sub-conscious cooperation

[lemur]

This is more of a psychology topic, I think, but I couldn't find a psychology section so I posted it in religion. Certainly it can be answered in terms of religious ideology producing such sub-conscious cooperation with authority or resistance to it. I wonder if there's any way to empirically test the degree to which people are sub-consciously driven to cooperate/comply with various forms of authority. I also wonder if there's any way to observe processes through which people are programmed to do so. Then, what would happen if you would show them concrete evidence of how they were programmed and how it affects their behavior? Would they choose to resist or just not care and go on behaving according to their programming? If so, is that too a product of the programming or is some element of freedom involved in making the choice to "go with the flow?"

Edited February 24, 2011 by lemur

[Marat]

The famous experiments in people being instructed to deliver electric shocks to test subjects conducted years ago by Stanley Milgram at Yale University are a good place to start in investigating your question.

[lemur]

The famous experiments in people being instructed to deliver electric shocks to test subjects conducted years ago by Stanley Milgram at Yale University are a good place to start in investigating your question.

I'm familiar with those, but they don't examine sub-conscious cooperation. I'm talking about processes through which people are programmed to fear even civil social disagreement; like when someone says that they like a certain food and you're afraid to disagree with them so you say something that doesn't directly contradict their opinion like, "yeah, I sort of like that food but I like this other food better." I.e. what makes people afraid to just say, "oh you like that food, huh? Well I don't." Some people might say it that bluntly, but then they will laugh as if they're doing something terrible by being blunt. Somehow people get programmed to think this way about even the most harmless conflicts of opinion and it would be interesting to know how it happens.

[Marat]

It is interesting that in some cultures you can disagree about many things and no palpable social tension arises from these debates, while in others there is a very high social cost to pay for disagreement. Could it be that in cultures which perceive their members as forming a very close-knit group disagreement is not only tolerated but when openly expressed can even generate a kind of comraderie based on irony, while in cultures which are more varied and less closely-knit these disagreements generate too much friction? Thus Jews often openly disagree with each other but the debates are more reinforcing of social bonds than tension-generating, while among Anglo-Saxons exactly the same disputes would create social distance. Conversely, however, I always found that ironic humor as a device to mediate disagreement is always accepted in North America, where the population is culturally quite diverse, while in most more ethnically homogeneous European communities people only understand irony as insulting.

[Mr Skeptic]

This is more of a psychology topic, I think, but I couldn't find a psychology section so I posted it in religion.

 

There is one; I moved it there for you.

[PhDwannabe]

Nobody is "programmed." Rather, we learn.

 

Pop-psychological, self-helpy understandings of learning frequently use terms like "programmed," which often connote semi-magical powers others have over us, or those we might have over others (if only we'll spend $19.99 on this helpful book I've got right here). I tend to loathe anything which propagates this largely unhelpful modern metaphor of mind/brain-as-computer. Cognitive science has done much in the last two decades to elucidate the many ways that your mind does not function similarly to the electronic device you're currently staring at.

 

So, at any rate, your question:

 

I'm talking about processes through which people are programmed to fear even civil social disagreement; like when someone says that they like a certain food and you're afraid to disagree with them so you say something that doesn't directly contradict their opinion like, "yeah, I sort of like that food but I like this other food better." I.e. what makes people afraid to just say, "oh you like that food, huh? Well I don't." Some people might say it that bluntly, but then they will laugh as if they're doing something terrible by being blunt. Somehow people get programmed to think this way about even the most harmless conflicts of opinion and it would be interesting to know how it happens.

 

In group dynamics (loosely a branch of social psychology), there's this general distinction between two large families of goals when people operate in groups: instrumental goals--getting concrete things decided or accomplished--and expressive/cohesive goals--keeping the group together, happy, and functioning. Sometimes, these goals assist one another; other times, they stand in opposition to one another.

 

Most simply put, it seems like you're asking about why individuals choose to serve expressive/cohesive goals--particularly, at moments when these goals don't seem terribly useful. Well, there are many domains on which to interrogate nature as to why this occurs, and probably a million answers at each level. To be honest, it's kind of a fuzzy question--there are a lot of difficult-to-operationalize variables with hands in your inquiry. Inasmuch as this is the case, I'm afraid clear empirical answers are pretty lacking.

 

To speak something to the question, however, one could look at things on the level of the conversational dyad: what sort of factors in the situation/related to the social partner/etc. would predict why people would do such a thing? The attractiveness of the conversational partner comes to mind! One could look at the level of traits: what sort of factors about a person would predict this behavior cross-situationally? "Agreeableness," one factor in the currently dominant and well-established Five Factor Model of personality, comes to mind. You could even ask about deeper attachment style issues or about differences in temperament (I know that word is used a lot of ways, but I'm talking about it in its technical sense: a relatively heritable psychobiological variable). Probably some halfway decent answers there too, but this actually strikes me as a behavior which is more substantially driven by more proximal, situational variables. That's just my social science spidey-sense about it.

