U4a: Social Psychology

Prisoner’s Dilemma

• A standard example of a game theory scenario where two individuals must choose between cooperation and betrayal, highlighting the tension between individual self-interest and collective benefit.

Social Psychology: Scientific study of how we think about, influence, and relate to one another

• social thinking

• social influence

• social relations

Attitudes:

• sets of beliefs and feelings

• Advertising is ALL based on attitude formation

• Mere Exposure effect: more often you are exposed to something the more likely you will like them/thinking higher about them.

• Central Route v Peripheral Route

  • Central Route: Involves careful and thoughtful consideration of the content of the message, leading to lasting attitude change.

    • Attitude change path in which interested people focus on the argument and respond with favorable thoughts

  • Peripheral Route: Relies on superficial cues such as attractiveness of the speaker or emotional appeals, resulting in temporary attitude change.

    • Attitude change path in which people are influenced by incidental cues, such as speaker’s attractiveness

Social Thinking

• our behavior is affected by our inner attitudes as well as by external social influences

• Attitudes follow behavior

• cooperative actions feed mutual liking

internal attitudes → behavior

external influences → behavior

Attitude and Behavior

• LaPiere’s Study: Do attitudes tell us about someone’s behavior?

  • Cognitive Dissonance Theory

  • People want to have consistent attitudes and behaviors… when they are not they experience dissonance (unpleasant tension)

  • Usually they will change their attitude.

    • say its the teachers fault

Compliance Strategies

• Foot-in-the-door phenomenon

  • if you ask people to do a small thing first, they are more likely to comply with a larger request later

  • If you agree someone to come to your house for an free home estimate, they are more likely to have you come for lighting estimate and for you to then fix their lighting — that’s how that kid went from 5 dollars/hour to 150 dollars/hour

  • Agreeing to drive someone home makes you more likely to drive them to go get food, go to swim practice and picking up their brother

• Door-in-the-face phenomenon

  • Asking for a big thing you know is going to be rejected

  • Begin by asking people for a large request followed by a smaller request (which doesn’t seem so bad now)

  • Asking for a sports car and then coming back to your parents and asking for a honda civic

• Norms of reciprocity

  • Someone does something nice for you so you feel obligated to do something nice in return

  • Best time to ask parents for something is when they feel good about something you did for them.

  • You copy off someone’s homework so now you feel that you have to let them copy your hw

Attribution Theory: Tries to Explain how people determine the cause of the behavior they observe

• Situational Attribution

• Dispositional Attribution

• Fundamental Attribution Error: The tendency to overemphasize dispositional factors and underestimate situational influences when explaining others' behaviors.

  • We tend to overestimate the role of dispositional factors

• Individualistic v. Collectivistic Cultures

  • Individualistic cultures: prioritize personal goals and achievements, leading to a greater emphasis on internal traits when assessing behavior.

  • Collectivistic cultures: prioritize group goals and community well-being, resulting in a stronger focus on situational factors and the influence of social context in evaluating behavior.

  False Consensus Effect: The tendency to overestimate the extent to which others share our beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors, leading us to assume that our views are more common than they actually are.

• Self Serving Bias: The tendency to attribute our successes to internal factors while blaming failures on external factors, which can distort our self-perception and influence our interactions with others.

Stereotypes, Prejudice & Discrimination

How does prejudice occur?

Just World Phenomenon: The belief that the world is fair and that people get what they deserve, which can lead to rationalizing social inequalities and victim-blaming.

Scapegoat theory:

Ingroup bias: the tendency to favor one's own group over others, often resulting in discriminatory behavior towards those outside of the group.

Combating Prejudice

Contact theory: Contact between hostile groups will reduce animosity if they ae made to work towards a superordinate goal.

Prejudices can often lead to…

• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

  • A prediction that causes itself to be true

  • Rosenthal and Jacobson’s “Pygmalion in the Classroom” experiment

    • This study demonstrated how teachers' expectations can influence student performance, highlighting the powerful impact of preconceived notions on individual outcomes. They did this by randomly assigning labels of "intellectual bloomers" to certain students, leading teachers to treat these students with more attention and encouragement, ultimately resulting in improved academic performance.

Social/Prosocial Behavior

Psychology of Aggression:

1. Instrumental aggression

2. Hostile Aggression

Theories of Aggression:

• Bandura’s Modeling

• Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis

Prosocial Behavior:

• Kitty Genovese case in Kew Gardens NY

• Bystander effect:The phenomenon where individuals are less likely to offer help to a victim when other people are present, as demonstrated in the Kitty Genovese case.

  • Diffusion of Responsibility

• Pluralistic Ignorance: People decide what to do by looking to others

How do groups affect our behavior?

In group settings, individuals often conform to the behavior and attitudes of those around them, leading to a phenomenon known as social influence, which can either promote or hinder pro-social actions depending on the dynamics within the group.

Social Facilitation Theory

• If you are really good at something.. or is it an easy task.. you will perform BETTER in front of a group

• If it is a difficult task or you are not very good at it.. you will perform WORSE in front of a group (social impairment)

  • basketball example

Conformity: Adjusting behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard.

• Asch’s Results

  • around 1/3 of people conformed every time

  • 70% conformed at least once

  • To strengthen conformity

    • group is unanimous

    • the group is at least 3 people

    • one admires the group’s status

    • one had made no prior comment

Reasons for conforming:

• Informational social influence

  • When we accept others’ opinions about reality

  • Why you should get a dashcam — people are distracted and second guess themselves easily

• Normative social influence

  • when we just want to gain acceptance and/or avoid disapproval

Milgram’s Study of Obedience

• The study was designed to investigate the extent to which individuals would follow orders from an authority figure, even when those orders conflicted with their personal conscience. Nazi war prisoners had defended themselves saying that they were merely following orders, highlighting the powerful impact of situational factors on behavior and the potential for individuals to commit acts contrary to their moral beliefs.

• Milgram assigned participants to the role of teacher, while confederates acted as learners. This setup allowed him to observe how far individuals would go in administering electric shocks under the instruction of an authority figure, revealing alarming insights into human behavior in hierarchical structures. Ultimately, the findings underscored the concept of obedience to authority, illustrating that people often prioritize compliance over ethical considerations, which can lead to troubling consequences in real-world scenarios. The implications of Milgram's findings are profound, suggesting that the desire for social acceptance and fear of disapproval can override personal morals, leading individuals to engage in harmful behavior when directed by an authority.

• Milgram found that 2/3rds of the people tested continued to administer shocks up to the maximum voltage, despite hearing the learners' protests, indicating a disturbing level of compliance with authority.

overall what we learned from milgram was

• ordinary people can do shocking things

• ethical issues

• would not have approved from todays IRB (International Review Board)

Double think: the ability to hold two contradictory beliefs simultaneously, often seen in situations where individuals justify their actions despite ethical concerns. (Holding someone lower and weaker than you, but also dangerous)

Social Loading: tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling efforts toward a common goal than if they were individually accountable (group projects or tug of war)

group polarization: groups tend to make more extreme decisions than the individual (cat example, politics, sports fans)

Groupthink:

• group members supress their reservations about the ideas supported by the group

• members are more concerned with group harmony

• worse in highly cohesive groups

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