. Y. R., 354
Gelfand, M. J., 124
Geller, D., 158
Gelles, R. J., 286
Gelman, A., 193
Genovese, K., 367, 370
Gentile, B. C., 302, 384
Gentile, D. A., 52, 295, 296, 298,
299, 300, 302
Gentzkow, M., 219
George, D., 378
George, H., 148
Gerard, H. B., 159, 163, 164
Gerbasi, K. C., 472
Gerber, A. S., 496
Gerbner, G., 298
Gergen, K. E., 386
Gershoff, E. T., 286
Gerstein, L. H., 377
Gerstenfeld, P. B., 220
Gesan, A., 399
Gesch, C. B., 281–282
Geyer, A. L., 148
Ghitza, Y., 193
Ghumman, S., 259
Giancola, P. R., 281
Gibbons, F. X., 93, 356
Gibson, J. I., 402
Gibson, S., 152
Gifford, R., 263, 392, 393, 485
Gigerenzer, G., 4, 58, 59, 63, 86
Gigone, D., 221
Gilbert, L. A., 133
Gilbert, D. T., 29, 37, 38, 74, 76,
196, 259, 317, 495, 498
Gildersleeve, K., 116
Gillath, O. M., 341
Gillham, J. E., 443
Gilligan, C., 130
Gilman, C. P., 173
Gilovich, T., 26, 27, 45, 47, 60, 64,
65, 66, 79, 369, 496
Gilsdorf, E., 307
Giltay, E. J., 441
Gini, G., 309
Gino, F., 162
Giuliani, R., 408
Gladwell, M., 12
Foster, C. A., 337, 348
Fothergill, E., 444
Fothergill, M., 204
Fournier, R., 241
Fowler, A., 189
Fowler, J. H., 146, 433
Fox, G., 378
Fraley, R. C., 249
Francesconi, M., 325
Francis (Pope), 87, 313, 482
Francis of Assisi, Saint, 355
Frank, A., 105
Frank, P., 375
Frank, R., 253
Frankel, A., 51
Franklin, B., 25, 97, 460
Frantz, C. M., 399
Franzoi, S. L., 434
Fraser, S. C., 184
Frasure-Smith, N., 439
Frederick, D. A., 328
Freedman, J. L., 97, 184, 193, 205
Freijy, T., 442
French, J. R. P., 46
Frenda, S. J., 457
Freud, S., 4, 106, 268, 278, 409
Freund, B., 47
Frey, B. S., 377
Frey, J., 288
Friebel, G., 130
Friedman, H. S., 54, 331
Friedman, T. L., 283
Friedmeier, M., 132
Friedrich, L. K., 384
Frieze, I. H., 325
Frijters, P., 243
Frimer, J. A., 60, 377
Frisell, T., 280
Froming, W. J., 93
Fromm, E., 323
Fry, A., 231
Fry, D. P., 411
Fryer, R. G., 243
Fulbright, J. W., 225, 394
Fulgoni, G. M., 70, 188
Fuller, M., 280
Fuller, S. R., 227
Fulton, R., 232
Fultz, J., 365
Fumento, M., 147
Funder, D. C., 76, 85
Furnham, A., 79, 246, 266
Fürst, G., 166
G
Gabbiadini, A., 301
Gable, S. L., 343
Gabrenya, W. K., Jr., 210
Gabriel, S., 130, 313
Gaebelein, J. W., 303
Gaertner, L., 33, 45, 257
Gaertner, S. L., 242, 268, 345,
410, 414
Gailliot, M. T., 53
Gaissmaier, W., 86
Gaither, S. E., 402
Gal, D., 100
Galak, J., 16, 162
Galbraith, J. K., 493
Galileo, 232
Galinsky, A. D., 66, 418
Galinsky, E., 46
Gallagher, K. M., 184
Gallo, L., 498
Gallo, L. C., 449
Gallup, 101, 118, 192, 193, 245, 247,
262, 291, 345, 379, 400, 408,
467, 472, 486, 492, 493, 501
Name Index NI-5
Human, L. J., 51
Hume, D., 228
Hunnius, S., 146
Hunt, A. R., 128
Hunt, L. L., 322
Hunt, M., 132
Hunt, P. J., 204
Hunt, R., 247
Hur, T., 65
Hurst, M., 491
Hurt, H. T., 436
Husband, R. W., 203
Hussak, L. J., 266
Hussein, S., 101, 227, 283, 392,
400, 416
Huston, T. L., 338, 350
Hutnik, N., 414
Hutson, M., 471
Huxhold, O., 434
Huxley, T. H., 203
Hvistendahl, M., 246
Hwang, Y., 193
Hyde, J. S., 115, 129, 135, 247
Hyers, L. L., 157
Hyman, H. H., 241
I
Ibsen, H., 86
Ickes, B., 78
Ickes, W., 215, 267
Iizuka, Y., 123
Ilies, R., 356
Imai, Y., 45
Imber, L., 261
Imhoff, R., 170, 265
Inbar, Y., 8
Indo-Asian News Service, 294
Ingham, A. G., 208
Inglehart, R., 120, 128, 351, 450
Inkster, J. A., 103
Innis, M., 183
Insko, C. A., 331
Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change
(IPCC), 480
International Parliamentary
Association (IPU), 128, 133
Inzlicht, M., 269
Ireland, M. E., 106, 146
Irvine, A. A., 77
Isen, A. M., 67, 357, 358
Iso-Ahola, S. E., 169–170
Isozaki, M., 217
Ito, T. A., 281
Iyengar, S., 219, 220
J
Jäckle, S., 247
Jackman, M. R., 241
Jackson, J., 79
Jackson, J. J., 95
Jackson, J. M., 205, 209
Jackson, J. W., 264
Jackson, L. A., 324
Jackson, M., 385
Jacobi, T., 131
Jacobs, R. C., 144
Jacobson, C. K., 154
Jacobson, L., 81, 276
Jacobson, N. S., 74
Jacoby, S., 331
Jaffe, Y., 304
James, H., 329
James, S. E., 247
James, W., 104, 106, 110,
250, 314
Hines, M., 117
Hinsz, V. B., 222, 229, 305
Hirschman, R. S., 198
Hirsh, J. B., 184
Hirt, E. R., 432
Hitchcock, A., 294
Hitler, A., 41, 60, 98, 157, 176, 226,
275, 400
Hitsch, G. J., 323
Hixon, J. G., 259
Ho, A. K., 249
Ho, S. J., 330
Hobbes, T., 278
Hobden, K. L., 102
Hoberman, H., 434
Hodges, B. H., 148
Hoffer, E., 146
Hoffman, C., 38
Hoffman, L. W., 252
Hoffman, M. L., 364
Hofling, C. K., 154
Hofmann, W., 334
Hofmeister, B., 486
Hogan, R., 235
Hogeveen, J., 377
Hogg, M. A., 222, 227, 235,
254, 255
Holland, R. W., 56, 109
Hollander, E. P., 164
Hollander, M. M., 152
Holmberg, D., 72
Holmes, J. G., 72, 333, 343
Holmes, O. W., 63, 456
Holoien, D. S., 249
Holtgraves, T., 33
Holt-Lunstad, J., 435, 446
Holyfield, E., 288
Hong, S., 179
Honigman, R. J., 325
Hoorens, V., 46, 47, 318
Hoover, C. W., 381
Hooykaas, R., 87
Hopkins, A., 273, 274
Hormuth, S. E., 51
Horne, Z., 182
Horner, V., 162, 364
Hornstein, H., 278
Horowitz, L. M., 331, 341
Horry, R., 260, 456, 461, 462
Hortensius, R., 377
Horton, R. S., 329
Horwitz, A. V., 451
Horwood, L. J., 19
Hosch, H. M., 463
Hostinar, C. E., 447
Houghton, J., 480, 482, 483
House, R. J., 235
Houston, V., 324
Hovland, C. I., 182, 253
Howard, D. J., 176
Howard, J., 291
Howard, R. M., 135
Howell, C. J., 492
Howell, R. T., 492, 496
Hoyle, R. H., 330
Hsiang, S. M., 484
Hsu, H-C., 324
Huang, C., 29, 32
Huang, J., 189
Huang, K., 331
Huang, Y., 165
Huart, J., 267
Huddy, L., 260
Huesmann, L. R., 19, 280, 294,
295, 296, 309
Huff, C., 22
Hüffmeier, J., 211
Hugenberg, K., 243
Hui, C. H., 397
Hull, J. G., 95, 215, 437
Hausmann, L. M., 96
Hautziner, M., 434
Havas, D. A., 105
Havel, V., 498
Hawkins, L. B., 52
Hawkins, W. L., 469
Hawkley, L. C., 315
Hawthorne, N., 95
Hayward, L. E., 406
Hayward, R. D., 379
Hazan, C., 340, 341, 349
Hazlitt, W., 431
He, Y., 260
Headey, B., 46
Hearold, S., 384
Heath, C., 170
Hebl, M. R., 251
Hecato, 333
Hedge, A., 362
Heesacker, M., 445
Hegarty, P., 133
Hehman, E., 329, 415
Hehman, J. A., 238
Heider, F., 74
Heine, S. J., 30, 33, 34, 45,
215, 264
Heinemann, K. S., 404
Heinz, A., 281
Heisenberg, W., 8
Helliwell, J., 497
Hellman, P., 352
Helweg-Larsen, M., 132
Helzer, E. G., 36
Hemenway, D., 29, 282, 290
Henderson, M., 125
Henderson, S., 483
Henderson, T., 434
Henderson-King, E. I., 262
Hendrick, C., 338
Hendrick, S. S., 338, 344
Hennenlotter, A., 105
Hennigan, K. M., 284
Henrich, J., 24, 354
Henry, P. J., 23, 286
Henslin, M., 66
Hepach, R., 364
Hepper, E. G., 341
Hepworth, J. T., 253
Heradstveit, D., 398
Herbener, E. S., 329
Herbenick, D., 262
Herek, G. M., 402
Herlocker, C. E., 392
Herman, C. P., 204
Hernandez, A. E., 292
Hernandez, I., 60
Hernández-Serrano, O., 163
Herodotus, 264
Herring, D. R., 56
Hershberger, S. L., 361
Hershey, J. C., 266
Hertel, A. W., 104
Hertwig, R., 230
Hertz, S. G., 93
Herzog, S. M., 230
Heschel, A., 174
Heuer, C. A., 239
Hewstone, M., 74, 260, 265, 268,
404, 406, 414
Heyman, E., 240
Hideg, I., 245
Higgins, E. T., 96, 432
Higher Education Research
Institute, 491
Highfield, R., 361
Hilgard, J., 299
Hillery, J. M., 204
Hilmert, C. J., 162
Hilton, J. L., 272
Hine, D. W., 392, 393
Halberstadt, J., 326, 409
Hald, G. M., 292
Haldane, J. B. S., 361
Halevy, N., 235
Halford, J. T., 324
Halko, M-L., 134
Hall, C. C., 270
Hall, G. C. N., 297
Hall, J. A., 52, 132, 133
Hall, K. M., 496
Hall, M., 470
Hall, T., 73
Hall, V. C., 107
Hall, D. L., 250
Halperin, E., 418
Halverson, A. M., 470
Hamamura, T., 45
Hamberger, J., 406
Hamblin, R. L., 308
Hamermesh, D. S., 325
Hamilton, D. L., 65, 263
Hamm, H. K., 154
Hammond, M. D., 272
Hampson, R. B., 376
Hampton, K., 226
Hancock, J. T., 52
Hancock, R. D., 52
Hand, L., 86, 429
Haney, C., 95, 467, 470, 471,
472
Hanoch, Y., 250
Hans, J. D., 341
Hans, V. P., 473
Hansel, T. C., 408
Hansen, D. E., 379
Hansen, J., 320
Hansen, P., 324
Harbaugh, W. T., 354
Harber, K. D., 243
Hardin, G., 391
Hardy, C. L., 208, 354
Harel, Y., 276
Haritos-Fatouros, M., 156
Harkins, S. G., 193, 195, 208,
209, 211
Harkness, K. L., 431
Harley, C. D. G., 482
Harmon-Jones, E., 108, 281, 320
Harries, K. D., 288
Harris, C. R., 134
Harris, E., 428
Harris, J. R., 124, 129, 341
Harris, L. T., 244
Harris, M. J., 82
Harris, N. P., 271
Harris, V. A., 75
Harrison, A. A., 319
Hart, A. J., 243
Hart, W., 100
Hartl, A. C., 331
Harton, H. C., 162
Harvey, J. H., 345, 351
Harvey, R. J., 436
Hasan, Y., 299, 300
Haselton, M. G., 48, 85, 116, 328
Haslam, N., 2, 74, 256
Haslam, S. A., 95, 154, 221, 224,
235, 254
Hass, R. G., 243
Hasselhoff, D., 49
Hastie, R., 133, 221, 227, 464, 470,
471, 473, 474
Hatcher, J. W., 148
Hatfield, E., 106, 135, 322, 334,
336, 337, 338, 339, 342, 343
Hatzenbuehler, M. L., 247, 248
Hatzfeld, J., 97, 304
Haugtvedt, C. P., 187
Hauser, M., 112
Hauser, R. M., 22
NI-6 Name Index
Koenig, A. M., 133, 239
Koenig, L. B., 193
Koestner, R., 323
Kogan, A., 402
Kogut, T., 366
Koladny, A., 21
Kolata, G., 462
Kolivas, E. D., 74
Komorita, S. S., 394
Konrad, A. M., 132
Konrath, S., 253, 341
Konrath, S. H., 43
Koo, M., 498
Koole, S. L., 313, 319
Koomen, W., 121
Koop, C. E., 292, 293
Koppel, M., 131
Korde, R., 229
Koresh, D., 194
Koriat, A., 60
Korn, J. H., 21
Kornbrot, D. E., 431
Korte, C., 371
Kosinski, M., 131
Kossowska, M., 250
Kothe, E. J., 442
Kouchaki, M., 314
Kovar, J. L., 323
Kovera, M. B., 462, 463
Kowalski, R. M., 134, 276, 436
Krackow, A., 154
Krahé, B., 294, 296, 297, 300
Kramer, A. D. I., 146, 239
Kramer, A. E., 210
Kramer, G. P., 468
Kraus, M. W., 31, 377
Kraus, S. J., 90, 249
Krause, N., 379
Krauss, R. M., 394
Kraut, R. E., 382
Kravitz, D. A., 208
Krebs, D., 354, 355, 362
Krendl, A. C., 270
Krettenauer, T., 93
Kristof, N., 411, 483
Krizan, Z., 47
Kroeper, K. M., 134
Kroger, R. O., 125
Krosnick, J. A., 16, 193
Kross, E., 29, 435
Krueger, A. B., 88, 501
Krueger, J., 48, 85, 259, 272
Krueger, J. I., 393
Krueger, R. F., 377, 492
Kruger, J., 45, 59, 65, 346
Kruglanski, A. W., 4, 58, 90, 134,
194, 232, 277, 398
Krull, D. S., 78
Krumhuber, E. G., 491
Kteily, N., 256
Kubany, E. S., 308
Kubota, J. T., 91
Kugihara, N., 210
Kuhlmeier, V. A., 358
Kuhns, J. B., 281
Kuiper, N. A., 432
Kulig, J. W., 170
Kull, S., 101
Kumar, A., 496
Kumar, S., 446
Kumkale, G. T., 178
Kunda, Z., 258, 268, 317
Kunkel, D., 298
Kunst-Wilson, W. R., 320
Kupper, N., 438
Kurtz, J. E., 331
Kurzman, D., 378
Kuster, F., 430
Kutner, L., 301
Kuziemko, I., 497
Kenworthy, J. B., 232
Kenyon, P., 252
Kepes, S., 299
Kercher, M., 458
Kern, M. L., 126, 131
Kernahan, C., 134
Kerr, N. L., 163, 209, 211, 393,
394, 395, 469, 473, 474,
476, 477
Kerr, R. A., 484
Kesebir, S., 29, 497
Kessler, T., 414
Key, E., 304
Keynes, J. M., 81
Khrushchev, N., 421
Kiatpongsan, S., 497
Kiecolt-Glaser, J. K., 440
Kierkegaard, S., 11
Kight, T. D., 337
Kihlstrom, J. F., 29, 71
Kilburn, J., 302
Kilduff, G. J., 235
Kiley, J., 219
Kille, D. R., 57
Kim, D., 449
Kim, D. A., 146
Kim, H. S., 31, 33
Kim, S., 464
Kimbro, W., 166
Kimel, S. Y., 415
Kim Jong-un, 400
Kimmel, A. J., 22
Kimmel, H. E., 225
Kimmel, M. J., 394
Kinder, D. R., 70
King, L. A., 448
King, L. L., 332
King, M. L., Jr., 232, 235,
304
Kingdon, J. W., 45
Kingston, D. A., 292
Kinias, Z., 122
Kinnier, R. T., 65
Kinzler, K. D., 254
Kipling, R., 121, 256
Kirshenbaum, H. M., 461
Kissinger, H., 327
Kitayama, S., 31, 32, 33, 34, 35,
74, 78, 142, 318
Kite, M. E., 125
Kitt, A. S., 284
Klaas, E. T., 96
Klapwijk, A., 420
Klauer, K. C., 243
Kleck, R. E., 261
Klee, P., 256
Klein, A., 248
Klein, J. G., 332
Klein, N., 46, 354
Klein, O., 52
Klein, R. A., 21
Klein, W. M., 317
Kleinfield, N. R., 299
Kleinke, C. L., 154
Klentz, B., 329
Kline, S. L., 33
Klinesmith, J., 281
Klinger, M. R., 59
Klopfer, P. H., 203
Knewtson, H. S., 318
Kniffin, K. M., 329
Knight, G. P., 134
Knight, J. A., 317
Knight, K. M., 40
Knowles, E. D., 171
Knowles, E. S., 205
Knowles, M. L., 436
Knox, A., 458
Knox, R. E., 103
Koehler, D. J., 60, 485
K
Kagan, J., 7, 280
Kagehiro, D. K., 470
Kahan, D. M., 3, 100, 178, 485
Kahle, L. R., 92
Kahlor, L., 292
Kahneman, D., 4, 36, 37, 56,
59, 62, 64, 66, 67, 229,
230, 319, 399, 419, 428,
492, 493
Kaiser, C. R., 249
Kalenkoski, C. M., 125
Kalick, S. M., 325
Kalinoski, Z. T., 417
Kalla, J., 258
Kalton, G., 16
Kalven, H., Jr., 464, 473, 474
Kambara, T., 289
Kameda, T., 232
Kaminski, K. S., 178
Kammer, D., 78
Kamphuis, J., 279
Kanagawa, C., 31
Kanazawa, S., 323
Kandel, D. B., 331
Kandinsky, W., 256
Kang, H., 199
Kanten, A. B., 46
Kaplan, M. F., 223, 259, 466,
467
Kaprio, J., 447
Karasawa, M., 318
Karau, S. J., 209, 210, 211
Karlin, B., 488
Karna, A., 305
Karney, B. R., 333, 345, 350
Karpen, S. C., 91
Karremans, J. C., 328
Kasen, S., 117
Kashima, E. S., 31
Kashima, Y., 2, 31
Kashy, D. A., 435
Kasser, T., 489, 491, 494, 495
Kassin, S. M., 83, 458, 463, 468
Katz, E., 191
Katz, J., 371, 380, 433
Katzer, C., 276
Katzev, R., 163, 381
Katz-Wise, S. L., 132, 247
Kaufman, J., 286
Kaufman-Gilliland, C. M., 393
Kawachi, I., 449
Kawakami, K., 89, 157, 240, 260
Kay, A. C., 239, 250, 266, 485
Keating, J., 218
Keating, J. P., 193
Keeter, S., 15
Keillor, G., 46
Keith, P. M., 343
Keller, E. B., 191
Keller, H., 312
Keller, J., 270
Kellerman, J., 350
Kellermann, A. L., 291
Kelley, H. H., 83
Kelly, A. E., 448
Kelly, B. R., 285
Kelly, D. J., 260, 320
Kelman, H. C., 398, 418, 419
Keltner, D., 249
Kendrick, R. V., 38
Kennedy, J. A., 60
Kennedy, J. F., 164, 224, 225, 226,
228, 420–421
Kennedy, K. A., 398
Kennedy, R., 226
Kenny, D. A., 330, 331
Kenrick, D. T., 116, 288, 328,
330, 339
Jamieson, D. W., 82
Jamieson, J., 204
Jamrozik, A., 324
Janda, L. H., 325
Janes, L. M., 164
Jang, K. L., 138
Janis, I. L., 224, 225, 227, 228,
399, 400
Jankowiak, W. R., 337
Janoff, D., 444
Jaremka, L. M., 349, 434
Jason, L. A., 380
Jefferson, T., 9, 60, 235
Jeffery, R. W., 444
Jelalian, E., 71
Jellison, J. M., 78
Jemmott, J. B., III, 440
Jenkins, H. M., 65
Jenner, C., 115
Jensen, J., 247
Jensen, J. D., 184
Jeong, S-H., 193
Jervis, R., 69
Jetten, J., 162
Jiang, L. C., 346
Job, V., 54
Jobs, S., 229
Joel, S., 330
Johnson, A. L., 202
Johnson, B., 256
Johnson, B. T., 183
Johnson, C., 321, 456
Johnson, C. F., 472
Johnson, C. S., 403
Johnson, D. J., 329
Johnson, D. W., 16, 412, 417
Johnson, H., 342
Johnson, J. A., 95
Johnson, J. D., 297
Johnson, J. G., 295
Johnson, J. L., 472
Johnson, L., 60, 101, 224, 226, 392
Johnson, M. H., 67, 432
Johnson, M. K., 250
Johnson, R. D., 214
Johnson, R. T., 16, 417
Johnson, S. S., 354
Johnson, W., 492
Johnston, L. D., 198
Joiner, T. E., Jr., 433
Joinson, A. N., 346
Joly-Mascheroni, R. M., 145
Jonason, P. K., 342
Jones, C. R., 176
Jones, C. S., 466
Jones, E. E., 50, 74, 75, 76, 77, 96,
333, 435, 442
Jones, J., 194, 319, 330
Jones, J. M., 219, 247, 366
Jones, J. T., 341
Jones, K. J., 314
Jones, L. L., 41
Jones, M. B., 204
Jones, M. V., 205
Jones, S., 336
Jones, T., 251
Jones, W. H., 24, 348
Josephson, W. L., 297
Jost, J. T., 40, 266
Joubert, J., 163
Jouffre, S., 76
Jourard, S. M., 344
Judd, C. M., 243
Judge, T. A., 235
Jugert, P., 166
Jules, S. J., 456
Jussim, L., 9, 69, 81, 82, 85, 239,
263, 271
Juvenal, 265
Juvonen, J., 277
Name Index NI-7
Magaro, P. A., 67, 432
Magnussen, S., 463
Mahajan, N., 329
Mahalik, J. R., 130, 361
Maheswaran, D., 176
Mahoney, J., 378
Maimaran, M., 192
Major, B., 45, 448
Malamuth, N. M., 292, 293
Malaviya, P., 181
Malečková, J., 88
Maliepaard, M., 178
Malka, A., 378
Malkiel, B. G., 60
Malle, B. F., 77
Mallinckrodt, V., 199
Malloy, T., 55
Malone, P. S., 74
Malpass, R. S., 261
Mandela, N., 6, 232
Mander, A., 303
Maner, J. K., 115, 136, 279, 282,
288, 348
Manilow, B., 26
Manis, M., 96, 273
Manjoo, F., 244
Mann, L., 212, 227
Mannell, R. C., 107
Mannes, A. E., 59, 231
Mao Zedong, 275
Marcus, A. F., 448
Marcus, S., 152
Marcus Aurelius, 14, 173
Marcus-Newhall, A., 283
Mares, M-L., 296
Marigold, D. C., 41
Marin-Garcia, E., 320
Markey, P. M., 302, 331
Markle, M., 241
Markman, H. J., 350
Markman, K. D., 64
Marks, G., 48, 317
Markus, H. R., 5, 29, 31, 32, 33,
34, 35, 142
Marquis, A. R., 260
Marsden, P., 285
Marsh, A. A., 355, 357
Marsh, H. W., 29, 39
Marsh, J., 498
Marshall, M. A., 379
Marshuetz, C., 325
Marti, M. W., 476
Martin, B., 208
Martin, L. L., 85
Martin, R., 232
Martin, R. C., 307
Martin, S. J., 179
Martin, T., 467
Martino, S. C., 298
Martinovic, B., 407
Martins, N., 294
Marty, M., 24
Maruyama, G., 19, 246
Marvelle, K., 325
Marx, D. M., 238
Marx, K., 203, 284, 397
Marzoli, D., 105
Mashek, D. J., 337
Mashoodh, R., 137
Masi, C. M., 443
Maslow, A., 9
Massey, C., 47
Mast, M. S., 133
Mastekaasa, A., 450
Masters, K. S., 378
Mastroianni, G. R., 95, 155
Masuda, T., 32, 78
Masure, R. M., 203
Matheny, A. P., Jr., 280
Mathewes, C., 498
Locksley, A., 256, 271
Lockwood, P., 29
Loewenstein, D., 37
Lofland, J., 194
Loftin, C., 291
Loftus, E. F., 59, 71, 454, 455,
457, 458, 459, 463
Logan, D. D., 472
Logan, M., 429
Logel, C., 269
Loges, W. E., 239
Lombardo, J. P., 334
