Suspension of Disbelief
Social consensus through the influence of committed minorities
J. Xie et al.
Physical Review E, July 2011
Abstract:
We show how the prevailing majority opinion in a population can be rapidly reversed by a small fraction p of randomly distributed committed agents who consistently proselytize the opposing opinion and are immune to influence. Specifically, we show that when the committed fraction grows beyond a critical value p(c)≈10%, there is a dramatic decrease in the time T(c) taken for the entire population to adopt the committed opinion. In particular, for complete graphs we show that when pp(c), T(c)~ln(N). We conclude with simulation results for Erdős-Rényi random graphs and scale-free networks which show qualitatively similar behavior.
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Abstraction increases hypocrisy
Joris Lammers & Diederik Stapel
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Four studies show that an abstract view on moral issues increases moral hypocrisy. In Experiment 1, participants who were directly instructed to take a more abstract view on a moral issue judged the immoral behavior of others more severely than their own immoral behavior, but participants with a concrete view did not. Experiments 2 and 3 induced an abstract view in an indirect manner, by manipulating temporal distance toward the dilemma. In Experiment 4 abstractness was manipulated completely independent from the moral dilemma, by inducing an abstract or a concrete mindset. In all four studies, abstractness consistently increased hypocrisy. The last study also shows that the effect of abstractness on hypocrisy is mediated by the degree of moral flexibility. Together, these studies show that hypocrisy is directly determined by the focus that people have when making a moral judgment.
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Ilka Gleibs et al.
British Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Does money buy happiness? Or is happiness derived from looking outwards towards our social networks? Many researchers have answered these questions by exploring whether the best predictor of well-being is either economic or social (or some fixed combination of the two). This paper argues for a dynamic perspective on the capacity for economic and social factors to predict well-being. In two studies, we show that both money (individual income) and community (social capital) can be the basis for individual happiness. However, the relative influence of each factor depends on the context within which happiness is considered, and how this shapes the way people define the self. Study 1 primes either money or community in the laboratory and demonstrates that such priming shifts individual values (so that they are economic vs. communal) and determines the extent to which income is more (vs. less) predictive of life satisfaction than social relations. Study 2 looks at these same priming processes in the external world (with people travelling to vs. from work). Both studies show that while money can become the basis of happiness when the self is defined in economic terms, the role of community relations in predicting happiness is more stable across contexts.
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The Ethical Dangers of Deliberative Decision Making
Chen-Bo Zhong
Administrative Science Quarterly, March 2011, Pages 1-25
Abstract:
Research on ethical decision making has been heavily influenced by normative decision theories that view intelligent choices as involving conscious deliberation and analysis. Recent developments in moral psychology, however, suggest that moral functions involved in ethical decision making are metaphorical and embodied. The research presented here suggests that deliberative decision making may actually increase unethical behaviors and reduce altruistic motives when it overshadows implicit, intuitive influences on moral judgments and decisions. Three lab experiments explored the potential ethical dangers of deliberative decision making. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that deliberative decision making, activated by a math problem-solving task or by simply framing the choice as a decision rather than an intuitive reaction, increased deception in a one-shot deception game. Experiment 3 - which activated systematic thinking or intuitive feeling about the choice to donate to a charity - found that deliberative decision making could also decrease altruism. These findings highlight the potential ethical downsides of a rationalistic approach toward ethical decision making and call for a better understanding of the intuitive nature of moral functioning.
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Suspicious spirits, flexible minds: When distrust enhances creativity
Jennifer Mayer & Thomas Mussweiler
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Intuitively, as well as in light of prior research, distrust and creativity appear incompatible. The social consequences of distrust include reluctance to share information, a quality detrimental to creativity in social settings. At the same time, the cognitive concomitants of distrust bear resemblance to creative cognition: Distrust seems to foster thinking about nonobvious alternatives to potentially deceptive appearances. These cognitive underpinnings of distrust hold the provocative implication that distrust may foster creativity. Mirroring these contradictory findings, we suggest that the social versus cognitive consequences of distrust have diverging implications for creativity. We address this question in Study 1 by introducing private/public as a moderating variable for effects of distrust on creativity. Consistent with distrust's social consequences, subliminal distrust (vs. trust) priming had detrimental effects on creative generation presumed to be public. Consistent with distrust's cognitive consequences, though, an opposite tendency emerged in private. Study 2 confirmed a beneficial effect of distrust on private creative generation with a different priming method and pointed to cognitive flexibility as the mediating process. Studies 3 and 4 showed increased category inclusiveness versus increased remote semantic spread after distrust priming, consistent with enhanced cognitive flexibility as a consequence of distrust. Taken together, these results provide evidence for the creativity-enhancing potential of distrust and suggest cognitive flexibility as its underlying mechanism.
