Very intersting. Cribbed from here:
Here we will consider the most "macro" dimensions of social psychology, those social forces arising out of the interactions of large numbers of individuals and groups which, in turn, are the master templates patterning the cultural and social orders. One cannot study the behaviors of individuals without devoting some attention to the broader socio-cultural environments--their economic structures, stratification orders, technological systems of communication and transportation, family processes, demographics, and value systems-- structuring their social lives. Humans have long been fascinated by the processes through which collective social wholes emerge out of individuals' separate activities. They have probably forever felt the sense of exhilaration and power of their unity in numbers when pressed into crowds. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts in the image on the left. In this 1947 photograph by E.O. Goldbeck, 21,765 members of the U.S. Army Air Force are fused into a symbol of their group.
COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
By "collective behavior" social scientists typically mean that realm of action not governed by the everyday rules and expectations which normally shape social behavior:
- the behavior of crowds (such as "the wave" rolling around a sports stadium) and mobs;
- religious revivalism;
- political bandwagons, fads and fashion (check out About.com's inventory of 20th Century Fads & Fashions);
- mass sociogenic illness and collective hysteria (like Orson Welles' 1938 radio broadcast of "War of the Worlds" or the 1954 windshield pitting epidemic in the Pacific Northwest)
- and rumor (such as urban legends).
Collective action can be understood as the result of an emerging collective definition of the situation. This definition includes elements of shared cognitive belief (the "facts" that are commonly defined as being real and relevant), emotional factors (such as the personal needs being frustrated and the dominant emotion evoked), and the predominant motivation of those present. How such a commonly-shared mindset comes to be gets us into such topics as how information flows through social networks (recall Stanley Milgram's "Small World" thesis, recently mathematically verified, that we are no more than six steps removed from any other person on earth?) and connectivity opportunities provided by email and the Web (also being explored in James Moody's Electronic Small World Project and at Columbia University's Small World Research Project).A century ago one of the first social science investigations of collective action focused on the behavior of crowds. Gustave LeBon, in
The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1897), wrote of the "crowd mind," emerging from anonymity and deindividuation (which often leads to antisocial behavior), contagion (e.g., epidemic hysteria, a variant of Functional Somatic Syndromes), convergence (such as the Seattle windshield pitting epidemic of 1954), and emergent norms. Though contemporary social scientists have dismissed LeBon's "crowd mind," his antecedents continue to influence social research. Indeed, individuals (whether crowd members or observers) frequently act on the basis of their inferences about what the crowd "thinks, fears, hates, and wants." The crowds that go mad--such as the 1921 Tulsa race riot (see also The Nation's story of events)--have long intrigued social scientists. (See Tony Perez's Annotated Bibliography on Riots and Protest.) These intensely emotional mobs that violate the social norms and values have been both agents of social change and targets of severe repression by agencies of social control. Participants, anonymous and deindividualized and hypersensitive to any emergent definition of the situation, may find themselves engaging in acts of wanton destruction that they never envisioned nor intended.
Being major agents of social change, perhaps the most-studied forms of collective behavior are social movements, such as the American civil rights, anti-war, feminist, and environmental crusades of recent decades. These can arise, for instance, when cultural values become ambiguous during times of social change or crisis, when people find themselves in unanticipated situations, or when individuals' motives are similarly blocked. Such are the occasions when novel shared definitions of the situation arise and a collectivity is formed, experiences solidarity, and mobilizes for action.Precisely how such collective action arises has likewise received considerable theory and research. Neal Smelser, for instance, develops such processes as:
- structural strain
- structural conduciveness
- generalized belief
- some precipitating factor
- mobilization of participants for action
- success or failure of social control mechanisms
A rich topic for research is the role of the photographer in triggering social movements. Consider the role, for instance, of Lewis H. Hine is bringing about reform in child labor laws.
- Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1775-1940 by Thomas Dublin & Kathryn Kish Sklar (SUNY Binghamton)
- ASA Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements
- The American Social Movement Cultures (Washington State)
- Richard Kimber's Political Parties, Interest Groups, and Other Social Movements (broken down by nation)
- Protest.Net--discover where protests are percolating across the U.S. and internationally
- WTO History Project, from the University of Washington with a focus on the 1999 Seattle protests
- Lorry Britt & David Heise, "From Shame to Pride in Identity Politics"
- Kenneth Andres & Michael Biggs, "The Dynamics of Protest Diffusion: The 1960 Sit-In Movement in the American South"
- Nathan Wolfson on the structural preconditions for anti-semitic mobilization
- Yahoo's social movements directory
- Prohibition Materials
- Underlying Causes of the LA Riots--Listserv Archive from the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs
- Pro-Life and Pro-Choice Movements in the Abortion debate
INSTITUTIONAL PSYCHOLOGIES
Institutions are perceptual, cognitive, emotive and behavioral systems--conventional domains of "you knows." As grammar allows one to make sense of a string of words, so institutions provide individuals with consensual ways for deriving meaning from their social interactions. They also provide individuals routine ways for making decisions and acting in various situations with various types of others. As Mary Douglas observes in How Institutions Think (Syracuse University Press, 1986:102), "the instituted community blocks personal curiosity, organizes public memory, and heroically imposes certainty on uncertainty. In marking its own boundaries it affects all lower level thinking, so that persons realize their own identities and classify each other through community affiliation."
From a more social perspective, institutions are social housekeepers in that they program the routine services necessary for the day-to-day functioning of the group. With social evolution, distinctive institutions emerged to address the separate needs of society. For instance, out of society's need for protection against external threats arose the military; out of the social need for an informed and trained citizenry emerged education; and out of the social need for moral consensus and restraint of selfish impulses arose religion. Ideally these social needs addressed simultaneously address the needs of individuals, such as the social need for procreating the next generation of members matching the personal needs for intimacy and connectedness in the institution of the family.From this social psychological perspective, the methodological tasks are to measure the way a given institution
- addresses the needs of both individuals and social systems;
- shapes perception, beliefs, and cognition;
- induces various emotional experiences, such as the feelings of awe and respect, love and hate;
- creates its own language, concepts, and metaphors;
- impacts identity: the bearing of its roles on the self-concepts and esteem of its actors, its rites-of-passages, its demands for biographical summaries and accountabilities;
- defines situations and creates settings for interaction;
- channels behavior, such as its encouragement of risk-taking or pro-social activities, restraint on sexual activity, or timing of activities;
- creates group dynamics, such as creating in-groups and out-groups, and specifying roles for leaders and followers, and groupthink;
- spawns collective action and social movements;
- relates to other institutional systems of action and thought.
To illustrate how institutions "work" consider the act of driving a car.
With these point in mind, consider the following findings from "The Diminishing Divide-- American Churches, American Politics" by The Pew Research Center For the People and the Press. In several national surveys (the last conducted in April 1996), Americans were asked for their views on the following issues:
- The death penalty for persons convicted of murder. (CAPPUN)
- President Clinton's decision to send 20,000 U.S. troops to Bosnia as part of an international peacekeeping force. (BOSNIA)
- Allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally. (HOMO MARR)
- Which comes closer to your view? Abortion should be generally available, ... but under stricter limits, ... against the law except in cases of rape, incest, and to save the woman's life,... not permitted at all. (ABORTION)
- Which comes closer to your view? The government should do more to help needy Americans even if it means going deeper in debt. The government today can't afford to do much more to help the needy. (GOVPOOR)
- Which comes closer to your view? This country should do whatever it takes to protect the environment. This country has gone too far in its efforts to protect the environment. (ENVIRON)
- Which comes closer to your view? Society has been improved because women are now represented in the work place. Society made a mistake in encouraging so many women with families to work. (WORKING WOMEN)
For each issue respondents were also asked "Which one of the following has had the biggest influence on your thinking on this issue: 1) a personal experience; 2) the views of your friends and family; 3) what you have seen or read in the media; 4) your religious beliefs; 5) your education; or 6) something else. Below, for each issue, are the percentages of individuals reporting each influence to be the largest.
