Social Structure, Groups, and Social Influence

Social structure
- organized pattern of social relationships + social institutions that together compose society
- Look at the whole picture + all the intricate relationships
- Building blocks: statuses and roles
- Statuses - recognizable social positions you occupy(occupation, gender, race, age, etc)
- Ascribed status - a status in which is born; involuntary status(race, age)
- Achieved status - a status into which one enters; voluntary status
- We are born into a gender - but you can change your gender
- Religion can be an ascribed or achieved status
- Roles - duties and behaviors expected of someone who holds a particular status

Filter Theory - how the structure of society narrows our choices of a mate
Structural Filters
- Propinquity - you’re more likely to get with people who live near you/same area
- Social class - poor vs. rich → who pays, where do you go on dates, social norms(behavior)
- Educational Homogamy - people of the same amount of education get with each
other
- Race and Ethnicity - usually intraracial relationships → often b/c of stress(interracial
relationships have higher divorce rates), usually have neighborhoods with a concentrated race
→ you are more likely to meet someone of the same race
- Religion - similar values, traditions
- Age - too old/young
Nonstructural Filters
- Physical Attraction - usually marry people of around the same physical attraction
- Family and peer pressure - hard to marry/date someone your family/friends don’t like
Asch Conformity Experiment
- Tested the social + personal conditions to make people conform
- People will go along with the group even when the group is factually wrong
- People are conformists

Groupthink
- Tendency of a group to reach a consensus decision, even if it’s a bad decision, to not upset
the cohesiveness of the group
- More of these characteristics are present = resulting decision is more likely bad/catastrophic
- 8 characteristics
1. An illusion of invulnerability
2. Falsely negative impression of the antagonists
 3. Discouragement of dissent
4. Self censorship
5. Illusion of unanimity
6. Inherent belief in the morality of the group
7. Collective rationalization of group decisions
8. Self appointed “mindguards” keep the group guarded from negative information

Stanford Prison Experiment, The Stanley Milgram Experiments, and Abu Ghraib Prison
- Evil - exercise of power to intentionally harm people psychological, to hurt people physically,
and/or to destroy people and commit crimes against humanity
The seven social processes that grease the slippery slope of evil
- Mindlessly taking the first small step
- Dehumanization of others
- Deindividuation of self(hiding identity)
- Diffusion of responsibility
- Blind obedience to authority
- Uncritical conformity to group norms
- Passive tolerance of evil, through inaction or indifference

Bystander Effect
- Tendency for individuals not to intervene when someone needs help
- Individuals will not intervene, especially when there are more people because of diffusion of
responsibility
- Instead of asking “how likely is it that someone would help me?” ask “would I be helped?”
- In 219 violent attacks - in 91% of cases, someone intervened → around 3.76
interveners/incident
- The more people present, the more likely intervention happened

Lucifer Effect
- Lucifer Effect - good people come to commit acts of evil b/c of social context
- God’s favorite angel, Lucifer, became evil
- Good people can become bad, bad people can become good
- Don’t ask who is responsible, ask what is responsible
- Dispositional - inside of individuals(bad apples)
- Situational - external(bad barrel)
- Systemic - broad influences - political, economic, legal power(bad barrel makers)
- Lucifer effect is a celebration of the mind’s
- Infinite capacity to make us behave kind or cruel
- Caring or indifferent
- Creative or destructive
- Can make us heroes or villains
Abu Ghraib Prison
- Prisoners were severely abused + humiliated
- Taken photos of
- Stopped by joe darby - a low level private who exposed the photos
- Hid with his wife and mother for three years due to threats of violence/death

Stanley Milgram
- Most people would say not to electrocuting someone
- Ran an experiment on regular people
- The “learner” is tied to an electric chair
- The “teacher” presses a button if they get it wrong
- Starts at 15 volts, goes up 15 everytime
- All evil starts at 15 volts
- Only one percent of the people were theorized to go to the max - 450 volts
- Two thirds of the people went to 450 volts
- You can almost make everyone obedient
- In the real world: 912 american citizens committed suicide/were murdered by family/friends
because their pastor convinced them to commit mass suicide(Jim Jones)

Stanford Prison Experiment

- Randomly assigned prisoners + guards
- Had realistic arrests for the prisoners
- The guards had them do humiliating acts
- Extreme stress reactions in 36 hours

- Power without oversight will lead to abuse

- Ended in 6 days
- Christina Maslach made it end - forced the person who ran the experiment to acknowledge
the cruelty and inhumanity

Refocus away from Evil to Understanding Heroes

- Banality of heroism - ordinary people do extraordinary moral deeds in certain situations
- Traditional societal heroes - gandhi, hnelson, mandela, etc are exceptions, they organize their
lives around sacrifice for a cause
- Children’s fantasy heroes - superman, wonder woman, etc aren’t realistic models, they are
supernatural
- Most heroes are everyday people who emerge as heroes only in particular situations
- Heroes are people who act when others are passive

In a new situation, there are 3 paths

 1. You become a perpetrator of evil
2. You become guilty of passive inaction
3. You become a hero

The Witness
- Kitty Genovese was murdered
- Killer drove a knife into her
- More than 30 people witnessed her attack but no one called the police
- No one came to help her → killer came back and stabbed her again
- Shows bystander apathy
- Now it is being questioned
- What did the witnesses actually see/hear, were there actually 38, why didn’t they help, etc
- Joseph Fink - the elevator operator saw the whole attack take place
- After the attacker stabbed her he ran away → no one called the police for 40 min-1hr →
killer came back
- Possibly some people may have not gotten involved bc they used to be in concentration
camps
- Some people did call according to some of the witnesses but they weren’t logged in police
records
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