Social Psychology PDF

13.1 We tend to feel that we are in charge of our own behaviour-that we are free to determine what we do and what we choose not to do, and that we act for good reasons, not just to go along with the crowd. Social psychology challenges these ideas with strong evidence that much of our behaviour d...

13.1 We tend to feel that we are in charge of our own behaviour-that we are free to determine what we do and what we choose not to do, and that we act for good reasons, not just to go along with the crowd. Social psychology challenges these ideas with strong evidence that much of our behaviour depends more on where we are than on who we are. Kurt Lewin, one of the first social psychologists, conceptualized psychology by a simple equation- B =f (P,E) -symbolizing that Behaviour is a function of the Person and the Environment (1936). This insight challenged the Freudian theories of the early 20th century, which focused solely on the person and their unconscious drives. Lewin's formula also challenged behaviourism, which focused solely on the environment. Lewin, therefore, did what is so often the most reasonable thing to do: take all things in moderation. In doing so, he emphasized the role of the individual in choosing what situations to go into, how to interpret a situation, and, ultimately, how to respond. The decades of research in social psychology that has flowed from this insight has pieced together a deep understanding of the situational forces and individual characteristics that determine human behaviour. Situational Influence on Behaviour: Mimicry, Norms, and Roles To begin our study of social psychology, we must first acknowledge that humans are fundamentally social creatures; perhaps the biggest part of the "E" is the social environment. Even the biggest introverts among us are remarkably sensitive to what is socially acceptable or unacceptable. This doesn't limit itself to the difference between right and wrong-it can be something as simple as how to walk down the street. Is it appropriate to make eye contact with strangers and give them a warm greeting? In some situations, it would be incredibly rude not to. In others, it could lead to an awkward interaction or even get you beaten up. Of course, we don't always get it right and some people are better than others at making these social judgments, but the vast majority of people in most situations somehow seem to know how to behave. In this section, we will find out why. Synchrony and Mimicry Exactly how do social influences become incorporated into our thoughts and behaviour? Neuroscientists and psychologists have observed that humans often become synchronized, in a sense. Synchrony occurs when two individuals engage in social interactions, and their speech, language, and even physiological activity become more alike (Gordon et al., 2019). Similarly, humans often engage in mimicry, taking on for ourselves the behaviours, emotional displays, and facial expressions of others. Perhaps you have caught yourself inadvertently copying another's behaviour. But most of the time it is a completely unconscious activity. You tend to laugh and smile when others are laughing and smiling. More generally, you display the same emotional expressions on your face as those you see on the faces around you and then pick up their moods as well. And if someone else is whispering, you will likely whisper, even if it is to ask, "Why are we whispering?" The examples are literally endless; practically every moment of social interaction between people involves mimicry. This kind of subtly attuned mimicry is highly functional (Lakin et al., 2003; Tschacher et al., 2014), serving as a "social glue" and helping to coordinate behaviours in social settings. Mimicry helps people feel reassured and validated by each other, sending the unconsciously processed message to others that you are kind of like them, and more so, that you are paying attention to them in that moment. However, it's a different story if you try to intentionally mimic people's behaviour in order to manipulate them. Consciously trying to "steer" this process could lead you into trouble, just like focusing too much on a well- practised movement can cause you to mess it up. Indeed, if someone notices that a person is mimicking them, they like that person less as a result (Maddux et al., 2008). So, if you are using this power for your own sneaky purposes, at the very least, be subtle about it! Norms and Roles Social norms are the (usually unwritten) guidelines for how to behave in social contexts. Some of the more readily observable norms are those associated with age, gender, and socioeconomic class, and you can see them influence everything from our manners (e.g., you probably make different jokes when out with your friends than when you meet your significant other's parents for the first time) to the clothes we wear (e.g., you shouldn't show up to the typical funeral wearing cargo shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt). Norms are mostly implicit and emerge naturally in social interactions, although there are plenty of examples to the contrary. When you were a child, adults most likely told you specifically how you were expected to behave in different situations. As an employee, your supervisor may have provided you with verbal instructions or a policy manual