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WAYNE WEITEN is a graduate of Bradley University and received his Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Illinois, Chicago in 1981. He currently teaches at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He has received distinguished teaching awards from Division Two of the American Psychological Association (APA) and from the College of DuPage, where he taught until 1991. He is a Fellow of Divisions 1 and 2 of the American Psychological Association. In 1991, he helped chair the APA National Conference on Enhancing the Quality of Undergraduate Education in Psychology and in 1996–1997 he served as President of the Society for the Teaching of Psychology. Weiten has conducted research on a wide range of topics, including educational measurement, jury decisionmaking, attribution theory, stress, and cerebral specialization. His recent interests have included pressure as a form of stress and the technology of textbooks. He is also the author of Psychology: Themes & Variations (Wadsworth, 2004) and the creator of an educational CD-ROM titled PsykTrek: A Multimedia Introduction to Psychology. MARGARET (MARKY) A. LLOYD received her B.A. from the University of Denver and her M.A. and Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Arizona. She is the author of Adolescence (Harper and Row, 1985). She has served as chair of the psychology departments at Suffolk University and Georgia Southern University and is the founding Chair of the Council for Undergraduate Psychology Programs. She is a past President of the Society for the Teaching of Psychology (Division 2 of the American Psychological Association), past Executive Director of the Society’s Office of Teaching Resources in Psychology, and currently serves on APA’s Council of Representatives for the Society. She is Emerita Professor and Chair of Psychology at Georgia Southern University and a recipient of that institution’s Award for Excellence for Contributions to Instruction.

EIGHTH EDITION

Psychology Applied to Modern Life ADJUSTMENT IN THE 21ST CENTURY

WAYNE WEITEN University of Nevada, Las Vegas

MARGARET A. LLOYD Georgia Southern University

Australia • Brazil • Canada • Mexico • Singapore Spain • United Kingdom • United States

To two pillars of stability in this era of turmoil—my parents W.W. To the memory of my mother and father—models of integrity and courage M.A.L.

Psychology Applied to Modern Life: Adjustment in the 21st Century, Eighth Edition Wayne Weiten and Margaret A. Lloyd

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To the Instructor Many students enter adjustment courses with great expectations. They’ve ambled through their local bookstores, and in the “Psychology” section they’ve seen numerous self-help books that offer highly touted recipes for achieving happiness for a mere $12.95. After paying far more money to enroll in a college course that deals with the same issues as the self-help books, many students expect a revelatory experience. However, the majority of us with professional training in psychology or counseling take a rather dim view of self-help books and the pop psychology they represent. Psychologists tend to see this literature as oversimplified, intellectually dishonest, and opportunistic and often summarily dismiss the pop psychology that so many students have embraced. Instructors try to supplant pop psychology with more sophisticated academic psychology, which is more complex and less accessible. In this textbook, we have tried to come to grips with this problem of differing expectations between student and teacher. Our goal has been to produce a comprehensive, serious, research-oriented treatment of the topic of adjustment that also acknowledges the existence of popular psychology and looks critically at its contributions. Our approach involves the following: ■ In Chapter 1 we confront the phenomenon of popular self-help books. We try to take the student beneath the seductive surface of such books and analyze some of their typical flaws. Our goal is to make the student a more critical consumer of this type of literature. ■ While encouraging a more critical attitude toward self-help books, we do not suggest that they should all be dismissed. Instead, we acknowledge that some of them offer authentic insights. With this in mind, we highlight some of the better books in Recommended Reading boxes sprinkled throughout the text. These recommended books tie in with the adjacent topical coverage and show the student the interface between academic and popular psychology. ■ We try to provide the student with a better appreciation of the merits of the empirical approach. This effort to clarify the role of research, which is rare for an adjustment text, appears in the first chapter. ■ Recognizing that adjustment students want to leave the course with concrete, personally useful information, we end each chapter with an application section. The Applications are “how to” discussions that address everyday problems. While they focus on issues that are relevant to the content of the particular chapter, they contain more explicit advice than the text proper.

In summary, we have tried to make this book both rigorous and applied. We hope that our approach will help students to better appreciate the value of scientific psychology.

Philosophy A certain philosophy is inherent in any systematic treatment of the topic of adjustment. Our philosophy can be summarized as follows: ■ We believe that an adjustment text should be a resource book for students. We have tried to design this book so that it encourages and facilitates the pursuit of additional information on adjustment-related topics. It should serve as a point of departure for more learning. ■ We believe in theoretical eclecticism. This book will not indoctrinate your students along the lines of any single theoretical orientation. The psychodynamic, behavioral, and humanistic schools of thought are all treated with respect, as are cognitive, biological, evolutionary, and other perspectives. ■ We believe that effective adjustment requires taking charge of one’s own life. Throughout the book we try to promote the notion that active coping efforts are generally superior to passivity and complacency.

Changes in the Eighth Edition One of the exciting things about psychology is that it is not a stagnant discipline. It continues to progress at what seems a faster and faster pace. A good textbook must evolve with the discipline. Although the professors and students who used the earlier editions of this book did not clamor for change, we’ve made some significant alterations. For example, we have implemented an entirely new design that is intended to be more open and friendly looking. All of the figures in the book have been redrawn. This process has allowed us to achieve greater consistency in style, make the graphics more attractive and modern looking, and enhance the pedagogical clarity of many figures. Color has been added to the integrated running glossary to make this pedagogical feature more prominent, and the look of the Applications has been changed so that students will no longer wonder whether these elements are an integral part of the chapters. And, of course, we have made countless content changes to keep up with new developments in psychology—adding and deleting some topics, condensing and reorganizing others, and updating everything (there are 1198 new references).

To t h e I n s t r u c t o r

v

The principal other change is the addition of boxes called “Living in Today’s World.” These features were originally developed in the previous edition to address issues that surfaced in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States (they were called Sidebars on Current Events). Continuing in this vein, many of the boxes in this edition deal with concerns raised by the ongoing specter of terrorism in today’s world. For example, we discuss how people tend to be affected by traumatic events, how people can cope more effectively with personal trauma, and how people can think more rationally about the threat of terrorism. However, in this edition we have broadened the scope of coverage in this series of boxes to include additional adjustment issues that are especially pertinent in light of current events, such as the controversy over whether the government should promote marriage and problems associated with living up to today’s unrealistic ideals of physical attractiveness.

Writing Style This book has been written with the student reader in mind. We have tried to integrate the technical jargon of our discipline into a relatively informal and down-toearth writing style. We use concrete examples extensively to clarify complex concepts and to help maintain student interest.

Features This text contains a number of features intended to stimulate interest and enhance students’ learning. These special features include Applications, Recommended Reading boxes, Internet-related features, Practice Tests, a didactic illustration program, and cartoons. Applications

The Applications should be of special interest to most students. They are tied to chapter content in a way that should show students how practical applications emerge out of theory and research. Although some of the material covered in these sections shows up frequently in adjustment texts, much of it is unique. Some of the Applications include the following: ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

Understanding Intimate Violence Monitoring Your Stress Understanding Eating Disorders Getting Ahead in the Job Game Building Self-Esteem Enhancing Sexual Relationships Bridging the Gender Gap in Communication

Recommended Reading Boxes

Recognizing students’ interest in self-help books, we have sifted through hundreds of them to identify some that may be especially useful. These books are featured in boxes that briefly review some of the higher-quality books. vi

To t h e I n s t r u c t o r

These Recommended Reading boxes are placed where they are germane to the material being covered in the text. Some of the recommended books are well known, while others are obscure. Although we make it clear that we don’t endorse every idea in every book, we think they all have something worthwhile to offer. This feature replaces the conventional suggested readings lists that usually appear at the ends of chapters, where they are almost universally ignored by students. Internet-Related Features

The Internet is rapidly altering the landscape of modern life, and students clearly need help dealing with the information explosion in cyberspace. To assist them, we have included two features. First, we recruited web expert Vincent Hevern to write a concise essay that explains the essentials of the Internet to the uninitiated. This essay, which appears in the front of the book, briefly explains URLs, domain names, hyperlinks, search engines, and so forth. It also provides students with realistic warnings about the instability of URLs and the questionable validity of much of the information available on the web. Second, we also asked Professor Hevern to evaluate hundreds of psychology- and adjustment-related sites on the web and come up with some recommended sites that appear to provide reasonably accurate, balanced, and empirically sound information. Short descriptions of these recommended websites are dispersed throughout the chapters, adjacent to related topical coverage. Because URLs change frequently, we have not included the URLs for the Web Links in the book. Insofar as students are interested in visiting these sites, we recommend that they do so through the Psychology Applied to Modern Life home page at the Wadsworth Psychology Website (http://psychology.wadsworth. com/weiten_lloyd8e). Links to all the recommended websites are maintained there, and the Wadsworth webmaster will periodically update the URLs. Of course, students can also use search engines such as Google to locate the recommended websites. Practice Tests

Each chapter ends with a ten-item multiple-choice Practice Test that should give students a fairly realistic assessment of their mastery of that chapter and valuable practice in taking the type of test that many of them will face in the classroom (if the instructor uses the Test Bank). This feature grew out of some research on students’ use of textbook pedagogical devices (see Weiten, Guadagno, & Beck, 1996). This research indicated that students pay scant attention to some standard pedagogical devices. When students were grilled to gain a better understanding of this perplexing finding, it quickly became apparent that students are pragmatic about pedagogy. Essentially, their refrain was, “We want study aids that will help us pass the next test.” With this mandate in mind, we added the Practice Tests. They should be very realistic, as many of the items came from the Test Bank for previous editions (these items do not appear in the Test Bank for the current edition).

Didactic Illustration Program

The illustration program is once again in full color, and many new figures have been added along with the redrawing of all the graphics. Although the illustrations are intended to make the book attractive and to help maintain student interest, they are not merely decorative: They have been carefully selected and crafted for their didactic value to enhance the educational goals of the text. Cartoons

A little comic relief usually helps keep a student interested, so we’ve sprinkled numerous cartoons throughout the book. Like the figures, most of these have been chosen to reinforce ideas in the text.

Learning Aids Because this book is rigorous, substantive, and sizable, a number of learning aids have been incorporated into the text to help the reader digest the wealth of material: ■ The outline at the beginning of each chapter provides the student with a preview and overview of what will be covered. ■ Headings are used extensively to keep material well organized. ■ To help alert your students to key points, learning objectives are distributed throughout the chapters, after the level-1 headings. ■ Key terms are identified with blue italicized boldface type to indicate that these are important vocabulary items that are part of psychology’s technical language. ■ An integrated running glossary provides an on-thespot definition of each key term as it is introduced in the text. These formal definitions are printed in blue boldface type. ■ An alphabetical glossary is found in the back of the book, as key terms are usually defined in the integrated running glossary only when they are first introduced. ■ Italics are used liberally throughout the text to emphasize important points. ■ A chapter review is found at the end of each chapter. Each review includes a concise but thorough summary of the chapter’s key ideas, a list of the key terms that were introduced in the chapter, and a list of important theorists and researchers who were discussed in the chapter.

educational endeavors. It provides a thorough overview of each chapter, along with a list of relevant films and InfoTrac College Edition® integration. It also includes a wealth of suggestions for lecture topics, class demonstrations, exercises, and discussion questions, organized around the content of each chapter in the text. Test Bank (0-495-03029-5)

The Test Bank, written by Mary Ann Valentino of Fresno City College and David Ward of Arkansas Tech University, contains an extensive collection of multiple-choice questions for objective tests, all closely tied to the learning objectives found in the text chapters. We’re confident that you will find this to be a dependable and usable test bank. ExamView® Computerized Testing (0-495-00418-9)

Windows®/Macintosh® CD-ROM Preloaded with all of the questions in the Test Bank, ExamView allows you to create, deliver, and customize tests and study guides (both print and online) in minutes. ExamView offers both a Quick Test Wizard and an Online Test Wizard that guides you step by step through the process of creating tests, while its unique “what you see is what you get” capability allows you to see the test you are creating onscreen exactly as it will print or display online. You can build tests of up to 250 questions using up to 12 question types. Using ExamView’s complete wordprocessing capabilities, you can enter an unlimited number of new questions or edit existing questions. Multimedia Manager Instructor’s Resource CD-ROM (0-534-24863-2)

This one-stop lecture and class preparation tool makes it easy for you to assemble, edit, publish, and present custom lectures for your course, using Microsoft® PowerPoint®. The Multimedia Manager lets you bring together text-specific lecture outlines, written by Lisa Garner of Tallahassee Community College, and art from the text, along with video and animations from the web or your own materials—culminating in a powerful, personalized, media-enhanced presentation. The CD-ROM also contains the full Instructor’s Manual, Test Bank, and other instructor resources. Transparency Acetates Set (0-495-03028-7)

Supplementary Materials A complete teaching/learning package has been developed to supplement Psychology Applied to Modern Life. These supplementary materials have been carefully coordinated to provide effective support for the text. (Available to qualified adopters. Please consult your local sales representative for details.) Instructor’s Manual (0-495-03031-7)

The Instructor’s Manual, written by Lenore Frigo of Shasta College, is available as a convenient aid for your

There are 50 acetates in this package, compiled by Susan Shapiro of Indiana University East, along with general comments on using these acetates. Study Guide (0-495-03032-5)

The Study Guide, written by William Addison of Eastern Illinois University, is designed to help students master the information contained in the text. It contains a programmed review of learning objectives, quiz boxes, and a self-test for each chapter. Your students should find it helpful in their study efforts. To t h e I n s t r u c t o r

vii

Critical Thinking with Psychology: Separating Sense from Nonsense, Second Edition (0-534-53659-X)

Students may have a difficult time distinguishing between the true science of human thought and behavior and pop psychology. This small paperback, written by John Ruscio, provides a tangible and compelling framework for making that distinction, teaching the fundamentals of scientific reasoning. InfoTrac® College Edition . . . now with InfoMarks®!

Southern Nevada and Wayne Weiten. It contains experiential exercises for each text chapter, designed to help your students achieve personal insights. The questionnaires are psychological tests or scales that your students can administer and score for themselves. The “Personal Probes” consist of questions intended to help students think about themselves in relation to issues raised in the text. In addition to generating student interest, these exercises can be fruitful in stimulating class discussion. The Personal Explorations Workbook can be ordered shrinkwrapped with the text.

NOT SOLD SEPARATELY. Available for packaging with the text! Now FREE four-month access to InfoTrac College Edition’s online database of more than 18 million reliable, full-length articles from 5000 academic journals and periodicals includes access to InfoMarks—stable URLs that can be linked to articles, journals, and searches. InfoMarks allow you to use a simple copy and paste technique to create instant and continually updated online readers, content services, bibliographies, electronic “reserve” readings, and current topic sites. And to help students use the research they gather, their free four-month subsciption to InfoTrac College Edition includes access to InfoWrite, a complete set of online critical thinking and paper-writing tools. To take a quick tour of InfoTrac College Edition, visit http://www.infotrac-college.com/ and select the User Demo. (Journals subject to change. Certain restrictions may apply. For additional information, please consult your local Thomson representative.)

Critical Thinking Exercises

Culture and Modern Life (0-534-49688-1)

WebTutor™ ToolBox for WebCT® WebTutor™ ToolBox for Blackboard®

Culture and Modern Life is a small paperback intended to help your students appreciate how cultural factors moderate psychological processes and how the viewpoint of one’s own culture can distort one’s interpretation of the behavior of people from other cultures. Written by David Matsumoto, a leading authority on cross-cultural psychology, this supplementary book should greatly enhance your students’ understanding of how culture can influence adjustment. Culture and Modern Life can be ordered shrinkwrapped with the text. Personal Explorations Workbook (0-495-03035-X)

The Personal Explorations Workbook is a small booklet assembled by John Pulver of the Community College of

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To t h e I n s t r u c t o r

We have developed a set of critical thinking exercises that will be posted on the Internet at the Wadsworth Psychology Website (http://psychology.wadsworth.com/weiten_ lloyd8e). Written by Jeffry Ricker, these exercises are intended to introduce students to specific critical thinking skills, such as recognizing extraneous variables, sampling bias, and fallacies in reasoning. The exercises also challenge students to apply these skills to adjustment-related topics on a chapter-by-chapter basis. Book Companion Website: http://psychology.wadsworth.com/ weiten_lloyd8e

This comprehensive website includes learning objectives, a full glossary, flashcards, crossword puzzles, InfoTrac College Edition articles with questions, web links, and tutorial quizzes.

Preloaded with content and available via a free access code when packaged with this text, WebTutor ToolBox pairs all the content of this text’s rich Book Companion Website with sophisticated course management functionality. You can assign materials (including online quizzes) and have the results flow automatically to your grade book. WebTutor ToolBox is ready to use as soon as you log on—or you can customize its preloaded content by uploading images and other resources, adding web links, or creating your own practice materials.

Acknowledgments This book has been an enormous undertaking, and we want to express our gratitude to the innumerable people who have influenced its evolution. To begin with, we must cite the contribution of our students who have taken the adjustment course. It is trite to say that they have been a continuing inspiration—but they have. We also want to express our appreciation for the time and effort invested by the authors of our Internet essay and various ancillary books and materials: Vinny Hevern (LeMoyne College), Bill Addison (Eastern Illinois University), Jeffry Ricker (Scottsdale Community College), John Pulver (Community College of Southern Nevada), David Matsumoto (San Francisco State University), Lenore Frigo (Shasta College), Lisa Garner (Tallahassee Community College), Susan Shapiro (Indiana University East), Mary Ann Valentino (Fresno City College), and David Ward (Arkansas Tech University). In spite of tight schedules, they all did commendable work. The quality of a textbook depends greatly on the quality of the prepublication reviews by psychology professors around the country. The reviewers listed on page x have contributed to the development of this book by providing constructive reviews of various portions of the manuscript in this or earlier editions. We are grateful to all of them. We would also like to thank Michele Sordi, who has served as editor of this edition. She has done a wonderful job following in the footsteps of Claire Verduin, Eileen Murphy, and Edith Beard Brady, to whom we remain indebted. We are also grateful to Jackie Estrada, for an excel-

lent job of copy editing and indexing; Tom Dorsaneo, who performed superbly as our production editor; Linda Beaupre, who created the colorful, inviting new design; Linda Rill, who provided outstanding photo and permissions research; Carol Zuber-Mallison, who created the new graphics; Alma Bell of Thompson Type who oversaw the composition; and Fiorella Ljunggren, who shepherded previous editions into existence. Others who have made significant contributions to this project include Jennie Redwitz (project manager), Jennifer Wilkinson (development editor), Jennifer Keever (ancillaries editor), Dory Schaefer and Marlene Veach (marketing), Jessica Kim (editorial assistant), and Vernon Boes (art director). In addition, Wayne Weiten would like to thank his wife, Beth Traylor, who has been a steady source of emotional support despite the demands of her medical career, and his twelve-year-old son, T. J., who adds a wealth of laughter to his dad’s life. He is also grateful to his former colleagues at the College of DuPage and at Santa Clara University, for their counsel and assistance, and to Mike Beede for his assistance with the references. Marky Lloyd would like to thank graduate student Gizelle George for preparing much of the reference list. She is also grateful to Janis Bohan and Glenda Russell for their suggestions for resources on gay and lesbian issues. She also wishes to thank Judith A. Holleman for her assistance and support. Wayne Weiten Margaret A. Lloyd

Acknowledgments

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Reviewers Bette Ackerman Rhodes College Jeff Banks Pepperdine University Marsha K. Beauchamp Mt. San Antonio College John R. Blakemore Monterey Peninsula College Barbara A. Boccaccio Tunxis Community College Paul Bowers Grayson County College Tamara L. Brown University of Kentucky George Bryant East Texas State University James F. Calhoun University of Georgia Robert Cameron Fairmont State College M. K. Clampit Bentley College Meg Clark California State Polytechnic University–Pomona Stephen S. Coccia Orange County Community College Dennis Coon Santa Barbara City College Katherine A. Couch Eastern Oklahoma State College Tori Crews American River College Salvatore Cullari Lebanon Valley College Kenneth S. Davidson Wayne State University Richard Fuhrer University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire R. Kirkland Gable California Lutheran University Lee Gills Georgia College Lawrence Grebstein University of Rhode Island Bryan Gros Louisiana State University Barbara Hansen Lemme College of DuPage Robert Helm Oklahoma State University Barbara Hermann Gainesville College Jeanne L. Higbee University of Minnesota Robert Higgins Central Missouri State University Clara E. Hill University of Maryland

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Reviewers

Michael Hirt Kent State University Fred J. Hitti Monroe Community College William M. Hooper Clayton College and State University Joseph Horvat Weber State University Kathy Howard Harding University Teresa A. Hutchens University of Tennessee–Knoxville Jerry Jensen Minneapolis Community & Technical College Walter Jones College of DuPage Wayne Joose Calvin College Bradley Karlin Texas A&M University Margaret Karolyi University of Akron Lambros Karris Husson College Martha Kuehn Central Lakes College Susan Kupisch Austin Peay State University Robert Lawyer Delgado Community College Jimi Leopold Tarleton State University Harold List Massachusetts Bay Community College Corliss A. Littlefield Morgan Community College Louis A. Martone Miami Dade Community College Richard Maslow San Joaquin Delta College Sherri McCarthy Northern Arizona University William T. McReynolds University of Tampa Fred Medway University of South Carolina– Columbia Frederick Meeker California State Polytechnic University–Pomona Mitchell Metzger Pennsylvania State University— Shenago Campus John Moritsugu Pacific Lutheran University Jeanne O’Kon Tallahassee Community College

Gary Oliver College of DuPage William Penrod Middle Tennessee State University Joseph Philbrick California State Polytechnic University–Pomona Barbara M. Powell Eastern Illinois University James Prochaska University of Rhode Island Katherine Elaine Royal Middle Tennessee State University Joan Royce Riverside Community College Joan Rykiel Ocean County College John Sample Slippery Rock University Thomas K. Savill Metropolitan State College of Denver Patricia Sawyer Middlesex Community College Carol Schachat De Anza College Norman R. Schultz Clemson University Dale Simmons Oregon State University Sangeeta Singg Angelo State University Valerie Smead Western Illinois University Dolores K. Sutter Tarrant County College–Northeast Karl Swain Community College of Southern Nevada Kenneth L. Thompson Central Missouri State University David L. Watson University of Hawaii Deborah S. Weber University of Akron Clair Wiederholt Madison Area Technical College J. Oscar Williams Diablo Valley College Raymond Wolf Moraine Park Technical College Raymond Wolfe State University of New York at Geneseo Michael Wolff Southwestern Oklahoma State University Madeleine E. Wright Houston Community College Norbert Yager Henry Ford Community College

Brief Contents PART O N E

1

The Dynamics of Adjustment

Adjusting to Modern Life 1 APPLICATION: IMPROVING ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE 24

2

Theories of Personality 32 APPLICATION: ASSESSING YOUR PERSONALITY 64

3

Stress and Its Effects 70 APPLICATION: MONITORING YOUR STRESS 97

4

Coping Processes 104 APPLICATION: ACHIEVING SELF-CONTROL 130

PART T WO

5

The Interpersonal Realm

The Self 138 APPLICATION: BUILDING SELF-ESTEEM 165

6

Social Thinking and Social Influence 170 APPLICATION: SEEING THROUGH COMPLIANCE TACTICS 195

7

Interpersonal Communication 200 APPLICATION: DEVELOPING AN ASSERTIVE COMMUNICATION STYLE 227

8

Friendship and Love 234 APPLICATION: OVERCOMING LONELINESS 260

9

Marriage and Intimate Relationships 268 APPLICATION: UNDERSTANDING INTIMATE VIOLENCE 295

PART TH R E E

10

Development al Transitions

Gender and Behavior 302 APPLICATION: BRIDGING THE GENDER GAP IN COMMUNICATION 329

11

Development in Adolescence and Adulthood 336 APPLICATION: BECOMING AN EFFECTIVE PARENT 362

12

Careers and Work 372 APPLICATION: GETTING AHEAD IN THE JOB GAME 399

13

Development and Expression of Sexuality 406 APPLICATION: ENHANCING SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS 434

PART F O U R

14

Ment al and Physical Health

Psychology and Physical Health 442 APPLICATION: UNDERSTANDING THE EFFECTS OF DRUGS 472

15

Psychological Disorders 480 APPLICATION: UNDERSTANDING EATING DISORDERS 509

16

Psychotherapy 516 APPLICATION: LOOKING FOR A THERAPIST 544 Brief Contents

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Contents PART O N E

The Dynami c s of Adjus tment

CHAPTER 1

Adjusting to Modern Life 1 THE PARADOX OF PROGRESS 2 THE SEARCH FOR DIRECTION 5 Self-Help Books The Approach of This Textbook

Extraversion

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADJUSTMENT 11 What Is Psychology? What Is Adjustment? Social activity

Happiness

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH TO BEHAVIOR 12 The Commitment to Empiricism Advantages of the Scientific Approach Experimental Research: Looking for Causes Correlational Research: Looking for Links THE ROOTS OF HAPPINESS: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS 19 What Isn’t Very Important? What Is Somewhat Important? What Is Very Important? Conclusions

CHAPTER 1 REVIEW

© David Young-Wolff/PhotoEdit

APPLICATION: IMPROVING ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE 24 Developing Sound Study Habits Improving Your Reading Getting More Out of Lectures Applying Memory Principles 30

PRACTICE TEST 31

Successful students Always or almost always in class 84%

Unsuccessful students Sometimes absent 8%

Often absent 45%

Always or almost always in class 47%

Sometimes absent Often absent 8% 8%

Contents

xiii

CHAPTER 2

Theories of Personality 32

Neuroticism (negative emotionality)

Extraversion (positive emotionality)

Conscientiousness (constraint)

Openness to experience

PSYCHODYNAMIC PERSPECTIVES 35 Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory Jung’s Analytical Psychology Adler’s Individual Psychology Evaluating Psychodynamic Perspectives BEHAVIORAL PERSPECTIVES 44 Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning Skinner’s Operant Conditioning Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory Evaluating Behavioral Perspectives HUMANISTIC PERSPECTIVES 51 Rogers’s Person-Centered Theory Maslow’s Theory of Self-Actualization Evaluating Humanistic Perspectives BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES 55 Eysenck’s Theory Recent Research in Behavioral Genetics The Evolutionary Approach to Personality Evaluating Biological Perspectives A CONTEMPORARY EMPIRICAL APPROACH: TERROR MANAGEMENT THEORY 59 Essentials of Terror Management Theory Applications of Terror Management Theory AN EPILOGUE ON THEORETICAL DIVERSITY 62 APPLICATION: ASSESSING YOUR PERSONALITY 64 Key Concepts in Psychological Testing Self-Report Inventories Projective Tests CHAPTER 2 REVIEW 68 PRACTICE TEST 69

xiv

Contents

Showing off

Approval or disapproval

Response

Reinforcer or punisher

© Laura Dwight/PhotoEdit

Agreeableness

THE NATURE OF PERSONALITY 34 What Is Personality? What Are Personality Traits?

CHAPTER 3

Stress and Its Effects 70 THE NATURE OF STRESS 72 Stress Is an Everyday Event Stress Lies in the Eye of the Beholder Stress May Be Embedded in the Environment Stress May Be Self-Imposed Stress Is Influenced by Culture

Quiet communities Epinephrine Noisy communities Quiet communities Norepinephrine

Noisy communities 200

400 600 800 Nanograms/hour

1000

1200

Tennis Pizza Blue sweater

RESPONDING TO STRESS 81 Emotional Responses Physiological Responses Behavioral Responses

Unemployment Painful backache

THE POTENTIAL EFFECTS OF STRESS 89 Impaired Task Performance Disruption of Cognitive Functioning Burnout Posttraumatic Stress Disorders Psychological Problems and Disorders Physical Illness Positive Effects

APPROACH-AVOIDANCE Date with an attractive person Rejection Investment returns Loss of capital

Racquetball Spaghetti Gray jacket

AVOIDANCE-AVOIDANCE Degrading job Surgery

FACTORS INFLUENCING STRESS TOLERANCE 94 Social Support Hardiness Optimism APPLICATION: MONITORING YOUR STRESS 97 Problems with the SRRS The Life Experiences Survey A Cautionary Note CHAPTER 3 REVIEW 102 PRACTICE TEST 103

Resistance to stress

APPROACH-APPROACH

MAJOR TYPES OF STRESS 75 Frustration Conflict Change Pressure

Normal level of resistance

Phase 1 Alarm reaction

Phase 2 Stage of resistance

Phase 3 Stage of exhaustion

Time

Contents

xv

CHAPTER 4

Coping Processes 104 THE CONCEPT OF COPING 106 COMMON COPING PATTERNS OF LIMITED VALUE 107 Giving Up Striking Out at Others Indulging Yourself Blaming Yourself Using Defensive Coping

80 60

Low

or hum

40 umor High h

20 0 0

10

20 Stress

30

40

THE NATURE OF CONSTRUCTIVE COPING 113 APPRAISAL-FOCUSED CONSTRUCTIVE COPING 115 Ellis’s Rational Thinking Humor as a Stress Reducer Positive Reinterpretation

EMOTION-FOCUSED CONSTRUCTIVE COPING 125 Enhancing Emotional Intelligence Releasing Pent-Up Emotions Managing Hostility and Forgiving Others Meditating Using Relaxation Procedures APPLICATION: ACHIEVING SELF-CONTROL 130 Specifying Your Target Behavior Gathering Baseline Data Designing Your Program Executing and Evaluating Your Program Ending Your Program CHAPTER 4 REVIEW 136 PRACTICE TEST 137 Before

During meditation

After

260

240

200

180

160

xvi

Oxygen consumption

220

Carbon dioxide elimination

10

Contents

20

30 Minutes

40

50

60

© Paul Thomas/The Image Bank/Getty Images

PROBLEM-FOCUSED CONSTRUCTIVE COPING 118 Using Systematic Problem Solving Seeking Help Using Time More Effectively Improving Self-Control

Cubic centimeters per minute

Mood disturbance

100

PART T WO

The Interpersonal Realm

CHAPTER 5

The Self 138 SELF-CONCEPT 140 The Nature of the Self-Concept Self-Discrepancies Factors Shaping the Self-Concept

Low self-esteem

Negative expectations

Self-blame

Failure

Low effort High anxiety

SELF-ESTEEM 146 The Importance of Self-Esteem The Development of Self-Esteem Ethnicity, Gender, and Self-Esteem BASIC PRINCIPLES OF SELF-PERCEPTION 152 Cognitive Processes Self-Attributions Explanatory Style Motives Guiding Self-Understanding Methods of Self-Enhancement

© GDT/Stone/Getty Images

SELF-REGULATION 158 Self-Efficacy Self-Defeating Behavior SELF-PRESENTATION 161 Impression Management Self-Monitoring APPLICATION: BUILDING SELF-ESTEEM 165 CHAPTER 5 REVIEW 168 PRACTICE TEST 169

Oversensitivity to rejection

Low self-esteem

Actual rejection by others

Negative, hurtful ways of relating to people

Contents

xvii

CHAPTER 6

FORMING IMPRESSIONS OF OTHERS 172 Key Sources of Information Snap Judgments Versus Systematic Judgments Attributions Perceiver Expectations Cognitive Distortions Key Themes in Person Perception

40

30

20

10

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Size of incorrect majority

THE PROBLEM OF PREJUDICE 181 “Old-Fashioned” Versus Modern Discrimination Causes of Prejudice Reducing Prejudice THE POWER OF PERSUASION 185 The Elements of the Persuasion Process The Whys of Persuasion THE POWER OF SOCIAL PRESSURE 190 Conformity and Compliance Pressures Pressure from Authority Figures Culture and Social Influence APPLICATION: SEEING THROUGH COMPLIANCE TACTICS 195 The Consistency Principle The Reciprocity Principle The Scarcity Principle CHAPTER 6 REVIEW 198 PRACTICE TEST 199

Threat to personal identity

Threat to social identity

Personal achievements

Favoritism toward ingroups Derogation of outgroups

xviii

Contents

Self-esteem

© RNT Productions/Corbis

Trials on which subjects conform (%)

Social Thinking and Social Influence 170

CHAPTER 7

Interpersonal Communication 200

Noise

Encoding

Decoding

NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION 205 General Principles Elements of Nonverbal Communication Detecting Deception The Significance of Nonverbal Communication

Channel Message Noise Sender

Receiver

TOWARD MORE EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION 213 Creating a Positive Interpersonal Climate Conversational Skills Self-Disclosure Effective Listening

Context

© Eric K. K. Yu/Corbis

Noise

THE PROCESS OF INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION 202 Components of the Communication Process Technology and Interpersonal Communication Communication and Adjustment

COMMUNICATION PROBLEMS 219 Communication Apprehension Barriers to Effective Communication INTERPERSONAL CONFLICT 221 Beliefs About Conflict Types of Conflict Styles of Managing Conflict Dealing Constructively with Conflict Public Communication in an Adversarial Culture APPLICATION: DEVELOPING AN ASSERTIVE COMMUNICATION STYLE 227 The Nature of Assertiveness Steps in Assertiveness Training CHAPTER 7 REVIEW 232 PRACTICE TEST 233

Concern for self

Competing/ forcing

Collaborating

Compromising

Avoiding/ withdrawing

Accommodating

Concern for others

Contents

xix

CHAPTER 8

Friendship and Love 234

Romantic love (intimacy + passion)

INTIMACY

Liking (intimacy alone)

Companionate love (intimacy + commitment)

Consummate love (intimacy + passion + commitment)

N

CO

MM

ITM

SIO

EN

S PA Infatuation (passion alone)

Fatuous love (passion + commitment)

T

Empty love (commitment alone)

PERSPECTIVES ON CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS 236 The Ingredients of Close Relationships Culture and Relationships The Internet and Relationships INITIAL ATTRACTION AND RELATIONSHIP DEVELOPMENT 239 Initial Encounters Getting Acquainted Established Relationships FRIENDSHIP 248 What Makes a Good Friend? Gender Differences in Friendship

APPLICATION: OVERCOMING LONELINESS 260 The Nature of Loneliness Prevalence of Loneliness The Roots of Loneliness Correlates of Loneliness Conquering Loneliness CHAPTER 8 REVIEW 266 PRACTICE TEST 267

Commitment

Level of intensity

Intimacy

Passion

Time

xx

Contents

© 2004 AP/Wide World Photos

ROMANTIC LOVE 250 Sexual Orientation and Love Gender Differences Regarding Love Theories of Love The Course of Romantic Love

CHAPTER 9

Marriage and Intimate Relationships 268 CHALLENGES TO THE TRADITIONAL MODEL OF MARRIAGE 270 MOVING TOWARD MARRIAGE 272 The Motivation to Marry Selecting a Mate Predictors of Marital Success

26 25 Males

24 23 22

Females 21 20 1970

1960

Year

1980

1990

2000

MARITAL ADJUSTMENT ACROSS THE FAMILY LIFE CYCLE 275 Between Families: The Unattached Young Adult Joining Together: The Newly Married Couple Family with Young Children Family with Adolescent Children Launching Children into the Adult World The Family in Later Life VULNERABLE AREAS IN MARITAL ADJUSTMENT 279 Gaps in Role Expectations Work and Career Issues Financial Difficulties Inadequate Communication DIVORCE 285 Increasing Rate of Divorce Deciding on a Divorce Adjusting to Divorce Effects of Divorce on Children Remarriage

© Matthew McVay/Corbis Saba

19 1950

ALTERNATIVES TO MARRIAGE 290 Remaining Single Cohabitation Gay Relationships APPLICATION: UNDERSTANDING INTIMATE VIOLENCE 295 Date Rape Partner Abuse CHAPTER 9 REVIEW 300 PRACTICE TEST 301 40 Hours per week of housework

Median age at first marriage

27

35 30 Married women

25 20 15

Married men

10 5 0 1965

1975

Year

1985

1995

Contents

xxi

PART TH R E E

Development al Transitions

CHAPTER 10

Gender and Behavior 302

Distribution for females

Distribution for males

Low

Score on the trait

High

GENDER SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES 306 Cognitive Abilities Personality Traits and Social Behavior Psychological Disorders Putting Gender Differences in Perspective BIOLOGICAL ORIGINS OF GENDER DIFFERENCES 311 Evolutionary Explanations Brain Organization Hormonal Influences ENVIRONMENTAL ORIGINS OF GENDER DIFFERENCES 313 Processes in Gender-Role Socialization Sources of Gender-Role Socialization GENDER ROLES 318 Role Expectations for Males Problems with the Male Role Role Expectations for Females Problems with the Female Role Sexism: A Special Problem for Females

© Michelle D. Bridwell/PhotoEdit

Persons receiving each score

GENDER STEREOTYPES 304 Mean score for females

Mean score for males

GENDER IN THE PAST AND IN THE FUTURE 326 Why Are Gender Roles Changing? Alternatives to Traditional Gender Roles A Gender-Free Society? APPLICATION: BRIDGING THE GENDER GAP IN COMMUNICATION 329 The Clash of Two “Cultures” Instrumental and Expressive Styles Common Mixed-Gender Communication Problems Toward a “Shared Language” CHAPTER 10 REVIEW 334 PRACTICE TEST 335

a

xxii

Contents

b

c

d

e

CHAPTER 11

Development in Adolescence and Adulthood 336 THE TRANSITION OF ADOLESCENCE 338 Physical Changes Cognitive Changes Personality Changes Adolescent Suicide

Optimum

THE EXPANSE OF ADULTHOOD 345 Early Adulthood (From About Age 20 to 40) Middle Adulthood (From About Age 40 to 65) Late Adulthood (After Age 65)

Girls

AGING: A GRADUAL PROCESS 352 Physical Changes Cognitive Changes Personality Changes

Poor Early

© David Young-Wolff/Stone/Getty Images

Quality of outcome

Boys

Late Teenagers’ perception of their pubertal timing

DEATH AND DYING 358 Attitudes About Death The Process of Dying Bereavement and Grieving APPLICATION: BECOMING AN EFFECTIVE PARENT 362 Maternal Behavior and Infant-Mother Attachment Day Care and Attachment Dimensions of Childrearing Correlates of Parenting Styles Rearing Adolescents Toward Effective Parenting Using Punishment Effectively CHAPTER 11 REVIEW 370 PRACTICE TEST 371

ge

85

Subjective age in years

ua

la

75

en

Ac t

65

:m

e ag

ive ct en je om b Su ge: w ea tiv

55 45 c

bje

Su

35 25 15 15

25

35 45 55 65 Actual age in years

75

85

Contents

xxiii

CHAPTER 12

Careers and Work 372 CHOOSING A CAREER 374 Examining Personal Characteristics and Family Influences Researching Job Characteristics Using Psychological Tests for Career Decisions Taking Important Considerations into Account

Percentage of respondents who . . . get a sense of identity from job work just to earn a living 70 60

30

THE CHANGING WORLD OF WORK 382 Workplace Trends Education and Earnings The Changing Workforce

20 10

Less than $30,000

$30,000– $50,000– $50,000 $75,000 Annual income

$75,000+

COPING WITH OCCUPATIONAL HAZARDS 387 Job Stress Sexual Harassment Unemployment BALANCING WORK AND OTHER SPHERES OF LIFE 395 Workaholism Work and Family Roles Leisure and Recreation APPLICATION: GETTING AHEAD IN THE JOB GAME 399 Putting Together a Résumé Finding Companies You Want to Work For Landing an Interview Polishing Your Interview Technique CHAPTER 12 REVIEW 404 PRACTICE TEST 405

All employees Women

All managers Executives

Minorities

Percent

40

All employees All managers Executives 0

xxiv

10 20 30 40 Percentage at different levels of Fortune 1000 corporations

Contents

© B. Busco/The Image Bank/Getty Images

MODELS OF CAREER CHOICE AND DEVELOPMENT 378 Holland’s Trait Measurement and Matching Model Super’s Developmental Model Women’s Career Development

50

CHAPTER 13

Development and Expression of Sexuality 406 BECOMING A SEXUAL PERSON 408 Key Aspects of Sexual Identity Physiological Influences Psychosocial Influences Gender Differences in Sexual Socialization Sexual Orientation

© Paul Wright/Masterfile

INTERACTION IN SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS 418 Motives for Engaging in Sex Communicating About Sex THE HUMAN SEXUAL RESPONSE 419 The Sexual Response Cycle Gender Differences in Patterns of Orgasm SEXUAL EXPRESSION 422 Fantasy Kissing and Touching Self-Stimulation Oral and Anal Sex Intercourse

Among prime-time broadcast shows Among top 20 teen programs 0

20 100 40 60 80 Percentage of programs with sexual content (2001–2002)

PATTERNS OF SEXUAL BEHAVIOR 424 Sex in the Age of AIDS Early Sexual Experiences Sex in Committed Relationships Infidelity in Committed Relationships PRACTICAL ISSUES IN SEXUAL ACTIVITY 429 Contraception Sexually Transmitted Diseases APPLICATION: ENHANCING SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS 434 General Suggestions Understanding Sexual Dysfunction Coping with Specific Problems CHAPTER 13 REVIEW 440 PRACTICE TEST 441

© Mark Romanelli/The Image Bank/Getty Images

Among all programs

Contents

xxv

PART F O U R

M en t al and Phys ical Health

CHAPTER 14

Psychology and Physical Health 442 STRESS, PERSONALITY, AND ILLNESS 445 Personality, Emotions, and Heart Disease Stress and Cancer Stress and Other Diseases Stress and Immune Functioning Conclusions

3.0 2.5 2.0 1.5 1.0 0.5 0

Low

Moderate Anger level

High

HABITS, LIFESTYLES, AND HEALTH 452 Smoking Drinking Overeating Poor Nutrition Lack of Exercise Behavior and AIDS REACTIONS TO ILLNESS 469 The Decision to Seek Treatment The Sick Role Communicating with Health Providers Adherence to Medical Advice APPLICATION: UNDERSTANDING THE EFFECTS OF DRUGS 472 Drug-Related Concepts Narcotics Sedatives Stimulants Hallucinogens Marijuana Ecstasy (MDMA) CHAPTER 14 REVIEW 478 PRACTICE TEST 479

Aspects of personality, physiology, memory

High stress

xxvi

Contents

High incidence of illness

© Jim Cummings/Taxi/Getty Images

Relative risk of coronary events

3.5

CHAPTER 15

Psychological Disorders 480 ABNORMAL BEHAVIOR: MYTHS AND REALITIES 482 The Medical Model Applied to Abnormal Behavior Criteria of Abnormal Behavior Psychodiagnosis: The Classification of Disorders The Prevalence of Psychological Disorders ANXIETY DISORDERS 487 Generalized Anxiety Disorder Phobic Disorder Panic Disorder and Agoraphobia Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Etiology of Anxiety Disorders

Neurochemical changes

SOMATOFORM DISORDERS 491 Somatization Disorder Conversion Disorder Hypochondriasis Etiology of Somatoform Disorders

Right ventricle Left ventricle

Negative thinking, attributions

Depression

DISSOCIATIVE DISORDERS 494 Dissociative Amnesia and Fugue Dissociative Identity Disorder Etiology of Dissociative Disorders

Third ventricle

Fourth ventricle

MOOD DISORDERS 496 Major Depressive Disorder Bipolar Disorder Etiology of Mood Disorders SCHIZOPHRENIC DISORDERS 502 General Symptoms Subtypes Course and Outcome Etiology of Schizophrenia PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDERS AND THE LAW 508 Insanity Involuntary Commitment APPLICATION: UNDERSTANDING EATING DISORDERS 509 Anorexia Nervosa Bulimia Nervosa History and Prevalence Etiology of Eating Disorders Course and Outcome

Deviance

CHAPTER 15 REVIEW 514 PRACTICE TEST 515

Normal

Personal distress

Abnormal

Maladaptive behavior

Contents

xxvii

CHAPTER 16

Psychotherapy 516

Psychologists 35.5%

Psychiatrists 26.9% General medical professionals 9.3%

National Library of Medicine

Other mental health specialists 28.3%

THE ELEMENTS OF THE TREATMENT PROCESS 518 Treatments: How Many Types Are There? Clients: Who Seeks Therapy? Therapists: Who Provides Professional Treatment? INSIGHT THERAPIES 522 Psychoanalysis Client-Centered Therapy Cognitive Therapy Group Therapy Evaluating Insight Therapies Therapy and the Recovered Memories Controversy BEHAVIOR THERAPIES 532 General Principles Systematic Desensitization Aversion Therapy Social Skills Training Evaluating Behavior Therapies BIOMEDICAL THERAPIES 536 Treatment with Drugs Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) CURRENT TRENDS AND ISSUES IN TREATMENT 541 Grappling with the Constraints of Managed Care Blending Approaches to Treatment Increasing Multicultural Sensitivity in Treatment APPLICATION: LOOKING FOR A THERAPIST 544 When Should You Seek Professional Treatment? Where Do You Find Therapeutic Services? Is the Therapist’s Profession Important? Is the Therapist’s Gender Important? Is Therapy Always Expensive? Is the Therapist’s Theoretical Approach Important? What If There Isn’t Any Progress? What Is Therapy Like? CHAPTER 16 REVIEW 550 PRACTICE TEST 551

Gloss ary

553

References Credits

559

611

Name Index Subject Index

xxviii

Contents

619 637

CS Bridge

UCS Lightning strikes

Desensitization is intended to weaken and replace this association

CR Fear UCR

To the Student In most college courses students spend more time with their textbooks than with their professors. Given this reality, it helps if you like your textbook. Making textbooks likable, however, is a tricky proposition. By its very nature, a textbook must introduce a great many new concepts, ideas, and theories. If it doesn’t, it isn’t much of a textbook, and instructors won’t choose to use it—so you’ll never see it anyway. Consequently, we have tried to make this book as likable as possible without compromising the academic content that your instructor demands. Thus, we have tried to make the book lively, informal, engaging, well organized, easy to read, practical, and occasionally humorous. Before you plunge into Chapter 1, let us explain some of the key features that can help you get the most out of the book.

Learning Aids Mastering the content of this text involves digesting a great deal of information. To facilitate this learning process, we’ve incorporated a number of instructional aids into the book. ■ Outlines at the beginning of each chapter provide you with both a preview and an overview of what will be covered. ■ Headings are used extensively to keep material well organized. ■ To help alert you to key points, learning objectives are found throughout the chapters, immediately after the level-1 headings. ■ Key terms are identified with blue italicized boldface type to indicate that these are important vocabulary items that are part of psychology’s technical language. ■ An integrated running glossary provides an on-thespot definition of each key term as it’s introduced in the text. These formal definitions are printed in blue boldface type. It is often difficult for students to adapt to the jargon used by scientific disciplines. However, learning this terminology is an essential part of your educational experience. The integrated running glossary is meant to make this learning process as painless as possible. ■ An alphabetical glossary is provided in the back of the book, as key terms are usually defined in the running glossary only when they are first introduced. If you run into a technical term that was introduced in an earlier chapter and you can’t remember its meaning, you can look it up in the alphabetical glossary instead of backtracking to find the place where it first appeared. ■ Italics are used liberally throughout the book to emphasize important points.

■ A chapter review near the end of each chapter includes a thorough summary of the chapter, and lists key terms and important theorists, with page references. Reading over these review materials can help ensure that you’ve digested the key points in the chapter. ■ Each chapter ends with a ten-item practice test that should give you a realistic assessment of your mastery of that chapter and valuable practice taking multiple-choice tests that will probably be representative of what you will see in class (if your instructor uses the test bank designed for this book).

Recommended Reading Boxes This text should function as a resource book. To facilitate this goal, particularly interesting self-help books on various topics are highlighted in boxes within the chapters. Each box provides a brief description of the book. We do not agree with everything in these recommended books, but all of them are potentially useful or intriguing. The main purpose of this feature is to introduce you to some of the better self-help books that are available.

Living in Today’s World Boxes These boxes were originally developed to address issues that surfaced in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States. Continuing in this vein, many of the boxes in this edition deal with concerns raised by the threat of terrorism in today’s world. For example, we discuss how people tend to be affected by traumatic events, how people can cope more effectively with personal trauma, and how people can think more rationally about the threat of terrorism. However, in this edition we have broadened the scope of coverage in these boxes to include additional adjustment issues that are especially pertinent in light of current events, such as the controversy over whether the government should promote marriage and problems associated with living up to today’s unrealistic ideals of physical attractiveness. We hope these digressions on pressing, contemporary issues prove helpful.

Web Links (by Vincent Hevern) To help make this book a rich resource guide, we have included Web Links, which are recommended websites that can provide you with additional information on adjustment-related topics. The recommended sites were selected by Vincent Hevern, the Internet editor for the Society for the Teaching of Psychology. Professor Hevern sought out sites that are interesting, that are relevant to

To t h e S t u d e n t

xxix

adjustment, and that provide accurate, empirically sound information. As with the Recommended Reading boxes, we cannot say that we agree with everything posted on these web pages, but we think they have some real value. The Web Links are dispersed throughout the chapters, adjacent to related topical coverage. Because URLs change frequently, we have not included the URLs for the Web Links in the book. If you are interested in visiting these sites, we recommend that you do so through the Psychology Applied to Modern Life home page at the Wadsworth Psychology Website (http://psychology.wadsworth.com/ weiten_lloyd8e). Links to all the recommended websites will be maintained there, and the Wadsworth webmaster will periodically update the URLs. Of course, you can also use a search engine, such as Google, to locate the recommended websites. By the way, if you are not particularly sophisticated about the Internet, we strongly suggest that you read Professor Hevern’s essay on the Internet, which follows this preface.

Study Guide (0-495-03032-5) The study guide that accompanies this text, written by William Addison of Eastern Illinois University, is an excellent resource designed to assist you in mastering the information contained in the book. It includes a wealth of review exercises to help you organize information and a self-test for assessing your mastery. You should be able to purchase it at your college bookstore.

InfoTrac®

College Edition . . . now with InfoMarks®! NOT SOLD SEPARATELY. Available for packaging with the text! Now FREE four-month access to InfoTrac College Edition’s online database of more than 18 million reliable, full-length articles from 5000 academic journals and periodicals includes access to InfoMarks—stable URLs that can be linked to articles, journals, and searches. InfoMarks allow you to use a simple copy and paste technique to create instant and continually updated online

xxx

To t h e S t u d e n t

readers, content services, bibliographies, electronic “reserve” readings, and current topic sites. And to help you use the research you gather, your free four-month subsciption to InfoTrac College Edition includes access to InfoWrite, a complete set of online critical thinking and paper-writing tools. To take a quick tour of InfoTrac College Edition, visit http://www.infotrac-college.com/ and select the User Demo.

Personal Explorations Workbook (0-495-03035-X) The Personal Explorations Workbook is a small booklet that contains interesting, thought-provoking experiential exercises for each text chapter. These exercises are designed to help you achieve personal insights. The Questionnaires are psychological tests or scales that you can administer, so you can see how you score on various traits discussed in the text. The Personal Probes consist of questions intended to help you think about issues in your personal life in relation to concepts and ideas discussed in the text. Many students find these exercises to be quite interesting, even fun. Hence, we encourage you to use the Personal Explorations Workbook. The exercises related to each chapter are listed at the end of each chapter on the same page as the Practice Test.

A Concluding Note We sincerely hope that you find this book enjoyable. If you have any comments or advice that might help us improve the next edition, please write to us in care of the publisher, Wadsworth Publishing Company, 10 Davis Drive, Belmont, California 94002. There is a form in the back of the book that you can use to provide us with feedback. Finally, let us wish you good luck. We hope you enjoy your course and learn a great deal. Wayne Weiten Margaret A. Lloyd

Applied Psychology and the Internet: What Should a Student Know? by Vincent W. Hevern, Le Moyne College Imagine walking into a huge bookstore at a mall to look for a good book in “applied psychology.” Your first reaction is confusion. The store is gigantic and you’re unsure even where to begin your search. No one seems to be around to tell you where to look. Eventually you discover that some titles of interest are shelved in a “Psychology” section but a lot of others are found in a separate “Self-Help” section. What’s the difference, you wonder? After a careful look at the books, you begin to notice that many (not all) of the psychology books contain research references to support their conclusions. But, many (not all) of the self-help books don’t have any references. Indeed, many self-help books have catchy titles, flashy covers, and bold claims, but little scientific support for the claims they make. The World Wide Web (WWW or “the web”) on the Internet (“the Net”) is much like one of those huge bookstores. The selection is enormous, and it’s sometimes difficult to find what you’re looking for. For many users, the Net can seem intimidating, and students may feel they don’t know how the Net works. On top of that, much of the web is filled with weak or poor resources of dubious validity. So what can you do? Wayne Weiten and Marky Lloyd, the authors of this textbook, asked me to put together some advice and guidelines for students like yourself who may turn to the Net for help. They know that I’ve been using the Net intensively for years in teaching and research with undergraduates. So I’m going to share with you what I believe to be the really important stuff about the Internet—information that should make your life as a student easier and, in the end, help you to learn even more about the fascinating world of applied psychology.

General Comments About the Internet We now know that something of a fundamental change in the way people exchange ideas and information took place around the time many of you were attending elementary school. For over twenty years, the Internet had been the tool of a relatively small group of lab scientists communicating mostly with each other. Suddenly, in the mid-1990s, the Net began to expand rapidly beyond the research laboratory. It first reached tens and then hundreds of millions of people as vast numbers of computers, large and small, were interconnected to form what is

often called cyberspace. Thus, in the 21st century learning to navigate the Internet is as crucial as learning to read or to write—most of us will probably use the Net in some form at work or at home for the rest of our lives. So, what are some basic notions to understand the Internet and how it works? Let me propose briefly eight crucial ideas. 1. The goal of the Internet is communication—the rapid exchange of information—between people separated from each other. Electronic mail (e-mail) and the World Wide Web (WWW, of just “the web”) are currently the two most important ways of communicating in cyberspace even though the Net also uses other formats to do so. 2. Every piece of information on the Net—every web page, every graphic, every movie or sound, every e-mail box—has a unique, short, and structured address called a URL (or uniform resource locator). Take, for example, the URL for materials related to psychology maintained by the publisher of this book: http://psychology.wadsworth.com/ This example shows all three elements of a URL: (a) to the left of the double forward slashes (// ) is the protocol that tells the Net how to transfer the information. Here it is http: which means “use hypertext transfer protocol”— the most frequent protocol on the Net; (b) to the right of the double slashes up to the first forward slash (/ ) is the domain name that indicates which computer on the Net from which to get the information. Here the name of the computer is “www.wadsworth.com”. (c) finally, everything after the first forward slash is called the pathway, which indicates where the information is located within that particular computer. Here the pathway consists of the location “psychology_d/”. 3. The foundation of the web rests on hypertext links (“hyperlinks”) that are contained within documents (or web pages) displayed online. A hyperlink is a highlighted word, phrase, or graphic image within an onscreen document that refers to some other document or web page elsewhere. Part of every hyperlink on a computer screen includes the URL of the document which is hidden from view on the screen but stored within the computer displaying the document. Users can easily move from one document to another on screen because of hypertext links and their URLs. 4. The last element of the domain name (the “domain” itself) indicates what type of organization sponsors the link. Four important domains are .com (commercial

Applied Psychology and the Internet: What Should a Student Know?

xxxi

businesses), .edu (colleges and universities), .gov (governmental agencies), and .org (non-profit organizations). 5. The Internet is too large for any one individual to know all the important resources that can be found there. Users, even experienced ones, often need help to find what they’re looking for. In the chapters ahead, you will find many recommended websites that I have carefully selected based on their quality and their suitability for undergraduates. In making these selections, I emphasized quality over quantity and strived to send you to excellent gateway sites that are rich in links to related sites. I hope these links help you to begin to explore the field of psychology on the Internet. 6. URLs are relatively unstable. Many websites are moved or changed each year, as new computer systems are installed to replace older ones. Thus, links or URLs that are good one day may be useless the next. That is why we have not included the URLs for our recommended websites in the book. If you want to check out a recommended website, we suggest that you do so through the Psychology Applied to Modern Life home page at the Wadsworth Psychology Website (http://psychology.wadsworth.com/ weiten_lloyd8e). Links to all the recommended websites will be maintained there, and the Wadsworth webmaster will periodically update the URLs. Of course, you can also use a search engine, such as Google, to locate the recommended websites. 7. The web is a world-wide democracy on which anyone can post materials. Hence, the quality of information found online varies tremendously. Some material is first rate, up to date, and backed up by good research and professional judgment. But a great deal of information online is junk—second rate, based on poor or invalid research, and filled with many errors. Frankly, some sites are downright wacky, and others are run by hucksters and hate-mongers. Thus, users need to learn to tell the difference between reputable and disreputable web resources. 8. Knowledge has a monetary value. Although the Internet started out as a noncommercial enterprise where almost everything was free, things have changed swiftly. Owners of knowledge (the holders of commercial “copyrights”) usually expect to be paid for sharing what they own over the Net. Thus, many commercial businesses, such as the publishers of academic journals or books, either do not make journal articles available on line for free or expect users to pay some type of fee for accessing their materials. Cognizant of this problem, the publisher of this text has entered into an agreement with a major online resource for magazine and journal articles and other types of information called InfoTrac College Edition. Your text may have come bundled with a free four-month subscription to InfoTrac College Edition, which provides easy access to full-text versions of thousands of periodicals. If you received an InfoTrac College Edition subscription with this book, it would be wise to take advantage of this valuable resource.

xxxii

Some Suggestions for Action In light of these ideas, how might students approach the Internet? What should you do to make the most of your time online? Let’s review some general suggestions for exploring the Internet. 1. Learn to navigate the Net before you get an assignment requiring you to do so. If you’ve never used the Net before, start now to get a feel for it. Consider doing what lots of students do: Ask a friend who knows the Net to work with you directly so you can quickly get personal experience in cyberspace. What if you “hate” computers or they make you uncomfortable? Recent research has shown that students’ fears of using computers tend to diminish once they get some practical experience during the course of a single semester. 2. Learn how the software browser on your computer works. Every popular web browser, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, or Safari (for Mac users), is filled with many simple tricks and helpful shortcuts. Ask your friends or the computer consultants at school. Learning the tricks makes Net-based research much easier. (Hint: Find out what happens when you hold down the right-hand mouse button on a PC or the whole button on a Mac once you have the cursor on top of a hyperlink.) 3. Get to know the different types of online help to find resources on the web. These resources currently fall into three general categories: (a) General guides or directories such as Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com) are similar to the Yellow Pages for telephones. You ask the online guide to show you what’s listed in its directory under a category heading you supply. (b) Search engines such as Google (www.google.com), Scirus (www.scirus.com), AllTheWeb (www.alltheweb.com), and Teoma (www.teoma.com) are huge databases that generally collect the names and URLs of millions of pages on the Net along with many lines of text from these pages. They can be searched by either keywords or phrases and provide ranked listings of web pages that contain the search target words or phrases. (c) Expert subject guides such as Russ Dewey’s PsychWeb (www. psychwww.com) or Scott Plous’ Social Psychology Network (www.socialpsychology.org) provide links to online resources in more narrow or specific fields. Volunteer specialists who claim to be experts on the topic select the links. Recent innovative features of websites include the vast graphic image database at Google, the “between the covers” text search capability of many books at Amazon.com, and the Wayback Machine’s post-1995 archive of more than 30 billion pages of the web itself (www.archive.org). 4. Carefully check everything you type online because even the slightest error in spelling a URL or an e-mail address will cause a failure to retrieve the web page or to deliver the e-mail message. Remember that computers are stupid and will do exactly and only what you tell them to do. They don’t read minds.

Applied Psychology and the Internet: What Should a Student Know?

Using the Internet in Psychology Are there specific suggestions for students of psychology about using the Net? Here are five that I think are very important. 1. Plan what to look for before going online. Too many psychology students jump right to the web when they’re given a research task, before giving careful thought to what they’re looking for. They get frustrated easily because the web doesn’t seem to have anything about the topic. It would be better (a) to think about the subject you are researching and what specifically you want to learn about that topic, (b) to recall what you already know that relates to the topic, especially psychological concepts and vocabulary words associated with the topic, and (c) to devise a strategy for getting the information you desire. Consult your school’s reference library staff or your teachers for suggestions. 2. Do not rely on the Internet as your principal or only source of data or references in a research project (especially if you want a good grade). The Net may be easy to use, but your teachers will expect you to cite journal articles, books, and other printed sources more than you cite Internet materials in research. Developing your library skills is essential. 3. As noted before, don’t expect to find many full-text journal articles or other copyrighted commercial materials online for free. Consult your school’s reference librarians about online access to such materials. Many schools now subscribe to online full-text databases that allow you to research articles and other information sources with your own computer. On the web itself, you are more likely to

uncover government reports, specialized technical materials from nonprofit organizations, current news and opinion, and general sorts of information rather than findings of specific research studies (though, if they were recently in the news, you may find some of these, too.) 4. Learn to recognize the characteristics of a good online resource site. Good sites have webmasters or editors personally identified by name and affiliation. Such persons may be professionals or staff members at a reputable institution such as a hospital or university. These sites seem to provide a broad set of resources, are balanced and reasonably objective in their content, and avoid sensational or one-sided viewpoints. Reputable sites tend not to promote specific products or services for money or, if they do, acknowledge there are other resources that browsers may consider. 5. If you contact anyone online for help, be courteous. Introduce yourself as you would if you were standing in a faculty member’s office. Give your name, your school, and a full statement of what help you are asking for and what you’ve tried to do that hasn’t worked. Don’t demand that someone help you. Be sure you’ve done adequate research on your own before contacting an expert on the web. And don’t be surprised if your request for help is turned down by a webmaster or editor. Frankly, he or she has already done a lot of volunteer work by editing the site online. I hope some of these ideas and suggestions help. The Internet offers an awesome array of learning resources related to psychology. Welcome to an exciting new world of discovery.

Applied Psychology and the Internet: What Should a Student Know?

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EIGHTH EDITION

Psychology Applied to Modern Life ADJUSTMENT IN THE 21ST CENTURY

THE PARADOX OF PROGRESS THE SEARCH FOR DIRECTION Self-Help Books The Approach of This Textbook THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADJUSTMENT What Is Psychology? What Is Adjustment?

THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH TO BEHAVIOR The Commitment to Empiricism Advantages of the Scientific Approach Experimental Research: Looking for Causes Correlational Research: Looking for Links

APPLICATION: IMPROVING ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE Developing Sound Study Habits Improving Your Reading Getting More Out of Lectures Applying Memory Principles CHAPTER 1 REVIEW

THE ROOTS OF HAPPINESS: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS What Isn’t Very Important? What Is Somewhat Important? What Is Very Important? Conclusions

PRACTICE TEST

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The immense Boeing 747 lumbers into position to accept its human cargo. The eager passengers-to-be scurry on board. In a tower a few hundred yards away, air traffic controllers diligently monitor radar screens, radio transmissions, and digital readouts of weather information. At the reservation desks in the airport terminal, clerks punch up the appropriate ticket information on their computer terminals and quickly process the steady stream of passengers. Mounted on the wall are video terminals displaying up-to-theminute information on flight arrivals, departures, and delays. Back in the cockpit of the plane, the flight crew calmly scans the complex array of dials, meters, and lights to assess the aircraft’s readiness for flight. In a few minutes, the airplane will slice into the cloudy, snow-laden skies above Chicago. In a mere three hours its passengers will be transported from the piercing cold of a Chicago winter to the balmy beaches of the Bahamas. Another everyday triumph for technology will have taken place.

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The Paradox of Progress LEARNING OBJECTIVES ■ ■

Describe four examples of the paradox of progress. Explain what is meant by the paradox of progress and how theorists have explained it.

We are the children of technology. We take for granted such impressive feats as transporting 300 people over 1500 miles in a matter of hours. After all, we live in a time of unparalleled progress. Our modern Western society has made extraordinary strides in transportation, energy, communication, agriculture, and medicine. Yet despite our technological progress, social problems and personal difficulties seem more prevalent and more prominent than ever before. This paradox is evident in many aspects of contemporary life, as seen in the following examples. Point. Modern technology has provided us with countless time-saving devices—automobiles, telephones, vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, photocopiers, fax machines. Today, cell phones allow people to talk to friends or colleagues and battle rush hour at the same time. In a matter of seconds a personal computer can perform calculations that would take months if done by hand. Counterpoint. Nonetheless, most of us complain about not having enough time. Our schedule books are overflowing with appointments, commitments, and plans. Surveys suggest that most of us spend more and more time working and have less and less time for ourselves (Schor, 1991). Time has become such a precious commodity, one national survey found that 51 percent of the adult respondents would rather have more time than more money (Weil & Rosen, 1997). As social critic Jeremy Rifkin (1989) notes, “It is ironic in a culture so committed to saving time that we feel increasingly deprived of the very thing we value” (p. 19). Where has all our free time gone? Recent research suggests that virtually all the additional leisure time gained over the last 30 years has been absorbed by one of technology’s most seductive inventions—television (Robinson & Godbey, 1997). Point. Thanks in large part to technological advances, we live in extraordinary affluence. Undeniably, there are pockets of genuine poverty, but social critics Paul Wachtel (1989), David Myers (2000), and Gregg Easterbrook (2003) argue convincingly that in North America and Europe the middle and upper classes are larger and wealthier than ever before. Most of us take for granted things that were once considered luxuries, such as color television and air conditioning. People spend vast amounts of money on expensive automobiles, 2

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audio systems, computers, projection TVs, clothing, and vacations. In the late 1990s, the amount of money spent on luxury goods increased four times faster than overall spending (Frank, 1999). Wachtel quotes a New York museum director who asserts that “shopping is the chief cultural activity in the United States” (p. 23). Counterpoint. In spite of this economic abundance, research suggests that most people do not feel very good about their financial well-being. For example, when one survey inquired about Americans’ satisfaction with 13 aspects of their lives, the results showed that people were least satisfied with their finances (Myers, 2000). In his book titled The High Price of Materialism, Tim Kasser (2002) summarizes research showing that people who are especially concerned with money and possessions tend to report lower levels of happiness than others. Why are people so dissatisfied with their economic well-being? One problem is that advertising helps foster an insatiable thirst for consumption and the belief that material goods are the key to happiness (Kanner & Soule, 2004; Kasser et al., 2004). Hence, studies find that the gap between what people have and what they desire is greater in the material domain than in other areas of life (Solberg, Diener, & Robinson, 2004). Point. The range of life choices available to people in modern societies has increased exponentially in recent decades. For example, Barry Schwartz (2004) describes how a simple visit to a local supermarket can require a consumer to choose from 285 varieties of cookies, 61 suntan lotions, 150 lipsticks, and 175 salad dressings. Although increased choice is most tangible in the realm of consumer goods and services, Schwartz argues that it also extends into more significant domains of life. Today, people tend to have unprecedented opportunities to make choices about how they will be educated (e.g., vastly more flexible college curricula are available), how and where they will work (e.g., telecommuting presents employees with all sorts of new choices about how to accomplish their work), how their intimate relationships will unfold (e.g., people have increased freedom to delay marriage, cohabit, not have children, and so forth), and even how they will look (advances in plastic surgery have made personal appearance a matter of choice). Counterpoint. Although increased freedom of choice sounds attractive, Schwartz (2004) argues that the overabundance of choices in modern life has unexpected

LIVING IN TODAY‘S WORLD

The citizens of the United States received a gigantic wake-up call on September 11, 2001, in the form of the horrific, tragic terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Life in the United States and much of the Western world may never be quite the same again. The specter of terrorism has psychological repercussions for virtually everyone in the United States (Danieli, Engdahl, & Schlenger, 2004). People are upset about the many things that they used to take for granted but have lost, such as being able to fly to a business meeting without a second thought, to pick up mail without worrying about contamination, to walk into a tall building without being searched, and to interact with strangers without being suspicious. They are angry about the injustice of it all, disgusted by the senseless violence, and anxious about what future terrorist attacks might bring. Above all else, Americans have lost their sense of invulnerability. In light of the fundamental ways in which our lives have been changed, you might wonder whether the principal premise of this book—that the basic challenge of modern life is the quest for meaning and direction— might suddenly seem irrelevant. In reality, the situation is quite the opposite. Perhaps more than before, because of the threat of terrorism, people are questioning the meaning of their lives. Americans are wondering whether what they do matters, whether what they cherish is important, and whether what they have worked for has been worth it. The terrorist-induced jolt to our collective psyche has made the search for a sense of direction even more relevant to contemporary life. That said, the threat of terrorism raises some important issues that an adjustment textbook should attempt to address. Fortunately, the field of psychology has much to contribute to the battle against terrorism (Marsella, 2004). After all, terrorism is psychological warfare (Lev-

costs. He argues that people routinely make errors even when choosing among a handful of alternatives and that errors become much more likely when decisions become vastly more complex. And he explains how having more alternatives increases the potential for rumination, postdecision regret, and anticipated regret. Ultimately, he argues, the malaise associated with choice overload undermines individuals’ happiness and con-

© AP/Wide World Photos

Life May Never Be the Same Again: Implications for Adjustment

ant, Barbanel, & DeLeon, 2004). The goal of terrorism is to provoke psychological vulnerability and agitation in a population. The death, destruction, and havoc wreaked by terrorists is not an end in itself, but a means to an end—the creation of widespread anxiety, alarm, and panic. In each chapter you will find boxes labeled “Living in Today’s World,” which address some of the adjustment issues raised by the threat of terrorism itself, related problems spawned by terrorism, and a variety of other challenges unique to our modern world. These boxes discuss such topics as how people tend to react to traumatic events, how people can cope more effectively with personal trauma, whether the government should promote marriage, how resilience can be enhanced in children, how workers can cope with unemployment, and other contemporary issues. We sincerely hope that this feature proves helpful.

tributes to depression. Consistent with this analysis, studies have found that the incidence of depressive disorders has increased dramatically—perhaps tenfold— over the last 50 years (Diener & Seligman, 2004). Average anxiety levels have also gone up substantially in recent decades (Twenge, 2000). It is hard to say whether choice overload is the chief culprit underlying these trends, but it is clear that increased freedom of choice CHAPTER 1

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© Randy Faris/Corbis

Barry Schwartz argues that people in modern societies suffer from choice overload. He maintains that the endless choices people are presented with lead them to waste countless hours weighing trivial decisions and ruminating about whether their decisions were optimal.

has not resulted in enhanced tranquillity or improved mental health. Point. Modern technology has gradually provided us with unprecedented control over the world around us. Advances in agriculture have dramatically increased food production, and biotechnology advocates claim that genetically modified crops will make our food supply more reliable that ever before. Elaborate water supply systems, made up of hundreds of miles of canals, tunnels, and pipelines, along with dams, reservoirs, and pumping stations, permit massive metropolitan areas to grow in inhospitable deserts. Thanks to progress in medicine, doctors can reattach severed limbs, use lasers to correct microscopic defects in the eye, and even replace the human heart. Counterpoint. Unfortunately, modern technology has also had a devastating negative impact on the world around us, leading to environmental problems such as global warming, destruction of the ozone layer, deforestation, exhaustion of much of the world’s fisheries, widespread air and water pollution, and extensive exposure of plants and animals to toxic chemicals (Oskamp, 2000). Many experts worry that in a few generations the earth’s resources will be too depleted to sustain an adequate quality of life (Winter, 2004). To most people, these crises sound like technical problems that call for technological answers, but they are also behavioral problems in that they are fueled by overpopulation and overconsumption (Howard, 2000). In North America, the crucial problem is excessive consumption of the world’s natural resources. For example, the United States houses 5 percent of the world’s population but guzzles 25 percent of its commercial energy (Flavin & Dunn, 1999).

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All these apparent contradictions reflect the same theme: The technological advances of the past century, impressive though they may be, have not led to perceptible improvement in our collective health and happiness. Indeed, many social critics argue that the quality of our lives and our sense of personal fulfillment have declined rather than increased. This is the paradox of progress. What is the cause of this paradox? Many explanations have been offered. Erich Fromm (1963, 1981) has argued that the progress we value so much has scrambled our value systems and undermined our traditional sources of emotional security, such as family, community, and religion. Alvin Toffler (1970, 1980) attributes our collective alienation and distress to our being overwhelmed by rapidly accelerating cultural change. Robert Kegan (1994) maintains that the mental demands of modern life have become so complex, confusing, and contradictory that most of us are “in over our heads.” Tim Kasser (2002) speculates that excessive materialism weakens the social ties that bind us, stokes the fires of insecurity, and undermines our collective sense of well-being. Whatever the explanation, many theorists agree that the basic challenge of modern life has become the search for meaning or a sense of direction (Naylor, Willimon, & Naylor, 1994). This search involves struggling with such problems as forming a solid sense of identity, arriving at a coherent philosophy of life, and developing a clear vision of a future that realistically promises fulfillment. Centuries ago, problems of this kind were probably much simpler. As we’ll see in the next section, today it appears that many of us are floundering in a sea of confusion.

The Search for Direction LEARNING OBJECTIVES

■ ■ ■

Provide some examples of people’s search for direction. Describe three problems that are common to popular self-help books. Summarize advice about what to look for in quality self-help books. Summarize the philosophy underlying this textbook.

We live in a time of unparalleled social and technological mutation. According to a host of social critics, the kaleidoscope of change that we see around us creates feelings of anxiety and uncertainty, which we try to alleviate by searching for a sense of direction. This search, which sometimes goes awry, manifests itself in many ways. ■ For example, we could discuss how hundreds of thousands of Americans have invested large sums of money to enroll in “self-realization” programs such as est training, Scientology, and Silva Mind Control. These programs typically promise to provide profound enlightenment and quickly turn one’s life around. Many participants claim that the programs have revolutionized their lives. However, most experts characterize such programs as intellectually bankrupt, and magazine exposés reveal that they are simply lucrative moneymaking schemes (Behar, 1991; Pressman, 1993). More than anything else, the success of these programs demonstrates just how desperate some people are for a sense of direction and purpose in their lives.

■ We could also discuss how a host of unorthodox religious groups—commonly called cults—have attracted hundreds of thousands of converts who voluntarily embrace a life of regimentation, obedience, and zealous ideology. Most of these cults flourish in obscurity, unless bizarre incidents—such as the mass suicide of the Heaven’s Gate cult—attract public attention. It is widely believed that cults use brainwashing and mind control to seduce lonely outsiders, but in reality converts are a diverse array of normal people who are swayed by remarkably ordinary social influence strategies (Baron, 2000; Deikman, 1990). According to Philip Zimbardo (1992), people join cults because these groups appear to provide simple solutions to complex problems, a sense of purpose, and a structured lifestyle that reduces feelings of uncertainty. ■ And, if you would like a mundane, everyday example of people’s search for direction, you need look no farther than your radio, where you will find that the hottest nationally syndicated personality is “Dr. Laura,” who doles out advice to more than 15 million listeners a week over a network of nearly 300 stations (Bendis,

There are many manifestations of our search for a sense of direction, including the emergence of cults, such as the Raelian UFO cult, and the astonishing popularity of “Dr. Laura.”

© Christopher J. Morris/Corbis

© Blake Little/Corbis Sygma

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Copyright © 2000. Used by permission [emailprotected]

1997). Although only seven or eight people get through to her during each show, an astonishing 75,000 people call each day to seek her unique brand of blunt, outspoken, judgmental advice. Dr. Laura, who is not a psychologist or psychiatrist (her doctorate is in physiology), analyzes callers’ problems in more of a moral than psychological framework. Unlike most therapists, she unabashedly preaches to her audience about how they ought to lead their lives. In many instances she is insulting and abusive to her callers, models remarkable intolerance, and provides terrible advice (Epstein, 2001). In an editorial in Psychology Today, Robert Epstein (2001) concludes that “no legitimate mental health professional would ever give the kind of hateful, divisive advice that Schlessinger doles out daily” (p. 5). Yet, the remarkable popularity of her highly prescriptive ad-

WE B LI N K 1.1

Psychological Self-Help Clinical psychologist and professor Clayton E. Tucker-Ladd has spent some 25 years exploring how individuals may help themselves deal with personal issues and problems from a psychological perspective. Here he has assembled an online 15-chapter book, grounded in up-to-date research, that complements this textbook extremely well. Note: The URLs (addresses) for the Web Links can be found on the website for this text (http://www.psychology. wadsworth.com/weiten_lloyd8e), or you can find them using a search engine such as Google.

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vice demonstrates once again that many people are eager for guidance and direction. Although we might choose to examine any of these examples of people’s search for a sense of direction, we will reserve our in-depth analysis for a manifestation of this search that is even more germane to our focus on everyday adjustment: the spectacular success of bestselling “self-help” books.

Self-Help Books In the year 2000, Americans spent $563 million on “self-help books” that offer do-it-yourself treatments for common personal problems (Paul, 2001). Their fascination with self-improvement is nothing new. For decades American readers have displayed a voracious appetite for self-help books such as I’m OK—You’re OK (Harris, 1967), Your Erroneous Zones (Dyer, 1976), How to Be Awake and Alive (Newman & Berkowitz, 1976), Living, Loving & Learning (Buscaglia, 1982), Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus (Gray, 1992), Ageless Body, Timeless Mind (Chopra, 1993), Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff . . . and It’s All Small Stuff (Carlson, 1997), Life Strategies (McGraw, 1999), Making Peace with Your Past (Bloomfield, 2000), Self-Nurture (Domar & Dreher, 2000), and Happiness Is Free (Dwoskin & Levenson, 2002). With their simple recipes for achieving happiness, these books have generally not been timid about promising to change the quality of the reader’s life. Consider the following excerpt from

DOONESBURY © 1978 G. B. Trudeau. Reprinted with permission of UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE. All rights reserved.

the back cover of a self-help book titled Self Creation (Weinberg, 1979): More than any book ever written, Self Creation shows you who you are and reveals the secret to controlling your own life. It contains an action blueprint built around a clear-cut principle as basic and revolutionary as the law of gravity. With it you will discover how to conquer bad habits, solve sexual problems, overcome depression and shyness, deal with infuriating people, be decisive, enhance your career, increase creativity. And it will show you how to love and be loved. You created you. Now you can start to reap the boundless benefits of self-confidence, self-reliance, self-determination with Self Creation.

Thus, it would be foolish to dismiss all these books as shallow drivel. In fact, some of the better self-help books are highlighted in the Recommended Reading boxes that appear throughout this text. Unfortunately, however, the gems are easily lost in the mountains of rubbish. A great many self-help books offer little of real value to the reader. Generally, they suffer from three fundamental shortcomings.

If only it were that easy! If only someone could hand you a book that would solve all your problems! Unfortunately, it is not that simple. Merely reading a book is not likely to turn your life around. If the consumption of these literary narcotics were even remotely as helpful as their publishers claim, we would be a nation of serene, happy, well-adjusted people. It is clear, however, that serenity is not the dominant national mood. Quite the contrary, as already noted, in recent decades Americans’ average anxiety level has moved upward (Twenge, 2000) and the prevalence of depression has increased dramatically (Ingram, Scott, & Siegle, 1999). The multitude of self-help books that crowd bookstore shelves represent just one more symptom of our collective distress and our search for the elusive secret of happiness. It is somewhat unfair to lump all self-help books together for a critique, because they vary widely in quality (Fried & Schultis, 1995; Norcross et al., 2003). Surveys exploring psychotherapists’ opinions of self-help books suggest that there are some excellent books that offer authentic insights and sound advice (Starker, 1990, 1992). Many therapists encourage their patients to read selected self-help books (Campbell & Smith, 2003), and some books that have been tested in clinical trials have proven helpful (Floyd, 2003; Gregory et al., 2004).

© David Young-Wolff/PhotoEdit

The Value of Self-Help Books

A glance at bookstore shelves verifies that the boom in self-help books continues unabated, fueled by people’s ongoing need for guidance and direction in their personal lives. CHAPTER 1

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WE B LI N K 1.2

RE C O M M E N D ED READING

The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less by Barry Schwartz (HarperCollins, 2004) In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz argues that people in modern, affluent societies suffer a variety of negative consequences because they face an overabundance of choices in their personal lives (see p. 2). Schwartz recognizes that his argument seems counterintuitive, as most people cherish their freedom of choice. But he maintains that “the fact that some choice is good doesn’t necessarily mean that more choice is better” (p. 3). In perhaps the most interesting part of the book, Schwartz outlines the differences between maximizers and satisficers. Maximizers need to feel confident that virtually every decision has yielded the best possible outcome. In contrast, satisficers are frequently willing to settle for outcomes that are good enough. He emphasizes that satisficers try to meet certain standards—sometimes very high standards—in making their decisions, but they do not feel compelled to select the best possible printer, mattress, vacation, and so forth. Although maximizing sounds like an admirable goal, Schwartz reports that high maximization scores are associated with reduced optimism and happiness and increased depression—and he raises doubts about whether maximizing tends to lead to better decisions. Does Schwartz have a solution for the problem of excessive choice? Yes, his final chapter offers advice for making the overabundance of choices in our modern world less painful. Among other things, he suggests that people should (1) decide which choices really matter, (2) satisfice more and maximize less, (3) avoid rumination about decisions, (4) let go of decision regrets, and (5) recognize that constraints on choice can sometimes be liberating. Schwartz’s writing is clear, concise, and engaging. The book is loaded with charming anecdotes that provide real-life examples of the issues discussed, but Schwartz’s conclusions are based on research rather than anecdotal evidence. In the final analysis, The Paradox of Choice delivers an enticing two-for-one bargain: it is a thought-provoking essay in social criticism and a sound, realistic self-help book. Entire hardcover book cover copyright © 2004 by Barry Schwartz. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

First, they are dominated by “psychobabble.” The term psychobabble, coined by R. D. Rosen (1977), seems appropriate to describe the “hip” but hopelessly vague language used in many of these books. Statements such as “It’s beautiful if you’re unhappy,” “You’ve got to get in touch with yourself,”“You have to be up front,”“You 8

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Quackwatch Stephen Barrett, a retired psychiatrist, has sought to alert the public to “health-related frauds, myths, fads, and fallacies” for over 30 years. This site offers no-holdsbarred evaluations of Internet-based medical resources that Barrett and his board of scientific and technical advisers judge to be dubious, fraudulent, or dangerous to one’s health.

gotta be you ’cause you’re you,” and “You need a real high-energy experience” are typical examples of this language. At best, such terminology is ill-defined; at worst, it is meaningless. Consider the following example, taken from a question/answer booklet promoting est training: The EST training doesn’t change the content of anyone’s life, nor does it change what anyone knows. It deals with the context or the way we hold the content. . . . Transformation occurs as a recontextualization. . . . “Getting it” means being able to discover when you have been maintaining (or are stuck with) a position which costs you more in aliveness than it is worth, realizing that you are the source of that position, and being able to choose to give up that position or hold it in a way that expands the quality of your life. What exactly does this paragraph say? Who knows? The statements are so ambiguous and enigmatic that you can read virtually any meaning into them. Therein lies the problem with psychobabble; it is often so obscure as to be unintelligible. Clarity is sacrificed in favor of a hip jargon that prevents, rather than enhances, effective communication. A second problem is that self-help books tend to place more emphasis on sales than on scientific soundness. The advice offered in these books is far too rarely based on solid, scientific research (Ellis, 1993; Paul, 2001; Rosen, 1987). Instead, the ideas are frequently based on the authors’ intuitive analyses, which may be highly speculative. Moreover, even when responsible authors provide scientifically valid advice and are careful not to mislead their readers, sales-hungry publishers often slap outrageous, irresponsible promises on the books’ covers (much to the dismay of some authors). The third shortcoming is that self-help books don’t usually provide explicit directions about how to change your behavior. These books tend to be smoothly written and “touchingly human” in tone. They often strike responsive chords in the reader by aptly describing a common problem that many of us experience. The reader says, “Yes, that’s me!” Unfortunately, when the book focuses on how to deal with the problem, it usu-

CALVIN AND HOBBES © 1993 Watterson. Reprinted with permission of UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE. All rights reserved.

ally provides only a vague distillation of simple common sense, which could be covered in 2 rather than 200 pages. These books often fall back on inspirational cheerleading in the absence of sound, explicit advice. What to Look for in Self-Help Books

Because self-help books vary so widely in quality, it seems a good idea to provide you with some guidelines about what to look for in seeking genuinely helpful books. The following thoughts give you some criteria for judging books of this type. 1. Clarity in communication is essential. Advice

won’t do you much good if you can’t understand it. Try to avoid drowning in the murky depths of psychobabble. 2. This may sound backward, but look for books that do not promise too much in the way of immediate change. The truly useful books tend to be appropriately cautious in their promises and realistic about the challenge of altering your behavior. 3. Try to select books that mention, at least briefly, the theoretical or research basis for the program they advocate. It is understandable that you may not be interested in a detailed summary of research that supports a particular piece of advice. However, you should be

interested in whether the advice is based on published research, widely accepted theory, anecdotal evidence, clinical interactions with patients, or pure speculation by the author. Books that are based on more than personal anecdotes and speculation should have a list of references in the back (or at the end of each chapter). 4. Look for books that provide detailed, explicit directions about how to alter your behavior. Generally, these directions represent the crucial core of the book. If they are inadequate in detail, you have been shortchanged. 5. More often than not, books that focus on a particular kind of problem, such as overeating, loneliness, or marital difficulties, deliver more than those that promise to cure all of life’s problems with a few simple ideas. Books that cover everything are usually superficial and disappointing. Books that devote a great deal of thought to a particular topic tend to be written by authors with genuine expertise on that topic. Such books are more likely to pay off for you.

The Approach of This Textbook Clearly, in spite of our impressive technological progress, we are a people beset by a great variety of personal CHAPTER 1

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problems. Living in our complex, modern society is a formidable challenge. This book is about that challenge. It is about you. It is about life. Specifically, it summarizes for you the scientific research on human behavior that appears relevant to the challenge of living effectively in contemporary society. It draws primarily, but not exclusively, from the science we call psychology. This text deals with the same kinds of problems addressed by self-help books, self-realization programs, and Dr. Laura: anxiety, stress, interpersonal relationships, frustration, loneliness, depression, self-control. However, it makes no boldly seductive promises about solving your personal problems, turning your life around, or helping you achieve tranquility. Such promises simply aren’t realistic. Psychologists have long rec-

RE C O M M E N D ED READING

What You Can Change and What You Can’t by Martin E. P. Seligman (Knopf, 1994) Martin Seligman is a prominent psychologist who has conducted influential research on learned helplessness, attributional style, optimism, depression, and phobias. He is also one of the chief architects of the new positive psychology movement (see Chapter 3). In this book he synthesizes research on a host of issues to help people understand what they can and cannot change about themselves. Seligman points out that self-improvement programs of all types—from meditation, to self-help books, to professional therapy—are predicated on the assumption that people can permanently change themselves for the better. He notes, however, that recent, highly publicized research in biological psychiatry is at odds with this assumption. This research suggests that personality, intelligence, physique, and vulnerability to psychological disorders are predominantly determined by genetic inheritance and hence are largely unchangeable. Seligman asserts that both viewpoints are too extreme, that the architects of selfimprovement programs are too optimistic while the authorities on biological psychiatry are too pessimistic about people’s capacity for change. Thus, he sets out to review the empirical evidence on what can be modified with reasonable success, and what can’t be. Seligman covers such wide-ranging topics as treatments for sexual difficulties, alcoholism, weight problems, anxiety, depression, obsessions, and posttraumatic stress syndrome. His discussions are lively, readable, objective, sophisticated, and thoroughly grounded in research. Cover copyright © 1994 Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Reprinted by permission.

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ognized that changing a person’s behavior is a difficult challenge, fraught with frustration and failure (Seligman, 1994). Troubled individuals sometimes spend years in therapy without resolving their problems. This reality does not mean that you should be pessimistic about your potential for personal growth. You most certainly can change your behavior. Moreover, you can often change it on your own without consulting a professional psychologist. We would not be writing this text if we did not believe that some of our readers could derive some personal benefit from this encounter. But it is important that you have realistic expectations. Reading this book will not be a revelatory experience. No mysterious secrets are about to be unveiled. All this book can do is give you some potentially useful information and point you in some potentially beneficial directions. The rest is up to you. In view of our criticisms of self-realization programs and self-help books, it seems essential that we explicitly lay out the philosophy that underlies the writing of this text. The following statements summarize the assumptions and goals of this book. 1. This text is based on the premise that accurate knowledge about the principles of psychology can be of value to you in everyday life. It has been said that knowledge is power. Greater awareness of why people behave as they do should help you in interacting with others as well as in trying to understand yourself. 2. This text attempts to foster a critical attitude about psychological issues and to enhance your critical thinking skills. Information is important, but people also need to develop effective strategies for evaluating information. Critical thinking involves subjecting ideas to systematic, skeptical scrutiny. Critical thinkers ask tough questions, such as: What exactly is being asserted? What assumptions underlie this assertion? What evidence or reasoning supports this assertion? Are there alternative explanations? Some general guidelines for thinking critically are outlined in Figure 1.1. We have already attempted to illustrate the importance of a critical attitude in our evaluation of self-help books, and we’ll continue to model critical thinking strategies throughout the text.

WE B LI N K 1.3

Foundation for Critical Thinking How can students best develop those skills that go beyond merely acquiring information to actively weighing and judging information? The many resources of the Foundation for Critical Thinking at Sonoma State University are directed primarily toward teachers at every level to help them develop their students’ critical thinking abilities.

Guidelines for Thinking Critically 1 Ask questions; be willing to wonder. To think critically you must be willing to think creatively— that is, to be curious about the puzzles of human behavior, to wonder why people act the way they do, and to question received explanations and examine new ones. 2 Define the problem. Identify the issues involved in clear and concrete terms, rather than vague generalities such as “happiness,” “potential,” or “meaningfulness.” What does meaningfulness mean, exactly? 3 Examine the evidence. Consider the nature of the evidence that supports all aspects of the problem under examination. Is it reliable? Valid? Is it someone’s personal assertion or speculation? Does the evidence come from one or two narrow studies, or from repeated research? 4 Analyze biases and assumptions—your own and those of others. What prejudices, deeply held values, and other personal biases do you bring to your evaluation of a problem? Are you willing to consider evidence that contradicts your beliefs? Be sure you can identify the bias of others, in order to evaluate their arguments as well. 5 Avoid emotional reasoning (“If I feel this way, it must be true”). Remember that everyone holds convictions and ideas about how the world should operate and that your opponents are as serious about their convictions as you are about yours. Feelings are important, but they should not substitute for careful appraisal of arguments and evidence.

FIG U R E 1.1

Guidelines for thinking critically. Critical thinking should not be equated with negative thinking; it’s not a matter of learning how to tear down others’ ideas. Rather, critical thinkers carefully subject others’ ideas—and their own— to careful, systematic, objective evaluation. The guidelines shown here, taken from Wade and Tavris (1990), provide a succinct overview of what it means to think critically. From Wade, C., & Tavris, C. (1990). Learning to Think Critically: A Handbook to Accompany Psychology. New York: Harper & Row. Copyright © 1990 by Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Pearson Education, Inc.

6 Don’t oversimplify. Look beyond the obvious. Reject simplistic, either-or thinking. Look for logical contradictions in arguments. Be wary of “arguments by anecdote.” 7 Consider other interpretations. Before you leap to conclusions, think about other explanations. Be especially careful about assertions of cause and effect. 8 Tolerate uncertainty. This may be the hardest step in becoming a critical thinker, for it requires the ability to accept some guiding ideas and beliefs—yet the willingness to give them up when evidence and experience contradict them.

3. This text should open doors. The coverage in this

book is broad; we tackle many topics. Therefore, in some places it may lack the depth or detail that you would like. However, you should think of it as a resource book that can introduce you to other books or techniques or therapies, which you can then pursue on your own. 4. This text assumes that the key to effective adjustment is to take charge of your own life. If you are dissatis-

fied with some aspect of your life, it does no good to sit around and mope about it. You have to take an active role in attempting to improve the quality of your life. Doing so may involve learning a new skill or pursuing a particular kind of help. In any case, it is generally best to meet problems head-on rather than trying to avoid them.

The Psychology of Adjustment LEARNING OBJECTIVES ■ ■

Describe the two key facets of psychology. Explain the concept of adjustment.

Now that we have spelled out our approach in writing this text, it is time to turn to the task of introducing you to some basic concepts. In this section, we’ll discuss the nature of psychology and the concept of adjustment.

What Is Psychology? Psychology is the science that studies behavior and the physiological and mental processes that underlie it, and it is the profession that applies the accumulated knowledge of this science to practical problems. Psychology leads a complex dual existence as both a science

and a profession. Let’s examine the science first. Psychology is an area of scientific study, much like biology or physics. Whereas biology focuses on life processes and physics focuses on matter and energy, psychology focuses on behavior and related mental and physiological processes. Psychology looks at behavior. Behavior is any overt (observable) response or activity by an organism. Psychology does not confine itself to the study of human behavior. Many psychologists believe that the principles of behavior are much the same for all animals, including humans. As a result, these psychologists often CHAPTER 1

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What Is Adjustment?

prefer to study animals—mainly because they can exert more control over the factors influencing the animals’ behavior. Psychology is also interested in the mental processes—the thoughts, feelings, and wishes—that accompany behavior. Mental processes are more difficult to study than behavior because they are private and not directly observable. However, they exert critical influence over human behavior, so psychologists have strived to improve their ability to “look inside the mind.” Finally, psychology includes the study of the physiological processes that underlie behavior. Thus, some psychologists try to figure out how bodily processes such as neural impulses, hormonal secretions, and genetic coding regulate behavior. Practically speaking, all this means that psychologists study a great variety of phenomena. Psychologists are interested in maze running in rats, salivation in dogs, and brain functioning in cats, as well as visual perception in humans, play in children, and social interaction in adults. As you probably know, psychology is not all pure science. It has a highly practical side, represented by the many psychologists who provide a variety of professional services to the public. Although the profession of psychology is quite prominent today, this aspect of psychology was actually slow to develop. Until the 1950s psychologists were found almost exclusively in the halls of academia, teaching and doing research. However, the demands of World War II in the 1940s stimulated rapid growth in psychology’s first professional specialty—clinical psychology. Clinical psychology is the branch of psychology concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of psychological problems and disorders. During World War II, a multitude of academic psychologists were pressed into service as clinicians to screen military recruits and treat soldiers suffering from trauma. Many found their clinical work interesting and returned from the war to set up training programs to meet the continued high demand for clinical services. Soon, about half of the new Ph.D.’s in psychology were specializing in clinical work. Psychology had come of age as a profession.

