I'm here, you're here, why not?

I dated a girl over the summer, and i'm pretty sure it's safe to say that the entire basis for our relationship was the mere exposure effect. The mere exposure effect (Zajonc, 1968) implies that simply being around someone will eventually improve your opinions of them, so long as their initial impression was at least not terrible. This girl Victoria and I had met before during my senior year of high school when she was dating one of my good friends. She seemed cool enough, but all of our interactions were contingent on my being around my friend, and right around that time is where he and I had a bit of a falling out. However, this past summer she showed up to my friend's high school graduation, then started hanging out with my friends and I on a regular basis. Basically all i knew about her at that point was that she dated Cameron my senior year, but as we hung out more and more, one thing lead to another and we started dating. It worked fine over the summer, but basically as soon as we both went to out respective schools, it fell apart and we broke up. In retrospect, our breaking up had a lot to do with the fact that we weren't seeing each other basically every day. This has a lot of different effects on relationships, but in ours it took away the basis of the mere exposure effect. Exposure.

Zajonc, R. B. (1968). Attitudinal effects of mere exposure, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Monograph Supplement, 9(2), 1-27.

Oh, Internet. What a glorious social tool you are.

Let me preface this by saying that i love the internet. The ability to obtain any amount of information on a given subject almost instantly has completely revolutionized the way that we interact with the world around us. That being said, there have also been some not too shining examples of what happens when you grant someone anonymity and an audience. I propose to you the following: A well known podcaster's "Theory of Internet Dickwad"

If you've ever been on youtube, you've no doubt seen evidence of this phenomenon in the form of what the internet calls "Trolls". A troll is someone who gets on a forum or other place where opinions are exchanged and either puts forth a purposely controversial idea, or takes a dump on someone else's opinion purely for the enjoyment of seeing the other people in the forum throw their collective yet futile rage at the troll.

A good example of Trolling which i saw just a few weeks ago went as follows: go to a blogging site dominated by mostly female, mostly liberal bloggers and post this.

I highly doubt this is this person's actual opinion, but they chose to post it to elicit a flaming rage-filled response from the collective community. Frustratingly for the people who this offended (and hilariously for those of us who realize its not a good idea to feed the trolls) it is impossible to really do anything about this kind of thing other than to ignore it.

How does this relate to social psychology you ask? I'll tell you. Social psychologist recognize this phenomenon and attribute it to two factors. First, the anonymity afforded by the internet reduces the person's feelings of accountability, making them feel less responsible for their actions because they won't have to suffer the consequences for them (Zimbardo, 1969). Second, there is reduced self awareness in an anonymous setting, meaning that not only do people not feel responsible for themselves, they are actually less likely to consider the consequences of their actions in the first place, leading to more dickwad-ish behavior. (Zimbardo, 1969)

Zimbardo, P. G. (1969). The human choice: Individuation, reason, and order versus deindividuation, impulse, and chaos. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 17, 237-307.

Get to know yourself by getting to know yourself.

Strangers to Ourselves by Timothy D. Wilson is a book all about the unconscious. Specifically, Wilson outlines his view of our unconscious and it's effects on how we perceive ourselves. Wilson starts out the book by spending the first few chapters defining his terms, specifically what the unconscious is, what it isn't, and what it does. Wilson terms his view of the unconscious as an “adaptive unconscious” because he views the unconscious as something which has evolved over time to serve the needs which have presented themselves. He is very clear on the fact that the adaptive unconscious is not Freud’s unconscious. He says that Freud was too limited in his scope of what the unconscious mind was capable of, pigeonholing it into the most primitive of tasks and leaving all of the “higher order” tasks to the conscious mind.

Wilson then delves into the specifics of what the unconscious mind does, and how those tasks influence our conscious perceptions. He outlines the differences between conscious and non-conscious processing, going into great detail concerning the absolute necessity of the unconscious both as a regulator of our internal state, as an interpreter of our environment. He spends the majority of the second chapter talking about a hypothetical person who woke up one day without an unconscious mind. Wilson calls this hypothetical person Mr D. in honor of how terrible of an idea Descartes' mind-body dualism was, and outlines what would go wrong as soon as Mr D. woke up. Hilariously, his problems would begin at getting out of bed, as our proprioceptive sense (the thing that tells our brains where our limbs are) is completely unconscious, and therefore Mr D. would have to concentrate fiercely on all of his movements.

