Gender and social influence: A social psychological analysis.

Men and women are believed to differ in how influential and easily influenced they are: Men are thought to be more influential, and women more easily influenced. In natural settings, men and women tend to differ in these ways, but these differences stem largely from formal status inequalities by which men are more likely than women to have high-status roles. Status is important because of the legitimate authority vested in high-status roles. Within appropriate limits, people of higher status are believed to have the right to make demands of those of lower status, and people of lower status are expected to comply with these demands. Yet, small, stereotypic sex differences in leadership and social influence generally have been found in laboratory experiments and other small-group settings where men and women have equal formal status. These small sex differences may occur because experience with hierarchical social structures in which men have higher status creates expectancies about male and female behavior, and these expectancies affect social interaction in ways that foster behavior that confirms the expectancies. Sex differences that occur in the laboratory as well as natural settings may stem from social structural factors—namely, from the existing distributions of women and men into social roles. (77 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ethical problems in social psychological experimentation in the laboratory.

Discusses ethical problems in the use of deception in laboratory social psychological experiments, and analyzes the 2 prevailing arguments used to justify such experiments (cost/benefit and the absolutist position). It is suggested that solutions to ethical problems lie in developing and perfecting new methodologies such as simulations, naturalistic observation, and unobtrusive measures. The fact that changing methods will change the nature of psychological inquiry is all the more reason for exploring new methods since dissatisfaction with traditional methodology, not ethical problems, has been the prime motive for movement in this direction. (French summary) (67 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Pornography, social science, and politics: When research and ideology collide.

Discusses controversy surrounding the 1985 Attorney General's Commission on Pornography. Critics argue that many of the commissioners lacked necessary credentials and had been selected for ideological reasons, the commission had too little time and money to adequately study the topic, and conclusions drawn by the commission were based on overgeneralizations from social psychological studies were largely laboratory based. The need for more precise definitions for pornography and obscenity and for continued frank participation by psychologists in such policy debates is emphasized. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Politicized collective identity: A social psychological analysis.

This article develops a social psychological model of politicized collective identity that revolves around 3 conceptual triads. The 1st triad consists of collective identity, the struggle between groups for power, and the wider societal context. It is proposed that people evince politicized collective identity to the extent that they engage as self-conscious group members in a power struggle on behalf of their group knowing that it is the more inclusive societal context in which this struggle has to be fought out. Next, 3 antecedent stages leading to politicized collective identity are distinguished: awareness of shared grievances, adversarial attributions, and involvement of society at large. This sequence culminates in the final triad because the intergroup power struggle is eventually triangulated by involving society at large or representatives thereof. Consequences of politicized collective identity are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ethical standards as an independent variable in psychological research.

Discusses recent proposals concerning ethical standards for psychological research. An experiment was conducted using a simple, typical verbal conditioning task in which the E said "good" when the S began a sentence with either "I" or "we." The nonethical group of 14 male undergraduates was selected and run under current procedures: they were informed only that the experiment involved "sentence construction." The ethical group of 14 Ss was selected and run under conditions of full disclosure of the experiment's purpose and hypotheses. Ss were allowed to participate or not under complete informed consent. Ss in the nonethical group significantly conditioned in a positive direction, while those in the ethical group conditioned in a negative direction (p     

A social relations analysis of agreement in liking judgments.

Using a round-robin design in which every subject served both as judge and target, subjects made liking judgments, trait ratings, and physical attractiveness ratings of each other on each of 4 days. Although there was some agreement in the liking judgments, most of the variance was due to idiosyncratic preferences for different targets. Differences in evaluations were due to at least 2 factors: disagreements in how targets were perceived (is this person honest?) and disagreements in how to weight the trait attributes that predicted liking (is honesty more important than friendliness?) When evaluating the targets in specific roles (as a study partner), judgments showed much greater agreement, as did the weights of the trait attributes. A 2nd study confirmed the differential weighting of trait attributes when rating liking in general and the increased agreement when rating specific roles. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Multicultural policy in Canada: A social psychological analysis.

