Initiation Rites Flashcards
What is an example of negative initiation rite?
An example of a negative initiation rite performed in USA is hazing this is performed at high school as an activity expected from a student to belong to a group even though they are unwilling to participate
What are initiation rites?
They they are often painful or embarrassing public procedure to mark a group members movement from one role to another
Why is this initiation rites negative?
Any special rate is negative because it consists of humiliated and dangerous activity that our practice. Such as tattooing, head shaving, sleep deprivation, deprivation of personal behaviour and or inappropriate sexual behaviour is as well as alcohol abuse.
What function do these procedures perform?
Although these practices are deemed negative,they serve a number of functions such as allowing a consensual with a discontinuity of self identity
What is cognitive dissonance explanation of negative initiation rite?
From the theory of cognitive dissonance, individuals sometimes experience a dissonance between two cognitions.
For example with a hazing experience, the individual may think that “I have knowingly gone through this experience to become accepted into this group “ “there are bad habits in this group”
From cognitive dissonance theory, how can this promote positive view of the group?
Cognitive theory argues that a positive view of the group can be promoted by the individual revising their opinion of the group.
How can they revise their view go the group?
This can be achieved by focusing on the positive aspects of the group and ignoring the negative aspect
An example of ignoring negative aspect and focusing on positive aspects
For example, even though the group has caused the individual total humiliation and embarrassment, the individual will focus on the benefit of being in the group. One form of benefit is being respected by other pupils or receiving attention or being noticed
Festinger (1957)
Proposes that to avoid dissonance, we are motivated to change or reduce tension by often rejecting or changing of the cognitions.
What happens when one revise their cognitions?
The consequence is a more favourable evaluation of the group thus greater commitment
Meaning that the more unpleasant the initiation is, the more positive the subsequent evaluation of the group will be.
Aronson and Mills (1957)
Conducted a study with female participants in a discussion on the psychology of sex. The control and second group of participant experienced mildi initiation as they had to say out loud 5 vague sexual characteristics whiles the control group. Both groups according to Hogg and Vaughan rated the experiment rightly.
However, the third group of participant experienced extreme initiation by saying out loud explicit passages but rated the discussion interesting
Gerard and Mathewson (1966)
Argues that they might have seen the discussion to be interesting because they could have been sexually aroused by the obscene passages that were read
