Social - Key Question Flashcards
what is our social key question?
How can knowledge of social psychology be used to reduce prejudice in situations such as crowd behaviour or rioting?
explain the example of marseilles 1998
7400 english fans, england vs tunisia
35 hospitalised
A02 theory/study: RCT - competing to win the match
SIT: ingroup and outgroup
A02/3 - reducing prejudice - deindividuation - cctv as people are less likely to do something stupid if they know they are being watched by law enforcement.
explain the example of charleroi 2000
20 found with weapons, england vs turkey - 10,000 england supporters arrived without tickets, 520 arrested
theory/study A02: SIT - ingroup and outgroup (CIC etc)
Realistic conflict theory - competing to win the match
reducing prejudice A02/3:
uniform (people won’t be stupid if they know they could get arrested there and then), deindividuation - cctv - they know they are being watched.
give all of the examples of applications of social concepts and theories to prejudice
With football hooliganism or crowd disturbances, two supporter groups can easily “identify” with each other. For example Manchester United supporters will identify with other Manchester United supporters and Liverpool football supporter will identify with other Liverpool football
supporters – this will make identification with each in-group very strong which will result according to Tajfels Social Identity Theory in strong prejudice towards the outgroup.
The “hostility” involved in football hooliganism and other crowd behaviour according to Social Identity Theory (Tajfel) can be explained by people identifying with their in-group and think their in-group is the best, for example, Manchester United football team as superior which boosts their self-esteem. This leads them to viewing members of the other football team, Liverpool United as inferior – which leads to prejudice and violence against those in the out-group football team or other crowd group.
Evidence comes from Tajfel study………
Social Identity Theory by Tajfel can explain lots of crowd behaviour especially that of football hooliganism, Tajfel (1971) found that even minimal groups discriminate in favour of their in-group and against their out-group. Football supporters are members of a group for more solid reasons eg, the length of time they have supported the team, than the group members in Tajfel’s study (who were only a group for a short period of time), so they could be perhaps be more prejudiced and so discriminate more – this in addition to hostility could explains their prejudice behaviour.
Another type of “bad” crowd behaviour is that of rioting which can be explained through members of a crowd who do not behave as individuals and identify with the group – they become DEINDIVIDUATED. This is when individual people do not feel recognised as individuals, which means they no longer feel responsible for their own actions, which can lead to behaviour that, as individuals would not occur. A group of football supporters can become a crowd quite easily and the same applies for a rioting crowd ie, London riots – they become deindividuated and acted in a negative way towards each other.
Realistic Conflict Theory (Sherif) in another explanation of prejudice which suggests that when teams COMPETE for material resources (trophy, money etc…), they are more likely to be prejudiced against one another. Football is based around competition. Social Identity Theory suggests that just the presence of two groups ie, two football teams can produce prejudice but the violence associated with football hooligans can be explained through the violence associated with increased competition as suggested by realistic Conflict Theory. Realistic Conflict Theory might also be able to explain riot behaviour where there is looting of shops and stealing of goods (material gains), as this might show competition for material resources like the money, jewellery or food, in times or places of economic hardship.
Evidence comes from Sherif study………
Social Impact Theory (Latane) is referred to as a theory of obedience however it can be used in any SITUATION where an individual is influenced by others and this can include being influenced by a CROWD. So if the influencing group is LARGE and seen as EXPERT (such as being long-term members of a football team), as well as being a GROUP the individual belongs to (eg, they support the team too), with IMMEDIATE IMPACT (eg, they are in the crowd), then a PERSON’S ATTITUDE might well be affected by the group or football team.
explain how SLT (Bandura) can cause antisocial behaviour and how we can tackle this:
Social Learning Theory (Bandura) argues that we observe and imitate the actions of others. Therefore we observe others prejudice and anti-social actions and copy them which quite often result in prejudice actions and anti-social crowd behaviour. One way to reduce this is to put in place positive prosocial role models who show how not to be prejudice and how working together in positive groups can overcome situations that promote aggressive behaviour.
explain how biological explanations can cause anti social behaviour and how we can fix this
BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATIONS – In contrast to these explanations, there are biological explanations. For example, high temperatures cause an increase in testosterone production, due to increased activity of the autonomic nervous system, and testosterone has been linked to aggression. This could increase anti-social crowd behaviour which could be reduced by preventing large crowd gathering in times of higher temperatures.
explain how over crowding can cause antisocial behaviour and how we can tackle this
- OVERCROWDING - (Macintyre and Homel) measured crowding by recording the number of unintentional physical contacts between club-goers in Australian nightclubs. They found that the level of crowding was related to the number of aggressive incidents. This means that crowding could cause anti-social and prejudice acts if crowding gets to level that influenced people to behave in a negative way. In football groups after incidents like Hillsborough in addition to protecting those in the groups there are now seats in terraces to prevent overcrowding and antisocial behaviour.
give all the ways to reduce prejudice:
- Realistic Conflict Theory (Sherif) suggests that one way of reducing prejudice is to have two groups work together towards a superordinate goal that they both want and need.
This would explain why supporters of opposing UK teams, for example Liverpool and Manchester United might compete as individual teams but come together when playing as a national “British” team for example in the World Cup.
- Sherif et al (1954/61) in his field experiment found that two groups of boys who had built up rivalry and prejudice got together, and prejudice was reduced when the boys had to work together towards a “superordinate goal” of fixing the camps water supply. The could be applied to rioting crowds by getting them to work together on a common task or towards a common goal which would reduce their aggressive behaviour and instigate calmness.
- HOWEVER, sometimes the COMMON GOAL is DESTRUCTIVE TO SOCIETY and has brought the crowd together, such as dissatisfaction over a country’s economic situations or, in the example of the London riots, fear against the police. Perhaps Sherif et al’s ideas about reducing prejudice can sometimes work towards increasing prejudice by forming an “in-group”. This means the common goal might result in avoidance of any more damage to a particular area or country that the crowd lives in or has an interest in. This shows that emphasising damage could be useful in getting those within a violent country to work together to reduce the violent behaviour, because they have an interest in protecting the area that they are fighting over or for.
- Another way to reduce prejudice would be to decrease DEINDIVIDUATION, giving people back their individual morality could reduce their rioting and hooliganism. This could be supported by filming the actions of the anti-social group using CCTV which they know about, this would mean that they would know they can be identified from the footage. They would then be influenced not to behave in a deindividuated way and behave according to their own moral values. When England become one of the highest recorded countries for football hooliganism the police and associated officials used CCTV to monitor fans, this could have contributed to the reduction in recent years of anti-social hooliganism at football matches both in the UK and abroad. However there are other factors that could
have contributed to reduction like the heavier police presence as well as putting seats in the stands to control the behaviour of crowds better.
- Social Impact Theory can help up predict behaviour which is helpful in that we can look at preventing it, a form of reduction. We know from Social Impact Theory that we are influenced by groups, this can be as little as two people therefore by having others support you as a minority viewpoint in a larger group. This can help reduce prejudice if the viewpoints of the minority are different to the majority.
- The power of a UNIFORM (Bickman 1974) found that passersby were more likely to obey (an actor) dressed as a security guard that someone dressed in normal clothes. By putting in police in uniforms eg, mounted police at football games or other potential prejudice/ anti-social crowd behaviour situations the obedience to authority should reduce the likelihood of rioting.
