How ten classical experiments explain irrational individual behavior through group dynamics

Social Psychology Studies: Explaining Irrational Individual Behavior by Understanding Group Dynamics

Social psychology is, as its name suggests, a science that blends the fields of psychology, which is the study of the individual, and sociology, which is the study of groups. Social psychology examines how the individual is influenced by the group. It looks at the influence of group or cultural norms on individual behaviors, thoughts, and feelings. However, because group norms are believed to change behavior, social psychology can be very difficult to document; the presence of the observer is believed to change behavior. As a result, social psychologists have developed a number of different studies aimed at investigating the interaction between group expectations and individual behavior. These studies offer insight into human social behavior, particularly into those social behaviors that seem to defy expectations and well-established social norms.

While there have been numerous social psychology studies since the field developed, not all of them have offered the same level of insight into the interaction of the group and the individual. However, ten studies have offered such insight and been so consistent that they have come to be known as classical social psychology studies. These include: The Halo Effect; Cognitive Dissonance; Sherif's Robber's Cave Experiment; The Stanford Prison Experiment; Stanley Milgram's Obedience Experiment; The False Consensus Bias; Social Identity Theory; Bargaining; Bystander Apathy; and Conformity. Though these ten experiments ostensibly examine different aspects of human behavior, when one examines them more closely, one sees that each of them offers insight into one of the most puzzling elements of human behavior: why rational people do seemingly irrational things. Therefore, this paper will examine each of the studies to see how they help explain irrational behavior by the individual by contextualizing it within the group.

The Halo Effect

The Halo Effect refers to the idea that global evaluations about a person impact the judgments about the person's specific traits. A person who looks good is believed to be good, while a person who appears bad is believed to be bad. There is actually a description of three major world leaders during World War II that points out the impact of the Halo Effect; three men are described according to specific characteristics that are seen as either positive or negative such as having mistresses, using drugs or alcohol, and liking dogs. People are always surprised that the candidate with the best specific traits is Hitler, who was a dog-loving, non-drinking, non-smoking vegetarian who did not have any extra-marital affairs, which the two seemingly bad characters are Roosevelt and Churchill. This is due to the Halo Effect, because the global evaluation of Hitler is a negative one, one does not associate him with negative characteristics. Likewise, because Roosevelt and Churchill are generally seen in a positive aspect, one is surprised to find the negative characteristics associated with them. What the Halo Effect means that likability impacts opinions about specific characteristics, and, when researchers have investigated the Halo Effect, people were not even consciously aware that the likeability of a person impacted their judgments about that person.

The Halo Effect can also impact how one interprets characteristics found in a person. For example, "the global evaluation may alter the interpretation of the meaning or evaluation of ambiguous attributes. Thus, if one is told that a warm and friendly person is impetuous, a quite different set of behaviors come to mind from those that occur when one is told that the impetuous person is angry and hostile" (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977, p. 250, para.1). However, judgments about ambiguous stimuli are relatively unimportant when compared to another impact of the Halo Effect, which is the alteration of judgments about unambiguous stimuli, with the person making the judgment unaware of the influence. In many situations, these judgments are harmless. For example, nice people may be seen as more attractive than mean people (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977, p.250, para. 2). This changed perception hardly seems critical. However, when one looks at the backwards global assumption, which is that attractive people are somehow better (nicer, smarter, kinder, more competent) than less attractive people, one can see how the Halo Effect can lead one to make irrational decisions.

Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive dissonance refers to when two thoughts contradict one another. This is troubling for people, so they close the gap between the two conflicting thoughts. The classic study of cognitive dissonance occurred in the 1950s, when students were asked to describe a boring task as interesting in exchange for a small amount of money, and, then report on their own perception of the task. Those students rated the task as more interesting than students who were paid a greater amount of money to say the task was interesting (Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959, p.208, para.2). However, cognitive dissonance does not only refer to situations where a person is aware of conflicting information; it also helps explain why some people seem to be unaware of conflicts between a previously held and a newly held position.

The idea that cognitive dissonance creates movement in one's internal beliefs has a long history of support. As early as the early 1950s, researchers had already determined that, "at least under some conditions, the private opinion changes so as to bring it into closer correspondence with the overt behavior the person was forced to perform. Specifically, they showed that if a person is forced to improvise a speech supporting a point-of-view with which he disagrees, his private opinion moves toward the position advocated in the speech" (Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959, p.203, para.1).

