Download Understanding ourselves

Understanding ourselves
What factors influence the ways
that we (and, by extension,
others) behave in various
situations?
Beliefs
• Are beliefs a purely individual thing?
• Do they depend on the beliefs of people
around us?
– Milgram’s “interesting window”
– Asch’s line length judgments.
• We seem to believe in a shared reality.
Cognitive dissonance
• What happens when your actions are
inconsistent with your beliefs?
– Doomsday cults
– Festinger’s boring tasks
Factors that influence social
behaviors
• Reciprocity: We feel a need to repay
that which we are given
– Foot in the door
– Free stuff from charities and companies
Factors, cont.
• Altruism: Do we really help others
simply out of the goodness of our
hearts? Does anyone?
– Self-interest as motivation
– Internal vs. external rewards
More factors
• Obedience: People succumb to the
desires of a perceived authority figure
– The Milgram experiment
– The Stanford Prison Experiment
• Conformity: We want to be like other
people
Social Impact Theory
• We must constantly sort out competing
social influences
– Social facilitation
– Social loafing
– Deindividuation