Social Psychology Commons^™

The Effects Of Peer Pressure On Social Conformity, Jeniffer Zou, Kayla Colley, Abby Westbrook, Caroline Grace Coey, Meg Combs

Science University Research Symposium (SURS)

The urge to be a member of a group, to fit in, and peer pressure can lead to many unexpected and unwanted repercussions. We see evidence of such consequences around us and even within ourselves daily. Social media can easily contribute to this problem by either allowing users to present their lives as something they are not, a deceptive representation of their true wants, or by allowing them to express their opinions in a way that denigrates those of others. To examine the link between peer pressure and social conformity, researchers have been studying whether strength of attraction to a …

Reducing Prejudice Through Law: Evidence From Experimental Psychology, Sara Emily Burke, Roseanna Sommers

Articles

Can antidiscrimination law effect changes in public attitudes toward minority groups? Could learning, for instance, that employment discrimination against people with clinical depression is legally prohibited cause members of the public to be more accepting toward people with mental health conditions? In this Article, we report the results of a series of experiments that test the effect of inducing the belief that discrimination against a given group is legal (versus illegal) on interpersonal attitudes toward members of that group. We find that learning that discrimination is unlawful does not simply lead people to believe that an employer is more likely …

Harnessing Growth Mindsets To Help Individuals Flourish, Jeni L. Brunette, Crystal L. Hoyt, Joseph Billingsley

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Psychologists are uniquely positioned to help with our collective obligation to advance scientific knowledge in ways that help individuals to flourish. Growth mindsets may offer one such tool for improving lives, yet some research questions the potential to replicate key findings. The aims in the current work are to help explain mixed results and outline ways to improve intervention impact. To reach these goals, we first offer a brief overview of the links between growth mindsets and psychological flourishing. Second, we outline key theories of causal mechanisms and summarize sources of meaningful heterogeneity in growth mindset interventions, with a focus …

The Psychology Of Separation: Border Walls, Soft Power, And International Neighborliness, Diana C. Mutz, Beth A. Simmons

All Faculty Scholarship

This study assesses the impact of international border walls on evaluations of countries and on beliefs about bilateral relationships between states. Using a short video, we experimentally manipulate whether a border wall image appears in a broader description of the history and culture of a little-known country. In a third condition, we also indicate which bordering country built the wall. Demographically representative samples from the United States, Ireland, and Turkey responded similarly to these experimental treatments. Compared to a control group, border walls lowered evaluations of the bordering countries. They also signified hostile international relationships to third-party observers. Furthermore, the …

Social Psychology Of Climate Change In The Asian Context: Introduction To Special Issue, Kim-Pong Tam, Angela K. Y. Leung, Susan Clayton

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing many countries in the Asia Pacific. Asia as a whole is a primary contributor to carbon emissions. According to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2020, the Asia Pacific region alone accounts for more than half of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions. This represents an increase in consumption of oil, gas, and coal in Asia Pacific from 44.5% in 2009 to 50.5% in 2019. According to the review, compared to the rest of the world, Asia Pacific had the highest growth rate (2.7%) of carbon emissions between 2008 and …

Research On Climate Change In Social Psychology Publications: A Systematic Review, Kim-Pong Kam, Angela K. Y. Leung, Susan Clayton

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

There is a strong scientific consensus that anthropogenic climate change is happening and that its impacts can put both ecological and human systems in jeopardy. Social psychology, the scientific study of human behaviours in their social and cultural settings, is an important tool for understanding how humans interpret and respond to climate change. In this article, we offered a systematic review of the social psychological literature of climate change. We sampled 130 studies on climate change or global warming from 80 articles published in journals indexed under the “Psychology, social” category of Journal Citation Reports. Based on this sample, …

The New Normal Of Social Psychology In The Face Of The Covid-19 Pandemic: Insights And Advice From Leaders In The Field, Kim Pong Tam, Angela K. Y. Leung, Sammyh Khan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Revisiting the history of social psychology, one noticeable trend is that the agenda of social psychologists is interwoven with events that happen in society and the world (Ross et al., 2010). For example, the Holocaust during World War II stimulated social psychologists’ interest in ethnocentrism, aggression, and obedience, just as increasing globalization became one of the impetuses for investigations into the role of culture in human behaviour, and hence the emergence of cultural and cross‐cultural psychology. Considering its immensity, we believe that the COVID‐19 pandemic will likely be a trigger for profound and consequential changes in social psychology (Khazaie & …

