Social Psychology 2019

As an emergency responder I have personally had experience with the phenomena known as the Bystander Effect.  The textbook defines this as “the effect whereby the presence of others inhibits helping,” (Kassin et al, p.426). Integrated from the earliest part of our training was the idea that when we needed help with something, we needed to pick out specific people and direct them to do the necessary task rather than leaving it up to the group to combat this issue.   I believe the textbook does an excellent job outlining the steps of the Bystander Effect.  It describes five of them: Noticing, Interpreting,  Taking Responsibility , Deciding, and Providing (Kassin et al , p.426)    Of these steps I believe that Taking Responsibility is where many people get lost when reacting to emergencies.  For events such as the Boston Marathon Bombing or our own Father’s Day Flood, it’s impossible not to notice that something is going on an...

On the fateful day of September 11th, 2001 at 9:42 AM the United States closed its airspace. All flights scheduled were cancelled, and any in the air were ordered to land in Canada or Mexico. Any that attempted to land in the U.S. would be shot down. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) quickly worked with Transport Canada to route these flights to their new destinations. The collaboration was named Operation Yellow Ribbon. To avoid more chaos at the biggest airports, they worked to find the closest places that could hold many large commercial planes. Gander was one of those towns. Gander began as a tiny airport in Newfoundland, Canada in 1935 as a refueling and emergency landing station for flights between New York and London. Then, during the second world war it became a military base, expanding in size. After the war the airport became open for civilians, and a town began to build around it. It was rather small and unnoticed until the day of the terrorist attacks. Thirt...

We’ve all read the studies, giving us 101 reasons to quit social media.   It makes us depressed, everybody’s a jerk, it’s consumption without substance, on and on and on.   I’m not here to tell you social media makes you evil in fact, I’d say it perhaps it shows us who we truly are.   It’s just that, maybe, who we truly are isn’t quite as picturesque as we’d like to believe. Lets say you’re walking down the street and you see somebody asking for a few dollars.   As you walk past you make eye contact, and now you feel obligated to at least acknowledge their presence, perhaps even give them some spare change.   This is called being kind, and it’s a pretty typical behavior, you’d probably even call it a social norm. But what if the same situation where presented on the internet, an acquaintance you follow makes a post about needing a few dollars to pay rent, would you respond?   Most people probably wouldn’t, you where willing to help somebody when yo...

Sometimes people help someone in need in order to reduce the discomfort of that person. Other times, people may help in order to reduce their own discomfort and increase their own well-being. These are called altruistic motivation and egoistic motivation. However, is there really such a thing as a good deed where you only did it for the other person and not at all because it would make you feel good? The above clip is an episode from a TV series called FRIENDS. In the clip, Joey and Pheobe are arguing about whether a good deed is always selfish or if it can sometimes prove to be selfless. Both sides could have brought about good points had Joey mentioned the social exchange theory and if Pheobe mentioned the empathy-altruism theory . The social exchange theory states that helping is always selfish and never selfless and that people will only help out if the benefits of helping outweigh the costs (Nero, 2016). As previously stated, Pheobe could have made a valid argument by discussi...