Study on How Societal Roles Determine Human Behavior

Social psychologists pay attention to how people interpret situations and their impact on thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (Ross Nisbett,1991). Thus, Social psychology manifests individuals as people with fixed characteristics while also portraying individuals in a social-context showing how situational variables and roles impact behaviour. This can be further looked into as interpersonal; helping behaviour, aggression, discrimination, etc. and intrapersonal; attitudes, emotions, cognition, etc.(Heider,1958).

Behaviour is seen to be a product of the situation/role and the person, which in psychology is termed as Situationism - the speculation that behaviour is governed by the environment we reside in; and Dispositionism - the view that behaviour is determined by internal factors of each individual such as personality and temperaments(Heider,1958). Unlike in the past where psychologists spoke for either the disposition or the situational nature of behaviour currently, psychologists acknowledge that behaviour is a combination of intricate factors of human nature and the environment around them (Lewin Mischel,1977).

However, there are instances where an individuals disposition overrides the situation while some instances the role played by the individual takes a more prominent place. Hence, we will look into aspects such as helping behaviour, obedience and conformity to understand how in certain instances society and its roles plays a bigger part in determining behaviour than personality.

Obedience

Obedience is a fundamental concept within family dynamics (Bray Harvey,1992; Martínez,2007) workplace (Özcan,2014) and school (Xiao,1999). Looking at the history of man, you find more crimes are committed for obedience than rebellion (Snow,1961). This discovery was made years after “obedience” went through various stages of psychological experimentation. For instance; Ribot (1891), expressed it as a context of will, which Milgram(1989) termed “autonomic obedience”.

Obedience was also discussed as a parent-child relationship where instilling obedience was a critical responsibility of parents through aspects such as “10 Commandments” where the child is taught to play his part as a devout catholic (Stogdill,1936). Ferenczi (1916/1950) agrees that obedience is not inherent but a part of human-development which is learnt and then challenged as the child grows older with the disappearance of the tendency to obey. However, finding another subject to attach obedience to; teacher/superiors, etc. depending on the situation and the role it entails.

Many psychologists such as Levinson; Adorno; Sanford (1950), pursued the possibility of “personality traits” playing a role in certain actions. Milgram too refused the possibility of the situational-based/ role-related excuses such as “I cannot be blamed; I was following orderes” given by concentration camp-guards at the Nuremberg War Trials, which led to his experiment on obedience. Before the study was orchestrated 100% of the participants thought they would not shock another while 1-2% agreed that others might, making the results of a 65% reaching 450volts rather shocking(Milgram,1974).

Similar experiments have been conducted over time due to psychologists presenting the fact that people in modern times wouldn’t comply to such authority such as Hoflings study of obedience (1966) where 21/22 nurses complied to authority. The 21 out of 22 nurses who complied to the authority of said doctor was unable to question or challenge his power due to the fact that as children everyone is raised/taught to obey and its ingrained to an extreme where its habituated as “the only duty of children is implicit obedience” (Hall,1904). Hence, obeying another’s command is seen to stem through upbringing, legitimate authority and socialization, which are all considered to be situational influences and the role played in socializing.

However, the replication done at Santa Clara University was the most recent study showing that 65% of men and 73% of women administered shocks when ordered (Burger,2009). Some psychologists attempted to attribute this to the individuals’ sadistic nature (dispositional) but certain variations in the experiments revealed that changes in the surrounding influenced obedience. Factors such as the physical proximity of the victim to the subject and the experimenter to the subject were seen to influence behaviour. The more isolated the victim was to the subject, the subject complied to instructions. This is seen through Milgram studying proximity in variables; where the victim was unseen, seen and felt by the subject and obedience reduced with each variable (Milgram,1975). Similarly, the proximity of the experimenter affected obedience as “obedience dropped sharply when the experimenter was psychically removed from the laboratory” bringing forth a lack of the role of authority (Milgram,1975).

