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Social Psychology
Chapter 13
Social Psychology
• Social Psychology:
– The scientific study of how we think about,
influence, and relate to one another
“Does her warmth reflect romantic interest, or is
that how she relates to everyone?”
“Does his absenteeism signify illness, laziness, or
stressful work atmosphere?”
• Social group: two or more individuals sharing
common goals, interacting, and influencing each
other’s behavior
Attributions
• Attribution Theory: the theory that we tend to
give a casual explanation for someone’s behavior,
often by crediting either the situation or the person’s
disposition
– Dispositional attribution: behaviors reflect
personality (internal)
– Situational attribution: behaviors reflect the
environment (external)
Often we overestimate the influence of personality
and underestimate the influence of situations
Attributions
• Fundamental Attribution Error: the tendency for observers,
when analyzing another’s behavior, to underestimate the
impact of the situation and to overestimate the impact of
personal disposition
– Even in study when told the exact opposite
– This happens less when describing our OWN behavior, however, when
watching a video of ourselves, we would more likely attribute how we
react to personality traits rather than the situation (actor-observer
bias)
– People tend to be more happy when they attribute their partner’s
behaviors by the situation rather than his/her personality
– Defensive Attribution- a tendency to blame victims for their
misfortune, so that one feels less likely to be victimized in a similar
ways
Attitudes and Actions
• Attitudes: beliefs and feelings that predisposes one
to respond in a particular way to objects, people, and
events
Although research states the opposite to be true in many
situations…. Our attitudes will guide our actions if:
1. Outside influences on what we say and do are minimal
2. The attitude is specifically relevant to the behavior
3. We are keenly aware of our attitudes
Explicit attitudes: attitudes we hold consciously & readily
describe
Implicit attitudes: covert attitudes that are expressed in subtle
automatic responses that people have little conscious control
over
Attitudes and Actions
• Elaboration Likelihood Model:
TWO main ways that are attitudes can be changed
• Central route of persuasion: the speaker uses
facts, figures, and other information so the listener
can carefully consider the information and make an
opinion….result in more stable opinions & decisions
• Peripheral route: often advertisers use superficial
information to distract the consumer to gain
favorable approval & increase sales
Process of Persuasion
• Source:
– the person who sends a communication
– Credibility is determined by trustworthiness &
expertise
• Receiver:
– the person to whom the message is sent
• Message:
– The information transmitted by the source
– Best when both sides of the argument are presented
• Channel:
– The medium through which the message is sent
Process of Persuasion
Who
What
By what means
To whom
Source factors
Message factors
Channel factors
Receiver factors
Credibility
Fear appeal versus
logic
In person
Personality
On television
or radio
Expectations (e.g.,
forewarning)
Via audiotape
Initial attitude
on issue
Expertise
Trustworthiness
Likability
Attractiveness
Similarity
One-sided versus
two-sided
argument
Number of strong
or weak arguments
Repetition
Via Internet
Via telephone
Strength of
preexisting
attitudes
Attitudes and Actions
• People also come to believe in what they have stood
up for… adjusting our beliefs to match our public acts
• Foot-in-the-door phenomenon: the tendency for
people who have first agreed to a small request to
comply later with a larger request
– Ex. Korean War
– Works for good as well as for bad actions….
– Evil shapes actions as well as acting like we like someone
will lead us to actually like them
– Reciprocity norm: obligatory feeling to maintain
connections or follow through with additional requests
after receiving a small gift or incentive from someone
Attitudes and Actions
• Role-playing ‘s affect on attitudes:
– Zimbardo’s experiment
– Greece military
Ethics in Experimentation
• American Psychological Association
1.
2.
3.
4.
Obtain INFORMED CONSENT
PROTECT from harm and discomfort
CONFIDENTIALITY of participant information
DEBRIEF: Fully explain research afterwards
Additional concerns include beneficence: maximize potential
benefits
Why do we do this?
• Cognitive dissonance: the theory that we act to
reduce the discomfort (dissonance) we feel when
two of our thoughts (cognitions) are inconsistent. For
example, when our awareness of our attitudes and
of our actions clash, we can reduce the resulting
dissonance by changing our attitudes
• We experience this most when we feel a great sense of
responsibility for engaging in behaviors of which we
personally disapprove
Changing our behavior can change how we think and
how we feel.
