Conformity

          When people change the way they are in order to fit into a group that is known as conformity.  Conformity according to Myers (2013) is when there is “change in behavior or belief as the result of real or imagined group pressure” (p. 188).  The three widely used form of conformity are compliance, obedience and acceptance.  When someone complies with something is means they do what is expected even if they do not agree with it.  People often just do what they are told by being obedient.  When someone accepts conformity they not only follow what is expected but they agree with what is expected.  Conformity can be used as a positive tool such as waiting your turn in line and not cutting it, and following rules that protect others. But sometimes the use of conformity can be detrimental when used in a negative way.
          One of the most profound situation that conformity was used was the incident at Jonestown. Conformity was used to persuade over 900 people to commit suicide in the Jonestown Massacre under the direction of James Jones in 1978. Jones convinced his people that it was what needed to be done in order to save his church as Haney (2007) described Jones’ thought process as, “the People's Temple would preserve their church by making the ultimate sacrifice: their own lives” (The visit of Congressman Ryan, para. 2). Jones was able to even convince parents to kill their own children in the name of the church.  This conformity has had such an impact on society, as Dittmann (2003) noted that “through 25 years of research and interviews with Jonestown survivors, [Philip G.] Zimbardo [PhD] has found parallels between the mind control techniques used by Jones at Jonestown--namely sophisticated types of compliance, conformity and obedience training” (para. 6).   Jones used these tools of conformity in order to convince his people to take their lives by drinking the poisoned Kool-Aid in order to save the church and return to god.
                                                            References

Dittmann, M. (2003). Lessons from Jonestown. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/monitor /nov03/jonestown.aspx

Haney, E. (2007). Ministry of terror. Retrieved from http://www.infoplease.com 

            /spot/jonestown1.html

Myers, D. (2013).  Social Psychology (11^th ed.).  New York: McGraw Hill.

      

Social-responsibility Norm

          When there is some sort of crisis that people are experiencing, other tend to respond to those crisis by helping because they feel they are obligated to do so.  This is the social-responsibility norm, as Myers (2013) defined as “an expectation that people will help those needing help” (p.448).  The social-responsibility norm sometimes applies to situations where people want to help other people that are not necessarily in bad situations and expect nothing in return.  Unfortunately, unless it is a crisis situation, people tend to not help others because we live in a society where people think people deserve what the get when it is their own fault for being in the situation.  The situations that social-responsibility norm most often applies to are natural disasters, people with terminal diseases such as cancer, house fires, starving children, and deaths in the family.

          One of the most significant crisis that occurred where society showed the social-responsibility norm was after Hurricane Katrina hit the gulf coast.  Livecience’s Kim Zimmermann (2012) reported: 

Hurricane Katrina was one of the deadliest hurricanes ever to hit the United States. An estimated 1,836 people died in the hurricane and the flooding that followed in late August 2005, and millions of others were left homeless along the Gulf Coast and in New Orleans, which experienced the highest death toll. (para. 1).

An overwhelming amount of people around the United States worked together to help the people devastated by the storm.  I do believe when people with in our society need help, we should help them. There were a lot of groups that came together to help, like healthcare workers, youth groups, and the Red Cross.  Another group that was big on helping was The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (2012) have an organization called Helping Hands that, “is a priesthood-directed Church program to provide community service and disaster relief to those in need” (para. 1). This organization came together and helped clean disaster areas, handed out fresh water, brought in food for people to eat, and donated money to people who lost everything so they could start their lives again.  It is people like these that exemplify the term social-responsibility norm because they so graciously donated their time, energy, and money during crisis like Hurricane Katrina and want nothing in return.

                                                                 References

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (2012). Helping hands. Retrieved from https://www.lds.org/topics/humanitarian-service/helping-hands

Myers, D. (2013).  Social Psychology (11^th ed.).  New York: McGraw Hill.

Zimmermann, K. A. (2012). Hurricane Katrina: Facts, damage and aftermath. Livescience. Retrieved from http://www.livescience.com/22522-hurricane-katrina-facts.html     

Misinformation Effect

                                          Rieger, M. (2001).
          A big social issue that occurs often is when there is information that is obscured by individuals who witnessed an event and using that information for a negative purpose.  This is often called the misinformation effect which Myers (2013) explained by saying it is when people are “incorporating “misinformation” into one’s memory of the event after witnessing an event and receiving misleading information about it” (p. 560).  This misinformation effect can sometimes be detrimental to individuals or a group of individuals if information about them or the group is purposefully or inadvertently false.  The misinformation effect is sometimes an issue in situations involving court cases.  Sometimes witnesses are tricked into thinking something is true if they are provoked into thinking so even though they witnessed something different.  If a person is told something over and over again even if it is false information, in general people start to believe that the information is true. 
          After 9-11 happened I believe there were a lot of information going around that was not true and the misinformation effect happened.  When the media stepped in and said it was a certain group of people, specifically the Muslim community, those type of people were then targeted and stamped as terrorist. Even though most of these people were legitimately not terrorists, they were viewed as such based solely upon how they looked, or where they attended church.A report written by Schevitz (2002) stated that after the events of September 11^th, 2001 occurred “the most dramatic change noted by the report was a more than 1,600 percent increase in reported hate crimes against Muslims -- a jump from 28 hate incidents in 2000 to 481 last year”(para. 3).Some of the witnesses of the attacks were so angry they needed someone to blame so when the media announced that the Muslims could be behind the attacks people took it into their own hands to deal with the situation.My uncle lives in Manhattan and witnessed the entire attack.  The night of the attacks he decided to take a walk and clear his head.  While walking down the street he witnessed a mob of people overtake a taxi cab that had a gentleman who was of the Muslim decent driving it.The mob pulled the gentleman out of the cab and proceeded beat him by kicking and punching him until the police showed up.  Another incident that I had witnessed that caused the college I was attending to close for the rest of the week was that of a definite hate crime towards the Muslims.  The college had a foreign exchange program and there was a small group of Muslim women who had been attending for over a year.  We all knew them and many of us were friends with them.The day following the attacks, while our group was headed to our next class we overheard commotion around the group of the foreign exchange women.  We saw the people around them throwing rocks and whatever else they could grab in their hands, at them while they tried to protect themselves with their bags. When others tried to help stop the attackers they stopped and ran away.Luckily the women were not badly hurt by the attacks.  People tend to believe what they hear even if it is false when they hear the same thing multiple times. The blast of the misinformation from the media saying that the Muslims were behind these attacks definitely provoked the increase in hate crimes towards the Muslims.
                                                                        

