Applied Social Psychology

 What is applied social psychology? - Chapter 1

The science of social psychology aims to understand human social behaviour and the cognitions, emotions, and motivations related to it. Many societal problems have aspects that involve social psychology, making research in this field of utmost importance to solving major problems. Often, the solutions to and prevention of societal problems involves a change in attitudes, beliefs, behaviour and lifestyles. Applied social psychologists focus on the aspects of social problems that can be improved through intervention. They examine which factors influence a particular behaviour and investigate which intervention techniques are appropriate and available.

What is the definition of Applied Social Psychology?

Social psychology is the field that attempts to gain a better understanding of the nature and causes of individual behaviour and thought in social settings. Applied social psychology is the systematic application of constructs, principles, theories, intervention techniques, and research findings of social psychology to the solving and understanding of social problems. Constructs are the individual psychological characteristics that are latent and observable only through the use of questionnaires (ex. Attitudes, values, and norms). Principles are statements that describe how psychological processes function (ex. the foot-in-the-door technique, cognitive dissonance, and the availability heuristic). Theories are integrated sets of principles describing, explaining, and predicting events based on observations. They cannot be considered facts or laws and must be tested.

What are the Major Differences between Basic and Applied Social Psychology?

1. While basic social psychologists focus on developing and testing theories, applied social psychologists focus on resolving and understanding practical problems. Therefore, theory development is not the main reason that applied social psychologists do research, and they can often use established theories to tackle problems.

2. Basic social psychologists follow a deductive approach, starting with a theory and examining how it can be used to understand behaviour. Applied social psychologists take an inductive approach, starting from specific problems and examining which theories are best to understand and explain the problem.

Applied studies can lead to theoretical breakthroughs and basic studies can often be conducted in applied settings, making a contribution to applied social psychology.

What is the Correspondence between Basic and Applied Social Psychology?

What about Theory Development and Testing?

Both basic and applied social psychology are interested in the development and testing of theories. Theories can act as a framework to understand the causes of social problems and suggest techniques to resolve them. Applied social psychology can contribute to basic psychology, because studies conducted in the field provide valuable, practical proof. Both are sciences, which means (1) reliance on scientific methods and (2) guidance by important values of science (ex. Accuracy, objectivity, scepticism and open-mindedness). The main goals of science are description, prediction, determining causality and explanation of a phenomenon or relationship.

How to understand behaviour and cognitions?

Individual factors are intrapersonal processes and characteristics. Social factors refer to the actions and opinions of others that affect our behaviour, thoughts and feelings. Situational factors are contextual factors that can affect our behaviour and thoughts. For instance, when the ambient temperature begins to rise, people become more aggressive. Cultural factors include cultural values that affect our behaviour and thoughts. Culture can be defined loosely as the system of shared meanings, perceptions, and beliefs held by people in a particular group. Social and cultural norms strongly affect behavior. For example, it used to be socially acceptable to smoke in the workplace, but such behaviour is now unheard of. Biological factors include the effect that biological processes and genetics have on behaviour and thinking. For example, we prefer characteristics in mates that are associated with reproductive capacity, even if we consciously do not want to have children.

What is the Stanford Prison Experiment?

In 1971, Zimbardo and colleagues conducted a prison experiment. 24 male college students participated, half assigned to be guards, the other half prisoners. The guards were not trained but told to do what they thought necessary to maintain order. Within a few days, those given the roles as guards became aggressive and sadistic, while those given prisoner roles became submissive and frightened. When they thought they were unsupervised, guards escalated their abuse and harassment of the prisoners. Arbitrary rules were challenged by no one. Due to the intensity of the participants’ reactions, the two-week experiment was shortened to 6 days.

What about City Dwellers?

Robert Levine and colleagues studied 23 different cities to determine how friendly and helpful city dwellers were. They found that the more dense the population, the less friendly the inhabitants, regardless of culture. Stanley Milgram proposed the “stimulus-overload theory”, which suggests that residents of densely populated cities cope by keeping neighbours and strangers at a distance and ignoring things that happen on the street.

What about Features?

What are Personal Values?

Values play a role in applied social psychology, specifically in the decisions made over what problems and target groups should be studied. Psychologists should be aware of their own values and how these affect their work. While applied social psychologists strive to improve quality of life, there are many different opinions on what is necessary for a person’s quality of life. Some may strongly value freedom and choice, while others believe in more regulation. Values impact choice of study, but not method.

What about Theories, Intervention Techniques, Research Methods?

With a problem-oriented, inductive approach, applied social psychologists are able to apply many theories, intervention techniques and research methods. Also, since social problems often have many causes, many variables must be considered. Some theories may be more applicable to a particular problem than others. For instance, anonymous behaviour is unlikely to be affected by social influence. In a case like that, theories like the theory of normative behaviour are less likely to apply. Similarly, intervention techniques must be appropriate to the problem. They tend to be more effective when they specifically address factors that contribute to the problem behaviour, and attempt to improve those factors that can be improved. Knowing which factors cause or inhibit certain behaviour is essential in choosing appropriate ways to deal with it.

What is the benefit of Interdisciplinary research?

Since most social problems involve a diverse spectrum of factors, knowledge from many fields must be used when approaching these problems. While an applied social psychologist might not easily gain expertise in these useful fields, collaboration and consultation become useful tools. One problem that arises in interdisciplinary research is that terms and concepts vary in usage between fields, making communication sometimes difficult. Multidisciplinary teams need to take time to understand one another’s contributions, but what tends to result is a very practical solution that takes different perspectives and skills into account.

How use use pyschology In the Field?

Applied social psychologists are more likely to conduct field research. In this sort of research, results are more easily generated but causal relationships are more difficult to infer due to confounding variables.

What is Social Utility?

The social utility of applied social psychology increases when research is directed on fixing the parts of the social problem where the greatest impact can be made. Another issue in social mobility is the ratio of cost-effectiveness of interventions: what results can be expected per money invested? Researchers try to ensure that their results are the strongest they can be, making the most practical difference. Since most applied research is conducted on the behest of an outside organization (like a local government or a sponsoring agency), there is often a time limit and a demand for results. This does, to some degree, limit the researchers: they have less opportunity to take risks and might have little time to think over their study design. When communicating the results of their work, they are more likely to be seen in specialized journals directed towards practitioners in the field of interest than in psychological journals directed towards other scientists. Because of the need for social utility, applied social psychologists often publish in popular magazines, mass media, and in popular lectures. These lectures and publications are often framed towards the uninformed and the policy-makers, and less concerned with the scientific point of view.

What are the Roles of Applied Social Psychologists?

What do Researchers do?

Applied social psychological researchers conduct applied experiments. They study the causes of social problems, understand the most relevant influences on behaviour, and evaluate the effect of interventions on this behaviour. Some interventions (like information campaigns) can be effective when the problem is misinformation. However, when people’s behaviour does not result from ignorance, information campaigns will be ineffective.

What do Consultants do?

Applied social psychologists are commonly employed as consultants, concerned with tasks such as training, managing, marketing, and communication. Within government and business, courses run by applied social psychologists are valuable.

What do Policy Advisers do?

Sometimes applied social psychologists are put to the task of advising policy-makers on ways to change cognitions and behaviour to improve various kinds of social problems.

How to use theory? - Chapter 2

Human behaviour is the cause of social problems, meaning that solving the problem will require changing the behaviour. Because of this, applied social psychologists can be instrumental in social change. Understanding motivation is the key to addressing many social problems. Finding appropriate solutions often requires the use of the scientific method, and the evaluation of possible interventions for their practicality.

What is The Role of Theory?

Theories are the main tools that applied social psychologists have for understanding and solving social problems, and are often the starting point for creating interventions. Without them, there is a tendency to use “common sense” and introspection on our own behaviour as if that may help understand others. This can misdirect efforts and deny helpful counter-intuitive results. Theories are useful in many ways in applied social psychology. They provide explanations for human behaviour. In having been subjected to scientific scrutiny and examined for logical consistency, theories are more scientifically useful than introspection. Good theories suggest ways in to change problem behaviour and tackle certain aspects of social problems. Theories also provide a shared language to discuss social problems, including words like attitude, reward, cost, attribution, social comparison, etc. In applied settings, theories become practical, tested in real environments and allowing a broader testing to be done. In doing this, constructs and principles of the theory must be operationalized to allow the hypothesis to be tested. An intervention can be implemented, followed by the systematic collection of data to see if the expected results occurred. The applied social psychologist might follow an action research model, in which case they would reanalyze the situation, adjust the intervention, implementing it again, and reassessing the usefulness of the theory.

What is the Knowledge-Deficit Model of Behavioural Change?

According to the knowledge-deficit model of behavioural change, inaction or undesirable behaviour is the result of a lack of knowledge. Based on this model, policy-makers and program planners often use an information or education campaign. However, it is often the case that it is not necessarily lack of knowledge, but rather lack of motivation that causes inaction. Information campaigns applied to the careless consumption of energy, cigarette smoking, and the effects of unhealthy lifestyles on diabetes failed to make a significant impact because the issue was motivational.

What about Principles, Constructs and Theories?

A theory is an organized set of principles used to describe, explain, and predict observed events. It is not a fact, law, nor an observation. A theory is an idea that can be wrong and must be tested. Principles are used to describe a process and are often included in theories. A hypothesis is a testable prediction that is derived from a theory. It is specific and can be tested for accuracy. Models are frameworks that integrate theories and principles, describing multiple processes linked by a causal sequence. Constructs are the inferred affective, cognitive, and motivational aspects of behaviour, such as an attitude, because it cannot be directly observed.

What is the Rational Choice Theory?

According to rational choice theory, individuals are motivated to act in ways that lead to personal rewards and to not act in ways that have personal costs (costs and rewards are constructs). This theory includes principles, each drawing on constructs. One principle is that we are motivated to act in ways that benefit us. Another is that we are motivated to avoid behaviour that negatively impacts us. Because individual perceptions differ, what motivates one person might not motivate another.

Which Theories of Social Psychology are there?

What is the Social Thinking theory?

Theories involving social thinking deal with how people see themselves and their social world, including the way we organize, gather, and interpret information. Some theories in this section address attributions, attitudes, self-concept, and schemas. This is also known as social cognition and relies on many aspects of cognitive psychology.

What is the Attribution Theory?

The basic principle governing attribution theory is that when explaining behaviour, people make internal (related to the person) and external (related to the environment) attributions as to the cause of behaviour. In the tendency called the fundamental attribution error, people tend to attribute their own positive behaviour to internal causes and their negative behaviour to external causes. On the other hand, they explain the positive behaviour of others as a result of external factors and the negative behaviour as internal. For instance, if Jenny passes her test she will attribute that to her intelligence and hard work, but if she fails her test, she will attribute that to how unfairly the questions were phrased. Seeing another fail she might suggest that the person didn’t study hard or understand the material, but seeing them succeed, she might conclude that the test was easy. Generally, fundamental attribution error is good for self-esteem and allows us to quickly assess a situation. However, it can also cause bias and dysfunction in relationships.

What is the Cognitive Dissonance Theory?

An attitude is a favourable or unfavourable evaluation of an object, person, situation, or idea. Research has shown that changing attitudes does not necessarily produce a corresponding change in behaviour. This is illustrated in the common ineffectiveness of the knowledge-deficit model described earlier. People can think one way and act another. Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory suggests that it is uncomfortable when our actions and attitudes do not align. When two elements of our attitudes, beliefs, or behaviour are dissonant, we are motivated to reduce this dissonance. This is dealt with in 3 ways:

1. The attitude changes

2. The behaviour changes

3. New cognitions are added to justify one of the dissonant elements

The third option allows us to behave the way we are used to even when our attitude has changed. Dissonance can be reduced when people feel they have less choice in a situation.

What is the Theory of Planned Behaviour?

The theory of planned behaviour (TPB) is a framework for understanding the relationship between attitudes and behaviours. It suggests that the best predictor of behaviour is the intention to act, caused by three constructs:

1. Attitude: the person’s evaluation of the behaviour.

2. Subjective norms: the person’s beliefs about what other respected people think they should do.

3. Perceived behavioural control: the person’s belief about how achievable the behaviour is.

This theory includes the compatibility principle, which suggests that attitudes, norms, behavioural control, intentions and behaviour should be assessed on the same level of measurement to determine behavioural intention.

How about Social Influence?

Theories of social influence refer to the ways in which people can change the thoughts, feelings, and behaviour of themselves and others. Most applied social psychologists use theories of social influence in their attempts to solve social problems.

What is Imitation?

Imitation is the replicating of another person’s actions. It seems to be innate, as even young infants mimic the facial expressions and attitudes of their parents. People tend to unconsciously imitate one another during social interaction.

What is Conformity?

Conformity tends to be a conscious process of imitation in which a person changes his or her behaviour to be consistent with the real or imagined expectations of others. People who are rule-oriented will conform to rules when others are there to see them, but feel free to break the rules when alone. People who are role-oriented will follow the rules to the extent that they feel it is in their societal role. People who are value-oriented will follow the rules because they feel it is fundamentally right.

What is Compliance?

Compliance is more direct than the subtle pressure of conformity – it results from a plainly stated request. People are more motivated to comply when the result of compliance aligns with the individual’s personal goals. This includes three possible goals:

1. The ambiguity of a situation may be reduced, resulting in a more accurate sense of reality. (accuracy)

2. Meaningful social relationships can be developed or preserved. (affiliation)

3. The person’s self-concept can be improved or maintained in a consistent and positive way.

What is Obedience?

Obedience, unlike compliance, is when behaviour changes in response to an explicit demand. For instance, in the controversial study by Stanley Milgram, it was revealed that in the proper circumstances a person can be influenced to inflict harm on another. It was found that obedience is more likely when a person perceives that an order and the authority giving the order are legitimate.

What is the Elaboration Likelihood Model?

One theoretical perspective is the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) which suggests that there are different roots to persuasion. In the central route, the person pays attention to the specifics of the message, considers and elaborates on the merits of the message, and only succumbs to influence if they agree with the message. The peripheral route is used when messages are processed superficially, the specifics overlooked. A person can still be influenced in this way, usually when the message appeals to them. Thus, the central route is characterized by high elaboration and the peripheral by low elaboration. Central route processing results in stronger, more lasting influence.

What about Social Relationships?

People have a tendency to distinguish between an in-group, “us”, and an out-group, “them”. We harbour a basic in-group bias, believing our own group to be superior. In times of uncertainty, we rely on these biases and heuristics. This can cause stereotypes (generalized beliefs about a person based on group membership). This is often automatic, making it difficult to put aside stereotypes when first encountering a person from the stereotyped group. However, when motivated not to stereotype, we are often able to counteract this tendency.

What are Prejudice and Discrimination?

Prejudice is an unjustified negative attitude towards a person based on group membership. This is in danger of occurring when stereotypes are not kept in check. An intrinsically motivated person who personally believes prejudice is bad will actively avoid it. One can also be extrinsically motivated, worried about how their prejudice will be seen by others. When people act on prejudice, discrimination is the result. This is the unfair treatment of a person based on their group. The theory of identity maintenance suggests that discriminated groups tend to promote a positive collective identity that encourages pride in one’s differences, acting as a protective buffer against the possible negative impacts of discrimination.

What is The Contact Hypothesis?

It has been found that certain circumstances can lead to more tense intergroup relations. For instance, when two groups are set into competition with one another, this is likely to lead to conflict. However, in activities that introduce a superordinate goal (a common good), hostility and conflict between the two groups will diminish. Contact theory suggests that contact between groups will reduce prejudice if the four criteria are met:

1. The groups have equal status.

2. They share common goals.

3. There is cooperation rather than competition between groups.

4. There is institutional support in the form of laws, customs, and authorities.

What is the Dual Concern Model?

When faced with a conflict of interest, the dual concern model contends that each party has concern for themselves and concern for the other. Low concern for self and high concern for other will cause a party to yield, and the opposite will cause a party to fight. High concern for self and other will lead to problem-solving behaviour.

How about Prosocial Action?

Prosocial behaviour means acting in a manner that benefits others. There are relationship-mending prosocial behaviours (such as apologies, confession, reparation, conceding, and expressing guilt), and relationship-enhancing behaviours (such as politeness, helping, and trustworthiness). Helping is when one person tries to reduce another’s burden; altruism is acting to benefit another without personal benefit in exchange. Prosocial behaviour is a point of interest for applied social psychologists.

What is the social impact Theory?

In 1964, a woman called Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death. She could have been saved had any of the 38 people who heard her scream for help actually intervened. However, due to a phenomenon called the bystander effect, nobody did. Each individual felt a diffusion of responsibility: when the size of a group increases, the probability of the individual taking action decreases. Another principle in this is pluralistic ignorance: the tendency for people to look to others for examples of how to behave in an unfamiliar or ambiguous situation. When these combine, nobody acts. According to these principles, one solution has been to provide normative feedback (e.x. other students tend to disapprove of smoking) to lesson negative behaviours.

What to consider?

