social psychology

For the last week of December, we’re re-posting some of our favorite posts from 2011. Originally cross-posted at Jezebel and Owni.

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A few years ago my mom took a short-term nursing job at a hospital in the Sacramento area. This was a huge deal for her. She had never been to California, hadn’t lived outside of our rural area of Oklahoma since she divorced my dad when I was a baby, and had never worked at a “big city” hospital. She feared she wouldn’t be able to make it, that her rural hospital experience just wouldn’t translate.  There were a lot of firsts for her, but it went well and the hospital administration told her they’d be happy to have her back. She was incredibly proud of herself, both for doing a good job and for being able to survive in California, a location trumped in the Big Scary Places sweepstakes only by New York City. It was an enormous confidence builder: she could leave her small town and she could make friends and keep a job.

And then, a few days before she was set to leave, she called me. Some of the staff had a little informal going-away party for her, and she was baffled by the card they’d all signed for her. It featured Jeff Foxworthy, the comic who made a name with his “You might be a redneck if…” schtick in the ’90s. The joke on the card was something about being a redneck if you used Hefty trash bags for luggage. But why, my mom asked hesitantly, would they give that to her? She’d never told them she liked Jeff Foxworthy; what made them think she’d want a card with him on it? And finally, in a plaintive voice that still just breaks my heart when I remember it, she asked me if it was possible they were implying she is a redneck, and that the people she thought were her friends were laughing at her.

Of course they did, and were. That doesn’t mean they didn’t genuinely like her or didn’t think she’s an excellent nurse, or that they meant to be hurtful; they probably assumed she’d get the joke, what with her accent, unusual colloquialisms, and openly-expressed awe and  complete lack of irony or cynicism. But in fact, the idea that her new friends might view her as a redneck or a hick was a shock. She didn’t know what she might have done that would make other people think she’s a redneck. And I could tell she was terrified — afraid that instead of “making it” in California, she was actually a joke, and too clueless to know it.

I lied to her. I said I was sure it wasn’t anything specific to her, but was just because she was from Oklahoma, and Jeff Foxworthy is from the South, so they probably just thought everybody in the South or South-adjacent region likes him. I knew it would break her heart and totally destroy her new-found confidence to think that to a lot of people, she represented stereotypes of backward rednecks, not the hard-working medical professional she’d been working so hard to portray herself as.

I thought of that experience when I saw this postcard from Post Secret:

I’ve built up a lot more cultural capital than my mom, going to grad school and being socialized into the norms of academia. I mostly eradicated my accent when I was an undergrad, I figured out that Velveeta cheese was not an acceptable addition to a cheese plate at an upper-middle-class dinner party, and I learned that most people don’t view skunks, squirrels, opossums, or raccoons as animals you might potentially turn into pets, if you’re brave and really dedicated.

I don’t feel ashamed of my background any more, because I’ve achieved enough proof of upper-middle-class success — a Ph.D., a tenure-track job, the knowledge that Brie is fancy cheese and not, as my grandma thought upon seeing it for the first time, fish bait — and some useful theories, like the idea of cultural capital, to help me make sense of what’s going on.

But I recognize the sentiment expressed in the postcard — the ever-present possibility that you’ll un-self-consciously mention something from your childhood and be met with gleefully horrified looks and giggles, and not know what’s so funny about shrugging and off-handedly saying, “I don’t know if I really need to see a movie about it, I’ve watched my relatives do it tons of times” when someone suggests watching the documentary Okie Noodling. It’s an extra little mental effort you have to expend as you navigate social encounters, trying to imagine whether something as small as honestly answering a simple question like what was your favorite food when you were a kid might open you up to ridicule. It’s not really the laughing itself, which is often good-natured and comes from people who do honestly like you, that’s so bothersome; it’s the realization that you still don’t know the cultural rules, and thus can’t necessarily protect yourself from being laughed at even if you wanted to — or in my mom’s case, that you don’t know what it is you’re doing that makes you a redneck in other people’s eyes.

For the last week of December, we’re re-posting some of our favorite posts from 2011.

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In Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior, Ori and Rom Brafman discuss a contestant on Qui Veut Gagner des Millions?, the French version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, who asks the audience for help with the question, “Which of these revolves around the Earth?” His options are the sun, the moon, Venus, and Mars. While it might be surprising that he doesn’t know, more shocking is the result of the audience poll — 56% say the sun:

How can we explain this? The easiest answer, and the video’s title, is that French people appear to be stupid, or were never informed about the Copernican Revolution. But the Brafmans have an explanation based on different cultural attitudes toward reality shows and, ultimately, ideas about fairness.

