Download Social Psychology

Social Psychology
The scientific study of the
individual's interactions with others in
terms of behavior, thoughts, and
feelings
Social Psychology and
Common Sense
• Common sense is contradictory
• Common sense is incomplete in a complex
world
• Common sense is subject to biases in social
cognitions: hindsight bias, illusory
correlations, illusion of unanimity,
availability and representativeness heuristic
The Social Psychological
Perspective
• The power of the situation
• The importance of cognitive processes as
they interact with emotions (affect)
• Basic and applied science using a variety of
methods including experiments and field
studies
• Mid-range theories
The social situation
• The social situation includes the physical
environment, the presence and actions of
others, and the social norms inherent in the
behavior setting
• People interact with their situation including
choosing and changing situations
• Thoughts, feelings, and perceptions about
situations affect our responses to them.
Social Cognition
• Schemas, attributions, and perceptions of
ourselves, other people, and situations affect
our responses to the world.
• The cognitive processes of memory,
attention, and perception are important
• We engage in heuristic and systematic
processing.
Cognitions and Emotions
• Cognitions influence emotions and
emotions influence cognitions. They
interact with one another and, in turn,
influence behavior.
• Much processing of social information is
implicit, non conscious, effortless, and
automatic. Non conscious processes and
associations affect perceptions of the world.
Some Trends
• Increasing importance of social cognition in
responses to perception of selves, others,
and the social situation
• NEW areas of application
• Multi cultural understanding of diversity
• Emphasis on neuroscience and
sociobiological functions.
• Increasing emphasis on emotion (affect)
along with cognition in explaining behavior
• Return to concern with the interaction of
personality and situation in explaining
behavior
• Use of correlational as well as experimental
studies
• Emphasis on implicit non conscious process
Why Study Research Methods
• Empirical evidence from research findings
is the basis of knowledge in social
psychology.
• We are all consumers of science in our lives
as citizens and as part of our careers.
• We are all informal scientists, and we need
to know the limitations of our findings.
Study Design
• Case Study and Qualitative Designs
• Non experimental Quantitative or
Correlational (observational, quantitative
non experimental studies)
• Experimental in laboratory or field
Case Study and Qualitative
• Involves intensive interviews and testing of
small number of cases. Qualitative methods
often involve participant observation and
interviewing. Sometimes qualitative.
• Can study rare cases and get feel for
variables to generate hypotheses
• Cannot determine what is generalized
Correlational
• Able to study issues where practical and/or
ethical factors limit experiments.
• Study how many variables interrelate
• Can use for unobtrusive studies
• Correlation implies prediction not cause.
Third variable problem. Modern
multivariate techniques help with causal
puzzle.
Experiments
• Manipulate independent variables,
randomly assign participants, control
situation. Can look at causal package.
• Short term, low impact experience
• Novel environment subject to experimenter
effect and demand characteristics.
• Volunteers not representative
The Social Psychology of the
Experiment
• Experimenter effects and reactivity
• Experimenter expectancy effects and the
Clever Hans experiments
• Evaluation apprehension
• Demand characteristics
• Participant reactance
Internal-External Validity
Trade-off
• Internal validity deals with whether
observed differences result from
manipulation of the independent variable
• External validity deals with generalizability
• Usually studies high in one attribute are low
in the other requiring trade-offs in study
designs.
Data Collection
• Self Reports including attitude
questionnaires, surveys, knowledge tests,
psychological tests, mood and symptom
reports, health histories, behavioral reports
• Observational measures
• Physiological measures for emotional
arousal, brain function, and bodily states
• Archival information
Self Report Advantages
• Can collect data on behavior when practical
or ethical factors limit observation
• Can determine opinions, knowledge, mood,
physical symptoms, personality, and
cognitive ability factors that hypothetically
affect important behaviors.
Self Report Problems
• Conscious faking, defensiveness, poor
memory, and wording problems may limit
accuracy of behavioral reports.
• Self reports may not relate to important
behaviors. Problems of sample adequacy,
wording and order of questions, and issues
affecting the attitude, knowledge
relationship with behaviors.
Factors Affecting AttitudeBehavior Relationship
• Specific attitudes and knowledge predict
specific behaviors
• Salience
• Sense of efficacy
• Attitudes of others
• Situational constraints
Systematic Observation
• Can be used in the lab or in naturalistic
settings. It is the real thing.
• Problems in time and event sampling.
• Problems in sampling settings
• Problems with inter-observer reliability
– Requires careful construction of categories and
training of observers
Problems With Using
Deception
• Ethical and moral problems of lying
• Potential harm especially if person is hurt
by the discovery of a potential behavior or
the fact of being duped.
• Anger of participants and potential
contamination of other studies once
deception is known.
