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Social Psychology
Chapter 13
Social Psychology
Social psychology:
The scientific study of
how the individual is
influenced by the
thoughts, feelings, and
behaviours of other
people
ATTITUDES
Dimensions
Change
Formation
Consistency
Attitudes:
Feelings and beliefs
about other people,
ideas, or objects that are
based on a person’s past
experiences, and shape
future behaviour
Dimensions of
Attitudes
1. Cognitive Dimension:
thoughts and beliefs
2. Emotional Dimension:
evaluative feelings
3. Behavioural Dimension:
how beliefs and evaluations
are demonstrated
How are Attitudes Formed?
Learning
- Operant conditioning
- Observational learning
How are Attitudes Formed?
• Does behaviour shape attitudes?
• “Stanford Prison Experiment”:
college students asked to act and
dress as prisoners or guards
quickly developed attitudes
consistent with their assigned role.
Persuasion: Changing Attitudes
4 Key Components (Carl Hovland):
• Communicator
– seem credible, perceived power/ prestige
• Communication
– Clear, convincing logical
• Medium
– Mass media vs. face to face
• Audience
– Age and education related
The Elaboration Likelihood Model
• Adaptive: people want to hold attitudes that
will be helpful in day-to-day life
• attitude change can be accomplished via
two routes: central and peripheral
The Elaboration Likelihood Model
• Central Route: emphasizes
conscious, thoughtful consideration
of arguments about an issue
• Peripheral Route: emotional,
superficial evaluations of a
message
Figure 13.2 Elaboration Likelihood Model
Attitude
Consistency:
Cognitive dissonance (Festinger):
• mental discomfort when have a discrepancy
between beliefs and behaviour
• try to reduce cognitive dissonance by changing
one’s attitudes or behaviours
Figure 13.3 Cognitive Dissonance
Social Cognition
Mental Shortcuts
Attribution
Nonverbal Communication
Prejudice
Social Cognition
• Social cognition: process of analyzing and
interpreting events, other people, oneself,
and the world
• Impression formation: process by which a
person uses the behaviour and appearance
of others to infer their intentions
Mental Shortcuts
• pragmatic rules of the thumb
Mental
Shortcuts
• Representativeness: individuals
or events that seem representative
of other members of a group are
classified as belonging to it
•
Availability: the easier it is to bring
to mind instances of a category or
idea, the more likely it will be used
to describe an event
Mental Shortcuts
• False Consensus Effect:
assume others hold the same
beliefs as they do
• Framing: the way information is
presented determines how
easily people accept it
Assessing the World by Using
Nonverbal Communication
Nonverbal
Communication
• nonverbal communication,
the communication of
information through the use
of physical cues or actions.
• Often plays a greater role
in impression formation
than oral communication.
Facial
Expressions
Six basic emotions are
distinguished in facial
expressions cross culturally:
•
•
•
•
•
•
fear
anger
joy
sadness
disgust
surprise
Body Language
Body Language:
Body positions, gestures,
and movements that
convey information about
moods and attitudes.
• Gestures and aspects of
body language have
different meanings in
different societies
Eye Contact
• People tend to judge others
based on eye contact.
• Eye contact is a powerful
form of nonverbal
communication in all cultures.
• The meaning of eye contact
is culturally defined
Attribution
Inferring the Causes of Behavior
Attribution
Attribution
• The process by which a
person infers other people’s
motives and intentions.
• Attribution must take into
account both dispositional
(internal) and situational
(external) causes of
behaviour.
Kelly’s Attributional
Model
Criteria used to determine whether the causes of
behavior are internal or external:
1) Consensus
– Would most people act this way in the same situation?
2) Consistency
– Has the person behaved like this in similar situations?
3) Distinctiveness
– Was the behavior unique to this situation, or has it occurred
under different circumstances?
Errors in attribution
• Fundamental attribution error
– Tendency to underestimate
situational influences and
overestimate dispositional
influences in explaining behavior
– Napolitan & Goethals (1979)
classic study demonstrating
fundamental attribution error
Errors in attribution
• Actor-Observer Effect
– Tendency to attribute the
behavior of others to internal
causes but one’s own
behavior to situational causes
Errors in Attribution
• Self-serving bias
– Tendency for people to feel their
positive behaviours are due to
internal traits, but blame their
failures and shortcomings on
external factors.
Prejudice: The Darker Side of
Attitudes
Prejudice
Definitions:
• Prejudice = a negative evaluation of a
group, typically based on unfavorable
stereotypes about the group and little
or no experience with the group.
• Stereotypes = fixed, overly simple,
often false ideas about the traits,
attitudes, and behaviors of a group’s
members
Prejudice
• Discrimination
– Behaviour targeted at individuals
or groups, intended to hold them
apart and treat them differently
– Prejudice translated into
behavior.
What causes prejudice?
