Unit 11 PDF_Social Psychology.doc
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
Unit 11: Social Cognition and Social Influences
Humans are social creatures. Indeed, our very survival depends upon our ability to live as
part of a social group. Not surprisingly, social forces have great impact on our thinking
and behavior. The behavior and thinking of individuals in social contexts is the focus of
the topic of Social Psychology.
READING: Chapter 8
During this unit, we will look at the following topics:
Part 1: Social Cognition
1. Attitudes and Attitude Change
2. Attributions
3. Stereotypes and Prejudices
Part 2: Social Influences and the Power of the Situation
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Norms and Roles
Conformity
Groupthink
Diffusion of Responsibility
Obedience
A Real World Case Study of Prisoner Abuse
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Unit 11 PDF_Social Psychology.doc
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
Part 1: Social Psychology
Attitudes and Attitude Change (pp. 279–283)
Effective ways of influencing attitudes
Cognitive dissonance and the need for cognitive consistency (pp. 201–203)
Cognitive persuasion
Inoculation against attitude change
VIDEO LECTURE: Click here to learn about attitudes and attitude change.
Attributions (pp. 277–279)
Internal (dispositional) vs. external (situational) causes of behavior
Attributional biases
Fundamental error of attribution
Self-serving bias
Self-handicapping strategies
Blaming the victim: the “just world” hypothesis
VIDEO LECTURE: Click here to learn about attributions.
Stereotypes and Prejudices (pp. 292–303)
Group identity
Benefits and costs of stereotypes
Prejudice
Explicit vs. implicit negative attitudes
What are your implicit attitudes? Take the IAT.
VIDEO LECTURE: Click here to learn about explicit vs. implicit negative attitudes.
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Unit 11 PDF_Social Psychology.doc
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
Definitions
These are terms that are used frequently in Part 1.
Attitude: A relatively stable opinion about a topic. Attitudes include beliefs about the
topic and emotional feelings regarding the topic.
Cognitive dissonance: An aversive state that one experiences when one holds two
beliefs that are inconsistent with each other or when one's behavior is inconsistent with
one's attitudes and beliefs.
Justification of effort: Tendency for individuals to increase their liking for something
that they have worked hard or suffered to attain.
Stereotype: Beliefs about the characteristics of groups of people.
Prejudice: A negative attitude toward members of a particular group.
Attribution: Judgment involved in assigning a cause to the behavior of others or
ourselves.
Fundamental error of attribution: Tendency to overattribute behavior to internal
causes--especially when evaluating other people's behavior.
Self-serving bias: Tendency to attribute our own successes to internal causes, while
attributing our own failures to external causes.
Self-handicapping: Strategy of setting up a potential external cause explanation for
anticipated failure.
Just world hypothesis: The need to believe that the world is a fair and just place, that
bad people are punished and good people are rewarded. Blaming the victim is a means of
maintaining a belief in a just world
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Unit 11 PDF_Social Psychology.doc
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
Activity 1: Take the IAT
The IAT (Implicit Attitudes Test) is one of the most widely used measures of implicit
attitudes. It is based on the assumption that our attitudes will affect the ease with which
we can form associations between concepts. For example, if you hold a negative attitude
of some kind toward old people, then it should be easier for you to do a task that requires
you to treat “old” and “bad” as related concepts than a task that requires you to treat
“old” and “good” as related concepts.
You can take a number of tests of your own implicit attitudes at the IAT website at
Harvard (link below.)
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Click on “Demonstration” and then click on “Go to the demonstration tests.”
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Read the information on this page, then click on the link at the bottom of the page,
“General information about the IAT.”
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Then proceed, and take whichever of the tests interests you.
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After you have taken one or more of the tests, go to the “Background Info”
section of the site. The FAQ’s should answer most of the questions you have
about the tests.
