How environmental features influence our behavior is, of course, a huge topic; but here are three particularly interesting experiments. The upshot is that how helpful people will be to strangers varies widely with seemingly minor events.
1: Mathews and Canon (1975: 574-5) found subjects were five times more likely to help an apparently injured man who had dropped some books when ambient noise was at normal levels than when a power lawnmower was running nearby (80 per cent v. 15 per cent).
2: Darley and Batson (1973: 105) report that passers-by not in a hurry were six times more likely to help an unfortunate who appeared to be in significant distress than were passers-by in a hurry (63 per cent v. 10 per cent).
3: Isen and Levin (1972: 387) discovered that people who had just found a dime were twenty-two times more likely to help a woman who had dropped some papers than those who did not find a dime (88 per cent v. 4 per cent).
Kind of makes you want to leave dimes for people to find, doesn't it? Actually, my favorite thing to do is to tuck a dollar bill behind some napkins in restaurant napkin dispensers.
To these studies I would also like to add my own anecdotal report. Several years ago I remember the news reporting that a homeless woman was giving birth in the stairway of the Downtown Berkeley BART station as hundreds of commuters passed without stopping (until an Oakland school teacher stopped to help get her to a nearby hospital). Why did no one stop? Probably some combination of being habituated to ignore those who appear homeless, being in a hurry, and the social distance they perceived between the woman and themselves.
Failing to help someone in acute distress (when doing so would be easy for you) is often presented as the paradigm of immorality; for example, simply walking past a child drowning in a shallow pond. Yet clearly many factors influence whether or not people will act.
The three studies were published in:
Mathews, K. E., and Cannon, L. K. (1975). ‘Environmental Noise Level as a Determinant of
Helping Behavior’ . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32: 571-7
Isen, A. M., and Levin, P. F. (1972). ‘Effect of Feeling Good on Helping: Cookies and
Kindness’ . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 21:384-8
Darley, J. M., and Batson, C. D. (1973). ‘From Jerusalem to Jericho: A Study of Situational and Dispositional Variables in Helping Behavior’ . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 27:100-8.
I found all three in an interesting book chapter (though I'm not sure what book as I found it online):
Doris, J. M., and Stich, S. P.. 'As A Matter of Fact: Emperical Perspectives on Ethics'
Monday, September 1, 2008
How stereotypes are maintained in communication
In they saying-is-believing post, I said that people tend to adjust their messages to fit their expectations of their audiences' expectations. What if a speaker doesn't know anything specific about their audience? They will tend to adjust their messages to fit general stereotypes.
Consider the following experiment:
Subjects re-tell a story involving a member of a stereotyped group in a 4-person "telephone" chain of story-tellers in which each has no information about the other participants. Because they lack information about their audience, they can't tune their message to a specific audience, but tuning occurs nonetheless. In the experiment, stereotype relevant information becomes more consistent over the communication chain, while stereotype non-relevant information becomes weaker.
The experiment in full is reported in:
Lyons & Kashima 2003. How are stereotypes maintained through communication? The influence of stereotype sharedness. J. Personal Soc. Psychol. 85:989-1005
Consider the following experiment:
Subjects re-tell a story involving a member of a stereotyped group in a 4-person "telephone" chain of story-tellers in which each has no information about the other participants. Because they lack information about their audience, they can't tune their message to a specific audience, but tuning occurs nonetheless. In the experiment, stereotype relevant information becomes more consistent over the communication chain, while stereotype non-relevant information becomes weaker.
The experiment in full is reported in:
Lyons & Kashima 2003. How are stereotypes maintained through communication? The influence of stereotype sharedness. J. Personal Soc. Psychol. 85:989-1005
The "Saying is Believing" Effect
In psychology, the saying-is-believing effect says that we tend to remember and believe what we say to other people, even if we told them what we thought they wanted to hear (instead of the full truth about what we really think). If we adjust our message to fit our audience, and then remember that version as the truth about something, it's no wonder that there can be such strong agreement between people who interact with each other a lot, and such deep, divisive, disagreement between those who rarely interact. Just think about the "conservative" and "liberal" ways of looking at the world!
