Social Psychology
Chapter 16
Social Psychology
• Social Psychology – the scientific study of
how a person’s thoughts, feelings, and
behavior are influenced by the real,
imagined, or implied presence of others.
Social Thinking
 Attribution Theory- tendency to give a causal
explanation for someone’s behavior, often by
crediting either the situation or the person’s
disposition
– Situational cause- cause of behavior attributed to external
factors, such as delays, the action of others, or some other
aspect of the situation.
– Dispositional cause - cause of behavior attributed to internal
factors such as personality or character.
• Name to know: Fritz Heider
– 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).
Social Thinking
• Fundamental Attribution Errortendency for observers, when
analyzing another’s behavior, to
underestimate the impact of the
situation and to overestimate the
impact of personal disposition
– We see Joe as quiet, shy, and
introverted most of the time, but
with friends he is very talkative,
loud, and extroverted.
• Self Serving Bias - if our behavior
is irritating to others, it’s the
situation not our personal
disposition
Effects of Attribution
• How we explain someone’s behavior
affects how we react to it.
Attribution
• Self Handicapping - a person offers a
preliminary “excuse” that they can fall back
on if they fail
• Just World - helps explain the misfortunes of
others by being a result of some behavior of
theirs; we are careful to avoid these
behaviors
• Illusion of Control – people overestimate
their ability to control events
Attitude
• Attitude - a tendency to
respond positively or negatively
toward a certain person, object,
idea, or situation.
– affective (emotional) component
– the behavioral component
– the cognitive component
– If we believe a person is mean,
we may feel dislike for the
person and act in an
unfriendly manner.
Formation of Attitudes
• Direct contact with the person, situation,
object, or idea.
• Direct instruction from parents or others.
• Interacting with other people who hold a
certain attitude.
• Watching the actions and reactions of
others to ideas, people, objects, and
situations.
Attitude
•Central Route Persuasion: when
interested people focus on the
arguments and respond with
favorable thoughts.
–Occurs most for naturally
analytical people or those involved
in the issue.
•Peripheral Route Persuasion:
Occurs when issues do not engage
systematic thinking, but rather
when people are influenced by
incidental cues, such as celebrity
endorsements; attractiveness
–More snap judgments such as the
well dressed, popular celebrity
promoting a political candidate.
Actions Can Affect Attitudes
• Not only do people stand
for what they believe in
(attitude), they start
believing in what they
stand for.
– Attitudes follow behavior
– Cooperative actions feed
mutual liking
• Sports teams
Actions Can Affect Attitudes
 Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon- tendency for people
who have first agreed to a small request to comply later
with a larger request
 Door-in-the-face technique – asking for a large
commitment and being refused, and then asking for a
smaller commitment- “settling”
 Norm of reciprocity - assumption that if someone does
something for a person, that person should do
something for the other in return.
 Role- set of expectations about a social position
 defines how those in the position ought to behave
Stanford Prison Experiment
• In what has become known as
the Stanford Prison
experiment, Zimbardo (1972)
assigned the roles of guards
and prisoners to random
students and found that
guards and prisoners
developed role- appropriate
attitudes
– Stanford Prison Experiment
• Abu Ghraib Prison- discussion p.678
Cognitive Dissonance Theory
 Cognitive Dissonance Theory- we act
to reduce the discomfort (dissonance) we
feel when two of our thoughts (cognitions)
are inconsistent (Leon Festinger)
 example- when we become aware that our
attitudes and our actions clash, we can
reduce the resulting dissonance by changing
our attitudes
You don’t like the teacher so in
You have a belief that
cheating on tests is bad.
But you cheat on a test!!!
that class it is OK.
Social Influence
• Social influence - the process through which the real
or implied presence of others can directly or
indirectly influence the thoughts, feelings, and
behavior of an individual.
– Conformity- changing one’s behavior to match
that of other people
– Obedience - changing one’s behavior as a result
of other people directing or asking for the
change.
• Compliance – a person changes behavior upon request
but there is a level of agreement
Social Influence
• The Chameleon Effect - Humans are natural
mimics. Unconsciously mimicking others’
expressions, postures, and voice tones helps us
feel what they are feeling.
– Mood Linkage- sharing up and down moods
• Solomon Asch- Group Conformity
– Suggestibility is a subtle type of conformity,
adjusting our behavior or thinking toward some
group standard.
• About 1/3 of the participants conformed.
