24 Social and Personality Psychology: In Search of Hidden Solutions to Society’s Problems

Remember and Understand

By reading and studying Module 24, you should be able to remember and describe:

• Basic and applied research
• Social and personality psychology research in response to real-world events
• How does terrorism work? Availability heuristic; fear, anxiety, and health problems
• Coping with terrorism, counterconditioning
• Who are terrorists? The failure of profiling
• Society, cultural, and group conditions leading to terrorism: isolation, selective moral disengagement, scapegoating, poverty and relative deprivation
• Situations and dispositions in good and evil: authoritarian personality
• The roles of questionable research practices and surprisingness in the replication crisis in psychology

With the conclusion of Unit 5, we have essentially completed the second floor of our house of psychology, with only the all-important roof to go. Remember, you saw the beginnings of the second floor in Unit 2 with the everyday thinking processes like problem-solving and reasoning. We have constructed the rest of the rooms out of other everyday processes such as thinking (and reasoning) about and influencing other people, forming and nurturing relationships, functioning effectively at work. Along the way, we have also completed the stairs between the first and second floor by describing more basic topics like personality, emotions, and motivation.

In this module, we will return to a distinction between basic and applied research that we introduced in Module 4 to illustrate an important piece of the story of how scientific psychologists work. Because the second floor of our house deals with everyday phenomena in our world, you are probably not surprised that applied goals are essential for guiding research, and this is especially true in social psychology.

Basic research is conducted with the goal of advancing knowledge in a discipline. Applied research is conducted with the goal of solving some real-world problem. Scientists often think of themselves as either basic or applied researchers, not both.

A large majority of scientific research is basic research. We are much more likely to hear about applied than basic research in the media, however. Reports on applied research, whether about the conclusions of a group of climate scientists on the causes of global warming or about the clinical tests for a new treatment for depression, have an obvious appeal to the public. Casual observers may not realize that they are seeing a small portion of the total amount of actual research.

Psychology in general is no different. Most research in psychology is not conducted with any particular real-world application in mind. Personality and social psychology, on the other hand, are a little different. Although it is often still conceived as basic research, research in social and personality psychology has often been driven by a desire to understand and solve real-world problems.

Module 9 explained how World War II influenced the development of cognitive psychology. If anything, the impact of World War II was even greater on personality and social psychology. Some observers have noted that social psychology in particular did not really exist as a separate subfield until after WWII, and that Adolph Hitler was the most influential person for its development (Cartwright, 1979). Personality and social psychology have continued to keep an eye focused on the outside world ever since. From the Nazi atrocities during WWII, to the apparent failure of 38 witnesses to help Kitty Genovese in the 1960s (but see Module 21), to the Al Qaeda terrorist attacks on the US in 2001, to the 2020 global COVID-19 pandemic, large bodies of research have been undertaken in response to real-world events.

For example, a search for coronavirus in PsycInfo, the comprehensive listing of research published in psychology, returns a total of 295 articles (on June 24, 2020). The first appeared in 1992 (you may recall that the common cold is a coronavirus, and some of the disease scares over the past 20 years, for example, the 2002 – 2004 SARS outbreak, were based on coronaviruses. Then COVID-19 came on the scene. The first paper to appear in PsycInfo related to COVID-19 was an editorial that appeared in the Journal of Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention in April 2020, just four months after the first person contracted COVID-19. Then, in the next two months another 217 articles appeared, many of them full-fledged research studies. In other words, in a span of two months, nearly 75% of all of the articles on coronavirus appeared, as hundreds of researchers planned and conducted their studies, then wrote them up and got them published in peer-reviewed journals. The topics ranged from combatting misinformation and racism related to the disease, to the psychological impact of the worldwide quarantine on the general population, to psychological distress, such as post-traumatic stress disorder in health care workers. In two months!

Although this is an extraordinary mobilization and response to a global crisis, we are too close to the beginning to draw solid conclusions from the COVID-19 even two-plus years later (and realistically, we will not be able to draw those solid conclusions for at least a few years). So, we are going to turn back the clock a bit, so we can see what a whole cycle looks like. In other words, let us choose a set of real-world events that are recent enough to still be relevant and remembered, but far enough in the past that we can draw some solid conclusions from the massive mobilization of psychological researchers.

