Social Psychology

Studying the way people relate to, think about and influence others

Attitude AttractionAggression

Group Behavior

Some questions in social psychology

• Does being late for school signify something?• How do our beliefs affect our interactions with

others?• How does a catastrophe turn some people

into heroes and others into criminals?• Is she nice to me or to everybody?• Etc……….• We are social animals!!

The Lunch Date

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epuTZigxUY8&list=PL2920A92123EAF834&index=61&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1&safe=active

Attribution Error

Fritz Heider • People usually attribute others

behavior whether to internal dispositions or external situations

• Are you just a cranky person or is there some stress at home? Is my AP Psychology teacher outgoing? But you only know me from one setting

• Is the person a bum or unemployed? ( not me of course)

Attribution Theory- How do we explain other’s behavior

• Tries to explain how people determine the cause of the behavior they observe.

It is either a….• Situational Attribution- a

reaction to stress or abuse • Dispositional Attribution-

an aggressive personalityAnd • Stable Attribution- lasting• Unstable Attribution -

temporary

Fundamental Attribution Error• We tend to overestimate

the role of dispositional factors (personality) and underestimate the importance of the situation.

Self-Serving Bias:readiness to perceive yourself more favorably

How do you view your teacher’s behavior?

You probably attribute it to their personality rather than their profession.

But do you really know?

If you win it is because you are awesome…if you lose, it must have been the coach or weather or….

Effects of Attribution• Every day we struggle to explain

others’ actions• Guilty or innocent?• Nice or mean?• Genuinely friendly or self-serving• Lazy or unemployed?• Effects our thinking politically and

in other areas• Conservatives tend to place

blame on personal attributions of the poor and unemployed

• Point to remember:• “Our attributions-to

individuals’ disposition or to their situations- should be made carefully. They have real consequences.”(Myers)

Attitudes:

• Feelings influenced by beliefs• They determine our reactions to

people objects and events .• Central Route v. Peripheral Route of

Persuasion• Central means that you are involved

in the issue-use a solid argument to convince somebody- analytical. Why learning something would be good for them? Get a good job. Use reasonable arguments

• Peripheral route – you respond to a product endorsed by someone famous or try to teach someone something by using an attractive teacher.

Actions affect attitudes

• Foot-in-the-door phenomenon- a tendency for people who agree to a small action to comply with a larger one later on.

• The idea: To get people to do something big- start small

• Works also with good deeds• Doing becomes believing

• During Korean War. Chinese communists had prisoners run errands etc. then slowly the prisoners came to their way of thinking (Brainwashed)

Attitude and Behavior• Do attitudes tell us about

someone’s behavior?• Leon Festinger:Cognitive Dissonance Theory• People want to have consistent

attitudes and behaviors….when they are not they experience dissonance (unpleasant tension).

• Usually they will change their attitude.

When Civil Rights law passed racial prejudice lessened

Moral actions strengthen moral convictions

Role Playing Affects Attitudes: Role is a set of expectations about a social position, that defines

behavior

Zimbardo Prison Experiment• https://www.youtube.com/

watch?v=1jdOoxnr7AI

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZwfNs1pqG0

• Toxic situations can make even good people bad

• When adapting to new role ( whether playing or not) feels as though you are playing a game. As time wears on the role becomes more real

• Showed how we deindividuate AND become the roles we are given.

• Cognitive Dissonance in action

• Philip Zimbardo has students at Stanford U play the roles of prisoner and prison guards in the basement of psychology building.

• They were given uniforms and numbers for each prisoner.

• What do you think happened

Social Influence

• Social influence can be seen in conformity, our compliance and group behavior.

• Conform in clothing, speech, suicides and copy cat crimes, events in LeRoy, New York

• Social strings are strong no one wants to be the loner. But how strong are they?

Conformity Studies

• Adjusting one’s behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard.

Asch’s Study of Conformity

Asch Experiment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA-gbpt7Ts8

Asch’s Results

• About 1/3 of the participants conformed.

• 70% conformed at least once.

To strengthen conformity:• The group is unanimous• The group is at least three

people.• One admires the group’s status• One had made no prior

commitment• One is made to feel incompetent

Chameleon Effect

• People look toward the sky so do you• Someone laughs and you join in, yawn etc.• We are natural mimics• Someone is happy you become happy = mood

linkage• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxB-

H6f3crY

Candid Camera

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP6b4RbIPGQ

Reasons for Conforming• Why do we clap when others

clap, see what they see• Studies show students who live in

dorms begin to think like each other.

• Generally we respect the norms that govern our society

• Reason: Normative social influence- price is too high not to conform or to be different

• Informational social influence- groups provide valuable information only stubborn people will never listen to the group.

• Our view of social influence as bad or good depends on our values Is this right/wrong

• Then came Millgram!

Milgram’s StudyOf

Obedience

Millgram Study

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOYLCy5PVgM

Results of the Milgram Study

What did we learn from Milgram?

• Ordinary people can do shocking things.

• Ethical issues….• Would not have

received approval from today’s IRB (Internal Review Board).

How groups affect our behavior?

Social Facilitation Theory• If you are really good at

something….or it is an easy task…you will perform BETTER in front of a group.

• If it is a difficult task or you are not very good at it…you will perform WORSE in front of a group (social impairment).

• Home team advantge• In book: when a light

turns green the drivers drive 100yds in 15% less time when side by side

Social Loafing

• The tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling efforts toward a common goal than if they were individually accountable. Causes: In a group feel less accountable, view individual efforts as dispensable, may not strongly identify with the group

• More prevalent in individualistic cultures

Deindividuation

• People get swept up in a group and lose sense of self.

