Over the last two tutorials, we’ve tackled two big topics in social psychology.
These are the power of situation to shape our behavior, and how we think about ourselves.
To wrap things up, we’re going to look at one more large topic: how we think and interact
with each other.
As we are all aware, humans are a profoundly social species.
Even if you personally don’t think of yourself as a social butterfly, the culture you live
in depends on the fact that humans are social.
For centuries humans have cooperated with and trusted one another.
We routinely believe that the people we interact with on a daily basis will act in a certain
way.
We can trust that libraries won’t charge us to read books, and that grocery stores
will sell us food.
It is through this cooperation that we as a species have been able to create civilizations.
Because cooperation is so integral to how we live, a lot of psychology has to do with
other people.
As we move through the world and interact with others, we ask ourselves questions like:
Who is that person?
What sort of person are they?
What are they doing?
Did they mean to do that?
In other words, we are constantly processing, storing, and applying information about other
people, and this shapes our interactions.
Of course, as we talked about when discussing the power of situation, the amount that we
trust and cooperate with others depends on what is going on around us.
Psychologists can study which factors impact cooperation through a scenario called the
Prisoner’s Dilemma.
Here’s how it works.
Imagine there are two prisoners, Prisoner A and Prisoner B. Each of them has been charged
with a crime and they are being detained separately.
The police give each of them a chance to confess to the crime, but neither prisoner knows if
the other prisoner will also confess.
Depending on who confesses, there are several possible outcomes.
If only Prisoner A confesses, they are set free but Prisoner B will serve a three-year
prison sentence, and vice versa.
If neither Prisoner A nor Prisoner B confesses, both will serve a one year sentence.
If both Prisoner A and Prisoner B confess to the crime, they will both serve a two-year
prison sentence.
So what should Prisoner A do?
If they don’t confess, they hope that Prisoner B will also refuse to confess, so that they
both only stay a year in prison.
But Prisoner A could try to betray Prisoner B by confessing, as long as they think that
Prisoner B won’t confess.
Then, Prisoner A wouldn’t have to serve any time in prison, while Prisoner B would
be stuck there for three years.
By asking participants what they would do as Prisoner A, we can start to learn about
what sorts of things affect cooperation.
In the classic version of the dilemma where only one round is played, the “rational”
decision is for Prisoner A to betray Prisoner B.
But doing things like adding additional rounds changes the equation, since now Prisoner B
can retaliate against Prisoner A for the betrayal.
Other situations like changing the length of the prison sentences, or even scarcity
of resources can also impact the decisions made.
Of course, making these decisions on whether to cooperate or not depends on us making judgements
about the other person.
Is our partner trustworthy, or do we think that they may betray us?
We are constantly making judgements about other people and forming impressions about
them.
This process is very subjective and varies from person to person.
Our impressions of people are influenced by things like the traits of the person we’re
making a judgement about, the context of the situation, our own personality traits, and
our past experiences.
We usually form impressions of others very quickly and base these impressions on how
we think others will act.
You might form an initial impression of an English teacher based on how books, movies,
and your own prior experience with teachers tells you that person should behave.
Perhaps according to you, English teachers should be strict and love Shakespeare.
It’s only after you get to know the English teacher that you start taking their personality
into account, and potentially update your impression of them.
We also tend to focus on physical characteristics when forming judgements.
If you see someone dressed in a business suit, you might assume that they work in a formal
office.
Importantly, we tend to focus on the most obvious or novel characteristic.
If that same person has a neon blue mohawk, you’ll probably focus more on that than
their business attire.
This will further shape your impression, and you’re more likely to assume they work at
a concert venue than a bank.
Unfortunately, our minds don’t always make correct judgments.
As we go through the world, we are constantly given new information.
To deal with the flood of information, our minds naturally sort things into categories.
There’s too much information out there for us to deal with it all in a slow, methodical
fashion.
By categorizing people, places, and ideas into neat categories, we can interact and
react quickly to things that we encounter.
This is useful, we see too many people to get to know every single one and categorize
them accurately.
Unfortunately, this categorization can also lead to stereotypes and prejudices.
By the word stereotype, we are talking about an assumption regarding a group of people
based on prior experience or beliefs, like thinking that all librarians are old women
who wear glasses, or that all Irish people love potatoes.
Stereotypes can lead to prejudice, or a baseless and often negative preconception or attitude
towards a group of people.
When you hold a prejudice, you tend to view everyone in a group as being the same.
This leads to things like racism, sexism, and ageism.
So prejudice and stereotypes come from the mind’s natural tendency to categorize things.
We can’t stop our minds from making these categories, but we can work on reducing our
prejudice towards different groups.
For example, we can do things like imagining ourselves in the same situation as other people.
This decreases prejudice by increasing empathy.
We become more able to think about how others would react and gain a better understanding
of other people’s actions.
Other ways we can reduce prejudice include making ourselves aware of the inconsistencies
in our own beliefs, increasing support and awareness for anti-prejudice social norms,
and even simply increasing our contact with members of other social groups.
The more we interact with people different from ourselves, the better our minds learn
that not everyone from a certain group is the same.
Let’s now wrap up this mini-series on social psychology by talking about attraction and
love.
What causes our attraction towards other people?
At some level, it’s purely biological.
We are initially attracted to people who on a biological level would be able to produce
healthy babies.
For instance, we tend to find people with symmetrical features more attractive.
We also tend to be attracted to people who are around us physically, as well as ones
who are similar to us.
Studies have shown that we have a tendency to seek out partners who resemble ourselves
in things like appearance, height, IQ, or goals and desires.
This initial attraction towards another person can lead to love, an emotion characterized
by intimacy, passion, and commitment.
Psychologist Zick Rubin considers romantic love to be comprised of three elements: attachment,
or the need to be with another person and desiring their physical contact and approval;
caring, or valuing the other person’s needs and wants as much as your own; and intimacy,
or sharing private thoughts and desires with another person.
Of course, not all love is the same as passionate and romantic love, and these other types of
love are just as important.
For instance, you might love someone as a close friend.
Friendship is marked by liking someone and having some form of intimacy.
Love can also change with time.
When you first start a romantic relationship, you may experience infatuation.
You are extremely attracted to a person, but don’t have a sense of commitment yet.
As the relationship develops, infatuation may develop into passionate love, which is
love characterized by a need to be physically close, often with sexual attraction, or compassionate
love, which is love marked by trust, affection, and commitment, or both.
All of these types of love and relationships are important, and can even have health benefits
like lower stress levels and lower risk of heart disease.
We can also benefit from having multiple types of relationships.
You probably get something different out of a close friendship than you do with a romantic
partner.
More on these sorts of topics later in the series.
As I hope you have seen over the last three tutorials, human psychology is impacted immensely
by social factors like situation.
Understanding how we see ourselves and the manner in which we are constantly interacting
with others helps explain how we move through the world.
We truly are a social species.