Psych Unit 3

What is Social Psychology?

Study of social behavior

• How people affect one another

• How situations impact behavior

What are two behavioral influences?

• Situationism

  • Environment/situation

• Dispositionism

  • Internal factors

    • personality, temperament, etc.

Fundamental Attribution Error

People assume that someone’s actions are all due to their character, rather than including situational factors.

What do we blame outcomes of our own behavior on if its positive or negative?

• Positive outcome = Personal disposition/character

  • Who I AM

• Negative outcome = situation

  • Was because of the actions of SOMEONE ELSE

Why do we blame outcomes on different things if they are positive or negative?

Actor - Observer Bias

• Doing something vs watching someone else do it

Self-Serving Bias

• Think of yourself in a positive light

Social Roles

Part people play as members of a certain social group

Social Norms

A group’s expectation for what is acceptable behavior

• Can be altered based off of the social role

Stanford Prison Experiment

Philip Zimbardo

• looking at how roles influence attitudes and behaviors

• Participants assigned to be a ‘prisoner’ or ‘guard’

• Prisoners tried rebelling and guards were aggressive and abusive

What were the critiques of the Stanford Prison Experiment?

Demand characteristics

• “Supposed” to act in a specific way; experimental bias

Zimbardo’s Influence

• Very involved, “Prison ward”

Ethical Concerns

• Abusive behaviors: a grad student stopped the experiment early due to these concerns

Cognitive Dissonance

• Competing or inconsistent thoughts, beliefs or actions

  • Don’t believe/care in the science

• Minds seeks to reduce dissonance

  • Only do so much, compare to someone else, healthy in other ways, substitute

What are two main aspects that cause dissonance?

• Inconsistent

  • Belief

  • Action

What are three things done to decrease Dissonance?

• Change Belief

• Change Action

• Change Action Perception

What are the two persuasion routes of changing an individual’s attitude?

• Central route

• Peripheral route

Central route

• Use evidence and arguments to change attitudes

• Typically more durable

• Doesn’t work when they’re distracted, have to be interested in the info

Peripheral Route Persuasion

• Doesn’t engage systematic thinking

• Relies on snap judgement

• Halo effect

  • Good Person = Good thing

  • Ex. Celebrity endorsements

Foot-in-the-door

• Agree to a small request

• Comply with a large request later

• Drive: Consistency

  • Ex. Fundraising

Door-in-the-Face

• Large, Unsuccessful, request

• Comply with a small request later

• Drive: Reciprocity

  • Ex. Raise

Social Facilitation

• Perform better in other people’s presence

  • If we’ve done it before

Social Loafing

• Less effort in group tasks

• Less accountable, contributions less important, ‘free ride’

Deindividuation

• Loss of self-awareness and self-restraint

• Happens when we feel activated and anonymous

• Explains why we might do things in groups we might not do individually

Asch’s conformity study

1 target line and three comparing lines, one that is the same and the other two are higher or lower

• some people were experimenters inside that purposely got it wrong first, and then other people started going along with them

Conformity

Adjusting our behavior or thinking to meat group standards

Informational conformity

Conform to group based on belief group has the correct information

Normative conformity

We conform to avoid rejection or gain social approval

Group think

Going along with a group decision to preserve harmony, but overrides opportunity for appraisal of alternatives.

Milgram’s Obedience Study

• A subject was asked to electrocute a fake test subject whenever instructed by the experimenter, increasing in shock levels

• Do people obey others even when they have concerns with behavior?

• Majority of participants obeyed until the end

Prejudice

“Prejudgement” - negative attitudes or feelings towards another based on group membership

What are three major factors of prejudice?

• Cognitions (ie. stereotypes)

• Affect (ie. feelings)

• Behavior (ie. discrimination)

What is the difference between explicit and implicit prejudice?

Explicit

• consciously held and directly expressed attitude

Implicit

• Unconsciously held (unaware) prejudice that is indirectly expressed

  • Impacts on friendliness and getting hired

What are three major sources of prejudice?

• Social inequities

• In vs outgroup thinking

• Scapegoat theory

Social inequities that cause prejudice

• Just-world-phenomenom

  • People get what they deserve

  • Reap what you sow

• Good is rewarded, evil is punished

What theory is involved for in vs outgroup thinking? What does it mean?

• Social identity theory

  • Reinforce IN group

  • Discriminate the OUT group

What is the scapegoat theory?

• Look for someone else to blame

What are the three cognitive roots of prejudice?

• Categorization

• Outgroup homogeneity

  • Tend to treat ALL outgroup members as the same

  • Those that are out, are OUT

• Vivid cases

  • ex. terrorism

Aggression

• Behavior with intent to harm or pain someone

• Hostile aggression

  • Goal to inflict pain

• Instrumental aggression

  • Aggression used to achieve a different goal

  • Gives a reason to hurt