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Chapter 15
4th Edition
Social Psychology:
The Individual in
Society
Copyright 2004 - Prentice Hall
15-1
Social Psychology and Culture
• Social psychology examines the causes, types,
and consequences of human interaction.
• Cultural differences, such as individualism (in
which the individual's goals are most important)
versus collectivism (in which group goals are
most important), can influence the results of
social psychological research.
• Researchers need to avoid ethnocentrism
(viewing other cultures as inferior extensions of
their own).
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How We View Others
• Impression formation requires an actor
and a perceiver.
• The views of the perceiver, as well as the
appearance and behaviors of the actor,
influence the impression of the actor that
is formed by the perceiver.
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How We View Others
• Stereotypes are negative or positive sets
of beliefs about members of particular
groups.
• Stereotypes reduce the amount of
information that must be processed.
• Stereotypes are very resistant to change
because we tend selectively to notice
behaviors that confirm our stereotypes.
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How We View Others
• Our treatment of other people is prompted
by our stereotypes
• Prompting often brings forth the very
behaviors that we associate with our
stereotypes of those people.
• Some self-disclosure fosters a positive
impression, but excessive self-disclosure
early in a relationship may result in a
negative first impression.
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How We View Others
• The process of attribution involves
deciding why certain events occurred and
why certain people behaved as they did.
• With internal attributions, behavior is seen
as being caused by factors that reside
within a person.
• With external attributions, the causes of
behavior are viewed as residing outside an
individual.
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How We View Others
• We are more confident in our attributions
when behaviors are consistent and have
also been witnessed by others.
• The fundamental attribution error occurs
when internal factors are emphasized to
the exclusion of external or situational
factors.
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How We View Others
• Perceivers' attributions may be biased
toward internal attributions.
• Actors are biased toward external
attributions, especially when failure is
involved.
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How We View Others
• Attitudes are evaluative judgments (negative,
positive, or neutral) that are formed about
people, places, and things.
• Affect, cognition, and behavior are the three
components of an attitude.
• Discrimination consists of behaviors directed at
members of a particular group that affect them
adversely.
• Attitudes can serve ego-defensive, adjustment,
and knowledge functions.
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How We View Others
• Attitudes can be
measured by
Likert scales and
evaluation of
observed behaviors.
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Interpersonal Relationships
• Attraction is the
extent to which we
like or dislike other
people.
• Attraction is
determined by
proximity, affect and
emotions,
reinforcement and
similarity.
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Interpersonal Relationships
• Friendship is a form of interpersonal attraction
that involves a set of unwritten rules.
• Passionate love is characterized by strong
emotional reactions, sexual desire, and
fantasies.
• Companionate love is characterized by a longterm relationship and commitment.
• Several other types of love have been proposed.
• Sex roles can influence the love relationship.
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Interpersonal Relationships
• Interdependence theory takes into account the
costs and rewards in a relationship.
• Each person develops a comparison level (CL),
or expected outcome, for the relationship.
• Dissatisfaction occurs when the outcomes of the
relationship fall below the CL
• People leave a relationship when the outcomes
fall below their CLs for other relationships.
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Interpersonal Relationships
• Prosocial behavior benefits society or
helps others.
• Altruism occurs when a person helps
others with no thought of reward.
• Because it is difficult to prove that no
reward is present when a person behaves
altruistically, the genuineness of this
behavior has been questioned.
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Interpersonal Relationships
• The bystander effect
refers to the fact that
people are less likely to
provide assistance in an
emergency when others
are present than when
they are alone.
• The bystander effect is
attributable to potential
embarrassment, fear of
failure, and diffusion of
responsibility.
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Interpersonal Relationships
• Aggression is any behavior that is performed
with the intent of doing harm.
• Hostile aggression occurs when the goal is
specifically to harm another individual.
• Instrumental aggression occurs when someone
hurts another person in the pursuit of another
goal-for example, during a robbery.
• Biological views stress the inherited nature of
aggressive behaviors.
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Interpersonal Relationships
• The frustration-aggression hypothesis
predicts that frustration, or being blocked
from attaining a goal, results in
aggression.
• In addition to frustration, the presence of
anger and certain cues may be necessary
for aggression to occur.
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Interpersonal Relationships
• Physical and verbal attacks, as well as adverse
environmental conditions, may also elicit
aggressive behavior.
• A high level of general arousal can facilitate
aggressive responding.
• Current statistics underestimate the prevalence
of sexual aggression directed toward women.
• Viewing of pornography is positively related to
sexual aggression.
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Interpersonal Relationships
• Many incidents of rape can be classified
as date or acquaintance rape.
• Date rape appears to result from
misperceptions, especially on the part of
men, about the acceptability of sexual
relations in certain situations.
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Social Influences on Behavior
• The use of social influence to cause other
people to change their attitudes and
behaviors defines persuasion.
• The expertise, attractiveness, and
trustworthiness of the source of a
message are important determinants of
persuasion.
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Social Influences on Behavior
• The most persuasive messages are those
that;
– attract attention,
– draw conclusions (If the audience is passively
involved),
– differ only moderately from the attitudes of the
audience,
– are the last message heard (if action is
required immediately),
– are presented on a one-to-one basis.
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Social Influences on Behavior
• Naive audiences that are unaware of the
intent of persuasive messages are more
likely to be influenced by these messages.
• If the audience has previously been
exposed to a mild form of the persuasive
message, persuasion will be more difficult.
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Social Influences on Behavior
• Obedience is the initiating or changing of
behavior in response to a direct command.
• In cases in which obedience will result in
harm to another person, obedience
increases with proximity to the source of
the commands but decreases with
proximity to the victim.
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Social Influences on Behavior
• If the source of the
commands takes
responsibility for any
harm resulting from
obedience to those
commands, the
likelihood of
obedience is high.
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Social Influences on Behavior
• Conformity results from indirect pressure
on an individual to change his or her
behaviors and thoughts.
• The authority behind these pressures is
less obvious than in cases of obedience.
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Social Influences on Behavior
• Selecting the
matching line seems
simple!
• However, one-third of
Asch’s participants
chose incorrectly to
conform with the
group.
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Social Influences on Behavior
• Compliance refers to behavior that is
initiated or changed as a result of a
request.
• The compliance technique known as
reciprocity involves doing something for
someone else to make that person feel
obligated to do something in return.
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The Individual and The Social Group
• Prejudice is judging others solely on the basis of
their group membership.
• Stereotypes about the members of certain
groups are an integral part of prejudice.
• Prejudice may be reduced through contact
among members of different groups.
• Such contact is most effective where status is
equal and common goals are being pursued
• Discrimination consists of behaviors directed at
members of a particular group that affect them
adversely.
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