about what is expected for manners, dress, and so on. Despite these examples, we adapt to new norms all the time without even realizing it. In fact, people often fail to realize this and instead believe that their behaviour is freely chosen (Nolan et al., 2008). Our tendency for mimicry helps us figure out normative behaviour, but what motivates us to go along with norms? One very important motivator is social approval. Individuals who don't appear "normal" (meaning some aspect of their behaviour challenges the norm) are often subject to all kinds of unpleasantness, ranging from insults to legal trouble. Ostracism, being ignored or excluded from social contact, is another powerful form of social pressure (Hartgerink et al., 2015; Pfundmair & Wetherall, 2018). Imagine this scenario: You arrive in the psychology department to participate in a study. In the waiting area, another student spots a ball in a basket of toys, picks it up, and playfully tosses it to you. A third student in the room holds up his hands, so you toss him the ball. This isn't a fun game, but it does pass the time. But what happens if the other two students for no apparent reason and without any provocation begin to only toss the ball back and forth with each other? This is an experimental method to produce ostracism developed over a 20-year period by Kip Williams and his graduate students (Williams & Nida, 2011). Although being left out of the game may sound trivial, the effects are anything but. The most noticeable observations across dozens of studies include anger and sadness; these effects have held up across many variations in the ball-toss procedure. Other typical responses include temporarily lowered self-esteem, self-confidence, and even a reduced sense of a meaningful existence. With all of these negative effects, you can see how ostracism could encourage someone to go along with the norms. In fact, ostracism can lead to hyper-normative behaviour. For example, individuals who experience a high need to belong—a type of personality trait-have a strong response to ostracism. In one study on group moralization, for example, high need- to-belong participants responded to ostracism by (1) increasing how much they identified with their ingroup's beliefs (such as a political group, church, social organization, etc.) and (2) increasing how morally important those beliefs are (Pfundmair & Wetherell, 2018). At its worse, ostracism can produce aggression in laboratory studies (Poon & Wong, 2019), and this has led researchers to note that, at the time of their writing, 13 of the 15 most recent school shooting perpetrators had experienced significant ostracism (Williams & Nida, 2011). The #Psych feature offers further insight into the effects of ostracism. While norms are general rules that apply to members of a group, social roles are guidelines that apply to specific positions within the group. Because roles are so specific, we often have labels for them, such as professor, student, coach, parent, and even prison guard. This latter role happens to be one of the most famous roles in psychology. The Stanford Prison Experiment of the early 1970s has become a memorable and controversial narrative of how quickly people might adapt to assigned roles-it has even been made into a feature film by that name (directed by Alvarez, 2015) and inspired one other. What makes this study so memorable? In 1971, researchers at Stanford University recruited a group of young men and randomly assigned them to play the part of prisoner or guard in a makeshift jail in the basement of the psychology building. The lead investigator, Phillip Zimbardo, coached the guards on how to play the role, even relying on consultation from a former prisoner on how to best mimic actual prison guard behaviours he experienced while incarcerated. Unsurprisingly, some guards became quite hostile and abusive, and in response many of the "prisoners" became helpless and submissive (Haney et al., 1973). The study was terminated before the end of planned two-week period. The reason offered by Zimbardo at the time was that the situation had gotten out of hand-the role-playing exercise became its own reality, and the prisoners were starting to show extreme duress. (However, this has been refuted multiple times by one of the prisoners in a 2004 interview; Toppo, 2018). Whether you accept Zimbardo's worst- case-scenario explanation, or the more moderate one offered by some participants, the point is still very important: People placed into situations change their behaviour. Sometimes the change is intentional, but often it is not a conscious act. Sometimes the change is minor, but the situation can also demand enormous changes. Classic studies have always been an essential part of learning about social psychology-they are often fascinating and illustrate concepts very well. It is also important to separate interesting story and narrative from scientific reality. Recall the concept of demand characteristics covered in Module 2.1: Providing the guards with specific instructions on how to play their role weakens Zimbardo's conclusion that the power of these randomly assigned roles turned otherwise good people into cruel guards and desperate victims (see Banuazizi & Movahedi, 1975). Interestingly, in the early 2000s a similar study, the British Prison Study, controlled for demand