Self Esteem

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SocialPsych.Ch.13-161.pdf

:H AFTER ^ ri • •ID Conflict and

Peacema ki If you want peace, work for justice."

—Pop.e.P.9ul.Vl.

What creates conflict?

How can peace be achieved?

Postscript: The conflict between individual and communal rights

There is a speech that has been spoken in many languages by the leaders of many countries. It goes like this; "The intentions of our country are entirely peaceful. Yet, we are also aware that other

^nations, with their new weapons, threaten us. Thus we must defend

iourselves against attack. By so doing, we shall protect our way of

jlife and preserve the peace" (Richardson, I960}. Almost every nation

^claims concern only for peace but, mistrusting other nations, arms

itself in self-defense. The result is a world that has been spending

$5 billion per day on arms and armies while hundreds of millions die of

malnutrition and untreated disease (SIPRI, 2011).

The elements of such conflict (a perceived incompatibility of

actions or goals) are similar at many levels: conflict between nations in

an arms race, between religious factions disputing points of doctrine,

between corporate executives and workers disputing salaries, and

between bickering spouses. People in conflict perceive that one side s

gain is the other's loss:

• "We want peace and security." "So do we, but you threaten us."

• "I'd like the music off." "I'd like it on."

• "We want more pay." "We can’t afford it."

A relationship or an organization without conflict is probably apa-

hetic. Conflict signifies involvement, commitment, and caring. If conflict

482 Part Three Social Relations

As civil rights leaders know, creatively managed con­ flicts can have constructive outcomes.

conflict A perceived incompatibility of actions or goals.

peace A condition marked by low levels of hostility and aggression and by mutually beneficial relationships.

is understood and recognized, it can end

oppression and stimulate renewed and

improved human relations. Harmony

occurs when justice and mutual respect

prevail but also when "everyone knows

their place" in an unjust world (Dixon &

others, 2010). Without conflict, people

seldom face and resolve their problems.

Genuine peace is more than the sup­

pression of open conflict, more than a

fragile, superficial calm. Peace is the

outcome of a creatively managed con­

flict. Peace is the parties reconciling

their perceived differences and reaching

genuine accord. "We got our increased

pay. You got your increased profit. Now each of us is helping the other achieve the

organization's goals." Peace, says peace researcher Royce Anderson (2004), "is a

condition in which individuals, families, groups, communities, and/or nations experi­

ence low levels of violence and engage in mutually harmonious relationships."

In this chapter we explore conflict and peacemaking by asking what factors create

or exacerbate conflict, and what factors contribute to peace:

• What social situations feed conflict?

• How do misperceptions fuel conflict?

• Does contact with the other side reduce conflict?

• When do cooperation, communication, and mediation enable reconciliation?

WHAT CREATES CONFLICT?__________ I Explain what feeds conflict.

Social-psychological studies have identified several ingredients of conflict. What's striking (and what simplifies our task) is that these ingredients are common to all levels of social conflict, whether international, intergroup, or interpersonal.

Social Dilemmas Several of the problems that most threaten our human future—nuclear arms, cli­ mate change, overpopulation, natural-resource depletion—arise as various parties pursue their self-interests, ironically, to their collective detriment. One individual may think, "It would cost me a lot to buy expensive greenhouse emission controls. Besides, the greenhouse gases I personally generate are trivial." Many others reason

483Conflict and Peacemaking

similarly, and the result is a warming climate, melting ice cover, rising seas, and more extreme weather.

In some societies, parents benefit by having many children who can assist with the family tasks and provide security in their old age. But when most families have many children generation after generation, the result is the collective devastation of overpopulation. Choices that are individually rewarding become collectively pun­ ishing. We therefore have a dilemma: How can we reconcile individual self-interest with communal well-being?

To isolate and study that dilemma, social psychologists have used laboratory games that expose the heart of many real social conflicts. "Social psychologists who study conflict are in much the same position as the astronomers," noted conflict researcher Morton Deutsch (1999). "We cannot conduct true experiments with large-scale social events. But we can identify the conceptual similarities between the large scale and the small, as the astronomers have between the planets and Newton's apple. That is why the games people play as subjects in our laboratory may advance our understanding of war, peace, and social justice."

Let's consider two laboratory games that are each an example of a social trap: the Prisoner's Dilemma and the Tragedy of the Commons.

THE PRISONER'S DILEMMA

This dilemma derives from an anecdote concerning two suspects being questioned separately by the district attorney (DA) (Rapoport, 1960). The DA knows they are jointly guilty but has only enough evidence to convict them of a lesser offense. So the DA creates an incentive for each one to confess privately:

• If Prisoner A confesses and Prisoner B doesn't, the DA will grant immunity to A and will use A's confession to convict B of a maximum offense (and vice versa if B confesses and A doesn't).

», • If both confess, each will receive a moderate sentence. F • If neither prisoner confesses, each will be convicted of a lesser crime and i receive a light sentence.

The matrix of Figure 13.1 summarizes the choices. If you were a prisoner faced with such a dilemma, with no chance to talk to the other prisoner, would you confess?

Prisoner A

Confesses Doesn't confess

Confesses

Doesn't confess

10 years

Chapter 13

social trap A situation in which the conflicting parties, by each rationally pursuing its self-interest, become caught in mutually destructive behavior. Examples include the Prisoner's Dilemma and the Tragedy of the Commons.

FIGURE:: 13.1 The Classic Prisoner's Dilemma In each box, the number above the diagonal is prisoner A's outcome. Thus, if both prisoners confess, both get five years. If neither confesses, each gets a year. If one confesses, that prisoner is set free in exchange for evidence used to convict the other of a crime bringing a 10-year sentence. If you were one of the prisoners, unable to communicate with your fellow prisoner, would you confess?

484 Part Three Social Relations

FIGURE:: 13.2 Laboratory Version of the Prisoner's Dilemma The numbers represent some reward, such as money. In each box, the number above the diagonal lines is the outcome for person A. Unlike the classic Pris­ oner's Dilemma (a one-shot deci­ sion), most laboratory versions involve repeated plays.

Response 1 (defect)

Person A

iponse 1 Respo (defect) (coopera-^

12

Response 2 (cooperate)

12

-6

Many people say they would confess to be granted immunity, even though mutual nonconfession elicits lighter sentences than mutual confession. Perhaps this is because (as shown in the Figure 13.1 matrix) no matter what the other prisoner decides, each is better off confessing than being convicted individually. If the other also confesses, the sentence is moderate rather than severe. If the other does not confess, one goes free.

University students have faced variations of the Prisoner's Dilemma, with the choices being to defect or to cooperate, and the outcomes not being prison terms but chips, money, or course points. As Figure 13.2 illustrates, on any given decision, a person is better off defecting (because such behavior exploits the other's cooperation or protects against the other's exploitation). However—and here's the rub—by not cooperating, both parties end up far worse off than if they had trusted each other and thus had gained a joint profit. This dilemma often traps each one in a maddening predicament in which both realize they could mutually profit. But unable to commu­ nicate, and mistrusting each other, they often become "locked in" to not cooperating. Outside the university, examples abound: seemingly intractable and costly conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians over borders, U.S. Republicans and Democrats over taxation and deficits, and professional athletes and team owners over pay.

Punishing another's lack of cooperation might seem like a smart strategy, but in the laboratory it can have counterproductive effects (Dreber & others, 2008). Punish­ ment typically triggers retaliation, which means that those who punish tend to esca­ late conflict, worsening their outcomes, while nice guys finish first. What punishers see as a defensive reaction, recipients see as an aggressive escalation (Anderson & others, 2008). When hitting back, they may hit harder while seeing themselves as merely returning tit for tat. In one experiment, London volunteers used a mechanical device to press back on another's finger after receiving pressure on their own. While seeking to reciprocate with the same degree of pressure, they typically responded with 40 percent more force. Thus, touches soon escalated to hard presses, much like a child saying "I just touched him, and then he hit me!" (Shergill & others, 2003). THE TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS

Many social dilemmas involve more than two parties. Climate change stems from deforestation and from the carbon dioxide emitted by vehicles, furnaces, and coal-fired power plants. Each gas-guzzling SUV contributes infinitesimally to the problem, and

Conflict and Peacemaking Chapter 13 485

harm each does is diffused over many people. To model such social predicaments, researchers have developed laboratory dilemmas that involve multiple people.

A metaphor for the insidious nature of social dilemmas is what ecologist Garrett Hardin (1968) called the Tragedy of the Commons. He derived the name from the centrally located grassy pasture in old English towns.

In today's world the "commons" can be air, water, fish, cookies, or any shared and limited resource. If all use the resource in moderation, it may replenish itself as rapidly as it's harvested. The grass will grow, the fish will reproduce, and the cookie jar will be restocked. If not, there occurs a tragedy of the commons. Imagine 100 farmers surrounding a commons capable of sustaining 100 cows. When each grazes one cow, the common feeding ground is optimally used. But then a farmer reasons, "If I put a second cow in the pasture. I'll double my output, minus the mere 1 percent overgrazing" and adds a second cow. So does each of the other farmers. The inevi­ table result? The Tragedy of the Commons—a mud field and famished cows.

Likewise, environmental pollution is the sum of many minor pollutions, each of which benefits the individual polluters much more than they could benefit them­ selves (and the environment) if they stopped polluting. We litter public places— dorm lounges, parks, zoos—while keeping our personal spaces clean. We deplete our natural resources because the immediate personal benefits of, for instance, taking a long, hot shower outweigh the seemingly inconsequential costs. Whalers knew others would exploit the whales if they didn't, and that taking a few whales would hardly diminish the species. Therein lies the tragedy. Everybody's business (conservation) becomes nobody's business.

Is such individualism imiquely American? Kaori Sato (1987) gave students in a more collective culture, Japan, opportunities to harvest—for actual money trees from a simulated forest. The students shared equally the costs of planting the for­ est. The result was like those in Western cultures. More than half the trees were harvested before they had grown to the most profitable size.

Sato's forest reminds me of our home's cookie jar, which was restocked once a week. What we should have done was conserve cookies so that each day we could each enjoy two or three. But lacking regulation and fearing that other family mem­ bers would soon deplete the resource, what we actually did was maximize our individual cookie consumption by downing one after the other. The result; Within 24 hours the cookie glut would often end, the jar sitting empty for the rest of the week.

When resources are not partitioned, people often consume more than they real­ ize (Herlocker & others, 1997). As a bowl of mashed potatoes is passed around a table of 10, the first few diners are more likely to scoop out a disproportionate share than when a platter of 10 chicken drumsticks is passed.

The Prisoner's Dilemma and the Tragedy of the Commons games have several similar features.

THE FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR

First, both games tempt people to explain their ozon behavior situationally ("I had to protect myself against exploitation by my opponent") and to explain their part­ ners' behavior dispositionally ("she was greedy," "he was untrustworthy ). Most never realize that their counterparts are viewing them with the same fundamental attribution error (Gifford & Hine, 1997; Hine & Gifford, 1996). People with self- inflating, self-focused narcissistic tendencies are especially unlikely to empathize with others' perspectives (Campbell & others, 2005).

EVOLVING MOTIVES

Second, motives often change. At first, people are eager to make some easy money, then to minimize their losses, and finally to save face and avoid defeat (Brockner & others, 1982; Teger, 1980). These shifting motives are strikingly similar to the shifting motives during the buildup of the 1960s Vietnam War. At first. President Johnson's speeches expressed concern for democracy, freedom, and justice. As the conflict escalated, his

Tragedy of the Commons The "commons" is any shared resource, including air, water, energy sources, and food supplies. The tragedy occurs when individuals consume more than their share, with the cost of their doing so dispersed among all, causing the ultimate collapse—the tragedy—of the commons.

486 Part Three Social Relations

non-zero>sum games Games in which outcomes need not sum to zero. With cooperation, both can win; with competition, both can lose (also called mixed-motive situations).

"LIKE THE OLD BUFFALO

HUNTERS, FISHERMEN

HAVE A PERSONAL INCEN­

TIVE TO MAKE AS MUCH AS

THEY CAN THIS YEAR, EVEN

IF THEY'RE DESTROYING

THEIR OWN PROFESSION IN

THE PROCESS."

—JOHN TIERNEY, "WHERE THE

TUNA ROAM," 2006

Small is cooperative. On the Isle of Muck, off Scotland's west coast, Constable Lawrence MacEwan has had an easy time policing the island's residents, recently numbering 33. Over his 40 years on the job, there was never a crime (5cotf/s/j Life, 2001). In 2010, a row between two friends who had been drinking at a wedding became the first recorded crime in 50 years, but the next morning, they shook hands and all was well (Cameron, 2010).

concern became protecHng America's honor and avoiding the national humiliaH^^ of losmg a war. A similar shift occurred during the war in Iraq, which was initiall^ proposed as a response to Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction. ^

OUTCOMES NEED NOT SUM TO ZERO

Third, most real-life conflicts, like the Prisoner's Dilemma and the Tragedy of thp Commons, are non-zero-sum games. The two sides' profits and losses need not add up to zero. Both can win; both can lose. Each game pits the immediate interests of indi ^duals agamst the well-being of the group. Each is a diaboUcal social trap that shows how, even when each individual behaves "rationally," harm can result. No maUcious person planned for the earth's atmosphere to be warmed by a carbon dioxide blanket

Not all self-serving behavior leads to collective doom. In a plentiful commons—as in the world of the eighteenth-century capitalist economist Adam Smith (1776, p 18)— mdividu^ who seek to maximize their own profit may also give the commuidty wl^t It needs: It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner," he observed, "but from their regard to their own interest."

RESOLVING SOCIAL DILEMMAS

Faced with social traps, how can we induce people to cooperate for their mutual betterment? Research with the laboratory dilemmas reveals several ways (Gifford & Hine, 1997). ^

REGULATION If taxes were entirely voluntary, how many would pay their full share? Modern societies do not depend on charity to pay for schools, parks, and social and military security. We also develop rules to safeguard our common good. Fishing and hunting have long been regulated by local seasons and limits; at the ^obal level, an International Whaling Commission sets an agreed-upon "harvest" that enables whales to regenerate. Likewise, where fishing industries, such as the Alaskan halibut fishery, have implemented "catch shares"—guaranteeing each fisher a percentage of each year's allowable catch—competition and overfishing have been greatly reduced (Costello & others, 2008).

In everyday life, however, regulation has costs—costs of administering and enforcing the regulations, costs of diminished personal freedom. A volatile political question thus arises: At what point does a regulation's cost exceed its benefits?

SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL There is another way to resolve social dilemmas; Make the group small. In a small commons, each person feels more responsible and effec­ tive (Kerr 1989). As a group grows larger, people become more likely to think, "I couldn t have made a difference anyway"—a common excuse for noncooperation (Kerr &Kaufman-Gilliland, 1997).

487Conflict and Peacemaking

In small groups, people also feel more identified with a group's success. Resi­ dential stability also strengthens communal identity and procommunity behavior (Oishi & others, 2007).

In small groups—in contrast to large ones—individuals are less likely to take more than their equal share of available resources (Allison & others, 1992). On the Pacific Northwest island where I grew up, our small neighborhood shared a com­ munal water supply. On hot summer days when the reservoir ran low, a light came on, signaling our 15 families to conserve. Recognizing our responsibility to one another, and feeling that our conservation really mattered, each of us conserved. Never did the reservoir run dry.

In a much larger commons—say, a city—voluntary conservation is less success­ ful. Because the harm one does diffuses across many others, each individual can rationalize away personal accountability. Some political theorists and social psy­ chologists therefore argue that, where feasible, the commons should be divided into smaller territories (Edney, 1980). In his 1902 Mutual Aid, the Russian revolu­ tionary Pyotr Kropotkin set down a vision of small communities rather than central government making consensus decisions for the benefit of all (Gould, 1988).

Evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar (1992, 2010) notes that hunter-gatherer societies often travel together as groups of 30 to 35 people, that tribal villages and clans often have averaged about 150 people—enough to afford mutual support and protection but not more people than one can monitor. He suspects it's not a coinci­ dence that the average number of Facebook friends—about 125—echoes the size of our ancestral tribal villages, which reflect the number of people with whom we can have meaningful, supportive relationships. This seemingly natural group size is also, he believes, the optimum size for business organizations, religious congrega­ tions, and military fighting units.

COMMUNICATION To resolve a social dilemma, people must communicate. In the laboratory as in real life, group communication sometimes degenerates into threats and name-calling (Deutsch & Krauss, 1960). More often, communication enables cooperation (Bornstein & others, 1988,1989). Discussing the dilemma forges a group identity, which enhances concern for everyone's welfare. It devises group norms and expectations and pressures members to follow them. Especially when people are face-to-face, it enables them to commit themselves to cooperation (Bouas & Komorita, 1996; Drolet & Morris, 2000; Kerr & others, 1994,1997; Pruitt, 1998).

A clever experiment by Robyn Dawes (1980, 1994) illustrates the importance of communication. Imagine that an experimenter offered you and six strangers a choice: You can each have $6, or you can donate your $6 to the others. If you give away your money, the experimenter will double your gift. No one will be told whether you chose to give or keep your $6. Thus, if all seven give, everyone pockets $12. If you alone keep your $6 and all the others give theirs, you pocket $18. If you give and the others keep, you pocket nothing. In this experiment, cooperation is mutually advantageous, but it requires risk. Dawes found that, without discussion, about 30 percent of people gave. With discussion, in which they could establish trust and cooperation, about 80 percent gave.

Open, clear, forthright communication between two parties reduces mistrust. Without communication, those who expect others not to cooperate will usually refuse to cooperate themselves (Messe & Sivacek, 1979; Pruitt & Kimmel, 1977). One who mistrusts is almost sure to be uncooperative (to protect against exploita­ tion). Noncooperation, in turn, feeds further mistrust ("VS^at else could I do? It's a dog-eat-dog world"). In experiments, communication reduces mistrust, enabling people to reach agreements that lead to their common betterment.

CHANGING THE PAYOFFS Laboratory cooperation rises when experimenters change the payoff matrix to reward cooperation and punish exploitation (Balliet & others, 2011). Changing payoffs also helps resolve actual dilemmas. In some cit­ ies, freeways clog and skies collect smog because people prefer the convenience

Chapter 13

"FOR THAT WHICH

IS COMMON TO THE

GREATEST NUMBER

HAS THE LEAST CARE

BESTOWED UPON IT."

-ARISTOTLE

"MY OWN BELIEF IS THAT

RUSSIAN AND CHINESE

BEHAVIOR IS AS MUCH

INFLUENCED BY SUSPICION

OF OUR INTENTIONS AS

OURS IS BY SUSPICION

OF THEIRS. THIS WOULD

MEAN THAT WE HAVE

GREAT INFLUENCE ON

THEIR BEHAVIOR-THAT,

BY TREATING THEM AS

HOSTILE, WE ASSURE THEIR

HOSTILITY."

-U.S. SENATOR J. WILLIAM

FULBRIGHT(1971)

488 Part Three Social Relations

To change behavior, many cities have changed the payoff matrix. Fast carpool-only lanes increase the benefits of carpooling and the costs of driving alone.

"NEVER IN THE FIELD OF HUMAN CONFLICT WAS SO MUCH OWED BY SO MANY TO SO FEW."

—SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL,

HOUSE OF COMMONS,

AUGUST 20,1940

of driving themselves directly to work. Each knows that one more car does not add noticeably to the congestion and pollution. To alter the personal cost-benefit calculations many cities now give carpoolers incentives, such as desig­ nated freeway lanes or reduced tolls.

APPEALING TO ALTRUISTIC NORMS In Chapter 12 we saw how increasing bystanders' feelings of responsibility for others boosts altruism. Will appeals to altruistic motives similarly prompt people to act for the common good?

The evidence is mixed. On the one hand, just knowing the dire consequences of noncooperation has little effect. In labo­ ratory games, people realize that their self-serving choices are mutually destructive, yet they continue to make them. Out­ side the laboratory, warnings of doom and appeals to con­ serve have brought little response. Shortly after taking office in 1976, President Carter declared that America's response to the energy crisis should be "the moral equivalent of war" and urged conservation. The following summer, Americans consumed more gasoline than ever before. At the beginning of this new century, people knew that global warming was under way—and were buying gas-slurping SUVs in record numbers. As we have seen many times in this book, attitudes sometimes fail to influence behavior. Knowing what is good does not necessarily lead to doing what is good.

Still, most people do adhere to norms of social responsibil­ ity, reciprocity, equity, and keeping one's commitments (Kerr, 1992). The problem is how to tap such feelings. One way is through the influence of a charismatic leader who inspires others to cooperate (De Cremer, 2002). Another way is by defining situations in ways that invoke cooperative norms. In one experiment, only a third of participants cooperated in a simulation labeled the "Wall Street Game." Two-thirds did so when the same social dilemma was labeled the "Community Game" (Liberman & others, 2004).

Communication can also activate altruistic norms. When permitted to communi­ cate, participants in laboratory games frequently appeal to the social-responsibility norm: "If you defect on the rest of us, you're going to have to live with it for the rest of your life" (Dawes & others, 1977). So researcher Robyn Dawes (1980) and his associates gave participants a short sermon about group benefits, exploitation, and ethics. Then the participants played a dilemma game. The sermon worked: People chose to forgo immediate personal gain for the common good. (Recall, too, from Chapter 12, the disproportionate volunteerism and charitable contributions by people who regularly hear religious sermons.)

Could such appeals work in large-scale dilemmas? In the 1960s struggle for civil rights, many marchers willingly agreed, for the sake of the larger group, to suffer harassment, beatings, and jail. In wartime, people make great personal sacrifices for the good of their group. As Winston Churchill said of the Battle of Britain, the actions of the Royal Air Force pilots were genuinely altruistic: A great many people owed a great deal to those who flew into battle knowing there was a high probability—70 per­ cent for those on a standard tour of duty—that they would not return (Levinson, 1950).

To summarize, we can minimize destructive entrapment in social dilemmas by establishing rules that regulate self-serving behavior, by keeping groups small by enabling people to communicate, by changing payoffs to make cooperation more rewarding, and by invoking compelling altruistic norms.

Competition Hostilities often arise when groups compete for scarce jobs, housing, or resources. When interests clash, conflict erupts—a phenomenon Chapter 9 identified as realistic group conflict. As one Algerian immigrant to France explained after Muslim youth rioted in

489Conflict and Peacemaking

f Prpnch cities in the autumn of 2005, "There is no exit, no factories, no jobs for ■dozens of French c (c^inVmo 2005) ''We are the 99 percent EconomiclU- ^ Tilted te chirpy wTll s“^t prlstors in 2011: expressing their fjustice is overdue declared the Wail b P ^pleasure With 1 percent of

invading his Turkish province in 1919.

: Theystartedkiliingpeoplerightand^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ and then I became mterested wLtevL science or specialization was

' After studying the social roots of savagery, Sherif introduced

camp m “Parate buse^ an p ^^,5 Oklahoma's Robb« s Cav^ State Park^to^^^^ in various activities-preparing

ifying the good feeling, a ^ ^ the conflict. Near the first Grouo identity thus established, the stage u n m " wVi#»n the

groups (baseball games, ° ^ ^ tMs was win-lose competition. Theforth), both groups responded enthusiastically. 1 Ills V* spoils (medals, knives) would all go to the , ,,ene from

boys marooned on an island. In Sh • • ^ it escalated to din-

Chapter 13

Little-known fact: How did Sherif unobtrusively observe the boys without inhibiting their behavior? He became the camp maintenance man (Williams, 2002).

Competition kindles conflict. Here, in Sherif's Robber’s Cave experiment, one group of boys raids the bunkhouse of another.

490 Part Three

"DO UNTO OTHERS 20% BETTER THAN YOU WOULD EXPECTTHEMTODO UNTO YOU, TO CORRECT FOR SUBJECTIVE ERROR."

—LINUS PAULING (1962)

Social Relations

after hearing tolerance-advocating messages, ingroup discussion often exacerh i dislike of the conflicting group (Paluck, 2010). All of this occurred without anv ? tural, physical, or economic differences between the two groups, and withal,"*' who were their communiHes' "cream of the crop." Sherif noted that, had we the camp at that point, we would have concluded these "were wicked dishirh a Md vicious bunches of youngsters" (1966, p. 85). Actually, their evil behavior ' tnggered by an evil situation.

Competition breeds such conflict, later research has shown, especially when i.i p^ple perceive that resources such as money, jobs, or power are limited and avaU- able on a zero-sum basis (others' gain is one's loss), and (b) a distinct outeroun stands out as a potential competitor (Esses & others, 2005). Thus, those who see immigrants as competing for their own jobs will tend to express negative attitudes toward immigrants and immigration. ^

Fortunately, as we will see, Sherif not only made strangers into enemies; he then also made the enemies into friends.

Perceived Injustice "That's i^air!" "What a ripoff!" "We deserve better!" Such comments typify conflicts bred by perceived injustice. But what is "justice"? According to some social-psychological theorists, people perceive justice as equity—the distribution of rewards in proportion to individuals' contributions (Walster & others, 1978). If you and I have a relationship (employer-employee, teacher-student, husband-wife colleague-colleague), it is equitable if

My outcomes _ Your outcomes My inputs Your inputs

If you contribute more and benefit less than I do, you will feel exploited and irri- tated; I may feel exploitative and guilty. Chances are, though, that you will be more sensitive to the inequity than I will be (Greenberg, 1986; Messick & Sentis, 1979).

We may agree with the equity principle's definition of justice yet disagree on whetiier our relationship is equitable. If two people are colleagues, what will each consider a relevant input? The older person may favor basing pay on seniority, the other on current productivity. Given such a disagreement, whose definition is likely to prevail. Those with social power usually convince themselves and others that they deserve what they're getting (Mikula, 1984). This has been called a "golden" rule: Whoever has the gold makes the rules.

Critics argue that equity is not the only conceivable definition of justice. (Pause a moment: Can you imagine any other?) Edward Sampson (1975) argued that equity Uieonsts wrongly assume that the economic principles that guide Western, capital­ ist nations are umversal. Some noncapitalist cultures define justice not as equity but as equality or even fulfillment of need: "From each according to his abilities, to each accordmg to his needs" (Karl Marx). Compared with individualistic Americans, people socialized under the influence of collectivist cultures, such as China and ^dia, defme justice more as equality or need fulfillment (Hui & others, 1991 • Leung & Bond, 1984; Murphy-Berman others, 1984).

On what basis should rewards be distributed? Merit? Equality? Need^ Some com­ bination of those? Political philosopher John Rawls (1971) invited us to consider a tuture m which our own place on the economic ladder is unknown. Which stan­ dard of justice would we prefer?

Misperception Recall that conflict is a perceived incompatibility of actions or goals. Many conflicts contain but a small core of truly incompatible goals; the bigger problem is the misper­ ceptions of the other's motives and goals. Hie Eagles and the Rattlers did indeed

Conflict and Peacemaking Chapter 13 491

have some genuinely incompatible aims. But their perceptions subjectively magni­ fied their differences (Figure 13.3).

In earlier chapters we considered the seeds of such misperception:

T • The self-serving bias leads individu- S' als and groups to accept credit for I ’ their good deeds and shirk respon-

sibility for bad deeds, r • A tendency to sc//-j«stf/y inclines 1^ people to deny the wrong of their I evil acts. ("You call that hitting? I

hardly touched him!") [■ • Thanks to the fundamental attribution error, each side sees the other's hostility j as reflecting an evil disposition. \. • One then filters the information and interprets it to fit one's preconceptions. \ • Groups frequently polarize these self-serving, self-justifying, biasing ?: tendencies. ' • One symptom of groupthink is the tendency to perceive one's own group as ! r moral and strong, and the opposition as evil and weak. Acts of terrorism that S in most people's eyes are despicable brutality are seen by others as "holy war." [' • Indeed, the mere fact of being in a group triggers an ingroup bias. i • Negative stereotypes of the outgroup, once formed, are often resistant to con­

tradictory evidence. So it should not surprise us, though it should sober us, to discover that people in

conflict—people everywhere—form distorted images of one another. Wherever in the world you live, was it not true that when your country was last at war it clothed itself in moral virtue? that it prepared for war by demonizing the enemy? that most of its people accepted their government's case for war and rallied 'round its flag? Show social psychologists Ervin Staub and Daniel Bar-Tal (2003) a group in intrac­ table conflict and they will show you a group that

• sees its own goals as supremely important. • takes pride in "us" and devalues "them." • believes itself victimized.

■ • elevates patriotism, solidarity, and loyalty to their group s needs. • celebrates self-sacrifice and suppresses criticism. Although one side to a conflict may indeed be acting with greater moral vutue,

the point is that enemy images are fairly predictable. Even the types of mispercep­ tion are intriguingly predictable.

MIRROR-IMAGE PERCEPTIONS

To a striking degree, the misperceptions of those in conflict are mutual. People in conflict attribute similar virtues to themselves and vices to the other. When the American psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner (1961) visited the Soviet Union in 1960 and conversed with many ordinary citizens in Russian, he was astonished to hear them saying the same things about America that Americans were saying about Russia. The Russians said that the U.S. government was militarily aggressive; that it exploited and deluded the American people; that in diplomacy, it was not to be trusted. "Slowly and painfully, it forced itself upon one that the Russians' distorted picture of us was curiously similar to our view of them—a mirror image.

Analyses of American and Russian perceptions by psychologists (Tobin & Eagles, 1992; White, 1984) and political scientists (Jervis, 1985) revealed that mirror-image

FIGURE:: 13.3 Many conflicts contain a core of truly incompatible goals surrounded by a larger exterior of misperceptions.

"AGGRESSION BREEDS PATRIOTISM, AND PATRIOTISM CURBS DISSENT."

—MAUREEN DOWD, 2003

492 Part Three Social Relations

Self-confirming, mirror-image perceptions are a hallmark of intense conflict.

mirror-image perceptions Reciprocal views of each other often held by parties in conflict: for example, each may view itself as moral and peace-loving and the other as evil and aggressive.

perceptions persisted into the 1980s. The same action (patrolling the other's coast with sellmg arms to smaller nations) seemed more hostile when they did it

When two sides have clashing perceptions, at least one of the two is misperceiving the other. And when such misperceptions exist, noted Bronfenbrenner, "It is a psy­ chological phenomenon without parallel in the gravity of its consequences ... for if IS characteristic of such images that they are self-confirming." If A expects B to be hostile

may treat B m such a way that B fulfills A's expectations, thus beginning a vicious circle (Kennedy & Pronin, 2008). Morton Deutsch (1986) explained:

You hear the false rumor that a friend is saying nasty things about you; you snub him; he then badmouths you, confirming your expectation. Similarly, if the policymakers of East and West believe that war is likely and either attempts to increase its military security vis-a-vis the other, the other's response will justify the initial move. Negative mirror-image perceptions have been an obstacle to peace in many

places: ^ ^

Both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict insisted that "we" are motivated by our need to protect our security and our territory, whereas "they" want to obliter­ ate us and gobble up our land. "We" are the indigenous people here, "they" are the mvaders. "We" are the victims; "they" are the aggressors" (Bar-Tal, 2004; ^^^dsWeit, 1979; Kelman, 2007). Given such intense mistrust, negotiation is

• At Northern Ireland's University of Ulster, Catholic and Protestant students viewed videos of a Protestant attack at a Catholic funeral and a Catholic attack at a Protestant funeral (Hunter & others, 1991). Most students attrib­ uted the other side's attack to "bloodthirsty" motives but its own side's attack to retaliation or self-defense.

• Terrorism is in the eye of the beholder. In the Middle East, a public opinion survey found 98 percent of Palestinians agreeing that the killing of 29 Pales­ tinians by an assault-rifle-bearing Israeli at a mosque constituted terrorism, and 82 percent disagreed that the killing of 21 Israeli youths by a Palestinian suicide-bombmg constituted terrorism (Kmglanski & Fishman, 2006) Israelis likewise have responded to violence with intensified perceptions of Palestinian evil intent (Bar-Tal, 2004).

OULU Lonriicts, iiuies 1 luup z^imoarao (^uu4a), engage "a two-categ^iy of good people, like US, and of bad people, like THEM." "In fact," n4e Danit

ahneman and Jonathan Renshon (200^, all the biases uncovered in 40 years of psv chological research are conducive to war. They "incline national leaders to exaggerat

Conflict and Peacemaking Chapter 13 493

the evil intentions of adversaries, to misjudge how adversaries perceive them, to he overly sanguine when hostilities start, and overly reluctant to make necessary con­ cessions in negotiations."

Opposing sides in a conflict tend to exaggerate their differences. On issues such as immigration and affirmative action, proponents aren't as liberal and opponents aren't as conservative as their adversaries suppose (Sherman & others, 2003). Opposing sides also tend to have a "bias blind spot," notes Cynthia McPherson Frantz (2006). They see their own understandings as not biased by their liking or disliking for others; but those who disagree with them seem unfair and biased.

John Chambers, Robert Baron, and Mary Inman (2006) confirmed misperceptions on issues related to abortion and politics. Partisans perceived exaggerated differ­ ences from their adversaries (who actually agreed with them more often than they supposed). From exaggerated perceptions of the other's position arise culture wars. Ralph White (1996,1998) reports that the Serbs started the war in Bosnia partly out of an exaggerated fear of the relatively secularized Bosnian Muslims, whose beliefs they wrongly associated with Middle Eastern Islamic fundamentalism and fanati­ cal terrorism. Resolving conflict involves abandoning such exaggerated perceptions and coming to understand the other's mind. But that isn't easy, notes Robert Wright (2003): "Putting yourself in the shoes of people who do things you find abhorrent may be the hardest moral exercise there is."

Destructive mirror-image perceptions also operate in conflicts between small groups and between individuals. As we saw in the dilemma games, both parties may say, "We want to cooperate. But their refusal to cooperate forces us to react defen­ sively." When Kermeth Thomas and Louis Pondy (1977) asked executives to describe a significant recent conflict, only 12 percent felt the other party was cooperative; 74 percent perceived themselves as cooperative. The typical executive explained that he or she had "suggested," "informed," and "recommended," whereas the antagonist had "demanded," "disagreed with everything I said," and "refused."

Group conflicts are often fueled by an illusion that the enemy's top leaders are evil but their people, though controlled and manipulated, are pro-us. This evil-leader- good people perception characterized Americans' and Russians' views of each other during the Cold War. The United States entered the Vietnam War believing that in areas dominated by the Communist Vietcong "terrorists," many of the people were allies-in-waiting. As suppressed information later revealed, those beliefs were mere wishful thinking. In 2003 the United States began the Iraq War presuming the exis­ tence of "a vast underground network that would rise in support of coalition forces to assist security and law enforcement" (Phillips, 2003). Alas, the network didn't materialize, and the resulting postwar security vacuum enabled looting, sabotage, persistent attacks on American forces, and increasing attacks from an insurgency determined to drive Western interests from the country.

"THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

ARE GOOD, BUT THE

LEADERS ARE BAD."

-BAGHDAD GROCER ADUL

GESAN AFTER 1998 AMERICAN

BOMBING OF IRAQ

SIMPLISTIC THINKING

When tension rises—as happens during an international crisis—rational thinking becomes more difficult (Janis, 1989). Views of the enemy become more simplistic and stereotyped, and seat-of-the-pants judgments become more likely. Even the mere expectation of conflict can serve to freeze thinking and impede creative prob­ lem solving (Camevale & Probst, 1998). Social psychologist Philip Tetlock (1988) observed inflexible thinking when he analyzed the complexity of Russian and American rhetoric since 1945. During the Berlin blockade, the Korean War, and the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, political statements became simplified into stark, good-versus-bad terms. At other times—notably after Mikhail Gorbachev became the Soviet general secretary (Figure 13.4)—political statements acknowledged that each country's motives are complex.

Researchers have also analyzed political rhetoric preceding the outset of major wars, surprise military attacks. Middle Eastern conflicts, and revolu­ tions (Conway & others, 2001). In nearly every case, attacking leaders displayed

494 Part Three Social Relations

FIGURE:: 13.4 Complexity of Official U.S. and Soviet Policy Statements, 1977-1986 Source:?rom Tetlock, 1988.

Mean integrative complexity (complexity = not simplistic)

Year

increasingly simplistic we-are-good/they-are-bad thinking immediately prior to new" u IT"''"'typically preceded wh^n P r optimism was cLirmed when President Reagan in 1988 traveled to Moscow to sign the American Russian mtermediate-range nuclear force (INF) treaty, and then Gorbachev visited

research CLOSE-UP Misperception and War

Most research that I report in this book offers numeri­ cal data drawn from observations of people's behav­ ior, cognitions, and attitudes as exhibited in laboratory experiments or in surveys. But there are other ways to do research. Some social psychologists, especially in Europe, analyze natural human discourse; they study written texts or spoken conversation to glimpse how people interpret and construct the events of their lives (Edwards & Potter, 2005). Others have analyzed human behavior in historical contexts, as did Irving Janis (1972) in exploring groupthink in historical fiascoes and Philip Tetlock (2005) in exploring the judgment failures of supposed political experts.

In what was arguably social psychology's longest career, Ralph K. White, legendary for his late 1930s studies of democratic versus autocratic leadership (with pioneering social psychologists Kurt Lewin and Ronald Lippitt), published in 2004—at age 97—a capstone article summarizing his earlier analyses (1968, 1984, 1986) of how misperceptions feed war. In reviewing 10 wars from the past century, White reported that each was marked by at least one of three mispercep­ tions: underestimating the strength of one's enemy,

ratJona//z/ng one's own motives and behavior, and, especially, demonizing the enemy.

Underestimating one's adversary, he observed, embold- |: ened Hitler to attack Russia, Japan to attack the United i States, and the United States to enter the Korean and |

Vietnam wars. And rationalization of one's own actions and I demonization of the adversary are the hallmark of war. In f

the early twenty-first century as the United States and Iraq i talked of war, each said the other was "evil." To George I W Bush, Saddam Hussein was a "murderous tyrant" and a "madman" who threatened the civilized world with weap- ■ ons of mass destruction. To Iraq's government, the Bush government was a "gang of evil" (Preston, 2002). |

The truth need not lie midway between such clash- I ing perceptions. Yet "valid perception is an antidote to hate," concluded White as he reflected on his lifetime ' as a peace psychologist. Empathy-accurately perceiv- ; ing the other's thoughts and feelings—is "one of the most important factors for preventing war. .. . Empathy can help two or more nations avoid the dangers of misperception that lead to the wars most would prefer not to fight."

Conflict and Peacemaking Chapter 13 495

I New York and told the United Nations that he would remove 500,000 Soviet troops ^ fixim Eastern Europe:

^ I would like to believe that our hopes will be matched by our joint effort to put an end I to an era of wars, confrontation and regional conflicts, to aggressions against nature, to I the terror of hunger and poverty as well as to political terrorism. This is our common

goal and we can only reach it together.

SHIFTING PERCEPTIONS

If misperceptions accompany conflict, they should appear and disappear as con­ flicts wax and wane. And they do, with startling regularity. The same processes that create the enemy's image can reverse that image when the enemy becomes an ally. Thus, the "bloodthirsty, cruel, treacherous, buck-toothed little Japs" of World War II soon became—in North American minds (Gallup, 1972) and in the media— our "intelligent, hard-working, self-disciplined, resourceful allies."

The Germans, who after two world wars were hated, then admired, and then again hated, were once again admired—apparently no longer plagued by what earlier was presumed to be cruelty in their national character. So long as Iraq was attacking unpopular Iran, even while using chemical weapons to massacre its own Kurds, many nations supported it. Our enemy's enemy is our friend. When Iraq ended its war with Iran and invaded oil-rich Kuwait, Iraq's behavior suddenly became "barbaric." Images of our enemies change with amazing ease.

The extent of misperceptions during conflict provides a chilling reminder that people need not be insane or abnormally malicious to form distorted images of their antagonists. When we experience conflict with another nation, another group, or simply a roommate or a parent, we readily misperceive our own motives as good and the other's as evil. And just as readily, our antagonists form a mirror-image perception of us.

So, with antagonists trapped in a social dilemma, competing for scarce resources, or perceiving injustice, the conflict continues until something enables both parties to peel away their misperceptions and work at reconciling their actual differences. Good advice, then, is this: When in conflict, do not assume that the other fails to share your values and morality. Rather, compare perceptions, assuming that the other is likely perceiving the situation differently.

SUMMING UP: What Creates Conflict? • Whenever two or more people, groups, or nations

interact, their perceived needs and goals may con­ flict. Many social dilemmas arise as people pursue individual self-interest to their collective detriment. Two laboratory games, the Prisoner's Dilemma and the Tragedy of the Commons, exemplify such dilemmas. In real life we can avoid such traps by establishing rules that regulate self-serving behav­ ior; by keeping social groups small so people feel responsibility for one another; by enabling com­ munication, thus reducing mistrust; by changing payoffs to make cooperation more rewarding; and by invoking altruistic norms.

• When people compete for scarce resources, human relations often sink into prejudice and hostility. In his famous experiments, Muzafer Sherif found that win-lose competition quickly made strangers into

enemies, triggering outright warfare even among normally upstanding boys.

