Guidelines for Writing Journal Entries

Sample Entries from Past Classes

1. Group polarization.
2. Self-esteem maintenance.
3. Cialdini's reciprocation principle.
4. Cialdini's scarcity principle.
5. Cialdini's liking principle.
6. Theories of aggression.
7. Fear and the need for affiliation.
8. Deindividuation.
9. Role conflict.
10. Brown's universal norm.
11. Social comparison theory.

     1.  The purpose of the journal is to relate classroom learning to everyday life.  To do this, you are asked to examine your daily experiences for evidence of social psychological concepts and principles at work.  You may wish to examine events, your own and others’ behavior, your decisions and thoughts, or social artifacts such as movies, books, magazines, and newspapers.  The concepts and principles that you apply are abstract descriptions and explanations of human behavior.  Of course, there may be a variety of interpretations or explanations of any given pattern of behavior.  In writing each entry, therefore, you should try to show why a particular social psychological principle offers a reasonable explanation of your observations. 

     2.  Use specific, concrete illustrations.  This doesn’t mean that you should give names and dates and so forth.  That sort of information is almost always irrelevant and nonessential for my understanding of your observation.  However, don’t substitute vague statements for concrete examples.  Apply the concept or principle to a specific event; don’t merely make supporting generalizations.  For example, it would not suffice simply to say:  “This happens to me all the time.  I have often done poorly on an exam because I expected to do poorly.”  Instead, relate a specific instance when this occurred.  Along the same line, if your observation or experience is too personally revealing or intimate, so much so that you find it necessary to make veiled statements about it, then don’t use it as a journal entry. 

     3.  Don’t apply “principles” that are so broad that they are “true by definition.”  It is pointless to illustrate such statements as:  some people are more perceptive than others; there are individual differences in the perception of the same event; other people influence a person’s behavior.  These “non-principles” have no explanatory power; they don’t contribute to our understanding of behavior.  In general, scientific principles are explanatory:  they tell us why some people are more perceptive than others, why the same event may be perceived differently, and how others influence a person’s behavior. 

     4.  If possible, your application of a given principle should be original and, thus, differ from applications suggested by the instructor or text, or provided by experimental tests of the principle.  In other words, try to apply principles to situations other than those encountered in lecture or readings.  If, for example, the text considers someone faced with the choice of living on or off campus as an illustration of “postdecisional dissonance,” then try to use a different kind of choice-decision to illustrate this concept. 

     5.  Be sure to discuss how the social psychological principle applies to your experience or observation.  Don’t merely cite a principle and describe an experience without indicating how they are connected.  In other words, don’t assume that I will understand the connection that you are making; spell it out.  Also, remember that applying a principle means offering a particular interpretation of an observation.  If you can offer alternative interpretations or if your application suggests conditions under which the principle may or may not hold, then extend your discussion along these lines. 

1.  Group Polarization.  M.N., Spring 1998.

After six long hours in the car, Amy, Dara, and I slowly got out and gathered our things together.  It was Dara’s first Strangefolk concert; we had been looking forward to it all summer.  As we walked up the hill to the concert, I couldn’t help but ponder how odd it was for us to be going to a Strangefolk concert together.  Although we had known each other since we were young girls, we had not spent much time together before this summer.  The three of us seemed so different that I never would have guessed we would form a close friendship.

I don’t remember how it all started, but last summer the three of us realized that, despite our outward differences, we actually had much in common.  All of us liked Strangefolk, although Dara hadn’t heard much of their music.  None of us ate very much meat, as Amy and I were vegetarians and Dara did not eat red meat.  In addition, we all liked hiking, going for walks, and spending time outdoors.  After discovering our common interests, we started spending time together.  By the end of the summer, all of us were listening to more Strangefolk than we ever had.  We started trading tapes with each other and going to their shows.  Whenever we got in the car together, we always played a Strangefolk tape, and we often discussed their music—what songs we liked, what the lyrics meant, etc.  Strangely, the same thing happened with food:  we often got together to cook dinner, try new vegetarian dishes, and experiment with new foods.

Throughout the summer the three of us formed a group.  Myers defines a group as “two or more people who, for longer than a few moments, interact with and influence one another and perceive one another as ‘us’” (p. 314).  Not only did we think of ourselves as a unit, but we also influenced one another by frequently sharing ideas and introducing each other to new things.  Through our interaction, we also illustrated group polarization, a “group-produced enhancement of members’ preexisting tendencies” (p. 333).  For example, although each of us liked Strangefolk at the beginning of the summer, we were much bigger fans when we returned to school in the fall.  Group polarization also explains our increased interest in vegetarian foods and cooking.  By being around people who shared our likes, we began to like those things even more.