characteristics and found that the guards were actually very reluctant to engage in abusive behaviour, and the prisoners eventually coalesced to agree upon strategies with how to deal with being locked up together, and thereby improved their well- being over the course of the study (Haslam & Richer, 2012). Thus, the power of the situation can bring people together to play the role of "survivor." Prison studies aside, the importance of norms can be illustrated in many other ways. For example, alcohol abuse among university students is an increasing problem in Canada and the United States, and psychologists have found that perceived norms are likely a factor. Students who perceive norms to be high tend to overestimate rates of drinking on campus and are much more likely to be binge drinkers and heavy drinkers themselves (Foster et al., 2015; Guo et al., 2020). We should keep in mind that this is correlational research, so we cannot establish whether the norms lead to more drinking or vice-versa, but research suggests that interventions aimed at correcting misperceptions of the norm can lead to decreased alcohol abuse (LaBrie et al., 2013; Ridout & Campbell, 2014). We should also keep in mind that alcohol use is just one example of the power of norms. In fact, our perceptions of what is normal are likely to influence everything we do. And as you'll see in the next section on group dynamics, perceptions about what is normal can be formed and exert influence on people almost instantly. Group Dynamics Mimicry, roles, and social norms highlight the fact that much of our lives are spent in groups, whether it's hanging out with friends, collaborating on school projects, or navigating a crowded sidewalk. A key question in social psychology is whether the subtleties of mimicry and norms lead us to behave differently in groups than we would alone, and how the behaviour of individuals may differ from the behaviour of a group. Social Loafing and Social Facilitation Let's start with a question about your own experiences in groups-how do you feel about group assignments? Do you like them because they're an opportunity to get to know people, or maybe because your previous experiences show that groups can accomplish something more impressive together than you could alone? Or do you hate group projects because other people waste so much time or because people don't have very good ideas or because some people are slackers whose work doesn't meet your standards and you end up having to do everything yourself? Research at various types of higher education settings finds that students' opinions are divided, but many of those feelings are quite strong (e.g., Chang & Brickman, 2018; Gottschall & Garcia-Bayonas, 2008). Regardless of your feelings, you are almost certainly going to be working in groups in the future. Whether it's your job, family and community groups, or the group project your professor assigns to your class, it's pretty tough to avoid working with other people. Often one of the main purposes of a group is to work on more complex and sophisticated projects than an individual could by working alone. But does this really happen? Do groups produce better work, making the most out of individuals' ideas and encouraging their best efforts? Or do they produce poorer outcomes, limiting people's creativity and enabling them to slack off? Oddly enough, the answer to both questions is "yes, sometimes." Groups sometimes produce poorer outcomes due to social loafing, which occurs when an individual puts less effort into working on a task with others. There are various phrases for describing this-coasting, slacking, free-riding. Social loafing can occur in all sorts of tasks, including physical activities (e.g., swimming, rope-pulling), cognitive activities (e.g., problem-solving, perceptual tests), and creativity (e.g., song writing), and across all types of groups, regardless of age, gender, or nationality (Karau & Williams, 2001; Latané et al., 2006). One reason why people loaf is because they think others in the group are also not doing their best, setting up an apparent social norm that "people in this group don't work very hard." There are two likely outcomes of social loafing. Either the group performs quite poorly (i.e., crashes and burns), or a small number of people end up saving the group by doing everything themselves. Given the importance and inevitability of group work, it is important to understand what factors encourage loafing, so we can avoid them (Hall & Buzwell, 2012). Low efficacy beliefs. This occurs if tasks are too difficult or complex, so people don't know where to start. Structure tasks so people know exactly what to do, provide clear deadlines, and give people feedback so they know how well they are doing and how they can improve. Believing that an individual's contributions are not important to the group. This occurs if people can't see how their own input matters to the group. Overcome this by helping people understand how group members rely on and affect each other, and assigning tasks to people that they feel are significant or they've had some say in choosing (if possible). Not caring about the group's outcome. This occurs when a person is not personally identified with the group, perhaps feeling socially rejected from the group or perceiving the group as unsuccessful or unimportant. Overcome