Specifically, between 1991 and 2000, there were an average of 17 articles per year listed under the subject heading Terrorism in PsycInfo. In particular, in 2000, the year prior to the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, there were 25 articles. In 2002, there were 475. The number increased over the next few years, peaking at 638 in 2006 before hovering in the mid- 300s for about a decade. In 2019, the number was down to 210

This module begins with a brief look at what psychologists learned about this still-present social problem.

The Psychology of Terrorism

The effort to understand terrorism was, and still is, a true interdisciplinary endeavor. Researchers from history, political science, sociology, and anthropology, as well as social, personality, clinical, and cognitive psychology, have all contributed to our current understanding. Three main goals have guided a great deal of research on terrorism:

• Understanding how terrorism works on a population
• Discovering how can people cope with the effects and threat of terrorism
• Understanding why people commit acts of terrorism

How Does Terrorism Work?

Approximately 3,000 people died during the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. These victims were not the intended targets of the attacks, however. The real target of a terrorist attack is the larger population; the murdered victims are simply tools used by the attackers to achieve their real goal (Hallett, 2004). Of course, that goal is terror. The terrorists intend to cause an entire population to fear that they, too, may become victims of an attack. Terrorism’s main effect is in many ways nothing more than the availability heuristic, the misperception of the likelihood of an event because it can be easily brought to mind.

Media reports of terrorist attacks unwittingly contribute to this fear. A survey conducted in Alabama in March 2002 found that many residents feared they would be victims of an attack; nearly 50% of people who watched four or more hours of television per day expressed this view (but only about 20% of infrequent television viewers). Further, 60% of men and 75% of women expressed the belief that there was nothing they could do to avoid being a victim of terrorism (Powell et al., 2004). Seeing victims as similar to yourself compounds viewers’ distress, which is also made worse by watching more media accounts (Wayment, 2004).

The unrealistic fear that terrorism causes can lead indirectly to more deaths. For example, Gerd Gigerenzer (2004) estimated that 350 Americans who would not normally have died between September 11 and the end of 2001 did die because they were afraid to fly and drove instead. Driving is far more dangerous than flying.

The fear and anxiety that the population suffers also lead to more health problems. After the September 11 attacks, many people suffered from nightmares, insomnia, grief and depression, and avoidance, symptoms that appear commonly in post-traumatic stress disorder (LeDoux & Gorman, 2001). Particularly after chemical or biological attacks, such as the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system, many people complain of unexplained physical symptoms long after any possible effects of the chemical agent itself (Kawana et al., 2001). After any terrorist attack, increases in substance abuse and acute stress responses are also common (Danieli et al., 2004). Anxiety disorders are likely as well.

How Do People Cope with Terrorism?

Much of what we know about successful coping techniques is based on studies of people who have been forced to deal with terrorism for many years. According to the Israel Defense Forces, there were over 22,000 terrorist attacks against Israelis between September 2000, and July 2004. One survey of residents of Israel found that coping techniques such as using alcohol, tranquilizers, and cigarettes were associated with higher levels of stress and depression. Avoiding television and radio and maintaining faith in God were associated with lower levels of these symptoms. Many respondents also reported that the search for information about loved ones, humor, distraction through activity, and search for social support were also effective coping techniques (Bleich et al.,  2003). Although these results are based on correlations, they do suggest some important coping techniques that an individual can try in coping with the stresses of terrorism.

Psychological counseling can also help. In the immediate aftermath of September 11, Joseph LeDoux and Jack Gorman (2001) pointed out the parallels between people’s fear reactions and classical conditioning. Many stimuli, such as a picture of the World Trade Center or even the sight of an airplane, can become a conditioned stimulus that will lead to a conditioned response of fear. One key method of coping is to break the link between the conditioned stimulus and conditioned response. In therapy, this technique is called counterconditioning (you can learn more about it in Module 29); it essentially involves replacing a fear-conditioned response with an incompatible response such as relaxation. Outside of a therapy setting, some people can achieve the same results through some kind of distraction strategy—in essence, getting on with life (LeDoux & Gorman, 2001).

