ADAPTIVE MOTIVES FOR SOCIAL SITUATIONS

What are your major concerns? What do you think about in the shower, discuss with friends after midnight, or ponder on the way to school? If you are like many students, various thoughts, both trivial and life-shaping, come to mind: Who am I, and who will I become? Do I look better in a sweater or a sweatshirt? How will I get that reading done in time? Should I go into clinical psychology, teaching, law, business, or some other field? How can I support myself in a career that makes sense to me? Who loves me, and whom do I love? Will that attractive person in my social psychology class be there today? What groups are mine? Should I join the campus drama club or do some community service? Am I safe here? Why do people hurt and kill each other? Are people basically loving, good, and helpful or self-serving, amoral opportunists? How can we make the world a better place? Although social psychology won’t tell you whether you look good in a sweatshirt, it can help you answer some of these questions about your life and the world around you.

To introduce social psychology, this chapter tackles five issues. First, what is social psychology all about, and how does it relate to everyday concerns? Second, what is social psychology’s main intellectual contribution? Third, what core social motives help people adapt to living with other people? Fourth, how does culture shape these general motives? Fifth, how does the brain influence our social motives and interactions? And finally, what key features characterize social psychology’s scientific approach?

WHAT IS SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY?

To illustrate social psychology at work, try this exercise. Take a clean sheet of paper, and fold it in half the long way. Now open it up, and fold one top corner down to meet the center crease. Then fold down the other top corner the same way. Now fold the paper in half again along the center crease. Fold one of the long sides backward to the outside of the crease, making another fold parallel to the central one. Flip the paper over and repeat this last step on the other side. What is this shape? What does it look like?

If you are like most readers, you have probably read this far and not done what I just asked you to do; you are reading on ahead to see if it is really necessary to put the book down, find a piece of paper, think through each instruction, fold the paper, and so on. No one will know whether you do it or not, so why bother until you find out if you really have to? You are especially unlikely to have followed these instructions if you are sitting someplace where other people can see you.

Now, try a thought experiment: Compare your reactions to those of students in my social psychology classes. In large and small classes alike, to a person, they all obediently take their pristine course syllabus, fold it in half, fold down the top corners, and construct … what? A paper airplane.

I never quite have the nerve to ask my students to take off their shoes and put them on their desks, or to stand up and face the back of the classroom and wave at the projection booth, but I suspect that if I did, they would probably comply. Why? Would they normally take off their shoes and put them on the desk in front of them? Would they normally fold their syllabus into a paper airplane? Then, why do they do it, semester after semester, year after year? Because I ask them to. But that’s not the only reason. They comply because everyone else does. And why did you not fold the paper airplane when I asked you to? Because your professor is not standing over you, in person and in authority. Because you are not sitting in a classroom full of other students doing the same thing. (If you did do it, you are a remarkably cooperative and active learner; congratulations!) In the classroom—as opposed to your room, the library, the lounge, the café, or wherever you are reading this—two simultaneous forms of social pressure occur: the professor’s request and other people going along with it.

Consider a second example. Eight male college students participate in a perception experiment, judging one standard line against three comparison lines (see Figure 1.1). Given a standard line of 10??10?, they choose the comparison line that is closest in length, stating their choice aloud, each in turn. The task is easy, and the first two judgments are unanimous. On the third trial, a 3??3? standard appears beside comparison lines of 3 3/4??3/4?, 4 1/4??1/4?, and 3??3?. Seven participants all choose the first comparison line as equivalent to the standard, and the eighth student finds himself a minority of one in the midst of a unanimous and erroneous majority. This experience is repeated in 11 of the remaining 15 trials.

Figure 1.1  Sample Standard Line and Comparison Lines Judged in Asch Study of Group Conformity (as described by Asch, 1956)

This strange circumstance occurs because seven members of the group are confederates of the experimenter, who is studying group pressure on judgments (Asch, 1956). And indeed, three-quarters of the participants go along at least once with the conspirators’ mistakes, blatant errors of 1/2??1/2? to 1 3/4??3/4? on lines ranging from 2??2? to 10??10?. Conversely, no participant making private judgments in a control condition makes any mistakes. On average, a third of the trial judgments are erroneous, with no other cause than conformity to the group, in direct violation of the participants’ senses.

Consider a third and final example. Jennifer King, a student at a small private college, wanted to make the world a better place. Along with many other students, she joined an organization called Western Massachusetts Labor Action. This group recruited students to chop wood for the poor, attend educational meetings, and canvass for new members; the group was known on campus as “a sort of Salvation Army with a political edge” (Rabinovitz, 1996). Indeed, lots of students participated as a way to fulfill a community service requirement for one particular course. Jennifer soon left college to become a full-time volunteer at the group’s Brooklyn office, the National Labor Federation. She had a dream of organizing the poor to create a more just world, and she was willing to work hard toward her vision.

Instead, she spent all her time confined inside a cramped apartment building, filing and telephoning; every minute was scheduled. Each evening, everyone in the group had to attend political lectures, which would sometimes last until 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. Jennifer and about 50 other recruits would stagger off to bed, only to wake up to commands from a loudspeaker six hours later. She was exhausted and had no time to think. Also, she was not allowed to chat with other recruits; she was isolated from family and friends; and she was not allowed outside. The group’s stated goal was mobilizing the poor to challenge the economic system, but they never seemed to get around to it, although they did collect a supply of rifles, shotguns, ammunition, and explosives. Jennifer became terrified, and after a few weeks, she escaped. Many other people never did.

The social-psychological question is this: Why did someone with such ideals choose to stay in such a useless, dangerous psychological prison? Some people would call this a cult, especially as its charismatic founder, Eugenio Perente-Ramos, had kept many people enthralled until his death a few years before. But why were people trapped by this group even now? Why were they afraid to leave the building? Most people never knew about the guns, so they were not physically coerced. The simple answer is the same one that causes my students, year after year, to fold their syllabi into paper airplanes and the same one that caused the experiment’s participants to conform in violation of their senses: People influence other people.