post 6 : social psych

 for my social psych irl theme, i chose the pokémon games.

compliance: it is a norm to train your starter pokémon to its max evolution and keep it on your team, and most people comply to this norm even though you’re allowed to take your starter off your team. people keep their starters because they’re expected to and everyone else does, which shows compliance.

obedience: throughout the games, there are pokémon professors who give you orders. since these npc’s are authority figures, players are inclined to follow their instructions even if it goes against the norms they know because of obedience. 

social facilitation: you gain more xp from battling with other trainers than you do from battling wild pokémon or npcs. this shows that other people watching you battle increases your performance 

group polarization: when a game comes out with new starters, each player forms an opinion about their favorite but the group as a whole tends to be very harsh on the starters, more so than each player is individually 

reciprocity norms: when trading, players avoid giving bad pokémon and give good pokémon instead with the expectation that the other player will return the favor and they will benefit.

here’s an interesting article about the sociology of pokémon: https://sociologyofvideogames.com/2013/05/23/lessons-on-the-social-world-pokemon/