Question

1. How did Solomon Asch’s study illustrate the power of norms to shape behavior? Provide at least one other example of the power of norms to shape behavior.

2.     Prior to our class on conformity, I emailed about half the students in our class and asked them to agree to take off their shoes when they entered class the next day, in the hopes that other students would conform. Discuss why very few people conformed, using concepts from variations in Asch’s research.

3.     Discuss the bystander effect, in particular, the roles that ambiguity, conformity, and diffusions of responsibility play in creating it.

5.     In Festinger and Carlsmith’s (1959) experiment, who said they liked the boring task more: those paid $20 or those paid $1? Explain why and connect this explanation to the definition of cognitive dissonance.

7.     According to humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers, what enables people to reach their potential?

8.     Trick question: According to trait theorists, through what process do traits cause behavior?

9.     Describe the process by which people acquire skills and behaviors, according to social-cognitive theorist Albert Bandura. How did he test this idea?

11. Why would a social-cognitive theorist be unlikely to compute an average score for a given trait (e.g., self-efficacy)? Hint: Think about behavioral signatures, in particular variations across situations and uniqueness of the signatures.

12. We noted that diagnostic labels are like hypotheses. Walk me through how this is true, using the concepts confirmation bias, interpretation of ambiguity, and self-fulfilling prophecy.

15. What makes exposure therapy, systematic desensitization, and response prevention therapy each a form of behavior therapy?

16. Describe the process through which an excess of dopamine can lead to the delusions experienced by people with schizophrenia.

Answer 1

In Asch’s classic experiment, participants were asked to judge the correct length of a line by comparing it to another set of lines. The participants, however, were not the only ones making the judgments. There were a group of “subjects” in the study, who posed as participants but in reality were experimenter’s confederates. To find the effect of conformity, these “subjects” on many occasions responded incorrectly while making judgments to check if the participant would go along with the (incorrect) group decision or would stick fast to their personal (and correct) judgment.

A surprising finding in the study was that about one-third of the participants went along with the clearly erroneous majority. What was even more shocking that the participants were college graduates, thereby leading researchers to question why young, educated, and reasonably intelligent individuals were willing to disregard their own accurate judgments for the sake of adhering to the grossly incorrect majority decision.

The findings of the study thereby illustrate the power of the social norms, the majority decision to shape individual behavior. Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment is another example that shows how the norms surrounding a particular social role can drastically impact individual behavior.

Please post the other questions separately.