Eight experiments to gain insight into social psychology

Psychology exists everywhere in life, and there is a lot of knowledge about social psychology. Below I will bring you some insights into social psychology. Eight experiments, I hope they will be helpful to everyone!

1. Lost children

How helpful are people? For example, who wouldn’t stop and help a lost child? ?No one, right?

To find out, Milgram decided to ask some 6- and 10-year-olds for help. They were sent down Main Street U.S.A. (with observers nearby for safety) and told to ask the first passerby for help: "I'm lost, can you call my home?"

In towns, the response was heartening: 72% of people helped. In the city, not so many, only 46 people helped.

In addition to numbers alone, the story itself can speak volumes. In towns, even those who don't offer help are compassionate, but in cities, they ignore children, bypass them or just shove money into their hands. A New Yorker told his child: "Go to that restaurant, your mother will be waiting for you there."

2. Interrupting and jumping in line

Milgram believes that queuing is how people automatically A classic example of bringing social order out of disorder.

However, this social order will be fragile when faced with disorder, such as queue jumping. To test people's reactions, Milgram had his assistants walk around New York and observe 129 queues and interrupted queues at lottery stores, train stations, and other places (Milgram et al., 1986).

Surprisingly, the reaction was quite mild. There are only 10 cases where the queue jumper is physically ejected from the line. Only half the time there is someone online doing anything. In this case, anything from looking bad or making gestures to objecting with actual words.

Milgram’s explanation is: Would you challenge someone who jumps in line or interrupts the line?

3. Obey authority

The most famous of all psychology experiments One, Milgram's obedience experiment, tested how far people would go when someone in authority ordered them to harm others.

Participants in this study were ordered by a person in a white shirt to deliver (apparently) lethal electric shocks to someone else (the learner).

The 63-year-olds carried out the power to the end: they administered all the shocks even as the learner screamed in pain, begged to stop, and finally sank.

Do you think you will obey?

Milgram clearly demonstrates the dark side of people's tendency to obey authority.

4. Familiar Strangers

Do you see the same people every day on the way to work or in the store? People you have never spoken to? Have you ever wondered? Where do they work, what are their stories, do they think the same way you do?

Milgram also wondered about the people waiting for trains in the New York River Valley neighborhood where he lived. He had his students take pictures of people on all the platforms, and then, a few weeks later, they walked onto the train and passed the pictures around to see who knew whom. The results are very interesting: 90% of people know at least one "familiar stranger" and on average know 4 others. Of the 62, there were at least one passerby who had spoken to each other, and almost half were interested in the person they were traveling with. It's no surprise that the most familiar strangers are those who stand in a certain way.

He also found that familiar strangers are likely to talk to each other when they are in unfamiliar circumstances, such as when you see a companion getting off a train in another city.

5. The world is small

Milgram is very interested in the interconnectedness of human society.

What he wants to know is, what is the probability that two people picked at random know each other? If they don't know each other, what are the chances that they know someone, who knows someone... (wait a minute) and who knows that person?

He sent letters to random people living in Nebraska or Boston and asked them to send it to someone they likely knew who lived in Massachusetts (Travers & Milgram, 1969) .

He found that on average there were five intermediaries carrying his letter from the first person to its destination through their respective social networks.

This shows that society is highly interconnected.

6. Secret opinions

Milgram wanted to measure people's attitudes indirectly, rather than directly asking them what they were thinking, because people often lie. Therefore, he dropped stamped, addressed letters on the street to see if anyone would mail them to the address to which they were sent (Milgram et al., 1965).

He found that 70 percent of the letters destined for the Medical Research Association were sent out by random people who found them. But only 25 letters with the email address "Communist/Nazi Party Friend" were mailed.

This wasn’t just about measuring people’s opinions, it was also about how willing they were to help others, especially when it required some small effort on their part.

Subsequent studies tested people's honesty by dropping wallets on the street, and found it difficult for people to quickly pick them up and return them to the researchers. People are often more honest than we think.

7. The attraction of crowds

Have you ever joined a group of people? You don’t know why, but you just think something must have happened that makes it worthwhile for you to stand with them. ?

Milgram was interested in how people joined crowds for no apparent reason. He experimented by stopping people on a crowded street and asking them to look at a six-story floor adjacent to an office block where nothing was happening (Milgram et al., 1969).

