Download Chapter 18 Social Psychology

Social Psychology
SW understand how society and culture
influence a person’s behavior and
mental processes
“We cannot live for ourselves alone; our lives
are connected by a thousand invisible threads”
-Herman Melville (author of Moby Dick)
If a friend gets angry with your
(for no apparent reason), how
do you explain their behavior?
If a friend does something nice
for you, how do you explain
their behavior?
Social Psychologists
Explore connections by scientifically studying
how we think about, influence, and relate to
one another
Social Psychology
• How do we explain people’s behavior?
• How do we form our beliefs and attitudes?
• How does what we think affect what we do?
Especially when the unexpected
occurs, we analyze why people
act as they do.
How do we tend to explain others’
behavior and our own?
• Attribution Theory:
– Fritz Heider (1958): Studied how people explain
others’ behavior
– Found that people attributed others’ behavior
either to their internal dispositions or to their
external situations
• Example: An teacher may wonder whether a child’s
hostility reflects an aggressive personality (internal
dispositions) or whether the child is reacting to stress or
abuse (external situations)
Social Psychology
• Fundamental Attribution Error:
– The tendency for observers when analyzing
another’s behavior, to underestimate the impact
of the situation and to overestimate the impact of
personal disposition
– Example: You meet (observe) someone who is
quiet, so you assume that this person is shy and
will always be quiet; then you see them at a
basketball game being talkative and loud and you
are surprised by their behavior.
Social Psychology
• Attribution Theory continued…
– When we explain our own behavior, we are sensitive
to how our behavior changes with the situations we
encounter
• When explaining others’ behavior, we often
commit fundamental attribution error: We
disregard the situation and leap to unwarranted
conclusions about their personality traits.
• DON’T JUDGE A BOOK BY THEIR COVER
Effects of Attribution
• In everyday life, we struggle to explain others’
actions.
– Jury must decide if a shooting was malicious or in
self-defense
– An interviewer must judge whether the applicant’s
geniality is genuine
• When we make such judgments, our
attributions-either to the person or to the
situation-have important consequences
Effects of Attribution
• Example:
– How do you explain the poverty or unemployment
rate?
• Political conservatives tend to attribute such social
problems to the person dispositions of the poor and
unemployed themselves: “People generally get what
they deserve. Those who don’t work are freeloaders.
People who take initiative can still get ahead.”
• Political liberals are more likely to blame past and
present situations: “If you or I had to live with the same
poor education, lack of opportunity, and discrimination,
would we be any better off?”
The Effects of Attribution
Our attributions-to individuals’
dispositions or to their situationsshould be made more carefully. They
have real consequences.
Stereotypes
Oversimplified, exaggerated or
unfavorable generalization about a
category of people
Prejudice
Unsupported generalization about a
category of people
Positive Psychology
• We make certain attributions (or explanations)
about our own behavior that are either
situational or dispositional
• Optimists :
– More likely to attribute good events to dispositions
and bad events to situations
• Pessimists:
– More likely to suffer depression, will make
dispositional attributions for bad events and
situational attributions for good events
Group Work
• One piece of paper per group
• Working with partner, provide examples of
attribution theory and fundamental
attribution error you have committed (at least
2 examples per person in group) or you may
create example.
• How do your examples lead to stereotypes
and prejudice?
Group Work
• Critical Thinking:
– If someone you have recently gotten to know
walks by you in the hall but doesn’t say hello
(even as you try to say hello to them), what would
you think about them? Why?
– Link to class discussion: Are your thoughts about
your good friend’s behavior different than your
thoughts about someone you’re only acquainted
with? Why or why not?
Group Work
• SW provide example of ANY societal event and
write briefly how the event has affected their
life (each person in the group must discuss)
• Do you consider yourself to be a optimist or
pessimist? Why?
Attitudes
Does what we think affect what we do, or does
what we do affect what we think?
Attitudes
• Feelings, often influenced by our beliefs, that
predispose our reactions to objects, people,
and events.
• If we believe someone is mean, we may feel
dislike for the person and act unfriendly.
Attitudes Affect Actions
• Our attitudes often predict our behavior
• Central Route Persuasion: Occurs mostly when people
are naturally involved in the issue
– Ex: Member of Presidential campaign and organize rallies
to promote their candidate
• Peripheral Route: Occurs when people are NOT
naturally involved in the issue and respond to cues
(make snap judgments)
– Ex: See a celebrity endorse a candidate and make decision
based off of what the celebrity says
Actions Affect Attitudes
Not only will people sometimes stand up for
what they believe, they will also come to believe
in the idea they have supported.
