Social Psychology

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Social Psychology
Social Control vs Personal Control
- despite group influences, we can still act as
individuals
- our individual acts/beliefs can influence the
social setting, which in turn influences our
acts/beliefs
Self-fulfilling prophecies
- others may conform their behavior to your
expectations (thereby confirming them)
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Social Psychology
Issues in Social Psychology
Prejudice
- has race- or gender-based prejudice declined in
recent years?
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Social Psychology
Issues in Social Psychology
Prejudice
- we are certainly less willing to publicly
support "unpopular" forms of prejudice
- "modern" prejudice
- all prejudice boils down to 'us' (ingroup) vs
'them' (outgroup)
- 'scapegoat' theory
- are scapegoats consciously selected?
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Social Psychology
Issues in Social Psychology
Prejudice
- categorization
- members of any category other than "us" tend to
be seen as homogeneous
- availability heuristic makes extreme cases seem
representative
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Social Psychology
Issues in Social Psychology
Prejudice
Prejudice can be justified and maintained by the
'just-world' phenomenon
- good is rewarded, evil is punished
- therefore, if a particular group of people is
being "discriminated" against, they must deserve
it (the act is justified)
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Social Psychology
Issues in Social Psychology
Aggression
- behavior intended to hurt others
- self-destructive impulses redirected outwards
(psychoanalytic view)
- genetic component?
- no single 'aggression center' in the CNS
- high testosterone, low serotonin
- testosterone ? aggression
- (successful) aggression ? testosterone
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Social Psychology
Issues in Social Psychology
Aggression
- frustration-aggression hypothesis
- being prevented from reaching a goal increases
aggressive behavior
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Social Psychology
Issues in Social Psychology
Aggression
- 'appropriate' aggression may be learned
- classical or operant conditioning
- modelling
- social / cultural influence
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Social Psychology
Issues in Social Psychology
Aggression
Violence on Television / in Video Games
- children do imitate aggressive behaviors seen
on TV
- is this really aggression?
- desensitization to violence?
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Social Psychology
Issues in Social Psychology
Attraction / Mate Choice
What makes people attractive?
- proximity / familiarity
- similarity
- "averageness (composite photos)
- symmetry
- signs of general (and reproductive) health and
viability
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Social Psychology
Issues in Social Psychology
Attraction / Mate Choice
- gender differences
- youth vs status
- many ideals are not universal
- different basic strategies?
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The Mating Game
The Bottom Line
reproduce your DNA
1. The Best Way To Do This
100 replication!!!
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The Mating Game
The Bottom Line
reproduce your DNA
2. The Next Best Way To Do This
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The Mating Game
The Bottom Line
reproduce your DNA
2. The Next Best Way To Do This
50 replication!
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The Mating Game
The Bottom Line
reproduce your DNA
Important Offspring must survive!
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The Mating Game
The Bottom Line
reproduce your DNA
Important Offspring must survive!
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The Mating Game
1. if you want to survive in evolutionary
terms, you need to produce offspring
2. the offspring also need to survive to produce
their own offspring (etc...)
There are 2 fairly obvious strategies to follow
in order to have reproductive success...
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The Mating Game
The Sure Thing Strategy
- produce relatively few offspring
- invest lots of resources in ensuring the
success of those offspring
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The Mating Game
The Lottery Strategy
- produce as many offspring as possible
- invest very few resources in those offspring,
hoping that at least a few will survive anyway
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The Mating Game
- a human female can potentially produce about
20-30 offspring during her reproductive lifespan
- a human male can potentially produce several
thousand offspring during his (generally longer)
reproductive lifespan
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The Mating Game
- some tendency for females to prefer the sure
thing strategy, while males prefer the lottery
strategy
- direct relation to some of the characteristics
seen as attractive in the opposite sex
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The Mating Game
- for females, a male with more status may seem
more attractive
- more resources to direct to offspring
- status may protect offspring
- status may encourage male to remain in the
group/relationship
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The Mating Game
- for males, a younger female may seem more
attractive
- better health / more likely to be able to
produce healthy offspring
- will live long enough to raise offspring
(possibly on her own)
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Social Psychology
Issues in Social Psychology
Altruism
Acting for the benefit of others
- often at some personal cost
- the Kitty Genovese rape/murder
- the Bystander Effect
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Social Psychology
Issues in Social Psychology
Altruism
- accepting responsibility is key
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Social Psychology
Issues in Social Psychology
Altruism
Are altruism and self-interest mutually exclusive?
- the reciprocity norm
- the responsibility norm
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Social Psychology
Issues in Social Psychology
Cooperation
Everyone acting in their own self-interest may
not always be the most productive situation
- the social trap game (aka The Prisoner's
Dilemma)
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Social Psychology
Issues in Social Psychology
Cooperation
- this is a 'non-zero sum' game
- self-interest ? pick B
- might win 10, can't lose anything
- cooperation ? pick A
- possibility of "betrayal"
- in the long-term, honest cooperation will have
the best results