We have used the term adjustment several times without clarifying its exact meaning. The concept of adjustment was originally borrowed from biology. It was modeled after the biological term adaptation, which refers to efforts by a species to adjust to changes in its environment. Just as a field mouse has to adapt to an unusually brutal winter, a person has to adjust to changes in circumstances such as a new job, a financial setback, or the loss of a loved one. Thus, adjustment refers to the psychological processes through which people manage or cope with the demands and challenges of everyday life. The demands of everyday life are diverse, so in studying the process of adjustment we will encounter a broad variety of topics. In the first section of this book, “The Dynamics of Adjustment,” we discuss general issues, such as how personality affects people’s patterns of adjustment, how individuals are affected by stress, and how they use coping strategies to deal with stress. In the second section, “The Interpersonal Realm,” we examine the adjustments that people make in their social relationships, exploring such topics as individuals’ perceptions of others, interpersonal communication, behavior in groups, friendship, and intimate relationships. In the third section, “Developmental Transitions,” we look at how individuals adjust to changing demands as they grow older. We discuss such topics as the development of gender roles, the emergence of sexuality, phases of adult development, and transitions in the world of work. Finally, in the fourth section, “Mental and Physical Health,” we discuss how the process of adjustment influences a person’s psychological and physical wellness. As you can see, the study of adjustment delves into nearly every corner of people’s lives, and we’ll be discussing a diverse array of issues and topics. Before we begin considering these topics in earnest, however, we need to take a closer look at psychology’s approach to investigating behavior—the scientific method.

The Scientific Approach to Behavior LEARNING OBJECTIVES ■ ■

12

Explain the nature of empiricism. Explain two advantages of the scientific approach to understanding behavior. Describe the experimental method, distinguishing between independent and dependent variables and between experimental and control groups.

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■ ■

Distinguish between positive and negative correlation and explain what the size of a correlation coefficient means. Describe three correlational research methods. Compare the advantages and disadvantages of experimental versus correlational research.

We all expend a great deal of effort in trying to understand our own behavior as well as the behavior of others. We wonder about any number of behavioral questions: Why am I so anxious when I interact with new people? Why is Sam always trying to be the center of attention at the office? Why does Joanna cheat on her wonderful husband? Are extraverts happier than introverts? Is depression more common during the Christmas holidays? Given that psychologists’ principal goal is to explain behavior, how are their efforts different from everyone else’s? The key difference is that psychology is a science, committed to empiricism.

The Commitment to Empiricism Empiricism is the premise that knowledge should be acquired through observation. When we say that scientific psychology is empirical, we mean that its conclusions are based on systematic observation rather than on reasoning, speculation, traditional beliefs, or common sense. Scientists are not content with having ideas that sound plausible; they must conduct research to test their ideas. Whereas our everyday speculations are informal, unsystematic, and highly subjective, scientists’ investigations are formal, systematic, and objective. In these investigations, scientists formulate testable hypotheses, gather data (make observations) relevant to their hypotheses, use statistics to analyze these data, and report their results to the public and other scientists, typically by publishing their findings in a technical journal. The process of publishing scientific studies allows other experts to evaluate and critique new research findings.

Advantages of the Scientific Approach Science is certainly not the only method that can be used to draw conclusions about behavior. We can also turn to logic, casual observation, and good old-fashioned common sense. Because the scientific method often requires painstaking effort, it seems reasonable to ask: What exactly are the advantages of the empirical approach? The scientific approach offers two major advantages. The first is its clarity and precision. Commonsense notions about behavior tend to be vague and ambiguous. Consider the old truism “Spare the rod and spoil the child.” What does this generalization about child-rearing amount to? How severely should children be punished if parents are not to “spare the rod”? How do parents assess whether a child qualifies as “spoiled”? Such statements can have different meanings to different people. When people disagree about this assertion, it may be because they are talking about entirely different things. In contrast, the empirical approach requires

that scientists specify exactly what they are talking about when they formulate hypotheses. This clarity and precision enhance communication about important ideas. The second advantage offered by the scientific approach is its relative intolerance of error. Scientists subject their ideas to empirical tests. They also scrutinize one another’s findings with a critical eye. They demand objective data and thorough documentation before they accept ideas. When the findings of two studies conflict, they try to figure out why the studies reached different conclusions, usually by conducting additional research. In contrast, common sense and casual observation often tolerate contradictory generalizations, such as “Opposites attract” and “Birds of a feather flock together.” Furthermore, commonsense analyses involve little effort to verify ideas or detect errors, so that many myths about behavior come to be widely believed. All this is not to say that science has a copyright on truth. However, the scientific approach does tend to yield more accurate and dependable information than casual analyses and armchair speculation. Knowledge of empirical data can thus provide a useful benchmark against which to judge claims and information from other kinds of sources. Now that we have an overview of how the scientific enterprise works, we can look at some of the specific research methods that psychologists depend on most. The two main types of research methods in psychology are experimental and correlational. We discuss them separately because there is an important distinction between them.

Experimental Research: Looking for Causes Does misery love company? This question intrigued social psychologist Stanley Schachter. How does anxiety affect people’s desire to be with others? When they feel anxious, do they want to be left alone, or do they prefer to have others around? Schachter’s hypothesis was that increases in anxiety would cause increases in the desire to be with others, which psychologists call the need for affiliation. To test this hypothesis, Schachter (1959) designed a clever experiment. The experiment is a research method in which the investigator manipulates one (independent) variable under carefully controlled conditions and observes whether any changes occur in a second (dependent) variable as a result. Psychologists depend on this method more than any other. Independent and Dependent Variables

An experiment is designed to find out whether changes in one variable (let’s call it x) cause changes in another variable (let’s call it y). To put it more concisely, we want to know how x affects y. In this formulation, we refer CHAPTER 1

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13

to x as the independent variable, and we call y the dependent variable. An independent variable is a condition or event that an experimenter varies in order to see its impact on another variable. The independent variable is the variable that the experimenter controls or manipulates. It is hypothesized to have some effect on the dependent variable. The experiment is conducted to verify this effect. The dependent variable is the variable that is thought to be affected by the manipulations of the independent variable. In psychology studies, the dependent variable usually is a measurement of some aspect of the subjects’ behavior. In Schachter’s experiment, the independent variable was the participants’ anxiety level, which he manipulated in the following way. Subjects assembled in his laboratory were told by a Dr. Zilstein that they would be participating in a study on the physiological effects of electric shock and that they would receive a series of electric shocks. Half of the participants were warned that the shocks would be very painful. They made up the high-anxiety group. The other half of the participants, assigned to the low-anxiety group, were told that the shocks would be mild and painless. These procedures were simply intended to evoke different levels of anxiety. In reality, no one was actually shocked at any time. Instead, the experimenter indicated that there would be a delay while he prepared the shock apparatus for use. The participants were asked whether they would prefer to wait alone or in the company of others. This measure of the subjects’ desire to affiliate with others was the dependent variable.

WE B LI N K 1.4

Research Methods Tutorials Bill Trochim’s classes in research and program design at Cornell University have assembled tutorial guides for undergraduate and graduate students for more than 50 topics at this subpage of the Web Center for Social Research Methods. Students new to research design may find these tutorials particularly helpful.

between the two groups on the dependent variable must be due to this manipulation of the independent variable. In this way researchers isolate the effect of the independent variable on the dependent variable. In his experiment, Schachter isolated the impact of anxiety on need for affiliation. What did he find? As predicted, he found that increased anxiety led to increased affiliation. The percentage of people who wanted to wait with others was nearly twice as high in the high-anxiety group as in the low-anxiety group. The logic of the experimental method rests heavily on the assumption that the experimental and control groups are alike in all important matters except for their different treatment with regard to the independent variable. Any other differences between the two groups cloud the situation and make it difficult to draw solid conclusions about the relationship between the independent variable and the dependent variable. To summarize our discussion of the experimental method, Figure 1.2 provides an overview of the various elements in an experiment, using Schachter’s study as an example.

Experimental and Control Groups

To conduct an experiment, an investigator typically assembles two groups of participants who are treated differently in regard to the independent variable. We call these groups the experimental and control groups. The experimental group consists of the subjects who receive some special treatment in regard to the independent variable. The control group consists of similar subjects who do not receive the special treatment given to the experimental group. Let’s return to the Schachter study to illustrate. In this study, the participants in the high-anxiety condition were the experimental group. They received a special treatment designed to create an unusually high level of anxiety. The participants in the low-anxiety condition were the control group. It is crucial that the experimental and control groups be similar except for the different treatment they receive in regard to the independent variable. This stipulation brings us to the logic that underlies the experimental method. If the two groups are alike in all respects except for the variation created by the manipulation of the independent variable, then any differences

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Advantages and Disadvantages

The experiment is a powerful research method. Its principal advantage is that it allows scientists to draw conclusions about cause-and-effect relationships between variables. Researchers can draw these conclusions about causation because the precise control available in the experiment permits them to isolate the relationship between the independent variable and the dependent variable. No other research method can duplicate this advantage. For all its power, however, the experimental method has its limitations. One disadvantage is that researchers are often interested in the effects of variables that cannot be manipulated (as independent variables) because of ethical concerns or practical realities. For example, you might want to know whether being brought up in an urban area as opposed to a rural area affects people’s values. A true experiment would require you to assign similar families to live in urban and rural areas, which obviously is impossible to do. To explore this question, you would have to use correlational research methods, which we turn to next.

Correlational Research: Looking for Links As we just noted, in some situations psychologists cannot exert experimental control over the variables they want to study. In such situations, all a researcher can do is make systematic observations to see whether a link or association exists between the variables of interest. Such an association is called a correlation. A correla-

tion exists when two variables are related to each other. The definitive aspect of correlational studies is that the researchers cannot control the variables under study. Measuring Correlation

The results of correlational research are often summarized with a statistic called the correlation coefficient. We’ll be refering to this widely used statistic frequently as we discuss studies throughout the remainder of this text. A correlation coefficient is a numerical index of the degree of relationship that exists between two variables. A correlation coefficient indicates (1) how strongly reHYPOTHESIS: Anxiety increases desire to affiliate lated two variables are and (2) the direction (positive or negative) of the relationship. Two kinds of relationships can be deChoice College students scribed by a correlation. A positive correof subjects lation indicates that two variables covary in the same direction. This means that high scores on variable x are associated Assignment Control Experimental with high scores on variable y and that low to groups scores on variable x are associated with low scores on variable y. For example, there Standardized is a positive correlation between high school Laboratory setting with Dr. Zilstein (similar) grade point average (GPA) and subsequent conditions college GPA. That is, people who do well in high school tend to do well in college, and those who perform poorly in high school ”Shocks ”Shocks tend to perform poorly in college (see Figwill be mild will be Manipulation ure 1.3 on the next page). and painless . . . ” very painful . . . ” of independent In contrast, a negative correlation in(low anxiety) (high anxiety) variable dicates that two variables covary in the opposite direction. This means that people who score high on variable x tend to score low on variable y, whereas those who score ”Would you prefer to wait Measurement low on x tend to score high on y. For examalone or with others?" of dependent ple, in most college courses, there is a neg(desire to affiliate) variable ative correlation between how frequently a student is absent and how well the student performs on exams. Students who have a high number of absences tend to earn low High-anxiety group wanted Comparison to wait with others more exam scores, while students who have a of results than low-anxiety group did low number of absences tend to get higher exam scores (see Figure 1.3). While the positive or negative sign inCONCLUSION: Anxiety does increase desire to affiliate dicates whether an association is direct or inverse, the size of the coefficient indicates the strength of the association between two variables. A correlation coefficient can vary between 0 and ⫹1.00 (if positive) or between 0 and ⫺1.00 (if negative). A coeffiF I G U R E 1.2 cient near zero tells us there is no relationThe basic elements of an experiment. This diagram provides an overview of the ship between the variables. The closer the key features of the experimental method, as illustrated by Schachter’s study of anxicorrelation to either ⫺1.00 or ⫹1.00, the ety and affiliation. The logic of the experiment rests on treating the experimental stronger the relationship. Thus, a correlaand control groups alike except for the manipulation of the independent variable.

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FIG U R E 1.3

Positive and negative correlations. Variables are positively correlated if they tend to increase and decrease together and are negatively correlated if one variable tends to increase when the other decreases. Hence, the terms positive correlation and negative correlation refer to the direction of the relationship between two variables.

y

Exam scores

Frequency of absences

x

Naturalistic Observation

In naturalistic observation a researcher engages in careful observation of behavior without intervening directly with the subjects. This type of research is called

x

y Positive correlation

naturalistic because behavior is allowed to unfold naturally (without interference) in its natural environment—that is, the setting in which it would normally occur. As an example, consider a study by Stoffer, Davis, and Brown (1977), which sought to determine whether it is a good idea for students to reconsider and change answers on multiple-choice tests. The conventional wisdom is that “your first hunch is your best hunch,” and it is widely believed that students should not go back and change their answers. To put this idea to an empirical test, Stoffer and his colleagues studied the answer changes made by college students on their regular exams in a psychology course. They simply examined students’ answer sheets for evidence of response changes, such as erasures or crossing out of responses. As Figure 1.5 shows, they found that changes that went from a wrong answer to a right answer outnumbered changes that went from a right answer to a wrong answer by a mar-

FIG U R E 1.4

1.00

Coefficient of determination

Interpreting correlation coefficients. The magnitude of a correlation coefficient indicates the strength of the relationship between two variables. The closer a correlation is to either ⫹1.00 or ⫺1.00, the stronger the relationship between the variables. The square of a correlation, which is called the coefficient of determination, is an index of a correlation’s strength and predictive power.

High

High

.75

Negative correlation

.50

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Positive correlation

Moderate

Moderate

.25

Low

Low Negligible

–1.00

–.80

–.60

–.40

Increasing

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College GPA

Negative correlation

tion of ⫹.90 represents a stronger tendency for variables to be associated than a correlation of ⫺.40 does (see Figure 1.4). Likewise, a correlation of ⫺.75 represents a stronger relationship than a correlation of ⫺.45. Keep in mind that the strength of a correlation depends only on the size of the coefficient. The positive or negative sign simply shows whether the correlation is direct or inverse. Therefore, a correlation of ⫺.60 reflects a stronger relationship than a correlation of ⫹.30. Correlational research methods comprise a number of approaches, including naturalistic observation, case studies, and surveys. Let’s examine each of these to see how researchers use them to detect associations between variables.

High school GPA

The Dynamics of Adjustment

–.20

0 +.20 Correlation

+.40

+.60

Increasing

+.80

+1.00

Right to wrong 22% Wrong to wrong 15%

Wrong to right 63%

more nicely by others than homely people are, suggesting that attractive patients may have an easier time adjusting to life outside the hospital. To find out, the research team compiled case history data (and ratings of physical attractiveness) for patients just before their discharge from a mental hospital and six months later. A modest positive correlation (.38) was found between patients’ attractiveness and their postdischarge social adjustment. Thus, the better-looking patients were better off, suggesting that physical attractiveness plays a role in psychiatric patients’ readjustment to community living. Surveys

F I G U R E 1.5

The effects of answer changing on multiple-choice exams. In a study of answer changes, Stoffer et al. (1977) found that wrong-to-right changes outnumbered right-to-wrong changes by a sizable margin. These results are similar to those of other studies on this issue.

gin of nearly 3 to 1! The correlation between the number of changes students made and their net gain from answer changing was ⫹.49, indicating that the more answer changing students engaged in, the more they improved their scores. These results, which have been replicated in a number of other studies (Benjamin, Cavell, & Shallenberger, 1984), show that popular beliefs about the harmful effects of answer changing are inaccurate. Case Studies

A case study is an in-depth investigation of an individual participant. Psychologists typically assemble case studies in clinical settings where an effort is being made to diagnose and treat some psychological problem. To achieve an understanding of an individual, a clinician may use a variety of procedures, including interviewing the person, interviewing others who know the individual, direct observation, examination of records, and psychological testing. Usually, a single case study does not provide much basis for deriving general laws of behavior. If researchers have a number of case studies available, however, they can look for threads of consistency among them, and they may be able to draw some general conclusions. This was the strategy used by a research team (Farina et al., 1986) that studied psychiatric patients’ readjustment to their community after their release from a mental hospital. The researchers wanted to know whether the patients’ physical attractiveness was related to their success in readjustment. As we’ll discuss in upcoming chapters, good-looking people tend to be treated

Surveys are structured questionnaires designed to solicit information about specific aspects of participants’ behavior. They are sometimes used to measure dependent variables in experiments, but they are mainly used in correlational research. Surveys are commonly used to gather data on people’s attitudes and on aspects of behavior that are difficult to observe directly (marital interactions, for instance). As an example, consider a study by Alvin Cooper and his colleagues (1999) which examined people’s Internet sexual pursuits. Cooper and his associates gathered data from an online questionnaire that was posted for seven weeks at the MSNBC website. The final sample consisted of 9,177 anonymous volunteers. The self-selected sample clearly was not representative of the general adult population in the United States, but the participants’ demographic data suggested that they were reasonably representative of that portion of the population that visits sexually explicit websites. What did the survey reveal? Male respondents outnumbered female respondents by about 6 to 1. Men reported mostly going to sites that featured visual erotica, whereas women were more likely to visit sexually themed chat rooms. Only 8–9 percent of the respondents reported spending more than 10 hours per week in online sexual pursuits (see Figure 1.6 on the next page). Although 87 percent of the subjects indicated that they never felt guilty about their behavior, 70 percent admitted keeping the extent of their online sexual activities secret from others. Among “heavy users” of Internet sex sites (more than 10 hours per week), about

WE B LI N K 1.5

American Psychological Association (APA) As the largest professional organization of psychologists, the APA continually publicizes the latest research findings for most topics discussed in this textbook. Students should consider using the excellent search engines at the APA’s online site when looking for leads to new scientific research on adjustment issues.

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HOURS PER WEEK IN ONLINE SEXUAL PURSUITS

1 to 10

Men Women Men Women

© David Young-Wolff/PhotoEdit

Less than 1

More Men than 10 Women 0

10

20 30 40 PERCENT OF RESPONDENTS

50

60

FIG U R E 1.6

Time devoted to Internet sexual pursuits. In the online survey conducted by Cooper and his colleagues (1999), over 9,000 respondents provided information on how much time they spend weekly visiting sexually oriented websites. As you can see, the vast majority of participants reported that they spend 10 hours or less each week in online sexual pursuits. (Based on Cooper et al., 1999)

one-half admitted that their online activities were interfering with their lives. The authors conclude that “the vast majority of online users generally seem to use Internet sexual venues in casual ways that may not be problematic,” but they emphasize that heavy users may be at risk for psychological difficulties. Advantages and Disadvantages

Correlational research methods give psychologists a way to explore questions that they could not examine with experimental procedures. Consider the study of the association between attractiveness and adjustment in psychiatric patients. Obviously, Farina et al. (1986) could not manipulate the physical attractiveness of their subjects. But correlational methods allowed them to gather useful information on whether a link exists between attractiveness and adjustment. Thus, correlational

FIG U R E 1.7

Possible causal relations between correlated variables. When two variables are correlated, there are several possible explanations. It could be that x causes y, that y causes x, or that a third variable, z, causes changes in both x and y. As the correlation between marital satisfaction and sexual satisfaction illustrates, the correlation itself does not provide the answer.

18

research broadens the scope of phenomena that psychologists can study. Unfortunately, correlational methods have one major disadvantage. The investigator does not have the opportunity to control events in a way to isolate cause and effect. Consequently, correlational research cannot demonstrate conclusively that two variables are causally related. The crux of the problem is that correlation is no assurance of causation. When we find that variables x and y are correlated, we can safely conclude only that x and y are related. We do not know how x and y are related. We do not know whether x causes y, whether y causes x, or whether both are caused by a third variable. For example, survey studies show a positive correlation between marital satisfaction and sexual satisfaction (Hunt, 1974; Christopher & Sprecher, 2000). Although it’s clear that good sex and

PART 1

Compatibility in values

z

x

The Dynamics of Adjustment

y

Marital satisfaction

Sexual satisfaction

a healthy marriage go hand in hand, it’s hard to tell what’s causing what. We don’t know whether healthy marriages promote good sex or whether good sex promotes healthy marriages. Moreover, we can’t rule out the possibility that both are caused by a third variable. Perhaps sexual satisfaction and marital satisfaction are both caused by compatibility in values. The plausible

causal relationships in this case are diagrammed for you in Figure 1.7, which illustrates the “third-variable problem” in interpreting correlations. This problem occurs frequently in correlational research. Indeed, it will surface in the next section, where we review the empirical research on the determinants of happiness.

The Roots of Happiness: An Empirical Analysis LEARNING OBJECTIVES ■

Discuss the prevalence of reported happiness in modern society. List the various factors that are surprisingly unrelated to happiness. Explain how health, social activity, and religion are related to happiness.

Discuss how love, work, and personality are related to happiness. Summarize the conclusions drawn about the determinants of happiness.

Percent

What exactly makes a person happy? This question has themselves below the neutral point on the various scales been the subject of much speculation. Commonsense used (see Figure 1.8). When the average subjective wellhypotheses about the roots of happiness abound. For being of entire nations is computed, based on almost example, you have no doubt heard that money cannot 1000 surveys, the means cluster toward the positive end buy happiness. But do you believe it? A television comof the scale, as shown in Figure 1.9 on the next page mercial says, “If you’ve got your health, you’ve got just (Veenhoven, 1993). That’s not to say that everyone is about everything.” Is health indeed the key? What if equally happy. Researchers have found substantial and you’re healthy but poor, unemployed, and lonely? We often hear about the joys of parenthood, the joys of youth, and the joys of the simple, rural life. 50 Are these the factors that promote happiness? In recent years, social scientists have begun 40 putting these and other hypotheses to empirical test. Quite a number of survey studies have been conducted to explore the determinants of subjec30 tive well-being—individuals’ personal assessments of their overall happiness or life satis20 faction. The findings of these studies are quite interesting. We review this research because it is central to the topic of adjustment and because it 10 illustrates the value of collecting data and putting ideas to an empirical test. As you will see, many 0 commonsense notions about happiness appear to be inaccurate. Which of these faces represents The first of these is the apparently widespread the way you feel about your life as a whole? assumption that most people are relatively unhappy. Writers, social scientists, and the general public seem to believe that people around the FIG U R E 1.8 world are predominantly dissatisfied, yet empirical surveys consistently find that the vast majority Measuring happiness with a nonverbal scale. Researchers have used a variety of methods to estimate the distribution of happiness. For example, of respondents—even those who are poor or disin one study in the United States, respondents were asked to examine the abled—characterize themselves as fairly happy seven facial expressions shown and to select the one that “comes closest to (Diener & Diener, 1996). When people are asked expressing how you feel about your life as a whole.” As you can see, the vast to rate their happiness, only a small minority place majority of participants chose happy faces. (Data adapted from Myers, 1992)

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What Isn’t Very Important? Let us begin our discussion of individual differences in happiness by highlighting those things that turn out to be relatively unimportant determinants of subjective well-being. Quite a number of factors that one might expect to be influential appear to bear little or no relationship to general happiness.

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Number of nations

thought-provoking disparities among people in subjective well-being, which we will analyze momentarily. But the overall picture seems rosier than anticipated.

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Money. There is a positive correlation between income and subjective feelings of happiness, but the association is surprisingly weak (Diener & Seligman, 2004). For example, one study found a correlation of just .13 between income and happiness in the United States (Diener et al., 1993). Admittedly, being very poor can make people unhappy, but once people ascend above the poverty level, there is little relation between income and happiness. On the average, even wealthy people are only marginally happier than those in the middle classes. The problem with money is that in this era of voracious consumption, rising income contributes to escalating material desires (Frey & Stutzer, 2002). When these growing material desires outstrip what people can afford, dissatisfaction is likely (Solberg et al., 2002). Thus, complaints about not having enough money are routine even among people who earn hefty six-figure incomes. Interestingly, there is some evidence that people who place an especially strong emphasis on the pursuit of wealth and materialistic goals tend to be somewhat less happy than others (Ryan & Deci, 2001). Perhaps they are so focused on financial success that they don’t derive much satisfaction from their family life (Nickerson et al, 2003). Age. Age and happiness are consistently found to be unrelated. Age accounts for less than 1 percent of the variation in people’s happiness (Inglehart, 1990; Myers & Diener, 1997). The key factors influencing subjective well-being may shift some as people grow older—work becomes less important, health more so—but people’s average level of happiness tends to remain remarkably stable over the life span. Gender. Women are treated for depressive disorders about twice as often as men, so one might expect that women are less happy on the average. However, like age, gender accounts for less than 1 percent of the variation in people’s subjective well-being (Myers, 1992). Parenthood. Children can be a tremendous source of joy and fulfillment, but they can also be a tremendous 20

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1

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Subjective well-being on 0 to 10 scale

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FIG U R E 1.9

The subjective well-being of nations. Veenhoven (1993) combined the results of almost 1000 surveys to calculate the average subjective well-being reported by representative samples from 43 nations. The mean happiness scores clearly pile up at the positive end of the distribution, with only two scores falling below the neutral point of 5. (Data adapted from Diener and Diener, 1996)

source of headaches and hassles. Compared to childless couples, parents worry more and experience more marital problems (Argyle, 1987). Apparently, the good and bad aspects of parenthood balance each other out, because the evidence indicates that people who have children are neither more nor less happy than people without children (Argyle, 2001). Intelligence. Intelligence is a highly valued trait in modern society, but researchers have not found an association between IQ scores and happiness (Diener, 1984). Educational attainment also appears to be unrelated to life satisfaction (Ross & Van Willigen, 1997). Physical attractiveness. Good-looking people enjoy a variety of advantages in comparison to unattractive people. Given that physical attractiveness is an important resource in Western society, we might expect attractive people to be happier than others, but the available data indicate that the correlation between attractiveness and happiness is negligible (Diener, Wolsic, & Fujita, 1995).

What Is Somewhat Important? Research has identified three facets of life that appear to have a moderate impact on subjective well-being: health, social activity, and religious belief. Health. Good physical health would seem to be an essential requirement for happiness, but people adapt

to health problems. Research reveals that individuals who develop serious, disabling health conditions aren’t as unhappy as one might guess (Myers, 1992). Good health may not, by itself, produce happiness, because people tend to take good health for granted. Such considerations may help explain why researchers find only a moderate positive correlation (average ⫽ .32) between health status and subjective well-being (Argyle, 1999). Social activity. Humans are social animals, and people’s interpersonal relations do appear to contribute to their happiness. People who are satisfied with their friendship networks and who are socially active report above-average levels of happiness (Diener & Seligman, 2004; Myers, 1999). And people who are exceptionally happy tend to report greater satisfaction with their social relations than others (Diener & Seligman, 2002). Religion. The link between religiosity and subjective well-being is modest, but a number of surveys suggest that people with heartfelt religious convictions are more likely to be happy than people who characterize themselves as nonreligious (Argyle, 1999; Ferris, 2002). Researchers aren’t sure how religious faith fosters happiness, but Myers (1992) offers some interesting conjectures. Among other things, he discusses how religion can give people a sense of purpose and meaning in their lives, help them accept their setbacks gracefully, connect them to a caring, supportive community, and comfort them by putting their ultimate mortality in perspective.

What Is Very Important? The list of factors that turn out to be very important ingredients of happiness is surprisingly short. Only a few variables are strongly related to overall happiness. Love and marriage. Romantic relationships can be stressful, but people consistently rate being in love as one of the most critical ingredients of happiness (Myers, 1999). Furthermore, although people complain a lot about their marriages, the evidence indicates that marital status is a key correlate of happiness. Among both men and women, married people are happier than people who are single or divorced (see Figure 1.10 on the next page; Myers & Diener, 1995) and this relationship holds around the world in widely different cultures (Diener et al., 2000). However, the causal relations underlying this correlation are unclear. It may be that happiness causes marital satisfaction more than marital satisfaction promotes happiness. Perhaps people who are happy tend to have better intimate relationships and more stable marriages, while people who are unhappy have greater difficulty finding and keeping mates.

R EC O M M EN D ED R EA D IN G

The Pursuit of Happiness by David G. Myers (William Morrow, 1992) The Pursuit of Happiness provides a thorough, accurate review of empirical research on the determinants of happiness, seasoned nicely with personal anecdotes and low-key, practical advice. Myers is a respected social psychologist and hard-nosed scientist who acknowledges that his reflections on happiness are “colored by Christian values and spirituality.” Emphasizing the finding that objective circumstances have limited impact on happiness, Myers discusses how people might alter their subjective assessments of their lives to foster greater happiness. Working from the insight that happiness is relative, he offers suggestions for managing our comparisons to others and restraining our expectations to enhance our well-being. Myers’s book is a superb example of what self-help books could and should be, but rarely are. It is clearly written and appropriately cautious about the limits of our knowledge. It is carefully documented, and assertions are closely tied to research and theory. The author’s conjectures— which are often fascinating—are accurately presented as learned speculation rather than scientific fact, and readers are encouraged to think for themselves. Complicated issues are not reduced to sound bites and bumper sticker slogans. Myers does not encourage a selfcentered approach to life (quite the opposite!), nor does he offer simple prescriptions about how to live. Given these realities, The Pursuit of Happiness has not topped any best-seller lists, but it is well worth reading. Cover copyright © 1992 by the David G. and Carol P. Myers Charitable Foundation. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollinsPublishers, Inc.

Work. Given the way people often complain about their jobs, we might not expect work to be a key source of happiness, but it is. Although less critical than love and marriage, job satisfaction is strongly associated with general happiness (Warr, 1999). Studies also show that unemployment has very negative effects on subjective well-being (Lucas et al., 2004). It is difficult to sort out whether job satisfaction causes happiness or vice versa, but evidence suggests that causation flows both ways (Argyle, 2001). Personality. The best predictor of individuals’ future happiness is their past happiness (Diener & Lucas, 1999). Some people seem destined to be happy and others unhappy, regardless of their triumphs or setbacks. The limited influence of life events was apparent in a stunning study that found only marginal differences CHAPTER 1

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FIG U R E 1.10

Happiness and marital status. This graph shows the percentage of adults characterizing themselves as “Very happy” as a function of marital status. Among both women and men, happiness shows up more in those who are married, as opposed to those who are separated, who are divorced, or who have never married. These data and many other findings suggest that marital satisfaction is a key ingredient of happiness.

Married Never married

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Separated Divorced

Married Never married WOMEN Separated Divorced 0

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Adapted from Myers, D. G. (1999). Close relationships and quality of life. In D. Kahneman, E. Diener, & N. Schwarz (Eds.), Well-being: The foundations of hedonic psychology. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Copyright © 1999. Reprinted by permission of the Russell Sage Foundation.

in overall happiness between recent lottery winners and recent accident victims who became quadriplegics (Brickman, Coates, & Janoff-Bulman, 1978). Investigators were amazed that extremely fortuitous and horrible events like these didn’t have a dramatic impact on happiness. Actually, several lines of evidence suggest that happiness does not depend on external circumstances— buying a nice house, getting promoted—as much as on internal factors, such as one’s outlook on life (Lykken & Tellegen, 1996). With this reality in mind, researchers have begun to look for links between personality and subjective well-being, and they have found some rela-

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20 25 30 Percent “very happy”

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tively strong correlations. For example, extraversion (sometimes referred to as positive emotionality) is one of the better predictors of happiness. People who are outgoing, upbeat, and sociable tend to be happier than others (Fleeson, Malanos, & Achille, 2002). Additional personality correlates of happiness include self-esteem and optimism (Lucas, Diener, & Suh, 1996).

Conclusions

© Stuart Hughes/Corbis

Research shows that happiness does not depend on people’s positive and negative experiences as much as one would expect. Some people, presumably because of their personality, seem destined to be happy in spite of major setbacks, and others seem destined to cling to unhappiness even though their lives seem reasonably pleasant.

15

We must be cautious in drawing inferences about the causes of happiness, because most of the available data are correlational data (see Figure 1.11). Nonetheless, the empirical evidence suggests that many popular beliefs about the sources of happiness are unfounded. The data also demonstrate that happiness is shaped by a complex constellation of variables. Despite this complexity, however, a number of worthwhile insights about human adjustment can be gleaned from research on the correlates of subjective well-being. First, research on happiness demonstrates that the determinants of subjective well-being are precisely that: subjective. Objective realities are not as important as subjective feelings. In other words, your health, your wealth, your job, and your age are not as influential as how you feel about your health, wealth, job, and age (Schwarz & Strack, 1999). Second, when it comes to happiness everything is relative (Argyle, 1999; Hagerty, 2000). In other words, you evaluate what you have relative to what the people around you have. Thus, people who are wealthy assess what they have by comparing themselves with their wealthy friends and neighbors. This is one reason for the low correlation between wealth and happiness. You

© Charles Gupton/Corbis

© Rolf Bruderer/Masterfile

Research on the correlates of happiness suggests that two key ingredients of happiness are a rewarding work life and satisfaction in intimate relationships.

might have a lovely home, but if it sits next to a neighbor’s palatial mansion, it might be a source of more dissatisfaction than happiness. People’s evaluations are also made relative to their expectations. Research suggests that bad outcomes feel worse when unexpected, than when expected, while good outcomes feel better

Extraversion

Social activity

Happiness

F I G U R E 1.11

Possible causal relations among the correlates of happiness. Although we have considerable data on the correlates of happiness, it is difficult to untangle the possible causal relationships. For example, we know that a moderate positive correlation exists between social activity and happiness, but we can’t say for sure whether high social activity causes happiness or whether happiness causes people to be more socially active. Moreover, in light of the finding that a third variable—extraversion—correlates with both variables, we have to consider the possibility that extraversion causes both greater social activity and greater happiness.

when unexpected than when expected (Shepperd & McNulty, 2002). Thus, the same objective event, such as a pay raise of $2000 annually, may generate positive feelings in someone who wasn’t expecting a raise and negative feelings in someone expecting a much larger increase in salary. Third, research on subjective well-being indicates that people often adapt to their circumstances. This adaptation effect is one reason that an increase in income doesn’t necessarily bring an increase in happiness. Thus, hedonic adaptation occurs when the mental scale that people use to judge the pleasantness-unpleasantness of their experiences shifts so that their neutral point, or baseline for comparison, is changed. Unfortunately, when people’s experiences improve, hedonic adaptation may sometimes put them on a hedonic treadmill—their neutral point moves upward, so that the improvements yield no real benefits (Kahneman, 1999). However, when people have to grapple with major setbacks, hedonic adaptation probably helps protect their mental and physical health. For example, people who are sent to prison and people who develop debilitating diseases are not as unhappy as one might assume because they adapt to their changed situations and evaluate events from a new perspective (Frederick & Loewenstein, 1999). That’s not to say that hedonic adaptation in the face of life’s difficulties is inevitable or complete (Lucas et al., 2003). People who suffer major setbacks, such as the death of a spouse or serious illness, often are not as happy as they were before the setback, but generally they are not nearly as unhappy as they or others would have predicted. CHAPTER 1

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Improving Academic Performance LEARNING OBJECTIVES ■ ■ ■

List three steps for developing sound study habits. Describe the SQ3R method of effective reading. Summarize advice on how to get more out of lectures.

Answer the following “true” or “false.” ___ 1. If you have a professor who delivers chaotic, hard-to-follow lectures, there is little point in attending class. ___ 2. Cramming the night before an exam is an efficient way to study. ___ 3. In taking lecture notes, you should try to be a “human tape recorder” (that is, take down everything exactly as said by your professor). ___ 4. Outlining reading assignments is a waste of time. As you will soon learn, all of these statements are false. If you answered them all correctly, you may already have acquired the kinds of skills and habits that lead to academic success. If so, however, you are not typical. Today, a huge number of students enter college with remarkably poor study skills and habits—and it’s not entirely their fault. The U.S. educational system generally does not provide much in the way of formal instruction on good study techniques. In this first Application, we will try to remedy this deficiency to some extent by sharing some insights that psychology can provide on how to improve your academic performance. We will discuss how to promote better study habits, how to enhance reading efforts, how to get more out of lectures, and how to make your memory more effective.

Developing Sound Study Habits Effective study is crucial to success in college. You may run into a few classmates who boast about getting good grades without studying, but you can be sure that if they perform well on exams, they study. Students who claim otherwise simply want to be viewed as extremely bright rather than as studious. Learning can be immensely gratifying, but studying usually involves hard work. The first step toward effective study habits is to face this reality. You don’t have to feel guilty if you don’t look forward to studying. Most students don’t. Once you accept the premise

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Summarize how memory is influenced by practice, interference, depth of processing, and organization. Describe several verbal and visual mnemonic devices.

that studying doesn’t come naturally, it should be clear that you need to set up an organized program to promote adequate study. Such a program should include the following three considerations (Siebert, 1995). Set up a schedule for studying. If you wait until the urge to study hits you, you may still be waiting when the exam rolls around. Thus, it is important to allocate definite times to studying. Review your time obligations (work, housekeeping, and so on) and figure out in advance when you can study. In allotting certain times to studying, keep in mind that you need to be wide awake and alert. Be realistic, too, about how long you can study at one time before you wear down from fatigue. Allow time for study breaks; they can revive sagging concentration. It’s important to write down your study schedule. Doing so serves as a reminder and increases your commitment to the schedule. As shown in Figure 1.12, you should begin by setting up a general schedule for the quarter or semester. Then, at the beginning of each week, plan the specific assignments that you intend to work on during each study session. This approach should help you to avoid cramming for exams at the last minute. In planning your weekly schedule, try to avoid the tendency to put off working on major tasks such as term papers and reports. Time management experts such as Alan Lakein (1996) point out that many of us tend to tackle simple, routine tasks first, saving larger tasks for later, when we supposedly will have more time. This common tendency leads many of us to delay working on major assignments until it’s too late to do a good job. You can avoid this trap by breaking major assignments into smaller component tasks that you schedule individually. Find a place to study where you can concentrate. Where you study is also important. The key is to find a place where distractions are likely to be minimal. Most people cannot study effectively while watching TV, listening to loud music, or overhearing conversations.

Don’t depend on willpower to carry you through these distractions. It’s much easier to plan ahead and avoid the distractions altogether. Reward your studying. One of the reasons it is so difficult to motivate oneself to study regularly is that the payoffs for studying often lie in the distant future. The ultimate reward, a degree, may be years away. Even shorter-term rewards, such as an A in the course, may be weeks or months off. To combat this problem, it helps to give yourself immediate rewards for studying. It is easier to motivate yourself to study if you reward yourself with a tangible payoff, such as a snack, TV show, or phone call to a friend, when you finish. Thus, you should set realistic study goals and then reward yourself when you meet them. This systematic manipulation of rewards involves harnessing the principles of behavior modification, which are described in some detail in the Chapter 4 Application.

Improving Your Reading

WE B LI N K 1.6

CalREN Project Study Tips The staff at the University of California–Berkeley have assembled an excellent set of study resources with an emphasis on the needs and questions of “nontraditional” students.

going, you can better appreciate and organize the information you are about to read. Step 2: Question

Once you have an overview of your reading assignment, proceed through it one section at a time. Take a look at the heading of the first section and convert it into a question. This is usually quite simple. If the heading is “prenatal risk factors,” your question should be “what are sources of risk during prenatal development?” If the heading is “stereotyping,” your question should be “what is stereotyping?” Asking these questions gets you actively involved in your reading and helps you identify the main ideas.

Much of your study time is spent reading and absorbing information. These efforts must be active. If you enStep 3: Read gage in passive reading, the information will pass right Only now, in the third step, are you ready to sink your through you. Many students deceive themselves into teeth into the reading. Read only the specific section that thinking that they are studying if they run a marker you have decided to tackle. Read it with an eye toward through a few sentences here and there in their text. If such highlighting isn’t done with thoughtful selectivity, the student is simply turning a textbook into a coloring book. Research F I G U R E 1. 12 suggests that highlighting selected textbook Example of an activity schedule. One student’s general activity schedule for a material is a useful strategy—if students are semester is shown here. Each week the student fills in the specific assignments to reasonably effective in identifying the main work on during the upcoming study sessions. ideas in the material and if they subsequently review the main ideas they have highlighted Mon Tues Wed Thurs Fri Sat Sun (Caverly, Orlando, & Mullen, 2000). You can choose from a number of meth8 A.M. Work ods for actively attacking your reading assign9 A.M. History Study History Study History Work ments. One of the more worthwhile strategies 10 A.M. Psych Psych Psych Work is Robinson’s (1970) SQ3R method. SQ3R is French French 11 A.M. Study Study Study Work a study system designed to promote effecNoon Math Study Math Study Math Work Study tive reading that includes five steps: survey, question, read, recite, and review. Its name 1 P.M. Study is an abbreviation for the five steps in the 2 P.M. Study Study Study Study English English procedure: 3 P.M. Study Study Study Study

Step 1: Survey

Before you plunge into the actual reading, glance over the topic headings in the chapter and try to get an overview of the material. Try to understand how the various chapter segments are related. If there is a chapter outline or summary, consult it to get a feel for the chapter. If you know where the chapter is

4 P.M. 5 P.M. 6 P.M.

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© Esbin-Anderson/The Image Works

questions and try to answer them without consulting your book or notes. This review should fortify your retention of the main ideas and alert you to any key ideas that you haven’t mastered. It should also help you to see the relationships between the main ideas.

Although some students downplay the importance of study efforts, the reality is that effective study habits are crucial to academic success.

answering the question that you just formulated. If necessary, reread the section until you can answer that question. Decide whether the segment addresses any other important questions and answer them as well. Step 4: Recite

Now that you can answer the key question for the section, recite it out loud to yourself. Use your own words for the answer, because that requires understanding instead of simple memorization. Don’t move on to the next section until you understand the main idea(s) of the current section. You may want to write down these ideas for review later. When you have fully digested the first section, go on to the next. Repeat steps 2 through 4 with the next section. Once you have mastered the crucial points there, you can continue. Keep repeating steps 2 through 4, section by section, until you finish the chapter. Step 5: Review

When you have read the chapter, test and refresh your memory by going back over the key points. Repeat your

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The SQ3R method does not have to be applied rigidly. For example, it is often wise to break your reading assignment into smaller segments than those separated by section headings. In fact, you should probably apply SQ3R to many texts on a paragraph by paragraph basis. Obviously, doing so will require you to formulate some questions without the benefit of topic headings. However, the headings are not absolutely necessary to use this technique. If you don’t have enough headings, you can simply reverse the order of steps 2 and 3. Read the paragraph first and then formulate a question that addresses the basic idea of the paragraph. The point is that you can be flexible in your use of the SQ3R technique. Using the SQ3R method does not automatically lead to improved mastery of textbook reading assignments. It won’t be effective unless it is applied diligently and skillfully and it tends to be more helpful to students with low to medium reading ability (Caverly, Orlando, & Mullen, 2000). Any strategy that facilitates active processing of text material, the identification of key ideas, and effective review of these ideas should enhance your reading.

Getting More Out of Lectures Although lectures are sometimes boring and tedious, it is a simple fact that poor class attendance is associated with poor grades. For example, in one study, Lindgren (1969) found that absences from class were much more common among “unsuccessful” students (grade average of C⫺ or below) than among “successful” students (grade average of B or above), as is shown in Figure 1.13. Even when you have an instructor who delivers hardto-follow lectures from which you learn virtually nothing, it is still important to go to class. If nothing else, you’ll get a feel for how the instructor thinks. Doing so can help you anticipate the content of exams and respond in the manner your professor expects. Fortunately, most lectures are reasonably coherent. Studies indicate that attentive note taking is associated with enhanced learning and performance in college classes (Cohn, Cohn, & Bradley, 1995; O’Donnell & Dansereau, 1993). However, research also shows that many students’ lecture notes are surprisingly incomplete, with the average student often recording less than 40 percent of the crucial ideas in a lecture (Armbruster, 2000). Thus, the key to getting more out of lectures is to stay motivated, stay attentive, and expend

Successful students Always or almost always in class 84%

Unsuccessful students Sometimes absent 8%

Always or almost always in class 47%

ries of insightful studies. Since then, psychologists have discovered a number of principles about memory that are relevant to helping you improve your study skills. Engage in Adequate Practice

Practice makes perfect, or so you’ve heard. In reality, practice is not likely to guarantee Often perfection, but repeatedly reviewing inforabsent 45% mation usually leads to improved retention. Studies show that retention improves with inSometimes creased rehearsal (Greene, 1992). Continued absent Often absent rehearsal may also pay off by improving your 8% 8% understanding of assigned material (Bromage & Mayer, 1986). As you go over information again and again, your increased faF I G U R E 1.13 miliarity with the material may permit you Successful and unsuccessful students’ class attendance. Lindgren (1969) to focus selectively on the most important found that attendance was much better among successful students than unsucpoints, thus enhancing your understanding. cessful students. (Data from Lindgren, 1969.) Evidence suggests that it even pays to overlearn material (Driskell, Wilis, & Copper, 1992). Overlearning is continued rehearsal of matethe effort to make your notes as complete as possible. rial after you have first appeared to master it. In one Books on study skills (Longman & Atkinson, 2002; Sostudy, after participants mastered a list of nouns (they tiriou, 2002) offer a number of suggestions on how recited the list without error), Krueger (1929) required to take good-quality lecture notes. These suggestions them to continue rehearsing for 50 percent or 100 perinclude: cent more trials. Measuring retention at intervals of up to 28 days, Kreuger found that overlearning led to bet■ Use active listening procedures. With active listenter recall of the list. The implication of this finding is ing, you focus full attention on the speaker. Try to ansimple: You should not quit rehearsing material just ticipate what’s coming and search for deeper meanbecause you appear to have mastered it. ings. Pay attention to nonverbal signals that may serve

to further clarify the lecturer’s intent or meaning. ■ When course material is especially complex and difficult, it is a good idea to prepare for the lecture by reading ahead on the scheduled subject in your text. Then you have less information to digest that is brand new. ■ Don’t try to be a human tape recorder. Instead, try to write down the lecturer’s thoughts in your own words. Doing so forces you to organize the ideas in a way that makes sense to you. In taking notes, look for subtle and not-so-subtle clues about what the instructor considers to be important. These clues may range from simply repeating main points to saying things like “You’ll run into this again.” ■ Ask questions during lectures. Doing so keeps you actively involved and allows you to clarify points you may have misunderstood. Many students are more bashful about asking questions than they should be. They don’t realize that most professors welcome questions.

Applying Memory Principles Scientific investigation of memory processes dates back to 1885, when Hermann Ebbinghaus published a se-

Use Distributed Practice

Let’s assume that you are going to study 9 hours for an exam. Is it better to “cram” all of your study into one 9-hour period (massed practice) or distribute it among, say, three 3-hour periods on successive days (distributed practice)? The evidence indicates that retention tends to be greater after distributed practice than massed practice (Glenberg, 1992; Payne & Wenger, 1996). This advantage is especially apparent if the intervals between practice periods are fairly long, such as 24 hours (Zechmeister & Nyberg, 1982). The inefficiency of massed practice means that cramming is an ill-advised study strategy for most students (Dempster, 1996). Cramming will strain your memorization capabilities and tax your energy level. It may also stoke the fires of test anxiety. Minimize Interference

Interference occurs when people forget information because of competition from other learned material. Research suggests that interference is a major cause of forgetting, so you’ll probably want to think about how you can minimize interference. Doing so is especially

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important for students, because memorizing information for one course can interfere with retaining information in another course. It may help to allocate study for specific courses to specific days. Thorndyke and Hayes-Roth (1979) found that similar material produced less interference when it was learned on different days. Thus, the day before an exam in a course, it is probably best to study for that course only. If demands in other courses make that impossible, study the test material last. Of course, studying for other classes is not the only source of interference in a student’s life. Other normal waking activities also produce interference. Therefore, it is a good idea to conduct one last, thorough review of material as close to exam time as possible (Anderson, 1980). Organize Information

Retention tends to be greater when information is well organized. Hierarchical organization is particularly helpful when it is applicable (Tigner, 1999). Thus, it may be a good idea to outline reading assignments for school. Consistent with this reasoning, there is some empirical evidence that outlining material from textbooks can enhance retention of the material (McDaniel, Waddill, & Shakesby, 1996). Emphasize Deep Processing

Research suggests that how often you go over material is less critical than the depth of processing that you engage in (Craik & Tulving, 1975). Thus, if you expect to remember what you read, you have to wrestle fully with its meaning. Many students could probably benefit if they spent less time on rote repetition and devoted more effort to actually paying attention to and analyzing the meaning of their reading assignments. In particular, it is useful to make material personally meaningful. When you read your textbooks, try to relate information to your own life and experience. For example, if you’re reading in your psychology text about the personality trait of assertiveness, you can think about which peo-

DOONESBURY © G. B. Trudeau. Reprinted with permission of UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE. All rights reserved.

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ple you know who are particularly assertive and why you would characterize them as being that way. Use Verbal Mnemonics

Of course, it’s not always easy to make something personally meaningful. When you study chemistry, you may have a hard time relating to polymers at a personal level. This problem has led to the development of many mnemonic devices, or strategies for enhancing memory, that are designed to make abstract material more meaningful. Acrostics and acronyms. Acrostics are phrases (or poems) in which the first letter of each word (or line) functions as a cue to help you recall the abstract words that begin with the same letter. For instance, you may remember the order of musical notes with the saying “Every good boy does fine” (or “deserves favor”). A variation on acrostics is the acronym—a word formed out of the first letters of a series of words. Students memorizing the order of colors in the light spectrum often store the name “Roy G. Biv” to remember red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Narrative methods. Another useful way to remember a list of words is to create a story that includes each of the words in the right order. The narrative increases the meaningfulness of the words and links them in a specific order. Examples of this technique can be seen in Figure 1.14. Bower and Clark (1969) found that this procedure enhanced subjects’ recall of lists of unrelated words. Rhymes. Another verbal mnemonic that people often rely on is rhyming. You’ve probably repeated, “I before E except after C” thousands of times. Perhaps you also remember the number of days in each month with the old standby, “Thirty days hath September . . .” Rhyming something to remember it is an old and useful trick.

Word Lists to Be Memorized and Stories Constructed from Them Word lists

Stories

Bird Costume Mailbox Head River

Nurse Theater Wax Eyelid Furnace

A man dressed in a Bird Costume and wearing a Mailbox on his Head was seen leaping into the River. A Nurse ran out of a nearby Theater and applied Wax to his Eyelids, but her efforts were in vain. He died and was tossed into the Furnace.

Rustler Penthouse Mountain Sloth Tavern

Fuzz Gland Antler Pencil Vitamin

A Rustler lived in a Penthouse on top of a Mountain. His specialty was the three-toed Sloth. He would take his captive animals to a Tavern where he would remove Fuzz from their Glands. Unfortunately, all this exposure to sloth fuzz caused him to grow Antlers. So he gave up his profession and went to work in a Pencil factory. As a precaution he also took a lot of Vitamin E.

F I G U R E 1.14

The narrative method. Two examples of the narrative method for memorizing lists are shown here (Bower & Clark, 1969). The words to be memorized are listed on the left, and the stories constructed to remember them are shown on the right. Adapted from Bower, G. H., & Clark, M. C. (1969). Narrative stories as mediators of serial learning. Psychonomic Science, 14, 181–182. Copyright © 1969 by the Psychonomic Society. Adapted by permission of the Psychonomic Society and the author.

Use Visual Mnemonics

Memory can be improved through the use of visual imagery. One influential theory (Paivio, 1986) proposes

that visual images create a second memory code and that two codes are better than one. Many popular mnemonic devices depend on visual imagery, including the link method and the method of loci. Link method. The link method involves forming a mental image of items to be remembered in a way that links them together. For instance, suppose that you are going to stop at the drugstore on the way home and you need to remember to pick up a news magazine, shaving cream, film, and pens. To remember these items, you might visualize a public figure likely to be in the magazine shaving with a pen while being photographed. Some researchers suggest that bizarre images may be remembered better (Iaccino, 1996; Worthen, 1997). Method of loci. The method of loci involves taking an imaginary walk along a familiar path where you have associated images of items you want to remember with certain locations. The first step is to commit to memory a series of loci, or places along a path. Usually these loci are specific locations in your home or neighborhood. Then envision each thing you want to remember in one of these locations. Try to form distinctive, vivid images. When you need to remember the items, imagine yourself walking along the path. The various loci on your path should serve as retrieval cues for the images that you formed (see Figure 1.15). The method of loci assures that items are remembered in their correct order because the order is determined by the sequence of locations along the pathway. Empirical studies have supported the value of this method for memorizing lists (Crovitz, 1971; De Beni, Mo, & Cornoldi, 1997).

F I G U R E 1.15

The method of loci. In this example from Bower (1970), a person about to go shopping pairs items to be remembered with familiar places (loci) arranged in a natural sequence: (1) hot dogs/driveway; (2) cat food/ garage; (3) tomatoes/front door; (4) bananas/coat closet; (5) whiskey/ kitchen sink. As the last panel shows, the shopper recalls the items by mentally touring the loci associated with them. Adapted from Bower, G. H. (1970). Analysis of a mnemonic device. American Scientist, 58, 496–499. Copyright © 1970 by Scientific Research Society. Reprinted by permission of the publisher and author.

CHAPTER 1

Adjusting to Modern Life

29

The Roots of Happiness: An Empirical Analysis ■

KEY IDEAS The Paradox of Progress ■

CHAPTER 1 REVIEW

Although our modern era has seen great technological progress, personal problems have not diminished. In spite of many time-saving devices, people tend to have less free time. Although affluence is widespread, most people worry about economic decline. ■ The life choices available to people have increased greatly, but Schwartz argues that choice overload undermines individuals’ happiness. Although we have unprecedented control over the world around us, we seem to create as many problems as we solve. Thus, many theorists argue that technological progress has brought new, and possibly more difficult, adjustment problems. The Search for Direction ■

According to many theorists, the basic challenge of modern life has become the search for a sense of direction and meaning. This search has many manifestations, including the appeal of self-realization programs, religious cults, and media “therapists” such as Dr. Laura. ■ The enormous popularity of self-help books is an interesting manifestation of people’s struggle to find a sense of direction. Some self-help books offer worthwhile advice, but most are dominated by psychobabble and are not based on scientific research. Many also lack explicit advice on how to change behavior. ■ Although this text deals with many of the same issues as selfrealization programs, self-help books, and other types of pop psychology, its philosophy and approach are quite different. The Psychology of Adjustment

A scientific analysis of happiness reveals that many commonsense notions about the roots of happiness appear to be incorrect, including the notion that most people are unhappy. Factors such as money, age, gender, parenthood, intelligence, and attractiveness are not correlated with subjective well-being. ■ Physical health, social relationships, and religious faith appear to have a modest impact on feelings of happiness. The only factors that are clearly and strongly related to happiness are love and marriage, work satisfaction, and personality. ■ There are no simple recipes for achieving happiness, but it helps to understand that happiness is a relative concept mediated by people’s highly subjective assessments of their lives. Application: Improving Academic Performance ■

To foster sound study habits, you should devise a written study schedule and reward yourself for following it. You should also try to find places for studying that are relatively free of distractions. ■ You should use active reading techniques, such as SQ3R, to select the most important ideas from the material you read. Good note taking can help you get more out of lectures. It’s important to use active listening techniques and to record lecturers’ ideas in your own words. ■ Rehearsal, even when it involves overlearning, facilitates retention. Distributed practice and deeper processing tend to improve memory. It is wise to plan study sessions so as to minimize interference. Evidence also suggests that organization facilitates retention, so outlining reading assignments can be valuable. ■ Meaningfulness can be enhanced through the use of verbal mnemonics such as acrostics, acronyms, and narrative methods. The link method and the method of loci are mnemonic devices that depend on the value of visual imagery.

Psychology is both a science and a profession that focuses on behavior and related mental and physiological processes. ■ Adjustment is a broad area of study in psychology concerned with how people adapt effectively or ineffectively to the demands and pressures of everyday life. The Scientific Approach to Behavior ■

The scientific approach to understanding behavior is empirical. Psychologists base their conclusions on formal, systematic, objective tests of their hypotheses, rather than reasoning, speculation, or common sense. The scientific approach is advantageous in that it puts a premium on clarity and has little tolerance for error. ■ Experimental research involves manipulating an independent variable to discover its effects on a dependent variable. The experimenter usually does so by comparing experimental and control groups, which must be alike except for the variation created by the manipulation of the independent variable. Experiments permit conclusions about cause-effect relationships between variables, but this method isn’t usable for the study of many questions. ■ Psychologists conduct correlational research when they are unable to exert control over the variables they want to study. The correlation coefficient is a numerical index of the degree of relationship between two variables. Correlational research methods include naturalistic observation, case studies, and surveys. Correlational research facilitates the investigation of many issues that are not open to experimental study, but it cannot demonstrate that two variables are causally related.

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KEY TERMS Adjustment p. 12 Behavior p. 11 Case study p. 17 Clinical psychology p. 12 Control group p. 14 Correlation p. 15 Correlation coefficient p. 15 Dependent variable p. 14 Empiricism p. 13 Experiment p. 13 Experimental group p. 14

Hedonic adaptation p. 23 Independent variable p. 14 Interference p. 27 Mnemonic devices p. 28 Naturalistic observation p. 16 Overlearning p. 27 Psychology p. 11 SQ3R p. 25 Subjective well-being p. 19 Surveys p. 17

KEY PEOPLE David Myers p. 2 Barry Schwartz pp. 2–3

Martin Seligman

p. 2

7. A psychologist collected background information about a psychopathic killer, talked to him and people who knew him, and gave him psychological tests. Which research method was she using? a. Case study b. Naturalistic observation c. Survey d. Experiment

Personal Explorations Workbook The following exercises in your Personal Explorations Workbook may enhance your self-understanding in relation to issues raised in this chapter. Questionnaire 1.1: Testwiseness Scale. Personal Probe 1.1: What Are Your Study Habits Like? Personal Probe 1.2: What Factors Affect Your Current Adjustment in Life?

ANSWERS

Page 14 Page 17 Page 14 Pages 20–21 Page 27

6. A researcher wants to determine whether a certain diet causes children to learn better in school. In the study, the independent variable is a. the type of diet. b. a measure of learning performance. c. the age or grade level of the children. d. the intelligence level of the children.

Visit the Book Companion Website at http://psychology. wadsworth.com/weiten_lloyd8e, where you will find tutorial quizzes, flashcards, and weblinks for every chapter, a final exam, and more! You can also link to the Thomson Wadsworth Psychology Resource Center (accessible directly at http://psychology.wadsworth.com) for a range of psychology-related resources.

a a d d d

5. An experiment is a research method in which the investigator manipulates the __________ variable and observes whether changes occur in a (an) __________ variable as a result. a. independent; dependent b. control; experimental c. experimental; control d. dependent; independent

Book Companion Website

CHAPTER 1

6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

4. The adaptation of animals when environments change is similar to __________ in humans. a. orientation c. evolution b. assimilation d. adjustment

10. A good reason for taking notes in your own words, rather than verbatim, is that a. most lecturers are quite wordy. b. “translating” on the spot is good mental exercise. c. it reduces the likelihood that you’ll later engage in plagiarism. d. it forces you to assimilate the information in a way that makes sense to you.

Page 4 Page 2 Pages 8–9 Page 12 Pages 13–14

3. Which of the following is not offered in the text as a criticism of self-help books? a. They are infrequently based on solid research. b. Most don’t provide explicit directions for changing behavior. c. The topics they cover are often quite narrow. d. Many are dominated by psychobabble.

9. Research has shown that which of the following is moderately correlated with happiness? a. Income b. Intelligence c. Parenthood d. Social activity

d b c d a

2. Kasser argues that the correlation between happiness and materialism (a strong focus on money and possessions) is a. positive. c. zero. b. negative. d. about ⫹1.24.

PRACTICE TEST

1. Technological advances have not led to perceptible improvement in our collective health and happiness. This statement defines a. escape from freedom. b. the point/counterpoint phenomenon. c. modern society. d. the paradox of progress.

Adjusting to Modern Life

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

PRACTICE TEST

8. The principal advantage of experimental research is that a. it has a scientific basis and is therefore convincing to people. b. experiments replicate real-life situations. c. an experiment can be designed for any research problem. d. it allows the researcher to draw cause-and-effect conclusions.

31

THE NATURE OF PERSONALITY What Is Personality? What Are Personality Traits?

HUMANISTIC PERSPECTIVES Rogers’s Person-Centered Theory Maslow’s Theory of Self-Actualization Evaluating Humanistic Perspectives

PSYCHODYNAMIC PERSPECTIVES Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory Jung’s Analytical Psychology Adler’s Individual Psychology Evaluating Psychodynamic Perspectives

BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Eysenck’s Theory Recent Research in Behavioral Genetics The Evolutionary Approach to Personality Evaluating Biological Perspectives

BEHAVIORAL PERSPECTIVES Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning Skinner’s Operant Conditioning Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory Evaluating Behavioral Perspectives

A CONTEMPORARY EMPIRICAL APPROACH: TERROR MANAGEMENT THEORY Essentials of Terror Management Theory Applications of Terror Management Theory

32

AN EPILOGUE ON THEORETICAL DIVERSITY APPLICATION: ASSESSING YOUR PERSONALITY Key Concepts in Psychological Testing Self-Report Inventories Projective Tests CHAPTER 2 REVIEW PRACTICE TEST

CHAPTER

Theories of Personality

2

Imagine that you are hurtling upward in an elevator with three other persons when suddenly a power blackout brings the elevator to a halt 45 stories above the ground. Your three companions might adjust to this predicament differently. One might crack jokes to relieve tension. Another might make ominous predictions that “we’ll never get out of here.” The third might calmly think about how to escape from the elevator. These varied ways of coping with the same stressful situation occur because each person has a different personality. Personality differences significantly influence people’s patterns of adjustment. Thus, theories intended to explain personality can contribute to our effort to understand adjustment processes. In this chapter, we will introduce you to various theories that attempt to explain the structure and development of personality. Our review of personality theory will also serve to acquaint you with four major theoretical perspectives in psychology: the psychodynamic, behavioral, humanistic, and biological perspectives. These theoretical approaches are conceptual models that help explain behavior. Familiarity with them will help you understand many of the ideas that you will encounter in this book, as well as in other books about psychology.

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The Nature of Personality LEARNING OBJECTIVES ■ ■

Explain the concepts of personality and traits. Describe the “Big Five” personality traits.

To discuss theories of personality effectively, we need to digress momentarily to come up with a definition of personality and to discuss the concept of personality traits.

What Is Personality? What does it mean if you say that a friend has an optimistic personality? Your statement suggests that the person has a fairly consistent tendency to behave in a cheerful, hopeful, enthusiastic way, looking at the bright side of things, across a wide variety of situations. In a similar vein, if you note that a friend has an “outgoing” personality, you mean that she or he consistently behaves in a friendly, open, and extraverted manner in a variety of circumstances. Although no one is entirely consistent in his or her behavior, this quality of consistency across situations lies at the core of the concept of personality. Distinctiveness is also central to the concept of personality. Everyone has traits seen in other people, but each individual has her or his own distinctive set of personality traits. Each person is unique. Thus, as illustrated by our elevator scenario, the concept of personality helps explain why people don’t all act alike in the same situation. In summary, we use the idea of personality to explain (1) the stability in a person’s behavior over time and across situations (consistency) and (2) the behavioral differences among people reacting to the same situation (distinctiveness). We can combine these ideas into the following definition: personality refers to an individual’s unique constellation of consistent behavioral traits. Let’s look more closely at the concept of traits.

(1950, 1966) assume that some traits are more basic than others. According to this notion, a small number of fundamental traits determine other, more superficial traits. For example, a person’s tendency to be impulsive, restless, irritable, boisterous, and impatient might all derive from a more basic tendency to be excitable. In recent years, Robert McCrae and Paul Costa (1987, 1997, 1999) have stimulated a lively debate among psychologists by arguing that the vast majority of personality traits derive from just five higher-order traits that have come to be known as the “Big Five”: extraversion, neuroticism, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness (see Figure 2.1). Let’s take a closer look at these traits: 1. Extraversion. People who score high in extraversion are characterized as outgoing, sociable, upbeat, friendly, assertive, and gregarious. Referred to as positive emotionality in some trait models, extraversion has been studied extensively in research for many decades (Watson & Clark, 1997). 2. Neuroticism. People who score high in neuroticism tend to be anxious, hostile, self-conscious, inse-

Agreeableness

Neuroticism (negative emotionality)

What Are Personality Traits? We all make remarks like “Melanie is very shrewd” or “Doug is too timid to succeed in that job” or “I wish I could be as self-assured as Antonio.” When we attempt to describe an individual’s personality, we usually do so in terms of specific aspects of personality, called traits. A personality trait is a durable disposition to behave in a particular way in a variety of situations. Adjectives such as honest, dependable, moody, impulsive, suspicious, anxious, excitable, domineering, and friendly describe dispositions that represent personality traits. Most trait theories of personality, such as those of Gordon Allport (1937, 1961) and Raymond Cattell 34

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Extraversion (positive emotionality)

Conscientiousness (constraint)

Openness to experience

FIG U R E 2.1

The five-factor model of personality. Trait models attempt to break down personality into its basic dimensions. McCrae and Costa (1987, 1997) maintain that personality can be described adequately with the five higher-order traits identified here, widely known as the Big Five traits.

cure, and vulnerable. Like extraversion, this trait has been the subject of thousands of studies. In some trait models it is called negative emotionality (Church, 1994). 3. Openness to experience. Openness is associated with curiosity, flexibility, vivid fantasy, imaginativeness, artistic sensitivity, and unconventional attitudes. McCrae (1996) maintains that its importance has been underestimated. Citing evidence that openness fosters liberalism, he argues that this trait is the key determinant of people’s political attitudes and ideology. 4. Agreeableness. Those who score high in agreeableness tend to be sympathetic, trusting, cooperative, modest, and straightforward. People who score at the opposite end of this personality dimension are characterized as suspicious, antagonistic, and aggressive. Agreeableness may have its roots in childhood temperament and appears to promote altruistic (helping) behavior in social interactions (Graziano & Eisenberg, 1997). 5. Conscientiousness. Conscientious people tend to be diligent, disciplined, well organized, punctual, and dependable. Referred to as constraint in some trait models, conscientiousness is associated with higher productivity in a variety of occupational areas (Hogan & Ones, 1997).

traits that they’ve identified. Their bold claim has been supported in many studies by other researchers, and the five-factor model has become the dominant conception of personality structure in contemporary psychology (John & Srivastava, 1999; Wiggins & Trapnell, 1997). These traits have been characterized as the “latitude and longitude” along which personality should be mapped (Ozer & Reise, 1994, p. 361). Thousands of studies have been conducted exploring correlations between the Big Five traits and such other characteristics as self-esteem (Watson, Suls, & Haig, 2002), transformational leadership (Judge & Bono, 2000), social status (Anderson et al., 2001), and well-being at midlife (Siegler & Brummett, 2000). However, some theorists maintain that more than five traits are necessary to account for most of the variation seen in human personality (Benet & Waller, 1995; Ashton et al., 2004). Ironically, other theorists have argued for three- or four-factor models of personality (Church & Burke, 1994; Eysenck, 1992). The debate about how many dimensions are necessary to describe personality is likely to continue for many years to come. As you’ll see throughout the chapter, the study of personality is an area in psychology that has a long history of “dueling theories.” We’ll begin our tour of these theories by examining the influential work of Sigmund Freud and his followers.

McCrae and Costa maintain that personality can be described adequately by measuring the five basic

Psychodynamic Perspectives LEARNING OBJECTIVES

■ ■

Describe Freud’s three components of personality and how they are distributed across levels of awareness. Explain the importance of sexual and aggressive conflicts in Freud’s theory. Describe seven defense mechanisms identified by Freud. Outline Freud’s stages of psychosexual development and their theorized relations to adult personality.

Psychodynamic theories include all the diverse theories descended from the work of Sigmund Freud that focus on unconscious mental forces. Freud inspired many brilliant scholars who followed in his intellectual footsteps. Some of these followers simply refined and updated Freud’s theory. Others veered off in new directions and established independent, albeit related, schools of thought. Today, the psychodynamic umbrella covers a large collection of related theories. In this section, we’ll examine Freud’s ideas in some detail and then take a brief look at the work of two of his most significant followers, Carl Jung and Alfred Adler. Another psychodynamic theorist, Erik Erikson, is covered in a later chapter on adolescent and adult development (see Chapter 11).

■ ■

Summarize Jung’s views on the unconscious. Summarize Adler’s views on key issues relating to personality. Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of psychodynamic theories of personality.

Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory Born in 1856, Sigmund Freud grew up in a middle-class Jewish home in Vienna, Austria. He showed an early interest in intellectual pursuits and became an intense, hardworking young man. He dreamed of achieving fame by making an important discovery. His determination was such that in medical Sigmund Freud school he dissected 400 male eels to prove for the first time that they had testes. His work with eels did not make him famous. However, his later work with people made him one of CHAPTER 2

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National Library of Medicine

36

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The Dynamics of Adjustment

© Peter Aprahamian/Corbis

the most influential and controversial figures of modern times. Freud was a physician specializing in neurology when he began his medical practice in Vienna near the end of the 19th century. Like other neurologists in his era, he often treated people troubled by nervous problems such as irrational fears, obsessions, and anxieties. Eventually he devoted himself to the treatment of mental disorders using an innovative procedure he developed, called psychoanalysis, which required lengthy verbal interactions in which Freud probed deeply into patients’ lives. Decades of experience with his patients provided much of the inspiration for Freud’s theory of personality. Although Freud’s theory gradually gained Freud’s psychoanalytic theory was based on decades of clinical work. He treated prominence, most of Freud’s contemporaries a great many patients in the consulting room pictured here. The room contains were uncomfortable with the theory, for at numerous artifacts from other cultures—and the original psychoanalytic couch. least three reasons. First, he argued that unconscious forces govern human behavior. This ciding how to behave. The ego is guided by the reality idea was disturbing because it suggested that people principle, which seeks to delay gratification of the id’s are not masters of their own minds. Second, he claimed urges until appropriate outlets and situations can be that childhood experiences strongly determine adult found. In short, to stay out of trouble, the ego often personality. This notion distressed many, because it works to tame the unbridled desires of the id. As Freud suggested that people are not masters of their own desput it, the ego is “like a man on horseback, who has to tinies. Third, he said that individuals’ personalities are hold in check the superior strength of the horse” (Freud, shaped by how they cope with their sexual urges. This 1923, p. 15). assertion offended the conservative, Victorian values of In the long run, the ego wants to maximize gratihis time. Thus, Freud endured a great deal of criticism, fication, just like the id. However, the ego engages in condemnation, and outright ridicule, even after his secondary process thinking, which is relatively rational, work began to attract more favorable attention. What realistic, and oriented toward problem solving. Thus, were these ideas that generated so much controversy? the ego strives to avoid negative consequences from soStructure of Personality ciety and its representatives (for example, punishment Freud (1901, 1920) divided personality structure into by parents or teachers) by behaving “properly.” It also three components: the id, the ego, and the superego. He attempts to achieve long-range goals that sometimes saw a person’s behavior as the outcome of interactions require putting off gratification. among these three components. While the ego concerns itself with practical realiThe id is the primitive, instinctive component of ties, the superego is the moral component of personpersonality that operates according to the pleasure ality that incorporates social standards about what principle. Freud referred to the id as the reservoir of represents right and wrong. Throughout their lives, psychic energy. By this he meant that the id houses the but especially during childhood, individuals receive raw biological urges (to eat, sleep, defecate, copulate, training about what is good and bad behavior. Eventuand so on) that energize human behavior. The id operally they internalize many of these social norms, meanates according to the pleasure principle, which demands ing that they truly accept certain moral principles, then immediate gratification of its urges. The id engages in they put pressure on themselves to live up to these stanprimary process thinking, which is primitive, illogical, dards. The superego emerges out of the ego at around irrational, and fantasy oriented. 3 to 5 years of age. In some people, the superego can beThe ego is the decision-making component of percome irrationally demanding in its striving for moral sonality that operates according to the reality principerfection. Such people are plagued by excessive guilt. ple. The ego mediates between the id, with its forceful According to Freud, the id, ego, and superego are desires for immediate satisfaction, and the external sodistributed across three levels of awareness. He concial world, with its expectations and norms regarding trasted the unconscious with the conscious and preconsuitable behavior. The ego considers social realities— scious (see Figure 2.2). The conscious consists of whatsociety’s norms, etiquette, rules, and customs—in deever one is aware of at a particular point in time. For

• CONSCIOUS: Contact with outside world EGO Reality principle Secondary process thinking

SUPEREGO Moral imperatives ID Pleasure principle Primary process thinking

PRECONSCIOUS: Material just beneath the surface of awareness

UNCONSCIOUS: Difficult to retrieve material; well below the surface of awareness

example, at this moment your conscious may include the current train of thought in this text and a dim awareness in the back of your mind that your eyes are getting tired and you’re beginning to get hungry. The preconscious contains material just beneath the surface of awareness that can be easily retrieved. Examples might include your middle name, what you had for supper last night, or an argument you had with a friend yesterday. The unconscious contains thoughts, memories, and desires that are well below the surface of conscious awareness but that nonetheless exert great influence on one’s behavior. Examples of material that might be found in your unconscious would include a forgotten trauma from childhood or hidden feelings of hostility toward a parent. Conflict and Defense Mechanisms

Freud assumed that behavior is the outcome of an ongoing series of internal conflicts. Internal battles among the id, ego, and superego are routine. Why? Because the id wants to gratify its urges immediately, but the norms of civilized society frequently dictate otherwise. For example, your id might feel an urge to clobber a co-worker

WE B LI N K 2.1

Sigmund Freud Museum, Vienna, Austria This online museum, in both English and German versions, offers a detailed chronology of Freud’s life and explanations of the most important concepts of psychoanalysis. The highlights, though, are the rich audiovisual resources, including online photos, amateur movie clips, and voice recordings of Freud.

FIG U R E 2.2

Freud’s model of personality structure. Freud theorized that people have three levels of awareness: the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious. To dramatize the size of the unconscious, he compared it to the portion of an iceberg that lies beneath the water’s surface. Freud also divided personality structure into three components—id, ego, and superego—that operate according to different principles and exhibit different modes of thinking. In Freud’s model, the id is entirely unconscious, but the ego and superego operate at all three levels of awareness.

who constantly irritates you. However, society frowns on such behavior, so your ego would try to hold this urge in check, and you would find yourself in a conflict. You may be experiencing conflict at this very moment. In Freudian terms, your id may be secretly urging you to abandon reading this chapter so you can watch television or go online. Your ego may be weighing this appealing option against your society-induced need to excel in school. Freud believed that conflicts dominate people’s lives. He asserted that individuals careen from one conflict to another. The following scenario provides a fanciful illustration of how the three components of personality interact to create constant conflicts. Imagine your alarm clock ringing obnoxiously as you lurch across the bed to shut it off. It’s 7 a.m. and time to get up for your history class. However, your id (operating according to the pleasure principle) urges you to return to the immediate gratification of additional sleep. Your ego (operating according to the reality principle) points out that you really must go to class since you haven’t been able to decipher the stupid textbook on your own. Your id (in its typical unrealistic fashion) smugly assures you that you will get the A that you need. It suggests lying back to dream about how impressed your roommate will be. Just as you’re relaxing, your superego jumps into the fray. It tries to make you feel guilty about the tuition your parents paid for the class that you’re about to skip. You haven’t even gotten out of bed yet—and there is already a pitched battle in your psyche. Let’s say your ego wins the battle. You pull yourself out of bed and head for class. On the way, you pass a donut shop and your id clamors for cinnamon rolls. Your CHAPTER 2

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ego reminds you that you’re gaining weight and that you are supposed to be on a diet. Your id wins this time. After you’ve attended your history lecture, your ego reminds you that you need to do some library research for a paper in philosophy. However, your id insists on returning to your apartment to watch some sitcom reruns. It’s only midmorning—and already you have been through a series of internal conflicts.

Cartoon © 1999 by Sidney Harris

Freud believed that conflicts centering on sexual and aggressive impulses are especially likely to have far-reaching consequences. Why did he emphasize sex and aggression? Two reasons were prominent in his thinking. First, Freud thought that sex and aggression are subject to more complex and ambiguous social controls than other basic motives. The norms governing sexual and aggressive behavior are subtle, and people often get mixed messages about what is appropriate. Thus, he believed that these two drives are the source of much confusion. Second, Freud noted that the sexual and aggressive drives are thwarted more regularly than other basic biological urges. Think about it: If you get hungry or thirsty, you can simply head for a nearby vending machine or a drinking fountain. But if a department store clerk infuriates you, you aren’t likely to slug the clerk, because that isn’t socially acceptable. Likewise, when you see an attractive person who inspires lustful urges, you don’t normally walk up and propose a tryst in a nearby broom closet. There is nothing comparable to vending machines or drinking fountains for the satisfaction of sexual and aggressive urges. Thus, Freud gave great importance to these needs because social norms dictate that they are routinely frustrated. Most psychic conflicts are trivial and are quickly resolved one way or the other. Occasionally, however, a conflict will linger for days, months, and even years,

creating internal tension. Indeed, Freud believed that lingering conflicts rooted in childhood experiences cause most personality disturbances. More often than not, these prolonged and troublesome conflicts involve sexual and aggressive impulses that society wants to tame. These conflicts are often played out entirely in the unconscious. Although you may not be aware of these unconscious battles, they can produce anxiety that slips to the surface of conscious awareness. This anxiety is attributable to your ego worrying about the id getting out of control and doing something terrible. The arousal of anxiety is a crucial event in Freud’s theory of personality functioning (see Figure 2.3). Anxiety is distressing, so people try to rid themselves of this unpleasant emotion any way they can. This effort to ward off anxiety often involves the use of defense mechanisms. Defense mechanisms are largely unconscious reactions that protect a person from painful emotions such as anxiety and guilt. Typically, they are mental

Ego

Id Intrapsychic conflict

Anxiety

Reliance on defense mechanisms

Superego

F I G U R E 2.3

Freud’s model of personality dynamics. According to Freud, unconscious conflicts between the id, ego, and superego sometimes lead to anxiety. This discomfort may lead to the use of defense mechanisms, which may temporarily relieve anxiety. 38

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maneuvers that work through self-deception. A common example is rationalization, which involves creating false but plausible excuses to justify unacceptable behavior. You would be rationalizing if, after cheating someone in a business transaction, you tried to reduce your guilt by explaining that “everyone does it.” Characterized as “the flagship in the psychoanalytic fleet of defense mechanisms” (Paulhus, Fridhandler, & Hayes, 1997, p. 545), repression is the most basic and widely used defense mechanism. Repression involves keeping distressing thoughts and feelings buried in the unconscious. People tend to repress desires that make them feel guilty, conflicts that make them anxious, and memories that are painful. Repression is “motivated forgetting.” If you forget a dental appointment or the name of someone you don’t like, repression may be at work. Self-deception can also be seen in the mechanisms of projection and displacement. Projection involves attributing one’s own thoughts, feelings, or motives to another. For example, if your lust for a co-worker makes you feel guilty, you might attribute any latent sexual tension between the two of you to the other person’s desire to seduce you. Displacement involves diverting emotional feelings (usually anger) from their original source to a substitute target. If your boss gives you a hard time at work and you come home and slam the door, kick the dog, and scream at your spouse, you are displacing your anger onto irrelevant targets. Unfortunately, social constraints often force people to hold back their anger until they end up lashing out at the people they love the most. Other prominent defense mechanisms include reaction formation, regression, and identification. Reaction formation involves behaving in a way that is ex-

actly the opposite of one’s true feelings. Guilt about sexual desires often leads to reaction formation. Freud theorized that many males who ridicule homosexuals are defending against their own latent homosexual impulses. The telltale sign of reaction formation is the exaggerated quality of the opposite behavior. Regression involves a reversion to immature patterns of behavior. When anxious about their self-worth, some adults respond with childish boasting and bragging (as opposed to subtle efforts to impress others). For example, a fired executive having difficulty finding a new job might start making ridiculous statements about his incomparable talents and achievements. Such bragging is regressive when it is marked by massive exaggerations that anyone can see through. Identification involves bolstering self-esteem by forming an imaginary or real alliance with some person or group. For example, youngsters often shore up precarious feelings of self-worth by identifying with rock stars, movie stars, or famous athletes. Adults may join exclusive country clubs or civic organizations with which they identify. Additional examples of the defense mechanisms we’ve described can be found in Figure 2.4. If you see defensive maneuvers that you have used, you shouldn’t be surprised. According to Freud, everyone uses defense mechanisms to some extent. They become problematic only when a person depends on them excessively. The seeds for psychological disorders are sown when defenses lead to wholesale distortion of reality. Development: Psychosexual Stages

Freud made the startling assertion that the foundation of an individual’s personality is laid down by the ten-

Defense Mechanisms, with Examples Definition

Example

Repression involves keeping distressing thoughts and feelings buried in the unconscious.

A traumatized soldier has no recollection of the details of a close brush with death.

Projection involves attributing one’s own thoughts, feelings, or motives to another person.

A woman who dislikes her boss thinks she likes her boss but feels that the boss doesn’t like her.

Displacement involves diverting emotional feelings (usually anger) from their original source to a substitute target.

After a parental scolding, a young girl takes her anger out on her little brother.

Reaction formation involves behaving in a way that is exactly the opposite of one’s true feelings.

A parent who unconsciously resents a child spoils the child with outlandish gifts.

Regression involves a reversion to immature patterns of behavior.

An adult has a temper tantrum when he doesn’t get his way.

Rationalization involves the creation of false but plausible excuses to justify unacceptable behavior.

A student watches TV instead of studying, saying that “additional study wouldn’t do any good anyway.”

Identification involves bolstering self-esteem by forming an imaginary or real alliance with some person or group.

An insecure young man joins a fraternity to boost his self-esteem.

CHAPTER 2

FIG U R E 2.4

Defense mechanisms. According to Freud, people use a variety of defense mechanisms to protect themselves from painful emotions. Definitions of seven commonly used defense mechanisms are shown on the left, along with examples of each on the right. This list is not exhaustive; additional defense mechanisms are discussed in Chapter 4.

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der age of 5! To shed light on these crucial early years, Freud formulated a stage theory of development. He emphasized how young children deal with their immature, but powerful, sexual urges (he used the term “sexual” in a general way to refer to many urges for physical pleasure, not just the urge to copulate). According to Freud, these sexual urges shift in focus as children progress from one stage to another. Indeed, the names for the stages (oral, anal, genital, and so on) are based on where children are focusing their erotic energy at the time. Thus, psychosexual stages are developmental periods with a characteristic sexual focus that leave their mark on adult personality. Freud theorized that each psychosexual stage has its own unique developmental challenges or tasks, as outlined in Figure 2.5. The way these challenges are handled supposedly shapes personality. The notion of fixation plays an important role in this process. Fixation is a failure to move forward from one stage to another as expected. Essentially, the child’s development stalls for awhile. Fixation is caused by excessive gratification of needs at a particular stage or by excessive frustration of those needs. Either way, fixations left over from childhood affect adult personality. Generally, fixation leads to an overemphasis on the psychosexual needs that were prominent during the fixated stage. Freud described a series of five psychosexual stages. Let’s examine some of the major features of each stage. Oral stage. This stage usually encompasses the first year of life. During this stage the main source of erotic stimulation is the mouth (in biting, sucking, chewing, and so on). How caretakers handle the child’s feeding experiences is supposed to be crucial to subsequent development. Freud attributed considerable importance to the manner in which the child is weaned from the breast or the bottle. According to Freud, fixation at the oral stage could form the basis for obsessive eating or smoking later in life (among many other things).

FIG U R E 2.5

PART 1

Phallic stage. Around age 4, the genitals become the focus for the child’s erotic energy, largely through selfstimulation. During this pivotal stage, the Oedipal complex emerges. Little boys develop an erotically tinged preference for their mother. They also feel hostility toward their father, whom they view as a competitor for mom’s affection. Little girls develop a special attachment to their father. At about the same time, they learn that their genitals are very different from those of little boys, and they supposedly develop penis envy. According to Freud, girls feel hostile toward their mother because they blame her for their anatomical “deficiency.” To summarize, in the Oedipal complex children manifest erotically tinged desires for their othergender parent, accompanied by feelings of hostility toward their same-gender parent. The name for this syndrome was taken from the Greek myth of Oedipus, who was separated from his parents at birth. Not knowing the identity of his real parents, he inadvertently killed his father and married his mother. According to Freud, the way parents and children deal with the sexual and aggressive conflicts inherent in

Freud’s Stages of Psychosexual Development

Freud’s stages of psychosexual development. Freud theorized that people evolve through the series of psychosexual stages summarized here. The manner in which certain key tasks and experiences are handled during each stage is thought to leave a lasting imprint on one’s adult personality.

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Anal stage. In their second year, children supposedly get their erotic pleasure from their bowel movements, through either the expulsion or retention of the feces. The crucial event at this time involves toilet training, which represents society’s first systematic effort to regulate the child’s biological urges. Severely punitive toilet training is thought to lead to a variety of possible outcomes. For example, excessive punishment might produce a latent feeling of hostility toward the “trainer,” who usually is the mother. This hostility might generalize to women in general. Another possibility is that heavy reliance on punitive measures might lead to an association between genital concerns and the anxiety that the punishment arouses. This genital anxiety derived from severe toilet training could evolve into anxiety about sexual activities later in life.

Stage

Approximate ages

Erotic focus

Key tasks and experiences

Oral

0–1

Mouth (sucking, biting)

Weaning (from breast or bottle)

Anal

2–3

Anus (expelling or retaining feces)

Toilet training

Phallic

4–5

Genitals (masturbating)

Identifying with adult role models; coping with Oedipal crisis

Latency

6–12

None (sexually repressed)

Expanding social contacts

Genital

Puberty onward

Genitals (being sexually intimate)

Establishing intimate relationships; contributing to society through working

The Dynamics of Adjustment

© Michael Newman/PhotoEdit

According to Freudian theory, a child’s feeding experiences are crucial to later development. Fixation at the oral stage could lead to an overemphasis on, for example, smoking or eating in adulthood.

Latency and genital stages. Freud believed that from age 6 through puberty, the child’s sexuality is suppressed—it becomes “latent.” Important events during this latency stage center on expanding social contacts beyond the family. With the advent of puberty, the child evolves into the genital stage. Sexual urges reappear and focus on the genitals once again. At this point the sexual energy is normally channeled toward peers of the other sex, rather than toward oneself, as in the phallic stage. In arguing that the early years shape personality, Freud did not mean that personality development comes to an abrupt halt in middle childhood. However, he did believe that the foundation for one’s adult personality is solidly entrenched by this time. He maintained that future developments are rooted in early, formative experiences and that significant conflicts in later years are replays of crises from childhood. In fact, Freud believed that unconscious sexual conflicts rooted in childhood experiences cause most personality disturbances. His steadfast belief in the

psychosexual origins of psychological disorders eventually led to bitter theoretical disputes with two of his most brilliant colleagues: Carl Jung and Alfred Adler. Jung and Adler both argued that Freud overemphasized sexuality. Freud summarily rejected their ideas, and the other two theorists felt compelled to go their own way, developing their own psychodynamic theories of personality.

Jung’s Analytical Psychology Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung called his new approach analytical psychology to differentiate it from Freud’s psychoanalytic theory. Like Freud, Jung (1921, 1933) emphasized the unconscious determinants of personality. However, he proposed that the unconscious consists of two layers. The first layer, Carl Jung called the personal unconscious, is essentially the same as Freud’s version of the unconscious. The personal unconscious houses material that is not within one’s conscious awareness because it has been repressed or forgotten. In addition, Jung theorized the existence of a deeper layer he called the collective unconscious. The collective unconscious is a storehouse of latent memory traces inherited from people’s ancestral past that is shared with the entire human race. Jung called these ancestral memories archetypes. They are not memories of actual, personal experiences. Instead, archetypes are emotionally charged images and thought forms that

CHAPTER 2

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the Oedipal complex is of paramount importance. The child has to resolve the dilemma by giving up the sexual longings for the other-sex parent and the hostility toward the same-sex parent. Healthy psychosexual development is supposed to hinge on the resolution of the Oedipal conflict. Why? Because continued hostile relations with the same-sex parent may prevent the child from identifying adequately with that parent. Without such identification, Freudian theory predicts that many aspects of the child’s development won’t progress as they should.

WE B LI N K 2.2

C. G. Jung, Analytical Psychology and Culture Synchronicity, archetypes, collective unconscious, introversion, extraversion—these and many other important concepts arising from analytical psychology and Jung’s tremendously influential theorizing are examined at this comprehensive site.

have universal meaning. These archetypal images and ideas show up frequently in dreams and are often manifested in a culture’s use of symbols in art, literature, and religion. Jung felt that an understanding of archetypal symbols helped him make sense of his patients’ dreams. Doing so was of great concern to him because he depended extensively on dream analysis in his treatment of patients. Jung’s unusual ideas about the collective unconscious had little impact on the mainstream of thinking in psychology. Their influence was felt more in other fields, such as anthropology, philosophy, art, and religious studies. However, many of Jung’s other ideas have been incorporated into the mainstream of psychology. For instance, Jung was the first to describe the introverted (inner-directed) and extraverted (outer-directed) personality types. Introverts tend to be preoccupied with the internal world of their own thoughts, feelings, and experiences. They generally are contemplative and aloof. In contrast, extraverts tend to be interested in the external world of people and things. They’re more likely to be outgoing, talkative, and friendly, instead of reclusive.

Alfred Adler was a charter member of Freud’s inner circle—the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. However, he soon began to develop his own theory of personality, which he christened individual psychology. Adler (1917, 1927) argued that the foremost human drive is not sexuality, but a striving for superiority. Adler Alfred Adler viewed striving for superiority as a universal drive to adapt, improve oneself, and master life’s challenges. He noted that young children understandably feel weak and helpless in comparison to more competent older children and adults. These early inferiority feelings supposedly motivate individuals to acquire new skills and develop new talents. Adler asserted that everyone has to work to overcome some feelings of inferiority. Compensation involves efforts to overcome imagined or real inferiorities by developing one’s abilities. Adler believed that 42

PART 1

The Dynamics of Adjustment

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Adler’s Individual Psychology

compensation is entirely normal. However, in some people inferiority feelings can become excessive, resulting in what is widely known today as an inferiority complex—exaggerated feelings of weakness and inadequacy. Adler thought that either parental pampering or parental neglect (or actual physical handicaps) could cause an inferiority problem. Thus, he agreed with Freud on the importance of early childhood, although he focused on different aspects of parent-child relations. Adler explained personality disturbances by noting that an inferiority complex can distort the normal process of striving for superiority (see Figure 2.6). He maintained that some people engage in overcompensation in order to conceal, even from themselves, their feelings of inferiority. Instead of working to master life’s challenges, people with an inferiority complex work to achieve status, gain power over others, and acquire the trappings of success (fancy clothes, impressive cars, or whatever looks important to them). They tend to flaunt their success in an effort to cover up their underlying inferiority complex. The problem is that such people engage in unconscious self-deception, worrying more about appearances than reality. Adler’s theory stressed the social context of personality development (Hoffman, 1994). For instance, it was Adler who first focused attention on the possible importance of birth order as a factor governing personality. He noted that firstborns, second children, and laterborn children enter varied home environments and are treated differently by parents and that these experiences are likely to affect their personality. For example, he hypothesized that only children are often spoiled by excessive attention from parents and that firstborns are often problem children because they become upset when they’re “dethroned” by a second child. Adler’s theory stimulated hundreds of studies on the effects of birth order, but these studies generally failed to support his hypotheses and did not uncover any reliable correlations between birth order and personality (Ernst & Angst, 1983; Harris, 2000). In recent years, however, Frank Sulloway (1995, 1996) has argued persuasively that birth order does have an impact on personality. Sulloway’s reformulated hypotheses focus on how the Big Five traits are shaped by competition among siblings as they struggle to find a “niche” in their family environments. For example, he hypothesizes that firstborns should be more conscientious but less agreeable and open to experience than later-borns. In light of these personality patterns, he further speculates that firstborns tend to be conventional and achievement oriented, whereas later-borns tend to be liberal and rebellious. To evaluate his hypotheses, Sulloway reexamined decades of research on birth order. After eliminating many studies that failed to control for important confounding variables, such as social class and family size, he concluded that the re-

Superiority complex Competence

Overcompensation, underdeveloped social interests

yielded some bold new insights for their time. Psychodynamic theory and research have demonstrated that (1) unconscious forces can influence behavior, (2) internal conflict often plays a key role in generating psychological distress, (3) early childhood experiences can exert considerable influence over adult personality, and (4) people do rely on defense mechanisms to reduce their experience of unpleasant emotions (Westen, 1998; Westen & Gabbard, 1999). In a more negative vein, psychodynamic formulations have been criticized on several grounds, including the following (Fine, 1990; Macmillan, 1991; Torrey, 1992):

1. Poor testability. Scientific investigations require testable hypotheses. Psychodynamic ideas have often been too vague to perInferiority mit a clear scientific test. Concepts such as complex the superego, the preconscious, and collecSocial tive unconscious are difficult to measure. interest 2. Inadequate evidence. The empirical evidence on psychodynamic theories has often been characterized as inadequate. The Compensation Parental approach depends too much on case studies, neglect in which it is easy for clinicians to see what WEAKNESS, HELPLESSNESS they expect to see based on their theory. ReOrganic Pampering, inferiority cent reexaminations of Freud’s own clinical spoiling (illness, work suggest that he sometimes distorted his physical handicap) patients’ case histories to mesh with his theory (Esterson, 1993; Sulloway, 1991) and that a substantial disparity existed between Freud’s writings and his actual therapeutic methods (Lynn & Vaillant, 1998). Insofar as researchers have accumulated evidence on psychoF I G U R E 2.6 dynamic theories, it has provided only modest support for the central hypotheses (Fisher Adler’s view of personality development. Like Freud, Adler believed that early & Greenberg, 1985, 1996; Westen & Gabbard, childhood experiences exert momentous influence over adult personality. However, he focused on children’s social interactions rather than on their grappling with their 1999). sexuality. According to Adler, the roots of personality disturbances typically lie in 3. Sexism. Many critics have argued that excessive parental neglect or pampering, which can lead to overcompensation. psychodynamic theories harbor a bias against women. Freud believed that females’ penis sults of the remaining, well-controlled studies provided envy made them feel inferior to males. He also thought impressive evidence in favor of his hypotheses. Some that females tended to develop weaker superegos and subsequent studies have provided additional support to be more prone to neurosis than males. He dismissed for Sulloway’s analyses (Paulhus, Trapnell, & Chen, female patients’ reports of sexual molestation during 1999), but others have not (Freese, Powell, & Steelman, childhood as mere fantasies. Admittedly, sexism isn’t 1999; Harris, 2000). More studies will be needed, as reunique to Freudian theories, and the sex bias in modsearch on birth order is enjoying a bit of a renaissance. ern psychodynamic theories has been reduced to some degree. But the psychodynamic approach has generally provided a rather male-centered viewpoint (Lerman, Evaluating Psychodynamic 1986; Person, 1990). Perspectives Normal growth

The psychodynamic approach has given us a number of far-reaching theories of personality. These theories

It’s easy to ridicule Freud for concepts such as penis envy and to point to ideas that have turned out to be CHAPTER 2

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wrong. Remember, though, that Freud, Jung, and Adler began to fashion their theories over a century ago. It is not entirely fair to compare these theories to other models that are only a decade old. That’s like asking the Wright brothers to race a supersonic jet. Freud and his psychodynamic colleagues deserve great credit for

breaking new ground. Standing at a distance a century later, we have to be impressed by the extraordinary impact that psychodynamic theory has had on modern thought. No other theoretical perspective in psychology has been as influential, except for the one we turn to next—behaviorism.

