A. P. Psychology

Social Psychology: Explores connections by scientifically studying how we think about, influence, and relate to one another.

Social Thinking

A. Attributing behavior to Persons or to Situations.

1. Attribution Theory – the theory that we tend to give a causal explanation for someone’s behavior, often by crediting either the situation or the person’s disposition.

i. Internal dispositions (a dispositional attribution)

ii. External situations (a situational attribution)

2. Fundamental Attribution Error – the tendency for observers, when analyzing another’s behavior, to underestimate the impact of the situation and to overestimate the impact of personal disposition.

i. The fundamental attribution error is almost irresistible.

ii. When explaining others’ behavior, particularly after observing them in only one type of situation, we often commit the fundamental attribution error.

3. The Effects of Attribution.

i. In everyday life we often struggle to explain others’ actions.

a. Examples: interviewers, couples, politics, managers, etc.

ii. Our attributions – to individuals’ dispositions or to their situations – have real consequences.

B. Attitudes and Actions

1. Attitudes – are beliefs and feelings the predispose our reactions to objects, people, and events.

2. Attitudes will guide our actions, if:

i. Outside influences on what we say and do are minimal.

ii. The attitude is specifically relevant to the behavior.

a. People readily profess general attitudes that contradict their behavior.

iii. We are keenly aware of our attitudes.

a. When we know and are conscious of what we believe, we are true to ourselves.

3. Do our actions affect our attitudes?

i. Many streams of evidence confirm that attitudes follow behavior.

ii. The Foot-In-The-Door Phenomenon – the tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request.

a. To get people to agree to something, start small and build.

b. Succumb to a temptation and you will find the next temptation harder to resist..

c. The attitudes-follow-behavior principle works as well for good deeds as for bad.

d. Experiments confirm that moral action has positive effects on the actor, and that doing favors for another person often leads to greater liking of the person.

iii. Role Playing Affects Attitudes – when you adopt a new role, you strive to follow the social prescriptions of the role.

a. Researchers have confirmed this effect.

b. What we do, we generally become.

iv. Why do our actions affect our attitudes?

a. Cognitive Dissonance Theory – the theory that we act to reduce the discomfort (dissonance) we feel when our thoughts (cognitions) are consistent. For example, when our awareness of our attitudes and of our actions clash, we can reduce the resulting dissonance by changing our attitudes.

- We rationalize, ""If I chose to do it (or say it), I must believe in it."

- Although we cannot directly control our feelings, we can influence them by altering our behavior.

- Changing our behavior can change how we think and how we feel. Just do it!

Social Influence

C. Social psychology’s great lesson is the enormous power of social influence on our attitudes, beliefs, decisions, and actions. This influence can be seen in our conformity, compliance, and group behavior.

D. Conformity and Obedience

1. Behavior is contagious.

2. Unconsciously mimicking others’ expressions, postures, and voice tones helps us feel what they are feeling. (i.e. we feel happier around happy people.)

3. Mimicry is part of empathy, and the most empathetic people mimic – and are liked – the most.

4. Group Pressure and Conformity.

i. Conformity – adjusting our behavior or thinking to bring it into line with some group standard.

ii. Suggestibility is a subtle type of conformity (Asch’s line comparison experiments).

iii. Conditions that strengthen conformity:

a. One is made to feel incompetent or insecure.

b. The group has at least three people.

c. The group is unanimous.

d. One admires the group’s status and attractiveness.

e. One has made no prior commitment to any response.

f. Others in the group observe one’s behavior.

g. The particular culture strongly encourages respect for social standards.

iv. Reasons for conforming:

a. Normative Social Influence – influence resulting from a person’s desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval.

b. Informational Social Influence – influence resulting from one’s willingness to accept other’s opinions about reality.

5. Obedience – people usually chose to obey orders, even though obedience means harming other people.

a. Example: social psychology’s most famous and controversial experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram (Yale University) involving test subjects who followed orders to administer shocks to other people.

b. The power of legitimate, close-at-hand authorities is dramatically apparent in stories of those who complied with orders to carry out the atrocities of the Holocaust.

6. Lessons From the Conformity and Obedience Studies.

a. With kindness and obedience on a collision course, obedience usually wins.

b. Strong social influence can make people conform to falsehoods or capitulate to cruelty.

c. In any society, great evils sometimes grow out of people’s compliance with lesser evils.

d. Evil does not require monstrous characters; all it takes is ordinary people corrupted by an evil situation.

E. Group Influence

1. Individual Behavior in the Presence of Others

i. Social Facilitation – improved performance of tasks in the presence of others; occurs with simple or well-learned tasks but not with tasks that are difficult or not yet mastered.

ii. Social Loafing – the tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling their efforts toward attaining a common goal than when individually accountable.

iii. Deindividuation – the loss of self-awareness and self-restraint occurring in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity.

a. The result can be uninhibited behavior ranging from a food fight or screaming at a basketball referee to vandalism or rioting.

