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0:00
[uplifting music]
0:04
>> Well, here we go. We're gonna spend some time today as I mentioned, talkin' about a field called Social Psychology. The exam is on Wednesday, one o'clock in this room. It is only over the last two chapters, 14 and this chapter. Is it 17? >> Students: 18. >> 18, 14 and 18, health and stress and this.
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Alright? >> Student: Okay. >> Wednesday, one o'clock.
0:34
Alright.
0:38
Here we go. Social Psychology. We're gonna spend time looking at...
0:47
A variety of things related to, whoa, bad.
0:54
Bad things have just happened.
0:58
We're looking at Social Psychology. Social Psychology is this very interesting discipline that says this, "What is it about humans in a situation,
1:11
like a social event or surrounded by other people and as we study people, does their behavior change as based upon the very fact that they're surrounded by other people?" So does the presence, the actual imagined or implied presence of other people change what we do? Let me ask you that question. Do you ever behave differently because you know people are around you?
1:38
Yeah. And do you behave differently in a variety of situations that are consistent? And the answer is yeah. For the most part we end up doing something that is very unique, and that is we take into account other people, and we change our behavior based upon that. Now that's, you know, not anything revolutionary. We've been studying this for a long time and know that people, we know that people will run faster
2:08
when they're jogging if there's just somebody standing by watching the people jogging. We know that because we've taken times in which people have jogged around a park or whatever and we kinda took the average speed. And then we simply of had people stand there and their simple presence people jog faster in the presence of other people. We started this very class by talking about how other people influence us, simply by standing in lines for example
2:36
or when we go to cheer and we're surrounded by crowds, our behavior differs. And so Social Psychology looks at things like the influence of other people. And so like the discipline of sociology, which some of you may have taken a sociology class in which they look at the external causes of behavior like how do groups from the south or people that are raised there differ from the people that are raised in the non-south.
3:08
How do Texans act differently because of the fact that they're raised in a very unique culture? How do people of one social economic standing or class relate to others and how does that, that's sociology, external causes of behavior. Psychology we learned this semester, primarily focuses on these internal things. That is, how do my emotions and my thoughts, things that I've learned, how do they impact my behavior? And then Social Psychology is the kind of combination
3:41
that looks at both external and internal causes of behavior. So, Social Psychology in a sense bridges
3:50
some of the disciplines that look at the external and some that look at more of the internal. And we would say then the goal of Social Psychology is understanding, explaining and predicting human social behavior. This is a big, big area because almost all of our behavior that we're interested in, in Social Psychology occurs in the context of other people.
4:13
My dissertation and my Master's thesis were all on the very topic of helping, who helps, who does altruism, why do people provide help, and are instances of giving aid to somebody else influence because there's somebody else in the room. We have created situations in which people do not get up to help somebody in need simply because there's another person sitting in the room with them. That's weird.
4:41
That somebody's interior, that is their personality is kind of geared towards being very helpful. They tend to be the kind who would go out of their ways. But by changing or altering the external environment, we've created people who are now like not helpful. And that happens all of the time.
5:00
Situations in which people say I just froze, I didn't know what was happening. How many have ever heard of the name Kitty Genovese? 1968, New York City, an amazing study, a woman is in New York City around this area in which there are, I don't know how many apartment buildings. And Kitty is being attacked by a man late at night who is stabbing her. And she's screaming.
5:27
And 30, 38 people, turn on their lights, open their windows, look out, and see Kitty being stabbed by a man. In fact, the very act of opening up their windows, turning on their lights, scared him away and he left. They turned their lights back off, they closed their windows, he came back and did it again. They lifted up their windows, they looked out again, and many of them went like, I just thought they were arguing. I wasn't sure what was going on.
5:53
I didn't wanna be involved, I wasn't quite sure. So he left again, came back a third time and finally killed her. And the next day, they interviewed 38 people, eyewitnesses, and not one single person called the police.
6:10
Now maybe it would be different today. We have cell phones, you know maybe they had to pick up something. But they asked the question, "Why did you not call this person?". And they would say things like, I just. Well why do you think, how did they answer that question? These weren't bad people. These were just people, 38 people minding their own business at two in the morning or one in the morning hearing something and all of a sudden they hear this noise and they didn't call.
6:31
Somebody tell me, raise your hand, tell me why do you think they didn't call? >> Student: They thought someone else was. How many think, maybe it was you, you thought maybe somebody else already called. How many would think that that might be the answer? That's a pretty good one. Anybody else? What else might go through their minds?
6:51
By the way, this isn't an isolated incident. This kind of thing happens all of the time. It just happened on a Detroit bridge during rush hour traffic where one girl accidentally has a fender bender with somebody else, little tiny thing. And she happened to hit the car of guys, that were in this, three bigger guys, and she tried to kinda get around them and run 'cause she was kind of afraid. And so she drove a little bit way, eventually got caught in this traffic jam
7:17
right on the bridge and these guys got out and started beating her.
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The only escape for her was she jumped over the bridge to get away. And there were like 24, 27 they said, people all around watching them beat her up, and nobody stopped him or them, nobody. And they all said, "I don't know what came over me."
7:42
By the way, when it comes to helping behavior and these kinds of things, there are lots of ways in which this has a very, very strong impact on different things related to human behavior. Why, I remember seeing this study going, why would they not get up and help? I don't understand it. And answering that question, trying to do it is why I set up my studies in which I looked at does the presence of other people, the mere presence keep you from doing something? And the answer is yes.
