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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 welllearned 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
 “Well, that is 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”
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Social Perception- Attribution Theory
 Attribution Theory: a way to understand how
people explain other’s behavior
 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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More Attribution Concepts
 Situational Factors: environmental
stimuli (factors) that affect a person’s
behavior
 Like knowing someone is watching you
 Your behavior at Grandma’s vs. at your
home
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). Ignoring
any external or situational causes
 Actor-observer bias - Tendency to attribute OUR
behavior to external causes (situations &
circumstances) while attributing OTHERS’ to
individual personality characteristics
(dispositional)
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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!
 Upward Comparison: Comparing ourselves to someone
who ranks higher than we do on some area; may be
used for self-improvement (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 thing
 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
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Attraction
 Psychological research:
 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
 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 when you are the therapist performing
therapy
 May lead to countertransference in therapy
 Reciprocity: moderate self-disclosure leads to
Return of sharing private thoughts in kind
 Overdisclosure: 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
 Solomon Asch’s Experiment – Gestalt Psych.
 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 “student”, an
accomplice/ actor
 The “teacher” was a real volunteer.
 The goal was to teach the learner 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, with shock
levels starting at 30 volts and increasing in 15-volt increments all
the way up to 450 volts.
 The many switches were labeled with terms including "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.
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” even though the learner
eventually could not answer any more
questions
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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.
 The selection of teacher and learner status seemed random.
 Participants assumed that the experimenter was a competent
expert. (“expert power”)
 The shocks were said to be painful, not dangerous.
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APA not thrilled
 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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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).
Fig. 20.8 Physical distance from the “learner” had a significant effect on the percentage of subjects
obeying orders.
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Milgram Experiment
 Video
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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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Fig. 18.9 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).
©Michael Newman/PhotoEdit
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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