Diffusion of Responsibility

Diffusion of Responsibility
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility

Diffusion of responsibility occurs in large group settings and under both prosocial and antisocial conditions. In prosocial situations, individuals’ willingness to intervene or assist someone in need is inhibited by the presence of other people. The individual is under the belief that other people present will or should intervene. Thus, the individual does not perceive it as his or her responsibility to take action.

The Murder of Kitty Genovese is the classic case study for diffusion of responsibility in a prosocial situation. It has been demonstrated that the likelihood of a person offering help decreases as the number of observers present increases. This is known as the bystander effect. In addition, diffusion of responsibility is more likely to occur under conditions of anonymity.

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The attitude-behavior link

Teaching Tip Sheet: Attitudes and Behavior Change
Lisa Bowleg, PhD
Georgetown University
APA, >= 1995
http://www.apa.org/pi/aids/resources/education/attitude-change.aspx

The study of attitudes has had a long and preeminent history in the field of social psychology (Eagly, 1992; Eagly & Chaiken, 1993).
The topic of attitudes is intrinsically appealing to psychologists and non-psychologists alike; we all hold attitudes about many different abstract (e.g., ideologies such as democracy and liberalism) and concrete (e.g., people, places, and things) attitude objects.
Attitudes are “psychological tendencies that are expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor” (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993, p. 1).

Although research on attitudes is dispersed among many topics such as the measurement of attitudes, the structures of attitudes and beliefs, and theories of attitude formation and change, research on the relationship between attitudes and behavior has consistently been one of the most prominent and debatable topics in the field of social psychology (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993).
Intuitively, the association between a person’s attitudes and her or his behavior makes sense.
However, contemporary research on attitudes has empirically demonstrated that attitudes correlate most reliably with behaviors when an aggregate of attitudes is related to an aggregate of attitude-relevant behaviors; and when a single attitude is related to a single attitude-relevant behavior (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993).

attitude-behavior consistency
attitude-behavior linkage
attitude-behavior link
attitude-behavior relation

I may hallucinate

On Being Sane in Insane Places
Rosenhan, D. L. Science 179, 250−258 (1973).
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/179/4070/250

… the patients often recognized normality

… may be due to the fact that physicians operate with a strong bias toward what statisticians call the Type 2 error. This is to say that physicians are more inclined to call a healthy person sick (a false positive, Type 2) than a sick person healthy (a false negative, Type 1). The reasons for this are not hard to find: it is clearly more dangerous to misdiagnose illnesss than health.

…The tag profoundly colors others’ perceptions of him and his behavior.

There is an enormous overlap in the behaviors of the sane and the insane. The sane are not “sane” all of the time. We lose our tempers “for no good reason.” We are occasionally depressed or anxious, again for no good reason. And we may find it difficult to get along with one or another person–again for no reason that we can specify.

I may hallucinate because I am sleeping … These are termed sleep-induced hallucinations, or dreams

There is by now a host of evidence that attitudes toward the mentally ill are characterized by fear, hostility, suspicion and dread.

At times, depersonalization reached such proportions that pseudopatients had the sense that they were invisible, or at least unworthy of account.

A diagnosis of cancer that has been found to be in error is cause for celebration.
But psychiatric diagnoses are rarely found to be in error.

Wikipedia entry:
Rosenhan experiment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment

related:
Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening (Salvador Dali).
http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v10/n11/fig_tab/nrn2716_F1.html

Change blindness

Magic and the Brain
Scientific American 299, 72 – 79 (2008)
Susana Martinez-Conde & Stephen L. Macknik
http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v299/n6/full/scientificamerican1208-72.html
KEY CONCEPTS:
•Magic tricks often work by covert misdirection, drawing the spectator’s attention away from the secret “method” that makes a trick work.
•Neuroscientists are scrutinizing magic tricks to learn how they can be put to work in experimental studies that probe aspects of consciousness not necessarily grounded in current sensory reality.
•Brain imaging shows that some regions are particularly active during certain kinds of magic tricks.

MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE. How Blind Are We?
Scientific American 18, 16 – 17 (2008)
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran & Diane Rogers-Ramachandran
http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v18/n2s/full/scientificamerican0508-16sp.html
We have eyes, yet we do not see.
PRETEND YOU ARE a member of an audience watching several people dribbling and passing a basketball among themselves. Your job is to count the number of times each player makes a pass to another person during a 60-second period.

Change-blindness as a result of ‘mudsplashes’
Nature 398, 34 (4 March 1999)
J. Kevin O’Regan, Ronald A. Rensink & James J. Clark
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v398/n6722/full/398034a0.html
Change-blindness occurs when large changes are missed under natural viewing conditions because they occur simultaneously with a brief visual disruption, perhaps caused by an eye movement, a flicker, a blink, or a camera cut in a film sequence.
We have found that this can occur even when the disruption does not cover or obscure the changes.
When a few small, high-contrast shapes are briefly spattered over a picture, like mudsplashes on a car windscreen, large changes can be made simultaneously in the scene without being noticed.
This phenomenon is potentially important in driving, surveillance or navigation, as dangerous events occurring in full view can go unnoticed if they coincide with even very small, apparently innocuous, disturbances. It is also important for understanding how the brain represents the world.

Big Fish Stories Getting Littler
by Robert Krulwich
February 05, 2014
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2014/02/05/257046530/big-fish-stories-getting-littler

Do we share the same reality?

LECTURE 1.4 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY

Do we share the same reality?

– In daily life we typically assume so …

– …but perceptions are powerfully influenced by:

• What we happen to be paying attention to
• Contextual factors
• Past experience
• Expectations
• Motivations (we often see what we want to see and don’t see what …)
• And many other factors

related:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjkQ0WUkVzw
I’d like to say to young people who are struggling in their own life is:
grown-ups are doing the best that they can but they don’t have any idea what your experience is really like and to the best of your ability you have to trust your instincts …

https://franzcalvo.wordpress.com/2016/07/23/monkeys-dont-solve-problems-in-quantum-mechanics

You will outlive your whole clan!

The lesson of framing research is told in the story of a sultan who dreamed he had lost all his teeth.
Summoned to interpret the dream, the first interpreter said, “Alas! The lost teeth mean you will see your family members die.”
Enraged, the sultan ordered 50 lashes for this bearer of bad news.
When a second dream interpreter heard the dream, he explained the sultan’s good fortune: “You will outlive your whole clan!”
Reassured, the sultan ordered his treasurer to go and fetch 50 pieces of gold for this bearer of good news.
On the way, the bewildered treasurer observed to the second interpreter, “Your interpretation was no different from that of the first interpreter.”
“Ah yes,” the wise interpreter replied, “but remember: What matters is not only what you say, but how you say it.”

Chapter 1. Introducing Social Psychology
Myers, D. G. (2012). Social psychology (11th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
http://www.mcgraw-hill.com.sg/html/9780078035296.html

related:
https://franzcalvo.wordpress.com/2013/08/22/just-as-important-is-how-you-say-it

Common sense is usu. right–after the fact

I KNEW IT ALL ALONG: IS SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY SIMPLY COMMON SENSE?

The point is not that common sense is predictably wrong.
Rather, common sense usually is right— after the fact.
We therefore easily deceive ourselves into thinking that we know and knew more than we do and did.
And that is precisely why we need science to help us sift reality from illusion and genuine predictions from easy hindsight.

Chapter 1. Introducing Social Psychology
Myers, D. G. (2012). Social psychology (11th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
http://www.mcgraw-hill.com.sg/html/9780078035296.html

related:
https://franzcalvo.wordpress.com/2016/02/28/which-comes-first-ideas-or-things