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What is Social Psychology?
 Social Psychology: Scientific study of how individuals
behave, think, and feel in social situations; how
people act in the presence (actual or implied) of
others
 Culture: Ongoing pattern of life that is passed from
one generation to another
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Social Roles
 Social Role: Patterns of behavior expected of
people in various social positions (e.g.
daughter, mother, teacher, President)
 Ascribed Role: Assigned to a person or not under
personal control (son, daughter)
 Achieved Role: Attained voluntarily or by special
effort (parent, teacher, mayor, President)
 Role Conflict: When two or more roles make
conflicting demands on behavior
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Groups
 Group Structure: Network of roles,
communication, pathways, and power in a group
 Group Cohesiveness: Degree of attraction among
group members or their commitment to
remaining in the group
 Cohesive groups work better together
 Status: Level of social power and importance
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Group Dynamics
 In-groups – groups to which we belong, we
tend to favor
 For example, I (as you know) am a democrat. I think
democrats rock.
 And I think teachers are cool too!
 Out-groups – groups to which we do not
belong, we tend to attribute negative
qualities to out-groups
 I often think…grrr, what are those tea-partiers
up to now.
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Group Dynamics
 Group polarization – like minded people sharing ideas
result in a more extreme position for every individual of
the group
 Groupthink (Irving Janis) Groups make bad decisions,
members suppress their reservations. You want
maintain each other’s approval, even at the cost of
critical thinking, not wanting to “rock the boat” causes
members to disregard suggestions of discontent or
disagreement.
 We passively comply with the consensus.
 Bay of Pigs Invasion under Kennedy great example
 Student Council decisions: like dance themes or events they
host
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Group Dynamics
 Group Sanctions: Rewards and punishments
administered by groups to enforce conformity
( laughter, staring)
 Unanimity: Unanimous agreement (having at
least one person in your corner can greatly
reduce your urge to conform, and secure your
opposition/ Jury room)
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Group Dynamics
 Social loafing – the tendency of individuals to put less
effort into group projects than when they are
individually accountable
 Hello, remember your last group project in class!
 Social facilitation – improved performance of welllearned tasks in front of others
 A coach’s dream
 Social impairment - decreased performance of a
newly learned task in front of others
 A coach’s nightmare
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Norms & Groups Behavior
 Norm: Accepted, but usually unspoken,
standard of appropriate behavior
 The functioning of any group is greatly
affected by its norms.
 Does the amount of trash already
discarded in an area affect the likelihood
that people will add to the litter?
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Fig. 20.1 Results of an experiment on norms concerning littering. The prior existence of litter in a public
setting implies that littering is acceptable. This encourages others to “trash” the area. (From Cialdini, Reno,
& Kallgren, 1990.)
Littering Anyone?
 Seeing others had littered implied a lax
norm about whether littering was
acceptable
 The cleaner the public is kept, the less it
will need cleaned
 Cialdini, Reno, & Kallgren, 1990
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Personal Space
 Personal Space -Area surrounding the
body that is defined as private and is
subject to personal control
 Proxemics: Systematic study of human
use of personal space, especially in
social settings
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Spatial Norms
1. Intimate Distance: Most private space
immediately surrounding the body; 18 inches
from the skin. Reserved for special people or
special circumstances
2. Personal Distance: Maintained in interactions
with friends. 18 inches to 4 feet from body;
arm’s length
3. Social Distance: Impersonal business & casual
interaction takes place; 4 to 12 feet
4. Public Distance: Formal interactions take place;
12 feet or more /for meetings and speeches
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Fig. 20.2 Typical spatial zones (in feet) for face-to-face interactions in North America. Often, we must stand
within intimate distance of others in crowds, buses, subways, elevators, and other public places. At such
times, privacy is maintained by avoiding eye contact, by standing shoulder to shoulder or back to back, and
by positioning a purse, bag, package, or coat as a barrier to spatial intrusions.
Attitudes
Attitudes – learned predispositions
to respond favorably or unfavorably
to certain people, objects, and
event
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Mere Exposure Effect
 Mere Exposure Effect - Repeated exposure to
novel stimuli increases our liking of them
 EX) Hear a new song on the radio, don’t initially like
it. But a week later after hearing it over and over on
the radio you love it!
 Walk into the supermarket, you are most likely to
buy the brand of spaghetti sauce you have seen
advertised the most
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Mere Exposure Effect
 There mere exposure effect works for human faces as well and
promotes fondness for the people with whom we spend time
Two researchers (Moreland & Beach) demonstrated the
mere exposure effect by enrolling 4 women, all whom were judged
equally attractive, in 1 200-student college class.