Who are the Terrorists?

Researchers have struggled for many years to construct a profile of terrorists. By now, many have concluded that no such profile exists, and few are continuing to look. In essence, personalities among the terrorist population differ as much as they do in the general population (Hudson, 1999). Besides, the happy truth that there really are very few terrorists in the world makes it extremely difficult to identify them. Any profile you might come up with to describe terrorists would also fit many non-terrorists. Even if you had a profile that matched terrorists perfectly, the huge majority of people who fit that profile would not be terrorists. Let us explain. Suppose that 1 out of every 100,000 innocent people matches your terrorist profile. There are more than 7 billion non-terrorists in the world, so your profile would identify 70,000 innocent people as terrorists. This is not an implausible scenario. One frequently cited profile of a terrorist described an unmarried, healthy, strong man between 22 and 25 years old, from a middle-class background, with at least some college education (Russell & Miller, 1977). It is not much of a stretch for us to estimate that this profile matches many readers of this book, and we will bet that none of you are terrorists.

To be fair, we must admit that we left out some of the characteristics from the profile, including some psychological ones. The inclusion of these characteristics does not improve the usefulness of the profile, however. Some of the extra characteristics, such as being devoted to a religious or political cause, also apply to countless non-terrorists. Others, such as ruthlessness and a belief that one’s terrorist actions are not criminal, would be a little difficult to use for identifying potential terrorists. They are not the kind of facts about oneself that a smart terrorist would want to publicize. More generally, that is another point about terrorists. They are often recruited and trained to blend in and be inconspicuous (Hudson, 1999).

Efforts to identify society, cultural, or group conditions that may lead to terrorism may ultimately be more fruitful. For example, physical or psychological isolation of a group may be necessary for terrorism to flourish. Isolation encourages the group to develop strong conformity pressures, and it can lead members to adopt a strict “good” versus “evil” worldview. It also makes it easy for group members to believe that the world is in desperate need of radical change and that there are no legitimate means to achieve their goals. These last two beliefs can lead to a strong “the ends justify any means” approach (Moghaddam, 2004). Albert Bandura (1990; 2004) has used the term selective moral disengagement to describe terrorists’ (and their supporters’) ability to justify their horrible actions by appealing to noble ends. Other psychologists have noted that the ingroup versus outgroup social categorization that leads to stereotyping, in general, is an important precursor that can spiral into hatred and in extreme cases violence. Scapegoating, or blaming an outgroup for current economic, religious, or cultural problems, can lead to strong negative feelings and possible violent actions (Staub, 2004).

Many observers over the years have blamed poverty as a key social condition that breeds terrorism. It is more correct to say that inequality breeds terrorism. If everyone were poor, there would be nothing to gain from terrorism. But members of a society who can see that others have more and who believe that the unequal distribution is not justified may develop feelings of relative deprivation, which can spiral into hatred and violence (Pilisuk & Wond, 2002).

Although these psychological, cultural, and social conditions are important (and perhaps necessary) for terrorism to develop, they are by no means sufficient. Throughout the world, many individuals and groups that have all of these “strikes against them” do not engage in terrorist activities. Rather, these conditions increase the likelihood that a group would turn to terrorism (Moghaddam, 2004).

The Psychology of Good and Evil

The contributions of social and personality psychology to the understanding of terrorism should perhaps be seen in the larger context of the psychology of good and evil (perhaps you remember this as related to one of the key philosophical debates we introduced in Module 4). Within social and personality psychology, these questions about good and evil have often come down to the relative roles of the situation and the person in determining our behavior. To what extent do good and evil reside inside of people as opposed to being elicited by situations? Social psychology has contended that each person has the capacity for good or evil and that, many times, the situation is what determines which way we will go. The traditional view from personality psychology is that stable dispositions within individuals, such as the Honesty-Humility trait of the HEXACO model, largely determine good and evil. You may recognize this debate as an example of the basic problem of attribution in our everyday lives. An actor has committed some behavior. As an observer, you might explain the behavior in terms of stable dispositions or situational factors. The correspondence bias would lead you to conclude that the actor is evil.

