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Frontiers for Young Minds is a free, online scientific journal that provides open access to articles written by scientists and reviewed by kids. The journal aims to make science accessible to children and teenagers, and to inspire the next generation of scientists. The articles published in Frontiers for Young Minds are written in a way that is easy for young readers to understand, while still maintaining scientific accuracy.

Frontiers for Young Minds also offers educational resources for parents and teachers, including activities and lesson plans that can be used to supplement classroom instruction. The goal of the journal is to encourage young people to engage with science and to foster a love of learning that will last a lifetime.

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Frontiers for Young Minds is an open access scientific journal that brings the latest research in real time to school kids between 8-15 years old.

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Open Learn - Health, Sports & Psychology

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Open Learn - Health, Sports & Psychology

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A range of free courses, subjects and activities from Open Learn on Psychology topics. Most content is published with a Creative Commons CC BY NC SA license.

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This free course, Exploring learning disabilities: supporting belonging, takes the real-life cases of a number of different people to explore what it is like to have the label 'learning disability'. The course also considers how it feels to support someone with a learning disability, as a family member, a friend, an advocate or a paid worker...

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We looked at more than 1,000 research trials and found clear evidence to back exercise as a way to improve depression, anxiety and psychological distress.

People who catfish tend to score highly in the 'dark tetrad' personality traits.

New research shows the way a person with chronic pain responds to limitations to the activities or goals they value can impact their mental wellbeing - even more so than their pain levels.

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Popular psychology is all over book shops, podcasts and Netflix specials. The value of these ideas is hotly debated but even unguided, self-administered bibliotherapy may bring mental health benefits.

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Researchers have suggested a new theory for why neurotic unhappiness and creativity are often found in the same person. But is the assumption that creative people are more neurotic actually true?

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Research and practice in positive psychology aim to find ways to make life better for people, and ensure they're the best and most mentally healthy person they can be.

After the Directions Tree was cut down last week, Australian academics - both Indigenous and non-Indigenous - have come together in 'sorrow and anger'.

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We looked at more than 1,000 research trials and found clear evidence to back exercise as a way to improve depression, anxiety and psychological distress. People who catfish tend to score highly in the 'dark tetrad' personality traits.

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Chapter Outline

On the night of February 26, 2012, Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old African American high school student, was shot by a neighborhood watch volunteer, George Zimmerman, in a predominantly White neighborhood. Zimmerman observed the boy dressed in a hoodie and pursued Martin. Zimmerman called the police to report a person acting suspiciously, which he had done on other occasions. According to the 911 call transcript, Zimmerman said on the call, "[expletive] punks. These [expletive], they always get away." The 911 operator told Zimmerman not to follow the teen, as was also stated in the police neighborhood watch guidelines that had been provided to Zimmerman. A physical altercation ended with Zimmerman fatally shooting Martin. Zimmerman claimed that he acted in self-defense. Martin was unarmed, and after his death, there was a nationwide outcry. A Florida jury found Zimmerman not guilty of second degree murder nor of manslaughter.

There have also been tragic situations with deadly consequences in which police officers have shot innocent civilians. In 2019, Atatiana Jefferson's neighbor used a non-emergency line to call the police because Jefferson's front door was open in the late hours of the night. The police arrived and an officer went to the back of the yard. Jefferson, not knowing that the police had been called, reached into her purse and got out her legally owned gun. The officer perceived a threat and fired upon Jefferson, killing her. Her 8-year-old nephew witnessed the incident, as he was playing video games with his aunt. Why did each of these nights end so tragically for those involved? What dynamics contributed to the outcomes? How can these deaths be prevented?

Social psychologists examine how the presence of others impacts how a person behaves and reacts, whether that person is an athlete playing a game, a police officer on the job, or a worshiper attending a religious service. Social psychologists believe that a person's behavior is influenced by who else is present in a given situation and the composition of social groups.

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Ch. 12 Introduction - Psychology 2e | OpenStax

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Chapter Outline On the night of February 26, 2012, Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old African American high school student, was shot by a neighborhood watch volunteer, George Zimmerman, in a predominantly White neighborhood. Zimmerman observed the boy dressed in a hoodie and pursued Martin.

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Brannan, D. & Mohr, C. D. (2023). Love, friendship, and social support. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. Retrieved from http://noba.to/s54tmp7k

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Friendship and love, and more broadly, the relationships that people cultivate in their lives, are some of the most valuable treasures a person can own. This module explores ways in which we try to understand how friendships form, what attracts one person to another, and how love develops. It also e…

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Carter, S. & Porges, S. (2023). Biochemistry of love. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. Retrieved from http://noba.to/3629qu8v

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Sue Carter and Stephen Porges
University of North Carolina, Northeastern University - Boston

Love is deeply biological. It pervades every aspect of our lives and has inspired countless works of art. Love also has a profound effect on our mental and physical state. A "broken heart" or a failed relationship can have disastrous effects; bereavement disrupts human physiology and may even precipitate death. Without loving relationships, humans fail to flourish, even if all of their other basic needs are met. As such, love is clearly not "just" an emotion; it is a biological process that is both dynamic and bidirectional in several dimensions. Social interactions between individuals, for example, trigger cognitive and physiological processes that influence emotional and mental states. In turn, these changes influence future social interactions. Similarly, the maintenance of loving relationships requires constant feedback through sensory and cognitive systems; the body seeks love and responds constantly to interactions with loved ones or to the absence of such interactions. The evolutionary principles and ancient hormonal and neural systems that support the beneficial and healing effects of loving relationships are described here.

Learning Objectives

Understand the role of Oxytocin in social behaviors.

Articulate the functional differences between Vasopressin and Oxytocin.

List sex differences in reaction to stress.

Although evidence exists for the healing power of love, only recently has science turned its attention to providing a physiological explanation for love. The study of love in this context offers insight into many important topics, including the biological basis of interpersonal relationships and why and how disruptions in social bonds have such pervasive consequences for behavior and physiology. Some of the answers will be found in our growing knowledge of the neurobiological and endocrinological mechanisms of social behavior and interpersonal engagement.

Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. Theodosius Dobzhansky's famous dictum also holds true for explaining the evolution of love. Life on earth is fundamentally social: The ability to dynamically interact with other living organisms to support mutual homeostasis, growth, and reproduction evolved very early. Social interactions are present in primitive invertebrates and even among prokaryotes: Bacteria recognize and approach members of their own species. Bacteria also reproduce more successfully in the presence of their own kind and are able to form communities with physical and chemical characteristics that go far beyond the capabilities of the individual cell ( Ingham & Ben-Jacob, 2008).

Life on earth is essentially social and many species besides humans engage in complex social interactions and have developed complex social systems that shape their behavior. [Image: www.metaphoricalplatypus.com, https://goo.gl/9n0Dli, CC BY 2.0, https://goo.gl/v4Y0Zv]

As another example, various insect species have evolved particularly complex social systems, known as eusociality. Characterized by a division of labor, eusociality appears to have evolved independently at least 11 times in insects. Research on honeybees indicates that a complex set of genes and their interactions regulate eusociality, and that these resulted from an "accelerated form of evolution" ( Woodard et al., 2011). In other words, molecular mechanisms favoring high levels of sociality seem to be on an evolutionary fast track.

The evolutionary pathways that led from reptiles to mammals allowed the emergence of the unique anatomical systems and biochemical mechanisms that enable social engagement and selectively reciprocal sociality. Reptiles show minimal parental investment in offspring and form nonselective relationships between individuals. Pet owners may become emotionally attached to their turtle or snake, but this relationship is not reciprocal. In contrast, most mammals show intense parental investment in offspring and form lasting bonds with their children. Many mammalian species-including humans, wolves, and prairie voles-also develop long-lasting, reciprocal, and selective relationships between adults, with several features of what humans experience as "love." In turn, these reciprocal interactions trigger dynamic feedback mechanisms that foster growth and health.

What is love? An evolutionary and physiological perspective

Human love is more complex than simple feedback mechanisms. Love may create its own reality. The biology of love originates in the primitive parts of the brain-the emotional core of the human nervous system-which evolved long before the cerebral cortex. The brain "in love" is flooded with vague sensations, often transmitted by the vagus nerve, and creating much of what we experience as emotion. The modern cortex struggles to interpret love's primal messages, and weaves a narrative around incoming visceral experiences, potentially reacting to that narrative rather than to reality. It also is helpful to realize that mammalian social behavior is supported by biological components that were repurposed or co-opted over the course of mammalian evolution, eventually permitting lasting relationships between adults.

Is there a hormone of love and other relationships?

One element that repeatedly appears in the biochemistry of love is the neuropeptide oxytocin. In large mammals, oxytocin adopts a central role in reproduction by helping to expel the big-brained baby from the uterus, ejecting milk and sealing a selective and lasting bond between mother and offspring ( Keverne, 2006). Mammalian offspring crucially depend on their mother's milk for some time after birth. Human mothers also form a strong and lasting bond with their newborns immediately after birth, in a time period that is essential for the nourishment and survival of the baby. However, women who give birth by cesarean section without going through labor, or who opt not to breastfeed, are still able to form a strong emotional bond with their children. Furthermore, fathers, grandparents, and adoptive parents also form lifelong attachments to children. Preliminary evidence suggests that the simple presence of an infant can release oxytocin in adults as well ( Feldman, 2012; Kenkel et al., 2012). The baby virtually forces us to love it.

How would it feel to learn that love is nothing more than biological processes in the brain? Would it make a difference to you? Or is the fact you feel love all that matters? [Image: CC0 Public Domain, https://goo.gl/m25gce]

The case for a major role for oxytocin in love is strong, but until recently was based largely on extrapolation from research on parental behavior ( Feldman, 2012) or social behaviors in animals ( Carter, 1998; Kenkel et al., 2012). However, recent human experiments have shown that intranasal delivery of oxytocin can facilitate social behaviors, including eye contact and social cognition ( Meyer-Lindenberg, Domes, Kirsch, & Heinrichs, 2011)-behaviors that are at the heart of love.

Of course, oxytocin is not the molecular equivalent of love. Rather, it is just one important component of a complex neurochemical system that allows the body to adapt to highly emotional situations. The systems necessary for reciprocal social interactions involve extensive neural networks through the brain and autonomic nervous system that are dynamic and constantly changing across the life span of an individual. We also now know that the properties of oxytocin are not predetermined or fixed. Oxytocin's cellular receptors are regulated by other hormones and epigenetic factors. These receptors change and adapt based on life experiences. Both oxytocin and the experience of love can change over time. In spite of limitations, new knowledge of the properties of oxytocin has proven useful in explaining several enigmatic features of love.

Emotional bonds can form during periods of extreme duress, especially when the survival of one individual depends on the presence and support of another. There also is evidence that oxytocin is released in response to acutely stressful experiences, perhaps serving as hormonal "insurance" against overwhelming stress. Oxytocin may help to ensure that parents and others will engage with and care for infants; develop stable, loving relationships; and seek out and receive support from others in times of need.

Animal models and the biology of social bonds

To dissect the anatomy and chemistry of love, scientists needed a biological equivalent of the Rosetta Stone. Just as the actual stone helped linguists decipher an archaic language by comparison to a known one, animal models are helping biologists draw parallels between ancient physiology and contemporary behaviors. Studies of socially monogamous mammals that form long-lasting social bonds, such as prairie voles, have been especially helpful to an understanding the biology of human social behavior.

There is more to love than oxytocin

Just as complex as our subjective experience of love can be, so, too, is the complexity of brain processes involved with it. [Image: CC0 Public Domain, https://goo.gl/m25gce]

Research in prairie voles showed that, as in humans, oxytocin plays a major role in social interactions and parental behavior ( Carter, 1998; Carter, Boone, Pournajafi-Nazarloo, & Bales, 2009; Kenkel et al., 2012). Of course, oxytocin does not act alone. Its release and actions depend on many other neurochemicals, including endogenous opioids and dopamine ( Aragona & Wang, 2009). Particularly important to social bonding are the interactions of oxytocin with a related neuropeptide known as vasopressin. The systems regulated by oxytocin and vasopressin are sometimes redundant. Both peptides are implicated in behaviors that require social engagement by either males or females, such as huddling over an infant ( Kenkel et al., 2012). For example, it was necessary in voles to block both oxytocin and vasopressin receptors to induce a significant reduction in social engagement, either among adults or between adults and infants. Blocking only one of these two receptors did not eliminate social approach or contact. However, antagonists for either the oxytocin or vasopressin receptor inhibited the selective sociality, which is essential for the expression of a social bond ( Bales, Kim, Lewis-Reese, & Carter, 2004; Cho, DeVries, Williams, & Carter, 1999). If we accept selective social bonds, parenting, and mate protection as proxies for love in humans, research in animals supports the hypothesis that oxytocin and vasopressin interact to allow the dynamic behavioral states and behaviors necessary for love.

Oxytocin and vasopressin have shared functions, but they are not identical in their actions. The specific behavioral roles of oxytocin and vasopressin are especially difficult to untangle because they are components of an integrated neural network with many points of intersection. Moreover, the genes that regulate the production of oxytocin and vasopressin are located on the same chromosome, possibly allowing coordinated synthesis or release of these peptides. Both peptides can bind to and have antagonist or agonist effects on each other's receptors. Furthermore, the pathways necessary for reciprocal social behavior are constantly adapting: These peptides and the systems that they regulate are always in flux. In spite of these difficulties, some of the different functions of oxytocin and vasopressin have been identified.

Functional differences between vasopressin and oxytocin

Vasopressin is associated with physical and emotional mobilization, and can help support vigilance and behaviors needed for guarding a partner or territory ( Carter, 1998), as well as other forms of adaptive self-defense ( Ferris, 2008). Vasopressin also may protect against physiologically "shutting down" in the face of danger. In many mammalian species, mothers exhibit agonistic behaviors in defense of their young, possibly through the interactive actions of vasopressin and oxytocin ( Bosch & Neumann, 2012). Prior to mating, prairie voles are generally social, even toward strangers. However, within a day or so of mating, they begin to show high levels of aggression toward intruders ( Carter, DeVries, & Getz, 1995), possibly serving to protect or guard a mate, family, or territory. This mating-induced aggression is especially obvious in males.

Oxytocin, in contrast, is associated with immobility without fear. This includes relaxed physiological states and postures that permit birth, lactation, and consensual sexual behavior. Although not essential for parenting, the increase of oxytocin associated with birth and lactation may make it easier for a woman to be less anxious around her newborn and to experience and express loving feelings for her child ( Carter & Altemus, 1997). In highly social species such as prairie voles ( Kenkel et al., 2013), and presumably in humans, the intricate molecular dances of oxytocin and vasopressin fine-tune the coexistence of caretaking and protective aggression.

The biology of fatherhood is less well-studied than motherhood is. However, male care of offspring also appears to rely on both oxytocin and vasopressin ( Kenkel et al., 2012), probably acting in part through effects on the autonomic nervous system ( Kenkel et al., 2013). Even sexually naïve male prairie voles show spontaneous parental behavior in the presence of an infant ( Carter et al., 1995). However, the stimuli from infants or the nature of the social interactions that release oxytocin and vasopressin may differ between the sexes ( Feldman, 2012).

At the heart of the benefits of love is a sense of safety

Love is a universal feeling of safety and connectedness with another. Research has shown that at the end of people's lives, their primary regret is not spending more time with the people they love. [Image: CC0 Public Domain, https://goo.gl/m25gce]

Parental care and support in a safe environment are particularly important for mental health in social mammals, including humans and prairie voles. Studies of rodents and of lactating women suggest that oxytocin has the important capacity to modulate the behavioral and autonomic distress that typically follows separation from a mother, child, or partner, reducing defensive behaviors and thereby supporting growth and health ( Carter, 1998).

The absence of love in early life can be detrimental to mental and physical health

During early life in particular, trauma or neglect may produce behaviors and emotional states in humans that are socially pathological. Because the processes involved in creating social behaviors and social emotions are delicately balanced, these be may be triggered in inappropriate contexts, leading to aggression toward friends or family. Alternatively, bonds may be formed with prospective partners who fail to provide social support or protection.

Sex differences exist in the consequences of early life experiences

Males seem to be especially vulnerable to the negative effects of early experiences, possibly helping to explain the increased sensitivity of males to various developmental disorders. The implications of sex differences in the nervous system and in the response to stressful experiences for social behavior are only slowly becoming apparent ( Carter et al., 2009). Both males and females produce vasopressin and oxytocin and are capable of responding to both hormones. However, in brain regions that are involved in defensive aggression, such as the extended amygdala and lateral septum, the production of vasopressin is androgen-dependent. Thus, in the face of a threat, males may be experiencing higher central levels of vasopressin.

Oxytocin and vasopressin pathways, including the peptides and their receptors, are regulated by coordinated genetic, hormonal, and epigenetic factors that influence the adaptive and behavioral functions of these peptides across the animal's life span. As a result, the endocrine and behavioral consequences of a stress or challenge may be different for males and females ( DeVries, DeVries, Taymans, & Carter, 1996). For example, when unpaired prairie voles were exposed to an intense but brief stressor, such as a few minutes of swimming, or injection of the adrenal hormone corticosterone, the males (but not females) quickly formed new pair bonds. These and other experiments suggest that males and females have different coping strategies, and possibly may experience both stressful experiences, and even love, in ways that are gender-specific.

In the context of nature and evolution, sex differences in the nervous system are important. However, sex differences in brain and behavior also may help to explain gender differences in the vulnerability to mental and physical disorders ( Taylor, et al., 2000). Better understanding these differences will provide clues to the physiology of human mental health in both sexes.

Loving relationships in early life can have epigenetic consequences

Love is "epigenetic." That is, positive experiences in early life can act upon and alter the expression of specific genes. These changes in gene expression may have behavioral consequences through simple biochemical changes, such as adding a methyl group to a particular site within the genome ( Zhang & Meaney, 2010). It is possible that these changes in the genome may even be passed to the next generation.

Although we are all born with a finite set of genes, experiences in childhood will cause some genes to express themselves (e.g., encourage certain personality traits), while other genes will remain dormant. [Image: CC0 Public Domain, https://goo.gl/m25gce]

Social behaviors, emotional attachment to others, and long-lasting reciprocal relationships also are both plastic and adaptive, and so is the biology upon which they are based. For example, infants of traumatized or highly stressed parents might be chronically exposed to vasopressin, either through their own increased production of the peptide, or through higher levels of vasopressin in maternal milk. Such increased exposure could sensitize the infant to defensive behaviors or create a lifelong tendency to overreact to threat. Based on research in rats, it seems that in response to adverse early experiences of chronic isolation, the genes for vasopressin receptors can become upregulated ( Zhang et al., 2012), leading to an increased sensitivity to acute stressors or anxiety that may persist throughout life.

Epigenetic programming triggered by early life experiences is adaptive in allowing neuroendocrine systems to project and plan for future behavioral demands. But epigenetic changes that are long-lasting also can create atypical social or emotional behaviors ( Zhang & Meaney, 2010) that may be especially likely to surface in later life, and in the face of social or emotional challenges.

Exposure to exogenous hormones in early life also may be epigenetic. For example, prairie voles treated postnatally with vasopressin (especially males) were later more aggressive, whereas those exposed to a vasopressin antagonist showed less aggression in adulthood. Conversely, in voles the exposure of infants to slightly increased levels of oxytocin during development increased the tendency to show a pair bond. However, these studies also showed that a single exposure to a higher level of oxytocin in early life could disrupt the later capacity to pair bond ( Carter et al., 2009).

There is little doubt that either early social experiences or the effects of developmental exposure to these neuropeptides holds the potential to have long-lasting effects on behavior. Both parental care and exposure to oxytocin in early life can permanently modify hormonal systems, altering the capacity to form relationships and influence the expression of love across the life span. Our preliminary findings in voles further suggest that early life experiences affect the methylation of the oxytocin receptor gene and its expression ( Connelly, Kenkel, Erickson, & Carter, 2011). Thus, we can plausibly argue that love is epigenetic.

The absence of social behavior or isolation also has consequences for the oxytocin system

Given the power of positive social experiences, it is not surprising that a lack of social relationships also may lead to alterations in behavior as well as changes in oxytocin and vasopressin pathways. We have found that social isolation reduced the expression of the gene for the oxytocin receptor, and at the same time increased the expression of genes for the vasopressin peptide. In female prairie voles, isolation also was accompanied by an increase in blood levels of oxytocin, possibly as a coping mechanism. However, over time, isolated prairie voles of both sexes showed increases in measures of depression, anxiety, and physiological arousal, and these changes were observed even when endogenous oxytocin was elevated. Thus, even the hormonal insurance provided by endogenous oxytocin in face of the chronic stress of isolation was not sufficient to dampen the consequences of living alone. Predictably, when isolated voles were given additional exogenous oxytocin, this treatment did restore many of these functions to normal ( Grippo, Trahanas, Zimmerman, Porges, & Carter, 2009).

In modern societies, humans can survive, at least after childhood, with little or no human contact. Communication technology, social media, electronic parenting, and many other recent technological advances may reduce social behaviors, placing both children and adults at risk for social isolation and disorders of the autonomic nervous system, including deficits in their capacity for social engagement and love ( Porges, 2011).

Social engagement actually helps us to cope with stress. The same hormones and areas of the brain that increase the capacity of the body to survive stress also enable us to better adapt to an ever-changing social and physical environment. Individuals with strong emotional support and relationships are more resilient in the face of stressors than those who feel isolated or lonely. Lesions in various bodily tissues, including the brain, heal more quickly in animals that are living socially versus in isolation ( Karelina & DeVries, 2011). The protective effects of positive sociality seem to rely on the same cocktail of hormones that carries a biological message of "love" throughout the body.

Although research has only begun to examine the physiological effects of these peptides beyond social behavior, there is a wealth of new evidence showing that oxytocin can influence physiological responses to stress and injury. As only one example, the molecules associated with love have restorative properties, including the ability to literally heal a "broken heart." Oxytocin receptors are expressed in the heart, and precursors for oxytocin appear to be critical for the development of the fetal heart ( Danalache, Gutkowska, Slusarz, Berezowska, & Jankowski, 2010). Oxytocin exerts protective and restorative effects in part through its capacity to convert undifferentiated stem cells into cardiomyocytes. Oxytocin can facilitate adult neurogenesis and tissue repair, especially after a stressful experience. We now know that oxytocin has direct anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties in in vitro models of atherosclerosis ( Szeto et al., 2008). The heart seems to rely on oxytocin as part of a normal process of protection and self-healing.

Researchers are interested in the medical/therapeutic potential of oxytocin. [Image: CC0 Public Domain, https://goo.gl/m25gce]

Thus, oxytocin exposure early in life not only regulates our ability to love and form social bonds, it also affects our health and well-being. Oxytocin modulates the hypothalamic-pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis, especially in response to disruptions in homeostasis ( Carter, 1998), and coordinates demands on the immune system and energy balance. Long-term, secure relationships provide emotional support and down-regulate reactivity of the HPA axis, whereas intense stressors, including birth, trigger activation of the HPA axis and sympathetic nervous system. The ability of oxytocin to regulate these systems probably explains the exceptional capacity of most women to cope with the challenges of childbirth and childrearing.

Dozens of ongoing clinical trials are currently attempting to examine the therapeutic potential of oxytocin in disorders ranging from autism to heart disease. Of course, as in hormonal studies in voles, the effects are likely to depend on the history of the individual and the context, and to be dose-dependent. As this research is emerging, a variety of individual differences and apparent discrepancies in the effects of exogenous oxytocin are being reported. Most of these studies do not include any information on the endogenous hormones, or on the oxytocin or vasopressin receptors, which are likely to affect the outcome of such treatments.

Research in this field is new and there is much left to understand. However, it is already clear that both love and oxytocin are powerful. Of course, with power comes responsibility. Although research into mechanisms through which love-or hormones such as oxytocin-may protect us against stress and disease is in its infancy, this knowledge will ultimately increase our understanding of the way that our emotions impact upon health and disease. The same molecules that allow us to give and receive love also link our need for others with health and well-being.

Acknowledgments

C. Sue Carter and Stephen W. Porges are both Professors of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and also are Research Professors of Psychology at Northeastern University, Boston.

Discussions of "love and forgiveness" with members of the Fetzer Institute's Advisory Committee on Natural Sciences led to this essay and are gratefully acknowledged here. We are especially appreciative of thoughtful editorial input from Dr. James Harris. Studies from the authors' laboratories were sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. We also express our gratitude for this support and to our colleagues, whose input and hard work informed the ideas expressed in this article. A version of this paper was previously published in EMBO Reports in the series on "Sex and Society"; this paper is reproduced with the permission of the publishers of that journal.

Outside Resources

Book: C. S. Carter, L. Ahnert et al. (Eds.), (2006). Attachment and bonding: A new synthesis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Book: Porges, S.W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication and self-regulation. New York, NY: Norton.

Web: Database of publicly and privately supported clinical studies of human participants conducted around the world.

http://www.clinicaltrials.gov

Web: PubMed comprises over 22 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. PubMed citations and abstracts include the fields of biomedicine and health, covering portions of the life sciences, behavioral sciences, chemical sciences, and bioengineering. PubMed also provides access to additional relevant web sites and links to the other NCBI molecular biology resources.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed

Web: Website of author Stephen Porges

http://www.stephenporges.com/

Discussion Questions

If love is so important in human behavior, why is it so hard to describe and understand?

Discuss the role of evolution in understanding what humans call "love" or other forms of prosociality.

What are the common biological and neuroendocrine elements that appear in maternal love and adult-adult relationships?

Oxytocin and vasopressin are biochemically similar. What are some of the differences between the actions of oxytocin and vasopressin?

How may the properties of oxytocin and vasopressin help us understand the biological bases of love?

What are common features of the biochemistry of "love" and "safety," and why are these important to human health?

Vocabulary

Epigenetics

Heritable changes in gene activity that are not caused by changes in the DNA sequence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics

Oxytocin

A nine amino acid mammalian neuropeptide. Oxytocin is synthesized primarily in the brain, but also in other tissues such as uterus, heart and thymus, with local effects. Oxytocin is best known as a hormone of female reproduction due to its capacity to cause uterine contractions and eject milk. Oxytocin has effects on brain tissue, but also acts throughout the body in some cases as an antioxidant or anti-inflammatory.

Vagus nerve

The 10th cranial nerve. The mammalian vagus has an older unmyelinated branch which originates in the dorsal motor complex and a more recently evolved, myelinated branch, with origins in the ventral vagal complex including the nucleus ambiguous. The vagus is the primary source of autonomic-parasympathetic regulation for various internal organs, including the heart, lungs and other parts of the viscera. The vagus nerve is primarily sensory (afferent), transmitting abundant visceral input to the central nervous system.

Vasopressin

A nine amino acid mammalian neuropeptide. Vasopressin is synthesized primarily in the brain, but also may be made in other tissues. Vasopressin is best known for its effects on the cardiovascular system (increasing blood pressure) and also the kidneys (causing water retention). Vasopressin has effects on brain tissue, but also acts throughout the body.

References

Aragona, B. J, & Wang, Z. (2009). Dopamine regulation of social choice in a monogamous rodent species. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 3, 15.

Bales, K. L., Kim, A. J., Lewis-Reese, A. D., & Carter, C. S. (2004). Both oxytocin and vasopressin may influence alloparental care in male prairie voles. Hormones and Behavior, 44, 454-361.

Bosch, O. J., & Neumann, I. D. (2012). Both oxytocin and vasopressin are mediators of maternal care and aggression in rodents: from central release to sites of action. Hormones and Behavior, 61, 293-303.

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Authors

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Biochemistry of Love by Sue Carter and Stephen Porges is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available in our Licensing Agreement.

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Carter, S. & Porges, S. (2023). Biochemistry of love. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. Retrieved from http://noba.to/3629qu8v

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Love is deeply biological. It pervades every aspect of our lives and has inspired countless works of art. Love also has a profound effect on our mental and physical state. A "broken heart" or a failed relationship can have disastrous effects; bereavement disrupts human physiology and may even precipitate death.

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Lambert, N. M. (2023). Positive relationships. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. Retrieved from http://noba.to/z7bf68n5

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Nathaniel M. Lambert
Brigham Young University

Most research in the realm of relationships has examined that which can go wrong in relationships (e.g., conflict, infidelity, intimate partner violence). I summarize much of what has been examined about what goes right in a relationship and call these positive relationship deposits. Some research indicates that relationships need five positive interactions for every negative interaction. Active-constructive responding, gratitude, forgiveness, and time spent together are some sources of positive deposits in one's relational bank account. These kinds of deposits can reduce the negative effects of conflict on marriage and strengthen relationships.

Learning Objectives

Understand some of the challenges that plague close relationships today.

Become familiar with the concept of positive emotional deposits.

Review some of the research that is relevant to positive emotional deposits.

Describe several ways people make positive emotional deposits.

The status of close relationships in America can sometimes look a bit grim. More than half of marriages now end in divorce in the United States ( Pinsof, 2002). Infidelity is the leading cause of divorce (Priviti & Amato, 2004) and is on the rise across all age groups ( Allen et al., 2008). Cybersex has likely contributed to the increased rates of infidelity, with some 65% of those who look for sex online having intercourse with their "Internet" partner offline as well. Research on intimate partner violence indicates that it occurs at alarmingly high rates, with over one-fifth of couples reporting at least one episode of violence over the course of a year ( Schafer, Caetano, & Clark, 1998). These and other issues that arise in relationships (e.g., substance abuse, conflict) represent significant obstacles to close relationships. With so many problems that plague relationships, how can a positive relationship be cultivated? Is there some magic bullet or ratio? Yes, kind of.

Many people consider romantic attachments one of the most significant relationships and invest them with time and resources. [Image: Ly Thien Hoang (Lee), https://goo.gl/JQbLVe, CC BY 2.0, https://goo.gl/BRvSA7]

Of course, no research is perfect, and there really is no panacea that will cure any relationship. However, we do have some research that suggests that long-term, stable marriages have been shown to display a particular ratio between positive and negative interactions. That ratio is not 1:1, in fact, 1:1 is approximately the ratio of couples who were heading toward divorce. Thus, in a couple where a spouse gives one compliment for each criticism, the likely outcome is divorce. Happier couples have five positive interactions for every one negative interaction ( Gottman, 1994).

