Social Facilitation and Inhibition

Do people act differently when they are alone than when they do when a group of people are watching? Social facilitation and social inhibition would answer, "yes." Social facilitation is the tendency to perform better at things that you are already good at when people are watching as opposed to when you are alone. If the dominant response is something that you are good at, the crowd will make your performance even better. For example, when Eli Osdoba is in games and everyone is watching, he tends to do better and tends to be more clutch than in pickup when there is no crowd. If as a response to the crowd, we get nervous because we are not so good at what we are doing, we tend to do worse. That is social inhibition. When we are not so good at something and there is a crowd watching, we tend to do worse than we normally do when we are alone.

Cognitive Dissonance

I always thought that my dad was able to "tell himself things" or "lie to himself." In other words, I knew the things that he was saying were in no way true, but I knew that he actually thought and convinced himself that they were in fact true. For example, if he drinks this nasty vegetable juice that he drinks, I know he doesn't like it, but he tells us that he loves it. Finally, thanks to Leon Festinger and Mrs. Perl, I came across a term to explain his behavior. It is not that he lies to himself or that he convinces himself of anything; it is simply called cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort that one experiences when holding two or more conflicting cognitions simultaneously. In this case, he already drank the vegetable juice and there is nothing anyone could do about it. Now that he already drank it, he is feeling discomforted because he doesn't actually like it, but yet, he still drank it. So, the cognitive dissonance theory explains that he wants to justify what he had done. Thus, eliminating the sense of discomfort. So, in this case, he says he liked it to eliminate his discomfort.

Freud was the Man

This week we did not really learn anything new, so I'm taking the freedom in picking my own topic.

Our class makes Freud out to be some super crazy, demented, old dude who knew nothing about what he was talking about. But I think some of his concepts make logical sense, even if they do seem a bit farfetched. 

Free association is a pretty cool concept. This is the Freud psychoanalysis method of psychological treatment where the psychologist is to the side and the patient just speaks about life and their problems and wherever they hit a road block in telling the story (something like a slip of the tongue, which is classified as resistance), this is where the underlying, unconscious problem is revealed. And doesn't this make sense? If someone is telling a story in general and they get up to a part that is embarrassing in anyway, they don't tell it with ease. I don't find it preposterous to say that the same can be true of one's unconcious. Free association sounds pretty solid. 

And then there are the id, ego, and the superego. These also make sense. Whenever you watch movies and there is the devil on a guy's left shoulder and an angel on his right shoulder, that is not too far from what actually goes on in someone's mind. When you are making decisions, you have what you want to do (steal the hotdog, you're starving!), but then there is society pulling you back (you could be arrested), and you make your decision based on whichever side wins. So Freud believed in that: the id is your instinctive impulse, the superego is your sense of right and wrong and society, and the ego is the mediator. Freud wasn't off his rocker with this concept.

So give Freud some slack. He was not conventional, but then again, who is nowadays? He makes sense; I respect the guy.

Problem with psychologists

We have learned quite a bit about different sorts of treatments for the mentally ill. We've also learned about many of the different kinds of disorders that plague mankind, spelled out in the DSM.

For those who are only mildly unwell, the classic "see a psychologist" may not work. The psychologist methodology can only work if the patient themselves has a desire to go along with the doctor. The psychologist is unable to really do much at all if the client does not want to be apart of the treatment. The desire to want to get better must come from the client themselves, and not from anyone else who may be wanting them to go. If the troubled client does not want to go to a psychologist, then not much can be done to solve his/her problems, despite their continued existence.

The DSM itself is also flawed. With the DSM-5 coming out soon, much controversy surrounded the process for deciding what would be included and what criteria determined a mental illness/disorder. The board of the DSM did not help itself in the manner. Shrouded in secrecy, the selection process was kept hidden from everyone else. There are numerous accounts of the psychologists on the board approving one member's choice in return for a vote of confidence on their own decision. Many newly labeled disorders, such as depression following the death of a beloved, have been ridiculed and decried. There are numerous psychologists who want to ban the whole book or who want the revision board to be reset and the process to begin again.

Psychologists need to work better to helping people solve their problems.

It's Almost Over

I'm going to talk about a term from earlier in the year: Rosy retrospection. I'm looking back at this year's course with a fairly positive attitude. Things were awesome, weren't they? We had so much fun! There was so much laughter! So many good times with our new friend, Mrs. Perl! Right?

Well, kinda. On a weekly basis, we were forced to do grueling assignments that took up to 5 hours. We were forced to pile work and work and work onto our workload, leaving no time for fun. Many of us have felt tortured in this class at some point or another.

All this being said, I still can't help but enjoy looking back at the year. This makes me think that Rosy Retrospection is more of a brief feeling - quickly ended by realistic remembering. Even so, I still look back and tend to see past the misery, the work, the painful feeling of my butt hurting from sitting on my kitchen table chair for too long. I look back and see what has been a phenomenal year with a phenomenal teacher.

It was truly rosy!