8:12
You can stop somebody from getting up and giving help simply by putting somebody else in the room who looks as if they aren't paying attention or they don't care or they don't determine that this is a danger. D'you remember the smoke coming in study that I told you about? They brought him into a room, smoke comes in, if the person's all by themselves in this room and they're supposed to be a part of a study, every single time they do this, they're takin' a study.
8:36
Stay in this room, finish the study, I'll be back in 20 minutes. And so they're working on this. They're all by themselves, and smoke comes pouring in the room. What did they do every single time? They get up and they go out and they say, "hey there's smoke comin' in the room, bad not good." Every time. But you put two people in this room, and you say to them, "Don't move, you're part of my experiment." Here's what's about to happen. We wanna see what this person will do.
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So now there's two confederates in the room, and all three of them are now taking this kind of test, and they're going and all of a sudden here comes the smoke, and the person now goes, "Huh smoke." And the others look up, smoke, but they go right back to working, and the person goes...
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And they don't get up. That's weird.
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Anybody know what we call that by the way?
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It's called the bystander effect. How many remember that, called the bystander effect. The mere presence of bystanders changes our behavior. That's Social Psychology.
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And so the question is, well wait a minute, are we that influenced by just simply other people that aren't even telling us not to get up? They're just not doing anything. So we look at them and we go like this. Well it must not be an emergency. Or those 38 people that didn't help Kitty, they would say I thought somebody else called. I didn't know what was going on. I wasn't certain what was happening. I just didn't feel responsible. I felt like somebody else should've done something.
10:07
Who am I? And by the way, the other thing they else felt, horrible,
10:14
when they found out what happened. They felt horrible. Like I can't believe I did this. So social psychologists say, "Let's go study the dynamics behind this kind of human social behavior and try and figure out why do people do this in situations, why do crowds happen?" Why if you put one person standing at an intersection in a very busy city and they look up like that, people walk by? Why is it if you put like three or four people, and they look up, almost 90 percent of the people
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that walk by them, look up?
10:46
That's interesting. Why because three people looking up, everybody walks by and goes-- [students laughing] like that. That's funny.
10:57
But it also follows a pattern. You see, we take some of our queues from this. And so psychologist then, that are specially interested in human social behavior, ask questions related to things that help them explain and understand and even predict human social behavior. Perhaps the most interesting early studies related to this thing called attribution. See you and I, when we look at somebody's behavior,
11:24
we just simply know some things about people.
11:28
We've been talkin' about that the whole semester. You know some things about people by watching their behavior. So you can look at somebody and somehow or another you come up with this kind of what we call naive psychology that's kind of like oh I can tell you about this person or what's going on in this situation. And what you're doing is literally making attributions.
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So if somebody in the cafeteria, as I gave you this example the very first day of class I believe. You're sitting there and two people are having a conversation and you watch them. And she takes a bowl of cereal and just dumps it on his head and walks out. You immediately come up with an explanation about why she did what she did. Because you're just human, and that's just the way we do things, we know things, and we go [gasps]. She is, why did she do that? 'Member this conversation in here?
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Some of you don't. If you don't remember answer me, why did she take that bowl of Froot Loops and dump it on his head? You don't know who they are. You've never seen them before. You just saw that go [imitates dumping bowl]. And then he's like, ah [blowing raspberry] like that whatever, and she walks out. Why did she do that? >> Student: Because somebody bet her to. >> Because what? Go ahead. >> Student: Somebody bet her to. >> Oh, she was bet. I bet you wouldn't do that.
12:41
So it was just simply a joke, a bet. Is that possible?
12:47
Yeah, might wanna choose your friends better. [students laughing] Gimme another example, how else would you explain her behavior? >> Student: He cheated on her. >> She what? >> Student: He cheated on her. >> He cheated on her. [laughing] So there's some explanation about her behavior that we would say oh it's because of that.
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Go ahead. >> Student: Question about this. So what we have here is some girl angrily reacting and then dumping something on another person's head and then people around, assume that it's because he cheated on her. >> Well we can say one person says maybe it's cheating. >> Student: Well I got a room reaction. >> Okay let's hear some other ones then, that's good. So what else, what else could be an explanation? Give me another one. He cheated on her, what's another one?
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>> Student: Said something insulting. >> He said something insulting. So he either cheated, said something insulting. >> Student: He burned his face. [students laughing] >> He was eating something, and he burned his face and she was helping him. [students laughing] Yeah like that'll happen. [students laughing] [student speaking off microphone] It was just playful moment. They throw Cheerios at each other and Froot Loops all the time, spaghetti. It's just a fun relationship.
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[student speaking off microphone] One more time. She had a seizure. [students laughing]
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I reach out sometimes and just smack people every once in awhile whenever I have seizures.
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>> Student: It was a social experiment and-- >> It was a social experiment for Intro to Psych. >> Student: She was really stressed out. >> She's just stressed out, finals week. >> Student: She's an emotional-- >> She's an emotional-- >> Student: Basket case. >> Basket case. [students laughing] Let me say this. Ready? Your attribution about her behavior changes how you interact with her, right? If she's an emotional basket case and she's stressed out and she's just wow,
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do you think you would ever want to kind of get to know her? It'd be like uh. But if your attribution is, I wonder what he said, he must of been cheating, lying, stealing, something bad, poor thing.