• 70% conformed at least once
• Asch Study
Reasons for Conforming
• 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.
• Informational Social Influence- The
group may provide valuable information,
but stubborn people will never listen to
others.
Stanley Milgram’s Study of Obedience
• People comply to social pressures
and the situation. How would they
respond to outright command?
• Milgram designed a study that
investigates the effects of
authority on obedience.
– Effect of punishment on learning;
word pairs
– “teacher” administered what they
thought were real shocks to a
“learner”
– Voltage goes up for every wrong
answer
Stanley Milgram’s Study of Obedience
• Ordinary people can do
shocking things.
– 63% complied
• Ethical issues….
• Would not have
received approval from
today’s IRB (Internal
Review Board)
• A third of the
individuals in Milgram’s
study resisted social
coercion.
Group Influence
• Social facilitation - the tendency for the presence of
other people to have a positive impact on the
performance of an easy task.
– What you do well, you are likely to do better with an
audience; what you find difficult may seem impossible
with an audience
– Social Inhibition – presence will hinder performance on
difficult tasks
• Social loafing - the tendency for people to put less
effort into a simple task when working with others on
that task.
– Individual is not held fully accountable
Group Influence
• De-individuation – a lack of
individual responsibility that
comes from being in a crowd
– Feel anonymous and aroused;
Explains rioting behaviors.
• Group polarization – the
strengthening of shared beliefs.
– People who discuss shared views
will come to believe in them more
strongly – this can be positive or
negative
– Internet
Group Influence
• Group think - kind of thinking that occurs
when people place more importance on
maintaining group cohesiveness than on
assessing the facts of the problem with
which the group is concerned.
– Abu Ghraib Prison- discussion p.678
– Why did the guards take those actions?
– Conditions that strengthen conformity
Social Relations
• Prejudice - negative attitude held by a person
about the members of a particular social group.
– Prejudice is often directed towards different cultural,
ethnic, or gender groups.
– Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes Study- 3rd graders in a Iowa
classroom in the 1960’s
Components of Prejudice
1.
2.
3.
Beliefs (stereotypes)- overgeneralized
Emotions (hostility, envy, fear)
Predisposition to act – negative behavior (to
discriminate)
Social Roots of Prejudice
1. Social Inequalities
2. Social Divisions
3. Emotional Scapegoating
Social Roots of Prejudice
• In-groups - social groups with whom a person
identifies; same; “us or we”
– In-group Bias: The tendency to favor one’s own group
• Out-groups - social groups with whom a person does
not identify; different; “them or they”
– Out-group homogeneity Bias - people are judged as more
similar because of a lack of knowledge
• Ethnocentrism- tendency to think that your nation or
culture is superior to others
• Realistic conflict theory - conflict between groups
increases prejudice and discrimination.
Emotional Roots of Prejudice
• Scapegoating - tendency
to direct prejudice and
discrimination at outgroup members who
have little social power
or influence.
– Finding someone to
blame
Cognitive Roots of Prejudice
• We categorize people into groups by
stereotyping them
– Blue eyes/ Brown Eyes Study- Jane Elliot
• Other-race effect - which emerges during
infancy, is the tendency to recall faces of
one’s own race more accurately than faces
of other races.
Cognitive Roots of Prejudice
• Implicit personality theory - sets of
assumptions about how different types of
people, personality traits, and actions are
related to each other.
• Schemas - mental patterns that represent
what a person believes about certain
types of people. Schemas can become
stereotypes.
Stopping Prejudice
• Social cognitive theory – views prejudice as an
attitude acquired through direct instruction,
modeling, and other social influences.
• Social identity theory – theory in which the
formation of a person’s identity within a
particular social group is explained by social
categorization, social identity, and social
comparison.
– Social identity - the part of the self-concept including
one’s view of self as a member of a particular social
category.
– Social comparison – the comparison of oneself to
others in ways that raise one’s self-esteem.
Stopping Prejudice
• Stereotype vulnerability - the effect that
people’s awareness of the stereotypes
associated with their social group has on
their behavior.
• Contact Theory- Contact between hostile
groups will reduce animosity if they are
made to work towards a superordinate
goal.
Aggression
• Aggression – physical or verbal
behavior intended to hurt or destroy
another person.
• Biological influences on aggression
may include genetics, the amygdala
and limbic system, and testosterone
and serotonin levels.