Argues that social psychologists in Canada have an important role to play in policy analysis and evaluation. The multiculturalism policy of the federal government is proposed as one policy area for which social psychological theory and research may be particularly relevant. The policy is outlined and a number of social psychological issues and assumptions in the policy are identified, including group maintenance and development, intergroup contact and sharing, and group acceptance and tolerance. Generally, the policy seems to be supported by theory and empirical findings, but there is a need to guard against possible countereffects. It is argued that more long-term programmatic research is required in social policy areas if social psychologists are to make a useful contribution. (French abstract) (49 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The client's perspective: Ethical judgments and perceptions of therapist practices.

In response to a questionnaire, 96 adults, both with and without experience as clients in therapy, judged the ethical appropriateness of 60 therapist practices. In addition, those who had been clients indicated whether the practices had occurred in their own therapy. The practices were organized into 6 groups that corresponded to major areas of professional ethics in psychology: confidentiality, dual relationships, informed consent and business practices, competence, sensitivity to differences, and interventions. Clients and nonclients alike showed a general understanding of ethical principles but uncertainty about many specific points. Some uncertainty stemmed from a misunderstanding about the nature, and particularly the risks, of therapy. Practices judged clearly appropriate were not reported to have occurred universally by the clients in the sample, and practices judged clearly inappropriate were reported to have occurred with some, albeit low, frequency. The results are discussed with regard to implications for ethics research and ethical practice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Another look at sex stereotypes and social judgments: An analysis of the social perceiver's use of subjective probabilities.

Reexamined the findings of A. Locksley et al (see record 1981-28048-001) that Ss fall prey to the baserate fallacy when they make stereotype-related trait judgments and that Ss ignore their stereotypes when trait judgments are made in the presence of trait-related behavioral information. A replication of Study 2 by Locksley et al, using 99 undergraduates, was conducted to examine 2 issues: (a) the use of a normative criterion in comparison with Ss' judgments and (b) the level of analysis (group vs individual) of Ss' judgments. Results show no support for the baserate fallacy. When a Bayesian normative criterion was constructed for each S based on the S's own stereotype judgments and was compared with assertiveness judgments made in the presence of individuating information, there was no evidence that Ss ignored or underused their stereotypes as the baserate fallacy predicts. (35 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of automatism of social judgments.

Two studies, with 28 Ss, examined the development and correlates of automatic processing. Ss judged the suitability for a given occupation of a stimulus person described by traits or performed a similar stereotyped judgment task. Results show that automatism developed relatively rapidly (within a few dozen trials) and required repeated execution of the same process, not necessarily with the same content. Increases in processing efficiency, the ability to transfer the increased efficiency to new information content, and memory storage were related to automatism of a process developed through practice. A tentative theoretical account is presented that relates these results to others in social cognition and cognitive psychology, particularly those reported by J. R. Anderson (1983) on the architecture of cognition and by E. R. Smith (see record 1984-28664-001) on social inference processes. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developing biased social judgments: The false-consensus effect.

Research with adults has demonstrated a false-consensus bias, a tendency to overestimate peer agreement with one's own choices and or behaviors. To test this effect with children, summer campers divided into 3 mean-age groups, including 71 7-yr-old, 40 9-yr-old, and 76 10-yr-old children, voted for their favorite camp activities and then guessed how the vote would turn out for either same-age, younger, or older peers. Results indicate a strong false-consensus bias, which declined with age for Ss whose preferences were in the minority. Ss whose own preferences were consistently in the minority (i.e., nonconformers) exhibited a stronger bias, especially when they were predicting the preferences of older peers. Results were discussed in light of 3 competing explanations for the false consensus effect: egocentrism, ego-defensiveness, and attributional/information processing explanations. None of these theoretical perspectives could account for all of the findings, suggesting that the false-consensus bias may have multiple causes. (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

AIDS: Ethical implications for psychological intervention.

Examines the ethical issues facing psychologists working with people who are infected with AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) and individuals in high-risk groups. Duty to treat is examined with a consideration of homophobia and biases about intravenous drug users. Confidentiality is discussed in the context of record keeping, in cases of conflict with duty to warn, and in cases of suicide. Psychologists are urged to consider possible ethical dilemmas before they arise, to ensure that the best decisions are made. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Milestones in the psychological analysis of social influence.