Social Influence
• Suicides, bomb threats, airplane hijackings,
school shootings, and UFO sightings all have a
curious tendency to come in clusters. And
these facts stem from the phenomenon that
behavior is contagious
– Chameleon effect- mimicking others’ expressions,
postures, and voice tones helps us feel what they
are feeling
– Mood linkage or contagion
Group Pressure and Conformity
• Conformity: adjusting one’s behavior of thinking to
coincide with a group standard
– Solomon Asch experiments (Ex. Line Experiment)
– Asch Principles reveal that conformity increases when
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
One is made to feel incompetent or insecure
The group has at least three people
The group is unanimous
One admires the group’s status or attractiveness
One has made no prior commitment to any response
Others in the group observe one’s behavior
One’s culture strongly encourages respect for social standards
Normative Social Influence
• Normative Social influence: influence resulting
from a person’s desire to gain approval or avoid
disapproval
– This happens when we want to avoid social
rejection or gain social approval
Informational social influence: influence resulting
from one’s willingness to accept others’ opinions
about reality
- when we are unsure of what is right, and when being right
matters, we become receptive to others’ opinions
However, individualism feeds nonconformity!!!!
Obedience
• Stanley Milgram- social psychology’s most famous
and controversial experiment
• 1000 participants in over 20 experiments
• Teachers were more likely to deliver high levels of shock when
the experimenter was perceived to be an ordinary college
students like themselves
• Most were surprised by his first experiments because the
teachers were more obedient than most people would have
expected
• Showed the impact of the misuse or manipulative use of the
foot-in-the door phenomenon
• His use of deception and stress triggered a debate over his
research ethics
– Controversial because teachers were deceived and frequently
subjected to severe stress
Group Influence
• Social Facilitation: improved performance on tasks
in the presence of others occurs with simple tasks
(more quickly and accurately) but not with tasks that
are difficult or not yet mastered (less quickly and
accurately- social impairment)….this is on individual
tasks
– Home team advantage
– Crowded performance
Group Influence
• Social Loafing: the tendency for people in a group
to exert less effort when pooling their efforts toward
attaining a common goal than when individually
accountable
– This is especially true of men in individualistic cultures
– “free riding” while still reaping the benefits
– Diminished sense of responsibility
Group Influence
• Deindividuation: the loss of self-awareness and
self-restraint occurring in group situations that foster
arousal and anonymity
– Arouses people and diminishes their sense of
responsibility
– Increases feelings of anonymity
– Whether in a mob, at a rock concert, ballgame,
worship, we become more responsive to the
group experience
Group Influence
• Group Polarization: the enhancement of a group’s
prevailing attitudes through discussion within a
group
– This is likely to occur in a groups in which
individuals share a similar opinion
- Gaps between groups widen as people who hold
similar views interact with one another
- Internet increases this through bereavement
groups, teachers, or negative group affiliation
Group Influence
• Groupthink: the mode of thinking that occurs when
the desire for harmony in a decision-making group
overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives
– The major process that operates in groupthink is group
polarization, but overconfidence, conformity, and selfjustification also play a role
– Harmonious but unrealistic because people suppress
others’ thoughts or they self-censor
– Can be deterred through leadership that welcomes various
opinions, expert critiques of plans, and looks for various
solutions to problems
Don’t Forget Individual Power
• Social control: the power of the situation
• Personal control: the power of the individual
– Commitment of individuals influences the group
• Minority influence: the power of one or two
individuals to sway the majority
– Key is commitment to the cause
– A minority opinion will not make you popular, but
it will make you influential
Social Relations
• Person Perception: the process of forming impressions of
others
• Prejudice: an unjustifiable (and usually negative) attitude
toward a group and its members. Prejudice generally involves
stereotyped beliefs, negative feelings, and a predisposition to
discriminatory action
– Unjustifiable & usually negative attitude toward a group
– It is a mixture of beliefs (often overgeneralized and called
stereotypes), emotions (hostility, envy, or fear), and
predispositions to action (to discriminate)
• Discrimination: behaving differently, usually unfairly, toward
the members of a group
• Stereotypes: a generalized (sometimes accurate but often
overgeneralized) belief about a group of people
How prejudiced are people?