What can you do to increase the ratio of positive interactions on a regular basis?-through positive relationship deposits. Naturally, making positive relationship deposits will boost your overall positive emotions-so by making positive relationships a priority in your life you can boost your positive emotions, becoming a flourishing individual.

In Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Covey ( 1989) compared human relationships to actual bank accounts-suggesting that every day we make deposits or withdrawals from our relationship accounts with each person in our lives. He recommended that to keep an overall positive balance, we need to make regular positive deposits. This will ultimately help buffer the negatives that are bound to occur in relationships. Keeping this metaphor of emotional capital in mind could be beneficial for promoting the well-being of the relationships in one's life.

Research suggests that if you focus on the positive aspects of a relationship you are more likely to stay in that relationship. [Image: adwriter, https://goo.gl/Hz9BOJ, CC BY-NC 2.0, https://goo.gl/tgFydH]

Some research suggests that people, on average, have more positive than negative experiences ( Gable & Haidt, 2005). Thus, there are far more opportunities for deposits than for withdrawals. Conversely, even though there may be fewer negatives, Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Finkenauer, and Vohs ( 2001) argue quite persuasively that bad events overpower good events in one's life, which suggests that the negative withdrawals are more salient and more impactful. This further accentuates the need to ensure that we have a healthy store of positive deposits that can help to counteract these more impactful account withdrawals. Positive deposits that accumulate over time should provide a buffer against the withdrawals that happen in every relationship. In other words, the inevitable occasional conflict is not nearly so bad for the relationship when it occurs in a partnership that is otherwise highly positive. What opportunities does relationships science suggest are effective opportunities each day to make positive relationship deposits?

An individual's general sentiment of his or her partner is dependent on ongoing interactions, and these interactions provide many opportunities for deposits or withdrawals. To illustrate how much daily interaction can give opportunities to make deposits in relationships, I will describe research that has been done on capitalization and active-constructive responding, gratitude, forgiveness, and spending time together in meaningful ways. Although there are several other ways by which positive relationship deposits can be made, these four have received quite a bit of attention by researchers. Then I will discuss some evidence on how an accumulation of such daily relationship deposits seems to provide a safeguard against the impact of conflict.

Intimacy has been defined as a close and familiar bond with another person. Intimacy has been positively related with satisfaction in marriage ( Patrick, Sells, Giordano & Tollerud, 2007) and well-being in general (e.g., Waltz & Badura, 1987; Prager & Buhrmester, 1998). On the other hand, lacking marital intimacy is related to higher severity of depression ( Waring & Patton, 1984). Thus, achieving intimacy with one's partner is essential for a happy marriage and happiness in general and is something worth seeking.

Given that 60% to 80% of the time, people disclose their most positive daily experiences with their partner ( Gable et al., 2004), this becomes a regular opportunity for intimacy building. When we disclose certain private things about ourselves, we increase the potential intimacy that we can have with another person, however, we also make ourselves vulnerable to getting hurt by the other person. What if they do not like what I have disclosed or react negatively? It can be a double-edged sword. Disclosing positive news from one's day is a great opportunity for a daily deposit if the response from the other person is positive. What constitutes a positive response?

Figure 1. Types of Responding (figure used with permission from thecoachinghouse.ca)

To achieve intimacy we must respond positively to remarks our partner makes. When a person responds enthusiastically to a partner's good news, this fosters higher levels of intimacy ( Gable, Reis, Impett, & Asher, 2004). Thus, responding in a positive manner to a relationship partner's good news provides frequent opportunities to make deposits in the relationship bank account. In fact, most people are presented the chance to make this kind of relationship deposit almost every day. Most research has focused on support (partners' responses to negative events), however, one study found that responses to positive events tend to be better predictors of relationship well-being than responses to negative events ( Gable, Gonzaga, & Strachman, 2006).

When one person seeks out another person with the intent to share positive news, it has been called capitalization ( Gable et al., 2004). The best, supportive response to someone who shares good news has been termed active-constructive and is characterized by enthusiastic support. These active-constructive responses are positively associated with trust, satisfaction, commitment, and intimacy. On the other hand, when the listener points out something negative about what is said, it is called active-destructive responding. Ignoring what is said is termed passive-destructive, and understating support is called passive-constructive. All of these types of responses (see Figure 1) have been related to adverse relationship outcomes ( Gable et al., 2004).

If partners listen and are enthusiastic about the good news of the other, they build a stronger relationship. If they ignore the good news, change the subject, devalue the good news, or refocus the good news to be about themselves, they may make a withdrawal from the account. Being aware of this research and findings can help individuals to focus on better providing helpful responses to those they care about.

Being grateful is one of the ways an individual contributes positively to a relationship. [Image: LarynDawn, https://goo.gl/n1AJwg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://goo.gl/eLCn2O]

Relationship researchers report that expressing gratitude on a regular basis is an important means by which positive deposits may be made into relationship bank accounts. In a recent study, participants were randomly assigned to write about daily events, express gratitude to a friend, discuss a positive memory with a friend, or think grateful thoughts about a friend twice a week for three weeks. At the conclusion of the three weeks, those who were randomly assigned to express gratitude to their friend reported higher positive regard for their friend and more comfort voicing relationship concerns than did those in the two control conditions ( Lambert & Fincham, 2011). Also, those who expressed gratitude to a close relationship partner reported greater perceived communal strength (e.g., caring, willingness to sacrifice) than participants in all control conditions ( Lambert, Clark, Durtschi, Fincham, & Graham, 2010). Similarly, Algoe, Fredrickson, and Gable ( 2013) found that benefactors' positive perceptions of beneficiaries were increased when gratitude was expressed for the benefit, and these perceptions enhanced relationship quality. These studies suggest that expressing gratitude to someone you are close to is an important way of making positive relationship deposits.

Forgiveness is something else you can do regularly to aid relationship satisfaction (e.g., Fincham, 2000; Paleari, Regalia, & Fincham, 2003) and commitment (e.g., Finkel, Rusbult, Kumashiro, & Hannon, 2002; Karremans & Van Lange, 2008). Unresolved conflict can put couples at risk of developing the negative cycle of interaction that causes further harm to relationships. For instance, one study found that lack of forgiveness is linked to ineffective conflict resolution ( Fincham, Beach, & Davila, 2004). For instance, if Cindy cannot forgive Joe, Cindy will struggle to effectively resolve other disagreements in their relationship. Yet, those who do forgive report much better conflict resolution a year later ( Fincham, Beach, & Davila, 2007). It appears that forgiveness can be an important way of building emotional capital in the relationship. Not forgiving the people in your life can block positive deposits to the relationship bank account.

Do you and your romantic partner have similar hobbies? Research suggests that spending time in meaningful ways also positively contributes to your relationships. [Image: Lucky Sunny, https://goo.gl/IADzgz, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, https://goo.gl/FuDJ6c]

Some suggest that the best way to spell love is T-I-M-E. In our fast-paced society, many relationships are time deprived. In the beginning phases of a relationship, this rarely seems to be an issue given the novelty and excitement of the relationship, however, discovering new things about one's partner declines and couples can slump into relationship boredom. The self-expansion model ( Aron & Aron, 1996) suggests that people naturally seek to expand their capacity and that intimate relationships are an important way by which they accomplish self-expansion. They have found that couples who engaged in more challenging and novel activities felt more satisfied with their relationship immediately afterward than control couples ( Aron et al., 2000). The takeaway message here is that simply watching TV with one's romantic partner will not make nearly the magnitude of a deposit in a relational bank account as would a more engaging or challenging joint activity.

When there is a positive balance of relationship deposits this can help the overall relationship in times of conflict. For instance, some research indicates that a husband's level of enthusiasm in everyday marital interactions was related to a wife's affection in the midst of conflict ( Driver & Gottman, 2004), showing that being pleasant and making deposits can change the nature of conflict. Also, Gottman and Levenson ( 1992) found that couples rated as having more pleasant interactions (compared with couples with less pleasant interactions) reported marital problems as less severe, higher marital satisfaction, better physical health, and less risk for divorce. Finally, Janicki, Kamarck, Shiffman, and Gwaltney ( 2006) showed that the intensity of conflict with a spouse predicted marital satisfaction unless there was a record of positive partner interactions, in which case the conflict did not matter as much. Again, it seems as though having a positive balance through prior positive deposits helps to keep relationships strong even in the midst of conflict.

Don't neglect your relationship bank account. Make daily positive deposits and you'll be better prepared for the inevitable negative interaction. [Image: AndreaPerryAbbott, https://goo.gl/8iTE7t, CC BY-NC 2.0, https://goo.gl/VnKlK8]

Relationships today are riddled with problems including divorce, infidelity, intimate partner violence, and chronic conflict. If you want to avoid some of these common pitfalls of relationships , if you want to build a good relationship with a partner or with your friends, it is crucial to make daily positive deposits in your relationship bank accounts. Doing so will help you enjoy each other more and also help you weather the inevitable conflicts that pop up over time. Some of the ways that have been most explored by researchers as a way to build your positive relationship bank account are through building intimacy by active constructive responding, expressing gratitude to the others, forgiving, and spending time in engaging joint activities. Although these are not the only ways that you can make positive deposits in one's relationship bank accounts, they are some of the best examined. Consider how you might do more to make positive relationship deposits through these or other means for the survival and improvement of your relationships.

Outside Resources

A Primer on Teaching Positive Psychology

http://www.apa.org/monitor/oct03/primer.aspx

An Experiment in Gratitude

Positive Psychology Center

http://www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu/videolectures.htm

Relationship Matters Podcast Series

http://spr.sagepub.com/site/podcast/podcast_dir.xhtml

Understanding Forgiveness

http://www.pbs.org/thisemotionallife/topic/forgiveness/understanding-forgiveness

Discussion Questions

What are some of the main challenges that face relationships today?

How would you describe the concept of an emotional bank account?

What are some ways people can make deposits to their relationship bank accounts?

What do you think are the most effective ways for making positive relationship deposits?

What are some of the most powerful relationship deposits that others have made into your relationship bank account?

What would you consider to be some challenging or engaging activities that you would consider doing more of with a close relationship partner?

Are there relationships of yours that have gotten into a negative spiral and could profit from positive relationship deposits?

Vocabulary

Active-constructive responding

Demonstrating sincere interest and enthusiasm for the good news of another person.

Capitalization

Seeking out someone else with whom to share your good news.

Relationship bank account

An account you hold with every person in which a positive deposit or a negative withdrawal can be made during every interaction you have with the person.

Self-expansion model

Seeking to increase one's capacity often through an intimate relationship.

References

Algoe, S. B., Fredrickson, B. L. & Gable, S. L. (2013) The social functions of the emotion of gratitude via expression. Emotion, 13, 605-609.

Allen, E. S., Atkins, D. C., Baucom, D. H., Snyder, D. K., Gordon, K. C., & Glass, S. P. (2005). Intrapersonal, interpersonal, and contextual factors in engaging in and responding to extramarital involvement. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 12, 101-130.

Aron, A., & Aron, E. N. (1996). Self and self-expansion in relationships. In G. J. O. Fletcher & J. Fitness (Eds.), Knowledge structures in close relationships: A social psychological approach (pp. 325-344). Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates

Aron, A., Norman, C., Aron, E., McKenna, C., & Heyman, R. (2000). Couples' shared participation in novel and arousing activities and experienced relationship quality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 273-284.

Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Finkenauer, C., & Vohs, K. D. (2001). Bad is stronger than good. Review of General Psychology, 5, 323-370.

Covey, S. R. (1989). The seven habits of highly effective people. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.

Driver, J., & Gottman, J. (2004). Daily marital interactions and positive affect during marital conflict among newlywed couples. Family Process, 43, 301-314.

Fincham, F., Beach, S., & Davila, J. (2004). Conflict resolution in marriage and forgiveness. Journal of Family Psychology, 18, 72-81.

Fincham, F. D. (2000). The kiss of the porcupines: From attributing responsibility to forgiving. Personal Relationships, 7,1-23.

Fincham, F. D., Beach, S. R. H., & Davila, J. (2007). Longitudinal relations between forgiveness and conflict resolution in marriage. Journal of Family Psychology, 21, 542-545.

Finkel, E. J., Rusbult, C. E., Kumashiro, M., & Hannon, P. A. (2002). Dealing with betrayal in close relationships: Does commitment promote forgiveness? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 956-974.

Gable, S., & Haidt, J. (2005). What (and why) is positive psychology? Review of General Psychology, 9, 103-110.

Gable, S., Reis, H., Impett, E., & Asher, E. (2004). What do you do when things go right? The intrapersonal and interpersonal benefits of sharing positive events. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 228-245.

Gable, S. L., Gonzaga, G., & Strachman, A. (2006). Will you be there for me when things go right? Social support for positive events. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 904-917.

Gottman, J. M. (1994). Why marriages succeed or fail and how you can make yours last. New York, NY: Fireside.

Gottman, J. M., & Levenson, R. W. (1992). Marital processes predictive of later dissolution: Behavior, physiology and health. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 221-233.

Janicki, D., Kamarck, T., Shiffman, S., & Gwaltney, C. (2006). Application of ecological momentary assessment to the study of marital adjustment and social interactions during daily life. Journal of Family Psychology, 20, 168-172.

Karremans, J. C., & Van Lange, P. A. M. (2008). Forgiveness in interpersonal relationships: Its malleability and powerful consequences. European Review of Social Psychology, 19, 202-241.

Lambert, N. M., & Fincham, F. D. (2011). Expressing gratitude to a partner leads to more relationship maintenance behavior. Emotion, 11, 52-60.

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Authors

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Positive Relationships by Nathaniel M. Lambert is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available in our Licensing Agreement.

How to cite this Noba module using APA Style
Lambert, N. M. (2023). Positive relationships. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. Retrieved from http://noba.to/z7bf68n5

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Most research in the realm of relationships has examined that which can go wrong in relationships (e.g., conflict, infidelity, intimate partner violence). I summarize much of what has been examined about what goes right in a relationship and call these positive relationship deposits. Some research indicates that relationships need five positive interactions for every negative interaction.

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Burger, J. M. (2023). Conformity and obedience. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. Retrieved from http://noba.to/hkray8fs

This work is licensed under CC BY NC SA Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike 4.0 international license. You are free to share and adapt the work with an attribution.

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We often change our attitudes and behaviors to match the attitudes and behaviors of the people around us. One reason for this conformity is a concern about what other people think of us. This process was demonstrated in a classic study in which college students deliberately gave wrong answers to a simple visual judgment task rather than go against the group.

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Biswas-Diener, R. & Thin, N. (2023). Culture. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. Retrieved from http://noba.to/y9xcptqw

This work is licensed under CC BY NC SA Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike 4.0 international license. You are free to share and adapt the work with an attribution.

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Although the most visible elements of culture are dress, cuisine and architecture, culture is a highly psychological phenomenon. Culture is a pattern of meaning for understanding how the world works. This knowledge is shared among a group of people and passed from one generation to the next. This m…

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Salter , P., Adams, G., & Kurtiş, T. (2023). Psychology of racism. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. Retrieved from http://noba.to/xt9wgd26

This work is licensed under CC BY NC SA Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike 4.0 international license. You are free to share and adapt the work with an attribution.

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Phia Salter , Glenn Adams, and Tuğçe Kurtiş
Davidson College, University of Kansas, Prescott College

Thinking about racism as solely a problem among a certain set of biased or prejudiced individuals can lead us to underestimate the problem of racism. This module describes a systemic approach to understanding racism and the implications of such an approach in psychology. Systemic approaches emphasize the important roles historical, cultural, legal, political, and economic systems have in reproducing contemporary forms of racism. By engaging this module, students will be able to better understand the implications of a systemic (versus individualistic) approach in psychology for anti-racist research, anti-racist practices, and anti-racist interventions.

Learning Objectives

Distinguish individual and systemic approaches to racism in psychology

Understand race as a social construction and its historical and contemporary links to racism

Learn about psychological mechanisms related to differences in perceptions of racism

Understand the implications of a systemic approach to racism for research and intervention efforts

Consider important connections between overlapping identities and oppression

In 2020, Kennedy Mitchum-a recent college graduate-wrote a series of emails to the editors at Merriam-Webster dictionary, asking them to update their online definitions of racism. At the time, the definition--which had not been significantly revised in decades--contained three entries:

Racism is "a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences reflect an inherent superiority of a particular race" (or, in other words: racial bigotry)

Racism is "a doctrine or political program based on the assumption of racism and designed to execute its principles". (Racism as "doctrine" highlights racism as a set of beliefs held by different political systems like Apartheid or groups like White Supremacists)

Racism is "racial prejudice or discrimination."

These definitions might be similar to the ways in which you think about racism. Indeed, these definitions are widely used and they frame everyday discussions of the topic. Thinking about racism as a problem among a certain set of biased or prejudiced people can lead us to underestimate the problem of racism. This is because it narrows the focus to individual acts motivated by hate or ignorance and it overlooks more systemic biases. In this module, we will discuss racism as a multifaceted and multi-level concept.

Different Understandings of Racism

In her email to the dictionary editors, Mitchum wrote, "Racism is not only prejudice against a certain race due to the color of a person's skin, as it states in your dictionary. It is both prejudice combined with social and institutional power. It is a system of advantage based on skin color" ( Hauser, 2020). Spurred by the exchange with Mitchum and the Black Lives Matter Protests in the summer of 2020, the editors updated their definition of racism which now has two entries. The first entry maintains the definition of racism as individual beliefs but the second now explicitly emphasizes racism as systemic oppression. This change is consistent with scholarship that defines racism as a system of advantage and disadvantage based on social, historical, and cultural constructions of race and ethnicity ( Jones, 1997/ 1998; Tatum, 1997; Wellman, 1993).

Though this view is generally accepted by psychologists now, it has not always been the case. In psychology, the term racism has sometimes been used synonymously with prejudice (biased feelings or affect), stereotyping (biased thoughts and beliefs, or flawed generalizations), discrimination (differential or the absence of equal treatment), and bigotry (intolerance or hatred toward those with differing beliefs) ( Adams et al., 2008a; Adams et al., 2008b). This approach reduces racism to its most basic parts at the individual level so that it can more easily be studied in a laboratory. However, it risks minimizing the institutional, systemic, and cultural processes that inform racism.

Research suggests that different understandings of racism-as a problem of individual bias versus a structurally embedded force-are not randomly distributed across people. In the United States, understanding of racism as individual bias is especially pronounced among White Americans ( Blauner, 2019; Carter & Murphy, 2015; Sommers & Norton, 2006). For example, Figure 1 (left side) shows the results of polls ( Pew Research Center, 2016) that generally find that White Americans are far more likely than Black Americans to define the problem of racism narrowly as discrimination "based on the prejudice of individuals." Conversely, Black Americans are more likely than White Americans to define the problem of racism more broadly as discrimination "built into laws and institutions." Beyond differences in the definition of racism, researchers have also noted group differences in perceptions of the role that racism plays in the modern world. Consider the results of another survey that also appear in Figure 1 (right side). Across several social issues, the percentage of participants who believe that racism impacts a wide range of social problems is much lower among White American than among Black American respondents.

Figure 1. [Image: Pew Research Center, tinyurl.com/2twte78j, All Rights Reserved.]

Systemic Racism

Systemic approaches to racism emphasize the particular roles that different societal factors-historical, cultural, legal, political, and economic-have played in organizing who is at the top or bottom of a society's racial hierarchy ( Salter et al., 2018) There are a few key ideas that are important to keep in mind for understanding racism as systemic. First, 'race' itself, is a social construct. Racial categories are arbitrary in that there is not substantial scientific evidence supporting a clear biological division of 'races.' Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why there are four or five common categories, but not 3, 29, or 101? Even though we treat racial categories as if they are true biological distinctions, they are not. Human beings share 99.9% of their genetic makeup ( National Human Genome Research Institute, 2018). Most people have physical characteristics or phenotypes that could be associated with more than one racial group. In fact, there are no traits that are only present in one population or 'race'. There are many expressions of traits found within and across different racial groups (see the images in Figure 2, for example). To say that race is an arbitrary social construct does not mean, however, that peoples' race-based experiences are not real.

Figure 2. [Images in clockwise order: Graham Crumb, https://tinyurl.com/7nwd3pvy, CC BY SA 2.0, https://tinyurl.com/4npnmepz; Ian Beatty, https://tinyurl.com/yc65txse, CC BY SA 2.0, https://tinyurl.com/4npnmepz; Erik Jacobs, https://tinyurl.com/2p8n47hh, CC BY 2.0, https://tinyurl.com/39uaces5; Abolfazl Eslami, https://tinyurl.com/5n6k4ftj, https://tinyurl.com/mrb5u7zv]

Second, racial categories were developed with intentions that have fluctuated over time. Racial categorizations have played a key role in dictating which people are marginalized. For example, upon their arrival in the British colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries, Irish Catholic immigrants were initially racialized as non-White, working and living alongside free and enslaved Black people ( Ignatiev, 2012; Garner, 2007). As Celts, the Irish were considered a less-developed, uncivilized race relative to Anglo-Saxons and faced wide-spread discrimination in this context. However, with a rising population of enslaved Africans and a need to easily distinguish enslaved from free laborers, it became useful to expand the definition of whiteness ( Garner, 2007). In the United States, actively defining and redefining who could be considered racially 'White' (and free) fortified the racial hierarchy and ultimately cemented enslaved status as tied to Blackness.

Modern ideas about race, in the Western world, have their foundations in histories of European imperialism and colonialism. European settlers came into (often violent) contact with communities that they deemed different in appearance and customs. Missionaries, slavers, and explorers commonly described darker-skinned "others" as uncivilized, barbaric, and otherwise culturally deficient in comparison to their European compatriots. The oppression of darker-skinned groups was often based on the assumed superiority of European language, intelligence, morality, beauty, and culture. Competitive pursuit of wealth among European nations accelerated the exploitation, enslavement, and genocide of non-European peoples across the globe ( Guthrie, 2004). This process of deeming one's own group as superior and another group as inferior to motivate and justify violence and colonization is not unique to European contexts, but its duration, extent, and lasting implications make it one of the most staggering examples.

Third, there are instances where the historical legacy of racism continues to bear racist consequences today. Even when laws may have changed, traces of historical racism still remain. For example, the patterns of racially segregated housing in most major US cities that we see today map onto governmental policies that emerged in the 1910s and 20s to restrict where African Americans could live and buy homes ( Rothstein, 2017). In South Africa, Apartheid (1940s-1990s) systematically denied non-White people access to most forms of capital, guaranteeing that South Africa would be controlled politically, socially, and economically by the nation's minority White population. Despite the repeal of Apartheid laws and subsequent democratic elections, South African society still struggles with race-based inequalities in wealth, education, and health ( National Research Council Panel on Race, Ethnicity, and Health in Later Life, 2004; WIDER & Oosthuizen, 2019).

We have noted that people see racism in different lights. How should we understand such differences in perception of racism? Which psychological factors predict perceptions or denial of racism? Before we discuss a few key factors, we want to point out a tendency of people to focus explanations on groups we think do not fit a perceived norm ( Hegarty & Pratto, 2001). Take for example, the caption of Figure 3 from a Pew Research Center report (2020) on views of racial progress in the United States. The caption, "Growing share of Black and Hispanic adults say the country hasn't made enough progress on racial equality" follows a common tendency to explain differences in views as if it is the minoritized group that deviates from an unspoken norm. Yes, when you examine the data, there are increases between 2019 and 2020 in the number of Black and Hispanic adults who say the United States has not gone far enough in giving equal rights to Black Americans. However, the data show that the graph could also be titled, 'White views that America's racial progress has been just about right, remain stagnant'. This tendency to locate the source of group differences in racial "otherness" is, itself, a manifestation of racism of a sort that Thomas Teo (2010) has referred to as epistemological violence.

Figure 3. [Image: Pew Research Center, tinyurl.com/4w9sxuwv, All Rights Reserved.]

To avoid this, social psychologists suggest that we "turn the analytic lens" ( Adams & Salter, 2007) and consider the flip side of the same coin. In this case, we should consider the topic from the standpoint of marginalized groups. The statistic that requires further explanation is the widespread belief that U.S. society has already done enough to attain racial equality. Claims about equality are not consistent with statistical evidence, which documents racial inequalities in education, employment, health, and income (e.g., American Psychological Association Presidential Task Force on Educational Disparities, 2012; U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, 2016). Instead, beliefs about racial equality reflect psychological processes that can facilitate underreporting of the extent of racism in US society. So, what are those psychological processes? Research has revealed two mechanisms through which under-reporting and denial of systemic racism tend to occur. The first-called "defensive motivations" -- focuses on how acknowledging racism or other forms of oppression can pose a threat to one's identity or worldview. The second-known as "foundations of knowledge"-focuses on the cultural information that forms people's judgments.

Defensive Motivations

For an advantaged person to admit that racism is prominent in one's society, they must acknowledge that, ultimately, they receive advantages from an illegitimate system ( Jost, Banaji & Nosek, 2004; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). This acknowledgement can threaten one's sense of personal self-worth or the worth of the group to which the person belongs, known as collective self-worth ( O'Brien & Major, 2005). When one's group is implicated by historical or contemporary wrong-doing, members of that group are motivated to deny that wrong-doing is ongoing, significant, or pervasive in order to maintain a positive view of one's social group (e.g., Branscombe et al., 1999). For example, when researchers boosted White research participants' sense of self-worth with positive self-statements, they were then more likely to perceive systemic racism than did participants in a control condition ( Unzueta & Lowery, 2008; Adams, Tormala, & O'Brien, 2006). Outside of the U.S. context, researchers have also found that, after completing a self-affirmation task, Israeli participants were more willing to acknowledge the victimization of Palestinians and the Israeli participation in that victimization ( Čehajić-Clancy et al., 2011).

Opposition to acknowledging the extent to which racism operates in society can sometimes take the form of neutral claims on racism-relevant issues. For example, color-blind race ideology-the idea that people "do not see race"-can seem enlightened but, in practice, primarily serves the purpose of not "seeing" racism. Color-blind racial frames downplay the significance of ethnic and racial identity in peoples' lived experiences and ignore the role of systemic oppression in impacting opportunities (e.g., Neville et al., 2013). Augoustinos and colleagues (2005) found that White Australians often used this principle to justify their opposition to anti-racism initiatives that would benefit Aboriginal people ( Augoustinos, Tuffin, & Every, 2005; see also Tuffin, 2008). Notably, they would dismiss the need for race-conscious policies that would address historical discrimination by suggesting that all people should be treated equally (and so Aboriginal people should not be given something "extra"), that people should be treated as individuals (and so Aboriginal people should not be treated as a group), and that White people have advanced through merit (thereby ignoring historically accumulated advantages).

Foundations of Knowledge

Beyond defensive motivations, there is another category of explanations for the tendency to minimize or deny racism. This category concerns the cultural knowledge that informs people's judgments. A person's cultural frame might lead to various conclusions about racism. Imagine, for example, an officer deciding to detain a person at the U.S.-Mexico border. Using a "racism as individual prejudice" framework, one might look toward features of the officer (i.e., how they feel about Mexicans) and conclude that without evidence of personal racial bias, the detention was simply the case of an officer applying the law in race-neutral fashion. In contrast, using a more systemic definition of racism, one might see the resulting detention as racially biased, regardless of the personal inclinations of an individual officer, because of the unequal and disparate impact of the policy itself. Consistent with this, researchers have found endorsements for harsher treatment of undocumented Mexican immigrants than undocumented Canadian immigrants, especially among White participants who equated being a true American with ethnocentric cultural values (e.g., being able to speak English without a "foreign" accent) ( Mukherjee et al., 2013). Discretionary institutional policies that rely on ethno-racial profiling and mistreatment are forms of structural racism and everyday violence ( Alexander, 2011).

Another kind of cultural knowledge that facilitates or inhibits awareness of racism is collective memory about the role of past racism. Research on the Marley Hypothesis reveals that perceptions of racism are positively related to accurate historical knowledge ( Bonam et al., 2019; Nelson, Adams, & Salter, 2013). In these studies, Black and White participants completed a "Black history" quiz that asked about historical events such as the U.S. government deliberately exposing black members of the military to syphilis, or hiding microphones in the hotel rooms of Civil Rights leaders. In the original study ( Nelson et al., 2013) and in the replication ( Bonam et al., 2019), White Americans scored lower on the measure of historical accuracy than did the Black Americans. Moreover, differences in knowledge of past racism helped explain Black and White differences in perception of present racism in U.S. society. Kurtiş and colleagues (2017) applied a similar research approach in Turkish contexts to further understand the relationship between critical historical knowledge about minority populations and policy support. They found that participants who demonstrated more accurate knowledge about officially silenced incidents of historical violence regarding minorities expressed greater support for protection of minority rights ( Kurtiş, Soylu-Yalçınkaya, & Adams, 2017).

Collective memory about racism is not only an individual-level phenomenon. What we know about historical events is embodied in cultural tools like textbooks, school curricula, government-sanctioned holidays, and memorials. Official government accounts of history tend to sanitize or silence the more negative or racist stories in order to maintain a positive view of a country's past and present. For example, Moore (2020) analyzed Australian history textbooks from 1950-2010. She was interested in the idea of interest-convergence. Interest convergence suggests that White (or dominant group) engagement in racial progress emerges when it aligns with their own interests. Moore (2020) discovered that earlier textbooks were 'loud and proud' when highlighting supposed deficiencies in Aboriginal people and White exceptionalism. However, over time they were reframed in more subtle terms. For example, early Aboriginal sea voyages are sometimes dismissed as short, easy, and as employing primitive boats. Similarly, descriptions of hunting and gathering are framed to suggest that Aboriginal communities operated by survival instinct rather than making sophisticated, intentional, and cooperative community decisions. These explanations of Aboriginal culture are less overtly racist, but continue to set up the idea that White settlers in Australia brought more sophisticated technology, the rule of law, and other forms of "civilization." Moore (2020) suggests that changes from overtly racist textbook narratives to more subtle forms are designed to affirm White racial progressiveness while still upholding White Supremacy.

