Social%20Psychology

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Social Psychology
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Social Psychology is a broad field devoted to
studying
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• how people relate to each other
• the development and expression of attitudes
• peoples attributions about their own behavior
  and that of others
• the reasons why people engage in both prosocial
  and antisocial behavior
• how the presence and actions of others
  influences the way people behave

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• An attitude is a set of beliefs and feelings
• One reason that attitudes are difficult to change
  is due to the Cognitive Dissonance Theory.
• People are motivated to have consistent attitudes
  and behaviors, and when they do not, they
  experience unpleasant mental tension
  (dissonance).

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Social Thinking

• Attribution Theory
• tendency to give a causal explanation for
  someones behavior, often by crediting either

the situation or
the persons disposition
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Social Thinking

• Fundamental Attribution Error
• when explaining anothers behavior, we tend to
  underestimate the impact of the situation and to
  overestimate the impact of personal disposition

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Social Thinking

• How we explain someones behavior affects how we
  react to it

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Attribution

• Interestingly, people do more the opposite when
  attributing successes or failures to themselves
  (we blame the situation more than ourselves).

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Social Thinking

• Our behavior is affected by our inner attitudes
  as well as by external social influences

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Jesse tells you that he got a perfect score on
his psychology test

• Because Jesse is very good at psychology
• Because the psychology test was easy
• Jesse has always been good at psychology
• Jesse just studied a lot for this particular
  psychology test
• Mr. Baker is an easy psychology teacher
• Mr. Baker is a tough psychology teacher who just
  happened to give one easy test

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Social Thinking Some Concepts

• Our Attitudes often direct our behavior but
  sometimes behavior shapes our attitudes
• Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon
• tendency for people who have first agreed to a
  small request to comply later with a larger
  request

• Doing Becomes Believing

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Group Pressure

• Social Influence..

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Social Influence

• Normative Social Influence
• influence resulting from a persons desire to
  gain approval or avoid disapproval
• Leads toConformity
• adjusting ones behavior or thinking to coincide
  with a group standard

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Social Influence - concepts

• Informational Social Influence
• influence resulting from ones willingness to
  accept others opinions about reality
• Leads To Norms
• an understood rule for accepted and expected
  behavior
• prescribes proper behavior

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Social Influence
Asch Conformity Experiment

• click above for a clip!

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Social Influence

• Participants judged which person in Slide 2 was
  the same as the person in Slide 1

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Obedience

• Stanley Milgram People conform, but will they
  simply obey others?

65 of Milgrams teachers did!
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A Shocking Experiment

• Over 400 volts!!

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(No Transcript)
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Social Influence

• Milgrams experiment

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Obedience is higher when

• Person giving the orders is perceived as a legit
  Authority figure. (prof., cop, etc)
• orderer supported by a prestigious institute
  (Yale, Government, etc)
• Victim is depersonalized or distant (no name,
  in another room, etc)
• No role models for defiance

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Whos Fault Is it?

• Who is MOST responsible for the murder?
• Note that the murderer does the exact same thing
  in BOTH scenarios!
• Did you blame the woman? The boss?
• Did the character of the victim influence your
  decision?
• Did you make an attribution error?

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DO NOT WRITE YOUR NAME ON THIS SHEET ANSWER
COMPLETELY ANONOMOUSLY!

• If you could be totally invisible for 24 hours
  and were completely assured that you would not be
  detected or held responsible for your actions,
  what would you do?

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Group Interaction
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Social Influencesomebodys watching me

• Social Impairment
• People tend to perform WORSE on difficult or new
  tasks in the presence of others

• Social Facilitation
• People tend to perform simple/well-learned tasks
  BETTER in the presence of others

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Social Facilitation
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Social Influencesomebodys helping me

• Social Loafing
• tendency for people in a group to exert less
  effort when pooling their efforts toward
  attaining a common goal than when individually
  accountable

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Deindividuation

• The loss of self awareness and self restrain
  occurring in group situations that foster arousal
  and anonymity

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Social Relations

• Bystander Effect
• tendency for any given bystander to be less
  likely to give aid if other bystanders are
  present

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Social Influence

• Group Polarization
• enhancement of a groups prevailing attitudes
  through discussion within the group (like AA or
  KKK) Yeah! I Agree!

