Making Social Psychology Accessible http://www.in-mind.org Mon, 12 May 2008 16:45:46 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://www.in-mind.org/images/M_images/joomla_rss.png http://www.in-mind.org Making Social Psychology Accessible http://www.in-mind.org/issue-5/taking-one-for-the-team-2.html Even on Your Way Out of the Door Kaitlyn works Monday through Friday, 9-5. Sitting at her desk on Friday afternoon, Kaitlyn glances at the clock. It is 4:30 pm. The end of the workweek is a mere 30 minutes away. Visions of a relaxing weekend begin to creep in. And then, the phone rings. A distraught coworker is calling to ask for a big favor. His kids are really sick, he feels there’s no way he’s going to be able to prepare for an upcoming meeting on Monday, and he’s wondering if Kaitlyn might be able to run it for him. She’s not up-to-date on the agenda, so it is going to take a fair amount of time to prepare. If she agrees to help out, she can kiss her weekend goodbye. And no, there isn’t any direct reward for running the meeting. A thank you, maybe. A complimentary latte, perhaps. But she shouldn’t expect a big bonus in her next check. Kaitlyn is simply being asked to step up to the plate, be a good sport, and take one for the team. Will she agree? How might her answer change if she knew, for sure, that she had another job lined up and was about to leave the organization? In the present article, I address these questions by first introducing the concept of organizational citizenship behaviors and then summarizing a series of recent studies my colleagues Dishan Kamdar, Denise Daniels, Jane George-Falvy and Blythe Duell and I conducted on this topic. Articles - Issue 5 Sat, 19 Jan 2008 17:52:09 +0100 http://www.in-mind.org/issue-5/are-stereotypes-true-2.html Are African Americans really better at basketball than Caucasians? Are blonds really dumber than brunettes? Are women really worse at math than men? The short answer is yes. The longer answer is no. Let me explain by focusing on the stereotype that women can’t do math. At first glance, this stereotype seems to be true. For instance, men continue to outperform women on the math sections of the SAT and GRE, and men outnumber women in college math courses and math-related jobs. Surely this is evidence that women are not as good at math as men. But as this article will explain stereotypes are self-perpetuating and not only reflect but also cause performance differences between groups. Articles - Issue 5 Tue, 22 Jan 2008 20:53:24 +0100 http://www.in-mind.org/issue-5/creativity-is-more-than-a-trait-it-s-a-relation-2.html What is all the commotion about creativity? Whatever definition this vogue expression is dressed in, it has apparently captured the awareness of countless authorities for educational, economical, governmental and last but not least, scientific issues. Moreover, the media is filled with references to creativity or its synonyms. Ochse (1990), the author of a renowned book on the determinants of creative genius, contested that "our quality of life, perhaps our very survival as a species, depends on promoting creativity" (p. 33). Articles - Issue 5 Sun, 27 Jan 2008 15:06:40 +0100 http://www.in-mind.org/issue-5/the-vision-thing-2.html Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion. [John Welch, American businessman, former head of General Electric] Vision is the key to understanding leadership, and real leaders have never lost the childlike ability to dream dreams… Vision is the blazing campfire around which people with gather. It provides light, energy, warmth and unity. [Bill Newman, Australian broadcaster] The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision. It’s got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion. [Theodore Hesburgh, former President of the University of Notre Dame]. Articles - Issue 5 Thu, 31 Jan 2008 00:37:33 +0100 http://www.in-mind.org/issue-5/the-naked-power-understanding-nonverbal-communications-of-power-2.html Because power is something we often avoid discussing openly, its nonverbal communication is fascinating to lay people and psychologists alike. When directly asked, people interpret many different nonverbal signs as indicating high or low power – unfortunately, these ideas are often exaggerated and misguided. Likewise, social psychologists still have no good understanding of the nonverbal cues to power. This article sheds more light on what is actually underlying nonverbal communication of power. We identify two new insights: First, much of the nonverbal communication of power takes places unconsciously and is hard to control. Second, people use abstract schemas to judge