Social Psychology essays

Social Psychology essays Chapter nine brings out a very important and scary part of society, deindividuation. In this chapter individuation is defined as the loosening of normal constraints on behavior when people are in a crowd, leading to an increase in impulsive and deviant acts. Acts of violence seem to be the dominating act in many of these situations. The fact that people seem to lose their individuality when they conform to the crowds behavior is disturbing. To somewhat confront this issue, a part in the chapter that we should review in class is the Great Person Theory. The Great Person Theory states that certain personality traits make us better leaders and therefore, we are less likely to deindividualize ourselves. Theories such as Contingency Theory of Leadership, Task-Oriented Leader, and Relationship-Oriented Leader provide great points on how to prevent conforming to the bad element. The study on Social Facilitation surprised me, when James Michaels tested his theory at the pool hall and found that the more comfortable the player was at playing pool the better he/she performed with an audience. I would have thought that it wouldnt have mattered how good you are at pool, the player would play the same, with or without an audience. The use of negotiation is a topic that I use frequently. I have used it to try to negotiate extra points in some of my classes, I have used it to get my out of trouble, and I have used it to barter for better things. ...