Social Psychology
• The study of how we
think about, influence,
and relate to one
another
• In other words, why do
we do what we do, how
do we treat, interact
with and view others,
how do groups influence
our actions?
• Today we will learn…
— How you think about
other peoples and your
own behavior
— How the way we think of
others causes us to
behave and treat others
What is Person perception?
PP is the process of forming
impressions of others.
We dress up for job
interviews and maybe dress
down for our friend’s party.
We might not mention
embarrassing stuff about
ourselves.
Our attitudes influence actions and
beliefs about others.
Attribution Theory
(Fritz Heider) –
people usually
attribute others’
behavior to either
their internal
dispositions or their
external situations.
Dispositional (internal) or Situational
(external)?
•
Durango only won because the best players on MCHS’s
team were out with injuries – talk about good fortune.
•
•
M-CHS band won State because we have some of the best
talent in the state.
•
•
Internal (dispositional)
Anybody could win the NFC east; the competition is so far
below average when compared to the rest of the
conferences.
•
•
External (situational)
External (situational)
MCHS won the baseball tournament because we put in a
great deal of effort and practice.
•
Internal (dispositional)
What happens when attributions are
wrong?
• Our attributions have
consequences. The
following attribution
errors lead to
overconfidence.
• Fundamental Attribution Error –
underestimating situational influences
when evaluating the behavior of someone
else.
– He swerved into my lane because he is
a jerk.
• Actor-observer bias – attributing others’
behaviors to disposition but your own
behaviors (even the same behaviors) to
situational factors.
– Example: He swerved into my lane
because he is a jerk, but I swerved into
the next lane because I was trying to
avoid an animal in the road.
• Self-serving bias – crediting your own
successes to disposition, but attributing
your own failures to situation.
– Example: I won the game because I’m
talented.
I failed the test because the
questions were unfair.
So what does this mean?
FAE is a pitfall of
judging other
people, a selfserving bias is an
error in the way we
look at and
interpret ourselves
and the situations
we find ourselves
in.
Do our actions influence our attitudes?
Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort caused
by holding two contradictory beliefs or
performing an action contradictory to our
beliefs.
Cognitive Dissonance Theory
Cognitive dissonance theory states that we are
motivated to reduce this uncomfortable feeling by
changing our beliefs to match our actions.
The dissonance (uncomfortable feeling) is less if we feel
that we were forced to perform the action. Thus, the
larger the pressure used to elicit the overt behavior,
the smaller the tendency to change opinion.
Example of Cognitive Dissonance
• Smokers tend to experience cognitive dissonance
because it is widely accepted that cigarettes cause
lung cancer, yet virtually everyone wants to live a
long and healthy life. In terms of the theory, the
desire to live a long life is dissonant with the activity
of doing something that will most likely shorten
one's life.
• The tension produced by these contradictory ideas
can be reduced by quitting smoking, denying the
evidence of lung cancer, or justifying one's smoking.
• For example, a smoker could rationalize his or her
behavior by concluding that everyone dies and so
cigarettes do not actually change anything. Or a
person could believe that smoking keeps one from
gaining weight, which would also be unhealthy.
Social schemas
• Schema – organized
clusters of ideas about
something.
• In Piaget’s
Preoperational stage,
children have schemas
about what a dog is. At
first they think a dog is
all furry animals with
tails.
Social schema
• Organized clusters of ideas about categories of social
events and people.
We act differently at church than we do at a bar.
We categorize people into groups like Emos, nerds,
Jocks, etc.
We have a schema about how a professor’s office might
look like or how a gangster should dress or how to
write a paper for English.
Stereotypes
• Type of schema
• A specific characteristic
we assume somebody
has because of their
social schema.
Oh, you are from Dallas.
You must ride a horse to
work!
Yeehaw!
I’m from
Texas!
Subjectivity in Person Perception
(confirmation bias?)
• We tend to notice behaviors in others that
already fit our preconceived notions. We tend
to notice the Asians who get
straight A’s. We tend to notice
the
Emo who dresses like this:
• We notice the White guy
who can’t dance.
• We see what we expect to see!
Subjectivity cont. . .
• We ignore events that do not fit with our
stereotypes and tell ourselves that that is a
rare exception.
• Ex: A redneck with a college degree.
What is Illusory correlation?
• Occurs when people think they have
confirmed their stereotypes more than they
actually have.
Ex. Saying you never met an honest lawyer
when in fact you have met a few.
Ex: You say all football players are dumb jocks.
But in reality, only a few are! (Just Kidding)
This is an error because of our confirmation
bias.
Evidence for illusory correlation.
• Subjects watched a video of a woman listening
to classical music, drinking beer, and watching
TV. If the subjects were told the woman was a
librarian, then they remembered she listened
to classical music. If the subjects were told
she was a waitress, they remember the beer.
If they were told she was unemployed, they
remembered the TV.
• Ingroup vs. out-group – just like in a high school
cafeteria, in the wild, animals need to distinguish
friend from foe.
• Ingroup bias - Those in our in-group are viewed
in a positive light, while those in the out-group
are viewed in terms of negative stereotypes.
(they are inferior, they are all alike)
• Remember the “Baby Morality” video…
So what did we learn today?
• That our perceptions of people may be inaccurate
given the situation and are prone to errors.
– How?
• That our actions may impact the way we feel
about something.
– How?
• That the way we think about a person or situation
may alter the way that we behave or treat other
people.
– How?
Self Fulfilling Prophesy
• Self-fulfilling prophecies—ideas that become
reality simply because someone believes them
• When parents believe that a child will abuse
alcohol, in fact, the child is likely to drink more
than expected.
• The findings support the social theory that
prophecies are especially self-fulfilling
for stereotyped groups.
We now know how our perceptions or
thinking can affect our behaviors or
how we behave toward others, but
what's next?
• Human interaction: How we behave toward
others.
– Aggression
– Attraction
– Conformity, obedience to authority, and
situational behavior.