Lecture 9 - Social Psychology

social psychology

is a branch of psychology that studies how people influence other behaviours, beliefs and attitudes

socioemotional selectivity theory

• predicts older adults having fewer relationships, which are based on different motives (emotional regulation)

• explains how people’s social goals and priorities shift

Need to belong theory

• humans have a fundamental drive to form/maintain relationships

• Absence of relationships might be harmful

• There was an isolation study where a lot of people left in the middle of the study cause they couldn’t handle being alone

Loneliness

• related to isolation but not the same

• it is a feeling that’s inherently negative due to being alone

• not easily treatable

  • forced interactions

  • support networks

  • social skills training

Isolation

• The lack of contact (not as bad as loneliness)

Social contagion

• when a belief spreads throughout a group

• can cause mass hysteria

• Examples:

  • UFO

  • social contagion theories of depression (people wrongly identifying themselves for depression)

  • Dissociative identity disorder

Dissociative Identity Disorder

• When a person claims to have two or more identities

• they don’t remember what they do as the other identity

• 9 times more common in women

• Contraversal: Some believe cultural factors or certain therapeutic practices might contribute to its appearance.

Social loafing

• tendency to do less work in groups

• related to bystander effect (diffusion of responsibility)

• cultural differences exist

• Example: Cheerleaders are less loud in a group

Deindividuation

• is when people loose their sense of identity and so act in ways they normally wouldnt

• being really loud or mean wearing a mask but being quiet and polite irl

• your basically doing what other people around you are doing even tho u wouldnt normally do that type of stuff otherwise

• online behaviours is an example

The Sandford Prison Study and its criticism

• observational study

• people were randomly assigned as guard or prisoner

• people became consumed by their roes, losing theri identity and behaving atypical

• even tho guards believed that they were incabable or cruilty, they still showed it

• the study was supposed to last 6 weeks but got terminated 2 weeks

Criticism

• small sample size

• selection bias

• demand characteristics (people behaved the way they thiught the researcher wated them to)

• observer effect (being watched may have chnaged their behaviour, making it less authentic)

• experimenter was a participant (superintendent)

obedience

listening to a figure of authority

Milgrams story/expierement

• Stanley milgram was a child of jewish parents and grew up in WW2 (holocaust)

• participant acts as a teacher who asks learner (actor) several questions

• teacher shocks learner for wrong answers

• the closer the teacher was to learner the less likley they were to shock

• when someoen was around and disagreed with the shocking they were also more likley to diagaree

• complience is related to obedience and authoritarianism

• failure to comply is related to moral development

conformity

adopting a belief or behaviour due to group pressure

Asch’s study on conformity

• participants sat in a room with actors and looked at three lines and needed to tell which line was longer

• actors went first saying the clearly wrong one and the participants followed

  • they readily conformed to the wrong opinions

  • rate of conformity increased with group size

• low self esteem = high conformity

• cultural differences may exist

  • greater in collective cultures than individualistic cultures

Individualism vs Collectivism

• Individualism means people put themselves first and value being independent.

• Collectivism means people put their group or family first and value working together.

• Western countries are often more individualistic, and Eastern countries are often more collectivist, but we should not group cultures into one or the other

cults

• groups that exhibit intense and unquestioning devotion to a single cause

misconceptions about cults

cults are easy to identify and define (wrong)

most cults are dangerous to others (wrong)

most people in cults are mentally ill (wrong)

brainwashing is requires (controversial)

Prosocial behavior

• voluntary behaviour for the benefit of others (doing something to make someone else happier)

• we treat altruism (selfless help) as the same as prosocial behavior

• associated w higher psychological and physical well-being

Can punishment be seen as prosocial behaviour

• yes, if they are fair and appropriate

• may discourage bad behaviour

• controversial because punishment might only be used on people who are seen as threats and not everyone equally

• Example: someone from another department makes a mistake and gets fired while someone in your department makes a mistake and have people in their group covering for them

predicting prosociality

• good mood

• not being rushed

• no easy escape

• personality traits

• similar characteristics

• selfish reasons

Reasons for Bystander effect

• Pluralistic ignorance (No one seems worried so maybe its not a big deal)

• Diffusion of responsibility (someone else will do it)

• Cost of intervention (feelings of judgement/vulnerability)

• bystander effect is the strongest and replicable effects in all of psychology

Aggression

• behaviour thats intended to harm others

Reasons for aggression

• male, especially for direct aggression (confrontation)

• provocation by the individual

• frustration

• physiological arousal (w provocation and frustration)

• reinforced by media (TV, video games)

• alcohol and temperature

Heuristics

• A heuristic is an approach to decision-making, problem-solving or discovery

• Helps us arrive at decions quickly, with little information but we dotn always arrive at the correct decision

• there is availability and representativeness heuristic

Availability heuristic

• Describes our tendency to make decisions or make thoughts based upon the most available content

• Example: memories that are most recent, most common, most negative, most frequent, etc

  • If you hear that there was a plane accident, you woulnt book a flight on a plane the next day. You are using your availability heuristic

Representativeness Heuristic

• Our tendency to organize information based on the similarity of that information to already established categories

• It’s our brain’s shortcut for judging things by how much they look like or match what we already know

  • If someone wears glasses and reads a lot, you might assume they’re a librarian — because they fit the "librarian" stereotype, even if that’s not logical or statistically likely.

• we ignore logic and only focus how similar somehting is

• inaccurate and harmdul (linked to stereotypes)

stereotyping

• we all have some risk for stereotyping

• if we are made aware of a stereotype we can change our behaviour

implicit discrimination

• when your not aware that you are doing discrimination

• unconcious and people dont realize they are doing it

• construct

How to address implict discrimination (associations)

• Implict associations test

• subjects are shown a word or image and cateorize it into one of two groups

• Faster responses suggest stronger automatic associations in your mind (learned through culture or experience).

• Slower responses suggest weaker or conflicting associations.

criticism of the IAT

• reliability concerns (youll get a differnt score each time)

• correlations to discriminatory behaviour unclear

• weak effects become important on the societal level

stereotyping threat

• when a fear fulfilling a stereotype in a task negatively affects performance of that task

  • Example: people say people in your group is bad at math and so you perform bad at math

Attributions

Outcomes come from a mix of personal traits and the surrounding environment.

• Dispositional attributions (trait-based)

  • Explains the outcome as caused by the person’s characteristics (e.g., personality, abilities).

    • Example: “You failed the test because you’re lazy or not smart enough.”

• situational attributions (environment-based)

  • Explains the outcome as caused by outside circumstances

    • Example: “You failed the test because you were dealing with a family tragedy.”

Fundamental attribution error

• when we blame peoples personality (dispositional factor) for their behaviour and ignore the situation they are in

fundamental attribution error experiment

• subjects were randomly assigned to debate different topics (even tho they prob didnt agree with it)

• even though participant knew that the debate was random, they still assumed the debaters agreed w the ideas they presented

• bias is lower in collectivist cultures and greater in indiviualistc cultures

why dont we include situational factors in the FAE expierements

• because we are unaware of the, or their severity

defensive attributions

• self-serving bias

  • When we succeed → we give ourselves credit (dispositional factors like talent, effort).

  • When we fail → we blame outside circumstances (situational factors).

  • more common in individualistic cultures where personal achievement is emphasized

  • might influence performance

    • to improve performance we have to address both dispositions as environment (situation) is uncontrollable