• Alcohol releases aggressive
responses to frustration
Four psychological factors that
influence aggressive behavior are:
1. Dealing with aversive events
– Studies in which animals and humans experience
unpleasant events reveal that those made miserable
often make others miserable.
– Frustration- Aggression Principle- the blocking of an
attempt to achieve a desired goal creates anger,
which can generate aggression.
Four psychological factors that
influence aggressive behavior are:
2. Learning aggression is rewarding
– When aggression leads to desired outcomes,
one learns to be aggressive. This is shown in
both animals and humans.
3. Observing models of aggression
– Albert Bandura Study- Modeling
– Sexually coercive men are promiscuous and
hostile in their relationships with women. This
coerciveness has increased due to television
viewing of R- and X-rated movies.
Four psychological factors that
influence aggressive behavior are:
4. Acquiring social scripts.
• Social role - the pattern of behavior that is expected of a
person who is in a particular social position.
– Violent TV, movies, and videos are related to aggression.
Summary
Attraction
• Interpersonal attraction - liking or
having the desire for a relationship
with another person
• 4 Factors of Attraction:
1. Proximity: Geographic nearness is a
powerful predictor of friendship.
–
Mere Exposure Effect- Repeated exposure
to novel stimuli increases their attraction
4 Factors of Attraction
2. Physical Attractiveness: Once
proximity affords contact, the
next most important thing in
attraction is physical appearance
3. Similarity: Similar views among
individuals causes the bond of
attraction to strengthen
4. Reciprocal Liking - tendency of
people to like other people who
like them in return.
Love
• Love - a strong affection for
another person due to
kinship, personal ties, sexual
attraction, admiration, or
common interests.
– Robert Sternberg states that
the three components of love
are intimacy, passion, and
commitment.
– Passionate Love- aroused state
of intense positive absorption
in another
• Beginning of a relationshipphysical arousal and cognitive
appraisal
Forms of Love
• Romantic love - type of love
consisting of intimacy and
passion.
• Companionate love - type
of love consisting of
intimacy and commitment.
– Deep and affectionate
attachment
• Empty love - has
commitment
• Infatuation – has passion
Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love
Other conditions of love
• Equity – people receive from a relationship
in proportion to what they give to it
• Self-disclosure - revealing intimate aspects
of oneself to others
Altruism
• Prosocial behavior - socially desirable
behavior that benefits others.
• Altruism - prosocial behavior that is done
with no expectation of reward and may
involve the risk of harm to oneself.
– Unselfish regard for the welfare of others
Bystander Effect
• Kitty Genovese death
• Bystander effect referring to the effect that
the presence of other
people has on the
decision to help or not
help, with help becoming
less likely as the number
of bystanders increases.
Bystander Effect
• Diffusion of responsibility - occurring when a
person fails to take responsibility for actions or for
inaction because of the presence of other people
who are seen to share the responsibility.
• Someone else will do it!
• Pluralistic Ignorance – after a period of time
without intervention, people believe nothing
needs to be done
– Researchers Latané and Darley found that people
who were alone were more likely to help in an
emergency than people who were with others.
• One bystander cannot diffuse responsibility.
5 Steps in making a decision to help
Norms of Helping
• Social Exchange Theory – if the
rewards you anticipate from helping
exceed the costs, you will help
• Reciprocity Norm – we should return
help, not harm, to those who have
helped us
• Social-Responsibility Norm – we
should help those who need help,
even if the costs outweigh the
benefits
Conflict
•Conflict - is perceived as an
incompatibility of actions, goals, or
ideas.
– People become deeply involved in
potentially destructive social processes
that have undesirable effects.
–Social Traps - conflicting parties are
caught in mutually destructive
behavior
•Tragedy of the Commons- multiple
individuals, acting independently, will
ultimately deplete a limited resource,
leading to the detriment of all
Conflict
• Mirror-Image Perceptions - People in conflict
form diabolical images of one another.
Saddam Hussein
“Wicked Pharaoh”
George Bush
“Evil”
Cooperation
•Superordinate Goals are shared goals that
override differences among people and require
their cooperation.
Syracuse Newspapers/ The Image Works
•Communication and understanding developed
through talking to one another. Sometimes it is
mediated by a third party.
GRIT
• Graduated & Reciprocated Initiatives in
Tension-Reduction (GRIT): This is a strategy
designed to decrease international
tensions. One side recognizes mutual
interests and initiates a small conciliatory
act that opens the door for reciprocation
by the other party.