1. Social Psychology: Attitudes, Group Influences, Social Relations, Attraction, and Altruism

2. Warm Up
1. How do the fundamental and situational attribution errors differ?
2.What was the significance of the Milgram study?
3. What types of situations cause ppl to follow orders the best ?
4. Describe the Zimbardo study?
5. What is Deindividuation?
6. What is dehumanization?

3. Bump or Jump Illustrates:
Social Trap: a situation in which the conflicting parties, by each rationally pursuing their self-interest gets caught in mutually destructive behavior.
Extra Credit activity
Optimal
outcome
Probable
Person 1
Choose A Choose B
Choose B Choose A
Person 2

4. Do Attitudes Guide Our Actions?
Attitude: beliefs and feelings that predispose our reaction to objects, people, and events.
Our behavior is affected by our inner attitudes as well as by external social influences:
Internal
attitudes
External
influences
Behavior

5. Attitudes are Likely to Affect Actions When:
Outside influences on what we say and do are minimal.
The attitude is specifically relevant to the behavior.
We are keenly aware of our attitudes.

6. Do Our Actions Affect Our Attitude?
Foot in the Door Phenomenon: tendency to comply with a larger request after agreeing to a small one.
Ex: P.O.W.’s in Korean War
Donations
Cognitive Dissonance: when our awareness of our attitudes and our actions clash, we can reduce the discomfort (dissonance) by changing our attitudes.
Act as though you like something, and you soon will.
Changing our behaviors can change how we think about others and how we feel about ourselves

7. Attitudes Affect Actions
Central Route Persuasion- changing your opinion based on agruements and evidence
More thoughtful and less superfical
More likely to influence behavior
Peripheral Route Persuasion- Changing your opinion based on incidental information
Celebrity endorsements
"feelings"
attractivness

8. Group Influences Reasons for Conformity in a group:
Normative Social Influence: influence from a person’s desire to gain approval or avoid disproval.
Informational Social Influence: influence resulting from one’s willingness to accept others opinions about reality.

9. Conformity and Informational Influence
Difficult judgments
Easy judgments
Conformity highest
on important
judgments
Low High
Importance
50% 40 30 20 10
Percentage of
conformity to
confederates’
wrong answers
Conformity with a group is a highest when the task is difficult and important.

10. Group Influences
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.
Why? When others are around us we become physiologically aroused.
Arousal helps with easy tasks but not with difficult.
EX: Running vs. New Math Problem
Green Light- much faster response when a car is next to you

11. Social Facilitation and Home Field Advantage
Home Advantage in Major Team Sports
Home Team
GamesWinning
SportStudiedPercentage
Baseball23, %
Football 2,
Ice hockey 4,
Basketball13,
Soccer37,

12. Group Influences
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.
Especially common among men in individualistic cultures.
Leads to the “free-rider” problem

13. Effects of Group Interaction
Group Polarization: the enhancement of a group’s prevailing attitudes through discussion within the group.
Ex: non-racist vs. racist students meeting to discuss issues. Each sides attitudes will be amplified.
Groupthink: the mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives.

14. Power of Individuals
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: occurs when one person’s belief about others leads one to act in ways that induce the others to appear to confirm the belief.
Man who believes woman is attracted to him; women more likely to act that way or vice-versa.

15. Social Interactions Prejudice
an unjustifiable (and usually negative) attitude or feeling ( anger, fear) toward a group and its members
involves stereotyped beliefs, negative feelings, and a predisposition to discriminatory action
Stereotype
a generalized (often overgeneralized) belief about a group of people

16. Us vs. Them Ingroup: “Us”---people who one shares a common identity.
Outgroup: “Them”---those perceived as different or apart of one’s ingroup.
Ingroup bias: the tendency to favor one’s own group.
Scapegoat theory: the theory that prejudice an outlet for anger by providing someone to blame
Nazis scapegoat jews for economic frustration. “If the Jews did not exist, we should have to invent him.”

