Defender Of The People Analysis

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Elizabeth Seils Psych 2743 Article Summary Historically speaking, individuals require a social atmosphere to offer protection from physical threat and to provide a reliable food source. Humans are a social creature who depend on others to offer many comforts and requirements such as safety in numbers to repopulation. If someone loses that social stability then they will seek out other individuals to repair this lose but they will be selective and guarded due to past experiences. A person will not return to an undesirable situation even if excluded form society. It is also apparent that if we fear lose to our social connections then our attitudes would change in order to avoid such events. The article, “Superman to the rescue: simulating physical …show more content…

The first test, “Defender of the people”, seeks to uncover if an individual who is given physical immunity, would they respond negatively towards out-group members compared to someone only given the ability to fly and immunity from pain but not injury. Forty-one participants are given the mental scenario that they go on a shopping experiences and have a strange encounter with an unknown gentleman. The man knows them by name and tells the participant that he will give them a superpower the next day. Still in the scenario, the participants wake to find that they do have a gift, but only one. They were also asked to describe an instance where they were socially excluded. A third of the participants are put into the control group which is prompted that they can fly but are not immune to pain. Another third of the group is told they are immune to injury but not to pain. The last section is immune to pain but not to injury. They are then asked to rate there attitude on undesirable groups and stigmatized groups such as heron addicts, obese, illegal immigrants, and so on. The data obtained supported the idea that given immunity from injury, participants would look at out-group members more positively then previously. Participants that were given invulnerability were more positive then those only given freedom from pain, and the data between pain free participants and flying were not that different. So this study supported the theory that if the …show more content…

Seventy-seven participants were chosen and given two dollars. 30 female and 47 male individuals were asked ether to recall a time where they were socially excluded while the other half was asked to recall a time where they lost something of importance which was the control group. They were then split into two groups, half given the ability to fly and the other had physical immunity. The final step was they same question simple from study two in which participants were asked to rate there desire for a group connection. Compared to other studies however, this study did not have much differences in outcomes. Individuals given invulnerability were still less likely to contact individuals but only when faced with exclusion. They desired social connection more when faced with loss. The control group, flying, was opposite with a greater desire for connection when faced with exclusion and less desire when primed with loss. So in both study 2 and 3, participants that were primed with exclusion had less of a desire to reconnect social connections when given

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