More Than Words Communication In Intergroup Conflicts: Fill & Download for Free

Part of the problem is people wanted replication in every situation. If there is anything we know about being human, if you draw a circle, somebody is going to step over the line. The psychiatric people are desperate to do reductionism where we are nothing but a bag of reactions from chemicals.This has now become an economic quest as well, with pharmaceutical companies needing validation. Psychological formats are trying to be scientific with their replication of testing, trying to have thinking as primarily a logical-behavioristic model.We are talking thinking processes, not biology. In addition, sorting why people think, much less act the way they do, is as variable as the weather. We can get general ideas but there are literally lists of different models which are all viable from a particular point of view. Science likes consistent, replicable reasons things happen the way they do, so some people just eliminate the models that don't work for theirs. You won't get consensus. Each group or school of thought has a viable interest on theirs being the one chosen for THE definitive model. It's not going to happen except where maybe money is involved.So lets start with the bio stuff and also some common errors.There is no lizard brain.That got popularized by Paul MacLean with his describing what he liked to call the "Triune Brain Theory. The basic idea is that every human brain contains three independent competing minds – the reptile, the early mammal, and the modern primate.People grabbed it. Problem is, its not accurate. His neuroanatomy has the proverbial holes in it.– Ben Thomas, Scientific AmericanYou do not use only 10 percent of your brain.This has gained some traction again because of the new movie Lucy. But it is Science Fiction at it's worse. This idea actually started from an urban legend. In Lucy, it now implies things such as hugely increased intelligence, super strength, ESP, complete control of all the cells in her body, the ability to control other people’s bodies, mind reading, telekinesis, and the ability to access electronic communications. Nature would never do that with evolution. Stupid people maybe but not natural selection. You use it all. How well is another story.- Neurologist Barry Gordon, Johns Hopkins School of MedicinePeople are Not either "right-brained" or "left-brained."Because of the popular notion that people are either dominated by their right or left hands, there is an assumption the opposite side of their brain hemispheres is dominate. There for, people who are "right-brained" tend to be more creative and expressive, while those who are "left-brained" tend to be more analytical and logical. Not accurate. Lateralization of brain function tends to be more associated with a particular region of the brain, they still work together.– Carl Zimmer, DiscoverThe human brain contains close to 85 billion neurons. instead of 100 billion neurons.To contrast, a baboon brain has around 14bn neurons– Dr. Suzana Herculano-HouzelThe human adult brain forms new cells throughout life. Neurogenesis– Dr. Dan Cossins, The ScientestHumans Do not have the biggest brains.The average adult brain is about three pounds and measures up to about 15 centimeters in length. The sperm whale, weighs 18 pounds, and even elephants are around 11 pounds.The another size issue is ratio to body size. The Encephalization Quotient is a measure of brain size relative to body size. Humans are nearly 7.5.They tried it with Dogs and Ravens because ravens are way smarter than Dogs. Nope other factors.Humans are smarter because of our increased cortical network, which supports more complex information processing. Whales and dolphins may have big brains, but their cerebral cortexes are much simpler in structure than in primate brains or even the brain of your pet dog.– R. Douglas Fields NeurobiologistAnd Finally, all brain damage is not necessarily permanent.Brains are fragile and can be damaged by trauma, stroke, or disease. I should know as I work with people who've had those and had a stroke myself. It is amazing what some of the recovery can be. It's true there can be and often is permanent personality or cognitive function but there are also some absolute miracle comebacks. The human brain has a huge amount of plasticity. Those little gray cells often realign themselves where they handshake their old friends as soon as possible. It often heals itself over time and form new connections.– BrainFacts.orgBut there are some things agreed on because we have been able to replicate it across cultures and races with some certainty. There are exceptions to this with disease or trauma but we are looking for general formats.Sensory inputs convert data into binary formats via nerve conduits. Those nerves collect and distribute info to certain parts of the brain. Those parts have specific functions which must work together for proper thinking to take place. Now we have cognition. Here are a few replicated research social experiments.When a number of people witness something such as an accident, the more people that are present, the less likely it is that someone will step forward to help. This is known as the bystander effect.People will go to great, and sometimes dangerous, lengths to obey authority figures. In his famous obedience experiments, psychologist Stanley Milgram found that people would be willing to deliver a potentially fatal electrical shock to another person when ordered to by the experimenters.Most people will go along with the group, even if they think the group is wrong. In Solomon Asch's conformity experiments, people were asked to judge which was the longest of three lines. When other members of the group picked the wrong line, participants were more likely to choose the same line.Situation variables can play a major role in our social behavior. In the Stanford Prison Experiment, psychologist Philip Zimbardo discovered that participants would take on the roles given to them to such an extreme that the experiment had to be discontinued after just six days. Those placed in the roles of prison guards began to abuse their power, while those in the role of the prisoners became anxious and stressed.People typically look for things that confirm their existing beliefs and ignore information that contradicts what they already think. This is known as expectation confirmation or conformational beliefs. This is part of the reason why stereotypes and prejudice exist.Our attitudes, or how we evaluate different things including people, ideas, and objects, can be both explicit and implicit. Explicit attitudes are the ones that we form consciously and of which we are fully aware. Implicit attitudes, on the other hand, form and work unconsciously yet still have a powerful influence on our behavior.Our perceptions of other people are often based upon things such as expected roles, social norms, and social categorizations. Since we expect people who are in a certain role or part of a particular social group to behave in a particular way, our initial impressions of a person frequently rely on these mental shortcuts to make fast judgments of how we expect people to behave.When explaining behavior, we tend to attribute our own good fortune to internal factors and negative outcomes to external forces. When it comes to other people, however, we typically attribute their actions to internal characteristics. For example, if we get a bad grade on a paper, it's the teacher's fault; if a classmate gets a bad grade, it's because he didn't study hard enough. This tendency is known as the actor-observer bias.In groups, people often go along with the majority opinion rather than cause disruption. This phenomenon is known as group-think and tends to occur more frequently when group members share a great deal in common, when the group is under stress, or in the presence of a charismatic leader.Credit: Kendra Cherry, 10 quick facts about social psychologySO now some othersAn estimated 10 to 15% of adults in the United States experience symptoms of at least one personality disorder.Researchers have identified a number of factors that may contribute to the onset of different personality disorders such as obsessive-compulsive disorder and borderline-personality disorder.These factors include:GeneticsRelationships with peersHigh sensitivityVerbal abuseChildhood traumaBirth Order Can Influence Your PersonalityYou've probably heard of this concept before. First born children are often described as "bossy" or "responsible," while last-born children are sometimes described as "irresponsible" and "impulsive." A few recent empirical studies have found that such things as birth order and family size may indeed have an impact on personality. One study even found that birth order can influence your choices of friends and romantic partners; first-borns tend to associate with other first-borns, middle-borns with other middle-borns and last-borns with last-borns.Your Personality Is Relatively Stable throughout LifeIn long-term studies of personality, some of the most core parts of personality remain stable throughout life. Three aspects that do tend to change as we age are anxiety levels, friendliness and eagerness for novel experiences.According to researcher Paul T. Costa Jr., there is no evidence our overall personalities change as we grow older. "What changes as you go through life are your roles and the issues that matter most to you. People may think their personality has changed as they age, but it is their habits that change, their vigor and health, their responsibilities and circumstances - not their basic personality," he suggested in a New York Times article.Huffington post had a list.We all have some capacity for evil.Philip Zimbardo proved it with the prison experiment but we all know we have been mean at times.We don't notice what's right in front of us.In 1998, researchers from Harvard and Kent State University targeted pedestrians on a college campus to determine how much people notice about their immediate environments. They were all basicly in their own worlds.Delaying gratification is hard -- but we're more successful when we do.This has been done many times with children. The research has shown when they do it with candy as a child. They tend to have sucessful lives as adults. When they