EXPLORING
PSYCHOLOGY
EIGHTH EDITION IN MODULES
David Myers
PowerPoint Slides
Aneeq Ahmad
Henderson State University
Worth Publishers, © 2011
Social Psychology
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Social Influence
Module 37
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Prejudice
 How Prejudiced Are People?
 CLOSE-UP: Automatic Prejudice
 Social Roots of Prejudice
 Emotional Roots of Prejudice
 Cognitive Roots of Prejudice
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Aggression
 The Biology of Aggression
 Psychological and Socio-Cultural Factors in
Aggression
 THINKING CRITICALLY ABOUT: Do Video
Games Teach, or Release, Violence?
Attraction
 The Psychology of Attraction
 CLOSE-UP: Online Matchmaking
 Romantic Love
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Altruism
 Bystander Intervention
 The Norms for Helping
Conflict and Peacemaking
 Social Traps
 Enemy Perceptions
 Contact
 Cooperation
 Communication
 Conciliation
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Social Relations
Social psychology teaches us how we relate to
one another through prejudice, aggression, and
conflict to attraction, and altruism and
peacemaking.
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Prejudice
Simply called “prejudgment,” a prejudice is an
unjustifiable (usually negative) attitude toward
a group. Prejudice is often directed towards
different cultural, ethnic, or gender groups.
Components of Prejudice
1. Beliefs (stereotypes)
2. Emotions (hostility, envy, fear)
3. Predisposition to act (to discriminate)
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How Prejudiced are People?
Over the duration of time many prejudices
against interracial marriage, gender,
homosexuality, and minorities have decreased.
Yet as overt prejudice wanes, subtle prejudice
lingers.
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Automatic Prejudice
Modern studies of implicit, automatic attitudes indicate that
prejudice is often more of a knee-jerk response than a decision.
Consider this finding on race-primed perceptions (Payne 2006):
When people viewed a White or Black face immediately followed
by a gun or a hand tool they were more likely to misperceive a
tool as a gun when preceded by a Black face.
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How Prejudiced Are People?
Although prejudice prevails against women, more people
feel positively toward women than men. Women rated
picture b [feminized] higher (66%) for a matrimonial ad
(Perrett & others, 1998).
Professor Dave Perrett, St. Andrews University
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Social Roots of Prejudice
Why does prejudice arise?
1. Social Inequalities
2. Social Divisions
3. Emotional Scapegoating
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Social Inequality
Prejudice develops when people have money, power, and
prestige, and others do not. The “haves” often develop
attitudes that justify inequality.
The just-world phenomenon reflects an idea that we often
teach our children – that good is rewarded and evil is
punished.
From this it is a short leap to the idea that those who
succeed are good and those who do not are bad.
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Us and Them: Ingroup and
Outgroup
Ingroup: People with whom one shares a
common identity. Outgroup: Those perceived as
different from one’s ingroup. Ingroup Bias: The
tendency to favor one’s own group.
Mike Hewitt/ Getty Images
Scotland’s famed “Tartan Army” fans.
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Emotional Roots of Prejudice
According to the scapegoat theory prejudice
provides an outlet for anger [emotion] by
providing someone to blame.
After 9/11 many people lashed out against
innocent Arab-Americans.
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Cognitive Roots of Prejudice
One way we simplify our world is to categorize.
We categorize people into groups by
stereotyping them.
To those in one ethnic group, members of another
often seem more alike than they really are.
The tendency to recall faces of one’s own race better
than those of others is called the other-race effect
or own-race bias and emerges during infancy.
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Cognitive Roots of Prejudice
In vivid cases such as the 9/11 attacks, terrorists
can feed stereotypes or prejudices (terrorism).
Most terrorists are non-Muslims.
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Aggression
Aggression can be any physical or verbal
behavior intended to hurt or destroy.
It may be done reactively out of hostility or
proactively as a calculated means to an end.
Research shows that aggressive behavior emerges
from the interaction of biology and experience.
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The Biology of Aggression
There are 3 biological influences on aggression:
Genetic Influences: Animals have been bred for
aggressiveness for sport and at times for research.
Twin studies show aggression may be genetic. In
men, aggression is possibly linked to the Y
chromosome.
Neural Influences: Some centers in the brain, especially
the limbic system (amygdala) and the frontal lobe,
are intimately involved with aggression.
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The Biology of Aggression
Biochemical Influences: Animals with diminished amounts of
testosterone (castration) become docile, and if injected with
testosterone aggression increases. Prenatal exposure to
testosterone also increases aggression in female hyenas.
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Psychological and Social-Cultural
Factors in Aggression
Biological factors influence the ease with which
aggression is triggered, but what psychological
and social-cultural factors can pull that trigger?
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Aversive Events
Although suffering can sometimes build
character, it may also bring out the worst in us.
Being blocked short of a goal can increase our
readiness to aggress – known as the frustrationaggression principle.
Frustration produces anger, which in some may
generate aggression.
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Aversive Events
Like frustration, other aversive stimuli can evoke hostility.
Even environmental temperature can lead to aggressive
acts. Murders and rapes increased with the temperature
in Houston.