Complex social problems are not always straightforward, but are multiply determined, including many variables that need to be addressed in seeking a solution. Because of this, it is unlikely that a single theory will be sufficient for most issues. Many elements of psychological theories are often needed, defying the boundary conditions of any single theory and making outcomes less predictable. Some theories are also more complex than others. Simple theories, like the motivational theory of David McClelland, are narrow in scope and can thus be useful in the single situation to which they apply. Some psychological theorists have broader theories, often so broad that they seem to apply to any situation (ex. Freud’s psychodynamic theory). These may be useful for understanding behaviour but not for solving problems on the practical level.

What about Prediction and Explanation?

Another challenge is that prediction and explanation are not equally attainable within applied social psychology. Predictions (forecasts) are difficult to make; in many real-world situations, different theories lead to different predictions because of unclear boundary conditions. Furthermore, as many outcomes are based on an individual’s perceptions and interpretations of their situation, both the outcomes and the interpretation of these outcomes may be seen in different ways. Explanation is more straightforward (hindsight is 20/20!). It is relatively easy to explain why things happen.

What about Principles and Constructs?

It is difficult to connect the principles and constructs of a theory to a real-world situation. To utilize the elements of a theory in coming up with an intervention, boundary conditions might require some stretching. This can be particularly challenging when theories deal with a static situation while a real situation is constantly changing. Connecting theories to interventions can sometimes take a leap of faith, though the scientific method allows for reflection of effectiveness after the intervention takes place. The internet created for example a sense of deindividuation, creating anonymity and decreasing self-awareness.

What is the difference between Basic, Applied, and Use-Inspired Research?

The work of applied social psychologists can be described as use-inspired. Any line of inquiry can be classified among two dimensions: the search for a fundamental understanding and a consideration of the usefulness of the research findings. Along these two dimensions, pure basic research is concerned only with fundamental understanding. Pure applied research is only concerned with use. The dimensions can be seen in the Quadrant model from Stokes. However, a mixture is found in use-inspired basic research, which is concerned with both dimensions. This is where most applied social psychologists exist on the scale.

How to apply Behaviour-Focused Intervention? - Chapter 3

What is the Behaviour-Analysis Approach?

The applied behaviour-analysis approach targets observable behaviour rather than internal events like cognition. This approach measures an observable behaviour or outcome as a dependent variable. It is based on B.F. Skinner’s behaviourist theory, which also suggests that we do what we do to gain positive consequences and avoid negative consequences. The most motivating consequences are those that occur soon and that are certain (ex. the soon and certain gratification of smoking outweighs the distant and uncertain possibility of lung cancer). One intervention based on this approach is to change the consequences of a behaviour (consequence). Anther intervention is to alter the environmental stimuli that occur before a behaviour (antecedent). Antecedents precede and direct behaviour. The three-term contingency is: antecedent-> behaviour -> consequence (ABC).

How does Behavioural Intervention work?

Which Strategies Use Antecedents?

Antecedent strategies of intervention include education, verbal and written prompts, demonstrations, and commitment procedures.

What about Education and training?

Education allows people to form a strong rationale for the requested change, making remote, uncertain and unknown consequences more “salient” to the audience. Training tends to add an element of role-playing and feedback to the education. Education and training delivered more personally has been found to be more effective than widespread broadcasting of information because it allows people to apply the information more directly to their own lives. While important, however, information alone is insufficient to change most behaviour, especially when the change requested is inconvenient.

What about Prompting?

Prompts are written or verbal messages delivered in the place where the behaviour occurs, reminding the person to avoid the behaviour (antecedent). They are most effective when they meet these four criteria:

1. The target behaviour is clearly defined by the prompt.

2. The change is easy to perform.

3. The message is displayed where the target behaviour is performed.

4. The message is polite.

Demanding messages may backfire, causing a rebellious response called countercontrol, or psychological reactance. Prompts are simple to implement, low cost and tend to have an impact when implemented on a large scale.

What about Models?

Modelling involves the demonstration of specific behaviours to the target audience. It is often more effect when the models receive an immediate reward after performing the behaviour. This has been shown to be effective, even when in the form of a video.

What about Commitment?

Behavioural commitments involve asking an individual to formally agree to change their behaviour. The simple act of making a formal commitment causes people to feel obligated to change. This explained by the notion of rule-governed behaviour – having grown up learning that following rules leads to more positive consequences than breaking them, people learn a tendency for rule-following. Behavioural commitments are also linked to the norm of consistency, which pressures people to be internally and externally consistent.

Which Strategies Use Consequences?

What about Penalties?

After identifying undesirable behaviours, penalty strategies administer negative consequences to those who perform them. While favoured by governments, these strategies are problematic. They require constant monitoring and enforcement, the backup of authority, and can have a negative long-term effect on individual’s perceptions of the good behaviour they are supposed to emulate, associating it with punishment.

What about Rewards?

Behavioural psychologists typically favour the strategy of rewarding positive behaviour. Rewards can be verbal praise, money, merchandise, or special privileges. While these strategies also have problems, they have been proven effective. Rewards are consequences, but are often preceded by a message announcing the availability of a reward, called an incentive. An antecedent message announcing a penalty is a disincentive. Incentives and rewards are used frequently by employers to improve employee performance. Disadvantages to reward strategies include expenses, which can be high. An interesting disadavantage can be seen in the phenomenon of intrinsic motivation – when a certain behaviour is rewarded, that behaviour temporarily increases. However, when the reward is no longer given, the behaviour tends to drop to a lower frequency than before the intervention. This is because intrinsic motivation (doing something for its own sake) towards the task is decreased when individuals become extrinsically motivated (doing something for the sake of a reward).

What about Feedback?

Feedback strategies provide participants with information about the rate or consequences of their behaviour, increasing the likelihood of behavioural change. This can be useful for a variety of problems, including energy consumption, smoking, and depression.

What about Interventions through Social Influence?

There are six social-influence principles used by salesmen to increase sales: consistency, social proof, authority, liking, reciprocity, and scarcity. Robert Cialdini calls them compliance techniques. These are relevant because they can be used as intervention techniques.

1: Consistency

People have a strong desire for both internal and external consistency (as evidenced by the cognitive dissonance theory). The following sections explain ways in which the consistency principle can impact intervention techniques.

What is the Foot in the Door Technique?

The foot-in-the-door technique observes that people who comply with a small request are more likely to comply with a subsequent larger request. This is thought to be due to a desire for internal consistency – if I felt alright giving this person a glass of water, it should be okay to donate money to their charity, too!

What is Cognitive Dissonance?

Cognitive dissonance is the uncomfortable tension when our beliefs and our actions don’t match, a state which we are highly motivated to reduce. Because this causes strong motivational reactions, it can be helpful in interventions to highlight and arouse dissonance, in ways sometimes as simple as getting people to reflect on the negative impact of their behaviour. Dissonance strategies have been found effective when applied to large-scale problems. The one downside to this strategy is that people may also reduce dissonance by changing their attitude, rather than their behaviour.

How about commitment to the Public?

As described previously, commitment strategies involve a person promising to change their behaviour. These work best when the commitment is active, public, and perceived as voluntary. In this way, breaking the commitment would produce the most dissonance. Voicing the commitment or signing a promise card makes the commitment feel more concrete and makes people more motivated to seem consistent to others. After the commitment is made, the new behaviour is often maintained. This is explained by the process of behavioural self-perception. The more often a person repeats a behaviour, the more it becomes part of their self-concept. Furthermore, people often infer their own attitudes from their overt behaviour – if you make a commitment to stop smoking, and then actively quit smoking, you might infer that you don’t want to smoke and think it is a bad habit.

What is The Hypocrisy Effect?

Elliot Aronson developed a method for using cognitive dissonance called the hypocrisy effect. This involves obtaining a commitment from someone. That person is given an exercise that reminds them of their past failures to perform in ways consistent with their commitment. This makes hypocrisy salient and increases the likelihood that future behaviour aligns with the commitment. Combining commitment and cognitive dissonance strategies can be an effective application of the consistency principle.

2: Social Proof

The term social proof describes the compliance technique that involves showing evidence that other people behave in the desired way. People have a tendency to look to others in their social environment for cues as to how it is appropriate to behave and think. Social norms are these unwritten codes of conduct- descriptive norms are what people in the social group do, and injunctive norms are what people in the social group approve or disapprove. These do not always align, as in the case of energy conservation.

What is Normative Prompting?

It is important when designing a campaign to consider the concept of social proof. For instance, if a sign attempts to discourage behaviour by outlining the scope of the problem, it often has the opposite of the intended effect. Knowledge that many people engage in a bad behaviour (littering, petty theft) is more likely to increase our bad behaviour.

Can Norms be misperceived?

Oftentimes, an individual’s perception of social norms is not actually accurate. Many students overestimate the amount of alcohol that their peers drink and end up consuming more. Clarifying these norms through advertising is a good way to reduce bad behaviour caused by misperceived norms.

What about Personal Normative Feedback?

Normative feedback compares an individual’s behaviour to the average behaviour of their social group as a way to personally correct abnormal undesirable behaviour.

What is The Social Norms Approach?

Pluralistic ignorance is the belief that other people’s attitudes or beliefs are different when behaviour is identical. This corresponds with the fundamental attribution error, or the correspondence bias. In this theory, people see their negative behaviour as externally caused and their positive behaviour as internally caused, but attribute the behaviour of others in the opposite manner. Another contributor is the availability heuristic: people judge the probability of something occurring by how often they have seen it occurring. A college student who attends a lot of drinking parties will develop a skewed view of college students’ drinking habits because they draw on the wrong sample group.

What about Salient Participation?

Interventions should be as salient as possible in social proof strategies.

3: Authority

People are more likely to comply with a request from someone they see as having authority than someone with less status. Uniforms and titles can help reinforce the presence of authority and enhance influence. Authority not only includes power, but also expertise. People use the opinions of experts as heuristics in making choices. Associating a request with the endorsement of an authority can increase the likelihood of compliance.

4: Liking

We are more likely to do things for people that we know and like. People tend to like those that are similar to them – salespeople often take advantage of this by pointing out similarities between them and their clients. Even fake similarities in name, birthday, and fingerprint types have an effect. Whenever possible, similarities between intervention agents and target audiences should be emphasized, and when choosing observational learning models, models should be similar to the target audience as well. Block-leaders are community members that serve as intervention agents within their own neighbourhoods, effective because they are similar to, and often liked by, their target audience.

5: Reciprocity

The reciprocity norm suggests that people feel the need to repay others for benefits received from them. Reciprocity strategies often involve giving someone a small token gift to encourage their donation or other reciprocal behaviour.

What about Antecedent Rewards?

Offering a pre-behaviour reward (such as a free pen before someone fills out a survey) is often a useful alternative to normal incentive/reward systems.

What about Reciprocity?

The reciprocity principle has been effectively used in behavioural prompts. For example, a hotel seeking to encourage visitors to reuse towels informed hotel guests that a donation to an environmental charity had already made in their honour, inviting guests to help recover the expense by reusing towels.

What means Pay-what-you-want?

This is an alternative pricing strategy, where costumers first enjoy a service or product and afterwards decide how much they want to pay for it. The norm of reciprocity would stop people from free-riding.

6: Scarcity

Scarcity can be linked to supply and demand – the rarer or more difficult to attain, the more valuable a thing is perceived to be.

What is Reactance Avoidance?

Reactance is the tendency to act in ways to re-establish freedom when it becomes threatened or limited in some way. Freedom, like objects, becomes more desirable when limited. This is important to keep in mind in important compliance situations, like health and safety in the workplace. A non-threatening approach should be taken to avoid reactance.

What are Salient Losses?

The threat of loss is often more motivationally powerful than the promise of a gain, which is called loss aversion. This can be very useful – in an energy-efficiency campaign, it is sometimes more useful to point out how much money you might lose if you don’t switch to saving practices.

What are Fear appeals?

Fear appeals are messages that attempt to change behaviour by highlighting negative consequences. The most successful fear appeals present a scary problem as well as an effective solution (arousing fear but providing an escape).

How to design applied Social Psychological Research? A case study – Chapter 4

Are there different Research Designs?

How to Select a Research Method?

When an applied topic is selected, an important issue to address is which research method to use. Many approaches exist, but there is rarely a single “right” decision. Each has advantages and disadvantages, and most choices involve some sort of trade-off. The most common trade-offs are represented as the “three-horned-dilemma”. There are three desirable qualities of a method: precision, generalizability to situations, and generalizability to people. Any attempt to maximize one of these qualities leads to the other two being compromised. Because it is impossible to create a perfect study, it is often best to use multiple studies in a research. A good researcher must adopt a dilemmatic approach, in which a series of choices among multiple research designs is viewed.

What are True Experiments?

What are the Features?

A true experiment tests the causal relationship between two or more variables using either manipulation or random assignment. Manipulation is the systematic tampering with one variable to observe the effects this may have on the other variables. The manipulate variable is the potential cause, and is usually called the independent variable, while the outcome variable is called the dependent variable. Random assignment ensures that every participant has an equal chance of being assigned to any condition in the experiment. This is essential because it allows for a rough estimate of group equality.

What are the Advantages?

True experiments are the most precise. They eliminate confounding variables so as to increase the clarity of the causal relationship. There are person confounds and procedural confounds. Person confounds occur when the presence of an individual difference influences outcome. Random assignment controls for this. Procedural confounds occur when the experimenter unwittingly manipulates two or more variables at once. This can usually be avoided with careful control of the experimental situation. Laboratory experiments have the advantage of diminishing noise, the variables that can influence a dependent variable but that remain consistent over different situations.

How about Precision and Statistics?

True experiments allow researchers to study statistical interactions, which indicate that the effect an independent variable has on the dependent variable depends on another independent variable. For this, the 2x2 factorial design is a common study method in addressing social behaviour. In this design, the researcher looks at the independent and combined effects of two independent variables that each have two levels. Statistical interactions are useful for more complex conceptually related interactions. They are also useful because they identify the boundary conditions of a theory. This improves the applicability of the theory.

What are the Disadvantages?

True experiments are typically low in their ability to generalize to other people and to generalize to other situations. The generalizability to people is limited by the fact that experimenters generally use samples from homogenous populations (like university students) for both convenience reasons and to eliminate the noise that comes with a heterogeneous population. Furthermore, in the effort to remove noise, experimenters tend to conduct their research in sterile, unnatural environments. This makes it difficult to generalize results to real-world situations.

How to minimize Disadvantages?

The reliance on convenience samples and contrived situations may limit the researcher, but there are still options available to reduce the disadvantages of true experiments. Of course, the challenge is that the researcher can rarely find a representative applied situation that will allow for effective generalization. In regards to generalizing to other people, researchers can sometimes conduct experiments in applied settings, or expand the sample list. While in individual studies they may need to keep the sample homogenous, they might choose to conduct a series of studies with different homogenous populations.

What is Realism?

The general concern for generalizability comes from a desire for studies to yield realistic results. Studies high in mundane realism involve a setting similar to the real-world setting of the phenomenon being studied. The problem with this is that the research questions tend to be highly specific. A different type of realism is experimental or psychological realism. This is when a study situation might not seem like a real one, but feels like a real one. This involves inspiring the same emotions and psychological states as a real situation might inspire, without mimicking a real situation.

What is Correlational Research?

What are the Features?

Correlational research is used to investigate the relationship between different measured variables in natural situations. The researcher generates a fixed set of observations about a group of people. This approach does not manipulate variables – the researcher merely assesses and measures variables of interest as they naturally occur. To determine a correlation, the collected data must be statistically analyzed for a relationship that is either consistent or inconsistent with the hypothesis, usually computing a correlation coefficient. This ranges from -1 to +1 and indicates the magnitude and direction of the correlation. A positive correlation is when one variable increases, the other one also increases. The opposite occurs in a negative correlation. It is important not to confuse correlational research with correlational statistics.

What are the Advantages?

Correlational research maximises generalizability to situations. This is because the observed behaviours occur in natural settings, increasing the chances that results are representative. They can also act as a useful follow-up to test the generalizability of an experimental research to the real world. It is especially useful when researching un-manipulatable variables, like gender, personality, or ethically troublesome variables like reactions to stress and danger.

What are the Disadvantages?

The primary limitation of correlational research is that correlation does not equal causation. One cannot infer the cause of one variable on the basis of a correlational relationship. One issue is reverse causality – the causal relationship might be the inverse of what is expected (violent video games might not cause aggression; they might only be played by naturally aggressive kids). Another issue is the third variable problem – there might be a separate variable causing both of the observed variables. While high in generalizability to other situations, correlational studies are low in generalization to other people. Studies still rely on convenience sampling. There is still a pressure to use a homogenous sample and this also decreases generalizability.

How to minimize Disadvantages?

The most common method of correcting for third-variable problems is to use covariates. This involves studying the effects of other plausible variables that may act as a third variable. While this cannot guarantee that the results are conclusive, nor establish causation, it still goes a long way to validating the results. It is also never possible to guess every possible third variable. In order to correct for the issue of reverse causality, researchers may pair the study with other research designs, such as a longitudinal study. This can control for prior levels of outcome, providing insurance against reverse causality. This is, however, limited. Another option is retrospective self-report.

What are Quasi-experiments?

What are the Features?

