¶ … attribution error helps explain, not only why people are surprised by the results of Milgram's experiment, but also why people are surprised whenever other seemingly good people go bad things. They fundamental attribution error refers to a person's tendency to blame internal characteristics when evaluating someone else's behavior. Generally, this means that when someone else engages in negative behaviors, the observer is likely to believe that behavior is the result of internal characteristics and not look for the external characteristics that could cause that behavior. Furthermore, this allows people to suggest that people who do bad things are bad people, which makes it easy to conclude that one would never engage in that same behavior. When one can see an experiment like Milgram's, in which presumably average people engage in behavior that is really somewhat horrific, it becomes easier to understand how social pressure helps contribute to negative behaviors. However, I am not certain that I...
Social psychology is a very broad field that takes in the many varieties of group dynamics, perceptions and interactions. Its origins date back to the late-19th Century, but it really became a major field during and after the Second World War, in order to explain phenomena like aggression, obedience, stereotypes, mass propaganda, conformity, and attribution of positive or negative characteristics to other groups. Among the most famous social psychological studies
Social Psychology Studies: Explaining Irrational Individual Behavior by Understanding Group Dynamics Social psychology is, as its name suggests, a science that blends the fields of psychology, which is the study of the individual, and sociology, which is the study of groups. Social psychology examines how the individual is influenced by the group. It looks at the influence of group or cultural norms on individual behaviors, thoughts, and feelings. However, because group
Lai massacre that occurred in March 1968 and led by Lieutenant William L. Calley took the lives of more than 500 Vietnamese civilians, including elderly men as well as women and children. This event fueled growing outrage in the United States over the war in Vietnam and contributed to the groundswell of calls for the withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Vietnam altogether. This paper provides an examination of
Community Colleges in America In 1983 and 1984, a dozen major reports on the United States' schools were published. All stressed the need for "excellence" in education. These reports are the subject of: Excellence in Education: Perspectives on Policy and Practice. The reports pertaining to higher education were published by The BusinessHigher Education Forum, and saw higher education as "unable to train skilled managers and technicians that they believed industry needed."
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