Behavioral Perspectives LEARNING OBJECTIVES ■

Describe Pavlov’s classical conditioning and its contribution to understanding personality. Discuss how Skinner’s principles of operant conditioning can be applied to personality development.

Behaviorism is a theoretical orientation based on the premise that scientific psychology should study observable behavior. Behaviorism has been a major school of thought in psychology since 1913, when John B. Watson published an influential article. Watson argued that psychology should abandon its earlier focus on the mind and mental processes and focus exclusively on overt behavior. He contended that psychology could not study mental processes in a scientific manner because they are private and not accessible to outside observation. In completely rejecting mental processes as a suitable subject for scientific study, Watson took an extreme position that is no longer dominant among modern behaviorists. Nonetheless, his influence was enormous, as psychology did shift its primary focus from the study of the mind to the study of behavior. The behaviorists have shown little interest in internal personality structures such as Freud’s id, ego, and superego, because such structures can’t be observed. They prefer to think in terms of “response tendencies,” which can be observed. Thus, most behaviorists view

FIG U R E 2.7

A behavioral view of personality. Behaviorists devote little attention to the structure of personality because it is unobservable, but they implicitly view personality as an individual’s collection of response tendencies. A possible hierarchy of response tendencies for a specific stimulus situation is shown here.

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PART 1

Describe Bandura’s social cognitive theory and his concept of self-efficacy. Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of behavioral theories of personality.

an individual’s personality as a collection of response tendencies that are tied to various stimulus situations. A specific situation may be associated with a number of response tendencies that vary in strength, depending on an individual’s past experience (see Figure 2.7). Although behaviorists have shown relatively little interest in personality structure, they have focused extensively on personality development. They explain development the same way they explain everything else—through learning. Specifically, they focus on how children’s response tendencies are shaped through classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and observational learning. Let’s look at these processes.

Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning Do you go weak in the knees when you get a note at work that tells you to go see your boss? Do you get anxious when you’re around important people? When you’re driving, does your heart skip a beat at the sight of a police car—even when you’re driving under the speed limit? If so, you probably acquired these common re-

RESPONSE TENDENCIES speaking to others R 1 Circulate, only if they approach you first

STIMULUS SITUATION Large party where you know relatively few people

The Dynamics of Adjustment

R2

Stick close to the people you already know

R3

Politely withdraw by getting wrapped up in host’s book collection

R4

Leave at the first opportunity

© Bettmann/Corbis

sponses through classical condiIn contrast, the link between the tone and salivationing. Classical conditioning is tion was established through conditioning. In condia type of learning in which a neutioned bonds, the conditioned stimulus (CS) is a pretral stimulus acquires the capacity viously neutral stimulus that has acquired the capacity to evoke a response that was origito evoke a conditioned response through conditionnally evoked by another stimulus. ing. The conditioned response (CR) is a learned reacThis process was first described tion to a conditioned stimulus that occurs because of back in 1903 by Ivan Pavlov. previous conditioning. Note that the unconditioned Pavlov was a prominent Rusresponse and conditioned response often involve the Ivan Pavlov sian physiologist who did Nobel same behavior (although there may be subtle differPrize–winning research on digesences). In Pavlov’s initial demonstration, salivation tion. He was a dedicated scientist who was obsessed with his research. Legend has it that Pavlov severely reprimanded an asBEFORE CONDITIONING sistant who was late for an experiment NS The unconditioned Bell because he was trying to avoid street fightstimulus elicits the No response unconditioned response, ing in the midst of the Russian Revolubut the neutral stimulus tion. The assistant defended his tardiness, does not. saying, “But Professor, there’s a revolution Elicits UCS UCR going on, with shooting in the streets!” Meat powder Salivation Pavlov supposedly replied, “Next time there’s a revolution, get up earlier!” (Fancher, 1979; Gantt, 1975). The Conditioned Reflex

Pavlov (1906) was studying digestive processes in dogs when he discovered that the dogs could be trained to salivate in response to the sound of a tone. What was so significant about a dog salivating when a tone was rung? The key was that the tone started out as a neutral stimulus; that is, originally it did not produce the response of salivation (after all, why should it?). However, Pavlov managed to change that by pairing the tone with a stimulus (meat powder) that did produce the salivation response. Through this process, the tone acquired the capacity to trigger the response of salivation. What Pavlov had demonstrated was how learned reflexes are acquired. At this point we need to introduce the special vocabulary of classical conditioning (see Figure 2.8). In Pavlov’s experiment the bond between the meat powder and salivation was a natural association that was not created through conditioning. In unconditioned bonds, the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) is a stimulus that evokes an unconditioned response without previous conditioning. The unconditioned response (UCR) is an unlearned reaction to an unconditioned stimulus that occurs without previous conditioning.

DURING CONDITIONING The neutral stimulus is paired with the unconditioned stimulus.

NS Bell

UCS Meat powder

AFTER CONDITIONING The neutral stimulus alone elicits the response; the neutral stimulus is now a conditioned stimulus, and the response to it is a conditioned response

SUMMARY An originally neutral stimulus comes to elicit a response that it did not previously elicit.

UCR Salivation

CS Bell

CR Salivation

CS Bell

Comes to elicit

UCS Meat powder

Elicits

Elicits

CR Salivation UCR

FIG U R E 2.8

The process of classical conditioning. The sequence of events in classical conditioning is outlined here. As we encounter new examples of classical conditioning throughout the book, you will see diagrams like that shown in the fourth panel, which summarizes the process. CHAPTER 2

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CS Newsroom

CS Bridge

CR Fear UCR

UCS Father’s scare tactics

FIG U R E 2.9

Classical conditioning of a phobia. Many emotional responses that would otherwise be puzzling can be explained as a result of classical conditioning. In the case of one woman’s bridge phobia, the fear originally elicited by her father’s scare tactics became a conditioned response to the stimulus of bridges.

was an unconditioned response when evoked by the UCS (meat powder) and a conditioned response when evoked by the CS (the tone). The procedures involved in classical conditioning are outlined in Figure 2.8. Pavlov’s discovery came to be called the conditioned reflex. Classically conditioned responses are viewed as reflexes because most of them are relatively involuntary. Responses that are a product of classical conditioning are said to be elicited. This word is meant to convey the idea that these responses are triggered automatically. Classical Conditioning in Everyday Life

What is the role of classical conditioning in shaping personality in everyday life? Among other things, it contributes to the acquisition of emotional responses, such as anxieties, fears, and phobias (Ayres, 1998; McAllister & McAllister, 1995). This is a relatively small but important class of responses, as maladaptive emotional reactions underlie many adjustment problems. For example, one middle-aged woman reported being troubled by a bridge phobia so severe that she couldn’t drive on interstate highways because of all the viaducts she would have to cross. She was able to pinpoint the source of her phobia. Many years before, when her family would drive to visit her grandmother, they had to cross a littleused, rickety, dilapidated bridge out in the countryside. Her father, in a misguided attempt at humor, made a major production out of these crossings. He would stop

WE B LI N K 2.3

Behavior Analysis and Learning A multitude of annotated links, all focusing on learning through conditioning, have been compiled at the excellent Psychology Centre site at Athabasca University (Alberta, Canada).

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PART 1

UCS Reprimands, criticism

The Dynamics of Adjustment

CR Anxiety UCR

F I G U R E 2. 10

Classical conditioning of anxiety. A stimulus (in this case, a newsroom) that is frequently paired with anxiety-arousing events (reprimands and criticism) may come to elicit anxiety by itself, through classical conditioning.

short of the bridge and carry on about the enormous danger of the crossing. Obviously, he thought the bridge was safe or he wouldn’t have driven across it. However, the naive young girl was terrified by her father’s scare tactics, and the bridge became a conditioned stimulus eliciting great fear (see Figure 2.9). Unfortunately, the fear spilled over to all bridges, and 40 years later she was still carrying the burden of this phobia. Although a number of processes can cause phobias, it is clear that classical conditioning is responsible for many of our irrational fears. Classical conditioning also appears to account for more realistic and moderate anxiety responses. For example, imagine a news reporter in a high-pressure job where he consistently gets negative feedback about his work from his bosses. The negative comments from his supervisors function as a UCS eliciting anxiety. These reprimands are paired with the noise and sight of the newsroom, so that the newsroom becomes a CS triggering anxiety, even when his supervisors are absent (see Figure 2.10). Our poor reporter might even reach a point at which the mere thought of the newsroom elicits anxiety when he is elsewhere. Fortunately, not every frightening experience leaves a conditioned fear in its wake. A variety of factors influence whether a conditioned response is acquired in a particular situation. Furthermore, a newly formed stimulus-response bond does not necessarily last indefinitely. The right circumstances can lead to extinction—the gradual weakening and disappearance of a conditioned response tendency. What leads to extinction in classical conditioning? It is the consistent presentation of the CS alone, without the UCS. For example, when Pavlov consistently presented only the tone to a previously conditioned dog, the tone gradually stopped eliciting the response of salivation. How long it takes to extinguish a conditioned response depends on many factors. Foremost among them is the strength of the con-

ditioned bond when extinction begins. Some conditioned responses extinguish quickly, while others are difficult to weaken.

other. For example, peer approval is a potent reinforcer for most people, but not all. Positive reinforcement motivates much of everyday behavior. You study hard because good grades are likely to follow as a result. You go to work because this behavior produces paychecks. Perhaps you work extra hard in the hopes of winning a promotion or a pay raise. In each of these examples, certain responses occur because they have led to positive outcomes in the past. Positive reinforcement influences personality development in a straightforward way. Responses followed by pleasant outcomes are strengthened and tend to become habitual patterns of behavior. For example, a youngster might clown around in class and gain appreciative comments and smiles from schoolmates. This social approval will probably reinforce clowningaround behavior (see Figure 2.11). If such behavior is reinforced with some regularity, it will gradually become an integral element of the youth’s personality. Similarly, whether or not a youngster develops traits such as independence, assertiveness, or selfishness depends on whether the child is reinforced for such behaviors by parents and by other influential persons. Negative reinforcement occurs when a response is strengthened (increases in frequency) because it is followed by the removal of a (presumably) unpleasant stimulus. Don’t let the word negative here confuse you. Negative reinforcement is reinforcement. Like positive reinforcement, it strengthens a response. How-

Even Pavlov recognized that classical conditioning is not the only form of conditioning. Classical conditioning best explains reflexive responding controlled by stimuli that precede the response. However, both animals and humans make many responses that don’t fit this description. Consider the response you are engaging in right now—studying. It is definitely not a reflex (life might be easier if it were). The stimuli that govern it (exams and grades) do not precede it. Instead, your studying response is mainly influenced by events that follow it—specifically, its consequences. This kind of learning is called operant conditioning. Operant conditioning is a form of learning in which voluntary responses come to be controlled by their consequences. Operant conditioning probably governs a larger share of human behavior than classical conditioning, since most human responses are voluntary rather than reflexive. Because they are voluntary, operant responses are said to be emitted rather than elicited. The study of operant conditioning was led by B. F. Skinner (1953, 1974, 1990), a Harvard University psychologist who spent most of his career studying simple responses made by laboratory rats and pigeons. The fundamental principle of operant conditioning is uncommonly simple. Skinner demB. F. Skinner onstrated that organisms tend to repeat those responses that are followed by favorable consequences, and they tend not to repeat those responses that are followed by neutral or unfavorable consequences. In Skinner’s scheme, favorable, neutral, and unfavorable consequences involve reinforcement, extinction, and punishment, respectively. We’ll look at each of these concepts in turn.

Courtesy of B. F. Skinner

Skinner’s Operant Conditioning

POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT Pleasant stimulus presented Clowning around

Attention, appreciation

Response

Reinforcer

NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT Aversive stimulus removed Calling in sick

Reduced anxiety

The Power of Reinforcement

According to Skinner, reinforcement can occur in two ways, which he called positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement. Positive reinforcement occurs when a response is strengthened (increases in frequency) because it is followed by the arrival of a (presumably) pleasant stimulus. Positive reinforcement is roughly synonymous with the concept of reward. Notice, however, that reinforcement is defined after the fact, in terms of its effect on behavior. Why? Because reinforcement is subjective. Something that serves as a reinforcer for one person may not function as a reinforcer for an-

Response

Reinforcer

F I G U R E 2. 11

Positive and negative reinforcement in operant conditioning. Positive reinforcement occurs when a response is followed by a favorable outcome, so that the response is strengthened. In negative reinforcement, the removal (symbolized here by the “No” sign) of an aversive stimulus serves as a reinforcer. Negative reinforcement produces the same result as positive reinforcement: The person’s tendency to emit the reinforced response is strengthened (the response becomes more frequent). CHAPTER 2

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Extinction and Punishment

In punishment, a response leads to the arrival of something aversive, and this response tends to be weakened. The second source of confusion involves assuming that punishment as only a disciplinary procedure used by parents, teachers, and other authority figures. In the operant model, punishment occurs whenever a response leads to negative consequences. Defined in this way, the concept goes far beyond actions such as parents spanking children or teachers handing out detentions. For example, if you wear a new outfit and your friends make fun of it and hurt your feelings, your behavior has been punished, and your tendency to wear this clothing will decline. Similarly, if you go to a restaurant and have a horrible meal, in Skinner’s terminology your response has led to punishment. The impact of punishment on personality development is just the opposite of reinforcement. Generally speaking, those patterns of behavior that lead to punishing (that is, negative) consequences tend to be weakened. For instance, if your impulsive decisions always backfire, your tendency to be impulsive should decline. According to Skinner (1987), conditioning in humans operates much as it does in the rats and pigeons that he has studied in his laboratory. Hence, he assumes that conditioning strengthens and weakens people’s response tendencies “mechanically”—that is, without their conscious participation. Like John Watson (1913) before him, Skinner asserted that we can explain behavior without being concerned about individuals’ mental processes. Skinner’s ideas continue to be influential, but his mechanical view of conditioning has not gone unchallenged by other behaviorists. Theorists such as Albert

Like the effects of classical conditioning, the effects of operant conditioning may not last forever. In both types of conditioning, extinction refers to the gradual weakening and disappearance of a response. In operant conditioning, extinction begins when a previously reinforced response stops producing positive consequences. As extinction progresses, the response typically becomes less and less frequent and eventually disappears. Thus, the response tendencies that make up one’s personality are not necessarily permanent. For example, the youngster who found that his classmates reinforced clowning around in grade school might find that his attempts at comedy earn nothing but The behavioral approach to personality centers around the principle of reinforceindifferent stares in high school. This termiment—behaviors that are followed by favorable outcomes, such as attention, laughter, approval, and appreciation, tend to be strengthened and become more nation of reinforcement would probably lead frequent. to the gradual extinction of the clowningaround behavior. How quickly an operant response extinguishes depends on many factors in the person’s earlier reinforcement history. Some responses may be weakened by punishment. In Skinner’s scheme, punishment occurs when a response is weakened (decreases in frequency) because it is followed by the arrival of a (presumably) unpleasant stimulus. The concept of punishment in operant conditioning confuses many students on two counts. First, it is often mixed up with negative reinforcement because both involve aversive (unpleasant) stimuli. Please note, however, that they are altogether different events with opposite outcomes! In negative reinforcement, a response leads to the removal of something aversive, and this response is strengthened. 48

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© J. Clarke/Taxi/Getty Images

ever, this strengthening occurs because the response gets rid of an aversive stimulus. Consider a few examples: You rush home in the winter to get out of the cold. You clean your house to get rid of a mess. Parents give in to their child’s begging to halt his whining. Negative reinforcement plays a major role in the development of avoidance tendencies. As you may have noticed, many people tend to avoid facing up to awkward situations and sticky personal problems. This personality trait typically develops because avoidance behavior gets rid of anxiety and is therefore negatively reinforced. Recall our imaginary newspaper reporter, whose work environment (the newsroom) elicits anxiety (as a result of classical conditioning). He might notice that on days when he calls in sick, his anxiety evaporates, so that this response is gradually strengthened— through negative reinforcement (shown in Figure 2.11). If his avoidance behavior continues to be successful in reducing his anxiety, it might carry over into other areas of his life and become a central aspect of his personality.

Bandura have developed somewhat different behavioral models in which cognition plays a role. Cognition is another name for the thought processes that behaviorists have traditionally shown little interest in.

Albert Bandura is one of several theorists who have added a cognitive flavor to behaviorism since the 1960s. Bandura (1977), Walter Mischel (1973), and Julian Rotter (1982) take issue with Skinner’s view. They point out that humans Albert Bandura obviously are conscious, thinking, feeling beings. Moreover, these theorists argue that in neglecting cognitive processes, Skinner ignores the most distinctive and important feature of human behavior. Bandura and like-minded theorists originally called their modified brand of behaviorism social learning theory. Today, Bandura refers to his model as social cognitive theory. Bandura (1986, 1999) agrees with the basic thrust of behaviorism in that he believes that personality is largely shaped through learning. However, he contends that conditioning is not a mechanical process in which people are passive participants. Instead, he maintains that individuals actively seek out and process information about their environment in order to maximize their favorable outcomes.

Courtesy, Albert Bandura

Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory

The theories of Skinner and Pavlov make no allowance for this type of indirect learning. After all, this observational learning requires that you pay attention to your friend’s behavior, that you understand its consequences, and that you store this information in memory. Obviously, attention, understanding, information, and memory involve cognition, which behaviorists used to ignore. As social cognitive theory has been refined, some models have become more influential than others (Bandura, 1986). Both children and adults tend to imitate people they like or respect more so than people they don’t. People are also especially prone to imitate the behavior of those they consider attractive or powerful (such as celebrities). In addition, imitation is more likely when individuals see similarity between the model and themselves. Thus, children imitate same-sex role models somewhat more than other-sex models. Finally, as noted before, people are more likely to copy a model if they see the model’s behavior leading to positive outcomes. According to social cognitive theory, models have a great impact on personality development. Children learn to be assertive, conscientious, self-sufficient, dependable, easygoing, and so forth by observing others behaving in these ways. Parents, teachers, relatives, siblings, and peers serve as models for young children. Bandura and his colleagues have done extensive research showing how models influence the development of aggressiveness, gender roles, and moral standards in children (Bandura, 1973; Bussey & Bandura, 1984; Mischel & Mischel, 1976). Their research on modeling and aggression has been particularly influential.

Observational Learning

Bandura’s foremost theoretical contribution has been Self-Efficacy Bandura (1993, 1997) believes that self-efficacy is a cruhis description of observational learning. Observacial element of personality. Self-efficacy is one’s belief tional learning occurs when an organism’s responding is influenced by the observation of others, who are called models. Bandura does not view observational learning as entirely separate from classical and operant conditioning. Instead, he asserts that both classical and operant conditioning can take place indirectly when one person observes another’s conditioning (see Figure 2.12). Approval or Showing To illustrate, suppose you observe a disapproval off friend behaving assertively with a car salesman. Let’s say that her assertiveness is reinReinforcer Response or punisher forced by the exceptionally good buy she gets on the car. Your own tendency to behave assertively with salespeople might well be strengthened as a result. Notice that the faF I G U R E 2. 12 vorable consequence is experienced by your Observational learning. In observational learning, an observer attends to and friend, not you. Your friend’s tendency to barstores a mental representation of a model’s behavior (for example, showing off) and gain assertively should be reinforced directly. its consequences (such as approval or disapproval from others). According to social But your tendency to bargain assertively may cognitive theory, many of our characteristic responses are acquired through obseralso be reinforced indirectly. vation of others’ behavior.

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about one’s ability to perform behaviors that should lead to expected outcomes. When a person’s selfefficacy is high, he or she feels confident in executing the responses necessary to earn reinforcers. When selfefficacy is low, the individual worries that the necessary responses may be beyond her or his abilities. Perceptions of self-efficacy are subjective and specific to different kinds of tasks. For instance, you might feel extremely confident about your ability to handle difficult social situations but doubtful about your ability to handle academic challenges. Although specific perceptions of self-efficacy predict behavior best, these perceptions are influenced by general feelings of self-efficacy, which can be measured with the scale shown in Figure 2.13 (Sherer et al., 1982). Perceptions of self-efficacy can influence which challenges people tackle and how well they perform. Studies have found that feelings of greater self-efficacy are associated with greater success in giving up smoking (Boudreaux et al., 1998); greater adherence to an exercise regimen (Rimal, 2001); better outcomes in substance abuse treatment (Bandura, 1999); more success in coping with medical rehabilitation (Waldrop et al., 2001); better self-care among diabetics (Williams & Bond, 2002); greater persistence and effort in academic pursuits (Zimmerman, 1995); higher levels of academic performance (Chemers, Hu, & Garcia, 2001); reduced vulnerability to anxiety and depression in childhood (Muris, 2002); enhanced performance in athletic competition (Kane et al., 1996); greater receptiveness to technological training (Christoph, Schoenfeld, & Tan-

FIG U R E 2.13

sky, 1998); higher work-related performance (Stajkovic & Luthans, 1998); and greater resistance to stress (Jex et al., 2001), among many other things.

Evaluating Behavioral Perspectives Behavioral theories are firmly rooted in empirical research rather than clinical intuition. Pavlov’s model has shed light on how conditioning can account for people’s sometimes troublesome emotional responses. Skinner’s work has demonstrated how personality is shaped by the consequences of behavior. Bandura’s social cognitive theory has shown how people’s observations mold their characteristic behavior. Behaviorists, in particular Walter Mischel (1973, 1990), have also provided the most thorough account of why people are only moderately consistent in their behavior. For example, a person who is shy in one context might be quite outgoing in another. Other models of personality largely ignore this inconsistency. The behaviorists have shown that this inconsistency occurs because people behave in ways they think will lead to reinforcement in the situation at hand. In other words, situational factors play a significant role in controlling behavior. Of course, each theoretical approach has its shortcomings, and the behavioral approach is no exception. Major lines of criticism include the following (Liebert & Liebert, 1998; Maddi, 1989): 1. Dilution of the behavioral approach. The behaviorists used to be criticized because they neglected cog-

The Self-Efficacy Scale

Sample items from the SelfEfficacy Scale. The eight items shown here are taken from the Self-Efficacy Scale, developed by Sherer et al. (1982), a 23-item measure of general expectations of selfefficacy that are not tied to specific situations. The more items you agree with, the stronger your self-efficacy. High scores on the complete scale are predictive of vocational and educational success. Adapted from Sherer, M., Maddox, J. E., Mercandante, B., Prentice-Dunn, S., Jacobs, B., & Rogers, R. W. (1982). The Self-Efficacy Scale: Construction and validation. Psychological Reports, 51, 663–671. Copyright © Psychological Reports 1982. Reproduced with permission of the authors and publisher.

Instructions: This questionnaire is a series of statements about your personal attitudes and traits. Each statement represents a commonly held belief. Read each statement and decide to what extent it describes you. There are no right or wrong answers. You will probably agree with some statements and disagree with others. Please indicate your own personal feelings about each statement below by marking the letter that describes your attitude or feeling. Please be very truthful and describe yourself as you really are, not as you would like to be. A = Disagree strongly B = Disagree moderately C = Neither agree nor disagree

D = Agree moderately E = Agree strongly

1. ________ When I make plans I am certain I can make them work. 2. ________ If I can’t do a job the first time, I keep trying until I can. 3. ________ If I see someone I would like to meet, I go to that person instead of waiting for him or her to come to me. 4. ________ When I have something unpleasant to do, I stick to it until I finish it. 5. ________ When I decide to do something, I go right to work on it. 6. ________ When I’m trying to become friends with someone who seems uninterested at first, I don’t give up very easily. 7. ________ Failure just makes me try harder. 8. ________ I am a self-reliant person.

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nitive processes, which clearly are important factors in human behavior. The rise of social cognitive theory blunted this criticism. However, social cognitive theory undermines the foundation on which behaviorism was built—the idea that psychologists should study only observable behavior. Thus, some critics complain that behavioral theories aren’t very behavioral anymore.

2. Overdependence on animal research. Many principles in behavioral theories were discovered through research on animals. Some critics, especially humanistic theorists, argue that behaviorists depend too much on animal research and that they indiscriminately generalize from the behavior of animals to the behavior of humans.

Humanistic Perspectives LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Discuss humanism as a school of thought in psychology. Explain Rogers’s views on self-concept, development, and defensive behavior.

Humanistic theory emerged in the 1950s as something of a backlash against the behavioral and psychodynamic theories (Cassel, 2000; DeCarvalho, 1991). The principal charge hurled at these two models was that they were dehumanizing. Freudian theory was criticized for its belief that primitive, animalistic drives dominate behavior. Behaviorism was criticized for its preoccupation with animal research. Critics argued that both schools view people as helpless pawns controlled by their environment and their past, with little capacity for self-direction. Many of these critics blended into a loose alliance that came to be known as humanism because of its exclusive interest in human behavior. Humanism is a theoretical orientation that emphasizes the unique qualities of humans, especially their free will and their potential for personal growth. Humanistic psychologists do not believe that we can learn anything of significance about the human condition from animal research. Humanistic theorists take an optimistic view of human nature. In contrast to most psychodynamic and behavioral theorists, humanistic theorists believe that (1) human nature includes an innate drive toward personal growth, (2) individuals have the freedom to chart their courses of action and are not pawns of their environment, and (3) humans are largely conscious

WE B LI N K 2.4

Personality Theories C. George Boeree, who teaches personality theory at Shippensburg University, has assembled an online textbook that discusses more than 20 important personality theorists in depth. All of the important figures cited in this chapter (except for the behaviorists such as Skinner and Pavlov) receive attention at this valuable site.

Describe Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and summarize his findings on self-actualizing persons. Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of humanistic theories of personality.

and rational beings who are not dominated by unconscious, irrational needs and conflicts. Humanistic theorists also maintain that one’s subjective view of the world is more important than objective reality. According to this notion, if you think you are homely, or bright, or sociable, these beliefs will influence your behavior more than the actual realities of how homely, bright, or sociable you are. The humanistic approach clearly provides a different perspective on personality than either the psychodynamic or behavioral approach. In this section we’ll review the ideas of the two most influential humanistic theorists, Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow.

Rogers’s Person-Centered Theory Carl Rogers (1951, 1961, 1980) was one of the founders of the human potential movement, which emphasizes personal growth through sensitivity training, encounter groups, and other exercises intended to help people get in touch with their true selves. Working at the University of Chicago in the Carl Rogers 1940s, Rogers devised a major new approach to psychotherapy. Like Freud, Rogers based his personality theory on his extensive therapeutic interactions with many clients. Because of his emphasis on a person’s subjective point of view, Rogers called his approach a person-centered theory. The Self and Its Development

Rogers viewed personality structure in terms of just one construct. He called this construct the self, although it is more widely known today as the self-concept. A self-concept is a collection of beliefs about one’s own

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Carl Rogers Memorial Library

CONGRUENCE

RE C O M M E N D ED READING

Three Psychologies: Perspectives from Freud, Skinner, and Rogers by Robert D. Nye (Wadsworth, 2000) One would be hard pressed to identify anyone who has had more influence over the evolution of psychology in the 20th century than the three theorists profiled in this book: Sigmund Freud, B. F. Skinner, and Carl Rogers. In this concise (159 pages), highly readable book, Robert Nye gives readers a simple—but not oversimplified—introduction to the theories of Freud, Rogers, and Skinner. After providing a brief overview of all three theories—the psychodynamic, behavioral, and humanistic—in the first chapter, Nye devotes a chapter to each theorist, attempting to present each man’s ideas as convincingly as possible, holding criticisms until later. These chapters include short biographical sketches of each man and discuss practical examples and real-world implications of each theorist’s provocative ideas. In the final chapter, Nye systematically compares the three theorists, reviews criticism of each, and adds his own personal comments. All in all, this is a superb introduction to the three major perspectives that have shaped contemporary psychology.

nature, unique qualities, and typical behavior. Your self-concept is your mental picture of yourself. It is a collection of self-perceptions. For example, a self-concept might include such beliefs as “I am easygoing” or “I am pretty” or “I am hardworking.” Rogers stressed the subjective nature of the selfconcept. Your self-concept may not be entirely consistent with your actual experiences. To put it more bluntly, your self-concept may be inaccurate. Most people are prone to distort their experiences to some extent to promote a relatively favorable self-concept. For example, you may believe that you are quite bright academically, but your grade transcript might suggest otherwise. Rogers used the term incongruence to refer to the disparity between one’s self-concept and one’s actual experience. In contrast, if a person’s self-concept is reasonably accurate, it is said to be congruent with reality. Everyone experiences some incongruence; the crucial issue is how much (see Figure 2.14). Rogers maintained that a great deal of incongruence undermines a person’s psychological well-being. In terms of personality development, Rogers was concerned with how childhood experiences promote congruence or incongruence. According to Rogers, everyone has a strong need for affection, love, and accep52

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Self-concept

Self-concept meshes well with actual experience (some incongruence is probably unavoidable)

Actual experience

INCONGRUENCE Self-concept does not mesh well with actual experience

Self-concept

Actual experience

F I G U R E 2. 14

Rogers’s view of personality structure. In Rogers’s model, the self-concept is the only important structural construct. However, Rogers acknowledged that one’s self-concept may not jell with the realities of one’s actual experience—a condition called incongruence. Different people have varied amounts of incongruence between their self-concept and reality.

tance from others. Early in life, parents provide most of this affection. Rogers maintained that some parents make their affection conditional. That is, they make it depend on the child’s behaving well and living up to expectations. When parental love seems conditional, children often distort and block out of their self-concept those experiences that make them feel unworthy of love. At the other end of the spectrum, Rogers asserted that some parents make their affection unconditional. Their children have less need to block out unworthy experiences because they have been assured that they are worthy of affection no matter what they do. Rogers believed that unconditional love from parents fosters congruence and that conditional love fosters incongruence. He further theorized that individuals who grow up believing that affection from others (besides their parents) is conditional go on to distort more and more of their experiences to feel worthy of acceptance from a wider and wider array of people, making the incongruence grow. Anxiety and Defense

According to Rogers, experiences that threaten people’s personal views of themselves are the principal cause of troublesome anxiety. The more inaccurate your self-concept, the more likely you are to have experiences that clash with your self-perceptions. Thus, people with highly incongruent self-concepts are espe-

Belief that affection from others is conditional

Need to distort shortcomings to feel worthy of affection

Relatively incongruent self-concept

Recurrent anxiety

Defensive behavior to protect inaccurate self-concept

F I G U R E 2.15

cially likely to be plagued by recurrent anxiety (see Figure 2.15). To ward off this anxiety, such people often behave defensively. Thus, they ignore, deny, and twist reality to protect their self-concept. Consider a young woman who, like most of us, considers herself a “nice person.” Let us suppose that in reality she is rather conceited and selfish, and she gets feedback from both boyfriends and girlfriends that she is a “self-centered, snotty brat.” How might she react in order to protect her self-concept? She might ignore or block out those occasions when she behaves selfishly and then deny the accusations by her friends that she is self-centered. She might also attribute her girlfriends’ negative comments to their jealousy of her good looks and blame the boyfriends’ negative remarks on their disappointment because she won’t get more serious with them. Meanwhile, she might start doing some kind of charity work to show everyone (including herself ) that she really is a nice person. As you can see, people often go to great lengths to defend their self-concept. Rogers’s theory can explain defensive behavior and personality disturbances, but he also emphasized the importance of psychological health. Rogers held that psychological health is rooted in a congruent self-concept. In turn, congruence is rooted in a sense of personal worth, which stems from a childhood saturated with unconditional affection from parents and others. These themes are similar to those emphasized by the other major humanistic theorist, Abraham Maslow.

Maslow’s Theory of Self-Actualization Abraham Maslow grew up in Brooklyn and spent much of his career at Brandeis University, where he provided crucial leadership for the fledgling humanistic move-

ment. Like Rogers, Maslow (1968, 1970) argued that psychology should take a greater interest in the nature of the healthy personality, instead of dwelling on the causes of disorders. “To oversimplify the matter somewhat,” he said, “it is as if Freud supplied to us the sick half of psychology and we must now fill Abraham Maslow it out with the healthy half ” (Maslow, 1968, p. 5). Maslow’s key contributions were his analysis of how motives are organized hierarchically and his description of the healthy personality. Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow proposed that human motives are organized into a hierarchy of needs—a systematic arrangement of needs, according to priority, in which basic needs must be met before less basic needs are aroused. This hierarchical arrangement is usually portrayed as a pyramid (see Figure 2.16 on the next page). The needs toward the bottom of the pyramid, such as physiological or security needs, are the most basic. Higher levels in the pyramid consist of progressively less basic needs. When a person manages to satisfy a level of needs reasonably well (complete satisfaction is not necessary), this satisfaction activates needs at the next level. Like Rogers, Maslow argued that humans have an innate drive toward personal growth—that is, evolution toward a higher state of being. Thus, he described the needs in the uppermost reaches of his hierarchy as growth needs. These include the needs for knowledge, understanding, order, and aesthetic beauty. Foremost among the growth needs is the need for selfactualization, which is the need to fulfill one’s potential; it is the highest need in Maslow’s motivational hiCHAPTER 2

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Courtesy, Abraham Maslow

Rogers’s view of personality development and dynamics. Rogers’s theory of development posits that conditional love leads to a need to distort experiences, which fosters an incongruent self-concept. Incongruence makes one prone to recurrent anxiety, which triggers defensive behavior, which fuels more incongruence.

FIG U R E 2.16

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. According to Maslow, human needs are arranged in a hierarchy, and individuals must satisfy their basic needs first, before they progress to higher needs. In the diagram, higher levels in the pyramid represent progressively less basic needs. People progress upward in the hierarchy when lower needs are satisfied reasonably well, but they may regress back to lower levels if basic needs cease to be satisfied.

Need for self-actualization: Realization of potential Aesthetic needs: Order and beauty Cognitive needs: Knowledge and understanding Esteem needs: Achievement and gaining of recognition Belongingness and love needs: Affiliation and acceptance

able with solitude. They thrive on their work, and they enjoy their sense of humor. Maslow also noted that they have “peak experiences” (profound emotional highs) more often than others. Finally, he found that they strike a nice balance between many polarities in personality, so that they can be both childlike and mature, rational and intuitive, conforming and rebellious.

The Healthy Personality

Because of his interest in self-actualization, Maslow set out to discover the nature of the healthy personality. He tried to identify people of exceptional mental health so that he could investigate their characteristics. In one case, he used psychological tests and interviews to sort out the healthiest 1 percent of a sizable population of college students. He also studied admired historical figures (such as Thomas Jefferson and psychologistphilosopher William James) and personal acquaintances characterized by superior adjustment. Over a period of years, he accumulated his case histories and gradually sketched, in broad strokes, a picture of ideal psychological health. Maslow called people with exceptionally healthy personalities self-actualizing persons because of their commitment to continued personal growth. He identified various traits characteristic of self-actualizing people, which are listed in Figure 2.17. In brief, Maslow found that self-actualizers are accurately tuned in to reality and are at peace with themselves. He found that they are open and spontaneous and that they retain a fresh appreciation of the world around them. Socially, they are sensitive to others’ needs and enjoy rewarding interpersonal relations. However, they are not dependent on others for approval, nor are they uncomfortPART 1

Regression if lower needs are not being satisfied

Safety and security needs: Long-term survival and stability Physiological needs: Hunger, thirst, and so forth

erarchy. Maslow summarized this concept with a simple statement: “What a man can be, he must be.” According to Maslow, people will be frustrated if they are unable to fully utilize their talents or pursue their true interests. For example, if you have great musical talent but must work as an accountant, or if you have scholarly interests but must work as a sales clerk, your need for self-actualization will be thwarted.

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Progression if lower needs are satisfied

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Characteristics of Self-Actualizing People

Clear, efficient perception of reality and comfortable relations with it

Spontaneity, simplicity, and naturalness

Problem centering (having something outside themselves they “must” do as a mission)

Detachment and need for privacy

Autonomy, independence of culture and environment

Continued freshness of appreciation

Mystical and peak experiences

Feelings of kinship and identification with the human race

Strong friendships, but limited in number

Democratic character structure

Ethical discrimination between means and ends, between good and evil

Philosophical, unhostile sense of humor

Balance between polarities in personality

F I G U R E 2. 17

Characteristics of self-actualizing people. Humanistic theorists emphasize psychological health instead of maladjustment. Maslow’s sketch of the self-actualizing person provides a provocative picture of the healthy personality.

PEANUTS reprinted by permission of United Feature Syndicate, Inc.

Evaluating Humanistic Perspectives

WE B LI N K 2.5

The humanists added a refreshing perspective to the study of personality. Their argument that a person’s subjective views may be more important than objective reality has proven compelling. Today, even behavioral theorists have begun to consider subjective personal factors such as beliefs and expectations. The humanistic approach also deserves credit for making the selfconcept an important construct in psychology. Finally, one could argue that the humanists’ optimistic, growth, and health-oriented approach laid the foundation for the emergence of the positive psychology movement that is increasingly influential in contemporary psychology (Sheldon & Kasser, 2001b; Taylor, 2001). Of course, there is a negative side to the balance sheet as well. Critics have identified some weaknesses in the humanistic approach to personality, including the following (Burger, 2000):

Great Ideas in Personality At this site, personality psychologist G. Scott Acton demonstrates that scientific research programs in personality generate broad and compelling ideas about what it is to be a human being. He charts the contours of 12 research perspectives, including behaviorism, behavioral genetics, and sociobiology, and supports them with extensive links to published and online resources associated with each perspective.

For instance, Maslow’s self-actualizing people sound perfect. In reality, Maslow had a hard time finding selfactualizing persons. When he searched among the living, the results were so disappointing that he turned to the study of historical figures. Thus, humanistic portraits of psychological health are perhaps a bit unrealistic. 3. Inadequate evidence. Humanistic theories are based primarily on discerning but uncontrolled observations in clinical settings. Case studies can be valuable in generating ideas, but they are ill-suited for building a solid database. More experimental research is needed to catch up with the theorizing in the humanistic camp. This situation is precisely the opposite of the one you’ll encounter in the next section, on biological perspectives, where more theorizing is needed to catch up with the research.

1. Poor testability. Like psychodynamic theorists, the humanists have been criticized for proposing hypotheses that are difficult to put to a scientific test. Humanistic concepts such as personal growth and selfactualization are difficult to define and measure. 2. Unrealistic view of human nature. Critics also charge that the humanists have been overly optimistic in their assumptions about human nature and unrealistic in their descriptions of the healthy personality.

Biological Perspectives LEARNING OBJECTIVES ■

Describe Eysenck’s views on personality structure and development. Summarize recent twin studies that support the idea that personality is largely inherited.

Like many identical twins reared apart, Jim Lewis and Jim Springer found they had been leading eerily similar lives. Separated four weeks after birth in 1940, the Jim twins grew up 45 miles apart in Ohio and were reunited in 1979. Eventually, they discovered that both drove the

Summarize evolutionary analyses of why certain personality traits appear to be important. Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of biological theories of personality.

same model blue Chevrolet, chain-smoked Salems, chewed their fingernails, and owned dogs named Toy. Each had spent a good deal of time vacationing at the same threeblock strip of beach in Florida. More important, when tested for such personality traits as flexibility, self-control, CHAPTER 2

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and sociability, the twins responded almost exactly alike. (Leo, 1987, p. 63) So began a Time magazine summary of a major twin study conducted at the University of Minnesota, where investigators have been exploring the hereditary roots of personality. The research team has managed to locate and complete testing on 44 rare pairs of identical twins separated early in life. Not all the twin pairs have been as similar as Jim Lewis and Jim Springer, but many of the parallels have been uncanny (Lykken et al., 1992). Identical twins Oskar Stohr and Jack Yufe were separated soon after birth. Oskar was sent to a Nazi-run school in Czechoslovakia, while Jack was raised in a Jewish home on a Caribbean island. When they were reunited for the first time during middle age, they both showed up wearing similar mustaches, haircuts, shirts, and wirerimmed glasses. A pair of previously separated female twins both arrived at the Minneapolis airport wearing seven rings on their fingers. One had a son named Richard Andrew, and the other had a son named Andrew Richard! Could personality be largely inherited? These anecdotal reports of striking resemblances between identical twins reared apart certainly raise this possibility. In this section we’ll discuss Hans Eysenck’s theory, which emphasizes the influence of heredity, and look at behavioral genetics and evolutionary perspectives on personality.

Eysenck’s Theory Hans Eysenck was born in Germany but fled to London during the era of Nazi rule. He went on to become one 56

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of Britain’s most prominent psychologists. According to Eysenck (1967), “Personality is determined to a large extent by a person’s genes” (p. 20). How is heredity linked to personality in Eysenck’s model? In part, through conditioning concepts borrowed from behavioral theory. Eysenck (1967, 1982, 1991) Hans Eysenck theorizes that some people can be conditioned more readily than others because of inherited differences in their physiological functioning (specifically, their level of arousal). These variations in “conditionability” are assumed to influence the personality traits that people acquire through conditioning. Eysenck views personality structure as a hierarchy of traits. Numerous superficial traits are derived from a smaller number of more basic traits, which are derived from a handful of fundamental higher-order traits, as shown in Figure 2.18. Eysenck has shown a special interest in explaining variations in extraversion-introversion, the trait dimension first described years earlier by Carl Jung. He has proposed that introverts tend to have higher levels of physiological arousal than extraverts. This higher arousal purportedly motivates them to avoid social situations that will further elevate their arousal and makes them more easily conditioned than extraverts. According to Eysenck, people who condition easily acquire more conditioned inhibitions than others. These inhibitions, coupled with their relatively high arousal, make them more bashful, tentative, and uneasy in social situations. This social discomfort leads them to turn inward. Hence, they become introverted.

Courtesy, Hans Eysenck, photo by Mark Gerson

© Michael Nichols/Magnum Photos

The striking parallels in the lives of Jim Lewis and Jim Springer, identical twins separated soon after birth and reunited as adults, suggest that heredity may have a powerful impact on personality.

Extraversion

Higher-order traits

Traits

Sociability

Impulsiveness

Activity

Liveliness

Excitability

Habitual responses Specific responses

F I G U R E 2.18

Eysenck’s model of personality structure. Eysenck describes personality structure as a hierarchy of traits. In this scheme, a few higher-order traits (such as extraversion) determine a host of lower-order traits (such as sociability), which determine one’s habitual responses (such as going to lots of parties). From Eysenck, H. J. (1967). The biological basis of personality, p. 36. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas. Courtesy of Charles C. Thomas.

Recent Research in Behavioral Genetics Recent twin studies have provided impressive support for Eysenck’s hypothesis that personality is largely inherited. In twin studies researchers assess hereditary influence by comparing the resemblance of identical twins and fraternal twins on a trait. The logic underlying this comparison is as follows. Identical twins emerge from one egg that splits, so that their genetic makeup is exactly the same (100 percent overlap). Fraternal twins result when two eggs are fertilized simultaneously; their genetic overlap is only 50 percent. Both types of twins usually grow up in the same home, at the same time, exposed to the same relatives, neighbors, peers, teachers, events, and so forth. Thus, both kinds of twins normally develop under similar environmental conditions, but identical twins share more genetic kinship. Hence, if sets of identical twins exhibit more personality resemblance than sets of fraternal twins, this greater similarity is probably attributable to heredity rather than to environment. The results of twin studies can be used to estimate the heritability of personality traits and other characteristics. A heritability ratio is an estimate of the proportion of trait variability in a population that is determined by variations in genetic inheritance. Heritability can be estimated for any trait. For example, the heritability of height is estimated to be around 90 percent (Plomin, 1994), whereas the heritability of intelligence appears to be about 50–70 percent (Bouchard et al., 1990). The accumulating evidence from twin studies suggests that heredity exerts considerable influence over many personality traits (Rowe, 1997, 1999). For instance,

in research on the Big Five personality traits, identical twins have been found to be much more similar than fraternal twins on all five traits (Loehlin, 1992). Some skeptics still wonder whether identical twins might exhibit more personality resemblance than fraternal twins because they are raised more similarly. In other words, they wonder whether environmental factors (rather than heredity) could be responsible for identical twins’ greater similarity. This nagging question can be answered only by studying identical twins who have been reared apart. Which is why the twin study at the University of Minnesota was so important. The Minnesota study (Tellegen et al., 1988) was the first to administer the same personality test to identical and fraternal twins reared together as well as apart. Most of the twins reared apart were separated quite early in life (median age of 2.5 months) and remained separated for a long time (median period of almost 34 years). Nonetheless, on all three of the higher-order traits examined, the identical twins reared apart displayed more personality resemblance than fraternal twins reared together. Based on the pattern of correlations observed, the researchers estimated that the heritability of personality is around 50 percent. Another large-scale twin study of the Big Five traits conducted in Germany and Poland yielded similar conclusions (Riemann, Angleitner, & Strelau, 1997). The heritability estimates based on the data from this study, which are shown in Figure 2.19 on the next page, are in the same range as the estimates from the Minnesota study. Research on the genetic bases of personality has inadvertently turned up another interesting finding that is apparent in the data shown in Figure 2.19. A numCHAPTER 2

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FIG U R E 2.19

Heritability and environmental variance for the Big Five traits. Based on the twin study data of Riemann et al. (1997), Plomin and Caspi (1999) estimated the heritability of each of the Big Five traits. The data also allowed them to estimate the amount of variance on each trait attributable to shared environment and nonshared environment. As you can see, the heritability estimates hovered in the vicinity of 40 percent, with two exceeding 50 percent. As in other studies, the influence of shared environment was very modest.

Source of variance Genetic Shared environment

Conscientiousness

Agreeableness

Neuroticism

Extraversion

Based on Plomin, R., & Caspi, A. (1999). Behavioral genetics and personality. In L. A. Pervin & O. P. John (Eds.), Handbook of Personality: Theory and Research. New York: The Guilford Press. Adapted by permission.

ber of recent studies have found that shared family environment has surprisingly little impact on personality (Beer, Arnold, & Loehlin, 1998; Plomin & Caspi, 1999). This finding is surprising in that social scientists have long assumed that the family environment shared by children growing up together led to some personality resemblance among them. These findings have led some theorists to conclude that parents don’t matter—that they wield very little influence over how their children develop (Cohen, 1999; Harris, 1998; Rowe, 1994). Critics of this conclusion have argued that the methods used in behavioral genetics studies have probably underestimated the impact of shared environment on personality (Collins et al., 2000; Stoolmiller, 1999). They also note that shared experiences—such as being raised with authoritarian discipline—may often have different effects on two siblings, which obscures the impact of environment but is not the same result as having no effect (Turkheimer & Waldron, 2000). Furthermore, the critics argue, decades of research in developmental psychology have clearly demonstrated that parents have significant influence on their children (Maccoby, 2000). Although the assertion that “parents don’t matter” seems premature and overstated, the perplexing findings in behavioral genetics studies of personality have led researchers to investigate why children from the same family are often so different. Thus far, the evidence suggests that children in the same family experience home environments that are not nearly as homogeneous as previously assumed (Hetherington, Reiss, & Plomin, 1994; Pike et al., 2000). Children in the same home may be treated quite differently, because gender and birth order can influence parents’ approaches to child-rearing. Temperamental differences between children may also evoke differences in parenting. Focusing

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TRAITS Openness to experience

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10

20

40 80 30 50 60 70 Percent of variance accounted for

90

100

on how environmental factors vary within families represents a promising new way to explore the determinants of personality.

The Evolutionary Approach to Personality In the realm of biological approaches to personality, the most recent development has been the emergence of an evolutionary perspective. Evolutionary psychologists assert that the patterns of behavior seen in a species are products of evolution in the same way that anatomical characteristics are. Evolutionary psychology examines behavioral processes in terms of their adaptive value for members of a species over the course of many generations. The basic premise of evolutionary psychology is that natural selection favors behaviors that enhance organisms’ reproductive success—that is, passing on genes to the next generation. Thus, evolutionary analyses of personality focus on how various traits— and the ability to recognize these traits in others—may have contributed to reproductive fitness in ancestral human populations. For example, David Buss (1991, 1995, 1997) has argued that the Big Five personality traits stand out as important dimensions of personality across a variety of cultures because those traits have had significant adaptive implications. Buss points out that humans have historically depended heavily on groups, which afford protection from predators or enemies, opportunities for sharing food, and a diverse array of other benefits. In the context of these group interactions, people have had to make difficult but crucial judgments about the characteristics of others, asking such questions as: Who will make a good member of my coali-

tion? Who can I depend on when in need? Who will share their resources? Thus, Buss (1995) argues, “Those individuals able to accurately discern and act upon these individual differences likely enjoyed a considerable reproductive advantage” (p. 22). According to Buss, the Big Five emerge as fundamental dimensions of personality because humans have evolved special sensitivity to variations in the ability to bond with others (extraversion), the willingness to cooperate and collaborate (agreeableness), the tendency to be reliable and ethical (conscientiousness), the capacity to be an innovative problem solver (openness to experience), and the ability to handle stress (low neuroticism). In a nutshell, the Big Five supposedly reflect the most salient personality features in ancestral humans’ adaptive landscape.

Evaluating Biological Perspectives Although evolutionary analyses of personality are pretty speculative, recent research in behavioral genetics has provided convincing evidence that biological

factors help shape personality. Nonetheless, we must take note of some weaknesses in biological approaches to personality: 1. Problems with estimates of hereditary influence.

Efforts to carve personality into genetic and environmental components with statistics are ultimately artificial. The effects of heredity and environment are twisted together in complicated interactions that can’t be separated cleanly (Brody & Crowley, 1995; Funder, 2001). Although heritability ratios sound precise, they are estimates based on a complicated chain of inferences that are subject to debate. 2. Lack of adequate theory. At present there is no comprehensive biological theory of personality. Eysenck’s model does not provide a systematic overview of how biological factors govern personality development (and it was never intended to). Evolutionary analyses of personality are even more limited in scope. Additional theoretical work is needed to catch up with recent empirical findings on the biological basis for personality.

A Contemporary Empirical Approach: Terror Management Theory LEARNING OBJECTIVES ■ ■

Explain the chief concepts and hypotheses of terror management theory. Describe how reminders of death influence people’s behavior.

So far, our coverage has been largely devoted to grand, panoramic theories of personality. In this section we’ll examine a new approach to understanding personality functioning that has a narrower focus than the classic theories of personality. Terror management theory emerged as an influential perspective in the 1990s. Although the theory borrows from Freudian and evolutionary formulations, it provides its own unique analysis of the human condition. This fresh perspective is currently generating a huge volume of research, and it seems especially relevant to contemporary adjustment issues.

Essentials of Terror Management Theory One of the chief goals of terror management theory is to explain why people need self-esteem (Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 1991). The theory begins with the assumption that humans share an evolutionary heritage with other animals that includes an instinctive drive for

self-preservation. However, unlike other animals, humans have evolved complex cognitive abilities that permit self-awareness and contemplation of the future. These cognitive capacities make humans keenly aware of the inevitability of death—they appreciate that life can be snuffed out unpredictably at any time. The collision between humans’ self-preservation instinct and their awareness of the inevitability of death creates the potential for experiencing anxiety, alarm, and terror when people think about their mortality (see Figure 2.20). How do humans deal with this potential for terror? According to terror management theory, “What saves us is culture. Cultures provide ways to view the world— worldviews—that ‘solve’ the existential crisis engendered by the awareness of death” (Pyszczynski, Solomon, & Greenberg, 2004, p. 16). Cultural worldviews diminish anxiety by providing answers to universal questions such as Why am I here? and What is the meaning of life? Cultures create stories, traditions, and institutions that give their members a sense of being part of

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an enduring legacy through their ty buffer contributions to their families, tribes, Anxie schools, churches, professions, and so forth. Thus, faith in a cultural Self-preservation Need to defend worldview can give people a sense of instinct cultural order, meaning, and context that can worldview soothe their fear of death. Potential for Where does self-esteem fit into death-related the picture? Self-esteem is viewed as anxiety and terror a sense of personal worth that depends on one’s confidence in the vaNeed to lidity of one’s cultural worldview enhance feelings and the belief that one is living up of self-esteem Awareness of the inevitability to the standards prescribed by that of death worldview. “It is the feeling that one An x iety is a valuable contributor to a meanb uffer ingful universe” (Pyszczynski et al., 2004, p. 437). Hence, self-esteem buffers people from the profound F I G U R E 2. 20 anxiety associated with the awareOverview of terror management theory. This graphic maps out the relations among the key ness that they are transient animals concepts proposed by terror management theory. The theory asserts that humans’ unique destined to die. In other words, selfawareness of the inevitability of death fosters a need to defend one’s cultural worldview and esteem serves a terror management one’s self-esteem, which serve to protect one from mortality-related anxiety. function (refer to Figure 2.20). The notion that self-esteem functions as an anxiety buffer has been supported by numerous studies (Pyszczynski et al., opposing political views (McGregor et al., 1998; Schimel 2004). In many of these experiments, researchers have et al., 1999). manipulated what they call mortality salience by asking Terror management theory asserts that much of our subjects to briefly think about their own death. Consisbehavior is motivated by the overlapping needs to defend tent with the anxiety buffer hypothesis, reminding peoour cultural worldview and to preserve our self-esteem. ple of their mortality leads subjects to engage in a variety This perspective yields novel hypotheses regarding many of behaviors that are likely to bolster their self-esteem, phenomena. For instance, Solomon, Greenberg, and thus reducing anxiety (see Chapter 5 for more on the Pyszczynski (2004) explain excessive materialism in terror management function of self-esteem). terms of the anxiety-buffering function of self-esteem. Specifically, they argue that “conspicuous possession and consumption are thinly veiled efforts to assert that Applications of Terror one is special and therefore more than just an animal Management Theory fated to die and decay” (p. 134). In another thoughtIncreasing mortality salience also leads people to work provoking analysis, the architects of terror management harder at defending their cultural worldview. For intheory argue that people high in neuroticism tend to be stance, after briefly pondering their mortality, research especially uptight about sex because sexuality lies at the participants (1) hand out harsher penalties to moral core of humans’ animal nature and hence their ultimate transgressors, (2) respond more negatively to people mortality (Goldenberg et al., 1999). Terror managewho criticize their country, (3) give larger rewards to ment theory has also been used to explain depressive people who uphold cultural standards, and (4) show disorders. According to Arndt et al. (2000), depression more respect for cultural icons, such as a flag (Greenberg occurs when individuals’ anxiety buffer fails and they et al., 1990; Rosenblatt et al., 1989). This need to delose faith in the cultural worldview that gave their life fend one’s cultural worldview may even fuel prejudice meaning. One recent study even applied terror manand aggression. Reminding subjects of their mortality agement theory to the political process. Cohen et al. leads to (1) more negative evaluations of people from (2004) found that mortality salience increases subjects’ different religious or ethnic backgrounds, (2) more preference for “charismatic” candidates who articulate stereotypic thinking about minority group members, a grand vision that makes people feel like they are part and (3) more aggressive behavior toward people with of an important movement of lasting significance.

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LIVING IN TODAY‘S WORLD

Understanding Reactions to 9/11 Although its name might suggest otherwise, terror management theory was not developed to deal with the phenomenon of terrorism in the aftermath of 9/11. Terror management theory has been around since the mid-1980s, and as the text explains, it is a wide-ranging theory that analyzes the many ramifications of humans’ existential struggle with the inevitability of death (see pp. 59–60, 62). Nonetheless, given its central focus on the effects of reminding people of their mortality, the theory can help us understand the psychological impact of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States. In their book In the Wake of 9/11, Tom Pyszczynski, Sheldon Solomon, and Jeff Greenberg (2003) point out that the tragic events of 9/11 produced a powerful, nationwide manipulation of mortality salience. The televised images of death and destruction seen that day made most Americans feel extremely vulnerable. Moreover, the terrorists dealt Americans a double blow in that the destruction was inflicted on two respected icons of American culture: the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. Thus, the 9/11 terrorist strikes were attacks on Americans’ cultural worldview, which terror management theory asserts is humanity’s main defense against death anxiety. According to the architects of terror management theory, many of the reactions seen across the country after 9/11 were exactly what one would expect based on their theory. Included among these reactions were the following. Reaffirmation of cultural worldviews. When mortality salience is elevated, terror management theory predicts that people will embrace their cultural worldviews even more strongly than before. Consistent with this prediction, in the months following 9/11, church attendance and the sale of bibles both increased dramatically. Thus, people reaffirmed their faith in organized religion, which represents the foundation of many individuals’ cultural worldview. People also became much more overtly patriotic. Flags flew everywhere, patriotic songs were all over the radio, and corporate logos were redesigned in red, white, and blue. Thus, people proudly proclaimed their faith in the American way.

Reduced tolerance. Research on terror management processes has shown that when death anxiety is heightened, people become less tolerant of opposing views and more prejudiced against those who are different. Consistent with this analysis, in the aftermath of 9/11, individuals who questioned government policies met more hostility than usual. Increased prejudice and bigotry toward Arab Americans and people of Middle Eastern descent was also readily apparent. Increased altruism. Altruism, which consists of unselfish concern for the welfare of others, is a highly respected virtue in most cultures. Behaving in an altruistic manner makes people feel like they are good citizens, thus reaffirming their commitment to their cultural worldview and enhancing their self-esteem. Hence, terror management theory would anticipate that increased mortality salience would stimulate increased altruism, which clearly was seen in the months after the terrorist assaults. Many people traveled to New York or Washington to help in whatever way they could after the attacks. Blood donations reached unprecedented levels, and charitable giving skyrocketed. Intensified need for heroes. Research indicates that reminders of mortality increase the tendency to admire those who uphold cultural standards. More than ever, people need heroes who personify cultural values. This need was apparent in the aftermath of 9/11 in the way the media made firefighters into larger-than-life heroes. This analysis is not meant to suggest that firefighters did not deserve to be characterized as heroic. Rather, the point is that firefighters had a long history of heroic behavior that largely went unrecognized until a massive increase in mortality salience created an urgent need for uplifting heroes. Admittedly, some of the reactions to 9/11 predicted by terror management theory could also be explained by other theoretical perspectives. Nonetheless, terror management theory seems to provide a perspective that is uniquely well suited to understanding some of the effects of terrorism on our collective psyche.

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© Andy Sacks/Stone/Getty Images

© Cheryl Maeder/Corbis

Terror management theory has been applied to a remarkably diverse array of phenomena. For example, it has been used to explain conspicuous consumption and to predict people’s voting preferences.

Although terror management theory is narrower in scope than psychoanalytic, behavioral, and humanistic theories, it has wide-ranging implications and is being applied to more and more aspects of human behavior. In particular, given its focus on death anxiety, it has much to say about people’s reactions to terrorism (see the Living in Today’s World box on page 61). At first glance, a theory that explains everything from prejudice to compulsive shopping in terms of death anxiety may seem highly implausible. After all, most people do not appear to walk around all day obsessing about the possibility of their death. The architects of terror management theory are well aware of this reality. They explain that the defensive reactions uncovered in their research generally occur when death anx-

iety surfaces on the fringes of conscious awareness and that these reactions are automatic and subconscious (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 1999). They also assert that people experience far more reminders of their mortality than most of us appreciate. They point out that people may be reminded of their mortality by a host of everyday events, such as driving by a cemetery or funeral home, reading about an auto accident, visiting a doctor’s office, hearing about a celebrity’s heart attack, learning about alarming medical research, skipping over the obituaries in the newspaper, and so forth. Thus, the processes discussed by terror management theory may be more commonplace that one might guess.

An Epilogue on Theoretical Diversity LEARNING OBJECTIVES ■

Discuss why the subject of personality has generated so much theoretical diversity. Compare and contrast the personality theories of Freud, Skinner, Rogers, and Eysenck.

Figure 2.21 provides a comparative overview of the ideas of Freud, Skinner, Rogers, and Eysenck, as representatives of the psychodynamic, behavioral, humanistic, and biological approaches to personality. Most of this information was covered in the chapter, but the figure organizes it so that the similarities and differences between the theories become more apparent. As you can see, there are many fundamental points of disagreement. Our review of perspectives on personality should have made one thing abundantly clear: Psychology is marked by theoretical diversity.

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Why do we have so many competing points of view? One reason is that no single theory can adequately explain everything that we know about personality. Sometimes different theories focus on different aspects of behavior. Sometimes there is simply more than one way to look at something. Is the glass half empty or half full? Obviously, it is both. To take an example from another science, physicists wrestled for years with the nature of light. Is it a wave, or is it a particle? In the end, it proved useful to think of light sometimes as a wave, and sometimes as a particle. Similarly, if a business executive

Overview of Four Approaches to Personality

Sigmund Freud: A psychodynamic view

B. F. Skinner: A behavioral view

Carl Rogers: A humanistic view

Hans Eysenck: A biological view

Source of data and observations

Case studies from clinical practice of psychoanalysis

Laboratory experiments primarily with animals

Case studies from clinical practice of clientcentered therapy

Twin, family, and adoption studies of hereditary influence; factor analysis studies of personality structure

Key motivational forces

Sex and aggression; need to reduce tension produced by internal conflicts

Pursuit of primary (unlearned) and secondary (learned) reinforcers; priorities depend on personal history

Actualizing tendency (need for personal growth) and selfactualizing tendency (need to maintain selfconcept)

No specific motivational forces singled out

Model of personality structure

Three interacting components (id, ego, superego) operating at three levels of consciousness

Collection of response tendencies tied to specific stimulus situations

Self-concept, which may or may not be congruent with actual experience

Hierarchy of traits, with specific traits derived from more fundamental, general traits

View of personality development

Emphasis on fixation or progress through psychosexual stages; experiences in early childhood leave lasting mark on adult personality

Personality evolves gradually over the life span (not in stages); responses followed by reinforcement become more frequent

Children who receive unconditional love have less need to be defensive; they develop more accurate, congruent selfconcepts; conditional love fosters incongruence

Emphasis on unfolding of genetic blueprint with maturation; inherited predispositions interact with learning experiences

Roots of disorders

Unconscious fixations and unresolved conflicts from childhood, usually centered on sex and aggression

Maladaptive behavior due to faulty learning; the “symptom” is the problem, not a sign of underlying disease

Incongruence between self-concept and actual experience; overdependence on others for approval and sense of worth

Genetic vulnerability activated in part by environmental factors

Importance of nature (biology, heredity) vs. nurture (environment, experience)

Nature: emphasis on biological basis of instinctual drives

Nurture: strong emphasis on learning, conditioning, role of experience

Nurture: interested in innate potentials, but humanists believe we can rise above our biological heritage

Nature: strong emphasis on how hereditary predispositions shape personality

Importance of person factors vs. situation factors

Person: main interest is in internal factors (id, ego, conflicts, defenses, etc.)

Situation: strong emphasis on how one responds to specific stimulus situations

Person: focus on self-concept, which is stable

Person: interested in stable traits molded by heredity

F I G U R E 2.21

Comparison of four theoretical perspectives on personality. This chart compares the theories of Freud, Skinner, Rogers, and Eysenck to highlight the similarities and differences between the psychodynamic, behavioral, humanistic, and biological approaches to personality.

lashes out at her employees with stinging criticism, is she releasing pent-up aggressive urges (a psychoanalytic view)? Is she making a habitual response to the stimulus of incompetent work (a behavioral view)? Is she trying to act like a tough boss because that’s a key aspect of her self-concept (a humanistic view)? Or is she exhibiting an inherited tendency to be aggressive (a biological view)? In some cases, all four of these explanations might have some validity. In short, it is an oversimplification to expect that one view has to be right while all others are wrong. Life is rarely that simple. In view of the complexity of per-

sonality, it would be surprising if there were not a number of different theories. It’s probably best to think of the various theoretical orientations in psychology as complementary viewpoints, each with its own advantages and limitations. Indeed, modern psychologists increasingly recognize that theoretical diversity is a strength rather than a weakness (Hilgard, 1987; Kleinginna & Kleinginna, 1988). As we proceed through this text, you will see how differing theoretical perspectives often inspire fruitful research and how they sometimes converge on a more complete understanding of behavior than could be achieved by any one perspective alone.

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Assessing Your Personality LEARNING OBJECTIVES ■

■ ■

Explain the concepts of standardization, test norms, reliability, and validity. Discuss the value and the limitations of self-report inventories. Discuss the value and limitations of projective tests.

Answer the following “true” or “false.” ___ 1. Responses to personality tests are subject to unconscious distortion. ___ 2. The results of personality tests are often misunderstood. ___ 3. Personality test scores should be interpreted with caution. ___ 4. Personality tests may be quite useful in helping people to learn more about themselves. If you answered “true” to all four questions, you earned a perfect score. Yes, personality tests are subject to distortion. Admittedly, test results are often misunderstood, and they should be interpreted cautiously. In spite of these problems, however, psychological tests can be very useful. We all engage in efforts to size up our own personality as well as that of others. When you think to yourself that “this salesman is untrustworthy,” or when you remark to a friend that “Howard is too timid and submissive,” you are making personality assessments. In a sense, then, personality assessment is part of daily life. However, psychological tests provide much more systematic assessments than casual observations do. The value of psychological tests lies in their ability to help people form a realistic picture of their personal qualities. In light of this value, we have included a variety of personality tests in the Personal Explorations Workbook that is available to accompany this text, and we have sprinkled a number of short tests throughout the text itself. Most of these questionnaires are widely used personality tests. We hope that you may gain some insights by responding to these scales. But it’s important to understand the logic and limitations of such tests. To facilitate your use of these and other tests, this Application discusses some of the basics of psychological testing.

Key Concepts in Psychological Testing A psychological test is a standardized measure of a sample of a person’s behavior. Psychological tests are

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measurement instruments. They are used to measure abilities, aptitudes, and personality traits. Note that your responses to a psychological test represent a sample of your behavior. This fact should alert you to one of the key limitations of psychological tests: It’s always possible that a particular behavior sample is not representative of your characteristic behavior. We all have our bad days. A stomachache, a fight with a friend, a problem with your car—all might affect your responses to a particular test on a particular day. Because of the limitations of the sampling process, test scores should always be interpreted cautiously. Most psychological tests are sound measurement devices, but test results should not be viewed as the “final word” on one’s personality and abilities because of the everpresent sampling problem. Most psychological tests can be placed in one of two broad categories: (1) mental ability tests, and (2) personality tests. Mental ability tests, such as intelligence tests, aptitude tests, and achievement tests, often serve as gateways to schooling, training programs, and jobs. Personality tests measure various aspects of personality, including motives, interests, values, and attitudes. Many psychologists prefer to call these tests personality scales, since the questions do not have right and wrong answers as do those on tests of mental abilities. Standardization and Norms

Both personality scales and tests of mental abilities are standardized measures of behavior. Standardization refers to the uniform procedures used to administer and score a test. All subjects get the same instructions, the same questions, the same time limits, and so on, so that their scores can be compared meaningfully. The standardization of a test’s scoring system includes the development of test norms. Test norms provide information about where a score on a psychological test ranks in relation to other scores on that test. Why do we need test norms? Because in psychological testing, everything is relative. Psychological tests tell you how you score relative to other people. They tell you,

for instance, that you are average in impulsiveness, or slightly above average in assertiveness, or far below average in anxiety. These interpretations are derived from the test norms. Reliability and Validity

Any kind of measuring device, whether it’s a tire gauge, a stopwatch, or a psychological test, should be reasonably consistent. That is, repeated measurements should yield reasonably similar results. To appreciate the importance of reliability, think about how you would react if a tire pressure gauge gave you several different readings for the same tire. You would probably conclude that the gauge was broken and toss it into the garbage, because you know that consistency in measurement is essential to accuracy. Reliability refers to the measurement consistency of a test. A reliable test is one that yields similar results upon repetition of the test (see Figure 2.22). Like most other types of measuring devices, psychological tests are not perfectly reliable. They usually do not yield the exact same score when repeated. A certain amount of inconsistency is unavoidable because human behavior is variable. Personality tests tend to have lower reliability than mental ability tests because daily fluctuations in mood influence how people respond to such tests. Even if a test is quite reliable, we still need to be concerned about its validity. Validity refers to the ability of a test to measure what it was designed to measure. If we develop a new test of assertiveness, we have to provide some evidence that it really measures assertiveness. Validity can be demonstrated in a variety of ways. Most of them involve correlating scores on a test with other measures of the same trait, or with related traits.

F I G U R E 2.22

Test reliability. Subjects’ scores on the first administration of an assertiveness test are represented on the left, and their scores on a second administration (a few weeks later) are represented on the right. If subjects obtain similar scores on both administrations, the test measures assertiveness consistently and is said to have high reliability. If subjects get very different scores when they take the assertiveness test a second time, the test is said to have low reliability.

High

HIGH RELIABILITY

Self-Report Inventories The vast majority of personality tests are self-report inventories. Self-report inventories are personality scales that ask individuals to answer a series of questions about their characteristic behavior. When you respond to a self-report personality scale, you endorse statements as true or false as applied to you, you indicate how often you behave in a particular way, or you rate yourself with respect to certain qualities. For example, on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, people respond “true,” “false,” or “cannot say” to 567 statements such as the following: I get a fair deal from most people. I have the time of my life at parties. I am glad that I am alive. Several people are following me everywhere. The logic underlying this approach is simple: Who knows you better than you do? Who has known you longer? Who has more access to your private feelings? The entire range of personality traits can be measured with self-report inventories. Some scales measure just one trait dimension, such as the Self-Efficacy Scale discussed earlier or the measure of sensation seeking shown in Figure 2.23 on the next page. Others simultaneously assess a multitude of traits. The Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF), developed by Raymond Cattell and his colleagues (Cattell, Eber, & Tatsuoka, 1970), is a representative example of a multitrait inventory. The 16PF is a 187-item scale that measures 16 basic dimensions of personality, called source traits, which are shown in Figure 2.24 on p. 67.

High

High Pam

Pam Tyrone Deb

Tyrone Deb

LOW RELIABILITY

High

Pam Tyrone

Mike Ed Pam Dawn

Deb

Mike

Mike

Maria Maria Dave

Ed

Ed Dawn

Dave Dawn Low Scores on first testing

Mike Maria Dave

Maria

Deb Dave

Ed Dawn

Low Scores on second testing

Tyrone Low Scores on first testing

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Low Scores on second testing

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FIG U R E 2.23

Measuring Sensation Seeking

A brief scale to assess sensation seeking as a trait. First described by Marvin Zuckerman (1979, 1995), sensation seeking is a personality trait characterized by a generalized preference for high or low levels of sensory stimulation. People who are high in sensation seeking need a high level of stimulation. They are easily bored and they like activities that may involve some physical risk. They may satisfy their appetite for stimulation by experimenting with drugs, numerous sexual partners, and novel experiences. Follow the instructions for this version of the Sensation Seeking Scale to obtain a rough estimate of your sensation seeking tendencies. (Adapted from Grasha & Kirschenbaum, 1986)

Answer true or false to each of the items listed below. A “T” means that the item expresses your preference most of the time. An “F” means that you do not agree that the item is generally true for you. After completing the test, score your responses according to the instructions that follow the test items. T

F

1. I would really enjoy skydiving.

T

F

2. I can imagine myself driving a sports car in a race and loving it.

T

F

3. My life is very secure and comfortable—the way I like it.

T

F

4. I usually like emotionally expressive or artistic people, even if they are sort of wild.

T

F

5. I like the idea of seeing many of the same warm, supportive faces in my everyday life.

T

F

6. I like doing adventurous things and would have enjoyed being a pioneer in the early days of this country.

T

F

7. A good photograph should express peacefulness creatively.

T

F

8. The most important thing in living is fully experiencing all emotions.

T

F

T

F

10. Doing the same things each day really gets to me.

T

F

11. I love snuggling in front of a fire on a wintry day.

T

F

12. I would like to try several types of drugs as long as they didn’t harm me permanently.

T

F

13. Drinking and being rowdy really appeals to me on the weekend.

T

F

14. Rational people try to avoid dangerous situations.

T

F

15. I prefer Figure A to Figure B.

9. I like creature comforts when I go on a trip or vacation.

A

B

Give yourself 1 point for answering “T” to the following items: 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, and 13. Also give yourself 1 point for answering “F” to the following items: 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 14, and 15. Add up your points, and compare your total to the following norms: 11–15, high sensation seeker; 6–10, moderate sensation seeker; 0–5, low sensation seeker. Bear in mind that this is a shortened version of the Sensation Seeking Scale and that it provides only a rough approximation of your status on this personality trait.

As we noted earlier, some theorists believe that only five trait dimensions are required to provide a full description of personality. This view led to the creation of the NEO Personality Inventory. Developed by Paul Costa and Robert McCrae (1985, 1992), the NEO Inventory is designed to measure the Big Five traits: neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. The NEO Inventory is widely used in research and clinical work. To appreciate the strengths of self-report inventories, consider how else you might assess your personality. For instance, how assertive are you? You probably have some vague idea, but can you accurately estimate how your assertiveness compares to others’? To do that, you need a great deal of comparative information about others’ usual behavior—information that all of us lack. In contrast, a self-report inventory inquires about your typical behavior in a wide variety of circumstances requiring assertiveness and generates an exact comparison with the typical behavior reported by many other 66

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respondents for the same circumstances. Thus, self-report inventories are much more thorough and precise than casual observations are. However, these tests are only as accurate as the information that the test-takers provide. Deliberate deception can be a problem with these tests, and some people are unconsciously influenced by the social desirability or acceptability of the statements (Kline, 1995; Paulhus, 1991). Without realizing it, they endorse only those statements that make them look good. This problem provides another reason why personality test results should always be regarded as suggestive rather than definitive.

Projective Tests Projective tests, which all take a rather indirect approach to the assessment of personality, are used extensively in clinical work. Projective tests ask people to respond to vague, ambiguous stimuli in ways that may reveal the respondents’ needs, feelings, and personality traits.

Less intelligent Affected by feelings Submissive Serious Expedient Timid Tough-minded

More intelligent Emotionally stable Dominant Happy-go-lucky Conscientious Venturesome Sensitive

Trusting

Suspicious

Practical

Imaginative

Forthright

Outgoing

Shrewd Apprehensive

Conservative

Experimenting

Group-dependent

Self-sufficient

Relaxed

The Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF). Cattell’s 16PF is designed to assess 16 basic dimensions of personality. The pairs of traits listed across from each other in the figure define the 16 factors measured by this selfreport inventory. The profile shown is the average profile seen among a group of airline pilots who took the test. Adapted from Cattell, R. B. (1973, July). Personality pinned down. Psychology Today, 40–46. Reprinted by permission of Psychology Today Magazine. Copyright © 1973 Sussex Publishers, Inc.

Self-assured

Uncontrolled

FIG U R E 2.24

Controlled Tense

The Rorschach test, for instance, consists of a series of inadequate evidence for the reliability and validity of ten inkblots. Respondents are asked to describe what projective measures (Lanyon & Goodstein, 1997; Lilienthey see in the blots (see the adjacent photo). In the feld, Wood, & Garb, 2000). In particular, serious doubts Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), a series of pictures have been raised about the research evidence on the of simple scenes is presented to subjects who are asked Rorschach test (Garb, Florio, & Grove, 1998; Hunsley, to tell stories about what is happening in the scenes Lee, & Wood, 2003). In spite of these problems, proand what the characters are feeling. For instance, one jective tests continue to be widely used by clinicians TAT card shows a young boy contemplating a violin (Watkins et al., 1995). About 40 years ago, a reviewer resting on a table in front of him. characterized the critics of projective tests as “doubtThe assumption underlying projective testing is ing statisticians” and the users of projective tests as that ambiguous materials can serve as a blank screen “enthusiastic clinicians” (Adcock, 1965). Decades of reonto which people project their characteristic concerns, search notwithstanding, little has changed since then. conflicts, and desires. Thus, a competitive person who is shown the TAT card of the boy at the table with the violin might concoct a story about how the boy is contemplating an upcoming musical competition at which he hopes to excel. The same card shown to a person high in impulsiveness might elicit a story about how the boy is planning to sneak out the door to go dirt-bike riding with friends. Proponents of projective tests assert that the tests have two unique strengths. First, they are not transparent to subjects. That is, the subject doesn’t know how the test provides information to the tester. Hence, it’s difficult for people to engage in intentional deception. Second, the indirect approach used in these tests may make them especially sensitive to unconscious features of personality. In projective tests, such as the Rorschach, stimuli are deliberately vague and Unfortunately, these alleged strengths are ambiguous to serve as a blank screen onto which subjects can project their based on mere speculation. Moreover, there is concerns, conflicts, and desires. CHAPTER 2

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Reserved

An Epilogue on Theoretical Diversity ■

KEY IDEAS The Nature of Personality ■

CHAPTER 2 REVIEW

The concept of personality explains the consistency in individuals’ behavior over time and situations while also explaining their distinctiveness. Personality traits are dispositions to behave in certain ways. Some theorists suggest that the complexity of personality can be reduced to just five basic traits: extraversion, neuroticism, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.

Psychodynamic Perspectives ■

Freud’s psychoanalytic theory emphasizes the importance of the unconscious. Freud described personality structure in terms of three components (id, ego, and superego) that are involved in internal conflicts, which generate anxiety. ■ According to Freud, people often ward off anxiety and other unpleasant emotions with defense mechanisms, which work through self-deception. Freud believed that the first five years of life are extremely influential in shaping adult personality. He describes five psychosexual stages that children undergo in their personality development. ■ Jung’s analytical psychology stresses the importance of the collective unconscious. Adler’s individual psychology emphasizes how people strive for superiority to compensate for feelings of inferiority. Behavioral Perspectives ■

Behavioral theories view personality as a collection of response tendencies shaped through learning. Pavlov’s classical conditioning can explain how people acquire emotional responses. ■ Skinner’s model of operant conditioning shows how consequences such as reinforcement, extinction, and punishment shape behavior. Bandura’s social cognitive theory shows how people can be conditioned indirectly through observation. He views self-efficacy as an especially important personality trait. Humanistic Perspectives ■

Humanistic theories take an optimistic view of people’s conscious, rational ability to chart their own courses of action. Rogers focused on the self-concept as the critical aspect of personality. He maintained that incongruence between one’s self-concept and reality creates anxiety and leads to defensive behavior. ■ Maslow theorized that needs are arranged hierarchically. He asserted that psychological health depends on fulfilling the need for self-actualization. Biological Perspectives ■

Eysenck believes that inherited individual differences in physiological functioning affect conditioning and thus influence personality. Recent twin studies have provided impressive evidence that genetic factors shape personality. Behavioral genetics research also suggests that the family has surprisingly little influence over personality. Evolutionary psychologists maintain that natural selection has favored the emergence of the Big Five traits as crucial dimensions of personality.

The study of personality illustrates how great the theoretical diversity in psychology is. This diversity is a strength in that it fuels research that helps psychology move toward a more complete understanding of behavior.

Application: Assessing Your Personality ■

Psychological tests are standardized measures of behavior— usually mental abilities or aspects of personality. Test norms indicate what represents a high or low score. Psychological tests should produce consistent results upon retesting, a quality called reliability. Validity refers to the degree to which a test measures what it was designed to measure. ■ Self-report inventories, such as the 16PF and NEO Personality Inventory, ask respondents to describe themselves. Self-report inventories can provide a better snapshot of personality than casual observations can, but they are vulnerable to deception and social desirability bias. ■ Projective tests, such as the Rorschach and TAT, assume that people’s responses to ambiguous stimuli reveal something about their personality. Projective tests’ reliability and validity appear to be disturbingly low.

KEY TERMS Archetypes pp. 41–42 Behaviorism p. 44 Classical conditioning p. 45 Collective unconscious p. 41 Compensation p. 42 Conditioned response (CR) p. 45 Conditioned stimulus (CS) p. 45 Conscious p. 36 Defense mechanisms p. 38 Displacement p. 39 Ego p. 36 Evolutionary psychology p. 58 Extinction p. 46 Fixation p. 40 Heritability ratio p. 57 Hierarchy of needs p. 53 Humanism p. 51 Id p. 36 Identification p. 39 Incongruence p. 52 Need for self-actualization p. 13 Negative reinforcement p. 47 Observational learning p. 49 Oedipal complex p. 40 Operant conditioning p. 47

A Contemporary Empirical Approach: Terror Management Theory

Personality p. 34 Personality trait p. 34 Positive reinforcement p. 47 Preconscious p. 37 Projection p. 39 Projective tests p. 66 Psychodynamic theories p. 34 Psychological test p. 64 Psychosexual stages p. 40 Punishment p. 47 Rationalization p. 39 Reaction formation p. 39 Regression p. 35 Reliability p. 65 Repression p. 39 Self-concept pp. 51–52 Self-efficacy pp. 49–50 Self-report inventories p. 65 Standardization p. 64 Superego p. 36 Test norms p. 64 Unconditioned response (UCR) p. 45 Unconditioned stimulus (UCS) p. 45 Unconscious p. 37 Validity p. 65

KEY PEOPLE

Terror management theory proposes that self-esteem and faith in a cultural worldview shield people from the profound anxiety associated with their mortality. Consistent with this analysis, increasing mortality salience leads people to make efforts to bolster their self-esteem and defend their worldviews. These defensive reactions are automatic and subconscious.

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Alfred Adler pp. 42–43 Albert Bandura pp. 49–50 Hans Eysenck pp. 56–58 Sigmund Freud pp. 35–41 Carl Jung pp. 41–42

Abraham Maslow pp. 53–54 Ivan Pavlov pp. 44–46 Carl Rogers pp. 51–53 B. F. Skinner pp. 47–48

7. According to Maslow, which of the following is not characteristic of self-actualizing persons? a. Accurate perception of reality b. Being open and spontaneous c. Being uncomfortable with solitude d. Sensitivity to others’ needs

The following exercises in your Personal Explorations Workbook may enhance your self-understanding in relation to issues raised in this chapter. Questionnaire 2.1: Desirability of Control Scale. Personal Probe 2.1: Who Are You? Personal Probe 2.2: How You See Personality.

ANSWERS

Page 52 Page 54 Pages 57–58 Pages 59–62 Page 65

6. According to Rogers, disparity between one’s selfconcept and actual experience is referred to as a. a delusional system. b. dissonance. c. conflict. d. incongruence.

Personal Explorations Workbook

d c b d d

5. Self-efficacy is a. the ability to fulfill one’s potential. b. one’s belief about one’s ability to perform behaviors that should lead to expected outcomes. c. a durable disposition to behave in a particular way in a variety of situations. d. a collection of beliefs about one’s nature, unique qualities, and typical behavior.

Visit the Book Companion Website at http://psychology. wadsworth.com/weiten_lloyd8e, where you will find tutorial quizzes, flashcards, and weblinks for every chapter, a final exam, and more! You can also link to the Thomson Wadsworth Psychology Resource Center (accessible directly at http://psychology.wadsworth.com) for a range of psychology-related resources.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

4. The strengthening of a response tendency by virtue of the fact that the response leads to the removal of an unpleasant stimulus is a. positive reinforcement. b. negative reinforcement. c. primary reinforcement. d. punishment.

Book Companion Website

CHAPTER 2

Pages 34–35 Page 39 Page 42 Pages 47–48 Pages 49–50

3. According to Adler, __________ is a universal drive to adapt, improve oneself, and master life’s challenges. a. compensation b. striving for superiority c. avoiding inferiority d. social interest

10. In psychological testing, consistency of results over repeated measurements refers to a. standardization. b. validity. c. statistical significance. d. reliability.

d c b b b

2. You’re feeling guilty after your third bowl of ice cream. You tell yourself it’s all right because yesterday you skipped lunch. Which defense mechanism is at work? a. Conceptualization b. Displacement c. Rationalization d. Identification

9. Research on terror management theory has shown that increased mortality salience leads to all of the following except: a. increased striving for self-esteem. b. more stereotypic thinking about minorities. c. more aggressive behavior toward people with opposing views. d. reduced respect for cultural icons.

PRACTICE TEST

1. Which of the following is not included in McCrae and Costa’s five-factor model of personality? a. Neuroticism b. Extraversion c. Conscientiousness d. Authoritarianism

T h e o r i e s o f Pe r s o n a l i t y

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

PRACTICE TEST

8. If identical twins exhibit more personality resemblance than fraternal twins, it’s probably due mostly to a. similar treatment from parents. b. their greater genetic overlap. c. their strong identification with each other. d. others’ expectations that they should be similar.

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THE NATURE OF STRESS Stress Is an Everyday Event Stress Lies in the Eye of the Beholder Stress May Be Embedded in the Environment Stress May Be Self-Imposed Stress Is Influenced by Culture MAJOR TYPES OF STRESS Frustration Conflict Change Pressure RESPONDING TO STRESS Emotional Responses Physiological Responses Behavioral Responses

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THE POTENTIAL EFFECTS OF STRESS Impaired Task Performance Disruption of Cognitive Functioning Burnout Posttraumatic Stress Disorders Psychological Problems and Disorders Physical Illness Positive Effects

APPLICATION: MONITORING YOUR STRESS Problems with the SRRS The Life Experiences Survey A Cautionary Note CHAPTER 3 REVIEW PRACTICE TEST

FACTORS INFLUENCING STRESS TOLERANCE Social Support Hardiness Optimism

CHAPTER

Stress and Its Effects

3

You’re in your car headed home from school with a classmate. Traffic is barely moving. A radio report indicates that the traffic jam is only going to get worse. You groan as you fiddle impatiently with the radio. Another motorist nearly takes your fender off trying to cut into your lane. Your pulse quickens as you shout insults at the driver, who cannot even hear you. You think about the term paper that you have to work on tonight. Your stomach knots up as you recall all the crumpled drafts you tossed into the wastebasket last night. If you don’t finish the paper soon, you won’t be able to find any time to study for your math test, not to mention your biology quiz. Suddenly you remember that you promised the person you’re dating that the two of you would get together tonight. There’s no way. Another fight looms on the horizon. Your classmate asks how you feel about the tuition increase the college announced yesterday. You’ve been trying not to think about it. You’re already in debt up to your ears. Your parents are bugging you about changing schools, but you don’t want to leave your friends. Your heartbeat quickens as you contemplate the debate you’ll have to wage with your parents. You feel wired with tension as you realize that the stress in your life never seems to let up. Many circumstances can create stress in people’s lives. Stress comes in all sorts of packages: large and small, pretty and ugly, simple and complex. All too often, the package is a surprise. In this chapter, we try to sort out these packages. We analyze the nature of stress, outline the major types of stress, and discuss how people respond to stressful events at several levels. In a sense, stress is what a course on adjustment is all about. Recall from Chapter 1 that adjustment essentially deals with how people manage to cope with various demands and pressures. These demands or pressures represent the core of stressful experience. Thus, the central theme in a course such as this is: How do people adjust to stress, and how might they adjust more effectively?

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The Nature of Stress LEARNING OBJECTIVES

■ ■ ■

Describe the nature of stress and discuss how common it is. Distinguish between primary and secondary appraisal of stress. Summarize the evidence on ambient stress. Explain how culture and ethnicity are related to stress.

Over the years, the term stress has been used in different ways by different theorists. Some have viewed stress as a stimulus event that presents difficult demands (a divorce, for instance), while others have viewed stress as the response of physiological arousal elicited by a troublesome event (Cooper & Dewe, 2004). However, the emerging consensus among contemporary researchers is that stress is neither a stimulus nor a response but a special stimulus-response transaction in which one feels threatened (McEwen, 2000). Hence, we will define stress as any circumstances that threaten or are perceived to threaten one’s well-being and thereby tax one’s coping abilities. The threat may be to one’s immediate physical safety, long-range security, self-esteem, reputation, or peace of mind. Stress is a complex concept—so let’s dig a little deeper.

Stress Is an Everyday Event The term stress tends to spark images of overwhelming, traumatic crises. People think of hijackings, hurricanes, military combat, and nuclear accidents. Undeniably, these are extremely stressful events. Studies conducted in the aftermath of tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, and the like typically find elevated rates of psychological problems and physical illness in the communities affected by these disasters (Brende, 2000; Raphael & Dobson, 2000). However, these unusual and infrequent events represent the tip of the iceberg. Many everyday events, such as waiting in line, having car trouble, shopping for Christmas presents, misplacing your checkbook, and staring at bills you can’t pay, are also stressful. Of course, major and minor stressors are not entirely independent. A major stressful event, such as going through a divorce, can trigger a cascade of minor stressors, such as looking for an attorney, taking on new household responsibilities, and so forth (Pillow, Zautra, & Sandler, 1996). You might guess that minor stressors would produce minor effects, but that isn’t necessarily true. Research shows that routine hassles may have significant negative effects on a person’s mental and physical health (Delongis, Folkman, & Lazarus, 1988). Richard Lazarus and his colleagues have devised a scale to measure stress in the form of daily hassles. Their scale lists 117 everyday problems, such as misplacing things, struggling

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with rising prices, dealing with delays, and so forth. When they compared their hassles scale against another scale that assessed stress in the form of major life events, they found that scores on their hassles scale were more strongly related to subjects’ mental health than the scores on the other scale were (KanRichard Lazarus ner et al., 1981). Other investigators, working with different types of samples and different measures of hassles, have also found that everyday hassles are predictive of mental and physical health (Chang & Sanna, 2003; Sher, 2003). Why would minor hassles be more strongly related to mental health than major stressful events? The answer isn’t entirely clear yet, but many theorists believe that stressful events can have a cumulative or additive impact (Seta, Seta, & McElroy, 2002). In other words, stress can add up. Routine stresses at home, at school, and at work might be fairly benign individually, but collectively they could create great strain.

Stress Lies in the Eye of the Beholder The experience of feeling threatened depends on what events you notice and how you choose to appraise or interpret them (Monroe & Kelley, 1995). Events that are stressful for one person may be “ho-hum” routine for another. For example, many people find flying in an airplane somewhat stressful, but frequent fliers may not even raise an eyebrow. Some people enjoy the excitement of going out on a date with someone new; others find the uncertainty terrifying. In discussing appraisals of stress, Lazarus and Folkman (1984) distinguish between primary and secondary appraisal (see Figure 3.1). Primary appraisal is an initial evaluation of whether an event is (1) irrelevant to you, (2) relevant, but not threatening, or (3) stressful. When you view an event as stressful, you are likely to make a secondary appraisal, which is an evaluation of your coping resources and options for dealing with the stress. Thus, your primary appraisal would determine whether you saw an upcoming job interview as stressful. Your secondary appraisal would

Courtesy of Richard Lazarus

mands on people. Features of the environment such as excessive noise, Stress Coping resources heat, and pollution can threaten wellappear inadequate being and leave their mark on menPrimary appraisal or likely to be taxed tal and physical health. Situation perceived Coping resources For example, investigators have as relevant and appear adequate threatening found an association between chronStimulus No Situation perceived ic exposure to high levels of noise event stress as irrelevant or and elevated blood pressure among harmless No children attending school near Los stress Angeles International Airport (Cohen et al., 1980). Similarly, studies of children living near Munich InF I G U R E 3.1 ternational Airport (Evans, Hygge, & Bullinger, 1995; Hygge, Evans, & Bullinger, 2002) have found elevated Primary and secondary appraisal of stress. Primary appraisal is stress hormones, reading and memory deficits, and an initial evaluation of whether an event is (1) irrelevant to you, (2) relevant, but not threatening, or (3) stressful. When you view poor task persistence in samples of schoolchildren (see an event as stressful, you are likely to make a secondary appraisal, Figure 3.2). which is an evaluation of your coping resources and options for Crowding is another source of environmental stress. dealing with the stress. Thus, your primary appraisal would deterTemporary experiences of crowding, such as being mine whether you saw an upcoming job interview as stressful. Your secondary appraisal would determine how stressful the packed into a rock concert venue with thousands of interview appeared in light of your assessment of your ability other fans, can be stressful. However, most of the reto deal with the event. (Based on Lazarus & Folkman, 1994) search on crowding has focused on the effects of residential density. Generally, studies find an association between high density and increased physiological arousal, determine how stressful the interview appeared, in psychological distress, and social withdrawal (Evans, light of your assessment of your ability to deal with 2001; Evans, LePore, & Schroeder, 1996). Psychologists the event. have also explored the repercussions of living in areas Often, people are not very objective in their appraisthat are at risk for disaster. For instance, studies suggest als of potentially stressful events. A study of hospitalized that people who live near a nuclear power plant or in an patients awaiting surgery showed only a slight correlaarea prone to earthquakes or hurricanes may experience tion between the objective seriousness of a person’s upincreased stress (Carr, 2000; Dougall & Baum, 2000). coming surgery and the amount of fear the person experienced (Janis, 1958). Clearly, some people are more prone to feel threatened by life’s difficulties than others. A Quiet communities number of studies have shown that anxious, Epinephrine Noisy neurotic people report more stress than othcommunities ers (Cooper & Bright, 2001; Watson, David, & Suls, 1999), as do people who are relatively Quiet unhappy (Seidlitz & Diener, 1993). Thus, communities Norepinephrine stress lies in the eye (actually, the mind) of the Noisy communities beholder, and people’s appraisals of stressful events are highly subjective. Secondary appraisal

Stress May Be Embedded in the Environment Although the perception of stress is a highly personal matter, many kinds of stress come from the environmental circumstances that individuals share with others. Ambient stress consists of chronic environmental conditions that, although not urgent, are negatively valued and that place adaptive de-

200

400 600 800 Nanograms/hour

1000

1200

FIG U R E 3.2

Excessive noise and stress hormones. Evans, Hygge, and Bullinger (1995) compared children from noisy areas near Munich International Airport with similar children from quiet neighborhoods in Munich. They found elevated levels of two hormones associated with stress reactions in the children exposed to the high noise of the airport. Adapted from Evans, G. W., Hygge, S., & Bullinger, M. (1995). Chronic noise and psychological stress. Psychological Science, 6, 333–338. Copyright © 1995 Blackwell Publishers. Adapted by permission.

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© AP/Wide World Photos

Recently, investigators have examined urban poverty and violence as a source of environmental stress. Ewart and Suchday (2002) developed a scale called the City Stress Index to measure participants’ exposure to street crime, gang activity, drug dealing, neighborhood decay, and unruly behavior. They found that scores on the City Stress Index correlated (modestly) with measures of subjects’ depressive symptoms, hostility, and irritability. In retrospect, it should come as no surprise that urban decay and violence produce ambient stress. It is hoped that the creation of the City Stress Index will facilitate more research on the long-term repercussions of this type of stress.

Stress May Be Self-Imposed We tend to think of stress as something imposed on us from without. However, a study of college students’ stress found that stress is self-imposed surprisingly often (Epstein & Katz, 1992). For example, you might sign up for extra classes to get through school quickly. Or you might actively seek additional responsibilities at work to impress your boss. People frequently put pressure on themselves to get good grades or to climb the corporate ladder rapidly. Many people create stress by embracing unrealistic expectations for themselves. In short, people have more control over their stress than they probably realize.

© Richard Lord/PhotoEdit

Stress can be caused by environmental circumstances such as pollution, excessive noise and crowding, traffic jams, and urban decay.