One explanation for the group polarization we experienced is that, through discussion, we were introduced to new ideas that reinforced what we already believed.  For example, Dara, a nutrition major, sometimes pointed out how we could eat better.  Amy once mentioned how much more energy she had when she ate healthy foods.  I had never really thought about these points, and realizing the truth in them led me to adopt a healthier diet.  In turn, my new dietary interest sparked new ideas that I shared with my two friends.  This kind of influence, called informational influence, is one way that groups polarize individual beliefs and attitudes.

Another explanation of group polarization is normative influence.  This occurs as a result of a person’s desire to be accepted and/or admired in a group.  For example, although I liked Strangefolk, I rarely mentioned them or listened to their music around my friends, as I knew that most of them didn’t like their music.  But when I discovered that Amy and Dara liked Strangefolk, I talked about them at length.  I sometimes brought up small facts about the group or showed obscure tapes of shows to impress them.  I wanted my friends to know what a big fan I was, because they also were fans.  Because of this, I became a bigger fan.  Similarly, Amy and Dara, seeing my devotion to Strangefolk, probably displayed the same enthusiasm to impress me.

In actuality, both informational and normative influences probably affected us and polarized our opinions.  It is clear, though, that our interests brought us together to form a group, and in so doing fostered a process of mutual influence that strengthened our beliefs.

2.  Self-esteem maintenance.  K.D., Spring 1996.

My seemingly perfect, wholesome American family was marred by one tiny flaw:  my sister despised me.  As far as I can tell, it all began when my parents proudly carried her home from the hospital.  As friends, relatives, and neighbors came to visit my mother and her new bundle of joy, they seemed to exclaim repeatedly how much she looked like me.  Although I was only three years old at the time, I vividly remember wondering how they could compare me to that chubby, wrinkled, and bald “poopy-pants.”  That was only the beginning of the comparisons.  For her entire childhood, teachers, friends, baby-sitters, and everyone else in our lives seemed unable to resist comparing Megan with me.  Looking much like me, and dressed in my hand-me-downs, I suppose that Megan was doomed to such comparisons.  Teachers often called her by my name, absentmindedly forgetting that we were two separate people, distanced in age by three years.

It seems that Megan has spent her entire life working to distinguish herself from me.  She rejected every one of my activities and successes, as if to demonstrate that my interests were of no value to her and that she would do anything she could to prove that she was not in her sister’s shadow.  Viewing me as a “nerd” for my academic successes, honors, and awards, she spent her high school years showing the rest of the family that grades were not important, proudly displaying her C+ papers on the refrigerator as if to prove that she was not following in my academic footsteps.  I love ice cream and pizza; she prefers aerobics and the Stairmaster (you figure that one out!).  In junior high school, I was on the volleyball team, so she necessarily rejected the sport; she spurned my cheerleading legacy to play on the girls’ basketball team.  When I chose to attend college at a small, liberal arts school 1200 miles from home, she demonstrated her disapproval by studying at a large, public university an hour away.  No matter what I chose to do, Megan rejected it and did the polar opposite.

I always attributed the animosity between us to normal sibling rivalry.  However, it became clear that our relationship was not normal.  In high school, I can remember watching television talk shows in which one sister had been arrested for attacking the other as they fought over a boyfriend.  Our relationship was not violent in that way, but to me it was equally damaging and painful.  After a while, I stopped being hurt by her rejection of me, but it was difficult to ignore the tension between us when we lived in the same house and shared a phone, car, and family.  I wished that she would have been eager to go shopping with me and to talk about boys with me late at night, as my friends and their sisters had done.

In reading about Abraham Tesser’s theory of self-esteem maintenance, I recognized a striking parallel between his analysis and my personal situation.  He predicts that social perceptions of one sibling as more talented than another will cause the less talented one to pursue other ways of developing self-esteem (Myers, p. 61).  Megan’s motivation to do anything and everything that I had not done appears to have been her way of ensuring that she would be seen for her own merit and talents.  Tired of being eclipsed by my successes, she was motivated to pursue “a search for acceptance elsewhere” (Myers, p. 61).

In considering Tesser’s analysis, I believe I unintentionally may have influenced my sister’s attitudes and behavior.  For in trying to make Megan more like me, trying to interest her in my favorite activities and hoping to be a role model for her, it is likely that I drove her further away.  She wanted to establish her individuality; she needed to fly independent of me and would not allow me to be the proverbial “wind beneath her wings.”  In light of Tesser’s study, perhaps her rejection of me is not necessarily a fundamental hatred of me, my interests, and my values.  Rather, her search for ways to be different from me stems from her desire to be recognized as the unique and special individual she is and not “the little _____” or “_____ little sister.”