• Conflicts also arise when people feel unjustly treated. According to equity theory, people define justice as the distribution of rewards in proportion to one's contributions. Conflicts occur when people disagree on the extent of their contributions and thus on the equity of their outcomes.

• Conflicts frequently contain a small core of truly incompatible goals, surrounded by a thick layer of misperceptions of the adversary's motives and goals. Often, conflicting parties have mirror-image perceptions. When both sides believe "We are peace- loving—they are hostile," each may treat the other in ways that provoke confirmation of its expecta­ tions. International conflicts are sometimes also fed by an evil leader-good people illusion.

496 Part Three Social Relations

"WE KNOW MORE ABOUT

WAR THAN WE DO ABOUT

PEACE—MORE ABOUT

KILLING THAN WE KNOW

ABOUT LIVING."

-GENERAL OMAR BRADLEY,

1893-1981, FORMER U.S. ARMY

CHIEF OF STAFF

HOW CAN PEACE BE ACHIEVED? Explain the processes that enable the achievement of peace.

Although toxic forces can breed destructive conflict, we can harness other forces to bring conflict to a constructive resolution. What are these ingredients of peace and harmony?

We have seen how conflicts are ignited by social traps, competition, perceived injustices, and misperceptions. Although the picture is grim, it is not hopeless. Sometimes closed fists become open arms as hostilities evolve into friendship. Social psychologists have focused on four strategies for helping enemies become comrades. We can remember these as the four Cs of peacemaking: contact, coopera­ tion, communication, and conciliation.

Contact Might putting two conflicting individuals or groups into close contact enable them to know and like each other? Perhaps not: In Chapter 3, we saw how negative expectations can bias judgments and create self-fulfilling prophecies. When ten­ sions run high, contact may fuel a fight.

But we also saw, in Chapter 11, that proximity—and the accompanying interac­ tion, anticipation of interaction, and mere exposure—boosts liking. In Chapter 4, we noted how blatant racial prejudice declined following desegregation, showing that attitudes follow behavior. If this social-psychological principle now seems obvi­ ous, remember: That's how things usually seem after you know them. To the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896, the idea that desegregated behavior might reduce preju­ dicial attitudes was anything but obvious. What seemed obvious at the time was "that legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts" (Plessy v. Ferguson).

DOES CONTACT PREDICT ATTITUDES? In general, contact predicts tolerance. In a painstakingly complete analysis, Linda Tropp and Thomas Pettigrew (2005a; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2008, 2011) assembled data from 516 studies of 250,555 people in 38 nations. In 94 percent of studies, increased contact predicted decreased prejudice. This is especially so for majority group attitudes toward minorities (Gibson & Claassen, 2010; Tropp & Pettigrew, 2005b).

Newer studies confirm the correlation between contact and positive attitudes: • The more interracial contact South African Blacks and Whites have, the less

prejudice they feel, and the more sympathetic their policy attitudes are to those of the other group (Dixon & others, 2007; Tredoux & Finchilescu, 2010).

• The more friendly contact Blacks and Whites have with one another, the bet­ ter their attitudes toward one another—and toward other outgroups, such as Hispanics (Tausch & others, 2010).

• The more contact straight people have with gays and lesbians, the more accepting they become (Smith & others, 2009).

• The more contact Dutch adolescents have with Muslims, the more accepting of Muslims they are (Gonzalez & others, 2008).

• Even vicarious indirect contact, via story reading or imagination, or through a friend's having an outgroup friend, tends to reduce prejudice (Cameron & Rutland, 2006; Crisp & others, 2011; Turner & others, 2007a, 2007b, 2008, 2010). This indirect contact effect, also called "the extended-contact effect," can spread more positive attitudes through a peer group (Christ & others, 2010).

In the United States, segregation and expressed prejudice have diminished together since the 1960s. But was interracial contact the cause of these improved attitudes? Were those who actually experienced desegregation affected by it?

Conflict and Peacemaking Chapter 13 497

DOES DESEGREGATION IMPROVE RACIAL ATTITUDES?

School desegregation has produced measurable benefits, such as leading more Blacks to attend and succeed in college (Stephan, 1988). Does desegregation of schools, neighborhoods, and workplaces also produce favorable social results? The evidence is mixed.

On the one hand, many studies conducted during and shortly after desegrega­ tion found Whites' attitudes toward Blacks improving markedly. Whether the peo­ ple were department store clerks and customers, merchant marines, government workers, police officers, neighbors, or students, racial contact led to diminished prejudice (Amir, 1969; Pettigrew, 1969). For example, near the end of World War II, the U.S. Army partially desegregated some of its rifle companies (Stouffer & others, 1949). When asked their opinions of such desegregation, 11 percent of the White soldiers in segregated companies approved. Of those in desegregated companies, 60 percent approved. They exhibited "system justification"—the human tendency to approve the way things are.

When Morton Deutsch and Mary Collins (1951) took advantage of a made to-order natural experiment, they observed similar results. In accord with state law. New York City desegregated its public housing units; it assigned families to apartments without regard to race. In a similar development across the river in Newark, New Jersey, Blacks and Whites were assigned to separate buildings. When surveyed. White women in the desegregated development were far more likely to favor interracial housing and to say their attitudes toward Blacks had improved. Exaggerated stereotypes had wilted in the face of reality. As one woman put it, "I've really come to like it. 1 see they're just as human as we are."

Such findings influenced the Supreme Court's 1954 decision to desegregate schools and helped fuel the 1960s civil rights movement (Pettigrew, 1986,2004). Yet initial studies of the effects of school desegregation were less encouraging. After reviewing all the available studies, Walter Stephan (1986) concluded that racial atti­ tudes had been little affected by desegregation. For Blacks, the noticeable effect of desegregated schooling was less on attitudes than on their increased likelihood of attending integrated (or predominantly White) colleges, living in integrated neigh­ borhoods, and working in integrated settings.

Thus, we can see that sometimes desegregation improves racial attitudes, and sometimes—especially when there is anxiety or perceived threat (Pettigrew, 2004)—it doesn't. Such disagreements excite the scientist's detective spirit. What explains the difference? So far, we've been lumping all kinds of desegregation together. Actual desegregation occurs in many ways and under vastly different conditions.

WHEN DOES DESEGREGATION IMPROVE RACIAL ATTITUDES?

Given that "mere exposure" can produce liking (Chapter 11), might exposure to other-race faces produce increased liking for other-race strangers? Indeed yes, Leslie Zebrowitz and her colleagues (2008) discovered, when exposing White par­ ticipants to Asian and Black faces. Might the frequency of interracial contact also be a factor? Indeed it seems to be. Researchers have gone into dozens of desegre­ gated schools and observed with whom children of a given race eat, talk, and loiter. Race influences contact. Whites disproportionately associate with Whites, Blacks with Blacks (Schofield, 1982, 1986). In one study of Dartmouth University e-mail exchanges. Black students, though only 7 percent of students, sent 44 percent of their e-mails to other Black students (Sacerdote & Marmaros, 2005).

The same self-imposed segregation was evident in a South African desegregated beach, as John Dixon and Kevin Durrheim (2003) discovered when they recorded the location of Black, White, and Indian beachgoers one midsummer (Decem­ ber 30th) afternoon (Figure 13.5). Desegregated neighborhoods, cafeterias, and

498 Part Three Social Relations

FIGURE :: 13.5 Desegregation Needn't Mean Contact After this Scottburgh, South Africa, beach became "open" and desegregated in the new South Africa, Blacks (represented by red dots), Whites (blue dots), and Indians (yellow dots) tended to cluster with their own race.

Source: From Dixon & Durrheim, 2003.

restaurants, too, may fail to produce integrated interactions (Clack & others, 2005; Dixon & others, 2005a, 2005b). "Why are all the Black kids sitting together?" people may wonder (a question that could as easily be asked of the White kids). One natu­ ralistic study observed 119 class sessions of 26 University of Cape Town tutorial groups, which averaged 6 Black and 10 White students per group (Alexander & Tredoux, 2010). On average, the researchers calculated, 71 percent of Black students would have needed to change seats to achieve a fully integrated seating pattern.

In one study that tracked the attitudes of more than 1,600 European students, over time, contact did serve to reduce prejudice. But prejudice also minimized con­ tact (Binder & others, 2009). Anxiety as well as prejudice helps explain why par­ ticipants in interracial relationships (when students are paired as roommates or as partners in an experiment) may engage in less intimate self-disclosure than those in same-race relationships (Johnson & others, 2009; Trail & others, 2009).

Efforts to facilitate contact sometimes help, but sometimes fall flat. "We had one day when some of the Protestant schools came over," explained one Catholic youngster after a Northern Ireland school exchange (Cairns & Hewstone, 2002). "It was supposed to be like ... mixing, but there was very little mixing. It wasn't because we didn't want to; it was just really awkward." The lack of mixing stems partly from "pluralistic ignorance." Many Whites and Blacks say they would like more contact but misperceive that the other does not reciprocate their feelings. (See "Research Close-Up; Relationships That Might Have Been.")

FRIENDSHIP The encouraging older studies of store clerks, soldiers, and hous­ ing project neighbors involved considerable interracial contact, more than enough to reduce the anxiety that marks initial intergroup contact. Other studies show similar benefits when they involve prolonged, personal contact—between Black and White prison inmates, between Black and White girls in an interracial sum­ mer camp, between Black and White university roommates, and between Black, Colored, and White South Africans (Clore & others, 1978; Foley, 1976; Holtman & others, 2005; Van Laar & others, 2005). Among American students who have

Conflict and Peacemaking Chapter 13 499

research CLOSE UP Relationships That Might Have Been

Perhaps you can recall a time when you really would have liked to reach out to someone. Maybe it was someone to whom you felt attracted. But doubting that your feel­ ings were reciprocated, you didn't risk rebuff. Or maybe it was someone of another race whom you wanted to welcome to the open seat at your dining hall or library table. But you worried that the person might be wary of sitting with you. It's likely that on some such occasions the other person actually reciprocated your wish to con­ nect but assumed that your distance signified indiffer­ ence or even prejudice. Alas, thanks to what Chapter 8 called "pluralistic ignorance"—shared false impressions of another's feelings—you passed like ships in the night.

Studies by University of Manitoba psychologist Jacquie Vorauer (2001,2005; Vorauer& Sakamoto, 2006) illuminate this phenomenon. In their new relationships, people often overestimate the transparency of their feelings, Vorauer reports. Presuming that their feelings are leaking out, they experience the "illusion of transparency (Chapter 2). Thus, they may assume that their body language conveys their romantic interest, when actually the intended recipi­ ent never gets the message. If the other person shares the positive feelings, and is similarly overestimating his or her own transparency, then the possibility of a relationship is quenched.

The same phenomenon, Vorauer reports, often occurs with low-prejudice people who would love more friend­ ships with those outside their racial or social group. If Whites presume that Blacks think them prejudiced, and

I if Blacks presume that Whites stereotype them, both will I feel anxious about making the first move. Such anxiety is i "a central factor" in South Africa's "continuing informal I segregation," reports Gillian Finchilescu (2CX)5). Seeking to I replicate and extend Vorauer's work, Nicole Shelton and [ Jennifer Richeson (2005; Richeson & Shelton, 2012) under­

took a coordinated series of surveys and behavioral tests. In their first study. University of Massachusetts White

students viewed themselves as having more-than-average interest in cross-racial contacts and friendships, and they perceived White students in general as more eager for such than were Black students. Black students had mirror- image views—seeing themselves as more eager for such than were White students. "I want to have friendships across racial lines," thought the typical student. But those in the other racial group don't share my desire."

Would this pluralistic ignorance generalize to a spe­ cific setting? To find out, Shelton and Richeson's second study asked White Princeton students to imagine how they would react upon entering their dining hall and

....................

noticing several Black (or White) "students who live near you sitting together." How interested would you be in joining them? And how likely is it that one of them would beckon you to join them? Again, Whites believed that they more than those of the other race would be inter­ ested in the contact.

And how do people explain failures to make interra­ cial contact? In their third study, Shelton and Richeson invited Princeton White and Black students to contem­ plate a dining hall situation in which they notice a table with familiar-looking students of the other race, but nei­ ther they nor the seated students reach out to the other. The study participants, regardless of race, attributed their own inaction in such a situation primarily to fear of rejection, and more often attributed the seated students' inaction to lack of interest. In a fourth study at Dartmouth University, Shelton and Richeson replicated this study with different instructions but similar results.

Would this pluralistic ignorance phenomenon extend to other real-life settings, and to contact with a single other person? In Study 5, Shelton and Richeson invited Princeton students, both Black and White, to a study of "friendship formation." After participants had filled out some background information, the experimenter took their picture, attached it to background information, ostensibly took it to the room of a supposed fellow participant, and then returned with the other person's sheet and photo- showing a person of the same sex but the other race. The participants were then asked, "To what extent are you con­ cerned about being accepted by the other participant?" and "How likely is it that the other person won't want you as a friend?" Regardless of their race, the participants guessed that they, more than the other-race fellow participant, were interested in friendship but worried about rejection.

Do these social misperceptions constrain actual inter­ racial contact? In a sixth study, Shelton and Richeson confirmed that White Princeton students who were most prone to pluralistic ignorance—to presuming that they feared interracial rejection more than did Black students—were also the most likely to experience dimin­ ishing cross-racial contacts in the ensuing seven weeks.

Vorauer, Shelton, and Richeson are not contend­ ing that misperceptions alone impede romances and cross-racial friendships. But misperceptions do restrain people from risking an overture. Understanding this phenomenon—recognizing that others' coolness may actually reflect motives and feelings similar to our own- may help us reach out to others, and sometimes to trans­ form potential friendships into real ones.

500 Part Three Social Relations

THE inside STORY

' : /t'

Nicole Shelton and Jennifer Richeson on Cross-Racial Friendships

During the initial stages of our collaboration, we spent time simply listening to each other talk about the stress associated with being assistant professors. We noticed that both White and ethnic minority students in our classes often indicated that they genuinely wanted to interact with people outside of their ethnic group but were afraid that they would not be accepted. However, they did not think people of other ethnic groups had the same fears; they assumed that members of other groups simply did not want to connect. This sounded very much like Dale Miller's work on pluralistic ignorance. Over the course of a few weeks, we designed a series of studies to explore plu­ ralistic ignorance in the context of interracial interactions.

Since the publication of our article, we have had researchers tell us that we should use our work in new student orientation sessions in order to reduce students'

fears about reaching across racial lines. We are delighted that when we present this work in our courses, students of all racial backgrounds tell us that it indeed has opened their eyes about making the first move to develop inter­ racial friendships.

Nicole Shelton

Princeton University

Jennifer Richeson

Northwestern University

Studied in Germany or in Britain, the more their contact with host country people, the more positive their attitudes (Stangor & others, 1996). Exchange students' hosts also are changed by the experience; they become more likely to see things from the other visitor culture's perspective (Vollhardt, 2010).

In experiments, contact with someone of another race who acts positively (warm and relaxed) makes their race less salient—less likely to be noted and commented on than when their behavior is distant and tense (Paolini & others, 2010). Those who form friendships with outgroup members develop more positive attitudes toward the outgroup (Page-Gould & others, 2010; Pettigrew &: Tropp, 2000). It's not just head knowledge of other people that matters; it's also the emotional ties that form with intimate friendships and interracial roommate pairings that serve to reduce anxiety and increase empathy (Barlow & others, 2009; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2000, 2011; Shook & Fazio, 2008). For initially intolerant people, the anxiety-reducing effect of contact is especially strong (Hodson, 2011).

The diminishing anxiety that accompanies friendly outgroup interactions is a biological event: It is measurable as decreased stress hormone reactivity in cross­ ethnic contexts (Page-Gould & others, 2008).

"Group salience" (visibility) also helps bridge divides between people. If you forever think of that friend solely as an individual, your affective ties may not generalize to other members of the friend's group (Miller, 2002). Ideally, then, we should form trusting friendships across group lines but also recognize that the friend represents those in another group—with whom we turn out to have much in common (Brown & others, 2007).

We are especially likely to befriend dissimilar people when their outgroup iden­ tity is initially minimized. If our liking for our new friends is then to generalize to others, their group identity must at some point become salient. So, to reduce preju­ dice and conflict, we had best initially minimize group diversity, then acknowledge it, then transcend it.

Surveys of nearly 4,000 Europeans reveal that friendship is a key to success­ ful contact: If you have a minority group friend, you become much more likely to express sympathy and support for the friend's group, and even somewhat more

501Conflict and Peacemaking

support for immigration by that group. It's true of West Geimans attitudes toward TurL, French people's attitudes toward Asians and North Africans Netherland ers' attitudes toward Surinamers and Turks, British attitudes toward West Indians and Asians, and Northern Ireland Protestants' and Catholics' attitudes toward eac other (Brown & others, 1999; Hamberger & Hewstone, 1997; Paolmi & others, 2004,

Pettigrew, 1997). EOUAL-STATUS CONTACT The social psychologists who advocated desegre­ gation never claimed that all contact would improve attitudes. They expected poor results when contacts were competitive, unsupported by (Pettigrew, 1988; Stephan, 1987). Before 1954 many prejudiced Whites had frequent contacts with Blacks—as shoeshine men and domestic workers As we saw m C ap- ter 9, such unequal contacts breed attitudes that merely justify inequality. So it's important that the contact be equal-status contact, like that between the store clerks, the soldiers, the neighbors, the prisoners, and the suiter

In colleges and universities, informal interactions enabled by classroom ethn diversity pay divideirds for all students, report University of ^ntem7 Patricia Gurin and colleagues from national collegiate surveys (2002). Such inte tions tend to be intellectually growth-promoting and to difference. Such findings informed a U.S. Supreme Court 2003 decision that rac diversity is a compelling interest of higher education and may be a criterion m admissions.

Although equal-status contact can help, it is sometimes not enough. It didn help when Muzafer Sherif stopped the Eagles versus Rattlers compehtion and bro g the groups together for noncompetitive activities, such as watchmg movies, sho tag off fimwoAs, arrd eating. By that time, their hostility -s so strong that mere contact only provided opportunities for taunts and attacks. When an Eagle was dumped b/a Rattler, his fellow Eagles urged him to "brush off the dta." Desegre-

gating the two groups hardly promoted their social integration.^ Sven entrenched host4 what can a peacemaker do? Think back to the suc­ cessful and the unsuccessful desegregation efforts. The army s racial companies didn't just bring Blacks and Whites into equal-status contact, it ma them interdependent. Together, they were fighting a common enemy, stri g

Dofs^thars^glest a second factor that predicts whether the effect of desegre­

gation will be favorable? Does competitive contact divide and cooperative contac Lte? Consider what happens to people who together face a ^ ment. In conflicts at all levels, from couples to rival teams to nations, shared thre

and common goals breed unity.

COMMON EXTERNAL THREATS BUILD COHESIVENESS Together with others, have you ever been caught in a blizzard, punished by a teacher, or persecuted and ridiculed because of your social, racial or rd'g'ou® ‘^en­ tity? If so, you may recall feeling close to those with whom you shared *6 Predica- mLt Perhaps previous social barriers were dropped as you helped one anothe dig out of the sLw or struggled to cope with your common more extreme crises, such as a bombing, also often repor a spirit of cooperation and solidarity rather than all-for-themselves pamc (Drury & others, 2009).

Such friendliness is common among those who experience a shared tteeatjolm Lanzetta (1955) observed this when he put four-man groups of naval ROTC cadets to work on problem-solving tasks and then began informmg them that their answers were wrong, their productivity mexcusably ow, g pid. Other groups did not receive this harassment. Lanzetta observed that the gro p

Chapter 13

equal-status contact Contact on an equal basis. Just as a relationship between people of unequal status breeds attitudes consistent with their relationship, so do relationships between those of equal status. Thus, to reduce prejudice, interracial contact should idealy be between persons equal in status.

"I COULDN'T HELP BUT SAY

TO [MR. GORBACHEV), JUST

THINK HOW EASY HIS TASK

AND MINE MIGHT BE IN

THESE MEETINGS THAT WE

HELD IF SUDDENLY THERE

WAS A THREAT TO THIS

WORLD FROM SOME OTHER

SPECIES FROM ANOTHER

PLANET. [WE'D] FIND OUT

ONCE AND FOR ALL THAT

WE REALLY ARE ALL HUMAN

BEINGS HERE ON THIS

EARTH TOGETHER."

—RONALD REAGAN,

DECEMBERS 1985, SPEECH

502 Part Three Social Relations

H'lV sfreiken!

Shared predicaments trigger cooperation, as these Walmart workers on strike in Germany demonstrate.

members under duress became friendlier to one another more cooperative, less argumentative, less competitive Thev were in it together. And the result was a cohesive spirit. ^

Having a common enemy unified the groups of competing boys m Sherif's camping experiments—and in many subs^ quent experiments (Dion, 1979). Just being reminded of an out­ group (say, a rival school) heightens people's responsiveness to their own group (Wilder & Shapiro, 1984). When keenly conscious of who "they" are, we also know who "we" are. ^

When facing a well-defined external threat during war­ time, we-feeling soars. The membership of civic organizations mushrooms (Putnam, 2000). Shared threats also produce a pditical 'rally 'round the flag" effect (Lambert & others, 2010) After 9/11, "old racial antagonisms... dissolved," reported the New YorkTimes (Sengupta, 2001). "I just thought of myself as Black, said 18-year-old Louis Johnson, reflecting on life before 9/11. "But now I feel like Tm an American, more than

A 4.U £n /XT ^ divorce rates dropped in the aftemath of 9/11 (Hansel & others, 2011). One sampling of conversation 0^9/11, and aiiother of New York Mayor Giuliani’s press conferences before and after 9/11 found a doubled rate of the word "we" (Liehr & others, 2004; Pennebaker & Lay, 2002).

ratings reflected this threat-bred spirit of oresTdent P^'^^ident of 9/10 had become the halted L hfs t ^ 1 hate us." Thereaf- (Hgure 13 6)^* gradually declined but then jumped again as the war in Iraq began

FIGURE :: 13.6 External Threats Breed Internal Unity As the ups and downs of President George Bush's approval ratings illustrate, national conflicts mold public attitudes (Gallup, 2006).

503Conflict and Peacemaking Chapter 13

Even just imagining or fearing the extinction of one's group often serves to strengthen ingroup solidarity (Wohl & others, 2010). Leaders may therefore create a threatening external enemy as a technique for building group cohesiveness. George Orwell's novel 1984 illustrates the tactic: The leader of the protagonist nation uses border conflicts with the other two major powers to lessen internal strife. From time to time the enemy shifts, but there is always an enemy. Indeed, the nation seems to need an enemy. For the world, for a nation, for a group, having a common enemy is powerfully unifying. Thus, we can expect that Protestant-Cafiiolic religious differ­ ences that feel great in Northern Ireland or South America will feel more negligible to those living under Islamic regimes. Likewise, Sunni and Shia Islamic differences that feel great in Iraq will not seem so great to Muslims in countries where both must cope with anti-Muslim attitudes.

Might the world likewise find unity if facing a common enemy? On September 21, 1987, President Ronald Reagan observed, "In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Per­ haps we need some outside, universal threat to recognize this common bond." Two decades later, A1 Gore (2007) agreed, suggesting that, with the specter of climate change, "We—all of us—now face a universal threat. Though it is not from outside this world, it is nevertheless cosmic in scale."

"THERE'S AN ENEMY OUT

THERE."

-GEORGE W. BUSH, 2005

focus ON Why Do We Care Who Wins?

Why, for sports fans everywhere, does it matter who wins? Why does it matter to Bostonians whether two dozen mul­ timillionaire temporary Red Sox employees, most born in other states or countries, win the World Series? During the annual NCAA basketball "March Madness," why do per­ fectly normal adults become insanely supportive of their team, and depressed when it loses? And why for that ulti­ mate sporting event. World Cup Football, do soccer fans worldwide dream of their country victorious?

Theory and evidence indicate that the roots of rivalry run deep. There's something primal at work when the crowd erupts as the two rivals take the floor for a basketball game. There's something tribal at work during the ensuing two hours of passion, all in response to the ups and downs

■I of a mere orange leather sphere. Our ancestors, living in a world where neighboring tribes occasionally raided and pillaged one another's camps, knew that there was safety in solidarity. (Those who didn't band together left fewer descendants.) Whether hunting, defending, or attacking, more hands were better than two. Dividing the world into "us" and "them" entails significant costs, such as racism and war, but also provides the benefits of communal soli­ darity. To identify us and them, our ancestors—not so far removed from today's rabid fans—dressed or painted themselves in group-specific costumes and colors. Sports and warfare, notes evolutionary psychologist Benjamin Winegard (2010), are mostly done by males associated with geographical areas and wearing group-identifying uniforms. Both use war-relevant skills (running, tackling, throwing). And both offer rewards to the victors.

As social animals, we live in groups, cheer on our groups, kill for our groups, die for our groups. We also define ourselves by our groups. Our self-concept—our sense of who we are—consists not only of our personal attributes and attitudes but also of our social identity. Our social identities—our knowing who "we" are—strengthens self-concept and pride, especially when perceiving that "we" are superior. Lacking a positive individual identity, many youths find pride, power, and identity in gangs. Many patriots define themselves by their national identities.

The group definition of who we are also implies who we are not. Many social-psychological experiments reveal that being formed into groups—even arbitrary groups—promotes ingroup bias. Cluster people into groups defined by nothing more than their birth date or even the last digit of their driver's license and they'll feel a certain kinship with their number mates, and will show them favoritism. So strong is our group consciousness that "we" seem better than "they" even when "we" and "they" are defined randomly.

As post-9/11 America illustrates, group solidarity soars when people face a common enemy. As Muzafer Sherif's Robber's Camp experiment vividly demon­ strated, competition creates enemies. Fueled by com­ petition and unleashed by the anonymity of a crowd, passions can culminate in sport's worst moments—fans taunting opponents, screaming at umpires, even pelting referees with beer bottles.

Group identification soars further with success. Fans find self-respect by their personal achievements but

(cont/nued)

504 Part Three Social Relations

also, in at least small measure, by their association with the victorious athletes when their team wins. Queried after a big football victory, university students commonly report that "we won" (Cialdini & others, 1976). As we noted in Chapter 9, they bask in reflected glory. Asked the outcome after a defeat, students more often dis­ tance themselves from the team by saying, "They lost."

Ironically, we often reserve our most intense passions for rivals most similar to us. Freud long ago recognized that animosities formed around small differences: "Of two neighbouring towns, each is the other's most jealous rival; every little canton looks down upon the others with contempt. Closely related races keep one another at arm's length; the South German cannot endure the North German, the Englishman casts every kind of aspersion upon the Scot, the Spaniard despises the Portuguese."

As an occasional resident of Scotland, I've witnessed many examples of the Xenophobe's Guide to the Scots observation—that Scots divide non-Scots "into two main groups: (1) The English; (2) The Rest." As rabid Chicago Cubs fans are happy if either the Cubs win or the White Sox lose, so ardent New Zealand soccer fans root for New Zealand and whoever is playing Australia (Halberstadt & others, 2006). Rabid fans of Scottish soccer likewise rejoice in either a Scotland victory or an England defeat. "Phew! They Lost," rejoiced one Scottish tabloid front­ page headline after England's 1996 Euro Cup defeat—by Germany, no less. To a sports fan, few things are so sweet as an archrival's misfortune. Both a rival's failure and a

favored team's success activate pleasure-associated brain areas (Cikara & others, 2011).

Numerical minorities, such as the Scots in Britain, are especially conscious of their social identities. The 5 million Scots are more conscious of their national iden­ tity vis-a-vis the neighboring 51 million English than vice versa. Likewise, the 4 million New Zealanders are more conscious of their identity vis-a-vis the 23 million Australians, and they are more likely to root for Australia's sports opponents (Halberstadt & others, 2006).

Group identity feeds, and is fed by, competition.

superordinate goal A shared goal that necessitates cooperative effort: a goal that overrides people's differences from one another.

SUPERORDINATE GOALS FOSTER COOPERATION

Closely related to the unifying power of an external threat is the unifying power of superordinate goals, goals that unite all in a group and require cooperative effort. To promote harmony among his warring campers, Sherif introduced such goals. He created a problem with the camp water supply, necessitating both groups' cooperation to restore the water. Given an opportunity to rent a movie, one expen­ sive enough to require the joint resources of the two groups, they again cooperated. When a truck "broke down" on a camp excursion, a staff member casually left the tug-of-war rope nearby, prompting one boy to suggest that they all pull the truck to get it started. When it started, a backslapping celebration ensued over their victori­ ous "tug-of-war against the truck."

After working together to achieve such superordinate goals, the boys ate together and enjoyed themselves around a campfire. Friendships sprouted across group lines. Hostilities plummeted (Figure 13.7). On the last day, the boys decided to travel home together on one bus. During the trip they no longer sat by groups. As the bus approached Oklahoma City and home, they, as one, spontaneously sang "Oklahoma" and then bade their friends farewell. With isolation and competition, Sherif made strangers into bitter enemies. With superordinate goals, he made enemies into friends.

Are Sherif's experiments mere child's play? Or can pulling together to achieve superordinate goals be similarly beneficial with adults in conflict? Robert Blake and Jane Mouton (1979) wondered. So in a series of two-week experiments involving more than 1,000 executives in 150 different groups, they re-created the essential features of the situation experienced by the Rattlers and the Eagles. Each group first

Conflict and Peacemaking Chapter 13 505

Ratings of outgroup, percent totally unfavorable

FIGURE :: 13.7 After competition, the Eagles and the Rattlers rated each other unfavorably. After they worked cooperatively to achieve superordinate goals, hostility dropped sharply. 5ou/‘ce:Data from Sherif, 1966, p.84.

engaged in activities by itself, then competed with another group, and then cooper­ ated with the other group in working toward jointly chosen superordinate goals. Their results provided "unequivocal evidence that adult reactions parallel those of Sherif's younger subjects."

Extending those findings, John Dovidio, Samuel Gaertner, and their collaborators (2005, 2009) report that working cooperatively has especially favorable effects under conditions that lead people to define a new, inclusive group that dissolves their for­ mer subgroups. Old feelings of bias against another group diminish when members of the two groups sit alternately around a table (rather than on opposite sides), give their new group a single name, and then work together under conditions that fos­ ter a good mood. "Us" and "them" become "we." To combat Germany, Italy, and Japan during World War II, the United States and the former USSR, along with other nations, formed one united group named the Allies. So long as the superordinate goal of defeating a common enemy lasted, so did supportive U.S. attitudes toward the Russians. Economic interdependence through international trade also motivates peace. "Where goods cross frontiers, armies won't," notes Michael Shermer (2006). With so much of China's economy now interwoven with Western economies, their economic interdependence diminishes the likelihood of war between China and the West.

The cooperative efforts by the Rattlers and the Eagles ended in success. Would the same harmony have emerged if the water had remained off, the movie unaffordable, the truck still stalled? Likely not. In experiments with Univer­ sity of Virginia students, Stephen Worchel and his associ­ ates (1977, 1978, 1980) confirmed that successful cooperation between two groups boosts their attraction for each other. If previously conflicting groups fail in a cooperative effort, how­ ever, and if conditions allow them to attribute their failure to each other, the conflict may worsen. Sherif's groups were already feeling hostile to each other. Thus, failure to raise sufficient funds for the movie might have been attributed to one group's "stinginess" and "selfishness." That would have exacerbated rather than alleviated their conflict. Unity is fed

Promoting "common ingroup identity." The banning of gang colors and the common European practice of school uniforms—an increasing trend in the United States, as

506 Part Three

Interracial cooperation—on athletic teams, in class projects and extracurricular activities—melts differences and improves racial attitudes. White teen athletes who play cooperative team sports (such as basketball) with Black teammates express more liking and support for Blacks than do their counter­ parts involved in individual sports (such as wrestling) (Brown & others, 2003).

Social Relations

COOPERATIVE LEARNING IMPROVES RACIAL ATTITUDES

So far we have noted the modest social benefits of desegregation if unaccompanied by the emotional bonds of friendship and by equal-status relationships. And we have noted the dramatic social benefits of successful, cooperative contacts between members of rival groups. Several research teams therefore wondered: Without compromising academic achievement, could we promote interracial friendships by replacing competitive learning situations with cooperative ones? Given the diver­ sity of their methods—all involving students on integrated study teams, sometimes m competition with other teams—the results are striking and heartening.

Are students who participate in existing cooperative activities, such as interracial athletic teams and class projects, less prejudiced? In one experiment. White youth on two- to three-week Outward Bound expeditions (involving intimate contact and cooperation) expressed improved attitudes toward Blacks a month after the expedi­ tion if they had been randomly assigned to an interracial expedition group (Green & Wong, 2008).

Robert Slavin and Nancy Madden (1979) analyzed survey data from 2,400 stu­ dents in 71 American high schools and found similarly encouraging results. Those of different races who play and work together are more likely to report having friends of another race and to express positive racial attitudes. Charles Green and his colleagues (1988) confirmed this in a study of 3,200 Florida middle-school stu­ dents. Compared with students at traditional, competitive schools, those at schools with interracial 'Teaming teams" had more positive racial attitudes.

From such correlational findings, can we conclude that cooperative interracial activity improves racial attitudes? The way to find out is to experiment. Randomly designate some students, but not others, to work together in racially mixed groups. Slavin (1985; Slavin & others, 2003, 2009) and his colleagues divided classes into interracial teams, each composed of four or five students from all achievement lev­ els. Team members sat together, studied a variety of subjects together, and at the end of each week competed with the other teams in a class tournament. All members contributed to their team's score by doing well, sometimes by competing with other students whose recent achievements were similar to their own, sometimes by com­ peting with their own previous scores. Everyone had a chance to succeed. More­ over, team members were motivated to help one another prepare for the weekly tournament by drilling each other on fractions, spelling, or historical events— whatever was the next event. Rather than isolating students from one another, team competition brought them into closer contact and drew out mutual support.

Conflict and Peacemaking Chapter 13 507

Cooperation and peace. Researchers have identified more than 40 peaceful societies—societies v/here people live with no, or virtually no, recorded instances of violence. An analysis of 25 of these societies, including the Amish shown here, reveals that most base their worldviews on cooperation rather than competition (Bonta,1997).

Another research team, led by Elliot Aronson (2004; Aronson & Gonzalez, 1988), elicited similar group cooperation with a "jigsaw" technique. In experiments in Texas and California elementary schools, the researchers assigned children to racially and academically diverse 6-member groups. The subject was then divided into six parts, with each student becoming the expert on his or her part. In a unit on Chile, one student might be the expert on Chile's history, another on its geography, another on its culture. First, the various "historians," "geographers," and so forth got together to master their material. Then they returned to the home groups to teach it to their classmates. Each group member held, so to speak, a piece of the jigsaw.

Self-confident students therefore had to listen to and learn from reticent stu­ dents who, in turn, soon realized they had something important to offer their peers. Other research teams—led by David Johnson and Roger Johnson (1987, 2003, 2004, 2010) at the University of Miimesota, Elizabeth Cohen (1980) at Stanford Univer­ sity, Shlomo Sharan and Yael Sharan (1976,1994) at Tel Aviv University, and Stuart Cook (1985) at the University of Colorado—devised additional methods for cooper­ ative learning. Studies (148 of them across eleven countries) show that adolescents, too, have more positive peer relationships and may even achieve more when work­ ing cooperatively rather than competitively (Roseth & others, 2008).

What can we conclude from all this research? With cooperative learning, students learn not only the material but other lessons. Cooperative learning, said Slavin and Cooper (1999), promotes "the academic achievement of all students while simulta­ neously improving intergroup relahons." Aronson reported that "children in the interdependent, jigsaw classrooms grow to like each other better, develop a greater liking for school, and develop greater self-esteem than children in traditional classrooms" (1980, p. 232).

Cross-racial friendships also begin to blossom. The exam scores of minority students improve (perhaps because academic achievement is now peer supported). After the experiments are over, many teachers continue using cooperative learning (D. W. Johnson & others, 1981; Slavin, 1990). "It is clear," wrote race-relations expert John McConahay (1981), that cooperative learning "is the most effective practice for improving race relations in desegregated schools that we know of to date."

Should we have "known it all along"? At the time of the 1954 Supreme Court decision, Gordon Allport spoke for many social psychologists in predicting that "Prejudice... may be reduced by equal status contact between majority and minority

"THIS WAS TRULY AN

EXCITING EVENT. MY

STUDENTS AND I HAD

FOUND A WAY TO MAKE

DESEGREGATION WORK

THE WAY IT WAS INTENDED

TO WORK!"

-ELLIOT ARONSON, "DRIFTING

MY OWN WAY." 2003

508 Part Three Social Relations

groups in the pursuit of common goals" (1954, p. 281). Cooperative learning experi­ ments confirmed Allport's insight, making Robert Slavin and his colleagues (1985, 2003) optimistic: "Thirty years after Allport laid out the basic principles operational­ ized in cooperative learning methods, we finally have practical, proven methods for implementing contact theory in the desegregated classroom.... Research on coopera­ tive learning is one of the greatest success stories in the history of educational research."

focus ON Branch Rickey, Jackie Robinson, and the integration of Baseball

On April 10, 1947, a nineteen-word announcement forever changed the face of baseball and put social-psychological principles to the test: "The Brooklyn Dodgers today pur­ chased the contract of Jackie Roosevelt Robinson from the Montreal Royals, He will report immediately." Five days later, Robinson became the first African American since 1887 to play major league baseball. In the fall, Dodger fans realized their dreams of going to the World Series. Robinson, after enduring racial taunts, beanballs, and spikes, was voted Sporting News rookie of the year, and in a poll finished second to Bing Crosby as the most popular man in America, Baseball's racial barrier was forever broken.

Motivated by both his Methodist morality and a drive for baseball success. Major League baseball executive Branch Rickey had been planning the move for some time, report social psychologists Anthony Pratkanis and Marlene Turner (1994a, 1994b). Three years earlier, Rickey had been asked by the sociologist-chair of the Mayor's Committee on Unity to desegregate his team. His response was to ask for time (so the hiring would not be attributed to pressure) and for advice on how best to do it. In 1945 Rickey was the only owner voting against keeping Blacks out of baseball. In 1947 he made his move using these principles identified by Pratkanis and Turner:

• Create a perception that change is inevitable. Leave little possibility that protest or resistance can turn back the clock. The team's radio announcer. Red Barber, a traditional southerner, recalled that in 1945 Rickey took him to lunch and explained very slowly and strongly that his scouts were searching for "the first black player I can put on the white Dodgers. I don't know who he is or where he is, but, he is coming." An angered Barber at first intended to quit, but in time decided to accept the inevitable and keep the world's "best sports announcing job." Rickey was equally matter-of-fact with the players in 1947, offering to trade any player who didn't want to play with Robinson.

• Establish equal-status contact with a superordinate goal. One sociologist explained to Rickey that when relationships focus on an overarching goal, such as winning the pennant, "the people involved would

adjust appropriately." One of the players who had been initially opposed later helped Robinson with his hitting, explaining, "When you're on a team, you got to pull together to win."

• Puncture the norm of prejudice. Rickey led the way, but others helped. Team leader, shortstop Pee Wee Reese, a southerner, set a pattern of sitting and eat­ ing with Robinson. One day in Cincinnati, as the crowd was hurling slurs—"get the nigger off the field"—Reese left his shortstop position, walked over to Robinson at first base, smiled and spoke to him, and then—with a hushed crowd watching—put his arm around Robinson's shoulder.

• Cut short the spiral of violence by practicing nonvio­ lence. Rickey, wanting "a ballplayer with guts enough not to fight back," role-played for Robinson the kind of insults and dirty play he would experience and gained Robinson's commitment not to return vio­ lence with violence. When Robinson was taunted and spiked, he left the responses to his teammates. Team cohesion was thereby increased.

Robinson and Bob Feller later became the first play­ ers in baseball history elected to the Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility. As he received the award, Robinson asked three persons to stand beside him: his mother, his wife, and his friend Branch Rickey.

Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey

509Conflict and Peacemaking

To sum up, cooperative, equal-status contacts exert a positive influence on boy campers, industrial executives, college students, and schoolchildren. Does the prin­ ciple extend to all levels of human relations? Are families imified by pulling together to farm the land, restore an old house, or sail a sloop? Are communal identities forged by bam raisings, group singing, or cheering on the football team? Is inter­ national understanding bred by international collaboration in science and space, by joint efforts to feed the world and conserve resources, by friendly personal contacts between people of different nations? Indications are that the answer to all of those questions is yes (Brewer & Miller, 1988; Desforges & others, 1991,1997; Deutsch, 1985, 1994). Thus, an important challenge facing our divided world is to identify and agree on our superordinate goals and to structure cooperative efforts to achieve them.

GROUP AND SUPERORDINATE IDENTITIES In everyday life, we often reconcile multiple identities (Gaertner & others, 2000, 2001). We acknowledge our subgroup identity (as parent or child) and then tran­ scend it (sensing our superordinate identity as a family). Pride in our ethnic heri­ tage can complement our larger communal or national identity. Being mindful of our muUipk social identities that we partially share with anyone else enables social cohesion (Brewer & Pierce, 2005; Crisp & Hewstone, 1999,2000). "I am many things, some of which you are, too."