This may confirm that attitudes follow behavior
The Foot-In-The-Door Phenomenon
• Tendency for people who agree to a small
action to comply later with a larger one
– To get people to agree to something big, “start
small and build”
Example
(Foot-In-The-Door-Phenomenon)
• During Korean war, may captured U.S. soldiers
were imprisoned in war camps run by Chinese
communists. Without using brutality, the captors
secured the prisoners’ collaboration in various
activities. Some ran errands or accepted favors.
Others made radio appeals and false confessions,
while some divulged military information. When
the war ended, 21 prisoners chose to stay with
the communists, while more returned home
“brainwashed” and convinced that communism
was a good thing for Asia
Example of POW camp
Role-Playing Affects Attitudes
• When you adopt a new role-you leave middle
school and begin high school, start a new job-you
try to follow social rules-you strive to follow the
social prescriptions
– As you begin high school, you follow new rules, find
new friends (be nice, polite), learn new subjects
– When you being a new job, you follow dress codes,
follow new rules (clock in and clock out), make new
friends (be nice, polite)
Philip Zimbardo (1972)
• Professor of Psychology
at Stanford University
• Wanted to study
conformity
• Important study in our
understanding of how
situational forces can
influence human
behavior
Philip Zimbardo (1972)
Male college students (screened about their
attitudes, beliefs and to ensure they were
psychological healthy) volunteered to spend time
in a simulated prison in the basement of a
building at Stanford University
Stanford Prison Experiment
http://www.prisonexp.org/psychology/2
Zimbardo Study Cont’d…
• Randomly designated as guards; he game
them uniforms, Billy clubs and whistles and
instructed them to enforce certain rules.
• The remainder became prisoners; they were
locked in barren cells and forced to wear
humiliated outfits.
• After a day or two in which the volunteers selfconsciously “played” their roles, the simulation
became real-too real.
Zimbardo Study Cont’d…
Stanford Prison Experiment
http://www.prisonexp.org/psychology/5
Zimbardo Study Cont’d…
• Most of the guards developed disparaging
attitudes, and some devised cruel and
degrading routines. One by one, the prisoners
broke down, rebelled or became passively
resigned, causing Zimbardo to call off the
study after only six days.
Cognitive Dissonance:
Relief from Tension
Actions affect attitudes; turning prisoners into
collaborators, doubters into believers,
acquaintances into friends, and compliant
guards into abusers
WHY?
Cognitive Dissonance Theory
Leon Festinger
• When our actions and attitudes are not the
same, we experience tension (Cognitive
Dissonance)
– To relieve the tension, people often bring their
attitudes into line with their actions
– People rationalize “If I chose to do it (or say it), I must
believe in it”.
• The less influence and more responsible we feel for
a troubling act, the more dissonance we feel.
• The more dissonance we feel, the more motivated
we are to find consistency, such as changing our
attitudes to help justify the act
Example
Although we cannot directly control all our feelings, we
can influence them by altering our behavior. If we are
unloving, we can become more loving by behaving as if
we were so-by doing thoughtful things, expressing
affection, giving affirmation
Example
If you are feeling down: talk more positive and in
self-accepting ways with fewer self-put-downs
Individual Activity
• On a piece of paper, please answer the
following:
– Driving to school one snowy day, Marco narrowly misses a
car that slides through a red light. “Slow down! What a
terrible driver,” he thinks to himself. Moments later, Marco
himself flips through an intersection and yelps, “Wow!
These roads are awful. The city plows need to get out
here.”
• What social psychology principle has Marco just
demonstrated? In your own words, explain the
principle and explain why you selected that
principle.
Social Influence
How do we influence each other? How are we
affected by pressures to conform and obey, by
group interaction and by cultural influences?
Social Psychology
The entire point is the enormous
power of social influence on our
attitudes, beliefs, decisions, and
actions
This influence can be seen in our conformity, compliance, and
group behavior
(suicides, bomb threats, airplane hijackings all have a tendency
to come in clusters/ advertisements want to sway you to
purchase something)
Example:
Hazing is considered a part of Social
Influence
Conformity and Obedience
• Behavior is contagious (if one person giggles,
coughs or yawns, others in the group are soon
to do the same)
– We are natural mimics (Tanya Chartrand and John
Bargh-1999)
• Chameleon Effect: Unconsciously mimicking others’
expressions, postures, and voice tones helps us to feel
what they are feeling
• Helps explain why we feel happier around happy people
than around depressed ones, and why studies of groups
reveal mood linkage- sharing up and down moods
Group Pressure and Conformity
• Conformity: Adjusting our behavior or
thinking toward some group standard
– Solomon Asch (1955): Study conformity. Devised
plan that he called a visual test, but was test to
see how would people conform
• One standard line and 3 comparison lines
• Found more than one third of the time, these
“intelligent and well-meaning” college-student
participants were then wiling to “call white black” by
going along with the group
Conditions that Strengthen Conformity
•
•
•
•
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
• Others in the group observe one’s behavior
• One’s culture strongly encourages respect for
social standards
Cultural Connection
• What are the qualities of cultures that encourage
conformity?
