Ch 12 Social Psychology Day 1

Introduction to Social Psychology

• Definition: Social Psychology is a branch of psychology focusing on how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the presence of other people and by the social and physical environment.

Chapter Overview

• Key topics covered in this chapter include:

  • What is Social Psychology?

  • Person Perception: Forming Impressions of Other People

  • Attribution: Explaining Behavior

  • The Social Psychology of Attitudes

  • Understanding Prejudice

  • Conformity: Following the Crowd

  • Obedience: Just Following Orders

  • Altruism and Aggression: Helping and Hurting Behavior

  • The Influence of Groups on Individual Behavior

What Is Social Psychology?

• A field that examines the ways individuals are influenced by others in their social environments.

Key Research Areas in Social Psychology

• Social Cognition: Mental processes that help individuals make sense of their interactions and environment, which encompasses:

  • Person perception

  • Social categorization

  • Implicit personality theory

  • Attribution

  • Attitudes

  • Stereotypes

• Social Influence: How individual behaviors are shaped by the actions of others and situational contexts.

Person Perception

• Definition: The mental process used to form judgments about other people’s characteristics and motives.

• This is an active and subjective process influenced by social context.

• Social Norms: Unwritten rules or expectations for appropriate behavior in specific social situations.

Examples of Violating Social Norms

• Smoking in a nonsmoking area

• Loud talking on public transportation

• Greeting a teacher with a hug unexpectedly

• Borrowing personal items from strangers

• Cutting in line

• Publicly picking one’s nose

• Taking food from someone else’s plate

Using Mental Shortcuts in Person Perception

• Social Categorization: The process of classifying people into groups based on shared characteristics, typically happening unconsciously.

• Implicit Cognition: Automatic, nonconscious mental processes that influence perceptions and decisions.

• Explicit Cognition: Deliberate and conscious processes in judgments and reasoning.

• Implicit Personality Theory: A network of beliefs about relationships among different traits and behaviors, guiding the use of cognitive schemas.

Interpersonal Attraction and Liking

• Attraction: The feeling that draws individuals towards one another.

• Factors influencing attractiveness include:

  • Personal characteristics: warmth, trustworthiness, adventurousness, social status.

  • Physical appearance: specific body proportions, such as a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7 in women, which is often labeled as an attractive "hourglass" figure.

  • Similarity: People are generally attracted to others who are similar to them.

  • Familiarity: Exposure increases liking, even without interaction.

Implicit Personality Theory: "What Is Beautiful Is Good"

• Societal associations that connect physical beauty to desirable traits such as happiness, intelligence, and social status.

• Attractive individuals often receive more favorable treatment throughout life, leading to higher self-esteem and perceived competence.

• Research indicates that attractive individuals enjoy better life outcomes, including professional success and favorable judgments.

Attribution Theory

• Definition: Explores how individuals assign causes to behaviors and the implications of these attributions on future actions.

• Attributions can be:

  • Dispositional: Internal factors influencing behavior (personal characteristics).

  • Situational: External factors influencing behavior (environmental influences).

Errors and Biases in Attribution

• Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE): The tendency to attribute others' behaviors to their internal traits while undervaluing external situational factors.

• More prevalent in individualistic cultures than collectivist cultures, which emphasize social context.

The Self-Serving Bias

• In individualistic cultures, people credit their successes to internal factors and blame failures on external circumstances.

• Cross-Cultural Findings: Self-serving bias is not universal; collectivist cultures may exhibit a Self-Effacing Bias, attributing success to situational factors while blaming failures on personal shortcomings.

Blaming the Victim

• The victim-blaming bias leads to attributing misfortune to the victim’s own behavior or decisions, often perpetuated by FAE and hindsight bias.

• Example: Criticism of a victim’s behavior post-crime, like questioning why they didn't escape.

Hindsight Bias and Just-World Hypothesis

• Hindsight Bias: Overestimating one’s ability to have predicted an event's outcome after the event has occurred.

• Just-World Hypothesis: The belief that the world is inherently fair, leading to the assumption that people get what they deserve. This bias influences how individuals interpret events, promoting the idea that good actions will result in positive outcomes and bad actions will lead to punishment.

• Implications: This belief system can create a sense of predictability and stability in understanding social outcomes.