Early efforts to explain one of the most evil acts of the 20th century, the Nazi Holocaust, attempted to identify dispositional characteristics of the German population that led them to support the Nazi atrocities. Psychologists proposed that the social structure in Germany led many of its citizens to develop an authoritarian personality—they were overly conventional, needed to submit to authority, were committed to harsh punishment, and were generally hostile (Adorno et al., 1950). The Milgram obedience line of research (discussed in section 21.5), motivated largely by Stanley Milgram’s desire to understand the Holocaust, effectively put an end to the authoritarian personality explanation and helped usher in the “power of the situation” era of classic social psychology, in which the situation was considered to be almost entirely responsible. This conclusion was shocking (no pun intended), but it has been accepted for many decades. In retrospect, however, perhaps the lesson was that we should only have muted our tendency to blame individual dispositions for evil behavior.

There were undeniable individual differences in Milgram’s research. In other words, some people were more apt to be obedient than others. It is certainly reasonable to ask whether some stable differences among the participants can explain these individual differences. In fact, one researcher found a significant relationship between participants’ scores on a measure of the authoritarian personality and their obedience levels (Elms, 1972). Even Milgram himself found that some stable differences, such as religious affiliation and education level, were related to obedience. Milgram noted, however, that these dispositional factors played only a small role (Milgram, 1974). Still, this is an important observation. In the most famous research demonstration of the power of the situation, there was evidence in favor of a contribution from the person. You may also recall that another individual difference was the degree to which a participant believed Milgram’s deception. Those who believed that they were actually giving shocks were far less likely to comply. Thus, the situation might not have been all-powerful.

Further, the reinterpretations of Milgram’s research have cast additional doubt on the idea that situations overpower all. It is helpful to tell you about a similar famous experiment now, too.  Philip Zimbardo is the architect of perhaps the second most famous experiment in social psychology, the Stanford Prison Experiment (Haney, Banks, & Zimbardo, 1973). Zimbardo and his colleagues apparently managed to turn ordinary college students into sadistic guards and meek, submissive prisoners simply by placing them in a simulated prison situation. This study was taken as a powerful demonstration of the ability of a situation to elicit dramatic changes in people’s behavior. Later analyses, however, have muted these conclusions. Although there are several criticisms that have been developed, the most serious one to our minds is that there appeared to be a great deal of participant demand behind both guards’ and prisoners’ behavior. For example, the students who were assigned as guards were not told that they were subjects in the experiment; they were led to believe that they were co-experimenters. Both guards and prisoners alike reported after the study that it was always top of mind to them that they were taking part in an experiment and that they had specific roles to play as part of that experiment. Zimbardo and his colleagues made the purposes of the experiment quite obvious, and transcript records indicate that the guards were given quite specific guidance as to the behaviors that were expected of them (Le Texier, 2019).

Despite the revised conclusions of research like Milgram’s and Zimbardo’s, there is little doubt that situations can exert powerful influences over our behavior. Think about the extreme cases. On the one hand, there are probably not any dispositions that will overpower every possible situation. For example, even the most evil person could certainly be prevented from committing an evil act in some situations (like solitary confinement). On the other hand, there are probably situations that will overpower nearly every disposition. For example, it is not difficult to imagine an extremely coercive situation that practically no one could refuse: very persuasive ideological arguments to encourage engaged followership, very strong authority figures, severe punishments for defiance, no models of defiance, and so on. So it seems that good people can indeed sometimes be influenced to do bad things.

Is There a Problem with Social Psychology?

