What is Psychology??

• Psychology- The science that seeks to understand behavior & mental processes & to apply that understanding in the service of human welfare 

What is Social Psychology??

• Social Psychology- The scientific study of how people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people (imagined could be a voice of a person who is not with you) 

  • Examples From Social Animal 

    • Political Debate

    • Kent State high school teacher

    • Second-grade girl and math

    • People’s Temple

    • Toy Drum

    • Columbine

    • Wheaties

    • Racial Stereotypes

    • Ignoring pretty girl

    • Rejected Freshman 

Social Influence- The effect that people have on the beliefs or behaviors of others 

Is Man A Social Animal

• “Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something in nature that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a God.” - Aristotle 328 BC 

Hindsight Bias

• Once we know the outcome of an event, we have a strong tendency (usually erroneous) to believe we could have predicted it in advance 

Attribution

• Judgments we make concerning why people act the way they do 

Dispositional Attibution

• The view that a person’s behavior is the result of his or her personality (disposition) rather than of pressures existing in the situation 

Some Pioneers in Social Psychology 

• Norman Triplett 

  • Social Facilitation: Performance is enhanced by competition such as time trails 

• Max Ringelmann

  • Social Loafing: The greater the number of people, the greater the tendency to slack off 

• Kurt Lewin

  • Field Theory: Examines patterns of interaction between the individual and the total field, or environment

  • B=f(P, E) or Behavior is a function of personality and environment

  • Considered the founder of modern Social Psychology

• Muzafer Sharif

  • Social Influenced & Realistic Conflict Theory: Accounts for group conflict, negative prejudices, and stereotypes as being the result of competition between groups for desired resources 

• Gordon Allport

  • Prejudice & Stereotyping

  • Trait Theory of Personality

    • Cardinal trait

    • Central trait

    • Secondary trait

• Solomon Asch

  • Conformity: The extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform

• Leon Festinger

  • Cognitive Dissonance: How we resolve the dissonance (disharmony) between our beliefs & behavior

• Fritz Heider

  • Attribution Theory: How ordinary people explain the causes of behavior & events 

• Carl Hovland

  • Persuasion & Attitude Change

• Elliot Aronson & Carol Tarvis

  • Self Justification: Why we justify foolish beliefs, bad decisions, and hurtful acts 

• Dan Ariely

  • Behavioral Economics: Study of psychology as it relates to the economic decision-making processes of individuals & institutions

The Bad Boys of Social Psychology 

• Stanley Milgram

  • Obedience: Milgram’s shocking (literally & figuratively) experiment to measure adherence to authority 

• Philip Zimbardo

  • Stanford Prison Experiment: Attempted to investigate the psychological effects of perceived power, focusing on the relationship between prisoners & prison guards 

Scientific Method in Psychology

• How is an experiment created

  • Making observations, guesses, and tests

• Correlation does not equal causation

  • Causation is correlation

• Hypothesis and Theory

  • Hypothesis - a testable prediction about conditions under which an event will occur

  • Theory - an organized set of principles used to explain an observed phenomenon

  • Why are some theories better than others?

    • Effectively summarizes many observations

    • Makes clear predictions we can use to:

      • Confirm or modify theories

      • Generate new exploration

      • Suggest practical applications

• Karl Popper and the falsification principle

  • Valid theory must be capable of being proven false by experiment or observation

• Experimental Conditions

  • Laboratory

  • Field Research

• Subjects

  • Representative Sample - Subjects in groups being studied

  • Convenience Sample - subjects easy to find

• Variables

  • Independent - the variable an experimenter changes to see if it affects some other variable

  • Dependent - a response that is assumed to be dependent on a particular experimental condition

• Validity

  • External Validity - Can the outcome be duplicated by further experimenting

• Ethnography

  • The scientific description of the customs of individual peoples and cultures

• Observational Research Design

  • Goal - to create a snapshot of the current state of affairs

  • Advantages - Provides a relatively complete picture of what is occurring at a given time. Allows the development of questions for further study

  • Disadvantages - Does not assess relationships between variables

• Correlation Research Design

  • Goal - To access the relationship between two or more variables

  • Advantages - allows the testing of expected relationships between variables and the making of predictions and can access these relationships in everyday life events

  • Disadvantages - Cannot be used to draw inferences about the causal relationships between the variables

• Experimental Research Design

  • Goal - to access the causal impact of one or more experimental manipulations on a dependent variable

  • Advantages - Allows the drawing of conclusions about causal relationships among variables

  • Disadvantages - Cannot experimentally manipulate many important variables. May be expensive and take much time to conduct

• How real does an experiment get?

  • Mundane Realism - How similar an experiment is to events that frequently happen to people in the outside world

  • Experimental realism - when experimental procedures have an impact on the participants, force them to take the experiment seriously and involve them in the procedure

• Ethical Concerns

  • Informed consent

  • Cover Story - The settings and scenarios of an experiment designed to increase experimental realism in which the participants can behave naturally without being inhibited by knowing just which aspect of human behavior is being studied

  • How much should a subject know?

    • Why is Lying Bad?

      • It’s unethical

      • Invasion of privacy

      • Unpleasant experiences

• How to Cure Ethical Problems

  • Debriefing - the procedure whereby the purpose of the study and exactly what transpired is explained to participants at the end of an experiment

• Aronson’s Advice

  • Avoid Painful procedures

  • Give subjects the option of quitting

  • If possible, use an alternate procedure

  • Give a thorough debriefing

  • Be sure the experiment is for sound and valid reason

Ethics and the Belmont Report

• Respect for persons - Consent

• Beneficence - Researchers should not do harm

• Justice - Share the benefits with all

Conformity

• Conformity - a change in a person’s behavior or opinions due to the real or imagined influence of others

  • Is it a good thing or a bad thing?

    • Good - Everyone observes hygiene practices to stop pandemic from spreading

    • Bad - Nazi Germany, where any independent thought was met with ridicule, punishment, or even death || Nixon administration during Watergate where illegality became commonplace to cover-up wire tapping and break-in

• When does conformity go off the track?

  • GroupThink - a kind of thinking which maintaining group agreement overrides the careful consideration of the facts in a realistic manner

  • Modern Tragedy - Challenger Explosion, January 28, 1986

    • Dissent to launch was discouraged at both NASA and Thiokol even though NASA and Thiokol engineers knew the O-Rings would malfunction in freezing temperatures

• Abilene Paradox

  • Group decision where the agreement reached is counter to the individual wishes or desires of many members of the group.

    • Results from poor communication among group members

• Factors that increase Conformity

  • Is everyone else in agreement?

  • What if you had one supporter

  • Does size matter?

  • Commitment

    • What if people told you they disagree with you after you’ve publicly voiced your choice?

  • What if you are to cooperate with a group, but also have to be accurate?

    • Andrew Quinn and Barry Schlenker Experiment - Independent thinkers primed with accuracy and accountability made best decisions

  • The person and the relationship with the group

    • James Dittes and Harold Kelly Experiment - Self esteem and conformity

      • Moderately Accepted - More Likely to conform

      • Totally Accepted - More likely to deviate from the group

  • Group exerting pressure

    • Most effective group factors

      • Consists of Experts

      • High social Standing

      • Comparable with the individual in some way

  • Malcom Gladwell and The Tipping Point

    • How to you encourage more women to get mammograms?

    • Connectors start social trends

  • Culture as an exerting force

    • Rod Bond and Peter Smith

      • Asch experiment in 17 contriesCollectivist societies like Japan, Norway and China are more likely to conform than independent cultures like the Us Or France

• Informational Social Influence

  • The influence of others that leads us to conform because we see them as a source of information to guide our behavior; we conform because we believe that others’ interpretation of an ambiguous situation is more correct than our own

  • When do we use informational social influence?

    • Uncertainty about what restroom to use - follow others of same gender

    • Uncertainty about where to go when detoured - follow other cars and hope they are not pulling into their driveways

  • Credibility - who do you follow?

