The bystander effect and social control behavior: the effect of the presence of others on people's reactions to norm violations

Observers of deviant social behavior sometimes communicate disapproval directly or indirectly to the perpetrator of a deviant act. This reaction has been termed ‘social control’. Three field studies were conducted to explore the influence of the number of bystander‐observers on the likelihood of social control. We predicted that the presence of others would inhibit people's tendency to communicate their disapproval to the deviant but only if personal implication was low. In the first study, we measured participants' perceptions of two fictive situations, one in which a deviant draws graffiti in an elevator of a shopping center and one in which a deviant litters in a small neighborhood park by throwing a plastic bottle in the bushes. As expected, participants considered both behaviors to be equally counternormative but felt personally more implicated by the littering behavior in the park. In Studies 2 and 3, the two situations were enacted with confederates of the experimenter. Naïve bystanders served as participants, and social control was the primary dependent variable. Consistent with our hypothesis, we found evidence for a bystander effect in the low personal implication situation (‘graffiti in the elevator’) but not in the high personal implication situation (‘littering in park’). These results make clear that perceived personal implication moderates the extent to which people are inhibited by the presence of others when they decide whether they should exert social control or not. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Social identity and personality processes: Non‐Aboriginal Australian identity and Neuroticism

There are ongoing debates both in personality psychology and social psychology on the causes and consequences of personality stability and change. Recent work on social roles suggests that as people change roles (e.g. employee to manager), different experiences and demands are internalised into one's self‐concept shaping identity and personality. In this paper, the emphasis moves beyond ‘roles’ to other group memberships (e.g. ethnicity) in shaping one's self‐view and self‐rated personality (e.g. Neuroticism). The results of two experiments demonstrated that the salience of a particular group membership (as a Non‐Aboriginal Australian) did significantly impact on Neuroticism. Such findings suggest that social identity processes may offer a hitherto neglected avenue for helping to explain personality (dis)continuity. Implications of these findings for both fields are discussed. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘Too black or not black enough’: Social identity complexity in the political rhetoric of Barack Obama

The election of the first African‐American President of the United States, Barack Obama, has been widely recognised as an extraordinary milestone in the history of the United States and indeed the world. With the use of a discursive psychological approach combined with central theoretical principles derived from social identity and self‐categorisation theories, this paper analyses a corpus of speeches Obama delivered during his candidacy for president to examine how he attended to and managed his social identity in his political discourse. Building on a social identity model of leadership, we examine specifically how Obama mobilises political support and social identification by building an identity for himself as a prototypical representative of the American people, notwithstanding the protracted public debate within both the White and Black American communities that had questioned and contested Obama's identity. Moreover, we demonstrate how Obama managed the dilemmas around his identity by actively crafting an in‐group identity that was oriented to an increasingly socially diverse America—a diversity that he himself exemplified and embodied as a leader. As an ‘entrepreneur’ of identity, Obama's rhetorical project was to position himself as an exceptional leader, whose very difference was represented as ‘living proof’ of the widely shared collective values that constitute the ‘American Dream’. Drawing on social identity complexity theory, we suggest that by providing more inclusive and complex categories of civic and national identity, Obama's presidency has the potential to radically transform what it means to be a prototypical in‐group member in America. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Social identification effects in social dilemmas: a transformation of motives

Three experimental studies were conducted to examine two alternative explanations for the widely established positive effect of social identification in promoting cooperation in social dilemmas. We hypothesised that social identification effects could be either ascribed to (1) an increase in the value assigned to the collective good (i.e. goal‐transformation hypothesis) or (2) an enhancement of trust in the cooperation of other group members (i.e. goal‐amplification hypothesis). To disentangle these two explanations, we examined the effects of social identification on the contributions to a public good of people with a different social value orientation (i.e. pre‐existing differences in preferred outcome distribution between self and others). Following the goal transformation hypothesis, we predicted that an increased group identification would raise contributions, in particular for people essentially concerned with their personal welfare (i.e. pro‐self value orientation). Alternatively, following the goal amplification hypothesis it was expected that increased group identification would primarily affect decisions of people concerned with the collective welfare (i.e. prosocial value orientation). The results of all three studies provided support for the goal‐transformation rather than goal‐amplification hypothesis, suggesting that ‘selfish’ individuals can be encouraged to cooperate by increasing the salience of their group membership. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Power and formation: New Foundations for a radical concept of Power

