Environmental Science: In lab this week, we visited the "Envision Center" at NCSU. It was all about Smart Grid technology being
implemented into houses so that the power company can directly communicate with you and receive feedback on your energy. Therefore, they can tell you how to reduce your energy use as well as tell if your power is out in a storm, a
nd you can respond by altering your usage on a daily and hourly basis. The part that related to social psychology was how Smart Grids allowed you to instantly find out how much energy you are using, so that you can immediately try to use less. This would be more effective for much of the population since they are getting the instant gratification of knowing they are reducing their energy by seeing a visual representa
tion of that decrease in energy.
Now, we just get our electric bill every month, and might not understand it. We just know if it's cheaper or more expensive than last month's bill so we must be doing something right. This doesn't usually make us change our behavior, and if it does, we're pretty much just guessing what it is we need to do less of. If we can directly see what we're doing to use up energy at that moment, we will be more likely to change our behavior right then in there, so that our bills will be cheaper (and we will use less energy).
During the Honors Trip: There were a few instances of real-life experience social psychology during the honors trip. I remember one specific example of conformity while a group of about ten of us were walking around the camp. We were pretty far away, and someone stated that they wanted to turn back. About four people, including me, wanted to keep going, so we just kept walking, maybe saying a short statement about wanting to continue. Seeing us continue to walk, one person saw us and ran to catch up, saying "well if you're going, I'll go too." Eventually, about six or eight of the previous ten was continuing to walk, when more than half of them were willing to go back to the camp. The original dissenters who had publicly said that they wished to turn back did not turn back. However, some people that had originally agreed with them saying, "Me too, I want to go back to camp," eventually turned back around to follow the group. Also, I believe that if I were in fact the only one who wanted to keep going, I would have probably agreed to go back (mostly because I wouldn't want to walk alone in the woods by myself in an unfamiliar place).
French Phonetics: We had to watch an Italian film (part of the foreign film series) called Bread and Tulips. In the movie there were a few examples of persuasion. The main character's husband convinced a plumber to be a detective for him, to find and spy on his wife who ran away to Venice. He used flattery to get him to agree to the job, and then to keep him doing the job, he used fear. Also, when the main character's sister was trying to convince her to return home from Venice, she told her that her son was doing drugs. That was a fear tactic as well as tapping into her emotions. (It ended up that the boy was 'only' smoking pot and wanted to drop out of school because he didn't see the point). The older man that she met in Venice who let her stay with her (out of the kindness of his heart) ended up having to convince her to come back to Venice. When she asked him why she had to return, he said "Because I love you." That was emotional appeal, and it worked. She ended up playing accordion with him while he sang, and she continued her job at the Venetian florist, and even brought her son with her since they both shared the feeling that they didn't belong in the other Italian town they were in with their dad/husband.
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