Living in a Social World
Psy 324: Advanced Social Psychology
Spring, 1999
News from a Social Psychology Perspective
Values in Conflict -- Holy Smoke! Parochial Students Punished for Marijuana -- March 24, 1999
Analysis by
Claudia Peschiera, Jessica Shuleva
Don Shea & Zachary Shuler
The entire sixth grade at Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic School was forced to attend an anti-drug program on Friday, March 26 as a punishment for failing to alert school officials that a fellow student was in possession of marijuana. If any student failed to attend the program, where parental presence was required, s/he would be given an additional four-day suspension. The severity of the punishment was in response to the fact that every or nearly every student had knowledge of the drug but failed to take appropriate steps in dealing with it. Given the background of this news story, our group wished to determine whether our age-mates would behave in the same manner. To prompt them, one group member hid some transparencies that were to be used in our presentation while the presenter was out of the room.
Before the presenter left the room, she made some obvious gestures indicating that the transparencies were very important. Right after she exited, the group member attempted to capture our classmates’ attention by dramatically hiding them in the back of the room. The purpose of this action was to see whether anyone would inform the presenter (the temporary authority figure) as to where the overheads were hidden. When the presenter reentered the room, she seemed frustrated that the transparencies were nowhere to be found. Unfortunately, the class’ attention had been diverted during the "hiding" scene, so we did not get the results we’d expected – namely, to prompt a student to "nark" on the member who did the hiding. Interestingly enough, one student suggested a possible place that the transparencies could be located. Even if other classmates had seen the hiding take place, some research suggests that they might not have ‘fessed up. Taylor, Gittes, and O’Neal (1994) found that when introduced to a lie, people are often "uncertain about what course of action to take" and are not even sure why they remain silent. A few classmates who both witnessed the hiding and saw the presenter asking her group members where the transparencies were located still may have decided not to tell.
By engaging the class in the scenario, we also hoped to orient them to our discussion topic. We began by discussing the group dynamics related to the article, pointing out that an outsider, such as a teacher, causes the group to "close rank" by accusing them of possession of marijuana. The students, in turn, protect their group (their classmates) by not telling. We also discussed Tuckman’s five stages to group development: forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. Given that these students have probably been together since an early age, it is possible that they are presently in the norming stage of group development. This stage leads to greater cohesiveness through the establishment of rules and norms for the group and by "resolving tensions that threaten group success" (Tesser, 1995). If one were to assume that this was not the first time students have failed to inform school officials of drugs, the issues of groupthink and polarization would be activated. Groupthink occurs when members are more concerned about getting along than they are about making an appropriate, informed decision. Group polarization causes a group’s final decision to be more extreme than it was prior to discussion (Tesser, 1995).
The class seemed very understanding of the students’ actions, and a number of our classmates commented that they would not have "tattled" had they been in a similar situation. One classmate recounted a story that occurred while she was a freshman in high school. She and other students were aware that a group of freshman girls brought alcohol to school on a daily basis and consumed it in the restroom. According to our classmate, fear (of retribution) was a main factor in her decision to keep quiet.
Several reasons exist to explain why the students at the parochial school chose not to inform school officials of the marijuana. It is possible that the students did not consider the teachers/school officials to be legitimate authority figures, for whatever reason. If the students liked the particular teacher who had requested the information, they would have been more likely to comply. Tesser (1995) notes that a person should be more willing to follow the suggestions of a legitimate authority figure, especially if that person controls the rewards and punishments. The presence of a social supporter also may have had an effect in this situation. The term "social supporter" stems from the Asch line studies, and refers to a person who dissents from an erroneous majority (Tesser, 1995). Perhaps if there was one student willing to speak out against the majority’s refusal to comply, this would have prompted other students to feel more comfortable in "wanting to tell" and thus, conformity would have been reduced.
Some of the authority figures at the school might consider the students to be terrible, rotten kids for not complying with their requests. However, this type of thinking is representative of the correspondence bias, described by Tesser (1995) as "the tendency to conclude that a person has a disposition that corresponds to his or her behavior even when that behavior is attributable to the situation." The authority figures likely underestimated the capacity of the other environmental forces to alter behavior.
To raise the question of why attitudes do not reliably predict behavior, we asked our classmates whether any of them had participated in or were familiar with the Drug Abuse Resistance Program (D.A.R.E.). One student recalled how a uniformed police officer visited his elementary school every month to implement the program. Our classmate questioned how big of an impact the program actually had, seeming as though he himself doubted its importance. Other students also questioned the program’s effectiveness. One classmate was shocked to discover that teenage substance abusers often took advantage of the program’s various activities. Another classmate, a former peer D.A.R.E. counselor, was dismayed to discover how many students used the drug hotline for frivolous causes.
We then shared a study from the D.A.R.E. web site that offered statistical evidence of the program’s effectiveness. Our group pointed out that the sixth-graders’ actions were not necessarily evidence of the program’s failure. Instead, many situational factors are at work. Tesser states that stronger attitudes are better predictors of behavior than are weaker attitudes; therefore, it follows that personal experience influences attitudes more than second-hand information. So, a sixth-grader is likely to have a stronger attitude towards drugs if she grew up in a drug-infested neighborhood than if she was simply alerted to the effects of drugs by a D.A.R.E. representative.
We asked our classmates’ opinions on the severity of the sixth-graders’ punishment. Several students felt that the punishment was too harsh. One student felt that the school officials failed to get the results they wanted because they approached the situation the in wrong way, apparently not allowing students to come forth with anonymous information. Our classmate said that this put students in the difficult position of having to secretly "police" their peers, something that very few students would be willing to do. Another classmate commented that the punishment was not appropriate because it punished innocent persons, including students who may not have been knowledgeable of the drug as well as parents, who were forced to take a day out of their busy lives to attend the program (costing some parents a day of pay). The punishment was paradoxical in that the school might have viewed the drug program as a means of calming parents’ fears, but it actually served to anger some parents. We also asked our class whether the sixth-graders were being punished for having the marijuana or for failing to disclose knowledge of the drug. As predicted, our classmates felt that the students were obviously punished for failing to disclose the information.
Given that our presentation informed the class of the issues at hand in this news story, we concluded by offering several variations of the story. These included altering the situation from a parochial school to a public school, from sixth-graders to high school seniors, marijuana to cocaine, unpopular/disliked offender to popular/well-liked offender, and disliked teacher to well-liked teacher. Our main point in presenting these alternatives was to illustrate the impact of situational variables. The number of student responses to these alternatives was testament to the fact that social psychology doesn’t always offer clear answers.
References
Taylor, L., Gittes, M., and O’Neal, E.C. (1994). The reluctance to expose dangerous lies. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 24(4), 301-315.
Tesser, A. (1995). Advanced Social Psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc.
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