| ISSUE | PERSONAL EXPERIENCE | FRIENDS/FAMILY | MEDIA | RELIGION | EDUCATION | OTHER |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CAPPUN | 13 | 6 | 21 | 18 | 21 | 18 |
| BOSNIA | 15 | 7 | 35 | 6 | 18 | 16 |
| HOMO MARR | 10 | 7 | 9 | 37 | 17 | 17 |
| ABORTION | 18 | 7 | 7 | 28 | 22 | 16 |
| GOVPOOR | 26 | 7 | 22 | 6 | 24 | 13 |
| ENVIRON | 22 | 3 | 24 | 3 | 36 | 10 |
| WORKING WOMEN | 45 | 8 | 7 | 4 | 23 | 11 |
As can be seen, for only two of the seven issues were Americans' attitudes most influenced by personal experiences. The media, for instance, was the greatest influencer of orientations toward capital punishment and America's Bosnia interventions, while religion was the greatest shaper of opinions toward homosexual marriages and abortion.
To more easily gauge the relative influence of these various sources of opinion we can standardize each row, dividing each percentage by the largest percentage therewithin. For instance, 28 percent of Americans claimed that religion was the greatest shaper of their opinions toward abortion. Dividing each percentage in this row by .28 we find that Americans are only one-quarter as likely to cite the media (and the views of family and friends) as they are to cite religion as the greatest influence on their abortion attitudes.
| ISSUE | PERSONAL EXPERIENCE | FRIENDS/FAMILY | MEDIA | RELIGION | EDUCATION | OTHER |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CAPPUN | .62 | .29 | 1.0 | .86 | 1.0 | .86 |
| BOSNIA | .43 | .20 | 1.0 | .17 | .51 | .46 |
| HOMO MARR | .27 | .19 | .24 | 1.0 | .46 | .46 |
| ABORTION | .64 | .25 | .25 | 1.0 | .79 | .57 |
| GOVPOOR | 1.0 | .27 | .85 | .23 | .92 | .50 |
| ENVIRON | .61 | .08 | .67 | .08 | 1.0 | .28 |
| WORKING WOMEN | 1.0 | .18 | .16 | .09 | .51 | .24 |
| MEAN INFLUENCE | .65 | .21 | .60 | .49 | .74 | .48 |
Reflecting on the "Mean Influence" row on the bottom, the institutional bearing of Americans' attitudes and values cannot be denied. The concerns of critics of the messages delivered by mass media and educational curricula appear well-grounded as the influence of these two institutions rival that of personal experience.
THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF INEQUALITY
inequality among men [is] a rich source of much that is evil, but also of everything that is good.
Consider the concept of "The American Dream": the expectation of achieving a higher standard of living than one's parents. Has this expectation changed historically? Has it changed historically more so for some groups--social classes, minorities, or women--than for others (or might the notion historically referred only to the condition of white middle- class males)? What are the social psychological implications of not holding this belief?
Individuals' positions in the stratification orders of sex, race, and social class determine the language the speak, their values, happiness, self-esteem, sense of personal efficacy, physical and mental health, rate of aging and life-expectancy, sexual activities, childrearing practices, and nature of their work.
THOUGHT PROBLEM
Suppose that you are a member of a dominant group. What social psychological tactics would you use to ensure that your "social lessers" remain in their place?
EXPLORING AMERICANS' ATTRIBUTIONS OF WHY THE POOR ARE POOR
In the 1990 NORC General Social Survey, Americans were asked why there are poor people in this country. Two questions dealt with internal loci of control (e.g., they blame the victims): People are poor because of: Loose morals and drunkenness, and Lack of effort by the poor themselves. Two deal with external loci (e.g., they locate the cause in society): Failure of society to provide good schools for many Americans, and Failure of industry to provide enough jobs. Out of these questions was created a scale of poverty attributions, where 1=society's fault, 2=both social and personal faults, and 3=self-fault. Not surprisingly, those identifying themselves as members of the lower class are most likely to see poverty being society's fault (43%) than are the other classes, but there is virtually no difference in attributions of the working, middle, and upper classes (27% of whom blame society). Women are slightly more to blame society (30%) than men (26%), as are those 18-29 years of age (32%) compared to those 70 and older (19%).
