Transcript of Bradford sp 2014 week3 tipping points, cascades, and self fulfilling prophecies
- 1. Cascades ,Tipping Points, and Self-fulfilling Prophecies
John Bradford, Ph.D.
- 2. I. CASCADES AND TIPPING POINTS
- 3. Cascades and Tipping points Social Cascades = a domino
effect or chain reaction (aka contagion, bandwagon effect). Occurs
when a small event triggers a large event or when the actions of a
few trigger the actions of many. Basic idea: small large (or few
many)
- 4. Cascades and Tipping points Social Cascades = a domino
effect or chain reaction (aka contagion, bandwagon effect). What
explains this? We are always paying attention to and being
influenced by the behavior of other people.
- 5. Cascades and Tipping points Tipping point = threshold: (aka
critical mass) The tipping point or threshold is the point beyond
which a cascade occurs A system has a tipping point at x if a small
change in the value of x has large effects on the end state. A
threshold =the number or proportion of others who must make one
decision before a given actor does so; this is the point where net
benefits begin to exceed net costs for that particular actor
(Granovetter 1978)
- 6. Cascades and Tipping points Example: Imagine there are 100
people in the mall and you see a few of them running! How many of
them have to be running out of the mall before you run out of the
mall also? Assume you have no understanding of why they are
running! Crowded mall
- 7. Cascades and Tipping points Consider two scenarios: Scenario
1: Homogeneity. Everyone has the same threshold, or tipping point.
Everyone will run out of the mall if they see 20 other people run
out of the mall. What happens? NOTHING! No one will leave unless 20
other people leave! Scenario 2: Heterogeneity (Diversity). Everyone
is numbered from 1 to 100; their number is also the number of
people they need to see running before they also run: their
threshold. What happens? First person leaves, then the second, then
the third, etc. This generates a chain reaction, aka a CASCADE!
Person 0 Begins to run Person 1 runs only if 1 other person runs
Person 2 runs only if 2 other people run 3 4 5 6
- 8. Cascades and Tipping points Mark Granovetter devised this
threshold model initially to describe RIOTS: one person will
definitely riot; another will riot only if one other person riots;
a third will riot only if two others riot; etc. We are much more
likely to riot ourselves if we see others rioting.
- 9. Maps of Social Protests
- 10. Cascades and Tipping points Thresholds explain: 1. Why
social changes can be abrupt, discontinuous, and sudden. 2. Why
they are so unpredictable. One person in a chain can either cause
or prevent a collective chain reaction, or social cascade. Other
examples: clapping, dancing at parties
- 11. Pluralistic Ignorance Pluralistic Ignorance situation in
which majority of people privately reject a norm but assume
incorrectly that most others accept it. "Resistance would have been
another form of suicide.
- 12. II. EMERGENCE AND UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
- 13. Emergence and unintended consequences What causes. Traffic
jams? Unemployment? Mass starvation?
- 14. Emergence and unintended consequences Often, these
collective outcomes are not intentional outcomes: they are not
planned or even desired. Note: unintended consequences can be both
GOOD or BAD (desirable or undesirable, depending on your point of
view) Unintended Consequences of Actions Intended actions
- 15. Emergence and unintended consequences The Invisible Hand:
selfinterested behavior maximizes the common good. (you best help
others by helping yourself) Adam Smith (1776), the founder of
economics, argued that individuals' efforts to maximize their own
gains in a free market can benefit society. The contrary is also
often argued: competition may generate a race to the bottom making
everybody worse off. Adam Smith
- 16. Emergence and unintended consequences Emergence refers to
the creation of a whole from the interaction or inter-relation of
component parts. Emergent properties are those new (and surprising)
properties of the whole that are not possessed by its individual
parts. Example: Hydrogen and Oxygen into H2O
- 17. Emergence and unintended consequences Emergence: The whole
is more than the sum of its parts Analogy: a cake. Cake has a taste
not found in any of its individual ingredients. Nor is it simply an
average, half-way between flour and egg.
