Sociocultural Level of Analysis

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Historical and Cultural Development of the Sociocultural Level of Analysis a. At the end of the 19th century, psychologists started addressing questions about how social influences affect our thinking and actions. Such questions defined the field of social psychology. After introspectionists started studying the mind, behaviorism became the dominant force and interest posing the belief that environment and environment alone influenced the psyche of individuals. WWII also influenced the emergence and development of the cognitive orientation is psychology. European psychologists acutely aware of social influences on behavior and trained mostly in ways that still addressed internal processes and cognition, immigrated to the USA. These psychologists began research in this field and carried out many ground breaking studies. Another influence was an interest in explaining the Nazi atrocities in terms of prejudiced attitudes that had fuelled and supported the war. During the 1970s and 1980s many psychologists began to bring cognition into social psychology to see how cognitive processes affected behavior. The result was the birth of Social cognition. Other influences include cultural psychology of the last 20 years or so and more recently, social neuroscience. Principles of the Sociocultural Level of Analysis a. (1) The social and cultural environment influences our individual behavior. (2) We construct our conceptions of the individual and social self. b. The influence of social environments could be demonstrated through research examining the effects of social pressure or compliance. For example, an example of direct social influence could be requesting someone to participate in an energy saving plan, however, if you use a certain technique to make the individual do as you wish that could be an example of using direct social influence to increase compliance. Requesting that someone do something might be considered social pressure but it is also direct social influence. Social norms are a good example of the second principle and can be studied by examining the differences in customs, traditions, and habits of different individuals from different countries. Sociocultural Cognition a. When it comes to determining what influences behavior, two popular factors arise: Dispositional factors and situational factors. Dispositional factors correspond to internal characteristics like personality traits, situational factors, however, relate to external factors such as the influence of others. Usually, behavior is influenced by both factors; Bandura called the combination, reciprocal determinism. Mischel argued that there is far less evidence of consistency in behavior than is claimed by trait theorists. Hartshorne and Mays study (1928)

provides some evidence that dispositional factors such as traits are not always cross-situationally consistent, meaning they dont show stability over time. The researchers found that school children who behaved dishonestly in one school setting were not necessarily likely to behave dishonest in another setting. Replying to Mischels original argument, Epstein said traits should be viewed as referring to classes of behaviors over a range of different situations, not to specific behaviors in specific situations. Epstein (1983) studied college kids, behavior varied. How participants behaved in a situation one day could not predict how they would behave in the same situation the next day. But when behavior was aggregated over a two week interval, it was highly predictive of their behavior in similar circumstances over another two week interval. Roberts and Delvicchio (2000) found a high correlation b/w personality measures obtained for groups of participants at a particular point in time and the measures obtained for the same individual 7 years later. McCrae and Costa (1999) developed the five-factor model (FFM) which broke down personality into five measurable traits. The model offered valid predictions both in research settings and in everyday life settings; many research studies provided evidence for this thus suggesting dispositions in the form of personality factors emerge as significant determinants of behavior and should be taken into consideration when trying to explain behavior. Reciprocal determinism believes that traits and situations interact in several ways, including the following: (1) people often choose their environment under the influence of their dispositions (2) our personalities shape both our interpretation of events and the ways we react to them. Mischel, making his original argument more flexible allowed personality to play a role by distinguishing between strong and weak situations. b. An error in attribution includes the Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE) which is a bias to attribute others behavior to stable internal causes rather than external circumstances. Jones and Harris (1967) hypothesized that people were more likely to attribute freely chosen behaviors to disposition, and chance-directed behaviors to situation. This hypothesis was proven wrong by the fundamental attribution error. Researchers had participants read pro- and anti-Fidel Castro essays. Then, they were asked to rate the attitudes of the writers who wrote pro-Castro essays. When participants were told that writers freely chose the positions they took (for or against Castro), they rated the writers of the pro-Castro essays as having positive attitudes toward Castro. However, contradicting Jones and Harris' initial hypothesis, when the subjects were told that the writer's positions were determined by chance, they still rated writers who spoke in favor of Castro as having a more positive attitude towards him. In other words, the subjects were unable to see the influence of the situational constraints placed upon the writers; they could not refrain from attributing sincere belief to the writers. Gilbert and

