Alcohol and social behavior: II. The helpful drunkard.

Hypothesized that alcohol would increase helping when, if the person were sober, the helping response was under high-inhibitory conflict (affected by strong instigating and inhibiting pressures). In Study 1, 143 university students (over 21 yrs of age) were given alcohol or no alcohol and submitted to high- or low-conflict situations. Results show a mild dose of alcohol (1.25 ml/kg) increased helping among high-conflict Ss pressured to help with a task they did not like but did not increase helping among low-conflict Ss who either liked the task or were weakly pressured to help. In Study 2, 81 male university students (aged 21 yrs or older) were subjected to the same conditions as in Study 1, but a higher dose of alcohol (1.88 ml/kg) was used. Results show that the stronger dose of alcohol increased helping among all high-conflict Ss but again had no effect among low-conflict Ss. It is suggested that the role of inhibitory-response conflict in mediating alcohol's social effects generalizes to prosocial behavior. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The his and hers of prosocial behavior: An examination of the social psychology of gender.

Prosocial behavior consists of behaviors regarded as beneficial to others, including helping, sharing, comforting, guiding, rescuing, and defending others. Although women and men are similar in engaging in extensive prosocial behavior, they are different in their emphasis on particular classes of these behaviors. The specialty of women is prosocial behaviors that are more communal and relational, and that of men is behaviors that are more agentic and collectively oriented as well as strength intensive. These sex differences, which appear in research in various settings, match widely shared gender role beliefs. The origins of these beliefs lie in the division of labor, which reflects a biosocial interaction between male and female physical attributes and the social structure. The effects of gender roles on behavior are mediated by hormonal processes, social expectations, and individual dispositions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The psychology of social impact.

Proposes a theory of social impact specifying the effect of other persons on an individual. According to the theory, when other people are the source of impact and the individual is the target, impact should be a multiplicative function of the strength, immediacy, and number of other people. Furthermore, impact should take the form of a power function, with the marginal effect of the Nth other person being less than that of the (N–2)th. When other people stand with the individual as the target of forces from outside the group, impact should be divided such that the resultant is an inverse power function of the strength, immediacy, and number of persons standing together. The author reviews relevant evidence from research on conformity and imitation, stage fright and embarrassment, news interest, bystander intervention, tipping, inquiring for Christ, productivity in groups, and crowding in rats. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The social psychology of citations.

Discusses 2 social facets of citations and citation counts. It is proposed that literature is cited both because of scholarly impact and to show a familiarity with the pertinent literature. In this sense, citation counts measure social consensus indistinguishable from scholarly impact. Qualitative evaluation methods are considered to be appealing because of the social-historical climate. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Accounting for the use of behavior technologies in social psychology.

Considerable scholarly effort in social psychology is devoted to the development of techniques that change behavior. In this article, the social and political forces that have guided the development of these techniques are examined. Also, ethical and psychological issues associated with the use of behavior technologies are discussed. These issues arise from the fact that to change behavior, it must first be controlled. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Crisis in social psychology: The relevance of relevance.

Considers that external influences on social psychology for socially relevant research are misguided and potentially destructive to the progress of the discipline. Social psychologists have studied socially relevant topics for years and if their findings are not generalizable to community problems it is because they are not relevant to the constructs to which they pertain. Once conceptual relevance is obtained by reevaluation of existent research methods, social relevance will inevitably follow. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The social psychology of creativity: A componential conceptualization.

Considers the definition and assessment of creativity and presents a componential framework for conceptualizing this faculty. Including domain-relevant skills, creativity-relevant skills, and task motivation as a set of necessary and sufficient components of creativity, the framework describes the way in which cognitive abilities, personality characteristics, and social factors might contribute to stages of the creative process. The discussion emphasizes the previously neglected social factors and highlights the contributions that a social psychology of creativity can make to a comprehensive view of creative performance. (99 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The place of personality and social structure research in social psychology.

In this article, I examine the relevance of the personality and social structure perspective for social psychology. A brief historical review summarizes earlier studies in this tradition and examines the limitations of these previous works, particularly the failure to explicate the linkages between individuals and their social worlds. At the same time, significant strengths of the personality and social structure perspective are emphasized, especially the concern with how normative culture influences people's values, beliefs, and behaviors, areas traditionally neglected in mainstream social psychology. Thus, the objective of the article is to describe the ways in which the personality and social structure perspective both contributes to and benefits from greater discourse with traditional domains of social psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The social psychology of Rorschach validity research.

An analysis of the research extant in the literature on the validity of the Rorschach, revealed that there was a relationship between where the research was done (academic, nonacademic settings) and type of validity study (construct, criterion, i.e., theoretical or practical validity). Ramifications of these findings with regard to formulation and interpretation of studies on the Rorschach were discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive psychology and social change.

E. E. Sampson's (see record 1982-04617-001) charges that the cognitive perspective denies reality, depicts mental acrobatics as substituting for effective action, and necessarily serves the existing social order can only be made by selectively ignoring the contributions of the Gestalt psychologists and of other prominent proponents of the cognitive perspective. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Experimental psychology and social responsibility.

Argues that (1) the roles of scientist and human being are to some extent inseparable, (2) the scientist cannot escape responsibility for the uses made of his knowledge, and (3) basic research must be defended in terms of its potential social value, however remote. It is argued that experimental psychologists have a series of obligations which can be met through formal organizations. They include: (1) the responsibility to interpret its basic research to society as a whole; (2) the responsibility to encourage its own social support through social action; (3) the need to step up its attack on pressing social problems; and (4) the responsibility to oppose political climates that would inhibit the progress of free psychological inquiry and to encourage political climates that permit and encourage such progress. A few illustrative examples are cited of the involvement of psychological associations in social action and of instances in which they might have been involved and were not. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social psychology, experimental psychology and the social psychology of the experiment.

