Lecture 13: Applications

Social Psychology and Law

Social psychology can be applied to the legal system to understand how social thinking, attitudes, influence, group processes, aggression, biases, attraction, and helping affect legal judgments and behavior.

Eyewitness Memory

A person's memory of an event they witnessed; eyewitness testimony can strongly influence legal decisions even though eyewitnesses can sometimes be incorrect.

Eyewitness Confidence

The confidence an eyewitness expresses in their memory; highly confident witnesses can be more believable even though confidence does not necessarily mean the witness is correct.

Eyewitness Misidentification

When an eyewitness incorrectly identifies someone as the person involved in a crime; it has contributed substantially to wrongful convictions.

Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

A Supreme Court case that ended school segregation and relied partly on social psychology research showing harmful effects of segregation on Black children.

Clark Doll Study

Research by Mamie and Kenneth Clark showing that racial segregation could negatively influence Black children's self-esteem and academic achievement; this research contributed to Brown v. Board of Education.

Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins (1989)

A Supreme Court case in which gender stereotyping was recognized as sex discrimination after Ann Hopkins was denied partnership partly because of gender stereotypes.

Power of the Situation

The idea that situations and social environments can strongly influence people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

Attitude-Behavior Relationship

Attitudes and behavior are related, but the relationship is not perfect; the lecture notes a correlation of about .3.

Dispositional Attribution

Explaining someone's behavior in terms of their personality or other internal characteristics rather than considering situational influences.

Fundamental Attribution Error

The tendency to overestimate personal or dispositional causes of other people's behavior while underestimating situational causes.

Self-Serving Bias

The tendency to interpret events in ways that protect or enhance one's view of oneself.

Cognitive Miser

The tendency to conserve mental effort by relying on shortcuts rather than carefully analyzing all available information.

Stereotype Exaggeration

The tendency to overestimate differences between groups even when the groups are actually more similar than different.

Stress

A psychological response that can occur because of both positive and negative life events; greater stress is associated with more illness.

Perceived Control and Stress

Having a greater sense of control over one's life is associated with lower levels of stress.

Social Support and Stress

Support from other people can buffer or reduce the negative effects of stress.

Processing Stress

Working through stressful experiences, such as through writing or the Step-Away approach, can help people cope with stress.

Step-Away Approach

A way of processing negative experiences by mentally distancing yourself from them and considering the situation from a broader perspective.

Social Psychology Backpack

A set of practical lessons from social psychology: recognize the power of situations, question yourself and others, avoid careless dispositional judgments, think carefully instead of being a cognitive miser, embrace differences, help others, and use GRACE.