Social Psychology Psychology & Religion Dr. Mark King

Social Psychology  Scientific study of how we influence one another’s behavior and thinking.

Topics to Explore 1.How others influence our behavior 2.How others influence our thinking

Part 1 How Others Influence Our Behavior

Social Influence  Social Influence: Changes in a person’s behavior induced by the actions of another person. (Someone else influences your decision)  Conformity: A change in behavior and/or belief to conform to a group norm as a result of real or imagined group pressure

Social Influence:  Changes in a person’s behavior induced by the actions of another person. (Someone else influences your decision)  Conformity: A change in behavior and/or belief to conform to a group norm as a result of real or imagined group pressure

The Asch Study People were tested in groups, one test participant and several confederates. Each was asked to judge which of three comparison lines was the same length as the standard line. The test participant was asked last, after the confederates had answered.

The Asch Study, continued 75% of participants conformed to confederates’ judgments at least some of the time. Overall, 37% of judgments conformed. Normative social influence: influence stemming from our desire to gain the approval and to avoid the disapproval of others.

Compliance: acting in accordance with a direct request from another person or group. Foot-in-the-door technique: compliance to a large request is gained by preceding it with a very small request. Door-in-the-face technique: compliance is gained by starting with a large, unreasonable request that is turned down, and then following it with a smaller, more reasonable request. Why We Comply

Obedience: Following the commands of a person in authority. Classic Milgram study: Volunteer told to teach another person (actually an accomplice in the experiment) word pairs by applying an electric shock each time the learner was wrong. The learner also told the volunteer that he had a heart condition. 65% obeyed by going all the way to 450 volts on the “shock machine” even though the learner eventually could not answer any more questions. Obedience to Authority

Results of Milgram’s Study

Situational Factors in Obedience Obedience to authority was lowered by: increased personal contact with victim social support of others (e.g., two volunteers working together) “Authority figure” appearing more disreputable Disagreement between 2 authority figures

What Are Social Psychology’s Big Lessons?  We construct our social reality  Our social intuitions are often powerful but sometimes perilous  Social influences shape our behavior  Personal attitudes and dispositions also shape behavior  Social behavior is biologically rooted  Social psychology’s principles are applicable to everyday life and other disciplines

Group Influence  Social Facilitation: the presence of others leads to heightened arousal, in which our performance of simpler, familiar tasks is improved and our performance of more difficult, unfamiliar tasks is adversely affected.  Social loafing: tendency to exert less effort when working in a group toward a common goal than when individually working toward the same goal.  Diffusion of responsibility: the lessening of a sense of individual responsibility for a task when responsibility is shared among members of a group.

Group Influence, continued  Deindividuation: the loss of self-awareness and self- restraint in a group situation that fosters arousal and anonymity  Group polarization: the strengthening of a group’s prevailing opinion about a topic following group discussion about the topic.  Groupthink: a mode of group thinking that impairs decision making because the desire for group harmony overrides a realistic appraisal of the possible decision alternatives.  Bystander effect: the probability of a person’s helping in an emergency is greater when there are no other bystanders than when there are bystanders.

Part 2 How Others Influence Our Thinking

Attribution Theory  Attribution: the process by which we explain our own behavior and that of others. We can attribute behavior to: External Causes (situational): Ones that lie outside of a person Internal Causes (dispositional): Ones that lie within a person

Attributions We Make About Ourselves  Actor-observer bias: the tendency to overestimate situational influences on our own behavior, but to overestimate dispositional influences on the behavior of others  Self-serving bias: the tendency to make attributions so that one can perceive oneself favorably  False-consensus effect : tendency to overestimate the commonality of one’s opinions and unsuccessful behaviors (but not successful behaviors)  False uniqueness effect: tendency to underestimate the commonality of one’s abilities and successful behaviors

Attributions We Make About Others  Fundamental attribution error: the tendency as an observer to overestimate dispositional influences (internal causes) and underestimate situational influences (external causes) upon others’ behavior  Just world hypothesis: the assumption that the world is just and that people get what they deserve  Primacy effect: information gathered early is weighted more heavily than information gathered later in forming an impression of another person (I.e., first impressions count!)  Self-fulfilling prophecy: our behavior leads a person to act in accordance with our expectations for that person