15:13
Alright, you see this whole notion is this. We come to know other people's behavior and social psychologists say, "How did you come to know and explain that behavior? It's just a behavior, they did this." We however, assume certain things and make an attribute a person's behavior and social psychologists found a very interesting pattern. Anybody know what the pattern was? In the case in which we, and by the way it happens every single day. I'm not sitting here making an attribution
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about your behavior nor are you mine anymore because it's not normal. I'm sorry because it is normal. I'm just sitting here lecturing. You're sitting here taking notes, but I don't think to myself why is she writing all this down.
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That's kind of weird. Well so is he, that's freaky, stop. I don't do that. If I walked past somebody and I say hi, and they say hi, I don't stop and go why did they say hi to me? [students laughing] But if I walk past somebody and I say hi, and they looked at me and they go, [students laughing] then I'm going to go now that's weird, why did they look that way? What did I do, what happened? Did somebody x, y or z to them? [students laughing] Did I do something?
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Okay, attributions come into play in almost any context especially if there's a violation of something that we call expectations. If you take notes in my class, that's fine you don't violate an expectation. But if you stand up and do a little jig now and dance and scream and then walk outta here, some of us are going to wonder why you did what you did. And every single one of us are going to come up with a causal attribution about your behavior, and here's the kicker.
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The kicker is this. It's not that I can explain your behavior, that's easy. I been doing that since I was little. You do a little baby like this, the kicker is that you take a little baby, and I told you this, they're playing with something like this, and they're like four or five months old age, even six seven eight months and you cover up their hands. You're playing with something and you just simply cover up their hands like that. That little baby goes like this.
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Why are you doing that?
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And they look at your face because they're about to make an attribution. And they're goin', he's smiling, he's joking, that's funny.
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Okay? We do this simply, naturally, and the kicker is this. You make an error every time you do it.
17:42
In explaining somebody's behavior, we have a tendency to make an error that's called fundamental. It happens all the time. Which way do we tend to attribute a person's behavior when their behaving or acting and we see it? Do we tend to most likely attribute their behavior to them or to the environment?
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See, when I asked you why she dumped the spaghetti or the Cheerios or the Froot Loops on somebody's head, we can say it's because of internal causes. She's angry, she's mean, she's an emotional basket case. She can't control her anger. That's called an internal attribution. We attribute her behavior to her, makes sense? But you could just as easily attribute her behavior to something on the outside. He must've said something. He must've did something to her.
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So there's an external attribution. And social psychologists have found that when we attribute somebody else's behavior to something we almost always lean towards one way or the other. Which way do we lean? We lean towards attributing their behavior to them. The actor is the cause of the events. Does that make sense? And that is so common that in our process of explaining these events, this bias is known as the fundamental attribution error.
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Our tendency to explain as observers,
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our tendency to overemphasize the actor as the cause of events. But that just makes a lot of sense, but it still is interesting. The reason it makes a lot of sense is because we see something happen, it's kinda weird, kinda different. We go well goodnight, you know, they're yelling at the cashier right in front of us and you see somebody yelling away, screaming at the cashier and they walk out, you're like, whoa. That was one angry customer. That's an angry person, stressed out.
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We don't have a lot of data to go on in some of these and so we simply make these kinds of attributions.
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But we tend to underemphasize the possibility that maybe that cashier was just flat out rude to this person. They're never like this. We don't have a lot of that data there and so this fundamental attribution error works in so many ways. By the way it's so fundamental, it happens so often that we fall victim to this all of the time. In fact, I'll challenge you that when you try to explain somebody else's behavior that seems a little bit odd or different, to be really careful,
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to now question this very possibility. Am I falling into that trap? When I see somebody yell at somebody else or get mad, I tend to think ugh. But every once in awhile that happens to us and if you ask people explain your behavior, they rarely say oh because I'm mean and angry and an emotional basket case. You should have seen the situation I was just in. And so we do this very quickly. But by the way this plays in so many examples. Can anybody think of any good examples
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in which we tend to do this? I'll just give you a couple real fast. Any of ya'll meet any actors or actresses or people that have been in plays, and they were in a certain role, and people tend to think of them now as that role? And so when you see the actor or actress that you know or the person that's in the play, you almost think of them as being that? How many have ever experienced that kind of thing? A lot of you. That's the attribution error.
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We tend to overemphasize the actor as the cause of events.
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When people have crimes that they have just had perpetuated against them, we as observers tend to believe and overemphasize that they were the cause. Think about it, you got your house was broken into, what happened? Aw they went in through a window in the garage that was left open. "You left the window open?" Yeah, like I wanted people to come through and steal my stuff. But you shouldn't have done that. Even in bad crimes, victims that can be, have absolutely, you know, just simply
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no responsibility in to be able to prevent this and we say, "You were there that night at that time wearing that?"
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Our tendency then, and we're finding this in people's naive psychology and the attribution part of this is they overemphasize this, and it's huge. This is why ventriloquism works. Have you ever seen somebody with the, well yeah, you have. And so we kind of look at that ventriloquist as like speaking [laughs].
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And we get caught up into it and it's not like weird that this guy's going like this [imitating puppet] like that, and that's weird. But we get caught up into it because of this attribution. Now, it has implications in a lotta different ways.
