CHAPTER 2

SEEING AND THINKING SOCIOLOGICALLY

Sociologists at Work

Solomon Asch
Social Pressure and Perception

Imagine yourself in the following situation: You sign up for a psychology experiment, and on a specified date you and seven others whom you think are also subjects arrive and are seated at a table in a small room. You don't know it at the time, but the others are actually associates of the experimenter, and their behavior has been carefully scripted. You're the only real subject.

The experimenter arrives and tells you that the study in which you are about to participate concerns people's visual judgments. She places two cards before you. The card on the left contains one vertical line. The card on the right displays three lines of varying length.

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The experimenter asks all of you, one at a time, to choose which of the three lines on the right card matches the length of the line on the left card. The task is repeated several times with different cards. On some occasions the other "subjects" unanimously choose the wrong line. It is clear to you that they are wrong, but they have all given the same answer.
What would you do? Would you go along with the majority opinion, or would you "stick to your guns" and trust your own eyes?
In 1951 social psychologist Solomon Asch devised this experiment to examine the extent to which pressure from other people could affect one's perceptions.1 In total, about one third of the subjects who were placed in this situation went along with the clearly erroneous majority.
Some of the subjects indicated afterward that they assumed the rest of the people were correct and that their own perceptions were wrong. Others knew they were correct but didn't want to be different from the rest of the group. Some even insisted they saw the line lengths as the majority claimed to see them.
Asch concluded that it is difficult to maintain that you see something when no one else does. Pressure from other people can make you see almost anything.
1 Asch, S. 1958. "Effects of group pressure on the modification and distortion."
In E. E. Maccoby, T. M. Newcomb, & E. L. Hartley (Eds.), Readings in Social Psychology. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.

Bibb Latane and John Darley
Why Don't People Help?

In the early morning hours of March 13, 1964, a woman named Kitty Genovese was brutally stabbed to death in front of her New York apartment.

As we all know, murders are not uncommon in New York Cityóor any other American city for that matter. What made this case troubling was the fact that about 40 people either heard her scream for help or watched her being stabbed from their apartment windows. No one called the police until about 35 minutes after the attack had begun.1

When the story appeared in the newspaper, the public was outraged. How could people be so insensitive to the suffering of another? Why didn't anyone help her? Some newspaper editors and psychiatrists at the time blamed the behavior on "bystander apathy" or growing "urban alienation." The story became a metaphor for modern city life.
Others, however, speculated that the failure of people to get involved might be due more to the social influence that bystanders have on each other than to individual callousness.

To test this theory, two social psychologists, Bibb Latane and John Darley, conducted a series of experiments on helping behavior in emergencies.2

In the first experiment the room in which subjects were completing written surveys gradually filled with smoke.

In the second experiment subjects heard a loud crashing noise from an adjoining room, followed by a woman's screaming, "Oh my God, my foot . . . I . . . I . . . can't move it. Oh my ankle. I . . . can't get this . . . thing off me.3

In the third study subjects were participating in a discussion over an intercom when one of them suddenly choked, gasped, and called out for help.
In each situation, the number of individuals present at the time of the emergency was varied so that some subjects were alone and others were with several people.

The researchers consistently found that as the number of bystanders increased, the likelihood that any one of them would help decreased. It appeared that people help others more often and more quickly when alone.
This phenomenon, which is often called the bystander effect, has a couple of sociological explanations.

First, the more bystanders present, the more likely it is that we will assume someone else will help. If we are by ourselves when an emergency occurs, we perceive ourselves to be 100% responsible for taking action. However, when there are 10 bystanders, we each perceive ourselves to have only a tenth of the responsibility. The higher the number of bystanders, the less obligated each individual is likely to feel to intervene.

Second, if we are unsure of our own perceptions and interpretations, or if the situation is ambiguous, we look to others for help in defining what is going on. If others appear calm, we may decide that whatever is happening doesn't require our assistance.

Unfortunately, people often try to avoid showing outward signs of worry or concern until they see that other people are alarmed. This sort of caution encourages others not to define the situation as one requiring assistance and therefore inhibits the urge to help. The larger the number of people who don't seem concerned, the stronger the inhibiting influence. Obviously, helping will not be inhibited if others are showing visible alarm or if the situation is so unambiguous that one doesn't need to look to the reactions of othersóas with a car accident, for instance.4 Kitty Genovese's neighbors weren't necessarily cruel, cold, or apathetic. They may simply have been victims of social influence, with each looking to others for information, waiting for someone else to define the situation and act. Because everyone was waiting for someone else to do something, no one did anything.