Malone attribute FAE to a two-step attribution process. First we observe some behavior and make an inference that the behavior has been caused by some disposition. Then we enquire into whether or not situational factors may have had an influence on the behavior. However, FAE is happens because we rarely make the second step. The Self-Serving Bias (SSB) is another example of an error in attribution in which we explain our successes on the basis of internal, dispositional factors and blame our failures to external, situational factors. Such biased attributions are viewed by many as serving the interests of preserving or increasing self-esteem. Johnson et al. (1964) rounded up psychology students that taught two children how to multiply numbers by 10 and 20. Teaching was done in phases via a one way intercom; first phase involved teaching children how to multiply by 10, second phase involved teaching children how to multiply by 20. After each phase, the childrens worksheets were made available to the participants to assess the learning progress of the children. The worksheets were actually marked in such a way that in both conditions, pupil A gave right answers to all questions on both worksheets, depending on the condition pupil B either did badly on both tasks or did badly on the first worksheet but improved on the second, participants had therefore either failed or succeeded in teaching pupil B the two tasks. Where pupil Bs performance improved, participants explained the improvement as a success based on their abilities as teachers. When Pupil B failed to improve they attributed this to the pupils lack of ability. c. Our social identity, a part of our identity is derived from the social groups that we belong to and that we do not belong to (Defining who we are by who we aren't). We derive self-esteem by positively differentiating our in-group from out-groups through social comparison (we look for positive distinctiveness to show your ingroups are better). We therefore tend to categorize our social environment into groups. We tend to favor our in-group over out-groups. We also implement ethnocentrism an in-group serving bias. Positive behaviors by in-group members are attributed to dispositions, negative to situational. Positive behaviors of outgroups are attributed to situational, negative to dispositions. Study done by Tajfel on groups of schoolboys found that: Randomly categorizing boys into meaningless groups, in-group bias and out-group discrimination was shown. This means that bias and discrimination against the out-group comes automatically in any group situation without any competition or hostility but simply from categorization. Lastly, the results also show that the process of categorization oneself into a group gives a distinct meaning to the individual's behavior, therefore creating a positive valued social identity. They, when given the choice, gave more to people in their groups compared to people who were not in their group. Billig and Tajfel (1973) study told participants were told that they had been assigned to either group X or Group Y and yet they obtained the same

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results as those of Tajfel et al. Brown (1978) reported a study of factory workers who were highly motivated to maintain wage differentials between their department and others in the same factory even if this would lead to a reduction in their own earnings. Research has suggested that people only show in-group favoritism due to personal gain. They expect that by showing this favoritism towards the in-group, the in-group will give them something back in return. Overall the SIT has been supported by many studies and the model demonstrates the large influence social categorization and identification has on the individuals behavior. SIT is also very useful because its explanatory power expands beyond the area of identity and helps explain other parts of psychology such as stereotypes. d. There are many different theories about stereotype formation. The socialcognitive theory states stereotypes are schemas and they exist as a method to help organize the large amount of information we are presented with every day. Cohen (1981) showed participants a video of a woman dining with a man. Half were told she was a waitress the other half were told she was a librarian. When asked to describe the video the participants who were told she was a waitress remembered her drinking beer while those who were told she was a librarian remembered her wearing glasses and listening to classical music. This theory says negative stereotypes of minorities are based on illusory correlations where observers conclude that two factors are associated despite the lack of any real association with them. SIT states stereotype formation is based on the category accentuation effect and positive distinction. In SIT stereotypes help enrich social perception. Theorists do not think that stereotypes have a biasing effect on social perception or that perceiving humans as individuals is necessarily more accurate. The system justification theory says stereotypes are used to justify social and power relations in society (i.e. distinction between rich and poor); this theory helps explain negative self-stereotyping, a phenomenon where disadvantaged groups tend to internalize the negative stereotypes of them held by others. The social representation holds that social representations are the shared beliefs of the society we live in or the group to which we belong. This theory explains that biases are also a result of the social representations which reflect dominant preconceptions shared by extensive social groups. Social Norms a. The social learning theory is how people can learn new information and behaviors by watching other people. It extended behavioristic accounts of learning to allow for indirect forms of learning (vicarious learning) and indirect forms of reinforcement (vicarious reinforcement). A form of vicarious learning, learning by watching is also known as observational learning (or modeling); this type of learning can be used to explain a wide variety of behaviors. Bandura (1963) in his

