SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
ATTITUDE FORMATION AND CHANGE
• Attitude = set of beliefs & feelings about anything. Attitudes
are evaluative (+ or -)
• Much research done on how to affect people’s attitudes
(marketing/advertising)
• Mere exposure effect – more you’re exposed to it the more you’ll come to
like it
• Characteristics of communicator – attractive, famous, experts
• Characteristics of audience – more educated people less likely to be
affected by advertising
• Central route to persuasion – persuaded by evidence/facts
• Peripheral route to persuasion – persuaded by superficial cues like the
speaker’s attractiveness
COGNITIVE DISSONANCE
• Relationship between attitude and behavior. Our
attitudes and behaviors do not always match up
• Great dissonance or difference between our attitudes and
behaviors (hypocrisy) causes mental tension and angst.
• Typically we either have to adjust our attitudes or behaviors
to bring them back into synch
• Ex: if I think lying is bad, but I am in a situation where I am
lying to someone close to me - it will cause me great stress.
I either need to stop lying and change my behavior or
adjust my attitude to justify lying (i.e. everyone lies – it’s okay
after all)
COGNITIVE DISSONANCE
COMPLIANCE STRATEGIES
• How do you get others to do what you want?
• Foot in the Door – get them to agree to a small request and
then follow it up with a larger request – can I borrow $5…if
you can spare that, I can really use a $20
• Door in the Face – ask for a huge request and when they
refuse follow up with a smaller request hoping it will seem
reasonable – can I borrow $200? No, well then can you
spare a $20?
• Norms of Reciprocity – you owe me a favor because I did a
favor for you (“The Godfather”)
ATTRIBUTION THEORY
• How do we determine the cause/motive of other’s
behaviors?
• Disposition (part of the person’s inherent traits)
• VERSUS
• Situational (the person’s behavior is unique to a
particular situation)
FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR
• When looking at the behavior of others we tend to
overestimate the importance of dispositional factors
(that’s who they are) and underestimate the importance
of situational factors (they’re in a tough spot). When we
evaluate our own behavior we emphasize situational
factors instead of our disposition.
• Ex: the guy at the next table who is yelling at his kids is a
jerk and a bad father (disposition). When I yelled at my
kids yesterday, they were really misbehaving and I was
having a bad day (situational).
• Zimbardo’s Prison Experiment
FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR
OTHER ATTRIBUTION ERRORS
• Self-fulfilling
prophecy – the
expectations we
have about others
can influence their
behavior such that
they fulfill our
expectation
(Pygmalion in the
classroom)
OTHER ATTRIBUTION ERRORS
• False Consensus Effect – tendency to overestimate
the number of people who agree with us
• Self serving bias – tendency to take more personal
credit for good outcomes than bad ones
• Just world belief – we think bad things happen to
bad people and good things happen to good
people. So misfortune befalls people who deserve
it. i.e. the homeless guy on the street must be lazy
because it’s a just world and if he was a hard
worker he’d have a job
INFLUENCE OF OTHER
PEOPLE ON OUR BEHAVIOR
GROUP DYNAMICS
• All groups have norms – rules about how members
should act
• Groups often have specific roles
• Social Loafing – often people slack off when a
member of a group (difficult to discern individual
effort)
• Group Polarization – the enhancement of a group’s
prevailing attitudes through discussion within the
group (if a gun rights person goes to a NRA
conference they will leave even more into gun
rights)
GROUP DYNAMICS
Group Think
Deindividuation
• Tendency for a group
to talk themselves into
a bad decision (more
likely when group is
highly cohesive – like a
gang)
• People do things within
a group they would
have never done on
their own; they feel
anonymous and lose
self-restraint. Usually
spur of the moment.
• Ex: Bay of Pigs
• Ex: throwing rocks at
cops
GROUP DYNAMICS
Social Facilitation
Social Impairment
• When having an
audience inspires you to
perform a task better
• More likely if the task is
simple or well practiced
• Ex: the athlete who nails it
in a big competition
when the stands are full
of people
• When having an
audience makes you
nervous and you bomb
• More likely if the task is
not simple or well
practiced)
• Ex: the athlete who gets
nervous and misses the
free throw to lose the
game when the stands
are full
SOLOMON ASCH - CONFORMITY
• Asch immigrated to the US from Poland when he
was a teen. Inspired to study conformity from WW
II…..would people conform to a knowingly wrong
behavior? Did his experiments in 1951
• In experimental group confederates give blatantly
wrong answers and Asch wants to know if
participant will conform. Participants are
told experiment is on visual perception
(deception)
SOLOMON ASCH - CONFORMITY
• Match the exhibit line to the
lettered line mostly closely
matching it’s size.