But in ethnically diverse cultures, how do people balance their ethnic identities with their national identities? They may have a "bicultural" or "omnicultural" identity, one that identifies with both the larger culture and one's own ethnic and religious culture (Moghaddam, 2009,2010; Phinney, 1990). "In many ways, I am like everyone around me, but I also affirm my own cultural heritage." Thus, ethnically conscious Asians liv­ ing in England may also feel strongly British (Hutnik, 1985). French Canadians who identify with their ethnic roots may or may not also feel strongly Canadian (Driedger, 1975). Hispanic Americans who retain a strong sense of their "Cubanness" (or of their Mexican or Puerto Rican heritage) may feel strongly American (Roger & others, 1991). As W. E. B. DuBois (1903, p. 17) explained in The Souls of Black Folk, "The American Negro [longs]... to be both a Negro and an American."

Over time, identification with a new culture often grows. Former East and West Germans come to see themselves as "German" (Kessler & Mummendey, 2001). The children of Chinese immigrants to Australia and the United States feel their Chinese identity somewhat less keenly, and their new national identity more strongly, than do immigrants who were bom in China (Rosenthal & Feldman, 1992). Often, however, the grandchildren of immigrants feel more comfortable iden­ tifying with their ethnicity (Triandis, 1994).

Researchers have wondered whether pride in one's group competes with iden­ tification with the larger culture. As we noted in Chapter 9, we evaluate ourselves partly in terms of our social identities. Seeing our own group (our school, our employer, our family, our race, our nation) as good helps us feel good about our­ selves. A positive ethnic identity can therefore contribute to positive self-esteem. So can a positive mainstream culture identity. "Marginal" people, who have nei­ ther a strong ethnic nor a strong mainstream cultural identity (Table 13.1), often have low self-esteem. Bicultural people, who affirm both identities, typically

TABLE :: 13.1 Ethnic and Cultural Identity

Identification with Ethnic Group

Identification with Majority Group Strong Weak

Strong

Weak

Bicultural Assimilated

Chapter 13

"MOST OF US HAVE

OVERLAPPING IDENTITIES

WHICH UNITE US WITH

VERY DIFFERENT GROUPS.

WE CAN LOVE WHAT WE

ARE, WITHOUT HATING

WHAT—AND WHO-WE

ARE NOT. WE CAN THRIVE

IN OUR OWN TRADITION,

EVEN AS WE LEARN

FROM OTHERS, AND

COME TO RESPECT THEIR

TEACHINGS."

—KOFI ANNAN, NOBEL PEACE

PRIZE LECTURE, 2001

510 Part Three Social Relations

A difficult balancing act. These ethnically conscious French Canadians— supporting Bill 101 "live French in Quebec"—may or may not also feel strongly Canadian. As countries become more ethnically diverse, people debate how we can build societies that are both plural and unified.

bargaining Seeking an agreement to a conflict through direct negotiation between parties.

mediation An attempt by a neutral third party to resolve a conflict by facilitating communication and offering suggestions.

arbitration Resolution of a conflict by a neutral third party who studies both sides and imposes a settlement.

have a strongly positive self-concept (Phinney, 1990; see also Sam & Berry, 2010). Often, they alternate between their two cultures, adapting their language and behavior to whichever group they are with (LaFromboise & others, 1993).

Debate continues over the ideals of multiculturalism (celebrating differ­ ences) versus assimilation (meshing one's values and habits with the prevail­ ing culture). On one side are those who believe, as the Department of Canadian Heritage (2006) has declared, that “mul­ ticulturalism ensures that all citizens can keep their identities, can take pride in their ancestry and have a sense of belonging. Acceptance gives Canadians a feeling of security and self-confidence, making them open to and accepting of diverse cultures." On the other side are those who concur with Britain's Com­ mission for Racial Equality chair, Trevor Phillips (2004), in worrying that mul­ ticulturalism separates people. Experi­ ments by Jacquie Vorauer and Stacey Sasaki (2011) showed that in threatening situations, highlighting multicultural dif­

ferences enhanced hostility. Focusing on differences prompted people to attend and attach meaning to outgroup members' threatening behaviors. An alternative com­ mon values view inspired the Rwandan government to declare “there is no eth­ nicity here. We are all Rwandan." In the aftermath of Rwanda's ethnic bloodbath, government documents and government-controlled radio and newspapers have ceased mentioning Hutu and Tutsi (Lacey, 2004).

In the space between multiculturalism and assimilation lies "diversity within unity," an omnicultural perspective advocated by cultural psychologist Fathali Moghaddam (2009, 2010) and by sociologist Amitai Etzioni and others (2005): “It presumes that all members of a given society will fully respect and adhere to those basic values and institutions that are considered part of the basic shared framework of the society. At the same time, every group in society is free to maintain its distinct subculture—those policies, habits, and institutions that do not conflict with the shared core."

By forging unifying ideals, immigrant countries such as the United States, Canada, and Australia have avoided ethnic wars. In these countries, Irish and Italians, Swedes and Scots, Asians and Africans seldom kill in defense of their eth­ nic identities. Nevertheless, even the immigrant nations struggle between separa­ tion and wholeness, between people's pride in their distinct heritage and unity as one nation, between acknowledging the reality of diversity and questing for shared values. The ideal of diversity within unity forms the United States motto: E pluribus unum. Out of many, one.

Communication Conflicting parties have other ways to resolve their differences. When husband and wife, or labor and management, or nation X and nation Y disagree, they can bargain with each other directly. They can ask a third party to mediate by making suggestions and facilitating their negotiations. Or they can arbitrate by submitting their disagreement to someone who will study the issues and impose a settlement.

511Conflict and Peacemaking

BARGAINING If vou want to buy or sell a new car, are you better off adopting a tough bargain- mg stance-opening with an extreme offer so that splitting the difference wdl yield a favorable result? Or are you better off beginnmg with a sincere good-

Experiments suggest no simple answer. On the one hand, those who demand more will often get more. Robert Cialdini, Leonard Bickman, and John Cacioppo (1979) provide a typical result: In a control condition, they approached various Chevrolet dealers and asked the price of a new Monte Carlo sports coupe with designated options. In an experimental condition, they approached other dealers and first struck a tougher bargaining stance, asking for and rejecting a price on a different car ("I need a lower price than that. That's a lot"). When they theri asked the price of the Monte Carlo, exactly as in the control condition, they received offers that averaged some $200 lower. ^

Tough bargaining may lower the other party's expectations, makmg the other side willing to settle for less (Yukl, 1974). But toughness can sometimes back- fire Many a conflict is not over a pie of fixed size but over a pie that shrinks if the conflict continues. A time delay is often a lose-lose scenario. When a strike is pro­ longed, both labor and management lose. Being tough is another potential lo^-lose scenario. If the other party responds with an equally tough stance, both may be locked into positions from which neither can back down without losing face. In the weeks before the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the first President Bush threatened, m the full glare of pubUcity, to “kick Saddam's ass." Saddam Hussein, no less macho, threatened to make "infidel" Americans “swim in their own blood." After such belligerent state­ ments, it was difficult for each side to evade war and save face.

MEDIATION A third-party mediator may offer suggestions that enable conflicting parties to make concessions and still save face (Pruitt, 1998). If my concession can be attrib­ uted to a mediator, who is gaining an equal concession from my antagonist, neither of us will be viewed as weakly caving in. TURNING WIN-LOSE INTO WIN-WIN Mediators also help resolve conflicts by facilitating constructive communication. Their first task is to help the parties rethink the conflict and gain information about the others' interests. Typically, peo­ ple on both sides have a competitive “win-lose" orientation: They are successful if their opponent is unhappy with the result, and unsuccessful if theu opponent is pleased (Thompson & others, 1995). The mediator aims to replace this win-lose orientation with a cooperative “win-win" orientation, by prodding both sides to set aside their conflicting demands and instead to think about needs, interests, and goals. In experiments, Leigh Thompson (1990a, 1990b) found that, with experience, negotiators become better able to make mutually beneficial trade-offs and thus to achieve win-win resolutions.

A classic story of such a resolution concerns the two sisters who quarreled over an orange (Follett, 1940). Finally they compromised and split the orange in halt, whereupon one sister squeezed her half for juice while the other used the peel on her half to make a cake. If the sisters had each explained why they wanted the orange, they very likely would have agreed to share it, giving one sister all t^e Juice and the other all the peel. This is an example of an integrative agreement (Pruitt & Lewis, 1975,1977). Compared with compromises, in which each party sacrifices something important, integrative agreements are more enduring, because they are mutually rewarding, they also lead to better ongoing relationships (Pruitt, 1986).

UNRAVELING MISPERCEPTIONS WITH CONTROLLED COMMUNICA­ TIONS Communication often helps reduce self-fulfilling misperceptions. Per­ haps you can recall experiences similar to that of this college student:

Chapter 13

integrative agreements Win-win agreements that reconcile both parties' interests to their mutual benefit.

512 Part Three Social Relations

Often, after a prolonged period of little communication, I perceive Martha's silence as a sign of her dislike for me. She, in turn, thinks that my quietness is a result of my being mad at her. My silence induces her silence, which makes me even more silent... until this snowballing effect is broken by some occurrence that makes it necessary for us to interact. And the communication then unravels all the misinterpretations we had made about one another.

The outcome of such conflicts often depends on how people communicate their feelings to one another. Roger Knudson and his colleagues (1980) invited married couples to come to the University of Illinois psychology laboratory and relive, through role playing, one of their past conflicts. Before, during, and after their conversation {which often generated as much emotion as the actual previ­ ous conflict), the couples were observed closely and questioned. Couples who evaded the issue—by failing to make their positions clear or failing to acknowledge their spouse's position—left with the illusion that they were more in harmony and agreement than they really were. Often, they came to believe they now agreed more when actually they agreed less. In contrast, those who engaged the issue—by mak­ ing their positions clear and by taking one another's views into account—achieved more actual agreement and gained more accurate information about one anoth­ er s perceptions. That helps explain why couples who communicate their concerns directly and openly are usually happily married (Crush & Glidden, 1987).

Such findings have triggered programs that train couples and children how to manage conflicts constructively (Horowitz and Boardman, 1994). If managed con­ structively, conflict provides opportunities for reconciliation and more genuine harmony. Psychologists Ian Gotlib and Catherine Colby (1988) offer advice on how to avoid destructive quarrels and how to have good quarrels (Table 13.2). Chil­ dren, for example, learn that conflict is normal, that people can learn to get along with those who are different, that most disputes can be resolved with two winners, and that nonviolent communication strategies are an alternative to a world of bul­ lies and victims. This "violence prevention curriculum ... is not about passivity," noted Deborah Prothrow-Stith (1991, p. 183). "It is about using anger not to hurt oneself or one's peers, but to change the world."

David Johnson and Roger Johnson (1995, 2000, 2003) put first-grade through ninth-grade children through about a dozen hours of conflict resolution training in six schools, with very heartening results. Before the training, most students

TABLE 13.2 How Couples Can Fight Constructively

Do Not Do

1* * * evade die argument, give the silent treatm^t, walk out on it • use your intimate knowledge of the other

person to hit below the belt and humiliate

•T' * bring in unrelated issues^

• feign agreement while harboring resentment

^ * |eiU the other party how she or he is feeling

• attack indirectly by criticizing someone or something the other person values

I * undermine the other by intensifying his or j; her insecurity or threatening disaster

• clearly define the issue and repeat the other's arguments in your own words

• divulge your positive and negative feelings

• welcome feedback about your behavior

• clarify where you agree and disagree and what matters most to each of you

' ask questions that help the oflier find words to express the concern

’ wait for spontaneous explosions to subside, without retaliating

offer positive suggestions for mut|i^f §

Conflict and Peacemaking Chapter 13 513

Communication facilitators work to breakdown barriers, as in this diversity training exercise for teenagers.

were involved in daily conflicts—put-downs and teasing, playground turn-takmg conflicts, conflicts over possessions-conflicts that nearly always also resulted m a winner and a loser. After training, the children more often found win-win solutions, better mediated friends' conflicts, and retained and applied their new skills in and out of school throughout the school year. When implemented with a whole student body, the result is a more peaceful student community and increased academic

Co^mct researchers report that a key factor is trust (Noor & others, 2008; Ross & Ward 1995). If you believe the other person is well intentioned, you are more likely to divulge your needs and concerns. Lacking trust, you may fear that bemg open will give the other party information that might be used against you. Even sim­ ple behaviors can enhance trust. In experiments, negotiators who were instructed to mimic the others' mannerisms, as naturally empathic people in close relation­ ships often do, elicited more trust and greater discovery of compatible mterests and mutually satisfying deals (Maddux & others, 2008).

When the two parties mistrust each other and communicate unproductively, a third-party mediator—a marriage counselor, a labor mediator, a diplomat—sometimes helps. Often the mediator is some­ one trusted by both sides. In the 1980s it took an Algerian Muslim to mediate the conflict between Iran and Iraq, and the pope to resolve a geographical dispute between Argentina and Chile (Carnevale & Choi, 2000).

After coaxing the conflicting parties to rethink their perceived win-lose conflict, the mediator often has each party identify and rank its goals. When goals are compatible, the ranking procedure makes it easier for each to concede on less-important goals so that both achieve their chief goals (Erickson & others, 1974; Schulz & Pruitt, 1978). South Africa achieved internal peace when Black and White South Africans

"[THERE IS] A PSYCHOLOGI­

CAL BARRIER BETWEEN US,

A BARRIER OF SUSPICION,

A BARRIER OF REJECTION;

A BARRIER OF FEAR, OF

DECEPTION, A BARRIER OF

HALLUCINATION..,

—EGYPTIAN PRESIDENT

ANWAR AL-SADAT, TO THE

ISRAELI KNESSET, 1977

Trust, like other social behaviors, is also a biological phenomenon. Social neuroscientists have found that individuals with lowered levels of serotonin, the brain neurotransmitter, become more likely to see a low offer in a laboratory game as unfair, and to reject it (Crockett & others, 2008). Infusions of the hormone oxytocin have something of an opposite effect, increasing people's trust of strangers in laboratory games (Zak, 2008).

514 Part Three Social Relations

with majority rule and safeguarding the security, welfare, and rights of Whites (Kelman, 1998).

When labor and management both believe that management's goal of higher productivity and profit is compatible with labor's goal of better wages and working conditions, they can begin to work for an integrative win-win solution. If workers will forgo benefits that are moderately beneficial to them but very costly to man­ agement (perhaps company-provided dental care), and if management will forgo moderately valuable arrangements that workers very much resent (perhaps inflex­ ibility of working hours), both sides may gain (Ross & Ward, 1995). Rather than seeing itself as making a concession, each side can see the negotiation as an effort to exchange bargaining chips for things more valued.

When the parties then convene to communicate directly, they are usually not set loose in the hope that, eyeball-to-eyeball, the conflict will resolve itself. In the midst of a threatening, stressful conflict, emotions often disrupt the ability to understand the other party's point of view. Although happiness and gratitude can increase trust, anger decreases it (Dunn & Schweitzer, 2005). Communication may thus become most difficult just when it is most needed (Tetlock, 1985).

The mediator will often structure the encounter to help each party understand and feel understood by the other. The mediator may ask the conflicting parties to restrict their arguments to statements of fact, including statements of how they feel and how they respond when the other acts in a given way: "I enjoy music. But when you play it loud, I find it hard to concentrate. That makes me crabby." Also, the mediator may ask people to reverse roles and argue the other's position or to imagine and explain what the other person is experiencing. The mediator may have them restate one another's positions before replying with their own: "It annoys you when I play my music and you're trying to study."

Experiments show that taking the other's perspective and inducing empathy decreases stereotyping and increases cooperation (Batson & Moran, 1999; Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000; Todd & others, 2011). It helps to humanize rather than demonize the other. Older people often find that easier to do, by having the wisdom to appreci­ ate multiple perspectives and the limits of knowledge (Grossmann & others, 2010). Sometimes our elders are older, wiser, and better able to navigate social conflicts.

Neutral third parties may also suggest mutually agreeable proposals that would be dismissed—"reactively devalued"—if offered by either side. Constance StiUinger and her colleagues (1991) found that a nuclear disarmament proposal that Americans dismissed when attributed to the former Soviet Union seemed more acceptable when attributed to a neutral third party. Likewise, people will often reactively devalue a concession offered by an adversary ("they must not value it"); the same concession may seem more than a token gesture when suggested by a third party.

These peacemaking principles—based partly on laboratory experiments, partly on practical experience—have helped mediate both interna­ tional and industrial conflicts (Blake & Mouton, 1962, 1979; Fisher, 1994; Wehr, 1979). One small team of Arab and Jewish Americans, led by social psychologist Herbert Kelman (1997, 2007, 2008), has conducted workshops bringing together influential Arabs and Israelis. Kelman and col­ leagues counter misperceptions and have partici­ pants seek creative solutions for their common good. Isolated, the participants are free to speak

Building trust, enabling communication. When President Obama and his political antagonist, House Republican leader John Boehner, played golf, they were each attempting to enhance their relationship and enhance their ability to communicate.

515Conflict and Peacemaking

directly to their adversaries without fear that their constituents are second-guessing what tLy are saying. The result? Those from both sides typically come to under­ stand the^ther's perspective and how the other side responds to their own group s

actions.

arbitration Some conflicts are so intractable, the underlying interests so divergent, that a mutu- X satisfactory resolution is unattainable. Conflicting claims to Jerusalem as the capital of an dependent Palestine versus a secure Israel have, so far, proven inhactable. In a divorce dispute over custody of a child, both parents canno enjoy fuU custody. In those and many other cases (disputes over tenants repair bills, aft ktes' wages, and national territories), a third-party mediator may-or may not

M not the parties may turn to arbitration by having the mediator or another tod

party impose a settlement. Disputants usually prefer to Lt arbitration so that they retain control over the outcome. Neil “ others (1987) observed this preference in an experiment involving disputants com ing to a dispute settlement center. When people knew they would face an a^'^ted settlement if mediation failed, they tried harder to resolve the problem, exhibited less hostility, and thus were more likely to reach agreement.

In cases where differences seem large and irreconcilable, the prospect of arbitra­ tion may cause the disputants to freeze their positions, hopmg to gam an adv^- tage when the arbitrator chooses a compromise. To combat that tendency, so difputes, such as those involving salaries of individual baseball with "final-offer arbitration," in which the third party chooses one of the two final offers. Final-offer arbitration motivates each party to make a reasonab e _

Typically, however, the final offer is not as reasonable as it would be if each parw free of self-serving bias, saw its own proposal through others eyes. Negoha- hon researchers report that most disputants are made stubborn by optimistic ove confidTce" (KahnLan & Tversky, 1995). Successful mediation is hmdered when as often happens, both parties believe they have a two-thirds chance of wmnmg final-offer arbitration (Bazerman, 1986,1990).

Conciliation Sometimes tension and suspicion run so high that even communication, let a one resolution, becomes all but impossible. Each party may threaten, coerce, or retaliate against the other. Unfortunately, such acts tend to be reciprocated, escalahng the cLflict So, would a strategy of appeasing the other party by being unconditionally cooperative produce a satisfying result? Often not. In laboratory games, ‘hose wto are 100 percent cooperative often are exploited. Politically, a one-sided pacifis

usually out of the question.

^cklpsychologlstCharles Osgood (1962,1980) advocated a third alternative one that is concmLry yet strong enough to discourage exploitoon. C^good called it grad ated and reciprocated initiatives in tension reduchon." He mcknamed it GRIT a laW that suggests the determination it requires. GRIT aims to reverse the conflict spiral by triggering reciprocal de-escalation. To do so, it draws upon social-psychological concepts such as the norm of reciprocity and the attribution of motives.

GRH requires one side to initiate a few small de-escalatory actions, after aniioim^ ing a concilltory intent. The initiator states its desire to reduce conciliatory act before making it, and invites the adversary to reciprocate Such announcements create a framework that helps the adversary correctly interpret what otherwise might be seen as weak or tricky actions. They also brmg pubhc pressure to bear on the adversary to follow the reciprocity norm.

Chapter 13

GRIT Acronym for "graduated and reciprocated initiatives in tension reduction”—a strategy designed to de-escalate international tensions.

516 Part Three Social Relations

"lAM NOT SUGGESTING

THAT PRINCIPLES OF

INDIVIDUAL BEHAVIOR

CAN BE APPLIED TO

THE BEHAVIOR OF

NATIONS IN ANY DIRECT,

SIMPLEMINOED FASHION.

WHAT I AM TRYING TO

SUGGEST IS THAT SUCH

PRINCIPLES MAY PROVIDE

US WITH HUNCHES ABOUT

INTERNATIONAL BEHAVIOR

THAT CAN BE TESTED

AGAINST EXPERIENCE IN

THE LARGER ARENA"

-CHARLES E. OSGOOD (1966)

Next, the initiator establishes credibility and genuineness by carrying out, ex­ actly as announced, several verifiable conciliatory acts. This intensifies the pressure to reciprocate. Making conciliatory acts diverse—perhaps offering medical help, closing a military base, and lifting a trade ban—keeps the initiator from making a significant sacrifice in any one area and leaves the adversary freer to choose its own means of reciprocation. If the adversary reciprocates voluntarily, its own concilia­ tory behavior may soften its attitudes.

GRIT is conciliatory. But it is not "surrender on the installment plan." The remaining aspects of the plan protect each side's self-interest by maintaining retalia­ tory capability. The initial conciliatory steps entail some small risk but do not jeop­ ardize either one's security; rather, they are calculated to begin edging both sides down the tension ladder. If one side takes an aggressive action, the other side recip­ rocates in kind, making clear it will not tolerate exploitation. Yet the reciprocal act is not an overresponse that would re-escalate the conflict. If the adversary offers its own conciliatory acts, these, too, are matched or even slightly exceeded. Morton Deutsch (1993) captured the spirit of GRIT in advising negotiators to be " 'firm, fair, and friendly': firm in resisting intimidation, exploitation, and dirty tricks; fair in holding to one's moral principles and not reciprocating the other's immoral behav­ ior despite his or her provocations; and friendly in the sense that one is willing to initiate and reciprocate cooperation."

Does GRIT really work? In a lengthy series of experiments at Ohio University, Svenn Lindskold and his associates (1976 to 1988) found "strong support for the various steps in the GRIT proposal." In laboratory games, announcing coopera­ tive intent does boost cooperation. Repeated conciliatory or generous acts do breed greater trust (Klapwijk & Van Lange, 2009; Shapiro, 2010). Maintaining an equality of power does protect against exploitation.

Lindskold was not contending that the world of the laboratory experiment mir­ rors the more complex world of everyday life. Rather, experiments enable us to formulate and verify powerful theoretical principles, such as the reciprocity norm and the self-serving bias. As Lindskold (1981) noted, "It is the theories, not the indi­ vidual experiments, that are used to interpret the world."

REAL-WORLD APPLICATIONS

GRIT-like strategies have occasionally been tried outside the laboratory, with pro­ mising results. IXirmg the Berlin crisis of the early 1960s, U.S. and Russian tanks faced each other barrel to barrel. The crisis was defused when the Americans pulled back their tanks step-by-step. At each step, the Russians reciprocated. Similarly, in the 1970s, small concessions by Israel and Egypt (for example, Israel allowing Egypt to open up the Suez Canal, Egypt allowing ships bound for Israel to pass through) helped reduce tension to a point where the negotiations became possible (Rubin, 1981).

To many, the most significant attempt at GRIT was the so-called Kennedy exper­ iment (Etzioni, 1967). On June 10, 1963, President Kennedy gave a major speech, "A Strategy for Peace." He noted that "Our problems are man-made ... and can be solved by man," and then announced his first conciliatory act: The United States was stopping all atmospheric nuclear tests and would not resume them unless another country did. Kennedy's entire speech was published in the Soviet press. Five days later Premier Khrushchev reciprocated, announcing he had halted pro­ duction of strategic bombers. There soon followed further reciprocal gestures; The United States agreed to sell wheat to Russia, the Russians agreed to a "hot line" between the two countries, and the two countries soon achieved a test-ban treaty. For a time, these conciliatory initiatives eased relations between the two countries.

Might conciliatory efforts also help reduce tension between individuals? There is every reason to expect so. When a relationship is strained and communication nonexistent, it sometimes takes only a conciliatory gesture—a soft answer, a warm smile, a gentle touch—for both parties to begin easing down the tension ladder, to a rung where contact, cooperation, and communication again become possible.

Conflict and Peacemaking Chapter 13 517

SUMMING UP: How Can Peace Be Achieved? • Although conflicts are readily kindled and fueled

by social dilemmas, competition, and mispercep­ tions, some equally powerful forces, such as con­ tact, cooperation, communication, and conciliation, can transform hostility into harmony. Despite some encouraging early studies, other studies show that mere contact (such as mere desegregation in schools) has little effect upon racial attitudes. But when con­ tact encourages emotional ties with individuals identified with an outgroup, and when it is struc­ tured to convey equal status, hostilities often lessen.

• Contacts are especially beneficial when people work together to overcome a common threat or to achieve a superordinate goal. Taking their cue from experiments on cooperative contact, several research teams have replaced competitive classroom learn­ ing situations with opportunities for cooperative learning, with heartening results.

• Conflicting parties often have difficulty commu­ nicating. A third-party mediator can promote communication by prodding the antagonists to replace their competitive win-lose view of their

conflict with a more cooperative win-win orienta­ tion. Mediators can also structure communications that will peel away misperceptions and increase mutual understanding and trust. When a negoti­ ated settlement is not reached, the conflicting par­ ties may defer the outcome to an arbitrator, who either dictates a settlement or selects one of the two final offers.

• Sometimes tensions run so high that genuine com­ munication is impossible. In such cases, small conciliatory gestures by one party may elicit recip­ rocal conciliatory acts by the other party. One such conciliatory strategy, graduated and reciprocated initiatives in tension reduction (GRIT), aims to alleviate tense international situations. Those who mediate tense labor-management and interna­ tional conflicts sometimes use another peacemak­ ing strategy. They instruct the participants, as this chapter instructed you, in the dynamics of conflict and peacemaking in the hope that understanding can help former adversaries establish and enjoy peaceful, rewarding relationships.

^ POSTSCRIPT: j The Conflict Between Individual I and Communal Rights

Many social conflicts are a contest between individual and collective rights. One person's right to own handguns conflicts with a neighborhood's right to safe streets. One person's right to smoke conflicts with others' rights to a smoke-free environment. One industrialist's right to do unregulated business conflicts with a community's right to clean air.

Hoping to blend the best of individualist and collectivist values, some social scientists—myself included—^have advocated a communitarian synthesis that aims to balance individual rights with the collective right to communal well-being. Com­ munitarians welcome incentives for individual initiative and appreciate why Marx­ ist economies have crumbled. "If I were, let's say, in Albania at this moment, said communitarian sociologist Amitai Etzioni (1991), "I probably would argue that there's too much community and not enough individual rights." But communitari­ ans also question the other extreme—the rugged individualism and self-indulgence of the 1960s ("Do your own thing"), the 1970s (the "Me decade"), the 1980s ("Greed is good"), and the 1990s ("Follow your bliss"). Unrestrained personal freedom, they say, destroys a culture's social fabric; unregulated commercial freedom, they add, has plundered our shared environment and produced the recent economic collapse.

During the last half-century. Western individualism has intensified. Parents have become more likely to prize independence and self-reliance in their children and are less concerned with obedience (Alwin, 1990; Remley, 1988). Children more often have uncommon names (Twenge & others, 2010). Clothing and grooming styles have become more diverse, personal freedoms have increased, and common values have waned (Putnam, 2000; Schlesinger, 1991).

"THIS IS THE AGE OF THE

INDIVIDUAL"

—PRESIDENT RONALD

REAGAN, ADDRESS ON WALL

STREET. 1982

518 Part Three Social Relations

sr'r'™* *

d“r,=~

.I.VH b. -m.’in* sr.“ £:sK'rb.':'rr “°™' Throughout this book, I have linked laboratory and life by relating social

psychology's principles and findings to everyday happenings. Now, in three short, concluding chapters, we will recall many of these principles and apply them in practical contexts. Chapter 14, "Social Psychology in the Clinic," applies social psychology to evaluating and promoting mental and physical health. Chapter 15, "Social Psychology in Court," explores the social thinking of, and social influ­

ences on, jurors and juries. Chapter 16, "Social Psychology and the Sus­ tainable Future," explores how social- psychological principles might help avert the ecological crisis that threat­ ens to engulf us as a result of increas­ ing population, consumption, and climate change.

:hapter *1Social Psychology

in the Clinic

"Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts and

happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts

that are forever blowing through one's mind. ., ., —MarkTyvai-h, ,183.5-19.1 Q......

If you are a typical college student, you may occasionally feel mildly depressed. Perhaps you have at times felt dissatisfied with life, dis­ couraged about the future, sad, lacking appetite and energy, unable

to concentrate, perhaps even wondering if life is worth living. Maybe

disappointing grades have seemed to jeopardize your career goals.

Perhaps the breakup of a relationship has left you in despair. At such

times, you may fall into self-focused brooding that only worsens your

feelings. In one survey of American collegians, 31 percent reported

that during the last school year they had at some point felt so

depressed it was difficult to function" {ACHA, 2009). For 13 percent

; of adult American men and 22 percent of women, life's down times

i are not just temporary blue moods in response to bad events, rather,

' they define a major depressive episode that lasts for weeks without

any obvious cause—and thus, at some point, a diagnosis of depres­

sion (Pelham, 2009). Among the many thriving areas of applied social psychology is

one that relates social psychology's concepts to depression; to other

problems, such as loneliness, anxiety, and physical illness; and to hap­

piness and well-being, This bridge-building research between social

psychology and clinical psychology seeks answers to four important

questions:

What influences the accuracy of clinical Judgments?

What cognitive processes accompany behavior problems?

What are some social-psychological approadies to treatment?

How do social relationships support health and well-being?

Postscript: Enhancing happiness

522 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

clinical psychology The study, assessment, and treatment of people with psychological difficulties.

• As laypeople or as professional psychologists, how can we improve our judg­

ments and predictions about others?

• How do the ways in which we think about self and others fuel problems such as

depression, loneliness, anxiety, and ill health?

• How might people reverse these maladaptive thought patterns?

• What part do close, supportive relationships play in health and happiness?

WHAT INFLUENCES THE ACCURACY OF CLINICAL JUDGMENTS?

Identify influences on social judgment (discussed in Chapters 2 through 4) that affect clinicians'judgments of clients. Describe biases that clinicians and their clients should be wary of,

A parole board talks with a convicted rapist and ponders whether to release him. A clinical psychologist ponders whether her patient is seriously suicidal. A physician notes a patient's symptoms and decides whether to recommend an invasive test. A school social worker ponders whether a child's overheard threat was a macho joke, a onetime outburst, or a signal indicating a potential school assassin.

All these professionals must decide whether to make their judgments subjec­ tively or objectively. Should they listen to their gut instincts, their hunches, their inner wisdom? Or should they rely on the wisdom embedded in formulas, statisti­ cal analyses, and computerized predictions?

In the contest between heart and head, most psychological clinicians vote with their hearts. They listen to the whispers from their experience, a still small voice that clues them. They prefer not to let cold calculations decide the futures of warm human beings. As Figure 14.1 indicates, they are far more likely than nonclinical (and more research-oriented) psychologists to welcome nonscientific "ways of knowing." Feelings trump formulas.

FIGURE :: 14.1

Clinical Intuition When Narina Nunez, Debra Ann Poole, and Amina Memon (2003) surveyed a national sample of clinical and nonclinical psychologists, they discovered "two cultures"—one mostly skeptical of "alternative ways of knowing," the other mostly accepting.

Source.'From Nunez, Poole, & Memon, 2003.

Disagree Agree

523Social Psychology in the Clinic

Clinical judgments are also social judgments, notes social-clinical psychologist James Maddux (2008). The social construction of mental illness works like this, he says: Someone observes a pattern of atypical or unwanted thinking and acting. A powerful group sees the desirability or profitability of diagnosirig and treatmg this problem, and thus gives it a name. News about this "disease" spreads, and people begin seeing it in themselves or family members. And thus is born Body Dysmorphic Disorder (for those preoccupied with an appearance defect), Opposi­ tional Defiant Disorder (for toddlers throwing tantrums), Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (for those not wanting sex often enough), or Orgasmic Disorder (for those having orgasms too late or too soon). "The science of medicine is not diminished by acknowledging that the notions of health and illness are socially constructed, notes Maddux, "nor is the science of economics diminished by acknowledging that the notions of poverty and wealth are socially constructed."

As social phenomena, clinical judgments are vulnerable to illusory correlations, overconfidence bred by hindsight, and self-confirming diagnoses (Garb, 2005; Maddux, 1993). Let's see why alerting mental health workers to how people form impressions (and misimpressions) might help avert serious misjudgments (McFall, 1991, 2000).

As we noted in Chapter 3, it's tempting to see correlations where none exist. If we expect two things to be associated—if, for example, we believe that premomtions predict events—it's easy to perceive illusory correlations. Even when shown ran­ dom data we may notice and remember instances when premonitions and events are coincidentally related and soon forget all the instances when premonitions aren't borne out and when events happen without a prior premonition.

Clinicians, like all of us, may perceive illusory correlations. Imagine that Mary, a mental health worker, expects particular responses to Rorschach inkblots to be more common among people with a sexual disorder. Might she, in reflecting on her experience, believe she has witnessed such associations?

To discover when such a perception is an illusory correlation, psychological science offers a simple method: Have one clinician administer and interpret the test Have another clinician assess the same person's traits or symptoms. Repeat this process with many people. Are test outcomes in fact correlated with reported symptoms? Some tests are indeed predictive. Others, such as the Rorschach ink­ blots and the Draw-a-Person test, have correlations far weaker than their users sup­ pose (Lilienfeld & others, 2000, 2005).

Why, then, do clinicians continue to express confidence in uninformative or ambiguous tests? Pioneering experiments by Loren Chapman and Jean Chapman (1969, 1971) helped us see why. They invited college students and professional clinicians to study some test performances and diagnoses. If the students or cli­ nicians expected a particular association, they generally perceived it, regardless of whether the data were supportive. For example, clinicians who believed that only suspicious people draw peculiar eyes on the Draw-a-Person test perceived such a relationship—even when shown cases in which suspicious people drew peculiar eyes less often than nonsuspicious people. If they believed in a connection, they were more likely to notice confirming instances.

In fairness to clinicians, illusory thinking also occurs among political analysts, historians, sportscasters, personnel directors, stockbrokers, and many other pro­ fessionals, including research psychologists. As a researcher, I have often been unaware of the shortcomings of my theoretical analyses. I so eagerly presume that my idea of truth is the truth that, no matter how hard I try, I cannot see my own error. During the past 40 years, I have read dozens of reviews of my own manu­ scripts and have been a reviewer for dozens of others. My experience is that it is far easier to spot someone else's sloppy thinking than to perceive my own.

Chapter 14

"TO FREE A MAN OF ERROR

IS TO GIVE, NOT TO TAKE

AWAY, KNOWLEDGE THAT

A THING IS FALSE IS A

TRUTH."

-ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER,

1788-1860

"NO ONE CAN SEE HIS

OWN ERRORS."

—PSALM 19:12

524 Part Four

20/20 hindsight. Kurt Cobain, member ofthe rock group Nirvana, whose songs often expressed depressed, sui­ cidal thinking. Should others have used such signs to pre­ dict or prevent his suicide?

Applying Social Psychology

Hindsight and Overconfidence If someone we know commits suicide how do we react? One common reac­ tion is to think that we, or those close to the person, should have been able to predict and therefore to prevent the sui­ cide: "We should have known!" In hind­ sight, we can see the suicidal signs and the pleas for help. One experiment gave participants a description of a depressed person. Some participants were told that the person subsequently committed sui­ cide; other participants were not told this. Compared with those not informed of the suicide, those who had been informed became more likely to say they "would have expected" it (Goggin & Range, 1985). Moreover, they viewed

sights they each made an appointment with a different mental hospital admis sions office and complained of "hearing voices.” Apart from giving fl se na^s e^iWter nT; r ites®honestly and re“edhosnita schizophreniJ and remained hospital zed for two to three weeks. Hospital clinicians then Marched for fir™™lnd'"exDl histories and hospital behavior that "con- truThfulirelDlainid t tfi r pseudopatient who whh wi mott mtervtewer that he had a close childhood mlationship With his mother but was rather remote from his father. During adolescence and mTto coXrres'’'* ‘"*^7 relationship with his and warr^ inarH ^ “ relationship with his wife was characteristically close dren had ra^X”

prXtXy-''' explained the

“rlfcXnf T H K ■ considerable ambivalence m Close relationships, which begins in early childhood. A warm relationshin with hi^ mother cools during his adolescence. A distant relationship to his a herTs d scled a Xh hSlTd^chT^™ cont“l,- hll iH ^ punctuated by angry outbursts and in the case of

says that he has several good friends one senses considerable ambivalence embedded in those relationships alsl

expXXbut douh! d"'”*' f (who had heard about his controversial the A 1 °“ur in their hospital) that duringhospital XZth P®™dopatients would seek admiLon to their aZtedXnZtbZ r '^hich of the 193 patients wereZr ^ d K ^ P®™dopatients. Of the 193 new patimts 41 werZX Pscudopatients. AcZlly, there

Social Psychology in the Clinic

Self-Confirming Diagnoses So far weVe seen that mental health clinicians sometimes perceive illusory cor­ relations and that hindsight explanations can err. A third possible problem with clinical judgment is that patients may supply information that fulfills clinicians' expectations. To get a feel for how this phenomenon might be tested experimen­ tally, imagine yourself on a blind date with someone who has been told that you are an uninhibited, outgoing person. To see whether this is true, your date slips ques­ tions into the conversation, such as "Have you ever done anything crazy in front of other people?" As you answer such questions, will you reveal a different "you" than if your date had been told you were shy and reserved?

In a clever series of experiments, Mark Snyder (1984), in collaboration with William Swann and others, gave University of Minnesota students some hypoth­ eses to test concerning individuals' traits. Their finding: People often test for a trait by looking for information that confirms it. As in the blind-date example, if people are trying to find out if someone is an extravert, they often solicit instances of extra­ version ("What would you do if you wanted to liven things up at a party?"). Testing for introversion, they are more likely to ask, "What factors make it hard for you to really open up to people?" In response, those probed for extraversion seem more sociable, and those probed for introversion seem more shy. Our assumptions about another help elicit the behavior we expect.

At Indiana University, Russell Fazio and his colleagues (1981) reproduced this finding and also discovered that those asked the "extraverted" questions later per­ ceived themselves as actually more outgoing than those asked the introverted ques­ tions. Moreover, they really became noticeably more outgoing. An accomplice of the experimenter later met each participant in a waiting room and 70 percent of the time guessed correctly from the person's behavior which condition the person had come from.

Given such experiments, can you see why the behaviors of people undergoing psychotherapy come to fit their therapists' theories (Whitman & others, 1963)? When Harold Renaud and Floyd Estess (1961) conducted life-history interviews of 100 healthy, successful adult men, they were startled to discover that their subjects' childhood experiences were loaded with "traumatic events," tense rela­ tions with certain people, and bad decisions by their parents—the very factors usually used to explain psychiatric problems. If therapists go fishing for trau­ mas in early childhood experiences, they will often find them. Thus, surmised Snyder (1981):

The psychiatrist who believes (erroneously) that adult gay males had bad childhood relationships with their mothers may meticulously probe for recalled (or fabricated) signs of tension between their gay clients and their mothers, but neglect to so carefully interrogate their heterosexual clients about their maternal relationships. No doubt, any individual could recall some friction with his or her mother, however minor or iso­ lated the incidents.

Clinical Versus Statistical Prediction Not surprisingly, given these hindsight- and diagnosis-confirming tendencies, most clinicians and interviewers express more confidence in their intuitive assessments than in statistical data (such as using past grades and aptitude scores to predict success in graduate or professional school). Yet when researchers pit statistical pre­ diction against intuitive prediction, the statistics usually win. Statistical predictions are indeed unreliable. But human intuition—even expert intuition—is even more unreliable (Faust & Ziskin, 1988; Meehl, 1954; Swets & others, 2000).

Three decades after demonstrating the superiority of statistical over intuitive prediction, Paul Meehl (1986) found the evidence stronger than ever:

Chapter 14 525

"AS IS YOUR SORT OF

MIND, SO IS YOUR SORT

OF SEARCH: YOU'LL FIND

WHAT YOU DESIRE."

-ROBERT BROWNING,

1812-1889

526 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

"A VERY BRIGHT YOUNG

MAN WHO IS LIKELY TO

SUCCEED IN LIFE. HE IS

INTELLIGENT ENOUGH

TO ACHIEVE LOFTY

GOALS AS LONG ASHE

STAYS ON TASK AND

REMAINS MOTIVATED."

-PROBATION OFFICER'S

CLINICAL INTUITION IN

RESPONSE TO ERIC HARRIS'S

"HOMICIDAL THOUGHTS"—2'/?

