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Introducing Social Psychology
CHAPTER 1
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What Is Social Psychology?


At the heart of social psychology is social influence.
Social influence:
 The
effect that the words, actions, or mere presence of
other people have on our thoughts, feelings, attitudes,
or behavior

Scientific study of the way in which people’s
thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by
the real or imagined presence of other people.
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Social Psychology, Philosophy, Science,
and Common Sense

Social psychology versus philosophy
 Address
 But

many of the same questions
social psych explores scientifically
Social psychology versus common sense

Common sense = folk wisdom
 Social
psychologists predict behavior by forming
hypotheses and testing them scientifically
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Social Psychology versus Personality
Psychology

Personality Psychology
 Focus
on individual differences
 Aspects
of people’s personalities that make them different
from others
 Ignores
the powerful role played by social influence
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Social Influence on Behavior
Personality psychologists study qualities of the individual that might make a person shy, conventional, rebellious,
and willing to wear a turquoise wig in public or a yellow shirt in a sea of blue. Social psychologists study the
powerful role of social influence on how all of us behave.
Source: Glow Images
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Social Psychology versus Other
Social Sciences

Difference in level of analysis

Other social sciences


concerned with how broad social, economic, political, and
historical factors influence events in a given society
Social psychology

the level of analysis is the individual in the context of a social
situation
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Social Psychology versus Sociology

Level of analysis
 Sociology
 Focus
 Social
on society at large
psychology
 Focus
on the individual in the context of a social situation
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The Influence of Groups on Individuals
The people in this photo can be studied from a variety of perspectives: as individuals or as
members of a family, a social class, an occupation, a culture, or a region. Sociologists study the
group or institution; social psychologists study the influence of those groups and institutions on
individual behavior.
Source: Paul Chesley/National Geographic Creative
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The Goal of Social Psychology (1 of 2)

Goal of social psychology
 Identify
universal properties of human nature that make
everyone susceptible to social influence, regardless of
social class or culture
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The Goal of Social Psychology (2 of 2)

Goal of sociology
 Identify
why a particular society or group within a
society produces behavior (e.g., aggression) in its
members
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Table 1.1
Social Psychology Compared to Related Disciplines
Sociology
Social Psychology
The study of groups,
The study of the
organizations, and societies, psychological processes
rather than individuals.
people have in common that
make them susceptible to
social influence.
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Personality Psychology
The study of the
characteristics that make
individuals unique and
different from one another.
The Power of the Situation
1.2 Why does it matter how people explain and
interpret events—and their own and others’
behavior?
The Importance of Explanation

Fundamental attribution error (FAE)
 The
tendency to explain other people’s behavior
entirely in terms of personality traits
 Underestimating
the power of social influence
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Underestimating the Power of Social
Influence (1 of 2)

When we underestimate the power of social
influence, we gain a feeling of false security.
 Increases
personal vulnerability to possibly destructive
social influence
 Lulls
us into lowering our guard
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Underestimating the Power of Social
Influence (2 of 2)

By failing to fully appreciate the power of the
situation, we tend to
 Oversimplify
 Decrease
complex situations
our understanding of the true causes
 Blame
the victim when people are overpowered by
social forces
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Figure 1.1
Why the Name of the Game Matters
In this experiment, when the name of the game was the “Community Game,” players were far more likely to behave cooperatively
than when it was called the “Wall Street Game”—regardless of their own cooperative or competitive personality traits. The game’s
title conveyed social norms that trumped personality and shaped the players’ behavior.
(Adapted from Liberman, Samuels, & Ross, 2004)
Source: Vacclav/Shutterstock
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The Importance of Interpretation (1 of 2)

We are constantly interpreting things
 How
humans will behave in a given situation is not
determined by the objective conditions of a situation
but rather how they perceive it (construal).
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The Importance of Interpretation (2 of 2)

Behaviorism: A school of psychology maintaining
that to understand human behavior, one need
consider only reinforcing effects of environment
 Chooses
 ignores
not to deal with cognition, thinking, & feeling
construals of the situation
 Inadequate
for understanding the social world!
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Subjectivity of the Social Situation

Emphasis on construal, the way people interpret the
social situation, has its roots in Gestalt psychology
Gestalt Psychology
A school of psychology stressing the importance of studying the
subjective way in which an object appears in people’s minds (the
gestalt or “whole”) rather than the objective, physical attributes of
the object
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Gestalt Psychology (1 of 2)

Founded in Germany
 Formulated
by German psychologists in the early 20th
century
 Late
1930s, several of these psychologists emigrated to
the U.S. to escape Nazi regime
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Gestalt Psychology (2 of 2)

Among the émigrés was Kurt Lewin
 Founding
father of modern experimental social
psychology
 Applied
Gestalt principles to social perception
 Stressed
the importance of taking perspective of
the people in any social situation to see how they
construe social environment
Kurt Lewin
(1890-1947)
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The Construal of “Naive Realism”
Research by social psychologists on construal shows why negotiation between nations can
be so difficult: Each side thinks that it sees the issues clearly but that the other side is
“biased.”
Source: Shawn Thew/EPA/Newscom
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Where Construals Come From:
Basic Human Motives
1.3 What happens when people’s need to feel
good about themselves conflicts with their need
to be accurate?
Two Central Motives