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Nicole Stephens & Cynthia Levine
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
American women still confront workplace obstacles (e.g., bias against mothers, inflexible workplaces) that hinder their advancement at the upper levels of organizations. Despite these obstacles, most Americans fail to recognize that such gender obstacles still exist. Focusing on mothers who leave the workforce, we propose that the prevalent American assumption that actions are a product of choice conceals workplace obstacles by communicating that opportunities are equal and that behavior is free from contextual influence. Study 1 reveals that stay-at-home mothers who view their own workplace departure as a choice experience greater well-being, but less often recognize workplace obstacles such as discrimination as a source of inequality. Study 2 shows that mere exposure to actions framed as choices increases observers' belief that society provides equal opportunities and that gender discrimination no longer exists. By concealing the obstacles that women still face, this choice framework may hinder women's long-term advancement in society.
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Marlone Henderson, Szu-chi Huang & Chiu-chi Angela Chang
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Prior research has found several factors that affect people's willingness to participate in philanthropy. In the present article, we explore whether people feel more inspired to engage in philanthropy after learning about individuals who help targets who are socially close or distant from those individuals. Specifically, we propose that when people learn about others who help socially distant (vs. close) targets, such prosocial actions will be more salient because it violates people's lay belief about distance and helping; therefore, people will be more attracted to the idea of engaging in prosocial actions after learning that prosocial actions have been directed toward socially distant (vs. close) targets. We present four experiments in support of our hypotheses.
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When Blemishing Leads to Blossoming: The Positive Effect of Negative Information
Danit Ein-Gar, Baba Shiv & Zakary Tormala
Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
This research uncovers a counterintuitive effect of negative information, showing that under specifiable conditions people will be more favorably disposed to a product when a small dose of negative information is added to an otherwise positive description. This effect is moderated by processing effort and presentation order, such that the enhanced positive disposition toward the product following negative information emerges when the information is processed effortlessly rather than effortfully and when the negative information follows rather than precedes positive information. Four studies demonstrate this blemishing effect in both lab and field settings and explore the proposed mechanism and boundary conditions.
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The Mental Roots of System Justification: System Threat, Need for Structure, and Stereotyping
Diederik Stapel & Marret Noordewier
Social Cognition, June 2011, Pages 238-254
Abstract:
In a series of correlational and experimental studies, it is shown that system justification motives result in stereotyping and that an important force behind this effect is an increased need for structure. People who perceive the system they are part of (e.g., their company) as unfair report a higher need for structure and are more likely to engage in stereotyping. Second, experimentally induced system threat increased structure needs which covaried with amplified negative and positive stereotyping effects, indicating that these effects served epistemic rather than self-enhancement needs. Third, the impact of system threat on stereotyping disappears when the desire to justify the system is satisfied through an alternative route. Implications for system justification theory are discussed and the importance of studying the impact of system justification motives on stereotype processes as well as stereotype contents is stressed.
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Kevin Binning & David Sherman
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, August 2011, Pages 321-336
Abstract:
In the face of prejudice against an ingroup, common ground for communication exists when people use similar social categories to understand the situation. Three studies tested the hypothesis that describing perceptions of prejudice can fundamentally change those perceptions because communicators account for the common ground in line with conversational norms. When women (Study 1), African Americans (Study 2), and Caucasian Americans (Study 3) simply thought about suspected prejudice against their ingroup, categorization guided their perceptions: Participants assimilated their views of the prejudiced event toward the perceptions of ingroup members but contrasted away from the perceptions of outgroup members. Conversely, when participants described their perceptions, they contrasted away from the given category information and actually arrived at the opposite perceptions as those who merely thought about the prejudiced event. Study 3 identified an important qualification of these effects by showing that they were obtained only when participants could assume their audience was familiar with the common ground. Implications are discussed for understanding the role of communication in facilitating and inhibiting collective action about prejudice.
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The Empirical Content of Models with Multiple Equilibria in Economies with Social Interactions
Alberto Bisin, Andrea Moro & Giorgio Topa
NBER Working Paper, July 2011
Abstract:
We study a general class of models with social interactions that might display multiple equilibria. We propose an estimation procedure for these models and evaluate its efficiency and computational feasibility relative to different approaches taken to the curse of dimensionality implied by the multiplicity. Using data on smoking among teenagers, we implement the proposed estimation procedure to understand how group interactions affect health-related choices. We find that interaction effects are strong both at the school level and at the smaller friends-network level. Multiplicity of equilibria is pervasive at the estimated parameter values, and equilibrium selection accounts for about 15 percent of the observed smoking behavior. Counterfactuals show that student interactions, surprisingly, reduce smoking by approximately 70 percent with respect to the equilibrium smoking that would occur without interactions.
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Can happy mood reduce the just world bias? Affective influences on blaming the victim
Liz Goldenberg & Joseph Forgas
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Do temporary moods influence people's tendency to blame victims for undeserved negative events? Based on research on the just world effect and recent affect theories, this experiment predicted and found that positive mood decreased and negative mood increased people's motivation to blame innocent victims for their misadventures. Participants (N = 70) were induced into positive or negative mood by viewing films, and subsequently read a newspaper article describing a random assault on either a fellow student (in-group member) or a corporate employee (out-group member). Their reactions were assessed on three measures: attributions of responsibility, dissociation from the victim and character evaluations. Positive mood reduced and negative mood increased the tendency to blame the victim, and in-group victims were blamed more than out-group victims. These results are discussed in terms of recent theories of affect and motivation, and their implications for real-life social judgments are considered.
