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Social Psychology
Chapter 14
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Social Psychology
Social Thinking
 The Fundamental Attribution Error
 Attitudes and Actions
Social Influence
 Conformity and Obedience
 Group Influence
 Lessons From the Social Influence
Studies
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Social Psychology
Social Relations
 Prejudice
 Aggression
 Attraction
 Altruism
 Conflict and Peacemaking
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Social Psychology
“We cannot live for ourselves alone.”
Herman Melville
Social psychology is the scientific study of how
we think about, influence, and relate to one
another.
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The Fundamental Attribution Error
When analyzing another’s behavior, there is a
tendency to overestimate the influence of
personal traits, and underestimate the effects of
the situation
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The Fundamental Attribution Error
• Experiment: Even when students were informed
that a young woman had been instructed to act
icy or warm, they still attributed her behavior to
her personal traits (Napolitan & Geothals, 1979)
• Cultural differences
– People in East Asian culture tend to be more
sensitive to the power of situations
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The Fundamental Attribution Error
• When we explain our behavior, we are sensitive
to situational influence
– Also for people we have seen in many contexts
• We are more likely to commit the F.A.E. when
we disapprove of the stranger’s behavior
• Taking the stranger’s point of view can help
decrease incidence of the F.A.E.
– Reflecting on our past self also switches our
perspective
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Political Effects of Attribution
• How to explain poverty or unemployment?
– Political conservatives often blame the
personal traits of the poor and unemployed
– Social scientists are more likely to blame past
and present situations
• Poor education, lack of opportunity, discrimination,
etc.
Our attributions have real consequences
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Attitudes and Actions
• Attitudes are feelings, based on our
beliefs, that predispose us to respond in a
particular way to objects, people, and
events
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Attitudes affect Actions
• Particularly when external influences are
minimal, and attitude is stable, specific,
and easily recalled
• Experiment: people given vivid information
changing their attitude
– Informed them about tanning, linking it to skin
cancer
– had lighter skin a month later compared to a
group not having their attitude influenced
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Or: Actions affect Attitudes
• Cooperative actions can build an attitude
of team loyalty
• Attitudes follow behavior
– Foot-in-the-door phenomenon
– Role-playing
– Cognitive dissonance
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Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon
• In the Korean War, Chinese communists
solicited cooperation from US army prisoners by
asking them to carry out small errands.
• People who have first agreed to a small request
are more likely to comply later with a larger
request
• To get people to agree to something big, start
small and build
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Role-Playing Affects Attitudes
• In many life stages, we take on new roles
– sets of behavioral expectations about a
social position
• May feel phony at first, as if “acting” the
role
– “Fake it until you make it”
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Role-Playing Affects Attitudes
• Zimbardo (1972) assigned the roles of guards
and prisoners to random students. Guards and
prisoners developed role-appropriate attitudes.
• Individual differences – not everyone gave into
the situation
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Why do actions affect attitude?
Cognitive dissonance theory: We feel
discomfort when beliefs don’t match with our
actions or other thoughts. To relieve this
tension, we may change our beliefs and
attitudes to fit our choices
– If we have chosen to support a party or president,
we will change our understandings to fit the
policies
– Foot in the door: if I have taken a small action to
help someone, I decide I must have wanted to
help, and then it’s easier to get me to help more
– Fake it till you make it: Make yourself act kindly,
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and kind intentions will grow.
Social Psychology
Social Influence
 Conformity and Obedience
 Group Influence
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Conformity and Obedience
• Chameleon effect: we take on the emotional
tones of those around us, imitating others’
expressions, postures, and voice tones
• When students worked beside people who
rubbed their own faces or shook a foot, the
students tended to do so too (Chatrand & Bargh,
1999)
• Automatic mimicry helps us empathize, to feel
what others feel
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Group Pressure and Conformity
• Conformity:
adjusting our
behavior or thinking
to coincide with a
group standard
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Group Pressure and Conformity
• Solomon Asch (1955) asked “which line is the
same length as the standard?”
