L9: Social Psychology [PSYC1001-1A]

[From previous lecture (8)]

Personality predicts behaviour, but sometimes, social influences overrides our personal will & autonomy

Stanley Milgram’s experiment (overview)

• The Milgram Shock Experiment, conducted by Stanley Milgram in the 1960s, tested obedience to authority.

• Participants were instructed to administer increasingly severe electric shocks to another person, who was actually an actor, as they answered questions incorrectly.

Milgram’s experiment — Aim & Method

Aim:

• Studied obedience to authority, exploring whether individuals would obey instructions to harm another person because an authority figure told them to.

Method:

• An authority figure instructed participants to administer increasingly intense electric shocks to a “learner” (an actor), who feigned pain and distress.

Mlgram’s experiment — Results & Conclusion

Results:

• A significant percentage of participants obeyed the authority figure and administered the maximum level of shocks, despite their apparent discomfort.

Conclusion:

• The study demonstrated that ordinary people are surprisingly likely to obey authority figures, even when those orders conflict with their own moral beliefs.

What does Milgram’s experiment show us?

We are susceptible to social influences because we value social bonds.

• Social pain by the Cyberball paradigm

• Attachment & Emotional bonding (in L7)

The Cyberball paradigm

A standard experimental tool in psychology used to study the effects of social exclusion or ostracism in a controlled, virtual environment. 

• We feel pain at the slightest sign of social rejection.

• It harms self-esteem and psychological well-being.

Attachments

Emotional bonding that facilitates cuddling rather than feeding (in the context of animals)

Our cognitive systems

We are often lazy, busy or cognitively preoccupied, thus we choose to prioritise social cognitions.

• System 1 — Heuristics

• System 2

Heuristics

• Mental shortcuts

• Effective & persistent; Built through previous experiences and choices (schemas)

• Can be wrong

• These initial beliefs are hard to change, even in the face of opposite evidence

  • The perseverance effect

Stereotypes (Heuristics)

A fixed, oversimplified mental shortcut about a group of people, assuming all members share certain traits (like being good at math or lazy), regardless of individual differences

The Halo effect (Heuristics)

A cognitive bias where your overall impression of someone (good or bad) dictates your judgment of their specific, unrelated traits.

• E.g, Believing a physically attractive person is also more competent, honest, or friendly.

Attributions (Heuristics)

They are based on past patterns of behaviour (which may bear little predictive value)

• Internal attribution

  • Based on dispositions and internal factors of the actor (e.g., personality traits)

• External attribution

  • Based on situational factors that are external (and uncontrollable) to the actor

Attributions being prone to error (Heuristics)

To save our limited cognitive resources, we avoid “what-ifs”

• Correspondence bias

Correspondence bias

The tendency to view behaviour as the result of disposition, even when the behaviour can be explained by the situation in which it occurs

• Dispositional attributions give us certainty (as if everything is easily explained

Defensive attributions (Heuristics)

• Self-serving bias

  • I earned an A in Henry’s class! (Bolster self-esteem)

  • Henry gave me a C in his class… (Protect self-esteem)

• Just-world beliefs

  • Good things happen to good people; bad things happen to bad people

  • Victim-blaming & rape myths

Self-serving bias

Attributing success to dispositional factors while attributing failure to situational factors

Group-serving bias

An organisation tends to attribute success to its dispositional characteristics, but blames failures on the situation.

Actor-observer bias

Occurs when we emphasise dispositional attributions to explain the behaviour of others, while emphasising situational attributions to justify our own behaviour.

• E.g, If my friend and I both flunked a test, it’s because I was sick, and they didn’t study hard enough.

Social Problems arising form S1 thinking

• Stereotypes → Prejudice

  • A negative prejudgment of another person based on their membership in a group (e.g, sex, race, ethnicity)

  • The problem of aggregation — overgeneralising individual differences to inter-group differences

Prejudice leading to overgeneralisation

• Starts with a negative belief (stereotype) about a group

• Then, using limited experiences or biased information to assume all members share that trait, ignoring individual differences

• Then, creating heuristics that confirm the bias, even when evidence contradicts it, making it hard to change the oversimplified view

Prejudice leading to discrimination

Discrimination

• Unfair behaviour that may or may not be due to stereotypes & prejudice

• May / May not be expressed immediately

  • Can be “positive” (e.g, tokenism in the workplace)

  • Can be unconscious

Correll et al. (2002)

“The Police Officers’ Dilemma”

• They studied racial bias in split-second decisions, finding people are quicker to shoot armed Black suspects than armed White suspects, and slower not to shoot unarmed Black suspects, demonstrating how stereotypes influence automatic threat assessment, especially under time pressure.