London, K., 468
London, P., 384
Lonner, W. J., 125
Lonsdale, A. J., 62
Lonsdorf, E. V., 130
Lord, C. G., 272
Lorenz, K., 278
Losch, M. E., 108
Lott, A. J., 334
Lott, B. E., 334
Lougheed, E., 130
Loughman, S., 256
Lount, R. B., Jr., 209
Lovett, F., 46
Lowery, P. G., 466
Lowery, W., 188
Loy, J. W., 3
Lubinski, D., 132
Lucas, R. E., 284, 497
Lücken, M., 232
Lueptow, L. B., 244
Luginbuhl, J., 472
Luhtanen, R., 40, 255
Lum, T. S., 122
Lun, J., 443
Luntz, F., 101
Luthans, F., 43
Lutsky, L. A., 36
Lüüs, C. A. E., 459
Lydon, J. E., 341
Lykken, D. T., 219, 281, 317
Lynch, J. W., 449
Lynn, M., 381
Lyons, P. A., 237
Lyons, P. M., 465, 466
Lyubomirsky, S., 448, 496
M
Ma, D. S., 244
Ma, V., 31
Maas, J., 206
Maass, A., 233, 264
Maass, S. A., 161
Macaulay, T., 365
Maccoby, E. E., 130, 218
Maccoby, N., 190, 193
MacCoun, R. J., 163, 474
MacCulloch, R., 492
MacDonald, G., 37, 189, 281
MacDonald, T. K., 36
MacFarlane, S. W., 288
Mack, D., 325
MacKenzie, M. J., 286
Mackie, D. M., 183, 259
Mackinnon, S. P., 329
MacLeish, K. T., 280
MacLeod, C., 63
MacLin, O. H., 462
Macrae, C. N., 258, 259
Macready, D. E., 448
Madden, N. A., 411
Maddux, J. E., 43, 183–184, 430
Maddux, W. W., 254, 417, 425
Madera, J. M., 133
Madon, S., 82
Maeder, E. M., 465
Lemay, E. P., Jr., 324
Le Mens, G., 165, 171
Lemmer, G., 412
Lemyre, L., 257
L’Engle, M., 85
Lenhart, A., 130, 298
Lenton, A. P., 325
Leodoro, G., 381
Leonardelli, G. F., 57, 315, 435
Leone, C., 52
LePage, A., 290
Lepper, M. R., 69, 71, 107
Lerman, D., 179
Lerner, M. J., 46, 265
Lerner, R. M., 375
Leshner, A. I., 14, 118
Leung, K., 125, 397
Levav, J., 92
Levenson, S., 379
Leventhal, H., 198, 438
Levesque, M. J., 74
Levine, H., 54
Levine, J. M., 160, 232, 233
Levine, M., 371, 374
Levine, R. V., 122, 198–199, 371
Levinson, H., 395
Levitan, L. C., 160, 200
Levy, S. R., 264
Levy-Leboyer, C., 183
Lewandowski, G. W., 328, 349
Lewandowsky, S., 189, 485
Lewicki, P., 334
Lewin, K., 400
Lewinsohn, P. M., 432, 433, 434
Lewis, C. S., 34, 103, 171, 193, 450
Lewis, D. M. G., 113
Lewis, D. O., 279
Lewis, J., 350
Lewis, M. B., 72, 241
Lewis, P., 326
Lewis, R., 338
Lewis, S. A., 416
Leyens, J-P., 256, 332
Li, C., 187
Li, H., 337
Li, N. P., 327
Li, T., 342
Li, Y., 64, 364, 485
Liberman, V., 395
Lichtblau, E., 243
Lichtenberg, G. C., 169
Lichtenstein, S., 60
Licoppe, C., 130
Lieberman, J. D., 467, 471
Liehr, P., 408
Lifton, R. J., 383
Likowski, K. U., 146
Lilienfeld, S. O., 277, 426
Lim, D. T. K., 68
Lin, D., 279
Lin, J-H., 301
Lincoln, A., 9, 235, 242, 363
Lind, A., 104
Lind, E. A., 383
Lindsay, R. C. L., 455, 462
Lindskold, S., 420
Linville, P. W., 16, 260
Linz, D., 292
Lippa, R. A., 132, 322
Lippitt, R., 400
Lipsey, M. W., 308
Lipsman, A., 70
Lit, L., 22
Liu, D., 43
Liu, J., 165
Livingston, R. W., 243, 325
Livingstone, S., 295
Locke, E. A., 233
Locke, K. D., 331
Locke, S. E., 440
L
Lacey, M., 415
Ladd, J., 378
LaFrance, M., 36, 131, 132
LaFromboise, T., 414
Lagerspetz, K., 280, 303
Lagnado, D., 227
Lai, C. K., 258
Laird, J. D., 72, 105, 350
Laird, N. M., 459
Lake, R. A., 375
Lakin, J. L., 315, 330
Lalonde, R. N., 44
Lalwani, A. K., 33
Lamal, P. A., 71
Lamb, C. S., 83
Lambert, A. J., 408
Lambert, N. M., 345
Lamberth, H., 276
Lammers, J., 8
Lamont, R. A., 269
Lamoreaux, M., 33
Landau, M. J., 257
Landers, A., 15
Landon, A., 15
Landrum, A. R., 100
Lane, D. J., 162
Langer, E. J., 66, 261
Langford, D. J., 364
Langlois, J. H., 324, 325, 326
Lankford, A., 157
Lanza, A., 299, 426
Lanzetta, J. T., 106, 407
Lao-tzu, 36, 45
Larkin, C., 46, 48
La Rochefoucauld, F., 93, 96, 334
Larrick, R. P., 288
Larsen, R., 280, 332
Larson, J. R., Jr., 219, 221
Larsson, K., 203
Larwood, L., 46
Lasgaard, M., 446
Lassiter, G. D., 46, 77, 458
Latané, B., 205, 208, 209, 210, 367,
368, 369, 370, 371, 376, 380
Latham, G. P., 233
Laughlin, P. R., 228, 229
Laumann, E. O., 74
Launay, C., 458
Lawler, A., 212
Laws, H. B., 314
Lawson, S., 463
Lawson, T. J., 26
Lay, T. C., 408
Layden, M. A., 443
Layous, K., 334
Lazarsfeld, P. F., 11
Lazer, D., 220
Leach, J. K., 65
Leach, S., 58
Leader, T., 212
Leahy, W., 60
Leaper, C., 130, 131
Leary, M. R., 18, 28, 40, 51, 100,
313, 314, 436, 442, 446
LeBoeuf, R., 74
Leckelt, M., 43
LeDoux, J., 58
Lee, F., 78
Lee, I-C., 233
Lee, R. Y-P., 329
Lee, S., 91
Lee, S. W. S., 57
Legate, N., 315
Legault, L., 54
Legrain, P., 121
Lehman, D. R., 33, 86, 264
Leippe, M. R., 455
Leiserowitz, A., 485
NI-8 Name Index
Muson, G., 294
Myers, D. G., 63, 67, 164, 217, 218,
246, 348, 450, 452, 499
Myers, G., 223, 488
Myers, J. E., 339
Myers, J. N., 230
Myers, L. B., 46
Myers, N., 487
N
Na, J., 74
Nadler, A., 215, 358, 361
Nadler, J. T., 269
Nagar, D., 205
Nail, P. R., 142, 169
Naimi, T. S., 281
Nair, H., 191
Nanjani, K., 220
Narang, P., 291
Nario-Redmond, M. R., 239
Nasby, W., 331
Nash, K., 315
National Academies of
Sciences, 482
National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA),
481, 482
National Center for Health
Statistics (NCHS), 438, 446
National Climatic Data Center
(NCDC), 482
National Council of Alcoholism
and Drug Dependence
(NCADD), 281
National Institute of Mental
Health, 296, 384
National Institutes of Health
(NIH), 438
National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Association
(NOAA), 481, 483
National Opinion Research Center
(NORC), 128, 174, 349, 351,
450, 499
National Safety Council, 4, 63
Navarrete, C. D., 259
Nawrat, R., 357
Neal, D. T., 105
Neely, R., 381
Neff, K. D., 40
Neff, L. A., 345
Neimeyer, G. J., 445
Nelson, L., 74, 261
Nelson, L. D., 326
Nelson, T. E., 272
Nelson-Coffey, S. K., 354
Nemeth, C. J., 161, 227, 228, 229,
232, 233
Nerem, R. S., 482
Nestler, S., 11
Netchaeva, E., 134
Nettle, D., 48
Neumann, R., 146
Newcomb, T. M., 212, 317
New Economic Foundation, 500
Newell, B., 227
Newman, L. S., 78
Newman, M. L., 131
Newport, F., 62, 101, 118,
241, 246
Newsome, J., 455
Newton, P., 90
Ng, W., 493
Nguyen, T., 281
Nicholson, I., 152
Nicks, S. D., 21
Nida, S. A., 314–315, 367
Nie, N. H., 346
Moghaddam, F. M., 220, 414, 415
Mojzisch, A., 228
Molander, E. A., 46
Möller, I., 296, 297, 300
Monin, B., 243
Monroe, M., 147
Montag, C., 301
Montaigne, M. de, 93
Monteith, M. J., 258, 402
Montgomery, D. A., 468
Montgomery, R. L., 443
Montoya, R. M., 319, 323, 329, 331
Moody, K., 199
Moons, W. G., 183, 188
Moor, B. G., 315
Moore, D. A., 59, 178, 281
Moore, D. L., 206
Moore, D. W., 16, 187
Moore, J., 371, 380
Mor, N., 433
Morales, L., 262
Moran, A., 371–372
Moran, G., 468, 471, 472
Morgan, C. A., III, 457
Morgan, G. S., 79
Morgan, K. L., 436
Mori, H., 105
Mori, K., 105
Morling, B., 33
Mörn, M., 188
Morris, M. W., 394
Morris, W. N., 160
Morrison, D., 292
Morrison, E. L., 326
Morrow, L., 142
Morry, M. M., 243
Moscatelli, S., 256
Moscovici, S., 8, 217, 232, 233
Moskalenko, S., 220
Moskowitz, G. B., 418
Moskowitz, T. J., 204
Moss, J. H., 136
Motherhood Project, 199, 200
Mouton, J. S., 410, 419
Moutsiana, C., 342
Moyer, K. E., 279
Moyers, B., 226
Moylan, S., 67
Moynihan, D. P., 8
Moynihan, M. M., 371
Mueller, C. M., 44
Mueller, C. W., 297
Mueller-Johnson, K., 470
Mugge, D. O., 302
Muggleton, N. K., 328
Mujcic, R., 243
Mulder, R., 483
Mullainathan, S., 242
Mullen, B., 44, 48, 162, 203, 205,
206, 209, 212, 224, 227, 303
Mullenix, J. W., 462
Muller, S., 183
Mullin, C. R., 292
Mummendey, A., 414
Munhall, P. J., 46
Munoz-Rivas, M. J., 276
Munro, G. D., 70
Murachver, T., 130
Murata, K., 473
Muraven, M., 53, 54
Murphy, C., 11, 13
Murphy, S. C., 60
Murphy, T., 90
Murray, D. R., 167
Murray, G. R., 167
Murray, J. P., 297
Murray, K. E., 238
Murray, S. L., 41, 83, 330, 333
Murstein, B. L., 323
Muscatell, K. A., 377
Mencken, H. L., 496
Mendel, R., 427
Mendonca, P. J., 442
Menninger, K., 352
Merari, A., 220
Merikle, P. M., 56
Merkel, A., 320
Mermelstein, R. J., 104
Merton, R. K., 80, 87, 284
Mesch, D. J., 378
Mescher, K., 246
Mesmer-Magnus, J. R., 228
Mesout, J., 456
Messé, L. A., 394
Messias, E., 496
Messick, D. M., 206, 397
Messner, S. F., 219
Metha, A. T., 65
Metzl, J. M., 280
Meyer, D., 90
Meyers, S. A., 336
Mezulis, A. H., 45
Michaels, J. W., 204
Michniewicz, K. S., 134
Mickelson, K. D., 341
Middendorf, K., 472
Migliaccio, N., 364
Miguel, E., 21
Miklikowska, M., 249
Mikula, G., 397
Mikulincer, M., 257, 313, 340, 363
Miles-Novelo, A., 484
Milgram, A., 150
Milgram, S., 3, 149–154, 155, 156,
157, 158, 159, 160, 162, 166, 291
Mill, J. S., 141, 226
Millar, M. G., 91
Miller, A. G., 71, 130, 152, 155, 158
Miller, C. E., 164
Miller, C. T., 69, 271
Miller, D., 261, 406
Miller, D. J., 427
Miller, D. T., 64, 265
Miller, D. W., 471
Miller, G., 328
Miller, G. E., 440
Miller, G. R., 469
Miller, J. G., 78, 359
Miller, L. C., 344
Miller, M., 290
Miller, N., 48, 187, 283, 317, 406,
414, 456
Miller, P. A., 373
Miller, P. J. E., 333, 341
Miller, R. L., 84
Miller, R. S., 53, 160, 329, 348
Miller, S. L., 244
Millett, K., 345
Mills, B. M., 316
Mills, J., 342
Milyavskaya, M., 54, 314
Mims, P. R., 360
Min, K. S., 36
Minard, R. D., 251
Ming, Y., 261
Mirabile, R. R., 200
Mirenberg, M., 319
Mirsky, S., 362
Mishna, F., 276, 309
Mita, T. H., 320
Mitchell, F., 220
Mitchell, G., 22
Mitchell, K. J., 457
Mitchell, T. R., 72
Miyake, A., 270
Mizerski, D., 199
Mizock, L., 247
Mocan, N., 466
Modigliani, A., 157
Moffitt, T. E., 54, 280
Mathieu, M. T., 38
Matsui, H., 262
Matthews, D., 333
Matthews, K. A., 449
Maugham, W. S., 328
Maurice, J., 328
Mauro, R., 470, 471, 476
Maxmen, A., 394
Maxwell, G. M., 340
Mayer, J. D., 67, 432
Mazzella, R., 465, 466
Mazzoni, G., 458
McAdams, D. P., 250
McAlister, A., 198
McAllister, H. A., 459
McAndrew, F. T., 278, 362
McCabe, D., 455
McCain, J., 282
McCain, J. L., 43
McCann, C. D., 52, 96
McCarthy, J. F., 285
McCauley, C., 220, 227
McClintock, E. A., 323
McClure, M. J., 341
McConahay, J. B., 412
McConnell, H. K., 72
McCullough, J. L., 321
McDermott, R., 280
McDonald, M. M., 328
McFall, R. M., 425
McFarland, C., 72
McFarland, S., 95, 383
McGarty, C. A., 218
McGillicuddy, N. B., 419
McGillis, D., 464
McGlynn, R. P., 229
McGovern, K .A., 56
McGowan, P. O., 137
McGrath, J. E., 202
McGrath, R. E., 125
McGraw, A. P., 64
McGraw, K. M., 261
Mcgregor, H., 305
McGregor, I., 257
McGuire, A., 198
McGuire, W. J., 171, 175, 197
McKelvie, S. J., 62
McKenna, F. P., 46
McKenna, K. Y. A., 220, 346
McKeown, S., 406
McKimmie, B. M., 232
McLatchie, N., 301
McMillen, D. L., 356, 357
McMullen, M. N., 64
McNeill, B. W., 445
McNulty, J. K., 74, 345, 350
McPherson, M., 317
McQuinn, R. D., 335, 344
McQuiston, D. E., 456
Mead, G. H., 30
Mead, M., 201
Means, B., 67
Media Insights Project, 179
Medin, D. L., 100
Medvec, V. H., 64, 65, 369
Meehl, P. E., 427, 428
Meerwijk, E. L., 115
Meeusen, C., 249
Meggs, J., 117
Mehl, M. R., 5, 313, 344
Meier, B. P., 305, 379
Meissner, C. A., 260, 457, 462
Melander, E., 128
Meleshko, K. G. A., 436
Mellers, B., 62, 224, 229, 231
Mellon, P. M., 81
Meltzer, A. L., 116, 322
Memmert, D., 149, 205
Memon, A., 425, 456, 458,
461, 463
Name Index NI-9
Pierce, K. P., 414
Piff, P. K., 377
Piliavin, I. M., 355
Piliavin, J. A., 354, 355
Pincus, H. A., 438
Pincus, J. H., 279
Pinel, E. C., 83
Pinker, S. (Steven), 113, 135,
309, 310
Pinker, S. (Susan), 132, 245, 446
Pipher, M., 434
Pittinsky, T. L., 43, 270
Pizzutti, C., 186
Place, S. S., 336
Plant, E. A., 83, 240, 243
Platek, S. M., 328
Plato, 244, 296
Platow, M. J., 146
Plaut, V. C., 31, 325
Plomin, R., 124
Plötner, M., 368
Poincaré, J. H., 14
Poling, C., 378
Polk, M., 212
Pomazal, R. J., 360
Pond, R. S., 309
Poniewozik, J., 69
Poole, D. A., 425
Pooley, E., 184
Poon, K-T., 314
Popenoe, D., 348
Pornpitakpan, C., 179
Porter, S., 458
Post, J. M., 221
Post, S. G., 354
Postmes, T., 214, 218, 228
Potok, C., 24
Potter, J., 400
Potter, S. J., 371
Poushter, J., 238
Powell, J. L., 484
Pratkanis, A. R., 51, 178, 225, 227,
359, 413
Pratt, M. W., 117
Pratt-Hyatt, J. S., 249
Pratto, F., 132, 133, 249
Predmore, S. C., 344
Prentice, D. A., 8, 129
Prentice-Dunn, S., 214
Preston, J., 400
Preston, J. L., 60, 379
Preston, S. D., 361
Price, G. H., 329
Price, H. L., 456
Priel, B., 341
Primack, B. A., 435
Prinsen, S., 165
Prinstein, M. J., 277
Pritchard, I. L., 297
Probst, T. M., 399
Prohaska, M. L., 331
Prohaska, T., 82
Prohaska, V., 48
Pronin, E., 45, 78, 80, 167, 398
Prosser, A., 374
Prot, S., 384
Prothrow-Stith, D., 416
Provine, R. R., 145
Pruitt, D. G., 394, 416, 418
Pryor, J. B., 74
Psaltis, C., 406
PsycINFO, 332
PTC, 294
Public Opinion, 46
Puhl, R. M., 239
Purvis, J. A., 344
Putnam, R., 132, 298, 346, 347,
379, 385, 407, 422
Pyszczynski, T., 51, 257, 337,
408, 433
Pashler, H., 230
Passariello, C., 170
Patall, E. A., 65
Patel, P. C., 358
Patten, E., 132
Patterson, G. R., 285, 286
Patterson, M. L., 123
Patterson, T. E., 321
Paulhus, D., 100
Paulhus, D. L., 42, 43, 68, 436
Pauling, L., 397
Paulus, P. B., 229, 230
Paul VI, Pope, 388
Pawlenko, N. B., 464
Payne, B. K., 240, 243
Payne, K., 492, 496
Payne, R., 446
Pazhoohi, F., 360
Pchelin, P., 496
Pearce, A., 219
Pedersen, A., 242, 440
Pedersen, W. C., 281, 283
Peetz, J., 36, 438
Pegalis, L. J., 344
Pegna, A. J., 328
Pelham, B. W., 41, 319, 379, 424
Pelonero, C., 367
Peñalosa, E., 500
Pence, M., 244
Peng, K., 171
Pennebaker, J. W., 5, 106, 132, 146,
313, 345, 408, 437, 448
Penner, L. A., 360, 376, 379
Pennington, N., 52, 470
Penrod, S. D., 456, 461, 471
Pentland, A., 146, 178
Penton-Voak, I. S., 327
Pepitone, A., 212
Peplau, L. A., 135, 344, 450
Pereira, C., 254
Perez, M., 132
Perilloux, C., 135
Perilloux, H. K., 328
Perls, F. S., 307
Perrett, D., 326
Perretta, S., 461
Perrin, P. B., 147
Perry, A., 122
Perry, G., 152, 153, 396
Persico, N., 325
Pessin, J., 203
Petersen, J. L., 115, 135
Peterson, C., 48, 432, 440
Peterson, C. K., 281
Peterson, E., 24
Peterson, I., 462
Peterson, J. L., 135, 298
Petraitis, J. M., 134
Petrocelli, J. V., 64
Petruska, R., 377
Pettigrew, T. F., 238, 239, 242, 251,
254, 256, 257, 264, 402, 403,
406, 407
Petty, R. E., 106, 108, 175, 176,
182, 193, 195, 211
Pew Research Center, 69, 127, 128,
219, 220, 237, 241, 247, 254,
317, 343, 346, 467, 484
Pfaff, D. W., 361
Pfaff, L. A., 134
Phelan, J. E., 246
Phillips, A. L., 499
Phillips, D. L., 399
Phillips, T., 415
Phinney, J. S., 414
Phua, J., 181
Pica, E., 465
Pichon, I., 379
Pickett, K. E., 448, 449, 496
Pierce, G. L., 467
Olson, J. M., 52, 83, 102, 109,
164, 178
Olson, K. R., 266
Olson, M. A., 38
Olweus, D., 280
Olweus, D., 277
O’Malley, P. M., 19
O’Mara, A., 39
Omarzu, J., 351
Omoto, A. M., 381
Onraet, E., 395
Open Science Collaboration, 21
Opotow, S., 383
Oppenheimer, D. M., 61, 106
Orenstein, P., 170–171
Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development
(OECD), 496
Orgaz, C., 66
Oriña, M. M., 341
Orive, R., 214
Ormiston, M., 227
Ornstein, R., 155
Orr, R., 403
Ortega, R., 276
Orth, U., 41, 430
Orwell, G., 73, 408
Osborne, D., 266
Osborne, J. W., 270
Osgood, C. E., 420
Oskamp, S., 92
Osofsky, M. J., 97
Osswald, S., 385
Osterhouse, R. A., 193
Ostrom, E., 393
Ostrom, T. M., 260, 321
Oswald, A. J., 493, 500
Oswald, F. L., 91, 240
Otten, M., 314
Overall, N. C., 272
Ovid, 323, 355
Owyang, M. T., 325
Oyserman, D., 31
P
Packer, D. J., 150, 227
Pactor, A., 378
Padawer-Singer, A., 171
Padgett, V. R., 153
Page, S. E., 227
Palazzolo, J., 466
Palin, S., 329
Pallak, S. R., 180
Palmer, D. L., 254
Palmer, E. L., 199
Paluck, E. L., 252, 396
Pandey, J., 79, 205
Panos, R. J., 245
Pantell, M., 446
Paolini, S., 406
Pape, R. A., 277
Parachin, V. M., 378
Parashar, U. D., 64
Pardini, D. A., 279
Park, B., 260
Park, D., 32
Park, G., 130
Park, H., 174, 277, 422
Park, H. S., 179
Park, J., 237
Park, L. E., 40
Parker, K., 132, 244, 310
Parks, R., 232
Parliament of the World Religions,
383
Parsons, J. T., 341
Pascal, B., 58, 445
Pascarella, E. T., 218
Nielsen, M. E., 22
Nielsen company, 293
Nielson, M. G., 378
Niemi, R. G., 128, 494
Niemiec, C. P., 314
Nietzel, M. T., 477
Nietzsche, F., 255
Nigbur, D., 92
Nigro, G. N., 253
NIH. See National Institutes of
Health
Nijstad, B. A., 229
Nisbet, E. K., 499
Nisbett, R. E., 32, 33, 77, 85, 86,
262, 286
Nix, G., 433
NOAA. See National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Association
Noble, A. M., 473
Noble, T., 309
Nock, M. K., 91
Noguchi, K., 169
Nolan, S. A., 313
Nolen-Hoeksema, S., 433
Noller, P., 341, 350, 351
NORC. See National Opinion
Research Center
Nordgren, L. F., 47, 314, 364
Norem, J. K., 48
Norenzayan, A., 122
North, A. C., 62, 176
Norton, A. T., 402
Norton, M. I., 330, 496, 497
Nosek, B. A., 38, 65, 91
Nosow, S., 362
Notarius, C., 350
Novalis, 160
Novelli, D., 122
Novotney, A., 372
Nowak, M. A., 361, 362, 393,
394
Nunez, N., 425, 468
Nurmi, J-E., 41, 436
Nuttin, J. M., 318
Nyer, P. U., 163
Nyhan, B., 189
O
Oaten, M., 54
Obama, B., 178, 188, 218, 228, 240,
241, 242, 282, 329
Obama, M., 361
O’Brien, E., 132
Oceja, L., 366
O’Connor, A., 166
O’Connor, P. J., 166
