1. Social Psychology: The Last Chapter!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2. Social Psychology
The scientific study of the ways in which the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of one individual are influenced by the real, imagined, or inferred behavior or characteristics of other people

3. How do we explain, interpret and judge behavior?
Social Cognition
How do we explain, interpret and judge behavior?

4. Impression Formation What do we think of others’ behavior?
Schema: a set of beliefs or expectations about something/someone based on past experiences
Ready-made category
Allows us to make inferences about others
Also plays a major role in how we interpret and remember information
E.g. if we witness a mother reprimanding her child at the supermarket, we might assume she is a bad or abusive mother because we saw something similar in a Lifetime movie, and we may even assign her other traits that go along with this assumption even if she doesn’t actually demonstrate those traits! Or if we have recently watched this, we may feel differently!

5. Impression Formation What do we think of others’ behavior?
Primacy effect: early information is a greater determinant of attitudes
Early information about someone makes a greater impact than later information in forming impressions
“Cognitive Misers”
Humans don’t like to spend too much time figuring people out
Go with the initial impression to save time

6. Impression Formation What do we think of others’ behavior?
Self-fulfilling prophecy
A person’s expectations about another elicits behavior from the other person that confirms the expectations
e.g. High school coach is told by middle school coach that a player coming up is “amazing.” High school coach treats this player as though s/he is talented, and the player responds accordingly, confirming the initial belief.
Stereotypes
A set of characteristics believed to be shared by all members of a social category
Can become the basis for self-fulfilling prophecies
e.g. “Elderly people are cheap!” You are a waiter in a restaurant and make this assumption, so you don’t provide the greatest service. Then your tip is smaller and you believe it is because the old people are cheap!

7. Attribution: How do we explain behavior?
Theory that addresses the question of how people make judgments about the causes of behavior
e.g. “Why did I fail the test?”
e.g. “Why did my best friend stop talking to me?”
Heider (1958) says we first decide if the cause is personal or dispositional (internal attribution) or situational (external attribution).
Personal/Internal: Behavior caused by that individual’s characteristics
Situational/External: Circumstances prompted the individual’s behavior

8. Attribution: How do we explain behavior?
Three criteria used to judge behavior as personal or situational (Kelley, 1967):
Distinctiveness: How do the person’s responses vary from situation to situation?
Consistency: Has this person responded in the same way in this situation?
Consensus: The degree to which person’s behavior is similar to others’ behavior
Low consensus + low distinctiveness + high consistency = Internal (personal) attribution
e.g. I often fail tests. I often fail psych tests. Nobody else failed the psych test. It’s ME!
High consensus + high distinctiveness + low consistency = External (situational) attribution
e.g. I never fail tests! I never fail psych tests! Everyone else also failed this test. It’s the TEST!

9. Biases in Attribution Fundamental Attribution Error
Tendency to overemphasize personal causes for others’ behavior
This works along with actor-observer bias, where we also underemphasize personal causes for our own behavior
e.g. “She cut me off because she is a terrible driver!”
e.g. “I cut someone else off because I am late for work.”
Defensive attribution and Self-Serving Bias
Tendency to attribute our successes to our own efforts and our failures to external factors
e.g. “I failed the test because the teacher made it impossible and clearly she hates me!” OR “I got an A because I’m a genius!”
Just-World Hypothesis
Assumption bad things happen to bad people and good things happen to good people
e.g. “She got herpes because she is a strumpet!”
e.g. “She will win the election because she’s sooooo nice.”
Attribution across cultures varies dramatically
E.g. Japanese vs. American students and explaining academic performance

10. Attitudes
What do we think?

11. Attitudes Is a person’s behavior a reflection of his/her attitudes?
Attitudes are relatively stable beliefs, feelings, and behaviors directed toward something/someone
Three components
Cognitive: beliefs and ideas held about the object/person
Affective: emotions associated with object/person
Behavioral: how we act based on our attitudes
Typically, feelings and beliefs about a person/thing correspond with behaviors toward that person/thing, but not always
Self-monitoring: tendency to observe a situation to determine how best to act.
High self-monitors look for social cues about how they are expected to behave in a given situation, overriding their attitudes, making it difficult to predict behavior based on attitudes.
Low self-monitors express and act on their attitudes consistently making prediction easier.
LaPiere Study in the 1930s (Chinese couple in restaurants)

12. Attitude Development
Many factors contribute to the development of attitudes
Imitation
Reward
Role Models
Peers
Mass media

