Journal Entry #4

2/21/13

Journal Entry #4

Power of the situation

In another instance when I was on the West Coast, I was attending my fourth rock concert out of five for that trip. My friends and I were already at the venue. The opening band had finished, and the crowd was all watching with eager as the tech crew set up for the main show. We were all sitting with anticipation, waiting for that first blasting chord, and then there it was. Something didn’t feel right though, the music was playing, the lights were scanning the crowd, but everyone was still sitting. Was there something this crowd knew that we didn’t? No, I had seen three shows of this same band in the past few days, I knew how this was supposed to go. After a few moments the band came on stage and yet seemingly the entire audience was still sitting down. What was wrong with these people? It’s a rock concert; you stand up for the band you bought tickets for. If you’re not excited to be here, it obviously was not worth the money.

My group and the entire section continued to sit for the entirety of the first two songs. I was definitely feeling the pressure to stay seated from everyone around me. I was conforming to what I guess was the “typical” audience member for this city. It just felt really weird to be sitting at a rock show. It was as if none of this was actually real; as if we were merely watching a video of the concert and it wasn’t really taking place in front of us. From the seat, my band felt boring, an adjective I never imagined using to describe them.

When the third song came on, I was sick of everyone’s attitudes. I tapped my friends on the shoulders and told them, “I don’t care anymore, I’m standing. I don’t care what anyone else thinks.” It was one of my favorite songs, and I wasn’t going to ruin it for myself just because no one else in the audience seemed to want to be there. The five of us got up and all decided to rock out along with the band members. We had a really good time despite the extremely disgruntled audience members behind us. My friend next to me heard them cursing and complaining that they couldn’t see. Clearly, the task of looking bored was way too difficult to do standing, so no one stood up behind us. That was alright though; they could do whatever they pleased so long as they didn’t try to make us sit down with them.

My choice to not conform was influenced by my strong desire to enjoy the experience I came for.  The power of the social situation was close to interrupting that exciting experience. I guess the gravity of the situation has an effect on how able a person within the situation is able to break social code. The situation my friends and I faced was not nearly as grave as something like “The Stanford Prison Experiment”.

http://www.prisonexp.org/

In the participants’ situation, there was a risk for serious consequences if they did not conform to their social roles. Each person adopted the role they thought was appropriate for a prisoner or guard. In such a small group, to not conform may make an individual feel like an outcast. Each individual cared about what the others thought of them.

My case was not nearly so extreme, but had a few parallels. In the stadium, I only cared about my groups’ welfare and my own. I was in a city where no one else knew me except for those in my group. I owed no loyalties to anyone else, so I did not care about breaking the social codes for that city. On the flip side, I wonder if there were so many people sitting down in the theater because they thought that’s what everyone else is supposed to do. They may also have been pressured by their friends to conform. Not wanting to be left out from the group in the future, they did what everyone else did, to fit in and maintain relationships with the people they knew.  

I am simply glad to not have had this negative conformity issue within my group of friends. We all had fun despite the dispirited crowd, and I’m really happy about that. 

Journal Entry # 3

2/21/13

Journal Entry # 3

Stereotypes and the Halo Effect

My friends and I make references to the movie, “Mean Girls” pretty frequently, so today I was re-watching a few clips from there and remembered the scene where the main character, Cady, and her crush are in their math class...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fZcoUmbRfg

The backstory is that Cady is super infatuated with this guy, and becomes giddy every time he talks to her. After several instances of a few exchanged phrases, Cady finally figures out a way to get her crush to talk to her for an extended period in time: play dumb. This part is actually a little sad because Cady feels like a good way to keep her crush around is to get him to “help” her with class when she doesn’t need it at all. She’s brilliant, but hides it. This brought up the question for me – where in the world did this stereotype that girls are bad at math come to be? Moreover, when did girls get the idea that you should pretend to be less intelligent than you are so that guys will swoop in and take care of you?

Stereotypes in general are used by people to quickly figure out someone’s personality based solely on what they look like. How they dress, what color hair they have, their ethnicity, and what kind of car they drive are all examples of cues one might use to determine what kind of person someone is without really knowing a single true fact about them. Someone may drive a Fiat 500 or a Porsche 911, and we will think to ourselves, Wow, they must be super rich to drive that kind of car. Although in this particular example, it is likely that either the person or their close family has a lot of money; it’s possible that the driver actually just won a contest and happened to win this car, while every other aspect of their life stayed about average.

