Ng, Winnie W.

Stanley Schachter (1959)- most people would choose to join other people to gain information they need to allay their anxiety

Experiment: recruited young women college students and explained that he was studying the effects of electric shock on human beings Ng, Winnie W.

-Two conditions:
Low- Anxiety = mild shocks

High-Anxiety = painful shocks, but no permanent damage

- Choice : either wait for her turn alone or with others - Results:
In the Low-Anxiety condition: 33% choose to affiliate In the High-Anxiety condition: 63% choose to affiliate

Ng, Winnie W.

Misery Loves Miserable Company

Schachter replicated the high anxiety condition of his original experiment Difference: manipulated the amount of information that could be gained by affiliating with others

Half: wait with other women who were about to receive shocks (similar situation) Other half: join women who were waiting for their advising by their professors (dissimilar situation)

Ng, Winnie W.

Schachter hypothesized: if there was no social comparison information to be obtained, there would not be any reason to join them Findings:

60% of the women asked to wait with

others who are facing a similar condition No one in the dissimilar condition expressed affiliate desires

Ng, Winnie W.

Embarrassed Misery Avoids Company

In some cases the fear of embarrassment can be stronger than the need to understand what is happening, resulting in inhibition instead of affiliation Researchers changed the Schachtertype situation to include an element of public embarrassment

Ng, Winnie W.

the investigators asked 4-6 strangers to meet at a room labeled with a sign Sexual Attitudes: Please Wait Inside. In the fear condition-electrical devices and information sheets In the ambiguous condition- two cardboard boxes filled with computer forms

Ng, Winnie W.

Embarrassment (Anxiety-producing) condition-contraceptive devices, books on sexually transmitted diseases and pictures of naked men and women Observers behind a two-way mirror watched the group for 20 minutes, recording 5 types of behavior:

Interaction (talking) Action (examining equipment) Withdrawal (reading a book) Controlled Nonreaction Escape

Ng, Winnie W.

Downward( and Upward) SOCIAL COMPARISON

Ng, Winnie W.

When people want to obtain information, they select those who are similar to them or are likely to be particularly well-informed Downward Social Comparison: selecting targets who are worse off than they are Upward Social Comparison: when a person compares himself to others who are better off than himself

Ng, Winnie W.

Abraham Tessers self-evaluation maintenance (SEM) model suggests that people often graciously celebrate others accomplishments-but not when they are bested in a domain that they value greatly In an experiment Tesser and collegues asked elementary students to identify the types of activities that were personally important to them

Ng, Winnie W.

The students also identified their most and least preferred classmate One week later, students rated their ability, their close classmates ability and their distant classmates ability in one area they felt was important and in one area they felt was unimportant Results:

Important Tasks= performed superior to close friends Unimportant Task=performed relatively worse

Ng, Winnie W.

Investigators asked students to keep track of : every single one of their interactions to take note whether interaction involved academic or social matters what their relationship was to the person and if they shared information that would be helpful to the other
Ng, Winnie W.

As the SEM model suggests: students gave more useful information to their friends when interactions pertained to social matters

In Academics, students helped their friends less than they help strangers

Ng, Winnie W.