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What I'd like ya to do is look at those. I also want you to know that there are subtle variations to these things. There's one, the actor-observer effect that is we tend to overemphasize the actor as the cause of events, but we tend to attribute our own behavior to external situational ones. This happened to me because of this. That might've happened to you because of that. Can anybody think of recent examples?
22:55
This happens a lot. If you stop and try and think of some, my guess is you'll come up with them pretty quickly. I was playing in a football game one time, it's the championship game, it was under the lights, it was in the snow, and I'm a wide receiver and I'm telling you it is pouring. The snow is coming down and here's what I said.
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These are the exact words I used, ready?
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We're playing the game, it's getting toward the end and one of our receiver's name, what was his name? His name was Ellen, and Ellen was missing a lot of, did I tell you this story? He's missing all these, he's the other wide receiver, and the quarterback's throwing to him and he keeps dropping it. And so I go back to the huddle, and here's what I say to the quarterback. "Jim, stop throwing the ball to Ellen. He's not a good receiver, he's dropping everything." That's what I said verbatim.
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Stop throwing the ball to him, he's a bad receiver. Throw me the ball [laughs], that's the other thing I said. So guess what we did. The game is coming to the end, it's snowing, it's like a blizzard.
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And he throws what could be the last play of the game, if I make the catch, we win.
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And he throws the ball to me, and did I tell you it was under the lights, and they were really bright and you couldn't see anything. And the snow, it was like pouring. And here comes the ball, and it's right to me, and I drop the ball, and I drop it. Did I go back to the huddle and say I'm a bad receiver, stop throwing me the ball? What did I say?
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"You didn't throw it very well, it was like wobbly and the snow is hitting me in the eyes and I couldn't see anything."
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You see, my behavior's because of what? Some of the bad things that've happened to me are because of external situational causes. He's a bad receiver, does that make sense? Yep. We ended up winning the game by the way. Long story, but I did make the catch later on and won, ha. But that wasn't that catch. And I attributed it all to my good receiving skills.
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Actor-observers say you, how 'bout you ever seen somebody who walks like this and they trip. What do people do when they trip? They look to see what tripped them. Right, because they're like "Ah." Or some people, have we talked about this one? Some people trip and they start jogging. Have you ever seen that? [students laughing] He's like oh, I was just jogging. I always start all of my jogs with a trip. But why do they think they do that? Because they know that people like you
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are looking at them going, that's a clumsy person. Oh, wait a minute, they're not clumsy. They were jogging, oh okay. [students laughing]
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They were jogging. I thought they were just clumsy. That's the actor-observer effect. We know people are seeing us thinking these things. When it comes to, again there are some subtle variations on attribution. I really want you to look at it in the textbook. Cool, cool things and studies that show how we come to know another person and explain their behavior is influenced by a lot of interesting kinds of things including other biases. There's a self-serving bias that comes into play
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when we explain good things that resulted because my own effort. Bad results, things that happen it's because of some external factor.
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And so these are just kind of subtle variations on the exact same theme, okay?
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It's a great area of study. It has some very important implications. We use this to help in how people come to explain and to know certain things.
26:35
And applying it to areas like the law, applying it to ways in which marriages, people attribute negative causes or they will claim in bad marriages a spouse who comes home and has a bad day. In bad marriages, a spouse tends to attribute. They just say see, this is what I have to live with, that person's always like this. In good marriages, they tend to attribute to external things. Oh, they must've had a bad day. I wonder what happened to that person. I wonder who made them feel this way.
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Those are huge implications for relationships and other things. So are there any questions about attribution, attribution processes? There's a lot more there, but it's a cool area. What I'd like to do is real quickly, there's about five or six topics in your chapter that can actually be courses in of themselves.
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One is even in this area of conformity, compliance and obedience. And what happens in this is that we have found that there are certain social dynamics that are involved in your conforming. Tell me right now how many of you are conforming. Right now are there any ways, are you conforming right now? [student speaking off microphone] Taking notes, you raised your hands, is that a conforming thing? Maybe it is. >> Student: Wearing clothes. >> Wearing clothes, thank you for wearing clothes.
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I mentioned the guy, didn't I mention the guy, Berkeley, the naked guy. Have I told you about naked guy? Yeah well if I haven't, I thought I told you in here. He went to his entire Berkeley classes, four years, never worn clothes ever. He was naked the whole time. And the first couple of days, people were like, "Well dude you're naked." And they're like, "Yeah, I know, this is my life." And so for four years, after a while they just ignored him. Four years, at Berkeley, completely naked.
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They passed a law recently that said no more naked guys and so I don't know what happened, but conformity, most of us conform. We wear clothes, we do certain things like stand in lines.
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This is conformity, lots of ways. It's not bad, we just do it. And a psychologist, social psychologist, tried out something by asking this question. Would people conform to certain kinds of things because of pressures that they felt to answers of obviously wrong outcomes?
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You see, conformity, there's nothing wrong with it. We stand in line, we drive, we wear clothes, we raise our hands, there's nothing wrong with conformity. It helps societies get along, but we feel intense pressures when we're out. I remember this wedding I went to and I was one of the groomsmen, and I was dressed like this because this is what I thought groomsmen did. And I was getting ready for the rehearsal dinner and I show up, it was in Arizona. And I remember the first, another bridesmaid
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and groomsmen come in and they're like in shorts and sandals, not thongs, sandals [laughs]. That would be weird. Shorts, sandals, and like a t-shirt, and I go ooh you're gonna be way underdressed. You're gonna feel bad, whatever. That's what I'm thinkin' to myself. And then here comes some more and they're like in shorts and sandals, and then here comes the bride and the groom, and they're dressed that same way and now who do you think felt out of place? It was me, like, ah crud.
