Transcript Chapter 19: Attitudes, Culture, and Human Relations

Chapter 19
Attitudes, Culture, and
Human Relations
Quiz
1. Desensitization is the removal of inhibition, results in
acting out behavior that normally would be restrained.
2. Mutual interdependence is a condition in which two or
more persons must depend on one another to meet
each persons goals.
3. Equal status contact is the differences in the power,
prestige, or privileges of two or more persons or
groups.
4. Symbolic prejudices are prejudices that are expressed
obvious ways, such as through symbols.
5. Ethnocentrism is placing one’s own group or race at the
center, rejecting others groups.
Attitudes and Beliefs
• Learned tendency to respond to people,
objects, or institutions in a positive or
negative way
– Summarize your evaluation of objects
• Belief Component: What a person believes
about the object of an attitude
• Emotional Component: Feelings towards the
object of an attitude
• Action Component: One’s actions towards
various people, objects, or institutions
Fig. 19-1, p. 633
Attitude Formation
• Direct Contact: Personal experience with the object
of the attitude
• Interaction with Others: Influence of discussions with
people holding a particular attitude
• Child Rearing: Effects of parental values, beliefs, and
practices
• Group Membership: Social influences from belonging
to certain groups
• How did you learn in your family?
• Describe your family’s ‘traditions’ regarding holidays,
bedtime routines, preferred language and slang,
value and use of money, views towards sex,
grandparents, anything else unique or special
Attitude Measurement and Change
• Chance Conditioning: Condition that occurs
by chance or coincidence
• Social Distance Scale: Scale where the
degree of a person’s willingness to have
contact with a member of another group is
measured
• Attitude Scale: Statements on a scale
expressing various possible views on an
issue
Social Distance Scale
• 1. Are you willing to let Europeans live in our country?
• Yes • No
• 2. Are you willing to let Europeans live in your village, town or
city?
•Yes • No
• 3. Are you willing to let Europeans live in your neighborhood?
•Yes • No
• 4. Are you willing to let Europeans live next to you?
•Yes • No
• 5. Are you willing to let your children play with European
children?
•Yes • No
• 6. Would be willing to let a child of yours marry a European?
•Yes • No
Reference Group
• Any group a person identifies with and uses
as a standard for social comparison
• What groups are you a member of?
Ethologists
• Study natural behavior patterns of animals
• Believe that aggression is innate in all
animals, including humans
– Appears to be a relationship between
aggression and hypoglycemia, allergy, and
certain brain injuries and disorders
– Certain brain areas can trigger or end
aggressive behavior
Aggression: any action designed to
harm another person
discomfort caused
by aversive
• Personal
Frustration-Aggression
Hypothesis:
Frustration tends
(unpleasant)
stimuli can make aggressive
to lead to aggression
more
likely.
For example,
of with
• behavior
Aggression
Cues:
Signals
that are studies
associated
crime
rates show that the incidence of highly
aggression
aggressive behavior, such as murder, rape,
• and
Weapons
Effect:
that weapons
serve as
assault,
risesObservation
as the air temperature
goes
strong
cuestofor
behavior
from
warm
hotaggressive
to sweltering
• Hand
Socialslap
Learning
gameTheory: Combines learning principles
with cognitive processes, socialization and modeling
to explain behavior
– No instinctive (innate) desires for shooting guns,
knife fights and so on
– Aggression must be learned
Social Learning Theory (Bandura) and
Television Continued
• Disinhibition: Removal of inhibition; results in
acting-out behavior that normally would be
restrained
• Television seems to be able to cause
desensitization to violence
– Desensitization: Reduced emotional
sensitivity
. The
results
you see here
further confirm
the heataggression link.
The graph
shows that
there is a
strong
association
between the
temperatures at
major league
baseball games
and the number
of batters hit by
a pitch during
those games.
Persuasion
• Deliberate attempt to change attitudes or beliefs with
information and arguments
– Communicator: Person presenting arguments or
information
– Message: Content of communicator’s arguments
– Audience: Person or group to whom a persuasive
message is directed
– When was the last time you persuaded people in
your life to do something different, or you were
persuaded to change. What types of arguments/
persuasive techniques were most and least
effective?
Cognitive Dissonance (Festinger)
• Contradicting or clashing thoughts, beliefs,
attitudes, or perceptions cause discomfort
– We need to have consistency in our
thoughts, perceptions, and images of
ourselves
– Underlies attempts to convince ourselves
we did the right thing
• Justification: Degree to which one’s actions
are explained by rewards or other
circumstances
Fig. 19-2, p. 636
Table 19-1, p. 636
Brainwashing
• Engineered or forced attitude change
requiring a captive audience
• Generally three steps to brainwash someone:
– Unfreezing: Loosening of former values
and convictions
– Change: When the brainwashed person
abandons former beliefs
– Refreezing: Rewarding and solidifying new
attitudes and beliefs
Cults
• Group that professes great devotion to a
person or people and follows that
person/people almost without question.
– Leader’s personality is usually more
important than the issues he/she preaches
– Cult members usually victimized by the
leader(s)
Ideal Cult “Targets”
• Will try to recruit potential converts at a time
of need, especially when a sense of
belonging is most attractive to potential
converts
– Look for college students and young adults
Bystander Theory
• The bystander effect is a social
psychological phenomenon in which
individuals are less likely to offer help in
an emergency situation when other people
are present. The probability of help is
inversely proportional to the number of
bystanders. In other words, the greater the
number of bystanders, the less likely it is
that any one of them will help.