- 18. III. SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION AND SELF-FULFILLING
PROPHECIES
- 19. The Sociological Imagination Sociology attempts to explain
facts about groups of people, and then to relate these social facts
to our individual lives. The study of how our lives are influenced
by our larger historical and social circumstances is called the
sociological imagination.
- 20. The Sociological Imagination Neither the life of an
individual nor the history of a society can be understood without
understanding both. C. Wright Mills (1916-1962)
- 21. The Sociological Imagination To understand one side, you
have to understand the other. Man/Woman Society Biography History
Self World Personal Troubles of Public Issues of milieu social
structure The ability to understand history and its relation to
biography is called the sociological imagination by C. Wright
Mills.
- 22. Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they
please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but
under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from
the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a
nightmare on the brains of the living. Karl Marx (1818-1883)
- 23. What is Social REALITY? Thomas theorem: "If people define
situations as real, they are real in their consequences To
understand human inter-actions and relations, sociologists have to
understand both reality, and perceived reality. W. I. Thomas 1863 -
1947
- 24. Social relations are often real because we act AS IF they
are real. The social world concerns not only the material world,
but the meanings we ascribe to the material objects, meanings which
are themselves non-physical and non-material. Examples: 1. Nations
2. Money
- 25. Self-fulfilling and Self-negating prophecies Robert K.
Merton also coined the terms self-fulfilling prophecy and role
model A self-fulfilling prophecy is something that becomes true
because it is believed to be true. Example: bank run, placebos,
psychic predictions, etc A self-negating prophecy is a belief that
causes its own falsehood. Explanation: it is something that, once
believed to be true or expected to happen, cannot happen (or
becomes less likely to happen). Robert K. Merton (1910 2003)
- 26. The Power of Expectations Pygmalion Effect (aka Rosenthal
effect): the greater the expectation placed upon people, the better
they perform. According to legend, Pygmalion was the king of Cyprus
who fell in love with a beautiful woman (Galatea) he sculpted out
of ivory.
- 27. The Power of Expectations In the 1960s Robert Rosenthal and
Lenore Jacobson hypothesized that teacher expectations influenced
childrens performance. Study: they randomly assigned 1 out of 5
children to the spurter/bloomer group, but told teachers these
students were selected to the group based on test performances that
indicated future success. Findings: the kids who were expected to
spurt made larger improvements than nonspurters.
- 28. IV. FOUR FAMOUS SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY EXPERIMENTS
- 29. Stanley Milgram and Obedience One of the most famous
experiments of the 20th century. What explains the Holocaust? Are
Germans just inherently more obedient than other people? The
Milgram experiment measured the willingness to obey an authority
figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with
their personal conscience.
- 30. Stanley Milgram and Obedience Experiment: Three roles: an
experimenter (man in white lab coat); a volunteer (the teacher);
and the shockee (the learner). All are actors except the volunteer.
Responding to a newspaper ad, a volunteer was told he would be
participating in an experiment testing the effects of negative
reinforcement (punishment) on learning. The volunteer was told that
a teacher (giving electric shocks) and learner (receiving electric
shocks) were to be picked at random.
- 31. Stanley Milgram and Obedience Experiment: In reality, the
experiment was to see how much electroshock the teacher would give
as punishment, when told it was part of an experiment. Everyone but
the teacher was acting and knew the true purpose of the experiment.
No electric shocks were actually administered, but the volunteer
believed he was administering them. The learner would go into
another room and a tape recording was played of scripted answers.
For each wrong answer, the teacher was supposed to give a shock to
the learner, with the voltage increasing in 15-volt increments for
each wrong answer.
