Social Psychology

Social Psychology  

• The study of the social influences that help to explain why the same person will act differently in different situations  

Influences 

• Attribution theory  

  • People usually attribute the behavior of others either to their personality or a situation  

• Social cognition  

  • The influence of the people around you and where you are on the way you think about other people  

  • Impression Formation  

Implicit Bias  

• To describe when we have attitudes towards people or associate stereotypes with them without our conscious knowledge  

Developing Impressions  

• Fundamental Attribution Error  

  • We tend to make errors in labelling the cause of someone else behavior in a given situation by placing  

    • Overemphasis  

      • Internal personal characteristics of an individual  

    • Underemphasis 

      • The outside social factors  

  • Individualistic cultures are more likely to make FAE then collectivist cultures  

  • This reflects  

    • Self-serving bias 

      • The readiness to perceive oneself favorable  

  • Attitude  

    • Feeling based on belief that predispose us to respond in a particular way towards someone or something  

Attitude affects Action  

• Persuading attitudes  

  • Peripheral Route Persuasion 

    • Occurs when people are influenced by incidental cues like a speaker's looks  

      • We are persuaded to adopt an attitude about a product by celebrity endorsements  

      • Marketers hope we will take action to buy  

  • Central Route Persuasion  

    • Occurs when people focus on arguments and responds with favorable thoughts  

      • Evidence- based persuasion  

      • More durable and more likely to influence behavior 

• Techniques used to obtain compliance  

  • Compliance  

    • Changing one's behavior due to the request of another person it is possible to say no  

  • Foot in the door  

    • A tendency for people who agree to a small action to comply later to a larger one 

  • Door in the face 

    • Refusing a large request increases the likelihood to agreeing to a smaller second request 

  • Role playing affects attitude 

    • Zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment is a great example of this  

    • Role  

      • A set of expectation norms about a social position defining how those in position ought to behave  

• Actions Affects our attitudes  

  • Self- Monitoring  

    • The tendency for an individual to observe the situation for cues how to react  

      • An individual may notice that attitudes and actions don't agree  

        • We are motivated to justify our actions  

Cognitive Dissonance (Festinger) 

• When our attitudes and behaviors do not agree we experience cognitive tension  

  • Someone can resolve this tension by trying to change their attitude to agree with their behavior  

Social relations  

• A (activating events) + B (belief) = C (consequence) 

  • Conformity  

    • Adjusting our behavior or thinking toward some group standard or norm 

Conform  

• Made to feel incompetent or insecure  

• In a group with at least people  

• In a group where everyone else agrees  

• Admire the group status  

• Normative social influence  

  • Influence resulting from a person desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval  

    • To appear "NORMAL 

• Informational Social influence  

  • Influence resulting from one willingness to accept other opinions on reality desire to be correct  

    • Desire to be correct  

Obey at any cost  

• Obedience  

  • Adjusting our behavior or thinking to coincide with authority  

  • At highest when  

    • Authority figure is close by 

    • Considered to be a legitimate authority figure  

    • No role models for defiance  

    • People obey when they feel that they are not personally responsible  

      • Shed responsibility to authority  

Group Influence on Behavior  

• Social facilitation  

  • Tendency to perform better at a well- learned task when in the presence of others  

• Social inhibition  

  • Tendency to perform worse at a new or poorly-learned task when in the presence of others  

• Social Loafing 

  • Tendency for an individual in a group to exert less effort when pooling their efforts towards a common goal than when individually accountable  

• Deindividuation  

  • In a group an individual tends to experience a loss of self-awareness and self- restraint because they get caught up in the group  

    • Feels anonymous 

• Groupthink 

  • A mode of thinking that occurs  when the desire for harmony in a decision making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternative  

• Group Polarization  

  • The strengthening of a group's pre-existing attitudes through discussion within the group  

  • Can lead to risky shift  

    • Decisions of a group are riskier than the decision of a single individual before the group met 

Prejudice  

• An unjustifiable attitude toward a group and its member  

• Ethnocentrism  

  • Assuming the superiority of one ethnic group 

• 3 features  

  • Stereotypes  

    • Generalized belief about a group (sometime accurate and sometime overgeneralized) 

  • Negative feelings 

  • Predisposition to discrimination  

    • Unjustifiable negative behavior towards a group and its members  

• Sources of prejudice  

  • From divisions in society "us vs. Them" 

  • "Us" (ingroup) excludes them (outgroup) 

  • Promotes an ingroup bias  

    • A favoring of one own group 

  • Scapegoat theory  

    • Theory that prejudice offers and outlet for anger by providing someone to blame  

  • Fundamental attribution error 

  • Cognitive dissonance  

  • Confirmation bias 

    • Prejudice and stereotypes are reinforced  

    • Assign greater importance to evidence that supports our existing beliefs while minimizing or ignoring evidence to the contrary  

  • Just-world phenomenon  

    • Tendency for people to believe the world is just and that people get what they deserve  

  • Victim Blaming  

    • Succeed must be good and those who don't succeed or those who suffer are responsible  

Biology of Aggression  

1. Genetics Influences 

2. Brain structures 

   1. Stimulation of amygdala facilitates  

   2. Stimulatioon of frontal lobes, specifically, PFC, inhibits aggression  

3. Biochemical  

   1. Lower serotonin  

   2. Increased testosterone  

Psychology of aggression  

• Frustration – aggression principle  

  • Frustration make people angry and then aggressive  

• Reinforcement of aggressive behavior  

• Observational learning  

• Social scripts  

  • Culturally modeled guides for how to act in various situations 

Factors of Interpersonal Attraction  

• Mere Exposure Effect  

  • Develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar to you  

    • Proximity  

    • Physical attractiveness  

    • Similarity  

    • Equity  

    • Self-disclosure  

• Halo effect  

  • Our perception of some observable characteristic has a tendency to be generalized to a person characteristics  

Triangular theory of love  

• Robert Sternberg  

• Consummate love  

  • Intimacy + passion = commitment  

Reducing conflict  

• Superordinate goals   

  • Shared goals that override difference among people and require their cooperation  

•  Used to reduce conflict by having individuals or groups work together towards common goals that benefit all parties  

Prosocial behavior  

• Reciprocity norm 

  • Someone does something for you, you feel compelled to help them out. 

• Factors  

  • Believe the person 

    • Appears to need & deserve help 

    • Similar to us in a way  

  • Observed someone else being help  

  • Are in a small town or rural area  

  • Feeling guilty  

  • Are in a good mood  

• Altruism  

  • Belief in or practice disinterested and selfless concern for weel being of other  

• Bystander effect  

  • Diffusion of responsibility  

    • When more people share the responsibility for helping a single individual is less likely to help