Chapter 21 Chapter Thirteen Social Psychologist-1

Q: What field of modern psychology is extremely busy and productive without a clear identity, or even a generally accepted definition? Answer: Social psychology.It is not so much a field as it is a no man's land between psychology and sociology, where it overlaps and influences several other social sciences.Since the birth of social psychology, its practitioners have disagreed about what it really is.Psychologists define it one way, sociologists another (this book is only concerned with the psychological part of social psychology), and while most textbook editors offer vague definitions, what do they Said both, said nothing, hoping to synthesize both opinions and cover the entire hash topic in this field.Here's an example: "(Social psychology is) the scientific study of the personal and situational factors that influence a person's social behavior."

The problem is that social psychology doesn't have a unified concept, it doesn't grow from the seed of a theoretical construct (as do the behavioral and gestalt schools), but it grows like a weed out of the field of social science . In 1965, in the introduction to his famous textbook on social psychology, Harvard's Roger Brown said that he could make a list of topics that were generally considered to belong to social psychology, but could not see any commonality between them. characteristic: I myself cannot find a single feature or combination of features that can clearly preserve the subject of social psychology as a subject of general experimental psychology or sociology or anthropology or linguistics.Roughly speaking, of course, social psychology is concerned with a person's mental processes (or behaviors) to the extent that they result from past or present interactions with other A definition that excludes something else.

More than two decades later, in the second edition of this textbook, Brown doesn't even bother to say anything of the sort, and goes straight to it without a single definition.That's a good idea, let's do the same.As an initial probe of the field, let's look at some examples of social psychology research: An undergraduate student volunteer—call him U. V Bar - Come to the laboratory of the Psychology Building to participate in the "Vision Sense" experiment.6 volunteers are already there.The researchers said the experiment was related to the length of the difference lines.At the front of the room is a writing board with a vertical line several inches long (this is the standard length), and another board to the right with three lines numbered 1, 2, and 3.Volunteers were to name which of the numbered lines were as long as the standard line. U． V can easily see that the second line is the standard length, and that the first and third are shorter.Other volunteers also talked about their choices, and everyone talked about the second standard when he said it, such as U. V's choice is the same.The experimenter changed the tablet, and the process was repeated, with similar results.

However, when using the next tablet, the first volunteer said "No. 1". However, in U. From V's point of view, No. 1 is obviously longer than the standard line.When others in turn stated the same result explicitly, U. V was getting more and more uneasy.When it was his turn, he felt awkward, hesitant, nervous, confused, and didn't know what to say.When he and others in the same situation finally spoke, they agreed with the majority 37 percent of the time, and at least part of the time, three-quarters of the people said the answers they didn't see for themselves A little longer is a little shorter.

The reality is that there is only one person at a time—in this case, U. V—is the actual subject; the other so-called volunteers are the assistants of the researcher Solomon Ash, who asks these volunteer assistants to sometimes deliberately make wrong choices.The purpose of this standard experiment, conducted in the early 1950s, was to determine the conditions that produced conformity—that is, the tendency to yield to real or imagined pressure to agree with the majority of group members.As confirmed by many further experiments, there are many reasons for conformity, among them the desire to be right (if everyone else agrees, maybe they are right), and not to be seen as a naysayer or weirdo wishes.

Two student volunteers, after discussing and practicing on daily clerical chores, played a game called "Prisoner's Dilemma" according to the experimenter's request.The premise is: The two suspects were taken into custody and held separately.The district attorney was convinced they had committed a crime together, but he didn't have enough evidence to charge them.He told each of the two men that if neither of them confessed, he would reduce their sentences to a year each.However, if one confesses and the other does not, the one who confesses will receive special treatment (sentenced to only half a year) while the other will receive the harshest punishment, possibly 20 years in prison.In the end, if both confessed, he would ask for clemency and each be sentenced to 8 years in prison.

Since Prisoner 1 cannot discuss a plan with Prisoner 2, he can only imagine the possibilities.If he confesses but 2 do not confess, he (No. 1) will only be sentenced to half a year, which is the best treatment he can get, while No. 2 will be sentenced to 20 years, which is the worst result he can get.However, No. 1 knows that it is very risky to do so. If both he and No. 2 recruit, each will be sentenced to 8 years.Maybe he'd better not confess.If he doesn't recruit, and No. 2 doesn't recruit, everyone will only be sentenced to one year, which is not too bad a result.However, if he doesn't recruit and No. 2 recruits-then No. 2 will only be sentenced to half a year and he will be sentenced to a very terrible 20 years.

Clearly, rational thinking cannot arrive at the best outcome for two prisoners unless they trust each other to make a choice that is good for both of them.If one of the two chooses because of fear or greed, both will fail.However, there is no point in choosing on the basis of what is best for both unless both are convinced that the other will do the same.In this way, volunteers make choices, and the results can be changed at will according to the conditions and the instructions of the researchers. (Working for each other's good is only sometimes the result.) Over the course of more than three decades, many researchers have exploited the Prisoner's Dilemma in various ways, studying trust, cooperation, and the conditions and inverse situations that make these things.

A college student ringing doorbells in Palo Alto, California, introduces himself as a representative of the Safe Driving Citizenship Campaign, and makes an absurd request: permission to put a large car park in his front lawn. sign that read "Drive Carefully" (this request is absurd because, as you can see from the photos he took, a beautiful house is partially blocked by a huge sign that reads large characters with poor calligraphy).Not surprisingly, most residents disagree.But some agreed.Why would they agree?Because for them, this is not the first request.Two weeks ago, another student, who claimed to be a volunteer for the Traffic Safety Neighborhood Committee, asked them to display a 3-inch square placard that read "Be a Safe Driver" neatly. The harmless request was complied with.Only 17 percent of residents who hadn't been softened by the previous humble request said yes to the placard, compared with 55 percent of those who had previously agreed to display the 3-inch-square sign.

