Hot answers tagged social-psychology
23
There are two great TED talks that together help shed some light on your question:
David Deutsch (2005) "A new way to explain explanation", and
Richard Dawkins (2009) "Why the universe seems so strange"
At a fundamental level, science is about explanation (and sometimes using that explanation to make predictions). Thus, to most people, science is useless ...
16
Introduction
It is interesting and quite under-researched topic in psychology. What has been studied and definied extensively are different abnormal sexual behaviours, and exhibitionism is one of them. In the DSM-IV exhibitionism is defined as sexual arousal by revealing one's body or performing sexual acts in public and it's a form of paraphilia. ...
10
From what I remember, the MBTI has been compared in some studies to the Big Five (or OCEAN) model of personality. If you've not heard of it, the Big Five is the primary theory of personality that is accepted by researchers who do this sort of thing. Here are some papers comparing the two approaches:
Recent comparison and another.
The main point is that a ...
9
Since you mentioned that you want an evolutionary explanation, there is one available. In biology the effect of providing benefit towards potential non-kin based on an arbitrary marker is known as the green-beard or armpit effect. In a social human setting, if the marker is arbitrary social construct it is usually known as ethnocentrism. This sort of ...
7
This is a fascinating question. According to Donald Symons (1979) "The evolution of human sexuality", it is a species specific adaptation that seems to be universal across cultures. Symons argued that having sex in private underlines the exclusivity of the relationship between monogamous couples. This theory does assume that sexual exclusivity is a universal ...
7
The classic reference for exactly what you are describing is Gilovich & Medvec, 1995 (LINK), the primary thesis of which is that "Actions, or errors of commission, generate more regret in the short term; but inactions, or errors of omission, produce more regret in the long run" (from the abstract). The authors explain that there are many factors that ...
6
Just a very brief note: in some cultures, sex does not appear to have been confined to private space. One article on the subject reads:
In fact, it seems that much of Athenian love life took place in public places: many vases show how people are looking when two people are having intercourse. There is not a single written statement that people objected ...
6
There is also the related phenomenon of 'Group Polarisation' (see Myers and Lamm, 1976; Isenberg, 1986), where groups are found to make more extreme decisions and hold more extreme opinions than its constituent members. Not sure if that's specifically related to what you're looking for but I think it's important to keep in mind.
References
Isenberg, D.J. ...
6
It seems like you are talking about a number of social processes related to internalising group norms. With regards to the influence that groups can have on beliefs, check out:
internalisation
Conformity and informational influence
Norms and internalising norms.
Groups internalize norms by accepting them as reasonable and proper
standards for ...
6
You may want to read up about "homophily". It is often summarised with the phrase "birds of a feather flock together". "Heterophily" relates to when people are attracted to those that are different to them.
There was a review article by McPhereson et al (2001) which you might like to read. To quote the abstract:
Similarity breeds connection. This ...
6
The easiest way to work forward from a well-cited article is to do a forward Google Search. My answer is almost completely based on such a search and concentrates on three brain regions: amygdala, insula cortex, and the anterior cingulate cortex; note that all three regions are linked to emotion.
Keep in mind: when you take any two groups of people that ...
6
In naïve realism, the subject acknowledges others' points of view while affirming the superiority of his/her own. Ross and Ward (1996) review the literature. I tried to write a summary of their fine paper, but I couldn't do it justice. I provide a link to it below.
In selfishness or unenlightened self-interest, the subject may consider multiple points of ...
6
A study that used the field setting you describe is done by Bateson et al. (2006).
As for the mechanism, they write:
we believe that images of eyes motivate cooperative behaviour because they induce a perception in participants of being watched. Although participants were not actually observed in either of our experimental conditions, the human ...
5
Obedience
The most famous paper dealing with this issue is Milgram's paper, called Behavioral study of obedience[1]. From the abstract:
This article describes a procedure for the study of destructive obedience in the laboratory. It consists of ordering a naive subject to administer increasingly more severe punishment to a victim in the context of a ...