can't. Their lives are more stressed and problematic.A famous Stanford experiment showed we can experience deeply conflicting moral impulses.A famous 1961 study by Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram tested (rather alarmingly) how far people would go to obey authority figures when asked to harm others, and the intense internal conflict between personal morals and the obligation to obey authority figures. They would nervously laugh but still gave what they thought were 450 volts of shock to people they were training.We're easily corrupted by power.We've all know the statement "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." It's true and replicated in real life but in experiments. Even simple ones. A 2003 study published in the journal Psychological Review put students into groups of three to write a short paper together. Two students were instructed to write the paper, while the other was told to evaluate the paper and determine how much each student would be paid. In the middle of their work, a researcher brought in a plate of five cookies. Although generally the last cookie was never eaten, the "boss" almost always ate the fourth cookie -- and ate it sloppily, mouth open."When researchers give people power in scientific experiments, they are more likely to physically touch others in potentially inappropriate ways, to flirt in more direct fashion, to make risky choices and gambles, to make first offers in negotiations, to speak their mind, and to eat cookies like the Cookie Monster, with crumbs all over their chins and chests," psychologist Dacher Keltner, one of the study's leaders, wrote in an article for UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center.We seek out loyalty to social groups and are easily drawn to intergroup conflict.This classic 1950s social psychology experiment shined a light on the possible psychological basis of why social groups and countries find themselves embroiled in conflict with one another -- and how they can learn to cooperate again.Study leader Muzafer Sherif took two groups of 11 boys (all age 11) to Robbers Cave State Park in Oklahoma for "summer camp." The groups (named the "Eagles" and the "Rattlers") spent a week apart, having fun together and bonding, with no knowledge of the existence of the other group. When the two groups finally integrated, the boys started calling each other names, and when they started competing in various games, more conflict ensued and eventually the groups refused to eat together. In the next phase of the research, Sherif designed experiments to try to reconcile the boys by having them enjoy leisure activities together (which was unsuccessful) and then having them solve a problem together, which finally began to ease the conflict.We only need one thing to be happy.The 75-year Harvard Grant study --one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies ever conducted -- followed 268 male Harvard undergraduates from the classes of 1938-1940 (now well into their 90s) for 75 years, regularly collecting data on various aspects of their lives. The universal conclusion? Love really is all that matters, at least when it comes to determining long-term happiness and life satisfaction.The study's longtime director, psychiatrist George Vaillant, told The Huffington Post that there are two pillars of happiness: "One is love. The other is finding a way of coping with life that does not push love away." For example, one participant began the study with the lowest rating for future stability of all the subjects and he had previously attempted suicide. But at the end of his life, he was one of the happiest. Why? As Vaillant explains, “He spent his life searching for love.”We thrive when we have strong self-esteem and social status.Achieving fame and success isn't just an ego boost -- it could also be a key to longevity, according to the notorious Oscar winners study. Researchers from Toronto's Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences Centre found that Academy Award-winning actors and directors tend to live longer than those who were nominated but lost. Winning actors and actresses outlived their losing peers by nearly four years."We are not saying that you will live longer if you win an Academy Award," Donald Redelmeier, the lead author of the study, told ABC News. "Or that people should go out and take acting courses. Our main conclusion is simply that social factors are important ... It suggests that an internal sense of self-esteem is an important aspect to health and health care."We constantly try to justify our experiences so that they make sense to us.Anyone who's taken a freshman Psych 101 class is familiar with cognitive dissonance, a theory which dictates that human beings have a natural propensity to avoid psychological conflict based on disharmonious or mutually exclusive beliefs. In an often-cited 1959 experiment, psychologist Leon Festinger asked participants to perform a series of dull tasks, like turning pegs in a wooden knob, for an hour. They were then paid either $1 or $20 to tell a "waiting participant" (aka a researcher) that the task was very interesting. Those who were paid $1 to lie rated the tasks as more enjoyable than those who were paid $20. Their conclusion? Those who were paid more felt that they had sufficient justification for having performed the rote task for an hour, but those who were only paid $1 felt the need to justify the time spent (and reduce the level of dissonance between their beliefs and their behavior) by saying that the activity was fun. In other words, we commonly tell ourselves lies to make the world appear a more logical, harmonious place.We buy into stereotypes in a big wayStereotyping various groups of people based on social group, ethnicity or class is something nearly all of us do, even if we make an effort not to -- and it can lead us to draw unfair and potentially damaging conclusions about entire populations. NYU psychologist John Bargh's experiments on "automaticity of social behavior" revealed that we often judge people based on unconscious stereotypes -- and we can't help but act on them. We also tend to buy into stereotypes for social groups that we see ourselves being a part of. In one study, Bargh found that a group of participants who were asked to unscramble words related to old age -- "Florida," "helpless" and "wrinkled" -- walked significantly slower down the hallway after the experiment than the group who unscrambled words unrelated to age. Bargh repeated the findings in two other comparable studies that enforced stereotypes based on race and politeness."Stereotypes are categories that have gone too far," Bargh told Psychology Today. "When we use stereotypes, we take in the gender, the age, the color of the skin of the person before us, and our minds respond with messages that say hostile, stupid, slow, weak. Those qualities aren't out there in the environment. They don't reflect reality."So these are some of the evidence based scientific psych data which can be replicated by yourself if you wish to. There are others which are always facinating. But there always is the guy who doesn't do it the way everyone else does. We have an assistant minister who periodically does the children's sermon. He's in his 40's and never has been married nor has children. Every time he is telling his story and interacts with the kids, they mess him up because they don't respond like an adult would, logically. In addition, many of them haven't the experience to know what he's driving at. This happens with adults too. They miss the point.And one last thing, all the models are trying to explain a phenomena which is already occurring. Even astrology is an attempt to explain why people do what they do. Body types were used as well as cranial shape. Even the famous paull reading is swarm to by some people. Now, some of the biological/chemical models are doing the same thing where they are throwing in the proverbial kitchen sink for all motivation and personality. We are more than a dopamine factory. But they are models, not fact. Our drives are still connected to Darwinian processes in which there always will be variables which play against the norm in every aspect of life. It is the way of nature. We diversify and adapt in every dimension.Thanks for the A2A by Vasco

Arab identity is the objective or subjective state of perceiving oneself as an Arab and as relating to being Arab. Like other cultural identities, it relies on a common culture, a traditional lineage, the common land in history, shared experiences including underlying conflicts and confrontations. These commonalities are regional and in historical contexts, tribal. Arab identity is defined independently of religious identity, and pre-dates the spread of Islam, with historically attested Arab Christian tribes and Arab Jewish tribes. Arabs are a diverse group in terms of religious affiliations and practices. Most Arabs are Muslim, with a minority adhering to other faiths, largely Christianity, but also Druze and Baha'i.[1][2]Arab identity can also be seen through a lens of national, regional or local identity. Throughout Arab history, there have been three major national trends in the Arab world. Pan-Arabism rejects the individual Arab states' existing sovereignty as artificial creations and calls for full Arab unity.Contents1 History2 Ideology2.1 Arab nationalism2.2 Arab socialism3 Unity3.1 Pan-Arabism3.2 Arab League4 Definition5 Homeland6 Categories6.1 Racial identity6.2 Ethnic identity6.3 National identity6.4 Religious identity6.5 Cultural Identity6.6 Linguistic identity6.7 Political identity7 See also8 ReferencesHistoryMain article: History of the ArabsNear East in 565, showing the Ghassanids, Lakhmids, Kindah and Hejaz.The Arabs are first mentioned in the mid-ninth century BCE as a people living in eastern and southern Syria, and the north of the Arabian Peninsula.