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Social Psychology
How people think about, influence, and relate to
other people
-How do we explain behavior?
-how do we form impressions of others?
-how does the presence of others influence our behavior?
-What leads to prejudice and discrimination?
Social Thinking
 We constantly try to
explain other people’s
motives, traits, and
preferences
 Attribution Theory:
causal explanations for why
events or actions occur.
Types of Attribution
1. Personal/internal or dispositional
attributions: refer to things within people, such
as abilities, moods, or efforts
 2. Situational/external attributions: refer
to outside events, such as luck, accidents, or the
actions of other people
Fundamental attribution error
 Occurs when we try to explain someone else’s
behavior
 Consistent tendency to:

overemphasize the importance of personality traits
 underestimate the importance of a situation when explaining
another’s behavior
Different when we explain our own behavior
Self-Serving Bias
 our failures: attributed to situational, unstable, or
uncontrollable factors in a way that casts us in a positive light
 our successes: attributed to personal, permanent factors in
a way that gives us credit for doing well
How do servers explain tips?
Self-serving Bias at Work
 Low Tips: because customer is cheap, jerk, etc
 Situational/External attribution
 High Tips: because my service was so great
 Personal/dispositional attribution
Is Behavior due to personal traits or
environment?
Power of the Situation
 Idea that behavior is
influenced by environmental
factors, even though we focus
on personal traits for
explanation
 Zimbardo Prison Study:
Test of situational vs. personal
factors
Summary
 Initially no differences
between groups at beginning
 How do subjects develop
identities:




Deindividuation
Risky Shift/Polarization
Conformity
Foot-in-the Door Escalation
 Implications for real world?
Attributions
 How do Guards
Explain their own
behavior??
 How do prisoners
explain it?
 How do prisoners
explain their own
behavior??
 How do guards explain
it?
Conclusions??
 Was it really the situation?
 “Three types of guards”
 “Three types of prisoners”
 Generalizability: Would this always happen again?
Social Influence
How presence of others influences individual
behavior
Eichmann Trial: April 1961
Seemingly “Normal”
Conformity, Compliance,
Obedience
Conformity
 Conformity: altering
one’s behaviors and
opinions to match those of
other people or to match
other people’s expectations
Asch Conformity Study
Methods
Results
Summary
 Conformity:
 Confederate present: 75% of subjects gave incorrect
answers at least once
 Control Group: with no confederate, 2% gave incorrect
answer
 Conditions promoting conformity:
 Social Norms: expected standard of conduct
 Larger group size
 Group unanimity
Why we conform
 Normative influence: occurs when we go along with the
crowd to avoid looking foolish
 Informational influence: occurs when we assume that the
behavior of the crowd represents the correct way to respond
Has Conformity Decreased?
Social Norms In Marketing
 "Most MU students drink 0-4 drinks per week.”
 "Most MU students don't drink and drive.”
 "Most MU students have not missed class due to drinking.”
 "Most MU students use alcohol once a week or less.”
 Results: increase behavior in light drinkers
Compliance
Agreeing to
a request
made by
others
Compliance strategies
 Foot-in-the-door effect:
 Door in the face:
Obedience
 Following orders of
an authority figure
Milgram Studies
Factors influencing Obedience
Social Facilitation
tendency for people to perform better on simple tasks
when in the presence of others
Roger Bannister: 1954
Zajonc’s model
 Presence of others can an enhance or decrease
performance
 Enhance: if dominant response is relatively easy
 Impair: If the dominant response is difficult
Social Loafing
 Social loafing: People work less hard when in a group
than when working alone
 Prevented by : monitoring individual efforts
Ringelmann’s Rope Pulling Experiment
Deindividuation
 Deindividuation: a state of reduced individuality,
reduced self-awareness, and reduced attention to
personal standards
 Increased when anonymity is present & responsibility is
diffused
Group Decision Making
Risky-shift effect
 Decisions made by a
group tend to be more
risky than ones made by
individuals
Main and Walker (1973) Study
 analyzed 1500 decisions of Federal district court judges
sitting either alone or in groups of three
 Alone: extreme course of action only 30% of the time.
 Group of three: extreme course 65%.
Group Polarization
Results
 initial preferences can
become exaggerated
through discussion
 final position is often
more extreme than it was
initially.
Groupthink
Groupthink & The Challenger
 an extreme form of group
polarization
 results when group members
are afraid to dissent
 concerned with maintaining
the group’s cohesiveness
Attitudes
people’s evaluations of objects, of events, or of ideas
Attitudes Can Be Explicit or Implicit
 Explicit attitudes: attitudes that a person can report
 Implicit attitudes: attitudes that influence a person’s feelings
and behavior at an unconscious level
How are Attitudes Formed?
 Mere exposure effect
 Conditioning: operant and classical
 Socialization
What happens when attitudes & behavior conflict?
Cognitive Dissonance
an uncomfortable mental
state due to a
contradiction between
two attitudes or between
an attitude and a behavior
How to reduce dissonance?