Western cities like Montreal or Philadelphia are quite different from the day-to-day difficulties experienced in indigenous societies in Africa or South America. The potential importance of culture is illustrated by the substantial body of evidence that cultural change—such as increased modernization and urbanization and shifting values and customs—has been a major source of stress in many societies around the world (Dessler, 2000). In some cases, a specific cultural group may be exposed to pervasive stress that is unique to that group (Berry & Ataca, 2000). For example, the devastating drought and famine in Sudan in 1985 and the ethnic cleansing of Albanians in Kosovo in 1999 were extraordinary forms of stress distinctive to these societies. Our discussion of stress will largely focus on the types of stressors confronted in everyday life in contemporary, Western society, but you should be aware that life in our society is not necessarily representative of life around the world. Moreover, even within the modern, Western world, disparities can be found in the constellation of stressors experienced by specific cultural groups (Mino, Profit, & Pierce, 2000). In recent years, researchers have shown a new interest in the effects of ethnicity-related sources

Stress Is Influenced by Culture

WE B LI N K 3.1

Although certain types of events (such as the loss of a loved one) are probably viewed as stressful in virtually all human societies, cultures vary greatly in the predominant forms of stress their people experience. Obviously, the challenges of daily living encountered in modern,

Centre for Stress Management This British website houses a diverse collection of brief online articles concerned with many aspects of the stress process. It also features links to many other sites around the world that provide information on stress.

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of stress experienced by African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and other minority groups (Contrada et al., 2000). Social scientists interested in ethnicity have traditionally focused their attention on the causes of institutional racism, such as discrimination in hiring and in access to health care. But their focus has been shifting to the effects of subtle discrimination in day-to-day living. Although overt racial discrimination in America clearly has declined in recent decades, covert expressions of ethnic prejudice continue to be commonplace (Dovidio & Gaertner, 1999). For example, in one study of 520 African Americans, 96 percent of the respondents reported experiencing some type of racist discrimination in the most recent year—and 95 percent of these subjects indicated that they found this discrimination to be stressful (Klonoff & Landrine, 1999). Everyday discrimination can take many forms, including verbal insults (ethnic slurs), negative evaluations, avoidance, denial of equal treatment, and threats of aggression. Feldman-Barrett and Swim (1998) emphasize that these acts of discrimination are often ambiguous (examples: “the clerk seemed to be ignoring me,” “the teacher seemed disdainful of me”). Hence, theorists assert that minority group members may experience stress not only from explicit discrimination but also from the subjective perception of discrimination in ambiguous situations and even from the anticipation of the possibility of discrimination at upcoming events (example: “I’m worried that no one will talk to me at the get-together for new employees”). In addition to discrimination, members of ethnic minorities experience stress because they are keenly aware of negative racial stereotypes and often worry that others will interpret their behavior in ways that confirm these derogatory stereotypes (Steele, 1997). So the threat of stereotype confirmation can become a source of chronic apprehension. At the other extreme, individuals are often chastised by members of their own group for “acting white” or abandoning their cultural heritage

END R EC O M M EN D ED R EA D IN G

The End of Stress as We Know It by Bruce McEwen with Elizabeth Norton Lasley (Joseph Henry Press, 2002) The title of this book is a bit misleading, as it suggests that the author will provide some stunning new secret that will permit readers to bring the stress in their lives to an end. In reality, one of the principal points that McEwen makes is that stress is normal, inevitable, and not necessarily bad. McEwen is a renowned stress researcher whose main focus has been on neuroendocrine responses to stress. In keeping with his background, what he provides in this book is an exceptionally lucid account of how stress affects brain function and cardiovascular and immune system processes. This potentially difficult material is presented in a lively and understandable fashion. The coverage of “how not to be stressed out” is relatively modest in volume. The author’s advice is empirically sound but fairly conventional and not overly detailed. In sum, this book provides an outstanding overview of the physiology of stress, but it offers less than you might expect—given its title—on coping with stress. Cover © 2002 Joseph Henry Press. Reprinted by permission of National Academies Press.

(Contrada et al., 2000). Thus, ethnic minorities may be under constant pressure to conform to the expectations and values of their own group. It seems likely that the extra layer of stress experienced by minority group members takes its toll on them, but scientists have just begun to investigate the degree to which ethnicityrelated stress may have detrimental effects on individuals’ mental and physical health (Clark et al., 1999).

Major Types of Stress LEARNING OBJECTIVES ■ ■ ■

Distinguish between acute and chronic stressors. Describe frustration as a form of stress. Outline the three types of conflict, and discuss typical reactions to conflicts.

An enormous variety of events can be stressful for one person or another. To achieve a better understanding of stress, theorists have tried to analyze the nature of stressful events and divide them into subtypes. One sensible distinction involves differentiating between acute stressors and chronic stressors (Dougall & Baum, 2001). Acute

■ ■

Summarize evidence on life change as a form of stress. Discuss evidence on pressure as a form of stress.

stressors are threatening events that have a relatively short duration and a clear endpoint. Examples would include having a difficult encounter with a belligerent drunk, waiting for the results of a medical test, or having your home threatened by severe flooding. Chronic stressors are threatening events that have a relatively CHAPTER 3

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Frustration “It has been very frustrating to watch the rapid deterioration of my parents’ relationship. Over the last year or two they have argued constantly and have refused to seek any professional help. I have tried to talk to them, but they kind of shut me and my brother out of their problem. I feel very helpless and sometimes even very angry, not at them, but at the whole situation.” This scenario illustrates frustration. As psychologists use the term, frustration occurs in any situation in which the pursuit of some goal is thwarted. In essence, you experience frustration when you want something and you can’t have it. Everyone has to deal with frustration virtually every day. Traffic jams, difficult daily commutes, and annoying drivers, for instance, are a routine source of frustration that can elicit anger and aggression (Hennessy & Wiesenthal, 1999; Rasmussen, Knapp, & Garner, 2000). Fortunately, most frustrations are brief and insignificant. You may be quite upset when you go to the auto shop to pick up your car and find that it hasn’t been fixed as promised. However, a few days later you’ll probably have your precious car back, and all will be forgotten. Of course, some frustrations can be sources of significant stress. Failures and losses are two common kinds of frustration that are often very stressful. All people fail in at least some of their endeavors. Some make failure almost inevitable by setting unrealistic goals for themselves. People tend to forget that for every newly appointed vice-president in the business world, there are dozens of middle-level executives who don’t get promoted. Losses may be especially frustrating when people are deprived of something they are accustomed to having. For example, there are few things that are

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more frustrating than losing a dearly loved friend or family member. More often than not, frustration appears to be the culprit at work when people feel troubled by environmental stress (Graig, 1993). Excessive noise, heat, pollution, and crowding are most likely stressful because they frustrate the desire for quiet, a comfortable body temperature, clean air, and adequate privacy.

Conflict “Should I or shouldn’t I? I became engaged at Christmas. My fiancé surprised me with a ring. I knew if I refused the ring he would be terribly hurt and our relationship would suffer. However, I don’t really know whether or not I want to marry him. On the other hand, I don’t want to lose him either.” Like frustration, conflict is an unavoidable feature of everyday life. That perplexing question “Should I or shouldn’t I?” comes up countless times on a daily basis. Conflict occurs when two or more incompatible motivations or behavioral impulses compete for expression. As we discussed in Chapter 2, Sigmund Freud proposed over a century ago that internal conflicts generate considerable psychological distress. This link between conflict and distress was measured with precision in studies by Laura King and Robert Emmons (1990, 1991). They used an elaborate questionnaire to assess the overall amount of internal conflict experienced by subjects. They found higher levels of conflict to be associated with higher levels of psychological distress. Conflicts come in three types, which were originally described by Kurt Lewin (1935) and investigated extensively by Neal Miller (1944, 1959). These types—approachapproach, avoidance-avoidance, and approach-avoidance—are diagrammed in Figure 3.3. In an approach-approach conNeal Miller flict a choice must be made between two attractive goals. The problem, of course, is that you can choose just one of the two goals. For example, you have a free afternoon;

WE B LI N K 3.2

Stress, Trauma, Anxiety, Fears, and Psychosomatic Disorders This resource, which constitutes Chapter 5 of Clayton E. Tucker-Ladd’s online text, Psychological Self-Help, provides a particularly fine discussion of the nature of stress and its relationship to psychological and physical disorders.

Courtesy, Neal Miller

long duration and no readily apparent time limit. Examples would include persistent financial strains produced by huge credit card debts, ongoing pressures from a hostile boss at work, or the demands of caring for a sick family member over a period of years. Of course, this distinction is far from perfect. It is hard to decide where to draw the line between a short-lived versus lengthy stressor, and even brief stressors can have longlasting effects. None of the proposed schemes for classifying stressful events has turned out to be altogether satisfactory. Classifying stressful events into nonintersecting categories is virtually impossible. Although this problem presents conceptual headaches for researchers, it need not prevent us from describing four major types of stress: frustration, conflict, change, and pressure. As you read about each of them, you’ll surely recognize some familiar situations.

APPROACH-APPROACH Tennis Pizza Blue sweater

Racquetball Spaghetti Gray jacket

AVOIDANCE-AVOIDANCE Unemployment Painful backache

Degrading job Surgery

APPROACH-AVOIDANCE Date with an attractive person Rejection Investment returns Loss of capital

F I G U R E 3.3

Types of conflict. Psychologists have identified three basic types of conflict. In approach-approach and avoidance-avoidance conflicts, the person is torn between two goals. In an approachavoidance conflict only one goal is under consideration, but it has both positive and negative aspects.

should you play tennis or go to the movies? You’re out for a meal; do you want to order the pizza or the spaghetti? You can’t afford both; should you buy the blue sweater or the gray jacket? Among the three kinds of conflict, the approach-approach type tends to be the least stressful. People usually don’t stagger out of restaurants, exhausted by the stress of choosing which of several appealing entrees to eat. In approach-approach conflicts you typically have a reasonably happy ending, whichever way you decide to go. Nonetheless, approachapproach conflicts centering on important issues may

sometimes be troublesome. If you are torn between two appealing college majors or two attractive boyfriends, you may find the decision-making process quite stressful. In an avoidance-avoidance conflict a choice must be made between two unattractive goals. Forced to choose between two repelling alternatives, you are, as they say, “caught between a rock and a hard place.” For example, let’s say you have painful backaches. Should you submit to surgery that you dread, or should you continue to live with the pain? Obviously, avoidanceavoidance conflicts are most unpleasant and highly stressful. Typically, people keep delaying their decision as long as possible, hoping that they will somehow be able to escape the conflict situation. For example, you might delay surgery in the hope that your backaches will disappear on their own. In an approach-avoidance conflict a choice must be made about whether to pursue a single goal that has both attractive and unattractive aspects. For instance, imagine that you’re offered a career promotion that will mean a large increase in pay. The catch is that you will have to move to a city that you hate. Approachavoidance conflicts are common, and they can be highly stressful. Any time you have to take a risk to pursue some desirable outcome, you are likely to find yourself in an approach-avoidance conflict. Should you risk rejection by asking out that attractive person in class? Should you risk your savings by investing in a new business that could fail? Approach-avoidance conflicts often produce vacillation. That is, people go back and forth, beset by indecision. They decide to go ahead, then not to, then to go ahead again. Humans are not unique in this respect. Many years ago, Neal Miller (1944) observed the same vacillation in his groundbreaking research with rats. He created approach-avoidance conflicts in hungry rats by alternately feeding and shocking them at one end of a runway apparatus. Eventually, these rats tended to hover near the center of the runway. They would alternately approach and retreat from the goal box at the end of the alley.

BLONDIE © 2001. Reprinted with special permission of King Features Syndicate.

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a

FIG U R E 3.4

Avoidance stronger than approach

Approach stronger than avoidance

na igi Or la t ien rad eg nc ida vo

nt die gra

c an oid av red we Lo

Near

h gr adie

nt

DISTANCE FROM GOAL

“After my divorce, I lived alone for four years. Six months ago, I married a wonderful woman who has two children from her previous marriage. My biggest stress is suddenly having to adapt to living with three people instead of by myself. I was pretty set in my ways. I had certain routines. Now everything is chaos. I love my wife and I’m fond of the kids, and they’re not really doing anything wrong, but The Dynamics of Adjustment

App

roac

hg

radi e

nt

t ien rad eg

Vacillation point

roac

Change

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Approach stronger than avoidance

App

In a series of studies, Miller (1959) plotted out how an organism’s tendency to approach a goal (the approach gradient in Figure 3.4a) and to retreat from a goal (the avoidance gradient in Figure 3.4a) increase as the organism nears the goal. He found that avoidance motivation increases more rapidly than approach motivation (as reflected by the avoidance gradient’s steeper slope in Figure 3.4a). Based on this principle, Miller concluded that in trying to resolve an approach-avoidance conflict, we should focus more on decreasing avoidance motivation than on increasing approach motivation. How would this insight apply to complex human dilemmas? Imagine that you are counseling a friend who is vacillating over whether to ask someone out on a date. Miller would assert that you should attempt to downplay the negative aspects of possible rejection (thus lowering the avoidance gradient) rather than dwelling on how much fun the date could be (thus raising the approach gradient). Figure 3.4b shows the effects of lowering the avoidance gradient. If it is lowered far enough, the person should reach the goal (make a decision and take action).

78

b

ce an oid Av

Approach-avoidance conflict. (a) According to Neal Miller (1959), as you near a goal that has positive and negative features, avoidance motivation tends to rise faster than approach motivation (that’s why the avoidance gradient has a steeper slope than the approach gradient), sending you into retreat. However, if you retreat far enough, you’ll eventually reach a point where approach motivation is stronger than avoidance motivation, and you may decide to go ahead once again. The ebb and flow of this process leads to vacillation around the point where the two gradients intersect. (b) As the avoidance gradient is lowered, the person comes closer and closer to the goal. If the avoidance gradient can be lowered far enough, the person should be able to resolve the conflict and reach the goal.

Increasing strength of tendency to approach or avoid

Far

Near

DISTANCE FROM GOAL

Far

my house and my life just aren’t the same and I am having trouble dealing with it all.” Life changes may represent a key type of stress. Life changes are any noticeable alterations in one’s living circumstances that require readjustment. Research on life change began when Thomas Holmes, Richard Rahe, and their colleagues set out to explore the relation between stressful life events and physical illness (Holmes & Rahe, 1967; Rahe & Arthur, 1978). They interviewed thousands of tuberculosis patients to find out what kinds of events preceded the onset of their disease. Surprisingly, the frequently cited events were not uniformly negative. The list included plenty of aversive events, as expected, but patients also mentioned many seemingly positive events, such as getting married, having a baby, or getting promoted. Why would positive events, such as moving to a nicer home, produce stress? According to Holmes and Rahe, it is because they produce change. Their thesis is that disruptions of daily routines are stressful. According to their theory, changes in personal relationships, changes at work, changes in finances, and so forth can be stressful even when the changes are welcomed. Based on this analysis, Holmes and Rahe (1967) developed the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) to measure life change as a form of stress. The scale assigns numerical values to 43 major life events that are supposed to reflect the magnitude of the readjustment required by each change (see Figure 3.5). In responding to the scale, respondents are asked to indicate how often they experienced any of these 43 events during a cer-

Social Readjustment Rating Scale Life event Death of a spouse

Mean value 100

Life event

Mean value

Son or daughter leaving home

29

Divorce

73

Trouble with in-laws

29

Marital separation

65

Outstanding personal achievement

28

Jail term

63

Spouse begins or stops work

26

Death of close family member

63

Begin or end school

26

Personal injury or illness

53

Change in living conditions

25

Marriage

50

Revision of personal habits

24

Fired at work

47

Trouble with boss

23

Marital reconciliation

45

Change in work hours or conditions

20

Retirement

45

Change in residence

20

Change in health of family member

44

Change in school

20

Pregnancy

40

Change in recreation

19

Sex difficulties

39

Change in church activities

19

Gain of a new family member

39

Change in social activities

18

Business readjustment

39

Loan for lesser purchase (car, TV, etc.)

17

Change in financial state

38

Change in sleeping habits

16

Death of a close friend

37

Change in number of family get-togethers

15

Change to a different line of work

36

Change in eating habits

15

Change in number of arguments with spouse

35

Vacation

13

Mortgage or loan for major purchase

31

Christmas

12

Foreclosure of mortgage or loan

30

Minor violations of the law

11

Change in responsibilities at work

29

F I G U R E 3.5

Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS). Devised by Holmes and Rahe (1967), this scale is designed to measure the change-related stress in one’s life. The numbers on the right are supposed to reflect the average amount of stress (readjustment) produced by each event. Respondents check off the events that have occurred to them recently and add up the associated numbers to arrive at their stress scores. See the Application for a detailed critique of the SRRS. Adapted from Holmes, T. H., & Rahe, R. (1967). The Social Readjustment Rating Scale. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 11, 213–218. Copyright © 1967 by Elsevier Science Publishing Co. Reprinted by permission.

tain time period (typically, the past year). The person then adds up the numbers associated with each event checked. This sum is an index of the amount of changerelated stress the person has recently experienced. The SRRS and similar scales have been used in thousands of studies by researchers all over the world. Overall, these studies have shown that people with higher scores on the SRRS tend to be more vulnerable to many kinds of physical illness—and many types of psychological problems as well (Derogatis & Coons, 1993; Rahe et al., 2000; Scully, Tosi, & Banning, 2000). These results have attracted a great deal of attention, and the SRRS has been reprinted in many newspapers and popular magazines. The attendant publicity has led to the widespread conclusion that life change is inherently stressful. More recently, however, experts have criticized this research, citing problems with the methods used and

raising questions about the meaning of the findings (Hobson & Delunas, 2001; Jones & Kinman, 2001; Monroe & McQuaid, 1994). At this point, it is a key interpretive issue that concerns us. Many critics have argued that the SRRS does not measure change exclusively. The list of life changes on the SRRS is dominated by events that are clearly negative or undesirable (death of a spouse, fired at work, and so on). These negative events probably generate great frustration. So even though the scale contains some positive events, it could be that frustration (generated by negative events), rather than change, creates most of the stress assessed by the scale. To investigate this possibility, researchers came up with ways to take into account the desirability and undesirability of subjects’ life changes. Participants were asked to indicate the desirability of the events that they checked off on the SRRS and similar scales. The findings in these CHAPTER 3

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© Kelvin Murray/Stone/Getty Images

© Allen Birnbach/Masterfile

Pressure comes in two varieties: pressure to perform and pressure to conform. For example, workers on assembly lines are often expected to maintain high productivity with few mistakes (performance pressure) and suburban homeowners are typically expected to maintain well-groomed exteriors (conformity pressure).

studies clearly indicated that life change is not the crucial dimension measured by the SRRS. Undesirable or negative life events cause most of the stress tapped by the SRRS (McLean & Link, 1994; Turner & Wheaton, 1995). Should we discard the notion that change is stressful? Not entirely. Other lines of research, independent of work with the SRRS, support the hypothesis that change is an important form of stress. For instance, researchers have found associations between geographic mobility and impaired mental and physical health that presumably reflect the impact of change (Brett, 1980; Shuval, 1993). A study by Brown and McGill (1989) suggests that desirable life changes may be stressful for some people but not for others. More research is needed, but it is quite plausible that change constitutes a major type of stress in people’s lives. However, we have little reason to believe that change is inherently or inevitably stressful. Some life changes may be quite challenging, while others may be quite benign.

expression mean? Pressure involves expectations or demands that one behave in a certain way. Pressure can be divided into two subtypes: the pressure to perform and the pressure to conform. You are under pressure to perform when you are expected to execute tasks and responsibilities quickly, efficiently, and successfully. For example, salespeople are usually under pressure to move lots of merchandise. Professors at research institutions are often under pressure to publish in prestigious journals. Comedians are under pressure to be amusing. Secretaries are often under pressure to complete lots of clerical work in very little time. Pressures to conform to others’ expectations are also common.

Pressure (PI) Life change (SRSS)

Pressure “My father questioned me at dinner about some things I did not want to talk about. I know he doesn’t want to hear my answers, at least not the truth. My father told me when I was little that I was his favorite because I was ‘pretty near perfect’ and I’ve spent my life trying to keep that up, even though it’s obviously not true. Recently, he has begun to realize this and it’s made our relationship very strained and painful.” At one time or another, most of us have probably remarked that we were “under pressure.” What does that 80

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.10

.20 .30 .40 .50 .60 Correlation with total index of psychological symptoms

.70

FIG U R E 3.6

Pressure and psychological symptoms. A comparison of pressure and life change as sources of stress suggests that pressure may be more strongly related to mental health than change is. In one study, Weiten (1988) found a correlation of .59 between scores on the Pressure Inventory (PI) and symptoms of psychological distress. In the same sample, the correlation between SRRS scores and psychological symptoms was only .28.

Businessmen are expected to wear suits and ties. Suburban homeowners are expected to keep their lawns manicured. Teenagers are expected to adhere to their parents’ values and rules. Young adults are expected to get themselves married by the time they’re 30. Although widely discussed by the general public, the concept of pressure has received scant attention from researchers. However, one scale has been developed to measure pressure as a form of life stress (Weiten,

1988). Studies with this scale have found a strong relationship between pressure and a variety of psychological symptoms and problems (Weiten, 1988, 1998). In fact, pressure has turned out to be more strongly related to measures of mental health than are the SRRS and other established measures of stress (see Figure 3.6). These findings suggest that pressure may be an important form of stress that merits more attention from researchers.

Responding to Stress LEARNING OBJECTIVES ■

List three categories of negative emotions commonly elicited by stress. Discuss the role of positive emotions in the stress process. Explain the effects of emotional arousal on coping efforts, and describe the inverted-U hypothesis.

The human response to stress is complex and multidimensional. Stress affects people at several levels. Consider again the chapter’s opening scenario, in which you’re driving home in heavy traffic, thinking about overdue papers, tuition increases, and parental pressures. Let’s look at some of the reactions we mentioned. When you groan in reaction to the traffic report, you’re experiencing an emotional response to stress—in this case, annoyance and anger. When your pulse quickens and your stomach knots up, you’re exhibiting physiological responses to stress. When you shout insults at another driver, your verbal aggression is a behavioral

Describe the fight-or-flight response and the three stages of the general adaptation syndrome. Distinguish between the two major pathways along which the brain sends signals to the endocrine system in response to stress. Explain the concept of coping.

response to the stress at hand. Thus, we can analyze people’s reactions to stress at three levels: (1) their emotional responses, (2) their physiological responses, and (3) their behavioral responses. Figure 3.7 depicts these three levels of response.

Emotional Responses Emotion is an elusive concept. Psychologists debate about how to define emotion, and many conflicting theories purport to explain emotion. However, everybody has had extensive personal experience with emotions.

Emotional response Potentially stressful objective events

Subjective cognitive appraisal

A major exam, a big date, trouble with your boss, or a financial setback, which may lead to frustration, conflict, change, or pressure

Primary and secondary appraisals of threat, which are influenced by familiarity with the event, its controllability, its predictability, and so on

Annoyance, anger, anxiety, fear, dejection, grief, guilt, shame, envy, disgust

Physiological response Autonomic arousal, hormonal fluctuations, neurochemical changes, and so on

Behavioral response Coping efforts, such as lashing out at others, blaming oneself, seeking help, solving problems, and releasing emotions

F I G U R E 3.7

The multidimensional response to stress. A potentially stressful event, such as a major exam, will elicit a subjective, cognitive appraisal of how threatening the event is. If the event is viewed with alarm, the stress may trigger emotional, physiological, and behavioral reactions. The human response to stress is multidimensional. CHAPTER 3

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Everyone has a good idea of what it means to be anxious, elated, gloomy, jealous, disgusted, excited, guilty, or nervous. So rather than pursue the technical debates about emotion, we’ll rely on your familiarity with the concept and simply note that emotions are powerful, largely uncontrollable feelings, accompanied by physiological changes. When people are under stress, they often react emotionally. More often than not, stress tends to elicit unpleasant emotions (Lazarus, 1993).

Negative Emotions

There are no simple one-to-one connections between certain types of stressful events and particular emotions, but researchers have begun to uncover some strong links between specific cognitive reactions to stress (appraisals) and specific emotions (Smith & Lazarus, 1993). For example, self-blame tends to lead to guilt, helplessness to sadness, and so forth. Although stressful events can evoke many negative emotions, some are certainly more

LIVING IN TODAY‘S WORLD

Common Reactions to Traumatic Events In this post-9/11 world, social scientists and the lay public are increasingly interested in understanding people’s reactions to traumatic events. The 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon exposed millions of television viewers to death and destruction of unprecedented magnitude in real time, and virtually everyone saw the horrific events replayed again and again in the ensuing weeks. Moreover, the threat of additional terrorist attacks, which could have even more far-reaching consequences, lingers. In light of these unpleasant realities, what can psychological research tell us about how people respond to traumatic events? There is a rich research literature on reactions to major disasters (such as earthquakes and hurricanes) and to personal trauma (such as automobile accidents and armed robberies). Based on this research, common reactions to traumatic events include the following (Danieli, Engdahl, & Schlenger, 2004; Flannery, 1999; Foa et al., 2001): Fear and anxiety. Anxiety is a normal response to threatening events. Many people find that certain cues associated with a traumatic event repeatedly trigger their anxiety. Reexperiencing the trauma. Many people are troubled by unwanted thoughts of the traumatic event that they are unable to control. Some experience flashbacks in which they vividly relive the traumatic moments. Nightmares about traumatic experiences are also common. Increased arousal. In the aftermath of traumatic events people tend to feel jumpy, jittery, and physically on edge. This physiological arousal may make sleep difficult. Avoidance. Many people try to avoid situations or cues that remind them of their trauma. People also tend

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to suppress painful thoughts and feelings. This coping strategy sometimes results in feelings of psychological numbness. Anger and irritability. Anger is a normal response to the perceived injustice of disastrous events. Coupled with increased arousal, this anger makes many people highly irritable. Ironically, some people get angry with themselves about their irritability. Grief and depression. In the wake of traumatic events, people often experience sadness, despair, and hopelessness. Future plans that once were important seem trivial. Activities that were once enjoyable seem empty. People understandably grieve for what they have lost. Increased sense of vulnerability. Traumatic events often lead to negative changes in one’s view of the world. People come to believe that the world is a dangerous place and that others cannot be trusted. One’s sense of self-efficacy may be undermined by feelings of helplessness, vulnerability, and the perception that events are uncontrollable. These reactions are normal short-term responses to traumatic events. Experiencing such reactions does not mean that you are weak or that you are “losing it.” For most people these reactions usually dissipate within three months, although others may recover more slowly. If reactions such as these persist indefinitely and interfere with one’s social, occupational, or family functioning, a diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder may be applicable (see pages 90–91 and Chapter 15). If your reactions to a traumatic event are especially severe, persistent, and disabling, it may be wise to seek professional help (see Chapter 16).

likely than others. Common negative emotional responses to stress include (Lazarus, 1993): ■ Annoyance, anger, and rage. Stress often produces feelings of anger ranging in intensity from mild annoyance to uncontrollable rage. Frustration is particularly likely to generate anger. ■ Apprehension, anxiety, and fear. Stress probably evokes anxiety and fear more frequently than any other emotions. As we saw in Chapter 2, Freudian theory has long recognized the link between conflict and anxiety. However, anxiety can also be elicited by the pressure to perform, the threat of impending frustration, or the uncertainty associated with change. ■ Dejection, sadness, and grief. Sometimes stress— especially frustration—simply brings one down. Routine setbacks, such as traffic tickets and poor grades, often produce feelings of dejection. More profound setbacks, such as deaths and divorces, typically leave one grief-stricken.

Of course, the above list is not exhaustive. In his insightful analyses of stress-emotion relations, Richard Lazarus (1991, 1993) mentions five other negative emotions that often figure prominently in reactions to stress: guilt, shame, envy, jealousy, and disgust.

WE B LI N K 3.3

Stress Management From the University of Nebraska’s (Lincoln) Department of Health and Human Performance, Wesley Sime provides both a general overview and an educational tutorial for issues involved in human stress management.

found that the frequency of pleasant emotions correlated positively with a measure of subjects’ resilience, whereas unpleasant emotions correlated negatively with resilience (see Figure 3.8). Based on their analyses, the researchers concluded that “positive emotions in the aftermath of crises buffer resilient people against depression and fuel thriving” (p. 365). Thus, contrary to common sense, positive emotions do not vanish during times of severe stress. Moreover, these positive emotions appear to play a key role in helping people bounce back from the negative emotions associated with stress (Tugade & Fredrickson, 2004). How do positive emotions promote resilience in the face of stress? Susan Folkman and Judith Moskowitz (2000) argue that positive emotions experienced while under duress can promote creativity and flexibility in problem solving, facilitate the processing of important

Positive Emotions

Although investigators have tended to focus heavily on the connection between stress and negative emotions, research shows that positive emotions also occur during periods of stress (Folkman, 1997). Although this finding seems counterintuitive, researchers have found that people experience a diverse array of pleasant emotions even while enduring the most dire of circumstances. Consider, for example, the results of a five-year study of coping patterns in 253 caregiving partners of men with AIDS (Folkman et al., 1997). Surprisingly, over the course of the study, the caregivers reported experiencing positive emotions about as often as they experienced negative emotions—except during the time immediately surrounding the death of their partners. Similar findings have been observed in some other studies of serious stress that made an effort to look for positive emotions. The most interesting was a recent study that examined subjects’ emotional functioning early in 2001 and then again in the weeks following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States (Fredrickson et al., 2003). Like most U.S. citizens, these subjects reported many negative emotions in the aftermath of 9/11, including anger, sadness, and fear. However, within this “dense cloud of anguish” positive emotions also emerged. For example, people felt gratitude for the safety of their loved ones; many took stock and counted their blessings; and quite a few reported renewed love for their friends and family. Fredrickson et al. (2003) also

Correlation Between Resilience and the Frequency of Selected Emotions in the Aftermath of 9/11 Correlation with resilience

Specific emotions Negative emotions Angry/irritated/annoyed

⫺.44*

Sad/downhearted/unhappy

⫺.29*

Scared/fearful/afraid

⫺.19

Disgust/distate/revulsion

⫺.09

Positive emotions Grateful/appreciative/thankful

.13

Glad/happy/joyful

.52*

Hopeful/optimistic/encouraged

.40*

Content/serene/peaceful

.47*

*Statistically significant

FIG U R E 3.8

Positive and negative emotions as correlates of resilience. In their study of emotional responses to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Fredrickson et al. (2003) asked subjects to rate the frequency with which they experienced 20 different emotions in the aftermath of 9/11. The frequency ratings for specific emotions were then correlated with a measure of participants’ resiliency. Representative results (for 8 of the 20 emotions studied) are shown here. As you can see, the frequency of pleasant emotions correlated positively with resiliency, whereas the opposite was true for negative emotions. (Adapted from Fredrickson et al., 2003) CHAPTER 3

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Effects of Emotional Arousal

Emotional responses are a natural and normal part of life. Even unpleasant emotions serve important purposes. Like physical pain, painful emotions can serve as warnings that one needs to take action. However, strong emotional arousal can also hamper efforts to cope with stress. For example, research has found that high emotional arousal can sometimes interfere with attention and memory retrieval and can impair judgment and decision making (Janis, 1993; Mandler, 1993). The well-known problem of test anxiety illustrates how emotional arousal can hurt performance. Often students who score poorly on an exam will nonetheless insist that they know the material. Many of them are probably telling the truth. Several researchers have

Simple

Courtesy, Susan Folkman

information about oneself, and reduce the adverse physiological effects of stress. Positive emotions can also enhance immune system functioning, increase valuable social support available from friends and family, and promote proactive coping efforts (Salovey et al., 2000). In sum, positive emotions can conSusan Folkman tribute to building social, intellectual, and physical resources that can be helpful in dealing with stress (Fredrickson, 1998, 2001). Research on the interface between stress and positive emotions is in its infancy, and much remains to be learned.

found a negative correlation between test-related anxiety and exam performance. That is, students who display high test anxiety tend to score low on exams (Hancock, 2001; Naveh-Benjamin et al., 1997). Test anxiety can interfere with test taking in several ways, but one critical consideration appears to be the disruption of attention to the test (Keough et al., 2004). Many testanxious students waste too much time worrying about how they’re doing and wondering whether others are having similar problems. In other words, their minds wander too much from the task of taking the test. Although emotional arousal may hurt coping efforts, this isn’t necessarily the case. The inverted-U hypothesis predicts that task performance should improve with increased emotional arousal—up to a point, after which further increases in arousal become disruptive and performance deteriorates (Anderson, 1990; Mandler, 1993). This idea is referred to as the inverted-U hypothesis because plotting performance as a function of arousal results in graphs that approximate an upsidedown U (see Figure 3.9). In these graphs, the level of arousal at which performance peaks is characterized as the optimal level of arousal for a task. This optimal level of arousal appears to depend in part on the complexity of the task at hand. The conventional wisdom is that as tasks become more complex, the optimal level of arousal (for peak performance) tends to decrease. This relationship is depicted in Figure 3.9. As you can see, a fairly high level of arousal should be optimal on simple tasks (such as driving eight hours to help a friend in a crisis). However, performance should

LEVEL OF TASK COMPLEXITY Medium

Complex

Performance level

High

Low Low

High Optimal Level of arousal

Low Optimal Level of arousal

High

Low Optimal Level of arousal

FIG U R E 3.9

Arousal and performance. Graphs of the relationship between emotional arousal and task performance tend to resemble an inverted U, as increased arousal is associated with improved performance up to a point, after which higher arousal leads to poorer performance. The optimal level of arousal for a task depends on the complexity of the task. On complex tasks, a relatively low level of arousal tends to be optimal. On simple tasks, however, performance may peak at a much higher level of arousal. 84

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High

peak at a lower level of arousal on complex tasks (such as making a major decision in which you have to weigh many factors). The research evidence on the inverted-U hypothesis is inconsistent and subject to varied interpretations (Neiss, 1988, 1990). Hence, it may be risky to generalize this principle to the complexities of everyday coping efforts. Nonetheless, the inverted-U hypothesis provides a plausible model of how emotional arousal could have either beneficial or disruptive effects on coping, depending on the nature of the stressful demands.

Physiological Responses As we have seen, stress frequently elicits strong emotional responses. These responses bring about important physiological changes. Even in cases of moderate stress, you may notice that your heart has started beating faster, you have begun to breathe harder, and you are perspiring more than usual. How does all this (and much more) happen? Let’s see. The “Fight-or-Flight” Response

The fight-or-flight response is a physiological reaction to threat that mobilizes an organism for attacking (fight) or fleeing (flight) an enemy. First described by Walter Cannon (1932), the fight-or-flight response occurs in the body’s autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system (ANS) is made up of the

nerves that connect to the heart, blood vessels, smooth muscles, and glands. As its name hints, the autonomic nervous system is somewhat autonomous. That is, it controls involuntary, visceral functions that people don’t normally think about, such as heart rate, digestion, and perspiration. The autonomic nervous system can be broken into two divisions (see Figure 3.10). The parasympathetic division of the ANS generally conserves bodily resources. For instance, it slows heart rate and promotes digestion to help the body save and store energy. The fight-orflight response is mediated by the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system, which mobilizes bodily resources for emergencies. In one experiment, Cannon studied the fight-or-flight response in cats by confronting them with dogs. Among other things, he noticed an immediate acceleration in breathing and heart rate and a reduction in digestive processes. Shelley Taylor and her colleagues (2000) have questioned whether the fight-or-flight model applies equally well to both males and females. They note that in most species females have more responsibility for the care of young offspring than males do. Using an evolutionary perspective, they argue that this disparity may make fighting and fleeing less adaptive for females, as both responses may endanger offspring and thus reduce the likelihood of an animal passing on its genes. Taylor and colleagues maintain that evolutionary processes have fostered more of a “tend and befriend” response

SYMPATHETIC Pupils dilated; dry; far vision

Eyes

PARASYMPATHETIC Pupils constricted; moist; near vision

Goosebumps

Skin

No goosebumps

Dry

Mouth

Salivating

Sweaty

Palms

Dry

Passages dilated

Lungs

Passages constricted

Increased rate Supply maximum to muscles Increased activity

Heart Blood

Decreased rate Supply maximum to internal organs Decreased activity

Adrenal glands

Inhibited Digestion Stimulated Orgasm

Sexual functions

Arousal

F I G U R E 3.10

The autonomic nervous system (ANS). The ANS is composed of the nerves that connect to the heart, blood vessels, smooth muscles, and glands. The ANS is subdivided into the sympathetic division, which mobilizes bodily resources in times of need, and the parasympathetic division, which conserves bodily resources. Some of the key functions controlled by each division of the ANS are summarized in the center of the diagram. CHAPTER 3

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DILBERT reprinted by permission of United Features Syndicate, Inc.

WE B LI N K 3.4

The American Institute of Stress The American Institute of Stress is a nonprofit organization established in 1978 at the request of stress pioneer Hans Selye. Its Board of Trustees reads like a who’s who of stress research. The resources available online are a bit limited, as one has to send for the information packets published by the institute. But the site contains an interesting tribute to Selye.

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complex responses. Moreover, these chronic stressors often continue for lengthy periods of time, so that the fight-or-flight response leaves one in a state of enduring physiological arousal. Concern about the effects of prolonged physical arousal was first voiced by Hans Selye, a Canadian scientist who conducted extensive research on stress. The General Adaptation Syndrome

The concept of stress was popularized in both scientific and lay circles by Hans Selye (1936, 1956, 1982). Although born in Vienna, Selye spent his entire professional career at McGill University in Montreal. Beginning in the 1930s, Selye exposed laboratory animals to a diverse array of both physical and Hans Selye psychological stressors (heat, cold, pain, mild shock, restraint, and so on). The patterns of physiological arousal he observed in the animals were largely the same, regardless of the type of stress. Thus, Selye concluded that stress reactions are nonspecific. In other words, they do not vary according to the specific type of stress encountered. Initially, Selye wasn’t sure what to call this nonspecific response to a variety of noxious agents. In the 1940s, he decided to call it stress, and his influential writings gradually helped make the word part of our everyday vocabulary (Cooper & Dewe, 2004). Selye (1956, 1974) formulated a seminal theory of stress reactions called the general adaptation syndrome (see Figure 3.11). The general adaptation syndrome is a model of the body’s stress response, consisting of three stages: alarm, resistance, and exhaustion. In the first stage of the general adaptation syndrome, an alarm reaction occurs when an organism recognizes the existence of a threat. Physiological arousal increases as the body musters its resources to combat the challenge. Selye’s alarm reaction is essentially the fight-or-flight response originally described by Cannon.

© Bettmann/Corbis

to stress in females. According to this analysis, in reacting to stress, females allocate more effort to the care of offspring and to seeking help and support. More research is needed to evaluate this provocative analysis. Although there may be sex differences in behavioral responses to stress, as hypothesized by Taylor and her colleagues, they are quick to note that the “basic neuroendocrine core of stress responses” is largely the same for males and females. The fight-or-flight response is not limited to the animal kingdom. Elements of the fight-or-flight response are also seen in humans. Imagine your reaction if your car were to spin out of control on the highway. Your heart would race, and your blood pressure would surge. You might get “goosebumps” and experience a “knot in your stomach.” These reflex responses are part of the fight-or-flight syndrome seen in many species. In a sense, this automatic reaction is a leftover from our evolutionary past. It is clearly an adaptive response for many animals, as the threat of predators often requires a swift response of fighting or fleeing. Likewise, the fight-or-flight response probably was adaptive among ancestral humans who routinely had to deal with acute stressors involving threats to their physical safety. But in our modern world, the fight-or-flight response may be less adaptive for human functioning than it was thousands of generations ago (Neese & Young, 2000). Most modern stressors cannot be handled simply through fight or flight. Work pressures, marital problems, and financial difficulties require far more

Resistance to stress

model provided guidance for generations of researchers who worked out the details of how stress reverberates throughout the body. Let’s look at some of those details. Brain-Body Pathways

When you experience stress, your brain sends signals to the endocrine system along two major pathways (Clow, 2001; Dallman, Bhatnagar, & Viau, 2000; Felker & Hubbard, 1998). The endocrine system consists of glands that secrete chemicals called hormones into the bloodstream. The major endocrine glands, such as the pituitary, pineal, thyroid, and adrenal glands, are shown in Figure 3.12. The hypothalamus, a small structure near the base of the brain, appears to initiate action along both pathways. The first pathway (shown on the right in Figure 3.13 on the next page) is routed through the autonomic nervous system. The hypothalamus activates the sympathetic division of the ANS. A key part of this acti-

Normal level of resistance

Phase 1 Alarm reaction

Phase 2 Stage of resistance

Phase 3 Stage of exhaustion

Time

F I G U R E 3.11

The general adaptation syndrome. According to Selye, the physiological response to stress can be broken into three phases. During the first phase, the body mobilizes its resources for resistance after a brief initial shock. In the second phase, resistance levels off and eventually begins to decline. If the third phase of the general adaptation syndrome is reached, resistance is depleted, leading to health problems and exhaustion.

However, Selye took his investigation of stress a couple of steps further by exposing laboratory animals to prolonged stress, similar to the chronic stress often endured by humans. If stress continues, the organism may progress to the second phase of the general adaptation syndrome, called the stage of resistance. During this phase, physiological changes stabilize as coping efforts get under way. Typically, physiological arousal continues to be higher than normal, although it may level off somewhat as the organism becomes accustomed to the threat. If the stress continues over a substantial period of time, the organism may enter the third stage, called the stage of exhaustion. According to Selye, the body’s resources for fighting stress are limited. If the stress cannot be overcome, the body’s resources may be depleted, and physiological arousal will decrease. Eventually, the individual may collapse from exhaustion. During this phase, the organism’s resistance declines. This reduced resistance may lead to what Selye called “diseases of adaptation,” such as ulcers or high blood pressure. Selye’s theory and research forged a link between stress and physical illness. He showed how prolonged physiological arousal that is meant to be adaptive could lead to diseases. His theory has been criticized because it ignores individual differences in the appraisal of stress (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), and his belief that stress reactions are nonspecific remains the subject of debate (Kemeny, 2003; McCarty & Pacak, 2000). However, his

Pineal gland

Hypothalamus Anterior pituitary

Posterior pituitary

Parathyroids (behind thyroid)

Thyroid

Adrenal gland Pancreas

Ovary (female)

Testis (male)

F I G U R E 3. 12

The endocrine system. The endocrine glands secrete hormones into the bloodstream. The locations of the principal endocrine glands are shown here. The hormones released by these glands regulate a variety of physical functions and play a key role in the physiological response to stress. CHAPTER 3

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Stress

Pituitary

Hypothalamus

Autonomic nervous system (sympathetic division)

Adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH)

Adrenal medulla Adrenal cortex

SECRETION OF CORTICOSTEROIDS Increased protein and fat mobilization Increased access to energy storage Decreased inflammation

SECRETION OF CATECHOLAMINES Increased cardiovascular response Increased respiration Increased perspiration Increased blood flow to active muscles Increased muscle strength Increased mental activity

FIG U R E 3.13

Brain-body pathways in stress. In times of stress, the brain sends signals along two pathways. The pathway through the autonomic nervous system (shown in blue on the right) controls the release of catecholamine hormones that help mobilize the body for action. The pathway through the pituitary gland and the endocrine system (shown in brown on the left) controls the release of corticosteroid hormones that increase energy and ward off tissue inflammation.

tating alertness. Digestive processes are inhibited to conserve your energy. The pupils of your eyes dilate, increasing visual sensitivity. The second pathway (shown on the left in Figure 3.13) involves more direct communication between the brain and the endocrine system. The hypothalamus sends signals to the so-called master gland of the endocrine system, the pituitary gland. The pituitary secretes a hormone (ACTH) that stimulates the outer part of the adrenal glands (the adrenal cortex) to release another important set of hormones—corticosteroids. These hormones stimulate the release of chemicals that help increase your energy and help inhibit tissue inflammation in case of injury (Munck, 2000). Stress can also produce other physiological changes that we are just beginning to understand. The most critical changes occur in the immune system. Your immune system provides you with resistance to infections. However, evidence indicates that stress can suppress certain aspects of the multifaceted immune response, reducing its overall effectiveness in repelling invasions by infectious agents (Chiappelli & Hodgson, 2000). In a thorough review of 30 years of research on stress and immunity, Segerstrom and Miller (2004) conclude that chronic stress can reduce both cellular immune responses (which attack intracellular pathogens, such as viruses) and humoral immune responses (which attack extracellular pathogens, such as bacteria). They also report that the duration of a stressful event is a key factor determining its impact on immune function. Long-lasting stressors, such as caring for a seriously ill spouse or enduring unemployment for months, are associated with greater immune suppression than relatively brief stressors. The exact mechanisms underlying immune suppression are complicated, but it appears likely that both sets of stress hormones (catecholamines and corticosteroids) contribute (Dantzer & Mormede, 1995). In any case, it is becoming clear that physiological responses to stress extend into every corner of the body. Moreover, some of these responses may persist long after a stressful event has ended (Esterling et al., 1994). As you will see, these physiological reactions can have an impact on both mental and physical health.

Behavioral Responses vation involves stimulating the central part of the adrenal glands (the adrenal medulla) to release large amounts of catecholamines into the bloodstream. These hormones radiate throughout your body, producing many important physiological changes. The net result of catecholamine elevation is that your body is mobilized for action (Lundberg, 2000). Heart rate and blood flow increase, pumping more blood to your brain and muscles. Respiration and oxygen consumption speed up, facili-

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Although people respond to stress at several levels, their behavior is the crucial dimension of these reactions. Emotional and physiological responses to stress—which are often undesirable—tend to be largely automatic. However, dealing effectively with stress at the behavioral level may shut down these potentially harmful emotional and physiological reactions. Most behavioral responses to stress involve coping. Coping refers to active efforts to master, reduce,

or tolerate the demands created by stress. Notice that this definition is neutral as to whether coping efforts are healthy or maladaptive. The popular use of the term often implies that coping is inherently healthy. When we say that someone “coped with her problems,” we imply that she handled them effectively. In reality, coping responses may be either healthy or unhealthy (Moos & Schaefer, 1993). For example, if you were flunking a history course at midterm, you might cope with this stress by (1) increasing your study efforts, (2) seeking help from a tutor, (3) blaming your professor for your poor grade, or (4) giving up on the

class. Clearly, the first two coping responses would be healthier than the second two. People cope with stress in an endless variety of ways. Because of the complexity and importance of coping processes, we’ll devote all of the next chapter to ways of coping. At this point, it is sufficient to note that coping strategies help determine whether stress has any positive or negative effects on an individual. In the next section, we’ll see what some of those effects can be as we discuss the possible outcomes of people’s struggles with stress.

The Potential Effects of Stress LEARNING OBJECTIVES ■ ■

■ ■

Explain the phenomenon of choking under pressure. Summarize evidence on how stress can affect cognitive functioning. Describe the symptoms and causes of burnout. Discuss the prevalence, symptoms, and causes of posttraumatic stress disorder.

People struggle with many stressors every day, most of which come and go without leaving any enduring imprint. However, when stress is severe or when demands pile up, stress may have long-lasting effects. These effects, often called “adaptational outcomes,” are relatively durable (though not necessarily permanent) consequences of exposure to stress. Although stress can have beneficial effects, research has focused mainly on possible negative outcomes, so you’ll find our coverage slanted in that direction.

Discuss the potential impact of stress on mental and physical health. Describe positive psychology and three ways in which stress might lead to beneficial effects.

professional sports teams in championship contests (Baumeister, 1995; Baumeister & Steinhilber, 1984). These findings were particularly impressive in that gifted professional athletes are probably less likely to choke under pressure than virtually any other sample one might assemble. Laboratory research on “normal” subjects is more pertinent to the issue, and it suggests that choking under pressure is fairly common (Butler & Baumeister, 1998; Lewis & Linder, 1997).

Impaired Task Performance

Disruption of Cognitive Functioning

Frequently, stress takes its toll on the ability to perform effectively on a task at hand. For instance, Roy Baumeister (1984) theorized that pressure to perform often makes people self-conscious and that this elevated self-consciousness disrupts their attention, thereby interfering with performance. He theorizes that attention may be distorted in two ways. First, elevated selfconsciousness may divert attention from the demands of the task, creating distractions. Second, on well-learned tasks that should be executed almost automatically, the self-conscious person may focus too much attention on the task. Thus, the person thinks too much about what he or she is doing. Baumeister (1984) found support for his theory in a series of laboratory experiments in which he manipulated the pressure to perform well on a simple perceptual-motor task. His theory also garnered some support in a pair of studies of the past performance of

An interesting experimental study suggests that Baumeister is on the right track in looking to attention to explain how stress impairs task performance. In a study of stress and decision making, Keinan (1987) was able to measure three specific aspects of subjects’ attention under stressful and nonstressful conditions. Keinan found that stress disrupted two out of the three aspects of attention measured in the study. Stress increased subjects’ tendency (1) to jump to a conclusion too quickly without considering all their options and (2) to do an unsystematic, poorly organized review of their available options. The results of some studies also suggest that stress can have detrimental effects on certain aspects of memory functioning (Kellogg, Hopko, & Ashcraft, 1999; Shors, 2004). Severe stress may leave people dazed and confused, in a state of shock (Valent, 2000; Weisaeth, 1993). In these states, people report feeling emotionally numb,

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and they respond in a flat, apathetic fashion to events around them. They often stare off into space and have difficulty maintaining a coherent train of thought. Their behavior frequently has an automatic, rigid, stereotyped quality. Fortunately, this disorientation usually occurs only in extreme situations involving overwhelming stress, such as surviving a fire, a flood, or a tornado.

Antecedents of burnout

Burnout Burnout is an overused buzzword that means different things to different people. Nonetheless, a few researchers have described burnout in a systematic way that has facilitated scientific study of the syndrome (Maslach & Leiter, 1997; Pines, 1993). Burnout involves physical and emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and a lowered sense of self-efficacy that is attributable to workrelated stress. Exhaustion, which is central to burnout, includes chronic fatigue, weakness, and low energy. Cynicism is manifested in highly negative attitudes toward oneself, one’s work, and life in general. Reduced self-efficacy involves declining feelings of competence at work that give way to feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. What causes burnout? According to Leiter and Maslach (2001), “burnout is a cumulative stress reaction to ongoing occupational stressors” (p. 418). The conventional wisdom is that burnout occurs because of some flaw or weakness within the person, but Christina Maslach (2003) asserts that “the research case is much stronger for the contrasting argument that burnout is more a function of the situation than of the person” (p. 191). Factors in the workplace that appear to promote burnout include work overload, interpersonal conflicts at work, lack of control over work responsibilities and outcomes, and inadequate recognition for one’s work (see Figure 3.14). As you might expect, burnout is associated with increased absenteeism and reduced productivity at work, as well as increased vulnerability to a variety of health problems (Maslach & Leiter, 2000).

Posttraumatic Stress Disorders Extremely stressful, traumatic incidents can leave a lasting imprint on victims’ psychological functioning. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) involves enduring psychological disurbance attributed to the experience of a major traumatic event. Researchers began to appreciate the frequency and severity of posttraumatic stress disorders after the Vietnam war ended in 1975 and a great many psychologically scarred veterans returned home. These veterans displayed a diverse array of psychological problems and symptoms that in many cases lingered much longer than expected. Studies suggest that nearly a half million Vietnam veterans were

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Components of burnout

Consequences of burnout

Work overload

Increased physical illness

Lack of social support

Increased absenteeism, turnover

Exhaustion Cynicism

Lack of control, autonomy

Inadequate recognition, rewards

Lowered self-efficacy

Decreased commitment to job

Reduced productivity

F I G U R E 3. 14

The antecedents, components, and consequences of burnout. Christina Maslach and Michael Leiter have developed a systematic model of burnout that specifies its antecedents, components, and consequences. The antecedents on the left in the diagram are the stressful features of the work environment that cause burnout. The burnout syndrome itself consists of the three components shown in the center of the diagram. Some of the unfortunate results of burnout are listed on the right. (Based on Leiter & Maslach, 2001)

still suffering from PTSD over a decade after the end of the war (Schlenger et al., 1992). Although posttraumatic stress disorders are widely associated with the experiences of Vietnam veterans, they are seen in response to other cases of traumatic stress as well, and they appear to be much more common than originally believed. Research suggests that 7–8 percent of people have suffered from PTSD at some point in their lives, with prevalence higher among women (10 percent) than men (5 percent) (Ozer et al.,

WE B LI N K 3.5

National Center for PTSD Maintained by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, this exceptionally rich site is devoted to the understanding and treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder. The site has well-organized materials for both professionals and the public and includes a wealth of new postings related to the psychological consequences of terrorism.

2003). PTSD is seen in children as well as adults (La Greca, 2000). In some instances, PTSD does not surface until many months or years after a person’s exposure to severe stress (Holen, 2000). What types of stress besides combat are severe enough to produce PTSD? The syndrome is frequently seen after a rape, a serious automobile accident, a robbery or assault, or the witnessing of someone’s death (Koren, Arnon, & Klein, 1999; Stein et al., 1997b). Studies indicate that PTSD is also common in the wake of major disasters, such as floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, and so forth (Koopman, Classen, & Spiegel, 1994; Vernberg et al., 1996). Vulnerability to PTSD is not limited to victims, survivors, and witnesses of traumatic events. Rescue workers and cleanup crews who have to grapple with the gruesome carnage of major disasters, dangerous working conditions, and tremendous fatigue also have an elevated risk for PTSD and often are “forgotten victims” of disasters (Ursano et al., 1999). Unfortunately, research by Stein et al. (1997b) suggests that the various types of traumatic events that can cause PTSD are more common than most people realize (see Figure 3.15). What are the symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorders? Common symptoms include reexperiencing the traumatic event in the form of nightmares and flashbacks, emotional numbing, alienation, problems in social relations, and elevated arousal, anxiety, and guilt (Flannery, 1999; Shalev, 2001). PTSD is also associated with an elevated risk for substance abuse, depression, and anxiety disorders, as well as a great variety of physical health problems (Fairbank, Ebert, & Caddell, 2001). The frequency and severity of post-

WE B LI N K 3.6

David Baldwin’s Trauma Information Pages This site has long been recognized as the premier repository for web-based and other resources relating to emotional trauma, traumatic stress, and posttraumatic stress disorder. David Baldwin has assembled more than 1000 links to information about these issues.

traumatic symptoms usually decline gradually over time, but in many cases the symptoms never completely disappear. Although PTSD is fairly common in the wake of traumatic events, the vast majority of people who experience such events do not develop PTSD (Ozer & Weiss, 2004). Hence, a current focus of research is to determine what factors make certain people more susceptible than others to the ravages of severe stress. According to McKeever and Huff (2003), this vulnerability probably depends on complex interactions among a host of biological and environmental factors. One key predictor that emerged in a recent review of the relevant research is the intensity of one’s reaction at the time of the traumatic event (Ozer et al., 2003). Individuals who have especially intense emotional reactions during or immediately after the traumatic event go on to show elevated vulnerability to PTSD. Vulnerability seems to be greatest among people whose reactions are so intense that they report dissociative experiences (a sense that things are not real, that time is stretching out, that one is watching oneself in a movie). You can consult Chapter 15 for a fuller discussion of PTSD risk factors.

The prevalence of traumatic events. We tend to think that traumatic events are relatively unusual and infrequent, but research by Stein et al. (1997b) suggests otherwise. When they interviewed over 1000 people in Winnipeg, they found that 74.2 percent of the women and 81.3 percent of the men reported having experienced at least one highly traumatic event. The percentage of respondents reporting specific types of traumatic events are summarized in this graph.

Men Women

Natural disaster

FIG U R E 3.15

Men Physical attack Women Men Robbery/holdup Women Serious Men auto accident Women Witnessing severe Men injury or death Women Sexual molestation Men before 18 Women Men Rape Women 0

5

10

15 20 25 30 PERCENT REPORTING TRAUMA

35

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© Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters/Corbis

Major disasters, such as the December 2004 tsunami that devastated vast regions of Southeast Asia, are just one of about a half-dozen types of calamitous events that frequently lead to posstraumatic stress disorders.

Psychological Problems and Disorders Posttraumatic stress disorders are caused by an acute episode of extreme stress. Of greater relevance to most of us are the effects of chronic, prolonged, everyday stress. On the basis of clinical impressions, psychologists have long suspected that chronic stress might contribute to many types of psychological problems and mental disorders. Since the late 1960s, advances in the measurement of stress have allowed researchers to verify these suspicions in empirical studies. In the domain of common psychological problems, studies indicate that stress may contribute to poor academic performance (Akgun & Ciarrochi, 2003), insomnia and other sleep disturbances (Vgontzas, Bixler, & Kales, 2000), sexual difficulties (Lemack, Uzzo, & Poppas, 1998), alcohol abuse (Colder, 2001), and drug abuse (Goeders, 2004). Above and beyond these everyday problems, research reveals that stress often contributes to the onset of full-fledged psychological disorders, including depression (Rehm, Wagner, & Ivens-Tyndal, 2001), schizophrenia (McGlashan & Hoffman, 2000), anxiety disorders (Falsetti & Ballenger, 1998), and eating disorders (Cooper, 1995). We’ll discuss the complex relations between stress and mental disorders in detail in Chapter 15.

Physical Illness Stress can also have an impact on one’s physical health. The idea that stress can contribute to physical ailments is not entirely new. Evidence that stress can cause phys92

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ical illness began to accumulate back in the 1930s. By the 1950s, the concept of psychosomatic disease was widely accepted. Psychosomatic diseases were defined as genuine physical ailments thought to be caused in part by stress and other psychological factors. The classic psychosomatic illnesses were high blood pressure, peptic ulcers, asthma, skin disorders such as eczema and hives, and migraine and tension headaches (Kaplan, 1989; Rogers, Fricchione, & Reich, 1999). Please note, these diseases were not regarded as imagined physical ailments. The term psychosomatic has often been misused to refer to physical ailments that are “all in one’s head,” but that is an entirely different syndrome (see Chapter 15). Rather, psychosomatic diseases were viewed as authentic organic maladies that were heavily stress related. Since the 1970s, the concept of psychosomatic disease has gradually fallen into disuse because research has shown that stress can contribute to the development of a diverse array of other diseases previously believed to be purely physiological in origin. Although there is room for debate on some specific diseases, stress may influence the onset and course of heart disease, stroke, tuberculosis, multiple sclerosis, arthritis, diabetes, leukemia, cancer, various types of infectious disease, and probably many other types of illnesses (Critelli & Ee, 1996; Dougall & Baum, 2001; Hubbard & Workman, 1998). Thus, it has become apparent that there is nothing unique about the psychosomatic diseases that requires a special category. Modern evidence continues to demonstrate that the classic psychosomatic diseases are influenced by stress, but so are numerous other diseases (Levenson et al., 1999). Of course, stress is only one of many factors that may contribute to the develop-

ment of physical illness. Nonetheless, it is sobering to realize that stress can have an impact on one’s physical health.

Positive Effects The effects of stress are not entirely negative. Recent years have brought increased interest in positive aspects of the stress process, including favorable outcomes that follow in the wake of stress (Folkman & Moskowitz, 2000). To some extent, the new focus on the possible benefits of stress reflects a new emphasis on “positive psychology.” Some influential theorists have argued that the field of psychology has historically devoted too much attention to pathology, weakness, and damage and how to heal suffering (Seligman, 2003). This approach has yielded valuable insights and progress, but it has also resulted in an unfortunate neglect of the forces that make life worth living. The positive psychology movement seeks to shift the field’s focus away from negative experiences. As Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2000) put it, “The aim of positive psychology is to begin to catalyze a change in the focus of psychology from preoccupation with only repairing the worst things in life to also building positive qualities” (p. 5). The advocates of positive psychology argue for increased research on well-being, contentment, hope, courage, perseverance, nurturance, tolerance, and other human strengths and virtues (Aspinwall & Staudinger, 2003; Peterson & Seligman, 2004). One of these strengths is resilience in the face of stress, which promises to be a burgeoning area of research in the years to come. The beneficial effects of stress may prove more difficult to pinpoint than the harmful effects because they may be more subtle. Although research data are sparse, there appear to be at least three ways in which stress can have positive effects. First, stressful events help satisfy the need for stimulation and challenge. Studies suggest that most people prefer an intermediate level of stimulation and challenge in their lives (Sutherland, 2000). Although we think of stress in terms of stimulus overload, underload can be stressful as well (Goldberger, 1993). Thus, most people would experience a suffocating level of boredom if they lived a stress-free existence. In a sense, then, stress fulfills a basic need of the human organism. Second, stress can promote personal growth or selfimprovement (Tedeschi, Park, & Calhoun, 1998). For example, studies of people grappling with major health problems show that the majority report having derived benefits from their adversity (Tennen & Affleck, 1999). Stressful events sometimes force people to develop new skills, reevaluate priorities, learn new insights, and acquire new strengths. In other words, the adaptation process initiated by stress may lead to personal changes that are changes for the better. Confronting and con-

R EC O M M EN D ED R EA D IN G

Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping by Robert M. Sapolsky (W. H. Freeman, 1998) This book provides a superb, wide-ranging discussion of the nature and effects of stress. The author is a neuroscientist at Stanford University whose research focuses on such issues as the relationship between stress and the cellular and molecular events underlying neural decay in the hippocampal area of the brain. That is not the type of résumé that you would normally associate with lively, witty discourse, but the book is written with flair and humor. Sapolsky’s basic thesis is that the physiological response to stress is a remnant of evolution that is no longer adaptive for the majority of stressful situations that humans face. He outlines in detail how neuroendocrine responses to stress can cause or worsen a host of physical and psychological afflictions, including cardiovascular disease, ulcers, colitis, diarrhea, infectious diseases, and depression. Sapolsky does an excellent job of making complicated research understandable. Although opinionated, his overviews of research are scientifically sound and thoroughly documented in notes at the back of the book. Although this is not a coping manual, it is probably the most insightful and interesting dissection of the stress response available today and is highly worthwhile reading. Cover © 1998 by Henry Holt and Co. Reprinted by permission, Henry Holt & Co., LLC.

quering a stressful challenge may lead to improvements in specific coping abilities and to an enhanced selfconcept. For example, a breakup with a boyfriend or a girlfriend may lead individuals to change aspects of their behavior that they find unsatisfactory. Moreover, even if people do not conquer stressors, they may be able to learn from their mistakes. Thus, researchers have begun to explore the growth potential of stressful events (Calhoun & Tedeschi, 2001; Park & Fenster, 2004). Third, today’s stress can inoculate individuals so that they are less affected by tomorrow’s stress. Some studies suggest that exposure to stress can increase stress tolerance—as long as the stress isn’t overwhelming (Meichenbaum, 1993). Thus, a woman who has previously endured business setbacks may be much better prepared than most people to deal with a bank foreclosure on her home. In light of the negative effects that stress can have, improved stress tolerance is a desirable goal. We’ll look next at the factors that influence the ability to tolerate stress. CHAPTER 3

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Factors Influencing Stress Tolerance LEARNING OBJECTIVES ■ ■

Explain how social support moderates the impact of stress. Describe the hardiness syndrome and how it influences stress tolerance. Discuss how optimism is related to stress tolerance.

Some people seem to be able to withstand the ravages of stress better than others (Holahan & Moos, 1990, 1994). Why? Because a number of moderator variables can soften the impact of stress on physical and mental health. To shed light on differences in how well people tolerate stress, we’ll look at a number of key moderator variables, including social support, hardiness, and optimism. As you’ll see, these factors influence people’s emotional, physical, and behavioral responses to stress. These complexities are diagrammed in Figure 3.16, which builds on Figure 3.7 to provide a more

complete overview of the factors involved in individual reactions to stress.

Social Support Friends may be good for your health! This startling conclusion emerges from studies on social support as a moderator of stress. Social support refers to various types of aid and succor provided by members of one’s social networks. For example, Jemmott and Magloire (1988) examined the effect of social support on

Moderating variables influencing stress tolerance Social support, hardiness, optimism, sensation seeking, autonomic reactivity

Emotional response

Annoyance, anger, anxiety, fear, dejection, grief, guilt, shame, envy, disgust

Potentially stressful objective events

Subjective cognitive appraisal

A major exam, a big date, trouble with your boss, or a financial setback, which may lead to frustration, conflict, change, or pressure

Primary and secondary appraisals of threat, which are influenced by familiarity with the event, its controllability, its predictability, and so on

Physiological response Autonomic arousal, hormonal fluctuations, neurochemical changes, and so on

Behavioral response Coping efforts, such as lashing out at others, blaming oneself, seeking help, solving problems, and releasing emotions

FIG U R E 3.16

Overview of the stress process. This diagram builds on Figure 3.7 (the multidimensional response to stress) to provide a more complete overview of the factors involved in stress. This diagram adds the potential effects of stress (seen on the far right) by listing some of the positive and negative adaptational outcomes that may result from stress. It also completes the picture by showing that moderating variables (seen at the top) can intervene to influence the effects of stress.

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Positive adaptational outcomes Desirable effects such as learning a new skill, increased self-esteem, and improved coping ability

Negative adaptational outcomes Undesirable effects such as physical illness, psychological problems, burnout, and impaired task performance

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© Ghislain & Marie David de Lossy/The Image Bank/Getty Images Courtesy, Suzanne Ouellette

immune response in a group of students going through the stress of final exams. They found that students who reported stronger social support had higher levels of an antibody that plays a key role in warding off respiratory infections. Positive correlations between high social support and greater immunal functioning have been observed in quite a number of studies with diverse samples (Uchino, Cacioppo, & KiecoltGlaser, 1996). Over the last two decades, a vast body of studies have found evidence that social support is favorably related to physical health (Wills & Fegan, 2001). Social support seems to be good medicine for the mind as The availability of social support is a key factor influencing stress tolerance. Decades of well as the body, as most studies also research have shown that social support reduces the negative effects of stress and has positive effects of its own. find an association between social support and mental health (Davis, Morris, & Kraus, 1998; Sarason, Pierce, & Sarason, Hardiness 1994). It appears that social support serves as a protecAnother line of research indicates tive buffer during times of high stress, reducing the that a syndrome called hardiness negative impact of stressful events—and that social supmay moderate the impact of stressport has its own positive effects on health, which may ful events. Suzanne (Kobasa) Ouelbe apparent even when people aren’t under great stress lette reasoned that if stress affects (Peirce et al., 1996; Wills & Fegan, 2001). The stresssome people less than others, then buffering effects of social support were apparent in a some people must be hardier than study that found strong social support to be a key facothers. Hence, she set out to detertor reducing the likelihood of posttraumatic stress dismine what factors might be the key Suzanne Ouellette orders among Vietnam veterans (King et al., 1998). to these differences in hardiness. The mechanisms underlying the connection beKobasa (1979) used a modified version of the tween social support and wellness have been the subHolmes and Rahe (1967) stress scale (SRRS) to meaject of considerable debate (Hobfoll & Vaux, 1993). A sure the amount of stress experienced by a group of variety of mechanisms may be at work. Among other executives. As in most other studies, she found a modthings, social support could promote wellness by: makest correlation between stress and the incidence of ing appraisals of stressful events more benign, dampphysical illness. However, she carried her investigation ening the intensity of physiological reactions to stress, one step further than previous studies. She compared reducing health-impairing behaviors such as smoking the high-stress executives who exhibited the expected and drinking, encouraging preventive behaviors such as high incidence of illness against the high-stress execuregular exercise and medical checkups, and fostering tives who stayed healthy. She administered a battery of more constructive coping efforts (Wills & Fegan, 2001). psychological tests and found that the hardier execuInterestingly, a recent study suggests that providing tives “were more committed, felt more in control, and social support to others can also be beneficial (Brown et had bigger appetites for challenge” (Kobasa, 1984, p. al., 2003). Another study found that the personality trait 70). These traits have also shown up in many other studof sociability (being friendly and agreeable), which ceries of hardiness (Maddi, 1999, 2002; Ouellette, 1993). tainly helps people to build supportive social networks, Thus, hardiness is a syndrome marked by comis independently associated with reduced susceptibility mitment, challenge, and control that is purportedly to infectious disease (Cohen et al., 2003). Yet another associated with strong stress resistance. Hardiness study has demonstrated that pet owners view their pets may reduce the effects of stress by altering stress apas sources of support in their lives, with resultant health praisals or fostering more active coping (Crowley, Haybenefits (Allen, Blascovich, & Mendes, 2002). Thus, it slip, & Hobdy, 2003; Maddi & Hightower, 1999). The appears that social support is not the only feature of our benefits of hardiness showed up in a study of Vietnam social relations that has some bearing on our wellness.

CALVIN AND HOBBES © Watterson. Reprinted with permission of UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE. All rights reserved.

veterans, which found that higher hardiness was related to a lower likelihood of developing posttraumatic stress disorders (King et al., 1998). Although the research on hardiness is promising, there is extensive debate about how to measure hardiness and about its key elements (Klag & Bradley, 2004; Oullette & DiPlacido, 2001; Younkin & Betz, 1996).

their own personal shortcomings, versus an optimistic explanatory style, which leads people to attribute setbacks to temporary situational factors. In two retrospective studies of people born many decades ago, they found an association between this optimistic explanatory style and relatively good health (Peterson, Seligman, & Vaillant, 1988) and increased longevity (Peter-

Optimism Measuring Optimism

Defining optimism as a general tendency to expect good outcomes, Michael Scheier and Charles Carver (1985) found a correlation between optimism as measured by the Life Orientation Test (see Figure 3.17) and relatively good physical health in a sample of college students. In another study that focused on surgical patients, optimism was found to be associated with a faster recovery and a quicker return to normal activities after coronary artery bypass surgery (Scheier et al., 1989). Yet another study found optimism to be associated with more effective immune functioning (Segerstrom et al., 1998). Twenty years of research with the Life Orientation Test has consistently shown that optimism is associated with better mental and physical health (Scheier, Carver, & Bridges, 2001). In a related line of research, Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman have studied how people explain bad events (personal setbacks, mishaps, disappointments, and such). They identified a pessimistic explanatory style, in which people tend to blame setbacks on

In the following spaces, mark how much you agree with each of the items, using the following scale: 4 = strongly agree 3 = agree 2 = neutral 1 = disagree 0 = strongly disagree ______

1. In uncertain times, I usually expect the best.

______

2. It’s easy for me to relax.

______

3. If something can go wrong for me, it will.

______

4. I always look on the bright side of things.

______

5. I’m always optimistic about my future.

______

6. I enjoy my friends a lot.

______

7. It’s important for me to keep busy.

______

8. I hardly ever expect things to go my way.

______

9. Things never work out the way I want them to.

______ 10. I don’t get upset too easily. ______ 11. I’m a believer in the idea that “every cloud has a silver lining.” ______ 12. I rarely count on good things happening to me.

FIG U R E 3.17

The Life Orientation Test (LOT). The personality trait of optimism, which appears to foster resilience in the face of stress, can be measured by the Life Orientation Test (LOT) developed by Scheier and Carver (1985). Follow the instructions for this scale to obtain an estimate of your own optimism. High and low scores are based on scoring three-fifths of a standard deviation above or below the mean. Adapted from Scheier, M. F., & Carver, C. S. (1985). Optimism, coping, and health: Assessment and implications of generalized outcome expectancies. Health Psychology, 4, 219–247. Copyright © 1985 Lawrence Erlbaum & Associates. Adapted by permission of the publisher and authors.

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Scoring Cross out and ignore the responses you entered for items 2, 6, 7, and 10, which are “filler” items. For items 3, 8, 9, and 12, you need to reverse the numbers you entered. If you entered a 4, change it to 0. If you entered a 3, change it to 1. If you entered a 2, leave it unchanged. If you entered a 1, change it to 3. If you entered a 0, change it to 4. Now add up the numbers for items 1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, 12, using the new numbers for the reversed items. This sum is your score on the Life Orientation Test. For college students, approximate norms are as follows: High score (25–32), intermediate score (18–24), low score (0–17).

son et al., 1998). Many other studies have linked the optimistic explanatory style to superior physical health (Peterson & Bossio, 2001), as well as higher academic achievement, increased job productivity, enhanced athletic performance, and higher marital satisfaction (Gillham et al., 2001). Why does optimism promote a host of desirable outcomes? Above all else, research suggests that opti-

mists cope with stress in more adaptive ways than pessimists (Aspinwall, Richter, & Hoffman, 2001; Carver & Scheier, 2002; Chang, 1996). Optimists are more likely to engage in action-oriented, problem-focused, carefully planned coping and are more willing than pessimists to seek social support. In comparison, pessimists are more likely to deal with stress by avoiding it, giving up, or engaging in denial.

Monitoring Your Stress LEARNING OBJECTIVES

List five problems with the SRRS. Summarize how the LES corrects some of the problems that are characteristic of the SRRS. Explain why one should be cautious in interpreting scores on stress scales.

Rank the following five events in terms of how stressful they would be for you (1 = most stressful, 5 = least stressful): ___ 1. Change in residence ___ 2. Fired at work ___ 3. Death of a close family member ___ 4. Pregnancy ___ 5. Personal injury or illness All five events appear on the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS), developed by Holmes and Rahe (1967), which we described earlier (see Figure 3.5). If you ranked them in the same order as Holmes and Rahe’s subjects, the rankings would be 5, 3, 1, 4, and 2. If you didn’t rank them in that order, don’t worry about it. That merely shows that the perception of stress is personal and subjective. Unfortunately, the SRRS fails to take this subjectivity into account. That is just one of a number of basic problems with the SRRS. The SRRS and the research associated with it have received a great deal of publicity. The scale has been reprinted in many popular newspapers and magazines. In these articles, readers have been encouraged to attribute great significance to their scores. They have sometimes been told that they should reduce or minimize change in their lives if their scores are high (Cohen, 1979). Such bold advice could be counterproductive and needs to be qualified carefully. Therefore, in this application section we’ll elaborate on some of the problems with the SRRS as a measurement scale, introduce you to an improved scale for measuring stress, and explain why scores on any stress scale should be interpreted with caution.

Problems with the SRRS As you learned earlier in this chapter, the SRRS was developed in the early 1960s by Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe (1967). They designed the scale to measure the amount of change-related stress that people experience. In a host of studies, these scores have been found to be related to the likeliThomas Holmes hood of developing an intimidating array of physical illnesses and psychological problems (Derogatis & Coons, 1993; Dougall & Baum, 2001; Turner & Wheaton, 1995). Before we discuss the shortcomings of the SRRS, we should emphasize that Holmes and Rahe deserve enormous credit for recognizing the potential importance of stress and for developing a scale that would permit its measurement. They pioneered a new area of research that has turned out to be extremely productive. However, their groundbreaking foray into the assessment of stress was not without its flaws, and their scale has been improved on. So, borrowing from the analyses of a number of critics (Derogatis, 1982; Rabkin, 1993; Schroeder & Costa, 1984), let’s look at some of the major problems with the SRRS. Although our list is not exhaustive, we highlight the key problems. First, as already discussed, the assumption that the SRRS measures change exclusively has been shown to be inaccurate. We now have ample evidence that the desirability of events affects adaptational outcomes more CHAPTER 3

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Courtesy, Eleanor Holmes Williams

than the amount of change that they require (Turner & Wheaton, 1995). Thus, it seems prudent to view the SRRS as a measure of diverse forms of stress, rather than as a measure of change-related stress (McLean & Link, 1994). Second, the SRRS fails to take into account differences among people in their subjective perception of how stressful an event is. For instance, while divorce may deserve a stress value of 73 for most people, a particular person’s divorce might generate much less stress and merit a value of only 25. Third, many of the events listed on the SRRS and similar scales are highly ambiguous, leading people to be inconsistent as to which events they report experiencing (Monroe & McQuaid, 1994). For instance, what qualifies as “trouble with boss”? Should you check that because you’re sick and tired of your supervisor? What constitutes a “change in living conditions”? Does your purchase of a great new sound system qualify? As you can see, the SRRS includes many “events” that are described inadequately, producing considerable ambiguity about the meaning of one’s response. Problems in recalling events over a period of a year also lead to inconsistent responding on stress scales, thus lowering their reliability (Klein & Rubovits, 1987). Fourth, the SRRS does not sample from the domain of stressful events very thoroughly. Do the 43 events listed on the SRRS exhaust all the major stresses that people typically experience? Studies designed to explore that question have found many significant omissions (Dohrenwend et al, 1993; Wheaton, 1994). Fifth, the correlation between SRRS scores and health outcomes may be inflated because subjects’ neuroticism affects both their responses to stress scales and their self-reports of health problems. Neurotic individuals have a tendency to recall more stress than others and to recall more symptoms of illness than others (Watson, David, & Suls, 1999). These tendencies mean that some of the correlation between high stress and high illness may simply reflect the effects of subjects’ neuroticism (Critelli & Ee, 1996). This is another case of the third variable problem in correlation that we introduced in Chapter 1 (see Figure 3.18). The possible contaminating effects of neuroticism obscure the meaning of scores on the SRRS and similar measures of stress.

The Life Experiences Survey In light of these problems, a number of researchers have attempted to develop improved versions of the SRRS. For example, the Life Experiences Survey (LES), assembled by Irwin Sarason and colleagues (1978), has become a widely used measure of stress in contemporary research (for examples see Ames et al., 2001; Denisoff & Endler, 2000; Malefo, 2000). The LES revises and builds on the SRRS in a variety of ways that correct, at 98

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Neuroticism (tendency to be anxious, insecure, self-conscious)

High stress (self-report)

High incidence of illness (self-report)

F I G U R E 3. 18

Neuroticism as a possible factor underlying the stress-illness correlation. Many studies have found a correlation between subjects’ scores on self-report stress scales, such as the SRRS, and their reports of how much illness they have experienced. However, neurotic subjects, who are anxious, insecure, and self-conscious, tend to recall more stress and more illness than others. Although there is a great deal of evidence that stress contributes to the causation of illness, some of the stress-illness correlation may be due to neuroticism causing high recall of both stress and illness.

least in part, most of the problems just discussed (see Hobson & Delunas, 2001 and Rahe et al., 2000 for other modernized versions of the SRRS). Specifically, the LES recognizes that stress involves more than mere change and asks respondents to indicate whether events had a positive or negative impact on them. This strategy permits the computation of positive change, negative change, and total change scores, which helps researchers gain much more insight into which facets of stress are most crucial. The LES also takes into consideration differences among people in their appraisal of stress, by dropping the normative weights and replacing them with personally assigned weightings of the impact of relevant events. Ambiguity in items is decreased by providing more elaborate descriptions of many items to clarify their meaning. The scale still contains some ambiguity, but there is no complete solution for this problem. The LES deals with the failure of the SRRS to sample the full domain of stressful events in several ways. First, some significant omissions from the SRRS have been added to the LES. Second, the LES allows the respondent to write in personally important events that are not included on the scale. Third, the LES reprinted here (in Figure 3.19) has an extra section just for students. Sarason et al. (1978) suggest that special, tailored sections of this sort be added for specific populations whenever it is useful. Arriving at your scores on the LES is very simple. Respond to the items in Figure 3.19 and add up all the positive impact ratings on the right side. The total is

F I G U R E 3.19

The Life Experiences Survey (LES). Like the SRRS, the LES is designed to measure change-related stress. However, Sarason, Johnson, and Siegel (1978) corrected many of the problems apparent in the SRRS. Follow the instructions in the text to determine your positive, negative, and total change scores. Instructions. Listed below are a number of events that sometimes bring about change in the lives of those who experience them and that necessitate social readjustment. Examine each event on the list and if that event has occurred in your life during the past year please indicate the extent to which you viewed the event as having either a positive or negative impact on your life at the time the event occurred. That is, circle a number on the appropriate line to indicate the type and extent of impact that the event had. A rating of –3 would indicate an extremely negative impact. A rating of 0 suggests no impact, either positive or negative. A rating of +3 would indicate an extremely positive impact. The Life Experiences Survey (LES) Extremely negative

Moderately negative

Somewhat No Slightly negative impact positive

Moderately positive

Extremely positive

Section 1 1. Marriage

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

2. Detention in jail or comparable institution

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

3. Death of spouse

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

4. Major change in sleeping habits

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

5. Death of a close family member a. Mother b. Father c. Brother d. Sister e. Grandmother f. Grandfather g. Other (specify)

−3 −3 −3 −3 −3 −3 −3 −3

−2 −2 −2 −2 −2 −2 −2 −2

−1 −1 −1 −1 −1 −1 −1 −1

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

+1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1

+2 +2 +2 +2 +2 +2 +2 +2

+3 +3 +3 +3 +3 +3 +3 +3

6. Major change in eating habits (much more or much less food intake)

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

7. Foreclosure on mortgage or loan

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

8. Death of a close friend

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

9. Outstanding personal achievement

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

10. Minor law violations

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

11. Male: Wife/girlfriend’s pregnancy

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

12. Female: Pregnancy

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

13. Changed work situation (different work responsibility, major change in working conditions, working hours, etc.)

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

14. New job

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

15. Serious illness or injury of close family member: a. Mother b. Father c. Brother d. Sister e. Grandmother f. Grandfather g. Spouse h. Other (specify)

−3 −3 −3 −3 −3 −3 −3 −3

−2 −2 −2 −2 −2 −2 −2 −2

−1 −1 −1 −1 −1 −1 −1 −1

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

+1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1

+2 +2 +2 +2 +2 +2 +2 +2

+3 +3 +3 +3 +3 +3 +3 +3

16. Sexual difficulties

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

17. Trouble with employer (in danger of losing job, being suspended, being demoted, etc.)

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

18. Trouble with in-laws

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

19. Major change in financial status (a lot better off or a lot worse off)

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3 (continued)

Adapted from Sarason, I. G., Johnson, J. H., & Siegel, J. M. (1978). Assessing the impact of life changes. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 46, 932–946. Copyright © 1978 by the American Psychological Association. Reprinted by permission of the authors.

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The Life Experiences Survey (LES) (continued) Extremely negative

Moderately negative

Somewhat No Slightly negative impact positive

Moderately positive

Extremely positive

20. Major change in closeness of family members (increased or decreased closeness)

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

21. Gaining a new family member (through birth, adoption, family member moving in, etc.)

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

22. Change in residence

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

23. Marital separation from mate (due to conflict)

−3

24. Major change in church activities (increased or decreased attendance)

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

26. Major change in number of arguments with spouse (a lot more or a lot fewer)

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

27. Married male: Change in wife’s work outside the home (beginning work, ceasing work, changing to a new job, etc.)

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

28. Married female: Change in husband’s work (loss of job, beginning new job, retirement, etc.)

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

29. Major change in usual type and/or amount of recreation

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

30. Borrowing for a major purchase (buying a home, business, etc.)

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

31. Borrowing for a smaller purchase (buying a car or TV, getting school loan, etc.)

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

32. Being fired from job

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

34. Female: Having abortion

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

35. Major personal illness or injury

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

36. Major change in social activities, e.g., parties, movies, visiting (increased or decreased participation)

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

37. Major change in living conditions of family (building new home, remodeling, deterioration of home or neighborhood, etc.)

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

25. Marital reconciliation with mate

33. Male: Wife/girlfriend having abortion

(continued)

your positive change score. Your negative change score is the sum of all of the negative impact ratings that you made on the left. Adding these two values yields your total change score. Approximate norms for all three of these scores are listed in Figure 3.20 so that you can get some idea of what your score means.

FIG U R E 3.20

Norms for LES

Norms for the Life Experiences Survey (LES). Approximate norms for college students taking the LES are shown for negative, positive, and total change scores. These norms are based on 345 undergraduates studied by Sarason, Johnson, and Siegel (1978). Data for males and females were combined, as gender differences were negligible. Negative change scores are the best predictor of adaptational outcomes. Adapted from Sarason, I. G., Johnson, J. H., & Siegel, J. M. (1978). Assessing the impact of life changes. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 46, 932–946. Copyright © 1978 by the American Psychological Association. Reprinted by permission of the authors.

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Research to date suggests that the negative change score is the crucial one; positive change has not been found to be a good predictor of adaptational outcomes. Thus far, research has shown that negative change scores are related to a variety of negative adaptational outcomes.

The Dynamics of Adjustment

Score category

Negative change

Positive change

Total change

High

14 and above

16 and above

28 and above

Medium

4–13

7–15

12–27

Low

0–3

0–6

0–11

The Life Experiences Survey (LES) (continued) Extremely negative

Moderately negative

Somewhat No Slightly negative impact positive

Moderately positive

Extremely positive

38. Divorce

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

39. Serious injury or illness of close friend

−3

−2

−1

40. Retirement from work

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

+1

+2

+3

41. Son or daughter leaving home (due to marriage, college, etc.)

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

42. End of formal schooling

−3

43. Separation from spouse (due to work, travel, etc.)

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

44. Engagement

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

45. Breaking up with boyfriend/girlfriend

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

46. Leaving home for the first time

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

47. Reconciliation with boyfriend/girlfriend

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

48. ______________________________________

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

49. ______________________________________

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

50. ______________________________________

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

51. Beginning a new school experience at a higher academic level (college, graduate school, professional school)

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

52. Changing to a new school at the same academic level (undergraduate, graduate, etc.)

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

53. Academic probation

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

54. Being dismissed from dormitory or other residence

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

55. Failing an important exam

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

56. Changing a major

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

57. Failing a course

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

Other recent experiences that have had an impact on your life. List and rate.

Section 2. Students only

58. Dropping a course

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

59. Joining a fraternity/sorority

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

60. Financial problems concerning school (in danger of not having sufficient money to continue)

−3

−2

−1

+1

+2

+3

A Cautionary Note There is merit in getting an estimate of how much stress you have experienced lately, but scores on the LES or any measure of stress should be interpreted with caution. You need not panic if you add up your negative change score and find that it falls in the “high” category. Although it is clear that a connection exists between stress and a variety of undesirable adaptational outcomes, a high score shouldn’t cause undue concern. For one thing, the strength of the association between stress and adaptational problems is modest. Most of the correlations observed between stress scores and illness have been low to moderate in magnitude, often less than .30 (Monroe & McQuaid, 1994). For researchers and theorists, it is interesting to find any relationship at all. However, the link between stress and adap-

tational problems is too weak to permit us to make confident predictions about individuals. Many people endure high levels of stress without developing significant problems. Second, stress is only one of a multitude of variables that affect susceptibility to various maladies. Stress interacts with many other factors, such as lifestyle, coping skills, social support, hardiness, and genetic inheritance, in influencing one’s mental and physical health. It’s important to remember that stress is only one actor on a crowded stage. In light of these considerations, you should evaluate the potential meaning of SRRS or LES scores with caution. A high score should be food for thought, but not reason for alarm.

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KEY IDEAS

However, stress can also have positive effects. Stress fulfills a basic human need for challenge and can lead to personal growth and self-improvement.

Factors Influencing Stress Tolerance

CHAPTER

3 REVIEW

The Nature of Stress ■

Stress involves transactions with the environment that are perceived to be threatening. Stress is a common, everyday event, and even routine hassles can be problematic. To a large degree, stress lies in the eye of the beholder. According to Lazarus and Folkman, primary appraisal determines whether events appear threatening, and secondary appraisal assesses whether one has the resources to cope with challenges. ■ Some of the stress that people experience comes from their environment. Examples of environmental stimuli that can be stressful include excessive noise, crowding, and urban decay. Much everyday stress is self-imposed. Stress can vary with culture. Within Western culture, ethnicity can be a source of stress in a variety of ways. Major Types of Stress ■

Major types of stress include frustration, conflict, change, and pressure. Frustration occurs when an obstacle prevents one from attaining some goal. There are three principal types of conflict: approach-approach, avoidance-avoidance, and approachavoidance. The latter is especially stressful. Vacillation is a common response to approach-avoidance conflict. ■ A large number of studies with the SRRS suggest that change is stressful. Although that may be true, it is now clear that the SRRS is a measure of general stress rather than just changerelated stress. Two kinds of pressure (to perform and to conform) also appear to be stressful. Responding to Stress ■

Emotional reactions to stress typically involve anger, fear, or sadness. However, people also experience positive emotions while under stress and these positive emotions may promote resilience. Emotional arousal may interfere with coping. As tasks get more complex, the optimal level of arousal declines. ■ Physiological arousal in response to stress was originally called the fight-or-flight response by Cannon. Selye’s general adaptation syndrome describes three stages in the physiological reaction to stress: alarm, resistance, and exhaustion. Diseases of adaptation may appear during the stage of exhaustion. ■ In response to stress, the brain sends signals along two major pathways to the endocrine system. Actions along these paths release two sets of hormones into the bloodstream, catecholamines and corticosteroids. Stress can also lead to suppression of the immune response, especially when the stress is chronic and longlasting. Behavioral responses to stress involve coping, which may be healthy or maladaptive. If people cope effectively with stress, they can short-circuit potentially harmful emotional and physical responses. The Potential Effects of Stress ■

Common negative effects of stress include impaired task performance, disruption of attention and other cognitive processes, pervasive emotional exhaustion known as burnout, posttraumatic stress disorders, a host of everyday psychological problems, full-fledged psychological disorders, and varied types of damage to physical health.

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People differ in how much stress they can tolerate without experiencing ill effects. A person’s social support can be a key consideration in buffering the effects of stress. The personality factors associated with hardiness—commitment, challenge, and control—may increase stress tolerance. People high in optimism also have advantages in coping with stress.

Application: Monitoring Your Stress ■

It can be useful to attempt to measure the amount of stress in one’s life, but the much-used SRRS is marred by a variety of shortcomings. It does not really measure change exclusively, and it fails to account for the subjective nature of stress. Some of the items on the SRRS are ambiguous, and the scale does not sample the domain of stress thoroughly. ■ In contrast, the LES is an improved measure of stress that recognizes the subjectivity of stress and the importance of the desirability of life events. The LES also samples the domain of stressful events a little more thoroughly and has less ambiguity than the SRRS. Negative change scores on the LES have been found to be predictive of a variety of adaptational outcomes.

KEY TERMS Acute stressors p. 75 Ambient stress p. 73 Approach-approach conflict p. 76 Approach-avoidance conflict p. 77 Autonomic nervous system (ANS) p. 85 Avoidance-avoidance conflict p. 77 Burnout p. 90 Chronic stressors pp. 75–76 Conflict p. 76 Coping pp. 88–89 Emotions p. 82 Endocrine system p. 86 Fight-or-flight response p. 85

Frustration p. 76 General adaptation syndrome p. 86 Hardiness p. 95 Life changes p. 78 Optimism p. 96 Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) p. 90 Pressure p. 80 Primary appraisal p. 72 Psychosomatic diseases p. 92 Secondary appraisal p. 72 Social support p. 94 Stress p. 72

KEY PEOPLE Susan Folkman pp. 83–84 Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe pp. 68–70 Suzanne (Kobasa) Ouellette pp. 95–96

Richard Lazarus p. 72 Neal Miller pp. 76–78 Hans Selye pp. 86–87 Shelley Taylor pp. 85–86

7. Selye exposed lab animals to various stressors and found that: a. each type of stress caused a particular physiological response. b. each type of animal responded to stress differently.

Personal Explorations Workbook The following exercises in your Personal Explorations Workbook may enhance your self-understanding in relation to issues raised in this chapter. Questionnaire 3.1: SensationSeeking Scale. Personal Probe 3.1: Where's the Stress in Your Life? Personal Probe 3.2: Stress—How Do You Control It? Personal Probe 3.3: Working Through and Assessing the Impact of a Stressful Event.

ANSWERS

Pages 85–86 Pages 86–87 Page 88 Page 90 Pages 95–96

6. The fight-or-flight response is mediated by the: a. sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system. b. sympathetic division of the endocrine system. c. visceral division of the peripheral nervous system. d. parasympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system.

Visit the Book Companion Website at http://psychology. wadsworth.com/weiten_lloyd8e, where you will find tutorial quizzes, flashcards, and weblinks for every chapter, a final exam, and more! You can also link to the Thomson Wadsworth Psychology Resource Center (accessible directly at http://psychology.wadsworth.com) for a range of psychology-related resources.

a c c b a

5. The optimal level of arousal for a task appears to depend in part on: a. one’s position on the optimism/pessimism scale. b. how much physiological change an event stimulates. c. the complexity of the task at hand. d. how imminent a stressful event is.

Book Companion Website

6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

4. José just completed writing an 8-page term paper. When he went to save it, the computer crashed and he lost all his work. What type of stress is José experiencing? a. Frustration c. Life change b. Conflict d. Pressure

10. A personality syndrome marked by commitment, challenge, and control and that appears to be related to stress resistance is called: a. hardiness. c. courage. b. optimism. d. conscientiousness.

CHAPTER 3

Pages 72–73 Pages 72–73 Pages 77–78 Page 76 Pages 77–78

3. An approach-avoidance conflict may best be resolved by __________ the avoidance motivation rather than __________ the approach motivation. a. decreasing, decreasing b. decreasing, increasing c. increasing, decreasing d. increasing, increasing

9. Salvador works as a security guard at a shopping center. His boss overloads him with responsibility but never gives him any credit for all his hard work. He feels worn down, disillusioned, and helpless at work. Salvador is probably experiencing: a. an alarm reaction. b. burnout. c. posttraumatic stress disorder. d. a psychosomatic disorder.

Stress and Its Effects

d d b a c

2. Secondary appraisal refers to: a. second thoughts about what to do in a stressful situation. b. second thoughts about whether an event is genuinely threatening. c. initial evaluation of an event’s relevance, threat, and stressfulness. d. evaluation of coping resources and options for dealing with a stressful event.

PRACTICE TEST

1. Concerning the nature of stress, which statement is not accurate? a. Stress is an everyday event. b. Stress lies in the eye of the beholder. c. Stress may be embedded in the environment. d. Stress is always imposed on us by others.

8. Stress can __________ the functioning of the immune system. a. stimulate c. suppress b. destroy d. enhance

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

PRACTICE TEST

c. patterns of physiological arousal were similar, regardless of the type of stress. d. patterns of physiological arousal were different, even when stressors were similar.

103

THE CONCEPT OF COPING COMMON COPING PATTERNS OF LIMITED VALUE Giving Up Striking Out at Others Indulging Yourself Blaming Yourself Using Defensive Coping THE NATURE OF CONSTRUCTIVE COPING APPRAISAL-FOCUSED CONSTRUCTIVE COPING Ellis’s Rational Thinking Humor as a Stress Reducer Positive Reinterpretation

104

PROBLEM-FOCUSED CONSTRUCTIVE COPING Using Systematic Problem Solving Seeking Help Using Time More Effectively Improving Self-Control EMOTION-FOCUSED CONSTRUCTIVE COPING Enhancing Emotional Intelligence Releasing Pent-Up Emotions Managing Hostility and Forgiving Others Meditating Using Relaxation Procedures

APPLICATION: ACHIEVING SELF-CONTROL Specifying Your Target Behavior Gathering Baseline Data Designing Your Program Executing and Evaluating Your Program Ending Your Program CHAPTER 4 REVIEW PRACTICE TEST

CHAPTER

Coping Processes

4 “I have begun to believe that I have intellectually and emotionally outgrown my husband. However, I’m not really sure what this means or what I should do. Maybe this feeling is normal and I should ignore it and continue my present relationship. This seems to be the safest route. Maybe I should seek a lover while continuing with my husband. Then again, maybe I should start anew and hope for a beautiful ending with or without a better mate.” The woman quoted above is in the throes of a thorny conflict. Although it is hard to tell just how much emotional turmoil she is experiencing, it’s clear that she is under substantial stress. What should she do? Is it psychologically healthy to remain in an emotionally hollow marriage? Is seeking a secret lover a reasonable way to cope with this unfortunate situation? Should she just strike out on her own and let the chips fall where they may? These questions have no simple answers. As you’ll soon see, decisions about how to cope with life’s difficulties can be terribly complex. In the previous chapter we discussed the nature of stress and its effects. We learned that stress can be a challenging, exciting stimulus to personal growth. However, we also saw that stress can prove damaging to people’s psychological and physical health because it often triggers physiological responses that may be harmful. These responses to stress tend to be largely automatic. Controlling them depends on the coping responses people make to stressful situations. Thus, a person’s mental and physical health depends, in part, on his or her ability to cope effectively with stress. This chapter focuses on how people cope with stress. We begin with a general discussion of the concept of coping. Then we review some common coping patterns that tend to have relatively little value. After discussing

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these ill-advised coping techniques, we offer an overview of what it means to engage in healthier, “constructive” coping. The remainder of the chapter expands on

the specifics of constructive coping. We hope our discussion provides you with some new ideas about how to deal with the stresses of modern life.