The experiment, done in 1966, was the first of many to explore the door-to-door approach, familiar to financiers who ask others for a small amount of money in return for large sums.However, the researchers were not interested in financing or driving safely. Their goal was to study why these methods of persuasion were successful.They concluded that people who agree to a smaller request end up seeing themselves as helpful and people-minded people, and this self-perception makes them feel more willing to help the next time the request is larger. much. The staff of a large psychiatric hospital said that Mr. X suffered from schizophrenia.He was a well-dressed middle-aged man who said he had auditory hallucinations when he came to the hospital.He told the admission psychiatrist that the voices were not very audible, but "as far as I could tell, they seemed to say 'empty', 'false' and 'thumping'".Having been admitted to the hospital, he never spoke of the voices again and has behaved normally since then, but the hospital staff continued to say he was mentally ill.Nurses also noted a frequent anomaly on his card: "Patient writing." Several of his roommates saw it differently.One of them said: "You are not crazy. You are a reporter or a professor. You are checking the situation in the hospital."

The patients were right and the staff was wrong. In this 1973 experiment to study the interaction between psychiatric hospital staff and their patients, a professor of psychology and seven research assistants admitted to 12 hospitals on the east and west coasts said they had auditory hallucinations. fault.Once in, they immediately behave normally.As patients, they overtly observe staff attitudes and behavior towards patients that they would never have had the opportunity to witness directly had they been identified as researchers.Among some of their shocking discoveries were: -- Once mental hospital staff believe that a patient has schizophrenia, they either cannot see or misinterpret the normal behavior of the patient's daily life.On average, the pseudopatients needed 19 days of normal behavior to relax themselves. - An employee who believes a patient is schizophrenic spends as little time as possible in contact with the patient.Generally speaking, they will ignore the patient's direct question and walk away with their eyelids raised. - Staff often ignore patients while working or talking to each other, as if they are not around at all."Depersonalization was to such an extent that the pseudopatients felt that they were invisible or at least unnoticeable," wrote David Rosenhan, senior author of the studies. In a university psychology lab, six second-year male students sat in a single room, each wearing a pair of headphones.Participant A heard the researcher say through his earphones that when he counted down to the end, Participants A and D had to shout "La!" as loud as they could for a few seconds.After the first round, A heard that this time only he himself yelled after counting, and the next time all 6 people yelled together; and so on.Some of the time, these instructions were passed to all six subjects, but other times, this or that person would hear false instructions.For example, participant A may be told that all six are to yell, when, in fact, several others are told not to yell.To conceal what was actually happening, the yells that all six people heard on their headphones during each quiz were pre-recorded yells. (This experiment, like many others in social psychology, was unimaginable before the development of modern communication devices.) All this little scam has a serious purpose: It's part of a series of studies on "social opportunism." "Social opportunism" refers to a person's tendency not to perform to the best of his ability in a group unless the work he is doing is recognized and known by others.In this case, the evidence was the measured strength of each individual's shouts (each student was fitted with a separate microphone).When a student believed he was yelling with another student, he used only 82 percent of the force he would use when yelling alone.And when he thought all six students were yelling together, his average force output was reduced to 74 percent of his strength when yelling alone."There is a clear potential for social opportunism in the very nature of humans. We suspect that the effects of social opportunism have a wide-ranging and profound consequence ... (it) It can be seen as a social disease." Such sampling, no matter how varied, does not do justice to the range of subjects and research methods in social