Understanding Psychology
6th Edition
Charles G. Morris and Albert A. Maisto
PowerPoint Presentation by
H. Lynn Bradman
Metropolitan Community College
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Chapter 14
Social Psychology
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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.
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Social Cognition
• Impression formation
• Attribution
• Interpersonal attraction
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Impression Formation
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Schemata
Primacy effect
Self-fulfilling prophecies
Stereotypes
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Schemata
• The use of schemata speeds information
processing.
• Schematic processing aids in encoding and
recall of personal information.
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Primacy Effect
• The theory that early information about
someone weighs more heavily than later
information in influencing one’s impression of
that person.
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Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
• The process in which a person’s expectation
about another elicits behavior from the
second person that confirms the expectation.
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Stereotypes
• A special type of schema about members of a
social category.
• Stereotypes may contribute to self-fulfilling
prophecies.
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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.
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Three 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
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Biases in Attributions
• Fundamental attribution error
• Defensive attribution
• Just-world hypothesis
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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.
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Defensive Attribution
• Sometimes referred to as the self-serving
bias.
• Our successes are attributed to internal
factors
• Our failures are attributed to external factors.
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Just-World Hypothesis
• An attribution error based on the assumption
that bad things happen to bad people and
good things happen to good people.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Attitudes
• Attitudes are important because they often
influence behavior.
• We cannot always tell people's attitudes from
their actions.
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What is an attitude?
• A relatively stable organization of beliefs,
feelings, and behavior tendencies directed
toward something or someone—the attitude
object.
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Three Components of an
Attitude
• Evaluative beliefs about the attitude object
• Feelings toward the attitude object
• Behavioral tendencies toward the attitude
object
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Self-Monitoring
• The tendency for one to observe a situation
for cues about how to react.
• High self-monitors may change their behavior
to meet the demands of the situation.
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How Do We Acquire Our
Attitudes?
• From early, direct personal experiences
• Parents, teachers, friends, famous people
• The mass media
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Prejudice and Discrimination
• Prejudice:
– An unfair, intolerant, or unfavorable attitude
toward a group of people.
• Discrimination:
– An unfair act or series of acts taken toward an
entire group of people or individual members of
that group.
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Sources of Prejudice
• Frustration-aggression theory
• Authoritarian personality
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Frustration-Aggression
Theory
• The theory that under certain circumstances
people who are frustrated in their goals turn
their anger away from the proper, powerful
target toward another, less powerful target
that is safer to attack.
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Authoritarian Personality
• A personality pattern characterized by rigid
conventionality, exaggerated respect for
authority, and hostility toward people who
defy society’s norms.
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Two Types of Racism
• Modern racism:
– A subtle and less extreme form of prejudice
reflected by agreement with statements that civil
rights groups are too extreme or that African
Americans receive more respect and benefits than
they deserve.
• Institutional racism:
– Discrimination that occurs because of the overall
effect of institutions and policies.
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Using the Contact Hypothesis
to Reduce Prejudice
• Members of opposing groups must have
equal status.
• One-on-one contact is necessary.
• Contact improves under cooperation.
• The social norms should encourage contact.
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The Process of Persuasion
• Must attend to the message,
• Comprehend the message,
• And accept it as convincing
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Four Elements of Effective
Persuasion
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The source
The message
The medium of communication
Characteristics of the audience
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The Source
• Must appeal to the audience
• Must be credible
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The Message
• Novel arguments are more persuasive than
old arguments.
• The message is more successful when both
sides of arguments are presented.
• The use of fear sometimes works.
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The Medium of
Communication
• The most effective medium is face-to-face
appeals or the lessons of our own experience.
• Writing is best suited for complex arguments.
• Videotape or live media is best for an
audience that already grasps the basics of an
argument.
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Characteristics of the
Audience
• Certain personality characteristics make some
people more susceptible to attitude change:
– People with low self-esteem are more easily
influenced.
– Highly intelligent people tend to resist persuasion
because they can think of counterarguments more
easily.
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Characteristics of the
Audience
• Attitudes are most resistant to change if:
– The audience has a strong commitment to its
present attitudes.
– Those attitudes are shared by other people.
– The attitudes were instilled during early childhood
by such pivotal groups as the family.
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Cognitive Dissonance
• Perceived inconsistency between two
cognitions (a piece of knowledge or a belief).
• An unpleasant psychological tension is
created and we want to alleviate this tension.
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Cognitive Dissonance
• Attitude change can occur due to cognitive
dissonance if a small reward is given for a
behavior that is attitude discrepant.
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Ways to Reduce Cognitive
Dissonance
• Increase the number of thoughts that support
one of the beliefs.
• Reduce the importance of one of the
cognitions.
