Social Psychology Chapter 15 Social Psychology The scientific

Social Psychology Chapter 15

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

Social Cognition How do we explain, interpret and judge behavior?

Impression Formation What do we think of others’ behavior? • Schema: a set of beliefs or expectations about something/someone based on past experiences • Ready-made category • Allows us to make inferences about others • Also plays a major role in how we interpret and remember information • E. g. if we witness a mother reprimanding her child at the supermarket, we might assume she is a bad or abusive mother because we saw something similar in a Lifetime movie, and we may even assign her other traits that go along with this assumption even if she doesn’t actually demonstrate those traits!

Impression Formation What do we think of others’ behavior? • Primacy effect: early information is a greater determinant of • Early information about someone makes a greater impact than later information in forming impressions • “Cognitive Misers” • Humans don’t like to spend too much time figuring people out • Go with the initial impression to save time

Impression Formation What do we think of others’ behavior? • Self-fulfilling prophecy • A person’s expectations about another elicits behavior from the other person that confirms the expectations • e. g. High school coach is told by middle school coach that a player coming up is “amazing. ” High school coach treats this player as though s/he is talented, and the player responds accordingly, confirming the initial belief. • Stereotypes • A set of characteristics believed to be shared by all members of a social category • Can become the basis for self-fulfilling prophecies • e. g. “Elderly people are cheap!” You are a waiter in a restaurant and make this assumption, so you don’t provide the greatest service. Then your tip is smaller and you believe it is because the old people are cheap!

Attribution: How do we explain behavior? • Theory that addresses the question of how people make judgments about the causes of behavior • e. g. “Why did I fail the test? ” • e. g. “Why did my best friend stop talking to me? ” • Heider (1958) says we first decide if the cause is personal (internal attribution) or situational (external attribution). • Personal/Internal: Behavior caused by that individual’s characteristics • Situational/External: Circumstances prompted the

Attribution: How do we explain behavior? • Three criteria used to judge behavior as personal or situational (Kelley, 1967): • Distinctiveness: How do the person’s responses vary from situation to situation? • Consistency: Has this behavior occurred before? • Consensus: Do other people behave this way? • If the behavior is low on consistency, we attribute the behavior to a passing situational factor right away. • e. g. I have never failed a psych test before! It was just a one-time, unusual occurrence due to the unique situation. I had an AP test that day so I couldn’t study for my psych test – that’s why I failed! • If the behavior is low on distinctiveness and consensus, but high in consistency, we would say the cause is internal or personal. • e. g. I often fail tests. Nobody else failed the psych test. It’s ME! • If the behavior is high on distinctiveness and consensus, but high on consistency, we say the cause is external or situational. • e. g. I never fail tests! Everyone else also failed this test. It’s the TEST!

Biases in Attribution • Fundamental Attribution Error • Tendency to overemphasize personal causes for others’ behavior and underemphasize personal causes for our own behavior • e. g. “She cut me off because she is a terrible driver!” • e. g. “I cut someone else off because I am late for work. ” • Defensive attribution and the Self-Serving Bias • Tendency to attribute our successes to our own efforts and our failures to external factors • e. g. “I failed the test because the teacher made it impossible and clearly she hates me!” OR “I got an A because I’m a genius!” • Just-World Hypothesis • Assumption bad things happen to bad people and good things happen to good people • e. g. “She got herpes because she is a strumpet!” • e. g. “She will win the election because she’s sooooo nice. ” • Attribution across cultures varies dramatically • E. g. Japanese vs. American students and explaining academic performance • Why do we have these biases?

Interpersonal Attraction: What determines whether we like someone? • Attraction is closely linked to… 1. Proximity/propinquity • We are attracted to people who are in the same space as we are • Has the internet changed this at all? 2. Physical attractiveness • We like physically attractive people! • Being with hot people makes us feel like we are hot, too! 3. Similarity • In attitudes, interests, values, and background • Opposites only attract for the short term… 4. Exchange: how do we reward each other? • We like people who appreciate us • Should be even 5. Intimacy: how much trust and closeness is there? • Self disclosure • Should be equal • Impact of physical attractiveness on attribution and on impression formation • Beauty and the Best article • People believe that physically attractive individuals are smarter, friendlier, and generally “better” based solely on their physical attributes!

Attitudes

Attitudes Is a person’s behavior a reflection of his/her attitudes? • Attitudes are relatively stable beliefs, feelings, and behaviors directed toward something/someone • Typically, feelings and beliefs about a person/thing correspond with behaviors toward that person/thing, but not always • Self-monitoring: tendency to observe a situation to determine how best to act. • High self-monitors look for social cues about how they are expected to behave in a given situation, overriding their attitudes, making it difficult to predict behavior based on attitudes. • Low self-monitors express and act on their attitudes consistently making prediction easier.

