6th edition
Social Psychology
Elliot Aronson
University of California, Santa Cruz
Timothy D. Wilson
University of Virginia
Robin M. Akert
Wellesley College
slides by Travis Langley
Henderson State University
Chapter 14
Making a Difference with
Social Psychology:
Attaining a Sustainable Future
“We live in an environment whose
principal product is garbage.”
—Russell Baker, 1968
APPLIED RESEARCH IN
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
The field of social psychology has been interested
in applying what it knows to solve practical
problems. Kurt Lewin (1946), generally
recognized as the founder of empirical social
psychology, made three key points:
1. Social psychological questions are best tested
with the experimental method.
2. These studies can be used to understand
basic psychological processes and to develop
theories about social influence.
3. Social psychological theories and methods can
be used to address pressing social problems.
APPLIED RESEARCH IN
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
• Basic research is concerned primarily
with theoretical issues.
• Applied research that is concerned
primarily with addressing specific realworld problems.
“There is nothing so practical
as a good theory.”
-- Kurt Lewin (1951)
Capitalizing on the
Experimental Method
Only by conducting experiments (as
opposed to observational or correlational
studies) can we hope to discover which
real life solutions will work the best.
It is difficult to test the effectiveness of an
intervention without a randomly-assigned
control group, and failing to conduct such
tests can have serious consequences.
Assessing the Effectiveness
of Interventions
• Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD)
brings people together promptly after the
trauma for a 3-4 hour session, in which
participants describe experiences and discuss
emotional reactions.
• This cathartic experience is purported to
prevent later psychiatric symptoms, including
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
• Numerous fire and police departments have
made CISD the treatment of choice for officers
who witness terrible human tragedies.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Assessing the Effectiveness
of Interventions
• An interesting thing about CISD is that it
was widely implemented before social
scientists conducted rigorous tests of its
effectiveness.
• One study, for example, 98% of police
officers who had witnessed traumatic
events and underwent psychological
debriefing reported that they were
satisfied with the procedure.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Assessing the Effectiveness
of Interventions
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Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Assessing the Effectiveness
of Interventions
• The only way to find out is to conduct an
experiment in which some people are
randomly assigned to undergo CISD and
others are not.
• This kind of experiment was finally
conducted at various sites to test the
effectiveness of CISD.
• A comprehensive review of CISD
experiments shows no evidence of its
effectiveness in preventing PTSD.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Potential Risks of
Social Interventions
Another problem with social and
psychological interventions:
People use common sense to assess their
effectiveness, and common sense is
sometimes wrong.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Potential Risks of
Social Interventions
Another
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and common
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wrong.
• Scored higher on psychological measures
of anxiety and depression, and
• Reported significantly less contentedness
with their lives.
Potential Risks of
Social Interventions
• People are often quite resilient when left alone.
• Forcing people to talk about and relive traumatic
experiences may even make people more likely
to remember those experiences later.
• If people don't succeed in recovering on their
own, they might be better to letting some time
pass before reliving the trauma, at a point when
they have distance from it and can think about
the event more objectively.
Social Psychology to the Rescue
Social psychologists are in a unique position to
find solutions to applied problems and to avoid
fiascos like the widespread use of CISD.
1. Social psychology is a rich source of theories
about human behavior that people can draw
upon to devise solutions to problems.
2. Social psychologists know how to perform
rigorous experimental tests these solutions to
see if they work.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
USING
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
TO ACHIEVE A
SUSTAINABLE FUTURE
Resolving Social Dilemmas
Social Dilemma
A conflict in which the most beneficial action for
an individual will, if chosen by most people,
have harmful effects on everyone.
It is in anyone's self-interest to use as much
energy as he or she wants; after all, one
person's contribution to global warming is pretty
miniscule. But if we all adopt that that attitude,
we will all suffer the consequences.
Resolving Social Dilemmas
Commons Dilemma
A situation in which everyone takes from a
common pool of goods that will replenish itself if
used in moderation but will disappear if
overused.
• Examples include the use of limited
resources such as water and energy.
Resolving Social Dilemmas
How can we resolve social dilemmas,
convincing people to act for the greater
good of everyone, rather than purely out
of self-interest?
How can people be convinced to trust their
fellow group members, cooperating in
such a way that everyone benefits?
Resolving Social Dilemmas
Communication helps in two ways…
1. When people make a public commitment
to help it is harder to back down.
2. When people communicate they are
more likely to establish a sense of group
identity and solidarity, which makes
them more likely to act for the good of
the group.
When people can communicate with each other they are more likely to
act for the social good, rather than selfishly. Communication works in
two ways:
1. When people make a public commitment to help it is harder to back
down.
2. When people communicate they are more likely to establish a sense
of group identity and solidarity, which makes them more likely to act
for the good of the group.
Conveying and Changing
Social Norms
Injunctive Norms
People's perceptions of what behaviors are
approved or disapproved of by others.
Descriptive Norms
People's perceptions of how people actually
behave.
Resolving Social Dilemmas
• The most straightforward way to
communicate descriptive norms against
littering would be to clean up all the litter
in an environment, to illustrate that “no
one litters here.”