famous "Bobo doll" studies, Bandura demonstrated that children learn and imitate behaviors they have observed in other people. The children in Bandura's studies observed a video of an adult acting violently toward a Bobo doll (control), acting violently and then being rewarded (model-rewarded), or being punished (modelpunished). When the children were later allowed to play in a room with the Bobo doll, they began to imitate the aggressive actions they had previously observed. The model rewarded and control acted more violent than the model punished, but when all three groups were told theyd be rewarded all of them acted violently. Gergely et al. (2002) used 14 month old infants and created two conditions. (1) hands-free condition infants observed an adult place her hands on a table and then illuminated a light box using her forehead. One week later, the same infants were given the opportunity to play with the box; 69% of them used their head to illuminate the light (2) hands-occupied condition infants observed the adult person perform the same forehead action to turn on the light but in this condition she used both her hands to wrap a blanket around her shoulders. When given the opportunity one week later to play with the box, only 21% of the infants illuminated the light by using their head. In the hands occupied condition infants seem to have assumed that the adult used her head because she had to. But this constraint did not apply to the infants in the hands- free condition; the adult could have chosen to use her hands. She did not but the children assumed there must have been a reason for this choice so they copied it. b. Two very popular compliance techniques include the Foot-In-The-Door technique and the Lowballing method. The FITD aims at increasing compliance with a large request by first asking people to go along with a smaller request by first asking people to go along with a smaller request. Freedman and Fraser (1966) is a demonstration of the FITD technique. In this study, researchers posing as volunteer workers asked a number of householders in California to allow a big ugly public-service sign reading, drive carefully to be placed in their front gardens. Only 17% of the householders complied with this request. A different set of householders were asked whether they would display a small Be a Safe Driver sign. Nearly all of those asked agreed with this request. A week later, these same homeowners were asked by a volunteer worker whether they would display the much bigger and ugly drive carefully sign in their front gardens. 76% of them complied with this second request, a far higher percentage than the 17% who had complied in the first condition. The researchers second study on this topic was very similar except that two different confederates asked participants to participate in two different unrelated tasks, beginning with the smaller request (asking them to sign a petition). Though tasks were completely unrelated, nearly half the homeowners agreed with the second request. Burger and Cornelius 2003 is a study representative of lowballing where an offer is changed

