In psychology, a social trap is a conflict of interest or perverse incentive where individuals or a group of people act to obtain short-term individual gains, which in the long run leads to a loss for the group as a whole.
Examples of individual social traps include choosing not to study for exams or choosing not to exercise leading to bad long-term results; while collective social trap examples include overfishing, pollution, deforestation, and overloaded energy grids.
Social Traps, American Psychologist, 1973, 28, 641-651. Social traps are negative situations where people, organizations, or societies get caught in a direction or relationship that later prove to be unpleasant or lethal and they see no easy way to back out of or avoid.
Another social trap example would be when an individual who is not adequately educated in financial responsibility receives their first credit card. The individual quickly reaches the credit limit on the card, but is not able to pay it back, resulting in high interest and potentially late fees if they do not pay.
Social traps, such as the overgrazing of pasturelands, overpopulation, and the extinction of species, are situations where individuals in a group respond for their own advantage in a manner damaging to the group.
In psychology, a social trap is a conflict of interest or perverse incentive where individuals or a group of people act to obtain short-term individual gains, which in the long run leads to a loss for the group as a whole.
Social dilemmas
The term social trap is generally less known than social dilemma. A few years after John Platt published his article, Robyn Dawes created the term social dilemma, which resembles the definition of a group social trap in almost all aspects.
Emotional reasoning
Mistaking our emotions as evidence for the truth is one of the most common mental traps we fall into. Example: “I feel like my ideas are worthless, therefore I shouldn't share them in this meeting.”
For example, have you ever been at the grocery store with your child, said “no” when she asked you to buy her a candy bar, and watched in dismay as she started to throw a tantrum? What did you do? If you eventually gave in and bought her that candy bar, you got caught in a behavioral trap.
Marriage is a bonding between two people, two family, two society, two cultures, which should be handled with care, understanding, trust and love. Failing to which may become a trap for them. Two people (family) always there for each other, in good as well as in bad situation, handling all the pros and cons of life.
In social traps, two or more individuals engage in mutually destructive behavior by rationally pursuing their own self-interests. People in conflict tend to expect the worst of each other, producing mirror-image perceptions that can become self-fulfilling prophecies.
Social traps challenge us to find ways of reconciling our right to pursue our personal well-being with our responsibility for the well-being of all.
The concept of 'trap life' speaks to the dialectical relation between the physical and existential struggle of living with socioeconomic exclusion and psychological vulnerability, and how urban men grapple with issues of life and death.
As a result, Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death, and her killer wasn't caught until four months after the murder. At first glance, this behavior might look like a social fence because it was public inaction that contributed to her death; but it is actually a social trap, because it may have been intentional.
Awareness, pressure, fear, concentration, and diminishing the risk. These five behavioural traps are the root cause of all accidents attributable to human error.
Rarely do we encounter physical traps in our lives; most of the uncomfortable situations that we get stuck in for a long time are Psychological Traps. These are often the product of unrealistic fears, dysfunctional social dynamics, or unhelpful beliefs.
A study on human behavior has revealed that 90% of the population can be classified into four basic personality types: Optimistic, Pessimistic, Trusting and Envious.
If your friend doesn't reciprocate by being there for you, it can quickly weigh you down mentally, emotionally, and sometimes even physically. Emotional draining can leave you feeling like you are shouldering another person's problems and absorbing their stress (while getting nothing in return).
A gregarious person who likes to attend parties and other social gatherings; a people person. synonyms ▲ Synonyms: gadabout, gadfly.
ignominy Add to list Share. Other forms: ignominies.
A person who enjoys socializing. mixer. extrovert. socializer. socialite.
The Question-and-Answer Trap: these are conversations that look more like interrogations, with you asking lots of closed questions and your loved one answering with ONE word responses…. “
The chameleon effect refers to nonconscious mimicry of the postures, mannerisms, facial expressions, and other behaviors of one's interaction partners, such that one's behavior passively and unintentionally changes to match that of others in one's current social environment.