Question

As you learned in this week's reading there are a lot of social psychological factors that influence beliefs and behaviors, especially those associated with discrimination, stereotyping, prejudice, and mob behavior. Take a moment to watch this brief video on mob mentality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mV0z9NV6Qas ( Prudential Everybody's Doing It )Keeping in mind how individuals' behavior changes when in a group environment, consider and respond to the scenario below. Consider your motivation in your answer. Consider the implications to your chosen response. What will the the likely group response to your chosen response? Are you OK with it? Do you focus your response to the incident, at the time, or do you delay your response and involve management? How might your choice impact the results? Scenario You're in the breakroom at work when you see a co-worker posting a cartoon on the bulletin board. You read it as you pass, and it is a joke about women breastfeeding in public. A male employee walks up, looks at it, and starts laughing. Other male employees walk up, and one takes it down saying he is going to make copies for everyone. What do you do?

Answer 1

This joke can potentially hurt the sentiments of breastfeeding women and would impede any progress our society is making towards reducing the stigma associated with them. Keeping this in mind, I would definitely not approve of or participate what the male employees are engaging in. In this scenario, I would delay my response and report this incident to the management. The management would be better equipped to deal with this situation and decide the appropriate course of action. I am certain that this response can earn me the label of being called a 'rat' or 'tattletale'.