• Assessing the efficacy of deception
Dealing With Deception
• Institutional Review Board (IRB) looks at
cost benefit balance, minimal deception,
alternatives to deception.
• Debriefing and informed consent especially
of right to withdraw. Do NOT use
deception to lure person into study.
• Studies show duped participants do not feel
harmed.
Science as a Body of Evidence
• We have more confidence in our
understanding of some phenomena
compared to others.
• We rely on a body of evidence rather than
one study.
• Replications and confirmatory results using
different methods and populations provide
more confidence. Look for more data.
Perception Is:
•
•
•
•
•
Immediate
Selective
Structured
Stable
Meaningful
Human Cognitions
• Humans are good at making remote
associations and seeing patterns, even if
sometimes they are not there.
• People have limited capacity in their short
term or working memory.
• They must use cognitive short cuts and
allocate their focused attention.
Working Memory
• Short term memory, focus of attention, task
allocation and multi tasking
• Limited capacity although new work not as
specific on number of chunks
• Individual differences in capacity of
working memory or executive function.
Automatic versus Controlled
Processing
• We tend to use as little effort and cognitive
capacity as possible in processing social
information. Controlled, conscious, and
focused processing is used only when
needed in order to mulit task. .
• We need to make evaluations of strangers
and novel situations as quickly as possible.
• Automatic processing involves seemingly
effortless, automatic, and non conscious
processes. It is usually done quickly.
• Often evaluation of the social situation is
done automatically and this evaluation may
involve different parts of the brain.
Response to negative emotions is associated
with the amygdala in the limbic system.
Emotions and Social Cognition
• Emotions help people identify the resources
and avoid dangers in the environment.
• Negative emotions cause people to stop
ongoing activity to attend to dangers,
identify dangers in the environment and be
motivated to reduce the danger.
• Negative emotions operate more quickly in
different brain centers.
Schemas
• Mental frameworks centering around a
specific theme that help us organize
information.
• Schemas help us identify important
information, predict situations, interact
smoothly, and work within our cognitive
capacity. They provide packages of
information for a complex world.
Examples of Schemas
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Self schema
Gender role schema
Schemas about social groups (may be stereotypes)
Role schemas: occupation, family relations
Person schemas
Relationship schemas (e. g., friendship, romance)
Schemas as behavioral scripts
Schema Inconsistent Information
• People remember and process more quickly
schema consistent information.
• Who;e schemas are self confirming, we do
remember schema inconsistent information
and we can notice inconsistent information
particularly if it is relatively extreme. It is
seen as the exception to the rule.
Cognitive Shortcuts
•
•
•
•
•
Representativeness Heuristic
Availability Heuristic
Framing and anchoring
Order Effects
Logical errors such as honoring sunk costs,
using the source of the communication to
verify arguments, and ignoring base rates.
Priming
• Stimuli may act as a prime causing the
person to attend to certain aspects of the
environment.
• Priming represents the tendency of recent
thoughts to influence subsequent
interpretations.
• Important in activating schemas.
Negativity Bias
• People attend to and remember negative
information more than positive facts.
• There may be evolutionary significance in
this bias and negative information is more
distinctive and may have more diagnostic
significance.
Optimistic Bias
• People see the world optimistically and tend
to see themselves as less likely to have bad
things happen. They see the future as rosy
even with a rocky past. They are subject to
the planning fallacy.
• There is a pessimistic bias when people
expect bad news or feedback.
Positive Illusions
•
•
•
•
•
Optimistic attributional style
Sense of control
Sense of above average competence
Some “fooling yourself” may be good.
Depressed people may be more realistic
about some aspects of life.
Counterfactual Thinking
• Such thinking is automatic and can cause
regret and blame for self and others as in the
just world hypothesis.
• If the person believes that a negative
outcome is inevitable it helps with regret.
• Inaction inertia occurs when a person fails
to act and then another positive outcome
becomes available.
Thought Suppression
• People try to suppress unwanted thoughts
through active modes or self distraction.
• Sometimes there is a rebound effect when
people try too hard to suppress thoughts.
• People high in reactance experience more
rebound effect.
Other Cognitive Biases
• Ignoring base rates when using the
representativeness and availability
heuristics
• Ignoring moderator variables that might not
be observed. The person may be subject to
the Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc fallacy.
• Falling prey to the false consensus
(pluralistic ignorance) effect
Kelley’s Attribution Theory
• Consensus: Everybody does it
• Consistency over time by the individual
• Distinctiveness of response to situation by
the individual.
• Dispositional: consensus and distinctiveness
are low and consistency is high.
• Situational: consistency, distinctiveness, and
consensus are high
Jones and Davis: Theory of
Correspondent Inferences
• Internal disposition if the behavior is freely
chosen, has a non common effect (clear
cause), and is low in social desirability.