[3]Expansion of the Caliphate.Expansion under the Prophet Muhammad, 622-632Expansion during the Rashidun Caliphate, 632-661Expansion during the Umayyad Caliphate, 661-750The Arabs appear to have been under the vassalage of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–605 BCE), and the succeeding Neo-Babylonian Empire (605–539 BCE), Persian Achaemenid Empire (539–332 BCE), Greek Macedonian/Seleucid Empire and Parthian Empire. Arab tribes, most notably the Ghassanids and Lakhmids begin to appear in the southern Syrian deserts and southern Jordan from the mid 3rd century CE onwards, during the mid to later stages of the Roman Empire and Sasanian Empire.The relation of ʿarab and ʾaʿrāb is complicated further by the notion of "lost Arabs" al-ʿArab al-ba'ida mentioned in the Qur'an as punished for their disbelief. All contemporary Arabs were considered as descended from two ancestors, Qahtan and Adnan. During the early Muslim conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries, the Arabs forged the Rashidun and then Umayyad Caliphate, and later the Abbasid Caliphate, whose borders touched southern France in the west, China in the east, Anatolia in the north, and the Sudan in the south. This was one of the largest land empires in history.IdeologyArab nationalismMain article: Arab nationalismSee also: Nasserism and Ba'athismGamal Abdel Nasser was a symbol and significant player in the rise of Arab nationalismArab nationalism is a nationalist ideology that asserts the Arabs are a nation and promotes the unity of Arab people. In its contemporary conception, it is the belief that the Arab people are a people united by language, culture, ethnicity, history, geography and interests, and that one Arab nation will assemble the Arabs within its borders from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Sea.Many Arabs believe that they are an old nation, exhibiting pride, for example, based on Arabic poetry and other forms of Arabic literature. In the era of the spread of Islam, nationalism was manifested by the identification of Arabs as a distinct nation within Islamic countries. In the modern era, this idea was embodied by ideologies such as Nasserism and Ba'athism, which were common forms of nationalism in the Arab world, especially in the mid-twentieth century. Perhaps the most important form of creating such an Arab state was the establishment of the United Arab Republic between Egypt and Syria, although it was short-lived. To some extent, Arab nationalism gained a new popular appeal as a result of the Arab Spring of the 2010s, calling for Arab social unity, led by the people on the streets, not the authoritarian regimes that had installed the historic forms of nationalism.Arab socialismMain article: Arab socialismArab socialism is a political ideology based on an amalgamation between Arab nationalism and socialism. Arab socialism differs from other socialist ideas prevalent in the Arab world.[4] For many, including Michel Aflaq, one of its founders, Arab socialism was a necessary step towards the consolidation of Arab unity and freedoms, since the socialist system of ownership and development alone could overcome the remnants of colonialism in the Arab world.[5][6]UnityPan-ArabismMain article: Pan-ArabismFurther information: Arab Federation, Arab Islamic Republic, Federation of Arab Republics, Unified Political Command, United Arab Republic, United Arab States, and Arab FederationEgyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser signing unity pact with Syrian president Shukri al-Quwatli, forming the United Arab Republic, February 1958.Pan-Arabism is an ideology espousing the unification of the countries of North Africa and Middle East from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Sea, often referred to as the Arab world.[7] The idea is based on the integration of some or all of the Arab countries into a single political and economic framework that removes the borders between the Arab states and establishes a strong economic, cultural and military state.[8] Arab unity is an ideology that Arab nationalists see as a solution to the backwardness, occupation and oppression that the Arab citizens in all the individual states are suffering from.[9]Arab LeagueMain article: Arab LeagueFurther information: Charter of the Arab LeagueSee also: Gulf Cooperation Council and Arab Maghreb UnionThe Arab League, formally the League of Arab States is a regional organization of Arab countries in and around North Africa, the Middle East, the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. It was formed in Cairo on 22 March 1945 with six members: Kingdom of Egypt, Kingdom of Iraq, Transjordan (renamed Jordan in 1949), Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Syria.[10][11] Its charter provides for coordination among member states in economic matters, including trade relations, communications, cultural relations, travel documents and permits, social relations and health.[12]DefinitionA depiction of Hagar and Ishmael in the Arabian Desert by François-Joseph Navez.An Arab can be defined as a member of a Semitic people, inhabiting much of the Middle East and North Africa.[13][14][15][16] The ties that bind Arabs are ethnic, linguistic, cultural, historical, nationalist, geographical,political, often also relating to religion and to cultural identity.[17] In their long history and with many local variations, Arabs have developed their distinct customs, language, architecture, fine art, literature, music, cinema, dance, media, cuisine, dress, societies, and mythology.[18]According to both Judaism and Islam, Ishmael was the ancestor of the Ishmaelites and of the Arabs. Ishmael was the elder son of Abraham and the forefather of several prominent Arab tribes.[19]“ Those who belong to the Arab ethnic group, the Arab people or the Arab nation, speak a form of Arabic and consider it their "natural" language; regard the history and cultural characteristics of the Arabs as their inheritance; assert an Arab identity or consciousness.—Maxime Rodinson ”“ By "Arab" I mean whoever describes himself thus … there, where he is - in his history, his memory, the place where he lives, dies and survives. There, where he is - that is to say, in the experience of a life which is both tolerable and intolerable for him.—Abdelkebir Khatibi ”“ Arabs: name given to the ancient and present-day inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula and often applied to the peoples closely allied to them in ancestry, language, religion, and culture. Presently more than 200 million Arabs are living mainly in 21 countries; they constitute the overwhelming majority of the population in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, and the nations of North Africa. The Arabic language is the main symbol of cultural unity among these people, but the religion of Islam provides another common bond for the majority of Arabs.—Encarta Encyclopedia ”HomelandMain article: Arab worldThe Arab world, formally the Arab homeland,[20][21][22] also known as the Arab nation or the Arab states,[23] currently consists of the 22 Arab countries: Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. They occupy an area stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the east, and from the Mediterranean Sea in the north to the Horn of Africa and the Indian Ocean in the southeast. In 2019, the combined population of the Arab world was estimated at 423 million inhabitants.[24]CategoriesArab identity can be described as consisting of many interconnected parts:Racial identityMain article: Arabid raceTraditional Qahtanite genealogy.According to traditional physical anthropology, Arabs belong to the Semitic branch of the so-called Arabid race.[25] [26] Based on analysis of the DNA of Semitic-speaking peoples, some recent genetic studies have found Y-chromosomal links between modern Semitic-speaking peoples of the Middle East like Arabs, Hebrews, Mandaeans, Samaritans, and Assyrians.Medieval Arab genealogists divided Arabs into three groups:"Ancient Arabs" tribes that had vanished or been destroyed."Pure Arabs" descending from the Qahtan tribe, who existed before Abraham and Ishmael.The "Arabized Arabs" descending from Ishmael, the elder son of Abraham through his marriage to Rala bint Mudad ibn Amr ibn Jurhum, an Arab Qahtani woman. Tribes descending from this alliance are also referred to as Adnani tribes.Centuries later, the "Arabized Arabs" assumed the name "Pure Arabs" and the "Arabized Arabs" description was attributed to other peoples that joined Islam and created alliances with the Arab tribes.[citation needed]Ethnic identityMain article: ArabsArab tribes before the spread of IslamConcentrating on ethnic identity is another way of defining Arab identity, which can be subdivided in linguistic, cultural, social, historical, political, national or genealogical terms. In this approach, "being Arab" is based on one or several of the following criteria:Genealogy: Someone who can trace his or her ancestry to the Arab tribes, from the Arabian Desert, Syrian Desert and neighboring areas.[27]Ancestry: belonging to Arab people, inherited from grandparents, or denoting an ancestor or ancestors.Self-concept: a person who defines himself as "Arab"Attribution of identity: Someone, who is seen by others as an Arab, based on their notions of ethnicity (for example, people of northern Sudan, who can be seen both as African and/or Arab)Linguistic: Someone whose first language, and, by extension, cultural expression, is Arabic.[28][29]Culture: someone who was brought up with Arab culturePolitical: Someone, whose country is a member of the League of Arab States and who shares political associations with the Arab countries. (for example, Somalis and Djiboutians)Societal: Someone who lives in or identifies with an Arab societyNationality: one who is a national of an Arab stateNational identityMain article: Arab nationalismThe flag of the Arab Revolt, its design and colors are the basis of many of the Arab states' flags.National identity is one's identity or sense of belonging to one state or to one nation.[30] It is the sense of a nation as a cohesive whole, as represented by distinctive traditions, culture, language and politics.[31] Arab nationalism is a nationalist ideology celebrating the glories of Arab civilization, the language and literature of the Arabs, calling for rejuvenation and political union in the Arab world. The premise of Arab nationalism is the need for an ethnic, political, cultural and historical unity among the Arab peoples of the Arab countries.[32] The main objective of Arab nationalism was to achieve the independence of Western influence of all Arab countries.[33] Arab political strategies with the nation in order to determine the struggle of the Arab nation with the state system (nation-state) and the struggle of the Arab nation for unity.