 actions, a leader must emerge who can communicate a new and relevant social identity, one that includes both separatist groups.
The famous Robbers Cave experiment involved two independent groups of boys with no previous social relations who unwittingly participated together.10 The individuals in each group took part in designed activities to promote social bonding within their groups.
Once each group bonded, the competing groups were introduced, and subsequent daily activities included rewards for the winning group. Shortly thereafter social norms deteriorated, and an us-versus-them condition formed. Participants committed overt and covert acts. Reactions included frequent name calling; physical confrontations; burning one group’s representative flag; and ravaging an opposing group’s cabin, which also included theft of personal items contained within.
When the researchers tried to remove the entrenched hostility between the two groups, they were met with disastrous results because every attempt at harmony between them resulted in more verbal and physical altercations. Only when the researchers devised scenarios in which continued disharmony would harm both groups did mutual cooperation result.
The researchers intentionally damaged the water supply to the camp. Knowing they needed water to survive, the boys in each competing group put aside their differences and formed a new social identity inclusive of each other.
Whoever emerges as the leader in a crisis will have to create a joint social identity that group members will consider imperative to their future survival. An all-inclusive social identity may not be hard to create, but getting opposing group members to become less entrenched in their original social identities could prove difficult.
This process allows leaders to resolve any remaining internal conflict by ensuring themselves that they made the right choice, a classic cognitive bias in decision making. “As a result of overconfidence and confirmation bias, we are stubbornly slow to realize we have made poor decisions.”13 This social psychological behavior increases the us-versus-them mentality because group members are innately prone to refuse to admit they made a discretionary error. This reluctance to admit error becomes further entrenched when persons publicly declare their decision.
By approaching leadership in such a manner, no one is made to feel guilty for their choices, but group members also are introduced to perspectives they failed to consider. “People often come into groups with their own community’s narrative firmly embedded within them, often at an unconscious level. As participants listen to the stories, experiences, and feelings of people from the ‘the other side,’ they come to realize that there is a different perspective. An internal cognitive and emotional structure once taken for granted becomes subject to question.”16 In protest situations police officers can begin to understand why the public is protesting their actions, and community members can learn the inherent dangers of protecting a community, as well as the split-second decisions officers make daily.
As people in the community move around each day, they drift between social identities. They alternately move between groups depending on where they are and what they are doing. Police officers do the same. However, prevailing social identities can compete against each other, forcing individuals to choose which social identity has primacy. As shown in recent events and in countless times throughout history, making the right choice is essential to overall social norms and the police and other governmental protectors of these social norms. If these authority figures lose balance and lean toward one of the competing identities, social decorum deteriorates. Leaders must remain aware of the past and cognizant of ways to avoid losing society’s equilibrium. If they do not, groups will fall into the us-versus-them mentality and devolve.
Supervisory Special Agent Hood can be reached at |||EMAIL_ADDRESS||| cognitive-dissonance.html (accessed March 18, 2015).
2 Michael Hogg, “Social Identity and Leadership,” in The Psychology of Leadership: New Perspectives and Research, ed. David Messick and Roderick Kramer (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005), 56.
3 Farhat Agbaria and Cynthia Cohen, “Working with Groups in Conflict: The Impact of Power Relations on the Dynamics of the Group,” Brandeis University, http://www.brandeis.edu/ethics/pdfs/publications/Working_Groups.pdf (accessed March 13, 2015).
4 Colin Leach, Nyla Branscombe, Russell Spears, and Bertjan Doosje, “Malicious Pleasure: Schadenfreude at the Suffering of Another Group,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 84, no. 5 (May 2003): 932-943.
6 Michael Rosander and Gunilla Guva, “Keeping the Peace: Police Behaviour at a Mass Event,” Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling 9, no. 1 (January 2012): 52-68.
10 Age-of-the-Sage.org, “The Robbers Cave Experiment,” http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/psychology/social/sherif_robbers_cave_experiment.html (accessed April 6, 2015).
11 Robert Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, rev. ed. (New York, NY: Harper Business, 2006), 179-181.
12 Lottie Bullens, Frenk van Harreveld, Jens Forster, and Joop van der Pligt, “Reversible Decisions: The Grass Isn’t Merely Greener on the Other Side; It’s Also Very Brown Over Here,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 49, no. 6 (November 2013): 1093-1099.
13 Nicholas Sordoni, Decision-Making Processes in Equity Investing: Implementing Investment Frameworks (New York, NY: Lazard Asset Management LLC, 2012).
cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1511&context=lcp (accessed May 22, 2015).
15 Daniel Lieberfeld, “Lincoln, Mandela, and Qualities of Reconciliation-Oriented Leadership,” Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology 15, no. 1 (January 2009): 27-47.
17 David Messick, “On the Psychological Exchange Between Leaders and Followers,” in The Psychology of Leadership: New Perspectives and Research, ed. David Messick and Roderick Kramer (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005), 90.OBJECTIVE: Lower respiratory tract infections (LRTIs) are a major cause of morbidity for children worldwide and particularly for children from developing and indigenous populations. In this study, we evaluated risk factors for hospitalization with LRTI in a region in southwest Alaska.
METHODS: The study was conducted from October 1, 2006, to September 30, 2007, in the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta region of Alaska. Cases were recruited from children <3 years of age hospitalized with LRTI. Controls were recruited during visits to the surrounding communities in the region and matched posthoc to cases on the basis of subregion, season, and age. Parents were interviewed for potential risk factors, and medical records were reviewed. Participants had a nasopharyngeal swab sample taken for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing for a panel of respiratory viruses. Samples positive for respiratory syncytial virus, human metapneumovirus, or parainfluenza type 3 were quantitated by reverse transcriptase real-time quantitative PCR.
RESULTS: One hundred twenty-eight cases were matched to 186 controls. In a multivariable conditional logistic regression model, significantly (P <.05) increased risk of hospitalization was associated with medically high-risk status, having a woodstove in the house, being bottle fed, and vomiting after feeding; living in a house that had 2 or more rooms with sinks was a protective factor. Viral loads in hospitalized cases were significantly higher than those in controls, but a strict cutoff level was not observed.
CONCLUSIONS: Several risk factors for LRTI hospitalization were identified in this high risk population. Some factors are amenable to environmental and behavioral interventions.
A recent report published by Infinium Global Research on the automotive power liftgate market provides in-depth analysis of segments and sub-segments in the global as well as regional automotive power liftgate market. The study also highlights the impact of drivers, restraints, and macro indicators on the global and regional automotive power liftgate market over the short term as well as long term. The report is a comprehensive presentation of trends, forecast and dollar values of the global automotive power liftgate market. According to the report, the global automotive power liftgate market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 13.5% over the forecast period of 2020-2026.
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