DO NOW 4.14.2011• Reading notes due tomorrow

(Mod. 44-46)• Choose one the of the following to

describe:• Projective Personality Test• The Big Five• MMPI-2• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

Unit 12: Social Psychology

AP PsychologyMs. Desgrosellier

2010 – 2011

Key Ideas:• Group dynamics• Bystander intervention• Attribution processes• Interpersonal perception• Organizational behavior• Conformity, compliance, and

obedience• Attitudes and attitude change• Aggression and antisocial behavior

Social Psychology• Social Psychology: study of how

groups influence individual’s attitudes and behavior.

Group Dynamics• Social group: two or more people

sharing common goals and interests.

• Interact and influence behavior of the other(s).

• Norms: rules either implicit or explicit that govern the behavior of group members.

Social Roles• Roles: ascribed social positions

and defined behavior expectations in groups.

Social Roles• Zimbardo Prison Study: Stanford

students were randomly assigned the roles of either prisoner or guard.– The experiment had to be stopped after only 6

days because of the severe stress inflicted by certain “sadistic” guards who took their roles too seriously.

– Those assigned the role of prisoner were cowering in their cells and one-third of those assigned to the role of guard inflicted harsh punishment for the slightest infraction of rules.

Social Roles• Zimbardo Prison Study• Video starts at: 13:08

Social Roles• Social loafing: the tendency of

individuals to put less effort into group projects than when individually accountable.

• e.g. When pulling a rope in tug-of-war, people tended to only pull 80% their real abilities when they were joined by other people.

Social Roles• Deindividuation: when in a large

group, we tend to lose some self-awareness and may engage in behavior that is unusual or uncharacteristic for us because of the anonymity.– This especially occurs when there is a

heightened sense of arousal.– e.g. People in crowds that riot.– e.g. People in masks.

Social Roles• Deindividuation can lead to

prosocial behavior, with an unusual outpouring and generosity among virtual strangers all caught up in an emotionally arousing situation.

Effects of the Group• Social facilitation: improved

performance of well-learned tasks in front of others.–e.g. musicians who are well practiced

may perform better during a recital than during rehearsal.

• Social impairment: when first learning a new task, one may perform worse in front of other people.

Effects of the Group• Group polarization: like-minded

people share ideas resulting in a more extreme position for every individual.–e.g. When groups like the KKK get

together, they become even more extremely racist.

Effects of the Group• Groupthink: individuals self-

censor beliefs to preserve harmony in the group.

• Groupthink can be countered when outside people bring in new ideas and opinions.

Minority Influence• minority influence: a lone

dissenter shows that a single individual with a strong opinion can also have an effect.

• e.g. on a jury, a single dissenting voice could change a verdict from guilty to not guilty.

Bystander Influence• Bystander intervention: the active

involvement of a person in a situation that appears to require his/her aid.

• Diffusion of responsibility: an explanation of the failure of bystander intervention stating that when several bystanders are present, no one person assumes responsibility for helping.

Bystander Influence• e.g. Kitty Genovese was repeatedly

stabbed and raped outside her Queens, New York apartment in 1964.

• 38 of her neighbors heard her screams for help at 3:30 am. Her attacker fled and then came back to stab her 8 more times and kill her.

• No one called the police until 3:50 am.

Bystander Influence• Researchers set up a situation

where people were alone or with a group, and then they heard a call for help.–When alone with someone in need,

40% helped. – In the presence of others, only 20%

helped.

Bystander Influence• Altruism: the unselfish concern of

one individual for the welfare of another.–e.g. helping someone who is injured

with no benefit (e.g. rewards of heroism) to you.

Attribution Processes• Social cognition: the way people

gather, use, and interpret information about social world.

• Attribution theory: a way to understand how people explain others’ behaviors.

Attribution Processes• Dispositional factors: individual

personality characteristics that affect a person’s behavior.

• Situational factors: environmental stimuli that affect a person’s behavior.

Evaluating Behavior• Self-serving bias: to take

personal credit for our own achievements and blame our failures on situational factors.–e.g. “I got an A in Psychology

because I’m smart and I worked hard. I got a F in math because I have it first period and my classmates suck.”

Evaluating Behavior• fundamental attribution error:

tendency when judging others’ behaviors to overestimate the role of personal factors and underestimate situational factors.–e.g. A peer fails a class because

they’re lazy or stupid, but ignores how their parents’ divorce affected their work.

Evaluating Behavior• actor-observer bias: a tendency

to attribute our own behavior to situational causes and the behavior of others to personal causes.–e.g. I got into a car accident because

it was raining and slick on the road. YOU got into an accident because you weren’t paying attention on the road.

Evaluating Behavior• just-world phenomenon:

tendency to believe in fairness, that people get what they deserve and deserve what they get.–e.g. blaming rape victims for what

happened to them.

Influencing Behavior• Self-fulfilling prophecy: a

tendency to let preconceived expectations influence one’s behavior, thus evoking those very expectations.

DO NOW 4.14.2011• Take out your reading notes to

be checked.• Recommended reading over

break:• Modules 47 – 58

• Briefly describe the Stanford Prison Study.

