Social Psychology: Thinking, Influence, and Relationships
Social Psychology: Definition and Scientific Study
Social Psychology Definition: The scientific study of how we think about, influence, and relate to one another.
Focus of Study: Social psychologists investigate social influences that explain why the same person will act differently in various situations. They utilize rigorous scientific methods to analyze the cognition, influence, and relationship dynamics between people.
Social Thinking: Attribution Theory
Attribution Theory (Fritz Heider): This theory suggests that individuals have a tendency to explain someone else's behavior by utilizing either situational factors or personality factors.
Dispositional (Internal) Attribution: Attributing behavior to something within the person, such as their personality. * Example: Seeing a man yell at a waiter and concluding, "He's a jerk!"
Situational (External) Attribution: Attributing behavior to factors outside the person. * Example: Explaining the man's yelling by noting, "He just found out that someone broke into his apartment."
The Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE)
Definition: The tendency for observers, when analyzing another person's behavior, to underestimate the impact of external situational factors and overestimate the impact of internal personal disposition.
Scenario Example: If someone cuts you off in traffic, your reaction might be, "What a rude and reckless person!" This assumes the behavior is due to personality (internal attribution). However, the reality may be that the driver is rushing to the hospital for an emergency (external situation).
Significance: How we explain behavior affects how we react to it.
Prevention: FAE most often occurs when observing a person in only one type of situation. To avoid this error, it is best to observe people across multiple situations.
Attitudes and Actions
Attitudes: Feelings, often influenced by our beliefs, that predispose us to respond in a particular way to objects, people, and events.
Attitude-Behavior Correlation: Attitudes are most likely to affect behavior when: * External influences are minimal. * The attitude is stable. * The attitude is specific to the behavior. * The attitude is easily recalled.
Examples: * Believing stealing is wrong leads to not stealing. * Believing a person is mean leads to disliking them and acting unfriendly.
Persuasion Techniques
Central Route of Persuasion: Offers evidence and arguments that trigger careful thinking. * Example: Focusing on arguments regarding environmental change.
Peripheral Route of Persuasion: Uses attention-getting cues to trigger emotion-based snap judgments. * Example: Utilizing celebrity endorsements.
The Impact of Actions on Attitudes
Bidirectional Relationship: While attitudes affect actions, actions also affect attitudes. This is demonstrated by the following:
Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon: Compliance with a large request after having agreed to a smaller request. * Classic Experiment: Researchers asked residents to place a large "Drive Carefully" sign in their yards; only agreed. However, the agreement rate increased to when people first agreed to a small favor: placing a -inch () "Be a Safe Driver" sign in their window.
Role Playing: Roles provide a set of expectations (norms) about a social position, defining how those in that position ought to behave. * Example: Initially, wearing medical scrubs may feel like playing dress-up, but over time, the role defines the person as they follow social cues in the environment.
The Stanford Prison Experiment (1971)
Researcher: Dr. Philip Zimbardo.
Setup: A mock prison was built in the Stanford University basement for a planned -week study.
Participants: healthy college students (screened for mental health) were assigned to be either Guards or Prisoners.
Roles and Conditions: * Guards: Wore uniforms, carried clubs and whistles, wore sunglasses, and carried batons. They dictated -hour-a-day rules and had full power, though no physical abuse was allowed. They were instructed to enforce rules and could use psychological torment. They eventually became tyrannical, aggressive, and abusive. * Prisoners: Were "arrested" by police, searched, stripped naked, sprayed for lice, and forced to wear humiliating smocks with ID numbers and chains on their legs. They were locked in barren cells and had no control. They became passive, resigned, and suffered mental breakdowns involving stress, anxiety, and depression.
Outcome: Five prisoners left early due to acute anxiety. Zimbardo himself became overly involved in his role as prison warden. The experiment was called off after only days because the roles became too real.
Conclusion: This illustrates the power of social situations to transform people into roles where they perform acts they would never consider outside of those settings.
Cognitive Dissonance Theory
Origin: Leon Festinger ().
Definition: The mental conflict that occurs when a person's behaviors and beliefs do not align, or when holding two contradictory beliefs. This results in feelings of unease, stress, anxiety, guilt, or shame.
