JoHo

Social psychology is the scientific study of processes in social relationships, and how people’s thoughts, feelings and behaviours are influenced by other people, more specifically by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. It is a basic science which tries to build knowledge primarily through experiments and survey. In addition to helping understand how people function in their everyday social life and why people do what they do, insights from social psychology can help solve problems that are related to how people behave towards others and with respect to many social issues. Based on a social problem, the upcoming chapter shows how a theoretical model is developed on which an intervention is based. This will be done using the PATHS (Problem, Analysis, Test, Help, Success) method.

What steps are in the PATHS method?

Step 1 – Problem: formulating a problem definition

It has become apparent that in recent years, fewer people are donating to reduce HIV/AIDS in high-risk areas such as Africa. A group of volunteers would like to start a campaign that will make people donate more money. They are struggling to determine how this campaign should look. They have, therefore, consulted a social psychologist to gain insight into what would prompt people to donate more money.

The psychologist starts with the first step of the PATHS method: formulating a problem definition. The problem is defined as follows: many people in Africa suffer from HIV / AIDS and there is not enough funding to provide them with adequate forms of medical or psychological assistance. What factors determine the willingness of potential donors to donate for this issue? How can we set up a fundraising campaign to help people living with HIV / AIDS?

Step 2 – Analysis: Finding an explanation for the problem

To identify what factors affect people’s willingness to donate money, the psychologist asks many questions that can be answered based on literature on social psychology. He looks at literature on altruism, pro-social behaviour, and social influence, which can show what motivates people to help others and give money to a good cause.

The psychologists looks at the literature on pro-social behaviour and formulates the first problem in terms of two general questions:

• When are people most likely to help others?
• What attributes of victims provoke help responses?

After researching literature that can answer these questions, the psychologist concludes that there are three kinds of help:

1. Emergency intervention: for example, helping someone who is the victim of a robbery or accident.
2. Organizational helping: for example, volunteering to take on an administrative job at the request of a manager.
3. Sharing and donating resources: for example, donating money to a charity.

The present problem, raising money for people with HIV / AIDS concerns the third type of prosocial behaviour. But, after reading the relevant literature, the practitioner concludes that most of the prosocial literature deals with emergency helping and organizational helping. Much less is known about raising money for good causes. Eventually, she finds publications on the ‘norm activation model’ (NAM), a theoretical model developed by the Israeli social psychologist Shalom Schwartz. This theoretical model is applicable to all forms of helping. In the model there are several steps that influence people’s pro-social behaviour. These are the most important steps:

1. Awareness of need: there must be a realization that others need help. The perceived need must be prominent, clear, and serious.
2. Opportunities to help: people should be aware that there are opportunities to help people with HIV / AIDS.
3. Ability to help: people must recognize their own ability to help. For example, it should be emphasized that even small donations are highly appreciated.
4. Personal norms: these are feelings of moral obligations that cause people to help others.
5. Ascription of responsibility: people need to have some sense of responsibility for the problem to be involved in providing help.

Melvin Lerner (1980, 2000) theorizes about “belief in a just world” He argues that people have a natural tendency to believe that they live in a fair world where everyone gets what they deserve. People therefore are especially upset by the unexplained suffering of others.

It can be found in literature that people with a disease arouse more sympathy when they aren’t considered responsible for their fate. Based on this, the psychologist concludes that one of the main goals of the campaign should be to suppress the idea that people in Africa with HIV / AIDS are responsible for their own illness. A sense of empathy must also be evoked in potential donors. This happens when people can identify with the victims. For example, because they are the same age, or hold the same position/values.

Similarity leads to empathy – seeing oneself in someone else’s place – which in turn leads to helping behaviour. However, potential financial donors and the victims of HIV / AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa seem to live in totally different words, making it hard for potential donators to identify themselves with the victims, even if the victims are of the same age or gender. She comes across literature that shows that people are more likely to help people in need that they perceive to be members of the same group (in-group) rather than of a very different group. However, this tendency can be counteracted by recategorization, by stimulating people to mentally embrace members of the out-group as members of their own group. Recategorization can be achieved by stressing the similarities between potential donators and the victims in sub-Saharan Africa (e.g. we are all humans and members of the planet’s population).

Step 3 – Test: Developing and testing the process model

The key outcome in the model is the willingness to donate money to help people with HIV / AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. There are a number of processes that influence this willingness according to the model.