Tramitación Social Después Del Trauma Colectivo: Un Análisis De Las Respuestas Colectivas En Torno El Trabajo De Las Abuelas De Plaza De Mayo De Argentina Después De La Última Dictadura Cívico-Militar / Social Processing After Collective Trauma: An Analysis Of The Collective Responses Around The Work Of Argentina’S Abuelas De Plaza De Mayo After The Most Recent Civic-Military Dictatorship, Sarah Horwitz

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Este ensayo investiga las respuestas colectivas al trabajo de las Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo en la Argentina. Las Abuelas son un grupo de mujeres con hijos y nietos que fueron desaparecidos sistemáticamente junto con 30.000 personas durante la última dictadura cívicomilitar de 1976 a 1983. En 1977, las Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo se juntaron para encontrar a sus nietos y nietas, muchos de los cuales habían sido entregados a familias cercanas a la dictadura. Aunque al día de hoy han recuperado más de 100 nietos y nietas, todavía falta más de 300. Esta investigación utiliza entrevistas personales y …

Many Labs 2: Investigating Variation In Replicability Across Samples And Settings, Richard A. Klein, Michelangelo Vianello, Susan L. O'Donnell, Et Al

Faculty Publications - Psychology Department

We conducted preregistered replications of 28 classic and contemporary published findings, with protocols that were peer reviewed in advance, to examine variation in effect magnitudes across samples and settings. Each protocol was administered to approximately half of 125 samples that comprised 15,305 participants from 36 countries and territories. Using the conventional criterion of statistical significance (p < .05), we found that 15 (54%) of the replications provided evidence of a statistically significant effect in the same direction as the original finding. With a strict significance criterion (p < .0001), 14 (50%) of the replications still provided such evidence, a reflection of the extremely highpowered design. Seven (25%) of the replications yielded effect sizes larger than the original ones, and 21 (75%) yielded effect sizes smaller than the original ones. The median comparable Cohen’s ds were 0.60 for the original findings and 0.15 for the replications. The effect sizes were small (< 0.20) in 16 of the replications (57%), and 9 effects (32%) were in the direction opposite the direction of the original effect. Across settings, the Q statistic indicated significant heterogeneity in 11 (39%) of the replication effects, and most of those were among the findings with the largest overall effect sizes; only 1 effect that was near zero in the aggregate showed significant heterogeneity according to this measure. Only 1 effect had a tau value greater than .20, an indication of moderate heterogeneity. Eight others had tau values near or slightly above .10, an indication of slight heterogeneity. Moderation tests indicated that very little heterogeneity was attributable to the order in which the tasks were performed or whether the tasks were administered in lab versus online. Exploratory comparisons revealed little heterogeneity between Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) cultures and less WEIRD cultures (i.e., cultures with relatively high and low WEIRDness scores, respectively). Cumulatively, variability in the observed effect sizes was attributable more to the effect being studied than to the sample or setting in which it was studied.

Zero Textbook Cost Syllabus For Psy 3056 (Social Psychology), Soohyun Ashley Lee

Open Educational Resources

Social psychology aims for a broad understanding of how people think about, influence, and relate to one another in social settings. In this course, you will learn various concepts and theories in social psychology, which are all highly applicable to our everyday life. The major areas are self, social perception, attribution, attitude, decision making, attraction and rejection, aggression, pro-social behaviors, prejudice and discrimination, group processes, cultures etc. This course benefits students who would like to learn about oneself, improve social relationships with others, and apply basic psychological concepts to other applied fields of study. In addition, this class can help …

Individual And Society: Sociological Social Psychology, Lizabeth A. Crawford, Katherine B. Novak