Quasi-experiments are something of a compromise between precision and generalizability to situations. Researchers only have partial control over independent variables. Random assignment is impossible as participants are placed into groups based on another naturally occurring criterion. Dependent variables and extraneous variables can be controlled. While there are many types of quasi-experimental designs, the most common is the person-by-treatment quasi-experiment. An independent variable (or treatment variable) is manipulated and the person variable is measured. This allows researchers in applied social psychology to examine how different people react to the same treatment. While they have less control than experiments, quasi-experiments can be more precise with the use of statistical covariates.

What are the Advantages?

Quasi-experimental designs offer a compromise between strict experiments and loose correlational studies. A quasi-experiment lends itself to natural measures and can be used to measure real-world behaviours that would be unethical to replicate in a lab.

What are the Disadvantages?

Quasi-experiments often include the shortcomings of correlational and experimental designs. Generalizability to people is also limited for the same reasons that it is limited in the other two designs.

What is Survey Research?

What are the Features?

Survey research addresses the need to generalize results to a particular population of people. Of course, to generalize from a sample to a population, one must have a representative sample. Survey research is the process of collecting information from a sample of people, selected for their ability to represent a larger population. This is different from a questionnaire in that a survey uses representative sampling. To ensure that a sample is representative, researchers may use random sampling within a particular population. This is often limited, however, by logistical problems. Another method is cluster sampling, which first randomly selects locations, then people within the locations (random U.S. high schools, with a random sample of students from each one). The error associated with a sample estimate is called sampling error. This is usually the discrepancy between the results of a representative sample and the results the full population would provide.

What are the Advantages?

Surveys are very effective ways of representing information about a large population, and as such, they are often used by politicians and governments, as well as by applied social scientists. They are flexible and efficient.

What are the Disadvantages?

As with the other research designs, survey design is unable to fulfill the three “horns” of research; while it can be generalized to people, it cannot be generalized to situations nor is it precise. It is costly in time and expense, and often requires the use of complex procedures. The questionnaires must be short and cannot go into much detail, so they are often used just for descriptive purposes.

How to minimize Disadvantages?

It is best to pair the survey’s sampling procedure with a true experimental or a correlational design. Survey research itself, however, tends to stand on its own.

How to decide between Research Designs?

1. Programmatic research engages in multi-methods, involving a number of studies that use different methods in order to form a more accurate picture of the problem at hand. No single study can answer all questions, and applied researchers must organize research programs that utilize the best of each method and correct for the worst.

2. Do something new, the research should be complementary to the strengths and weaknesses of earlier research.

3. Seek the best research team of collaborators who are specialized in different ways.

What about the psychology of consumer behaviour? - Chapter 5

The meaning of consumer behaviour here is the process of acquiring goods. Two different kinds of buying behaviour are delibarate and impulse buying.

Do Goods have different Functions?

Consumers buy goods next to its utilitarian function, also for its identity function. People use suspicious consumption to express wealth, to express something about their personality and about the way they see themselves. A set of human characteristics that someone associates with a certain brand is called brand personality. People tend to buy the brands with traits that are similar to their own self-image. These products also help them to be the kind of people they want to be.

Categorization

Goods can be placed on a thinking-feeling continuum ranging from exclusively utilitarian or thinking goods, to goods that have exclusively identity-related functions or feeling goods. Most products serve both of these functions. Goods also very in their level of involvement, meaning that products of low involvement are bought repetitive and habitual. High involvement products are infrequently bought and expensive. Combing the thinking-feeling dimension and the involvement dimension, Vaughn created four quadrants. Quadrant 1 are high involvement thinking goods, quadrant 2 are high involvement feeling goods, quadrant 3 are low involvement thinking products and quadrant 4 are low involvement feeling products.

What about Buying Behaviours?

What is Deliberate buying?

Deliberate buying means acquiring a good on the basis of a pre-shopping intention. The Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) specifies three determinants of people’s behaviourial intentions. First, the attitudes towards the specific action which are based on the beliefs of the outcome of the behaviour and on the evaluations of the expected outcomes of the behaviour. Second, the subjective norms exist of the person’s willingness to comply and on his/her normative beliefs. Third, perceived behavioural control reflects the perceived extent to perform and control the behaviour. Individual and environmental changes can influence the accessibility of the costumer’s beliefs, so attitudes can fluctuate over time. Additional to the TPB is the extent to which performing behaviour is consistent with the person’s self-concept or identity similarity.

What is Impulsive buying?

Impulsive buying is characterized by unplanned and unintended behaviour or a powerful urge to buy something immediately. Often there exist a violation of pre-shopping intentions, in which a long term personal goal with future rewards conflicts with a short term goal with immediate rewards. In such self-control dilemmas the process of regulating behaviour in the service of long-term personal goals is being challenged. It becomes more difficult to resist temptations when resources are more desirable, more cognitive accessible, more hedonistic as an experience and the more our resources of self-control are depleted.

How to measure attitudes?

Attitudes are mostly mostly measures in an explicit way that requires people to agree or to non-agree with verbal attitude statements. When socially sensitive issues are being measured, individuals tend to give social desirable answers rather than honest. To prevent this, implicit measures can be done in which respondents are not aware of the purpose of the assessment. There is evidence that implicit measures a better predictors of behaviour that is outside our control than explicit measures. There is also found support for the assumption that under the influence of alcohol, behaviour in a self-control dilemma is better predicted by implicit that explicit measures. Alcohol has two effects on costumers: it puts them in a better mood and it lowers their cognitive resources. In addition, by offering costumers a drink in the shop, the rule reciprocity says that they should try to repay what is provided to us.

What is the impact of Advertisement?

Advertising can influence the likelihood that people buy a specific product via the cognitive route, the affective route or the subliminal route.

What is The cognitive route?

Persuasive arguments can change beliefs, attitudes or intentions. Based on the Information Processing Model of McGuire, the impact of an argument depends on (1) how it is received, based on paid attention and understanding; and (2) how it is yielded or accepted. The Cognitive Response Theory argues that it is the balance of pro en con responses to an argument that determines whether the individual is persuaded. Next to arguments, advertisements also persuade costumers by heuristic processing. Heuristics are rules to thumb that help us to decide about the validity of communications without having to scrutinize the arguments. In addition, they are used to decide whether a communicator can be believed. According to Dual-Processing Theories of Persuasion, the extent to which costumers scrutinize arguments depends on their processing motivation and their ability.

What about the fit of Advertisement and Message with costumer?

The processing style of the targeted costumer is important in advertising. Costumers that are cognitively depleted are more likely to fall back on heuristic processing. Also, high self-monitoring people who care more about their self-image, are more likely to look at the country of origin of their food than low self-monitoring people. Moreover, the message and the function of a certain product should fit. This means that an identity-related message is most effective for feeling products and an utilitarian message is most effective for thinking products.

What is The affective route?

In evaluative conditioning a person’s attitude about something can be changed, without involving cognitions. It is the process of an unconditioned stimulus being presented with a neutral stimulus, in which in the neutral stimulus gradually begins to get the same response as the unconditioned stimulus. It differs from classical (Pavlovian) conditioning, because here words, pictures or music are used as an unconditioned stimulus instead of food. Conditioning procedures with brands do not work very well with people who already have a strong attitude towards the brand. On ‘neural’ participants, evaluative conditioning affects the implicit attitudes and not the explicit attitudes. The conditioning doesn’t change beliefs about attributes of brands, it only changes evaluative responses. This means that ony when thinking is made difficult, the influence of conditioning will have effect.

What is the the subliminal route?

In subliminal advertising viewers are briefly exposed to information, in a way they are unable to read or to see the text. Most of countries have made this illegal, but playing certain music in a shop is also a way of subliminal advertising. People then are aware of what they are doing, but they are manipulated and not always aware of why they are doing it. For subliminal advertising to the effective, there are a few conditions: the brand needs to be liked, the brand is name is not already highly cognitive accessible, the product is offered quickly after the advertising and the consumer needs the product.

What is the context of Applied Social Psychology?

Social psychology in the field of consumption can help explain spending behaviours of different people and can help the government as well as practitioners to adjust their policy or advertisements in the best way to their targets.

Can Social Psychology contribute to Development Aid? - Chapter 6

To help people in low income countries much money is spend on development aid projects. The positive and negative effects of developmental aid is largely discussed, because on one side it is important for countries to overcome the ‘poor position’. On the other side it is said that powerful aid organizations are corruptive and undermining.

What are the Goals and Impact?

When impact evaluations are implemented in in development aid projects, the long- and short-term impacts are assessed and it can be determined if and how the activities contribute to the achievement of the goals.

How about Logical frames?

Different aspects of an intervention and the relationship between these aspects can be defined by a result chain or logical frame. It starts with looking at the inputs of the intervention: what is provided through the intervention. Then a list of main activities of the intervention is made. The outputs should be under control and they can be tracked by the organization. Outcomes or impacts cannot be directly controlled by the organization. Short-term impacts can be seen in for example percentages and longer-term impacts is the evaluation of the realization of the higher-order goals of the intervention. Many organizations develop a theory of change, which is an explanation of how and why activities will bring changes to reach the goals. First, a pathway of how and in which time an activity contributes to the goal of the intervention is shown. Second, an explanation is made for whether and why the intervention is effective, by testing underlying assumptions. Third, the theory thrives to make people think about what they want to achieve with the intervention.

Which Scientific Methods are useful?

To look at the effectiveness of interventions and to consider cultural contexts, field experiments are useful. Here it is important to gain deep insights in the hindering and supporting factors and in the impacts of the interventions. For development aid interventions, an experimental design that compares different groups is also often used. There is one main goal and groups with different types of interventions are compared in their effectiveness of reaching the goal.

How about Interventions on immunization?

An example of an immunization intervention in India is given, which makes clear that is can be important to use incentives to increase people’s motivation to perform specific behaviour. Three experimental groups were compared: one in which education and information about immunization was given, one with the same condition, but with an additional non-financial incentive and there was one control group. Incentives seemed to improve immunization behaviour significantly. Though, it is important to realize that these incentives change the extrinsic motivation of people, but not the intrinsic motivation.

What is the Cultural context?

Qualitative research is a way to understand cultural context. An intervention can be developed and seem very successful in individualistic countries, but the functioning of the intervention is based on psychological and cultural factors. Daily routines and psychological processes need to be kept in mind with implementing an intervention in an other culture, because innovations require changes in people’s behaviour.

What about Theories and Constructs?

It has to be kept in mind that for quantitative, as well as qualitative, some psychological concepts are specific to the Western culture and less relevant in collectivistic contexts. To gain insights and increase validity, different research methods should be applied. Data of a field experiment revealed that to change prejudiced behaviour of a person, it may be more useful to target the social community beliefs in the intervention instead of the personal beliefs.

What are good Promotional strategies?

To consider the importance of context, an example of an intervention is given in which poor communities are offered a bottle to clean their water, in order to disinfect their water from diseases. The bottles are promoted in different ways: via mass media, centralized communication or and interpersonal communication. As a form of interpersonal communication, promoters, opinion leaders and a health fair were used. Interpersonal communication was most convincing to change people’s water-cleaning behaviour. The intervention seemed to stimulate the communication about the subject. This is an example of showing that if interventions want to change behaviour, need to consider people’s embeddedness in the collective.

Can Laptop Usage change Culture?

Interventions can cause effects that are not envisaged by the organization. These so-called side-effects can lead to cultural change. Culture is a broad concept, and described as a collective phenomenon that forms a frame of reference for people’s sense of reality. Culture is not stable and it is not only existing of individual values and beliefs, but it is also located in the society. Culture can be differentiated in two dimensions. (1) The individualism versus collectivism of societies is a dimension about differences between nations or societies. (2) The independence versus interdependence of self-construals is a dimension about differences on an individual level. In individualist cultures, endorsing independent self-construals is emphasized. People view themselves as unique and express their abilities as internal attributes. In collectivistic cultures, endorsing interdependent self-construals is emphasized. People see themselves in relation to others and they are motivated to stick to social norms and beliefs.

What is Modernization theory?

Modernization takes place when activities of a traditional country are becoming similar to those of industrialized countries. This process is described by Modernization theory: It explains how different aspects of modernization lead to cultural and social change on a macro-level. We know that values and principles influence people’s behaviour. How modern technology affects particular values can be seen in two trends. First, certain values like rationality, trust and participation become more important. Second, other values persist over time, like religious and traditional values. Modernization is tested in an experiment in which poor Ethiopian students in a traditional culture were given a laptop. Laptop usage seemed to increase agentic cultural values like achievement, self-direction, universalism and benevolence. Individual enhancement values as well as values about helping others were increased. Values about religion and tradition were not affected by laptop usage. Note that the value change only appeared when students actively used their laptops, so ownership only didn’t bring change in values. The long-term impacts of modernization requires more long-term research.

What is the context of Applied Social Psychology?

An important role of social psychology is to gain understanding of the (un)successfulness of aid projects by looking at the psychological factors and cultural differences. In psychological research, there are many ethical issues. The challenge of sample selection is to randomize the participation, to have a fair selection criterion (which can be better reached by using a waiting-list control group) and to make participants in the control group unaware of the profit of the experimental group. Nowadays, many research comes from WEIRD countries: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic societies. Generalization of research would be better if insights from collectivistic, less industrialized countries would increase.

What about Psychology and Economic Behaviour? - Chapter 7

What is Utility Maximization?

According to the principle of hedonic utility, the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain explain all human behaviour. Utility, then, would be the main measure of pleasure. Hedonic calculus would compute utility by balancing pleasure and pain, creating a universal law of human nature from which an economic system could be derived. This concept was the brain-child of 19^th century economists and was criticized by psychologists as being far too simplistic. Nevertheless, economists excluded psychological assumptions in a manner similar to that taken by behaviourism. Economists also shifted from cardinal utility, based on an individual’s ratings of options, towards ordinal utility, which is easier to measure because it automatically ranks options.

How about Anomalies?

The theory of subjective expected utility (SEU) suggests that costs and benefits are multiplied by the perceived likelihood of their occurrence. Gains and losses are relative to a reference point – if you expect something and don’t get it, that’s as much of a loss as actually losing something. Here you also see loss aversion: When people have a choice, they seem to avoid the possibility of getting nothing. The prospect theory suggests that losses are more painful than gains are pleasurable, meaning that losing €100 the same day that you win €100 will not even things out. For economists, however, this would result in a neutral state of no change. Anomalies like this challenge the established economic paradigm. Behavioural economics and economic psychology seek to establish a new paradigm.

What are Personal, Situational and Social Reference?

What is Personal Reference?

Personal reference is when one compares their present with their past welfare. We see things according to a reference point, and can feel positive or negative about something depending on how it is framed. People can consider salary increase as a gain, even though the increase is less then the inflation rate. This is called ‘money illusion’. The welfare function of income suggests that people use their current income as a reference point when evaluating preferred income level – “sufficient” is almost always more than the current income. As people move into different income brackets, instead of being satisfied, they make a new reference point. Their preferences shift so that they consume more, and as such, feel less satisfied.

What is Social Reference?

Social reference or social comparison also contributes with satisfaction to income level and consumption. We compare our own welfare with others. If we see others earning more for doing the same work, our satisfaction falters – we’ve performed a reference shift. The concern about the distribution of welfare between people is called fairness. In an ultimatum game fair behaviour can be observed by seeing how someone divides a sum of money between himself and another person. Traditional economic theory suggests that if people all pursue their own self-interests in transactions, eventually equilibrium will be found. Actually people tend to be more altruistic than the economic theory would suggest, often as a way to establish good working relations and ease economic transactions in the future in which they may not be the one in power. “Pay it forward”.

What is Situational Reference?

People react more negatively in a situation when they incur a loss than one in which they lose a gain. Situational reference involves comparing market cases and judging them on fairness. People see consumers as having the entitlement to make comparisons. Consumers typically consider it unfair if sellers take advantage of external situations to raise their prices. They also find it unfair if a company reduces wages in periods of high unemployment, even though market theory would both predict and advise these behaviour.

Do we have Aversion to Loss?

Loss aversion is a strong motivation, as loss is associated in our brains with danger. This is the same basic characteristic as prospect theory. If someone has time to adjust to a gain or loss, this new state becomes a reference point, meaning that an additional gain or loss will be judged relative to the new state. People take more risks to avoid loss – this translates to market scenarios when stock traders hold on to failing stocks for far too long. They also sell winning stocks too soon, in the disposition effect (they’d rather take a small gain than risk losing while waiting for a big gain). Be aware that every stock is seen by investors as a separate mental account. They don’t want to have loss on an account, and they also don’t compensate losses and gains on different accounts.

What is Positive and Negative Framing?

Framing strongly influences whether a certain situation is considered a loss or a gain. Framing medical statistics in “survivals” rather than “mortality rates” makes the procedures described seem safer and more of a gain than a loss.

What is Hedonic Framing?

Hedonic framing is the process that individuals use to increase value by separating losses and gains – it is based on the prospect theory. Integration means that losses and gains are expressed at once so that there is no time to adapt to a new reference point, while segregation involves telling the gain and loss with a time interval, to allow for adaptation.

How about Gains Segregation?