The early teenage years are a time of experimenting, rebelling against family and expectations, seeking out new friends, and, in effect, “trying on” new personalities in the same way we try on clothes in search of the best ways to express ourselves.  In these difficult years, teenagers are also faced with the physical changes and emotional swings associated with puberty.  Studies have revealed that happy, well-adjusted girls often become victims of low self-esteem when they enter the teen years.  If this alternative interpretation more feasibly applies to Megan, perhaps Tesser’s analysis of self-esteem motivation is less applicable.  Nevertheless, I feel somewhat guilty that in Megan’s experience, the development of high self-esteem was handicapped further by the presence of her older sister.  If nothing else, I realize now that I could have been more supportive of her genuine interests, helping her to succeed on her own, instead of trying to pave the way for her by trying to involve her in all the activities in which I had been successful.

3.  Cialdini's reciprocation principle.  M. C., Spring 1993.

Robert Cialdini considers the principle of reciprocation to be “vital in human social systems.”  He gives an example of an experiment in which a subject was more likely to do a favor for another person after the person had given the subject a soft drink.  According to Cialdini, all humans feel the direct obligation to give back to those who have given something to them.

Last year, on my way home for Thanksgiving break, I felt the effect of reciprocation firsthand.  Within a half-hour of my house, I blew a tire.  I decided to leave my two other passengers behind to wait for help while I walked down the road toward a residential area.  Only minutes after I began walking, another car pulled in front of me.  After some discussion, the young woman driver suggested that we go into the city and find a phone.  I balked at the idea because Albany was still at least fifteen minutes away, but the woman insisted that she was on her way home from work and was glad to help.  We found a phone, but after several futile efforts to explain to my mother where the car was located, the mystery woman decided that she would simply take me home.  There, I would be able to call the tow truck myself and my mother could drive me back to the car.  I told the woman several times that my house was still twenty-five miles away; however, I did not get the chance to mention that her house was in the opposite direction before I was in her car heading toward my home.  Here, my first reciprocal action took place.  I reached inside my wallet and tried several times to give the woman money.  Her refusal created the uneasy, uncomfortable feeling that Cialdini discusses.  Because she had already done something extravagant for me, I felt compelled to return the favor and was disconcerted by her refusal to take my return offer.

The days following the incident also caused anxiety for my parents.  The rule of reciprocation and the guilt and discomfort associated with an unreturned favor caused mild “neurosis.”   With only miniscule clues as to her name and address, we pushed onward in our search to reciprocate.  We intently sought to identify her in order to send her flowers or a gift.  My father attempted to track down her license plate number while my mother called area hospitals looking for the nurse who saved her baby (the woman was wearing a nurse’s uniform).  All our efforts were to no avail, however, as the elusive savior remained unidentified and uncompensated.  As I think back, my family might have fallen into the same trap as Cialdini’s example of the woman who lent her car to the man who had helped her.  We had become somewhat irrational.  The woman was gone and we could do nothing about it.  I now believe that we probably would have given her almost anything she requested.  Reciprocation had taken over our thoughts and actions.  The discomfort experienced by both my parents and me was evidenced in our prayers of Thanksgiving that holiday.  My mother thanked God for the woman’s kindness, asking the Lord to compensate her because we had tried everything humanly possible.  Our extraordinary efforts at returning the wonderful favor were somewhat comical.  We had been influenced by the rule of reciprocity.  If the woman went unrewarded, we were guilty of a social faux pas.  And so, my mother even resorted to asking the Lord to return the favor in order to relieve her conscience.

4.  Cialdini's scarcity principle.  M. G., Spring 1993.

Robert Cialdini suggested that we are vulnerable to the scarcity principle, the tendency to perceive a direct correlation between the value and scarcity of opportunities.  Cialdini noted that compliance professionals invoke the scarcity principle through two tactics, the limited-number tactic and the deadline tactic.  Compliance professionals inform their customers that they must purchase an item immediately; if they miss the deadline, the item may have an inflated price or it may no longer be available.  In accord with psychological reactance theory, deadlines and limited quantities threaten customers’ freedom and cause them to react against these impediments by increasing their desire to obtain items.  Undoubtedly, the “threat of potential loss plays a tremendous role in human decision making” (p. 196).

The scarcity principle can be observed in how people value human life; if confronted with the knowledge that a close relative is terminally ill, we value the time that we can spend with that person more than if he or she was perfectly healthy.  Several years ago, my grandfather, at the age of ninety-three, was diagnosed with cancer.  Shortly after being informed of that diagnosis, my mother began to travel almost every weekend from Connecticut to New Jersey to visit my grandfather.  She continued to do this for a year and a half, until my grandfather passed away.  Prior to the time when my grandfather was diagnosed as having cancer, she visited him approximately once every two months.  Clearly, my mother recognized that the time that my grandfather was going to be alive was short and thus she reacted against this “deadline” of life by valuing the moments that she was able to spend with him more than she had in the past.