• In general, this is true: The less litter
there is in an environment, the less likely
people are to litter.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Resolving Social Dilemmas
There is, however, an interesting exception
to this finding.
Ironically, seeing a single piece of trash in
an otherwise clean area reminds people
more strongly of norms against littering.
A completely clean setting is less likely to
make them think of the norms.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Resolving Social Dilemmas
• What happens when there are no norms
for acting in environmentally responsible
ways, or even norms for behaving in the
opposite manner?
• In this situation the first step is to change
the norm.
• Often, though, people overestimate the
strength of an injunctive norm.
Making It Easy To Keep Track
of Consumption
• A problem with some environmental
social dilemmas is that it is not easy for
people to keep track of how much gas,
electricity, water, etc., they use.
• Making it easy for people to keep track of
their water consumption during a drought
makes it easier for them to act on their
concern for the greater good.
Making Energy Loss Vivid
• If the sources of home energy
consumption are made more vivid, people
will take more action.
• People will act in a manner that is
sensible in terms of environmental goals
and their own economic self-interest.
• But if old habits are involved, the
communication must be vivid enough to
break through those established habits.
A little
competitiveness
helps people
conserve energy
in the workplace.
Inducing Hypocrisy
• Merely posting notices reminding people
to conserve will only increase compliance
a little.
• Asking people to commit publicly to a
conservation principles greatly increases
conservation behavior.
Removing Small Barriers to Achieve
Big Changes
Sometimes the best way to change
people's behavior is simply to make it
easy for them to do so.
• To reduce the amount of trash that ends
up in landfills, many cities are
encouraging their residents to recycle
materials such as glass, paper, and
aluminum.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Removing Small Barriers to Achieve
Big Changes
Some psychologists have focused on ways
of changing people’s attitudes and values
in a pro-environment direction, with the
assumption that their behavior will follow
suit.
Several studies have found that people’s
attitudes toward recycling are in fact good
predictors of their recycling behaviors.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Happiness and a
Sustainable Life Style
What Makes People Happy?
• Happiness is partly genetic; some of us are
born with a happier temperament than others.
• Further, environmental circumstances outside
of our control, such as huge political upheavals
in a country, can have a big impact on
happiness.
• Nonetheless, research shows that there are
things that people can control that influence
their happiness.
What Makes People Happy?
Three of the most important factors are:
• Having satisfying relationships with other
people.
• Pursuing something you love.
• Helping others.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Satisfying Relationships
• Perhaps the best predictor of whether
someone is happy is the quality of his or
her social relationships.
• Happy people spend more time with other
people and are more satisfied with their
relationships.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Flow: Becoming Engaged in
Something You Enjoy
People tend to be happier when they are working
at something they enjoy and are making
progress than when they achieve their goal.
1. While working toward a goal, many people
are in a highly desired state called flow, which
occurs when people are "lost" in a task that is
challenging but attainable.
Reaching a goal may be gratifying, but then
people are no longer in a state of flow.
Flow: Becoming Engaged in
Something You Enjoy
People tend to be happier when they are working
at something they enjoy and are making
progress than when they achieve their goal.
2. When people work toward a goal but
aren’t sure they will obtain it, it is hard to
think about anything else.
The uncertainty about the outcome
focuses their attention on the task and
other matters fade from view.
Helping Others
Helping others can make people happy in a
couple of ways.
1. It is a way of connecting people to others and
enhancing social relationships, which we've
already seen is an important source of
happiness.
2. People who help others are likely to come to
view themselves in a more positive light,
namely as the "kind of person" who is altruistic
and cares about others.
Money, Materialism, and Happiness
Research shows that the relationship
between the amount of money people
make and how happy they are is weak at
best.
People who are very poor and have trouble
getting food and shelter are, not
surprisingly, less happy than others.
Money, Materialism, and Happiness
Research shows that the relationship
between the amount of money people
make and how happy they are is weak at
best.
People
who are
verythe
poor
andnecessities
have trouble
Once people
have
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getting
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increase happiness
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at others.
all.
Do People Know What Makes Them
Happy?
• Research on affective forecasting has
found that people often make systematic
mistakes about what will make them
happy in the future.
• When it comes to understanding the
recipe for happiness, some people get it
backwards.
Do People Know What Makes Them
Happy?
• We already saw that one of the best
predictors of happiness is having
satisfying social relationships.
• And yet, Americans are becoming increasingly
isolated from each other.
• In 1985, about 75% of the people surveyed said
that they had a close friend with whom they
could talk about their problems, but by 2004,
only half the people said they had such a friend.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Do People Know What Makes Them
Happy?
• In short, people often strive for things that are
unlikely to make them happier (e.g., earning
lots of money) and overlook things that will
make them happier (e.g., spending time with
close friends and loved ones).
• Ironically, striving for money and more
consumption is a source of many environmental
problems, which can ultimately reduce
happiness.
6th edition
Social Psychology
Elliot Aronson
University of California, Santa Cruz
Timothy D. Wilson
University of Virginia
Robin M. Akert
Wellesley College
slides by Travis Langley
Henderson State University