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

"Unlike the few other texts for undergraduate sociological social psychology courses that present 3 distinct traditions (or "faces") ... Symbolic Interactionist (SI), Social Structure and Personality (SSP), and Group Processes and Structure (GPS) by topic alone, this text initially discusses these "faces" by research tradition, and emphasizes the different theoretical frameworks within which social psychological analyses are conducted. With this approach, the authors make clear the link between "face" of sociological social psychology, theory, and methodology. And students gain an appreciably better understanding of the field of sociological social psychology; how and why social psychologists trained in sociology ask particular …

Do Clothing Style And Color Affect Our Perceptions Of Others?, Ariel M. Kershner

Faculty Curated Undergraduate Works

Prior research has shown that women who wear red clothing or suggestive clothing are perceived as more attractive, having greater sexual intent, and having more negative qualities than women dressed in different colors or less suggestive clothing. This bias towards perceiving sexual intent may be evolutionary or may be due to people projecting their emotions onto others. The current study builds from this research by performing a 2 (color: white or red) x 2 (clothing type: suggestive or non-suggestive) between-subjects experiment. We hypothesized that women would be perceived as more attractive and as having greater sexual intent while wearing red …

Women Between The Ages Of 65 And 75: What Is Their Subjective Experience Of How Their Sexuality Is Portrayed In American Society?, Rebecca E. Gilda

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

This dissertation focused on capturing and describing the experience of sexuality for women between the ages of 65 and 75 as they live in American society. The main research question asks how these women gain awareness, perceive, and react to the stereotypes, assumptions, expectations, and negative images associated with their sexuality. The participants completed a questionnaire and a semi-structured interview with the principal researcher. Information was gathered about age, relationships, family history, employment, and sexuality. In the interview general and specific questions were asked relating to sexuality in order to answer the research questions. The data from these was analyzed …

Survival In Soviet Gulags: A Secondary Analysis, Kimberly M. Maas, Paul Prew, Elizabeth J. Sandell

Elementary and Literacy Education Department Publications

One of the most common book series on the subject of Soviet Gulags is Evgenia Ginzburg’s “Journey into the Whirlwind” and “Within the Whirlwind.” This paper will use secondary analysis from anthology works with stories similar to Ginzburg's in combination with the works of several other authors like Anne Applebaum (2011) and Geith and Jolluck (2011). It shall also examine extensively Raphaël Lemkin’s definition of genocide and how it fits to what happened in the Gulags. It shall be argued why certain situations that occurred within the Gulags fit this definition. It will also explore the intimate details and lives …

Cognitive Systems For Revenge And Forgiveness, Michael E. Mccullough, Robert Kurzban, Benjamin A. Tabak

ESI Publications

Minimizing the costs that others impose upon oneself and upon those in whom one has a fitness stake, such as kin and allies, is a key adaptive problem for many organisms. Our ancestors regularly faced such adaptive problems (including homicide, bodily harm, theft, mate poaching, cuckoldry, reputational damage, sexual aggression, and the infliction of these costs on one's offspring, mates, coalition partners, or friends). One solution to this problem is to impose retaliatory costs on an aggressor so that the aggressor and other observers will lower their estimates of the net benefits to be gained from exploiting the retaliator in …

The Seditious Class, Donelson R. Forsyth

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

I never saw it coming. My students and I had just shared a splendid semester-long educational experience. I had deftly mixed original readings, engaging class discussions, illuminating lectures, and thoughtful assessments with a community-based project that gave students the opportunity to apply course concepts in a real-world setting. Or had I? You would think that, after some 30 years of opening packets of students’ evaluations at the semester’s end (and now, downloading them from the University’s evil evaluation website), that the thrill would be gone—no more disappointment, elation, or surprise.

Not so.