Change Behavior
Quit smoking
Change Attitude
“Smoking’s not so bad
for me”
trivialize the discrepancies
 “I don’t smoke much”
 “I only smoke filtered
Rationalize away the conflict
 “I won’t get sick”
 “Lots of people smoke
and live to be very
old”
Dissonance can lead to attitude change
Festinger & Carlsmith (1959)
 Participants performed
an extremely boring
task and then asked to
tell other participants
on how enjoyable it
was
 Some paid $20; others
paid $1
Results
$1 group
said it was
more
interesting
than $20
group
$20 Group
 Conflict between attitude and behavior: Told others
it was interesting bit initially thought it was boring
 No Dissonance
 Could rationalize away behavior: getting paid $20
was a reasonable explanation for discrepancy
$1 Group
Conflict between attitude and behavior: Told others it
was interesting but initially thought it was boring.
Produced dissonance
Couldn’t rationalize away behavior: so they changed
attitude
Insufficient justification
Way to
change
attitudes by
changing
behaviors
first, using as
few
incentives as
possible
Insufficient Justification: I love my Job!
Postdecisional Dissonance
 Automatic process
 focus on positive
aspects of chosen
option and the
negative aspects of
the non-chosen
aspects
Implicit process
Justifying Effort
 Dissonance Produced:
When people put
themselves through pain,
embarrassment, or
discomfort to join a group
 Resolve the
dissonance: inflate the
importance of the group
and their commitment to it
Helping Behavior
Bystander Apathy?
 Bystander
intervention effect:
the failure to offer help
by those who observe
someone in need
Bystander Intervention Model
 “Before an individual can decide to intervene
in an emergency, he must, implicitly or
explicitly, take several preliminary steps.
 1. He must first notice the event
 2. he must then interpret it as an emergency
 3. and he must decide that it is his personal
responsibility to act.”
• Latane and Darley (1968b)
1. Noticing the Event
“Good Samaritan” Study
Green Hall: asked to use side entrance
Confederate planted in alley
Seminarians didn’t stop to help
 Didn’t notice “emergency
situation” because they
were focused on getting to
talk
2. Interpreting event as emergency
Smoke-filled room study
 Methods:
 Subjects directed to a waiting room where they could fill out a
preliminary questionnaire.
 Smoke flowed out from beneath a door into the waiting room.
 Continued for six minutes to the extent that “vision was
obscured by the amount of smoke present” by the end.
 Independent Variable: The number of other people in the
waiting room varied depending on the condition the
participant was unknowingly in.
Ambiguity in Kitty Genovese
3. Feeling personal responsibility
Communication Study
 Method:
 Subjects recruited for study on communication
 Placed in individual cubicle; communicate with others over
intercom
 Emergency occurred in middle of experiment
 Independent Variable: ?
 Dependent Variable: ?
Results
Diffusion of Responsibility
Stereotypes
cognitive schemas that help us organize information about
people on the basis of their membership in certain groups
Characteristics of Stereotypes
 Allow for easy, fast processing of social information
 Are overused
 Occur automatically, largely outside of our awareness
 Self –perpetuating: Affect impression formation
Stereotypes are self-maintaining
 Confirmation Bias: direct our attention toward
information that confirms them and away from
disconfirming evidence
 Subtyping: When we encounter someone who does
not fit a stereotype, we put that person in a special
category rather than alter the stereotype
Stereotypes Can Lead to Prejudice
 prejudice: positive or negative feelings, opinions,
and beliefs associated with a stereotype
 discrimination: positive or negative behavior
toward another person based on that person’s group
membership
Stereotypes and Perception
 Payne (2001):
 White subjects asked to classify pictures of guns or tools
 Shown white or black faces immediately before
 Being shown a black face led the participants to identify guns more
quickly and to mistake tools for guns
 Priming people with pictures of weapons (e.g., guns and knives) leads
them to pay greater attention to pictures of black faces than to pictures
of white faces (Eberhardt, Goff, Purdie, & Davies, 2004)
Ingroup/ Outgroup Bias
“Humans show a strong inclination to form such subgroups
which eventually distinguish themselves from the others by
dialect and other subgroup characteristics and go on to form
new cultures . . . To live in groups which demarcate themselves
from others is a basic feature of human nature”
Eible-Eibesfeldt
Lord of the Flies
Ralph vs. Jack ( and Piggy)
US
 Ingroups: groups to which we belong
 Ingroup Favoritism:
 We are more likely to be positively prejudiced
towards members of our group
 We are more willing to do favors for ingroup
members and to forgive their mistakes or errors.
THEM
 Outgroups: groups to which we do not belong
 Outgroup homogeneity effect: we tend to
view outgroup members as less varied than
ingroup members
Robbers Cave Experiment ( 1954)
 How does group
identify form?
 How can we reduce
out-group hostility?