13. Attitude Change What makes us change our mind?
Process of persuasion
Must pay attention to the message
Must comprehend the message
Comprehension leads to acceptance
Central vs. Peripheral Route to persuasion
Central – people focus on the message and the facts to form attitudes
Peripheral – people focus on incidental cues, such as speaker’s attractiveness, position, reputation, etc.
Communication model
Source: credible spokesperson?
Message: present both sides!
Medium: written for complex messages; video for more simple; face to face is best!
Audience: how committed is audience to their point of view?
People with low self esteem easier to change
Intelligent people more resistant to change

14. Attitude Change Role-Playing and Attitudes Mere Exposure Effect
When we adopt a new role, we attempt to conform to social expectations of playing that role
Eventually, we “become” the role
e.g. Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Study (1971)
Mere Exposure Effect
Our attitude toward someone/something will become more positive with continued exposure
e.g. We are more likely to like someone we see frequently
Cognitive Dissonance Theory (Leon Festinger)
Perceived inconsistency between two cognitions causes discomfort (dissonance)
e.g. “I am an honest person” and “I cheated on the test”
Dissonance can be reduced through attitude change
e.g. “I am not that honest”
An alternative is to increase the number thoughts that support one or the other dissonant cognitions
e.g. “I have never stolen, never gotten arrested, never cheated on a FINAL,” etc.

15. Social Influence
How do we impact others?

16. Compliance
Change in behavior in response to an explicit request from another person or group
Work of Robert Cialdini and the methods of gaining compliance
Foot-in-the-door effect: Get them to say yes to a small request first
Lowball procedure: Get compliance then raise price of compliance
Door-in-the-face effect: Get them to decline large request then ask something smaller

17. Conformity
Voluntarily yielding to social norms, even at the expense of one’s own preferences
Asch Experiment
Factors That Strengthen Conformity
Unfamiliar situation
Larger group
Unanimity of group
If group is high status/attractive
Collectivist culture

18. Obedience
Change in behavior in response to a command from another person, typically an authority figure
Milgram’s studies on obedience show willingness to follow commands
63% of subjects fully complied!
Follow up studies showed women also complied
The Modern Milgram
The British Milgram

19. Group Influence Social Facilitation Helping Behavior
In the presence of others, performance is stronger on easier tasks
Also, performance can be weaker on difficult tasks in the presence of others – unless we have expertise
e.g. Runners who run in a group have faster times than when running alone
Helping Behavior
Altruistic behavior: helping behavior that is not linked to personal gain
Bystander effect and Diffusion of Responsibility
Helpfulness decreases as bystanders increase
Kitty Genovese Case and the bystander effect
Darley and Latané (1969) and the smoke-filled room (75% to 10%)
Mood can affect willingness to help
Cultures differ in amount of help offered in response to requests for minor help (collective cultures more willing)
Social Exchange Theory: behavior is dictated by desire to maximize benefits and minimize costs of helping
Reciprocity norm: people will help those who helped them
Social Responsibility Norm: people will help those dependent on them

20. Group Decision Making Deindividuation Risky Shift
Loss of personal sense of responsibility in a group
People more likely to engage in risky behavior when anonymous
Helps to explain mob behavior
Mob Behavior also facilitated by the snowball effect, when one vocal person convinces a few people, who convince a few more, etc.
Risky Shift
Increased willingness to take risks when making decisions as a group as opposed to making decisions as individuals.
Group Polarization in decision making
Shift toward more extreme position following group discussion between like-minded individuals

21. Group Decision Making: Effectiveness of Groups
The more people in the group…
The more stable the group is
The less cohesive/efficient the group may become
Social loafing
Tendency to expend less effort when part of a large group
Decrease in individual accountability
Groupthink
Pressure to conform to group makes everyone in the group have same beliefs and attitudes
Realistic and logical decision making gives way to the desire to have consensus
Hawthorne Effect
Behavior improves when one is being studied by others
Based on studies of Hawthorne Works Electric Factory ( )

22. Cultural Influence Culture greatly influences attitudes and behaviors
Cultural truism
Beliefs that most members of a society accept as self-evidently true
People in the culture do not question these
e.g. “Eating dog is unacceptable.”
Truisms are the backbone of norms, shared expectations about how to behave in a given culture.

