Recenlty, the Journal of Group Processes and Intergroup Relations published a paper by Cristina Zogmaister, et al., on how priming for loyalty or equality affected ingroup favortisim. They conducted experiments of three different types of “cultures” (national, local, religious).
In the first experiment, the experiment tested ingroup favoritism between Italians and Germans. After priming and testing, the authors concluded that those who were primed with loyalty were more bias towards their group and those who were primed with equality were found to be less bias towards their group.
Experiment 2 tested ingroup favoritism between Northern Italians to Southern Italians. As in experiment 1, the authors found that those primed with loyalty were again more biased towards their group while the opposite for being primed with equality.
Maybe the most interesting part of the study was in Experiment 3, when the authors looked at ingroup favoritism of Catholics. After being primed, the participants were told to go into a room where they were going to “become acquainted” with a Muslim person. Upon entering the room, the participants were told that the Muslim person they were to meet was “probably drinking coffee in a room nearby” and had the participant fill out a questionnaire while he/she waited. There was a chair and a table in the room with an Arabic language newspaper and a jacket on the chair. In the corner were a stack of chairs of which the participants utilized in order to fill out the questionnaire. The authors then measured the distance from the Muslim persons chair that the participants sat. Interestingly enough, they found that those primed with loyalty say further away from the Muslim person’s chair than did the participants primed with equality.
Unfortunately, that’s where I stray from the paper. The authors conclude that their “main interest in the present set of studies was to understand how to make use of social goals in order to ‘put the brakes on prejudice.'” The essential definition of science is to look at the physical and natural world through observation and experiment (www.dictionary.com).
In a moral sense, there are good and bad sides to everything. Ingroups can have a bad side, but Efferso, Lalive, and Fehr showed a positive of ingroups when they showed that participants profited more when they formed “cultures.” Studies in altruism punishment have shown a positive to ingroups as well. Piazza and Bering have shown that a thrid party is willing to punish another person who has not followed the accepted norms.
By equating a moral system to science, it can become just another religion, trying to fit the data into a belief system instead of reading the data for what it is.
Citations:
C. Zogmaister, L. Arcuri, L. Castelli, E. R. Smith (2008). The Impact of Loyalty and Equality on Implicit Ingroup Favoritism Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 11 (4), 493-512 DOI: 10.1177/1368430208095402
C. Efferson, R. Lalive, E. Fehr (2008). The Coevolution of Cultural Groups and Ingroup Favoritism Science, 321 (5897), 1844-1849 DOI: 10.1126/science.1155805
Jared Piazza, Jesse M. Bering (2008). The Effects of Perceived Anonymity on Altruistic Punishment Evolutionary Psychology, 6 (3), 487-501
Filed under: Altruistic Punishment, Charles Efferson, Culture, Ernst Fehr, Ingroup Favoritism, Rafael Lalive, ScienceMag
With the presidential elections coming soon, every American makes a decision of whether or not they are going to vote and, if they are going to vote, who they are going to vote for. For arguments sake, a person makes their decision based on the beliefs they hold and whether or not a candidate holds those same beliefs. This is where cultures start to emerge and it is no clearer than the two main cultures in American politics, the Democrats and Republicans. These two monumental cultures have grown to become important symbols of American culture.
And that’s just what they are, symbols of beliefs that a group of people have, brought together forming a culture. But why and how do these cultural groups form? Recently, Charles Efferso, Rafael Lalive, and Ernst Fehr tried to draw some more understanding of why and how cultural groups form.
Everywhere you look, everyone is part of a culture whether it be politics, religion, or art. The authors attempted to fabricate a culture through a series of games. They took groups of people, divided them into subgroups (marker-maintained and marker-randomized) and then had to choose from one of two behaviors (A or B). In the first subgroup, if an A paired with another A, they received 41 points. If a B paired with another B, they received 21 points. If an A paired with a B, they received 1 point. The second subgroup was the opposite, paired A’s received 21 point, B’s received 41 points, and mismatches received 1 point.
At the end of each round, 80 rounds in total, they switched one random person from each 
subgroup, putting that person into a new subgroup. To make it interesting, the researchers allowed each person to choose a shape, either a circle or a triangle, after each round, for the marker-maintained group. The marker-randomized group had their shapes randomly assigned after round 2.
After all 80 rounds were completed, the authors discovered that the marker-maintained group averaged a payoff of 27.454 points, while the marker-randomized averaged a payoff of 20.912 points. In both conditions, participants continually tried to assort themselves by shape, although it was to no avail for the marker-randomized group. That’s why a higher payout can be seen for the marker-maintained group because they were able to assort themselves ending up creating a definition for their chosen shape which originally meant absolutely nothing.
It seems to me that when these different “cultures” arise, it is easy to understand why ingroup favoritism and altruistic tendencies appear. Each “culture” believes it’s payoffs are more than the next “culture.” In order to maintain that standard, a set of morals and rules must be brought into place to ensure that the payoff continues.
Citation: C. Efferson, R. Lalive, E. Fehr (2008). The Coevolution of Cultural Groups and Ingroup Favoritism Science, 321 (5897), 1844-1849 DOI: 10.1126/science.1155805
Research into the diets of children have shown that a “high-sugar/high-fat” diet and restricting a diet can both increase the risk of obesity. But with it being fairly difficult to research humans, especially research on dietary habits over many years, the next best thing is to use C57BL/6 mice. These mice are a great alternative to studying humans because like humans they prefer sugar and fat. On top of that, when the mice are given long exposure to a “high-sugar/high-fat” diet, they are likely to develop diabetes.