Construals shaped by two basic human motives:
1.
The need to be accepted
2.
The need to feel good about ourselves
Motives may tug in opposite directions
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Edward Snowden: Traitor or Patriot?
This is Edward Snowden, a former computing contractor for the National Security Agency. Snowden’s release in
2013 of thousands of classified documents related to the U.S. government’s surveillance programs led the
Department of Justice to charge him with espionage. Some have argued that Snowden is a spy, a traitor, and a
criminal who should be brought back to the United States from his asylum in Russia to face trial. Others view him
as a whistleblower, a patriot, and a hero fighting to protect privacy rights and inform the American public of
what its government is up to (in fact, here you see him pictured receiving a German peace prize, a prize he was
only able to accept via Skype). Each side is sure that they are right. Where do differing construals come from,
and what are their consequences?
Source: Thomas Kienzle/EPA/Newscom
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The Self-Esteem Motive: The Need to Feel
Good About Ourselves
Self-Esteem
People’s evaluations of their own self-worth; the extent to which they
view themselves as good, competent, and decent


Most people have a strong need to maintain reasonably
high self-esteem.
People will often distort the world in order to feel good
about themselves instead of representing the world
accurately.
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Suffering and Self-Justification (1 of 2)

The more unpleasant the procedure the participants
underwent to get into a group, the better they liked
the group
1.
Human beings are motivated to maintain a positive
picture of themselves, in part by justifying their past
behavior
2.
Under certain conditions, this leads them to do things
that at first glance might seem surprising or
paradoxical
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Suffering and Self-Justification (2 of 2)

The more unpleasant the procedure the participants
underwent to get into a group, the better they liked
the group
 For
example, they might prefer people and things for
whom they have suffered to people and things they
associate with ease and pleasure
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Hazing: Hazardous but Cohesive
These first-year students are being “welcomed” to their university by seniors who subject them to
hazing. Doing silly or dangerous things as part of a hazing ritual may be, well, silly or dangerous.
At the same time, it does build cohesiveness.
Source: Newscom
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The Social Cognition Motive:
The Need to Be Accurate

Social cognition motive
 Takes
into account how people think about the world
 We
try to gain accurate understandings so we can make
effective judgments and decisions
 But
we typically act on the basis of incompletely and
inaccurately interpreted information
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Social Cognition

Social Cognition = How people think about themselves and
the social world; how people select, interpret, remember, & use
social information to make judgments and decisions
people as “amateur sleuths” doing their best to
understand and predict their social world.
 views
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Cereal Box Short-Cuts
We rely on a series of expectations and other mental short-cuts in
making judgments about the world around us, from important life
decisions to which cereal to buy at the store, a conclusion with which
advertisers and marketers are very well aware.
Source: Felix Choo/Alamy
Lenscap/Alamy
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Expectations About the Social World


Our expectations can even change the nature of the
social world
Self-fulfilling prophecy
 Rosenthal
& Jacobson (1968/2003) found that a
teacher who expects certain students to do well may
cause those students to do better
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Expectations About the Social World

How does such a self-fulfilling prophecy come about?

Teachers expecting specific students to perform will often

pay more attention to them.

listen to them with more respect.

call on them more frequently.

encourage them.

try to teach them more challenging material.
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Expectations About
the Social World (2 of 2)

How does such a self-fulfilling prophecy come
about?
 This,
in turn, helps these students feel
 happier.
 more
respected.
 more
motivated.
 smarter.
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Vlog #18 - Self-Fulfilling Prophecy ~
Nerdwriter 1
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Social Psychology
and Social Problems (1 of 2)
Why study social influence?
1.
We are curious.
2.
Some social psychologists contribute to the solution of
social problems.
Today, social psychologists’ interest in how people think, feel,
and act in social environments leads to research designed to
study behavioral tendencies on Facebook, Twitter, and across
other platforms, sites, and apps.
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Social Psychology
and Social Problems (2 of 2)

Social psychological theories about human behavior
have been applied to a range of contemporary
problems, including:

Prejudice

Energy shortages

AIDS

Unhealthy habits

Violence in schools
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Is TV Violence Tied to Aggression?
Social psychology can help us study social problems and find ways to solve them. Social
psychologists might study whether children who watch violence on television become more
aggressive themselves—and, if so, what kind of intervention might be beneficial.
Source: Villerot/Age Fotostock
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The Importance of Being
Scientifically Grounded

When recommending interventions, it is imperative
to act on the basis of scientifically grounded
theories
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Discussion Question Follow-up

In this chapter you read about the fundamental
attribution error (FAE). How might understanding the
FAE help you do a better job predicting the future
behavior of those around you?
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Summary and Review




Defined social psychology
Differentiate social psychology from philosophy,
common sense, and related disciplines
The power of the situation in explaining and
interpreting events
Construal of situations affected by need to feel
good about ourselves and need to be accurate
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