psychology, but perhaps these samples can give us a sense of what the field is about, or at least not about.It is not concerned with what is actually going on inside a person's brain in the strict sense, as in, say, Catersonian, Jamesian, or Freudian studies, nor is it concerned with the larger society scientific phenomena, such as social hierarchy analysis, social organization, and social practice. It is concerned with everything in between, any thought or action of one person because of what another person thinks or does, or what the first person thinks or does about the second person.Gordon Allport wrote many years ago that social psychology is about "understanding and explaining how a person's thoughts, feelings, and behavior are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others."This can only be regarded as a very small description, but after seeing some examples, we begin to understand what he means, and also understand the difficulty of expressing these in words. Social psychology is both a more recent and arguably older field of knowledge. It didn't appear in its modern form until the 1950s, but philosophers and archetypal psychologists have long been building theories about how our interactions with each other affect our our mental life, and, in turn, how our mental processes and character affect our social behaviour.According to Allport, one could find evidence that Plato was the founder of social psychology, or if not Aristotle, or, if not, some of the later political philosophies Homes, such as Hobbes and Bentham, etc. are also available.All these ancestors contributed, however, to contemplation, not to science.Claims of founding fathers are increasingly numerous, but equally shaky in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: Auguste Comte, Émile Durkheim, American sociologist Charles Houghton Curré, There are many others who have written on social psychological issues, but mostly armchair philosophical speculation rather than experimental science. However, in 1897, an American psychologist named Norman Tripler conducted the first test of commonsense social psychological speculation.He had read that cyclists were faster when they were being chased than when they were alone, and it occurred to him that perhaps it was also true that one's performance was affected by the presence of others.To test this hypothesis, he asked 10- and 12-year-olds to reel fishing line individually or in pairs (without telling them their true intentions).He found that many of the kids did roll faster when other people were around. Tripler didn't just confirm his hypothesis; he also created a rough pattern of social psychological investigation.His method, an experiment that stimulates a real-world situation, obscures the researcher's true purpose and compares the effect of the presence or absence of a variable (in this case, a child standing by to watch). In comparison, this method has become the dominant method of social psychology research.Plus, his topic, "social facilitation" (the observer's positive influence on a person's performance), remains a major research topic among social psychologists for over three decades—Allport even Having said that this is the only problem. In the 1930s, social psychology expanded beyond Tripler's topic.A Turk named Muzafa Sharif (1906-1988), who received graduate training in psychology at Harvard and Columbia Universities, studied the influence of other people on a person's judgment rather than performance.Sharif had subjects sit in a dark room, one at a time.They stared at a dim lamp and asked them to tell when the lamp started to move and how far it moved. (Unbeknownst to them, hallucinations of movement are a common delusion).Sharif found that each person had a unique impression of how far the light had moved when tested alone, but was swayed by the opinions of others in the group when they were also included.His experiments strongly demonstrated the fragility of individuals' judgments about social views, and pointed the way to hundreds of compliance experiments conducted over the next two decades. (The famous compliance experiment on Ash's line length described earlier was carried out almost 20 years later.) An even larger expansion of the field of social psychology was caused by the rise of the Nazis in Germany.A group of Jewish psychologists immigrated to the United States in the 1930s, some of whom had broader social-psychological views than the American tradition.Among the refugees is Kirk Luwin, who is widely considered to be the true father of the field, a man we've talked about before.He