Download Questions to Consider

Questions to Consider
What makes someone good or evil?
How far will people go in obeying the commands of an authority figure?
Overall, how much does the situation influence yours and others actions?
Social Psychology
• How a person’s behavior, thoughts,
and feelings are influenced by the real,
imagined, or implied presence of
others
Three Areas
1. Social Influence
• This area examines the situational
factors that can affect behavior
2. Social Cognition
• The ways in which people think
about other people
3. Social Interaction
• The positive and negative aspects of
people relating to others
Topics
• Bystander Effect
• Conformity
• Obedience
• Social Roles
Kitty Genovese
On March 13th, 1964, at about 3:15 in
the morning, a man who didn’t even
know Catherine ―Kitty‖ Genovese
caught her in the parking lot of her
apartment complex, stabbed her, and
then came back nearly half an hour
later to rape and stab her to death in
the entryway of the complex. A
police investigation determined that at
least 38 people heard or watched some
part of the fatal attack from their
apartment windows. It has been
widely reported that none of the
people called the police in response to
the attack.
However, recent analysis of the court
reports and evidence indicate that
several people may have made
attempts to contact the police. But
still, of the numerous people who saw
or heard the attack, MOST did not
make any attempt to call the police.
Why?
•What do we think about these
people? Were they ―bad‖ people?
Bystander Effect
Definition
• The effect that the presence of other
people have on the decision to help or
not help
• In general, as the number of
bystanders increase, the decision to
help becomes less likely
Diffusion of Responsibility
• When a person fails to take
responsibility for actions or for
inaction because of the presence of
other people who are seen to share the
responsibility
Levine & Crowther (2008)
Bystander Effect Revised
• The type of group influences the
decision to act
• Groups of friends are more likely to
make the decision to help
• When the group of individuals is all
one social category (all males, all
females, all Latinos, etc.), group
members are more likely to make the
decision to help
Conformity
Definition
• Changing one’s behavior to match
that of other people
Conformity
Asch’s Comparison Line Study (1951)
• 7 people in a room (6 were
confederates, one was ―the participant‖)
• Shown a ―standard line‖, then asked,
―To which comparison line is it most
similar?‖
• Confederates would confidently give
the wrong answer
• Participant was second to last to
respond
Conformity
Results (Asch, 1951)
Condition
Error rate
Subject is alone
1%
With 1 person who says “A”
3%
With 2 persons who say “A”
13%
With 3-6 persons who say “A”
33%
With 5 persons who say “A” and 1 person
who says “B”
6%
Conformity
Asch’s Study Revisited
• Recent studies have demonstrated
mixed effects of ―Asch’s conformity‖
* In some studies participants
demonstrate conformity, in others
they don’t (Cole & Rocklin, 1985)
• Cross-cultural research indicates
that samples from Brazil, Lebanon,
China, and Portugal have
demonstrated the conformity effect
(Neto, 1990)
Take Home Message
• The inconsistency of the effect may
be an indicator of the level of
emphasis and value a culture places on
conformity
The Milgram Study
Purpose
Authority Figure
• To investigate why people in Nazi
Germany reported ―I was just
following orders‖, Milgram
designed a series of experiments to
study the causes of obedience
• A person with social power over others
* Teacher
* Police Officer
* Judge
Compliance: changing one’s
behavior because someone else asks
for the change
* President
Obedience: Changing one’s
behavior at the direct order of an
authority figure
* Doctor/Researcher
* Manager/Boss
The Milgram Study
The Milgram Study
The Milgram Study
The Milgram Study
Conclusions
• Personality research has failed to
identify one particular trait, or set
of traits, that predicts whether
people would be obedient or defiant
Why Did People Do It?
Foot-in-the-door Effect: people
may have been willing to go to
XXX, because they only increased
the shocks by small increments each
time
Social Roles
Definition
• A pattern of behavior that is expected of
a person who is in a particular social
position
Ex: college student/older sibling
Social Role
Stanford Prison Experiment
(Zimbardo, 1971)
Twenty-five years ago, a group of
psychologically healthy, normal college
students (and several presumably mentally
sound experimenters) were temporarily but
dramatically transformed in the course of
six days spent in a prison-like environment,
in research that came to be known as the
Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE; Haney,
Banks, & Zimbardo, 1973). The outcome of
our study was shocking and unexpected to
us, our professional colleagues, and the
general public.
Otherwise emotionally strong college
students who were randomly assigned
to be mock-prisoners suffered acute
psychological trauma and breakdowns.
Some of the students begged to be
released from the intense pains of less
than a week of merely simulated
imprisonment, whereas others adapted
by becoming blindly obedient to the
unjust authority of the guards. The
guards, too--who also had been
carefully chosen on the basis of their
normal-average scores on a variety of
personality measures—quickly
internalized their randomly assigned
role.
