Download Introduction to Psychology - Parkway C-2

 What is social psychology?
 What is person perception?
 What is a schema?
 What is illusory correlation?
 What’s fundamental attribution error?
 What’s self fulfilling prophecy?
 What’s attribution? Fundamental attribution error?
 Internal vs. external attributions?
 What’s self serving bias?
 Individualist vs collective societies?
 Persuasion techniques?
 Stanley Milgram’s experiment?
 Jane Elliot’s Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment?
 Bystander effect?
 Psychology of attraction?
 What is love?
What is Social Psychology?
Study of how our thoughts, feelings and
behaviors are influenced by others.
(Or)
How people influence each other.
What is Person Perception?
§ PP is the process of forming
impressions of others.
§ We dress up for job interviews and
maybe dress down for our friend’s
party.
§ We might not mention embarrassing
stuff about ourselves.
To be HOT or NOT?
Good looking people are seen as
more sociable, friendly, poised,
warm, well-adjusted than ugly
people.
People tend to downplay good
looking people’s
accomplishments and attribute
them to their good looks
In reality. . .
Research indicates there is little
correlation between attractiveness and
personality traits.
Ladies, which do you prefer?
Although prejudice prevails against women, more people feel positively
toward women than men. Women rated picture b [feminized] higher (66%)
for a matrimonial ad (Perrett & others, 1998).
Professor Dave Perrett, St. Andrews University
Ladies, which do you prefer?
The right one is said to be keener on long
term relationships.
Guys, which do you prefer?
Men think the composite face on the right
is keener on short term sex
Evolutionary Perspective on
attractiveness
Female attractiveness is related to child-bearing
features: big breasts, curvy hips, overall health
and vigor.
Male attractiveness is related to man’s ability to
protect and provide. Women (when ovulating)
like strong shoulders and masculine features.
Otherwise, women like more nurturing qualities.
Facial symmetry is the most consistent factor for
attractiveness.
Social RelationsAttractiveness Variables
§ Conceptions of attractiveness vary by
culture
§ Physical Attractiveness is KEY
Proximity
Geographic nearness
Mere exposure effect:
Repeated exposure to
something breeds
liking.
Reciprocal Liking
You are more likely to
like someone who likes
you.
Why?
Except in elementary
school!!!!
Similarity
Paula Abdul was
wrong- opposites do
NOT attract.
Birds of the same
feather do flock
together.
Similarity breeds
content.
Liking through Association
• Classical Conditioning can play a part in attraction.
• I love Bread Co. If I see the same cashier every time
I go there, I may begin to associate that cashier with
the good feelings I get from Bread Co.
c
Baby faces
For partners, women prefer baby faced
men, except when they are ovulating.
Women prefer masculine men for affairs.
In terms of competence, we prefer
mature-looking men.
Baby Face
Baby faced men are seen as more
trustworthy, honest, relatively warm,
submissive, helpless and naïve.
Evidence suggests there is no association
between baby-faced features and these
traits.
Masculine men are seen as competent,
strong
Social schemas
Schema – organized clusters of ideas
about something.
In Piaget’s Preoperational stage, children
have schemas about what a dog is. At
first they think a dog is all furry animals
with tails.
Social schema
Organized clusters of ideas about categories of
social events and people.
We act differently at church than we do at a
bar.
We have a schema about how a professor’s
office might look or how you might feel on the
first day of school.
Stereotypes
Type of schema
A specific characteristic we assume
somebody has because of their social
schema.
Oh, you are from Dallas. You must ride a
horse to work!
Stereotypes, Prejudice and Discrimination
Stereotype:
• Overgeneralized idea about
a group of people.
Prejudice:
• Undeserved (usually
negative) attitude towards a
group of people.
Ethnocentrism is an
example of a prejudice.
Discrimination:
• An action based on a
prejudice.
Ingroup vs. out-group – just like in a high
school cafeteria, in the wild, animals need
to distinguish friend from foe.
Ingroup bias - Those in our ingroup are
viewed in a positive light, while those in
the outgroup are viewed in terms of
negative stereotypes. (they are inferior,
they are all alike)
Does perception change with race?
Prejudice leads to
discrimination
Social Roots to Prejudice (attitude)=social
inequality, blame the victim, in group vs. out
group
Emotional Roots: Fear and anger
Cognitive Roots: Social schemas, just world
phenomenon, availability heuristics
Jane Eliot Study: “Blue Eyes-Brown Eyes Study”
Self Fulfilling Prophecy
How Prejudiced are People?
Over the duration of time many prejudices against
interracial marriage, gender, homosexuality, and
minorities have decreased.
Racial & Gender Prejudice
Americans today express much less racial and
gender prejudice, but prejudices still exist.
Combating Prejudice
Contact Theory
• Contact between hostile groups will reduce animosity if
they are made to work towards a superordinate goal.
• Mere exposure
Role Playing Affects Attitudes
Zimbardo (1972) assigned the roles of guards and
prisoners to random students and found that guards
and prisoners developed role- appropriate attitudes.
Self-fulfilling prophesy
Originally published in the New Yorker
Phillip G. Zimbardo, Inc.
Confirmation Bias
We tend to notice
behaviors in others
that already fit our
preconceived notions.
As we learned in the
Perception chapter,
we see what we
expect to see!
Waiting for the
blonde to say
something stupid…
Confirmation bias. . .
We ignore events that
do not fit with our
stereotypes and tell
ourselves that that is
a rare exception.
Ex: A redneck with a
college degree.
Just-World Hypothesis
The belief that good things happen to good
people.
Karma-what goes around, comes around.
If someone has been hit, they must have
deserved it.
BAD things DON’T happen to GOOD people
What is Illusory correlation?
Occurs when people think they have
confirmed their stereotypes more than
they actually have.
Ex. Saying you never met an honest lawyer
when in fact you have met a few.
Evidence for illusory
correlation.
Subjects watched a video of a woman
listening to classical music, drinking beer,
and watching TV. If the subjects were
told the woman was a librarian, then they
remembered she listened to classical
music. If the subjects were told she was
a waitress, they remember the beer.
Attribution Theories of
Behavior
Think of the word “attribute”
Attributions are inferences that people
draw about the causes of events, others’
behavior.
How do we explain other people’s
behavior? Our own behavior?
Attribution Theory
Tries to explain how people
determine the cause of the
behavior they observe.
It is either a….
Situational Attribution
Dispositional Attribution
And
Stable Attribution
Unstable Attribution
What is Fritz Heider’s Attribution Theory?
http://www.stedwards.edu
Attribution Theory: Fritz
Heider (1958) suggested
that we have a tendency to
say others’ behavior is
caused by internal and
external attributions.
Fritz Heider
Effects of Attribution
How we explain someone’s behavior affects how we
react to it.
Fundamental Attribution Error
Refers to the observer’s bias in favor of internal
attributions in explaining others’ behavior.
As a teacher, I might assume that a student who
sleeps, doesn’t take notes and doesn’t try is dumb,
lazy and an all around loser. This is wrong because
students have external factors affecting this reality.
Self Serving Bias
We tend to explain
our own bad behavior
in terms of external
factors. (I am a
victim.)
We tend to attribute
others’ bad behavior
in terms of internal
factors. (They are a
stupid loser.)
Situational or dispositional
Attributions?
A teen crashes the car. One parent says
it was because of the slippery road.
Another says it’s because he wasn’t
paying attention to driving.
One parent uses dispositional attributes;
the other uses situational attributes.
What is Self Serving Bias?
We attribute our
success to
personal/internal
factors but attribute
our failures to
situational/external
factors.
Hindsight Bias
After learning an outcome, the tendency to believe
that we could have predicted it beforehand may
contribute to blaming the victim and forming a
prejudice against them.
“I knew John Edwards was a slimeball politician!”
Culture and close
relationships
Very little cross-cultural research has been
conducted on interpersonal attraction.
Cultures DO vary on their emphasis on love.
Love as a basis for marriage is an 18th century
Western invention. Love is not as important as
a prerequisite for marriage in “collectivist”
countries like China, India, Japan.
Collectivist countries traditionally like arranged
marriages.
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
Cooperative actions can lead to mutual liking (beliefs).
Persuasion Techniques
Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon: The tendency for people who
have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a
larger request.
Door in the face: ask for something big (a car) then ask for
something small (a cell phone).
Reciprocity: charities give you something like return address
stickers hoping you will donate to their cause.
Cognitive dissonance
Cognitive Dissonance Theory
• People want to have consistent attitudes and
behaviors….when they are not they experience
dissonance (unpleasant tension).
• Usually they will change their attitude.
You have a belief that
cheating on tests is
bad.
But you
cheat on a
test!!!
The teacher
was really bad
so in that
class it is OK.
Cognitive Dissonance
Group Pressure & Conformity
.