power, and they not only apply these schemas to understanding body talk, but also elements of art, advertisement, and architecture. Articles - Issue 5 Wed, 30 Jan 2008 23:04:00 +0100 http://www.in-mind.org/issue-4/the-media-carriers-of-contagious-information-2.html The media play a critical role in modern society because they are the carriers of information about how people behave. And, the evidence from social science is clear that information about others’ behavior can have a contagious effect—leading observers to behave similarly, which can lead still more and more observers to conform (Cialdini (#Cialdini), 2001). In the economic arena, marketing professionals understand how to harness this power. Television commercials depict crowds rushing into stores and hands depleting shelves of the product. Advertisers proclaim their products as the “largest selling” or “fastest growing” in the market. Restaurant owners designate certain menu items as “our most popular,” which immediately makes them even more popular. Consider the advice offered more than 350 years ago by the Spaniard Balthazar Gracian (#Gracian) (1649/1945) to those wishing to sell goods: Their intrinsic worth is not enough, for not all turn the goods over and look deep. Most run where the crowd is—because the others run. (p. 124) The Media: Carriers of Contagious Information – In-Mind.org Articles - Issue 4 Thu, 18 Oct 2007 00:22:05 +0100 http://www.in-mind.org/issue-4/there-s-something-about-zero.html For some people, looking at one or more of the numbers in the image will be an aesthetically unpleasant experience. “But zero is black!” they will think to themselves. Those with black (or red, or upper left, or shy, or any other type of additional sensation) zeroes are synaesthetes – for them, the perception of a stimulus (the inducer) in one sense will activate a sensation (the concurrent) in a second sense, or a different aspect of the same sense. There’s Something About Zero – In-Mind.org Articles - Issue 4 Thu, 18 Oct 2007 11:16:50 +0100 http://www.in-mind.org/issue-4/on-mirror-neurons-or-why-it-is-okay-to-be-a-couch-potato.html Have you ever wondered why, when you see someone stretch out and yawn, suddenly, you start to feel drowsy and feel the urge to do the same? Or how about the tendency of people to copy each other’s postures? In social psychology this phenomenon is called postural mirroring. All this mimicking is the result of so-called mirror neurons in our brain. On Mirror Neurons or Why it is Okay to be a Couch Potato – In-Mind.org Articles - Issue 4 Thu, 18 Oct 2007 11:59:58 +0100 http://www.in-mind.org/issue-4/the-double-edged-passion.html Humans are passionate creatures. Our passions drive us, gives us a sense of belonging, and unite us as few other things can. Still, there are only a couple of passions that have been constants down the ages, passions that people from every place and culture can agree on. Love is one, but another is that "those no-good bastards over there are trouble." Of course, we quibble endlessly over the exact definition of "those" -- every culture, pretty much, has had a different group in mind. But the singular fact of prejudice per se was as recognizable in Ancient Greece, Rome, and Samaria as it is now in modern Greece, Rome, and Arkansas. Not only do we disagree over who Those Bastards Over There (TBOT) are, but also over why we hate them so much. Nose size has been cited in the past as a reason, as has intellectual capacity (too much or too little), and bad manners (eating without implements, eating with implements, etc). Hate may be a massively universal thing, but we are shockingly divided over why we do it. Personally, I blame TBOT. Psychologists, though, (hate us or loathe us) aren’t as sanguine about not knowing, and have spent a great deal of time investigating prejudice in its many guises. They have come to two broad classes of answers: (a) Reasons we hate each other, and (b) Reasons we think we hate each other. There's not as much overlap between those two as you might hope. The Double Edged Passion – In-Mind.org Articles - Issue 4 Sat, 20 Oct 2007 13:25:08 +0100 http://www.in-mind.org/issue-4/forever-and-a-day-or-just-one-night.html On Adaptive Functions of Long-Term and Short-Term Romantic RelationshipsA happy, fulfilling, faithful and ‘till death do us part’ type of relationship seems to be an ultimate aim for most people. If you consider the typical storyline of popular fairy tales, like, Snow White and Cinderella, they portray an attractive couple overcoming number of difficult circumstances to rejoice committed relationship and “live happily ever after” and ”till death do them