Social Psychology
The study of how a person’s
thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are
influenced by other people.
Social Psychology
• Attitudes
– Cognitive dissonance
– Persuasion
• Social perception
– Impression formation
– Stereotypes
• Social influence
– Conformity
– Obedience
• Social relations
– Aggression
– Altruism
• Relationships
– Friendship
– Love
– Marriage
Attitudes (Opinions)
“Drinking alcohol leads to personal problems.”
• Attitudes (opinions) have a cognitive component
(called a belief), an emotional component (often
called an evaluation), and a behavioral component.
• Learning can shape attitudes.
– Learned associations between objects (an attractive
salesperson and a product) can affect attitudes towards
the product.
– The mere exposure effect.
• Being exposed multiple times to the same stimulus tends to
create a positive attitude toward that object.
• Socialization can shape attitudes.
Some other aspects of attitudes
• Attitudes differ in strength (durability and impact).
• General attitudes do not predict behavior in specific
situations because behavior is determined by so
many factors.
– Specific attitudes are much better predictors of specific
behaviors.
• Explicit vs. implicit attitudes
– Explicit attitudes are those we are aware of.
– Implicit attitudes are those we are not aware of (see the
Implicit Attitudes Test at the beginning of Chapter 1).
Other aspects of attitudes
• Attitudes are often complex, ambivalent or
incoherent.
– I have strong negative feelings and strong positive
feeling about giving blood
– I know Bill Clinton was responsible for good economic
times, but I dislike his womanizing.
• Attitudes are interconnected
– If a person has the attitude that women should stay at
home, that person probably is also against a woman’s
right to choose.
• Attitudes are constructed “on-line” and can differ
from situation to situation.
Attitude change: Cognitive Dissonance
• Cognitive dissonance: a perceived discrepancy
between an attitude and a behavior or between
an attitude and a new piece of information
–
–
You’ve always thought of yourself as someone that cares
about the environment but, when your friends litter, you don’t
say anything about it
This discrepancy causes tension (anxiety, distress) in the
person and leads them to
a) change the attitude
b) change the behavior
c) add some other information that reestablishes the status quo
(rationalize)
d) trivialize the discrepancy
Cognitive Dissonance
• Subjects did a boring task.
• Subjects were then paid
either $1 or $20 to tell the
next subject that the task was
enjoyable.
• Subjects receiving $1 rated
the task as more enjoyable
than those receiving $20.
• Why? They were less able to
justify their action (lying to
the next subject) than those
receiving $20, so they had to
change their attitude about
the task.
Attitude change: Justification of effort
• Justification of effort
– When we join a group, and entrance to the group is
difficult, we tend to like the group more (than if entrance
to the group was easy) because we don’t want to waste
the sacrifice that we have already expended.
• One explanation for the prevalence of hazing rituals
Attitude change: Persuasion
• The central route
– When the audience has the time and motivation to think carefully,
then a well reasoned argument is the most persuasive
• However, the message should be only moderately discrepant from the
audience’s point of view
• The peripheral route
– When the audience does not have the ability or interest to think
carefully, then more superficial cues are the most persuasive
• Attractive and credible speakers are the most persuasive
• Perceived similarity between the speaker and audience is also important
• Use of humor so that the consumer will associate the product with a good
feeling; conditioned emotional response
• Repetition
• Fear arousal (“This is your brain on drugs.”)
– But should include instructions on how to cope with the threat
Social Perception:
Impressions and attributions
• First impressions are very important.
– Nonverbal behavior
• To some extent, facial expression and body language is used in forming first
impressions
• Often, just a few seconds spent observing someone can lead to accurate
judgments of that person
• Making attributions
– People like to think that things happen for a reason and that,
therefore, they can anticipate future events.
• The “just world hypothesis” makes violent mistreatment seem more
understandable (i.e., the victim must have done something to deserve it) and,
therefore, makes the world seem safer and saner.
– In trying to understand someone else’s behavior, we often draw
conclusions about the causes of their behavior.
