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Self-esteem and deindividuation
Concepts of the self
Knowledge structure of attitudes
The function of attitudes
Persuasion

Sample 5 page paper
 
 

        The article by Hales (1985) offered an interesting perspective on self-management theories.  Briefly stated, self-management theories posit that "people are highly sensitive to the social significance of their conduct and are motivated to create desired identities in interpersonal encounters" (Tetlock & Manstead, 1985, p. 60). This statement does not imply how the state of deindividuation, which has usually been used to investigate antisocial behavior (see Diener, 1980), would affect a person's motivation to create desired identities, which I believe would affect self-esteem.
        According to Diener's (1980) model, deindividuation occurs when the focus of attention has been directed away from the self and onto a group. Researchers have argued that there is no awareness of self in a deindividuated state, as well as demonstrating that situational cues influence a deindividuated person more than a non-deindividuated person. However, when a person is deindividuated and is involved in either prosocial or antisocial behaviors will their self-esteem be affected? Based on the articles by Cooley (1908), James (1892), and Mead (1964) which suggest that there is part of the self which we cannot possibly know, I suggest that even in a deindividuated state part of the self (the "I") is still aware of the events occurring around the person.
        I propose that a loss of self-esteem will occur when a deindividuated person engages in antisocial behavior (cheating or stealing) and increase when a person engages in prosocial behavior (helping or donating to charity). I believe this can only occur when the appropriate situational cues are present. For example, a deindividuated person will engage in prosocial helping behavior when the appropriate "helping cues" are present. Harvey and Enzle (1981) have defined helping cues as any number of stimuli that imply or are associated with helping.
        If a person has no self-awareness at all when they are in a state of deindividuation, then neither
a prosocial or antisocial behavior should affect self-esteem. However, while in a deindividuated state if a person is still somewhat in touch with part of the self we cannot consciously know, then ratings
of self-esteem should increase or decrease depending on whether the behavior is prosocial
or antisocial. The problem with such an investigation is quite clear: how is it possible to measure a person's self-esteem while in a state of deindividuation? Directly measuring self-esteem would in effect invoke self-referent thought. By focusing attention on the self, any state of deindividuation generated by a manipulation to disappear (Diener, 1979). If it is possible to measure someone's self-esteem while in a state of deindividuation, then such an investigation would be an interesting and worthwhile contribution to the literature.
 
 

        The article by Epstein (1973) addressed the issue of the self-concept and a possible
self-theory. This article appeared to be quite beneficial to the area of psychology dealing with the
self, however, I do have reservations regarding his position on the self-concept.
        My own personal view of the self and the self-concept is a conundrum, in that, I am not sure if
we even have a self. Dollinger and Clancy (1993) would disagree on the grounds of their research.
They propose that by using the technique of autophotographic essay one can get a sense of the
"self" and this methodology "affords a clear view of the self seen through self-created and self-selected social and physical environments" (p. 1068). I do not believe this is the case. I argue
that this method only taps how creative a person is, a hypothesis that could have been confirmed if
Dollinger and Clancy had given subjects a measure of creativity prior to the beginning of the
experiment. The potential problem with their research and other investigations into the self appears
to be that no one knows what the self is. Almost a century of work has gone by into the investigation
of the the self and in that time it appears that no one has been able to define the self, although there have been very good attempts to do so. Not knowing what the self is presents an interesting research question: How do we know we are actually measuring the self?
        Looking back at Dollinger and Clancy's (1993) research, how do we know that they were
actually measuring the self? The article by Markus and Nurius (1986) suggests that people view
themselves in many different ways. For example, if I do poorly on a graduate exam or if I feel
overwhelmed with graduate school work, my "truck-master" possible self is activated. Based on
Markus and Nurius' research, it is conceiveable that Dollinger and Clancy activated the
"photographer" possible self in their research. In that, subjects were taking pictures as if they were
a "true photographer" and not giving an "eye of the beholder" (p. 1068) view into the self.
 
 

        The articles for this week examined the knowledge structures of attitudes and how Loftus' (1975?) spreading activation model affects attitude structure and polarization. The article by Judd and Lusk (1984) investigated how the way social stimuli is organized in memory affects how it is differentiated. There are two camps of thought on this issue. First, Tesser suggests that the
polarizing effects would be strongest when a person has a well developed schema about the object to be judged. Tesser and Leone (1977) supported this hypothesis by finding male and female participants differed in polarization when the attitude object used was football (males more than females) or women's fashion (females more than males). Second, Linville suggested complex knowledge structures about a domain are associated with and lead to non-polarized evaluative judgments of those objects. Linville further states that as long as those attributes are uncorrelated
and orthogonal more complex knowledge structures should lead to less extreme judgments. Judd and Lusk found some support in Study 2, but I found the article to be somewhat confusing and they conducted, what I believe to be, far too many analyses.
        The article by Millar and Tesser (1986) examined how commitment mediates attitude polarization. This was an interesting study and it appeared to have a "cognitive busy" component in the procedure (maybe this was a precursor to Gilbert, Pelham, & Krull). The authors found support for their hypothesis by showing that committed participants using a complex schema produced more attitude polarization than when using a simple schema. The opposite effect was found for uncommitted participants.
        The article by Judd, Drake, Downing, and Krosnick (1991) examined the potential influence the theory of spreading activation could have on attitude structure. They found that attitudes are capable of priming one another. This adds additional evidence to Fazio (1989) who suggested that attitude becomes stronger the more times it is activated.
        Katz and Hass (1988) attempted to develop scales to measure attitudes and values associated with Blacks. However, the authors ignored Lerner (1975) who demonstrated that the Protestant-Ethic scale DOES correlate with the Belief in a Just World Scale (BJWS). The study could have been more complete by giving all participants the BJWS.
        The article by Chaiken and Yates (1985) was an interesting take on attitude polarization and their inclusion of an analysis on participants' essays to examine their cognitions was well intentioned. Finally, the article by Judd and Krosnick (1982) was an attempt to take the "high road" as it were, but their analyses were inadequate and their data needs to be re-analyzed using EQS to draw any substantial
 
