Social Psychology Key Concepts: Conformity, Obedience, and Attribution

Social Psychology

Deals with interactions between people, from confrontation to working together and helping others; the belief that an individual's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by social situations

Intrapersonal

A major topic in social psychology concerning emotions, attitudes, self-perception, and social cognition

Interpersonal

A major topic in social psychology concerning relationships, communication, helping behavior, aggression, prejudice and discrimination, and group processes

Conformity

Changing one's own behavior to match that of other people, even if one does not agree with the group

Normative Social Influence

The need to act in ways that we feel will let us be liked and accepted by others

Informational Social Influence

Taking cues for how to behave from other people when in a situation that is not clear or is ambiguous

Asch Effect

The influence of the group majority on an individual's judgment; demonstrated in Asch's study where 76% of participants conformed to group pressure at least once by indicating the incorrect line

Factors that Increase Conformity

Greater size of the majority; public nature of the responses (compared to private); and the absence of another dissenter

Groupthink

Occurs when people place more importance on maintaining group cohesiveness than on assessing facts of the problem, leading to faulty decision making

Groupthink Symptom: Insularity

Individual members prevent the group from hearing disruptive but potentially useful information from people who are outside the group

Social Facilitation

An individual performs better when an audience is watching, typically when performing a task that is easy or for which they are skilled, because the presence of others creates enough arousal to improve performance

Social Impairment

The presence of others has a negative impact on the performance of a difficult task because it creates too much arousal and impairs performance

Social Loafing

People put less effort into a simple task when working with others, typically found in individualistic cultures

Compliance

Changing one's behavior as a result of other people directing or asking for the change

Foot-in-the-door Technique

Asking for a small commitment and, after gaining compliance, asking for a bigger commitment

Door-in-the-face Technique

Asking for a large commitment, and after being refused, asking for a smaller commitment

Lowball Technique

Getting a commitment from a person and then raising the cost of that commitment (cost can involve money, time, or effort)

Obedience

Changing one's behavior at the command of an authority figure

Stanley Milgram's Study

Research where a 'teacher' administered what they thought were real shocks to a 'learner'; 65% of participants continued to administer shocks to an unresponsive learner

Social Role

A pattern of behavior that is expected of a person in a given setting or group (e.g., being a student)

Social Norm

A group's expectation of what is appropriate and acceptable behavior for members (e.g., how to behave, think, or wear)

Script

A person's knowledge about the sequence of events expected in a specific setting (e.g., walking into an elevator or a restaurant)

Stanford Prison Experiment

Demonstrated the power of social roles, norms, and scripts when a two-week mock study had to be ended after six days due to guards' increasingly sadistic harassment and prisoners' severe anxiety

"Rejection hurts" Finding

A study (Eisenberger et al., 2003, using Cyberball) that revealed social exclusion activates the same brain regions as physical pain

Attribution

The process of explaining one's own behavior and the behavior of others; a belief about the cause of a result

Situational Cause

Cause of behavior attributed to external factors such as delays, the action of others, or some aspect of the situation

Dispositional Cause

Cause of behavior attributed to internal factors such as personality or a character trait

Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE)

The tendency to overestimate the influence of internal (dispositional) factors and underestimate the power of the situation when explaining someone else's behavior

FAE and Culture

People from individualistic cultures have the greatest tendency to commit the FAE; people from collectivistic cultures are more likely to consider situational and cultural influences

Actor-Observer Bias

The phenomenon of explaining other people's behaviors as due to internal factors, but explaining our own behaviors as due to situational forces (because we have more information about our situation)

Self-serving Bias

The tendency to take credit (make dispositional/internal attributions) for positive outcomes, but blame others (make situational/external attributions) for negative outcomes, which protects self-esteem

Just-world Hypothesis

The belief that people get the outcomes they deserve because the world is a fair place; this can lead to blaming victims of poverty, ignoring situational and cultural causes