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And so now that pressure of like what do I do? Do I take the tie off, which I did. Should I roll up my sleeves, which I did. Pull out my thing, whatever just [imitates pulling shirt] shirt tail, and try and roll up my pants and look like I have shorts on. I did anything to get back in line, to look like them.
30:31
Well that's conformity, it's not a bad thing. I didn't have to, I could stand there and go, oh I like dressing like this when everybody else dresses like that.
30:39
But the pressure to behave in certain ways and to adjust my thoughts, my attitudes and my behaviors to coincide with this kind of assumed group norm, that's what we call conformity.
30:53
Okay, a researcher by the name of Solomon Asch, wanted to know when and how far would people go to conform.
31:04
So if we put people that are in a line like this right here in this front row. And Solomon Asch said, "Let's see what would happen
31:18
to people conforming to things that would be fairly easy." And so his study was called the subject dilemma study. They placed him in this amazing dilemma, and the dilemma was if answer is obviously wrong, will students still conform.
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And so he took a line of people just like this and every single person in this row is part of my study, Solomon Asch's study, except, tell me your name. >> Student: I'm Patrick. >> Except for Patrick. Patrick is the only person in this entire row that's the true subject. Everybody else I've talked with here, and they're all part of my study. And we wanted to see how often would Patrick give me a wrong answer when it was clear it was the wrong answer. He's only doing it because of pressure.
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Does that make sense? So it'd go like this. We'd say alright the first standard line is equal to which comparison line and the answers would go really straight forward. At first, somebody would say two, two, two, two, two two, two, everything's fine, okay? Then you go to the next one, and you go like this. And the person goes it's fine, it's two, two, two, everything's great, and everything's fine. And people are doing wonderful and then I'll just pop this back up.
32:38
Then they say that obviously it's two and the person this time goes three. And so this person goes three and now Patrick goes like this. Soon as that person says three, he almost always goes and looks back up and then the next person says three. And then three and then three and then three and now it's Patrick's turn. What will Patrick say? What would you say? All along everybody's been goin' fine for [laughs] four or five times in a row, everybody's doin' fine
33:08
and then all of a sudden now three. That doesn't even make sense. What does Patrick do and Asch said let's put these subjects in this dilemma and see what they would do. And anybody wanna guess what percentage of time this person went along with the crowd that was wrong? Did they say all the time, forget you, you're all wrong? It's two, I don't care what ya'll said.
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It's two, what's wrong with you guys? Or did 100% of the time they go, uh, three. Did they do that every time?
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Well, Asch found what percentage of people conformed when put into this dilemma. 37% of the time Patrick, 37% of the time in these studies,
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he will go along with the crowd in an obvious wrong answer. 37, that's huge, isn't it? Why would he have done that? Asch studied all kinds of things. People to conform like this, there's lot of pressure, you're not maybe certain, you wanna be right.
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Right, you wanna be right, that's a normative influence.
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That's informational, informative, you wanna be liked, you wanna be right. Both of those kinds of influences then played into Patrick answering this 37% of the time in the wrong way.
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In this case, Solomon Asch simply looked at conformity to obvious wrong answers and found these kinds of things. Why we conform, this normative influence comes into play,
34:51
this influence that says I need to know what's right and I'm trying to have my behavior also be right, and I wanna be liked by this group. So these things come into play. By the way, if there was one way in which Patrick would almost always go with the correct answer and not the majority wrong answer. Anybody know what one little thing we could do to make Patrick answer the correct way instead of the wrong way? [student speaking off microphone] Yeah, alls it took was he just have somebody else.
35:23
So here the obvious answer, let's say is, is it one? It's one, and if he says three, three, one, three, three, three, Patrick almost always just took that one little person with him and went oh, it's one. Does that make sense? Just having somebody with you could be real helpful. [student speaking off microphone] One more time, does the person-- [student speaking off microphone] Yeah the personality is, what was the last word you said? [student speaking off microphone] Vary depending upon this?
35:56
Personalities come into place somewhat, but in this case they were really examining these kind of social pressures that were on this person. And yes, there were some people who never went along with this. And you're gonna find even in strong things like obedience, there were some people who never obeyed all the way. But so yeah, there are some personality differences, but the interesting thing about this is the social dynamics almost overrode a lot of those personality traits.
36:21
So if you are outnumbered eight to one, you almost guess, here's the 37% of the time that somebody like Patrick would conform to the wrong answer. But if he just had one other person joining you, only about 10% of the time would the person then just get the wrong answer. So, that's conformity. Compliance is simply a little bit level higher and that is I'm asking you for something.
36:47
And I wanna see will you comply with my request. So compliance is this kind of technique which I'm trying to change your behavior
36:57
with a direct request. So if you're ever walking in the mall this Christmas and somebody comes up to you and says, "Would you take a survey, just a couple of questions?" How many have ever had that happen, where you're out in some public place and somebody asks you would you mind taking a survey? How many have ever done these surveys before, and you yourself are asking the questions?