Discusses the recent growth of experimental social psychology which has involved wholesale adoption of classical methodology as conceived by experimental psychology. Paradoxically, research and writings on the "social psychology of the experiment" raise serious questions about certain assumptions implicit in classical methodology, i.e., those concerning the nature of the subject matter and the relationship between E and S. The views of R. Rosenthal, M. T. Orne, and others are discussed in this context and general implications considered in the light of the humanistic movement in American psychology. The general conclusion is that the values and criteria for all experimentation in psychology may be destined to undergo a radical reorientation. (French summary) (32 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The turn to discourse in social psychology.

We discuss the emerging turn to discursive social psychology as an alternative to experimental social psychology. We note that the barriers to change are rooted in the history of the discipline, in the failure of researchers to recognize the distinction between movements and actions and in their reluctance to switch from positivist to post-positivist criteria. We outline the tenets of discursive psychology and of its associated method, discourse analysis. Illustrations of discourse analysis are drawn primarily from a recent study of date rape. Throughout, we emphasize the centrality of discourse in social life and the definition of the social being as Homo loquens. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The social constructionist movement in modern psychology.

Discusses the social constructionist movement in modern psychology, noting that social constructionism views discourse about the world not as a reflection or map of the world but as an artifact of communal interchange. Both as an orientation to knowledge and to the character of psychological constructs, constructionism presents a significant challenge to conventional understanding. Although the roots of constructionist thought may be traced to long-standing debates between empiricist and rationalist schools of thought, constructionism moves beyond the dualism of these traditions and places knowledge within the process of social interchange. Although the role of psychological explanation is problematic, a fully developed constructionism could furnish a means for understanding the process of science and invites the development of alternative criteria for the evaluation of psychological inquiry. (100 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Enhancing the social ethics of psychology: Toward a psychology at the service of social change.

Presents a proposal for furthering the social ethics of psychology under the general term conscientization (P. Freire, 1971), which entails carrying out 2 tasks, denunciation and annunciation. It is argued that in contrast to its considerable efforts to insure proper ethical behavior toward individual clients, psychology has virtually neglected its moral obligations to society. Psychology can contribute to the advent of social change toward a "good" society by making explicit the process by which people come to accept the current social order as the best possible one, and by proposing strategies to counteract this pervasive phenomenon. This article illustrates how psychological research and psychologists can significantly transform social structures incapable of promoting human welfare. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The social psychology of eyewitness accuracy: Misleading questions and communicator expertise.

In two studies we examined the effect of questioner expertise on the error rates of subjects who were asked misleading versus unbiased questions. A total of 105 introductory psychology students watched a videotaped clip of a bank robbery and were then questioned about the crime. The questioner was represented to subjects as either highly knowledgeable or completely naive about the events the subject witnessed. One half of the subjects in each expertise condition were asked misleading questions, and the other half were asked unbiased questions. In the knowledgeable questioner conditions, misleading questions were associated with error rates significantly higher than those obtained with the unbiased questions (p?ns). These results indicate that misleading questions decrease witness accuracy when the questioner is assumed to be knowledgeable about the crime, but have no effect on accuracy when the questioner is assumed to be naive. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Instrumentation in social psychology.

Focuses on various conceptual paradigms that were "instrumented with display or measurement procedures having the potential for relatively standardized usage." The paradigms include problems concerning (a) attitude formation and change, (b) social conformity, (c) game behavior, and (d) group performance. Comment is made on "advantages and disadvantages of the primitive state of instrumentation in the field," and regards the future as making increasing use of more sophisticated instruments. (16 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Plurality in social psychology.

Argues that social psychology should be considered a polyparadigmatic enterprise based on human science social psychology theories and discusses the nature of a paradigm and the social character of paradigm-construction as a knowledge-building industry. Four major approaches of human science social psychology are presented: existential-phenomenology, hermeneutical dialectics, dialogal existentialism, and critical emancipatory theory. These approaches are discussed in terms of the changing meanings of intentionality. "Way of Life Psychology" is presented as a discipline capable of integrating the contributions of the various human science schools of thought in social psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Why social psychology fails.

Maintains that the failure of social psychology to develop substance and direction has been due primarily to the misguided vision that complex social phenomena can be fruitfully studied by experimental laboratory methods. Many who share this view but maintain their commitment to the experimental method are turning to nonreactive experiments in field settings. Based on matters of ethics and propriety, however, it is inevitable that these will continue in the same pattern of short-term, low-impact studies that predominated in the laboratory. Short-term, low-impact research strategies cannot, by themselves, bring us to the minimal goal of meaningful, general laws of social development and behavior, and social psychologists can only begin to grow toward that goal when the experiment ceases to be the primary modus operandi. (French summary) (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The decade of behavior: An opportunity for family psychology.

In the past, we have had the decade of the brain. Now, as behavioral scientists and practitioners, it is our turn and the period from 2000-2010 is the Decade of Behavior. The American Psychological Association's Board of Scientific Affairs initiated this idea, which is now sponsored by a host of behavioral and social science organizations. With an advisory committee representing a dozen disciplines, this is a ground-breaking multidisciplinary effort that aims to raise awareness of the importance of behavioral aspects of our lives. Five major themes guide this initiative: health, safety, education, prosperity, and democracy. I want to bring this important idea to your attention as both readers and authors of articles in the Journal of Family Psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)