The general outlines of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? are the same regardless of country. But distinct cultural patterns have emerged in how audiences act when asked for help. In the U.S., contestants can count on the audience’s goodwill; regardless of the question asked, audiences appear to do their best to help contestants out and the Brafmans report that data shows the audience is right over 90% of the time. I must admit it had never occurred to me that audiences would do anything other than try to be helpful. Though I don’t watch game shows now, as a kid I regularly watched The Price Is Right, among others, with my family, and we always inherently rooted for the contestant, cringing if they seemed to make a bad choice and rejoicing if they won big. We truly wanted these complete strangers to win.

But not all national audiences are so cooperative. When the show was introduced in Russia, contestants quickly learned to be wary of asking the audience for help because Russian audiences frequently mislead them, intentionally giving the wrong answer. It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the players or the questions they ask for help on.

In France, audiences seem to fall in the middle. They don’t regularly attempt to trick players, as Russian (and according to my googling, Ukrainian) audiences do. But unlike U.S. audiences, they don’t seem willing to help under any circumstances, either. They appear to intentionally give the wrong answer if the contestant asks for help on a question the audience perceives as too easy. If they think the player ought to know the answer they give the wrong response, apparently thinking the contestant deserves to lose if they’re so stupid. In the video you can hear audience laughter when Henri decides to go with the results of the audience poll.

Ori and Rom Brafman suggest this relates to notions of fairness, which have been shown to vary widely by culture. They say that in the U.S., we think it’s fair for people to win large sums of money even if they seem dumb, while in France, there is more concern about whether the individual deserves to win. They consulted historians of Russian society who suggest audience behavior there results from a general mistrust of those who gain sudden wealth. However, they provide no data to directly connect the audience members’ intentional wrong answers to cultural perceptions of fairness more broadly, so I’m somewhat hesitant about this theoretical leap. If you’re an enterprising grad student looking for a dissertation topic, perhaps you can take this project on and get back to me with your results.

But I think this topic is also interesting for the way it highlights the intersection of globalization and local cultures. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, like other reality shows such as the various varieties of Idol, are international franchises (Millionaire is owned by Sony), designed to be easily transferable to and implemented in many countries with the same basic blueprint — simply add local talent and you’ve got a successful TV show. But as the variation in Millionaire shows, differences inevitably creep in as a global product or process is used or interpreted on the local level, sometimes in superficial ways but other times to a degree that significantly alters the original product.

Thanks to Kelly V. for the tip about the book!

In an earlier post we reviewed research by epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett showing that income inequality contributes to a whole host of negative outcomes, including higher rates of mental illness, drug use, obesity, infant death, imprisonment, and interpersonal trust.

In the four-minute video below, Kate Pickett argues that once societies develop the capacity to enable status-based consumption (as opposed to survival-oriented consumption),  status-consciousness among humans exacerbates inequality.  Meanwhile, being status-conscious in a highly unequal society creates stress, and all kinds of other negative outcomes, among those who are judged less-than.

See Dr. Pickett, also, on why raising the average national income in developed countries doesn’t make people happier or enable them to live longer. And see more about income inequality and national well-being at Equality Trust.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

To add to our coverage of sketchy Halloween costumes and the social significance of costume themes Ann K., Dolores R., Tessa S., Zeynep A., and occasional guest blogger Brady Potts all sent in an opinion column that ran in the New York Times on Friday about a costume party at Steven J. Baum, a law firm near Buffalo, NY. Steven J. Baum specializes in representing banks and mortgage companies as they attempt to foreclose on homes and evict the residents; according to the NYT piece, it is the largest such firm in New York, representing clients such as Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase.

Apparently the company has a big annual Halloween party, with employees encouraged to dress up and the office elaborately decorated. In 2010, the theme in one department was…mocking people who are losing their homes. Part of the office was decorated as “Baum Estates,” a set of foreclosed-upon homes, and some employees dressed up as residents of homes in foreclosure, whom they depict as dirty, pathetic, booze-loving liars. Part of the room was decorated as foreclosed homes; the sign says “Foreclosure Sale.”

