The human being is a galaxy of motivations, emotions, cognitive distortions (biases), perceptions and elaborations. Its complexity is such that it is not surprising that it gets stuck from time to time. We are not talking about real mental disorders, but about psychological phenomena that can occur daily and yet indicate brain failure.
So, here is this Psychology-Online article in which we will show you a list of surprising social psychological phenomena that you may have never heard of, but have probably experienced at least once in your life.
Diffusion of responsibilities
Diffusion of responsibility is a sociopsychological phenomenon that exposes that a person has less likely to take responsibility of an action when there are other individuals present. In these situations, the individual assumes that others are responsible for acting.
This is one of the social psychological phenomena that tends to occur in large groups of people in which responsibility is not specifically assigned. Diffusion of responsibilities rarely occurs when the person is alone, but rather occurs in groups of three or more people.
Below, we show you some examples of this psychological phenomenon:
- Emergency situations: People feel less responsibility to respond or ask for help if they know others are also watching the situation.
- Group tasks– Each member takes the least responsibility for contributing and working towards achieving the task or goal. The extension of responsibility is present in almost all groups, but at various levels, and can be mitigated by reducing the size of the group and explicitly increasing the responsibility of each one.
Drag effect
What phenomena does social psychology study? One of them is the drag effect, or effect bandwagonin which it is considered that a person has certain beliefs only because the majority believes in those same things. This effect is often referred to as herd instinct.
Therefore, it can be said that humans have the tendency to follow the crowd. In the literal sense, the term bandwagon It means “the car that carries the band to a parade.” Therefore, the expression “jump on the bandwagon” is used in the sense of “joining an increasingly widespread trend.”
If you want to better understand this psychological phenomenon, we recommend reading this article about .
Dunning–Kruger effect
The e is a cognitive distortion in which a inexperienced person and competent in a field They tend to overestimate their abilities and to despise experts in the field. As a corollary to this theory, incompetent people often appear extremely arrogant.
Forer effect
The , also called the subjective validation effect or Barnum effect, is one of the most surprising social psychological phenomena. Specifically, it describes how a person identifies a generic phenomenon as his or her own without realizing that it can refer to any individual.
Thus, the Forer effect provides a partial explanation for the wide spread of some pseudosciences such as astrology and divination, as well as some personality tests.
streetlight effect
The streetlight effect or street light effect is a type of observational distortion consisting of look for something where it is easier to find it. This type of research is also called “drunkard’s search” because of the example that is commonly used to explain this phenomenon.
The expression was coined by David H. Freedman, but the metaphor dates back to at least 1964, when Abraham Kaplan dubbed it the “drunkard’s search principle.” If we talk about examples of psychological phenomena, this has numerous versions, but they all have the following structure:
- A police officer sees a drunk looking for something near a lamppost and asks him what he lost.
- “A set of keys,” answers the questioner.
- The policeman decides to help him, but after a few minutes of fruitless searching he asks the drunk if he is sure he lost his keys near the streetlight.
- The drunk answers no and that he actually lost them in the park.
- Then, the policeman asks him “Why are you looking for them here then?”
- The drunk answers: “Because it is illuminated here!”
In reality, the story of the streetlight effect is related to the human tendency to lead the search for truth along simple paths, avoiding complexity. For example, it is difficult to find an object where it is dark, so people usually look for places where there is light because the search will be easier.
Lombard effect
There are many social psychological phenomena that affect human behavior. Specifically, the Lombard effect is the involuntary tendency from speakers to increase voice intensity in the presence of noise background that interferes with understanding the conversation.
Effort and change not only affect intensity, but also other acoustic characteristics such as pitch, rhythm, and syllabic duration. This compensation results in the listener perceiving an increase in sound and, therefore, understanding the words better.
As we see, the Lombard effect is related to real communication needs. Given the this effect is involuntaryis used to detect staining in the simulation of hearing loss.
Pygmalion Effect
The , also known as the Rosenthal effect, derives from classic studies on self-fulfilling prophecy, whose basic assumptions They follow this order:
- If a teacher believes that a boy or girl has fewer intellectual resources, they will unconsciously treat him or her differently from others.
- Then, the minor will internalize that judgment and behave accordingly.
- In this way, a vicious circle will be established in which the infant will tend to act just as the teacher had originally imagined.
- It should be noted that this behavior can be attributed to the fact that, unconsciously, the teacher’s negative judgment will undermine the child’s academic results, since he will believe that he is not capable of performing as well as others.
In short, this psychic phenomenon shows that belonging to a social context in which it is evaluated based on performance It can have a psychological impact on boys and girls whose results do not resemble the average. Furthermore, the fact that the teacher himself gives more credit to the student makes learning easier. On the contrary, if the teacher discredits him, the child may come to believe that he is not capable of meeting academic objectives.
Ringelmann effect
The Ringelmann effect is the tendency for members of a group to become increasingly less productive as the group grows. This effect, discovered by the French agricultural engineer Maximilien Ringelmann, illustrates the inverse relationship that exists between the size of a group and the extent of the individual contribution of its members in carrying out tasks.
Thus, Ringelmann studied the relationship between reductions in effectiveness or performance efficiency and group productivity when working together on a task. The result of this social psychological phenomenon is that effort is significantly less when members work in a group than when they work alone.
Additionally, Ringelmann discovered that as more people join a group, it becomes less and less efficient. Ultimately, this violates the notion that group effort reliably leads to greater effort on behalf of members.
Bystander effect
The bystander effect, also known as bystander apathy or witness effect. It is a phenomenon of social psychology that exposes that people don’t offer help someone in trouble when other people are present.
The probability of intervention is inversely related to the number of spectators. In other words, the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that any of them will provide help. Numerous variables are involved in determining the bystander effect, such as ambiguity, social cohesion, and extent of responsibility.
Fundamental attribution error
In social psychology, the fundamental attribution error is the tendency to attribute the cause of a behavior as one’s own, underestimating the influence of the environment or context. This effect is also described as tendency to believe that what people do reflects who they are.
The classic example that is presented to understand this social psychological phenomenon is the following:
A driver is stuck in traffic because of another driver.
- The first attributes the other’s behavior to his personality, for example, to the fact that he only thinks about himself, that he is selfish, or that he is an inexperienced driver. Even so, this does not mean that his behavior is also influenced by external factors such as, for example, that he is about to miss his flight, his wife is giving birth in the hospital or that he has had a day awful.
- The other driver makes the same mistake and apologizes, saying that he has been affected by contingent causes, for example, that he is late for his job interview, that he must pick up his son to take him to the dentist, or that he believes that he is not a good driver.
This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
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Bibliography
- Hogg, M.A., Graham, M.V. (2008). Social psychology. Madrid: Panamericana Medical Editorial.
- Myers, D. G. (2009). Social Psychology. Milan: McGraw Hill.
- World Open News (2020). 10 little-known psychological phenomena that almost everyone has experienced. Retrieved from: https://www.wonews.it/post/10-fenomeni-psicologici