Consistent with these findings, research on how high schools in the U.S. discuss Black history revealed differences between predominantly Black and predominantly White schools ( Salter & Adams, 2016). The researchers observed that predominantly White schools were more likely to present a version of Black history that promotes multicultural tolerance and diversity. Another notable strategy was to highlight individual Black American achievement-inventors, intellectuals, and Civil Rights heroes-while minimizing discussion of the historical barriers that these people faced. By contrast, predominantly Black schools were more likely to position Black history as accounts of the ongoing legacy of systemic exploitation and violent oppression. Cultural products, such as school curricula and textbooks, are not necessarily neutral accounts of what factually happened in the past; they reflect biases carried forward from the past and biases cultivated in the present.

Psychological studies have also highlighted the consequences of being exposed to different foundations of knowledge. In the same line of research described above, Salter and Adams (2016) randomly assigned White American university students to view two distinct representations of Black History Month: those from predominantly White schools or those from predominantly Black schools. Their results indicate that exposure to representations of history from predominantly Black schools (which were more likely to contain narratives of historical racism) led to greater perceptions of racism and support for antiracist policies. Similarly, in a study by Bonam and colleagues (2019), White American participants listened to a clip of historian Richard Rothstein on NPR's Fresh Air program discussing the federal government's role in creating Black ghettos and the ongoing legacy of systemic racism in housing. The researchers found that listening to the clip increased critical history knowledge (in comparison to a control condition), increased beliefs about the government's active role in creating Black ghettos, and, in turn, increased perceptions of systemic racism.

Together, studies in this research program suggest how cultural representations of the past-what we might refer to as collective memory-matter for interpretation of the present. These studies also illuminate different sources of knowledge as important components for perceiving systemic racism. People who engage with representations of history that obscure past racism not only indicate a smaller role for racism as an explanation for contemporary events, but also express less support for reparative policies such as affirmative action than do people who engage with representations that acknowledge past racism.

Before we move to the final section of the module, we would like you to pause and consider the links between the two mechanisms described in this section: motivation to view one's self positively and information-based judgments of racism. Though we have presented them separately, they are related to each other. For example, Mukherjee and colleagues (2017) asked participants in India to rate historical events that either glorified India or acknowledged wrongdoing against marginalized groups. The nation-glorifying events were rated as more relevant and more important for the study of Indian history. Notably, exposure to glorifying themes about collective achievements in India produced higher national identification and exposure to critical narratives about collective wrongdoing decreased national identification. Thus, the two processes affect one another: certain information boosted the desire to view one's group favorably and viewing one's group favorably predicted the types of information a person prefers. Important to our discussion, exposure to critical narratives produced greater perceptions of injustice in India. By contrast, exposure to themes that glorified India lowered perceptions of injustice. Regardless of individual beliefs and biases, mainstream cultural tools influence people to approach the topic of racial justice in ways that serve national and dominant group interests.

A major goal of this module has been to articulate a systemic approach to understanding racism. We end the module by discussing the implications of this approach for action against racism. We break our discussion into three distinct sections: 1) anti-racist research, 2) anti-racist practices and interventions, and 3) intersectional considerations.

Anti-Racist Research

As discussed above, standard psychological accounts of racism often suggest that it is a problem of biased individuals. This individualistic approach to racism is evident in research on the topic. Racism research often examines individual personality traits such as authoritarian personality or social justice orientation (see Noba's Prejudice, Discrimination, and Stereotyping). This approach to understanding racism leads to the idea that counteracting racism consists of measuring and altering personal qualities such as prejudice. As an example, one trend has involved the development of measures to identify people with implicit racist dispositions (e.g., Dovidio & Gaertner, 2004). Another research trend has been to develop strategies that people might use to change their racist dispositions ( Devine, Brodish, & Vance, 2005; Monteith, Ashburn-Nardo, Voils, & Czopp, 2002; Sassenberg & Moskowitz, 2005). Although research on individual factors in racism can reveal important insights, it may miss others.

In contrast to an exclusive focus on individual dispositions, a systemic approach locates the roots of racism in social and cultural factors. This approach calls for research to examine the role that institutions, norms, laws, and policies play in racism. Table 1 lists examples of both individual and systemic questions about racism that researchers might ask. The systemic questions emphasize an attention to the interplay between individual and systemic oppression (see Fiske, Kitayama, Markus, & Nisbett, 1998; Oakes, Haslam, & Turner, 1994). Addressing these questions requires the use of unique theoretical perspectives and empirical techniques that are relatively rare in psychological research (e.g., discourse analysis, decolonial approaches, critical race theory frameworks). These approaches have the potential to yield new insights because they are more likely to include the experiences and perspectives of racially marginalized people.

Table 1.

Anti-Racist Intervention

Beyond its implications for research, a systemic approach to racism also suggests a shift in the emphasis of anti-racist interventions. Psychologists have typically framed the fight against racism as reducing individual prejudice or changing racist attitudes, and have designed effective programs to address this goal. Standard approaches to prejudice reduction seem to imply that the formerly racist individual, equipped with new attitudes, will now be anti-racist. In addition, this strategy implies that racially marginalized groups should accept a reduction of prejudice as a substitute for challenging the legacy of historical violence and the enduring, unjust status quo.

A systemic approach to anti-racism, by contrast, proposes to change the societal structures that foster racist tendencies ( Karpinski & Hilton, 2001). This direction suggests that people might better control automatic racist tendencies by disengaging from experiences that promote racism and, instead, cultivate experiences that reinforce anti-racist tendencies. For example, interventions that increase engagement with diversity may lead participants to seek out diverse social communities or conversations that can promote non-racist attitudes (see Gurin et al., 2008).

The systemic approach to addressing racism also calls for dismantling racist structures that continue to cause harm, above and beyond the prejudices of any individual person. This includes challenging popular accounts of history; namely, progress narratives that promote the idea that society was once racist but now has overcome racism ( Richeson, 2020). Such challenges emphasize:

understanding the experiences of people who belong to historically marginalized groups

exposing and reforming racist laws and institutional policies

including alternative narratives of history that include the voices and understandings of marginalized communities

raising awareness of privilege among members of dominant groups

One example of work in this direction involves challenging traditional notions of merit ( Croizet, 2008). Specifically, intelligence tests, college entrance exams, and other assessments of "ability" or "aptitude" have been used to discriminate against people of color. Although these types of tests often yield differences in scores between members of various racial groups, these differences do not suggest that members of dominant groups are smarter or have more potential. Instead, they reflect inequalities in test familiarity, test preparation and support, educational support, and similar factors. Other examples of challenging common attitudes involve challenging conceptions of fairness ( Jones, 1998; Smith & Crosby, 2008), national identity ( Gurin et al., 2008), and accounts of history ( Sears, 2008; Yellow Bird, 2004).

Intersectional Considerations

One of the complicating factors in successfully addressing racism is intersectionality. Rooted in Black feminist scholarship and critical race theory, intersectionality is the idea that people's lived experience of oppression is based on more than a single identity. Intersectional analyses consider the oppression that arises out of the combination of various forms of discrimination which produces something distinctive from any one form of discrimination alone. One of the earliest recorded accounts of intersectionality dates back to the 1851 Women's Convention in Akron, Ohio where a former slave, --Sojourner Truth-- delivered her famous "Ain't I a woman?" speech. In it, she provided an account of Black women born into slavery at the intersections of race and gender. In the 1990s, Kimberlé Crenshaw popularized the term intersectionality to describe the exclusion of Black women from feminist discourse (which equated women with White) and conversations about racism (which equated Black with men). Intersectionality situates experience within a complex web of power relations including dimensions such as race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, class, dis/ability, and sexuality ( Anthias & Yuval-Davis, 1983; Crenshaw, 1989; Collins & Bilge, 2020 ; hooks, 2000; Hurtado, 1998). Attention to intersectionality can help us move beyond dichotomous formulations (e.g. us-them, oppressor-oppressed) to better appreciate the personal and cultural experiences that structure our everyday lives in distinct yet interrelated ways ( Grewal & Kaplan, 2001). Intersectional analyses elevate the often-ignored experiences of people in marginalized identity positions ( Matsuda, 1987). Accordingly, a primary contribution of intersectional analyses is to rethink standard accounts of knowledge ( Kurtiş & Adams, 2016) and reimagine society from the perspective of those in marginalized positions.

Psychology has played a pivotal role in the struggle against racism since decades. Scholars have produced nuanced accounts about the dynamics of individual prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination. Yet, persisting inequalities and racism reveal that efforts at research, intervention, and education remain incomplete. In this module, we have proposed that one direction for action is a systemic approach to racism. From this perspective, racism is not an issue of biased individuals, but instead, a historically rooted and enduring cultural pattern embedded in everyday laws, policies, and social attitudes that can cause harm for people from oppressed groups. Racism can also create advantages for people from dominant groups, even if they are unaware of these benefits or have no personal intention to discriminate. Accordingly, anti-racist efforts require greater attention to multiple and intersecting systems of oppression. These efforts compel us to pay attention to both how environmental patterns of racism shape individual experience, but also processes by which even good-intentioned individuals can unknowingly reproduce systems of racism.

Outside Resources

Web: Apology to People of Color for APA's Role in Promoting, Perpetuating, and Failing to Challenge Racism, Racial Discrimination, and Human Hierarchy in U.S.:

https://www.apa.org/about/policy/racism-apology

Web: Summary of the APA Resolution Recommending Retirement of American Indian Mascots:

https://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/indian-mascots

Web: To explore how Merriam-Webster's online dictionary's definition of racism has changed overtime, see archived web pages:

https://web.archive.org/web/20200120062820/https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/racism

Web: To further explore this topic, see the Pew Research Center's interactive tool tracing racial categorization in the US Census over time:

https://www.pewresearch.org/interactives/what-census-calls-us/

Discussion Questions

Please refer to the Summary of the APA Resolution Recommending Retirement of American Indian Mascots link in the outside resources and list the reasons why using Native American people as mascots is harmful to the Native community as well people who are not Native American; where possible, use concepts from this module.

Media discussions in US society have attempted to explain why African Americans and people from other historically oppressed groups tend to perceive relatively high levels of racism in U.S. society. Why is it problematic to focus on marginalized groups' higher perception of racism as the "deviant" phenomenon that requires explanation? What else requires explanation?

Discuss BOTH motivational and informational sources of group differences in perceptions of racism. How might they work together to produce differences in perceptions of racism?

Generate a research question that takes a systemic approach to racism. What are some implications of a systemic approach to racism for anti-racist research? What are the implications for anti-racist action?

Define intersectionality. How can intersectionality extend analyses of racism? Why is this important?

Discuss examples of ongoing anti-racism efforts, policies, curriculum, and/or programming at your school. Compare and contrast anti-racism efforts that use systemic versus individualistic approaches to addressing racism. Have they been successful? If so, what do you think contributes to their success? If not, what do you think are barriers to their success?

In modern times, national origin, citizenship, and immigration status sometimes overlap with issues of race. To what extent do you think there are both individual and systemic biases against immigrants? What examples might you be able to offer?

Vocabulary

Apartheid

A political system with policies that promote segregation of the basis of race. The word means "apartness" in Afrikaans, and the system was in use in South Africa from the 1950s through the 1990s.

Bigotry

An unreasonable opinion or prejudice against a category of people.

Collective memory

Knowledge that is shared among members of a group about the historical experiences of that group.

Collective self-worth

The idea that a person's self-worth is influenced by the treatment of and perceptions about a group to which that person belongs.

Color-blind race ideology

A belief that racism is a past-- rather than a current-- phenomenon. Also, the idea that the best way to eliminate discrimination is to ignore categorical differences between people and their experiences.

Critical race theory

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a critical framework that emerged as an intervention in the 1970s to explain how racism and other tools of oppression shape law and society. Building on the pioneering work of activists and legal scholars like Derrick Bell, Kimberle Crenshaw, Richard Delgado, and Mari Matsuda, CRT has influenced social scientists in fields outside of legal studies including education, sociology, public health, and psychology. The framework provides a foundation for understanding racism as systemic, the ideologies that reinforce and maintain racist structures, and the value of perspectives and theories grounded in the experiences of oppressed and marginalized peoples. For an introduction to CRT, we recommend Delgado & Stefancic, 2012. To learn more about the intersections of psychology and CRT see Jones, 1998; Adams & Salter, 2011, and Salter & Adams, 2013.

Discrimination

Unjust or prejudicial treatment of a category of people, or of an individual based on their belonging to a category of people.

Epistemological violence

A form of scientific or academic racism in which observers interpret empirical data in ways that problematize or suggest the inferiority of racial and cultural Others, even when the data allow for equally viable alternative interpretations (Teo, 2010).

Interest-convergence

The tendency for White (or dominant group) engagement in racial progress to emerge when it aligns with the interests of the dominant group.

Intersectionality

The idea that social identities can overlap. For instance, a person could be "Canadian", "Indigenous" and "a woman".

Marginalized

To treat a person or group as socially inferior, peripheral, or unimportant.

Marley Hypothesis

These lines from "Buffalo Soldier" by Bob Marley and the Wailers provide a brief statement of the Marley Hypothesis: the suggestion that White denial of racism reflects a collectively cultivated ignorance of the role that racism has played in U.S. society throughout its history.

Phenotypes

Observable traits, such as hair or eye color, that are result of genetic and environmental interactions.

Prejudice

Having a bias or opinion about a person based on assumptions rather than actual experience.

Racism

A system of advantage and disadvantage based on social, historical, and cultural constructions of race and ethnicity (Jones, 1997/1998; Tatum 1997; Wellman 1993).

Social construct

Something that is not found in objective reality but it, instead, the result of a common shared understanding. Social constructs are defined and given meaning by a particular society.

Stereotyping

Holding a generalized belief about an entire group of people, and often making a flawed generalization about an individual based solely on that person's membership in a group.

Systemic approaches

Approaches to understanding racism that emphasize the roles that societal factors-historical, cultural, legal, political, and economic-have played in organizing who is at the top or bottom of a society's racial hierarchy.

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Salter , P., Adams, G., & Kurtiş, T. (2023). Psychology of racism. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. Retrieved from http://noba.to/xt9wgd26

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Thinking about racism as solely a problem among a certain set of biased or prejudiced individuals can lead us to underestimate the problem of racism. This module describes a systemic approach to understanding racism and the implications of such an approach in psychology.

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Fiske, S. T. (2023). Prejudice, discrimination, and stereotyping. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. Retrieved from http://noba.to/jfkx7nrd

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Susan T. Fiske
Princeton University

People are often biased against others outside of their own social group, showing prejudice (emotional bias), stereotypes (cognitive bias), and discrimination (behavioral bias). In the past, people used to be more explicit with their biases, but during the 20th century, when it became less socially acceptable to exhibit bias, such things like prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination became more subtle (automatic, ambiguous, and ambivalent). In the 21st century, however, with social group categories even more complex, biases may be transforming once again.

Learning Objectives

Distinguish prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination.

Distinguish old-fashioned, blatant biases from contemporary, subtle biases.

Understand old-fashioned biases such as social dominance orientation and right-wing. authoritarianism.

Understand subtle, unexamined biases that are automatic, ambiguous, and ambivalent.

Understand 21st century biases that may break down as identities get more complicated.

You are an individual, full of beliefs, identities, and more that help make you unique. You don't want to be labeled just by your gender or race or religion. But as complex as we perceive ourselves to be, we often define others merely by their most distinct social group. [Image: caseorganic, https://goo.gl/PuLI4E, CC BY-NC 2.0, https://goo.gl/VnKlK8]

Even in one's own family, everyone wants to be seen for who they are, not as "just another typical X." But still, people put other people into groups, using that label to inform their evaluation of the person as a whole-a process that can result in serious consequences. This module focuses on biases against social groups, which social psychologists sort into emotional prejudices, mental stereotypes, and behavioral discrimination. These three aspects of bias are related, but they each can occur separately from the others ( Dovidio & Gaertner, 2010; Fiske, 1998). For example, sometimes people have a negative, emotional reaction to a social group (prejudice) without knowing even the most superficial reasons to dislike them (stereotypes).

This module shows that today's biases are not yesterday's biases in many ways, but at the same time, they are troublingly similar. First, we'll discuss old-fashioned biases that might have belonged to our grandparents and great-grandparents-or even the people nowadays who have yet to leave those wrongful times. Next, we will discuss late 20th century biases that affected our parents and still linger today. Finally, we will talk about today's 21st century biases that challenge fairness and respect for all.

You would be hard pressed to find someone today who openly admits they don't believe in equality. Regardless of one's demographics, most people believe everyone is entitled to the same, natural rights. However, as much as we now collectively believe this, not too far back in our history, this ideal of equality was an unpracticed sentiment. Of all the countries in the world, only a few have equality in their constitution, and those who do, originally defined it for a select group of people.

At the time, old-fashioned biases were simple: people openly put down those not from their own group. For example, just 80 years ago, American college students unabashedly thought Turkish people were "cruel, very religious, and treacherous" ( Katz & Braly, 1933). So where did they get those ideas, assuming that most of them had never met anyone from Turkey? Old-fashioned stereotypes were overt, unapologetic, and expected to be shared by others-what we now call "blatant biases."

Blatant biases are conscious beliefs, feelings, and behavior that people are perfectly willing to admit, which mostly express hostility toward other groups (outgroups) while unduly favoring one's own group (in-group). For example, organizations that preach contempt for other races (and praise for their own) is an example of a blatant bias. And scarily, these blatant biases tend to run in packs: People who openly hate one outgroup also hate many others. To illustrate this pattern, we turn to two personality scales next.

Social Dominance Orientation

People with a social dominance orientation are more likely to be attracted to certain types of careers, such as law enforcement, that maintain group hierarchies. [Image: Thomas Hawk, https://goo.gl/qWQ7jE, CC BY-NC 2.0, https://goo.gl/VnKlK8]

Social dominance orientation (SDO) describes a belief that group hierarchies are inevitable in all societies and are even a good idea to maintain order and stability ( Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). Those who score high on SDO believe that some groups are inherently better than others, and because of this, there is no such thing as group "equality." At the same time, though, SDO is not just about being personally dominant and controlling of others; SDO describes a preferred arrangement of groups with some on top (preferably one's own group) and some on the bottom. For example, someone high in SDO would likely be upset if someone from an outgroup moved into his or her neighborhood. It's not that the person high in SDO wants to "control" what this outgroup member does; it's that moving into this "nice neighborhood" disrupts the social hierarchy the person high in SDO believes in (i.e. living in a nice neighborhood denotes one's place in the social hierarchy-a place reserved for one's in-group members).

Although research has shown that people higher in SDO are more likely to be politically conservative, there are other traits that more strongly predict one's SDO. For example, researchers have found that those who score higher on SDO are usually lower than average on tolerance, empathy, altruism, and community orientation. In general, those high in SDO have a strong belief in work ethic-that hard work always pays off and leisure is a waste of time. People higher on SDO tend to choose and thrive in occupations that maintain existing group hierarchies (police, prosecutors, business), compared to those lower in SDO, who tend to pick more equalizing occupations (social work, public defense, psychology).

The point is that SDO-a preference for inequality as normal and natural-also predicts endorsing the superiority of certain groups: men, native-born residents, heterosexuals, and believers in the dominant religion. This means seeing women, minorities, homosexuals, and non-believers as inferior. Understandably, the first list of groups tend to score higher on SDO, while the second group tends to score lower. For example, the SDO gender difference (men higher, women lower) appears all over the world.

At its heart, SDO rests on a fundamental belief that the world is tough and competitive with only a limited number of resources. Thus, those high in SDO see groups as battling each other for these resources, with winners at the top of the social hierarchy and losers at the bottom (see Table 1).

Table 1. Old-Fashioned Biases

Right-wing Authoritarianism

Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) focuses on value conflicts, whereas SDO focuses on the economic ones. That is, RWA endorses respect for obedience and authority in the service of group conformity ( Altemeyer, 1988). Returning to an example from earlier, the homeowner who's high in SDO may dislike the outgroup member moving into his or her neighborhood because it "threatens" one's economic resources (e.g. lowering the value of one's house; fewer openings in the school; etc.). Those high in RWA may equally dislike the outgroup member moving into the neighborhood but for different reasons. Here, it's because this outgroup member brings in values or beliefs that the person high in RWA disagrees with, thus "threatening" the collective values of his or her group. RWA respects group unity over individual preferences, wanting to maintain group values in the face of differing opinions. Despite its name, though, RWA is not necessarily limited to people on the right (conservatives). Like SDO, there does appear to be an association between this personality scale (i.e. the preference for order, clarity, and conventional values) and conservative beliefs. However, regardless of political ideology, RWA focuses on groups' competing frameworks of values. Extreme scores on RWA predict biases against outgroups while demanding in-group loyalty and conformity Notably, the combination of high RWA and high SDO predicts joining hate groups that openly endorse aggression against minority groups, immigrants, homosexuals, and believers in non-dominant religions ( Altemeyer, 2004).

Fortunately, old-fashioned biases have diminished over the 20th century and into the 21st century. Openly expressing prejudice is like blowing second-hand cigarette smoke in someone's face: It's just not done any more in most circles, and if it is, people are readily criticized for their behavior. Still, these biases exist in people; they're just less in view than before. These subtle biases are unexamined and sometimes unconscious but real in their consequences. They are automatic, ambiguous, and ambivalent, but nonetheless biased, unfair, and disrespectful to the belief in equality.

Automatic Biases

An actual screenshot from an IAT (Implicit Association Test) that is designed to test a person's reaction time (measured in milliseconds) to an array of stimuli that are presented on the screen. This particular item is testing an individual's unconscious reaction towards members of various ethnic groups. [Image: Courtesy of Anthony Greenwald from Project Implicit]

Most people like themselves well enough, and most people identify themselves as members of certain groups but not others. Logic suggests, then, that because we like ourselves, we therefore like the groups we associate with more, whether those groups are our hometown, school, religion, gender, or ethnicity. Liking yourself and your groups is human nature. The larger issue, however, is that own-group preference often results in liking other groups less. And whether you recognize this "favoritism" as wrong, this trade-off is relatively automatic, that is, unintended, immediate, and irresistible.

Social psychologists have developed several ways to measure this relatively automatic own-group preference, the most famous being the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald, Banaji, Rudman, Farnham, Nosek, & Mellott, 2002; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). The test itself is rather simple and you can experience it yourself if you Google "implicit" or go to understandingprejudice.org. Essentially, the IAT is done on the computer and measures how quickly you can sort words or pictures into different categories. For example, if you were asked to categorize "ice cream" as good or bad, you would quickly categorize it as good. However, imagine if every time you ate ice cream, you got a brain freeze. When it comes time to categorize ice cream as good or bad, you may still categorize it as "good," but you will likely be a little slower in doing so compared to someone who has nothing but positive thoughts about ice cream. Related to group biases, people may explicitly claim they don't discriminate against outgroups-and this is very likely true. However, when they're given this computer task to categorize people from these outgroups, that automatic or unconscious hesitation (a result of having mixed evaluations about the outgroup) will show up in the test. And as countless studies have revealed, people are mostly faster at pairing their own group with good categories, compared to pairing others' groups. In fact, this finding generally holds regardless if one's group is measured according race, age, religion, nationality, and even temporary, insignificant memberships.

This all-too-human tendency would remain a mere interesting discovery except that people's reaction time on the IAT predicts actual feelings about individuals from other groups, decisions about them, and behavior toward them, especially nonverbal behavior ( Greenwald, Poehlman, Uhlmann, & Banaji, 2009). For example, although a job interviewer may not be "blatantly biased," his or her "automatic or implicit biases" may result in unconsciously acting distant and indifferent, which can have devastating effects on the hopeful interviewee's ability to perform well ( Word, Zanna, & Cooper, 1973). Although this is unfair, sometimes the automatic associations-often driven by society's stereotypes-trump our own, explicit values ( Devine, 1989). And sadly, this can result in consequential discrimination, such as allocating fewer resources to disliked outgroups ( Rudman & Ashmore, 2009). See Table 2 for a summary of this section and the next two sections on subtle biases.

Table 2: Subtle Biases

Ambiguous Biases

Whether we are aware of it or not (and usually we're not), we sort the world into "us" and "them" categories. We are more likely to treat with bias or discrimination anyone we feel is outside our own group. [Image: Keira McPhee, https://goo.gl/gkaKBe, CC BY 2.0, https://goo.gl/BRvSA7]

As the IAT indicates, people's biases often stem from the spontaneous tendency to favor their own, at the expense of the other. Social identity theory ( Tajfel, Billig, Bundy, & Flament, 1971) describes this tendency to favor one's own in-group over another's outgroup. And as a result, outgroup disliking stems from this in-group liking ( Brewer & Brown, 1998). For example, if two classes of children want to play on the same soccer field, the classes will come to dislike each other not because of any real, objectionable traits about the other group. The dislike originates from each class's favoritism toward itself and the fact that only one group can play on the soccer field at a time. With this preferential perspective for one's own group, people are not punishing the other one so much as neglecting it in favor of their own. However, to justify this preferential treatment, people will often exaggerate the differences between their in-group and the outgroup. In turn, people see the outgroup as more similar in personality than they are. This results in the perception that "they" really differ from us, and "they" are all alike. Spontaneously, people categorize people into groups just as we categorize furniture or food into one type or another. The difference is that we people inhabit categories ourselves, as self-categorization theory points out ( Turner, 1975). Because the attributes of group categories can be either good or bad, we tend to favor the groups with people like us and incidentally disfavor the others. In-group favoritism is an ambiguous form of bias because it disfavors the outgroup by exclusion. For example, if a politician has to decide between funding one program or another, s/he may be more likely to give resources to the group that more closely represents his in-group. And this life-changing decision stems from the simple, natural human tendency to be more comfortable with people like yourself.

A specific case of comfort with the ingroup is called aversive racism, so-called because people do not like to admit their own racial biases to themselves or others ( Dovidio & Gaertner, 2010). Tensions between, say, a White person's own good intentions and discomfort with the perhaps novel situation of interacting closely with a Black person may cause the White person to feel uneasy, behave stiffly, or be distracted. As a result, the White person may give a good excuse to avoid the situation altogether and prevent any awkwardness that could have come from it. However, such a reaction will be ambiguous to both parties and hard to interpret. That is, was the White person right to avoid the situation so that neither person would feel uncomfortable? Indicators of aversive racism correlate with discriminatory behavior, despite being the ambiguous result of good intentions gone bad.

Bias Can Be Complicated - Ambivalent Biases

Not all stereotypes of outgroups are all bad. For example, ethnic Asians living in the United States are commonly referred to as the "model minority" because of their perceived success in areas such as education, income, and social stability. Another example includes people who feel benevolent toward traditional women but hostile toward nontraditional women. Or even ageist people who feel respect toward older adults but, at the same time, worry about the burden they place on public welfare programs. A simple way to understand these mixed feelings, across a variety of groups, results from the Stereotype Content Model ( Fiske, Cuddy, & Glick, 2007).

When people learn about a new group, they first want to know if its intentions of the people in this group are for good or ill. Like the guard at night: "Who goes there, friend or foe?" If the other group has good, cooperative intentions, we view them as warm and trustworthy and often consider them part of "our side." However, if the other group is cold and competitive or full of exploiters, we often view them as a threat and treat them accordingly. After learning the group's intentions, though, we also want to know whether they are competent enough to act on them (if they are incompetent, or unable, their intentions matter less). These two simple dimensions-warmth and competence-together map how groups relate to each other in society.

Figure 1: Stereotype Content Model - 4 kinds of stereotypes that form from perceptions of competence and warmth

There are common stereotypes of people from all sorts of categories and occupations that lead them to be classified along these two dimensions. For example, a stereotypical "housewife" would be seen as high in warmth but lower in competence. This is not to suggest that actual housewives are not competent, of course, but that they are not widely admired for their competence in the same way as scientific pioneers, trendsetters, or captains of industry. At another end of the spectrum are homeless people and drug addicts, stereotyped as not having good intentions (perhaps exploitative for not trying to play by the rules), and likewise being incompetent (unable) to do anything useful. These groups reportedly make society more disgusted than any other groups do.

Some group stereotypes are mixed, high on one dimension and low on the other. Groups stereotyped as competent but not warm, for example, include rich people and outsiders good at business. These groups that are seen as "competent but cold" make people feel some envy, admitting that these others may have some talent but resenting them for not being "people like us." The "model minority" stereotype mentioned earlier includes people with this excessive competence but deficient sociability.

The other mixed combination is high warmth but low competence. Groups who fit this combination include older people and disabled people. Others report pitying them, but only so long as they stay in their place. In an effort to combat this negative stereotype, disability- and elderly-rights activists try to eliminate that pity, hopefully gaining respect in the process.

Altogether, these four kinds of stereotypes and their associated emotional prejudices (pride, disgust, envy, pity) occur all over the world for each of society's own groups. These maps of the group terrain predict specific types of discrimination for specific kinds of groups, underlining how bias is not exactly equal opportunity.

Figure 2: Combinations of perceived warmth and confidence and the associated behaviors/emotional prejudices.

As the world becomes more interconnected-more collaborations between countries, more intermarrying between different groups-more and more people are encountering greater diversity of others in everyday life. Just ask yourself if you've ever been asked, "What are you?" Such a question would be preposterous if you were only surrounded by members of your own group. Categories, then, are becoming more and more uncertain, unclear, volatile, and complex ( Bodenhausen & Peery, 2009). People's identities are multifaceted, intersecting across gender, race, class, age, region, and more. Identities are not so simple, but maybe as the 21st century unfurls, we will recognize each other by the content of our character instead of the cover on our outside.

Outside Resources

Web: Website exploring the causes and consequences of prejudice.

http://www.understandingprejudice.org/

Web: Website that provides helpful information about prejudice including definition and statistics. This content is provided by [email protected], the Online Master of Psychology program from Pepperdine University.

https://onlinepsych.pepperdine.edu/blog/prejudice-discrimination-coping-skills/

Discussion Questions

Do you know more people from different kinds of social groups than your parents did?

How often do you hear people criticizing groups without knowing anything about them?

Take the IAT. Could you feel that some associations are easier than others?

What groups illustrate ambivalent biases, seemingly competent but cold, or warm but incompetent?

Do you or someone you know believe that group hierarchies are inevitable? Desirable?

How can people learn to get along with people who seem different from them?

Vocabulary

Automatic bias

Automatic biases are unintended, immediate, and irresistible.

Aversive racism

Aversive racism is unexamined racial bias that the person does not intend and would reject, but that avoids inter-racial contact.

