Sem 2 Social Thinking and Social Influence Lecture week 12

The Big Questions:

Notes:

Part 1: Introduction

What is social psychology?

Introduction:

Define what psychological scientists mean by social psychology:

• The study of how people behave in social situations.
• Answers the “whys” in social situations ex. why are people racist, why are cults so good at recruiting young people.
• How is our behaviour impacted by other people?

What questions do you have about Part 1? Make sure to come to office hours and get them answered!

Part 2: Social Groups

What is an ingroup?

What is an outgroup?

Ingroup: Groups that you personally identify with

• Ex. brock student
• Positive attributes

Outgroup: groups that you don’t identify with

• Negative attributes
• Ex. UofT
• Not a part of this group

What are social roles?

What are social norms?

Social roles: expectations for how people who hold certain positions in a group ought to behave. Ex. barista, student

Social norms: a widely accepted standard of conduct for appropriate behaviour ex. norm for a movie theatre is being quiet

Describe the main finding from the study on littering and social norms.

• Researchers manipulated the amount of litter in an amusement parking lot
• People were handed a flyer, researchers watched what the participants did with it
• The more litter was already on the ground, the more people littered their flyer (littering was the norm)
• People followed the norms

What questions do you have about Part 2? Make sure to come to office hours and get them answered!

Part 3: Social Cognition

What is social cognition?

Social cognition: The process of thinking about ourselves and other people in a social context

What is social comparison?

Social comparison: the process of evaluating our abilities, achievements, and attitudes by comparing ourselves to other people.

- Ex. comparing your 77 grades to everyone else’s 90, you will feel shitty about yourself.

Downward social comparisons: comparing yourself to a person who ranks lower than you on some dimension.

• Makes us feel good about ourselves
• Ex. comparing myself to someone I think is ugly

Upward social comparisons: comparing yourself to someone who ranks higher than you on some dimension.

• Makes us feel bad about ourselves, can be bad for mental health
• Can motivate us
• Ex. comparing myself to Sydney Sweeney

Who do the happiest people compare themselves to?

• Someone that compares themselves to their own internal standards.
• Ex. am I doing better today than I did yesterday,

What is the fundamental attribution error?

Define what psychological scientists mean by attribution:

Attribution- the act of assigning a cause to a behaviour.

• We generate a hypothesis as to why people behave the way they do
• Ex. if someone ignores you at a party, they try to figure out why

Attribution theory: a theory describing how we assign attributions for other people’s behaviour. 2 parts:

• Dispositional Attribution- explaining a person’s behaviour as being a product of their personality. (ex. Jim didn’t care about being on time)
• Situational attribution- explaining a person’s behaviour as being a product of their situation (ex. Jim could have got caught in traffic that’s why he was late)

Fundamental attribution error: The tendency to attribute the behaviour of others to dispositional causes, without regard for situational influences.

• We are prone to thinking there is something inherit about people’s behaviour that is a product of their personality instead of their environment.
• This error can impact the way we view the world in a negative way
• Ex. If I see crime as criminals being inherently evil, I will support policies that increase punishment i.e.. Prison
• But If I see crime as criminals being impacted by their upbringing to be this way, I will support policies that have better education and support systems.

What is the actor-observer bias?

Actor-observer bias: the tendency to make dispositional attributions for the behaviour of others and situational attributions for our own behaviour.

• For ourselves we think about situational attributions, what caused our behaviour (vs. for others we think dispositional)

What is a self-serving bias?

Self-serving bias:

Positive outcome for self:

• Explain it in terms of dispositional factors
• Ex. I did well on the test because I’m so smart

Negative Outcome for self:

• Explain in terms of situational factors
• Ex. I did badly on the test because I had to work so I couldn’t study
• We want to feel good about ourselves

What is self-handicapping?

Self-handicapping: Placing obstacles in the way of your success to protect your self-esteem from possible future failure.

• Ex. you go out the night before a test; if you do well you’re a genius (dispositional), if you do bad you know why you did it and think it’s not your fault (situational).

What is cognitive dissonance?

Cognitive dissonance: The idea that people have a distaste for perceiving inconsistency between their thoughts and Behaviours.

• Cognitive dissonance occurs when we hold two cognitions that are psychologically inconsistent
• Dissonant thought cause psychological discomfort
• We try to reduce dissonance by making our cognitions more compatible
• We like to see ourselves behaving in a consistent manner (thoughts match actions)
• Explains other people’s Behaviours as well as why we do bad things
• When we do bad things we often convince ourselves it’s the right thing
• Ex. Nazi Germany, the soldiers convinced themselves that the Jews deserved it, so they were doing the right thing
• We are skilled in the act of psychological distortion when it comes to justifying ourselves.

Describe the various ways people reduce dissonance: Ex. Smoking, we know smoking is bad but we still smoke.

1. Change the behaviour: stop smoking
2. Change the cognition: convincing yourself that smoking doesn’t cause cancer
3. Add consonant thoughts (adding positive thoughts/ thoughts that help you ignore the dissonance): smoking reduces stress
4. Change the importance of the dissonant thoughts: Saying you don’t really care about the negative effects because smoking is cool.

What questions do you have about Part 3? Make sure to come to office hours and get them answered!

Part 4: Social Influence

What is social facilitation?

Social facilitation: The tendency to perform better in the presence of other people

(ex. you dance better on stage than when you’re practicing alone)

Describe the main finding from Triplett’s social facilitation study among children.

• Asking children to reel in a fishing rod as fast as they could
• They did some alone and some competing
• The kids were faster when they were competing than when they were alone.

What is social loafing?

Social loafing: when a person exerts less effort knowing that their individual performance will be hidden in the group product.

Describe the main finding from the tug of war study on social loafing.

• Participants told they would pull on a rope as individuals and as part of a team (they were alone)
• Participants were blindfolded
• Participants led to believe they had teammates that exerted less effort
• They found that people tried less when they thought that they were in a group, and performed better when they were alone.

How are social facilitation and social loafing different from one another?

• They both performed better under the most pressure, but they differ because people are more motivated with social facilitation by people and less motivated by people with social loafing because they have something to fall back on. They are responsible when people are watching but can blame it on a team when they aren’t alone.

What is conformity?

Conformity: when we change our behavior’s to be in agreement with other people.

Describe the main finding from Solomon Asch’s (1956) study of conformity.

• 3 people had to answer; 2 actors, 1 participant in order
• The actors both answered wrong, and the participant is influenced to answer the same as them
• 75% of the participants conformed and gave the wrong answer at least once

What is compliance?

Compliance: bending the requests of another person who has little or no authority over them.

Ex. a salesperson influencing you to buy something

What is the foot-in-the-door effect?

• A person who complies with a small request is more likely to comply with a larger demand later.

What is low balling?

• You get a person committed to act, then, once they are committed, make the terms less desirable.

What is the door in the face effect?

• People are more likely to comply with a moderate request after they have first refused a much larger request.

What is obedience?

Obedience:

• When you comply with the requests of someone in a position of authority

Describe the main finding from Milgram’s study of obedience.

• Conducted a series of studies in the 60s that encouraged participants to fatally shock a man
• When authority was telling them to do it 2/3 of the participants did it
• Obedience to authority

What is coercion?

Coercion:

• forced to change beliefs or behaviour against your will

Brainwashing- forced attitude change on a captive audience.

Use the table below to describe the three steps used in brainwashing

What questions do you have about Part 4? Make sure to come to office hours and get them answered!