Click to see:
- Poverty attributions by race and social class
- Poverty attributions by political ideology
- Poverty attributions by education and newspaper readership (newspaper read daily, several times/week, less)
- Poverty attributions by religious faith and religiosity
Related resources:
- T.R. Young's "The Contributions of Karl Marx to Social Psychology"
- Dimostenis Yagcioglu's "Psychological Explanations of Conflicts Between Ethnocultural Minorities and Majorities"
- Explorations in Social Inequality
THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION
Decency is veiled from sight; indecency is exposed to view. Scenes of evil attract packed audiences; good words scaredly find any listeners. It is as if purity should provoke a blush, and corruption give ground for pride. But where else should this happen but in devils' temples, in the resorts of delusion?
According to a 1995 Gallup Survey, virtually all Americans (96%) say they believe in God or a universal spirit, and most Americans (88%) say religion is important in their lives. Certainly any description of American Exceptionalism must include Americans' profound religiosity and their faith in the existence of an afterlife. To see how your personal beliefs match up with those of twenty-six world religions try the Religion Selector by SelectSmart.com and SpeakOut.com.RELIGION'S ROLE IN ADDRESSING THE NEEDS OF SELF AND SOCIETY
In numerous ways, religion acts as a shock absorber that cushions the inevitable tensions between self and society. Social frustrations must be resolved; the incongruities between personal desires and social needs must be explained. Social order may well require individuals' absolute faith in the order, meaningfulness, and justice of social life. Religious faith is a potent source of human motivation, whether directed toward orthodoxy or fanaticism.Considering the needs of selves and societies addressed by religion, let's first investigate the extent to which religiosity contributes to the happiness of individuals. As can be seen, when controlling for Americans' age and education, those who report being "strongly" religious are significantly more likely to be "very happy" than are their less religious counterparts-- particularly among those 18-30 and those 45-64 years of age.
In addition to emotional health, religion contributes to physical well-being as well, evidenced by Mormons' prohibitions against alcohol, tobacco and caffeine. In the October 1997 issue of The International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine is reported a study by Harold Koenig and Harvey Cohen of 1,718 older North Carolinians. They found that those who attended religious services at least once a week were significantly less likely to have high levels of interleukin-6, an immune-system protein implicated with a number of diseases, in their bloodstreams. Perhaps it should not be surprising that one-quarter of Americans report using prayer as a form of health care. For other studies, check out The National Institute for Healthcare Research ("Bridging the Gap Between Spirituality and Health").
Click here to see influence of religion on Americans' outlooks toward science and belief in the theory of evolution.
It is in society's interest that individuals voluntarily become involved in its groups and organizations, particularly in a democratic society such as ours. Being so "plugged into" the social order not only keeps individuals out of mischief but intertwines personal motivations with group objectives. Over the years, the NORC General Social Surveys have asked Americans if they are members of fraternal groups, service clubs, political clubs, school service groups, farm organizations, professional societies, and the like. As can be seen, even when controlling for age and education, religiosity significantly increases the likelihood of individuals belonging to four or more of the sixteen groups inquired of--particularly for those with at least some post-secondary education. And, as developed elsewhere, religiosity is significantly related to volunteerism. 