• Constructed in a computer game setting

Cultural influences on Attribution

• Individualistic cultures (US & other Western nations)

  • Stress individual achievement & competition

  • Members are more likely to demonstrate correspondence bias

• Collectivist Cultures (many East Asian nations)

  • Traditionally, values cooperation as a means of attaining family and work group goals

  • Members tend to place more emphasis on situation than the members individually

Attitudes

A positive or negative evaluation that predisposes behaviour towards an object, person or situation

Networks of Attitudes

The A.B.C’s:

• Affect (i.e, emotions)

• Behaviour

• Cognition

Affect (Attitude)

Addressed emotional responses to the object

• Information about your future career may make you feel helpless, confused, or angry.

Behaviour (Attitude)

Reflects in the way people respond to the object.

• After hearing about that information, you may schedule an appointment with your A.A. to discuss your future.

Cognition (Attitude)

Includes your beliefs about the object

• After hearing the news about your future career, you may begin to worry that you’ve chosen the wrong major or that the news was inaccurate.

Attitude Formation

• From the basis of our personal experiences

• Absorbed from contact with peers, parents, and other close influences

• Learning principles also play an important role:

  • Operant conditioning suggests that approval / disapproval shapes attitudes

  • Classical conditioning suggests that a positive attitude toward stimuli is associated with positive outcomes

Attitude & Behaviour

The relationship is bidirectional

• Positive attitude → Approach behaviour

• Negative attitude → Avoidance behaviour

• Behaviours also influence attitudes

Cognitive dissonance

A state of psychological discomfort from holding contradictory thoughts or beliefs.

• When the mind and behaviour are in conflict

• We need to resolve the conflict → by looking for justifications inside or outside of our system

Cognitive dissonance & justification

Condition 1

• There is sufficient external justification

• The experimenter is a nice person; I’m doing this for him.

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Condition 2

• Insufficient external justification; seek internal justification

• The experimenter is a rude person; I can’t be really doing this for him

Cognitive consistency

A preference for holding congruent attitudes and beliefs

Attitude change & Persuasion

Cognitive dissonance can produce an attitude change, but it doesn’t occur in response to a direct effort by another person.

• Persuasion occurs, via a change in attitude, in response to information provided by another person

The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)

A model that predicts responses to persuasive messages by distinguishing between the central & peripheral routes to persuasion.

• Central route

• Peripheral route

Central route (ELM)

Occurs when a person considers persuasive arguments carefully & thoughtfully

• Analysis of the quality of the argument

Peripheral route (ELM)

Occurs when a person responds to peripheral cues without carefully considering the quality of the argument.

• Uses heuristics, or rules of thumb

• Focus on the speaker’s credibility, appearance

• Intonation

• Emotional appeals

Prejudice

A prejudgement, usually negative, of another person on the basis of membership in a group

Social Identity

Refers to people’s sense of who they are, based on the groups to which they belong (Tajfel & Turner, 1879)

• Develops into the categorisation of an “out-group” & an “in-group”

• Leads to “group comparison”

Social Identity Theory (S.I.T)

• People build a positive social identity and self-esteem through group membership.

• People perceive the group they are members of (in-group) more positively than people who aren’t (out-group)

Stereotype threat

• The fear that one will confirm a negative stereotype about a group to which they belong

• When people are faced with a stereotype threat, they often get nervous and perform worse, thus confirming the stereotype.

Reducing prejudice

Increased contact can reduce it, but not just any contact.

• Allport (1954) suggested 4 criteria for positive contact:

  • Equal standing

  • Common Goals

  • Cooperation

  • Support from authorities or customs

Social Norms

Usually unwritten / implicit rules for behaviour in social settings

Types of individual behaviours in a group

• Conformity – Normative social influence / Informational social influence

• Obedience – Investigated in the Stanford Prison Study

• Social loafing & diffusion of responsibility

Conformity

Matching one’s behaviour and appearance to perceived social norms in order to be accepted

Why do people conform?

• Informative Social Influence (useful in ambiguous situations)

  • E.g, if you’re uncertain about what to do, observing the behaviours of others and conforming to them can be helpful

• Normative Social Influence (To fit in)

  • Gaining Approval/Avoiding Rejection: Humans fear exclusion; conforming helps us feel accepted and liked, preventing feelings of insecurity or being an outcast.