• 70% of participants
conformed at least once
and @ 33% conformed
every time
• Control Group – no
confederates – participants
gave wrong answers less
than 1% of the time
• http://www.simplypsycholo
gy.org/asch-conformity.html
CONDITIONS THAT STRENGTHEN
CONFORMITY
• One is made to feel incompetent or insecure
• The group has at least three people (further
increase in group size didn’t yield more conformity)
• The group is unanimous
• One admires the group’s status and attractiveness
• One has made no prior commitment to any prior
response
• Others in the group are observing one’s behavior
• The particular culture strongly encourages respect
for social standards
CONFORMITY TAPERS OFF AT ABOUT 3
CONFEDERATES
STANLEY MILGRAM’S OBEDIENCE
STUDIES (1961/1962)
• Milgram was Asch’s
research assistant in
is conformity studies.
He became
interested in a
similar concept –
would people
willfully obey a
command if it was
a bad command
MILGRAM
• Deception – told participants
they were studying learning
and the effect of punishment
on an incorrect answer
• Teacher = participant
• Learner = confederate
• @ 60% (2/3) obeyed
experimenter and delivered all
the shocks
• Not ethical by today’s APA
guidelines
• https://www.youtube.com/wat
ch?v=xOYLCy5PVgM
MILGRAM
FACTORS THAT AFFECT OBEDIENCE
• If one has less respect for the authority figure they
are less likely to obey (when Milgram used a TA or
when he disassociated the experiment from Yale
obedience decreased)
• If the victim is more personalized (if Milgram
introduced the teacher and the learner prior to the
experiment obedience decreased).
•Do Asch and Milgram’s
experiments jive with
Kohlberg stages of ethical
development? HOW?
STEREOTYPES, PREJUDICE,
AND DISCRIMINATION
• Stereotypes: attitudes/ideas of what members of
different groups are like. Stereotypes can be + or – and
can be applied to any group of people (racial, ethnic,
geographic). Our stereotypes often influence the way
we interact with people
• Prejudice: negative stereotypes about an entire group of
people
• Discrimination: ACTION – when one acts on prejudice
(prejudice is an attitude discrimination is action based
on that attitude)
• Examples????
• Origin of prejudice? Bandura - modeling
STEREOTYPES, PREJUDICES, ETC.
• Out group homogeneity – people tend to see their
own group (the in group) as more diverse than
other groups. We lack familiarity with other groups
and see them as all the same
• In group bias – we prefer members of our own
group. We see ourselves as “good people” and
therefore other members of our group must also be
good people
COMBATING PREJUDICE
• Contact Theory – contact between hostile groups
will decrease hostility if groups are made to work
towards a common goal that benefits everyone –
superordinate goal – the goal must require the
participation of all and must benefit both groups of
the goal is achieved
• Integration of military and public schools did a lot to
break down racism in America
• “Remember the Titans”
ROBBERS CAVE
AGGRESSION/ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOR
• Instrumental aggression – aggressive act to secure
a particular end (John hits his sister to get a toy)
• Hostile aggression – no clear purpose for aggression
• Causes of human aggression….??
• Frustration Aggression Hypothesis – feelings of frustration
make aggression more likely (socio-economic levels,
desperation, etc.)
• Social Learning – Bandura and Bobo Doll
PRO-SOCIAL BEHAVIOR
• What factors make people more or less likely to help
one another?
• Bystander Intervention
• Diffusion of Responsibility – the more people who witness an
emergency they less likely anyone is to intervene. Each
assumes someone else will do something and everyone
feels less responsible
• Pluralistic Ignorance – people decide what constitutes
appropriate behavior in a situation by looking to others. If
no one seems to think it’s an emergency everyone follows
that cue
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4S1LLrSzVE
BYSTANDER INTERVENTION
PLURALISTIC IGNORANCE
KITTY GENOVESE
HTTPS://WWW.YOUTUBE.COM/WATCH?V=Q-AUSW85QKA&FEATURE=FVWREL
ATTRACTION
• What determines who we like?
• Similarity – we are attracted to people with similar attitudes,
background, and interests
• Proximity – nearness – the more time we spent together, the
more we like them
• Reciprocal Liking – we like people who like us and are nice
to us
• Self Disclosure – sharing pieces of personal information
increases closeness/intimacy/likeness
DECISION MAKING
• Approach-Approach – choose between 2 things
you want but can’t do both
• Avoidance-Avoidance – neither choice is
particularly appealing but you have to choose one
• Approach-avoidance – the choice has both good
and bad outcomes
• Multiple approach avoidance – choosing between
several alternatives – each has multiple advantages
and disadvantages
• Examples?