For instance, strongly religious individuals were found to be two-thirds more likely (45% vs. 27%) to have volunteered for two or more causes over the previous year. This religiosity effect is most pronounced among the most highly educated: among those with four or more years of college (who were three times more likely than high school dropouts to be high volunteers), the strongly religious were three-quarters more likely (71% vs. 45%) to have volunteered for two or more causes. - From the Independent Sector and the National Council of Churches: Faith and Philanthropy: The Connection Between Charitable Behavior and Giving to Religion (2002)
RELIGION'S ROLE IN SHAPING AMERICANS' MORAL OUTLOOKS
Click here to see religion's role in shaping Americans' attitudes toward some of the moral issues of our times: - Religion's role in shaping attitudes toward abortion
- Religion's role in shaping attitudes toward euthanasia
- Michael Nielson's Psychology of Religion Page, including full text of William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience
- Diana Eck's (Harvard) The Pluralism Project
- The American Religious Experience Project, a consortium of UWV, UNC, LA State, AZ State, Barnard-Columbia, and Franklin and Marshall
- Religion Online--over 900 articles & chapters by religious scholars
- From PEW/Public Agenda "For Goodness Sake" --a survey released in 2003 finding the American public strongly equates religion with personal ethics and views faith as an antidote to the nation's moral problems
- Rutgers Anthropology/Sociology of Religion links
- Adherents.com statistics galore on over 4000 religions
- Hartford Institute for Religion Research
- Jeffrey Hadden's New Religious Movements Page
- American Religion Data Archive (Purdue): downloadable files in ASCII, SPSS, and MicroCase formats, with such studies as "Anti-Semitism in the U.S., 1981"
- Beliefnet.com--"We all believe in something."
- The Pluralism Project--"Our mission is to help Americans engage with the realities of religious diversity through research, outreach, and the active dissemination of resources."
- Religion & Ethics Newsweekly
- Weberian Sociology of Religion
RELIGION'S ROLE IN SHAPING AMERICANS' TEMPORAL OUTLOOKS
RELIGION AS ANTIDOTE TO ANOMIE AND PERCEIVED CRISES OF MORALITY
- Briane Turley's American Religion Links
- Case study: American Guardian: "America's Frontline Defense Against Perversion"
- Ronald Fagan on religion's role in restraining excessive individualism in Habits of the Heart
RELIGION AS ANTIDOTE TO CRISES OF THE LIFESPAN
- UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute's National Study of of College Students' Search for Meaning and Purpose--results of the 2004 survey of more than 112,000 students from 236 colleges
RELIGION AS MECHANISM OF OPPRESSION AND LEGITIMATOR OF VIOLENCE
THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF CULTS
- The Rick A. Ross Institute for the Study of Destructive Cults, Controversial Groups and Movements
- Cult Database
- Steven Alan Hassan's Freedom of Mind Center
- TheologyWebsite's Cults and sects internet resources
- Psychological Issues in Spiritual Movements, with articles by former cult members
- How Cults Manipulate People
- AFF's Information about Cults and Psychological Manipulation, including Robert Jay Lifton on "Cult Formation"
- Ontario Consultants Religious Tolerance: Doomsday, destructive religious cults
- Anti-cult page of Watchman Fellowship on-line, with sizable index of contemporary cults
THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF WORK AND LEISURE
When people meet for the first time, a question that invariably arises is, "What do you do for a living?" We believe that to know another person's line of work is to have a highly predictive framework for inferring his or her social status, interpersonal traits and skills, value orientations, personal interests, and even personality type. So central is work to establishing one's social that King John of England proclaimed that people must use surnames pertaining to their trade. As populations were growing rapidly and the social system was becoming increasingly specialized, it was no longer practical to refer to others by their first names (even when coupled with one's residence, such as Edward-of-Dover). What better way to index other selves than by what they do? Those who made carts became Cartwrights and Wainwrights; metal workers became Smiths; and Shepard became the surname of people who tended sheep.
Of all the institutionalized arenas of human activity, work is the most central, both sociologically and psychologically. From a macro perspective, work is a way of keeping social actors "out of mischief" by harnessing and coordinating their energies to produce socially necessary goods and services. The products of work become the basis of trade, which brings cultures into contact with each other, thereby providing opportunities for social innovation.From a micro perspective, work satisfies a broad spectrum of individual needs, such as the needs for solidarity and a feeling of self-worth. One way to appreciate this function of is to study those who lack it: the unemployed and unemployable, those who have been fired and laid off, and retired people. In many ways these individuals become nonpersons; their activities are no longer perceived as wholly legitimate, since only through working is one generally seen as contributing to the social system. The centrality to individuals' needs is further evidenced by the movements for equal opportunity for women and minorities.
