WHS AP Psychology

Unit 12: Social Pyschology

Essential Task 12-1:Apply attribution theory to explain the behavior of others with specific attention to the fundamental attribution error, self-serving bias, just-world hypothesis and differences between collectivistic and individualistic cultures

AttributionAttribution Attitudes and

Persuasion

Attitudes and

Persuasion

Impact of Others on You

Impact of Others on You

Group BehaviorGroup

Behavior

Fundamental Attribution

Error

Self-Serving Bias

Just-World Hypothesis

Individualistic vs.

Collectivistic Culture

Schema

Conformity Compliance Group Polarization

Group Think

In-Group/Out-Group

Attraction

Cognitive Dissonance

Routes to Persuasion

Unit 12:

Social Psychology

Unit 12:

Social Psychology

We are here

Social Psychology

• The scientific study of the ways in which the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of one individual are influenced by the real, imagined, or inferred behavior or characteristics of other people

• Today’s class:– How you think about people– How you explain their behavior– Why you like them

Social Cognition: How you think about people?• Impression Formation – how do you

construct your social cognition?– Primacy effect

• Early information about someone weighs more than later information in forming impressions

• We are “cognitive misers”

– Self-fulfilling prophecy• A person’s expectations about another elicits behavior from

the other person that confirms the expectations • “Hostile” partners continued to be more hostile• Randomly identified “bloomers” made greater gains

– Schemata– Stereotypes

Impression Formation

• Schemata– Ready-made categories– Allow us to make inferences about others

(good for cognitive misers)– Also plays a major role in how we

interpret and remember information– We will remember characteristics of our

schema that weren’t there

Impression Formation• Stereotypes

– A set of characteristics believed to be shared by all members of a social category

– It is usually unfair– Most often applied to sex, race, occupation,

physical appearance, place of residence, membership in a group or organization

– Can become the basis for self-fulfilling prophecies

Self-fulfilling prophecy

• (Snyder, Tanke & Berscheid, 1977) • Attractiveness Stereotype – sociability and socially savy• Men received “background” information about a woman

they were about to talk with on a phone, info included a photo. Women received same info, but no photo.

• IV: Photo of woman either attractive or unattractive• DVs: 1) Men’s expectations about the woman 2)

Observers’ ratings of the woman’s behavior • Results: When men expected that the woman was

attractive, she was judged as friendly, warm, and more animated than when men believed they were talking with an unattractive woman. (self-fulfilling prophecy)

Attribution: Why did he do that?

• Attribution Theory: tries to explain how people make judgments about the causes of other people’s behavior

• Three criteria used to judge behavior– Distinctiveness: Is this how the person treats

everyone or are you different?– Consistency: Has the person always treated

you this way or is this different?– Consensus: Do other people do this same

thing or is this really different?

Attribution: Why did he do that?

• Bob walks past you without saying hi.– Distinctiveness: Your explanation as to why Bob

did this will be different if he does this to everyone in the hall or just you

– Consistency: Your explanation as to why Bob did this will be different if he always says hi to you or if you don’t really know each other.

– Consensus: Whether you’re in New York vs. a college of 600 will change how you explain Bob’s behavior.

Biases in Attribution: The errors to which your guesses will succumb• Actor-Observer Effect: attribute actions of others to

internal factors and the actions of yourself to external factors– Fundamental attribution error: the tendency to overemphasize

personal causes for others’ behavior and underemphasize personal causes for our own behavior

• Defensive attribution– Self-Serving Bias: Tendency to attribute our successes to our own

efforts and our failures to external factors– Just-world hypothesis: Assumption bad things happen to bad

people and good things happen to good people• Attribution across cultures varies dramatically

Effects of Attribution

How we explain someone’s behavior affects how we react to it.

Collectivistic vs. Individualistic