Principle of Cognitive Consistency: The drive to resolve dissonance to relieve discomfort.
Examples: * Smoking despite knowing it has adverse health effects. * Hypocrisy: Promoting regular exercise while not practicing it. * Telling a lie while identifying as an honest person. * Buying a car that is not fuel-efficient despite being environmentally conscious. * The Meat Paradox: Eating meat while identifying as an animal lover who dislikes killing animals.
Methods to Reduce Dissonance: 1. Change Action: Stop the behavior (e.g., "I don't smoke anymore"). 2. Change Belief/Attitude: Alter the thought (e.g., "The research on smoking is not conclusive"). 3. Change Perception of Action: Make excuses to rationalize the behavior (e.g., "I only took , and theft is bad, but I had a reason").
Social Influence: Conformity
Definition: Adjusting one's behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard. Individuals are prone to abide by social norms.
Asch’s Conformity Experiment: * Participants were asked to match a standard line to three comparison lines. * Process: When five confederates (individuals working for the researcher, also known as "stooges") gave the same obviously wrong answer, the subject felt severe discomfort. * Findings: More than of college students gave the incorrect answer to match the group, even when they knew it was wrong.
Factors Increasing Conformity: * The group has at least people. * The group is unanimous. * One admires the group's status or attractiveness. * One is made to feel incompetent or insecure. * Others in the group are observing the behavior. * No prior commitment to a response has been made. * The culture encourages respect for social standards.
Psychological Explanations: * Normative Social Influence: Influence resulting from a desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval (avoiding being ridiculed or left out). * Informational Social Influence: Willingness to accept others' opinions about reality as new information, especially when unsure.
Cultural Differences: * Individualist Cultures (e.g., USA, Australia): Value individualism; lower conformity rates. * Collectivist Cultures (e.g., many Asian and African countries): Value group standards; higher conformity rates.
Social Influence: Obedience
Definition: A person acts in response to a direct order or command from an authority figure. It is essential for social function but can lead to objectionable acts (e.g., the Nazi regime's genocide to achieve a "pure Aryan" race).
Milgram’s Obedience Experiment: * Stated Aim: Effect of punishment on learning. * Roles: Learner (confederate) and Teacher (actual participant). * Procedure: The Teacher delivered electric shocks to the Learner for wrong answers, increasing in intensity. * Voltage/Response Scale: * : Slight shock (grunt). * : Moderate shock ("shocks are painful"). * : Strong shock ("get me out of here," "I refuse to go on"). * : Labelled "XXX". Learner falls silent. * : Labelled "XXXX" (death). * Prompts: If the Teacher hesitated, Milgram would say, "You must go on" or "The experiment requires that you continue."
Results: * Prior to the study, psychiatrists predicted teachers would stop when the learner showed pain. * Actual data: More than of men (ages –) complied fully to the last switch (). * Women had similar rates. * complied fully even when the learner mentioned a "heart condition." * Jerry Burger () Replication: of participants complied up to the -volt point (compared to Milgram's at that same point).
High Obedience Conditions: * Authority figure is close by and perceived as legitimate. * Authority is supported by a prestigious institution. * Victim is depersonalized or in another room. * No role models for defiance are present.
Group Behavior Dynamics
Social Facilitation: The presence of others arouses us, increasing performance on easy/well-learned tasks but decreasing performance on difficult tasks. * Example: A good singer performs better in front of an audience, while a poor singer performs worse.
Social Loafing: The tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling efforts toward a common goal than when individually accountable. * Ringelmann’s Studies: Individuals pulling a rope alone exerted to more pull than those in a group. Individual output lessened as the group grew larger. * Reasons for Loafing: Feeling less accountable, viewing contributions as dispensable, overestimating one's own contribution, or "free riding" on others' efforts.
Deindividuation: Loss of self-awareness and self-restraint in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity. * Example: The George Floyd protests, where darkness and masks/hoodies provided anonymity, leading some to perform behaviors (like looting or violence) they later expressed bewilderment over.
Group Polarization: Strengthening of a group's prevailing beliefs and attitudes through discussion with like-minded others. * Example: Pro-vegan arguments making people considering giving up meat even more convinced.
