Unit 10: Social Psychology
The scientific study of how we think about,
influence and relate to one another.
Do people behave the way they do because
of personal disposition or the situation?
Days 2 and 3: Group Behavior, Prejudice, Altruism and Attraction
Group / Organizational Behavior
How Groups Influence Individuals Behavior
Social facilitation is the tendency for
people to do better on some tasks when
they are in the presence of others.
Tasks which are more likely to be socially
facilitated are simple, well-learned
responses
How Groups Influence Individuals Behavior
Social inhibition is the tendency for people
to do worse on some tasks when they are
in the presence of others.
Tasks which are more likely to be socially
inhibited are complex, little-practiced
responses
Social loafing is the tendency for people
in a group to exert less effort when
pooling their efforts
Deindividuation Activity
How Groups Influence Individuals
Behavior
Deindividuation is the loosening of normal constraints on
behavior when people are in a crowd, leading to an
increase in impulsive and deviant acts.
Mullen (1986) examined news reports of lynchings in the
U.S. from 1899-1946 and found that the larger the mob,
the greater the savagery with which they killed their
victims.
Deindividuation makes people feel less accountable for
their actions. Another factor is that deindividuation
increases obedience to group norms.
Lord of the Flies, 1990 (MGM 1:02:05 – 1:05:35)
Deviance in the Dark (Myers)
How Groups Influence Individuals Behavior
How Groups Influence Individuals Behavior
Groupthink, when group cohesiveness is more
important than considering the facts in a
realistic manner. Groupthink can lead to
defective decision making.
Ex: Challenger Space Shuttle Explosion, 1986
Group Decisions
• Group Polarization:
Going to Extremes
Group polarization is the tendency for groups to
make decisions that are more extreme than the
initial inclinations of its members.
Prejudice vs. Discrimination
• Prejudice: an unjustifiable (and usually negative)
attitude toward a group and its members. Ex: “White
people are evil.”
• Discrimination: involves treating a group differently
because of their class or other category. Ex: Blacks
could not eat at certain restaurants and stay at certain
hotels because of their race prior to Civil Rights
Movement.
• Prejudice is a THOUGHT…discrimination is a
BEHAVIOR.
Us vs. Them
• Ingroup: “Us”---people who one shares a common
identity. We are Ardrey Kell.
• Outgroup: “Them”---those perceived as different or
apart of one’s ingroup. They are Providence.
• Ingroup bias: the tendency to favor one’s own group.
Ex: Might not like certain people just because they go
to Providence OR Band people may not like jocks and
vice versa.
Roots of Prejudice
• Categorization
• Vivid Cases
• Just World Phenomenon:
the tendency of people to
believe the world is just and
that people therefore get
what they deserve and
deserve what they get.
– Example: homeless
people are just lazy
Self-fulfilling prophecy
The idea that anticipating something will
cause a person to imperceptibly change his
behavior to make it more likely that the
anticipated event will occur.
Example: Studies have shown that some teachers
have lower expectations of students who are
African-American or Hispanic. The theory states
that those teachers will commit small,
unnoticeable, seemingly benign actions that could
result in African-American or Hispanic earning
lower grades.
Robber’s Cave Study
Classic experiment on prejudice
1954- Robber's Cave State Park in Oklahoma
• Two groups of boys – all 11-years-old,
white & middle class
• No one in either group knew the other
group existed
• For a week, each group participated in
typical camp activities
• After a week, the two groups discovered
each other
• The groups then learned there would be
an athletic tournament in which they would
be competing against the other group
• As the games took place, so did the
confrontations – the two groups became
extremely antagonistic (ransacking cabins,
stealing, food fights)
• MUTUAL PREJUDICE HAD BEEN
ARTIFICIALY CREATED
• The investigators created apparent emergencies
that the boys had to resolve through cooperative
efforts – superordinate goals (fixing water
supply, digging a truck out of mud)
• By the end of camp, the two groups were playing
together peacefully
• WHEN THE BOYS WERE FORCED TO WORK
TOGETHER, THEIR PREJUDICES WERE
LARGELY ELIMINATED
• superordinate goals: shared goals that
override differences among people and require
their cooperation.
Dehumanization
the ability to view the
victims of violence as
somehow less than human.
–Humans find it easier to
inflict and rationalize
violence against victims
who seem less than
human.
Bandura’s Dehumanization Experiments
•
Group of college students were to help train
other visiting college students using shocks
when they erred.
• Participants overhear 1 of 3 statements:
1. Neutral: the subjects from the other school
are here.
2. Humanized: the subjects from the other
school are here and they seem nice.
3. Dehumanized: the subjects from the other
school are here and they seem like animals.
Results: escalated aggression toward
dehumanized labeled individuals.
Dehumanization’s Use in War
Propaganda: Jew As Rat
Aggression
•
•
•
•
TV’s Impact (remember Bandura & Bobo?)
Modeling
Frustration-aggression Principle
Social Scripts (when we find ourselves in a new situation,
uncertain how to act, we rely on social scripts provided by our culture)
Links to Aggression
• Causes of Aggression:
– Genes
– Neural Influences: stimulation to certain neural
regions can increase or decrease aggression.
– Biochemical Influences: high testosterone levels
correlate with aggressive behavior…
• 2-way…testosterone boosts and is boosted by aggressive
behavior.
– Alcohol: 4/10 violent crimes…3/4 spousal abuse
Causes of Aggression
• Frustration-Aggression Principle: the
principle that frustration---the blocking of an
attempt to achieve some goal---creates anger,
which can generate aggression.
– Aversive stimuli also increases
aggression…ex: more spousal abuse in
hotter years and months.