An integrated gain has a smaller value than two separate gains - it’s better to give a big multi-part present in separate wrapped parts than as one whole.

How about Loss Integration?

An integrated loss has a smaller negative value than separate losses – people prefer to receive one large bill than six smaller ones.

How about Loss Integration with Larger Gain?

If you inform someone about a loss at the same time as informing them of a larger gain, they will see the loss as a diminished gain and feel less bad.

How about Gain Segregation from Larger Loss?

A large loss can be more easily dealt with when segregated from a smaller gain presented as a “silver lining”.

What is Endowment?

People don’t like giving away things they own- they often price their own things at a higher value than they would be willing to spend to acquire the same item. WTA (willing to accept) cost can be more than twice as high as WTP (willing to pay). According to the endowment effect, people prefer to keep what they have than exchange it for another product, probably because the loss is felt stronger than the gain. It seems that the for less similar (less exchangeable) products the endowment effect is stronger.

What is Status Quo?

When presented with many options, people prefer to maintain the status quo by going with the standard or comfortable choice. This might be partially due to laziness- people don’t want to bother learning about the other options. The status-quo bias and the endowment effect share an evaluation of public goods.

What are Sunk-Costs?

The sunk cost effect is present when, having already invested in a project, people are more willing to continue investing than accept failure and cut losses. This is much like taking a large risk to avoid a loss.

Are there differences in Time Preference?

Time preference is the distinction between people who are more or less patient with their money. The more patient will invest, the less patient will spend.  Hyperbolic discounting describes time preferences with the present as a reference. The time preference can be explained by four processes. The sign effect suggests that gains are discounted more than losses as people want more compensation for delaying a gain than they would pay to delay a loss. The magnitude effect suggests that small sums are discounted more than large sums. The delay-speed-up asymmetry effect suggests that people want more compensation for delaying a gain than they would pay for speeding it up (to increase pleasant anticipation and decrease unpleasant dread). Furthermore, people prefer improved sequences –they’d rather get the loss over with and delay the gain.

What is the New Rationality of Economic Behaviour?

Studying heuristics and biases of economic actors helps explain economic behaviour and expose flaws in the current economic paradigm. Heuristics are search and decision rules and biases are attitude-based tendencies, both of which are used in every decision and impact our behaviour. They are related to unconscious thinking and can interfere with judgement and decision-making. The use of heuristics points to a new rationality in economic behaviour.

What is the context of Applied Social Psychology?

Cognitive, economic, and social psychological principles are now more often applied to economic behaviour. Applying social-psychological theories to economic research allows for a more realistic result. Social-psychological hypotheses can further be tested well in the domain of economic behaviour.

How to apply Social Psychology in the Classroom? - Chapter 8

Applied social psychology can be used to understand and further educational goals. It can increase student participation, improve attitudes, and have a great deal of positive influence. There is even a new branch of social psychology called educational social psychology.

What is Social Comparison?

Social comparison is the process of thinking about other people in relation to the self (comparing your own behaviour with how you see others behaving). People rely on social comparison to form their self-image, even as young as preschool. This facilitates adaptation and learning. This begins at around age 6 or 7, and peaks around age 10. Children rank themselves according to those around them, and what they conclude can have a huge impact on how they view school and the world. Seeing other similar children excel at something can induce pride or jealousy. It can motivate a child to learn and, through observational learning, the child learns how to imitate the good behaviour. People also prefer to compare themselves with people who are similar to them on attributes related to the relevant behaviour. It can also be task-specific, then the similarity is only considered on ‘related attributes’. Social comparison follows a unidirectional drive upwards: most students prefer to compare themselves with students who perform better than them.

What is Upward Social Comparison?

In a study of social comparison among Dutch secondary school children, a large majority of students compared themselves with other students of their own gender. They also usually compared themselves with students who were just above them on the grading scale. This is a slight upward comparison. Higher comparison levels are associated with higher grades, though it did not lower student’s comparative evaluation (how the students viewed their own relative place in the class). This is because upward comparison is usually also paired with downward comparison, as students look at worse performers and feel slightly better about their own performance. Students try to identify with the people above them (making friends) and distance themselves with people below them. Upward social comparison is only helpful because most kids have a mutable self-image; they see the possibility for positive change.

What about Academic Self-Concept and Intelligence?

What about Entity vs. Incremental Intelligence Theories?

Entity theorists believe that intelligence is a stable property. Incremental theorists believe that performance can be improved by experience and effort. Incremental theorists have been shown to be more optimistic and resilient when presented with failure, and there is evidence that even hearing the incremental theory makes children believe they can improve and actually positively effects performance. Students who hold an entity theory of intelligence who begin as poor performers continue to be poor; those who begin as high performers often fall down to low performance over the years as they lose confidence in their abilities.

What about Academic Self-Concept of Failure?

Self-representations have an important impact on cognitive output. If a child does poorly at algebra, for example, he or she might incorporate that into their self-representation. On every task that reminds the student of their past failures (ex. an algebra test), they are prone to do poorly. The more frequent the failure, the more it can take on significance to the student and reduce interest and motivation in the subject. Sometimes having a reputation as a poor student can sabotage future performance. The conclusion that can be drawn is that teachers should try to teach their students the entity theory of intelligence and should not assume that poor performance means lack of necessary skills and aptitudes. This is especially important when diagnosing learning disabilities.

What about Self-Concept of Success and the BFLPE?

In a phenomenon called the “big fish, little pond” effect (BFLPE), high-achieving students who are moved to higher-ability schools typically experience a lowering of their academic self-concept as they begin to compare themselves with other high-achieving children. BFLPE can affect academic choices, effort and achievement. It represents a counterbalancing of two opposing processes. The first, contrast, occurs when a student’s self-judgment moves from their environment (a higher-ability school) to the other students in their class. Assimilation occurs when self-evaluation moves towards context, for instance when a student takes their placement in a higher-ability school as a source of pride. Both contrast and assimilation can occur at once.

What is Stereotype Threat?

Stereotype threat is a phenomenon in which a person’s performance might confirm a stereotype about the social group of which they are a part. For instance, after being told that girls don’t do as well at math as boys, girls tend to score lower than those who are not presented with the stereotype.

Does Classroom Climate play a role?

Classroom climate is another factor that can determine a student’s performance. This is the perceived ambiance or social atmosphere of the setting. Climate can be effected by a number of factors and can be toxic or supportive, a barrier or a benefit. Whether or not a subject is taught by a good teacher can strongly affect a student’s opinion of the subject. This has a great deal to do with classroom climate; in classrooms where the academic success of the children is displayed openly, the result is that students become more aggressive and less attentive to the other students. Minimizing competition and maximizing collective activities is the key to improving a classroom’s atmosphere.

What is the context of Applied Social Psychology?

In education, it is importance to compare the dominant biological approach with the findings from social psychology. Adopting the social psychology findings into the practice may help teachers as well as parents and policy makers. There seems to be a strong interrelationship between the scores of students and the social context of the classroom. In education, not much time is devoted for children to the classroom climate and learning how to see themselves in comparison with others.

How to apply Psychology on Environmental Problems? - Chapter 9

Introduction

Our physical environment has an important impact on our thoughts and behaviour, even in such basic details as ambient temperature. Furthermore, our behaviour has an impact on the environment as well. Environmental psychologists study the interactions of people and their environments. Many of the topics studied by environmental psychologists have social psychological aspects, and applied social psychology theories have been used to address environmental issues.

Does Environment affect Behaviour?

Environment can have a positive of negative effect on experience and behaviour. Comfortable room temperature and windows that can be easily opened greatly improve work performance. Poor building design can lead to getting lost and feeling stressed in the hallways of a large office building. Objective factors like these combine with subjective factors to influence behaviour. For instance, people are usually less annoyed with loud noise if they have a positive attitude towards the source of the noise, can control it, or feel it has an important purpose. Because of this, solving environmental issues is not just a problem of changing exposure levels, but is also about targeting relevant social psychological factors that impact the way stressors affect people. Social design is architectural and environmental design that uses the help of environmental psychologists to achieve specific psychological goals. In comparison with urban environments, natural environments are processed more fluently because of the fractal patterns of nature. This means that nature is self-similar.

What about Social Design and Hospitals?

As an example for the proper use of social design, in designing a hospital courtyard, the architects wanted to use inexpensive and attractive brick for the pathways. However, the social designers discovered that patients in wheelchairs found the bumpy surfaces painful to wheel over, and the final design included smooth pathways. In a further example, one hospital wing (out of three) was renovated, and the effects this renovation had on behaviour were systematically measured and compared with the other two wings. It was found that this renovation greatly improved work ethic and social interaction in that wing.

Does Behaviour affect Environment?

What is the effect of Behaviour?

Human behaviour has an impact on the environment, with some of the most serious effects around the world being air pollution, noise annoyance, freshwater shortages, overfishing, and loss of biodiversity. In an attempt to prevent or at least slow down global warming, applied social psychologists have been looking into ways to improve the way people treat the environment, by understanding all the reasons why we behave how we do. Indirect energy use refers to the energy used to collect raw materials, manufacture, deliver, and dispose of material goods. This, combined with direct energy use, forms the carbon footprint of the individual. Gains in energy efficiency are often overtaken by growth in consumption levels. Effective interventions can be arrived at after considering which behaviour most significantly contributes to environmental problems, which factors cause the behaviour, and which interventions can be applied.

What is Environmental Behaviour?

Environmental behaviour is the behaviour that changes the availability of materials and energy from the environment, or alters the structure of ecosystems and the biosphere. Almost all behaviour can be considered to fit this definition, but it is the task of applied social psychologists to discover which behaviour as the most impact, and to target that behaviour. Since pro-environmental behaviour is associated with high personal cost, it becomes pertinent to determine what conditions are needed to make a person sacrifice that cost.

In which situations do Dilemmas exist?

Commons dilemmas are situations that involve conflict between the individual and their environment. Driving your car is convenient, but negatively impacts the collective due to emissions, increased traffic, and need for parking. In the short term, driving a car would seem better to the individual, but in the long-run driving a car has a lasting negative impact on the environment (and thus society as a whole). However, if one individual cuts down on their energy use, this has little impact in the grand scheme of things – only if many other individuals cut down, too, will there be real change. Luckily, people don’t just think about their immediate convenience when making decisions. Many people go out of their way to make environmentally friendly choices and reduce their environmental impact. Social psychologists are interested in explaining why, and models that include morality as a factor are important towards this goal.

What is Norm Activation?

The norm activation model (NAM) was developed to explain pro-social behaviour and can also be applied to pro-environmental behaviour. The model suggests that behaviour occurs according to personal feelings of moral obligation (personal norms). These morals are activated when people are aware of the consequences of their actions (AC), and believe that they can reverse these consequences (AR). The NAM is most applicable when the costs of the behaviour are low, as in the case of recycling. The higher the cost becomes, the more likely it is that the person will choose the self-serving behaviour. To justify this, self-serving denial, the denial of a moral obligation, allows the person to feel their behaviour is acceptable. There are four types of self-serving denial:

1. Environmental problems are distorted, disregarded or minimized through the selective collection of sources.

2. People might discount their liability for environmental problems, seeing their own contribution as small or irrelevant, blaming others (like corporations) instead.

3. They might deny their own ability to perform the action.

4. They might argue that their individual contribution will not be effective.

The NAM was later extended as the value-belief-norm theory of environmentalism (VBN). This theory states that next to being aware of the consequences (AC) and believing to be able to reverse the consequences (AR), it is for human behaviour important which general beiefs about the human-environment relationships and values they have (NEP).

What about Values?

One way to measure how concerned people are with environmental issues is to use the NEP: new environmental paradigm. This measures fundamental beliefs people hold about how humans and the environment interact. Those who endorse NEP see humanity as limited and the balance of nature as delicate. Values are goals that apply to many situations, serving as a guiding principle in life. Values have four key features:

1. Values feature a strong belief in the desirability of the end-state (good health, world peace, friendly interactions).

2. Values are abstract enough that they can apply to multiple situations and affect many types of behaviour.

3. Values are used as guides to behaviour and judgment.

4. Values are ordered by priority, and if they conflict in any given situation, the strongest priority value takes precedence.

What are the four Value Orientations?

There are four general value orientations relevant to environmental psychology:

1. Hedonic value orientation: personal feelings should be improved and effort should be reduced as much as possible;

2. Egoistic value orientation: personal outcomes should be maximized (power, wealth, ambition);

3. Altruistic value orientation: social welfare outcomes should be maximized (equality, justice, helpfulness);

4. Biospheric/ecocentric value orientation: concern for non-human species and nature (respecting the earth, animal rights, etc.).

In terms of engagement in pro-environmental behaviour, those with altruistic values will do so unless the behaviour conflicts with a humanitarian cause. Altruistic people are more likely to donate to humanitarian organizations while biospheric people are more likely to donate to environmental organizations.

What about Habits?

While the NAM and the NEP assume that thought precedes behaviour, we often act habitually, without thinking. Habits are formed to simplify the way we live our everyday lives. Habits have three characteristics:

1. They are activated in order to achieve a specific goal.

2. When the outcome of the activity is positive, the more often that action will be activated.

3. The more frequently a behaviour is repeated, the more associations are made between the action and the goal.

This means that there is a cognitive structure that is learned and stored in memory, to be retrieved in the appropriate situation. Habits are goal-directed, automatic behaviours. The stronger the habit, the less reasoned the choices. When habits are strong, intention is not related to behaviour. Unfortunately, they are not always good habits.

Habits or Planned Behaviour?

The Theory of Planned Behaviour and the the theory about Habits can be compared. In one study the behaviour of travellers was researched, by looking at their car driving behaviours. The Theory of Planned Behaviour accounted for the intentions to drive, where behavioural control was perceived. When habit was strong, people were not making conscious decisions. This study revealed that when habits are strong, it sets a boudary for making reasoned choices. Habits form a boundary for the Theory of Planned Behaviour.

Can Pro-Environmental Behaviour be promoted?

Interventions will have more success if they target factors that encourage or inhibit pro-environmental behaviours. Two ways to change behaviour include changing people’s perceptions, or changing the consequences that follow the behaviour.

Can Perceptions be changed?

Most perception-changing strategies are antecedent strategies because they precede behaviour. Feedback is in contrast an example of a consequence strategy. Information campaigns aim to increase awareness of environmental problems and about behavioural consequences. This is effective in situations where the problem stems from ignorance. Feedback involves giving people information about how successful their behavioural changes have been, to make the impact of their behaviour more salient. In the following part, five kinds of interventions are discussed that target perceptions, cognitions, motivations and norms.

1. Information campaigns: Increasing awareness and knowledge about (consequences of) human behaviour. Paying attention and changing attitudes depends for example on the values and interests of these targeted people.

2. Modeling: Making people copy behaviours of others. It seems to be effective in changing behaviour, for example when people copy the food disposing behaviour of others when standing in a row of a food restaurant.

3. Block leaders: These are people who inform people in their social network of neighbourhood about environmental issues. It is a effective way of chaning environmental actions, because information is better received when it is given within the social network.

   Behavioural commitment is also a effective way of changing behaviour: Making a private or public promise to perform the trageted behaviour. A private promise activates the personal norm and a public promise makes people want to avoid cognitive dissonance and makes people want to avoid public disaproval of behaviour.

4. Feedback: Giving information about the succesfulness of the one’s behaviour. It works best when it is immediately and frequently provided. An experiment on gas usage showed that gas usage was best reduced when feedback was given on a daily basis and when this maintained. Normative feedback gives information about one’s behaviour compared with others. This can work in a counter-effective way when people hear that they perform better in comparison with others, so then an injunctive norm message should be included in the feedback.

Changing Incentives

Since pro-environmental behaviour tends to come at personal cost, consequence strategies can be a useful way to counteract the negative impact of the costs. Pro-environmental behaviour might be rewarded, or anti-environmental behaviour might be punished. Three strategies can be considered:

1. Pricing policies: cost reduction of environmentally friendly behaviour.

2. Legal measures: Regulations and laws prohibiting anti-environmental behaviour.

3. Availability and quality of products: Easier access to environmentally friendly choices. (ex. closing off city centres to car traffic).

As mentioned previously, penalties are less effective than rewards.

What is the context of Applied Social Psychology?

Applied social psychology can work together with environmental scientists in order to determine which behaviours will have maximum impact. Feasibility and acceptability of environmental behaviours also needs to be addressed. Input from economists, medical professionals, and lawyers are all needed. Interdisciplinary work can be complicated and challenging but is often necessary for applied social psychologists.

What are Health and Illness Psychologically? - Chapter 10

What is the Societal Burden of Unhealthy Behaviour?

Life expectancy is the estimated number of years a child of a certain demographic will live. Life expectancy has increased on a global level, though healthy life expectancy is lower in developing countries than developed countries. Many factors threaten life expectancy. For instance, in developing countries child mortality, bad housing and malnutrition are factors. In developed countries, lifestyle choices like smoking tobacco and dietary choices can have a negative impact. Others include HIV-AIDS, obesity, and the possible future threat of infectious diseases and climate change. The behaviour of individuals is important in determining the health of a population. Behavioural choices are estimated to be responsible for more than 50% of the loss of healthy years in developing countries.