– Before subject’s turn to answer, confederates say
“Line 3”
– More than 1/3 of subjects conformed to wrong answer
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Group Pressure and Conformity
We are more likely to conform when we
– Are made to feel incompetent or insecure
– Are in a group with at least three people
– Are in a group in which everyone else agrees
– Admire the group’s status and attractiveness
– Have not already committed to any response
– Know that others in the group will observe our
behavior
– Are from a culture that strongly encourages
respect for social standards
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Why Do We Conform?
• To avoid rejection or gain approval
– Responding to social norms
• Because we are open-minded and were
convinced by new information from the
group
• Whether conformity is perceived as good
or bad depends on our values
• Conformity rates are lower in individualistic
cultures like the U.S.
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Obedience
• People give into social pressures.
What about outright commands?
• Stanley Milgram (1963) investigated
the effects of authority on obedience
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The Milgram Experiment
• You, as the “teacher”, must shock the “learner”
if he gives a wrong answer
• With each wrong answer, increase the voltage
• The “learner” appears in pain, the experimenter
says you must continue
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Milgram Experiment: Results
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More Milgram Obedience Results
• In later experiments, Milgram found that obedience
was highest when
– The person giving orders was close at hand and
perceive to be a legitimate authority figure
– The authority figure was supported by a respected,
well-known institution
– The victim was depersonalized or at a distance
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Lessons from the Conformity and
Obedience Studies
• Social influences can make people
conform to falsehoods or give in to cruelty
“I was only following orders.”
– Adolf Eichmann, Director of Nazi deportation of Jews to
concentration camps
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Group Influence
• One of the first social psychology experiments
(Triplett, 1898):
– Adolescents would wind a fishing reel faster in the
presence of someone doing the same thing
• Group Influences
– Social Facilitation
– Social Loafing
– Deindividuation
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Social Facilitation
• Social facilitation: stronger responses on
simple or well-learned tasks in the presence of
others
• What you do well, you are likely to do even
better in front of an audience
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Home Team Advantage
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Social Loafing
• When performing a task as a group,
people tend to exert less effort toward a
common goal
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Social Loafing
• People acting as part of a group feel less
accountable, worry less about what others
think of them
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Deindividuation
• Group situations that foster anonymity
may lead to a loss of self-restraint
– Have we seen a loss of self-restraint among
the Occupy Wall Street protestors?
– How about the mob in Lybia that captured
Khadfi?
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Group Polarization
• Group polarization:
strengthening of a
group’s preexisting
attitudes through
discussions within the
group
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Groupthink
• In a deeply cohesive group, members may try to
reach consensus without critically evaluating
ideas
– Fraternities and sororities
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Social Psychology
Social Relations
 Prejudice
 Aggression
 Attraction
 Altruism
 Conflict and Peacemaking
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Prejudice
• An unjustifiable and usually negative attitude
toward a group and its members
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How Prejudiced Are People?
• Open prejudice has waned
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Ingroup and Outgroup
• We have a need to belong and have a group
identity
– Ingroup bias: we have a tendency to favor our own
group
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Emotional Roots of Prejudice
• Scapegoat theory: prejudice offers an
outlet for anger by providing someone to
blame
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Cognitive Roots of Prejudice
• Forming categories
– When we categorize people into social or
ethnic groups, we overestimate their
similarities
– The other-race effect: tendency to recall
faces of one’s own race more accurately than
faces of other races (Irving Teranishi and me)
• Emerges during infancy (between 3 and 9 months)
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Cognitive Roots of Prejudice
• Remembering vivid cases
– Violent cases are readily available to our
memory and feed our stereotypes
• James Byrd Jr., black man who dragged to death
in Texas in 1998
• Matthew Shepard, gay man who died tied to barb
wire fence in Wyoming
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Cognitive Roots of Prejudice
• Believing the world is just
– People have a tendency to justify their
culture’s social systems.
