Extra Credit Blog!

I think the five sexiest theories are:

1. Cognitive Dissonance Theory. This is the theory that inconsistent cognitions create tension within us that we are motivated to reduce. Cognitive dissonance is one of those theories that literally applies to all aspects of life, in very possible situation it seems. That is why I think it’s sexy. In addition, after reading Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me) I will always remember cognitive dissonance. Plus, it’s just a fun theory!

2. Social Exchange Theory. This theory is sexy because I think relationships are fascinating! Social exchange theory is the idea that in relationships we are motivated to maximize our benefits and minimize our costs. We all want the benefits without all the other stuff, just keep the good times coming, am I right?!

3. Self-Perception Theory. The idea that we gain self-insight from observing ourselves is just a cool concept. We make judgments and come to conclusions about other people by watching and observing them, so why not do it to ourselves as well… It’s not something that I had thought about, I think that’s partially a contributing “sexy” factor as well.

4. Attribution Theory. Attribution theory is another interesting concept in everyday life. We make attributions about everything and everyone; we love to come up with explanations for everything! Taking the time to break down what we are doing and how we go about making attributions was very insightful. I feel like that is good information to know so that we can try and cut back on all the mistaken attributes.

5. Self-Awareness Theory. This theory is sexy because it is so powerful. Also, this theory can be seen as a solution to cognitive dissonance (a sexy theory in itself). Basically by taking the time to focus on ourselves we can “shape up” and make changes in our behavior. It also allows for withdrawal from self-awareness” but that’s not as powerful.

I think my five favorite social psychologists are:

1. Gottman. His research on relationships is pretty awesome. I think the fact that he can predict if relationships will last is definitely sexy. Plus, he calls his lab the “Love Lab!”

2. Cialdini. His research about compliance techniques is super cool. And what fun research to conduct, tricking people and getting them to do crazy things!

3. Swann. Swann is sexy because his research on self-verification caught me off guard. I figured people with positive self-concepts want to be around people who reinforce their self-perceptions, but I would have thought all people looked to enhance their self-perceptions. Not true, thanks Swann!

4. Zajonc. I really liked his research on social facilitation… I mean he used roaches! Who thinks or wants to study cockroaches?!

5. Wegner. I like Wegner because of his White Bear study and the card game footsie. He seems like a funny guy with those silly white bears creeping in everywhere!

Free-Riding

We have all been social loafers at some point in our lives. I’ll admit that I have taken part in social loafing numerous times. Social loafing is the decrease in individual output on tasks where everyone’s contributions are pooled (Latane et al., 1979). Basically speaking, we don’t exert as much effort when in a group, mostly because individual output can’t be identified.

Recently, our sorority had a potluck dinner. As far as potlucks go, for those of you who don’t know about potlucks, everyone is supposed to bring something. Anyways, the girl in charge of the event had created a sign-up sheet and reinforced the idea multiple times that everyone was supposed to contribute something to the dinner, even if all the blanks had been filled. However, I sit at the front of the room during chapter and consequently never get passed the sign-up sheets. Nothing was different this time, I didn’t receive the sign-up and instead of doing what I had been instructed to do and bring something anyways I just figured that since forty-some odd other girls had signed up to bring things no one would notice if I didn’t contribute an item. I mean if forty-plus people are bringing dishes there would for sure be plenty of food. And that was me being a total free-rider, letting everyone else do the work while I just showed up and ate.

Side note on the event: We initially were in a panic at the beginning of our potluck because half the people who signed up didn’t bring what they’d signed up for or showed up late with it; we weren’t sure we were going to have enough food. And at that point I felt super guilty about not bringing anything. Whoops! But I still managed to not get caught J

Latane, B., Williams, K., & Harkins, S. (1979). Many hands make light the work: The causes and consequences of social loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 822-832.

Door In Yo Face!

We’ve all heard of the term compliance before and we’ve all complied with numerous requests, but were we complying because we honestly wanted to or were we being tricked into doing things for someone else?

The term compliance means changes in behavior that are brought forth by direct request (Cialdini, 2007). People can manipulate others into compliance with their request by employing a number of different techniques. The strategy I chose to focus on is the door-in-the-face technique. The door-in-the-face technique is a two-step process in which the influencer opens with a large initial request that is sure to be rejected, followed by the real request which is much more reasonable (Cialdini et al., 1975). It is really quite simple.

The following video clip is demonstration of how the door-in-the-face technique really works. Be sure to pay attention to the initial large requests and how it is followed up by a much more realistic request. And notice the behavior elicited!

Let’s walk through the situation demonstrated in the video. Miranda, the influencer, only ever wanted Sara to hand her the drink that she left sitting on the counter. Basically, she felt like being lazy and did not want to have to get up and get it herself. Instead of just asking Sara to please hand her the drink, Miranda wanted to ensure that Sara wouldn’t call her out on being lazy so she used the door-in-the-face technique. Her initial request was for Sara to please go get her bag out of her car. Miranda never needed her bag. As you saw, Sara refused to go get Miranda’s bag and told her she could do it herself. So instead Miranda asked Sara if she could hand her her drink from the counter. And what did Sara do… hand her her drink from the counter. Success for Miranda!

