Have you ever wondered why when you and 23 of your closest friends see a random bystander get murdered in the parking lot, nobody seems to call the police? You're just waiting on your buddy to call them. You're like, ah, Tim's got it. He always calls the police. Tim's thinking the same thing. Today we're going to explore some of the social psychology that's tested on the MCAT, like the bystander effect, groupthink, and more. Let's get right to it. All right, so if you're a part of our program, then today we're covering the psych-soc chapter three high-yield topics. If you're not a part of the program, well, that sucks for you, but you're still going to do okay. We're going to walk you through the high-yield topics for psych-soc. Some of high-yield topics. um some of psych so she had a very limited um field of it actually is social psychology so we're gonna you know social psychology is a pretty broad topic they could do entire classes on just aspects within that but we're going to cover group think group polarization conformity and the bystander effect today um as always we puts our we put our medial topics up uh for the chapter that our students are going through so that would be motivation and when i say that i don't mean like a motivational speaker i mean um underlying drives that humans have so the four f's um food um fighting um what is it food fighting fleeing and mating something like that i think that's one of them and then I said maybe. And then psychological disorders and all that psychopathology. So know a little bit about that. This is just a meme. And I do actually like Breaking Bad. And I don't think that it's social influence. I think it's Brian Kirk's influence. I like Breaking Bad, but I started to feel bad towards the end that I was rooting for the large drug dealer. I've always been rooting for them. We're just trying to make a living. That's right. Just trying to make an honest living. Alright. The first topic is groupthink. I would say... Groupthink and group polarization are going to be our two big players. You think, John? Yeah, for sure. Those are the ones you're going to see on the MCAT. But you'll probably see that on your real MCAT on test day. yeah for real um group think i put the literal like wikipedia um definition up here because i think it's great it's when a group basically comes to a decision without really thinking hard about that decision because they just want to not upset the balance within the group they don't want to um dissent from the group you I'm sure you've experienced this at some point when the entire, you know, physics lab group thinks that it's a great idea to, I don't know, fabricate answers or something. And you just kind of go along with it and you don't think about the fact that you could get caught cheating or whatever. In my physics lab group, that was, I was the ringleader of that decision-making process, but. um so you've probably experienced groupthink um there's i think that's seven one two three there's eight okay so there's eight um kind of smaller aspects of groupthink that kind of play into why groupthink is a thing why we kind of skip over that critical evaluation of of alternatives and why we eventually jump to a irrational conclusion john you want to cover them Well, I was just about to say we could cover those, but I remember memorizing all of them, and I've never seen the actual individual definitions on the MCAT. Have you? I was thinking that as well, and I was thinking there might have been like one mention in my whole life of like... I don't know. And that might have actually just been like within my program's question set for group think. So I don't really even, Like John said, I don't think those are high yield. I think I remember mind guarding being like a, um, incorrect answer choice on an Altius test. Yeah. I mean, you might just want to, you know, I don't know. You definitely want to hide it. It's on there. Right. Like it's not something you just ignore. You want to read it once, but what you need to make sure you're thinking about with group think is you need to make sure you're thinking of. I am trying to maximize conformity or consensus and minimize conflict. So maximize consensus, minimize conflict. And the way that they're going to test it on the MCAT is through scenario. They're going to be like... Tom, Dick, and Jane. Tom is just getting it today. I'm just throwing him under the bus everywhere. But anyways, he's a jerk. He's got it coming. They are all at work, and Tom and Jane agree with the boss about the new approach, and Dick really doesn't agree with it, but he doesn't want to rock the boat, and so he agrees with him as well. So that's pretty much how they're going to... test it is there they're going to give you like a scenario like that yeah i want to talk about one quick scenario because it really sticks in my mind and it's this picture down here at the bottom this is the challenger explosion um that was if you're not familiar with it that's the explosion of the um the nasa aircraft when they were sending a teacher up into space and i read a little about it I mean, not just the teacher, like she was highly trained. It was funny the way you said it. It's not funny that that happened. Yeah, no, it was really tragic, but I was reading a lot about it and kind of what caused it. And basically NASA had said that, oh, space travel is going to be like totally routine. It's going to be like basically like riding in an airplane by the time we hit 1960 or whatever. Like, I mean, they hadn't even figured out like racism and they're still like trying to send people into space every single day. And so basically people were like, oh, it's routine. So it got boring. even though NASA wasn't able to actually ever make spaceflight routine. So they basically kind of had this big publicity. They were going to send this teacher to space and she was going to teach a lesson from space. And they were sending her up on a Tuesday and she was only going to be able to reach the satellite