Recently I posted about Philip Zimbardo’s research on conformity and the ways that seemingly normal people become involved in horrible acts, and I think his research has some relevance here. It’s possible these employees are all openly mean-spirited, callous people who lack compassion, and that they were like that before they got to Steven J. Baum. But more likely, they are reacting to a corporate culture that gives clear signals that this type of attitude and behavior is acceptable. Indeed, according to the NYT article,

When we spoke later, [the former employee who sent the photos] added that the snapshots are an accurate representation of the firm’s mind-set. “There is this really cavalier attitude,” she said. “It doesn’t matter that people are going to lose their homes.” Nor does the firm try to help people get mortgage modifications; the pressure, always, is to foreclose.

For these employees, there’s going to be a powerful motivation to view people being foreclosed upon as lying, stupid cheats. Day after day, your job is to help kick people out of their homes. Your workplace has made it clear that the preferred outcome is always to foreclose, not to help people get loan modifications that might allow them to stay in their homes. Your job, by definition, requires you to not try to help people, even when they have legally-guaranteed options available.

Given that situation, belittling the homeowners, dehumanizing them, thinking of them as just stumbling blocks who cause you headaches with their complaints that you haven’t followed proper procedure, their efforts to legally block the foreclosure proceedings, their various attempts to avoid becoming homeless…those seem like unsurprising outcomes encouraged as part of the corporate culture, and job requirements, described at Steven J. Baum.

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UPDATE: It appears that Steven J. Baum PC has folded in the aftermath of this scandal.  Reports Globe St.:

New York’s largest foreclosure firm, Steven J. Baum PC, has announced “mass layoffs,” signaling that the firm is closing its doors. The move followed recent decisions by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to stop referring new cases to the embattled firm.

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

In The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, Philip Zimbardo tries to explain how seemingly ordinary, average people can become involved in, or passively fail to oppose, evil acts. Zimbardo is the researcher who designed the (in)famous 1971 Stanford prison experiment,  in which students were randomly assigned as “prisoners” or “guards” for an experiment on how prison affects human behavior. The experiment, meant to last two weeks, had to be called off after 6 days because of the extreme negative effects on, and brutality emerging among, the participants. Zimbardo’s study, as well as others such as Milgram’s obedience experiment, highlighted the role of conformity to social norms and obedience to apparent authority figures in leading people to engage in actions that would seem to be so ethically unacceptable that any decent person would refuse.

Dolores R. sent in a Candid Camera clip from 1962 that illustrates the power of conformity:

As Zimbardo says on his website,

We laugh that these people are manipulated like puppets on invisible strings, but this scenario makes us aware of the number of situations in which we mindlessly follow the dictates of group norms and situational forces.

From Open Culture, via Boing Boing.

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Amanda Knox, an American exchange student, was convicted in 2009 of murdering her flatmate, Meredith Kercher.  In 2011, on appeal, her conviction was overturned.

At The Guardian this month, Ian Leslie discusses the way that Knox’s body language and facial expressions were used in arguments as to her guilt.  He quotes jury members, police officers, court watchers, and others making such arguments.  The lead investigator, Edgardo Giobbi, for example, was quoted saying:

We were able to establish guilt by closely observing the suspect’s psychological and behavioural reaction during the interrogation. We don’t need to rely on other kinds of investigation.

A bystander speculated: “Her eyes didn’t seem to show any sadness, and I remember wondering if she could have been involved.”  The head of the murder squad, Monica Napoleoni, discussed the video below, arguing that kissing wasn’t the kind of behavior an innocent person would engage in:

Leslie argues that the tendency to think we can read “someone else’s state of mind simply by looking at them” is a common social psychological tendency.  Describing the work of Emily Pronin, a psychologist at Princeton University, he explains:

…there is a fundamental asymmetry about the way two human beings relate to one another in person. When you meet someone, there are at least two things more prominent in your mind than in theirs – your thoughts, and their face. As a result we tend to judge others on what we see, and ourselves by what we feel. Pronin calls this “the illusion of asymmetric insight.”

Unfounded belief into the insight into others’ minds has been shown to hold experimentally.  Certainty that Knox was guilty, then, may very well have been born of an overconfidence in our ability to read the mental states of others.

Thanks to Matt Vidal for sending the link!

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Cross-posted at Sociology in Focus.

Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, died this week. I didn’t know him and yet his death moved me deeply. It shook me awake. When I woke up sad the next morning I did the only thing I know how to do, I thought about Steve Jobs and his passing sociologically.

Of all the things you could say about Steve Jobs, without a doubt, one of them was that he was a great charismatic leader. During his presentations his words, energy, and style could create a “reality distortion field” that would make mundane aspects of his products sound revolutionary. His spirit worked almost like a Jedi mind trick telling reporters what they were to write in their reviews. His charisma seemed superhuman.