[34] The concepts of new nationalism and old nationalism are used in analysis to expose the conflict between nationalism, national ethnic nationalism, and new national political nationalism. These two aspects of national conflicts highlight the crisis known as the Arab Spring, which affects the Arab world today.[35] Suppressing the political struggle to assert the identity of the new civil state is said to clash with the original ethnic identity.[36]Religious identityMain article: Arabs § ReligionPre-Islamic Arabian goddess Allāt from the Ba‘alshamîn temple in Palmyra, first century ADUntil about the fourth century, almost all Arabs practised polytheistic religions.[37] Although significant Jewish and Christian minorities developed, polytheism remained the dominant belief system in pre-Islamic, most Arabs followed a pagan religion with a number of deities, including Hubal,[38] Wadd, Allāt,[39] Manat, and Uzza. A few individuals, the hanifs, had apparently rejected polytheism in favor of monotheism unaffiliated with any particular religion. Different theories have been proposed regarding the role of Allah in Meccan religion.[40][41][42][43] Today the majority of Arabs are Muslims, identities are often seen as inseparable. The "Verse of brotherhood" is the tenth verse of the Quranic chapter "Al-Hujurat", is about brotherhood of believers with each other.[44][45][46] However, there were divergent currents in Arabism - one religious and secular one - throughout Arab history. After the collapse of the Ottoman Islamic caliphate in the 20th century, Arab nationalism emerged on the religious front. These two trends have continued to overcome each other to this day. Now, religious fundamentalism offers an alternative to secular nationalism. There are also different religious denominations within Islam and are often valuable to religion as a whole, leading to sectarian conflict and conflict. In fact, the social and psychological distances between Sunni and Shia Muslims may be greater than the perceived distance between different religions. Because of this, Islam can be seen both as a unification and as a force of division in Arab identity.[47]Cultural IdentityMain article: Arab cultureElegant Arab Ladies on a Terrace at SunsetArab cultural identity is characterized by complete uniformity. Arab cultural space are historically so tightly interwoven.[48] Arab cultural identity has been assessed through four measures that measure the basic characteristics of Arab culture: religiosity, grouping, belief in gender hierarchy and attitudes toward sexual behavior. The results indicate the predominance of the professional strategies that Arab social workers have learned in their training in social work, while indicating the willingness of social workers to benefit from established strategies in their culture and society, either separately or in combination with the professional.[49] There are different aspects of Arab identity, whether ethnic, religious, national, linguistic or cultural - of different fields and analytical angles.[50][51]“ The family is still at the heart of traditional Arabic letters that the fact that the family is a basic unit of social organization in the traditional Arab contemporary society may explain why it continues to exercise a significant influence on the formation of identity. At the heart of social and economic activities, this institution is still very coherent. Exercise the early and most lasting influence on the person's affiliations.—Halim Barakat ”Linguistic identityMain article: ArabicArabic epitaph of Imru' al-Qays, son of 'Amr, king of all the Arabs", inscribed in Nabataean script. Basalt, dated in 7 Kislul, 223, viz. December 7, 328 AD. Found at Nemara in the Hauran (Southern Syria).For some Arabs, beyond language, race, religion, tribe or region. Arabic; hence, can be considered as a common factor among all Arabs. Since the Arabic language also exceeds the country's border, the Arabic language helps to create a sense of Arab nationalism.[52] According to the Iraqi world exclusive Cece, "it must be people who speak one language one heart and one soul, so should form one nation and thus one country." There are two sides to the coin, argumentative. While the Arabic language as one language can be a unifying factor, the language is often not unique at all. Accents vary from region to region, there are wide differences between written and spoken versions, many countries host bilingual citizens, many Arabs are illiterate. This leads us to examine other identifying aspects of Arabic identity.[53] Arabic, a Semitic language from the Afroasiatic language family. Modern Standard Arabic serves as the standardized and literary variety of Arabic used in writing, as well as in most formal speech, although it is not used in daily speech by the overwhelming majority of Arabs. Most Arabs who are functional in Modern Standard Arabic acquire it through education and use it solely for writing and formal settings.Political identityMain article: Politics of the Arab LeagueA map of the Arab world.Arab political identity characterized by restraint, tolerance, compassion, hospitality, generosity, proper conduct, equality and unanimity. Arab countries to redefine politics are linked to the fact that the political culture behind the Arabs has been overrun for centuries by successive political.[54][55] The vast majority of the citizens of the Arab countries view themselves and are seen by outsiders as "Arabs". Their sense of the Arab nation is based on their common denominators: language, culture, ethnicity, social and political experiences, economic interests and the collective memory of their place and role in history.[56]The relative importance of these factors is estimated differently by different groups and frequently disputed. Some combine aspects of each definition, as done by Palestinian Habib Hassan Touma:[57]“ "One who is a national of an Arab state, has command of the Arabic language, and possesses a fundamental knowledge of Arab tradition, that is, of the manners, customs, and political and social systems of the culture. ”The Arab League, a regional organization of countries intended to encompass the Arab world, defines an Arab as:“ An Arab is a person whose language is Arabic, who lives in an Arab country, and who is in sympathy with the aspirations of the Arab peoples.[58] ”See alsoArabismArab diasporaArab worldArab nationalismArab cultureCultural identityEthnogenesisGroup identityIdentity (social science)Identity politicsNational identityPassing (racial identity)Self-conceptSocial identityReferencesOri Stendel. The Arabs in Palestine. Sussex Academic Press. p. 45. ISBN 1898723249. Retrieved March 4, 2014.Mohammad Hassan Khalil. Between Heaven and Hell: Islam, Salvation, and the Fate of Others. Oxford University Press. p. 297. Retrieved March 1, 2014.Myers, E. A. (2010-02-11). The Ituraeans and the Roman Near East: Reassessing the Sources. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781139484817.TORREY, GORDON H.; DEVLIN, JOHN F. (1965). "Arab Socialism". Journal of International Affairs. 19 (1): 47–62. doi:10.2307/24363337. JSTOR 24363337."No Arab Bolivars: As region implodes, Arab socialism fizzles out". Middle East Eye. Retrieved 2017-11-22."Coping with the Legacy of Arab Socialism". Cato Institute. 2014-08-25. Retrieved 2017-11-22."Pan-Arabism Is Not Dead | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson". The Harvard Crimson. Retrieved 2017-11-22."Pan-Arabism - Oxford Reference"."Pan-Arabism | ideology". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2017-11-22."Arab League". The Columbia Encyclopedia. 2013. Retrieved 17 December 2013. – via Questia (subscription required)Sly, Liz (12 November 2011). "Syria suspended from Arab League". Washington Post."Profile: Arab League". BBC News. 2017-08-24. Retrieved 2017-11-22.Naylor, Chris (2015). Postcards from the Middle East: How our family fell in love with the Arab world. Lion Books. ISBN 9780745956503."Arab | Definition of Arab in US English by Oxford Dictionaries". Oxford Dictionaries | English.BOARD, V&S EDITORIAL (2015). ENGLISH - ENGLISH DICTIONARY (in German). V&S Publishers. ISBN 9789350574195."member of a semitic people spread throughout middle east, n africa etc. Crossword Clue, Crossword Solver". Crossword Solver, Words with Friends Cheat, Scrabble Word Finder, Boggle, Anagram Solver, Scrabble Help, Sudoku.*"Who is an Arab?". Home.3War of Visions: Conflict of Identities in the Sudan. p 405. By Francis Mading Deng"Culture and Tradition in the Arab Countries". The Habiba Chaouch Foundation."Arabic Culture & Traditions – Online Resources | Pimsleur Approach™". Learn Languages Online.El-Shamy, Hasan M. (1995). Folk traditions of the Arab world : a guide to motif classification (1. [Dr.]. ed.). Bloomington u.a.: Indiana Univ. Press. ISBN 0253352223.Both Judaism and Islam see him as the ancestor of Arab peoples. Jones, Lindsay (2005). Encyclopedia of religion. Macmillan Reference USA. ISBN 9780028657400.Ishmael is recognized by Muslims as the ancestor of several prominent Arab tribes and being the forefather of Muhammad. A–Z of Prophets in Islam and Judaism, Wheeler, Ishmael Muslims also believe that Muhammad was the descendant of Ishmael that would establish a great nation, as promised by God in the Old Testament.