was a Gestalt psychologist at the University of Berlin, and his graduate student Bruma Segarnik conducted an experiment to test one of his own hypotheses that unfinished tasks are more important than any completed tasks. easier to remember. (He was correct.) Although Luwin's name has never been known to the general public, and is known today only by a few psychologists and some students of psychology, Chase Tolman, in his 1947 He was mentioned after his death: Freud, the clinical psychologist, and Luwin, the experimental psychologist—these are two giants whose names will rank above all in the history of our psychological age.For it was their contrasting yet complementary insights that for the first time made psychology a science applicable to real humans and real human societies. Luwin, with his deep glasses and scholarly air, was a rare man: a genius of great sociability and kindness.He enjoys, and encourages, intense and free-flowing group discussions on psychological issues with colleagues and graduate students; during these discussions, his mind is an intellectual flintstone that brings out a rainstorm of sparks—some of which he Hypotheses and ideas to inspire experiments are given at will to others, and those experiments which he arranges he will happily appropriate as his own. Luwin was born in 1890 in a small village in Posen (then part of Prussia, now part of Poland), where his family opened a grocery store.He went to school with poor grades and showed no intellectual aptitude, perhaps because of anti-Semitic tendencies among his classmates.When he was 15, however, his family moved to Berlin, where he reaped an intellectual harvest and developed an interest in psychology, eventually earning a doctorate at the University of Berlin.However, many psychology courses at that time were based on Wundt's traditional theory.Luwin found that some of the problems these theories dealt with were too small, boring, and unhelpful for understanding human nature, and he desperately sought a more meaningful psychology.Not long after he returned to the university from the army during World War I, Koehler became the head of the Institute, and Wedheimer also became a member of the teaching and research section. Therefore, Luwin found what he had been looking for, the gestalt theory. His early Gestalt studies dealt primarily with questions of motivation and inspiration, however, he soon moved on to applying Gestalt theory to social problems.Luwin conceived of social behavior in terms of "field theory," a way of looking at an overall concept of the forces that affect a person's social behavior.In his view, each individual is surrounded by a "life space" or field of dynamic forces in which his or her needs and purposes interact with the influence of the environment.Social behavior can be systematized in terms of the tension and interaction of these forces, and a person's tendency to maintain balance among these forces or to restore balance when this balance is disturbed. In order to describe these interrelationships, Luwin always draws the "Jordan curve" on the blackboard, on a piece of paper, on the gray sand, or in the snow-the ellipse representing the life space-and constructs these forces in society on these curves. The push-pull action in the situation.His students in Berlin called these ellipses "Luwin eggs"; later, his students at MIT called them "Luwin baths"; Luwin Potatoes".Whether you call it an egg, a bathtub, or a potato, they all delineate some processes that take place on a small, face-to-face level. These are the realistic passages that Luwin regards as the territory of social psychology. Although students in Berlin crowded to attend Luwin's lectures and observe his research projects, he, like other Jewish academics, made little progress up the academic ladder.However, his brilliant writing on field theory, especially in the areas of personal conflict and child development, earned him an invitation to lecture at Yale University in 1929 and another as a lecturer in 1932. Invitation letter for visiting scholars to go to Stanford for 6 months. In 1933, shortly after Hitler became Führer, Luwin resigned from the University of Berlin and, with the help of American colleagues, secured a transitional job at Cornell University and later a permanent teaching position at the University of Iowa. job. In order to realize his long-standing ideal, he established his own Institute of Social Psychology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1944, the "Group Dynamics Research Center", where he assembled first-class researchers and a