1. Social Psychology Dr Jacqui McKechnie Department of Psychology
Glasgow Caledonian University

2. Definition of Social Psychology How the presence of (imagined or real) others influences our thoughts, feelings and behaviours
Topics to be covered
Communication - non-vocal behaviour
- paralanguage
Attitudes - nature; formation; measurement
- cognitive dissonance
- persuasion

3. Communication
Verbal communication in the form of language, is better for conveying logical or abstract ideas.
Non-verbal communication is regarded as better for conveying emotions, the type of relationship existing between two people and regulating/ manipulating interpersonal interaction.
Basic facial expressions (Ekman, 1980)
Personal Space
Paralanguage
Detection of deception (DePaulo et al., 2003)
Basic Facial Expressions – Ekman: Sad, Happy, Disgust, Fear, Surprise, Pain – universal throughout the world. Women better than men due to them being primary caregivers.
Personal Space – invisible boundary surrounding us which others may not trespass. Changes depending on situation – night bus.
4 interpersonal space distances: Intimate up to about 18 inches; Personal 18 inches up to 4 feet; Social 4 feet up to feet; Public – over 10 – 12 feet
Low ceiling leads to increase in personal space; large room decrease in ps, indoors increase in ps, position in a room – centre of room decrease in ps, against a wall increase in ps
Paralanguage – not what you say but how you say it. pitch, stress, speed, pauses, tone, accent, speech errors
Deception detection – microexpressions (involuntary movement in facial muscles unconsciously displayed when people are hiding an emotion , pitch of voice increases, more pauses, more sentence repairs, less eye contact, more adapters - yawning. – place something between you and them, may turn away or look away, contraction more truthful (I didn’t do it rather than I did not do it). More unnecessary details.

4. Consider typical communication disruptions for the following disorders...
Sensory Impaired
Autistic Spectrum Disorders
Other Childhood Disorders
Cognitive Disorders
Schizophrenia
Hall 1966 ‘The Hidden Dimension’ – mental people don’t know the correct distance to stand - invade personal space
Jourard 1966 – touching behaviour in several countries couples observed in cafes for 30 minutes. Amount of touching recorded. Puerto Rico 180 times, France 110 times, London only once and apologised
Field teenagers observed in McDonalds in Paris and Miami looking for touching and aggression in peer interactions. US teens spent less time kissing, stroking, hugging then Parisians, US teens showed more self touching more aggression - verbal and physical.
Argyle and Ingham – gaze. Male female pairs less eye contact than all male or all female pairs. Gaze increases with distance
Non verbal communication & cultural differences (Hall, 1966; Jourard, 1966; Argyle & Ingham, 1972)

5. Attitudes: The nature of attitudes
“An attitude is a mental and neural state of readiness, organised through experience, exerting a directive or dynamic influence upon the individual’s response to all objects and situations with which it is related” (Allport, 1935; 198)
Structural Approach (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975)
Cognitive Component
Affective Component
Action Tendency Component
It is assumed that each of these components may vary in strength quite independently of the others
Cognitive approach – the knowledge the person has about the object. Example of music cog component would be what you know about classical music.
Affective – the feeling or emotion you associate with the object. How does classical music make you feel. Do you like it? Does it make you feel happy?
Action Tendency – the tendency to behave in a certain way towards the object – Do you turn up the radio when clasicla music comes on, do you download this type of music?
A person may have a great deal of knowledge about something but not feel strongly about it. You may have learned all the composers work for a pub quiz, but do not enjoy listening to it. Or you may not know who the composers are or what the music is called but you know you like it and will turn it up when it’s on.

6. Attitudes: The formation of attitudes
Acquiring Attitudes via Social Learning
Classical Conditioning
Instrumental Conditioning
Modelling
Acquiring Attitudes via Direct Experience
Stronger
Respond more quickly
More resistant to change
We are not born with attitudes these are made. We acquire from other people in social learning.
Classical conditioning – learn that a stimulus which precedes an event can be associated with it. A young child sees her father frown and looks unhappy every time he meets a member of a particular minority group. At first the child is neutral towards this group. With repeated exposure the child begins to experience negative reactions towards the group as well.
Instrumental conditioning - have you heard a young child say something like “BMWs are much better cars than Fords? The child doesn’t understand what they are saying but because they have rewarded for saying things like this in the past. Behaviours which are followed by positive outcomes are strengthened are more likely to be repeated. Whilst others which are ignored are likely to be weakened. This is why until their teens most children tend to have the same political, religious and social views as their parents.
Modelling – Acquiring attitudes through observing others. Children often hear things not intended for their ears. A mother may tell her child not to smoke whilst lighting up a fag.
Direct experience – respond more quickly when asked if you like something. Quick responses are a sign of attitude strength

7. Attitudes: The Measurement of Attitudes
Direct Measures
Self-reports - verbal and non-verbal
Attitude scales - Thurstone scale (1928)
- Likert scales (1932)
- Semantic Differential scale
(Osgood, Suci & Tannendaum, 1957)
Observations
Indirect Measures
Subtle measurements - projective techniques
Bogus lie detectors
Thurstone scale – Usually 20 – 30 items which have inter rater agreement. Respondents asked to indicate what items they agree with. If the scale has been well constructed then they would select only two or three items. The average scale value for these items would represent the persona’s attitude on the 11 point scale. – time consuming and expensive to develop. Lack of objectivity on the part of the judges.
Likert Scale – Usually 5 point scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree . Items are selected so that half agree represents a positive attitude and the half of the items agree means a negative attitude. Scores are reversed when scoring.
Osgood interested in the meaning given to a word or concept. So not just looking fro denotative or dictionary meaning but also connotative or what the word means to an individual. Most of the connotative meaning comes from whether the word has good/bad/meaning; potency - weak/strong and activity – active/passive.
Projective – ask people how they feel about something such as product logo
Bogus lie detector – person linked up to it and are more likely to tell the truth as they don’t want to be shown up by a machine

