Social Psychology
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Created by David Silverman
Attitude Formation and Change
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One main focus of social psychology is attitude formation and change.
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An attitude is a set of beliefs and feelings.
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The entire field of advertising is devoted to studying people’s attitudes.
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The central route to persuasion involves a persuasion method that focuses on the
facts of the message a person is receiving.
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The mere exposure effect states that the more someone is exposed to something, the
more that person will come to like it.
If a television ad shows scientific facts to support its product, it is using the central route
to persuasion.
The peripheral route involves other aspects of the message to persuade.
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The attractiveness of the presenter, background music, or anything else not related to the
actual content of the message.
Attitude and Behavior
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Knowing a person’s attitude does not always predict their behavior.
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Richard LaPiere- Conducted a study in 1934 concerning racial discrimination.
During the 1930’s, Asians were highly discriminated against in the United States.
Richard traveled to hotels and restaurants with an Asian couple to study how they
were treated. Surprisingly, there was only one instance of the couple being
treated poorly due to race. He then sent a follow up survey to the same places,
and 90% said they would not serve Asians in their responses.
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Cognitive dissonance theory is based on the idea that people are motivated to
have consistent attitudes and behaviors.
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When they do not, they experience mental tension or disturbances.
Compliance Strategies
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The foot-in-the-door phenomenon suggests that if you can first get people to
agree to a small request, they will be more likely to agree another request
that is much larger.
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The door-in-the-face strategy argues that if people refuse a large request,
they are more likely to agree to a smaller request.
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Once your friend agrees to let you borrow $5, he or she will be more likely to give
you more money in the future.
After refusing to lend you $100, your friend might feel bad so instead she lends you
$20.
Another common strategy involves using norms of reciprocity.
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People seem to think that when someone does something nice for them, they
should do something nice in return.
Attribution Theory
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Attribution theory tries to explain how people determine the cause of what
they observe.
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If your friend Davey told you he got a perfect score on his math test:
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you might think that Davey is just very good at math. In that case, you have made
a dispositional or person attribution.
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If you conclude that Davey has always been a math whiz, you have made a person
attribution, and a stable attribution (or a person-stable attribution).
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if you think that Davey studied a lot for this one test you have made a personunstable attribution.
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if you feel that Ms. Mahoney (Davey’s math teacher) is an easy teacher, you have
made a situation-stable attribution.
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If you think that Ms. Mahoney is a tough teacher who gave one easy test, you have
made a situation-unstable attribution.
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Harold Kelley proposed a theory that explains the kind of attributions people
make based on three factors:
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Consistency means how similarly a person acts in the same situation over time.
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Distinctiveness refers to how similar this situation is to other situations in which
we have watched Charley.
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Consensus means to factor in how others in the same situation have responded.
Self-fulfilling prophecy- the idea that the expectations we have about others
can influence the way others behave.
Attributional Biases
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When people make errors they often make the same type of errors.
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When looking at the behavior of others, people tend to overestimate the
importance of dispositional factors (what our personalities are genetically
predisposed to be like) and underestimate the role of situational factors.
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This tendency is known as the fundamental attribution error.
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You might be having a bad day when you meet someone because you got in a fight with
your parents. The person you are meeting is likely to think you’re an unfriendly person,
even if this is not the case.
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Cross-cultural psychologists have argued that the fundamental attribution
error is less likely to occur in collectivist cultures than in individualistic
cultures.
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In an individualistic culture, (America) the importance and uniqueness of the
individual is stressed.
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In more collectivist cultures, (Japanese, North Korea) a person’s link to various
groups is stressed (family, companies).
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Research suggests that people in collectivist cultures are less likely to commit the
fundamental attribution error.
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The tendency for people to overestimate the number of people who agree
with them is called the false-consensus effect.
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Self-serving bias is the tendency to take more credit for good outcomes than
for bad ones.
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If Jamal dislikes horror movies, he probably thinks that most other people share his
aversion.
A basketball coach would be more likely to emphasize her or his role in the team’s
championship win than in their first-round tournament loss.
Research has found that people tend to think that bad things happen to bad
people (you deserve it!).
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People are unemployed because they are lazy.
Stereotypes, Prejudice, and
Discrimination
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The ideas we formulate about members of different groups, and how we interact with members of
these groups are called Stereotypes.
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Stereotypes can be either negative or positive and can be applied to virtually any group of people
Prejudice is an undeserved (mostly negative) attitude toward a group of people.