Kitty Genovese
•
•
•
•
Genovese had driven home in the early morning of March 13, 1964. Arriving home at about 3:15 a.m. and
parking about 100 feet (30 m) from her apartment's door, she was approached by Winston Moseley, a
business machine operator.[2] Moseley ran after her and quickly overtook her, stabbing her twice in the
back. Genovese screamed, "Oh my God, he stabbed me! Help me!" It was heard by several neighbors, but
on a cold night with the windows closed, only a few of them recognized the sound as a cry for help. When
one of the neighbors shouted at the attacker, "Let that girl alone!", Moseley ran away and Genovese slowly
made her way towards her own apartment around the end of the building. She was seriously injured, but
now out of view of those few who may have had reason to believe she was in need of help.
Records of the earliest calls to police are unclear and were certainly not given a high priority by the police.
One witness said his father called police after the initial attack and reported that a woman was "beat up, but
got up and was staggering around."[6]
Other witnesses observed Moseley enter his car and drive away, only to return ten minutes later. In his car,
he changed his hat to a wide-rimmed one to shadow his face. He systematically searched the parking lot,
train station, and small apartment complex, ultimately finding Genovese, who was lying, barely conscious,
in a hallway at the back of the building. Out of view of the street and of those who may have heard or seen
any sign of the original attack, he proceeded to further attack her, stabbing her several more times. Knife
wounds in her hands suggested that she attempted to defend herself from him. While she lay dying, he
sexually assaulted her. He stole about $49 from her and left her dying in the hallway. The attacks spanned
approximately half an hour.
A few minutes after the final attack a witness, Karl Ross, called the police. Police and medical personnel
arrived within minutes of Ross' call. Genovese was taken away by ambulance and died en route to the
hospital. Later investigation by police and prosecutors revealed that approximately a dozen (but almost
certainly not the 38 cited in the Times article) individuals nearby had heard or observed portions of the
attack, though none could have seen or been aware of the entire incident. [7] Only one witness, Joseph Fink,
was aware she was stabbed in the first attack, and only Karl Ross was aware of it in the second attack.
Many were entirely unaware that an assault or homicide was in progress; some thought that what they saw
or heard was a lovers' quarrel or a drunken brawl or a group of friends leaving the bar outside when
Moseley first approached Genovese.
Prejudice
• Negative emotional attitude held toward
members of a specific social group
• Racism: Racial prejudice that can be found in
institutions (schools, etc.) and is enforced by
existing social power structure
• Sexism: Prejudice against men OR women,
based solely on gender
• Ageism: Prejudice based on age; somewhat
common in the USA
Prejudice Continued
• Discrimination: Unequal treatment of people
who should have the same rights as others
• Displaced Aggression: Redirecting
aggression to a target other than the actual
source of one’s frustration
• Personal Prejudice: When members of
another racial or ethnic group are perceived
as a threat to one’s own self-interests
• Group Prejudice: Occurs when a person
conforms to group norms
Personal Prejudices
Make two columns on a sheet of paper. One
column should be ‘good’ prejudices you hold.
The other should be ‘bad’ prejudices you
hold.
What is prejudice?
Can there be good and bad prejudices?
Racial stereotypes are
common in sports. For
example, a recent study
confirmed that many
people actually do
believe that “white men
can’t jump.” This
stereotype implies that
African-American
basketball players are
naturally superior in
athletic ability.
European-American
players, in contrast, are
falsely perceived as
smarter and harder
working than African
Americans. Such
stereotypes set up
expectations that distort
the perceptions of fans,
coaches, and
sportswriters. The
resulting
misperceptions, in turn,
help perpetuate the
stereotypes
Fig. 19-3, p. 642
Prejudiced Personality
• Authoritarian Personality: Marked by rigidity,
inhibition, prejudice, and oversimplification
• Ethnocentrism: Placing one’s group at the
center, usually by rejecting all other groups
• Dogmatism: Unwarranted positiveness or
certainty in matters of belief or opinion
– Difficult for dogmatic people to change
their beliefs
Overcoming Prejudice
• Mutual Interdependence: When two or more
people must depend on each other to meet
each person’s goals
• Jigsaw Classroom: Each student only gets a
piece of information needed to complete a
problem or prepare for a test. In order to
succeed and get all pieces, students must all
work together
Prejudicial Policies?
Affirmative Action
•
Affirmative action refers to policies that take
gender, race, or ethnicity into account in an attempt
to promote equal opportunity. The focus of such
policies ranges from employment and public
contracting to educational outreach and health
programs (such as breast or prostate cancer
screenings). The impetus towards affirmative action
is twofold: to maximize the benefits of diversity in all
levels of society, and to redress disadvantages due
to overt, institutional, or involuntary discrimination.
• What are your feelings about affirmative action
hiring? In what ways does a more culturally diverse
set of employees add to the quality of decisions
made by a company?
Decision Points Reached Before
Giving Help
• Noticing the person in trouble
• Defining an Emergency: Until someone
declares the situation an emergency, no one
acts
• Taking Responsibility: Assume responsibility
to help
– Diffusion of Responsibility: Spreading
responsibility to act among several people;
decreases likelihood that help will be given
to the person in need
• Select a Course of Action
Fig. 19-7, p. 653
Empathy Concepts
• Empathic Arousal: Emotional arousal that
occurs when you feel some of the person’s
pain, fear or anguish
• Empathy-Helping Relationship: We are most
likely to help person in need when we feel
emotions such as empathy and compassion