Blatant biases

Blatant biases are conscious beliefs, feelings, and behavior that people are perfectly willing to admit, are mostly hostile, and openly favor their own group.

Discrimination

Discrimination is behavior that advantages or disadvantages people merely based on their group membership.

Implicit Association Test

Implicit Association Test (IAT) measures relatively automatic biases that favor own group relative to other groups.

Prejudice

Prejudice is an evaluation or emotion toward people merely based on their group membership.

Right-wing authoritarianism

Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) focuses on value conflicts but endorses respect for obedience and authority in the service of group conformity.

Self-categorization theory

Self-categorization theory develops social identity theory's point that people categorize themselves, along with each other into groups, favoring their own group.

Social dominance orientation

Social dominance orientation (SDO) describes a belief that group hierarchies are inevitable in all societies and even good, to maintain order and stability.

Social identity theory

Social identity theory notes that people categorize each other into groups, favoring their own group.

Stereotype Content Model

Stereotype Content Model shows that social groups are viewed according to their perceived warmth and competence.

Stereotypes

Stereotype is a belief that characterizes people based merely on their group membership.

Subtle biases

Subtle biases are automatic, ambiguous, and ambivalent, but real in their consequences.

References

Altemeyer, B. (2004). Highly dominating, highly authoritarian personalities. The Journal of Social Psychology, 144(4), 421-447. doi:10.3200/SOCP.144.4.421-448

Altemeyer, B. (1988). Enemies of freedom: Understanding right-wing authoritarianism. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Bodenhausen, G. V., & Peery, D. (2009). Social categorization and stereotyping in vivo: The VUCA challenge. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 3(2), 133-151. doi:10.1111/j.1751-9004.2009.00167.x

Brewer, M. B., & Brown, R. J. (1998). Intergroup relations. In D. T. Gilbert, S. T. Fiske, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology, Vols. 1 and 2 (4th ed.) (pp. 554-594). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Devine, P. G. (1989). Stereotypes and prejudice: Their automatic and controlled components. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56(1), 5-18. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.56.1.5

Dovidio, J. F., & Gaertner, S. L. (2010). Intergroup bias. In S. T. Fiske, D. T. Gilbert, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology, Vol. 2 (5th ed.) (pp. 1084-1121). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley.

Fiske, S. T. (1998). Stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination. In D. T. Gilbert, S. T. Fiske, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology, Vols. 1 and 2 (4th ed.) (pp. 357-411). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Fiske, S. T., Cuddy, A. J. C., & Glick, P. (2007). Universal dimensions of social cognition: Warmth and competence. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11(2), 77-83. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2006.11.005

Greenwald, A. G., Banaji, M. R., Rudman, L. A., Farnham, S. D., Nosek, B. A., & Mellott, D. S. (2002). A unified theory of implicit attitudes, stereotypes, self-esteem, and self-concept. Psychological Review, 109(1), 3-25. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.109.1.3

Greenwald, A. G., McGhee, D. E., & Schwartz, J. L. K. (1998). Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The implicit association test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(6), 1464-1480. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.74.6.1464

Greenwald, A. G., Poehlman, T. A., Uhlmann, E. L., & Banaji, M. R. (2009). Understanding and using the Implicit Association Test: III. Meta-analysis of predictive validity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97(1), 17-41. doi:10.1037/a0015575

Katz, D., & Braly, K. (1933). Racial stereotypes of one hundred college students. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 28(3), 280-290. doi:10.1037/h0074049

Rudman, L. A., & Ashmore, R. D. (2007). Discrimination and the implicit association test. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 10(3), 359-372. doi:10.1177/1368430207078696

Sidanius, J., & Pratto, F. (1999). Social dominance: An intergroup theory of social hierarchy and oppression. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Tajfel, H., Billig, M. G., Bundy, R. P., & Flament, C. (1971). Social categorization and intergroup behaviour. European Journal of Social Psychology, 1(2), 149-178. doi:10.1002/ejsp.2420010202

Turner, J. C. (1975). Social comparison and social identity: Some prospects for intergroup behaviour. European Journal of Social Psychology, 5(1), 5-34. doi:10.1002/ejsp.2420050102

Word, C. O., Zanna, M. P., & Cooper, J. (1974). The nonverbal mediation of self-fulfilling prophecies in interracial interaction. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 10(2), 109-120. doi:10.1016/0022-1031(74)90059-6

Authors

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Prejudice, Discrimination, and Stereotyping by Susan T. Fiske is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available in our Licensing Agreement.

How to cite this Noba module using APA Style
Fiske, S. T. (2021). Prejudice, discrimination, and stereotyping. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. Retrieved from http://noba.to/jfkx7nrd

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
People are often biased against others outside of their own social group, showing prejudice (emotional bias), stereotypes (cognitive bias), and discrimination (behavioral bias). In the past, people used to be more explicit with their biases, but during the 20th century, when it became less socially acceptable to exhibit bias, such things like prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination became more subtle (automatic, ambiguous, and ambivalent).

# data[].attributes.body
Jhangiani, R. (2023). Research methods in social psychology. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. Retrieved from http://noba.to/zjn2aty5

This work is licensed under CC BY NC SA Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike 4.0 international license. You are free to share and adapt the work with an attribution.

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Rajiv Jhangiani
Kwantlen Polytechnic University

Social psychologists are interested in the ways that other people affect thought, emotion, and behavior. To explore these concepts requires special research methods. Following a brief overview of traditional research designs, this module introduces how complex experimental designs, field experiments, naturalistic observation, experience sampling techniques, survey research, subtle and nonconscious techniques such as priming, and archival research and the use of big data may each be adapted to address social psychological questions. This module also discusses the importance of obtaining a representative sample along with some ethical considerations that social psychologists face.

Learning Objectives

Describe the key features of basic and complex experimental designs.

Describe the key features of field experiments, naturalistic observation, and experience sampling techniques.

Describe survey research and explain the importance of obtaining a representative sample.

Describe the implicit association test and the use of priming.

Describe use of archival research techniques.

Explain five principles of ethical research that most concern social psychologists.

Interested to improve your personal performance? Test your skills in the presence of other people to take advantage of social facilitation. [Image: Hans 905, http://goo.gl/SiOSZh, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, http://goo.gl/iF4hmM]

Are you passionate about cycling? Norman Triplett certainly was. At the turn of last century he studied the lap times of cycling races and noticed a striking fact: riding in competitive races appeared to improve riders' times by about 20-30 seconds every mile compared to when they rode the same courses alone. Triplett suspected that the riders' enhanced performance could not be explained simply by the slipstream caused by other cyclists blocking the wind. To test his hunch, he designed what is widely described as the first experimental study in social psychology (published in 1898!)-in this case, having children reel in a length of fishing line as fast as they could. The children were tested alone, then again when paired with another child. The results? The children who performed the task in the presence of others out-reeled those that did so alone.

Although Triplett's research fell short of contemporary standards of scientific rigor (e.g., he eyeballed the data instead of measuring performance precisely; Stroebe, 2012), we now know that this effect, referred to as " social facilitation," is reliable-performance on simple or well-rehearsed tasks tends to be enhanced when we are in the presence of others (even when we are not competing against them). To put it another way, the next time you think about showing off your pool-playing skills on a date, the odds are you'll play better than when you practice by yourself. (If you haven't practiced, maybe you should watch a movie instead!)

One of the things Triplett's early experiment illustrated is scientists' reliance on systematic observation over opinion, or anecdotal evidence. The scientific method usually begins with observing the world around us (e.g., results of cycling competitions) and thinking of an interesting question (e.g., Why do cyclists perform better in groups?). The next step involves generating a specific testable prediction, or hypothesis (e.g., performance on simple tasks is enhanced in the presence of others). Next, scientists must operationalize the variables they are studying. This means they must figure out a way to define and measure abstract concepts. For example, the phrase "perform better" could mean different things in different situations; in Triplett's experiment it referred to the amount of time (measured with a stopwatch) it took to wind a fishing reel. Similarly, "in the presence of others" in this case was operationalized as another child winding a fishing reel at the same time in the same room. Creating specific operational definitions like this allows scientists to precisely manipulate the independent variable, or "cause" (the presence of others), and to measure the dependent variable, or "effect" (performance)-in other words, to collect data. Clearly described operational definitions also help reveal possible limitations to studies (e.g., Triplett's study did not investigate the impact of another child in the room who was not also winding a fishing reel) and help later researchers replicate them precisely.

Laboratory Research

The Asch conformity experiment, which investigated how social pressure influences individual conformity, remains a classic example of a social psychology lab experiment. [Image: D-janous, http://goo.gl/KwuGGM, CC BY-SA 4.0, http://goo.gl/etijyD]

As you can see, social psychologists have always relied on carefully designed laboratory environments to run experiments where they can closely control situations and manipulate variables (see the NOBA module on Research Designs for an overview of traditional methods). However, in the decades since Triplett discovered social facilitation, a wide range of methods and techniques have been devised, uniquely suited to demystifying the mechanics of how we relate to and influence one another. This module provides an introduction to the use of complex laboratory experiments, field experiments, naturalistic observation, survey research, nonconscious techniques, and archival research, as well as more recent methods that harness the power of technology and large data sets, to study the broad range of topics that fall within the domain of social psychology. At the end of this module we will also consider some of the key ethical principles that govern research in this diverse field.

The use of complex experimental designs, with multiple independent and/or dependent variables, has grown increasingly popular because they permit researchers to study both the individual and joint effects of several factors on a range of related situations. Moreover, thanks to technological advancements and the growth of social neuroscience, an increasing number of researchers now integrate biological markers (e.g., hormones) or use neuroimaging techniques (e.g., fMRI) in their research designs to better understand the biological mechanisms that underlie social processes.

The participants completed a brief questionnaire and were then sent down a narrow corridor to drop it off on a table. En route, they encountered a confederate at an open file cabinet who pushed the drawer in to let them pass. When the participant returned a few seconds later, the confederate, who had re-opened the file drawer, slammed it shut and bumped into the participant with his shoulder, muttering "asshole" before walking away. In a manipulation of an independent variable-in this case, the insult-some of the participants were insulted publicly (in view of two other confederates pretending to be doing homework) while others were insulted privately (no one else was around). In a third condition-the control group-participants experienced a modified procedure in which they were not insulted at all.

Although this is a fairly elaborate procedure on its face, what is particularly impressive is the number of dependent variables the researchers were able to measure. First, in the public insult condition, the two additional confederates (who observed the interaction, pretending to do homework) rated the participants' emotional reaction (e.g., anger, amusement, etc.) to being bumped into and insulted. Second, upon returning to the lab, participants in all three conditions were told they would later undergo electric shocks as part of a stress test, and were asked how much of a shock they would be willing to receive (between 10 volts and 250 volts). This decision was made in front of two confederates who had already chosen shock levels of 75 and 25 volts, presumably providing an opportunity for participants to publicly demonstrate their toughness. Third, across all conditions, the participants rated the likelihood of a variety of ambiguously provocative scenarios (e.g., one driver cutting another driver off) escalating into a fight or verbal argument. And fourth, in one of the studies, participants provided saliva samples, one right after returning to the lab, and a final one after completing the questionnaire with the ambiguous scenarios. Later, all three saliva samples were tested for levels of cortisol (a hormone associated with stress) and testosterone (a hormone associated with aggression).

The results showed that people from the Northern United States were far more likely to laugh off the incident (only 35% having anger ratings as high as or higher than amusement ratings), whereas the opposite was true for people from the South (85% of whom had anger ratings as high as or higher than amusement ratings). Also, only those from the South experienced significant increases in cortisol and testosterone following the insult (with no difference between the public and private insult conditions). Finally, no regional differences emerged in the interpretation of the ambiguous scenarios; however, the participants from the South were more likely to choose to receive a greater shock in the presence of the two confederates.

Figure 1

Field Research

Because social psychology is primarily focused on the social context-groups, families, cultures-researchers commonly leave the laboratory to collect data on life as it is actually lived. To do so, they use a variation of the laboratory experiment, called a field experiment. A field experiment is similar to a lab experiment except it uses real-world situations, such as people shopping at a grocery store. One of the major differences between field experiments and laboratory experiments is that the people in field experiments do not know they are participating in research, so-in theory-they will act more naturally. In a classic example from 1972, Alice Isen and Paula Levin wanted to explore the ways emotions affect helping behavior. To investigate this they observed the behavior of people at pay phones (I know! Pay phones!). Half of the unsuspecting participants (determined by random assignment) found a dime planted by researchers (I know! A dime!) in the coin slot, while the other half did not. Presumably, finding a dime felt surprising and lucky and gave people a small jolt of happiness. Immediately after the unsuspecting participant left the phone booth, a confederate walked by and dropped a stack of papers. Almost 100% of those who found a dime helped to pick up the papers. And what about those who didn't find a dime? Only 1 out 25 of them bothered to help.

In cases where it's not practical or ethical to randomly assign participants to different experimental conditions, we can use naturalistic observation-unobtrusively watching people as they go about their lives. Consider, for example, a classic demonstration of the " basking in reflected glory" phenomenon: Robert Cialdini and his colleagues used naturalistic observation at seven universities to confirm that students are significantly more likely to wear clothing bearing the school name or logo on days following wins (vs. draws or losses) by the school's varsity football team ( Cialdini et al., 1976). In another study, by Jenny Radesky and her colleagues ( 2014), 40 out of 55 observations of caregivers eating at fast food restaurants with children involved a caregiver using a mobile device. The researchers also noted that caregivers who were most absorbed in their device tended to ignore the children's behavior, followed by scolding, issuing repeated instructions, or using physical responses, such as kicking the children's feet or pushing away their hands.

The ubiquitous smart phone provides social psychology researchers with an invaluable tool for working with study participants to gather data about such things as their daily activities, interactions, attitudes, and emotions. [Image: eltpics, http://goo.gl/DWvoUK, CC BY-NC 2.0, http://goo.gl/l8UUGY]

A group of techniques collectively referred to as experience sampling methods represent yet another way of conducting naturalistic observation, often by harnessing the power of technology. In some cases, participants are notified several times during the day by a pager, wristwatch, or a smartphone app to record data (e.g., by responding to a brief survey or scale on their smartphone, or in a diary). For example, in a study by Reed Larson and his colleagues ( 1994), mothers and fathers carried pagers for one week and reported their emotional states when beeped at random times during their daily activities at work or at home. The results showed that mothers reported experiencing more positive emotional states when away from home (including at work), whereas fathers showed the reverse pattern. A more recently developed technique, known as the electronically activated recorder, or EAR, does not even require participants to stop what they are doing to record their thoughts or feelings; instead, a small portable audio recorder or smartphone app is used to automatically record brief snippets of participants' conversations throughout the day for later coding and analysis. For a more in-depth description of the EAR technique and other experience-sampling methods, see the NOBA module on Conducting Psychology Research in the Real World.

Survey Research

Of course, obtaining large, cross-cultural, and representative samples has become far easier since the advent of the internet and the proliferation of web-based survey platforms-such as Qualtrics-and participant recruitment platforms-such as Amazon's Mechanical Turk. And although some researchers harbor doubts about the representativeness of online samples, studies have shown that internet samples are in many ways more diverse and representative than samples recruited from human subject pools (e.g., with respect to gender; Gosling et al., 2004). Online samples also compare favorably with traditional samples on attentiveness while completing the survey, reliability of data, and proportion of non-respondents ( Paolacci et al., 2010).

Subtle/Nonconscious Research Methods

The research conducted by Rosenblatt and colleagues revealed that even seemingly sophisticated and level-headed thinkers like judges can be influenced by priming. [Image: Penn State, https://goo.gl/mLrmWv, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/Toc0ZF]

In one of the earliest tests of this hypothesis, actual municipal court judges in Arizona were asked to set a bond for an alleged prostitute immediately after completing a brief questionnaire. For half of the judges the questionnaire ended with questions about their thoughts and feelings regarding the prospect of their own death. Incredibly, judges in the experimental group that were primed with thoughts about their mortality set a significantly higher bond than those in the control group ($455 vs. $50!)-presumably because they were especially motivated to defend their belief system in the face of a violation of the law ( Rosenblatt et al., 1989). Although the judges consciously completed the survey, what makes this a study of priming is that the second task (sentencing) was unrelated, so any influence of the survey on their later judgments would have been nonconscious. Similar results have been found in TMT studies in which participants were primed to think about death even more subtly, such as by having them complete questionnaires just before or after they passed a funeral home ( Pyszczynski et al., 1996).

To verify that the subtle manipulation (e.g., questions about one's death) has the intended effect (activating death-related thoughts), priming studies like these often include a manipulation check following the introduction of a prime. For example, right after being primed, participants in a TMT study might be given a word fragment task in which they have to complete words such as COFF_ _ or SK _ _ L. As you might imagine, participants in the mortality-primed experimental group typically complete these fragments as COFFIN and SKULL, whereas participants in the control group complete them as COFFEE and SKILL.

The use of priming to unwittingly influence behavior, known as social or behavioral priming ( Ferguson & Mann, 2014), has been at the center of the recent "replication crisis" in Psychology ( see the NOBA module on replication). Whereas earlier studies showed, for example, that priming people to think about old age makes them walk slower ( Bargh, Chen, & Burrows, 1996), that priming them to think about a university professor boosts performance on a trivia game ( Dijksterhuis & van Knippenberg, 1998), and that reminding them of mating motives (e.g., sex) makes them more willing to engage in risky behavior ( Greitemeyer, Kastenmüller, & Fischer, 2013), several recent efforts to replicate these findings have failed (e.g., Harris et al., 2013; Shanks et al., 2013). Such failures to replicate findings highlight the need to ensure that both the original studies and replications are carefully designed, have adequate sample sizes, and that researchers pre-register their hypotheses and openly share their results-whether these support the initial hypothesis or not.

Archival Research

Researchers need not rely only on developing new data to gain insights into human behavior. Existing documentation from decades and even centuries past provide a wealth of information that is useful to social psychologists. [Image: Archivo FSP, http://goo.gl/bUx6sJ, CC BY-SA 3.0, http://goo.gl/g6ncfj]

In a more controversial example, researchers at Facebook attempted to test whether emotional contagion-the transfer of emotional states from one person to another-would occur if Facebook manipulated the content that showed up in its users' News Feed ( Kramer et al., 2014). And it did. When friends' posts with positive expressions were concealed, users wrote slightly fewer positive posts (e.g., "Loving my new phone!"). Conversely, when posts with negative expressions were hidden, users wrote slightly fewer negative posts (e.g., "Got to go to work. Ugh."). This suggests that people's positivity or negativity can impact their social circles.

The controversial part of this study-which included 689,003 Facebook users and involved the analysis of over 3 million posts made over just one week-was the fact that Facebook did not explicitly request permission from users to participate. Instead, Facebook relied on the fine print in their data-use policy. And, although academic researchers who collaborated with Facebook on this study applied for ethical approval from their institutional review board (IRB), they apparently only did so after data collection was complete, raising further questions about the ethicality of the study and highlighting concerns about the ability of large, profit-driven corporations to subtly manipulate people's social lives and choices.

The Question of Representativeness

How confident can we be that the results of social psychology studies generalize to the wider population if study participants are largely of the WEIRD variety? [Image: Mike Miley, http://goo.gl/NtvlU8, CC BY-SA 2.0, http://goo.gl/eH69he]

Along with our counterparts in the other areas of psychology, social psychologists have been guilty of largely recruiting samples of convenience from the thin slice of humanity-students-found at universities and colleges ( Sears, 1986). This presents a problem when trying to assess the social mechanics of the public at large. Aside from being an overrepresentation of young, middle-class Caucasians, college students may also be more compliant and more susceptible to attitude change, have less stable personality traits and interpersonal relationships, and possess stronger cognitive skills than samples reflecting a wider range of age and experience ( Peterson & Merunka, 2014; Visser, Krosnick, & Lavrakas, 2000). Put simply, these traditional samples (college students) may not be sufficiently representative of the broader population. Furthermore, considering that 96% of participants in psychology studies come from western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic countries (so-called WEIRD cultures; Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010), and that the majority of these are also psychology students, the question of non-representativeness becomes even more serious.

Of course, when studying a basic cognitive process (like working memory capacity) or an aspect of social behavior that appears to be fairly universal (e.g., even cockroaches exhibit social facilitation!), a non-representative sample may not be a big deal. However, over time research has repeatedly demonstrated the important role that individual differences (e.g., personality traits, cognitive abilities, etc.) and culture (e.g., individualism vs. collectivism) play in shaping social behavior. For instance, even if we only consider a tiny sample of research on aggression, we know that narcissists are more likely to respond to criticism with aggression ( Bushman & Baumeister, 1998); conservatives, who have a low tolerance for uncertainty, are more likely to prefer aggressive actions against those considered to be "outsiders" ( de Zavala et al., 2010); countries where men hold the bulk of power in society have higher rates of physical aggression directed against female partners ( Archer, 2006); and males from the southern part of the United States are more likely to react with aggression following an insult ( Cohen et al., 1996).

Ethics in Social Psychological Research

The Stanford Prison Study has been criticized for putting participants in dangerous and psychologically damaging situations. [Image: Teodorvasic97, http://goo.gl/0LJReB, CC BY-SA 4.0, http://goo.gl/etijyD]

For better or worse (but probably for worse), when we think about the most unethical studies in psychology, we think about social psychology. Imagine, for example, encouraging people to deliver what they believe to be a dangerous electric shock to a stranger (with bloodcurdling screams for added effect!). This is considered a "classic" study in social psychology. Or, how about having students play the role of prison guards, deliberately and sadistically abusing other students in the role of prison inmates. Yep, social psychology too. Of course, both Stanley Milgram's ( 1963) experiments on obedience to authority and the Stanford prison study ( Haney et al., 1973) would be considered unethical by today's standards, which have progressed with our understanding of the field. Today, we follow a series of guidelines and receive prior approval from our institutional research boards before beginning such experiments. Among the most important principles are the following:

Informed consent: In general, people should know when they are involved in research, and understand what will happen to them during the study (at least in general terms that do not give away the hypothesis). They are then given the choice to participate, along with the freedom to withdraw from the study at any time. This is precisely why the Facebook emotional contagion study discussed earlier is considered ethically questionable. Still, it's important to note that certain kinds of methods-such as naturalistic observation in public spaces, or archival research based on public records-do not require obtaining informed consent.

Privacy: Although it is permissible to observe people's actions in public-even without them knowing-researchers cannot violate their privacy by observing them in restrooms or other private spaces without their knowledge and consent. Researchers also may not identify individual participants in their research reports (we typically report only group means and other statistics). With online data collection becoming increasingly popular, researchers also have to be mindful that they follow local data privacy laws, collect only the data that they really need (e.g., avoiding including unnecessary questions in surveys), strictly restrict access to the raw data, and have a plan in place to securely destroy the data after it is no longer needed.

Risks and Benefits: People who participate in psychological studies should be exposed to risk only if they fully understand the risks and only if the likely benefits clearly outweigh those risks. The Stanford prison study is a notorious example of a failure to meet this obligation. It was planned to run for two weeks but had to be shut down after only six days because of the abuse suffered by the "prison inmates." But even less extreme cases, such as researchers wishing to investigate implicit prejudice using the IAT, need to be considerate of the consequences of providing feedback to participants about their nonconscious biases. Similarly, any manipulations that could potentially provoke serious emotional reactions (e.g., the culture of honor study described above) or relatively permanent changes in people's beliefs or behaviors (e.g., attitudes towards recycling) need to be carefully reviewed by the IRB.

Deception: Social psychologists sometimes need to deceive participants (e.g., using a cover story) to avoid demand characteristics by hiding the true nature of the study. This is typically done to prevent participants from modifying their behavior in unnatural ways, especially in laboratory or field experiments. For example, when Milgram recruited participants for his experiments on obedience to authority, he described it as being a study of the effects of punishment on memory! Deception is typically only permitted (a) when the benefits of the study outweigh the risks, (b) participants are not reasonably expected to be harmed, (c) the research question cannot be answered without the use of deception, and (d) participants are informed about the deception as soon as possible, usually through debriefing.

Debriefing: This is the process of informing research participants as soon as possible of the purpose of the study, revealing any deceptions, and correcting any misconceptions they might have as a result of participating. Debriefing also involves minimizing harm that might have occurred. For example, an experiment examining the effects of sad moods on charitable behavior might involve inducing a sad mood in participants by having them think sad thoughts, watch a sad video, or listen to sad music. Debriefing would therefore be the time to return participants' moods to normal by having them think happy thoughts, watch a happy video, or listen to happy music.

As an immensely social species, we affect and influence each other in many ways, particularly through our interactions and cultural expectations, both conscious and nonconscious. The study of social psychology examines much of the business of our everyday lives, including our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors we are unaware or ashamed of. The desire to carefully and precisely study these topics, together with advances in technology, has led to the development of many creative techniques that allow researchers to explore the mechanics of how we relate to one another. Consider this your invitation to join the investigation.

Outside Resources

Article: Do research ethics need updating for the digital age? Questions raised by the Facebook emotional contagion study.

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2014/10/research-ethics.aspx

Article: Psychology is WEIRD. A commentary on non-representative samples in Psychology.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/05/weird_psychology_social_science_researchers_rely_too_much_on_western_college.html

Web: Project Implicit. Take a demonstration implicit association test

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/

Web: Research Randomizer. An interactive tool for random sampling and random assignment.

https://www.randomizer.org/

Discussion Questions

What are some pros and cons of experimental research, field research, and archival research?

How would you feel if you learned that you had been a participant in a naturalistic observation study (without explicitly providing your consent)? How would you feel if you learned during a debriefing procedure that you have a stronger association between the concept of violence and members of visible minorities? Can you think of other examples of when following principles of ethical research create challenging situations?

Can you think of an attitude (other than those related to prejudice) that would be difficult or impossible to measure by asking people directly?

What do you think is the difference between a manipulation check and a dependent variable?

Vocabulary

Anecdotal evidence

An argument that is based on personal experience and not considered reliable or representative.

Archival research

A type of research in which the researcher analyses records or archives instead of collecting data from live human participants.

Basking in reflected glory

The tendency for people to associate themselves with successful people or groups.

Big data

The analysis of large data sets.

​Complex experimental designs

An experiment with two or more independent variables.

Confederate

An actor working with the researcher. Most often, this individual is used to deceive unsuspecting research participants. Also known as a "stooge."

Correlational research

A type of descriptive research that involves measuring the association between two variables, or how they go together.

Cover story

A fake description of the purpose and/or procedure of a study, used when deception is necessary in order to answer a research question.

Demand characteristics

Subtle cues that make participants aware of what the experimenter expects to find or how participants are expected to behave.

Dependent variable

The variable the researcher measures but does not manipulate in an experiment.

Ecological validity

The degree to which a study finding has been obtained under conditions that are typical for what happens in everyday life.

Electronically activated recorder (EAR)

A methodology where participants wear a small, portable audio recorder that intermittently records snippets of ambient sounds around them.

Experience sampling methods

Systematic ways of having participants provide samples of their ongoing behavior. Participants' reports are dependent (contingent) upon either a signal, pre-established intervals, or the occurrence of some event.

Field experiment

An experiment that occurs outside of the lab and in a real world situation.

​Hypothesis

A logical idea that can be tested.

Implicit association test (IAT)

A computer-based categorization task that measures the strength of association between specific concepts over several trials.

Independent variable

The variable the researcher manipulates and controls in an experiment.

Laboratory environments

A setting in which the researcher can carefully control situations and manipulate variables.

Manipulation check

A measure used to determine whether or not the manipulation of the independent variable has had its intended effect on the participants.

Naturalistic observation

Unobtrusively watching people as they go about the business of living their lives.

Operationalize

How researchers specifically measure a concept.

Participant variable

The individual characteristics of research subjects - age, personality, health, intelligence, etc.

Priming

The process by which exposing people to one stimulus makes certain thoughts, feelings or behaviors more salient.

Random assignment

Assigning participants to receive different conditions of an experiment by chance.

Samples of convenience

Participants that have been recruited in a manner that prioritizes convenience over representativeness.

Scientific method

A method of investigation that includes systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.

Social facilitation

When performance on simple or well-rehearsed tasks is enhanced when we are in the presence of others.

Social neuroscience

An interdisciplinary field concerned with identifying the neural processes underlying social behavior and cognition.

Social or behavioral priming

A field of research that investigates how the activation of one social concept in memory can elicit changes in behavior, physiology, or self-reports of a related social concept without conscious awareness.

Survey research

A method of research that involves administering a questionnaire to respondents in person, by telephone, through the mail, or over the internet.

Terror management theory (TMT)

A theory that proposes that humans manage the anxiety that stems from the inevitability of death by embracing frameworks of meaning such as cultural values and beliefs.

WEIRD cultures

Cultures that are western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic.

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Authors

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Research Methods in Social Psychology by Rajiv Jhangiani is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available in our Licensing Agreement.

How to cite this Noba module using APA Style
Jhangiani, R. (2023). Research methods in social psychology. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. Retrieved from http://noba.to/zjn2aty5

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Social psychologists are interested in the ways that other people affect thought, emotion, and behavior. To explore these concepts requires special research methods. Following a brief overview of traditional research designs, this module introduces how complex experimental designs, field experiments, naturalistic observation, experience sampling techniques, survey research, subtle and nonconscious techniques such as priming, and archival research and the use of big data may each be adapted to address social psychological questions.

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Forsyth, D. R. (2023). The psychology of groups. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. Retrieved from http://noba.to/trfxbkhm

This work is licensed under CC BY NC SA Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike 4.0 international license. You are free to share and adapt the work with an attribution.

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Donelson R. Forsyth
University of Richmond

This module assumes that a thorough understanding of people requires a thorough understanding of groups. Each of us is an autonomous individual seeking our own objectives, yet we are also members of groups-groups that constrain us, guide us, and sustain us. Just as each of us influences the group and the people in the group, so, too, do groups change each one of us. Joining groups satisfies our need to belong, gain information and understanding through social comparison, define our sense of self and social identity, and achieve goals that might elude us if we worked alone. Groups are also practically significant, for much of the world's work is done by groups rather than by individuals. Success sometimes eludes our groups, but when group members learn to work together as a cohesive team their success becomes more certain. People also turn to groups when important decisions must be made, and this choice is justified as long as groups avoid such problems as group polarization and groupthink.