• Feel anonymous and aroused.

• Explains rioting behaviors.

• Bullying on the internet

• Emails

Group Dynamics

Group Polarization

• Groups tend to make more extreme decisions than the individual.

• Zimbardo study: women dressed in Klan outfits administered more electric shock

Groupthink

• Group members suppress their reservations about the ideas supported by the group.

• They are more concerned with group harmony.

• Worse in highly cohesive groups.

• Occurs when the desire for group harmony in a decision-making process overrides a realistic look at the situation.

• Combination of overconfidence, conformity, fear of unpopularity

• EX: Bay of Pigs- JFK

Stereotypes, Prejudice and Discrimination

Stereotype:• Overgeneralized idea

about a group of people.

Prejudice:• Undeserved (usually

negative) attitude towards a group of people. Ethnocentrism is an example of a prejudice.

Discrimination:• An action based on a

prejudice.

Racism

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoLPLsQbdt0&playnext=1&list=PL8A4D336E121ECAFA&feature=results_main&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1&safe=active

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1NY6LxiDFU&list=PL8A4D336E121ECAFA&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1&safe=active

Blue Eyes Brown Eyes

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hqp6GnYqIjQ

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeK759FF84s

Is it just race?

NO

• Palestinians and Jews

• Yankees v Red Sox

• Men and Women

How does prejudice occur?

Social Roots:Have v have nots- when

the haves have they develop attitudes that justify things as they are ex: slave owners justified slavery, blacks were too ______

Discrimination increases stereotyping and prejudice through the reactions it provokes in its victims

Just world Phenomenon (reading)Good is rewarded and evil is punishedBelief that people get what they

deserveJustifies the rich having money and the

poor is having noneShould have known betterAlso know as:Blame-the-victim

Us and Them: Ingroup and the Outgroup

• Part of evolution• The social definition of who we are

also tells us who we are not• Make instant judgments about

people: language, accent, • The “us” the ingroup automatically

excludes “them” the outgroup• Creates an ingroup bias- favoring

ones own group• Social identity formed as we

associate ourselves with certain groups and contrast ourselves to other groups- predisposes us to prejudice

Emotional Roots

• Scapegoat theory- finding someone to blame when things go wrong

• Target for one’s anger• High among

economically troubled people

• Boosts our own self -esteem

Cognitive Roots of Prejudice

• Simplify our world through categorization

• Own-Race effect or own race bias develops around 3-9 months

• Own race effect the ability to recognize the face of one’s own race more accurately than the face of others

• Video from 60 minutes• Morality and babies• https://

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRvVFW85IcU&list=PL2920A92123EAF834&index=111

Combating PrejudiceContact Theory• Contact between hostile groups will reduce

animosity if they are made to work towards a superordinate goal.

Prejudices can often lead to a….

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

• A prediction that causes itself to be true.

• Rosenthal and Jacobson’s “Pygmalion in the Classroom” experiment. High expectations students perform, low expectations students do poorly

Psychology of AggressionRead 671-678

Causes: genetic and neural, biochemical

Theories of Aggression:• Psychological- frustration-

aggression model- frustration creates anger, anger begets aggression

• Sociocultural• Observational

Prosocial Behavior/Altruism- the unselfish regard for the welfare of others

• Kitty Genovese case in Kew Gardens Queens, NY.

Bystander Effect:• Conditions in which people

are more or less likely to help one another. In general…the more people around…the less chance of help….because of…

• Diffusion of Responsibility

Pluralistic Ignorance• People decide what to do

by looking to others.

Help someone when…

• Person appears to need help and deserves help

• Similar to us in some way

• Observed helpfulness • Not in a hurry• Live in a small town or

rural area

• Feeling guilty• Focused on othe

Bystander effect

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OdKow7IAuw&list=PL2920A92123EAF834&index=62

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSsPfbup0ac

Norms for Helping

• Social exchange theory- weigh the costs of doing good (time, etc.) against the benefits good feelings ex: Blood donor costs time, anxiety, benefits- reduces guilt, social approval, feels good. If rewards outweigh costs, you help

• Reciprocity norm- return help to those who have helped us

• Social – responsibility norm- help those who need help. Children- reciprocity norm not in play

Conflict and Peacemaking

• Problem of Social traps: when the conflicting parties, by each pursuing their own interests, get caught in mutually destructive behavior

• Mirror-image perceptions- as we see them they see us ex: they are evil, so they see us as evil

• Self-fulfilling prophecies- belief that leads to its own fulfillment

Attraction

5 Factors of Attraction

Proximity

• Geographic nearness

Mere exposure effect:

• Repeated exposure to something breeds liking.

Which person would you want to have a long term relationship with?

Reciprocal Liking

• You are more likely to like someone who likes you.

• Why?• Except in

elementary school!!!!

Similarity

• Paula Abdul was wrong- opposites do NOT attract.

• Birds of the same feather do flock together.

• Similarity breeds content.

Liking through Association• Classical

Conditioning can play a part in attraction.

• I love Theo’s Wings. If I see the same waitress every time I go there, I may begin to associate that waitress with the good feelings I get from Theo's.

Physical Attractiveness

The Hotty Factor

• Physically attractiveness predicts dating frequency (they date more).

• They are perceived as healthier, happier, more honest and successful than less attractive counterparts.

What is beauty?

Beauty and Culture

Obesity is so revered among Mauritania's white Moor Arab population that the young girls are sometimes force-fed to obtain a weight the government has described as "life-threatening".

Are these cultures really that different?