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SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
What is Social psychology?
 The field of psych pertaining to how we
think about other people, interact in
relationships and groups, and are
influenced by others
 Scientific study of how people’s thoughts,
feelings, and behavior are impacted by the
actual, imagined, or implied presence of
others
 The study of social situations, with special
attention to how we view and affect
others
Topics in Social Psychology
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Person Perception & Attribution
Stereotypes & Prejudice
Social Influence
Attraction/Love
Close Relationships (my area of research)
Behavior in Groups
Helping Behavior
Aggressions
Attitudes
The Self
Person Perception
 Perception
 Mental grasp of objects through the senses
 Object of interest in social psych is the
person
 Impression Formation
 What info do we use when making
judgments?
 Appearance
 Age, gender, ethnicity
 Attractiveness
 Behavior
 Information from others
Biases in Judgment
 Implicit Personality Theory
 People assume that certain aspects or traits go
together
 Halo effect: We assume people we like have good
characteristics, even if we haven’t seen them
 Self-concept bias
 What we consider important in ourselves is often
what we consider important in others
 Primacy effects
 People are influenced more by info they receive
early in an interaction than by info that appears
later
 We will even re-interpret new information so that it
fits our earlier impression of people
Attribution Processes
 The process of asking “why” people do
what they do
 We do this for unexplained or unexpected
events
 Kelley’s covariation model
 Consensus
 Do other people react in the same way as the target?
 Consistency
 Does the target react in the same way to this stimulus
on repeated exposures?
 Distinctiveness
 Does the target react the same way to similar stimuli?
Kelley’s Covariation Model
Distinctiveness High
Low
High
Consensus
High
Low
Low
Consistency
High
High
Low
Attribution
Stimulus
(movie)
Person
(my sister)
Situation
Attributional Errors
 Fundamental Attribution Error
 A tendency to overestimate the impact of
personal causes of behavior and to overlook
the role of situations
 Actor-Observer Bias
 More likely to make external attributions
for our own negative behavior and internal
attributions for others’ negative behavior
 Vice versa for positive behavior (though this
tendency isn’t as strong)
Stereotypes
 If we use schemas to form overall
impressions of others because we are
cognitive misers…
 Stereotypes: group schemas, containing a set of
beliefs about people in a particular social
category
 Devine (1989)
 Automatic activation of stereotypes
 CAN be controlled, when our personal beliefs
(either positive or negative) of a social group
are not aligned with the automatic stereotypes
Origins of Prejudice
 Socialization
 We are not born with stereotypes, but we grow
to imitate those who we respect
 Realistic Group Conflict Theory
 When groups are forced to compete for scarce
resources (e.g., good jobs, nice homes, college
educations), they threaten each other in a very
negative manner
 ‘Our group is better than yours’ becomes
justification for greater access to these
positive resources
Ways to Reduce Prejudice
 Allport’s Contact Theory
 Under certain conditions, direct contact
between members of different groups will
improve relations
 Contact must involve:
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Mutual interdependence
A common goal
Equal status of groups
Informal, interpersonal contact
Multiple contacts
Social norms of equality
Social Influence
 Three types
 Conformity
 Compliance
 Obedience
 Conformity
 The tendency for people to bring their
behavior in line with group norms
 Changing to match group’s standards
Conformity
 Informational Social Influence
 The need to be right
 Sherif (1936) autokinetic effect
 Initially, P’s show a lot of variety in their
answers but each group will create its own
range
Sherif (1936) autokinetic effect
Conformity
 Informational Social Influence
 The need to be right
 Sherif (1936) autokinetic effect
 Initially, P’s show a lot of variety in their answers but
each group will create its own range
 Normative Social Influence
 The need to be liked
 Asch (1955) line study
 76% of the time, P’s will conform and give the wrong
answer as well
Compliance
 Doing something because someone asked
us to
 Two types
 Commitment-based techniques
 By getting us to commit to a small item, we
are more likely to commit to larger items
 Norm of Reciprocity-based techniques
 We should do for those who have done for us
Commitment-based Compliance
 Foot in the Door
 Small request (accepted) followed by larger
(accepted due to initial commitment)
 Low Ball
 Once request is agreed to, the hidden costs of
complying reveal themselves
 Why do these work?