To go back to “Mean Girls” – Cady is a pretty person too, and by playing herself down, she is conforming to another stereotype that a single person cannot be both pretty and smart. This belief seems to be held for girls more often than for guys in my experience. I think it’s strange because this belief goes against what is known as the “Halo Effect” (basically the understanding among people that things that are beautiful are quintessentially good and perfect). The attractiveness of the person just increases the goodness of all the person’s other traits. For example, attractive people tend to be thought of as more intelligent. The “stupid pretty girl” does not fall under the Halo Effect whatsoever, but why is this? One would think that because a girl is attractive, she would be thought of as a brighter person, but in real life, we see the opposite effect.

Where did this stereotype for girls come from? When I think of “stupid, but pretty”, I tend to picture someone in high school or middle school, and I would guess that most others would too. I think the Halo Effect still applies to elementary school girls, because I picture a cute little elementary schooler and think, Yeah, that adorable little kid is probably brilliant. What happens on the road to middle school then? Do girls continue to fulfill these stereotypes because they want boys to like them, and so have the desire to be rescued to be from a dire situation like math?

It would be great if someone could do a correlational study on what ages this particular stereotype comes into effect. One could test both girls and boys at grades 5, 7, 9, and 11, so that you could see whether the stereotype develops right before middle school, in middle school, or at some point in high school. Though once getting results, one would have to determine whether the stereotype has developed as an effect of the type of school the student is in (elementary, middle, or high school), or whether it is purely an age factor. With further reflection I think these two variables are impossible to separate.  I would be curious to see whether boys and girls feel the same way about that stereotype. I wonder if both sexes would be conscious of it at the same time, or if one sex would endorse the stereotype at an earlier age than the other.

If any psychologists are reading this post, feel free to take this idea and run with it. It could be expanded and I would love to see what kind of results a correlational study like this would generate. 

Journal Entry #2

2/19/13
Journal Entry #2

Self-fulfilling prophecy

Every morning, I slowly wake up to the glory that is 9 AM French class. However, some of my classmates clearly do not know what time the class starts or what it means to be on time for a class that you have every single day. Something that really annoys me is personally being on time for class every day, and having to watch so many students stroll into the class anywhere from five to twenty minutes late. It is always the same people. It would not be nearly so annoyed if a student who is always on time randomly walked in super late one day. No, it is the people who have been in this same French class since last September, who for some reason, don’t believe it is worth their time to come into class by the start time, nor do they care about the professor’s opinion of them. I think one of the worst parts of the whole event is knowing that there will not be any direct consequences for them. I see the professor casually glance at the door each time it is opened in the middle of class. She will either smile at them, or even say the occasional “Bonjour” as they waltz past. Often she will interrupt her lesson to provide them with the stack of papers passed out to the rest of us at the beginning of class, and I realize “Wow, everyone just stopped everything so we could watch this person arrive.

There are many expectations flying around at this moment. One, the professor has an expectation that her students come to class. Pretty much every student fulfills this expectation each day. Another expectation comes from the students: “the professor will teach us a lesson in French for every day that we come to class”. This is another fulfilled expectation. However, there is also an expectation from the late students in class: “the professor will not care if I walk in late, I will still get marked present, and I will learn the lesson for today”. This expectation is unfortunately manifested. It then turns into an unfortunate cycle. Because the students expect the professor to be lenient for their tardiness, she is, and then after a few incidents of reoccurrence, the professor in turn, expects them to be late for class. Because the professor does nothing to create consequences for the late students, they continue to walk into class whenever they please.

This series of expectations is what people in the realm of psychology call the self-fulfilling prophecy. The self-fulfilling prophecy is a phenomenon I would venture to say is pretty well known outside of the psych world. Basically, it is the idea that your expectations of a person or thing leads to the person or thing fulfilling that expectation. This is generally due to one person’s attitudes to another person or people. The second person or group of people reacts to that first person’s attitude accordingly. So, from the example above, the student’s expectations about the professor are fulfilled by her complying with their tardiness. The professor (perhaps unconsciously) expects the students to walk in late, so they do, and everyone does what is predicted.

