Social Psychology
“The Big 3”
– Studies in Social Psychology
1907-1996
key name
Solomon ASCH
Conducted a famous study of
Conformity (line length)
(1950s)
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyDDyT1lDhA
1933-1984
key name
Stanley MILGRAM
Conducted a famous study of
Obedience (shock experiment)
(1962)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCVlI-_4GZQ
1933-____
key name
Philip ZIMBARDO
Conducted the Stanford
Prison Study (1971).
Results showed that the role
someone plays greatly
impacts their behavior
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpDVFp3FM_4
Attribution

Attribution theory – the theory that we tend to give
causal explanations for someone’s behavior, often by
crediting either the situation or the person’s disposition
 If your friend wants to borrow your notes, you
almost immediately start to think of a reason for
your friend’s request


If you think she is lazy and doesn't’t pay attention in class,
this is a dispositional attribution
If you remember she missed class the day before, you are
making a situational attribution
Attribution– continued
We often make the mistake or error of attributing behaviors to
inner dispositions than to situations. This is called the:
Fundamental attribution error –
tendency for observers, when analyzing another’s behavior, to
underestimate the impact of the situation and overestimate the
impact of personal disposition
Snoopy, why did you fail that test?
I had four tests on the same day and the
night before I had Red Baron flying lessons
– I just didn’t have time to study.
Snoopy, why did Woodstock fail that test?
He’s a bird brain!
Attribution– continued
Actor-observer effect - attribute behaviors to situational effects when
we are the actor, but attribute behavior to dispositional factors when
we are the observer

Also we tend to have a readiness to perceive ourselves more favorably
than others

This is called the self-serving
bias
Attitudes– How do they develop?

Behavior can affect attitudes - belief or feeling that
predisposes one to respond in a particular way to
objects, people and events
 Foot–in–the–door phenomenon - tendency to
comply with larger request after we have complied
with a smaller one
 Gateway drugs
 Stealing
 Racism
 People can be moved away from their attitudes
because they begin rationalizing behavior at smaller
steps
Attitudes– How do they develop?
One theory is that we want our actions and attitudes to match. If they
don’t, we experience stress or tension called:
Cognitive dissonance – theory that we act to reduce the
discomfort we feel when two of our thoughts are inconsistent
 The more dissonance the more likely we are to change attitudes.
 Operant Conditioning

Our attitudes are either reinforced or punished
 Modeling

We learn our attitudes by watching our parents and other role
models
 Classical Conditioning
Attitudes are not hereditary!
Conformity & Obedience
Conformity – changing one’s behavior or thinking to
coincide with the group’s standard.
Conditions that strengthen conformity:







Social insecurity
Group over three
Group is unanimous
admire the group
no prior commitment
being observed
culture encourages respect for social standards
Obedience – the tendency to comply with orders,
implied or real, from someone perceived as an
authority
Conformity & Obedience
 Normative social influence
 A person’s desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval (to
follow the “norms”) can shape behavior

Example: turn around and face door in elevator
 Informational social influence
 A person’s behavior may change because they have been
made aware of new information

Example: stop using the word “gyped;” seatbelt use
Obedience
Milgram – the results of his experiments solidify
the idea that people will go to the extreme in order
to obey someone they believe to be a legitimate
authority.
Real life example: Jedwabne, Poland, July, 1941
The town of 3,200 Poles murdered half its
population, 1,600 Jews.
How Groups Influence Individual Behavior
Social facilitation is the tendency for people to do
better on some tasks when they are in the presence
of others.
Tasks which are more likely to be socially facilitated
are simple, well-learned responses
How Groups Influence Individuals Behavior
Social inhibition is the tendency for people to do
worse on some tasks when they are in the presence
of others.
Tasks which are more likely to be socially inhibited
are complex, little-practiced responses
Social loafing is the tendency for
people in a group to exert less effort
when pooling their efforts
How Groups Influence Individual Behavior
Deindividuation is the loosening of normal constraints
on behavior when people are in a crowd, leading to an
increase in impulsive and deviant acts.
Mullen (1986) examined news reports of lynchings in the
U.S. from 1899-1946 and found that the larger the mob,
the greater the savagery with which they killed their
victims.
Deindividuation makes people feel less accountable for
their actions. Another factor is that deindividuation
increases obedience to group norms.
Lord of the Flies, 1963
Deviance in the Dark (Myers)
How Groups Influence Individual Behavior
How Groups Influence Individuals Behavior
Groupthink, when group cohesiveness is more
important than considering the facts in a
realistic manner. Groupthink can lead to
defective decision making.
Ex: Challenger Space Shuttle Explosion, 1986
Group Decisions
Group Polarization:
Going to Extremes
Group polarization is the tendency for groups
to make decisions that are more extreme than
the initial inclinations of its members.
Prejudice vs. Discrimination
 Prejudice: an unjustifiable (and usually negative)
attitude toward a group and its members. Ex: “White
people are evil.”
 Discrimination: involves treating a group
differently because of their class or other category. Ex:
Blacks could not eat at certain restaurants and stay at
certain hotels because of their race prior to Civil Rights
Movement.
 Prejudice is a THOUGHT…discrimination is a
BEHAVIOR.
Us vs. Them
 Ingroup: “Us”---people who one shares a common
identity. We are Ardrey Kell.
 Outgroup: “Them”---those perceived as different or
apart of one’s ingroup. They are Providence.
 Ingroup bias: the tendency to favor one’s own group.
Ex: Might not like certain people just because they go
to Providence OR Band people may not like jocks and
vice versa.
Roots of Prejudice
 Categorization
 Vivid Cases
 Just World
Phenomenon: the
tendency of people to believe
the world is just and that
people therefore get what
they deserve and deserve
what they get.

