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CHAPTER 14
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Social Psychology
1) Social Perception and Cognition
a) Overview: Social perception and cognition refers to the process by which we gather and
remember information about others and make inferences based on that information.
i) First Impressions: We tend to be influenced more by earlier information than by later
information when thinking about people. This is termed the primacy effect. First
impressions can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
ii) Stereotypes and Prejudices: A stereotype is a generalized belief or expectation about
a group of people “a picture in one’s head” of the typical member of a particular
group. To hold a prejudice is to have an unfavorable stereotype, a negative attitude
about a group of people. Many stereotypes stem from the fact that we tend to
remember the unusual; this can lead to a quickly formed but relatively long-lasting
stereotype. These can be based on a grain of truth, though that truth is usually grossly
exaggerated. Stereotypes can also be correct, but tend to lead to overlooking
differences between individuals. Prejudice is difficult to measure because people
generally deny being prejudiced. Studies indicate that an ambiguous action is
interpreted differently, depending on who is believed to have performed the action.
Reaction time studies demonstrate the cognitive processing is affected by
stereotypes–information is processed more quickly if it is consistent with stereotypes.
iii) Stereotypes and prejudices are present at an unconscious level. Unconscious
prejudices are called aversive racism (aversive to the holder of the
stereotype/prejudice). Implicit measures may be able to detect unconscious
prejudices or aversive racism.
iv) Overcoming Prejudice: An effective technique in overcoming prejudice between
groups is to get the groups together to work on some common goal.
b) Attribution: Attributions are thought processes by which we assign causes to our own
behavior
and that of others.
i) Internal Causes Versus External Causes: Internal attributions explain behavior as
based on someone’s purported stable characteristics, such as attitudes, personality
traits, or abilities. External attributions explain behavior as being related to the
situation, such as stimuli in the environment, the events of the day, and the rewards
and penalties associated with certain acts. Internal attributions tend to be made when
someone does something unexpected, which leads to misunderstandings between
members of different cultures.
ii) Kelley proposed that we use three types of information when we make attributions.
There is consensus information about how a person’s behavior compares with other’s
behavior, consistency information, that tells us how the person’s behavior varies from
one time to the next, and distinctiveness, which refers to the variability of a person’s
behavior from one object or social situation to another.
iii) Errors and biases: A common bias of social cognition is that we tend to make
internal attributions for others’ behavior, even if we see external influences. This is
called the fundamental attribution error.
iv) Related to this is the actor-observer effect. People are more likely to make internal
attributions to other people’s behavior (when they are observers) than they are to
their own behavior (when they are “actors.”)
v) Using Attributions to Control Perceptions of Ourselves: We often show self-serving
biases in attribution. We adopt these in an effort to maximize our credit for our
successes and take minimal blame for our failures. We also protect our self-images
by using self-handicapping strategies, in which we create external causes as “decoy”
excuses for our failures.
2) Attitudes and Persuasion
a) Attitudes and Their Influence:
i) An attitude is a feeling that influences our behavior toward some person or thing.
Attitudes have emotional, cognitive, and behavioral components. Attitudes are
usually measured with some type of pencil and paper scale, which leads to problems
because different people have different styles of responding. Also, attitudes do not
always correlate well with actual behavior.
ii) Two Routes of Attitude Change and Perception: Petty and Cacioppo propose a
distinction between the central route to persuasion and the peripheral route to
persuasion. The central route is taken when people invest a great deal of time and
effort to evaluate carefully the evidence and logic behind the message. The peripheral
route is generally used when people listen to a message on a topic of little importance
to them. They will tend to pay more attention to such factors as the speaker’s
appearance and reputation or the sheer number of arguments presented.
iii) Highly Resistant Attitudes: Most attitudes fall on a continuum, but on certain topics,
many people form very strong, unyielding beliefs based on little or no information.
iv) Delayed Influence of Messages -The Sleeper Effect: The sleeper effect occurs when a
previously rejected message has a persuasive effect later.
v) Minority Influence: If a minority group proposes a worthwhile idea it may be rejected
at first, but adopted in some form later.
vi) Ways of Presenting Persuasive Messages: Most persuasive messages are one of two
varieties. One variety is an appeal that asks us to do something because a great good
will result. The other is the “appeal to fear” - do this to prevent something bad from
happening. Appeals to fear are most effective if people feel they can do something to
avoid the danger.