this by making the group's goals and values clear and explicit, encouraging friendships to form and group activities to be fun and socially rewarding. Feeling like others are not trying very hard. As discussed earlier, people loaf if they feel others are loafing (Karau & Williams, 2001). Overcome this by providing feedback about the progress of group members on their individual tasks. Strong groups often have regular meetings where people's progress is discussed and, ideally, celebrated! In contrast to social loafing, social facilitation occurs when one's performance is affected by the presence of others (Belletier et al., 2019). For example, in perhaps the first social psychology experiment ever published, Norman Triplett (1898) found that cyclists ride faster when racing against each other than when trying to beat the clock. Many other researchers have found similar effects, even in animals. For example, ants are able to dig more when other ants are working alongside them (Chen, 1937), and even cockroaches run down a runway more quickly when other cockroaches are around (Zajone et al., 1969). The presence of others does not always improve performance, however. We're all familiar with the athlete who "choked" at the big moment. The presence of others is likely to interfere with our performance when our skills are poor, or the task is difficult. Even the cockroaches mentioned earlier did more poorly when other cockroaches watched them try to navigate a more complex maze (Zajone et al., 1969). There are many mechanisms that explain the social facilitation effect (Uziel, 2007; Belletier et al., 2019). One of the most important is that the presence of others is (emotionally) arousing, and arousal tends to strengthen our dominant responses. Similarly, the presence of others occupies our attention, reducing our ability to consciously direct our behaviour. For both reasons, when the task is simple (e.g., run in a straight line), our dominant responses are the right ones. But when the task is very complex (e.g., juggle three axes for the first time), we need to be able to pay more attention and control our responses more carefully, and then arousal decreases performance. Based on these tendencies, it is probably not surprising that, for true masters of a skill, audiences and competitors generally enhance performance, but novices tend to perform best in practice sessions when nobody is watching (Bell & Yee, 1989; MacCracken & Stadulis, 1985). Conformity At the most basic level, conformity can be found in mimicry, and it can be a very useful skill at times. Imagine travelling to a country where you do not know the language, and no one is around to help you translate. Could you get by? If you want to ride public transportation, just watch what the other passengers are doing. Do they buy tickets before boarding, or do they pay a driver once they board? Following another's lead is often the best way to go, even if you are just walking into a new restaurant in your neighbourhood. The study of mimicry focuses on how we are influenced by a single individual, but being part of a group can affect our behaviours as well. Conformity refers to a change in behaviour to fit in with a group, whether it is intentional or not. In the 1950s Solomon Asch developed a very creative way to study conformity in the lab and conducted a series of studies that are nearly as famous as the Stanford Prison Experiment. In this method, a research participant would join a group of subjects in a room and complete a series of very simple and obvious perceptual judgments-judgments that anyone should get right (see Figure 13.1*). However, the other "participants" in the room were actually research confederates, meaning that Asch had placed them there with instructions to give the wrong answer at specific times. Despite the simplicity of the task, the participants would often conform to the rest of the group and give an incorrect answer (Asch, 1951, 1955, 1956). Why we sometimes conform so readily is an important psychological question. There are two pretty clear reasons, and they lead to different types of conformity. First, normative influence is the result of social pressure to adopt a group's perspective in order to be accepted, rather than rejected, by the group. This is sometimes referred to as public compliance because the individual modifies what they say or do without internalizing their conformity-it is a public rather than private type of conformity (Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004). This generally means that the person sacrifices a little honesty about their own beliefs in order to avoid criticism or rejection from the group. Second, informational influence occurs when people feel the group is giving them useful information. This can be referred to as private acceptance, when people actually change their internalized beliefs and opinions as well as their public behaviour. In this situation, the conforming individual is likely to see other group members as being better informed, having more skill, or perhaps better taste; thus, they are a good source of information. The following experiment demonstrates that the two types of conformity may work together: A group of young heterosexual men participated in a study of facial attractiveness by rating photographs of females on a scale from 1 to 10. Then