part”. The main actors in these screenplays are young, attractive and healthy individuals at the peak of their reproductive age, and willing to commit to each other for the rest of their lives. ‘Forever and a Day’ or ‘Just One Night’? – In-Mind.org Articles - Issue 4 Tue, 23 Oct 2007 00:30:54 +0100 http://www.in-mind.org/issue-4/exposing-an-armed-criminal-what-can-we-learn-from-psychology-and-the-po.html How vulnerable are armed criminals? Can one predict their intentions and actions just by watching them walking or standing somewhere? Psychologists and the police believe this is possible. They think this can be done by reading subtle clues in the appearance of a person. These clues can be meaningless for a novice, but are significant for a trained person. While these tiny details can become visible for other people after an appropriate training, it is difficult to learn to suppress them. They can still be unconsciously shown by a criminal even though he is very skilled. Thus, a criminal may still unconsciously betray his or her intent by displaying cues, no matter how experienced or trained he is. So, what are these cues? In this article I will review a selection of scientific research on the issue within the field of psychology. The evidence derived from the literature is considered next in order to understand which emotional state, according to the offenders themselves, accompanies a criminal act. On top of that, the findings from experimental research on how an emotional state is being reflected in non-verbal cues and how this is recognized by other people will be presented. To conclude, the examples of applying knowledge about non-verbal cues to the security industry will be discussed. Exposing an Armed Criminal: What Can We Learn from Psychology and the Police? – In-Mind.org Articles - Issue 4 Fri, 26 Oct 2007 11:37:58 +0100 http://www.in-mind.org/special-issue/do-multicultural-experiences-make-people-more-creative-if-so.html MacDonalds' Rice-burger in Asia; Starbucks’ Coffee Mooncake in Singapore; Disneyland Yin-Yang Mickey Mouse Cookies in Hong Kong; Lay's Peking Duck Flavored Potato Clip … The list can go on. What is common in all these examples is that they are all novel product ideas created by integrating seemingly non-overlapping cultural or product ideas from Eastern and Western cultures. Multicultural Experiences and Creativity – In-Mind.org Articles - Special Issue Mon, 02 Jul 2007 22:53:32 +0100 http://www.in-mind.org/special-issue/from-heavens-to-hells-to-heroes.html The poet John Milton gave highest praise to the human mind when he wrote in 'Paradise Lost', "The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." I have been celebrating that mental agility for most of my life, as a research psychologist for the past fifty years, but even before that as a child of only five years. Before I describe how I helped to transform the paradise that is Palo Alto, California, and Stanford University, into a hell on earth for a group of college students that I imprisoned in a dramatic experiment, allow me first to note briefly how I also mentally transformed a living hell into my optimistic heaven. From Heavens to Hells to Heroes – In-Mind.org Articles - Special Issue Mon, 02 Jul 2007 22:33:24 +0100 http://www.in-mind.org/special-issue/fairness-judgments-genuine-morality-or-disguised-egocent.html When people think about fairness, they often think about social norms and values, or about general moral principles such as equality between humans and impartiality when solving conflicts. Fairness is thus often associated with a genuine concern for other people's well-being. In a variety of scientific disciplines, fairness is even equated with altruism and contrasted with egoism (e.g., De Waal, 1996; Sober & Wilson, 1998). Articles - Special Issue Sun, 15 Jul 2007 17:52:09 +0100 http://www.in-mind.org/special-issue/why-we-are-still-social.html Some years ago, when I first began writing about the evolution of human sociality, a colleague put to me the question: Why are humans still social? That “still” was weighty with meaning—the idea of a primal solitary state, to which humans might return, perhaps finally freed from group living by technological progress. I was dumbfounded. Humans have no choice but to live in groups. They are unable to reproduce and survive to reproductive age without a group, which makes them obligately interdependent. That interdependence is inscribed upon the body. We lack natural defenses such as impressive canines or tough hides. We have an extended, care-intensive infancy. And we have traits, such as omnivory and tool making, that enabled humans to exploit rainforests and