Groupthink: Occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives. People self-censor dissenting views to avoid being an outcast. * Case Study: The January , , Challenger space shuttle explosion. NASA had data that the launch was compromised, but group pressure to proceed caused silence, resulting in the death of seven astronauts. * Prevention: Leaders should welcome various opinions, invite expert critiques, and assign people to identify potential problems.
Antisocial Relations: Prejudice
Prejudice: An unjustifiable (and usually negative) attitude toward a group and its members.
Components: Stereotyped beliefs, negative feelings, and a predisposition to discriminatory action.
Distinctions: * Stereotype: An overly generalized belief about a group (e.g., "People who own cats are mean"). * Prejudice: A negative attitude/feeling based on group membership (e.g., "I don't like people who own cats"). * Discrimination: Negative behavior toward an individual based on group membership (e.g., "I will not let a cat owner sit next to me").
Types: * Explicit Prejudice: Conscious, intentional, and aware. * Implicit Prejudice: Unconscious, unintentional, and unaware.
Causes of Prejudice
Social Causes: * Just-World Phenomenon: Tendency to believe the world is just and people get what they deserve (good is rewarded, evil is punished). This often leads to victim-blaming. * Ingroup vs. Outgroup: "Us" (ingroup) vs. "Them" (outgroup). * Ingroup Bias: Favoring one's own group over the outgroup.
Emotional Causes: * Scapegoat Theory: Unfairly blaming an individual or group for problems to provide an outlet for negative emotions or deflect responsibility. (e.g., blaming immigrants during an economic recession).
Cognitive Causes: * Outgroup Homogeneity: Perceiving members of outgroups as more similar to each other than they actually are ("They are alike; we are diverse"). * Other-Race Effect: Tendency to recall faces of one's own race more accurately than faces of other races.
Prosocial Relations: Attraction and Love
Factors Influencing Attraction: 1. Proximity: The most powerful predictor. Includes the mere exposure effect (developing a preference for things simply because they are familiar). 2. Physical Attractiveness: Affects first impressions and predicts popularity; influenced by cultural ideals. 3. Similarity: Includes shared attitudes, beliefs, age, religion, race, education, and intelligence.
Types of Love: * Passionate Love: An aroused state of intense positive absorption, usually present at the beginning of a relationship. * Companionate Love: Present later in a relationship. Involves mutually supportive equity and self-disclosure, which deepens intimacy.
Prosocial Relations: Altruism and Helping
Altruism: Unselfish concern for the welfare of others.
The Case of Kitty Genovese (): A woman was stabbed times over minutes while witnesses saw/heard and did nothing. This sparked research into helping behavior.
Bystander Effect: The tendency for a bystander to be less likely to give aid if other bystanders are present due to a diffusion of responsibility.
Conditions for Helping: 1. Notice the incident. 2. Interpret it as an emergency. 3. Assume responsibility.
Increased Helping Likelihood: The victim is a woman; the victim is similar to the bystander; the bystander is in a good mood, unhurried, focused on others, or feels guilty.
Theories on Why We Help: 1. Social Exchange Theory: Social behavior is an exchange process aimed at maximizing benefits and minimizing costs. 2. Social Expectations: * Reciprocity Norm: Expectation to return help to those who have helped us. * Social Responsibility Norm: Expectation to help those who need it (e.g., children, the poor).
Questions & Discussion
Q: If we encounter a person who appears to be high on drugs and make the fundamental attribution error, we will probably attribute the behavior to…? * A: Individual weakness or an addictive personality (Internal factors).
Q: The members of a club are so afraid of going against the president's ideas that they conceal their true opinions. This group is a victim of…? * A: Group think.
Q: One reason people comply with social pressure to avoid rejection or gain approval is…? * A: Normative social influence.
Q: When racially prejudiced students discussed racial issues, their attitudes became even more prejudiced. This illustrates…? * A: Group polarization.
Q: According to social exchange theory, altruistic behavior is based on…? * A: A cost-benefit analysis of the action.
Q: Republican and Democrat members both believe their own party is fairer-minded and more trustworthy. This illustrates…? * A: Ingroup bias.