Social Psychology

Social psychology examines behavior and mental life in social situations

Making Attributions

What is social perception? 

• The process by which we come to know and evaluate other individuals; 3 steps of social perception:

• Observe the way another person behaves

• Try to explain the behavior

• Form an impression of the person

Theories of attribution

• Fritz Heider: Was interested in understanding the causes of behavior; proposed that people are intuitive scientists in the way that they conclude or determine why people do what they do. We explain someone's behavior by crediting their disposition or by looking at the situation: attribution to the person or situation

• Harold Kelley: people make attributions on the basis of 3 types of information: consensus information - we ask how do others react to the same stimulus, if consensus is low we attribute the cause of the behavior to the person; distinctiveness information - how does the person react to different stimuli, if distinctiveness is high, then we attribute the cause of the behavior to the stimulus; consistency information - how does the same person react to the same stimulus at a different time, if consistency is low, we attribute the cause of the behavior to a specific circumstance 

Fundamental Attribution Error

When we explain the behavior of others, we typically overestimate the role of personal factors in that behavior, and we underestimate the role of situational factors.

• Jones and Harris: participants read essays written by college students that expressed views in favor of or against fidel castro. Some people were told that the authors were assigned to argue for a specific opinion while some people were told it was chosen by choice. In the freely chosen condition, people sensibly chose that the author of the positive groups chose participants ignored the situational cues, and inferred the author's attitude from the context of the speech

• Ross: Quiz show that has an audience, by flipping a coin, participants were assigned to play the role of a questioner or the contestant. The questioner was assigned to write 10 hard questions. The contestants answered less than 40% of the questions correctly. The audience members were then asked to rate the intelligence of both participants. They ranked the questionnaires as above average, and the answers as lower intelligence. In making judgments of intelligence, the audience ignored the fact that the questioners wrote the questions. They attributed behavior to the person and ignored the situational factors.

Self serving attributions

• When we make attributions for our own behavior, we typically do so in a way that enhances our own feelings of self worth.

• We take credit for our success and disown our failures

Social Influence

Social influence is pervasive and social behavior is contagious. 

The chameleon effect

• Chartrand and Bargh: Participants worked in an experimental room with a confederate who would at times rub his face or shake their foot. Participants were more likely to subconsciously rub their face or shake their foot if with the confederate. People naturally mimic the behavior of others. With this effect, people express a sort of understanding of another, which sets the stage for empathy. This effect can also affect our mood. When people are around happier people, they themselves tend to experience more happiness.

What is conformity?

• Conformity is the tendency to bring one's own behavior in line with group norms.

• Conformity can lead to destructive or offensive behavior.

Conformity

• Solomon Asch’s experiment: Participants were told they were in a visual perception experiment. When they get to the lab, there are 5 other individuals there. The experimenter asks them to look at three comparison lines, and asks which is identical to the standard line. For the first few trials, the confederate answers aligned with the participants. But on the third trial, the confederates purposely got it wrong. When in a group, 37% of participants gave the wrong answer when people sound them gave the wrong answer. 

What strengthens conformity?

• When people are made to feel incompetent

• When the group has at least 3 members

• When the group is unanimous

• When one admires the status of the group

• When one has made no prior commitment to a response

• When your behavior is observed

Reasons for conformity

• Normative social influence: people conform to social standards to avoid rejection or to gain the approval of others

• Public conformity: we change our behavior, but don;t change the beliefs that underlie those behaviors.

Informational social influence: when people conform to social standards because they believe that others behavior is correct.

• Private conformity: we change both our behaviors and our beliefs

Obedience

Stanley Milgram's experiment: Asking participants to shock a confederate continually during a test.

Factors that affect obedience:

• The authority: obedience is highest when the person giving the orders is close at hand and presumed to be a legitimate source of authority 

• The victim: obedience is highest when the victim is depersonalization or at a distance

• The situation: obedience is highest when the authority is assumed to have responsibility for the victim’s welfare

Obedience is highest when the punishment moves up through levels or stages

Group Processes

Social facilitation

• Norman Triplett: studied bicycle racing records. He noticed that cyclists' times were fastest when they competed against others as opposed to going against a timer. The presence of others creates nervous energy which enhances performance. 

• Robert Zajonc: the presence of others creates arousal and this arousal enhances the dominant response. On easy tasks, the dominant response is likely to be the correct response, however, on difficult tasks, the dominant response is likely incorrect.

Social loafing

The tendency to exert less effort in group tasks for which individual efforts are pooled. 

• Ingham: Blindfolded participants were asked to pull a rope as hard as they could. Participants pulled 18% harder when they knew that they were alone, compared to how hard they pulled when they thought they were pulling with other people.

• Latane: Asked participants to clap and cheer as loud as they could, clapped less in the group. 

Reasons for social loafing:

• In a group we tend to see our own contributions as unsuccessful to the group's success.

• In a group, people are less worried about being individually evaluated.

• In a group, people slack off to avoid looking like the sucker

Group Interactions

Group polarization

• The enhancement of a group’s prevailing inclinations through discussions within the group

Groupthink

• Group decision making style in which group members convince themselves that they are correct

Attitudes and Attitude Change

What is an attitude? 

• A positive or negative reaction to any person, object, or idea

• Behavior often changes in response to the demands of a social situation

• For behavior to change attitude must also change

• Persuasion is the process of changing people's attitude

Two-track model of persuasion

• Richard Petty and John Cacioppo

• Central route to persuasion: we hope that the recipient of that message will be influenced by the strength and the quality of the argument. Convince people with logic, reason, and well thought out arguments. Is effective when people have the ability and motivation to think critically about the contents of a message. Produces attitude change that is more durable and more likely to influence behavior

• Peripheral route to persuasion: the recipient of the message is influenced by superficial cues of the speaker. Things like their appearance, slogans, one liners, emotions, and audience reactions. Is effective when people don’t have the ability or motivation to pay critical attention to the issues. Although effective in changing attitudes, it has a fleeting effect on behavior.

