Social Psychology Pp 15 26 6 th edition

Social Psychology (Pp 15 – 26) 6 th edition Elliot Aronson University of California, Santa Cruz Timothy D. Wilson University of Virginia Robin M. Akert Wellesley College slides by Travis Langley

THE POWER OF SOCIAL INFLUENCE When trying to convince people that their behavior is greatly influenced by the social environment, the social psychologist is up against a formidable barrier: All of us tend to explain people’s behavior in terms of their personalities. Fundamental Attribution Error The tendency to explain our own and other people’s behavior entirely in terms of personality traits, thereby underestimating the power of social influence.

Underestimating the Power of Social Influence • When we underestimate the power of social influence, we gain a feeling of false security. • Doing so gives the rest of us the feeling that we could never engage in the repugnant behavior shown by others. • Ironically, this in turn increases our personal vulnerability to possibly destructive social influence by lulling us into lowering our guard. • By failing to fully appreciate the power of the situation, we tend to: – Oversimplify complex situations which, – Decreases our understanding of the true causes.

Underestimating the Power of Social Influence • Aspects of the social situation that may seem minor can have powerful effects, overwhelming the differences in people’s personalities. • Personality differences do exist and frequently are of great importance. • But social and environmental situations can be so powerful that they have dramatic effects on almost everyone.

Underestimating the Power of Social Influence Lee Ross and colleagues had university resident assistants identify which students would play games more cooperatively and which would play more competitively. All student volunteers then played the same game. • Half were told that it was the Wall Street Game. • Half were told that it was the Community Game. Players’ behavior changed depending on something as seemingly trivial as the game’s name. • When it was called the Wall Street Game, two thirds played competitively. • When it was called the Community Game, only one third played competitively.

The name of the game sent a powerful message about how the players should behave.

The Subjectivity of the Social Situation • Human beings are sense making creatures, constantly interpreting things. • How humans will behave in a given situations is not determined by the objective conditions of a situation but, rather how they perceive it (construal). Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

The Subjectivity of the Social Situation What exactly do we mean by the social situation? One strategy for defining it would be to specify the objective properties of the situation and then document the behaviors that follow from these objective properties. Behaviorism A school of psychology maintaining that to understand human behavior, one need only consider the reinforcing properties of the environment—that is, how positive and negative events in the environment are associated with specific behaviors.

The Subjectivity of the Social Situation • Behaviorists chose not to deal with cognition, thinking, and feeling because they considered these concepts too vague and mentalistic and not sufficiently anchored to observable behavior. • But behaviorism therefore has proved inadequate for a complete understanding of the social world. • We need to look at the situation from the viewpoint of the people in it, to see how they construe the world around them.

The Subjectivity of the Social Situation This emphasis on construal, the way people interpret the social situation, has its roots in an approach called Gestalt psychology. Gestalt Psychology A school of psychology stressing the importance of studying the subjective way in which an object appears in people’s minds (the gestalt or “whole”) rather than the objective, physical attributes of the object. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

Gestalt Psychology • The Gestalt approach was formulated in Germany in the first part of the twentieth century by Kurt Koffka, Wolfgang Kohler, Max Wertheimer, and colleagues. • In the late 1930 s, several of these psychologists emigrated to the United States to escape the Nazi regime. “If I were required to name the one person who has had the greatest impact on the field, it would have to be Adolph Hitler. ” (Cartwright, 1979, p. 84) Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

Gestalt Psychology Among the émigrés was Kurt Lewin, generally considered the founding father of modern experimental social psychology. Lewin took the bold step of applying Gestalt principles beyond the perception of objects to social perception. Lewin was the first scientist to stress the importance of taking the perspective of the people in any social situation to see how they construe this social environment. Lewin illustration copyright (2007) Nick Langley. Used with permission.

WHERE CONSTRUALS COME FROM: BASIC HUMAN MOTIVES • If it is true that subjective and not objective situations influence people, then we need to understand how people arrive at their subjective impressions of the world. • What are people trying to accomplish when they interpret the social world?