on a Friday. So they couldn't they couldn't push it back. They had to launch on the day that they were going to launch or else, you know, the public would have an outcry or something. But really. On the day that they were supposed to fly, it was too cold. And the scientists, you know, the people who created some of the parts on the aircraft were concerned about the cold. They were concerned about these little O-rings, like rubber O-rings, not being flexible enough to prevent leaks and things. And that is exactly what happened. It was not flexible enough. It was too cold and rigid. And there was a leak in the gas chamber or whatever it's called. And then there was a giant explosion. And it was really tragic. All because... of groupthink all because they were like oh the whole public wants this like we need to not rock the boat we need to not upset the balance of of nasa who's been working so hard for it of the astronauts of the public and so they did not critically evaluate all the consequences of their actions so really sad you know that there was it it's sad right but you know that there was some scientist that was like in the back and he leaned over to his buddy. He was like, I don't want to say I told you so, but... them o-rings yeah no it's it said that the people who made the uh it's not a gas chamber like that's a holocaust thing i don't want you saying there was a gas chamber but like the the fuel chamber depression chamber is what i remember reading yeah sure something like that um the people who made that they were in constant contact with nasa um but the communication was a little bit um stalled i guess it was a little bit you know, it's kind of like when my mom calls me and I don't really want to listen to all that she's saying, cause she's rambling. So I'll put the phone down for a minute and then pick it back up later and say, uh-huh. That was kind of what NASA was doing to the, the makers of the fuel, you know, box or whatever. So they did mention the O-rings. They were like, Hey, these O-rings, they're not, they're cold, they're chilly, they're rigid. And it just didn't, just didn't get through. So. well I have one more comment on that that is not sciencey but I think it says a lot about where we've come and where we started the fact that they want the person they wanted to send the space to live stream was a teacher teaching a lesson like I feel like we would send Cardi B up there to twerk or something like that you I would send my cat up there if I had a choice. Yeah. I would send Jack Harlow into space, I think, if I had anyone. Sing Industry Baby from space. Ooh. Absolutely. He could ask the O-rings, what's poppin'? All right, that's enough of the cat. I'll dial it back. Okay, next up is group polarization. Don't get this confused with groupthink though. Group polarization, I think this picture pretty accurately describes it. It's when you kind of get a group together that have a certain, they have a certain position on they have a certain opinion, I guess, about an issue. And, you know, it may be pretty spread out like this, like this guy is really, really like radical to one side. He, you know, he hates, he thinks waffles are like a thousand times better than pancakes. But, you know, this guy's like, well, yeah, I think waffles are better than pancakes, but, you know, pancakes do have their day. And then this girl's like, well, I mean. relatively speaking, I think pancakes and waffles are both pretty good. So they, they get these people in a group and average opinion is a little bit in one direction. So you can see the average opinion of this is that waffles are better if we're saying that this is the waffle side and this is the pancake side. This is absolutely the worst example I could have ever thought of. Um, but because it's so, but you get them in a group. Yeah, it's so obviously pancakes. But once you get that group together and they start discussing it a little bit, basically, they're all going to shift to a more radical position. So you can see by the end of it, the average opinion is further over from neutral than it started. Yeah, I hate to even say it. I hate to even say it, but the easiest way to think of this and the way that you've seen it the most in your life is with politics. Like nobody has, if you take your political opinion from five years ago and you compare it to now, nobody's like, I mean, yeah, I think I'm more neutral. I think I understand both sides. No, you're either like... I love President Biden or I love former President Donald Trump. Like that's, most people are polarized. And after they have a discussion, they will become more polarized on that opinion. You know, it's just like you sit down and say that you are a supporter of former President Trump. You sit down and you talk with someone that is a supporter of President Biden. both of you are going to leave and be like, that guy's flipping nuts. Trump train 2024. You're not, you're not going to be like, well, he had some valid arguments, even though you should, but it's a, this is, this is a, this is a social phenomenon. So yeah, I would, I would go out on a limb and I would go out on a limb and say that I think most, most people are moderate, but that's because I'm a positive. I'm like an optimist. but uh john's totally right um that's a completely different topic trump train 2024 pancakes just kidding um pancakes pancakes are obviously better um so well basically yeah when you see this on the mcat if you see a group discussing an issue they're going to get more radical of whatever i mean they're not going to start out like sort of on you know sort of if we're talking about politics they're not going to start out sort of democrat and then by the end of their discussion they're totally republican you know they're going to become like totally democrat so you know there has to be kind of an already like a shift to the side but once they discuss it, it gets more radical. Yeah, and you're not going to see the words Republican and Democrat. I do