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Unit 14:
Social Psychology
Introduction
• Social Psychology the scientific study
of how we think about, influence, and
relate to one another.
Social Thinking
Social thinking involves thinking about
others, especially when they engage in
doing things that are unexpected.
Attributing Behavior to Persons or
to Situations
• Attribution theory suggested that we have
a tendency to give causal explanations for
someone’s behavior, often by crediting either
the situation or the person’s disposition.
•
Was my friend a jerk because she had a bad day or is just a bad person
• A teacher may wonder whether a child’s
hostility reflects an aggressive personality
(dispositional attribution) or is a reaction
to stress or abuse (a situational
attribution).
The tendency to overestimate the impact of
personal disposition and underestimate the
impact of the situations in analyzing the
behaviors of others leads to the fundamental
attribution error.
Example: Someone trips you and you think they did
it on purpose because they are mean.
The Effects of Attribution
• Social Effects: Happy Couples chalk
up an argument to other person
having a bad day. Divorced couple
could attribute it to the other person
just being mean.
• Political Effects: how do we explain
poverty? Ex. Conservatives tend to
attribute social problems to the poor
and unemployed. Liberals blame past
and present situations.
• Workplace Effects managers could
attribute poor performance of
personal factors.
Effects of Attribution
How we explain someone’s behavior affects how
we react to it.
Attitudes & Actions
Attitude: A belief and feeling that predisposes a
person to respond in a particular way to objects, other
people, and events.
If we believe a person is mean, we may feel
dislike for the person and act in an
unfriendly manner.
Attitudes and Actions
–Central route persuasion attitude
change path in which interest people
focus in which interested people focus
on the arguments and respond with
favorable thoughts.
–Peripheral route persuasion attitude
change path in which people are
influenced by incidental cues, such as a
speaker’s attractiveness.
Attitudes and Actions
Actions Affect Attitudes
• The Foot-in-the-Door
Phenomenon
–“start small and build”
– the tendency for people
who have first agreed to a
small request to comply
later with a larger request.
Attitudes and Actions
Actions Affect Attitudes
• Role-Playing Affects Attitudes
–Role a set of expectations (norms) about a
social position, defining how those in the
position ought to behave.
–Stanford prison
study
–
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_LKzEqlPto
Social Influence
Conformity and Obedience
Group Pressure and Conformity
• Conformity adjusting one’s behavior or
thinking to coincide with a group standard
– Solomon Asch study
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPEDS-0jMgs
Conformity and Obedience
Group Pressure and Conformity
• Conditions That Strengthen Conformity
– One is made to feel incompetent or insecure
– Group has at least three people
– Group is unanimous
– One admires the group’s status
– One has made no prior commitment
– Others in group observe one’s behavior
– One’s culture strongly encourages respect
for social standards
Conformity and Obedience
• Reasons for Conforming
–Normative social influence resulting from a
person’s desire to gain approval or avoid
disapproval
–Informational social influence resulting
from one’s willingness to accept other’s opinions
about reality.
Conformity and Obedience
Obedience
• Obedience
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOYLCy5PVgM
–Milgram’s studies
on obedience
• Procedure
• Results
• Ethics
• Follow up studies
Conformity and Obedience
Obedience
Group Influence
Individual Behavior in the Presence of Others
• Social Facilitation stronger responses on
simple or well-learned tasks in the presence of others.
–Task difficulty
–Expertise effects
–Crowding effects
Group Influence
Individual Behavior in the Presence of Others
• Social Loafing The tendency for people in a group
to exert less effort when pooling efforts toward a common
goal than if they were individually accountable.
Group Influence
Individual Behavior in the Presence of Others
• Deindividuation
• People get swept up in a group and lose sense of self.
• Feel anonymous and aroused.
• Explains rioting behaviors.
Group Influence
Effects of Group Interaction
• Group Polarization Groups tend to make
more extreme decisions than the individual.
For example, after a group
discussion, people already
supportive of a war become
more supportive, people with
an initial tendency towards
racism become more racist
and a group with a slight
preference for one job
candidate will come out with
a much stronger preference.
Group Influence
Effects of Group Interaction
• Groupthink Group members suppress their
reservations about the ideas supported by the
group.
• They are more concerned with group harmony.
• Worse in highly cohesive groups.
–Challenger explosion
Cultural Influence
• Culture the enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes,
values, and traditions shared by a group of people
and transmitted from one generation to the next
– Culture within animals
– Culture in humans
Cultural Influence
Variations Across Cultures
• Norm an understood
rule for accepted and
expected behavior.
Norms prescribe
“proper” behavior
–Personal space
the buffer zone we
like to maintain
around our bodies
The Power of Individuals
• Social control vs personal control
• Minority
influence
Social Relations
Prejudice
How Prejudiced Are People?
• Prejudice an unjustifiable (and usually negative)
attitude toward a group and its members.
• Stereotype generalized (sometimes accurate but
often overgeneralized) belief about a group of people
• Discrimination unjustifiable negative behavior
toward a group and its members.
Prejudice
Social Roots of Prejudice
• Social Inequalities
• Us and Them: Ingroup
and Outgroup
–Ingroup “Us” – people with
whom we share a common
identity.
– Ingroup bias the tendency to
favor our own group
– Outgroup “Them” – those
perceived as different or apart
from our ingroup.
Aggression
• Aggression any physical or verbal
behavior intended to hurt or destroy.
• Frustration-aggression principle
the principle that frustration creates anger,
which can generate aggression
Biopsychosocial Understanding of
Aggression
Attraction
5 Factors of Attraction
1. Proximity
• Geographic nearness
Mere exposure effect:
• Repeated exposure
to something breeds
liking.
2. Reciprocal Liking
• You are more likely to
like someone who likes
you.
• Except in elementary
school!!!!
3. Similarity
• Paula Abdul was wrong- opposites do NOT
attract.
• Birds of the same feather do flock together.
• Similarity breeds content.
4. Liking through Association
• Classical Conditioning
can play a part in
attraction.
• I love BBQ, If I see the
same waitress every
time I go there, I may
begin to associate that
waitress with the good
feelings I get from
Larry’s.
5. Physical Attractiveness
•Physically attractiveness predicts
dating frequency (they date more).
•They are perceived as healthier,
happier, more honest and
successful than less attractive
counterparts.
Attraction
Romantic Love
–Passionate love an aroused state of intense
positive absorption in another, usually present at
the beginning of a love relationship
–Companionate love the deep affectionate
attachment we feel for those with whom our lives
are intertwined.
• Equity a condition in which people receive from a
relationship in proportion to what they give to it.
• Self-disclosure revealing intimate aspects of
oneself to others.
Altruism
• Altruism unselfish regard for the welfare of others
• Bystander Intervention
–Diffusion of responsibility
–Bystander effect the tendency for any given
bystander to be less likely to give aid if other
bystanders are present.
– Kitty Genovese
Altruism
Altruism
The Norms of Helping
• Social exchange theory the theory that our
social behavior is an exchange process, the aim of
which is to maximize benefits and minimize costs.
• Reciprocity norm an expectation that people
will help, not hurt those who have helped them.
• Social-responsibility norm an expectation
that people will help those dependent upon them.
Conflict and Peacemaking
• Conflict a perceived incompatibility of
actions, goals, or ideas.
• Social trap
a situation in which the
conflicting parties, by each rationally pursuing
their self-interest, become caught in mutually
destructive behavior.
Conflict and Peacemaking
Enemy 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.
• Self-fulfilling prophecy a belief that leads to its
own fulfillment.
The End of Unit 14
and
The END OF THE BOOK!!
YOU MADE IT!! WHOOP!!