20/20 experiment; the are two groups of actors (White/ Black) vandalizing and trying to break into a car in a suburban neighbor hood. Why did? or, Why did not? both groups get treated the same way?
Cross race effect
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This is a perfect illustration of a sociological study I read about in one of my sociology classes as an undergrad. Since my sociology books are in my house in El Paso so this was the next best thing. I found this article on google scholar that gives of brief summary of the what William Chambliss originally wrote about:
"As Labeling theory clearly illustrates, both the social and academic deviant, once labeled
as such, are forced to carry these labels with them, performing the very behavior society expects
of them, inevitably leading to confirmation bias. William Chambliss identified this bias when he
examined society’s reaction to two groups of high school boys: the Saints and the Roughnecks
(Lilly, Cully, & Ball, 2007). Although both sets of boys had an equal amount of delinquency
between them, because of their less desirable status (i.e. lower social class) the Roughnecks were
assumed by police, and regular citizens alike, as being more likely to participate in deviant
behavior (Lilly, Cully, & Ball, 2007). Thus as this example illustrates, secondary deviance leads
to the formulation of stereotypes, which is troubling, considering how persistent stereotypes are."
I made a comment about confirmation bias in class last week and how we interpret people's behavior according to our expectations. The idea of labeling and deviance is what I was trying to get at. I remember in my intro to abnormal class in undergrad about psychologists who pretended to have a mental disorder in order to get into a mental hospital to conduct research. One researcher talked about how the hospital staff made records in his file saying that he was displaying all these schizophrenic symptoms, when in reality he was just walking up and down the hall out of boredom or sitting in his room writing notes for the research study. Once he received the label of "Schizophrenic", all of his behavior was interpreted as him displaying "schizophrenic" tendencies and symptoms. The ironic part of this experiment was that only the REAL mental patients figured out that the researchers were faking their disorder.
Good example, Liz! The confirmation bias is definitely part of what's going on here. Nice tie-in to the schizophrenia study as well. If we're talking about the same study, I'm not even sure that the Psychologists were acting schizophrenic; they were just admitted to the institution with that label. Therefore, they were actually behaving like normally functioning adults but due to the "diagnosis," the employees sought to confirm behavior that fit the label. It makes me wonder what would happen if our whole class went to see a therapist acting normal; what percentage of us would leave with a complex?
Right Dan. The psychologists were acting completely normal the entire time. But since they were "diagnosed" as being X-type of disorder, all of their behaviors were interpreted by the doctors and staff as being that of a person with a mental disorder. I wish I knew the name of the study. Maybe there's video of it on youtube.
Going back to what Dan said about leaving a therapist's office with a complex, it makes one wonder whether or not patients of mental health institutions get better or worse because of the way they're being treated.