• Social Learning Theory
• Motivational theory
• Cognitive Theory
• Personality Theory
Social Learning Theory
• Children learn to be
prejudiced by observing
other people in acts of
discrimination and
stereotyping
Motivational Theory
• Based on the idea that
people compete for scarce
resources
• Asserts that people tend to
dislike individuals who are
viewed as competitors
• This dislike is generalized to
entire groups
Cognitive Theory
• The world is so complex,
people cannot analyze all
relevant data about any one
thing
• One such shortcut is
stereotyping
Cognitive Theory
• Mental shortcuts can lead
to:
– Illusory correlations:
• Unsubstantiated and incorrect
correlations between social
groups and behaviors
– Social categorization
• Division of the world into ‘us’
and ‘them’
Classic Study of Stereotyping & Prejudice
• Bodenhausen & Wyer (1985)
– Subjects read vignettes about people who had committed crimes and were
asked to make parole recommendations.
– Name of criminal = ‘John T.’, ‘Carlos Ramirez’ or ‘Ashley Chamberlain’
– Crime = embezzling company funds by forging signatures, or brutally
attacking a man in a bar after an argument.
– Sometimes an explanation of the crime was provided
– Subjects likely to recommend parole of ‘John T.’ regardless of crime (no
stereotype)
– Less likely to recommend parole if crime fit stereotype i.e. Chamberlain
embezzled, Ramirez attacked)
SOCIAL
INFLUENCE
•Conformity
•Obedience
Social Influence
• Social influence refers to the ways people
alter the attitudes or behaviours of others
CONFORMITY
• Conformity – the act of going along with what other people
think or do
• Asch (1951) conducted the following experiment:
– Seven to nine people were asked to judge which of three
lines matched a standard line
– Only one group member, the “naïve” participant, was
really unaware of the purpose of the study
– The other “participants” deliberately gave false answers
– Asch found some naïve participants would go along with
the group, even when the answer they gave was
obviously wrong
Factors influencing
conformity:
• Amount of information – in ambiguous situations, people
seek the opinions of others
• Relative competence of the group - Conformity increases if
people feel group members are more competent than they are
• Position within a group - The more secure one’s status, the
more independently one will behave
• Public nature of behaviour - People are more likely to make
decisions inconsistent with the group if decisions are private
Why Do People
Conform?
• Social conformity approach - people conform to avoid the
stigma of being wrong or deviant
• Attribution - when a person can identify causes for group
behaviour they disagree with, conformity decreases
• Independence - can be risky, and be seen as deviant
• Expediency - it is efficient to go along with people one trusts
because it conserves mental energy
CONFORMITY
VIDEO
OBEDIENCE
• Obedience is
compliance with the
orders of another
person or group
Obedience: The
Milgram Studies
• Classic studies of obedience were performed by
Stanley Milgram
• Milgram told participants they would be participating
in a study of the effects of punishment on learning
• Their task was to administer electric shock to a
“learner,” but in reality, the “learner” was a
confederate
Results
• No participant stopped before 300v
• 65% administered all 30 levels of
shock
• Teacher did display distress
• Concluded obedience to authority
common
• What about female participants?
MILGRAM IN
ACTION
Explaining
Milgram’s Results
• Psychological Distance – the participant could defer
personal responsibility onto the researcher and
therefore maintain psychological distance
• Cognitive Reinterpretations – dehumanization of
victim increases obedience of the participant
• Slippery slope - The initial act of obedience is relatively
mild and escalation is gradual so that each step seems only
slightly different from the one before
Ethical Issues
• Milgram’s study raised ethical issues
• To ensure that there are no long-lasting ill effects
from participating in a study, participants are
debriefed
• Debriefing means informing participants about the
true nature of a study after its completion
PROSOCIAL
BEHAVIOUR
Altruism - helping
Bystander Apathy – Not helping
Prosocial
Behaviour: Helping
• Prosocial behaviour - behaviour
that benefits someone else or
society that offers no obvious
benefit to the person performing
it and may involve personal risk
or sacrifice
• Altruism is helping for which
there is no discernible reward,
recognition, or appreciation
Bystander Apathy:
Not helping
• Latané and Darley found that whether or not
someone helps depends on a series of interconnected
events and decisions
• The potential helper must:
a) NOTICE what is happening,
b) INTERPRET the event as an emergency
c) accept PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY for
helping
d) DECIDE how to help
Bystander Apathy:
Not helping
Reasons for not helping include:
• Ambiguity – witnesses may be confused about the situation
• Pluralistic Ignorance – a situation in which individuals in a
group don’t know that there are others in the group who share
their feelings
• Diffusion of Responsibility – the tendency to assume that
someone else will respond and act
• The Bystander Effect - as the number of people present at
an emergency increases, people often watch, but do not help
BYSTANDER
APATHY VIDEO
Assignment #8
• Describe an example of cognitive
dissonance in your life. For
instance, do you do things that you
know you shouldn't do? How do you
justify your actions? If you engage
in some unhealthy behaviours, how
do you reduce dissonance?