• Discounting: Tendency to attach less weight
to causes when there are multiple causes.
• Augmentation: Greater weight to causes in
the presence of inhibitory causes.
Attribution Biases
• Fundamental attribution error
(correspondence bias) or actor-observer
effect. Tendency to attribute own behavior
to situations and others’ behavior to
dispositions.
• Defensive attribution or self serving bias.
For good things internal. Bad things external
Dimensions of Attribution Applied
to Self and Others
•
•
•
•
•
Internal-External
Stable-Unstable
Global-Specific
Controllable-uncontrollable
Application to depression, marriage,
achievement motive, self handicapping,
leadership, aggression, self efficacy, etc.
Schachter’s Two Factor Theory
• Physiological arousal is similar for
emotions. In ambiguous situations,
environmental cues help us label emotions.
• Participants given epinephrine in some
cases without explanation. Assistants acted
either happy or angry. Emotions labeled in
terms or environment. Experiment
questioned but applications still important.
Mood Dependent and Mood
Congruent Memory
• Mood Dependent Memory: We recall
information more readily when in the same
mood as when we remembered it.
• Mood congruent memory: We notice and
recall positive or negative information if
we are in a positive or negative mood.
• Depressed people remember negative
events
Impression Formation and
Person Perception
• We have an immediate, structured,
selective, and emotional response to people
when we first meet them. We have a strong
need to determine if they are likely to be
good or bad to us. This is an automatic,
seemingly effortless, non conscious process
• These impressions often lead to self
fulfilling prophecies.
Combining Information
• Early research emphasized the importance
of central traits such as warm or cold; good
or bad.
• People use a weighted averaging model to
combine relevant central traits.
• The Rosenhan pseudopatient study
illustrates the importance of central traits in
a specific setting
Cognition and Impression
Formation
• Modern approaches emphasize motivation
and cognition. We seek information about
traits and values and then about
performance. Negative information carries
greater diagnostic values.
• We from impressions with This is often
automatic because we are mulit tasking.
Politicians and Impression
Formation
• Modern media with short advertisements
emphasizes image over issues.
• People vote for those who seem similar in
personality. There is an emphasis on
emotional response to candidates.
• People do not like negative advertisements
but they respond to them.
Nonverbal Communication
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Paralanguage: Pitch, tempo, loudness
Facial expressions
Eye contact
Interpersonal distance
Touching including shaking hands
Gestures
Body language and orientation
Detection of Deception
• Micro-expressions, fidgeting
• Channel discrepancies
• Voice quality: Pitch increases especially
when motivated to lie. Longer to begin
responses, more starting/stopping sentences
• Different words: Less first person, more
negative emotions, words for simple actions
Accuracy in Detecting Deception
• Some, especially psychopaths, are more
skilled liars.
• Trained people especially those who pay
attention can be much more accurate than
people in everyday situations.
• While women are better at sending and
receiving non verbal messages, they are not
better at detecting deception.
Impression Management
• We try to improve the impression others
have of us through self enhancement and
other enhancement.
• First impressions involve both verbal and
nonverbal cues.
• Ingratiation can help particularly with high
self esteem people. Few recognize
ingratiation but rebound effect if they do.
• When followers believe that the leader cares
about impressions of superiors but is
unconcerned about followers (the slime
effect), then the followers react extremely
negatively and if the superiors detect it there
can be a rebound in impression
management.
Attitudes
• Traditional definitions involved our beliefs,
feelings, and behavior towards an object.
• The problem is that these three aspects are
correlated but not identical.
• Modern definitions emphasize evaluation of
various aspects of our social world.
Functions of Attitudes
• Knowledge: Schemas for organizing social
information
• May express general affect from a genetic
predisposition
• Supports our desire to be right (Social
comparison) Increases self esteem.
• Express our values and identity
• Predict others behavior from our knowledge
• Supports ego defense: Especially reactance
and denial defense mechanisms.
• Supports impression motivation: When we
want to make a good impression we are
motivated to express attitudes and think up
arguments that make us look good to others.
We are also motivated to suppress other
attitudes.
Are Attitudes Inherited
• Although shared environment explains much of
attitude similarity between parents and children,
attitudes have a heritability component.
• Assortive mating increases similarity among
parents.
• Mechanism probably through inheritance of
emotionality and abilities.
• Different attitudes have different heritability
Dimensions of Attitudes
• Direction
• Magnitude or extremity
• Strength: Importance, Accessibility,
extremity, Acquisition through experience,
Relevance
• Level of ambivalence
• Embedness or centrality
Attitude Measurement
• Attitude scales or questionnaires
– Likert scale
– Thurstone Scale
• Non reactive and non obtrusive measures
• Implicit attitude measures
Attitudes and Behavior
• Specificity of attitudes and the number of
attitudes affecting an object.
