INTRO TO SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
Presented by: Mahnoor mehmood
Zuhra lal baksh
Table of contents
 Definition
 History
 Social thinking, Social influence and Social relations
 Big ideas in social psychology
 Social psychology and human values
 Classical experiments in social psychology

Solomon Asch conformity experiment

The Milgram experiment

Stanford prison experiment

Sherif’s autokinet illusion study

Bobo doll experiment

The smoky room experiment

Robbers cave experiment

The piano stairs experiment

The marshmallow test experiment
 Social psychology is a science that studies the influences of our
situations, with special attention to how we view and affect one another.
More precisely, it is the scientific study of how people think about,
influence, and relate to one another
 Difference with sociology and personality psychology
 Johann Friedrich Herbart and Auguste Comte
 Kurt Lewin…father of modern social psychology
 Volkerpsychologie : a precursor to social psychology (late 19th century)
 The first social psychology experiments were reported more than a century
ago (1898)
 Not until the 1930s did social psychology assume its current form. After
World War II it began to emerge as the vibrant field it is today
Social thinking
 Social thinking, refers to what we do any time we are interacting with
someone, sharing space with someone, or basically engaging in any activity
that requires our social interpretation of and reaction to the situations
 How we perceive ourselves and others : social cues
 What we believe
 Judgments we make
 Our attitudes
Social influence
 Social influence means changes in behavior or thinking as a result of
influence by others
 Majority influence
 Minority influence
 Resistance to influence
Social relations
 social relationships refer to the connections that exist between people
who have recurring interactions that are perceived by the participants to
have personal meaning
 Prejudice
 Aggression
 Attraction and intimacy
 helping
 Social psychology is all about life—your life: your beliefs, your attitudes,
your relationships.
Social psychology and human values
 Values are individual beliefs that motivate people to act one way or another
 Social psychologists’ values penetrate their work in obvious ways, such as
their choice of research topics and the types of people who are attracted to
various fields of study.
 1960s saw interest in aggression increase with riots and rising crime rates
 the feminist movement of the 1970s helped stimulate a wave of research on
gender and sexism
 the 1990s and the early twenty-first century were marked by heightened
interest in how people respond to diversity in culture, race, and sexual
orientation. Social psychology reflects social history
Subjective aspects of science
 most ancient Greeks didn’t consider the movements of the planets to be anything other
than circular. They took the circle to be the perfect shape and, given that the heavens
were the realm of the divine, they expected planetary movements to be equally
perfect.
 Culture
Psychological concepts contain hidden values
 Defining the good life….Abraham maslow
self-actualized personalities—as spontaneous, autonomous, mystical
 Professional advice
 Forming concepts….High self esteem or defensiveness
 Labelling….
 Whether we label a quiet child as “bashful” on “cautious,” as “holding
back” or as “an observer,” conveys a judgment.
 Whether we view wartime civilian deaths as “the loss of innocent lives”
or as “collateral damage” affects our acceptance of such.
 Whether someone involved in an extramarital affair is practicing “open
marriage” or “adultery” depends on one’s personal values.
 Remarks about “ambitious” men and “aggressive” women convey a
hidden message.
 Should we dismiss science because it has its subjective side?
 Social psychology is criticized for being trivial because it documents
things that seem obvious.
 Experiments, however, reveal that outcomes are more “obvious” after
the facts are known.
 This hindsight bias (the I-knew-it-all-along phenomenon ) often makes
people overconfident about the validity of their judgments and
predictions.
 Better-educated soldiers suffered more adjustment problems than did
less educated soldiers. (Intellectuals were less prepared for battle
stresses than street-smart people.)
Classical experiments in social psychology
Solomon Asch- conformity experiment
 Solomon asch conducted an experiment to investigate social pressure could effect the
people to conform
 Sherif’s (1935) experiment: no correct answer to the ambiguous autokinetic
experiment.
 The incorrect answer was due to group pressure.
 Asch used a lab experiment to study conformity, 50 male students participated in a
vision test.
 Line judgement task. (A,B,or C)
 18 trails total. Wrong answer on 12 trails ( called critical trails)
 Apparently, people for two main reason:
 1- normative influence: because they want to fit in with the group.
 2- informational influence: because they believe the group is better informed than they
are.
 Critical evaluation
 Biased sample ( only male students)
 Same age group.
 Lacks population validity .
 Result cannot be generalized to female or older groups of people
The Milgram experiment
 Study of authority on obedience
 An authority figure ordered participants to deliver what they believed were dangerous
electrical shocks to another person. These results suggested that people are highly
influences by authority, and highly obedient.
 Milgram experiment in 1961, after the trail of the world war II.
 40 men participants.
