Download Social Psychology: Meeting of the Minds

Social Psychology:
Meeting of the Minds
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Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2007
What is social psychology
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The study of individuals in groups, and
the social factors that influence
individuals
Social Cognition and Social Behavior
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Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2007
Social Cognition
How we perceive our social worlds and
how we attend to, store, remember,
and use information about other people
and the social world
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Objectives: Organizing the world
around us
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How do we form impressions of others?
How do we manage impressions of ourselves?
Understanding attitudes: How do we evaluate
different aspects of our world?
Persuasion: How can we change attitudes
Attitudes toward groups: stereotypes and
prejudice
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Making an Impression
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Impression formation:
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The homeless of San Francisco…
Social judgments in seconds!
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Judgment of Psych instructor:
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Hard – Easy?
Nice – Mean?
Funny – Serious?
Organized – disorganized?
How accurate were these perceptions?
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Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2007
How we form impressions
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External Cues
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Halo effect: One good attribute
Primacy effect:
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First impressions Come First
Internal Cues – Top-Down
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Expectancies – Schemas
Waitress – drinks beer
Librarian – likes to read
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Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
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Expectations can create outcomes
Rosenthal & Jacobson
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“Test” predicted student academics
Students performed as “predicted”
Discovering Psychology: Constructing Social
Reality 12:15 – 16:10
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Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2007
Appearance and Impression
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Snyder & colleagues
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Men believe they are speaking to attractive
or unattractive women
Treat women differently
Judges’ ratings of women match men’s
expectations
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Impression Management
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Being on your “best behavior”
Rebound effect
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Attitudes
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Attitudes – an overall evaluation of
some aspect of the world
a favorable or unfavorable evaluative
reaction toward something or someone,
exhibited in one's beliefs, feelings, or
intended behavior.
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A positive or negative evaluation of an
object.
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Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2007
Examples of attitudes
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How many are in favor of getting out of
Iraq?
How many opposed?
Where did these beliefs come from?
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Components of attitudes
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Cognitive component  belief
Affective component  feeling
Behavioral component  action
Sample attitude scales
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Attitudes and Behavior
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Implicit attitudes
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Social desirability bias
Implicit association test (IAT)
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Attitudes and Behavior
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Predicting behavior from attitudes
Behavior affects attitudes
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(1) Strongly Disagree- (5) Strongly Agree
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World hunger is serious problem that needs
attention
Our country needs to address the growing
number of homeless
The right to vote is one of the most valuable
rights of American Citizens
Our government should spend less money on
nuclear weapons and more on its citizens
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Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2007
Turn your page over
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Yes or no….
Do you personally do anything to lessen world
hunger? (e.g. Donate money or food or write your representative)
Do you personally do anything to help the
homeless? (e.g. Volunteer at homeless shelters or donate money)
Did you vote in the last election you were eligible?
Do you personally convey your opinions to the
government? (e.g. by writing your representative or participating in
protests or marches)
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Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2007
What happened?
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Attitudes often not in line with
behaviors?
How did this make you feel?
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Psychologically uncomfortable?
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Dissonance…
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Cognitive Dissonance
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Changing our attitudes to be line with
our behavior
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When our behaviors and our attitudes do
not match we experience dissonance
One way to reduce that dissonance, is to
change our attitude so that it is in line with
our behavior…
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What happens when attitude and behavior don’t
match?
Creating Cognitive Dissonance
- Festinger and Carlsmith
“Did you
Receive
enjoy the task?”
Boring task
$1
“Yes”
$20
“No”
Reducing mismatch between behaviors and feelings
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Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2007
Cognitive Dissonance
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Dissonance theory
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Self-perception theory
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Reducing mismatch between behaviors and
feelings
Make inferences from our behaviors
Cognitive dissonance in the real world
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Rationalizing illegal behavior
Direct and indirect strategies
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Persuasion: Trying to change
attitudes
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Elaboration likelihood model: What
causes attitude change?
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Central route – High Content Elaboration –
Deep Processing
Peripheral route – Low Content Elaboration
– Shallow processing:
source, number of arguments, conformity,
exposure, Persuasive people
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Analyzing Advertisements
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http://veryfunnyads.com/
Discovering Psychology
Judgment and decision making
20:53 – 25:30
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Persuasion: Trying to change
attitudes
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Fast speaker
Scarcity
Authority –
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Tiger Woods?
Dr. Kildare
Foot in the door
Messenger honest
Arouses strong positive
emotion - reciprocity
Does not appear to be
trying to persuade
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Thwarting Persuasion
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Obstacles to persuasion
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Strong attitude
Reactance
Forewarning
Selective avoidance
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Stereotypes
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A belief (or set of beliefs) about people
in a particular category
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Attitudes toward groups and
stereotypes
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Ingroup
Outgroup
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Blue-eyed Brown-eyed Study – Jane Elliott
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Illusory correlation
Illusion of outgroup homogeneity
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Discovering Psychology - Minute 5.56 – 12:15
Ingroup differentiation
Discrimination
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Stereotypes and prejudice
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Prejudice is a negative or hostile attitude
toward a social group
Discrimination is unfair treatment of a group
or member of a group based on prejudice
“I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone
equally.”
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W.C. Fields
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Stereotypes, Prejudice, and
Discrimination
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Stereotypes: Cognitive Component
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Prejudice: Affective component
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Discrimination: Behavioral component
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Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2007
Understanding Prejudice
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Realistic conflict theory
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Competition for scarce resources
Social categorization theory: us v
them
Self-fulfilling prophecy
Social learning theory
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Combating Prejudice
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Contact hypothesis
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Increase awareness of similarities
Information inconsistent with stereotypes
Challenge outgroup homogeneity view
Recategorization
“Jigsaw classroom”
Discovering Psychology 16:53 – 20:00
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Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2007
Reducing Prejudice
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Contact Hypothesis: Stereotypes and prejudice will
be weakened by bringing groups into direct contact
with one another
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We like people we know more than strangers
Stereotypes will be disconfirmed
Perceptions of dissimilarity will be reduced
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See others as individuals and not just members of a group
But the conditions have to be right…
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Equality of status, working toward common goal,
supportive social norms
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Attribution: forming ideas
about the causes of behavior
An explanation for the cause of an
event or behavior
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What caused that behavior?
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Internal attributions
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Dispositional attributions
External attributions
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Situational attributions
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Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2007
Attribution: Causes of
Behavior
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Suppose you get a nasty email from a friend
– what would you think?
Suppose you heard that Michael Jackson
spent a few hours with a 14-year old boy –
what would you think?
Suppose you heard that your high-school
English teacher spent a few hours with a 14year old boy – what would you think?
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Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2007
Attributions: Causes of
Behavior
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Theory of causal attribution
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Consensus –
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Consistency –
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if others agree - external attribution
if others don’t agree - internal attribution
Behavior occurs previously – internal
Behavior does not occur previously - external
Distinctiveness
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Behavior unusual – external
Behavior similar - internal
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Attributional Biases
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Fundamental attribution error:
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Actor-Observer Bias
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Why are you driving slowly?
Why is car in front of you driving slowly?
Self Serving Bias
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Student answers question incorrectly – internal attribution
Ace a test
Flunk a test
Blaming the victim
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Belief in a just world
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Tuesday’s Class
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Behavior and Emotion in the social
context
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Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2007