What is social psychology?
The scientific study of the ways in which the
thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of an
individual are influenced by the real or
imagined behavior of others.
Social Cognition
• impression formation
• attribution
• interpersonal attraction
Impression Formation
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schemata
primacy effect
self-fulfilling prophecies
stereotypes
Schemata
• The use of schemata speeds information
processing.
• Schematic processing aids in encoding and
recall of personal information.
Primacy Effect
• The theory that early information about
someone weighs more heavily than later
information in influencing one’s impression
of that person.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
• The process in which a person’s expectation
about another elicits behavior from the
second person that confirms the
expectation.
Stereotypes
• A special type of schema about members of
a social category.
• Stereotypes may contribute to self-fulfilling
prophecies.
Attribution Theory
• The theory that addresses the question of
how people make judgments about the
causes of behavior.
• Behavior is typically explained as being the
result of either internal or external factors.
3 Types of Information Used to
Determine Causality
• distinctiveness: uniqueness of circumstances
• consistency: degree to which behavior is
typical of the individual in similar
circumstances
• consensus: degree to which behavior in this
circumstance is typical of most people
Biases in Attributions
• fundamental attribution error
• defensive attribution
• just-world hypothesis
Fundamental Attribution Error
• The tendency of people to overemphasize
personal causes for other people’s behavior
and to underemphasize personal causes for
their own behavior.
Defensive attribution
• Sometimes referred to as the self-serving
bias.
• Our successes are attributed to internal
factors,
• whereas our failures are attributed to
external factors.
Just World Hypothesis
• An attribution error based on the
assumption that bad things happen to bad
people and good things happen to good
people.
Factors Involved in Interpersonal
Attraction
• proximity: How close two people live to
each other.
• physical attractiveness: We tend to ascribe a
host of positive qualities to physically
attractive individuals.
Factors Involved in Interpersonal
Attraction
• similarity: We tend to be attracted to people
who share our attitudes, interests, values,
and beliefs.
• exchange: We are attracted to those
individuals with whom we exchange
rewards.
Exchange
• equity: We prefer to have equitable (equal
give and take) relationships.
• gain-loss theory: We prefer increases in
positive evaluation by others to steady
positive evaluation.
Factors Involved in Interpersonal
Attraction
• intimacy: The quality of genuine closeness
and trust achieved in communication with
another person.
• self-disclosure: The revealing of personal
experiences and opinions.