Learning Objectives

Review the evidence that suggests humans have a fundamental need to belong to groups.

Compare the sociometer model of self-esteem to a more traditional view of self-esteem.

Use theories of social facilitation to predict when a group will perform tasks slowly or quickly (e.g., students eating a meal as a group, workers on an assembly line, or a study group).

Summarize the methods used by Latané, Williams, and Harkins to identify the relative impact of social loafing and coordination problems on group performance.

Describe how groups change over time.

Apply the theory of groupthink to a well-known decision-making group, such as the group of advisors responsible for planning the Bay of Pigs operation.

List and discuss the factors that facilitate and impede group performance and decision making.

Develop a list of recommendations that, if followed, would minimize the possibility of groupthink developing in a group.

How many groups are you a part of on a daily basis? Whether it's family, class, work, social, sports, church or other areas, we typically spend a good deal of our time and attention each day interacting with others in groups. [Image: CC0 Public Domain, https://goo.gl/m25gce]

Psychologists study groups because nearly all human activities-working, learning, worshiping, relaxing, playing, and even sleeping-occur in groups. The lone individual who is cut off from all groups is a rarity. Most of us live out our lives in groups, and these groups have a profound impact on our thoughts, feelings, and actions. Many psychologists focus their attention on single individuals, but social psychologists expand their analysis to include groups, organizations, communities, and even cultures.

This module examines the psychology of groups and group membership. It begins with a basic question: What is the psychological significance of groups? People are, undeniably, more often in groups rather than alone. What accounts for this marked gregariousness and what does it say about our psychological makeup? The module then reviews some of the key findings from studies of groups. Researchers have asked many questions about people and groups: Do people work as hard as they can when they are in groups? Are groups more cautious than individuals? Do groups make wiser decisions than single individuals? In many cases the answers are not what common sense and folk wisdom might suggest.

Many people loudly proclaim their autonomy and independence. Like Ralph Waldo Emerson, they avow, "I must be myself. I will not hide my tastes or aversions . . . . I will seek my own" ( 1903/2004, p. 127). Even though people are capable of living separate and apart from others, they join with others because groups meet their psychological and social needs.

The Need to Belong

The need to belong is a strong psychological motivation. [Image: CC0 Public Domain, https://goo.gl/m25gce]

Across individuals, societies, and even eras, humans consistently seek inclusion over exclusion, membership over isolation, and acceptance over rejection. As Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary conclude, humans have a need to belong: "a pervasive drive to form and maintain at least a minimum quantity of lasting, positive, and impactful interpersonal relationships" ( 1995, p. 497). And most of us satisfy this need by joining groups. When surveyed, 87.3% of Americans reported that they lived with other people, including family members, partners, and roommates ( Davis & Smith, 2007). The majority, ranging from 50% to 80%, reported regularly doing things in groups, such as attending a sports event together, visiting one another for the evening, sharing a meal together, or going out as a group to see a movie ( Putnam, 2000).

People respond negatively when their need to belong is unfulfilled. For example, college students often feel homesick and lonely when they first start college, but not if they belong to a cohesive, socially satisfying group ( Buote et al., 2007). People who are accepted members of a group tend to feel happier and more satisfied. But should they be rejected by a group, they feel unhappy, helpless, and depressed. Studies of ostracism-the deliberate exclusion from groups-indicate this experience is highly stressful and can lead to depression, confused thinking, and even aggression ( Williams, 2007). When researchers used a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner to track neural responses to exclusion, they found that people who were left out of a group activity displayed heightened cortical activity in two specific areas of the brain-the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and the anterior insula. These areas of the brain are associated with the experience of physical pain sensations ( Eisenberger, Lieberman, & Williams, 2003). It hurts, quite literally, to be left out of a group.

Affiliation in Groups

Groups not only satisfy the need to belong, they also provide members with information, assistance, and social support. Leon Festinger's theory of social comparison ( 1950, 1954) suggested that in many cases people join with others to evaluate the accuracy of their personal beliefs and attitudes. Stanley Schachter ( 1959) explored this process by putting individuals in ambiguous, stressful situations and asking them if they wished to wait alone or with others. He found that people affiliate in such situations-they seek the company of others.

Although any kind of companionship is appreciated, we prefer those who provide us with reassurance and support as well as accurate information. In some cases, we also prefer to join with others who are even worse off than we are. Imagine, for example, how you would respond when the teacher hands back the test and yours is marked 85%. Do you want to affiliate with a friend who got a 95% or a friend who got a 78%? To maintain a sense of self-worth, people seek out and compare themselves to the less fortunate. This process is known as downward social comparison.

Identity and Membership

Groups are not only founts of information during times of ambiguity, they also help us answer the existentially significant question, "Who am I?" Common sense tells us that our sense of self is our private definition of who we are, a kind of archival record of our experiences, qualities, and capabilities. Yet, the self also includes all those qualities that spring from memberships in groups. People are defined not only by their traits, preferences, interests, likes, and dislikes, but also by their friendships, social roles, family connections, and group memberships. The self is not just a "me," but also a "we."

Even demographic qualities such as sex or age can influence us if we categorize ourselves based on these qualities. Social identity theory, for example, assumes that we don't just classify other people into such social categories as man, woman, Anglo, elderly, or college student, but we also categorize ourselves. Moreover, if we strongly identify with these categories, then we will ascribe the characteristics of the typical member of these groups to ourselves, and so stereotype ourselves. If, for example, we believe that college students are intellectual, then we will assume we, too, are intellectual if we identify with that group ( Hogg, 2001).

Groups also provide a variety of means for maintaining and enhancing a sense of self-worth, as our assessment of the quality of groups we belong to influences our collective self-esteem ( Crocker & Luhtanen, 1990). If our self-esteem is shaken by a personal setback, we can focus on our group's success and prestige. In addition, by comparing our group to other groups, we frequently discover that we are members of the better group, and so can take pride in our superiority. By denigrating other groups, we elevate both our personal and our collective self-esteem ( Crocker & Major, 1989).

Mark Leary's sociometer model goes so far as to suggest that "self-esteem is part of a sociometer that monitors peoples' relational value in other people's eyes" ( 2007, p. 328). He maintains self-esteem is not just an index of one's sense of personal value, but also an indicator of acceptance into groups. Like a gauge that indicates how much fuel is left in the tank, a dip in self-esteem indicates exclusion from our group is likely. Disquieting feelings of self-worth, then, prompt us to search for and correct characteristics and qualities that put us at risk of social exclusion. Self-esteem is not just high self-regard, but the self-approbation that we feel when included in groups ( Leary & Baumeister, 2000).

Evolutionary Advantages of Group Living

Groups may be humans' most useful invention, for they provide us with the means to reach goals that would elude us if we remained alone. Individuals in groups can secure advantages and avoid disadvantages that would plague the lone individuals. In his theory of social integration, Moreland concludes that groups tend to form whenever "people become dependent on one another for the satisfaction of their needs" ( 1987, p. 104). The advantages of group life may be so great that humans are biologically prepared to seek membership and avoid isolation. From an evolutionary psychology perspective, because groups have increased humans' overall fitness for countless generations, individuals who carried genes that promoted solitude-seeking were less likely to survive and procreate compared to those with genes that prompted them to join groups ( Darwin, 1859/1963). This process of natural selection culminated in the creation of a modern human who seeks out membership in groups instinctively, for most of us are descendants of "joiners" rather than "loners."

Groups usually exist for a reason. In groups, we solve problems, create products, create standards, communicate knowledge, have fun, perform arts, create institutions, and even ensure our safety from attacks by other groups. But do groups always outperform individuals?

Social Facilitation in Groups

Do people perform more effectively when alone or when part of a group? Norman Triplett ( 1898) examined this issue in one of the first empirical studies in psychology. While watching bicycle races, Triplett noticed that cyclists were faster when they competed against other racers than when they raced alone against the clock. To determine if the presence of others leads to the psychological stimulation that enhances performance, he arranged for 40 children to play a game that involved turning a small reel as quickly as possible (see Figure 1). When he measured how quickly they turned the reel, he confirmed that children performed slightly better when they played the game in pairs compared to when they played alone (see Stroebe, 2012; Strube, 2005).

Figure 1: The "competition machine" Triplett used to study the impact of competition on performance. Triplett's study was one of the first laboratory studies conducted in the field of social psychology. Triplett, N. (1898)

Triplett succeeded in sparking interest in a phenomenon now known as social facilitation: the enhancement of an individual's performance when that person works in the presence of other people. However, it remained for Robert Zajonc ( 1965) to specify when social facilitation does and does not occur. After reviewing prior research, Zajonc noted that the facilitating effects of an audience usually only occur when the task requires the person to perform dominant responses, i.e., ones that are well-learned or based on instinctive behaviors. If the task requires nondominant responses, i.e., novel, complicated, or untried behaviors that the organism has never performed before or has performed only infrequently, then the presence of others inhibits performance. Hence, students write poorer quality essays on complex philosophical questions when they labor in a group rather than alone ( Allport, 1924), but they make fewer mistakes in solving simple, low-level multiplication problems with an audience or a coactor than when they work in isolation ( Dashiell, 1930).

Social facilitation, then, depends on the task: other people facilitate performance when the task is so simple that it requires only dominant responses, but others interfere when the task requires nondominant responses. However, a number of psychological processes combine to influence when social facilitation, not social interference, occurs. Studies of the challenge-threat response and brain imaging, for example, confirm that we respond physiologically and neurologically to the presence of others ( Blascovich, Mendes, Hunter, & Salomon, 1999). Other people also can trigger evaluation apprehension, particularly when we feel that our individual performance will be known to others, and those others might judge it negatively ( Bond, Atoum, & VanLeeuwen, 1996). The presence of other people can also cause perturbations in our capacity to concentrate on and process information ( Harkins, 2006). Distractions due to the presence of other people have been shown to improve performance on certain tasks, such as the Stroop task, but undermine performance on more cognitively demanding tasks( Huguet, Galvaing, Monteil, & Dumas, 1999).

Social Loafing

Groups usually outperform individuals. A single student, working alone on a paper, will get less done in an hour than will four students working on a group project. One person playing a tug-of-war game against a group will lose. A crew of movers can pack up and transport your household belongings faster than you can by yourself. As the saying goes, "Many hands make light the work" ( Littlepage, 1991; Steiner, 1972).

Groups, though, tend to be underachievers. Studies of social facilitation confirmed the positive motivational benefits of working with other people on well-practiced tasks in which each member's contribution to the collective enterprise can be identified and evaluated. But what happens when tasks require a truly collective effort? First, when people work together they must coordinate their individual activities and contributions to reach the maximum level of efficiency-but they rarely do ( Diehl & Stroebe, 1987). Three people in a tug-of-war competition, for example, invariably pull and pause at slightly different times, so their efforts are uncoordinated. The result is coordination loss: the three-person group is stronger than a single person, but not three times as strong. Second, people just don't exert as much effort when working on a collective endeavor, nor do they expend as much cognitive effort trying to solve problems, as they do when working alone. They display social loafing ( Latané, 1981).

Bibb Latané, Kip Williams, and Stephen Harkins ( 1979) examined both coordination losses and social loafing by arranging for students to cheer or clap either alone or in groups of varying sizes. The students cheered alone or in 2- or 6-person groups, or they were lead to believe they were in 2- or 6-person groups (those in the "pseudo-groups" wore blindfolds and headsets that played masking sound). As Figure 2 indicates, groups generated more noise than solitary subjects, but the productivity dropped as the groups became larger in size. In dyads, each subject worked at only 66% of capacity, and in 6-person groups at 36%. Productivity also dropped when subjects merely believed they were in groups. If subjects thought that one other person was shouting with them, they shouted 82% as intensely, and if they thought five other people were shouting, they reached only 74% of their capacity. These loses in productivity were not due to coordination problems; this decline in production could be attributed only to a reduction in effort-to social loafing (Latané et al., 1979, Experiment 2).

Figure 2: Sound pressure per person as a function of group or pseudo group size. Latane, B. (1981)

Teamwork

Social loafing can be a problem. One way to overcome it is by recognizing that each group member has an important part to play in the success of the group. [Image: Marc Dalmulder, https://goo.gl/Xa5aiE, CC BY 2.0, https://goo.gl/BRvSA7]

Social loafing is no rare phenomenon. When sales personnel work in groups with shared goals, they tend to "take it easy" if another salesperson is nearby who can do their work ( George, 1992). People who are trying to generate new, creative ideas in group brainstorming sessions usually put in less effort and are thus less productive than people who are generating new ideas individually ( Paulus & Brown, 2007). Students assigned group projects often complain of inequity in the quality and quantity of each member's contributions: Some people just don't work as much as they should to help the group reach its learning goals ( Neu, 2012). People carrying out all sorts of physical and mental tasks expend less effort when working in groups, and the larger the group, the more they loaf ( Karau & Williams, 1993).

Groups can, however, overcome this impediment to performance through teamwork. A group may include many talented individuals, but they must learn how to pool their individual abilities and energies to maximize the team's performance. Team goals must be set, work patterns structured, and a sense of group identity developed. Individual members must learn how to coordinate their actions, and any strains and stresses in interpersonal relations need to be identified and resolved ( Salas, Rosen, Burke, & Goodwin, 2009).

Researchers have identified two key ingredients to effective teamwork: a shared mental representation of the task and group unity. Teams improve their performance over time as they develop a shared understanding of the team and the tasks they are attempting. Some semblance of this shared mental model is present nearly from its inception, but as the team practices, differences among the members in terms of their understanding of their situation and their team diminish as a consensus becomes implicitly accepted ( Tindale, Stawiski, & Jacobs, 2008).

Effective teams are also, in most cases, cohesive groups ( Dion, 2000). Group cohesion is the integrity, solidarity, social integration, or unity of a group. In most cases, members of cohesive groups like each other and the group and they also are united in their pursuit of collective, group-level goals. Members tend to enjoy their groups more when they are cohesive, and cohesive groups usually outperform ones that lack cohesion.

This cohesion-performance relationship, however, is a complex one. Meta-analytic studies suggest that cohesion improves teamwork among members, but that performance quality influences cohesion more than cohesion influences performance ( Mullen & Copper, 1994; Mullen, Driskell, & Salas, 1998; see Figure 3). Cohesive groups also can be spectacularly unproductive if the group's norms stress low productivity rather than high productivity ( Seashore, 1954).

Figure 3: The relationship between group cohesion and performance over time. Groups that are cohesive do tend to perform well on tasks now (Time1) and in the future (Time 2). Notice, though, that the relationship between Performance at Time 1 and Cohesiveness at Time 2 is greater (r=.51) than the relationship between Cohesion at Time 1 and Performance at Time 2 (r=.25). These findings suggest that cohesion improves performance, but that a group that performs well is likely to also become more cohesive. Mullen, Driskell, & Salas (1998)

Group Development

In most cases groups do not become smooth-functioning teams overnight. As Bruce Tuckman's ( 1965) theory of group development suggests, groups usually pass through several stages of development as they change from a newly formed group into an effective team. As noted in Focus Topic 1, in the forming phase, the members become oriented toward one another. In the storming phase, the group members find themselves in conflict, and some solution is sought to improve the group environment. In the norming, phase standards for behavior and roles develop that regulate behavior. In the performing, phase the group has reached a point where it can work as a unit to achieve desired goals, and the adjourning phase ends the sequence of development; the group disbands. Throughout these stages groups tend to oscillate between the task-oriented issues and the relationship issues, with members sometimes working hard but at other times strengthening their interpersonal bonds ( Tuckman & Jensen, 1977).

Focus Topic 1: Group Development Stages and Characteristics

We also experience change as we pass through a group, for we don't become full-fledged members of a group in an instant. Instead, we gradually become a part of the group and remain in the group until we leave it. Richard Moreland and John Levine's ( 1982) model of group socialization describes this process, beginning with initial entry into the group and ending when the member exits it. For example, when you are thinking of joining a new group-a social club, a professional society, a fraternity or sorority, or a sports team-you investigate what the group has to offer, but the group also investigates you. During this investigation stage you are still an outsider: interested in joining the group, but not yet committed to it in any way. But once the group accepts you and you accept the group, socialization begins: you learn the group's norms and take on different responsibilities depending on your role. On a sports team, for example, you may initially hope to be a star who starts every game or plays a particular position, but the team may need something else from you. In time, though, the group will accept you as a full-fledged member and both sides in the process-you and the group itself-increase their commitment to one another. When that commitment wanes, however, your membership may come to an end as well.

Groups are particularly useful when it comes to making a decision, for groups can draw on more resources than can a lone individual. A single individual may know a great deal about a problem and possible solutions, but his or her information is far surpassed by the combined knowledge of a group. Groups not only generate more ideas and possible solutions by discussing the problem, but they can also more objectively evaluate the options that they generate during discussion. Before accepting a solution, a group may require that a certain number of people favor it, or that it meets some other standard of acceptability. People generally feel that a group's decision will be superior to an individual's decision.

Groups, however, do not always make good decisions. Juries sometimes render verdicts that run counter to the evidence presented. Community groups take radical stances on issues before thinking through all the ramifications. Military strategists concoct plans that seem, in retrospect, ill-conceived and short-sighted. Why do groups sometimes make poor decisions?

Group Polarization

Let's say you are part of a group assigned to make a presentation. One of the group members suggests showing a short video that, although amusing, includes some provocative images. Even though initially you think the clip is inappropriate, you begin to change your mind as the group discusses the idea. The group decides, eventually, to throw caution to the wind and show the clip-and your instructor is horrified by your choice.

This hypothetical example is consistent with studies of groups making decisions that involve risk. Common sense notions suggest that groups exert a moderating, subduing effect on their members. However, when researchers looked at groups closely, they discovered many groups shift toward more extreme decisions rather than less extreme decisions after group interaction. Discussion, it turns out, doesn't moderate people's judgments after all. Instead, it leads to group polarization: judgments made after group discussion will be more extreme in the same direction as the average of individual judgments made prior to discussion ( Myers & Lamm, 1976). If a majority of members feel that taking risks is more acceptable than exercising caution, then the group will become riskier after a discussion. For example, in France, where people generally like their government but dislike Americans, group discussion improved their attitude toward their government but exacerbated their negative opinions of Americans ( Moscovici & Zavalloni, 1969). Similarly, prejudiced people who discussed racial issues with other prejudiced individuals became even more negative, but those who were relatively unprejudiced exhibited even more acceptance of diversity when in groups ( Myers & Bishop, 1970).

Common Knowledge Effect

One of the advantages of making decisions in groups is the group's greater access to information. When seeking a solution to a problem, group members can put their ideas on the table and share their knowledge and judgments with each other through discussions. But all too often groups spend much of their discussion time examining common knowledge-information that two or more group members know in common-rather than unshared information. This common knowledge effect will result in a bad outcome if something known by only one or two group members is very important.

Researchers have studied this bias using the hidden profile task. On such tasks, information known to many of the group members suggests that one alternative, say Option A, is best. However, Option B is definitely the better choice, but all the facts that support Option B are only known to individual groups members-they are not common knowledge in the group. As a result, the group will likely spend most of its time reviewing the factors that favor Option A, and never discover any of its drawbacks. In consequence, groups often perform poorly when working on problems with nonobvious solutions that can only be identified by extensive information sharing ( Stasser & Titus, 1987).

Groupthink

Groupthink helps us blend in and feel accepted and validated but it can also lead to problems. [Image: CC0 Public Domain, https://goo.gl/m25gce]

Groups sometimes make spectacularly bad decisions. In 1961, a special advisory committee to President John F. Kennedy planned and implemented a covert invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs that ended in total disaster. In 1986, NASA carefully, and incorrectly, decided to launch the Challenger space shuttle in temperatures that were too cold.

Irving Janis ( 1982), intrigued by these kinds of blundering groups, carried out a number of case studies of such groups: the military experts that planned the defense of Pearl Harbor; Kennedy's Bay of Pigs planning group; the presidential team that escalated the war in Vietnam. Each group, he concluded, fell prey to a distorted style of thinking that rendered the group members incapable of making a rational decision. Janis labeled this syndrome groupthink: "a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members' strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action" (p. 9).

Janis identified both the telltale symptoms that signal the group is experiencing groupthink and the interpersonal factors that combine to cause groupthink. To Janis, groupthink is a disease that infects healthy groups, rendering them inefficient and unproductive. And like the physician who searches for symptoms that distinguish one disease from another, Janis identified a number of symptoms that should serve to warn members that they may be falling prey to groupthink. These symptoms include overestimating the group's skills and wisdom, biased perceptions and evaluations of other groups and people who are outside of the group, strong conformity pressures within the group, and poor decision-making methods.

Janis also singled out four group-level factors that combine to cause groupthink: cohesion, isolation, biased leadership, and decisional stress.

Cohesion: Groupthink only occurs in cohesive groups. Such groups have many advantages over groups that lack unity. People enjoy their membership much more in cohesive groups, they are less likely to abandon the group, and they work harder in pursuit of the group's goals. But extreme cohesiveness can be dangerous. When cohesiveness intensifies, members become more likely to accept the goals, decisions, and norms of the group without reservation. Conformity pressures also rise as members become reluctant to say or do anything that goes against the grain of the group, and the number of internal disagreements-necessary for good decision making-decreases.

Isolation. Groupthink groups too often work behind closed doors, keeping out of the limelight. They isolate themselves from outsiders and refuse to modify their beliefs to bring them into line with society's beliefs. They avoid leaks by maintaining strict confidentiality and working only with people who are members of their group.

Biased leadership. A biased leader who exerts too much authority over group members can increase conformity pressures and railroad decisions. In groupthink groups, the leader determines the agenda for each meeting, sets limits on discussion, and can even decide who will be heard.

Decisional stress. Groupthink becomes more likely when the group is stressed, particularly by time pressures. When groups are stressed they minimize their discomfort by quickly choosing a plan of action with little argument or dissension. Then, through collective discussion, the group members can rationalize their choice by exaggerating the positive consequences, minimizing the possibility of negative outcomes, concentrating on minor details, and overlooking larger issues.

Even groups that like one another and work well together in most situations can be victims of groupthink or the common knowledge effect. But knowing that these pitfalls exist is the first step to overcoming them. [Image: CC0 Public Domain, https://goo.gl/m25gce]

Most of us belong to at least one group that must make decisions from time to time: a community group that needs to choose a fund-raising project; a union or employee group that must ratify a new contract; a family that must discuss your college plans; or the staff of a high school discussing ways to deal with the potential for violence during football games. Could these kinds of groups experience groupthink? Yes they could, if the symptoms of groupthink discussed above are present, combined with other contributing causal factors, such as cohesiveness, isolation, biased leadership, and stress. To avoid polarization, the common knowledge effect, and groupthink, groups should strive to emphasize open inquiry of all sides of the issue while admitting the possibility of failure. The leaders of the group can also do much to limit groupthink by requiring full discussion of pros and cons, appointing devil's advocates, and breaking the group up into small discussion groups.

If these precautions are taken, your group has a much greater chance of making an informed, rational decision. Furthermore, although your group should review its goals, teamwork, and decision-making strategies, the human side of groups-the strong friendships and bonds that make group activity so enjoyable-shouldn't be overlooked. Groups have instrumental, practical value, but also emotional, psychological value. In groups we find others who appreciate and value us. In groups we gain the support we need in difficult times, but also have the opportunity to influence others. In groups we find evidence of our self-worth, and secure ourselves from the threat of loneliness and despair. For most of us, groups are the secret source of well-being.

Outside Resources

Audio: This American Life. Episode 109 deals with the motivation and excitement of joining with others at summer camp.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/109/notes-on-camp

Audio: This American Life. Episode 158 examines how people act when they are immersed in a large crowd.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/158/mob-mentality

Audio: This American Life. Episode 61 deals with fiascos, many of which are perpetrated by groups.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/61/fiasco

Audio: This American Life. Episode 74 examines how individuals act at conventions, when they join with hundreds or thousands of other people who are similar in terms of their avocations or employment.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/74/conventions

Forsyth, D. (2011). Group Dynamics. In R. Miller, E. Balcetis, S. Burns, D. Daniel, B. Saville, & W. Woody (Eds.), Promoting student engagement: Volume 2: Activities, exercises and demonstrations for psychology courses. (pp. 28-32) Washington, DC: Society for the Teaching of Psychology, American Psychological Association.

http://teachpsych.org/ebooks/pse2011/vol2/index.php

Forsyth, D.R. (n.d.) Group Dynamics: Instructional Resources.

https://facultystaff.richmond.edu/~dforsyth/gd/GDResources2014.pdf

Journal Article: The Dynamogenic Factors in Pacemaking and Competition presents Norman Triplett's original paper on what would eventually be known as social facilitation.

http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Triplett/

Resources for the Teaching of Social Psychology.

http://jfmueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/crow/group.htm

Social Psychology Network Student Activities

http://www.socialpsychology.org/teaching.htm#student-activities

Society for Social and Personality Psychology

http://www.spsp.org

Tablante, C. B., & Fiske, S. T. (2015). Teaching social class. Teaching of Psychology, 42, 184-190. doi:10.1177/0098628315573148 The abstract to the article can be found at the following link, however your library will likely provide you access to the full text version.

http://top.sagepub.com/content/42/2/184.abstract

Video: Flash mobs illustrate the capacity of groups to organize quickly and complete complex tasks. One well-known example of a pseudo-flash mob is the rendition of "Do Re Mi" from the Sound of Music in the Central Station of Antwerp in 2009.

Web: Group Development - This is a website developed by James Atherton that provides detailed information about group development, with application to the lifecycle of a typical college course.

http://www.learningandteaching.info/teaching/group_ development.htm

Web: Group Dynamics- A general repository of links, short articles, and discussions examining groups and group processes, including such topics as crowd behavior, leadership, group structure, and influence.

http://donforsythgroups.wordpress.com/

Web: Stanford Crowd Project - This is a rich resource of information about all things related to crowds, with a particular emphasis on crowds and collective behavior in literature and the arts.

http://press-media.stanford.edu/crowds/main.html

Working Paper: Law of Group Polarization, by Cass Sunstein, is a wide-ranging application of the concept of polarization to a variety of legal and political decisions.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=199668

Discussion Questions

What are the advantages and disadvantages of sociality? Why do people often join groups?

Is self-esteem shaped by your personality qualities or by the value and qualities of groups to which you belong?

In what ways does membership in a group change a person's self-concept and social identity?

What steps would you take if you were to base a self-esteem enrichment program in schools on the sociometer model of self-worth?

If you were a college professor, what would you do to increase the success of in-class learning teams?

What are the key ingredients to transforming a working group into a true team?

Have you ever been part of a group that made a poor decision and, if so, were any of the symptoms of groupthink present in your group?

Vocabulary

Collective self-esteem

Feelings of self-worth that are based on evaluation of relationships with others and membership in social groups.

Common knowledge effect

The tendency for groups to spend more time discussing information that all members know (shared information) and less time examining information that only a few members know (unshared).

Group cohesion

The solidarity or unity of a group resulting from the development of strong and mutual interpersonal bonds among members and group-level forces that unify the group, such as shared commitment to group goals.

Group polarization

The tendency for members of a deliberating group to move to a more extreme position, with the direction of the shift determined by the majority or average of the members' predeliberation preferences.

Groupthink

A set of negative group-level processes, including illusions of invulnerability, self-censorship, and pressures to conform, that occur when highly cohesive groups seek concurrence when making a decision.

Ostracism

Excluding one or more individuals from a group by reducing or eliminating contact with the person, usually by ignoring, shunning, or explicitly banishing them.

Knowledge, expectations, conceptualizations, and other cognitive representations that members of a group have in common pertaining to the group and its members, tasks, procedures, and resources.

Social comparison

The process of contrasting one's personal qualities and outcomes, including beliefs, attitudes, values, abilities, accomplishments, and experiences, to those of other people.

Social facilitation

Improvement in task performance that occurs when people work in the presence of other people.

Social identity theory

A theoretical analysis of group processes and intergroup relations that assumes groups influence their members' self-concepts and self-esteem, particularly when individuals categorize themselves as group members and identify with the group.

Social loafing

The reduction of individual effort exerted when people work in groups compared with when they work alone.

Sociometer model

A conceptual analysis of self-evaluation processes that theorizes self-esteem functions to psychologically monitor of one's degree of inclusion and exclusion in social groups.

Teamwork

The process by which members of the team combine their knowledge, skills, abilities, and other resources through a coordinated series of actions to produce an outcome.

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Authors

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Forsyth, D. R. (2020). The psychology of groups. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. Retrieved from http://noba.to/trfxbkhm

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This module assumes that a thorough understanding of people requires a thorough understanding of groups. Each of us is an autonomous individual seeking our own objectives, yet we are also members of groups-groups that constrain us, guide us, and sustain us.

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An Introduction to the Science of Social Psychology

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An Introduction to the Science of Social Psychology

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Biswas-Diener, R. (2023). An introduction to the science of social psychology. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. Retrieved from http://noba.to/s64y5c2m

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We live in a world where, increasingly, people of all backgrounds have smart phones. In economically developing societies, cellular towers are often less expensive to install than traditional landlines. In many households in industrialized societies, each person has his or her own mobile phone instead of using a shared home phone. As this technology becomes increasingly common, curious researchers have wondered what effect phones might have on relationships. Do you believe that smart phones help foster closer relationships? Or do you believe that smart phones can hinder connections? In a series of studies, researchers have discovered that the mere presence of a mobile phone lying on a table can interfere with relationships. In studies of conversations between both strangers and close friends-conversations occurring in research laboratories and in coffee shops-mobile phones appeared to distract people from connecting with one another. The participants in these studies reported lower conversation quality, lower trust, and lower levels of empathy for the other person ( Przybylski & Weinstein, 2013). This is not to discount the usefulness of mobile phones, of course. It is merely a reminder that they are better used in some situations than they are in others. It is also a real-world example of how social psychology can help produce insights about the ways we understand and interact with one another.

Social psychology is interested in how other people affect our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Researchers study group interactions, the way culture shapes our thinking, and even how technology impacts human relationships. [Image: Matthew G, https://goo.gl/En2JSi, CC BY 2.0, https://goo.gl/BRvSA7]

Social psychology is the branch of psychological science mainly concerned with understanding how the presence of others affects our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Just as clinical psychology focuses on mental disorders and their treatment, and developmental psychology investigates the way people change across their lifespan, social psychology has its own focus. As the name suggests, this science is all about investigating the ways groups function, the costs and benefits of social status, the influences of culture, and all the other psychological processes involving two or more people.

