Chapter 12: Social Psychology

Social psychology: examines how people affect one another and it looks at the power of the situation  

Norms (social): rules that regulate social life, including explicit laws and implicit cultural conventions

Role: social position that is governed by a set of norms for proper behavior 

Culture: a program of shared rules that governs the behavior of people in a community or society, and a set of values, beliefs, and customs, shared by most members of that community 

The Obediance Study: subjects told to give increasing levels of shock to another subject everytime an error was made 

• Results:

  • All: shocked other subjects at least once

  • ⅔: gave all levels of shock, even though many were upset by being asked to do so

• Conclusions: 

  • Obedience is a function of the situation, not of personalities

  • Nature of the relationship to authority influences obedience 

• Participants were more likely to disobey orders to give shocks when:

  • The experimenter left the room

  • The victim was right there in the room

  • Two experimenters issued conflicting demands

  • The person ordering them to continue was an ordinary man 

  • The participant worked with peers who refused to go further

Why people obey: 

• To avoid punishment

• Out of respect for authority 

• Because of entrapment: a gradual process in which individuals escalate their commitment to a course of action to justify their investment of time, money, or effort 

Attribution theory: people are motivated to explain their own and other’s behavior by attributing causes of that behavior to a disposition or a situation 

• Dispositional: a conclusion that a person’s behavior is due to something internal; something about the person 

  • Fundamental attribution error: the tendency in explaining other people’s behavior to overestimate personality factors and underestimate the influence of the situation 

• Situational: a conclusion that a person’s behavior was due to the effects of the circumstances, setting or surroundings the person is in 

Self-serving biases: attributional tendencies that paint a person in a particularly favorable light 

• The bias to choose the most flattering and forgiving attributions of our own lapses 

• The bias that we are better, smarter, and kinder, than others 

• The bias to believe that the world is fair (Just-world hypothesis)

  • Just-world hypothesis: a belief that many people hold that good things happen to good people, bad things happen to bad people and the world is fair 

Attitudes: beliefs about people, groups, ideas, or activities

• Explicit

• Implicit

Cognitive dissonance: a state of tension that occurs when a person simultaneously holds two cognitions that are psychologically inconsistent or when a person’s belief is incongruent with their behavior 

Methods of indoctrination: 

• The person is subjected to entrapment 

• The person’s problems are explained by one simple attribution: “It is all the fault of those bad people; we have to eliminate them” 

• The person is offered a new identity and is promised salvation 

• The person’s access is disconfirming (dissosant) information is severely controlled 

Basic motives for conformity:

• Need for social acceptance 

• Need for information 

Groupthink: the tendency for all members of a group to think alike for the sake of harmony and to suppress disagreement 

Diffusion of responsibility: in groups, the tendency of members to avoid taking action because they assume the others will → bystander effect 

Deindividuation: in groups or crowds, the loss of awareness of one’s own individuality 

• Disinhibition: a lack of inhibition brought on by feelings of deindividuation 

Altruism and dissent: factors that can overcome bystander apathy and increase likelihood of helping others by behaving courageously 

• You perceive the need for intervention or help

• Cultural norms encourage you to take action 

• You have an ally 

• You become entrapped 

Social identities

• Ethnic identity:

• Acculturation: 

Ethnocentrism: the belief that one’s own ethnic group, nation, or religion is superior to all others

• us vs them 

Stereotypes: aren’t necessarily bad and are sometimes accurate 

• Can distort reality by: 

  • Exaggerating differences between groups 

  • Producing selective perception 

  • Underestimating differences within the stereotyped group

Origins of Prejudice:

• Psychological causes

• Social causes 

• Economic causes

• Cultural and national causes 

Defining and measuring prejudices: five ways 

• Measures of social distance and “microaggressions”

• Measures of unequal treatment 

• Measures of what people do when they are stressed or angry 

• Measures of brain activity 

• Measures of implicit attitudes 

Four situations that can help reduce prejudice and intergroup conflict 

• Both sides must have equal legal status, economic opportunities, and power

• Authorities and community institutions must provide moral, legal, and economic support for both sides 

• Both sides must have many opportunities to work and socialize together, formally and informally 

• Both sides must cooperate, working together for a common goal