group of top-level students. .It became the main training center for mainstream American social psychology. In 1947, just 3 years later, Luwin, then 57, died of a heart attack; the group dynamics research center soon moved to the University of Michigan, where his students continued to spread his ideas here and later elsewhere and methods. Luwin's bold and imaginative experimental style went far beyond the early social psychologists and became one of the most prominent features of this field of study.His experience of the Nazi dictatorship and his yearning for American democracy inspired one of his studies, which can serve as an example.To explore the effects of dictatorships and democracies on people, Luwin and two of his graduate students, Ronald Ribbide and Ralph White, started a series of clubs for 11-year-olds.He provided each club with an adult leader to help them learn crafts, games, and other activities, and gave each leader one of three management styles: authoritarian, democratic, or noninterventionist.The dictatorship group quickly became hostile or passive, the democracy group was friendly and cooperative, and the noninterventionist group was also friendly but apathetic. Also reluctant to do anything.Luwin was very proud of the results of this experiment, because it proved his idea that dictatorships have extremely harmful effects, while democracies have extremely beneficial effects on human beings. It is projects and experiments of this kind that demonstrate Luwin's solid influence on social psychology. (The field theory that enabled him to conceive of these studies never managed to become a central topic of the discipline.) Leon Furstinger (1919-1989) was Luwin's student, colleague and academic successor, Luwin's main contribution, he said, was twofold.On the one hand, he chose very interesting and important topics; it was largely through his efforts that social psychology began to explore group bonding, group decision-making, autocratic and democratic management, attitude change techniques, and conflict resolution.The other part is his "obsessive attempt to create powerful social situations in the laboratory that can make a big difference" and his extraordinary creativity in devising methods. Despite the catalytic effect of Luwin's efforts, for several years social psychology gained a foothold in only a few universities in the larger cities.Elsewhere, behaviorism remains the king of psychological research, and adherents of behaviorism find social psychology too focused on mental processes to be acceptable.During World War II, however, military necessity fueled the most important studies of soldier behavior and morale in social psychology, and after the war a range of social influences and social issues led to great interest in discipline education for the younger generation.Among them: the increasing mobility of the American population and the range of social and personal problems it raises; the search for a new, more persuasive sales technique in the expanding business world; Efforts to exterminate campaigns and more broadly offensive origin and control laws; the slow return of cognitivism to psychology; the rise of Senator McCarthy, thus stimulating interest in the phenomenon of conformism; and continuing international negotiations , which turned the attention of social psychologists to the study of group dynamics and discourse theory. By the 1950s, social psychology was actively expanding, with psychology departments across the United States offering courses in it.The youth rebellion of the 1960s in the United States, the ideological confusion caused by the Vietnam War, black, women's and gay activism, and other social issues made it an increasingly urgent field of study.More often, however, when businessmen and legislators turn to social psychologists for answers, they exaggerate in hearings that social psychologists are only just beginning their work and have no ready-made answers. supply.But it wasn't long before the researchers' data began to have a profound impact on American society.as shown below.In its 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case, the U.S. Supreme Court said evidence from "modern authorities" showed that black children were being poisoned by racially discriminatory education, and cited a wealth of social psychological research that said segregated schools even Being equal also makes black kids feel inferior, with low self-esteem and resentment towards themselves.If Luwin was alive, he would be proud of his successor. Many psychologists feel that their field is too susceptible to