Introduction to Psychology: Social Psychology

Introduction to Psychology

Social Psychology

• Social Psychology: A subfield of psychology that examines how individuals impact or affect each other, particularly focusing on the power of the situation.

Dispositionism vs. Situationism

Dispositionism

• Definition: Asserts that behavior is determined by internal factors such as personality traits and temperament.
• Promotion: This view is primarily endorsed by personality psychologists.

Situationism

• Definition: Perspective that behavior and actions are determined by the immediate environment and surroundings.
• Promotion: This view is primarily endorsed by social psychologists.

Fundamental Attribution Error

• Definition: The tendency to overemphasize internal factors as the causes of behavior while underestimating the influence of the situation.
• Example: In the quizmaster study, individuals disregarded situational influences and mistakenly concluded that the knowledge of the questioner was greater than their own.

Actor-Observer Bias

• Definition: A phenomenon wherein individuals explain others’ behaviors as being due to internal factors while attributing their own behaviors to situational forces.

Self-Serving Bias

• Definition: The tendency for individuals to take credit for positive outcomes through dispositional or internal attributions, while attributing negative outcomes to situational or external factors.
• Function: This bias protects self-esteem by emphasizing internal, stable, and controllable explanations for success.

Just-World Hypothesis

• Definition: A commonly held ideology, particularly in the United States, suggesting that people get the outcomes they deserve.
• Implications: This belief can lead to victim-blaming where the responsibility of misfortune is placed on individuals rather than acknowledging external factors.

Norms, Roles, and Scripts

• Social Norm: Collective expectations regarding appropriate thoughts and behaviors among group members.
• Social Role: A socially defined pattern of expected behaviors for an individual in a specific setting or group.
• Script: The knowledge that a person possesses about the sequence of events occurring in a specific setting.

Example: Stanford Prison Experiment

• Overview: Conducted at Stanford University to demonstrate the influence of social roles, norms, and scripts.
• Participants: 24 healthy college students with no psychiatric issues, randomly assigned as either prisoners or guards.
• Results: Guards adopted authoritarian and sadistic behaviors; prisoners became subservient, anxious, and hopeless.

Attitude and Cognitive Dissonance

• Attitude: An evaluation or feeling towards a person, idea, or object, typically expressed as positive or negative.
• Cognitive Dissonance: A psychological discomfort arising from a conflict between a person’s behaviors, attitudes, or beliefs that contradict their positive self-perception.

Cognitive Dissonance Example

• Claim: "Smoking is bad for your health."
• Personal Conflict: Being a smoker juxtaposed against this belief leads to cognitive dissonance.
• Resolution Strategies:
  • Rationalization such as "Research is inconclusive."
  • Change behavior by quitting smoking or justifying continued smoking despite knowing risks.

Attitude and Persuasion

• Definition: The process through which an individual's attitude toward something is changed via communication.

Persuasive Strategy Components

• Persuasive Message
• Audience

Routes of Persuasion

• Central Route:

  • Characteristics: Involves motivated and analytical processing.
  • Result: High effort leads to lasting attitude change.

• Peripheral Route:

  • Characteristics: Involves individuals who are not motivated or analytical.
  • Result: Low effort leads to temporary attitude change based on cues outside the message.

Types of Social Influence

• Conformity: Changing behavior to align with the group despite personal disagreement.
• Compliance: Agreeing to a request or demand.
• Normative Social Influence: Conformity due to the desire to fit in and be accepted by the group.
• Informational Social Influence: Conformity based on belief in the group's competence and correctness.
• Obedience: Changing behavior to please an authority figure or avoid negative consequences.
• Groupthink: Modification of group members' opinions to align with perceived consensus.
• Group Polarization: Strengthening of original group attitudes following discussion among group members.
• Social Facilitation: Improved performance on tasks in the presence of an audience.
• Social Loafing: Reduction in effort by individuals in group tasks due to diminished accountability for personal performance.

Social Influence: Conformity and the Asch Effect

• Definition: Conformity occurs when individuals change their behavior to align with the group, even against their own judgment.
• Asch Effect: The phenomenon where a majority group influences an individual's judgment to conform, regardless of the group's accuracy.
• Influential Factors:
  • Size of the majority group.
  • Presence of dissenting individuals.
  • Whether the response is public or private.

Social Influence: Obedience

• Definition: Obedience involves changing behavior to satisfy authority figures or avoid negative outcomes.
• Stanley Milgram's Experiment:
  • Setup: Participants instructed to administer electric shocks.
  • Results: 65% of participants delivered shocks up to the maximum voltage, highlighting the power of authority in influencing behavior.

Altruism: When Do People Help Others?

• Bystander Intervention: The act of intervening to help a stranger at personal risk.
• Three key factors influencing helping behavior:
  1. Pluralistic Ignorance: Misinterpretation of others' inaction as everyone else's belief that help is not needed.
  2. Diffusion of Responsibility: A reduced sense of urgency to act when others are present.
  3. Cost–benefit Analysis: Weighing the costs and benefits of intervening.

Altruism: Why Do People Help Others?

• Reciprocal Altruism: A concept from evolutionary psychology suggesting a genetic predisposition for helping those who have previously assisted us.
• Empathy–Altruism Model: Proposes that empathetic individuals will experience concern for victims, motivating altruistic behavior.
• Arousal: Cost–Reward Model: An egoistic theory indicating that witnessing someone in need causes unpleasant feelings, prompting observers to alleviate their discomfort by helping.

Triangular Theory of Love

• Components of Love:
  • Liking: Intimacy without passion or commitment.
  • Romantic Love: Combination of passion and intimacy.
  • Consummate Love: The ideal form, including intimacy, passion, and commitment.
  • Companionate Love: Intimacy and commitment without passion.
  • Infatuation: Passion without intimacy or commitment.
  • Fatuous Love: Passion and commitment without intimacy.
  • Empty Love: Commitment alone without passion or intimacy.

Social Exchange Theory

• Definition: The social exchange theory posits that humans act as naïve economists, evaluating the costs and benefits of forming and maintaining relationships to maximize benefits and minimize costs.

Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination

• Stereotype: A cognitive structure that contains overgeneralized beliefs about a category of people leading to prejudice and discrimination.
• Prejudice: Affective responses toward a group that imply judgment and can influence treatment of group members.
• Discrimination: Biased behaviors resulting from stereotypes and prejudice, potentially manifesting in negative treatment of individuals based on characteristics such as race, gender, or affiliations.

Connections and Examples

Why Do Stereotypes and Prejudice Exist and Persist?

• Factors:
  1. Confirmation Bias: The tendency to only acknowledge information that confirms existing stereotypes.
  2. Self-fulfilling Prophecy: Expectations about a person can lead them to act in ways that confirm those expectations.
  3. In-group Bias: Preference for individuals within one’s own group, potentially leading to prejudice against others.
  4. Scapegoating: Blaming a group for problems that are not due to them, often seen in times of societal stress.

Aggression

• Definition: Aggression involves actions intended to cause harm or pain to another person.
• Hostile Aggression: Aggression that is driven by anger with the intention to inflict pain.
• Instrumental Aggression: Aggression motivated by achieving a specific goal that does not necessarily involve the intent to cause pain.