Oddone-Paolucci, E., 292
O’Dea, T. F., 194
Odean, T., 66, 134
Odgers, C. L., 284
O’Donovan, A., 439
OECD. See Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and
Development
Ohbuchi, K., 289
O’Heeron, R., 448
Ohtaki, P., 234
Oishi, S., 29, 393, 496, 497, 499
O’Keefe, D. J., 184
Okimoto, T. G., 163, 246
O’Leary, K. D., 349
Oleson, K. C., 268
Olfson, M., 438
Oliner, P. M., 384
Oliner, S. P., 384
Olson, C. K., 301
Olson, E. A., 456, 462
Olson, I. R., 325
NI-10 Name Index
Sancton, T., 371
Sandberg, L., 163
Sandberg, S., 244
Sande, G. N., 78
Sanders, B., 192
Sanders, G. S., 206, 229
Sanderson, C. A., 345
Sanderson, E., 355
Sandsmark, E., 498
Sani, F., 254, 257
Sanislow, C. A., 433
Sanitioso, R., 50
Sanna, L. J., 65
Sansone, C., 107
Santaella-Tenorio, J., 291
Santos, A., 254
Santos, H. C., 30
Sanz, V., 114
Sap, M., 126
Sapadin, L. A., 133
Sapolsky, R., 448, 449
Sarnoff, I., 351
Sarnoff, S., 351
Sartre, J-P., 1, 446
Sasaki, J. Y., 31
Sasaki, S. J., 264, 415
Sassenberg, K., 64, 254
Sato, K., 391–392
Saucier, D. A., 69, 375
Saucier, G., 125, 250
Sauer, J., 456, 461
Sauerland, M., 456
Savani, K., 54
Savitsky, K., 26, 27, 47, 64, 369
Sax, L. J., 245
Sbarra, D. A., 440, 447
Scalia, A., 302
Scarr, S., 129
Schachter, S., 164, 289, 337
Schacter, D. L., 463
Schäfer, M., 397
Schafer, R. B., 343
Schaffner, P. E., 66, 321
Schaller, M., 167, 365
Scheier, M. F., 93, 436
Schein, E. H., 98
Scher, S. J., 51
Schersching, C., 467
Schiavo, R. S., 205
Schiffenbauer, A., 205
Schimel, J., 257
Schimmack, U., 31
Schindler, O., 385
Schirmer, A., 381
Schkade, D., 37, 218, 475
Schlenker, B. R., 51, 53, 436
Schlesinger, A. M., Jr., 11, 225,
226, 232, 422
Schmader, T., 270
Schmelz, M., 364
Schmiege, S. J., 148
Schmitt, D. P., 44, 135, 136,
139, 341
Schmitt, M. T., 248
Schnall, S., 105, 373
Schneider, M. E., 358
Schneider, T. R., 438
Schoeneman, T. J., 30, 31
Schofield, J., 403
Scholl, A., 64
Schollander, D., 129
Schopenhauer, A., 425
Schroeder, D. A., 365, 382
Schroeder, J., 47, 191, 211, 404, 417
Schroeder, J. E., 323
Schuh, E. S., 244
Schultz, P., 488
Schultz-Wettel, F., 353
Schulz, J. W., 418
Schulz-Hardt, S., 227, 228
Rossi, P. H., 132
Rossiter, J. R., 178
Roszell, P., 325
Rotenberg, K. J., 83
Rotge, J., 315
Rothbart, M., 171, 260, 262, 272
Rothman, A. J., 438
Rotton, J., 288, 289
Rotundo, M., 74
Rousseau, J-J., 278
Rowe, D. C., 24, 280
Rowling, J. K., 189
Roy, M. M., 36
Royal Society, 481
Rubel, A. N., 265
Rubel, T., 133
Ruben, C., 48
Rubin, J., 285
Rubin, L. B., 133
Rubin, R. B., 420
Rubin, Z., 335, 350
Ruble, D. N., 108
Rucker, D. D., 100
Rudman, L. A., 246, 485
Rudolph, K. D., 130
Rudolph, U., 359, 360
Ruggieri, R., 130
Ruiter, R. A. C., 184
Ruiter, S., 379
Rule, B. G., 288
Rule, N. O., 58, 328, 465
Rupp, H. A., 135
Rusbult, C. E., 329, 330, 349, 350
Rushton, J. P., 280, 362, 372, 376
Rusk, D., 226
Russell, B., 52, 322
Russell, G. W., 307
Russell, N. J. C., 149
Russo, F., 434
Russo, J. E., 470
Ruva, C. L., 468
Ryan, P., 280
Ryan, R., 494
Ryan, R. M., 107, 108, 314, 354
Rydell, R. J., 269, 271
Ryff, C. D., 48, 446
S
Saad, L., 101, 174, 484
Sabini, J., 158
Sachdeva, S., 356
Sackett, A. M., 48
Sacks, C. H., 433
Sadler, M. S., 243
Safer, M. A., 72, 463, 464
Sagarin, B. J., 49, 196
Sageman, M., 221
Sagioglou, C., 284
Saguy, T., 418
Said, C. P., 327
Saitta, M. B., 132
Sakamoto, Y., 405
Saks, M. J., 464, 471, 475, 476
Saleem, M., 252, 301
Sales, S. M., 194
Salganik, M. J., 223
Salk, R. H., 129
Salman, J., 466
Salmela-Aro, K., 41
Salmivalli, C., 277, 305
Salomon, E., 184
Salovey, P., 67, 183, 357, 432, 438
Saltzstein, H. H., 163
Salvatore, J., 341
Sam, D. L., 414
Sampson, E. E., 397
Sanchez, C. A., 302
Sanchez, D. T., 250
Richardson, L. F., 388
Richardson, M., 43
Richeson, J. A., 258, 405, 406, 407
Rickey, B., 413
Ridge, R. D., 83
Ridley, M., 120
Riek, B. M., 268
Riess, M., 52
Rietzschel, E. F., 229
Riggs, J. M., 51
Rijnbout, J. S., 232
Rinderu, M. I., 484
Ringelmann, M., 208
Riordan, C. A., 44, 334
Risen, J. L., 64, 263, 404
Ritov, I., 366
Ritter, R. S., 379
Riva, P., 164, 315
Rivera, L. M., 258
Robberson, M. R., 183
Roberts, J., 63, 495
Roberts, J. A., 435
Robertson, C., 372
Robertson, I., 120
Robertson, L. A., 295
Robins, L., 451
Robins, R. W., 41, 47, 74
Robinson, J. R., 413
Robinson, M. D., 48, 280
Robinson, M. S., 433
Robinson, T. N., 309
Robles, T. F., 447, 450
Robnett, R. D., 131
Robustelli, S. L., 81
Roccas, S., 166
Rochat, F., 157
Rodeheffer, C., 301
Rodenhizer, K. A. E., 292
Rodger, E., 314
Rodin, J., 370
Roehling, P. V., 238
Roese, N. J., 11, 64, 65
Roese, N. L., 109
Roger, L. H., 414
Rogers, C., 172, 344, 361
Rogers, R. W., 183–184, 214
Roggman, L. A., 326
Rohrer, J. H., 144
Romer, D., 377
Ronay, R., 60
Roney, J. R., 116
Rook, K. S., 436, 448
Rooney, A., 333
Roosevelt, E., 9
Roosevelt, F. D., 15
Roosevelt, T., 284
Rooth, D-O., 91, 243
Rosander, M., 148
Rose, A. J., 130
Rose, T. L., 263
Rosenbaum, M., 432
Rosenbaum, M. E., 330
Rosenberg, L. A., 17, 159
Rosenblatt, A., 331
Rosenbloom, S., 52
Rosenfeld, D., 107
Rosenhan, D. L., 356, 384,
426–427
Rosenthal, D. A., 414
Rosenthal, E., 488
Rosenthal, R., 80, 81, 82, 83
Rosenthal, S. A., 43
Rosenzweig, M. R., 97
Roseth, C. J., 412
Ross, D. F., 463
Ross, J. M., 251
Ross, L., 45, 69, 70, 71, 75, 76, 78,
85, 86, 149, 418
Ross, M., 36, 45, 50, 68, 72, 73
Rossi, A. S., 132
Q
Qirko, H. N., 220
Quartz, S. R., 137
Quesnel, M., 41
Quinn, D. M., 269
Quist, M. C., 327
Quoidbach, J., 78, 495
R
Rabinovich, A., 179
Radelet, M. L., 467
Rafferty, R., 283
Raifman, J., 248
Raine, A., 279, 280
Rainey, D., 325
Rains, S. A., 169
Rajagopal, P., 65
Rajecki, D. W., 323
Ramirez, J. M., 307
Rammstedt, B., 331
Ramones, S. M., 131
Ramos, M. R., 407
Randall, P. K., 116
Randi, J., 453
Randler, C., 280
Range, L. M., 426
Rank, S. G., 154
Rapoport, A., 390
Rapson, R. L., 337
Ratliff, K. A., 65
Ratner, R. K., 222
Rato, R., 493
Rawls, J., 397
Rawn, C. D., 51
Rawson, K. A., 60
Raymond, P., 74
Raynor, D. A., 54
Read, J. D., 463
Read, S. J., 60
Reagan, R., 193, 400, 407, 408, 421
Reber, J. S., 83
Redick, C., 429
Reed, D., 251
Reed, G., 95
Reed, S., 117
Reese, P. W., 413
Regan, D. T., 94, 193
Regan, P. C., 334
Regier, D., 451
Reicher, S. D., 95, 154, 214,
221, 374
Reid, C. A., 329
Reid, P., 298
Reifler, J., 189
Reijntjes, A., 314
Reiner, W. G., 117
Reis, H. T., 129, 205, 317, 320, 321,
337, 343, 344, 435
Reisenzein, R., 289
Reiss, S., 434
Reitzes, D. C., 251
Remley, A., 422
Rempel, J. K., 341, 343
Renaud, H., 427
Renshon, J., 399
Reuters, 241
Reysen, S., 170
Rhodes, G., 326, 327
Rhodes, M. G., 260
Rhodewalt, F., 51, 442
Rholes, W. S., 78, 96
Rice, B., 45
Rice, M. E., 373
Richards, K., 324
Richards, Z., 268
Richardson, D. S., 134
Richardson, J. D., 69
Name Index NI-11
Staub, E., 156–157, 255, 303, 365,
371, 372, 383, 384, 385, 398
Stavrova, O., 380
Steblay, N. K., 456, 460, 462
Steblay, N. M., 362, 468
Steele, C. M., 30, 108, 109, 269,
270, 271
Steen, T. A., 432
Steers, M. N., 29, 496
Stefan, S., 66
Steffen, P. R., 378
Stegall, A., 299
Stein, A. H., 384
Stein, S., 180
Steinhauer, J., 16
Stellar, J. E., 377
Stelter, B., 213
Stenseng, F., 314
Stephan, C. W., 403, 466
Stephan, W. G., 402, 407, 466
Stephens, N. M., 167
Stephens-Davidowitz, S., 35,
239, 246
Steptoe, A., 438
Sternberg, R. J., 275, 335, 336,
340, 350
Stevenage, S. V., 462
Stewart-Williams, S., 361
Stiles, W. B., 432
Stillinger, C., 418
Stillwell, D., 131
Stinson, D. A., 83, 84, 435
Stinson, V., 464
Stiwne, D., 227
St. John, H., 498
Stockdale, L. A., 295
Stockholm International
Peace Research Institute
(SIPRI), 388
Stocks, E. L., 365
Stok, F. M., 170
Stokes, B., 486
Stoltenberg, C. D., 445
Stone, A. A., 501
Stone, A. L., 67
Stone, J., 269, 270
Stone, L., 348
Stone, M. H., 279, 280
Stoner, J. A. F., 216
Storms, M. D., 205
Storr, W., 315
Stouffer, S. A., 284, 402
Stout, J. G., 252
Stoverink, A., 407
Stowell, J. R., 162
Strack, F., 58, 146
Strack, S., 432
Strasser, A. A., 183
Straus, M. A., 286
Strauss, L., 121
Straw, M. K., 370
Strenta, A., 261
Strick, M., 179, 183
Stroebe, W., 203, 229
Stroessner, S. J., 259
Strong, G., 337
Strong, S. R., 442, 445
Stroud, J. N., 260
Stroufe, B., 360
Strube, M. J., 203
Stulp, G., 138
Su, R., 132
Subramanian, A., 246
Sue, S., 468
Suedfeld, P., 371
Sugden, N. A., 260
Sugimori, S., 232
Sullivan, D., 122
Suls, J., 30, 47
Summers, G., 266
Smith, A. E., 470, 471
Smith, C., 354
Smith, C. T., 179
Smith, D. E., 154
Smith, E., 226
Smith, H., 210
Smith, J., 212
Smith, L. G. E., 218
Smith, M. B., 9
Smith, P. B., 2, 148, 167, 235
Smith, P. M., 257
Smith, R. H., 29
Smith, S. G., 446
Smith, S. J., 402
Smith, S. L., 239, 382
Smith, T. W., 437, 444
Smith, V. L., 468
Smoreda, Z., 130
Snell, J., 319
Snibbe, A. C., 449
Snodgrass, M. A., 435
Snyder, C. R., 46, 170, 437
Snyder, M., 52, 64, 83, 92, 360,
381, 427
Snyder, M. L., 51
Sofer, C., 320
Solano, C. H., 344
Solberg, E. C., 284
Solnick, S. J., 29, 282
Solomon, H., 381
Solomon, L. Z., 381
Somaiya, R., 212
Sommer, F., 314
Sommers, S. R., 402, 466, 473
Sommerville, J. A., 29
Song, H., 435
Sonne, J., 444
Sontag, S., 302
Sophocles, 182
Soral, W., 252
Sorhagen, N. S., 81
Sorokowska, A., 122
Sorokowski, P., 326
Southern Poverty Law Center, 252
Sowislo, J. F., 41, 430
Sparkman, D. J., 406
Sparkman, G., 384
Sparrell, J. A., 48
Spears, R., 49, 214
Spector, P. E., 234
Speer, A., 226
Spence, A., 91
Spencer, H., 182
Spencer, S. J., 257, 258, 269, 271
Speth, J. G., 489
Spiegel, H. W., 48
Spielmann, S. S., 349
Spisak, B. R., 134
Spitz, H. H., 81
Spitzberg, B. H., 436
Spivak, J., 210
Sporer, S. L., 178, 260, 455, 456
Sprecher, S., 339, 344
Srivastava, S., 83
Stack, L., 465
Stack, S., 147
Stadler, S. J., 288
Stahelski, A. J., 83
Stajkovic, A., 43
Stalder, D. R., 367
Stalin, J., 275
Stangor, C., 404
Stanley, D., 91
Stanovich, K. E., 85, 399
Stanton, S. J., 282
Stark, R., 194
Starks, T. J., 341
Starmans, C., 397
Stasser, G., 221, 474
Statistics Canada, 134, 174
Sherman, J. W., 259, 262, 263
Sherman, L. E., 435
Sherman, S. J., 63
Shermer, M., 411
Shih, M., 270
Shiller, R., 81
Shin, H., 122
Shipman, P., 113
Short, J. F., Jr., 286
Shostak, M., 338
Shotland, R. L., 370
Shovar, N., 53
Showers, C., 48
Shrauger, J. S., 48, 333
Shriver, E. R., 260
Shteynberg, G., 217
Shutts, K., 241
Sias, R. W., 318
Sibley, C. G., 266
Sicoly, F., 50
Sidanius, J., 133, 134, 249
Siegel, M., 291, 482
Siegelman, J., 194
Siegers, P., 380
Sieverding, M., 148
Sigall, H., 334
Sigurdson, J. F., 276
Silk, J. B., 362
Silke, A., 214
Silva, K., 145
Silver, M., 158, 256
Silver, N., 193
Silver, R. C., 45
Silver, S., 231
Silverman, A. M., 270
Silverman, J., 313
Silvia, P. J., 161
Simmons, C. H., 265
Simon, B., 232
Simon, H. A., 85
Simon, P., 16
Simonsohn, U., 319
Simonton, D. K., 235
Simpson, J. A., 149–152, 329,
341, 349
Sinclair, S., 249
Singer, B., 446
Singer, J. E., 289, 337
Singer, M., 194
Singer, T., 132
Singh, D., 116, 328
Singh, J. V., 235
Singh, P., 339
Singh, R., 330
SIPRI. See Stockholm
International Peace Research
Institute
Sittser, G. L., 65
Sivacek, J. M., 394
Sivarajasingam, V., 282
Six, B., 92
Skaalvik, E. M., 18
SkepticalScience.com, 480
Skitka, L. J., 76, 79, 253, 330, 359
Skowronski, J. J., 205
Slatcher, R. B., 345
Slater, M., 152
Slavin, R. E., 411, 412
Slepian, M. L., 57
Sloan, R. P., 266
Slopen, N., 440
Slotow, R., 303
Slotter, E. B., 28, 345, 349
Slovic, P., 11, 85, 383
Smalarz, L., 454, 456, 460
Smedley, J. W., 241
Smelser, N. J., 220
Smidt, C. D., 219
Smidts, A., 178
Smith, A., 48, 392
Schuman, H., 16, 193
Schuman, R., 348
Schumann, K., 379
Schupp, J., 331
Schuster, A. M. H., 212
Schwartz, B., 107
Schwartz, H. A., 130, 131
Schwartz, J., 462
Schwartz, M. F., 357
Schwartz, S. H., 133, 359, 372
Schwarz, N., 57, 67, 189
Schweers, D., 131
Schweitzer, M. E., 418
Schwinger, M., 51
Scoboria, A., 71
Scott, B., 486
Scott, J., 193
Scott, R. F., 233
Seabright, P., 130
Searcy, T., 170
Searle, R., 116
Sears, D. O., 70, 193
Sears, R., 253
Sedikides, C., 44, 45, 46, 50, 260
Segal, H. A., 98
Segal, N. L., 361
Segal-Caspi, L., 324, 325
Segall, M. H., 135
Segerstrom, S., 48, 440, 441
Seibt, B., 270
Seidel, E., 45
Sejnowski, T. J., 137
Selby, J. W., 466
Seligman, M. E. P., 18, 131, 433,
439, 440
Sen, S., 179
Senate Committee on the
Judiciary, 294
Sendén, M., 45
Seneca, 50, 344, 448
Sengupta, S., 408
Senter, M. S., 241
Sentis, K. P., 397
Sentyrz, S. M., 215
Sevelius, J. M., 115
Sezer, O., 51
Shackelford, T. K., 323
Shaffer, D. R., 344
Shah, A., 131
Shah, A. K., 61
Shakespeare, W., 35, 84, 93, 133,
164, 168, 182, 221, 289
Shakya, H. B., 450
Shapiro, D. L., 420
Shapiro, P. N., 256, 267, 407
Shariff, A. F., 56, 379
Sharot, T., 103
Sharpe, D., 22
Shatford, R., 461
Shaver, P. R., 257, 340, 344, 349
Shaw, G. B., 252
Shaw, J., 458, 459–460
Shaw, M. E., 202
Shayo, M., 466
Sheatsley, P. B., 98, 241
Sheehan, E. P., 323
Sheese, B. E., 301
Sheldon, K. M., 314, 494
Shell, R. M., 358
Shelton, J. N., 405, 406
Shen, H., 359
Sheppard, B. H., 459
Shepperd, J. A., 30, 47, 51, 60, 436
Shergill, S. S., 391
Sherif, C. W., 144
Sherif, M., 143–144, 159, 395–396,
407, 409, 410, 411
Sherman, A., 247
Sherman, D. A., 272
Sherman, D. K., 33, 270, 399
NI-12 Name Index
Vargas, R. A., 164
Varnum, M. E. W., 30, 31, 148, 167
Vartanian, L. R., 149
Vasquez, E. A., 283
Västfjäll, D., 383
Vatiné, E., 153
Vaughan, K. B., 106
Vedantam, S., 55
Veitch, R., 288
Velez, J. A., 302
Ventis, W. L., 251
Verhulst, B., 160
Verkuyten, M., 178, 255, 407
Verplanken, B., 176
Vescio, T. K., 249
Veysey, B. M., 219
Vezzali, L., 402
Vidmar, N., 459, 476
Vignoles, V., 317
Viken, R. J., 65
Vilnai-Yavetz, I., 132
Vinokur, A., 222
Vinsel, A. M., 122
Virgil, 178, 325
Virtanen, S., 260
Visher, C. A., 455, 464
Visintainer, M. A., 439, 440
Visser, P. S., 200
Vitelli, R., 21
Vohs, K. D., 11, 51, 52, 135, 136,
332, 494
Voigt, R., 243
Vollhardt, J. R., 406
Vollmer, C., 280
Vollrath, D. A., 474
Von Arnim, E., 83
von Hippel, F. N., 63
von Hippel, W., 258
Vonn, L., 64
Vorauer, J. D., 41, 222, 262, 264,
405, 415
Voss, A., 243
Vrij, A., 457
Vukasović, T., 124
Vul, E., 230
W
Wachtler, J., 233
Wade, K. A., 457
Wade, L., 136
Wadsworth, T., 30
Wagner, G., 488
Wagner, U., 239, 406, 412, 418
Wagstaff, G. F., 79
Waldman, I. D., 280
Walfish, S., 425
Walinsky, A., 310
Walker, I., 242
Walker, L. J., 377
Walker, P. M., 260
Walker, R., 189
Wallace, D. B., 458
Wallace, D. S., 92
Wallace, M., 155
Wallbom, M., 93, 215
Wallen, K., 135
Wallenberg, R., 384, 385
Waller, J., 97, 158, 164
Walster, E. H., 324
Walster, G. W., 332
Walster, W., 334
Walster (Hatfield), E., 321, 397
Walters, R. H., 286, 296
Walther, E., 176
Walther, J., 52
Walton, G. M., 270, 384
Walum, H., 340, 342
Wan, L., 260
Tsutsumi, M., 123
Tuan, Y-F., 214
Tubb, V. A., 463
Tubbs, M., 123
Turner, B., 464–465
Turner, C. W., 294
Turner, J. C., 8, 254, 255
Turner, M. E., 51, 225, 227, 359, 413
Turner, N., 235
Turner, R. N., 402
Turowetz, J., 152
Tutu, D., 172
Tversky, A., 59, 62, 66, 67, 85, 229,
230, 419
Twain, M., 13, 333, 339, 423
Twenge, J. M., 5, 18, 31, 47, 128,
139, 151, 174, 193, 219, 313,
314, 422, 424, 435, 450,
491, 499
Ty, A., 355
Tykocinski, O. E., 239
Tyler, J. M., 52, 105
Tyler, T. R., 383
Tyson, M., 288
Tzeng, M., 348
U
Uchino, B. N., 447, 448
Ugwuegbu, C. E., 466
Uleman, J. S., 74
Ungar, L. H., 131
Unger, R. K., 9, 354
United Nations (UN), 125, 246,
247, 482
Unkelbach, C., 68, 149, 205
Unsworth, N., 302
Updegraff, J. A., 184
U.S. Department of Justice, 460
U.S. Supreme Court, 462, 472,
475, 476, 478
Ustinov, P., 316
Uysal, A., 344
V
Väänänen, A., 447
Vaillant, G. E., 72, 439, 447
Vala, J., 259
Valdesolo, P., 89
Valentine, T., 456, 461
Vallacher, R. R., 317
Vallone, R. P., 60, 69, 70, 77
Vanable, P. A., 437
van Baaren, R. B., 146, 330
Van Bavel, J. J., 6, 260
VanDellen, M. R., 40
Vandello, J. A., 31, 134, 286
VanderLaan, B. F., 429
van der Linden, S., 197
van der Pligt, J., 16
Vanderslice, V. J., 234
Van der Velde, S. W., 146
Vander Ven, T., 283
van de Ven, N., 205
Van de Vliert, E., 483
van de Vyver, J., 395
van Dijk, W. W., 37, 40
van Emmerick, A. A., 448
van Hemmen, J., 117
Van Lange, P. A. M., 417, 420
van Prooijen, J., 250
van Schaik, J. E., 146
van Straaten, I., 323
Van Tongeren, D. R., 250
van Veluw, S. J., 29
Van Vugt, M., 134, 354
Van Yperen, N. W., 342, 343
Tetlock, P. E., 96, 228, 243, 359,
399–400, 418
Thakar, M., 339
Thaler, R. H., 16
t’Hart, P., 227
Thatcher, M., 285
Theiss, A. J., 82
Thelwall, M., 345
Theroux, P., 72
Thomas, A., 336
Thomas, E. F., 218
Thomas, G. C., 205
Thomas, L., 275
Thomas, S. L., 297
Thomas, W. N., 463
Thomas à Kempis, 236
Thompson, D. V., 181
Thompson, L., 72, 416
Thompson, L. L., 257
Thompson, S. H., 130
Thompson, W. C., 356, 476
Thomson, J. A., Jr., 433
Thomson, R., 130
Thoreau, H. D., 71
Thorne, A., 436
Thornhill, R., 327
Thornton, B., 328
Tice, D. M., 51
