Social Psychology 2019

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...

(Before you begin to read this blog post I would like to make it known that rape is discussed in this post and I understand if you chose not to read my post) If someone was in serious need of help and was only an arms length away, do you think you would help them? It is possible that you would try to help but there is also the chance that you decide not to but are unaware why. The decision to not help could be attributed to the bystander effect, which is a phenomenon that causes us to not intervene or help in an emergency situation due to the presence of others. The following video helps to explain the bystander effect. It shows real cases of how having people around you can affect your decision to help or not.   This video exhibits a very innocent example of how the bystander effect impacts people, but not everything in life is that simple.  A highly talked about example of the bystander effect happened at Richmond High School in 2009 (Chitale, 2009). A female studen...

The American social psychologist  C. Daniel. Batson, believes that we help each other out of genuine concern for ones well-being. according to his 'empathy-altruism hypothesis'   if someone feels  empathy  towards another person, they will help them, regardless of what they can gain from it (1991). The number one free fundraising cite out there today is GoFundMe. The simple process of starting up a fundraiser and getting it out there across multiple social platforms is almost effortless.  I used GoFundMe while in high school to help fund travel expenses for a national competition. The support I received was more than I had expected and looking back on this experience now, I was curious as to why people would support a fundraiser that they would not personally gain from (physical reward).  Link to old GoFundMe As we talked about helping others in chapter 10  I came across an article online called In Helping Other, You Help Y...

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...

First, a personal note / soapbox.  I take a keen interest in the decay of modern day relationships, and relationships in general, because I come from a 2-generations-divorced family and don't want to end up the same way. I have witnessed firsthand the bitterness and pain this causes between kids and their parents, as well as the emotional damage it does to parents but especially to their kids, and even though it has been over 18 years since my parents were divorced, the impacts of this event, psychologically and otherwise, affect me to this day. I gained a further interest in relationships and social psychology in high school, seeing what I perceived to be utterly futile and meaningless so-called relationships around me. How is it that two people can meet, claim to be in love in a couple of weeks, and be bitter enemies, all by the end of the month? What leads to a relationship succeeding, or failing? And most importantly, what things can I look for, can I do, to maximize the chan...

Relationships and attraction are two pretty complex topics. In trying to think of ways to explore these areas a little further, I decided to conduct a little social psychology research and get some information from a local population to answer two main questions: how do people in our local environment view relationships, and what makes them view them the way that they do? I was curious about whether our local environment here in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, specifically Houghton, even more specifically the MTU community, is unique in how relationships are viewed and experienced, or if we fit the mold discussed in our textbook and other literature. To get my answers, I created a simple 14-question survey and sent it out to a variety of family, friends, coworkers, and classmates, all in the local area. I received a total of 23 responses, none of which are in our social psychology class. After looking at the data I collected, I was able to make some links and connections to possible r...