Social influence research has been, and remains, the defining hallmark of social psychology. The history of this preoccupation is reviewed selectively, and important contributions to social influence and persuasion are discussed. The central thesis of the presentation is that a return to a consideration of the social group, a critical source of identity and individuality, pays major dividends in understanding the processes of social influence. Moscovici's insistence on the importance of minority influence processes is seen as a harbinger of the return of the group to social influence. Finally, the leniency contract is proposed as a model that integrates these insights with important features of social identity, the elaboration likelihood model, and considerations of structural attitude theory in developing a predictive device that accounts for immediate and persistent majority attitude change as well as indirect and delayed focal change attributable to minority persuasion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ethical problems of psychological jargon.

An overuse of psychological jargon is potentially harmful in 4 ways; it can (a) distort truth and understanding, (b) provide a means for avoiding responsibility, (c) foster the development of an elitist class, and (d) lead to the denigration of psychology as a profession. Examples of jargon are given that are redundant, obscure, or distortive or that permit a semblence of conversation to occur with no real exchange of information. It is suggested that psychologists (a) use the clearest language available, (b) be aware of others' use of jargon, and (c) help clients to communicate better by pointing out jargon and helping them select words that express what they really feel. (10 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On being useful: The nature and consequences of psychological research on social problems.

Discusses the definition of problems and causal attribution bias in psychological research into social problems. An analysis of the literature on blacks covered in Psychological Abstracts during a 6-mo period indicates the types of variables studied (person vs. situation) and the causal relationships between them. It is concluded that too much research emphasis is placed on "blaming" the personal characteristics of those experiencing problems, and that greater attention should be given to the possible influence of external factors. (21 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Informational social influence and product quality judgments.

Eight groups of 15 college females each rated the quality of 1 paper plate while exposed to simulated quality evaluations of other raters. Others' evaluations were manipulated by presenting the modal evaluation as higher or lower than the control (no influence) mean rating and by varying the uniformity of others' ratings at 2 levels of dispersion. The availability of intrinsic (product composition) cues during prerating examination of the plate was manipulated by making available, or withholding, 2 comparison plates. Others' modal evaluations significantly affected the Ss' quality ratings of the plate. This effect was substantially stronger when others' evaluations were more uniform. The presence or absence of comparison plates had no effect on the influence conditions. Results are interpreted, in conjunction with those of J. B. Cohen and E. Golden (see record 1972-11926-001) as providing support for the effect of informational social influence on ratings of product quality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Framing interethnic ideology: Effects of multicultural and color-blind perspectives on judgments of groups and individuals.

In 3 experiments, White American college students received a message advocating either a color-blind or a multicultural ideological approach to improving interethnic relations and then made judgments about various ethnic groups and individuals. Relative to a color-blind perspective, the multicultural perspective led to stronger stereotypes, greater accuracy in these stereotypes, and greater use of category information in judgments of individuals. This increase in between-category differentiation occurred both for attributes that favored the in-group and for attributes that favored the out-group and was also paired in some cases with greater overall positivity toward the out-group. The findings lead us to question the implicit assumption driving the majority of social psychological efforts at prejudice reduction: that the categorization process leads to prejudice, and that the relevance of social categories must therefore be de-emphasized. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hedgehogs, foxes, and the evolving social contract in psychological science: Ethical challenges and methodological opportunities.

This article is addressed primarily to new researchers who feel burdened by an expanding body of ethical rules and regulations. Moral dilemmas proliferate as researchers try to strike a balance between ethical accountability and the technical demands of scientific practices. The challenge is to expand existing knowledge and abide by an evolving social contract that is responsive to current ethical sensitivities. This article illustrates dilemmas faced by researchers, examines some of the events leading up to the present situation and shows how researchers might exploit this situation, so that science and society can both benefit. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age-related priming effects in social judgments.

Two experiments investigated adult age differences in the impact of previously activated (and thus easily accessible) trait-related information on judgments about people. The authors hypothesized that age-related declines in the efficiency of controlled processing mechanisms during adulthood would be associated with increased susceptibility to judgment biases associated with such information. In each study, different-aged adults made impression judgments about a target, and assimilation of these judgments to trait constructs activated in a previous, unrelated task were examined. Consistent with the authors' hypotheses, older adults were likely to form impressions that were biased toward the primed trait constructs. In contrast, younger adults exhibited greater awareness of the primed information and were more likely to correct for its perceived influence, especially when distinctive contextual cues regarding the source of the primes were available. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)