• To find this out must look at what people say and do.
• Prejudice can be subtle and unconscious (p. 715):
-(Anthony Greenwald et al., 1998)
-(Kent Harber, 1998)
-(Correll et al, 2002 & Greenwald et al., 2003)
• Public
Social Roots of Prejudice
• Social Inequalities: Justification of their status
– Illusory correlation: occurs when people estimate that they have
encountered more confirmations of an association between social
traits than they have actually seen
• Ethnocentrism: belief that own culture is better than
another
• Us & Them: Ingroup & Outgroup
– Social identities cause us to align with certain groups
• Ingroup: “Us”- people with whom one shares a
common identity
– Ingroup bias- the tendency to favor one’s own
group
• Outgroup: “Them”- those perceived as different or
apart form one’s ingroup (out-group homogeneity)
Social Roots of Prejudice
• Scapegoating
– Scapegoating theory: The theory that prejudice
offers an outlet for anger by providing someone to
blame
• Not only allows people to justify their anger but also
boosts ingroup self-esteem and self-worth
Cognitive Roots of Prejudice
• Categorization
– More sensitive to differences within our group than in
other groups
• Vivid Cases
– Vivid violent cases are readily available to our memory
and therefore influence our judgments of a group
• The Just-World Phenomenon
– Just-world phenomenon: the tendency of people to
believe the world is just and that people therefore get
what they deserve and deserve what they get…good is
rewarded and evil is punished
– Ex. Experiments were people receive shocks, viewers think
less of them
Aggression
• The most destructive force in our social relation is
aggression
• Aggression: any physical or verbal behavior
intended to hurt or destroy; whether actively or
proactively
– Vicious rumors, verbal assault, attacker mugs you
– Within the US, there is more chance of being
murder than outside of the US; thus aggression
varies from culture to culture
Biology of Aggression
• Genetic Influences
– Animal breeding for aggression & the Y chromosome
• Neural Influences
– Electrodes in the amygdala
– Damaged frontal lobes
• Biochemical Influences
– Hormones, alcohol, and other substances influence the
control aggression
– Aggressive behavior is most likely to be increased by
injections of testosterone and increased by consumption
of alcohol
Aggression
• Instrumental Aggression: purpose behind these
actions are to satisfy some goal or benefit in some
way
• Hostile Aggression: actions that result when a
person feels pain, anger, or frustration
Psychology of Aggression
• Frustration-aggression principle: the principle
that frustration-the blocking of an attempt to achieve
some goal-creates anger, which can generate
aggression
– Other aversive stimuli- physical pain, personal insults, foul
odors, hot temperatures, cigarette smoke, etc. can evoke
hostility
– Learning to Express and Inhibit
– Sexual Aggression and the Media
– TV violence, pornography, society
Psychology of Aggression
• Learning to Express and Inhibit
– Our reactions are more likely to be aggressive in
situations where experience has taught us that
aggression pays
• Can be learned through direct rewards and observation
– Children who are aggressive are disciplined with aggression &
rewarded for tantrums
• Different cultures model, reinforce, and evoke different
tendencies
• High violence rates are found in cultures and families
that experience minimal father care
Psychology of Aggression
• Sexual Aggression & the Media
– Rise of home videos, ex. X-rated videos depict quick,
casual sex btwn strangers, scenes of rape and sexual
exploitation are also common
– Over hundreds of thousands of for-profit pornography
sites
– “rape myth”
– Watching X-rated films makes one’s own partner seem less
attractive
– Media that portrays sexual aggression as pleasurable for
victim increases accepts of aggression in relationships
Psychology of Aggression
• TV Violence, Pornography, and Society
– Dominance motives
– Disinhibition by alcohol
– History of child abuse
- Social scripts: cultural play-by-play of situations
that we are unfamiliar
- Ex. Teens watching multiple sexual innuendos and acts
in primetime TV hours
- Ex. Teen smoking increased after presented in movies
again
• Do video games teach or release violence?