Here are a few experiments in support of the saying-is-believing effect:
In an experiment by Higgins (1992) (replicated many times, as reviewed by Echterhoff et al. 2005), subjects are given behavioral descriptions of someone and told to describe this person to an audience so that the audience would be able to identify him. Subjects are told the audience is familiar with this person already, and, in different experimental conditions, that they either like or dislike the person.
The results are that subjects tended to tailor their descriptions of people to fit their perception of their audiences' expectations. Furthermore, their subsequent memories of the person described were more consistent with their audience-tuned message than the original description they were given.
This effect disappears, however, when they are led to believe the audience didn't identify the person on the basis of their tailored description. The message-tuning remains, but the saying-is-believing effect also disappears when the audience is an "out" group rather than an "in" group.
The common factor that seems to modulate the saying-is-believing effect is a sense of epistemic trust in the audience; The speaker has to trust the knowledge-forming credentials of their audience.
There is an especially interesting case of this for the acculturation of new immigrants. An experiment by Kosic et al. (2004) shows that, if immigrants are positively disposed toward their initial reference group of the new culture, they will tend to acculturate in proportion with their need for epistemic certainty in their beliefs (that is, for their need to have their own beliefs confirmed by people they trust). Otherwise, they will resist acculturation proportional to this need.
Here are references to the experiments:
Higgins ET. 1992. Achieving "shared reality" in the communication game: a social action that creates meaning. J. Lang. Soc. Psychology. 11:107-31
Echterhoff G, Higgins ET, Grolls S. 2005. Audience-tuning effects on memory: the role of shared reality. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol. 89:257-79
Kosic A, Kruglanksi AW, Pierro A, Mannetti L. 2004. Social cognition of immigrants' acculturation: effects of the need for closure and the referece group at entry. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol. 86:796-813
All of these experiments are summarized in the psychology review article:
E. Tory Higgins and Thane S. Pittman. Motives of the Human Animal: Comprehending, Managing, and Sharing Inner States. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2008. 59:361-85
Here are a few experiments in support of the saying-is-believing effect:
In an experiment by Higgins (1992) (replicated many times, as reviewed by Echterhoff et al. 2005), subjects are given behavioral descriptions of someone and told to describe this person to an audience so that the audience would be able to identify him. Subjects are told the audience is familiar with this person already, and, in different experimental conditions, that they either like or dislike the person.
The results are that subjects tended to tailor their descriptions of people to fit their perception of their audiences' expectations. Furthermore, their subsequent memories of the person described were more consistent with their audience-tuned message than the original description they were given.
This effect disappears, however, when they are led to believe the audience didn't identify the person on the basis of their tailored description. The message-tuning remains, but the saying-is-believing effect also disappears when the audience is an "out" group rather than an "in" group.
The common factor that seems to modulate the saying-is-believing effect is a sense of epistemic trust in the audience; The speaker has to trust the knowledge-forming credentials of their audience.
There is an especially interesting case of this for the acculturation of new immigrants. An experiment by Kosic et al. (2004) shows that, if immigrants are positively disposed toward their initial reference group of the new culture, they will tend to acculturate in proportion with their need for epistemic certainty in their beliefs (that is, for their need to have their own beliefs confirmed by people they trust). Otherwise, they will resist acculturation proportional to this need.
Here are references to the experiments:
Higgins ET. 1992. Achieving "shared reality" in the communication game: a social action that creates meaning. J. Lang. Soc. Psychology. 11:107-31
Echterhoff G, Higgins ET, Grolls S. 2005. Audience-tuning effects on memory: the role of shared reality. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol. 89:257-79
Kosic A, Kruglanksi AW, Pierro A, Mannetti L. 2004. Social cognition of immigrants' acculturation: effects of the need for closure and the referece group at entry. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol. 86:796-813
All of these experiments are summarized in the psychology review article:
E. Tory Higgins and Thane S. Pittman. Motives of the Human Animal: Comprehending, Managing, and Sharing Inner States. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2008. 59:361-85
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