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Stereotyping can lead to prejudice when stereotypes (those rude New Yorkers) are applied to all members of a
group (she is from New York, therefore she must be rude).
While prejudice is an attitude, discrimination involves an action.
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If I dislike New Yorkers, I am prejudiced, but if I refuse to hire New Yorkers to work in my company, I am
discriminating.
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Ethnocentrism is the belief that your own culture is superior to others, which is a specific kind of
prejudice.
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People become so used to their own cultures that they see their culture as “normal” and use their
own culture to compare and judge other cultures. Many people look down on other cultures that
don’t dress the same, eat the same foods, or worship the same God the same way that they do.
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People tend to see members of their own group (known as the in-group) as
more diverse than members of other groups (out-groups).
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This is often referred to as out-group homogeneity. For example, growing up in
Detroit, I know that while some people from Detroit are dangerous, most are not.
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While we all have experience with members of our own groups, we aren’t as
familiar with other groups and tend to view them as more similar.
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In addition, research has shown a preference for members of one’s own group (ingroup bias). In-group bias is thought to originate from people’s belief that they
themselves are good people.
The Origin of Stereotypes and Prejudice
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Some psychologists have suggested that people naturally magnify differences
between their own group and others as way to categorize.
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By taking into account the in-group bias, this idea suggests that people cannot
avoid forming stereotypes.
Social learning theorists suggest that stereotypes and prejudice are frequently
learned through modeling.
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Children raised by parents who express prejudices may be more likely to share
those prejudices themselves. On the other hand, this theory suggests that
prejudices could be unlearned by being surrounded by different models.
Combating Prejudice
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One theory about how to reduce prejudice is known as the contact theory.
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The contact theory states that contact between hostile groups will reduce the tensions
between them. However, this can only be accomplished if the groups are made to work
towards a goal that benefits all groups.
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Such a goal is called a superordinate goal.
Muzafer Sherif’s (1966) conducted a series of experiments at a summer camp
(also known as the Robbers Cave study). He first divided the campers into two
groups and arranged for them to compete in a series of activities. This
competition created negative feelings between the groups. Once prejudices had
been established, Sherif staged several camp emergencies that required the
groups to cooperate.
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The superordinate goal of solving the crises greatly improved relations between the
groups. A number of educational researchers have attempted to use the contact theory
to reduce prejudices between members of different groups in school.
Aggression and Antisocial Behavior
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Instrumental aggression is when an aggressive act is intended to secure a
particular end.
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If Davina wants to hold the doll that Carol is holding and she kicks her and grabs the doll.
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Hostile aggression has no such clear purpose. If Davina is just angry or upset and
then kicks Carol, her aggression is hostile aggression.
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Freud linked aggression to Thanatos, the death instinct.
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Sociobiologists suggest that the expression of aggression is adaptive in certain
situations.
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frustration-aggression hypothesis suggests that the feeling of frustration makes
aggression more likely.
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Another common theory is that the exposure to aggressive models makes people
aggressive
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This research was conducted by Bandura, Ross, and Ross’s (1963) classic Bobo doll
experiment
Prosocial Behavior
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While social psychologists have devoted a lot of time and effort to studying
antisocial behavior, they have also studied factors that make people more
likely to help one another.
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This helping behavior is termed prosocial behavior.
Most of the research in this area has focused on bystander intervention
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The conditions under which people nearby are more and less likely to help someone in
trouble.
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The vicious murder of Kitty Genovese in New York was committed within view of at
least 38 witnesses, and none of the bystanders intervened.
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led John Darley and Bibb Latane to explore how people decided whether or not to help
others in distress. Counterintuitively, the larger the number of people who witness an
emergency situation, the less likely any one is to intervene. This finding is known as the
bystander effect.
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One explanation for this phenomenon is called diffusion of responsibility.
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The larger the group of people who witness a problem, the less responsible any one
person feels to help. People tend to assume that someone else will take action so they
don’t need to.
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Another factor contributing to the bystander effect is known as pluralistic ignorance.
People seem to decide what determines appropriate behavior in a situation by looking to
others. So if no one in a classroom seems worried by the black smoke coming through
the vent, each person decides that taking no action is the best way to handle each
situation.
Attraction
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Social psychologists also study what factors increase the likelihood people will
get along. Research shows that we like others who:
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Are similar to us in terms of background, attitude, and interests.
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We are around the most (closeness in proximity)
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Opposites don’t attract (according to research).