they received randomly assigned feedback indicating that the average rating for that same face was higher, lower, or the same that they gave. In subsequent trials, many of the participants changed their ratings to conform to the perceived group norm. Perhaps they wanted to make sure they were doing a good job and using the same standards as others (normative compliance). However, they changed their behaviour even though their responses were not being observed. It would appear that this represents private compliance— perhaps perceptions of attractiveness really are influenced by what others think (Huang et al., 2014). Both types of influence seemed to be occurring in Asch's studies as well. For example, some of the conforming participants said afterwards that they thought they had misunderstood something, or that there was some sort of "trick" the others picked up on that they didn't, because surely the others couldn't all be wrong if they were all saying the same thing. Other people reported that they didn't want to stand out or make a scene by being the disagreeable person, so they just went along with the group. In everyday contexts, both types of influence are often at work, making us easily swayed by other people. We will be especially vulnerable to social influence when we are uncertain about the situation, although as Asch showed us, social influence is powerful enough to make us doubt ourselves even when the situation is pretty clear and unambiguous. Many factors work together to determine, in a given situation, the strength of social influence pressures and whether or not a person ends up conforming (see Table 13.1*). Groupthink Despite the old proverb, two heads are not always better than one, and six can be downright harmful. Probably the best example of this case is the phenomenon of groupthink, a decision-making problem in which group members avoid arguments and strive for agreement. At first, this might sound like a good thing. Conflicts can be unpleasant for some people, and they can certainly get in the way of group decision making. But groupthink does not always promote good decision making. When group members are more concerned with avoiding disagreements than with generating ideas, three main problems occur. First, group members may minimize or ignore potential problems and risks in the ideas they are considering. The lack of ability to critically question or disagree with ideas means that people will emphasize potential rewards and successes and overlook potentially disastrous things that might go wrong. Second, groups will likely settle too quickly on ideas, because social pressures will make people uncomfortable with prolonging a decision-making process. Instead, they will simply agree with one of the existing ideas. As a result, many potential ideas are never brought to the table for consideration. Third, groups often become overconfident and therefore less likely to carefully examine the consequences of their decisions, leading them to be less likely to learn from their mistakes (Ahlfinger & Esser, 2001; Janis, 1972). All things considered, groupthink seems like a pretty bad outcome! Historians have implicated groupthink in some truly terrible decisions. There was the 1986 decision to launch the space shuttle Challenger despite safety concerns raised by engineers (the shuttle broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing seven astronauts). A more recent example comes from the decisions made by the Bush administration in the United States and the Blair administration in the United Kingdom to start a preemptive war in Iraq. Their justification was that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was manufacturing weapons of massive destruction (WMDs), and therefore he needed to be stopped before he could launch them. However, both administrations were widely criticized for seeking and accepting supporting information while ignoring or downplaying conflicting information. Because of the power of groupthink, the leaders became more and more confident in their use of faulty evidence. Now, nearly 20 years later, no WMDs have ever been found, thousands of military personnel and over 100,000 civilians died, and that region remains in turmoil. Some groups are more susceptible to groupthink than others, and psychologists have turned to laboratory research to find out when and why. Their work revealed that when groupthink occurs, there is often a strong or "directive" leader-specifically, an individual who suppresses dissenters and encourages the group to consider fewer alternative ideas (Ahlfinger & Esser, 2001). Also, groups in which members are more similar to each other, especially in shared sociopolitical perspectives, are more likely to fall into groupthink (e.g., Schulz-Hardt et al., 2000). To Act or Not to Act: Obedience, the Bystander Effect, and Altruism So far in this module, we have seen that situational factors can have a great impact on behaviour. In some cases, these effects happen completely without our awareness; that can certainly be true for mimicry, adopting roles and norms, and participating in groupthink. Although there are many cases in which people do make conscious decisions-particularly with conformity and social loafing, in this section, we turn to situations in which people have to make a decision to act or not to act. Obedience to