Actions affect attitudes

Not only can behavior follow from our attitudes, but our attitudes can also follow from our behaviors.

• Foot in the door phenomenon: a tendency for people who agree to a small action to comply later with a larger action.

• Freedman and Fraser: Researchers posed as safe driving volunteers and went door to door asking residents to permit their insulation of a poorly lettered sign that says drive carefully; it was an eyesore. Only 17% said sure. Asked other residents first to display a three inch sign that said be a safe driver; nearly all agreed. These residents were approached 2 weeks later and asked to put up the large ugly sign. 76% said yes. 

• Role playing: when people adopt new roles they strive to follow the social norms (prescriptions and proscriptions) of that role. At first, such role playing might feel fake, but over time the role playing becomes you.

• Zimbardo: Stanford prison experiment

Self persuasion

People often engage in attitude discrepant behavior. 

What happens when people change behavior in ways that do not follow from their attitudes?

• Cognitive dissonance theory: Leon Festinger- we hold many cognitions about ourselves and about the world. At times these cognitions clash. When cognitions clash, we experience tension. Our thoughts are contradictory, we know it, and it doesn’t feel good for us. To relieve tension we bring our attitudes in line with our behavior.

• Designer and Carlsmith: participants were given a wooden board containing 48 pegs. Asked to turn each peg to the left and right twice. After, handed a board with a spool of thread and asked to pull it off and back on. After an hour, they are told it is over. Put into three conditions: 1st group was told the experiment is over and asked to tell the next person that the experiment was fun. If they did so, they would get one dollar. 2nd condition: participants were told to tell the next participant that the experiment was fun for twenty dollars. Control wasn’t told to tell anything. Before they left, they were asked to rate the level of fun in the experiment. Control reported it was not fun, twenty dollars reported not fun, one dollar reported very fun. For the participants offered one dollar, there were insufficient reasons to tell a lie. They told the lie to change the attitude around their lying behavior. This was to quiet cognitive dissonance.

Prejudice

What is prejudice?

• Prejudice is an unjustified attitude toward a group and its members. Three components:

• Stereotypic beliefs: beliefs about a group of people that are generalized

• Negative feelings like hostility, envy, and fear

• Predisposition towards action: a predisposition to act and think negatively based solely on demographics

Social roots of prejudice

• Social inequality: oftentimes, two groups differ in material resources that are valuable to them. Typically, they develop an attitude to justify things as they are; those attitudes, stereotypic beliefs are used to rationalize social inequality.

• Us vs Them: it is common for people to draw mental circles around those who are similar and those who are dissimilar to oneself. We have a tendency to favor one's own group; ingroup bias.

Emotional roots of prejudice

• Scapegoat theory: prejudice offers an outlet for anger by providing someone to blame.

Cognitive roots of prejudice

Just-world phenomenon: the tendency to believe that the world is just and therefore we have a tendency to believe that others get what they deserve.

Aggression

What is aggression?

• Physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt or destroy

Frustration-aggression principle:

• The principle that frustration creates anger, and anger leads to aggression

Analysis of baseball statistics: 

• Baseball pitchers are more likely to hit a batter when they are frustrated. Frustrated by the previous batter hitting a home run and the current batter previously hitting a home run.

Attraction

Three factors that affect the attraction of another:

Proximity: 

• More likely to be attracted to someone in close geographically location

• Being geographically close to another is the most important predictor in friendship

• People are more inclined to like and marry those who live in the same neighborhood, work in the same office, and those who sit nearby in class. 

• Mere exposure effect: repeated exposure to novel stimuli increases liking of those stimuli

• Moeland and Beach: Participants were part of a 200 person class, had 4 equally attractive women sit silently in the class. Attended either 0 classes, 5 classes, 10 classes, or 15 classes. At the end of the semester, the students were asked to rate the attractiveness of the 4 women. Those women who attended class more often, were ranked more attractive. 

• Mita: female college students were shown two pictures of themselves. One was how they actually looked and another was their mirror image.  Most participants preferred their mirror image while their friends more preferred their actual image.

Physical attractiveness: 

• People tend to preserve attractive others as healthier, happier, more sensitive, more successful, and more socially skilled. 

• Across occupations, physically attractive men and women earn more than those perceived to be less attractive

• People prefer average composite images as opposed to individual people/images.

Similarity:

• We are more likely to befriend those who are similar to us in multiple ways. Similar in age, interest, attitude, race, education, intelligence, economic status, and religion.

Romantic Love

Passionate love

• an intense positive absorption in another person

• emotional arousal facilitates attraction to others]

• Carducci: college men aroused by various stimuli: fright, running in place, viewing arotic material, listening to humorous monologue. Rated their girlfriends and other women as more attractive.

Companionate love

• a deep affectionate attraction towards those in which our lives are intertwined.

• evolutionary advantage:: passionate love produces children, but as that wanes, people rely on companionate love to raise children.

Altruism

What is altruism?

• Unselfish regard for another human life

The murder of Kitty Genovese: was brutally murdered and raped. As she cried for help, 38 surrounding apartment windows lit up, but 0 people came to help. The murderer left and came back to stab and rape her again. It wasn’t until after he left for the second time that people finally called the police.

Bystander effect

The assumption of responsibility is less likely to occur because we assume someone else will assist.

• When one is alone with a person in need, 40% of people help. When in the presence of 5 others and someone in need, only 20% helped. 

• Decision scheme for providing assistance: First, we must notice the incident, then interpret the incident as an emergency, and finally assume responsibility for helping.