Before learning how to apply social psychological research and theory in real life scenarios, it is important to be able to synthesize complex information and relay this information

CONTENT SUMMARY 1

Content Summary: Week One

Student Name

Liberty University

(Note: Include all elements in APA Format: Title Page, Body, Reference Page) 2

CONTENT SUMMARY 2

Content Summary: Week One

Social psychology is a continuously growing field that is considered fairly new to the

scientific world, in comparison to other psychological fields. Social psychology scientifically

studies individuals in regards to their thoughts, feelings, and behavioral patterns, all within a

social context (Kassin et al., 2017). Social psychology is a highly impacting field that offers

insight into a variety of practical situations, such as cultural variations on behavior, political

concerns, and economical perspectives. Through the use of qualitative and quantitative research,

social psychology aims to uncover various aspects of social phenomena, such as obedience,

aggression, and social influence (Kassin et al., 2017). Each specific phenomena will be

discussed at length in the following paragraphs. (Note: Must be 1 Paragraph (5-7 sentences) / Must

contain the appropriate header / *Doesn’t have to contain sources in this paragraph, but must introduce the

material for the week and give a broad summary of what will be discussed.)

Key Topics

Behavioral Obedience

In society, obedience is a learned action of complying to an order or command due to the

submission of authority (Milgram, 1963). Obedience is a behavioral outcome that is often

exhibited from an individual when the opposing relational component carries an amount of

power in the relationship. The act of obedience can have either beneficial or detrimental effects

on a situation, depending upon the underlying purpose of the commanded action (Milgram,

1963). Beneficial acts of obedience such as when individuals abide to the traffic laws aid to the

positive flow of society. Beneficial obedience can often stem from cooperative interdependence

and the value orientation of maximizing the outcome for both self and other (Rumble, 2011).

CONTENT SUMMARY 3

Detrimental acts of obedience such as the Nazi officer efforts in World War II aid to the

hindrance of society, and typically stem from unilateral dependence and partner control (Kassin

et al., 2017; Rumble 2011). (Note: Must be 1 Paragraph (5-7 sentences) / Must contain the appropriate

header / Must contain a MINIMUM of 2 SOURCES (Ex: Text, Theory Book, Assigned Articles, or other

Journal articles that you find that relate to this topic. **The idea is to HIGHLIGHT the 3-5 Major

topics/ideas that have been discussed ACROSS all of the Assigned Reading material for the week.)

Human Aggression

Human aggression is the complex dynamic of the social self that is often a behavioral

response to a combination of internal and external factors. Aggression can be manifested in

many forms, such as active aggression shown in the Zimbardo study with the guards’ harsh

behavior towards the prisoners, or non-assertive aggression that was shown in the Milgram

study, in which the subjects permitted the experimenter to infringe upon their ethical boundaries

by continuing to obey the experimenters’ orders to administer harmful shocks to the victim

(Haney et al., 1973; Milgram, 1963). Aggression can vary in its presented form based upon

cultural differences, as well as its external trigger, such as alcohol or violent video games

(Kassin et al., 2017). It’s also important to determine how the situation influences the expression

of aggressive behavior. People look for social cues such as norms, authority, peers to determine

how to express their behavior, even if it’s aggressive in nature. (Note: Must be 1 Paragraph (5-7

sentences) / Must contain the appropriate header / Must contain a MINIMUM of 2 SOURCES (Ex: Text,

Theory Book, Assigned Articles, or other Journal articles that you find that relate to this topic. **The idea is

to HIGHLIGHT the 3-5 Major topics/ideas that have been discussed ACROSS all of the Assigned Reading

material for the week.)

CONTENT SUMMARY 4

Interdependence

Interdependence results when two or more interacting individuals have influence on the

behavioral outcomes of each other (Rumble, 2011). Interdependence stems from the

interactionist perspective that human behavior is due to both the individuals’ personality and the

surrounding social context (Kassin et al., 2017; Rumble, 2011). A personality that includes

elements of understanding and dependability, coupled with an environment of mutual partner

control will likely lead to a positive outcome of cooperative interdependence (Rumble, 2011).