not expect the AAMC to use political words, but that's a good example to burn it into your brain. Yeah, absolutely. When I started talking about it, I almost said, okay, this guy's a fascist, and then I was like, wait, maybe I shouldn't bring politics into this. Anyway. Okay, conformity. So conformity, the Wikipedia definition is pretty dang good. The act of matching attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to group norms without being instructed or asked to do so. I added that last part in there actually, where it says without being instructed or asked to do so. If you're asked to go along with the group, that's called compliance. If you're instructed or demanded to go with the group, that's called obedience. But here with conformity, without being instructed or asked, you just kind of feel like a little bit of peer pressure, like, oh, maybe I should, you know. I don't know. Maybe I should conform with the group. It's a really funny experiment. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. Note how a lot of these topics seem like they play into each other. Like groupthink seems like you're like, oh, well, how do I separate groupthink and conformity? Groupthink maximizes conformity. So they're going to be difficult to kind of... Fars between or completely separate them because they're intertwined by their definition a little bit. But when it comes to things like groupthink versus grouppolarization, you are looking for the actual scenario. Groupthink and grouppolarization are results from a scenario. Whereas conformity is an act in and of itself. Yeah. And the best way to keep these apart is to think of those scenarios. That's why I think it's important for us to give you scenarios for all of these. And that's why I'm doing that. But I think that I think the scenario they used to test this way back in the like 60s or 70s was hilarious. And so I'm going to tell you all about it. They basically had a bunch of people in a room. okay, these researchers were researching informant and they, they had like, I think it was like five or six Confederates, which means that they work for the research team, but they pretend like they're participants in the research study. So Confederates five or six of them were in the room and they brought the actual research participant who was just some random Joe off the street. And they asked him to all come into the room. So, okay. So Joe and Joe off the street is sitting in there and he thinks he's surrounded by five other. jills off the street and so they ask everybody okay you have this line here on the left and then they showed them these three other lines and they said which line is the same length as the line on the left seems like a very simple task right it's a well all the confederates kind of went around and they were like I guess it's B. I think it's B. If I go straight across, it's right on B. And so they went around and then they left Joe off the street, the participant, for the last. And it was like a crazy amount of time. It was like 60 or 70% of the time Joe would be like, yeah, definitely B. Definitely B is the same length. Joe got gas out of his mouth. empath and it's not that joe joe probably thought like these mf's are crazy like it's obviously a but he just didn't want to be the one guy left out that that looked stupid because he picked a um so that's what conformity is and i think that's a really funny experiment all right any anything else john i think i think that's pretty good i think that's it this is what i was talking about bystander yeah you want to cover it Yeah, so I already kind of gave you my example, but it says individuals are less likely to help someone in need when there are other people present. The more people you have, the worse it gets. Why? Because you think somebody else did it. You think somebody else is going to do that. And so a lot of times the example that you'll hear is like if you see somebody drop their book or drop all their papers and stuff in the hallway, it's like a crowded hallway, you don't go down to help them, you will likely just... kind of watch people on trucking but keep on trucking be like nerd but the the kind of the classic example is this the example i was referencing jokingly in the intro which is um actually kind of a morbid story and i don't remember the exact details and maggie you may can fill it fill me in but i believe that there was you do know the exact details yeah i read all about it i got into like a wormhole about it when i was making this powerpoint all right you go off king take it from here yeah um okay so basically um there was this very popular story about the bystander effect and it kind of the bystander effect was not really like a studied phenomenon until this happened so um there's a story about this girl um i think she was a waitress and she was coming home from work um and it was like 3 a.m. in the morning or something, or maybe it was a little bit earlier because there had to be people watching. But anyway, she got mugged in the parking lot of her apartment complex, and she actually got murdered by the person that was mugging her. And as the story goes, there were 38 people watching from different balconies, watching her get murdered, and no one called. And so that kind of like no one called the police. I guess everybody assumed that someone else had already called them, etc, etc. That's literally the bystander effect. So that kind of spurred a lot of research on social psychology and group dynamics. As it goes, I did research some more about it. And it seems to me that there were some people that call the police. so maybe humans aren't quite as crappy as we think we are. So I know we'd be stretching the truth just to get people interested. That's how I got tricked into getting a bachelor's in psychology. Anyway. um so yeah so in the story it actually um people did call and the person that actually murdered her um went on to confess to two other murders and a bunch of burglaries a bunch of rapes he was he had a