Haggling 101

A lot of people say that they go to Chinatown in New York and haggle with the workers there. The only quesiton is, are they haggling properly? Are there any techniques that they should be using that they are not?
The first technique for bargaining that people should employ is the foot-in-the-door phenomenon. Although this mostly applies to workers, if you start at a high price and go a little lower the person will be willing to do it. For example, I have a TV that, in actuality, costs about 400$ so I say to someone, would you like to buy this TV for 350$ and they will probably say yes. Then, I say, "Ohh, I just realized this is the only TV I own so I am going to have to raise the price to 450$." They will probably say yes based on the foot-in-the-door phenomenon and I will get an extra 50$.
The next phenomenon is the door-in-the-face phenomenon. This is that you start at a higher price and then go lower and this one has a higher success rate. For example, I have the same TV that costs 400 so I say to Shmitty, "You want this sweet TV for 650?" Of course, Shmitty wiil say no and then I will lower the price to 500$ and he will think about it and then say yes.
These two techniques are essential for anyone who likes to haggle and get their money's worth so make sure to employ these next time you are at the market.

Pride and Prejudice... But really just Cognitive Prejudice.

Certain things about prejudice that are interesting, yet once you see them it's like "oh, that's so true," are the cognitive roots of prejudice. To clarify, prejudice is a negative attitude or belief of a group as a whole that is UNJUSTIFIED. And cognitive psychology is the study of mental processes.

One cognitive root of prejudice is: categorization - outgroup homogeneity. This is where you believe all people outside of your "ingroup" are all the same. For example, Bob has a group of 5 close friends. He can distinguish all of them from each other; one is smart, one is annoying, one is hideous, etc. But when analyzing another group, he just categorizes them as "tall and mean" even though that is almost certainly not the case of all people in that group. Bob, like all of us do at some point, categorized the group to form a prejudice. 

Another cognitive root of prejudice is the concept of vivid cases. These are cases of people that stick out in the mind. It is similar to a representative heuristics (where you make judgments about an event of uncertainty) and an availability heuristic (mental shortcut to gage probability). Hence, this is using a vivid case, like 9/11, to come to the conclusion that ALL muslims are terrorists. In actuality, you are just recalling one specific case, and that causes you to unfairly have a prejudice against all Muslims. 

And yet another cognitive root of prejudice is the just-world phenomenon. This is the idea that good is punished and bad is punished, and hence people "get what they deserve and deserve what they get." For example, there are a bunch of people in the hospital with broken legs. As a result, Bobby forms a prejudice against all broken leg people that they have this misfortune because they must deserve it; they must either be mean people, or really clumsy people, or something along those lines.

Prejudices are not cool. Everybody has them, and some more than others, but if you know how and why you form them, there is a better chance that you can control yourself to learn how not to form them.

Altruism: The Seth Goldstein Story

For those of you who don't remember the story of Kitty Genovese, here's a reminder: Kitty Genovese was a woman who, in 1964, was stabbed to death in front of her apartment building. While she screamed for help, people all around heard her cries, but nobody did anything about it. How could something like this happen? There are, actually, several reasons. First of all, there's the bystander intervention model: according to the model, one will help another person if a) he/she notices the incident, b) interprets the incident as an emergency, and c) assumes responsibility. In the Kitty Genovese case, none of the bystanders could get past step C. It's possible that, in this case, the presence of other bystanders caused people to turn away from helping. Thankfully, we have people like Seth Goldstein. While he was running in some place in Tennessee for cross-country, a runner next to him collapsed, the result of a seizure. While four other runners ran by, Seth stopped racing in order to make sure the runner was safe. The four other runners either didn't get past Step B or Step C, and this is because they saw other people around to take responsibility. Thankfully, Seth took responsibility and made a big Kiddush Hashem.

The Fear of Conformity

We don't even realize we do it. We aren't conscious of it when it is happening. But now that it has been pointed out, now that we have learned all about it, I understand that we conform to social norms more often than not. Some conformations are not as recurrent as others, but there is one that I constantly find myself doing. Groupthink is prevalent in my life. When I work in a group with other students, I often find myself agreeing to their ideas, even though I find them completely moronic. I don't do this because I find value in those ideas, I do it because I want to maintain the harmony within the group. I do it because I think a happy group is a more efficient group. When everyone feels they are contributing, they feel a sense of harmony. They will work harder and better with others. So, you can't just shoot down every stupid idea that you come across. At times, you must concede your standards and bite the bullet. It's just the way of things, there isn't much we can do about it.

Deuces y'all.

crime and punishment

the more i read and still the more i think about this chapter the less i find it right for us to punish people for crimes. to me, this chapter is saying that we are basically all products of our situations and biological predispositions. this means that we do not really have the free will to make decisions even though we might think we do. we are just chemicals and impulses that would are set off because of who we are the experiences we encounter. and if we do not control our actions how can we be punished for them? so, this class has fully convinced me that jails are immoral. in their place we should have correctional facilities. places that teach these so called criminals what society wants from them. punishing them is a way of teaching them but the way they do it just doesnt seem so effective. we need to invest money into coming up with a better way to fix peoples maladaptive behaviors.