Social Psychology: Thinking, Influence, and Relations

The Focus of Social Psychology

• Social Psychology Definition: The scientific study of how individuals think about, influence, and relate to one another.
• Personality Psychologists vs. Social Psychologists:
  • Personality psychologists study personal traits and internal processes to explain why different people may act differently when placed in the same situation.
  • Social psychologists study social forces to explain why the same person may act differently across different situations.

Social Thinking

• The Choice of Explanation (Attribution): When explaining actions, we choose between:
  • Stable traits: Attributing behavior to the person's enduring characteristics.
  • The situation: Attributing behavior to external environmental factors.
  • Our attributions have real consequences periodically affecting our feelings and actions.
• The Fundamental Attribution Error: The tendency, when analyzing others’ behavior, to overestimate the influence of personal traits and underestimate the influence of the situation.
  • Cultural Influence: This error is affected by the observer's culture.
  • Context: It is influenced by whose behavior is being considered and the power of the situation's context.
  • Strangers: This error is most likely to occur when a stranger acts badly.
• Exceptions to the Attribution View:
  • Deliberate, Admirable Actions: These are often attributed to our own good reasons rather than the situation.
  • Younger Selves: As we age, we tend to attribute our past behavior to traits rather than the situation.
• Case Study: 2018 Pittsburgh Synagogue Slaughter: A real-world application of attribution—should the killing of 11 Jewish worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue be attributed to the shooter's hateful disposition, America's gun culture, or both?
• Attitudes and Actions:
  • Attitudes: Feelings that predispose an individual to respond in a particular way to objects, people, and events.
  • Attitudes affect actions, though other factors are influential. For example, U.S. regions with high expressed hostile attitudes toward women correlate with high rates of domestic violence against women.
• Conditions for Attitudes Affecting Behavior:
  • External influences are kept to a minimum.
  • The attitude is stable.
  • The attitude is specific to the behavior.
  • The attitude is easily recalled.
• The Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon: The tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request. This confirms that moral action strengthens moral convictions.
• Role-Playing: Over time, a role (like a nurse putting on scrubs for the first time) defines the player as they follow social cues in their new environment.
• Cognitive Dissonance Theory: Individuals act to reduce the discomfort (dissonance) they feel when two of their thoughts (cognitions) clash. We often bring our attitudes into line with our actions to relieve tension.
• Persuasion Techniques:
  • Peripheral Route Persuasion: Occurs when people are influenced by attention-getting cues rather than content.
  • Central Route Persuasion: Occurs when interested people’s thinking is influenced by considering evidence and arguments.
• Strategic Persuasion Guidelines:
  • Do Not: Loudly argue, humiliate, or bore the audience.
  • Do: Identify shared values/goals, appeal to admirable motives, make messages vivid, repeat the message, and engage the audience in restating the message.
• Case Study: Sandra Lindsay: The first American vaccinated for COVID-19. She used her position to inspire those skeptical of vaccines due to historically unequal and racist medical treatment of people of color.

Cultural Influences

• Humans as Cultural Animals: Humans are born with collective wisdom from ancestors that supports the ability to imitate, invent, and improve.
• Mechanisms of Culture: Language, social living, and imitation ensure the preservation of innovation and enable the division of labor.
• Cultural Variations:
  • Collectivism vs. Individualism: Reflected in pandemic responses. Individualist nations (e.g., Germany) saw more defiance against community measures, while collectivist nations (e.g., Japan) demonstrated greater compliance.
  • Loose vs. Tight Cultures:
    • Loose: Flexible and informal norms.
    • Tight: Clearly defined and reliably imposed norms.
• Cultural Evolution: Like biological creatures, cultures compete for resources and evolve. Culture can change rapidly (agriculture, religion), often faster than the gene pool. Not all changes are positive.

Social Influence: Conformity and Obedience

• Social Contagion: Often called the Chameleon Effect, where humans take on the emotional tones of others (imitating expressions, postures, and voice tones).
• Asch’s Conformity Experiments: When participants saw five others choose the wrong line in a comparison task, they frequently conformed to the group's incorrect answer.
• Conditions that Increase Conformity:
  • Feeling incompetent or insecure.
  • Being in a group with at least three people.
  • The group is unanimous.
  • Admiring the group's status/attractiveness.
  • Not having a prior commitment to a response.
  • Knowing others will observe the behavior.
  • Coming from a culture emphasizing respect for social standards.
• Types of Social Influence:
  • Normative: Desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval.
  • Informational: Willingness to accept others' opinions about reality.
• Milgram’s Obedience Experiments: Participants were commanded to shock an individual for wrong answers, reaching a final shock level of $450\,volts$. Many participants went against their moral convictions in response to authority.
• Conditions for Highest Obedience:
  • The authority figure is in close proximity and perceived as legitimate.
  • The authority is supported by a prestigious institution.
  • The victim is depersonalized or at a distance.
  • There are no role models for defiance.
• Minority Influence: Power of one or two individuals to sway majorities (e.g., Greta Thunberg’s 2018 solo school strike growing into a movement of 4 million people by 2019).