It would be interesting to see what would happen if the professor spontaneously decided to be strict about punctuality. She could close the door exactly at the start of class and not let late students attend. However, in this case, I think some of the much later students may actually an excuse not to attend class, so this method would be inefficient. Another thing the professor could try would occur once the students have walked in. She could allow them to enter her class, but only give them handouts after the class had ended. During partner work, they could also be made to work with the professor instead of working with their peers. If these consequences happened every time a student walked in after the class had begun, it would probably decrease the frequency of their behavior because the expectations would have changed. This kind of expectation probably would have been more effective on behavior if it was initiated at the beginning of the year, but I digress. 

Journal Entry #1

2/18/13

Journal Entry #1

Attribution Errors

Very recently I was on the West Coast touring with my favorite band. Needless to say, it was truly the opportunity of a lifetime. On one of the days of the trip, my group and I had the special opportunity of actually meeting the band members in person and getting a photo with them. After lots of waiting around in hallways, we were finally allowed through the secure doors to greet them. We were guided into the band’s dressing room and upon entering, were greeted by the jubilant bass guitarist, shortly followed by the drummer, and lead singer/guitarist. I am still not quite sure how I managed not to feint. The time came to shake each of the band member’s hands in introduction. My group got into a single file line and I was the first in it to shake each band member’s hand. Everything was going well; the band was lined up in the order of – the bassist, the lead singer, and then the drummer. Unbeknownst to me, as I began to extend my hand toward the bassist – because he was the first in their line – the drummer quickly snuck around from the back of the line to the front. I, however, was already in the process of shaking the bassist’s hand, and by some weird stroke of luck (or maybe due to my long bangs blocking that side of my vision) did not at all see the drummer appear. So of course, I go on to shaking the lead singer’s hand, exchanging a quick “Hello, it’s a pleasure to meet you, etc.” After he moves on to the next person, suddenly I am left with empty space. Where I thought the drummer should be – there was no one. I looked back at the rest of the line, hoping to see what had happened. By then he was shaking my other friends’ hands, and I had been totally left out. 

At that point, I wondered if maybe he had skipped me for some reason or if perhaps he just did not want to shake my hand. Feeling kind of bummed, we went on to have a short conversation with the band, and took a picture together, to continue on with the rest of the night with me having the wrong impression.  

Until after the concert, I had not heard about what actually happened. I went on through the day thinking that it was something weird about the drummer that caused him to skip me in line. Naturally, I was making dispositional attributions, thinking what had happened was due to the drummer’s personality. However, there was more to the situation than I gave credit for.

As my friends and I began to relive the moments of meeting the band, I learn that the reason I randomly missed the drummer in line was because he didn't want to be last. However, in the process of him doing so, he was too late to shake my hand and I was then by consequence too late to shake his. Unfortunately, my accidental skipping of him in line made him throw his hands up into the air and make a displeased face. He actually thought I snubbed him on purpose even though I still wanted to greet him! This whole time, he too, was making dispositional attributions for my behavior.

Both of us made the fundamental attribution error – not factoring in the effects of the situation on a person’s behavior. The situation for me was that I was too excited by meeting my favorite band to notice many things going on around me, and I wasn't about to stop in the middle of shaking the bassist’s hand suddenly to shake the drummer’s hand and then awkwardly have to go back to shaking the bassist’s hand. Of course, it is not instinctual to assume this in the 30 seconds that the behaviors occurred between the drummer and me. His first thought was probably that I was a snobby young adult who only like two out of the three band members. I also did not take the drummer’s situation into account when making attributions. I did not think that perhaps he felt left out or that he didn't think he was actually in line. By moving to the front, maybe he thought he was actually getting in line instead of just hanging out on the side of the group. Perhaps he did not realize he had skipped me at all, and was waiting for us to all form a line as well.

This line of thought seems to follow Jones and Davis’ “Correspondent Inference Theory” (1965), in which it is thought that behaviors that are unexpected or socially undesirable are due to someone’s personality, because the situation at the time does not call for those behaviors exhibited. Neither the drummer nor I expected the apparent rudeness of the other because the situation we were in (me being a huge fan and him being the celebrity) called for both of us to be polite to each other.

Hopefully, the drummer was able to eventually reason out that I am not the terribly discourteous person that he probably thought I was at the time. At this point I have gotten over it (mostly). 

The Purpose of the Blog

So, if anyone besides my professor reads this, here is a blog relating real-life events (as well as pop-culture) to Social Psychology over the course of a semester. Enjoy! (If you so choose.)