REQUIRED WEBLINK: Click here to take tests about implicit attitudes:
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
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Unit 11 PDF_Social Psychology.doc
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
Part 2: Social Influences and the Power of the Situation
Norms and Roles (pp. 269–271)
Personal space
Context-specific norms: the spring break phenomenon
Zimbardo’s prison experiment (pp. 272–273)
REQUIRED WEBLINK: Visit the prison experiment web site. Read about the study
and watch the slide show: http://prisonexp.org/
VIDEO LECTURE: Click here to watch the video lecture about norms and roles.
Conformity (pp. 284–286)
Asch’s study of perceptual judgment conformity
Factors affecting conformity: Group size, culture, characteristics of other group members,
presence of another nonconformist
Factors Affecting Conformity
Research with the Asch task has identified a number of factors that affect conformity—
factors that also function in many situations in the real world. These include:
1. Group size: In general, the larger the group (in which everyone is behaving the
same way), the greater the pressure that people feel to conform. The surprising
finding in this research, however, is how much pressure people feel even when
the group is small. There is more pressure with three other people behaving the
same way than with two, and more with five than three, but the pressure to
conform that people feel does not increase much after group size six—in large
part because with a group that large, the pressure people feel to conform is
already very high.
2. Culture: Some cultures place greater value on conformity than do others. The
surprising finding here is that, even in cultures that place great value on
individualism and nonconformity—such as in the United States—the amount of
pressure that people feel to conform is distressingly high.
3. Characteristics of other group members: It does matter who the other
members of the group are. In general, we feel greater pressure to conform when
we care about the opinions of the others in the group, hold them in high esteem,
and/or feel they are similar to ourselves. Note again, however, that high levels of
conformity are found with the Asch task even when the members of the group are
strangers who are unlikely to ever see each other again.
4. Modeling: It makes sense to model one’s behavior on that of others. It is
adaptive to try to behave in a manner consistent with the way others are behaving.
There is no question that this adaptive value of using the behavior of others as a
guide to how we should behave is one factor that leads us to generally feel
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Unit 11 PDF_Social Psychology.doc
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
uncomfortable behaving in a manner different from that of others. However, in
the Asch experiment, and in many situations in real life, we conform even when
we know that the behavior of others is wrong. In these situations, however,
modeling can also lead us to be a nonconformist. In the Asch task, if even one
other person in the group is occasionally a nonconformist, the amount of
conformity by the one real subject declines dramatically. It is much easier to go
against the group with a partner than when you are all alone.
WEBLINK: Listen to a BBC radio discussion of this research and its implications:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/mindchangers1.shtml
Groupthink (pp. 286–287)
Diffusion of Responsibility (pp. 287–288)
Social loafing
Mob behavior and deindividuation (p. 288)
Bystander apathy (p. 287)
Effects of group size
Diffusing responsibility
Creating pluralistic ignorance
VIDEO LECTURE: Click here to watch the video lecture about social loafing.
VIDEO LECTURE: Click here to watch the video lecture on bystander apathy.
Obedience (pp. 270–272)
Stanley Milgram’s experiment
Note: All students should watch the Milgram obedience video
Obedience, diffusion of responsibility, the effects of roles, modeling:
A real world case study of prisoner abuse
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Unit 11 PDF_Social Psychology.doc
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
Definitions
These are terms that are used frequently in Part 2.
Norm: Rule that regulates human behavior, including social conventions, explicit laws,
and implicit cultural standards.
Role: A given social position that is governed by a set of rules and norms (implicit and
explicit cultural standards) for behavior.
Conformity: Tendency to match one’s behavior to the behavior of others around us.
Diffusion of responsibility: Tendency for members of a group to feel less personally
responsible for their behaviors.
Deindividuation: Loss of awareness of one’s own individuality when part of a large
group or crowd.
Social loafing: Tendency for group members to work less hard on group tasks—to let
others do the work.
Pluralistic ignorance: Using the inaction of others in an emergency situation as a cue
that the emergency is not very serious.
Behavioral trap (entrapment): A situation that pressures people into self-defeating
behaviors.