Social psychology is such an exciting science precisely because it tackles issues that are so familiar and so relevant to our everyday life. Humans are "social animals." Like bees and deer, we live together in groups. Unlike those animals, however, people are unique, in that we care a great deal about our relationships. In fact, a classic study of life stress found that the most stressful events in a person's life-the death of a spouse, divorce, and going to jail-are so painful because they entail the loss of relationships ( Holmes & Rahe, 1967). We spend a huge amount of time thinking about and interacting with other people, and researchers are interested in understanding these thoughts and actions. Giving up a seat on the bus for another person is an example of social psychology. So is disliking a person because he is wearing a shirt with the logo of a rival sports team. Flirting, conforming, arguing, trusting, competing-these are all examples of topics that interest social psychology researchers.

At times, science can seem abstract and far removed from the concerns of daily life. When neuroscientists discuss the workings of the anterior cingulate cortex, for example, it might sound important. But the specific parts of the brain and their functions do not always seem directly connected to the stuff you care about: parking tickets, holding hands, or getting a job. Social psychology feels so close to home because it often deals with universal psychological processes to which people can easily relate. For example, people have a powerful need to belong ( Baumeister & Leary, 1995). It doesn't matter if a person is from Israel, Mexico, or the Philippines; we all have a strong need to make friends, start families, and spend time together. We fulfill this need by doing things such as joining teams and clubs, wearing clothing that represents "our group," and identifying ourselves based on national or religious affiliation. It feels good to belong to a group. Research supports this idea. In a study of the most and least happy people, the differentiating factor was not gender, income, or religion; it was having high-quality relationships ( Diener & Seligman, 2002). Even introverts report being happier when they are in social situations ( Pavot, Diener & Fujita, 1990). Further evidence can be found by looking at the negative psychological experiences of people who do not feel they belong. People who feel lonely or isolated are more vulnerable to depression and problems with physical health ( Cacioppo, & Patrick, 2008).

The feelings we experience as members of groups - as teammates, fellow citizens, followers of a particular faith - play a huge role in our identities and in our happiness. [Image: leonardo samrani, https://goo.gl/jHVWXR, CC BY 2.0, https://goo.gl/BRvSA7]

The need to belong is also a useful example of the ways the various aspects of psychology fit together. Psychology is a science that can be sub-divided into specialties such as "abnormal psychology" (the study of mental illness) or "developmental psychology" (the study of how people develop across the life span). In daily life, however, we don't stop and examine our thoughts or behaviors as being distinctly social versus developmental versus personality-based versus clinical. In daily life, these all blend together. For example, the need to belong is rooted in developmental psychology. Developmental psychologists have long paid attention to the importance of attaching to a caregiver, feeling safe and supported during childhood, and the tendency to conform to peer pressure during adolescence. Similarly, clinical psychologists-those who research mental disorders-- have pointed to people feeling a lack of belonging to help explain loneliness, depression, and other psychological pains. In practice, psychologists separate concepts into categories such as "clinical," "developmental," and "social" only out of scientific necessity. It is easier to simplify thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in order to study them. Each psychological sub-discipline has its own unique approaches to research. You may have noticed that this is almost always how psychology is taught, as well. You take a course in personality, another in human sexuality, and a third in gender studies, as if these topics are unrelated. In day-to-day life, however, these distinctions do not actually exist, and there is heavy overlap between the various areas of psychology.

Figure 1 - The levels of analysis in psychology.

In psychology, there are varying levels of analysis. Figure 1 summarizes the different levels at which scientists might understand a single event. Take the example of a toddler watching her mother make a phone call: the toddler is curious, and is using observational learning to teach herself about this machine called a telephone. At the most specific levels of analysis, we might understand that various neurochemical processes are occurring in the toddler's brain. We might be able to use imaging techniques to see that the cerebellum, among other parts of the brain, is activated with electrical energy. If we could "pull back" our scientific lens, we might also be able to gain insight into the toddler's own experience of the phone call. She might be confused, interested, or jealous. Moving up to the next level of analysis, we might notice a change in the toddler's behavior: during the call she furrows her brow, squints her eyes, and stares at her mother and the phone. She might even reach out and grab at the phone. At still another level of analysis, we could see the ways that her relationships enter into the equation. We might observe, for instance, that the toddler frowns and grabs at the phone when her mother uses it, but plays happily and ignores it when her stepbrother makes a call. All of these chemical, emotional, behavioral, and social processes occur simultaneously. None of them is the objective truth. Instead, each offers clues into better understanding what, psychologically speaking, is happening.

Social psychologists attend to all levels of analysis but-historically-this branch of psychology has emphasized the higher levels of analysis. Researchers in this field are drawn to questions related to relationships, groups, and culture. This means that they frame their research hypotheses in these terms. Imagine for a moment that you are a social researcher. In your daily life, you notice that older men on average seem to talk about their feelings less than do younger men. You might want to explore your hypothesis by recording natural conversations between males of different ages. This would allow you to see if there was evidence supporting your original observation. It would also allow you to begin to sift through all the factors that might influence this phenomenon: What happens when an older man talks to a younger man? What happens when an older man talks to a stranger versus his best friend? What happens when two highly educated men interact versus two working class men? Exploring each of these questions focuses on interactions, behavior, and culture rather than on perceptions, hormones, or DNA.

Social psychologists have developed unique methods for studying attitudes and behaviors that help answer questions that may not be possible to answer in a laboratory. Naturalistic observation of real world interactions, for example, would be a method well suited for understanding more about men and how they share their feelings. [Image: Michael Coghlan, https://goo.gl/dGc3JV, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/rxiUsF]

In part, this focus on complex relationships and interactions is one of the things that makes research in social psychology so difficult. High quality research often involves the ability to control the environment, as in the case of laboratory experiments. The research laboratory, however, is artificial, and what happens there may not translate to the more natural circumstances of life. This is why social psychologists have developed their own set of unique methods for studying attitudes and social behavior. For example, they use naturalistic observation to see how people behave when they don't know they are being watched. Whereas people in the laboratory might report that they personally hold no racist views or opinions (biases most people wouldn't readily admit to), if you were to observe how close they sat next to people of other ethnicities while riding the bus, you might discover a behavioral clue to their actual attitudes and preferences.

Social psychology is the study of group processes: how we behave in groups, and how we feel and think about one another. While it is difficult to summarize the many areas of social psychology research, it can be helpful to lump them into major categories as a starting point to wrap our minds around. There is, in reality, no specific number of definitive categories, but for the purpose of illustration, let's use five. Most social psychology research topics fall into one (but sometimes more) of each of these areas:

Attraction

A large amount of study in social psychology has focused on the process of attraction. Think about a young adult going off to college for the first time. He takes an art history course and sits next to a young woman he finds attractive. This feeling raises several interesting questions: Where does the attraction come from? Is it biological or learned? Why do his standards for beauty differ somewhat from those of his best friend? The study of attraction covers a huge range of topics. It can begin with first impressions, then extend to courtship and commitment. It involves the concepts of beauty, sex, and evolution. Attraction researchers might study stalking behavior. They might research divorce or remarriage. They might study changing standards of beauty across decades.

When a study of attractiveness was conducted with Maasai tribal people the researchers found that when participants rated the attractiveness of their friends they used different criteria than when they rated the attractiveness of strangers - a pattern that was also discovered in a sample of people from the United States. [Image: DFID, https://goo.gl/5FfSjt, CC BY 2.0, https://goo.gl/BRvSA7]

In a series of studies focusing on the topic of attraction, researchers were curious how people make judgments of the extent to which the faces of their friends and of strangers are good looking ( Wirtz, Biswas-Diener, Diener & Drogos, 2011). To do this, the researchers showed a set of photographs of faces of young men and women to several assistants who were blind to the research hypothesis. Some of the people in the photos were Caucasian, some were African-American, and some were Maasai, a tribe of traditional people from Kenya. The assistants were asked to rate the various facial features in the photos, including skin smoothness, eye size, prominence of cheekbones, symmetry (how similar the left and the right halves of the face are), and other characteristics. The photos were then shown to the research participants-of the same three ethnicities as the people in the photos-who were asked to rate the faces for overall attractiveness. Interestingly, when rating the faces of strangers, white people, Maasai, and African-Americans were in general agreement about which faces were better looking. Not only that, but there was high consistency in which specific facial features were associated with being good looking. For instance, across ethnicities and cultures, everyone seemed to find smooth skin more attractive than blemished skin. Everyone seemed to also agree that larger chins made men more attractive, but not women.

Then came an interesting discovery. The researchers found that Maasai tribal people agreed about the faces of strangers-but not about the faces of people they knew! Two people might look at the same photo of someone they knew; one would give a thumbs up for attractiveness, the other one, not so much. It appeared that friends were using some other standard of beauty than simply nose, eyes, skin, and other facial features. To explore this further, the researchers conducted a second study in the United States. They brought university students into their laboratory in pairs. Each pair were friends; some were same-sex friends and some were opposite-sex friends. They had their photographs taken and were then asked to privately rate each other's attractiveness, along with photos of other participants whom they did not know (strangers). Friends were also asked to rate each other on personality traits, including "admirable," "generous," "likable," "outgoing," "sensitive," and "warm."

In doing this, the researchers discovered two things. First, they found the exact same pattern as in the earlier study: when the university students rated strangers, they focused on actual facial features, such as skin smoothness and large eyes, to make their judgments (whether or not they realized it). But when it came to the hotness-factor of their friends, these features appeared not to be very important. Suddenly, likable personality characteristics were a better predictor of who was considered good looking. This makes sense. Attractiveness is, in part, an evolutionary and biological process. Certain features such as smooth skin are signals of health and reproductive fitness-something especially important when scoping out strangers. Once we know a person, however, it is possible to swap those biological criteria for psychological ones. People tend to be attracted not just to muscles and symmetrical faces but also to kindness and generosity. As more information about a person's personality becomes available, it becomes the most important aspect of a person's attractiveness.

Understanding how attraction works is more than an intellectual exercise; it can also lead to better interventions. Insights from studies on attraction can find their way into public policy conversations, couples therapy, and sex education programs.

Attitudes

Social psychologists are interested in finding ways to apply their research to improve the lives of individuals and benefit communities and society as a whole. For example researchers are looking at ways to change the general public's attitudes about stigmatized groups such as the homeless. [Image: Sascha Kohlmann, http://goo.gl/L436hN, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/rxiUsF]

Social psychology shares with its intellectual cousins sociology and political science an interest in attitudes. Attitudes are opinions, feelings, and beliefs about a person, concept, or group. People hold attitudes about all types of things: the films they see, political issues, and what constitutes a good date. Social psychology researchers are interested in what attitudes people hold, where these attitudes come from, and how they change over time. Researchers are especially interested in social attitudes people hold about categories of people, such as the elderly, military veterans, or people with mental disabilities.

Among the most studied topics in attitude research are stereotyping and prejudice. Although people often use these words interchangeably, they are actually different concepts. Stereotyping is a way of using information shortcuts about a group to effectively navigate social situations or make decisions. For instance, you might hold a stereotype that elderly people are physically slower and frailer than twenty-year-olds. If so, you are more likely to treat interactions with the elderly in a different manner than interactions with younger people. Although you might delight in jumping on your friend's back, punching a buddy in the arm, or jumping out and scaring a friend you probably do not engage in these behaviors with the elderly. Stereotypical information may or may not be correct. Also, stereotypical information may be positive or negative. Regardless of accuracy, all people use stereotypes, because they are efficient and inescapable ways to deal with huge amounts of social information. It is important to keep in mind, however, that stereotypes, even if they are correct in general, likely do not apply to every member of the group. As a result, it can seem unfair to judge an individual based on perceived group norms.

Prejudice, on the other hand, refers to how a person feels about an individual based on their group membership. For example, someone with a prejudice against tattoos may feel uncomfortable sitting on the metro next to a young man with multiple, visible tattoos. In this case, the person is pre-judging the man with tattoos based on group members (people with tattoos) rather than getting to know the man as an individual. Like stereotypes, prejudice can be positive or negative.

Discrimination occurs when a person is biased against an individual, simply because of the individual's membership in a social category. For instance, if you were to learn that a person has gone to rehabilitation for alcohol treatment, it might be unfair to treat him or her as untrustworthy. You might hold a stereotype that people who have been involved with drugs are untrustworthy or that they have an arrest record. Discrimination would come when you act on that stereotype by, for example, refusing to hire the person for a job for which they are otherwise qualified. Understanding the psychological mechanisms of problems like prejudice can be the first step in solving them.

Social psychology focuses on basic processes, but also on applications. That is, researchers are interested in ways to make the world a better place, so they look for ways to put their discoveries into constructive practice. This can be clearly seen in studies on attitude change. In such experiments, researchers are interested in how people can overcome negative attitudes and feel more empathy towards members of other groups. Take, for example, a study by Daniel Batson and his colleagues ( 1997) on attitudes about people from stigmatized groups. In particular, the researchers were curious how college students in their study felt about homeless people. They had students listen to a recording of a fictitious homeless man-Harold Mitchell-describing his life. Half of the participants were told to be objective and fair in their consideration of his story. The other half were instructed to try to see life through Harold's eyes and imagine how he felt. After the recording finished, the participants rated their attitudes toward homeless people in general. They addressed attitudes such as "Most homeless people could get a job if they wanted to," or "Most homeless people choose to live that way." It turns out that when people are instructed to have empathy-to try to see the world through another person's eyes-it gives them not only more empathy for that individual, but also for the group as a whole. In the Batson et al. experiment ( 1997), the high empathy participants reported a favorable rating of homeless people than did those participants in the low empathy condition.

Studies like these are important because they reveal practical possibilities for creating a more positive society. In this case, the results tell us that it is possible for people to change their attitudes and look more favorably on people they might otherwise avoid or be prejudiced against. In fact, it appears that it takes relatively little-simply the effort to see another's point of view-to nudge people toward being a bit kinder and more generous toward one another. In a world where religious and political divisions are highly publicized, this type of research might be an important step toward working together.

Peace & Conflict

Why do we fight? How do we fight? What factors contribute to successful reconciliation? Social psychologists study conflict, aggression, and violence and their research leads to many real-world applications in areas such as international relations and clinical therapy. [Image: David Shankbone, http://goo.gl/r6DWkc, CC BY 2.0, https://goo.gl/BRvSA7]

Social psychologists are also interested in peace and conflict. They research conflicts ranging from the small-such as a spat between lovers-to the large-such as wars between nations. Researchers are interested in why people fight, how they fight, and what the possible costs and benefits of fighting are. In particular, social psychologists are interested in the mental processes associated with conflict and reconciliation. They want to understand how emotions, thoughts, and sense of identity play into conflicts, as well as making up afterward.

Take, for instance, a 1996 study by Dov Cohen and his colleagues. They were interested in people who come from a " culture of honor"-that is, a cultural background that emphasizes personal or family reputation and social status. Cohen and his colleagues realized that cultural forces influence why people take offense and how they behave when others offend them. To investigate how people from a culture of honor react to aggression, the Cohen research team invited dozens of university students into the laboratory, half of whom were from a culture of honor. In their experiment, they had a research confederate "accidentally" bump the research participant as they passed one another in the hallway, then say "asshole" quietly. They discovered that people from the Northern United States were likely to laugh off the incident with amusement (only 35% became angry), while 85% of folks from the Southern United States-a culture of honor region-became angry.

In a follow-up study, the researchers were curious as to whether people from cultures of honor would overestimate the likelihood of violent reactions in others ( Vandello, Cohen & Ransom, 2008). They presented participants with a description of a scenario in a bar, in which someone spilled a beer on another person. The people from honor cultures did not differ from others in their personal likelihood of responding aggressively. However, the people from cultures of honor said they would expect their peers-other people from their culture -to act violently even though they, themselves, would not. This follow-up study provides insights into the links between emotions and social behavior. It also sheds light on the ways that people perceive certain groups.

This line of research is just a single example of how social psychologists study the forces that give rise to aggression and violence. Just as in the case of attitudes, a better understanding of these forces might help researchers, therapists, and policy makers intervene more effectively in conflicts.

Social Influence

Take a moment and think about television commercials. How influenced do you think you are by the ads you see? A very common perception voiced among psychology students is "Other people are influenced by ads, but not me!" To some degree, it is an unsettling thought that outside influences might sway us to spend money on, make decisions about, or even feel what they want us to. Nevertheless, none of us can escape social influence. Perhaps, more than any other topic, social influence is the heart and soul of social psychology. Our most famous studies deal with the ways that other people affect our behavior; they are studies on conformity-being persuaded to give up our own opinions and go along with the group-and obedience -following orders or requests from people in authority.

Many of our most common everyday-activities - eating in a restaurant for example - involve instances of social influence. We may not even be aware that our behaviors are being guided by outside forces of persuasion, but none of us is immune to social influence. [Image: Alan Light, http://goo.gl/ZdxASW, CC BY 2.0, http://goo.gl/T4qgSp]

Among the most researched topics is persuasion. Persuasion is the act of delivering a particular message so that it influences a person's behavior in a desired way. Your friends try to persuade you to join their group for lunch. Your parents try to persuade you to go to college and to take your studies seriously. Doctors try to persuade you to eat a healthy diet or exercise more often. And, yes, advertisers try to persuade you also. They showcase their products in a way that makes them seem useful, affordable, reliable, or cool.

One example of persuasion can be seen in a very common situation: tipping the serving staff at a restaurant. In some societies, especially in the United States, tipping is an important part of dining. As you probably know, servers hope to get a large tip in exchange for good service. One group of researchers was curious what servers do to coax diners into giving bigger tips. Occasionally, for instance, servers write a personal message of thanks on the bill. In a series of studies, the researchers were interested in how gift-giving would affect tipping. First, they had two male waiters in New York deliver a piece of foil-wrapped chocolate along with the bill at the end of the meal. Half of 66 diners received the chocolate and the other half did not. When patrons were given the unexpected sweet, they tipped, on average, 2% more ( Strohmetz, Rind, Fisher & Lynn 2002).

In a follow-up study, the researchers changed the conditions. In this case, two female servers brought a small basket of assorted chocolates to the table ( Strohmetz et al., 2002). In one research condition, they told diners they could pick two sweets; in a separate research condition, however, they told diners they could pick one sweet, but then-as the diners were getting ready to leave-the waiters returned and offered them a second sweet. In both situations, the diners received the same number of sweets, but in the second condition the waiters appeared to be more generous, as if they were making a personal decision to give an additional little gift. In both of these conditions the average amount of tips went up, but tips increased a whopping 21% in the "very generous" condition. The researchers concluded that giving a small gift puts people in the frame of mind to give a little something back, a principle called reciprocity.

Research on persuasion is very useful. Although it is tempting to dismiss it as a mere attempt by advertisers to get you to purchase goods and services, persuasion is used for many purposes. For example, medical professionals often hope people will donate their organs after they die. Donated organs can be used to train medical students, advance scientific discovery, or save other people's lives through transplantation. For years, doctors and researchers tried to persuade people to donate, but relatively few people did. Then, policy makers offered an organ donation option for people getting their driver's license, and donations rose. When people received their license, they could tick a box that signed them up for the organ donation program. By coupling the decision to donate organs with a more common event-getting a license-policy makers were able to increase the number of donors. Then, they had the further idea of "nudging" people to donate-by making them "opt out" rather than "opt in." Now, people are automatically signed up to donate organs unless they make the effort to check a box indicating they don't want to. By making organ donation the default, more people have donated and more lives have been saved. This is a small but powerful example of how we can be persuaded to behave certain ways, often without even realizing what is influencing us.

Social Cognition

You, me, all of us-we spend much of our time thinking about other people. We make guesses as to their honesty, their motives, and their opinions. Social cognition is the term for the way we think about the social world and how we perceive others. In some sense, we are continually telling a story in our own minds about the people around us. We struggle to understand why a date failed to show up, whether we can trust the notes of a fellow student, or if our friends are laughing at our jokes because we are funny or if they are just being nice. When we make educated guesses about the efforts or motives of others, this is called social attribution. We are "attributing" their behavior to a particular cause. For example, we might attribute the failure of a date to arrive on time to car trouble, forgetfulness, or the wrong-headed possibility that we are not worthy of being loved.

"Am I the only one who knows how to drive? The roads are full of maniacs and idiots today!" If you've ever had these feelings while behind the wheel you likely have experienced what psychologists call the fundamental attribution error. [Image: seppschanz, http://goo.gl/eVkDIs, CC BY-NC 2.0, http://goo.gl/iF4hmM]

Because the information we have regarding other people's motives and behavior is not as complete as our insights into our own, we are likely to make unreliable judgments of them. Imagine, for example, that a person on the freeway speeds up behind you, follows dangerously close, then swerves around and passes you illegally. As the driver speeds off into the distance you might think to yourself, "What a jerk!" You are beginning to tell yourself a story about why that person behaved that way. Because you don't have any information about his or her situation-rushing to the hospital, or escaping a bank robbery?-you default to judgments of character: clearly, that driver is impatient, aggressive, and downright rude. If you were to do the exact same thing, however-cut someone off on the freeway-you would be less likely to attribute the same behavior to poor character, and more likely to chalk it up to the situation. (Perhaps you were momentarily distracted by the radio.) The consistent way we attribute people's actions to personality traits while overlooking situational influences is called the fundamental attribution error.

The fundamental attribution error can also emerge in other ways. It can include groups we belong to versus opposing groups. Imagine, for example, that you are a fan of rugby. Your favorite team is the All Blacks, from New Zealand. In one particular match, you notice how unsporting the opposing team is. They appear to pout and seem to commit an unusually high number of fouls. Their fouling behavior is clearly linked to their character; they are mean people! Yet, when a player from the All Blacks is called for a foul, you may be inclined to see that as a bad call by the referee or a product of the fact that your team is pressured from a tough schedule and a number of injuries to their star players. This mental process allows a person to maintain his or her own high self-esteem while dismissing the bad behavior of others.

People are more connected to one another today than at any time in history. For the first time, it is easy to have thousands of acquaintances on social media. It is easier than ever before to travel and meet people from different cultures. Businesses, schools, religious groups, political parties, and governments interact more than they ever have. For the first time, people in greater numbers live clustered in cities than live spread out across rural settings. These changes have psychological consequences. Over the last hundred years, we have seen dramatic shifts in political engagement, ethnic relations, and even the very definition of family itself.

Social psychologists are scientists who are interested in understanding the ways we relate to one another, and the impact these relationships have on us, individually and collectively. Not only can social psychology research lead to a better understanding of personal relationships, but it can lead to practical solutions for many social ills. Lawmakers, teachers and parents, therapists, and policy makers can all use this science to help develop societies with less conflict and more social support.

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An Introduction to the Science of Social Psychology

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The science of social psychology investigates the ways other people affect our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It is an exciting field of study because it is so familiar and relevant to our day-to-day lives. Social psychologists study a wide range of topics that can roughly be grouped into 5 categories: attraction, attitudes, peace & conflict, social influence, and social cognition.

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Hess, Y. D. & Pickett, C. L. (2023). Social cognition and attitudes. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. Retrieved from http://noba.to/6xanb4j9

This work is licensed under CC BY NC SA Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike 4.0 international license. You are free to share and adapt the work with an attribution.

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Yanine D. Hess and Cynthia L. Pickett
University of California, Davis

Social cognition is the area of social psychology that examines how people perceive and think about their social world. This module provides an overview of key topics within social cognition and attitudes, including judgmental heuristics, social prediction, affective and motivational influences on judgment, and explicit and implicit attitudes.

Learning Objectives

Learn how we simplify the vast array of information in the world in a way that allows us to make decisions and navigate our environments efficiently.

Understand some of the social factors that influence how we reason.

Determine if our reasoning processes are always conscious, and if not, what some of the effects of automatic/nonconscious cognition are.

Understand the difference between explicit and implicit attitudes, and the implications they have for behavior.

Imagine you are walking toward your classroom and you see your teacher and a fellow student you know to be disruptive in class whispering together in the hallway. As you approach, both of them quit talking, nod to you, and then resume their urgent whispers after you pass by. What would you make of this scene? What story might you tell yourself to help explain this interesting and unusual behavior?

People know intuitively that we can better understand others' behavior if we know the thoughts contributing to the behavior. In this example, you might guess that your teacher harbors several concerns about the disruptive student, and therefore you believe their whispering is related to this. The area of social psychology that focuses on how people think about others and about the social world is called social cognition.

Researchers of social cognition study how people make sense of themselves and others to make judgments, form attitudes, and make predictions about the future. Much of the research in social cognition has demonstrated that humans are adept at distilling large amounts of information into smaller, more usable chunks, and that we possess many cognitive tools that allow us to efficiently navigate our environments. This research has also illuminated many social factors that can influence these judgments and predictions. Not only can our past experiences, expectations, motivations, and moods impact our reasoning, but many of our decisions and behaviors are driven by unconscious processes and implicit attitudes we are unaware of having. The goal of this module is to highlight the mental tools we use to navigate and make sense of our complex social world, and describe some of the emotional, motivational, and cognitive factors that affect our reasoning.

Consider how much information you come across on any given day; just looking around your bedroom, there are hundreds of objects, smells, and sounds. How do we simplify all this information to attend to what is important and make decisions quickly and efficiently? In part, we do it by forming schemas of the various people, objects, situations, and events we encounter. A schema is a mental model, or representation, of any of the various things we come across in our daily lives. A schema (related to the word schematic) is kind of like a mental blueprint for how we expect something to be or behave. It is an organized body of general information or beliefs we develop from direct encounters, as well as from secondhand sources. Rather than spending copious amounts of time learning about each new individual object (e.g., each new dog we see), we rely on our schemas to tell us that a newly encountered dog probably barks, likes to fetch, and enjoys treats. In this way, our schemas greatly reduce the amount of cognitive work we need to do and allow us to "go beyond the information given" ( Bruner, 1957).

We can hold schemas about almost anything-individual people ( person schemas), ourselves ( self-schemas), and recurring events ( event schemas, or scripts). Each of these types of schemas is useful in its own way. For example, event schemas allow us to navigate new situations efficiently and seamlessly. A script for dining at a restaurant would indicate that one should wait to be seated by the host or hostess, that food should be ordered from a menu, and that one is expected to pay the check at the end of the meal. Because the majority of dining situations conform to this general format, most diners just need to follow their mental scripts to know what to expect and how they should behave, greatly reducing their cognitive workload.

Does the person in this image fit reasonably into your heuristic of a librarian? How representative is he of that category? [Image: University Library of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, https://goo.gl/LxQTuD, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/Toc0ZF]

Another important way we simplify our social world is by employing heuristics, which are mental shortcuts that reduce complex problem-solving to more simple, rule-based decisions. For example, have you ever had a hard time trying to decide on a book to buy, then you see one ranked highly on a book review website? Although selecting a book to purchase can be a complicated decision, you might rely on the "rule of thumb" that a recommendation from a credible source is likely a safe bet-so you buy it. A common instance of using heuristics is when people are faced with judging whether an object belongs to a particular category. For example, you would easily classify a pit bull into the category of "dog." But what about a coyote? Or a fox? A plastic toy dog? In order to make this classification (and many others), people may rely on the representativeness heuristic to arrive at a quick decision ( Kahneman & Tversky, 1972, 1973). Rather than engaging in an in-depth consideration of the object's attributes, one can simply judge the likelihood of the object belonging to a category, based on how similar it is to one's mental representation of that category. For example, a perceiver may quickly judge a female to be an athlete based on the fact that the female is tall, muscular, and wearing sports apparel-which fits the perceiver's representation of an athlete's characteristics.

In many situations, an object's similarity to a category is a good indicator of its membership in that category, and an individual using the representativeness heuristic will arrive at a correct judgment. However, when base-rate information (e.g., the actual percentage of athletes in the area and therefore the probability that this person actually is an athlete) conflicts with representativeness information, use of this heuristic is less appropriate. For example, if asked to judge whether a quiet, thin man who likes to read poetry is a classics professor at a prestigious university or a truck driver, the representativeness heuristic might lead one to guess he's a professor. However, considering the base-rates, we know there are far fewer university classics professors than truck drivers. Therefore, although the man fits the mental image of a professor, the actual probability of him being one (considering the number of professors out there) is lower than that of being a truck driver.

In addition to judging whether things belong to particular categories, we also attempt to judge the likelihood that things will happen. A commonly employed heuristic for making this type of judgment is called the availability heuristic. People use the availability heuristic to evaluate the frequency or likelihood of an event based on how easily instances of it come to mind ( Tversky & Kahneman, 1973). Because more commonly occurring events are more likely to be cognitively accessible (or, they come to mind more easily), use of the availability heuristic can lead to relatively good approximations of frequency. However, the heuristic can be less reliable when judging the frequency of relatively infrequent but highly accessible events. For example, do you think there are more words that begin with "k," or more that have "k" as the third letter? To figure this out, you would probably make a list of words that start with "k" and compare it to a list of words with "k" as the third letter. Though such a quick test may lead you to believe there are more words that begin with "k," the truth is that there are 3 times as many words that have "k" as the third letter ( Schwarz et al., 1991). In this case, words beginning with "k" are more readily available to memory (i.e., more accessible), so they seem to be more numerous. Another example is the very common fear of flying: dying in a plane crash is extremely rare, but people often overestimate the probability of it occurring because plane crashes tend to be highly memorable and publicized.

In summary, despite the vast amount of information we are bombarded with on a daily basis, the mind has an entire kit of "tools" that allows us to navigate that information efficiently. In addition to category and frequency judgments, another common mental calculation we perform is predicting the future. We rely on our predictions about the future to guide our actions. When deciding what entrée to select for dinner, we may ask ourselves, "How happy will I be if I choose this over that?" The answer we arrive at is an example of a future prediction. In the next section, we examine individuals' ability to accurately predict others' behaviors, as well as their own future thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and how these predictions can impact their decisions.

Whenever we face a decision, we predict our future behaviors or feelings in order to choose the best course of action. If you have a paper due in a week and have the option of going out to a party or working on the paper, the decision of what to do rests on a few things: the amount of time you predict you will need to write the paper, your prediction of how you will feel if you do poorly on the paper, and your prediction of how harshly the professor will grade it.

