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Social Psychology
Social Psychology
 Social Psychology
 scientific study of
how we think
about, influence,
and relate to one
another
Attitude Survey
1. Texting while driving is dangerous.
 a. Yes
 B. No
2.It important to stay informed about proposed
legislation that affects my community.
 A.Yes
 B.No
3.Soft drinks/sodas are unhealthy beverages.
 A.Yes
 B.No
4.Poverty is a serious problem that needs to be addressed.
 A.Yes
 B.No
5.Smoking is an unhealthy behavior.
 A.Yes
 B.No
Social Thinking
 Attitude
 belief and feeling
that predisposes
one to respond in
a particular way to
objects, people
and events
 Cognitive
 Behavioral
 Emotional
Social Thinking Activity
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Observation #1: A married woman goes to a single man's apartment two nights of every week for three
hours. What's your explanation?
Observation #2: Two police officers visit your next-door neighbor's house. What's your explanation?
Observation #3: A person smelling of stale liquor is buying aspirin at 6 a.m. What's your explanation?
Observation #4: When you get home you find your brother's car is dented in on the right side. What's your
explanation?
Observation #5: You see a man chasing a woman down an alley. What is your explanation?
Observation #6: A teenager carrying a heavy backpack runs out the door of a convenience store. What's
your explanation?
Observation #7: Two clean-cut young men wearing dark slacks and white shirts ring your doorbell. What's
your explanation?
Observation #8: It's dinnertime and the phone rings. A pleasant person on the line asks for you but
mispronounces your name. What's your explanation?
Observation #9: Last week a mechanic fixed the vibration in your car's front end. Now you feel the vibration
again. What's your explanation?
Observation #10: Your boss and the director of personnel are moving boxes out of your friend's office.
What's your explanation?
Observation #11: You are driving down the street when a car in a side driveway suddenly cuts in front of
you. What's your explanation?
Observation #12: You're sitting in the airport waiting for a flight. When you reach for your newspaper, the
person next to you is reading it. What's your explanation?
Social Psych - Social
Thinking
 Attribution Theory
 tendency to give
a causal
explanation for
someone’s
behavior
 crediting either
 the situation OR
 the person’s
disposition
Social Thinking
 Fundamental
Attribution Error
 tendency for
observers, when
analyzing another’s
behavior to:
 underestimate the
impact of the
situation AND
 overestimate the
impact of personal
disposition
Social Thinking –
Attribution Error
 How we explain how someone’s behavior affects
how we react to it
Situational attribution
“Maybe that driver is ill.”
Tolerant reaction
(proceed cautiously, allow
driver a wide berth)
Dispositional attribution
“Crazy driver!”
Unfavorable reaction
(speed up and race past the
other driver, give a dirty look)
Negative behavior
Social Psych - Social
Thinking
 How does CAN YOU EXPLAIN IT? challenge our common assumptions?
 What is the basis of some of the worst assumptions you made in this
game?
 To what extent did your explanations for the observations become more
creative and less stereotyped as you played the game?
 What are some of the potential problems of the fundamental attribution
error?
 Describe some strategies for overcoming the shortfalls of holding onto
assumptions.
 What are the factors that make us vulnerable to making wrong
conclusions?
 What types of real life situations might make us especially susceptible to
this type of thinking error?
 What are the implications of what you have learned for scientists, law
enforcement officers, news reporters, managers, and school teachers who
rely upon observable data for making conclusions?
Behavior Survey
Please indicate whether or not you have performed each of the following behaviors by writing the correct
response:
1. I text when I am driving.
 a. Yes
 b. No
2. I am able to name at least on bill affecting my community that was passed in the past year by the
legislators in my county or my state .
 a. Yes
 b. No
3. I drink soft drinks/sodas.
 a. Yes
 b. No
4. Within the last year I have donated money or engaged in volunteer work to address the
 problem of poverty.
 a. Yes
 b. No
5. Within the last year I have smoked a cigarette.
 a. Yes
 b. No
Social Thinking
 Cognitive dissonance
 When our attitudes do not match our actions
 Internal conflict
 We either change attitude or action
Social Thinking
 Cognitive Dissonance Theory
 we act to reduce the discomfort (dissonance) we feel
when two of our thoughts (cognitions) are inconsistent
 when we become aware that our attitudes and our
actions clash, we can reduce the resulting dissonance
by changing our attitudes or by justifying our actions
(blaming others)
Social Thinking
 Cognitive dissonance
Social Thinking
So much about Walt and the way he manipulates revolves around the idea of
cognitive dissonance – the struggle that takes place when you try to hold
two opposing ideas in the mind at once. This happens, too, when our
actions contradict our personal beliefs about right and wrong, which often
makes us want to resolve our guilt or anxiety by justifying or minimizing
the behavior. It’s the same mechanism that engages Walt. How has he
has always resolved his cognitive dissonance? By telling himself that he had
very good reasons for doing everything he’s done.
