Words of the Day
AP Review #2
• Name and explain the 7 perspectives of
Psychology
Answers:
• Behavioral Approach: concerned with
reactions to stimuli; experience (Pavlov,
Watson, Skinner)
• Psychoanalytic/Psychodynamic
Approach: unconscious instincts, conflict
and motives (Freud, Jung, Adler)
• Humanistic Approach: individual
potential for growth (Rogers, Maslow)
Answers:
• Biological Approach: Physiological and
biochemical factors that determine
behavior
• Cognitive Approach: how we receive,
store and process information; think or
reason (Piaget, Vygotsky)
• Evolutionary Approach: natural selection
favored behavior
• Sociocultural Approach: cultural
differences affect behavior (Milgram, Asch,
Zimbardo)
Social Influence
Me and My Gang
Who or what influences you??
• Throughout my life I have noticed
that I act differently around different
groups of people.
• Around my family I act quiet and
reserved.
• Around friends I act silly and fun.
• But, around my fellow teachers and
students at school I talk about
curriculum and study skills for the AP
test.
• In other words, the people around us
affect the way we behave.
Group Influence on Behavior
Lets look at how groups effect our behavior.
When are you most likely to do your best??
• Social Facilitation
– Improved performance of tasks in the presence of
others.
• Occurs when one is very skilled at a task or it is a very
easy task
• Take Lebron James. He is very good in basketball and when
he is practicing alone I am sure he looks pretty good.
• But because he is so skilled, he actually performs better in
front of a group of people.
• Social
Impairment
• when a task is very hard or one is not skilled, one performs
worse in front of a group than if they were alone.
Conformity
• Adjusting one’s
behavior or thinking
to coincide with a
group standard.
How did you feel the
first time someone
asked you to smoke,
drink, or skip class?
Asch’s Study
Conditions that Strengthen
Conformity
•
•
•
•
•
•
One is made to feel incompetent
The group is at least three people
The group is unanimous
One admires the group’s status
One had made no prior commitment
The person is observed
Reasons for Conforming
• Normative Social
Influence
A desire to gain
approval or avoid
disappointment of
others (acceptance or
rejection)
• Informational Social
Influence
Influence resulting
from one’s willingness
to accept others’
opinions about reality
Obedience
• compliance with commands given by an
authority figure
Milgram’s Experiments
Milgram’s Obedience Study
Why do People Obey Immoral
Commands??
• Legitimization of Authority
– We are taught to obey authority figures and not
to question or second-guess them
• Social Validation
– We use other people’s behavior as a standard for
judging the appropriateness of our own actions
• We may see that someone is admired for their
behavior so we use that to legitimize our behavior and
even look up to those people even more
What did we learn from Asch &
Milgram?
Ordinary people can do
shocking things
Other Issues
in Group
Dynamics
Social Loafing
Sometimes people take advantage of being in a group
• The tendency to put
forth less effort when
working as a member
of a group than when
working alone
Think of the last time you did a group project – you may
have worked less because if the group did badly it was
not a direct reflection of your skills, but the group as a
whole
Deindividuation
• The loss of self-awareness and self-restraint
occurring in group situations
• People lose inhibitions and sense of responsibility
and feel anonymous – mobs, riots, and looting.
• Behave in a way you usually would not
Zimbardo
Prison
Study
Group Polarization
The tendency of people to make
decisions that are more extreme
when they are in a group as
opposed to a decision alone or
independently
Groupthink
• Occurs when the desire for
harmony in a decisionmaking group overrides
common sense.
– Members pressure others to
conform
– Members squash dissent
and focus just on
information that agrees
with the group’s point of
view
How could hazing incidents be an example of
groupthink?
Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
• Occurs when one
person’s belief about
others leads one to act
in ways that induce the
others to appear to
confirm the belief.
If you think someone finds you
attractive, they more likely will!!!
Prejudice and
Discrimination
Prejudice = attitude
Discrimination = behavior
Prejudice
• An unjustifiable
attitude towards a
group of people.
• Usually involves
stereotyped beliefs (a
generalized belief
about a group of
people).
Overt
Subtle
Why is there prejudice?
• The JustWorld
Phenomenon
– People get what
they deserve in
this world
Social Inequalities
• Ingroup: “us”- people with whom
one shares a common identity.
• Outgroup: “them”- those perceived
as different than one’s ingroup.
• Ingroup bias: the tendency to favor
one’s own group.
Scapegoat Theory
• The theory that
prejudice
provides an
outlet for anger
by providing
someone to
blame.