Social Psychology
Chapter 13
Social Psychology
• Social psychology is the scientific study of
how the individual is influenced by the
thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of other
people
Behaviour in Social and
Cultural Context
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Roles and rules
Social influences on beliefs
Individuals in groups
Group conflict and prejudice
Roles and Rules
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Defining norms and roles
The obedience study (Milgram)
The prison study (Zimbardo)
The power of roles
Defining Roles and Rules
• Norms
– Rules about how we are supposed to act
– Includes social conventions, explicit laws, and implicit
cultural standards.
• Roles
– Positions in society that are governed by norms about
how people in those positions should behave.
• Culture
– Program of shared rules for behaviour in a community
or society, and
– A set of values, beliefs and attitudes shared by most
members of that community.
Obedience
• Obedience is compliance with the orders
of another person or group
• Classic studies of obedience were
performed by Stanley Milgram
• Milgram told participants they would be
participating in a study of the effects of
punishment on learning
Obedience Examples
• Jonestown Massacre
• Nazi Persecution of Jews
• My Lai Massacre
Obedience
• Milgram’s 1936 classic study
• Would people obey an authority and
violate own ethical standards?
• Told experiment was about learning &
instructed to shock another participant
(confederate) when an error was made
Milgram’s Study
• Participants assigned role of “teacher”
• Confederate assigned role of “learner”
• “Teacher” required to shock “learner” for
each mistake made on task
• Shocks increased by 15v after each
mistake
Obedience abroad
• Other researchers found that
obedience to authority is not specific
to Western culture, and that it applies
to men and women, and younger and
older individuals
Conclusions
• Obedience function of situation, not
personality: ZIMBARDO
• Nature of the relationship to authority
influences obedience
How realistic is this?
• Nurse study (Hofling et al. (1966))
• Nurses were telephoned by a doctor they
didn't know.
• They were ordered to administer a
nonprescribed drug in double the
maximum dosage to a patient.
• 22 nurses were called.
• Results?
Why Do People Conform?
• The social conformity approach states that
people conform to avoid the stigma of
being wrong or deviant
• Attribution also explains conformity
• When a person can identify causes for
group behaviour they disagree with,
conformity decreases
Reactance Theory
• According to Jack Brehm, reactance
arises when people feel their freedom is
being restricted, they are motivated to
reestablish it
• Reactance theory focuses on how
people try to re-establish their feeling of
free choice
The Prison Study - Zimbardo
• Subjects were physically and mentally
healthy young men who volunteered to
participate for money.
• Randomly assigned to be prisoners or
guards.
• Given no further behavioral instructions.
• Predictions?
Prison Study
• Those assigned the role of prisoner
became distressed, helpless, and panicky.
They begged to be let out of study.
• Those assigned the roles of guards
became either nice, “tough but fair,” or
tyrannical (1/3).
• Study had to be ended after 6 days.
Conclusion
• Behavior depends partly on roles
• Roles can overrule personality and values
The Power of Roles
• Why do people obey an authority figure,
especially when it violates their interest or
values?
Social Influences on Beliefs
• Defining social cognition
• Attributions
• Attitudes
Social Cognition
• How the social environment influences
thought, memory, perception, and other
cognitive processes.
• How people’s perceptions of themselves
and others affect relationships, thoughts,
beliefs and values.
Inferring the Causes of Behaviour:
Attribution
• Attribution is the process by which a
person infers other people’s motives or
intentions
• Attribution must take into account
internal as well as external causes of
behaviour
Why do people do what they do?
• Attribution Theory
– Situational – cause is something in
situation
– Dispositional – cause is something in
person (trait or motive)
Two rules
• Discounting rule
– Less likely to make dispositional attribution if
behavior is required, demanded, or expected
in the situation.
• Augmentation rule
– More likely to make dispositional attribution if
the behavior is the opposite of what is
expected, required, or demanded in the
situation
Why People Make Attributions
• People use attributions to maintain a
sense of control over their environment
• Knowledge about the causes of events
helps predict and control similar events
in the future
Errors in Attribution
• Errors or bias can occur in making
attributions about the behaviour of
others
• Sometimes errors occur because
people use mental shortcuts that are not
accurate
Fundamental Attribution Error
• Occurs when explaining the behavior of
others
• Tendency to overestimate dispositional
factors & underestimate situational factors
(assume people’s behavior is caused by
their internal dispositions and situational
influences are underestimated)
• More common in Western nations
The Actor-Observer Effect
• The actor-observer effect is the
tendency to attribute the behaviour of
others to internal causes
• One’s own behaviour is attributed to
situational causes
Attributions
• Self-serving bias
– Occurs when explaining own behavior (and
in-group’s)
– Luck vs skill
– Tendency to take credit for one’s good actions
and attribute mistakes to situation.