It seems too simple, right? And you may be wondering why it works. One explanation involves the idea of perceptual contrast (Cialdini et al., 1975). To the person who was asked the first, very large request, the second request appears to be much smaller: this is perceptual contrast (Cialdini et al., 1975). However, a second explanation plays an even more significant role. Reciprocal concession refers to the pressure to react to changes when in a bartering position (Cialdini et al., 1975). When the influencer backs down from a larger request to smaller one, people take that as a concession that they, in turn, should duplicate with their compliance (Cialdini et al., 1975). This explains why the technique only works if the same person makes both requests, because they feel as if they owe you for your “gracious” behavior in lessening the request. That has also been explained by O’Keefe and Figge (1997), who suggest that by denying to help with your first request they may generate feelings of guilt leading them to comply with your second request. One final note to be aware of is that you must be careful to not make too extreme of a first request because it only works if it is taken as a sincere offer (Schwarzwald et al., 1979).

That’s the door-in-the-face technique! Now everyone can be lazy like Miranda and trick other people into fulfilling your requests!

Cialdini, R. B. (2007). Influence: The psychology of persuasion. New York: HarperCollins.

Cialdini, R. B., Vincent, J. E., Lewis, S. K., Catalan, J., Wheeler, D., & Darby, B. L. (1975). Reciprocal concessions procedure for inducing compliance: the door-in- the-face technique. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 31, 206-215.

O’Keefe, D. J., & Figge, M. (1997). A guilt-based explanation of the door-in-the-face influence strategy. Human Communication Research, 42, 191-212.

Schwarzwald, J., Raz, M., & Zvibel, M. (1979). The applicability of the door-in-the-face technique when established behavioral customs exists. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 9, 576-586.

Easy target

I can be a total sucker for a “good deal.” For example, when makeup counters are having their “bonus” time, I often purchase items that I otherwise did not need immediately in order to receive the free gift. Or another example, the “buy two, get one free” type of deals are super tempting. I mean, technically you are getting three items for the price of two, however you never actually intended to buy, or needed, more than one item. It wasn't until the lovely salesperson pointed out how much you'd be saving and how exceptional of a deal it was that you decided to buy the product. Therefore, people like me get sucked into spending more money than necessary.

This strategy for compliance is known as the that’s-not-all technique. The technique is a two-step process in which the influencer starts with a somewhat exaggerated request and then reduces it by offering discounts or bonuses (Burger, 1986). Salespeople wrangled us in to buy their products by offering us, what we consider, a great deal and what do we do in return… comply.

Burger, J.M. (1986). Increasing compliance by improving the deal: The that’s-not-all technique. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 277-283.

Crafting: My favorite pastime

We come to love what we suffer for; this concept is known as effort justification (Aronson & Mills, 1959). The “effort” can be many different things including physical exertion, money spent, time spent, and so on (Aronson & Mills, 1959). I have definitely justified my effort many, many times. Most recently I have justified the mass amounts of time I have spent crafting Delta things for my little. We have initiation this week and I had to make her paddle in addition to other random “cutsie” things, like picture frames, blankets, etc. My initial attitude leading into the whole crafting scene was that I don’t like crafting; I am too much of a perfectionist or something so I end up taking FOREVER to finish things and I seriously doubt my artistic abilities. However, the past couple of days I have found myself to be crafting a lot. Working on her paddle was my first project and probably the most time consuming activity. Yet because I spent so much time on it that by the time I finished my little’s paddle I had convinced myself that I was an amazing crafter and that I really enjoyed doing crafting! And it was from that point on (the completion of the paddle) that I decided to continue making other Delta things. My attitude towards craft projects had changed from a negative outlook to a positive one; my effort justification had inspired me to continue crafting!

Needless to say, I spent lots of time being crafty when I should have been doing productive things like reading and working on papers.

Aronson, E., & Mills, J. (1959). The effect of severity of initiation on liking for a group. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 59, 177-181.

Freedom and Control

Nick and I are huge movie buffs. We used to go see movies all the time; I’m talking like multiple movies a week. And if we weren’t heading to the theaters, we were hitting up blockbuster. Now that he lives in Houston and I’m still here in Georgetown, I rarely go to the movies. Which is sad because I really do love going. Nick, being in law school, shouldn’t really have the time to go to the movies either but somehow he still manages occasionally (even more than I do, which makes me question how hard he really is working, hehe). Anyways, Nick is the type of person that goes to see a movie and if you ask him how it was, more often than not this is the reaction you’ll get: “Oh my gosh. It was one of the best movies I’ve ever seen.” Now initially, I hated when he would do that when I had not seen the movie he was referencing because he was taking away my freedom to think what I wanted to think. This is called psychological reactance. Psychological reactance is the theory that when our freedom to think and do what we want is threatened, we will take active steps to restore our freedom (Brehm & Brehm, 1981). So when he tells me how wonderful it is and how much I’m going to love it and MUST see it, then I’m slightly more inclined to not like it before I even see it.