Tideman, S., 499
Tidwell, N. D., 135, 329
Tiedens, L. Z., 134
Tierney, J., 18, 53, 54, 393
Tiffert, S., 132
Tiihonen, J., 280
Tilcsik, A., 247
Timberlake, J., 31
Time, 16
Timmerman, T. A., 283
Tindale, R. S., 474
Titus, L. J., 204
Toburen, T., 379
Tocqueville, A. de, 172
Todd, A. R., 418
Todorov, A., 74, 323, 327
Tolstoy, L., 78, 97, 325, 329
Tomasello, M., 107, 202, 364
Tompson, T., 241
Toner, K., 250
Topolinski, S., 105
Tormala, Z. L., 179
Toro-Morn, M., 339
Toronto News, 44
Totterdell, P., 146
Towers, S., 147
Towles-Schwen, T., 91
Townsend, E., 91
Towson, S. M. J., 466
Tracy, J. L., 257
Trail, T. E., 106, 403
Tran, C., 336
Travis, L. E., 203
Trawalter, S., 258
Tredoux, C., 402, 403
Trew, J. L., 442
Triandis, H. C., 30, 33, 90, 122,
339, 348, 414
Triplett, N., 202
Trivedi, N., 124
Trivers, R., 362
Trolier, T. K., 65
Tromholt, M., 29
Tropp, L. R., 242, 402, 404
Trost, M. R., 232, 339
Truman, H., 228
Trump, D. J., 15, 116, 189, 192,
252, 332, 400
Trump, M., 323
Tsang, J-A., 158
Tsarnaev, D., 220
Tsarnaev, T., 220
Sun, C., 292
Sundie, J. M., 116
Sunstein, C. R., 217, 218, 220,
227, 475
Surowiecki, J., 230
Sussman, N. M., 168
Susukida, R., 438
Sutton, D., 166
Sutton, R., 266
Suzuki, I., 262
Svenson, O., 46
Swami, V., 238
Swann, W. B., Jr., 39, 41, 50, 60,
92, 255, 333, 344, 350, 427
Swanson, J. W., 280
Swap, W. C., 320
Sweeney, J., 209
Sweeney, K., 100
Sweeney, P. D., 432
Swets, J. A., 427
Swift, J., 72, 171, 251
Swift, S. A., 178
Swim, J. K., 129, 157, 244, 246,
261, 488, 489
Symons, D., 136
Szczuka, K., 184
Szent-Györgyi, A. von, 203
Szymkow, A., 57
T
Tafarodi, R. W., 33
Tajfel, H., 8, 233, 254, 256
Takada, M., 473
Takahashi, K., 336
Tale-Yax, H. A., 369
Talhelm, T., 31
Tamres, L. K., 130
Tan, H. H., 211
Tan, M. L., 211
Tang, L., 195
Tang, S-H., 107
Tankard, M. E., 252
Tanke, E. D., 476
Tanke, T. J., 476
Tannenbaum, M. B., 183
Tanner, R. J., 146
Tapp, J. L., 476
Tarrant, M., 362, 399
Taub, A., 250
Tavris, C., 101
Tay, L., 492, 493
Tayeb, M., 235
Taylor, D. A., 344
Taylor, J., 90
Taylor, K. M., 30
Taylor, L. S., 323
Taylor, M., 171
Taylor, S., 130, 431, 433
Taylor, S. E., 47, 48, 67, 98, 260,
261, 338, 432, 448
Taylor, S. P., 280
Technical Working Group for
Eyewitness Evidence, 460
Tedeschi, J. T., 100
Teger, A. I., 392
Teigen, K. H., 12, 46, 65
Tellegen, A., 317
Tenney, E. R., 456
Tennov, D., 357
Teoh, J. B. P., 330
Terenzini, P. T., 218
Teresa, Mother, 376, 383
Teri, L., 434
Tesch, F., 30
Tesser, A., 39, 96, 222, 256
Test, M. A., 372
Testa, M., 280
Testa, R. J., 115
Name Index NI-13
Yee, L., 301
Yee, N., 181
Yelsma, P., 339
Yildiz, A. A., 255
Yinon, Y., 304
You, D., 130
Young, J. E., 434
Young, L. J., 338, 340
Young, R. D., 437
Young, S. G., 260
Younger, J., 315
Yourish, K., 219
Yousif, Y. H., 362, 371
Youyou, W., 329
Yovetich, N. A., 350
Yu, F., 31
Yukl, G., 416
Yzerbyt, V. Y., 332
Z
Zaalberg, A., 282
Zadro, L., 315
Zagefka, H., 359, 374, 496
Zainulbhai, H., 246
Zajonc, R. B., 203, 207, 221, 304,
318, 320
Zak, P. J., 418
Zakaria, F., 277
Zaki, J., 143, 165
Zanna, M. P., 52, 129, 245, 268,
285, 466
Zaragoza, M. S., 457
Zarkadi, T., 461
Zaval, L., 485
Zavalloni, M., 217
Zebrowitz, L. A., 328, 403
Zebrowitz-McArthur, L., 78, 465
Zeelenberg, M., 65
Zeisel, H., 464, 473, 474
Zelenski, J. M., 499
Zell, E., 129
Zerjal, T., 115
Zhang, D. D., 483
Zhang, P., 162
Zhang, Q., 64
Zhang, S., 33
Zhang, Y. F., 487
Zhong, C-B., 57, 213, 315, 435
Zhou, X., 435
Zhu, L., 395
Zhu, W. X., 246
Zhu, Y., 33
Zick, A., 250
Zickafoose, D. J., 456
Zigler, E., 286
Zill, N., 298
Zillmann, D., 289, 296,
297, 328
Zimbardo, P. G., 95–96, 213–214,
386, 399, 437
Zimmer, C., 29, 362
Zimmerman, G., 467
Ziskin, J., 427
Zitek, E. M., 251
Zola-Morgan, S., 320
Zotto, M., 328
Zou, D., 162
Zuckerman, E. W., 40
Zumbrun, J., 448
Zussman, A., 466
Zuwerink, J. R., 258
Wiseman, R., 465
Wisman, A., 313
Wittenberg, M. T., 435
Wixon, D. R., 72
Wixted, J. T., 456
Wodehouse, P. G., 357
Wohl, M. J. A., 66, 408
Wojciszke, B., 334
Wolf, S., 468
Wolf, W., 315
Wolfe, C., 39
Wolfe, M. B., 72
Wollmer, M. A., 105
Wondergem, T. R., 132
Wong, E. M., 233
Wong, J. S., 411
Wood, A. M., 496
Wood, C., 92
Wood, J. V., 41
Wood, L. A., 125
Wood, O., 177
Wood, W., 92, 127, 134, 138–139
Woodward, M., 234
Woodward, W., 234
Woodzicka, J. A., 36
Woolley, A. W., 227
Wootton-Millward, L., 260
Worchel, P., 284
Worchel, S., 205, 211, 411
Word, C. O., 268
Workman, E. A., 108
World Bank, 133
World Health Organization
(WHO), 276
World Meteorological
Organization, 481
Worringham, C. J., 206
Wotman, S. R., 349
Wozniak, S., 229
Wraga, M., 270
Wright, D. B., 260, 457, 470
Wright, E. F., 229
Wright, F. L., 43
Wright, J., 49
Wright, P. J., 292
Wright, R., 115, 220
Wright, S. C., 402
Wrightsman, L. S., 468
Wrzesnieski, A., 107
Wu, A., 126
Wu, B-P., 167
Wu, S., 302
Wuebbles, D. J., 480, 482
Wurf, E., 29
Wylie, R. C., 46
Wynn, K., 329
X
Xie, Y., 143
Xu, H., 356
Xu, Y., 171
Y
Yamagishi, T., 51
Yamaguchi, S., 45
Yang, B. Z., 137
Yaniv, D., 418
Yarmey, A. D., 460
Ybarra, M. L., 292, 295, 301
White, M. J., 377
White, P., 468
White, R. K., 400
Whitechurch, E. R., 332
Whitehead, A. N., 13, 92
Whitley, B. E., Jr., 455
Whitman, R. M., 427
Whitman, W., 92, 316
Whitson, J. A., 66
WHO. See World Health
Organization
Wicker, A. W., 89
Wicklund, R. A., 356
Widom, C. S., 286
Wiebe, D. J., 291
Wiegman, O., 177
Wiesel, E., 352
Wieselquist, J., 342
Wike, R., 237
Wilberforce, W., 251
Wilder, D. A., 160, 256, 260,
267, 407
Wildschut, T., 396
Wilford, J. N., 118
Wilk, S. L., 209
Wilkes, J., 278
Wilkinson, G. S., 362
Wilkinson, R. G., 448, 449, 496
Wilkowski, B. M., 280
Willard, G., 41
Willems, S., 320
Willer, R., 184
Williams, A. L., 183
Williams, D. K., 186
Williams, E. F., 47
Williams, J. E., 125, 133, 244
Williams, K., 208, 314
Williams, K. D., 209, 210, 211,
314–315, 396
Williams, K. M., 42
Williams, M. J., 134, 264
Williams, R., 147
Williams, R. L., 108
Williams, T. J., 72
Williams, W., 246
Willis, F. N., 154
Willis, J., 74
Willoughby, B. J., 136
Willoughby, T., 300, 302
Wilson, A. E., 45
Wilson, B. J., 294
Wilson, D., 453–454
Wilson, D. K., 438
Wilson, D. S., 362
Wilson, E. O., 360, 362, 502
Wilson, G., 116
Wilson, J. P., 239, 377, 465
Wilson, M., 367
Wilson, R. S., 280
Wilson, S., 220
Wilson, S. J., 308
Wilson, T. D., 37, 38, 495
Wiltze, A., 230
Winch, R. F., 331
Windschitl, P. D., 49
Winegard, B., 409
Wines, M., 63
Wingate, V. S., 309
Winquist, J. R., 219, 433
Winseman, A. L., 379
Winter, F. W., 321
Wirth, J. H., 335
Wise, R. A., 463
Wang, R., 494
Wang, T., 163
Wang, X., 44, 491
Wang, Z., 29
Wangchuk, J. S., 499
Wänke, M., 320
Ward, A., 418
Ward, C., 264
Ward, W. C., 65
Wareham, J., 314
Warneken, F., 107
Warnick, D. H., 229
Warr, P., 446
Washington, J., 378
Washington, K. N., 341
Waters, E. A., 47
Waters, N. L., 473
Watkins, D., 130
Watkins, E. R., 433
Watson, D., 78, 331
Watson, J., 229
Watson, M., 409
Watson, R. I., Jr., 214
Watt, S. E., 46, 48, 313
Waytz, A., 399
Wearing, A., 46
Weary, G., 52
Weaver, J. B., 296
Webb, C. E., 57, 418
Weber, A. L., 345
Weber, N., 461
Webley, K., 246
Webster, C. D., 465
Webster, D. M., 232
Weeks, J. L., 365
Wegener, D. T., 187
Wegner, D. M., 258, 436
Wehbe, M. S., 169
Wehr, P., 419
Weichselbaumer, D., 247
Weick, M., 58
Weigold, M. F., 51
Weiner, B., 73, 78, 79, 284, 359
Weiner, J., 90
Weinstein, N., 47, 354
Weis, R., 302
Weischelbaum, S., 354
Welch, D. T., 156
Welker, K. M., 344
Wells, B. M., 205
Wells, G. L., 106, 454, 455, 456,
459, 460, 461, 462
Welzel, C., 120, 128
Wenzelburger, G., 247
Wenzlaff, R. M., 331
Werner, C. M., 186, 472
Wertheim, L. J., 204
Wesselmann, E. D., 314
West, R. F., 85
West, S. G., 253, 360
Westwood, S. J., 220
Weyant, J. M., 382
Whang, W., 439
Whatley, M. A., 358, 359
Wheeler, L., 30, 323
Whillans, A. V., 496
Whitaker, J. L., 301
Whitchurch, E., 30, 46
White, G. L., 323, 337
White, J. W., 134
White, K., 33
White, L., 339
White, M. H., 252
SI
Subject Index/Glossary
A
ABCs of attitudes, 89
accentuation effect, 218
acceptance: Conformity that involves both
acting and believing in accord with social
pressure, 142. See also conformity
achievement. See performance or achievement
adaptation-level phenomenon: The tendency to
adapt to a given level of stimulation and thus
to notice and react to changes from that
level, 495–496
additive tasks, 207–208
advertising. See also persuasion
inoculating children against, 198–200
advice, professional, values in, 9
affective forecasting, 37
age
of audience, in persuasion, 192–193
in own-age bias, 260
prejudice based on, 238
aggregation, principle of, 92
aggression: Physical or verbal behavior
intended to hurt someone. In laboratory
experiments, this might mean delivering
electric shocks or saying something
likely to hurt another’s feelings, 134,
275–311
approaches to reducing, 306–310
arousal in, 289–290
aversive incidents in, 287–289
as biological phenomenon, 278–282
cues for, 290–291
definition of, 277–278
electric shock experiment on, 21
empathy-induced altruism and, 365–366
evolutionary psychology on, 115
gender differences in, 115, 116, 117, 134
group influences on, 303–306
hormones in, 116–117
media influences on, 291–303
narcissism and, 42–43
in prejudice, 253–254
as response to frustration, 282–285
rewards of, 285
social learning in, 285–287, 296–297,
308–309
television violence and, 20–21, 293–298
temperature and, 288–289, 484
theories of, 278–287
types of, 277–278
video games and, 298–302
alcohol
and aggression, 280–281
and social anxiety, 437
altruism: A motive to increase another’s welfare
without conscious regard for one’s self-
interests, 353. See also helping
approaches to increasing, 380–387
approaches to socializing, 382–387
vs. egoism, 365
empathy-induced, 364–366
genuine, 363–366
in groups, 362
modeling, 383–385
parental, 361
in resolution of social dilemmas, 394–395
androgynous: From andro (man) + gyn
(woman)—thus mixing both masculine and
feminine characteristics, 117
animals
culture and, 120
helping, 364
anonymity, in deindividuation, 213
anticipation of interaction, 317–318
antisocial behavior, video-game violence and,
301, 302
anxiety, 27, 436–437
anxious attachment: Attachments marked by
anxiety or ambivalence. An insecure
attachment style, 341, 342
arbitration: Resolution of a conflict by a neutral
third party who studies both sides and
imposes a settlement, 415, 419
arousal
in aggression, 289–290
deindividuation and, 214
dissonance as, 108–109
passionate love and, 336–337
from presence of others, 203–206
in two-factor theory of emotion, 337
assertiveness training, 442
assimilation, 414–415
attachment, 340–342
styles of, 341–342
attacks, aggression influenced by, 289
attitude(s): Feelings, often influenced by our
beliefs, that predispose us to respond
favorably or unfavorably to objects, people,
and events, 88–110. See also prejudice
ABCs of, 89
behavior affected by, 6, 90–94
behavior’s effect on, evidence of, 94–99
behavior’s effect on, theories on, 99–108
changing, 109
cognitive dissonance theory on, 99, 100–104,
108–109
dual attitude system, 38
facial feedback effect and, 105–106
immoral acts and, 96–98
implicit vs. explicit, 38, 90–91
moral hypocrisy in, 89–90, 93
past, reconstruction of, 72
potency of, 92–94
principle of aggregation and, 92
racial prejudice and, 98
role playing and, 95–96
self-perception theory on, 99, 104–108, 108–109
self-presentation theory on, 99–100, 108
social influences on, 90–91
social movements and, 98–99
in theory of planned behavior, 92
attitude inoculation: Exposing people to weak
attacks upon their attitudes so that when
stronger attacks come, they will have
refutations available, 197–200
attitudes-follow-behavior principle. See attitude(s)
attraction, 316–335
gender differences in, 115–116
mutual liking in, 331–334
of opposites, 331
physical attractiveness in, 321–329
proximity in, 316–321
reward theory of, 334
similarity vs. complementarity in, 329–331
attractiveness: Having qualities that appeal to an
audience. An appealing communicator (often
someone similar to the audience) is most
persuasive on matters of subjective preference,
180–181. See also physical attractiveness
attribution theory: The theory of how people
explain others’ behavior—for example, by
attributing it either to internal dispositions
(enduring traits, motives, and attitudes) or to
external situations, 73–80
cultural differences in, 78–79
depression and, 431–434
on flattery, 333–334
fundamental attribution error in, 75–80
group-serving bias and, 264–265
helping and, 359–361
maintaining change and, 444–445
misattribution in, 74
on mutual liking, 331–334
on prejudice, 264–266
self-serving bias and, 45
audience
passive, 202–205
in persuasion, 182, 192–196
authoritarian personality: A personality that is
disposed to favor obedience to authority and
intolerance of outgroups and those lower in
status, 250
authority
closeness and legitimacy in obedience to, 154
institutional, 154–155
in persuasion, 180
autokinetic phenomenon: Self (auto) motion
(kinetic). The apparent movement of a
stationary point of light in the dark, 144
automatic processing: “Implicit” thinking that is
effortless, habitual, and without awareness;
roughly corresponds to “intuition.” Also
known as System 1, 58–59
automatic racial prejudice, 243–244
availability heuristic: A cognitive rule that judges
the likelihood of things in terms of their
availability in memory. If instances of
something come readily to mind, we presume
it to be commonplace, 62–64
and climate change, 484–485
average
in physical attractiveness, 326–327
in principle of aggregation, 92
regression toward the, 66–67
aversive incidents, aggression influenced by,
287–289
avoidant attachment: Attachments marked by
discomfort over, or resistance to, being close to
others. An insecure attachment style, 341, 342
B
bad events
aggression influenced by, 287–289
and depression, 432–433
power of, 332
self-serving bias in explaining, 45
bad luck, 65
balance, false, 485
bargaining: Seeking an agreement to a conflict
through direct negotiation between parties,
415–416
baseball, integration of, 413
“beautiful is good” stereotype, 325–326
behavioral confirmation: A type of self-fulfilling
prophecy whereby people’s social expectations
lead them to behave in ways that cause others
to confirm their expectations, 83
Subject Index/Glossary SI-1
common external threats in, 407–408
in groupthink, 224–231
collective rights, vs. individual rights, 420–421
collectivism: Giving priority to the goals of one’s
group (often one’s extended family or work
group) and defining one’s identity
accordingly, 30–34
conformity and, 142, 148
as cultural norm, 122
divorce and, 348
self-presentation in, 51
self-serving bias and, 45
social loafing in, 210
social-responsibility norm in, 359
and Tragedy of the Commons, 391–392
commitment
prior, and conformity, 162–163
in resistance to persuasion, 198
common sense, 10–13
communal rights, vs. individual rights, 420–421
communication. See also persuasion
channels of, 188–192
on climate change, 486
fear-arousing, 183–184
gender differences in, 130–132, 134
via Internet, 346–347
in peacemaking, 415–419
in resolution of social dilemmas, 394
two-step flow of, 191
communicator, in persuasion, 177–181
communism, social loafing in, 210
communitarianism, 172
community, group polarization in, 218–219
companionate love: The affection we feel for
those with whom our lives are deeply
intertwined, 338–339, 344–345
compassion
personalization and, 153
self-esteem and, 40
compassion fatigue, 371
competence
helping and, 358–359
vs. likability, 249
overconfidence and, 59–60
professional, self-serving bias and, 46
self-efficacy and, 43
competition
in conflict, 395–396
in prejudice, 254
complementarity: The popularly supposed
tendency, in a relationship between two
people, for each to complete what is missing
in the other, 329–331
compliance: Conformity that involves
publicly acting in accord with an implied or
explicit request while privately disagreeing,
142–143
compliant confessions, 458
comprehension
by jurors, 470
in persuasion, 191–192
concepts, hidden values in, 9
conciliation, 419–421
confessions
camera perspective bias in, 77
false, 458
confiding, and health, 448
confirmation bias: A tendency to search for
information that confirms one’s
preconceptions, 61
conflict: A perceived incompatibility of actions
or goals, 388–401
climate change and, 483–484
competition in, 395–396
individual vs. communal rights in, 420–421
misperception in, 397–401
perceived injustice in, 397
social dilemmas in, 389–395
and trust, 417
channel of communication: The way the message
is delivered—whether face-to-face, in
writing, on film, or in some other way,
188–192
children. See also schools
achievement of, 18–19
aggression in, 285–286, 293–298, 308–309