Mere exposure effect- the more you are around someone the more you’ll like them
Who returns our positive feelings.
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Talking a lot to a person helps you identify similarities, which makes you feel closer to
that person.
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The more someone likes you the more you will like them (most of you anyway) because
nobody likes being rejected.
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Physical attraction is always a plus.
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Research has shown that “good looking people” get additional benefits:
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Perceived as having positive attributes
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Better personalities
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Greater job competence
Love is difficult to explain, although research seems to show the emotion of
“love” is different than “like”
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self-discloses occurs in most studies involving liking and loving. This is when one
shares a piece of personal information with another. Close relationships with
friends and lovers are often built through the process of self-disclosure
The Influence of Others on Behavior
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A major area of research in social psychology is how one person’s behavior
can be affected by another’s actions, or even by another person’s presence.
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A number of studies have proved that people perform tasks better in front of an
audience than they do when they are alone.
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This is known as social facilitation.
However, other studies found that if what was being observed was a difficult task
(rather than an easy well-practiced skill), being watched by others actually hurt
performance
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This is known as social impairment.
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Conformity has been an area of much research as well. Conformity is the
tendency of people to go along with the views or actions of others.
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“Solomon Asch (1951) conducted one of the most interesting conformity
experiments. He brought participants into a room of confederates and asked them
to make a series of simple perceptual judgments. Asch showed the participants
three vertical lines of varying sizes and asked them to indicate which one was the
same length as a different target line. All members of the group gave their answers
aloud, and the participant was always the last person to speak. All of the trials had
a clear, correct answer. However, on some of them, all of the confederates gave
the same, obviously incorrect judgment. Asch was interested in what the
participants would do. Would they conform to a judgment they knew to be wrong
or would they differ from the group? Asch found that in approximately one-third of
the cases when the confederates gave an incorrect answer, the participants
conformed. Furthermore, approximately 70 percent of the participants conformed
on at least one of the trials. “
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Most studies have suggested that conformity is most likely to occur when a
group’s opinion is unanimous.
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However, studies have shown that groups larger than three do not significantly
increase the tendency to conform.
While conformity involves following a group without being explicitly told to do
so, obedience studies focus on an individuals willingness to do what another
asks them to do.
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Stanley Milgram (1974) conducted the classic obedience studies. (The shocking
experiments we studied earlier this year)
Group Dynamics
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All groups have norms, which are rules about how group members should act.
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Within groups is often a set of roles.
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The lawyers at a firm may have rules governing appropriate work dress.
On a baseball team the players have different roles. Such as pitcher, shortstop, and
center fielder.
Sometimes people take advantage of being part of a group by social loafing.
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Social loafing is when individuals don’t put in as much effort when they are in a
group as they do when they are alone.
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One explanation for this is that when we are alone, an individual’s efforts are more easily
noticed than when in a larger group. Therefore, in a group, a person may be less
motivated to “put on a show”. Being part of a group might also encourage members to
take advantage of the group effort without expending energy unnecessarily.
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Group polarization is when a group makes more extreme and radical decisions
than the group members would make individually.
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In a group, individuals may be exposed to new ideas and arguments they had not thought
of on their own.
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An individual might feel less responsibility for an extreme decision within a group’s many
members.
Groupthink (coined by Irving Janis) describes the tendency for some groups to
make bad decisions.
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Groupthink occurs when group members don’t express their reservations about the
group’s ideas. This creates a kind of false unanimity, and flaws in the group’s decisions
are frequently overlooked.
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Tightly knit cohesive groups that make a lot of risky decisions seem to be at a greater
risk for groupthink.
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Sometimes people get swept up by a group and do things they never would have by themselves
(rioting, looting, cult activities).
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The loss of self-restraint can occur when group members feel anonymous and
are aroused by a situation. This is known as deindividuation.
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One famous experiment that showed how such conditions can cause people to
deindividuate is Phillip Zimbardo’s prison experiment (which we also studied
earlier this year). Zimbardo assigned a group of Stanford students to either play
the role of prison guard or prisoner.
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The students took to their assigned roles too well, and the experiment had to be
ended early because of the cruel treatment the guards were inflicting on the
prisoners.
References
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This powerpoint presentation was adapted using the information from the
Barron’s AP Psychology 5th edition prep book.
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Weseley, Allyson, Robert McEntarffer, and Robert McEntarffer. AP® Psychology.
Hauppauge, N.Y.: Barron's Educational Series, 2014. Print.