Sociocultural Approach to Understanding Behavior

Social psychology - the study of how the presence of others influence our thoughts, feelings and behaviors

Social groups - a group of people with a shared purpose

  • the social group is usually seen as a group by other or the people in the group

Social identity theory - made by Tajfel and Turner (1979) to analyze intergroup relationships

  • Personal identity - who am I?

  • Social identity - where do I belong?

We exaggerate the character traits of our social group to enhance our self image

Zimbardo (1971)

  • Stanford prison experiment

  • 24 students were given the role of prisoner or guard

  • cancelled after 6 days due to the weird behavior presented by both prisoners and guards

Social cognitive theory - we learn behavior through the art of observing

Vicarious learning - learning from the success and mistakes others make

  • Ex: Watching a video

Vicarious reinforcement - reinforcement of behavior by seeing other peoples consequences from their actions

  • Ex: a student sees their friend get an A+ on the test, and starts to copy their study strategy to get an A+ too

Reciprocal determinism - individuals are shaped by their social environment, but they also influence it

Socialization - the process of becoming apart of a social group

  • primary socialization usually happens during childhood. the individual finds and builds their core identity and personality

  • gender socialization is when kids learn about the social, and behavior expectations set for their own gender

  • cultural socialization is when kids learn about a culture and develop a sense of belonging that culture

  • secondary socialization is when kids learn about values, beliefs, and attitudes of their own culture from people outside their family

  • group socialization is when an individual starts to interact with a group he/she might consider joining

Self-efficacy - the belief in yourself to carry out actions to achieve a goal

Learned helplessness - the belief that your own efforts do make a difference in pursuing a goal

Social cognition - How individual process information about the social world based on attributions, stereotypes, and schemas

  • Attribution - interpretation on why people behave the way they do

    • situational factors are known as external impacts

      • EX: She’s tired from soccer practice

    • dispositional factors are known as internal/personal impacts '

      • EX: He is super lazy

Fundemental attribution error - the habit of overestimating dispositional factors and undermine situational factors when interpreting others behavior

Self-serving bias - your own success if attributed to dispositional factors and own faliures to situational factors

Stereotypes - mental representations by which people categorize groups and their members

  • EX: every natural blonde haired person is dumb

A self-fulfilling prophecy is when a stereotypic schemas influences a persons behavior in a way that makes the stereotype true

  • EX: believing you will fail an exam and then failing it

Sterotype threat is when a person believes in a negative sterotype that can harm the outcome of the group

  • EX: white colored students are told that asian students do better on academics which then makes the white colored students think they are dumb

Conformity - when someone matches another persons attitudes, feelings, or behavior to match the group by which they belong to or want to belong to

  • EX: getting an iPhone like everyone else

Informative conformity - when someone changes their opinion because of the influence of someone we believe is accurate

  • EX: scientists, doctors, politicians

Normative conformity - When a person changes their public beliefs but not private beliefs

Sherif (1936)

An experiment to figure out if people conform in ambiguous situations

  • people sat in dark room and researchers asked them to look at the light in the room and estimate how far the light moved

  • The light did not actually move

  • When they were alone the estimates were varied

  • When they were in groups the estimates were very similar

Compliance - the result of direct pressure to respond to a favor/command

Minority influence - a social influence where the monitory group influences other people to accept their beliefs and behaviors

  • EX: civil rights movement in the US

Groupthink - a phenomenon in which members of a group make irrational decisions

Risky shift - when an individual in a group changes their decision to a more extreme decision

  • people in groups tend to make riskier decisions

Obedience - yielding to direct orders or instructions from an authority figure

Cultural norms - attitudes, beliefs, and behavior patterns that are associated with a specific cultural group

Geert Hofstedes model of cultural dimensions shows universal features of all cultures

Enculturation - the process by which people learn about their culture in order to fully function inside it

Acculturation - the process of psychological and cultural change due to contact and interaction between cultures