The book then moves on from describing the unconscious to outlining how we can gain insight into our unconscious desires. A lot of what Wilson describes relates to Bem's Self Perception Theory (Bem, 1972), which says that when internal cues are difficult to understand, we turn to observing our own behavior to gain self-insight. Many of his examples revolve around overcoming different biases in how we perceive things, such as the fundamental attribution error. The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to underestimate the impact of situational factors on a person's behavior (Ross, 1977).

I chose this book for the same reason I chose to pursue psychology; because I love learning what makes people who they are and do what they do. In that regard, this book was like a gold mine. The entire time I was reading I was amazed by the unconscious mind, and how we know so much, yet so little about how it works. I would recommend this book to anyone who ever does things, then wonders why they just did what they did. In terms of accessibility, Strangers to Ourselves is written in a way that anyone can understand. There is some Psychological jargon, but Wilson does a terrific job of explaining what these terms mean in a way that the layperson can understand. For instance, Wilson describes a cognitive bias which causes people to interpret outside information in a way which is consistent with their current worldview. While this is a concept that someone with a background in psychology would recognize immediately as a confirmation bias, Wilson That being said, he doesn't shy away from using empirical evidence to back up his claims, so the more scholarly among his audience can appreciate the depth of the claims he makes.

In terms of how applicable this book is to everyday life, I think the term “very” sums that up quite nicely. The whole point of the book is to grant the reader more insight into his or her unconscious. The concepts in the book, as with most of social psychology, are phenomena which people see and experience on a day to day basis. One of the biggest 'aha' moments for me was when Wilson described the unconscious mind as having a personality of its own. At first that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but the more I thought about it, the more it started to make sense. Since our unconscious is responsible for interpreting various information, wouldn't it make sense for our unconscious to do this in a stable, predictable manner? And since a personality at it's most basic is a characteristic pattern of behavior and thought (Allport, 1961), doesn't the unconscious meet that criteria? Knowing this, Wilson goes on to explain ways in which we can better know our unconscious self, so that we can make decisions that better resonate with our unconscious' drives and motivation.

Wilson himself has been researching self-knowledge for many years, and has published an extensive body of work on the subject. He is currently a Psychologist at the University of Virginia, and has been for many years. This, in conjunction with his use of empirical sources throughout the book makes this a rather scholarly book, but by no means out of reach for the lay person.

My favorite part about the book was the flow of it. It went nicely from one point to the next in a way that was both natural and easily followable. On the other side of the same coin, however, my least favorite part of the book would have to be that it seemed to slow down to a snail's pace at parts. Some of the examples he gave seemed redundant, and although they were used to drive home important points, some of the examples seemed almost unnecessary.

To me, the take-home point of the book is this: In psychology's infancy, a great emphasis was placed on the unconscious mind with Freud, whose un-testable ideas led behaviorists to reject the unconscious almost outright. Now, however, the unconscious is making a comeback in the Psychological community. No longer is the concept of non-conscious thought met in academic circles with a series of phallic jokes, but with a growing recognition of the role which the unconscious plays in cognition, and the overall human experience. With this renewed recognition of the unconscious' importance comes the equally important idea that to know oneself truly, one must have some inclining to their own unconscious desires.

Allport, G.W. (1961). Pattern and growth in personality. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Bem. D. J. (1972). Self-perception theory. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 6, pp. 1-62). New York: Academic Press

Ross, M., Greene, D., & House, P. (1977). The false consensus phenomenon: An attributional bias in self-perception and social-perception processes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13, 279-301.

You want to do WHAT?!

