Download Social Psychology Notes - Morgan Park High School

Social Psychology
 Social psychology is the scientific study of how we think about, influence, and relate to one another.
 Person versus the situation
o Attribution error theory states we tend to give a causal explanation for someone’s behavior, often by crediting either the
situation or the person’s disposition.
o We often overestimate the influence of personality and underestimate the influence of situations.
o Fundamental attribution error is the tendency for observers, when analyzing another’s behavior, to underestimate the
impact of the situation and to overestimate the impact of personal disposition.
o When explaining our own behavior, we are sensitive to how our behavior changes with the situation we encounter. When
observing others in one situation, people automatically jump to the conclusion of defining their behavior by the person’s
personality.
o We attribute:
 Other’s successes to outside forces
 Other’s failures to their personality
 Our own successes to our personality
 Our own failures to outside forces or the situation
 Attitudes and actions
o Attitudes are beliefs and feelings that predisposes one to respond in a particular way to objects, people, and events.
o Change the way you think – and things will never be the same.
o Attitudes are specifically relevant to the behavior
o People readily profess general attitudes that contradict their behavior
o Attitudes about a specific act do guide one’s actions (behavior)
o We are keenly aware of our attitudes
 When one makes us self conscious of how we feel and how we are actually acting, we tend to make the two, our
attitudes and behavior match each other.
o Do our actions affect our attitudes?
o People come to believe in what they have stood up for. Thus, we know that attitudes follow behavior.
o Two examples:
 Foot in the door is the tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger
request.
 The pattern of action followed by attitude
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o When person is asked to speak and/or write on a position that they have qualms with, they begin to believe their own
words. Their actions (behavior) makes them begin to rationalize and persuade themselves that they believe what they did to
be true to their nature (attitude).
o Action followed by attitude a.k.a. behavior followed by attitude
o Saying and doing becomes believing
o WORDS ARE POWER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Role playing affects attitudes
o When you adopt new roles – you tend to follow preconceived notions or observed examples of what you think that role
should entail you doing.
o Before long, your behavior no longer feels forced.
o Simulated prison experiment (Zimbardo, 1972)
 Wardens and inmates – became so real that the experiment had to be stopped after six days
o “No man for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally getting
bewildered to which may be the truer.”
- Nathanial Hawthorne Cognitive dissonance theory happens when we are aware that our attitudes and actions do not coincide with each other, so we try
to bring our attitudes in line with our actions – with the use of defense mechanisms.
We want and need to find consistency within ourselves
Social influence
o How do we influence each other?
o How are we affected by pressures to conform and obey the group?
Conformity and obedience
We are natural mimics and exemplify the “the chameleon effect” and “mood linkage”
o We piece ourselves together from the fabric of society, relationships, friends, and family – we from each qualities and
trends and we become US.
Group pressure
o Conformity is adjusting one’s behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard.
o Conditions that strengthen conformity:
 One is made to feel insecure and incompetent
 The group has least three or more group members
 The group is unanimous
 One admires group status
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 One’s culture strongly encourages group respect and respect for social standards
 One has a commitment to the group
 Others in the group observe one’s behavior
Reasons for conforming
o Normative social influence
o Informational social influence
Obedience
o Stanley Milgram (1963, 1974) teacher/ learner punishment scenario
o 63 percent of men aged 20 to 50 complied fully with the amount of shock (435-50volts)
o Milgrams use of deception and stress – ethics
o Milgram learned obedience was highest when:
 The person giving the orders was close at hand and was perceived to be a legitimate authority figure
 The authority figure was supported by a prestigious institution
 The victim was depersonalized or at a distance
 There was no one who disobeyed orders, thus everyone was mentally forced to comply
Group influence
o Social facilitation
o We perform well learned task better in front of an audience, rather than task that we can not perform so well or that we do
not know how to do
o Be mindful that we perform well in front of a comfortable audience (friends, family, etc)
o Social loafing
 When part of a group people feel less accountable and do not worry about what others think
o Deindividuation
o Group polarization
o Groupthink
The power of individuals
o Social control (the power of the situation) and personal control (the power of the individual) interact. When feeling
pressured, people may react how they truly feel instead of what is expected.
o “the test of courage comes when we are in the minority; the test of tolerance is when we are in the majority.”
Social relations
o Prejudice
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o Stereotypes
o Social roots of prejudice
 Social inequalities and social competition – goods, resources, money, and living space
 Us versus Them a.k.a the in-group and the out-group
 Using each other as scapegoats
 Our need to see things in categorizes --- WE are individuals, but they all look and act alike
 Frustration aggression principle
Sexual aggression and violence in the media
o The seduction of rape
o Violent videogames – training killers
Altruism and social responsibility
o Kitty Genovese (1964)
o Altruism
o Bystander effect
 We notice the situation
 We interpret the situation as an emergency
 We assume responsibility for helping in the situation
The psychology of helping
o The best odds of our helping someone occur when:
 We have just observed someone else being helpful
 We are not in a hurry
 The victim appears to need and deserve help
 The victim is in some way similar to us
 We are in a small town or rural area
 We are feeling guilty
 We are focused on others and not preoccupied
 We are in a good mood
Social exchange theory
o Peacemaking
o Cooperation and superordinate goals