MONTHS BEFORE HE

COMMITTED THE COLUMBINE

HIGH SCHOOL MASSACRE.

"THE EFFECT OF MEEHL'S

WORK ON CLINICAL

PRACTICE IN THE MENTAL

HEALTH AREA CAN BE

SUMMED UP IN A SINGLE

WORD: ZILCH. HE WAS

HONORED, ELECTED TO

THE PRESIDENCY OF [THE

AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGI­

CAL ASSOCIATION] AT A

VERY YOUNG AGE IN 1962.

RECENTLY ELECTED TO THE

NATIONAL ACADEMY OF

SCIENCES, AND IGNORED."

—ROBYN M. DAWES (1989)

There is no controversy in social science which shows [so many] studies coming out so uniformly in the same direction as this one... When you are pushing 90 inves­ tigations, predicting everything from the outcome of football games to the diag­ nosis of liver disease and when you can hardly come up with a half dozen studies showing even a weak tendency in favor of the clinician, it is time to draw a practical conclusion.

One University of Minnesota research team conducted an all-encompassing digest ( meta-analysis ) of 134 studies predicting human behavior or making psychological or medical diagnoses and prognoses (Grove & others, 2000). In only 8 of the studies did clinical prediction surpass "mechanical" (statistical) predic­ tion. In 8 times as many (63 studies), statistical prediction fared better. (The rest were a virtual draw.) Ah, but would clinicians fare differently when given the opportunity for a firsthand clinical interview? Yes, report the researchers: Allowed mterviews, the clinicians fared substantially worse. "It is fair to say that 'the ball is in the clinicians' court,"' the researchers concluded. "Given the overall deficit in clinicians' accuracy relative to mechanical prediction, the burden falls on advo­ cates of clinical prediction to show that clinicians' predictions are more [accurate or cost-effective]."

What if we combined statistical prediction with clinical intuition? What if we gave professional clinicians the statistical prediction of someone's future academic performance or risk of parole violation or suicide and asked them to refine or improve on the prediction? Alas, in the few studies where that has been done, pre­ diction was better if the "improvements" were ignored (Dawes, 1994).

Why then do so many clinicians continue to interpret Rorschach inkblot tests and offer intuitive predictions about parolees, suicide risks, and likelihood of child abuse? Partly out of sheer ignorance, said Meehl, but also partly out of "mistaken conceptions of ethics":

If I try to forecast something important about a coUege student, or a criminal, or a depressed patient by inefficient rather than efficient means, meanwhile charging this person or the taxpayer 10 times as much money as I would need to achieve greater pre­ dictive accuracy, that is not a sound ethical practice. That it feels better, warmer, and cuddlier to me as predictor is a shabby excuse indeed.

Such words are shocking. Did Meehl (who did not completely dismiss clinical expertise) underestimate experts' intuitions? To see why his findings are appar­ ently valid, consider the assessment of human potential by graduate admissions interviewers. Dawes (1976) explained why statistical prediction is so often superior to an interviewer's intuition when predicting certain outcomes such as graduate school success:

What makes us think that we can do a better job of selection by interviewing (students) for a half hour, than we can by adding together relevant (standardized) variables, such as undergraduate GPA, GRE score, and perhaps ratings of letters of recommendation? The most reasonable explanation to me lies in our overevaluation of our cognitive capacity. And it is really cognitive conceit. Consider, for example, what goes into a GPA. Because for most graduate applicants it is based on at least years of under­ graduate study, it is a composite measure arising from a minimum of 28 courses and possibly, with the popularity of the quarter system, as many as 50 ... Yet you and I, looking at a folder or interviewing someone for a half hour, are supposed to be able to form a better impression than one based on 314 years of the cumulative evaluations of 20-40 different professors.... Finally, if we do wish to ignore GPA, it appears that the only reason for doing so is believing that the candidate is particularly brilliant even though his or her record may not show it. What better evidence for such brilliance can we have than a score on a carefully devised aptitude test? Do we really think we are better equipped to assess such aptitude than is the Educational Testing Service, what­ ever its faults?

Social Psychology in the Clinic Chapter 14 527

focus ON A Physician's View: The Social Psychology of Medicine

Reading this book helps me understand the human behaviors I observe in my work as a cancer specialist and as medical director of a large staff of physicians. A few examples:

Reviews of medical records illustrate the "l-knew-it- all-along phenomenon." Physician reviewers who assess the medical records of their colleagues often believe, in hindsight, that problems such as cancer or appendicitis should clearly have been recognized and treated much more quickly. Once you know the correct diagnosis, it's easy to look back and interpret the early symptoms accordingly.

For many physicians I have known, the intrinsic motives behind their entering the profession—to help people, to be scientifically stimulated—soon become "overjustified" by the high pay. Before long, the joy is lost. The extrinsic rewards become the reason to prac­ tice, and the physician, having lost the altruistic motives, works to increase "success," measured in income.

"Self-serving bias" is ever present. We physicians gladly accept personal credit when things go well. When they don't—when the patient is misdiagnosed or doesn't get well or dies—we attribute the failure elsewhere. We

were given inadequate information or the case was ill- fated from the beginning.

I also observe many examples of "belief persever­ ance." Even when presented with the documented facts about, say, how AIDS is transmitted, people will strangely persist in wrongly believing that it is just a "gay" disease or that they should fear catching it from mosquito bites. It makes me wonder: How can I more effectively per­ suade people of what they need to know and act upon?

Indeed, as I observe medical attitudes and decision making 1 feel myself sub­ merged in a giant practical laboratory of social psychol­ ogy. To understand the goings-on around me, I find social psychological insights invaluable and would strongly advise premed stu­ dents to study the field.

Burton F. VanderLaan Grand Rapids, Michigan

y.tijunLiii I'll '.iiMi'j .*

The bottom line, contends Dawes (2005) after three decades pressing his point, is that, lacking evidence, using clinical intuition rather than statistical prediction "is simply unethical."

When considering valid behavioral predictors, psychol­ ogists can offer useful predic­ tions. Such was the case when psychologists Melissa Dannelet and Carl Redick assessed Mau­ rice Clemmon, who was in a Tacoma, Washington, jail on rape and assault charges. Based partly on "previous violence, young age at first violent inci­ dent, relationship instability and prior supervision failure," Dannelet and Redick predicted that Clemmons was at "risk for future dangerous behavior and for committing future criminal acts jeopardizing public safety

When evaluating clients, mental health workers, like all of us, are vulnerable to cogni­ tive illusions.

528 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

'"I BESEECH YE IN THE

BOWEL5 OF CHRIST, THINK

THATYE MAY BE MISTAKEN.'

ISHAaUKETOHAVETHAT

WRITTEN OVER THE PORTALS

OF EVERY CHURCH, EVERY

SCHOOL, AND EVERY

COURTHOUSE, AND, MAY

I SAY OF EVERY LEGISLATIVE

BODY IN THE UNITED STATES,"

—JUDGE LEARNED HAND,

1951, ECHOING OLIVER

CROMWELL'S 1650 PLEA TO

THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND

behaviors" (AP, 2009). Six weeks later, after being released on bond, Clemmons came upon four police officers working on their laptops in a coffee shop, and shot and killed them.

Implications for Better Clinical Practice Professional clinicians are human; they are "vulnerable to insidious errors and biases," concluded James Maddux (1993). They are, as we have seen,

• frequently the victims of illusory correlation. • too readily convinced of their own after-the-fact analyses. • unaware that erroneous diagnoses can be self-confirming. • likely to overestimate their clinical intuition.

The^ implications for mental health workers are easily stated: Be mindful that clients' verbal agreement with what you say does not prove its validity. Beware of the tendency to see relationships that you expect to see or that are supported by striking examples readily available in your memory. Rely on your notes more than on your memory. Recognize that hindsight is seductive: It can lead you to feel overconfident and sometimes to judge yourself too harshly for not having foreseen outcomes. Guard against the tendency to ask questions that assume your precon­ ceptions are correct; consider opposing ideas and test them, too (Garb, 1994).

SUMMING UP: what Influences the Accuracy of Clinical Judgments?

As psychiatrists and clinical psychologists diagnose and treat their clients, they may perceive illusory correlations. Hindsight explanations of people's difficulties are sometimes too easy. Indeed, after-the-fact explain­ ing can breed overconfidence in clinical judgment. In interaction with clients, erroneous diagnoses are sometimes self-confirming because interview­ ers tend to seek and recall information that verifies what they are looking for.

• Research on the errors that so easily creep into intuitive judgments illustrates the need for rigor­ ous testing of intuitive conclusions and the use of statistics to make predictions.

• The scientific method cannot answer all questions and is itself vulnerable to bias. Thankfully, how­ ever, it can help us sift truth from falsehood if we are aware of the biases that tend to cloud judg­ ments that are made "from the heart."

WHAT COGNITIVE PROCESSES ACCOMPANY BEHAVIOR PROBLEMS?

Describe the cognitive processes that accompany psycho­ logical disorders.

Let's next consider how people's thinking affects their feelings. What are the memo­ ries, attributions, and expectations of depressed, lonely, shy, or illness-prone people?

Depression People who feel depressed tend to think in negative terms. They view life through dark-colored glasses. With seriously depressed people—those who are feeling worthless, lethargic, indifferent toward friends and family, and unable to sleep or eat normally—the negative thinking is self-defeating. Their intensely pessi­ mistic outlook leads them to magnify every bad experience and minimize every

529Social Psychology in the Clinic Chapter 14

good one. They may view advice to "count your blessings" or "look on the bright side" as hopelessly unrealistic. As one depressed young woman reported, "The real me is worthless and inadequate. I can't move forward with my work because I become frozen with doubt" {Burns, 1980, p. 29).

DISTORTION OR REALISM? Are all depressed people unrealistically negative? To find out, Lauren Alloy and Lyn Abramson (1979; Alloy & others, 2004) studied college students who were either mildly depressed or not depressed. They had the students press a button and observe whether the button controlled a light coming on. Surprisingly, the depressed students were quite accurate in estimating their degree of control. It was the nondepressives whose judgments were distorted; they exaggerated their control. Despite their self-preoccupation, mildly depressed people also are more attuned to others' feelings (Harkness & others, 2005).

This surprising phenomenon of depressive realism, nicknamed the "sadder-but- wiser effect," shows up in various judgments of one's control or skill (Ackermann & DeRubeis, 1991; Alloy & others, 1990). Shelley Taylor (1989, p. 214) explains:

Normal people exaggerate how competent and well liked they are. Depressed people do not. Normal people remember their past behavior with a rosy glow. Depressed people [unless severely depressedl are more evenhanded in recalling their successes and fail­ ures. Normal people describe themselves primarily positively. Depressed people describe both their positive and their negative qualities. Normal people take credit for successful outcomes and tend to deny responsibility for failure. Depressed people accept responsi­ bility for both success and failure. Normal people exaggerate the control they have over what goes on around them. Depressed people are less vulnerable to the illusion of con­ trol. Normal people believe to an unrealistic degree that the future holds a bounty of good things and few bad things. Depressed people are more realistic in their perceptions of the future. In fact, on virtually every point on which normal people show enhanced self-regard, illusions of control, and unrealistic visions of the future, depressed people fail to show the same biases. "Sadder but wiser" does indeed appear to apply to depression.

depressive realism The tendency of mildly depressed people to make accurate rather than self-serving judgments, attributions, and predictions.

"LIFE IS THE ART OF BEING

WELL DECEIVED."

—WILLIAM HAZLITT, 1778-1830

Underlying the thinking of depressed people are their attributions of respon­ sibility. Consider: If you fail an exam and blame yourself, you may conclude that you are stupid or lazy; consequently, you may feel depressed. If you attribute the failure to an unfair exam or to other circumstances beyond your control, you may feel angry. In over 100 studies involving 15,000 subjects, depressed people have been more likely than nondepressed people to exhibit a negative explanatory style (Haeffel & others, 2008; Peterson & Steen, 2002; Sweeney & others, 1986). As shown in Figure 14.2, this explanatory style attributes failure and setbacks to causes that

explanatory style One's habitual way of explaining life events. A negative, pessimistic, depressive explanatory style attributes failure to stable, global, and internal causes.

Optimistic attributional style

is this failure...

Depressive attributional style

"No, It's a temporary sefb^l*' Stable? "Yes, it's g

No depression

“No, everything else Js , Global? "Yes, it's goingl Depression

FIGURE:: 14.2 Depressive Explanatory Style Depression is linked with a negative, pessimistic way of explaining and interpreting failures.

530 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

"TO THE MAN WHO IS

ENTHUSIASTIC AND OPTI­

MISTIC, IF WHAT IS TO

COME SHOULD BE PLEAS­

ANT, IT SEEMS BOTH LIKELY

TO COME ABOUT AND

LIKELY TO BE GOOD, WHILE

TO THE INDIFFERENT OR

DEPRESSED MAN IT SEEMS

THE OPPOSITE."

-ARISTOTLE, THEARTOF

RHETORIC, 4TH CENTURY e.c.

are stable ("It's going to last forever"), global ("It's going to affect everything I do"), and internal ("It's all my fault"). The result of this pessimistic, overgeneralized, self- blaming thinking, say Abramson and her colleagues (1989), is a depressing sense of hopelessness.

IS NEGATIVE THINKING A CAUSE OR A RESULT OF DEPRESSION? The cognitive accompaniments of depression raise a chicken-and-egg question: Do depressed moods cause negative thinking, or does negative thinking cause depression?

DEPRESSED MOODS CAUSE NEGATIVE THINKING As we saw in Chapter 3, our moods color our thinking. When we feel happy, we think happy. We see and recall a good world. But let our mood turn gloomy, and our thoughts switch to a different track. Off come the rose-colored glasses; on come the dark glasses. Now the bad mood primes our recollections of negative events (Bower, 1987; Johnson & Magaro, 1987). Our relationships seem to sour, our self-images tarnish, our hopes dim, others seem more sinister (Brown & Taylor, 1986; Mayer & Salovey, 1987). As depression increases, memories and expectations plummet; when depression lifts, thinking brightens (Barnett & Gotlib, 1988; Kuiper & Higgins, 1985). Thus, cur­ rently depressed people recall their parents as having been rejecting and punitive. But formerly depressed people recall their parents in the same positive terms as do never-depressed people (Lewinsohn & Rosenbaum, 1987). Thus, when you hear depressed people trashing their parents, remember: Moods modify memories.

By studying Indiana University basketball fans, Edward Hirt and his colleagues (1992) demonstrated that even a temporary bad mood can darken our thinking. After the fans were either depressed by watching their team lose or elated by a vic­ tory, the researchers asked them to predict the team's future performance, and their own. After a loss, people offered bleaker assessments not only of the team's future

THE inside STORY

----------------------------- ^

ey Taylor on Positive Illusions

Some years ago, I was conducting interviews with people who had cancer for a study on adjustment to intensely stressful events. I was surprised to learn that, for some people, the cancer experience actually seemed to have brought benefits, as well as the expected liabilities. Many people told me that they thought they were bet­ ter people for the experience, they felt they were better adjusted to cancer than other people, they believed thnSl they could exert control over their cancer in the future, and they believed their futures would be cancer-free, even when we knew from their medical histories that their cancers were likely to recur.

As a result, I became fascinated by how people can construe even the worst of situations as good, and I've studied these "positive illusions" ever since. Through our research, we learned quickly that you don't have to expe­ rience a trauma to demonstrate positive illusions. Most

people, including the majority of college students, thin! of themselves as somewhat better than average, as mor€ in control of the circumstances around them than maj actually be true, and as likely to experience more posi­ tive future outcomes in life than may be realistic. These illusions are not a sign of maladjustment—quite the con­ trary. Good mental health may depend on the ability to see things as somewhat better than they are and to find benefits even when things seem most bleak.

Shelley Taylor

UCLA

531Social Psychology in the Clinic

but also of their own likely performance at throwing darts, solving anagrams, and getting a date. When things aren't going our way, it may seem as though they never will.

A depressed mood also affects behavior. When depressed, we tend to be withdrawn, glum, and quick to com­ plain. Stephen Strack and James Coyne (1983) found that depressed people were realistic in thinking that others didn't appreciate their behavior; their pessi­ mism and bad moods can even trigger social rejection (Carver & others, 1994). Depressed behavior can also trigger reciprocal depression in others. College students who have depressed room­ mates tend to become a little depressed themselves (Burchill & Stiles, 1988; Joiner, 1994; Sanislow & others, 1989). In dating couples, too, depression is often contagious (Katz & others, 1999). (Better news comes from a study that followed nearly 5,000 residents of one Massachussetts city for 20 years. Happiness also is contagious. When surrounded by happy people, people become more likely to be happy in the future [Fowler & Christalds, 2008].)

We can see, then, that being depressed has cognitive and behavioral effects. Does it also work the other way around: Does depression have cognitive origins?

NEGATIVE THINKING CAUSES DEPRESSED MOODS Depression is natu­ ral when experiencing severe stress—losing a job, getting divorced or rejected, or suffering any experience that disrupts our sense of who we are and why we are worthy human beings. The brooding that comes with this short-term depression can be adaptive. Much as nausea and pain protect the body from toxins, so depres­ sion protects us, by slowing us down, causing us to reassess, and then redirecting our energy in new ways (Andrews & Thomson, 2009,2010; Watkins, 2008). Insights gained during times of depressed inactivity may later result in better strategies for interacting with the world. But depression-prone people respond to bad events with intense rumination and self-blame (Mor & Winquist, 2002; Pyszczynski & others, 1991). Their self-esteem fluctuates more rapidly up with boosts and down with threats (Butler & others, 1994).

Why are some people so affected by minor stresses? Evidence suggests that when stress-induced rumination is filtered through a negative explanatory style, the fre­ quent outcome is depression (Robinson & Alloy, 2003). Colin Sacks and Daphne Bugental (1987) asked some young women to get acquainted with a stranger who sometimes acted cold and unfriendly, creating an awkward social situation. Unlike optimistic women, those with a pessimistic explanatory style—who characteristi­ cally offer stable, global, and internal attributions for bad events—reacted to the social failure by feeling depressed. Moreover, they then behaved more antagonisti­ cally toward the next people they met. Their negative thinking led to a negative mood, which led to negative behavior.

Such depressing rumination is more common among women, reports Susan Nolen-Hoeksema (2003). When trouble strikes, men tend to act, women tend to think—and often to "overthink," she reports. And that helps explain why, begin­ ning in adolescence, women have, compared with men, a doubled risk of depres­ sion (Hyde & others, 2008).

Outside the laboratory, studies of children, teenagers, and adults confirm that those with the pessimistic explanatory style more often become depressed when bad things happen. One study monitored university students every six weeks for

Chapter 14

Stresses challenge some people and defeat others. Researchers have sought to understand the "explana­ tory style" that makes some people more vulnerable to depression.

532 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

FIGURE:: 14.3 The Vicious Circle of Depression

two-and-a-half years (Alloy & others, 1999). One percent of those who began college with optimistic thinking styles had a first depressive episode, as did 17 percent of those with pessimistic thinking styles. "A recipe for severe depres­ sion is preexisting pessimism encountering failure," notes Martin Seligman (1991, p. 78).

Researcher Peter Lewinsohn and his colleagues (1985) have assembled these findings into

a coherent psychological understanding of depression. The negative self-image, attri­ butions, and expectations of a depressed person are, they report, an essential link in a vicious circle that is triggered by negative experience—perhaps academic or voca­ tional failure, family conflict, or social rejection (Figure 14.3). Such ruminations create a depressed mood that alters how a person thinks and acts, which then fuels fur­ ther negative experiences, self-blame, and depressed mood. In experiments, mildly depressed people's moods brighten when a task diverts their attention to something external (Nix & others, 1995). Depression is therefore both a cause and a result of nega­ tive cognitions.

Martin Seligman (1991, 1998, 2002) believes that self-focus and self-blame help explain the near-epidemic levels of depression in the Western world today. In North America, for example, young adults today are three times as likely as their grandparents to have suffered depression—despite their grandparents' experienc­ ing a lower standard of living and greater hardship (Cross-National Collabora­ tive Group, 1992; Swindle & others, 2000). Seligman believes that the decline of religion and family, plus the growth of individualism, breeds hopelessness and self-blame when things don't go well. Failed courses, careers, and marriages pro­ duce despair when we stand alone, with nothing and no one to fall back on. If, as a macho Fortune ad declared, you can "make it on your own," on "your own drive, your own guts, your own energy, your own ambition," then whose fault is it if you don t make it? In non-Western cultures, where close-knit relationships and cooper­ ation are the norm, major depression is less common and less tied to guilt and self­ blame over perceived personal failure. In Japan, for example, depressed people instead tend to report feeling shame over letting down their family or co-workers (Draguns, 1990).

These insights into the thinking style linked with depression have prompted social psychologists to study thinking patterns associated with other problems. How do those who are plagued with excessive loneliness, shyness, or substance abuse view themselves? How well do they recall their successes and their failures? And to what do they attribute their ups and downs?

Seif-focus and ijg;

self-blame

Negative experiences

Cognitive and behavioral

consequences

Depressed mood

Loneliness If depression is the common cold of psychological disorders, then loneliness is the headache. Loneliness, whether chronic or temporary, is a painful awareness that our social relationships are less numerous or meaningful than we desire. In modem cultures, close social relationships are less numerous. One national survey revealed a one-third drop, over two decades, in the number of people with whom Americans can discuss important matters." Moreover, the number of Americans living alone is up 30 percent since 1980 (Miller, 2011). Reflecting on such findings, Robert Putnam (2006) reported that his data likewise reveal "sharp generational differences—baby boomers are more socially marooned than their parents, and the

Social Psychology in the Clinic

boomers' kids are lonelier still. Is it because of two-career families? Ethnic diver­ sity? The Internet? Suburban sprawl? Everyone has a favorite culprit. Mine is TV, but the jury is still out."

In a study of Dutch adults, Jenny de Jong-Gierveld (1987) documented the lone­ liness that unmarried and unattached people are likely to experience. She specu­ lated that the modem emphasis on individual fulfillment and the depreciation of marriage and family life may be "loneliness-provoking" (as well as depression- provoking). Job-related mobility also makes for fewer long-term family and social ties, and increased loneliness (Dill & Anderson, 1999).

Like depression, loneliness is also genetically influenced; identical twins are much more likely than fraternal twins to share moderate to extreme loneliness (Bartels & others, 2008; Boomsma & others, 2006).

FEELING LONELY AND EXCLUDED

But loneliness need not coincide with aloneness. One can feel lonely in the mid­ dle of a party. "In America, there is loneliness but no solitude," lamented Mary Pipher (2002). "There are crowds but no community." In Los Angeles, observed her daughter, "There are 10 million people around me but nobody knows my name." Lacking social connections, and feeling lonely (or when made to feel so in an experiment), people may compensate by seeing humanlike qualities in things, animals, and supernatural beings, with which they find companionship (Epley & others, 2008).

One can be utterly alone—as I am while writing these words in the solitude of an isolated turret office at a British university 5,000 miles from home—without feeling lonely. To feel lonely is to feel excluded from a group, unloved by those around you, unable to share your private concerns, different and alienated from those in your surroundings (Beck & Young, 1978; Davis & Franzoi, 1986). Hav­ ing lonely acquaintances increases the chance that you feel lonely (Cacioppo & others, 2009). Loneliness tends to run in social clusters, as its negative thoughts and behaviors spread.

Loneliness also increases the risk of health problems. In Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection, John Cacioppo and William Patrick (2008) explain that loneliness affects stress hormones and immune activity. Loneliness therefore puts people at increased risk not only for depression and suicide, but also high blood pressure, heart disease, cognitive decline, and sleep impairment (Hawkley & Cacioppo, 2010; Shankar & others, 2011; VanderWeele & others, 2011). A digest of data from more than 300,000 people in 148 studies showed that social isolation increased the risk of death about as much as smoking, and more than obesity or inactivity (Holt-Lunstad & others, 2010).

Loneliness—which may be evoked by an icy stare or a cold shoulder—even feels, quite literally, cold. When recalling an experience of exclusion, people esti­ mate a lower room temperature than when thinking of being included. After being excluded in a little ball game, people show a heightened preference for warm foods and drinks (Zhong & Leonardelli, 2008).

Adolescents more than adults experience loneliness (Heinrich & Gullone, 2006). When beeped by an electronic pager at various times during a week and asked to record what they were doing and how they felt, adolescents more often than adults reported feeling lonely when alone (Larsen & others, 1982). Males and females feel lonely under somewhat different circumstances—males when isolated from group interaction, females when deprived of close one-to-one relationships (Berg & McQuirm, 1988; Stokes & Levin, 1986). Men's relationships, it is said, tend to be side-by-side; women's relationships tend to be face-to-face. One exception: After divorce, men tend to feel lonelier than do women (Dykstra & Fokkema, 2007). But for all people, including those recently widowed, the loss of a person to whom one has been attached can produce unavoidable pangs of loneliness (Stroebe & others, 1996).

534 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

FIGURE:: 14.4 The Interplay of Chronic Shyness, Loneliness, and Depression Solid arrows indicate primary cause-effect direction, as sum­ marized by Jody Dill and Craig Anderson (1999). Dotted lines indicate additional effects.

Such feelings can be adaptive. The path of loneliness signals people to seek social connec­ tions, which facilitate survival Even when loneliness triggers nostalgia—a longing for the P^st—it serves to remind people of their social connections (Zhou & others, 2008).

PERCEIVING OTHERS NEGATIVELY Like depressed people, chroni­ cally lonely people seem caught in a vicious circle of self-defeating social thinking and social behav­ iors. They have some of the

j j , negative explanatory style of thedepressed; they perceive their interactions as making a poor impression, blame them- se ves for their poor social relahonships, and see most things as beyond their control (^derson & others, 1994; Christensen & Kashy, 1998; Snodgrass, 1987). Moreover,

ey perceive others m negative ways. When paired with a stranger of the same gen- der or with a first-year college roommate, lonely students are more likely to perceive

e other person negatively (Jones & others, 1981; Wittenberg & Reis, 1986). Ironi­ cally, report Danu Stinson and her co-researchers (2011), socially insecure people therefore often behave m ways that produce the very social rejection they fear. As arwthL^^^ illustrates, lonelmess, depression, and shyness sometimes feed one

These negative views may both reflect and color the lonely person's experience. Believing m their social unworthiness and feeling pessimistic about others inhibit lonely people from acting to reduce their loneliness. Lonely people often find it IZt Qof r'? ' participate in groups (Nurmi & others 1996,1997; Rook, 1984; Spitzberg & Hurt, 1987). Yet, like mildly ^pressed

Self-disclosure in relationships, and a positive explanatory style help protect people from feelings of loneliness.

Shyness is a form of social anxiety characterized by self-consciousness and worry about what others think (Anderson & Harvey, 1988; Asendorpf, 1987; Carver & Scheier, 1986). Being interviewed for a much-wanted job, dating someone for the first time, stepping into a room­ ful of strangers, performing before an important audience, or giving a speech (one of the most common phobias) can make almost anyone feel anxious. But some people feel anxious in almost any situation in which they may feel they are bemg evaluated, even having lunch with a co-worker. For these people, anxiety is more a personality trait than a temporary state.

DOUBTING OUR ABILITY IN SOCIAL SITUATIONS What causes us to feel anxious in social situations? Why are some people shackled in the prison of their own social anxi­ ety? Barry Schlenker and Mark Leary (1982, 1985; Leary &

Social Psychology in the Clinic Chapter 14 535

Kowalski, 1995) answer those questions by applying self-presentation theory. As you may recall from Chapters 2 and 4, self-presentation theory assumes that we are eager to present ourselves in ways that make a good impression. The implications for social anxiety are straightforward: We feel anxious when we are motivated to impress others but have self-doubts. This simple principle helps explain a variety of research findings, each of which may ring true in your own experience. We feel most anxious when we are

• with powerful, high-status people—people whose impressions of us matter.

• in an evaluative context, such as when making a first impression on the parents of one's fiance.

• self-conscious (as shy people often are), with our attention focused on ourselves and how we are coming across.

• focused on something central to our self-image, as when a college professor presents ideas before peers at a professional convention.

• in novel or unstructured situations, such as a first school dance or first formal dinner, where we are unsure of the social rules.

For most people, the tendency in all such situations is to be cautiously self-protective: to talk less; to avoid topics that reveal one's ignorance; to be guarded about one­ self; to be unassertive, agreeable, and smiling. Ironically, such anxious concern with making a good impression often makes a bad impression (Broome & Wegner, 1994; Meleshko & Alden, 1993). With time, however, shy people often become well liked. Their lack of egotism, their modesty, sensitivity, and discretion wear well (Gough & Thome, 1986; Paulhus & Morgan, 1997; Shepperd & others, 1995).

OVERPERSONALIZING SITUATIONS Compared with unshy people, shy, self-conscious people (whose numbers include many adolescents) see incidental events as somehow relevant to themselves (Fenigstein, 1984; Fenigstein & Vanable, 1992). Shy, anxious people overpersonalize situations, a tendency that breeds anxious concern and, in extreme cases, paranoia. They also overestimate the extent to which other people are watching and evaluat­ ing them. If their hair won't comb right or they have a facial blemish, they assume everyone else notices and judges them accordingly. Shy people may even be con­ scious of their self-consciousness. They wish they could stop worrying about blush­ ing, about what others are thinking, or about what to say next.

To reduce social anxiety, some people turn to alcohol. Alcohol lowers anxiety and reduces self-consciousness (Hull & Young, 1983). Thus, chronically self- conscious people are especially likely to drink following a failure. If recover­ ing from alcoholism, they are more likely than those low in self-consciousness to relapse when they again experience stress or failure.

Symptoms as diverse as anxiety and alcohol abuse can serve a self-handicapping function. Labeling oneself as anxious, shy, depressed, or under the influence of alco­ hol can provide an excuse for failure (Snyder & Smith, 1986). Behind a barricade of

When a person is eager to impress important people, social anxiety is natural.

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behavioral medicine An interdisciplinary field that integrates and applies behavioral and medical knowledge about health and disease.

health psychology The study of the psychological roots of health and illness. Offers psychology's contribution to behavioral medicine.

symptoms, the person's ego stands secure. "Why don't I date? Because I'm shy, so people don't easily get to know the real me." The symptom is an unconscious stra­ tegic ploy to explain away negative outcomes.

What if we were to remove the need for such a ploy by providing people with a handy alternative explanation for their anxiety and therefore for possible fail­ ure? Would a shy person no longer need to be shy? That is precisely what Susan Brodt and Philip Zimbardo (1981) found when they brought shy and not-shy col­ lege women to the laboratory and had them converse with a handsome male who posed as another participant. Before the conversation, the women were cooped up in a small chamber and blasted with loud noise. Some of the shy women (but not others) were told that the noise would leave them with a pounding heart, a com­ mon symptom of social anxiety. Thus, when these women later talked with the man, they could attribute their pounding hearts and any conversational difficul­ ties to the noise, not to their shyness or social inadequacy. Compared with the shy women who were not given this handy explanation for their pounding hearts, these women were no longer so shy. They talked fluently once the conversation got going and asked questions of the man. In fact, unlike the other shy women (whom the man could easily spot as shy), these women were to him indistinguishable from the not-shy women.

Health, Illness, and Death In the industrialized world, at least half of all deaths are linked with behavior—with consuming cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, and harmful foods; with reactions to stress; with lack of exercise and not following a doctor's advice. A new interdisciplinary field called behavioral medicine studies these behavioral contributions to illness. Psychology's contribution to this interdisciplinary science is its subfield, health psychology. Health psychologists study how people respond to illness symptoms and how emotions and explanations influence health.

REACTIONS TO ILLNESS How do people decide whether they are ill? How do they explain their symptoms? What influences their willingness to seek and follow treatment?

NOTICING SYMPTOMS Chances are you have recently experienced at least one of these physical complaints; headache, stomachache, nasal congestion, sore muscles, ringing in the ears, excess perspiration, cold hands, racing heart, dizzi­ ness, stiff joints, and diarrhea or constipation (Pennebaker, 1982). Are such symp­ toms meaningless? Or are you coming down with something that requires medical attention? Hardly a week goes by without our playing doctor by self-diagnosing some symptom.

Noticing and interpreting our body's signals is like noticing and interpreting how a car is running. Unless the signals are loud and clear, we often miss them. Most of us cannot tell whether a car needs an oil change merely by listening to its engine. Similarly, most of us are not astute judges of our heart rate, blood-sugar level, or blood pressure. People guess their blood pressure based on how they feel which often is unrelated to their actual blood pressure (Baumann & Leventhal, 1985). Furthermore, the early signs of many illnesses, including cancer and heart disease, are subtle and easy to miss.

EXPLAINING SYMPTOMS: AM I SICK? With more serious aches and pains, the questions become more specific—and more critical. Does the small cyst match our idea of a malignant lump? Is the stomachache bad enough to be appendicitis? Is the pain in the chest area merely—as many heart attack victims suppose—a muscle spasm? Indeed, reports the National Institutes of Health, most heart attack victims wait too long before seeking medical help. What factors influence how we explain symptoms?

Social Psychology in the Clinic

After we notice symptoms, we interpret them using familiar disease schemas (Bishop, 1991). In medical schools, this can have amusing results. As part of their training, medical students learn the symptoms associated with various diseases. Because they also experience various symptoms, they sometimes attribute their symptoms to recently learned disease schemas. ("Maybe this wheeze is the begin­ ning of pneumonia.") As you may have discovered, psychology students are prone to this effect as they read about psychological disorders.

DO I NEED TREATMENT? When people notice a symptom and interpret it as possibly serious, several factors influence their decision to seek medical care. Peo­ ple more often seek treatment if they believe their symptoms have a physical rather than a psychological cause (Bishop, 1987). They may delay seeking help, however, if they feel embarrassed, if they think the likely benefits of medical attention won't justify the cost and inconvenience, or if they want to avoid a possibly devastating diagnosis.

The U.S. National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) reports a gender differ­ ence in decisions to seek medical treatment: Compared with men, women report more symptoms, use more prescription and nonprescription drugs, and visit phy­ sicians twice as often for preventive care (NCHS, 2008). Women also visit psycho­ therapists 50 percent more often (Olfson & Pincus, 1994).

So, are women more often sick? Apparently not. In fact, men may be more dis­ ease prone. Among other problems, men have higher rates of hypertension, ulcers, and cancer, as well as shorter life expectancies. So why are women more likely to see a doctor? Perhaps women are more attentive to their internal states. Perhaps they are less reluctant to admit "weakness" and seek help (Bishop, 1984).

Patients are more willing to follow treatment instructions when they have warm relationships with their doctors, when they help plan their treatment, and when options are framed attractively. People are more likely to elect an operation when given "a 40 percent chance of surviving" than when given "a 60 percent chance of not surviving" (Rothman & Salovey, 1997; Wilson & others, 1987). Such "gain­ framed" messages also persuade more people to use sunscreen, eschew cigarettes, and get HIV tests (Detweiler & others, 1999; Salovey & others, 2002; Schneider & others, 2000). Better to tell people that "sunscreen maintains healthy, young- looking skin" than to tell them that "not using sunscreen decreases your chances of healthy, young-looking skin." Framing a desired exercise program as minutes per day, rather than hours per week, similarly increases people's willingness to commit to it (Peetz & others, 2011).

EMOTIONS AND ILLNESS Do our emotions predict our susceptibility to heart disease, stroke, cancer, and other ailments (Figure 14.5)? Consider the following.

Heart disease has been linked with a competitive, impatient, and—the aspect that matters most—anger-prone personality (Chida & Steptoe, 2009; Kupper & Denollet, 2007). Under stress, reactive, anger-prone "Type A" people secrete more of the stress hormones believed to accelerate the buildup of plaque in the heart's arteries.

Depression also increases the risk of various ailments. Mildly depressed people are more vulnerable to heart disease, even after controlling for differences in smok­ ing and other disease-related factors (Anda & others, 1993; Boehm & others, 2011). The year after a heart attack, depressed people have a doubled risk of further heart problems (Frasure-Smith & others, 1995,1999, 2005). The toxicity of negative emo­ tions contributes to the high rate of depression and anxiety among chronically ill people (Cohen & Rodriguez, 1995). The association between depression and heart disease may result from stress-related inflammation of the arteries (Matthews, 2005; Miller & Blackwell, 2006). Stress hormones enhance protein production that contributes to inflammation, which helps fight infections. But inflammation also can exacerbate asthma, clogged arteries, and depression.

538 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

FIGURE:: 14.5 Stress-caused negative emo­ tions may have various effects on health. This is especially so for depressed or anger-prone people.

Negative emotions

Immune 5 suppression

Autonomic nervous I system effects (ulcers, ! headaches, hypertension) •

George Vaillant (1997) witnessed the effect of distress when he followed a group of male Harvard alumni from midlife into old age. Of those whom at age 52 he classified as "squares" (having never abused alcohol, used tranquilizers, or seen a psychiatrist), only 5 percent had died by age 75. Of those classified as "distressed" (who had abused alcohol and either used tranquilizers or seen a psychiatrist) 38 percent had died.

OPTIMISM AND HEALTH Stones abound of people who take a sudden turn for the worse when something makes them lose hope, or who suddenly improve when hope is renewed. As cancer atHcks the liver of 9-year-old Jeff, his doctors fear the worst. But Jeff remains opti­ mistic. He is determined to grow up to be a cancer research scientist. One day Jeff is elated. A specialist who has taken a long-distance interest in his case is planning to stop off while on a cross-country trip. There is so much Jeff wants to tell the doctor and to show him from the diary he has kept since he got sick. On the anticipated day, fog blankets his city. The doctor's plane is diverted to another city, from which the doctor flies on to his final destination. Hearing the news, Jeff cries quietly. The next morning, pneumonia and fever have developed, and Jeff lies listless. By eve­ ning he is in a coma. The next afternoon he dies (Visintainer & Seligman, 1983).

Understanding the links between attitudes and disease requires more than dra­ matic true stories. If hopelessness coincides with cancer, we are left to wonder: Does cancer breed hopelessness, or does hopelessness also hinder resistance to cancer? To resolve this chicken-and-egg riddle, researchers have (1) experimentally created hopelessness by subjecting organisms to uncontrollable stresses and (2) correlated the hopeless explanatory style with future illnesses.

STRESS AND ILLNESS The clearest indication of the effects of hopelessness— what Chapter 2 labels learned helplessness—comes from experiments that subject animals to mild but uncontrollable electric shocks, loud noises, or crowding. Such experiences do not cause diseases such as cancer, but they do lower the body's resistance. Rats injected with live cancer cells more often develop and die of tumors if they also receive inescapable shocks than if they receive escapable shocks or no shocks. Moreover, compared with juvenile rats given controllable shocks, those given uncontrollable shocks are twice as likely in adulthood to develop tumors if given cancer cells and another round of shocks (Visintainer & Seligman, 1985). Ani­ mals that have learned helplessness react more passively, and blood tests reveal a weakened immune response.

Social Psychology in the Clinic Chapter 14 539

It's a big leap from rats to humans. But a growing body of evidence reveals that people who undergo highly stressful experiences become more vulnerable to dis­ ease (Segerstrom & Miller, 2004). Stress doesn't make us sick, but it does divert energy from our disease-fighting immune system, leaving us more vulnerable to infections and malignancy (Cohen, 2002,2004). The death of a spouse, the stress of a space flight landing, even the strain of an exam week have all been associated with depressed immune defenses (Jemmott & Locke, 1984).

Consider the following:

• Stress magnifies the severity of respiratory infections and of symptoms expe­ rienced by volunteers who are knowingly infected with a cold virus (Cohen & others, 2003,2006; Pedersen & others, 2010).

• Newlywed couples who became angry while discussing problems suffered more immune system suppression the next day (Kiecolt-Glaser & others, 1993). When people are stressed by marital conflict, laboratory puncture wounds take a day or two longer to heal (Kiecolt-Glaser & others, 2005). Studies in eleven countries following 6.5 million lives through time reveal that, among men and younger adults, divorce increases the ensuing risk of early death (Sbarra &: others, 2011).

• Work stress can literally be disheartening. In one study that followed 17,415 middle-aged American women, researchers found that significant work stress predicted an 88 percent increased risk of heart attacks (Slopen & others, 2010). In Denmark, a study of 12,116 female nurses found that those reporting "much too high" work pressures had a 40 percent increased risk of heart disease (Allesoe et al., 2010).

• Stress increases the production of inflammation-producing proteins. Those who experience social stress, including children reared in abusive families, are therefore more prone to inflammation responses (Dickerson & others, 2009; Miller & others, 2011). Inflammation fights infections, but persistent inflammation contributes to asthma, clogged arteries, and depression. Researchers have even discovered molecular, "epigenetic" mechanisms by which stress, in some people, activates genes that control inflammation (Cole & others, 2010).