The door in the face technique is a technique used by salespeople and others to convince people to comply with them. The door in the face technique involves proposing a completely outlandish idea to someone which you know they will reject, and then putting forth the idea you actually want them to comply with (Cialdini, 2007). This technique works for two reasons, the first of which is perceptual contrast (Cialdini, 2007). The larger, outrageous request makes the smaller request seem menial by comparison, so the person is much more likely to consider compliance. The second reason the door in the face technique works is the idea of reciprocal concessions (Cialdini, 2007). Because it appears that the person using the door in the face technique is making a concession in what they want, the person who it is being used on is more likely to make a concession of their own and accept the smaller proposal(Cialdini, 2007).

I have used this technique before on my parents on many occasions, but one which sticks out the most is when i wanted to get my parents to accept me wanting to major in Psychology. You see, my family is very, very math and science heavy. My dad programs for IBM, my mom has two math degrees, i have three architect uncles and an aunt with a Ph.D in Biochemistry. At this point my parents thought i was going to go into engineering, and had gotten me transfered to the school which offered engineering classes. Needless to say, i wasn't totally convinced my parents would initially approve of me doing Psychology, since their vision of psychology at the time was definitely not one of a hard science. In order to garner this approval, i first told my dad that i wanted to be a history major. That really didn't go over well. After letting that stew for a couple of minutes, i told him "well, maybe i could do a social science like, i dunno, Psychology". At this point, anything using the word science was a better option that history, and he was much less reticent of my decision than i think he would have been if i had just told him straight up that i wanted to do Psychology.

Cialdini, R.B. (2007). Influence: The psychology of persuasion. New York: HarperCollins.

Is it really worth it? Effort justification.

Cognative dissonance is a theory proposed by Leon Festinger (Festinger, 1957) which proposes that when our behaviors and beliefs are incongruent, we experience a degree of psychological discomfort. In order to alleviate this, we change our attitudes to match our behavior. One way by which people alleviate cognitive dissonance is a process called effort justification (Aronson & Mills, 1959). Effort justification is a way in which people rationalize their attitudes towards something because they have worked so hard on it (Aronson & Mills, 1959).

One example of effort justification would be my refusal to let go of my piece of crap Honda Civic because I've put so much work into it. Over the course of time which i have had it, I have replaced the entire steering system, 3/4 of the suspension, both drive axles (one of them three times), along with four different engine sensors. And yet despite all of my hard work, it is still a money pit, relatively unsafe, and generally a hunk of crap. The driver door leaks, the two back doors don't work, all of the tint has come off, but decided to leave behind some intense glue residue on all of the glass, making it neigh on impossible to see out of the car, and the car's vitals hold fluids like a sieve (the freon, clutch, power steering, and oil systems all have pretty substantial leak issues). Why in the world, then, would someone like myself so avid about automobile performance choose to drive this kind of machine? The answer lies mostly in the fact that I've worked so freaking hard to keep that thing running in the first place that I am unwilling to let all of that work "go to waste" by getting a different car. Does this make sense? No, but somehow every time I get into my car, all i can think of is how many hours i've spent underneath it making it drivable.

Aronson, E., & Mills, J. (1959). The effect of severity of initiation on liking for a group. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 59(2), 177-181. doi:10.1037/h0047195.
Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford University Press. Retrieved from PsycINFO database.

Ohhhhhh, Shiny. Central vs. peripheral routes of processing.

As an avid car enthusiast, I sometimes have people come to me and ask my opinions of cars they are thinking of buying. I assume this is because these people know that not only do i enjoy looking up specs and consumer reports for cars, but I am also motivated by my general craving for information to learn as much about the car as I possibly can. When doing this, I utilize a process called the central route of processing (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). The central route of processing is one that people use when they are highly motivated to make a correct decision, or the decision they are making is high in personal relevance (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). The flip side to the central route is the peripheral route, which is the way people make decisions when not highly motivated, or when the decision is low in personal relevance (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). Peripheral route decisions are influenced by heuristics, as well as other factors such as how attractive the source presenting the information is, or simply how the person making the decision is feeling. On the other hand, central route decisions are not influenced by these factors, instead the decision is made by carefully examining the facts, and using logic to make the best choice (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986).

