Humanistic and Sociocultural Perspectives

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Humanistic and Sociocultural Perspectives

• Segment 1
• Humanistic Perspective
• Sociocultural Perspective
• Segment 2
• Group Behavior and Conflict

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Humanistic

• Premise Reaction to psychoanalytic theory and
  behaviorism.
• Creator Abraham Maslow
• Postulates of Humanistic Psychology
• Human beings cannot be reduced to components.
• Human beings have in them a uniquely human
  context.
• Human consciousness includes an awareness of
  oneself in the context of other people.
• Human beings have choices and responsibilities.
• Human beings are intentional (Meaning/Value/Creati
  vity).

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Maslows Hierarchy of Needs
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Social Psychology

• Culture Program of shared rules that govern the
  behavior of members of a community and a set of
  values/beliefs/attitudes shared by most.
• Individualist Self is regarded as autonomous and
  individual goals/wishes are prized above
  duty/relations with others.
• Collectivist Self is regarded as embedded in
  relationships and harmony with ones group is
  prized above individual goals/wishes.
• Behavior in Social and Cultural Context
• Norm rules that regulate social life, including
  explicit laws and implicit cultural conventions.
• Role a given social position that is governed by
  a set of norms for proper behavior.

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Obedience Study

• Stanley Milgram (1961)
• Institutional Review Board (IRB)
• Learner and Teacher
• Holocaust
• Entrapment
• .
• __________________________________________________
  ______________________________________
• Factors that make people less likely to obey
• Experimenter is not in the room
• Victim was right in front of you
• Two experimenters gave conflicting demands
• Experimenter was an ordinary man (No lab coat)
• When peer group was there who refused to go
  further

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Conformity Study

• Phillip Zimbardo (1973)
• Stanford Prison Experiment
• Roles
• Why do we follow the group and fill in our roles
  like this?
• Why do we have less control over our behavior
  than we would like to believe?
• Why do we establish norms and feel uncomfortable
  when they are violated?

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Conformity StudyAbu Ghraib

• Baghdad Correctional Facility
• 2004

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Conformity StudyEstelle High Security
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Obedience

• Factors that cause people to obey when they
• would rather not
• Allocating responsibility to the authority
  (Milgram)
• Making the task routine (Duty, role, behavior,
  feels normal)
• Wanting to be polite (Dont want to be rude)
• Becoming entrapped
• Gradual process in which individuals escalate
  their commitment to a course of action to justify
  their investment of time/money /effort.

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Social Influence on Beliefs

• Social Cognition an area in social psychology
  concerned with social influences on thought,
  memory, perception, and beliefs.

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Attributions

• Attribution Theory People are motivated to
  explain their own and other peoples behavior by
  attributing causes of that behavior to a
  situation or a disposition.
• Situational Identifying the cause of an action
  as something in the situation or environment.
• Dispositional Identify the cause of an action as
  something in the person, such as a trait or a
  motive.
• Fundamental Attribution Error (Explaining others
  behavior)
• Overestimate personality factors.
• Underestimate the influence
• of the situation.
• Waitress/waiter and road rage

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Attributions

• Self-serving Bias Tendency, in explaining ones
  own behavior, to take credit for ones good
  actions and rationalize ones mistakes.
• Football/Basketball players after game
• Winners vs. Losers
• Just-World Hypothesis Good things happen to good
  people, bad things happen to bad people.
• If something bad happens to you, you must have
  deserved it.

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Attitudes

• Familiarity effect Tendency of people to feel
  more positive toward a person/item/product/ other
  stimulus that they have seen before.
• Validity effect Tendency of people to believe
  that a statement is true or valid simply because
  it has been repeated many times.

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Forer Effect

• Also called personal validation fallacy or the
  Barnum Effect.
• The observation that individuals will give high
  accuracy ratings to descriptions of their
  personality that supposedly are tailored
  specifically for them, but are in fact vague and
  general enough to apply to a wide range of
  people.
• Provides a partial explanation for the widespread
  acceptance of some beliefs and practices, such as
  astrology, fortune telling, and some types of
  personality tests.

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Social Psychology

• Other-Race Effect-
• People can recognize faces of their own race
  better than they can of other races.

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Persuasion

• Key aspects of coercive persuasion
• Person is put under physical or emotional stress.
• Persons problems are reduced to one simple
  explanation. (Which is repeatedly emphasized)
• Leader offers unconditional love/acceptance/attent
  ion.
• New identity based on the group is created.
• (Part of the whole)
• Person is subjected to entrapment.
• (Start off small in demands but then they
  increase)
• Persons access to information is severely
  controlled.
• (Mainly contradictory information)

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Prisoners Dilemma