vii) Audience Variables: The ease of persuasion depends on aspects of the person as well
as aspects of the situation.
viii) Person Variables: The effectiveness of the central and peripheral routes depends on
one’s intelligence and interest. Less intelligent people are more persuaded by the
peripheral route. Also, the less interest one has in the subject of the attitude, the more
likely the peripheral route is to be effective.
ix) Situation Variables: Messages are more effective if the speaker can present
him/herself as similar to the listener.
x) People With Heightened Resistance: Warning people in advance that they are going
to be hearing a persuasive message will weaken the effect of the message on their
attitudes, a phenomenon called the forewarning effect. The inoculation effect occurs
when people are first exposed to weak argument, followed by a stronger argument for
the same conclusion. The weak argument dilutes the influence of the stronger
message that follows.
xi) Strategies of Persuasion: The foot-in-the-door technique involves making a modest
request at first, and then following this with a larger second request. Agreement to
the smaller request will increase the likelihood of agreement with the larger request.
In the door-in-the-face technique, an outrageous initial request is followed by a much
more reasonable subsequent one. In the bait-and-switch or lowball technique we are
first offered an extremely favorable deal and then, after we have committed to the
deal, additional demands are made of us. In the that’s-not-all technique, someone
makes an offer and then improves the offer before any reply is made to the original
one.
xii) Cognitive Dissonance: According to this theory, when people’s behavior changes,
their attitudes will change. Cognitive dissonance describes a state of unpleasant
tension that people experience when they realize that they hold contradictory
attitudes or when they perceive that their behavior is inconsistent with their attitudes,
especially if the inconsistency is experienced as a threat to self-esteem. One way of
reducing this tension is to change one’s attitudes.
xiii) Evidence Favoring Cognitive Dissonance Theory: In Festinger and Carlsmith’s
classic study, subjects were paid $1 or $20 for lying about their enjoyment of a very
boring task. Later, when asked to rate how enjoyable the experiment was, the group
that received only $1 rated it as more enjoyable, and were more willing to participate
again. According to the theory, these subjects felt more cognitive dissonance than did
the other subjects, and relieved the dissonance by changing their attitude about the
task. The general principle is that people who are persuaded to do something by a
tiny reward or tiny threat will change their attitudes to defend what they are doing to
reduce cognitive dissonance.
3) Interpersonal Attraction
a) People’s Need For One Another: Humans’ need for a relationship can be considered a
basic one, part of our biological nature. Temporary relationships are often formed for a
specific purpose. People generally like to be with those who are in a similar predicament.
i) Establishing Lasting Relationships Proximity and Familiarity: Proximity, or
closeness, is a strong predictor of the people with whom we are most likely to
become friends. The mere-exposure effect is the finding that the more often we come
into contact with someone or something, the more we tend to like that person or
object.
ii) Similarity: Close friends resemble one another in age, attractiveness, beliefs,
intelligence, and other basic characteristics.
iii) Confirmation of Self-Concept: Research demonstrates that people often gravitate
toward someone who validates their own self-concept, even if the self-concept is low.
iv) The Equity Principle: According to equity or exchange theories, social relationships
function as transactions in which partners exchange goods and services. A friendship
is most stable if the individuals involved feel they are getting “a fair deal.”
b) Special Considerations in Selecting a Mate
i) Physical Attractiveness: Physical attractiveness is very influential in the formation of
a relationship, not only for its own sake, but because it biases what people say and
do. Physically attractive individuals are perceived as having many other desirable
characteristics, such as intelligence, social skills, and sensitivity.
ii) The Possible Biological Value of Attractiveness: The importance of physical
attractiveness probably has evolutionary roots. Physical attractiveness of a mate is
associated with good health. People tend to be attracted to normal-looking faces,
probably because a normal face is perceived as a healthy face, although facial
attractiveness in reality turns out to be a poor cue to health.
iii) Men’s Preferences and Women’s Preferences: Across different societies, the man
tends to be the older one in a relationship, places greater value on physical
attractiveness, and is the one expected to earn a living and provide resources.
