Social Psychology Vocabulary

Social Psychology

  • Social psychology is the scientific study of how people affect and are affected by other people's thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Attribution

  • Attribution is the way in which we interpret the cause of our and others’ behaviors.
  • Dispositional attribution: Assuming behavior is caused by the inherent or personal characteristics of the individual, such as their personality or temperament.
  • Situational attribution: Assuming a person's behavior is caused by the situation or environment in which they find themselves.
  • Fundamental attribution error: A cognitive bias in which we assume a person's bad behavior is because of their character (dispositional attribution) and underestimate environmental influences (situational attribution).

Persuasion

  • Persuasion is the way in which people attempt to change others’ attitudes, thoughts, and behavior.
  • Attitude: Our subjective evaluation of something or someone, which precedes and influences our behavior.

The Foot-in-the-Door Technique

  • Foot-in-the-door (FITD) technique: A way to persuade people to do a large effortful task by having them first do a small task.
  • Door-in-the-face technique: A way to persuade someone to do a small task by first asking them to do a large task that they likely refuse.
  • Example: Cialdini et al. (1975) had three groups, and all were asked to chaperone children to the zoo.
    • Group 1: first asked to mentor children for two years (big request)
    • Group 2: first asked to mentor children for two years or chaperone children to the zoo
    • Group 3: was only asked to chaperone children to the zoo

Conformity

  • Conformity: A motivation to adhere to social norms and do what others are doing around us.
  • Early research by Solomon Asch in a conformity experiment.
  • One participant and several research confederates were asked to judge the length of the line.
  • When the confederates gave wrong answers, the participant conformed and agreed with the group 1/3 of the time.

Obedience

  • Obedience: When a person agrees to do a behavior because they are asked by someone whom they perceive to be in a position of authority.
  • In the 1960s, Stanley Milgram conducted a well-known study in psychology when he investigated obedience to authority.

Milgram’s Obedience Experiment

  • Participant and a confederate (actor) entered the research room.
  • The participant assigned to “teacher” and confederate was the “learner.”
  • The “teacher” experienced a 45-volt shock, for example, when the “learner” was strapped to a chair and a shock was attached in the other room.
  • Teacher sat in front of an apparatus that had switches ranging from 15 volts to 450 volts.
  • No shocks were actually experienced by the learner.
  • When the learner got something wrong, the teacher was shocked, and the voltage increased for every wrong answer.
  • The “learner” would begin protesting at 75 volts, and as the shocks increased, they would scream and yell and complain of a heart problem. They fell silent after 300 volts.
  • Experimenter prompts:
    • Please continue.
    • The experiment requires that you continue.
    • It is absolutely essential that you continue.
    • You have no other choice; you must continue.
  • Milgram Obedience Experiment Results
    • Most psychiatrists believed that most people would stop when the participant was asked to be set free – 10th shock.
    • 65% went all the way to 450 volts.
    • About the same for males and females.
    • Experimental results replicated around the world with slight differences between countries. For example, in the Netherlands, 92% complied until the end, 85% in Germany, and 40% in Australia.
    • If the teacher and learner were in the same from, 40% went to 450 volts
    • If the teacher had to hold the learner’s hand down, 30% went to 450 volts.
  • Milgram Obedience Replicated by Jerry Burger
    • Used the same apparatus
    • Participants were screened first
    • Clinical psychologist present
    • Teachers were only allowed to go to 150 volts.
    • In the original study, 79% of those that went to 150 volts continued all the way to 450 volts.
    • Burger found that 70% went to 150 volts.

Groups

  • Group: People who interact and influence each other’s attitudes, ideas, and behaviors.
  • There are numerous advantages of living together that humans have benefited from during our evolution, such as sharing resources, collectively hunting, supporting the upbringing of children, having access to mates, and protecting against threats.
  • Therefore, we have strong genetic influences and innate desires to seek out other people and belong to groups.
  • Entiativity: The level of cohesion between group members.
  • Groups that participate together as a team or roll play.
  • Another powerful unifying principle is having a common enemy or rival or a common challenge or adversity to overcome
  • Uncertainty-identity theory: The theory of the importance of other members of our group because they help us navigate the uncertainty of our experiences and help with our self-identity.
  • Social identity theory: The theory that being part of a social group helps foster self-esteem and a sense of self.
  • A common technique to understand social identity is to create a list of 20 statements that begin with, “I am .”
  • There are many ways that a person might be considered part of a group, including skin color, body weight, ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic status, political affiliation, immigration status, gender, or sexual orientation.

Stereotypes, Prejudices, and Discrimination

  • Stereotypes: Overgeneralized beliefs about members of a group. Stereotypes often lead to prejudices and acts that diminish a person's individuality.
  • Stereotype threat: This is when someone is anxious that their behavior might be seen to confirm their group’s stereotype.
  • Prejudices: Prejudices are negative attitudes, emotions, behaviors, or biases toward individuals or members of a group.
  • Discrimination: The explicit or implicit harmful treatment or attitudes toward members of a group. Discriminatory acts can take many forms, including exclusion, harassment, or violence.
  • Discrimination touches just about everyone’s lives, especially people of color.
  • Experiencing discrimination can also be incredibly harmful to a person’s mental health.