*Genesis 17:20Zeep, Ira G. (2000). A Muslim primer: beginner's guide to Islam, Volume 2. University of Arkansas Press. p. 5. ISBN 978-1-55728-595-9.Ishmael was considered the ancestor of the Northern Arabs and Muhammad was linked to him through the lineage of the patriarch Adnan. Ishmael may also have been the ancestor of the Southern Arabs through his descendant Qahtan."Zayd ibn Amr" was another Pre-Islamic figure who refused idolatry and preached monotheism, claiming it was the original belief of their [Arabs] father Ishmael. *The Beginning and the End by Ibn Kathir – Vol. 3, p. 323 The History by Ibn Khaldun, Vol, 2, p. 4The tribes of Central West Arabia called themselves the "people of Abraham and the offspring of Ishmael". The Signs of Prophethood, Section 18, page 215."Signs of Prophethood in the Noble Life of Prophet Muhammad (part 1 of 2): Prophet Muhammad's Early Life – The Religion of Islam". The Religion of Islam.Gibb, Hamilton A.R. and Kramers, J.H. (1965) Shorter Encyclopedia of Islam. Ithaca:Cornell University Press. pp. 191–98Maalouf, Tony. Arabs in the Shadow of Israel: The Unfolding of God's Prophetic Plan for Ishmael's Line. Kregel Academic. ISBN 9780825493638.Urbain, Olivier (2008). Music and Conflict Transformation: Harmonies and Dissonances in Geopolitics. I.B.Tauris. ISBN 9781845115289.Khan, Zafarul-Islam. "The Arab World – an Arab perspective". Alternative media news source from India.Phillips, Christopher (12 November 2012). "Everyday Arab Identity: The Daily Reproduction of the Arab World". Routledge.Mellor, Noha; Rinnawi, Khalil; Dajani, Nabil; Ayish, Muhammad I. (20 May 2013). "Arab Media: Globalization and Emerging Media Industries". John Wiley & Sons."Majority and Minorities in the Arab World: The Lack of a Unifying Narrative". Jerusalem Center For Public Affairs.http://worldpopulationreview.com http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/arab-countries/. Retrieved 2019-11-26. Missing or empty |title= (help)Boosahda, Elizabeth (2010). Arab-American Faces and Voices: The Origins of an Immigrant Community. University of Texas Press. ISBN 9780292783133."The Mediterranean race in Arabia". http://Theapricity.com. Retrieved 28 October 2017.(Regueiro et al.) 2006; found agreement by (Battaglia et al.) 2008Jankowski, James. "Egypt and Early Arab Nationalism" in Rashid Kakhlidi, ed., Origins of Arab Nationalism, pp. 244–245Quoted in Dawisha, Adeed. Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century. Princeton University Press. 2003, ISBN 0-691-12272-5, p. 99Tajfel, H; Turner, J.C (1986). "The Social Identity Theory of Inter-group Behavior". Psychology of Intergroup Relations."Definition of National Identity in English". Oxford Dictionaries. Archived from the original on 2015-11-17.Dawisha, Adeed (2003-01-01). "Requiem for Arab Nationalism". Middle East Quarterly."Arab Nationalism: Mistaken Identity | Martin Kramer on the Middle East". Martin Kramer on the Middle East. Retrieved 2017-03-27."Rise of Arab nationalism - The Ottoman Empire | NZHistory, New Zealand history online". New Zealand History. Retrieved 2017-03-27."The Rise and Fall of Arab Nationalism". General Guide To Personal and Societies Web Space at Oxford. Retrieved 2017-03-27."A short history of Arab Nationalism | Freedom Socialist Party - Revolutionary feminism in action". Freedom Socialist Party - Revolutionary feminism in action. Archived from the original on 2017-03-28. Retrieved 2017-03-27.Robert G. Hoyland (11 September 2002). Arabia and the Arabs: From the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam. Routledge. p. 139. ISBN 978-1-134-64634-0."Is Hubal The Same As Allah?". Islamic Awareness. Archived from the original on 25 March 2010. Retrieved 13 April 2010.Dictionary of Ancient Deities. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-514504-6.Jonathan Porter Berkey (2003). The Formation of Islam: Religion and Society in the Near East, 600-1800. Cambridge University Press. p. 42. ISBN 978-0-521-58813-3.Neal Robinson (5 November 2013). Islam: A Concise Introduction. Routledge. p. 75. ISBN 978-1-136-81773-1.Francis E. Peters (1994). Muhammad and the Origins of Islam. SUNY Press. p. 110. ISBN 978-0-7914-1875-8.Daniel C. Peterson (26 February 2007). Muhammad, Prophet of God. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. p. 21. ISBN 978-0-8028-0754-0.Brotherhood in the Quran and Sunnah | Faith in Allah الإيمان بالله"The Bonds of Brotherhood". Archived from the original on 2015-06-27. Retrieved 2017-11-19."Al-Hujurat chapter".García-Arenal, Mercedes (2009-01-01). "The Religious Identity of the Arabic Language and the Affair of the Lead Books of the Sacromonte of Granada". Arabica. 56 (6): 495–528. doi:10.1163/057053909x12544602282277. JSTOR 25651684."Cultural Identity in the Islamic World | MR Online". MR Online. 17 May 2009.Sabry, Tarik (2012). Arab Cultural Studies: Mapping the Field. I.B.Tauris. ISBN 9781848855595.Sabry, edited by Tarik (2012). Arab cultural studies : mapping the field. London: I.B. Tauris. ISBN 1848855591.Anishchenkova, Valerie (2014). Autobiographical Identities in Contemporary Arab Culture. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 9780748643417."Arab Origins: Identity, History and Islam - British Academy Blog". British Academy Blog. 2015-07-20. Archived from the original on 2017-05-16. Retrieved 2017-03-26.D., Phillips, Christopher, Ph. (2013-01-01). Everyday Arab identity : the daily reproduction of the Arab world. Routledge. ISBN 9780415684880. OCLC 841752039."Arabs at the Crossroads: Political Identity and Nationalism | Middle East Policy Council". Middle East Policy Council.Hoyt, Paul D. (1998). "Legitimacy, Identity, and Political Development in the Arab World". Mershon International Studies Review: 173–176. doi:10.2307/254461. JSTOR 254461.Eid, Paul (2007). Being Arab: Ethnic and Religious Identity Building among Second Generation Youth in Montreal. McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. ISBN 9780773577350.1996, p.xviiiDwight Fletcher Reynolds, Arab folklore: a handbook, (Greenwood Press: 2007), p.1.

Social PsychologySocial psychology is the scientific study of how people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. By this definition scientific refers to the empirical method of investigation. The terms, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors include all of the psychological variables that are measurable in human being. The statement that others may be imagined or implied suggests that we are prone to social influence even when no other people are present, such as when television, of following internalized cultural norms.Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the interaction of mental states and immediate social situations. In Kurt Lewin’s conceptual formula, behavior can be viewed as a function of the person in the environment, B =f (P, E). In general, social psychologists have a preference for laboratory based empirical findings. Social psychology theories tend to be specific and focused, rather than global and general.Social psychology is an interdisciplinary domain that bridges the gap between psychology and sociology. During the years immediately following World War II, there was frequent collaboration between psychologists and sociologists. However, the two disciplines have become increasingly specialized and isolated from each other in recent years, with sociologists focusing on “ macro variables” (e.g social structure) to much greater extent.Nevertheless, sociological approaches to social psychology remain an important counterpart to psychological research in this area.In addition to the split between psychology and sociology, there has been a some what less pronounced difference in emphasis between American social psychologists and European social psychologists. As a broad generalization, American researchers traditionally have focused more on the individual, whereas Europeans have paid more attention to group level phenomena.HistoryThe discipline of social psychology began in the United States at the dawn of the 20th century. The first published study in this area was an experiment in 1898 by Norman Triplett on the phenomenon of social facilitations. During the 1930s, many Gestalt psychologists, most notably Kurt Lewin, fled to the United States from Nazi Germany. They were instrumental in developing the field as something separate from the behavioral and psychoanalytic schools that were dominant during that time, and social psychology has always maintained the legacy of their interests in perception and cognition. Attitudes and small group phenomena were the most commonly studied topics in this era.During WWII, social psychologists studied persuasion and propaganda for the U.S. Military. After the war, researches became interested in a variety of social problems, including gender issues and racial prejudice. Most notable, revealing, and contentious of them all were the Stanley Milgram shock experiments on obedience to authority. In the sixties, there was growing interests in new topics, such as cognitive dissonance, bystander intervention, and aggression. By the 1970s, however, social psychology in America had reached a crisis. There was heated debate over the ethics of laboratory experimentation, whether or not attitudes really predicted behavior, and how much science could be done in a cultural context (see Gergen, 1973). This was also the time when a radical situationist approach challenged the relevance of self and personality in psychology.Social psychology reached maturity in both theory and method during the 1980s and 1990s. Careful ethical standards now regulate research, and greater pluralism and multiculturalism perspectives have emerged. Modern researchers are interested in a many phenomena, but attribution, social cognition, and the self-concept are perhaps the greatest areas of growth in recent years. Social psychologists have also maintained their applied interests with contributions in health and environmental psychology, as well as the psychology of the legal system.Intrapersonal phenomenaAttitudesIn social psychology, attitudes are defined as learned, global evaluations of a person, object, place, or issue that influence thought and action. Put more simply, attitudes are basic expressions of approval or disapproval, favorability or unfavorability, or as Bem put it, likes and dislikes. Examples would include liking chocolate ice cream, being against abortion, or endorsing the values of a particular political party. Social psychologists have studied attitude formation, the structure of attitudes, attitude change, the function of attitudes, and the relationship between attitudes and behavior. Because people are influenced by the situation, general attitudes are not always good predictors of specific behavior. For a variety of reasons, a person may value the environment and not recycle a can on a particular day. Attitudes that are well remembered and central to our self-concept, however, are more likely to lead to behavior, and measures of general attitudes do predict patterns of behavior over time.Large amount of recent research on attitudes is on the distinction between traditional, self-report attitude measures and "implicit" or unconscious attitudes. For example, experiments using the Implicit Association Test have found that people often demonstrate