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Social Psychology: The Last
Chapter!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Chapter 16
Social Psychology
• The scientific study of the ways in which the
thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of one
individual are influenced by the real,
imagined, or inferred behavior or
characteristics of other people
Social Cognition
How do we explain, interpret and
judge behavior?
Impression Formation
What do we think of others’ behavior?
• Schema: a set of beliefs or expectations about
something/someone based on past experiences
– Ready-made category
– Allows us to make inferences about others
– Also plays a major role in how we interpret and remember
information
– E.g. if we witness a mother reprimanding her child at the
supermarket, we might assume she is a bad or abusive
mother because we saw something similar in a Lifetime
movie, and we may even assign her other traits that go
along with this assumption even if she doesn’t actually
demonstrate those traits! Or if we have recently watched
this, we may feel differently!
Impression Formation
What do we think of others’ behavior?
• Primacy effect: early information is a greater
determinant of attitudes
– Early information about someone makes a greater
impact than later information in forming
impressions
– “Cognitive Misers”
• Humans don’t like to spend too much time figuring
people out
• Go with the initial impression to save time
Impression Formation
What do we think of others’ behavior?
• Self-fulfilling prophecy
– A person’s expectations about another elicits behavior
from the other person that confirms the expectations
– e.g. High school coach is told by middle school coach that a
player coming up is “amazing.” High school coach treats
this player as though s/he is talented, and the player
responds accordingly, confirming the initial belief.
• Stereotypes
– A set of characteristics believed to be shared by all
members of a social category
– Can become the basis for self-fulfilling prophecies
• e.g. “Elderly people are cheap!” You are a waiter in a restaurant
and make this assumption, so you don’t provide the greatest
service. Then your tip is smaller and you believe it is because the
old people are cheap!
Attribution:
How do we explain behavior?
• Theory that addresses the question of how people
make judgments about the causes of behavior
– e.g. “Why did I fail the test?”
– e.g. “Why did my best friend stop talking to me?”
• Heider (1958) says we first decide if the cause is
personal or dispositional (internal attribution) or
situational (external attribution).
– Personal/Internal: Behavior caused by that individual’s
characteristics
– Situational/External: Circumstances prompted the
individual’s behavior
Attribution:
How do we explain behavior?
• Three criteria used to judge behavior as personal or
situational (Kelley, 1967):
– Distinctiveness: How do the person’s responses vary from
situation to situation?
– Consistency: Has this person responded in the same way in this
situation?
– Consensus: The degree to which person’s behavior is similar to
others’ behavior
• Low consensus + low distinctiveness + high consistency = Internal
(personal) attribution
– e.g. I often fail tests. I often fail psych tests. Nobody else failed the
psych test. It’s ME!
• High consensus + high distinctiveness + low consistency = External
(situational) attribution
– e.g. I never fail tests! I never fail psych tests! Everyone else also failed
this test. It’s the TEST!
Biases in Attribution
• Fundamental Attribution Error
– Tendency to overemphasize personal causes for others’ behavior
– This works along with actor-observer bias, where we also
underemphasize personal causes for our own behavior
– e.g. “She cut me off because she is a terrible driver!”
– e.g. “I cut someone else off because I am late for work.”
• Defensive attribution and Self-Serving Bias
– Tendency to attribute our successes to our own efforts and our failures
to external factors
– e.g. “I failed the test because the teacher made it impossible and
clearly she hates me!” OR “I got an A because I’m a genius!”
• Just-World Hypothesis
– Assumption bad things happen to bad people and good things happen
to good people
– e.g. “She got herpes because she is a strumpet!”
– e.g. “She will win the election because she’s sooooo nice.”
• Attribution across cultures varies dramatically
– E.g. Japanese vs. American students and explaining academic
performance
Attitudes
What do we think?
Attitudes
Is a person’s behavior a reflection of his/her attitudes?
• Attitudes are relatively stable beliefs, feelings, and behaviors
directed toward something/someone
• Three components
– Cognitive: beliefs and ideas held about the object/person
– Affective: emotions associated with object/person
– Behavioral: how we act based on our attitudes
• Typically, feelings and beliefs about a person/thing
correspond with behaviors toward that person/thing, but not
always
– Self-monitoring: tendency to observe a situation to determine how
best to act.
• High self-monitors look for social cues about how they are expected to
behave in a given situation, overriding their attitudes, making it difficult to
predict behavior based on attitudes.
• Low self-monitors express and act on their attitudes consistently making
prediction easier.
– LaPiere Study in the 1930s (Chinese couple in restaurants)
Attitude Development
• Many factors contribute to the development
of attitudes
– Imitation
– Reward
– Role Models
– Peers
– Mass media
Attitude Change
What makes us change our mind?
• Process of persuasion
– Must pay attention to the message
– Must comprehend the message
– Comprehension leads to acceptance
• Central vs. Peripheral Route to persuasion
– Central – people focus on the message and the facts to form attitudes
– Peripheral – people focus on incidental cues, such as speaker’s
attractiveness, position, reputation, etc.
