I believe that the area of psychology that I will most remember from here on out, along with the area that I most enjoyed would be social psychology. I believe that one of the biggest reasons that I truly will retain the most of the subject was because the way that professor Gonzales presented to us all in lecture. Areas on the subject like proximity and how social situations influence the behavior of individuals. I think it is also interesting about the concept of mass hysteria. It is just like playing a game of telephone where things can get screwed up so easily. I think that I can relate very easily to this subject because it is just so evident of all the meanings and ideas behind social psychology, so it is very easy for me to compare or see myself in similar situations. I also thought the videos from my discussion section was interesting with the experiment with the different lines and the people part of the study purposely giving the wrong answers to see what the candidate of the experiment would answer and how they would react. It is so interesting to me because I saw how so many people would conform and how many people actually do in real life, but I am so different and unique that I would see myself as being the one that would be the outlier and go against the entire group or be the one to face the people in the elevator when they are in fact standing the wrong way.
I will not give in!
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I couldn't agree more with this entry. Like the video we watched in discussion, so many people fall to pressure - whether it's saying a wrong answer or doing something that could seriously harm you. Social psychology was also my favorite subject to learn about this semester. It's something that relates to everyone, even though some people might believe it won't affect them. I think it would be interesting to put myself into a study where everyone is doing the wrong thing and see if I might conform or not. It's one thing to say you won't but another to actually not conform.
I agree, social psychology was very intersting and I think it was because it pertains to our everyday lives. All of psychology is like that but especially social psychology because we ineract with others on a daily basis. For most of us, it is how define ourselves as individuals so in that perspective, I believe it is one fo the most important subjects in psychology.
Social psychology is a very unique way of looking at psychology. When I first thought about psychology I never really though about the differences between people and why certain people are friends with who. After this class I find it interesting that so many people are just friends with people who they live close to and are similar with. It is weird to think that so many people will conform just because they live close to someone and want to fit in and befriend them.
I'm sure a lot of people think that they would be one of the few who would not conform, me myself being one of them. I've always thought myself as one who is strong minded and able to stick to my own beliefs and so I think I would be able to not conform. But I've never been in that type of situation and neither has any of us so we may think we won't conform but hey who knows, they say hindsight is 20/20 right?
I would agree with you when you say that professor gonzales did a very good job of laying out the information to us. I think it is crazy how many people did conform in the study where they clearly knew it was the wrong answer, yet they agreed with it anyway because for me I can think of times in High School when teachers would go around and ask for answers and myself included changed our answers even when we were certain ours were correct. It is interesting to think that I too would say I would not conform and do that, but how do we know for sure? (As i agree with the comment about mine completely.)
The game telephone which you mentioned is a really interesting example of a game with an important lesson to teach. I remember telephone was one of my favorite games as a kid, but I never really thought of any deeper meaning to it. However, as I grew older, I began to realize that it was a game intended to teach an important lesson, one that applies to Psychology also. I feel like a lot of pseudo-scientific beliefs stem from people just believing the first thing they here. Although it's possible that some of these ideas have roots in real science, it has been completely distorted by unscientific points of view advocating for it. Also, on a simpler level, people should never take what they hear at face value and should try to gather hard proof for themselves.
It is great that you mentioned again about conformity in the last entry. Nowadays people in this country as well as other fast growing countries like China have been facing huge pressure and have been re-evaluate their original believes and goals in order to fit into the world we are living in. It is never a bad thing to know what kind of added value we need to gain for a competitive positions or to complete a more challenging task. However, sometimes we do get lost at some points. For example, to seek for the beautiful outlook, certain people force themselves to use unhealthy ways to get the "ideal" shapes frequently appeared at catwalk stage when they are already medically defined as at the underweight group. Also, people gave in their believes under any kind of authorities without qualifications. It is the time to have more people, especially the teenagers who are at the critical phase of shaping their personal values, to get more exposed to those video clips we have had in our discussion.
Nicely written piece! And I agree that I really enjoyed professor Gonzales's lectures as well. With all those tests on conformity, it's shocking as a behind the scene person to see the action and reactions of those people and you would say to yourself, I would never be that stupid. But scientists these days are getting smarter and with technology getting more advanced, I'm sure psychologists have many ways of still doing conformity tests. Have you ever seen those videos of these people who set up a scene in public that's usually a little out of place and then see the reaction of the public? Not sure if that is totally related to conformity but I clearly remember this one set-up scene where a little girl was supposedly being dragged off by a man she didn't know and shockingly, very few people out in public stopped that scene from happening. I know this is definitely related to the diffusion of responsibility but in a sense it's kind of related to conformity because people usually don't want to step up in public and be acting out of place even in a situation like the "kidnapping".
I think the picture you used to illustrate your point is interesting, I think the conformity that we see everyday in many social situations extends well beyond simply the public realm. Everyday we are pressured and pushed to fit into certain molds, to be pretty, to be driven, or ambitious, or to focus our efforts on gaining money at the expense of life experience or our own goals and dreams.
Overall I feel that simply because those are the norms of our society right now doesn't mean they are correct or innate. If society was any other way we would view that as the norm,. Don't be pressured to conform to social norms by the appeal to tradition fallacy.
I agree with your post, this was also one of the most interesting points of psychology 1001 to me. The video we watched in discussion lab especially stands out to me. I could not believe the number of people who said the wrong answer when they knew it was incorrect, simply because they felt pressured to answer the same way as the others. The participants explained how stressful of a situation it was. As I watched it, I thought to myself that I would never do that and that the answers were so obvious that I would be sure to answer them correctly regardless of the others. However, under that pressure I would likely react differently. I'm curious to see how I actually would deal with that situation. It is easy to believe that you will not give in, but in reality the likelihood is high.