2. Effects of Group Interaction (Can have both bad and good effects).

i. Group Polarization – the enhancement of a group’s prevailing attitudes through discussion within the group.

a. Becomes more and more extreme as the group interacts in isolation from any moderating influences.

b. The internet provides a new medium for group polarization (finding solace and support from kindred spirits).

ii. Groupthink – the mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives.

a. Groupthink is prevented when a leader welcomes various opinions, invites experts’ critiques of developing plans, and assigns people to identify possible problems.

3. The Power of Individuals.

i. Self-Fulfilling Prophecies – occurs when one person’s belief about others leads one to act in ways that induce the others to appear to confirm the belief.

a. If we expect people to be uncooperative and hostile, we may treat them in ways that elicit such behavior.

ii. Minority Influence – the power of committed individuals appears in their influence on their group.

a. Social history is often made by a minority that sways the majority. Some examples: communism, Christianity, civil rights movement, etc.

b. A minority that unswervingly holds to its position is far more successful in swaying the majority than is a minority that waffles.

c. The powers of social influence are enormous; but so are the powers of the committed individual.

 

Social Relations – how we relate to one another.

F. Prejudice – an unjustifiable (and usually negative) attitude toward a group and its members. Prejudice generally involves stereotyped beliefs, negative feelings, and a predisposition to discriminatory action.

1. Like other forms of prejudgment, prejudices are schemas that influence how we notice and interpret events.

2. As blatant prejudice wanes, subtle prejudice lingers.

i. Two recent studies illustrate that prejudice can be not only subtle but apparently unconscious.

3. Around the world, gender prejudice and discrimination persist.

4. Social Inequalities

i. Prejudice rationalizes inequalities.

ii. Being a victim of discrimination can produce either self-blame or anger

iii. Blame-the-victim dynamic.

5. Us and Them: Ingroup and Outgroup.

i. We are a group-bound species.

ii. Ingroup – people with whom one shares a common identity (Us).

a. Ingroup Bias – the tendency to favor one’s own group.

iii. Outgroup – those perceived as different or apart from one’s ingroup (Them).

6. Scapegoating Theory – the theory that prejudice provides an outlet for anger by providing someone to blame.

i. In experiments, students who experience failure or are made to feel insecure will often restore their self-esteem by disparaging a rival school or another person.

7. Cognitive Roots of Prejudice.

i. Stereotyped beliefs are a by-product of how we cognitively simplify the world.

ii. Categorization – one way we simplify our world is to categorize.

a. We are keenly sensitive to differences within our group, less so to differences within other groups.

iii. Vivid Cases – we often judge the frequency of events by instances that readily come to mind.

a. Vivid (violent) cases are readily available to our memory and therefore influence our judgments of a group.

iv. The Just-World Phenomenon – the tendency of people to believe that the world is just and that people get what they deserve and deserve what they get.

a. People often justify their prejudice by blaming its victims.

b. Blaming the victim also serves to reassure people that it couldn’t happen to them.

G. Aggression – any physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt or destroy (In psychology, aggression has a more precise meaning than it does in everyday usage).

1. The most destructive force in our social relations is aggression.

2. The Biology of Aggression

i. Aggression varies too widely from culture to culture and person to person to be considered an unlearned instinct, but biology does influence aggression.

ii. Genetic Influence – twin studies suggest that genes influence human aggression.

iii. Neural Influence – animal and human brains have neural systems that, when stimulated, inhibit or produce aggressive behavior.

a. No one spot in the brain controls aggression because aggression is a complex behavior that occurs in particular contexts.

iv. Biochemical Influences – hormones, alcohol, and other substances in the blood influence the neural systems that control aggression.

a. High testosterone levels correlate with delinquency, hard drug use, and aggressive-bullying responses to frustration.

b. The traffic between hormones and behavior is two-way. Testosterone heightens dominance and aggressiveness, but dominating or defeating behavior also boosts testosterone levels.

c. Alcohol unleashes aggressive responses to frustration.

3. The Psychology of Aggression

i. Aversive Events

a. Although suffering sometimes builds character, it may also bring out the worst in us.

b. Those made miserable often make others miserable.

c. Frustration-Aggression Principle – the principle that frustration, the blocking of some goal, creates anger, which can generate aggression.

d. Like frustration, other aversive stimuli – physical pain, personal insults, foul odors, hot temperatures – and a host of others – can also evoke hostility.

ii. Learning To Express and Inhibit Aggression

a. Our reactions are more likely to be aggressive in situations where experience has taught us that aggression pays.

b. Children growing up observing aggressive models often imitate what they see.

c. Social influence also appears in high violence rates among cultures and families that experience minimal father care.