1. The degree to which people think victims are to be blamed for their infection. As people attribute more blame to the victims they will hold more negative attitudes towards these victims, and identify with them less, consequently being less likely to donate money to the cause. Based on the just world theory, the relationship between perceived blame and negative attitude will be stronger the more people believe in a just world.
   • Potential problem for the campaign is that some people will feel that the victims could have done something to prevent the infection and somehow brought it upon themselves.
2. The second process concerns the degree of identification with victims. As people are less able to identify with the victim, they will experience less empathy for the victim and hold more negative attitudes towards them. This will make them less willing to donate money. This lack of identification is fed by the perception that the victims belong to another group, a lack of personalized information on the victims and the belief that they themselves or their beloved ones are not very likely to be infected.
   • Potential problem for the campaign is that people will not be able to identify themselves with the victims simply because they lack information, because of the automatic tendency to see victims as members of the out-group and because one sees HIV infection as a not very likely possibility for oneself and loved ones.

These processes mutually influence each other. As people attribute more blame to the victim, they will be less likely to identify with the victim and feel less empathy.

Step 4 – Help: intervention programme

The team of volunteers now has several factors than can increase help behaviour. The campaign will look like this:

1. A victim is selected who will become the face of the campaign. Personalized information about this victim will be presented to increase identification. The description of the victim is not only an ‘identified victim’ but also blameless for the infection. Other information is given about the living conditions of this young woman that may strengthen the belief that victims in this region are not necessarily to blame for getting infected. Emphasize that due to limited information, poverty, and lack of contraceptives, people with HIV / AIDS are unaware of the risks of unsafe sexual contact and ways to prevent infection. As a result, they can’t be held personally responsible for contracting the disease.
2. To enhance identification with victims, the campaign wills tress the similarities between the identified victim and potential financial donors, by priming people to view victims as co-members of humanity and inhabitants of the same planet who through no fault of their own are suffering greatly, rather than as members of the out-group.
3. Personal norms of helping will be activated by showing that people with HIV / AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa are in desperate need of help (condition: awareness of need), by showing how one can donate money and that even small donations matter (opportunity to help). To lower the threshold to donate money, people can also donate through the internet (ability to help).

Step 5 – Success: evaluating the intervention

Following the intervention, the practitioner conducts a thorough evaluation of the intervention.

• Did the intervention persuade people to donate?
• How much money was donated?

Additionally, to evaluating the effect of the campaign in terms of money, the evaluation also examines related variables like how many people donated money. The S stage of the PATHS model is important to justify the campaign and its implementation towards all those involved, including financial donators and other sponsors.

Are there other relevant decisions?

Though the general approach of the campaign has been formulated by the team, many decisions still need to be made.

1. First a decision must be made regarding the communication channel. Do they run a media campaign, a door-to-door campaign, or a combination of both?
2. Another issue is whether donors receive something in exchange for their gift, for example a CD by African artists for every donation over 50 euros.
   • The norm of reciprocity states that individuals feel best when they receive something in return for what they give. It is a powerful mechanism that has evolved to facilitate social exchange, and when this norm is being violated, for instance when someone doesn’t return a favour, people get angry and upset.
3. For many of the additional questions that need to be answered, there is relevant social psychological literature that can be consulted, for example, on persuasion, communication, and social influence.

What is the PATHS road from problem to intervention to success?

We believe that the PATHS method helps practitioners to develop a theoretically based intervention programme relatively quickly and smoothly. The PATHS method offers a simple, systematic, step-by-step, easy-to-use methodology for applying social psychological theories to tackle a diversity of social issues. In sum, we can identify five essential steps in this methodology:

1. Problem – from a problem to a problem definition. Identifying and defining the problem.
2. Analysis – from a problem definition to analysis and explanation. Formulating appropriate concepts and developing theory-based explanations.
3. Test – from explanations to a process model: developing and testing an explanatory process model.
4. Help – from a process model to interventions: developing and implementing a programme of interventions.
5. Success – from implementing the intervention to evaluating its success.

Step 1 – Problem: How do we get from the problem to a problem definition?