• What types of government do these cultures
have? Are they all communistic , democratic, or a
mixture of both?
• On whom do these cultures encourage
conformity-government officials, families, adults,
or all of the above?
• How do these cultures handle people who don’t
conform? Do they suffer formalized punishment
(jails, fines, etc.) or more informal social
punishment (shunning, lack of job advancement,
etc.)?
Reasons for Conforming
• Normative Social Influence: Influence
resulting from a person’s desire to gain
approval or avoid disapproval
– We are sensitive to social norms, (understood rules
for accepted and expected behavior) because of
the price we pay for being different
• Informational Social Influence: Influence
resulting from one’s willingness to accept
other’s opinions about reality
– Groups may provide valuable information and only
an uncommonly stubborn person will never listen
to others
Stanley Milgram (1933-1984)
•
•
•
•
Student of Solomon Asch
Social Psychologist
Became professor at Yale University
Wanted to study how people responded to
social pressures (conformity and obedience)
Demo
• Stanley Milgram: Asked his students
to violate a social norm, such as
asking another passenger for their
seat on a city bus or subway.
– One student responded “I couldn’t go on. It
was one of the most difficult things I ever did
in my life.”
• Milgram then tried it himself. He
approached a seat and reluctantly
said “Excuse me, sir, may I have your
seat?”
– To Milgram’s surprise, the man gave
up his seat. In taking the man’s seat,
Milgram said he felt overwhelmed to
justify his request, so his head sank
into his knees…and he felt as though
he was to perish.
– It was not until Milgram left the train
station he felt relieved.
Milgram: Obedience
•Asked college students in ad in
newspaper to come to psychology
department at Yale University
•Draw from hat to be teacher or
learner:
•Teacher: Sit in front of desk with
switches marked with “voltage”
•Learner: Let to another room
and strapped into a chair
•Experiment: To teach the learner pair
of words using a list
Milgram: Obedience
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdb20gcc_Ns
• 65% fully complied with experiment
Lessons Learned from Conformity and
Obedience
“Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and
without any particular hostility on their part, an
become agents in a terrible destructive process”
(Milgram, 1974)
Group Influence
• How do groups affect our behavior?
• How are we influenced by people watching us
or joining us in various activities?
Social Facilitation
• Stronger responses on simple or well-learned
tasks in the presence of others
– Example: Norman Triplett (1898) had adolescents
wind a fishing reel as rapidly as possible, he
discovered that they wound the reel faster in the
presence of someone doing the same thing.
***Point to remember: What you do well, you are
likely to do even better in front of an audience,
especially a friendly audience; what you normally
find difficult may seem all but impossible when you
are being watched***
Effects of Group Interaction
• Group Polarization: The enhancement of a
group’s prevailing opinions through discussion
within the group
– Example: It amplifies a sought-after spiritual awareness of
reinforces the resolve of those in a self-help group, or
strengthens feelings of tolerance in a low-prejudice group.
Groupthink
• The mode of thinking that occurs when the
desire for harmony in a decision-making group
overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives
– Example: To preserve a good group feeling, any opposing
views are suppressed or self-censored (no one speaks
strongly against the idea, so everyone assumes a
consensus support)
Cultural Influence
• How do cultural norms affect our behavior?
• As social creatures, our human readiness to
learn from and adapt to those around us
includes the influence of our surrounding
culture.
– Culture: behaviors, ideas, attitudes, values and
traditions shared by a group of people and
transmitted from one generation to the next
– Norms: Rules for accepted and expected behavior
– Personal Space: The portable buffer zone we like
to maintain around our bodies or we feel
uncomfortable
Social Loafing
• The tendency for people in a group to exert
less effort when pooling their efforts toward
attaining a common goal than when
individually accountable
Deindividuation
• The loss of self-awareness and self-restraint
occurring in group situations that foster
arousal and anonymity
Lessons from Conformity
• The Power of One:
– People aren’t sheep; social control and personal control
interact. When pressured, we may react by doing the
opposite of what is expected.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPW9mIrQcXA
Social Relations
• Explores how we relate to one another
• What causes us to harm or help or to fall in
love?
• How can we move a destructive conflict
toward a just peace?