Interpersonal Perception

• In-group: groups to which we belong and tend to favor.

• Out-group: groups to which we do not belong, we tend to attribute negative qualities to out-groups.

Causes of Conflict• Prejudice: unjustified attitudes we

hold about others.• Discrimination: unjustified action

against an individual or group.• Stereotypes: scheme used to

quickly judge others.–Can be an overgeneralized belief

about the characteristics of members of a particular group.

Causes of Conflict• Scapegoat theory: when own

self-worth is in doubt or jeopardy, we find others to blame.–attributes prejudice to frustration

• Ethnocentrism: belief that our culture or social group is superior to others.

Causes of Conflict• Out-group homogeneity: belief

that members of another group are more similar in their attitudes than they actually are.–e.g. I’m a jock, but not all jocks are

the same. You’re a nerd, all nerds are the same.

Increasing Cooperation

• Contact theory: if members of two opposing groups are brought together in an emergency situation, group cooperation will reduce prejudicial thinking.

Increasing Cooperation

• Jigsaw classroom: expert groups of diverse backgrounds learn one part of a lesson and share information in jigsaw groups.– Students are dependent on others.– Self-esteem and achievement of “worse”

students improve.– Former stereotypes are diminished.– Friendships based on proximity, similarity,

reciprocal liking, and utilitarian value.

Friendships

Friendships• Mere exposure effect: the more

we come in contact with someone, the more likely we are to like that person.

• Most consider beautiful people to be more socially skilled than less attractive people.

Friendships• Studies show that friends are rated

very similarly in physical attractiveness.

• Similarity of interests and social background is also likely to determine who become friends.

Conformity• Conformity: the adoption of

attitudes and behaviors shared by a particular group of people.

Conformity• Solomon Asch conformity study• Asch instructed subjects to choose which

of three lines was the same length as the original line shown. Each subject was on a panel with other “subjects” who were actually confederates who all initially gave the wrong answer.

• Approximately 35% of the real subjects chose to give an obviously wrong but conforming choice.

Conformity

Conformity• Asch – 7:07

Conformity• Normative social influence:

going along with the decisions of a group in order to gain its social approval.

• Information social influence: accepting others’ opinions about reality especially in conditions of uncertainty.

Compliance• Compliance: engaging in a particular

behavior at another person’s request.• Foot-in-the-door phenomenon:

agreement to a smaller request leads to agreement with larger requests later.–e.g. Letting me borrow $1 now makes it

more likely that you will lend me $5 next time.

Compliance• Reciprocity: small gift makes

others feel obligation to agree to later request.–e.g. Have this free gift, but you can

make a donation if you want.

Obedience to Authority

• Stanley Milgram obedience study:• Participants thought they were studying

how punishment influenced learning.• There was a confederate learner and the

participant was the teacher who had to give increasingly stronger electric shocks to the learner when they got an answer wrong.

• “Teachers” didn’t know that “learners” were not actually being shocked.

Obedience to Authority

• If the “teacher” asked questions or hesitated to deliver a shock, the researcher in a lab coat would simply urge them to continue.

• Milgram found that 66% of participants would go up to the lethal shock level.

• Besides learning about obedience to authority, Milgram’s study also helped establish important ethical guidelines for psychological research.

Obedience to Authority

• Milgram – 8:06

DO NOW 4.25.2011• Take out your spring break

practice test to be checked.

• FINAL review session this Saturday, 9am – Noon.

• AP EXAM, Monday, 5.2.2011, Noon.

Attitudes & Attitude Change

• Attitudes: learned predisposition to respond favorably or unfavorably to certain people, objects, or events.

• Mere exposure effect leads to increased liking of a person or another stimulus.– e.g. One study found that a confederate

placed in a lecture class only 3 times (and who never spoke) would be rated more attractive then strangers by the class.

Ways of Changing Attitudes

• Elaboration likelihood model (ELM): attitudinal change through two routes: central or peripheral.

• Central route of persuasion: relatively stable change by carefully scrutinizing facts, statistics, and other information.

Ways of Changing Attitudes

• Peripheral route of persuasion: pairs superficial positive factors (e.g. supermodels & celebrities) with an argument leading to less stable changes in attitudes.–Communicators should be experts,

likeable, and good-looking.–Messages should be geared to the

audience – one-sided if in agreement, two-sided if audience differs.

Cognitive Dissonance• Cognitive dissonance: the

tension that results from holding conflicting beliefs, attitudes, opinions, or values when our actions do not coincide with these cognitions.

Cognitive Dissonance• e.g. Leon Festinger had students complete

boring tasks and then asked students if they would lie and tell other students the tasks were interesting.– Some were paid $1 while some were paid $20.– Two weeks later they were asked about the task.– Those paid $20 still thought the task was boring.– Those who were only paid $1 revised their

opinion and believed the task to be more interesting than they first thought.

Aggression/Antisocial Behavior

• Aggression: the intention to do harm to others.

• Instrumental aggression: to achieve some goal.

Aggression/Antisocial Behavior

• Hostile aggression: to inflict pain upon someone else.

• Though Freud believed aggression to be innate, the fact that different cultures display differing levels of aggression supports the belief that aggression is learned.