What is fascinating about cognitive dissonance, as a theory, is that it underwent so many substantial changes in the 20 years following its introduction that the theory began to focus on things other than dissonance. Instead, the movement to new opinions was believed to be linked to self-esteem and other factors that had nothing to do with conflict in a person's though processes and cognitions. However, Greenwald and Ronis, looking at this history, questioned whether the movement away from the original theory was appropriate. "The continuing process of adjusting a theoretical statement to maintain its currency with empirical data is scientifically questionable. Revision, as opposed to rejection, of a theory is acceptable only so long as basic characteristics of the theory remain intact. In the case of dissonance theory, the emerging centrality of the notion of personal responsibility for undesired consequences does appear to have changed the basic character of the theory" (Greenwald & Ronis, 1978, p.55, para.3). Moreover, they seem to believe that these changes have made cognitive dissonance theory more about ego and self-esteem than about cognitive processes (Greenwald & Ronis, 1978, p.55, para. 3). However, despite changes in the presentation of theory, Greenwald and Ronis make it clear that they do not believe that the original dissonance theory has ever been proven wrong, suggesting support for the old theory, and not the theory which evolved over time.

Sherif's Robber's Cave Experiment

Sherif's Robber's Cave Experiment looks at inter-group conflict and the role of power in those conflicts. In the third of a series of three experiments, two groups of boys were taken to a camp, where the experimenters orchestrated conflict between the boys, and then attempted to see if two groups in conflict could work to find peace. The result of the experiment was that working together to solve a problem helped encourage peace. However, the first two experiments had the boys working together to solve a problem, but then they did so by identifying a common enemy and by ganging up on the experimenters, themselves. Therefore, not only did the experiment reveal information about peace-building, but it also revealed the role that power and the perception of power could play in conflict.

The innovative part of the Robber's Cave experiments was not the finding that groups would develop conflicts. On the contrary, by that time it was already well-understood that even arbitrarily-divided groups would create conflict if the opportunity arose. Instead, the innovative part of the study was that it revealed ways to build consensus and overcome hostility. In fact, "the question- for both theory and policy- is how to overcome this intergroup hostility. Sherif believed that the egocentric orientation of group members could be overcome if the rival groups were involved in achieving superordinate goals- goals that neither group by itself had the resources to achieve" (Fine, 2004, p.664, para. 2). It was not enough that the group achieve a goal together, because, if the goal could have been accomplished without cooperation between the two parties, the accomplishment would not necessarily be linked to one of the groups. Instead, it was important for the goal to be linked to the cooperation, so that the cooperation was essential for success. "The idea that groups sometimes require others for the desired ends is surely accurate and behaviors may alter as a consequence" (Fine, 2004, p.664, para.2). In other words, the groups may still dislike one another, but can still cooperate to achieve a goal.

However, some have questioned whether these results would have been the same if the groups of people had known one another. In the experiment, the boys were not acquainted with one another prior to the experiment. Believing that such a scenario is too artificial to make it generalizable to the population at large, Tyerman and Spencer conducted a similar experiment, but used an existing Scout troop, where the boys knew one another, as the source of the study population (Tyerman & Spencer, 1983, p.519, para.5). Moreover, the divisions in the study were natural divisions. "The subjects had been accustomed to functioning within their four distinct patrol groups at previous camps, meetings and other activities over a long period. At camp, the seven-boy patrol units, although in close proximity, have separate patrol sites in which they cook, eat, and sleep…Again, as in the Sherifs' studies, intergroup competition is very much an institutionalized feature of the scout camp, with, here, daily marks being awarded for efficiency and camping standards, as well as for the organized activities" (Tyerman & Spencer, 1983, p.520, para.3). What they found was that in groups where people knew the members of the out-groups, the hostility level never rose to the levels it did in the groups where the boys were not acquainted prior to the experiments (Tyerman & Spencer, 1983, p. 522, para.2). This suggests that group membership is not defined by membership in a single group, but by overlapping series of group membership.