Solomon Asch’s conformity experiment
Which line is equal to the standard line? After
several others said “3” the subject would say “3”.
William Vandivert/ Scientific American
Asch’s Results
• About 1/3 of the participants
conformed.
• 70% conformed at least
once.
To strengthen conformity:
•
•
•
•
The group is unanimous
The group is at least three people.
One admires the group’s status
One had made no prior commitment
Conditions that Strengthen Conformity
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
One is made to feel incompetent or insecure.
The group has at least three people.
The group is unanimous.
One admires the group’s status and attractiveness.
One has no prior commitment to a response.
The group observes one’s behavior.
One’s culture strongly encourages respect for a social
standard.
Obedience to authority
Stanley Milgram designed a
study that investigates the
effects of authority on
obedience.
Courtesy of CUNY Graduate School and University Center
People comply to social
pressures. How would they
respond to outright
command?
Stanley Milgram
(1933-1984)
Both Photos: © 1965 By Stanley Miligram, from the
film Obedience, dist. by Penn State, Media Sales
Milgram’s Study
Milgram’s Study: Results
Group Behaviors
Social Facilitation vs. Social Inhibition
Related to Yerkes-Dodson Law
Arousal Theory
Individual Behavior in the Presence of Others
Social facilitation: Refers
to improved performance
on tasks in the presence of
others.
We perform better when
we are competing.
Michelle Agnis/ NYT Pictures
Social Facilitation
Social Loafing
The tendency of an individual in a group to exert less
effort toward attaining a common goal than when
tested individually
We pull harder by ourselves!
Deindividuation
The loss of self-awareness and self-restraint in group
situations that foster arousal and anonymity.
Mob behavior
Prosocial Behavior
• Kitty Genovese case in
Kew Gardens NY.
Bystander Effect:
•
Conditions in which people are
more or less likely to help one
another. In general…the more
people around…the less chance of
help….because of…
• Diffusion of Responsibility
Pluralistic Ignorance
• People decide what to do by
looking to others.
Bystander Effect
Tendency of any given
bystander to be less likely
to give aid if other
bystanders are present.
Bystander Intervention
The decision-making process for bystander
intervention.
Akos Szilvasi/ Stock, oston
Effects of Group Interaction
Group Polarization
enhances a group’s
prevailing attitudes
through a discussion. If a
group is like-minded,
discussion strengthens its
prevailing opinions and
attitudes.
Group Polarization
Groups tend to make
more extreme decisions
than the individual.
Groupthink
A mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony
in a decision-making group overrides the realistic appraisal of
alternatives.
Aggression & Conflict
Biology: genetics, amygdala, decreased
frontal lobe activity, testosterone levels
Psychology:
Frustration Aggression Principle
Modeling (observed it)
Social scripts: (mental tapes on how to act)
Video games?
Frustration-Aggression Principle
A principle in which frustration (caused by the
blocking of an attempt to achieve a desired goal)
creates anger, which can generate aggression.
Environment
Even environmental temperature can lead to
aggressive acts. Murders and rapes increased with the
temperature in Houston.
Sternberg’s Model of Love?
Passionate Love
Passionate Love: An aroused state of intense positive
absorption in another, usually present at the beginning
of a love relationship.
Two-factor theory of emotion
1. Physical arousal plus cognitive appraisal
2. Arousal from any source can enhance one emotion
depending upon what we interpret or label the
arousal
Companionate Love
Companionate Love: A deep, affectionate attachment
we feel for those with whom our lives are intertwined.
Courtship and Matrimony (from the collection of Werner Nekes)
1. Your unique ideas about how a college
class should be run, what a typical
straight "A" student is like, and how a
typical professor will act are all examples
of
a.Prejudices
b.Attitudes
c.Attributions
d.Social schemas
e. Confirmation Bias
2. A father suggests that his son's low
marks in school are due to the child's
laziness. The father has made __________
attribution.
