Working at Hardee's
Jennifer Eddins
Asch's Line Experiment
In Asch's experiment he found that more often than not people conform to what the majority is saying, even if they know it is wrong. Sometimes at work we have down time and talk to each other and frequently we agree with each other just because it is easy and feels right, especially if they are talking about another employee. Who wants to stand out and express a different opinion? It shouldn't be like that but it is.
Zimbardo's Prison Experiment
Zimbardo set up an experimental prison. He took people off the street to be guards and prisoners. After a few days the prisoners became depressed and the guards became hateful and vulgar. From this he concluded that good people can turn bad in given situations. This shows group think and group polarization. It starts with group think, when the group members stop thinking individually and start thinking only about the group. Then group polarization happens when the whole group's attitude strengthens. At work our goal is to serve customers and make money while doing it. We don't think as much about benefitting the customer as we do keeping our stores sales up. Our attitude strengthens near the end of each month and we all try very hard to get people to upsize and buy more food. We get into our roles, like the prisoners and guards did, and when we fail or get stressed we get upset; maybe a little too upset.
Milgram's Obedience Experiment
Milgram conducted an experiment where he tested how far people would go just to follow a figure of authority's instruction. He found that even when hearing children scream by what they were doing to them, if the authority was near by, the subject would still inflict pain even though it was morally wrong. This shows that generally people will be overly obedient, or follow rules, when it comes to pleasing someone of authority, or power. I'm not going to go into detail, but one time at work I had a head set on and a customer in drive through asked a question about something we have. My manger said something and I repeated it to the customer without thinking because usually when he says things at that time I repeat because it's beneficial to the customer. Well this time it was inappropriate and I didn't think about that until afterwards and it was very embarrassing and wrong. We all go out of our way to please whoever has authority over us because they hold our power, but there should be a defined line.
Fundamental Attribution Error
This is kind of like first impressions. You really don't know what someone is like, but you judge them based off of what you can see. Fundamental attribution errors happen when you create an unlawful image of someone or their actions without knowing all of the details. When I wait on angry customers, I become slightly irritated and may sometimes come off as rude because I don't like angry or rude people. However, they might have just had the worst day od their life and I was probably not making it any better.
Self-Serving Bias
This is when you think too highly of yourself. Anything good that happens you give yourself credit for, but when anything bad happens you blame it on someone besides yourself. We all often do this at work. We have something called secret shopper where someone comes through drive through and orders and then gives us a grade on how well our service was. When it is a good grade, everyone fights over claiming who was at drive through when it happened, but when it is a bad grade we all blame someone and say we were doing something else at that moment.