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16
Social Psychology
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Social Psychology
Definition of Social Psychology
• Studies individuals as they interact with
others
– Aristotle: Man is by nature a social animal
– Psychologists study
• Attractions
• Needs
• Influences
– Examine within social context of situations
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Slide 2
Slide 3
Social Psychology
Groups and Social Influence
• Lynch mobs
– Racial prejudice: lynching of African Americans
– Deindividuation – anonymous, inidentifiable
feeling of group member
• Weakens restraints; are more aggressive
• Uninvolved bystanders
– Murder of Kitty Genovese in New York
– The larger the group, the less likely one will help
– Diffusion of responsibility
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Slide 4
Social Psychology
Working and
Solving Problems in Groups
• Social facilitation: being in group improves
individual performance
• Social loafing: individuals exert less effort
in group than if by themselves (slack off)
• Nature of task affects behavior
– Optimal levels of arousal
– Easy/skilled tasks performed more quickly
– Difficult/unfamiliar tasks performed more
slowly
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Slide 5
Social Psychology
Group Problem Solving
• Groupthink –
– Faulty decision-making process in groups
– President Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs invasion
– NASA’s 1986 Challenger shuttle disaster
– Causes
• Process of polarization (extreme views)
• Cohesiveness of members of the group
(likelihood highest in tightly knit groups)
• Size of the group
– Interactive dialogue vs. serial monologue
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Slide 6
Social Psychology
Conformity,
Social Roles, and Obedience
• Conformity –
– Asch experiments
• Peer and cultural expectations
• Conform for two reasons
– Gain rewards, avoid punishment
– Gain social approval, avoid disapproval
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Slide 7
Yielding to
group pressure
even when no
direct request
to comply has
been made.
A
X Y
Z
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Slide 8
Social Psychology
Conformity
– Autokinetic effect (Sherif)
• In ambiguous situation – one looks to others
for information that influences judgment
• Likelihood of conformity causes
– Size of group (increases with size)
– Unanimous groups (reduced by dissent)
– Culture and conformity
– Gender and conformity (sterotypes
changing, no longer true)
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Slide 9
Decision Model of Helping
1
Notice an event?
Yes
2
No
No
Interpret as an emergency?
Yes
3
Assume responsibility for helping?
No
Yes
4
Know how to help?
No
Yes
5
Decide to help implement intervention?
Yes
Help victim
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved
No
Do not help
Social Psychology
Social Roles and Social Norms
• Every culture has
– Social roles – expectations of behavior
– Social norms – standards for behavior in given
situations
• Zimbardo’s prison study –
– Power of social roles influencing behaviors
– Behavior changes to fit perceptions of role
• Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison scandal
– Social roles coupled with intense emotions
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Slide 10
Slide 11
Social Psychology
Obedience
• Direct influence by authority figures
– Unthinkable atrocities of WW II
– Milgram’s shock experiments
• Teacher less likely to give high voltage
shock when learner in same room
• Positive sides of groups
– Accomplish things that individuals cannot
– Can be therapeutic: emotional support, lower
stress
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Slide 12
Social Psychology
Attitudes and Persuasion
• Attitudes – beliefs that predispose one to
act or feel in certain ways
– Learned directly from experience and others
• Persuasion and attitude change
– Aristotle: persuasive arguments in oral debates
– Ads in media use persuasion to induce behavior
– Persuasion – process of changing another’s
attitudes by arguments and other related means
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Slide 13
Social Psychology
Attitudes and Persuasion
• Characteristics of Speaker
– Credibility – is speaker credible source of
information about specific argument being
presented
– Attractiveness – more effective to be
attractive, popular, famous, or likeable
– Intent – what the rationale is behind it
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Slide 14
Social Psychology
Attitudes and Persuasion
• Characteristics of the message
– Fear appeals (emotional arousal)
– Two-sided arguments (most effective)
– Message framing (how argument is presented)
• Characteristics of listeners
– Intelligence
– Need for social approval
– Self-esteem
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved
– Audience size
– Social support
Slide 15
Social Psychology
Attitudes and Persuasion
• Techniques of persuasion
– Foot-in-the-door (small request made, then
progressively larger ones)
– Low-ball
• Cognitive dissonance theory
– Explains discomfort of inconsistencies in
attitudes and behaviors
– Humans usually reduce dissonance the easiest
way possible (ie: smoking and cancer)
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Slide 16
Cognitive Dissonance
Smoking
cigarettes is
unhealthy
Unpleasant
tension
state
Smoking cigarettes
is unhealthy
I don’t smoke
cigarettes anymore
or
The research on smoking
is not conclusive
I smoke
cigarettes
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved
I smoke cigarettes
Slide 17
Social Psychology
Prejudice and Stereotypes
• Prejudice – harmful attitude based on
inaccurate generalizations (ie: group, race)
– Stereotypes: inaccurate generalizations that are
harmful for three reasons
• Reduce one’s ability to treat another as
individual
• Narrow expectations for behavior
• Lead to faulty attributions
– Attitudes lead to behaviors!!
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Slide 18
Social Psychology
Prejudice and Stereotypes
• Automatic prejudice – everyone is
prejudiced about something
• Causes of stereotypes and prejudice
– Realistic conflict (frustration from competing
with another group for scarce resources)
– Us versus them – human tendency of in-group
and out-group
– Social learning (it is taught and learned)
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Slide 19
Social Psychology
Prejudice and Stereotypes
• Combating prejudice
– Recognize prejudice
– Control automatic prejudice
– Increase contact among prejudiced groups
• Two groups must be almost equal in status
• View each other as typical of their respective
group; not the exception
• Engage in cooperative, not competitive tasks
• Contact must be informal
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Slide 20
Social Psychology
Interpersonal Attraction
• Attribution - Making judgments about what
causes people to behave the way they do
– Fundamental attribution error
• Underestimating negative impact of
situations on others
– Situational attribution –
• Blaming external cause for behavior
– Dispositional attribution
• Blaming internal motive/trait for behavior
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Slide 21
Social Psychology
Interpersonal Attraction
• Negative Information
– The bad outweighs the good – cognitive
algebra
• Chemistry of love and social bonding
– Appears people respond to sex hormones
• Androstadien (in human sweat)
• Oxytocin (in blood and brain)
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Slide 22
Social Psychology
Interpersonal Attraction
• Characteristics of the other person
– Drawn to those with similar interests
– Opposites attract – complements each other
(gives balance to relationship, avoids having
competition)
– Physical attractiveness
• attribute better qualities to beautiful people
• Most important factor in early stage meeting
• Self-fulfilling prophecy and perceptions
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Slide 23
Social Psychology
Interpersonal Attraction
• Characteristics of perceiver
– Personality traits influence person perception
• Neuroticist persons tend not to marry
– Emotions and person perception
• Positive emotions are more attractive
– Gender differences
• Men interested in falling in love
• Majority of people think romantic love is
necessary for marriage
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Slide 24
Social Psychology
Extraneous Factors
• Primacy effects
– First impressions are very important; more
weight given than to later information
• Conditions lessen impact primacy effects
– Prolonged exposure
– Passage of time
– Knowledge of primacy effects
• Cause of attraction
– Proximity
– Mutual liking
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Slide 25
Social Psychology
Relationships
• Maintaining relationships
– Balancing reality with expectations
– Shift from passionate love to companionate
love signals unfulfilled expectations
– Normal for personal changes to occur over
time
• Equity in relationships
– Equity theory
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Slide 26
Social Psychology
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The End
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved