Halloween Psychology Report/Questions

November 2, 2010 [Neff. Block A. Psychology]

A. ) I told my friends who went to Confederation Park, that I need to go to the park as a part of my English project. I told them that I have to write out a report about the recent news about people seeing something abnormal in Confederation Park. When we got to the Park it was dark, and the light in the park didn't light up everything thus I bought them to the darkest part telling them that I am looking for something abnormal. We ended up sitting there for about five minutes before my partner who was working with me exclaimed, “ Oh my gosh! Did you hear that?” Following that I screamed exclaiming I saw a ghost. At first no one believed us, and said we just had an illusion and it was the wind. It was then I told them about the phantom jogger I supposedly “read in the news about.”

B.) Conformity worked when my partner exclaimed her statement about hearing the jogger and I agreed with her. The others seemed wary at first, but in the end conformity was displayed and they agreed with us they also saw or heard something. Because we were in a group, deindividuation was possible. Although no actual action was done, the suggestion of “let's throw rocks at jogger when we see him again.” came from one of my friends, most wanted to but were too scared to take action. My friends doubted the ghost at first, but not be the odd one out of actually, they agreed on hearing something when they really didn't. In hindsight, they may wonder “how could I believed and agreed to something so unrealistic?” This displays groupthink. Social loafing could possibly have been present during the experiment. My partner could have done more acting perhaps if she was alone instead being in a group with me. She may have no preformed her best in acting her part because she knew I was there to help her out. Social facilitation could have been possible, when I was telling the story. I usually enjoy story telling, because there was an audience I may have made it more believable than I usually do.

C. ) This experiment which is a conformity experiment because of how we were to make the others believe they saw a ghost just because my partner claimed they saw one. This experiment proved how powerful conformity is. We are able to understand how social influence better through this experiment because my friends gave into conformity because of their desire to belong.

D.) Yes, even though I personally never believed in ghosts before, or anything supernatural, when one of my friends got scared and screamed, I screamed along with her. I would like to admit it was acting, but I think I actually believed she actually saw something. In the beginning, I knew that there were no ghosts, but when everyone who didn't know about our project agreed on they did hear the sound of the jogger's steps, I started to actually started to believe in them for a few moments.