The reduction in obedience that was achieved through the change in venue, social support, experimenter absenteeism, etc. are a few variations confirming the situational effect on behaviours such as obedience. The experiments carried by Milgram introduced the agency theory by which he claims that under the influence of legitimate authority people undergo an agentic shift leading people to hold authority figures in charge responsible for the consequences of their actions. This can also be related to the study of synchrony and destructive obedience which state that people who act in synchrony with an authority figure are more likely to follow orders (destructive) than people who aren’t in synchrony (Wiltermuth,2012). The synchrony and destructiveness of obedience study further explains that the candidate mirroring the experimenter’s actions play the role of a follower, hence following the instructions of putting the bugs into the grinder as participants in synchrony with the experimenter put in 54% more bug into the funnel than participants in the asynchronous conditions (Wiltermuth,2012).

Helping which is explained through Freudian and other personality-theories such as the initialization of societal standards is first and foremost considered an act governed by ethical precepts taught to children, which support Hartshrone and May’s (1928) statement that these acts aren’t fixed characteristics of an individual (Bickman,1969; Darley Latane,1968; Korte,1969). Many psychologists have conducted experiments on this matter such as Helping Behaviour (Piliavin,1969), From Jerusalem to Jericho (Darley Batson,1973), Effects of Situational Primes “From Student to Superhero” (Nelson and Norton,2004), etc.

The “Situational and Dispositional Variables in Helping” experiment in relation to the Good Samaritan parable, supported Batsons’ hypothesis that the degree of hurry a person is in and time factors determines helping-behaviour as only 10% of high-hurry-situation individuals offered help as opposed to 63% of help offered by low-hurry-situation individuals. He further explains that the individual sees both the experimenter and victim needing help, it comes down to who needs it more and the role they play in that specific situation. In this instance, it was the role of a “subject” to an experimenter. This experiment further suggests that how “virtuous” and individual is does not affect helping behaviour as seen through the Priest and Levite but it is the social roles and factors such as the time consumption, importance of helping over the duties of the religious, type of help needed, degree of hurry, etc. that affected the help rendered at different times. Which all finally collaborate to explain how certain behaviours in certain situations are determined more by the role one plays than their individual characteristics.

Nelson and Norton (2004) state that situational-priming impacts spontaneous behaviour and future-planned behaviour. Findings indicate that subtle-priming approaches create behaviour stemming without conscious regulation in instances such as conformity (Epley Gilovich,1999), helping behaviour (Garcia, Moskowitz Darley,2002) and walking-speed (Bargh, Chen Burrows,1996). Darley and Batson (1973) states that informing individuals that they’re late reduced help whereas Macrae and Johnston (1998) states that an individual primed with helping-words were more prone to pick-up someone’s stationary. However, although priming’s seen to influence spontaneous-behaviour Penner Finkelstein (1998), predicted that its unlikely to impact predicted/stable behaviours like volunteering which led to studies such as “From Student to Superhero” which looked at how situational-primes make people think themselves to be more helpful. The results of these studies supported the above hypothesis on situational priming as participants volunteered more than twice as many hours than non-primed candidates as the latter was not bestowed an illusionary role of a superhero/man (Macrae Johnston,1998). These studies show evidence supporting the fact that priming effects are strong and could reap results even after 2-weeks (Merikle Danemoan,1998) while Lockwood(1997) stated that situational effects of role models guide people behaviour through inspiration.

According to Eisenberg and Fabes (1994), secure and emotionally-warm environments along with socialization and modelling behaviour by parents develop collectivist-nature aiding helping which is again a part of the role the individual plays as a model citizen of that community. Thaibaut and Kelly (1959) states that helping occurs when rewards are maximal when religion backs positive-behaviour claiming that good-behaviours are rewarded. Further studies conducted at the University of Karachi, Pakistan claims that help rendered depends on the type of help required. For instance, 55 people claimed that they would rather help a molested-victim than an accident-victim as the latter causes the helper to be accused by the police. This is due to the fact that if they take on the role of the helper in the accident-situation they will have to take on the role of the accused as well (Iqal,2013). It was Piliavin (1969), who finally introduced the Cost-Reward analysis through the “Helping Behaviour” train study which claims that help finally comes down the costs and rewards the act generates.