EXPLANATORY STYLE AND ILLNESS If uncontrollable stress affects health, depresses immune functioning, and generates a passive, hopeless resignation, then will people who exhibit such pessimism be more vulnerable to illness? Several stud­ ies have confirmed that a pessimistic style of explaining bad events (saying, "It's going to last, it's going to undermine everything, and it's my fault") makes illness more likely (Carver & others, 2010). Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman (1987) studied the press quotations of 94 members of baseball's Hall of Fame and gauged how often they offered pessimistic (stable, global, internal) explanations for bad events, such as losing big games. Those who routinely did so tended to die at somewhat younger ages. Optimists—who offered stable, global, and internal expla­ nations for good events—usually outlived the pessimists.

Other studies have followed lives through time:

• Harvard graduates who expressed the most optimism in 1946 were the healthiest when restudied 34 years later (Peterson & others, 1988).

• One Dutch research team followed 941 older adults for nearly a decade (Giltay & others, 2004, 2007). Among those in the upper optimism quartile only 30 percent died, compared with 57 percent of those in the lower opti­ mism quartile.

• Catholic nuns who expressed the most positive feelings at an average age of 22 outlived their more dour counterparts by an average 7 years over the ensuing half-century and more (Danner & others, 2001).

540 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

Note, however, that healthy behaviors—exercise, good nutrition, not smoking, not drinking to excess—are essential contributors to the longevity of many opti­ mists (Peterson & Bossio, 2000; Whooley & others, 2008).

From their own studies, researchers Howard Tennen and Glenn Affleck (1987) agree that a positive, hopeful explanatory style is generally good medicine. The healing power of positive belief is evident in the well-known placebo effect, refer­ ring to the healing power of believing that one is getting an effective treatment. (If you think a treatment is going to be effective, it just may be—even if it's actually inert.) Tennen and Affleck also remind us that every silver lining has a cloud. Opti­ mists may see themselves as invulnerable and thus fail to take sensible precautions; for example, those who smoke cigarettes optimistically underestimate the risks involved (Segerstrom &: others, 1993). And when things go wrong in a big way— when the optimist encounters a devastating illness—adversity can be shattering. Optimism is good for health. But remember: Even optimists have a mortality rate of 100 percent.

SUMMING UP: What Cognitive Processes Accompany Behavior Problems?

♦ Social psychologists are actively exploring the attributions and expectations of depressed, lonely, socially anxious, and physically ill people. Depressed people have a negative explanatory style, interpreting negative events as being stable, global, and internally caused. Despite their more negative judgments, mildly depressed people in laboratory tests tend to be surprisingly realistic. Depression can be a vicious circle in which negative thoughts elicit self-defeating behaviors, and vice versa.

• Loneliness involves feelings of isolation or not fit­ ting in, and is common in individualistic societies. Like depression, it can be a vicious circle in which

feelings of aloofness lead to socially undesirable behaviors.

• Most people experience anxiety in situations where they are being evaluated, but shy individuals are extremely prone to anxiety even in friendly, casual situations. This can be another vicious circle in which anxious feelings elicit awkward, off-putting behavior.

• The mushrooming field of health psychology is exploring how people decide they are ill, how they explain their symptoms, and when they seek and follow treatment. It also is exploring the effects of negative emotions and the links among illness, stress, and a pessimistic explanatory style.

Social Psychology in the Clinic Chapter 14 541

WHAT ARE SOME SOCIAL- PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO TREATMENT?_____________________

Describe treatments that aim to undo the maladaptive thought patterns we have considered to be linked with problems ranging from serious depression to extreme shyness to physical illness.

There is no social-psychological therapy. But therapy is a social encounter, and social psychologists have suggested how their principles might be integrated mto existing treatment techniques (Forsyth &: Leary, 1997; Strong & others, 1992). Con­ sider three approaches: Use of external behavior for internal change, breaking vicious cycles, and attributing improvement to factors under one's own control.

Inducing Internal Change Through External Behavior In Chapter 4 we reviewed a broad range of evidence for a simple but powerful prin­ ciple: Our actions affect our attitudes. The roles we play, the things we say and do, and the decisions we make influence who we are.

Consistent with this attitudes-follow-behavior principle, several psychotherapy techniques prescribe action:

• Behavior therapists try to shape behavior on the theory that the client's inner disposition will also change after the behavior changes.

• In assertiveness training, the individual may first role-play assertiveness in a supportive context, then gradually implement assertive behaviors in every­ day life.

• Rational-emotive therapy assumes that we generate our own emotions; cli­ ents receive "homework" assignments to talk and act in new ways that will generate new emotions: Challenge that overbearing relative. Stop telling yourself you're an unattractive person and ask someone out.

• Self-help groups subtly induce participants to behave in new ways in front of the group—to express anger, cry, act with high self-esteem, express positive feelings.

All these techniques share a common assumption: If we cannot directly control our feelings by sheer willpower, we can influence them indirectly through our behavior.

Experiments confirm that what we say about ourselves can affect how we feel. In one experiment, students were induced to write self-laudatory essays (Mirels & McPeek, 1977). These students, more than others who wrote essays about a current social issue, later expressed higher self-esteem when rating themselves privately for a different experimenter. In several more experiments, Edward Jones and his associates (1981; Rhodewalt & Agustsdottir, 1986) influenced students to present themselves to an interviewer in either self-enhancing or self-deprecating ways. Again, the public displays—whether upbeat or downbeat-carried over to later self-esteem. Saying is believing, even when we talk about ourselves.

In this experiment and many others, people internalized their behavior most when they perceive some choice. For example, Pamela Mendonca and Sharon Brehm (1983) invited one group of overweight children who were about to begin a weight-loss pro­ gram to choose the treatment they preferred. Then they reminded them periodically that they had chosen their treatment. Other children who simultaneously experienced the

542 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

same program were given no choice. Those who felt responsible for their tr» * ment haci lost more weight both at the end of the 8-week prograr^ and 3 rnonte later

Breaking Vicious Circles drcte oT n°"'“xiety maintain themselves through a vicious sho dd h ® m '^xpenences, negative thinking, and self-defeating behavior i should be possible to break the circle at any of several points-by changing the envrronnrent, by training the person to behave more constructively, L byZefJn, sio?s vL“!le depres®

Social skills training: When shy, anxious people first observe, then rehearse, then try out more assertive behav­ iors in real situations, their social skills often improve.

SOCIAL SKILLS TRAINING

moun^r H' f y"®®® problems in someone's mind. To be around a depressed person for any length of time can be irritating and depressing As lonely and shy people suspect, they may indeed come across poorly hi socifl situations. How iromc that the more self-preoccupied people seek to make a goid

tead focus on supporting others more often enjoy others' regard in return In these cases, social skills training may help. By observing and thfn practicing new eSrt ? “ P“®™ may develop the confidence to behave^more ing more^sMlClv Pf 1° '^"joy the rewards of behav- »r,dTi! self-perception develops. Frances Haemmerlie and Robert Montgomery (1982, 1984, 1986) demonstrated this in several heart­ warming studies with shy, anxious college students. Those who are inexperienced and nervous around those of the other sex may say to themselves, "I don't date much, so 1 must be socially inadequate, so I shouldn't try reaching out to anyone " To reverse this negative sequence, Haemmerlie and MontgomeryLticed such stu­ dents into pleasant interactions with people of the other sex came to thXhrr*' ® social anxiety questionnaires and then vemattons wttbT b 12-minute con- parttoirantr lrtoal^ *e women were also participants. Actually, the women were confederates who had been asked to carry on a natural, positive, friendly conversation with each of the men. ^

effect of these two-and-a-half hours of conversation was remarkable As one participant wrote afterward, "I had never met so many girls thaTl could have a fd?l'^rT"'‘b°" ""y “ifidence grew to the point where I didn notice being nervous like I once did." Such comments were supported by

variety of measures. Unlike men in a control condition, those who experienced

Social Psychology in the Clinic Chapter 14 543

the conversations reported considerably less female-related anxiety when retested one week and six months later. Placed alone in a room with an attractive female stranger, they also became much more likely to start a conversation. Outside the laboratory they actually began occasional dating.

Haemmerlie and Montgomery note that not only did all this occur without any counseling, it may very well have occurred because there was no counseling. Hav­ ing behaved successfully on their own, the men could now perceive themselves as socially competent. Although seven months later the researchers did debrief the participants, by that time the men had presumably enjoyed enough social success to maintain their internal attributions for success. "Nothing succeeds like success," concluded Haemmerlie (1987)—"as long as there are no external factors present that the client can use as an excuse for that success!"

EXPLANATORY STYLE THERAPY The vicious circles that maintain depression, loneliness, and shyness can be broken by social skills training, by positive experiences that alter self-perceptions, and by changing negative thought patterns. Some people have good social skills, but their experiences with hypercritical friends and family have convinced them otherwise. For such people it may be enough to help them reverse their negative beliefs about themselves and their futures. Among the cognitive therapies with this aim is an explanatory style therapy proposed by social psychologists (Abramson, 1988; Gillham & others, 2000; Masi & others, 2011).

One such program taught depressed college students to change their typical attributions. Mary Anne Layden (1982) first explained the advantages of making attributions more like those of the typical nondepressed person (by accepting credit for successes and seeing how circumstances can make things go wrong). After assigning a variety of tasks, she helped the students see how they typically inter­ preted success and failure. Then came the treatment phase: Layden instructed them to keep a diary of daily successes and failures, noting how they contributed to their own successes and noting external reasons for their failures. When retested after a month of this attributional retraining and compared with an untreated control group, their self-esteem had risen and their attributional style had become more positive. The more their explanatory style improved, the more their depression lifted. By changing their attributions, they had changed their emotions.

Maintaining Change Through Internal Attributions for Success Two of the principles considered so far—that internal change may follow behav­ ior change and that changed self-perceptions and self-attributions can help break a vicious circle—converge on a corollary principle: After improvement is achieved, it endures best if people attribute it to factors under their own control rather than to a treatment program.

As a rule, coercive techniques trigger the most dramatic and immediate behav­ ior changes (Brehm & Smith, 1986). By making the unwanted behavior extremely costly or embarrassing and the healthier behavior extremely rewarding, a therapist may achieve impressive results. The problem, as 50 years of social-psychological research reminds us, is that coerced changes in behavior soon wane.

Consider the experience of Marta, who is concerned with her mild obesity and frus­ trated with her inability to do anything about it. Marta is considering several com­ mercial weight-control programs. Each claims it achieves the best results. She chooses one and is ordered onto a strict l,200<alorie-a-day diet. Moreover, she is required to record and report her calorie intake each day and to come in once a week and be weighed so she and her instructor can know precisely how she is doing. Confident of the program's value and not wanting to embarrass herself, Marta adheres to the program and is delighted to find the unwanted pounds gradually disappearing. "This unique program really does work!" Marta tells herself as she reaches her target weight.

544 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

Sadly, however, after graduating from the program, Marta experiences the fate of ™st weight-control graduates (Jeffery & others, 2000): She regains the lost weight On the street, she sees her mstructor approaching. Embarrassed, she moves to fte other side of the sidewalk and looks away. Alas, she is recognized by Struc tor, who warmly invites her back into "the program." Admitting thaUhe program to r^mru f her need of it and agree" to return, beginning a second round of yo-yo dieting. ®

Marta's experience typifies that of the participants in several weight-control experiments, including one by Janet Sonne and Dean Janoff (1979). Half the par ticipants wre led, like Marta, to attribute their changed eating behavior to V p ograim The others were led to credit their own efforts. Both groups lost weight during the program. But when reweighed 11 weeks later, those^in the self-control condition had maintamed the weight loss better. These people, like those in the shv' man-meets-women study described earlier, illustrate the benefits of self-efficacy Having learned to cope successfully and believing that they did it, they felt more confident and were more effective. / leii more

Having emphasized what changed behavior and thought patterns can accom- phsh, we do well to remmd ourselves of their limits. Social skills training and positive tanking cannot transform us into consistent winners who are loved and admired by everyone. Furthermore, temporary depression, loneliness, and sh^ess are perfectly appropriate responses to profoundly bad events. It is when suchTeel- ceS r d without any discernible cause that there is reason for con­ cern and a need to change the self-defeating thoughts and behaviors.

Using Therapy as Social Influence Psychologists more and more accept the idea that social influence-one person affecting another-is at the heart of therapy. Stanley Strong (1991) offers aproto-

sion. The therapist gently probes her feelings and her situation. She eXlains her helplessness and her husband's demands. Although admiring her devotion the

erapist helps her see how she takes responsibility for her husband's problems Xv not b?a f r t™e, she realizes that her husband hZ r g I ^^She as she presumed. She begins to see how she can respect new we'ek At th "d" P‘“s strategies 10^^ and cTen^' th "" " T® reciprocal influences between therapist behaXg ™ depressed and equipped with new ways of

Early analyses of psychotherapeutic influence focused on how therapists estab- is credible expertise and trustworthiness and how their credibility enhances their

influence (Strong 1968). Later analyses focused less on the therapist than on how

StoltenWg ‘hiking (Cacioppo & others, 1991; McNeill & creS^®' ' Nemeyer & others, 1991). Peripheral cues, such as therapist to iX, "’“VP™ f°r ideas that the therapist can now get the cltont nXrtoXata d ^P^-^es the rnost

dklra^int change. Therapists should therefore aim not to client s own tLXj ™P“‘Judgment but to change the

routXlXXk *™“Py motivated to take the central route-to tank deeply about their problems under the therapist's guidance The IX thouX ThX ” questions calculated fo elicit favor- XthfchenXTbl tb *™g‘’ts they evoke ^ndersiX P"* “"g" ’’’ ^ ^an hear and andlhat whi IT"!" X “S"'™"’™* mf^er than counterargument, and that will allow time and space for the client to reflect. Questions such as "How do you respond to what I just said?" can stimulate the client's thinking

Social Psychology in the Clinic Chapter 14 545

Martin Heesacker (1989) illustrated how a therapist can help a client reflect with the case of Dave, a 35-year-old male graduate student. Having seen what Dave denied—an underlying substance abuse problem—the counselor drew on his knowl­ edge of Dave, an intellectual person who liked hard evidence, in persuading him to accept the diagnosis and join a treatment-support group. The counselor said, "OK, if my diagnosis is wrong, I'll be glad to change it. But let's go through a list of the char­ acteristics of a substance abuser to check out my accuracy." The counselor then went through each criterion slowly, giving Dave time to think about each point. As he finished, Dave sat back and exclaimed, "I don't believe it; Tm a damned alcoholic."

In his 1620 Pensees, the philosopher Pascal foresaw this principle: "People are usually more convinced by reasons they discover themselves than by those found by others." It's a principle worth remembering.

SUMMING UP: What Are Some Social-Psychological Approaches to Treatment?

• Changes in external behavior can trigger internal change.

• A self-defeating cycle of negative attitudes and behav­ iors can be broken by training more skillful behavior, by positive experiences that alter self-perceptions, and by changing negative thought patterns.

• Improved states are best maintained after treatment if people attribute their improvement to internal

factors under their continued control rather than to the treatment program itself.

• Mental health workers also are recognizing that changing clients' attitudes and behaviors requires persuasion. Therapists, aided by their image as expert, trustworthy communicators, aim to stimu­ late healthier thinking by offering cogent argu­ ments and raising questions.

HOW DO SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS SUPPORT HEALTH AND WELL-BEING?

Identify evidence suggesting that supportive, close relationships—feeling liked, affirmed, and encouraged by intimate friends and family—predict both health and happiness.

Our relationships are fraught with stress. "Hell is others," wrote Jean-Paul Sartre. When Peter Warr and Roy Payne (1982) asked a representative sample of British adults what, if anything, had emotionally strained them the day before, "family" was their most frequent answer. And stress, as we have seen, aggravates health problems such as coronary heart disease, hypertension, and suppression of our disease-fighting immune system.

Still, on balance, close relationships contribute less to illness than to health and happiness. Asked what prompted yesterday's times of pleasure, the same British sample, by an even larger margin, again answered "family." Close relationships provide our greatest heartaches, but also our greatest joys.

Close Relationships and Health Eight extensive investigations, each interviewing thousands of people across several years, have reached a common conclusion: Close relationships predict health (Berkman, 1995; Ryff & Singer, 2000). Health risks are greater among

546 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

lonely people, who often experience more stress, sleep less well, and commit sui cide more often (Cacioppo & Patrick, 2008). Compared with those who have few social ties, those who have close relationships with friends, kin, or other members of close-knit religious or community organizations are less likely to die prema­ turely. Outgoing, affectionate, relationship-oriented people not only have more friends, but also are less susceptible to cold viruses (Figure 14.6; Cohen & others,

Married people also tend to live healthier, longer lives than their unmarried counterparts. The National Center for Health Statistics (2004) reports that people regardless of age, sex, race, and income, tend to be healthier if married. Married folks experience less pain from headaches and backaches, suffer less stress, and drink and smoke less. One experiment subjected married women to the threat of electric ankle shocks as they lay in an fMRI brain scanning machine (Coan & others 2006). Meanwhile, some of the women held their husband's hand, some held an anonymous person's hand, and some held no hand at all. While awaiting the shocks the threat-responsive areas of the women's brains were less active if they held their husband's hand. Consistent with findings that it's happy and supportive marriages that are conducive to health (De Vogli & others, 2007), the soothing hand-holding benefit was greatest for those reporting the happiest marriages.

Giving social support also matters. In one five-year study of 423 elderly married couples, those who gave the most social support (from rides and errands for friends and neighbors to emotional support of their spouse) enjoyed greater longevity, even after controlling for age, sex, initial health, and economic status (Brown & others, 2003). Especially among women, suggests a Finnish study that tracked more than 700 people's illnesses, it is better to give than only to receive (Vaananen & others, 2005).

Moreover, losing social ties heightens the risk of disease:

• A Finnish study of 96,000 newly widowed people found their risk of death doubled in the week following their partner's death (Kaprio & others, 1987).

• A National Academy of Sciences study revealed that recently widowed people become more vulnerable to disease and death (Dohrenwend & others, 1982).

• A study of 30,000 men revealed that when a marriage ends, men drink and smoke more and eat fewer vegetables and more fried foods (Eng & others, 2001). °

FIGURE:: 14.6 Rate of Colds by Sociability After a cold virus injection, highly sociable people were less vulner­ able to catching colds. Source: From Cohen & others, 2003.

Social Psychology in the Clinic Chapter 14 547

CONFIDING AND HEALTH

So there is a link between social support and health. Why? Perhaps those who enjoy close relationships eat better, exercise more, and smoke and drink less. Perhaps friends and family help bolster our self-esteem. Perhaps a supportive network helps us evaluate and overcome stressful events (Taylor & others, 1997). In more than 80 studies, social support has been linked with better-functioning cardiovas­ cular and immune systems (Uchino & others, 1996). Thus, when we are wounded by someone's dislike or the loss of a job, a friend's advice, help, and reassurance may indeed be good medicine (Cutrona, 1986; Rook, 1987). Even when the problem isn't mentioned, friends provide us with distraction and a sense that, come what may, we're accepted, liked, and respected.

With someone we consider a close friend, we also may confide painful feelings. In one study, James Pennebaker and Robin O'Heeron (1984) contacted the surviv­ ing spouses of suicide or car accident victims. Those who bore their grief alone had more health problems than those who expressed it openly. When Pennebaker (1990) surveyed more than 700 college women, he found 1 in 12 reported a trau­ matic sexual experience in childhood. Compared with women who had experi­ enced nonsexual traumas, such as parental death or divorce, the sexually abused women reported more headaches, stomach ailments, and other health problems, especially if they had kept their history of abuse secret.

To isolate the confiding, confessional side of close relationships, Pennebaker asked the bereaved spouses to relate the upsetting events that had been preying on their minds. Those they first asked to describe a trivial event were physically tense. They stayed tense until they confided their troubles. Then they relaxed. Writing about personal traumas in a diary also seems to help. When volunteers in another experiment did so, they had fewer health problems during the next six months. One participant explained, "Although I have not talked with anyone about what I wrote, I was finally able to deal with it, work through the pain instead of trying to block it out. Now it doesn't hurt to think about it." Even if it's only "talking to my diary," and even if the writing is about one's future dreams and life goals, it helps to be able to confide (Burton & King, 2008; King, 2001; Lyubomirsky & others, 2006).

Other experiments confirm the benefits of engaging with others rather than sup­ pressing stressful experiences. In one, Stephen Lepore and his colleagues (2000) had students view a stressful slide show and video on the Holocaust and either talk about it immediately afterward or not. Two days later, those who talked were experiencing less stress and fewer intrusive thoughts.

"FRIENDSHIP IS A SOVER­

EIGN ANTIDOTE AGAINST

ALL CALAMITIES,"

-SENECA, 5 B.C.-A.D.65

POVERTY, INEQUALITY, AND HEALTH

We have seen connections between health and the feelings of control that accom­ pany a positive explanatory style. And we have seen connections between health and social support. Feelings of control and support together with health care and nutritional factors help explain why economic status correlates with longevity. Recall from Chapter 1 the study of old grave markers in Glasgow, Scotland: The costliest, highest pillars (indicating affluence) marked the grave sites of individu­ als who tended to have lived the longest (Carroll & others, 1994). Still today, in Scotland, the United States, Canada, and elsewhere, poorer people are at greater risk for premature death (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2009). Poverty predicts perishing. Wealthy predicts healthy.

The correlation between poverty and ill health could run either way. Bad health isn't good for one's income. But most evidence indicates that the arrow runs from poverty toward ill health (Sapolsky, 2005). So how does poverty "get under the skin"? The answers include (a) reduced access to quality health care, (b) unhealthier lifestyles (smoking is much more common among less-educated and lower-income people), and, to a striking extent, (c) increased stress. To be poor is to be at risk for increased stress, negative emotions, and a toxic environment

548 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

Wealthy and healthy. A 2008 Scotsmen article illustrated the striking disparity in life expectancv in lewer-inoonre Cal,on. on the east end o, Glasgow, and in affluent Lenzie, eight mis awTy '

(Adler & Snibbe, 2003; Chen, 2004; Gallo & Matthews, 2003). To be poor is to more cove"r^L brOk r paychecks that don't cover the bills, commuting on crowded public transit, living in a high-pollution area, and ciomg hard labor that's controlled by someone else. Even rfmong other primates, those with the least control-at the bottom of the social pectog orflr- are most vulnerable when exposed to a coldlike virus (Cohen & others 1^997)

Poverty also helps explain a curious but oft-reported correlation between intel- igence and health Edinburgh University researcher Ian Deary (2005) and his

colleagues observed this correlation after stumbling across data^ from an intelli­ gence test administered on June 1, 1932, to virtually all Scots born in 1921 When they searched Scotland s death records, they found, as have researchers in other countries sinc^that "whether you live to collect your old-age pension depends in low inUr” ° ® predictor down." Partly, the blond factor—which is roughly equivalent to that of obesity or^high blood pressure, he reports-is due to the low-IQ persons having been less likely o cease smokmg after its risks became known, and therefore more likely to die of

lung cancer Poverty-related stresses and lack of control also contribute, he notes oth„ 1QQQ ? inequality (Kawachi &

laTanand Swef expectancies than people in Eurone and r ‘"equality has grown over the last decade, as in Erstem

Is fnem.al h ' 1 “t the falling end of the teeter-totter. Is mequa ty merely an indicator of poverty? The mixed evidence indicates that

0998 Jool^rren' t tb I t°°- John Lynch and his colleagL 998,2000) report that people at every income level are at greater risk of early death hey live m a commumty with great income inequality. It's not just being poor it's

sip°o{rkv f2005[s T h T’"'" that proves toxic. And that Robert Sapolsky (2005) suggests, helps explain why the United States, which has the great-

m the world on health care expenditures and number 29 on life expectancy.

Social Psychology in the Clinic Chapter 14 549

FIGURE:: 14.7 Social and physical health problems are greater in countries with high income inequality. This health problems index is a composite of lower life expectancy, infant mortality, obesity, teen births, mental illness, imprisonment, and lower levels of literacy, social trust, and social mobility. Source,-Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger (Penguin, 2009).

Close Relationships and Happiness Confiding painful feelings is good not only for the body but for the soul. That's the conclusion of studies showing that people are happier when supported by a net­ work of friends and family.

Some studies, summarized in Chapter 2, compare people in a competitive, indi­ vidualistic culture, such as the United States, Canada, and Australia, with those in collectivist cultures, such as Japan and many developing countries. Individu­ alistic cultures offer independence, privacy, and pride in personal achievements. Collectivist cultures, with their tighter social bonds, offer protection from loneli­ ness, alienation, divorce, and stress-related diseases.

"WOE TO HIM WHO IS

ALONE WHEN HE FALLS

AND HAS NOT ANOTHER

TO LIFT HIM UP."

-ECCLESIASTES 4;10B

FRIENDSHIPS AND HAPPINESS

Other studies compare individuals with few or many close relationships. Being attached to friends with whom we can share intimate thoughts has two effects, observed the seventeenth-century philosopher Francis Bacon. "It redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in half." So it seems from answers to a question asked of Americans by the National Opinion Research Center: "Looking back over the

550 Part Four

"THE SUN LOOKS DOWN

ON NOTHING HALF SO

GOOD AS A HOUSEHOLD

LAUGHING TOGETHER

OVER A MEAL"

-C. S. LEWIS,

"MEMBERSHIP," 1949

Applying Social Psychology

last six months, who are the people with whom you discussed matters important to you?" Compared with those who could name five or six such intimates, those who could name no such person were twice as likely to report being "not very happy."

Other findings confirm the importance of social networks. In many experiments, others' acceptance has been gratifying, and their rejection painful—so much so that a pain reliever can help relieve the hurt (DeWall Bushman, 2011). Across the life span, friendships foster self-esteem and well-being (Hartup & Stevens, 1997). For example:

• The happiest university students are those who feel satisfied with their love life (Emmons & others, 1983).

• Those who enjoy close relationships cope better with a variety of stresses, including bereavement, rape, job loss, and illness (Abbey & Andrews, 1985; Perlman & Rook, 1987).

• Among 800 alumni of Hobart and William Smith colleges surveyed by Wesley Perkins, those who preferred having very close friends and a close marriage to having a high income and occupational success and prestige were twice as likely as their former classmates to describe themselves as "fairly" or "very" happy (Perkins, 1991). When asked "What is necessary for your happiness?" or "What is it that makes your life meaningful?" most people mention— before anything else—satisfying close relationships with family, friends, or romantic partners (Berscheid, 1985; Berscheid & Peplau, 1983). Happiness hits close to home.

MARITAL ATTACHMENT AND HAPPINESS For more than 9 in 10 people worldwide, one eventual example of a close rela­ tionship has been marriage. Does marriage correlate positively with happiness? Or is there more happiness in the pleasure-seeking single life than in the "bondage," "chains," and "yoke" of marriage?

A mountain of data reveals that most people are happier attached than unat­ tached. Survey after survey of many tens of thousands of Europeans and Americans has produced a consistent result: Compared with those single or widowed, and especially compared with those divorced or separated, married people report being happier and more satisfied with life (Gove & others, 1990; Inglehart, 1990). In National Opinion Research Center surveys of nearly 50,000 Americans since 1972, for example, 23 percent of never-married adults, but 40 percent of married adults, have reported being "very happy." This marriage-happiness link occurs across eth­ nic groups (Parker & others, 1995). Lesbian couples, too, report greater well-being than those who are alone (Peplau & Fingerhut, 2007). This is but one illustration of what social psychologist Bella DePaulo (2006) documents: There are multiple ways to satisfy the human need to belong. Nevertheless, there are few stronger predictors of happiness than a close, nurturing, equitable, intimate, lifelong companionship with one's best friend.

More important than being married, however, is the marriage's quality. People who say their marriages are satisfying—who find themselves still in love with their partners—rarely report being unhappy, discontented with life, or depressed. Fortu­ nately, most married people do declare their marriages happy ones. In the National Opinion Research Center surveys, almost two-thirds say their marriages are "very happy." Three out of four say their spouses are their best friends. Four out of five people say they would marry the same people again. As a consequence, most such people feel quite happy with life as a whole.

Why are married people generally happier? Does marriage promote happiness, or is it the other way around—does happiness promote marriage? Are happy peo­ ple more appealing as marriage partners? Do depressed people more often stay single or suffer divorce (Figure 14.8)? Certainly, happy people are more fun to

Social Psychology in the Clinic Chapter 14 551

Married Never Divoreed Cohabiting Divorced

(never divorced) married once

FIGURE :: 14.8 Marita! Status and Depression A National Institute of Mental Health survey of psychological disorders found depression rates two to four times greater for adults not married. Source: Data from Robins & Regier, 1991. p. 72.

be with They are also more outgoing, trusting, compassionate, nthprs fMvers 1993) Unhappy people, as we have noted, are more often socia y rejected Depression often triggers marital stress which p” (Davila & others, 1997). So, positive, happy people do more readily form happy

“^prevailing opinion of researchers,” reports University gist Arne M^tekaasa (1995), is that the due" to the beneficial effects of marriage. Put on your thmking cap. If the ^app e neople marry sLner and more often, then as people age Pjogressively less- Lppv peopfe move into marriage), the average happiness of both married a never marrM people should decline. (The older, less-happy newlyweds wou d pull down the average happiness of married people would be more and more left with the unhappy people.) But the data do not port that prediction. This suggests that New pay emotional dividends. A Rutgers University team ° fo, Tersev adults over 15 years concurs (Horwitz & others, 1997 The tendency tor married people to be less depressed occurs even after controlling for prema

*'"^rrTave enhances happiness for at least two reasons. First, married people are more likefy to enjoy anLduring, supportive intimate ’'f ̂ “onstyp and are^les^ UVpIv to suffer loneliness. No wonder male medical students in a study y Srt Coomb"ved medical school with less stress and anxiety if they were

married (Coombs, 1991). A good marriage gives each partner a depen a

Th«e''iiTseconrmtre prosaic, reason why marriage promotes

WhenlirTstruck onetLirf WtaLotcaLle, most of the castle still remained for

“.1. lo m|oy. Wh» ...

what matter most.

552 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

SUMiyilNG UP: How Do Social Relationships Support Health and Well-Being?

• Health and happiness are influenced not only by social cognition but also by social relations. People who enjoy close, supportive relationships are at less risk for illness and premature death. Such relation­ ships help people cope with stress, especially by enabling people to confide their intimate emotions. Close relationships also foster happiness. People who have intimate, long-term attachments with

friends and family members cope better with loss and report greater happiness. Compared with unmarried adults, those who are married, for example, are much more likely to report being very happy and are at less risk for depression. This appears due both to the greater social success of happy people and to the well-being engendered by a supportive life companion. ^

POSTSCRIPT: Enhancing Happiness Several years ago I wrote a book. The Pursuit of Happiness, that reported key find- ftfhoTZ'^r happiness. When the editors wanted to subtitle the book mat Makes People Happy? I cautioned them: That's not a question this and therefo “'."wer. What we have learned is simply what correktes with- S “ was mo is

Nevertheless, in 400 subsequent media interviews concerning happiness the most frequent question has been "What can people do to be happyr Without JoS ponder^ ' assembled 10 research-based

1. Realize that enduring happiness doesn’t come from "making it." People adapt to heahwf to wealth or a disability. Thus, wealth is like health. Its utter absence breeds misery, but having it (or any circumstance we long for) doesn t guarantee happiness.

2. Take control of your time. Happy people feel in control of their lives, often aided by mastering their use of time. It helps to set goals and break them into daily aims. Although we often overestimate how much we will accomplish in any given day (leaving us frustrated), we generally underestimate how much we can accomplish in a year, given just a little progress every day

3. Act happy. We can sometimes act ourselves into a frame of mind. Manipu­ lated into a smiling expression, people feel better; when they scowl, the whole world seems to scowl back. So put on a happy face. Talk as if you feel positive self-esteem, are optimistic, and are outgoing. Going through the motions can trigger the emotions.

4. Seek work and^ leisure that engage your skills. Happy people often are in a zone called flow -absorbed in a task that challenges them without overwhelm- mg them. The most expensive forms of leisure (sitting on a yacht) often pro­ vide less flow experience than gardening, socializing, or craft work.

5. Join the 'movement" movement. An avalanche of research reveals that aerobic exercise not only promotes health and energy but also is an antidote for mild depression and anxiety. Sound minds reside in sound bodies

6. Give your body the sleep it wants. Happy people live active, vigorous lives yet reserve time for renewing sleep and solitude. Many people suffer from a s eep debt, with resulting fatigue, diminished alertness, and gloomy moods.

Social Psychology in the Clinic Chapter 14 553

7. Give priority to close relationships. Intimate friendships with those who care deeply about you can help you weather difficult times. Confiding is good for soul and body. Resolve to nurture your closest relationships: to not take those closest to you for granted, to display to them the sort of kindness that you display to others, to affirm them, to share, and to play together. To reju­ venate your affections, resolve in such ways to act lovingly.

8. Focus beyond the self. Reach out to those in need. Happiness increases helpful­ ness. (Those who feel good do good.) But doing good also makes one feel good.

9. Keep a gratitude journal. Those who pause each day to reflect on some positive aspect of their lives (their health, friends, family, freedom, education, senses, natural surroundings, and so on) experience heightened well-being.

10. Nurture your spiritual self. For many people, faith provides a support commu­ nity, a reason to focus beyond self, and a sense of purpose and hope. Study after study finds that actively religious people are happier and that they cope better with crises.

CHAPTER

15 Social "A courtroom is a battleground where lawyers compete for the minds of jurors." I James Randi,1?9?,

How reliable is eyewitness testimony?

What other factors influence juror judgments?

What influences the individual juror?

How do group influences affect juries?

Postscript: Thinking smart with psychological science

It was the most publicized criminal case in history: Football hero, actor, and broadcaster O. J. Simpson was accused of brutally mur­ dering his estranged wife and her male acquaintance. The evidence

was compelling, the prosecution argued. Simpson's behavior fit a

long-standing pattern of spouse abuse and threats of violence. Blood

tests confirmed that his blood was at the crime scene and his victim's

blood was on his glove, on his car, even on a sock in his bedroom. His

travels the night of the murder and the way he fled when arrest was

imminent were, prosecutors said, additional indicators of his guilt.

Simpson's defense attorneys responded that racial prejudice may

have motivated the officer who allegedly found the bloody glove at

Simpson's estate. Moreover, they said, Simpson could not receive a

fair trial. Would the jurors—10 of whom were women—be kindly dis­

posed to a man alleged to have abused and murdered a woman?

And how likely was it that jurors could heed the judge's instructions to

ignore prejudicial pretrial publicity? The case raised other questions that have been examined in social

psychological experiments;

• There were no eyewitnesses to this crime. How influential is eye­

witness testimony? How trustworthy are eyewitness recollections?

What makes a credible witness?

556 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

• Simpson was handsome, rich, famous, and widely admired. Can jurors ignore,

as they should, a defendant's attractiveness and social status?

• How well do jurors comprehend important information, such as statistical prob­

abilities involved in DNA blood tests?

• The jury in the criminal case was composed mostly of women and Blacks, but

it also included two men, one Hispanic, and two non-Hispanic Whites. In the

follow-up civil trial, in which Simpson was sued for damages, the jury had nine

Whites. Do jurors' characteristics bias their verdicts? If so, can lawyers use the

jury selection process to stack a jury in their favor?

• In cases such as this, a 12-member jury deliberates before delivering a verdict.

During deliberations, how do jurors influence one another? Can a minority win

over the majority? Do 12-member juries reach the same decisions as 6-member

juries?

Such questions fascinate lawyers, judges, and defendants. And they are questions

to which social psychology can suggest answers, as law schools recognize by hir­

ing professors of "law and social science" and as trial lawyers recognize when hiring

psychological consultants.

We can think of a courtroom as a miniature social world, one that magnifies every­

day social processes with major consequences for those involved. In criminal cases,

psychological factors may influence decisions involving arrest, interrogation, prosecu­

tion, plea bargaining, sentencing, and parole. Whether a case reaches a jury verdict

or not, the social dynamics of the courtroom matter. Let's therefore consider two sets

of factors; (1) eyewitness testimony and its influence on jurors, and (2) characteristics

of jurors as individuals and as a group.

HOW RELIABLE IS EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY?

Explain the accuracy of eyewitness testimony, its associa­ tion (or not) with eyewitness confidence, its contamination by misinformation effects, and ways to increase eyewitness accuracy and educate jurors.

As the courtroom drama unfolds, jurors hear testimony, form impressions of the defendant, listen to instructions from the judge, and render a verdict. Let's take these steps one at a time, starting with eyewitness testimony.

Although never in trouble with the law, Kirk Bloodsworth was convicted for the sexual assault and slaying of a 9-year-old girl after five eyewitnesses identified him at his trial. During his 2 years on death row and 7 more under a sentence of life imprisonment, he maintained his innocence. Then DNA testing proved it was

Social Psychology in Court Chapter 15 557

not his semen on the girl's underwear. Released from prison, he still lived under a cloud of doubt until in 2003,19 years after his death sentence, DNA testing identi­ fied the actual killer (Wells & others, 2006).

The Power of Persuasive Eyewitnesses In Chapter 3, we noted that vivid anecdotes and personal testimonies can be pow­ erfully persuasive, often more so than compelling but abstract information. There s no better way to end an argument than to say, "I saw it with my own eyes!"

Memory researcher Elizabeth Loftus (1974,1979,2011) found that those who had "seen" were indeed believed, even when their testimony was shown to be useless. When students were presented with a hypothetical robbery-murder case with cir­ cumstantial evidence but no eyewitness testimony, only 18 percent voted for con­ viction. Other students received the same information but with the addition of a single eyewitness. Now, knowing that someone had declared, "That's the one!" 72 percent voted for conviction. For a third group, the defense attorney discredited that testimony (the witness had 20/400 vision and was not wearing glasses). Did that discrediting reduce the effect of the testimony? In this case, not much; 68 per­ cent still voted for conviction.

Later experiments revealed that discrediting may reduce somewhat the num­ ber of guilty votes (Whitley, 1987). But unless contradicted by another eyewitness, a vivid eyewitness account is difficult to erase from jurors' minds (Leippe, 1985). That helps explain why, compared with criminal cases lacking eyewitness testi­ mony (such as the O. J. case), those that have eyewitness testimony (such as the Bloodsworth case) are more likely to produce convictions (Visher, 1987).

Can't jurors spot erroneous testimony? To find out, Gary Wells, R. C. L. Lindsay, and their colleagues staged hundreds of eyewitnessed thefts of a calculator at the University of Alberta. Afterward, they asked each eyewitness to identify the cul­ prit from a photo lineup. Other people, acting as jurors, observed the eyewitnesses being questioned and then evaluated their testimony. Are incorrect eyewitnesses believed less often than those who are accurate? As it happened, both correct and incorrect eyewitnesses were believed 80 percent of the time (Wells & others, 1979). That led the researchers to speculate that "human observers have absolutely no ability to discern eyewitnesses who have mistakenly identified an innocent person" (Wells & others, 1980).

In a follow-up experiment, Lindsay, Wells, and Carolyn Rumpel (1981) staged the theft under conditions that sometimes allowed witnesses a good long look at the thief and sometimes didn't. The jurors believed the wit­ nesses more when conditions were good. But even when conditions were so poor that two-thirds of the witnesses had actually misidentified an innocent person, 62 percent of the jurors still usually believed the witnesses.

Wells and Michael Leippe (1981) found that jurors are more skeptical of eyewit­ nesses whose memory of triv­ ial details is poor—though these tend to be the most accu­ rate witnesses. Jurors think a witness who can remember that there were three pictures

"As it turned out, my battery of lawyers was no match for their lottery of eyewitnesses."

® Joseph Mirachi/The New Yorker Collectior/www.cartoonbank.com

558 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

The innocent James Newsome (left) mistakenly identified by eyewitnesses, and the actual culprit (right}.

hanging in the room must have "really been paying attention" (Bell & Loftus, 1988, 1989). Actually, those who pay attention to surrounding details are less likely to attend to the culprit's face.

The persuasive power of three eyewitnesses sent Chicagoan James Newsome, who had never been arrested before, to prison on a life sentence for suppos­ edly gunning down a convenience store owner. Fifteen years later he was released, after fingerprint technol­ ogy revealed the real culprit to be Dennis Emerson, a career criminal who was 3 inches taller and had longer hair {Chicago Tribune, 2002).

Lie detection brain scans have, as yet, marginal mlidity. But such high- tech-seeming evidence can nevertheless seem credible to jurors (Gazzaniga, 2011; McCabe & others, 2011).

"CERTITUDE IS NOT THE

TEST OF CERTAINTY."

—OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES,

COLLECTED LEGAL PAPERS

Eyewitness recall of detail is sometimes impressive. When John Yuilleand Judith Cutshall (1986) studied accounts of a midafternoon murder on a busy Burnaby, British Columbia, street, they found that eyewitnesses' recall for detail was 80 percent accurate.

When Eyes Deceive Is eyewitness testimony often inaccurate? Stories abound of innocent people who have wasted years in prison because of the testimony of eyewitnesses who were sincerely wrong (Brandon & Davies, 1973; Doyle, 2005; Wells & others, 2006). Eighty years ago, Yale law professor Edwin Borchard (1932) documented 65 convictions of people whose innocence was later proven (and who were released after receiving clemency or being acquitted after a new trial). Most resulted from mistaken identi­ fications, and some were narrowly saved from execution. In modem times, among the first 250 convictions overturned by DNA evidence, 76 percent were wrongful convictions influenced by mistaken eyewitnesses (Garrett, 2011a).