• Personal attributions vs. situational attributions
Fundamental Attribution Error
The tendency to overestimate the role of personal
factors and underestimate the role of situational factors.
• A simulated quiz
show gave
questioners an
advantage over
contestants
• Observers still
judged questioners
as more
knowledgeable
• Contestants also
rated questioners
higher
The consequences of
impressions and attributions
• Cognitive-confirmation bias
– People interpret information that is ambiguous or that conflicts
with the first impression in a manner that is consistent with (or
confirms) the first impression. See next slide.
• Intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, envious.
• Envious, stubborn, critical, impulsive, industrious, intelligent.
– Change of meaning hypothesis.
» How did you interpret the terms industrious and intelligent in the two lists?
• Behavioral-confirmation bias
– People also alter their behavior towards someone they’ve formed
an impression of, which in turn can lead the target to act in a
manner that is consistent with (or confirms) that impression.
• This is similar to the idea of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Cognitive-Confirmation Bias
• Participants were asked to
evaluate the academic
potential of “Hannah”
– High or low expectations
– Half watched videotape of
Hannah taking achievement
test
• Without viewing tape,
expectations influenced
evaluations
• Viewing the videotape
magnified this bias
Social Categorization
• Social Categorization: The classification of persons into groups based
on their common attributes.
– In general, forming categories for objects (animate and inanimate) that we
encounter in our world is a basic, automatic information processing component
in both human and animal brains/minds.
• When our minds form categories (e.g., tame animals vs. wild animals), the features
that all the objects in those categories have in common are stored with those
categories.
– At first, it takes a tremendous amount of energy and experience to learn the categories
» The categories, the objects in them, and the features of those objects are determined
through experience, trial and error, hypothesis testing, observation, and information
received from other sources.
• After the categories are formed, the features of a particular newly-encountered object
do not have to be rediscovered.
– Instead, all it takes to know the features of the newly-encountered object is to place it in
the correct category and then retrieve all the features that we already know that the
objects in that category have.
• Thus, the formation of categories (or concepts) is a tremendous time-saving and
energy-saving mental processing component and is surely one of the reasons that
relatively complex nervous systems have been evolutionarily favored.
Stereotypes
• Social categorization has some unfortunate side effects.
– Objects are in a particular category because of the similarities they share, not the
differences.
– And, when we place a particular person in a particular category, we retrieve all
the ways in which that person is similar to the other category members.
• Outgroup-Homogeneity Bias
– The tendency to assume that “they” (members of groups other than our own) are all alike.
– That is, we tend to automatically retrieve the stereotype of that group.
• Stereotype
– A belief that associates a group of people (and each of it’s individual members)
with certain traits.
• However, not all people in a particular group are the same and this may lead to
misperception in individual cases.
– Stereotypes (like attributions and impressions) also lead to cognitive- and
behavioral-confirmation biases, similar to self-fulfilling prophecy.
– Stereotype threat
• When the negative stereotype of an individual’s ingroup leads an individual to
perform poorly and thereby confirm the negative stereotype
– Physiological stress affecting prefrontal functioning
– Distracted into thinking about their performance, rather than the task at hand
– Attempts to suppress negative thoughts and emotions sap limited pool of resources
Prejudice and Discrimination
• Prejudice
– Negative feelings toward others based solely on their membership in a certain
group.
• Discrimination
– Behavior directed against persons because of their affiliation with a social group
• Outgroup-Homogeneity Bias
– The tendency to assume that “they” (members of groups other than our own) are
all alike.
• Ingroup Favoritism
– The tendency to discriminate in favor of ingroups over outgroups.
• Implicit attitudes can affect basic perceptual processes
– When a black face (rather than a white face) is presented prior to the
classification of an object as a tool or a weapon, white participants more often
incorrectly classify a tool as a weapon.
– When a weapon (rather than a tool) is presented prior to faces, white participants
spend more time processing black faces than white faces.