The Stanford Prison Experiment

Arguably one of the most troubling of all social psychology experiments, the Stanford Prison Experiment helped answer the unanswerable: why those in power abuse those not in power. In this experiment, the researchers divided subjects into two groups: guards and prisoners and set up a simulated prison in a basement at Stanford. Within a day, the prisoners were rebelling against the guards, and the guards were using every bit of power they had to control the prison population. Even the experimenters became engrossed in their roles as prison administrators.

It is important to realize that the experimenters took great steps to arrange as realistic a prison environment as they could. For example, the guards were allowed to select uniforms, which would have them stand out from the prisoners. They were also allowed to set-up rules for how their prison would run; they were given power and authority before ever being introduced to the prisoners. In contrast, the prisoners were deprived of power. "The would-be prisoners were told to wait at home or at the address they provided us, and we would contact them on Sunday" (Zimbardo et al., 2000, p. 6, para.3). However, they were not contacted in a traditional way; instead, the investigators had arranged from them to be arrested by the Palo Alto police department. "After the surprise arrest by the police, they were brought to our simulated prison environment, where they underwent a degradation ceremony as part of the initiation into their new role" (Zimbardo et al., 2000, p. 6, para.3). The prisoners were further dehumanized; their clothes were taken and they were given smocks, forced to wear ankle chains, flip-flops rather than shoes, and could not wear underwear (Zimbardo et al., 2000, p. 6, para.3). Therefore, simply by appearance, this group of college-age boys who had been indistinguishable from one another when selected for their groups could identify as groups through visual cues immediately after the beginning of the study.

The prison guards were prohibited from using physical violence against the inmates, but they tortured them anyway, forcing them to go naked, do pushups, depriving them of sleep, and having them engage in simulated sexual activities with one another (Zimbardo, 2007, p. 2-3). At the time, the experiment was a failure; the prison scenario became so chaotic that another psychologist brought the experiment to a halt after 6 days, rather than allowing it to run for the planned 14 days. However, what it did reveal is that people will adapt to the social roles given to them, in positive and negative ways. Moreover, the study really challenged the prevailing attitudes about the violence in prison conditions at that time, which were based on a dispositional hypothesis that the conditions were the result of violent or sadistic people self-selecting jobs as prison guards and prisoners being a group that already fails to conform to social norms (Haney et al., 1973, p.70-71, para. 3/1).

The other thing it reveals is that even those who understand that they are investigating power and control are not necessarily immune from that impact. In a 2007 article, Philip Zimbardo looked back on the experiment he created, and reflected on the changes it created, not only in the students who were participants, but also in the researchers. He was not even aware of the changes in himself until a fellow professor, whom he was dating, responded in horror when she saw what was occurring in the "prison." According to Zimbardo, "Christina made evident in that one statement that human beings were suffering, not prisoners, not experimental subjects, not paid volunteers. And further, I was the one who was personally responsible for the horrors she had witnessed" (Zimbardo, 2007, p. 3, para.5). As an experimenter, he had insulated himself from the responsibility for the subjects' behavior, because he was not directing them to do any of the behavior. However, as he recognized their sadism, her comments became a mirror for his own willingness to tolerate such behavior.

The False Consensus Bias

The False Consensus Bias explains the idea that most people believe that most people think and feel the same way that they think and feel about things. In other words, people tend to assume that they are average in their beliefs. Moreover, people tend to assume that those who do disagree with them are flawed in some way. "The false consensus bias, in summary, both reflects and creates distortions in the attribution process. It results from nonrandom sampling and retrieval of evidence and from idiosyncratic interpretation of situational factors and forces. In turn, it biases judgments about deviance and deviates, and helps lead actors and observers to divergent perceptions of behavior, and, more generally, promotes variance and error in the interpretation of social phenomena"(Ross et al., 1977, p.299-300, para.5/1).

Social Identity Theory

Social Identity Theory suggests that group membership and identity is important to people, regardless of the merits of the group. A wide variety of studies have been done where study subjects have been divided into groups on the basis of unimportant characteristics, yet still form group loyalty on the basis of those characteristics. This helps explain some of the underlying behavior behind bias and prejudice. While in a laboratory setting there is no real advantage to favoring one's own group, in real-world applications, favoring one's own group can be very beneficial in the real world. For example, the group most likely to be similar to the individual is that person's family, and favoring the family will bring about positive results for the individual. However, it is important to understand that bias can be very detrimental to society, as a whole, and to outsiders in society, in particular. "People typically seek other people who are similar to themselves, being comfortable with others they perceive as members of their own in-group. From comfort follows, at best, neglect of people from outgroups and, at worst, murderous hostility toward out-groups perceived as threatening the in-group. Biases do vary by degree, and the psychologies of moderate and extreme biases differ considerably" (Fiske, 2002, p.123, para.1).

