How humans think about, relate to, and influence others

Social psychology
• Two major assumptions
– Behavior is driven by context
– Subjective perceptions guide our behavior

Conformity and obedience
• Social norms
– Conclusions:
• Anxiety prevents us from breaking norms
• We need to justify our actions
• Context directs our feelings and behavior

Conformity and obedience
• Would you resist group pressure?
– Most people say “Yes”
– Studies say: Probably not.
• Asch
• Milgram

Asch study
•Demonstrates suggestibility as a form of conformity.

Milgram study
• Subjects believed they were participating in a study on the effects of punishment on learning
• Milgram found that obedience is highest when:
– Authority figure is ___________ & _______________
– Victim is _____________ & ________________
– Disobedience has not been modeled

Conformity and obedience
Conditions that strengthen conformity:
 One is made to feel incompetent or insecure.
 The group has at least three people.
 The group is unanimous.
 One admires the group’s status and attractiveness.
 One has no prior commitment to a response.
 The group observes one’s behavior.
 One’s culture strongly encourages respect for a social standard.

Conformity and obedience
• Why do we conform?
– To be ______________
– To be ______________
– To be ______________

Group influence
• Individual behavior is influenced by the presence of others
– Social facilitation
– Social loafing
– Disindividuation

Group influence
• Individual behavior may also influence the behavior of the group

Group influence
• Group behavior is influenced by the interactions within a group
– Group polarization
– Groupthink

Social relations
• How we relate to one another through a variety of attitudes and actions
– Prejudice
– Attraction

Prejudice
• An unjustifiable, mostly unconscious, attitude toward a group and its members
• Schema
– Beliefs
– Emotions
– Predisposition to act
• Discrimination = behavior
• How common is prejudice?
– Implicit association test

Social roots of prejudice
• Social inequalities increase prejudice
• Social divisions increase prejudice
• Emotional scapegoating

Cognitive roots of prejudice
• Categorization
• Availability heuristic
• Just-world phenomenon

Attraction
• Influenced by:
– Proximity
– Physical attractiveness
– Similarity

Romantic love
• Passionate love
– Intense attraction, based on arousal
– Temporary
• Companionate love
– Enduring attachment based on mutual interests, values and commitment
• Equity
• Intimacy

Social thinking
• Attribution theory - our interpretation about the cause of someone else’s behavior
– Dispositional attribution
– Situational attribution
• Fundamental attribution error
• Self-serving bias

Attitudes and actions
• Attitudes are influence how we feel and act
– Attitudes direct our behavior
– Can actions can direct attitudes?

Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison
Experiment
• Examined the effects of role playing on attitudes and behavior
– Assigned volunteers to play the role of prisoner or prison guard
– Role playing can have a strong effect on beliefs

Cognitive dissonance
• Tension that results from opposition between actions and beliefs

Foot-in-the-door phenomenon
• Strategy for gaining compliance
– People who agree to a small request will later agree to a larger request
• Charities
• Alliances

Can attitudes be legislated?
• Can people’s beliefs be changed by creating laws that enforce specific behaviors?