Sociology 3701: Outline--Week 11
I. Psychological social psychology
A. Role of Experiment as a research method... think about the Mark Snyder article, "When Belief Creates Reality: the Self-Fulfilling Impact of First Impressions"
1. Contrast with symbolic interactionist research methods, which involve mostly qualitative research
2. Role of experiment in sociology--other social psychologies; for example, behaviorism at the University of Washington when I was a graduate student there
3. Characteristics of true experiments
a. Two or more comparison groups: a treatment group and a control group or sometimes, two or more different treatment groups.
b. The experimenter introduces variation in the independent variable before assessment of change in the dependent variable
c. Random assignment to the treatment and comparison groups. This is what allows you to equalize the effects of outside (including unknown) factors. From the point of view of establishing causality, this is the single most important advantage of experiment as a research method because it eliminates the possibility that the causal connection(s) we find is really spurious.
Example: what would have happened to the Zimbardo prison experiment if research subjects had been able to choose whether they wanted to be prisoners or guard?
d. Experimental control: each run of the experiment follows the same carefully monitored script. e.g., the Milgram obedience to authority experiement... the lab assistant running the experiment had just 3 or 4 scripted phrases he could use if the research subject didn't want to go on with administering the shocks
4. Two varieties
a. Laboratory: far more common and often ingenious... the big challenge is what is sometimes called external validity or generalizability... (contrast with internal validity)...
b. Field experiments
B Cognitive Dissonance Theory.
1. Leon Festinger: Simultaneously holding two cognitions that are psychologically inconsistent creates a pressure to reduce the dissonance. What does "psychologically inconsistent" mean? Aronson: "Considering these two cognitions alone, the opposite of one follows from the other."
When Prophecy Fails
2. Wide variety of applications: 3,000 experiments altogether, say Tavris and ARonson
a. Disasters
b. "Bad" habits
c. Cheating (or not cheating)... see Judson Mills experiment, p. 244
d. Decision-making... after you buy the house or the car... experiment: choosing one of several small appliances of approximately equal value and then evaluating them afterwards... suddenly the one you chose is the obvious best choice
And much, much more.
3. Experiment by Elliot Aronson and Judson Mills on initiation. Is it more useful to view human beings as rational or as rationalizers? What would the then-dominant behaviorist theory predict? What would cognitive dissonance predict?
a. See p. 16 for a brief summary
b. My first thought... maybe reading those forbidden words was exciting. But notice that the experiment has been replicated with several different kinds of initiation, and the results are always the same. People who have gone through the severest initiation rate the experiment the highest.
c. text, p. 18: "Dissonance theory exploded the self-flattering idea that we, Homo Sapiens, process information logically."
4. I particularly like a formulation of the theory that Aronson came up with in an earlier book, The Social Animal: "When a person is involved in a situation where he might consider himself to be stupid or immoral, he engages in self-justifying behavior which involves some form of self-persuasion."
5. Confirmation bias: What if after we make a decision, evidence emerges that would seem to show it was a bad decision? e.g. no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
a. This dynamic is particularly powerful when the decision has important consequences and is hard to reverse.
b. Doesn't mean this dynamic always kicks in successfully: e.g., my first home purchase. Individual and/or cultural differences in suceptibility to cognitive dissonance?
6. How do we evaluate evidence, if we already have a strong position about something? Capital punishment experiment: 2 articles, each making the strongest possible case, one for the "pro" side and one for the "anti." What would cognitive dissonance theory predict in terms of how those articles would affect people's views of capital punishment?
7. Spirals of violence and the flawed theory of "getting it out of your system (catharsis)." Notice the implications of cognitive dissonance theory for situations in which we treat other people badly.
a. David Glass experiment on the justification of cruelty (We'll come back to this later, in a section titled "Perpetrators of Evil)
b. Bullying (including cyber-bullying) and the comment from one class member that those being bullied really bring it on themselves
c. Karamazov quote, p. 27
8. The pyramid of choice: who can explain how it works? p. 33
"How do you get an honest man to lose his ethical compass? You get him to take one step at a time and self-justification will do the rest."
9. Cognitive dissonance is particularly strong when:
a. Self-concept is involved
b. Actions are voluntary or nearly so (What Aronson calls "the psychology of inadequate justification" )
c. Individual feels responsible for consequences and they matter.
III. Blind spots
A. "Naive realism"--the conviction that we perceive objects and events clearly, as they really are
1. What if we have a powerful and self-interested motive to see things a particular way?
a. Experiment: The Israeli citizen judging what he is told is his own government's peace proposal (but it's really the Palestinian proposal) and also the reverse
b. Scientists doing industry-funded research on the safety of particular chemicals . 161 studies of the possible risks to human health of four chemicals.
1) Industry funded studies: 14 % found harmful effects
2) Independent funding: 60% found harmful effects
c. The effects of even small gifts: the pharmaceutical companies and the doctors (now that industry is even offering consulting contracts and honoraria to bioethicists!)