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A charismatic authority figure is one of three styles of authority that Max Weber talked about. Authority can be thought of as the use of power that is perceived as legitimate. Some statuses have power simply because of tradition (e.g. parents have power over children). Other statuses have power because they have been “routinized” or built in the structure of social institutions. Weber calls this type of authority rational-legal authority and the president of the United States is a good example of this type.

Charismatic authority can be thought of as the the use of power that is legitimized by the exemplary characteristics of a person or by their accomplishments that inspire others to follow or be loyal to them. Steve Jobs accomplishments have gained him a rabid fan base; to the point that Apple fans are oft referred to as members of the “Cult of Mac”. It was because of who Jobs is (or at least how he was perceived) that many people admired, respected, and followed his work.

The problem for Apple is that any organization that gains its authority because they have a charismatic leader must eventually deal with the loss of that leader. How can you hold on to your authority and legitimacy with the charismatic figure gone? You have to build the revolutionary ideas and practices of the figure into the bureaucracy or formal structure of the organization. Weber called this process of transferring authority from a charismatic person to a bureaucratic organization the “Routinization of Charisma”. In the corporate world they call this process a “succession plan.”

When Jobs resigned on August 24th Tim Cook succeeded him and became the CEO. A few weeks later on October 4 Cook took the stage for the first time to lead Apple’s announcement of the iPhone 4S. The announcement was nearly identical in form to the announcements led by Jobs. During the announcement Cook said multiple times, “There is a lot of momentum here at Apple” which could be interpreted sociologically as, “nothing has changed; we still deserve the authority our previous leader gained through his charisma.” The entire announcement was almost identical to the announcements except many viewers noted that Tim Cook did not have the charisma of Steve Jobs.

Jobs was a master at getting the media to write the headlines he wanted, but after this weeks talk ABC’s headline read “Apple Unveils Anti-Climatic iPhone 4S.” Anti-climatic!?!  Comedians ripped Cook for his poor stage presence in a video. Traders showed their disapproval as Apple’s stock price dropped a half percent after the announcement. I’m not trying to pile on here, I’m just pointing out that transitioning from a charismatic authority figure to less charismatic figure is hard; or as Weber would say it, the “routinization of charisma” is difficult if not impossible.

Now that he is gone, I’m sad because I enjoyed so much listening to him speak about his work. He was an artist in so many ways and I’m sad I won’t get to see anymore of his work. Rest in peace Mr. Jobs.

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Nathan Palmer is a visiting lecturer at Georgia Southern University. He is a passionate educator, the founder of Sociology Source, and the editor of Sociology in Focus.

If you would like to write a post for Sociological Images, please see our Guidelines for Guest Bloggers.

This week I listened to a Freakonomics podcast featuring Economics PhD-student twins, Alison and Steve Sexton.  They had studied the phenomenon of conspicuous conservation, which I’ve defined elsewhere as “the (often lavish) spending on ‘green’ products designed mainly to advertise one’s environmentally-moral righteousness.”  The Sexton’s studied how much people are willing to pay for the conspiciousness of their conservation.

They found that, in places where being environmentally-friendly is looked upon positively, people will spend more (or gain less) to ensure that their conservation efforts are obvious. For example, people will sometimes have their solar panels mounted on the shady side of their house. Why? It’s the side that faces the street. Why have solar panels if no one in the neighborhood can see that you do?  Likewise, the Prius is so popular in part because it is obviously a hybrid; no other car looks like it, so it can’t be mistaken for a “regular” (person’s) car.

I thought of this willingness to pay to display one’s environmental thoughtfulness while visiting Goldstein’s Bagels in La Cañada, CA this week. They had this photograph proudly displayed:

I just love how not only are they paying to keep the highway clean, they’re being rewarded with a big advertisement for their store alongside the freeway, AND they get to take a picture of that sign and put it up for all to see.  It’s win-win-win; a win for the environment and a double win for Goldstein’s.

The Sexton’s argue that all of this conspicuous conservation is probably good.  Competing to be environmentally-friendly translates into more conservation, no matter what the motivation. (Especially as compared to conspicuous consumption; remember the Hummer?)  Accordingly, they suggest that public policy should focus on incentivizing the types of conservation efforts that aren’t visible, like insulation and weather-proofed windows, and leave the showy stuff to the market.

For another example of conspicuous conservation, see our post on faux-oil slicked shoes purchased to benefit the Gulf; on conspicuous consumption, check out the Louis Vitton mommy diva birthday cake; and see this post on conspicuous intellectual consumption.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.