A radical concept of power identifies social processes which (whether as ‘ideology’, ‘false consciousness’, or ‘the spectacle') influence people's actions by moulding their beliefs or desires. However, seeing people as deluded is to risk treating them as less than fully autonomous beings. Despite his libertarian intentions, Lukes fails to guard against this paternalistic implication. His view still implies that it is the social critic who is in the best position to identify the real interests of an oppressed group. Here it is argued that power should be conceived as an intrusion on the ‘formative practices’ of people. It is possible to identify power as an unwanted influence on the processes in which people ‘form and discover’ interests, while maintaining that interests can only be self‐ascribed. This solution requires a concept of formation as both irreducibly social and yet potentially free. Neither Foucault nor Habermas can provide such a solution, despite some valuable insights. In the end, we must look at the influences of power on formative practices which are actual rather than idealized, productive rather than reflective, and which involve the whole person rather than merely the intellect.     

The Relationship Between Perceived Violation of Social Norms and Social Control: Situational Factors Influencing the Reaction to Deviance

Social control is the generic term for all reactions through which people express their disapproval to someone who engages in a counternormative behavior or who holds a counter-normative attitude. The literature on helping behavior suggests that perceived personal implication should play an important role in the decision of whether or not to exert social control. A field study involving 5 different experimental settings was conducted in order to test this hypothesis. Confederates engaged in a variety of behaviors that violated social norms. Perceived personal implication was consistently the best predictor of social control behavior, such that the more someone felt that a deviant behavior affected him or her personally, the more he or she was likely to communicate his or her disapproval to the deviant confederate. Perceived deviance of the behavior was a less powerful predictor of social control. These findings speak to the moderating factors of social control behavior and to the circumstances under which social norms protecting public property are likely to be perpetuated.     

Autonomic and subjective responsivity to emotional images in people with dissociative seizures

People with dissociative seizures (DS) report a range of difficulties in emotional functioning and exhibit altered responding to emotional facial expressions in experimental tasks. We extended this research by investigating subjective and autonomic reactivity (ratings of emotional valence, arousal and skin conductance responses [SCRs]) to general emotional images in 39 people with DS relative to 42 healthy control participants, whilst controlling for anxiety, depression, cognitive functioning and, where relevant, medication use. It was predicted that greater subjective negativity and arousal and increased SCRs in response to the affective pictures would be observed in the DS group. The DS group as a whole did not differ from controls in their subjective responses of valence and arousal. However, SCR amplitudes were greater in ‘autonomic responders’ with DS relative to ‘autonomic responders’ in the control group. A positive correlation was also observed between SCRs for highly arousing negative pictures and self‐reported ictal autonomic arousal, in DS ‘autonomic responders’. In the DS subgroup of autonomic ‘non‐responders’, differences in subjective responses were observed for some conditions, compared to control ‘non‐responders’. The findings indicate unaffected subjective responses to emotional images in people with DS overall. However, within the group of people with DS, there may be subgroups characterized by differences in emotional responding. One subgroup (i.e., ‘autonomic responders’) exhibit heightened autonomic responses but intact subjective emotional experience, whilst another subgroup (i.e., ‘autonomic non‐responders’) seem to experience greater subjective negativity and arousal for some emotional stimuli, despite less frequent autonomic reactions. The current results suggest that therapeutic interventions targeting awareness and regulation of physiological arousal and subjective emotional experience could be of value in some people with this disorder.     

Probability of reciprocation in repeated prisoner's dilemma games

Both social cooperation and self‐control require reciprocation. In social cooperation situations a single person's cooperative act, if not reciprocated by others, would be unreinforced both immediately and in the long term. Similarly, a single act of self‐control (refusing a single cigarette, for example), if not followed up by other such acts, would also be unreinforced immediately and in the long term. The present experiments varied probability of reciprocation in a prisoner's dilemma‐like game that could resemble a social cooperation or a self‐control situation. Participants earned points by playing against a computer. The computer offered the participant a choice between 5 or 6 points (‘cooperation’ by the computer) or between 1 or 2 points (‘defection’ by the computer). The participant's choice of the lesser alternative (‘cooperation’) or the greater alternative (‘defection’) on the current trial led, respectively, to cooperation or defection by the computer on the next trial with a probability (probability of reciprocation, PR) which could vary. When PR was greater than 63%, consistent cooperation maximized the participant's earnings. When PR was less than 63%, defection maximized earnings. Three conditions were studied: PR signaled by spinners; PR unsignaled; PR unsignaled with participants believing that they were playing with another person, not the computer. With PR = 100% (‘tit‐for‐tat’) and PR = 50%, the modal participant maximized earnings under all three conditions. With PR = 75%, participants maximized earnings only when PR was signaled. These results indicate that differences between people's tendency to cooperate with other people (social cooperation) and their tendency to cooperate with their own future interests (self‐control) may lie in differences in subjective PR. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Meaning of Social Inclusion to Young People Not in Employment,Education or Training

