Psych Notes 3.5

Social Psych

the scientific study of the way in which peoples thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people

Ex. when you stop at a red light when no one is around, when you tip at a restaurant even if youre never going there again

Dispositional attribution, aka internal attribution

inference that a behavior us due to something internal about a person. aka their personality or character

Situational attribution, aka externa attribution

Inference that a behavior is due to something external to a person, situation, context. Assumption that most people would behave similarly in that situation

Give an example of situational and dispositional attribution if you see a mother intensly scolding a child

Situational- Because the son has done something very bad

dispositional- because the mother is an angry person, because she is a bad mom

What are the features of healthy and distressed marriages in the context of attributions

Healthy- dispositional attributions for positive events, situational attributions for negative ones

• They washed the dishes- they're so thoughtful!

• They forgot my birthday? Well they've been so busy recently

• Distressed- the opposite!

  • They washed the dishes- they're just trying to get on m y good side

  • They forgot my birthday- they are no forgetful and disrespectful

Fundamental attribution error

The tendency to overestimate the extent to which peoples behavior is due to internal, dispositional factors and to underestimate situational factors

Attributional study on college students

Participants talked to a woman and were told before hand that shewould act a certain way.. participants knew before the conversation that the woman was told to act a certain way, but they still thought the actor that was portraying friendly actually was more friendly. even when they had situational information, they ignored it

Attitudes

Our evaluation of people, objects, events, ideas

Your behaviors affect your attitude

Once we make a decision or engage in a behavior, we are motivated to justify it. cognitive dissonance can arise when behaviors dont match attitudes

Cognitive dissonance

we dont like discomfort,so we attempt to reduce dissonance. We change our behavior/cognitions to be consistent with each other. We justify dissonant behavior/cognitions by chaging or adding new cognitions

Festinger and Carlsmith

conducted a study on cognitive dissonance, demonstrating that people who engaged in a boring task and were paid less to lie about it experienced more dissonance and altered their attitudes to align with their behavior. The less money people recieved to lie, the more they enjoyed the study

Social influence

when other people affect our thoughts, feelings, and behavior (and vice versa)

Norms

One process of a social influence. Rules for acceptable and expected behavior. Maintained and enforced within groups.

Injunctive norms

The definition of rules and acceptable behaviors (you shouldnt pick your nose in public, you shouldnt run red lights)

Descriptive norms

statements about or observations about normal behavior.Ex. we all pick our noses, people do run red lights. Descriptively these things happen, even if the injunctive norm is not

Norms vary across cultures and across time

cultures- ex. which hand to eat with, how close you should get to someone when youre talking

Time- gay marriage

Conformity

A change in ones behavior to match others. not necessarily positive or negative

Reasons why we conform

normative social influence- we confrom because we want to belong

informational social influence- we conform because we want to be correct, accurate in our judgements

or a combo of both!

types of conformity

private acceptance- conforming becsue you believe other people are right

public compliance- confomring to avoid standing out (may include private disagreement)

Asch study

People are asked to say which line is longest (every single person gives the wrong answer, then the last person also gives the wrong answer so they are being pressured)

Obedience

Complying with request from an authority fiugure

milgram test

people think they are shocking someone, they can hear them asking for mercy (actor), but are told to keep shocking

Original interpretation- we cannot resist authority

Modern interpretation- participants conform to wrong norms/goals

Social behavior

How does being with other people affect performance

social facilitation

the presence of others improves performance

When people are in the presence of others and their individual performance can be evaluated, the tendency to preform better on simple tasks and worse on complex tasks

social loafing

when people reduce their effort when working with a group, compared to what they do alone

Social identity theory

social identity- part of your identity rooted in their groups you belong to (race, gender, orientation)

Not always constant!

Social identity is psychologically important when active

Consequences of social identity

When ID is particularly strong, it changes how we see the world. we are sensitive to group relevant information

Minimal group studies

participants randomly assigned groups based on meaningless criteria (ex. overestimatory and underestimator) removed outgroup context. Participants then assigned money to other participants. shows ingroup bias

Ingroup bias- a consequence of social identity

tendency to treat ingroup members differently that outgroup members

out group homogeneity

perception that outgroup memebrs are very similar to each other

Prejudice

negative attitudes towards group and its members

Potential effects of implicit bias

deaths to black people at the hands of police officers for example. Deadly consequences beacuse of prejudice and implicit bias

types of bias

implicit bias- baises that a person might not be aware of

Explicit bais- prejudice that is self reported. more stigmatized now

Shooter bias studies

participants see pictures and have to make a quick judgement of whether or not a person is holding a gun (shoot or not shoot)

“just world belief”

Belief that the world is fair and people get what they deserve and deserve what they get