Authority If there was a pivotal world event that stimulated research on obedience, it would have to be the number of military personnel in World War Il who committed atrocities. The fact that so many average German citizens actively participated in the rounding up, incarceration, torture, and murder of millions of people must raise the question "Were they already evil people? Or were most of them just normal people following the instructions of their leaders?" Most of us believe that we would never do such things, no matter how powerful the situation. If we were asked to harm somebody against their will, and we found it immoral, we would say no. Right? The Milgram obedience experiments (1963, 1974) have thoroughly shaken our confidence in that belief. In his now-famous studies, Stanley Milgram showed the world just how powerful authority could be, and how easily otherwise good, normal people could be made to act inhumanely. Consider what happened in Milgram's study: Participants-all of them were men-were told the study was about the effects of punishment on memory. They, and the other supposed participant (who was actually a confederate), a friendly middle-aged man, drew slips of paper in order to determine who would be the "teacher" and who would be the "learner." The draw was secretly rigged so that the participants were always the teacher. The teacher's job was to read a series of word pairs to the learner, and then to test him on his memory of the word pairs. The learner was in a separate room hooked up to an electric shock machine. Each time the learner got an answer wrong, the teacher had to administer a shock by flipping a switch on a panel in front of him, and increasing the voltage after each wrong answer. The switches went up by 15 volts until reaching a maximum of 450 volts, which was labelled "xxx." This process was watched by "the experimenter," a man wearing a lab coat. As the experiment progressed, the learner started to make sounds of discomfort in the other room, grunting audibly as he was shocked. By 150 volts he was protesting loudly and saying that he no longer wanted to continue in the study. If the subjects continued reading the word pairs and increasing the shock level, the learner got to the point of screaming in pain, demanding and pleading, over and over again, to be let out, pleading that he couldn't take it anymore, even that his heart condition was bothering him, and his heart was acting up. And then, at 330 volts, the learner fell silent and gave no further responses. At this point, subjects were informed by the experimenter that a non-response was to be considered "wrong," and the punishing shock was to be administered. If, at any point, subjects expressed concern for the learner, or said that they didn't want to continue, the experimenter simply said a few stock responses, such as "Please continue" or "The experiment requires that you continue. Now let's step back for a moment and put the situation in perspective. As part of a psychology experiment, people were asked to shock a person in another room and ignore this person as he expressed increasing discomfort, screaming repeatedly, begging and pleading to be let out of the experiment, angrily refusing to continue, indicating that he might be having a heart attack, and eventually falling completely silent. There was no compelling reason for people to continue, except a man in a lab coat was telling them to do so. What would you do? If you are like most people, you probably feel that you would refuse to continue whenever the "learner" said that he didn't want to continue (which happened quite early, 150 volts). In fact, a group of psychiatrists at Yale University were asked to predict ahead of time how many people would obey all the way to the end of the experiment, and they estimated it would be about 1 in 1000- the base rate of sadistic or psychopathic individuals in the population (Milgram, 1974). But overall, Milgram's results were pretty grim: Most subjects continued (approximately 65% in most versions of the study), despite the protestations of the learner, simply because an "authority figure" told them to. It's important to point out that subjects were not sadists, gleefully shocking their partners. Many were deeply distressed themselves, telling the experimenter they didn't want to continue, arguing with him, and so on. As Milgram wrote: Subjects were observed to sweat, tremble, stutter, bite their lips, groan, and dig their fingernails into their flesh. These were characteristic rather than exceptional responses.... At one point he (one of the participants) pushed his fist into his forehead and muttered, "Oh God, let's stop it." And yet he continued to respond to every word of the experimenter, and obeyed to the end.... (1963, pp. 371-378) Why would people put themselves and another person through such agony just for an experiment? Interestingly, Milgram ran other variants of this experiment, trying to see what might change obedience rates. Milgram tried to reduce the pressure from authority in several ways, such as having the experimenter give orders from another room, by phone. Milgram also tried to increase sense of the learner's distress, such as by having subjects and learners in the same room, and even requiring subjects to physically press the learner's hand onto a shock. Although the rates of