Groups and Decision Making

  • The presence of others can highly influence the way we make decisions.
  • Adolescents tend to take greater risks when peers are present, but people might gamble less when watched by an audience.
  • Group polarization: The finding that decisions made as a group tend to shift to more extreme views compared to individual views.
  • This is often seen in people who share the same political views.
  • Groupthink: Making decisions as a group tends to discourage opposing views and ideas from individual members.
  • Companies often look for solutions to combat groupthink, such as encouraging dissent and designating a person to be purposefully doubtful and contradictory to the group’s consent.

Cults

  • Cult: A group of people with extreme views and ideologies. Cults have charismatic and controlling leaders; members go through indoctrination where they lose self-identity, and members are typically exploited for labor, money, or sex.
  • Cult leaders prophesize the end of the world and claim they are the only ones who can fix it.
  • Cult leaders employ groupthink, conformity, and obedience.
  • Cults target all races, economic statuses, and gender.
  • Cult members tend not to have psychological disorders but may have low self-confidence, are not assertive, and are frustrated spiritually.
  • There have been cults throughout history, and some see modern religions as evolving from ancient cults.
  • Reverend Jim Jones established the People’s Temple cult in San Francisco and relocated members to the South American country of Guyana. They called this Jones Town.
  • Members of the cult killed Congressman Leo Ryan and others that visited because of complaints by relatives of cult members.
  • 918 members died by murder and suicide.

Mob Mentality

  • There are times when we may act in very different ways when we are in a crowd compared to when we are alone.
  • Mob mentality: When individual behaviors are highly influenced by crowds. It often leads to people acting in ways that depart from their normal behavior.
  • Mob mentality has a great deal to do with conformity and groupthink, but it is often associated with the destructive or harmful actions of a crowd of people.
  • Examples are people being destructive at what starts as a peaceful march or people crashing their way into the U.S. Capital on January 6, 2021.
  • Deindividuation: When people lose their sense of self when in a group. It is a cause of mob mentality.
  • People also feel a sense of anonymity in a group, reducing their sense of accountability and culpability for their actions.

The Bystander Effect

  • Being around other people also can reduce the probability that individuals will act to help others.
  • Bystander effect: When individuals tend to render aid more often when they are alone then when in a crowd.
  • Latané and Darley (1970) proposed three factors that explain why the bystander effect occurs:
    • Diffusion of responsibility: Someone else in the group is bound to jump in and help.
    • Evaluation apprehension: A fear of embarrassment, mistakenly providing unwanted help, or having their actions add to the problem.
    • Pluralistic ignorance: You assume other people know what’s going on and are taking appropriate action.
  • Latané and Darley (1970) also described a five-stage model to explain why people help or do not help in an emergency. Before help is given, a bystander must do the following, in order:
    1. Notice the potential problem.
    2. Define the situation as an emergency.
    3. Assess how personally responsible they feel in the situation.
    4. Make the decision to offer assistance.
    5. Act on that decision.

Prosocial Behavior

  • People can do extraordinary things when they come together.
  • Prosocial behavior: Individual behavior that is helpful to others.
  • What leads us to do good?
  • Norm of reciprocity: The assumption that if one does something good for another person, they will be helped in the future themselves when they are in need.
  • Social exchange theory: The fact that we weigh the costs and benefits of helping others.
  • Empathy-altruism model: The idea that we help others in distress because we empathize with what they are dealing with – we feel their pain.

Social Media

  • Social media has allowed people to connect with family members and reconnect with old friends and classmates.
  • Social media is a good tool for creating support groups for people with physical and mental health issues.
  • Social media platforms can also be places where like-minded citizens can organize and plan events, elicit support, and start and maintain movements for social change and social justice.
  • Examples include the Arab Spring, Me Too movement, and Black Lives Matter.
  • Most psychologists and sociologists are beginning to recognize the many problems that can come with social media use and misuse.
  • Social media posts are often exaggerated depiction of the positive aspects of the lives of others.
  • A study by Youth Health Movement (YHM) found that people had more negative than positive experiences related to their physical and mental health.
  • Social media platforms have complex algorithms that track detailed information about the habits of individuals, including what they look at and for how long, how often they return, where they link to, and who they follow as friends.
  • Social media platforms also have the ability to manipulate behavior by highlighting emotional content that gains our attention.
  • Facebook altered algorithms that manipulated user’s emotional state of 689,000 randomly selected users.
  • They found that when positive expressions were reduced, people produced fewer positive posts and more negative posts.
  • Data engineer Frances Haugen disclosed thousands of documents showing Facebook executives knew that their platform could have serious mental health consequences for adolescents, especially girls, including increased depression, eating disorders, and suicidality.
  • Facebook’s own research found that “32 percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse.”