attachment in, 340, 341
attitude inoculation for, 198–200
bullying and, 276, 304–305, 309
in conflict, 396, 416
cooperative learning for, 411–414
culture transmitted to, 124–125
false memories in, 458
helping, 364, 384, 385
influence of adults on, 192
narcissistic, 43
physical attractiveness of, 324
self-efficacy of, 44
self-esteem of, 18–19, 41, 44
superordinate goals for, 410, 411
television viewing and behavior of, 20–21,
293–298
video-game violence and, 298–302
choice
cognitive dissonance and, 102
in informed consent, 22
choices-influence-preferences effect, 103
choking, 205, 436
Cinderella story, 1
climate change, 480–487
indicators of, 480–482
persuasion regarding, 174, 184, 485–486
psychological effects of, 483–484
psychological research on responses to, 489
public opinion about, 484–486
as Tragedy of the Commons, 391
clinical intuition, 425, 427–429
clinical psychology: The study, assessment, and
treatment of people with psychological
difficulties, 423–452
accuracy of judgments in, 424–430
cognitive processes and behavior problems,
430–441
treatment approaches in, 441–445
values in, 9–10
closed-mindedness, 225–226
co-actors: Co-participants working individually
on a noncompetitive activity, 202–205
cognition. See also specific types
culture and, 32–33
embodied, 57
media’s effects on, 297–298
need for, 195–196
in prejudice, 259–267
in psychological disorders, 430–441
cognitive dissonance: Tension that arises when
one is simultaneously aware of two
inconsistent cognitions. For example,
dissonance may occur when we realize that
we have, with little justification, acted
contrary to our attitudes or made a decision
favoring one alternative despite reasons
favoring another, 100
as arousal, 108–109
after decisions, 103–104
insufficient justification and, 101–103, 106
selective exposure and, 100
vs. self-perception theory, 108–109
theory of, 100–104
cognitive interview, 461
cognitive processing
automatic vs. controlled, 58–59
in persuasion, 175–177
in psychological disorders, 430–441
cohesiveness: A “we feeling:”; the extent to
which members of a group are bound
together, such as by attraction to one
another, 161–162
behavioral medicine: An interdisciplinary
field that integrates and applies behavioral
and medical knowledge about health and
disease, 437
behavior genetics, 124
behavior problems, cognitive processes in, 430–441
behavior therapy, 442
belief. See attitude; social judgment
belief perseverance: Persistence of one’s initial
conceptions, such as when the basis for one’s
belief is discredited but an explanation of
why the belief might be true survives, 70–71
in medicine, 429
benevolent sexism, 245, 249
bias. See also prejudice; stereotype
camera perspective, 77
confirmation, 61
correspondence (See fundamental attribution
error)
experimenter, 80
group-serving, 264–265
hindsight (See hindsight bias)
impact, 37, 495–496
implicit, 90–91
ingroup (See ingroup bias)
of jurors, 464–467
myside, 399
own-age, 260
own-race, 260
political perception and, 69–70
self-serving (See self-serving bias)
similarity, 373–376
biochemical influences, on aggression, 280–282
biology. See also evolutionary psychology
of aggression, 278–282
and behavior, interaction of, 6
and culture, interaction of, 137–139
and gender, 114–116
of passionate love, 337
blindness, change, 456
blindsight, 58
blind testing, in police lineup, 462
brainstorming, 229, 230
brainwashing, 98
“broken heart syndrome,” 447
bullying, 276
consequences of, 277
cyberbullying, 276, 283
group influences on, 304–305
as instrumental aggression, 277
vs. ostracism, 314
reducing, 309
as social aggression, 277
bystander effect: The finding that a person is
less likely to provide help when there are
other bystanders, 367–372
C
camera perspective bias, 77
categorization, in prejudice, 259–260
catharsis: Emotional release. The catharsis view
of aggression is that aggressive drive is
reduced when one “releases” aggressive
energy, either by acting aggressively or by
fantasizing aggression, 301, 306–308
causation vs. correlation, 18–19. See also
attribution theory
cause and effect, research into, 19–22
central route to persuasion: Occurs when
interested people focus on the arguments and
respond with favorable thoughts, 175–177, 182
chameleon effect, 146
change
inducing, 442
inevitability of, 413
maintaining, 444–445
change blindness, 456
SI-2 Subject Index/Glossary
diagnoses, self-confirming, 427
diet, aggression and, 281–282
disclosure reciprocity: The tendency for one
person’s intimacy of self-disclosure to match
that of a conversational partner, 344
discrimination: Unjustified negative behavior
toward a group or its members, 239. See also
prejudice
gender, 245–247
obesity and, 238
vs. prejudice, 239
racial, 242–243
as self-fulfilling prophecy, 268–269
sexual orientation and, 247
dismissing attachment style, 341
displacement: The redirection of aggression to a
target other than the source of the
frustration. Generally, the new target is a
safer or more socially acceptable target, 283
climate change and, 483
in prejudice, 253
dispositional attribution: Attributing behavior to
the person’s disposition and traits, 74–80
dissimilarity, and dislike, 330
dissonance theory. See cognitive dissonance
distance, and obedience, 153
distinctiveness, in prejudice, 260–263
distractions, 206
diversity, cultural, 120–121. See also culture
divorce, 348–350, 447
do-good/feel-bad phenomenon, 356–357
do-good/feel-good phenomenon, 354–355, 357–358
door-in-the-face technique: A strategy for gaining
a concession. After someone first turns down
a large request (the door-in-the-face), the
same requester counteroffers with a more
reasonable request, 185–186
driving, self-serving bias and, 44, 46
dual attitude system: Differing implicit
(automatic) and explicit (consciously
controlled) attitudes toward the same object.
Verbalized explicit attitudes may change
with education and persuasion; implicit
attitudes change slowly, with practice that
forms new habits, 38
dual processing, 4, 91
E
education
of jurors, 463–464
persuasion as, 174–175
egoism
vs. altruism, 364, 365
genetic, 361
egotism, implicit, 319
elevation, 373
embodied cognition: The mutual influence of
bodily sensations on cognitive preferences
and social judgments, 57
emotional contagion, 106
emotions. See also mood
automatic processing of, 58
in catharsis, 301
cultural variations in linguistic expressions
of, 126
difficulty of predicting, 36–38
and eyewitness testimony, 456–457
in facial feedback effect, 105–106
gender differences in expressing, 133
helping and, 354–355
illness and, 438–439
in national well-being, 500
priming and, 57
vs. reason, in persuasion, 182–184
self-perception theory of, 104
as semi-independent of thinking, 320
two-factor theory of, 337
attribution errors and, 78–79
behavior and, 5, 119–124
and biology, interaction of, 137–139
cognition and, 32–33
conformity and, 148, 167
diversity in, 120–121
and divorce rates, 348
in ethnocentrism, 250
in gender differences, 125–127
in gender roles, 127–128
humans as cultural animals, 120
individualist vs. collectivist, 30–34
and love, 337
in mating preferences, 116
morality in common across, 112
norms in, 121–124
peer-transmitted, 124–125
in physical attractiveness criteria, 326–327
self-concept and, 30–34
self-esteem and, 33–34
similarities among, 112–114, 125
in subjectivity of science, 8
cyberbullying: Bullying, harassing, or
threatening someone using electronic
communication such as texting, online social
networks, or e-mail, 276, 283
cyber-ostracism, 314–315
D
dating. See also relationships
physical attractiveness in, 321–323, 327–328
self-disclosure in, 345
death
fear of, 40
thinking about, and prejudice, 257
“death-qualified” jurors, 471–472
debriefing: In social psychology, the
postexperimental explanation of a study
to its participants. Debriefing usually
discloses any deception and often queries
participants regarding their understandings
and feelings, 22
deception: In research, a strategy by which
participants are misinformed or misled about
the study’s methods and purposes, 21
deciding-becomes-believing effect, 103
decisions. See choice
defections from majority, 233
defensive pessimism: The adaptive value of
anticipating problems and harnessing one’s
anxiety to motivate effective action, 48
deindividuation: Loss of self-awareness and
evaluation apprehension; occurs in group
situations that foster responsiveness to group
norms, good or bad, 211–215. See also
depersonalization
demand characteristics: Cues in an experiment
that tell the participant what behavior is
expected, 22
dependent variable: The variable being
measured, so called because it may depend
on manipulations of the independent
variable, 21
depersonalization. See also deindividuation
obedience and, 153
in war, 153
depression, 430–434
and health, 439
low self-esteem and, 41
depressive realism: The tendency of mildly
depressed people to make accurate rather
than self-serving judgments, attributions, and
predictions, 431–432
deprivation, relative, 284–285
desensitization, 297–298, 301
detachment process, 349–350
developmental psychology, 124
conformity: A change in behavior or belief as
the result of real or imagined group pressure,
141–172. See also obedience
connotations of term, 142
culture and, 148, 167
ethics of experiments on, 148, 152
factors motivating resistance to, 169–172
factors predicting, 159–163
formation of norms and, 143–147
group pressure in, 147–149
in groupthink, 226
and helping, 376–377
liberating effects of, 155
normative and information influence in,
164–165
personality and, 166–167
power of norms and, 157–159
in prejudice, 251–252
reasons for, 164–165
reflections on studies of, 155–159
social roles and, 168–169
suggestibility and, 144–147
types of, 142–143
vs. uniqueness, 170–171
connectedness, gender and, 130–133
consent, informed, 22
consistency
in minority influence, 232
in persuasion, 180
consumption, reducing, 487–489
contact. See also proximity
equal-status, 406–407, 413
indirect, 402
in peacemaking, 401–407
personal, vs. media influence, 189–192
control. See also self-control
illusion of, 66–67, 431
control (experimental), 20–21
controlled processing: “Explicit” thinking that is
deliberate, reflective, and conscious. Also
known as System 2, 58–59
conversion disorder, 147
cooperation, in peacemaking, 407–415
coping mechanisms, 37–38
correlation, vs. causation, 18–19. See also
illusory correlation
correlational research: The study of the naturally
occurring relationships among variables,
17–19
correlation vs. causation in, 18–19
vs. experimental research, 19, 23
correspondence bias. See fundamental
attribution error
counterarguments: Reasons why a persuasive
message might be wrong, 197–198
counterfactual thinking: Imagining alternative
scenarios and outcomes that might have
happened, but didn’t, 64–65
courts. See eyewitness testimony; juries
cover story, 21
credibility: Believability. A credible
communicator is perceived as both expert
and trustworthy, 178–180
crowding, 205
cult (also known as new religious movement): A
group typically characterized by (1)
distinctive ritual and beliefs related to its
devotion to a god or a person, (2) isolation
from the surrounding “evil” culture, and (3)
a charismatic leader. (A sect, by contrast, is a
spinoff from a major religion, 194
cultural psychology, 35
cultural racism, 242–243, 330
culture: The enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes,
and traditions shared by a large group of
people and transmitted from one generation
to the next, 8, 119
aggression in, changes to, 309–310, 311
aggression learned from, 286
Subject Index/Glossary SI-3
feel-good/do-good phenomenon, 354–355,
357–358
feelings. See emotions
femininity, 134
field research: Research done in natural, real-life
settings outside the laboratory, 17
first impressions, 325
flattery, 331–334
flow, 499
foot-in-the-door phenomenon: The tendency for
people who have first agreed to a small
request to comply later with a larger request,
184–185
framing: The way a question or an issue is
posed; framing can influence people’s
decisions and expressed opinions, 16–17
of climate change, 486
freedom, reactance and, 169
free riders: People who benefit from the group
but give little in return, 209
friendship, 316–335. See also relationships
gender differences in, 130–132
happiness and, 450
intergroup contact and, 404–406
long-term equity in, 342–343
mutual liking in, 331–334
physical attractiveness in, 321–329
proximity in, 316–321
reward theory of, 334
self-disclosure in, 343, 344, 345
similarity vs. complementarity in, 329–331
universal norms of, 125
frustration: The blocking of goal-directed
behavior, 283
aggression as response to, 282–285
in prejudice, 253–254
frustration-aggression theory: The theory that
frustration triggers a readiness to aggress,
283, 284
fundamental attribution error: The tendency for
observers to underestimate situational
influences and overestimate dispositional
influences upon others’ behavior, 75–80, 392
in conflict, 397
G
gambling, 66
gangs, 286, 303–304
gay marriage, 247, 248
gender: In psychology, the characteristics,
whether biological or socially influenced,
that we associate with males or females, 114
prejudice based on, 244–247
terms for studying, 114–115
gender differences, 129–137
in aggression, 115, 116, 117, 134
biology in, 114–116
cultural explanations of, 125–127
evolutionary psychology on, 115–116
genes in, 117
in helping, 361, 377–378
hormones and, 116–117
in importance of physical attractiveness,
321–323, 327–328
in independence vs. connectedness, 130–133
in love, 337–338
in mating preferences, 115–116
and misattribution, 74
prejudice based on, 244–247
in reporting symptoms, 438
in self-disclosure, 345
in sexuality, 135–137
in social behavior, 138–139
in social dominance, 133–134
gender discrimination, 245–247
gender fluidity, 114
while controlling others (holding them
constant), 17, 19–22
control and variables in, 20–21
vs. correlational research, 19, 23
ethical issues in, 21–22
generalizing from, 22–24
random assignment in, 19–20
replication of, 21
experimenter bias, 80
expertise
intuition and, 58
perceived, in persuasion, 178
explanatory style: One’s habitual way of
explaining life events. A negative, pessimistic,
depressive explanatory style attributes failure
to stable, global, and internal causes, 431–432
illness and, 440–441
explanatory style therapy, 443–444
explicit attitudes, 38, 90–91
prejudice, 240
racial prejudice, 241
expressiveness norms, 122
external threats, common, 407–408
eyewitness testimony, 454–464. See also juries
approaches to reducing error in, 459–464
feedback’s influence on, 459–460
inaccuracy of, 455–457
influences on, 463–464
misinformation effect in, 457–458
power of, 454–455
retelling and, 459
F
face-ism, 252–253
facial feedback effect: The tendency of facial
expressions to trigger corresponding
feelings such as fear, anger, or happiness,
105–106
facial recognition, 58
facts, vs. theories, 14
“fake news,” 144, 197–198
false balance, 485
false belief, 70, 173
false confessions, 458
false consensus effect: The tendency to
overestimate the commonality of one’s
opinions and one’s undesirable or
unsuccessful behaviors, 48
false lineup identifications, 456, 461–463
false memories, 71, 458
false uniqueness effect: The tendency to
underestimate the commonality of one’s
abilities and one’s desirable or successful
behaviors, 49
family. See also relationships
aggression learned from, 286
gender differences in, 132
vs. peers, in transmission of culture, 124–125
as source of prejudice, 249
favoritism
empathy-induced altruism and, 366
ingroup bias and, 256
kin selection and, 361
racial prejudice as, 242–243
fear-arousing communication, in persuasion,
183–184
feedback
and eyewitness testimony, 459–460
facial feedback effect, 105–106
narcissists and, 42
negative, 39–40, 48
in reducing consumption, 488
as remedy for overconfidence, 61
self-efficacy, 44
self-esteem, 44
true and specific, 39
feel-bad/do-good phenomenon, 356–357
empathy: The vicarious experience of another’s
feelings; putting oneself in another’s shoes,
132, 364
altruism induced by, 364–366
for deaths in war, 383
gender differences in, 132–133
narcissism and lack of, 42
video-game violence and, 301
enemy
common, 407–408, 409, 411
creating external, 408
demonizing, 400
environment, in evolutionary psychology, 113
environmental challenges. See climate change;
sustainability
epigenetics: The study of environmental
influences on gene expression that occur
without DNA change, 120, 137–138
equality, persuasion regarding, 174
equal-status contact: Contact on an equal basis.