• Communication model
– Source: credible spokesperson?
– Message: present both sides!
– Medium: written for complex messages; video for more simple; face to
face is best!
– Audience: how committed is audience to their point of view?
• People with low self esteem easier to change
• Intelligent people more resistant to change
Attitude Change
• Role-Playing and Attitudes
– When we adopt a new role, we attempt to conform to social
expectations of playing that role
– Eventually, we “become” the role
– e.g. Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Study (1971)
• Mere Exposure Effect
– Our attitude toward someone/something will become more positive
with continued exposure
– e.g. We are more likely to like someone we see frequently
• Cognitive Dissonance Theory (Leon Festinger)
– Perceived inconsistency between two cognitions causes discomfort
(dissonance)
• e.g. “I am an honest person” and “I cheated on the test”
– Dissonance can be reduced through attitude change
• e.g. “I am not that honest”
– An alternative is to increase the number thoughts that support one or
the other dissonant cognitions
• e.g. “I have never stolen, never gotten arrested, never cheated on a
FINAL,” etc.
Social Influence
How do we impact others?
Compliance
• Change in behavior in response to an explicit request
from another person or group
• Work of Robert Cialdini and the methods of gaining
compliance
– Foot-in-the-door effect: Get them to say yes to a small
request first
– Lowball procedure: Get compliance then raise price of
compliance
– Door-in-the-face effect: Get them to decline large request
then ask something smaller
Conformity
• Voluntarily yielding to social norms, even at
the expense of one’s own preferences
• Asch Experiment
• Factors That Strengthen Conformity
– Unfamiliar situation
– Larger group
– Unanimity of group
– If group is high status/attractive
– Collectivist culture
Obedience
• Change in behavior in response to a command from
another person, typically an authority figure
• Milgram’s studies on obedience show willingness to
follow commands
– 63% of subjects fully complied!
– Follow up studies showed women also complied
• The Modern Milgram
• The British Milgram
• Social Facilitation
Group Influence
– In the presence of others, performance is stronger on easier tasks
– Also, performance can be weaker on difficult tasks in the presence of others –
unless we have expertise
– e.g. Runners who run in a group have faster times than when running alone
• Helping Behavior
– Altruistic behavior: helping behavior that is not linked to personal gain
– Bystander effect and Diffusion of Responsibility
• Helpfulness decreases as bystanders increase
• Kitty Genovese Case and the bystander effect
• Darley and Latané (1969) and the smoke-filled room (75% to 10%)
– Mood can affect willingness to help
– Cultures differ in amount of help offered in response to requests for minor help
(collective cultures more willing)
– Social Exchange Theory: behavior is dictated by desire to maximize benefits and
minimize costs of helping
– Reciprocity norm: people will help those who helped them
– Social Responsibility Norm: people will help those dependent on them
Group Decision Making
• Deindividuation
– Loss of personal sense of responsibility in a group
– People more likely to engage in risky behavior when
anonymous
– Helps to explain mob behavior
– Mob Behavior also facilitated by the snowball effect, when one
vocal person convinces a few people, who convince a few more,
etc.
• Risky Shift
– Increased willingness to take risks when making decisions as a
group as opposed to making decisions as individuals.
• Group Polarization in decision making
– Shift toward more extreme position following group discussion
between like-minded individuals
Group Decision Making: Effectiveness of
Groups
• The more people in the group…
– The more stable the group is
– The less cohesive/efficient the group may become
• Social loafing
– Tendency to expend less effort when part of a large group
– Decrease in individual accountability
• Groupthink
– Pressure to conform to group makes everyone in the group have same
beliefs and attitudes
– Realistic and logical decision making gives way to the desire to have
consensus
• Hawthorne Effect
– Behavior improves when one is being studied by others
– Based on studies of Hawthorne Works Electric Factory (1924-1932)
Cultural Influence
• Culture greatly influences attitudes and behaviors
• Cultural truism
– Beliefs that most members of a society accept as selfevidently true
– People in the culture do not question these
– e.g. “Eating dog is unacceptable.”
• Truisms are the backbone of norms, shared
expectations about how to behave in a given culture.
Cultural Assimilators
• Not all cultures are the same, and not all cultures have the
same norms.
• People in a given culture may feel their way is the “right” way,
and other cultures are “backwards.”
• This is the basis of ethnocentrism, or the belief that one’s
own culture superior.
• Examining cultural assimilators helps to reduce these
assumptions.
– Cultural assimilators are the explanations for why members of a
culture have a particular behavior.
– Understanding cultural assimilators helps people to maintain an open
mind about other cultures’ norms and values.
Social Relations
How do we relate to others?
Prejudice and Discrimination
• Prejudice
– An intolerant, unfavorable, and rigid attitude toward a
group of people; negative stereotypes.
– Ultimate Attribution Error: tendency to use stereotyped
beliefs about a group to make internal attributions about
shortcomings and external attributions about successes.
• Discrimination
– An act or series of acts that denies opportunities and social
esteem to an entire group of people or individual
members of that group
Sources of Prejudice:
Where does it come from?