– Affected by culture
Just World Hypothesis
• The need to believe that the world is fair
and that justice is served
• Bad people are punished and good people
rewarded
• People get what they deserve
• Bad outcomes are ‘asked for’
• Can lead to blaming the victim
Attitudes
• Attitudes are feelings and beliefs about
other people, ideas, or objects that are
based on a person’s past experiences,
and shape future behaviour
Dimensions of Attitudes
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The cognitive dimension of an attitude consists
of thoughts and beliefs
The emotional dimension of an attitude
involves evaluate feelings (such as like or
dislike)
The behavioural dimension of an attitude
involves how beliefs and evaluations are
demonstrated
Attitudes consist of 3
components:
• 1. Affectively based Attitudes:
– They are based more on people's feelings and values
than on their beliefs.
– They do not result from rational examination of the
issues (i.e., not governed by logic).
– They can result from the conditioning process.
• 2.Cognitively based Attitudes:
– They are based primarily on people's beliefs.
• 3. Behaviorally based Attitudes:
– They are based on self-perception of one's own
behavior when the initial attitude is weak or ambiguous.
Attitudes
• Attitudes are tendencies to react in a
characteristically positive or negative
fashion toward targets.
– Explicit
• We are aware of them, they shape
conscious decisions
– Implicit
• We are unaware of them, they may
influence our behaviour in ways we do not
recognize.
Are Attitudes Good Predictors of
Behavior?
• LaPiere (1934)
• Studied prejudicial attitudes & behavior
towards Chinese
• Visited 184 restaurants with Chinese
couple
• Surveyed same restaurants
• Behavior did not match attitudes
Attitudes & Behavior
• Attitudes & behavior influence each other
• Often attitudes dispose people to behave
in certain ways
• Attitudes can change to reduce cognitive
dissonance and by persuasive techniques.
Attitudes are Better Predictors
If…
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Attitude is strong
Few competing influences
High personal importance
Forms part of self-concept
Specific to situation
Accessible: how easily the attitude comes to
mind.
• Importance of / Level of knowledge about object
• How extreme the attitude about object.
Factors Influencing Attitude
Change
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Change in social environment
Social influence
Change in behaviors
Due to a need for consistency
Cognitive Dissonance
• Cognitive dissonance is a state of mental discomfort that
arises from a discrepancy between two or more of a
person’s beliefs, or between beliefs and behaviour
• Leon Festinger believed that people try to reduce
cognitive dissonance by changing one’s attitudes or
behaviours
• Cognitive Dissonance
– A state of tension that occurs when a person simultaneously holds
two cognitions that are psychologically inconsistent,
– OR
– When a person’s belief is incongruent with his or her behavior
Individuals in Groups
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Conformity
Groupthink
The anonymous crowd
Disobedience and dissent
Groups: Sharing Common Goals
• A group is two or more people working
with a common purpose, characteristics,
or interests
Social Influence
• Social influence refers to the ways
people alter the attitudes or behaviours
of others
Social Influence
 Conformity = yielding to real or imagined
social pressure
• When a person changes her or his
attitudes or behaviours so they are
consistent with those of other people or
norms, the person is exhibiting conformity
 Examples?
 Why do people conform?
Conformity – Asch, 1951
• Studied conformity in visual perception
• Asch found that people in a group adopt its standards
• Participants in groups of 7-9 were asked to match
line lengths.
• Only one group member, the “naïve” participant, was
really unaware of the purpose of the study
• After a few trials, confederates in the group began to
pick the wrong line.
• How does the participant respond? Would he agree
with an obviously wrong answer?
Compliance
• Were participants pretending to change or did
they really change their beliefs?
Compliance = yielding to social pressure publicly,
but private beliefs do not change
• WHY do people conform in this situation?
– Normative influence: We conform to others because
we want to be liked and accepted by them. This is
more realistic than you think!
Who is best liked in a group?
• Schachter (1951). The Johnny Rocco Study
• Students participated in groups concerning how
to best treat a young juvenile delinquent (Johnny
Rocco)
• Three of the students were confederates who
played the role of:
– the modal member (agreed w/ group majority)
– the slider (initially disagreed, then changed to agree)
– the deviate (disagreed w/ group majority)
Group Polarization
• The risky shift is when people in groups may be
more willing to take chances they would not take
if making decisions alone
• Exaggerations in group members’ attitudes or
behaviours may also occur after a discussion
• Shifts in attitudes or behaviours are called group
polarization
Group Polarization
• One explanation says this occurs because
people initially view themselves as more
extreme than other group members
• When people discover they are similar to
the other members, they shift and become
more extreme
• Changes in the individual are called the
choice shift
Group Polarization
• The persuasive argument explanation is
a different view
• This says people’s attitudes become
polarized when they hear others in the
group express similar attitudes
Group Polarization
• Another view is called diffusion of responsibility
• This says individual group members feel they
cannot be held responsible for the group’s
actions
• This feeling may allow members to make more
extreme decisions than they would individually
Group Polarization
• Social comparison may also play a
role in group polarization
• This says that people compare their
views to those they respect
Groupthink
• In close-knit groups, the tendency for all
members to think alike and suppress
disagreement for the sake of harmony.
• Occurs when group’s need for total
agreement overwhelms need to make
wisest decision.