Group Influence

• Social Facilitation: Improved performance on simple or well-learned tasks in the presence of others. Crowding can trigger arousal, which amplifies dominant behaviors.
• Social Loafing: The tendency for group members to exert less effort when pooling efforts toward a common goal because they feel less accountable or view their contribution as unneeded.
• Deindividuation: Loss of self-awareness and self-restraint in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity (e.g., online blog anonymity fostering cruel words).
• Group Polarization: The strengthening of a group’s preexisting attitudes through discussion. The internet acts as a social amplifier for this effect.
• Groupthink: Occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives. Leaders can prevent this by welcoming debate and inviting expert critiques.

Social Relations: Prejudice and Aggression

• Prejudice Defined: An unfair and negative attitude toward a group involving negative feelings, stereotyped beliefs, and a predisposition to discriminatory action.
• Discrimination: Unjustifiable negative behavior, including microaggressions.
• Implicit Prejudice: Unconscious favoritism or prejudice toward social groups, often studied via the Implicit Association Test (IAT) or bodily responses.
• Targets of Prejudice:
  • Racial/Ethnic: Examples include the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in 2020. Research by Keith Payne (2006) showed people more often misperceive a tool as a gun if preceded by a Black face.
  • Gender: Men often dominate leadership roles and are perceived to have more rights to jobs when work is scarce.
  • LGBTQ: Explicit prejudice remains high in many countries where same-sex relationships are criminalized, leading to higher rates of depression and suicide.
• Roots of Prejudice:
  • Just-World Phenomenon: Believing people get what they deserve, which feeds the blame-the-victim dynamic.
  • Ingroup Bias: Favoring one's own group.
  • Scapegoat Theory: Prejudice offers an outlet for anger by providing someone to blame.
• Cognitive Shortcuts:
  • Outgroup Homogeneity: Perceiving members of other groups as similar to each other.
  • Other-race effect: Easier recognition of faces of one's own race (also known as own-race bias).
  • Availability Heuristic: Estimating frequency based on vivid cases that come to mind easily.
• Biology of Aggression:
  • Genetic: The Y chromosome is a genetic marker of violence.
  • Biochemical: High testosterone levels and alcohol.
  • Neural: The frontal lobes play a role in controlling aggression.
• Psychological and Socio-cultural Influences on Aggression:
  • Frustration-aggression principle: Frustration creates anger. Aversive stimuli like hot temperatures, physical pain, foul odors, and crowding trigger aggression.
  • Social Scripts: Culturally modeled guides for behavior (e.g., media, music lyrics, or violent video games).

Attraction, Love, and Altruism

• Psychology of Attraction:
  • Proximity: Geographic nearness and the mere exposure effect (familiarity breeds fondness).
  • Physical Attractiveness: Affects first impressions and dating frequency. Features like symmetry and health are universally attractive.
  • Similarity: Friends/couples usually share age, religion, race, education, and interests.
• Romantic Love:
  • Passionate Love: Aroused state at the start of a relationship. Explained by the two-factor theory of emotion (physical arousal + cognitive appraisal).
  • Companionate Love: Deep affectionate attachment supported by oxytocin, trust, and calmness.
  • Keys to Longevity: Equity (receiving in proportion to giving) and self-disclosure.
• Altruism: Unselfish concern for others.
• Bystander Effect: People are less likely to help if other bystanders are present. In studies, helping dropped from nearly $100\%$ to less than $\frac{1}{3}$ when participants thought four others heard a person having a seizure.
• Norms for Helping:
  • Reciprocity norm: Helping those who helped us.
  • Social-responsibility norm: Helping those dependent on us.

From Conflict to Peace

• Mirror-Image Perceptions: Conflicted parties hold mutual views: each sees itself as peaceful/ethical and the other as evil/aggressive.
• Superordinate Goals: Shared goals that override differences and require cooperation can reconcile hostile groups.
• Contact: Positive, noncompetitive contact between parties of equal status can lower prejudice and eradicate untruths.