Topic ideas in the social psychology of work:
- professional argots and jargon (e.g., legalese, bureaucratese)
- how do organizations harness worker loyalties?
- the centrality of work role to individuals' identities and lives
- the connection between work satisfactions and overall happiness with life--and how this varies across societies, the lifespan, and between the sexes
- what does "success" in work mean to individuals? (e.g., income, respect and recognition of superiors and/or peers, having control over work content and schedules, etc.)
- what kinds of selves are spawned by capitalism vs. socialism?
- distributive justice and workplace ethics; see Public Agenda's 2004 study "A Few Bad Apples? An Exploratory Look at What Typical Americans Think about Business Ethics Today"
- the impacts of retirement on identity
- the bifurcated work-self/private-self. In 1990s there emerged what was known as the
- Economic Beliefs and Behaviour--downloadable discussion papers
- How did the Wall Street Crash of 1929 occur? Play the market with this interactive simulation.
- Eva Bertram and Kenneth Sharpe's "Capitalism, Work and Character"
- Robert Merton's "Bureaucratic Structure and Personality"
- David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald, "Well-being, Insecurity, and the Decline of American Job Satisfaction" (1999, pdf format)
- The Temporalities of Work and Leisure
INDUSTRIAL PSYCHOLOGY
- Working papers from the Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies at Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations
- The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychologist
- Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis
CONSUMERISM
P.S. It is my observation that too many of us are spending money we haven't earned to buy things we don't need to impress people we don't like.
During the winter of '94-95 throughout the Midwest there appeared the following mall advertisement: "Shop like you mean it." What does this supposed to mean?The mass production wrought by industrialization required mass consumption, which brings us to the social psychology of materialism and abundance. How are individuals socialized and conditioned to consume? One place is in the schools. Check out Arizona State University's Commercialism in Education Research Unit, the Center for Commercial-Free Public Education, and Schools Inc. from PBS's NOW.
- Collection of articles and essays on advertising
- Mass consumerism requires a buy-now-pay-later mindset. Check out PBS Frontline's Secret History of the Credit Card
- Temples of Consumption: Shopping Malls as Secular Cathedrals, an essay written with Beth Gill
- "Identity and Desire in Consumption: Interactions between Industry and Consumers by the Use of Commodities", by Mineo Hattori (1997)
- Inconspicuous consumption: the sociology of consumption and the environment, by Elizabeth Shove and Alan Warde
- Don Slater's "Researching Consumer Cultures" page (with sizable bibliography)
- Signaler "Analyzing commercials and advertisements. How products get their meaning and the way they signify."
- Richard Taflinger's Taking ADvantage
- John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History
- Celebrating 75 Years of Supermarkets: 1930-2005 facts and figures from the Food Marketing Institute
- NPD Group "leading international provider of marketing information...[tracking] retail and e-commerce sales plus consumer behavior and attitudes"
- Bad Fads Museum--Look at what Madison Avenue has made us consume
- For further mirth, check out a collection of bad ads at The Gallery of the Absurd
- Consumerism gotten you down? Check out Overcoming Consumerism: Citizen-Activist's Anti-consumerism site
- Have a complaint? Place to gripe is eComplaints.com--"a better way to complain"
- Want to see a future tool of retailers to know precisely what button of yours to push? Check out IBM's BlueEyes software to determine individuals' physical, emotional or informational states by analyzing video and audio information. Other researchers of consumers' minds (and impulses):
- Links to Consumer Psychology Research
- Ipsos --"features a collection of behavioral tracking products and services that help clients throughout a broad range of industries learn how to marry consumers' behaviors with their attitudes."
- The American Marketing Association
- Public Relations Society of America Home Page
- International Advertising Association
- The Institute For Retail Studies
- Advertising Age
- Journal of Material Culture
THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF MASS MEDIA
POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGIES
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