What is the Societal Burden of Chronic Illness?

In developed countries with improved medical care, people with chronic diseases live longer. A complicating factor is that roughly one third of patients with chronic illnesses don´t comply with their medical treatment.

How can Social Psychology contribute to Health Issues?

There are three ways that social psychologists can contribute to improvements in health and life expectancy:

1. Primary prevention: psychologists can study ways to prevent unhealthy behaviours and encourage healthy choices.

2. Promoting behavioural change in people who have unhealthy behaviours.

3. Promoting adherence to medical prescriptions and care regiments for the ill.

What are Health-Related Behaviours?

Health-specific models of behaviour include the health belief model (HBM), the protection motivation theory (PMT), and the health action process approach (HAPA). They can be used to explain the psychology behind healthy choices. At the broadest level, they cover the psychological categories of motivation and self-efficacy expectations.

What about Motivation?

The main reason not to do unhealthy things is to avoid sickness and pain. Whether or not a person is motivated in this regard relies somewhat on their risk perception of the health problem and their perceived vulnerability. This might be based on one’s personal history (the assumption that never having had a certain illness indicates some sort of invulnerability). It can also be based on family history. Lastly, people may use social comparison. This is called unrealistic optimism. Besides vulnerability, the perceived seriousness of a disease can alter a person’s motivation to take preventative action. If it is known that chlamydia is easily treatable, it is considered less serious. Only a combination of high vulnerability and high seriousness motivates prevention.

What about Fear?

Another aspect of the perception of danger lies in the emotional response fear. Fear signals danger and motivates people to avoid it. Worry is the uncontrolled repetition of thoughts that accompanies fear, and can help remind a person of the danger of unhealthy behaviours. However, disengagement beliefs help lower fear without changing behaviour by helping preserve peace of mind. Furthermore, positive outcome expectations, the beliefs of what benefit quitting an unhealthy behaviour will have, impact the choice to change.

What about Self-Efficacy?

Self-efficacy expectations reflect people’s belief in their own ability to do something. They are task-specific. One has to have a high enough level of self-efficacy expectations to be motivated to engage in a certain behaviour – if they don’t think they’ll succeed, then why bother? Estimates of self-efficacy come from enactive learning (when someone proves many times that they can do them) and from attributions of failure (whether someone attributes failure to their own efforts or success to their own efforts). Vicarious learning or modelling is another improver of self-efficacy as it shows something can be done. Third, social comparison information can contribute to self-efficacy in a way of “If he can do it, I can do it”.

How to Initiate and Implement Behaviour?

Motivation, unfortunately, is able to influence the formation of intentions, but not necessarily actions. People’s intentions do not specify where, when, and how they will initiate planned behaviour. Circumstantial and motivational factors may easily delay action. Implementation intentions involve a where and when and help people engage in behaviour when it’s not yet routine. Especially when implementation actions are written down the chance of them happening is increased. Another issue is that people sometimes do things without explicit intention, but out of behavioural willingness. This is the willingness to take a risk when the situation comes up, without having planned to. Depending on a person’s opinion of the prototype image of a person who engages in that behaviour will determine their willingness.

How about Behaviour while being ill?

When it comes to illness, a huge number of patients do not regularly take their medication or medical advice. One factor is symptom perception. People search for whether the symptom is indicative of illness, and then decide whether to go to a doctor. Symptom perception depends on a person’s illness beliefs. A symptom like a headache may fit a patient’s idea of a serious illness, or may remind them of a hangover and cause them to take different action. People tend to prefer to “wait and see” in the face of uncertainty rather than seek medical advice.

Can Taking Medicines be supported?

The doctor-patient relationship effects likelihood of compliance to medical advice – what the doctor communicates and how they make the patient feel have a great deal to do with adherence. Furthermore, the social environment of the patient plays a role. Social support can provide people with emotional support and in some cases, tangible assistance. Friends and family can help the patient interpret their experiences. They can give instrumental support, like helping out with the household or directly influencing adherence to medication.

What are Stage Models of Health Behaviour change?

The previously mentioned social psychological variables generally do not change instantly- change takes time. Stage models suggest that people move through stages of behavioural change and movement through the stages is caused by psychological factors. The trans-theoretical model (TTM) distinguishes five stages of behavioural change:

1. Precontemplation: no motivation for change.

2. Contemplation: begin thinking about change but postponing action.

3. Preparation: plan to adopt new behaviour on a short-term basis.

4. Action: start to adopt new behaviour but must actively prevent relapse.

5. Maintenance: new behaviour is integrated into life.

One can move forward through stages, but cannot skip a stage. It often occurs that people regress to previous stages. People in different stages need different interventions.

Which Methods change behaviour over time?

Many behavioural changes are tested longitudinally. In this case, since people are dynamic and their motivations may change from hour to hour, psychologists have been focusing on methods that provide frequent momentary assessments throughout a subject’s day. These can be in the form of diaries, forms, or even cellphone apps. Measurements can be objective or by self-report, they can be situational or with time intervals, and they can be initiated by the individual or the apparatus itself.

How can Healthy Behaviour be promoted?

In order to promote healthy behaviour it is important to provide people with information that can persuade them to improve this behaviour. This can be new information, or a message designed to put already known information into a more convincing light. A fear appeal must convince people that a threat is real and there are things they can do to fight against it. But, fear appeal can have a side-effect: defensive and denying behaviours. To reduce this side-effect, a self-affirmation procedure can be done before the fear-appeal. When exposed to this a person will realize that threatening information should not be holded off.

How does Message Tailoring work?

Mass-media is good to spread information to many people, but this information might be less effective if it is too specific, because people will look for something to relate to. Computer technology allows information to be adapted to individuals. Computer-tailored persuasion takes into account age, name, gender, and other specifics about a person. It can provide relevant information that may convince the user to change their behaviour. It needs input of information, decision rules to determine responses, a library of messages, and a program to show the message. Three tailoring mechanisms can be distinguished:

1. Adaptation: information should be adapted to the specific individual, avoiding redundancy and irrelevancy.

2. Feedback: feedback always signals that it is directed towards the individual. It may be literal, comparative, or evaluative.

3. Personalization: recognizable individual features are incorporated into content information. Research showed that personalization seems to be a central and effective variable in increasing efficacy of tailored communications.

Message tailoring may enhance the central processing of information provided and trigger self-referent encoding. This processes the information in relation to personal memories, self-attributes and values.

How does Message Framing work?

Messages about healthy behaviours can be framed by promoting good behaviour (gain-framed approach) or by emphasizing the costs of not performing the good behaviour (loss-framed approach). In cases where the behaviour has a very certain outcome, people are more easily convinced when messages are gain-framed. In cases where the outcome is uncertain, people are more easily convinced with a loss-framed approach. Gain-framing is more effective when promoting prevention behaviours, and loss-framing when promoting detection behaviours. The Regulatory Focus Theory (RFT) further differentiates gain-framing and loss-framing into four kinds of messages:

1. Gain frame: The gain of behaving more healthy.

2. Non-gain frame: The absence of gain when there is an absence of behaving healthy.

3. Loss frame: The loss of not behaving healty.

4. Non-loss frame: The prevention of loss by behaving healthy.

Be aware that the influence of environment works in a physical, economic, politcal and sociocultural dimension. Applied Social Psychologists need to be aware of the supporting or non-supporting environments of the behaviour interventions. It is best to also coordinate environmental changes.

What is the Context of Applied Social Psychology?

Social psychologists work with healthcare professionals for information of what target behaviours should be analyzed. They can also provide other professionals with information and techniques to influence health problems. Third, they give advise about how to shape the environment when intervening in people’s behaviours .

How to look at Immigration? – Chapter 11

What are Migration and Cultural Diversity?

Globally, there were around 214 million international migrants in 2010. North America and Oceania take the lead with Europe holding the largest number. In the United States, dominated by European Americans, the largest minorities are the Hispanic and African Americans. In Western Europe, most migrants come from the Mediterranean, South East Asia, and the Middle East. Canada has a very multicultural population, many coming from Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. Australia is the most English-dominated immigration country with more than 83% of the population coming from the British Isles. This all means that in all four above named areas, it is leading towards a less Western culture.

What is Acculturation Theory?

Acculturation is the process of adapting to a new culture. Models of acculturation fit into two categories – one-dimensional (seeing cultural change as linear) and multi-dimensional (seeing cultural change as an independent process). The host society plays in important role in the process of acculturation, by being adopted by the immigrants.

What are the One-Dimensional Models?

The one-dimensional model saw immigrants as gradually giving up elements of their home culture to adopt customs and behaviours of their host culture. This used to be more appropriate when host cultures had more homogenous societies, the migrants formed a small minority, migrants were welcomed for moral reasons, and the cultural differences were small. In the US, another one-dimensional model was used- the melting pot. In this case there was a strong social pressure to conform to mainstream culture. This changed when mainstream culture became more heterogeneous, making it a mosaic rather than a melting pot. One-dimensional models have been shown to be too simplistic – identification with home culture and host culture are two independent influences, not existing on either sides of a single dimension.

What are the Multidimensional Models?

Multidimensional models assume that acculturation processes function in different domains: attitudes, behaviours, values, language, and cultural identity. A migrant might relate to their host culture to different degrees in these domains. Another assumption is that the orientation towards the home culture and the host culture are two separate domains- one might find it valuable to identify with each culture in some ways.

What is Berry’s Classification of Strategies Model?

The four main acculturation strategies are:

1. Integration: maintain cultural identity but relate positively with host country

2. Assimilation: only positive relations with host country are important

3. Separation: only maintaining cultural identity

4. Marginalization: none of these are important

This model suggests that immigrants change in six areas of functioning, modifying their behaviour, attitudes and beliefs, and at times alternating between these acculturation strategies.

What is the criticism?

Marginalization can’t exactly be called a strategy as it is usually involuntary. It is also possible that the immigrant has an individualistic acculturation strategy in which they selectively adopt elements from other cultures. This is called cosmopolitism. Integration has found to be the most adaptive strategy, but research showed that it is important to look at the acculturation expectations of the receiving society. Host societies are likely to think that immigrants just take over the present culture and abandon their own culture and language.

What is the Interactive Acculturation Model?

This model recognizes that the host culture may hold certain expectations towards immigrants:

1. Segregation: Host believes immigrants should be separated from nationals.

2. Integration: Host believes it is important to maintain heritage but still adapt.

3. Assimilation: Host believes immigrants should abandon their heritage.

4. Exclusion: Host believes immigration poses a threat and should be stopped.

5. Individualism: Host believes individual should choose whatever strategy suits them.

Host and migrant strategy preferences sometimes clash. Immigrants tend to prefer integration while hosts tend to prefer assimilation. One problem that can arise is if the host strongly encourages assimilation, reactance can occur and lead to separation. Moreover, when there is too much pressure on assimilation, some immigrants may experience the need for separation which leads to marginalization – Psychological reactance.

What about Social-Psychological Theories?

Social-psychological theories of intergroup relations help us understand immigration situations. The contact hypothesis holds that negative attitudes from one group about another stem from unfamiliarity and ignorance. To diminish this, both groups should be united in cooperation and treated with equal status. Cultural similarity assures us of our own behaviour and values. Similarity-attraction hypothesis states that another person is evaluated more positively when he/she is perceived more similarly in characteristics. The hypothesis is supported by different studies, for example a Dutch survey that showed that when a Dutch couple got new neighbours, they would feel most attracted to neighbours that had all characteristics of themselves in common (here: Dutch, Christian and employed). There is a general phenomenon called ‘ethnic hierarchy’ in which the cultural distance to the ingroup of a country is evaluated and prefered. Canada and England are viewed as more acceptable than East Asia and the West Indies. Social identity theory suggests that individuals strive to have a positive identity, in which group membership plays an important part. Because of this they can maintain a positive self-identity by complimenting their in-group and insulting out-groups.

What is the Instrumental model of Group Conflict?

The instrumental model of group conflict suggests that intergroup antagonism occurs when access to resources is unequal and/or limited, especially if the inequality stems from social hierarchy. The salience of an out-group (the more noticeable and competitive it is) further affects conflict. In situations like this, a zero-sum outlook is taken on the out-group (they are taking what’s ours, not what’s free for the taking). This is a cognitive component of perceived threat. The common in-group identity model suggests that once people are defined as part of an in-group, they will be treated as such. The defining of an out-group person as an in-group member can be achieved by pointing out superordinate memberships (citizen of a nation, employee, etc.) and introducing a shared factor between the two groups (a shared fate). But we have to take into account the historical and contemporary demands of a country or in-group.

What does Research on Acculturation say?

Acculturation research has inspired social psychologists to extend their research to immigration and encouraged acculturation researchers to be more precise. A new concept in immigration theory is attachment, which deals with how people approach others in unfamiliar situations. The terms culture and identity are often interchangeable in acculturation research, something that makes it imprecise, and which psychologists have begun to refine and correct. A recent study on the relevance of attachment theory shows that secure base priming (subliminal presentation of secure base words like love and support, which gives a sense of being loved) leads to reacting to outgroups in a more accepting and tolerant way. Even insecure attached people were more accepting when they were gone through secure base priming.

What Interventions are there?

Interventions use in improving intercultural relations and the situation of immigrants include:

1. Enhancing contact between in-group and out-group members by imposing a superordinate goal that fosters cooperation. For example, letting different groups talk about positive experiences with outgroup members.

2. Reducing unnecessary social categorizations by creating superordinate memberships and minimising stereotyping. Examples are neighbourhoods, organizations or the nation.

3. Maintaining and accepting the cultural identity of all people involved. This because people want to belong to an accepted group.

4. Training focused on improving intercultural understanding and competencies in empathy, open-mindedness and other skills. For example, training can be given.

What is the context of Applied Social Psychology with Immigration?

How about Transnationalism?

Globalization also has an influence on acculturation and intergroup relations. Transnational contact and an increasingly migrant world have had consequences on acculturation that are not yet being studied. One element of transnationalism is how immigrants maintain relations with people in both their home and host countries, often through telecommunications. This adds new dimensions to the acculturation strategies. In cases of integration, this means an extended cultural contact with home. In cases of segregation, a person might move into an ethnic enclave (like Chinatown or Little Italy) in which they can act and experience the world as if they were in their home country. This withdrawal can occur when there is too much pressure to assimilate or when the person experiences discrimination.

How about the demographics?

Demographics are also changing as immigrant populations grow, making some cultures more heterogeneous. This can lead to new acculturation strategies. One of these strategies is creolization. When there is no clearly dominant group, two or more groups may merge to create a distinct culture. Creole cultures are often created by youth interactions that develop beyond a single generation. Another strategy is pluralism. This is when cultural maintenance and intergroup contact are both encouraged but no creolization occurs. National identity in multicultural societies is an important issue. Canada, for example, has a national identity founded on multicultural tolerance, a policy that allows immigrants to identify more with their host country.

How to deal with Mental Health? - Chapter 12

Introduction

This chapter focuses on only three mental health problems, which can be considered some of the most relevant (and prevalent), for social psychologists: body image, depression, and relationship problems.

What about Body Image?

Body image is our internal representation of our appearance. Disturbance of body image is a continuum ranging from no disturbance to extreme disturbance, with most people somewhere in the middle. There is a discrepancy between real and perceived body image, especially in those with disturbed body image disorders.

Are there Gender Differences?

In general, women are more dissatisfied with their bodies than men are. This is usually about weight satisfaction – women tend to rate themselves as larger than they actually are and see the ideal as much thinner than they actually are. They assume that men find people attractive who are closer to their thin ideal. For measuring how satisfied men and women are with their bodies, the Body-Areas Satisfaction Scale can be used. Here eight parts of the body are evaluated and someone’s score of body satisfaction can be low, average or high in comparison to others. Men tend to be more satisfied with their bodies but put the ideal as someone more muscular and large than they are, and believe women want larger men than what women actually rate as attractive. The difference between men and women can be seen in the study of Fallon and Rozin. They made four scales that men and women needed to indicate: current figure, ideal figure, figure that is most attractive to the opposite sex and figure they find most attractive in the opposite sex. For women, these four evaluations were much more separated from each other than for men. Note that in general, weight dissatisfaction means for men that they don’t have enough muscles and for women that they have too much body fat.

What are the Consequences?

The most common medical consequences of disturbed body image are anorexia nervosa (in which a person exercises excessively and severely restricts caloric intake even when underweight), bulimia nervosa (in which a person has bouts of uncontrolled binge-eating after which they purge or fast to compensate), and body dismorphic disorder (BDD) (in which the person is preoccupied with a slight or imagined defect in appearance).

Can we give Theoretical Explanations?

What about Social Comparion?

Social comparison theory suggests that people have a desire to evaluate their opinions and abilities based on those of others. There are lateral comparisons, when a person compares themself with similar people, upward comparisons where a person compares themself with people who are better off, and downward comparisons. Depending on whom people compare themselves with, they may feel either better or worse about their body image. In society, women, especially, are confronted with many examples of beauty ideals and often make upward comparisons that lead to low body image. People with low self-esteem make more comparisons and are less satisfied. People differ in the extent to which and how much they compare themselves with others. This is called the social comparison orientation (SCO). Women that are high is SCO, tend to be more positive about themselves because of looking for similarities with (more) attractive women.