• Social Inequalities
– “Haves” vs. “Have Nots” – those who have feel justified and often
use negative stereotypes of “have nots” to justify inequalities.
– “Blame-the-victim” dynamic
• Us vs. Them: Ingroup and Outgroup
– We have the need to belong (Maslow) for feelings of identity,
solidarity and safety
– Those who are outside our group are threatening
– We reserve greatest hatred for those most like us (Yankees vs.
Mets fans)
– Ingroup Bias – Belief that those with whom you identify are not
only different, but BETTER than those outside the group.
Sources of Prejudice:
Where does it come from?
• Frustration-aggression theory
– People who are frustrated in their goals may turn their anger away from the
proper target toward another, less powerful target
• Authoritarian personality
– Personality pattern characterized by rigid conventionality, exaggerated
respect for authority, and hostility toward those who defy social norms
• Racism
– Prejudice and discrimination directed at particular racial group based on the
belief that certain groups are innately inferior
– Institutionalized Racism
– What Would You Do part 1
– What Would You Do part 2
• Scapegoat Theory
– Blame others for when things go wrong for us
– Tendency is to blame a “weaker” group/group in minority
– e.g. antisemitism during the plague or during the economic depression of the
1920s and 1930s in Europe
Inducing Prejudice: Jane Elliot
• Elementary education teacher Jane Elliot
wanted to teach her class about
discrimination after the assassination of
Martin Luther King.
• She designed an experiment to show how
easily children could be transformed into
prejudiced monsters.
• A Class Divided: video on Elliot’s work
• Update on the experiment with Phil Zimbardo
Reducing Prejudice
• Recategorization
– Assumes prejudice can be linked to categorization, or how we group - usually
based on stereotypes
– Try to expand our schema for a particular group
– What qualities are shared between groups?
• Controlled processing
– Train ourselves to be more mindful of people who differ from us
– Think about examples that fall outside the stereotypes
• Improving contact between groups
–
–
–
–
Group members must have equal status
Need one-on-one contact with other group
Relations are improved when groups come together to cooperate
Social norms should encourage contact
• Superordinate Goals
– Goals that override differences and require cooperative contact between
groups
– First used by Muzafer Sherif (1966) in a study on two groups of boys in boy
scout camp initially encouraged to be competitive with one another
Interpersonal Attraction:
What determines whether we want to befriend someone?
• Proximity/propinquity
– We are attracted to people who are in the same space as we are
– Has the internet changed this at all?
• Physical attractiveness
– We like physically attractive people because being with hot people makes us
feel like we are hot, too!
– Berscheid and Walster (1972)
• Beauty and the Best Psychology Today
• People believe that physically attractive individuals are smarter, friendlier, and generally
“better” based solely on their physical attributes!
• Similarity
– In attitudes, interests, values, and background
– Opposites only attract for the short term…
• Exchange: how do we reward each other?
– We like people who appreciate us
– Should be even (reciprocity)
• Intimacy: how much trust and closeness is there?
– Self disclosure
– Should be equal
Love
• Similar to friendship, similarity, proximity,
attractiveness, and exchange all play a role.
• However, love also includes physiological
arousal, all-encompassing interest in each
other, fantasizing about each other, and a
relatively rapid swing of emotions.
• Love also includes passion, closeness,
fascination, exclusiveness, sexual desire, and
intense caring.
Theories of Love
• Two main types of love
– Passionate or Romantic Love
• Intense physiological arousal, psychological interest, sexual desire,
being “in love”
• Predominates in the early part of a romantic relationship
– Companionate or Affectionate Love
• Deep, caring affection for a person
• Necessary for relationships to succeed in the long term
• Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of love
– Complete or consummate love occurs when all 3 of the following
are present
• Intimacy: closeness/connectedness
• Passion: physical and sexual attraction
• Commitment: cognition of loving someone/long-term maintenance
of relationship
Aggression
• Aggression is behavior intended to hurt or destroy
• Biological Influences
– Genetic Influences
• Animals bred for aggression
• Identical twin correlation
– Neural Influences
• Amygdala in limbic system triggers it
• Frontal cortex inhibits it
• Damage to or immaturity of frontal cortex?
– Biochemical Influences
• Testosterone levels and behavior – a 2-way street
• Alcohol
Aggression
• Psychosocial Causes of Aggression
– Frustration-Aggression Principle
– Aversive stimuli such as hot temperatures,
physical pain or foul odors
– Reinforcement
– Ostracism
– Exposure to violent television or video games
(disproving catharsis hypothesis)
Leadership
• Great person theory
– Personal qualities qualify one to lead
• Right place-right time theory
– Circumstances are optimal for individual with particular
characteristics
• Fielder’s Contingency Theory
– Depends on the traits of the leader, the circumstances, and
the interaction of the group itself.
– Task-Oriented vs. Relationship Oriented Leaders
– In extreme circumstances – very good or very bad – best to
be task oriented.
– In moderate circumstances, best to be relationship
oriented.