Where Construals Come From • We human beings are complex organisms; at a given moment, various intersecting motives underlie our thoughts and behaviors. • Over the years, social psychologists have found that two of these motives are of primary importance: – The need to feel good about ourselves, – The need to be accurate.

The Self-Esteem Approach: The Need to Feel Good about Ourselves • Most people have a strong need to maintain reasonably high self-esteem, to see themselves as good, competent, and decent. • Given the choice between distorting the world in order to feel good about themselves and representing the world accurately, people often take the first option. Self-Esteem People’s evaluations of their own self-worth; the extent to which they view themselves as good, competent, and decent. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

Justifying Past Behavior • Acknowledging major deficiencies in ourselves is very difficult, even when the cost is seeing the world inaccurately. • Although extreme distortion of reality is rare outside of mental institutions, normal people can put a slightly different spin on the existing facts, one that puts us in the best possible light.

Suffering and Self. Justification • Why would hazing cause someone to like his fraternity? • Didn’t behavioristic psychology teach us that rewards, not punishments, make us like things associated with them? • But social psychologists have discovered that this formulation is far too simple to account for human thinking and motivation. • Unlike rats and pigeons, human beings have a need to justify their past behavior, and this need leads them to thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that don’t always fit into the neat categories of the behaviorist. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

Suffering and Self. Justification Experiments demonstrated that the more unpleasant the procedure the participants underwent to get into a group, the better they liked the group. The important points to remember here are: (1) That human beings are motivated to maintain a positive picture of themselves, in part by justifying their past behavior, and (2) That under certain specifiable conditions, this leads them to do things that at first glance might seem surprising or paradoxical. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

The Social Cognition Approach: The Need to Be Accurate The Social Cognition perspective is an approach to social psychology that takes into account the way in which human beings think about the world. Individuals are viewed as trying to gain accurate understandings so that they can make effective judgments and decisions that range from which cereal to eat to whom they will marry. In actuality, individuals typically act on the basis of incomplete and inaccurately interpreted information.

SOCIAL COGNITION The social cognition perspective views people as amateur sleuths doing their best to understand predict their social world. Social Cognition How people think about themselves and the social world; more specifically, how people select, interpret, remember, and use social information to make judgments and decisions. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

EXPECTATIONS ABOUT THE SOCIAL WORLD • Our expectations can even change the nature of the social world. • Rosenthal & Jacobson (1968) found that a teacher who expects certain students to do well may cause those students to do better creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

EXPECTATIONS ABOUT THE SOCIAL WORLD How does such a self-fulfilling prophecy come about? Teachers expecting specific students to perform well often: • Provide more attention to them, • Listen to them with more respect, • Call on them more frequently, • Encourage them more • Try to teach them more challenging material. This, in turn, helps these students feel: • Happier, • More respected, • More motivated, • and smarter. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

Additional Motives Though self-esteem and social cognition are the most important of our social motives, a variety of motives also influence what we think, feel, and do: • • Biological drives (e. g. , hunger & thirst), Fear, Desire for rewards (e. g. , love, favors), Need for control.

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS Why study social influence? 1. We are curious. 2. To contribute to the solution of social problems. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS Social psychologists have always been interested in social challenges: • Reducing hostility and prejudice, • Increasing altruism and generosity. Contemporary social psychologists have broadened the issues of concern: • Conservation, • Safe sex education, • TV violence, • Negotiation strategies, • Life adjustments (college, death of loved one).

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS Social psychologists realized that in AIDS education, arousing fear would not help with most people. Most people do not want to think about dying or contracting horrible illness when ready to have sex. Given these considerations, when people have been exposed to frightening messages, instead of engaging in rational problem-solving behavior, most tend to reduce that fear by engaging in denial: “It can’t happen to me, ” “Surely none of my friends have AIDS, ” etc. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS The denial stems not from the desire to be accurate but from the need to maintain one’s self-esteem. If people can convince themselves that their sexual partners do not have AIDS, they can continue to enjoy unprotected sex while maintaining a reasonably good picture of themselves as rational beings. By understanding how this process works, social psychologists have been able to contribute important insights to AIDS education and prevention. Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

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