obedience are somewhat lower in these experiments, they remained higher than anyone expected (often around 30%). Reducing the appearance of authority and increasing the suffering of the learner clearly helped, but did not resolve the situation. There were two especially interesting and powerful variations. One experiment looked at whether it is easier for a group to resist the experimenter, pitting the power of the group against the power of authority. In this experiment, there were three teachers making decisions collectively. Two of the teachers were confederates, pretending to be real subjects; the other teacher was the actual subject. When the two confederate teachers made the decision to not continue with the experiment, 90% of subjects also refused. (We would note that it seems surprising that only 90% of them refused, leaving a full 10% of people still obeying the experimenter to the bitter end. Still, 10% obedience is a far cry from the 65% of the original study.) This particular variation is important because it illustrates again the power of dissent. As in the Asch study, if even a couple of people are courageous enough to fight for what is "right," they make it much easier for others to do the same. Milgram himself believed that these studies provided insight into the horrors of the Holocaust, particularly how so many millions of people could be "evil" enough to willingly participate in the Nazi death machine or to stand passively by while such a brutal genocide took place. The Bystander Effect: Situational Influences on Helping Behaviour As is often the case-as it certainly was for Milgram-a single, shocking, real-world event led to a flurry of psychological research on a social topic. In this case, the topic is why bystanders may or may not help someone in need. The event was reported on the front pages with sensationalized reporting: In the middle of a cold night in 1964, a young woman, Kitty Genovese, was sexually assaulted and stabbed to death outside an apartment building in New York City. The papers said 38 neighbours heard her screams, but did nothing for over 30 minutes. When the police were finally called, they were too late to save Kitty's life. Naturally, people were shocked and outraged that so many could have allowed a young woman to be assaulted without doing anything to help her. How is it possible that not one person intervened? Have we become so selfish and disconnected from each other that we don't get involved even when someone's life is on the line? Before continuing, we should mention that several decades later, the sensationalism in the reporting became more apparent. Far fewer than 38 people actually understood what they were hearing. After all, when you live in a highly populated urban area, it is not uncommon to hear noises, including shouting, in the middle of the night. If you called the police every time someone shouted, they might soon stop taking your calls. So, some of the apparent apathy could have been due to confusion and uncertainty, rather than a lack of caring (Manning et al., 2007). Nevertheless, the event launched an important line of research that found similar effects in many situations, as you can read in Working the Scientific Literacy Model. The Bystander Effect We have seen how powerful norms can be in shaping behaviour as well as how difficult it can be if you don't follow along. This is definitely true for the reciprocity norm, which is basically the social psychology way of saying "We should all look out for each other." This is the norm that leads us to help others while understanding that others will help us. If you drop your keys on the sidewalk, more often than not, someone will call to you and pick up your keys for you. It's a very powerful norm and we respond to it every day. So why does it break down sometimes, as it seems to have done in the Kitty Genovese case? What do we know about the bystander effect? Although the Kitty Genovese story was exaggerated in the news, it is an example of individuals failing to help someone in need. This phenomenon is now known as the bystander effect (also known as bystander apathy), and is the observation that an individual is less likely to help when they perceive that others are not helping. Sadly, there are many more stories that tell of similar events. Although they usually unfold in the same way, modern technology adds a new dimension. In 2018, for example, Alexandra Levine wrote in the New York Times that she had called for emergency help the prior week when she came across a woman in a subway station who had fallen down the stairs toward the platform. The station was far from empty, yet everyone else was hurrying past her, some even stopping to catch an image of it on their mobile phones (Levine, 2018). How can science study the bystander effect? Within months of the Kitty Genovese tragedy, researchers began developing methods of re- creating bystander effects in the laboratory. For example, in one of the first studies, an individual volunteer was ushered into a small room with an intercom under the premise that they would be conversing with other participants in reality, research confederates) waiting in similar rooms down the hall. As the conversation began, one confederate reported being prone to seizures and subsequently asked for help as a seizure apparently began. The researchers