The Concept of Coping LEARNING OBJECTIVES ■ ■

Describe the variety of coping strategies that people use. Discuss whether individuals display distinctive styles of coping.

In Chapter 3, you learned that coping refers to efforts to master, reduce, or tolerate the demands created by stress. Let’s take a closer look at this concept and discuss some general points about coping. People cope with stress in many ways. A number of researchers have attempted to identify and classify the various coping techniques that people use in dealing with stress. Their work reveals quite a variety of coping strategies. For instance, in a study of how 255 adult subjects dealt with stress, McCrae (1984) identified 28 coping techniques. In another study, Carver, Scheier, and Weintraub (1989) found that they could sort their participants’ coping tactics into 14 categories, which are listed in Figure 4.1. Thus, in grappling with stress, people select their coping tactics from a large and varied menu of options. Individuals have their own styles of coping. Even with a large menu of coping tactics to choose from, most people come to rely on some strategies more than oth-

FIG U R E 4.1

Types of Coping Strategies

Classifying coping strategies. Carver, Scheier, and Weintraub (1989) sorted their subjects’ coping responses into 14 categories. The categories are listed here (column 1) with a representative example from each category (column 2). As you can see, people use quite a variety of coping strategies. From Carver, C. S., Scheier, M. F., & Weintraub, J. K. (1989). Assessing coping strategies: A theoretically based approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56(2), 267–283. Copyright 1989 by the American Psychological Association. Reprinted by permission of the authors.

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ers (Carver & Scheier, 1994; Heszen-Niejodek, 1997). Of course, an individual’s coping strategies are also influenced by situational demands, and Cheng (2001) has argued that flexibility in coping is more desirable than consistently relying on the same strategy. The need for flexibility may explain why people’s coping strategies show only moderate stability across varied situations (Schwartz et al., 1999). Nonetheless, to some extent, each person has an individual style of coping with life’s difficulties. As we progress through this chapter, it may be fruitful for you to analyze your own style of coping. Coping strategies vary in their adaptive value. In everyday terms, when we say that someone “coped with her problems,” we imply that she handled them effectively. In reality, however, coping processes range from the helpful to the counterproductive (Carver et al., 1989; Vaillant, 2000). For example, coping with the disappointment of not getting a promotion by plotting to

Coping strategy

Example

Active coping

I take additional action to try to get rid of the problem.

Planning

I come up with a strategy about what to do.

Suppression of competing activities

I put aside other activities in order to concentrate on this.

Restraint coping

I force myself to wait for the right time to do something.

Seeking social support for instrumental reasons

I ask people who have had similar experiences what they did.

Seeking social support for emotional reasons

I talk to someone about how I feel.

Positive reinterpretation and growth

I look for the good in what is happening.

Acceptance

I learn to live with it.

Turning to religion

I seek God’s help.

Focus on and venting of emotions

I get upset and let my emotions out.

Denial

I refuse to believe that it has happened.

Behavioral disengagement

I give up the attempt to get what I want.

Mental disengagement

I turn to work or other substitute activities to take my mind off things.

Alcohol-drug disengagement

I drink alcohol or take drugs in order to think about it less.

The Dynamics of Adjustment

sabotage your company’s computer system would be a negative way of coping. Hence, we will distinguish between coping patterns that tend to be helpful and those that tend to be maladaptive. Bear in mind, however, that our generalizations about the adaptive value of various coping strategies are based on trends or tendencies.

No coping strategy can guarantee a successful outcome. Furthermore, the adaptive value of a coping technique depends on the exact nature of the situation. As you’ll see in the next section, even ill-advised coping strategies may have adaptive value in some instances.

Common Coping Patterns of Limited Value LEARNING OBJECTIVES ■

Analyze the adaptive value of giving up as a response to stress. Describe the adaptive value of aggression as a response to stress. Evaluate the adaptive value of indulging yourself as a response to stress.

“Recently, after an engagement of 22 months, my fiancée told me that she was in love with someone else, and that we were through. I’ve been a wreck ever since. I can’t study because I keep thinking about her. I think constantly about what I did wrong in the relationship and why I wasn’t good enough for her. Getting drunk is the only way I can get her off my mind. Lately, I’ve been getting plastered about five or six nights a week. My grades are really hurting, but I’m not sure that I care.” This young man is going through a difficult time and does not appear to be handling it very well. He’s blaming himself for the breakup with his fiancée. He’s turning to alcohol to dull the pain that he feels, and it sounds like he may be giving up on school. These coping responses aren’t particularly unusual in such situations, but they’re only going to make his problems worse. In this section, we’ll examine some relatively common coping patterns that tend to be less than optimal. Specifically, we’ll discuss giving up, aggression, selfindulgence, blaming yourself, and defense mechanisms. Some of these coping tactics may be helpful in certain circumstances, but more often than not, they are counterproductive.

When confronted with stress, people sometimes simply give up and withdraw from the battle. This response of apathy and inaction tends to be associated with the emotional reactions of sadness and dejection. Martin Seligman (1974, 1992) has

Courtesy of Martin E. P. Seligman

Giving Up

Martin Seligman

■ ■

Discuss the adaptive value of negative self-talk as a response to stress. Explain how defense mechanisms work. Evaluate the adaptive value of defense mechanisms, including recent work on healthy illusions.

developed a model of this giving-up syndrome that appears to shed light on its causes. In Seligman’s original research, animals were subjected to electric shocks they could not escape. The animals were then given an opportunity to learn a response that would allow them to escape the shock. However, many of the animals became so apathetic and listless they didn’t even try to learn the escape response. When researchers made similar manipulations with human subjects using inescapable noise (rather than shock) as the stressor, they observed parallel results (Hiroto & Seligman, 1975). This syndrome is referred to as learned helplessness. Learned helplessness is passive behavior produced by exposure to unavoidable aversive events. Unfortunately, this tendency to give up may be transferred to situations in which one is not really helpless. Hence, some people routinely respond to stress with fatalism and resignation, passively accepting setbacks that might be dealt with effectively. Interestingly, Evans and Stecker (2004) argue that environmental stressors, such as excessive noise, crowding, and traffic (see Chapter 3), often produce a syndrome that resembles learned helplessness. Seligman originally viewed learned helplessness as a product of conditioning. However, research with human participants has led Seligman and his colleagues to revise their theory. Their current model proposes that people’s cognitive interpretation of aversive events determines whether they develop learned helplessness. Specifically, helplessness seems to occur when individuals come to believe that events are beyond their control. This belief is particularly likely to emerge in people who exhibit a pessimistic explanatory style. Among other things, such people tend to attribute setbacks to personal inadequacies instead of situational factors

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(Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978; Seligman, 1990). As you might guess, giving up is not a highly regarded method of coping. Carver and his colleagues (1989, 1993) have studied this coping strategy, which they refer to as behavioral disengagement, and found that it is associated with increased rather than decreased distress. Furthermore, many studies suggest that learned helplessness can contribute to depression (Seligman & Isaacowitz, 2000). However, giving up could be adaptive in some instances. For example, if you were thrown into a job that you were not equipped to handle, it might be better to quit rather than face constant pressure and diminishing self-esteem. There is something to be said for recognizing one’s limitations and unrealistic goals.

Striking Out at Others A young man, aged 17, cautiously edged his car into traffic on the Corona Expressway in Los Angeles. His slow speed apparently irritated the men in a pickup truck behind him. Unfortunately, he angered the wrong men— they shot him to death. During that same weekend there were six other roadside shootings in the Los Angeles area. All of them were triggered by minor incidents or “fender

benders.” Frustrated motorists are attacking each other more and more frequently, especially on the overburdened highways of Los Angeles. These tragic incidents of highway violence—so-called “road rage”—vividly illustrate that people often respond to stressful events by striking out at others with aggressive behavior. Aggression is any behavior intended to hurt someone, either physically or verbally. Snarls, curses, and insults are much more common than shootings or fistfights, but aggression of any kind can be problematic. Many years ago, a team of psychologists (Dollard et al., 1939) proposed the frustrationaggression hypothesis, which held that aggression is always due to frustration. Decades of research eventually showed that there isn’t an inevitable link between frustration and aggression, but this research also supported the basic idea that frustration frequently elicits aggression (Berkowitz, 1989). People often lash out aggressively at others who had nothing to do with their frustration, especially when they can’t vent their anger at the real source of their frustration. Thus, you’ll probably suppress your anger rather

RE C O M M E N D ED READING

Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion by Carol Tavris (Simon & Schuster, 1989)

Book cover, Copyright © 1989 by Simon & Schuster, Inc. Reproduction by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.

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© Paul Thomas/The Image Bank/Getty Images

With the possible exception of anxiety, anger is the emotion elicited by stress more than any other. It’s a powerful emotion that can be harnessed to achieve admirable goals. The work of some of the world’s great reformers and leaders has been fueled by moral outrage. However, anger also lies at the center of many human woes—wrecked friendships, destroyed marriages, murders, and wars. Hence, anger is a profoundly important emotion. Carol Tavris analyzes virtually every facet of anger in her book. She carefully scrutinizes common beliefs about anger and concludes that many of them are inaccurate. For instance, she argues convincingly against the idea that aggression can drain off anger through catharsis and the idea that anger and aggression are overpowering, instinctual responses. Tavris’s book is a delight to read. It’s witty, lively, practical, thought provoking, and frequently eloquent. Lashing out at others with verbal aggression tends to be an ineffective coping tactic that often backfires, creating additional stress.

Indulging Yourself Stress sometimes leads to reduced impulse control, or self-indulgence (Tice, Bratslavsky, & Baumeister, 2001).

© Rachel Epstein/The Image Works

than lash out verbally at a police officer who gives you a speeding ticket. Twenty minutes later, however, you might be downright brutal in rebuking a waiter who is slow in serving your lunch. As we discussed in Chapter 2, this diversion of anger to a substitute target was noticed long ago by Sigmund Freud, who called it displacement. Unfortunately, research suggests that when people are provoked, displaced aggression is a common response (Marcus-Newhall et al., 2000). Freud theorized that behaving aggressively could get pent-up emotion out of one’s system and thus be adaptive. He coined the term catharsis to refer to this release of emotional tension. The Freudian notion that it is a good idea to vent anger has become widely disseminated and accepted in modern society. Books, magazines, and self-appointed experts routinely advise that it is healthy to “blow off steam” and thereby release and reduce anger. However, experimental research generally has not supported the catharsis hypothesis. Indeed, most studies find just the opposite: behaving in an aggressive manner tends to fuel more anger and aggression (Bushman, 2002; Bushman, Baumeister, & Stack, 1999). Moreover, Carol Tavris (1982, 1989) points out that aggressive behavior frequently backfires because it elicits aggressive responses from others that generate more anger. She asserts, “Aggressive catharses are almost impossible to find in continuing relationships because parents, children, spouses and bosses usually feel obliged to aggress back at you” (1982, p. 131). Thus, the adaptive value of aggressive behavior tends to be minimal. Hurting someone, especially an irrelevant someone, is not likely to alleviate frustration. Moreover, the interpersonal conflicts that often emerge from aggressive behavior may produce additional stress. If you pick a fight with your spouse after a terrible day at work, you may create new stress and lose valuable empathy and social support as well.

Experts disagree about whether excessive Internet use should be characterized as an addiction, but inability to control online use appears to be an increasingly common syndrome.

For instance, after an exceptionally stressful day, some people head for their kitchen, a grocery store, or a restaurant in pursuit of something chocolate. In a similar vein, others cope with stress by making a beeline for the nearest shopping mall for a spending spree. Still others respond to stress by indulging in injudicious patterns of drinking, smoking, gambling, and drug use. In their classification of coping responses, Moos and Billings (1982) list developing alternative rewards as a common response to stress. It makes sense that when things are going poorly in one area of your life, you may try to compensate by pursuing substitute forms of satisfaction. Thus, it is not surprising that there is evidence relating stress to increases in eating (Laitinen, Ek, & Sovio, 2002), smoking (Kassel, Stroud, & Paronis, 2003), and consumption of alcohol and drugs (Colder, 2001; Goeders, 2004). A new manifestation of this coping strategy is the tendency to immerse oneself in the online world of the Internet. Kimberly Young (1998) has described a syndrome called Internet addiction, which consists of

CATHY © Cathy Guisewite Reprinted with permission of UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE. All rights reserved.

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spending an inordinate amount of time on the Internet and inability to control online use (see Figure 4.2). People who exhibit this syndrome tend to feel anxious, depressed, or empty when they are not online (Kandell, 1998). Their Internet use is so excessive, it begins to interfere with their functioning at work, at school, or at home, leading victims to start concealing the extent of their dependence on the Internet. Some people exhibit pathological Internet use for one particular purpose, such as online sex or online gambling, whereas others exhibit a general, global pattern of Internet addiction (Davis, 2001). It is difficult to estimate the prevalence of Internet addiction, but the syndrome does not appear to be rare (Greenfield, 1999; Morahan-Martin & Schumacher, 2000). Research suggests that Internet addic-

tion is not limited to shy, male computer whizzes, as one might expect (Young, 1998). Although there is active debate about the wisdom of characterizing excessive Internet surfing as an addiction (Griffiths, 1999), it is clear that this new coping strategy is likely to become increasingly common. There is nothing inherently maladaptive about indulging oneself as a way of coping with life’s stresses. If a hot fudge sundae or some new clothes can calm your nerves after a major setback, who can argue? However, if a person consistently responds to stress with excessive self-indulgence, obvious problems are likely to develop. Excesses in eating may produce obesity. Excesses in drinking and drug use may endanger one’s health and affect work quality. Excesses in spending may create

Internet Addiction Test To assess your level of addiction, answer the following questions using this scale: 1 = Not at all

2 = Rarely

3 = Occasionally

4 = Often

5 = Always

1. How often do you find that you stay online longer than you intended?

1

2

3

4

5

2. How often do you neglect household chores to spend more time online?

1

2

3

4

5

3. How often do you prefer the excitement of the Internet to intimacy with your partner?

1

2

3

4

5

4. How often do you form new relationships with fellow online users?

1

2

3

4

5

5. How often do others in your life complain to you about the amount of time you spend online?

1

2

3

4

5

6. How often do your grades or school work suffer because of the amount of time you spend online?

1

2

3

4

5

7. How often do you check your e-mail before something else that you need to do?

1

2

3

4

5

8. How often does your job performance or productivity suffer because of the Internet?

1

2

3

4

5

9. How often do you become defensive or secretive when anyone asks you what you do online?

1

2

3

4

5

10. How often do you block out disturbing thoughts about your life with soothing thoughts of the Internet?

1

2

3

4

5

11. How often do you find yourself anticipating when you will go online again?

1

2

3

4

5

12. How often do you fear that life without the Internet would be boring, empty, and joyless?

1

2

3

4

5

13. How often do you snap, yell, or act annoyed if someone bothers you while you are online?

1

2

3

4

5

14. How often do you lose sleep due to late-night log-ins?

1

2

3

4

5

15. How often do you feel preoccupied with the Internet when off-line, or fantasize about being online?

1

2

3

4

5

16. How often do you find yourself saying “just a few more minutes” when online?

1

2

3

4

5

17. How often do you try to cut down the amount of time you spend online and fail?

1

2

3

4

5

18. How often do you try to hide how long you’ve been online?

1

2

3

4

5

19. How often do you choose to spend more time online over going out with others?

1

2

3

4

5

20. How often do you feel depressed, moody, or nervous when you are off-line, which goes away once you are back online?

1

2

3

4

5

After you’ve answered all the questions, add the numbers you selected for each response to obtain a final score. The higher your score, the greater your level of addiction and the problems your Internet usage causes. Here’s a general scale to help measure your score. 20–39 points: You are an average online user. You may surf the Web a bit too long at times, but you have control over your usage. 40–69 points: You are experiencing frequent problems because of the Internet. You should consider their full impact on your life. 70–100 points: Your Internet usage is causing significant problems in your life. You need to address them now.

FIG U R E 4.2

Measuring addiction to the Internet. The questions on Young’s (1998) Internet Addiction Test highlight the traits that make up this syndrome. You can check to see whether you exhibit any signs of Internet addiction by responding to the items and computing your score. From Young, K. S. (1998). Caught in the Net: How to recognize the signs of Internet addiction—and a winning strategy for recovery. New York: John Wiley. Copyright ©1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. This material is used by permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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havoc in one’s personal finances. Given the risks associated with self-indulgence, it has rather marginal adaptive value.

Blaming Yourself In a postgame interview after a tough defeat, a prominent football coach was brutally critical of himself. He said that he had been outcoached, that he had made poor decisions, and that his game plan was faulty. He almost eagerly assumed all the blame for the loss himself. In reality, he had taken some reasonable chances that didn’t go his way and had suffered the effects of poor execution by his players. Looking at it objectively, the loss was attributable to the collective failures of 50 or so players and coaches. However, the coach’s unrealistically negative self-evaluation was a fairly typical response to frustration. When confronted by stress (especially frustration and pressure), people often become highly self-critical. The tendency to engage in “negative self-talk” in response to stress has been noted by a number of influential theorists. As we will discuss in greater detail later in this chapter, Albert Ellis (1973, 1987) calls this phenomenon “catastrophic thinking” and focuses on how it is rooted in irrational assumptions. Aaron Beck (1976, 1987) analyzes negative self-talk into specific tendencies. Among other things, he asserts that people often (1) unreasonably attribute their failures to personal shortcomings, (2) focus on negative feedback from others while ignoring favorable feedback, and (3) make unduly pessimistic projections about the future. Thus, if you performed poorly on an exam, you might blame

it on your woeful stupidity, dismiss a classmate’s comment that the test was unfair, and hysterically predict that you will flunk out of school. Although recognizing one’s weaknesses has value, Ellis and Beck agree that self-blame tends to be counterproductive. According to Ellis, catastrophic thinking causes, aggravates, and perpetuates emotional reactions to stress that are often problematic. Along even more serious lines, Beck marshals evidence that negative selftalk can contribute to the development of depressive disorders.

Using Defensive Coping Defensive coping is a common response to stress. We noted in Chapter 2 that the concept of defense mechanisms was originally developed by Sigmund Freud. Though rooted in the psychoanalytic tradition, this concept has gained acceptance from psychologists of most persuasions (Cramer, 2000). Building on Freud’s initial insights, modern psychologists have broadened the scope of the concept and added to Freud’s list of defense mechanisms. The Nature of Defense Mechanisms

Defense mechanisms are largely unconscious reactions that protect a person from unpleasant emotions such as anxiety and guilt. A number of strategies fit this definition. For example, Laughlin (1979) lists 49 different defenses. In our discussion of Freud’s theory in Chapter 2, we described seven common defenses. Figure 4.3 introduces another five defenses that people use with some regularity. Although widely discussed in

Common Defense Mechanisms Mechanism

Example

Denial of reality. Protecting oneself from unpleasant reality by refusing to perceive or face it.

A smoker concludes that the evidence linking cigarette use to health problems is scientifically worthless.

Fantasy. Gratifying frustrated desires by imaginary achievements.

A socially inept and inhibited young man imagines himself chosen by a group of women to provide them with sexual satisfaction.

Intellectualization (isolation). Cutting off emotion from hurtful situations or separating incompatible attitudes in logic-tight compartments.

A prisoner on death row awaiting execution resists appeal on his behalf and coldly insists that the letter of the law be followed.

Undoing. Atoning for or trying to magically dispel unacceptable desires or acts.

A teenager who feels guilty about masturbation ritually touches door knobs a prescribed number of times after each occurrence of the act.

Overcompensation. Covering up felt weaknesses by emphasizing some desirable characteristic, or making up for frustration in one area by overgratification in another.

A dangerously overweight woman goes on eating binges when she feels neglected by her husband.

F I G U R E 4.3

Additional defense mechanisms. Like the seven defense mechanisms described in our discussion of Freudian theory in Chapter 2 (see Figure 2.4), these five defenses are frequently used in our efforts to cope with stress. Adapted from Carson, R. C., Butcher, J. N., & Coleman, J. C. (1988). Abnormal psychology and modern life. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman. Copyright © 1988 by Scott, Foresman and Company. Adapted by permission.

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defense mechanisms work their magic by bending reality in self-serving ways (Bowins, 2004).

WE B LI N K 4.1

American Self-Help Clearinghouse Sourcebook This online clearinghouse provides contact information for hundreds of self-help groups and organizations across the United States. For individuals trying to cope with specific problems or challenging life situations, one of these groups may be particularly helpful with focused advice and suggestions.

the popular press, defense mechanisms are often misunderstood. We will use a question-answer format to elaborate on the nature of defense mechanisms in the hopes of clearing up any misconceptions. What do defense mechanisms defend against? Above all else, defense mechanisms shield the individual from the emotional discomfort elicited by stress. Their main purpose is to ward off unwelcome emotions or to reduce their intensity. Foremost among the emotions guarded against is anxiety. People are especially defensive when the anxiety is the result of some threat to their self-esteem. They also use defenses to prevent dangerous feelings of anger from exploding into acts of aggression. Guilt and dejection are two other emotions that people often try to evade through defensive maneuvers. How do they work? Defense mechanisms work through self-deception. They accomplish their goals by distorting reality so it does not appear so threatening. Let’s say you’re doing poorly in school and are in danger of flunking out. Initially, you might use denial to block awareness of the possibility that you could flunk out. This tactic might temporarily fend off feelings of anxiety. If it becomes difficult to deny the obvious, you might resort to fantasy, daydreaming about how you will salvage adequate grades by getting spectacular scores on the upcoming final exams, when the objective fact is that you are hopelessly behind in your studies. Thus,

CALVIN AND HOBBES © Watterson. Reprinted with permission of UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE. All rights reserved.

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Are they conscious or unconscious? Mainstream Freudian theory originally assumed that defenses operate entirely at an unconscious level. However, the concept of defense mechanisms has been broadened to include maneuvers that people may have some awareness of. Thus, defense mechanisms operate at varying levels of awareness and can be conscious or unconscious reactions (Erdelyi, 2001). Are they normal? Definitely. Everyone uses defense mechanisms on a fairly regular basis. They are entirely normal patterns of coping. The notion that only neurotic people use defense mechanisms is inaccurate. Can Illusions Be Healthy?

The most critical question concerning defense mechanisms is: Are they healthy? This is a complicated question. More often than not, the answer is no. Generally, defense mechanisms are poor ways of coping, for a number of reasons. First, defensive coping is an avoidance strategy, and avoidance rarely provides a genuine solution to our problems. Holahan and Moos (1985, 1990) have found that people who exhibit relatively high resistance to stress use avoidance strategies less than people who are frequently troubled by stress. Second, defenses such as denial, fantasy, and projection represent “wishful thinking,” which is likely to accomplish little. In fact, in a study of how students coped with the stress of taking the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT), Bolger (1990) found that students who engaged in a lot of wishful thinking experienced greater increases in anxiety than other students as the exam approached. Third, a repressive coping style has been related to poor health, in part because repression often leads people to delay facing up to their problems (Weinberger, 1990). For example, if you were to block out obvious warning signs of cancer or diabetes and fail to obtain needed medical care, your defensive behavior could be fatal.

Courtesy, Shelley Taylor

Although defensive behavior tends to be relatively unhealthy, some defenses are healthier than others, and defense mechanisms can sometimes be adaptive (Cramer, 2002; Vaillant, 2000). For example, overcompensation for athletic failures could lead you to work extra hard in the classroom. And creative use of fantasy is sometimes the key to helping people deal effectively with a temporary period of frustration, such as a period of recovery in the hospital. Most theorists used to regard accurate contact with reality as the hallmark of sound mental health (Jahoda, 1958; Jourard & Landsman, 1980). However, Shelley Taylor and Jonathon Brown (1988, 1994) have reviewed several lines of evidence suggesting that “illusions” may be adaptive for mental Shelley Taylor health and well-being. First, they note that “normal” people tend to have overly favorable self-images. In contrast, depressed subjects exhibit less favorable—but more realistic— self-concepts. Second, normal subjects overestimate the degree to which they control chance events. In comparison, depressed participants are less prone to this illusion of control. Third, normal individuals are more

likely than depressed subjects to display unrealistic optimism in making projections about the future. A variety of other studies have also provided support for the hypothesis that positive illusions promote well being. For example, studies of individuals diagnosed with AIDS show that those with unrealistically optimistic expectations of the likely course of their disease actually experience a less rapid course of illness (Reed et al., 1999). In a laboratory study, Taylor et al. (2003) found that subjects who tended to exhibit positive illusions showed lower cardiovascular responses to stress, quicker cardiovascular recovery from stress, and lower levels of a stress hormone. As you might guess, critics have expressed considerable skepticism about the idea that illusions are adaptive. For example, Colvin and Block (1994) make an eloquent case for the traditional view that accuracy and realism are healthy. Moreover, they report data showing that overly favorable self-ratings are correlated with maladaptive personality traits (Colvin, Block, & Funder, 1995). One possible resolution to this debate is Roy Baumeister’s (1989) theory that it’s all a matter of degree and that there is an “optimal margin of illusion.” According to Baumeister, extreme self-deception is maladaptive, but small illusions may often be beneficial.

The Nature of Constructive Coping LEARNING OBJECTIVES ■ ■

Discuss whether constructive coping is related to intelligence. Describe the nature of constructive coping.

Our discussion thus far has focused on coping strategies that tend to be less than ideal. Of course, people also exhibit many healthful strategies for dealing with stress. We will use the term constructive coping to refer to efforts to deal with stressful events that are judged to be relatively healthful. No strategy of coping can guarantee a successful outcome. Even the healthiest coping responses may turn out to be ineffective in some cases. Thus, the concept of constructive coping is simply meant to convey a healthy, positive connotation, without promising success. Constructive coping does not appear to depend particularly on one’s intelligence—at least not the abstract, “academic” intelligence measured by conventional IQ tests. Seymour Epstein (1990) has shown an interest in “why smart people think dumb.” His interest was stimulated in part by a course that he taught in which students kept daily records of their most positive and negative emotional experiences, for class discussion. Commenting on these discussions, Epstein noted,

“One cannot help but be impressed, when observing students in such a situation, with the degree to which some otherwise bright people lead their lives in a manifestly unintelligent and self-defeating manner” (Epstein & Meier, 1989, p. 333). To investigate this matter more systematically, Epstein and Petra Meier (1989) devised an elaborate scale to assess the degree to which people engage in constructive coping and thinking. They found constructive thinking to be favorably related to mental and physical health and to measures of “success” in work, love, and social relationships. However, participants’ IQ scores were only weakly related to their constructive coping scores and were largely unrelated to the measures of success in work, love, and social relationships. What makes a coping strategy constructive? Frankly, in labeling certain coping responses constructive or healthy, psychologists are making value judgments. It’s a gray area in which opinions will vary to some extent. Nonetheless, some consensus emerges from the bur-

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Cartoon, Sally Forth, Copyright © 1984 News Group Chicago, reprinted by permission of North American Syndicate.

geoning research on coping and stress management. Key themes in this literature include the following: 1. Constructive coping involves confronting problems directly. It is task-relevant and action oriented. It involves a conscious effort to rationally evaluate your options in an effort to solve your problems. 2. Constructive coping is based on reasonably realistic appraisals of your stress and coping resources. A little self-deception may sometimes be adaptive, but excessive self-deception and highly unrealistic negative thinking are not. 3. Constructive coping involves learning to recognize and manage potentially disruptive emotional reactions to stress.

4. Constructive coping involves learning to exert some control over potentially harmful or destructive habitual behaviors. It requires the acquisition of some behavioral self-control.

These points should give you a general idea of what we mean by constructive coping. They will guide our discourse in the remainder of this chapter as we discuss how to cope more effectively with stress. To organize our discussion, we will use a classification scheme proposed by Moos and Billings (1982) to divide constructive coping techniques into three broad categories: appraisalfocused coping, problem-focused coping, and emotionfocused coping (see Figure 4.4).

Constructive coping tactics

Appraisal-focused strategies Detecting and disputing negative self-talk Rational thinking Using positive reinterpretation Finding humor in the situation Turning to religion

Problem-focused strategies Active problem solving Seeking social support Enhancing time management Improving self-control Becoming more assertive

Emotion-focused strategies Releasing pent-up emotions Distracting oneself Managing hostile feelings Meditating Using systematic relaxation procedures

F I G U R E 4.4

Overview of constructive coping tactics. Coping tactics can be organized in several ways, but we will use the classification scheme shown here, which consists of three categories: appraisal-focused, problem-focused, and emotion-focused. The list of coping tactics in each category is not exhaustive. We will discuss most, but not all, of the listed strategies in our coverage of constructive coping.

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Appraisal-Focused Constructive Coping LEARNING OBJECTIVES

■ ■

Explain Ellis’s analysis of the causes of maladaptive emotions. Describe some assumptions that contribute to catastrophic thinking. Discuss the merits of positive reinterpretation and humor as coping strategies.

are the foundation for his widely used system of therapy. Rationalemotive behavior therapy is an approach to therapy that focuses on altering clients’ patterns of irrational thinking to reduce maladaptive emotions and behavior. Ellis maintains that you feel the way you think. He argues that probAlbert Ellis lematic emotional reactions are caused by negative self-talk, which, as we mentioned earlier, he calls catastrophic thinking. Catastrophic thinking involves unrealistic appraisals of stress that exaggerate the magnitude of one’s problems. Ellis uses a simple A-B-C sequence to explain his ideas (see Figure 4.5).

People often underestimate the importance of the appraisal phase in the stress process. They fail to appreciate the highly subjective feelings that color the perception of threat to one’s well-being. A useful way to deal with stress is to alter your appraisal of threatening events. In this section, we’ll examine Albert Ellis’s ideas about reappraisal and discuss the value of using humor and positive reinterpretation to cope with stress.

Ellis’s Rational Thinking Albert Ellis (1977, 1985, 1996, 2001) is a prominent theorist who believes that people can short-circuit their emotional reactions to stress by altering their appraisals of stressful events. Ellis’s insights about stress appraisal

A. Activating event. The A in

The commonsense view

A

Activating event Stress: Someone stands you up on a date you looked forward to

Ellis’s view

A Activating event Stress: Someone stands you up on a date you looked forward to

C Consequence Emotional turmoil: You feel angry, anxious, agitated, dejected

B Belief system

C Consequence

Irrational appraisal: ”This is terrible. I’ll have a boring weekend. I’ll never find anyone. I must be a worthless person.”

Emotional turmoil: You feel angry, anxious, agitated, dejected

Rational appraisal: ”This is unfortunate but I’ll salvage the weekend. Someday I’ll find someone who is mature and dependable.”

Emotional calm: You feel annoyed and subdued but remain hopeful

F I G U R E 4.5

Albert Ellis’s A-B-C model of emotional reactions. Most people are prone to attribute their negative emotional reactions (C) directly to stressful events (A). However, Ellis argues that emotional reactions are really caused by the way individuals think about these events (B).

Ellis’s system stands for the activating event that produces the stress. The activating event may be any potentially stressful transaction. Examples might include an automobile accident, the cancellation of a date, a delay while waiting in line at the bank, or a failure to get a promotion you were expecting. B. Belief system. B stands for your belief about the event. This represents your appraisal of the stress. According to Ellis, people often view minor setbacks as disasters, engaging in catastrophic thinking: “How awful this is. I can’t stand it! Things never turn out fairly for me. I’ll be in this line forever. I’ll never get promoted.” C. Consequence. C stands for the consequence of your negative thinking. When your appraisals of stressful events are highly negative, the consequence tends to be emotional distress. Thus, you feel angry, outraged, anxious, panicstricken, disgusted, or dejected.

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Courtesy, Albert Ellis Institute

WE B LI N K 4.2

The Albert Ellis Institute Albert Ellis developed rational-emotive behavior therapy in the mid-1950s as an effective alternative to psychoanalytically inspired treatment approaches. This site demonstrates the growth of Ellis’s approach over the subsequent decades.

Ellis asserts that most people do not understand the importance of phase B in this three-stage sequence. They unwittingly believe that the activating event (A) causes the consequent emotional turmoil (C). However, Ellis maintains that A does not cause C. It only appears to do so. Instead, Ellis asserts that B causes C. Emotional distress is actually caused by one’s catastrophic thinking in appraising stressful events. According to Ellis, it is common for people to turn inconvenience into disaster and make “mountains out of molehills.” For instance, imagine that someone stands you up on a date that you were eagerly looking forward to. You might think, “Oh, this is terrible. I’m going to have another rotten, boring weekend. People always mistreat me. I’ll never find anyone to fall in love with. I must be a crummy, worthless person.” Ellis would argue that such thoughts are irrational. He would point out that it does not follow logically from being stood up that you (1) must have a lousy weekend, (2) will never fall in love, or (3) are a worthless person. The Roots of Catastrophic Thinking

Ellis (1994, 1995) theorizes that unrealistic appraisals of stress are derived from the irrational assumptions that people hold. He maintains that if you scrutinize your catastrophic thinking, you will find that your reasoning is based on an unreasonable premise, such as “I must have approval from everyone” or “I must perform well in all endeavors.” These faulty assumptions, which most people hold unconsciously, generate catastrophic thinking and emotional turmoil. To facilitate emotional selfcontrol, it is important to learn to spot irrational assumptions and the unhealthy patterns of thought that they generate. Let’s look at four particularly common irrational assumptions. 1. I must have love and affection from certain people. Everyone wants to be liked and loved. There is nothing wrong with that. However, many people foolishly believe that they should be liked by everyone they come into contact with. If you stop to think about it, that’s clearly unrealistic. Once individuals fall in love, they tend to believe that their future happiness depends absolutely on the continuation of that one, special relationship. They believe that if their current love relationship were to end, they would never again be able 116

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to achieve a comparable one. This is an unrealistic view of the future. Such views make the person anxious during a relationship and severely depressed if it comes to an end. 2. I must perform well in all endeavors. We live in a highly competitive society. We are taught that victory brings happiness. Consequently, we feel that we must always win. For example, many sports enthusiasts are never satisfied unless they perform at their best level. However, by definition, their best level is not their typical level, and they set themselves up for inevitable frustration. 3. Other people should always behave competently and be considerate of me. People are often angered by others’ stupidity and selfishness. For example, you may become outraged when a mechanic fails to fix your car properly or when a salesperson treats you rudely. It would be nice if others were always competent and considerate, but you know better—they are not! Yet many people go through life unrealistically expecting others’ efficiency and kindness.

R EC O M M EN D ED R EA D IN G

How to Stubbornly Refuse to Make Yourself Miserable About Anything—Yes, Anything! by Albert Ellis (Carol Communications, 1988) This is one of the better “popular” books by Albert Ellis, the world-renowned architect of rational-emotive behavior therapy. At last count, Ellis had written around 50 books, about evenly divided between popular books intended for a general audience and technical books intended for mental health professionals. This book doesn’t break any new ground for Ellis, but it does bring his ideas together in one succinct, readable summary, complete with exercises. Ellis is a bit prone to overstatement, asserting that his book “will help you achieve a profound philosophic change and a radically new outlook on life.” Whether it does so or not, his ideas can clearly be helpful in coping with stress more effectively. If you tend to fall into the trap of overly negative thinking, this book is worth reading. Other recent self-help titles from Ellis that cover much of the same ground include How to Make Yourself Happy and Remarkably Less Disturbable (1999), Feeling Better, Getting Better, Staying Better: Profound Self-Help Therapy for Your Emotions (2001), and Ask Albert Ellis: Straight Answers and Sound Advice from America’s Best-Known Psychologist (2003). Cover image reprinted by permission of Carol Publishing Group.

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4. Events should always go the way I like. Some people simply won’t tolerate any kind of setback. They assume that things should always go their way. For example, some commuters become tense and angry each time they get stuck in a rush-hour traffic jam. They seem to believe that they are entitled to coast home easily every day, even though they know that rush hour rarely is a breeze. Such expectations are clearly unrealistic and doomed to be violated. Yet few people recognize the obvious irrationality of the assumption that underlies their anger unless it is pointed out to them.

80

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o hum Low

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umor High h

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Reducing Catastrophic Thinking

How can you reduce your unrealistic appraisals of stress? Ellis asserts that you must learn (1) how to detect catastrophic thinking and (2) how to dispute the irrational assumptions that cause it. Detection involves acquiring the ability to spot unrealistic pessimism and wild exaggeration in your thinking. Examine your self-talk closely. Ask yourself why you’re getting upset. Force yourself to verbalize your concerns, covertly or out loud. Look for key words that often show up in catastrophic thinking, such as should, ought, never, and must. Disputing your irrational assumptions requires subjecting your entire reasoning process to scrutiny. Try to root out the assumptions from which your conclusions are derived. Most of us are unaware of these assumptions. Once they are unearthed, their irrationality may be quite obvious. If your assumptions seem reasonable, ask yourself whether your conclusions follow logically. Try to replace your catastrophic thinking with more low-key, rational analyses. These strategies should help you to redefine stressful situations in ways that are less threatening. Strangely enough, another way to defuse such situations is to turn to humor.

Humor as a Stress Reducer A number of years ago, the Chicago area experienced its worst flooding in about a century. Thousands of people saw their homes wrecked when two rivers spilled over their banks. As the waters receded, the flood victims returning to their homes were subjected to the inevitable TV interviews. A remarkable number of victims, surrounded by the ruins of their homes, joked about their misfortune. When the going gets tough, it may pay to laugh about it. In a study of coping styles, McCrae (1984) found that 40 percent of his subjects reported using humor to deal with stress. Empirical evidence showing that humor moderates the impact of stress has been accumulating over the last 25 years (Lefcourt, 2001). For instance, in one influential study, Martin and Lefcourt (1983) found that a good sense of humor functioned as a buffer to lessen the negative impact of stress on mood. Some of their results are presented in Figure 4.6, which shows

10

20 Stress

30

40

FIG U R E 4.6

Humor and coping. Martin and Lefcourt (1983) related stress to mood disturbance in subjects who were either high or low in their use of humor. Increased stress led to smaller increases in mood disturbance in the high-humor group, suggesting that humor has some value in efforts to cope with stress. Adapted from Martin, R. A., & Lefcourt, H. M. (1983). Sense of humor as a moderator of the relation between stressors and moods. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45 (6), 1313–1324. Copyright © 1983 by the American Psychological Association. Adapted by permission.

how mood disturbance increased as stress went up in two groups of participants—those who were high or low in their use of humor. Notice how higher stress leads to a smaller increase in mood disturbance in the highhumor group. Similar findings have been observed in other studies (Abel, 1998; Martin, 1996). Although there are some inconsistencies in the data, researchers have also found an association between humor and enhanced immune function, greater pain tolerance, and fewer symptoms of illness (Martin, 2001). How does humor help to reduce the effects of stress and promote wellness? Several explanations have been proposed (see Figure 4.7 on the next page). One possibility is that humor affects appraisals of stressful events (Abel, 2002). Jokes can help people put a less-threatening spin on their trials and tribulations. Another possibility is that humor increases the experience of positive emotions (Martin, 2002). As we discussed in Chapter 3, positive emotions can help people bounce back from stressful events (Tugade & Fredrickson, 2004). Another hypothesis is that a good sense of humor facilitates positive social interactions, which promote social support, which is known to buffer the effects of stress (Martin, 2002). Finally, Lefcourt and colleagues (1995) argue that high-humor people may benefit from not taking themselves as seriously as low-humor people do. As they put it,“If persons do not regard themselves too seriously and do not have an inflated sense of self-importance, then defeats, embarrassments, and even tragedies should have less pervasive emotional consequences for them” (p. 375). Thus, humor is a rather versatile coping strategy that may have many benefits. CHAPTER 4

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However, comparing your own plight with others’ even tougher struggles can help you Less threatening appraisals of stressful put your problems in perspective. Research events suggests that this strategy of making positive comparisons with others is a common coping mechanism that can result in improved Increased experience of positive mood and self-esteem (Wills & Sandy, 2001). emotions Wellness, Moreover, this strategy does not depend on reduced effects Good sense knowing others who are clearly worse off. from stressful of humor You can simply imagine yourself in a similar life events Rewarding social relations, greater social situation with an even worse outcome (exsupport ample: two broken legs after a horse-riding accident instead of just one). One healthy aspect of positive reinterpretation is that it Takes self less can facilitate calming reappraisals of stress seriously than others without the necessity of distorting reality. Another way to engage in positive reinterpretation is to search for something good in a bad experience. Distressing though they FIG U R E 4.7 may be, many setbacks have positive elements. After experiencing divorces, illnesses, Possible explanations for the link between humor and wellness. Research suggests that a good sense of humor buffers the effects of stress and promotes wellfirings, financial losses, and such, many peoness. Four hypothesized explanations for the link between humor and wellness are ple remark that “I came out of the experience outlined in the middle column of this diagram. As you can see, humor may have better than I went in,” or “I grew as a pera variety of beneficial effects. son.” Studies of victims of natural disasters, heart attacks, and bereavement have found an association between this type of benefit Positive Reinterpretation finding under duress and relatively sound psychologiWhen you are feeling overwhelmed by life’s difficulties, cal and physical health (Tennen & Affleck, 2002). Of you might try the commonsense strategy of recognizcourse, the positive aspects of a personal setback may ing that “things could be worse.” No matter how terribe easy to see after the stressful event is behind you. ble your problems seem, you probably know someone The challenge is to recognize these positive aspects while who has even bigger troubles. That is not to say that you are still struggling with the setback, so that it beyou should derive satisfaction from others’ misfortune. comes less stressful.

Problem-Focused Constructive Coping LEARNING OBJECTIVES ■

List and describe four steps in systematic problem solving. Discuss the adaptive value of seeking help as a coping strategy. Explain five common causes of wasted time.

Problem-focused coping includes efforts to remedy or conquer the stress-producing problem itself. In this category, we’ll discuss systematic problem solving, the importance of seeking help, effective time management, and improvement of self-control.

Using Systematic Problem Solving In dealing with life’s problems, the most obvious course of action is to tackle the problems head-on. Obviously, people vary in their problem-solving skills. However, 118

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Describe evidence on the causes and consequences of procrastination. Summarize advice on managing time effectively.

evidence suggests that problem-solving skills can be enhanced through training (Heppner & Lee, 2002). With this thought in mind, we will sketch a general outline of how to engage in more systematic problem solving. The problem-solving plan described here is a synthesis of observations by various experts, especially Mahoney (1979), Miller (1978), and Chang and Kelly (1993). Clarify the Problem

You can’t tackle a problem if you’re not sure what the problem is. Therefore, the first step in any systematic

problem-solving effort is to clarify the nature of the problem. Sometimes the problem will be all too obvious. At other times the source of trouble may be quite difficult to pin down. In any case, you need to arrive at a specific concrete definition of your problem. Two common tendencies typically hinder people’s efforts to get a clear picture of their problems. First, they often describe their problems in vague generalities (“My life isn’t going anywhere” or “I never have enough time”). Second, they tend to focus too much on negative feelings, thereby confusing the consequences of problems (“I’m so depressed all the time” or “I’m so nervous I can’t concentrate”) with the problems themselves. Generate Alternative Courses of Action

The second step in systematic problem solving is to generate alternative courses of action. Notice that we did not call these alternative solutions. Many problems do not have a readily available solution that will completely resolve the problem. If you think in terms of searching for complete solutions, you may prevent yourself from considering many worthwhile courses of action. Instead, it is more realistic to search for alternatives that may produce some kind of improvement in your situation. Besides avoiding the tendency to insist on solutions, you need to avoid the temptation to go with the first alternative that comes to mind. Many people are a little trigger-happy. They thoughtlessly try to follow through on the first response that occurs to them. Various lines of evidence suggest that it is wiser to engage in brainstorming about a problem. Brainstorming is generating as many ideas as possible while withholding criticism and evaluation. In other words, you generate alternatives without paying any attention to their apparent practicality. This approach facilitates creative expression of ideas. Evaluate Your Alternatives and Select a Course of Action

Once you generate as many alternatives as you can, you need to start evaluating the possibilities. There are no simple criteria for judging the relative merits of your alternatives. However, you will probably want to address three general issues. First, ask yourself whether each alternative is realistic. In other words, what is the probability that you can successfully execute the intended course of action? Try to think of any obstacles you may have failed to anticipate. In making this assessment, it is important to try to avoid both foolish optimism and unnecessary pessimism. Second, consider any costs or risks associated with each alternative. The “solution” to a problem is sometimes worse than the problem itself. Assuming you can successfully implement your intended course of action, what are the possible negative consequences? Finally, compare the desirability of the probable outcomes of

each alternative. After eliminating the unrealistic possibilities, list the probable consequences (both good and bad) associated with each alternative. Then review and compare the desirability of these potential outcomes. In making your decision, you have to ask yourself “What is important to me? Which outcomes do I value the most?” Take Action While Maintaining Flexibility

After you have chosen your course of action, you should follow through in implementing your plan. In so doing, try to maintain flexibility. Do not get locked into a particular course of action. Few choices are truly irreversible. You need to monitor results closely and be willing to revise your strategy. In evaluating your course of action, try to avoid the simplistic success/failure dichotomy. You should simply look for improvement of any kind. If your plan doesn’t work out too well, consider whether it was undermined by any circumstances that you could not have anticipated. Finally, remember that you can learn from your failures. Even if things did not work out, you may now have new information that will facilitate a new attack on the problem.

Seeking Help In Chapter 3, we learned that social support can be a powerful force that helps buffer the deleterious effects of stress and that has positive effects of its own (Wills & Fegan, 2001). We discussed social support as if it were a stable, external resource available to different people in varying degrees. In reality, social supports fluctuate over time and evolve out of individuals’ interactions with others (Newcomb, 1990). Some people have more support than others because they have personal characteristics that attract more support or because they make more effort to seek support. In trying to tackle problems directly, it pays to keep in mind the value of seeking aid from friends, family, co-workers, and neighbors. Because of potential embarrassment, many people are reluctant to acknowledge their problems and look for help from others. What makes this reluctance so lamentable is that others can provide a great deal of help in many ways.

WE B LI N K 4.3

Mind Tools James Manktelow’s site in England offers practical techniques to help people deal with the world more efficiently and effectively. The site houses useful information on several of the topics discussed in this chapter, including stress management, time management, and effective problem solving.

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LIVING IN TODAY‘S WORLD

Thinking Rationally About the Threat of Terrorism Acts of terrorism are intended to provoke psychological instability in a population. The death, destruction, and havoc wreaked by terrorists is not an end in itself, but a means to an end—the creation of widespread anxiety, fear, and alarm (Everly & Mitchell, 2001). Unfortunately, a normal feature of human mental processing makes it much too easy for terrorists to achieve their goal. However, being aware of this cognitive tendency can help people to be more rational about the threat of terrorist acts. To introduce you to this cognitive tendency, consider the following problem: Various causes of death are paired up below. For each pairing, decide which is the more likely cause of death. Asthma or tornadoes? Syphilis or botulism (food poisoning)? Tuberculosis or floods? Would you believe that the first choice in each pair causes at least 18 times as many deaths as the second choice? If your guesses were wrong, don’t feel bad. Most people tend to greatly overestimate the likelihood of dramatic, vivid—but infrequent—events that receive heavy media coverage. Thus, the number of fatalities caused by tornadoes, floods, and food poisonings is usually overestimated (Slovic, Fischhoff, & Lichtenstein, 1982), whereas fatalities caused by asthma and other run-ofthe-mill diseases tend to be underestimated. This tendency to overestimate the improbable reflects the operation of the availability heuristic, which involves basing the estimated probability of an event on the ease with which relevant instances come to mind.

Using Time More Effectively Do you constantly feel that you have too much to do, and too little time to do it in? Do you feel overwhelmed by your responsibilities at work, at school, and at home? Do you feel like you’re always rushing around, trying to meet an impossible schedule? If you answered yes to some of these questions, you’re struggling with time pressure. You can estimate how well you manage time by responding to the brief questionnaire in Figure 4.8. If the results suggest that your time is out of your con-

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Relying on the availability heuristic is a normal cognitive tendency. However, to the extent that certain events occur infrequently but are easily available in memory, your estimates will be biased. Instances of floods, tornadoes, and other disasters are readily available in memory because these events receive a great deal of publicity. The same principle applies to terrorist acts. The round-the-clock news coverage of terrorist attacks means that they are constantly on people’s minds and highly available in memory. The result is that people tend to greatly exaggerate the likelihood that they might be a victim of terrorism, and such overestimates fuel the anxiety and alarm that terrorists seek to create. Admittedly, no one knows what the future might bring in the way of terrorist attacks. However, based on what has happened in recent years, your chances of being harmed by a terrorist are microscopic in comparison to your chances of perishing in an automobile accident (Myers, 2001). Since 9/11, many Americans have been reluctant to fly because the airplane hijackings that occurred on 9/11 remain salient in their minds. But think about: Even if you knew in advance that terrorists planned to blow up a commercial flight next week, your chances of choosing that specific flight would only be about 1 in 173,000. In sum, it is wise to be mindful of the natural tendency to overestimate the likelihood that you might be harmed by terrorist attacks. Thinking more rationally about the probability of being victimized by terrorism can reduce people’s collective sense of alarm and thwart the main objective of terrorism, which is the cultivation of fear.

trol, you may be able to make your life less stressful by learning sound time-management strategies. R. Alec Mackenzie (1997), a prominent timemanagement researcher, points out that time is a nonrenewable resource. It can’t be stockpiled like money, food, or other precious resources. You can’t turn back the clock. Furthermore, everyone, whether rich or poor, gets an equal share of time—24 hours per day, 7 days a week. Although time is our most equitably distributed resource, some people spend it much more wisely than

others. Let’s look at some of the ways in which people let time slip through their fingers without accomplishing much. The Causes of Wasted Time

When people complain about “wasted time,” they’re usually upset because they haven’t accomplished what they really wanted to do with their time. Wasted time is time devoted to unnecessary, unimportant, or unenjoyable activities. Why waste time on such activities? There are many reasons.

How Well Do You Manage Your Time? Listed below are ten statements that reflect generally accepted principles of good time management. Answer these items by circling the response most characteristic of how you perform your job. Please be honest. No one will know your answers except you. 1. Each day I set aside a small amount of time for planning and thinking about my job. 0. Almost never 1. Sometimes 2. Often 3. Almost always 2. I set specific, written goals and put deadlines on them. 0. Almost never 1. Sometimes 2. Often 3. Almost always 3. I make a daily “to do list,” arrange items in order of importance, and try to get the important items done as soon as possible. 0. Almost never 1. Sometimes 2. Often 3. Almost always

Inability to set or stick to priorities. Time consultant Alan Lakein (1996) emphasizes that it’s often tempting to deal with routine, trivial tasks ahead of larger and more difficult tasks. Thus, students working on a major term paper often read their mail, do the dishes, fold the laundry, reorganize their desk, or dust the furniture instead of concentrating on the paper. Routine tasks are easy, and working on them allows people to rationalize their avoidance of more important tasks. Unfortunately, many of us spend too much time on trivial pursuits, leaving our more important tasks undone. Inability to say no. Other people are constantly making demands on our time. They want us to exchange gossip in the hallway, go out to dinner on Friday night, cover their hours at work, help with a project, listen to their sales pitch on the phone, join a committee, or coach Little League. Clearly, we can’t do everything that everyone wants us to. However, some people just can’t say no to others’ requests for their time. Such people end up fulfilling others’ priorities instead of their own. Thus, McDougle (1987) concludes, “Perhaps the most successful way to prevent yourself from wasting time is by saying no” (p. 112). Inability to delegate responsibility. Some tasks should be delegated to others—secretaries, subordinates, fellow committee members, assistant coaches, spouses, children, and so on. However, many people have difficulty delegating work to others. Barriers to delegation include unwillingness to give up any control, lack of confidence in subordinates, fear of being disliked, the need to feel needed, and the attitude that “I can do it better myself ” (Mitchell, 1987). The problem, of course, is that people who can’t delegate waste a lot of time on trivial work or others’ work. Inability to throw things away. Some people are pack rats who can’t throw anything into the wastebasket. Their desks are cluttered with piles of mail, newspapers, magazines, reports, and books. Their filing cabinets overflow with old class notes or ancient memos.

4. I am aware of the 80/20 rule and use it in doing my job. (The 80/20 rule states that 80 percent of your effectiveness will generally come from achieving only 20 percent of your goals.) 0. Almost never 1. Sometimes 2. Often 3. Almost always 5. I keep a loose schedule to allow for crises and the unexpected. 0. Almost never 1. Sometimes 2. Often 3. Almost always 6. I delegate everything I can to others. 0. Almost never 1. Sometimes 2. Often 3. Almost always 7. I try to handle each piece of paper only once. 0. Almost never 1. Sometimes 2. Often 3. Almost always 8. I eat a light lunch so I don’t get sleepy in the afternoon. 0. Almost never 1. Sometimes 2. Often 3. Almost always 9. I make an active effort to keep common interruptions (visitors, meetings, telephone calls) from continually disrupting my work day. 0. Almost never 1. Sometimes 2. Often 3. Almost always 10. I am able to say no to others’ requests for my time that would prevent my completing important tasks. 0. Almost never 1. Sometimes 2. Often 3. Almost always To get your score, give yourself 3 points for each “almost always” 2 points for each “often” 1 point for each “sometimes” 0 points for each “almost never” Add up your points to get your total score. If you scored 0–15 15–20 20–25 25–30

Better give some thought to managing your time. You’re doing OK, but there’s room for improvement. Very good. You cheated!

FIG U R E 4.8

Assessing your time management. The brief questionnaire shown here is designed to evaluate the quality of one’s time management. Although it is geared more for working adults than college students, it should allow you to get a rough handle on how well you manage your time. From Le Boeuf, M. (1980, February). Managing time means managing yourself. Business Horizons Magazine, p. 45. Copyright © by the Foundation for the School of Business at Indiana University. Used with permission.

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© Bruce Ayres/Stone/Getty Images

For many people, an inability to throw things away is a key factor promoting wasted time.

At home, their kitchen drawers bulge with rarely used utensils, their closets bulge with old clothes that are never worn, and their attics bulge with discarded junk. Pack rats waste time in at least two ways. First, they lose time looking for things that have disappeared among all the chaos. Second, they end up reshuffling the same paper, rereading the same mail, resorting the same reports, and so on. According to Mackenzie (1997), they would be better off if they made more use of their wastebaskets. Inability to accept anything less than perfection. High standards are admirable, but some people have difficulty finishing projects because they expect them to be flawless. They can’t let go. They dwell on minor problems and keep making microscopic changes in their papers, projects, and proposals. They are caught in what Emanuel (1987) calls the “paralysis of perfection.” They end up spinning their wheels, redoing the same work over and over. The Problem of Procrastination

Another time-related problem is procrastination— the tendency to delay tackling tasks until the last minute. Almost everyone procrastinates on occasion. For example, 70–90 percent of college students procrastinate before beginning academic assignments (Knaus, 2000). However, research suggests that about 20 percent of adults are chronic procrastinators (Ferrari, 2001). Procrastination is more likely when people have to work on aversive tasks or when they are worried about their performance being evaluated (Milgram, Marshevsky, & Sadeh, 1995; Senecal, Lavoie, & Koestner, 1997). Although many people rationalize their delaying tactics by claiming that “I work best under pressure” (Ferrari, 1992; Lay, 1995), the empirical evidence suggests otherwise. Studies show that procrastination tends

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to have a negative impact on the quality of task performance (Ferrari, Johnson, & McCown, 1995; Tice & Baumeister, 1997). Why? Late starters may often underestimate how much time will be required to complete a task effectively, or they experience unforeseen delays and then run out of time because they didn’t allow any “cushion.” Another consideration is that waiting until the last minute may make a task more stressful—and as we saw in Chapter 3, performance often suffers under conditions of high stress. Moreover, performance may not be the only thing that suffers when people procrastinate. Studies indicate that as a deadline looms, procrastinators tend to experience elevated anxiety and increased health problems (Lay et al., 1989; Tice & Baumeister, 1997). Why do people procrastinate? Personality factors that contribute to procrastination include low conscientiousness (Watson, 2001), low self-efficacy (Haycock, McCarthy, & Skay, 1998), and excessive perfectionism (Flett, Hewitt, & Martin, 1995). The type of irrational thinking described by Albert Ellis also seems to foster procrastination (Bridges & Roig, 1997), as does a strong fear of failure (Lay, 1992). Roy Baumeister (1997) argues that procrastination is one of many types of selfdefeating behavior in which people choose courses of action that yield short-term gains despite their longterm costs. In the case of procrastination, the shortterm payoff is the avoidance of an unpleasant task, whereas the long-term costs consist of impaired performance and increased stress. Procrastination can also be a frequent problem in relation to health care. People who recognize that they need to alter their eating behavior or start an exercise regimen routinely put off these commitments, promising themselves that they will start tomorrow, or next week, or next month. In a similar vein, many people procrastinate about getting health checkups or even seeking medical treatment for existing maladies (Sirois, Melia-Gordon, & Pychyl, 2003). People who struggle with procrastination often impose deadlines and penalties on themselves. This practice can be helpful, but self-imposed deadlines are not as effective as externally imposed deadlines (Ariely & Wertenbroch, 2002). Time-Management Techniques

What’s the key to better time management? Most people assume that it’s increased efficiency—that is, learning to perform tasks more quickly. Improved efficiency may help a little, but time-management experts maintain that efficiency is overrated. They emphasize that the key to better time management is increased effectiveness—that is, learning to allocate time to your most important tasks. This distinction is captured by a widely quoted slogan in the time-management literature: “Efficiency is doing the job right, while effectiveness is doing

the right job.” Let’s look at the experts’ suggestions about how to use time more effectively (based on Lakein, 1996; Mackenzie, 1997; Morgenstern, 2000): 1. Monitor your use of time. The first step toward

better time management is to monitor your use of time to see where it all goes (Douglass & Douglass, 1993). Doing so requires keeping a written record of your activities, similar to that shown in Figure 4.9. At the end of each week, you should analyze how your time was allocated. Based on your personal roles and responsibilities, create categories of time use such as studying,

Monday 7 a.m. 8 9 10

Tuesday Wednesday Thursday

Friday

p, Wake-u , jogging shower, breakfast ily with fam

Bus to campus

Molly to daycare

Bus to campus

Medical Anthropology

Teach class

12 noon

lunch

1 p.m.

Biology seminar

lunch

Molly to daycare Prepare lecture

Bus to campus

Medical Anthropology

lunch

pick up Molly writing at home at daycare

lunch and shopping with Barbara

Lab work

Sunday Sleep in

ach Waffles for at be Walk ic family. Read V with Sunday paper

FIG U R E 4.9

Example of a time log. Experts recommend keeping a detailed record of how you use your time if you are to improve your time management. The example depicted here shows the kind of record keeping that should be done.

Clean house

Teach class

writing at home

2

Saturday Sleep in

Prepare Medical gy lecture Anthropolo

11

child care, housework, commuting, working at the office, working at home, going online, eating, and sleeping. For each day, add up the hours allocated to each category. Record this information on a summary sheet like that in Figure 4.10 (on the next page). Two weeks of record keeping should allow you to draw some conclusions about where your time goes. Your records will help you make informed decisions about reallocating your time. When you begin your time-management program, these records will also give you a baseline for comparison, so that you can see whether your program is working.

lunch

pick up Molly at daycare

Work in garden

Hiking and picnic with family and Tom

writing at home

3 Drive Florrie to piano lesson

4

6

Dinner at home

7

Spend time with Vic and kids

8

Guitar lesson

Dinner at home

Dinner at home

Dinner at home Spend time with Vic and kids

Women’s meeting Practice guitar

9

11

Practice guitar

Grocery shopping

5

10

Molly to dentist

Practice guitar

Dinner out with Vic

Pick up babysitter

t

Party a Reid’s

Call mother

Band rehearsal Watch TV

Reading al and journ

Sleep

12 1 a.m.

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FIG U R E 4.10

Time Use Summary Form

Time use summary. To analyze where your time goes, you need to review your time log and create a weekly time use summary, like the one shown here. The exact categories to be listed on the left depend on your circumstances and responsibilities.

Activity

Mon.

Tues.

Wed.

Thurs.

Fri.

Sat.

Sun.

Total

%

8

6

8

6

8

7

9

52

31

1. Sleeping 2. Eating

2

2

3

2

3

2

3

17

10

3. Commuting

2

2

2

2

2

10

6

4. Housework

1

3

2

6

4

5. In class

4

2

4

2

4

16

9

6. Part-time job

5

5

3

13

8

7. Studying

3

2

4

2

4

5

20

12

8. Relaxing

5

4

3

2

7

8

5

34

20

9. 10.

2. Clarify your goals. You can’t wisely allocate your time unless you decide what you want to accomplish with your time. Lakein (1996) suggests that you ask yourself, “What are my lifetime goals?” Write down all the goals that you can think of, even relatively frivolous things like going deep-sea fishing or becoming a wine

RE C O M M E N D ED READING

Time Management from the Inside Out: The Foolproof System for Taking Control of Your Schedule—and Your Life by Julie Morgenstern (Henry Holt, 2000) If you’re locked in a perennial struggle with time—and if you’re losing the battle—this book may be worth your time. Julie Morgenstern, whose first book dealt with improving personal organization, offers insightful analyses of why most of us never have enough time. She begins by describing a host of barriers to effective time use, such as unrealistic workloads, interruptionrich environments, unclear priorities, fear of failure, and perfectionism. She then discusses how to evaluate your use of time and how to prioritize your goals. She devotes quite a bit of attention to scheduling and planning and to modern devices intended to aid these processes (datebooks, computerized calendar programs, personal digital assistants, and so forth). This discussion is followed by a wealth of advice on how to be more efficient and make better choices in allocating your time. Time Management from the Inside Out is succinct, entertaining, and practical. Cover image © 2000 by Henry Holt and Co. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt & Co., LLC.

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expert. Some of your goals will be in conflict. For instance, you can’t become a vice-president at your company in Wichita and still move to the West Coast. Thus, the tough part comes next. You have to wrestle with your goal conflicts. Figure out which goals are most important to you, and order them in terms of priority. These priorities should guide you as you plan your activities on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. 3. Plan your activities using a schedule. People resist planning because it takes time, but in the long run it saves time. Thorough planning is essential to effective time management (McGee-Cooper & Trammell, 1994). At the beginning of each week, you should make up a list of short-term goals. This list should be translated into daily “to do” lists of planned activities. To avoid the tendency to put off larger projects, break them into smaller, manageable components, and set deadlines for completing the components. Your planned activities should be allocated to various time slots on a written schedule. Schedule your most important activities into the time periods when you tend to be most energetic and productive. 4. Protect your prime time. The best-laid plans can quickly go awry because of interruptions. There isn’t any foolproof way to eliminate interruptions, but you may be able to shift most of them into certain time slots while protecting your most productive time. The trick is to announce to your family, friends, and coworkers that you’re blocking off certain periods of “quiet time” when visitors and phone calls will be turned away. Of course, you also have to block off periods of “available time” when you’re ready to deal with everyone’s problems. 5. Increase your efficiency. Although efficiency is not the key to better time management, it’s not irrelevant. Time-management experts do offer some suggestions for improving efficiency, including the following (Klassen, 1987; Schilit, 1987):

Improving Self-Control

■ Handle paper once. When memos, letters, reports, and such arrive on your desk, they should not be stashed away to be read again and again before you deal with them. Most paperwork can and should be dealt with immediately. ■ Tackle one task at a time. Jumping from one problem to another is inefficient. Insofar as possible, stick with a task until it’s done. In scheduling your activities, try to allow enough time to complete tasks. ■ Group similar tasks together. It’s a good idea to bunch up small tasks that are similar. This strategy is useful when you’re paying bills, replying to letters, returning phone calls, and so forth. ■ Make use of your downtime. Most of us endure a lot of “downtime,” waiting in doctors’ offices, sitting in needless meetings, riding on buses and trains. In many of these situations, you may be able to get some of your easier work done—if you think ahead and bring it along.

Self-discipline and self-control are the key to handling many of life’s problems effectively. All four forms of stress described in Chapter 3 can create challenges to your self-control. Whether you’re struggling with the frustration of poor grades in school, constant conflicts about your overeating, pressure to do well in sports, or downhill changes in finances that require readjustment, you will need reasonable self-control if you expect to make much progress. For many people, however, satisfactory self-control is difficult to achieve. Fortunately, the last several decades have produced major advances in the technology of self-control. These advances have emerged from research on behavior modification, an approach to controlling behavior that utilizes the principles of learning and conditioning. Because of its importance, we’ll devote the entire Application at the end of this chapter to improving self-control through behavior modification.

Emotion-Focused Constructive Coping LEARNING OBJECTIVES ■ ■

Describe the nature and value of emotional intelligence. Analyze the adaptive value of releasing pent-up emotions. Discuss the importance of managing hostility and forgiving others’ transgressions.

Let’s be realistic: There are going to be occasions when appraisal-focused coping and problem-focused coping are not successful in warding off emotional turmoil. Some problems are too serious to be whittled down much by reappraisal, and others simply can’t be “solved.” Moreover, even well-executed coping strategies may take time to work before emotional tensions begin to subside. Hence, it is helpful to be able to recognize and modulate one’s emotions. In this section, we will discuss a variety of coping abilities and strategies that relate mainly to the regulation of one’s emotions.

Enhancing Emotional Intelligence According to some theorists, emotional intelligence is the key to being resilient in the face of stress (Slaski & Cartwright, 2003). The concept of emotional intelligence was originally formulated by Peter Salovey and John Mayer (1990). Emotional intelligence consists of the ability to perceive and express emotion, assimilate emotion in thought, understand and reason with emotion, and regulate emotion. Emotional intelligence includes four essential components (Salovey, Mayer, & Caruso, 2002). First, people need to be able

■ ■

Summarize the evidence on the effects of meditation. Describe the requirements and procedure for Benson’s relaxation response.

to accurately perceive emotions in themselves and others and have the ability to express their own emotions effectively. Second, people need to be aware of how their emotions shape their thinking, decision making, and coping with stress. Third, people need to be able to understand and analyze their emotions, which may often be complex and contradictory. Fourth, people need to be able to regulate their emotions so that they can dampen negative emotions and make effective use of positive emotions. Several tests have been developed to measure the relatively new concept of emotional intelligence. The test that has the strongest empirical foundation is the MayerSalovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (2002). The authors have strived to make this test a performance-

WE B LI N K 4.4

International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies This site offers a vast storehouse of information relating to coping with traumatic events. The resources are divided into those for the general public, for professionals, and for the news media.

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Releasing Pent-Up Emotions Try as you might to redefine situations as less stressful, you no doubt still go through times when you feel wired with stress-induced tension. When this happens, there’s

RE C O M M E N D ED READING

Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ by Daniel Goleman (Bantam Books, 1995) It’s great to see a book like this make the best-seller lists. It is a serious, scholarly, yet readable analysis of how emotional functioning is important in everyday life. Daniel Goleman is both a psychologist and a journalist who writes about the behavioral sciences for the New York Times. In this book, he synthesizes the research of many investigators as he argues that emotional intelligence may be more important to success than high IQ. The concept of emotional intelligence, as originally developed by Peter Salovey and John Mayer (1990), languished in relative obscurity until Goleman’s book attracted attention. He views emotional intelligence more broadly than Salovey and Mayer, who focused primarily on people’s ability to access, monitor, and express their own emotions and to interpret and understand others’ emotions. Goleman includes all of their ingredients but adds social poise and skill, strong motivation and persistence, and some desirable personality traits, such as optimism and conscientiousness. One can argue that Goleman’s concept of emotional intelligence is too much of a hodgepodge of traits to be measureable or meaningful, but his broad view yields a wide-ranging book that discusses innumerable examples of how social finesse and emotional sensitivity can foster career success, marital satisfaction, and physical and mental health. In the course of this analysis, Goleman discusses research on a diverse array of topics in an exceptionally lucid manner. Cover image reprinted by permission of Bantam Books.

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merit in the commonsense notion that you should try to release the emotions welling up inside. Why? Because the physiological arousal that accompanies emotions can become problematic. For example, research suggests that people who inhibit the expression of anger and other emotions are somewhat more likely than other people to have elevated blood pressure (Jorgensen et al., 1996). Moreover, research suggests that efforts to actively suppress emotions result in increased stress and autonomic arousal (Butler et al., 2003; Gross, 2001). One interesting study looked at the repercussions of “psychological inhibition” in gay men who conceal their homosexual identity (Cole et al., 1996). Many gay individuals inhibit the public expression of their homosexuality to avoid stigmatization, discrimination, and even physical assault. Although hiding one’s gay identity may be a sensible strategy, it entails vigilant inhibition of one’s true feelings. To investigate the possible effects of this inhibition, Cole et al. (1996) tracked the incidence of cancer, pneumonia, bronchitis, sinusitis, and tuberculosis in a sample of 222 HIV-negative gay and bisexual men over a period of five years. As you can see in Figure 4.11, they found that the overall incidence of these diseases was noticeably higher among the men who concealed their homosexual identity. The investigators speculate that psychological inhibition may be detrimental to people’s health. If inhibition is bad, perhaps expression is good. James Pennebaker and his colleagues have shown that

Incidence (cases per person–year)

based measure of the ability to deal effectively with emotions rather than a measure of personality or temperament. Preliminary results suggest that they have made considerable progress toward this goal, as evidenced by the scale’s ability to predict intelligent management of emotions in real-world situations (Ciarrochi, Dean, & Anderson, 2002; Lam & Kirby, 2002; Mayer et al., 2001). Illustrating the practical importance of emotional intelligence, scores on the scale also predict the quality of subjects’ social interactions (Lopes et al., 2004).

0.45 0.40 0.35 0.30 0.25 0.20 0.15 0.10 0.05 0.00 Completely Mostly Half in/ Mostly or out out half out completely Concealment (degree to which in person is in or out of closet)

F I G U R E 4. 11

Elevated health risk among gay men who conceal their homosexual identity. In a sample of gay and bisexual men, Cole et al. (1996) found that the more the men concealed their homosexual identity, the more likely they were to experience various diseases. The investigators speculate that the elevated incidence of disease may reflect the costs of inhibiting one’s true feelings. (Data from Cole et al., 1996)

© Stephanie Maze/Corbis

© Bill Ling/Taxi/Getty Images

In times of stress, seeking support from one’s friends is a very useful coping strategy. Releasing pent-up emotions by talking about one’s difficulties appears to be a particularly beneficial coping mechanism.

talking or writing about traumatic events can have beneficial effects. For example, in one study of college students, half the subjects were asked to write three essays about their difficulties in adjusting to college. The other half wrote three essays about superficial topics. The participants who wrote about their personal problems and traumas enjoyed better health in the following months than the other subjects did (Pennebaker, Colder, & Sharp, 1990). A host of subsequent studies have replicated the finding that emotional disclosure, or “opening up,” is associated with improved mood, more positive self-perceptions, fewer visits to physicians, and enhanced immune functioning (Hemenover, 2003; Smyth, 1998; Smyth & Pennebaker, 2001). Summarizing this research, Smyth and Pennebaker (1999) assert that “when people put their emotional upheavals into words, their physical and mental health seems to improve markedly.” They conclude that “the act of disclosure itself is a powerful therapeutic agent” (p. 70). The research on emotional disclosure indicates that both writing and talking about important personal issues can be beneficial (Smyth & Pennebaker, 2001). Thus, if you can find a good listener, it may be wise to let your secret fears, misgivings, and suspicions spill out in a candid conversation. Of course, confiding in others about one’s problems can be awkward and difficult. Therein lies the beauty and appeal of the writing approach, which can be kept private. Figure 4.12 summarizes some guidelines for writing about personal issues and trauma that should make this coping strategy more effective.

should strive to learn how to manage their feelings of hostility more effectively (Williams & Williams, 2001). The goal of hostility management is not merely to suppress the overt expression of hostility that may continue to seethe beneath the surface, but to actually reduce the frequency and intensity of one’s hostile feelings. The first step toward this goal is to learn to quickly recognize one’s anger. A variety of strategies can be used to decrease hostility, including reinterpretation of annoying events, distraction, and the kind of rational self-talk advocated by Ellis (Williams & Williams, 1993). Efforts to increase empathy and tolerance can also contribute to

Guidelines for Writing About Emotional Experiences

• Managing Hostility and Forgiving Others Scientists have compiled quite a bit of evidence that hostility is related to increased risk for heart attacks and other types of illness (Williams, 2001; see Chapter 14). In light of this reality, many experts assert that people

Find a location where there will be no disturbances (from others, the phone, etc.)

Set aside about 30 minutes each day: 20 minutes for writing, with a few minutes afterward to compose yourself if necessary.

Write for three or four days, usually consecutively.

Explore your deepest thoughts and feelings about any experiences or topics that are weighing heavily upon you.

Explore how this topic is related to a variety of issues in your life: your childhood, your relationships, who you are, who you would like to be, and so forth.

Write continuously, without regard for spelling or grammar.

Remember that the writing is for you, not someone else.

F I G U R E 4. 12

Using writing about emotional experiences as a coping strategy. Many studies have shown that writing about traumatic experiences and sensitive issues can have beneficial effects on mental and physical health. These guidelines can help you to use this coping strategy. From Smyth, J. M. & Pennebaker, J. W. (1999). Sharing one’s story. In C. R. Snyder (Ed.), Coping: The psychology of what works. Copyright © 1999 by Oxford University Press. Reprinted by permission.

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hostility management, as can forgiveness, which has become the focus of a new line of research in psychology. We tend to experience hostility and other negative emotions when we feel “wronged”—that is, when we believe that the actions of another person were harmful, immoral, or unjust. Our natural inclination is either to seek revenge or to avoid further contact with the offender (McCullough, 2001). Forgiving someone involves counteracting these natural tendencies and releasing the person from further liability for his or her transgression. Research suggests that forgiving is an effective emotion-focused coping strategy that is associated with better adjustment and well-being (McCullough & Witvliet, 2002; Worthington & Scherer, 2004). For example, in one study of divorced or permanently separated women reported by McCollough (2001), the extent to which the women had forgiven their former husbands was positively related to several measures of well-being and was inversely related to measures of anxiety and depression. In another study, when participants were instructed to actively think about a grudge they had nursed and to think about forgiving the grudge, forgiving thoughts were associated with more positive

emotions and reduced physiological arousal (Witvliet, Ludwig, & Vander Laan, 2001). Research also shows that vengefulness is correlated with more rumination and negative emotion and with lower life satisfaction (McCullough et al., 2001). Taken together, these findings suggest that it may be healthful for people to learn to forgive others more readily.

© Acey Harper/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

Meditating Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in meditation as a method for relieving stress. Meditation refers to a family of mental exercises in which a conscious attempt is made to focus attention in a nonanalytical way. There are many approaches to meditation. In the United States, the most widely practiced approaches are those associated with yoga, Zen, and transcendental meditation (TM). However, meditation has been practiced throughout history as an element of all religious and spiritual traditions, including Judaism and Christianity. Moreover, the practice of meditation can be largely divorced from religious beliefs. In fact, most Americans who meditate have only vague ideas regarding its religious significance. Of interest to us is the possibility that meditation can calm inner emotional turmoil. Most meditative techniques look deceptively simple. For example, in TM a person is supposed to sit in a comfortable position with eyes closed and silently focus attention on a mantra, a specially assigned Sanskrit word that creates a resonant sound. This exercise in mental self-discipline is to be practiced twice daily for 20 minutes. The technique has been described as “diving from the active surface of the mind to its quiet depths” (Bloomfield & Kory, 1976, p. 49). Advocates of meditation claim that it can improve learning, energy level, work productivity, physical health, mental health, and general happiness while reducing tension and anxiety caused by stress (Alexander et al., 1990; Andresen, 2000). These are not exactly humble claims. Let’s examine the scientific evidence on meditation. What are the physical effects of going into the meditative state? Most studies find decreases in participants’ heart rate, respiration rate, oxygen consumption, and carbon dioxide elimination (see Figure 4.13). Many researchers have also observed increases in skin resistance

WE B LI N K 4.5

In September 1994, Reg and Maggie Green were vacationing in Italy when their seven-year-old son Nicholas was shot and killed during a highway robbery. In an act of forgiveness that stunned Europe, the Greens chose to donate their son’s organs, which went to seven Italians. The Greens, shown here five years after the incident, have weathered their horrific loss better than most, perhaps in part because of their willingness to forgive. 128

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Stress Management and Emotional Wellness Links This website functions as a gateway to a host of other sites that may be relevant to the subject of coping with stress. Included are links to sites that deal with humor, relaxation, meditation, increasing social support, crisis intervention, and stress management for college students.

Cubic centimeters per minute

and decreases in blood lactate—physiologiBefore During meditation After cal indicators associated with relaxation. 260 Taken together, these bodily changes suggest that meditation can lead to a potentially beneficial physiological state charac240 terized by relaxation and suppression of arousal (Carrington, 1993; Fenwick, 1987; Oxygen Travis, 2001). 220 consumption To shed additional light on the physical effects of meditation, some researchers have begun to use new brain-imaging technolo200 gies in an effort to identify the neural circuits that are affected by meditation. For example, using a special type of brain scan to 180 Carbon dioxide track blood flow in the brain, Andrew Newelimination berg and his colleagues (2001) examined patterns of brain activity during meditation in 160 0 10 20 30 50 60 40 a sample of eight experienced Tibetan BudMinutes dhist meditators. Among other things, they observed high activity in the prefrontal cortex, which is consistent with the focused atF I G U R E 4. 13 tention that is central to meditation. They Transcendental meditation (TM) and physiological arousal. The physiological also found unusually low activity in an area changes shown on this graph (based on Wallace & Benson, 1972) indicate that in the parietal lobe that is known to process meditation suppresses arousal, thus leading to a physical state that may have information on the body’s location in space. beneficial effects. This finding is interesting in that skilled Adapted from Wallace, R. K., & Benson, H. (1972, February). The physiology of meditation. Scientific American, 226, 85–90. Graphic redrawn from illustration on p. 86 by Lorelle A. Raboni. Copyright © 1972 by Scientific American, Inc. meditators often report that their sense of individuality and separateness from others diminishes as they experience a sense of oneness with Shapiro, 1987). In a recent and relatively enthusiastic the world. Although the findings of Newberg and colreview of meditation research, Shapiro, Schwartz, & leagues are preliminary, they suggest that it may be Santerre (2002) acknowledge that many meditation possible to pinpoint the neural bases of meditative exstudies “do not use rigorous research design (includperiences that previously seemed inexplicable. ing lack of randomization, lack of followup, and imWhat about the long-term psychological benefits precise measurement of constructs) and sometimes are that have been claimed for meditation? Research sugbased on small samples” (p. 634). gests that meditation may have some value in reducing the effects of stress (Anderson et al., 1999; Winzelberg Using Relaxation Procedures & Luskin, 1999). In particular, regular meditation is Ample evidence suggests that systematic relaxation associated with lower levels of some “stress hormones” procedures can soothe emotional turmoil and reduce (Infante et al., 2001). Research also suggests that medistress-induced physiological arousal (Lehrer & Wooltation can improve mental health while reducing anxifolk, 1984, 1993; Smyth et al., 2001). There are a numety and drug abuse (Alexander et al., 1994). Other studber of worthwhile approaches to achieving beneficial ies report that meditation may have beneficial effects relaxation. The most prominent systems are Jacobson’s on blood pressure (Barnes, Treiber, & Davis, 2001), self(1938) progressive relaxation (see McGuigan, 1993), esteem (Emavardhana & Tori, 1997), mood and one’s Schultz and Luthe’s (1969) autogenic training (see Linsense of control (Easterlin & Cardena, 1999), happiness den, 1993), and Benson’s (1975; Benson & Klipper, 1988) (Smith, Compton, & West, 1995), and overall physical relaxation response. We’ll discuss Benson’s approach health and well-being (Reibel et al., 2001). because it is a simple one that virtually anyone can learn At first glance these results are profoundly impresto use. sive, but they need to be viewed with some caution. At After studying various approaches to meditation, least some of these effects may be just as attainable Herbert Benson, a Harvard Medical School cardiologist, through systematic relaxation or other mental focusing concluded that elaborate religious rituals and beliefs are procedures (Shapiro, 1984; Smith, 1975). Critics also not necessary for someone to profit from meditation. wonder whether placebo effects, sampling bias, and He also concluded that what makes meditation benefiother methodological problems may contribute to some cial is the relaxation it induces. After “demystifying” of the reported benefits of meditation (Bishop, 2002;

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FIG U R E 4.14

Benson’s relaxation response. The relaxation procedure advocated by Herbert Benson is a simple one that should be practiced daily. From Benson, H., & Klipper, M. Z. (1975, 1988). The relaxation response. New York: Morrow. Copyright © 1975 by William Morrow & Co. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

1 2 3 4 5 6

Sit quietly in a comfortable position. Close your eyes. Deeply relax all your muscles, beginning at your feet and progressing up to your face. Keep them relaxed. Breathe through your nose. Become aware of your breathing. As you breathe out, say the word ”one” silently to yourself. For example, breathe in . . . out ”one”; in . . . out ”one”; and so forth. Breathe easily and naturally. Continue for 10 to 20 minutes. You may open your eyes to check the time, but do not use an alarm. When you finish, sit quietly for several minutes, at first with your eyes closed and later with your eyes opened. Do not stand up for a few minutes. Do not worry about whether you are successful in achieving a deep level of relaxation. Maintain a passive attitude and permit relaxation to occur at its own pace. When distracting thoughts occur, try to ignore them by not dwelling on them, and return to repeating ”one.” With practice, the response should come with little effort. Practice the technique once or twice daily but not within two hours after any meal, since digestive processes seem to interfere with the elicitation of the relaxation response.

meditation, Benson (1975) set out to devise a simple, nonreligious procedure that could provide similar benefits. He calls his procedure the “relaxation response.” According to Benson, four factors are critical to effective practice of the relaxation response:

3. A passive attitude. It is important not to get upset

when your attention strays to distracting thoughts. You must realize that such distractions are inevitable. Whenever your mind wanders from your attentional focus, calmly redirect attention to your mental device. 4. A comfortable position. Reasonable body comfort is essential to avoid a major source of potential distraction. Simply sitting up straight works well for most people. Some people can practice the relaxation response lying down, but for most people such a position is too conducive to sleep.

1. A quiet environment. It is easiest to induce the relaxation response in a distraction-free environment. After you become skilled at the relaxation response, you may be able to accomplish it in a crowded subway. Initially, however, you should practice it in a quiet, calm place. 2. A mental device. To shift attention inward and keep it there, you need to focus it on a constant stimulus, such as a sound or word that you recite over and over. You may also choose to gaze fixedly at a bland object, such as a vase. Whatever the case, you need to focus your attention on something.

Benson’s deceptively simple procedure for inducing the relaxation response is described in Figure 4.14. For full benefit, it should be practiced daily.

Achieving Self-Control LEARNING OBJECTIVES ■

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Explain why traits cannot be target behaviors in selfmodification programs. Describe the three kinds of information you should pursue in gathering your baseline data. Discuss how to use reinforcement to increase the strength of a response.

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Explain how to use reinforcement, control of antecedents, and punishment to decrease the strength of a response. Analyze issues related to fine-tuning and ending a selfmodification program.

Answer the following “yes” or “no.” ___ 1. Do you have a hard time passing up food, even when you’re not hungry? ___ 2. Do you wish you studied more often? ___ 3. Would you like to cut down on your smoking or drinking? ___ 4. Do you experience difficulty in getting yourself to exercise regularly? ___ 5. Do you wish you had more willpower? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you have struggled with the challenge of self-control. This Application discusses how you can use the techniques of behavior modification to improve your self-control. If you stop to think about it, self-control—or rather a lack of it—underlies many of the personal problems that people struggle with in everyday life. Behavior modification is a systematic approach to changing behavior through the application of the principles of conditioning. Advocates of behavior modification assume that behavior is a product of learning, conditioning, and environmental control. They further assume that what is learned can be unlearned. Thus, they set out to “recondition” people to produce more desirable patterns of behavior. The technology of behavior modification has been applied with great success in schools, businesses, hospitals, factories, child-care facilities, prisons, and mental health centers (Goodall, 1972; Kazdin, 1982, 2001; Rachman, 1992). Moreover, behavior modification techniques have proven particularly valuable in efforts to improve self-control. Our discussion will borrow liberally from an excellent book on self-modification by David Watson and Roland Tharp (2002). We will discuss five steps in the process of self-modification, which are outlined in Figure 4.15.

Step

1 Step

2

Specify your target behavior

Gather baseline data Identify possible controlling antecedents Determine initial level of response Identify possible controlling consequences

Step

3 Step

4

Step

5 •

Design your program Select strategies to increase response strength or Select strategies to decrease response strength

Execute and evaluate your program

Bring your program to an end

F I G U R E 4. 15

Steps in a self-modification program. This flowchart provides an overview of the steps necessary to execute a self-modification program.

scription. For instance, the man who regards himself as “too irritable” might identify two overly frequent responses, such as arguing with his wife and snapping at his children. These are specific behaviors for which he could design a self-modification program.

Specifying Your Target Behavior The first step in a self-modification program is to specify the target behavior(s) that you want to change. Behavior modification can only be applied to a clearly defined, overt response, yet many people have difficulty pinpointing the behavior they hope to alter. They tend to describe their problems in terms of unobservable personality traits rather than overt behaviors. For example, asked what behavior he would like to change, a man might say, “I’m too irritable.” That may be true, but it is of little help in designing a self-modification program. To use a behavioral approach, you need to translate vague statements about traits into precise descriptions of specific target behaviors. To identify target responses, you need to ponder past behavior or closely observe future behavior and list specific examples of responses that lead to the trait de-

Gathering Baseline Data The second step in behavior modification is to gather baseline data. You need to systematically observe your target behavior for a period of time (usually a week or two) before you work out the details of your program. In gathering your baseline data, you need to monitor three things. First, you need to determine the initial response level of your target behavior. After all, you can’t tell whether your program is working effectively unless you have a baseline for comparison. In most cases, you would simply keep track of how often the target response occurs in a certain time interval. Thus, you might count the daily frequency of snapping at your children, smoking cigarettes, or biting your fingernails. If studying is your target behavior, you will probably monitor

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FIG U R E 4.16

3500

Example of record keeping in a selfmodification program for losing weight. Graphic records are ideal for tracking progress in behavior modification efforts.

3000 Caloric total for food eaten

2500 Calories

2000 1500 1000 500 0

Caloric value of exercise 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8 9 February

10

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Weight

220 218 Morning weight

216 214 212

1

2

hours of study. If you want to modify your eating, you will probably keep track of how many calories you consume. Whatever the unit of measurement, it is crucial to gather accurate data. You should keep permanent written records, preferably in the form of some type of chart or graph (see Figure 4.16). Second, you need to monitor the antecedents of your target behavior. Antecedents are events that typically precede the target response. Often these events play a major role in evoking your target behavior. For example, if your target is overeating, you might discover that the bulk of your overeating occurs late in the evening while you watch TV. If you can pinpoint this kind of antecedent-response connection, you may be able to design your program to circumvent or break the link. Third, you need to monitor the typical consequences of your target behavior. Try to identify the reinforcers that are maintaining an undesirable target behavior or the unfavorable outcomes that are suppressing a desirable target behavior. In trying to identify reinforcers, remember that avoidance behavior is usually maintained by negative reinforcement (see Chapter 2). That is, the payoff for avoidance is usually the removal of something aversive, such as anxiety or a threat to selfesteem. You should also take into account the fact that a response may not be reinforced every time, as most behavior is maintained by intermittent reinforcement.

Designing Your Program Once you have selected a target behavior and gathered adequate baseline data, it is time to plan your intervention program. Generally speaking, your program will

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3

4

5

6

7

8 9 February

10

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13

be designed either to increase or to decrease the frequency of a target response. Increasing Response Strength

Efforts to increase the frequency of a target response depend largely on the use of positive reinforcement. In other words, you reward yourself for behaving properly. Although the basic strategy is quite simple, doing it skillfully involves a number of considerations. Selecting a reinforcer. To use positive reinforcement, you need to find a reward that will be effective for you. Reinforcement is subjective—what is reinforcing for one person may not be reinforcing for another. Figure 4.17 lists questions you can ask yourself to help you determine your personal reinforcers. Be sure to be realistic and choose a reinforcer that is really available to you. You don’t have to come up with spectacular new reinforcers that you’ve never experienced before. You can use reinforcers that you are already getting. However, you have to restructure the contingencies so that you get them only if you behave appropriately. For example, if you normally buy two compact discs per week, you might make these purchases contingent on studying a certain number of hours during the week. Making yourself earn rewards that you used to take for granted is often a useful strategy in a self-modification program. Arranging the contingencies. Once you have chosen your reinforcer, you have to set up reinforcement contingencies. These contingencies will describe the exact behavioral goals that must be met and the rein-

What Are Your Reinforcers?

Responses Earning Tokens

1. What will be the rewards of achieving your goal?

Response

Amount

Number of Tokens

2. What kind of praise do you like to receive, from yourself and others?

Jogging

1/2 mile

4

Jogging

1 mile

8

3. What kinds of things do you like to have?

Jogging

2 miles

16

4. What are your major interests?

Tennis

1 hour

4

5. What are your hobbies?

Tennis

2 hours

8

6. What people do you like to be with?

Sit-ups

25

1

7. What do you like to do with those people?

Sit-ups

50

2

8. What do you do for fun? Redemption Value of Tokens

9. What do you do to relax? 10. What do you do to get away from it all?

Reinforcer

11. What makes you feel good?

Purchase one compact disc of your choice

30

12. What would be a nice present to receive?

Go to movie

50

13. What kinds of things are important to you?

Go to nice restaurant

100

14. What would you buy if you had an extra $20? $50? $100?

Take special weekend trip

500

Tokens required

15. On what do you spend your money each week? 16. What behaviors do you perform every day? (Don’t overlook the obvious or commonplace.) 17. Are there any behaviors you usually perform instead of the target behavior? 18. What would you hate to lose? 19. Of the things you do every day, which would you hate to give up? 20. What are your favorite daydreams and fantasies? 21. What are the most relaxing scenes you can imagine?

F I G U R E 4.17

Selecting a reinforcer. The questions listed here may help you to identify your personal reinforcers. Adapted from Watson, D. L., & Tharp, R. G. (1997). Self-directed behavior: Self-modification for personal adjustment. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Reprinted by permission.

forcement that may then be awarded. For example, in a program to increase exercise, you might make spending $40 on clothes (the reinforcer) contingent on having jogged 15 miles during the week (the target behavior). Try to set behavioral goals that are both challenging and realistic. You want your goals to be challenging so that they lead to improvement in your behavior. However, setting unrealistically high goals—a common mistake in self-modification—often leads to unnecessary discouragement. You also need to be concerned about doling out too much reinforcement. If reinforcement is too easy to get, you may become satiated, and the reinforcer may lose its motivational power. For example, if you were to reward yourself with virtually all the compact discs you wanted, this reinforcer would lose its incentive value. One way to avoid the satiation problem is to put yourself on a token economy. A token economy is a

F I G U R E 4. 18

Example of a token economy to reinforce exercise. This token economy was set up to strengthen three types of exercise behavior. The person can exchange tokens for four types of reinforcers.

system for doling out symbolic reinforcers that are exchanged later for a variety of genuine reinforcers. Thus, you might develop a point system for exercise behavior, accumulating points that can be spent on compact discs, movies, restaurant meals, and so forth. You can also use a token economy to reinforce a variety of related target behaviors, as opposed to a single, specific response. The token economy in Figure 4.18, for instance, is set up to strengthen three different, though related, responses (jogging, tennis, and sit-ups). Shaping. In some cases, you may want to reinforce a target response that you are not currently capable of making, such as speaking in front of a large group or jogging ten miles a day. This situation calls for shaping, which is accomplished by reinforcing closer and closer approximations of the desired response. Thus, you might start jogging two miles a day and add a halfmile each week until you reach your goal. In shaping your behavior, you should set up a schedule spelling out how and when your target behaviors and reinforcement contingencies should change. Generally, it is a good idea to move forward gradually. Decreasing Response Strength

Let’s turn now to the challenge of reducing the frequency of an undesirable response. You can go about this task in a number of ways. Your principal options are reinforcement, control of antecedents, and punishment.

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Reinforcement. Reinforcers can be used in an indirect way to decrease the frequency of a response. This may sound paradoxical, since you have learned that reinforcement strengthens a response. The trick lies in how you define the target behavior. For example, in the case of overeating you might define your target behavior as eating more than 1600 calories a day (a response that you want to decrease) or eating less than 1600 calories a day (a response that you want to increase). You can choose the latter definition and reinforce yourself whenever you eat less than 1600 calories in a day. Thus, you can reinforce yourself for not emitting a response, or for emitting it less, and thereby decrease a response through reinforcement.

Controlling the Antecedents of Overeating A. Shopping for food 1. Do not purchase problematic foods. These include a. very fattening, high-calorie foods b. your favorite foods, unless they have very low caloric values (you will be tempted to overconsume favorite foods) c. foods requiring little preparation (they make it too easy to eat) 2. To facilitate the above, you should a. use a shopping list from which you do not deviate b. shop just after eating (your willpower is reduced to jelly when you’re hungry) c. carry only enough money to pay for items on your list B. In your kitchen

Control of antecedents. A worthwhile strategy for decreasing the occurrence of an undesirable response may be to identify its antecedents and avoid exposure to them. This strategy is especially useful when you are trying to decrease the frequency of a consummatory response, such as smoking or eating. In the case of overeating, for instance, the easiest way to resist temptation is to avoid having to face it. Thus, you might stay away from enticing restaurants, minimize time spent in your kitchen, shop for groceries just after eating (when willpower is higher), and avoid purchasing favorite foods. Figure 4.19 lists a variety of suggestions for controlling antecedents to reduce overeating. Control of antecedents can also be helpful in a program to increase studying. The key often lies in where you study. You can reduce excessive socializing by studying somewhere devoid of people. Similarly, you can reduce loafing by studying someplace where there is no TV, stereo, or phone to distract you.