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Social Influence
• The process by which others individually or
collectively affect one’s perceptions, attitudes,
and actions.
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Social Influence and Culture
• Culture:
– All the goods, both tangible and intangible,
produced in a society.
• Cultural truism:
– The belief that most members of a society accept
as self-evidently true.
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Social Influence and Culture
• Norm:
– A shared idea or expectation about how to
behave.
• Cultural norm:
– A behavioral rule shared by an entire society.
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Conformity
• Voluntarily yielding to social norms, even at
the expense of one’s own preferences.
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Asch’s Findings
• Overall, subjects conformed on about 35% of
the trials.
• Two factors influence the likelihood a person
will conform:
– Characteristics of the situation
– Characteristics of the individual
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Characteristics of the
Situation
• Size of the group:
– Likelihood of conformity increases until four
confederates are present
• Degree of unanimity
– Just one “ally” eases the pressure to conform
• Nature of task:
– When task is difficult, poorly defined, or
ambiguous there is higher conformity
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Characteristics of the
Individual
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Likelihood to conform increases when one:
Is attracted to the group
Expects future interaction with the group
Has low status in the group
Does not feel completely accepted
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Compliance
• A change of behavior in response to an
explicit request from another person or
group.
– Foot-in-the-door effect
– Lowball procedure
– Door-in-the-face effect
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Foot-in-the-Door Effect
• Once people have granted a small request,
they are more likely to comply with a larger
request.
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Lowball Procedure
• First, one must be induced to agree to do
something.
• Then, the cost of compliance is raised.
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Door-in-the-Face Effect
• A person initially refuses to grant a large
request, but agrees to grant a smaller second
request.
• This technique may work because people
interpret the smaller request as a concession
by the person asking for the request.
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Obedience
• A change of behavior in response to a
command from another person, typically an
authority figure.
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Milgram’s Obedience Studies
• Classic work by Stanley Milgram showed that
many people were willing to obey orders to
administer harmful shocks to other people.
• This obedience to an authority figure was
more likely when certain situational factors
were present.
• For example, people found it harder to
disobey when the authority figure issuing the
order was nearby.
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Milgram’s Obedience Studies
• They were also more likely to obey the
command when the person being given the
shock was some distance from them.
• According to Milgram, obedience is brought
on by the constraints of the situation.
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Factors Influencing
Obedience
• The amount of power vested in the person
giving orders.
• Surveillance:
– Whether or not someone is watching you
• Whether or not responsibility for actions is
shared.
– If it is, then one is more likely to obey.
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Social Action
• Deindividuation:
– The more anonymous people feel in a group, the
less responsible they feel as individuals.
• Helping behavior
• Group decision making
• Organizational behavior
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Helping Behavior
• Altruistic behavior:
– Helping behavior that is not linked to personal
gain.
• Bystander effect:
– The tendency for an individual’s helpfulness in an
emergency to decrease as the number of
bystanders increase.
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Factors Influencing Helping
• Situational variables
– Presence of other people
– Ambiguity of situation
• Personal characteristics
– Amount of personal responsibility felt
– Amount of empathy felt
– One’s present mood
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Group Decision Making
• Group polarization:
– Group discussion leads attitudes to be more
extreme
• Risky shift:
– Greater willingness to take risks in decision in a
group
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Factors Affecting Group
Effectiveness
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Nature of the task
Resources of group members
Interaction among members
Group size
Cohesiveness
Social loafing:
– Tendency to exert less effort on a task when
working in a group
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Leadership
• Great person theory:
– Leadership is a result of personal qualities and
traits that qualify one to lead others.
• Today this theory is rejected because it
ignores social and economic factors.
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Transactional View of
Leadership
• A number of factors interact to determine
who becomes a leader:
– Traits of the potential leader
– Aspects of the situation in which the group finds
itself
– Response of the group and the leader to each
other
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Fiedler’s Contingency Model
• There are two types of leaders:
– Task-oriented; Mainly focuses on doing the task
well
– Relationship-oriented; Focuses on maintaining
group harmony and cohesiveness
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Effectiveness of Leadership
Styles
• The effectiveness of leadership style depends
on:
– The nature of the task.
– The relationship between the leader and group.
– The leader’s ability to exercise the proper amount
of power over the group.
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Effectiveness of Leadership
Styles
• Task-oriented leadership is more effective
when conditions are either very favorable or
unfavorable for the leader.
• Relationship-oriented leadership is more
effective when conditions are moderately
favorable for the leader.
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Industrial/Organizational
(I/O) Psychology
• I/O psychology is concerned with the
application of psychological principles to the
problems of human organizations.
• Hawthorne effect:
– The principle that people will alter their behavior
because of researcher’s attention and not
necessarily because of any treatment condition.
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