My course was a required one, populated with …

Psychological Culture: Ambivalence And Resistance To Social Change, Alexander Etkind

Russian Culture

"National character," "modal personality," "collective unconscious," "ethnic mentality," "cultural identity" -- these and similar notions are designed to capture psychological traits that distinguish one social group from another. Attempts to isolate such hypothetical qualities are not different in principle from efforts to describe religious, legal, or other social patterns found among people who have lived together for a length of time, except that psychological constructs tend to focus on subjective characteristics and are somewhat harder to identify. For the first time, the link between culture and psychology came under close scrutiny in the nineteen century. German linguists Steinthal and Lazarus …

Effect Of Out-Group Exposure On The Mirror Neuron System, Mackenzie Hepker

Summer Research

Mirror neurons appear to play an important role in the experience of empathy, and may be critical for understanding the social signals of others in an interactive context between distinctly identified groups. Research has shown that mirror neuron activation is greater when observing in-group members (others that one most identifies with based on a certain factor or number of factors) as opposed to out-group members, which may implicate the mirror neuron system (MNS) in the neural aspect of social bias. However, no research had been conducted on the effect on the MNS of practice in interpreting and internalizing social signals …

The Bathsheba Syndrome: When A Leader Fails, Donelson R. Forsyth

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Another leader—no, an entire cadre of leaders—has been found to be a moral failure. Legal authorities have charged Jerry Sandusky, who retired as the defensive coordinator for the Penn State football team in 1999, with the sexual abuse of children who he targeted through his involvement in the charitable organization The Second Mile. Additionally, a number of other administrators and leaders at Penn State University—the university’s president Graham Spanier, vice-president Gary Schultz, athletic director Tim Curley and long-time football coach Joe Paterno—face charges or have been fired from the university because of their failure to take action when Sandusky’s crimes …

Factors That Influence Team Identification: Sport Fandom And The Need For Affiliation, Sarah L. Absten

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The current study was conducted to examine whether priming for a need for assimilation or the need for differentiation influences an individual’s identification with a particular team. Team Identification is defined as “the level of psychological attachment felt by a sports fan toward his or her favorite team” (Kim & Kim, 2009; Wann, Melnick, Russell, & Pease, 2001). Participants for the current study included 80 undergraduate psychology students, recruited through Study Board at Western Kentucky University. Participants completed the Sport Fandom Questionnaire (SFQ) and were randomly assigned one of two scenarios where they were asked to transcribe two memories based …

A Qualitative Approach To Spiral Of Silence Research: Self-Censorship Narratives Regarding Environmental And Social Conflict, Christopher John Ryan

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

The purpose of this research is to seek narratives of self-censorship from in-depth interviews of 19 participants acquired through a purposive (criterion) sampling protocol. The primary research question driving this study is “What types of sanctions contribute to people choosing to self-censor their strongly held beliefs, values, and opinions.” Previous research conducted on the topic of self-censorship (generally under the rubric of the spiral of silence theory) has been predominantly quantitative and consideration of sanctions influencing self-censorship have been limited to fear of social isolation. I suggest that ostensibly important sanction variables have not been utilized within these existing frameworks. …

It's That Efa* Time Of Year (*Extreme Fan Addiction), Donelson R. Forsyth

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

What an odd lot our ancestors must have been to let themselves get caught up in crazes like the 10th century dancing mania in Italy, or the alarming outbreak of biting mania in 15th century Germany, Italy, and Holland. Holland's 17th century tulipmania proved only economically painful, when wealthy families spent their savings buying and hoarding tulip bulbs, and were left in financial ruin when prices plummeted.

We are not so different from those long-gone dancers, biters, and tulipophiles, because a modern mania is about to descend upon us: March Madness. Sixty-four colleges and universities send their basketball teams into …

I ♥ U: Attachment Style And Gender As Predictors Of Deception In Online And Offline Dating, Mattitiyahu S. Zimbler

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Online dating is becoming an increasingly used method for meeting significant others. This study had two central goals. The first goal was to explore the factors that contribute to deception used to attract a romantic partner online. The second aim was to discover the reasons that people with different attachment styles might lie as well as their justifications and interpretations for those lies. Male and female single college undergraduates (N = 208), who had previously completed an attachment style measure via an online screening, were asked to complete an online dating profile and an email to a potential dating partner. …

Social Influence And The Acceptance Of Racially Charged Humor, Nicholas M. Joyce

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This study examined factors important in determining the acceptance of racially charged humor. It utilized a 2 x 3 design in which race of joke teller and group targeted by the jokes were manipulated. It measured people’s level of acceptance regarding the jokes and recorded participants’ behaviors. This study found that under the conditions in which comedians derogated their in-group, White participants demonstrated higher levels of acceptance and a greater likelihood to perform the jokes. This pattern was especially true when the comedian was Black.

