AP Psych Unit 9: Social Psychology

Social group

Two or more individuals sharing common goals and interests

Norms

implicit/explicit rules that we apply to all members of the group

Zimbardo prison study

• students assigned prison or guard

• guards took their roles too seriously and hurt the prisoners

• 1/3 of the guards inflicted harsh punishment onto the prisoners

socia loafing

feeling less pressure to put forth effort when engaged in group projects

Deindividuation

we tend to lose some self-awareness, may engage in uncharacteristic behavior

Stanley Milgram

Teacher applied electric shocks when learner does not answer questions correctly

• obedience to authority

Soloman Asch

Select the line in a triad that matches the stimulus line

• conformity

• normative influence

• social influence

Leon Festinger

Gave two different groups either $1 or $20 to lie about a boring task to future subjects

• cognitive dissonance

Latane & Darley

Emergency situation created to test people’s helping behavior

• diffusion of responsibility

• bystander intervention

Muzafer Sherif

Boy’s camp study where an emergency required group cooperation

• contact theory

• superordinate goal

Aronson and Gonzales

Devised a teaching strategy (jigsaw) making Anglo and Latino children interdependent on each other

• jigsaw classroom

Rosenthal and Jacobsen

Teachers were told prior to school year to expect certain students to “bloom” academically during the year

• self-fulfiling prophecy

Triplett

Looked at the effect of an audience when learned had learned task well or were just beginning to learn it

• social facilitation

• social impairment

Social impairment

When first learning a new task, performing in front of others leads to the opposite tendency

Group polarization

When we are in a group of like-minded people, our decisions can become very extreme

Groupthink

If some members of the group do not speak out and a bad conclusion is made

Minority influence

One member of the jury held that a man is innocent, and all the other jurors wanted to leave, so they all agreed, as each juror supported conviction, members of the group became even more sure it was right

Diffusion of responsbility

Reduces the sense of personal responsibility that any one person feels to help another in need and increase in proportion to the size of the group present

Altruism

Individuals engage in acts of selfless sacrifice for others

Social cognition

The way people gather, use, interpret information about the social aspects of the world around them

Attribution theory

Why people behave the way they do

• dispositional attributions

• situational attributions

Self-serving bias

We attribute our achievements and successes to personal stable causes and our failures to situational factors

Fundamental attribution error

Tendency to underestimate the impact of situational factors and overestimate the impact of personal factors when assessing why other people acted the way they did

Actor-observer bias

Tendency to attribute our own behavior to situational causes and behavior of others to personal causes

Just-world phenomenon

believe that people get what they deserve

Self-fullfilling prophecy

Tendency to let our preconceived expectations of others influence how we treat them, and thus bring about the behavior we expected

Implicit bias

Unconscious attribution of particular qualities to members of a particular group

Scapegoat theory

When our self-worth is in jeopardy, we become frustrated and try to find others to blame

• hitler and the jews

Ethnocentrism

belief that our culture is superior to others

Out-group homogeneity

Tendency to believe all members of another group are more similar than is true

Contact theory

Equal status contact between antagonistic groups should lower tension and increase harmony

Mere exposure effect

the more we come into contact with something, the more we are to like that thing

Normative social influence

going along with the decision of a group in order to gain social approval

Informational social influence

accepting others opinions about reality, especially under conditions of uncertainty

Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon

Tendency to comply with a large request if we have previously complied with a smaller request

Reciprocity

They gift something small, and then ask for a donation, we are obliged to give one

Elaboration likelihood model

• central route of persuasion

• peripheral route

central route of persuasion

speaker uses facts, figures, other information

Peripheral route

Superficial information to distract the audience, usually in sales

Cognitive dissonance

tension that results from holding conflicting beliefs, attitudes, opinions, or values, or when our actions do not coincide with these cognitions

Instrumental aggression

purpose is that satisfaction of some goal behavior ro benefit

Hostile aggression

A person feels pain, anger, frustration