 Milgram developed an intimidating shock generator with shock levels starting from 15
volts and increasing to 450 volts.
 The switches were labeled with terms including: “ slight shock”, “moderate shock”, and
“ danger: severe shock”. The final three shocks were named as XXX.
 The learner became silent and refused to answer the questions, so the experimenter
ordered the silence to be considered incorrect responses and deliver further shock.
 The experimenter used a series of command to motivate the participants to continue:
 1- please continue.
 2- the experiment requires that you continue.
 3- it is absolutely essential that you continue.
 4- you have no other choice, you must go on.
 The result show that obedience was measured by the level of shock that the
participant was willing to deliver.
Stanford Prison Experiment
 Experiment was conducted by Zimbardo.
 24 male college students were randomly assigned to act as a “ guard” or “prisoner” in
a mock prison.
 Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI): inventory developed to measure time
perspective which is believed to significantly influence human behavior. It includes
people’s view of past, current, and future behavior.
 Social intensity syndrome (SIS) Theory describe how military culture and
socialization effect soldiers and military veterans.
 SIS is an important way to gain better insight into military culture’s positive and
negative effects.
Norms formation Revisiting Sherif’s autokinet illusion
study
 What is truth?
 Sherif sought to understand how people come to see particular views of the world as
correct and to demonstrate and analyze the critical role that other people play in this
process.
 The autokinetic illusion (AKI) studies:- the autokinetic effect is an illusion whereby a
pinpoint of light in an otherwise darkened surrounding appear to move spontaneously.
This phenomenon is well known to astronomers, who first noticed it while observing
stars on dark nights.
 Experiment was conducted on a dark room in the Columbia University psychological
laboratory. The individual experiments involved 19 male participants ( in fact just two
conditions) involved 40 male participants, all university students.
Bobo Doll Experiment
 Children were involved in two different adult models: an aggressive model, and a nonaggressive model.
 Prediction: Bandura predicted that boys would behave more aggressively than girls.
 children who observed an adult acting aggressively would also act aggressively even
there is no adult model present.
 Children would be more likely to imitate models of the same-sex rather than models of
the opposite sex.
 Children who observed non-aggressive adult model would be less aggressive than the
children who observed the aggressive model.
 36 boys and 36 girls enrolled at the Standford university Nursery School. Age ranged 3
to 6 years, the average participants age were 4 years 4 months
 Over a 10 minutes period, the adult models began to play with sets of tinker toys.
 In non-aggressive condition the adult model played with the toys and ignored the Bobo
doll for the entire period.
 In aggressive model condition, the adult models would violently attack the Bobo doll.
 The adult shows physical and verbal aggression.
The smoky room experiment
 If you saw someone in trouble, do you think you would try to help?
 We are much more likely to help when we are the only witness but much we are part of
a crowd.
 In one experiment, researcher and participants sit in a room to fill out the
questionnaires, suddenly the room began to fill with smoke. In some cases the
participants were alone and in some cases there were three unsuspecting participants
in the room, in final condition one participant and two confederates.
 The experiment is a great example of how much people relay on the responses of
others to guide their actions.
Robbers cave experiment
 According to psychologist Muzafer Sherif, intergroup conflicts tend to arise from
competition for resources, stereotypes, and prejudices.
 22 boys age range from 11 to 12 years, in two groups at a camp.
The piano stairs experiment
 How can you get people to change their daily behavior and make healthier choices?
 In one social experiment sponsored by Volkswagen as part of their fun theory initiative,
making the most mundane activities fun can inspire people to change their behavior.
 In the experiment, a set of stairs was transformed into a giant working keyboard, right
next to the stairs an escalator, people were able to choose between taking the stairs
and escalator.
 66% more people took stairs instead of escalator.
The marshmallow test experiment
 During the late 1960s and early 1970s, a psychologist named Walter Mischel leda
series of experiment on delayed gratification. He was interested in learning that
whether the ability to delayed gratification might be a predictor of future life success.
 In the experiment, children between the age of 3 and 5 were places in a room with
treat ( often a marshmallow or cookie). Before leaving the room, the experimenter told
each child that they would receive a second treat if the first treat was still on the table
after 15 minutes.
 Follow-up studies conducted years after and found that children who were able to
delay gratification did better in a variety of areas, including academically.
 Those who could wait the 15 minutes for the second treat tend to have higher scores
in SAT and more academic success (according to a parent survey)
 Result suggests that this ability to wait for gratification is not only an essential skill for
success but also something that forms early on and lasts throughout life.