• Compliance

  • A response to social influence brought about by an individuals hope for reward or fear of punishment

    • Obey speed limits to avoid tickets

    • Promise of treat for doing what parents want

  • Secondary Gain

    • After complying, an unexpected, beneficial state of affairs that makes the compliant behavior more attractive

• Identification

  • Response to a social influence brought about by the individuals desire to be like the influencer

• Internalization

  • A response to social influence brought about by an individuals desire to be right

  • Bystander Effect - The finding that the greater the number of bystanders who witness an emergency, the less likely any one of them is to help

Nonconforming in the Same Way

• Impressionism and the Impressionist movement

• Jazz Music Movement

• Cultural Bias and Conformity - Western View

  • Self esteem: people’s evaluation of their own worth - placing higher value on self worth

  • Individualist - a person whose behavior does not change when pressured by a group

  • Collectivism - all workfor the greater good - individuality is not prized

• Idividualism at the Extreme

  • Deviate - a person whose opinion or behavior is diametrically opposed to the average

Mass Communication

• 9/11 and Aftermath

  • Fear of terrorist Attacks

  • Government response

  • Information

• Journalism

  • What news outlets do you watch, read, or listen to?

  • In your opinion, what outlet is authoritative

  • Must all stories have two sides? Do we normalize aberrant behavior?

• Emotional Contagion

  • the rapid transmission of emotions or behavior through a crowd

• Propaganda

  • Systematic propagation of a given doctrine

    • What does that mean?

    • How is it used - to get citizen to fall in line and feel a certain way about an event happening in this

• Education or Propaganda

  • Education: the act of imparting knowledge or skill

  • How does education become propaganda

Persuasion

• What is persuasion?

  • the central route to persuation: a situation in

Social Cognition

• What does it mean?

  • Broken windowpanes and chamberpots

  • What do these have to do with social cognition

  • How do our fictions guide our behaviors and actions

• Felicific Calculation

  • Do the pros outweigh the cons

• We are cognitive misers

  • The idea that people try to conserve energy in decision-making by taking mental shortcuts whenever they can

• Effects of Context

  • Decoys - An alternative that is clearly inferior to other possibilities, but serves the purpose of making one of the others look better in comparison

  • Contrast - An object appears to be worse than it is, depending on the quality of the objects it is compared to

• Priming

  • A procedure based on the notion that ideas that have been recently encountered or frequently activated are more likely to come to mind and thus will be used in interpreting social events

  • Kahneman & Tversky - 70% of people will choose the more appealing option if no loss is presented

• Ordering of Information

  • Put your best foot forward

  • Does this work?

  • Remember the primacy/recency effect

• Amount of information

  • Dilution - the tendency for neutral or irrelevant information to weaken a judgment or impression

  • Tim and Tom and their study habits

• Heuristics

  • Heuristic - a mental shortcut

  • Judgement Types

    • Representative

    • Availability

    • Attitude

• Blink - Malcolm Gladwell

  • Thin-Slicing - The shortcut judgments people make

    • Rare works of art

    • Musician Try Outs

    • Hospital Procedures

    • Police Shootings

• How do we avoid the negative consequences of Cognitive conservatism?

  • Be aware of those who attempt to create categories and definitions

  • Try to use more than one category to define a person or event

  • Try to think of people and events as unique

  • Consider the possibility that you are mistaken

• False consensus effect

  • Our tendency to overestimate how many people agree with us

• What are teachers guilty of?

  • Self-fulfilling prophesy - the process by which expectations or stereotypes lead people to treat others in a way that makes them confirm their expectations

• Illusory Correlations

  • A tendency to see relationships or correlations between events that are unrelated

• Is my group better than your group?

  • Ingroups - the group with which an individual identifies and feels a belonging to

  • Ingroup favoritism - positive feelings and special treatment for people we have defined as being apart of our ingroup, and negative feelings and unfair treatment of those we have defined as being part of the outgroup

  • Outgroup - a group with which an individual does not identify

  • Homogeneity effect - we tend to see members of outgroups as more similar to one another than to members of our own group

  • Minimum group paradigm - the formation of meaningless groups by grouping strangers on the basis of trivial criteria; minimal group members will display ingroup biases

Memory and Biases

• Constructive predictions

  • Do events emotionally impact us as much as we predicted

  • What if you don’t get the A as predicted?