1. Don’t use your kitchen for anything other than food preparation and consumption. 2. Keep food stock stored out of sight. 3. If you have problematic foods in your kitchen (for other household members, of course), arrange cupboards and the refrigerator so that these foods are out of reach or in the rear. 4. Don’t hover over cooking food. It will cook itself. 5. Prepare only enough food for immediate consumption. C. While eating 1. Don’t do anything besides eating. Watching TV or reading promotes mindless consumption. 2. Leave serving dishes on the kitchen counter or stove. Don’t set them right in front of you. 3. Eat from a smaller dish. It will make a quantity of food appear greater. 4. Slow the pace of eating. Relax and enjoy your food. D. After eating 1. Quickly put away or dispose of leftover foods. 2. Leave the kitchen as soon as you are through.

Punishment. The strategy of decreasing unwanted behavior by punishing yourself for that behavior is an obvious option that people tend to overuse. The biggest problem with punishment in a self-modification effort is the difficulty in following through and punishing oneself. Nonetheless, there may be situations in which your manipulations of reinforcers need to be bolstered by the threat of punishment. If you’re going to use punishment, keep two guidelines in mind. First, do not use punishment alone. Use it in conjunction with positive reinforcement. If you set up a program in which you can earn only negative consequences, you probably won’t stick to it. Second, use a relatively mild punishment so that you will actually be able to administer it to yourself. Nurnberger and Zimmerman (1970) developed a creative method of self-punishment. They had subjects write out a check to an organization they hated (for instance, the campaign of a political candidate whom they despised). The check was held by a third party who mailed it if subjects failed to meet their behavioral goals. 134

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E. In regard to restaurants 1. Insofar as possible, do not patronize restaurants. Menus are written in a much too seductive style. 2. If social obligations require that you eat out, go to a restaurant that you don’t particularly like. 3. When in restaurants, don’t linger over the menu, and don’t gawk at the food on other tables. 4. Avoid driving down streets and going to shopping centers that are loaded with alluring fast-food enterprises. F. In general 1. Try to avoid boredom. Keep yourself busy. 2. Try to avoid excessive sleep loss and fatigue. Your selfcontrol diminishes when you are tired. 3. Avoid excessive fasting. Skipping meals often leads to overeating later.

F I G U R E 4. 19

Control of antecedents. Controlling antecedents that trigger overeating is often a crucial part of behavioral programs for weight loss. The tips listed here have proven useful to many people.

Such a punishment is relatively harmless, but it can serve as a strong source of motivation.

Executing and Evaluating Your Program Once you have designed your program, the next step is to put it to work by enforcing the contingencies that you have carefully planned. During this period, you need to continue to accurately record the frequency of your target behavior so you can evaluate your progress. The success of your program depends on your not “cheating.” The most common form of cheating is to reward yourself when you have not actually earned it. You can do two things to increase the likelihood that you will comply with your program. One is to make up a behavioral contract—a written agreement outlining a promise to adhere to the contingencies of a behavior modification program (see Figure 4.20). The formality of signing such a contract in front of friends or family seems to make many people take their program more seriously. You can further reduce the likelihood of cheating by having someone other than yourself dole out the reinforcers and punishments. Behavior modification programs often require some fine-tuning. So don’t be surprised if you need to make a few adjustments. Several flaws are especially com-

mon in designing self-modification programs. Among those that you should look out for are (1) depending on a weak reinforcer, (2) permitting lengthy delays between appropriate behavior and delivery of reinforcers, and (3) trying to do too much too quickly by setting unrealistic goals. Often, a small revision or two can turn a failing program around and make it a success.

Ending Your Program Generally, when you design your program you should spell out the conditions under which you will bring it to an end. Doing so involves setting terminal goals such as reaching a certain weight, studying with a certain regularity, or going without cigarettes for a certain length of time. Often, it is a good idea to phase out your program by planning a gradual reduction in the frequency or potency of your reinforcement for appropriate behavior. If your program is successful, it may fade away without a conscious decision on your part. Often, new, improved patterns of behavior become self-maintaining. Responses such as eating right, exercising regularly, and studying diligently may become habitual. Whether you end your program intentionally or not, you should always be prepared to reinstitute the program if you find yourself slipping back to your old patterns of behavior.

I, ____________________, do hereby agree to initiate my self-change strategy as of (date) ____________________ and to continue it for a minimum period of ____________________ weeks—that is, until (date) ____________________. My specific self-change strategy is to ______________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ I will do my best to execute this strategy to my utmost ability and to evaluate its effectiveness only after it has been honestly tried for the specified period of time. Optional Self-Reward Clause: For every ____________________ day(s) that I successfully comply with my self-change contract, I will reward myself with ____________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________

FIG U R E 4.20

A behavioral contract. Behavior modification experts recommend the use of a formal, written contract similar to that shown here to increase commitment to one’s self-modification program.

In addition, at the end of my minimum period of personal experimentation, I will reward myself for having persisted in my self-change efforts. My reward at that time will be ____________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ I hereby request that the witnesses who have signed below support me in my self-change efforts and encourage my compliance with the specifics of this contract. Their cooperation and encouragement throughout the project will be appreciated. Signed ____________________ Date ____________________ Witness: Witness:

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Coping involves behavioral efforts to master, reduce, or tolerate the demands created by stress. People cope with stress in many ways, but most have certain styles of coping. Coping strategies vary in their adaptive value.

Research suggests that it is wise for people to learn how to manage their feelings of hostility. New evidence also suggests that forgiving people for their offenses is healthier than nursing grudges. ■ Meditation can be helpful in soothing emotional turmoil. Meditation is associated with lower levels of stress hormones, improved mental health, and other indicators of wellness. Although less exotic, systematic relaxation procedures, such as Benson’s relaxation response, can also be effective in reducing troublesome emotional arousal.

Common Coping Patterns of Limited Value

Application: Achieving Self-Control

KEY IDEAS The Concept of Coping

CHAPTER 4 REVIEW

Giving up, possibly best understood in terms of learned helplessness, is a common coping pattern that tends to be of limited value. Another is striking out at others with acts of aggression. Frequently caused by frustration, aggression tends to be counterproductive because it often creates new sources of stress. ■ Indulging oneself is a common coping strategy that is not inherently unhealthy, but it is frequently taken to excess and thus becomes maladaptive. Internet addiction is a new form of selfindulgence. Blaming yourself with negative self-talk is associated with depression. ■ Defensive coping is common and may involve any of a number of defense mechanisms. Although the adaptive value of defensive coping tends to be less than optimal, it depends on the situation. Taylor and Brown have argued that some illusions may be healthful, but their thesis has been controversial. The Nature of Constructive Coping ■

Constructive coping, which includes efforts to deal with stress that are judged as relatively healthful, does not appear to depend on one’s intelligence. Constructive coping is rational, realistic, and action oriented. It also involves managing emotions and learning self-control.

In behavior modification, the principles of learning are used to change behavior directly. Behavior modification techniques can be used to increase one’s self-control. The first step in selfmodification is to specify the overt target behavior to be increased or decreased. ■ The second step is to gather baseline data about the initial rate of the target response and identify any typical antecedents and consequences associated with the behavior. The third step is to design a program. If you are trying to increase the strength of a response, you’ll depend on positive reinforcement. The reinforcement contingencies should spell out exactly what you have to do to earn your reinforcer. A number of strategies can be used to decrease the strength of a response, including reinforcement, control of antecedents, and punishment. ■ The fourth step is to execute and evaluate the program. Selfmodification programs often require some fine-tuning. The final step is to determine how and when you will phase out your program.

Appraisal-Focused Constructive Coping ■

Appraisal-focused constructive coping is facilitated by Ellis’s suggestions on how to reduce catastrophic thinking by digging out the irrational assumptions that cause it. Other valuable strategies include using humor to deal with stress and looking for the positive aspects of setbacks and problems.

Problem-Focused Constructive Coping ■

Systematic problem solving can be facilitated by following a four-step process: (1) clarify the problem, (2) generate alternative courses of action, (3) evaluate your alternatives and select a course of action, and (4) take action while maintaining flexibility. ■ Other problem-focused coping tactics with potential value include seeking social support and acquiring strategies to improve self-control. Better time management can also aid problemfocused coping. Effective time management doesn’t depend on increased efficiency so much as on setting priorities and allocating time wisely. It is also helpful to avoid the common tendency to procrastinate on aversive tasks.

KEY TERMS Aggression p. 108 Antecedents p. 132 Behavior modification p. 131 Behavioral contract p. 135 Brainstorming p. 119 Catastrophic thinking p. 115 Catharsis p. 109 Constructive coping p. 113 Coping p. 106 Defense mechanisms p. 111

Emotional intelligence p. 125 Internet addiction pp. 109–110 Learned helplessness p. 107 Meditation p. 128 Procrastination p. 122 Rational-emotive therapy p. 115 Shaping p. 133 Token economy p. 133

Emotion-Focused Constructive Coping ■

Emotional intelligence may help people to be more resilient in the face of stress. Inhibition of emotions appears to be associated with increased health problems. Hence, it appears that releasing pent-up emotions is adaptive. Research shows that writing or talking about traumatic events or sensitive issues is associated with enhanced wellness.

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KEY PEOPLE Herbert Benson pp. 129–130 Albert Ellis pp. 115–117 Sigmund Freud pp. 111–112

Martin Seligman pp. 107–108 Shelley Taylor p. 113

Personal Explorations Workbook The following exercises in your Personal Explorations Workbook may enhance your self-understanding in relation to issues raised in this chapter. Questionnaire 4.1: Barnes-Vulcano Rationality Test. Personal Probe 4.1: Can You Detect Your Irrational Thinking? Personal Probe 4.2: Analyzing Coping Strategies. Personal Probe 4.3: Recognizing Coping Tactics.

ANSWERS

Pages 115–117 Pages 121–122 Pages 126–127 Page 131 Page 133

6. According to Albert Ellis, people’s emotional reactions to life events result mainly from: a. their arousal level at the time. b. their beliefs about events. c. congruence between events and expectations. d. the consequences following events.

Visit the Book Companion Website at http://psychology. wadsworth.com/weiten_lloyd8e, where you will find tutorial quizzes, flashcards, and weblinks for every chapter, a final exam, and more! You can also link to the Thomson Wadsworth Psychology Resource Center (accessible directly at http://psychology.wadsworth.com) for a range of psychology-related resources.

b b c c b

5. Taylor and Brown found that normal people’s selfimages tend to be __________; depressed people’s tend to be __________. a. accurate, inaccurate b. less favorable, more favorable c. overly favorable, more realistic d. more realistic, overly favorable

Book Companion Website

6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

4. Defense mechanisms involve the use of _________ to guard against negative _________. a. self-deception, behaviors b. self-deception, emotions c. self-denial, behaviors d. self-denial, emotions

10. A system providing for symbolic reinforcers is called a(n): a. extinction system. b. token economy. c. endocrine system. d. symbolic reinforcement system.

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Page 109 Pages 108–109 Pages 109–110 Page 112 Page 113

3. Bill feels sure that he failed his calculus exam and that he will have to retake the course. He is very upset. When he gets home, he orders himself a jumbo-size pizza and drinks two six-packs of beer. Bill’s behavior illustrates which of the following coping strategies? a. Catastrophic thinking b. Defensive coping c. Self-indulgence d. Positive reinterpretation

9. The first step in a self-modification program is: a. design your program. b. gather baseline data. c. specify your target behavior. d. any of the above; it doesn’t matter.

b b c b c

2. Reggie works at a software firm. Today his boss unfairly blamed him for the fact that a new program is way behind schedule. The unjustified public criticism really had an impact on Reggie. Later that night at home, when Reggie couldn’t find some tools that he misplaced, he lashed out at his wife in annoyance. Reggie’s behavior illustrates: a. overcompensation. b. displaced aggression. c. self-indulgence. d. catastrophic thinking.

8. Research by James Pennebaker and his colleagues suggests that wellness is promoted by: a. depending on more mature defense mechanisms. b. strong self-criticism. c. writing about one’s traumatic experiences. d. Iihibiting the expression of anger.

PRACTICE TEST

1. The release of emotional tension as termed by Freud is called: a. flushing. b. catharsis. c. discharge. d. diversion.

Coping Processes

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

PRACTICE TEST

7. Which of the following is not listed in your text as a cause of wasted time? a. Inability to set priorities b. Inability to work diligently c. Inability to delegate responsibility d. Inability to throw things away

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SELF-CONCEPT The Nature of the Self-Concept Self-Discrepancies Factors Shaping the Self-Concept SELF-ESTEEM The Importance of Self-Esteem The Development of Self-Esteem Ethnicity, Gender, and Self-Esteem

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BASIC PRINCIPLES OF SELF-PERCEPTION Cognitive Processes Self-Attributions Explanatory Style Motives Guiding Self-Understanding Methods of Self-Enhancement

SELF-PRESENTATION Impression Management Self-Monitoring

SELF-REGULATION Self-Efficacy Self-Defeating Behavior

PRACTICE TEST

APPLICATION: BUILDING SELF-ESTEEM CHAPTER 5 REVIEW

CHAPTER

The Self

5 You’ve just taken your first exam in your first psychology course. Expecting a B, you’re looking forward to getting your test back. Your instructor hands you your exam and you look at your grade: a C–. You’re stunned! How could this be? You thought that you knew the material really well. As you sit there taking in this disappointing and disturbing turn of events, you anxiously search for possible explanations for your performance. “Did I read the chapters carefully? Do I need to revamp my study methods? Is this course a lot harder than I had thought? Am I really ‘college material’?” As you leave the class, your mood has shifted from up to down. You’re feeling dejected and already worrying about how you’ll do on the next exam. This scenario illustrates the process of self-perception and the effect it can have on emotions, motivation, and goal setting. People engage in this process constantly to understand the causes of their own behavior. In this chapter, we highlight the self and its role in adjustment. We start off by looking at two major components of the self: self-concept and self-esteem. Then we review some key principles of the self-perception process. Next, we turn to the important topic of self-regulation. Finally, we focus on how people present themselves to others. In the Application, we offer some suggestions for building self-esteem.

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Self-Concept LEARNING OBJECTIVES ■ ■

Describe some key aspects of the self-concept. Cite two types of self-discrepancies and describe their effects. Describe two ways of coping with self-discrepancies.

■ ■

If you were asked to describe yourself, what would you say? You’d probably start off with some physical attributes such as “I’m tall,” “I’m of average weight,” or “I’m blonde.” Soon you’d move on to psychological characteristics: “I’m friendly,” “I’m honest,” “I’m reasonably intelligent,” and so forth. How did you develop these beliefs about yourself ? Have your self-views changed over time? Read on.

Discuss important factors that help form the self-concept. Discuss how individualism and collectivism influence the self-concept.

you receive in that setting. Similarly, when you’re at a party (or thinking about a party when you’re in class!), you tap into your social self-schema and the thoughts and feelings related to it. Jason’s self-concept Athlete

Tall

Friendly

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Aspiring sales manager

Son Sense of humor

Optimistic Helpful

Liberal Student

Fraternity member

Attractive Intelligent

Chris’s self-concept Stanford University News Service, photo by L. A. Cicero

Although we usually talk about the self-concept as a single entity, it is actually a multifaceted structure (Mischel & Morf, 2003). That is, the self-concept is an organized collection of beliefs about the self. These beliefs, also called self-schemas, are developed from past experience and are concerned with one’s personality traits, abilities, physical features, values, goals, and social roles (Campbell, Assanand, & DiPaula, 2000). People have self-schemas on dimensions that are important to them, including both strengths and weaknesses. Figure 5.1 depicts the self-concepts of two hypothetical individuals. Each of these self-schemas is characterized by relatively distinct thoughts and feelings. For instance, you might have considerable information about your social skills and feel quite self-assured about them but have limited information and less confidence about your physical skills. Current thinking is Hazel Markus that only a portion of the total selfconcept operates at any one time. The self-concept that is accessible at any given moment has been termed the working self-concept by Hazel Markus, a leading researcher in this area (Markus & Wurf, 1987). Self-schemas are dynamic and play a major role in processing self-relevant information. For example, when a particular self-schema is operating, its attendant thoughts and feelings strongly influence the way individuals process information about that aspect of the self. When you’re in class, for example, the beliefs and emotions associated with your intellectual selfschema will influence how you process information

Masculine

Son

Averagelooking

Masculine Aspiring journalist

Energetic

Helpful Cynical

Intelligent

Student

Ambitious

Introverted

Conservative Inquisitive

Determined

FIG U R E 5.1

The self-concept and self-schemas. The self-concept is composed of various self-schemas, or beliefs about the self. Jason and Chris have different self-concepts, in part, because they have different self-schemas.

Beliefs about the self influence not only current behavior but also future behavior. Possible selves refer to one’s conceptions about the kind of person one might become in the future (Markus & Nurius, 1986). If you have narrowed your career choices to personnel manager and psychologist, these represent two possible selves in the career realm. Possible selves are developed from past experiences, current behavior, and future expectations. They make people attentive to goal-related information and role models and mindful of the need to practice goal-related skills. As such, they help individuals not only to envision desired future goals but also to achieve them (Cross & Markus, 1991). Interestingly, it has been found that, for individuals who have experienced traumatic events, psychological adjustment is best among those who are able to envision a variety of positive selves (Morgan & Janoff-Bulman, 1994). Sometimes, possible selves are negative and represent what you fear you might become—such as an alcoholic like Uncle George or an adult without an intimate relationship like your next-door neighbor. In this case, possible selves function as images to be avoided. Individuals’ beliefs about themselves are not set in concrete—but neither are they easily changed. People are strongly motivated to maintain a consistent view of the self across time and situations. Thus, once the self-concept is established, the individual has a tendency to preserve and defend it. In the context of this stability, however, self-beliefs do have a certain dynamic quality (Markus & Wurf, 1987). They seem to be most susceptible to change when people shift from an important and familiar social setting to an unfamiliar one—for example, when moving off to college or to a new city for one’s first “real” job. This finding clearly underscores the social foundations of the self-concept.

Self-Discrepancies Some people perceive themselves pretty much the way they’d like to see themselves. Others experience a gap between what they actually see and what they’d like to see. For example, Nathan describes his actual self as “shy” but his ideal self as “outgoing.” Such mismatching of selfperceptions is termed self-discrepancy. According to E. Tory Higgins (1987), individuals have several self-perceptions: an actual self (qualities you believe you actually possess), an ideal self (characteristics you would like to have), and an ought self (traits you believe you should possess). The ideal and ought selves serve as personal standards or self-guides that direct behavior.

WE B LI N K 5.1

Research Sources: Concepts of Person and Self Over the past century psychologists, philosophers, and many others have wondered what we mean when we use terms like “person” and “self.” Professor Shaun Gallagher of the University of Central Florida’s Philosophy and Cognitive Science Department provides visitors with a variety of resources to explore these concepts.

Self-Discrepancies and Their Effects

According to Higgins, when people live up to their personal standards (ideal or ought selves), they experience high self-esteem; when they don’t meet their own expectations, their self-esteem suffers (Moretti & Higgins, 1990). In addition, he says, certain types of selfdiscrepancies are associated with specific emotions (see Figure 5.2). One type of self-discrepancy occurs when the actual self is at odds with the ideal self. Such instances trigger dejection-related emotions (sadness, disappointment). As actual-ideal discrepancies outnumber actual-ideal congruencies, sadness increases and cheerfulness decreases (Higgins, Shah, & Friedman, 1997). Consider Tiffany’s situation: She knows that she’s attractive, but she is also overweight and would like to be thinner. Self-discrepancy theory predicts that she would feel dissatisfied and dejected. Interestingly, research has shown an association between discrepant actual/ideal views of body shape and eating disorders (Strauman et al., 1991). A second type of discrepancy involves a mismatch between actual and ought selves. Let’s say you don’t stay in touch with your grandparents as often as you feel you should. According to Higgins, actual/ought self-

Self-discrepancy

Emotional state

Possible consequences

Actual self vs. ideal self

Disappointment Dejection Sadness

Depression

Actual self vs. ought self

Anxiety Irritability Guilt

Anxiety-related disorders

FIG U R E 5.2

Types of self-discrepancies, their effects on emotional states, and possible consequences. According to E. Tory Higgins (1989), discrepancies between actual and ideal selves produce disappointment and sadness, whereas discrepancies between actual and ought selves result in irritability and guilt. Such self-discrepancies can make individuals vulnerable to more serious psychological problems, such as depression and anxietyrelated disorders.

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discrepancies produce agitation-related emotions (irtest to improve your grade. But what about the times ritability, anxiety, and guilt). As actual-ought discrepyou can’t match your ideal standards? Perhaps you had ancies outnumber actual-ought congruencies, anxiety your heart set on making the varsity tennis team, but increases and calm emotions decrease (Higgins, Shah, didn’t make the cut. Maybe you had planned to go to & Friedman, 1997). Extreme discrepancies of this type medical school, but barely managed to eek out C’s in can result in anxiety-related psychological disorders. your science courses. One way to ease the discomfort Everyone experiences self-discrepancies, yet most associated with such discrepancies is to bring your people manage to feel reasonably good about themideal self a bit more in line with your actual abilities. selves. How is this possible? Three factors seem to be Another option is to blunt your self-awareness. You can important: the amount of discrepancy you experience, do so by avoiding situations that increase your selfawareness—you don’t go to a party if you expect to your awareness of the discrepancy, and whether the disspend a miserable evening talking to yourself. crepancy is actually important to you (Higgins, 1999). Some people use alcohol to blunt self-awareness. Thus, a pre-med major who gets a C in calculus will In one study, college students were first put into either probably feel a lot worse than an English major who gets a high or a low self-awareness group based on test scores a C in the course. (Hull & Young, 1983). Then, both groups were given a Although people use both ideal and ought selves as brief version of an intelligence test as well as false feedpersonal standards, they usually rely on just one of these back on their test performance. Half of the high selfself-guides. These “preferences” are rooted in parentawareness group were told that they had done quite well child interactions and individual temperament (Higon the test and the other half were told that they had gins, 1987). If Kyle’s parents typically communicate done quite poorly. Next, supposedly as part of a sepawith him in terms of what they would like him to do, rate study, these participants were asked to taste and he will probably develop a strong ideal self-guide. If evaluate various wines for 15 minutes. The experitheir communications usually take the form of what menters predicted that the high self-awareness particithey think he ought to do, Kyle will probably develop a pants who had been told that they had done poorly on strong ought self-guide. the IQ test would drink more than the other groups, and One study took a closer look at self-guide “preferthis is precisely what the study found (see Figure 5.3). ences.” The researchers first tested college students to Those who couldn’t escape negative information about determine their temperament and the self-guides (ideal themselves drank more alcohol to reduce their selfor ought) students “preferred” (Manian, Strauman, & awareness. Similarly, in the real world, it has been found Denney, 1998). Then they asked participants to recall that alcoholics who have high self-awareness and who the parenting style their parents used. A preference for experience negative or painful life events relapse more the ideal self-guide was strongly associated with a posquickly and completely (Hull, Young, & Jouriles, 1986). itive temperament and parental warmth, while a prefHeightened self-awareness doesn’t always make erence for the ought self-guide was strongly associated people focus on self-discrepancies and negative aspects with a negative temperament and parental rejection. of the self. If that were true, most people would feel a Of course, a retrospective study can’t show that parlot worse about themselves than they actually do. As enting style determines self-guide preferences, but the results are interesting. Other researchers report that “ideals” look for opportunities to advance their aspirations, while “oughts” keep an eye out for obstacles to their goals Failure feedback High to avoid possible failures (Dweck, Higgins, Success feedback self-awareness & Grant-Pillow, 2003). Thus, self-guides can determine the types of goals you pursue and Failure feedback Low the way you pursue them. self-awareness Success feedback Coping with Self-Discrepancies

Can individuals do anything to blunt the negative emotions and blows to self-esteem associated with self-discrepancies? Yes! For one thing, people can change their behavior to bring it more in line with their ideal or ought selves. For instance, if your ideal self is a person who gets above-average grades and your actual self just got a D on a test, you can study more effectively for the next 142

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1

2

3 4 5 6 7 8 Ounces of wine consumed

9

10

FIG U R E 5.3

Self-awareness and alcohol consumption. Individuals who were high in selfawareness drank significantly more wine in a 15-minute period if they believed that they had performed poorly on an IQ test than did any other group. From Hull, J. G., & Young, R. D. (1983), Self-consciousness, self-esteem, and success-failure as determinants of alcohol consumption in male social drinkers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44, 1097–1109. Copyright © 1983 American Psychological Association. Reprinted by permission of the author.

The Interpersonal Realm

© Spencer Grant/PhotoEdit

When people don’t live up to their personal standards, selfesteem suffers, and some turn to alcohol to blunt their awareness of the discrepancy.

you recall, self-concepts are made up of numerous selfbeliefs—many of them positive, some negative. Because individuals have a need to feel good about themselves, they tend to focus on their positive features rather than their “warts” (Tesser, 2001).

Factors Shaping the Self-Concept A variety of sources influence one’s self-concept. Chief among them are one’s own observations, feedback from others, and cultural values. Your Own Observations

Your observations of your own behavior are obviously a major source of information about what you are like. Individuals begin observing their own behavior and drawing conclusions about themselves early in life. Children will make statements about who is the tallest, who can run fastest, or who can swing the highest. Leon Festinger’s (1954) social comparison theory proposes that individuals compare themselves with others in order to assess their abilities and opinions. People compare themselves to others to determine how attractive they are, how they did on the history exam, how their social skills stack up, and so forth.

Although Festinger’s original theory claimed that people engage in social comparison for the purpose of accurately assessing their abilities, research suggests that they also engage in social comparison to improve their skills and to maintain their self-image (Wood & Wilson, 2003). Furthermore, the reasons people engage in social comparison determine whom they choose for a point of comparison. A reference group is a set of people against whom individuals compare themselves. For example, if you want to know how you did on your first test in social psychology (ability appraisal), your reference group will be the entire class. On the other hand, if you want to improve your tennis game (skill development), your reference group will probably be limited to those of superior ability, because their skills give you something to strive for. And, if your self-esteem needs bolstering, you will probably compare yourself to those whom you perceive to be worse off than you so you can feel better about yourself. The potential impact of such social comparisons was dramatically demonstrated in the classic “Mr. Clean/ Mr. Dirty” study (Morse & Gergen, 1970). Subjects thought they were being interviewed for a job. Half the participants met another applicant who was neatly dressed and who appeared to be very competent. The other half encountered a competitor who was unkempt and disorganized. All subjects filled out measures of self-esteem both before and after the bogus job interviews. The results indicated that subjects who encountered the impressive competitor showed a decrease in self-esteem after the interview while those who met the unimpressive competitor showed increases in selfesteem. Thus, comparisons with others can have immediate effects on one’s self-concept. People’s observations of their own behavior are not entirely objective. The general tendency is to distort reality in a positive direction (see Figure 5.4 on the next page). In other words, most people tend to evaluate themselves in a more positive light than they really merit (Taylor & Brown, 1988, 1994). The strength of this tendency was highlighted in a large survey of high school seniors conducted as part of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) (Myers, 1980). By definition, 50 percent of the students must be “above average” and 50 percent “below average” on specific questions. However, 100 percent of the

WE B LI N K 5.2

Identity and Self Professor Andy Lock at Massey University in New Zealand has posted the outline of a possible upper-level course that would explore contemporary psychological conceptions of the self and identity development, particularly from the social constructivist and cultural viewpoints. His site includes a full set of bibliographical and topical guides.

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As the husband sees her: Older than her years. Someone more suited to suburban domesticity and PTA.

As he sees himself: Stylish haircut, rakish moustache, benevolent, generous, powerful. A smooth operator.

As the wife sees him: Somewhat of a slob, moody, not very decisive or strong.

Brooks/Cole Collection

As she sees herself: Unchanged since age 22. Sociable, scintillating, sexy.

F I G U R E 5.4

Distortions in self-images. How people see themselves may be different from how others see them. These pictures and text illustrate the subjective quality of self-concept and people’s perception of others. Generally, self-images tend to be distorted in a positive direction.

respondents saw themselves as above average in “ability to get along with others.” And 25 percent of the respondents thought that they belonged in the top 1 percent! Although the general tendency is to distort reality in a positive direction, most people make both positive and negative distortions. For example, you might overrate your social skill, emotional stability, and intellectual ability while underrating your physical attractiveness. Also, a minority of people consistently evaluate themselves in an unrealistically negative way. Thus, the tendency to see oneself in an overly favorable light is strong but not universal. Feedback from Others

Your self-concept is shaped significantly by the feedback you get from important people in your life. Early on, parents and other family members play a dominant role. Parents give their children a great deal of di-

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rect feedback, saying such things as “We’re so proud of you” or “If you just tried harder, you could do a lot better in math.” Most people, especially when young, take this sort of feedback to heart. Thus, it comes as no surprise that studies find a link between parents’ views of a child and the child’s self-concept (Berne & Savary, 1993; Burhans & Dweck, 1995). There is even stronger evidence for a relationship between children’s perceptions of their parents’ attitudes toward them and their own self-views (Felson, 1989, 1992). Teachers, Little League coaches, Scout leaders, classmates, and friends also provide feedback during childhood. In later childhood and adolescence, parents and classmates are particularly important sources of feedback and support (Harter, 2003). Later in life, feedback from close friends and marriage partners assumes importance. In fact, there is evidence that a close partner’s support and affirmation can bring the loved one’s ac-

© David Young-Wolff/PhotoEdit

ahead of group goals and defining one’s identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group memberships. In contrast, collectivism involves putting group goals ahead of personal goals and defining one’s identity in terms of the groups one belongs to (such as one’s family, tribe, work group, social class, caste, and so on). Although it’s tempting to think of these perspectives in either-or terms, it is more appropriate to view them as points along a continuum. Thus, it is more accurate to say that certain cultures are more or less individualistic (or collectivist) than others rather than seeing them as either individualistic or collectivist. Whether positive or negative, feedback from others plays an important role in shaping a In comparison to individualisyoungster’s self-concept. tic cultures, collectivist cultures place a higher priority on shared values tual self-views and behavior more in line with his or and resources, cooperation, and concern for how one’s her ideal self (Drigotas et al., 1999). For this situation actions will affect other group members. Child-rearing to happen, the partner needs to hold views of the loved patterns in collectivist cultures emphasize the imporone that match the target person’s ideal self and betance of obedience, reliability, and proper behavior, have in ways to bring out the best in the person. If the whereas individualistic cultures stress the development target person’s behavior can closely match the ideal of independence, self-esteem, and self-reliance. self, then self-views can move nearer to the ideal self. A variety of factors influence societies’ tendencies Researchers have labeled this process the Michelangelo to cherish individualism or collectivism. Among other phenomenon to reflect the partner’s role in “sculpting” things, increases in a culture’s affluence, education, urinto reality the ideal self of a loved one. banization, and social mobility tend to foster more inKeep in mind that people filter feedback from othdividualism (Triandis, 1994). Many contemporary soers through their existing self-perceptions. That is, indicieties are in transition, but generally speaking North viduals don’t see themselves exactly as others see them, American and Western European cultures tend to be inbut rather as they believe others see them (Baumeister dividualistic, whereas Asian, African, and Latin Ameri& Twenge, 2003; Tice & Wallace, 2003). Thus, feedback can cultures tend to be collectivist (Hofstede, 1980, 1983). from others usually reinforces people’s self-views. Individuals reared in individualistic cultures usually have an independent view of the self, perceiving themCultural Values selves as unique, self-contained, and distinct from othYour self-concept is also shaped by cultural values. ers. In contrast, individuals reared in collectivist cultures Among other things, the society in which you are reared typically have an interdependent view of the self. They defines what is desirable and undesirable in personalsee themselves as inextricably connected to others and ity and behavior. For example, American culture puts believe that harmonious relationships with others are of a high premium on individuality, competitive success, utmost importance. Thus, in describing herself, a person strength, and skill. When individuals meet cultural exliving in an individualistic culture might say,“I am kind,” pectations, they feel good about themselves and expewhereas someone in a collectivist culture might respond, rience increases in self-esteem and vice-versa (Cross & “My family thinks I am kind” (Triandis, 2001). FigGore, 2003). ure 5.5 (on the next page) depicts the self-conceptions Cross-cultural studies suggest that different culof individuals from these contrasting cultures. tures shape different conceptions of the self (Cross & Individuals with an independent view of the self are Markus, 1999; Cross & Gore, 2003). One important way socialized to maintain their sense of self as a separate cultures differ is on the dimension of individualism person—to “look out for number one,” claim more versus collectivism (Hofstede, 1983; Triandis, 1989, than their share of credit for group successes, and dis2001). Individualism involves putting personal goals avow responsibility for group failure. Those with an

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FIG U R E 5.5

b) Interdependent self-system

a) Independent self-system

Independent and interdependent views of the self. (a) Individuals in cultures that support an independent view perceive the self as clearly separated from significant others. (b) Individuals in cultures that support an interdependent view perceive the self as inextricably connected to others. Adapted from Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98, 224–253.

Father Father Mother

Mother Sibling

Sibling

Self

Self Friend

Friend Friend

Co-worker

interdependent view of the self are taught to adjust themselves to the needs of the groups to which they belong and to maintain the interdependence among individuals. In this situation, social duties and obligations assume great importance and people are likely to see themselves as responsible for group failures (Cross & Gore, 2003). Researchers have noted parallels between the selfviews promoted by individualistic and collectivist cultures and the self-views of some groups. For example, women usually have more interdependent self-views than men (Cross & Madson, 1997). But don’t take this to mean that men are less social than women; instead it means that men and women get their social needs met in different ways (Baumeister & Sommer, 1997). Thus

Friend

Co-worker

women are usually involved in close relationships involving intimate friends and family members (relational interdependence), while men interact in social groups such as clubs and sports teams (collective interdependence) (Gabriel & Gardner, 1999). These gender differences in self-views may explain other observed gender differences, such as women being more likely than men to share their feelings and thoughts with others. We’ll take up such issues in subsequent chapters. Cultural values are also responsible for various stereotypes that can mold people’s self-perceptions and behavior. And stereotypes—about gender, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, and religion—can influence self-conceptions.

Self-Esteem LEARNING OBJECTIVES ■

Describe the implications of self-concept confusion and self-esteem instability. Discuss how high and low self-esteem are related to adjustment. Distinguish between high self-esteem and narcissism, and discuss narcissism and aggression.

One of the functions of the self-concept is to evaluate the self; the result of this self-evaluation is termed selfesteem. Self-esteem refers to one’s overall assessment of one’s worth as a person. Self-esteem is a global selfevaluation that blends many specific evaluations about one’s adequacy as a student, an athlete, a worker, a spouse, a parent, or whatever is personally relevant. Figure 5.6 shows how specific elements of the selfconcept may contribute to self-esteem. If you feel ba-

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Discuss some key influences in the development of self-esteem. Summarize the findings on ethnicity and gender regarding self-esteem.

sically good about yourself, you probably have high self-esteem. It has long been thought that individuals with low self-esteem hold strong negative views about themselves. In reality, it seems that the self-views of these individuals are not more negative, but more confused and tentative (Campbell, 1990; Campbell & Lavallee, 1993). In other words, their self-concepts seem to be less clear, less complete, more self-contradictory, and

Self-esteem

Emotional self-image

Academic self-image

Physical self-image

Relationships

Emotional expression

Course work

Physical appearance

Peers Significant others

Anger Happiness Love

English History Psychology

Weight Smile Hairstyle

more susceptible to short-term fluctuations than the self-views of high self-esteem individuals. According to Roy Baumeister (1998), an eminent researcher on the self, this “self-concept confusion” means that individuals with low selfesteem simply don’t know themselves well enough to strongly enRoy Baumeister dorse many personal attributes on self-esteem tests, which results in lower self-esteem scores. Studies generally show self-esteem to be quite stable over time, once past childhood (Trzesniewski, Donnellan, & Robins, 2003). In other words, if you have high self-esteem today, you are likely to have high selfesteem six months or two years from now. While it’s true that baseline self-esteem is stable, it’s also true that the ups and downs of daily life can produce shortterm fluctuations in self-esteem. Recall your elation when that great-looking person at work asked you out and your distress when you saw that C– staring back at you on your last calculus exam. People vary in the stability of their self-esteem. Those whose self-esteem fluctuates in response to daily experiences are highly sensitive to interactions and events that have potential relevance to their self-worth, and they may even mistakenly view irrelevant events as having significance (Kernis & Goldman, 2003). Thus, in their eyes, their self-worth is always on the line. These tendencies have important implications for adjustment, as you’ll see shortly.

Courtesy, Roy Baumeister

Social self-image

FIG U R E 5.6

The structure of self-esteem. Self-esteem is a global evaluation that combines assessments of various aspects of one’s selfconcept, each of which is built up from many specific behaviors and experiences. (Adapted from Shavelson, Hubner, & Stanton, 1976)

Investigating self-esteem is challenging for several reasons. For one thing, it is difficult to obtain accurate measures of self-esteem. The problem is that researchers tend to rely on self-reports from subjects, which obviously may be biased. As you’ve seen, most individuals typically hold unrealistically positive views about themselves; moreover, some people may choose not to disclose their actual self-esteem on a questionnaire. Second, in probing self-esteem it is often quite difficult to separate cause from effect. Thousands of correlational studies report that high and low self-esteem are associated with various behavioral characteristics. For instance, you saw in Chapter 1 that self-esteem is a good predictor of happiness. However, it is hard to tell whether high self-esteem causes happiness or vice versa. You should keep this problem in pinpointing causation in mind as we zoom in on this fascinating topic.

The Importance of Self-Esteem Popular wisdom holds that self-esteem is the key to practically all positive outcomes in life. In fact, its actual benefits are much fewer—but, we hasten to add, not unimportant. A recent comprehensive review of research looked at the purported and actual advantages of self-esteem (Baumeister et al., 2003). Let’s look at the findings that relate to self-esteem and adjustment. Self-Esteem and Adjustment

The clearest advantages of self-esteem are in the emotional sphere. Namely, self-esteem is strongly and consistently related to happiness. In fact, Baumeister and his colleagues are persuaded that high self-esteem ac-

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tually leads to greater happiness, although they acknowledge that research has not clearly established the direction of causation. On the other side, low self-esteem is more likely than high self-esteem to lead to depression. In the area of achievement, high self-esteem has not been shown to be a reliable cause of good academic performance. In fact, it may actually be the (weak) result of doing well in school. Baumeister and his colleagues speculate that other factors may underlie both self-esteem and academic performance. Regarding job performance, the results are mixed. Some studies find that high self-esteem is linked to better performance, but others find no difference. And it may be that occupational success leads to high self-esteem. In the interpersonal realm, Baumeister and his colleagues report that people with high self-esteem claim to be more likable and attractive, to have better relationships, and to make better impressions on others than people with low self-esteem. Interestingly, these advantages seem to exist mainly in the minds of the beholders because objective data (ratings of peers) do not support these views. In fact, Mark Leary’s sociometer theory suggests that self-esteem is actually a subjective measure of one’s interpersonal popularity and success (Leary et al., 1995; Leary & Baumeister, 2000). Regarding romantic relationships, those with low selfesteem are more likely to distrust their partners’ expressions of love and support and to worry about rejection compared to high self-esteem individuals. Still there is no evidence that self-esteem (high or low) is related to how quickly relationships end. When it comes to groups, high self-esteem people are more likely to speak up and to criticize the group’s approach. And they are perceived as contributing more to groups. What about self-esteem and coping, a key aspect of adjustment? Individuals with low self-esteem and a self-blaming attributional style are definitely at a disadvantage here. For one thing, they become more demoralized after a failure experience than those with high self-esteem do. For them, failure contributes to depression and undermines their motivation to do better the next time. By contrast, individuals with high self-esteem persist longer in the face of failure. Second, as can be seen in Figure 5.7, individuals with low selfesteem often have negative expectations about their performance (in a social situation, at a job interview, on a test). Because self-esteem affects expectations, it operates in a self-perpetuating fashion. As a result, they feel anxious and may not prepare for the challenge. Then, if they blame themselves when they do poorly, they feel depressed and deliver one more blow to their already battered self-esteem. Of course, this cycle also works (in the opposite way) for those with high self-esteem. In either case, the important point is that self-esteem can affect not only the present, but also the future.

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Low self-esteem

Self-blame

Failure

Negative expectations

Low effort High anxiety

FIG U R E 5.7

The vicious circle of low self-esteem and poor performance. Low self-esteem is associated with low or negative expectations about performance. These low expectations often result in inadequate preparation and high anxiety, which heighten the likelihood of poor performance. Unsuccessful performance triggers self-blame, which feeds back to low self-esteem. Adapted from Brehm, S. S., & Kassin, S. M. (1993). Social Psychology. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Copyright © 1993 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Adapted with permission.

High Self-Esteem Versus Narcissism

Although feeling good about oneself is desirable, problems arise when people’s self-views are inflated and unrealistic. Narcissism is the tendency to regard oneself as grandiosely self-important. Narcissistic individuals passionately want to think well of themselves and are highly sensitive to criticism (Twenge & Campbell, 2003). They are preoccupied with fantasies of success, believe that they deserve special treatment, and react aggressively when they experience threats to their self-views (ego threats). Those with fragile (unstable) self-esteem also respond in this manner (Kernis, 2003a, 2003b). On the other hand, individuals whose positive self-appraisals are secure or realistic are not so susceptible to ego threats and are less likely to resort to hostility and aggression in the face of them. Note that narcissists’ aggression must be provoked; without provocation, they

WE B LI N K 5.3

Self-Esteem vs. Narcissism: Implications for Teachers of Young Children Self-esteem in early childhood can be undermined by wellintentioned, but ill-informed, teachers who misunderstand how self-esteem is developed. Lilian G. Katz explores durable foundations for a child’s self-worth in this online book from ERIC, the Education Resources Information Center.

are no more likely to aggress than nonnarcissists (Baumeister, Bushman, & CampHigh High Perception bell, 2000; Twenge & Campbell, 2003). aggression narcissism of high threat Baumeister speculates that narcissists who experience ego threats are likely to Negative engage in aggression such as partner abuse, evaluation rape, gang violence, individual and group hate crimes, and political terrorism (BauLow Low meister, 1999; Baumeister, Smart, & Boden, Perception aggression narcissism of low threat 1996). Is there any evidence to support this idea? In a series of studies, researchers gave participants the opportunity to aggress against someone who had either insulted or praised an essay they had written (BushFIG U R E 5.8 man & Baumeister, 1998). The narcissistic The path from narcissism to aggression. Individuals who score high on narcissism participants reacted to their “insultors” perceive negative evaluations by others to be extremely threatening. This experience with exceptionally high levels of aggresof ego threat triggers strong hostile feelings and aggressive behavior toward the sion (see Figure 5.8). Another study comevaluator in retaliation for the perceived criticism. Low scorers are less likely to perceive negative evaluations as threatening and, therefore, behave much less aggrespared male prisoners and college men on sively toward evaluators. (Adapted from Bushman & Baumeister, 1998). narcissism and self-esteem. Violent offenders scored significantly higher in narcissism, but their self-esteem scores were similar to those correlations between parenting styles and children’s of the college men (Bushman & Baumeister, 2002). traits and behaviors, including self-esteem (Furnham These findings have important practical implica& Cheng, 2000; Maccoby & Martin, 1983). Authoritations (Baumeister et al., 1996). Most rehabilitation tive parenting is associated with the highest self-esteem programs for spousal abusers, delinquents, and crimiscores. Authoritarian parenting, permissive parenting, nals are based on the faulty belief that these individuand neglectful parenting are second, third, and fourth als suffer from low self-esteem. In opposition to this in line. These studies were correlational, so they don’t view, current research suggests that efforts to boost (aldemonstrate that parenting style causes high or low ready inflated) self-esteem are misguided; a better apself-esteem. proach is to help such individuals develop more selfOf course, parents are not the only significant othcontrol and more realistic views of themselves. ers in a person’s life: teachers, classmates, and close friends also play important roles. As you would expect, children who perceive they have the most support The Development of Self-Esteem from significant others have the highest self-esteem, Because the foundations of self-esteem are laid early in whereas those who have the lowest perceived support life (Harter, 2003), psychologists have focused much of their attention on the role of parenting in self-esteem Parental acceptance development. Indeed, there is ample evidence that parHigh Low ental involvement, acceptance, support, and exposure to clearly defined limits have marked influence on chilAuthoritarian Authoritative dren’s self-esteem (Felson, 1989; Harter, 1998). Two (low acceptance, (high acceptance, high control) high control) major dimensions underlie parenting behavior: acceptance and control (Maccoby & Martin, 1983). Diana Neglectful Permissive Baumrind (1967, 1971, 1978) identified four distinct (low acceptance, (high acceptance, parenting styles as interactions between these two dilow control) low control) mensions (see Figure 5.9). Authoritative parenting uses high emotional support and firm, but reasonable limits (high acceptance, high control). Authoritarian parenting entails low emotional support with rigid limits FIG U R E 5.9 (low acceptance, high control). Permissive parenting uses high emotional support with few limits (high acBaumrind’s parenting styles. Four parenting styles result from the interactions of parental acceptance and parental control. ceptance, low control), and neglectful parenting inAdapted from Baumrind, D. (1971). Current patterns of parental authority [Monograph]. volves low emotional support and few limits (low accepDevelopmental Psychology, 4(1, Part 2), 1–103. American Psychological Association. Adapted tance, low control). Baumrind and others have found by permission of the author. Parental control Low High

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LIVING IN TODAY‘S WORLD

Self-Esteem and Threats to Mortality One consequence of living in a post–9-11 world is anxiety about subsequent terrorist attacks in the United States, as well as elsewhere. As explained in Chapter 2, terror management theory (TMT) (Greenberg, Solomon, & Pyszczynski, 1997) is an influential new theoretical perspective asserting that self-esteem plays a pivotal role in people’s efforts to deal with the threats to mortality posed by modern terrorism. As you may recall, terror management theory notes that human beings are the only creatures who live with the knowledge that they will die. According to TMT, the instinctive desire to live is juxtaposed against the inevitability of death, which produces the potential for paralyzing terror (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Goldenberg, 2003). To diminish the existential terror resulting from the awareness of their mortality, people are thought to rely on two defenses: the first involves efforts aimed at validating one’s cultural worldview, while the second bolsters self-esteem. First, belonging to a culture supposely reduces the fear of death because it provides a sense of meaning beyond oneself and a sense of belonging to a larger entity that will live beyond one’s own lifetime. This idea has considerable support. Compared to participants who are not reminded about their own death, those for whom death is made salient are more likely to endorse negative evaluations of outgroup members (Schimel et al., 1999) and to endorse harsh punishments for those who violate cultural values (Greenberg et al., 1990). More relevant to the current discussion is the second terror management mechanism, which ascribes great importance to self-esteem. Terror management theory proposes that the principal function of self-esteem is to serve as a buffer against death-related anxiety. The idea

have the lowest self-esteem (Harter, 2003). For older children and adolescents, approval from parents and approval from classmates are the two strongest predictors of high self-esteem; by college age, peers have much more impact on self-esteem than parents do (Harter, 1993). Children (and adults) also make their own judgments about themselves. Perceiving oneself as success-

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is that people can reduce or ward off their fear of death by focusing on thoughts and experiences that help them feel good about themselves. This idea was supported in a series of experiments in which people were shown graphic scenes of death aimed at building anxiety about their own mortality (Greenberg et al., 1992). Prior to viewing these scenes, half of the participants were given positive feedback to temporarily increase their self-esteem. Interestingly, the group that got the “self-esteem boost” showed less anxiety and less defensiveness in viewing the gruesome scenes than did a control group that didn’t receive the prior positive feedback. Thus, terror management theory has generated some interesting hypotheses about the role that self-esteem plays in modulating reactions to rumors and media discussion about the possibility of terrorist attacks. According to TMT, when the specter of future attacks is elevated, people should increase their self-esteem striving. In other words, they will be more likely than usual to engage in behaviors and patterns of thinking that are likely to bolster their self-esteem. TMT also posits that people who are relatively high in self-esteem should be somewhat less vulnerable to the threat of terrorism. That is, they should be less easily rattled and shaken by media speculation about possible terrorist strikes. Although TMT offers an intriguing perspective on the function of self-esteem, there are alternative explanations as well (Leary, 2004). That said, there is quite a bit of empirical support for the specific idea that high self-esteem counteracts anxiety (Baumeister et al., 2003). This anxiety-buffering function of high self-esteem seems particularly relevant in these troubled times.

ful in domains that are highly valued is important in these self-evaluations (Harter, 2003; MacDonald, Saltzman, & Leary, 2003). For instance, if Maria values success in the academic and social areas and sees herself as competent in these arenas, she will have higher selfesteem than Heather, who also values these domains but rates herself low on one or both of them. An important basis for self-judgments is how well one “stacks

© Robert W. Ginn/PhotoEdit

Ethnicity, Gender, and Self-Esteem

Significant others play a key role in shaping self-esteem.

up” against a selected reference group (recall social comparison theory). A classic study reported that preadolescents’ academic (but not global) self-esteem was affected by the quality of competition they faced in school (Marsh & Parker, 1984). In this study, children from schools in higher socioeconomic class areas with “high-quality” competition (high-ability reference group) were compared to children of similar ability from schools in lower-class areas with “low-quality” competition (low-ability reference group). Surprisingly, the children in the low-quality schools tended to display greater academic self-esteem than children of similar academic ability enrolled in the high-quality schools. This finding that academic self-esteem is boosted by being a “big fish in a small pond” has found widespread support, even in many other countries (Marsh & Hau, 2003). Thus, it seems that individuals compare themselves to others in their specific reference group (other students in their school), not to a general reference group (other students in the country). The fact that individuals with similar talents may vary in self-esteem depending on their reference group demonstrates the importance of social comparison in the development of self-esteem.

Because prejudice and discrimination are still pervasive in the United States, people commonly assume that members of minority groups have lower self-esteem than members of the majority group. Research both supports and contradicts this assumption. On the one hand, the self-esteem of Asians, Hispanics, and American Indians is lower than that of whites, although the differences are small (Twenge & Crocker, 2002). On the other, the self-esteem of blacks is higher than that of whites (Gray-Little & Hafdahl, 2000; Twenge & Crocker, 2002). Adding gender to the mix complicates the picture even more. White males have higher selfesteem than white females, but minority males have lower self-esteem than minority females (Twenge & Crocker, 2002). Thus, ethnicity and gender interact in complex ways in self-esteem. The fact of cultural differences in the self-concept may provide some insight here. Recall our earlier discussion of individualism and collectivism. Note that differences on this dimension are found not only between different nations but also within a given country. And here’s another fact: High individualism is associated with high self-esteem. What’s interesting here is that the pattern of ethnic differences in individualism closely mirrors the pattern of ethnic differences in self-esteem (Twenge & Crocker, 2002). That is, blacks score higher than whites, whites do not differ significantly from Hispanics, and Hispanics score higher than Asian Americans. Thus, the ethnic differences in self-esteem are likely rooted in how the different groups view themselves, based on cultural messages. Although females are not a minority group, they resemble ethnic minorities in that they tend to have lower status and less power than males. The popular press abounds with reports of low self-esteem in adolescent girls and women (Orenstein, 1994; Pipher, 1994). Is there any empirical basis for this assertion? In a massive undertaking, researchers examined gender differences in self-esteem by statistically summarizing the results of several hundred studies (with respondents ranging from 7 to 60 years of age) as well as the data from three nationally representative surveys of adolescents and young adults (Kling et al., 1999). In both analyses, males scored higher on self-esteem than females, although the differences were small for the most part. The largest difference occurred in the 15- to 18-yearold age group. Also, white girls have lower self-esteem than minority girls do. The fact that white girls have more negative body images than minority girls may be a factor in their lower self-esteem (Twenge & Crocker, 2002).

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Basic Principles of Self-Perception LEARNING OBJECTIVES ■ ■

Distinguish between automatic and controlled processing. Define self-attributions, and identify the key dimensions of attributions. Explain how optimistic and pessimistic explanatory styles are related to adjustment.

Now that you’re familiar with some of the major aspects of the self, let’s consider how people construct and maintain a coherent and positive view of the self.

Cognitive Processes What do I want for breakfast? What shall I wear today? You’re barely awake and you’re already making decisions. People are faced with an inordinate number of decisions on a daily basis. How do they keep from being overwhelmed? The key lies in how people process information. According to Shelley Taylor (1981a), people are “cognitive misers.” In this model, cognitive resources (attention, memory, and so forth) are limited, so the mind works to “hoard” them by taking cognitive short-cuts. For example, you probably have the same morning routine—shower, drink coffee, read the paper as you eat breakfast, check e-mail, and so forth. Because you do these things without a lot of thought, you can conserve your attentional, decision-making, and memory capacities for important cognitive tasks. This example illustrates the default mode of handling information: automatic processing. On the other hand, when important decisions arise or when you’re trying to understand why you didn’t get that job you wanted, you spend those precious cognitive resources. This mode is termed controlled processing. Ellen Langer (1989) describes these two states as mindlessness and mindfulness, respectively. In addition to guiding the processing of self-relevant information, these two modes of information processing operate in a variety of social situations, as you’ll see in subsequent chapters. Another way that cognitive resources are protected is through selective attention, with high priority given to information pertaining to the self (Bargh, 1997). An example of this tendency is a phenomenon known as the “cocktail party effect”—the ability to pick out the mention of your name in a roomful of chattering people (Moray, 1959; Wood & Cowan, 1995). Another principle of self-cognition is that people strive to understand themselves. One way they do so, as you saw in our discussion of social comparison theory, is to compare themselves with others (Wood & Wilson, 2003). Yet another is to engage in attributional thinking, our next topic.

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■ ■

Discuss four motives that guide self-understanding. Describe four strategies people use to maintain positive feelings about the self.

Self-Attributions Let’s say that you win a critical match for your school’s tennis team. To what do you attribute your success? Is your new practice schedule starting to pay off ? Did you have the home court advantage? Perhaps your opponent was playing with a minor injury? This example from everyday life illustrates the nature of the selfattribution process. Self-attributions are inferences that people draw about the causes of their own behavior. People routinely make attributions to make sense out of their experiences. These attributions involve inferences that ultimately represent guesswork on each person’s part. Fritz Heider (1958) was the first to assert that people tend to locate the cause of a behavior either within a person, attributing it to personal factors, or outside of a person, attributing it to environmental factors. He thus established one of the crucial dimensions along which attributions are made: internal versus external. The other two dimensions are stable/unstable and controllable/uncontrollable. Internal or external. Elaborating on Heider’s insight, various theorists have agreed that explanations of behavior and events can be categorized as internal or external attributions (Jones & Davis, 1965; Kelley, 1967; Weiner, 1974). Internal attributions ascribe the causes of behavior to personal dispositions, traits, abilities, and feelings. External attributions ascribe the causes of behavior to situational demands and environmental constraints. For example, if you credit your poor statistics grade to your failure to prepare adequately for the test or to getting overly anxious during the test, you are making internal attributions. Whether one’s self-attributions are internal or external can have a tremendous impact on one’s personal adjustment. As you’ll see in Chapter 8, lonely people tend to attribute the cause of their loneliness to internal, stable causes (“I’m unlovable”). Similarly, studies suggest that people who ascribe their setbacks to internal, personal causes while discounting external, situational explanations may be more prone to depression than people who display opposite tendencies (Riso et al., 2003).

Controllable or uncontrollable. A third dimension in the attribution process acknowledges the fact that sometimes events are under one’s control and sometimes they are not (Weiner, 1986, 1994). For example, the amount of effort you expend on a task is typically perceived as something under your control, whereas an aptitude for music is viewed as something you are born with (beyond your control). Controllability can vary with each of the other two factors. These three dimensions appear to be the central ones in the attribution process. Research has documented that self-attributions can influence future expectations (success or failure) and emotions (pride, hopelessness, guilt), and that these expectations and emotions combine to influence subsequent performance (Weiner, 1986, 1994). Thus, self-attributions play a key role in one’s feelings, motivational state, and behavior.

Explanatory Style Julio and Josh are freshmen who have just struck out trying to get their first college dates. After this disappointment, they reflect on the possible reasons for it. Julio speculates that his approach was too subtle. Look-

Stability dimension Stable cause Unstable cause (permanent) (temporary) Internal-external dimension

Stable or unstable. A second dimension people use in making causal attributions is the stability of the causes underlying behavior (Weiner, 1986, 1994). A stable cause is one that is more or less permanent and unlikely to change over time. A sense of humor and intelligence are stable internal causes of behavior. Stable external causes of behavior include such things as laws and rules (speed limits, no smoking areas). Unstable causes of behavior are variable or subject to change. Unstable internal causes of behavior include such things as mood (good or bad) and motivation (strong or weak). Unstable external causes could be the weather and the presence or absence of other people. According to Bernard Weiner (1986, 1994), the stable-unstable dimension in attribution cuts across the internal-external dimension, creating four types of attributions for success and failure, as shown in Figure 5.10. Let’s apply Weiner’s model to a concrete event. Imagine that you are contemplating why you just landed the job you wanted. You might credit your good fortune to internal factors that are stable (excellent ability) or unstable (hard work on your eye-catching résumé). Or you might attribute the outcome to external factors that are stable (lack of top-flight competition) or unstable (luck). If you didn’t get the job, your explanations would fall in the same four categories: internalstable (lack of ability), internal-unstable (inadequate effort on your résumé), external-stable (too much competition in your field), and external-unstable (bad luck).

Internal cause

Effort Mood Fatigue

Ability Intelligence

External cause

Luck Chance Opportunity

Task difficulty

F I G U R E 5. 10

Key dimensions of attributional thinking. Weiner’s model assumes that people’s explanations for success and failure emphasize internal versus external causes and stable versus unstable causes. For example, if you attribute an outcome to great effort or to lack of effort, you are citing causes that lie within the person. Since effort can vary over time, the causal factors at work are unstable. Other examples of causal factors that fit into each of the four cells in Weiner’s model are shown in the diagram. From Weiner, B., Frieze, I., Kukla, A., Reed, L.. & Rosenbaum, R. M. (1972). Perceiving the causes of success and failure. In E. E. Jones, D. E. Kanuouse, H. H. Kelly, R. E. Nisbett, S. Valins, & B. Weiner (Eds.), Perceiving causes of behavior. Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ing back, he realizes that he wasn’t very direct because he was nervous about asking the woman out. When she didn’t reply, he didn’t follow up for fear that she didn’t really want to go out with him. On further reflection, he reasons that she probably didn’t respond because she wasn’t sure of his intentions. He vows to be more direct the next time. Josh, on the other hand, mopes, “I’ll never have a relationship. I’m a total loser.” On the basis of these comments, who do you think is likely to get a date in the future? If you guessed Julio, you are probably correct. Let’s see why. Explanatory style refers to the tendency to use similar causal attributions for a wide variety of events in one’s life. According to Martin Seligman (1991), people tend to exhibit, to varying degrees, an optimistic explanatory style or a pessimistic explanatory style (see Figure 5.11 on the next page). The person with an optimistic explanatory style usually attributes setbacks to external, unstable, and specific factors. A person who failed to get a desired job, for example, might attribute this misfortune to factors in the interview situation (“The room was really hot,” “The questions were slanted”) rather than to personal shortcomings. This style can help people discount their setbacks and thus maintain a favorable self-image. It also helps people bounce back from failure. One study found that optimistic students had more confidence and performed better than pessimistic students after a sports failure (Martin-Krumm et al., 2003).

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Pessimistic explanatory style Negative event Failing an exam

Attributional style Optimistic explanatory style

Internal stable, global “I failed the exam because I’m stupid.”

Lack of control over future events “There’s nothing I can do about it. I’ll never get through college.”

Chronic negative feelings, depression

Attributions

Expectations

Outcomes

External, unstable, specific “I failed the exam because unusual pressures at work prevented me from studying.”

Control over future events “I‘ll have more time to study next time and I’ll do much better.”

Passive behavior, learned helplessness

Temporary negative feelings Active, goal-directed behavior

FIG U R E 5.11

The effects of attributional style on expectations, emotions, and behavior. The pessimistic explanatory style is seen in the top set of boxes. This attributional style, which attributes setbacks to internal, stable, and global causes, tends to result in an expectation of lack of control over future events, depressed feelings, and passive behavior. A more adaptive, optimistic attributional style is shown in the bottom set of boxes.

In contrast, people with a pessimistic explanatory style tend to attribute their setbacks to internal, stable, and global (or pervasive) factors. These attributions make them feel bad about themselves and pessimistic about their ability to handle challenges in the future. Such a style can foster passive behavior and make people more vulnerable to learned helplessness and depression (Peterson, Maier, & Seligman, 1993). Luckily, cognitive-behavioral therapy appears to be successful in helping depressed individuals change their pessimistic explanatory style (Seligman et al., 1999). Thus, individuals can learn to stop always blaming themselves for negative outcomes (especially when they can’t be avoided) and to take personal credit for positive outcomes.

Motives Guiding Self-Understanding Whether people evaluate themselves by social comparisons, attributional thinking, or other means, they are highly motivated to pursue self-understanding. In seeking self-understanding, people are driven by four major motives: assessment, verification, improvement, and enhancement (Biernat & Billings, 2001; Sedikides & Strube, 1997). Self-Assessment

The self-assessment motive is reflected in people’s desire for truthful information about themselves (Trope,

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1983, 1986). Individuals seek accurate feedback about many types of information—their personal qualities, abilities, physical features, and so forth. It’s obvious why people look for accurate information. After all, it helps them set realistic goals and behave in appropriate ways (Oettingen & Gollwitzer, 2001). Still, the bald truth is not always welcome. Accordingly, people are also motivated by other concerns. Self-Verification

The self-verification motive drives people toward information that matches what they already know about themselves, whether it is positive or negative. This tendency to strive for a consistent self-image ensures that individuals’ self-concepts are relatively stable. Individuals maintain consistent self-perceptions in a number of subtle ways and are often unaware of doing so (Schlenker & Pontari, 2000). For example, people maintain consistency between their past and present behavior by erasing past memories that conflict with present ones. To illustrate, people who were once shy and who later became outgoing have been shown to recall memories about themselves that indicate that they perceive themselves as always having been outgoing (Ross & Conway, 1986). This inclination to revise the past in favor of the present may lie behind the oft-heard parental reproof, “When I was your age . . .” Here, parents conveniently erase memories of their childhood behavior— which was probably similar to that of their children— and, instead, compare their children’s behavior to their

own current behavior (Ross, McFarland, & Fletcher, 1981). Another way people maintain self-consistency is by seeking out feedback and situations that will confirm their existing self-perceptions and avoiding potentially disconfirming situations or feedback. According to William Swann’s self-verification theory, people prefer to receive feedback from others that is consistent with their own self-views. Thus, those with positive self-concepts should prefer positive feedback from others and those with negative self-concepts should prefer negative feedback. Research usually finds this to be the case (Swann, Rentfrow, & Guinn, 2003). In one study, college men were divided into either a positive self-concept group or a negative self-concept group based on test scores. They were then asked to choose a partner for a subsequent 2- to 3-hour interaction. Participants were led to believe that one of the prospective partners held views of him that were consistent with his self-view and that the other held views of him that were inconsistent with his self-view. As predicted, subjects with positive self-views preferred partners who viewed them positively, whereas those with negative self-views chose partners who viewed them negatively (Swann, Stein-Seroussi, & Geisler, 1992). Self-Improvement

What is your current self-improvement project? To study more? To get more exercise? When people seek to better themselves, the self-improvement motive comes into play. In trying to improve, individuals typically look to successful others for inspiration (Collins, 1996). Advertisers of personal care products (tooth whiteners, exercise machines, and so forth) tap into this motive by showing before-and-after photographs of individuals who have used the products. Self-Enhancement

Finally, people are motivated by self-enhancement, or the tendency to maintain positive feelings about the self. One example of self-enhancement is the tendency to hold flattering views of one’s personal qualities, a tendency termed the better-than-average effect (Alicke, 1985; Buckingham & Alicke, 2002). You’ve already seen an example of this effect in our earlier report that 70 percent of students who took the SAT rated themselves above average in leadership ability—a mathematical impossibility. Students can take perverse pleasure in knowing that faculty also succumb to this bias: 94 percent of them regard their teaching as above average (Cross, 1977)! A second example of self-enhancement concerns illusions of control (Langer, 1975), in which people overestimate their degree of control over outcomes. Thus, individuals who pick their own “lucky” numbers

on lottery tickets falsely believe that they can influence the outcome of such random events. A third form of self-enhancement is the tendency to have unrealistic optimism about future events (Weinstein, 1980). For example, most people believe that they will have a brighter future and experience fewer negative events than others (Helweg-Larsen & Shepperd, 2001). While self-enhancement is quite common, it is not universal. Individuals who have low self-esteem or who are depressed are less likely to use self-enhancement than others (Taylor & Brown, 1988, 1994). Culture also plays a role. A number of studies have found that selfenhancement is more pronounced in Western than in Eastern cultures (Kanagawa, Cross, & Markus, 2001). Still, self-enhancement motives are not entirely absent in collectivist cultures. It seems that American subjects self-enhance on individualistic attributes and Japanese participants on collectivist attributes (Sedikides, Gaertner, & Toguchi, 2003). In other words, people tend to self-enhance on the characteristics that their culture designates as important. Thus, people may selfenhance on different (culturally valued) attributes, but self-enhancement appears to be a universal motive. The four self-motives of assessment, verification, improvement, and enhancement permit flexibility in making self-evaluations. Although you would think that accurate information would be the most useful to people, that doesn’t seem to be the case. In a series of studies that pitted self-assessment, self-verification, and selfenhancement against each other, the self-enhancement motive was found to be the strongest, the self-verification motive a distant second, and the self-assessment motive an even more distant third (Sedikides, 1993).

Methods of Self-Enhancement The powerful self-enhancement motive drives individuals to seek positive (and reject negative) information about themselves. Let’s examine four cognitive strategies people commonly use. Downward Comparisons

We’ve already mentioned that people compare themselves to others as a means of learning more about themselves (social comparison), whether or not they expect to receive esteem-threatening information. Once threat enters the picture, people often change their strategy and choose to compare themselves with someone who is worse off than they are (Wood, 1989). This defensive tendency to compare oneself with someone whose troubles are more serious than one’s own is termed downward social comparison. Why do people switch strategies under threat? It seems that downward social comparisons are associated with increases in both mood and self-esteem (Reis, Gerrard, & Gibbons, 1993).

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A dramatic example of downward comparison can be found in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September 2001: Compared to the devastating losses suffered by the victims and families, most people’s problems suddenly appeared insignificant. There are also more common examples. If you have ever been in a serious car accident in which your car was “totaled,” you probably reassured yourself by reflecting on the fact that at least no one was seriously injured. Similarly, people with chronic illnesses may compare themselves with those who have life-threatening diseases. On television talk and “reality” shows (Dr. Phil, for example), people with assorted life tragedies provide numerous opportunities for downward social comparison. This aspect no doubt contributes to their popularity.

prevalent in individualistic, Western societies, where the emphasis on competition and high self-esteem motivates people to try to impress others, as well as themselves. In contrast, Japanese subjects exhibit a selfeffacing bias in explaining successes (Akimoto & Sanbonmatsu, 1999; Markus & Kitayama, 1991), as they tend to attribute their successes to the help they receive from others or to the ease of the task, while downplaying the importance of their ability. When they fail, Japanese subjects tend to be more self-critical than subjects from individualistic cultures (Heine & Renshaw, 2002). They are more likely to accept responsibility for their failures and to use their setbacks as an impetus for selfimprovement (Heine et al., 2001). Studies have also failed to find the usual self-serving bias in Nepalese and Chinese samples (Lee & Seligman, 1997; Smith & Bond, 1994).

Suppose that you and three other individuals apply for Basking in Reflected Glory When your favorite sports team won the national a part-time job in the parks and recreation department championship last year, did you make a point of wearand you are selected for the position. How do you exing the team cap? And when Ben, your best friend, won plain your success? Chances are, you tell yourself that that special award, do you remember how often you you were hired because you were the most qualified for told others the good news about him? If you played a the job. But how do the other three people interpret role in someone’s success, it’s understandable that you their negative outcome? Do they tell themselves that would want to share in the recognition; however, peoyou got the job because you were the most able? Unlikely! Instead, they probably attribute their loss to “bad luck” or to not having had time to prepare for the interview. These different explanations for success and failure reflect the self-serving bias, or the tendency to attribute one’s successes to personal factors and one’s failures to situational factors (Miller and Ross, 1975). Research indicates that people are more likely to take credit for their successes than they are to disavow their failures (Campbell & Sedikides, 1999). To illustrate: In an experiment, two strangers jointly took a test. They then received bogus success or failure feedback about their test performance and were asked to assign responsibility for the test results. Successful participants claimed credit, but those who failed blamed their partners (Campbell et al., 2000). Still, people don’t always rush to take credit. In another experiment in the just-cited study, participants were actual friends. In this case, participants shared responsibility for both successful and unsuccessful outcomes. Thus, friendship places limits on the self-serving bias. Although the self-serving bias has been documented in a variety of cultures (Fletcher People frequently claim association with others who are successful (bask in & Ward 1988), it seems to be particularly reflected glory) to maintain positive feelings about the self.

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© GDT/Stone/Getty Images

Self-Serving Bias

PEANUTS reprinted by permission of United Feature Syndicate, Inc.

ple often want to share recognition even when they are on the sidelines of an outstanding achievement. Basking in reflected glory is the tendency to enhance one’s image by publicly announcing one’s association with those who are successful. Robert Cialdini and his colleagues (1976) studied this phenomenon on college campuses with nationally ranked football teams. They predicted that, when asked how their team had fared in a recent football game, students would be more likely to say, “We won” (in other words, to bask in reflected glory, or to “BIRG”— pronounced with a soft “g”) when the home team had been successful than to respond “We lost” when it had been defeated. As predicted, students were more likely to BIRG when their team won than when it lost. Also, subjects who believed that they had just failed a bogus test were more likely to use the words “we won” than those who believed they had performed well. A related self-enhancement strategy is “CORFing,” or cutting off reflected failure. Because self-esteem is partly tied to an individual’s associations with others, people often protect their self-esteem by distancing themselves from those who are unsuccessful (Cialdini et al., 1976; Boen, Vanbeselaere, & Feys, 2002). Thus, if your cousin is arrested for drunk driving, you may tell others that you don’t really know him very well. Self-Handicapping

When people fail at an important task, they need to save face. In such instances, individuals can usually come up with a face-saving excuse (“I had a terrible stomachache”). Curiously, some people actually behave in a way that sets them up to fail so that they have a ready-made excuse for failure, should it occur. Selfhandicapping is the tendency to sabotage one’s performance to provide an excuse for possible failure. For example, when a big test is looming, they put off studying until the last minute or go out drinking the night before the test. If, as is likely, they don’t do well

on the exam, they explain their poor performance by saying they didn’t prepare. (After all, wouldn’t you rather have others believe that your poor performance is due to inadequate preparation rather than lack of ability?) People use a variety of tactics for handicapping their performance: alcohol, drugs, procrastination, a bad mood, a distracting stimulus, anxiety, depression, and being overcommitted (Baumeister, 1998). A related tactic is sandbagging, in which people attempt to reduce performance expectations by playing down their abilities and predicting they’ll fail (Gibson & Sachau, 2000). Individuals differ in their reasons for selfhandicapping. People with low self-esteem more often use it to maintain a positive impression (or to avoid failing), whereas those with high self-esteem are more likely to use it to enhance their image (Tice, 1991). That is, if they happen to do well, they can claim that they are especially capable because they performed so well with minimal preparation. Self-handicapping seems like a “win-win” strategy: If you fail, you have a face-saving excuse ready, and if you happen to succeed, you can claim that you are unusually gifted! However, it probably has not escaped your attention that self-handicapping is highly risky. By giving yourself an attributional “out” in case of failure, your self-defeating behavior will likely result in poor performance (Zuckerman, Kieffer, & Knee, 1998). Moreover, while self-handicapping may save you from negative self-attributions about your ability, it does not prevent others from making different negative attributions about you. For example, people believe that individuals are less competent when they self-handicap than when they don’t (Rhodewalt et al., 1995). Also, others may perceive you as lazy, inclined to drink too much, or highly anxious, depending on the means you use to self-handicap. Consequently, this self-enhancement tactic has serious drawbacks.

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Self-Regulation LEARNING OBJECTIVES

■ ■ ■

Define self-regulation, and explain the ego-depletion model of self-regulation. Explain why self-efficacy is important to psychological adjustment. Describe how individuals develop self-efficacy. Describe the three categories of self-defeating behavior.

“Should I have that hot fudge sundae or not?” “I guess I’d better get started on that English paper.” People are constantly trying to resist impulses and make themselves do things they don’t want to do. They also determine the various goals they want to pursue and how to reach them. This work of directing and controlling one’s behavior is termed self-regulation. Clearly, the ability to manage and direct what you think, how you feel, and how you behave is tied to your success at work, your relationships, and your mental and physical health (Baumeister & Vohs, 2003). Being able to forgo immediate gratification (studying instead of partying) and focus one’s behavior toward important, longer-range goals (graduating and getting a good job) is of paramount importance if one is to be successful in life. It’s possible that people have a limited amount of self-control resources. So if you tax these resources resisting temptation in a given situation, you may have a hard time resisting the next immediate temptation or persisting at a new task. At least that’s the idea behind the ego-depletion model of self-regulation (Baumeister et al., 1998). To investigate this hypothesis, researchers asked college students to participate in a study of taste perception (the study was actually on self-control) (Baumeister et al., 1998). Some participants were asked to eat two or three radishes in 5 minutes but not to touch the chocolate candy and chocolate chip cookies that were nearby. Others were asked to eat some candy or some cookies but were told not to eat any of the nearby radishes. A control group didn’t participate in this part of the study. Then all subjects were asked to solve what were, unbeknownst-to-them, unsolvable puzzles while they supposedly waited for another part of the study. Researchers measured the subjects’ selfcontrol by the amount of time they persisted at the puzzles and the number of attempts they made. According to the ego-depletion model, the radish-eaters would use more self-control resources (resisting the chocolate) than would the chocolate-eaters (resisting the radishes) or the subjects in the no-food control group. Thus, this group should have the fewest self-control resources to use for persisting at a difficult task. As you can see in Figure 5.12, the radish-eaters gave up sooner and made fewer attempts on the puzzles than the chocolate-eaters or the control group. One of the rea-

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sons people rely so often on habit and automatic processing is to conserve these important self-control resources (Baumeister, Muraven, & Tice, 2000). Self-regulation seems to develop early and remain relatively stable. One study reported that 4-year-olds who were better at delaying gratification did better both in terms of academic performance and social competence some ten years later (Mischel, Shoda, & Peake, 1988; Shoda, Mischel, & Peake, 1990). In this section, we examine self-efficacy, a key aspect of self-regulation, as well as self-defeating behavior, a case of self-control failure.

Self-Efficacy As explained in Chapter 2, self-efficacy refers to people’s conviction that they can achieve specific goals. According to Albert Bandura (1997, 2000), efficacy beliefs vary according to the person’s skills. You may have high

Persistence (time on task) Radish

Condition

8.35 minutes

Chocolate

18.90 minutes

No food contol

20.86 minutes Persistence (number of attempts)

Radish

19.40

Chocolate

34.29

No food contol

32.81

F I G U R E 5. 12

Persistence on unsolvable puzzles. Participants who were instructed to eat radishes and not to eat chocolate chip cookies or chocolate candy used more self-control resources than participants who were instructed to eat the chocolate and not to touch the radishes or participants in the no-food control group. Because the radish-eaters had relatively few self-control resources to help them persist at a difficult task (unsolvable puzzles), they persisted for the shortest time and made the fewest attempts to solve the puzzles compared to the other two groups. (Adapted from Baumeister et al., 1998)

A number of studies have shown that self-efficacy affects individuals’ commitments to goals, their performance on tasks, and their persistence toward goals in the face of obstacles (Maddux & Gosselin, 2003). In addition, people with high self-efficacy anticipate success in future outcomes and are able to tune out negative thoughts that can lead to failure. Self-efficacy is related to academic success (Schunk, 2003), career choice (Betz & Klein, 1996), and job performance (Stajkovic & Luthans, 1998). Because of the importance of self-efficacy in psychological adjustment, it is worth keeping in mind that it is learned and can be changed. Research shows that increasing self-efficacy is an effective way to improve health (losing weight, stopping smoking) (Maddux & Gosselin, 2003) and to treat a variety of psychological problems, including test anxiety (Smith, 1989), phobias (Williams, 1995), fear of sexual assault (Ozer & Bandura, 1990), eating disorders (Goodrick et al., 1999),

Developing Self-Efficacy

Self-efficacy is obviously a valuable quality. How does one acquire it? Bandura (1997, 2000) identifies four sources of self-efficacy: mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, persuasion/encouragement, and interpretation of emotional arousal. Mastery experiences. The most effective path to selfefficacy is through mastering new skills. Sometimes new skills come easily—learning how to use the copy machine in the library, for instance. Some things are harder to master, such as learning how to use a spreadsheet program or how to play the piano. In acquiring more difficult skills, people usually make mistakes. How they handle these failure experiences is the key to learning self-efficacy. If you give up when you make mistakes, your failure instills self-doubts or low selfefficacy. On the other hand, if you persist through failure experiences to eventual success, you learn the lesson of self-efficacy: I can do it! A practical implication for parents, teachers, and coaches is that they should set high, but attainable, goals for children and encourage them to learn from their mistakes and to persevere until they succeed. This approach provides children with the mastery experiences they need to build self-efficacy and approach future challenges with confidence. Well-intentioned parents, teachers, and supervisors unwittingly deprive individuals of opportunities to develop self-efficacy when they do others’ work or regularly allow others to opt out of obligations with no consequences. Vicarious experiences. Another way to improve selfefficacy is by watching others perform a skill you want

Ironically, difficulties and failures can ultimately contribute to the development of a strong sense of self-efficacy. Selfefficacy tends to improve when youngsters learn to persist through difficulties and overcome failures.

© Mary Kate Denny/PhotoEdit

Correlates of Self-Efficacy

and substance abuse (DiClemente, Fairhurst, & Piotrowski, 1995). Courtesy, Albert Bandura

self-efficacy when it comes to making friends but low self-efficacy when it comes to speaking in front of a group. However, simply having a skill doesn’t guarantee that you will be able to put it into practice. Like The Little Engine that Could, you must also believe that you are capable of doing so (“I think I can, Albert Bandura I think I can . . .”). In other words, self-efficacy is concerned not with the skills you have, but with your beliefs about what you can do with these skills.

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to learn. It’s important that you choose a model who is competent at the task, and it helps if the model is similar to you (in age, gender, and ethnicity). For example, if you’re shy about speaking up for yourself, observing someone who is good at doing so can help you develop the confidence to do it yourself. Picking successful role models is important—watching unsuccessful ones can undermine self-efficacy. Persuasion and encouragement. Although it is less effective than the first two approaches, a third way to develop self-efficacy is through the encouragement of others. For example, if you’re having a hard time asking someone for a date, a friend’s encouragement might give you just the push you need. Of course, persuasion doesn’t always work. And, unless encouragement is accompanied by specific and concrete suggestions, this tactic is unlikely to be successful. Interpretation of emotional arousal. The physiological responses that accompany feelings and one’s interpretations of these responses are another source of self-efficacy. Let’s say you’re sitting in class waiting for your professor to distribute an exam. You notice that your palms are moist and your heart is pounding. If you attribute these behaviors to fear, you can temporarily dampen your self-efficacy, thus decreasing your chances of doing well. Alternatively, if you attribute your sweaty palms and racing heart to the arousal everyone needs to perform well, you may be able to boost your selfefficacy and increase your chances of doing well. Of course, self-regulation doesn’t always succeed. That’s the case in self-defeating behavior, our next topic.

Self-Defeating Behavior It’s adaptable for people to act in their own self-interest, and typically they do. But sometimes people knowingly do things that are bad for them—such as smoking, having unprotected sex, and completing important assignments at the last minute. Self-defeating behaviors are seemingly intentional actions that thwart a person’s self-interest. According to Roy Baumeister (1997; Baumeister & Scher, 1988), there are three categories of intentional self-defeating behaviors: deliberate selfdestruction, tradeoffs, and counterproductive strategies. The key difference among these three behaviors lies in how intentional they are. As you can see in Figure 5.13, attempts at deliberate self-destruction involve the most intent; counterproductive strategies are the least intentional, and tradeoffs fall in between. In deliberate self-destruction, people want to harm themselves and they choose courses of action that will forseeably lead to that result. Although this type of behavior may occur in individuals with psychological disorders, deliberate self-destruction appears to be infrequent in normal populations.

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In tradeoffs, people foresee the possibility of harming themselves but accept it as a necessary accompaniment to achieving a desirable goal. Overeating, smoking, and drinking to excess are examples that come readily to mind. Other examples include procrastinating (putting off tasks feels good in the short-run, but the struggle to meet looming deadlines results in poor performance and increased stress and illness), failing to follow prescribed health care advice (it’s easier to slack off now, but doing so leads to future problems), shyness (avoiding social situations protects against anxiety but makes loneliness more likely), and selfhandicapping (getting drunk before an exam explains poor performance but increases the chances of failure). One factor that underlies most self-defeating tradeoffs is poor judgment. That is, people choose immediate benefits (pleasant sensations, escape from painful thoughts or feelings) over long-term costs (heart disease, lung cancer, few intimate relationships). To bolster their choices, they usually ignore or downplay the long-term risks of their behavior. Two other factors that underlie tradeoffs are emotional distress (anxiety) and high self-awareness. Because negative emotions are distressing, people want quick escape. Thus, they light a cigarette or have a drink to bring immediate relief, and they tune out the long-term negative consequences of their actions. In short, people engage in tradeoffs because they bring immediate, positive, and reliable outcomes, not because they want to kill themselves. In counterproductive strategies, a person pursues a desirable outcome but misguidedly uses an approach that is bound to fail. Of course, you can’t always know in advance if a strategy will pay off. Thus, people must habitually use this strategy for it to qualify as selfdefeating. For example, some people tend to persist in

Three Categories of Self-Defeating Behavior

Type of self-defeating behavior

Harm foreseen?

Harm desired?

Deliberate self-destruction

Yes

Yes

Tradeoffs

Yes

No

Counterproductive strategies

No

No

F I G U R E 5. 13

Three categories of self-defeating behavior. Roy Baumeister and Steven Scher (1988) distinguished three categories of selfdefeating behaviors, based on how intentional the behaviors are. Intentionality is determined by two factors: an individual’s awareness that a behavior could bring possible harm and an individual’s desire to harm himself or herself. Deliberate self-destruction is the most intentional, followed by tradeoffs, then counterproductive strategies. (Based on Baumeister & Scher, 1988)

R EC O M M EN D ED R EA D IN G

© Marc Vaughn/Masterfile

Self-Defeating Behaviors by Milton R. Cudney and Robert E. Hardy (Harper San Francisco, 1991)

Self-defeating behaviors come in many forms with many underlying motivations. Overeating is a matter of tradeoffs. People realize that excessive eating may be harmful in the long run, but it is enjoyable at the time.

unproductive endeavors, such as pursuing an unreachable career goal or an unrequited love. Such behavior costs valuable time, generates painful emotions, and blocks the discovery of productive approaches. The key cause of counterproductive behavior seems to be errors in judgment, such as misjudging one’s abilities or the actions required to produce a desired result. People persist in these behaviors because they believe they’ll be successful, not because they are intent on self-defeat.

Having successfully treated thousands of clients, the authors (two counseling psychologists) decided to share their approach with a wider audience. (Dr. Cudney died in 1992.) They offer insights on a wide array of selfdefeating behaviors, including procrastination, substance abuse, smoking, overeating, worrying, compulsive actions, shyness, and perfectionism. They assert that selfdefeating behavior develops as an ineffective way of protecting oneself against hurt and disappointment. Thus, a woman who is afraid of being lonely grasps at any man she meets. Predictably, men are put off by her desperation, and she finds herself alone. The tragic irony of self-defeating behavior is that the fear of a particular consequence (loneliness) leads to behaviors that virtually guarantee the feared outcome. The authors explain the genesis and dynamics of self-defeating behavior and offer practical advice to guide individuals away from self-defeating behaviors and toward life-enhancing actions. Although short on documentation, the book is highly readable, provides useful examples, and is sprinkled with numerous charts and helpful self-tests. Copyright © 1975 by Lifegiving Enterprises, Inc. Copyright © 1991 by Milton R. Cudney and Robert E. Hardy. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

To conclude, although most people engage in selfdefeating behavior at some time, there is little evidence that they deliberately try to harm themselves or to fail at a task. Instead, self-defeating behavior appears to be the result of people’s distorted judgments or strong desires to escape from immediate, painful feelings. If you’re plagued by self-defeating behavior, the Recommended Reading titled Self-Defeating Behaviors (Cudney & Hardy, 1991) provides additional insights and suggestions for dealing with this frustrating problem.

Self-Presentation LEARNING OBJECTIVES ■ ■ ■

Explain why and when individuals engage in impression management. Cite some strategies people use to make positive impressions on others. Describe how high self-monitors are different from low self-monitors.

Whereas your self-concept involves how you see yourself, your public self involves how you want others

to see you. A public self is an image presented to others in social interactions. This presentation of a pub-

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lic self may sound deceitful, but it is perfectly normal, and everyone does it (Schlenker, 2003). Many selfpresentations (ritual greetings, for example) take place automatically and without awareness. But when it really counts (job interviews, for example), people consciously strive to make the best possible impression. Typically, individuals have a number of public selves that are tied to certain situations and certain people. For instance, you may have one public self for your parents and another for your peers. (Do you cover your tattoo when you go home?) You may have still others for your teachers, your boss, your co-workers, and so forth. Also, people differ in the degree of overlap or congruence among their various public selves (see Figure 5.14). Does it matter whether you perceive yourself to be essentially the same person in different situations? It seems so. People who see themselves as being similar across different social roles (with friends, at work, at school, with parents, with romantic partners) are better adjusted than those who perceive less integration in their self-views across these roles (Donahue et al., 1993; Lutz & Ross, 2003).

at a study of behavior in simulated job interviews (von Baeyer, Sherk, & Zanna, 1981). In this study, female job applicants were led to believe that the man who would interview them held either traditional, chauvinistic views of women or just the opposite. The researchers found that applicants who expected a chauvinist presented themselves in a more traditionally feminine manner than subjects in the other condition. Their selfpresentation efforts extended to both their appearance (they wore more makeup) and their communication style (they talked less and gave more traditional answers to a question about marriage and children). In a job interview, people are particularly attentive to making a good impression, but impression management also operates in everyday interactions, although

Impression Management Interestingly, people think others notice and evaluate them more than is the actual case (Gilovich & Savitsky, 1999). This common tendency is aptly termed the spotlight effect. People also normally strive to make a positive impression on others to be liked, respected, hired, and so forth (Baumeister & Twenge, 2003). Impression management refers to usually conscious efforts by people to influence how others think of them. To see impression management in operation, let’s look

Public selves for (a) spouse (b) parents

(c) neighbors (d) boss (e) colleagues at work

b d

e

c

d

c b

Person 1

e a © 2004 AP/Wide World Photos

a

Person 2

FIG U R E 5.14

Public selves and adjustment. Person 1 has very divergent public selves with relatively little overlap among them. Person 2, whose public selves are more congruent with each other, is likely to be better adjusted than Person 1. 162

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Singer Christina Aguilera attracts press attention for her unusual self-presentation behavior.

individuals may be less aware of it (Schlenker, 2003). Let’s look at some common impression management strategies. Impression Management Strategies

One reason people engage in impression management is to claim a particular identity (Baumeister, 1998). Thus, you select a type of dress, hairstyle, and manner of speech to present a certain image of yourself. Tattoos and body piercings also create a specific image. A second motive for impression management is to gain liking and approval from others—by editing what you say about yourself and by using various nonverbal cues such as smiles, gestures, and eye contact. Because selfpresentation is practiced so often, people usually do it automatically. At other times, however, impression management may be used intentionally—to get a job, a date, a promotion, and so forth. Some common self-presentation strategies include ingratiation, selfpromotion, exemplification, intimidation, and supplication (Jones, 1990). Ingratiation. Of all the self-presentation strategies, ingratiation is the most fundamental and most frequently used. Ingratiation is behaving in ways to make oneself likable to others. For example, giving compliments is effective, as long as you are sincere (people dislike insincerity and can often detect it). Doing favors for others is also a common tactic, as long as your gestures aren’t so spectacular they leave others feeling indebted (Gordon, 1996). Other ingratiation tactics include expressing liking for others and going along with others (to get others to like you, it helps to do the things that they want to do). Self-promotion. The motive behind self-promotion is earning respect. You do so by playing up your strong points so you will be perceived as competent. For instance, in a job interview, you might find ways to mention that you earned high honors at school and that you were president of the student body and a member of the soccer team. To keep from coming across as a braggart, you shouldn’t go overboard with self-promotion. For this reason, false modesty often works well. Exemplification. Because most people try to project an honest image, you have to demonstrate exemplary behavior to claim special credit for integrity or character. Danger-fraught occupations such as those in the military or law enforcement provide obvious opportunities to exemplify moral virtue. A less dramatic, but still effective, strategy is to behave consistently according to high ethical standards—as long as you don’t come across as self-righteous. Also, your words and deeds need to match unless you want to be labeled a hypocrite. Intimidation. This strategy sends the message, “Don’t mess with me.” Intimidation usually works only in nonvoluntary relationships—for instance, when it’s

WE B LI N K 5.4

Impression Management This short article at TheFreeDictionary.com explains impression management and provides a number of links to other articles on related issues.

hard for workers to find another employer or for an economically dependent spouse to leave a relationship. Obvious intimidation tactics include threats and the withholding of valuable resources (salary increases, promotions, sex). A more subtle tactic is emotional intimidation—holding over a person’s head the threat of an aggressive outburst if you don’t get your way. The other self-presentation strategies work by creating a favorable impression; intimidation usually generates dislike. Nonetheless, it can work. Supplication. This is usually the tactic of last resort. To get favors from others, individuals try to present themselves as weak and dependent—as in the song, “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg.” Students may plead or break into tears in an instructor’s office in an attempt to get a grade changed. Because of the social norm to help those in need, supplication may work; however, unless the supplicator has something to offer the potential benefactor, it’s not an effective strategy. Individuals tailor their use of self-presentation strategies to match the situation. For instance, it’s unlikely that you’d try intimidating your boss; you’d be more likely to ingratiate or promote yourself with her. As you can see in Figure 5.15 on the next page, all of these strategies carry risks. Thus, to make a good impression, you must use these strategies skillfully. Perspectives on Impression Management

Curiously, almost all research on self-presentation has been conducted on first meetings between strangers, yet the vast majority of actual social interactions take place between people who already know each other. Noting the gap between reality and research, Dianne Tice and her colleagues (1995) investigated whether self-presentation varied in these two situations. They found that people strive to make positive impressions when they interact with strangers but shift toward modesty and neutral self-presentations when they are with friends. Why the difference? Because strangers don’t know you, you want to give them positive information so they’ll form a good impression of you. Besides, strangers have no way of knowing whether you are bending the truth. On the other hand, your friends already know your positive qualities. Thus, belaboring them is unnecessary and may make you seem immodest. Likewise, your friends know you well enough to know whether you are grandstanding, so you don’t bother. CHAPTER 5

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Strategic Self-Presentation Strategies

Presentation strategy

Impression sought

Emotion to be aroused in target

Negative impressions risked

Ingratiation

Likable

Affection

Boot-licker, conformist

Self-promotion

Competent

Respect

Conceited, defensive

Exemplification

Morally superior

Guilt

Hypocrite, sanctimonious

Intimidation

Dangerous

Fear

Blusterer, ineffectual

Supplication

Helpless

Obligation

Undeserving, lazy

FIG U R E 5.15

Strategic self-presentation strategies. Individuals rely on a variety of self-presentation strategies to present a certain image of themselves to others (Jones, 1990). To avoid the risks associated with the strategies, it’s important to use the tactics skillfully.

Sometimes the need to project a positive public image can lead to dangerous practices (Leary, Tchividjian, & Kraxberger, 1994). For instance, to avoid the embarrassment of buying condoms or talking with their sex partners, people will practice unprotected sex and heighten their risk of contracting AIDS. In pursuit of an attractive tan, people spend hours in the sun, thereby increasing their chances of getting skin cancer. To keep thin, many (especially women) use strong diet medications and develop full-blown eating disorders (see the Chapter 15 Application). To impress their peers, some adolescents take up drinking and smoking and even drug abuse. Finally, out of the desire to appear brave and daring, some people engage in reckless behavior that ends in accidents and death. How good are people at discerning the results of their impression management attempts? As we noted earlier, individuals are much better judges of how people, in general, view them than they are of how specific persons evaluate them.

Self-Monitoring According to Mark Snyder (1979, 1986), people vary in their awareness of how they are perceived by others. Self-monitoring refers to the degree to which people attend to and control the impressions they make on others. People who are high self-monitors seem to be very sensitive to their impact on others. Low

WE B LI N K 5.5

Building Self-Esteem The Counseling Center at the University of Florida offers tips on how to build self-esteem and self-confidence at this website.

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self-monitors, on the other hand, are less concerned about impression management and behave more spontaneously. Compared to low self-monitors, high self-monitors want to make a favorable impression and try to tailor their actions accordingly; they are skilled at deciphering what othMark Snyder ers want to see. Because they control their emotions well and deliberately regulate nonverbal signals, they are talented at self-presentation (Gangestad & Snyder, 2000). In contrast, low self-monitors are more likely to express their true beliefs or, possibly, to try to convey the impression that they are sincere and genuine individuals. As you might infer, these two personality types view themselves differently (Gangestad & Snyder, 2000). Low self-monitors see themselves as having strong principles and behaving in line with them, whereas high self-monitors perceive themselves as flexible and pragmatic. Because high self-monitors don’t see a necessary connection between their private beliefs and their public actions, they aren’t troubled by discrepancies between beliefs and behavior. You may be wondering whether these groups differ on psychological adjustment. It seems that more adjustment problems are found among individuals who score either very high or very low on self-monitoring compared to those who score closer to the middle (Miller & Thayer, 1989). On a final note, we’ll add that self-monitoring scores decline as people age—probably because individuals become more comfortable with themselves over time (Reifman, Klein, & Murphy, 1989). In the upcoming Application, we redirect our attention to the critical issue of self-esteem and outline seven steps for boosting it.

Courtesy, Mark Snyder

Based on Jones, E. E. (1990). Interpersonal perception. New York: W. H. Freeman & Company, p. 198.

Building Self-Esteem LEARNING OBJECTIVES ■

Explain when it is inadvisable to increase one’s self-esteem and why this is so. List seven ways to build self-esteem.

