[uplifting music]
>> 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.
Alright?
>> Student: Okay.
>> Wednesday, one o'clock.
Alright.
Here we go.
Social Psychology.
We're gonna spend time looking at...
A variety of things related to, whoa, bad.
Bad things have just happened.
We're looking at Social Psychology.
Social Psychology is this very interesting
discipline that says this,
"What is it about humans in a situation,
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?
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
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
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.
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
that looks at both external and
internal causes of behavior.
So, Social Psychology in a sense bridges
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
right on the bridge and these guys got out
and started beating her.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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...
And they don't get up.
That's weird.
Anybody know what we call that by the way?
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.
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.
Who am I?
And by the way, the other
thing they else felt, horrible,
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
that walk by them, look up?
That's interesting.
Why because three people looking up,
everybody walks by and goes--
[students laughing]
like that.
That's funny.
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,
we just simply know some
things about people.
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.
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?
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.
So it was just simply a joke, a bet.
Is that possible?
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.
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?
>> 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.
[student speaking off microphone]
One more time.
She had a seizure.
[students laughing]
I reach out sometimes
and just smack people
every once in awhile
whenever I have seizures.
>> 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,
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
Why are you doing that?
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.
Okay?
We do this simply, naturally,
and the kicker is this.
You make an error every time you do it.
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?
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.
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.
Our tendency to explain as observers,
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.
We don't have a lot of data
to go on in some of these
and so we simply make these
kinds of attributions.
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,
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
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.
We tend to overemphasize the
actor as the cause of events.
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
no responsibility in to
be able to prevent this
and we say, "You were there that night
at that time wearing that?"
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].
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.
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?
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.
These are the exact words I used, ready?
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.
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.
And he throws what could be
the last play of the game,
if I make the catch, we win.
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?
"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."
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.
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
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]
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
when we explain good things that resulted
because my own effort.
Bad results, things that happen
it's because of some external factor.
And so these are just
kind of subtle variations
on the exact same theme, okay?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Okay, a researcher by
the name of Solomon Asch,
wanted to know when and how
far would people go to conform.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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,
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.
Right, you wanna be right,
that's a normative influence.
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.
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,
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
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?
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
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
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
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
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.
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,
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,
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.
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]
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.
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.
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
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?
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,
Josh is going to get shocked.
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!"
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."
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."
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,
"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."
And so by the way,
because this was exactly
what people were claiming
at trials for Nazi Germany
when they said you killed people.
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?
"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]
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.
This was done in 1963,
and here's how it looked.
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.
>> 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]
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]
>> Is that too tight?
These electrodes are
connected to the chest area.
[muffled speaking]
>> This is the teacher.
[muffled speaking]
>> 300 volts
[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.
[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]
Continue.
>> Green, grass, pink, apple.
The answer is green.
>> Go on with the procedure please.
>> 115 volts the answer is pink.
[screaming]
[students laughing]
[muffled speaking]
>> 130 volts.
[screaming]
[muffled speaking]
>> Car, train, plane.
Please answer.
The answer is bird.
325 volts.
Blunt, knife, straight, word, arrow.
Answer please.
>> Continue please.
>> The answer is arrow.
360 volts.
[muffled speaking]
>> Go on please, please continue.
>> Saw, drug, pillow,
hair, grass, answer please.
>> Go on.
>> Hair, 375 volts.
[muffled speaking]
He won't answer.
Can you check and see
if he's alright please?
[muffled speaking]
Answer please, are you alright in there?
Are you alright?
>> Please continue teacher.
[muffled speaking]
>> Continue, continue.
>> 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,
but yeah I learned a lot about myself."
By the way the guy getting
shocked wasn't getting shocked.
He was part of the experiment.
You see, he wasn't getting shocked,
he was just going ah!
Like that behind a room.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
They were responsible.
They could say no.
And they found that that helped resist
especially authorities that
would have you hurt somebody.
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."
But if they were wearing a uniform,
that's all you had to do with people,
like oh, he's in a uniform, okay.
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,
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,
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?
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
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?
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]
