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Social Psychology
“WE CANNOT LIVE FOR OURSELVES
ALONE.”
--HERMAN MELVILLE
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY IS A BRANCH
OF PSYCHOLOGY WHICH EXAMINES
THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL INFLUENCES
ON HUMAN BEHAVIOR.
Social Psychology
Attitude
Attraction
Aggression
Group Behavior
STUDYING THE WAY PEOPLE THINK ABOUT, INFLUENCE, &
RELATE TO OTHERS.
Social Psychologists
 A social psychologist looks at the attitudes, beliefs,
and behaviors of both individuals and groups.
 The field also examines interpersonal interaction,
analyzing the way in which someone interacts with
other people, whether on a singular basis or in the
form of a large group.
 Social psychology also examines cultural influences
like advertisements, books, films, television, and
radio, looking at the ways in which these influences
impact human behavior.
Social Thinking
HOW DO WE THINK
ABOUT ONE ANOTHER?
Attitudes influence actions…
Attribution Theory
(Fritz Heider) –
people usually
attribute others’
behavior to either
their internal
dispositions or
their external
situations.
Dispositional (internal) or Situational
(external)?

They won only because the best athletes on the Central
State’s teams were out with injuries – talk about good
fortune.


They won because they have some of the best talent in
the country.


Internal (dispositional)
Anybody could win this region; the competition is so far
below average in comparison to the rest of the country.


External (situational)
External (situational)
They won because they put in a great deal of effort and
practice.

Internal (dispositional)
Attribution At Work
Fundamental Attribution Error
 The tendency to underestimate the impact of a
situation and overestimate the impact of
personal disposition.
How do you view your
teacher’s behavior? You
probably attribute it to
their personality rather
than their profession.
Our attributions have
consequences. The
following attribution
errors lead to
overconfidence.
 Fundamental Attribution Error –
underestimating situational influences
when evaluating the behavior of
someone else.
 He swerved into my lane because he is
a jerk.
 Actor-observer bias – attributing others’
behaviors to disposition but your own
behaviors (even the same behaviors) to
situational factors.
 Example: He swerved into my lane
because he is a jerk, but I swerved
into the next lane because I was trying
to avoid an animal in the road.
 Self-serving bias – crediting your own
successes to disposition, but attributing
your own failures to situation.
 Example: I won the game because
I’m talented.
 I failed the test because
the questions were unfair.
Answer in your notes
 Tell me a time when you made the
fundamental attribution error (FAE) on
someone only to discover you were
wrong.
 Tell a time when someone made the
FAE on you.
Attitudes & Actions
13
A belief and feeling that predisposes a
person to respond in a particular way to
objects, other people, and events.
If we believe a person is mean, we may
feel dislike for the person and act in an
unfriendly manner.
Attitudes Can Affect Actions
Our attitudes predict our behaviors
imperfectly because other factors,
including the external situation, also
influence behavior.
14
Actions Can Affect Attitudes
Not only do people stand for what they believe in
(attitude), they start believing in what they stand
for.
D. MacDonald/ PhotoEdit
15
Cooperative actions can lead to mutual liking (beliefs).
Small Request – Large Request
16
In the Korean War, Chinese communists
solicited cooperation from US army prisoners
by asking them to carry out small errands. By
complying to small errands they were likely to
comply to larger ones.
Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon: The tendency
for people who have first agreed to a small
request to comply later with a larger request.
Actions Can Affect Attitudes
17
Why do actions affect attitudes? One
explanation is that when our attitudes and
actions are opposed, we experience tension.
This is called cognitive dissonance.
Cognitive dissonance is the
discomfort caused by holding two
contradictory beliefs or performing
an action contradictory to our
beliefs.
Cognitive Dissonance Theory
 Cognitive dissonance theory states that we are
motivated to reduce this uncomfortable feeling by
changing our beliefs to match our actions.
 The dissonance (uncomfortable feeling) is less if
we feel that we were forced to perform the action.
Thus, the larger the pressure used to elicit the
overt behavior, the smaller the tendency to change
opinion.
Cognitive Dissonance
19
Role Playing Affects Attitudes
Zimbardo (1972) assigned the roles of guards
and prisoners to random students and found
that guards and prisoners developed roleappropriate attitudes.
Originally published in the New Yorker
Phillip G. Zimbardo, Inc.
20
Zimbardo’s prison study
 Role playing - subjects
who play a role often
begin to “become” the role
 How can the subjects’
behavior in this study be
explained by cognitive
dissonance theory?