To assess the accuracy of eyewitness recollections, we need to learn their overall rates of "hits" and "misses." One way for researchers to gather such information is to stage crimes comparable to those in everyday life and then solicit eyewitness reports.

During the past century, this has been done many times in Europe and elsewhere, sometimes with disconcerting results (Sporer, 2008). For example, at California State University, Hayward, 141 students witnessed an "assault" on a professor. Seven weeks later, when Robert Buckhout (1974) asked them to identify the assailant from a group of six photographs, 60 percent chose an innocent person. No wonder eyewitnesses to actual crimes sometimes disagree about what they saw. Later studies have confirmed that eyewitnesses often are more confident than correct. For example, Brian Bomstein and Douglas Zickafoose (1999) found that students felt, on average, 74 percent sure of their later recollections of a classroom visitor but were only 55 percent correct.

Three studies of live lineups conducted in England and Wales show remarkable consistency. Roughly 40 percent of witnesses identified the suspect. Forty percent made no identification. And, despite having been cautioned that the person they witnessed might not be in the lineup, 20 percent made a mistaken identification (Valentine & others, 2003).

Of course, some witnesses are more confident than others. Wells and colleagues (2002, 2006) report that it's the confident witnesses whom jurors find most believ­ able. Unless their credibility is punctured by an obvious error, confident witnesses seem more credible (Tenney & others, 2007). Confident witnesses are somewhat more accurate, especially when making quick and confident identifications soon after the event (Sauer & others, 2010; Sauerland & Sporer, 2009). In 57 percent of DNA exoneration cases that included eyewitness testimony, the eyewitnesses initially were uncertain (Garrett, 2011b). Still, the overconfidence phenomenon (Chapter 3) affects witnesses, too. Under many conditions, report Neil Brewer and Gary Wells (2011), witnesses that feel 90 to 100 percent confident tend to be approximately 75 to 90 percent accurate. Moreover, some people—whether right or wrong—chronically express themselves more assertively. And that, says Michael Leippe (1994), explains why mistaken eyewitnesses are so often persuasive.

This finding would surely come as a surprise to members of the 1972 U.5. Supreme Court. In a judgment that established the position of the U.S. judiciary

Social Psychology in Court Chapter 15 559

FIGURE:: 15.1 Expectations Affect Perception Is the drawing on the far right a face or figure?

Source: From Fisher (1968), adapted by Loftus (1979b). Drawing by Anne Canevari Green.

system regarding eyewitness identifications, the Court, we now realize, goofed. It declared that among the factors to be considered in determining accuracy is "the level of certainty demonstrated by the witness" (Wells & Murray, 1983).

Errors sneak into our perceptions and our memories because our minds are not videotape machines. Many errors are understandable, as revealed by "change blind­ ness" experiments in which people fail to detect that an innocent person entering a scene differs from another person exiting the scene (Davis & others, 2008). People are quite good at recognizing a pictured face when later shown the same picture alongside a new face. But University of Stirling face researcher Vicki Bruce (1998) was surprised to discover that subtle differences in views, expressions, or lighting "are hard for human vision to deal with." We construct our memories based partly on what we perceived at the time and partly on our expectations, beliefs, and cur­ rent knowledge (Figure 15.1).

The strong emotions that accompany witnessed crimes and traumas may further corrupt eyewitness memories. In one experiment, visitors wore heart rate monitors while in the London Dungeon's Horror Labyrinth. Those exhibiting the most emo­ tion later made the most mistakes in identifying someone they had encountered (Valentine & Mesout, 2009).

Charles Morgan and his team of Yale colleagues and military psychologists (2004) documented the effect of stress on memory with more than 500 soldiers at survival schools—mock prisoner of war camps that were training the soldiers to withstand deprivation of food and sleep, combined with intense, confrontational interrogation, resulting in a high heart rate and a flood of stress hormones. A day after release from the camp, when the participants were asked to identify their intimidating interrogators from a 15-person lineup, only 30 percent could do so, although 62 percent could recall a low-stress interrogator. Thus, concluded the researchers, "contrary to the popular conception that most people would never forget the face of a clearly seen individual who had physically confronted them and threatened them for more than 30 minutes, [many] were unable to correctly identify their perpetrator." We are most at risk for false recollections made with high confidence with faces of another race (Brigham & others, 2006; Meissner & others, 2005).

Recall from Chapter 9 the "own-race bias"—the tendency to more accurately recognize faces of one's own race.

The Misinformation Effect Elizabeth Loftus and associates (1978) dramatically demonstrated memory con­ struction. They showed University of Washington students 30 slides depicting suc­ cessive stages of an automobile-pedestrian accident. One critical slide showed a

560

I

Part Four

misinformation effect Incorporating "misinforma­ tion" into one’s memory of the event after witnessing an event and receiving mislead­ ing information about it

red Datsun stopped at a stop sign or a yield sign. Afterward they asked half the students, among other questions, "Did another car pass the red Datsim while it was stopped at the stop sign?" They asked the other half the same question, but with the words "stop sign" replaced by "yield sign." Later, all viewed both slides in Figure 15.2 and recalled which one they had seen previously. Those who had been asked the question consistent with what they had seen were 75 percent cor­ rect. Those previously asked the misleading question were only 41 percent correct; more often than not, they denied seeing what they had actually seen and instead "remembered" the picture they had never seen!

In other studies of this misinformation effect, Loftus {1979a, 1979b, 2001) found that after suggestive questions, witnesses may believe that a red light was actually green or that a robber had a mustache when he didn't. When questioning eyewit­ nesses, police and attorneys commonly ask questions framed by their own under­ standing of what happened. So it is troubling to discover how easily witnesses incorporate misleading information into their memories, especially when they believe the questioner is well informed, when shown fabricated evidence, when suggestive questions are repeated, or when they have discussed events with other

Applying Social Psychology

FIGURE:: 15.2 The Misinformation Effect

When shown one of these two pictures end then asked a question suggesting the sign from the other photo, most people later "remembered" seeing the sign they had never actually seen. Source: From Loftus, Miller, & Burns (1978), Photos courtesy of Elizabeth Loftus.

Social Psychology in Court Chapter 15 561

witnesses (Frenda & others, 2011; Wade & others, 2010; Wright & others, 2009; Zaragoza & Mitchell, 1996).

It also is troubling to realize that false memories feel and look like real memories. They can be as persuasive as real memories—convincingly sincere, yet sincerely wrong. This is true of young children (who are especially susceptible to misinfor­ mation) as well as adults. Stephen Ceci and Maggie Bruck (1993a, 1993b, 1995) dem­ onstrated children's suggestibility by telling children, once a week for 10 weeks, "Think real hard, and tell me if this ever happened to you." For example, "Can you remember going to the hospital with the mousetrap on your finger?" Remarkably, when later interviewed by a new adult who asked the same question, 58 percent of preschoolers produced false and often detailed stories about the fictitious event. One boy explained that his brother had pushed him into a basement woodpile, where his finger got stuck in the trap. "And then we went to the hospital, and my mommy, daddy, and Colin drove me there, to the hospital in our van, because it was far away. And the doctor put a bandage on this finger."

Given such vivid stories, professional psychologists were often fooled. They could not reliably separate real from false memories—nor could the children. Told the incident never actually happened, some protested. "But it really did happen. I remember it!" For Bruck and Ceci (1999, 2004), such findings raise the possibility of false accusations, as in alleged child sex abuse cases in which children's memo­ ries may have been contaminated by repeated suggestive questioning and in which there is no corroborating evidence. Given suggestive interview questions, Bruck and Ceci report, most preschoolers and many older children will produce false reports such as seeing a thief steal food in their day-care center.

Even among American and British university students, imagining childhood events, such as breaking a window with their hand or having a nurse remove a skin sample, led one-fourth to recall that the imagined event actually happened (Garry & others, 1996; Mazzoni & Memom, 2003). This "imagination inflation" happens partly because visualizing something activates similar areas in the brain as does actually experiencing it (Gonsalves & others, 2004).

Misinformation-induced false memories provide one explanation for a peculiar phenomenon:/fl/se confessions (Kassin & others, 2010; Lassiter, 2010; Loftus, 2011). Among 250 closely studied cases in which DNA evidence cleared wrongfully con­ victed people, 40 involved false confessions (Garrett, 2011b). Many of these were compliant confessions—people who confessed when worn down and often sleep deprived ("If you will just tell us you accidentally rather than deliberately set the fire, you can go home."). Others were internalized confessions—ones apparently believed after people were fed misinformation.

Retelling Retelling events commits people to their recollections, accurate or not. An accurate retelling helps them later resist misleading suggestions (Bregman & McAllister, 1982). Other times, the more we retell a story, the more we convince ourselves of a falsehood. Wells, Ferguson, and Lindsay (1981) demonstrated this by having eyewit­ nesses to a staged theft rehearse their answers to questions before taking the witness stand. Doing so increased the confidence of those who were wrong and thus made jurors who heard their false testimony more likely to convict the innocent person.

In Chapter 4, we noted that we often adjust what we say to please our listeners. Moreover, having done so, we come to believe the altered message. Imagine wit­ nessing an argument that erupts into a fight in which one person injures the other. Afterward, the injured party sues. Before the trial, a smooth lawyer for one of the two parties interviews you. Might you slightly adjust your testimony, giving a ver­ sion of the fight that supports this lawyer's client? If you did so, might your later recollections in court be similarly slanted?

562 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

"WITNESSES PROBABLY

OUGHT TO BE TAKING A

MORE REALISTIC OATH; 'DO

YOU SWEAR TO TELL THE

TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH,

OR WHATEVER IT 1$ YOU

THINK YOU REMEMBER?"'

—ELIZABETH F. LOFTUS,

"MEMORY IN CANADIAN

COURTS OF LAW," 2003

Blair Sheppard and Neil Vidmar (1980) report that the answer to both questions is yes. At the University of Western Ontario, they had some students serve as wit­ nesses to a fight and others as lawyers and judges. When interviewed by lawyers for the defendant, the witnesses later gave the judge testimony that was more favorable to the defendant. In a follow-up experiment, Vidmar and Nancy Laird 0983) noted that witnesses did not omit important facts from their testimony; they just changed their tone of voice and choice of words depending on whether they thought they were witnesses for the defendant or for the plaintiff. Even this was enough to bias the impressions of those who heard the testimony. So it's not only suggestive questioirs that can distort eyewitness recollections but also their own retellings, which may be adjusted subtly to suit their audience.

Reducing Error Given these error-prone tendencies, what constructive steps can be taken to increase the accuracy of eyewitnesses and jurors? The U.S. Department of Justice convened a panel of researchers, attorneys, and law enforcement officers to hammer out Eye­ witness Evidence: A Guide for Law Enforcement (Technical Working Group for Eyewit­ ness Evidence, 1999; Wells & others, 2000). Their suggestions parallel many of those from a Canadian review of eyewitness identification procedures (Yarmey, 2003a). They include ways to (a) train police interviewers and (b) administer lineups. This forensic science of mind" seeks to preserve rather than contaminate the eyewit­

ness memory aspect of the crime scene.

TRAIN POLICE INTERVIEWERS When Ronald Fisher and co-workers (1987, 1989, 2011) examined tape-recorded interviews of eyewitnesses conducted by experienced Florida police detectives, they found a typical pattern. Following an open-ended beginning ("Tell me what you recall ), the detectives would occasionally interrupt with follow-up questions, including questions eliciting terse answers ("How tall was he?").

The Eyewitness Evidence guide instructs interviewers to begin by allowing eye­ witnesses to offer their own unprompted recollections. The recollections will be most complete if the interviewer jogs the memory by first guiding people to recon­ struct the setting. Have them visualize the scene and what they were thinking and feeling at the time. Even showing pictures of the setting—of, say, the store check­ out lane with a clerk standing where she was robbed—can promote accurate recall (Cutler & Penrod, 1988). After giving witnesses ample, uninterrupted time to report everything that comes to mind, the interviewer then jogs their memory with evoca­ tive questions ("Was there anything unusual about the voice? Was there anything unusual about the person's appearance or clothing?").

When Fisher and colleagues (1989, 1994, 2011) trained detectives to question in this way, the eyewitnesses' information increased 25 to 50 percent without increas- ing the false memory rate. A later statistical summary of 46 published studies con­ firmed that this "cognitive interview" substantially increases details recalled, with no loss in accuracy (Memon & others, 2011). In response to such results, most police agencies in North America and Britain have adopted the cognitive interview pro­ cedure (Dando & others, 2009). (The procedure also shows promise for enhancing information gathered in oral histories and medical surveys.)

Accurate identifications tend to be automatic and effortless (Sauer & others, 2010). The right face just pops out. In studies by David Dunning and Scott Perretta (2002), eyewitnesses who make their identifications in less than 10 to 12 seconds were nearly 90 percent accurate; those taking longer were only about 50 percent accurate. Although other studies challenge a neat 10- to 12-second rule, they con­ firm that quicker identifications are generally more accurate (Weber & others, 2004). For example, when Tim Valentine and co-workers (2003) analyzed 640 eyewitness

Social Psychology in Court Chapter 15 563

research CLOSE-UP Feedback to Witnesses

Eyewitness to a crime on viewing a lineup: "Oh, my God ... I don’t know ... It's one of those two . . . but I don't know . .. Oh, man ... the guy a little bit taller than number two .. . It's one of those two, but I don't know...."

Months later at trial: "You were positive it was number two? It wasn't a maybe?"

Eyewitness's answer: "There was no maybe about it... I was absolutely positive."

{Missouri V. Hutching, 1994, reported by Wells & Bradfield, 1998)

What explains witnesses misrecalling their original uncer­ tainty? Gary Wells and Amy Bradfield (1998, 1999) won­ dered. Research had shown that one's confidence gains a boost from (a) learning that another witness has fin­ gered the same person, (b) being asked the same ques­ tion repeatedly, and (c) preparing for cross-examination (Liius & Wells, 1994; Shaw, 1996; Wells & others, 1981). Might the lineup interviewer's feedback also influence not just confidence but also recollections of earlier confi­ dence ("I knew it all along")?

To find out. Wells and Bradfield conducted two experiments in which 352 Iowa State University students viewed a grainy security camera video of a man entering a store. Moments later, off camera, he murders a secu­ rity guard. The students then viewed the photo spread from the actual criminal case, minus the gunman's photo,

and were asked to identify the gunman. All 352 students made a false identification, following which the experi­ menter gave confirming feedback ("Good. You identified the actual suspect"), disconfirming feedback ("Actually, the suspect was number____ "), or no feedback. Finally, all were later asked, "At the time that you identified the person in the photo spread, how certain were you that the person you identified from the photos was the gun­ man that you saw in the video?" (from 1, not at all certain, to 7, totally certain).

The experiment produced two striking results: First, the effect of the experimenter's casual comment was huge. In the confirming feedback condition, 58 percent of the eyewitnesses rated their certainty as 6 or 7 when making their initial judgments. This was 4 times the 14 percent who said the same in the no-feedback condi­ tion and 11 times the 5 percent in the disconfirming con­ dition. What's striking is that those were their confident recollections before they received any feedback.

It wasn't obvious to the participants that their judg­ ments were affected, for the second rather amazing find­ ing is that when asked if the feedback had influenced their answers, 58 percent said no. Moreover, as a group, those who felt uninfluenced were influenced just as much as those who said they were (Figure 15.3).

This phenomenon—increased witness confidence after supportive feedback—is both big and reliable enough, across many studies, to have gained a name; the

Totally certain

Not at all certain

Amount of certainty 7

Disconfirming Confirming

■ I I

"Feedback influenced me*

Participants who said feedback did not influence them were influenced no less.

"Feedback did not influence me

FIGURE:: 15.3 Recalled Certainty of Eyewitnesses' False Identification After Receiving Confirming or Disconfirming Feedback (Experiment 2) Source: Data from Wells & Bradfield (1998).

564 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

post-identification feedback effect (Douglass & Steblay, 2006; Jones & others, 2008; Wright & Skagerberg, 2007). It is understandable that eyewitnesses would be curious about the accuracy of their recollections, and that inter­ rogators would want to satisfy their curiosity ("you did identify the actual suspect"). But the possible later effect of inflated eyewitness confidence points to the need to keep interrogators blind (ignorant) of which person is the suspect.

The inability of eyewitnesses to appreciate the post­ identification feedback effect points to a lesson that

runs deeper than jury research. Once again, we see why we need social psychological research. As social psychologists have so often found—recall Milgram's obedience experiments—simply asking people how they would act, or asking what explains their actions, 1 sometimes gives us wrong answers. Benjamin Franklin ? was right: "There are three things extremely hard, f Steel, a Diamond, and to know one's self." That is why we need not only surveys that ask people to explain t themselves but also experiments in which we see what | they actually do. |

viewings of London police lineups, they, too, found that nearly 9 in 10 "fast" iden­ tifications were of the actual suspect, as were fewer than 4 in 10 slower identifica­ tions. Younger eyewitnesses, and those who had viewed the culprit for more than 1 minute, were also more accurate than older eyewitnesses and those who had less than 1 minute's exposure.

MINIMIZE FALSE LINEUP IDENTIFICATIONS The case of Ron Shatford illustrates how the composition of a police lineup can promote misidentification (Doob & Kirshenbaum, 1973). After a suburban Toronto department store robbery, the cashier involved could recall only that the culprit was not wearing a tie and was "very neatly dressed and rather good looking." When police put the good-looking Shatford in a lineup with 11 unattractive men, all of whom wore ties, the cashier readily identified him as the culprit. Only after he had served 15 months of a long sentence did another person confess, allowing Shatford to be retried and found not guilty.

If a suspect has a distinguishing feature—a tie, a tattoo, or an eye patch—false identifications are reduced by putting a similar feature on other lineup "foils" (Zarkadi & others, 2009). Gary Wells (1984, 1993, 2005, 2008) and the Eyewitness Evidence guide report that another way to reduce misidentifications is to remind witnesses that the person they saw may or may not be in the lineup. Alternatively, give eyewitnesses a "blank" lineup that contains no suspects and screen out those who make false identifications. Those who do not make such errors turn out to be more accurate when they later face the actual lineup.

Dozens of studies in Europe, North America, Australia, and South Africa show that mistakes also subside when witnesses simply make individual yes or no judg­ ments in response to a sequence of people (Lindsay & Wells, 1985; Meissner «& others, 2005; Steblay & others, 2001). A simultaneous lineup tempts people to pick the per­ son who, among the lineup members, most resembles the perpetrator. Witnesses viewing just one suspect at a time are less likely to make false identifications.

If witnesses view several photos or people simultaneously, they are more likely to choose whoever most resembles the culprit. (When not given a same-race lineup, witnesses may pick someone of the culprit's race, especially when it's a different race from their own [Wells & Olson, 2001].) With a "sequential lineup," eyewit­ nesses compare each person with their memory of the culprit and make an absolute decision—match or no-match (Goodsell & others, 2010; Gronlund, 2004a, 2004b). In one large study based on cases from several cities, the sequential lineup reduced the misidentification of foils from 18 to 12 percent, with no reduction in accurate identifications (Wells & others, 2011).

These no-cost procedures make police lineups more like good experiments. They contain a control group (a no-suspect lineup or a lineup in which mock witnesses

565Social Psychology in Court

try to guess the suspect based merely on a general description). They have an experi­ menter who is blind to the hypothesis (and who therefore won't welcome an expected identification while asking "Might it be any­ one else?" in response to a different identi­ fication). Questions are scripted and neutral, so they don't subtly demand a particular response (the procedure doesn't imply the culprit is in the lineup). And they prohibit confidence-inflating post-lineup comments ("you got him") prior to trial testimony. Such procedures greatly reduce the natural human confirmation bias (having an idea and seek­ ing confirming evidence). Lineups can also be effectively administered by computers (MacLin & others, 2005).

Although procedures such as double-blind testing are common in psychologi­ cal science, they are still uncommon in criminal procedures (Wells & Olson, 2003). So it was when Troy Davis was arrested for the 1989 killing of a Georgia police officer. The police showed some of the witnesses Davis's photo before they viewed the lineup. His lineup picture had a different background than the other photos. TTie lineup was administered by an officer who knew that Davis was the suspect. Later, seven of the nine witnesses against Davis recanted, with six saying the police threatened them if they did not identify Davis. The man who first told police that Davis was the shooter later confessed to the crime. Despite court appeals and pleas from the Pope, a former FBI director, and 630,000 others, in 2011, Georgia executed Troy Davis (New York Times, 2011).

Mindful of all this research. New Jersey's attorney general has mandated state­ wide blind testing (to avoid steering witnesses toward suspects) and sequential lineups (to minimize simply comparing people and choosing the person who most resembles the one they saw commit a crime) (Kolata & Peterson, 2001; Wells & others, 2002). In 2011, the New Jersey Supreme Court, in response to research on eyewitness identification procedures, overhauled its state's rule for treating lineup evidence. By making it easier for defendants to challenge flawed evidence, the court attached consequences to the use of lineup procedures that are most likely to produce mistaken identifications (Goode & Schwartz, 2011).

EDUCATE JURORS Do jurors evaluate eyewitness testimony rationally? Do they understand how the circumstances of a lineup determine its reliability? Do they know whether or not to take an eyewitness's self-confidence into account? Do they realize how memory can be influenced—by earlier misleading questions, by stress at the time of the incident, by the interval between the event and the questioning, by whether the suspect is the same or a different race, by whether recall of other details is sharp or hazy? Studies in Canada, Great Britain, Norway, and the United States reveal that although juror knowledge seems on the increase, jurors fail to fully appreciate some of these fac­ tors, all of which are known to influence eyewitness testimony (Desmarais & Read, 2011; Magnussen & others, 2010; Wise & Safer, 2010). In one national survey, more than half mistakenly agreed that, "Human memory works like a video camera, accurately recording the events we see and hear so that we can review and inspect them later" (Loftus, 2011).

To educate jurors, experts now are asked frequently (usually by defense attor­ neys) to testify about eyewitness testimony (Cutler & Kovera, 2011). Their aim is to offer jurors the sort of information you have been reading about to help them eval­ uate the testimony of both prosecution and defense witnesses. Table 15.1, drawn

Chapter 15

Trov0avis|1968-2011). Despite error-prone procedures for screening eyewitness testimonies, the State of Georgia argued that Davis, who maintained his innocence to his last breath, was guilty of murder.

Researchers are also exploring the conditions under which "earwitness" testimony, based on voice recognition, is also vulnerable to error (Mullenix & others, 2011; Stevenage & others, 2011).

566 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

TABLE:: 15.1 Influences on Eyewitness Testimony

Phenomenon

Question wording. An eyewitness's testimony about an event can be affected by how the questions put to that eyewitness are worded.

Lineup instructions. Police instructions can affect an eyewitness's willingness to make an identification.

,lf Confidence malleability. An eyewitness's confi^^ce cante i^u^cel: * tfiat are unrelated to identification accuracy. V«;:'

Mug-shot-induced bias. Exposure to mug shots of a suspect increases the likeli­ hood that the witness will later choose that suspect in a lineup.

J Postevent information. Eyewitnesses' testimony about an event often reflects not .J ; only what they actually saw but also information they obtained later on.

Attitudes and expectations. An eyewitness's perception and memory of an event may be affected by his or her attitudes and expectations.

Cross-race bias. Eyewitnesses are more accurate when identifying members of .their own race tl^n members of other races.

Accuracy versus confidence. An eyewitness's confidence is not a good predictor of his or her identification accuracy.

Eyewitness Experts Agreeing* Jurors Agreeing*

98% 85%

*"This phenomenon is reliable enough for psychologists to present it in courtroom testimony."

Source; Experts from S, M. Kassin, V, A, Tubb, H. M. Hosch, & A. Memon (2001). Jurors from T. R. Benton, D. F. Ross, E. Bradshaw, W. N. Thomas, & G. S. Bradshaw (2006).

from a survey of 64 researchers on eyewitness testimony, lists some of the most agreed-upon phenomena. A follow-up survey compared their understandings with those of 111 jurors sampled in Tennessee.

When taught the conditions under which eyewitness accounts are trustwor­ thy, jurors become more discerning (Cutler & others, 1989; Devenport & others, 2002; Wells, 1986). Moreover, attorneys and judges are recognizing the importance of some of these factors when deciding when to ask for or permit suppression of lineup evidence (Stinson & others, 1996,1997).

SUMIVIING UP: How Reliable Is Eyewitness Testimony? • In hundreds of experiments, social psychologists

have found that the accuracy of eyewitness testi­ mony can be impaired by a host of factors involving the ways people form judgments and memories.

• Some eyewitnesses express themselves more assertively than others. The assertive witness is more likely to be believed, although assertiveness is actually a trait of the witness that does not reflect the certainty of the information.

• The human eye is not a video camera; it is vulner­ able to variations in light, angle, and other changes that impair recognition of a face.

• When false information is given to a witness, the misinformation effect may result in the witness com­ ing to believe that the false information is true.

• As the sequence of events in a crime is told repeat­ edly, errors may creep in and become embraced by the witness as part of the true account.

• To reduce such errors, interviewers are advised to let the witness tell what he or she remembers without interruption and to encourage the witness to visualize the scene of the incident and the emo­ tional state the witness was in when the incident occurred.

• Educating jurors about the pitfalls of eyewit­ ness testimony can improve the way testimony is received and, ultimately, the accuracy of the verdict.

Social Psychology in Court Chapter 15 567

WHAT OTHER FACTORS INFLUENCE JUROR JUDGMENTS?________________

Explain how defendants' attractiveness and similarity to jurors may bias Jurors, and how faithfully jurors follow judges' instructions.

The Defendant's Characteristics According to the famed trial lawyer Clarence Darrow (1933), jurors seldom convict a person they like or acquit one they dislike. He argued that the main job of the trial lawyer is to make a jury like the defendant. Was he right? And is it true, as Darrow also said, that "facts regarding the crime are relatively unimportant"?

Darrow overstated the case. One classic study of more than 3,500 criminal cases and 4,000 civil cases found that four times in five the judge agreed with the jury's decision (Kalven & Zeisel, 1966). Although both may have been wrong, the evidence usually is clear enough that jurors can set aside their biases, focus on the facts, and agree on a verdict (Saks & Hastie, 1978; Visher, 1987). Facts matter.

But facts are not all that matter. As we noted in Chapter 7, communicators are more persuasive if they seem credible and attractive. Likewise, in courtrooms, high-status defendants often receive more leniency (McGillis, 1979).

Actual cases vary in so many ways—in the type of crime, in the status, age, gen­ der, and race of the defendant—that it's difficult to isolate the factors that influence jurors. So experimenters have controlled such factors by giving mock jurors the same basic facts of a case while varying, say, the defendant's attractiveness or simi­ larity to the jurors.

PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVENESS

In Chapter 11, we noted a physical attractiveness stereotype: Beautiful people seem like good people. Michael Efran (1974) wondered whether that stereotype would bias students' judgments of someone accused of cheating. He asked some of his University of Toronto students whether attractiveness should affect presumption of guilt. They answered, "No, it shouldn't." But did it? Yes. When Efran gave other students a description of the case with a photograph of either an attractive or an unattractive defendant, they judged the more attractive as less guilty and recom­ mended that person for lesser punishment.

Other experimenters have confirmed that when the evidence is meager or ambiguous, justice is not blind to a defendant's looks (Mazzella & Feingold, 1994). O. J. Simpson's being, as one prospective juror put it, "a hunk of a fellow" probably did not hurt his case. Diane Berry and Leslie Zebrowitz-McArthur (1988) discov­ ered this when they asked people to judge the guilt of baby-faced and mature-faced defendants. Baby-faced adults (people with large, round eyes and small chins) seemed more naive and were found guilty more often of crimes of mere negligence but less often of intentional criminal acts. If found guilty, unattractive people also strike people as more dangerous, especially if they are sexual offenders (Esses & Webster, 1988).

In a mammoth experiment conducted with BBC Television, Richard Wiseman (1998) showed viewers evidence about a burglary, with just one variation. Some viewers saw the defendant played by an actor who fit what a panel of 100 peo­ ple judged as the stereotypical criminal—unattractive, crooked nose, small eyes. Among 64,000 people phoning in their verdict, 41 percent judged him guilty. British viewers elsewhere saw an attractive, baby-faced defendant with large blue eyes. Only 31 percent found him guilty.

FIGURE:: 15.4 Attractiveness and Legai Judgments Texas Gulf Coast judges set higher bails and fines for less attractive defendants. Source: Data from Downs & Lyons |1991).

568 Part Four

There were differences within each race in perceptions of Simpson's guilt or innocence. White women whose identity focused on gender were especially likely to think Simpson guilty. African Americans for whom race was central to their identity were especially likely to think him innocent (Fairchild & Cowan, 1997; Neuman & others, 1997).

Applying Social Psychology

To see if these findings extend to the real world, Chris Downs and Phillip Lyons (1991) asked police escorts to rate the physical attractiveness of 1,742 defendants appearing before 40 Texas judges in misdemeanor cases that were serious (such as forgery), moderate (such as harassment), or minor (such as public intoxication). In each type of case, the judges set higher bails and fines for less attractive defendants (Figure 15.4). What explains this dramatic effect? Are unattractive people also lower in status? Are they more likely to flee or to commit another crime, as the judges per­ haps suppose? Or do judges simply ignore the Roman statesman Cicero's advice; "The final good and the supreme duty of the wise man is to resist appearance."

SIMILARITY TO THE JURORS

If Clarence Darrow was even partly right in his declaration that liking or disliking a defendant colors judgments, then other factors that influence liking may also mat­ ter. Among such influences is the principle, noted in Chapter 11, that likeness (simi­ larity) leads to liking. When people pretend they are jurors, they are indeed more sympathetic to a defendant who shares their attitudes, religion, race, or (in cases of sexual assault) gender (Selby & others, 1977; Towson & Zanna, 1983; Ugwuegbu, 1979). Juror racial bias is usually small, but jurors do exhibit some tendency to treat racial outgroups less favorably (Mitchell & others, 2005).

Some examples:

• Paul Amato (1979) had Australian students read evidence concerning a left- or right-wing person accused of a politically motivated burglary. The stu­ dents judged less guilt when the defendant's political views were similar to their own.

• Cookie Stephan and Walter Stephan (1986) had English-speaking people judge someone accused of assault. Participants were more likely to think the accused not guilty if the defendant's testimony was in English rather than translated from Spanish or Thai.

• In Israel, Moses Shayo and Asaf Zussman (2011) analyzed 1,748 small claims court cases, such as plaintiffs seeking damages for fender-bender accidents. Jewish plaintiffs received more favorable outcomes when their cases were randomly assigned to Jewish judges, and Arab plaintiffs received more favorable outcomes when assigned to Arab judges.

• When a defendant's race fits a crime stereotype—say, a White defendant charged with embezzlement or a Black defendant charged with auto theft— mock jurors offer more negative verdicts and punishments (Jones & Kaplan, 2003; Mazzella & Feingold, 1994). Whites who espouse nonprejudiced views

Social Psychology in Court Chapter 15 569

‘You look like this sketch of someone who's thinking about committing a crime.

® David Sipress/The New Yorker Collection/www.cartoonbank.com

are more likely to demonstrate racial bias in trials in which race issues are not blatant (Sommers & Ellsworth, 2000, 2001).

In actual capital cases, reports Craig Haney (1991), data "show that Blacks are overpunished as defendants or under­ valued as victims, or both." One analy­ sis of 80,000 criminal convictions during 1992 and 1993 found that U.S. federal judges—only 5 percent of whom were Black—sentenced Blacks to 10 percent longer sentences than Whites when com­ paring cases with the same seriousness and criminal history (Associated Press, 1995). Likewise, Blacks who kill Whites are more often sentenced to death than Whites who kill Blacks (Butterfield, 2001). Compared with killing a Black person, killing a White person is also , e tee times as likely to lead (in one U.S. study) to a death sentence (Radelet &

Pierce, 2011). , , , x In two studies, harsher sentences are also given those who look more stereo-

typically Black. Irene Blair and colleagues (2004) found that given similar criminal histories Black and White inmates in Florida receive similar sentences—but that within each race, those with more "Afrocentric" facial features are given longer sen­ tences. According to the famed trial lawyer Clarence Darrow (1933), jurors seldom convict a person they like or acquit one they dislike. (58 percent versus 24 percent for Blacks with features less Afrocentric than average.)

So it seems we are more sympathetic toward a defendant with whom we can identify. If we think we wouldn't have committed that criminal act, we may assume that some­ one like us is also unlikely to have done it. That helps explain why, m acquamtance-rape trials, men more often than women judge the defendant not guilty (Fischer, 199^. That also helps explain why a national sur­ vey before the O. J. Simpson trial got under way found that 77 percent of Whites, but only 45 percent of Blacks, saw the case against him as at least "fairly strong" (Smolowe, 1994).

Ideally, jurors would leave their biases outside the courtroom and begin a trial with open minds. So implies the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitu­ tion: "The accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial by impar­ tial jury." In its concern for objectivity, the judicial system is similar to science. Both scientists and jurors are supposed to sift and weigh the evidence. Both the courts and science have rules about what evidence is relevant. Both keep careful records and assume that others given the same evidence would decide similarly.

c—

“I'm soins to have to recuse myself.”

© Mike Twohy/The New Yorker Collection/www.cartoonbank.coin

570 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

When the evidence is clear and individuals focus on it (as when they reread and debate the meaning of testimony), their biases are indeed minimal (Kaplan & Schersching, 1980; Lieberman, 2011). The quality of the evidence matters more than the prejudices of the individual jurors.

reactance A motive to protect or restore one's sense of freedom. Reactance arises when someone threatens our freedom of action.

The Judge's Instructions All of us can recall courtroom dramas in which an attorney exclaimed, "Your honor, I object!" whereupon the judge sustains the objection and instructs the jury to ignore the other attorney's suggestive question or the witness's remark. How effective are such instructions?

Nearly all states in the United States now have "rape shield" statutes that pro­ hibit or limit testimony concerning the victim's prior sexual activity. Such testi­ mony, though irrelevant to the case at hand, tends to make jurors more sympathetic to the accused rapist's claim that the woman consented to sex (Borgida, 1981; Cann & others, 1979). If such reliable, illegal, or prejudicial testimony is nevertheless slipped in by the defense or blurted out by a witness, will jurors follow a judge's instruction to ignore it? And is it enough for the judge to remind jurors, "The issue is not whether you like or dislike the defendant but whether the defendant commit­ ted the offense"?

Very possibly not. Several experimenters report that jurors show concern for due process (Fleming & others, 1999) but that they find it difficult to ignore inadmissible evidence, such as the defendant's previous convictions. In one study, Stanley Sue, Ronald Smith, and Cathy Caldwell (1973) gave University of Washington students a description of a grocery store robbery-murder and a summary of the prosecution's case and the defense's case. When the prosecution's case was weak, no one judged the defendant guilty. When a tape recording of an incriminating phone call made by the defendant was added to the weak case, approximately one-third judged the person guilty. The judge's instructions that the tape was not legal evidence and should be ignored did nothing to erase the effect of the damaging testimony.

Indeed, a judge's order to ignore testimony—"It must play no role in your con­ sideration of the case. You have no choice but to disregard it"—can even boomer­ ang, adding to the testimony's impact (Wolf & Montgomery, 1972). Perhaps such statements create reactance in the jurors. Or perhaps they sensitize jurors to the

It is not easy for jurors to erase inadmissible testimony from memory. © Lee Lorenz/The New Yorker Collection/ WWW canoonbank.com "The jury ■will disregard the ■witness's last remarks. *

Social Psychology in Court Chapter 15 571

inadmissible testimony, as when I warn you not to notice your nose as you finish this sentence. Judges can more easily strike inadmissible testimony from the court records than from the jurors' minds. As trial lawyers sometimes say, "You can't unring a bell."

This is especially so with emotional information (Edwards & Bryan, 1997). When jurors are told vividly about a defendant's record ("hacking up a woman"), a judge's instructions to ignore are more likely to boomerang than when the inadmis­ sible information is less emotional ("assault with a deadly weapon"). Even if jurors later claim to have ignored the inadmissible information, it may alter how they construe other information.

Pretrial publicity also is difficult for jurors to ignore, especially in studies with real jurors and serious crimes (Steblay & others, 1999). In one large-scale experi­ ment, Geoffrey Kramer and colleagues (1990) exposed nearly 800 mock jurors (most from actual jury rolls) to incriminating news reports about the past convictions of a man accused of robbing a supermarket. After the jurors viewed a videotaped reen­ actment of the trial, they either did or did not hear the judge's instructions to disre­ gard the pretrial publicity. The effect of the judicial admonition? Nil.

People whose opinions are biased by pretrial publicity typically deny its effect on them, and that denial makes it difficult to eliminate biased jurors (Moran & Cutler, 1991). In experiments, even getting mock jurors to pledge their impartiality and their willingness to disregard prior information has not eliminated the pretrial publicity effect (Dexter & others, 1992). O. J. Simpson's attorneys, it seems, had rea­ son to worry about the enormous pretrial publicity. And the trial judge had reason to order jurors not to view pertinent media publicity and to isolate them during the trial.

Judges can hope, with some support from available research, that during delib­ eration, jurors who bring up inadmissible evidence will be chastised for doing so, thus limiting its influence on jury verdicts (London & Nunez, 2000). To minimize the effects of inadmissible testimony, judges also can forewarn jurors that certain types of evidence, such as a rape victim's sexual history, are irrelevant. Once jurors form impressions based on such evidence, a judge's admonitions have much less effect (Borgida & White, 1980; Kassin & Wrightsman, 1979). Thus, reports Vicki Smith (1991), a pretrial training session pays dividends. Teaching jurors legal pro­ cedures and standards of proof improves their understanding of the trial proce­ dure and their willingness to withhold judgment until after they have heard all the trial information.

Better yet, judges could cut inadmissible testimony before the jurors hear it— by videotaping testimonies and removing the inadmissible parts. Live and video­ taped testimonies have much the same impact as do live and videotaped lineups

Will jurors clear their minds of pretrial publicity that might bias their evaluation of evidence? Although jurors will deny being biased, experiments have shown otherwise.

574 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

Faced with an incomprehen­ sibly complex accounting of Imelda Marcos's alleged thefts of public money, jurors fell back on their intuitive assessments of the seemingly devout and sincere woman and found her not guilty.

Alan Dershowitz, an O. J. Simpson defense attorney, argued to the media that only 1 in 1,000 men who abuse their wives later murder them. More relevant, replied critics, is the probability that a husband is guilty given that (a) he abused his wife, and (b) his wife was murdered. From available data, Jon Merz and Jonathan Caulkins (1995) calculated that probability as .81.

When a more precise DNA match with Simpson's blood was found, pros­ ecutors contended that the chance of such a match was 1 in 170 million, and the defense showed that experts dis­ agreed about the reliability of DNA test­ ing. For one thing, defendants for whom there is an incriminating DNA match seem less likely to be guilty when they are from a big city, where someone else might have the matching DNA (Koehler & Maachi, 2004).

Naked numbers, it seems, must be supported by a convincing story. Thus, reports Wells, one Toronto mother lost a paternity suit seeking child support from her child's alleged father despite a blood test showing a 99.8 percent probability that the man was her child's father. She lost after the man took the stand and per­ suasively denied the allegation. But a per­ suasive story without forensic evidence may also seem unconvincing. Some

- . psychologists believe this is especially so for viewers of the television show CSI, many of whom—in Canadian, Australian, and American studies—have unreasonable expectations of the quantity and quality of physical evidence (Holmgren & Fordham, 2011; Houck, 2006; Winter & York, 2007).

INCREASING JURORS' UNDERSTANDING Understanding how jurors misconstrue judicial instructions and statistical informa­ tion IS a first step toward better decisions. A next step might be giving jurors access to transcripts rather than forcing them to rely on their memories in processing com­ plex mformation (Bourgeois & others, 1993). A further step would be devising and teshng clearer, more effective ways to present information—a task on which sev­ eral social psychologists have worked. For example, when a judge quantifies the required standard of proof (as, say, 51, 71, or 91 percent certainty), jurors under­ stand and respond appropriately (Kagehiro, 1990).

And surely there must be a simpler way to tell jurors, as required by the Illinois Death Penalty Act, not to impose the death sentence in murder cases when there are justifying circumstances: "If you do not unanimously find from your consider­ ation of all the evidence that there are no mitigating factors sufficient to preclude imposition of a death sentence, then you should sign the verdict requiring the court to impose a sentence other than death" (Diamond, 1993). When jurors are given instructions rewritten into simple language, they are less susceptible to the judge's biases (Halverson & others, 1997; Smith & Haney, 2011).

Phoebe Ellsworth and Robert Mauro (1998) sum up the dismal conclusions of jury researchers: "Legal instructions are typically delivered in a manner likely to frustrate the most conscientious attempts at understanding.... The language is technical and ... no attempt is made either to assess jurors' mistaken preconcep­ tions about the law or to provide any kind of useful education."

