Social Psychology

Thoughts about Social Psychology

• “If you make it plain you like people, it’s hard for them to resist liking you back.”– Lois McMaster Bujold

• “I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally.”– W.C. Fields

• “Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.”– Robert Louis Stevenson

Social Psychology

• Social Psychologists study social behavior. They are interested in the ways people influence and are influenced by each other.

• Social psychology is a diverse field incorporating the study of attitudes and perceptions, persuasion, and typical behaviors of relatively normal people in their relationships with others.

Social Cognition

How we attend to, store, remember, and use information about other people and the social world

Social Perception and Cognition

• Social perception and cognition are mental processes that help us to collect and remember information about others, and to make inferences and judgments based on that information.

Making an Impression

• Impression formation– The process by which people develop impressions of

others

• Impression management– Refers to our efforts to control the type of impression

created.

• Halo effect– The effect of labels

• Primacy effect– People tend to give earlier information more weight than

later information.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

• Expectations can create outcomes• Teachers expect students to do well or not

– Treat students differently– Students perform as expected

• Men believe they are speaking to attractive or unattractive women– Treat women differently– Judges’ ratings of women match men’s

expectations

Attitudes and Behavior

• An attitude is an overall evaluation about some aspect of the world: people, issues, or objects.

• This evaluation has three components:– Affective (feelings) or one’s feelings about the object

or topic.

– Behavioral or one’s predisposition to act in a particular way toward the object or topic.

– Cognitive (thoughts) refers to what you believe or know about the object or topic

Attitudes and Behavior

• Attitude

• Predicting behavior

• Behavior affects attitudes

• Implicit attitudes– Implicit Association Test (IAT)

Cognitive Dissonance

• Attitudes and behavior don’t always go hand in hand. But, when they are inconsistent, an uncomfortable state called cognitive dissonance, which is accompanied by heightened arousal, arises.

Cognitive Dissonance

Boring task

“Did you enjoy the task?”

$1

$20 “No”

“Yes”

Receive

Cognitive Dissonance

• Dissonance theory– Reducing mismatch between behaviors and

feelings

• Self-perception theory– Make inferences from our behaviors

• Cognitive dissonance in the real world– Rationalizing illegal behavior– AIDS prevention

Persuasion

• Elaboration likelihood model– Central Route

• Expertise of the source, the number of arguments, or how other people respond to the messag

– Peripheral Route• involves considering the attractiveness andexpertise of the source,

the number of arguments, or how other people• respond to the message.

• Obstacles to persuasion– Strong attitude– Reactance– Forewarning– Selective avoidance

Effective Persuasion

• Generally the following situations are more persuasive:– Fast speakers (vs. slow speakers).– The attempt at persuasion arouses strong emotions,

especially if it includes specific advice for a positive outcome.

– The messenger is perceived as honest.– The recipient has low self-esteem.– When the message does not appear to be trying to persuade.– When both sides are presented– Exposure effect

Social Cognition and the Brain

• Social cognitive neuroscience– Brain damage– Neuroimaging studies

Social Perception and Cognition

• Stereotypes and Prejudices– A stereotype is a generalized belief or expectation

about group of people.• We tend to remember unusual qualities or characteristics

more readily than ordinary ones, so we form false stereotypes easily.

• Some stereotypes are based on exaggerations of essentially correct observations.

• This is not a justification for basing our behavior towards other people according to rigid stereotypes.

Stereotypes

• Ingroup

• Outgroup

• Illusory correlation

• Illusion of outgroup homogeneity– Ingroup differentiation

• Discrimination

Social Perception and Cognition

• Stereotypes and Prejudices– Prejudice is an unfavorable attitude toward a

group of people.• Aversive racism refers to the behavior of

unintentionally discriminating against some groups while expressing the belief that all people are equal.

• People tend to acknowledge that prejudice is a serious problem in the world, but deny that they themselves are prejudiced.

Understanding Prejudice

• Realistic conflict theory– Competition for scarce resources

• Social categorization theory

• Self-fulfilling prophecy

• Social learning theory

Social Perception and Cognition

• Overcoming Prejudice• Just getting people from different groups to talk

does not appear to be enough to solve this problem…

• Getting people from two different groups to work towards a common goal appears to be a more effective strategy.

• Evidence for this was provided by the Robber’s Cave experiment.

• But the children in the experiment were from arbitrarily formed competitive groups, not two different racial or ethnic groups.

Combating Prejudice

• Contact hypothesis

• Recategorization

• “Jigsaw classroom”

Attribution

An explanation for the cause of an event or behavior

Attributions: Causes

• Internal attributions– Dispositional attributions

• External attributions– Situational attributions

• Theory of causal attribution– Consensus– Consistency– Distinctiveness

Attributional Biases

• Fundamental attribution error

• Self-serving bias

• Belief in a just world– Blaming the victim

Relationships: Liking

• Repeated contact

• Similarity

• Physical attraction– “Average” faces– Symmetry– Feminized faces

Relationships: Loving

• Passionate love

• Compassionate love

• Sternberg’s triangular model of love– Passion– Intimacy– Commitment

• Attachment style

Relationships: Mating Preferences

• Evolutionary theory

• Social exchange theory

Social Organizations

• Deindividuation

• Norms– Perceived norms

• Roles

• Status hierarchy

Yielding to Others

• Conformity

• A change in beliefs or behavior because of pressure from others– Informational social influence– Normative social influence

Conformity: Asch’s Studies

1 2 3Find the matching line

Compliance

• A change in behavior brought about through a direct request rather thanby social norms.

• Six principles– Friendship/liking

– Commitment/consistency

– Scarcity

– Reciprocity

– Social validation

– Authority

Complience

• These principles are consistent with some of the techniques most often used to win compliance:– 1) The foot-in-the-door technique involves making an

insignificantrequest and then following up with a larger request if the person complies with the first. This technique appears to work because people want to seem consistent. If they agree to the first request, they are being nice people; declining the second request would call these selfperceptions into account.

– 2) The lowball technique consists of first getting someone to make an agreement and then increasing the cost of the agreement.

– The door-in-the-face technique involves making a very large request first. When denied, the requester can make a smaller request, for what one actually wanted in the first place.

• People sometimes go to surprising lengths to comply with a request, including making up details to support false admissions of guilt.

The Milgram Studies

Teacher and Learner

The Milgram Studies

Increasing Shocks for Errors

The Milgram Studies

• 15 volts to 450 volts (“XXX”)

• At 120 volts nearner shouts in pain

• At 150 volts learner asks to stop

• At 300 volts learner pounds on wall

• At 330 volts learner stops responding

• Question: how far will teachers go?

The Milgram Studies

• Psychiatrists predicted – 2% would go to maximum level

• Actual results– 65% of teachers went to the maximum level

• Other factors– Lab coat– Proximity

• Ethical issues

Decision Making in Groups

• Majority-win rule

• Truth-win rule

• Group polarization

• Groupthink

Performance in Groups

• Social loafing

• Social compensation

• Social facilitation

Helping Others

• Altruism

• Prosocial behavior

• Bystander intervention– Bystander effect– Evaluation apprehension– Diffusion of responsibility