fads. "Hot topics" have come and gone in its brief forty years as a trendsetting discipline, and some topics that once seemed to be the quintessence of social psychology are now relegated to the warehouse. The main reason, however, is not the currents that are the essence of social psychology.In most other disciplines, knowledge about a particular group of phenomena is gradually accumulated and deepened, but social psychology deals with a series of distinct problems, which are not related to each other. Knowledge does not increase.As a result, many phenomena captured the interest of social psychologists, were deeply studied, and then explained essentially.And only a few details have to be clarified, and for all intents and purposes, the document is marked "SOLVED," and the case is closed and closed. Here are three notable finalizations. cognitive dissonance This is undoubtedly the most influential theory in social psychology, and it was the hottest topic in the journals of this profession from the late 1950s to the early 1970s.Since then, it has slowly lost its place as a focal point.Today, it is an accepted body of knowledge but no longer an active field of research. Cognitive dissonance theory says that humans feel tense and unpleasant when they have conflicting thoughts (for example, "So-and-so is a garrulous woman, which is annoying," whereas, "I need so-and-so to be my Friends and Partners"), he finds ways to lessen the dissonance ("So-and-so isn't necessarily that bad if you get to know him," or, "I don't really need him; I'm fine without him of.") Luwin was almost approaching this subject in the 1930s, when he was exploring how a person's attitude is changed by his membership in a decision-making group, and how such a person therefore sticks to the decision, thereby Ignore later information that contradicts it.Leon Furstinger, a student of Luwin, took this research further and developed the theory of cognitive dissonance. Furstinger went to the University of Iowa to join Luwin in 1933. At that time, he was a young graduate student with no interest in social psychology. He wanted to learn from Luwin his early work on motivation and inspiration.However, under Luwin's influence, he was drawn to social psychology, and in 1945 became Luwin's assistant at the New Institute for Collective Dynamics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After Luwin's death, Frstinger went to the University of Minnesota, where he continued in Luwin's mantle in the following years to continue such research.Because of his natural intelligence, the excitement he brings to teaching, the audacity with which he conducts deviant research to obtain data that would otherwise be unavailable, is ultimately safe.In one respect, he was boldly competing with Luwin, but in another, he was expressing his own character.He was a fiery, medium-sized guy who liked to play cards and chess, and he looked like he had to win.There was about him the strong, quick-tempered, aggressive spirit that is common in men who have grown up in the stormy life of New York's Lower East Side between the two world wars. There is one example of Frstinger's candor and extraordinaryness.He embarked on a research project in which he spent seven weeks as fake spies with two students, Henry W. Leecken and Stanley Schachter (who had been his students at MIT).They had read in a newspaper in September 1954 that a housewife named Marianne Keicher (not her real name) had declared that for over a year she had been receiving Messages from super-beings she identified as Guardians on the planet Clarion. (These messages were sent by her in a trance state by automatic writing.) She told the media that on December 21, according to the guardian, a great flood is coming, submerging the northern hemisphere, and all the people living here will disappear, leaving only a few voters. Ferstinger was codifying his theory, and his younger colleagues saw a golden opportunity to study cognitive dissonance.In their 1956 report, "When the Prophecy Fails," they proposed a hypothesis: Suppose a man sincerely believes in something; then suppose he is bound by this belief to take some irreversible action; finally, suppose he has evidence in hand, an unambiguous and undeniable proof , proving his own beliefs wrong: what will happen?The man will continually appear, and instead of sinking down, will be more convinced than ever of the validity of his beliefs. The three social psychologists felt that Mrs. Kiche's public statement and subsequent facts were a living and invaluable example of how conflicting responses to