But cognitive dissonance is a funny thing. It doesn’t just affect us when we
actually do things that we believe are wrong, but even when we tolerate
them. It turns out that when you fail to confront injustices committed by
others, you become more inclined to excuse them in order to make your
actions feel consistent with your beliefs. If you don’t stand up against
something you believe is wrong, it’s easier to convince yourself that
perhaps it wasn’t so wrong after all.
Social Thinking
 Our behavior is affected by our inner attitudes
as well as by external social influences
Internal
attitudes
External
influences
Behavior
Social Thinking
 Foot-in-the-Door
Phenomenon
 tendency for
people who have
first agreed to a
small request to
comply later with
a larger request
 Role
 set of
expectations
about a social
position
 defines how
those in the
position ought to
behave
Social Influence – Social
Roles
Philip Zimbardo
studied social
roles in an
experiment now
known as the
Stanford prison
study.
Social Influence
 Conformity
 adjusting one’s
behavior or thinking
to coincide with a
group standard
Social Influence Conformity
 Asch’s conformity experiments
Asch’s results:
On average across trials, 37% of time Ss
conformed.
Social Influence
 Normative Social
Influence
 influence resulting
from a person’s
desire to gain
approval or avoid
disapproval
Social Influence – Normative
Social Influence
Social Influence –
Normative Social Influence
50%
Difficult judgments
40
Percentage of
conformity to
confederates’
wrong answers
Conformity highest
on important
judgments
30
20
10
Easy judgments
0
Low
High
Importance
 Participants
judged
which
person in
Slide 2 was
the same
as the
person in
Slide 1
Social Influence
 Obedience
 People comply to
social pressures.
 How would they
respond to outright
command?
Social Influence Obedience
 Milgram’s Obedience
Experiment
 The teacher gives a
shock for a wrong
answer.
 What would you do?
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
Social Influence Obedience
 Milgram’s obedience experiment
Social Influence
 Individual Resistance
 Some individuals resist
social coercion (do not
obey)
Social Influence Performance
 Social Facilitation
 improved
performance of
tasks in the
presence of others
 occurs with simple
or well-learned
tasks but not with
tasks that are
difficult or not yet
mastered
Social Facilitation
Social Influence Performance
 Social Loafing
 tendency for
people in a group
to exert less effort
when pooling their
efforts toward
attaining a
common goal than
when individually
accountable
Social Influence
 Deindividuation
 loss of self-awareness
and self-restraint in
group situations that
foster arousal and
anonymity
Social Influence
 Group
Polarization
 enhancement of a
group’s prevailing
attitudes through
discussion within
the group
 Teams tend to
make more
extreme decisions
than individuals
working alone.
Social Influence
 If a group is
like-minded,
discussion
strengthens its
prevailing
opinions
Social Influence
 Groupthink
 mode of thinking
that occurs when
the desire for
harmony in a
decision-making
group overrides
realistic appraisal
of alternatives
Social Relations
 Prejudice
 an unjustifiable (and
usually negative)
attitude toward a
group and its
members
 involves stereotyped
beliefs, negative
feelings, and a
predisposition to
discriminatory action
Social Relations
 Stereotype
 a generalized
(sometimes
accurate, but
often
overgeneralized)
belief about a
group of people
Social Relations Prejudice
 Does perception change with race?
Social Relations
 Americans today express much less racial
and gender prejudice
Social Relations
 Ingroup
 “Us”- people
with whom one
shares a
common
identity
 Outgroup
 “Them”- those
perceived as
different or
apart from
one’s ingroup
Social Relations
 Ingroup Bias
 tendency to favor
one’s own group
 Scapegoat Theory
 theory that prejudice
provides an outlet for
anger by providing
someone to blame
 Just-World
Phenomenon
 tendency of people to
believe the world is
just
 people get what they
deserve and deserve
what they get
Social Relations
 Vivid cases (9/11 terrorists) feed
stereotypes
Social Relations
 Aggression
 any physical or
verbal behavior
intended to hurt or
destroy
 FrustrationAggression Principle
 principle that
frustration – the
blocking of an
attempt to achieve
some goal – creates
anger, which can
generate aggression
Social Relations
Social Relations
 Men who
sexually
coerce
women
Social Relations
 Conflict
 perceived
incompatibility of
actions, goals, or
ideas
 Social Trap
 a situation in
which the
conflicting parties,
by each rationally
pursuing their selfinterest, become
caught in mutually
destructive
behavior
Social Relations
Person 1
Person 2
Choose B
Choose A
Choose A
Choose B
Optimal
outcome
Probable
outcome
 Social trap
 by pursuing
our selfinterest and
not trusting
others, we can
end up losers
Social RelationsAttractiveness
 Mere Exposure Effect
 repeated exposure to novel stimuli increases liking of
them
 Conceptions of attractiveness vary by culture
 Conceptions of taste vary work the same way
Social Relations
 Bystander Effect
 tendency for
any given
bystander to be
less likely to
give aid if other
bystanders are
present
Social Relations
 The decision-making process for
bystander intervention
Social Relations
 Social Exchange
Theory
 the theory that
our social
behavior is an
exchange
process
 maximize benefits
 minimize costs
Social Relations
 Superordinate
Goals
 shared goals
that override
differences
among people
and require
their
cooperation