One might reasonably argue that my mother’s behavior does not reflect the scarcity principle but rather that my grandmother needed my mother to come to New Jersey each weekend to assist her in taking care of my grandfather due to the increased demands that his illness placed on her.  Yet, this is not a viable explanation because there was a live-in nurse taking care of him.  My mother went to New Jersey each weekend solely to enjoy her parents’ company, particularly her father’s company, due to his impending death.  Although my mother always valued his life, she valued it more after she learned that he had cancer.  Cancer, a disease that few are able to fight off, particularly at age ninety-three, represented a threat to her freedom of interacting with her father; thus in accord with psychological reactance theory she began to spend as much time as possible with her father while he was still alive.  As often happens, life’s moments become most precious in the face of death.

5.  Cialdini's liking principle.  J. M., Spring 1993.

Have you ever bought something that you didn’t need, didn’t want, and couldn’t use?  Cialdini harps on this point throughout Social Influence, yet I have never had this experience.  However, I recall an instance when a mastermind of influence invoked one of Cialdini’s principles.  Cialdini focuses mainly on salespeople who, as they “rip off” the public, seem to have at least an inkling of foreknowledge about the weapons of influence they employ.  My experience, on the other hand, left me the unwilling victim of an amateur—a beautiful, intelligent woman.  The “halo” over her head blinded me.

Cialdini introduces the halo effect to explain how positive characteristics may be attributed to others.  The problem is that our liking for others, especially new acquaintances, can be manipulated by them.  And “liking,” in turn, can facilitate commitment to someone and/or something (such as buying a product from a salesperson we like).  One trait that influences liking is physical attractiveness.  Attractive people tend to elicit positive attributions, often about traits unrelated to physical beauty.  Cialdini calls such overgeneralization a “halo effect”:  “A halo effect occurs when one positive characteristic of a person dominates the way that person is viewed by others.”  These views range from persuasiveness to intelligence to such socially desirable traits as honesty, kindness, and talent.  Thus, attributing positive traits to newly encountered people on the basis of attractiveness can lead to liking, which in turn can result in compliance.

Another factor that influences liking for a person is similarity.  Cialdini discusses many aspects of similarity, one of which is background resemblance.  Compliance professionals often feign this by claiming a family’s or friend’s origin in the customer’s hometown; “you’re from Guam, my sister was born in Guam . . .”  In reality, manufacturing “a veneer of similarity” is easy.  People often ask the question, “So, where exactly are you from?” especially in situations where the likelihood of meeting others who are from outside their home state (or country) is high.  Even on the basis of such artificial and trivial similarity, people make judgments.  What follows is liking . . . and a sale.

Working at a compact disc store this past summer, I encountered a situation that left me both frustrated and confused.  One particular day, a woman about my age walked into the store and began browsing.  Although I usually watch customers to prevent shoplifting, I needed no incentive to keep an eye on this woman.  She was very beautiful and wore a risqué bathing suit that complemented her beauty.  My wide-eyed staring did not last, however, because she glanced up and noticed me watching her.  I asked her how she was doing, and was about to begin my sales pitch when she responded, “Great, hey . . . is that Holy Cross in Massachusetts?”  It took me only a second to remember the Holy Cross Crusaders hat I was wearing.  She proceeded to tell me that her sister graduated from Holy Cross a few years earlier, and continued the conversation by asking me what I majored in and how I liked it—standard questions.  Then she inquired about store discounts for large purchases.  I did not consider the question a strange one—many people bought hundreds of dollars of merchandise at a time, and we often granted a ten- or fifteen-percent discount to these individuals if they requested it.  I mentioned that we did, expecting her to ask for some expensive items behind the counter.  Instead, she placed the three compact discs she had down on the counter, a value of about forty-five dollars.  Although the small amount of her purchase did catch me by surprise, I rang up a ten-percent discount, which brought the cost down to about thirty-eight dollars.  She then asked if thirty-five would be enough, because that was all she had.  I said no problem.  After she left the store, I wondered what I had just done.  I compromised the store policy and my enforcement of it and received nothing in return besides a smile from a beautiful woman who had just ripped me off.  The more I thought about our conversation, the more I doubted that she knew anybody from Holy Cross.  She probably guessed that Holy Cross was in Massachusetts, and she said nothing to convince me that she knew anything about the college.  I did all the talking.  In addition, I believed her when she said she only had thirty-five dollars, although I should not have.  If she had been average in attractiveness, I would not have accepted such an excuse.  She suckered me good.