a contrary piece of evidence develop.They called Mrs. Kiche and said that one of them was a businessman and the other two were friends. They were very curious about her story and wanted to know more.Leoken gave his real name, but Schachter, who was a man of deadly humor, called himself Leon Furstinger, which to the astonishment of Furstinger had no choice but to say he was Stanley Furstinger. Schachet, and used that identity in all contact with Mrs. Kichet and her followers. They learned that Mrs. Kiche had assembled a small circle of people who met regularly, were already planning for the future, and were waiting for the final order from the planet Clarion.The group drew up a research plan for all three to participate, plus five student assistants who would act as "closed participant observers." Dressed as true believers, they interviewed members of the small group and participated in their research. 60 sessions in 7 weeks. Some visits were only one or two hours long, while others were endless like seances, lasting 12-14 hours at a time The study was physically and emotionally exhausting, partly because of having to mask one's reactions to some absurdity during the session, and partly because of having to record the It was not an easy task to read the Guardian's words in the status. Fürstinger later recalled: The three of us took turns going to the toilet to take notes, and the frequency of going in and out was well controlled so as not to cause gossip, and the toilet was the only place in the house where there was any privacy.我们当中的一个或两个会不时地说出去走动一下，呼吸一点新鲜空气。然后，我们会飞快地直奔旅馆房间，把记下来的笔记录下来……到研究结束时，我们都已经差不多累垮了。 最终，基切夫人接受到等待已久的信息了。太空飞船将于某时在某地降落，以解救信仰者，并把他们带到安全地带。可是，飞船既没有在特定时间到来，也没有在后来数度更改的地方降落，而12月21日也最终过去了，没有发生任何洪水。 这时候，基切夫人也接到话了，说由于信徒的良善和信徒创造的人，上帝已经决定收回这场灾难，让世界得以安宁。其中一些成员，特别是一直就心存怀疑或者不太确信的人，他们无法承受自己信仰所托的预言的失败，最终退出去了，可是，一些坚信不疑的信徒——有些人甚至辞掉了工作，卖掉了家产——他们的行为正如研究者们所料。他们最终更加坚定不移地信仰由基切夫人传达出来的真理，这样就消弥了他们曾经信仰的东西与令人失望的现实之间的冲突。 弗斯丁格继续发展和出版（1957年）他的认知失谐理论。它立即成了社会心理学的中心问题，并在15年多的时间内一直是实验研究中主要的课题。1959年，他和一位同事，J·麦里尔·卡尔史密斯，进行了另一项研究，它后来经常作为古典认知失谐实验而被引用。他们巧妙地哄骗了志愿受试者，不让他们知道实验的真实目的，因为这些受试者如果知道研究者们想知道他们是否会改变其对某些话题的观点，以减少认知失谐的话，他们也许会因为太不好意思而不这么做。 弗斯丁格和卡尔史密斯让本科的男大学生受试者做一件极端烦人的工作：他们得把十几把汤匙装进一只盘子，然后再一把把拿出来，然后又放进去，一直重复半个小时。然后，他们得转动记分板上的48个木钉，每根都顺时针转动四分之一圈，再转达四分之一圈等等，一直工作半个小时。每个受试者都弄完以后，研究者之一会告诉他说，实验的目的，是要看看人对某件事情有多么有趣的想法，是否会影响到他完成这件事情的效率，还对他说，他是在“无期待组”里，而其他人会被告知说这工作很有兴趣。不幸的是，研究者继续说，本应该去把这个情况告诉下一个受试者的助手刚才却打来电话说他不干了。研究者说，他需要人来接替助手的工作，并要求受试者出来帮忙。有些受试者得到一美元来干这事，有些得20美元。 几乎所有的人都同意把明显是说谎的内容告诉下一个受试者（而实际上，这人是串通好的。）他们这样做了之后，有人会问受试者说他们自己觉得这件事干得有没有意思。由于前面所提之事明显是一点意思都没有的，而对别人撒谎就形成了一种认知失谐（“我对别人撒谎了。可我并不是这样一种人。”）关键问题是，他们所得的钱数是否引导他们减少认知失谐，从而认为这些活是真正很有意思的。 从直觉上看，人们也许会想，那些得到20美元的人——在1959年这算得上是一份钱——会不会比那些得到1美元的人更倾向于改变其观点。可是，弗斯丁格和卡尔史密斯所预测的却与事实正好相反。得到20美元的受试者会有一个非常坚实的理由来为自己撒谎找到理由，可是，那些得到1美元的人所能为自己找借口的机会是很小的，他们仍然会感到失谐，他们减轻的办法就是，这些活一直是有趣的，他们也就没有真正的撒谎。而这就是实验结果真正显示出来的。 （实验的真正目的被说穿了之后，所有的学生都要求退还这笔钱。只有一个学生不肯还——他只得了1美元。）。 弗斯丁格和卡尔史密斯得到广泛赞扬；社会心理学家们觉得能发现某种并非如此明显或者与我们通常的印象相反的东西而特别高兴。如沙切特经常对其学生说的，学习老祖母心理学是对时间的浪费；就跟你回家对老奶奶说什么时，她会说：“还有什么新东西没有？他们就为这个给你付工资？” 认知失谐理论引起了好多敌对的批评。弗斯丁格毫不留情地骂这些批评是“垃圾”，还将这些批评归咎于一个事实，说这个理论提出了“并非非常现实的”人类图景。不管这些批评者的动机如何，大量的实验证明，认知失谐是最为坚实（彼此连贯）的发现。而且更重要的是，它是一个丰富的理论。著名的社会心理学家艾略特·阿龙森回忆说：“我们所做的一切就是坐着不动，能在一个晚上的时间内想到十个假设……这类假设几年以前甚至连做梦都不会想到的。”这个理论还解释了一系列的社会行为，而用行为主义的理论是无法解释清楚这些东西的。下列是一些例子，都经过实验证明了的： ——在一个集团中越是很难成为成员（比如，需要经过令人厌烦的筛选或者糊弄过程），被接受的成员就越是觉得这个集团了不起。我们使自己相信，引起我们痛苦的东西我们就会去爱它，以使自己觉得这份痛苦是值得的。 ——当人们以一种使自己看上去很蠢或者不道德的方式行事时，他们会改变看法，以使自己相信其行为是有道理和公平的。比如，吸烟者会说，抽烟与癌症之间的关系的证据是不完全的；作弊的学生会说，每个人都在作弊，因此，他们只好也去作弊，以免使自己处于不利的地位。 ——一些持有不同观点的人倾向于以极不相同的办法来解释有关被争辩问题的同一个报告或者事实材料；他们会注意并记住对自己的观点有用的材料，掩盖或者忘记会引起失谐的东西。 ——当一些认为自己有足够人性的人处于一种伤害别人的情形时，就比如士兵在战争当中经常要伤害平民一样，他们会以贬损受害者的方式来减少这种失谐（“那些婊子养的在帮助敌人。一有机会，他们会在背后捅你一刀。”）当人们从社会不公正当中得到好处而使其他人受难时，他们经常对自己说，这些受害人根本没有能力得到更好的东西，他们已经满足了自己的生活方式，而且很懒，又脏，没有道德感。 最后，还有一个“自然实验”的例子，可以看出人类通过理性化来减少认知失谐的情形： ——1983年加利福尼亚的一次地震后，圣塔克鲁茨市根据加利福尼亚一项新的法案，委派声望卓著的戴夫·斯迪夫思工程师去评估当地建筑的抗震情况。斯迪夫思认为有175栋建筑可能会在大地震中遭受严重损坏，而这些建筑有许多是在主要的商业购物区里。市政委员会被他的报告和暗含在里面的大量工作吓坏了，他们退回了他的报告，并一致通过要等待州立法律条款明确下来以后再说。斯迪夫思被称为一位大惊小怪的家伙，他的报告对全市人民的利益是有妨害的，从此以后再也没有采取任何措施。1989年10月17日，圣塔克鲁茨市近郊发生7．1级地震。300栋民房被毁灭掉了，整个圣塔克鲁茨县有五千多民房受到严重损坏；市内商业区被夷为平地；3人在地震中殒命，2000人受伤。 认知理论本身有很强的说服力，它很容易逃过各种攻击。弗斯丁格最早提出来这个理论的25年及他离开社会心理学转而研究感知的16年后，对社会心理学家进行的一项调查显示，有百分之七十九的人认为他对这个领域作出了最大的贡献，只有鲁温接近这个数字，即百分之七十。 然而，有一种对认知失谐理论的批评却不是可以轻易辩驳的。研究者们几乎总是哄骗志愿者去做一些平常不会做的事情（比如为钱而撒谎），不经他们同意就要他们去做一些劳神费力或者荒诞不经的事情，或者把他们自己身上不好的一面呈现在他们面前，从而使他们的自尊心受损。调查者事后会“询问”受试者，解释实验的真实目的，说合理欺骗是必需的，他们的参与使科学受益无穷。这样做是为了恢复他们的有益感，可是，批评者坚持认为，把别人摆在这样的体验中而不告诉他们或者没有他们的同意是不道德的。 ' 这些道德问题在认知失谐研究当中并不是十分特别的；在其它更为严肃的社会心理学研究当中也存在这样的情形。一个著名的例子是1971年由菲律普·G·金巴多及三名助手做的一项实验，他是斯坦福大学的一位社会心理学家。