37:20
How do we get people to comply if we want them to do something, is there some things we can do and the answers social psychologists found is this, ready? If you simply do a couple of things, you can get almost everybody to agree with your request. Alls you have to do is frame your request in a certain way. One way is you ask them a very tiny small request. By the way this is called the foot-in-the-door technique. If you ask a very small request, you almost always get your second larger request
37:47
than if you just asked the second larger request by itself. Can anybody think of this example or a way in which this happens? Gettin' a foot in the door is like this. Can I ask you just one quick question? And that question is do you shop at this mall once a week, twice a week or like monthly or rarely? One question. And if you say gosh, I only shop here like rarely. Great, hey I got a ten-page questionnaire. Do you think you could take it real quick? People go well if they've just been asked
38:19
that small request, you would not be kind of wrong in predicting that people all of a sudden go, hmm, yeah sure why not. That's what we call the foot-in-the-door technique. The second larger request is agreed to more commonly if they've been asked the small request first. Yeah, go 'head. >> Student: Supposedly just asked their one quick question was asking them if they would take this questionnaire. >> Yeah it could be as subtle as would you just simply
38:49
would you mind taking, that's a question that, it has to almost make the person feel like they've done something to help. Like could you help me real quick? Yeah sure what is it? Do you mind answering a quick question? No, I don't mind. Okay, would you take a questionnaire? Is that what you mean? [laughs] Yeah, there's probably ways that-- [students laughing] Is that right? [laughs] He's gonna say yes even if it's not. The small request first, this larger request second
39:15
really kinda comes into play when we make a person, if you hold the door open for somebody, it's like a very interesting helping thing. Like I've done this and then people tend to help more along because they start to feel oh that was nice. And so they'll hold doors open for other people. It's almost as if there's this something that occurs in our thinking that says I'm a helpful person, I just answered this question and they answer bigger ones. Now, salesmen use this a lot, foot-in-the-door.
39:43
I just want to point to you some other ones, the-door-in-the-face, which is some things you can do to salesmen. But a door-in-the-face is another what we call compliance technique where people have taken college students and asked them gigantic requests first that they always say no to. And because they said no to something big, they agreed to a smaller second request. Anybody have an example of this occurring for you? They took college students. I don't know if they've done it in the last,
40:13
I don't know maybe ten years or so, but they used to repeat this in different places and they would ask college students this question. They'd go around and say, hey, there's these students that we would like you to come and you know,
40:28
the first large request was something outrageous. And they would say we want you to come work six hours a week for the next 15 weeks to volunteer to come in and work with these disadvantaged youth. Would you come and do that? And almost everybody said wait, six to eight hours a week for the next 15 weeks? Nah, I can't do that, that's too much. Well then would you be able to take some kids to the zoo this Saturday for four hours? And they'd go, oh I can do that.
40:56
But if they went to people first and just said would you take kids to the zoo for four hours, people would just say oh sorry I'm busy, nah it's too much. Isn't that interesting? Simply turning down something big almost lead people to go, but oh well they gave in and said, okay forget that maybe just coming to the zoo for four hours, oh I'll do that. That's called the foot-in-the-door technique. Very interesting how these old compliance techniques work. Yeah? [student speaking off microphone]
41:22
Yeah if you give a mouse a cookie [laughs], it'll want milk. It's similar to that, is that what you said? That's really funny, yeah, sounds like a good book.
41:33
If you give a mouse a cookie, he'll want a glass of milk. It's kind of like that. It's actually not like that at all, it's just a good book though. [students laughing] It is, it's sort of like that, it's like he gets the power to ask for more but that's cute. Okay.
41:49
The last form of trying to get people to behave in a certain way involves something called obedience in which we demand somebody to do something. Is it possible to influence people by demanding that they do something and how obedient are people in general? Let me ask you this question. I was going to pull out the clickers, but I don't want to mess with them. So I just wanna ask you this question. How many agree that I could get somebody
42:26
to obey my commands to hurt somebody else simply by telling them you have to do this? Is it possible that I could get them to hurt somebody really bad?
42:42
If I just simply said to Patrick, "Patrick, you have in front of you a clicker, and every time Josh over here answers a question that's wrong,
42:54
Josh is going to get shocked.
42:57
In fact, he's gonna get shocked so bad, it's going to hurt him. But he's got to learn, in fact learning is simply us being able to teach people, and shocking and punishment really helps. And so Patrick, listen to the answer, he's going to learn some things, you read the question, one is A. If he says B, you shock him." And so Josh says, "A", wrong [imitates buzzer]. And you hear Josh go, "Ahhh, that hurt!"
43:24
And I say, "Patrick, while this may hurt, it's the only way for him to learn. And I'm doing a study on learning, and I want you to keep shocking him" and you're like, "But that hurt him." I said, "Yes, I know." [students laughing] "But I also happen to know a lot about learning, and this is part of my study and while the shocks maybe painful, they're not dangerous, he's fine. He'll live."
43:50
And then the next question, [imitates buzzer] wrong. Shock him, "Ah that hurts, stop." How far along could I get him to go on a scale of let's say zero voltage, let's say 15 volts, all the way to 450 volts of electricity? And there's a whole scale boom boom boom boom boom boom boom. And he's gotta go all the way to the very end. Do you think Patrick will obey me if I keep saying, "Go all the way to the end." And he's saying, "Stop it hurts, it hurts really bad, stop."