I fell prey to the principle of liking.  I liked the woman because she was pretty and had a similar background.  As a salesperson, I should have recognized the compliance techniques that were used against me.  Her attractiveness immediately made me like her more, but this explanation alone doesn’t account for the way I collapsed and did something that I did not want to do.  The fact that she was physically attractive made me assign her other socially desirable traits, such as honesty.  The halo effect was at work when I believed her story that her sister had gone to Holy Cross.  I believed it without real evidence, and it happened without contemplation.  At the same time, the Holy Cross connection, generated so simply by a glance at my hat (if she was lying, it was fabricated; if not, she still invoked the principle and made it work for her) increased my liking of her.  Together these concepts bred liking and, in turn, persuaded me to give her the discount and the “break.”

As Cialdini explains, unconfirmed liking for someone can alert us to the possibility that it has been artificially produced.  Unfortunately, I was unaware of the situation until it was over, leaving me angry and bewildered.  The chain of events occurred so quickly that I had little time to think.

6.  Theories of aggression.  S.D., Spring 1990.

According to Myers, aggression is “physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt someone.”  This definition encompasses two distinct types aggression:  hostile aggression “springs from anger” and “aims to hurt”; instrumental aggression “also aims to hurt, but only as a means to some other end.”  Social psychologists have analyzed several ideas about the causes of aggression.  One of these, that aggression is a natural response to frustrating experiences, offers an explanation of the climactic scene in Spike Lee’s film Do the Right Thing. 

In the film, Radio Raheem, a black youth, enters Sal’s Pizzeria with his music box blasting and gets involved in an argument with Sal, the white owner.  When the argument escalates into a fight, someone calls the police.  The police, all of whom are white, arrive and, in breaking up the fight, one of the officers intentionally strangles Raheem to death.  After the police leave, a large group of nonwhite residents proceed to vandalize Sal’s Pizzeria and burn it to the ground.  This scene illustrates both hostile and instrumental aggression.  The police action is without a doubt hostile.  The officer’s goal was to hurt Raheem.  Other police officers tried to tell the officer who strangled Raheem to “lighten up,” but he only choked harder.  On the other hand, the action of the group of residents is intended by Lee to be instrumental aggression.  Destroying Sal’s is the means by which a message is sent.  The message is that the nonwhite residents are tired of the white police and white people treating them unfairly. 

Why did they become aggressive and eventually attack Sal’s?  Frustration-aggression theory suggests that frustration, anything which block’s one’s goals, produces anger, an emotional readiness to aggress.  Frustration is often created by the gap between one’s expectations and attainments.  “Anger is especially likely when the person who frustrates could have chosen to act otherwise.”  Also, a frustrated person is more likely to lash out when there are aggressive cues that help unleash the bottled-up anger.  Finally, fear of retaliation or punishment for aggressing against the source of one’s frustration may cause the aggressive drive to be displaced on some other target. 

All of the elements of the theory are present in the film.  The people in the neighborhood are frustrated.  They expect to be treated humanely; however, they are treated like animals.  They expect to be protected by the police, but instead become victims of the people who are supposedly there to serve them.  This creates anger, which is heightened by the fact that the police did not have to kill Raheem.  It was cold-blooded murder.  Aggressive cues such as guns and police batons helped to “uncork” the anger in the people.  Since they knew they would be put in jail or even killed for aggressing against the police, they displaced their aggression on Sal’s Pizzeria, a much safer target. 

Other explanations also help to explain the crowd’s actions.  It is possible that aversive stimulation rather than frustration was the more basic trigger of aggression.  Studies have shown that heat triggers aggressive thoughts and retaliatory actions.  Throughout the film we are constantly reminded that it is an extremely hot day.  Also, being attacked is especially conducive to aggression.  When the police intentionally killed Raheem, all members of the black neighborhood felt personally attacked.  Crowding too has an effect on aggression.  That the residents lived in a densely populated city block also may have contributed to their aggression. 

How did the crowd at Sal’s come to act as a group and what is the group’s effect on aggression?  Often, at a riot’s beginning, acts of aggression spread rapidly after being triggered by the aggressive example of one antagonistic person.  In the film, Mookie starts the group aggression by throwing a barrel through Sal’s front window.  Others may have followed because of deindividuation and diffusion of responsibility.  When a group is large, as was the gathering outside Sal’s, people feel less responsible for their actions.  They lose their self-awareness and are no longer apprehensive about being evaluated.

7.  Fear and the need for affiliation.  K.N., Fall 1986.

In one of his many experiments, Stanley Schachter tested the theory that when people become anxious, they seek out the company of others, preferably those in a similar situation, in order to relieve their anxiety.  In this experiment, college women who believed they were to receive a series of “shocks” were asked to wait in another room while the experiment was set up.  Given a choice of waiting either alone or with others, the majority of the subjects chose to wait with others, especially with other subjects waiting to receive the same “shocks.”  I have noticed this “misery loves miserable company” reaction in Schachter’s anxiety/affiliation study in some of my everyday experiences. 