Consider this as an example. Someone recently asked me about my opinion on Ford Mustangs, specifically the GT models from 2005-2008. I told them that, in my opinion they should wait a year and buy a 2011 v6 mustang used instead of the one they were looking at buying, since they were in no real need of a new car. My rationale for saying that was thus: the new v6's have just as much horsepower as the old v8's, they get much better gas mileage, cost less to insure, and use a new, more reliable transmission. All of this, and they would end up paying about the same for a one-year-old v6 as a five-year-old v8. Very logical, yes? Central route processing. They informed me recently that, in spite of my opinion, they had purchased a 2005 GT because, and I quote "It was prettier, and the engine sounded good". Their decision was obviously influenced by factors outside of logic, hence they used the peripheral route.

Petty, R., E. & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). Communication and persuasion: Central and peripheral routes to attitude change. New York: Springer-Verlag.

Switching off the self monitor: a day with no filter.

According to Snyder (1987), self-monitoring is the tendency for a person to regulate their behavior to meet the demands of social situations. As someone who is moderately high on the Self-Monitoring Scale (Snyder, 1987), I had wondered what it would be like to live a day where I didn't change my behavior to fit the situation I was in. In order to implement this change, I went through the whole day as if I didn't give a hoot what others thought of me. As a mild self monitor, this was rather difficult and I often had to just turn my social brain off and just roll with whatever was happening.

One situation where it was really obvious that I was not self monitoring was at work. First off, I showed up without my work shirt. Instead I wore my work shorts and shoes with a Grey v-neck t shirt. When my manager asked where my shirt was, I told him it was in my car, but I didn't feel like wearing it because it was way too big for me (which it is) and the shirt I was wearing was more comfortable (which it was). I had always wondered what would happen if I did something like that, because my manager is kind of a push-over, but I had never taken the notion seriously because wearing my work shirt was the proper thing to do in that situation. Not surprisingly, he just shrugged off my comment and didn't make a huge deal about me being out of uniform. After that, I continued my low self-monitoring streak by not adapting my language to fit where I was. I'm pretty abrasive to myself and around people I know well, because they know I mean no harm by what I say. However, when I'm at work I tone the madness down and just shrug off whatever weird stuff my co-workers say, and just go with the flow. However, with my self-monitoring turned way down it was on like donkey kong. One of my co-workers called me a hipster (note: I don't especially like hipsters, actually they make me pretty angry) because of my wardrobe choice, and seemingly out of nowhere I tore into him about what his choice of vehicle, a lifted ford f-150, said about the size of his gentleman’s parts. This caught him a little off guard, but he soon recovered and we went back and forth like that all night. It was fun having a little bit of a pissing contest with him, and good times were had by all. At one point a co-worker asked if I was on drugs because I seemed “a lot more energetic than normal”. I told him no, I was just letting loose a little bit. He said he thought I should keep doing drugs, because it was fun to watch me mess with people like I was doing.

Before I undertook this adventure, I was pretty nervous that people would misunderstand my cutting remarks and think that I was being serious, but as my day progressed I noticed that nobody really took anything I said too seriously, which was nice. I have often chided myself for being a little slow on the uptake in social situations, but seeing my behavior I realize that rather than taking forever to say anything, I'm taking forever to say something that I think people will like to hear. I think in the future I could use this to my advantage, altering my level of self monitoring in certain situations so as not to just fade into the background like I usually do. After being a low self-monitor for a day, I learned that my self-concept is built largely on my being a mid-to-high self-monitor, because I felt like a completely different person than I usually was. Apparently my self-concept is rather malleable, because after changing one part of that self-concept I changed a lot of how I viewed myself as a social being. I would actually consider making this a permanent change if I didn't know that there are people out there who don't really appreciate my brand of cutting humor (ironically, I seem to be related to a good number of these types). Also, I'm pretty sure I'd get myself into some pretty deep trouble in more structured social settings if I just let myself go like that all the time.

Snyder, M. (1987). Public appearances/private realities: The psychology of self-monitoring. New York: Freeman