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Social Influence

• If a group is like-minded, discussion strengthens
  its prevailing opinions

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• Groupthink
• the desire for harmony in a decision-making group
  overrides realistic appraisal of alternatives
  (like shuttle disaster or bay of pigs) Who am I
  to rock the boat? I just want to get out of
  this meeting

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• The tendency for people to overestimate the
  number of people who agree with them is called
  the false consensus effect. I thought everyone
  was against the death penalty

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• IE. If Brianna hates Psychology, she assumes
  that most people also find it boring, tedious,
  and utterly useless as well. If Shavanna likes
  pizza, she assumes that because its so good that
  everyone must like it too. Shes shocked to find
  people who dont like it as much as she does.

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Social Influence
Percentage agreeing The activities of married
women are best confined to home and family
70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0
Percentage

• Gender Role
• a set of expected behaviors for males and for
  females

Men
Women
1967 71 75 79 83 87 91
95
Year
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Social Relations why do we treat each other
differently?

• Prejudice
• an unjustifiable (and usually negative) attitude
  toward a group and its members
• involves stereotyped beliefs, negative feelings,
  and a predisposition to discriminatory action
• Stereotype
• a generalized (often overgeneralized) belief
  about a group of people

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Social Influences

• Culture
• enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, and
  traditions shared by a large group of people
• transmitted from one generation to the next
• Personal Space
• buffer zone we like to
• maintain around our bodies

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Social Relations why prejudice social bias?

• In-group Bias
• tendency to favor ones own group and dislike or
  blame things on another out-group

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• Scapegoat Theory
• Taking responsibility often causes people too
  much dissonance
• Better to blame others (maybe even an
  out-group)

• prejudice provides an outlet for anger by
  providing someone to blame

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• Just-World Phenomenon
• tendency of people to believe the world is just
• people get what they deserve and deserve what
  they get

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Social Relations

• Americans today express much less racial and
  gender prejudice

Percentage answering yes
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• Preconceived ideas can affect the way someone
  acts towards another person.

• Our expectations of behavior can be influenced as
  well. This is called the self-fulfilling
  prophecy.

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Social Relations

• Aggression
• any physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt
  or destroy
• Frustration-Aggression Principle
• principle that frustration the blocking of an
  attempt to achieve some goal creates anger,
  which can generate aggression

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Why are we aggressive?

• Genetics Some people are born to be aggressive
• Neural and Biological Your neural system
  facilitates aggression chemicals in your blood
  stream can change aggression..
• What happens if the frontal lobes get damaged?

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Social Relations

• Is there a CORRELATION BETWEEN WEATHER AND
  AGGRESSION?

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Social Relations

• Conflict
• perceived incompatibility of actions, goals, or
  ideas

• Social Trap
• a situation in which a group of people act to
  obtain short-term individual gains, which in the
  long run leads to a loss for the group as a whole.

• (overfishing, near destruction of the buffalo,
  rainforest logging)

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Social Relations conflict reduction

• Social Exchange Theory
• the theory that our social behavior is an
  exchange process, the aim of which is to maximize
  benefits and minimize costs
• Superordinate Goals
• shared goals that override differences among
  people and require their cooperation

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Social Relations conflict reduction among
nations

• Graduated and Reciprocated Initiatives in
  Tension-reduction (GRIT)
• a strategy designed to decrease international
  tensions
• one side announces recognition of mutual
  interests and initiates a small conciliatory act
• opens door for reciprocation by other party

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Social Relations- What attracts us to others?

• Proximity
• mere exposure effect- repeated exposure to novel
  stimuli increases liking of them
• Physical Attractiveness
• youthfulness may be associated with health and
  fertility
• Similarity
• friends share common attitudes, beliefs, interests

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Attractiveness

• Worldwide, men prefer youth and health, women
  prefer resources and social status

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Social Relations

• Passionate Love
• an aroused state of intense positive absorption
  in another
• usually present at the beginning of a love
  relationship
• Companionate Love
• deep affectionate attachment we feel for those
  with whom our lives are intertwined

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The key to lasting and satisfying relationships

• Equity
• a condition in which people receive from a
  relationship in proportion to what they give to
  it
• Self-disclosure
• revealing intimate aspects of oneself to others
• Altruism
• unselfish regard for the welfare of others