The ‘social inclusion’ of young people, particularly those who are ‘not in education, employment or training’, is a contemporary concern in policy discourses. However, it has been argued that the term ‘social inclusion’ is defined by adults and imposed on young people, and there is little understanding of what ‘social inclusion’ means to young people themselves. Using a participatory methodology, this study investigated what ‘being included’ meant to young people. A qualitative approach with a thematic analysis was used to explore the accounts of 11 participants and yielded three main themes. ‘“Acceptance”—the building blocks of inclusion’ reflected the power of interpersonal acceptance in determining young people's sense of inclusion. ‘“Learning why I don't matter”—when power and discourse shape inclusion’ illustrated how social discourses and power dynamics influenced young people's experience of inclusion. ‘“Keeping up or falling behind”—internalising the discourse of inclusion’ reflected how young people internalised some of these societal definitions of inclusion and responded to them. Those who felt ‘accepted’ or ‘included’ in a ‘mainstream’ sense articulated a sense of agency and hope. For those who did not, it appeared that agency dissolved as did a sense of hope for the future. Although the participants negotiated their ‘inclusion’ through close, trusting relationships with others, the application of the societal discourses of inclusion such as productivity, independence and career mindedness had the potential to leave them feeling excluded, isolated and distressed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Social categorization,visual cues,and social judgements

Recent research on social cognition suggests that lifelike visual and vocal information about a person may strongly mediate the impact of prior social categorical knowledge on social judgements. Other research, however, on the contribution of visual cues to impression formation, suggests that they have relatively little impact. This study sought to resolve these conflicting findings by examining the effect of visual cues on social judgements when subjects possess prior social categorical knowledge varying in salience to the experimental task. Videotaped target interviews were monitored by observers in either sound and vision or sound only, and measures were taken of the targets' perceived personality, their ‘actual’ and ‘predicted’ social performance, and social acceptance by observers. Whilst salience of categorization strongly influenced the quality of judgements, visual cues had little if any effect. However, visual cues strongly influenced subjects' confidence in all three sets of judgements, sound and vision subjects being consistently more confident than their sound only counterparts. The findings are discussed in relation to previous research in both social cognition and visual cues.     

When being disadvantaged grows into vengeance: The effects of asymmetry of interest and social rejection in social dilemmas

In public good dilemmas, group members often differ in the extent to which they benefit from provision of the public good (asymmetry of interest). In the current paper, we argue that people may readily accept such financial differences in interest when their social needs are met by being accepted by the others. When people are socially rejected, however, members having a low rather than a high interest in the public good may display negative emotional and retributive reactions. This reasoning was supported by the findings of a first experimental study in which we manipulated people's interest in the public good and social rejection. These effects were replicated in a second experimental study and it was further shown that this two‐way interaction between social rejection and interest in the public good was moderated by people's social value orientation. The negative reactions to low interest (vs. high interest) in the public good when being socially rejected were especially prominent among group members with a proself orientation. Taken together, the current studies illustrate the importance of studying how financial and social needs interact to determine emotional and retributive actions in social dilemmas. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Prosocial and antisocial children's perceptions of peers' motives for prosocial behaviours

This study investigated whether peer‐nominated prosocial and antisocial children have different perceptions of the motives underlying peers' prosocial actions. Eighty‐seven children, aged 10–12 years old, completed peer‐nomination measures of social behaviour. On the basis of numbers of social nominations received, a subsample of 51 children (32 who were peer‐nominated as ‘prosocial’, and 18 who were peer‐nominated as ‘antisocial’) then recorded their perceptions of peers' motives for prosocial behaviours. Expressed motives were categorized predominantly into three categories, coinciding with Turiel's (1978) ‘moral’, ‘conventional’, and ‘personal domains’. Results indicate that children's social reputation is associated with the extent to which they perceive peers' prosocial motives as ‘personal’ or ‘moral’, with more prosocial children attributing moral motives, and more antisocial children attributing personal motives. Although traditionally Turiel's domain theory has been used to understand ‘antisocial’ children's behaviour, the current findings suggest that ‘prosocial’ children's behaviour may also be related to domains of judgment.     