tundra, but that create dependence on collective knowledge and cooperative information sharing. Humans are still social because they must be. Articles - Special Issue Sun, 29 Jul 2007 18:22:25 +0100 http://www.in-mind.org/issue-3/evolution-of-religion.html Religion. "Praise be to God." "Awakening the Buddha within." "Allāhu akbar." Just phrases at first sight.. But what comes to mind? Depending on your background or your personal situation, each of these might prime you with anxiety, or with comfort. Equally so, wars have been (and are) fought over whose way is ‘The Way’. Religion of Evolution – In-Mind.org Articles - Issue 3 Mon, 02 Jul 2007 22:11:32 +0100 http://www.in-mind.org/issue-3/are-blonds-really-dumb.html Blonds are dumb, foreigners lazy, women can't do math. We continuously encounter such statements in our every-day lives – even if most people obviously wouldn’t take them seriously. Nevertheless, we often act towards others as if they were members of a particular group and nothing more. The bases for such behaviors are stereotypes and prejudices. Stereotypes are subjective views about the characteristics, attitudes, and behaviors of the members of a particular group. They are overgeneralizations, whereby the members of a group are assigned certain characteristics – merely based on their group membership. Are Blondes Really Dumb? – In-Mind.org Articles - Issue 3 Mon, 11 Jun 2007 00:55:39 +0100 http://www.in-mind.org/issue-3/five-social-psychology-essentials-2.html Social psychology teaches critical thinking about social behavior, or at least that's what we teachers like to think. It's comforting to believe that the field we've spent years studying will help our students see the world anew. We're glad when students show signs of internalizing a social psychological perspective. More often than we like to admit, though, students have trouble seeing the point. Sometimes they tell us the subject matter is obvious. Sometimes they think it's irrelevant. And sometimes they have trouble seeing how the field’s disparate collection of seemingly unrelated details fit together in a coherent approach to social life. All this reduces the appeal of more advanced courses, seminars, and graduate school. For many students who are not psychology majors, introductory social psychology course is the last psychology course they ever take. Five Social Psychology Essentials – In-Mind.org Articles - Issue 3 Sat, 09 Jun 2007 22:41:02 +0100 http://www.in-mind.org/issue-2/positive-illusions-brad-pitt-or-danny-devito.html Imagine a colleague of yours, Mary, comes to the office one day and starts talking about this guy John whom she met in a bar. Supposedly, this guy is not only handsome, but also super smart, extremely witty, and God knows what else. So, obviously, you cannot wait to see this stud. When you – finally - meet this Brad Pitt look-alike, Brad Pitt seems to have been turned into Danny DeVito: all you get to see is this balding dwarf! What makes matters worse; he is so boring that after 5 minutes of talking to him you have to seize any excuse you can to run away from him. So, the next time you meet Mary and ask about John, wondering perhaps whether she meant a different John, you still hear this same perfect description. If you ever were in a situation like that you know that it can be quite confusing, you might ask yourself: what on earth’s name is Mary (insert the name of your own friend here) thinking?! Can’t she see the blatant truth about this guy? Positive Illusions: Brad Pitt or Danny DeVito? – In-Mind.org Articles - Issue 2 Sun, 04 Mar 2007 12:05:16 +0100 http://www.in-mind.org/issue-2/brain-training-practice-keeps-you-fit-2.html Commercials on the importance of training your brain are nearly a daily occurrence nowadays. A world without Sudoku has almost become unthinkable. Not only puzzles like these, but also numerous specific internet exercise-sites and try-at-home packages are devoted to this phenomenon. This merchandise is usually accompanied by slogans saying something like: "improve cognitive ability and prevent the negative outcome of the aging brain". Just as physical exercise improves the shape of your body muscles, cognitive exercise should keep your brain in optimal form. Have the retailers of these products merely found a good catchphrase to sell their products, or do they actually have a point? In other words, can mental deterioration be prevented by cognitive exercise? It might come in handy to know some facts about the brain before starting to unravel the answer to this question. Brain Training: Practice Keeps You Fit – In-Mind.org Articles - Issue 2 Sun, 25 Feb 2007 23:35:30 +0100