bias against other races, even when their questionnaire responses reveal equal mindedness. One study found that explicit attitudes correlate with verbal behavior in interracial interactions, whereas implicit attitudes correlate with nonverbal behavior. One hypothesis on how attitudes are formed, first advanced by Abraham Tesser (1983), is that strong likes and dislikes are rooted in our genetic make-up. Tesser speculates that individuals are disposed to hold certain strong attitudes as a result of inborn physical, sensory, and cognitive skills, temperament, and personality traits. Whatever disposition nature elects to give us, our most treasured attitudes are often formed as a result of exposure to attitude objects; our history of rewards and punishments; the attitude that our parents, friends, and enemies express; the social and cultural context in which we live; and other types of experiences we have. Obviously, attitudes are formed through the basic process of learning. Numerous studies have shown that people can form strong positive and negative attitudes toward neutral objects that are in some way linked to emotionally charged stimuli.Attitudes are also involved in several other areas of the discipline, such as the following; conformity, interpersonal attraction, social perception, and prejudice.PersuasionThe topic of persuasion has received a great deal of attention in recent years. Persuasion is an active method of influence that attempts to guide people toward the adoption of an attitude, idea, or behavior by rational or emotive means. Persuasion relies on "appeals" rather than strong pressure or coercion. Numerous variables have been found to influence the persuasion process, and these are normally presented in five major categories: who said what to whom and how.1. The Communicator, including credibility, expertise, trustworthiness, and attractiveness.2. The Message, including varying degrees of reason, emotion (such as fear), one-sided or two sided arguments, and other types of informational content.3. The Audience, including a variety of demographics, personality traits, and preferences.4. The Channel, including the printed word, radio, television, the internet, or face-to-face interactions.5. The Context, including the environment, group dynamics, pre-amble to the messageDual process theories of persuasion (such as the elaboration likelihood model) maintain that the persuasive process is mediated by two separate routes. Persuasion can be accomplished by either superficial aspects of the communication or the internal logic and evidence of the message. Whether someone is persuaded by a popular celebrity or factual arguments is largely determined by the ability and motivation of the audience.Persuasion attempts that rely on the mass media frequently result in failure. This is because people's attitudes and behaviors are often established habits that tend to be resistant to change. Communication campaigns are most likely to succeed when they use entertaining characters and messages, tailor the message to fit the audience, and repeat messages across relevant media channels. An example of a highly effective mass media campaign is the Got Milk campaign.Social cognitionSocial cognition is a growing area of social psychology that studies how people perceive, think about, and remember information about others. Much of the research rests on the assertion that people think about people differently from non-social targets. This assertion is widely supported by the existence of social cognitive deficits exhibited by people with Williams’s syndrome and autism. Person perception is the study of how people form impressions of others. The study of how people form beliefs about each other while interacting is known as interpersonal perception.A major research topic in social cognition is attribution.Attributions are the explanations we make for people's behavior, either our own behavior or the behavior of others. We can ascribe the locus of a behavior to either internal or external factors. An internal, or dispositional, locus of causality involves factors within the person, such as ability or personality. An external, or situational, locus involves outside factors, such as the weather. A second element of attribution ascribes the cause of behavior to either stable or unstable factors. Finally, we also attribute causes of behavior to either controllable or uncontrollable factors.Numerous biases in the attribution process have been discovered. The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to make dispositional attributions for behavior. The actor-observer effect is a refinement of this bias, the tendency to make dispositional attributions for other people's behavior and situational attributions for our own. The just-world phenomenon is the tendency to blame victims (a dispositional attribution) for their suffering. This is believed to be motivated by people's anxiety that good people, including themselves, could be victimized in an unjust world.Finally, the self-serving bias is the tendency to take credit for successes, and blame others for failure. Researchers have found that depressed individuals often lack this bias and actually have more realistic perceptions of reality.Heuristics are cognitive short cuts. Instead of weighing all the evidence when making a decision, people rely on heuristics to save time and energy. The availability heuristic occurs when people estimate the probability of an outcome based on how easy that outcome is to imagine. As such, vivid or highly memorable possibilities will be perceived as more likely than those that are harder to picture or are difficult to understand, resulting in a corresponding cognitive bias. Numerous other biases have been found by social cognition researchers. The hindsight bias is a false memory of having predicted events, or an exaggeration of actual predictions, after becoming aware of the outcome. The confirmation bias is a type of bias leading to the tendency to search for, or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions.Another key concept in social cognition is the assumption that reality is too complex to easily discern. As a result, we tend to see the world according to simplified schemas or images of reality. Schemas are generalized mental representations that organize knowledge and guide information processing. Schemas often operate automatically and unintentionally, and can lead to biases in perception and memory. Expectations from schemas may lead us to see something that is not there. One experiment found that people are more likely to misperceive a weapon in the hands of a black man than a white man. This type of schema is actually a stereotype, a generalized set of beliefs about a particular group of people (Ultimate attribution error). Stereotypes are often related to negative or preferential attitudes (prejudice) and behavior (discrimination). Schemas for types of events (e.g. going to a restaurant, doing laundry) are known as scripts.Self-conceptSelf-concept is a term referring to the whole sum of beliefs that people have about themselves. However, what specifically does self-concept consist of? According to Hazel Markus (1977), the self-concept is made up of cognitive molecules called self-schema; which is a belief that people have about themselves which guides the processing of self reliant information. Self-schemas are to an individual’s total self–concept as a hypothesis is to a theory, or a book is to a library. A good example to use is body weight self-schema; people who regard themselves as over or underweight, or for those whom body image is a conspicuous aspect of the self-concept, are considered schematics with respect to weight. For these people a range of otherwise mundane events – grocery shopping, new clothes, eating out, or going to the beach – can trigger thoughts about the self. In contrast, people who do not regard their weight as an important part of their lives are a-schematic on that attribute.It is rather clear that the self is a special object of our attention. Whether you are mentally focused on a memory, a conversation, a foul smell, the song that is stuck in your head, or this sentence, conscious is like a spotlight. This spotlight can shine on only one object at a time, but it can switch rapidly from one object to another and process the information out of awareness. In this spotlight the self is front and center. The ABC’s of the self are: affect, behavior, and cognition. A cognitive question: How do individuals become themselves, build a self-concept, and uphold a stable sense of identity? An affective (or emotional) question: How do people evaluate themselves, enhance their self image, and maintain a secure sense of identity? A behavioral question: How do people regulate their own actions and present themselves to others according to interpersonal demands?Affective forecasting is the process of prediction of how one would feel in response to future emotional events. Studies done by Timothy Wilson and Daniel Gilbert (2003), have shown that people overestimate the strength or reaction, to positive and negative life events, than they actually felt when the event did occur.There are many theories on the perception of our own behavior. Daryl Bem’s (1972) self perception theory claims that when internal cues are difficult to interpret, people gain self-insight by observing their own behavior. Leon Festinger's (1954), social comparison theory is that people evaluate their own abilities and opinions by comparing themselves to others when they are uncertain of their own ability or opinions.There is also the facial feedback hypothesis; that changes in facial expression can lead to corresponding changes in emotion.The fields of social psychology and personality have merged over the years, and social psychologists have developed an interest in self-related phenomena. In contrast with traditional personality theory, however, social psychologists place a greater emphasis on cognitions than on traits. Much research focuses on the self-concept, which is a person's understanding of his or her self. The self-concept is often divided into a cognitive component, known as the self-schema, and an evaluative component, the self-esteem. The need to maintain a healthy self-esteem is recognized as a central human motivation in the field of social psychology.Self-efficacy beliefs are cognitions that are associated with the self-schema. These are expectations that performance on some task will be effective and successful. Social psychologists also study such self-related processes as self-control and self-presentation.People develop their self-concepts by varied means, including introspection, feedback from others, self-perception, and social comparison. By comparison to relevant others, people gain information about themselves, and they make inferences that are relevant to self-esteem. Social comparisons can be either "upward" or "downward," that is, comparisons to people who are either higher in status or ability, or lower in status or ability. Downward comparisons are often made in order to elevate self-esteem.Self-perception is a specialized form of attribution that involves making inferences about oneself after observing one's own behavior. Psychologists have found that too many extrinsic rewards (e.g. money) tend to reduce intrinsic motivation through the self-perception process, a phenomenon known as over justification. People's attention is directed to the reward and they lose interest in the task when the reward is no longer offered. This is an important exception to reinforcement theory.Cognitive dissonanceCognitive dissonance is a feeling of unpleasant arousal caused by noticing an inconsistency among one's cognition. These contradictory cognitions may be attitudes, beliefs, or ones awareness of his or her behavior. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, or by justifying or rationalizing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Cognitive dissonance theory is one of the most influential and extensively studied theories in social psychology.Cognitive dissonance theory was originally developed as a theory of attitude change, but it is now considered to be a theory of the self-concept by many social psychologists. Dissonance is strongest when a discrepancy has been noticed between one's self-concept and one's behavior, e.g. doing something that makes one ashamed. This can result in self-justification as the individual attempts to deal with the threat. Cognitive dissonance typically leads to a change in attitude, a change in behavior, a self-affirmation, or a rationalization of the behavior.An example of cognitive dissonance is smoking. Smoking cigarettes increases the risk of cancer, which is threatening to the self-concept of the individual who smokes. Most of us believe ourselves to be intelligent and rational, and the idea of doing something foolish and self-destructive cause’s dissonance. To reduce this uncomfortable tension, smokers tend to make excuses for themselves, such as "I'm going to die anyway, so it doesn't matter."Interpersonal phenomenaSocial influenceSocial influence refers to the way people affect the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of others. Like the study of attitudes, it is a traditional, core topic in social psychology. In fact, research on social influence overlaps considerably with research on attitudes and persuasion. Social influence is also closely related to the study of group dynamics, as most of the principles of influence are strongest when they take place in social groups.Conformity is the most common and pervasive form of social influence. It is generally defined as the tendency to act or think like other members of a group. Group size, unanimity, cohesion, status, and prior commitment all help to determine the level of conformity in an individual. Conformity is usually viewed as a negative tendency in American culture, but a certain amount of conformity is not only necessary and normal, but probably essential for a community to function.The two major motives in conformity are normative influence, the tendency to conform in order to gain social acceptance, and avoid social rejection or conflict, as in peer pressure; and informational influence, which is based on the desire to obtain useful information through conformity, and thereby achieve a correct or appropriate result.Minority influence is the degree to which a smaller faction within the group influences the group during decision making. Note that this refers to a minority position on some issue, not an ethnic minority. Their influence is primarily informational and depends on consistent adherence to a position, degree of defection from the majority, and the status and self-confidence of the minority members. Reactance is a tendency to assert oneself by doing the opposite of what is expected.This phenomenon is also known as anticonformity and it appears to be more common in men than in women.There are two other major areas of social influence research. Compliance refers to any change in behavior that is due to a request or suggestion from another person. The Foot-in-the-door technique is a compliance method in which the persuader requests a small favor and then follows up with a larger favor, e.g. asking for the time, and then asking for ten dollars. A related trick is the Bait and switch. The third major form of social influence is obedience. This is a change in behavior that is the result of a direct order or command from another person.A different kind of social influence is the self-fulfilling prophecy. This is a prediction that, in being made, actually causes itself to become true. For example, in the stock market, if it is widely believed that a crash is imminent, investors may lose confidence, sell most of their stock, and actually cause the crash. Likewise, people may expect hostility in others and actually induce this hostility by their own behavior.Group dynamicsA group can be defined as two or more individuals that are connected to each another by social relationships.Groups tend to interact, influence each other, and share a common identity. They have a number of emergent qualities that distinguish them from aggregates:• Norms - implicit rules and expectations for group members to follow, e.g. saying thank you, shaking hands.• Roles - implicit rules and expectations for specific members within the group, e.g. the oldest sibling, who may have additional responsibilities in the family.• Relations - patterns of liking within the group, and also differences in prestige or status, e.g. leaders, popular peopleTemporary groups and aggregates share few or none of these features, and do not qualify as true social groups. People waiting in line to get on a bus, for example, do not constitute a group.Groups are important not only because they offer social support, resources, and a feeling of belonging, but because they supplement an individual's self-concept. To a large extent, humans define themselves by the group memberships which form their social identity. The shared social identity of individuals within a group influences intergroup behavior, the way in which groups behave towards and perceive each other. These perceptions and behaviors in turn define the social identity of individuals within the interacting groups. The tendency to define oneself by membership of a group leads to intergroup discrimination, which involves favorable perceptions and behaviors directed towards the in-group, but negative perceptions and behaviors directed towards the out-group. Intergroup discrimination leads to prejudice and stereotyping, while the processes of social facilitation and group polarization encourage extreme behaviors towards the out-group.Group often moderate and improve decision making, and are frequently relied upon for these benefits, such as committees and juries. A number of group biases, however, can interfere with effective decision making. For example, group polarization, formerly known as the “risky shift”, occurs when people polarize their views in a more extreme direction after group discussion. More problematic is the phenomenon of groupthink. This is a collective thinking defect that is characterized by a premature consensus or an incorrect assumption of consensus, caused by members of a group failing to promote views which are not consistent with the views of other members. Groupthink occurs in a variety of situations, including isolation of a group and the presence of a highly directive leader. Janis offered the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion as a historical case of groupthink.Groups also affect performance and productivity. Social facilitation, for example, is a tendency to work harder and faster in the presence of others. Social facilitation increases the likehood of the dominant response, which tends to improve performance on simple tasks and reduce it on complex tasks. In contrast, social loafing is the tendency of the individuals to slack when working in a group. Social loafing is common when the task is considered unimportant and individual contributions are not easy to see.Social psychology study group - related (collective) phenomena such as the behavior or crowds. An important concept in this area is deindividuation, a reduced state of self - awarness that can be caused by feelings of anonymity.Deindividuation is associated with uninhibited and sometimes dangerous behavior. It is common in crowds and mobs, but it can also caused by a disguise, a uniform, alcohol, dark environments, or online anonymity.Relations with othersSocial psychologists are interested in the question of why people some times act in prosocial way (helping, liking, or loving others), but at other times act in an antisocial way (hostility, aggression, or prejudice against others).Aggression can be defined as many behavior that is intended to harm another human being. Hostile aggression is accompanied by strong emotions, particularly anger. Harming the other person is the goal. Instrumental aggression is only a means to an end. Harming the person is used to obtain some other goal, such as money. Research indicates that there are many causes of aggression, including biological factors like testosterone and environmental factors, such as social learning. Immediate situational factors such as frustration are also important in triggering an aggressive response. Although violence is a fact of life, people are also capable of helping each other, even complete strangers in emergencies. Research indicates that altruism occurs when a person feels empathy for another individual, even in the absence of other