How do generic statements impact performance? Evidence for entity beliefs

Generic statements about the abilities of children's social groups (e.g. ‘Girls/Boys are good at this game’) negatively impact children's performance – even if the statements are favorable towards children's own social groups. We explored the mechanism by which generic language impairs children's performance. Across three studies, our findings suggest that generic statements influence children's performance by creating an entity belief (i.e. a belief that a fixed ability determines performance). Children who were exposed to a generic statement about their social group's ability performed worse than children in control conditions. This effect hurt children's performance even when the person who made the generic statement was no longer present and a new person not privy to the statement replaced them. However, when children heard a generic statement paired with an effort explanation (i.e. ‘Girls/Boys are good at this game because they try really hard when they draw’) they performed better than children who heard the generic statement with no explanation (i.e. just ‘Girls/Boys are good at this game’) and children who heard the generic statement paired with a trait explanation (i.e. ‘Girls/Boys are good at this game because they are smart and really good at drawing’). This work uncovers when and how generic statements that refer to the ability of one's social group hinder performance, informing the development of practices to improve student motivation and learning.     

Social cognition: learning about what matters in the social world

Social‐cognitive principles underlie people's learning about what matters in the social world. The benefits of these social‐cognitive principles reveal essential aspects of what it means to be human. But these social‐cognitive principles also have inherent costs , which highlight what it means to be ‘only human’. Social cognition is ‘social’ because what is learned concerns the social world, and where the learning takes place is in the social world. This paper reviews the benefits and costs of both sides of social cognition: (1) the cognition of social psychology principles of organization, explanation, knowledge activation and use; and (2) the social psychology of cognition principles of shared reality role enactment, social positions and identities and internal audiences. The fact that there are inherent costs of the same social‐cognitive principles for which there are essential benefits affords a new perspective on social‐cognitive costs that is different from either the classic ‘conflict’ perspective or the more current ‘limited capacity’ and ‘dual‐process’ perspectives. This ‘trade‐off’ perspective deepens both our understanding of the true nature of these principles and our appreciation of our common humanity. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Lay Theories of Personality: Cornerstones of Meaning in Social Cognition

Lay theories (or ‘implicit theories’) are cornerstones for social cognition: people use lay theories to help them make sense of complex and ambiguous behavior. In this study, we describe recent research on the entity and incremental theories (the belief that personality is fixed or malleable). In so doing, we demonstrate that each theory does not act alone. Instead, each is associated with a set of allied beliefs, the sum total of which cohere into two distinct meaning systems. We present evidence that these meaning systems produce systematic differences in a range of fundamental social cognition processes, with important implications for the field’s understanding of trait/situation attribution, moral judgment, person memory, and stereotyping. We further argue that because meaning systems serve a central meaning‐making function, people are motivated to believe that the meaning system they are using is effective and accurate. Accordingly, we present evidence that people exhibit processing distortions and compensatory mechanisms to minimize the impact of information that violates their meaning system. We discuss the implications of these findings for the field’s understanding of basic social cognition.     

Social Capital and Community Group Participation: Examining ‘Bridging’ and ‘Bonding’ in the Context of a Healthy Living Centre in the UK

Social capital has been widely advocated as a way of understanding and building community participation in the interest of health improvement. However, the concept as proposed by Putnam, has been criticised for presenting an overly romanticised account of complex community relations. This paper presents analysis from a qualitative evaluation of a Healthy Living Centre (HLC) in the North of England, to examine the utility of the concept of social capital in this context. We found the concepts of ‘bridging’ and ‘bonding’ social capital were useful – though not without limitations – in helping to make sense of the complexities and contradictions in participants’ experiences of community group participation. 'Bridging' helped provide an understanding of how the decline in shared social spaces such as local shops impacts on social relationships. 'Bonding' highlighted how community group membership can have positive and negative implications for individuals and the wider community. It was found that skilled group leadership was key to strengthening bridging capital. Politically, in the UK, community participation is seen as having an essential role in social change, for example, its centrality to the coalition government's idea of the ‘Big Society’. A micro‐examination of this HLC using the lens of social capital provides a valuable critical insight into community participation. It shows that this kind of initiative can be successful in building social capital, given conditions such as an appropriate setting and effective leadership. However, they cannot substitute for other kinds of investment in the physical infrastructure of a community. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Women's experiences of workplace bullying: changes in social relationships