to make it seem less attractive to the target after they have agreed to it. Students were contacted by phone by a female caller and asked whether they would be prepared to donate five dollars to a scholarship fund for underprivileged children. Three conditions: Lowballing students were told that those who contributed would receive a coupon for a free smoothie at a local juice bar. Students who agreed were then informed that that the investigator realized she had run out of coupons. The students were asked if they would still be willing to contribute. 77.6% said yes. The interrupt condition caller made the same initial request, but before the participant had a chance to answer, she interrupted them to say there were no coupons left. 16% made a donation. Control condition participants were simply asked to donate the five dollars without any mention of coupons. 42% made a donation. Results support that the lowballing technique is based on the principle of commitment; technique only works when individuals have made a public commitment. Hornik et al. (1990) compared the effectiveness of lowballing and FITD and found that lowballing was the more effective of the two, but a combination of both techniques yielded the best results. c. Aschs (1951) study on conformity: the researchers told participants to indicate which of three comparison lines is equal in length with the standard line. The task was repeated 18 times, but the task is so easy that participants almost always get it right when they are alone. In one condition of the study, participants had to say their answer in front of a group of six confederates; confederates gave the wrong answer 12 out of 18 trials and the genuine participants were always the last to participate. Participants conformed. They went along with the wrong answer given by the majority on nearly 37% of the critical trials; 76% of the participants conformed on at least one trial; only 24% remained independent throughout the entire experiment. Abrams et al. (1990) studies the effects of social groups on conformity. Replicated Aschs study using three confederates. Depending on the condition, genuine participants were either led to believe that the confederates were like themselves, psychology students from a neighboring university or ancient history students from the same neighboring university students. The 18 trial sequence consisted of 9 correct and 9 incorrect responses by the confederates, presented in random order. All group members presented publically. 100% of the participants conformed at least once when they thought the confederates belonged to their ingroup.The corresponding percentage for those participants who though the confederates belonged to an outgroup was only 50%.We are far more likely to be influenced by groups we feel we belong to than by groups we consider as outgroups. Zimbardo: Stanford Prison Experimentstudents spent all their time in prison, as prisoners. The guards only worked 8 hour shifts. The boundaries between what they were playing and what they really were got blurred- nice boys became harsh guards, healthy boys got sick. Some

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developed extreme stress reactions and had to be released. They never said I quit, and had lost all perspective. Originally planned to be two weeks long, only lasted 6 days before they stopped. Situations can largely affect the behavior of individuals, people conform to the stereotypes/schemas they have in mind. While these studies are very informative and provide good cause and effect because they are in fact experiments, many ethical considerations come into play. d. Factors influencing conformity: (1) informational influence we accept the views and attitudes of others as valid evidence about how things are in a particular situation. Others are often viewed as valid sources of information and especially in situations where we cannot on our own test the validity of our perceptions, beliefs, and feelings. Supported by Sherifs study (2) Normative influence influence is based on our need to be liked and be accepted by others. In fear of social disapproval and rejection we often behave in ways that conform to what others expect of us with little concern about the accuracy of the beliefs we express or the soundness of our actions. Supported by Aschs study. (3) dual-process model people conform because they want to be right and they want to be liked. This explanation has received much support from studies (both Aschs and Sherif), but has also received criticism from those trying to explain conformity from a SIT point of view. (4) Referent informational influence introduced by SIT theorists. Says conformity is not simply a matter of adhering to just any social norms; it has more to do with adhering to a persons ingroup norms. We conform out of a sense of belongingness and by so doing we form and maintain desired social identities. Supported by Abrams et al. (5) Dispositional and situational explanations of conformity Hogg and Vaughan (2008) suggest low self-esteem, high need for social support and approval, high anxiety, and feelings of low status in the group can all contribute to conformity. Support for the situational perspective is provided by studies that show how easy it is to vary conformity levels by manipulating situational variables like group size and social support. Cultural Norms a. Culture a set of attitudes, behaviors, and symbols shared by a large group of people and usually communicated from one generation to the next (Shiraev and Levy, 2004); a unique meaning and information system, shared by a group and transmitted across generations, that allows the group to meet basic needs of survival, pursue happiness and wellbeing, and derive meaning from life (Matsumoto and Juang, 2008). Cultural Norms the norms of an established group which are transmitted across generations and regulate behavior in accordance with the groups beliefs about acceptable and unacceptable ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving. b. Individualistic cultures tend to emphasize the personal more than the social, such societies are much more competitive and individuals are viewed as unique and

