376 ChapteR 10 Behavior in Social and Cultural Context
opposes social change, and whether a person thinks inequal-
ity is a result of human policies and can be overcome or is an
inevitable part of the natural order. Attitudes are also profoundly
affected by a person’s generation and by the person’s nonshared
environment (unique life experiences).• Suicide bombers and terrorists have not been “brainwashed”
and most are not psychopaths or mentally ill. They have been
entrapped into taking increasingly violent actions against real
and perceived enemies; encouraged to attribute all problems to
that one enemy; offered a new identity and salvation; and cut off
from access to dissonant information. These methods have been
used to create religious and other cults as well.
individuals in groups
• The need to belong is so powerful that the pain of social rejec-
tion and exclusion is greater and more memorable than physical
pain, which is why groups use the weapon of ostracism or rejec-
tion to enforce conformity.
• In groups, individuals often behave differently than they would
on their own. Conformity permits the smooth running of society
and allows people to feel in harmony with others like them. Two
basic motives for conformity are the need for social acceptance
and the need for information. But as the Asch experiment
showed, most people will conform to the judgments of others
even when the others are plain wrong.
• Close-knit groups are vulnerable to groupthink, the tendency of
group members to think alike, censor themselves, actively sup-
press disagreement, and feel that their decisions are invulner-
able. Groupthink often produces faulty decisions because group
members fail to seek disconfirming evidence for their ideas.
However, groups can be structured to counteract groupthink.
• Sometimes a group’s collective judgment is better than that of
its individual members—the “wisdom of crowds.” But crowds
can also spread panic, rumor, and misinformation. Diffusion of
responsibility in a group can lead to inaction on the part of in-
dividuals, as in bystander apathy. The diffusion of responsibility
is likely to occur under conditions that promote deindividuation,
the loss of awareness of one’s individuality. Deindividuation
increases when people feel anonymous, as in a large group or
crowd or when they are wearing masks or uniforms. In some
situations, crowd norms lead deindividuated people to behave
aggressively, but in others, crowd norms foster helpfulness.
• The willingness to speak up for an unpopular opinion, blow the
whistle on illegal practices, or help a stranger in trouble and per-
form other acts of altruism is partly a matter of personal belief
and conscience. But several situational factors are also impor-
tant: The person perceives that help is needed; cultural norms
support taking action; the person has an ally; and the person
becomes entrapped in a commitment to help or dissent.
us Versus Them: group identity
• People develop social identities based on their ethnicity, na-
tionality, religion, occupation, and other social memberships.
In culturally diverse societies, many people face the problem of
balancing their ethnic identity with acculturation into the larger
society.
• Ethnocentrism, the belief that one’s own ethnic group or religion
is superior to all others, promotes “us–them” thinking. One
effective strategy for reducing us–them thinking and hostility
between groups is interdependence, having both sides work to-
gether to reach a common goal.
• Stereotypes help people rapidly process new information, or-
ganize experience, and predict how others will behave. But
they distort reality by exaggerating differences between groups,
underestimating the differences within groups, and producing
selective perception.Prejudice and group Conflict
• A prejudice is an unreasonable negative feeling toward a cat-
egory of people. Psychologically, prejudice wards off feelings
of anxiety and doubt; it bolsters self-esteem when a person
feels threatened, by providing a scapegoat. Prejudice also has
social causes: People acquire prejudices mindlessly, through
conformity and parental lessons. Prejudice serves the cultural
and national purpose of bonding people to their social groups
and nations, and in extreme cases justifying war. Finally,
prejudice also serves to justify a majority group’s economic
interests and dominance. Hostile sexism differs from benevo-
lent sexism, but both legitimize gender discrimination. During
times of economic insecurity and competition for jobs, preju-
dice rises.
• Psychologists disagree on whether racism and other prejudices
are declining or have merely taken new forms. Some are trying
to measure prejudice indirectly, by measuring social distance
and “microaggressions”; measuring unequal treatment of groups
by the police or other institutions; seeing whether people are
more likely to behave aggressively toward a target when they are
stressed or angry; observing changes in the brain; or assessing
unconscious positive or negative associations with a group, as
with the Implicit Association Test (IAT). Critics of the IAT argue
that it is not capturing true prejudice but unfamiliarity and the
salience of negative words.
• Efforts to reduce prejudice need to target both the explicit and
implicit attitudes that people have. Four conditions help to re-
duce two groups’ mutual prejudices and conflicts: Both sides
must have equal legal status, economic standing, and power;
both sides must have the legal, moral, and economic support of
authorities and cultural institutions; both sides must have op-
portunities to work and socialize together informally and formally
(the contact hypothesis); and both sides must work together for
a common goal.Psychology in the News, revisited
• The bombing at the Boston Marathon illustrates the central
theme of this chapter: the human capacity for both cruelty and