Prejudice (Beliefs)
Means to make a “prejudgment”
An unjustifiable (and usually negative) attitude toward a
group and its members. Prejudice generally involves
stereotyped beliefs, negative feelings and a predisposition to
discriminatory action
Stereotype (Emotions)
• A generalized (sometimes accurate but often
overgeneralized) belief about a group of
people
Discrimination (Action)
• Unjustifiable negative behavior toward a
group and its members
Example
To believe that obese people are gluttonous, to
feel dislike for an obese person, and to be
hesitant to hire or date an obese person is to be
prejudiced
Prejudice is a negative attitude, discrimination
is a negative behavior
Social Roots of Prejudice
• When some people have money, power and
prestige and others do not, the “haves”
usually develop attitudes that justify things as
they are
• Example (Extreme case): Slave “owners”
perceived slaves as innately lazy, ignorant and
irresponsible-as having the very traits that
“justified” enslaving them
Us and Them: Ingroup and Outgroup
• Backgroud:
– Thanks to our ancestral need to belong, we are
group-bound species
– Whether hunting, defending or attacking, 10
hands were better than 2
– Dividing the world into “us” and “them” entails
racism and war, but it also provides the benefits of
communal solidarity
– Thus we cheer for our groups, kill for them, die for
them
In Group
“Us”-people with whom we share a common
identity
Outgroup
• “Them”-those perceived as different or apart
from our ingroup
Ingroup Bias
• Favoring one’s own group
Scapegoat Theory
• Theory that prejudice offers an outlet for
anger by providing someone to blame
Other-Race Effect
• The tendency to recall faces of one’s own race
more accurately than faces of other races
Just-World Phenomenon
• The tendency for people to believe the world
is just and that people therefore get what they
deserve and deserve what they get
Discussion
• Do you believe that illness is payback for
mistakes in life?
• If you were diagnosed with a terminal illness,
would you wonder what you did to deserve
such an illness? Why or why not?
Aggression
Aggression
• Any physical or verbal behavior intended to
hurt or destroy, whether done reactively out
of hostility or proactively as a calculated
means to an end
Aggression
• Genetic Influence
• Neural Influence: No one spot in brain; neural
system will facilitate aggression. Frontal lobe
for inhibiting aggression
• Biochemical Influence: Hormones, alcohol, and
other substances
Psychological and Social Cultural
Factors in Aggression
• Frustration-Aggression Principle: The
principle that frustration-the blocking of an
attempt to achieve some goal-creates anger,
which can generate aggression
Romantic Love
Rodgers and Hammerstein Musical
Prince Charming to Cinderella, “Do I love you
because your beautiful, or are you beautiful
because I love you?”
Probably both.
As we see someone again and again, and come to
like them, their physical imperfections grow less
noticeable and their attractiveness grows more
apparent
Friends and Couples
• In real life, opposites retract
• Birds flock together usually ARE of a feather
• Share attitudes, beliefs, and interests (age,
religion, race, education, intelligence, smoking
behavior, and economic status) than are
randomly paired people
– Ex: Online dating
Love
• Elaine Hartfield (1988):
– Two Types of Love
• Temporary passionate love and Enduring companionate
love
Passionate Love
• Theory of Emotion: Helps us understand why
we feel a need to be around one another
– Emotions have two ingredients: Physical plus
cognitive appraisal
– Physical attraction from any source can enhance
one emotion or another, depending on how we
interpret and label attraction
• Adrenaline makes the heart grow fonder
Companionate Love
• Passion of romantic love subsides
• “Floating on a cloud” feeling fades
• Recognizing the short duration of passionate
love, some societies have deemed such feelings
as irrational reason for marrying
– Cultures say, to choose (or have someone choose for
you) a partner with compatible backgrounds and
interests
– Non-Western cultures, where people rate love as less
important for marriage decisions, have lower divorce
rates
Companionate Love
• Deep, affectionate attachment we feel for
those with whom our lives are intertwined
• Wisdom to change from passion to affection
– Passionate love often produces children, survival
depends on parents’ relationship with one
another
Companionate Love
• One key to a gratifying and enduring relationship
is equity
– Both partners receive in proportion to what they give
– Both partners freely give and receive, when they share
decision making-their chances for a sustained and
satisfying companionate love are good
– Mutually sharing self and possessions, giving and
getting emotional support and promoting and caring
about one another’s welfare are at the core of every
type of loving relationship
Self-Disclosure
• In order for a strong friendship or marriage,
you must self-disclose
– A revealing of intimate details about ourselves
• Likes and dislikes, our dreams and worries, our proud
and shameful moments
– Self-disclosure breed's liking (if one person reveals
more and on and on, results in developing of
friendships or more---deeper intimacy)
Altruism
• Unselfish regard for others’ welfare
– Major concern of psychologists after an especially vile
act of sexual violence
• Example: A knife-wielding stalker repeatedly stabbed Kitty
Genovese then raped her as she lay outside her Queens, NY
apartment at 3:30am on March 13, 1964.