• Sitting in the back of the bus
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Aggression
• Aggression: any verbal or physical
behavior intended to hurt or destroy
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The Biology of Aggression
• Genetic Influences
• Neural Influences
• Biochemical Influences
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The Biology of Aggression
• Biochemical Influences
– Testosterone circulates in the blood, and
influences neural control of aggression
– Alcohol also unleashes aggressive
responses to frustration
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The Psychology of Aggression
• Psychological factors that trigger
aggression
– Frustration or rejection
– Learning that aggression is rewarding
– Observing models of aggression
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The Psychology of Aggression
Frustration-aggression principle:
• Frustration creates anger, which can generate
aggression
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The Psychology of Aggression
• Learning that aggression is rewarding
– Children whose aggression successfully
intimidates other children may become more
aggressive
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The Psychology of Aggression
• Observing models of aggression
– We often imitate what a model says and does
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The Psychology of Aggression
• Observing models of aggression
– X-rated films and women-hating song lyrics
can teach aggressive behavior
• How does that affect men’s beha
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Other Social Psychology Issues
•
•
•
•
Attraction and Romantic Love
Altruism
Bystander Psychology
Conflict and Cooperation
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Psychology of Attraction
Ingredients for attraction:
– Proximity
– Physical attractiveness
– Similarity
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Proximity
• People are most inclined to like (and
marry) those who are nearby
• Mere exposure effect:
– A Taiwanese man wrote 700+ letters to his
girlfriend proposing marriage. She married the
mailman.
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Proximity/Familiarity
• People prefer the candidate whose image
had been (secretly) blended with their own
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Physical Attractiveness
• Physical appearance
most important factor in
first impressions
“I constantly think about my looks”
Men
Women
Canada
18%
20%
USA
17%
27%
Mexico
40%
45%
Venezuela
47%
65%
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In the Eye of the Beholder
• Youthful physical features appear to be
universally considered attractive, at least for
females
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Similarity
• Lasting friends and couples are likely to
share attitudes, beliefs, and interests,
among other factors
• We also like those who like us
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Romantic Love
Passionate Love
Aroused state of
positive absorption in
another
Companionate Love
Deep affectionate
attachment for those
with whom our lives
are intertwined
Nothing
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Passionate Love
• Two-factor theory of emotion: Many
emotions are an arousal state plus a label
• Studies show: Men getting their heart rate up
by any means, from exercise to erotica, felt
more attracted to a woman they met while
still stirred up, attributing their arousal state to
the attraction
• Passionate love may be physical, as
misattributed, and temporary
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Romantic Love
• Transition to companionate love is
adaptive
– Shift focus to family and parenting
• Key ingredients for lasting relationships
– Equity: both partners receive in proportion to
what they give
– Self-disclosure: revealing intimate aspects of
yourself to others
– Romance? Overvaluing this increases divorce
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Altruism
• Altruism is the unselfish concern for the
welfare of others
Wesley Autrey jumped
onto subway tracks to
save a fallen stranger
from oncoming train
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Bystander Intervention
• In 1964, Kitty Genovese was raped and
murdered as 38 neighbors heard but did
nothing
• Was this simply the opposite of Altruism,
or is something more complex going on?
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Bystander Intervention:
Deciding whether to Intervene
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The Bystander Effect
• Study: participants
heard a crash and yell
in the next room
• Results showed the
Bystander effect:
any given bystander
is less likely to give
aid if other bystanders
are present
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Conflict
• Conflict: a perceived incompatibility of
actions, goals, or ideas
• Mirror-image perceptions: mutual views
often held by people in conflict
– Each side sees itself as ethical and peaceful,
and the other side as evil and aggressive
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Cooperation
• Superordinate goals: shared goals that
override differences among people and
require their cooperation
• Members of interracial groups who form
teams and work together come to feel
friendly toward one another
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