Let us return to the observation that Milgram’s and Zimbardo’s conclusions were shocking. Indeed, the very great influence of social psychology rests largely on the fact that its conclusions cannot generally be predicted by the “person on the street,” which brings us to the remaining part of this Module’s title, the hidden solutions. We pointed out in Module 21 that one reason we need social and personality psychology is that we make these kinds of judgments incorrectly on our own. For example, we have a strong tendency to explain people’s behavior using dispositional, that is, personality, attributions to the exclusion of situational factors. That tendency does not just make social and personality psychology necessary; it also makes it surprising.

Indeed, social psychology especially has thrived on revealing hidden factors in human behavior. And we cannot emphasize enough; that has been extraordinarily valuable. Unfortunately, however, there may be a downside to the extra focus on the unexpected and hidden.

Let us explain by reminding you of a fact you first learned in Module 4. When researchers first drew widespread attention to the replication crisis in 2015, they did so by revealing that only 36% of the studies they did could be successfully replicated. The rate of successful replication varied by subfield, though. Specifically, the researchers were able to replicate 53% and 48% of the cognitive psychology studies (from the two different journals they used), but only 29% and 23% of the social psychology studies (social and cognitive were the only two subfields included in the effort). Neither set of numbers is impressive, but why is social psychology’s so much lower?

Many critical observers of psychology have focused on the use of questionable research practices (QRP) as one of the driving forces behind research that cannot be replicated. Indeed John et al. (2012) conducted an anonymous survey (with special methods to encourage truth-telling) of over 2000 active psychology researchers and found that nearly 40% admitted to QRP’s (averaged over 10 separate practices), with a frightening 94% admitting to at least one. There is little doubt that this is a major factor behind the replication crisis. The only problem is, there were only tiny differences in the admission rates for QRP’s between social and cognitive psychology researchers, clearly not enough to explain the doubled successful replication rate for cognitive psychology.

So what else might it be?

Perhaps it is the very shockingness of some of the results that offer a clue. It would seem that the fact that some research finding is surprising is at least indirectly and partially a reflection of the probability that it is true. Imagine that your friend invites you to predict what will happen when they let go of a book they are holding. Then when they do let go, the book shoots up instead of dropping down. The fact that this is surprising is likely to make you doubt that what you witnessed is genuine (in this case, you might suspect some kind of illusion or trick). The surprise and doubt are because you are probably right; it is not genuine.

The important lesson to draw from this is that the more surprising a research finding is, the more you should be surprised by it. Oh, too trivial? How about this: the more unbelievable a research finding seems, the less you should believe it. We are obviously trying to be funny, but this really is a serious point. All research needs to be replicated, but research that surprises you is less likely to be true, so it has a special obligation to demonstrate both reproducibility and scientific rigor.

Can Psychological Knowledge Contribute to a Better World?

The short answer is yes, we believe so very strongly. Despite the missteps of non-replicable and scientifically questionable research, there are many examples of where it has already made that contribution. For example, we are not aware of any significant criticisms that would call into question the major conclusions we shared about the psychology of terrorism earlier. And throughout the rest of this book, we have shared research that can without a doubt be used to improve individuals’ lives and society. After all, what is society, if not an organized system of individuals?

Further, even some of the reinterpretations of classical research offer important lessons. For example, consider the engaged followership explanation of Milgram’s research (an explanation that, to a certain extent, could be applied to the Stanford Prison Experiment, too). In some ways, this new explanation is even more chilling than the original. It might not be authority, coercion and fear of punishment that leads some people to comply; it might be an identification with the leader, and a true belief in the system espoused by the leader. What if that system is evil? What if the leader is malevolent? Milgram and Zimbardo have shown that it is at least possible to get people to commit horrible acts without much difficulty at all.

We should always remember that we have a responsibility to be vigilant. And that includes all of us. We, as educators and authors have a special responsibility to keep abreast of current developments, new research, and reinterpretations of old research. We must engage our skeptical minds, and sometimes have to change our beliefs when the evidence in favor of an alternative view becomes sufficient. You should do the same. You should neither automatically believe every study you hear about, nor automatically reject any study that surprises you or contradicts your personal experience. Each important claim deserves a critical evaluation, using the skills you are learning in this class and many other classes, too.