 First never attended class
 Second went 5 times
 Third 10 times
 Fourth attended 15 classes
 After the course ended, students judged who they felt was most
attractive
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Mere Exposure Effect
 The students judged the woman who had attended
most often as the most attractive
 Why?
 Our ancestors benefited from the mere exposure
effect. Familiar faces were less likely to be
dangerous or threatening than unfamiliar faces.
Some researchers believe we are born with a
tendency to bond with those who are familiar to us,
and to be leery of those we don’t know.
 (evolutionary instinct, if we have been around them
and they have posed no threat, we like or trust them
more)
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Persuasive Messages, Attitudes
and Change
 Elaboration likelihood model (ELM) – attitudinal change
through two possible routes
 Central route of persuasion – relatively stable change in attitude by
carefully scrutinizing facts, statistics, and other information
 Peripheral route – pairs superficial positive factors (prof athletes,
supermodels & celebrities) with an argument leading to a less
stable change in attitude
 Proactive works, Adam Levine
uses it and he is hot! I should use
Proactive too.
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Persuasive Messages, Attitudes
and Change
 Informational social influence –our willingness to
accept others’ opinions about reality, especially under
conditions of uncertainty
 “That’s what she said”
 Normative social influence – going along with the
decisions of the group in order to gain its social
approval
 don’t rock the boat mentality
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Social Perception
 Social cognition – the way we gather, use,
and interpret information about the social
world
 Just-world phenomenon – tendency to
believe in fairness, that people get what they
deserve
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Attribution – why people behave the
way they do
Attribution theory- a way to
understand how people explain
other’s behavior
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Attribution – how do we asses
other’s behavior?
Situational Factors: environmental stimuli
(factors) that affect a person’s behavior
 Like knowing someone is watching you
 My dog ate my homework
Dispositional factors – individual personality
characteristics that affect a person’s behavior
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More Attribution Concepts
Fundamental Attribution Error Tendency to attribute behavior
of others to internal, personal causes (personality, motives, and
traits)
 We assume a friend is late because they are terrible at managing their
time while Ignoring any external or situational causes (late because
they were stuck behind a bus),
Actor-observer bias - Tendency to attribute OUR behavior to
external causes (situations & circumstances) while attributing
OTHERS’ to individual personality characteristics (dispositional)
Self-serving bias – to take personal (dispositional) credit for
our successes and blame our failures on situational factors
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Affiliation- The need to affiliationCome Together
 Need to Affiliate: Desire to associate with
other people; appears to be a basic human
trait
 Social Comparison: Making judgments
about ourselves by comparing ourselves
to others. E.g. comparing our feelings and
abilities to those of other people
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Social Comparison
 Downward Comparison: Comparing yourself with someone who
ranks lower than you on some area
 (e.g. money, attractiveness, grade on a quiz)
 An in instant self-esteem booster, “Mean Girl” style: “OMG, her
dress is sooo ugly!”
 You got a C on a quiz, you friend says they got an F. You think a
C isn’t so bad
 Upward Comparison: Comparing ourselves to someone who
ranks higher than we do on some area; may be used for selfimprovement (something we strive for)
 Gosh, if I could just get a 33 like (insert name)
on the ACT
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Interpersonal Attraction
 Interpersonal Attraction –affinity to another
person
 Physical Proximity: Physical nearness to another
person in terms of housing, school, work, and so on
 Physical Attractiveness: Person’s degree of physical
beauty as defined by his or her culture
 Research suggests we assume that attractive people
are likable, intelligent, warm, witty, mentally healthy,
greater job competence, and socially skilled (Feingold
1992)
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Interpersonal Attraction
 Halo Effect: Tendency to generalize a (often
single or few) favorable impression to
unrelated personal characteristics, ignore the
bad and focus on the one/few good things
 The explanation for why you and all your
friends think your best friends boyfriend is s
jerk. But she doesn’t see it. She thinks he is
amazing.
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Halo Effect
 Video
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Interpersonal Attraction (cont.)
Similarity: Extent to which two people are alike in
terms of age, education, attitudes, and so on
 Similar people are attracted to each other!
Homogamy: Tendency to marry someone who is
like us in almost every way
 Psychological research proves:
 The conventional wisdom that opposites attract is FALSE!!!
 We are drawn to people who are like us: they share our
attitudes, beliefs, interests, and backgrounds
 Homogamy leads to longer marriages also
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Attraction
 Proximity (nearness) & Mere exposure effect matter too
 Reciprocal liking- the more someone likes you, the more you will
like them
 Self- disclosure - when we share personal information with
someone, it is likely they will reciprocate. Many close friendships
are built on the foundation of self disclosure.
 Meeting someone on an online dating website…If you self-disclose
a lot before you even meet, odds are you will date awhile
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Selecting a Mate- Reflections in a
Social Mirror
 Page 657
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Self-Disclosure
 Self-Disclosure - Should be used cautiously and sparingly as a
professional therapist performing therapy
 May lead to countertransference in therapy
 Reciprocity: moderate self-disclosure leads to
return of sharing private thoughts in kind
 Over-disclosure: Self-disclosure that exceeds
what is appropriate for a relationship or social
situation
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Gendered Friendships
 Page 658
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Social Exchange Theory
 Social Exchange – transfer of attention,
information, affection, favors between two
people
 Social Exchange Theory: Rewards must exceed costs
for relationships to endure; we unconsciously weigh
social rewards and costs
 Comparison Level: Personal standard used to
evaluate social rewards and costs in a social
exchange/ individual and based on one’s history
 Relationship needs to be profitable enough to
maintain it
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Love and Attachment
 Romantic Love: Marked by high levels of interpersonal attraction,
sexual desire, and heightened arousal
 Liking: Relationship based on affection without passion and
commitments
 Secure Attachment: Stable and positive emotional bond
 Mutual Absorption: When two lovers almost always attend only
to each other
 Avoidant Attachment: Fear of intimacy and a tendency to resist
commitment to others
 Ambivalent Attachment: Mixed emotions about relationships;
conflicting feelings of affection, anger and emotional turmoil
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Evolution and Mate Selection
 Evolutionary Psychology – the study of the
evolutionary origins of human behavior
patterns
 Human evolution explains contemporary dating
practices differences among genders
 Let us read: Evolution and Mate Selection, pg.
660
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Social Influence
 Social Influence - Changes in a person’s
behavior induced by the actions of
another person
 Someone else influences your decision:
husband, wife, mother, peer, etc.
 Peer pressure: Rudy is swayed by Fanny to
go see “The Hunger Games” when he really
wanted to see “The Avengers”
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Conformity
 Conformity - Bringing one’s behavior into
agreement with norms or the behavior of
others
 Conformity & Solomon Asch’s Experiment
In Asch's experiments, students were told that they were
participating in a 'vision test.' Unbeknownst to the subject,
the other participants in the experiment were all
confederates, or assistants of the experimenter. At first, the
confederates answered the questions correctly, but
eventually began providing incorrect answers.
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Fig. 20.5 Stimuli used in Solomon Asch’s conformity experiments.
Do you think of yourself as a
conformist or a non-conformist?
 Nearly 75 percent of the participants in the
conformity experiments went along with the rest of
the group at least one time.
 After combining the trials, the results indicated that
participants conformed to the incorrect group
answer approximately one-third of the time.
 Remember: Normative social influence – going along with
the decisions of the group in order to gain its social approval
 “don’t rock the boat”
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Bottom “Line” of the Asch Study
 These results suggest that conformity can be
influenced both by a need to fit in and a belief
that other people are smarter or better
informed.
 Given the level of conformity seen in Asch's
experiments, conformity can be even stronger
in real-life situations where stimuli are more
ambiguous or more difficult to judge.
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Social Power
 Social Power: Capacity to control, alter
or influence the behavior of another
person
 Reward Power: Rewarding a person for
complying with desired behavior, parents
& teacher
 Coercive Power: Based on ability to
punish a person for failure to comply, a
bully
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More Power Concepts
 Legitimate Power: Accepting a person as
an agent of an established social order,
cardinal or deputy
 Referent Power: Respect for, or
identification with, a person or a group,
grandparents & WWII vets
 Expert Power: Based on possession of
knowledge or expertise, a doctor or
attorney
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Milgram’s Study
 If you were obeying orders, just how far would
you go?
 Milgram started his experiments in 1961, shortly
after the trial of the World War II criminal
Adolph Eichmann had begun.
 Eichmann’s defense that he was simply
following instructions when he ordered the
deaths of millions of Jews roused Milgram’s
interest.
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Stanley Milgram
"The social psychology of this century
reveals a major lesson: often it is not so
much the kind of person a man is as the
kind of situation in which he finds
himself that determines how he will
act.”
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Obedience (Milgram)
 Obedience – going along with the demands of
an authority
 Would you shock a man with a known heart condition
who is screaming and asking to be released?
 Milgram’s Famous Shock Study at Yale
 the man with a heart condition was the “learner” &
most importantly an accomplice/ actor
 The “teacher” was a real volunteer.
 The subject believed he had to teach the “student”
word pairs.
 Every time the “student” missed and answer the
teacher was supposed to deliver an electric shock
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The Set-Up
1961
 The participants in the Milgram experiment were 40 men
recruited using newspaper ads. In exchange for their
participation, each person was paid $4.50.
