The Power Of The Situation :: essays research papers

The Power of the Situation     A week of urban mayhem was ignited by the April 29, 1992 jury acquittalof four color police officers who were captured on videotape beating blackmotorist Rodney King. The angry response in South Central produced its ownbrutal footage, most dramatically the live spread out from a hovering 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 zillion in qualitydamage, nearly 2,000 arrests, and countless businesses in ashes. These two men,Damian Williams and Henry Watson undoubtedly committed a heinous crime, butthousands more looted, burned, and destroyed property with the same disregardfor life and property. Were all these people criminals who used the verdicts asan excuse to commit crimes, or w as the nature of the social situation theprimarydeterminant of this nefarious fashion? In the course of this paper, Iplan to explore this question from a psychological perspective with an emphasizeon conformity and social norms, bystander intervention, social science andreality, and finally, prejudice. Generally looking at the Los Angeles riots,and specifically drawing upon the Reginald Denny beating and subsequent trial,the power of the situation becomes evident, as thousands of people living in anextremely inadequate and crime-ridden area of Los Angeles, lashed out against aperception of injustice through violence.     The conditions that lead people to perceive themselves as victims ofunjust actions are rather complex. In this case, the affirmative verdicts towardsthe officers who beat Rodney King was the "unjust action", not only for RodneyKing, but for the community he came from. The perceived damage to desiredsocial identities and justice lead to resentment on the part of a historicallypoor and underprivileged class of citizens. The case-by-case attempts to explainthe event (the verdicts) by processes of attribution in which score may ormay not be formed. (DeRidder, Schruijer, and Tripathi, 1992). The attributionof responsibility and blame is activated when confronted with unexpectedbehavior, unwanted consequences, or stressful, puzzling, and important events(Wong & Weiner, 1981). so the attribution process may be activated eitherwhen the individual experiences harm, or perceives an anti-normative action byanother person or group.     Contrary to public 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 take away fromthe validity of the attribution theory due to the individual differences in