November 7, 2024

·      What question about the reading for today did I prepare before class?

o   Why was he so focused on God?

·      What key ideas did I hear in seminar today?

o   With little experiment and a lot of theory in Allport’s textbook there were the bones of a new discipline, he asserted that social psychology should focus on objectively observable responses made by individuals in specific social situations

o   He also denied the group fallacy, which is the notion that people in groups or crowds can create an influenceable “group mind” that is an entity that is more than the sum of their individual reactions

o   Leon Festinger (1919-1989) did research at Stanford University on what he called cognitive dissonance, which merged experimental social psychology with cognitive processes like thinking, reasoning, and believing

o   He observed a group of cultists that believed there would be a flood that would kill everyone else, when it didn’t, they were stunned and broken, but soon a revelation from God told their leader they were so faithful the disaster was cancelled

o   According to Festinger this created conflicting ideas in the members that they settled when their leader proclaimed God had spared the rest of the world due to their actions

o   Both experiments also raised ethical concerns with Milgram assuring he relieved distress in participants in debriefs and with Zimbardo having to stop his experiment early, this led to debate on if Milgram was as ethical as he said he was

·      What substantive ideas or comments did I contribute in seminar today?

o   Active Listening

·      What did I learn today that contributed to my understanding of psychology?

o   Asch when looking at social conformity, saw the Nancy school and Bernheim’s work with suggestibility and wondered, does the one conforming believe everything they were being suggested

o   Asch then conducted his social conformity experiments with the lines