In general, we make predictions about others quickly, based on relatively little information. Research on "thin-slice judgments" has shown that perceivers are able to make surprisingly accurate inferences about another person's emotional state, personality traits, and even sexual orientation based on just snippets of information-for example, a 10-second video clip ( Ambady, Bernieri, & Richeson, 2000; Ambady, Hallahan, & Conner, 1999; Ambady & Rosenthal, 1993). Furthermore, these judgments are predictive of the target's future behaviors. For example, one study found that students' ratings of a teacher's warmth, enthusiasm, and attentiveness from a 30-second video clip strongly predicted that teacher's final student evaluations after an entire semester ( Ambady & Rosenthal, 1993). As might be expected, the more information there is available, the more accurate many of these judgments become ( Carney, Colvin, & Hall, 2007).

Although we can be reasonably certain that a winning lottery ticket will make us feel good, we tend to overestimate both how good we'll feel and for how long. [Image: CC0 Public Domain, https://goo.gl/m25gce]

Because we seem to be fairly adept at making predictions about others, one might expect predictions about the self to be foolproof, given the considerable amount of information one has about the self compared to others. To an extent, research has supported this conclusion. For example, our own predictions of our future academic performance are more accurate than peers' predictions of our performance, and self-expressed interests better predict occupational choice than career inventories ( Shrauger & Osberg, 1981). Yet, it is not always the case that we hold greater insight into ourselves. While our own assessment of our personality traits does predict certain behavioral tendencies better than peer assessment of our personality, for certain behaviors, peer reports are more accurate than self-reports ( Kolar, Funder, & Colvin, 1996; Vazire, 2010). Similarly, although we are generally aware of our knowledge, abilities, and future prospects, our perceptions are often overly positive, and we display overconfidence in their accuracy and potential ( Metcalfe, 1998). For example, we tend to underestimate how much time it will take us to complete a task, whether it is writing a paper, finishing a project at work, or building a bridge-a phenomenon known as the planning fallacy ( Buehler, Griffin, & Ross, 1994). The planning fallacy helps explain why so many college students end up pulling all-nighters to finish writing assignments or study for exams. The tasks simply end up taking longer than expected. On the positive side, the planning fallacy can also lead individuals to pursue ambitious projects that may turn out to be worthwhile. That is, if they had accurately predicted how much time and work it would have taken them, they may have never started it in the first place.

The other important factor that affects decision-making is our ability to predict how we will feel about certain outcomes. Not only do we predict whether we will feel positively or negatively, we also make predictions about how strongly and for how long we will feel that way. Research demonstrates that these predictions of one's future feelings-known as affective forecasting-are accurate in some ways but limited in others ( Gilbert & Wilson, 2007). We are adept at predicting whether a future event or situation will make us feel positively or negatively ( Wilson & Gilbert, 2003), but we often incorrectly predict the strength or duration of those emotions. For example, you may predict that if your favorite sports team loses an important match, you will be devastated. Although you're probably right that you will feel negative (and not positive) emotions, will you be able to accurately estimate how negative you'll feel? What about how long those negative feelings will last?

Predictions about future feelings are influenced by the impact bias : the tendency for a person to overestimate the intensity of their future feelings. For example, by comparing people's estimates of how they expected to feel after a specific event to their actual feelings after the event, research has shown that people generally overestimate how badly they will feel after a negative event-such as losing a job-and they also overestimate how happy they will feel after a positive event-such as winning the lottery ( Brickman, Coates, & Janoff-Bullman, 1978). Another factor in these estimations is the durability bias. The durability bias refers to the tendency for people to overestimate how long (or, the duration) positive and negative events will affect them. This bias is much greater for predictions regarding negative events than positive events, and occurs because people are generally unaware of the many psychological mechanisms that help us adapt to and cope with negative events ( Gilbert, Pinel, Wilson, Blumberg, & Wheatley, 1998; Wilson, Wheatley, Meyers, Gilbert, & Axsom, 2000).

In summary, individuals form impressions of themselves and others, make predictions about the future, and use these judgments to inform their decisions. However, these judgments are shaped by our tendency to view ourselves in an overly positive light and our inability to appreciate our habituation to both positive and negative events. In the next section, we will discuss how motivations, moods, and desires also shape social judgment.

Although we may believe we are always capable of rational and objective thinking (for example, when we methodically weigh the pros and cons of two laundry detergents in an unemotional-i.e., "cold"-manner), our reasoning is often influenced by our motivations and mood. Hot cognition refers to the mental processes that are influenced by desires and feelings. For example, imagine you receive a poor grade on a class assignment. In this situation, your ability to reason objectively about the quality of your assignment may be limited by your anger toward the teacher, upset feelings over the bad grade, and your motivation to maintain your belief that you are a good student. In this sort of scenario, we may want the situation to turn out a particular way or our belief to be the truth. When we have these directional goals, we are motivated to reach a particular outcome or judgment and do not process information in a cold, objective manner.

Motivated skepticism is a bias that can easily impact our views of political candidates or issues. It may be more difficult to objectively evaluate the merits of a political argument if it comes from someone we don't expect to vote for. [Image: Senado Federal, https://goo.gl/slEPEv, CC BY-NC 2.0, https://goo.gl/VnKlK8]

Directional goals can bias our thinking in many ways, such as leading to motivated skepticism, whereby we are skeptical of evidence that goes against what we want to believe despite the strength of the evidence ( Ditto & Lopez, 1992). For example, individuals trust medical tests less if the results suggest they have a deficiency compared to when the results suggest they are healthy. Through this motivated skepticism, people often continue to believe what they want to believe, even in the face of nearly incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.

There are also situations in which we do not have wishes for a particular outcome but our goals bias our reasoning, anyway. For example, being motivated to reach an accurate conclusion can influence our reasoning processes by making us more cautious-leading to indecision. In contrast, sometimes individuals are motivated to make a quick decision, without being particularly concerned about the quality of it. Imagine trying to choose a restaurant with a group of friends when you're really hungry. You may choose whatever's nearby without caring if the restaurant is the best or not. This need for closure (the desire to come to a firm conclusion) is often induced by time constraints (when a decision needs to be made quickly) as well as by individual differences in the need for closure ( Webster & Kruglanski, 1997). Some individuals are simply more uncomfortable with ambiguity than others, and are thus more motivated to reach clear, decisive conclusions.

Just as our goals and motivations influence our reasoning, our moods and feelings also shape our thinking process and ultimate decisions. Many of our decisions are based in part on our memories of past events, and our retrieval of memories is affected by our current mood. For example, when you are sad, it is easier to recall the sad memory of your dog's death than the happy moment you received the dog. This tendency to recall memories similar in valence to our current mood is known as mood-congruent memory ( Blaney, 1986; Bower 1981, 1991; DeSteno, Petty, Wegener, & Rucker, 2000; Forgas, Bower, & Krantz, 1984; Schwarz, Strack, Kommer, & Wagner, 1987). The mood we were in when the memory was recorded becomes a retrieval cue; our present mood primes these congruent memories, making them come to mind more easily ( Fiedler, 2001). Furthermore, because the availability of events in our memory can affect their perceived frequency (the availability heuristic), the biased retrieval of congruent memories can then impact the subsequent judgments we make ( Tversky & Kahneman, 1973). For example, if you are retrieving many sad memories, you might conclude that you have had a tough, depressing life.

In addition to our moods influencing the specific memories we retrieve, our moods can also influence the broader judgments we make. This sometimes leads to inaccuracies when our current mood is irrelevant to the judgment at hand. In a classic study demonstrating this effect, researchers found that study participants rated themselves as less-satisfied with their lives in general if they were asked on a day when it happened to be raining vs. sunny ( Schwarz & Clore, 1983). However, this occurred only if the participants were not aware that the weather might be influencing their mood. In essence, participants were in worse moods on rainy days than sunny days, and, if unaware of the weather's effect on their mood, they incorrectly used their mood as evidence of their overall life satisfaction.

In summary, our mood and motivations can influence both the way we think and the decisions we ultimately make. Mood can shape our thinking even when the mood is irrelevant to the judgment, and our motivations can influence our thinking even if we have no particular preference about the outcome. Just as we might be unaware of how our reasoning is influenced by our motives and moods, research has found that our behaviors can be determined by unconscious processes rather than intentional decisions, an idea we will explore in the next section.

Do we actively choose and control all our behaviors or do some of these behaviors occur automatically? A large body of evidence now suggests that many of our behaviors are, in fact, automatic. A behavior or process is considered automatic if it is unintentional, uncontrollable, occurs outside of conscious awareness, or is cognitively efficient ( Bargh & Chartrand, 1999). A process may be considered automatic even if it does not have all these features; for example, driving is a fairly automatic process, but is clearly intentional. Processes can become automatic through repetition, practice, or repeated associations. Staying with the driving example: although it can be very difficult and cognitively effortful at the start, over time it becomes a relatively automatic process, and aspects of it can occur outside conscious awareness.

Our tendency to subtly mimic the people we interact with is largely an unconscious behavior. [Image: Susan Sermoneta, https://goo.gl/6yQXYp, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/Toc0ZF]

In addition to practice leading to the learning of automatic behaviors, some automatic processes, such as fear responses, appear to be innate. For example, people quickly detect negative stimuli, such as negative words, even when those stimuli are presented subliminally ( Dijksterhuis & Aarts, 2003; Pratto & John, 1991). This may represent an evolutionarily adaptive response that makes individuals more likely to detect danger in their environment. Other innate automatic processes may have evolved due to their pro-social outcomes. The chameleon effect-where individuals nonconsciously mimic the postures, mannerisms, facial expressions, and other behaviors of their interaction partners-is an example of how people may engage in certain behaviors without conscious intention or awareness ( Chartrand & Bargh, 1999). For example, have you ever noticed that you've picked up some of the habits of your friends? Over time, but also in brief encounters, we will nonconsciously mimic those around us because of the positive social effects of doing so. That is, automatic mimicry has been shown to lead to more positive social interactions and to increase liking between the mimicked person and the mimicking person.

When concepts and behaviors have been repeatedly associated with each other, one of them can be primed-i.e., made more cognitively accessible-by exposing participants to the (strongly associated) other one. For example, by presenting participants with the concept of a doctor, associated concepts such as "nurse" or "stethoscope" are primed. As a result, participants recognize a word like "nurse" more quickly ( Meyer, & Schvaneveldt, 1971). Similarly, stereotypes can automatically prime associated judgments and behaviors. Stereotypes are our general beliefs about a group of people and, once activated, they may guide our judgments outside of conscious awareness. Similar to schemas, stereotypes involve a mental representation of how we expect a person will think and behave. For example, someone's mental schema for women may be that they're caring, compassionate, and maternal; however, a stereotype would be that all women are examples of this schema. As you know, assuming all people are a certain way is not only wrong but insulting, especially if negative traits are incorporated into a schema and subsequent stereotype.

In a now classic study, Patricia Devine ( 1989) primed study participants with words typically associated with Blacks (e.g., "blues," "basketball") in order to activate the stereotype of Blacks. Devine found that study participants who were primed with the Black stereotype judged a target's ambiguous behaviors as being more hostile (a trait stereotypically associated with Blacks) than nonprimed participants. Research in this area suggests that our social context-which constantly bombards us with concepts-may prime us to form particular judgments and influence our thoughts and behaviors.

In summary, there are many cognitive processes and behaviors that occur outside of our awareness and despite our intentions. Because automatic thoughts and behaviors do not require the same level of cognitive processing as conscious, deliberate thinking and acting, automaticity provides an efficient way for individuals to process and respond to the social world. However, this efficiency comes at a cost, as unconsciously held stereotypes and attitudes can sometimes influence us to behave in unintended ways. We will discuss the consequences of both consciously and unconsciously held attitudes in the next section.

When we encounter a new object or person, we often form an attitude toward it (him/her). An attitude is a "psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor" ( Eagly & Chaiken, 1993, p. 1). In essence, our attitudes are our general evaluations of things (i.e., do you regard this thing positively or negatively?) that can bias us toward having a particular response to it. For example, a negative attitude toward mushrooms would predispose you to avoid them and think negatively of them in other ways. This bias can be long- or short-term and can be overridden by another experience with the object. Thus, if you encounter a delicious mushroom dish in the future, your negative attitude could change to a positive one.

Traditionally, attitudes have been measured through explicit attitude measures, in which participants are directly asked to provide their attitudes toward various objects, people, or issues (e.g., a survey).

The explicit attitudes expressed by voters are used to predict the outcomes of elections, however some people who respond to opinion questions that involve controversial issues may hide their true attitudes. [Image: SueWalkerWhite, https://goo.gl/1jL4WP, CC BY-NC 2.0, https://goo.gl/VnKlK8]

For example, in a semantic-differential scale, respondents are asked to provide evaluations of an attitude object using a series of negative to positive response scales-which have something like "unpleasant" at one end of the scale and "pleasant" at the other ( Osgood, Suci, & Tannenbaum, 1957). In a Likert scale, respondents are asked to indicate their agreement level with various evaluative statements, such as, "I believe that psychology is the most interesting major" ( Likert, 1932). Here, participants mark their selection between something like "strongly disagree" and "strongly agree." These explicit measures of attitudes can be used to predict people's actual behavior, but there are limitations to them. For one thing, individuals aren't always aware of their true attitudes, because they're either undecided or haven't given a particular issue much thought. Furthermore, even when individuals are aware of their attitudes, they might not want to admit to them, such as when holding a certain attitude is viewed negatively by their culture. For example, sometimes it can be difficult to measure people's true opinions on racial issues, because participants fear that expressing their true attitudes will be viewed as socially unacceptable. Thus, explicit attitude measures may be unreliable when asking about controversial attitudes or attitudes that are not widely accepted by society.

In order to avoid some of these limitations, many researchers use more subtle or covert ways of measuring attitudes that do not suffer from such self-presentation concerns ( Fazio & Olson, 2003). An implicit attitude is an attitude that a person does not verbally or overtly express. For example, someone may have a positive, explicit attitude toward his job; however, nonconsciously, he may have a lot of negative associations with it (e.g., having to wake up early, the long commute, the office heating is broken) which results in an implicitly negative attitude. To learn what a person's implicit attitude is, you have to use implicit measures of attitudes. These measures infer the participant's attitude rather than having the participant explicitly report it. Many implicit measures accomplish this by recording the time it takes a participant (i.e., the reaction time) to label or categorize an attitude object (i.e., the person, concept, or object of interest) as positive or negative. For example, the faster someone categorizes his or her job (measured in milliseconds) as negative compared to positive, the more negative the implicit attitude is (i.e., because a faster categorization implies that the two concepts-"work" and "negative"-are closely related in one's mind).

One common implicit measure is the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald & Banaji, 1995; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998), which does just what the name suggests, measuring how quickly the participant pairs a concept (e.g., cats) with an attribute (e.g., good or bad). The participant's response time in pairing the concept with the attribute indicates how strongly the participant associates the two. Another common implicit measure is the evaluative priming task ( Fazio, Jackson, Dunton, & Williams, 1995), which measures how quickly the participant labels the valence (i.e., positive or negative) of the attitude object when it appears immediately after a positive or negative image. The more quickly a participant labels the attitude object after being primed with a positive versus negative image indicates how positively the participant evaluates the object.

Individuals' implicit attitudes are sometimes inconsistent with their explicitly held attitudes. Hence, implicit measures may reveal biases that participants do not report on explicit measures. As a result, implicit attitude measures are especially useful for examining the pervasiveness and strength of controversial attitudes and stereotypic associations, such as racial biases or associations between race and violence. For example, research using the IAT has shown that about 66% of white respondents have a negative bias toward Blacks ( Nosek, Banaji, & Greenwald, 2002), that bias on the IAT against Blacks is associated with more discomfort during interracial interactions ( McConnell, & Leibold, 2001), and that implicit associations linking Blacks to violence are associated with a greater tendency to shoot unarmed Black targets in a video game ( Payne, 2001). Thus, even though individuals are often unaware of their implicit attitudes, these attitudes can have serious implications for their behavior, especially when these individuals do not have the cognitive resources available to override the attitudes' influence.

Decades of research on social cognition and attitudes have revealed many of the "tricks" and "tools" we use to efficiently process the limitless amounts of social information we encounter. These tools are quite useful for organizing that information to arrive at quick decisions. When you see an individual engage in a behavior, such as seeing a man push an elderly woman to the ground, you form judgments about his personality, predictions about the likelihood of him engaging in similar behaviors in the future, as well as predictions about the elderly woman's feelings and how you would feel if you were in her position. As the research presented in this module demonstrates, we are adept and efficient at making these judgments and predictions, but they are not made in a vacuum. Ultimately, our perception of the social world is a subjective experience, and, consequently, our decisions are influenced by our experiences, expectations, emotions, motivations, and current contexts. Being aware of when our judgments are most accurate, and how our judgments are shaped by social influences, prepares us to be in a much better position to appreciate, and potentially counter, their effects.

Outside Resources

Video: Daniel Gilbert discussing affective forecasting.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xebnl3_dan-gilbert-on-what-affective-forec_people#.UQlwDx3WLm4

Video: Focus on heuristics.

http://study.com/academy/lesson/heuristics.html

Web: BBC Horizon documentary How to Make Better Decisions that discusses many module topics (Part 1).

Web: Implicit Attitudes Test.

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/

Discussion Questions

Describe your event-schema, or script, for an event that you encounter regularly (e.g., dining at a restaurant). Now, attempt to articulate a script for an event that you have encountered only once or a few times. How are these scripts different? How confident are you in your ability to navigate these two events?

Think of a time when you made a decision that you thought would make you very happy (e.g., purchasing an item). To what extent were you accurate or inaccurate? In what ways were you wrong, and why do you think you were wrong?

What is an issue you feel strongly about (e.g., abortion, death penalty)? How would you react if research demonstrated that your opinion was wrong? What would it take before you would believe the evidence?

Take an implicit association test at the Project Implicit website (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit). How do your results match or mismatch your explicit attitudes.

Vocabulary

Affective forecasting

Predicting how one will feel in the future after some event or decision.

Attitude

A psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor.

Automatic

A behavior or process has one or more of the following features: unintentional, uncontrollable, occurring outside of conscious awareness, and cognitively efficient.

Availability heuristic

A heuristic in which the frequency or likelihood of an event is evaluated based on how easily instances of it come to mind.

Chameleon effect

The tendency for individuals to nonconsciously mimic the postures, mannerisms, facial expressions, and other behaviors of one's interaction partners.

Directional goals

The motivation to reach a particular outcome or judgment.

Durability bias

A bias in affective forecasting in which one overestimates for how long one will feel an emotion (positive or negative) after some event.

Evaluative priming​ task

An implicit attitude task that assesses the extent to which an attitude object is associated with a positive or negative valence by measuring the time it takes a person to label an adjective as good or bad after being presented with an attitude object.

Explicit attitude

An attitude that is consciously held and can be reported on by the person holding the attitude.

Heuristics

A mental shortcut or rule of thumb that reduces complex mental problems to more simple rule-based decisions.

Hot cognition

The mental processes that are influenced by desires and feelings.

Impact bias

A bias in affective forecasting in which one overestimates the strength or intensity of emotion one will experience after some event.

Implicit Association Test

An implicit attitude task that assesses a person's automatic associations between concepts by measuring the response times in pairing the concepts.

Implicit attitude

An attitude that a person cannot verbally or overtly state.

Implicit measures of attitudes

Measures of attitudes in which researchers infer the participant's attitude rather than having the participant explicitly report it.

Mood-congruent memory

The tendency to be better able to recall memories that have a mood similar to our current mood.

Motivated skepticism

A form of bias that can result from having a directional goal in which one is skeptical of evidence despite its strength because it goes against what one wants to believe.

Need for closure

The desire to come to a decision that will resolve ambiguity and conclude an issue.

Planning fallacy

A cognitive bias in which one underestimates how long it will take to complete a task.

Primed

A process by which a concept or behavior is made more cognitively accessible or likely to occur through the presentation of an associated concept.

Representativeness heuristic

A heuristic in which the likelihood of an object belonging to a category is evaluated based on the extent to which the object appears similar to one's mental representation of the category.

Schema

A mental model or representation that organizes the important information about a thing, person, or event (also known as a script).

Social cognition

The study of how people think about the social world.

Stereotypes

Our general beliefs about the traits or behaviors shared by group of people.

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Authors

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Hess, Y. D. & Pickett, C. L. (2020). Social cognition and attitudes. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. Retrieved from http://noba.to/6xanb4j9

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Social cognition is the area of social psychology that examines how people perceive and think about their social world. This module provides an overview of key topics within social cognition and attitudes, including judgmental heuristics, social prediction, affective and motivational influences on judgment, and explicit and implicit attitudes.

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Tsai, J. (2023). Culture and emotion. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. http://noba.to/gfqmxtyw

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Jeanne Tsai
Stanford University

How do people's cultural ideas and practices shape their emotions (and other types of feelings)? In this module, we will discuss findings from studies comparing North American (United States, Canada) and East Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) contexts. These studies reveal both cultural similarities and differences in various aspects of emotional life. Throughout, we will highlight the scientific and practical importance of these findings and conclude with recommendations for future research.

Learning Objectives

Review the history of cross-cultural studies of emotion

Learn about recent empirical findings and theories of culture and emotion

Understand why cultural differences in emotion matter

Explore current and future directions in culture and emotion research

Take a moment and imagine you are traveling in a country you've never been to before. Everything-the sights, the smells, the sounds-seems strange. People are speaking a language you don't understand and wearing clothes unlike yours. But they greet you with a smile and you sense that, despite the differences you observe, deep down inside these people have the same feelings as you. But is this true? Do people from opposite ends of the world really feel the same emotions? While most scholars agree that members of different cultures may vary in the foods they eat, the languages they speak, and the holidays they celebrate, there is disagreement about the extent to which culture shapes people's emotions and feelings-including what people feel, what they express, and what they do during an emotional event. Understanding how culture shapes people's emotional lives and what impact emotion has on psychological health and well-being in different cultures will not only advance the study of human behavior but will also benefit multicultural societies. Across a variety of settings-academic, business, medical-people worldwide are coming into more contact with people from foreign cultures. In order to communicate and function effectively in such situations, we must understand the ways cultural ideas and practices shape our emotions.

In the 1950s and 1960s, social scientists tended to fall into either one of two camps. The universalist camp claimed that, despite cultural differences in customs and traditions, at a fundamental level all humans feel similarly. These universalists believed that emotions evolved as a response to the environments of our primordial ancestors, so they are the same across all cultures. Indeed, people often describe their emotions as "automatic," "natural," "physiological," and "instinctual," supporting the view that emotions are hard-wired and universal.

Universalists point to our prehistoric ancestors as the source of emotions that all humans share. [Image: Stefan Sheer, https://goo.gl/x56mw9, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://goo.gl/tCiqlm]

The social constructivist camp, however, claimed that despite a common evolutionary heritage, different groups of humans evolved to adapt to their distinctive environments. And because human environments vary so widely, people's emotions are also culturally variable. For instance, Lutz ( 1988) argued that many Western views of emotion assume that emotions are "singular events situated within individuals." However, people from Ifaluk (a small island near Micronesia) view emotions as "exchanges between individuals" (p. 212). Social constructivists contended that because cultural ideas and practices are all-encompassing, people are often unaware of how their feelings are shaped by their culture. Therefore emotions can feel automatic, natural, physiological, and instinctual, and yet still be primarily culturally shaped.

In the 1970s, Paul Ekman conducted one of the first scientific studies to address the universalist-social constructivist debate. He and Wallace Friesen devised a system to measure people's facial muscle activity, called the Facial Action Coding System (FACS; Ekman & Friesen, 1978). Using FACS, Ekman and Friesen analyzed people's facial expressions and identified specific facial muscle configurations associated with specific emotions, such as happiness, anger, sadness, fear, disgust. Ekman and Friesen then took photos of people posing with these different expressions (Figure 1). With the help of colleagues at different universities around the world, Ekman and Friesen showed these pictures to members of vastly different cultures, gave them a list of emotion words (translated into the relevant languages), and asked them to match the facial expressions in the photos with their corresponding emotion words on the list ( Ekman & Friesen, 1971; Ekman et al., 1987).

Across cultures, participants "recognized" the emotional facial expressions, matching each picture with its "correct" emotion word at levels greater than chance. This led Ekman and his colleagues to conclude that there are universally recognized emotional facial expressions. At the same time, though, they found considerable variability across cultures in recognition rates. For instance, whereas 95% of U.S. participants associated a smile with "happiness," only 69% of Sumatran participants did. Similarly, 86% of U.S. participants associated wrinkling of the nose with "disgust," but only 60% of Japanese did ( Ekman et al., 1987). Ekman and colleagues interpreted this variation as demonstrating cultural differences in "display rules," or rules about what emotions are appropriate to show in a given situation ( Ekman, 1972). Indeed, since this initial work, Matsumoto and his colleagues have demonstrated widespread cultural differences in display rules ( Safdar et al., 2009). One prominent example of such differences is biting one's tongue. In India, this signals embarrassment; however, in the U.S. this expression has no such meaning ( Haidt & Keltner, 1999).

Figure 1. Facial expressions associated with happiness, sadness, disgust, and anger based on the Facial Action Coding System. [Image: Paul Eckman, used with permission]

These findings suggest both cultural similarities and differences in the recognition of emotional facial expressions (although see Russell, 1994, for criticism of this work). Interestingly, since the mid-2000s, increasing research has demonstrated cultural differences not only in display rules, but also the degree to which people focus on the face (versus other aspects of the social context; Masuda, Ellsworth, Mesquita, Leu, Tanida, & Van de Veerdonk, 2008), and on different features of the face ( Yuki, Maddux, & Matsuda, 2007) when perceiving others' emotions. For example, people from the United States tend to focus on the mouth when interpreting others' emotions, whereas people from Japan tend to focus on the eyes.

But how does culture shape other aspects of emotional life-such as how people emotionally respond to different situations, how they want to feel generally, and what makes them happy? Today, most scholars agree that emotions and other related states are multifaceted, and that cultural similarities and differences exist for each facet. Thus, rather than classifying emotions as either universal or socially-constructed, scholars are now attempting to identify the specific similarities and differences of emotional life across cultures. These endeavors are yielding new insights into the effects of cultural on emotion.

Given the wide range of cultures and facets of emotion in the world, for the remainder of the module we will limit our scope to the two cultural contexts that have received the most empirical attention by social scientists: North America (United States, Canada) and East Asia (China, Japan, and Korea). Social scientists have focused on North American and East Asian contexts because they differ in obvious ways, including their geographical locations, histories, languages, and religions. Moreover, since the 1980s large-scale studies have revealed that North American and East Asian contexts differ in their overall values and attitudes, such as the prioritization of personal vs. group needs (individualism vs. collectivism; Hofstede, 2001). Whereas North American contexts encourage members to prioritize personal over group needs (to be "individualistic"), East Asian contexts encourage members to prioritize group over personal needs (to be "collectivistic").

In a landmark paper, cultural psychologists Markus and Kitayama ( 1991) proposed that previously observed differences in individualism and collectivism translated into different models of the self-or one's personal concept of who s/he is as a person. Specifically, the researchers argued that in North American contexts, the dominant model of the self is an independent one, in which being a person means being distinct from others and behaving accordingly across situations. In East Asian contexts, however, the dominant model of the self is an interdependent one, in which being a person means being fundamentally connected to others and being responsive to situational demands. For example, in a classic study ( Cousins, 1989), American and Japanese students were administered the Twenty Statements Test, in which they were asked to complete the sentence stem, "I am ______," twenty times. U.S. participants were more likely than Japanese participants to complete the stem with psychological attributes (e.g., friendly, cheerful); Japanese participants, on the other hand, were more likely to complete the stem with references to social roles and responsibilities (e.g., a daughter, a student) ( Cousins, 1989). These different models of the self result in different principles for interacting with others. An independent model of self teaches people to express themselves and try to influence others (i.e., change their environments to be consistent with their own beliefs and desires). In contrast, an interdependent model of self teaches people to suppress their own beliefs and desires and adjust to others' (i.e., fit in with their environment) ( Heine, Lehman, Markus, & Kitayama, 1999; Morling, Kitayama, & Miyamoto, 2002; Weisz, Rothbaum, & Blackburn, 1984). Markus and Kitayama ( 1991) argue that these different models of self have significant implications for how people in Western and East Asian contexts feel.

A considerable body of empirical research suggests that these different models of self shape various aspects of emotional dynamics. Next we will discuss several ways culture shapes emotion, starting with emotional response.

People's Physiological Responses to Emotional Events Are Similar Across Cultures, but Culture Influences People's Facial Expressive Behavior

Although study participants from different cultural backgrounds reported similar emotions and levels of intensity when recalling important episodes in their lives, there were significant differences in facial expressions in response to those emotions. [Image: Andrew Sweeney, https://goo.gl/Npc7Wm, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, https://goo.gl/H2QaA8]

How does culture influence people's responses to emotional events? Studies of emotional response tend to focus on three components: physiology (e.g., how fast one's heart beats), subjective experience (e.g., feeling intensely happy or sad), and facial expressive behavior (e.g., smiling or frowning). Although only a few studies have simultaneously measured these different aspects of emotional response, those that do tend to observe more similarities than differences in physiological responses between cultures. That is, regardless of culture, people tend to respond similarly in terms of physiological (or bodily) expression. For instance, in one study, European American and Hmong (pronounced "muhng") American participants were asked to relive various emotional episodes in their lives (e.g., when they lost something or someone they loved; when something good happened) ( Tsai, Chentsova-Dutton, Freire-Bebeau, & Przymus, 2002). At the level of physiological arousal (e.g., heart rate), there were no differences in how the participants responded. However, their facial expressive behavior told a different story. When reliving events that elicited happiness, pride, and love, European Americans smiled more frequently and more intensely than did their Hmong counterparts-though all participants reported feeling happy, proud, and in love at similar levels of intensity. And similar patterns have emerged in studies comparing European Americans with Chinese Americans during different emotion-eliciting tasks ( Tsai et al., 2002; Tsai, Levenson, & McCoy, 2006; Tsai, Levenson, & Carstensen, 2000). Thus, while the physiological aspects of emotional responses appear to be similar across cultures, their accompanying facial expressions are more culturally distinctive.