8. Attitudes: The relationship between attitudes & behaviour
LaPierre (1934)
Wicker (1969) reviewed 47 studies between 1934 and and found a very weak correlation
Intervening Factors
Attitude Specificity - a specific attitude
- a general attitude
LaPierre - toured USA with a young Chinese couple stopping at more than 250 hotels and restaurants. In that time they were refused service only once. When LaPierre then wrote top the same establishments several months later asked whether or not they would serve Chinese people 92% of the places said they would not.
Safe sex study – 98% would wear condoms if having casual sex, however pregnancy and rate of sexually transmitted diseases suggest this is lower – 60 – 70%/.
Intervening factors when measuring attitudes we tend to ignore other factors such as drunk, embarrassed
Health promotion campaigns can change people’s attitude but not their behaviour.
General attitude belief in God – affects other attitudes
Specific attitude – wear glasses when driving doesn’t affect other attitudes.

9. Attitudes: Cognitive Dissonance Theory
When people become aware that their attitudes are inconsistent with their behaviour an uncomfortable state of tension occurs - this is called cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957)
Festinger & Carlsmith (1959)
Dissonance is reduced by
Changing attitudes so they are consistent with behaviour
Changing beliefs about behaviour
Acquiring new information
Minimising the importance of the inconsistency.
In 1987 in USA 90% of adults believed smoking increased heart disease, lung cancer and premature death but 33% of males and 28% of females continued to smoke
Changing attitude– the odds of dying from smoking are less than being killed on the roads
Change beliefs – smoke to relieve stress and odd cigarette is better than too much stress
New Info - I have an aunt who smoked all her life and lived to 120
Minimising – it’s not as important to give up smoking as it is to lose weight or stop drinking

10. Attitudes: Persuasion
The traditional approach to persuasion (The Yale Model)
Source There are 8 characteristics
Communication of the source
Audience communication & audience
The cognitive approach concentrates on
what we think about when being exposed to appeals
how our thoughts determine whether, and to what extent we experience attitude change
cognitive heuristics
8 Characteristics
1. Experts more persuasive than non experts
2.Messages not designed to change our attitudes more successful than those that seem to want to manipulate us
3. Popular and attractive communicators more effective than unattractive – use of celebrities in adverts
4. More susceptible to persuasion when distracted by something else
5. Low self esteem easier to persuade than high self esteem
6. Two sided approach is better than one sided approach
7. People who speak rapidly are more persuasive than slow
8. Persuasion is enhanced by messages that arouse strong emotions
Cognitive heuristics – representative, availability
If told 95% were happy with a shampoo you more like to think it was good than if told 15% weren’t happy with it.

11. The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM): Two routes to persuasion
Degree of attitude change depends on quality of argument
Careful
processing of
information
High
elaboration
Central
route
Persuasive
message
Attitude change depends on presence of persuasive cues
Careful processing of information does not occur
Low
elaboration
8 Characteristics
1. Experts more persuasive than non experts
2.Messages not designed to change our attitudes more successful than those that seem to want to manipulate us
3. Popular and attractive communicators more effective than unattractive – use of celebrities in adverts
4. More susceptible to persuasion when distracted by something else
5. Low self esteem easier to persuade than high self esteem
6. Two sided approach is better than one sided approach
7. People who speak rapidly are more persuasive than slow
8. Persuasion is enhanced by messages that arouse strong emotions
Peripheral
route
(Petty & Cacioppo, 1986)

12. When Attitude Change Fails: Resistance to Persuasion
Reactance - Protecting one’s personal freedom
Forewarning - Prior knowledge of persuasive intent
Selective Avoidance - A tendency to direct our attention away from information that challenges our existing attitudes
Given the frequency of appeals to change our attitudes we would be very confused if we took them all on board. Think of the ad breaks during an hour long show. You would think different types of car was the best or skin lotion. Listening to a debate you would support one person then the next.
Reactance – protecting your personal freedom. This is the negative reaction you experience when you feel someone is trying to limit our personal freedom and take away your choice.
Forewarning –prior knowledge of persuasive intent. When we perceive a persuasive message which is contrary to our views we formulate a counter argument against it. If we know someone is going to try to sell us something we may make our counter argument in advance.
Selective avoidance - we do not simply sit in front of the tv and absorb the media thrown at you we change channels or tune out, turn the volume down. When we encounter info which supports our view we give it increased attention.

13. Persuasion Fear-Based Appeals
VD study (Watson & Lashley, 1921)
Using storyline techniques is risky since viewers follow the action rather than the information
Young people respond with flippancy to sex information
Only work in the short term
Incorrect information is retained
Adolescents think they are invincible
Myhre and Flora (2000) Reviewed all media campaigns on HIV/AIDS
Increased awareness, but not knowledge; increased anxiety
Janis and Feshbach (1953) tooth decay study. 3 x 15 mins lectures on the dangers of tooth decay and need for good oral hygiene main difference between them was amount of fear.
Strong fear – cancer, showed pictures of diseased mouths, emphasised pain. Moderate same dangers less scarey pictures, weak fear, talked about decay and cavities used x rays and drawings. Strong appeal too much for people although rated as more intersting, most change in behaiour from minimal fear. (36%) strong appeal least (8%)
Fear based appeals short term gain only, ethical issues, avoidance of further health info.