– Increases aggressive thoughts, emotions, and behaviors
Conflict
• Conflict: a perceived incompatibility of actions, goals, or
ideas
• Social Traps: a situation in which the conflicting parties,
by each rationally pursuing their self-interest, become caught
in mutually destructive behavior
– Ex. Operating fuel-inefficient cars despite warnings of its
negative impact on the environment
Enemy Perceptions
- When individuals demonize each other so similarly that it
is known as mirror-image perceptions
- Ex. Sally views her friend as angry because she is quiet but
her friend doesn’t want to talk to her because she thinks
she is angry, which feeds the quietness
Psychology of Attraction
• Interpersonal Attraction: positive feelings towards another
• Proximity
– Proximity: geographic nearness, is the most powerful
predictor of friendship
– Breeds liking, because increased exposure to novel stimuli
increasing liking which is known as mere exposure effect
• Physical Attractiveness
– Predicts their frequency of dating, their feelings of popularity, and
others’ initial impressions of their personalities
– Perceive attractive people to be healthier, happier, more sensitive,
more successful, more socially skilled…..but not more honest or
compassionate
– not related to self-esteem and happiness, because most people don’t
consider themselves unattractive
– attractive people do not view praise as genuine
Psychology of Attraction
• Cultural Perception of Beauty
- Beauty is influenced by place and time
- Americans spend more money on beauty supplies than
education and social services combined yet since 1970 the
number of women unhappy with their appearance has
substantially increased
- Across cultures- men want women with youthful look/
women want men who look healthy & seem mature,
dominant and affluent
- People everywhere prefer noses, legs, physique that are not
unusually small or large….and average faces are more
attractive
- As you see someone again and again physical imperfections
lessen and attractiveness grows
Psychology of Attraction
• Similarity
– We tend not to like dissimilar people
• Matching hypothesis: proposes that males and females
of approximately equal physical attractiveness are likely
to select each other as partners
– Similarity breeds content
– We like people more who like us
Overall, we are attracted to and have relationships with
people who overall have less COST involved with the
maintenance of the relationship
Psychology of Attraction
• Romantic Love
– Passionate Love: an aroused state of intense
positive absorption in another, usually present at
the beginning of a love relationship
– TWO-FACTOR Theory of emotion:
1. emotions: physical arousal & cognitive appraisal
2. arousal from any source can enhance emotion
Ex. Being aroused by fright, exercise, listening to
humor, or exposure to erotic material makes us
more attracted to someone
Psychology of Attraction
• Companionate Love
– Companionate love: the deep affectionate attachment we
feel for those with whom our lives are intertwined
Key factors to Gratifying and Enduring Relationships
1. Equity: a condition in which people receive from a
relationship in proportion to what they give to it
2. Self-disclosure: revealing intimate aspects of oneself to
others
self-disclosure breeds liking and liking breeds self-disclosure
Given self-disclosure, intimacy ,plus mutually supportive
equality, the odds favor enduring companionate love
Altruism
• Altruism: unselfish regard for the welfare of others
– Kitty Genovese
– Bystander Intervention
Bystander effect: the tendency for any given
bystander to be less likely to give aid if other
bystanders are present
- In K. G. situation bystanders failed to assume personal
responsibility for helping the victim
- Also, people are less likely to help if they have been
exposed to similar situations before
Altruism
• The best odds of helping occur when:
– We have just observed someone else being
helpful
– We are not in a hurry
– The victim appear to need and deserve help
– The victim is in some way similar to us
– We are in a small town or rural area
– We are feeling guilty
– We are focused on others and not preoccupied
– We are in a good mood
The Psychology 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: meeting the expectation that we should
help someone who has helped us
– Social responsibility norm: meeting the expectation that
we should help those who need it even if it outweighs the
costs
People who attend religious services weekly given twice the
amount of time in helping the poor and give away three
times the amount of money
Peacemaking
• Cooperation
– Contact theory: equal status cooperative interaction bwtn
antagonistic groups
• Ex. Jigsaw classroom
– Superordinate goals: shared goals that override differences
among people and require their cooperation
– Sherif experiment
– Solidarity against external threat
• Communication
– Mediators are important especially in
• Conciliation- GRIT
G:graduated R:reciprocated I:Initiatives T: Tension-Reduction
Practice Test
Stereotypes:
a. Are often automatic products of normal
cognitive processes
b. Are widely held beliefs that people have
certain characteristics because of their
membership in a particular group
c. Are equivalent to prejudice
d. Both a and b
Practice Test
You believe that short men have a tendency to be
insecure. The concept of illusory correlation implies
that you will
a. Overestimate how often short men are insecure
b. Underestimate how often short men are insecure
c. Overestimate the frequency of short men in the
population
d. Falsely assume that shortness in men causes
insecurity
Practice Test
A father suggests that his son’s low marks in school are
due to the child’s laziness. The father has made a(n)