• Can result in disastrous decisions
Groupthink
• Symptoms include:
– Illusion of invulnerability
– Self-censorship
– Pressure on dissenters to conform
– Illusion of unanimity
• Counteracted by:
– Creating conditions rewarding dissent
– Basing decision on majority rule
The Bystander Effect
• The bystander effect is that as the
number of people present at an
emergency increases, people often
watch, but do not help
• Latané and Darley found that before
deciding to help, people must decide if
there is actually an emergency
Helping model…
• Whose responsibility is it to act?
– More people, feel less responsible (report
would do the same if alone…)
– What is it called?
– Social loafing?
– Normative responding?
– Deindividuation?
• Can the person do anything to act?
• Is what they are doing helping?
Helping model
• Does the person notice the other needs
help?
– More people around= more noise
• Is it an emergency?
– If people know each other, they are less likely
to believe it is an emergency
• Rely on others to interpret situation
– Conformity and pluralistic ignorance
The Bystander Effect
• People may also experience diffusion of
responsibility (feeling they cannot be held
responsible for not helping).
• A form of social loafing
Unrestrained Group Behaviour
• In groups, normally thoughtful people can
exhibit irrational behaviour, like mob
violence
• The process of loss of self-awareness and
distinctive personality in a group is called
deindividuation
Deindividuation
• In groups or crowds, the loss of awareness
of one’s own individuality.
• Increases willingness to do harm, cheat,
break the law
• Eliminates gender differences in
aggressiveness
• Can increase friendliness and selfdisclosure
• Depends on norms of specific situation
Assessing the World Using
Nonverbal Communication
• Impression formation often begins with
nonverbal communication, the
communication of information by physical
cues or actions, facial expressions, body
language, and eye contact
Group Identity: Us versus
Them
• Social Identity
– The part of a person’s self-concept that is based
on identification with a nation, culture, or group or
with gender or other roles in society.
– Give us place and position in world
– Create us versus them categories
• Us versus them social identities are
strengthened when groups compete with one
another.
– Robber’s Cave studies
Competition
• Strengthened us versus them social identities
• Can have positive & negative results
– Can lead to better services, products,
inventions
– Can decrease motivation, increase insecurity
& anxiety, anger and frustration, jealously and
hostility
– Interdependence in reaching cooperative
goals can reduce competitiveness and
hostility
Robbers’ Cave Experiment
• Boys were randomly separated into two
groups
– “Rattlers” and “Eagles”
• Competitions fostered hostility between
the groups.
• Experimenters contrived situations
requiring cooperation for success.
• Cross-group friendships increased.
Stereotypes
• Stereotypes are fixed, overly simple, often false ideas
about the traits, attitudes, and behaviours of a group’s
members (textbook definition)
• Cognitive schemas of a group, in which a person
believes that all members of the group share a
common trait or traits (positive, negative, or neutral).
• Allow us to quickly process new information and
retrieve memories.
• Distort reality in 3 ways.
– Exaggerate differences between groups.
– Produce selective perception.
– Underestimate differences between groups.
Stereotype Threat
• People are highly concerned about how they
appear to others
• When minority group members concentrate
on scholastic tasks, they worry about
confirming negative stereotypes of their group
• Stereotype threat is concern with confirming
stereotypes may drag down their performance
Prejudice
• The origins of prejudice
• Defining and measuring prejudice
• Reducing prejudice and conflict
Prejudice
• A negative attitude toward the members of
some groups, based solely on their
membership in that group
• Resists rational argument & evidence
• Resistant to change
Origins of Prejudice
• Psychological functions
– inflate own self worth by disliking groups seen as
inferior.
– Scapegoating
• Social and cultural functions
– By disliking others we feel closer to others who are
like us. (Ethnocentrism)
– Groupthink, pressures to conform
• Economic functions
– Legitimizes unequal economic treatment.
Defining and Measuring Prejudice
• Not all people are prejudiced in the same way.
• People know they shouldn’t be prejudiced so
measures of prejudice have declined.
• Distinguishing between explicit and implicit
prejudice.
• Measuring implicit prejudice.
– Measures of symbolic racism.
– Measures of behaviours rather than attitudes.
– Measures of unconscious associations with a target
group.
Experiencing Prejudice
• Research at McGill studied women or
members of minority ethnic groups
• Told to take a test and performance
graded by a group of judges.
• Told judges had history of
discriminating against members of
participant’s group at rate of 100%,
75%, 50%, 25% or 0%
• Who did participants blame for failing
the test?
Ways to Reduce Prejudice
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Social Learning
Increased intergroup contact
Extended contact hypothesis
Have groups work on superordinate, cooperative
goals
• Focus on similarities between in-group & nonthreatening out-group
• Re-categorization
• Focus on others’ specific traits & outcomes
Reducing Prejudice and Conflict
• Groups must have equal legal status,
economic opportunities, and power.
• Authorities and community institutions must
endorse egalitarian norms and provide
moral support and legitimacy for both
sides.
• Both sides must have opportunities to work
and socialize together, formally and
informally.
• Both sides must cooperate, working
together for a common goal.
Reducing Prejudice
• Both sides must cooperate together,
working towards a common goal
• Both sides must believe that they have the
moral, legal and economic support of
authorities
• Both sides must have the opportunity to
work and socialize together formally and
informally