What about Self-discrepancy?

Following the Self-discrepancy Theory, people can have three possible selves. First, the actual self is how someone sees him- or herself in the present. Second, the ideal self are the hopes and aspirations. Third, the ought self is the package of feelings of duty, responsibility and obligation. A discrepancy between the actual and ideal self or between the actual and ought self, can cause dissatisfaction. The feared self is the self that someone is afraid and avoiding to become. When it comes to body-changing behaviour, the feared self plays a larger role than the ideal self. In this theory, internal comparison between the selves are made. Though, the process of forming the selves comes mostly from social comparisons.

How can we cope with these disturbances?

Building self-esteem is an important way to prevent body-image problems. Looking at the differences with their feared self and the similarities with their ideal self can be a good way to improve self-esteem. Physical exercise can temporarily reduce body image dissatisfaction by both causing real weight-loss, and increasing a sense of self-worth. When looking at the SCO level of women, it was notable that women high in SCO had a more positive self-image. Here it is important that women high in SCO rather look at similarities with attractive others than at differences or shortcomings. In coping with body image dissatisfaction, it may be good to learn focussing on similarities instead of contrasts when doing social comparisons. Next to the social comparions and self-descrepancies, it must be noted that there are also other theories that play a role in forming body images.

What about depression?

In Western society, roughly 17% of people experience depression in their lifetime. Depressed people experience feelings of sadness, apprehension, worthlessness, tiredness, and tend to withdraw from other people. An average depressive episode lasts more than six months. Due to the DSM5 (The Diagnostic System for Mental health problems), for diagnosing someone with depression, at least five depressive symptoms need to last for two weeks. Moreover, depressive mood or lost of interest need to be included in the symptoms.

Are there Gender Differences?

Women tend to be more likely than men to suffer from depression. One possible explanation is that for women, the amygdala (region of the brain that processes emotion) is more active. Another explanation of the gender differences has something to do with coping strategies learned in youth to deal with life’s stressors. Now two theories will be described that explain why depression is likely to maintain once it exists:

1: Coping theory

The two major coping strategies are problem-focused coping, in which the person tries to alter the source of the stress, and emotion-focused coping, in which the individual tries to alter their emotional response to the stressor. Women tend to use the less effective emotion-focused coping method. This may be due to being raised to believe that women are “moodier” than men and not being effectively taught how to solve problems instead of brooding about them. The higher one’s level of masculinity, regardless of sex, the less depression and brooding is seen. Following research on coping, there exist nine cognitive coping strategies. The strategies that are enhancing depression are self-blame, rumination (don’t stop thinking about how bad something is) and catastrophizing. The other strategies are acceptance, positive refocusing, refocus on planning, positive reappraisal, putting into perspective and blaming others.

2: Attributional Model of Depression

Attributions of negative and uncontrollable events can be classified as internal or external, stable or unstable and global or specific. Someone is more likely to become depressed when negative events are attributed as internal, stable and global. Depressed people are likely to attribute positive events as caused by external, unstable and specific causes.

How can Depression be Prevented?

Depression can begin relatively young, so early prevention programs are important. Cognitive behavioural programs can help people identify pessimistic thoughts and learn to relax, regulate emotions, solve problems, make more decisions and successfully, assertively deal with conflict. Adults in especially at-risk target groups, like single mothers, can be taught to stop negative thought spirals and engage in positive self-talk. Downward social comparison can also temporarily alleviate depression. Following the attributional Model of Depression, attribution retraining ca be successful in depression prevention. When a depression has already started, additional interventions like medications may be successful.

What about Relationships?

Divorce and marital problems are increasing. These can lead to many mental and physical health problems. Two relevant theories will be discussed here to highlight the importance of dealing with relationship issues.

What is the Attachment Theory?

Attachment theory suggests that people unconsciously learn an attachment style in infancy that influences the way they deal with relationships later on in life. There are three attachment styles:

1. Secure attachment style: Carers are responsive, dependable, and available. The child will view others as trustworthy and have positive self-image.

2. Avoidant attachment style: Carers show rejection, neglect, or are abusive. The child will develop a cynical view of others as untrustworthy.

3. Anxious-ambivalent attachment style: Carers show an inconsistent responsiveness to the child’s needs, causing them to have a strong desire to be close to others but a fear that others will not respond.

Avoidant attachment style has been argued to be more complex, and can be split into two styles. In fearful attachment style, the person wants intimate relationships but avoids them for fear of being hurt. In dismissing attachment style, the person prefers freedom and independence over closeness with others.

What is the relation between Attachment and Relationship Quality?

The four-group model of attachment includes these styles:

1. Secure: positive model of self, positive model of other.

2. Dismissing: positive model of self, negative model of other.

3. Preoccupied: negative model of self, positive model of other.

4. Fearful: negative model of self, negative model of other.

Both the fearful and the dismissing attachment style can be seen as avoidant styles. Attachment styles are often measured using a questionnaire (in which you rate some given statements) or using an interview. It has been found that people with secure attachment styles have higher levels of trust and satisfaction in their relationships. Preoccupied and avoidant attachment styles lead to distrust. Preoccupied and fearfully attached people experience higher than average blood pressure in the face of relationship stress, while dismissive people show less than average.

What is Social Exchange?

The social exchange and interdependence theory suggests that people form and continue relationships on the basis of cost and reward reciprocity. Rewards and costs include love, sex, support, financial contributions, and household tasks. Feeling indebted to one’s partner or feeling one’s partner is in debt to one can cause guilt, obligation, and fear. Sex life lessens when there is a feeling on inequity in arousal. In social exchange theory, equitability and stability are key to satisfaction. Inequitable relationships often lead to an attempt to restore balance. This often presents itself in a demand-withdraw conflict. One partner demands, criticizes, or complains to get the other to change their behaviour, causing a defensive and increasingly passive response from their partner. The partner will withdraw further with every attempt. When women are getting the short end of the stick, this can lead to affairs as they try to take back some of the balance. Feelings of fairness are not based only on action, but also on how much actions are appreciated by the partner.

What are differences in Exchange orientation?

Individual differences in exchange orientation can influence relationship satisfaction. Exchange-oriented individuals will often look for a tit-for-tat exchange and weigh the actions of themselves and their spouse accordingly. They don’t like being in debt or having someone owe them. Highly exchange-oriented people have problems giving generously and receiving gratefully. This contributes to relationship dissatisfaction.

How can relationship problems be prevented?

To prevent problems from the earliest age, altering parent-child interactions can be useful. In many countries, parenting courses are offered to new parents, especially useful for those in vulnerable situations or psychological conditions. A therapy for couples dealing with attachment-problems is Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT). This leads to looking at their attachment styles, communicating about them and improving attachment. For people with preoccupied or fearful attachment styles, individual therapy can be successful. For parents, it can be useful to watch pedagogic books or television programs. From the social exchange perspective, programs that encourage spouses to discuss the distribution of tasks may prevent marital problems.

What is the context of Applied Social Psychology?

Social psychologists approach mental health problems from a different perspective than clinical health psychologists. Clinicians are often more focused on the treatment of specific and often extreme problems, while social psychologists look into the theories underlying such problems on a more generalized scale.

How does Crime work over the Life Course? - Chapter 13

In the Dutch population, around 16 million people, there are around 1,2 registered offences every year. Notable is that many of these crimes are offended by adolescents. In many populations and in many other historical time periods, this finding is the same. When we look at the distribution of crime, the line is increasing enormously at the age of twelve and starting to decrease after the late teenage years, in which offending is most common. This distribution is called the age-crime curve. Now different explanations and theories will be given for explaining the association between age and crime.

What is the Age-Crime Curve?

All the committed crimes of an individual over time are called his/her criminal career. In this career are different dimensions like the frequency of offending, the onset of the offending and the duration of the offending, which is the time between the first and last offence.

What is criminal propensity?

Gottefredson and Hirschi are examples of Propensity theorists. They propose that every offender has the same age-crime curve, and differences in levels of crime between individuals can be explained by the factor ‘self-control’ being low. This is a stable factor throughout the lifetime and is called the individual’s propensity. Propensity theorists explain differences only by individual and stable factors (self-control) and not by environmental of social factors: they take an ‘anti-developmental’ or static stance. The increase of offending during teenager years are explained by changes within the individual, called maturation. Propensity theorists say that once a person is low in self-control and behaving offensive, this will remain throughout the lifespan: One-size-fits-all.

What is Dual-Taxonomy?

The Dual-Taxonomy theory states that next to stable individual factors, environmental influences are also important in shaping one’s criminal career. This theory is most influential in the Western society. In this theory there exist two pathways. The fist pathway is followed by the Life Course Persistent Offenders (LCP offender), who have an early onset, a high frequency and a long duration of offending. The second pathway is followed by the Adolenscence-limited offenders (AL), who have a late onset and short duration of offending. Most of the offenders are adolescence-limited. The pathways explain the age crime curve by putting the curves of the two pathways together. Second, the pathways explain the paradoxical finding that most adult offenders were already offenders in adolescence, but not all delinquent adolescents grow up as adult offenders.

How can Life-course persistent crime be explained?

Both propensity and Dual-taxonomy theorists explain life-course persistent crime by stable individual characteristics, which can be found already in childhood in neuropsychological deficits. These children show impulsive behaviour and negative reactions from the environment worsen the child’s problem behaviour, for example parents who share these genes and cannot react adequately. They are put at risk for a cascade of negative social interactions. The behaviour starts as a dynamic process between individual and social factors in early childhood, but when reaching school age the environment cannot change behaviour any more. Because of many negative reactions, the problem behaviour has become a stable, individual factor.

Can persistent crime be predicted?

Following the Dual-Taxonomy Theory, longitudinal research is done by asking parents to rate the problem behaviour of their children in childhood, adolescence and early adulthood. It seems that adult offending can be better predicted by childhood problem behaviour (LCP offending) than adolescent offending. This finding supports the separation between the two pathways of LCP offenders and AL offenders.

How can Adolescence-Limited offending be explained?

When children come into puberty, many psychological and hormonal changes are entailed, but also changes in social preferences. Many teenagers who reach their biological maturity, are not treated that way in their social environment. They have to follow rules and are not treated as a mature person. There is a discrepancy with their social age being lower than their biological age, which is called the maturity gap. This is the main reason for adolescents to start offending: their need for authority grows but they are confronted with many social boundaries. Moffitt gives another reason for the start of offending in adolescence: the change in social preference. Teenagers start to spend more time with and prioritize their peergroups. Given that 5% of people are LCP offenders, there is a big change that a LCP offender is in the peergroup. The deviant behaviour of a LCP offender can be seen as beneficial by showing freedom and authority. The deviant teenagers are seen as role models: the process of mimicking expands the behaviour repertoire of other teenagers by showing the same behaviour.

How does peer influence work?

Not all adolescents are as susceptible for peer influence and mimicking as others. This susceptibility is an intrinsically concept and very difficult to measure. To test if susceptibility to peer influence is a moderating factor in the correlation between peer delinquency and own delinquency, Prinstein combined questionnaire and experimental methods. In short, teenagers had to tell what behaviour they would show in 14 scenarios, with opportunity’s to show aggressive or delinquent behaviour. In the next part, they had to do this again, but after being showed the answers of other delinquent teenagers (which were actually computer-programmed answers). Teenagers who had the biggest differences between level of delinquency in the answers of the first and second part of the test, were most susceptible for peer influence. In conclusion, the most susceptible teenagers were most likely to change their behaviour in a delinquent way when their fellow students were behaving delinquent. Notable is that is effect is only present, when the fellow delinquent student is rated as popular.

What does it mean to be popular?

There is a finding that teenagers who are seen as popular, don’t have to show prosocial behaviour: they seem to show a mixture of prosocial and antisocial behaviours. A first type of popular youths is prosocial-popular: they are social, helpful and going good at school. A second type of popular youths is populistic: they are antisocial, loud, bullies and not doing good at school. Following the Dual-Taxonomy theory, it can be said that delinquent behaviour makes the populistic youths popular.

How can desistance from delinquency be explained?

Most criminal careers of AL offenders take about 4-7 years. Several reasons can be given for the fact that around their twenties, they get rid off their criminal practises. First, it is given that many AL offenders show actions that are only prohibited to minors: they constitute status offences. When becoming older, many societal boundaries disappear and the opportunities within the society grow. The adult status becomes more available and this makes the maturity gap, which was most of the reason for them to start, disappear. Second, age plays an important role in the increase of offensive behaviour, as well as the decrease of offensive behaviour. First, teenagers seem too young to show adult behaviour, but at a certain age, (unspoken) rules state that they are too old to show deviant, egoistic and irresponsible behaviour.

What does age have to do with deviance?

As said before, when adolescents become older, their newly attained social roles don’t allow them to show deviant behaviour any more. There are many costs of the deviant behaviour, which they can’t afford any longer. This shows that role expectations create desistance from criminal behaviour. Another aspect that had to do with age is marriage. When adolescents marry, they spend less time with their peers. Both motivations as well as opportunities to show deviant behaviour decline. Furthermore, when adopting the social roles of adulthood, the effect of social control is emphasized. Within their new environments and with new people around them, youths want to be liked and want to gain respect. This means that they cannot longer show deviant behaviour. To continue in deviant behaviour, is costs effort and investment which makes people want to abstain form deviancy. Next to the importance of the social environment, for many adults it is also important how they see themselves now and in the future. Many adults don’t have an image or ideas about persistence in crime over the years. They see themselves as good employees, parents, husbands and there images don’t fit with the image of a persistent criminal.

What if disadvantage of offending is cumulated?

The desistance from crime is more gradual than the onset of crime. While LCP offenders don’t have the environmental resources to stop offending, most of the AL offenders do have them. But, prior offending may have negative consequences for the opportunities of an adolescent to fit within the social roles. If they for example get fired, they have less opportunity to see what it is like to become a ‘good employee’ and their desire for gaining respect is not present. The conventional opportunities are closing off by crime, which is called cumulative disadvantage. For example, a juvenile record can have detrimental effects on the employment careers of former delinquents. Cumulative disadvantage results more in continuity than that is results in changes in offending behaviour.

What about Labelling Theory?

The labelling theory proposes that the society reacts to deviance in a way that is stigmatic, and a result of this is criminal behaviour. Primary deviance leads to labelling, and the label makes that people start to treat that person differently based on the negative image. When someone has been arrested or convicted, people are less likely to treat the person well, because of this bad reputation. The conventional opportunities of such persons are lowered and creates a risk of further crime: the secondary deviance. Their self-image turns into being a failure or being a delinquent, which causes that they start to act like a deviant by believer that they are one. This is called the self-fullfilling prophecy. It further increases the risk of prolonged deviance. An example of the Labeling theory is someone who has the label of imprisonment. After marriage, this person is at higher risk of divorce, because the person has the label and is treated in a negative way by society, which also has consequences for the marriage.

What are the Policy Implications?

What are the policy implications for LCP offenders?

For the prevention and intervention aimed at crime, the Dual-Taxonomy Theory has many implications. For the LCP offenders, is is important to start prevention as soon as possible, like reducing the prevalence of the children born with neuropsychological deficits due to for example alcohol. Also parental training programs and inclusion programmes at schools, were difficult children are in the same class as normal children and teachers learn how to control this, are useful. It seems that intervention efforts are useless when a LCP offender once has a delinquent behaving repertoire.

What are the policy implications for AL offenders?

Following the Dual-Taxonomy theory, for AL offenders it is important to intervene in the social environment of the teenagers and early prevention is not necessary. Forbidding teenagers to hang out with ‘the wrong friends’ is unsuccessful. Deviant behaviour has a large symbolic value, which means that it may be successful to use mass media to devalue deviant behaviour. An example is to portray smoking as uncool or childish. Note that it is far more effective to restrict availability of for example tabacco or sigarettes, that to display it negatively in the media. Another strategy is to provide positive opportunities for youth that are perceived as voicing adulthood, for example changes for employment. For employment to be effective in reducing deviance, it is important that the social control is high and it is worth so much that the youth don’t want to lose it. A last strategy in the policy due to the Dual-Taxonomy theory is to reduce the level in which youth who have offended become trapped by the negative consequences. There should be ways for them to turn back into society without being labelled of being followed by the negative consequences. Youth should aso be made aware of the importance of for example a declaration of good behaviour. Youth should know that for many jobs, this is required.

How are mentor programs helpful?

One way to provide good role models and the necessary resources for youths that are at risk of developing a (prolonged) criminal career are youth mentors. Most youths who are at risk have backgrounds that provide little skills or resources. A youth mentor can be helpful by offering guidance and support in their transition into adulthood and by overcoming their maturity gap. The four elements that all youth mentoring programs have are:

1. Interaction between mentor and mentee over a period of time;

2. The mentor had a different and higher level of experience, knowledge and/or ability;

3. The mentee can profit from or imitate the above named higher level of experience, knowledge and/or ability;

4. The mentor and mentee have no professional or unequal relationship.

This youth mentor provides a source of social control, information and may help with family, financial or legal matters. It is a one-on-one relationship in which time is spend on talking or doing activities- at least the mentee is not spending time with their delinquent peers whom they might otherwise imitate. The mentor might accompany the mentee at formal meeting and moreover, the mentor might provide emotional support.