Example: homeless people are just
lazy
Self-fulfilling prophecy
The idea that anticipating something will cause a
person to imperceptibly change his behavior to make
it more likely that the anticipated event will occur.
Example: Studies have shown that some teachers
have lower expectations of students who are
African-American or Hispanic. The theory states
that those teachers will commit small,
unnoticeable, seemingly benign actions that could
result in African-American or Hispanic earning
lower grades.
1954- Robber's Cave State Park in Oklahoma
 Two groups of boys – all 11-years-old, white &
middle class
 No one in either group knew the other group existed
 For a week, each group participated in typical camp
activities
 After a week, the two groups discovered each other
 The groups then learned there would be an athletic
tournament in which they would be competing
against the other group
 As the games took place, so did the confrontations
– the two groups became extremely antagonistic
(ransacking cabins, stealing, food fights)
 MUTUAL PREJUDICE HAD BEEN ARTIFICIALY
CREATED
 The investigators created apparent emergencies that
the boys had to resolve through cooperative efforts –
superordinate goals (fixing water supply, digging
a truck out of mud)
 By the end of camp, the two groups were playing
together peacefully
 WHEN THE BOYS WERE FORCED TO WORK
TOGETHER, THEIR PREJUDICES WERE
LARGELY ELIMINATED
 superordinate goals: shared goals that override
differences among people and require their
cooperation.
Dehumanization
the ability to view the
victims of violence as
somehow less than human.
Humans find it easier to
inflict and rationalize
violence against victims
who seem less than
human.
Bandura's Dehumanization Experiments
Group of college students were to help train other
visiting college students using shocks when they
error.

Participants overhear 1 of 3 statements:
1. Neutral: the subjects from the other school are here.
2. Humanized: the subjects from the other school are
here and they seem nice.
3. Dehumanized: the subjects from the other school are
here and they seem like animals.
Results: escalated aggression toward dehumanized
labeled individuals.

Dehumanization’s Use in War Propaganda: Jew
As Rat
Aggression
 TV's Impact (remember Bandura & Bobo?)
 Modeling
 Frustration-aggression Principle
 Social Scripts (when we find ourselves in a new situation, uncertain how
to act, we rely on social scripts provided by our culture)
Links to Aggression
 Causes of Aggression:



Genes
Neural Influences: stimulation to certain neural regions can
increase or decrease aggression.
Biochemical Influences: high testosterone levels correlate with
aggressive behavior…


2-way…testosterone boosts and is boosted by aggressive behavior.
Alcohol: 4/10 violent crimes…3/4 spousal abuse
Causes of Aggression
 Frustration-Aggression Principle: the principle
that frustration---the blocking of an attempt to achieve
some goal---creates anger, which can generate
aggression.
 Aversive
stimuli also increases aggression…ex:
more spousal abuse in hotter years and
months.
Murders
and rapes
per day in
Houston, Texas
Temperature in degrees Fahrenheit
Psychology of Attraction
 Importance of Proximity: can’t usually fall in love with
someone you’ve never met.
 Mere Exposure Effect: the phenomenon that repeated
exposure to novel stimuli increases the liking of them
 Similarity also is a strong determinant of attraction:
share common goals, interests, and attitudes. Opposites
don’t usually attract!
 Primacy effect – impression formation

(do first impressions matter – YES!)
Psychology of Love
2 Types of Love:
 Passionate Love: an aroused state of
intense positive absorption in another,
usually present at the beginning of a love
relationship.
 Companionate Love: the deep
affectionate attachment we feel for those
whom our lives are intertwined.
Making Love Last
 Equity: a condition in
which people receive from a
relationship in proportion to
what they give to
it…decision-making, shared
responsibilities, etc.
 Self Disclosure: revealing
intimate aspects of oneself to
others breeds liking.
Altruism
 Bystander effect a decreased likelihood that an individual
will help a person in distress, due to the presence of others
 Diffusion of Responsibility an implied reduction in
personal responsibility due to the presence of others
 Optimum # of witnesses - ???
 Kitty Genovese Case