 We like to think that our self-identity is
consistent
 Once we agree to this person on this topic, we like to
maintain consistency and keep agreeing
Norm of Reciprocity-based Compliance
 Unsolicited Gift
 March of Dimes address labels, paying
participants in advance
 You are providing them with something in
the hope that they will reciprocate
 Door in the Face
 Initial large request (rejected) followed by
a smaller request (accepted)
 The requester has lowered their demands
so you feel the need to reciprocate by
giving in a little
Obedience
 Doing something because a legitimate
authority figure asked us to
 Stanley Milgram (1960’s)
 The participant is the teacher, the confederate
is the learner
 If the learner makes an error, the teacher has
to ‘shock’ him…with the level of shock
increasing to dangerous and deadly levels
 As the level of shock increases, the P can hear
the learner is in obvious pain
Obedience
 Factors that increased/decreased
obedience
 Making subject feel more responsible for their
behavior reduced obedience
 Emphasizing pain of other subject reduced
obedience
 Increasing physical presence of legitimate
authority figure increased obedience
 Having other subjects stop obeying reduced
obedience
Attraction - Proximity
 We like those we are close to both
physically and functionally
 Why does proximity work?
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It increases familiarity
Often linked to similarity
It makes others more available
Cognitive consistency
 It's easier to be around others who we like,
therefore we feel a need to get along with
people we see often
Attraction - Familiarity
 Simply seeing a person more frequently
can increase our liking of that person
 This only works if our initial reaction is either
neutral or positive
 Seeing a negative stimulus repeatedly simply makes us
not like it even more
 Why does familiarity work?
 Repeated exposure increases recognition
 We assume that familiar others are similar to
ourselves
Attraction - Similarity
 Matching Principle
 The tendency to choose similar partners
 Friends
 Social class, educational level, and religious
backgrounds
 Romantic partners
 Age, social class, ethnicity, and religion
 Why does the similarity effect occur?
 Similar others are easier and more pleasant to
be around
 Expectancy-value Theory
 Maybe we deliberately select people for their
similarity to us
 The reward for dating someone similar to us is
high…but so is the probability that they will like us
What does being physically
attractive mean?
 Beauty is in the eye of the
beholder…for the most part
 Walster et al (1966) Computer Dance
study
 Used a computer service to match people
for blind dates (but they were really
randomly assigned)
 Physical attractiveness was the only
significant predictor of liking
What does being physically
attractive mean? (cont.)
 Halo effect of beauty
 Attractive people are judged more
favorably on other traits than are less
attractive people
 Pretty people are assumed to have better:
 Social skills
 Intellectual competence
 Greater integrity and concern for others
 Is it true?
 Certainly not for intelligence or integrity but
sort of for social skills
Close Relationships
Rusbult’s Investment Model
Commitment
Satisfaction
(
+)
Investments
(
+)
(
-)
Alternatives
Violence
 U.S. has highest murder rate in the world
among developed countries
 More than 15,000 murders every year
 More than 92,000 reported rapes
 More than 7 million reported violent acts
overall
 Every 5 minutes a child is arrested for a violent
crime
 More than 50% of 5th graders report being a
victim of violence (70% of those have seen
weapons used)
 Guns kill an American child every 3 hours
Aggression
 Aggression
 Behavior intended to injure another who is
motivated to avoid it
 Assertiveness
 Behavior intended to express dominance or
confidence
 Assertiveness is not aggression
Biological Theories
 Aggressive impulses may be hereditary
 Twin studies:
 Correlations of aggression higher among
monozygotic twins than dizygotic pairs
 Aggression is associated with
 Low levels of serotonin
 High levels of testosterone
 Activation of the amygdala can lead to
aggressive behaviors (though it still depends on
situational factors)
Gender Differences in
Aggression
 Men use more physical, direct forms of
aggression
 Men’s aggression is more likely to do physical
harm, and thus gets more attention
 Girls and women use more indirect forms
of aggression (e.g., spreading rumors).
 There is no clear sex difference in
reporting feelings of anger
Gender Differences in
Aggression
 Provocation: The great equalizer?
 Men are more likely to attack physically when
unprovoked than women
 What happens when people are irritated,
frustrated, or threatened by another person?
 Bettencourt & Miller (1996)
 Conducted a meta-analysis of gender
differences in aggression
 Found that when provocation is involved, the
typical gender difference in physical aggression
is reduced or eliminated
Physical Discomfort & Aggression
 Heat
 Humidity
 Pain
 Noxious fumes
 Poverty
 Crowding
Media Violence
 More TV sets in United States than toilets
 Media consumption is #1 pass-time among
Americans, particularly youth
 60%-70% of all TV programs contain
violence
 70%-80% show no remorse, criticism, or
penalty for the violence
 By the time the average American child
graduates from elementary school:
 More than 8,000 murders
 More than 100,000 other acts of violence (e.g.,
assaults, rape)
Media Violence
 More recently, video games have
become kids’ favorite form of media
 90% of kids age 2-17 play regularly
 Majority of popular games are violent
Grand Theft Auto
Mortal Kombat
Media Violence
 Since at least 1970, researchers have
known of a link between violent media and
aggression
 Weakened inhibitions against violent behavior
 Imitation of specific violent acts
 Aggression primed as a response to anger
 Desensitization to violence
 Overestimation of prevalence of violence in real
life
Common Responses
1. “That’s all boloney. I play those games
and I’ve never killed anyone.”