Sociobiological theories emphasize that social behaviors are a result of evolutionary
pressures; a younger wife has more childbearing years, according to this idea.
However, there are other possible explanations. Evolutionary and sociobiological
theories are hard to test.
iv) Romantic and Passionate Love: Romantic Relationships That Last: The
characteristics of a successful marriage include similarity in attitudes and
personalities, sexual satisfaction, and a steady and adequate income.
4) Interpersonal Influence
a) Overview: Other people are a vital source of influence in our lives. They provide
information or misinformation about situations. Other people establish the norms for
behavior in a variety of situations.
b) Conformity: Conformity is altering or maintaining behavior to match that of other people.
i) It can serve an informational function, as in the autokinetic effect (if a person sits in
a darkened room and stares at a stationary point of light, the light will seem to move.)
If someone in the room expresses an opinion about the direction of movement, the
other people present will tend to adopt the same opinion.
ii) Asch’s classic line-judging experiment demonstrated that a majority of subjects felt
compelled to conform to an obviously wrong answer. The amount of influence of the
group depended on the size of the opposing majority.
iii) Conformity shows cross-cultural variation.
c) Bystander Helpfulness or Apathy:
i) Often, people fail to help in an emergency. One possible reason is diffusion of
responsibility– we feel less responsibility for helping when other people are around
than when we know that no one else can help. This phenomenon has received
empirical support, though there are other explanations for bystander nonintervention.
ii) Pluralistic ignorance is one alternative explanation. People may say nothing to each
other in an ambiguous situation, falsely assuming that the other people (similarly
tacit) have different and better-formed opinions. Nothing gets said and nothing gets
done.
iii) Social Loafing: Social loafing is the tendency to “loaf” (not work hard or not work at
all) when we are sharing the work with other people. People are more likely to loaf if
they expect no reward for an extra effort. Males and people in western cultures are
more likely to loaf than women and people in Asian cultures.
d) Group Decision Making:
i) Group Polarization: Group polarization describes a group process effect in which if
nearly all the people who compose a group lean in the same direction on a particular
issue, the group as a whole will tend to move even further in that direction after they
discuss that issue. It occurs due to both informational and normative influences.
ii) Groupthink: A form of group polarization, groupthink occurs when the members of a
group fail to express their doubts about a group’s poorly thought-out decision.
Examples include the Bay of Pigs invasion, and NASA’s decision to launch the space
shuttle Challenger.
5) The Power of the Social Situation
a) Behavior Traps: A behavior trap is a situation that forces us into self-defeating behaviors.
One example is when a conflict or competition between two sides escalates. A
demonstration of this is the $1 auction, where the highest bidder gets the $1, and the
runner-up bidder must also pay his/her bid. In this situation, people end up paying $3 to
$5 on average.
i) Cooperation and Competition in the Prisoner’s Dilemma: The prisoner’s dilemma is
a situation in which people have to choose between a cooperative act and an act that
is detrimental to others but benefits them. Psychologists who use the dilemma are
interested in when people choose to collaborate and when they choose to compete.
ii) Reciprocal altruism is one alternative strategy to strict competition or cooperation –
help others and they may eventually help you.
iii) The Commons Dilemma: In the commons dilemma people who share a common
resource tend to overuse it and cause it to be unavailable in the long run. Simulations
using this dilemma reveal different strategies and levels of cooperation.
b) Obedience to Authority:
i) Stanley Milgram formulated his classic experiment on obedience in the wake of the
Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals. His experiment provided evidence that blind
obedience to authority figures was not specific to any one nationality or ethnicity, but
a common human tendency. The real experimental subject, the “teacher” was ordered
to give shocks to a “learner” (who was a confederate and not actually being shocked
at all) whenever the learner made mistakes. The experimenter gave the orders. The
shocks were to begin at a mild level and be increased to the severe, potentially lethal
level if the learner’s performance did not improve. About two-thirds of the teachers
followed orders and delivered shocks all the way to the potentially lethal level.
ii) Other versions of the experiment were done, changing some aspects of the
situation, but overall the compliance levels were for the most part high. This is
probably one of the most crucial experiments done in the social psychology
field, although it could never be repeated today because of changes in our
rules about ethical treatment of subjects. As you can imagine, participation in
this study was quite disturbing to the teacher/subjects.