Behavior in a Social Context

A major influence on people’s behavior, thought processes and emotions are other people and society that they have created.

 Understanding individual behavior in a social context  Human behavior is influenced by others & social context  Social norms ◦ Spoken or unspoken rules about behavior

 Self concept  Social cognition  Attribution theory  Social influence  Group processes  Aggression  Prejudice & discrimination  Interpersonal processes  Attitudes  Stereotypes

 Social Influence ◦ Conformity ◦ Obedience ◦ Bystander Effect  Social Cognition ◦ Identity ◦ Attitudes ◦ Stereotypes  Social Behavior ◦ Discrimination ◦ Relationships  Social Development ◦ Attachment ◦ Self-concept

 Social Facilitation ◦ The presence of others influences behavior ◦ Audiences improve actor’s performances ◦ Home teams perform better than away teams

Home Advantage in Major Team Sports Home Team GamesWinning SportStudiedPercentage Baseball23, % Football 2, Ice hockey 4, Basketball13, Soccer37, Home teams win about 6 of 10 games.

 Social inhibition ◦ The presence of others can impair performance on tasks that one is not particularly good at ◦ Ex. Parallel parking  Social Loafing ◦ On group tasks, people will sometimes exert less effort if individual contributions are not possible to identify ◦ Ex. Group projects ◦ Note: Men are more likely to participate in social loafing than women

 When we believe in something different than the people around us we feel discomfort  We are motivated to change our beliefs to lessen the discomfort

 “Free speech being a privilege rather than a right, it is proper for a society to suspend free speech when it feels threatened” Agree or Disagree?

 19% agreed with statement in private  58% agreed under pressure of group influence

 Adopting the social norms of a group ◦ 1. We want to be liked ◦ 2. We want to be right  We are most likely to conform when… ◦ We like the group and leaders ◦ The larger the group  We are least likely to conform when… ◦ The group is not unanimous

 When divided into groups prejudices develop naturally  Individuals need to maintain a positive sense of personal and social identity  Desirability of qualities found within your group over less desirable traits in the other group

 We look for an explanation of behavior in the social world  Is it internal or external?  Is it stable or does it change over time?  Is it controllable?  The fundamental attribution error overestimating internal (personal) influences and underestimating external (situational) influences when judging the behavior of others: “He’s poor because he’s lazy.”

 Most likely occurs in unfamiliar environments  The presence of authority  Covert pressure  Feeling that someone else is responsible

Milgram’s experiment RM  Confederate strapped into chair with electrodes  Teacher & experimenter go to room with shock generator…  Shocks range: 15 volts (slight shock) volts (Danger/severe shock/XXX)  Every time learner gets one wrong, “teacher” is to increase the shock

 Giving up normal behavioral restraints to the group. Being less self-conscious and restrained in a group situation may account for mob behavior  Ex. Students at pep assemblies are more likely to behave badly at the assembly if they cannot be identified individually for their behavior).  Ex. Fan behavior (good and bad) at sports games (painting faces, screaming insults, and so on).

 Phillip Zimbardo, psychologist at Stanford University  Developed to understand mass mentality as seen in the Holocaust  Zimbardo analyzed 70 male student volunteers and picked the most normal, average people in the bunch  Participants divided into two groups, guards and prisoners  Prisoners arrested and booked and transported to a university building where a prison had been created for a two-week stay

 Within a few hours, the guards — who’d been instructed that physical abuse was off limits — became psychologically abusive gang. ◦ Ex. Name calling, unsanitary conditions, removal of mattresses  Five of the prisoners began to experience such severe negative emotions, including crying and acute anxiety, that they had to be released from the study early  Researchers lost sight of purpose  Still sited as an unethical study

 Perceived number of bystanders predicts likelihood of helping behavior  Diffusion of responsibility

 According to the police report, Catherine "Kitty" Genovese was stabbed to death over a period of 35 minutes - with 38 people watching the cruelty.  By the time a neighbor finally called the police - who arrived within two minutes - it was too late for Genovese who had died just inside the front door of a nearby apartment as she was trying to escape.