Again, these differences in facial expressions during positive emotional events are consistent with findings from cross-cultural studies of display rules, and stem from the models of self-description discussed above: In North American contexts that promote an independent self , individuals tend to express their emotions to influence others. Conversely, in East Asian contexts that promote an interdependent self, individuals tend to control and suppress their emotions to adjust to others.

People Suppress Their Emotions Across Cultures, but Culture Influences the Consequences of Suppression for Psychological Well-Being

If the cultural ideal in North American contexts is to express oneself, then suppressing emotions (not showing how one feels) should have negative consequences. This is the assumption underlying hydraulic models of emotion: the idea that emotional suppression and repression impair psychological functioning ( Freud, 1910). Indeed, significant empirical research shows that suppressing emotions can have negative consequences for psychological well-being in North American contexts ( Gross, 1998). However, Soto and colleagues ( 2011) find that the relationship between suppression and psychological well-being varies by culture. True, with European Americans, emotional suppression is associated with higher levels of depression and lower levels of life satisfaction. (Remember, in these individualistic societies, the expression of emotion is a fundamental aspect of positive interactions with others.) On the other hand, since for Hong Kong Chinese, emotional suppression is needed to adjust to others (in this interdependent community, suppressing emotions is how to appropriately interact with others), it is simply a part of normal life and therefore not associated with depression or life satisfaction.

These findings are consistent with research suggesting that factors related to clinical depression vary between European Americans and Asian Americans. European Americans diagnosed with depression show dampened or muted emotional responses ( Bylsma, Morris, & Rottenberg, 2008). For instance, when shown sad or amusing film clips, depressed European Americans respond less intensely than their nondepressed counterparts.However, other studies have shown that depressed East Asian Americans (i.e., people of East Asian descent who live in the United States) demonstrate similar or increased emotional responses compared with their nondepressed counterparts ( Chentsova-Dutton et al., 2007; Chentsova-Dutton, Tsai, & Gotlib, 2010). In other words, depressed European Americans show reduced emotional expressions, but depressed East Asian Americans do not-and, in fact, may express more emotion. Thus, muted responses (which resemble suppression) are associated with depression in European American contexts, but not in East Asian contexts.

People Feel Good During Positive Events, but Culture Influences Whether People Feel Bad During Positive Events

Someone from a collectivist culture is more likely to think about how their own accomplishments might impact others. An otherwise positive achievement for one person could cause another to feel something negative, with mixed emotions as the result. [Image: lian xiaoxiao, https://goo.gl/js5jDw, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/jSSrcO]

What about people's subjective emotional experiences? Do people across cultures feel the same emotions in similar situations, despite how they show them? Recent studies indicate that culture affects whether people are likely to feel bad during good events. In North American contexts, people rarely feel bad after good experiences. However, a number of research teams have observed that, compared with people in North American contexts, people in East Asian contexts are more likely to feel bad and good ("mixed" emotions) during positive events (e.g., feeling worried after winning an important competition; Miyamoto, Uchida, & Ellsworth, 2010). This may be because, compared with North Americans, East Asians engage in more dialectical thinking (i.e., they are more tolerant of contradiction and change). Therefore, they accept that positive and negative feelings can occur simultaneously. In addition, whereas North Americans value maximizing positive states and minimizing negative ones, East Asians value a greater balance between the two ( Sims, Tsai, Wang, Fung, & Zhang, 2013). To better understand this, think about how you would feel after getting the top score on a test that's graded on a curve. In North American contexts, such success is considered an individual achievement and worth celebrating. But what about the other students who will now receive a lower grade because you "raised the curve" with your good grade? In East Asian contexts, not only would students be more thoughtful of the overall group's success, but they would also be more comfortable acknowledging both the positive (their own success on the test) and the negative (their classmates' lower grades).

Again, these differences can be linked to cultural differences in models of the self. An interdependent model encourages people to think about how their accomplishments might affect others (e.g., make others feel bad or jealous). Thus, awareness of negative emotions during positive events may discourage people from expressing their excitement and standing out (as in East Asian contexts). Such emotional suppression helps individuals feel in sync with those around them. An independent model, however, encourages people to express themselves and stand out, so when something good happens, they have no reason to feel bad.

So far, we have reviewed research that demonstrates cultural similarities in physiological responses and in the ability to suppress emotions. We have also discussed the cultural differences in facial expressive behavior and the likelihood of experiencing negative feelings during positive events. Next, we will explore how culture shapes people's ideal or desired states.

People Want to Feel Good Across Cultures, but Culture Influences the Specific Good States People Want to Feel (Their "Ideal Affect")

Everyone welcomes positive feelings, but cultures vary in the specific types of positive affective states (see Figure 2) their people favor. An affective state is essentially the type of emotional arousal one feels coupled with its intensity-which can vary from pleasant to unpleasant (e.g., happy to sad), with high to low arousal (e.g., energetic to passive). Although people of all cultures experience this range of affective states, they can vary in their preferences for each. For example, people in North American contexts lean toward feeling excited, enthusiastic, energetic, and other "high arousal positive" states. People in East Asian contexts, however, generally prefer feeling calm, peaceful, and other "low arousal positive" states ( Tsai, Knutson, & Fung, 2006). These cultural differences have been observed in young children between the ages of 3 and 5, college students, and adults between the ages of 60 and 80 ( Tsai, Louie, Chen, & Uchida, 2007; Tsai, Sims, Thomas, & Fung, 2013), and are reflected in widely-distributed cultural products. For example, wherever you look in American contexts-women's magazines, children's storybooks, company websites, and even Facebook profiles (Figure 3)-you will find more open, excited smiles and fewer closed, calm smiles compared to Chinese contexts ( Chim, Moon, Ang, Tsai, 2013; Tsai, 2007; Tsai, Louie, et al., 2007).

Figure 2: Adapted from Feldman, Barrett, and Russell (1999); Larsen and Diener ((1992); Russell (1991); Thayer (1989); Watson and Tellegen (1985)

Again, these differences in ideal affect (i.e., the emotional states that people believe are best) correspond to the independent and interdependent models described earlier: Independent selves want to influence others, which requires action ( doing something), and action involves high arousal states. Conversely, interdependent selves want to adjust to others, which requires suspending action and attending to others-both of which involve low arousal states. Thus, the more that individuals and cultures want to influence others (as in North American contexts), the more they value excitement, enthusiasm, and other high arousal positive states. And, the more that individuals and cultures want to adjust to others (as in East Asian contexts), the more they value calm, peacefulness, and other low arousal positive states ( Tsai, Miao, Seppala, Fung, & Yeung, 2007).

Figure 3: Sample Hong Kong Chinese (left) and European American (right) Facebook pages.

Because one's ideal affect functions as a guide for behavior and a way of evaluating one's emotional states, cultural differences in ideal affect can result in different emotional lives. For example, several studies have shown that people engage in activities (e.g., recreational pastimes, musical styles) consistent with their cultural ideal affect. That is, people from North American contexts (who value high arousal affective states) tend to prefer thrilling activities like skydiving, whereas people from East Asian contexts (who value low arousal affective states) prefer tranquil activities like lounging on the beach ( Tsai, 2007). In addition, people base their conceptions of well-being and happiness on their ideal affect. Therefore, European Americans are more likely to define well-being in terms of excitement, whereas Hong Kong Chinese are more likely to define well-being in terms of calmness. Indeed, among European Americans, the less people experience high arousal positive states, the more depressed they are. But, among Hong Kong Chinese-you guessed it!-the less people experience low arousal positive states, the more depressed they are ( Tsai, Knutson, & Fung, 2006).

People Base Their Happiness on Similar Factors Across Cultures, but Culture Influences the Weight Placed on Each Factor

Research has shown that self-esteem is more highly correlated with life satisfaction in individualistic cultures than in collectivist cultures. [Image: Erik, https://goo.gl/N8zccv, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/Toc0ZF]

What factors make people happy or satisfied with their lives? We have seen that discrepancies between how people actually feel (actual affect) and how they want to feel (ideal affect)-as well as people's suppression of their ideal affect-are associated with depression. But happiness is based on other factors as well. For instance, Kwan, Bond, & Singelis ( 1997) found that while European Americans and Hong Kong Chinese subjects both based life satisfaction on how they felt about themselves (self-esteem) and their relationships (relationship harmony), their weighting of each factor was different. That is, European Americans based their life satisfaction primarily on self-esteem, whereas Hong Kong Chinese based their life satisfaction equally on self-esteem and relationship harmony. Consistent with these findings, Oishi and colleagues ( 1999) found in a study of 39 nations that self-esteem was more strongly correlated with life satisfaction in more individualistic nations compared to more collectivistic ones. Researchers also found that in individualistic cultures people rated life satisfaction based on their emotions more so than on social definitions (or norms). In other words, rather than using social norms as a guideline for what constitutes an ideal life, people in individualistic cultures tend to evaluate their satisfaction according to how they feel emotionally. In collectivistic cultures, however, people's life satisfaction tends to be based on a balance between their emotions and norms ( Suh, Diener, Oishi, & Triandis, 1998). Similarly, other researchers have recently found that people in North American contexts are more likely to feel negative when they have poor mental and physical health, while people in Japanese contexts don't have this association ( Curhan et al., 2013).

Again, these findings are consistent with cultural differences in models of the self. In North American, independent contexts, feelings about the self matter more, whereas in East Asian, interdependent contexts, feelings about others matter as much as or even more than feelings about the self.

Understanding cultural similarities and differences in emotion is obviously critical to understanding emotions in general, and the flexibility of emotional processes more specifically. Given the central role that emotions play in our interaction, understanding cultural similarities and differences is especially critical to preventing potentially harmful miscommunications. Although misunderstandings are unintentional, they can result in negative consequences-as we've seen historically for ethnic minorities in many cultures. For instance, across a variety of North American settings, Asian Americans are often characterized as too "quiet" and "reserved," and these low arousal states are often misinterpreted as expressions of disengagement or boredom-rather than expressions of the ideal of calmness. Consequently, Asian Americans may be perceived as "cold," "stoic," and "unfriendly," fostering stereotypes of Asian Americans as "perpetual foreigners" ( Cheryan & Monin, 2005). Indeed, this may be one reason Asian Americans are often overlooked for top leadership positions ( Hyun, 2005).

In addition to averting cultural miscommunications, recognizing cultural similarities and differences in emotion may provide insights into other paths to psychological health and well-being. For instance, findings from a recent series of studies suggest that calm states are easier to elicit than excited states, suggesting that one way of increasing happiness in cultures that value excitement may be to increase the value placed on calm states ( Chim, Tsai, Hogan, & Fung, 2013).

What About Other Cultures?

In this brief review, we've focused primarily on comparisons between North American and East Asian contexts because most of the research in cultural psychology has focused on these comparisons. However, there are obviously a multitude of other cultural contexts in which emotional differences likely exist. For example, although Western contexts are similar in many ways, specific Western contexts (e.g., American vs. German) also differ from each other in substantive ways related to emotion ( Koopmann-Holm & Matsumoto, 2011). Thus, future research examining other cultural contexts is needed. Such studies may also reveal additional, uninvestigated dimensions or models that have broad implications for emotion. In addition, because more and more people are being raised within multiple cultural contexts (e.g., for many Chinese Americans, a Chinese immigrant culture at home and mainstream American culture at school), more research is needed to examine how people negotiate and integrate these different cultures in their emotional lives (for examples, see De Leersnyder, Mesquita, & Kim, 2011; Perunovic, Heller, & Rafaeli, 2007).

How Are Cultural Differences in Beliefs About Emotion Transmitted?

Children's story books offer one interesting and effective way to study how early influences can impact a person's ideal affect. [Image: Vernon Barford School Library, https://goo.gl/fghcae, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/Toc0ZF]

According to Kroeber and Kluckhohn ( 1952), cultural ideas are reflected in and reinforced by practices, institutions, and products. As an example of this phenomenon-and illustrating the point regarding cultural differences in ideal affect-bestselling children's storybooks in the United States often contain more exciting and less calm content (smiles and activities) than do bestselling children's storybooks in Taiwan ( Tsai, Louie, et al., 2007). To investigate this further, the researchers randomly assigned European American, Asian American, and Taiwanese Chinese preschoolers to be read either stories with exciting content or stories with calm content. Across all of these cultures, the kids who were read stories with exciting content were afterward more likely to value excited states, whereas those who were read stories with calm content were more likely to value calm states. As a test, after hearing the stories, the kids were shown a list of toys and asked to select their favorites. Those who heard the exciting stories wanted to play with more arousing toys (like a drum that beats loud and fast), whereas those who heard the calm stories wanted to play with less arousing toys (like a drum that beats quiet and slow). These findings suggest that regardless of ethnic background, direct exposure to storybook content alters children's ideal affect. More studies are needed to assess whether a similar process occurs when children and adults are chronically exposed to various types of cultural products. As well, future studies should examine other ways cultural ideas regarding emotion are transmitted (e.g., via interactions with parents and teachers).

Could These Cultural Differences Be Due to Temperament?

An alternative explanation for cultural differences in emotion is that they are due to temperamental factors-that is, biological predispositions to respond in certain ways. (Might European Americans just be more emotional than East Asians because of genetics?) Indeed, most models of emotion acknowledge that both culture and temperament play roles in emotional life, yet few if any models indicate how. Nevertheless, most researchers believe that despite genetic differences in founder populations (i.e., the migrants from a population who leave to create their own societies), culture has a greater impact on emotions. For instance, one theoretical framework, Affect Valuation Theory, proposes that cultural factors shape how people want to feel ("ideal affect") more than how they actually feel ("actual affect"); conversely, temperamental factors influence how people actually feel more than how they want to feel ( Tsai, 2007) (see Figure 4).

To test this hypothesis, European American, Asian American, and Hong Kong Chinese participants completed measures of temperament (i.e., stable dispositions, such as neuroticism or extraversion), actual affect (i.e., how people actually feel in given situations), ideal affect (i.e., how people would like to feel in given situations), and influential cultural values (i.e., personal beliefs transmitted through culture). When researchers analyzed the participants' responses, they found that differences in ideal affect between cultures were associated more with cultural factors than with temperamental factors ( Tsai, Knutson, & Fung, 2006). However, when researchers examined actual affect, they found this to be reversed: actual affect was more strongly associated with temperamental factors than cultural factors. Not all of the studies described above have ruled out a temperamental explanation, though, and more studies are needed to rule out the possibility that the observed group differences are due to genetic factors instead of, or in addition to, cultural factors. Moreover, future studies should examine whether the links between temperament and emotions might vary across cultures, and how cultural and temperamental factors work together to shape emotion.

Figure 4: Affect valuation theory. Thicker lines indicate stronger predicted relationships.

Based on studies comparing North American and East Asian contexts, there is clear evidence for cultural similarities and differences in emotions, and most of the differences can be traced to different cultural models of the self.

Consider your own concept of self for a moment. What kinds of pastimes do you prefer-activities that make you excited, or ones that make you calm? What kinds of feelings do you strive for? What is your ideal affect? Because emotions seem and feel so instinctual to us, it's hard to imagine that the way we experience them and the ones we desire are anything other than biologically programmed into us. However, as current research has shown (and as future research will continue to explore), there are myriad ways in which culture, both consciously and unconsciously, shapes people's emotional lives.

Outside Resources

Audio Interview: The Really Big Questions "What Are Emotions?" Interview with Paul Ekman, Martha Nussbaum, Dominique Moisi, and William Reddy

http://www.trbq.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=16&Itemid=43

Book: Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener: Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth

Book: Eric Weiner: The Geography of Bliss

Book: Eva Hoffmann: Lost in Translation: Life in a New Language

Book: Hazel Markus: Clash: 8 Cultural Conflicts That Make Us Who We Are

Video: Social Psychology Alive

http://psychology.stanford.edu/~tsailab/PDF/socpsychalive.wmv

Video: The Really Big Questions "Culture and Emotion," Dr. Jeanne Tsai

Video: Tsai's description of cultural differences in emotion

Web: Acculturation and Culture Collaborative at Leuven

http://ppw.kuleuven.be/home/english/research/cscp/acc-research

Web: Culture and Cognition at the University of Michigan

http://culturecognition.isr.umich.edu/

Web: Experts In Emotion Series, Dr. June Gruber, Department of Psychology, Yale University

http://www.yalepeplab.com/teaching/psych131_summer2013/expertseries.php

Web: Georgetown Culture and Emotion Lab

http://georgetownculturelab.wordpress.com/

Web: Paul Ekman's website

http://www.paulekman.com

Web: Penn State Culture, Health, and Emotion Lab

http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/m/r/mrm280/sotosite/

Web: Stanford Culture and Emotion Lab

http://www-psych.stanford.edu/~tsailab/index.htm

Web: Wesleyan Culture and Emotion Lab

http://culture-and-emotion.research.wesleyan.edu/

Discussion Questions

What cultural ideas and practices related to emotion were you exposed to when you were a child? What cultural ideas and practices related to emotion are you currently exposed to as an adult? How do you think they shape your emotional experiences and expressions?

How can researchers avoid inserting their own beliefs about emotion in their research?

Most of the studies described above are based on self-report measures. What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of using self-report measures to understand the cultural shaping of emotion? How might the use of other behavioral methods (e.g., neuroimaging) address some of these limitations?

Do the empirical findings described above change your beliefs about emotion? How?

Imagine you are a manager of a large American company that is beginning to do work in China and Japan. How will you apply your current knowledge about culture and emotion to prevent misunderstandings between you and your Chinese and Japanese employees?

Vocabulary

Affect

Feelings that can be described in terms of two dimensions, the dimensions of arousal and valence (Figure 2). For example, high arousal positive states refer to excitement, elation, and enthusiasm. Low arousal positive states refer to calm, peacefulness, and relaxation. Whereas "actual affect" refers to the states that people actually feel, "ideal affect" refers to the states that people ideally want to feel.

Culture

Shared, socially transmitted ideas (e.g., values, beliefs, attitudes) that are reflected in and reinforced by institutions, products, and rituals.

Emotions

Changes in subjective experience, physiological responding, and behavior in response to a meaningful event. Emotions tend to occur on the order of seconds (in contract to moods which may last for days).

Feelings

A general term used to describe a wide range of states that include emotions, moods, traits and that typically involve changes in subjective experience, physiological responding, and behavior in response to a meaningful event. Emotions typically occur on the order of seconds, whereas moods may last for days, and traits are tendencies to respond a certain way across various situations.

Independent self

A model or view of the self as distinct from others and as stable across different situations. The goal of the independent self is to express and assert the self, and to influence others. This model of self is prevalent in many individualistic, Western contexts (e.g., the United States, Australia, Western Europe).

Interdependent self

A model or view of the self as connected to others and as changing in response to different situations. The goal of the interdependent self is to suppress personal preferences and desires, and to adjust to others. This model of self is prevalent in many collectivistic, East Asian contexts (e.g., China, Japan, Korea).

Social constructivism

Social constructivism proposes that knowledge is first created and learned within a social context and is then adopted by individuals.

Universalism

Universalism proposes that there are single objective standards, independent of culture, in basic domains such as learning, reasoning, and emotion that are a part of all human experience.

References

Bylsma, L., Morris, B., & Rottenberg, J. (2008). A meta-analysis of emotional reactivity in major depressive disorder. Clinical Psychology Review, 28(4), 676-691.

Chentsova-Dutton, Y. E., Chu, J. P., Tsai, J. L., Rottenberg, J., Gross, J. J., & Gotlib, I. H. (2007). Depression and emotional reactivity: Variation among Asian Americans of East Asian descent and European Americans. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 116(4), 776-785.

Chentsova-Dutton, Y. E., Tsai, J. L., & Gotlib, I. (2010). Further evidence for the cultural norm hypothesis: Positive emotion in depressed and control European American and Asian American women. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 16, 284-295.

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Chim, L., Moon, A., Ang, J., & Tsai, J. L. (2013). Magazine ads, Facebook pages, and company websites reflect cultural differences in ideal affect. In T. Masuda (Chair). Culture and mind: Implications for art, design, and advertising. Symposium held at International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology, Los Angeles, CA.

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Curhan, K., Sims, T., Markus, H., Kitayama, S., Karasawa, M., Kawakami, N., . . . Ryff, C. (2013). Negative affect predicts worse physical and mental health in the U.S. than in Japan. Manuscript under review.

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Sims, T., Tsai, J., Wang, I., Fung, H. H., & Zhang, X. L. (2013). Whether you experience the bad with the good depends on how you want to feel: Understanding cultural differences in the relationship between positive and negative affect. Manuscript in progress.

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Tsai, J. L., Chentsova-Dutton, Y., Freire-Bebeau, L., & Przymus, D. (2002). Emotional expression and physiology in European Americans and Hmong Americans. Emotion, 2(4), 380-397. doi: 10.1037/1528-3542.2.4.380

Tsai, J. L., Knutson, B., & Fung, H. H. (2006). Cultural variation in affect valuation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 288-307.

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Tsai, J. L., Sims, T., Thomas, E., & Fung, H. H. (2013). Ideal affect across the life span: A comparison of European American, Chinese American, and Hong Kong Chinese. Manuscript in progress.

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Authors

Creative Commons License
Culture and Emotion by Jeanne Tsai is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available in our Licensing Agreement.

How to cite this Noba module using APA Style
Tsai, J. (2023). Culture and emotion. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. Retrieved from http://noba.to/gfqmxtyw

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How do people's cultural ideas and practices shape their emotions (and other types of feelings)? In this module, we will discuss findings from studies comparing North American (United States, Canada) and East Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) contexts. These studies reveal both cultural similarities and differences in various aspects of emotional life.

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What's new in the Winter 2023 update? Forensic Evidence Gender Affirming Care Indigenous Rights Inflation (Economic) Mental Health Education Persistent Depressive Disorder Includes more than 10,100 standard and cross-referenced terms. Scope notes define the terms. Historical notes provide valuable information on historical usage, text, or status changes, and the application of the term to historical records.

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Academic Writer Tutorial: Basics of Seventh Edition APA Style

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This page contains sample papers formatted in seventh edition APA Style. The sample papers show the format that authors should use to submit a manuscript for publication in a professional journal and that students should use to submit a paper to an instructor for a course assignment. You can download the Word files to use as templates and edit them as needed for the purposes of your own papers.

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Credits for sample professional paper templates

Quantitative professional paper template: Adapted from "Fake News, Fast and Slow: Deliberation Reduces Belief in False (but Not True) News Headlines," by B. Bago, D. G. Rand, and G. Pennycook, 2020, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 149(8), pp. 1608-1613 ( https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000729). Copyright 2020 by the American Psychological Association.

Qualitative professional paper template: Adapted from "'My Smartphone Is an Extension of Myself': A Holistic Qualitative Exploration of the Impact of Using a Smartphone," by L. J. Harkin and D. Kuss, 2020, Psychology of Popular Media, 10(1), pp. 28-38 ( https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000278). Copyright 2020 by the American Psychological Association.

Mixed methods professional paper template: Adapted from "'I Am a Change Agent': A Mixed Methods Analysis of Students' Social Justice Value Orientation in an Undergraduate Community Psychology Course," by D. X. Henderson, A. T. Majors, and M. Wright, 2019, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 7(1), 68-80. ( https://doi.org/10.1037/stl0000171). Copyright 2019 by the American Psychological Association.

Literature review professional paper template: Adapted from "Rethinking Emotions in the Context of Infants' Prosocial Behavior: The Role of Interest and Positive Emotions," by S. I. Hammond and J. K. Drummond, 2019, Developmental Psychology, 55(9), pp. 1882-1888 ( https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000685). Copyright 2019 by the American Psychological Association.

Review professional paper template: Adapted from "Joining the Conversation: Teaching Students to Think and Communicate Like Scholars," by E. L. Parks, 2022, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 8(1), pp. 70-78 ( https://doi.org/10.1037/stl0000193). Copyright 2020 by the American Psychological Association.

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These papers came from real students who gave their permission to have them edited and posted by APA.

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These sample papers formatted in seventh edition APA Style show the format that authors should use to submit a manuscript for publication in a professional journal and that students should use to submit a paper to an instructor for a course assignment.

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The authority on APA Style and the 7th edition of the APA Publication Manual. Find tutorials, the APA Style Blog, how to format papers in APA Style, and other resources to help you improve your writing, master APA Style, and learn the conventions of scholarly publishing.

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Bond University Library APA Referencing Guide

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Bond University Library APA Referencing Guide

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Library Research Guides: APA Referencing Guide: Home

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This guide will help you discover how to reference a source in the APA style.

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Quality open access high school statistics textbook with accompanying instructor and student resources. Includes PowerPoint slides, google forms and solutions manual.

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OpenStax | Free Textbooks Online with No Catch

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OpenStax offers free college textbooks for all types of students, making education accessible & affordable for everyone. Browse our list of available subjects!

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Quality open access undergraduate psychology textbook with accompanying instructor and student resources. Includes annotated video guide, QTI test bank, instructor solution guide, enhanced lecture PowerPoint slides and more.

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OpenStax | Free Textbooks Online with No Catch

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OpenStax offers free college textbooks for all types of students, making education accessible & affordable for everyone. Browse our list of available subjects!

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UQ Psychology: Resources for QCE Senior School Psychology

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UQ Psychology: Resources for QCE Senior School Psychology

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Explains correlational and experimental research designs and contains interactive calculators for statistics i.e. Spearman, Wilcoxon, Mann-Whitney and calculating a P Value from a Z Score.

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Research Design

Correlational

Correlational designs are used to test whether there is a relationship between two measures. e.g. Is there a relationship between a person's age and their IQ? Positive correlation would mean that IQ increases with age. Negative correlation would indication that IQ decreases with age. No significant correlation (the null hypothesis) is that there is no significant relationship, i.e. a person's IQ is not related to their age. Correlational designs have no independent or dependent variables, and only test for the linear relationship between two measures.

Experimental

Experimental designs are used to test whether there is a significant difference between two (or more) groups or between measures at different times or under different conditions (e.g. experimental versus control groups/conditions). The alternate hypothesis is that the two groups/conditions are different. The null hypothesis is that the two groups/conditions are not different. Experimental designs have an independent variable that is the group/condition that is controlled by the experimenter and a dependent variable that is the measure assessed. Experimental designs test the effect of the independent variable on the dependent variable.

Experimental designs can use either:

Independent Groups: Two (or more) independent groups of participants are compared. e.g. Is IQ different in girls compared with boys? The independent variable is gender that is controlled in the experiment, i.e. the experimenter selects participants and assigns them to groups according to their gender (girls versus boys). The dependent variable is IQ that is measured by the experimenter. The experimental design tests the effect of gender on IQ. The null hypothesis is that IQ will not be different between girls and boys. The alternate hypothesis is that IQ will be different between girls and boys, either greater for girls compared with boys or lower for girls compared with boys. As groups are independent, there can be a different number of participants in each group.

Matched Participants: Two (or more) groups of participants are compared, but participants between groups are matched one-to-one on other relevant factors, to control potential effects of other factors that might influence results. e.g. Is IQ different in girls compared with boys, controlling for potential effects of age? The independent variable is gender that is controlled in the experiment, but the experimenter selects a pairs of participants, one girl and one boy, of exactly the same age, paired one-to-one between the two participant groups. The dependent variable is IQ that is measured by the experimenter. The null hypothesis is that IQ will not be different between girls and boys. The alternate hypothesis is that IQ will be different between girls and boys. Any difference in IQ observed between girls and boys cannot be influenced by age as the two groups are exactly matched in age. As groups are matched one-to-one, there must be the same number of participants in each group.

Repeated Measures: Two (or more) measures taken from the same participants under different conditions or at different times are compared. e.g. Is IQ different when measured at the start of the school day compared with the end of the school day? The independent variable is the time of day that is controlled in the experiment, i.e. the experimenter selects the times of day to measure IQ and compare. The dependent variable is IQ that is measured by the experimenter. The dependent variable is measured in all participants at both times of day (i.e. repeated measures) and compared. The experimental design tests the effect of the time of day of the IQ test on the measured IQ. The null hypothesis is that there will be no difference in IQ measured at the start compared with the end of the school day. The alternate hypothesis is that measured IQ will be different at the start compared with the end of the school day, either greater at the start of the day compared with the end or less at the start of the day compared with the end. As measures are repeated under both conditions in all participants, there must be an equal number of measures (i.e. equal participants) in each condition.

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psychology; uq; university of queensland; school of psychology; brisbane; australia;

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UQ Psychology - Queensland Certificate of Education - QCE - Resources for QCE Senior School Psychology

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Correlational designs are used to test whether there is a relationship between two measures. e.g. Is there a relationship between a person's age and their IQ? Positive correlation would mean that IQ increases with age. Negative correlation would indication that IQ decreases with age.

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Maricopa Open Digital Press

This book is licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY NC SA license. You are free to share and adapt the work with an attribution.

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Thanks to the Maricopa Millions Grant at the Maricopa County Community College District, for providing the funds and support to develop this textbook. It was originally produced for the course PSY 132 Psychology and Culture, an introductory-level, general education course at Glendale Community College. Many colleagues, fellow faculty, staff, teaching assistants and students have developed the course and generously given their time to improving the teaching materials. We are very grateful for their support. We are also very grateful for the editing and reviewing of our colleagues and students who contributions have improved the text and content.

Like many faculty, we were concerned about the cost of textbooks for our students who experienced financial hardship in purchasing required texts. In addition, we could not find an introductory undergraduate textbook that used an informal and engaging style. This situation prompted us to begin drafting this textbook and other open source course materials.

This textbook reflects the disciplinary expertise of the three main authors, who are all counselors and psychologists. We recognize this as both a strength and weakness of the text, as it provides a strong psychological approach but does not cover the entire range of work in the field. The guiding perspective of this work is an awareness that social and cultural factors influence our thinking and behavior but individual differences often direct our decision making and choices.

We hope this resource will be useful to anyone who is interested in the role that culture plays in shaping who we are and how we as individuals in turn shape our culture.

Senior Contributing Authors

Lisa Worthy

Trisha Lavigne

Fernando Romero

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Acknowledgements – Culture and Psychology

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Thanks to the Maricopa Millions Grant at the Maricopa County Community College District, for providing the funds and support to develop this textbook. It was originally produced for the course PSY 132 Psychology and Culture, an introductory-level, general education course at Glendale Community Colle…