Where Do We Draw Our Lines?: Approach/Avoidance Motivation, Political Orientation, And Cognitive Rigidity, Mindi S. Rock

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

The current research explored how one’s motivational focus and political orientation may interact to produce cognitive rigidity. Past literature provides evidence for associations between approach-based orientation and cognitive flexibility and between avoidance-based motives and cognitive rigidity (e.g., Cacioppo, Priester, & Berntson, 1993; Friedman & Förster, 2005; Förster, Friedman, Özelsel & Denzler, 2006, Isen & Daubman, 1984; Mikulincer, Kedem & Paz, 1990). Further, research on political orientation suggests a strong association between conservatism and cognitive rigidity (Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003). Can approach/avoidance motivation help explain this link between political orientation and rigidity? To answer this question, we manipulated approach/avoidance …

Community College Online Course Retention And Final Grade: Predictability Of Social Presence, Simon Y. Liu, Joel Gomez, Cherng-Jyh Yen

Educational Foundations & Leadership Faculty Publications

This study employed a quantitative research design to examine the predictive relationships between social presence and course retention as well as final grade in community college online courses. Social presence is defined as the degree of one's feeling, perception and reaction to another intellectual entity in the online environment. Course final grades included A, B. C, D, F, I, or W. Course retention was defined as successfully completed a course with an A to C grade. The results of the binary and ordinal logistic regression analyses suggest that social presence is a significant predictor of course retention and final grade …

The More You Know: Reviewing Concepts Using Student-Created Public Service Announcements, Pamela L. Bacon

Psychology Faculty Publications

In past course evaluations, my social psychology students consistently reported that they started offering their roommates unsolicited social psychological interpretations of their behaviors and beliefs. I began to wonder if my students’ desire to educate others could be harnessed to help them review course material. I reasoned that elaborating on the material covered in the class would help them learn (Loyens, Rikers, & Schmidt, 2007) and finding a creative outlet for their desire to teach others might preserve some roommate relationships.

In an attempt to encourage students to build on past material, I turned to one of the most well-known …

Characteristics Of Aversive Racism, Bryan T. Hall

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Recently in the psychological field, attitudes are being recognized as existing on the explicit and implicit level (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). Aversive racists have been defined as people low in explicit prejudice but high in implicit prejudice (Son Hing, Li, & Zanna, 2002). The purpose of this study was to determine what distinguishes those who are low in prejudice from aversive racists. Participants were compared on eight different constructs: authenticity, moral judgment development, moral identity, nonprejudice, social dominance, authoritarianism, empathy, and social desirability. No differences were found between low prejudice people and aversive racists. People high in explicit prejudice …

Social Psychology, Calamities, And Sports Law, Michael Mccann

Law Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the role of situational pressures, fundamental attribution errors, and legal frameworks in how professional sports actors respond to the threat and occurrence of calamities. Both natural and manmade threats to American health are likely to rise over the next decade. Such threats may include catastrophic weather, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, and communicable disease pandemics. In response to these threats, professional sports leagues, professional athletes, fans, and media might engage in unprecedented behavior. Consider, for instance, increasingly-devastating weather patterns, and how they might animate leagues to relocate franchises to cities with more favorable forecasts. The same outcome might …

Corporate And Individual Influences On Managers' Social Orientation, Joachim W. Marz, Thomas L. Powers, Thomas Queisser

WCBT Faculty Publications

This paper reports research on the influence of corporate and individual characteristics on managers' social orientation in Germany. The results indicate that mid-level managers expressed a significantly lower social orientation than low-level managers, and that job activity did not impact social orientation. Female respondents expressed a higher social orientation than male respondents. No impact of the political system origin (former East Germany versus former West Germany) on social orientation was shown. Overall, corporate position had a significantly higher impact on social orientation than did the characteristics of the individuals surveyed.