 Milgram developed an intimidating shock generator display
panel, with shock levels starting at 30 volts and increasing in 15volt increments all the way up to 450 volts and words appeared
on the panel to describe all the various levels of voltage – like
"slight shock" "moderate shock" and "danger: severe shock."
The final two switches were labeled simply with an ominous
"XXX."
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Would you?
 Most participants asked the experimenter whether they
should continue. The experimenter issued a series of
commands to prod the participant along:
 "Please continue."
 "The experiment requires that you continue."
 "It is absolutely essential that you continue."
 "You have no other choice, you must go on."
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
eTX42lVDwA4
© Stanley Milgram, The Pennsylvania State University
Fig. 20.6 Scenes from Stanley Milgram’s study of obedience: the “shock generator,” strapping a “learner” into
his chair, and a “teacher”being told to administer a severe shock to the learner.
Milgram Experiment
 Video
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Results
 Of the 40 participants in the study, 26 delivered the
maximum shocks while 14 stopped before reaching
the highest levels.
 It is important to note that many of the subjects
became extremely agitated, distraught and angry at the
experimenter. Yet they continued to follow orders all
the way to the end.
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Milgram’s “Shocking” Results
 The “student” screamed and provided
no further answers once 300 volts
(“Severe Shock”) was reached
 65% of subjects obeyed by going all
the way to 450 volts on the “shock
machine”
 No response = was an incorrect response and
they were expected to deliver a shock
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a number of situational factors
Explaining such high levels of
obedience:
 The physical presence of an authority figure dramatically
increased compliance, he later replicated the study several times
altering related variables
 The fact that the study was sponsored by Yale (a trusted and
authoritative academic institution) led many participants to
believe that the experiment must be safe = Legitimate Power
 The selection of teacher and learner status seemed random.
 Participants assumed that the experimenter was a competent
expert = Expert power and the experimenter assured them he
would take responsibility
 The shocks were said to be painful, not dangerous.
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The APA was Shocked too
 Because of concerns about the amount of anxiety
experienced by many of the participants, all subjects
were debriefed at the end of the experiment to
explain the procedures and the use of deception.
 Many critics of the study have argued that many of
the participants were still confused about the exact
nature of the experiment.
 Milgram later surveyed the participants and found
that 84% were glad to have participated, while only 1%
regretted their involvement.
 HOW WOULD YOU FEEL AFTER, IF YOU WERE ONE
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OF THE 40 SUBJECTS?
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Fig. 20.7 Results of Milgram’s obedience experiment. Only a minority of subjects refused to provide shocks,
even at the most extreme intensities. The first substantial drop in obedience occurred at the 300-volt level
(Milgram, 1963).
Bystander Intervention
 Kitty Genovese- Bystander effect (Darley & Latane)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdpdUbW8vbw
 The more people that witness a crime, the less likely an
individual will take action to help or intervene (we assume
someone else will, no one person assumes
responsibility) = diffusion of responsibility
Related to social-loafing – when you are not individually
accountable, you naturally put in less effort
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Compliance Strategies
 Compliance - Bending to the requests of one person who has
little or no authority or social power
 Foot-in-the-Door Effect: A person who has agreed to a small
request is more likely later to agree to a larger demand. (little to
big) you ask for $1 first, but you need $5 so later you ask for $5
 Once you get a foot in the door, then a sale is almost a sure thing
 Door-in-the-Face Technique: A person who has refused a major
request will be more likely later on to comply with a smaller
request ( big to little) Can I borrow $20? Then ask can I borrow $2 (you really
just needed $2 the entire time)
 After the door has been slammed in your face (major request refused),
person may be more likely to agree to a smaller request
 Reciprocity – giving a small gift makes others feel obligated to
agree to a later request, used to solicit contributions
 The March of Dimes sends me address label and they
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hope I send them a sizable donation
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Assertiveness
 Self-Assertion: Standing up for your rights by
speaking out on your own behalf; direct, honest
expression of feelings and desires
 Broken Record: Self-assertion technique that involves
repeating a request until it is acknowledged
 Good way to be assertive without being aggressive
 The squeaky wheel gets oiled (most of the time)
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In an experiment done at an airport, a smoker intentionally sat or stood
near non-smokers. Only 9 percent of the non-smokers asked the
smoker to stop smoking, even when no-smoking signs were clearly
visible nearby (Gibson & Werner, 1994).
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©Michael Newman/PhotoEdit
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Aggression
 Aggression - The intention to do harm others
2 Types:
Instrumental aggression – to achieve a goal
While playing soccer you kick an opponent, in attempt to
steal the ball and win the game
Hostile aggression – to inflict pain upon someone
else
Punching your sister, to ,well, punch your sister
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