Now if you noticed, I said “initially” and said that that is his reaction more often than not, so now I just tune him out because every movie cannot be his favorite movie. He just likes to be dramatic. But it does still irk me a little when he says things like that, even when I know he is exaggerating. Also, it has now become a joke at my house. Over the summer when Nick and I would go back to my house after seeing a movie, my parents would always ask how it was and then before we could say anything, they’d say, “Nick, is it one of your new favorite movies, greatest movie of all time?” And then laugh. They jest, all in good fun!

Another story I thought of as we were talking about this in class was from when I was younger. I lived in England for my elementary school years and we travelled and went sightseeing all the time. At a lot of the castles there were these beautiful gardens, but the little signs always said, “Keep Off the Grass.” As a kid who has just ridden in the car for a couple hours and is tempted with large open areas of soft, green grass, all you want to do is run around and roll around in the grass. In addition, add a small sign instructing you not to touch the grass and you can imagine what happens… My little brother and I would take off on to the grass. Of course it was never long before my dad was running after us to get us off, some of the older British people would be giving our family dirty looks, and then up walks some official-looking person to tell us that we are not allowed on the grass and blah blah so on and so on. The people who decide to make touching the grass a bad idea have to think that if you put a sign up, people are going to want to touch the grass even more. Do they not know of psychological reactance? Silly idea, it is just grass.

Brehm, S. S., & Brehm, J. W. (1981). Psychological reactance: A theory of freedom and control. New York: Academic Press.

Participant Observer: IAT

We all have implicit attitudes, attitudes that we are unaware of possessing (Fazio & Olson, 2003). However, Greenwald, Banaji, Nosek, and others (1998) developed a form of assessment that can pick up on and measure our unconscious attitudes, such as prejudice. This measure is known as the Implicit Association Test (IAT). The test measures the speed at which people associate pairs of concepts – such as black or white with good or bad. To take an IAT you must go through a progression of stages. For example if you were taking an IAT to measure your racial attitudes you would first sort black and white faces as quickly as you can. You do this by pressing a left-hand key (“e”) in response to black faces and a right-hand key (“i”) for white faces. Next, you categorize a set of words, left-hand key for positive words and right-hand key for negative words. The next stage gets a little more difficult, now you have to sort faces and words at the same time. So the left-hand key would be for black faces and positive words and the right-hand key for white faces and negative words. Then, in the final stage black faces would be paired with negative words and white faces with positive words. The test then measures the amount of time it takes you to respond to the pairings of black-bad/white-good in relation to black-good/white-bad. Your score is then presented to you showing the strength (slight, moderate, strong) and direction of your attitude (black-bad/white-good or black-good/white-bad).

The first test I chose to take was the Gender-Career IAT. My test results were generally consistent with my beliefs, however I would not have predicted them to be quite so strong. I knew I favored the family-female/career-male attitude, but I thought my attitudes were slighter to moderate in strength as opposed to strong. I guess I’m not really all that surprised by the result I got because I was raised in a home where my mom stayed home and my dad worked. My mom volunteered and did lots things, but she wasn’t a “career woman” per se. Not only is my immediate family like that, but that’s the situation for almost all the women in my distant family are well. So I grew up in an environment where the norm was for the mother to stay home and not work. The majority of my friends’ families followed the same practices, so even my experiences outside of my family supported this attitude. I, therefore, believe that the IAT is probably showing me my “true” attitude. Yet consciously, I want to have the best of both worlds, family and career. Ideally I want to become established in my career initially, then take some time off for family, but then most likely return to working eventually.

Completing the IAT did not really change my thinking about prejudice and stereotypes too much. If my result had been completely different from what I was expecting I probably would say otherwise, but since I had a feeling as to what results I would yield my thoughts stayed relatively the same. I did think it was interesting though because in another test I took about attitudes toward people with disabilities I, once again, basically knew what result I would get however I was off in the strength. The fact that my conscious beliefs never fully matched my implicit attitudes does say something. It reminds me of affective forecasting, how we can predict whether we like or dislike something but we are not as accurate at predicting the strength and duration of these feelings (Gilbert, 1998).

When I took the IAT for Gender-Career a second time, I went slightly slower and tried not to make any mistakes at all (I had made some the first time around). Even though I made zero mistakes my results did not change. Obviously I just associate family-female and career-male a lot quicker than career-female and family-male. I thought I was doing really well while taking it and that my result was going to be much more neutral, but I was wrong. Very wrong. Consequently, I believe that the IAT is a good measure of implicit attitudes. Maybe I could have changed them more if it was a different subject, but who knows… I didn’t have the time to take them all and more than once at that. I really enjoyed taking them though; I think they are fun and I do believe that there is truth to them!

Fazio, R. H., & Olson, M. A. (2003). Implicit measure in social cognition research: Their meaning and use. Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 297-327.

Gilbert, D. T., Pinel, E. C. Wilson, T. D., Blumberg, S. J., & Wheatley, T. (1998). Immune neglect: A source of durability bias in affective forecasting. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 617-638.

Greenwald, A. G., McGhee, D. E., & Schwartz, J. L. K. (1998). Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The implicit association test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1464-1480.