March 13, 1964 Along a serene, tree-lined street in the Kew
Gardens section of Queens, New York City, Catherine Genovese began
the last walk of her life in the early morning hours of March 13, 1964.
She had just left work, and it was 3:15 a.m. when she parked her red Fiat
in the Long Island Railroad parking lot 20 feet from her apartment door.
As she locked her car door, she took notice of a figure in the darkness
walking quickly toward her. She became immediately concerned as soon
as the stranger began to follow her. “As she got out of the car she saw me
and ran,” the man told the court later, “I ran after her and I had a knife
in my hand.” She must have thought that since the entrance to her
building was so close, she would reach safety within seconds. But the
man was faster than she thought. The man caught up with Catherine,
who was all of 5'1” and weighed just 105 pounds, near a street light at
the end of the parking lot.

“I could run much faster than she could, and I jumped on her back and
stabbed her several times,” the man later told cops. “Oh my God! He
stabbed me!” she screamed. “Please help me! Please help me!” Some
apartment lights went on in nearby buildings. Irene Frost heard
Catherine’s screams plainly. “There was another shriek,” she later
testified in court, “and she was lying down crying out.” Up on the
seventh floor of the same building, Robert Mozer slid open his window
and observed the struggle below.
 “Hey, let that girl alone!” he yelled down into the street. The attacker
heard Mozer and immediately walked away. There was quiet once again
in the dark. The only sound was the sobbing of the victim, struggling to
her feet. The lights in the apartment went out again. Catherine, bleeding
badly from several stab wounds, managed to reach the side of her
building and held onto the concrete wall. She staggered over to a locked
door and tried to stay conscious. Within five minutes, the assailant
returned. He stabbed her again. “I’m dying! I’m dying!” she cried to no
one.
 But several people in her building heard her screams. Lights went on
once again and some windows opened. Tenants tried to see what was
happening from the safety of their apartments. The attacker then ran to
a white Chevy Corvair at the edge of the railroad parking lot and seemed
to drive away.
 On the sixth floor Marjorie and Samuel Koshkin witnessed the attack
from their window. “I saw a man hurry to a car under my window,” he
said later. “He left and came back five minutes later and was looking
around the area.” Mr. Koshkin wanted to call the police, but Mrs.
Koshkin thought otherwise. “I didn't let him,” she later said to the press.
“I told him there must have been 30 calls already.” Miss Andre Picq,
who lived on the second floor, heard the commotion from her window.
“I heard a scream for help, three times,“ she later told the court, “I saw
a girl lying down on the pavement with a man bending down over her,
beating her.”
 About 3:25 a.m., Catherine, bleeding badly, stumbled to the rear of her
apartment building and attempted to enter through a back entrance. The
door was locked. She slid along the wall until she reached a hallway
leading to the 2nd floor of 82-62 Austin Street but she fell to the
vestibule floor. In the meantime, the man had returned again. “I came
back because I knew I’d not finished what I set out to do,” he told cops
later.
 He walked along the row of doors and calmly searched for the woman.
He checked the first door and didn’t find her. He followed the trail of
blood to the doorway where Catherine lay bleeding on the tiled floor. And
there, while the defenseless victim lay semiconscious, incoherent from
pain and loss of blood, he cut off her bra and underwear and sexually
assaulted her. He then took $49 in cash from her wallet. “Why would I
throw money away?” he asked the court at his trial.
 As Catherine moaned at his feet, probably unable to comprehend what
had happened to her, the man viciously stabbed her again and killed her.
The man, who had selected his victim purely at random, ran to his car
still parked where he left it. The entire event lasted at least 32 minutes.
 He said later that murder “was an idea that came into my mind, just as an
idea might come into your mind, but I couldn't put mine aside.”
Catherine was his third murder.
 At about 3:50 a.m., a neighbor, Karl Ross, who lived on the second floor
of Catherine’s building on Austin Street, finally called the police. But
before he did, he called a friend in nearby Nassau County and asked his
opinion about what he should do. After the police were notified, a squad
car arrived within three minutes and quickly found Catherine’s body in
the hallway on the first floor. She had been stabbed 17 times. Her torn
and cut clothes were scattered about and her open wallet lay on the floor
next to her. Her driver’s license identified her as Catherine Genovese.
 Detectives from the 112 responded and began an exhaustive investigation.
A canvass of the neighborhood turned up several witnesses, including the
one who had notified the police. When cops finished polling the
immediate neighborhood, they discovered at least 38 people who had
heard or observed some part of the fatal assault on Kitty Genovese.