Jury Selection Given the variations among individual jurors, can trial lawyers use the jury selection process to stack juries in their favor? Legal folklore suggests that some­ times they can. One president of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America boldly proclaimed, "Trial attorneys are acutely attuned to the nuances of human

Social Psychology in Court Chapter 15 575

behavior, which enables them to detect the minutest traces of bias or inability to reach an appropriate deci­ sion" (Bigam, 1977). In actuality, attorneys, like all of us, are vulnerable to overconfidence. For example, they over­ estimate the likelihood of their meeting their goals (such as acquittal) in trial cases, and likely also of their ability to read jurors (Goodman-Delahunty & others, 2010).

Mindful that people's assessments of others are error- prone, social psychologists doubt that attorneys come equipped with fine-tuned social Geiger counters. In some 6,000 American trials a year, consultants—some of them social scientists—help lawyers pick juries and plot strat­ egy (Gavzer, 1997; Hutson, 2007; Miller, 2001). In several celebrated trials, survey researchers have used "scientific jury selection" to help attorneys weed out those likely to be unsympathetic. One famous trial involved two of Presi­ dent Nixon's former cabinet members, conservatives John Mitchell and Maurice Stans. A survey revealed that from the defense's viewpoint, the worst possible juror was "a liberal, Jewish, Democrat who reads the New York Times or the Post, listens to Walter Cronkite, is interested m political affairs, and is well-informed about Watergate" (Zeisel & Diamond, 1976). Of the first nine trials, relying on "scientific" selection methods, the defense won seven (Hans & Vidmar, 1981; Wrightsman, 1978). (However, we can't know how many of those nine would have been won anyway, without scientific juror selection.)

Many trial attorneys have now used scientific jury selection to identify questions they can use to exclude those biased against their clients, and most have reported satisfaction with the results (Gayoso & others, 1991; Moran & others, 1994). Most jurors, when asked by a judge to "raise your hand if you've read anything about this case that would prejudice you," don't directly acknowledge their preconceptions. But if, for example, the judge allows an attorney to check prospective jurors' atti­ tudes toward drugs, the attorney can often guess their verdicts in a drug-trafficking case (Moran & others, 1990). Likewise, people who acknowledge they "don't put much faith in the testimony of psychiatrists" are less likely to accept an insanity defense (Cutler & others, 1992).

Individuals react differently to specific case features. Racial prejudice becomes relevant m racially charged cases; gender seems linked with verdicts only in rape and battered-woman cases; belief in personal responsibility versus corporate respon­ sibility relates to personal injury awards in suits against businesses (Ellsworth & Mauro, 1998).

Despite the excitement and ethical concern—about scientific jury selection, experiments reveal that attitudes and personal characteristics are weak verdict pre­ dictors (Lieberman, 2011). There are "no magic questions to be asked of prospective jurors," cautioned Steven Penrod and Brian Cutler (1987). Researchers Michael Saks and Reid Hastie (1978) agreed: "The studies are unanimous in showing that evi­ dence is a substantially more potent determinant of jurors' verdicts than the indi­ vidual characteristics of jurors" (p. 68).

Ditto for judges. At her Senate confirmation hearing, the first Hispanic U S Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor, assured her skeptical questioners that she would follow the law without influence from her background and identity. But complete neutrality is an ideal that even judges seldom attain (as illustrated by the 5-to-4 Supreme Court vote that decided the contested 2000 U.S. presidential elec­ tion for Republican George W. Bush, with conservative and liberal judges voting in opposition). Simple weariness can also color judges' judgments. In one study of 1,112 Israeli parole board hearings, judges granted parole to 65 percent of the pris­ oners when their cases were decided right after a lunch or snack break, with favor­ able decisions declining thereafter with time (Figure 15.5).

0. J. Simpson attorneys in the criminal trial also used a jury selection consultant—and won (Lafferty, 1994). Meeting the press after the not-guilty verdict, Simpson's attorney imme­ diately thanked the jury selection consultant.

"BEWARE OF THE LUTHER­

ANS, ESPECIALLY THE

SCANDINAVIANS; THEY ARE

ALMOST ALWAYS SURE TO

CONVICT."

—CLARENCE DARROW, "HOW

TO PICK A JURY," 1936

Applying Social Psychology576 Part Four

FIGURE:: 15.5 Hungry = harsh. After a food break (the dotted lines), Israeli judges became more likely, for a time, to approve prisoners' requests for parole (Danziger & others, 2011).

"THE KIND OF JUROR WHO

WOULD BE UNPERTURBED

BY THE PROSPECT OF

SENDING A MAN TO HIS

DEATH ... IS THE KIND

OF JUROR WHO WOULD

TOO READILY IGNORE

THE PRESUMPTION OF

THE DEFENDANT'S INNO­

CENCE, ACCEPT THE PROS­

ECUTION'S VERSION OF

THE FACTS, AND RETURN A

VERDICT OF GUILTY."

-WITHERSPOON V. ILLINOIS,

1968

"Death-Qualified" Jurors A close case can, however, be decided by who is selected for the jury. In criminal cases, people who do not oppose the death penalty—and who therefore are eligible to serve when a death sentence is possible—are more prone to favor the prosecu­ tion, to feel that courts coddle criminals, and to oppose protecting the constitutional rights of defendants (Bersoff, 1987). Simply put, these "death-qualified" jurors are more concerned with crime control and less concerned with due process of law. When a court dismisses potential jurors who have moral scruples against the death penalty—something O. J. Simpson's prosecutors chose not to do—it constructs a jury that is more likely to vote guilty.

On this issue, social scientists are in "virtual unanimity... about the biasing effects of death qualification," reports Craig Haney (1993). The research record is "unified," reports Phoebe Ellsworth (1985, p. 46): "Defendants in capital-punishment cases do assume the extra handicap of juries predisposed to find them guilty." What is more, conviction-prone jurors tend also to be more authoritarian—more rigid, punitive, closed to mitigating circumstances, and contemptuous of those of lower status (Gerbasi & others, 1977; Luginbuhl & Middendorf, 1988; Moran & Comfort, 1982, 1986; Werner & others, 1982).

Because the legal system operates on tradition and precedent, such research find­ ings only slowly alter judicial practice. In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a split deci­ sion, overturned a lower court ruling that death-qualified jurors are indeed a biased sample. Ellsworth (1989) believes the Court in this case disregarded the compelling and consistent evidence partly because of its "ideological commitment to capital pun­ ishment" and partly because of the havoc that would result if the convictions of thou­ sands of people on death row had to be reconsidered. The solution, should the Court ever wish to adopt it for future cases, is to convene separate juries to (a) decide guilt in capital murder cases, and, given a guilty verdict, to (b) hear additional evidence on factors motivating the murder and to decide between death or imprisonment.

But a deeper issue is at stake here: whether the death penalty itself falls under the U.S. Constitution's ban on "cruel and unusual punishment." As readers in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Western Europe, and most of South America know, their countries prohibit capital punishment. There, as in the United States, public atti­ tudes tend to support the prevailing practice (Costanzo, 1997). But American pro­ capital punishment attitudes seem to be softening. After reaching 80 percent in 1994, support fell to 61 percent in 2011 (Gallup, 2011).

In wrestling with the punishment, U.S. courts have considered whether courts inflict the penalty arbitrarily, whether they apply it with racial bias, and whether legal killing

Social Psychology in Court Chapter 15 577

deters illegal killing. The social sci­ ence answers to these questions are clear, note social psychologists Mark Costanzo (1997) and Craig Haney and Deana Logan (1994). Consider the deterrence issue. States with a death penalty do not have lower homicide rates. Homicide rates have not dropped when states have ini­ tiated the death penalty, and they have not risen when states have abolished it. When committing a crime of passion, people don't pause to calculate the consequences (which include life in prison without parole as another potent deterrent). More­ over, the death penalty is applied inconsistently (in Texas 40 times as often as in New York). And it is applied more often with poor defendants, who often receive a weak defense (Econo­ mist, 2000). Nevertheless, the Supreme Court has determined that admitting only death-qualified jurors provides a representative jury of one's peers and that "the death penalty undoubtedly is a significant deterrent."

Humanitarian considerations aside, say the appalled social scientists, what is the rationale for clinging to cherished assumptions and intuitions in the face of contradictory evidence? Why not put our cultural ideas to the test? If they find sup­ port, so much the better for them. If they crash against a wall of contradictory evi­ dence, so much the worse for them. Such are the ideals of critical thinking that fuel both psychological science and civil democracy.

Guilty. Jury selection criteria may yield conviction-prone jurors. © Nick Oownes/The New Yorker Collection/www.canoonbank.com

Average homicide rate per 100,000

•for entire United States: 9 •for death-penalty states: 9.3 {Source: Scientific American, February 2001)

SUMMING UP: What Influences the Individual Juror? • Social psychologists are interested in not only the

interactions among witnesses, judges, and juries but also what happens within and between indi­ vidual jurors. One major concern is jurors' abil­ ity to comprehend evidence, especially when it involves statistics indicating the probability that a given person committed the crime.

• Trial lawyers often use jury consultants to help them select jurors most sympathetic to their case.

People who are aware of pretrial publicity, for example, may be disqualified from serving.

• In cases in which the death penalty may be applied, lawyers can disqualify any prospective juror who opposes the death penalty on principle. Social psy­ chology research argues that this in itself produces a biased jury, but the Supreme Court has ruled otherwise.

HOW DO GROUP INFLUENCES AFFECT JURIES?_____________________

Explain how individual jurors' prejudgments coalesce into a group decision, and what can influence the outcome.

Imagine a jury that has just finished a trial and has entered the jury room to begin its deliberations. Researchers Harry Kalven and Hans Zeisel (1966) reported that

578 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

chances are approximately two in three that the jurors will not agree initially on a h™ed ^ consensus^Group infl"u:n" :

DP^ltran'^Hf States 300,000 times a year small groups sampled from the 3 million people called for jury duty convene to seek a group decision (Kagehiro, 1990). Are

ey and juries elsewhere subject to the social influences that mold other decision ^oups-to patterns of majority and minority influence? To group polarization^ To ^oupthmk. Let s start with a simple question; If we knew the jurors' initial lean- ings, could we predict their verdict?

Th^aw prohibits observing actual juries. So researchers simulate the jury pro- cess They present a case to mock juries and have them deliberate as a real Lrv Hnb M K University of Illinois, James Davis, Robert

olt, Norbert Kerr, and Garold Stasser tested various mathematical schemes for 1975'*1977 decisions by mock juries (Davis & others,

^ others, 1976). Will some mathematical combination of ini- u decision? Davis and colleagues found that the

erne that predicts best varies with the nature of the case. But in several experi­ ments a ^o-tMrds-majority" scheme fared best; The group verdict was usually the alternative favored by at least two-thirds of the jurors at the outset. Without such a majority, a hung jury was likely.

Likewise, in Kalven and Zeisel's survey of juries, 9 in 10 reached the verdict IbouTsnm^ f^tasize happens courageous lone juror who sways the majority, it seldom

Minority Influence Seldom, yet sometimes, what was initially a minority opinion prevails. A typi- ra e V r ““"g" Th*^ three quietest people IHasL contribute more than half the talking (Hast e & others, 1983). In the Mitchell-Stans trial, the four jurors who favored acquittal persisted, were vocal, and eventually prevailed. From the research on minority influence, we know that jurors in the minority will be most persuasive when they are consistent, persistent, and self-confident. This is especially so if 2002; KOT^?981b) ‘he majority (Gordijn & others.

Group Polarization f^hheration shifts people's opinions in other intriguing ways as well. In exper-

‘ sentiments. For example, Robert Bray and Audrey Noble (1978) had University of Kentucky students listen to a 30-minute tape of a murder trial. Then, assuming the defendant was found guilty, they recom­ mended a prison sentence. Groups of high authoritarians initiSly recommended strong punishments (56 years) and after deliberation were even more punitive fi ‘'’"■®“‘ho''itanan groups were initially more lenient (38 years) and

after de iberation became more so (29 years). By contrast, group diversity often moderates judgments. Compared with Whites who judge Black defendants on all- White mock juries, those serving on racially mixed mock juries enter deliberation expressing more leniency and during the deliberation exhibit openness to a wider range of information (Sommers, 2006).

Confirmation of group polarization in juries comes from an ambitious study m which Reid Hastie, Steven Penrod, and Nancy Pennington (1983) put together 69 twelve-person juries from Massachusetts citizens on jury duty. Each jury was shown a reenactment of an actual murder case, with roles played by an experiLced judge and actual attorneys. Then they were given unlimited time to delib^erate the

Social Psychology in Court Chapter 15 579

research CLOSE-UP Group Polarization in a Natural Court Setting

In simulated juries, deliberation often amplifies jurors' individual inclinations. Does such group polarization occur in actual courts? Cass Sunstein, David Schkade, and Lisa Ellman (2004) show us how researchers can har­ vest data from natural settings when exploring social psychological phenomena. Their data were 14,874 votes by judges on 4,958 three-judge U.S. circuit court pan­ els. (On these federal "Courts of Appeals," an appeal is almost always heard by three of the court's judges.)

Sunstein and his colleagues first asked whether a judge's votes tended to reflect the ideology of the Republican or Democratic president who appointed them. Indeed, when voting on ideologically tinged cases involving affirmative action, environmental regulation, campaign finance, and abortion, Democratic-appointed judges more often sup­ ported the liberal position than did Republican-appointed judges. No surprise there. That's what presidents and their party members assume when seeking congressional approval of their kindred-spirited judicial nominees.

Would such tendencies be amplified when the panel had three judges appointed by the same party? Would three Republican-appointed judges be even more often conservative than the average Republican appointee? And would three Democratic-appointed judges be more

often liberal than the average Democrat appointee? Or would judges vote their convictions uninfluenced by their fellow panelists? Table 15.2 presents their findings.

Note that when three appointees from the same party formed a panel (RRR or DDD), they became more likely to vote their party's ideological preference than did the average individual judge. The polarization exhib­ ited by like-minded threesomes was, the Sunstein team reported, "confirmed in many areas, including affirma­ tive action, campaign finance, sex discrimination, sex­ ual harassment, piercing the corporate veil, disability discrimination, race discrimination, and review of envi­ ronmental regulations" (although not in the politically volatile cases of abortion and capital punishment, where judges voted their well-formed convictions).

Sunstein and colleagues offer an example: If all three judges "believe that an affirmative action program is unconstitutional, and no other judge is available to argue on its behalf, then the exchange of arguments in the room will suggest that the program is genuinely uncon­ stitutional." This is group polarization in action, they conclude—an example of "one of the most striking find­ ings in modern social science: Groups of like-minded people tend to go to extremes."

TABLE 15.2 Proportion of "Liberal" Voting by Individual Judges and by Three-Judge Panels

D, Democratic appointee; R, Republican appointee.

case in a jury room. As Figure 15.6 shows, the evidence was incriminating; Four out of five jurors voted guilty before deliberation but felt unsure enough that a weak verdict of manslaughter was their most popular preference. After delibera­ tion, nearly all agreed the accused was guilty, and most now preferred a stronger verdict—second-degree murder. Through deliberation, their initial leanings had grown stronger.

580 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

FIGURE:: 15.6 Group Polarization in Juries In highly realistic simuiations of a murder trial, 828 Massachusetts jurors stated their initial verdict preferences, then deliberated the case for periods ranging from 3 hours to 5 days. Deliberation strengthened initial tendencies that favored the prosecution.

Source; From Hastie & others (1983).

Proportion of jurors favoring .60 ..........................

.50

.40

.30

.20

.10

0

Verdict preferences at the start of deliberation Verdict preferences at the end of deliberation

Undecided Not guilty Manslaughter Second-degree First-degree murder murder

*rr IS BEHER THAT TEN

GUIOY PERSONS ESCAPE

THAN ONE INNOCENT

SUFFER."

-WILLIAM BLACKSTONE. 1769

Leniency In many experiments, one other curious effect of deliberation has surfaced: Especially when the evidence is not highly incriminating, deliberating jurors often become more lenient (MacCoun & Kerr, 1988). This qualifies the “two- thirds-majority-rules" finding, for if even a bare majority initially favors acquittal, it usually will prevail (Stasser & others, 1981). Moreover, a minority that favors acquittal stands a better chance of prevailing than one that favors conviction (Tindale & others, 1990).

Once again, a survey of actual juries confirms the laboratory results. Kalven and Zeisel (1966) report that in those cases in which the majority does not prevail, it usually shifts to acquittal (as in the Mitchell-Stans trial). When a judge disagrees with the jury s decision, it is usually because the jury acquits someone the judge would have convicted.

Might informational influence" (stemming from others' persuasive arguments) account for the increased leniency? The "innocent-unless-proved-guilty" and proof-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt" rules put the burden of proof on those who

favor conviction. Perhaps this makes evidence of the defendant's innocence more persuasive. Or perhaps "normative influence" creates the leniency effect, as jurors who view themselves as fair-minded confront other jurors who are even more con­ cerned with protecting a possibly innocent defendant.

Are Twelve Heads Better Than One? In Chapter 8, we saw that on thought problems where there is an objective right answer, group judgments surpass those by most individuals. Does the same hold true in juries? When deliberating, jurors exert normative pressure by trying to shift others judgments by the sheer weight of their own. But they also share informa­ tion, thus enlarging one another's understanding. So, does informational influence produce superior collective judgment?

The evidence, though meager, is encouraging. Groups recall information from a trial better than do their individual members (Vollrath & others, 1989). Delibera­ tion also tends to cancel out certain biases and draws jurors' attention away from their own prejudgments and to the evidence. Twelve heads can be, it seems, better than one.

Social Psychology in Court

Are Six Heads as Good as Twelve? In keeping with their British heritage, juries in the United States and Canada have traditionally been composed of 12 people whose task is to reach consensus—a unanimous verdict. However, in several cases appealed during the early 1970s, the U.S. Supreme Court modified that requirement. It declared that in civil cases and state criminal cases not potentially involving a death penalty, courts could use 6-person juries. Moreover, the Court affirmed a state's right to allow less than unanimous verdicts, even upholding one Louisiana conviction based on a 9-to- 3 vote (Tanke & Tanke, 1979). There is no reason to suppose, argued the Court, that smaller juries, or juries not required to reach consensus, will deliberate or decide differently from the traditional jury.

The Court's assumptions triggered an avalanche of criticism from both legal scholars and social psychologists (Saks, 1974, 1996). Some criticisms were matters of simple statistics. For example, if 10 percent of a community's total jury pool is Black, then 72 percent of 12-member juries but only 47 percent of 6-member juries may be expected to have at least one Black person. So smaller juries may be less likely to include a community's diversity.

And if, in a given case, one-sixth of the jurors initially favor acquittal, that would be a single individual in a 6-member jury and 2 people in a 12-member jury. The Court assumed that, psychologically, the two situations would be identical. But as you may recall from our discussion of conformity, resisting group pressure is far more difficult for a minority of one than for a minority of two. Psychologically speaking, a jury split 10 to 2 is not equivalent to a jury split 5 to 1. Not surprisingly, then, 12-person juries are twice as likely as 6-person juries to have hung verdicts (Ellsworth & Mauro, 1998; Saks & Marti, 1997).

Jury researcher Michael Saks (1998) sums up the research findings: Larger juries are more likely than smaller juries to contain members of minority groups, more accurately recall trial testimony, give more time to deliberation, hang more often, and appear more likely to reach 'correct' verdicts."

In 1978, after some of these studies were reported, the Supreme Court rejected Georgia's 5-member juries (although it still retains the 6-member jury). Announc­ ing the Court's decision, Justice Harry Blackmun drew upon both the logical and the experimental data to argue that 5-person juries would be less representative, less reliable, and less accurate (Grofman, 1980). Ironically, many of these data actu­ ally involved comparisons of 6- versus 12-member juries and thus also argued against the 6-member jury. But having made and defended a public commitment to the 6-member jury, the Court was not convinced that the same arguments applied (Tanke & Tanke, 1979).

From Lab to Life: Simulated and Real Juries Perhaps while reading this chapter, you have wondered what some critics (Tapp, 1980; Vidmar, 1979) have wondered: Isn't there an enormous gulf between college students discussing a hypothetical case and real jurors deliberating a real person's fate? Indeed there is. It is one thing to ponder a pretend decision, given minimal information, and quite another to agonize over the complexities and profound con­ sequences of an actual case. So Reid Hastie, Martin Kaplan, James Davis, Eugene Borgida, and others have asked their participants, who sometimes are drawn from actual juror pools, to view enactments of actual trials. The enactments are so real­ istic that sometimes participants forget the trial they are watching on television is staged (Thompson & others, 1981).

Student mock jurors become engaged, too. "As I eavesdropped on the mock juries," recalls researcher Norbert Kerr (1999), "I became fascinated by the jurors' insightful arguments, their mix of amazing recollections and memory fabrications.

Chapter 15 581

Hung juries are rarely a problem. Among 59,511 U.S. federal court criminal trials during one 13-year period, 2.5 percent ended in a hung jury, as did a mere 0.6 percent of 67,992 federal civil trials (Saks, 1998).

"WE HAVE CONSIDERED

[THE SOCIAL SCIENCE

STUDIES] CAREFULLY

BECAUSE THEY PROVIDE

THE ONLY BASIS, BESIDES

JUDICIAL HUNCH, FORA

DECISION ABOUT WHETHER

SMALLER AND SMALLER

JURIES WILL BE ABLE TO

FULFILL THE PURPOSES AND

FUNCTIONS OF THE SIXTH

AMENDMENT."

-JUSTICE HARRY BLACKMUN,

8ALLEWV, GEORGIA, 1978

582 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

Attorneys are using new technology to present crime stories in ways jurors can easily grasp, as in this computer simulation of a homicide generated on the basis of forensic evidence.

their prejudices, their attempts to persuade or coerce, and their occasional courage in standing alone. Here brought to life before me were so many of the psychological processes I had been studying! Although our student jurors under­ stood they were only simulating a real trial, they really cared about reaching a fair verdict."

The U.S. Supreme Court (1986) debated the usefulness of jury research in its decision regarding the use of death-qualified jurors in capital punishment cases. Defendants have a constitutional "right to a fair trial and an impartial jury whose composition is not biased toward the prosecution." The dissenting judges argued that this right is violated when jurors include only those who accept the death penalty. Their argument, they said, was based chiefly on "the essential unanimity of the results obtained by researchers using diverse subjects and var­ ied methodologies." The majority of the judges, however, declared their "seri­ ous doubts about the value of these studies in predicting the behavior of actual jurors." The dissenting judges replied that the courts have not allowed experi­ ments with actual juries; thus, "defendants claiming prejudice from death quali­ fication should not be denied recourse to the only available means of proving their case."

Researchers also defend the laboratory simulations by noting that the labora­ tory offers a practical, inexpensive method of studying important issues under controlled conditions (Dillehay & Nietzel, 1980; Kerr & Bray, 2005). As researchers have begun testing them in more realistic situations, findings from the labora­ tory studies have often held up quite well. No one contends that the simplified world of the jury experiment mirrors the complex world of the real courtroom. Rather, the experiments help us formulate theories with which we interpret the complex world.

Social Psychology in Court Chapter 15 583

Come to think of it, are these jury simulations any different from social psychology's other experiments, aU of which create simplified versions of “^plex realities? By varying just one or two factors at a time m this simulated reahty the experimenter pinpoints how changes in one or two aspects of a situation can affect us. And that is the essence of social psychology's experimental method.

SUMMING UP; How Do Group Influences Affect Juries? • Juries are groups, and they are swayed by the same

influences that bear upon other types of groups. For example, the most vocal members of a jury tend to do most of the talking and the quietest members say little.

• As a jury deliberates, opposing views may become more entrenched and polarized.

• Especially when evidence is not highly incriminat­ ing, deliberation may make jurors more lenient than they originally were.

• The 12-member jury is a tradition stemming from English Common Law. Researchers find that a jury this size allows for reasonable diversity among

jurors, a mix of opinions and orientations, and bet­ ter recall of information.

• Researchers have also examined and questioned the assumptions underlying several recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions permitting smaUer juries and non-unanimous juries.

. Simulated juries are not real juries, so we must be cautious in generalizing research findings to actual courtrooms. Yet, tike all experiments in social psychology, laboratory jury experiments help us formulate theories and principles that we can use to interpret the more complex world of everyday life.

POSTSCRIPT: Thinking Smart with Psychological Science An intellectually fashionable idea, sometimes called "postmodernism," that truth is socially constructed; knowledge always reflects the cultures that or it. Indeed, as we have often noted in this book, we do often ' our biases, our cultural bent. Social scientists are not immune to confirmation bms belief perseverance, overconfidence, and the biasing power of preconceptions Our precoreeived ideas and values guide our theory development, our mterpretations, our topics of choice, and our language. , , • i • u mnHvatP

Being mindful of hidden values within psychological science should motivate us to clfan the cloudy spectacles through which we view the world. Mmctol of cmr vulnerability to bias and error, we can steer between the two extremes—of be g naive abou/a value-laden psychology that pretends to be ” °^^Tut tempted to an unrestrained subjectivism that dismisses evidence as nothing but collected biases. In the spirit of humility, we can put testable ideas to the test. If we think capital punishment does (or does not) deter crime more than other avmlable punishments, we can utter our personal opmions, as has the U.S. Supreme Com . L we can ask whether states with a death penalty have lower homicide rates, whether their rates have dropped after instituting the death penalty, and whethe they have risen when abandoning the penalty. wlion

As we have seen, the Court considered pertinent social science evidence when disallowing five-member juries and ending school desegregahom But i has dis­ counted relearch when offering opinions as to whether the death penalty deters crime whether society views execution as what the U.S. Constitution prohibits ("cruel and unusual punishment"), whether courts inflict the penal y Y- Uether they apply it with racial bias, and whether potential jurors selected by vir­ tue of their accepting capital punishment are biased toward conviction.

584 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

Beliefs and values do guide the perceptions of judges as well as scientists and laypeople. And that is why we need to think smarter—to rein in our hunches and biases by testing them against available evidence. If our beliefs find support, so much the better for them. If not, so much the worse for them. That's the humble spirit that underlies both psychological science and everyday critical thinking.

t.

CHAPTER

16 Social and the

^ • I

uture

"Have always in view not only the present but also the coming generations, even those whose faces are yet beneath the surface of the ground—the unborn of the

future Nation." —Gayanashagowa, the Constitution of the Iroquois Nations ........................(also, known .as .".The .Graat Uaw.of Paa.c?"}..

Imagine yourself on a huge spaceship traveling through our galaxy.To sustain your community, a spacecraft biosphere grows plants and breeds animals. By recycling waste and managing resources,

the mission has, until recently, been sustainable over time and across

generations of people born onboard.

The spaceship's name is Planet Earth, and its expanding crew now

numbers 7 billion. Alas, it increasingly consumes its resources at an

unsustainable rate—50 percent beyond the spaceship's capacity

(FootPrintNetwork.org, 2011). With the growing population and con­

sumption have come deforestation, depletion of wild fish stocks, and

climate destabilization. Some crew members are especially demand­

ing. For all 7 billion to live the average American lifestyle would require

five Planet Earths. In 1960, the spaceship Earth carried 3 billion people and 127 million

motor vehicles. Today, it has more than 7 billion people and nearly

1 billion motor vehicles (Davis & others, 2011). The greenhouse gases

emitted by motor vehicles, along with the burning of coal and oil to

generate electricity and heat homes and buildings, are changing the

Earth's climate. To ascertain how much and how fast climate change

is occurring, several thousand scientists worldwide have collaborated

to create and review the evidence via the Intergovernmental Panel on

Psychology and climate change

Enabling sustainable living

The social psychology of materialism and wealth

Postscript: How does one live responsibly in the modern world?

588 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

FIGURE :: 16.1 A synopsis of scientific indicators of global climate change.

Soi/rce. From John Cook (2010, and skepticalscience.com).

Climate Change (IPCC). The past chair of its scientific assessment committee, John

Houghton (2011), reports that their conclusions-supported by the national acade­

mies of science of the world's 11 most developed countries-are undergirded by the

most "thoroughly researched and reviewed" scientific effort in human history.

As the IPCC reports, and Figure 16.1 illustrates, converging evidence verifies cli-

mate change:

• A warming greenhouse gas blanket is growing. About half the carbon dioxide

emitted by human activity since the Industrial Revolution (since 1750) remains in

the atmosphere (Royal Society, 2010).

• There is now 39 percent more atmospheric carbon dioxide and 158 percent

more atmospheric methane than before industrial times-and the increase

has recently accelerated (World Meteorological Organization, 2011). As the

permafrost thaws, methane gas release threatens to compound the problem

(Gillis,2011).

• Sea and air temperatures are rising. The numbers-the facts-have no political

leanings. Every decade since the 1970s has been warmer than the one preced­

ing It, with 9 of the 10 warmest years on record since 2001 (Royal Society, 2010;

Figure 16.2). If the world were not warming, random weather variations should

produce equal numbers of record-breaking high and low temperatures. In real­

ity, record highs have been greatly outnumbering record lows—by about

Social Psychology and the Sustainable Future Chapter 16 589

s.

!

r

r

Global temperature anomalies (°C)

Year

FIGURE :: 16.2 The warming world. Since 1980, global temperatures have trended upward, with record high temperatures greatly outnumbering record lows (NASA, 20111.

r 2 to 1 in the United States, for example (Meehl & others, 2009). After amassing

I 1.6 billion temperature reports from more than 39,000 weather stations, one­ time climate change skeptic Richard Muller (2011} became convinced: "Global

warming is real."

• Various plant and animal species are migrating. In response to the warming

world, they are creeping northward and upward, with anticipated loss of biodi­

versity (Harley, 2011; Houghton, 2011).

• The Arctic sea ice is melting. The late-summer ice cover has shrunk from nearly

3 million square miles in the late 1970s to 1.67 million square miles in 2011

(Figure 16.3). The West Antarctica and Greenland glacial ice sheets are also

melting—faster than ever (Kerr, 2011).

• The seas are rising. Ocean water expands as it warms. Moreover, what happens

in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic. Projections of rising sea levels portend

large problems for coastal and low-lying areas, including Pakistan, southern

China, and Indian and Pacific Ocean islands (Houghton, 2011).

• Extreme weather is increasing. Any single weather event—even the record

European heat of 2010, or the record 2011 Mississippi floods, Missouri torna­

does, and Texas heat and drought—cannot be attributed to climate change.

Weird weather happens. Nevertheless, climate scientists predict that global

warming will make extreme weather events—hurricanes, heat waves, droughts,

590 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

Extent (million square kilometers)

Year

FIGURE :: 16.3 The shrinking ice cap. The National Snow and ice Data Center and NASA show the September 2011, minimum Arctic ice sheet compared with the median 1979 to 2000 minimum ice sheet. The figure depicts the shrinking September ice sheet year by year.

and floods—more intense (Kerr, 2011 b). As precipitation in a warming and wet­

ter world falls more as rain and less as snow, the likely result will be rainy season

floods and less dry season snow and ice melt to sustain rivers.

PSYCHOLOGY AND CLIMATE CHANGE Identify possible psychological consequences of continuing or even accelerating climate change. Summarize the gap between scientific and public understandings of climate change and possible reasons for this difference.

Throughout its history, social psychology has responded to human events—to the civil rights era with studies of stereotyping and prejudice, to years of civil unrest and increasing crime with studies of aggression, to the women's movement with stud­ ies of gender development and gender-related attitudes. If global climate change is now "the greatest problem the world faces" (Houghton, 2011), surely we will see more and more studies of the likely effects of climate change on human behavior, of public opinion about climate change, and of ways to modify the human sources of climate change. Already, such inquiry is under way.

Psychological Effects of Climate Change It's a national security issue, say some: Terrorist bombs and climate change are both weapons of mass destruction. "If we learned that al Qaeda was secretly developing a new terrorist technique that could disrupt water supplies around the globe, force tens of millions from their homes and potentially endanger our entire planet, we would be aroused into a frenzy and deploy every possible asset to neutralize the threat," observed essayist Nicholas Kristof (2007). "Yet that is precisely the threat that we're creating ourselves, with our greenhouse gases." Consider the human consequences.

591Social Psychology and the Sustainable Future

DISPLACEMENT AND TRAUMA In 2010,42 million people were forced by natural disasters to leave their homes—up from 17 million in 2009. More than 90 percent of these displacements were caused by weather-related hazards, making climate-related displacement "the defining challenge of our times," said Antonio Guerres, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (Amland, 2011).

If temperatures increase by the expected 2° to 4° Celsius this century, the result­ ing changes in water availability, agriculture, disaster risk, and sea level will neces­ sitate massive resettlement (de Sherbinin & others, 2011). When drought or floods force people to leave their land, shelter, and work, as when sub-Saharan African farming and grazing lands become desert, the frequent result is increased poverty and hunger, earlier death, and loss of cultural identity. If an extreme weather event or climate change disrupted your ties to a place and its people, you could expect to feel grief, anxiety, and a sense of loss (Doherty & Clayton, 2011). For social and mental health, climate matters.

CLIMATE AND CONFLICT Got war? Blame the climate. Such is often the case, notes Jeffrey Sachs (2006). The recent deadly carnage in Darfur, Sudan, for example, had its roots in drought and the competition for water. And so it has happened across history. Many human maladies—from economic downturns to wars—have been traced to climate fluctu­ ations (Zhang & others, 2011). When the climate changes, agriculture often suffers, leading to increased famine, epidemics, and overall misery. Poorer countries, with fewer resources, are especially vulnerable to climate-produced misery (Fischer & Van de Vliert, 2011). And when miserable, people become more prone to anger with their governments and with one another, leading to war. For social stability, climate matters.

As Chapter 11 explained, studies both in the laboratory and in everyday life reveal that heat also amplifies short-term aggression. On hot days, neigh­ borhood violence, and even batters hit by pitches in baseball games, become more frequent. Violence is also more common in hotter seasons of the year, hot­ ter summers, hotter years, hotter cities, and hotter regions (Anderson & Delisi, 2010). Craig Anderson and his colleagues project that if a 4-degree-Fahrenheit

Chapter 16

Is the weather getting weirder? In 2011, reported NOAA, the United States experienced a dozen billion dollar weather disasters, sharply up from the more typical three or four. No single weather event, such as the massive Joplin, Missouri, tornado shown here, can be attributed to climate change. But climate scientists warn that global warming will produce increasing extreme weather events and increased human displacement and trauma.

592 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

(about 2°C) warming occurs, the United States will suffer at least 50,000 more serious assaults each year.

Public Opinion About Climate Change Is the Earth getting warmer? Are humans responsible? Will it matter to our grand­ children? Yes, yes, and yes, say published climate scientists—97 percent of whom agree that climate change is occurring and is human caused (Anderegg & others, 2010). As one report in Science explained, "Almost all climate scientists are of one mind about the threat of global warming: It's real, it's dangerous, and the world needs to take action immediately" (Kerr, 2009).

In response, the European Community, Australia, and India have all passed either a carbon tax on coal or a carbon emissions trading system, and even China now has a limited plan that will make polluters pay for excess pollution. In China, India, and South Korea, a 2010 Pew survey found more than 70 percent of people willing to address climate change by paying more for energy—compared with only 38 percent in the United States (Rosenthal, 2011).

In 2011, only 38 percent of Americans likewise agreed that there is "solid evi­ dence" of human-caused global warming (Pew, 2011). And in 2011, their doubts supported a 240 to 184 U.S. House of Representatives vote defeating a resolution stating that "climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for public health and welfare" (McKibben, 2011).

The enormous gulf between the scientific and U.S. public understandings of climate change intrigues social psychologists. Why the gap? Why is global warm­ ing not a hotter topic? And what might be done to align scientific and public imderstandings?

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AND THE AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC

By now, it's a familiar lesson: vivid and recent experiences often overwhelm abstract statistics. Despite knowing the statistical rarity of shark attacks and plane crashes, vivid images of such—being readily available in memory—often hijack our emotions and distort our judgments. We make our intuitive judgments imder the influence of the availability heuristic—and thus we often fear the wrong things. If an airline misplaces our bag, we likely will overweight our immediate experi­ ence; ignoring data on the airline's overall lost-bag rate, we belittle the airline. Our ancient brains come designed to attend to the immediate situation, not out-of-sight data and beyond-the-horizon dangers (Gifford, 2011).

Likewise, people will often scorn global warming in the face of a winter freeze. One climate skeptic declared a record East Coast blizzard "a coup de grace" for global warming (Breckler, 2010). In a May 2011 survey, 47 percent of Americans agreed that "The record snowstorms this winter in the eastern United States make me question whether global warming is occurring" (Leiserowitz & others, 2011b). But then after the ensuing blistering summer, 67 percent of Americans agreed that global warming worsened the "record high summer temperatures in the U.S. in 2011" (Leiserowitz, 2011). In studies in the United States and Australia, people have expressed more belief in global warming, and more willingness to donate to a global warming charity, on warmer-than-usual days than on cooler-than-usual days (Li & others, 2011). As in so many life realms, our local experience distorts our global judgments.

LACKING COMPREHENSION As you may recall from Chapter 7, persuasive messages must first be understood. Thanks in part to the media's mixed messages—its framing of two opposing sides: those concerned about and those dismissive of climate change—only 39 percent of Americans in 2011 believed that "Most scientists think global warm­ ing is happening." More perceived "a lot of disagreement among scientists" or

Social Psychology and the Sustainable Future Chapter 16 593

didn't know enough to say (Leiserowitz & others, 2011). Perceiving uncertainty, and reassured by the natural human optimism bias, people discount the threat (Gifford, 2011).

People also exhibit a "system justification" tendency—a tendency to believe in and justify the way things are in their culture, and thus, especially when comfort­ able, to not want to change the familiar status quo (Feygina & others, 2010). We tend to like our habitual ways of living—of traveling, of eating, and of heating and cool­ ing our spaces.

More encouraging news comes from an experiment that showed people the global temperature trend in Figure 16.2. Regardless of their prior assumptions about global climate change, people were able to understand the trend and project it into the near future—and to adjust their beliefs. Education matters.

We also benefit from framing energy savings in attention-getting ways. An infor­ mation sheet or store sign might read, "If you do not install CFL light bulbs, you will lose $____." And use long time periods. Instead of saying, "This Energy Star refrigerator will save you $120 a year on your electric bills, say it "will save you $2,400 in wasted energy bills over the next 20 years" (Hofmeister, 2010).

"ONE DAY FAIRLY SOON

WE WILL ALL GO BELLY

UP LIKE GUPPIES IN A

NEGLECTED FISHBOWL.

I SUGGEST AN EPITAPH

FOR THE WHOLE

PLANET:...'WE COULD

HAVE SAVED IT, BUT WE

WERE TOO DARN CHEAP

AND LAZY."'

-KURTVONNEGUT, "NOTES

FROM MY BED OF GLOOM,"

1990

SUMMING UP: Psychology and • Scientists report that exploding population and

increasing consumption and greenhouse gas emis­ sions have together exceeded the Earth's carrying capacity. We now are seeing the predicted begin­ nings of global warming, melting polar ice, rising seas, and more extreme weather.

• Expected social consequences of climate change include human displacement and trauma and

Climate Change conflict stemming from competition over scarce resources.

• Social psychologists are also exploring the gap between scientific and public understandings of climate change, and they are suggesting ways to educate the public and to encourage a flourishing human future in a sustainable world.

ENABLING SUSTAINABLE LIVING Identify new technologies and strategies for reducing consumption that together may enable sustainable living.

What shall we do? Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow is doom? Behave as so many participants have in prisoners' dilemma games, by pursuing self-interest to our collective detriment? ("Heck, on a global scale, my consumption is infinitesi­ mal; it makes my life comfortable and costs the world practically nothing.") Wring our hands, dreading that fertility plus prosperity equals calamity, and vow never to bring children into a doomed world?

Those more optimistic about the future see two routes to sustainable lifestyles: (a) increasing technological efficiency and agricultural productivity, and (b) moder­ ating consumption and population.

New Technologies One component in a sustainable future is improved technologies. We have not only replaced incandescent bulbs with energy-saving ones, but replaced printed and delivered letters and catalogs with email and e-commerce, and replaced commuter miles driven with telecommuting.

"NO ONE MADE A

GREATER MISTAKE THAN

HE WHO DID NOTHING

BECAUSE HE COULD ONLY

DOALimE."

—EDMUND BURKE.

18TH CENTURY BRJ.TISH

PHILOSOPHER

594 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

When driving, today's middle-aged adults drive cars that get twice the mileage and produce a twentieth of the pollution of the ones they drove as teenagers, and new hybrid and battery-driven cars promise greater efficiency.

Plausible future technologies include diodes that emit light for 20 years with­ out bulbs; ultrasound washing machines that consume no water, heat, or soap; reusable and compostable plastics; cars running on fuel cells that combine hydrogen and oxygen and produce water exhaust; lightweight materials stronger than steel; roofs and roads that double as solar energy collectors; and

Capturing light in a bottle, lilac Diaz inspects a new solar light bulb sealed into the ^^^^ed and cooled chairs that provide corrugated roof of a Manila apartment. personal comfort with less heating and

cooling of rooms {N. Myers, 2000; Zhang & others, 2007).