Attitude Development • Many factors contribute to the development of attitudes • • • Imitation Reward Teachers Peers Mass media

Prejudice and Discrimination • Prejudice • An intolerant, unfavorable, and rigid attitude toward a group of people; negative stereotypes. • Ultimate Attribution Error: tendency to use stereotyped beliefs about a group to make internal attributions about shortcomings and external attributions about successes. • Discrimination • An act or series of acts that denies opportunities and social esteem to an entire group of people or individual members of that group

Sources of Prejudice: Where does it come from? • Frustration-aggression theory • People who are frustrated in their goals may turn their anger away from the proper target toward another, less powerful target • Authoritarian personality • Personality pattern characterized by rigid conventionality, exaggerated respect for authority, and hostility toward those who defy social norms • Racism • Prejudice and discrimination directed at particular racial group based on the belief that certain groups are innately inferior • What Would You Do part 1 • What Would You Do part 2 • In-Group Bias: Belief that those with whom you identify are not only different, but BETTER than those outside the group.

Reducing Prejudice • Recategorization • Try to expand our schema for a particular group • What qualities are shared between groups • Controlled processing • Train ourselves to be more mindful of people who differ from us • Think about examples that fall outside the stereotypes • Improving contact between groups • • Group members must have equal status Need one-on-one contact with other group Relations are improved when groups come together to cooperate Social norms should encourage contact

Inducing Prejudice: Jane Elliott • Elementary education teacher Jane Elliot wanted to teach her class about discrimination after the assassination of Martin Luther King. • She designed an experiment to show easily children could be transformed into prejudiced monsters. • A Class Divided: video on Elliott’s work

Attitude Change What makes us change our mind? • Process of persuasion • Must pay attention to the message • Must comprehend the message • Comprehension leads to acceptance • Communication model • Source: credible spokesperson? • Message: present both sides! • Medium: written for complex messages; video for more simple; face to face is best! • Audience: how committed is audience to their point of view? • People with low self esteem easier to change • Intelligent people more resistant to change

Attitude Change • Cognitive Dissonance (Leon Festinger) • Perceived inconsistency between two cognitions • e. g. “I am an honest person” and “I cheated on the test” • Dissonance can be reduced through attitude change • e. g. “I am not that honest” • An alternative is to increase the number thoughts that support one or the other dissonant cognitions • e. g. “I have never stolen, never gotten arrested, never cheated on a FINAL, ” etc.

Social Influence

Cultural Influence • Culture greatly influences attitudes and behaviors • Cultural truism • Beliefs that most members of a society accept as selfevidently true • People in the culture do not question these • e. g. “Eating dog is unacceptable. ” • Truisms are the backbone of norms, shared expectations about how to behave in a given culture.

Cultural Assimilators • Not all cultures are the same, and not all cultures have the same norms. • People in a given culture may feel their way is the “right” way, and other cultures are “backwards. ” • This is the basis of ethnocentrism, or the belief that one’s own culture superior. • Examining cultural assimilators helps to reduce these assumptions. • Cultural assimilators are the explanations for why members of a culture have a particular behavior. • Understanding cultural assimilators helps people to maintain an open mind about other cultures’ norms and values.

Conformity • Voluntarily yielding to social norms, even at the expense of one’s own preferences • Asch Experiment • Conformity across cultures • Tends to be higher in collectivist cultures

Compliance • Change in behavior in response to an explicit request from another person or group • Work of Robert Cialdini and the methods of gaining compliance • Foot-in-the-door effect: Get them to say yes to a small request first • Lowball procedure: Get compliance then raise price of compliance • Door-in-the-face effect: Get them to decline large request then ask something smaller

Obedience • Change in behavior in response to a command from another person, typically an authority figure • Milgram’s studies on obedience show willingness to follow commands • Milgram Revisited

Social Action

Social Action • Deindividuation • • Loss of personal sense of responsibility in a group People more likely to engage in risky behavior when anonymous Helps to explain mob behavior Mob Behavior also facilitated by the snowball effect, when one vocal person convinces a few people, who convince a few more, etc. • Helping Behavior • Altruistic behavior • Helping behavior that is not linked to personal gain • Bystander effect • Helpfulness decreases as bystanders increase • Kitty Genovese Case and the bystander effect • Mood can affect willingness to help • Cultures differ in amount of help offered in response to requests for minor help (collective cultures more willing)

Group Decision Making • Risky Shift • Increased willingness to take risks when making decisions as a group as opposed to making decisions as individuals. • Polarization in group decision making • Shift toward more extreme position following group discussion • The effectiveness of groups • The more people in the group… • The more stable the group is • The less cohesive/efficient the group may become • Social loafing • Tendency to expend less effort when part of a large group • Groupthink • Pressure to conform to group

Leadership • Great person theory • Personal qualities qualify one to lead • Right place-right time theory • Circumstances are optimal for individual with particular characteristics • Fielder’s Contingency Theory • Depends on the traits of the leader, the circumstances, and the interaction of the group itself. • Task-Oriented vs. Relationship Oriented Leaders • In extreme circumstances – very good or very bad – best to be task oriented. • In moderate circumstances, best to be relationship oriented.