The Hastorf and Cantril Case Study and Selective Group Perception. In selective group perception, people tend to actively filter information they think is irrelevant.
This effect is demonstrated in Hastorf and Cantril’s Case Study: They Saw a Game. Background of the Study Hastorf and Cantril’s case study analyzed what proved to be selective group perception of a football game contested between the Dartmouth Indians and Princeton Tigers. The football game the students watched had been played in 1951, and in that game Princeton won. It was a tough game, with a lot of penalties and caused uproar in series of editorials in campus newspapers. The Princeton quarterback, who is an All-American, in his last game for college, left the game in its second quarter with a broken nose and a mild concussion. Methodology. Stanley Milgram Experiment - Will People Do Anything If Ordered? The Stanley Milgram Experiment was created to explain some of the concentration camp-horrors of the World War 2, where Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, Slavs and other enemies of the state were slaughtered by Nazis.
Do as you’re told Many war-criminals claimed they were merely following orders and could not be held responsible for their actions, in the trials following the World War 2. Were the Germans in fact evil and cold-hearted, or is this a group phenomenon which could happen to anyone, given the right conditions? Preparation of the Stanley Milgram Experiment The psychologist Stanley Milgram created an electric ‘shock generator’ with 30 switches. He also placed labels indicating the shock level, such as ‘Moderate’ (75-120 Volts) and ‘Strong’ (135-180 Volts). Cognitive Dissonance Experiment by Leon Festinger. The Cognitive Dissonance Experiment is based on the theory of cognitive dissonance proposed by Leon Festinger in the year 1957: People hold many different cognitions about their world, e.g. about their environment and their personalities.
In an event wherein some of these cognitions clash, an unsettled state of tension occurs and this is called cognitive dissonance. Within the same theory, Festinger suggests that every person has innate drives to keep all his cognitions in a harmonious state and avoid a state of tension or dissonance. Confirmation Bias and the Wason Rule Discovery Test. Confirmation bias is also known as selective collection of evidence.
It is considered as an effect of information processing where people behaves to as to make their expectations come true. People tend to favor information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses independently of the information’s truthfulness or falsity. Confirmation bias is a person’s tendency to favor information that confirms their assumptions, preconceptions or hypotheses whether these are actually and independently true or not. The phenomenon is also called confirmatory bias or myside bias.
So how does confirmation bias work? Asch Experiment - Conformity in Groups. The Asch Experiment, by Solomon Asch, was a famous experiment designed to test how peer pressure to conform would influence the judgment and individuality of a test subject.
The experiment is related closely to the Stanford Prison and Milgram Experiments, in that it tries to show how perfectly normal human beings can be pressured into unusual behavior by authority figures, or by the consensus of opinion around them. For the experiment, eight subjects were seated around a table, with the seating plan carefully constructed to prevent any suspicion. Only one participant was actually a genuine subject for the experiment, the rest being confederates, carefully tutored to give certain pre-selected responses. Careful experimental construction placed a varying amount of peer pressure on the individual test subject.
The experiment was simple in its construction; each participant, in turn, was asked to answer a series of questions, such as which line was longest or which matched the reference line. Cognitive Dissonance and Festinger & Carlsmith's Study. Every individual has his or her own way of evaluating their own selves and usually this is done by comparing themselves to others.
Bystander Apathy Experiment - The Case of Kitty Genovese Explained. Overjustification Effect and the Felt Tip Marker Study. The overjustification effect happens when an external incentive like a reward, decreases a person's intrinsic motivation to perform a particular task.
Lepper, Greene and Nisbett confirmed this in their field experiment in a nursery school. Overjustification effect is manifested in cases where giving an external incentive to a person decreases his intrinsic motivation to perform the task. When we do a certain task, there are two types of motivation present: intrinsic and extrinsic. It can be either or even be both, depending upon what causes or gives the person the drive to do a particular task.
Lepper, Greene and Nisbett conducts an activity to find out if giving rewards which is a form of extrinsic motivation, decreases the intrinsic motivation of a person. Social Judgment Theory Experiment - Henry Tajfel. Social Judgment Theory Experiment was conducted by Henry Tajfel along with his colleagues.
The Halo Effect - Nisbett and Wilson's Experiment. The Halo Effect perfectly fits the situation of Hollywood celebrities where people readily assume that since these people are physically attractive, it also follows that they are intelligent, friendly, and display good judgment as well.
This also greatly applies to other well-known people such as politicians. Research Question. The Chameleon Effect and Chartrand & Bargh Experiments. Also called unintentional mirroring, the chameleon effect usually applies to people who are getting along so well, each tend to mimic each other's body posture, hand gestures, speaking accents, among others.
This was confirmed by the Chartrand and Bargh experiments. The perfect description of the chameleon effect is the cliché saying: "Imitation is the best form of flattery. " In interpersonal relations, often times mimicking another's body language can increase our likeability.