Social Psychology

Social Psychology

How we think about ourselves/others that affects interactions and the way people respond

Automatic Processing

Reflex:Fast

ex: drive to a location unintenionally when driving somewhere else due to quick decision making

Controlled Processing

Effortful: Takes time

ex: paying closer attention (first impression) asking “do I want to get to know this person more?” while just generally observing someone is more automatic

Schema

info networks that reflect beliefs, associations, and expectations about the world

Group-based Schema

Categorizing people by group

ex: Canadians, football players, sorority girls, religious groups

Situation-based Schema

Mental frameworks about the events and behaviors appropriate in specific situations

ex: classroom, elections, football games

Halo Effect

When meeting someone, you see one positive trait and assume they have many positive traits

Power of the Primacy Effect

The first thing you see/hear has a major impact on first impression

ex: how your potential employer sees you dresses at your job interview

Attractiveness Bias

more attractive —> thought to be more put together and smarter

Baby-face Bias

Often rated as innocent and trustworthy

ex: lawyer wants to present client with baby-face to project innocence to judge/jury

Stereotypes

oversimplified group-based schema used to describe all members as one way. forms barriers.

Self-fulfilling Prophecy

beliefs/schemas about person can lead us to behave toward them in ways that are consistent with our expectations and cause them to become true

Teacher Expectations/Late Bloomer Study

tests for self-fulfilling effects

Teachers Expectation study

is a fake assessment on students where teachers are told a specific 5 students will be “late bloomers” but will eventually really grasp the concepts and be successful later on. Observers watch throughout the semester to find out that the 5 late bloomers actually were more successful, due to more help and attention by the teachers. Prophecy: teacher believes that they will be sucessful later on and then the students are more successful.

The “Telephone/picture” Study

College men talk with women they have never met in person, but have only been given a photo. Some women were really attractive in the photo and some were not thought to be attractive. The men behaved more engaged when talking with more attractive women. Women respond to this by being more engaged to. Women have a stronger response because they are more valued.

We live up to others expectations.

Children and the Math/Tidiness study.

Consists of 3 manipulations: student is told, “you are good at math,” (attribution), “you should be good at math,” (persuasion) and are told nothing.

People who scored higher over time more consistently were the attribution participants. Those who were persuaded were originally seeing an increase but eventually a drop back to the original state.

Factors that affect our self-concept

1. Judgement of others

2. Social comparison

3. Observing our own behavior

Judgement of others

Someone tells you that you look attractive, you will feel more attractive. Negative feedback really damages self-esteem.

Social Comparison

Compare yourself to a reference group

“I am ___, compared to Sally”

Observing our own behavior

Thinking “I am not good at this”

Attribution Theory

People naturally make judgements about others and try to understand their behavior.

Internal Attribution

Person acts this way because this is the way that they are

External Attribution

Person acts this way because of this situation

Consistency

Asking, “Does this person regularly behave this way?”

If not, most likely external.

Consensus

Asking, “Do others behave in a similar way?”

High Consensus —> external attribution (anyone would act this way)

Low Consensus —> internal attribution (only this person is behaving this way)

Distinctiveness

Asking, “Does this behavior occur in only this situation or do they behave this way across other situations?”

High distinctiveness —→ external attri. (this person is only acting this way in this situation)

Low distinctiveness —→ internal attri. (this person acts this way in many situations)

Fundamental Attribution Error

bias to make internal attribution when judging others (NOT ABT OURSELF OR PEOPLE WE KNOW WELL)

ex: see a person acting crazy, and automatically assume it’s because they are crazy all the time.

Is FAE apparent in eastern cultures?

It is not apparent in India.

Self-serving Bias

internal attribution for success & external attribution for failure

ex: “of course, I did that all by myself!” (internal)

“it wasn’t my fault, I was just tired” (external)

Depressive Bias

When people are depressed, they focus on the negative

-internal attri. for failure (It’s all my fault)

-external attri. for success (I don’t deserve credit for this)

Just world bias

People get what they deserve

-internal causes

Attitudes

An evaluation of someone/something

3 components of an attitude

1. Affect (feeling about thing)

2. Behavior (predisposition toward certain behavior)

3. Cognitive (Belief)

ex: Belief: Chocolate tastes good Behavior: likely to eat chocolate Affect: positive toward chocolate

Attitudes are often formed

rapidly through association (automatic)

Sources that are influential on rapidly forming attitudes

• Credibility - expert, degree

• Trustworthy

• Famous / Attractive

• Similar to values of receiver

ex: cars are advertised by attractive women

Attitudes can be formed

slowly through controlled processing/ careful thinking

ex: when something is personal to us, we think more about it and are more influenced by details

Study about Exam Requirement (Juniors/Seniors")

Juniors and Seniors are presented idea of new test needed to graduate. Seniors have low personal relevance to this change, so they focus less on details and more on credibility of presenter regardless of weak/strong argument. Juniors have high personal relevance so they focus on strong argument led by more positive attitude regardless of expertise.