What are the critiques on the Dual-Taxonomy Theory?

1. It might be too simple to state that there are only two pathways of delinquency. For example, some people start their criminal career after age 18 and this finding doesn’t fit in one of the two pathways. Other pathways can be added, like the ‘low level chronics’. These are life persistent, but show delinquency due to personality disorders (which keep them out of social opportunities to learn delinquency).

2. The pathways can provide explanation for criminal behaviour and risk factors are found. But, the prediction level of the theories is very low. When someone has many risk factors and is in a crime-stimulating environment, he or she doesn’t have to follow a criminal pathway. The appeal of the taxonomy theory is low because developmental pathways are proved to be unpredictable.

3. The pathway of LCP offenders is supposed to be ‘flat’, but it seems that for them also crime level declines when they are getting older. There might be some interventions that help LCP offenders to prevent them from committing crimes, like communication skills or vocational training.

Following the critiques, it can be said that Dual-Taxonomy shouldn’t be taken too literally.

What is the context of Applied Social Psychology?

It seems important to look at environmental factors that have an influence on criminal behaviour and how, why and under what circumstances these factors work. By looking at causal relations between environment and criminal behaviour, social psychologists can develop interventions and prevention programs. It is notable that in this field it is difficult t observe behaviour and many behaviour goes unnoticed. (Stable) individual factors are difficult to measure. Remember that criminal behaviour always must be seen within context and sometimes ethical issues burden the level of research that can be done on crime.

What about the Social Psychology of Organizations? - Chapter 14

Organizations have expanded our lives and there are many types and definitions. A primary goal of organizations is to motivate people for working together or in a team to benefit the organization. The policy of an organization and the way colleagues work together differ per organization and may be the reason for individuals to behave differently within organizations. Social psychology is valuable within the challenges that organizations face. We will look at consequences of commitment to teamwork as a factor of motivation, how to create innovations and look at the characteristics of diversity policies.

How can Social Psychology contribute to organizations?

Organizations differ from other social groups in a few ways: (1) An organization is not spontaneously emerged, but is planned and mostly hierarchical. (2) People are hired not because they are liked, but because of their abilities. The main reason for employees to stay is that they need the money. Management is used to influence people’s behaviour and is done through monitoring, for example punishing and rewarding (un)wanted behaviour. Social psychology’s goal is to understand organizational behaviour, and not to influence. The knowledge available can be used within processes of management and influence. Psychological advice can be contributing or detrimental to organizations.

What is the Social Identity Perspective?

In organizations, people work together in groups to achieve desired outcomes. This functioning as a groups goes beyond the concerns at individual level, and these group processes can be studied within the ‘social identity approach’. It means that people want to have a sense of who they are and where they belong. A first process within this approach is self-categorization: the tendency to classify people in a social group, based on features that distinguishes them from others. Most of the time groups are formed with people who have the same goal. People belong to different social groups and they can choose to some extent which they emphasize. What is seemed as the most relevant and self-defining, is called the process of social identification. It is a way of presenting yourself and communicating to others how you want to be seen.

What are the basic assumptions of Social Identity Approach?

A central assumption of the social identity perspective is that people strive to have a positive social identity, which can be reached by being associated with social groups that are positively valued. Through the process of social comparison between groups, every social group reaches a specific status. An important consequence of this process is the way people reach a positive sense of the self, by seeing themselves as a part of a successful organization, regardless of the individual input into the organization. Self-categorization is the process of using the group membership and the social identities to decide which information and opinions are important and relevant for them. This explains why individual characteristics sometimes seem to be less relevant within an organization.

What about motivation and commitment to work?

The motivation of employees is the key concern of organizations, because the performance of the organization depends on efforts and quality of the work of the employees. Organizational Psychology developed different motivation theories and they all have the goal to understand (1) which conditions energize the employees, (2) which activities give direction to their efforts, and (3) what makes their efforts persistent. Employees seem to like jobs in which they experience autonomy, task variety and skill variety. Because employees also tend to focus on personal values within the job, it is useful to reward the activities that need to be focused on in the organization. Motivation theories are characterised by an individualistic approach, where employees are seen solely with their own preferences, motivations and directives. Since organizations are social structures in which working together is a central part of the functioning of the organizations, there is need for looking at the whole process of working together in work situations. Social relations and group processes are important for looking at motivational processes. The most important explanation for differences in motivation between workers is their differing sense of emotional involvement within the organization. This is called organizational commitment. Commitment can e so high that people voluntary put more effort in the organization, this is called Organizational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB).

How can Central Identity Approach and commitment theories be combined?

It seems that in organizations it is important to look at personal values and characteristics that can create commitment, but also at the social identifications of workers with the whole organization. There are many dimensions of an organization that employees can identify themselves with, for example teams, divisions or sections. The organization itself is mostly too large for employees to self-categorize themselves with. The potential identities of an employee need to be established to look how motivation can be optimal. For example, research showed that employees felt more committed to their work team than to their organization. The findings that motivation of workers can depend on levels of commitment and sense of belonging to the social group, is important to know for managers, because increasing one’s salary is not always the good way to improve the effort of the employees.

What about Innovation and Change?

The world of business is changing fast and there is a great need for innovation at work: The development and the introduction of products, ideas, and ways of working. For the employees of an organization it is important to stimulate personal development and adaptation, which are ‘social innovations’. These innovation can cause resistance from the workers, because of their identification with the organization in the way it is used to function. The workers don’t want things to change. One way to overcome the resistance is to simple hire new workers, to bring a fresh look on the organization and new ideas. The danger here is that the new employees need to do a course about the procedures and rules within the organization, causing that they don’t come up with new ideas. To overcome this, it is important to look at the overall openness of the organization to change. Looking at this from the social identity approach, it can be said that there needs to develop an organizational climate that has an identity of openness to new and fresh ideas. There is need for employees to realize that the workers have different identities, with different ways of thinking and doing, and that everyone can have valuable contributions and ideas. No interpersonal conflict has to exist when people experience that different views and ideas are valuable for the tasks and the organization.

How to deal with diversity?

Nowadays the diversity within organizations is greater that ever, meaning that people come from different background, have different reasons to work, and have different goals and ambitions. People tend to compare themselves with others with same characteristics to evaluate their work. Also, it is important for organizations to communicate clearly its desire for hiring a specific group of people, for example part-time workers. The employees can realize how these new employees can contribute to the organization. For every different group it is important that they experience a sense of worthiness and being valued by other workers. Only in this way, they can reach a positive social identity. For minority groups within an organization it is important that they feel a sense of respect and willingness to be understood, otherwise their motivation lowers and they will be less willing to adapt to the organizational conditions. For workers belonging to a minority group that is not directly visible, for example homosexuals, it is important that they experience that they can show their identity. Otherwise, hiding this will distract them from thinking about work-related subjects.

As an example, how to deal with being worker and parent?

In a company with a small number of female workers, a research was done why it had difficulty with attracting and retaining female workers. Women seemed to have difficulty dealing with their dual identity of worker and parent. A new concept, work-family facilitation, was also found: the benefits of having this dual identity. It seems important for the employee satisfaction that the dual identity is supported at work, as well as at home. This is the relevance of the identity conflict versus the identity facilitation. Moreover, the study found that employees who were reminded and caught attention to the benefits of combining the identities, had more positive emotions and attitudes about their lives.

How to intervene in cross-gender teams?

Research on women who needed to perform a gender-neutral task showed that when there was a minority position for women and the expectations were low for them, it raised women’s feeling of threat and lowered their working motivation. When it was explicitly said that expectations were high, no such motivation loss was found.

What about other classical organizational issues?

Next to the three main themes discussed in this chapter, there are more organizational themes that can be discussed within social psychology. For example leadership, communication and employee health can be better understood from the social identity perspective. Remember that all these issues are a process of group membership, and cannot be seen without influences of the group identity and the membership.

How to apply Social Psychology in Organizations?

By using applied social psychology in organizations, process models are helpful to explain specific chains of events. The social nature of the work situation is explicitly addressed. Where most of the time it seems a good solution to strict the rules and higher the level of control when an organization is not functioning well, it may be good to change the atmosphere on the work floor. This enhances the employee’s motivation and commitment. An example of an ‘error climate’ is a working situation in which individual failures have to be avoided. Instead of reducing the number of errors, the errors are covered up! Solutions for problems within organizations can lie in group-processes.

What is the Context of Applied Social Psychology?

To create a successful team, social psychology shows that it is important to look at individual differences and create a climate in which these different qualities and characteristics are recognized and valued. All of the issues at work can be seen and integrated within a social identity perspective. Communication seems very important in this process, because nowadays change and innovation are bigger than before. Topics that need more attention when looking at group processes are for example management science and marketing strategies.

What about the Social Psychology of Political Behaviour? - Chapter 15

Another name for the study of applied social psychology about politics is political psychology. In this chapter three main topics of the political psychology: political leadership, voting behaviour and ideology. At least four types of studies are used in political psychology. The fist type is finding contributions to the process of understanding political psychology. Here researchers are trying to find insights about underlying (uncovered) principles. The second type is theorizing about political topics, without having the primary goal to explain particular political phenomena. The third type is studying political topics that can also be applied outside the field of politics. The theories that are formulated are applicable in other fields. The fourth type is studying topics that are solely political, described in politcal terms and in which theories are formulated that are only applicable in the field of politics.

What does Psychology say about Political Leadership?

Many aspects of political leadership have been studied, for example the looks, the height and the birth order of political leaders and whether these would make a difference or not. The most studied subject of political leadership is the personality of leaders. Personality is a factor that contributes to actions and thoughts of leaders.

What are the ‘Big Five’ personality factors?

Among all psychological theories about personality, the Five Factor Trait model or The Big Five is the most widely accepted theory. Following this theory, the personality is compromised of five central dimensions: neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, openness to new experiences and conscientiousness. It seems that political orientation is associated with certain traits of the Big Five. It is challenging to measure personality of political leaders: self-report can be biased and motivation of political leaders to fill in questionnaires is low. Moreover, when political leaders have already died, this is not a possibility any more. One possibility is for other people to fill in questionnaires about the political leaders. Conclusions of this kind of research showed that for example successful presidents score high on the personality dimensions of openness, extraversion and neuroticism and low on agreeableness.

How can political leaders be profiled?

A widely used and successful method of studying political leadership is content analysis, in which for example biography’s, speeches and interviews are used to be analysed. One researcher called Winter used content analysis in his research on the match between the power motive of the leader and the needs of the society. His conclusions were that these two were associated, meaning that the performance of the leader were influenced by characteristics as power motive that were matching with the needs of the society in that time. Another widely used method of studying political leadership with a more cognitive approach is operational coding. The operational code is the set of fundamental beliefs and future predictions about the world and whether things in the world can be influenced or not. Most studies focus on the combination of factors like traits, motives, cognitions and behavioural tendencies. Note that most research on political leaders is done on American presidents or leaders of authoritarian regimes. One research on four European leaders showed that they all had different leadership styles and the researchers concluded that this leadership style had an impact on foreign policy making.

What is known about Crisis decision-making?

To understand decision making that occurs in crisis times, it is important to understand how politicians deal with public opinion and group processes. The prospect theory is a response to expected utility theory, in that decisions deviate from expected utility when the people making the decisions do not want to experience loss and when the risk is high. They will take a risk to prevent potential loss.

What is the groupthink Theory?

According to groupthink theory, certain circumstances lead to poor group decision making. These include group cohesion, isolation, directive leadership, and stress. This can limit alternatives and cause initial decisions not to be critically assessed. Groupthink leads to the opposite of what is known to cause greatness: openness to ideas. One method to counteract groupthink is to encourage ingroup members to challenge dominant views, and to make a “second round” of discussion sometime after the decision seems to have been made.

What does Psychology say about Voting Behaviour?

How are we choosing to vote?

It is important to investigate why people are voting, and how. What influences their choices? Who votes, and who abstains? There is a worry that people who need a voice (the economic underclass) might not vote, while people who are better off might both vote and donate money to political campaigns. Economists have given a lot of attention to the question of voters because people who choose to vote seem to defy rational choice theory. Even though the chance of making a real difference is small, people seem to vote out of a sense of civic duty. Social norms do not fit into economic decision-making models, so social psychologists can be of some help in explaining voter turnout.

What is Reasoned Action?

The theory of reasoned action is a slightly modified version of the theory of planned behaviour. It holds that behaviour is determined by the intention to perform the behaviour, and that an intention comes from a person’s evaluations of consequences and their personal compliance with social influence. While attitude-behaviour models have given insight into strategic voting and voter attitudes, they do not provide the information electoral researchers are looking for.

Does Facebook play a role?

One research on voting behaviour tested whether people would be more likely to vote when they saw on Facebook that people voted, including their friends. The control group consisted of people who got a message about how many people voted, without having the pictures of their friends showed. In conclusion, this kind of social message leads people to show that they voted and they looked for more information. Together, this increases the likelihood to vote.

What is The Michigan Model

The Michigan model of voting behaviour is more helpful. According to this model, political objects (candidates, issues) are perceived and evaluated. The orientations that result direct voters to one of the political parties. The University of Michigan group (Campbell, Converse, Miller and Stokes) distinguished six “partisan attitudes”, related specifically to American politics:

1. Characteristics of the Democratic candidate

2. Characteristics of the Republican candidate

3. Domestic policy issues

4. Foreign policy issues

5. Politically-involved groups

6. Parties’ past government management performance

These attitudes were influenced by party identification established early in adulthood. Party identification was found to stable, making it possible to distinguish between short-term and long-term factors.

What about Partisan Attitudes?

While normal attitudes exist on the dimension of like-dislike, partisan attitudes exist on the dimensions of pro-Republican—pro-Democrat (in the American system). The Michigan model does not describe specific mental processes but acts as an explanation of voting behaviour. The Michigan model has been a basis for research in Europe, though it has been harder to establish stable party identification. Most European countries have far more than two parties, making the context significantly different.

What is the Online Model?

Memory-based judgments are made on information from memory stores, while online judgments are created and changed while relevant information is being processed and then stored. The online model of candidate evaluations suggests that when information about a candidate is processed it updates a sort of mental tally that is drawn upon during the voting process. While the specific information might be forgotten, its impact lasts. This model suggests that while voters may seem uninformed, they are often still using the information when making their decision, just in a less conscious way.

What about Motivated Political Reasoning?

Following the theory of motivated political reasoning, the interaction of affect and cognition can lead to biased information processing. New information is being processed automatically by using already existing information, which shapes the interpretation of the new information. In the hot-cognition hypothesis thoughts are stored in the long-term memory and the categorization of information is affected by previous thoughts. Thee mechanisms influence biased information processing: (1) The disconformation bias means that when information is contradicting with prior information, more effort will be done to make counterarguments than when information is the same. (2) The conformation bias means that people are looking for information that confirms prior thoughts and information. (3) The prior-attitude effect means that the arguments that are attitude congruent, are evaluated as more convincing.

What does Psychology say about Ideology?

One question that is important for researchers is whether people’s attitudes towards policies correlate with their left/right ideological orientation.

Can Nonattitudes be studied?

It has been found that while it may seem that people would be consistent in their left or right approach to important issues, only about 10% of Americans used ideological constructs to form their opinions. It was concluded that asking questions on issues was actually a way of studying nonattitudes, apparent attitudes that have little meaning in the real world. The “end of ideology” idea suggests that after WWII, left-right ideologies began to play a less important role in politics. Political ideas lack consistency, people are unmoved by ideological ideals, and the politics of the left and right are no longer as different as they once were. While these arguments are compelling, it was found that the left/right continuum remains an important factor in European and American politics.

What are people’s main values?

Rokeach aimed to identify all major values across human cultures. The two closely related to left/right ideology are equality and freedom. Peoples ratings of their importance lead to four main political ideologies:

Rokeach suggested that in a society which puts equal value on both sides of the dimension, ideology would be one dimensional (as it now exists, left vs. right).

What about Post-Materialism?

Inglehart suggested that aside from left/right, there is also materialism/post-materialism. This value hierarchy depends on the scarcity of goods required to satisfy needs. In this model, people raised in times of economic security are expected to put less value on financial security than those raised in times of economic hardship.

Is Thinking prejudiced?

Ideological orientations impact prejudice. The general authoritarian psychological orientation involves in-group glorification, prejudice against out-groups, and pseudo-conservatism. People who score high in right-wing authoritarianism also score high in prejudice. The social dominance orientation also correlates with prejudice. It can be said that social situations are more easy to manipulate than personality, so fighting prejudice can be done by using social psychology.

What is the context of Applied Social Psychology?

Psychoanalysts and historians also look at political leadership, especially when addressing leadership of the past. In terms of social psychological interventions, some measures can increase turnout but the institutional context is much more important.

