Page 52 - The Social Animal

34 The Social Animal

It should be noted that, if the people were given a placebo (that
is, an injection of a benign solution that produces no symptoms), or
if they were forewarned about the symptoms of the drug that they
had been given, they were relatively unaffected by the antics of the
stooge. To sum up this experiment: When physical reality was clear
and explainable, the participants’ emotions were not greatly influ-
enced by the behavior of other people. However, when they were ex-
periencing a strong physiological response, the origins of which were
not clear, they interpreted their own feelings as either anger or eu-
phoria, depending on the behavior of other people who supposedly
were in the same chemical boat.

Social Influence: Life and Death As we have seen, the influence
of other people, whether intentional or not, can have an important
effect on a person’s behavior. Unless we understand how this process
works, these effects can have major unwanted consequences for so-
ciety, as well. An investigation by Craig Haney into the death quali-
fication procedure provides an interesting and instructive example. 32
Basically, the death qualification procedure refers to the process
whereby, in selecting a jury for a murder trial, prospective jurors who
are opposed to the death penalty are systematically excluded from the
jury. This procedure takes place in the presence of those people who
are eventually selected to serve on the jury. Haney, who is both an at-
torney and a social psychologist, reasoned that it is possible that
when jurors who believe in capital punishment witness others being
dismissed because they oppose the death penalty, this may subtly
suggest to them that the law disapproves of people who oppose the
death penalty.This conclusion may increase their tendency to impose
the death penalty. To test this notion, Haney performed an experi-
ment in which a random sample of adults was shown a videotape of
a convincing jury selection procedure filmed in the moot courtroom
of a law school—a highly realistic setting complete with all the
courtroom accouterments. Experienced trial lawyers served as pros-
ecutor, defense attorney, and judge on the videotape. In one condi-
tion, the procedure included a segment on death qualification; in the
other condition (control), this segment did not appear. Compared
with people in the control condition, those who viewed the death
qualification segment were more convinced of the defendant’s guilt,
believed it was more likely that he would receive the death penalty,