This article reports a qualitative study, which investigated social processes in workplace bullying, based on in‐depth interviews with ten British women professionals who were targets of workplace bullying. Data were analysed using grounded theory methods. The resulting analysis showed links between disclosures of bullying, reactions of others, and some impacts on targets' psychological health. Key themes which emerged from the data included ‘being heard’ which describes how others reacted to disclosures of bullying behaviours, and the ‘ripple effect’ which describes how bullying impacted upon targets' significant others; these predominantly describe relationships with others outside the workplace. The theme of ‘withdrawal’ describes how targets and others managed relationships within the workplace, and ‘denial’ and ‘personalizing problems’ describe how others within the workplace responded to knowledge of bullying behaviours. The theme ‘maintaining self’ describes how participants responded to changed relationships and struggled to maintain a coherent sense of self during and subsequent to bullying. This research emphasizes the role of social processes and social environments, rather than individual or personality characteristics, in explaining the development of workplace bullying and its impacts on targets. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Conceptualizing ‘social capital’ for health promotion in small local communities: a micro‐qualitative study

This paper reports on a micro‐qualitative case study of peoples' experiences of local community life in a south‐east English town. This material is used as the basis for a critical discussion of the suitability of Putnam's notion of social capital as a conceptual tool for the design and evaluation of ‘community strengthening’ policies and interventions. The study was motivated by a concern that too much debate about social capital has been conducted by academics and policy‐makers in a top‐down manner, with inadequate attention to the realities of life in the local communities that they refer to. Three‐hour semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 37 residents in two less affluent wards in our town of interest. Informants—half men and half women, and spread across the 15–75 age group—were encouraged to talk about their personal experiences of local community life. Interview findings are presented within the ‘norm’ categories of trust, neighbourliness and reciprocal help and support, and the ‘network’ categories of participation in informal networks, voluntary groupings and community activist groupings. Our case study points to a number of ways in which Putnam's concept needs to be refined if it is to inform ‘community strengthening’ policies and interventions in England. Far more notice needs to be taken of the role played by informal networks of friends and neighbours in the construction of local community life. Attention also needs to be given to the complex and shifting geographical spread of peoples' significant social networks. Putnam's conceptualization of cohesive local communities and his unitary notions of trust and local identity may also be unduly essentialist. In our particular communities of interest, they failed to capture the fluidity of local community norms and networks in a rapidly changing society. They also failed to do justice to the extent to which social distinctions—such as age, gender, ethnicity and housing tenure—shape and constrain the way in which people create, sustain and access social capital. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adults' representations of the Earth: Implications for children's acquisition of scientific concepts

When children are asked to draw the Earth they often produce intriguing pictures in which, for example, people seem to be standing on a flat disc or inside a hollow sphere. These drawings, and children's answers to questions, have been interpreted as indicating that children construct naïve, theory‐like mental models of the Earth (e.g. Vosniadou & Brewer, 1992 ). However, recent studies using different methods have found little or no evidence of these mental models, and report that many young children have some scientific knowledge of the Earth. To examine the reasons for these contrasting findings, adults (N = 350) were given the drawing task previously given to 5‐year‐old children. Fewer than half of the adults' pictures were scientific, and 15% were identical to children's ‘naïve’ drawings. Up to half of the answers to questions (e.g. ‘Where do people live?’) were non‐scientific. Open‐ended questions and follow‐up interviews revealed that non‐scientific responses were given because adults found the apparently simple task confusing and challenging. Since children very probably find it even more difficult, these findings indicate that children's non‐scientific responses, like adults', often result from methodological problems with the task. These results therefore explain the discrepant findings of previous research, and support the studies which indicate that children do not have naïve mental models of the Earth.     

A Typology of Ideological Attitudes Towards Social Solidarity and Social Control

Research on ideological attitudes has identified two main dimensions that refer to two fundamental features of group organization: social solidarity and social control. In response to prior research that has studied their relationship mainly from a correlational perspective, this paper introduces a social reality model based on psychological functionality of ideological attitudes. Social position variables (education, income and material vulnerability) and insecurity variables (fear of crime and distrust) are used to predict the interplay between ideological attitudes towards social solidarity and social control. Using K‐means cluster analysis, a typology with four patterns of support for solidarity and control (‘socials’, ‘repressives’, ‘minimalists’ and ‘social‐repressives’) was created, on the basis of representative survey data for the UK, France and Germany (N = 7034). Results from logistic regression analyses show that the proposed social reality model explains membership in typology categories, with similar results across the three countries. Overall, the model underscores the social origins of ideological attitudes as functional responses to perceived social reality. The paper illustrates how the social psychological study of ideological attitudes may be enriched by a typological approach that examines patterns of attitudes rather than single dimensions. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.