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Social Psychology:
 Definition: This area of psychology is concerned with human
behaviour in relation to ourselves, others and groups
 Key issues:
 How we interact with others
 How we think about ourselves and others
 How we behave in groups
 Some of the main areas of social psychology:
 Proxemics: personal space and territory and
crowding
 Social cognition: ways people process information
about themselves, others, social situations and the
world around them
 Social influence: how people influence each others
actions, decisions and judgements
 Interpersonal attraction
 Cultural diversity
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Social cognition:
 Social cognition is concerned with:
 How social information is perceived interpreted and
remembered (by self and others)
 How we make inferences from what we know to
what we don’t know
 Schema: general knowledge acquired from experience about an
object, event, person or group (a set of assumptions which leads
to a framework determining how we think and behave)
 Schemata: general knowledge about roles of groups. For
example, roles of bankers, lawyers, professors.
 Scripts: general knowledge about events. For example, what
happens in particular situations such as walking into a
restaurant, bank, movie theatre, etc.
 Note: schema, schemata and scripts are resistant to change
 Assimilation: fitting incongruent information into an existing
schema.
 Accommodation: The complete revision of schema.
 Note: it is much easier for people to assimilate than to
accommodate
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 Note: although schema, schemata and scripts are resistant to
change, we are drawn to and intrigued by novel, incongruent
information.
 Clinton – lies and sex scandals
 Girls murdering girls in Victoria BC
 How information affects our schema, schemata and scripts
depends upon:
 The time we have to think about the new
information
 Our ability to understand the new information in
relation to our schema, schemata and scripts
 Our motivation to assimilate or change
(accommodate)
How we remember information:
 Primacy effect: impression weighted by early rather than by
later information
 Recency effect: impression weighted by later rather than earlier
information
 Note: the primacy effect is generally stronger than the recency
effect
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Attribution:
 Definition: The process of explaining the cause of peoples’
behaviour
 We can attribute cause as due to either internal sources
(personality) or to external sources (the situation)
 We err in the direction of paying too little attention to external
causes of behaviour when evaluating other people
(Fundamental Attribution Error)
 Why do we err like this?
 If someone is always influenced by the situation, it is
difficult to predict how they are going to behave in
other situations
 If someone behaves according to a set of internal
principles and values, we can better predict their
behaviour across situations. We like to believe that
we can pigeon hole or stereotype others.
 When do we not tend to make the fundamental attribution error?
 With ourselves: we like to think of ourselves as
being flexible and adaptive (responding to the
situation) and not as being rigid and inflexible (ruled
only by internal principles)
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 Unless of course we have done something
particularly noteworthy, in which we tend to
attribute cause internally (self serving bias)
 When in cultures that have collectivist values
Social influence:
 Definition: changing peoples attitudes and beliefs
 Belief: a perception of factual matters – what’s true and what’s
false
 Artichokes grow on trees
 Dogs have 4 legs
 Attitudes: positive or negative evaluations of things.
 Artichokes have a wonderful taste
 Dogs are friendly creatures
 Changing attitudes and beliefs:
 Central: route: logic of the argument
 Peripheral: attractiveness of the person, neatness, if
others seem similar to us, we like them and this
makes them seem believable
 Persuasive people use both central and peripheral techniques
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Group behaviour:
 Group think: tendency for all members of a group to think
alike and repress descent
 Group polarization: a group’s average decision is more
extreme than those of the individuals in the group
 Diffusion of responsibility: responsibility for action or an
outcome is spread amongst many people
 Deindividuation: individuals stop taking responsibility for their
own actions (mob – gang behaviour)
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