a.an external
b.a distinctive
c.an internal
d.a situational
e.a self serving
3. Attributing one's successes to
dispositional factors and one's failures to
situational factors is referred to as
a. the fundamental attribution error
b. a self-serving bias
c. the actor-observer bias
d. a self-enhancing strategy
e. the just world hypothesis
4. In Stanley Milgram's research on
obedience, the "teacher" routinely
a.resisted the authority figure
b.obeyed the authority figure
c.resisted the authority figure, but obeyed
the confederate
d.resisted the authority figure when the
learner appeared to be injured
e.Conformed to other participant’s answers
5. The "bystander effect" is the finding
that
a.the probability that a witness to an emergency
will help increases as the number of bystanders
increases
b.a group of witnesses to an emergency will all
tend to cooperate to provide help
c.the probability that a witness to an emergency
will help decreases as the number of bystanders
increases
d.bystanders' willingness to help depends on the
seriousness of the emergency
e.The probability of the group cooperating with
the leader regardless of the decision
6. Diffusion of responsibility refers to the
a.tendency of others to assume that
someone else will take responsibility in a
crisis
b.basis for performing prosocial behavior
c.halo effect in aggression
d.loss of identity one experiences in mob
violence/aggression
e.The foundation of prejudice
7. The reduction in effort by individuals
when they work in groups is referred to as
a.bystander apathy
b.diffusion of responsibility
c.extroverted effort
d.social loafing
e.social impairment
8. When the jury entered the jury room most of
the jurors thought that the defendant in the case
was probably innocent, but some weren't certain.
After discussing the case for four hours, all twelve
jurors are now firmly convinced that the
defendant did not commit the crime. The
strengthening of the jurors' opinions following
group discussion is consistent with which of the
following processes?
a.Group think
b.The bystander effect
c.Reciprocity
d.Group polarization
e.Social facilitation
9. Which of the following is not
characteristic of groupthink?
a.dividing the world into the ingroup and
the outgroup
b.censoring dissent from group members
c.gathering all the relevant information
before making a decision
d.censoring information that contradicts
the group's views
e. Blindly agreeing with the leader of a
group
10. A man who believes that "women just
don't make good leaders" may dwell on
his female supervisor's mistakes and
quickly forget about her achievements.
This scenario illustrates which of the
following concepts?
a.defensive attribution
b.the illusory correlation effect
c.the fundamental attribution error
d.the bystander effect
e.diffusion of responsibility
11. Ethnocentrism refers to the tendency
to
a.focus on one's own needs as opposed to
what is best for the group
b.evaluate people in one's own group as
superior to others
c.model the attitudes of members of one's
immediate family
d.identify with members of a popular
outgroup
e.being open-minded to other cultures
12. Solomon Asch is best known for his
studies in
A. interpersonal attraction
B. conformity
C. obedience
D. stereotyping
E. self-fulfilling prophesies
13. According to the bystander effect, you
are more likely to get help with your flat
tire if you are
A. on Jefferson
B. Oak Cliff Blvd
C. on Hampton
D. Interstate 30
14. Zimbardo’s Prison experiment studied
A. The cruelty of the prison system
B. How people will follow orders even if
they are told to harm someone
C. How a person’s current situation affects
their thinking and behavior
D. How people will conform their answers
to that of others on an intelligence test
15. JFK had a disaster when he failed to
uproot Castro in the failed Bay of Pigs
invasion. Part of the problem were his
“yes” men who did not want to make
waves and say it’s a bad idea. This
illustrates:
A. the expert-power effect
B. mere exposure effect
C. self serving bias
D. groupthink
16. According to the theory of cognitive
dissonance, attitudes are changed
because
A. emotionally persuasive arguments
unfreeze beliefs.
B. logical arguments alter the belief
component of an attitude
C. clashing thoughts cause discomfort
D. acting contrary to one’s beliefs for a
large reward causes dissonance
17. You are walking into a store when a man
rudely cuts in front of you, almost shoving you,
so that he may enter the store first. "What a
jerk!" you think to yourself. As you enter the
store, you see the same man performing an
emergency tracheotomy on a women with a
collapsed windpipe. You have just
a.discounted a person's actions due to
situational demands.
b.self-handicapped.
c.overemphasized the object in this action
sequence.
d.made the fundamental attribution error.
18. The person who agrees to a small
request initially is more likely later to
comply with a larger demand. This
describes the
a.door-in-the-face-effect.
b.foot-in-the-door effect.
c.low-ball technique.
d.high-ball technique.
19. Prejudice based on displaced
aggression represents a form of
a.projection.
b.discrimination.
c.scapegoating.
d.authoritarianism
20.In general, helping behavior in
emergency situations is discouraged by
a.the presence of a large number of
persons.
b.low costs associated with helping.
c.smaller social distance between the
helper and the victim.
d.fear of cognitive dissonance

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


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1.D
2.C
3.B
4.B
5.C
6.A
7.D
8.D
9.C
10.B
11.B
12.B
13.D
14.C
15.D
16.C
17.D
18.B
19.C
20.A