- The correlation between father absence and violence in the U.S. holds for all races, income levels, and locations.

d. Once established, aggressive behavior patterns are difficult to change.

e. To foster a kinder, gentler world we had best model and reward sensitivity and cooperation from an early age.

iii. Television Watching and Aggression.

a. During the late twentieth century the average child viewed some 8000 TV murders and 100,000 other acts of violence before finishing elementary school.

b. The consensus among most of the research community is that violence on TV does lead to aggressive behavior by children and teenagers who watch the programs.

c. The violence effect stems from a combination of factors:

- arousal by the violent excitement

- strengthening of violence-related ideas

- erosion of one’s inhibitions

- desensitization to violence

- desire to imitate

iv. Sexual Aggression and The Media

a. Coinciding with the increase in sexual aggression has been the rise of the home video business, giving easier access to R-rated "slasher films" and X-rated films.

b. X-rated films give unrealistic scripts – she resists, he persists, she melts.

c. Laboratory experiments reveal that repeatedly watching X-rated films makes one’s own partner seem less attractive, makes a women’s friendliness seem more sexual, and makes sexual aggression seem less serious.

H. Conflict – a perceived incompatibility of actions, goals, or ideas.

1. Social Traps – situations in which the conflicting parties, by each rationally pursuing their self-interest, become caught in mutually destructive behavior.

i. Social traps challenge us to find new ways of reconciling our right to pursue our personal well-being with our responsibility for the well-being of all.

a. Cooperation for mutual betterment.

2. Enemy Perceptions

i. Psychologists have noted that those in conflict have a curious tendency to form diabolical images of one another.

a. Mirror-image perceptions: As we see "them’ – as untrustworthy and evil – so "they" see us.

ii. Biased perceptions, whether of individuals or of groups or nations, have deep psychological roots.

a. The self-serving bias leads each party to accept credit for good deeds and to shuck the blame for bad deeds.

I. Attraction

1. The Psychology of Attraction

i. Proximity – geographic nearness is perhaps the most powerful predictor of friendship. It often breeds liking.

a. Mere Exposure Effect – the phenomenon that repeated exposure to novel stimuli increases liking of them.

ii. Physical Attractiveness

a. People’s physical attractiveness has wide-ranging effects. It predicts frequency of dating, their feelings of popularity, and others’ initial impressions of their personalities.

b. Attractive, well-dressed people are more likely to make a favorable impression on potential employers.

c. Even babies prefer attractive over unattractive faces.

d. People’s attractiveness is surprising unrelated to their self-esteem and happiness.

e. Attractiveness judgments are relative to culture, place and time.

f. Some aspects of attractiveness do cross place and time.

- Women are judged more attractive if they have a youthful appearance.

- Men are judged more attractive if they are health, mature, dominant, and affluent.

g. People seem to prefer physical features that are neither unusually large or small.

h. People with symmetrical faces and bodies are more sexually attractive.

i. Cultural standards aside, attractiveness also depends on our feelings about a person.

iii. Similarity

a. We tend not to like dissimilar people.

b. In real life, opposites retract.

c. Friends and couples are far more likely to share common attitudes, beliefs, and interests.

d. Reward theory of attraction – we will like those whose behavior is rewarding to us and that we will continue relationships that offer more rewards than costs.

iv. Romantic Love

a. Passionate Love – an aroused state of intense positive absorption in another, usually present at the beginning of a love relationship.

b. Companionate Love – the deep affectionate attachment we feel for those with whom our lives are intertwined.

c. One key to gratifying and enduring relationship is equity: Both partners receive in proportion to what they give.

d. Another vital ingredient of loving relationships is intimacy.

- A strong friendship or marriage offers self-disclosure, the revealing of intimate details about ourselves.

J. Altruism – unselfish regard for the welfare of others.

1. Bystander Intervention

i. We will help only if the situation enables us first to notice the incident, then to interpret it as an emergency, and finally to assume responsibility for helping.

ii. At each step, the presence of other bystanders turns people away from the path that leads to helping. (i.e. The Genovese murder)

iii. The Bystander Effect – the tendency for any given bystander to be less likely to give aid if other bystanders are present.

2. The Psychology of Helping

i. One widely held view is that self-interest underlies all human interactions.

ii. If you anticipate rewards from helping that exceed the costs, you help.

iii. Social expectation also influences helping.

- Reciprocity Norm – the expectation that we should return help to those who have helped us.

- Social Responsibility Norm – that we should help those who need our help, even if the costs outweigh the benefits.

K. Peacemaking

1. Cooperation

i. Superordinate Goals – shared goals that override differences among people and require their cooperation.

ii. The power of cooperative activity to make friends of former enemies is quite powerful.

2. Communication

i. When conflicts do become intense, a third-party mediator may facilitate much-needed communication.

ii. Neutral third parties can suggest proposals that would be dismissed if either side offered them.

3. Conciliation

i. When tension and suspicion peak, cooperation and communication may become impossible, even a small conciliatory gesture may work wonders.