References

Myers, D. (2013).  Social Psychology (11^th ed.).  New York: McGraw Hill.

Rieger, M. (2001). FEMA-4211. FEMA photo library. New York, NY.

Schevitz, T. (2002). FBI sees leap in anti-Muslim hate crimes/ 911 attacks blame for bias—blacks still most frequent victims. Retrieved from http://www.sfgate.com/news /article/FBI-sees-leap-in-anti-Muslim-hate-crimes-9-11-2750152.php

Just-world Phenomenon

There are people in this world that believe in the just-world phenomenon. The just-world phenomenon is described by Myers (2013) to be “the tendency of people to believe that the world is just and that people therefore get what they deserve and deserve what they get” (p. 342).  People believe that people get whatever they deserve to get.  If people have misfortune then they must have done something wrong in order to deserve that misfortune.  This also contributes to societies that do not change and advance.  If people have the mindset that things have been done a particular way for years, then it is just the way it is. Inflexibility of this kind of thinking inhibits necessary change in this ever changing world.

One very controversial topic that fits the just-world phenomenon would be the death penalty. In some states in the United States the death penalty is not only legal but it is still used.  As the Death Penalty Information Center (2014) stated “the first established death penalty laws date as far back as the Eighteenth Century B.C. in the Code of King Hammaurabi of Babylon, which codified the death penalty for 25 different crimes” (para.1).  Through the years the uses of the death penalty changed in different ways it was carried out and what the crime committed was. The Death Penalty Information Center (2014) noted that in the United States “the first recorded execution in the new colonies was that of Captain George Kendall in the Jamestown colony of Virginia in 1608” (The Death Penalty in America, para. 1) for being a spy.  These days capital punishment is still legal in some states but there are laws regulating its use.  The death penalty is used for capital crimes such as murder and a jury usually decides whether the person gets the death penalty or a lesser sentence of life in prison.

I believe the death penalty exemplifies the idea of the just-world phenomenon. When talking about the just-world phenomenon, people believe that people get what they deserve.  In the case of the death penalty people who support it generally believe that if someone kills someone then they deserve to die also. In this phenomenon there is no room for change, so what has been done for centuries still plays a role in our society today.

References

Death Penalty Information Center (2014). Part I: History of the death penalty. Retrieved from http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/part-i-history-death-penalty

Myers, D. (2013).  Social Psychology (11^th ed.).  New York: McGraw Hill.

Foot-in-the-door Phenomenon

         Often people find themselves is situations where the foot-in-the-door phenomenon happens to them.  According to Myers (2013) the definition of foot-in-the-door phenomenon would be “the tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request” (p.129).  The biggest situation where this type of phenomenon occurs is when people volunteer to have a small part in something and then later on be pushed into volunteering for bigger parts.  These situations can have a negative outcome and can sometimes become rather inconvenient to the person stuck in the situation. 

            I graduated in 2002 with an associated degree in health science with the emphasis in radiological technology. After receiving my license as a radiologic technologist I was hired for first shift in a major hospital.  I was very excited to get hired for first shift because there were rumors that new out of school technologist usually start with the shifts no one wants such as second shift and third shift.  About three months after I was hired I was asked if I could cover second shift for another technologist because she was going out for surgery.  Being a new technologist and wanting to prove that I was a team player I agreed.  So for six weeks while the other technologist was on leave I worked the dreaded second shift.  After the technologist came back from leave I was transferred back to first shift and sent to work at our outpatient centers.  I was exactly where I wanted to be with my dream job.   After about six months I was again asked to cover the second shift.  A technologist had left and they needed someone to cover the second shift until they hired another person.  I was assured it would be just like the first time that I agreed to work second shift, as soon as they hire for the second shift I would be back on first shift so they told me it would be for four weeks at the most.  Well, the four weeks they guaranteed turned into over six years of working second shift. 

            I believe my situation exemplifies the foot-in-the-door phenomenon because I volunteered for a small amount of time but was pushed to comply with a longer time.  I was told by my boss that since I had volunteered to work second shift both times that he felt I was fine with a permanent position on second shift.  Later, I found out that the person they hired told them that she was only able to work day shift so if she could not have day shift she would not take the job so they hired her anyways sticking me permanently on second shift.  As Myers (2013) stated:

The foot-in-the-door phenomenon is a lesson worth remembering. Someone trying to seduce us—financially, politically, or sexually—will often use this technique to create a momentum of compliance. The practical lesson: Before agreeing to a small request, think about what may follow. (p. 130).

From my experience, I have learned to think about any long term effects that might result before I agree to any type of volunteering.  

Reference

Myers, D. (2013).  Social Psychology (11^th ed.).  New York: McGraw Hill.