psychological profile taken of him like after he went to jail and he was um claimed to be like a necrophile and stuff and he was you Yeah, he was really like, he very much disgusted me, but he recently died in like 2016, spending 52 years in. what you really out here doing some research you know this guy's famous i love that to you i've been doing wormhole because this guy really disgusted me i was like reading the wikipedia page and i was like oh this piece of crap and i was like how did i get here um but yeah he went on to spend like 52 years in prison and um he was the he was like the second longest like he spent the second longest amount of time in jail of anyone in the New York prison system. So that's pretty interesting. Second only to Michael Myers. yeah and also um i i saw the where he he came up for like parole several times because he got he was supposed to get a death sentence and then he got life in prison and then he actually came up for parole several several several times like 15 times and every time he went to the courtroom he just kept effing it up the first time he said well you actually, I'm the victim in this scenario because everyone thinks I'm a piece of crap now. And he said that the actual victim, like the person that he, like the people he raped and burglarized and killed, he was like, they actually only experienced a moment of pain, but I'm in jail for 52 years. So I'm the real victim. And then he said, I didn't mean to mug her sometimes, or I didn't mean to kill her. Sometimes when you're mugging people, you accidentally kill them. So yeah, they did not. They denied his parole. It's just, man, that's bad. You know, he had a lawyer. He had a lawyer. The lawyer obviously was like, Effie, you deserve to be in here. I thought that was interesting. Back to the MCAT. We got some questions. I got a lot of questions after how well you knew that. I'll tell you the first one. It says based on the passage, which I didn't put the passage in here because it is not required. Which statement is the best definition of groupthink? Groupthink refers to a the faulty decisions that result in a powerful leader leader imposes his or her will on the group and overrides the wishes of the majority of its members. Definitely not because this is a groupthink is about when an entire group comes to a consensus, not when a leader imposes a consensus upon a group. um so i don't like that b says a style of decision making that occurs when strangers are placed into decision making groups and forced to make choices under time pressure groupthink doesn't have anything to do with time pressure or strangers it can be a group of friends and they can have groupthink um so um not loving that c says the presence of conformity pressures and beliefs of superiority that lead decision-making groups to fail to critically evaluate their alternatives and options you see though you see that language alternatives and options that was in our definition of group think so um i like that i also i know that you know um the illusion of it's like, it's something like illusion of superiority or something that is one of the facets of groupthink. And so that's what they're talking about. So I like that. D says that a conscious decision-making strategy employed by groups tasked with making important policy decisions. I wouldn't say that groupthink is conscious. Would you, John? I don't think I would say it's conscious. no i don't think it is because the way to avoid it is to try to be conscious that it is a thing yeah exactly so a group think is not really conscious and um it's not just based on policy decisions so c i think is my final choice it'd be a dumb strategy too yeah right not aware about them o-rings stop oh my gosh I think that's probably the exact moment when Elon Musk was born actually um John you want to do this yeah I do four students all of whom oppose the university policy to ban alcohol on campus are placed in a room and asked to discuss their views on this policy for an hour okay I can already tell that this is going to be like a group polarization question because they are going to be locked in a room and asked to discuss policies. Like, what else are we going for? Okay, so I'm reading that. I'm thinking group polarization. And so I know that your views should get more radical. Which outcome is most likely? The students'views will be unchanged. That's kind of tempting because you're like, well, if they're for it, then they're still going to be for it. But group polarization says that if you're for it, you're going to be more radically for it. So I say maybe, maybe to A, I'm not going to rule it out. B, the students will oppose the campus policy more strongly. This is making the assumption that they all disagree with it to begin with. So that is an assumption. But it's saying that... I think I can annotate this. But it's saying that we're going to be moving more strongly, which I do like. I actually think that that makes me prefer B over A, because A is not showing a deviation. So triangle delta is going to be my deviation. This does not show a deviation. This does show a deviation. They're going to pose it. So I kind of like B. C says the students will no longer oppose the campus policy. I'm glad we're looking at this question because it says no longer oppose it. That means they're going to change their view. They're not going to change their view, right? They may get more radical in their view of it, but they're not going to change it. A.K.A. you're not going to start out at a Democrat and become a Republican. You may start out at a Democrat and become more of a Democrat, or you may start out at a Republican and become more of a Republican. I'm obviously borrowing an analogy here, right, the politics thing. But you're not going to switch from one to the other, or vice versa, according to group polarization. So I'll say maybe not C. D says the students'views will become more moderate. Again, that is, if we're looking at this continuum from D to R, A. we have