Social Psychology
Chapter 20 & 21 Review
Group Behavior
• When the desire to be part of a group
prevents a person from seeing other
alternatives.
Groupthink
Group Behavior
• When a person performs better in front
of a group.
Social facilitation
Group Behavior
• Not doing your best in a group because
you think others will do more
Social Loafing
Group Behavior
• When group attitudes become stronger
after they discuss and act upon the
shared attitudes.
Polarization
Group Behavior
• When a person is willing to do things
with a group they would not do alone.
Risky Shift
Group Behavior
• Feeling you are less responsible when
with a group
Diffusion of responsibility
Group Behavior
• Loss of self-awareness and selfrestraint, and loss of sense of
responsibility when in a group.
Deindividuation
Helping & Moral Behavior
• Sacrificing your own welfare to help
another person.
Alturism
Helping & Moral Behavior
• Obviously neglecting someone needing
help because of diffusion of
responsibility.
Bystander Effect
Helping & Moral Behavior
• Any behavior that helps another person.
Prosocial Behavior
Helping & Moral Behavior
• This real life case study led to the theory
of bystander effect.
Kitty Genovese Murder
Helping & Moral Behavior
• These experimenters tested helping
behavior by faking an epileptic seizure.
Darley & Latane
Conformity & Obedience
• Found people would knowingly give the
wrong answer to conform to the group.
Asch’s Line Experiment
Conformity & Obedience
• Unspoken or unwritten rules – you
don’t pass gas in math class but you
might when with friends.
Implicit Norms
Conformity & Obedience
• Guidelines for what people should
or should not do in a situation
Social Norms
Conformity & Obedience
• Spoken or written rules – dress codes or
traffic laws.
Explicit Norms
Conformity & Obedience
• Our the desire to be correct makes
us more likely to conform
Informational social
influence
Conformity & Obedience
– Our desire to gain social acceptance
and approval that causes us to
conform
Normative social influence
Conformity & Obedience
• Found most people would obey an
authority figure to do something hurtful
to another if authority figure accepted
responsibility.
Milgram’s Shock
Experiment
Aggression
• Found good people will become
aggressive in the right environment or
when they buy into their roles
Zimbardo’s Prison Study
Social Perception
• People get what they deserve and they
deserve what they get.
Just-World Bias
Social Perception
• Recent interactions with a person
cause you to change your opinion
about them.
Recency Effect
Social Perception
• “When I get good grades it is because I
am smart. When I don’t it is because the
teacher is bad.”
Self-Serving bias
Social Perception
• The mental processes used in making
judgments about people.
Person perception
Social Perception
• First impressions are lasting
impressions; dress up for a job
interview.
Primacy Effect
Social Perception
• When you think a person is rude
because the only time you saw the
person was when they were impolite to
another; forming a judgment on one
behavioral observation.
Actor-Observer Bias
Social Perception
• Tendency to give too much weight to
personality factors and not enough
weight to situational factors when
observing someone’s behavior.
Fundamental Attribution
Error
Social Perception
• “When something bad happens it is
always my fault. When something good
happens it is luck.”
Self-Effacing Bias
Social Perception
• “She deserved to be mugged for being in
that neighborhood after dark.” Their
misfortune is their own fault.
Blaming the Victim
Social Perception
• Ignores a person’s unique qualities and
makes a conclusion about a person
based on limited information. Like to
group people
Social Categorization
Social Perception
• We often explain our own behavior
differently than we explain the behavior
of other people; can lead to errors.
Attribution Theory
Social Perception
• Waitresses received higher tips when
making change with their customers
this way.
Physical Contact
Attitudes & Prejudice
• Positive or negative evaluation of a
person, object or idea.
Attitudes
Attitudes & Prejudice
• Prejudice was overcome when groups
cooperate to achieve a common goal.
Robbers Cave
Attitudes & Prejudice
• Blaming a complex problem on an
undeserving group.
Scapegoat Theory
Attitudes & Prejudice
• After being discriminated against, a
person may put down another group that
is worse off in order to gain power.
Victimization
Attitudes & Prejudice
• Unfair treatment of a person because
they are part of a particular group.
Discrimination
Attitudes & Prejudice
• Children will imitate their parents’
attitudes and parents will reinforce
these attitudes in their children.
Social Learning
Attitudes & Prejudice
• Unjustifiable attitude towards a group
or a member; usually negative.
Prejudice
Attitudes & Prejudice
• Belief that people with less money are
lazy and do not work as hard.
Justifying Economic
Status
Attitudes & Prejudice
• Oversimplified belief about a group that
is certainly not true about all people in
that group. Tall people are good
basketball players.
Stereotype
Attitudes & Prejudice
• Tendency to favor one’s own group even
at the expense of others.
Ingroup Bias
Attitudes & Prejudice
• Tendency to see people who are not part
of our group as being very similar, when
we see people of our own group as
varied.
Out-Group Homogeneity
Effect
Attitudes & Prejudice
• This experiment with school children showed
how quickly ingroups and outgroups can be
formed and how prejudice can influence
one’s performance.
Jane Elliot’s Blue/Brown
Eye Experiment