One of the interesting findings is that bias seems to exist, even in populations who do not want to exhibit bias. However, these biases may be more subtle, which makes them ultimately more difficult to eradicate. Moreover, while these people may not ever engage in intentional or overt discrimination, it is important to realize the negative impact of subtle discrimination. "Automatic reactions to outgroup members matter in everyday behavior. Awkward social interactions, embarrassing slips of the tongue, unchecked assumptions, stereotypic judgments, and spontaneous neglect all exemplify the mundane automaticity of bias, which creates a subtly hostile environment for out-group members" (Fiske, 2002, p. 126, para.2). The good news is that, when motivated to do so, people can account for these automatic reactions, but they have to be aware of the reactions and they have to be motivated to counteract them.

One of Fiske's most interesting findings is that not all out-groups are treated the same way. Some outgroups are respected because of high status, but resented and disliked because they are seen as competition for the in-group (Fiske, 2002, p.125, para. 6). These groups would include Asians, Jews, career women, and other groups that compete with the dominant social norm for resources and jobs. In contrast, "Other out-groups (older people, disabled people, housewives) are pitied and disrespected for their perceived incompetence and low status, but they are nurtured and liked as warm because they do not threaten the in-group" (Fiske, 2002, p. 125, para. 6). Finally, some out groups are both disrespected and disliked, which results in them receiving the worst treatment; these groups include the homeless and the poor (Fiske, 2002, p.125, para. 6).

What is interesting is that the desire to categorize people as in-group or out-group seems almost automatic to human beings. "An important cognitive consequence of this pervasiveness is that the articulation of an individual's social world in terms of its categorization into groups becomes a guide for his conduct in situations to which some criteria of intergroup division can be meaningfully applied" (Tajfel et al., 1971, p.153, para.3). In other words, group divisions can be adaptive, because, even if the theoretical ideal is the treatment of all human beings equally, to do so would likely result in very negative consequences for the individual. The problem is that this desire to categorize continues, even when there is no real impetus or benefit to categorizing people as in group or out of group. Anytime a person is in a group situation, he or she faces the desire to categorize, and even meaningless differences can lead to "differential intergroup behavior" (Tajfel et al., 1971, p.153, para.3).

Furthermore, the drive to categorize people as in-group and out-group seems to be motivated by more than benefits for one group. Instead, it seems also to be linked to self-esteem, with the notion that members of the in-group experience an increase in self-esteem when compared to out-group members. However, this theory has limitations. As the majority group grows, members of the majority may not even identify with that majority status in a meaningful way. In other words, it is much less important to a white person's daily experience that he is white than it is to a black person's daily experience that he is black. "As the security of a majority group increases, the self-esteem of its members becomes less susceptible to the favourability of intergroup comparisons. Other social groups largely become irrelevant" (Abrams & Hogg, 1988, p.324, para. 3).

Bargaining

While there is no single definitive study on bargaining, a number of studies have been conducted to see how people bargain. What these studies have demonstrated is that the presence of a bilateral threat is actually the least conducive to effective bargaining. Both parties do more poorly when there is a bilateral threat present. Being under duress, rather than encouraging cooperation, actually hinders cooperation. In addition, forcing communication between two people, even if they otherwise have the means to communicate, helps foster cooperation.

Bilateral threats have often been described as mutual deterrence, and the idea of mutual deterrence is that the presence of a threat will mean that one party is not powerless, and thus lead to a more successful resolution for both parties. Experiments belie the thoughts underlying the notion of bilateral threat. Rather than encouraging a peaceable resolution, bilateral threats discourage cooperation. This may be because: (1) when both parties can make a threat, it is more likely a threat will be made and threats are not conducive to cooperation; (2) threats will likely evoke counterthreats; and (3) the threatened person has a stronger position in the case of bilateral threat and it less likely to yield (Deutsch & Krauss, 1962, p.54, para.3).