5
Speed dating seems to provide an ideal setting for the type of study you seek. There are several relevant papers (see References below and Google search human mate preferences speed dating).
There is no consensus among researchers, but here's a sampling of some of the supposed findings:
Buston & Emlen claim that people choose mates from their league, ...
5
There is strong evidence that there is indeed a interindividual differential distribution of emotional processes or capabilities.
For instance, Bartels and Pizzarro (2011) could show that some antipersonality traits connected to the lack of compassion and empathy towards others are varying among people. Those who endorsed a more pragmatic and "straight" ...
5
Diener et al's (1999) review in Psychological Bulletin provides an excellent entry point into the well-being literature. It reviews the literature with regards to the many causes and correlates of well-being.
Individual Differences
First, individual differences explain a lot of variance in well-being. This is often seen in terms of personality traits such ...
5
I was alerted to your post here and would like to respond to a non-technical side of the question. I'm an Intellectual Property Assistant for CPP, Inc., publisher of the MBTI® assessment tool. I help protect the instrument's trademarks and copyrights, and ensure ethical use of the instrument.
The names MBTI®, Myers-Briggs®, and Myers-Briggs Type ...
5
The IPIP may provide what you are looking for.
This IPIP Website is intended to provide rapid access to measures of
individual differences, all in the public domain, to be developed
conjointly among scientists worldwide.
In general, the scientific literature tends to focus more on a dimensional approach based on the Big 5 model of personality than ...
5
I think the exceptions are implied. If someone says, "All Russians like vodka" then we understand that there are no exceptions to the rule. People get frustrated when you're overly specific about the percent of Russians who like vodka. Instead it's safer to just say Russians like vodka. And bears.
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion talks about why we ...
5
But what about a human empathizing with less humanoid animals?
Empathic responding towards humans is generalized to other species. The greater the similarity of the species towards humans, the larger is the empathic response. The findings support the notion that there is a relationship between human empathy directed towards other humans and human ...
4
The MBTI is based on Carl Jung's work with psychological types. However, Jung's work led to the formation of analytic psychology. This work is often associated with clinical observations and anecdotes instead of controlled scientific study. This means that Jung didn't carry out research that can be considered conclusive and scientifically validated. However, ...
4
If I understand your question correctly, you have found that participants are more willing to admit to an error if they interact with a computer rather than a human being.
I would suggest reading up on related findings in the field of social desirability. Social desirability is the tendency of humans to think of themselves (self-deceptive enhancement) and ...
4
There are two ways to approach your question: with or without dualism. I will highlight the dualist approach since it is more salient. Keep in mind that I do not find this approach reasonable, and doubt my summary will do it justice.
You might be interested in the concept of philosophical zombie, it is a modal argument against physicalism in the spirit of ...
4
Your example of no student willing to object until one objects is analagous to Asch's conformity experiments. To quote the Wikipedia article:
In a control group, with no pressure to conform to an erroneous view,
only one participant out of 35 ever gave an incorrect answer. Solomon
Asch hypothesized that the majority of participants would not conform
...
4
As @Jeff mentions you are essentially asking why people stereotype. Steretyping is a huge topic particularly in social psychology.
The wikipedia article on stereotypes provides a basic introduction to the functions of stereotypes where it talks about cognitive and social functions. It seems like most of the examples you provide are referring more to the ...
4
I think the difference comes down to awareness and control. A person who "wears many hats" and can step into different archetypes is a sort of personality chameleon, whereas a person with dissociative identity disorder has little or no control over changing personalities, and certain personalities within that person may be only partially or completely ...
4
Is husband and wife intelligence corelated?
By way of background, Mascie-Taylor (1989) report IQ correlations between husbands and wives in two british samples to be r=.40 and r =.37 respectively. I had a little difficulty discerning the sample size as it's not reported in the 1989 paper. But from another paper I got the sense that each sample might have ...
3
Could you be talking about conformity:
e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conformity
and/or
groupthink http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink ?
In addition to the famous Milgram studies which you may have already heard about:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
There's quite a lengthy literature on these issues but those links should get ...
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