1Seedman, A. A., & Hellman, P. 1975. Chief. New York: Avon.
2Latane, B., & Darley, J. 1970. The unresponsive bystander: Why doesn't he help? New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
3Latane, B., & Rodin, J. 1969. "A lady in distress: Inhibiting effects of friends and strangers on bystander intervention." Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 5, 189-202.
4Clark, R. D., III, & Word, L. E. 1972. "Why don't bystanders help? Because of ambiguity." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 24, 392-400.

Philip Zimbardo
The Psychology of Imprisonment

In 1971 Philip Zimbardo, a professor of social psychology at Stanford University, conducted a remarkable experiment. Recent prison uprisings had piqued his interest in what it means psychologically to be a prisoner or a prison guard. Why were prisoners so disposed toward violence? Why were prison guards so brutal?
The answers seemed obvious. Prisoners are violent because of the type of people they are: antisocial criminals who have little regard for other people. Guards are brutal because only brutal people are attracted to such an occupation in the first place.

But Zimbardo suspected that the dynamics of prison life depend on more than the personalities of the individuals involved. He wondered whether the structure of the prison situation played a part in turning prisoners and guards into mean and violent people.

With the help of several colleagues, Zimbardo created a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. There he could observe volunteer subjects in the roles of prisoners and guards.

Of the 70 or so students who answered his ad for volunteers, Zimbardo chose two dozen mature, emotionally stable, intelligent young men to be part of the study. None had a criminal record. They were, as he put it, the "cream of the crop of this generation."1

Some subjects were designated as "prisoners" with a flip of a coin; the rest served as "guards."
When it was time for the experiment to begin, the prisoners were unexpectedly picked up at their homes by a city police officer in a squad car. They were searched, handcuffed, fingerprinted, blindfolded, and taken to the "prison."

There the prisoners were stripped, given a uniform and number, and placed in a cell with two other inmates. They were told the cell would be their home for the next 2 weeks.

When the guards arrived, they were informed that they had the authority to make up their own rules for maintaining law, order, and respect in the prison and were free to improvise new ones at any time during their 8-hour shifts on duty.

Although the experiment was supposed to last for 2 weeks, it had to be stopped after only 6 days. Zimbardo described the situation as follows:

What we saw was frightening. It was no longer apparent to most of the subjects (or to us) where reality ended and their roles began. The majority had indeed become prisoners or guards, no longer able to clearly differentiate between role playing and self. . . . In less than a week the experience of imprisonment undid (temporarily) a lifetime of learning; human values were suspended, self-concepts were challenged and the ugliest . . . side of human nature surfaced. We were horrified because we saw some guards treat others as if they were despicable animals, taking pleasure in cruelty, while the prisoners became . . . dehumanized robots who thought only of escape, of their own individual survival and of their mounting hatred for the guards.2

Some of the prisoners became severely depressed, confused, or hysterical and had to be released after only a few days. Just to get out of the prison, all but three of the remaining prisoners were willing to forfeit all the money they had earned for participating.

When told they had been "denied parole," however, the prisoners returned docilely to their cells. Zimbardo points out that had these individuals been thinking like the college students they were, instead of the prisoners they were playing, they simply would have quit.

Many of the guards became tyrants, arbitrarily using their power and enjoying the control they had over others.

Other guards were not as brutal, but they never intervened on behalf of the prisoners and never told the other guards to "ease off."

What Zimbardo so poignantly discovered was that individual behavior is largely controlled by social forces. The prison situation itself turned nice, ordinary college students into either vicious or cowering animals.
In addition, Zimbardo's aborted study illustrated that, given the proper environmental circumstances, individuals can create the very social forces that come to shape their behavior. As the experimenter, he merely provided the physical structure of the "prison" and a few general rules. It was the subjects themselves who created the reality of their roles and therefore defined the power that the prison structure exerted over them.

1 Zimbardo, P. 1971. "The pathology of imprisonment." Society, 9, 4-8. p. 4.
2 Zimbardo, P. 1971. "The pathology of imprisonment." Society, 9, 4-8. p. 4.