Answer the following “yes” or “no.” ___ 1. I worry that others don’t like me. ___ 2. I have very little confidence in my abilities. ___ 3. I often feel awkward in social situations and just don’t know how to take charge. ___ 4. I have difficulty accepting praise or flattery. ___ 5. I have a hard time bouncing back from failure experiences. If you answered “yes” to most of these questions, you may suffer from low self-esteem. As we noted earlier, people with low self-esteem are less happy and more prone to depression, become demoralized after failures, and are anxious in relationships. Too, people with high global self-esteem may have pockets of low selfesteem—for example, you may feel great about your “social self ” but not so good about your “academic self.” Thus, this Application can be useful to many people. We have one caveat, however: It is possible for selfesteem to be too high—recall our earlier discussion about narcissism, ego threats, and violence. Better adjustment is associated with realistically high (and stable) self-esteem. Thus, our suggestions are directed to those whose self-esteem could use a legitimate boost, not to those whose self-esteem is inflated. The latter group can benefit from developing more realistic self-views. As you saw in our discussion of self-efficacy, there is ample evidence that efforts at self-improvement can pay off by boosting self-esteem. Following are seven guidelines for building self-esteem. These suggestions are distilled from the advice of many experts, including Baumeister et al. (2003), Ellis (1989), McKay and Fanning (2000), Rogers (1977), and Zimbardo (1990). 1. Recognize That You Control Your Self-Image

The first thing you must do is recognize that you ultimately control how you see yourself. You do have the power to change your self-image. True, we have discussed at length how feedback from others influences your self-concept. Yes, social comparison theory suggests that people need such feedback and that it would

be unwise to ignore it completely. However, the final choice about whether to accept or reject such feedback rests with you. Your self-image resides in your mind and is a product of your thinking. Although others may influence your self-concept, you are the final authority. 2. Learn More About Yourself

People with low self-esteem don’t seem to know themselves in as much detail as those with high self-esteem. Accordingly, to boost your self-esteem, you need to take stock of yourself. The Recommended Reading titled Self-Esteem (McKay & Fanning, 2000) contains a selfconcept inventory that includes areas such as physical appearance, personality characteristics, relating to others, school and job performance, intellectual functioning, and sexuality. In taking inventory, you may discover that you’re fuzzy about certain aspects of yourself. To get a clearer picture, pay careful attention to your thoughts, feelings, and behavior and utilize feedback from others. 3. Don’t Let Others Set Your Goals

A common trap that many people fall into is letting others set the standards by which they evaluate themselves. Others are constantly telling you that you should do this or you ought to do that. Thus, you hear that you “should study computer science” or “ought to lose weight.” Most of this advice is well intentioned and may contain good ideas. Still, it is important that you make your own decisions about what you will do and what you will believe in. For example, consider a business executive in his early forties who sees himself in a negative light because he has not climbed very high in the corporate hierarchy. The crucial question is: Did he ever really want to make that arduous climb? Perhaps he has gone through life thinking he should pursue that kind of success only because that standard was imposed on him by his family. Think about the source of and basis for your personal goals and standards. Do they really represent ideals that you value? Or are they beliefs that you have passively accepted from others without thinking?

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4. Recognize Unrealistic Goals

Even if you truly value certain ideals and sincerely want to achieve certain goals, another question remains. Are your goals realistic? Many people demand too much of themselves. They want to always perform at their best, which is obviously impossible. For instance, you may have a burning desire to achieve national acclaim as an actress. However, the odds against such an achievement are enormous. It is important to recognize this reality so that you do not condemn yourself for failure. Some overly demanding people pervert the social comparison process by always comparing themselves against the best rather than against similar others. They assess their looks by comparing themselves with famous models, and they judge their finances by comparing themselves with the wealthiest people they know. Such comparisons are unrealistic and almost inevitably undermine self-esteem.

RE C O M M E N D ED READING

Self-Esteem by Matthew McKay and Patrick Fanning (New Harbinger Publications, 2000) If you want to assess, raise, and maintain your selfesteem, this book can help you. The authors work from the premise that everyone has a “pathological critic,” an inner voice that is judgmental and fault finding. Some people have an overly active and harsh pathological critic that, over time, erodes self-esteem. The reader is shown how to deal with these destructive self-statements through the use of cognitive restructuring. This book is easily understood, is written in an interesting style, and packs a lot of information in a few pages. It is most useful for those whose selfesteem problems are limited to a specific area (work, parenting, sex, etc.). While the book is also helpful to those whose esteem problems are more serious, the authors suggest that it will be most effective for this group when used along with psychotherapy.

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© Evan Agostini/Getty Images

© Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

Cover image Copyright © 2000 New Harbinger Publications. Reprinted by permission.

If you like singing star Usher or actress Jennifer Aniston, that’s fine, but they are not sensible benchmarks for evaluating your attractiveness or success. Some people distort the social comparison process.

FRANK & ERNEST reprinted by permission of Newspaper Enterprise Association, Inc.

5. Modify Negative Self-Talk

How you think about your life influences how you see yourself (and vice versa). People who are low in selfesteem tend to engage in various counterproductive modes of thinking. For example, when they succeed, they may attribute their success to good luck, and when they fail, they may blame themselves. Quite to the contrary, you should take credit for your successes and consider the possibility that your failures may not be your fault. As discussed in Chapter 4, Albert Ellis has pointed out that people often think irrationally and draw unwarranted negative conclusions about themselves. If someone breaks off a romantic relationship with you, do you think, “He doesn’t love me. I must be a worthless, unlovable person?” The conclusion that you are a “worthless person” does not follow logically from the fact of the break-up. Such irrational thinking and negative self-talk breed poor self-esteem. Recognize the destructive potential of negative self-talk and bring it to a halt.

This faultfinding and negative approach does not go over well. Instead, it leads to tension, antagonism, and rejection. This rejection lowers self-esteem still further (see Figure 5.16). You can boost your esteem-building efforts by recognizing and reversing this self-defeating tendency. Cultivate the habit of maintaining a positive, supportive outlook when you approach people. Doing so will promote rewarding interactions and help you earn others’ acceptance. There is probably nothing that enhances self-esteem more than acceptance and genuine affection from others.

Oversensitivity to rejection

6. Emphasize Your Strengths

This advice may seem trite, but it has some merit. People with low self-esteem often derive little satisfaction from their accomplishments and virtues. They pay little heed to their good qualities while talking constantly about their defeats and frailties. The fact is that everyone has strengths and weaknesses. You should accept those personal shortcomings that you are powerless to change and work on those that are changeable, without becoming obsessed about it. At the same time, you should take stock of your strengths and learn to appreciate them. 7. Approach Others with a Positive Outlook

Some people with low self-esteem try to cut others down to their (subjective) size through constant criticism.

Low self-esteem

Actual rejection by others

Negative, hurtful ways of relating to people

F I G U R E 5. 16

The vicious circle of low self-esteem and rejection. A negative self-image can make expectations of rejection a self-fulfilling prophecy, because people with low self-esteem tend to approach others in negative, hurtful ways. Real or imagined rejections lower self-esteem still further, creating a vicious circle.

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Self-Regulation ■

KEY IDEAS Self-Concept

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The self-concept is composed of a number of beliefs about what one is like, and it is not easily changed. It governs both present and future behavior. Discrepancies between one’s ideal self and one’s actual or ought self can produce negative emotions and lowered self-esteem. To cope with these negative states, individuals may bring their behavior in line with their ideal selves or blunt their awareness of self-discrepancies. ■ The self-concept is shaped by several factors, including individuals’ observations of their own behavior, which often involve social comparisons with others. Self-observations tend to be biased in a positive direction. In addition, feedback from others shapes the self-concept; this information is also filtered to some extent. Cultural guidelines also affect the way people see themselves. Members of individualistic cultures usually have an independent view of the self, whereas those in collectivist cultures often have an interdependent view of the self. ■

Self-esteem is a person’s global evaluation of his or her worth. Like the self-concept, it tends to be stable, but it can fluctuate in response to daily ups and downs. ■ Compared to those with high self-esteem, individuals with low self-esteem are less happy, are more likely to be depressed, are more prone to giving up after failure, and are less trusting of others. ■ Narcissistic individuals are prone to violence when their selfesteem is threatened. Self-esteem develops through interactions with significant others. Self-esteem, ethnicity, and gender interact in complex ways. Basic Principles of Self-Perception ■

To avoid being overwhelmed with information, people use automatic processing; for important decisions, they use controlled processing. To explain the causes of their behavior, individuals make self-attributions. Generally, people attribute their behavior to internal or external factors and to stable or unstable factors. Controllability-uncontrollability is another key dimension of self-attributions. People tend to use either an optimistic explanatory style or a pessimistic explanatory style to explain various events that occur in their lives, and these attributional styles are related to psychological adjustment. ■ People are guided by four distinct motives in seeking to understand themselves. The self-assessment motive directs people toward accurate feedback about the self. The self-verification motive drives people toward information that matches their current self-views, even though doing so may involve some distortion of reality. The self-improvement motive underlies people’s attempts to better themselves. The self-enhancement motive enables people to maintain positive views of themselves. Common self-enhancement strategies include downward comparisons, the self-serving bias, basking in reflected glory, and self-handicapping.

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Self-Presentation ■

Public selves are the various images that individuals project to others. Generally, people try to manage the impressions they make by using a variety of strategies, including ingratiation, self-promotion, exemplification, intimidation, and supplication. Impression management can be dangerous to one’s health. High self-monitors seem to be more concerned about making favorable impressions than low self-monitors are.

Application: Building Self-Esteem

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Self-regulation involves setting goals and directing behavior to meet those goals. A key aspect of self-regulation is selfefficacy—an individual’s belief that he or she can achieve specific goals. Engaging in self-control can temporarily deplete what appears to be a limited underlying resource. Self-efficacy plays a key role in adjustment and can be learned through mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, persuasion, and positive interpretations of emotional arousal. ■ Sometimes normal people knowingly do things that are bad for them. These self-defeating actions fall into three categories: deliberate self-destruction, tradeoffs, and counterproductive strategies.

The Interpersonal Realm

The seven building blocks to higher self-esteem are (1) recognize that you control your self-image, (2) learn more about yourself, (3) don’t let others set your goals, (4) recognize unrealistic goals, (5) modify negative self-talk, (6) emphasize your strengths, and (7) approach others with a positive outlook.

KEY TERMS Basking in reflected glory p. 157 Collectivism p. 145 Downward social comparison p. 155 Explanatory style p. 153 External attributions p. 152 Impression management p. 162 Individualism p. 145 Ingratiation p. 163 Internal attributions p. 152 Narcissism p. 148 Possible selves p. 141 Public self p. 161 Reference group p. 143

Self-attributions p. 152 Self-concept p. 140 Self-defeating behaviors p. 160 Self-discrepancy p. 141 Self-efficacy p. 158 Self-enhancement p. 155 Self-esteem p. 146 Self-handicapping p. 157 Self-monitoring p. 164 Self-regulation p. 158 Self-serving bias p. 156 Self-verification theory p. 155 Social comparison theory p. 143

KEY PEOPLE Albert Bandura pp. 158–160 Roy Baumeister p. 147

Hazel Markus p. 140 Mark Snyder p. 164

7. Keisha is upset when a textbook is stolen, but she feels better after she hears that a classmate’s book bag, including her cell phone, was stolen. This is an example of: a. the self-serving bias. b. basking in reflected glory. c. downward comparison. d. self-handicapping.

Personal Explorations Workbook The following exercises in your Personal Explorations Workbook may enhance your self-understanding in relation to issues raised in this chapter. Questionnaire 5.1: Self-Monitoring Scale. Personal Probe 5.1: How Does Your Self-Concept Compare to Your Self Ideal? Personal Probe 5.2: Examining Your Self Evaluation. Personal Probe 5.3: Analyzing Your Emerging Self.

ANSWERS

Pages 152–155 Pages 155–156 Pages 158–159 Page 163 Pages 165–167

6. Which of the following is not a basic principle of selfperception? a. People are “cognitive spenders.” b. People’s explanatory style is related to adjustment. c. People most want to receive information that is consistent with their self-views. d. People most want to maintain positive feelings about the self.

Visit the Book Companion Website at http://psychology. wadsworth.com/weiten_lloyd8e, where you will find tutorial quizzes, flashcards, and weblinks for every chapter, a final exam, and more! You can also link to the Thomson Wadsworth Psychology Resource Center (accessible directly at http://psychology.wadsworth.com) for a range of psychology-related resources.

a c a d b

5. Aggression in response to self-esteem threats is more likely to occur in people who are: a. high in self-esteem. b. low in self-esteem. c. narcissistic. d. self-defeating.

Book Companion Website

6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

4. Low self-esteem is associated with: a. happiness. b. high trust of others. c. self-concept confusion. d. recovering after failure experiences.

10. Which of the following will not help you build higher self-esteem? a. Minimizing negative self-talk b. Comparing yourself with those who are the best in a given area c. Working to improve yourself d. Approaching others with positive expectations

Page 140 Pages 141–142 Page 145 Pages 146–147 Pages 148–149

3. A person reared in a collectivist culture is likely to have a(n) _____ self-view, whereas a person reared in an individualistic culture is likely to have a(n) _____ self-view. a. self-discrepant; self-consistent b. self-consistent; self-discrepant c. independent; interdependent d. interdependent; independent

9. The self-presentation strategy of ingratiation involves trying to make others: a. respect you. b. fear you. c. feel sorry for you. d. like you.

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a b d c c

2. Mismatches between one’s actual and ought selves result in lower self-esteem and: a. dejection-related feelings. b. agitation-related feelings. c. feelings of self-enhancement. d. no particular feelings.

PRACTICE TEST

1. Which of the following statements about the selfconcept is false? a. It is composed of one dominant belief about the self. b. It is composed of many self-beliefs. c. It is relatively stable over time. d. It influences present as well as future behavior.

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

PRACTICE TEST

8. Which of the following statements about self-efficacy is true? a. It can be developed by persevering through failure until one achieves success. b. It is something that one is born with. c. It refers to a person’s general self-confidence. d. It refers to conscious efforts to make a certain impression on others.

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FORMING IMPRESSIONS OF OTHERS Key Sources of Information Snap Judgments Versus Systematic Judgments Attributions Perceiver Expectations Cognitive Distortions Key Themes in Person Perception

THE PROBLEM OF PREJUDICE “Old-Fashioned” Versus Modern Discrimination Causes of Prejudice Reducing Prejudice

APPLICATION: SEEING THROUGH COMPLIANCE TACTICS The Consistency Principle The Reciprocity Principle The Scarcity Principle

THE POWER OF PERSUASION The Elements of the Persuasion Process The Whys of Persuasion

CHAPTER 6 REVIEW

THE POWER OF SOCIAL PRESSURE Conformity and Compliance Pressures Pressure from Authority Figures Culture and Social Influence

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PRACTICE TEST

CHAPTER

Social Thinking and Social Influence

6

You’ve had your eye on that attractive brunette in the first row of your English Lit class since the term began. Should you ask her out? As you ponder the wisdom of this action, you watch her, hoping to pick up some clues to help you make your decision. You notice a sorority decal on her notebook. But, you don’t belong to a fraternity and you’ve never dated a sorority woman. You’ve heard that some of them can be snobbish, although she seems to be friendly and approachable. Still, you’re only a sophomore; what if she’s a senior? That could be awkward. As you contemplate what to do, similar thoughts flit through your mind. In this scenario, you can see the process of person perception at work. People are constantly constructing impressions of others in order to understand them and predict their behavior. In this chapter, we explore what’s involved in forming these impressions and how and why they can be inaccurate. Expanding our discussion of social cognition, we then turn to the problem of prejudice. Next, we look at how others try to influence your beliefs and behavior. Specifically, we focus on the power of persuasive messages and the pressures to conform and obey. As you’ll see, social thinking and social influence play significant roles in personal adjustment.

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Forming Impressions of Others LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Cite the five sources of information people use to form impressions of others. Describe the key differences between snap judgments and systematic judgments. Define attributions and explain when people are likely to make them.

Do you recall the first time you met your current boss? She seemed pleasant, but distant, and you were worried that she might be difficult to work with. Thankfully, your concerns diminished as you got to know her better. As people interact with others, they constantly engage in person perception, the process of forming impressions of others. Because impression formation is usually such an easy and automatic process, people are unaware that it is taking place. Nonetheless, the process is a complex one. Let’s review some of its essential aspects.

Key Sources of Information Because you can’t read other people’s minds, you are dependent on observations of others to determine what they are like. In forming impressions of others, people rely on five key sources of observational information: appearance, verbal behavior, actions, nonverbal messages, and situational cues. Appearance. Despite the admonition, “You can’t judge a book by its cover,” people frequently do exactly that. Physical features such as height, weight, skin color, and hair color are some of the cues used to “read” other people. Regardless of their accuracy, beliefs about physical features are used to form impressions of others (Hellström & Tekle, 1994). For example, Americans learn to associate the wearing of eyeglasses with studiousness. Style of dress, clothing or jewelry that designates religious beliefs, body piercings, and tattoos also provide clues about others. Verbal behavior. Another obvious source of information about others is what they say. People form impressions based on what and how much others selfdisclose, how often they give advice and ask questions, and how judgmental they are (Berry et al., 1997). If Tanisha speaks negatively about most people she knows, you will probably conclude that she is a critical person. Actions. Because people don’t always tell the truth, you have to rely on their behavior to provide insights about them. For instance, when you learn that Jamal volunteers five hours a week at the local homeless shelter, you are likely to infer that he is a caring person. In impression formation, “actions speak louder than words.” Nonverbal messages. Another key source of information about others is nonverbal communication: fa172

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Describe two expectancies that can distort observer’s perceptions. Describe four important cognitive distortions and how they operate. Describe some ways in which perceptions of others are efficient, selective, and consistent.

cial expressions, eye contact, body language, and gestures (Forrest & Feldman, 2000; Frank & Ekman, 1997). These nonverbal cues provide information about people’s emotional states and dispositions. For example, in our culture a bright smile and good eye contact signal friendliness and openness. Also, because people know that verbal behavior is easily manipulated, they often rely on nonverbal cues to determine the truth of what others say (Frank & Ekman, 1997). Situations. The setting in which behavior occurs provides crucial information about how to interpret a person’s behavior (Trope & Gaunt, 2003). For instance, without situational cues, it would be hard to know whether a crying person is happy or sad.

Snap Judgments Versus Systematic Judgments In their interactions with others, people are bombarded with more information than they can possibly handle. To avoid being overwhelmed, people rely on alternative ways to process information. Snap judgments about others are those made quickly and based on only a few bits of information and preconceived notions. Thus, they may not be particularly accurate. Nevertheless, people can get by with superficial assessments of others quite often. As Susan Fiske (1993) puts it: “People are

© RNT Productions/CCorbis

In forming impressions of others, people rely on cues such as appearance, actions, and verbal and nonverbal messages, as well as the nature of the situation.

Perceiver‘s observations of • Target’s appearance • Target’s verbal statements • Target’s actions • Target’s nonverbal messages • Situational clues

Accuracy is not a priority

Accuracy is a priority

WE B LI N K 6.1

Social Psychology Network Wesleyan University social psychologist Scott Plous offers a broad collection of more than 5,000 web links related to all aspects of social and general psychology, including how people understand and influence each other interpersonally.

Courtesy, Susan Fiske

good enough perceivers” (p. 156). Often, interactions with others are so fleeting or inconsequential that it makes little difference that such judgments are imprecise. Does it really matter that you mistakenly infer that the blonde postal clerk is a fun-loving person, or that your bespectacled restaurant server is Susan Fiske an intellectual? You may never interact with them again, and even if you do, your interactions are not likely to be significant to either of you. On the other hand, when it comes to selecting a friend, a mate, a boss, or an employee, it’s essential that your impressions be as accurate as possible. Hence, it’s not surprising that people are motivated to take more care in these assessments. In forming impressions of those who can affect their welfare and happiness, people make systematic judgments rather than snap decisions (see Figure 6.1). That is, they take the time to observe the person in a variety of situations and to compare that person’s behavior with that of others in similar situations. In Chapter 5, we noted that people are “cognitive misers” (Taylor, 1981b). This fact has important implications for impression formation. To conserve their time, energy, and cognitive resources (attention, memory, and so forth), people often depend on automatic processing. Controlled processing, or mindfulness, which requires more cognitive effort, kicks in only when individuals expect others to be personally relevant. In assessing what a significant individual is like, people are particularly interested in learning why the person behaves in a certain way. This deeper level of understanding is vital if one is to make accurate predictions about the person’s future behavior. After all, when you’re looking for a roommate, you don’t want

to end up with an inconsiderate slob. To determine the cause of others’ behavior, people engage in the process of causal attribution.

Attributions As we have noted in earlier chapters, attributions are inferences that people draw about the causes of their own behavior, others’ behavior, and events. In Chapter 5, we focused on self-attributions. Here, we’ll apply attribution theory to the behavior of other people. For example, suppose that your boss bawls you out for doing a sloppy job on an insignificant project. To what do you attribute this tongue lashing? Was your work really that bad? Is your boss just in a grouchy mood? Is your boss under too much pressure? In Chapter 5, we noted that attributions have three key dimensions: internal versus external, stable versus unstable, and controllable versus uncontrollable (Jones & Davis, 1965; Kelley, 1950; Weiner, 1974). For this discussion, we focus only on the internal/external dimension. When people ascribe the causes of someone’s behavior to personal dispositions, traits, abilities, or feelings, they are making internal attributions. When they impute the causes of their behavior to situational demands and environmental constraints, they are making external attributions. For example, if a friend’s business fails, you might attribute the failure to your friend’s lack of business skills (an internal factor) or to

Snap judgments

Systematic judgments, including attributions

Impression of the person

F I G U R E 6.1

The process of person perception. In forming impressions of others, perceivers rely on various sources of observational information. When it’s important to form accurate impressions of others, people are motivated to make systematic judgments, including attributions. When accuracy isn’t a priority, people make snap judgments about others. Adapted from Brehm, S. S., & Kassin, S. M. (1993) Social Psychology. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Copyright © 1993 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Adapted with permission.

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DILBERT Reprinted by permission of United Feature Syndicate, Inc.

negative trends in the economy (an external factor). Parents who discover that their teenage son has banged up the family car may blame it on his carelessness (an internal attribution) or on slippery road conditions (an external attribution). The types of attributions people make about others can have a tremendous impact on everyday social interactions. For example, blaming a friend’s business failure on poor business “smarts” rather than on a poor economy will obviously affect how you view your friend— not to mention whether you’ll lend her money! Likewise, if parents attribute their son’s automobile accident to slippery road conditions, they are likely to deal with him very differently than if they attribute it to his carelessness. In addition, there is evidence that spouses’ attributions for each other’s behavior can affect their marital satisfaction (Fletcher & Thomas, 2000). Obviously, people don’t make attributions about every person they meet. Research suggests that people are relatively selective in this process (Jones, 1990; Malle & Knobe, 1997). It seems that people are most likely to make attributions (1) when others behave in unexpected or negative ways, (2) when events are personally relevant, and (3) when they are suspicious about another person’s motives. For example, if Serena laughs loudly at the local student hangout, no one bats an eye. But if she does so in the middle of a serious lecture, it raises eyebrows and generates speculation about why she behaved this way. Some aspects of the attribution process are logical (Trope & Gaunt, 2003). Nonetheless, research also shows that the process of person perception is sometimes illogical and unsystematic, as in the case of snap judgments. Other sources of error also creep into the process, a topic we take up next.

Perceiver Expectations Remember Evan, that bully from the fourth grade? He made your life a total misery—constantly looking for opportunities to poke fun at you and beat you up. Now 174

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when you meet someone named Evan, your initial reaction is negative, and it takes a while to warm up to him. Why? Your negative past experiences with an Evan have led you to expect the worst, whether or not it’s warranted. This is just one example of how perceiver expectations can influence the perception of others. Confirmation Bias

Shortly after you begin interacting with someone, you start forming hypotheses about what the person is like. In turn, these hypotheses can influence your behavior toward that person in such a way as to confirm your expectations. Thus, if on your first encounter with Xavier, he has a camera around his neck, you will probably hypothesize that he has an interest in photography and question him selectively about his shutterbug activities. You might also neglect to ask more wide-ranging questions that would give you a more accurate picture of him. This tendency to behave toward others in ways that confirm your expectations about them is termed confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is a well-documented phenomenon (Snyder & Swann, 1978; Dougherty, Turban, & Callendar, 1994). It occurs in casual social interactions as well as in job interviews and in courtrooms, where the interviewer or attorney may ask leading questions (Fiske & Taylor, 1991). When it comes to forming first impressions of others, it is not so much that “seeing is believing” but rather that “believing is seeing.” Confirmation bias also occurs because individuals selectively recall facts to fit their views of others. In one experiment (Cohen, 1981), participants watched a

WE B LI N K 6.2

Social Cognition Paper Archive and Information Center Eliot R. Smith at Indiana University maintains a popular site that includes information about papers (abstracts, mostly) and people and that links to the wider social psychological research community.

videotape of a woman engaging in a variety of activities, including listening to classical music, drinking beer, and watching TV. Half of them were told that the woman was a waitress and the other half were told that she was a librarian. When asked to recall the woman’s actions on the videotape, participants tended to remember activities consistent with their stereotypes of waitresses and librarians. Thus, those who thought that the woman was a waitress recalled her drinking beer; those who thought she was a librarian recalled her listening to classical music. Although confirmation bias does occur, just how pervasive is it? Susan Fiske (1993) notes that when people have a high need for accuracy in their impression of someone, they are less likely to engage in selective questioning. Instead, they ask diagnostic questions such as, “Would you rather have a few close relationships or a lot of less intimate ones?” Diagnostic questions provide people with information about the accuracy of their expectations, in contrast to biased questions that seek mainly to confirm their initial hypotheses. Normally, people remain unaware of the biases in their perceptions. They go blithely along, assuming that their version of reality is accurate. And, most of the time, this approach works (Fiske, 1993). It’s only when someone disagrees that a perceiver is brought up short. When this happens, the individual may alter his or her views, conclude that the other person’s perception is “off,” or look for another satisfactory explanation for the difference in perceptions. Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

Sometimes a perceiver’s expectations can actually change another person’s behavior. A self-fulfilling prophecy occurs when expectations about a person cause the person to behave in ways that confirm the expectations. This term was originally coined by sociologist Robert Merton (1948) to explain such phenomena as “runs” on banks that occurred during the Depression. That is, when unfounded rumors would circulate that a bank couldn’t cover its deposits, people would rush to the bank and withdraw their funds, thereby draining the deposits from the bank and making real what was initially untrue. This phenomenon is also called behavioral confirmation or the Pygmalion effect (named after the Greek myth in which King Pygmalion carved a statue of the perfect woman and fell in love with it). Figure 6.2 depicts the three steps in the self-fulfilling prophecy. First, the perceiver has an initial impression of someone. (A teacher believes that Jennifer is highly intelligent.) Then the perceiver behaves toward the target person in line with his or her expectations. (He asks her interesting questions and praises her answers.) The third step occurs when the target person adjusts his or her behavior to the perceiver’s actions, which confirms the perceiver’s hypothesis about the target person. (JenCHAPTER 6

Perceiver’s impression of other person. She is really funny. leads to

confirms

Perceiver’s behavior based on that impression. “Tell us the story about the time when . . .” (laughter at her witty comments) produces Corresponding behavior elicited from the other person. She tells humorous story as requested and tries to make witty comments.

FIG U R E 6.2

The three steps of the self-fulfilling prophecy. Through a three-step process, your expectations about a person can cause that person to behave in ways that confirm those expectations. First, you form an impression of someone. Second, you behave toward that person in a way that is consistent with your impression. Third, the person exhibits the behavior you encourage, which confirms your initial impression. Adapted from Smith, E. R., & Mackie, D. M. (1995). Social Psychology. New York: Worth, p. 103. Copyright © 1995 Worth Publishing. Reprinted with permission.

nifer performs well in class.) Note that both individuals are unaware that this process is operating. Also note that because perceivers are unaware of their expectations and of the effect they can have on others, they mistakenly attribute the target person’s behavior to an internal cause (Jennifer is smart), rather than an external one (their own expectations). The best-known experiments on the self-fulfilling prophecy have been conducted in classroom settings, looking at the effect of teachers’ expectations on students’ academic performance (Rosenthal, 1985). A review of 400 studies of this phenomenon over a period of 30 years reported that teacher expectations significantly influenced student performance in 36 percent of the experiments. The self-fulfilling prophecy also operates with adults and in noneducational settings such as the military, factories and businesses, courtrooms, and physicians’ offices (Ambady et al., 2002; Halverson et al., 1997; Kierein & Gold, 2000; Rosenthal, 2003). Although a perceiver’s expectations can produce corresponding changes in another person’s behavior, this outcome is not inevitable (Smith, Jussim, & Eccles, 1999). For one thing, self-fulfilling prophecies are less likely to operate if perceivers are motivated to form accurate impressions of others (Harris & Perkins, 1995). Social Thinking and Social Influence

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Second, if target persons are aware of another’s beliefs and these beliefs contradict their self-views, they work hard to change the perceiver’s perceptions and are often successful (Hilton & Darley, 1985). Third, when target persons are confident about their self-views, they are less likely to be influenced by a perceiver with different perceptions (Swann & Ely, 1984).

Cognitive Distortions Another source of error in person perception comes from distortions in the minds of perceivers. These errors in judgment are most likely to occur when a perceiver is in a hurry, is distracted, or is not motivated to pay careful attention to another person. Social Categorization

One of the ways people efficiently process information is to classify objects (and people) according to their distinctive features (Fiske, 1998). Thus, people quite often categorize others on the basis of nationality, race, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, sexual orientation, and so forth. People frequently take the easy path of categorizing others to avoid expending the cognitive effort that would be necessary for a more accurate impression. People perceive similar individuals to be members of their ingroup (“us”) and those who are dissimilar to them, in the outgroup (“them”). Such categorizing has three important results. First, people usually have less favorable attitudes toward outgroup members than ingroup members (Brewer & Brown, 1998). Second, individuals usually see outgroup members as being much more alike than they really are, whereas they see members of the ingroup as unique individuals (Oakes, 2001). In other words, people frequently explain the behavior of outgroup members on the basis of the characteristic that sets them apart (“Those Nerdians are all drunks”), but attribute the same behavior by an ingroup member to individual personality traits (“Brett’s a heavy drinker”). This phenomenon is termed the outgroup homogeneity effect. Anne Frank alluded to this tendency when she wrote, “What one Christian does is his own responsibility, what one Jew does is thrown back at all Jews.” A third result of categorizing is that it heightens the visibility of outgroup members when there are only a few of them within a larger group. In other words, minority group status in a group makes more salient the quality that distinguishes the person—ethnicity, gender, whatever. When people are perceived as being unique or distinctive, they are also seen as having more influence in a group, and their good and bad qualities are given extra weight (Crocker & McGraw, 1984). Significantly, distinctiveness also triggers stereotyping. This phenomenon explains why many people notice

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nagging women (but not men), noisy blacks (but not whites), and jolly fat (but not thin) people. Stereotypes

Stereotypes are widely held beliefs that people have certain characteristics because of their membership in a particular group. For example, many people assume that Jews are shrewd and ambitious, that African Americans have special athletic and musical abilities, and that Muslims are religious fanatics. Although a kernel of truth may underlie some stereotypes, it should be readily apparent that not all Jews, African Americans, Muslims, and so forth behave alike. If you take the time to think about it, you recognize that there is enormous diversity in behavior within any group. The most prevalent stereotypes in America are those based on gender, age, and ethnicity (Fiske, 1993). Gender stereotypes, although in transition, remain pervasive. For example, in a study of gender stereotypes in 30 countries, males were typically characterized as adventurous, powerful, and independent, while females were characterized as sentimental, submissive, and superstitious (Williams & Best, 1982, 1990). Because of their wide-ranging significance, gender stereotypes will be covered in detail in our chapter (10) on gender. Stereotypes may also be based on physical appearance. In particular, there is plenty of evidence that physically attractive people are believed to have desirable personality traits. This widespread perception is termed the “what-is-beautiful-is-good” stereotype (Dion, Berscheid, & Walster, 1972). Specifically, beautiful people are usually viewed as more socially competent, more assertive, better adjusted, and more intellectually competent than those who are less attractive (Eagly et al., 1991). Yet most of these perceptions have little basis in fact. Attractive people do have an advantage in the social arena. For example, they have better social skills, are more popular, are less socially anxious (especially about interactions with the other gender), are less lonely, and are more sexually experienced (Feingold, 1992b). However, they are not any different from others in intelligence, happiness, mental health, or self-esteem (Feingold, 1992b; Langlois et al., 2000). Thus, attractive people are perceived in a more favorable light than is actually justified. Unfortunately, the positive biases toward attractive people also operate in reverse. Thus, unattractive people are unjustifiably seen as less well adjusted and less intellectually competent than others. Most Americans believe that good looks are an advantage in everyday life (see Figure 6.3). This tendency to associate attractiveness with positive qualities also occurs outside the United States—with an important twist. You’ll recall from our discussion in Chapter 5 that Western societies tend to be individualistic, viewing people as autonomous individuals who

Most Americans Believe Good Looks Are an Advantage

Poll Question “How important do you think a person’s physical attractiveness is in our society today in terms of his or her happiness, social life, and ability to get ahead?

“Fairly important” or “Very important” answers Men

Women

Total

1990

82%

85%

84%

1999

76%

76%

76%

F I G U R E 6.3

Physical attractiveness as a social advantage. A Gallup poll reported that a large majority of men and women believe that physical attractiveness is an advantage when it comes to happiness, social life, and the ability to get ahead. Affirmative responses to the poll question decreased a little between 1990 and 1999, but it is clear that most people continue to believe that good looks are advantageous. Data from Newport, F. (1999, September 15), Americans agree that being attractive is a plus in American society. Retrieved June 10, 2001 from http://gallup.com/poll/releases/pr990915.

are responsible for their actions. In contrast, members of collectivist societies value interdependence and obedience. In a study conducted in Korea, a collectivist culture, participants were asked to view photographs of Korean men and women and then to describe the personal qualities of those in the pictures (Wheeler & Kim, 1997). The participants described the attractive individuals as possessing qualities that are valued in collectivist cultures (“a concern for others” and “integrity,” for instance), but they did not choose terms that are desirable in individualistic cultures (“dominant” and “assertive,” for example). Thus, it is likely that although people in many cultures associate attractiveness with positive qualities, cultural values determine what characteristics are considered desirable. Stereotypes can be spontaneously triggered when people encounter members of commonly stereotyped groups—even in those who are not prejudiced (Devine, 1989; Dunning & Sherman, 1997). Stereotypes can exist outside a person’s awareness (Bodenhausen, Macrae, & Hugenberg, 2003; Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). Because stereotyping is automatic, some psychologists are pessimistic about being able to control it (Bargh, 1999); others take a more optimistic view (Uleman et al., 1996). Why do stereotypes persist? For one thing, they are cognitively functional (Quinn, Macrae, & Bodenhausen, 2003). Recall that people are “cognitive misers.” Because they are deluged with much more information than they can process, the tendency is to reduce complexity to simplicity. But, as we noted earlier, the tradeoff for simplification is inaccuracy. Stereotypes also endure because of confirmation bias. Thus, when

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individuals encounter members of groups that they view with prejudice, they are likely to see what they expect to see. The self-fulfilling prophecy is a third reason stereotypes persist: Beliefs about another person may actually elicit the anticipated behavior and confirm biased expectations. The Fundamental Attribution Error

When explaining the causes of others’ behavior, people invoke personal attributions and discount the importance of situational factors. Although this tendency is not universal (Choi, Nisbett, & Norenzayan, 1999; Miyamoto & Kitayama, 2002), it is strong enough that Lee Ross (1977) called it the “fundamental attribution error.” The fundamental attribution error refers to the tendency to explain other people’s behavior as the result of personal, rather than situational, factors. This tendency (sometimes termed correspondence bias) differs from stereotyping in that inferences are based on actual behavior. Nonetheless, those inferences may still be inaccurate. If Jeremy leaves class early, you may be correct in inferring that he is inconsiderate, but he might also have had a previously scheduled job interview. Thus, a person’s behavior at a given time may or may not be reflective of his or her personality—but observers tend to assume that it is. What’s behind this tendency to discount situational influences on people’s behavior? Once again, the culprit is people’s tendency to be cognitive misers. It seems that making attributions is a two-step process (Gilbert & Malone, 1995). As you can see in Figure 6.4 (on the next page), in the first step, which occurs automatically, observers make an internal attribution because they are focusing on the person (not the situation). (At your bank, if you observe the man ahead of you yell at the teller, you might infer that he is a hostile person.) In the second step, observers weigh the impact of the situation on the target person’s behavior and adjust their inference. (If you overhear the customer say that this is the third time in three weeks that the bank has made the same error in his account, you’re likely to temper your initial judgment about his hostile tendencies.) The first step in the attribution process occurs spontaneously, but the second step requires cognitive effort and attention. Thus, it is easy to stop after step one— especially, if one is in a hurry or distracted. Failure to take the effortful second step can result in the fundamental attribution error. However, when people are motivated to form accurate impressions of others (Webster, 1993) or when they are suspicious about another’s motives (Fein, 1996), they do expend the effort to complete the second step. In these cases, they are more likely to make accurate attributions. Some evidence suggests that these two steps may be related to different types of brain activity (Lieberman et al., 2004).

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FIG U R E 6.4

Explaining the fundamental attribution error. People automatically take the first step in the attribution process (making a personal attribution). However, they often fail to take the second step (considering the possible influence of situational factors on a person’s behavior) because that requires extra effort. The failure to consider situational factors causes observers to exaggerate the role of personal factors in behavior—that is, they make the fundamental attribution error. (Adapted from Brehm, Kassin, & Fein, 2002)

Step 1 Step 2 (automatic, mindless) (effortful, mindful) Observer makes initial observation of actor’s behavior

Observer makes a personal attribution

Observer becomes aware of situational influences on actor’s behavior.

A customer argues loudly with a bank teller.

”He’s a hostile person.”

Observer hears customer say that the bank has often made the same error.

Cultural values seem to promote different attributional errors. In individualistic cultures, where independence is valued, it is assumed that people are responsible for their actions. In collectivist societies, conformity and obedience to group norms are valued, so it is assumed that one’s behavior reflects adherence to group norms. Some experts speculate that different styles of thinking underlie cultural differences in attributional styles (Nisbett et al., 2001). They suggest that the Western mentality is analytical (attention is focused on an object and causality is ascribed to it), whereas the East Asian mentality is holistic (attention is focused on the field surrounding an object, and causality is understood to reside in the relationship between the object and its field). Consistent with both of these views, researchers have found that Americans explain others’ behavior in terms of internal attributions more often than do Hindus (Miller, 1984), Chinese (Morris & Peng, 1994), Japanese (Weisz, Rothbaum, & Blackburn, 1984), or Koreans (Choi et al., 2003).

Observer modifies initial attribution based on situational information. ”He’s probably not such a hostile person after all.”

ilar way. Blaming victims for their calamities also helps people maintain their belief that they live in a “just world” where people get what they deserve and deserve what they get (Lerner, 1980, 1998). Acknowledging that the world is not just—that unfortunate events can happen as a result of chance factors—would mean having to admit the frightening possibility that the catastrophes that happen to others could also happen to oneself. Defensive attributions are a self-protective, but irrational, strategy that allows people to avoid such unnerving thoughts and helps them feel in control of their lives (Hafer, 2000; Lipkus, Dalbert, & Siegler, 1996). Unfortunately, when victims are blamed for their setbacks, people unfairly attribute undesirable traits to them, such as incompetence, foolishness, and laziness.

Observers are especially likely to make internal attributions in trying to explain the calamities and tragedies that befall other people. Examples easily come to mind. When a woman is abused by a boyfriend or husband, people frequently blame the victim by remarking how stupid she is to stay with the man, rather than condemning the aggressor for his behavior. Similarly, rape victims are often judged to have “asked for it.” Defensive attribution is a tendency to blame victims for their misfortune, so that one feels less likely to be victimized in a sim-

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© Andrew Holbrooke/The Image Works

Defensive Attribution

A common example of defensive attribution is the tendency to blame the homeless for their plight.

The Interpersonal Realm

LIVING IN TODAY‘S WORLD

Beliefs, Revenge, and Intergroup Conflict Knowing that terrorist attacks could come at any time and in any location in the country disturbs Americans’ sense of control over their own and their loved ones’ safety. This experience strikes at a fundamental need to see one’s world as stable and predictable (Greenberg, Solomon, & Pyszczynski, 1997). A foundation of this need for order is the belief in a just world (BJW). As we discuss elsewhere in this chapter, this belief is the idea that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. Individuals differ on how strongly they endorse BJW. Compared to weak endorsers, strong endorsers are more likely to have an internal locus of control (believe that their fate is under their own control versus chance), to espouse the Protestant work ethic, and to be more authoritarian and more politically conservative (Furnham & Procter, 1989). Having to face incontrovertible evidence that the world is not just (the 9-11 attacks, for example) triggers fear, stress, and vulnerability, especially among strong endorsers of BJW. One way to deal with these painful feelings is to restore justice cognitively—by persuading themselves that the victims of tragedies actually deserve their fate (because they are “bad” people). These defensive attributions help individuals maintain the comforting, but false, belief that nothing bad will happen to them (because they are “good” people). “Blaming the victim” is reduced when individuals identify with the victim. For example, because the 9-11 attacks were perceived as an attack against the United States (versus an individual or a group), Americans identified and sympathized with the victims of the 9-11 attacks rather than blaming them. A second response to challenges to BJW is to seek revenge—to punish those responsible for the perceived

injustice (and for threatening their BJW). If the perpetrators can be punished, justice can be restored (when bad things do happen to good people, the perpetrators will get what they deserve). A recent study investigated the psychological dynamics involved in BJW after the 9-11 events (Kaiser, Vick, & Major, 2004). Prior to the 9-11 attacks, participants (college students) completed a test of BJW. Several months after 9-11, the subjects were assessed on a number of measures, including terrorismrelated distress and the desire for revenge. The more strongly participants endorsed BJW, the more distressed they were about the attacks and the more they desired revenge against the terrorists. Contrary to popular opinion, terrorists are not deranged; rather, they are usually enraged young males seeking revenge for perceived injustices (Silke, 2003). Therefore, it seems likely that some terrorists would have strong beliefs in a just world. Although we deplore the acts of terrorists, it is possible to understand them as attempts to seek revenge for perceived injustices perpetrated by other countries. When some people feel vulnerable, they engage in aggression (revenge) to feel less vulnerable. Unfortunately, large-scale military strikes against terrorism can actually increase terrorist behavior when they “unwittingly reinforce terrorists’ views of their enemies as aggressive, make it easier for terrorist groups to recruit new members, and strengthen alliances among terrorist organizations” (Plous & Zimbardo, 2004, p. B9). Ironically and tragically, engaging in vengeful aggression to reduce feelings of vulnerability may actually increase vulnerability when it perpetuates intergroup conflict.

Key Themes in Person Perception The process of person perception is a complex one. Nonetheless, we can detect three recurrent themes in this process: efficiency, selectivity, and consistency. Efficiency

In forming impressions of others, people prefer to exert no more cognitive effort or time than is necessary. Thus,

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much social information is processed automatically and effortlessly. According to Susan Fiske (1993), people are like government bureaucrats, who “only bother to gather information on a ‘need to know’ basis” (p. 175). After all, you’re a busy person with many important things to do. It boggles the mind to consider what life would be like if you had to take the time to make careful observations and judgments of everyone you meet. Efficiency has two important advantages: People can

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make judgments quickly, and it keeps things simple. The big disadvantage is that judgments are error-prone. Still, on balance, efficiency works pretty well as an operating principle. Selectivity

The old saying that “people see what they expect to see” has been confirmed repeatedly by social scientists. In a classic study, Harold Kelley (1950) showed how a person is preceded by his or her reputation. Students in a class at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were told that a new lecturer would be speaking to them that day. Before the instructor arrived, the students were given a short description of him, with one important variation. Half the students were led to expect a “warm” person, while the other half were led to expect a “cold” one (see Figure 6.5). All the participants were exposed to exactly the same 20 minutes of lecture and interaction with the new instructor. However, those who were led to expect a warm person rated the instructor as significantly more considerate, sociable, humorous, goodnatured, informal, and humane than those who were led to expect a cold person. Especially if someone’s behavior is ambiguous, people are likely to interpret what they see in a way that fits their expectations (Bodenhausen et al., 2003). Thus, after dealing with an assertive female customer, a salesman who holds traditional gender stereotypes might characterize the woman as “pushy.” By contrast, he might fail to notice the same behavior in a man because he would have automatically interpreted it as appropriate male behavior. Consistency

How many times did your parents remind you to be on your best behavior when you were meeting someone for the first time? As it turns out, they were onto something! Considerable research supports the idea that first impressions are powerful (Asch, 1956; Belmore, 1987). A primacy effect occurs when initial information carries more weight than subsequent information. It is worth noting that initial negative impressions may be especially hard to change (Mellers, Richards, & Birnbaum, 1992). Thus, getting off on the wrong foot may be particularly damaging. First impressions tend to be particularly potent for several reasons. For one thing, it seems that once people believe that they have formed an accurate impression of someone, they tend to tune out later information (Belmore, 1987). But if people are motivated to form an accurate impression and are not tired, they are less likely to lock in their initial impressions (Webster, Richter, & Kruglanski, 1996). Also, confirmation biases may lead people to discount later information that con-

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Mr. Blank is a graduate student in the Department of Economics and Social Science here at M.I.T. He has had three semesters of teaching experience in psychology at another college. This is his first semester teaching Ec. 70. He is 26 years old, a veteran, and married. People who know him consider him to be a rather cold person, industrious, critical, practical, and determined.

Mr. Blank is a graduate student in the Department of Economics and Social Science here at M.I.T. He has had three semesters of teaching experience in psychology at another college. This is his first semester teaching Ec. 70. He is 26 years old, a veteran, and married. People who know him consider him to be a very warm person, industrious, critical, practical, and determined.

FIG U R E 6.5

Descriptions of the guest lecturer in Kelley’s (1950) study. These two descriptions, provided to two groups of students before the lecturer spoke, differ by only an adjective. But this seemingly small difference caused the two groups to form altogether different perceptions of the lecturer.

tradicts their initial impression. Of course, it is possible to override a primacy effect. If you’re actively looking for change in a person or have compelling evidence that contradicts your initial impression, you can alter your opinion. Still, since people usually expect others to stay the same, their initial impressions don’t change too often. Thus far, our discussion of impression formation has been based on face-to-face encounters. What about impressions based on virtual encounters? In the first study to look at this issue, researchers reported that viewers of personal websites were able to form clear and coherent impressions of site authors and that there was general agreement on what the authors were like (Vazire & Gosling, 2004). The study also measured the accuracy of the observer’s impressions by comparing the observers’ trait ratings of the authors to criterion ratings of what the authors were really like. (The criterion ratings included the authors’ scores on a test of five key personality traits as well as personality trait ratings by two friends of the authors.) Interestingly, the accuracy of observers’ web-based impressions was comparable to the accuracy of impressions based on face-to-face encounters in both long-term and zeroacquaintance studies. To conclude, although the process of person perception is highly subjective, people are relatively accurate perceivers of others (Fiske, 1998). Even when misperceptions occur, they are often harmless. However, there clearly are occasions when such inaccuracies are problematic. This is certainly true in the case of prejudice, which we consider next.

The Problem of Prejudice LEARNING OBJECTIVES ■ ■

Explain how “old-fashioned” and modern discrimination differ. Describe some of the key determinants of prejudice, and explain how they work. Describe the operation of several strategies for reducing prejudice.

Discrimination

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 Prejudice were an extreme demonstration of the deAbsent Present structive power of prejudice—hatred of one A restaurant owner who group by another. Unfortunately, antagonism is bigoted against No relevant Hispanics treats them between groups continues to be a problem, Absent behavior fairly because she both on the international scene and at home. needs their business. For example, after the September 11 attacks, hate crimes increased against Americans An executive with A professor who is favorable attitudes toward hostile toward women presumed to be Muslims or Arabs. Why is it grades his female Present blacks doesn’t hire them so hard for members of different groups to because he would get in students unfairly. get along? trouble with his boss. Let’s begin our discussion by clarifying a couple of terms that are often confused. Prejudice is a negative attitude toward members of a group; discrimination involves beFIG U R E 6.6 having differently, usually unfairly, toward Prejudice and discrimination. Prejudice and discrimination are highly correlated, the members of a group. Prejudice and disbut they don’t necessarily go hand in hand. As the examples in the blue cells show, crimination do tend to go together, but that there can be prejudice without discrimination and discrimination without prejudice. is not always the case (see Figure 6.6). For example, a restaurant owner might be prejudiscrimination based on race, ethnicity, gender, and diced against Chicanos and yet treat them like anyone religion is much less common now than it was in the else because he needs their business. This is an exam1950s and 1960s. Thus, the good news is that overt, or ple of prejudice without discrimination. Although it is “old-fashioned,” discrimination against minority groups probably less common, discrimination without prejuhas declined (but not disappeared, as we noted above). dice may also occur. For example, an executive who has The bad news is that a more subtle form of prejudice favorable attitudes toward blacks may not hire them and discrimination has emerged (Dovidio & Gaertner, because his boss would be upset. 1996; Gaertner & Dovidio, 1986). That is, people may privately harbor negative attitudes toward minority “Old-Fashioned” Versus groups (including women) but express them only when Modern Discrimination they feel that such views are justified or that it’s safe to do so. This new phenomenon has been termed James Byrd Jr., a 49-year-old black man, was walking modern discrimination (also called “modern racism”). home from a family gathering in the summer of 1998 Modern discrimination is also operating when people when he was offered a ride by three white men, one of endorse equality as an abstract principle but oppose whom he knew. Shortly thereafter, pieces of Byrd’s savconcrete programs intended to promote equality on agely beaten body were found strewn along a rural road the grounds that discrimination against minority in Texas. Apparently, he had been beaten, then shackgroups no longer exists (Wright & Taylor, 2003). Similed by his ankles to the back of the truck and dragged lar distinctions between blatant and subtle discriminato death over 21⁄2 miles of road. Police say that Byrd tion have been found in European countries as well— was targeted simply because he was black. Thankfully, for example, in British attitudes toward West Indians such tragic events are relatively rare in the United States. and Asians, in French attitudes toward North Africans Nonetheless, they remind us that discrimination still and Asians, and in German attitudes toward Turks (Petexists. tigrew & Meertens, 1995). In Figure 6.7 (on the next Over the past 40 years, prejudice and discriminapage), you can see the kinds of items used to measure tion against minority groups have diminished in the old-fashioned and modern sexism. United States. Racial segregation is no longer legal, and

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Authoritarianism Items Related to Old-Fashioned Sexism 1. Women are generally not as smart as men. 2. It is more important to encourage boys than to encourage girls to participate in athletics. Items Related to Modern Sexism 1. Discrimination against women is no longer a problem in the United States. 2. Over the past few years, the government and news media have been showing more concern about the treatment of women than is warranted by women’s actual experiences. Scoring: Possible responses to the statements range from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.” Individuals who moderately or strongly agree with the above items reflect old-fashioned or modern sexism, respectively.

FIG U R E 6.7

Measuring old-fashioned and modern sexism. Research shows similarities between old-fashioned and modern beliefs about both racism and sexism. Janet Swim and colleagues have developed a scale to measure the presence of both types of sexism. Four items from the 13-item scale are shown here. Old-fashioned sexism is characterized by endorsement of traditional gender roles and acceptance of stereotypes that portray females as less competent than males. In contrast, subtle, modern sexism is characterized by denial of continued discrimination and rejection of policies intended to help women. From Swim, J. K., Aikin, K. J., Hall, W. S., & Hunter, B. A. (1995). Sexism and racism: Oldfashioned and modern prejudices. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 199–214. Copyright © 1995 American Psychological Association. Reprinted by permission of the author.

While modern racists do not wish to return to the days of segregation, they also feel that minority groups should not push too fast for advancement or receive special treatment by the government. Individuals who endorse statements that favor “modern” discrimination (“Blacks are getting too demanding in their push for equal rights”) are much more likely to vote against a black political candidate, to oppose school busing, and to favor tax laws that benefit whites at the expense of blacks, compared to those who do not endorse such views (Murrell et al., 1994). Interestingly, endorsing statements such as “I do not like black people” (“oldfashioned” racism) does not reliably predict an individual’s political actions (because many people who might personally agree with such a statement are reluctant to publicly endorse it).

Causes of Prejudice Prejudice is obviously a complex issue and has multiple causes. Although we can’t thoroughly examine all of the causes of prejudice, we’ll examine some of the major psychological and social factors that contribute to this vexing problem.

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In some of the earliest research on prejudice, Robert Adorno and his colleagues (1950) identified the authoritarian personality, a personality type characterized by prejudice toward any group perceived to be different from oneself. Subsequent research found serious methodological weaknesses in the study, calling into question the validity of the personality type. Over the past 50 years, both the definition and measurement of authoritarianism have evolved (Dion, 2003). The construct is now termed right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) (Altemeyer, 1988a, 1988b), and it is characterized by authoritarian submission (exaggerated deference to those in power), authoritarian aggression (hostility toward targets sanctioned by authorities), and conventionalism (strong adherence to values endorsed by authorities). Because authoritarians tend to support established authority, RWA is more commonly found among political conservatives than among political liberals (who are more likely to challenge the status quo). Studies in Canada and the United States show that RWA correlates with prejudice and discrimination toward various minority groups—African Americans, ethnic minorities, women, homosexuals—(Altemeyer, 1998; Whitley, 1999). Among Russians and citizens of the former Soviet Union, authoritarianism is also correlated with prejudice (McFarland, Ageyev, & AbalakinaPaap, 1992; McFarland, Ageyev, & Djintcharadze, 1996). What causes RWAs to be prejudiced? According to Robert Altemeyer (1998), there are two key factors. First, they organize their social world into ingroups and outgroups, and they view outgroups as threatening their cherished traditional values. Second, they tend to be self-righteous: They believe that they are more moral than others, and they feel justified in derogating groups that authority figures define as less moral than themselves. RWAs have typically been reared in highly religious and socially homogeneous groups, with little exposure to minority groups and unconventional behavior. They feel unduly threatened by social change—a fear picked up from their parents who believe that “the world is a dangerous and hostile place” (Altemeyer, 1988b, p. 38). Altemeyer also notes that fearful attitudes are reinforced by the mass media’s emphasis on crime and violence. Exposure to various kinds of people and perspectives can reduce RWA (Peterson & Lane, 2001). Cognitive Distortions and Expectations

Much of prejudice is rooted in cognitive processes that kick in automatically and operate without conscious intent (Wright & Taylor, 2003). As you recall, social categorization predisposes people to divide the social world into ingroups and outgroups. This distinction can trigger negativity toward outgroup members.

Perhaps no factor plays a larger role in prejudice than stereotyping. Many people subscribe to derogatory stereotypes of various ethnic groups. Although racial stereotypes have declined over the last 50 years, they’re not entirely a thing of the past (Dovidio et al., 2003). Racial profiling, in which officials stop motorists, pedestrians, and airline passengers solely on the basis of skin color, is a case in point. Similarly, the events of September 11, 2001 caused some Americans to view all Muslims and Arabs as terrorists. It seems that people are particularly likely to make the fundamental attribution error when evaluating targets of prejudice (Hewstone, 1990; Levy, Stroessner, & Dweck, 1998). Thus, when people take note of ethnic neighborhoods dominated by crime and poverty, they blame these problems on the residents (they’re lazy and ignorant) and downplay or ignore situationally based explanations (job discrimination, poor police service, and so on). The old saying, “They should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps” is a blanket dismissal of how situational factors may make it especially difficult for minorities to achieve upward mobility. Similarly, in trying to understand why individuals in some countries hold negative views of the United States, many Americans depict such people as “crazy” or “evil” rather than looking at possible situational causes, such as the negative effects of American foreign policy on their countries or the negative portrayal of the United States in their media. Defensive attributions, in which people unfairly blame victims of adversity to reassure themselves that the same thing won’t happen to them, can also contribute to prejudice. For example, individuals who claim that people who contract AIDS deserve it may be trying to reassure themselves that they won’t suffer a similar fate. Expectations can also foster and maintain prejudice. You already know that once people have formed impressions, they are invested in maintaining them. For instance, people note and recall behavior that confirms their stereotypes better than information that is inconsistent with their beliefs (Bodenhausen, 1988). Also, when an outgroup member’s behavior contradicts a stereotype, people often “explain away” such behavior to leave their stereotype intact. A study demonstrating this phenomenon involved male college students who were randomly assigned to pairs (Ickes et al., 1982). In one condition, one member of each pair was casually informed that his partner was extremely friendly; in a second condition, one man in each pair learned that his partner was just the opposite—very unfriendly. All the men were instructed to behave very positively toward each other during the study, which they did. After the interaction, the participants were asked to describe their partners. Those who expected their part-

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ners to be very friendly described them this way. However, those who expected their partners to be very unfriendly described the friendly behavior as fake and merely a temporary response to their own friendly behavior. Thus, they interpreted their partner’s behavior in line with their expectations. Unfortunately, the fact that social thinking is automatic, selective, and consistent means that people usually see what they expect to see when they look through prejudiced eyes. Competition Between Groups

Back in 1954, Muzafer Sherif and his colleagues conducted a now-classic study at Robbers’ Cave State Park in Oklahoma to look at competition and prejudice (Sherif et al., 1961). In this study, 11-year-old white boys were invited, with parental permission, to attend a three-week summer camp. What the boys didn’t know was that they were participants in an experiment. The boys were randomly assigned to one of two groups; at camp, they went directly to their assigned campsites and had no knowledge of the other group’s presence. During the first week, the boys got to know the other members of their own group through typical camp activities (hiking, swimming, and camping out); each group also chose a name (the Rattlers and the Eagles). In the second week, the Rattlers and Eagles were introduced to each other through intergroup competitions. Events included a football game, a treasure hunt, and a tug of war, with medals, trophies, and other desirable prizes for the winning team. Almost immediately after competitive games were introduced, hostile feelings erupted between the two groups and quickly escalated to highly aggressive behavior: Food fights broke out in the mess hall, cabins were ransacked, and group flags were burned. This experimental demonstration of the effects of competition on prejudice is often mirrored in the real world. For example, disputes over territory often provoke antagonism, as is the case in the former Yugoslavia and in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The lack of jobs or other important resources can also create competition between social groups. Still, competition does not always breed prejudice. In fact, the perception of threats to one’s ingroup (loss of status, for example) is much more likely to cause hostility between groups than actual threats to the ingroup are (Brown et al., 2001; Dovidio et al., 2003). Unfortunately, such perceptions are quite common because ingroup members usually assume that outgroup members are competitive and will try to thwart the ingroup’s success (Fiske & Ruscher, 1993). To conclude, there is ample evidence that conflict over actual and perceived scarce resources can prejudice individuals toward outgroup members.

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Threats to Social Identity

Although group membership provides indiPersonal Threat to achievements personal identity viduals with a sense of identity and pride, it can also foster prejudice and discrimination, as we just noted. To explore a different facet Self-esteem Favoritism of this idea, we turn to social identity theory, toward ingroups Threat to developed by Henri Tajfel (1982) and John social identity Turner (1987). According to this theory, selfDerogation esteem is partly determined by one’s social of outgroups identity, or collective self, which is tied to one’s group memberships (nationality, religion, gender, major, occupation, and so forth) FIG U R E 6.8 (Luhtanen & Crocker, 1992). Whereas your personal self-esteem is elevated by individual accomplishments Social identity theory. According to Tajfel (1982) and Turner (you got an A on a history exam), your collective self(1987), individuals have both a personal identity (based on a unique sense of self) and a social identity (based on group memesteem is boosted when an ingroup is successful (your berships). When social identity is threatened, people are motiteam wins the football game, your country wins a war). vated to restore self-esteem by either showing favoritism to Likewise, your self-esteem can be threatened on both ingroup members or derogating members of outgroups. These the personal level (you didn’t get called for that job intactics contribute to prejudice and discrimination. terview) and the collective level (your football team Adapted from Brehm, S. S., & Kassin, S. M. (1993). Social psychology. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Copyright © 1993 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Adapted with permission. loses the championship game, your country is defeated in a war). Threats to both personal and social identity motivarious groups. This means that stereotyped thinking vate individuals to restore self-esteem, but threats to about others becomes a mindless habit—even for insocial identity are more likely to provoke responses that dividuals who have been taught to be tolerant of those foster prejudice and discrimination (Crocker & Luhtawho are different from themselves (Devine, 1989; Fiske, nen, 1990). When collective self-esteem is threatened, 2002). individuals react in two key ways to bolster it. The most Although it’s true that stereotypes kick in autocommon response is to show ingroup favoritism—for matically, unintentionally, and unconsciously, individexample, tapping an ingroup member for a job openuals can override them—with some cognitive effort ing or rating the performance of an ingroup member (Fiske, 2002). Thus, if you meet someone who speaks higher than that of an outgroup member (Branscombe with an accent, your initial, automatic reaction might et al., 1993). The second way to deal with threats to sobe negative. However, if you believe that prejudice is cial identity is to engage in outgroup derogation—in wrong and if you are aware that you are stereotyping, other words, to “trash” outgroups that are perceived as you can intentionally inhibit such thoughts. According threatening. This latter tactic is more often used by into Patricia Devine’s (1989) model of prejudice reducdividuals who identify especially strongly with an intion, this process requires an intentional shift from augroup (Perreault & Bourhis, 1999). Figure 6.8 depicts tomatic processing to controlled processing, or from mindthe various elements of social identity theory. lessness to mindfulness, in Ellen Langer’s terms (see Significantly, it is “ingroup love,” not “outgroup Chapter 5). hate” that underlies most discrimination (Brewer, 1999). Research supports the idea that controlled, mindIn other words, ingroups reward their own members ful thinking can actually reduce stereotyping and prejand withhold rewards from outgroups, rather than deudice. In one study, children who were shown slides of liberately blocking outgroups from desired resources handicapped individuals and who were asked questions (Fiske, 2002). that required them to think carefully about the disabled individuals showed less prejudice and more willingness to play with a handicapped peer than did children Reducing Prejudice who saw the same slides but who were asked to make For decades, psychologists have searched for ways to only mindless responses to the slides (Langer, Bashner, reduce prejudice. Such a complicated problem requires & Chanowitz, 1985). Thus, you can reduce prejudice if solutions on a number of levels. Let’s look at a few inyou are motivated to pay careful attention to what and terventions that have been shown to work. how you think.

Cognitive Strategies

Intergroup Contact

Because stereotypes are part of the social air that people breathe, practically everyone learns stereotypes about

Let’s return to the Robbers’ Cave study. When we left them, the Rattlers and Eagles were engaged in food fights

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and flag burning. Understandably, the experimenters were eager to restore peace. First, they tried speaking with each group, talking up the other group’s good points and minimizing their differences. They also made the Eagles and the Rattlers sit together at meals and “fun” events like movies. Unfortunately, these tactics fell flat. Next, the experimenters designed intergroup activities based on the principle of superordinate goals— goals that require two or more groups to work together to achieve mutual ends. For example, each boy had to contribute in some way (building a fire, preparing the food) on a cookout so that all could eat. After the boys had participated in a variety of such activities, the hostility between the two groups was much reduced. In fact, at the end of the three-week camping period, the Eagles and the Rattlers voted to ride the same bus back home. Researchers have identified four necessary ingredients in the recipe for reducing intergroup hostility (Brewer & Brown, 1998). First, groups must work together for a common goal (merely bringing hostile groups into contact is not an effective way to reduce intergroup antagonism and may in fact worsen it). Second, cooperative efforts must have successful outcomes (if groups fail at a cooperative task, they are likely to blame each other for the failure). Third, group members must have the opportunity to establish mean-

ingful connections with one another and not merely go through the motions of interacting. The fourth factor of equal status contact requires bringing together members of different groups in ways that ensure that everyone has equal status. A large meta-analysis demonstrated clear support for intergroup contact as a means of reducing prejudice (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2000). The “jigsaw classroom” uses these principles to reduce prejudice in schoolchildren (Aronson & Patnoe, 1997). In this intervention, six children are first assigned to an “expert group” in which they help each other learn specialized information prepared by the teacher about a study topic. Thus, each child becomes an “expert” on a subtopic. Then the children are assigned to ethnically mixed groups of six where they teach each other their school lessons. This arrangement puts all children on an equal footing (equal-status contact) and reduces competition for the teacher’s attention and grades (scarce resources). Children taught in a jigsaw classroom learn as much as peers taught in a traditional classroom setting. In addition, “jigsaw” children get an important bonus: Prejudice is replaced with positive feelings for ethnically different children, and the self-esteem of minority kids gets a big boost. To conclude, although prejudice remains a complex and distressing social problem, a number of effective strategies are available to combat it.

The Power of Persuasion LEARNING OBJECTIVES ■ ■ ■

Cite the key elements in the persuasion process. Describe several source factors that influence persuasion. Discuss the evidence on one-sided versus two-sided messages and the value of arousing fear or positive feelings in persuasion.

■ ■

Every day you are bombarded by attempts to alter your attitudes through persuasion. You may not even be out of bed before you start hearing radio advertisements that are meant to persuade you to buy specific toothpastes, cell phones, and athletic shoes. When you watch the morning news, you hear statements from numerous government officials, all of which have been carefully crafted to shape your opinions. On your way to school, you see billboards showing attractive models draped over cars in the hopes that they can induce positive feelings that will transfer to the vehicles. Walking to class, a friend tries to get you to vote for his candidate for student body president. “Does it ever let up?” you wonder. When it comes to persuasion, the answer is “no.” As Anthony Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson (2000) note, CHAPTER 6

Describe several receiver factors that influence persuasion. Explain how the two cognitive routes to persuasion operate.

Americans live in the “age of propaganda.” In light of this reality, let’s examine some of the factors that determine whether persuasion works. Persuasion involves the communication of arguments and information intended to change another person’s attitudes. What are attitudes? For the pur-

WE B LI N K 6.3

Social Influence and Persuasion How are people influenced or affected by others? Shelley Wu has assembled a collection of web resources that seek to answer this question, covering such topics as cults, propaganda, and healthy approaches to influencing other people.

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tive deterrent to crime. The “feeling” component of attitudes refers to the positivity and negativity of one’s feelings about an issue as well as how strongly one feels about it. For example, you may strongly favor equal pay for equal work but only mildly disagree with the idea that capital punishment reduces the crime rate.

RE C O M M E N D ED READING

Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion by Anthony R. Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson (W. H. Freeman, 2000)

The Elements of the Persuasion Process The process of persuasion includes four basic elements (see Figure 6.9). The source is the person who sends a communication, and the receiver is the person to whom the message is sent. Thus, if you watched a presidential address on TV, the president would be the source, and you and millions of other viewers would be the receivers in this persuasive effort. The message is the information transmitted by the source; the channel is the medium through which the message is sent. In examining communication channels, investigators have often compared face-to-face interaction against appeals sent via mass media (such as television and radio). Although the research on communication channels is interesting, we’ll confine our discussion to source, message, and receiver variables.

The two social psychologists who wrote this book did so out of their concern about the harmful consequences of the increased use of propaganda in contemporary American society. Propaganda discourages careful reasoning and scrutiny, and the authors see its use by contemporary political leaders and the advertising industry as particularly problematic in a democracy. According to Pratkanis and Aronson, for a democratic form of government to survive in an age of propaganda, it must have “communicators who know how to present their message clearly and fairly, coupled with an informed electorate that knows the difference between a fair presentation and a con job” (p. xv). The authors have written the book to help Americans understand how their attitudes are being manipulated. Using an engaging writing style, they do an excellent job of applying research evidence to historical events (Nazi Germany, the Vietnam war, Iran-Contra, and the Persian Gulf War) and contemporary situations (political incidents and campaigns, televangelism, and commercials).

Source Factors

Persuasion tends to be more successful when the source has high credibility (Petty, Wegener, & Fabrigar, 1997). Two subfactors make a communicator credible: expertise and trustworthiness. People try to convey their expertise by mentioning their degrees, their training, and their experience, or by showing an impressive grasp of the issue at hand (Wood & Kallgren, 1988). As to trustworthiness, whom would you believe if you were told that your state needs to reduce corporate taxes to stimulate its economy—the president of a huge corporation in your state or an economics professor from out of state? Probably the latter. Trustworthiness is undermined when a source, such as the corporation presi-

Cover reprinted by permission.

poses of our discussion, we’ll define attitudes as beliefs and feelings about people, objects, and ideas. Let’s look more closely at two of the terms in this definition. We use the term beliefs to mean thoughts and judgments about people, objects, and ideas. For example, you may believe that equal pay for equal work is a fair policy or that capital punishment is not an effec-

FIG U R E 6.9

Overview of the persuasion process. The process of persuasion essentially boils down to who (the source) communicates what (the message) by what means (the channel) to whom (the receiver). Thus, four sets of variables influence the process of persuasion: source, message, channel, and receiver factors. The diagram lists some of the more important factors in each category (including some that are not discussed in the text due to space limitations). 186

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Who

What

By what means

To whom

Source factors

Message factors

Channel factors

Receiver factors

Credibility Expertise Trustworthiness Likability Attractiveness Similarity

Fear appeal versus logic

In person

Personality

On television

Expectations (e.g., forewarning)

The Interpersonal Realm

One-sided versus two-sided argument Repetition

Via audiotape Via Internet

Preexisting attitudes

Message Factors

Imagine that you are going to advocate the selection of a high-profile entertainer as the speaker at your commencement ceremony. In preparing your argument, you ponder the most effective way to structure your message. On the one hand, you’re convinced that having a well-known entertainer on campus would be popular with students and would boost the image of your university in the community and among alumni. Still, you realize that this performer would cost a lot and that some people believe that an entertainer is not an appropriate commencement speaker. Should you present a one-sided argument that ignores the possible problems? Or should you present a two-sided argument that acknowledges concern about the problems and then downplays them? In general, two-sided arguments seem to be more effective (Crowley & Hoyer, 1994). In fact, just menCHAPTER 6

AFP/AFP/Getty Images

© 2004 AP/ Wide World Photos

dent, appears to have something to gain. In contrast, trustworthiness is enhanced when people appear to argue against their own interests (Petty et al., 2001). This effect explains why salespeople often make remarks like “Frankly, my snowblower isn’t the best and they have a better brand down the street if you’re willing to spend a bit more . . .” Likability is a second major source factor and includes a host of subfactors (Petty et al., 1997). A key consideration is a person’s physical attractiveness (Petty et al., 1997). For example, one researcher found that attractive students were more successful than less attractive students in obtaining signatures for a petition (Chaiken, 1979). People also respond better to sources who are similar to them in ways that are relevant to the issue at hand (Mackie, Worth, & Asuncion, 1990). Thus, politicians stress the values they and their constituents hold in common. Source variables are used to great effect in advertising. Many companies spend a fortune to obtain a spokesperson such as George Foreman, who combines trustworthiness, likability, and a knack for connecting with the average person. Companies quickly abandon spokespersons whose likability declines. For example, McDonald’s and Sprite cancelled advertising contracts with basketball star Kobe Bryant after he was accused of rape. Thus, source variables are extremely important factors in persuasion.

Advertisers frequently employ well-liked celebrities like James Earl Jones and Catherine Zeta-Jones to pitch their products, hoping that the positive feelings of the audience toward the source will transfer to the product.

tioning that there are two sides to an issue can increase your credibility with an audience (Jones & Brehm, 1970). One-sided messages work only when your audience is uneducated about the issue or when they already favor your point of view. Persuaders also use emotional appeals to shift attitudes. Insurance companies show scenes of homes on fire to arouse fear. Antismoking campaigns emphasize the threat of cancer. Deodorant ads prey on the fear of embarrassment. Does fear arousal work? Yes, studies involving a wide range of issues (nuclear policy, auto safety, and dental hygiene among others) have shown that the arousal of fear often increases persuasion (Perloff, 1993). However, there are limiting conditions (Rogers & Prentice-Dunn, 1997). Fear appeals are most likely to work when your listeners view the dire consequences that you describe as exceedingly unpleasant, as fairly probable if they don’t take your advice, and as avoidable if they do (Das, deWit, & Stroebe, 2003). If you induce strong fear in your audience without providing a workable solution to the problem (such as a surefire stop-smoking or weight-loss program), you may make your audience defensive, causing them to tune you out (Petty & Wegener, 1998). Generating positive feelings is also an effective way to persuade people. Familiar examples of such tactics include the use of music and physically attractive actors in TV commercials, the use of laugh tracks in TV programs, and the practice of wining and dining prospective customers. Shortly after the terrorist attacks on America, you probably noticed that patriotic themes and images in ads increased dramatically. Producing positive feelings to win people over can be effective— Social Thinking and Social Influence

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What about the receiver of the persuasive message? Are some people easier to persuade than others? Yes, but the answer is complicated. Transient factors, such as forewarning the receiver about a persuasive effort and a receiver’s initial position on an issue, seem to be more influential than a receiver’s personality. When you shop for a new TV, you expect salespeople to work at persuading you. To some extent, this forewarning reduces the impact of their arguments (Petty & Wegener, 1998). When receivers are forewarned about a persuasion attempt on a personally important topic, it is harder to persuade them than when they are not forewarned (Wood & Quinn, 2003). But when they are told to expect a persuasive message on an unimportant topic, their attitudes shift in the direction of the persuasive appeal even before it occurs—to avoid appearing gullible! Thus, the old saying, “To be forewarned is to be forearmed” is often, but not always, true. Understandably, receivers are harder to persuade when they encounter a position that is incompatible with their existing beliefs. In general, people display a disconfirmation bias in evaluating such arguments (Edwards & Smith, 1996). Also, people from different cultures respond to different themes in persuasive messages. In one study, participants from an individualistic culture (the United States) preferred magazine ads that stressed the theme of uniqueness, while those from a collectivist culture (Korea) preferred ads that stressed conformity (Kim & Markus, 1999).

The Whys of Persuasion In the previous section, we looked at a number of effective persuasion techniques. Clearly, you can’t incorporate all of these factors into a single persuasive ap-

FIG U R E 6.10

The peripheral and central routes to attitude change. Persuasion can occur via two different routes. The central route, which results in high elaboration, tends to produce longer-lasting attitude change.

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Central route

Persuasion based on content and logic of the message

High elaboration: Careful processing of the information

Persuasion is more durable, more difficult to change, more predictive of behavior

Peripheral route

Persuasion based on nonmessage factors such as attractiveness, credibility, emotion

Low elaboration: Minimal processing of the information

Persuasion is more temporary, easier to change, less predictive of behavior

The Interpersonal Realm

Courtesy, Richard E. Petty

Receiver Factors

peal. Which ones should you use? To answer that important question, you need to understand why people change their attitudes. Thanks to the work of Richard Petty and John Cacioppo (1986), psychologists have a good understanding of the cognitive processes that underlie attitude change. Richard Petty According to the elaboration likelihood model, an individual’s thoughts about a persuasive message (rather than the actual message itself) will determine whether attitude change will occur (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). As we have noted, at some times people make quick, sloppy decisions (automatic processing, mindlessness, snap judgments), whereas at other times they John Cacioppo process information carefully (controlled processing, mindfulness, systematic judgments). These processes also operate in persuasion. When people are distracted, tired, or uninterested in a persuasive message, they fail to key in on the true merits of the product or issue. They process information, but not mindfully. Being in a happy mood produces the same effect (Sinclair, Mark, & Clore, 1994). Surprisingly, even when people do not carefully evaluate a message, attitude change can occur (Petty & Cacioppo, 1990). What happens is that the receiver is persuaded by cues that are peripheral to the message—hence the term the peripheral route (see Figure 6.10). Just because you’re not mindfully analyzing a TV commercial for a new fruit drink doesn’t mean that you’re totally tuned out. You may not be paying attention to the substance of the commercial, but you are aware of superficial aspects of the ad—you like the music, your favorite basketball player is pitching the product, and so forth. Although persuasion usually occurs via the peripheral route, senders can also use another route to attitude change—the central route (see Figure 6.10). In this

Courtesy, John T. Cacioppo

provided they don’t care too much about the issue. If people do care about the topic, it takes more than good feelings to move them. For example, one study showed that the use of music in TV commercials was effective in persuading viewers, but only when the message concerned a trivial topic (Park & Young, 1986).

© Scott Olsen/Getty Images

letting biases influence their judgments, they overcorrected to the extent that a dislikable source was more persuasive than a likable one (Petty, Wegener, & White, 1998). Ultimately, the two routes to persuasion are not equally effective. Attitudes formed via the central route are longer lasting and more resistant to challenge than those formed via the peripheral route (Petty & Wegener, 1998). They are also better predictors of a person’s behavior (Petty, Priester, & Wegener, 1994). To conclude, although we can’t stem the tide of persuasive messages bombarding you every day, we hope we’ve alerted you to the need to be a vigilant recipient of persuasion attempts. Of course, persuasion is not the only method through which people try to influence you, as you’ll see in the next section.

Political candidates use music, flags, and slogans to persuade via the peripheral route; when they present their views on an issue, they are going for the central route.

case, receivers process persuasive messages mindfully, by thinking about the logic and merits of the pertinent (or central) arguments. In other words, the receiver cognitively elaborates on the persuasive message— hence, the name of the model. If people have a favorable reaction to their thoughtful evaluation of a message, positive attitude change occurs; an unfavorable reaction results in negative attitude change. For the central route to override the peripheral route, there are two requirements. First, receivers must be motivated to process the persuasive message carefully. Motivation is triggered when people are interested in the issue, find it personally relevant, and have time and energy to think about it carefully. For example, if your university is considering changing its grading system, you will probably make a point of thinking carefully about the various options and their implications. Second, receivers must have the ability to grasp the message—that is, the message must be comprehensible, and individuals must be capable of understanding it. If people are distracted, tired, or find the message uninteresting or irrelevant, they will not pay careful attention to it, and superficial cues will become salient. If people mindfully process persuasive messages, does doing so ensure that their decisions are objective or unbiased? It seems not. Biased processing can result from both motivational factors (having a vested interest) and ability factors (one-sided knowledge of an issue) (Wood, 2000). And alerting people to possible biases in their thinking doesn’t necessarily help. For example, when participants were cautioned to avoid CHAPTER 6

R EC O M M EN D ED R EA D IN G

Influence: Science and Practice by Robert B. Cialdini (Allyn and Bacon, 2001) Cialdini, a social psychologist, has conducted extensive empirical research on influence tactics such as the door-in-the-face technique and lowballing (see the Application). As you might expect, Cialdini’s book is based on his studies and his review of other scientific research on the topic. However, what makes his book unique is that he went far beyond laboratory research in his effort to better understand the ins and outs of social influence. For three years, he immersed himself in the real world of influence artists, becoming a “spy of sorts.” As he puts it, “When I wanted to learn about the compliance tactics of encyclopedia (or vacuum cleaner, or portrait photography, or dance lessons) sales organizations, I would answer a newspaper ad for sales trainees and have them teach me their methods. Using similar but not identical approaches, I was able to penetrate advertising, public relations, and fundraising agencies to examine their techniques” (from the preface). The result is an insightful book that bolsters scientific data with anecdotal accounts of how influence artists ply their trade. Familiarity with their strategies can help you avoid being an easy mark, or “patsy.” Published by Allyn and Bacon, Boston, MA. Copyright © 2001 by Pearson Education. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

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The Power of Social Pressure LEARNING OBJECTIVES ■ ■

Summarize what Asch discovered about conformity. Discuss the difference between normative and informational influence. Describe some conformity pressures in everyday life and how people can resist them.

In the previous section, we showed you how others attempt to change your attitudes. Now you’ll see how others attempt to change your behavior—by trying to get you to agree to their requests and demands.

Conformity and Compliance Pressures If you extol the talent of popular singer Beyoncé Knowles or keep a well-manicured lawn, are you exhibiting conformity? According to social psychologists, it depends on whether your behavior is freely chosen or the result of group pressure. Conformity occurs when people yield to real or imagined social pressure. For example, if you like Beyoncé because you truly enjoy her music, that’s not conformity. However, if you like her because it’s “cool” and your friends would question your taste if you didn’t, then you’re conforming. Similarly, if you maintain a well-groomed lawn just to avoid complaints from your neighbors, you’re yielding to social pressure. The Dynamics of Conformity

To introduce this topic, we’ll re-create a classic experiment devised by Solomon Asch (1955). The participants are male undergraduates recruited for a study of visual perception. A group of seven participants are shown a large card with a vertical line on it and asked to indicate which of three lines on a second card matches the original “standard line” in length (see Figure 6.11). All seven participants are given a turn at the task, and each announces his choice to the group. The subject in the sixth chair doesn’t know it, but everyone else in the group is an accomplice of the experimenter. The accomplices give accurate responses on the first two trials. On the third trial, line 2 clearly is the correct response, but the first five participants all say that line 3 matches the standard line. The genuine subject can’t believe his ears. Over the course of the experiment, the accomplices all give the same incorrect response on 12 out of 18 trials. Asch wanted to see how the subject would respond in these situations. The line judgments are easy and unambiguous. Without group pressure, people make matching errors less than 1 per-

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Describe some situational and personality factors involved in obedience to authority. Cite an important factor in resisting inappropriate demands of authority figures. Describe how culture can affect people’s responses to social influence.

cent of the time. So, if the subject consistently agrees with the accomplices, he isn’t making honest mistakes— he is conforming. Will the subject stick to his guns, or will he go along with the group? Averaging across 123 participants, Asch (1955) found that the men conformed (made mistakes) on 37 percent of the 12 trials. However, the participants varied considerably in their tendency to conform: 25 percent never caved in to the group, while 75 percent conformed on at least one trial. Although a meta-analysis of 133 Asch-type studies reported that conformity has declined over the past 50 years, it also concluded that majority influence remains a powerful force (Bond & Smith, 1996). In subsequent studies, Asch (1956) determined that group size and group unanimity are key determinants of conformity. To examine group size, Asch repeated his procedure with groups that included 1 to 15 accomplices. Little conformity was seen when a subject was pitted against just one accomplice. Conformity increased rapidly as group size went from 2 to 4, peaked at a group size of 7, and then leveled off (see Figure 6.12). Thus, Asch concluded that as group size increases, conformity increases—up to a point. Subsequent research has confirmed this finding (Nemeth & Chiles, 1988). Significantly, Asch found that group size made little difference if just one accomplice “broke” with the others, wrecking their unanimous agreement. The presence of another dissenter lowered conformity to about one-quarter of its peak, even when the dis-

F I G U R E 6. 11

Stimuli used in Asch’s conformity studies. Subjects were asked to match a standard line (top) with one of three other lines displayed on another card (bottom). The task was easy—until experimental accomplices started responding with obviously incorrect answers, creating a situation in which Asch evaluated subjects’ conformity. Adapted from illustration on p. 35 by Sarah Love in Asch, S. (1995, November). Opinions and social pressure. Scientific American, 193(5), 31–35. Copyright © 1955 by Scientific American, Inc.

1 2 3

Trials on which subjects conform (%)

40

30

20

10

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Size of incorrect majority

F I G U R E 6.12

Conformity and group size. This graph shows the percentage of trials on which subjects conformed as a function of the number of individuals with an opposing view. Asch found that conformity became more frequent as group size increased, up to about 7 persons, and then leveled off. Adapted from illustration on p. 32 by Sarah Love in Asch, S. (1995, November). Opinions and social pressure. Scientific American,193(5), 31–35. Copyright © 1955 by Scientific American, Inc.

senter made inaccurate judgments that happened to conflict with the majority view. Apparently, the participants just needed to hear a second person question the accuracy of the group’s perplexing responses. Conformity Versus Compliance

Did the conforming participants in Asch’s study really change their beliefs in response to social pressure, or did they just pretend to change them? Subsequent studies asked participants to make their responses privately, instead of publicly (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955; Insko et al., 1985). Conformity declined dramatically when participants wrote down their responses. Thus, it is likely that Asch’s participants did not really change their beliefs. Based on this evidence, theorists concluded that Asch’s experiments evoked a particular type of conformity, called compliance. Compliance occurs when people yield to social pressure in their public behavior, even though their private beliefs have not changed. The Whys of Conformity

People often conform or comply because they are afraid of being criticized or rejected. Normative influence operates when people conform to social norms for fear of negative social consequences. For example, around the time of the Supreme Court decision in 1954 that outlawed segregated schools, many ministers in Little Rock, Arkansas favored integration. However, they kept their opinions to themselves because they

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feared that they would lose church members and contributions if they went against the views of the majority (Campbell & Pettigrew, 1959). Compliance often results from subtle, implied pressure. For example, for fear of making a negative impression, you may remove your eyebrow ring for a job interview. However, compliance also occurs in response to explicit rules, requests, and commands. Thus, you’ll probably follow your boss’s directions even when you think they’re lousy ideas. People are also likely to conform when they are uncertain how to behave (Cialdini, 2001; Sherif, 1936). Thus, if you’re at a nice restaurant and don’t know which fork to use, you may watch others to see what they’re doing. Informational influence operates when people look to others for how to behave in ambiguous situations. In situations like this, using others as a source of information about appropriate behavior is a good thing. But relying on others to know how to behave in unfamiliar situations can sometimes be problematic, as you’ll see shortly. It may have occurred to you that it is not always easy to distinguish normative from informational influence. Such concerns have prompted researchers to find alternative explanations for conformity (Martin & Hewstone, 2003). One viewpoint reconceptualizes normative and informational influence into three motives that underlie conformity (Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004): positive self-evaluations and having good relationships with others (normative-based motives) and better understanding a situation to reduce uncertainty (information-based motive). Another perspective looks at the role of group identification on conformity. For example, young adults who strongly identified with peer groups that endorsed smoking were more likely to smoke than were those who had a weak group identification (Schofield et al. 2001). Resisting Conformity Pressures

Sometimes conforming is just harmless fun—such as participating in Internet-generated “flash mobs.” At other times, people conform on relatively trivial matters—such as dressing up for a nice restaurant. In this case, conformity and compliance minimize the confusion and anxiety people experience in unfamiliar situations. However, when individuals feel pressured to conform to antisocial norms, tragic consequences may result. Negative examples of “going along with the crowd” include drinking more than one knows one should because others say, “C’mon, have just one more” and driving at someone’s urging when under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Other instances include refusing to socialize with someone simply because the person isn’t liked by one’s social group and failing to come to another’s defense when it might make one unpopular.

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know in advance that you’re heading into this kind of situation, consider inviting a friend with similar views to go along.

“Flash mobs” are an example of harmless conformity to social pressure. Participants follow instructions on the Internet to appear at a designated time and place to engage in specified, nonsensical behavior.

The above examples all concern normative influence, but pressure can come from informational influence as well. A useful example concerns a paradox called the bystander effect—the tendency for individuals to be less likely to provide help when others are present than when they are alone. Numerous studies have confirmed that people are less helpful in emergency situations when others are around (Latané and Nida, 1981; Levine et al., 1994). This effect even shows up on the Internet, when members of different-sized chat groups receive requests for assistance (Markey, 2000). Thankfully, the bystander effect is less likely to occur when the need for help is very clear. What accounts for the bystander effect? A number of factors are at work, and conformity is one of them. The bystander effect is most likely to occur in ambiguous situations, because people look around to see whether others are acting as if there’s an emergency (Harrison & Wells, 1991). If everyone hesitates, this inaction (informational influence) suggests that help isn’t needed. So the next time you witness what you think might be an emergency, don’t automatically give in to the informational influence of inaction. To resist conformity pressures, we offer these suggestions: First, make an effort to pay more attention to the social forces operating on you. Second, if you find yourself in a situation where others are pressuring you, try to identify someone in the group whose views match yours. Recall that just one dissenter in Asch’s groups significantly reduced conformity pressures. And, if you

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Obedience is a form of compliance that occurs when people follow direct commands, usually from someone in a position of authority. In itself, obedience isn’t good or bad; it depends on what one is being told to do. For example, if the fire alarm goes off in your classroom building and your instructor “orders” you to leave, obedience is a good idea. On the other hand, if your boss asks you to engage in an unethical or illegal act, disobedience is probably in order. The Dynamics of Obedience

Like many other people after World War II, social psychologist Stanley Milgram was troubled by how readily the citizens of Germany had followed the orders of dictator Adolf Hitler, even when the orders required morally repugnant actions, such as the slaughter of millions of Jews, as well as Russians, Poles, Stanley Milgram Gypsies, and homosexuals. This was Milgram’s motivation to study the dynamics of obedience. Milgram’s (1963) participants were a diverse collection of 40 men from the local community who volunteered for a study on the effects of punishment on learning. When they arrived at the lab, they drew slips of paper from a hat to get their assignments. The drawing was rigged so that the subject always became the “teacher” and an experimental accomplice (a likable 47-year-old accountant) became the “learner.” The teacher watched while the learner was strapped into a chair and as electrodes were attached to his arms (to be used to deliver shocks whenever he made a mistake on the task). The subject was then taken to an adjoining room that housed the shock generator that he would control in his role as the teacher. Although the apparatus looked and sounded realistic, it was a fake, and the learner was never shocked. The experimenter played the role of the authority figure who told the teacher what to do and who answered any questions that arose. The experiment was designed such that the learner would make many mistakes, and the teacher was instructed to increase the shock level after each wrong answer. At 300 volts, the learner began to pound on the wall between the two rooms in protest and soon stopped responding to the teacher’s questions. From this point

© 1981 Eric Kroll, courtesy of Alexandra Milgram

© Scott Barbour/Getty Images

Pressure from Authority Figures

forward, participants frequently turned to the experimenter for guidance. Whenever they did so, the experimenter (authority figure) firmly stated that the teacher should continue to give stronger and stronger shocks to the now-silent learner. Milgram wanted to know the maximum shock the teacher was willing to administer before refusing to cooperate. As Figure 6.13 shows, 65 percent of the subjects administered all 30 levels of shock. Although they tended to obey the experimenter, many participants voiced and displayed considerable distress about harming the learner. They protested, groaned, bit their lips, trembled, and broke into a sweat—but they continued administering the shocks. Based on these findings, Milgram concluded that obedience to authority was even more common than he or others had anticipated. The Causes of Obedience

After his initial demonstration, Milgram (1974) tried about 20 variations on his experimental procedure, looking for factors that influenced participants’ obedience. For instance, he studied female participants to look at gender differences in obedience (he found no evidence of such differences). In another condition, two confederates played the role of teachers who defied the experimenter’s demands to continue, one at 150 volts and one at 210 volts. In this condition, only 10 percent of the subjects shocked at the maximum level.

What caused the obedient behavior observed by Milgram? First, the demands on the participants (to shock the learner) escalated gradually so that very strong shocks were demanded only after the participant was well into the experiment. Second, participants were told that the authority figure, not the teacher, was responsible if anything happened to the learner. Third, subjects evaluated their actions in terms of how well they lived up to the authority figure’s expectations, not by their harmful effects on the victim. Taken together, these findings suggest that human behavior is determined not so much by the kind of person one is as by the kind of situation one is in. Applying this insight to Nazi war crimes and other atrocities, Milgram made a chilling assertion: Inhuman and evil visions may originate in the disturbed mind of an authority figure like Hitler, but it is only through the obedient actions of normal people that such ideas can be turned into frightening reality. Research has also identified personality variables that correlate with greater obedience. Authoritarianism is one of those (Elms & Milgram, 1966). Recall from our earlier discussion of this concept that, in addition to being prejudiced, those who score high on authoritarianism tend to be overly submissive to people in authority. On the other hand, individuals who have a strong sense of social responsibility and those who believe that they are in control of their destiny are less obedient than those with a weaker sense of social respon-

• Number of subjects who stopped giving shocks

28 26 24 22 20 18 16 14 65% of subjects

12 10 8

FIG U R E 6.13

Milgram’s (1963) experiment on obedience. The photos show the fake shock generator and the “learner” being connected to the shock generator during an experimental session. The results of the study are summarized in the bar graph. The vast majority of subjects (65%) delivered the entire series of shocks to the learner. Photos copyright 1965 by Stanley Milgram. From the film Obedience, distributed by The Pennsylvania State University. Reprinted by permission of Alexandra Milgram.

6 4 2 0 15

45

Slight shock

75

105 135 165 195 225 255 285 315 345 375 405 435 450 Volts Danger: Extreme Moderate Strong Very strong Intense XXX shock intensity shock severe shock shock shock shock Level of shock (as labeled on Milgram’s shock machine)

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sibility and those who believe that fate controls their destiny (Berkowitz, 1999; Blass, 1999). Thus, a few personality factors do play a role in obedient behavior. Still, the pervasive tendencies toward obedience demonstrate that situational factors have greater impact. Milgram’s study has been consistently replicated for many years, in diverse settings, with a variety of participants and procedural variations (Blass, 1999). Overall, the weight of evidence supports Milgram’s results. Of course, critics have questioned the ethics of Milgram’s procedure (Baumrind, 1964). Today, at most universities it would be difficult to obtain permission to replicate Milgram’s study—an ironic epitaph for what may be psychology’s best-known experiment. To Obey or Not to Obey?

The findings of obedience research confront us with the chilling fact that most people can be coerced into engaging in actions that violate their morals and values. Recall the 1968 My Lai incident, an American “crime of obedience,” in which U.S. military forces killed 400–500 Vietnamese women, children, and elderly men (Kelman & Hamilton, 1989). The Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq is a more recent reminder that strong social pressures can produce morally repugnant behavior. Nonetheless, some individuals are able to resist pressure from authority figures. A dramatic example is Karen Silkwood, who probably died because she tried to report unsafe practices at the nuclear power plant where she worked. Thankfully, disobedience to authority is usually less dramatic and less dangerous, but “ethical resisters” also risk the loss of credibility, friends, and jobs for the sake of important principles (Glazer & Glazer, 1990). Examples of “whistleblowers” include Erin Brockovich, who helped expose hazardous-waste dangers, and Sherron Watkins, who warned Ken Lay, her boss at Enron Corporation, about accounting irregularities there. In keeping with Milgram’s finding that participants in the condition with two disobedient confederates found it easier to defy authority, it seems that social support plays a critical role in disobedient behavior. The findings of a study on college students’ decisions to ride with an intoxicated driver are relevant here (Powell & Drucker, 1997). Participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: (1) driver with one beer, (2) intoxicated driver, (3) intoxicated driver and confederate who enters the car, and (4) intoxicated driver and confederate who refuses to enter the car. Participants consistently chose to enter the car in all conditions except when the confederate refused. Especially when disobedience involves risk, aligning oneself with

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WE B LI N K 6.4

The Stanford Prison Experiment: A Simulation Study of the Psychology of Imprisonment The Stanford Prison experiment, conducted by Philip Zimbardo in 1971, is one of psychology’s most famous studies. At this site, Zimbardo provides an in-depth set of online slides, supplemental materials, discussion questions, and links to other sites detailing all aspects of the original study and important reflections after more than 30 years.

supportive others (family, friends, labor unions, for example) can decrease anxiety and increase safety. In dealing with pressure from authority figures, remember that social influence is a two-way street: You are not merely a helpless victim. Being mindful of how obedience pressures operate and of some strategies that make it easier to resist these pressures should make you a stronger player in these situations.