Attitude-Behavior Consistency

Attitudes imply behavior

When attitudes are more likely to be consistent w/ behavior

1. You are aware of you attitude

2. Stable attitude/prior experience w/ behavior

3. Specific so more directly relevant to behavior

4. Highly relevant / important situations

Cognitive Dissonance Theory

Inconsistency leads to discomfort/dissonance

Consists of either: attitude-behavior inconsistency, attitude-attitude inconsistency

Dissonance motivates us to

Avoid or reduce dissonance when it occurs by:

• only paying attention to info relevant to our beliefs (selective attention)

• reducing through post-decision dissonance effect where after making a decision between 2+ desired things, people feel dissonance because they had to decline something they wanted, which results in increasing the value in the thing they chose and under-valuing the thing they rejected.

• Justifying the contradiction - by making excuses for our behavior such as, “Oh I was just tired”

• Change your attitude - If you can’t make excuses, you tend to change attitude such as, hanging out with someone you don’t really like them. Attitude will change and sometimes you will start to like them.

Smoker Study

Smokers selectively attend to info that minimizes the risks of smoking.

STUDY: Smokers listen to PSA about health risks of smoking vs. “smoking is not as bad as it is thought to be.” Static sometimes clouds the audio, and participant needs to press the button to clear up static and hear the message. Smokers have more button presses for smoking not being so bad whereas non-smokers have more presses for smoking being BAD.

Festinger & Carlsmith Study about Attitude Changes

• Subjects do really boring task and then are paid either $1 or $20 to recruit another subject from waiting area and tell them that it was really interesting and exciting (lie) to get OG subject to have contradicting attitude and behavior.

• Those who lied and were paid $20 had justification for lying (Well I was paid $20)

• Those who lied for $1 had no justification and changed their attitude to think that the experiment really was exciting

Bystander Effect

• People are less likely to go out of their way to help someone if many others are present

• Diffusion of Responsibility

• Modeling effects counter DoR

Diffusion of Responsibility (DoR)

When more than 4 people are present, there is much less altruistic behavior.

ex: you don’t answer questions in class because you assume someone else will do it

Modeling effects can counteract DoR

Someone volunteers to do something first and shows that it is okay, so you go after them.

Social Influence

How other people influence behavior in others

3 Processes of Social Influence

• conformity

• obedience

• compliance

Conformity

Doing something that others do to be liked (normative influence) or gain info to be right (informational influence)

Conformity Experiment

Solomon Asch’s Line experiment

Solomon Asch’s line experiment

7 Confederates ad 1 subject are shown 3 lines and need to match the correct line to one of the 3 options. The confederates all go first and purposely choose incorrectly, so the subject also gives wrong answer to fit in.

• There are variations of this study such as one confederate giving correct answer so conformity decreases

Obedience

Doing something than an authority figure demanded/ordered

Compliance

Doing something that someone asks you to do

Milgram’s Experiment

Teacher (subject) asks questions and if confederate gets it wrong, they must deliver shocks that increase each time you miss a question. 65% of subjects followed orders and administered the shocks.

Different methods of experiment:

• Not seeing each other, teacher only hears the shocks being delivered

• Teacher seeing through a one way mirror

• Being face-to-face and teacher touches the confederate to administer shock

• Distancing experimenter

With each of these progressive

Compliance Techniques

• Foot in the door technique

• Pre-giving

• The door in the face method

• The low-ball technique

• Four Walls technique (boxing in)

Foot-in-the-door Technique

Start w/ small request and then follow up with larger request.

• compliance is more likely if they already agreed to small task

Principle: Cognitive Dissonance (wants to be consistent)

Pre-giving

Give a small gift and then ask for a donation

Principle: Reciprocity Norm (leads to feeling that one needs to reciprocate the favor)

Can you combine Pre-giving and foot-in-the-door technique?

NO

They cancel each other out.

The door-in-the-face method

Start w/ very large request and quickly change it to a smaller one.

ex: “Can you donate $20 to my fundraiser? Oh, wait! You are a student, could you just do $2?”

Principle: Reciprocity Norm

The low-ball technique

Person agrees to purchase item at a specific price, act as though you will accept their offer, but return and say that you are unable to raise it.

They are more lilely to buy it despite price change, because they thought it would be theirs.

Principle: Cognitive Dissoan

Four Walls Technique (Boxing in)

Get a person to say things that are consistent with a behavior.

ex: get them to speak for themself about the benefits of donating, and they are more likely to donate.

Principle: Cognitive Dissonance (person feels compelled to be consistent)