Reducing the influence of stereotypes
• Computerized training can eliminate racial bias in the
shooting of blacks in virtual reality experiments
• Even though categorizing and stereotyping occurs
automatically, we can override these activated concepts
through
– Education
– Awareness
– Self-regulation
• Cooperation between groups on a shared, superordinate goal
can reduce tensions between groups
– Sherif’s Robber’s Cave experiment
• Jigsaw classrooms
Why do we experience prejudice and
discriminate against outgroups?
• Social identity theory
– We tend to have not only a personal identity but also a
social identity
– How the social identity is viewed affects our self esteem
• Negative social identities decrease self-esteem
• Positive social identities increase self-esteem
– Social self-esteem can be increased in two different ways
• Directly, as when your ingroup succeeds
• Indirectly, as when an outgroup fails
– Or when you make it look bad or make it fail
– When this happens, by comparison, your ingroup looks good
– See next slide
Social Identity Theory
• Personal Identity and Social Identity both
contribute to self esteem.
• Viewing and treating ingroups more favorably
than outgroups can boost self-image.
Social influence
• Group processes
– The changes that take place in individual behavior
when those individuals are part of a group
• Conformity
– The tendency for people to bring their behavior in line
with social (group) norms
Group processes:
Social Facilitation in Individual Tasks
Group Processes:
Social Loafing in Group Tasks
• People tend to exert
less effort in a group
task where everyone’s
performance is pooled
– The more people in the
group, the more each
individual’s amount of
effort decreases
Deindividuation
• Deindividuation
– People feel less accountable and have less self-awareness
when they are in large groups
• Being less self-aware means losing one’s own sense of values
and internal standards of conduct
• When self-awareness disappears, so do the restraints on one’s
behavior that go along with those standards
• As a result, deindividuated people (in a crowd) do things that
they would not normally do when alone
– Rioting by sports fans
– Looting after disasters
– Gambling in crowded casinos
Groupthink
• A group may overemphasize unity
– Members may suppress
their own doubts
– Open dissent is stifled
by other group members
• Can lead to lowerquality decisions by the
group
Social Norms
• The implicit or explicit rules a group has for the
acceptable behaviors, values, and beliefs of its
members
– Values: What is the relevance of something to one’s
goals?
– Beliefs: Cognitive component of an attitude; the “fact”
w/o regard to how one feels about it
• Social norms are helpful because people know what
to expect
Conformity
The Chameleon Effect
• Participants
worked with a
“partner” who was
really one of the
experimenters
• Hidden cameras
recorded behavior
• Participants
mimicked their
partner without
realizing it
Informational influence
• Subjects in dark room
were shown a light
– While alone
(Pregroup), each
estimated how far the
light moved
– In three sessions,
estimated light
movement in a group
• Subjects’ estimates
converged on a
common value
– The group established
its norm
Normative influence
• Subjects in a group were asked to match line
lengths. Subjects were second-last to pick.
• In the first couple of trials, confederates in the group
picked the right line.
• On the 3rd trial, confederates picked the wrong line.
• 37% of the subjects went along with the wrong
answer.
Sample
A B C
Group Size and Conformity
• Conformity
increases with
group size up to
about 4-7 people
– Adding additional
persons has little
effect
• One dissenter can
reduce conformity
by up to 80 percent
Compliance
• Compliance
– The act of doing something that is requested by another
person.
– Often we comply automatically, to avoid conflict
• Strategies to get others to comply
–
–
–
–
Foot-in-the-door technique
Door in the face
Low balling
Bait and switch
Obedience
• Compliance to the orders of authority
• Many scary historical examples
– Jewish Holocaust
– My Lai, Vietnam (1968)
• Three platoons of American soldiers massacred
several hundred unarmed civilians after being ordered
to do so by their CO, Lt. William Calley
– Reverend Jim Jones (1978)
• 900 Americans in the People’s Temple cult (in
Jonestown, Guyana) drank Kool-Aid laced with
cyanide after being ordered to do so by Jones
Milgram’s (1963) study of obedience
• Subject’s task is to test a learner’s memory and
administer a shock whenever the learner makes a
mistake.