could then observe if the participant helped and if so, how long they waited before acting. Remember, the researchers were interested in how the presence of others might affect a bystander's reaction. Therefore, each time a new participant arrived for the study, the researchers manipulated the number of confederates so that the participant would be talking to one, two, or three confederates. It turns out that the more confederates there were, the longer it took the true participant to react to the calls for help (Latané & Darley, 1968). Why does the presence of others reduce the tendency to help? If you think of bystander apathy as a type of conformity, you might be able to anticipate the hypotheses they proposed and then confirmed with their experiments. First, there are normative influences. When one person sees another in need of help, they may ask themselves, "What happens if I try to intervene and wind up embarrassing myself?" Second, there are informational influences. The bystander is likely to wonder, "What if the others know something I don't? Am I blowing this out of proportion?" (Karakashian et al., 2006; Prentice & Miller, 1993). In addition to explanations based on conformity, Latané and Darley also observed diffusion of responsibility, the reduced personal responsibility that a person feels when more people are present in a situation (Figure 13.2"). In other words, if everybody thinks someone else will take on the responsibility of helping, nobody will do anything. These are natural questions and assumptions people make. Fortunately, they do not always result in the bystander effect. This is especially true for bystanders with specific training, such as CPR (Huston et al., 1981), or those with a social connection to the person in need (Levine & Crowther, 2008). Can we critically evaluate this evidence? Research makes it clear that bystander effects can happen. But is it really a regular event? One study asked this question by examining closed-circuit security recordings of 219 street disputes in Lancaster (U.K.), Amsterdam, and Cape Town. In the vast majority of cases, people intervened, even when in groups (Philpot et al., 2020). Therefore, we must approach the topic critically. The shocking nature of bystander effects can easily lead to exaggeration and overly emotional thinking. But you should be able to recall some counter examples: Can you think of situations in which crowds have rushed to help? A quick search on the internet will turn up more stories of compassion and altruism than of bystander effect. Therefore, researchers should also study why people do help, even when it puts them at risk. Finally, the bystander effect can be explained by principles of conformity, but what about personal safety? If someone is being physically attacked or is in some other dangerous situation, should we expect others to put themselves at risk? Why is this relevant? To put this topic into context, let us return to the situation where someone is at risk of being assaulted. This is all too common on university campuses where as many as one in five women will report being victim to a sexual assault. A substantial number of these crimes begin at parties and clubs where the victims and perpetrators are presumably surrounded by peers. What if those peers intervened when they noticed one of their friends was behaving aggressively with a woman? Or took a friend home when her judgment had been affected by alcohol so much that she was unaware of a threat? In fact, there are a number of programs designed to reduce the incidence of these types of assaults by educating students and encouraging them to get involved. For example, over 25 years, one U.S. university sponsored seminars to teach students how to spot risks, effective ways to respond, and foster a climate where intervening is expected. During this period, surveys show that unwanted sexual experiences have been cut by over 50% (University of New Hampshire, 2012). When People Decide to Act If this module is starting to bring you down, don't worry. The world is filled with human beings who have acted-sometimes incredibly bravely-to help others who have been hurt or threatened. To counteract the unpleasant outcomes of the Milgram studies, consider altruism-helping others in need without receiving or expecting reward for doing so. For an individualistic perspective, altruism can be a bad deal, especially when putting yourself at risk for a complete stranger. However, as you can see in Figure 13.3", people are capable of incredibly heroic acts. The capacity for empathy-understanding what another's situation feels like and what its implications might be—is a prerequisite for helping others. The more empathy an individual reports on personality scales, the more likely the person is to help. This is true even if helping requires very little effort (Davis & Knowles, 1999). At the individual level, the willingness to help depends on the situations. After all, some situations seem more urgent than others. Willingness to help can also depend on the individual. Some individuals regularly feel more empathy than others. Also, individuals who feel they have a strong, secure bond with family and friends seem to be more likely to help others regardless of their group membership (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2005; Stürmer et al., 2005).