[lemur]

PhDwannabee, your post sort of validates its own assumptions just by making fleeting references to studies that you don't give any basis for rejecting or accepting. When you say you don't like the word, "programmed," because it carries certain connotations, I agree with you. But I think you also should recognize that there's a difference between conscious choice behavior and sub-conscious cognitive behavior that frames the context in which choices are made. So, while a person is completely capable of consciously choosing to say practically anything they want, that choice gets framed within numerous sub-conscious assumptions about consequences they presume will occur as a result of their actions/speech. My point/question was in regard to looking at how cognitive learning takes place that primes people to be cooperative and avoid the will to resist or make completely independent choices. I'd like to go beyond simply naturalizing such behavior to approaching it from the perspective of it being a unique culture of personality, perhaps with a unique worldview of social interactions, etc.

[PhDwannabe]

PhDwannabee, your post sort of validates its own assumptions just by making fleeting references to studies that you don't give any basis for rejecting or accepting

 

I didn't even make fleeting references to studies--I made fleeting references to general findings. This isn't my area of psych--actually, this isn't really any area of psych I'm familiar with. It's sort of an oddly formed question that I'm trying my best to shoehorn into any area of psych. My thoughts are off the cuff, and moderately informed by literature and contact with academic psychologists. Those thoughts deserve all of the credibility and suspicion that sort of talk calls for.

 

But I think you also should recognize that there's a difference between conscious choice behavior and sub-conscious cognitive behavior that frames the context in which choices are made. So, while a person is completely capable of consciously choosing to say practically anything they want, that choice gets framed within numerous sub-conscious assumptions about consequences they presume will occur as a result of their actions/speech.

 

In general, I think I can tell you that most of us don't make this distinction so clearly anymore. I'm not going to give you specific citations, because 1) I'm not a cognitive psychologist, and 2) again, this is sort of an oddly phrased question that people in research wouldn't really ask, so I'm doing my best to interpret it. But in general, I think most academic psychologists would tell you that this conscious/unconscious distinction is a bit misleading. We talk a little bit more now about things being in or out of awareness, or somewhere inbetween. There is no thick wall with a tiny door.

 

To temporarily use the metaphor I generally hate, these "unconscious processes" are not so much the deep mysterious processes buried in the operating system that you only find in the task manager, they're just the browser tabs you've got open that you don't happen to be looking at right at this second. It's not as if we've got a set of conscious processes which are "learned" and a set of unconscious ones which are "programmed." Of course a person's freely chosen actions are affected by cognitions which are occurring outside of awareness. But those cognitions do not inhabit a terribly special realm, they can often be dragged into awareness and tossed back out again. (Not to say that they're aren't plenty of heuristics and information processing tricks that we'd never know are going on with introspection. I'm not saying that the full machinery of perception is viewable to us.)

 

Again, this is my feeling on the general state of the science. Many grains of salt, and all that.

 

My point/question was in regard to looking at how cognitive learning takes place that primes people to be cooperative and avoid the will to resist or make completely independent choices. I'd like to go beyond simply naturalizing such behavior to approaching it from the perspective of it being a unique culture of personality, perhaps with a unique worldview of social interactions, etc.

 

My ability to try to frame this in scientific terminology that is familiar to me has run out. Lemur, I'm really not trying to be an ass, and I've got nothing whatsoever against you, but I have no idea what the hell this means.

[lemur]

To temporarily use the metaphor I generally hate, these "unconscious processes" are not so much the deep mysterious processes buried in the operating system that you only find in the task manager, they're just the browser tabs you've got open that you don't happen to be looking at right at this second. It's not as if we've got a set of conscious processes which are "learned" and a set of unconscious ones which are "programmed." Of course a person's freely chosen actions are affected by cognitions which are occurring outside of awareness. But those cognitions do not inhabit a terribly special realm, they can often be dragged into awareness and tossed back out again. (Not to say that they're aren't plenty of heuristics and information processing tricks that we'd never know are going on with introspection. I'm not saying that the full machinery of perception is viewable to us.)

It would help if we had a specific bit of empirical data to analyze. Just from self-reflection, I believe that sub-conscious orientations evolve almost as a shadow for conscious processes. If I notice that my boss always gets grumpy when I smile while talking to him and he acts more civil when I keep a straight face, I will gradually make a sub-conscious association between smiling and irritation by others. I could still make the conscious choice to smile because I believe it is the best face to put on to others, but the uneasiness I would feel doing it would come from a sub-conscious association. Does that make sense?

 

My ability to try to frame this in scientific terminology that is familiar to me has run out. Lemur, I'm really not trying to be an ass, and I've got nothing whatsoever against you, but I have no idea what the hell this means.

Yes, but you also don't try or ask. I'm sure you understand what culture is, but from your other post it sounds like you operate much more on a discursive level than one where you concretely interpret language in terms of empirical reflection, which is what I do. If I'm stereotyping, I apologize. It comes from talking with too many academic social scientists who spend most of their time reading texts and learning to mimick the style of the language without critically dissecting it and doing comparative analysis with empirical data. It's hard for them to do this because they are trained to ignore all but the most formally validated data as even constituting data at all. This is in stark contrast to people I know who were taught to informally self-reflect and talk about everyday knowledge of social interaction and behavior. Unless you can do that, I'm not sure how fruitful our discussion could be.