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Focuses in Social Psychology

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Social psychology scientifically studies how we think about, influence, and relate

to one another.

“We cannot live for ourselves alone.”Herman Melville

indradestianaputra.blogspot.com

xtracash.net.au

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Food Court Musical

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Social Psychology

Social ThinkingAttribution of Behavior to Persons or Situations

Attitudes and Action5

Social Thinking

Social thinking involves thinking about others, especially when they engage in

doing things that are unexpected.

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1. Does your failure on a test signify lack of understanding, illness, laziness, or a stressful home atmosphere?

2. Was the horror of 9/11 the work of crazed evil people or ordinary people corrupted by life events?

teachers.net

Attributing Behavior to Persons or to Situations

Attribution Theory: Fritz Heider (1958) suggested that we have a tendency to

give causal explanations for

someone’s behavior, often by crediting

either the situation or the person’s disposition.

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Fritz Heider

Attributing Behavior to Persons or to Situations

A teacher may wonder whether a child’s hostility reflects an

aggressive personality (dispositional attribution) or is a reaction to stress or abuse (a

situational attribution).

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http://www.bootsnall.orgDispositions are enduring

personality traits. So, if Joe is a quiet, shy, and introverted child,

he is likely to be like that in a number of situations.

Fundamental Attribution Error

The tendency to overestimate the impact of personal disposition and underestimate the impact of the situations in analyzing

the behaviors of others leads to the fundamental attribution error.

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We see Joe as quiet, shy, and introverted most of the time, but with friends he is very talkative, loud, and extroverted.

qwickstep.com

Fundamental Attribution Error

Attributing others' behavior to their dispositions is a relatively effortless, almost automatic process.

Explaining people's behavior in terms of situational factors requires more thought and effort.

Are people poor because they are uneducated and lazy ?

Are people poor because they are born into poverty and may have faced discrimination?

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Effects of AttributionHow we explain someone’s behavior

affects how we react to it.

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Fundamental Attribution Error

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AttitudeA belief and feeling that predisposes a

person to respond in a particular way to objects, other people, and events.

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If we believe a person is mean,

we may feel dislike for the person and act in an unfriendly

manner.

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Attitudes Can Affect Action

Our attitudes predict our behaviors imperfectly because other factors,

including the external situation, also influence behavior.

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Democratic leaders supported Bush’s attack on Iraq under public pressure.

However, they had their private reservations.

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Attitudes Can Affect Action

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Attitudes Can Affect Action

Not only do people stand for what they believe in (attitude), they start believing in

what they stand for.

16Cooperative actions can lead to mutual liking (beliefs).

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Attitudes Can Affect Action

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Small Request – Large Request

For example, someone might want you to give to give 5 hours of your time a week for the three

months as a volunteer to a charity (a big request). But to get you to agree to this big request,

they first ask you to volunteer for 1 hour one time and one time only. After hearing this small

request, which you are willing to agree to, they then work their

way up asking you to volunteer time until you are willing to

agree to the big request.18

Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon: The tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply

later with a larger request.

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http://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition.cfm?term=Foot-In-The-Door%20Phenomenon

Role Playing Affects Attitudes

Zimbardo (1972) assigned the roles of guards and prisoners to random students and found that guards and prisoners developed role- appropriate attitudes.

Abu Ghraib - U.S. military in Iraq – sadistic guards or exhausted, fearful individuals placed under

horrendous working conditions

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Abu Ghraib

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Actions Can Affect Attitudes

Why do actions affect attitudes? One explanation is that when our attitudes and actions are opposed, we experience tension. This is called cognitive

dissonance.

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To relieve ourselves of this tension we bring our

attitudes closer to our actions (Festinger,

1957).

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http://svnlsenetter.files.wordpress.com/2007/07/cognitive-dissonance1.jpg

Cognitive Dissonance

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Social Psychology

Social influenceConformity and Obedience

Group Influence

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Social Influence

The greatest contribution of social psychology is its study of attitudes, beliefs,

decisions, and actions and the way they are molded by social influence.

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Conformity and Obedience

Conformity occurs when people yield to real or imagined social pressure

Obedience is a form of compliance that occurs when people follow direct commands, usually from someone in a position of authority

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Conformity & Obedience

Behavior is contagious, modeled by one followed by another. We follow behavior

of others to conform.

Other behaviors may be an expression of compliance (obedience) toward authority.

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Conformity Obedience

The Chameleon Effect

Conformity: Adjusting

one’s behavior or thinking to

coincide with a group standard

(Chartrand & Bargh, 1999).

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Group Pressure & Conformity

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Suggestibility is a subtle type of

conformity, adjusting our behavior or

thinking toward some group standard.

William Vandivert/ Scientific American

Asch Experiment

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Conditions that Strengthen Conformity

1. One is made to feel incompetent or insecure.

2. The group has at least three people.

3. The group is unanimous.

4. One admires the group’s status and attractiveness.

5. One has no prior commitment or response.

6. The group observes one’s behavior.

7. One’s culture strongly encourages respect for a social standard.

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Conformity

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Reasons for Conformity

Normative Social Influence: Influence

resulting from a person’s desire to gain approval or avoid rejection. A

person may respect normative behavior because

there may be a severe price to

pay if not respected.

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Informative Social

Influence: The group

may provide valuable

information, but stubborn people will never listen to others.

http://cdn.sheknows.com/articles/stubborn-boy.jpg

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Conformity

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Obedience

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People comply to social pressures. How would they respond to

outright command?

Stanley Milgram designed a study that

investigates the effects of authority on

obedience.Stanley Milgram

(1933-1984)

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Milgram’s Experiment

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Milgram’s Study

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Milgram’s Study: Results

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Milgram’s Study: Results Compliance is strongest when:

The person giving the orders is close at hand and perceived to be a legitimate authority

The authority figure was supported by a prestigious institution

The victim was depersonalized/ at a distance/ in another room

There were no role models for defiance. 41

jewishvirtuallibrary.org

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Individual Resistance

A third of the individuals in Milgram’s study resisted social coercion.

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An unarmed individual single-handedlychallenged a line of tanks at Tiananmen

Square.

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Lessons from the Conformity and Obedience Studies

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In both Ash's and Milgram's studies, participants were pressured to follow their standards and be responsive to

others.

In Milgram’s study, participants were torn between hearing the victims pleas

and the experimenter’s orders.

Group Influence

How do groups affect our behavior? Social psychologists study various groups:

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1. One person affecting another

2. Families3. Teams4. Committees

Individual Behavior in the Presence of Others

Social facilitation: Refers to improved

performance on tasks in the presence of

others. Triplett (1898) noticed cyclists’ race

times were faster when they competed against others than

when they just raced against the clock.

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Social Facilitation

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Hazing: Sport or school epidemic?

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Social LoafingThe tendency of an individual in a group to

exert less effort toward attaining a common goal than when tested

individually (Latané, 1981).

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DeindividuationThe loss of self-awareness and self-

restraint in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity.

This in turn reduces an individual's self-restraint and normative regulation of

behavior.

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Deindividuation

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