Just as a relationship between people of
unequal status breeds attitudes consistent
with their relationship, so do relationships
between those of equal status. Thus, to
reduce prejudice, interracial contact should
ideally be between persons equal in status,
406–407, 413
equity: A condition in which the outcomes
people receive from a relationship are
proportional to what they contribute to it.
Note: Equitable outcomes needn’t always be
equal outcomes, 342–343
as definition of justice, 397
ethics and morality. See also norms
attitudes-follow-behavior principle and, 96–97
of bystander experiments, 372
of clinical intuition, 429
commonalities across cultures, 112
of conformity experiments, 148, 152
of experimental research, 21–22
in groupthink, 225
moral hypocrisy, 89–90, 93
moral inclusion vs. exclusion, 383
of obedience experiments, 152
self-serving bias and, 46
ethnocentric: Believing in the superiority of
one’s own ethnic and cultural group, and
having a corresponding disdain for all other
groups, 250
evaluation apprehension: Concern for how
others are evaluating us, 206, 209
evil
acts of, 96–98
conformity and, 157
evil-leader–good people perception, 399
evolutionary psychology: The study of the
evolution of cognition and behavior using
principles of natural selection, 113–114
on aggression, 115, 278–279
on biological roots of behavior, 6
critics of, 118
environmental influences in, 113
on gender differences, 115–116
on helping, 360–362
hindsight bias in, 117–118
on mating preferences, 115–116
on physical attractiveness, 327–328
religion and, 118
exclusion, moral, 383
expectations
in behavioral confirmation, 83
in experimenter bias, 80
teacher, in student performance, 80–82
experimental realism: Degree to which an
experiment absorbs and involves its
participants, 21, 148
experimental research: Studies that seek clues to
cause–effect relationships by manipulating
one or more factors (independent variables)
SI-4 Subject Index/Glossary
hostile sexism, 245, 249
human nature, 112–114
“humblebrag,” 51
humility, 87
humor, in persuasion, 179, 183
hypocrisy, moral, 89–90, 93
hypothesis: A testable proposition that describes
a relationship that may exist between events,
14
hysteria, mass, 146–147
I
idealization, in relationships, 83–84, 333–334
identity. See also social identity
personal, 254–255
superordinate, 414–415
identity-protective cognition, 100–101
ignorance, 60
pluralistic, 222–223, 369, 404, 405
illness. See health
illusion(s)
of invulnerability, 225
positive, 433
of unanimity, in groupthink, 226
illusion of control: Perception of uncontrollable
events as subject to one’s control or as more
controllable than they are, 66–67, 431
illusion of transparency: The illusion that our
concealed emotions leak out and can be
easily read by others, 26–28, 369, 405
illusory correlation: Perception of a relationship
where none exists, or perception of a stronger
relationship than actually exists, 65–67
in clinical judgments, 425–426
in prejudice, 263
imitation, and aggression, 285–286, 297
immigrants
peer culture and, 124
prejudice against, 238
impact bias: Overestimating the enduring impact
of emotion-causing events, 37, 495–496
implicit association test (IAT): A computer-driven
assessment of implicit attitudes. The test uses
reaction times to measure people’s automatic
associations between attitude objects and
evaluative words. Easier pairings (and faster
responses) are taken to indicate stronger
unconscious associations, 90–91, 240
implicit attitudes, 38, 90–91
prejudice, 240
racial prejudice, 91, 243–244
implicit egotism, 319
impressions
first, 325
management of, 51–53, 99–100
incentives, for reducing consumption, 488
inclusion, moral, 383
income inequality
and aggression, 284–285
and happiness, 496–498
and health, 448–449
and prejudice, 248–249, 257
independence, gender and, 130–133
independent self: Construing one’s identity as an
autonomous self, 30–31, 34
independent variable: The experimental factor
that a researcher manipulates, 20
indirect contact, 402
individualism: The concept of giving priority to
one’s own goals over group goals and
defining one’s identity in terms of personal
attributes rather than group identifications,
30–34
vs. communal rights, 420–421
communitarian, 172
conformity and, 142, 148, 170, 172
as cultural norm, 122
that it tends to override realistic appraisal of
alternative courses of action.”—Irving Janis
(1971), 224–231
critiques of concept of, 227–228
vs. group problem solving, 228–231
and misperception in conflict, 397
preventing, 228
symptoms of, 225–227
guilt, helping out of, 355–358, 381–382
guns, as aggression cues, 290–291
gun violence, 276, 290–291
H
happiness
enhancing, 452, 499
helpfulness and, 354–355, 357
marriage and, 450–451
materialism and wealth in, 492–494
in national well-being, 492, 500
relationships and, 351, 449–451, 499
health
cognitive processes in, 437–441
emotions in, 438–439
loneliness and, 435
optimism and, 439–441
persuasion regarding, 174
positive illusions and, 433
poverty and inequality and, 448–449
reactions to illness, 437–438
relationships in, 446–449
self-serving bias and, 46
sexual orientation and, 247–248
health psychology: The study of the
psychological roots of health and illness.
Offers psychology’s contribution to
behavioral medicine, 437
health–wealth correlation, 17–18
heat, aggression influenced by, 288–289
helping, 352–387
approaches to increasing, 380–387
bystanders and, 367–372
circumstances prompting, 367–376
comparison of theories on, 363
evolutionary psychology on, 360–362
gender and, 360–361, 377–378
genuine altruism in, 363–366
personality traits and, 376–377
religious faith and, 378–380
rewards of, 353–355
similarity and, 373–376
social-exchange theory of, 353–358
social norms in, 358–360
time pressures and, 373
when someone else does, 372–373
helplessness, learned, 439–440
heroism, 157
heuristics: A thinking strategy that enables
quick, efficient judgments, 61
availability, 62–64, 484–485
representativeness, 62
in social judgments, 61–64
hindsight bias: The tendency to exaggerate, after
learning an outcome, one’s ability to have
foreseen how something turned out. Also known
as the I-knew-it-all-along phenomenon, 11–13
in clinical judgments, 426–427
in evolutionary psychology, 117–118
in medicine, 429
home team advantage, 204–205
honor, culture of, 286
hormones
aggression and, 281
gender differences and, 116–117
and love, 338
and trust, 418
hostile aggression: Aggression that springs from
anger; its goal is to injure, 277–278, 290
gender role: A set of behavior expectations
(norms) for males and females, 127
biology in, 138
culture in, 127–128
history of, 128
gender similarity, 129
gender socialization, 127
gender stereotypes, 129, 244
gene(s), 113–114. See also evolutionary
psychology
in aggression, 280
in gender differences, 117
generalizing
from experimental research, 22–24
in overgeneralized stereotypes, 239
generation gap, in persuasion, 192–193
genocide
attitudes-follow-behavior principle and, 97
cumulative casualties of, 275–276
group influence and, 304
studies on, 155, 156–157
global warming. See climate change
goals, superordinate, 410–411, 413
good luck, 65
good people–evil-leader perception, 399
green defaults, 486
GRIT: Acronym for “graduated and
reciprocated initiatives in tension
reduction”—a strategy designed to de-escalate
international tensions, 420
group: Two or more people who, for longer than
a few moments, interact with and influence
one another and perceive one another as
“us,” 201–202. See also ingroup; outgroup
group cohesion
common external threats and, 407–408
conformity and, 161–162
victory and, 408–409
group influences, 201–236
on aggression, 303–306
deindividuation, 211–215
groupthink, 224–231
on juries, 473–477
minority influence, 231–236
polarization, 215–223
pros and cons of, 236
social facilitation, 202–207
social loafing, 207–211
group polarization: Group-produced
enhancement of members’ preexisting
tendencies; a strengthening of the members’
average tendency, not a split within the
group, 215–223
competition and, 396
and intensification of opinions, 217–221
in juries, 473–474
and misperception in conflict, 397
in politics, 219, 399
risky shift phenomenon in, 216–217
theories explaining, 221–223
group pressure, in conformity, 147–149
group salience, 406
group selection, 362
group-serving bias: Explaining away outgroup
members’ positive behaviors; also attributing
negative behaviors to their dispositions
(while excusing such behavior by one’s own
group), 264–265
group size
in conformity, 159–160
crowding, 205
and deindividuation, 212
and ingroup bias, 256
and performance, 208–209
and polarization, 215–216
in resolution of social dilemmas, 393–394
groupthink: “The mode of thinking that persons
engage in when concurrence-seeking
becomes so dominant in a cohesive in-group
Subject Index/Glossary SI-5
looking-glass self, 30
looting, 211–212, 213
lose-lose situation, 416
love, 335–339. See also intimacy; relationships
attractiveness of loved ones, 328–329
companionate, 338–339, 344–345
culture and, 337
gender and, 337–338
long-term equity in, 342–343
passionate, 335–338, 340, 344, 348
self-disclosure in, 343, 344–345
lowball technique: A tactic for getting people to
agree to something. People who agree to an
initial request will often still comply when
the requester ups the ante. People who
receive only the costly request are less likely
to comply with it, 185
luck, 65
lynch mobs, 212, 303
M
majority, defections from, 233
marriage. See also relationships
and happiness, 450–451
and health, 446–447
love and, 337, 339
perceived equity in, 343
quality of, 447
same-sex, 247, 248
self-disclosure in, 344–345
successful, 343, 350
masculinity, 134
massacres, 304. See also genocide
mass hysteria: Suggestibility to problems that
spreads throughout a large group of people,
146–147
matching phenomenon: The tendency for men
and women to choose as partners those who
are a “good match” in attractiveness and
other traits, 323
materialism, 490–501
happiness and, 492–494
historical increase in, 491
satisfaction and, 494–498
mating preferences, gender differences in,
115–116
media
aggression influenced by, 291–303
altruism modeling in, 384–385
attractive people in, 328
and cognition, 297–298
comparing, 191–192
influence of, 191
inoculating children against advertising in,
198–200
passively received appeals from, 188–189
vs. personal contact, influence of,
189–192
pretrial publicity in, 468
television violence in, 20–21, 293–298
mediation: An attempt by a neutral third party
to resolve a conflict by facilitating
communication and offering suggestions,
415, 416–419
medicine, social psychology of, 429. See also
health
memory. See also eyewitness testimony
construction of, 71–73
false, 458
in false confessions, 458
in misinformation effect, 457–458
misinformation effect in, 71
moods and, 67, 432
priming, 56–57
stress and, 456–457
weather and, 68
men. See gender; gender differences
in heuristics, 61–64
limits of, 59
power and limits of, 4–5
powers of, 58–59
self-knowledge and, 37–38
social judgment and, 57–59
invulnerability, illusion of, 225
isolation, on Internet, 346–347
J
“jigsaw” technique (in school), 412
judges, instructions to juries by, 467–469, 470
judgments. See also social judgment
clinical, accuracy of, 424–430
value, 9–10
juries, 453–478
comprehension among, 470
“death-qualified” jurors in, 471–472
defendant characteristics and, 464–467
educating, 463–464
eyewitness testimony and, 454–464
group influences on, 473–477
judges’ instructions to, 467–469, 470
laboratory simulations of, 476–477
selection of, 471
size of, 474–476
justice, equity as definition of, 397
just-world phenomenon: The tendency of
people to believe that the world is just
and that people therefore get what they
deserve and deserve what they get,
265–266
K
kin selection: The idea that evolution has
selected altruism toward one’s close relatives
to enhance the survival of mutually shared
genes, 361–362
L
labeling, value judgments in, 9–10
laboratory research, 17
generalizing from, 22–24
leadership: The process by which certain
group members motivate and guide the
group, 233
in cults, 194
gender and, 133–134
great person theory of, 234–235
minority influence and, 233–235
social, 233–234
task, 233
transformational, 234, 235
learned helplessness: The sense of hopelessness
and resignation learned when a human or
animal perceives no control over repeated
bad events, 439–440
legitimacy, of authority, 154
leniency, and juror deliberation, 464–467, 474
life, quality of, 501
likability
attractiveness and, 180–181, 322, 328–329
vs. competence, 249
of defendants, 464–465
in persuasion, 180–181
lineup identifications
false, 456, 461–463
post-identification feedback effect, 460
loneliness, 434–436
longevity–status correlation, 17–18
longitudinal study: Research in which the same
people are studied over an extended period
of time, 41
within cultures, 30–31
divorce and, 348
narcissism and, 42
origins of term, 172
social-responsibility norm in, 359
and Tragedy of the Commons, 391–392
inference, spontaneous trait, 74
influence, principles of, 180
informational influence: Conformity occurring
when people accept evidence about reality
provided by other people, 164–165
in group polarization, 221–222
in helping, 368–369
and leniency effect, 474
informed consent: An ethical principle requiring
that research participants be told enough to
enable them to choose whether they wish to
participate, 22
infrahumanization, 256
ingratiation: The use of strategies, such as
flattery, by which people seek to gain
another’s favor, 333
ingroup: “Us”—a group of people who share a
sense of belonging, a feeling of common
identity, 254
ingroup bias: The tendency to favor one’s own
group, 255
helping and, 362, 374, 383
and misperception in conflict, 398
outgroup homogeneity effect and, 260
in prejudice, 255–257
injustice, perceived, in conflict, 397
insecure attachment: Attachments marked by
anxiety or ambivalence, 341, 342
instinctive behavior: An innate, unlearned
behavior pattern exhibited by all members of
a species, 278–279
institutional authority, 154–155
institutional supports for prejudice, 252–253
instrumental aggression: Aggression that aims to
injure, but only as a means to some other
end, 277–278
insufficient justification: Reduction of
dissonance by internally justifying one’s
behavior when external justification is
“insufficient,” 101–103, 106
integrative agreements: Win-win agreements that
reconcile both parties’ interests to their
mutual benefit, 416
intelligence, self-serving bias and, 46
intended behaviors, 92
interaction: A relationship in which the effect of
one factor (such as biology) depends on
another factor (such as environment), 137.
See also group influences
anticipation of, 317–318
between behavior and biology, 6, 282
between culture and biology, 137–139
leading to friendship, 317–318
pedestrian, norms of, 123
interdependent self, 33, 34. See also collectivism
internalized confessions, 458
Internet
aggression influenced by, 295
cyberbullying on, 276, 283
cyber-ostracism on, 314–315
deindividuation on, 213
group polarization on, 219–220
intimacy vs. isolation on, 346–347
interview, police, 460–461
intimacy. See also love
in attachment styles, 341–342
on Internet, 346–347
self-disclosure and, 343–345
intrinsic motivation, in self-perception theory,
106–108
intuition
automatic processing and, 58–59
clinical, 425, 427–429
SI-6 Subject Index/Glossary
overgeneralized stereotypes, 239
overjustification effect: The result of bribing
people to do what they already like doing;
they may then see their actions as externally
controlled rather than intrinsically appealing,
106–108, 386
overpersonalizing situations, 437
overprecision, 59
own-age bias, 260
own-race bias: The tendency for people to more
accurately recognize faces of their own race.