Due to cultural differences, the act of interdependence can be more prevalent in certain cultures

and societies (Kassin et al., 2017). It is interesting to see how a culture’s adoption of

interdependence influences much of how the culture operates. (Note: Must be 1 Paragraph (5-7

sentences) / Must contain the appropriate header / Must contain a MINIMUM of 2 SOURCES (Ex: Text,

Theory Book, Assigned Articles, or other Journal articles that you find that relate to this topic. **The idea is

to HIGHLIGHT the 3-5 Major topics/ideas that have been discussed ACROSS all of the Assigned Reading

material for the week.)

Conclusion

Behavioral obedience is the action of complying to an order, typically from an authority

or respected figure. Obedience is necessary for many beneficial components of society, but can

also be harmful to society when the obeyed order crosses a legal, ethical, or moral boundary.

Aggression can be a result of negative acts of obedience, such as the Nazi actions of World War

II. Interdependence can play a role in both acts of obedience and aggression, dependent upon the

characteristics of the relationship and individuals’ personalities. Together these behaviors help us

better understand human beings in social contexts. (Note: Must be 1 Paragraph (5-7 Sentences) /

Include the appropriate header / Summarize the main elements of your weekly summary)

CONTENT SUMMARY 5

References

Haney, C., Banks, C., & Zimbardo, P. (1973). A study of prisoners and guards in a simulated

prison. Naval Research Reviews, 1-17.

Kassin, S., Fein, S., & Markus, H.R. (2017). Social psychology. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.

Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. The Journal of Abnormal and Social

Psychology, 67(4), 371-378.

Rumble, A. (2011). Interdependence in social interaction. In D. Chadee (Ed.), Theories in social

psychology (191-207). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

(Note: Make sure to Reference All Assigned Reading Materials for the week along with any additional

materials that you decided to add)

BRIEF REPORT

Social Heuristics and Social Roles: Intuition Favors Altruism for Women but Not for Men

David G. Rand and Victoria L. Brescoll Yale University

Jim A. C. Everett Oxford University

Valerio Capraro Center for Mathematics and Computer Science,

Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Hélène Barcelo Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, Berkeley, CA

Are humans intuitively altruistic, or does altruism require self-control? A theory of social heuristics, whereby intuitive responses favor typically successful behaviors, suggests that the answer may depend on who you are. In particular, evidence suggests that women are expected to behave altruistically, and are punished for failing to be altruistic, to a much greater extent than men. Thus, women (but not men) may internalize altruism as their intuitive response. Indeed, a meta-analysis of 13 new experiments and 9 experiments from other groups found that promoting intuition relative to deliberation increased giving in a Dictator Game among women, but not among men (Study 1, N � 4,366). Furthermore, this effect was shown to be moderated by explicit sex role identification (Study 2, N � 1,831): the more women described themselves using traditionally masculine attributes (e.g., dominance, independence) relative to traditionally feminine attributes (e.g., warmth, tenderness), the more deliberation reduced their altruism. Our findings shed light on the connection between gender and altruism, and highlight the importance of social heuristics in human prosociality.

Keywords: altruism, prosociality, intuition, dual process, gender

Supplemental materials: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000154.supp

Humans often choose to help others. Yet such prosociality typically requires us to expend time, effort, and money. What makes us willing to do so? Recently, there has been considerable interest in exploring human prosociality using a dual process perspective (for a review, see Zaki & Mitchell, 2013), where decisions are conceptualized as resulting from competition be- tween cognitive processes that are automatic, fast, and intuitive, versus those that are controlled, slow, and deliberative (Kahneman,

2003; Sloman, 1996). Does prosociality require deliberative self- control, or do prosocial impulses get reined in by the calculus of self-interest?

The Social Heuristics Hypothesis (SHH) has been proposed as a theoretical framework for answering this question (Peysakhovich & Rand, 2015; Rand et al., 2014). The SHH adds an explicitly dual process lens to theories regarding the adoption of typically advan- tageous behaviors (e.g., theories based on “spillover” effects [Ki- yonari, Tanida, & Yamagishi, 2000], norm internalization [Chudek & Henrich, 2011], and consequences of interdependence in one’s social interaction experiences [Van Lange, De Bruin, Otten, & Joireman, 1997]). The SHH posits that the social strategies which are typically successful in daily life become automatized specifi- cally as intuitive responses. Deliberation can then override these intuitions and adjust one’s behavior in light of the details of the specific decision at hand.

