I'm Going to Convince Myself That My Actions Are Okay

Last week we started social psychology. Social psychology is defined as the branch of psychology concerned with the way individual's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by others. It therefore scientifically studies how we think about, influence, and relate to one another.

• How does out perceptions and thoughts impact how we see other people?
• How does other peoples' actions impact us?
• How does the way we interact with others impact us?

Cognitive  Dissonance: 

This video starts off giving an example: Your parents tell you that people with blue eyes are bad, so you grow up with the idea that people with blue eyes are bad people. Later in life, you begin to meet and interact with people with blue eyes and you realize that they are not so bad. Since you must listen to your parents, you convince yourself that people with blue eyes are, indeed, bad. 

Then the video goes on to explain to us the experiment of Leon Festinger: he had people come in and did a boring job. After they did the job, they would have to convince another person to also do the job. One group was offered $1 to do the job and the other was offered $20 to do the job. The people who got $20 said that it was kind of boring, but they got $20. The other group, who got $1 said that it was kind of cool and pretty fun. If they can't change their actions, then they will change their attitudes. The people convince themselves that they are telling the truth and that they enjoyed it. 

Impact of role-playing on attitude and action: 

As I was watching the other video, the beginning reminded me of another video that I (and I think many of you) have seen before. For an experiment on discrimination a teacher told students that one day was a special day for people with blue eyes and the next day is a special day for the people with brown eyes. Whichever color eyes you had, and whichever day it was, you were either seen as greater or lesser. The kids got to act greater, but really they began to feel greater and made the other people with the bad color eyes that day, feel much worse. They became the role that they were acting, like what happened in Phillip Zimbardo's prison experiment.