2. “Maybe there is an effect, but it’s
really small and meaningless.”
3. “Actually, my friends and I feel better
after blowing off steam playing video
games.”
Common Responses
1. “Not all who play violent games/watch
violent media become killers.”
 True. Not all smokers die of lung cancer,
either.
 The point is NOT whether exposure
leads inevitably to criminal mayhem, but
that the likelihood of aggression is
increased
Effects of VVGs
(Bushman & Anderson, 2001)
Findings from a meta-analysis
Correlation with
VVG Exposure
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
-0.1
-0.2
-0.3
Aggression Helping
Hostile
Thoughts
Hostile
Affect
Arousal
Common Responses
2. “Effects are trivially small”
 False. Effects are larger than many that
we take for granted
Common Responses
3. “Playing violent games/watching violence
allows people to “vent” feelings of
anger”

False. Watching violence or engaging in
virtual violence increases aggression

Catharsis doesn’t work!
Media Industry Response
1. The media is simply “holding a mirror to
society.”
 False. Real world is far less violent than the
TV/Movie world.
 0.2% of crimes are murders; 50% of crimes on
TV are murders
 Average of 7 characters are killed on TV each
night
 If applied in reality, this proportion of murder would
wipe out U.S. population in 50 days
Media Industry Response
2. “We’re simply giving the public what
they want.”
 Maybe. But viewer interest is only one
factor driving programming decisions
 Societal violence can be considered a
hazardous by-product
 Also, most popular shows (Friends, Seinfeld,
Bachelor) are not violent
Media Industry Response
3. “Violence sells!”
 False. TV violence significantly decreases
memory for commercial messages
 Bushman, 1998
 19% of viewers will be less likely to remember
an ad if it is embedded in a violent or sexually
explicit show
Prosocial Behavior
(a.ka. Altruism)
 Prosocial Behavior
 Any act that helps or is meant to help
others
 It doesn’t matter what the helper’s
motivation is
Evolutionary Theory
 Kin selection
 Gene survival is more important than the
individual’s survival
 By helping our relatives, we are giving our genes
a greater chance of surviving, even if it harms
our own life
 Parents behave more altruistically to
healthy offspring to unhealthy ones
(Dovidio et al., 1991)
Social Exchange Theory
 We want to maximize our benefits and
minimize our costs
 We examine the costs and rewards of helping
and not helping
 3 rewards of helping
 Reciprocity
 They will owe us when we need help (or at least it
eventually balances out)
 Relieves distress
 We don’t like to see others suffer
 Social approval
 Others like us more when we are viewed as helpful and
increases our self-worth
Gender and Helping
 Women are universally perceived as kinder, more
soft-hearted, and more helpful (Williams & Best,
1990)
 But over 90% of Carnegie Hero awards go to men
(for saving, or attempting to save, the life of
another)
 Women
 Help those they already know
 Help in nurturing ways involving long-term commitment
 Men
 Help strangers in emergency situations
 Help in chivalrous, heroic ways
Mood & Helping
 People are more willing to help when they
are in a good mood
 Isen & Levin, 1972
 84% of those who found dime helped, only 4% of those
who did not find dime helped
 Why do good moods increase helping?
 Interpret events sympathetically
 Mood-maintenance
 Good moods increase self-attention
 People in a bad mood will help under certain
conditions
 Negative-state relief hypothesis
 People help to alleviated their own sadness and distress
Bystander Effect
 The story of Kitty Genovese (1964)
 Bystander effect
 The tendency to be less likely to help if others
are also present
 Smoke-filled room study (Latané and
Darley, 1968)
 IV:
 left alone
 with 2 other real participants
 with 2 other confederates who pretended nothing was
wrong
 DV: Percentage of participants who reported
smoke
Smoke-Filled Room Study
80
Percent
who
report
smoke
60
40
20
0
Alone
With 2 other
real subjects
With 2 calm
confederates
Situational Influences:
5 Steps to Helping
 Step 1: Notice the Event
 In order to help, you must realize something is
happening
 Often people are distracted and don’t even
notice (especially in large cities)
 Step 2: Interpret as Emergency
 If you see someone lying on the sidewalk, does
that mean they need or want help?
 Pluralistic ignorance can play a role here
 Others not helping, must not be a problem
5 Steps to Helping
 Step 3: Feel responsible
 Just because you notice someone in need of
help, is that your problem?
 Diffusion of responsibility plays a role at this
step
 Step 4: Know how to help
 If someone appears to need medical care and
you’re not a nurse or doctor, then what?
 If you can’t offer appropriate help, you likely
won’t try
5 Steps to Helping
 Step 5: Assess costs of helping
 You see someone in need of help, you feel
responsible, you know what to do, but…
 Could be highly dangerous
 Could make you financially liable
 Could embarrass you