• Salience or accessibility
• Strength: Importance, extremity, knowledge
• Attitudes formed by experience
• Behavior expressed in public with
normative support
• Few barriers to enacting behavior
Attitude-Behavior Links
• We approach decisions about behavior and
relationships to attitudes in two ways:
Conscious reasoned actions and because of
automatic implicit associations of attitudes.
• Time pressure, cognitive overload, low
evaluation of importance, habitual
responses tend to push for automatic
processing.
The theories of reasoned action
and planned behavior
• Attitudes towards specific behavior
• Subjective norms and motivation to comply
• Perceived behavioral control and chances of
reaching the goals implied by the behavior
• If positive results in behavioral intent
Attitudes-to-Behavior Process
Model
• This is an implicit, non conscious process
where an event activates perceptions.
• Attitudes shape our behavior by influencing
our perception of events.
• At the same time knowledge about what is
appropriate behavior (norms) is activated.
• Together perceptions of events and norms
dictate behavior.
The Attitude Change Process
•
•
•
•
Reach Audience
Attend to message and selective exposure
Understand message
Yield to message: rejecting communicator
and making message extreme
• Remember message
• Act on message.
The Yale Approach
• Source: the credibility and likablility of the
communicator
• Message: One versus two sided messages,
using fear in messages, distraction in
messages, using hot medium, use of
hecklers, emotional hot buttons
• Audience: Self esteem, unanimity
Fear in Messages
• Rear eliciting messages should have clear
instructions on how to reduce the fear by
taking specific actions.
• Too much fear elicits defensiveness.
• Easily imagined or terrifying symptoms use
positive message. Less easily imagined
symptoms use negative (fear) message.
Resistance to Persuasion
• Reactance: Response to threat to freedom
• Forewarning: Vigilance produces
counterarguments
• Active and de facto selective avoidance
• Development of active arguments
• Rejecting the communicator in advance
• Inoculation against attacks on attitudes
Central (systematic) Vs.
Peripheral (heuristic)
Processing
• Elaboration likelihood model points to some
situations where we used central,
systematic, or focused processing of
messages.
• In most situations we use peripheral or
heuristic processing where rules such as
longer is stronger, or fast talkers are right
prevail. Emotion is important here.
Effectiveness of Media
Campaigns
• Set the agenda
• Provide new information
• Commit the uncommitted and support the
committed
• Repeated exposure increases effectiveness
• Prime the person for more concerted
attempts
Perceived Media Effects
• Groups on two sides of a story often see the
same report as biased against their side.
• The third person effect indicates that people
perceive media (e.g., propaganda, violence,
pornography) affects and is negative for
others but not influence them.
Implicit Attitude Theory
• People possess many implicit attitudes
about which they may not have conscious
awareness. These often involve stereotypes
or basic affective responses.
• These attitudes are elicited automatically
and very quickly.
Implicit Association Test
• Those high in implicit association should respond
more quickly to stereotype consistent pairs of
words presented subliminally than to stereotype
inconsistent words. The response may be to pick
out younger or older sounding names for example.
Thelma-slow quicker than Lisa-slow.
• helma and slow faster than Lisa and slow.
Evaluative Priming Technique
• Uses a picture as a prime. (e.g., an older or
younger person) shown subliminally. Then
participant is asked to respond whether
positive or negative.
• Participant should respond more quickly to
stereotype consistent pairs.
Subliminal Messages
• People are not consciously aware of
receiving subliminal messages.
• Recent research shows that they can be
effective in changing attitudes, but they may
not be more effective than supraliminal
messages.
Festinger’s Dissonance Theory
• If two concepts (attitudes, behaviors) are
perceived to be inconsistent or dissonant
people have a drive to reduce the
dissonance.
• We can reduce dissonance by changing our
beliefs about attitudes or behaviors or both.
• We take the path of least resistence.
Means of Reducing Dissonance
• Change attitudes or behavior or both
• Seek new information
• Trivialize by minimizing significance or
deciding that no dissonance exists.
• We take the path of least resistance.
Insufficient Justification Effect
• In the experiment participants told a lie to
another that the experiment they were in
was interesting. Those who were paid a
large amount showed less attitude shift from
the control than those who were paid a
small amount. This was because the
cognitions I lied for a little money and I am
honest are dissonant.
Factors Required for Effect
•
•
•
•
Free will
Minimal coercion or reward
A sense that the effect is important
A sense of responsibility for the
consequences of the effect.
Examples of Applications of
Dissonance Theory
• Post-decisional dissonance and spreading of
alternatives.
• Severity of initiation effect
• Counter-attitudinal role playing
• Confronting hypocrisy to change behavior.