 

        The readings from last week attempted to define what attitudes were and how the definition
has changed, perhaps due to the Zeitgeist of the times. The readings for this week attempted to determine the function of attitudes, which led to an interesting article by Herek (1987) who used an interesting technique to look at the functions attitudes may serve in response to homosexual men
and women. However, I have some concerns regarding the results of the factor analysis for the attitude function inventory. For example, the factor analysis for the homosexual men and women target generated a four factor solution that Herek said was the "most interpretable solution." I
would be curious to know the results of the other analyses that were not so interpretable. Also, the second factor analysis has additional problems; mainly, several of the questions load highly on more than one factor, which is unacceptable in factor analysis.
        The articles that prompted the most thought on my part were Synder and DeBono (1985) and Debono (1987). I believe that Synder and DeBono interestingly examined the issue of how self-monitoring affects the likelihood that someone will purchase a product based on the technique used to advertise it: evaluative or quality. However, I felt the following study by DeBono lends itself to a different interpretation and an interesting research avenue. In general, DeBono identified two functions that attitudes generally serve; a social-adjustive function and a value-expressive function. The social-adjustive function deals with how well attitudes affect behavior in reference to the group to which you belong and the value-expressive function allows a person to express his or her individuality. Although the main purpose of this study was to examine the possible mediating role of self-monitoring, I felt these results could have considerable impact on the growing field of cultural psychology, especially individualism and collectivism issues.
        Individualism refers to the extent that some cultures structure the social experience around the individual and individual concerns take precedent over group concerns. Collectivism refers to the social experience being organized around some collective (e.g. family, tribe, religious groups, country, etc.) where the concerns/goals of the group outweigh that of the individual. In general, the United States is considered to have an individualistic "personality," while Africa and Japan are considered to be collectivistic. The results that DeBono found fit nicely with the individualistic/collectivistic distinction, and offer the possibility that self-monitoring may be correlated with individualism/collectivism. In addition, it may be that those individuals who are high in collectivism may be more influenced by social-adjustive concerns and those high individualism
 
 

        The hefty articles for this weeks readings dealt with persuasion. When you mention the word "persuasion" to someone they initially may have thoughts about a salesman trying to get them to buy an expensive new car without giving "persuasion" processes the respect they deserve. The immense power of persuasion was made disturbingly apparent when Jim Jones was able to persuade the majority of his followers to drink koolaid laced with cyanide in Guyana, South America in 1978.
The persuasion process includes four basic elements: the source, the receiver, the message, and the channel. The source is the person sending the communication. The receiver is to whom this communication is sent. The message is the information transmitted by the source and the channel is how the message is sent.
        Chaiken, Liberman, & Eagly (1989) suggest that individuals engage in two types of processing differing in respect to the cognitive resources allocated to each. The first of these is systematic processing, which they define as a comprehensive, analytical orientation in which perceivers access and scrutinize all informational input for its relevance and importance to their judgment task, and integrate all useful information in forming their judgments. The second type of processing individuals engage in is heuristic processing, which is a more limited processing using less cognitive resources than systematic processing. Basically, this type of processing uses simple rules to prepare their judgments.
        Petty and Cacioppo put forth an Elaboration Likelihood Model which tells how likely an individual is to elaborate on various arguments, which they say depends on motivation and ability. One interesting aspect I found in this article was the information on social judgment theory. People will evaluate the incoming messages or information on the basis of how they initially feel about the message. Messages that are too divergent from their own position (known as the latitude of rejection) will fall on deaf ears and no persuasion takes place. Messages that are close to their own initial position (known as the latitude of acceptance) will be accepted and persuasion may take place. They also suggest the most powerful form of processing occurs when attitude formation results from self-generation of arguments. This may explain why many salesmen, car salesmen in particular, use the "Ben Franklin close." This process involves making a pro and con list for buying the car. The salesman helps with the pro side, while remaining silent while the customer tries to formulate the con side.
        Who tries to persuade us? A study by Rule, Bisanz, & Kohn (1985) asked participants to indicate who tries to persuade them. 27% indicated it was their immediate family, 18% indicated close friends, 13% said their instructors tried to persuade them (!!), and only 11% indicated salespeople.
        One final point, the manipulation of self-awareness usually is done by having a mirror in the room with the participant. However, manipulation checks are rarely conducted in such
circumstances and when they are done, in the majority of cases, they simply ask participants
whether they recall seeing a mirror as was done in the Hutton and Baumeister article.
 