During my first year of college I wrote many letters and called home often to keep in touch with family and high school friends.  I enjoy writing and mailed approximately ten letters per week.  Although I used many stamps, I kept a ready supply and never ran out.  From the beginning I also ran up a rather high long-distance phone bill, as my friends went to college in New York, Vermont, and New Jersey.  For each of the first three months I averaged about sixty dollars in calls.  At the end of November and beginning of December the alarming thought of my first college finals became a reality.  I began to get very nervous and I turned to my friends from high school for solace.  During that time I bought about forty stamps but ran out very quickly; meanwhile, my phone bill skyrocketed.  In fact, when I checked my receipts for last year’s phone bills, I found that the average amount that I paid in September, October, and November was $54.34.  My bill for December, however, was $134.15.

The way in which I reacted to a stressful situation can be explained by Schachter’s findings regarding fear and affiliation.  During final exams, a time of great stress for me, I had to find a way to be close to others to relieve the tension I was feeling.  Since I could not be physically close to my friends, I substituted that closeness with phone calls and letters.  I also noticed that the persons to whom I talked supported the theory.  My calls and letters to my family remained about the same, but the calls to my friends, who were also preparing for exams at that time, went up noticeably.  The idea of communicating with others who were also in stressful situations seemed to ease my pre-exam tensions.  Misery definitely loves miserable company!

8.  Deindividuation.  M.M., Spring 1986.

During my recent trip to Fort Lauderdale I experienced deindividuation while observing the infamous “College Olympics” at the Button Bar.  At this event students from various colleges compete in contests that range from beer chugging to pie eating while their classmates watch from the floor.  Members of each school are told to stand together in a group.  Although I didn’t personally know most of the students in the HC group, they were familiar to me and the competitive atmosphere (intensified by the fact that one or our adversaries was BC) quickly bound us into an energetic unified group. 

The behavior of those in the group was unusual to say the least.  People threw and spit beer at each other, poured beer in each other’s mouths, screamed and cheered and joined in singing bawdy songs.  Swept up in the scene, I shared in most of these activities and even those I refused to partake in (spitting is not my style) didn’t horrify me as one would suppose because I was part of the group.  If I had been alone in the bar with one or two friends or mixed with students of other schools I would never have tolerated having a football player throw beer in my face.  But at the time it seemed quite normal.  In retrospect, I attribute my behavior to the effects of deindividuation; in losing my sense of individuality I became less self-aware and lost my normal restraints.  As Myers says, I could attribute my behavior to the situation because everyone else was doing it.  Furthermore, I enjoyed physical anonymity because I was acting as a group member not an individual.  Few of the other HC students knew me well and none of the other students or bar employees knew me at all.  Thus there was no chance that I would be physically singled out. 

Secondly, the arousing and distracting activities that Myers cites as serving to disinhibit and deindividuate were part of this group experience.  Led by the M.C. to sing, clap hands, dance, etc., we were aroused and disinhibited since we were distracted from thinking of ourselves.  (Keep in mind the effect that alcohol also had on our inhibitions.)  These activities bound us together with a feeling of closeness and unity, especially when we joined in cheers against the BC group. 

The diminished self-awareness resulting from distracting activities and physical anonymity caused my behavior to be disconnected from my attitudes. According to my attitudes, spitting is “gross” and shouting abusive remarks at others is rude and obnoxious.  But I did it and enjoyed it.  I was too un-self-aware to think of what I was doing but was responding to the situation.  Because “everyone was doing it,” the behavior seemed appropriate and I forgot my attitudes. 

Further evidence that I was experiencing the effects of deindividuation described by Myers is the change in my behavior that took place once I was again individualized.  About halfway through the show a staff member came on duty and was stationed about six feet away from me.  His presence would not have affected me had I not spent a great deal of time talking to him the night before.  As a result, we knew each other’s names, where we lived, what we did, and so on.  When he spotted me he smiled, said hello, and called me by name.  Suddenly I was no longer anonymous.  Here was an observer viewing me not as a member of the group but as an individual—so much for anonymity.  My immediate reaction was to experience evaluation apprehension, a feeling of concern over how another was viewing me.  He was obviously disgusted by the scene (the fact that he was occasionally hit by a wayward beer didn’t help) and I began to wonder what he thought of me?  Did I seem crude? immature? wild?   Was his previously favorable image of me being altered for the worse? Immediately I toned down my behavior.  I still participated in the festivities but in a way that was more in line with my attitudes because I was now self-aware.  I was no longer deindividuated and was acting as an individual rather than a group member driven by the forces that influenced the group. 