___________ attribution.
a. External
b. Internal
c. Situational
d. High consensus
Practice Test
Bob explains his failing grade on a term paper by saying
that he really didn’t work very hard at it. According
to Weiner’s model, Bob is making an ____________
attribution about his failure
a.
b.
c.
d.
internal-stable
Internal-unstable
External-stable
External-unstable
Practice Test
The fundamental attribution error refers to the
tendency of :
a. Observers to favor external attributions in
explaining the behavior
b. Observers to favor internal attributions in explaining
the behavior of others
c. Actors to favor external attributions in explaining
the behavior of others
d. Actors to favor situational attributions in explaining
their own behavior
Practice Test
According to Hazan and Shaver (1987):
a. Romantic relationships in adulthood follow the
same form as attachment relationships in infancy
b. Those who had ambivalent attachments in infancy
are doomed never to fall in love as adults
c. Those who had avoidant attachments in infancy
often overcompensate by becoming excessively
intimate in their adult love relationships
d. All of the above
Practice Test
Cross-cultural similarities are most likely to be found in
which of the following areas:
a.
b.
c.
d.
What people look for in perspective mates
The overall value of romantic love
Passionate love as a prerequisite for marriage
The tradition of prerarranged marriages
Practice Test
Covert attitudes that are expressed in subtle automatic
responses over which we have little conscious
control are called ___________ attitudes.
a.
b.
c.
d.
Ambivalent
Automatic
Implicit
subtle
Practice Test
Cognitive dissonance theory predicts that after people
engage in counter-attitudinal behavior, they will:
a. Convince themselves they really didn’t perform the
behavior
b. Change their attitude to make it more consistent
with their behavior
c. Change their attitude to make it less consistent with
their behavior
d. Do nothing
Practice Test
The elaboration likelihood model of attitude change
suggests that:
a. The peripheral route results in more enduring
attitude change
b. The central route results in more enduring attitude
change
c. Only the central route to persuasion can be
effective
d. Only the peripheral route to persuasion can be
effective
Practice Test
The results of Milgram’s (1963) study imply that:
a. In the real world, most people will refuse to follow
orders to inflict harm on a stranger
b. Many people will obey an authority figure even if
innocent people get hurt
c. Most people are willing to give obviously wrong
answers when ordered to do so
d. Most people stick to their own judgment, even
when group members unanimously disagree
Practice Test
According to Latane’ (1981), social loafing is due to:
a. Social norms that stress the importance of positive
interactions among group members
b. Duplication of effort among group members
c. Diffusion of responsibility in groups
d. A bias toward making internal attributions about
the behavior of others
Practice Test
Groupthink occurs when members of a cohesive group:
a. are initially unanimous about an issue
b. Stress the importance of caution in group decision
making
c. Emphasize concurrence at the expense of critical
thinking in arriving at a decision
d. Shift toward a less extreme position after group
discussion
Practice Test
Discrimination:
a. Refers to a negative attitude toward members of a
group
b. Refers to unfair behavior toward the members of a
group
c. Is the same thing as prejudice
d. All of the above
Practice Test
The foot-in-the-door technique involves asking people
to agree to a _______ request first to increase the
likelihood that they will comply with a _______
request later.
a.
b.
c.
d.
large; small
Small; large
Large; large
Large; larger