  • Why do we mispredict?

• Reconstructive memory

  • Definition - the process whereby memories of an event become distorted by information encountered after the event

  • Hennis case - tainted eyewitness testimony

• Autobiographical memory

  • Self-schemas - coherent memories, feelings, and beliefs about ourselves that hang together and form an integrated whole

• False-Memory Syndrome

  • A memory of a past traumatic event that is objectively false but that people believe occurred

• Recovered memory phenomenon

  • recollections of a past event, such as sexual abuse, that had been forgotten or repressed; a great deal of controversy surrounds the accuracy of such memories

• Confirmation Bias

  • The tendency to seek confirmation of initial impressions or beliefs

  • Hindsight bias - once we know the outcome, we certainly know it all along

• How do attitudes and beliefs guide behavior?

  • 1930s study by LaPierre and attitudes toward Chinese by 128 hotels

  • 1969 study by Wicker that attitudes are only slightly related to overt behaviors

• Is it all in our heads?

  • Correspondent inference - the tendency to attribute the cause of a person’s behavior to a corresponding trait of that person

• When do attitudes predict behavior?

  • Attitude accessibility - the strength of the association between an object and a person’s evaluation of that object; accessibility is measured by the speed with which people can report how they feel about an object or issue

• Self Biases

  • Egocentric thought - the tendency to perceive oneself as more central to events than is the case

  • Why does this happen?

    • We are motivated to keep our self-concept protected

    • Self Concept - the contents of the self

    • We are ego-defensive

      • Behavior aimed at maintaining a positive view of oneself at the expense of viewing the world accurately

Self Justification

• The tendency to justify one’s actions to maintain one’s self-esteem

• Doomsday predictions and tragic examples

  • Marian Keech and the end of the world 12.21.1954

  • Heavens Gate cult and telescope purchases

    • Mass Suicide 3.26.1997

• Cognitive Dissonance

  • A state of tension that occurs whenever an individual simultaneously holds two cognitions that are psychologically inconsistent

• Conformation Bias

  • When faced with disconfirming evidence of a strongly held belief, the need to criticize, distort, or dismiss that evidence in order to maintain consonance

Human Aggression

• Aggressive action - Intentional behavior aimed at causing either physical or psychological pain

• Hostile Aggression - Act of aggression stemming from a feeling of anger and aimed at inflicting pain of injury

• Instrumental Aggression - means to some goal other than pain (football)

• Altruism - Any act that benefits another person but does not benefit the helper'; often involvs some personal cost to the helper

• Catharsis - Blowing off steam

• Relational Aggression - Non-physical form of aggression such as gossiping, spreading false rumors, ostracism

• Frustration - the perception that you are being prevented from obtaining a goal; will increase the probability of an aggressive response

• Relative Deprivation - The perception that you have less than you deserve

• Deindividualization - a state of reduced self awareness which results in reduced concern over social evaluation and weakened restraints against prohibited forms of behavior

Prosocial Behavior

• Defined as an action by an individual that is intended to benefit another individual or set of individuals

• Kin Selection - the idea that natural selection lead to greater tendencies to help close kin than those with whom we have little genetic relation

• Social Exchange Theory - Human interactions are transactions to maximize rewards and minimize one’s losses

• Resolving Conflicts

  • Bargaining - seeking an arrangement between parties through direct negotiation

  • Mediation - attempt by neutral third party to resolve a conflict facilitating communication between parties

  • Integrative agreements - win win agreements that reconcile both parties interest to their mutual benefit

  • Arbitration - resolution of a conflict by a neutral 3rd party who studies both sides and imposes settlement

• Negative State Relief Hypothesis

  • The idea that people help in order to reduce their own distress

• Evolutionary theory

  • The idea that people help relatives because it increases the chance that the genes will be passed o=along

• Causal Attribution

  • Is someone the cause of their own misfortune