Some energy solutions are low-tech. One Philippine nonprofit is working with the government and volunteers to install zero-energy solar light bulbs in one million low-income homes. The "bulbs" are nothing more than discarded clear plastic soda bottles that, when filled with water and wedged in a hole in the roof—with half the bottle exposed to the sun and half jutting into the room— transmit 55 watts of light. The result? Daytime light is provided without electric­ ity bills (Orendain, 2011).

Given the speed of innovation (who could have imagined today's world a cen- tury ago?), the future will surely bring solutions that we aren't yet imagining. Surely, say the optimists, the future will bring increased material well-being for more people while requiring fewer raw materials and creating much less polluting waste.

Reducing Consumption The second component of a sustainable future is controlling consumption. Unless we argue that today's less-developed countries are somehow less deserving of an improved standard of living, we must anticipate that their consumption will increase. As it does, the United States and other developed countries must consume less.

Thanks to family planning efforts, the world's population growth rate has decel­ erated, especially in developed nations. Even in less-developed countries, when food security has improved and women have become educated and empowered, birth rates have fallen. But if birth rates everywhere instantly fell to a replacement level of 2.1 children per woman, the lingering momentum of population growth, fueled by the bulge of younger humans, would continue for years to come. In 1960, after tens of thousands of years on the spaceship Earth, there were 3 billion people—which is also the number that demographers expect the human popula­ tion to grow in just this century.

With this population size, humans have already overshot the Earth's carrying capacity, so consumption must also moderate. With our material appetites con­ tinually swelling—as more people seek personal computers, refrigeration, air- conditioning, jet travel—what can be done to moderate consumption by those who can afford to overconsume?

Social Psychology and the Sustainable Future Chapter 16 595

INCENTIVES One way is through public policies that harness the motivating power of incentives. As a general rule, we get less of what is taxed, and more of what is rewarded. On jammed highways, high-occupancy vehicle lanes reward carpooling and penalize driving solo. Gregg Easterbrook (2004) noted that if the United States had raised its gasoline tax by 50 cents a decade ago, as was proposed, the country would now have smaller, more fuel-efficient cars (as do the Europeans, with their higher petrol taxes) and would therefore import less oil. This, in turn, would have led to lower oil consumption, less global warming, lower gas prices, less money flowing to petro- dictators, and a smaller trade deficit weighing down the economy.

Europe leads the way in incentivizing mass transit and bicycle use over personal vehicle use. In addition to the small vehicles incentivized by high fuel taxes, cities such as Vienna, Munich, Zurich, and Copenhagen have closed many city center streets to car traffic. London and Stockholm drivers pay congestion fees when enter­ ing the heart of the city. Amsterdam is a bicycle haven. Dozens of German cities have "environmental zones" where only low CO2 cars may enter (Rosenthal, 2011). The Netherlands has even experimented with a car meter that would tax drivers a fee for miles driven, rather like paying a phone fee for minutes talked (Rosenthal, 2011b).

Some free-market proponents object to carbon taxes because they are taxes. Oth­ ers respond that carbon taxes are simply payment for external damage to today's health and tomorrow's environment. If not today's CO2 emitters, who should pay for the cost of tomorrow's more threatening floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, droughts, and sea rise? "Markets are truly free only when everyone pays the full price for his or her actions," contends Environmental Defense Fund economist Gernot Wagner (2011). "Anything else is socialism."

FEEDBACK Another way to encourage greener homes and businesses is to harness the power of immediate feedback to the consumer by installing "smart meters" that provide a continuous readout of electricity use and its cost. Turn off a computer monitor or the lights in an empty room, and the meter displays the decreased wattage. Turn on the air-conditioning, and you immediately know the usage and cost. In Britain, where smart meters are being installed in businesses. Conservative Party leader David Cameron has supported a plan to have them installed in all homes. "Smart meters have the power to revolutionize people's relationship with the energy they use," he said to Parliament (Rosenthal, 2008).

U.S. studies have shown that when an energy supplier sticks a "smiley" or "frowny" face on home energy bills when the consumer's energy use is less or more than the neighborhood average, energy use is reduced (Schultz & others, 2007; Van Vugt, 2009). Sacramento's Municipal Utility District has sent bills to randomly selected customers, rating their energy use compared with neighbors in similar­ sized homes and with their most efficient neighbors (Figure 16.4), and giving sug­ gestions for energy savings. By the second year, high-consumption households were using nearly 3 percent less electricity (Provencher & Klos, 2010).

IDENTITY In one survey, the top reason people gave for buying a Prius hybrid car was that it "makes a statement about me" (Clayton & Myers, 2009, p. 9). Indeed, argue Tom Crompton and Tim Kasser (2010), our sense of who we are—our identity—has profound implications for our climate-related behaviors. Does our social identity, the ingroup that defines our circle of concern, include only those around us now? Or does it encompass vulnerable people in places unseen, our descendants and others in the future, and even the creatures in the planet's natu­ ral environment?

596 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

Last 2 months neighbor comparison You used 229% MORE electricity than your neighbors.

How you are

Efficient neighbors

All neighbors

YOU 3,082

*kWh : A 100-watt bulb burning for 10 hours uses 1 Kilowatt-hour

You used more than average

Turn over for ways to save

Who are your neighbors?

m All neighbors Approximately 100 occupied nearby homes (avg. 0.62 miles away) that have electric heat

■ Efficient neighbors The more efficient 20 percent from the "All neighbors" group

Last 12 months neighbor comparison You used 166% MORE electricity than your neighbors.

This costs you about $1,541 EXTRA per year. V

YOU

All neighbors

Efficient neighbors

Months

FIGURE:: 16.4 Sample feedback to selected Sacramento electricity users.

Support for new energy policies will require a shift in public consciousness not unlike that occurring during the 1960s civil rights movement and the 1970s wom­ en's movement. Yale University environmental science dean James Gustave Speth (2008) is calling for an enlarged identity—a "new consciousness"—in which people

• see humanity as part of nature. • see nature as having intrinsic value that we must steward. • value the future and its inhabitants as well as our present. • appreciate our human interdependence, by thinking "we" and not just "me. • define quality of life in relational and spiritual rather than materialistic terms. • value equity, justice, and the human community.

Is there any hope that human priorities might shift from accumulating money to finding meaning, and from aggressive consumption to nurturing connections? The British government's plan for achieving sustainable development includes an emphasis on promoting personal well-being and social health (Figure 16.5). Per­ haps social psychology can help point the way to greater well-being, by suggest­ ing ways to reduce consumption—and also by documenting materialism, by informing people that economic growth does not automatically improve human morale, and by help­ ing people understand why materialism and money fail to satisfy and encoura^ng alternative, intrinsic values.

Social Psychology and the Sustainable Future Chapter 16 597

Living vyithin Environmental Limits Respecting the limits of the planet’s environment, resources and biodiversity— to improve our environment and ensure that the natural resources needed for life are unimpaired and remain so for future generations.

Ensuring a Strong, Healthy and Just Society Meeting the diverse needs of all people in existing and future communities, promoting personal well-being, social cohesion and inclusion, and creating equal opportunity for alt.

Achieving a Sustainable Economy Building a strong, stable and sustainable economy which provides prosperity and opportunities for all, and in which environmental and social costs fall on those who impose them (Polluter Pays), and efficient resource use is incentivised.

Using Sound Science Responsibly Ensuring policy is developed and implemented on the basis of strong scientific evidence, whilst taking into account scientific uncertainty (through the Precautionary Principle) as welt as public attitudes and values.

Promoting Good Governance Actively promoting effective, participative systems of governance in all levels of society— engaging people's creativity, energy, and diversity.

FIGURE :: 16.5 The "Shared UK Principles of Sustainable Development" The British government defines sustainable development as development that meets present needs without compromising future generations' abilities to meet their needs. "We want to live within environmental limits and achieve a just society, and we will do so by means of sustainable economy, good governance, and sound science." Social psychology's contribution will be to help influence behaviors that enable people to live within environmental limits and to enjoy personal and social well-being.

Source; www.sustainable- development.gov.uk, 2005.

SUMMING UP: Enabling Sustainable Living • Humanity can prepare for a sustainable future by

increasing technological efficiency. • We can also create incentives, give feedback, and

promote identities that will support more sustainable

consumption. Rapid cultural change has hap­ pened in the past 40 years, and there is hope that in response to the global crisis it can happen again.

THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF MATERIALISM AND WEALTH

Explain social psychology's contribution to our understanding of changing materialism: To what extent do money and consumption buy happiness? And why do materialism and economic growth not bring enduringly greater satisfaction?

Despite the recent economic recession, life for most people in Western countries is good. Today the average North American enjoys luxuries unknown even to royalty in centuries past: hot showers, flush toilets, central air-conditioning, microwave ovens, jet travel, wintertime fresh fruit, big-screen digital television, e-mail, and Post-it notes. Does money—and such associated luxuries—^buy happiness? Few of

598 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

us would answer yes. But ask a different question—"Would a little more money make you a little happier?"—and most of us will say yes. There is, we believe, a con­ nection between wealth and well-being. That belief feeds what Juliet Schor (1998) has called the "cycle of work and spend"—working more to buy more.

Increased Materialism Although the Earth asks that we live more lightly upon it, materialism has surged, most clearly in the United States. Think of it as today's American dream: life, lib­ erty, and the purchase of happiness.

Such materialism surged during the 1970s and 1980s. The most dramatic evi­ dence comes from the UCLA/American Council on Education annual survey of nearly a quarter million entering collegians. The proportion considering it "very important or essential" that they become "very well-off financially" rose from 39 percent in 1970 to 77 percent in 2010 (Figure 16.6). Those proportions virtually flip-flopped with those who considered it very important to "develop a meaningful philosophy of life." Materialism was up, spirituality down.

What a change in values! Among 19 listed objectives, new American collegians in most recent years have ranked becoming "very well-off financially" number 1. That outranks not only developing a life philosophy but also "becoming an author­ ity in my own field," "helping others in difficulty," and "raising a family."

Wealth and Well-Being Does sustainable consumption indeed enable "the good life?" Does being well-off produce—or at least correlate with—psychological well-being? Would people be happier if they could exchange a simple lifestyle for one with palatial surroundings.

FIGURE :: 16.6 Changing Materialism, from Annual Surveys of More than 200,000 Entering U.S. Collegians (total sample 13 million students) Source: Data from Dey, Astin, & Korn, 1991, and subsequent annual reports.

599Social Psychology and the Sustainable Future Chapter 16

Mean life satisfaction ladder

•SAU-

NZL • ESP

■*n7r

SWE ‘NOR •IRL •USA

JtARG • GRC • CYP

iBR •ARE

•DEtJSGP

•SVN • KOR

• PRT

• KWT

>HKG

• JPN

10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 GDP per capita in 2005 (constant 2000 US$)

FIGURE :: 16.7 National Wealth and Well-Being Life satisfaction (on a 0 to 10 ladder) across 132 countries, as a function of national wealth (2005 gross domestic product, adjusted to the 2000 U.S. dollar value). Source; From Di Telia & MacCullough (2008).

ski vacations in the Alps, and executive-class travel? Would you be happier if you won a sweepstakes and could choose from its suggested indulgences: a 40-foot yacht, deluxe motor home, designer wardrobe, luxury car, or private housekeeper? Social-psychological theory and evidence offer some answers.

ARE WEALTHY COUNTRIES HAPPIER? We can observe the traffic between wealth and well-being by asking, first, if rich nations are happier places. There is, indeed, some correlation between national wealth and well-being (measured as self-reported happiness and life satisfaction). The Scandinavians have been mostly prosperous and satisfied; the Bulgarians are neither (Figure 16.7). But after nations reached above $20,000 GDP per person, higher levels of national wealth are not predictive of increased life satisfaction.

ARE WEALTHIER INDIVIDUALS HAPPIER? We can ask, second, whether within any given nation, rich people are happier. Are people who drive their BMWs to work happier than those who take the bus? In poor countries—where low income threatens basic needs—being relatively well-off does predict greater well-being (Howell & Howell, 2008). In affluent countries, where most can afford life's necessities, affluence still matters—partly because people with more money perceive more control over their lives Qohnson & Krueger, 2006). But after a comfortable income level is reached, more and more money produces diminishing long-term returns. In Gallup surveys of more than 450,000 Americans during 2008 and 2009, daily positive feelings (the average of self-reported happi­ ness, enjoyment, and frequent smiling and laughter) increased with income up to, but not beyond, $75,000 (Kahneman & Deaton, 2010). The same was true for the absence of negative feelings of worry and sadness (Figure 16.8). In worldwide Gal­ lup surveys across 123 countries, it's close relationships and feeling empowered and competent that predict subjective well-being (Tay & Diener, 2011). When those basic needs are met, more money adds little.

600 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

FIGURE :: 16.8 The Diminishing Effects of Increasing Income on Positive and Negative Feelings Data from Gallup surveys of more than 450,000 Americans (Kahneman & Deaton, 2010). (Note; income is reported on a log scale, which tends to accentuate the appearance of correlation between income and well-being.)

Fraction of population experiencing

"I ALWAYS IN THE BACK OF

MY MIND FIGURED A LOT

OF MONEY WILL BUY YOU

A LITTLE BIT OF HAPPINESS.

BUT IT'S NOT REALLY

TRUE."

-GOOGLE BILLIONAIRE

COFOUNDER SERGEY

BRIN,2006

Even the super-rich—the Forbes 100 wealthiest Americans—have reported only slightly greater happiness than average (Diener & others, 1985). And winning a state lottery seems not to enduringly elevate well-being (Brickman & others, 1978). Such jolts of joy have "a short half-life," notes Richard Ryan (1999).

IS THE WEALTHIER TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY HAPPIER?

We can ask, third, whether, over time, a culture's happiness rises with its affluence. Does our collective well-being float upward with a rising economic tide?

In 1957, as economist John Kenneth Galbraith was describing the United States as The Affluent Society, Americans' per-person income was (in 2005 dollars) about $12,000. Today, as Figure 16.9 indicates, the United States is a triply affluent society. Although this rising tide has lifted the yachts faster than the dinghies, nearly all boats have risen. With double the spending power, thanks partly to the surge in married women's employment, we now own twice as many cars per person, eat out twice as often, and are supported by a whole new world of technology. Since 1960 we have also seen the proportion of households with dishwashers rise from 7 to 60 percent, with clothes dryers rise from 20 to 74 percent, and with air-conditioning rise from 15 to 86 percent (Bureau of the Census, 2009).

So, believing that it's "very important" to "be very well-off financially," and having become better off financially, are today's Americans happier? Are they happier with espresso coffee, caller ID, camera cell phones, and suitcases on wheels than before?

They are not. Since 1957 the number of Americans who say they are "very happy" has declined slightly: from 35 to 29 percent. Twice as rich and apparently no happier. The same has been true of many other countries as well (Easterlin & others, 2010). After a decade of extraordinary economic growth in China—from few owning a phone and 40 percent owning a color television to most people now having such things—Gallup surveys revealed a decreasing proportion of people sat­ isfied "with the way things are going in your life today" (Burkholder, 2005).

The findings are startling because they challenge modern materialism: Eco­ nomic growth has provided no apparent boost to humans. More than ever, we have big houses and broken homes, high incomes and modest happiness. We excel at mak­ ing a living but often fail at making a life. We celebrate our prosperity but yearn for purpose. We cherish our freedoms but long for connection.

601Social Psychology and the Sustainable Future Chapter 16

« FIGURE :: 16,9 Has Economic Growth Advanced Human Morale? While inflation-adjusted income has risen, self-reported happiness has not. Source: Happiness data from General Social Surveys, National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago. Income data from Bureau of the Census (1975) and Bcor)ornic Indicators.

Materialism Fails to Satisfy It is striking that economic growth in affluent countries has failed to satisfy. It is further striking that individuals who strive most for wealth tend to live with lower well-being. This finding "comes through very strongly in every culture I've looked at," reported Richard Ryan (1999). Seek extrinsic goals—wealth, beauty, popular­ ity, prestige, or anything else centered on external rewards or approval—and you may find anxiety, depression, and psychosomatic ills (Eckersley, 2005; Sheldon &

Today's material comforts in China; people shopping for laptops and other increasingly valuable goods. Despite increasing incomes, the percentage of Chinese who feel satisfied with their lives has declined.

602 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

"WHY DO YOU SPEND

YOUR MONEY FOR THAT

WHICH IS NOT BREAD,

AND YOUR LABOR FOR

THAT WHICH DOES NOT

SATISFY?"

-ISAIAH 55:2

adaptation-level phenomenon The tendency to adapt to a given level of stimulation and thus to notice and react to changes from that level.

others, 2004). Those who instead strive for intrinsic goals such as "intimacy, per­ sonal growth, and contribution to the community" experience a higher quality of life, concludes Tim Kasser (2000, 2002). Intrinsic values, Kasser (2011) adds, pro­ mote personal and social well-being and help immunize people against material­ istic values. Those focused on close relationships, meaningful work, and concern for others enjoy inherent rewards that often prove elusive to those more focused on things or on their status and image.

Pause a moment and think: What is the most personally satisfying event that you experienced in the last month? Kennon Sheldon and his colleagues (2001) put that question (and similar questions about the last week and semester) to samples of university students. Then they asked them to rate the extent to which 10 different needs were met by the satisfying event. The students rated self-esteem, relatedness (feeling connected with others), and autonomy (feeling in control) as the emotional needs that most strongly accompanied the satisfying event. At the bottom of the list of factors predicting satisfaction were money and luxury.

People who identify themselves with expensive possessions experience fewer positive moods, report Emily Solberg, Ed Diener, and Michael Robinson (2003). Such materialists tend to report a relatively large gap between what they want and what they have, and to enjoy fewer close, fulfilling relationships. Wealthier people also tend to savor life's simpler pleasures less (Quoidbach & others, 2010). Sipping tea with a friend, savoring a chocolate, finishing a project, discovering a waterfall while hiking may pale alongside the luxuries enabled by wealth.

People focused on extrinsic and material goals also "focus less on caring for the Earth," reports Kasser (2011). "As materialistic values go up, concern for nature tends to go down.... When people strongly endorse money, image, and status, they are less likely to engage in ecologically beneficial activities like riding bikes, recycling, and re-using things in new ways."

But why do yesterday's luxuries, such as air-conditioning and television, so quickly become today's requirements? Two principles drive this psychology of consumption; our ability to adapt and our need to compare.

OUR HUMAN CAPACITY FOR ADAPTATION The adaptation-level phenomenon is our tendency to judge our experience (for example, of sounds, temperatures, or income) relative to a neutral level defined by our prior experience. We adjust our neutral levels—the points at which sounds seem neither loud nor soft, temperatures neither hot nor cold, events neither pleas­ ant nor unpleasant—on the basis of our experience. We then notice and react to up or down changes from those levels.

Thus, as our achievements rise above past levels, we feel successful and satisfied. As our social prestige, income, or in-home technology improves, we feel pleasure. Before long, however, we adapt. What once felt good comes to register as neutral, and what formerly was neutral now feels like deprivation.

Would it ever, then, be possible to create a social paradise? Donald Campbell (1975b) answered no: If you woke up tomorrow to your utopia—perhaps a world with no bills, no ills, someone who loves you unreservedly—you would feel euphoric, for a time. Yet before long, you would recalibrate your adaptation level and again sometimes feel gratified (when achievements surpass expectations), sometimes feel deprived (when they fall below), and sometimes feel neutral.

To be sure, adaptation to some events, such as the death of a spouse, may be incomplete, as the sense of loss lingers (Diener & others, 2006). Yet, as Chapter 2 explained, we generally underestimate our adaptive capacity. People have diffi­ culty predicting the intensity and duration of their future positive and negative emotions (Wilson & Gilbert, 2003; Figure 16.10). The elation from getting what we want—riches, top exam scores, the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series— evaporates more rapidly than we expect.

Social Psychology and the Sustainable Future Chapter 16 603

FIGURE :: 16.10 The Impact Bias As explained in Chapter 2, people generally overestimate the enduring impact of significant positive and negative life events.

Source: Figure inspired by de Botton, 2004.

We also sometimes "miswant." When first-year university students predicted their satisfaction with various housing possibilities shortly before entering their school's housing lottery, they focused on physical features. "I'll be happiest in a beautiful and well-located dorm," many students seemed to think. But they were wrong. When contacted a year later, it was the social features, such as a sense of community, that predicted happiness, report Elizabeth Dunn and her colleagues (2003). Likewise, Leaf Van Boven and Thomas Gilovich (2003) report from their surveys and experiments that positive experiences (often social experiences) leave us happier. The best things in life are not things.

OUR WANTING TO COMPARE Much of life revolves around social comparison, a point made by the old joke about two hikers who meet a bear. One reaches into his backpack and pulls out a pair of sneakers. "Why bother putting those on?" asks the other. "You can't outrun a bear." "I don't have to outrun the bear," answers the first. "I just have to outrun you."

Similarly, happiness is rela­ tive to our comparisons with oth­ ers, especially those within our own groups (Lyubomirsky, 2001; Zagefka & Brown, 2005). Whether we feel good or bad depends on whom we're comparing our­ selves with. We are slow-witted or clumsy only when others are smart or agile. Let one professional athlete sign a new contract for $15 million a year and an $8-million- a-year teammate may now feel less satisfied. "Our poverty became a reality. Not because of our having

'O.K., if you can'l see your way to giving me a fay raise, bow about giving Rirkerson a fay cutV

social comparison Evaluating one's abilities and opinions by comparing oneself with others.

Social comparisons foster feelings. ® Barbara Smaller/The New Yorker Collection/www.canoonbank.com •

604 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

focus Social Comparison, Belonging, and Happiness

Mfezy was born in a South African village. She grew up in a family where there was no money for luxuries, yet she never felt herself to be poor. What she did know, from early childhood, was the truth of the Xhosa saying— "Umntu ngumtu ngaabantu," which translated means "a person is made by other people."

When Mfezy wanted to start a master's degree in psy­ chology at Rhodes University, she was asked at an inter­ view about how, coming from such a poor background herself, she could understand better-off people. She replied that she did not come from a "poor" background.

The word "poor" was, she felt, only attached as a label by better-off people. She told her interviewers that the vil­ lage community that she came from was all family. Every woman in the community was like a mother to her. Each carried responsibility for her well-being. She felt held in a wide love. In such a situation how could she be "poor"? Mfezy did not seek to romanticize poverty in any way, yet neither had she felt "poor"—even in times of hardship.

Source: From Peter Millar's Cuguletu Journal, The Iona Community.

Times of increased inequality tend, for many, to be times of diminished perceived fairness and happiness.

less, but by our neighbors having more," recalled Will Campbell in Brother to a Dragonfly. (See "Focus On: Social Comparison, Belonging, and Happiness.")

Further feeding our luxury fever is the tendency to compare upward: As we climb the ladder of success or affluence, we mostly compare ourselves with peers who are at or above our current level, not with those who have less. People living in commu­ nities where a few residents are very wealthy tend to feel envy and less satisfaction as they compare upward (Fiske, 2011).

In developed and emerging economies worldwide, inequal­ ity has grown in recent years. In the 34 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 2011) coun­ tries, the richest 10 percent now average nine times the income of the poorest 10 percent. (The gap is less in the Scandinavian countries, and is substantially greater in Israel, Turkey, the United States, Mexico, and Chile.) Countries with greater inequality not only have greater health and social problems, but also higher rates of mental illness (Pickett & Wilkinson, 2011). Likewise, U.S. states with greater inequality have higher rates of depression (Messias & others, 2011). And over time, years with more income inequality—and associated increases in per­ ceived unfairness and lack of trust—correlate with less happi­ ness among those with lower incomes (Oishi & others, 2011).

Although people often prefer the economic policies in place, a national survey found that Americans overwhelmingly pre­ ferred the income distribution on the right of Figure 16.11 (which, unbeknownst to the respondents, happened to be Sweden's income distribution) to the one on the left (which happened to be the United States' income distribution). More­ over, people preferred (in an ideal world) the top 20 percent income share ranging between 30 and 40 percent (rather than the actual 84 percent), with modest differences between Republicans and Democrats and between those making less than $50,000 and more than $100,000 (Norton & Ariely, 2011).

Even in China, income inequality has grown. This helps explain why rising affluence has not produced increased happiness—there or elsewhere. Rising income inequality, noted Michael Hagerty (2000), makes for more people who have rich

Social Psychology and the Sustainable Future Chapter 16 605

■ Top 20% ■ 2nd 20% B 3rd 20% B 4th 20% ■ 5th 20%

8% prefer this 92% prefer this

FIGURE :: 16.11 In an ideal society, what would be the level of income inequality? A survey of Americans provided a surprising consensus that a more equal distribution of wealth—like that shown on the right (which happened to be Sweden's distribution) would be preferable to the American status quo (shown on the left).

neighbors. Television's modeling of the lifestyles of the wealthy also serves to accen­ tuate feelings of "relative deprivation" and desires for more (Schor, 1998).

The adaptation-level and social-comparison phenomena give us pause. They imply that the quest for happiness through material achievement requires continu­ ally expanding affluence. But the good news is that adaptation to simpler lives can also happen. If we shrink our consumption by choice or by necessity, we will ini­ tially feel a pinch, but the pain likely will pass. "Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning," reflected the Psalmist. Indeed, thanks to our capacity to adapt and to adjust comparisons, the emotional impact of significant life events—losing a job or even a disabling accident—dissipates sooner than most people suppose (Gilbert & others, 1998).

As individuals and as a global society, we face difficult social and political issues. How might a democratic society induce people to adopt values that emphasize psychological well-being over materialism? How might a thriving market econ­ omy mix incentives for prosperity with restraints that preserve a habitable planet? To what extent can we depend on technological innovations, such as alternative energy sources, to reduce our ecological footprints? And to what extent does the superordinate goal of preserving the Earth for our grandchildren call us each to limit our own liberties—our freedom to drive, bum, and dump whatever we wish?

A shift to postmaterialist values will gain momentum as people, governments, and corporations take these steps:

• Face the implications of population and consumption growth for climate change and environmental destruction

• Realize that extrinsic, materialist values make for less happy lives • Identify and promote the things in life that can enable sustainable human

flourishing

"If the world is to change for the better it must have a change in human conscious­ ness," said Czech poet-president Vaclav Havel (1990). We must discover "a deeper sense of responsibility toward the world, which means responsibility toward some­ thing higher than self." If people were to believe that ever-bigger houses, closets full of seldom-worn clothes, and garages with luxury cars do not define the good

606 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

"ALL OUR WANTS, BEYOND

THOSE WHICH AVERY

MODERATE INCOME

WILL SUPPLY, ARE PURELY

IMAGINARY."

—HENRY ST- JOHN, LETTER TO

SWIFT. 1719

Close, supportive relation­ ships are a key element in well-being.

life, then might a shift in consciousness become possible? Instead of being an indi­ cator of social status, might conspicuous consumption become gauche?

Social psychology's contribution to a sustainable, flourishing future will come partly through its consciousness-transforming insights into adaptation and com­ parison. These insights also come from experiments that lower people's compari­ son standards and thereby cool luxury fever and renew contentment. In two such experiments, Marshall Dermer and his colleagues (1979) put university women through imaginative exercises in deprivation. After viewing depictions of the grim­ ness of Milwaukee life in 1900, or after imagining and writing about being burned and disfigured, the women expressed greater satisfaction with their own lives.

In another experiment, Jennifer Crocker and Lisa Gallo (1985) found that people who five times completed the sentence "I'm glad I'm not a ..." afterward felt less depressed and more satisfied with their lives than did those who completed sen­ tences beginning "I wish I were a. . . ." Realizing that others have it worse helps us count our blessings. "I cried because I had no shoes," says a Persian proverb, "until I met a man who had no feet." Downward social comparison facilitates contentment.

Downward comparison to a hypothetical worse-off self also enhances content­ ment. In one experiment, Minkyung Koo and her colleagues (2008) invited people to write about how they might never have met their romantic partner. Compared to others who wrote about meeting their partner, those who imagined not having the relationship expressed more satisfaction with it. Can you likewise imagine how some good things in your life might never have happened? It's very easy for me to imagine not having chanced into an acquaintance that led to an invitation to author this book. Just thinking about that reminds me to count my blessings.

Social psychology also contributes to a sustainable and survivable future through its explorations of the good life. If materialism does not enhance life qual­ ity, what does?

• Close, supportive relationships. As we saw in Chapter 11, our deep need to belong is satisfied by close, supportive relationships. People who are sup­ ported by intimate friendships or a committed marriage are much more likely to declare themselves "very happy."

• Faith communities and voluntary organizations are often a source of such connections, as well as of meaning and hope. That helps explain a finding from National Opinion Research Center surveys of nearly 50,000 Americans

607Social Psychology and the Sustainable Future Chapter 16

since 1972; 26 percent of those rarely or never attending religious services declared themselves very happy, as did 48 percent of those attending mul­ tiple times weekly.

• Positive thinking habits. Optimism, self-esteem, perceived control, and extra­ version also mark happy experiences and happy lives. One analysis of 638 studies of 420,000+ people in 63 countries found that a sense of autonomy— feeling free and independent—consistently influences people's sense of well­ being more than does wealth (Fischer & Boer, 2011).

• Experiencing nature. Carleton University students randomly assigned to a 17-minute nature walk near their campus ended up (to their and others' sur­ prise) much happier than students who took a similar-length walk through campus walking tunnels (Nisbet & Zelenski, 2011). Japanese researchers report that "forest bathing"—walks in the woods—also help lower stress hormones and blood pressure (Phillips, 2011).

• Flow. Work and leisure experiences that engage one's skills mark happy lives. Between the anxiety of being overwhelmed and stressed, and the apathy of being underwhelmed and bored, notes Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990,1999), lies a zone in which people experience/lou?. Flow is an optimal state in which, absorbed in an activity, we lose consciousness of self and time. When people's experience is sampled using electronic pagers, they report greatest enjoyment not when they are mindlessly passive but when they are unselfconsciously absorbed in a mindful challenge. In fact, the less expensive (and generally more involving) a leisure activity, the happier people are while doing it. Most people are happier gardening than powerboating, talking to friends than watching TV. Low-consumption recreations prove most satisfying.

That is good news indeed. Those things that make for the genuinely good life— close relationships, social networks based on belief, positive thinking habits, engaging activity—are enduringly sustainable. And that is an idea close to ^e heart of Jigme Singye Wangchuk, former King of Bhutan. "Gross national happiness is more impor­ tant than gross national product," he said. Writing from the Center of Bhutan Studies in Bhutan, Sander Tideman (2003) explained: "Gross National Happiness ... aims to promote real progress and sustainability by measuring the quality of life, rather than the mere sum of production and consumption." Now other nations, too, are assessing national quality of life. (See "Research Close-Up: Measuring National Well-Being.")

"WE HAVE FAILED TO SEE

HOW OUR ECONOMY, OUR

ENVIRONMENT AND OUR

SOCIETY ARE ALL ONE.

AND THAT DELIVERING

THE BEST POSSIBLE

QUALITY OF LIFE FOR US

ALL MEANS MORE THAN

CONCENTRATING SOLELY

ON ECONOMIC GROWTH."

-PRIME MINISTER TONY BLAIR,

FOREWORD TO A SETTER

QUALITY OF LIFE, 1999

research CLOSE-UP Measuring National Well-Being

"A city is successful not when it's rich, but when its peo­ ple are happy." So said Bogota, Colombia, former mayor Enrique Pefialosa, in explaining his campaign to improve his city's quality of life—by building schools and increas­ ing school enrollment 34 percent, building or rebuilding more than 1,200 parks, creating an effective transit sys­ tem, and reducing the murder rate dramatically (Gardner & Assadourian, 2004),

Pehalosa's idea of national success is shared by a growing number of social scientists and government planners. In Britain, the New Economic Foundation (2009, 2011) has developed "National Accounts of Well-Being" that track national social health and has published a

Well-Being Manifesto for a Flourishing Society. The foun­ dation's motto: "We believe in economics as if people and the planet mattered." To assess national progress, they urge, we should measure not just financial progress but also the kinds of growth that enhance people's life satisfaction and happiness.

British economist Andrew Oswald (2006), one of a new breed of economists who study the relationships between economic and psychological well-being, notes that "economists' faith in the value of growth is diminish­ ing. That is a good thing and will slowly make its way into the minds of tomorrow's politicians."

(continued)

608 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

Leading the way toward new ways of assessing human progress are the newly developed "Guidelines for National Indicators of Subjective Well-Being and Ill-Being" devel­ oped by University of Illinois psychologist Ed Diener (2005; Diener & others, 2008, 2009) and signed by four dozen of the world's leading researchers (Figure 16.12). It notes that global measures of subjective well-being, such as assess­

ments of life satisfaction and happiness, can be useful for policy debates," such as by detecting the human effects of any policy interventions. More specifically, questions are now available for assessing these indicators;

• Positive emotions, including those involving low arousal (contentment), moderate arousal (pleasure), and high arousal (euphoria), and those involving posi­ tive responses to others (affection) and to activities (interest and engagement).

• Negative emotions, including anger, sadness, anxi­ ety, stress, frustration, envy, guilt and shame, loneli­ ness, and helplessness. Measures may ask people to recall or record the frequency of their experiencing positive and negative emotions.

• Happiness, which often is taken to mean a general positive mood, such as indicated by people's answers to a widely used survey question: "Taking all things together, how would you say things are these days_ would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?"

Life satisfaction, which engages people in appraising their life as a whole.

Domain sat/sfact/ons, which invites people to indicate their satisfaction with their physical health, work, lei­ sure, relationships, family, and community.

• Quality of life, a broader concept that includes one's environment and health, and one's perceptions of such

Such well-being measures can assist governments as they debate economic and tax policies, family protection laws, health care, and community planning—a point now affirmed by the Canadian, French, German, and British governments, each of which are assessing national well­ being (Cohen, 2011; Gertner, 2010; Stiglitz, 2009). Univer­ sity of Waterloo researchers, for example, are tracking a "Canadian Index of Wellbeing."

Well-being indicators are also part of worldwide Gallup surveys of well-being in more than 150 countries encompassing more than 98 percent of the world's people. The surveys compare countries (revealing, for example, that people in some high-income countries such as Israel and Saudi Arabia report lower levels of positive emotion than people in some low-income coun­ tries such as Kenya and India). Gallup also is conducting a massive 25-year survey of the health and well-being of U.S. residents, with 250 interviewers conducting a thousand surveys a day, seven days a week. The result is a daily snapshot of American well-being—of people's happiness, stress, anger, sleep, money worries, laughter, socializing, work, and much more. Although the project was recently launched, researchers have already identi­ fied the best days of the year (weekends and holidays) and monitored the short-term emotional impact of eco­ nomic ups and downs. And with 300,000+ respondents a year, any subgroup of 1 percent of the population will have some 3,(X)0 respondents included, thus enabling researchers to compare people in very specific occupa­ tions, locales, religions, and ethnic groups.

Supportive Trust and folafionships belonging

Positive feelings

Absttweof negative feelings

Seff-esteem Optintlsm Resilience Competence Autonorrry Errgagement Meaning

and purpose

FIGURE:: 16.12 Components of Well-Being

f sovernments to -directly measure people’s subjective eronSr I <‘"0 perceptions of how their lives are going." What matters, this think tank argues is not so much people's

work-rXedteTrerg”'''"''’' Wh"-bhin9. ="1

Social Psychology and the Sustainable Future Chapter 16 609

SUMMING UP: The Social Psychology of Materialism and Wealth

• To judge from the expressed values of college students and the "luxury fever" that marked late- twentieth-century America, today's Americans— and to a lesser extent people in other Western countries—live in a highly materialistic age.

• People in rich nations report greater happiness and life satisfaction than those in poor nations (though with diminishing returns as one moves from moderately to very wealthy countries). Rich people within a country are somewhat happier than working-class people, though again more and more money provides diminishing returns (as evident in studies of the super-rich and of lottery winners). Does economic growth over time make people happier? Not at all, it seems from the slight

decline in self-reported happiness and the increas­ ing rate of depression during the post-1960 years of increasing affluence.

• Two principles help explain why materialism fails to satisfy: the adaptation-level phenomenon and social comparison. When incomes and consumption rise, we soon adapt. And comparing ourselves with others, we may find our relative position unchanged. Com­ paring upward breeds dissatisfaction, which helps explain the more frequent sense of unfairness and unhappiness in times and places of great inequality.

• To build a sustainable and satisfying future, we can individually seek and, as a society, promote close relationships, supportive social networks, positive thinking habits, and engaging activity.

POSTSCRIPT: How Does One Live Responsibly in the Modern World?

We must recognize that... we are one human family and one Earth community with a common destiny. We must join together to bring forth a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace. Towards this end, it is imperative that we, the peoples of the Earth, declare our responsibility to one another, to the greater community of life, and to future generations.

—Preamble, The Earth Charter, www.earthcharter.org

Reading and writing about population growth, global warming, materialism, con­ sumption, adaptation, comparison, and sustainability provokes my reflection: Am I part of the answer or part of the problem? I can talk a good line. But do I walk my own talk?

If Tm to be honest, my record is mixed. I ride a bike to work year-round. But I also flew 90,0(K) miles last year on fuel-

guzzling jets. I have insulated my 114-year-old home, installed an efficient furnace, and turned

the winter daytime thermostat down to 68. But having grown up in a cool summer cli­ mate, I can't imagine living without my air-conditioning on sweltering summer days.

To control greenhouse gas production, I routinely turn off lights and the com­ puter monitor when away from my office and have planted trees around my house. But I've helped finance South American deforestation with the imported beef I've dined on and the coffee I've sipped.

I applauded in 1973 when the United States established an energy-conserving 55 mph national maximum speed limit and was disappointed when it was aban­ doned in 1995. But now that drivers on the highway around my town are back up to 70 mph, I drive no less than 70 mph—even with (blush) no other cars in sight.

At my house we recycle all our home paper, cans, and bottles. But each week we receive enough mail, newspapers, and periodicals to fill a 3-cubic-foot paper recycling bin.

610 Part Four Applying Social Psychology

"THE GREAT DILEMMA

OF ENVIRONMENTAL

REASONING STEMS FROM

THIS CONFLICT BETWEEN

SHORT-TERM AND LONG­

TERM VALUES. "

—E. 0. WILSON, THE FUTURE

OF LIFE, 2002

Not bad, I tell myself. But it's hardly a bold response to the looming crisis. Our great-grandchildren will not thrive on this planet if all of today's 7 billion humans were to demand a similar-sized ecological footprint.

How, then, does one participate in the modern world, welcoming its beauties and conveniences, yet remain mindful of our environmental legacy? Even the lead­ ers of the simpler-living movement—who also flew gas-guzzling jets to the three conferences we attended together in luxurious surroundings—struggle with how to live responsibly in the modem world.

So what do you think? What regulations do you favor or oppose? Higher fuel- efficiency requirements for cars and trucks? Auto-pollution checks? Leaf-burning bans to reduce smog? If you live in a country where high fuel taxes motivate peo­ ple to drive small, fuel-efficient cars, do you wish you could have the much lower fuel taxes and cheaper petrol that have enabled Americans to drive big cars? If you are an American, would you favor higher gasoline and oil taxes to help conserve resources and restrain climate change?

How likely is it that humanity will be able to curb global warming and resource depletion? If the biologist E. O. Wilson (2002) is right to speculate that humans evolved to commit themselves only to their small piece of geography, their own kin, and their own time, can we hope that our species will exhibit "extended altru­ ism" by caring for our distant descendants? Will today's envied "lifestyles of the rich and famous" become gauche in a future where sustainability becomes neces­ sity? Or will people's concern for themselves and for displaying the symbols of suc­ cess always trump their concerns for their unseen great-grandchildren?

Epilogue If you have read this entire book, your introduction to social psychology is complete. In the Preface, I offered my hope that this book "would be at once solidly scientific and warmly human, factually rigorous and intellectually pro­ vocative." You, not I, are the judge of whether that goal has been achieved. But I can tell you that sharing the discipline has been a joy for me as your author. If receiving my gift has brought you any measure of pleasure, stimulation, and enrichment, then my joy is multiplied.

A knowledge of social psychology, I do believe, has the power to restrain intuition with critical thinking, illusion with understanding, and judgmen- talism with compassion. In these 16 chapters, we have assembled social psy­ chology's insights into belief and persuasion, love and hate, conformity and independence. We have glimpsed incomplete answers to intriguing questions: How do our attitudes feed and get fed by our actions? What leads people some­ times to hurt and sometimes to help one another? What kindles social conflict, and how can we transform closed fists into helping hands? Answering such questions expands our minds. And, "once expanded to the dimensions of a larger idea," noted Oliver Wendell Holmes, the mind "never returns to its orig­ inal size." Such has been my experience, and perhaps yours, as you, through this and other courses, become an educated person.

David G. Myers davidmyers.org