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Social and Cultural Influences
Learning can alter natural reactions. When aggression
leads to desired outcomes, one learns to be aggressive.
Rejection often intensifies aggression. People led to feel
socially isolated are more likely to disparage others.
Cultural models reinforce and evoke tendencies toward
violence. Crime rates are higher in countries with a great
disparity between rich and poor.
Cultures with minimal father care tend to have higher
rates of violence.
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Observing Models of Aggression
Observational learning
influences our natural
reactions.
Sexually coercive men are
promiscuous and hostile in
their relationships with
women. This coerciveness
has increased due to
television viewing of R- and
X-rated movies.
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Do Video Games Teach or Release
Violence?
The general consensus
on violent video games
is that, to some extent,
they breed violence.
Adolescents who play a
lot of violent video
games view the world as
hostile when they get
into arguments and
receive bad grades after
playing such games.
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Summary
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The Psychology of Attraction
Proximity: Geographic nearness is a powerful
predictor of friendship. Repeated exposure to
novel stimuli increases their attraction (mere
exposure effect).
Rex USA
A rare white penguin born
in a zoo was accepted after
3 weeks by other penguins
just due to proximity.
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The Psychology of Attraction
Familiarity breeds fondness. In DeBruine’s study, men liked
other men and women liked other women, when one of their
own features was morphed into the other person’s picture.
Participants in Bailenson’s study were more likely to say they would vote for
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candidates when shown pictures of them with their own features morphed in.
Psychology of Attraction
Physical Attractiveness: Once proximity affords contact, the
next most important thing in attraction is physical
appearance.
We perceive physically attractive people to be healthier,
happier, more sensitive, and more successful.
Conceptions of attractiveness vary by culture.
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Psychology of Attraction
For those taught that “beauty is only skin deep” the
power of attractiveness might seem unfair.
However:
-People’s unattractive is unrelated to their selfesteem or happiness.
- Attractiveness judgments are relative and change
over time.
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Psychology of Attraction
Similarity: Similar views among individuals causes
the bond of attraction to strengthen.
Friends and couples are far more likely to
share common attitudes, beliefs, and interests
(and, for that matter, age, religion, race, education,
intelligence, smoking behavior, and economic
status) than are randomly paired people.
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Romantic Love
Passionate Love: An aroused state of intense
positive absorption in another, usually present at
the beginning of a love relationship.
Two-factor theory of emotion
1. Physical arousal plus cognitive appraisal
2. Arousal from any source can enhance one
emotion depending upon what we interpret or
label the arousal
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Romantic Love
Companionate Love: A deep, affectionate
attachment we feel for those with whom our lives
are intertwined.
Courtship and Matrimony (from the collection of Werner Nekes)
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Romantic Love
Two key ingredients to a
loving, lasting relationship
are:
Equity – both partners
receive in proportion to
what they give
Self-disclosure – revealing
intimate details of oneself to
others
Love is ancient. This 5000-6000
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year old couple was found locked
in an embrace.
Altruism
Altruism is an unselfish regard for the welfare of
others.
Altruism became an important focus of social
psychology after the Kitty Genovese incident
in Queens, NY in 1964.
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Bystander Intervention
The decision-making process for bystander
intervention.
Akos Szilvasi/ Stock, Boston
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Bystander Intervention
In hundreds of
experiments on
bystander intervention
the bystander effect has
emerged – any
particular bystander is
less likely to help when
others are present.
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The Norms of Helping
Why do we help?
Social exchange theory: our social behavior is an
exchange process, the aim of which is to maximize
benefits and minimize costs.
Reciprocity norm: an expectation that people
will help, not hurt, those who have helped them.
Social-responsibility norm: an expectation that people
will help those dependent upon them.
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Conflict and Peacemaking
Conflict is perceived as an incompatibility of
actions, goals, or ideas.
The elements of conflict are the same at all levels.
People become deeply involved in potentially
destructive social processes that have undesirable
effects.
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Social Traps
In some situations we
harm the collective
well-being by
pursuing our own
interests. These
situations are called
social traps. Social
traps challenge us to
find ways of
cooperating for our
mutual benefit.
Social-trap matrix game.
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Enemy Perceptions
People in conflict form diabolical images of one
another.
These distorted images are ironically similar, so
similar in fact that we call them mirror - image
perceptions.
These perceptions can become self-fulfilling
prophecies, fueling a cycle of hostility.
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Contact
Does it help to put two conflicting parties in close
contact? It depends.
If the contact is noncompetitive and between
parties of equal status, it usually helps.
However, mere contact is not always enough.
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Cooperation and
Communication
If given superordinate goals, shared goals that
override differences among people and require
their cooperation, can help people overcome
conflict.
Likewise, a shared predicament, such as a fearful
situation, can help conflicting parties to work
together.
When real life conflicts become intense, a thirdparty mediator may facilitate much-needed
communication.
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Conciliation
When understanding and cooperation are most
needed, they are also least likely.
Charles Osgood advocated Graduated &
Reciprocated Initiatives in Tension-Reduction
(GRIT): This is a strategy designed to decrease
international tensions. One side recognizes
mutual interests and initiates a small
conciliatory act that opens the door for
reciprocation by the other party.
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