• The shock increases by 15 volts every time the
learner makes an error, to a maximum of 450 volts.
– At 75 volts, the learner grunts in pain
– At 120 volts, the learner shouts
– At 150 volts, the learner complains vehemently about his
heart and demands to be released.
– At 330 volts, the learner falls silent
What do you predict?
• How many subjects will apply the maximum
voltage?
• Results: 26 of 40 men (65%) administered the
maximum 450 volt shock.
• The same result was obtained with women.
• If not ordered, most subjects stopped at 75 volts.
• Conclusion: The men in the original experiment
acted out of obedience, not cruelty.
What variables reduced the level
of obedience Milgram observed?
• Reductions in the “prestige” or “presence” of
the authority figure.
• Closing the physical gap between the subject
and the learner.
• The experimenter does not assume
responsibility.
• The increments in voltage are not as gradual.
Social Relations
• Aggression
– Verbal or physical behavior aimed at harming another
person or living being
• In the USA, 24,000 people are murdered every year
• Altruism
– Helping behavior that is motivated primarily by a desire
to benefit others, not oneself
• Study of altruism has been motivated by trying to understand
why people don’t help
The Aggression Instinct?
• Freud, Lorenz: An instinctual drive that builds over time if
not discharged
– War
– Pleasure in violence
• Aggressive sex in movies
• People are attracted to boxing matches and hockey games
– Sublimation
• People channel their violent urges into socially acceptable outlets
• If so, there should be some catharsis (a reduction in the need
to be aggressive) when aggression is released
– But the evidence does not support this hypothesis
• Bottom line: Aggression is no longer thought of as
instinctual
Biological Basis of Aggression
• If not instinctual, how do we characterize aggression?
• Aggression
– An evolutionarily determined inborn (innate) behavioral potential
that is activated by certain environmental events (especially those
that threaten reproductive success?).
• Across all species and human cultures, males are more
aggressive than females.
• Aggression is correlated with testosterone levels.
• Hypothalamus and amygdala play a clear role in aggression.
• Low levels of serotonin are associated with increased
aggression
Environmental influences on aggression
• Berkowitz model
– Any situation that induces negative affect can trigger physical
aggression
• Aversive stimulation sparks aggression
• Frustration-aggression hypothesis
– When an individual is blocked from achieving a goal, he/she may become
aggressive.
• Temperature and violence are positively correlated
• Population density and violence are positively correlated
• Culture of honor
– Men from Southern US are more likely to respond with violence to
insults
• Presence of weapons
– The presence of weapons activates (“primes”) concepts related to
aggression and/or violence
• Activated concepts influence our behavior by inspiring courses of action that
we might not otherwise have thought of
Media Violence and Aggression I
• Two types of studies
– Experimental
• Randomly assign subjects either to watch violent TV
or to watch nonviolent TV
• Short-term increases in aggression for the violent TV
group are almost always reported
Media Violence and Aggression II
• Correlational
– What is the relationship between amount of violent TV
watched and amount of violent behavior used to solve
interpersonal conflicts?
– Positive correlation does not demonstrate causation
• Individuals already high in aggression like violent TV
• Low SES causes both
– Eron et al (1972) longitudinal study
• 800 8-9 year olds show positive correlation
• Positive correlation also obtained between the amount of
violent TV these children watched and peer ratings of
aggression in these individuals when they were 19
• This was true even when the initial level of aggression was
held constant (controlled for)
Altruism
• Altruism: Helping behavior that is motivated
primarily by a desire to benefit others, not
oneself.
• Is there really something like pure altruism or is
all helping somewhat selfishly motivated?
Altruism: Two Pathways to Helping
• People have two reactions to someone in need:
– Personal distress (guilt, anxiety, and discomfort)
– Empathy (sympathy and compassion for the person)
• Helping can satisfy both selfish and noble motives
Evolutionary Psychology
• Natural selection
– Individuals, whose inherited characteristics are adapted
to their environment, survive and reproduce while others
die.