Culture and Social Influence As we have discussed, Western cultures tend to have an individualistic orientation and other cultures, a collectivist orientation. This observed difference in orientations appears to influence people’s attitudes about the desirability or undesirability of conformity, compliance, and obedience. For example, among East Asians, conformity is associated with the valued characteristics of harmony and connectedness; among Americans, uniqueness is associated with the positive values of freedom and interdependence (Kim & Markus, 1999). Thus, East Asians view conformity and obedience more positively than either Americans or citizens of some other Western countries (Matsumoto, 1994). Is conformity behavior more common in collectivist than in individualistic cultures? Yes, as you might expect. A meta-analysis compared conformity rates in 17 countries and reported that conformity rates were higher in collectivist cultures than in individualistic cultures (Bond & Smith, 1996). Studies have found that both Japanese and Koreans are more conforming than Americans (Buck, Newton, & Muramatsu, 1984; Kim & Markus, 1999). Thus, beliefs about the desirability of yielding to social influence as well as conforming behavior are consistent with cultural orientations. In the Application, we’ll alert you to some social influence strategies that people use to get you and others to agree to their requests.

Seeing Through Compliance Tactics LEARNING OBJECTIVES ■

■ ■

Describe two compliance strategies based on the principles of commitment and consistency. Describe several compliance strategies based on the principle of reciprocity. Discuss how the principle of scarcity can increase a person’s desire for something.

Which of the following statements is true? ___ 1. It’s a good idea to ask for a small favor before soliciting the larger favor that you really want. ___ 2. It’s a good idea to ask for a large favor before soliciting the smaller favor that you really want.

The Foot-in-the-Door Technique

Courtesy, Robert Cialdini

Would you believe that both of the statements are true? Although the two approaches work for different reasons, both can be effective ways to get people to do what you want. It pays to understand these and other social influence strategies because advertisers, salespeople, and fundraisers (not to mention Robert Cialdini friends and neighbors) use them frequently to influence people’s behavior. So you can see the relevance of these strategies to your own life, we’ve grouped them by the principles that make them work. Much of our discussion is based on the work of Robert Cialdini (2001), a social psychologist who spent several years observing social influence tactics used by salespeople, fundraisers, advertisers, and other compliance professionals. His book, Influence: Science and Practice, is an excellent and entertaining discussion of social influence principles in action.

volve a person getting another individual to commit to an initial request and then changing the terms of the agreement to the requestor’s advantage. Because people often stay with their initial commitments, the target will likely agree to the revised proposal, even though it may not be to his or her benefit.

The Consistency Principle Once people agree to something, they tend to stick with their initial commitment (Cialdini, 2001). This principle is used to gain compliance in two ways. Both in-

WE B LI N K 6.5

Influence at Work This website, by researchers Robert Cialdini and Kelton Rhodes, offers an intriguing set of pages that explore a wide variety of social influence phenomena: persuasion, propaganda, brainwashing, and the tactics of various types of cults.

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Door-to-door salespeople have long recognized the importance of gaining a little cooperation from sales targets (getting a “foot in the door”) before hitting them with the real sales pitch. The foot-in-the-door (FITD) technique involves getting people to agree to a small request to increase the chances that they will agree to a larger request later (see Figure 6.14a on the next page). This technique is widely used. For example, groups seeking donations often ask people to simply sign a petition first. Salespeople routinely ask individuals to try a product with “no obligations” before they launch their hard sell. In a similar vein, a wife might ask her husband to get her a cup of coffee, and when he gets up to fetch it say, “While you’re up, would you fix me a peanut butter sandwich?” The FITD technique was first investigated by Jonathon Freedman and his colleagues. In one study (Freedman & Fraser, 1966), the large request involved telephoning homemakers to ask whether a team of six men doing consumer research could come into their home to classify all their household products. Imagine six strangers tramping through your home, pulling everything out of your closets and cupboards, and you can understand why only 22 percent of the subjects in the control group agreed to this outlandish request. Subjects in the experimental group were contacted three days before the unreasonable request was made and were asked to answer a few questions about the soaps used in their home. When the large request was made three days later, 53 percent of the experimental group complied with that request. Of course, no strategy works all the time. A review of research reported that the FITD tactic increases compliance rates, on the average, about 13 percent (Burger, 1999). The technique may be ineffective if the second Social Thinking and Social Influence

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Goal: Obtain $50 contribution for youth group a. Foot-in-the-Door Technique ”Would you Small donate request some old first clothes for one of our charity programs?”

If yes, then . . .

Larger request (the one desired in the first place)

”Would you donate $50 to our program?”

b. Door-in-the-Face Technique

Large request first

”Would you volunteer to run a weekly program for our youth group?”

If no, then . . .

Smaller request (the one desired in the first place)

”Would you donate $50 to our program?”

FIG U R E 6.14

The foot-in-the-door and door-in-the-face techniques. These two influence techniques are essentially the reverse of each other, but both can work. (a) In the foot-in-the-door technique, you begin with a small request and work up to a larger one. (b) In the door-in-the-face technique, you begin with a large request and work down to a smaller one.

request follows too quickly on the heels of the first one (Chartrand, Pinckert, & Burger, 1999), if the initial request is too trivial to register, or if the second request is so large it is unreasonable (Burger, 1999). Why does this strategy work? The best explanation is rooted in Daryl Bem’s self-perception theory or the idea that people sometimes infer their attitudes by observing their own behavior (Burger & Caldwell, 2003; Burger & Guadagno, 2003). When Joe agrees to sign a petition, he infers that he is a helpful person. So when he is confronted with a second, larger request to collect petition signatures, “helpful person” comes to mind, and Joe complies with the request. The Lowball Technique

A second commitment-based strategy is the lowball technique, which involves getting someone to commit to an attractive proposition before its hidden costs are revealed. The name for this technique derives from a common practice in automobile sales, in which a customer is offered a terrific bargain on a car. The bargain price gets the customer to commit to buying, but soon after, the dealer starts revealing some hidden costs. Typically, the customer discovers that options apparently included in the original price are actually going to cost extra. Once they have committed to buying a car, most customers are unlikely to cancel the deal. Car dealers aren’t the only ones who use this 196

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technique. For instance, a friend might ask if you want to spend a week with him at his charming backwoods cabin. After you accept this seemingly generous offer, he may add, “Of course, there’s a little work to do. We need to paint the doors, repair the pier, and . . .” You might think that people would become angry and back out of a deal once its hidden costs are revealed. Sometimes this does happen, but once people make a public commitment, lowballing is a surprisingly effective strategy (Burger & Cornelius, 2003).

The Reciprocity Principle Most people have been socialized to believe in the reciprocity principle—the rule that one should pay back in kind what one receives from others. Charities frequently make use of this principle. Groups seeking donations for the disabled, the homeless, and so forth routinely send “free” address labels, key rings, and other small gifts with their pleas for donations. The belief that we should reciprocate others’ kindness is a powerful norm; thus, people often feel obliged to reciprocate by making a donation in return for the gift. According to Cialdini (2001), the reciprocity norm is so powerful that it often works even when (1) the gift is uninvited, (2) the gift comes from someone you dislike, or (3) the gift results in an uneven exchange. Let’s review some reciprocity-based influence tactics.

CALVIN AND HOBBES © Watterson. Reprinted with permission of UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE. All rights reserved.

The door-in-the-face technique reverses the sequence of requests employed with the foot-in-the-door technique. The door-in-the-face (DITF) technique involves making a large request that is likely to be turned down in order to increase the chances that people will agree to a smaller request later (see Figure 6.14b). The name for this strategy is derived from the expectation that an initial request will be quickly rejected. For example, a wife who wants to coax her frugal husband into agreeing to buy a $25,000 sports car might begin by proposing that they purchase a $35,000 sports car. By the time he has talked his wife out of the pricier car, the $25,000 price tag may look quite reasonable to him. For the DITF to work, there must be no delay between the two requests (O’Keefe & Hale, 2001). Other Reciprocity-Based Techniques

Salespeople who distribute free samples to prospective customers are also using the reciprocity principle. Cialdini (2001) describes the procedures used by the Amway Corporation, which sells such household products as detergent, floor wax, and insect spray. Amway’s doorto-door salespeople give homemakers many bottles of their products for a “free trial.” When they return a few days later, most of the homemakers feel obligated to buy some of the products. The reciprocity norm is meant to promote fair exchanges in social interactions. However, when people manipulate the reciprocity rule, they usually give something of minimal value in the hopes of getting far more in return. For example, a person selling large computer systems may treat a potential customer at an exclusive restaurant in an effort to close a deal worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

First, people have learned that items that are hard to get are of better quality than items that are easy to get. From there, they often assume, erroneously, that anything that is scarce must be good. Second, when people’s choices (of products, services, romantic partners, job candidates) are constrained in some way, they often want what they can’t have even more (Brehm & Brehm, 1981; Williams et al., 1993). The psychological term for this is reactance (Brehm, 1966). Companies and advertisers frequently use the scarcity principle to drive up the demand for their products. Thus, you constantly see ads that scream “limited supply available,” “for a limited time only,” “while they last,” and “time is running out.” In summary, people use a variety of methods to coax compliance from one another. Despite the fact that many of these influence techniques are more or less dishonest, they’re still widely used. There is no way to completely avoid being hoodwinked by influence strategies. However, being alert to them can reduce the likelihood that you’ll be a victim of influence artists. As we noted in our discussion of persuasion,“to be forewarned is to be forearmed.”

© Tony Freeman/PhotoEdit

The Door-in-the-Face Technique

The Scarcity Principle It’s no secret that telling people they can’t have something only makes them want it more. According to Cialdini (2001), this principle derives from two sources. CHAPTER 6

Advertisers often try to artificially create scarcity to make their products seem more desirable. Social Thinking and Social Influence

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KEY IDEAS Forming Impressions of Others

CHAPTER 6 REVIEW

In forming impressions of other people, individuals rely on appearance, verbal behavior, actions, nonverbal messages, and situational cues. Individuals usually make snap judgments about others unless accurate impressions are important. To explain the causes of other people’s behavior, individuals make attributions (either internal or external). ■ People often try to confirm their expectations about what others are like, which can result in biased impressions. Selffulfilling prophecies can actually change a target person’s behavior in the direction of a perceiver’s expectations. Cognitive distortions are caused by categorizing, stereotyping, the fundamental attribution error, and defensive attributions. The process of person perception is characterized by the themes of efficiency, selectivity, and consistency.

In Milgram’s landmark study of obedience to authority, subjects showed a remarkable tendency to follow orders to shock an innocent stranger. Personality factors can influence obedient behavior, but situational pressures are more powerful determinants. Although people often obey authority figures, sometimes they are disobedient, usually because they have social support. ■ The value cultures place on conformity influences the extent to which individuals are likely to conform. Conformity tends to be greater in collectivistic cultures. Application: Seeing Through Compliance Tactics ■

Although they work for different reasons, all compliance tactics have the same goal: getting people to agree to requests. The foot-in-the-door and the lowball technique are based on the principle of consistency, while the door-in-the-face technique and the tactic of offering “give-away” items rely on the principle of reciprocity. When advertisers suggest that products are in short supply, they are using the scarcity principle. Understanding these strategies can make you less vulnerable to manipulation.

The Problem of Prejudice ■

Prejudice is a particularly unfortunate outcome of the tendency to view others inaccurately. Blatant (“old-fashioned”) discrimination occurs relatively infrequently today, but subtle expressions of prejudice and discrimination (“modern discrimination”) have become more common. Common causes of prejudice include right-wing authoritarianism, cognitive distortions, competition between groups, and threats to social identity. Strategies for reducing prejudice are rooted in social thinking and intergroup contact.

The Power of Persuasion ■

The success of persuasive efforts depends on several factors. A source of persuasion who is expert, trustworthy, likable, physically attractive, and similar to the receiver tends to be relatively effective. Although there are some limitations, two-sided arguments, arousal of fear, and generation of positive feelings are effective elements in persuasive messages. Persuasion is undermined when receivers are forewarned or have beliefs that are incompatible with the position being advocated. ■ Persuasion takes place via two processes. The central route to persuasion requires a receiver to be motivated to process persuasive messages carefully (elaboration). A favorable reaction to such an evaluation will result in positive attitude change. When a receiver is unmotivated or unable to process persuasive messages carefully, persuasion may take place via the peripheral route (on the basis of simple cues such as a catchy tune). The Power of Social Pressure ■

Asch found that subjects often conform to the group, even when the group reports inaccurate judgments. Asch’s experiments may have produced public compliance while subjects’ private beliefs remained unchanged. Both normative and informational influence can produce conformity. Being mindful of social pressures and getting support from others with similar views are ways to resist conformity pressures.

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KEY TERMS Attitudes p. 186 Attributions p. 173 Bystander effect p. 192 Channel p. 186 Compliance p. 191 Confirmation bias p. 174 Conformity p. 190 Defensive attribution p. 178 Discrimination p. 181 Door-in-the-face technique p. 197 Elaboration likelihood model p. 188 Foot-in-the-door technique p. 195 Fundamental attribution error p. 177

Informational influence p. 191 Lowball technique p. 196 Message p. 186 Normative influence p. 191 Obedience p. 192 Person perception p. 172 Persuasion p. 185 Prejudice p. 181 Primacy effect p. 180 Receiver p. 186 Reciprocity principle p. 196 Self-fulfilling prophecy p. 175 Source p. 186 Stereotypes p. 176 Superordinate goals p. 185

KEY PEOPLE Solomon Asch pp. 190–191 Robert Cialdini pp. 189, 195–197 Susan Fiske pp. 172–173

Stanley Milgram pp. 192–194 Richard Petty and John Cacioppo pp. 188–189 Muzafer Sherif p. 183

8. When people change their outward behavior but not their private beliefs, __________ is operating. a. conformity b. persuasion c. obedience d. compliance

PRACTICE TEST

1. Mindfulness operates when people: a. make snap judgments. b. are on “cognitive automatic pilot.” c. make systematic judgments. d. are not concerned about forming accurate impressions. 2. Which of the following is not a type of cognitive distortion in perception? a. Categorizing b. “Old-fashioned” discrimination c. Stereotypes d. Defensive attribution 3. Which of the following is not a theme in person perception? a. Efficiency b. Selectivity c. Consistency d. Mindfulness

PRACTICE TEST

9. Conformity is a. more common in collectivist countries. b. more common in individualistic countries. c. not affected by culture. d. viewed very positively in all cultures. 10. When charities send prospective donors free address labels and the like, which of the following social influence principles are they using? a. The consistency principle b. The scarcity principle c. The reciprocity principle d. The foot-in-the-door principle

Book Companion Website

c b d a c

Page 188 Page 189 Page 191 Page 194 Page 196

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ANSWERS

6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

7. Compared to attitudes formed via the peripheral route, those formed via the central route a. operate subliminally. b. are hard to change. c. last only a short time. d. are poor predictors of behavior.

The following exercises in your Personal Explorations Workbook may enhance your self-understanding in relation to issues raised in this chapter. Questionnaire 6.1: Argumentativeness Scale. Personal Probe 6.1: Can You Identify Your Prejudicial Stereotypes? Personal Probe 6.2: How Do You Operate in a Group?

Page 173 Page 176 Pages 179–180 Pages 181–182 Page 182

6. Receivers who are forewarned that someone will try to persuade them will most likely a. be very open to persuasion. b. get up and stomp out of the room. c. not be very open to persuasion. d. heckle the persuader.

Personal Explorations Workbook

Social Thinking and Social Influence

c b d a b

5. Which of the following is a cause of prejudice? a. Mindfulness b. Right-wing authoritarianism c. Jigsaw classrooms d. Activities based on superordinate goals

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

4. “Old-fashioned” discrimination is __________; modern discrimination is ___________. a. blatant; subtle b. legal; illegal c. common; rare d. race-based; gender-based

Visit the Book Companion Website at http://psychology. wadsworth.com/weiten_lloyd8e, where you will find tutorial quizzes, flashcards, and weblinks for every chapter, a final exam, and more! You can also link to the Thomson Wadsworth Psychology Resource Center (accessible directly at http://psychology.wadsworth.com) for a range of psychology-related resources.

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THE PROCESS OF INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION Components of the Communication Process Technology and Interpersonal Communication Communication and Adjustment

TOWARD MORE EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION Creating a Positive Interpersonal Climate Conversational Skills Self-Disclosure Effective Listening

INTERPERSONAL CONFLICT Beliefs About Conflict Types of Conflict Styles of Managing Conflict Dealing Constructively with Conflict Public Communication in an Adversarial Culture

NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION General Principles Elements of Nonverbal Communication Detecting Deception The Significance of Nonverbal Communication

COMMUNICATION PROBLEMS Communication Apprehension Barriers to Effective Communication

APPLICATION: DEVELOPING AN ASSERTIVE COMMUNICATION STYLE The Nature of Assertiveness Steps in Assertiveness Training CHAPTER 7 REVIEW PRACTICE TEST

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“Why don’t you wear your new tie?” Robin suggests to Brian, as they are dressing to go out. “There you go again, telling me what to wear!” Brian retorts. To which Robin zings back with, “Oh, wear whatever you want. I don’t care if you want to look like you’re colorblind!” Could this couple have sidestepped the bad feelings and fight that are brewing? You bet! The keys to managing such encounters are recognizing the pitfalls of interpersonal communication and honing one’s skills to deal effectively with them—two things you’ll learn about in this chapter. Communication skills are highly relevant to adjustment because they can be critical to happiness and success in life. In this chapter, we begin with an overview of the communication process and then turn to the important topic of nonverbal communication. Next, we discuss ways to communicate more effectively and examine common communication problems. Finally, we look at interpersonal conflict, including constructive ways to deal with it. In the Application, we consider ways to develop an assertive communication style.

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The Process of Interpersonal Communication LEARNING OBJECTIVES ■ ■

List and explain the six components of the communication process. List several important differences between face-to-face and computermediated communication. Discuss how interpersonal communication is important to adjustment.

Communication can be defined as the process of sending and receiving messages that have meaning. Your personal thoughts have meaning, of course, but when you “talk to yourself,” you are engaging in intrapersonal communication. In this chapter, we will focus on interpersonal communication—the transmission of meaning between two or more people. For the most part, we’ll concentrate on two-person interactions. We define interpersonal communication as an interactional process in which one person sends a message to another. Note several points about this definition. First, for communication to qualify as interpersonal, at least two people must be involved. Second, interpersonal communication is a process. By this, we simply mean that it usually involves a series of actions: Kelli talks/Jason listens, Jason responds/Kelli listens, and so on. Third, this process is interactional. Communication is generally not a one-way street: Both participants send as well as receive information when they’re interacting. A key implication of this fact is that you need to pay attention to both speaking and listening if you want to be an effective communicator.

sion of messages: Speakers encode or transform their ideas and feelings into symbols and organize them into a message; receivers decode or translate a speaker’s message into their own ideas and feelings (see Figure 7.1). Generally, fluent speakers of a language are unaware of these processes. If you’ve ever learned a new language, however, you have consciously experienced encoding (groping for the right word to express an idea) and decoding (trying to discover a word’s meaning by how it is used). The primary means of sending messages is language, but people also communicate to others nonverbally. Nonverbal communication includes the facial expressions, gestures, and vocal inflections used to supplement (and sometimes entirely change) the meaning of verbal messages. For example, when you say, “Thanks a lot,” your nonverbal communication can convey either sincere gratitude or heavy sarcasm. The channel refers to the sensory channel through which the message reaches the receiver. Typically, people receive information from multiple channels simultaneously. They not only hear what the other person

Components of the Communication Process Let’s take a look at the essential components of the interpersonal communication process. The key elements are (1) the sender, (2) the receiver, (3) the message, (4) the channel through which the message is sent, (5) noise or interference, and (6) the context in which the message is communicated. As we describe these components, refer to Figure 7.1 to see how they work together. The sender is the person who initiates the message. In a typical two-way conversation, both people serve as senders (as well as receivers). Keep in mind that each person brings a unique set of expectations and understandings to each communication situation. The receiver is the person to whom the message is targeted. The message refers to the information or meaning that is transmitted from the sender to the receiver. The message is the content of the communication—that is, the ideas and feelings conveyed to another person. Two important cognitive processes underlie the transmis-

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Noise

Noise

Encoding

Decoding Channel Message Noise

Sender

Receiver Context

F I G U R E 7. 1

A model of interpersonal communication. Interpersonal communication involves six elements: the sender, the receiver, the message, the channel through which the message is transmitted, distorting noise, and the context in which the message is sent. In conversations, both participants function as sender and receiver.

RE C O M M E N D E D READING

Multicultural Manners: New Rules of Etiquette for a Changing Society by Norine Dresser (John Wiley & Sons, 1996) This interesting book seeks to help Americans interact more comfortably and effectively as the nation becomes increasingly ethnically diverse. Written with humor, the book covers a wealth of practical issues that arise in a variety of settings: business, social, educational, and medical. The majority of the book addresses issues and situations that can result in miscommunication: body language, childrearing practices, classroom behavior, gifts, male/female relations, verbal expressions, and so on. Each chapter includes real-life incidents of miscommunication, explanations of what happened in the situation, and verbal and behavioral guidelines for avoiding such problems. In two smaller sections of the book, Dresser explores the diversity in rules for holidays and worship (to help people feel comfortable when they visit unfamiliar places of worship) as well as multicultural health practices (some of which are benign, others of which are dangerous). Examples involve African Americans, Native Americans, Caribbean Islanders, Asians, Latinos, and recently arriving groups of immigrants. The author also provides information about the practices of a number of diverse religious groups. Cover image used by permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

says, they also see the person’s facial expressions, observe his or her gestures, experience eye contact, and sometimes feel the person’s touch. Note that the messages in the various channels may be consistent or inconsistent with each other, making their interpretation more or less difficult. Sometimes sound is the only channel available for receiving information—when you talk on the telephone, for instance. Through sound, people hear both the literal content of messages and vocal inflections. In computer-mediated communication (e-mail, chat rooms, and so on), only the visual channel is called into play, as individuals communicate in writing. Whenever two people interact, miscommunication can occur. Any stimulus that interferes with accurately expressing or understanding a message is termed noise. Sources of noise include environmental factors (street traffic, loud music) and physical factors (poor hearing, poor vision). Noise can also have semantic origins (Verderber & Verderber, 2005). For instance, profanity, ethnic slurs, or sexist language can cause a lis-

tener to disregard the larger message. In addition, psychological factors such as defensiveness and anxiety can contribute to noise, a topic we’ll consider later in the chapter. All social communication occurs in and is influenced by a context, the environment in which communication takes place. Context includes the physical environment (location, time of day, and noise level). Another aspect of the physical environment is how a conversation takes place: face to face, in a telephone call, or via the Internet. Other important aspects of context include the nature of the participants’ relationship (work associates, friends, family), their history (previous interactions), their current mood (happy, stressed), and their cultural backgrounds (Verderber & Verderber, 2005). Culture is especially important in the United States because of the varieties of subcultures, many with different rules of communication. The Recommended Reading Multicultural Manners is an excellent guide to the cultural variety in communication practices in our diverse nation. Cultural context is also important in the global marketplace, as the marketers of Coca-Cola in China discovered too late (Petras & Petras, 1993). It seems that the symbols they used for the brand name translated to something like “Bite the wax tadpole” in Chinese!

Technology and Interpersonal Communication The recent explosion in electronic and wireless communication technology has dramatically altered our notions of interpersonal communication. Today, communication via cellular telephones and the Internet must be considered along with face-to-face interactions. Cell phones have both advantages and disadvantages (Verderber & Verderber, 2004). On the positive side, they are a convenient way to keep in touch with others, provide a sense of security, and can summon aid in an emergency. On the down side, they tie people to their jobs, can disrupt classrooms and public events, and bring private conversations into public places. Who hasn’t been exasperated by being forced to listen to a loud-mouth yelling his or her personal business into a cell phone in a public place? New rules of etiquette have been devised to guide cell phone use in public. Three basic guidelines are (1) turn off your phone (or put it on “vibrate” mode) when the ringing will disturb others, (2) keep your calls short, and (3) make and receive calls unobtrusively or out of earshot from others (Farnsworth, 2002). In the area of computer-mediated communication, e-mail is by far the most popular application, but newsgroups and chat rooms are also popular (Verderber & Verderber, 2004). As we have noted, face-to-face com-

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clarifying details, and describe your feelings, if necessary. It’s also a good idea to review what you have written before you send it! The lack of nonverbal cues and the anonymous nature of computer-mediated communication also have important implications for relationship development (Bargh & McKenna, 2004), an issue we will take up in Chapter 8.

© Martin Parr/Magnum Photos

Communication and Adjustment Before we plunge further into the topic of interpersonal communication, let’s take a moment to emphasize its significance. Communication with others—friends, lovers, parents, spouses, children, employers, workers—is such an essential and commonplace aspect of everyday Cell phone etiquette in public places calls for turning off your phone or putting it on life that it’s hard to overstate its role vibrate mode, keeping your voice low and your calls short. in adjustment. Many of life’s gratifications (and frustrations and heartmunication relies on the spoken word while Internet aches, as well) hinge on one’s ability to communicate communication depends on the written word. You can effectively with others. Numerous studies have shown see other important differences in Figure 7.2. The abthat good communication can enhance satisfaction in sence of nonverbal cues in computer-mediated commurelationships (Meeks, Hendrick, & Hendrick, 1998) and nication means that you need to take special care that that poor communication ranks high as a cause of the other person understands your intended meaning. breakups among both straight and gay couples (KurThus, you should choose your words carefully, provide dek, 1994, 1998).

Dimension

Face-to-Face

Internet

Physical distance

People need to be in the same place at the same time to meet.

People can meet and develop a relationship with someone thousands of miles away.

Anonymity

One can’t be anonymous in real-life interactions.

People take greater risks in disclosing personal information than they otherwise do. Thus, feelings of intimacy can develop more quickly.

Richness of communication

People have access to nonverbal cues such as facial expressions and tone of voice to detect nuances in meaning or deception.

In cyberspace, these cues are absent.

Visual cues

Physical appearance and visual cues play a big role in attraction in face-to-face relationships.

These cues are generally absent on the Internet (although people can exchange photographs online).

Time

Two people have to connect at the same time.

There is no need for an immediate response, so time becomes relatively unimportant. On the Internet, you can take as long as you like to craft a response so you can more completely explain yourself.

F I G U R E 7.2

Differences between face-to-face and Internet communication. Computer-mediated communication applications (e-mail, chat rooms, news groups, and so forth) have dramatically changed the ways people interact and develop relationships. Internet communication differs from face-to-face communication in five important ways. (Adapted from Bargh & McKenna, 2004; Verderber & Verderber, 2004)

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LIVING IN TODAY‘S WORLD

Communication in Uncertain Times we discuss in the chapter. The computer is another important communication vehicle that connects people through e-mail, chat rooms, and newsgroups (Verderber & Verderber, 2004). Mass communication has also assumed a higher profile in these unsettling times. People want to have fast access to the news in case of terrorist attacks or other disasters. Thus, in addition to their regular news programming, many radio stations and television channels provide hourly news updates and special bulletins. Some TV channels provide news on a 24-hour basis, and scrawls run continuously across the bottom of the screen to give viewers instant access to unfolding national and world events. The Internet is another source of news. An obvious advantage of computer–mediated news is that coverage of breaking events is much more timely than is possible with print newspapers. Thus, both interpersonal and mass communication play a major role in helping people cope with the unfortunate and stressful reality of life in today’s United States.

The possibility of additional terrorist attacks in the United States continues to haunt many Americans. In such uncertain times, people have a strong need to be able to communicate with their family and friends. And for those who are employed on the front lines in emergencies, being in close communication with work sites is essential. Luckily, recent advances in communications technology support individuals’ needs to make fast contact with each other (Verderber & Verderber, 2004). Take cell phones, for example. Through both text-messaging and telephone mode, they provide a popular and convenient way for people to keep in touch. On college campuses, students with cell phones at their ears are a familiar sight. Cell phones also provide a sense of security for parents, children, and others who may want to contact each other or summon aid in an emergency. Recall that it was the cell phone calls between airline passengers and their loved ones that sparked the “Let’s roll” rebellion on the hijacked plane that crashed in Pennsylvania on September 11. Of course, portable phones have their down sides, too, as

Nonverbal Communication LEARNING OBJECTIVES ■ ■ ■

List five general principles of nonverbal communication. Define proxemics and discuss personal space. Discuss display rules and what can be discerned from facial cues. Summarize the characteristics associated with effective eye contact. Describe the roles of body movement, posture, and gestures in communication.

You’re standing at the bar in your favorite hangout, gazing across a dimly lit room filled with people drinking, dancing, and talking. You signal to the bartender that you’d like another drink. Your companion comments on the loudness of the music, and you nod your head in agreement. You spot an attractive stranger across the bar; your eyes meet for a moment and you smile. In a matter of seconds, you have sent three messages with-

Summarize the research findings on touching and paralanguage. Discuss the difficulty of detecting deception and the nonverbal cues linked to deception. Explain what polygraphs do, and cite some problems with their use. Describe the significance of nonverbal messages in interpersonal interactions.

out uttering a syllable. To put it another way, you have just sent three nonverbal messages. Nonverbal communication is the transmission of meaning from one person to another through means or symbols other than words. Communication at the nonverbal level takes place through a variety of behaviors: interpersonal distance, facial expression, eye contact, body posture and movement, gestures, physical touch, and tone of voice.

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The power of nonverbal communication was dramatically illustrated during the first Presidential Debate of the 2004 election. President Bush’s poor performance during the debate was attributed, in part, to facial expressions that conveyed a variety of negative emotions.

Clearly, a great deal of information is exchanged through nonverbal channels—probably more than most people realize. You can significantly enhance your communication skills by learning more about this important aspect of communication.

General Principles Let’s begin by examining some general principles of nonverbal communication. 1. Nonverbal communication is multichanneled. Nonverbal communication typically involves simultaneous messages sent through a number of channels. For instance, information may be transmitted through gestures, facial expressions, eye contact, and vocal tone at the same time. In contrast, verbal communication is limited to a single channel: speech. If you have ever tried to follow two people speaking at once, you understand how difficult it is to process multiple inputs of information. This means that many nonverbal transmissions can sail by the receiver unnoticed. 2. Nonverbal communication is ambiguous. A shrug or a raised eyebrow can mean different things to different people. Moreover, it can be difficult to know whether nonverbal messages are being sent intentionally. Although some popular books on body language imply otherwise, few nonverbal signals carry universally accepted meanings, even within the same culture. Thus, nonverbal cues are informative, but they are most reliable when accompanied by verbal messages and embedded in a familiar cultural and social context (Samovar & Porter, 2004). 3. Nonverbal communication conveys emotions. People often communicate their feelings without say206

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ing a word—for example, “a look that kills.” Nonverbal demonstrations of positive feelings include sitting or standing close to those you care for, touching them often, and looking at them frequently. Still, nonverbal signals, on their own, are not the precise indicators of emotional states that they were once believed to be (Samovar & Porter, 2004), so you should be cautious in making inferences. 4. Nonverbal communication may contradict verbal messages. How often have you seen people proclaim “I’m not angry” even though their bodies shout that they are positively furious? When confronted with such an inconsistency, which message should you believe? Because of their greater spontaneity, you’re probably better off heeding the nonverbal signs. Research shows that when someone is instructed to tell a lie, deception is most readily detected through nonverbal signals (DePaulo, LeMay, & Epstein, 1991). 5. Nonverbal communication is culture-bound. Like language, nonverbal signals are different in different cultures (Samovar & Porter, 2004). Sometimes cultural differences can be quite dramatic. For example, in Tibet people greet their friends by sticking out their tongues (Ekman, 1975).

Elements of Nonverbal Communication Nonverbal signals can provide a great deal of information in interpersonal interactions. As we discuss specific nonverbal behaviors, we will focus on what they communicate about interpersonal attraction and social status. Personal Space

Proxemics is the study of people’s use of interpersonal space. Personal space is a zone of space surrounding a person that is felt to “belong” to that person. Personal space is like an invisible bubble you carry around with you in your social interactions. The size of this mobile zone is related to your cultural background, social status, personality, age, and gender. The amount of interpersonal distance people prefer depends on the nature of the relationship and the

WE B LI N K 7.1

Nonverbal Communication Research Page Social psychologist Marvin A. Hecht, this site’s editor, makes clear that the Internet is not an adequate realm for the preparation of a research paper on the topic of nonverbal communication. But the links provided here can serve to introduce students and others to major issues, researchers, current news, and examples drawn from this fascinating field.

situation (Darley & Gilbert, 1985; J. A. Hall, 1990). The appropriate distance between people is also regulated by social norms and varies by culture (J. A. Hall, 1990). For instance, people of Northern European heritage tend to engage in less physical contact and keep a greater distance between themselves than people of Latin or Middle Eastern heritage. The United States is usually characterized as a medium-contact culture, but there is a lot of variability among ethnic groups. Anthropologist Edward T. Hall (1966) has described four interpersonal distance zones that are appropriate for middle-class encounters in American culture (see Figure 7.3). The general rule is that the more you like someone, the more comfortable you feel being physically close to that person. Of course, there are obvious exceptions, such as in crowded subways and elevators, but these situations are often experienced as stressful. Women seem to have smaller personal-space zones than men do (Remland, Jones, & Brinkman, 1995). When talking, women sit or stand closer together than men do. Like other aspects of nonverbal communication, personal distance can convey information about status. People of similar status tend to stand closer together than people whose status is unequal (J. A. Hall, 1990). Moreover, it is the prerogative of the more powerful person in an interaction to set the “proper” distance (Henley, 1977).

ZONE AND DISTANCE Zone 2: Zone 1: Personal Intimate distance zone distance zone (0–18")

(18"–4')

Invasions of personal space usually produce discomfort and stimulate attempts to restore your privacy zone. To illustrate, if someone stands too close, you may back up. Or, if a stranger sits down at “your” table in the library and forces you to share it, you may reorient your body away from the intruder, place a barrier (for example, a stack of books) between you and the invader, or move to a different table. Invasions of personal space rarely go unnoticed, and they usually elicit a variety of reactions. Facial Expression

More than anything else, facial expressions convey emotions. Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen have identified six distinctive facial expressions that correspond with six basic emotions: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise (Ekman, 1994; Ekman & Friesen, 1984). Early research involving participants from many countries supported the idea that these six emotions are universally recognized (Ekman, 1972). In such studies, researchers show photographs depicting different emotions to subjects from a variety of Western and nonWestern cultures and ask them to match the photographs with an emotion. Some representative results from this research are depicted in Figure 7.4 on the next page. A recent meta-analysis of 97 studies (over 42 countries) looked at whether these six emotions are universally recognized or are culturally specific (Elfenbein &

Zone 4: Public distance zone

Zone 3: Social distance zone (4'–12')

(12'+)

APPROPRIATE PEOPLE AND SITUATIONS Close friends Co-workers, social Parents gatherings, friends, and children, work situations lovers, husband and wife

Actors, total strangers, important officials

F I G U R E 7.3

Interpersonal distance zones. According to Edward Hall (1966), people like to keep a certain amount of distance between themselves and others. The distance that makes one feel comfortable depends on whom one is interacting with and the nature of the situation. CHAPTER 7

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F I G U R E 7.4

Facial expressions and emotions. Ekman and Friesen (1984) found that people in highly disparate cultures showed fair agreement on the emotions portrayed in these photos. This consensus across cultures suggests that the facial expressions associated with certain emotions may have a biological basis. Photos from Unmasking the Face, © 1975 by Paul Ekman, photographs courtesy of Paul Ekman

Fear

Country United States Brazil Chile Argentina Japan New Guinea

Emotion Displayed Disgust Happiness

Anger

Agreement in judging photos (%) 85 67 68 54 66 54

92 97 92 92 90 44

97 95 95 98 100 82

67 90 94 90 90 50

Ambady, 2002). Interestingly, there was evidence for 2000). Also, as you might expect, high self-monitors both perspectives. In support of the universal view, inare better than low self-monitors at managing their fadividuals do accurately recognize emotions in photocial expressions (Gangestad & Snyder, 2000). graphs of people from other cultures. Favoring cultural Eye Contact specificity, there was evidence of an “ingroup advanEye contact (also called mutual gaze) is another major tage.” Thus, observers are better at recognizing the emochannel of nonverbal communication. The duration of tions in photographs from their own cultural groups eye contact is its most meaningful aspect. Because there than from cultural outgroups. A few basic facial exis considerable research on “eye communication,” we pressions are universally recognizable, but other emowill summarize the most relevant findings. tional expressions vary from culture to culture—as we Among European Americans, people who engage noted in the earlier example of Tibetans sticking out in high levels of eye contact are usually judged to have their tongues to greet their friends. effective social skills and credibility. Similarly, speakers, Each society has rules that govern whether and interviewers, and experimenters receive higher ratings when it is appropriate to express one’s feelings. These of competence when they maintain high rather than norms that govern the appropriate display of emotions are termed display rules. In the United States, for instance, it is considered bad form to gloat over one’s victories or to show envy or anger in defeat. This regulation of facial expression is an aspect of impression management that we discussed in Chapter 5. Is it possible to deliberately deceive others through facial expression? Absolutely. In fact, people are better at sending deceptive messages with their faces than with other areas of their bodies (Ekman & O’Sullivan, 1991). You are no doubt familiar with the term “poker face,” an allusion to poker players who are experts at controlling their excitement about a good hand of cards (or their dismay about a bad one). Besides cultural differences, there are gender differences in facial expression (Hall, Carter, & Horgan, 2000). For example, men typically show less facial expression than women do, a finding linked to social pressures Display rules require unsuccessful contestants in beauty pageants to suppress for males to inhibit such displays (Kilmartin, the display of resentful, envious, or angry feelings. 208

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© Tony Freeman/PhotoEdit

© Walter Hodges /Corbis

The eyes can be used to convey either very positive or very negative feelings.

low eye contact with their audience. As a rule, people engage in more eye contact when they’re listening than when they’re talking (Bavelas, Coates, & Johnson, 2002). Gaze also communicates the intensity (but not the positivity or negativity) of feelings. For example, couples who say they are in love spend more time gazing at each other than other couples do (Patterson, 1988). Also, maintaining moderate (versus constant or no) eye contact with others typically generates positive feelings in them. These positive feelings may also translate into higher tips! One study found that food servers who squatted down next to their customers to take drink orders got higher tips than servers who stood next to their customers (Lynn & Mynier, 1993). Supposedly, the increased eye contact and closeness produced more positive feelings. In a negative interpersonal context, a steady gaze becomes a stare that causes most people to feel uncomfortable (Kleinke, 1986). Moreover, like threat displays among nonhuman primates such as baboons and rhesus monkeys, a stare can convey aggressive intent (Henley, 1986). Thus, if you want to avoid road rage incidents, avoid making eye contact with hostile motorists (“Road rage plagues drivers,” 1997). People also communicate by reducing eye contact with others. Unpleasant interactions, embarrassing situations, or invasions of personal space usually trigger this behavior (Kleinke, 1986). Culture strongly affects patterns of eye contact (Samovar & Porter, 2004). For example, Americans should be sensitive to the fact that direct eye contact is perceived as an insult in some Native American tribes and in Mexico, Latin America, Japan, and Africa. By contrast, people from Arab countries look directly into the eyes of their conversational partners for longer periods than Americans are used to. In the United States, gender and racial differences have been found in eye contact. For instance, women tend to gaze at others more than men do (Cegala & Sillars, 1989). However, the patterning of eye contact also

reflects status, and gender and status are often confounded. Higher-status individuals look at the other person more when speaking than when listening, while lower-status people behave just the opposite. Women usually show the lower-status visual pattern because they are typically accorded lower status than men. As you can see in Figure 7.5, when women are in high-power positions, they show the high-status visual pattern to the same extent that men do (Dovidio et al., 1988). African Americans use more continuous eye contact than European Americans when speaking, but less when listening (Samovar & Porter, 2004). Misunderstandings can arise if eye-gaze behaviors that are intended to convey interest and respect are interpreted as being disrespectful or dishonest.

Man in high power position

Men Women

Control group

Men Women

Woman in high power position

Men Women 0 Low

.20

.40

.60

.80

Visual dominance behavior

1.00 High

F I G U R E 7.5

Visual dominance, status, and gender. Women typically show low visual dominance (see control condition) because they are usually accorded lower status than men (Dovidio et al. 1988). However, when researchers placed women in a high-power position and measured their visual behavior, women showed the high visual dominance pattern and men showed the low visual dominance pattern. When men were placed in the high-power position, the visual dominance patterns reversed. Thus, visual dominance seems to be more a function of status than of gender. CHAPTER 7

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Body movements—those of the head, trunk, hands, legs, and feet—also provide nonverbal avenues of communication. Kinesics is the study of communication through body movements. Through a person’s body movements, observers may be able to tell an individual’s level of tension or relaxation. For instance, frequent touching or scratching suggests nervousness (Harrigan et al., 1991). Posture also conveys information. Leaning back with arms or legs arranged in an asymmetrical or “open” position conveys a feeling of relaxation. Posture can also indicate someone’s attitude toward you (McKay, Davis, & Fanning, 1995). When people lean toward you, it typically indicates interest and a positive attitude. When people angle their bodies away from you or cross their arms, their People in higher-status positions tend to adopt an “open” body posture, and posture may indicate a negative attitude or those in lower-status roles usually adopt a “closed” position. defensiveness. Posture can also convey status differences. Generstatus and power. In the United States, people typically ally, a higher-status person will look more relaxed. By “touch downward”—i.e., higher-status individuals are contrast, a lower-status person will tend to exhibit a freer to touch subordinates than vice versa (Henley & more rigid body posture, often sitting up straight with Freeman, 1995). How people interpret the possible mesfeet together, flat on the floor, and arms close to the sages communicated by touch depends on the age and body (a “closed” position) (J. A. Hall, 1984; Vrugt & gender of the individuals involved, the setting in which Luyerink, 2000). Again, status and gender differences the touching takes place, and the relationship between are frequently parallel. That is, men are more likely to the toucher and recipient, among other things (Major, exhibit the high-status “open” posture and women the Schmidlin, & Williams, 1990). Also, there are strong lower-status “closed” posture (J. A. Hall, 1990). norms about where people are allowed to touch friends. People use hand gestures to describe and emphasize These norms are quite different for same-gender as opthe words they speak. You might point to give directions posed to cross-gender interactions, as can be seen in or slam your fist onto a desk to emphasize an assertion. Figure 7.6. As travelers frequently discover, the meaning of gesOther findings about touching behavior come from tures is not universal (Samovar & Porter, 2004). For an observational study of 4,500 pairs of Bostonians ininstance, a circle made with the thumb and forefinger teracting in a variety of public places (shopping malls, means that everything is “OK” to an American but is hotel lobbies, subway stations) (Hall & Veccia, 1990, considered an obscene gesture in some countries. 1991). For one thing, female-female pairs touched each other significantly more than male-male pairs. Second, Touch in younger pairs, men touched women more, but in Touch takes many forms and can express a variety of older pairs, the pattern was reversed. Comparable age meanings: support, consolation, and sexual intimacy changes were not found for same-gender pairs. (Anderson, 1999). Touch can also convey messages of Women typically perceive touch to be an expressive behavior signifying affection or support, whereas men often view touch as an instrumental behavior used to assert power or to show sexual interest. These gender differences in the meaning of touch can contribute to WE B LI N K 7.2 misunderstandings: In the workplace, touching is more UCSC Perceptual Science Laboratory likely to be perceived as sexual harassment by women Will the day come when interpersonal communication will than by men (LaPoire, Burgoon, & Parrott, 1992). allow us to talk directly to a computer, with the computer responding as if it were another person? The resources at this University of California, Santa Cruz laboratory and its extensive links provide a state-of-the-art view of research into the visual and auditory components of personal perception.

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Paralanguage

The term paralanguage refers to how something is said rather than to what is said. Thus, paralanguage includes all vocal cues other than the content of the ver-

© Bob Daemmrich/The Image Works

Body Language

Where men and women tend to be touched by friends of the . . . Same gender Other gender

Seldom (0–25%) Quite often (26–50%) Often (51–75%) Very often (51–75%)

may indicate anxiety. Slow speech, low volume, and low pitch are often associated with sadness. Thus, vocal quality provides another window on someone’s true feelings. Keep in mind, however, that it is easy to assign meanings to voice quality that aren’t valid, such as associating a deep voice with masculinity and maturity and a high, breathy voice with femininity and youth. In cyberspace communication, e-mailers use various substitutes for the paralanguage cues used in spoken communication. For instance, capital letters are used for emphasis (“I had a GREAT vacation”); however, using capital letters throughout a message is viewed as shouting and considered rude behavior. Using emoticons (punctuation marks arranged to indicate the writer’s emotions) has also become a common practice; thus, :-) indicates a smile and :-( indicates a frown. Interestingly, just as women display more emotion in their faces than men, women are more likely than men to use emoticons (Witmer & Katzman, 1999).

Detecting Deception

F I G U R E 7.6

Where friends touch each other. Social norms govern where friends tend to touch each other. As these figures show, the patterns of touching are different in same-gender as opposed to cross-gender interactions. Adapted from Marsh, P. (Ed.). (1988). Eye to eye: How people interact. Topsfield, MA: Salem House. Copyright © 1988 by Andromeda Oxford Ltd. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins, Publishers, Inc. and Andromeda Oxford Ltd.

bal message itself. These cues include how loudly or softly people speak, how fast they talk, and the rhythm and quality of their speech. Each of these vocal characteristics can affect the message being transmitted. Variations in vocal emphasis can give the same set of words very different meanings. Consider the sentence “I really enjoyed myself ” By varying the word that is accented, you can speak this sentence in three ways, each resulting in a different meaning: ■ I really enjoyed myself! (Even though others may not have had a good time, I did.) ■ I really enjoyed myself! (My enjoyment was exceptional.) ■ I really enjoyed myself! (Much to my surprise, I had a great time.)

As you can see from these examples, you can actually reverse the literal meaning of a verbal message by how you say it (such as with sarcasm). Aspects of vocalization can also communicate emotions (Banse & Scherer, 1996). For example, rapid speech may mean that a person is happy, frightened, or nervous. Slower speech might be used when people are uncertain or when they want to emphasize a point. Loud vocalization often signals anger. A relatively high pitch

Like it or not, lying is a part of everyday life (DePaulo et al., 2003). People typically tell one to two lies a day (DePaulo et al., 1996). Most of these everyday lies are inconsequential “white lies,” such as claiming to be better than one actually is or lying to avoid hurting someone’s feelings. Is it possible to catch people in a lie? Yes, but it’s difficult (DePaulo et al., 2003). In fact, even trained experts are not spectacular lie detectors (Ekman & O’Sullivan, 1991). While it’s true that people in occupations with expertise or an interest in detecting deception (including some types of psychologists) are more accurate judges of liars than others (Ekman, O’Sullivan, & Frank, 1999), even these individuals are not remarkably skilled at lie detection. Regardless, people overestimate their ability to detect liars (DePaulo et al., 1997). The popular stereotypes about how liars give themselves away don’t necessarily correspond to the actual clues related to dishonesty. For example, observers tend to focus on the face (the least revealing channel) and to ignore more useful information (Burgoon, 1994). In Figure 7.7 (on the next page), you can review the research findings on the nonverbal behaviors actually associated with deception (based on DePaulo, Stone, & Lassiter, 1985). By comparing the second and third columns in the figure, you can see which cues are actually associated with deception and those that are erroneously linked with deception. Contrary to popular belief, lying is not associated with slow talking, long pauses before speaking, excessive shifting of posture, reduced smiling, or lack of eye contact. A recent metaanalysis of over 300 studies generally supported these findings, concluding that liars say less, tell less compelling stories, make a more negative impression, are CHAPTER 7

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Nonverbal Cues and Deceptions

Detecting deception from nonverbal behaviors. This chart summarizes evidence on which nonverbal cues are actually associated with deception and which are believed to be a sign of deception, based on a research review by DePaulo, Stone, and Lassiter (1985).

Are cues associated with actual deception?

Are cues believed to be a sign of deception?

Speech hesitations

YES: Liars hesitate more

YES

Voice pitch

YES: Liars speak with higher pitch

YES

Speech errors (stutters, stammers)

YES: Liars make more errors

YES

Speech latency (pause before starting to speak or answer)

NO

YES: People think liars pause more

Speech rate

NO

YES: People think liars talk slower

Response length

YES: Liars give shorter answers

NO

Pupil dilation

YES: Liars show more dilation

(No research data)

Adapters (self-directed gestures)

YES: Liars touch themselves more

NO

Blinking

YES: Liars blink more

(No research data)

Postural shifts

NO

YES: People think liars shift more

Smile

NO

YES: People think liars smile less

Gaze (eye contact)

NO

YES: People think liars engage in less eye contact

Kind of Cue Vocal Cues

more tense, and include less unusual content in their stories than truth tellers do (DePaulo et al., 2003). So, how do liars give themselves away? As you may have noted in Figure 7.7, many of the clues “leak” from nonverbal channels, because speakers have a hard time controlling information from these channels (DePaulo & Friedman, 1998; Ekman and Friesen, 1974). Vocal cues include speaking with a higher pitch, giving relatively short answers, and excessive hesitations. Visual cues include dilation of the pupils. It’s also helpful to look for inconsistencies between facial expressions and lower body movements. For example, a friendly smile accompanied by a nervous shuffling of feet could signal deception. Bella DePaulo (1994), a noted researcher in this area, isn’t too optimistic about the prospects of teaching people to spot lies, because the cues are usually subtle. If she’s correct, perhaps machines can do better. The polygraph is a device that records fluctuations in physiological arousal as a person anBella DePaulo swers questions. Although called a “lie detector,” it’s really an emotion detector. The polygraph monitors key indicators of autonomic arousal such as heart rate, blood pressure, respiration rate, and perspiration, or galvanic skin response (GSR). The assumption is that when people lie, they 212

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Courtesy, Bella DePaulo

Visual Cues

experience emotion that produces noticeable changes in these physiological indicators (see Figure 7.8). Polygraph experts claim that lie detector tests are 85–90 percent accurate and that there is research support for the validity of polygraph testing (Iacono & Lykken, 1997; Iacono & Patrick, 1999). These claims are clearly not supported by the evidence. Methodologically sound research on this question is surprisingly sparse (largely because the research is difficult to do), and the limited evidence available is not very impressive (Lykken, 1998; Saxe & Ben-Shakhar, 1999). One problem is that when people respond to incriminating questions, they may experience emotional arousal even when they are telling the truth. Thus, polygraph tests often lead to accusations against the innocent. Another problem is that some people can lie without experiencing physiological arousal. Thus, because of high error rates, polygraph results are not admitted as evidence in most types of courtrooms. Yet, many companies require prospective and current employees to take lie detector tests to weed out thieves. In 1988, Congress passed a law curtailing this practice in certain occupations (Camara & Schneider, 1994). Perhaps computers will succeed where polygraphs have not—at least one laboratory is developing a computer program to detect the emotions underlying facial expressions (Bartlett et al., 1999). To summarize, deception is potentially detectable, but the nonverbal behaviors that accompany lying are subtle and difficult to spot.

Respiration

© Bob Daemmrich/ The Image Works

GSR

Blood pressure What department do you work in?

Have you ever taken money from this bank?

Who is your supervisor?

Have you ever falsified bank records?

F I G U R E 7.8

The polygraph measures emotional reactions. A lie detector measures the physiological arousal that most people experience when they tell a lie. After using nonthreatening questions to establish a baseline, a polygraph examiner looks for signs of arousal (such as the sharp change in GSR shown here) on incriminating questions.

Accuracy in reading the emotions of others is related to social and academic competence even in children (Hubbard & Coie, 1994; Izard et al., 2001). Is there any truth in the stereotype that females are better “readers” of nonverbal cues than men? Some researchers have found women to be better at this skill (1998; Hall & Matsumoto, 2004). However, motivation, rather than ability, may account for supposed gender differences in this area (Klein & Hodges, 2001). Some experts claim that this supposed gender difference is actually a status difference (Henley, 1977; Snodgrass, 1985, 1992). That is, people in subordinate roles are better at reading the nonverbal behaviors of those in dominant roles than vice versa. Later research has not supported this interpretation, however (Hall & Friedman, 1999; Snodgrass, Hecht, & Ploutz-Snyder, 1998).

The Significance of Nonverbal Communication Although you are often unaware of nonverbal communication, you constantly use these cues to convey your own feelings to others and to “read” theirs. Let’s consider some ways that nonverbal communication is linked to interpersonal relationships. In our society, if you dislike someone, you don’t usually say so. Instead, your negative feelings will leak out through nonverbal channels. Unfortunately, individuals with negative self-concepts attend to the positive verbal cues from others but disregard the negative nonverbal ones. Deprived of this important information, they may fail to learn why they alienate others, making it difficult for them to correct their behavior.

Toward More Effective Communication LEARNING OBJECTIVES ■

■ ■

List five suggestions for creating a positive interpersonal climate. Give five steps involved in making small talk. Cite some ways to reduce the risks of self-disclosure.

As we’ve noted, the importance of communication in everyday life can hardly be exaggerated. In this section, we’ll turn to some practical issues that will help you be-

■ ■

Describe the role of self-disclosure in relationship development. Discuss cultural and gender differences in self-disclosure. Cite four points good listeners need to keep in mind.

come a more effective communicator with your family, friends, romantic partner, and co-workers. We’ll review conversational skills, self-disclosure, and effective listenCHAPTER 7

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Tools for Communication: A Model of Effective Communication Communicating effectively is essential to success in most aspects of life, including relationships and work. This online manual provides helpful advice on key issues related to effective communication. It is one of many online manuals on coping with various life stresses at Coping.org, a site maintained by James J. Messina, Ph.D. and Constance M. Messina, Ph.D.

■ Express your opinions tentatively. Instead of coming across as a know-it-all, let others know that your beliefs and attitudes are flexible and subject to revision. Using qualifying words or phrases is helpful. For instance, instead of announcing, “Here’s the plan,” you might say, “There seem to be several options; I lean toward . . . What do you think?”

Keep these points in mind as we delve further into the topic of interpersonal communication.

Conversational Skills ing. Effective communication rests on the foundation of a positive interpersonal climate, so we’ll start there.

Creating a Positive Interpersonal Climate A positive interpersonal climate exists when people feel they can be open rather than guarded or defensive in their communication. You can do your part to create such an atmosphere by putting the following suggestions into practice. ■ Learn to feel and communicate empathy. Empathy is adopting another’s frame of reference so you can understand his or her point of view. Being sensitive to others’ needs and accepting of their feelings are hallmarks of empathy. Note that being accepting of others doesn’t require you to condone or endorse their behavior. For example, if your roommate confides his concerns about his drinking, you can support him as a person by continuing to be his friend—without encouraging him to continue drinking. ■ Practice withholding judgment. You can promote an open climate by trying to be nonjudgmental. That doesn’t mean that you can’t express opinions and make judgments. It merely means that you should strive to interact with people in ways that don’t make them feel inadequate or that put them down or force them to offer an opinion when they would rather not. ■ Strive for honesty. Mutual trust and respect thrive on authenticity and honesty. So-called hidden agendas don’t stay hidden for long. Even if others don’t know exactly what your underlying motives are, they often can sense that you’re not being entirely honest. Of course, striving for honesty does not require you to communicate everything at any time to any person. For those conversations that are unavoidably painful—such as breaking up with a romantic partner—you should strive to be honest without being needlessly hurtful. ■ Approach others as equals. Most people don’t like to be reminded of another’s higher status or greater ability. When you have the higher status, it helps to approach people on equal terms.

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When it comes to meeting strangers, some people launch right into a conversation,while others break into a cold sweat as their minds go completely blank. If you fall into the second category, don’t despair! The art of conversation is actually based on conversational skills. And these skills can be learned. To get you started, we’ll offer a few general principles, gleaned primarily from Messages: The Communication Skills Book by McKay and associates (1995). If you want to explore this topic in greater depth, this book is an excellent source of practical advice.

R EC O M M EN D ED R EA D IN G

Messages: The Communication Skills Book by Matthew McKay, Martha Davis, and Patrick Fanning (New Harbinger Publications, 1995) In this short book, you will find a wealth of information by which to improve your communication skills in a wide variety of situations. Messages is organized according to six types of communication skills: basic, advanced, conflict, social, family, and public. Within each of these sections, chapters address important issues. For example, the section on family skills includes chapters on sexual communication, parent effectiveness, and family communications; the section on public skills addresses communication in small groups and public speaking; and “advanced skills” deals with hidden agendas, transactional analysis, and the role of culture and gender in communication. The authors have a breezy writing style and use lots of examples to illustrate their points. They have also included numerous exercises to help you assess your communication skills and practice more effective ways of interacting with others. Cover design by Shelby Design & Associates. Reprinted by permission.

1. Indicate that you are open to conversation by commenting on your surroundings. (“This line sure is long.”). Of course, you can begin with other topics, too, but you should be careful about your opening line. In one study, participants viewed videotapes of a man or a woman approaching an other-gender stranger and initiating a conversation using a cute/flippant, an innocuous, or a direct opening line (Kleinke, Meeker, & Staneski, 1986). The preferred openers were either innocuous (“Where are you from?”) or direct (“Hi, I’m a little embarrassed about this, but I’d like to get to know you”). In contrast, the least preferred openers were of the cute/flippant variety (“Hi, I’m easy—are you?”). Because cute lines often backfire, your best bet is probably the conventional approach. 2. Introduce yourself. Do so early in the conversation and use specifics to give the other person information to relate to. (“I’m Jeremy Jackson. I’m a psychology major at the university.”) 3. Select a topic others can relate to. (“I saw a great movie last night.”) Keep an eye out for similarities and differences between you and your conversational partner (McKay et al., 1995). Thus, look for things you have in common—a tattoo, a class, a hometown—and build a conversation around that. Alternatively, work off of your differences. (“How did you get interested in science fiction? I’m a mystery fan myself.”) 4. Keep the conversational ball rolling. You can keep things going by elaborating on your initial topic. (“After the movie, I met some friends at the new coffee house and tried their dessert special.”) Alternatively, you can introduce a related topic or start a new one. 5. Make a smooth exit. Politely end the conversation. (“Well, I’ve got to be going, but I really enjoyed talking with you.”)

After you’ve learned a little about another person, you may want to move the relationship to a deeper level.

This is where self-disclosure comes into play, the topic we’ll address next.

Self-Disclosure Self-disclosure is the act of sharing information about yourself with another person. In other words, self-disclosure involves opening up about yourself to others. The information you share doesn’t have to be a deep, dark secret, but it may be. Conversations with strangers and acquaintances typically start with superficial self-disclosure—the TV show you saw last night or your views on who will win the World Series. Only when people have come to like and trust each other do they begin to share private information—such as self-consciousness about one’s weight, or jealousy of one’s brother (Collins & Miller, 1994). Figure 7.9 illustrates how self-disclosure varies according to type of relationship. Self-disclosure is critically important to adjustment for several reasons. First, sharing fears and problems with others who are trustworthy and supportive plays a key role in mental health. Recall from Chapter 4 that sharing your feelings can reduce stress. And after mutual self-disclosures, people experience a boost in positive feelings (Vittengl & Holt, 2000). Second, emotional (but not factual) self-disclosures lead to feelings of closeness, as long as disclosers feel that listeners are

Breadth of self-disclosure Nonintimate topic areas

Depth of self-disclosure

First, follow the Golden Rule: Give to others what you would like to receive from them. In other words, give others your attention and respect and let them know that you like them. Second, focus on the other person instead of yourself. Keep your attention focused on what the person is saying, rather than on how you look, what you’re going to say next, or winning the argument. Third, as we have noted, use nonverbal cues to communicate your interest in the other person. Like you, others also find it easier to interact with a person who signals friendliness. A welcoming smile can make a big difference in initial contacts. Now, how do you actually get the conversational ball rolling? Psychologist Bernardo Carducci (1999) suggests five steps for making successful small talk. We’ll use his template and fill in with additional suggestions:

Stranger

Casual acquaintance Best friend

Intimate topic areas

F I G U R E 7.9

Breadth and depth of self-disclosure. Breadth of self-disclosure refers to how many topics one opens up about; depth refers to how far one goes in revealing private information. Both the breadth and depth of one’s disclosures are greater with best friends as opposed to casual acquaintances or strangers. (Adapted from Altman & Taylor, 1973) CHAPTER 7

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understanding and accepting (Laurenceau, Barrett, & Pietromonaco, 1998; Reis & Shaver, 1988). And, as you saw in Chapter 1, having close relationships is an important ingredient of happiness. Third, self-disclosure in romantic relationships correlates positively with relationship satisfaction (Meeks et al., 1998). More specifically, equity in self-disclosure, rather than high self-disclosure, may be the critical factor that helps couples avoid stress (Bowers, Metts, & Duncanson, 1985). Reducing the Risks of Self-Disclosure

Let’s face it: Disclosing private information to others is risky business. When you reveal private things about yourself to others, they might reject you or divulge your confidences to someone else. A study of European college students reported that they revealed others’ personal emotional disclosures to third parties in 66– 78 percent of the cases (Christophe & Rime, 1997). Although the researchers did not ask the students if they had been sworn to secrecy, in 85 percent of the cases the students were intimates (versus acquaintances) of the self-disclosers. Moreover, more emotionally intense disclosures were more likely to be shared—and with more people—than less emotionally intense revelations. Thus, if you have a secret you cannot risk others knowing but that is troubling you, it is probably safer to share it with a trained counselor. Alternatively, writing about an issue, such as in a journal, can help you feel better (Pennebaker, 1997; Sloan & Marx, 2004). While it pays to be discriminating about sharing private business, limiting your conversations to superficial topics won’t deepen a relationship. To safely steer the conversation toward more intimate topics, we advise using the strategy of gradual self-disclosure. Moving gradually gives you the chance to observe how the other person responds to your self-disclosures. Of course, the principle of gradual self-disclosure doesn’t always hold. Many people can tell, early on, which relationships they want to remain relatively superficial and which they would like to become more intimate. But, for most sit-

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uations, we advise gradual self-disclosure as the optimal route to close relationships, because it entails less risk and stress. How can you gauge whether it’s safe to share personal information with someone? It should reassure you to know that self-disclosure is usually reciprocated in depth and topic (Collins & Miller, 1994). Thus, a good strategy is to monitor your partners’ verbal and nonverbal cues for their reactions to your disclosures. If you make a personal disclosure and the other person reciprocates with a parallel disclosure, this ordinarily signals comfort with more intimacy. Of course, some people who aren’t comfortable engaging in self-disclosure themselves are sincerely willing to listen to you anyway. Thus, you can’t depend on reciprocity alone as an indicator of another’s interest. That’s why tuning in to nonverbal signals is of crucial importance. When people are uncomfortable, they will usually send you a nonverbal message to that effect to avoid embarrassing you with a more obvious verbal warning. “Stop” cues include reducing eye contact and displaying a puzzled, apprehensive, or pained facial expression. Your partner may angle his or her body away from you, increase the distance between you, or shuffle his or her feet impatiently. In contrast, when listeners lean forward, appear relaxed, and maintain good eye contact, they are likely interested in your self-disclosure. What about the risk of self-disclosure in computermediated communication? Because of the relative anonymity of the Internet, self-disclosure in e-mail and chat rooms involves less risk (Bargh & McKenna, 2004). We’ll explore the implications of this fact for relationship development in Chapter 8. Self-Disclosure and Relationship Development

Earlier, we noted that self-disclosure leads to feelings of intimacy. Actually, the process is a little more complicated than that. Research suggests that only certain types of disclosures lead to feelings of closeness (Laurenceau et al., 1998). For instance, emotional self-disclosures do, but factual self-disclosures do not. Moreover, for inti-

Culture, Gender, and Self-Disclosure

Americans generally assume that personal sharing is essential to close friendships and happy marriages. This view is consistent with an individualistic culture that emphasizes the individual and the expression of each person’s unique feelings and experiences. In collectivist cultures such as China and Japan, people are open about their group memberships and status because these factors guide social interactions. However, sharing personal information is reserved for established relationships (Smith & Bond, 1999). In the United States, it has been found that females tend to be more openly self-disclosing than males, although the disparity seems smaller than once believed (Dindia, 2000). This gender difference is strongest in same-gender friendships (Reis, 1998), with female friends

WE B LI N K 7.4

Cross-Cultural Communication Strategies Citizens of the 21st century are challenged to communicate sensitively with individuals from other cultural groups both within the United States and around the world. This site, maintained by the Conflict Research Consortium at the University of Colorado, provides commentaries by experts on a variety of intercultural communication settings.

© Mary Kate Denny/PhotoEdit

macy to develop in a relationship, a discloser must feel understood and cared for (Reis & Patrick, 1996). In other words, self-disclosure alone doesn’t lead to intimacy. Self-disclosure varies over the course of relationships. At the beginning of a relationship, high levels of mutual disclosure prevail (Taylor & Altman, 1987). Once a relationship is well established, the level of disclosure tapers off, although responsiveness remains high (Reis & Patrick, 1996). Also, in established relationships, people are less likely to reciprocate disclosures. Thus, when a lover or a good friend reveals private information, you frequently respond with words of sympathy and understanding rather than a like disclosure. This movement away from equal exchanges of self-disclosure appears to be based on twin needs that emerge as intimate relationships develop: (1) the need for support and (2) the need to maintain privacy (Altman, Vinsel, & Brown, 1981). By reciprocating support (versus information), individuals can strengthen relationships while maintaining a sense of privacy. In fact, successfully balancing these two needs seems to be an important factor in relationship satisfaction (Finkenauer & Hazam, 2000). When relationships are in distress, self-disclosure patterns change. For example, one or both individuals may decrease the breadth and depth of their selfdisclosures, indicating that they are emotionally withdrawing (Baxter, 1988).

Self-disclosure can be a risky business. In many instances selfdisclosure can lead to increased intimacy, but that depends on the nature of the relationship and the disclosure. Hence, when making disclosures it is important to pay attention to others’ nonverbal reactions.

sharing more personal information than male friends. (As we’ll discuss in Chapter 8, male friends tend to share activities versus personal talk.) In other-gender relationships, self-disclosure is more equal, although men with traditional gender-role attitudes are less likely to self-disclose, because they view sharing personal information as a sign of weakness. Also, women share more personal information and feelings, whereas men share more nonpersonal information (Dolgin, 2001). Gender disparities in self-disclosure are attributed to socialization. In American culture, most men are taught to conceal tender emotions and feelings of vulnerability, especially from other men (Kilmartin, 2000). But different gender patterns are found in other countries (Reis & Wheeler, 1991). For example, in Jordan and Japan, where early intimacy between male and female friends is discouraged, close contacts between samegender friends is encouraged. And, in the early stages of other-gender relationships, American men often disclose more than women (Derlega et al., 1985). This finding is consistent with the traditional expectations that males should initiate relationships and females should encourage males to talk. Thus, it is an oversimplification to say that American women are always more open than men. (We will take up other aspects of gender and communication in the Chapter 10 Application.) CHAPTER 7

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Effective listening is a vastly underappreciated skill. There’s a lot of truth in the old saying, “We have two ears and only one mouth, so we should listen more than we speak.” Because listeners process speech much more rapidly than people speak (between 500 and 1,000 words per minute versus 125–175 words per minute), it’s easy for them to become bored, distracted, and inattentive (Hanna, 2003). Fatigue and preoccupation with one’s own thoughts are other factors that interfere with effective listening. To be a good listener, you need to keep four points in mind. First, signal your interest in the speaker by using nonverbal cues. Face the speaker squarely and lean toward him or her (rather than slouching or leaning back in a chair). This posture signals that you are interested in what the other person has to say. Try not to cross your arms and legs, as this posture can signal defensiveness. Maintaining eye contact with the speaker also indicates your attentiveness. (You know how anBeing a good listener is an essential skill that contributes to success in relationnoying it is to talk with someone whose eyes ships and on the job. are roaming around the room.) Communicate your feelings about what the speaker is saying by nodding your head or raising your eyebrows. right . . .” or “Do you mean . . .?” It’s obviously ludiSecond, hear the other person out before you respond. crous to paraphrase every single thing the speaker says; Listeners often tune out or interrupt a conversational you only need to paraphrase when the speaker says partner when (1) they know someone well (because something important. Paraphrasing has a number of they believe that they already know what the speaker benefits: It reassures the speaker that you are “with” will say), (2) a speaker has mannerisms listeners find him or her, it derails misinterpretations, and it keeps frustrating (stuttering, mumbling, speaking in a moyou focused on the conversation. notone), and (3) a speaker discusses ideas (abortion, Paraphrasing can take several forms (Verderber & politics) that generate strong feelings or uses terms Verderber, 2005). In content paraphrasing, you focus (welfare cheat, redneck) that push “red buttons” (Veron the literal meaning of the message. In feelings paraderber & Verderber, 2001). Although it is challenging phrasing, You focus on the emotions connected to the not to tune out a speaker or to lob an insult in these content of the message. If your friend declares, “I just situations, you’ll be better able to formulate an approcan’t believe he showed up at the party with his old priate response if you allow the speaker to complete his girlfriend!,” a feelings paraphrase is obviously in order or her thought. (“You were really hurt by that”). Third, engage in active listening (McKay et al., 1995). To develop your skill at paraphrasing, try practicPay careful attention to what the speaker is saying and ing it with a friend. Have the friend tell you about somemindfully process the information. Active listening also thing; your job is to paraphrase from time to time to involves the skills of clarifying and paraphrasing. Inbe sure that you really understand what your friend is evitably, a speaker will skip over an essential point or say trying to communicate. After each paraphrase, your something that is confusing. When this happens, you friend can tell you whether he or she agrees with your need to ask for clarification. “Was Bill her boyfriend or interpretation. Don’t be surprised if you have to reher brother?” Clarifying ensures that you have an acparaphrase several times. Keep trying until you get it curate picture of the message and also tells the speaker right. You’ll probably discover that paraphrasing is that you are interested. harder than you think! Paraphrasing takes clarifying another step. To paraFinally, pay attention to the other person’s nonverphrase means to state concisely what you believe the bal signals. Listeners use a speaker’s words to get the speaker said. You might say, “Let me see if I’ve got this “objective” meaning of a message, but they rely on non-

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Effective Listening

verbal cues for the emotional and interpersonal meanings of a message. Your knowledge of body language, tone of voice, and other nonverbal cues can give you deeper understanding of what others are communicating. Remember that these cues are available not only when the other person is speaking but also when you are talking. If you often get signals that your listener is drifting away, you might be going overboard on ir-

relevant details or, perhaps, hogging the conversation. The antidote is active listening. Most people are ineffective listeners because they are unaware of the elements of effective listening—information you now have. Also, effective listening hinges largely on your attitude. If you’re willing to work at it, you can definitely become a good listener fairly quickly.

Communication Problems LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Discuss four responses to communication apprehension. Describe five barriers to effective communication.

In this section, we focus on two problems that can interfere with effective communication: anxiety and communication barriers.

Communication Apprehension It’s the first day of your child psychology class and you have just learned that 30-minute oral reports are a course requirement. Do you welcome this requirement as an opportunity to polish your public speaking skills or, panic-stricken, do you race to the registrar’s office to drop the class? If you opted for the latter, you may suffer from communication apprehension, or anxiety caused by having to talk with others. Some people experience communication apprehension in all speaking situations (including one-on-one encounters), but most people who have the problem notice it only when they have to speak before groups. Bodily experiences associated with communication apprehension can range from “butterflies” in the stomach to cold hands, dry mouth, and a racing heart rate. These physiological effects are stress-induced “fight or flight” responses of the autonomic nervous system (see Chapter 3). The physiological responses themselves aren’t the root of communication apprehension; rather, the problem lies in the speaker’s interpretation of these bodily responses. That is, high scorers on measures of communication apprehension frequently interpret the

bodily changes they experience in public speaking situations as indications of fear. In contrast, low scorers often chalk up these reactions to the normal excitement in such a situation (Richmond & McCroskey, 1995). Researchers have identified four responses to communication apprehension (Richmond & McCroskey, 1995). The most common is avoidance, or choosing not to participate when confronted with a voluntary com-

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Effective Presentations Students often tell teachers that they are terrified of making a presentation in front of a class. Professor Jeff Radel (University of Kansas Medical Center) has crafted an excellent set of guides to show the best ways of communicating by means of oral presentations, visual materials, and posters.

Being able to speak effectively before a group is a highly useful skill, so it is important to overcome communication apprehension.

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munication opportunity. If people believe that speaking will make them uncomfortable, they will typically avoid the experience. Withdrawal occurs when people unexpectedly find themselves trapped in a communication situation they can’t escape. Here they may clam up entirely or say as little as possible. Disruption refers to the inability to make fluent oral presentations or to engage in appropriate verbal or nonverbal behavior. Of course, inadequate communication skills can produce this same behavioral effect, and it isn’t always possible for the average person to identify the actual cause of the problem. Overcommunication is a relatively unusual response to high communication apprehension, but it does occur. An example would be someone who attempts to dominate social situations by talking nonstop. Although such individuals are seen as poor communicators, they are not usually perceived to have communication apprehension. That’s because we expect to see it only in those who talk very little. Of course, overcommunication may be caused by other factors as well. Obviously, avoidance and withdrawal tactics are merely short-term strategies for coping with communication apprehension (Richmond & McCroskey, 1995). Because it is unlikely that you can go though life without having to speak in front of a group, it is important to learn to cope with this stressful event rather than avoid it time and again. Allowing the problem to get out of hand can result in self-limiting behavior, such as refusing a job promotion that would entail public speaking. People with high communication apprehension are likely to have difficulties in relationships, at work, and at school (Richmond & McCroskey, 1995). Happily, both cognitive restructuring (Chapter 4) and systematic desensitization (Chapter 16) are highly effective methods for dealing with this problem.

Barriers to Effective Communication Earlier in the chapter, we discussed noise and its disruptive effects on interpersonal communication. Now we want to check out some psychological factors that contribute to noise. These barriers to effective communication can reside in the sender, in the receiver, or sometimes in both. Common obstacles include defensiveness, motivational distortion, self-preoccupation and game playing. Defensiveness

Perhaps the most basic barrier to effective communication is defensiveness—an excessive concern with protecting oneself from being hurt. People usually react defensively when they feel threatened, such as when they believe that others are evaluating them or trying to control or manipulate them. Defensiveness is also triggered when others act in a superior manner. Thus, 220

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those who flaunt their status, wealth, brilliance, or power often put receivers on the defensive. Dogmatic people who project “I’m always right” also breed defensiveness. A threat need not be real to elicit defensive behavior. If you persuade yourself that Brandon won’t like you, your interactions with him will probably not be very positive. And, if the self-fulfilling prophecy kicks in, you may produce the negative reaction you fear. You want to cultivate a communication style that minimizes defensiveness in others. Still it’s good to keep in mind that you don’t have complete control over others’ perceptions and reactions. Motivational Distortion

In Chapter 6, we discussed distortions and expectancies in person perception. These same processes operate in communication. That is, people can hear what they want to hear instead of what is actually being said. Each person has a unique frame of reference—certain attitudes, values, and expectations—that can influence what he or she hears. Information that contradicts an individual’s own views often produces emotional discomfort. One way people avoid such unpleasant feelings is to engage in selective attention, or actively choosing to attend to information that supports their beliefs and ignoring information that contradicts them. Similarly, an individual may read meanings that are not intended into statements or jump to erroneous conclusions. This tendency to distort information occurs most often when people are discussing issues they feel strongly about, such as politics, racism, sexism, homosexuality, or abortion. Self-Preoccupation

Who hasn’t experienced the frustration of trying to communicate with someone who is so self-focused as to make two-way conversation impossible? These annoying individuals seem to talk to hear themselves talk. If you try to slip in a word about your problems, they cut you off by proclaiming, “That’s nothing. Listen to what happened to me!” Further, self-preoccupied people are poor listeners. When someone else is talking, they’re mentally rehearsing their next comments. Because they are self-focused, these individuals are usually oblivious to their negative impact on others. Self-preoccupied people arouse negative reactions in others for several reasons. First, their remarks are usually so self-serving (seeking to impress, to gain unwarranted sympathy, and so on) that others find it offensive. Another problem is that they consistently take up more than their fair share of conversation time. Some individuals do both—talking only about themselves and going on at great length. After a “conversation” with someone like this, listeners feel ignored. No wonder people try to avoid such people if they can. If they can’t, they usually respond only minimally to end

the conversation quickly. Needless to say, you risk alienating others if you ignore the norm that conversations should involve a mutual sharing of information.

with others, she “innocently” inquires, “Say, has anyone seen Rodrigo lately?” Here, the hidden agenda is to make Carlos feel bad. If Yvonne’s behavior produces the desired response, she “wins.” In the broadest sense, game playing can include the deliberate (or sometimes unintentional) use of ambiguous, indirect, or deceptive statements. Some game playing involves “verbal fencing” to avoid having to make clear one’s meaning or intent. Particularly problematic are repetitive games that result in bad feelings and that erode the trust and respect that are essential to good relationships. Games interfere with effective communication and are a destructive element in relationships.

Game Playing

“Game playing” is another barrier to effective communication. Game playing was first described by Eric Berne (1964), who originated transactional analysis, a theory of personality and interpersonal relations that emphasizes patterns of communication. In Berne’s scheme, games are manipulative interactions with predictable outcomes, in which people conceal their real motives. For instance, Yvonne knows that Carlos gets upset when her former boyfriend is mentioned. So when they’re out

Interpersonal Conflict LEARNING OBJECTIVES ■

Cite some positive outcomes associated with constructive interpersonal conflict. Describe five personal styles of dealing with interpersonal conflict. List six tips for coping effectively with interpersonal conflict.

People do not have to be enemies to be in conflict, and being in conflict does not make people enemies. Interpersonal conflict exists whenever two or more people disagree. By this definition, conflict occurs between friends and lovers as well as between competitors and enemies. The discord may be caused by a simple misunderstanding, or it may be a product of incompatible goals, values, attitudes, or beliefs. Because conflict is an unavoidable aspect of interactions, it’s essential to know how to deal constructively with it.

Explain why Deborah Tannen characterizes America as “the argument culture.” Describe some reasons for increased social contentiousness today. Describe what individuals and social institutions can do to reduce the level of public conflict.

ture of the relationship. When relationships and issues are important to you, avoiding conflict is generally counterproductive. For one thing, it can lead to a selfperpetuating cycle (see Figure 7.10).

We think of conflict as bad.

Beliefs About Conflict Many people assume that any kind of conflict is inherently bad and that it should be suppressed if at all possible. In reality, conflict is neither inherently bad nor inherently good. It is a natural phenomenon that may lead to either good or bad outcomes, depending on how people deal with it. When people see conflict as negative, they tend to avoid coping with it. Of course, sometimes avoiding conflict can be good. If a relationship or an issue is of little importance to you, or if you believe that the costs of confrontation are too high (your boss might fire you), avoidance might be the best way to handle a conflict. Also, cultures differ in how conflict should be handled. Collectivist cultures (such as China and Japan) often avoid conflict, whereas individualistic cultures tend to encourage direct confrontations (Ting-Toomey, 2000). In individualistic cultures, the consequences of avoiding conflict depend on the na-

We handle it badly.

The conflict gets out of control and must be confronted.

We get nervous about conflict we’re experiencing.

We avoid it as long as possible.

F I G U R E 7. 10

The conflict avoidance cycle. Avoiding conflict can lead to a self-perpetuating cycle: (1) People think of conflict as bad, (2) they get nervous about a conflict they are experiencing, (3) they avoid the conflict as long as possible, (4) the conflict gets out of control and must be confronted, and (5) they handle the confrontation badly. In turn, this negative experience sets the stage for avoiding conflict the next time—usually with the same negative outcome. (Adapted from Lulofs, 1994) CHAPTER 7

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Types of Conflict To manage conflict effectively, you need to know what you’re dealing with. A useful scheme categorizes conflicts into five types: pseudoconflicts, fact conflicts, policy conflicts, value conflicts, and ego conflicts (Verderber & Verderber, 2004). A pseudoconflict is just what it says: a false conflict. The game playing between Yvonne and Carlos is one type of pseudoconflict. The goal of the game is to get the other person “hooked” so that an unresolved issue comes out. The “fight” between Brian and Robin that introduced the chapter is another example of a pseudoconflict. When Brian said, “There you go again, telling me what to wear,” he intended to draw Robin into a fight about power issues in their relationship. Robin’s comeback that Brian looked like he was colorblind was an acceptance of Brian’s invitation to fight. Had Robin been able to identify the interchange as a pseudoconflict, she could have declined his invitation using a nondefensive tone of voice (“I was just making a suggestion. Wear what you like”). The key to managing such encounters is being able to recognize the game and not allowing yourself to be drawn in. A second type of conflict occurs when people disagree about issues of a factual nature. For instance, Keisha and DeWayne disagree about whether they are supposed to meet another couple at the restaurant or be picked up so they can all drive in one car. The way to deal with such fact-based conflicts is to check the facts and then not dwell on who was right and who was wrong. But, note that either party can escalate the disagreement into an argument with insulting comments (“Can’t you ever get anything straight?”). Policy conflicts arise when people disagree about how to handle a particular situation. Take the case of Brad and Julia, who are planning their trip to Europe. Brad earns more than Julia. Should they split the expenses down the middle, or should they share the expenses based on the proportion of their incomes? Obviously, there is no right or wrong answer here. Successfully resolving a policy conflict depends on finding 222

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a solution that addresses the problem and the feelings of both people. Policy conflicts can reerupt when two people agree on a policy but one or both fail to follow through on it. Differing personal values can also lead to conflicts. Values are beliefs people use to evaluate the worth of various aspects of life—religion, politics, and various social and aesthetic issues. Some values are obviously more important to people than others, and higher-ranked values usually have more influence on behavior. Thus, if you believe that your family’s happiness is more important than your work, you may opt for a career with minimal stress and time demands. Value-based conflicts are a particular problem in intimate relationships. If couples can recognize conflicts as value based, they can understand that an issue is important to the other person and that he or she is not just being stubborn. When conflicts can’t be resolved, two people may be willing to take turns obliging each other to maintain the relationship. For example, they might alternate going to each other’s favorite hangout. Too, sometimes people can agree to disagree. Nonetheless, when unresolvable conflicts become an ongoing source of distress in relationships, they can lead to breakups. You can minimize value-based conflicts by matching up with a person who has similar values. The most difficult conflicts to manage are those in which one or both parties view the outcome as a measure of self-worth—how competent one is, how much

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Suppression of discord usually has a negative effect on a relationship in spite of efforts to conceal it. For example, people in distressed marriages use more avoidance than people in nondistressed or satisfied marriages (Noller et al., 1994). When dealt with openly and constructively, interpersonal conflict can lead to a variety of valuable outcomes (Clark & Grote, 2003). Among other things, constructive confrontation may (1) bring problems out into the open where they can be solved, (2) put an end to chronic sources of discontent in a relationship, and (3) lead to new insights through the airing of divergent views.

Disagreements are a fact of everyday life, so effective communicators need to learn how to deal with them constructively.

Styles of Managing Conflict How do you react to conflict? Most people have a habitual way or personal style of dealing with dissension. Studies have consistently revealed five distinct patterns of dealing with conflict: avoiding/withdrawing, accommodating, competing/forcing, compromising, and collaborating (Lulofs & Cahn, 2000). Two dimensions underlie these different styles: interest in satisfying one’s own concerns and interest in satisfying others’ concerns (Rahim & Magner, 1995). You can see the location of these five styles on these two dimensions in Figure 7.11. As you read about these styles, try to determine where you fit: ■ Avoiding/withdrawing (low concern for self and others). Some people simply find conflict extremely distasteful. When a conflict emerges, the avoider will change the subject, deflect discussion with humor, make a hasty exit, or pretend to be preoccupied with something else. People who prefer this style believe that ignoring a problem will make it go away. For minor problems, this tactic is often a good one—there’s no need to react to every little annoyance. For bigger conflicts, avoiding/withdrawing is not a good strategy; it usually just delays the inevitable clash. If Maria consistently wants to discuss a problem and Tony consistently does not, relationship difficulties can arise. A particular problem occurs when an avoider has greater power in a relationship (parent, supervisor, romantic partner). This situation prevents the less powerful person from airing his or her concerns and breeds frustration and resentment. Of course, in some cases it is good to postpone a discussion, especially if one or both individuals is tired or rushed or needs time to cool off. Postponing qualifies as avoiding only if the promised discussion never takes place.

Competing/ forcing Concern for self

one knows, how much power one has, and so forth. In these ego-based conflicts, “winning” becomes more important than finding a fair solution to the problem. Ego-based conflicts often arise when one or both parties lapse into negative personal judgments about a content- or value-based issue under discussion. People most often slip into judgmental statements when they have expertise or a special stake in the discussion. Before you realize it, you are hooked by your emotions, lose the ability for rational thought, and find yourself saying things you can’t take back. Because individuals perceive so much to be at stake, ego-based conflicts are difficult to manage. For this reason, the best way to handle them is to recognize them early on and to move the conflict back to a content level. Unfortunately, even minor disagreements can erupt into aggressive (and possibly lethal) confrontations. Thus, learning how to manage conflict is an essential skill in today’s world.

Collaborating

Compromising

Avoiding/ withdrawing

Accommodating

Concern for others

F I G U R E 7. 11

Five styles of handling interpersonal conflict. In dealing with discord, individuals typically prefer one of five styles. The two dimensions of “concern for self” and “concern for others” underlie each of the five styles.

■ Accommodating (low concern for self, high concern for others). Like the avoider, the accommodator feels uncomfortable with conflict. However, instead of ignoring the disagreement, this person brings the conflict to a quick end by giving in easily. People who are overly concerned about acceptance and approval from others commonly use this strategy of surrender. Habitual accommodating is a poor way of dealing with conflict because it does not generate creative thinking and effective solutions. Moreover, feelings of resentment (on both sides) may develop because the accommodator often likes to play the role of a martyr. Of course, when you don’t have strong preferences (for instance, where to eat out), occasional accommodating is perfectly appropriate. Also, in some cultures (such as Japan), it is the preferred style of dealing with conflict (Samovar & Porter, 2004). ■ Competing/forcing (high concern for self, low concern for others). The competitor turns every conflict into a black-and-white, win-or-lose situation. Competitors will do virtually anything to emerge victorious from confrontations; thus, they can be deceitful and aggressive—including using verbal attacks and physical threats. They rigidly adhere to one position and will use threats and coercion to force the other party to submit. Giving no quarter, competitors often get personal and “hit below the belt.” This style is undesirable because, like accommodation, it fails to generate creative solutions to problems. Moreover, this approach is especially likely to lead to postconflict tension, resentment, and hostility. ■ Compromising (moderate concern for self and others). Compromising is a pragmatic approach to conflict

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that acknowledges the divergent needs of both parties. Compromisers are willing to negotiate and to meet the other person halfway. With this approach, each person gives up something so both can have partial satisfaction. Because both parties gain some satisfaction, compromising is a fairly constructive approach to conflict, especially when the issue is moderately important. ■ Collaborating (high concern for self and others). Whereas compromising simply entails “splitting the difference” between positions, collaborating involves a sincere effort to find a solution that will maximally satisfy both parties. In this approach, conflict is viewed as a mutual problem to be solved as effectively as possible. Collaborating thus encourages openness and honesty. It also stresses the importance of criticizing the other person’s ideas in a disagreement rather than the other person. To collaborate, you have to work on clarifying differences and similarities in positions so that you can build on the similarities. Generally, this is the most productive approach for dealing with conflict. Instead of resulting in a postconflict residue of tension and resentment, collaborating tends to produce a climate of trust.

Dealing Constructively with Conflict As you have seen, the most effective approach to conflict management is collaborating. To help you implement such an approach, we will offer some specific suggestions. But, before we get down to specifics, there are a few principles to keep in mind (Alberti & Emmons, 2001; Verderber & Verderber, 2004). First, in a conflict situation, try to give the other person the benefit of the doubt; don’t automatically assume that those who disagree with you are ignorant or mean-spirited. Show respect for their position, and do your best to empathize with, and fully understand, their frame of reference. Second, approach the other person as an equal. If you have a higher status or more power (parent, supervisor), try to set this difference aside. Third, define the conflict as a mutual problem to be solved cooperatively, rather than as a win-lose proposition. Fourth, choose a mutually acceptable time to sit down and work on resolving the conflict. It is not always best to tackle the conflict when and where it first arises. Finally, commu-

WE B LI N K 7.6

The Conflict Resolution Information Source This excellent resource on conflict management is provided by the University of Colorado’s Conflict Research Consortium. The site is actually a gateway to a huge variety of resources on conflict management and is easy to navigate.

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nicate your flexibility and willingness to modify your position. Here are some explicit guidelines for dealing effectively with interpersonal conflict (Alberti & Emmons, 2001; Johnson & Johnson, 1999; Verderber & Verderber, 2004): ■ Make communication honest and open. Don’t withhold information or misrepresent your position. Avoid deceit and manipulation. ■ Use specific behaviors to describe another person’s annoying habits rather than general statements about their personality. You’ll probably get further with your roommate if you say something like, “Please throw your clothes in the hamper” rather than “You’re such an inconsiderate slob.” Remarks about specific actions are less threatening and are less likely to be taken personally. They also clarify what you hope will change. ■ Avoid “loaded” words. Certain words are “loaded” in the sense that they tend to trigger negative emotional reactions in listeners. For example, you can discuss politics without using terms such as “right-winger” and “knee-jerk liberal.” ■ Use a positive approach and help the other person save face. Saying “I love it when we cook dinner together” will go over better than “You never help with dinner, and I resent it.” Similarly, you can increase your chances of having a request accepted if you say, “I realize that you are very busy, but I’d really appreciate it if you would look at my paper again. I’ve marked the places I’d like you to reconsider.” ■ Limit complaints to recent behavior and to the current situation. Dredging up past grievances only rekindles old resentments and distracts you from the current problem. And avoid saying things like “You always say you’re too busy” or “You never do your fair share of the housework.” Such categorical statements are bound to put the other person on the defensive. ■ Assume responsibility for your own feelings and preferences. Rather than “You make me mad,” say “I am angry.” Or, try “I’d appreciate it if you’d water the garden” instead of “Do you think the garden needs watering?”

Finally, if you can use an assertive (as opposed to submissive or aggressive) communication style, you will find it easier to head off and deal constructively with conflict situations. You can learn more about assertive communication in this chapter’s Application. Up to this point, we’ve been focusing on communication in the private sphere—interactions between people in personal relationships. To complete our discussion, we need to examine communication in the public sphere—interactions among members of the same society or community who do not personally know one another.

Political attack ads, vicious reality TV shows, “flame wars,” hate-generating Internet sites, road rage—hostile incidents assault Americans on a daily basis. In fact, some universities have instituted speech and behavior codes to counteract hate speech and disrespectful behavior. Profanities and vulgarities in the workplace have become so commonplace that some employers have instituted anti-swearing policies (DuFrene & Lehman, 2002). Ominously, aggression among nonemotionally disturbed kindergartners is on the rise, including hitting, biting, and swearing at teachers; assaulting peers; and even carrying weapons (Wallis, 2003). What is going on?

Sociolinguist Deborah Tannen (1998) characterizes contemporary America as “the argument culture.” According to Tannen, an atmosphere of “unrelenting contention” (p. 3) pervades American culture and is fueled by a growing tendency for Americans to automatically take an adversarial approach in almost Deborah Tannen any public situation. She worries that this constant exposure to public arguments is having a “corrosive” effect on Americans’ spirits and is creating serious social problems. Hostile public debates confuse and frustrate listeners, inflame emotions, and alienate Americans from each other and their leaders.

Photo by Sara Barrett, courtesy, Random House

Public Communication in an Adversarial Culture

Contributing Factors

The Argument Culture: Moving from Debate to Dialogue by Deborah Tannen (Random House, 1998) In this thought-provoking work, Tannen claims that public interchanges in America are increasingly framed as battles or games. Hence, the focus has become trying to win arguments rather than trying to understand what is being said. While acknowledging that opposition can be useful and necessary, Tannen is concerned with what she sees as a trend for Americans to use an adversarial approach to the exclusion of other ways of communicating in public. And living in “the argument culture” is having negative effects on Americans and the larger society. With an easygoing style, Tannen brings in research and wide-ranging examples from politics, the media, the legal profession, the classroom, and the Internet to bolster her thesis. To halt the growth of “the argument culture,” Tannen advocates using nonadversarial ways to negotiate disagreements and mediate conflicts. For instance, she urges people to start looking for ways that both sides can win disagreements (as opposed to thinking in terms of one side “winning” and the other “losing”). In addition, she urges people to get out of the “dualism trap.” Instead of asking, “What is the other side?” individuals can ask, “What are the other sides?” Tannen recommends setting up discussions with three or more people rather than using the debate-prone two-person format. She also suggests reducing the use of war metaphors (the battle of the sexes, the war on drugs, “annihilating” the other team, and so forth) and replacing them with less combative figures of speech. Cover copyright © 1997 by Random House. Inc. Used by permission of Random House, Inc.

Obviously, numerous factors contribute to social contentiousness, and we can touch on only a few. We’ll start with the fact that the United States is a strongly individualistic culture. This culture predisposes Americans to be adversarial because the self is perceived to be an isolated entity and in opposition to society. Second, Americans (and those in other Western cultures) have a dualistic view of nature and tend to see things in terms of opposites—good versus bad, strong versus weak, and so on (Tannen, 1998). On the other hand, most Eastern cultures have a nondualistic perspective, in which opposites are seen as complementary partners, both essential to a larger whole (good and bad, strong and weak). A third factor is that face-to-face communication is on the decline, fed by economic pressures and advances in technology. Parents are working longer hours, and many come home exhausted. This can mean less “quality time” for children. Many families gather only rarely for meals. Instead, to accommodate busy schedules, family members each pop frozen dinners into the micro-

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RE C O M M E N D E D READING

Road rage is one example of increased public conflict in American society.

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wave. Whereas families used to gather around a single radio or television, now family members each have their own radios and TVs (as well as computers and cell phones). In the same vein, distance-learning classes permit many individuals to take classes they would not otherwise be able to attend, but students have limited social interactions with peers and instructors. Taken together, such changes mean that individuals spend more time on their own, rather than learning to interact effectively with others. Excessive exposure to the high levels of physical and verbal aggression, especially in the media, is a fourth factor in the equation. Children spend from two to four hours a day watching television, with viewing time increasing up through early adolescence. The National Television Violence Study, a large-scale study of the content of network and cable television shows during the 1994–1997 viewing seasons, determined that 61 percent of programs airing between 6 A.M. and 11 P.M. contain violence (Center for Communication and Social Policy, 1998). By the time a child finishes grade school, he or she will have witnessed approximately 8,000 murders and 100,000 other acts of vio