With it being so difficult to test humans, Cristianne Frazier, et al., at the University of Chicago, decided to do some research with the C57BL/6 mice, testing how the mice reacted to unrestricted access to sucrose. While some mice were given unrestricted access to sucrose, other mice were not given any sucrose. After the sucrose exposure was finished for five weeks, the mice were then tested on their how much they wanted to work for sucrose pellets. In order to obtain a sucrose pellet, a mouse was required to press a lever x number of times with the amount the lever had to be pressed increasing each time a pellet was acquired.
What was discovered by the experiment was that the mice that had an unlimited quantity of sucrose had a lower breakpoint, defined by the maximum number of times a mouse pressed the lever to obtain a pellet, than did the mice that had no sucrose. But this was only when the mice had to work for the sucrose. When a “high-sugar/high-fat” diet was provided, in their adult lives, with unlimited exposure, the mice preferred it to a regular diet of “chow.” What’s interesting is that both sets of mice, unlimited sucrose and no sucrose, ate the same amount of food, but the mice who were given unlimited amounts of sucrose early in life stored more energy from the food.
So how does this relate to humans? While there is evidence that sugar and fat exposure will increase a child’s potential for obesity, it has also been shown that restricting a child’s diet can also increase a child’s potential for obesity. What can be concluded is that adults who are exposed to a “high-sugar/high-fat” diet as a child would be less motivated to have to work for those same foods. But, if “high-sugar/high-fat” food is readily available, those same adults will store more energy from the same amount of food than will an adult who’s diet was restricted as a child.
Filed under: Beverly Mcleod, Deceptive Communictaion, Lying, Personality, Personality and Individual Differences, Randy Genereux
I have always prided myself on my sense to be able to pick up on when people are lying. The way they stand, where their eyes are moving, each of the muscles in their face telling a story, it’s just something I have been able to do. It could all just be in my head as well.
Their goal?
To see if there is a correlation between acceptability of lies and personality traits, as well as any correlation between how likely a person is to lie based on certain personality traits. A questionnaire was answered by 287 college students about four types of lying depicting sixteen different scenarios (Altruistic, Conflict Avoidance, Social Acceptance, Self-gain). Afterward, the students personalities were measured (Honesty, Kindness, Assertiveness, Approval Motivation, Self-monitoring, Machiavellianism).
As predicted, the research was found to show what types of personalities accept certain lies and what personalities are more likely to tell certain lies. On example, that was discovered, is of self-gain lies where there is a positive correlation to Machiavellianism and self-monitoring and a negative correlation to honesty and kindness.
With this being one of a few pieces of research on this specific topic, it is exciting to see a deeper understanding emerge of the understanding of Human Evolution. At least for me, personally, it is an exciting thing because now the next time I am having a conversation with someone, I will be able to predict what type of lies the person will tell based on the personality traits I have picked up on.
Citation: B MCLEOD, R GENEREUX (2008). Predicting the acceptability and likelihood of lying: The interaction of personality with type of lie Personality and Individual Differences, 45 (7), 591-596 DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2008.06.015
Filed under: Deception, Joseph P. Forga, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Rebekah East, social cognition, social judgments
On the day of the robbery, my mom left work early to go home and while waiting for my step-dad to pick her up, she was approached by a man from Wales asking her where he could pick a cab up. Normally, my parents would have offered the man a ride, but in light of the certain circumstances, she allowed him to go upon his way. She told me later that she didn’t know whether or not he was genuine or not. She might have been on to something, but didn’t know it.
In a post a few weeks ago, I discussed a study that showed when children are in a neutral or bad mood, they actually are more detailed oriented. This may have been the same situation for my mom, she was certainly not in a good mood and so she was more critical of the details around her and recent research may support this conclusion.
In a recent study published by Joseph P. Forgas and Rebekah East, they wanted to see how mood affects how a person believes or disbelieves another person. People tend to be very poor judges of deception which can lead to problems such as my mom possibly being robbed by the man who needed a taxi.
Since people tend to perform better in detailed situations while in a bad mood, it could be assumed that people who are in a bad mood would cue into different signals that another person would be giving to indicate that they are being deceptive. Forgas and East had those participating in the study watch 10 minute video clips that would either put them in a good, neutral, or bad mood. Once the participants were in one of the three moods, they watched four videos of people who were either telling the truth or lying about taking a movie ticket.
What the study found was that the participants that were in the bad mood were more critical and were able to pick out more liars than the people in the happy mood. When it came to truth telling, the participants in bad moods were no more better than at judging honesty than those in happy moods.
With the ever growing amount of research into how mood effects humans, I can’t help but become overjoyed for the next time I’m in a bad mood. Had it not been for the men robbing my parents house, my mom would have been in a good mood which, in turn, would not have allowed her to see the cues of deception given off by the man from Wales asking for a place to grab a cab, which could have led to her heinous murder. That might be taking it over the top.
Citation: J FORGAS, R EAST (2008). On being happy and gullible: Mood effects on skepticism and the detection of deception☆ Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44 (5), 1362-1367 DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2008.04.010
Cognitive Trammeling 