In particular, the SHH argues that a key component of deliber- ation is the consideration of strategic concerns and payoff maxi- mization, which favors self-interested behavior. As a result, delib- eration is predicted to sometimes undermine prosocial intuitions, but not to push selfish intuitions toward prosociality. A mathemat- ical model of dual-process agents playing Prisoner’s Dilemma games formalizes this prediction (Bear & Rand, 2016): among all

This article was published Online First February 25, 2016. David G. Rand, Departments of Psychology and Economics, and School

of Management, Yale University; Victoria L. Brescoll, School of Manage- ment, Yale University; Jim A. C. Everett, Department of Experimental Psychology, Oxford University; Valerio Capraro, Center for Mathematics and Computer Science, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Hélène Barcelo, Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, Berkeley, CA.

Funding by the John Templeton Foundation and the National Science Foundation (Grant 0932078000) is gratefully acknowledged. We also thank the authors of the studies included in our meta-analysis for sharing their data.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to David G. Rand, Department of Psychology, Yale University, Box 208205, New Haven, CT 06520-8205. E-mail: [email protected]

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Journal of Experimental Psychology: General © 2016 American Psychological Association 2016, Vol. 145, No. 4, 389–396 0096-3445/16/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000154

389

possible strategies, the dual-process strategies that perform best (and thus are favored by evolution, social learning, and/or strategic decision-making) use deliberation to switch from cooperation to defection in one-shot anonymous settings. Conversely, strategies that use deliberation to switch from defection to cooperation (under any circumstances) never perform well, and are always disfavored.

By this account, where typically successful strategies are intu- itive, intuition should favor cooperation for most people: in the context of daily life, most important interactions (e.g., with co- workers, friends, and family) are repeated. Thus, because cooper- ation is non-zero-sum, cooperating can be in one’s long-run self- interest: cooperating with others today can induce others to cooperate with you in the future (Rand & Nowak, 2013). Con- versely, when interacting in settings where future consequences are not enough to incentivize cooperation (e.g., one-shot anony- mous laboratory experiments), it is never in one’s self-interest to cooperate; and, therefore, deliberation should favor selfishness. As predicted by this account, experimentally promoting intuition rel- ative to deliberation via time pressure or a conceptual priming exercise has been found to increase cooperation on average in one-shot anonymous interactions (Cone & Rand, 2014; Lotz, 2015; Protzko, Ouimette, & Schooler, 2015; Rand, Greene, & Nowak, 2012; Rand, Newman, & Wurzbacher, 2015); for a meta- analysis, see Rand et al. (2014).

The implications of the SHH for altruism (unilaterally giving resources to others), however, remain unclear. On the one hand, a narrow read of the SHH suggests that, like deliberation, intuition should disfavor altruism: transferring money to someone and then having them transfer it back does not make one better off than just keeping the original money, and so altruism (unlike cooperation) is not advantageous even in repeated games. On the other hand, a broader interpretation of the SHH suggests that intuition may favor altruism in a similar way to what has been observed with cooper- ation. If being selfish in the context of zero-sum interactions is seen negatively by others, it may create reputational costs in the context of other (non-zero-sum) interactions. If so, then altruism could be payoff maximizing in the long run. However, it may not be the case that all people are harmed from being seen as selfish, such that moderators may exist for whether altruism is advanta- geous in daily life (and thus favored by intuition).

A particularly compelling candidate for such moderation is gender. Specifically, we might expect women, but not men, to have altruism as their intuitive social response for two reasons. First, a large body of work suggests that the behavior of men and women is governed by stereotypes concerning their social roles; and in particular that women are expected to be communal and unselfish, whereas men are expected to be agentic and independent (Eagly, 1987). When women behave in ways that are perceived as insufficiently communal, they are not only liked less, but they are also less likely to be helped, hired, promoted, paid fairly, and given status, power, and independence in their jobs (Heilman & Okimoto, 2007). Thus, women are subject to much stronger ex- pectations that they will behave altruistically (Heilman & Chen, 2005). Furthermore, recent work has found that women are well aware of these gender stereotype-based behavioral prescriptions, and their concern over encountering backlash effects from violat- ing these stereotypes helps explain, in part, a range of behaviors that systematically vary by gender (Brescoll, 2011). As a result,

behaving altruistically in accordance with others’ expectations is typically advantageous for women.