Methods
 22 Protestant boys, 11 yrs old
 IQs, grades average to above average
 Told they would be going to summer camp
 No glasses, non overweight, same accents
 All new to area; None knew each
 Split into two groups of 11
 Each group transported separately to Boy Scout Camp in
Robbers Cave State Park
Stage 1: Group Identification
 Each group was unaware of existence of the other
 Chose names: Eagles & Rattlers
 At end of first week notified that there was another
group
 each group started plotting to “ take down” the other
Stage 2: Competition
WAR!
 Name calling recorded at first meeting ( baseball game)
 Rattlers hung their flag on backstop of “their” baseball
diamond; Eagles lost and tore down the flag and burned it.
 Raided cabins, stole items, Eagles carried sticks and baseball
bats “just in case”
 Rattlers prepared defense: socks filled with stones, stones to
be used as projectile
Stage 3: Reconciliation?
 Put groups together in non-competitive
situations:
 not helpful: food fights
 Institute superordinate goals:
 Problem with camp water system
 Broken down supply truck
 Relocation to new camping ground
Friend choice before & after superordinate goal
Easy to produce in-groups & out-groups
Tajfel Study
 Subjects: 14-15 yrs old; all knew each other
 Methods: asked to estimate number of dots flashed in a
cluster
 Classification: told they were either “overestimators” or
“underestimators”
 Result: asked how much each subject should be paid for
participating; consistently gave more to in –group members
Romantic Relationships
Major Themes
 Evolutionary Origins
 Universality
 Dissociable Components
 Specific Neural Systems
Animal Courtship and Attraction
Described in over 100 species
Evolution & Love: Natural Selection
 Adaptive Behaviors
 -Lust
 Attachment/bonding
 Functions
 Increase reproductive success
A Universal Human Experience
 Found in all cultures
Systems are Dissociable
Separate Neural Pathways & Behaviors
 Romantic Love
 Bonding/Attachment
 Lust/Sex Drive
Romantic Love/Attraction
Characteristic Behaviors
 Euphoria
 Focused Attention on one individual
 Distorted Reality
 Obsessive Thinking
 Physiological Changes
 Mood Swings
 Jealousy/Sexual exclusivity
 Transient State
 Evolved to conserve mating energy
 Gender differences in what is attractive
Romantic Love Neural Circuitry
Love is the Drug
 Brain Circuit:
 Activation in Reward Circuit: VTA, Nucleus Accumbens,
Caudate
 Same circuit involved in drug addiction
Attachment/Bonding
 Evolved to motivate mating
partners to maintain
affiliation long enough to
complete parental duties
 Companionate Love
Characteristic Behaviors
 Animals
 Humans
 mutual territory defense
 feelings of calm, security
 mutual feeding, grooming
 social comfort
 separation anxiety
 emotional union
 Gender Differences in
what triggers attachment
Attachment Brain Circuitry
Of Voles and Men
 Monogamous Voles:
increased density of
Vasopression & Oxytocin
Receptors in VTA
Of Voles and Men
 Monogamous Voles:
 Co-localization with
Dopamine in Nucleus
Accumbens and caudate
Of Voles and Men
 vasopression gene in men
associated with monogamy
Lust/Sex Drive
 Evolved to motivate sexual
union with ANY available
member of the species
Lust Neural Circuitry
 Determined by levels of
Testosterone- can increase
drive but not attachment to
partner
 Gender differences in how
system is activated
Applications of Research
Understanding Marriage and Divorce
Matching Principle
 People similar in attitudes,
values, interests,
backgrounds, and
personalities tend to like
each other
 The most successful
romantic couples also tend
to be the most physically
similar
Physical Attractiveness
 How people rate
attractiveness is generally
consistent across all
cultures :
 symmetrical
 “averaged” faces are
rated more attractive
 Averaged faces that
include your own are
rated more attractive
Love is Fostered by Idealization
 People who loved their partners the most also idealized their
partners the most
 People with the most positively biased views of their partners were
more likely to still be in the relationships with their partners several
months later than were those people with more “realistic” views of
their partners
Dealing with Conflict
 Styles leading to marital problems (Gottman)
 being overly critical
 holding the partner in contempt
 being defensive
 mentally withdrawing from the relationship
 Styles leading to happy marriages:
 express concern for each other even while they are disagreeing
 deliver criticism lightheartedly and playfully
Attributional Style and Accommodation
 Attributional style: how one partner explains the other’s
behavior
 Accommodation: a process in which happy couples make
partner-enhancing attributions by overlooking bad behavior or
responding constructively
 Unhappy couples:
 view each other in the most negative ways possible
 they attribute good outcomes to situations, and they attribute bad
outcomes to each other
Consequences of Anti-depressants
 Interfere with Dopamine
 Increase Serotonin
 Decrease testosterone
Understan
ding
Infidelity
and “One
Night –
stands”
Understan
ding
Stalking,
Crimes of
Passion
This is Your Brain
in Love
Helen Fisher and Three Systems of Mammalian Love
Lance Armstrong
 Justification for doping:
only have one testicle, so
juicing really to put me on
level playing field