What is social psychology?

1
What is social psychology?

• The scientific study of the ways in which the
  thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of an
  individual are influenced by the real or imagined
  behavior of others.

2
Social Cognition

• impression formation
• attribution
• interpersonal attraction

3
Impression Formation

• schemata
• primacy effect
• self-fulfilling prophecies
• stereotypes

4
Schemata

• The use of schemata speeds information
  processing.
• Schematic processing aids in encoding and recall
  of personal information.

5
Primacy Effect

• The theory that early information about someone
  weighs more heavily than later information in
  influencing ones impression of that person.

6
Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

• The process in which a persons expectation about
  another elicits behavior from the second person
  that confirms the expectation.

7
Stereotypes

• A special type of schema about members of a
  social category.
• Stereotypes may contribute to self-fulfilling
  prophecies.

8
Attribution Theory

• The theory that addresses the question of how
  people make judgments about the causes of
  behavior.
• Behavior is typically explained as being the
  result of either internal or external factors.

9
3 Types of Information Used to Determine Causality

• distinctiveness uniqueness of circumstances
• consistency degree to which behavior is typical
  of the individual in similar circumstances
• consensus degree to which behavior in this
  circumstance is typical of most people

10
Biases in Attributions

• fundamental attribution error
• defensive attribution
• just-world hypothesis

11
Fundamental Attribution Error

• The tendency of people to overemphasize personal
  causes for other peoples behavior and to
  underemphasize personal causes for their own
  behavior.

12
Defensive attribution

• Sometimes referred to as the self-serving bias.
• Our successes are attributed to internal factors,
  
• whereas our failures are attributed to external
  factors.

13
Just World Hypothesis

• An attribution error based on the assumption that
  bad things happen to bad people and good things
  happen to good people.

14
Factors Involved in Interpersonal Attraction

• proximity How close two people live to each
  other.
• physical attractiveness We tend to ascribe a
  host of positive qualities to physically
  attractive individuals.

15
Factors Involved in Interpersonal Attraction

• similarity We tend to be attracted to people who
  share our attitudes, interests, values, and
  beliefs.
• exchange We are attracted to those individuals
  with whom we exchange rewards.

16
Exchange

• equity We prefer to have equitable (equal give
  and take) relationships.
• gain-loss theory We prefer increases in
  positive evaluation by others to steady positive
  evaluation.

17
Factors Involved in Interpersonal Attraction

• intimacy The quality of genuine closeness and
  trust achieved in communication with another
  person.
• self-disclosure The revealing of personal
  experiences and opinions.