Consider a few examples. In 2004, a rally for world peace was held in California. Sixteen thousand people came together from nine different countries to support the worthy cause of reducing violence and promoting harmony among all human beings. Many stayed up all night holding hands in a giant circle and praying for peace. Is it possible for human beings to live in peace? World War I was called “the war to end all wars,” but after World War II that name went out of fashion. The colossal slaughter and destruction of World War II might have taught humanity some lessons about the importance of peace, yet wars continued; one expert calculated that during the 40 years after the end of World War II there were only 26 days of world peace, defined as the absence of international wars (Sluka, 1992). (Civil wars didn’t count; if you count them, there were probably no days of peace at all.) World peace remains even today a hope of idealists, and we must be grateful for the efforts of campaigners such as those who rally for it. Yet it turns out that on the first day of the conference, several of the delegates got into an argument in the parking lot, and one beat another badly with a shovel. Why would people attending a rally for world peace start fighting each other? Here are some stories from the news. A woman who was charged in the drunk-driving death of her son was sent to prison. The judge allowed her a leave for 24 hours to attend her son’s funeral. Instead of attending the funeral, however, she went to a bar that was about a mile away from the church where the funeral was held. Another judge, in another country, removed a 9-yearold girl from her mother’s home because he did not approve of the name the mother had given her child: “Talulah Does the Hula.” He said such names humiliated children and should not be used. Other names were also rejected, such as Sex Fruit and, for twins, Fish and Chips. Still, not all weird names could be disallowed, and some children were named Number 16 Bus Shelter, Violence, and Midnight Chardonnay. In Santiago, Chile, a prostitute auctioned 27 hours of sex (she called it “love”) and raised $4,000 for a charity event to help poor and disabled children. Religion has been much in the news, but the coverage has been mixed. In Maryland, during the gasoline crisis of 2008, a community organizer held group meetings at gas stations, in which the group prayed for divine intervention to reduce fuel prices. Unfortunately, the prices remained high. (They did come down eventually.) Another type of news story that created a minor furor in 2004 concerned the traffic signals in New York City. Many intersections had buttons for pedestrians to press in order to change the signals—to halt car traffic and activate the signal that it was safe to walk across the street. City officials admitted that many of these buttons were not even connected properly and did not work at all. Why did they have the buttons if they didn’t work? In Brussels, two Belgian beer fans (one a software designer, the other an electrical engineer) launched a video game called “Place to Pee.” In one of the games. players can blow up aliens in outer space by aiming at sensors positioned on either side of the urinal. A specially designed paper cone allows women to play too! Or consider the man who auctioned his “entire life” on eBay. He had recently divorced and wanted to make a new start. So he put up for bid his house in Australia and everything in it, his Mazda car, motorcycle, jet ski, parachuting gear, a trial run at his sales assistant job at a rug shop, and an introduction to his friends. The winning bid was 399,300 Australian dollars (about $389,000). He said, “I am relatively pleased but I thought it would go a bit higher, if I’m honest.” Or consider something much simpler, such as taking a coffee break. If your boss told you to make 10,000 decisions before you got your first cup of coffee, you’d probably think you had a mean boss! But the Starbucks chain of coffee shops has advertised that they offer 19,000 beverage options, if you count all the different coffees, teas, cold drinks, and all the things you could add to them. The recent addition of an “extra hot” option, in which the temperature of your chosen beverage is boosted by 30 degrees Fahrenheit, probably increases the number of choices to more than 25,000. In a sense, therefore, the customer who walks into a Starbucks shop for a morning drink is confronted with more than 25,000 decisions to make. Isn’t that just a way to torture people? Why does Starbucks make money? Why don’t their customers quit in protest? More to the point (at least for a social psychologist), how do people get by in a world that offers them thousands of options at every turn, even for the simplest decisions? Social psychology is the scientific study of how people affect and are affected by others. Can social psychology help us make sense of the bizarre and baffling diversity of human behavior? The answer to this question is a resounding “Yes!” Whether you know it or not, social psychology can also help you make sense of your own social world. The material discussed in this book is intensely relevant to your life. For example, how many of you have asked yourselves something along these lines: “How can I get him to go along with my plan?” “Should I ask her right up front to do this big favor, or is there a better way to get her to say yes?” “How can I bring them around to my way of thinking?” Chances are, something in this book will prove helpful to you in the future. This is not to say that social psychology is a cookbook for how to manipulate people. But social psychology can help you understand some basic principles of social influence, as well as many other principles of social behavior. And it is also just plain interesting to learn about how and why people act the way they do. The point is that there are plenty of reasons why you ought to be interested in social psychology. As your reasons for learning about social psychology become deeper, your level of understanding will become deeper, and your enjoyment will become deeper. So let’s plunge in by looking at a brief history of social psychology !.
