Psychological Look at Social Change

Chapter #2

Focus their investigation of social change on people’s behaviours and attitudes ( link between what people do and what they think)

Psychologists want to know if it is necessary to change individual’s attitudes before their behaviour can be changed.

Psychologists have discovered that it can be difficult to change people’s attitudes and behaviours

* consider the effectiveness of the media

* advertisements* tactics of persuasion

The Psychological Question:

Most individuals desire Cognitive Consistency in their beliefs

We want to avoid attitudes that conflict with each other, and we tend to live more satisfying lives when this is the case

We change our attitudes when we experience discomfort because of 2 conflicting attitudes

The favoured theory of attitude change is called Cognitive Dissonance theory

Consider the issue of smoking To relieve the dissonance ( discomfort) you could:

Change your behaviour to make it consistent with your beliefs OR

Reinforce attitudes As long as you live in a state of dissonance, you may feel

anxiety, uncomfortable or even hostile when someone criticizes your behaviour

Experimental Psychology: deals with measuring and explaining human behaviour

Psychological Theories about Social Change:

Clinical Psychology: focuses on the treatment of problem human behaviours.

Behaviour Modification: theories of psychologists attempting to determine the methods that can successfully change or modify problem human behaviour

Negative reinforcement: punishment of people who do something of which society disapproves ( ie. Criminal justice system)

Positive reinforcement: rewarding of people who display what society considers good behaviour

Ie student of the month ( positive reinforcement is considered more effective in modifying behaviour)

3 categories 1) Neurosis: sufferers experience high

levels of anxiety or tension managing their daily lives

i.e panic attacks, phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorders

Treating Mental Disorders:

2) Psychosis: the patient has lost touch with the real world, may suffer from delusions or hallucination, and needs treatment before he can live with any degree of normality

Paranoia: a person suffers from irrational thoughts of persecution or foreboding

Schizophrenia: a complex disorder that leads to feelings of distress and social isolation

3) Anti-social Personality Disorders: a habitual pattern of rule-breaking and harming others

Examples: Pathological lying; absence of empathy toward others,

deliberately causing pain; a lack of feelings of guilt for the damage caused; serial killers are examples of people with anti-social personality disorders.