The Power Of The Situation :: essays research papers

The Power of the Situation     A week of urban whitethornhem was ignite by the April 29, 1992 jury acquittalof four white police officers who were captured on videotape beating pitch blacknessmotorist Rodney King. The angry response in South Central produced its ownbrutal footage, most dramatically the have a go at it broadcast from a h everywhereing TVnews helicopter of two black men striking unconscious with a brick, kicking, andthen dancing over the body of, white truck driver Reginald Denny. The finalthree-day toll of what many community activists took to defiantly calling anuprising, revolt, or rebellion, was put at 53 dead, some $1 billion in propertydamage, nearly 2,000 arrests, and myriad businesses in ashes. These two men,Damian Williams and Henry Watson undoubtedly committed a grievous crime, butthousands more looted, burned, and destroyed property with the same disregardfor life and property. Were all these people criminals who used the verdicts as an excuse to commit crimes, or was the nature of the social situation theprimarydeterminant of this nefarious behavior? In the occupation of this paper, Iplan to explore this question from a psychological posture with an emphasizeon conformity and social norms, bystander intervention, social perception andreality, and finally, prejudice. slackly looking at the Los Angeles riots,and specifically drawing upon the Reginald Denny beating and subsequent trial,the motive of the situation becomes evident, as thousands of people living in anextremely ugly and crime-ridden area of Los Angeles, lashed out against aperception of injustice through violence.     The conditions that pinch people to perceive themselves as victims ofunjust actions are rather complex. In this case, the favorable verdicts towardsthe officers who beat Rodney King was the "unjust action", non however for RodneyKing, but for the community he came from. The perceived damage to desired social identities and justice led to resentment on the part of a historicallypoor and underprivileged class of citizens. The individual attempts to explainthe event (the verdicts) by processes of attribution in which grievance may ormay not be formed. (DeRidder, Schruijer, and Tripathi, 1992). The attributionof responsibility and blame is activated when confronted with unexpectedbehavior, throwaway(prenominal) consequences, or stressful, puzzling, and important events(Wong & Weiner, 1981). Thus the attribution process may be activated eitherwhen the individual experiences harm, or perceives an anti-normative action byanother person or group.     Contrary to popular belief, not everyone residing in south-central LosAngeles looted. Instead the majority stayed in their homes until theparticipants ceased their destructive activities. This does not use up away fromthe validity of the attribution theory due to the individual differences in