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encouraged to express their emotions. In collectivistic cultures, individuals focus more on the group than the individual and individual autonomy and selfexpression are not encouraged. In collectivistic cultures, as opposed to individualistic cultures, it has been found that people are less likely to behave consistently with their personal choices and earlier commitments. Collectivists also show lower levels of compliance than individualists when the FITD technique is used. Cialdini et al. (1999) however, discovered that one might be more successful in gaining compliance from collectivist participants by supplying information that others belonging to their same group have complied in the past. Bond and Smith (1996) found through their meta-analyses that collectivists have a higher level of conformity than do individualists. Long term oriented cultures show a dynamic, future-oriented mentality that value long-standing, as opposed to short term, traditions and values. Individuals in such cultures strive to fulfill their own long-term social obligations and avoid loss of face. Unlike short-term oriented cultures, long-term oriented cultures delay gratification of material, social, and emotional needs among their members. Chen et al. (2005) ran a study on time orientation in bicultural participants. The researchers investigated 147 Singaporean bicultural participants who have been exposed extensively to two different cultures, assuming that both can affect behavior depending on which is more actively represented in the mind at any particular moment. The researchers selectively activated one or the other of the two cultures by presenting half the participants with a collage of easily recognizable photos relevant to US culture. Impatience was tested by having the participants perform an online shopping scenario in order to purchase a novel. The book could be delivered either within four working days for a standard fee or the next day for an additional charge. The extra money participants were willing to pay for faster delivery of the book was used as a measure of impatience. Chen et al. found that US primed participants valued immediate consumption more than the Singaporean primed participants. Thus this dimension could affect the impatience levels of an individual. Ayoun and Moreos study demonstrated that the dimension could also affect the strategic decisions made by business individuals. Emic and Etic concepts a. Etic cross cultural comparisons; Emic culture specific phenomena. An example of an etic approach can be seen in the study sponsored by the World Health Organization (1983) on the diagnosis and classification of depression in Switzerland, Canada, Japan, and Iran. Investigators used a standard diagnostic scheme to investigate the symptoms of depression of 573 patients in these four countries. It was found that most patients experienced several symptoms that were the same in all four countries. Thus 76% of patients reported sadness, joylessness, anxiety, and sense of insufficiency. Other research studies also obtained a

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common pattern of symptoms with depressed patients. An Emic approach to the study of depression is seen in the research of Manson et al. (1985). These researchers developed the American Indian Depression Scale. Through interviewers with native informants, the authors derived the following five (translated) Hopi illness categories relevant to depression: worry sickness, unhappiness, heartbroken, drunken-like craziness, disappointment. Hopi participants could not identify a Hopi word that was equivalent to the term depression, but were familiar with all five of the Hopi illness categories. Some of the characteristics identified by Manson et al. (e.g. unhappiness) were similar to western ways of looking at depression. Others were entirely different (e.g. heartbroken). As a pattern, the symptoms part of Heartbroken do not form part of any Western diagnostic scheme. Methods Used in the Sociocultural Level of Analysis and the Ethical Concerns they Raise a. Some of the methods used in the sociocultural perspective include: Experiments, Case Studies, and Correlational studies. Experiments in the sociocultural perspective can be subdivided into different types. Laboratory experiments are not used very often though some key examples are Aschs and Jones and Harris; in studies of compliance laboratory experiments are very common. They tend not to be used because of the lack of ecological validity and sometimes the subjects being studied do not permit for such a controlled environment. Several of the laboratory experiments presented are also field experiments (e.g. Palek et al). Naturalistic experiments are the main type of method used in cross-cultural studies. This method is used because it helps create clear parallels between behavior and situational factors; they also generally provide more credibility. Correlational studies are applied through the implementation of large scale surveys, the most noteworthy example being Hofstedes five dimension study. This method is used because there usually arent many ethical issues and though lengthy, it is usually pretty simple to conduct the research. Case Studies are used mainly through the application of interviews and archival research, primary example being Janis study on groupthink. This method is used because it provides rich data and much tangible evidence. b. Ethical considerations for the methods of the sociocultural level of analysis: Experiments unacceptable levels of psychological trauma/stress can occur (e.g. Milgram, Asch), participants may be upset about their role in the experiment, and deception may be used to convince participants to join the study. Correlational studies stereotypes may arise from the generalizing of results and individuals who face these stereotypes may be offended, potential pressure from survey questions, involving unsuspecting subjects in compliance studies and making them participate in possibly stressful energy-saving schemes. Case Studies

when studying events of large-scale disaster with the archival research method, certain individuals involved in the event may become offended.