17. Roots of Prejudice Example: social darwinism…p.666
Categorization- us vs. them
Other Race Effect- we are better able to recognize faces from our own race, starting at 3 months old.
Vivid Cases
Just World Phenomenon: the tendency of people to believe the world is just and that people therefore get what they deserve and deserve what they get.
Example: social darwinism…p.666

18. Aggression Causes of Aggression: Genes
Neural Influences: stimulation to certain neural regions can increase or decrease aggression.
Biochemical Influences: high testosterone levels correlate with aggressive behavior…2-way…testosterone boosts and is boosted by aggressive behavior.
Alcohol: 4/10 violent crimes…3/4 spousal abuse

19. Causes of Aggression
Frustration-Aggression Principle: the principle that frustration---the blocking of an attempt to achieve some goal---creates anger, which can generate aggression.
Aversive stimuli also increases aggression…ex: more spousal abuse in hotter years and months.
Murders
and rapes
per day in
Houston, Texas
Temperature in degrees Fahrenheit

20. Media and Aggression
Average child sees 8000 murders and 100,000 acts of violence before finishing elementary school on TV…desensitization?
In the U.S. and Canada, homicide rates doubled between 1957 and 1974, coinciding with the introduction of television.
“Rape Myth”…pornography that portrays sexual aggression as pleasurable for the victim increases acceptance of coercion in sexual relations.
Media gives us our “social scripts” on how to behave
Violent TV is NOT cathartic

21. Psychology of Attraction
1. Importance of Proximity: can’t fall in love with someone you’ve never met.
Mere Exposure Effect: the phenomenon that repeated exposure to novel stimuli increases the liking of them…mirror image vs. reverse.
You like people who have similar features to yourself
2. Similarity also is a strong determinant of attraction: share common goals, interests, and attitudes.
3. Attraction- most affects your first opinions of someone
We perceive attractive people to be healthier, happier, more sensitive and more successful. BUT NOT more honest or compassionate
Physical attractiveness is not related to self esteem
Facial symmetry plays a big role in level of attraction
Attractiveness varies across time and culture

22. Love
Passionate Love: an aroused state of intense positive absorption in another, usually present at the beginning of a love relationship.
Companionate Love: the deep affectionate attachment we feel for those whom our lives are intertwined.

23. Making Love Last
Equity: a condition in which people receive from a relationship in proportion to what they give to it…decision-making, bank accounts, etc.
Self Disclosure: revealing intimate aspects of oneself to others breeds liking.

24. Altruism Altruism: unselfish regard for the welfare of others.
Bystander Effect: less likely to give aid if others are present..diffusion of responsibility.

25. You are more likely to help if…
The person seems deserving of help
We are not in a hurry
The person is similar to us
We feel guilty
We are in a good mood
We have observed someone else being helpful
We are alone, or with fewer than 5 people

26. Increasing Altruism & Cooperation
Social Exchange Theory: the theory that our social behavior is an exchange process, the aim of which is to maximize benefits and minimize costs. Ex: volunteer at homeless shelter if believe benefits (good feelings, etc.) outweigh costs (time, effort, etc.)
Superordinate Goals: shared goals that override differences among people and require their cooperation. Ex: Remember the Titans
Reciprocity Norm: people will help, not hurt , those who have helped them
Social Responsibility Norm: an expectation that people will help those who are dependent on them

27. At a school wide pep rally preceding a big game at Williams James High School, each grade has a designated t-shirt color and seating area in the bleachers. Student leaders organize classes so that their colored shirts combine to form the school flag. The coach gives an exciting speech, the cheerleaders perform a routine, and the band plays the school song while the students sing in unison. Explain the behavior and perceptions of the participants in the pep rally using the concepts below. Be sure to apply the concepts to the scenario in your explanation.
Cocktail party effect
Conformity
Figure-ground
Deindividuation
Social Loafing