Social Psych Chapter 1

Social Psychology

Scientific study of the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors of individuals in social situations; study situations in which people influence one another as well as the ways people respond to attempts to influence them — interested in how ppl make sense of their world; who they believe, motives, personalities, explaining events

The Power of the Situation

Kurt Lewin; behavior of people is always the function of the field of forces (social situation, actions, words, and emotions of other people) and our physical/physiological selves. Can produce drastic changes in behavior

Examples of the Power of Situation

Milgram Shock Experiment (unfamiliar situation, trust authority who took responsibility, step-by-step nature); Princeton Theological Seminary (in a rush)

Fundamental Attribution Error

Failure to recognize the importance of situational influences on behavior as well as over-emphasize dispositions (internal factors like beliefs, values, personality, abilities that guide behavior)

Channel Factors

Circumstances can guide behavior in a particular direction by making it easier to follow one path than another (nudges; instead of opt in, check if opt out)

Construal

How we interpret situations and behavior and how we make inferences, often nonconscious, about the contexts and the people we encounter; perceptions of ppl drive behavior towards them

Schema

Elaborate stores of systematized knowledge to understand simple/obvious situations; generalized knowledge about physical/social world — help rely on certain expectations

Stereotypes

Schemas that we have for people of various kinds; content of person schemas and how they are applied and sometimes misapplied in order to facilitate or derail interactions; necessary but unfounded

Automatic Processing

Emotional reactions, implicit attitudes/beleifs that can’t be readilly controlled consciously; can’t explain reasons for judgements (nylon stockings); quick and parallel operation (recognize faces, muscle memory of driving places); everyday decisions, hidden prejudices; leads to biases

Controlled Processing

Careful and deliberate thought, systematic, explicit attitudes and beliefs that can become implicit over time; slow and serially

Ideomotor Mimicry

Subconsciously imitate

Natural Selection

Believe that humans defining traits are social and inherited (learn, language, cooperation)

Universals

Private sex, sexual jealousy, living in families, older husbands, no incest, etc; primates show facial expressions, food sharing, etc

Group Living and Language

hunting, protect little ones, understand and produce language to express emotions and intentions; infants prewired for language, learn at similar developmental stages; babble phenomes but eventually drop

Theory of Mind

Ability to recognize that other people have beliefs and desires, and understanding that helps us predict their behavior; children know before 2, by ¾ can recognize false beliefs; autistic people can’t relate to mental states

Naturalistic Fallacy

The way things are is they way they should be (biology as destiny); but have decreased violence, so view with caution

Social neuroscience

Field of examining the biological grounding for behavior; the brain

• 100 billion neruons with 50 distinct regions

• fMRI= blood flows to activated parts of the brain

• Older parts of brain (amygdala (fear, salient stimuli like strangers) or accumbens (reward projected to prefrontal (complex thoughts/emotion))

• Neocortex= neurons on top of older regions of brain; unique and used in reasoning, abstract thought, memory

Cultural Differences

Independent vs Individualistic

Independent Cultures

Distinct social entities tied by voluntary bonds of affection and membership that can be terminated — attributes exist in absence of others

Interdependent Collective Culture

Don’t have as much freedom/personal control, and don’t necessarily want/need it. Success in Asia not important for self but for family; Korean people don’t want to be unique; prefer hierarchal relations; justice for certain circumstances

Some Qualifications of Interdependent/Independent

Hispanic familialism; warmth, closeness and support — greater well-being and stronger relationships but greater stress when move away; social class differences= working-class and low SES are more interdependent; American South is more interdependent than the rest of the US

Rule Makers and Breakers

Germany and China= tight, US and Australia=loose; South tight and West loose

Culture and Gender Roles

Male dominance is one of the most variable aspects; hunter-gatherers = males hunted and women gathered, but gender-egalitarian with weak hierarchies; polygyny vs serial monogamy

WEIRD Societies and Generalizability of Social Psych

Many findings obtained from middle class individuals in western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic

Culture and Evolution as Tools for Understanding Situations

Complementary understandings; ancestors concerned with survival and reproduction, so prewired inclinations towards certain behavior/thinking; can be applied flexibly, modifiable by culture, society develops a prewired inclination from adaptiveness to circumstances in; circumstance and intelligence help us determine which tools we develop and which we override

Social Psychology and Critical Thinking

Scientific method in context of common, everyday events, so easy to apply to bread and daily problems; often content with hasty and wrong info