When I returned from Florida and described the College Olympics to my friends who had never had the fortune(?) of experiencing it they reacted with disgust and horror.  They failed to see what possibly could have been fun about it and assured me that they themselves would not have been able to appreciate it. They were voicing their attitudes, the same attitudes I held.  But they did not understand the power of the group to disconnect their behavior from such attitudes and to produce the arousal and anonymity that probably would have led them to act as I had done. 

9.  Role conflict.  K.B., Fall 1985.

Role conflict occurs when people’s expectations about how one ought to behave conflict.  There are three basic types of role conflict: a conflict between person and role, intrarole conflict, and interrole conflict.  A conflict between person and role occurs when there is a clash between a person’s personality or attitudes and the expectations of a particular role he or she must play.  Intrarole conflict is the tension that is created by differing expectations about how a person should play a particular role.  Finally, interrole conflict results when there is a disagreement between the requirements of two different roles that a person must play at once.  From my own personal experience, I know that there is often a good deal of overlap among the three conflicts in a given situation. 

When the Dean of Students office sent me a note asking me to be an I.D. checker at dorm parties, I figured it would be a great way to make some easy cash and still get to see many people.  I signed up to check at a girls’ basketball party since I was friends with a couple of girls on the team and knew a lot of their friends as well.  At the outset, it seemed like it would be both a fun and profitable night.  The only problem was that I had never bothered to think about the deeper implications of being an I.D. checker at a party where I would know most of the people and they, in turn, would know me.  I hadn’t really thought about the JOB of an I.D. checker, preventing underage students from entering a keg party. 

At the party, when the realities of the checker position could no longer be avoided, I immediately encountered a conflict between person and role.  I didn’t BELIEVE in keeping the under-twenty set out of keg parties.  As an R.A. in particular, I had seen from an objective standpoint what this meant to the social life of those not yet legal.  At the keg parties, the kids are out meeting people, drinking only beer, generally not much of it at that, and having a good time. When they’re not allowed into the keg parties, the kids sit in one room, with more hard alcohol, and POUND.  They aren’t out meeting people, aren’t really having fun, and often drink until they pass out.  To me, the lesser of the two evils was clear.  Here I was, though, in a role that supported the greater of the two evils. 

The stress I was feeling was not just a result of my own personal attitude conflicting with the expectations of the role, but also a result of other people’s conflicting attitudes toward my role (intrarole conflict).  The checker supervisor, who appeared intermittently throughout the night, expected me not only to keep out the under-twenty set, but also to take fake I.D.’s away from the students.  These students, however, were my friends, and they expected me to let them into this keg party.  The supervisor was my boss, but the students were my friends; I had to choose. 

I also experienced a third component of conflict, interrole conflict.  I was a checker, responsible for the college’s upholding the legal drinking age; I was also a student, necessarily an ally to my fellow students.  At this party, there was no separation, no buffer zone, between these roles.  Here they were, differing requirements and all, coming face to face. 

So what it boiled down to was that I had voluntarily, yet ignorantly, placed myself in a situation which rendered me helpless against three types of conflict:  conflict between person and role, intrarole conflict, and interrole conflict.  Conflict theorists suggest several ways of resolving these conflicts.  Conflict between person and role can be resolved by adjusting one’s traits and attitudes to fit the role.  This wouldn’t work; my attitudes were too ingrained by vivid experiences to shift during such a short interval.  Intrarole conflict can sometimes be resolved by having the parties with the conflicting expectations seek greater consensus.  There wasn’t much chance of that happening here.  The college had their legality standpoint, and the students had their fun standpoint.  Nevertheless, I had to resolve this conflict for myself. 

What did I do?  I stood by my beliefs and placed the expectations of my peers ahead of those of the college; in other words, I blatantly disregarded the rules and let everyone into that keg party.  My friends and fellow students were happy; the Dean of Students office, I am quite sure, was not.  No one, to my knowledge, got horribly drunk; people were out meeting other people and having fun.  Nonetheless, I still experienced a certain amount of discomfort at having so grossly abused my authority and responsibility as a checker.  That keg party was the last keg party at which I was or ever again will be a checker.  I found that the easiest and most effective way of resolving conflict is to avoid it altogether. 

10.  Brown's universal norm.  J.S., Spring 1984.

Brown’s universal norm concerns the relationships between people of unequal status, such as between a professor and a student or a supervisor and a secretary. Brown asserted that in every society a hierarchy exists and that this hierarchy is manifested in the manner in which people of different status address one another and refer to one another; it is also manifested in the way in which intimate relationships between people of unequal status are initiated.  Brown pointed out that the noun forms which people use, as well as different forms of address such as the formal and informal ‘you’ in other languages, can illustrate the existence of social inequalities.  I have noticed that such nouns and forms of address often are used subconsciously by people, particularly with regard to racial and sexual inequality of status.  People don’t purposely use subordinate nouns for those they consider to be of lower status; in fact, casual slips of the tongue or of the pen often reveal status differences that people don’t even realize exist. 