(Also called the cross-race effect or other-race
effect), 260
P
pain
aggression influenced by, 287–288
of breakup, 349
of rejection, 315
parental altruism, 361
parental support, self-serving bias and, 46
partisanship, 55–56
passing encounters, 123
passionate love: A state of intense longing for
union with another. Passionate lovers are
absorbed in each other, feel ecstatic at attaining
their partner’s love, and are disconsolate on
losing it, 335–338, 340, 344, 348
patronization, 243
peace: A condition marked by low levels of
hostility and aggression and by mutually
beneficial relationships, 389
peacemaking, 401–421
communication in, 415–419
conciliation in, 419–421
contact in, 401–407
cooperation in, 407–415
pedestrian interaction norms, 123
peer pressure, inoculation against, 198–200
peer-transmitted culture, 124–125
perceived injustice, in conflict, 397
perception. See political perception; social
perception
performance or achievement
presence of others and, 202–205
self-efficacy and, 43–44
self-esteem and, 18–19, 39
self-fulfilling prophecy in, 80–82
social loafing and, 207–211
stereotype threat and, 270–271
peripheral route to persuasion: Occurs
when people are influenced by incidental
cues, such as a speaker’s attractiveness,
176–177, 182
personal contact, vs. media, 189–192
personal identity, vs. social identity, 254–255
personality
behavior influenced by, 6
conformity and, 166–167
helping and, 376–377
personalization
and compassion, 153
and helping, 381
and shyness, 437
personal space: The buffer zone we like to
maintain around our bodies. Its size depends
on our familiarity with whoever is near us,
122–124
persuasion: The process by which a message
induces change in beliefs, attitudes, or
behaviors, 173–200
audience of, 182, 192–196
central vs. peripheral route to, 175–177, 182
channel of communication for, 188–192
and climate change, 174, 184, 485–486
communicator’s role in, 177–181
in cults, 194
nature vs. nurture, 114, 124
need for cognition: The motivation to think and
analyze. Assessed by agreement with items
such as “The notion of thinking abstractly is
appealing to me” and disagreement with
items such as “I only think as hard as I have
to,” 195–196
need to belong: A motivation to bond with
others in relationships that provide ongoing,
positive interactions, 312–313, 314–316
negative events. See bad events
negative thinking
and depression, 432–434
and loneliness, 435–436
neglect, probability, 63
nervousness, 27
neural influences, on aggression, 279–280
neuroscience. See social neuroscience
non-zero-sum games: Games in which
outcomes need not sum to zero. With
cooperation, both can win; with
competition, both can lose (also called
mixed-motive situations), 392
normative influence: Conformity based
on a person’s desire to fulfill others’
expectations, often to gain acceptance,
164–165
in group polarization, 222–223
and leniency effect, 474
norms: Standards for accepted and expected
behavior. Norms prescribe “proper”
behavior. (In a different sense of the word,
norms also describe what most others do—
what is normal), 121
conformity and formation of, 143–147
conformity and power of, 157–159
cultural similarities in, 125
cultural variations in, 121–124
on helping, 358–361
reciprocity, 358–359
social-responsibility, 359–360, 373
O
obedience: A type of compliance involving
acting in accord with a direct order or
command, 142, 143. See also conformity
ethics of experiments on, 152
factors determining, 152–155
Milgram’s experiments with, 149–152
reflections on studies of, 155–159
slippery slope of, 152, 156
during war, 153, 155, 156–157
obesity, prejudice against, 238
objectivity, in science, 9–10
observational learning, of aggression, 285–286
one-sided vs. two-sided appeals, 186
openness, vs. naïveté, 200
opinion(s)
groups in intensification of, 217–221
public, on climate change, 484–486
opinion leaders, 191
opposites, attraction of, 331
optimism
health and, 439–441
unrealistic, 47–48
ostracism, 314–316
outgroup: “Them”—a group that people perceive
as distinctively different from or apart from
their ingroup, 254
outgroup homogeneity effect: Perception of
outgroup members as more similar to one
another than are ingroup members. Thus
“they are alike; we are diverse,” 260
overconfidence phenomenon: The tendency to be
more confident than correct—to overestimate
the accuracy of one’s beliefs, 59–61
in clinical judgments, 426–427
mere-exposure effect: The tendency for novel
stimuli to be liked more or rated more
positively after the rater has been repeatedly
exposed to them, 318–321
mere presence of others, 206
message content, in persuasion, 182–188
message context, in persuasion, 184–186
meta-stereotypes, 262
#MeToo movement, 249, 371
microaggressions, 277
mindguards, 226
minority groups, self-awareness of uniqueness
in, 171
minority influence
on groups, 231–236
on juries, 473
minority slowness effect, 232
mirror-image perceptions: Reciprocal views of
each other often held by parties in conflict;
for example, each may view itself as moral
and peace-loving and the other as evil and
aggressive, 398–399
misattribution: Mistakenly attributing a behavior
to the wrong source, 74, 84
misinformation effect: Incorporating
“misinformation” into one’s memory of the
event after witnessing an event and receiving
misleading information about it, 71, 457–458
misperceptions
in conflict, 397–401
unraveling, 416–419
mixed-motive situations. See non-zero-sum games
mobbing, 304
modeling altruism, 383–385
modern racism, 242–243
modesty, 51–53
momentum investing, 81
monogamy, 117
mood(s). See also emotions
negative thinking and, 432–434
priming and, 57
self-presentation and, 52
social judgment and, 67–68
mood linkage, 146
moral(s). See ethics and morality
moral exclusion: The perception of certain
individuals or groups as outside the
boundary within which one applies moral
values and rules of fairness. Moral inclusion
is regarding others as within one’s circle of
moral concern, 383
moral hypocrisy, 89–90, 93
moral inclusion, 383
motives
evolving, 392
rationalizing one’s own, 400
movement synchrony, 418
multiculturalism, 414–415
mundane realism: Degree to which an
experiment is superficially similar to
everyday situations, 21, 148
murder
guns and, 290–291
as hostile aggression, 278
punishment for, 308, 472
myside bias, 399
N
naïveté, vs. openness, 200
“name letter effect,” 319
narcissism, 42–43
natural selection: The evolutionary process by
which heritable traits that best enable
organisms to survive and reproduce in
particular environments are passed to
ensuing generations, 113–114, 117. See also
evolutionary psychology
Subject Index/Glossary SI-7
random assignment: The process of assigning
participants to the conditions of an
experiment such that all persons have the
same chance of being in a given condition.
(Note the distinction between random
assignment in experiments and random
sampling in surveys. Random assignment
helps us infer cause and effect. Random
sampling helps us generalize to a
population), 19–20
random sampling: Survey procedure in which
every person in the population being studied
has an equal chance of inclusion, 15, 19
rape
just-world phenomenon and, 266
media influences and, 292
“myth” of, 292
shield laws on, 467–468
rational-emotive therapy, 442
rationalization, in groupthink, 225–226
reactance: A motive to protect or restore one’s
sense of freedom. Reactance arises when
someone threatens our freedom of action,
169–170, 468
realism
defensive pessimism as, 48
depressive, 431–432
mundane vs. experimental, 21, 148
realistic group conflict theory: The theory that
prejudice arises from competition between
groups for scarce resources, 254
reality
construction of, 3–4
virtual social reality, 181
reason, vs. emotion, in persuasion, 182–184
recency effect: Information presented last
sometimes has the most influence. Recency
effects are less common than primacy
effects, 187
reciprocity
disclosure, 344
and helping, 362
in persuasion, 180
reciprocity norm: An expectation that people
will help, not hurt, those who have helped
them, 358–359
regression toward the average: The statistical
tendency for extreme scores or extreme
behavior to return toward one’s average,
66–67
regulations, in resolution of social dilemmas, 393
rejection, social, 314–315
relationships, 312–351. See also conflict; family;
friendship
attachment in, 340–342
bad events’ consequences for, 332
constructive fighting in, 417
current decline of, 351
divorce, 348–350
ending of, 347–351
equity in, 342–343
happiness and, 351, 449–451, 499
and health, 446–449
idealization in, 333–334
love in, 335–339
memory reconstruction and, 72
misattribution in, 74
mutual liking in, 331–334
ostracism from, 314–316
physical attractiveness in, 321–329
power of, 313
proximity in, 316–321
reward theory of, 334
same-sex marriage, 247, 248
self-disclosure in, 343–347
self-fulfilling prophecies in, 83–84
self-serving bias in, 46
in sense of self, 28
similarity vs. complementarity in, 329–331
cognitive sources of, 259–267
consequences of, 267–273
contact and, 402
definition of, 238–240
vs. discrimination, 239
gender-based, 244–247
historical changes in, 241–242
implicit vs. explicit, 240
institutional supports for, 252–253
motivational sources of, 253–258
nature of, 238–248
against obesity, 238
religion and, 237, 250–251
sexual orientation and, 247–248
social sources of, 248–253
vs. stereotypes, 238–239, 244
types of, 237–238
primacy effect: Other things being equal,
information presented first usually has the
most influence, 186–187
priming: Activating particular associations in
memory, 56–57
television violence and, 298
Prisoner’s Dilemma, 390–391
prison role-playing experiment, 95–96
probability neglect, 63
professional advice, values in, 9
professional competence, self-serving bias and, 46
propaganda, persuasion as, 174–175
prosocial behavior: Positive, constructive, helpful
social behavior; the opposite of antisocial
behavior, 297, 302, 384
proverbs, 12–13
proximity: Geographical nearness. Proximity (more
precisely, “functional distance”) powerfully
predicts liking, 316–321. See also contact
psychic numbing, 383
public opinion, on climate change, 484–486
public responses, conformity and, 162
punctuality norms, 122
punishment, insufficient justification and, 102
Q
quality of life, 501
questions
in police interviews, 461, 462
survey, 15–17
R
racial desegregation
of baseball, 413
and racial prejudice, 402–407
of schools, 98, 402, 403
racial prejudice, 240–244
attitudes-follow-behavior principle and, 98
conformity and, 251–252
cooperative learning and, 411–414
desegregation and, 402–407
explicit, 241
helping and, 375
historical changes in, 241–242
implicit (automatic), 91, 243–244
integration of baseball and, 413
juries influenced by, 466–467
religion and, 250–251
school desegregation and, 98
subtle forms of, 242–243
unequal status and, 249
racism: (1) An individual’s prejudicial attitudes
and discriminatory behavior toward people
of a given race, or (2) institutional practices
(even if not motivated by prejudice) that
subordinate people of a given race, 239
cultural, 242–243, 330
“rally ‘round the flag” effect, 407–408
in eyewitness testimony, 454–455
goals of, 176–177
hurdles to, 175
message content in, 182–188
message context in, 184–186
principles of, 180
as propaganda vs. education, 174–175
tactics for resistance to, 196–200
pessimism, 47–48
“phubbing,” 435
physical aggression: Hurting someone else’s
body, 277
physical attractiveness, 321–329
in “beautiful is good” stereotype, 325–326
criteria for, 326–329
cultural agreement about, 326–327
in dating, 321–323
first impressions of, 325
jurors influenced by, 465, 466
and likability, 180–181, 328–329
of loved ones, 328–329
matching phenomenon in, 323
in persuasion, 180–181
self-serving bias and, 46
social comparison of, 328
physical-attractiveness stereotype: The
presumption that physically attractive
people possess other socially desirable
traits as well: What is beautiful is good,
323–326
placebo effect, 441
planned behavior theory, 92
planning fallacy: The tendency to underestimate
how long it will take to complete a task, 36
play, gender and, 130
pluralistic ignorance: A false impression of what
most other people are thinking or feeling,
or how they are responding, 222–223, 369,
404, 405
poison parasite, 197
polarization. See group polarization
police
interview training for, 460–461
racial prejudice in, 243, 244
police shootings, 243, 244
political perception, 69–70
partisanship in, 55–56
politics
of climate change, 486
cognitive dissonance in, 100–101
group polarization in, 219, 399
of judges’ votes, 475
overconfidence in, 60
physical attractiveness in, 323, 329
prejudice based on, 238
pornography
and aggression, 291–293
gender gap in consumption of, 135, 136
positive events, self-serving bias in explaining, 45
positive illusions, 433
positive thinking, 54, 499
possible selves: Images of what we dream of or
dread becoming in the future, 38
post-identification feedback effect, 460
postmodernism, 477
potency, of attitudes, 92–94
poverty, and health, 448–449
Power Rangers (TV show), 20
precarious manhood, 134
prediction
of behavior from attitudes, 90–94
overconfidence in, 59–61
self-knowledge and, 35–38
statistical, vs. clinical intuition, 427–429
prejudgments, self-perpetuating, 267–268
prejudice: A preconceived negative judgment of
a group and its individual members, 237–274.
See also racial prejudice
avoiding and reducing, 258, 273–274
SI-8 Subject Index/Glossary
self-handicapping: Protecting one’s self-image
with behaviors that create a handy excuse for
later failure, 50–51
self-help groups, 442
self-image. See self-concept
self-interest
genetic, and reciprocity, 362
and helping, 358
social judgment affected by, 28
self-justification, 100–104
and misperception in conflict, 397
self-knowledge, 34–38
self-monitoring: Being attuned to the way one
presents oneself in social situations and
adjusting one’s performance to create the
desired impression, 52
self-perception theory: The theory that when we
are unsure of our attitudes, we infer them
much as would someone observing us—by
looking at our behavior and the
circumstances under which it occurs, 104–108
vs. cognitive dissonance theory, 108–109
on emotions, 104
facial feedback effect in, 105–106
overjustification and intrinsic motivation in,
106–108
self-perpetuating prejudgments, 267–268
self-presentation: The act of expressing oneself
and behaving in ways designed to create a
favorable impression or an impression that
corresponds to one’s ideals, 50–53
anxiety and, 436
self-presentation theory: A theory positing that
we are eager to present ourselves in ways that
make a good impression, 99–100, 108, 436
self-schema: Beliefs about self that organize and
guide the processing of self-relevant
information, 29
self-segregation, 403
self-serving attributions: A form of self-serving
bias; the tendency to attribute positive
outcomes to oneself and negative outcomes
to other factors, 45
self-serving bias: The tendency to perceive
oneself favorably, 44–50, 54
in comparisons with others, 45–46
in explaining positive and negative events, 45
false consensus and uniqueness effects in, 48–49
in medicine, 429
and misperception in conflict, 397
motives for, 49–50
optimism and, 47–48
self-verification, 61
sensory overload, 371
sequential lineup, 462
sexism: (1) An individual’s prejudicial
attitudes and discriminatory behavior
toward people of a given sex, or
(2) institutional practices (even if not
motivated by prejudice) that subordinate
people of a given sex, 239–240
benevolent vs. hostile, 245, 249
sex: The two biological categories of male and
female, 114
terms for studying, 114–115
sexual harassment, roots of, 84
sexuality, gender differences in, 135–137
sexual orientation
prejudice based on, 247–248
and sexual attitudes, 135
sexual violence, and aggression, 276, 291–293
shyness, 436–437
similarity
in attractiveness, 181
in cultural norms, 112–114, 125
gender, 129
helping and, 373–376
jurors influenced by, 465–467
perceived, in prejudice, 259–260
selective exposure: The tendency to seek
information and media that agree with one’s
views and to avoid dissonant information, 100
self-actualization, 9
self-affirmation theory: A theory that (a)
people often experience a self-image
threat after engaging in an undesirable
behavior; and (b) they can compensate by
affirming another aspect of the self.
Threaten people’s self-concept in one
domain, and they will compensate either by
refocusing or by doing good deeds in some
other domain, 108–109
self-awareness: A self-conscious state in which
attention focuses on oneself. It makes people
more sensitive to their own attitudes and
dispositions, 215
group experiences diminishing, 214–215
of minority groups, 171
in potency of attitudes, 93
social surroundings affecting, 26
self-censorship
in groupthink, 226
in relationships, 333–334
self-compassion, 40–41
self-concept: What we know and believe about
ourselves, 28–38. See also social identity
confirmation bias in, 61
culture and, 30–34
helping and, 381–382
independent, 30–31, 34
ingroup bias in, 255–256
interdependent, 33, 34
self-control and, 53–54
self-esteem and, 39–44
self-knowledge and, 34–38
self-presentation and, 50–53
self-schemas in, 29
self-serving bias in, 44–50
social comparisons in, 29–30
social identity in, 409
social judgment and, 30
uniqueness in, 170–171
self-concern, behavior motivated by, 28
self-confidence
in minority influence, 233
overconfidence and, 59–61
self-confirming diagnoses, 427
self-consciousness
and distinctiveness, in prejudice, 261–262
spotlight effects and illusion of transparency
in, 26–28
self-control
self-concept and, 53–54
video-game violence and, 301
self-disclosure: Revealing intimate aspects of
oneself to others, 343–347
self-doubt, 436
self-efficacy: A sense that one is competent and
effective, distinguished from self-esteem, which
is one’s sense of self-worth. A sharpshooter in
the military might feel high self-efficacy and
low self-esteem, 43, 48, 54, 444
self-esteem: A person’s overall self-evaluation or
sense of self-worth, 39–44
achievement and, 18–19, 39
culture and, 33–34
helping and, 358–359
increasing, 442, 443–444
low vs. high, trade-off of, 41–43
in marriage, 451
motivation to maintain, 39–41
narcissism and, 42–43
vs. self-efficacy, 43–44
social identity and, 414
self-fulfilling prophecy: A belief that leads to its
own fulfillment, 80–84
attractiveness as, 326
prejudice as, 268–269
relative deprivation: The perception that
one is less well off than others with
whom one compares oneself,
284–285
religion
evolutionary psychology and, 118
and happiness, 499
helping and, 378–380
prejudice and, 237, 250–251
repetition, in persuasion, 189
replication: Repeating a research study, often
with different participants in different
settings, to determine whether a finding
could be reproduced, 21
representativeness, of samples, 15
representativeness heuristic: The tendency
to presume, sometimes despite contrary
odds, that someone or something
belongs to a particular group if
resembling (representing) a typical
member, 62
research methods, 13–24
correlational research, 17–19, 23
ethical issues in, 21–22
experimental research, 17, 19–22, 23
generalization and, 22–24
hypothesis formation and testing, 14
longitudinal studies, 41
questions in, wording of, 15–17
sampling in, 14–15
research topics, values in selection of, 7–8
response options on surveys, 15–17
responsibility
groups diffusing, 207–211
and helping, 368, 370–372, 380–381
retelling, 459
reward theory of attraction: The theory that we
like those whose behavior is rewarding to
us or whom we associate with rewarding
events, 334
rights, communal vs. individual, 420–421
riots, 282, 303
risky shift phenomenon, 216–217
rivalry, 408–409
role: A set of norms that defines how people
in a given social position ought to
behave, 95
attitude affected by, 95–96
conformity and, 168–169
gender roles, 127–128
role playing, 95–96, 168, 198
role reversal, 168
rosy retrospection, 72
rule-breaking norms, 122
S
salience, group, 406
same-sex marriage, 247, 248
sampling, 14–15
random, 15, 19
representative, 15
satisfaction
materialism and, 494–498
received equity and, 343
scapegoat theory, 253–254
scarcity, in persuasion, 180
Schadenfreude, 29, 40
schemas, 29, 58
schools
bullying at, 276, 304–305, 309
cooperative learning in, 411–414
desegregation of, 98, 402, 403
group polarization in, 218
school shootings, 299, 314, 426
science, subjective aspects of, 8–9
secure attachment: Attachments rooted in trust
and marked by intimacy, 341
Subject Index/Glossary SI-9
statistical information
vs. clinical intuition, 427–429
correlation vs. causation in, 19
regression toward the average, 66–67
status
authoritarian personality and, 250
and communication, 132
conformity and, 162
in equal-status contact, 406–407, 413
and helping, 376–377
need for, 257
status–longevity correlation, 17–18
unequal, as source of prejudice, 248–249, 257
universal norms of, 125
stereotype: A belief about the personal attributes
of a group of people. Stereotypes are
sometimes overgeneralized, inaccurate, and
resistant to new information (and sometimes
accurate), 238. See also prejudice
accuracy of, 239, 271
avoiding, 258
“beautiful is good,” 325–326
biased judgment of individuals due to,
272–273
categorization and, 259
gender, 129, 244
in groupthink, 226
illusory correlations in, 263
meta-stereotypes, 262
and misperception in conflict, 398
physical-attractiveness, 323–326
vs. prejudice, 238–239, 244
strength of, 272
stereotype threat: A disruptive concern, when
facing a negative stereotype, that one will be
evaluated based on a negative stereotype.
Unlike self-fulfilling prophecies that hammer
one’s reputation into one’s self-concept,
stereotype threat situations have immediate
effects, 269–271
stock market
self-fulfilling prophecies in, 81
stockbroker overconfidence in, 60
stress
and depression, 432–433, 439
and illness, 438–440
and memory, 456–457
subgrouping: Accommodating individuals who
deviate from one’s stereotype by forming a
new stereotype about this subset of the
group, 268
subjectivity, in science, 9–10
subtyping: Accommodating individuals who
deviate from one’s stereotype by thinking of
them as “exceptions to the rule,” 268
suggestibility, 144–147
suicide
anonymous online commenters on, 213
driving people to, 276
imitative, 147
superordinate goal: A shared goal that
necessitates cooperative effort; a goal that
overrides people’s differences from one
another, 410–411, 413
superordinate identity, 414–415
survey research, 15–17
sustainability, 479–502
climate change and, 480–487
materialism and wealth and, 490–501
strategies for enabling, 487–490, 498–499
symmetry, in physical attractiveness, 327
symptoms
explaining, 438
noticing, 437–438
System 1: The intuitive, automatic, unconscious,
and fast way of thinking, 56, 58–59, 61
System 2: The deliberate, controlled,
conscious, and slower way of thinking, 56,
58–59, 61
influence of, 80–84
intuitive, 57–59
moods in, 67–68
overconfidence in, 59–61
priming in, 56–57
self-concept and, 30
self-fulfilling prophecies and, 80–84
self-interest and, 28
social perception and, 69–73
strategies for reducing errors in, 84–86
social leadership: Leadership that builds
teamwork, mediates conflict, and offers
support, 233–234
social learning theory: The theory that we learn
social behavior by observing and imitating
and by being rewarded and punished, 285
on aggression, 285–287, 296–297, 308–309
social loafing: The tendency for people to exert
less effort when they pool their efforts
toward a common goal than when they are
individually accountable, 207–211
social movements, attitudes-follow-behavior
principle and, 98–99
social neuroscience: An interdisciplinary field
that explores the neural bases of social and
emotional processes and behaviors, and how
these processes and behaviors affect our
brain and biology, 6
on aggression, 279–280
on trust, 418
social perception, 69–73
in conflict, 397
of equity, in relationships, 343
of expertise, in persuasion, 178
mirror-image, 398–399
negative, of others, 435–436
of similarity, in prejudice, 259–260
television violence and, 298
of trustworthiness, in persuasion, 179–180
social pressure. See conformity
social proof, in persuasion, 180
social psychology: The scientific study of how
people think about, influence, and relate to
one another, 2–3
areas of study, 2–3
central concepts behind, 3–7
common sense in, 10–13
history of, 2
research methods of, 13–24
values in, 7–10
social representations: A society’s widely held
ideas and values, including assumptions and
cultural ideologies. Our social
representations help us make sense of our
world, 8
social-responsibility norm: An expectation that
people will help those needing help,
359–360, 373
social scripts: Culturally provided mental
instructions for how to act in various
situations, 298
social skills training, 442–443
social trap: A situation in which the conflicting
parties, by each rationally pursuing its self-
interest, become caught in mutually
destructive behavior. Examples include the
Prisoner’s Dilemma and the Tragedy of the
Commons, 389–392
sociology, 2
solitude, vs. loneliness, 434
speaking style, in persuasion, 178
spontaneous categorization, 259
spontaneous trait inference: An effortless,
automatic inference of a trait after exposure
to someone’s behavior, 74
sports, winning in, 408, 409
spotlight effect: The belief that others are paying
more attention to our appearance and
behavior than they really are, 26–28, 437
in persuasion, 181
in relationships, 329–331
simplistic thinking, in conflict, 399–400
situational attribution: Attributing behavior to
the environment, 74–80
sleeper effect: A delayed impact of a message
that occurs when an initially discounted
message becomes effective, such as we
remember the message but forget the reason
for discounting it, 178
slippery slope, of obedience, 152, 156
smiling
attitude and, 105–106
gender differences in, 132
smoking, attitude inoculation against, 198
snap judgment, 58, 61
social aggression: Hurting someone else’s
feelings or threatening their relationships.