44:21
Well, a guy named Stanley Milgram did a study of just this, and he wanted to find out could a guy like me who's an obvious authority in this case because I'm doing a psychological study or anything else, tell Patrick to shock somebody to hurt them. And how far would they go? And we ask people would anybody go all the way and shock these people to this highest level and make them feel electricity at 450 volts. And everybody there would say, they said,
44:43
"There is no way you could get somebody like Patrick to go and give that much voltage to somebody like him. You can't do it, they won't do this."
44:55
And so by the way, because this was exactly what people were claiming at trials for Nazi Germany when they said you killed people.
45:08
You hurt them and pushed the button that sent them to their death. And the people who were on trial would say, I was what?
45:19
"I'm not guilty because I was following orders. I was obeying." And then people would say would people really obey somebody to hurt somebody just because they were obeying orders? Wouldn't people stop and go no I'm not obeying you. I'm not going to do that. And people thought no one would obey all the way to the end. And so a guy named Stanley Milgram said let's take college students, see what would happen. [student speaking off microphone]
45:48
Yes, there were some ways in which people, she asked a question, do people obey more because they were afraid of things like well I just had to obey authority. They would shoot me if I don't do this, and so I'm under fear or whatever the case may be. But the question is how likely is this to occur. By the way let me show you a video clip of the original study of somebody called Stanley Milgram's study and what he found. Here's the actual clip from his study.
46:14
This was done in 1963, and here's how it looked.
46:22
You could see the shock levels, moderate shock, strong. These are different voltages, 185 very strong shock, 250 volts intense shock, 315 extreme intensity, and then danger severe and then xxx.
46:44
>> Well step right in here and have a seat there. You can leave your coat on the back of that chair there. [muffled speaking] >> This guy... [muffled speaking]
46:59
This guy is what we call right here, he's the learner. He's going to get shocked. This is the teacher, who's the subject in this experiment. We wanna see what he will do, this guy right here, what he will do. This is the authority, the teacher. [muffled speaking]
47:22
>> Is that too tight?
47:26
These electrodes are connected to the chest area.
47:33
[muffled speaking]
47:44
>> This is the teacher. [muffled speaking] >> 300 volts
47:52
[screaming] [students laughing] >> Get me out of here! Get me out of here! Get me out! Get me out of here! [muffled speaking] >> Green, grass as a apple.
48:15
[muffled speaking] >> If the learner doesn't answer in a reasonable time about four or five seconds, consider the answer wrong. And follow the same procedures we've been doing for the wrong answers. [muffled speaking]
48:30
Continue.
48:34
>> Green, grass, pink, apple.
48:39
The answer is green.
48:47
>> Go on with the procedure please. >> 115 volts the answer is pink. [screaming] [students laughing] [muffled speaking]
49:09
>> 130 volts.
49:11
[screaming]
49:18
[muffled speaking]
49:31
>> Car, train, plane.
49:40
Please answer.
49:46
The answer is bird. 325 volts.
49:56
Blunt knife straight word arrow.
50:01
Answer please.
50:06
>> Continue please.
50:10
>> The answer is arrow.
50:13
360 volts.
50:18
[muffled speaking] >> Go on please, please continue.
50:25
>> Saw, drug, pillow, hair, grass, answer please.
50:39
>> Go on. >> Hair, 375 volts.
50:44
[muffled speaking] He won't answer. Can you check and see if he's alright please? [muffled speaking]
51:02
Answer please, are you alright in there? Are you alright? >> Please continue teacher. [muffled speaking] >> Continue, continue.
51:22
>> Was he under distress, this guy? >> Students: Yes. >> Uh huh, psychologists said this 1963 you can't do that experiment again [laughs]. That's too risky, it's too much stress for these subjects. By the way every subject that did this ultimately was asked a question, now here's what we were doing. We're trying to find out some things in this study. Now that you know what happened, would you do this again? They went, "Oh, it was very interesting, very stressful,
51:46
but yeah I learned a lot about myself." By the way the guy getting shocked wasn't getting shocked.
51:52
He was part of the experiment. You see, he wasn't getting shocked, he was just going ah! Like that behind a room.
51:59
It wasn't anything to do with learning to see what Josh would do or not do. It was all to see would he obey and follow orders. And he obeyed and follow orders. Anybody want to guess at how many people went all the way to 450 volts now?
52:16
Amazingly at the beginning of the study, people said like the sadistic, mean, rotten types, maybe one to five percent would go all the way. And instead they found what percentage went all the way?
52:31
Here, 63% of the people, you're gonna remember that 'cause it's like 1963. 63% of the people, by the way, everybody went to 15.
52:42
Everybody went to the moderate, everybody went to the strong, everybody went to the very strong, everybody went to the intense, even when the victim began to scream. But when he began to pound on the wall, 10% of the people said, "I'm not going any further." They said, "I'm done." Even when the victim fell silent like was portrayed in this video, 34, 35% of the people still went all the way.
53:05
That's an amazing finding, and it happened with men. It happened with women, it happened with people of a low or high economics, social economic standing. It happened to people with different countries, of different races. It was almost always around 63% of the people would obey and go all the way. This is very interesting, and it's something to do with why do we obey authorities who tell us. By the way you can't do the study again. You can't redo it on a campus like this
53:36
because there's ethical committees that say, "No, you're putting that subject through too much stress. We don't care and we already know what the results are." Go ahead. >> Student: What was the motivation to-- >> Five dollars, they were getting five bucks. They even did studies where they weren't getting anything. They were even doing studies where that victim was in the other room and they said, is there anything they could say, at the end of the study.