Social facilitation & Social inhibition (Individual behaviour in a group)

Where an individual's performance on a task improves when others are present, especially for simple or well-learned tasks, but worsens for complex or new tasks (social inhibition)

Deindividuation (Individual behaviour in a group)

A state where people lose their sense of personal identity, self-awareness, and personal responsibility in a group setting

• People start acting out in more radical ways

• E.g, The KKK members

Group polarisation (Individual behaviour in a group)

When a group's shared opinion becomes more extreme after discussing a topic, compared to the initial opinions of the individuals.

• Conformity and desire for affiliation contribute to this

• E.g, It’s like chatting with friends about a movie you only mildly disliked, and by the end, you all hate it because your opinions were amplified through discussion.

Groupthink (Individual behaviour in a group)

When a group priorities harmony over critical thinking, leading members to suppress their doubts and agree with the majority, even if the decision is irrational or flawed, to avoid conflict and maintain unity.

Social loafing

Reduced motivation and effort shown by individuals working in a group

• E.g, A student not contributing much to a group project because they know others will do the work (free-riding)

Compliance

Agreement with a request from a person with no perceived authority

• We are more likely to comply with requests presented by attractive people (McCall, 1997; Lynn & Simons, 2000)

Reciprocation

In which we feel obligated to give something back to people who’ve given something to us.

• It’s one of the most powerful tools of social influence (Gouldner, 1960).

“The Foot in the Door” technique

• Starts with an irresistible small request (”Where’s the medical school?”)

• Followed up by a larger one (“Could you show me the way?”)

• Dissonance – Action inconsistency

  • Effective in gaining compliance

“Door-in-the-face” scenario

• Where you first ask for a huge, unreasonable favour that's likely to be rejected

• Then immediately follow up with the smaller, actual request you wanted all along.

• This makes the second request seem much more reasonable & increasing the chance of compliance due to reciprocity

The low-balling strategy

Designed to gain compliance by making a very attractive initial offer to induce a person to accept the offer, only to then make the terms less favourable.

Obedience

Compliance with the request from an authority figure

Mere exposure effect (importance of proximity in relationships)

A situation in which repeated exposure increases liking.

Attitude alignment

The extent to which individuals change their attitudes in such a manner as to bring their attitudes into closer alignment with the attitudes of another person (or group of persons).

Robert Stemberg’s triangular model of love

Distinguishes the foundations of different types of relationships along the dimensions:

• Intimacy

• Passion

• Commitment

Stemberg’s Three types of Love

Type	Combines	Excludes
Romantic love	Intimacy + passion	Commitment
Companionate love	Intimacy + commitment	Passion
Consummate love	Intimacy + commitment + passion	Nothing

Choosing between cooperation & competition

“The Prisoner’s Dilemma” (Poundstone, 1992)

• A scenario showing how 2 rational individuals, acting in their own self-interest (like confessing to a crime), often lead to a worse outcome for both than if they had cooperated (stayed silent).

Bystander intervention

The study of situational variables related to helping a stranger, most notably the decreased likelihood of helping as the number of bystanders increases

• Probably influenced by a sense of individual responsibility

Altruism

• Helping others without personal gain or with personal cost

• Influential Factors:

  • Number of potential helpers available

  • Relatedness to person needing help

  • Punishment for selfishness

  • Conscious desire to help

  • Sense of personal responsibility

Aggression

The conscious intent to harm others. Several forms of aggression are:

• Instrumental aggression

• Relational aggression

• Defensive aggression

• Passive aggression

• Maternal aggression

Instrumental aggression

Intentional harm, usually physical, done to others to obtain a goal

• E.g. attacking a person to steal their purse / wallet.

Relational aggression

Harms another person’s social standing through behaviours such as ignoring, excluding, and gossiping

Defensive aggression

The person may do harm to others in self-defense

Passive aggression

In which people who aren’t comfortable being openly aggressive get what they want under the guise of still trying to please others

Maternal aggression

A rather common phenomenon (in the animal word, and occasionally humans), in which sickly or unwanted offspring are killed

Biological psychology of Aggression

• Prenatal exposure to high levels of androgens increases the aggressive play of male & female preschoolers (Reinisch et al., 1991)

• Serotonin levels are negatively correlated with aggressive behaviour