Gender and societal-roles both play a vital part in helping-behaviour as people are more likely to help the opposite sex (Benson,1976) while the male “heroic-role” encourages help for dangerous and short-term acts whereas the female “nurturing-role” encourages helping when victim’s known and long-term care is required (Pandey Griffit,1977). This was substantiated by Zimbardo during the Stanford prison experiment where he himself claims to have “been thinking like a superintendent rather than a psychologist” (Zimbardo,1973).

This was also explained to occur due to the internalization of roles by the individuals causing the candidates and him to act as they did. This can also be related to the theory of demand characteristics as he states that people will conform to social roles specially if they are strongly stereotyped (Zimbardo,1973). This is also due to the fact that “an individual carries his social position around his head and puts it into action when the appropriate occasion arises. Not only does he carry it in his head but others also carry it in theirs because social positions matter and must be publicly and commonly conceived by everyone” (Davis,1948).

Conformity

The experiments conducted by Asch (1955) and Jenness (1932) substantiate the role played by external factors in shaping behaviour namely, Conformity which Willis (1964) states as the modification of behaviour of an individuals preferred tendencies to a socially prescribed standards for mainly 2 reasons; normative-influence and informal-influence. According to Kelman (1958), there are 3 forms of social-influence contributing to conformity; compliance, identification and internalization, which all stem through roles an individual plays and situational factors such as culture, group-size, age, etc. Sadat,2011)

Peabody (1985) claims that some national groups are submissive while others are independent. Asch (1952) and Triandis (1990) later termed these as individualistic and collectivist cultures.

Each society has a separate role that they play as a whole and each individual has a role to play in order to keep/ meet the societal standards. In the instance of relating this concept to real life, the behaviour of blood donators have been analyzed by Ferguson (1996) where the general notion is that being part of a society an individual is to contribute to the society. This contribution is presented in various ways, in this context; blood donation. The act and decision of donating blood in a collectivist culture is backed by situational forces such as the role of a cultured citizen, peer-pressure, family expectations, societal standard, etc. Berry (1979) proposed a link between the maintenance of a society and its behaviour through finding higher conformity at Sierra Leone (A high-food-accumulation-culture which highlight obedience and responsibility) in comparison to the Baffin Islands (A low-food-accumulation-culture highlighting self-reliance). Schwartz (1994) confirmed this by claiming that collectivist-cultures follow conservatism entailing conformity, tradition and security. This can be explained through the “status” that collectivist cultures strive to maintain. For instance; many Asian countries tries to maintain the fact that they are subservient. Hence, citizen has roles to play in order to preserve said status.

The line experiment conducted by Asch (1951) concluded that a large group lacked the effect that a small group had (3-people). But this theory was rejected by Latane (1981) based on the social impact theory stating that bigger the group, larger the effect depending on power and immediacy of influence-sources. The self-attention-theory states that when more attention is focused on self, the more an individual attempt to follow expected behaviour due to the minority standing out (Carve Scheier,1981). The minority that comply in order to avoid standing out are seen as individuals who may not have enough confidence which brings us to the concept of self-esteem, which is another feature that is solely based on situational attributes in certain environments and the self-identity (social-role) of an individual affecting an individual’s self-evaluation of self-concept (Frager,1970; Good Sanchez,2010).

As the most persistent measure of self-esteem is the feeling of acceptance and respect which is comparatively drawn on through the role an individual play in society and at that specific moment (Rosenberg et al. 1995). Further, Asch (1951) claims that higher the task difficulty and greater the ambiguity, the higher the probability for conformity. This was proved through the experiment conducted by Kahana and Coe (1969). The susceptibility to conformity isn’t distinctive to a specific type of task but is found in a wide variety including; the reactance and expression of attitudes (Converse Campbell,1968; Sanders,1976; Dunker,1938), violation of prohibitions (Barch, Trumbo Nangle,1957; Blake, Helson Moutan,1956) and the reaction to judgmental, perceptual and factual material (Asch,1951; Blake Brehm,1954; Endler,1960).

It’s suggested that although some predictions of behaviour could be made based on traits and of a person, the most powerful ones would likely be made by situational factors and social roles (Allport Vernon,1933; Dudycha,1936; Newcomb,1920). Causing many psychologists to endorse Mitchel’s (1967) declaration that situational roles predominantly overwhelm dispositional-factors when shaping behaviour (Funder Ozer,1983).