Social Roles
Many of these seemingly gentle and
caring young men, some of whom had
described themselves as pacifists or
Vietnam War "doves," soon began
mistreating their peers and were
indifferent to the obvious suffering
that their actions produced. Several of
them devised sadistically inventive
ways to harass and degrade the
prisoners, and none of the less
actively cruel mock-guards ever
intervened or complained about the
abuses they witnessed.
Most of the worst prisoner treatment
came on the night shifts and other
occasions when the guards thought
they could avoid the surveillance and
interference of the research team. Our
planned two-week experiment had to
be aborted after only six days because
the experience dramatically and
painfully transformed most of the
participants in ways we did not
anticipate, prepare for, or predict.
Topics
• Agency
• Attribution Theory
• Attitudes
• Attitude Formation
• Cognitive Dissonance
• Social Categorization
Class Survey
On a separate sheet of paper, answer
the questions using the following scale
1 = strongly agree
2 = agree
3 = neutral
4 = disagree
5 = strongly disagree
1. World hunger is a serious problem
that needs attention.
2. Our country needs to address the
growing number of homeless.
3. The right to vote is one of the most
valuable rights of American citizens.
4. Our government should spend less
money on nuclear weapons and more
on helping citizens better their lives.
Class Survey
Turn your paper over and answer
―yes‖ or ―no‖ to the questions as to
whether or not you perform the behavior
on a regular basis.
1. Do you personally do anything to
lessen world hunger (e.g., donate
money or food or write your
representative)?
2. Do you personally do anything to
help the homeless (e.g., volunteer at a
homeless shelter or donate money)?
3. Did you vote in the last election for
which you were eligible?
4. Do you personally convey your
feelings to the government (e.g., by
writing your representative or by
participating in protests/marches)?
Cognitive Dissonance
Definition
• The sense of discomfort or distress
that occurs when a person:
1. Performs a behavior that does not
correspond to his/her attitude
2. Holds two conflicting attitudes
• People are motivated to reduce the
unpleasant feelings
Reducing Cognitive Dissonance
1. Change their conflicting behavior to
make it match their attitude
2. Change their current conflicting
cognition to justify their behavior
*Change their attitudes
Attitudes
Definition
• An attitude consists of having
positive, negative or mixed feelings or
thoughts toward a person, object or
idea
• Three components
1. Affective Component
• Affect – emotions or feelings
• The emotional component of an
attitude (the way someone feels)
2. Cognitive Component
• The way a person thinks about a
person, object, or situation
• Ideas, beliefs, reasons for holding the
attitude
3. Behavioral Component
• The action (behavior) that someone
will perform based on the attitude
• Strong and weak links have been
found
Factors That Influence Behavior
Based On Attitudes
• Specificity : More specific attitudes =
more likely to act
• Strength: Stronger attitudes = more
likely to act based on attitude
Attitude Formation
Use the women that were interviewed
toward the end of the segment to answer
the following questions.
1. What were the attitudes of the women?
2. What were the affective components?
3. What were the cognitive components?
4. What were the behavioral components?
Agency and Attribution
Agency
• The extent to which people believe
they are in control of their own
actions and capable of obtaining
desired outcomes
Attribution
• The process of explaining one’s own
behavior and the behavior of others
Attribution Theory
Situational Causes: behavior can be
explained in terms the situation or
other external factors
Dispositional Causes: A person’s
internal personality characteristics are
seen as the cause of the behavior
Attribution Biases
Fundamental Attribution Error
• The tendency to overestimate the
influence of internal factors when
attributing others’ behavior while
underestimating situational factors
• People tend to explain the actions of
others based on what kind of person
they are rather than looking for
outside causes such as social influences
or situations
Why Do We Do This?
• We know all of the situational
events in our lives, but we don’t see all
the situational events of others’ lives
Cross-Cultural Comparisons
• The fundamental attribution error is not
universal
• More prevalent in individualistic
cultures
• Collectivist cultures found in China,
Hong Kong, Japan and Korea, people tend
to assume that external situational factors
are more responsible for the behavior of
other people than are internal
dispositional factors
Attribution Biases
Availability Heuristic
• The tendency to estimate the odds
that an event will occur by how easily
instances of it pop into the mind
Ex: letter r survey
Ex: Fear of plane crashes vs. fear of
driving
False-Consensus Effect
• The tendency for people to
overestimate the extent to which
others share their opinions, attributes,
and behaviors
Katz and Allport (1931): students
who cheat on a test overestimated the
number of other students who also
cheated on the test