 

        Why is one item seen as a "cause" of an event and an other item virtually ignored?  Weber

(1958) suggests that an item is seen as a cause of an event when the item can be understood as

being psychologically involved in the determination of an action. In his chapter on Systematic Biases

in Attribution, Brown (1986) suggested that responsibility, in addition to causality, necessitates

intent.  While this assertion seems quite plausible, Fishbein and Ajzen (1973) have argued against

this line of reasoning on the grounds that it appears to contradict Heider's (1958) work which

differentiates causality from responsibility.

        The distinction implied by Brown (1986) between causality, responsibility and indirectly

blameworthiness is quite important to researchers investigating the reasons why victims of violent

crimes are sometimes held responsible for their own victimization.  Before continuing, it is necessary

to distinguish between the these terms.  The cause of an event is that precursor that is satisfactory for

the occurrence of the effect, i.e. the person's core contribution to the production of the effect.  For

example, the research investigating victim blame has suggested that the suggestive manner in which a

victim dresses is such a cause.  In contrast, responsibility is the label applied to the outcome of a

process.  Whereas responsibility is variable, causality is dichotomous (the person either caused the

event or did not).  On the other hand, blame is the attribution made after the observer has assessed

and does not accept the legitimacy of the person's justification or excuse.  The wording of the

attribution of "fault" questions found in the rape literature vary from the use responsibility (Tyler &

Devinitz, 1981) and blame (Janoff-Bulman, Timko, & Carli, 1985), and in many instances the two

terms are used interchangeably.  But what evidence exists that suggests these two terms are distinct?

        In one of the earliest comparisons, Harvey and Rule (1978) demonstrated that what they

labeled causal responsibility was observed to be different from blame.  In their study, subjects were

asked to  rate a stimulus person who caused harm either as a result of aggression that was intentional

or aggression in combination with an accident.  Subjects were then asked to judge the stimulus

person on a several bipolar scales including responsible - not responsible and praised - blame.

These ratings were then subjected to a factor analysis that indicated the clusters related with

responsibility were separate from those associated with blame.  But not even in the literature on

actor-observer differences, where the interpretation of events is expected to change from the self to

the other, is it insinuated that the meaning of central terms (i.e. causality and responsibility) differ

between the actor and the observer.

        Harvey and Rule's (1978) characterization of "causal responsibility" is somewhat awkward

since a question posed, "was the cause of" is not identical to "is responsible for".  For example, Tyler

and Devinitz (1981) asked subjects to indicate the magnitude to which a student victim of a campus

burglary was responsible for or caused the incident.  The incident was described as either serious or

mild, and either rare or frequent.  Although there were no effects for how much subjects felt that the

accident was caused by the student, the results did indicate that only victims of a frequently occurring

crime were rated more responsible than were victims of a rare crime.  This is an important result,

since it indicates that people can be held responsible in the negligence sense for failing to deter

something they undoubtedly did not cause.

        This is quite applicable to studies investigating why rape victims are sometimes held responsible

for the attack.  Third party observers tend to assign culpability for such instances based on what the

victim could have done to prevent the rape, and tend to ignore the fact that they are making their

judgments based on hindsight, whereas the victim was operating without such knowledge.  Based on

the results obtained by Gilbert, Pelham, & Krull (1988), we can suggest that the failure of these

observers to make the pertinent situational adjustments may be a result of the spent cognitive

processes.

        Albeit, this does not uniformily account for why victims are held accountable for their own

misfortune.  Researchers such as Fishbein and Ajzen (1973) and Shaver (1985) have made

arguments for keeping responsibility separate from causality, and keeping both of these terms

separate from blame.  From their line of reasoning, the issue of keeping the content of the scenario

provided to the subject or the dependent measure of interest needs to conform to one of Heider's

(1958) levels.
 
 

        Brown, R. (1986).  Social psychology: The second edition.  New York: The Free Press.

        Fishbein, M., & Ajzen, I.  (1973).  Attribution of responsibility: A theoretical note.

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 9, 148-153.

        Gilbert, D. T., Pelham, B. W., & Krull, D. S.  (1988). On cognitive busyness: When person

perceivers meet persons perceived.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 733-740.

        Harvey, M. D., & Rule, B. G.  (1978).  Moral evaluations and judgments of

responsibility. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 4, 583-588.

        Janoff-Bulman, Timko, C., & Carli, L. L.  (1985). Cognitive biases in blaming the victim.

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 21, 161-177.

        Shaver, K. G.  (1985).  The attribution of blame: Causality, responsibility, and

blameworthiness.  New York: Springer-Verlag.

        Tyler, T. R., & Devinitz, V.  (1981).  Self-serving bias in the attribution of responsibility:

Cognitive versus motivational explanations.  Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 17,

408-416.