53:59
Is there anything he could have said to get you to stop? And they're like what do you mean? Like could the victim have yelled out something like my heart, my heart. And I don't know, probably I don't know, maybe. So by the way, they brought the person into the room with them. Now remember this is the guy who's not getting shocked. He's a good actor though, and he sat there in the room hooked up to this machine just like this. And Patrick's over there and I'm getting shocked
54:20
and he sees me and I go stop, it hurts. And still [laughs] that many people went all the way, 40%. In fact, Patrick had to come over here, put my hand on top of the shock generator, what he thought was a shock generator. And in that case 30% of the people came over and put the guy's hand on there to make his hand stay on the shock generator.
54:43
Does that make sense, that they obeyed that strongly? So the question is, here 63, 65, maybe 65% of the people when they heard the learner screaming, they still complied all the way to the very end. And 40%, when they saw the learner in the room with them, and it went down a little bit if they had to go over and physically touch the person so they would get shocked.
55:05
Question is this. For social psychologists, why do people obey authorities? Do we obey them, and the answer seems to be that it occurs because we tend to follow authorities. Authorities tend to have what we believe the best interest of people in mind, and that's why they're in authority. People in uniforms, we tend to obey.
55:30
And the results of the study showed, that there were people, and then still remember there's 35% of the people that stopped. And the question we would ask them is why'd you stop. And they'd say because ultimately I'm responsible. He's telling me, but I'm the one that's pushin' the button and I'm not gonna go on. And it's cool, I wish I could show you a video clip of those guys going, you must continue. I don't have to continue. Well it's worth five dollars, the experiment demands you.
55:50
I don't care what the experiment says, you can have your money back. I'm not gonna hurt somebody. And just simply seeing these people do this is like oh, we can do this. There are ways to not obey authorities blindly and follow them. Did somebody have a question, yeah? >> Student: Well, what about something like the Stanford Prison Experiment? >> Stanford Prison Experiment was one in which you'll see in your textbook in which people were just simply pretending
56:12
to be the roles of a prisoner or a guard. And they all of a sudden really took on this and started hurting the prisoners down there. And they had to stop this study because the prisoners actually were being humiliated by these guards who became almost sadistic. And so there's some role things that occurred beyond even obeying. Now, the last thing is by the way, and resisting obedience in our resisting of it, that once this study went out, people started to realize they can question things.
56:41
They were responsible. They could say no. And they found that that helped resist especially authorities that would have you hurt somebody.
56:54
But we do this so easy that the first day of this class, remember I told you if you wanted to increase your chance of getting somebody to put a quarter into a parking meter for you, or to feed a parking meter, alls you had to do was what? Have a uniform on and if you walked up, even a janitorial supply uniform, and said you go put money in that guy's meter he's short, people obeyed like 78% of the time versus if they were dressed in jeans. They'd go, "No."
57:20
But if they were wearing a uniform, that's all you had to do with people, like oh, he's in a uniform, okay.
57:28
But you see resisting simply requires us to kind of take responsibility and to go wait a minute, hold on, I don't have to obey you. And now I will on some things, but not in this, not when someone else is in danger or in harm. And these are kinds of interesting things. That's the obedience study. 65 or so, 63, I don't know what it is, percent you can see in the textbook of people went all the way. And that was amazing. And so now there's different ways in which,
57:51
by the way this is one of the classic social psychics. It's one of the classic experiments of all time in psychology. And it has really kinda opened our eyes to the ways in which authority, even when kids are little, how we kinda bring them up in that. And then the ways in which we could not only understand it and how it occurs but then ways of resisting. >> Student: Um, I'm just curious, like I know most kids, if they get in trouble by somebody else's parents,
58:17
it's way worse than getting in trouble by their own. Does that have something to do with it? >> That's a good question. That sometimes, she said that if you get in trouble by somebody else's parents it may be way worse than if your own parents did the, yeah it's interesting how cultures vary in this as well. The ability to punish somebody else's child or is that what you mean? That kind of that maybe has a different impact and so we're more worried about that kind of thing? Could come into play?
58:48
There's lots of influences like this. By the way, it's a great study, what I want you to do is look at it and read it and see some of these implications that are out there. Here is, here are four other areas that I want you to look at in the textbook in chapter 17 on Social Psychology. There are some cool ways in which our behavior as individuals are influenced by simply being around the presence of others. In that case, we call that social facilitation. That your behavior's influenced
59:20
by the presence of other people. Social loafing, we tend to have less effort when we're in a group than when we're alone. We tend to put forth less effort, and that's called social loafing. And then I'll let you look at group polarization and even groupthink. These are some cool things that come up in the field of social psych out of chapter 17 that I want you to read. Are there any questions about conformity or compliance and obedience or even what we talked about attributions, anything?
59:57
Guess what, we're done, we're over. [students whistling] It's been a good semester you guys. [uplifting music] Biola University offers a variety of biblically-centered degree programs ranging from business to ministry to the arts and sciences. Visit Biola.edu to find out how Biola could make a difference in your life. [uplifting music]
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