Usually, the problem definition is more extensive than the one we formulated earlier in this chapter, where the team already knew that they wanted to set up a fundraising campaign to help people with HIV / AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. Often there is just a general feeling within a team, community, or organization that there is a problem, and something must be done without much further thought being involved. Usually, a psychologist starts more at the root of a problem when the definition needs to be formed. Therefore, it is very important to describe precisely what the problem is. But even when the problem is clearly presented, other questions need to be asked:

• Assess whether the problem is sufficiently concrete rather than it being a general scientific question.
• Why is it a problem at all?
• For whom is it a problem?
• What are the main causes of the problem?
• What population do we aim to target with our intervention?
• Who do we need to convince this problem has to be solved?
• Who must help us solve this problem?

Finally, the “key aspects” of the problem must be considered. That is, a good problem definition makes clear that the problem has an applied rather than a basic nature and is formulate din concrete terms. It is also important that the problem has social psychological aspects and that the problem is solvable. If a problem can’t be defined by a few terms, it probably isn’t suitable for a PATHS analysis.

Step 2 – Analysis: how do we go from a problem definition to analysis and explanation?

when the problem is defined in terms of one or more social psychological constructs, the second step is to come up with social psychological explanations for the problem but first one must decide what the outcome variable is – which variable eventually needs changing.

Sometimes it isn’t so obvious what to look for in the literature. Even when this is clear, there can be many different theories. For example, there are “social exchange” and “reciprocity” theories. These theories emphasize the role of selfishness in helping. In this way, people feel good when they have done something for someone else. Additionally, there are empathy-altruism theories. The basic idea of this theory is that empathy motivates altruistic behaviours aimed at alleviating the suffering of a victim.

To determine the validity of social psychological theories, it’s important to determine to what extent the experiments used for the theory are applicable to the real world. This refers to the external validity of an experiment. It is possible that the findings of a study, due to the specific research question or limitations in the samples, are applicable to a limited number of real-life situations.

Step 3 – Test: how do we go from explanations to process model?

The process model has an outcome variable that is affected. The model must mainly contain variables that can be influenced and must describe the relationship between the variables in the form of a process model. This process model is the core of the PATHS method. Generally, the model only specifies a few possible relationships between the variables. This forces researchers to be selective, so that not everything is explained by everything. Sometimes it’s hard to find in the literature how certain variables influence each other. If nothing can be found about a specific variable, it is good to look at the more general form of the variable concerned.

Step 4 – Help: how do we go from a process model to intervention?

Often, the hardest step is to move form the process model to an intervention programme. To develop an intervention programme, it’s important that the model contains primarily variables that can be influenced through intervention. Most social psychological variables, like attitudes and social norms, can be targeted by interventions. But variables like gender, personality or other deeply rooted traits and values cannot (at least not by a practitioner focusing on social psychological processes).

The step from the test to the help phase is huge. The practitioner must devise as many interventions as possible, aimed at the most promising and important causal variables in the model. Especially the shaping of details takes a lot of work.

Step 5 – Success: how do we go from implementation to evaluation?

It is of vital importance to evaluate the intervention in terms of effects and process. Evaluating the intervention isn’t merely an activity that starts after the intervention has been implemented. Parts of the evaluation must take place before and/or during the implementation of the intervention. How to evaluate an intervention and what choices toned to be made in the context of this evaluation will be described in chapter 6.

What are problems with applying theories?

It’s hard to apply social psychological theories to social problems because many theories have been developed through laboratory experiments. There are three very important limitations of research in social psychology:

• Oversimplification: the situation that is investigated through experiments is a reduction and simplification of reality. A laboratory experiment can never encompass the complexity of variables that influence human behaviour. In such experiments, often only one of the many variables are investigated.
• External validity: another limitation is that in real life all factors can cover the impact of the variables that are very clearly manipulated in an experiment. This makes it difficult to apply the findings of certain studies to real-life situations.
• Contradictory evidence: another limitation is that studies often produce contradictory/conflicting findings. For example, an effect can be found in one study, which is not found when the study is carried out by someone else at a different time. This is often due to the fact that studies differ slightly in terms of their methodology. So, this shows that when the circumstances are not the same, people can quickly react differently to a similar situation.

What can we conclude?

This book introduces the PATHS model, a step-by-step approach for addressing and resolving societal problems through the application of social psychological theory and knowledge, from the formulation of the problem to the shaping of interventions.

The PATHS method shouldn’t be used rigidly. Going from a problem to intervention is usually an iterative process, and one frequently moves back and forth between the different steps in the model. What is important is to develop a clear problem definition, a process model that fits the empirical findings as closely as possible, and an effective intervention.