- 32. Stanley Milgram and Obedience Findings: BASELINE STUDY
(most famous): 65% of volunteers go all the way and are willing to
shock the subject to death! Milgram also studied 20-40 variants of
this experiment with different results:
- 33. Stanley Milgram and Obedience Findings: Experiment #3: The
Shockee is placed in the same room so that the volunteer can see
him; obedience drops to 40%. Experiment #4: The volunteer must
physically restrain the shockee; obedience drops to 30%. Experiment
#14 : If experimenter is not a scientist in a white lab coat, then
obedience drops to 20%. Experiment #17: Volunteer and two other
participants (both actors); if other actors refuse to continue the
experiment, obedience drops to 10%
- 34. Stanley Milgram and Obedience Findings: Experiment #15: *If
there are two other experimenters in white lab coats (both actors)
who disagree about what to do, then obedience drops to ZERO! As
soon as participants are told that they have no choice, obedience
drops to ZERO! These results were confirmed in 2006.
- 35. Stanley Milgram and Obedience QUESTION: What does all this
mean? Why did so many people go along with the experiment, if they
only did so long as they were NOT ordered to do so?
- 36. Stanley Milgram and Obedience This study does NOT show that
people obey orders! They are participating because they believe
they are promoting the greater good, a noble cause: science. They
are shocking innocent strangers not because they believe they have
to, but because they believe they ought to.
- 37. Zimbardos Stanford Prison Experiments Experiment: 70
volunteers selected; by flip of coin, half are chosen as guards,
other half as prisoners Participants make up their own rules; not
pre-determined Each participant was paid $15 a day
- 38. Zimbardos Stanford Prison Experiments Findings: Experiment
ended after 6 days! Could no longer distinguish reality (the
experiment) from the roles they adopted as prisoners and guards
There were dramatic changes in virtually every aspect of their
behavior, thinking and feeling. We were horrified because we saw
some boys (guards) treat others as if they were despicable animals,
taking pleasure in cruelty, while other boys (prisoners) became
servile, dehumanized robots. (141)
- 39. Zimbardos Stanford Prison Experiments Findings: About 1/3
of guards became corrupted by the power of their roles (142) *T+he
mere act of assigning labels to people and putting them into a
situation where those labels acquire validity and meaning is
sufficient to elicit pathological behavior (Zimbardo, pg. 143)
- 40. On Being Sane in Insane Places Can we always distinguish
normal from abnormal people? The sane from the insane? How
objective are these labels? 1. Are insane behaviors caused by
innate characteristics of these individuals or are they elicited
from external environments? 2. Do observers see the same behavior
differently in different circumstances? Scene from One Flew Over
the Cuckoos Nest (1975)
- 41. On Being Sane in Insane Places Rosenhan undertakes
groundbreaking study: will sane people (pseudo-patients) be
recognized as sane by hospital staff in a psychiatric ward?
Experiment 8 sane people admitted into 12 hospitals; 3 women, 5 men
Initially complained of hearing voices of an existential nature:
Symptoms chosen because there were zero reports of existential
psychoses in the literature After being admitted, pseudo-patients
behaved normally Length of stay ranges from 7 to 52 days, average
of 19 days D. L. Rosenhan
- 42. On Being Sane in Insane Places Findings: The normal are not
detectably sane! Pseudo-patients were never detected Other patients
(but not doctors and staff) sometimes detected that they were not
insane. Each was discharged with a diagnosis of schizophrenia in
remission Normal behaviors were often interpreted as abnormal
because of the diagnosis! D. L. Rosenhan
- 43. Labels and Perception Perception of behavior Label
(diagnosis) Once a person is designated abnormal, all of his other
behaviors and characteristics are colored by that label (280). 1.
Observers perceive normal behavior as crazy; our expectations thus
reinforce our initial impressions 2. Patients can even begin to see
themselves as crazy, and thus act crazy (self-fulfilling
prophecy)
- 44. Aschs Conformity Experiments Question: Which of the lines
on the second card (A, B, or C) is the same length as the line on
the first card? That we have found the tendency to conformity in
our society so strong that reasonably intelligent and well-meaning
young people are willing to call White Black is a matter of
concern. It raises questions about out ways of education and about
the values that guide out conduct (95) Solomon Asch (1907
1996)