Sometimes called relational aggression, it
includes cyberbullying and some forms of
in-person bullying, 277
social anxiety, 436–437
social beliefs. See also social judgment
universal dimensions of, 125, 127
social capital: The mutual support and
cooperation enabled by a social network, 358
social cognition, 25
social comparison: Evaluating one’s opinions
and abilities by comparing oneself with
others, 29, 222
in group polarization, 222–223
of physical attractiveness, 328
in self-concept, 29–30
of wealth, 496–498
social contagion, 144–147
in aggression, 303–304
in yawning, 145
social dilemmas, 389–395
approaches to resolving, 393–395
examples of, 390–392
social dominance, gender differences in,
133–134
social dominance orientation: A motivation to
have one’s group dominate other social
groups, 249
social-exchange theory: The theory that human
interactions are transactions that aim to
maximize one’s rewards and minimize one’s
costs, 353–358
social facilitation: (1) Original meaning: the
tendency of people to perform simple or well-
learned tasks better when others are present.
(2) Current meaning: the strengthening of
dominant (prevalent, likely) responses in the
presence of others, 202–207
social identity: The “we” aspect of our self-
concept; the part of our answer to “Who am I?”
that comes from our group memberships, 254
in marriage, 451
multiple, 414–415
in prejudice, 254–257
sustainability in, 488–489
social identity theory, 254–257
social influences. See also conformity; culture;
group influences; persuasion
on aggression, 285–287, 308–309
behavior shaped by, 5, 90–91
on helping, 353–361
therapy as, 445
socialization
of altruism, 382–387
gender, 127
as source of prejudice, 249–252
social judgment, 56–87
attribution theory in, 73–80
clinical judgments as, 425
counterfactual thinking in, 64–65
heuristics in, 61–64
illusory thinking in, 65–67
SI-10 Subject Index/Glossary
sexual, 276, 291–293
on television, 20–21, 293–298
in video games, 298–302
virtual social reality, 181
virtues, self-serving bias and, 46
vocations, gender and, 132
voting, self-serving bias and, 46
W
war. See also conflict
attitudes-follow-behavior principle in, 96–97,
98–99
climate change and, 483–484
cognitive dissonance in, 101
cumulative casualties of, 275–276
depersonalization in, 153
empathy for deaths in, 383
as instrumental aggression, 277
misperception in, 399, 400
obedience during, 153, 155, 156–157
wealth, 490–501
happiness and, 492–494
satisfaction and, 494–498
social comparison of, 496–498
wealth–health correlation, 17–18
weather
climate change and, 482, 483–484
memory and, 68
well-being. See also happiness; health
components of, 500
national, 492, 500–501
relationships in, 446–451
wealth and, 492–494
Williams syndrome, 253–254
win-lose situation, 396, 416, 417
win-win situation, 416, 417, 418
women. See also gender; gender differences
prejudice against, 244–247
sexual aggression toward, 276, 292–293
unequal status of, 249
“women are wonderful” effect, 129, 245
Y
yawning, contagious, 145
transgender: Someone whose psychological
sense of being male or female differs from
their birth sex, 114–115
transparency, illusion of, 26–28, 369, 405
treatment, seeking, 438
trust
communication and, 394
conflict and, 417
enhancing, 417
hormones and, 418
in persuasion, 179–180
in secure attachments, 341
in self-disclosure, 344, 345
two-factor theory of emotion: Arousal x its
label = emotion, 337
two-sided appeals, 186
two-step flow of communication: The process by
which media influence often occurs through
opinion leaders, who in turn influence
others, 191
U
unanimity
in conformity, 160–161
illusion of, in groupthink, 226
unconscious thinking, 4–5. See also intuition
uniformity, pressure toward, 226
uniforms, 214
uniqueness, vs. conformity, 170–171
V
value judgments, 9–10
values
and climate change, 486
social psychology influenced by, 7–10
values affirmation, 270
variables, 20–21
victims
blaming, 156
just-world phenomenon and, 265–266
personalization of, 153
victory, 408–409
video games, and aggression, 298–302
violence. See also aggression
cutting spiral of, with nonviolence, 413
T
task leadership: Leadership that organizes work,
sets standards, and focuses on goals, 233
teacher expectations, 80–82
technology, in sustainability, 487
television. See also media
altruism modeling on, 384
temperature
and aggression, 288–289, 484
in climate change, 481–482, 483
terrorism
group polarization in organizations, 220–221
as instrumental aggression, 277
mirror-image perceptions of, 398
rewards of, 285
terror management: According to ‘terror
management theory,’ people’s self-protective
emotional and cognitive responses (including
adhering more strongly to their cultural
worldviews and prejudices) when confronted
with reminders of their mortality, 257
terror management theory: Proposes that people
exhibit self-protective emotional and
cognitive responses (including adhering more
strongly to their cultural worldviews and
prejudices) when confronted with reminders
of their mortality, 40, 257
testimony. See eyewitness testimony
testosterone: A hormone more prevalent in
males than females which is linked to
dominance and aggression, 116
in aggression, 116–117, 281
gender and, 116, 117
theory: An integrated set of principles that
explain and predict observed events, 14
thinking. See cognition
time-lagged correlations, 19
time pressures, and helping, 373
Tragedy of the Commons: The “commons” is any
shared resource, including air, water, energy
sources, and food supplies. The tragedy occurs
when individuals consume more than their
share, with the cost of their doing so dispersed
among all, causing the ultimate collapse—the
tragedy—of the commons, 391–392
transformational leadership: Leadership that,
enabled by a leader’s vision and inspiration,
exerts significant influence, 234, 235
STEP 1. Over the course of three years, data
points showing concepts that caused
students the most difficulty were
anonymously collected from McGraw-
Hill Connect® for Social Psychology’s
McGraw-Hill SmartBook® adaptive
learning system.
STEP 2. Dave Myers and Jean Twenge were
provided with data from SmartBook
that graphically illustrated “hot spots”
in the text impacting student learning.
STEP 3. The authors used this “heat map”
data to refine content and reinforce
student comprehension in the new
edition. Additional quiz questions
and assignable activities were
created for use in Connect to further
support student success.
RESULT: With empirically based feedback at
the paragraph and even sentence
level, the authors developed the new
edition using precise student data
to pinpoint concepts that caused
students to struggle.
BETTER DATA, SMARTER REVISION,
IMPROVED RESULTS
For this new edition, data were analyzed to
identify the concepts students found to be
the most difficult, allowing for expansion upon
the discussion, practice and assessment of
challenging topics. The revision process for
a new edition used to begin with gathering
information from instructors about what they
would change and what they would keep. Using
these reviews to provide guidance, authors
would revise the material. But now, a new tool
has revolutionized that model. McGraw-Hill
Education authors now have access to student
performance data to analyze and to inform their
revisions. This data is anonymously collected
from the many students who use Smartbook,
the adaptive learning system that provides
students with individualized assessment of
their own progress. Because virtually every
text paragraph is tied to several questions that
students answer while using SmartBook, the
specific concepts with which students are having
the most difficulty are easily pinpointed through
empirical data in the form of a “heat map” report.
Social Psychology harnesses the power of
data to improve the instructor and student
course experiences:
THE HEAT MAP STORY
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
About the Authors
Brief Contents
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1 Introducing Social Psychology
What Is Social Psychology?
What Are Social Psychology’s Big Ideas?
We Construct Our Social Reality
Our Social Intuitions Are Often Powerful but Sometimes Perilous
Social Influences Shape Our Behavior
Personal Attitudes and Dispositions Also Shape Behavior
Social Behavior Is Biologically Rooted
Social Psychology’s Principles Are Applicable in Everyday Life
How Do Human Values Influence Social Psychology?
Obvious Ways Values Enter Psychology
Not-So-Obvious Ways Values Enter Psychology
I Knew It All Along: Is Social Psychology Simply Common Sense?
Focus On: I Knew It All Along
Research Methods: How Do We Do Social Psychology?
Forming and Testing Hypotheses
Sampling and Question Wording
Correlational Research: Detecting Natural Associations
Experimental Research: Searching for Cause and Effect
Generalizing from Laboratory to Life
Postscript: Why We Wrote This Book
Part One: Social Thinking
Chapter 2 The Self in a Social World
Spotlights and Illusions: What Do They Teach Us About Ourselves?
Research Close-Up: On Being Nervous About Looking Nervous
Self-Concept: Who Am I?
At the Center of Our Worlds: Our Sense of Self
Self and Culture
Self-Knowledge
The Inside Story: Hazel Markus and Shinobu Kitayama on Cultural Psychology
What Is the Nature and Motivating Power of Self-Esteem?
Self-Esteem Motivation
The Trade-Off of Low vs. High Self-Esteem
Self-Efficacy
What Is Self-Serving Bias?
Explaining Positive and Negative Events
Can We All Be Better Than Average?
Focus On: Self-Serving Bias—How Do I Love Me? Let Me Count the Ways
Unrealistic Optimism
False Consensus and Uniqueness
Explaining Self-Serving Bias
How Do People Manage Their Self-Presentation?
Self-Handicapping
Impression Management
What Does It Mean to Have “Self-Control”?
Postscript: Twin Truths—The Perils of Pride, the Powers of Positive Thinking
Chapter 3 Social Beliefs and Judgments
How Do We Judge Our Social Worlds, Consciously and Unconsciously?
Priming
Intuitive Judgments
Overconfidence
Heuristics: Mental Shortcuts
Counterfactual Thinking
Illusory Thinking
Moods and Judgments
The Inside Story: Joseph P. Forgas: Can Bad Weather Improve Your Memory?
How Do We Perceive Our Social Worlds?
Perceiving and Interpreting Events
Belief Perseverance
Constructing Memories of Ourselves and Our Worlds
How Do We Explain Our Social Worlds?
Attributing Causality: To the Person or the Situation
The Fundamental Attribution Error
How Do Our Social Beliefs Matter?
Teacher Expectations and Student Performance
Focus On: The Self-Fulfilling Psychology of the Stock Market
Getting from Others What We Expect
What Can We Conclude About Social Beliefs and Judgments?
Postscript: Reflecting on Illusory Thinking
Chapter 4 Behavior and Attitudes
How Well Do Our Attitudes Predict Our Behavior?
When Attitudes Predict Behavior
When Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes?
Role Playing
Saying Becomes Believing
Evil and Moral Acts
Social Movements
Why Does Our Behavior Affect Our Attitudes?
Self-Presentation: Impression Management
Self-Justification: Cognitive Dissonance
The Inside Story: Leon Festinger on Dissonance Reduction
Self-Perception
Comparing the Theories
Postscript: Changing Ourselves Through Action
Part Two: Social Influence
Chapter 5 Genes, Culture, and Gender
How Are We Influenced by Biology?
Genes, Evolution, and Behavior
Biology and Gender
Gender and Hormones
Reflections on Evolutionary Psychology
Focus On: Evolutionary Science and Religion
How Are We Influenced by Culture?
Culture and Behavior
Focus On: The Cultural Animal
Research Close-Up: Passing Encounters, East and West
Peer-Transmitted Culture
Culture and Gender
Gender Roles Vary with Culture
Gender Roles Vary over Time
How Are Females and Males Alike and Different?
Independence versus Connectedness
Social Dominance
Aggression
Sexuality
What Can We Conclude About Genes, Culture, and Gender?
The Inside Story: Alice Eagly on Gender Similarities and Differences
Postscript: Should We View Ourselves as Products of Our Biology or Our Culture?
Chapter 6 Conformity and Obedience
What Is Conformity?
What Are the Classic Conformity and Obedience Studies?
Sherif’s Studies of Norm Formation
Research Close-Up: Contagious Yawning
Asch’s Studies of Group Pressure
Milgram’s Obedience Studies
The Inside Story: Stanley Milgram on Obedience
The Ethics of Milgram’s Studies
What Breeds Obedience?
Focus On: Personalizing The Victims
Reflections on the Classic Studies
What Predicts Conformity?
Group Size
Unanimity
Cohesion
Status
Public Response
Prior Commitment
Why Conform?
Who Conforms?
Personality
Culture
Social Roles
Do We Ever Want to Be Different?
Reactance
Asserting Uniqueness
Postscript: On Being an Individual Within a Community
Chapter 7 Persuasion
What Paths Lead to Persuasion?
The Central Route
The Peripheral Route
Different Paths for Different Purposes
What Are the Elements of Persuasion?
Who Says? The Communicator
Research Close-Up: Experimenting with a Virtual Social Reality
What Is Said? The Message Content
How Is It Said? The Channel of Communication
To Whom Is It Said? The Audience
Focus On: Cults and Persuasion
How Can Persuasion Be Resisted?
Attitude Inoculation
Implications of Attitude Inoculation
Postscript: Being Open but Not Naïve
Chapter 8 Group Influence
What Is a Group?
Social Facilitation: How Are We Affected by the Presence of Others?
The Mere Presence of Others
Crowding: The Presence of Many Others
Why Are We Aroused in the Presence of Others?
Social Loafing: Do Individuals Exert Less Effort in a Group?
Many Hands Make Light Work
Social Loafing in Everyday Life
Deindividuation: When Do People Lose Their Sense of Self in Groups?
Doing Together What We Would Not Do Alone
Diminished Self-Awareness
Group Polarization: Do Groups Intensify Our Opinions?
The Case of the “Risky Shift”
Do Groups Intensify Opinions?
Focus On: Group Polarization
Explaining Group Polarization
Groupthink: Do Groups Hinder or Assist Good Decisions?
The Inside Story: Irving Janis on Groupthink
Symptoms of Groupthink
Critiquing Groupthink
Preventing Groupthink
Group Problem Solving
The Inside Story: Behind a Nobel Prize: Two Minds Are Better Than One
The Influence of the Minority: How Do Individuals Influence the Group?
Consistency
Self-Confidence
Defections from the Majority
Is Leadership Minority Influence?
Focus On: Transformational Community Leadership
Postscript: Are Groups Bad for Us?
Part Three: Social Relations
Chapter 9 Prejudice
What Is the Nature and Power of Prejudice?
Defining Prejudice
Prejudice: Implicit and Explicit
Racial Prejudice
Gender Prejudice
LGBT Prejudice
What Are the Social Sources of Prejudice?
Social Inequalities: Unequal Status and Prejudice
Socialization
Institutional Supports
What Are the Motivational Sources of Prejudice?
Frustration and Aggression: The Scapegoat Theory
Social Identity Theory: Feeling Superior to Others
Motivation to Avoid Prejudice
What Are the Cognitive Sources of Prejudice?
Categorization: Classifying People into Groups
Distinctiveness: Perceiving People Who Stand Out
Attribution: Is It a Just World?
What Are the Consequences of Prejudice?
Self-Perpetuating Prejudgments
Discrimination’s Impact: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Stereotype Threat
The Inside Story: Claude Steele on Stereotype Threat
Do Stereotypes Bias Judgments of Individuals?
Postscript: Can We Reduce Prejudice?
Chapter 10 Aggression
What Is Aggression?
What Are Some Theories of Aggression?
Aggression as a Biological Phenomenon
Aggression as a Response to Frustration
Aggression as Learned Social Behavior
What Are Some Influences on Aggression?
Aversive Incidents
Arousal
Aggression Cues
Media Influences: Pornography and Sexual Violence
Media Influences: Television, Movies, and the Internet
Another Media Influence: Video Games
Effects of Video Games
The Inside Story: Craig Anderson on Video-Game Violence
Group Influences
Research Close-Up: When Provoked, Are Groups More Aggressive Than Individuals?
How Can Aggression Be Reduced?
Catharsis?
A Social Learning Approach
Culture Change and World Violence
Postscript: Reforming a Violent Culture
Chapter 11 Attraction and Intimacy
How Important Is the Need to Belong?
What Leads to Friendship and Attraction?
Proximity
Focus On: Liking Things Associated with Oneself
Physical Attractiveness
The Inside Story: Ellen Berscheid on Attractiveness
Similarity versus Complementarity
Liking Those Who Like Us
Focus On: Bad Is Stronger Than Good
Relationship Rewards
What Is Love?
Passionate Love
Companionate Love
What Enables Close Relationships?
Attachment
Equity
Self-Disclosure
Focus On: Does the Internet Create Intimacy or Isolation?
How Do Relationships End?
Divorce
The Detachment Process
Postscript: Making Love
Chapter 12 Helping
Why Do We Help?
Social Exchange and Social Norms
The Inside Story: Dennis Krebs on Life Experience and the Study of Altruism
Evolutionary Psychology
Comparing and Evaluating Theories of Helping
Genuine Altruism
Focus On: The Benefits—and the Costs—of Empathy-Induced Altruism
When Will We Help?
Number of Bystanders
The Inside Story: John M. Darley on Bystander Reactions
Helping When Someone Else Does
Time Pressures
Similarity
Research Close-Up: Ingroup Similarity and Helping
Who Will Help?
Personality Traits and Status
Gender
Religious Faith
How Can We Increase Helping?
Reduce Ambiguity, Increase Responsibility
Guilt and Concern for Self-Image
Socializing Altruism
Focus On: Behavior and Attitudes Among Rescuers of Jews
Postscript: Taking Social Psychology into Life
Chapter 13 Conflict and Peacemaking
What Creates Conflict?
Social Dilemmas
Competition
Perceived Injustice
Misperception
Research Close-Up: Misperception and War
How Can Peace Be Achieved?
Contact
Research Close-Up: Relationships That Might Have Been
The Inside Story: Nicole Shelton and Jennifer Richeson On Cross-Racial Friendships
Cooperation
Focus On: Why Do We Care Who Wins?
Focus On: Branch Rickey, Jackie Robinson, and the Integration of Baseball
Communication
Conciliation
Postscript: The Conflict Between Individual and Communal Rights
Part Four: Applying Social Psychology
Chapter 14 Social Psychology in the Clinic
What Influences the Accuracy of Clinical Judgments?
Illusory Correlations
Hindsight and Overconfidence
Self-Confirming Diagnoses
Clinical Intuition versus Statistical Prediction
Focus On: A Physician’s View: The Social Psychology of Medicine
Implications for Better Clinical Practice
What Cognitive Processes Accompany Behavior Problems?
Depression
The Inside Story: Shelley Taylor on Positive Illusions
Loneliness
Anxiety and Shyness
Health, Illness, and Death
What Are Some Social-Psychological Approaches to Treatment?
Inducing Internal Change Through External Behavior
Breaking Vicious Cycles
Maintaining Change Through Internal Attributions for Success
Using Therapy as Social Influence
How Do Social Relationships Support Health and Well-Being?
Close Relationships and Health
Close Relationships and Happiness
Postscript: Enhancing Happiness
Chapter 15 Social Psychology in Court
How Reliable Is Eyewitness Testimony?
The Power of Persuasive Eyewitnesses
When Eyes Deceive
The Misinformation Effect
Retelling
Reducing Error
Research Close-Up: Feedback to Witnesses
What Other Factors Influence Juror Judgments?
The Defendant’s Characteristics
The Judge’s Instructions
Additional Factors
What Influences the Individual Juror?
Juror Comprehension
Jury Selection
“Death-Qualified” Jurors
How Do Group Influences Affect Juries?
Minority Influence
Group Polarization
Leniency
Are Twelve Heads Better Than One?
Research Close-Up: Group Polarization in a Natural Court Setting
Are Six Heads as Good as Twelve?
From Lab to Life: Simulated and Real Juries
Postscript: Thinking Smart with Psychological Science
Chapter 16 Social Psychology and the Sustainable Future
Psychology and Climate Change
Psychological Effects of Climate Change
Public Opinion About Climate Change
Enabling Sustainable Living
New Technologies
Reducing Consumption
The Inside Story: Janet Swim on Psychology’s Response to Climate Change
The Social Psychology of Materialism and Wealth
Increased Materialism
Wealth and Well-Being
Materialism Fails to Satisfy
Toward Sustainability and Survival
Research Close-Up: Measuring National Well-Being
Postscript: How Does One Live Responsibly in the Modern World?
Epilogue
References
Name Index
Subject Index
2018-08-29T16:41:54+0000
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