students here, or we have students here. Group polarization says they're moving closer to the ends, not that they're becoming more moderate. So I would go with answer choice B. Yay! yeah and if you'll notice um the questions like this are the reason why a lot of people like psych because you have to know like an nth of group polarization to really see like what this question is trying to get at you know and you you notice these group um not group you notice these um these buzzwords kind of, you know, okay, we know that they oppose some policy, they're placed in a room and they discuss their views for an hour, what's going to happen, and we're talking about how their opinion is going to change, like, very obviously pointing to groupthink, so, yeah, notice those, those keywords in these definitions. Okay, to determine the effectiveness of brainstorming, a researcher designs a study in which participants are asked to produce alternatives to an existing marketing strategy on their own or with a group. Which pattern of results is most likely based on research on group processes? Okay, so we have a So two scenarios here. So we can either come up with ideas on our own or in a group. And it's asking basically how much do you know about group dynamics? So let's read the answer choices. A says groups arrive at the improved alternatives more often than individuals. From what I know about social psychology, oftentimes, even though it is a group of people, it's not counterintuitive. We actually make worse decisions as groups than we do as individuals. And so I know that A doesn't sound like it's really trying to get at how the MCAT teaches social psychology. I don't really like A. Let's see if I got a better answer somewhere. Is there a better word around here? B says groups are more likely to critically evaluate alternatives than individuals. So that's exactly the opposite, right? Like that's the opposite of group think. groups are less likely to critically evaluate alternatives than individuals, right? Because they're all just like, yes, bro, let's do all this. Let's do, yeah, I like your idea without even like thinking about it. C says on average participants generate more alternatives alone than in a group. I like that because it basically says alone greater than in a group as far as like decision-making goes. So I like C. D says, on average, participants produce more alternatives in a group than alone. So just the exact opposite of C. So I don't really like that one. I think C is the right answer. Notice how that would go against what you would naturally think. And this is why some people find psych-society more difficult. Most people don't. Most people think it's the easiest section. some people find it tough because you can rely less on intuition and you have to rely more on like your straight flashcard knowledge. But once you know the flashcard knowledge, it's cake. Do your flashcards. Yeah. Agree. Okay. John. A college student is late for class and is running down the stairs with several textbooks. I know where we're going. The student falls, dropping all the books. But do you know where we're going? The student is most likely to receive help if... A. Only one other student was present when the accident occurred. Okay, so before I even start reading the answer choices, I'm going to realize and recognize that we're talking about the bystander effect here. Right, I mean, it's just the scenario they'll give us, right? We keep telling you that a lot of these things for social psychology they're testing are scenario based. So the scenario they're giving us is literally a scenario I gave you to teach bystander effects. So you should be able to get this one right. A says, only one other student was present when the accident occurred. Well, bystander effect states that the more people that you get, the less likely you are to receive help. So, seems like that would work vice versa. So, you'd probably get some help if only one other person was there. So, I say maybe to A. B, the stairway was crowded when the accident occurred. Probably not. They're probably going to be like, eh, Tina. she's so stupid. So maybe not to be. C says the accident occurred at the end of the day. I don't believe that I know of any social psychology that says you're going to be more altruistic or more prone to help at the end of the day. I'd probably say it'd be the opposite because people get cranky towards the end of the day. Anywho, that's not the bystander effect, right? That's about the number of people that are watching. So maybe not C. And D says the college was in an urban neighborhood. I don't like D because this is kind of talking about how your geography is going to make a difference. Even if that was the case, colleges consist of individuals from all over the country and sometimes the world coming to them, so that kind of rules all that out. And E says, if the person that knocked the books out of your hands admitted to necrophilia. I say maybe not, because apparently in that scenario, people actually called the cops. So the correct answer here should be A. You probably receive help if only one other student was watching because that would kind of offset the bystander effect by saying, I don't have a crowd of people watching me so those, the people that are watching me are not going to be thinking, oh well maybe X, Y, or Z will help them pick up the books. It's just like, I'm the only one here. I'm going to help Tina the Klutz pick up her books. So I go with that. Or not. Or I'm going to look at her and just be like, what type of person would that take? She's never going to come back to school again. She does not. All right. That was the end of the questions, guys. Thanks so much for tuning into this little lesson about social psychology. These are cake questions. If you can get these definitions down and you can really like separate them from each other and recognize these, like the scenarios that they give you, like, what are they testing? So we will see you in the next video.