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Unit 11 PDF_Social Psychology.doc
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
Obedience
One of the most obvious ways in which humans influence each other is by telling others
what to do. Throughout history, evidence has accumulated suggesting that most people
are distressingly willing to obey direct commands by someone perceived to have
legitimate authority over them, even if the commands require them to engage in actions
that ultimately cause harm to others.
The signature case of this phenomenon occurred in Germany in the late 1930s and during
the Second World War, when many ordinary Germans contributed in direct and indirect
ways to the Holocaust. After the war, when these individuals were asked why they did
what they did, a common response was, “I was only doing what I was told to do.” In the
early 1960s, Stanley Milgram, a Yale University social psychologist, designed a series of
studies to examine the factors that affect the extent to which humans are likely to follow
the directions of someone in authority.
VIDEO: Click here to watch the Milgram experiment video.
Factors Affecting Obedience
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Politeness and the lack of a language of protest
Diffusion of responsibility: legitimization of authority
Entrapment: The dollar auction
Modeling
VIDEO LECTURE: Click here for the lecture on factors affecting obedience.
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Unit 11 PDF_Social Psychology.doc
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
Entrapment
Entrapment occurs in situations where some element of the situation leads individuals to
gradually increase their commitment to a course of action that ultimately results in
behaviors they would never have engaged in at the outset of the process. Usually, the
escalation of commitment occurs as a means of justifying the individual’s ongoing
investment of time, money, effort, or emotion.
The essence of an entrapment situation is that, once the individual begins the process,
there is no logical place to stop. In the case of Milgram’s experiment, for example, the
only way to justify giving a shock of 180 volts is to continue the process by giving a
shock of 195 volts. Then, the only way to justify giving a 195 volt shock is to continue by
next giving a 210 volt shock.
A good illustration of entrapment occurs with the dollar auction. The dollar auction
involves auctioning off a real dollar. There should be two people bidding on the dollar.
The odd feature of the rules of this auction, however, is that the person who makes the
final winning bid does not have to pay anything. Instead, that person gets the dollar for
free. It is the person who loses the auction who has to pay the amount of their own final
bid.
For example, if bidder A say $.50 and then bidder B says $.75 and then bidder A decides
not to make a higher bid, bidder B is the winner and receives the dollar for free, while
bidder A has to pay $.50. Once this process begins, both bidders become entrapped in a
situation in which the only way to justify their most recent bid is to make another bid. In
fact, the bidding usually quickly rises above the level of a dollar—and sometimes quite a
bit above that level! Obviously, no one would even, at the outset, agree to bid $1.50 for a
dollar, but once the process begins, there is no logical place to stop even as the amounts
escalate beyond the dollar level.
VIDEO LECTURE: Click here to see the dollar auction in action!
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Unit 11 PDF_Social Psychology.doc
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
Power of the Situation: A Real World Case Study of Prisoner Abuse
On April 29, 2004, the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes II presented detailed information
(including photos) of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners in an Iraq prison by U.S. guards. How
could something like this happen?
As shocking as the events and photos may be, any student of social psychology should
not be surprised. Interviews with the guards point toward the influence of many of the
factors discussed in this section of the course, including obedience, diffusion of
responsibility, and modeling. The influence of social roles and norms is also an obvious
contributing factor.
In order to learn more about this event in the context of research in social psychology,
begin by visiting the CBS news website where you can read about this event, see
pictures, and watch video clips from the news show. Be forewarned—the pictures are
unpleasant and some are for adults only. Then visit the NPR “Talk to the Nation” website
for a discussion of this event with Dr. Philip Zimbardo, the psychologist who conducted
the original Stanford Prison Experiment.
REQUIRED WEBLINK: CBS news report on Iraqi prisoner abuse:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/04/27/60II/main614063.shtml
REQUIRED WEBLINK: Talk of the Nation interview with Dr. Zimbardo:
http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1870756
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