• Her cries of help were heard; people opened their windows
and lights came on in apartments (38 people reported
hearing her screams)
• Attacker fled scene, returned to stab her 8 more times and
raped her again)
• Not until he left for good that someone called police at 3:50
am
Bystander Intervention
• Inaction in a situation-based off of presence of
others
• Darley and Lantane (1968) found a decision
scheme:
– We only help if the situation enables us first to
NOTICE the incident, then INTERPRET it as an
emergency, and finally to ASSUME RESPONSIBILITY
for helping
Bystander Effect
• The tendency for any given bystander to be
less likely to give aid if other bystanders are
present
– EX: When one other person was on the elevator,
those who dropped coins were helped 40% of the
time
• When there were 6 passengers, help came less than
20% of the time
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSsPfbup0ac
Best Odds of Helping
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
We have 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
The Norms for Helping
•
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdTpU5WZHHM
• Who is he?
• What were his beliefs?
• Why do you think he decided
to do something about what
was going on the society?
The Norms for Helping
Why do we help people?
The Norms for Helping
• Social Exchange Theory:
–Our social behavior is an exchange
process, the aim of which is to
maximize benefits and minimize costs
• EX: Donating blood: Cost (discomfort, time) vs.
Benefit (reduced guilt, good feelings)
The Norms for Helping
• Reciprocity Norm:
– The expectation that we should return help, not
harm, to those who have helped us
The Norms for Helping
• Social-Responsibility Norm:
– We should help those who need our help, even if
the costs outweigh the benefits
Group Activity
• Working with partner:
– Please provide a personal example or example of
social program(s) for each of the norms for
helping
Conflict
• What in the human mind causes destructive
conflict?
• How might threats of social diversity be
replaced by cooperation?
Conflict
Incompatibility of actions, goals, or ideas
Social Traps
• We harm our collective well-being by pursuing
our personal interests
• A situation in which the conflicting parties, by
each rationally pursuing their own goals,
become caught in mutually destructive
behavior
Discussion
• What is prejudice?
• What is discrimination?
• What are examples in our social history that
describe this event?
Jane Elliot
• “A Class Divided” 1968
• 3rd grade teacher from
Riceville, Iowa
• 2 Day exercise
• Separated students based
on eye color: Brown eyes
or Blue eyes
•
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hqp6GnYqIjQ
Perceptions
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy:
– A belief that leads to its own fulfillment
Perceptions
• Mirror-Image Perceptions:
– Mutual views often held by conflicting people as
when each side sees itself as ethical and peaceful
and views the other side as evil and aggressive
Class Activity
• Please provide an example of self-fulfilling
prophecy and mirror-image perceptions
• How can we transform feelings of prejudice,
aggression and conflict into attitudes that
promote peace?
• What do you think would be the result of putting
two conflicting parties into close contract?
Cooperation
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUsBQ-dA6eU
• If you have your own agenda, how do you work
together as a team?
Cooperation
• Superordinate goals:
– Shared goals that overrides differences among
people and require their cooperation
Communication
• People usually are distrustful and pursue their
own interests as a defense against being
exploited
– When we are given the opportunity to discuss the
problems and compromise, cooperation increases
• Why do you think that once we are able to
communicate, it can lead to cooperation?
Conflict
• Researchers identify 5 strategies for dealing
with social conflict
– Example: Peter is looking forward to a vacation at
a mountain lodge. His wife wants to go to a
seaside resort
•
•
•
•
•
Contend (argue)
Yield (agree to go with wife’s preference)
Problem-Solving Approach (compromise)
Inactive (hope argument will go away)
Withdraw (decide not to go take any vacation)
Class Activity
• Write/Discuss with partner problem in your
life and strategy used in how you dealt with
problem
• Is there a particular strategy you see a pattern
you use when making decisions?
Critical Thinking Exercise
• Many teachers use cooperative learning
groups, but are these groups truly
cooperative?
• What does a truly cooperative situation look
like?
• Do the groups they work in for projects at
school reflect these qualities?
• Do the groups have any superordinate goals
besides getting a good grade?
Critical Thinking Exercise Continued
• Do the group members share common values
such as hard work and attention to detail?
• How are groups typically graded? Do the
grading practices reduce cooperation or
improve it?
• How does social loafing fit into all of this?