• As a result, aspects of our behavioral and mental
lives must have helped individuals survive and
reproduce in the past
– Or are by-products of other aspects that have helped
individuals survive and reproduce
• Selfish gene
– Reproductive strategies and territorial aggression
Evolutionary Psychology and Altruism
• But why do we help others? Why does altruism exist?
• Inclusive fitness
– One’s genes are preserved through your own children
– One’s genes are also preserved through the offspring of genetic
relatives
• Kinship selection
– Helping behavior (altruism) came about because it increases the
survival of genetic relatives
– Organisms are more apt to survive if their parents (or relatives)
help them survive. Since they are more likely to have the genes
that their parents (or relatives) have, this “helping kin
characteristic” will be retained and they too will help their own
offspring survive.
Certainty of genetic relatedness
Dashed lines represent relative uncertainty
Solid lines represent certainty
Paternity uncertainty refers to the fact that men are more
uncertain than women that “their” offspring are really
their’s
DeKay (1998)
• Took the ideas of
– inclusive fitness (we share genes with our relatives)
– kinship selection (we help those with whom we share
genes) and
– paternity uncertainty (men are less certain about their
genetic relation to offspring than are women)
• And made a prediction
– The most uncertain grandparent (father’s father) should
help their grandchildren the least and the most certain
grandparent (mother’s mother) should help their
grandparent the most
• The results are on the next slide
Rankings of grandparent investment
The Bystander Effect
• Kitty Genovese
– In 1964, a young New York
woman was attacked for ½ hr,
stabbed, raped, and murdered
in the middle of the night
while 38 neighbors watched,
but did nothing
• In experiments, the more
potential helpers there are,
the less likely that a
participant in the experiment
– who is one of the potential
helpers – would actually help
• Diffusion of responsibility
– How to disrupt this?
A Model of Bystander Intervention
Notice, at each of the steps, that a larger number of people
could make someone more likely to decide not to help.
Relationships: Friendship
• What determines who you become friends with?
– Proximity
– Similarity
– Having desirable personal characteristics
• And not having undesirable personal characteristics
– Physical attractiveness
• The halo effect (what is beautiful is good)
– The assumption that, because someone is physically attractive, they
have other positive (especially social) qualities.
• Symmetrical faces are attractive
• Averaged faces are attractive
Romantic Relationships
• In Robert Sternberg’s
triangular theory of love,
there are three
independent dimensions
that make up romantic
relationships
– Intimacy
– Passion
– Commitment
• As a result, there a seven
different forms of love
– These are formed when a
particular dimension is
taken alone or is taken in
combination with one or
more of the other
dimensions
Sternberg’s Seven Forms of Love
• This table
shows the
same seven
forms of
love (plus
nonlove)
that are
displayed in
the triangle
on the
preceding
slide
Intimacy
Passion
Commitment
Nonlove
Liking or friendship
x
Infatuation or limerence
x
Empty love
x
Romantic love
x
Companionate love
x
Fatuous love
Consummate love
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
Love is fragile
• Over half of all marriages end in divorce and only ¼ are
identified as happy
– Passionate love fades and often is not replaced by the other
dimensions of a loving relationship
– Infidelity
• 25% of husbands and 10% of wives
– Poor strategies for dealing with conflict
•
•
•
•
•
Overly critical
Holding partner in contempt
Being defensive
Mental withdrawal
Attributional style
– Unhappy couples tend to make person attributions for “bad” behavior or
outcomes
– Happy couples tend to make situational attributions
Making Marriage Last
• Agreeing on the frequency of sex
• Resolving conflict in a positive way
– Compromise
– Demonstrate mutual respect
– Fights do not devolve into name calling, contempt, or one partner
fleeing the conflict
• There should be five times more positive interactions than
negative interactions
–
–
–
–
–
–
Show interest.
Be affectionate.
Show you care.
Spend quality time.
Maintain loyalty and fidelity.
Handle conflict.