Second, the fact that women disproportionately occupy roles that either mandate self-sacrificing and altruistic behavior (e.g., mother) or, at the very least, require a great deal of other-oriented, communal behavior (e.g., nurse; Eagly, 1987), may cause women to habituate to being altruistic. And even women who do not explicitly occupy such family or work roles may acquire altruistic intuitive social responses because female peer groups are markedly more communal and egalitarian than male peer groups, and thus make self-sacrificing, unselfish behavior socially adaptive (Mac- coby, 1998). Taken together, consideration of both the expecta- tions of others and the behaviors one engages in regularly point to intuition favoring altruism for women more so than men.

In this paper, we experimentally investigated the role of intu- ition and deliberation in altruism, and the potential moderating role of gender. In Study 1, a meta-analysis of 22 giving studies where cognitive processing was manipulated revealed the predicted in- teraction between cognitive processing mode and gender: promot- ing intuition increased altruism in women but had no significant effect in men. Study 2 then investigated the mechanism behind this effect by examining whether identification with gender norms moderated the sex differences found in Study 1.

Study 1

Method

In Study 1, we conducted a meta-analysis (N � 4,366) of new and existing studies looking at the effects of experimentally ma- nipulating the use of intuition versus deliberation on giving in the Dictator Game (DG). In the DG, participants unilaterally decide how to divide actual money between themselves and an anony- mous recipient. Across studies, we used the percentage of the endowment given to the recipient as our measure of altruism.

To minimize file-drawer effects, we began by including all data each of the authors of the present study had ever collected where cognitive processing was manipulated in a zero-sum dictator game (including failed pilots, experiments with problematic design fea- tures, etc.). We had 13 such experiments (all previously unpub- lished), each of which manipulated cognitive processing using either time constraints or conceptual priming. To avoid selection effects, we included participants who disobeyed the time con- straints.

Reducing the amount of time subjects have to decide shortens the window of opportunity for deliberation to rein in intuition, leading to more intuitive decisions (Wright, 1974). Therefore, in the time constraint experiments, reliance on intuition was in- creased by asking subjects to make their giving decision in less than a specified number of seconds (time pressure) and was reduced by asking subjects to wait and think for at least a specified number of seconds before deciding (time delay). The conceptual priming conditions, on the other hand, used a writing exercise at the outset of the experiment to induce more or less intuitive decision making (Shenhav, Rand, & Greene, 2012). Reliance on intuition was increased by asking subjects to write about a time in their life where following their intuition worked out well, or where carefully reasoning through a problem worked out poorly. Reli- ance on intuition was decreased by asking subjects to write about

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390 RAND, BRESCOLL, EVERETT, CAPRARO, AND BARCELO

a time in their life where following their intuition worked out poorly, or where carefully reasoning through a problem worked out well.

We also included data from other labs by doing a comprehen- sive database search and requesting raw data (including gender) for experiments in which cognitive processing was manipulated in dictator games with the standard setup of (a) a single anonymous recipient, and (b) a decision space ranging from completely selfish to completely altruistic. For cognitive process manipulations, in addition to time pressure and conceptual priming, we also included experiments that used cognitive load (where participants had to engage in a more or less cognitively demanding task, such as holding a 7-digit vs. 3-digit number in working memory, while completing the DG).1

In total, we received data sets for nine additional experiments (Benjamin, Brown, & Shapiro, 2013; Cornelissen, Dewitte, & War- lop, 2011; Evans, 2014; Hauge, Brekke, Johansson, Johansson- Stenman, & Svedsäter, 2014; Kinnunen & Windmann, 2013). Thus, Study 1 aggregated data from 22 experiments, for a total of 4,366 participants (52.7% female, Mage � 29.8). (Please see online supple- mental material Table S1, which provides details for each experi- ment).

Results and Discussion

As predicted, random-effects meta-analysis of DG giving found a significant interaction between gender and cognitive processing mode, effect size 5.5 percentage points, 95% CI [2.6, 8.5], Z � 3.66, p � .0001 (see Figure 1). There was no evidence of publi- cation bias (Egger’s test, t � �.28, p � .79; Begg’s test, z � �.3

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