为了研究被囚禁的社会心理学，他们召收了本科生志愿者，让他们体验监狱生活，大家分别当看守或者犯人。所有志愿者都接受采访和性格测试；21位中产阶级白人经过评定被认为情绪稳定、成熟和守法，因而被挑选出来。根据扔币法，10人被派当犯人，11人当看守，共进行两周实验。 “犯人”们在一个静悄悄的星期天早晨被“逮捕了”，戴上手铐，在警局登上名册，然后带入“监狱”（在斯坦福大学心理学系大楼的地下室里设的一套房间），在那里脱衣、搜查、驱除虱子、配上囚衣。看守们配上警棍、手铐、警用哨子和囚室钥匙；他们被告知，其工作是要维持监狱的“法律和秩序”，可以自行设计控制囚犯的办法。典狱长（金巴多的一位同事）和看守设计了16条办法让囚犯遵守：他们在进餐、休息时和熄灯后得保持沉默；他们只准在进餐时进餐，别的时间不行；彼此称号只能叫号码，所有看守都称作管教“干部”，等等。触犯任何条例都将召至惩罚。 看守和囚犯的关系很快就进入老式的模样：看守们开始认为这些囚犯次人一等而且十分危险，囚犯开始觉得看守们都是流氓和施虐狂。有位看守这样报告： 我对自己感到惊奇……我让他们彼此对骂，并用光光的手去清洗便池。我实际上是把这些犯人当牲口看的，我不断地对自己说，得小心看守他们以免他们图谋不轨。 几天之后，囚犯们组织了一次反叛活动。他们把身份证号撕掉，用床顶住门不让看守进来。看守们用灭火器喷他们，让他们从门后退下去，撞入囚室，扒掉衣服，拿走床铺，总体来说让他们大大地受一顿惊吓。 这以后，看守们不断地增加新的管制条例，半夜三更经常唤醒犯人点名，迫使他们进行无聊和无用的劳动，因为“不守规定”而惩罚他们。受到羞辱的犯人开始对不公的处罚习以为常了。有些人慢慢感到头脑混乱；有个人完全到了很严重的程度，到第5天时实验者只得考虑不到实验结束就放他出来了。 看守思想中很快形成的施虐心理可以从他们中的一个人说的话中看出来。实验开始前，这人说他是位和平主义者，不喜欢进攻别人，他无法想象自己竟然会虐待别人。到第5天，他在日记中说： 我把这人（一个囚犯）挑选出来进行特别处罚，因为他极想受到这样的处罚，也因为我特别不喜欢他……新囚犯（416）不吃这种香肠……我决定强行让他吃，可他还是不吃。我让食物从他脸上流下来。我无法想象是我自己在干这样的事。我为逼迫他吃东西而感到内疚，可是，因为他不吃我感到更火。 金巴多及其同事没有预料到两个组都会如此迅速地发生转变，后来在报告中写道： 这次模拟监狱体验最令人吃惊的结果是，这些极为正常的年轻人身上竟会很轻松地激发起施虐行为，而在这些因为情绪稳定而严格挑选出来的人中间，竟会很快散布一种传染力极强的情绪病状。 到第5天，实验者突然宣布实验结束，以保全所有人。可是，他们感觉到，这次实验是极有价值的；它表明，“正常的、健康的、受过教育的年轻人在'监狱环境'的团体压力下如此迅速地发生转变”是多么轻易的一件事。 这项发现可能很重要，可是，在许多伦理学家们看来，这项实验是极为不合道德的。它在志愿者身上施加了生理和情绪上的压力，而这些是受试者没有预料到，也没有同意的。这样做的话，他们就违反了1914年最高法院强调的一项原则，即“任何有正常头脑的成年人类都有权决定可以在自己的身上干什么”。因为道德问题，监狱实验不准重复；它已经成了定案。 可是，与另一项同样也有很高价值，现在同样也是一件定案的实验比较起来，这还真是小巫见大巫。让我们打开卷宗，看看学习到了什么，是以何等超常的方法来进行该项实验的。 大屠杀之后，许多行为主义科学家都在寻找办法来理解，为什么会有这么多正常的、受过文明教化的德国人竟会对别的人类实施如此不可理喻的暴行。1950年发表的一项巨型研究报告描述了由一个多学科研究组进行的心理分析方向的实验，它将偏见和种族仇恨归因于“强权人格”，这是某种特别的为父之道和儿童体验的自然生长。可是，社会心理学家们发现这个解释太过狭窄；他们认为，答案可能更多地要牵涉到一种特别的社会情形，它引起正常人产生与性格不符的残暴行为。 为了探索这种可能性，1960年早期，纽黑文市的一张报纸上发表了一则广告，寻求志愿者来耶鲁大学进行记忆力和学习方法的研究。任何不是大中学在校生的成年男性都可以报名申请，参加者可获每小时4美元（约相当今天的20美元）外加交通费的报酬。 选择了40名20-50岁的男子，各自分配了不同的见面时间。在一间很大的实验室里，大家都去见一位打扮整齐、身着灰色实验制服的小个子年轻人。同时见面的还有另一位“志愿者”，一位长得像爱尔兰美国人的中年人，看上去样子不错。穿实验制服的人，即明显的研究者，实际上是31岁的中学生物学教师，而中年人是一位职业会计师。两人都是进行这项实验的心理学家——耶鲁大学的斯坦利·米尔格莱姆的合谋人。他们将担当斯坦利编写的角色。 研究者向两位男人，真的和假的志愿者，解释说，他在研究针对学习的惩罚效果。其中一位将扮演教师，另一位扮演学习者。每当学生犯一个错误，老师就会给他一个电击。两位志愿者抓阉决定各自扮演什么角色。“天真的”那位志愿者抓到了“教师”那张。（为了确保效果，两张条子上都写着“教师”，可是，串通好的那位会在抓起纸后立马扔掉，不拿出来看。） 然后，研究者会带领两位受试者到一个小房间里去，学习者坐在一张桌子前，他的双臂被绑起来，电极接到手腕上。他说，他希望电击不会太重；这人有心脏病。然后，教师被带入另一个邻近的房间，他可以在这里向学习者说话，也可以听到学习者的声音，可看不到他。桌子上有一个闪亮的大金属盒子，说是里面有一个电击发生器。前面有摆成一排的三十多个开关，每个开关上都标着电压数（15到450），另有“轻度电击”、“中度电击”等等，直到在435上标着“危险：严重电击”，还有两个开关，上面只是简单地标着“XXX。” 教师这个角色，研究者说，是要宣读一些成对的词（比如蓝色，天和狗，猫）给学习者听，再考他的记忆力。先念一组词中的第一个词，然后念四个可能答案词，让他选择其中正确的一个词。学习者通过面前的按纽来选择答案，教师桌上的灯泡就会亮起来。每当学习者选择了错误的答案，老师就掀动开关，给他一个电击，从最低的水平开始。每当学生犯一个错误，老师就给他一个更高级别的电击。 一开始，实验进行得很容易，什么事情也没有发生。学习者会给出一些正确的答案，也有一些错误答案，老师在每个错误答案之后给学习者一引起轻微的电击，然后继续进行下去。可是，随着学习者犯的错误越来越多，电击程度也越来越高了-当然，这些仪器都是些假摆设，实际上没有任何电流从里面出来-情形是越来越糟糕了。到75伏的时候，学习者发出了听得见的呻吟声；到120伏的时候，他喊出声来，说电击已经弄得他很痛了；到150伏时，他叫出声来：“放我走，我不想试了！”每当教师动摇时，站在他旁边的研究者都说：“请继续下去。”到180伏时，学习者喊叫起来，“我疼得受不了啦！？到270伏时，他嚎叫起来。当教师犹豫不决时，研究者说：“实验要求你进行下去。 ”后来，当学习者开始撞墙，或者更后面，他开始尖声大叫时，研究者严肃地说：“你得进行下去，这是绝对必需的。 ”超过330伏时，隔壁只有沉静——这与选择了错误答案是一样解释的——研究者说：“你没有别的选择；你必须进行下去。 " 令人万分惊讶的是——米尔格莱姆本人也甚为惊讶——有百分之六十三的教师当真进行下去了，一直进行到底了。可是，这不是因为他们是些施虐狂，能够从他们以为正在发生着的痛苦当中体会到什么快感（标准性格测试显示，在完全的顺从受试者与那些到某些点就拒绝进行下去的人之间没有什么差别存在）；而是说，相反的情况是，他们当中的许多人在遵照研究者的命令进行下去的时候是体会到了很严重的痛苦的。如米尔格莱姆在报告所言： 在很多情况下，紧张到了在心理学实验室里很少看见的程度。可以看见受试者出汗，颤抖，口吃，咬嘴唇，呻吟，手指甲都抓进肉里面去了……一位成熟的、开始很有自制力的生意人，进实验室的时候满脸微笑，十分自信。在20分钟时间里，他就变得颤搐，口吃起来，很快接近精神崩溃……可是，他还是继续对实验者的每一句话作出反应，一直执行着命令，直到最后。 谢天谢地，米尔格莱姆并没有报告他本人在观察这些教师受折磨时所体验到的一些症状。他是个生气勃勃的、诚实的小个子，他没有讲到他自己对这些受试者的痛苦有何感觉，否则，这篇报道一定会更加增色不少。 他对这些结果的解释是，这种情形是利用文化上面的期待产生了对权威的服从现象。志愿者进入实验时是要扮演合作者和受试者的角色，而研究者是扮演的权威角色。在我们这个社会和许多其它的社会里，孩子们从小就被教导着遵守权威，而不要管有权威的人让你去做的事情是对还是错。在实验中，研究者感觉到有必要执行命令；他们可以对一个无辜的人施加痛苦和伤害，就因为他们感觉到研究者，而不是他们自己要对其行动负责。 在米尔格莱姆看来，他的实验系列有助于解释为什么那么多正常的德国人、奥地利人和波兰人竟会进行死亡营这类的暴行，或者至少接受了对犹太人和吉普赛人及其它被厌恶的民族的集体屠杀命令。（阿道夫·艾奇曼说，当他在以色列接受审判时他发现自己在消灭成百上千万犹太人中扮演一个角色时非常恶心，可是，当时他只好执行权威的命令。） 米尔格莱姆不断地变换实验方法，从而证明他的解释是正确的。有一种变化是这样的，在研究者还没有来得及向教师说完继续使用更高电压的重要性的时候，突然有电话找他；他的位置将会被一位志愿者来接替（也是串通好的人），他好像对按需要加压非常有兴趣，不断要求教师继续加压。可是，他是个替代者，而不是真正的权威；在这种情况下，只有百分之二十的教师会一直干下去。米尔格莱姆还变化着办法把队伍的构成调整一下。一般是，学习者长得和善、矮胖，中年人，而教师是穿戴整齐，严肃的年轻研究人员。可他又把角色倒换过来。在这种情况下，教师一路进行到底的比例会减少，但也只到百分之五十。很明显，是权威与受害者的角色，而不是各人的性格在起主要作用。 米尔格莱姆的另一项令人不安的附属研究，是他对人们在这种情形之下认为自己会怎样想的调查。他向大学生、行为学科学家、心理工程师和外行人详细讲解了实验的构成，然后问他们到什么份上他们会停下来。尽管他们的背景有差别，可是，所有像他们这样的小组都说他们会在约150伏的时候违背实验者的要求而停下来，因为这时候，受害者是在要求放开他。米尔格莱姆还问过一些本科生，说到什么水平上他们会不听实验者的话，答案也在约150伏左右。因此，人们对他们会采取什么行动的估计和他们对自己应该如何行动的道德观念，与他们实际上在一个受权威控制的情形下的所作所为都没有什么关系。 米尔格莱姆的服从研究吸引了很多的注意力，并因为其在社会心理学领域的研究而获得1964年美国科技进步奖。（1984年，当米尔格莱姆51岁因心脏病去世时，罗杰·布朗称他“也许是我们这个时代的社会心理学中最有天赋的实验科学家之一”。）在十余年时间里，进行了约130例类似实验，包括在其它国家进行的一些实验。大部分实验证实和扩大了米尔格莱姆的发现，而且，在许多年里，他的实验过程或者其变化脚本，都是进行服从研究的重要范本。 今天，再没有任何研究者使用这样的方法了，也不敢这样做，作为历史发展的结果，我们只是简单地看一下而已。