He found that 4 passers-by would stop to join a person and stare, but if 15 people were already there, 40 would stop. At most 86% of passers-by stopped to see what was going on.

8. Urban overload

The last study is not an experiment but a theory that attempts to explain urban social behavior.

Milgram believes that in cities or in crowded cities we behave as a natural response to information overload. In cities our senses are under continuous attack. There are so many situations, sounds, and people for us to process appropriately. This is both the city’s attraction and its flaw.

City dwellers thus strive to conserve their psychological energy:

They have only superficial contact with each other—an approach invariably encouraged by frowning or looking angry.

They keep moving and transacting as quickly as possible.

Social interactions like apologizing for bumping into others are skipped because city dwellers don’t have the processing capacity to spare.

In the city, the standard is anonymity, and the unwritten rule is: If you pretend that I don’t exist, I will pretend that you don’t exist. City dwellers are not bad people (as the Lost Child experiment revealed); they use rational strategies to cope with information overload. As Milgram once said:

"Perhaps we are just puppets on puppets controlled by the threads of society. But at least we are puppets with ideas and consciousness. I also think that our consciousness is the first step in our liberation. step.

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Basic knowledge of social psychology

Common sense of social psychology 1. Butterfly effect:

In the 1970s, an American named Lorenz When explaining the air system theory, meteorologists said that the occasional vibration of a butterfly's wings in the Amazon rainforest may cause a tornado in Texas, USA, two weeks later.

A missing nail is broken. A shoe; a shoe is broken, a horse is broken; a knight is injured, a battle is lost, and an empire is destroyed!

The butterfly effect means that the initial conditions are very good. Small changes will make a huge difference to its future status after continuous amplification. Some small things can be confused, but if they are magnified by the system, they are very important to an organization and a country and cannot be confused.

Common sense in social psychology 2. Crocodile law:

Its original meaning is that if a crocodile bites your foot, if you try to free your foot with your hands, the crocodile will bite at the same time. Hold your feet and hands. The more you struggle, the more you will be bitten. So, if the crocodile bites your foot, your only way is to sacrifice one foot.

For example, in the stock market. Among them, the crocodile rule is: when you find that your transaction deviates from the direction of the market, you must stop the loss immediately without any delay or any luck.

Common sense in social psychology 3. Catfish effect. :

In the past, the survival rate of sardines during transportation was very low. Later, someone found that if a catfish was placed in the sardines, the situation improved and the survival rate would be greatly improved. Why is this?

It turns out that catfish will become "impatient" and swim around after arriving in a strange environment. This undoubtedly plays a role in stirring up a large number of sardines that are very quiet; and there are too many sardines. Such an "alien" is naturally very nervous and swims faster. In this way, the problem of hypoxia of sardines will be solved, and the sardines will not die.

Common sense of social psychology 4. Sheep. Effect:

Wherever the leading sheep goes, the following sheep will follow.

The herding effect was originally a term in stock investment, mainly referring to the trading process of investors. There is a phenomenon of learning and imitation, "imitating others" and blindly imitating others, which leads them to buy and sell the same stocks within a certain period of time.

Common sense in social psychology 5. Hedgehog rule:

The two sleepy hedgehogs hugged each other because of the cold. But because they had thorns on their bodies, they moved away for a while, but they couldn't stand the cold, so they got together after several struggles. Hedgehogs finally found a suitable distance: they can gain each other's warmth without being stung.

The Hedgehog Law mainly refers to the "psychological distance effect" in interpersonal communication.

Common sense in social psychology 6. Watch law:

The watch law means that when a person has one watch, he can know what time it is, but when he has two watches at the same time, he cannot be sure. Two watches cannot tell a person a more accurate time, but will make the person looking at the watch lose confidence in the accurate time.

The watch theorem gives us a very intuitive inspiration in business management, that is, the same person or the same organization cannot use two different methods at the same time, and cannot set two different goals at the same time, or even each time. One person cannot be directed by two people at the same time, otherwise the company or individual will be at a loss.

Common sense in social psychology 7. The 28/20 law (Barledo’s law):

The Italian economist Barledo in the late 19th and early 20th centuries believed that in any group of things Among them, the most important only account for a small part, about 20, and the remaining 80, although they are the majority, are secondary. About 80% of society's wealth is concentrated in the hands of 20% of people, while 80% of people only own 20% of society's wealth. This statistical imbalance is ubiquitous in society, economy and life. This is the 80/20 rule.

