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.