Murders
and rapes
per day in
Houston, Texas
Temperature in degrees Fahrenheit
Psychology of Attraction
• Importance of Proximity: can’t usually fall in
love with someone you’ve never met.
• Mere Exposure Effect: the phenomenon that
repeated exposure to novel stimuli increases
the liking of them
• Similarity also is a strong determinant of
attraction: share common goals, interests, and
attitudes. Opposites don’t usually attract!
• Primacy effect – impression formation
– (do first impressions matter – YES!)
Psychology of Love
2 Types of Love:
• Passionate Love: an aroused state of
intense positive absorption in another,
usually present at the beginning of a love
relationship.
• Companionate Love: the deep
affectionate attachment we feel for those
whom our lives are intertwined.
Making Love Last
• Equity: a condition in which
people receive from a
relationship in proportion to
what they give to
it…decision-making, shared
responsibilities, etc.
• Self Disclosure: revealing
intimate aspects of oneself
to others breeds liking.
Altruism
• Bystander effect a decreased likelihood that an individual
will help a person in distress, due to the presence of others
• Diffusion of Responsibility an implied reduction in
personal responsibility due to the presence of others
• Optimum # of witnesses - ???
Kitty Genovese Case
March 13, 1964 Along a serene, tree-lined street in the Kew
Gardens section of Queens, New York City, Catherine Genovese began
the last walk of her life in the early morning hours of March 13, 1964. She
had just left work, and it was 3:15 a.m. when she parked her red Fiat in the
Long Island Railroad parking lot 20 feet from her apartment door. As she
locked her car door, she took notice of a figure in the darkness walking
quickly toward her. She became immediately concerned as soon as the
stranger began to follow her. “As she got out of the car she saw me and
ran,” the man told the court later, “I ran after her and I had a knife in my
hand.” She must have thought that since the entrance to her building was
so close, she would reach safety within seconds. But the man was faster
than she thought. The man caught up with Catherine, who was all of 5’1”
and weighed just 105 pounds, near a street light at the end of the parking
lot.
“I could run much faster than she could, and I jumped on her back and
stabbed her several times,” the man later told cops. “Oh my God! He
stabbed me!” she screamed. “Please help me! Please help me!” Some
apartment lights went on in nearby buildings. Irene Frost heard Catherine’s
screams plainly. “There was another shriek,” she later testified in court,
“and she was lying down crying out.” Up on the seventh floor of the same
building, Robert Mozer slid open his window and observed the struggle
below.
“Hey, let that girl alone!” he yelled down into the street. The attacker heard
Mozer and immediately walked away. There was quiet once again in the
dark. The only sound was the sobbing of the victim, struggling to her feet.
The lights in the apartment went out again. Catherine, bleeding badly from
several stab wounds, managed to reach the side of her building and held
onto the concrete wall. She staggered over to a locked door and tried to
stay conscious. Within five minutes, the assailant returned. He stabbed her
again. “I’m dying! I’m dying!” she cried to no one.
But several people in her building heard her screams. Lights went on once
again and some windows opened. Tenants tried to see what was
happening from the safety of their apartments. The attacker then ran to a
white Chevy Corvair at the edge of the railroad parking lot and seemed to
drive away.
On the sixth floor Marjorie and Samuel Koshkin witnessed the attack from
their window. “I saw a man hurry to a car under my window,” he said later.
“He left and came back five minutes later and was looking around the
area.” Mr. Koshkin wanted to call the police, but Mrs. Koshkin thought
otherwise. “I didn’t let him,” she later said to the press. “I told him there
must have been 30 calls already.” Miss Andre Picq, who lived on the
second floor, heard the commotion from her window. “I heard a scream for
help, three times,“ she later told the court, “I saw a girl lying down on the
pavement with a man bending down over her, beating her.”
About 3:25 a.m., Catherine, bleeding badly, stumbled to the rear of her
apartment building and attempted to enter through a back entrance. The
door was locked. She slid along the wall until she reached a hallway
leading to the 2nd floor of 82-62 Austin Street but she fell to the vestibule
floor. In the meantime, the man had returned again. “I came back because I
knew I’d not finished what I set out to do,” he told cops later.
He walked along the row of doors and calmly searched for the woman. He
checked the first door and didn’t find her. He followed the trail of blood to
the doorway where Catherine lay bleeding on the tiled floor. And there,
while the defenseless victim lay semiconscious, incoherent from pain and
loss of blood, he cut off her bra and underwear and sexually assaulted her.
He then took $49 in cash from her wallet. “Why would I throw money
away?” he asked the court at his trial.
As Catherine moaned at his feet, probably unable to comprehend what had
happened to her, the man viciously stabbed her again and killed her. The
man, who had selected his victim purely at random, ran to his car still
parked where he left it. The entire event lasted at least 32 minutes.
He said later that murder “was an idea that came into my mind, just as an
idea might come into your mind, but I couldn’t put mine aside.” Catherine
was his third murder.
At about 3:50 a.m., a neighbor, Karl Ross, who lived on the second floor of
Catherine’s building on Austin Street, finally called the police. But before he
did, he called a friend in nearby Nassau County and asked his opinion about
what he should do. After the police were notified, a squad car arrived within
three minutes and quickly found Catherine’s body in the hallway on the first
floor. She had been stabbed 17 times. Her torn and cut clothes were
scattered about and her open wallet lay on the floor next to her. Her driver’s
license identified her as Catherine Genovese.
Detectives from the 112 responded and began an exhaustive investigation.
A canvass of the neighborhood turned up several witnesses, including the
one who had notified the police. When cops finished polling the immediate
neighborhood, they discovered at least 38 people who had heard or
observed some part of the fatal assault on Kitty Genovese.