At a recent Student Government Association debate, seven candidates for chairperson were answering a question about the minority situation at Holy Cross (Did they perceive a problem?).  One of the candidates replied, “I don’t think there’s a problem. I know a black boy and . . .”  Without meaning to make a racist statement, this candidate unconsciously made one when he uttered the two words “black boy.”  He never would have said “I know a white boy,” unless he were talking about someone under the age of 16, because he knows no white boys as peers; he only knows white men and white guys as such.  This type of unconscious slip of the tongue shows the social inequality that exists.  It is ironic in this case that the person who made the slip of tongue was consciously denying that there was a problem in majority/minority relations at the same time as he was unconsciously making a racist statement. 

I have unconsciously made similar errors in speech.  Last semester several students wrote a letter to the Crusader complaining that the paper was sexist.  The reason for their complaint was two stories that ran on page one about the Rugby Club and described “Holy Cross men” allegedly harming “Colby girls.”  The other article in question reported that “two girls” in Beaven were robbed.  The paper wasn’t sexist; I was.  I wrote both of the articles and automatically used the words “men” and “girls” without even thinking of their implications about status.  These different nouns indicate that the difference in social equality between men and women (or girls and boys) is not at the level where we would like it to be.  The inequality is often unthinkingly perpetuated by people who are often unaware of what the different terminology indicates about levels of social inequality.  I hadn’t even thought of the implications before, but I could see, after it was pointed out to me, that they did perpetuate inequality. 

The second part of Brown’s norm says that the superior in the relationship sets the pace for furthering the development of intimacy.  I have found this to be true, particularly in my relationships with professors.  In these relationships I, the student, am inferior in social status.  One of my classmates and I became good friends with a professor we had last semester.  When my classmate and I discussed the professor’s class, we always referred to her by her first name.  We never were able to call her by her first name to her face because that would have been presumptuous on our part.  Until she told us to drop the formality and call her by her first name we were restrained from doing so. 

When an advance in intimacy, as evidenced by changing the form of address (i.e., moving from a title to a first name), is initiated by the inferior in a relationship with a superior, the superior may see this behavior as improper.  For example, I always call my neighbors who are my parents’ age “Mr.” and “Mrs.” unless they tell me to call them otherwise.  My parents expect our neighbors’ children to call them “Mr. and Mrs. __________.”   However, the son of one of our neighbors started calling my parents by their first names without having been told by them that they wouldn’t mind if he did so.  My parents were a bit offended, for they had never suggested that the boy call them by their first names and saw this initiative as presumptuous.  It is the norm for the superior to initiate changes in intimacy even if the inferior person desires to initiate a change.

11.  Social comparison theory.  J.M., Spring 1979.

According to Festinger’s social-comparison theory, people have a need to evaluate their opinions and abilities.  In choosing someone as a standard for self-evaluation, people are likely to seek out others who are similar to them, since an individual whose abilities or opinions are very divergent from one’s own would not allow accurate comparison.  Moreover, we tend to employ social comparison when we are uncertain about ourselves. 

Scott Turow offers a prime example of these principles at work in his intriguing work One L, an account of life in the first year at Harvard Law School.  Quite understandably the competition is rigid at Harvard Law.   Thus, the struggle for superior grades is intense, and the day marks come out is one of notoriety.  Turow describes how everyone was comparing grades, even himself.  This itself is of some interest, as earlier he had noted:  “In the days before, I had not been certain whether I would discuss my marks.  Talking about grades seemed a lot like talking about how much money you make—there was no way to be tasteful.”

And yet, despite his uncomfortable feeling about discussing grades and his belief that they were relatively meaningless, “in the end,” he says, “I made no conscious choice.  When asked, I just blurted.”  This seems to suggest that even though we may not like the idea of conscious comparison, it often is simply a conditioned and automatic reaction.  As the theory offers, people need to compare themselves to others. 

Turow also mentions the actions of one of his friends, Stephen, who appeared selective in his questioning of others.  Stephen had received very high grades and felt he might qualify for Law Review.  The people he approached regarding grades were those whom he felt would be likely competition.  This is consistent with social comparison theory since it says that we seek to compare ourselves with those who seem similar, which in Stephen’s case were those who were likely to get high marks. 

This need for social comparison was highlighted further when second semester grades were received.  At this time, the students were home for summer break. Nonetheless, Turow reports receiving calls from around the country.  The conversations were convivial, but each turned in time to grades.  Apparently the need for self-evaluation was very great, in accordance with social comparison theory.