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AP Psychology
Social Psychology
Social Psychology—the study of how groups and
cultures shape our perceptions, attitudes, and behavior.
Group Dynamics
 Social group—two or more individuals sharing
common goals and interests, interacting, and
influencing each other’s behavior (people in
elevator vs. members of girl scout troop)
*norms—implicit or explicit rules applying to
all members of group, governing acceptable
behavior and attitudes
*Zimbardo Prison Study—Stanford
University study; students assigned roles as
guards or prisoners; individual behavior
changed dramatically; by 6th day study was
halted because of severe stress inflicted by
sadistic guards who took roles too seriously
 Social loafing—tendency for some in group
situations to be “slackers” and leave work to
others; more effort would be expended if group
members evaluated individually
 Deindividuation—in large group, we lose some selfawareness and act in ways unusual for us normally
because of anonymity of group. (looting during
blackouts)
 Social facilitation—tendency to perform welllearned tasks better in front of others (playing
piano better at recital than during practice)
 Group Polarization—decisions reached by group
are more extreme than those made by single
individual
*Groupthink—consequence of group
polarization—individuals afraid to voice objections
or dissent from opinions expressed by others
(Bay of Pigs Invasion)
Bystander Intervention
 Kitty Genovese murder, simulations—those who
thought they were acting alone more likely to help
out than those who thought they were with others
*Diffusion of Responsibility—reduction of our
sense of personal responsibility decreases
according to the size of group present
 Spectators sometimes do act altruistically—Air
Florida crash
ATTRIBUTION PROCESSES
 Social Cognition—the way that people gather, use,
interpret information about social aspects of the
world
 Attribution theory—way to understand what
causes our behavior and that of those around us
*dispositional attributions—holds individual
responsible for his own behavior
*situational attributions—looks at factors in
environment to explain people’s behavior
When evaluating our own behavior, we tend to
show:
 Self-Serving Bias—we attribute our achievement
and successes to ourselves (dispositional) and our
failures to situational factors
When evaluating others’ behavior, we tend to
show:
 Fundamental Attribution Error—underestimating
situational factors and overestimating dispositional
factors (the opposite of how we explain our own
behavior)
*actor-observer bias—our tendency to attribute
our own behavior to situational causes and others’
to dispositional (personal)
*just-world phenomenon—our belief that people
get what they deserve
 Self-Fulfilling Prophesy—our tendency to let our
preconceived expectations of others influence how
we treat them and thus bring about the very
behavior we expected (Rosenthal and Jacobsen
“bloomer study”)
INTERPERSONAL PERCEPTION (how two groups
conflict or cooperate when they come into contact with
one another)
 Prejudice—unjustifiable negative attitude about
someone based on their membership in a certain
group
 Discrimination—when prejudice results in
unjustifiable behavior toward members of that
group
 Stereotypes—mental schemas society attributes to
these groups, can result in prejudice,
discrimination
 Scapegoat theory—when our self-worth is in doubt
or jeopardy, we tend to look for others to blame
(Hitler used Jews as scapegoats in WWI’s
aftermath)
 Mere Exposure Effect—the more we come into
contact with someone, the more we likely we are to
like that person
 physical attractiveness major factor
 similarity also factor in relationships
CONFORMITY, COMPLIANCE, OBEDIENCE
Conformity
 Solomon Asch Experiment—subjects asked which
line of three match the original line. 35%gave
wrong answers just to conform with others who
purposely gave wrong answers. Asch concluded
that desire to gain social approval causes
conformity
Compliance Behavior
 Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon—our tendency to
comply with large request if we have previously
complied with smaller requests
 Reciprocity—used by groups soliciting donations—
we are given small gift, then asked for donation;
people then feel obligated
 Low-Ball Technique—initial offer is cut rate, but
then add-ons increase price
 Door-in-the-Face Technique—after we say no to
very large request, we often comply with smaller
requests out of guilt
Obedience to Authority
 Stanley Milgram Experiment—based on question
of under what circumstances could ordinary people
be influenced to inflict harm on others
*”teacher” applied electric shocks when learner
does not answer questions correctly
 66% of subjects administered what they
thought was a lethal level of shock
 main premise—obedience to authority figures
ATTITUDES AND ATTITUDE CHANGE
Attitudes—learned predispositions to respond to a
specific object, person, event in a certain way
 mere exposure effect—we unconsciously begin to
adopt the beliefs of our parents, friends, significant
others
 not good predictors of behavior
Persuasive Techniques—attempt to exploit what is
known about attitudes to convince people to alter their
attitudes in a given direction
 elaboration likelihood model—two ways
attitudes can be changed:
 central route of persuasion—speaker uses
facts, figures, other info. to carefully
process info, and think about their
opinions
 peripheral route—frequently used by
advertisers—uses superficial info. to
distract audience and increase sales
 Other issues related to changing attitudes:
 Communicators perceived as experts
 Those deeply admired by audience
 Those perceived as attractive