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Can the absence of prejudice be more threatening than its presence? It depends on one's worldview
Sarah Townsend, Brenda Major, Pamela Sawyer & Wendy Berry Mendes
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, December 2010, Pages 933-947
Abstract:
The present research used validated cardiovascular measures to examine threat reactions among members of stigmatized groups when interacting with members of nonstigmatized groups who were, or were not, prejudiced against their group. The authors hypothesized that people's beliefs about the fairness of the status system would moderate their experience of threat during intergroup interactions. The authors predicted that for members of stigmatized groups who believe the status system is fair, interacting with a prejudiced partner, compared with interacting with an unprejudiced partner, would disconfirm their worldview and result in greater threat. In contrast, the authors predicted that for members of stigmatized groups who believe the system is unfair, interacting with a prejudiced partner, compared with interacting with an unprejudiced partner, would confirm their worldview and result in less threat. The authors examined these predictions among Latinas interacting with a White female confederate (Study 1) and White females interacting with a White male confederate (Study 2). As predicted, people's beliefs about the fairness of the status system moderated their experiences of threat during intergroup interactions, indicated both by cardiovascular responses and nonverbal behavior. The specific pattern of the moderation differed across the 2 studies.
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Going off the Rails on a Crazy Train: The Causes and Consequences of Congressional Infamy
Justin Buchler
The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics, July 2011
Abstract:
Legislators like Michele Bachmann and Alan Grayson become nationally infamous for their provocative behavior, yet there is little scholarly attention to such infamy. This paper examines the predictors of congressional infamy, along with its electoral consequences. First, infamy is measured through the frequency with which internet users conduct searches of legislators' names, paired with epithets attacking their intelligence or sanity. Then, ideological extremism and party leadership positions are shown to be the best statistical predictors. The electoral consequences of infamy follow: infamous legislators raise more money than their lower-profile colleagues, but their infamy also helps their challengers to raise money. In the case of House Republicans, there appears to be an additional and direct negative effect of infamy on vote shares. The fundraising effect is larger in Senate elections, but there is no evidence of direct electoral cost for infamous senatorial candidates.
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When sentimental rules collide: "Norms with feelings" in the dilemmatic context
Edward Royzman, Geoffrey Goodwin & Robert Leeman
Cognition, forthcoming
Abstract:
According to a recently prominent account of moral judgment, genuine moral disapprobation is a product of two convergent vectors of normative influence: a strong negative affect that arises from the mere consideration of a given piece of human conduct and a (socially acquired) belief that this conduct is wrong (Nichols, 2002). The existing evidence in favor of this "norms with feelings" proposal is rather mixed, with no obvious route to an empirical resolution. To help shed further light on the situation, we test a previously unexamined prediction that this account logically yields in a novel dilemmatic context: when individuals are faced with a moral dilemma that pits two or more "affectively-charged" moral norms against each other, the norm underwritten by the strongest feeling ought to determine the content of dilemmatic resolution. Across three studies, we find evidence that directly challenges this prediction, offering support for a Kolhberg-style "rationalist" alternative instead. More specifically, we find that it is not the participants' degree of norm-congruent emotion (whether situationally or dispositionally assessed) or its correlates, but rather their appraisal of the relative costs associated with various alternative courses of action that appears to be most predictive of how they resolve the experimentally induced moral conflict. We conclude by situating our studies within an overarching typology of moral encounters, which, we believe, can help guide future research as well as shed light on some current controversies within this literature.
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The interrupted sacrifice: Hegemony and moral crisis among Israeli conscientious objectors
Erica Weiss
American Ethnologist, August 2011, Pages 576-588
Abstract:
In this article, I explain why some of the most elite and dedicated soldiers in the Israeli Defense Forces ultimately became conscientious objectors. I argue that because the sacrificial moral economy, and not the state as supersubject, was hegemonically inculcated in these young people, resistance was possible. This case prompts a reconsideration of anthropological understandings of the relationship between hegemonic inculcation and resistance. Specifically, we cannot only ask to what degree subjects subscribe to hegemony but we must also ask what specifically is inculcated and how this alters agency and its object.
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Manufactured Scientific Controversy: Science, Rhetoric, and Public Debate
Leah Ceccarelli
Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Summer 2011, Pages 195-228
Abstract:
This article examines three cases that have been identified by scholars as "manufactured" scientific controversies, in which rhetors seek to promote or delay public policy by announcing that there is an ongoing scientific debate about a matter for which there is actually an overwhelming scientific consensus. The comparative study of argumentative dynamics in the cases of AIDS dissent, global warming skepticism, and intelligent design reveals the deployment of rhetorical traps that take advantage of balancing norms and appeals to democratic values. It also reveals the ineffectual counterarguments marshalled by defenders of mainstream science. By exploring the inventional possibilities available to those who would respond to manufactured scientific controversies, this article equips readers and their students to confute deceptive arguments about science and engage in a more productive public debate. In so doing, this article initiates an Isocratean orientation to the rhetoric of science as a field of study.