motives. However, according to the bystander effect, the probability of receiving help in an emergency situation drops as the number of bystanders increases. This is due to both conformity and diffusion of responsibility, the tendency for people to feel less personally responsible when other people are around.Interpersonal attractionA major area in the study of people’s relations to each other is interpersonal attraction. This refers to all the forces that lead people to like each other, estabilish relationships. and in some cases, fall in love.Several general principles of attraction have been discovered by social psychologists. For example, physical proximity tends to increase attraction, whereas long distances make relationships difficult to form and maintain. Even very small differences in distance - such as the case of a next door neighbor versus someone who lives down the block - can make a significant difference in friendship patterns. Familiarity, or “mere exposure,” also increases attraction, influencing people even if the familiarity is not consciously noticed. One of the most important factors in interpersonal attraction is similarity: the more similar two people are in attitudes, background, and other traits, the more probable it is that they will like each other. Contrary to popular opinion, opposites do not usually attract.Physical attractiveness is an important element of romantic relationships, particularly in the early stages characterized by high levels of passion.Later on, similarity and other compatibility factors become more important, and the type of love people experience shifts from passionate to companionate. Robert Sternberg has suggested that there are actually three components of love: intimacy, passion, and commitment. When two people experience all three, they are said to be in a state of consummate love; this condition is relatively rare and difficult to maintain for a long period of time.According to social exchange theory, relationships are based on rational choice and cost - benefit analysis. If one partner's costs begin to outweigh his or her benefits, that person may leave the relationship, especially if there are good alternatives available. This theory is similar to the minimax principle proposed by mathematicians and economists. With time, long term relationships tend to become communal rather than simply based on exchange.ResearchMethodsSocial psychology is an empirical science that attempt to answer questions about human behavior by testing hypotheses, both in the laboratory and in the field. Careful attention to sampling, research design, and statistical analysis is important, and result are published in peer reviewed journals such as the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Personality and Social Bulletin and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.Social psychology studies also appear in general science journals such as Psychological Science and Science.Experimental methods involve the researcher altering a variable in the environment and measuring the effect on another variable. An example would be allowing two groups of children to play violent or non violent videogames and then observing their subsequent level of aggression during free - play period. A valid experiment is controlled and uses random assignment.Correctional methods examine the statistical association between two naturally occurring variables. For example, one could correlate the amount of violent television children watch at home with the number of violent incidents the children participate in at school. Note that this study would not prove that violent TV causes aggression in children.It’s quite possible that aggressive children choose to watch more violent TV.Observational methods are purely descriptive and include naturalistic observation, “contrived” observation participant, and archival analysis. These are less common in social psychology but are sometimes used when first investigating a phenomenon. An example would be to unobtrusively observe children on playground (with videocamera, perhaps) and record the number and types of aggressive actions displayed.Whenever possible, social psychologists rely on controlled experimentation. Controlled experiments require the manipulation of one or more independent variables in order to examine the effect on a dependent variable.Experiments are useful in social psychology because they are high in internal validity, meaning that they are free from the influence of confounding or extraneous variables, and so are more likely to accurately indicate a casual relationship. However, the small samples used in controlled experiments are typically low in external validity, or the degree to which the results can be generalized the larger population. There is usually a trade - off between experimental control (internal validity) and being able to generalize to the population (external validity).Because it is usually impossible to test everyone, research tends to be conducted on a sample of persons from the wider population. Social psychologists frequently use survey research when they are inserted in results that are high in external validity. Surveys use various forms of random sampling to obtain a sample of respondents that are representative of a population. This type of research is usually descriptive or correlational because there is no experimental control over variables. However, new statistical methods like structural equation modeling are being used to test for potential causal relationships in this type of data.Regardless of which method is used it is important to evaluate the research hypothesis in light of the results, either to jugde their results, which define a significant finding as less than 5% likely to be due to chance. Replications are important, to ensure that the results is valid and not due to chance, or some feature of particular sample.EthicsThe goal of social psychology is to understand cognition and behavior as they naturally occur in a social context, but the very act of observing people can influence and alter their behavior. For this reason, many social psychology experiments utilize deception to conceal or distort certain aspects of the study. Deception may include false cover stories, false participants (known as confederates or stooges), and false feedback given to the participants, and so on.The practice of deception has been challenged by some psychologists who maintain that deception under any circumstances is unethical, and that other research strategies (e.g. role-playing) should be used instead. Unfortunately, research has shown that role - playing studies do not produce the same results as deception studies and this has cast doubt on their validity. In addition to deception, experimenters have at times put people into potentially uncomfortable or embarrassing situations (e.g. the Milgram experiment, Stanford prison experiment), and this has also been criticized for ethical reasons.To protect the rights and well - being of research participants and at the same time discover meaningful results and insights into human behavior, virtually all social psychology research must pass an ethical review process. At most colleges and universities, this is conducted by an ethics committee or Institutional Review Board. This group examines the proposed research to make sure that no harm is done to the participants, and that the benefits of the study outweigh any possible risks or discomforts to people taking part in the study.Furthermore, a process of informed consent is often used to make sure that volunteers know what will happen in the experiment and understand that they are allowed to quit the experiment at any time. A debriefing is typically done at the conclusion of the experiment in order to reveal any deceptions used and generally make sure that the participants are unharmed by the procedures. Today, most research in social psychology involves no more risk of harm than can be expected from routine psychological testing or normal daily activities.Famous experimentsThe Asch conformity experiments demonstrated the power of conformity in small groups with a line estimation task that was designed to be extremely easy. On over a third of the trials, participants conformed to the majority, even though the majority judgment was clearly wrong. Seventy-five percent of the participants conformed at least once during the experiment.Muzafer Sherif's Robbers' Cave Experiment divided boys into two competing groups to explore how much hostility and aggression would emerge. Sherif's explanation of the results became known as realistic group conflict theory, because the intergroup conflict was induced through competition over resources. Inducing cooperation and [superordinate goals] later reversed this effect.In Leon Festinger's cognitive dissonance experiment, participants were asked to perform a boring task. They were divided into 2 groups and given two different pay scales. At the end of the study, some participants were paid $1 to say that they enjoyed the task and another group of participants was paid $20 to say the same lie. The first group ($1) later reported liking the task better than the second group ($20). Festinger's explanation was that people justified their lies by changing their previously unfavorable attitudes about the task.One of the most infamous experiments in social psychology was the Milgram experiment, which studied how far people would go to obey an authority figure. Following the events of The Holocaust in World War II, the experiment showed that normal American citizens were capable of following orders from an authority even when they believed they were causing an innocent person to suffer.Albert Bandura's Bobo doll experiment demonstrated how aggression is learned by imitation. This was one of thfirst studies in a long line of research showing how exposure to media violence leads to aggressive behavior in theobservers. In the Stanford prison experiment, by Philip Zimbardo, a simulated exercise between student prisoners and guards showed how far people would follow an adopted role. In just a few days, the "guards" became brutal and cruel, and the prisoners became miserable and compliant. This was an important demonstration of the power of the immediate social situation, and its capacity to overwhelm normal personality traits.