Bystander Apathy

Bystander apathy was not well understood until an event in 1964, which happened outside of the psychology context, but changed what many people understood about social psychology. A young lady named Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death. Her attack was very lengthy and literally dozens of people saw or heard the attack and had an opportunity to call for help, but failed to do so. The immediate reaction was for people to believe this was an anomaly, and that one would not notice this effect in different populations. However, in lab studies in which an unseen participant appears to be having an epileptic seizure and is asking for help, the greater the number of people in the group, the longer it took for people to come to the aid of the ailing person. This appears, at first, to contradict social conventions that seem to dictate helping victims. However, it is important to keep in mind that, even though there are social norms dictating a humanitarian response, there are also fears, both rational and irrational, about the results of intervention (Darley & Latane, 1968, p.377, para.3). For example, when Genovese was being stabbed, anyone who physically intervened would have risked being stabbed as well, making the fear of physical intervention a rational one.

In 1968 Latane and Darley conducted an experiment in which they had participants in a room that was filling with smoke. The greater the number of participants, the less likely they were to report the smoke. Latane and Darley hypothesized that bystander apathy is linked to diffusion of responsibility. According to them, "Diffusion of responsibility' seems the most likely explanation for this result. If an individual is alone when he notices an emergency, he is solely responsible for coping with it. If he believes others are also present, he may feel that his own responsibility for taking action is lessened, making him less likely to help" (Latane & Darley, 1968, p. 215, para. 4). There are alternative explanations for this behavior. One is the pressure to appear calm. "If each member of a group is, at the same time, trying to appear calm and also looking around at the other members to gauge their reactions, all members may be led (or misled) by each other to define the situation as less critical than they would if alone" (Latane & Darley, 1968, p.216, para. 8).

Conformity

Conformity experiments demonstrate how influenced people are by group perceptions. The classic experiment calls upon a person to identify which of three lines is the same size as a line in a control group. The answer is obvious, and yet, when surrounded by people who name either the shorter or the longer line as the same size as the control line, a large percentage of people choose the wrong line. Some reported doing so in order to conform, while others actually reported perceiving that line differently. Not all people respond by conforming; instead those who are most likely to conform tend to share characteristics, such as being high anxiety and low status people. In addition, conformity was not always dependent upon the other people knowing one's response- even confidential responses could show higher levels of conformity.

What is fascinating is that conformity, a social construct, appears to be very dependent upon the structure of society. Societies that expect higher levels of conformity are more likely to produce conforming responses in people than societies expecting lower levels of conformity, even when the thing being tested remains constant. This notion is reinforced by the tension between individualism and collectivism, where collectivist societies are expected to produce at least higher public conformity. "That is, individuals will publicly accept the majority view while privately retaining their initial view, motivated by a desire not to appear deviant or to risk possible negative sanctions from the majority, such as ostracism or ridicule" (Bond & Smith, 1996, p. 113, para. 10). Therefore, in the United States, conformity is higher when: the majority is larger, there is a larger proportion of female respondents, when the majority reflects group norms, and when the stimuli is ambiguous (Bond & Smith, 1996, p.124, para.2). Furthermore, in the United States, conformity declined between the 1950s and the 1990s, which is believed to be a result of the decline in the pressure for conformity in the community (Bond & Smith, 1996, p.124, para.3). Finally, conformity is greater in collectivist than individualist societies (Bond & Smith, 1996, p.124, para.4).

Conclusion

Human beings like to think of themselves as rational beings that are capable of independent thought. However, the above studies reveal that human beings are very social creatures, whose decision-making abilities are tremendously influenced by group norms and dynamics. Those behaviors that may seem the least rational to an outside observer can be explained by looking at how human beings interact within a group setting. What is the most interesting is that even knowledge that group dynamics might impact individual behavior may not be sufficient to prevent those interactions. One need only look at the role the researchers played in the Stanford Prison Experiments in order to understand that even knowledgeable people can fall into culturally prescribed normative roles. On the other hand, as research on in-group and out-group bias demonstrates, awareness of the impact of social behaviors can help mitigate some of the automatic reactions in those scenarios. As a result, one must conclude that while social psychology may not be able to solve all of society's problems, by explaining them, it can help move humans away from the creatures we are and closer to the creatures we wish to be.