Psychology for Dummies (51 page)

Easy as pie

There’s a great rock video out by a band named Cake that demonstrates the influence of persuadee participation perfectly. In the video, a man walks around a beach, asking real people to put headphones on and listen to the new song. They’re encouraged to comment on the song. This is a much more powerful advertising technique than if the man just walked up with a sign that read, “Check out Cake’s new song. In stores now!” The persuadees are participating in their own manipulation. It’s beautiful. I don’t know if the video makers were thinking this way, but if they were, they hit on a great persuasion technique!

Blaming the boob tube

I’ve watched violent television all my life, and I don’t consider myself a violent person. The research is clear though, the more violent a child’s television viewing is, the more aggressive the child is (Eron, 1987). There’s little denying it. Hearold in 1986, conducted a comprehensive review of over 230 studies and concluded that watching aggressive behavior leads to aggressive behavior. My question is, why is there so much violence on television? Do we get something out of it? Is it an emotionally arousing persuasion technique used by corporations to sell their goods? I don’t know, but I think we should look at reasons behind the inclusion of so much violence on TV.

Although most of us would like to think that we’re civilized, it’s hard to ignore all the violence and aggression around us. Some of the most horrific acts of aggression were committed in the twentieth century, not in some savage society in our remote past. Examples abound — Pol Pot’s Cambodian genocide, the Holocaust, Mao Tse-tung’s killing of 26 million people, and in recent years, the Rwandan civil war. These are mass atrocities, but every day, we’re confronted with smaller-scale, but nevertheless as horrible, acts of violence and aggression. Domestic violence, child abuse, murder, rape, and assault are all around us. Unfortunately, most of us have had some experience with at least one of these forms of violence and aggression. Why do we act this way? Why are we violent toward one another? Psychologists have searched for answers to these questions by studying
aggression,
a form of violence.
Aggression
can be defined as any behavior that is directed at and intended to hurt another person or persons. Two subtypes exist:

Most of the theories about aggression ask why we commit hostile aggression. What if I can’t help it? Several theories exist.

Maybe I was born with a violent instinct and a genetic predisposition to act aggressively. It does seem that some children are born more aggressive than others. Freud felt that we are born with aggressive instincts, and genetic studies have shown that identical twins are more likely to be more equally aggressive than fraternal twins (Rushton et al, 1986).

Some research also shows higher levels of the hormone testosterone in both men and women convicted of violent crimes when compared to those convicted on non-violent crimes (Dabbs, 1988).

Our brains may actually have something to do with it as well. Specific centers in the brain seem to be implicated in producing and inhibiting aggressive behaviors. Individuals with severe damage to the frontal lobes of the brain have long been observed as having more difficulty controlling their aggressive impulses because this inhibition is seen as one of the functions of the frontal lobe. This difficulty with controlling aggression is a disinhibition process.

Maybe I’m just frustrated? I’m one of those drivers who gets angry when I’m stuck in traffic. Now, I don’t curse out my window at people or get into fistfights, but I sure do get frustrated. In 1989, Berkowitz found that sometimes frustration leads to aggression, and sometimes it doesn’t. When we get frustrated, we get angry, and when we feel angry, we’re predisposed to act aggressively. It’s like our bodies and minds are poised, or on alert, to act with aggression. The trigger comes when we make a cognitive evaluation of a situation and conclude that the person who is ticking us off did so on purpose. This scenario is likely to produce an aggressive response (Weiner, 1981). So if you step on my toes, you’d better hope that it was an accident.

Maybe I’m just a product of my environment? I may have learned how to act aggressively by watching other people do it. Albert Bandura would agree.
Social learning theory
holds that aggressive behavior is learned by observing others and by seeing them rewarded for such behavior. Little boys are often rewarded for being tough. We pay boxers tens of millions of dollars to beat people up. We reward aggressive acts on a regular basis in our society. What child wouldn’t see the benefits of aggression in such an environment?

Television violence has come under fire in recent years because of the dramatic increase in youth violence. Americans watch a lot of television. Even as far back as 1972, Gallup polls reported that Americans watch an average of seven hours of TV a day. I’m sure that number is higher today. Regardless of our opinions on violence and television, the fact is that there’s a lot of violence on the tube. In 1990, Gerbner found that seven out of ten programs contain violent scenes, with primetime programming containing five violent acts per hour. No doubt about it, we get a heavy dose of violent images from television.

I’ve always marveled at people like Mother Teresa who devote their entire lives to helping others. Her sacrifice was unquestionable. What drives people to help in this way? It certainly wasn’t money. I never saw Mother Teresa driving around in a Rolls Royce.
Altruism,
having concern for and helping other people without asking for anything in return, seems to have been a favorite topic among social psychologists. Maybe, they studied altruism with such zeal because it’s an integral part of our everyday lives. Nearly every day, we’re presented with a situation in which someone needs our help, even if it’s those sad, late-night commercials showing starving children in developing nations.

I think that most of us like to see ourselves as helpful people. If we’re not particularly helpful, then at least we’re willing to help in certain situations or when the need is severe. Hundreds, if not thousands, of studies conducted by social psychologists have investigated why, when, and who we actually help. Some of the findings are surprising, even shocking.

In New York City, 1964, a woman named Kitty Genovese was brutally murdered outside of her apartment by a man with a knife. She struggled with the attacker and screamed for help for nearly 35 minutes. No one came to her aid. There were later reports by 38 of her neighbors stating that they had witnessed the crime and heard her screams, but they did nothing to help her.

What happened here? Why didn’t anyone help her? I’m sure that as you’re reading this you’re saying to yourself that you would have helped. When I first heard this account I thought, “What was wrong with those people?” Think about it though. What are the chances that all 38 people were cold, callous individuals who didn’t care about a woman being murdered within earshot? The chances aren’t good. The Kitty Genovese story illustrates the main point of social psychology — the power of the situation was a major factor in determining each individual’s behavior.