The 28/20 rule tells us not to analyze, handle and look at problems equally, but to seize the key few in business operations and management; to find out those who can bring 80% profit to the company, but the total amount is not Only accounting for 20% of key customers, strengthen services to achieve twice the result with half the effort; business leaders must carefully classify and analyze the work, and spend the main energy on solving major problems and grasping major projects.

Common sense in social psychology 8. Barrel theory:

If the wooden boards that make up the barrel are of different lengths, then the water capacity of the barrel does not depend on the longest wooden board. It depends on the shortest piece of wood.

Common sense in social psychology 9. Matthew effect:

There is a famous saying in "The Bible-Matthew": "To everyone who has, more will be given, so that he will have an abundance. "If you don't have it, even what he has will be taken away."

Sociologists have derived the concept of the "Matthew Effect" to describe the widespread polarization in social life. Phenomenon.

Common sense in social psychology 10. Birdcage logic

Hang a beautiful birdcage in the most conspicuous place in the room. In a few days, the owner will definitely make the following two One option: throw away the birdcage, or buy a bird and put it in the birdcage. This is birdcage logic. The process is very simple. Imagine that you are the owner of this room. As long as someone walks into the room and sees the birdcage, they will not be able to help but ask you: "Where is the bird? Is it dead?" When you answer: "I never have Birds." People ask, "Well, what do you want a birdcage for?" You end up having to choose between two options because it's easier than endless explanations. The reason for birdcage logic is simple: most of the time, people adopt inertial thinking. So it can be seen how important it is to cultivate logical thinking in life and work.

Common sense in social psychology 11. Broken window effect

There is a phenomenon in social psychology research called the "broken window effect". That is to say, if the windows of a house are broken, there will be no If someone repairs it, other windows will be broken inexplicably soon. If there are some graffiti on a wall that is not cleaned off, the wall will soon be covered with messy and unsightly things. In a very clean place, people would be embarrassed to throw away garbage, but once there is garbage on the ground, people will throw it away without hesitation and without any shame. This is a really strange phenomenon.

Social psychologists study this "tipping point". How dirty does the ground have to be before people will feel that it is so dirty anyway, and it doesn't matter if it is a little dirtier. How bad does the situation have to be for people to think that it is just that dirty anyway? He will give up on himself and let it rot to the end.

Any bad thing, if it is not stopped at the beginning and becomes a trend, cannot be changed. It is like a river embankment. If a small gap is not repaired in time, the dam can collapse and cause millions of times the damage. loss.

Crime is actually the result of disorder. In New York City in the 1980s, people were robbed everywhere and killed every day. Even walking on the road in broad daylight would make you scared. Not to mention the subway. The carriages are dirty and dirty, and obscene sentences are scrawled everywhere. Everyone feels in danger while sitting in the subway. Although I have not been robbed, a professor was given a sap in broad daylight and lost his eyesight. This ended his research career and made me change my mind over the years. I did not dare to go to New York alone for meetings. New York's city appearance and reputation have improved a lot recently. I'm quite surprised that a city that has been sinking can actually come back from the dead and move up.

Therefore, when I went out for a meeting and met a criminologist, I immediately asked him for advice. It turned out that New York City used the broken windows effect theory discussed in books in the past to first improve the crime environment. , so that people are less likely to commit crimes, and then slowly arrest the murderers and thieves, and return to order.

Although this approach was scolded at the time as slowing down the process and saying, "The ship is sinking and we are still washing the decks", New York City still started by keeping the subway cars clean and said that if you don't buy a ticket, you won't be able to take the train for free. People were handcuffed and lined up on the platform to publicly declare to the people the government's determination to rectify the situation. It turned out to be very effective.

The police found that people are less likely to commit crimes in clean places, and also found that catching fare evaders is very rewarding, because one in every seven fare evaders is a wanted criminal, and one in twenty Carry weapons, so the police are willing to take fare evaders seriously, which makes gangsters dare not evade fares, and dare not bring weapons when going out, so as not to lose more than they gain. In this way, New York City starts from the smallest and easiest place to break the criminal chain so that this vicious cycle cannot continue. ;