1. Social Psychology
Unit 13

2. Topics in Social Psychology
Attitude and Behavior
Stereotypes, Prejudice and Discrimination
Aggression and Anti-social behavior
Attraction
Influence of others on our behavior
Group Dynamics

3. Social Psychology
Social Psychology is a field devoted to studying the way people relate to others
Social Cognition is a study of how people think about themselves and others.
Throughout our lives, we go about our days making observations which eventually lead to predictions about what will happen next, so we can act accordingly

4. Attitude Formation and Change
One of the biggest focuses in Social Psychology is how we formulate our attitudes, and how they can change.
An attitude is a set of beliefs and feelings. We have attitudes about a great deal of things such as groups od people, events, places, lifestyles, etc.
We have positive and negative attitudes about certain aspects of our environment.

5. Attitude
An area greatly dedicated to affecting people’s attitudes is advertising.
Companies seek to find out how to have people develop a positive attitude about their product.
One method of advertising stems from capitalizing on the mere exposure effect. It states that, generally, the more we are exposed to something, the more we come to like it.
So, when you go to the store, you are more likely to pick the product that has been shown to you a great deal of times.

6. Persuasive Messages
Methods with which to persuade our opinion or attitude about something are two-fold
The central route to persuasion involves deeply processing the content of the message. What it is about THIS product that is better than THAT product.
The peripheral route to persuasion includes all other aspects of the message such as quality of the marketing campaign, the speaker, the shininess of the product
Actors, athletes and models are all useful communicators of messages

7. Likelihood of Persuasion
Studies have shown that educated people are less likely to be persuaded by advertisements.
Furthermore, the higher the level of education, the better it is to show both sides of an argument in attempting to persuade people
For the less educated, one sided arguments are much better.

8. Attitude and Behavior
Research has shown that relationships between attitudes and behavior are often greatly contrasted.
However, our minds feel tension when our attitudes don’t match our behavior. This is stated by the cognitive dissonance theory. We seek consistency in our thoughts and attitudes.
If we know smoking is bad for us, yet we are addicted to it, we may either quit smoking (matching attitude and behavior) or we can convince ourselves smoking really isn’t that bad,

9. Compliance Strategies
We also use strategies to get people to comply with our wishes. We often use a few different methods:
The foot in the door phenomenon based on the idea that if you can get someone to agree to a small request early on, they are more likely to agree to a bigger request later.
(ex: You want $20, ask for $5 now, and $15 later)

10. Compliance Strategies
The door in the face strategy is asking for an unreasonable request first, like $100, and then moving it down to $20.
You wanted $20 all along, but giving you $20 seems much better after first being asked for $100
The Norms of reciprocity idea is based of the theory that we feel compelled to do something nice for someone who has done something nice for us.

11. Attribution Theory
Another idea within the field of Social cognition is Attribution Theory which tries to explain how people determine the cause of something they observe.
We can either attribute our observations to Personal (dispositional) factors or Situational factors. These attributions can either be stable or unstable.

12. Attribution Theory
Say that your friend Mark does well in his basketball game. If you think to yourself that Mark did well in his game because he is good at basketball, you have made a person (dispositional) attribution.
If you think to yourself, Mark did well because they were playing an easy team, you made a situational attribution. (Mark did well because of the situation)

13. Attribution Theory
Additionally, your attributions can be stable or unstable
If you feel that Mark has always shown great talent in basketball and that is why he did well, you have made a person-stable attribution.
If you think that Mark did well at his game because he practiced his techniques and shots a ton in the days leading up to the game, you have made a person-unstable attribution.

14. Attribution Theory
Now, you may put more weight onto the situational context.
If you think Mark did well because the team he played is ALWAYS bad, you have made a Situational-stable attribution.
If you think Mark did well because the team he played was good, but had a really off night, you made a Situation-unstable attribution.

15. Attribution Theory
Researcher Harold Kelley offered a 3-factor theory that explains the kind of attributions we make based on 3 kinds of information: Consistency, Distinctiveness and Consensus
Consistency: how the individual acts in the same situation. How does Mark normally play against THIS team?
Distinctiveness: How similar this situation actually is to others we have seen. Is this team comparable to other teams mark has played and done well against? Does mark normally play well in games?
Consensus: How others have fared in this situation. Have other people played well against this team?

16. Attributional Biases
We often make mistakes in our attributions due to preconceived notions about people.
Even the expectations we have of other can influence the way we, and the other person behaves. This is called a Self-fulfilling prophecy
Your friends tell you the Calculus teacher is mean so you go into their class with a grumpy, bad attitude which elicits a poor attitude from the teacher.
However, If your friends tell you the teacher is awesome and nice, you go in with a good cheerful attitude and the teacher responds positively

17. Attributional Biases
One of the most common errors in Attribution is the Fundamental Attribution error. (Tendency to overestimate dispositional/personal factors & not consider the situation)
Ex: You sit next to a man on the bus. He is quiet and doesn’t say hello back to you. You assume he is a jerk. However, you didn’t consider the fact he is on his way home from the hospital where he was tending to his sick wife.

18. Attributional Biases
False-consensus effect: Overestimating the amount of people who share the same opinion/beliefs as you.
Self-serving bias: Tendency to take more credit for good outcomes than bad ones
Just-world bias: Belief in our world as just. Bad things happen to bad people. People deserve what they get.

19. Stereotypes
We all have ideas about what members of different groups are like. These ideas/expectations may influence how we interact with these groups. These ideas we have are called Stereotypes.
Stereotypes can be positive or negative and are applicable to almost any group of people in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, geographic, religious, etc.
Many Psychologists believe stereotypes are just schemata about groups. Others believe stereotypes are harder to change than schemata.

