Chap 4 Misery
Transcript of Chap 4 Misery
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Ng, Winnie W.
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Stanley Schachter (1959)- most
people would choose to join otherpeople to gain information they need
to allay their anxiety
Experiment: recruited young women
college students and explained that
hewas studying the effects of electric
shock
on human beingsNg, Winnie W.
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-Two conditions:
Low- Anxiety = mild shocksHigh-Anxiety = painful shocks, but no
permanent damage
- Choice : either wait for her turn
alone or with others
- Results:In the Low-Anxiety condition: 33%
choose
to affiliate
In the High-Anxiety condition: 63%
choose
to affiliateNg, Winnie W.
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Misery Loves Miserable
Company Schachter replicated the high anxiety
condition of his original experiment
Difference: manipulated the amount of
information that could be gained byaffiliating with others
Half: wait with other women who were
about
to receive shocks (similar situation)
Other half: join women who were waiting
for their advising by their professors
(dissimilar situation)Ng, Winnie W.
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Schachter hypothesized: if there was
no social comparison information to beobtained, there would not be any
reason to join them
Findings:60% of the women asked to wait with
others who are facing a similar condition
No one in the dissimilar condition
expressed affiliate desires
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Embarrassed MiseryAvoids
Company
In some cases the fear ofembarrassment can be stronger than
the need to understand what is
happening, resulting in inhibitioninstead of affiliation
Researchers changed the Schachter-
type situation to include an element ofpublic embarrassment
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the investigators asked 4-6 strangers
to meet at a room labeled with a signSexual Attitudes: Please Wait
Inside.
In the fearcondition-electrical devicesand information sheets
In the ambiguouscondition- two
cardboard boxes filled with computerforms
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Embarrassment(Anxiety-producing)
condition-contraceptive devices,
books on sexually transmitteddiseases and pictures of naked men
and women
Observers behind a two-way mirrorwatched the group for 20 minutes,
recording 5 types of behavior:Interaction (talking)
Action (examining equipment)
Withdrawal (reading a book)
Controlled Nonreaction
EscapeNg, Winnie W.
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Downward( andUpward)
SOCIAL
COMPARISON
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When people want to obtain
information, they select those who aresimilar to them or are likely to be
particularly well-informed
Downward Social Comparison:selecting targets who are worse off
than they are
Upward Social Comparison: when aperson compares himself to others
who are better off than himself
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Abraham Tessersself-evaluation
maintenance (SEM)model suggeststhat people often graciously celebrate
others accomplishments-but not when
they are bested in a domain that theyvalue greatly
In an experiment Tesser and
collegues asked elementary students
to identify the types of activities that
were personally important to them
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The students also identified their most
and least preferred classmate One week later, students rated their
ability, their close classmates ability
and their distant classmates ability inone area they felt was important and
in one area they felt was unimportant
Results:Important Tasks= performed superior toclose
friends
Unimportant Task=performed relativelyworse
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Investigators asked students to keep
track of : every single one of their interactions
to take note whether interaction
involved academic or social matters what their relationship was to the
person
and if they shared information thatwould be helpful to the other
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As the SEM modelsuggests:
students gave moreuseful information to
their friends wheninteractions pertained tosocial matters
In Academics, studentshelped their friends lessthan they help strangers
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