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 remissionof four white police officers who were captured on videotape beating cruddymotorist Rodney world power. The angry response in South Central produced its witnessbrutal footage, most dramatically the live broadcast 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 career anuprising, revolt, or rebellion, was put at 53 dead, some $1 zillion in propertydamage, nearly 2,000 arrests, and countless businesses in ashes. These two men,Damian Williams and heat content Watson undoubtedly committed a heinous crime, butthousands more looted, burned, and finished property with the same disregardfor life and property. Were all these masses criminals who employ the verdicts asan exc use to commit crimes, or was the nature of the social incident theprimarydeterminant of this nefarious behavior? In the course of this paper, Iplan to search this question from a psychological perspective with an emphasizeon deference and social norms, bystander intervention, social perception 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 poor 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 favorable 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 led to irritation on the part of a historicallypoor and underprivileged gradation of citizens. The individual 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 accountability and blame is activated when confronted with unexpectedbehavior, unwanted consequences, or stressful, puzzling, and important events(Wong & ampere 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 bulk 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