Class Notes on Social Psychology and Related Concepts

Class Format Change

  • Instructor appreciates students' understanding regarding the switch to a Zoom format.

Course Progress

  • Remaining Chapters:
    • Social Psychology
    • Psychological Disorders with a focus on anxiety disorders and therapy.
  • Next week’s class will be recorded and TAs will cover topics in Monday's lab.

Overview of Social Psychology

  • Definition: Scientific study of how people think, feel, and behave in a social context.
  • Emphasis on ABCs in social psychology:
    • Affect: Emotions
    • Behavior: Actions
    • Cognition: Thoughts
  • Key concepts to be covered:
    • Social Cognition
    • Helping Behavior
  • Upcoming lecture will focus on social influence regarding conformity and obedience, including classic experiments
    (e.g., Solomon Asch's experiment, Milgram's obedience study).

Major Concepts in Social Psychology

Social Cognition
  • Focus: How we think about others and the social world.
  • Core Idea: Attribution, which explains why people behave the way they do.
Attribution Theory
  • Definition: Behavior may be explained by either:
    • Personal Attribution (internal factors): Traits, moods, abilities.
    • Situational Attribution (external factors): Environmental context.
  • Example Consideration:
    • If a person doesn’t greet you, it could be viewed as rude (personal) or due to inability to see (situational).
Biases in Attribution
  1. Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE):
    • Overemphasis on personal characteristics over situational ones when explaining others' behaviors.
    • Example: Assuming someone did well in an exam due only to intelligence rather than hard work or external support.
  2. Actor-Observer Bias:
    • Tendency to explain own behaviors in terms of situational factors, while attributing others’ actions to personal traits.
    • Example: Explaining your success as solely due to hard work, while dismissing a friend's success as merely luck.
  3. Self-Serving Bias:
    • Attributing successful outcomes to oneself and failures to external factors.
    • Example: Passing an exam due to one’s intelligence but blaming the teacher when failing.
  4. Just World Belief:
    • Belief that good things happen to good people and bad things to bad people, ignoring social inequalities.

Attitudes in Social Psychology

  • Definition: Evaluations that predispose behaviors toward an object.
  • Three components influencing attitudes:
    1. Affect: Emotional response
    2. Behavior: Action taken based on attitude
    3. Cognition: Beliefs about the object/individual.
  • Types:
    • Explicit Attitudes: Conscious and readily identifiable (e.g., love for a specific artist).
    • Implicit Attitudes: Unconscious and less visible.
Cognitive Dissonance
  • Definition: Psychological discomfort from a mismatch between beliefs/attitudes and actual behaviors.
  • People resolve dissonance by either changing their beliefs/attitudes or behaviors.
    • Example: Justifying minor theft by deeming it \"reimbursement\" when one feels guilty about stealing.