What about the Psychology of Sport and Exercise? - Chapter 16

Some of the befits of regular exercise, physical activity and sports are prevention against many (chronic) diseases and a positive influence on our psychological systems and brain functioning. Further does exercise play a role in reducing heavy consequences of injuries that are leading to mortality and morbidity. On the other hand does inactivity (sedentary behaviour) correlate with ill health: This is a dose-response relationship. In this chapter it will be explained why and how social psychologists help reaching the goal of promoting sports and exercising. The main aims of psychologists in this field are to find factors that predict sport, to find factors that maintain sports and to understand sport behaviours within the social environment.

How can Exercise Behaviour be explained and promoted?

Theories about sport behaviours help developing interventions that promote and maintain sport behaviours. To plan, implement and evaluated these interventions the framework of Intervention Mapping is useful. In Intervention Mapping (1) the problem or cause is diagnosed, (2) the best fitting theory including its variables is searched for, (3) interventions that target antecedents of desired behaviour are made and (4) the process and content of these interventions are evaluated. In step two, many interventions use the Theory of Planned Behaviour to find explanations or physical activity behaviour. For example, it seems that attitudes and Perceived Behavioural Control are the best predictor of children’s physical activity behaviour.

How is TPB related to sports behaviour?

In a study that evaluated an intervention aiming to increase physical behaviour of children, the TPB was used as the theoretical frame. Different conditions were tested. The condition that manipulated the non-salient physical behaviour beliefs seemed to make attitudes and beliefs of children about sport more positive. This was not the case in the group in which children were manipulated on their model salient behavioural beliefs. Note that the TPB cannot explain and predict all physical activity of children. Directly and indirectly the environment influences physical activity of children, for example the degree of availability of sedentary leisure activities (television, etcetera).

How is psychical activity related to the self?

The physical self-worth exists of four subcomponents in the theory that Fox and Corbin proposed: (1) Bodily Attractiveness, (2) Physical Conditioning, (3) Physical Strength and (4) Sporting Competence. For children, the global self-worth can be best predicted by the physical self-worth. When developing interventions for children, there is need for looking at factors like embarrassment and fear of exercising (in public). For example, children may have high social physique anxiety.

What about Explaining and Enhancing Sport Performance?

Sport psychology is concerned with the understanding of enhancement and performance of motivated, sporting participants. In the next part it will be considered how the sport performance of individuals, teams or groups can be understood and enhanced.

What are the Dynamics of Teams in Sport?

Many sports that are classified as individual sport or sporting activities, they include next to the individual, lots of other that contribute to the success of the athlete. For example parents, coaches and physiotherapists. The productivity and efficiency of teamwork is higher than for individuals. That emphasizes the importance of making all the complex interaction in sports into good teamwork.

What about Cohesion and Performance?

Like other psychological theories, in sport psychology one basic assumption in theories is that the work of a team or group is essential to high performance. Groups are changing and developing. One relevant factor in understanding performance is the cohesion of the group. The conceptual model of cohesion consists of four components, on two dimensions. The first dimension reflects the group integration versus individual attraction to the group. The second dimension reflects the social aspects versus the task aspects. There appears to be a positive relationship (with an effect size of .65) between cohesion and individual and group performance. Though, the direction of the relationship is not clear: it may be a bi-directional relationship. This is researched by a number of cross-lagged panel studies. Performance may even have a stronger effect on cohesion than vice versa.

Which Factors predict Cohesiveness?

A number of factors contribute to group cohesion and performance. The factors can be divided in team factors, environmental factors, individual factors and leadership factors:

• The first team factor related to cohesion is the team stability. Constant turnover and absence contribute to less cohesion. Also, players in a team with high cohesion are more likely to stay with their team and increase stability. The second team factor is cooperation, like having common goals, sticking together and having common rules and norms. This contributes to a common sense of team identity.

• Environmental factors are for example the size of the group, whereas a bigger group contributes to less cohesion. Also, contractual responsibilities are a factor that contributes to cohesion, meaning that being unhappy with the contracting leads to less team cohesion.

• Individual factors include cognitions and behaviours, for example high levels of sacrifice behaviour contribute to a higher sense of group cohesion. Further, factors leading to less cohesion are social loafing and self-handicapping. The last factor can be behavioural or claimed and it is a cognitive strategy in which is tried to not hurt the self-esteem when failing.

• Leadership factors are the way a team is coached and the way a team perceived the relationship with their coach. Democratic coaching enhances group cohesion of the team.

How are successful teams build?

Team-building activities are used to enhance the task aspects as well as the social aspects of groups by creating a sense of individual responsibility for the team. Some effective strategies of team-building are described:

• The feelings of ownership (desicion-making, etc) among athletes should be developed;

• The collective efficacy should be increased: the feeling that all individuals are competent to work together to respond in a good way in different situations;

• Role acceptance of the group members should be achieved;

• The cooperation should be encouraged through team drills, for example by changing perceptions and mentality. This should be done in a correct way, because in the past it has also been unsuccessful a few times;

• Clique formation should be avoided;

• Conflict should be expected;

• Some personal information should be shared (with the team and with the coach).

Is there a difference between Individual and Team Performance?

It is found that sometimes a team with very talented individuals, together performs below their potential. When group size is increased, the average effort produced by every performer decreases. An explanation for this is the Ringelmann effect or loafing effect, in which performances are poor because of wrong coordination or motivation processes. This theory is for example tested in an experiment where individuals were asked to pull a rope. When performing alone, most effort was made and the performance was most high. When one, two or three others were positioned behind the individual, his/her performance dropped linearly. When with more than four persons, the effort was not additional decreased any more. This study proved the effect of social loafing.

What is the Social Dilemma?

In some sports, the social loafing effect or free-riding is used to increase the performance of one individual. For example in the Tour The France, where the group, except one lead racer, reduces effort to help the lead racer. The risk is that this individual has a pursuit of self-interest (winning) and collective interest (the others stay out of reach) and this can make him/her to also lower the effort. This is called the social dilemma.

Why are individuals loafing?

One explanation of loafing is that people lose their own sense of individual performance and motivation. In this way, the Collective Effort Model (CEM) suggests that working in groups lowers the motivation of individual performance, due to reduced feelings of responsibility and value to the group outcome. For athletes it is important to have a sense of importance, meaning and intrinsically satisfaction. Social loafing is independent of factors like gender, culture, age and the nature of the group.

How can Social Loafing be reduced?

To reduce social loafing, there are many strategies that coaches can use. A first strategy is to increase the self-awareness of the athletes or to monitor the individual performance of the athletes. This makes that individual and team efforts are measured and can be stimulated or challenged. A second strategy is to make tasks personally involving, by creating senses of pride and collective identity within the team. Third, a strategy is to set clear goals for the team and for the individual. Fourth, rotating positions can be useful in creating understanding and assessment of the positions.

What is Social Facilitation?

In the past, there have been mixed finding about the presence of others while performing and about the effects of the social interactions within the sport. Social facilitation theory explains why findings about the presence of others can be different. The basic assumption is that the (imagined) presence of others increases the levels of physical arousal, which makes it more easy to perform well-learned or easy behaviours. In turn, when difficult behaviour must be performed, these higher levels of physical arousal result in impaired performance. It might also be important how the presence of others is appraised, noting the importance of cognitive factors in the social facilitation theory. A conclusion from research on this theory can be that for athletes to perform best in the presence of audience, it is important to master the skills to make it an ‘easy’ task.

How about Choking under Pressure?

Choking means that an athlete feels the pressure to do well and can be explained by the process of self-consciousness. In many cases, this choking has a bad effect in the performance, because the consequence of introspection into task-related movements may be failure. The first explanation for self-consciousness leading to choking in sport is the acclimatization hypothesis. This hypothesis suggests than when an individual is predisposed to be self-conscious, it will not interfere with their performance. A second explanation is the reinvestment theory, in which reinvestment means that someone consciously controls their behaviour. The theory suggests that athletes that have a tendency to reinvest are more likely to choke. Related is the progression-regression hypothesis, which proposes that the learning of motor skills goes though different stages and the last stage is autonomous with fast performance. When an athlete reinvests, the skills are regressing to an earlier stage and performance is decreasing. This theory is also an explanation for a strategy that is used by many athletes: To praise one’s opponent in order to make him/her self-conscious.

What are the Environmental Influences?

The location of sport and competition seems an important factor: The change of winning a competition is bigger when competed at home. The location influences psychological, physiological and behavioural states of athletes and coaches. Many factors explain the advantage of competing at the home location, for example larger crowds enhance the athletes’ confidence and performance, and thus the change of winning. When the crowd protests, it may have decreasing effects on the performance of the away teams. Moreover, crowds increase the level of functional assertive behaviour of the home team and increase the level of dysfunctional assertive behaviour of the away team. In addition, the travel towards the away location may cause fatigue and disruption of daily routines. Most likely, it is an interaction of factors, differing per individual, contributing to the advantage of the home location.

What is the Context of Applied Social Psychology?

The two main works of psychologists in the field of sport and exercise it to find the best ways to promote physical exercising and to work together with sport scientists to achieve the full potential of athletes and make them satisfied with their performance.

What about the Social Psychology of Driving Behaviour? - Chapter 17

We prefer driving over for example flying, because we do it more regular and we feel more control when we are driving. Even though individual risk for a car crash is low, the overall risk of a traffic accident is high. Social psychology is looking for the psychology behind traffic accidents and for an understanding of how the number of accidents can decrease. Car accidents are a big societal risk, so it is important to find the factors that predict likelihood of car crashes. Key predictors can be found in human and behavioural factors. In this chapter, pros and cons of some theoretical models about predicting factors will be discussed. In addition, social psychology is looking for interventions that contribute to the safety of traffic behaviour. This chapter will look at techniques for measuring driving behaviour and performance and discuss some interventions.

What Theories and Models are there?

The ‘what-factor’: Which Factors predict crash involvement?

Aberrant driving behaviours can predict crash involvement. It is important for interventions to find the different factors that cause aberrant behaviour. There are three most accounting factors. First, violations are intentional and deliberate acts of not following the traffic rules, which can be ordinary or aggressive. Second, errors are actions of failure, without having the attention to disregard the rules. Third, lapses are (harmless) attention and memory failures. Of all three, violations are most predictive of traffic crashes. Note that predicting factors differ per country, so for driving behaviour cross-cultural research is needed. Moreover, an additional factor that increases violent driving behaviour is one’s attitude towards safe driving practices.

How can the Theory of Planned Behaviour be Relevant in Driving Behaviour?

A huge criticism of the TPB is that in research past behaviours and future intentions were used together. It would be better to use future intentions to predict future behaviour. One research showed that following the TPB, driving behaviour can be predicted. It seemed that attitudes, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control predict speeding intentions. Further, speeding intentions and perceived behavioural control seemed to predict speeding behaviour. Moreover, past driving behaviour seemed to be a moderator, indicating that when a behaviour has become a habit, it is less consciously performed in the future. The ‘who-factor’: What individual differences predict crash involvement?

The ‘who-factor’: What individual differences predict crash involvement?

People differ in their way of driving, called their driving style. People differ also in the way they perceive their own driving skills. Personality factors can predict differences in driving behaviour. A first predicting characteristic of is sensation-seeking. People high in sensation-seeking are looking for novel experiences despite risks, so they are more likely to take risks while driving. For them, some risky behaviours are not perceived as risky at all. These people seem to be more involved in car crashes. A second characteristic that is predictive for car crashes is aggression, often resulting from anger. When aggression is a relatively stable and pertaining characteristic, it is called trait aggression. When it is only induced in certain moments or situations, it is called state aggression.

Does Bias also play a Role?

Less stable that personality factors, but also predicting risk-taking driving behaviour is the optimism bias, which is unrealistic optimism about for example getting involved in a car crash. Illusion of control refers to the idea that every situation can be handled well. These subjective assessments result in self-enhancement bias: making mostly positive judgement about the self. These beliefs lead to overestimations about driving skills and underestimations of getting involved in a car crash. Older, more experienced and male drivers tend to engage in self-enhancement bias more.

The ‘why- and how-factors’: Which Theories explain risky and unsafe Behaviour?’

Drivers perceived riskiness of behaviour may be more important than the real riskiness of behaviours. Perceived risk are the subjective feelings of risk on a specific moment while driving and these are influenced by personal and objective factors. How subjective feelings of risk regulate driving behaviour, how risk is accepted and how thresholds of toleration of risks work are described in risk models. Two risk models will be described below.

What is the Risk Homeostasis Theory?

The Risk Homeostasis Theory (RHT) proposes that every driver has a target level of risk that he/she wants to engage in. If the perceived risk is not high enough, for example because of safety innovations like like seat-belts, risk-taking behaviour will increase. Research that is in line with RHT found that for example when the road is narrow or curvy, drivers seem to take less risk. Critics on the RHT include the target risk being an abstract concept. Research on the risk threshold is difficult and it is not known if the threshold is stable or contextual. Furthermore, the theory doesn’t take into account the interplay between factors like driving environment and drivers’ capability.

What is the Capability Interface Model?

The Capability Interface Model describes the driving task by looking at how task-demands (the complexity of the driving task) and drivers’ capability (one’s competence to drive safely, including low-order and high-order driving skills) lead to indicating the task-difficulty. Following this theory, when the difficulty of tasks is not exceeding the capabilities, a driver is control of the situation. So, it is important for drivers to monitor whether their capabilities are sufficient.

What is the Risk Allostatis Theory?

The Risk Allostasis Theory proposes that feeling of risk signal whether the drivers’ capabilities in a certain situation are high enough. When feelings of risk are high, it is compensated by driving very safely and low-risky. A great difference with the Capability Interface Model is that risk is not seen as a threshold but within a range. Also, in the Risk Allostatis Theory risk is seen as being influenced and changed by other factors like motivations. In this theory, it has not yet been investigated how drivers regulate their behaviour in the condition of a mismatch between risk and capability. A criticism on the theory is that most research in done on speed changes as an indication of regulation processes. Next to behavioural regulations, cognitive regulations like prioritizing may also play a role.

What do driving simulating studies show?

One research on the effect of listing to music on mental effort in driving behaviour showed that when drivers listen to music, mental effort was higher than when drivers were not listening to music. A compensation was found: higher mental effort was a response to music-induced distraction. Further, it seemed that for more difficult tasks, mental effort was highest and drivers seemed to perform even better in the presence of music in boring tasks: music guides attention.

What about Research Methods?

Using self-reports in research on traffic psychology is easy and efficient and therefore used most of the time. Other methods are discussed in the following part.

How are Driving Simulators used?

Using driving simulators in research has several advantages. First, there is control over normally uncontrollable variables in traffic. Second, participants can be exposed to dangerous condition without the risk of getting into a crash. Third, in simulations, instructions and feedback can be given while doing the tasks. For the validity and reliability of this method, it is important to control the psychological realism. This can be done by comparing simulator findings with findings of real-life situations.

How are Observations used?

To collect information about driving behaviour, observation is a good method to use. Studies using observations eliminate the problems of social desirability or self-presentation, that are common in surveys. In this way observations provide a basis for the design of an intervention. There can be several issues in the use of observations. Sampling biases should be avoided, measuring should be done on different moments, sometimes a second observer should be used to increase reliability of observations. Observational studies require much time, money and effort.

How are Archival studies used?

Another way of collecting information about driving behaviour is to use the numbers that derive from databases. The information is highly representative, but not all variables are included within the databases. This method is very useful as a starting point for building models and theories.

Which Interventions promote safe Driving Behaviour?

What about Enforcement?

One way to promote safe driving behaviour is to use enforcement. This is the stationary and mobile identification of law violations and as a consequence, fines or incarceration can be used. The use of sanctions is particularly useful when the chance of being caught is high. Therefore, automated enforcement may be more useful than traditional enforcement. It seems to be the best practise for reducing driving violations, traffic crashes and fatalities. One concern of the intevrention is that undesired behaviour had bad consequences and therefore will be avoided, but the desired behaviour is not learned. Moreover, undesired behaviour is suppressed, but this has nothing to do with the continuation of desired behaviour. On the long term, when people are not caught and likelihood of being punished is low, the undesired behaviour seems to reappear.

What about Driver Education?

For most young and inexperienced drivers, driver education is offered or required. Goals of education are enhancing knowledge and increasing driving skills. One limitation of education as an intervention is that the motivation factor is not always included, but is needed for behaviour to change. Evidence about education is inconclusive and incomplete.

What about persuasive Messages?

The media also can be used to persuade audiences of changing risking driving behaviours into safe driving behaviours. Print, internet, radio and television media can be used. The messages can be used next to the use of enforcement.

What is the Context of Applied Social Psychology?

Traffic safety is a societal problem that needs an interdisciplinary approach. Social psychologists should work together with road designers, engineers and urban designers to build the optimal roads and spaces for driving. Also, collaborations with the car industry are needed to build the best cars with safety promoting innovations. Last, collaboration with policy advisors is needed.

What is the idea of a ‘shared space’?

One traffic intervention has been the idea of a ‘shared traffic space’: a road with the absence of any signalizations, traffic lights, etc. It was expected that drivers would pay more attention to driving, because the risk level was increased. Expectations of increasing the traffic safety were largely fulfilled. But, more research on this idea is needed.