20. Prejudice
Having negative stereotypes against a specific group can lead to prejudice. Prejudice is an undeserved, generally negative, attitude toward a group of people.
Prejudices arise when stereotypes are uncritically applied to all members of a group.
If you stereotype French people as pompous or Southerners as unintelligent, it can lead to a negative attitude about these groups. This leads to discrimination.

21. Discrimination
Whereas prejudices and stereotypes are attitudes and beliefs, Discrimination is an action against a group.
If I think all French people are pompous I have stereotypes them. If this leads to me having a negative attitude against them, I am prejudiced.
However, if I act on this and refuse to hire a French person, I have discriminated against them.

22. Ethnocentrism
A person who is Ethnocentric has a belief that their own culture, whether racial, geographic or religious is superior to others.
People become so used to their own cultures that they often believe them to be the “norm” by which other cultures should be judged.
We can look down on others for not voting the same, worshipping the same god or having a different skin color.

23. Group Bias
Often times we have the tendency to see our own group (in-group) as more diverse than others (out-groups)
This is known as out-group homogeneity.
We may tend to look at other cultures as having members that are all the same.
We also show a preference for our own groups. We tend to view ourselves as generally good. This is called the in-group bias.

24. Origins of Stereotypes and Prejudice
Many theories exist on why we develop prejudices.
Some researchers believe we magnify the difference between our own group and others as a way of cognitively categorizing our world.
Others believe that we develop prejudices through modeling. Children with prejudiced parents tend to raise children with similar prejudices.

25. Combating Prejudice
One idea on how to reduce prejudice is the Contact theory. This is the idea that hostility will be reduced with contact between two opposing groups as long as these groups are working towards a mutual goal know as a Superordinate goal.
This is often used in schools in attempts to have multi-cultured groups of students work together on a task.

26. Aggression and Anti-social Behavior
One topic of great interest to social psychologists is the study of Aggression and Anti-social behavior.
Aggression is separated into two categories: Instrumental and Hostile.
Instrumental aggression is when the aggression is intended to secure a particular end(beating up a kid so you can have his lunch money)
Hostile aggression is aggression for the sake of aggression. No clear purpose exists

27. Aggression
Freud suggested that aggression is linked to the Thanatos(death instinct)
Frustration-aggression hypothesis argues there is a link between feelings of frustration and aggressive behavior.
Additionally, many psychologists believe aggression stems from modeling (Bandura, Bobo)

28. Pro-social Behavior
Studies have also been conducted on people’s willingness to help one another. This is termed Pro-social behavior.
Bystander intervention, an area of great research, is studied to determine how more or less likely people are to help someone in trouble.
Psychologists have studied crimes in the view of public to determine who helps, doesn’t help and why.

29. Pro-social Behavior
Interestingly, the more people around to view a crime happening, the less likely one is to help. This is known as the bystander effect.
The larger the group witnessing the crime the less responsibility we, as individuals feel. This is called Diffusion of responsibility.
Pluralistic ignorance is when we decide what is appropriate behavior by looking at others. If no one is acting, we deem that appropriate.

30. Attraction
Social Psychologists are also interested in what increases the chances that people will like one another.
Generally, people like those who are similar to them (similarity), people who they are frequently in contact with (proximity) and people who return the feelings (reciprocal liking).

31. Attraction
Obviously, people who are physically attractive attract more attention.
Additionally, people who are attractive tend to experience more social benefits than others.
Attractive people, especially men, tend to be looked at as competent in the workplace and as possessing better qualities.

32. Love
Love has long been a difficult concept to quantify. Romantic love has been shown to correlate with interpersonal attraction, heightened arousal and sexual desires.
We often self-disclose with those we love. This is the sharing of bits of personal information. It should be reciprocal. Relationships that lack self-disclosure can be filled with anxiety, unhappiness and loneliness.

33. Social Influence on Behavior
Our behaviors can be affected by another’s actions or even someone else’s presence.
Many studies have shown that some people perform better at tasks when there are others watching them than they would have done alone. This is known as Social Facilitation.
However, the more increasingly difficult the task, the actual performance suffers. This is called Social impairment.

34. Conformity
Conformity is the tendency to go along with the actions of others.
Solomon Asch (3 vertical line study)
Asch asked people to determine the longest line. There were 3 people in a room. 2 were actors. People not in on experiment, the majority of the time conformed to the incorrect answers of the group.

35. Stanley Milgram
Stanley Milgram created a very controversial experiment involving participants giving electric shocks to people when told to do so.
Results of this experiment were “Shocking”

36. Group Dynamics
All of us are members of groups. Often our groups have norms and roles.
One way people take advantage of being part of a group is through Social loafing. This is individuals may not put in as much effort for a task as they would alone.
One explanation for this is that your individual efforts are less discernable when you are part of a group.

37. Group Dynamics
Group Polarization is the tendency of groups to make more extreme decisions than they would likely make as individuals.
Diffusion of responsibility plays a role into why groups make such extreme decisions.
Groupthink is a similar phenomenon in which groups make bad decisions due to group members suppressing reservations they may have about a decision.

38. Group Dynamics
When people get swept up in sort of a mob mentality they do things they wouldn’t normally do, like looting or rioting.
This is due to the members feeling anonymous and less responsible for their actions. This is known as de-individuation.
One additional sketchy experiment was the Stanford Prison experiment conducted by Philip Zambardo.