Introduction to Psychology

Social Psychology

Attributions

• Internal vs. External

• Stability

• Fundamental Attribution Error

• Defensive Attribution

• Self-serving Bias

• Individualism vs. Collectivism

The Justification of Effort

• If someone works hard to attain a goal, the will be more attractive than to the individual who achieves the same goal with no effort.

• Hazing• Basic training• Charging money for pound puppies• Aronson and Mills (1959) sex discussion

group with an embarrassing initiation

The ABCs of Attitudes

• An attitude can be defined as one’s favorable or unfavorable evaluative reaction toward something or someone exhibited in beliefs, feelings, or intended behavior.

• A – affect (feelings)

• B – behavior (intentions)

• C – cognitions (thoughts)

Attitude Functions

1) A knowledge function by helping us organize and structure our environment

2) An instrumental function in helping us maximize rewards and minimize punishments

3) An ego-defensive function by helping us deal with internal conflicts and defend against anxiety

4) A value-expressive function in helping us express ideals important to our self-concept

Why Do Behaviors Change Attitudes?

• Self-Presentation (Impression Management)

• Self-Justification (Cognitive Dissonance)

• Self-Perception

Conformity and Obedience

• Asch experiment• Milgram experiment • The difference a symbol of authority makes e.g., a

lab coat• The nurse’s obedience experiment – much lower

level of compliance when the drug was familiar and when they had an opportunity to consult with someone

• Knowledge and social support increase the likelihood of resistance to authority

Norm Formation

• Norms can be arbitrary, pervasive and unintentional

• Norm violation examples

Groups

• Who am I?

• Categorize self-descriptions into group and non-group identifications

• What is a group?

• Is this class a group

What is a group?

• “Two or more people who, for longer than a few moments, interact with and influence one another and perceive one another as us”

• People on a plane?• Five people waiting at the same corner for a bus.• People attending a worship service.• The Brittany Spears Fan Club.• The students in a seminar class.

Are groups good or bad?

• Conformity, obedience, diffusion of reponsibility, deindividuation, panic, the risky shift, groupthink, anonymity, social loafing

• Social, moral, and language development, sense of membership and identity, charity, emotional comfort, support, social facilitation, cooperation, survival

Crowding• Calhoun’s Behavioral Sink (1962)• A rat colony lives in a quarter acre pen• Population stabilizes at about 150• He then divided the pen into 4 sections, the 2 largest males

each claimed one section along with a small harem of females, the rest of the colony lived in terribly overcrowded conditions

• Breakdown in mating and nest building, eating of the young, random an inappropriate aggression, others passive and withdrawn

• Infant mortality 80%, adults showed marked signs of stress related illness and premature death

Collective Behavior

• Deindividuation – loss of self awareness and evaluation apprehension when the situation allows one to feel anonymous

• When combined with high states of arousal and a diffusion of responsibility it can create a mob mentality, disinhibiting violent and unacceptable behavior

Riots

• Convergence – only certain types of people would bait a person to jump or commit an act of violence, however, their actions spread throughout a crowd by means of contagion.

• This can create a norm of callousness or cynicism the seems to fit the situation. It creates the illusion of consensus for violence and extreme acts.

Convergence

• Deindividuation alone cannot explain all these phenomena

• Riots, lynchings, mobs, wartime attrocities, police beatings, road rage, escape panics

• Cheering at sporting events, spring break behavior, Mardi Gras, fads, pop icons

Deindividuation

• If you could do anything humanly possible with complete assurance that you would not be detected or held in any way responsible, what would you do?

• Common findings: 36% antisocial, 19% non-normative, 36% neutral, and 9% prosocial

• Robbing a bank is the most often reported