23. Cultural Assimilators
Not all cultures are the same, and not all cultures have the same norms.
People in a given culture may feel their way is the “right” way, and other cultures are “backwards.”
This is the basis of ethnocentrism, or the belief that one’s own culture superior.
Examining cultural assimilators helps to reduce these assumptions.
Cultural assimilators are the explanations for why members of a culture have a particular behavior.
Understanding cultural assimilators helps people to maintain an open mind about other cultures’ norms and values.

24. How do we relate to others?
Social Relations
How do we relate to others?

25. Prejudice and Discrimination
An intolerant, unfavorable, and rigid attitude toward a group of people; negative stereotypes.
Ultimate Attribution Error: tendency to use stereotyped beliefs about a group to make internal attributions about shortcomings and external attributions about successes.
Discrimination
An act or series of acts that denies opportunities and social esteem to an entire group of people or individual members of that group

26. Sources of Prejudice: Where does it come from?
Social Inequalities
“Haves” vs. “Have Nots” – those who have feel justified and often use negative stereotypes of “have nots” to justify inequalities.
“Blame-the-victim” dynamic
Us vs. Them: Ingroup and Outgroup
We have the need to belong (Maslow) for feelings of identity, solidarity and safety
Those who are outside our group are threatening
We reserve greatest hatred for those most like us (Yankees vs. Mets fans)
Ingroup Bias – Belief that those with whom you identify are not only different, but BETTER than those outside the group.

27. Sources of Prejudice: Where does it come from?
Frustration-aggression theory
People who are frustrated in their goals may turn their anger away from the proper target toward another, less powerful target
Authoritarian personality
Personality pattern characterized by rigid conventionality, exaggerated respect for authority, and hostility toward those who defy social norms
Racism
Prejudice and discrimination directed at particular racial group based on the belief that certain groups are innately inferior
Institutionalized Racism
What Would You Do part 1
What Would You Do part 2
Scapegoat Theory
Blame others for when things go wrong for us
Tendency is to blame a “weaker” group/group in minority
e.g. antisemitism during the plague or during the economic depression of the 1920s and 1930s in Europe

28. Inducing Prejudice: Jane Elliot
Elementary education teacher Jane Elliot wanted to teach her class about discrimination after the assassination of Martin Luther King.
She designed an experiment to show how easily children could be transformed into prejudiced monsters.
A Class Divided: video on Elliot’s work
Update on the experiment with Phil Zimbardo

29. Reducing Prejudice Recategorization Controlled processing
Assumes prejudice can be linked to categorization, or how we group - usually based on stereotypes
Try to expand our schema for a particular group
What qualities are shared between groups?
Controlled processing
Train ourselves to be more mindful of people who differ from us
Think about examples that fall outside the stereotypes
Improving contact between groups
Group members must have equal status
Need one-on-one contact with other group
Relations are improved when groups come together to cooperate
Social norms should encourage contact
Superordinate Goals
Goals that override differences and require cooperative contact between groups
First used by Muzafer Sherif (1966) in a study on two groups of boys in boy scout camp initially encouraged to be competitive with one another

30. Interpersonal Attraction: What determines whether we want to befriend someone?
Proximity/propinquity
We are attracted to people who are in the same space as we are
Has the internet changed this at all?
Physical attractiveness
We like physically attractive people because being with hot people makes us feel like we are hot, too!
Berscheid and Walster (1972)
Beauty and the Best Psychology Today
People believe that physically attractive individuals are smarter, friendlier, and generally “better” based solely on their physical attributes!
Similarity
In attitudes, interests, values, and background
Opposites only attract for the short term…
Exchange: how do we reward each other?
We like people who appreciate us
Should be even (reciprocity)
Intimacy: how much trust and closeness is there?
Self disclosure
Should be equal

31. Love
Similar to friendship, similarity, proximity, attractiveness, and exchange all play a role.
However, love also includes physiological arousal, all-encompassing interest in each other, fantasizing about each other, and a relatively rapid swing of emotions.
Love also includes passion, closeness, fascination, exclusiveness, sexual desire, and intense caring.

32. Theories of Love Two main types of love
Passionate or Romantic Love
Intense physiological arousal, psychological interest, sexual desire, being “in love”
Predominates in the early part of a romantic relationship
Companionate or Affectionate Love
Deep, caring affection for a person
Necessary for relationships to succeed in the long term
Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of love
Complete or consummate love occurs when all 3 of the following are present
Intimacy: closeness/connectedness
Passion: physical and sexual attraction
Commitment: cognition of loving someone/long-term maintenance of relationship

33. Aggression Aggression is behavior intended to hurt or destroy
Biological Influences
Genetic Influences
Animals bred for aggression
Identical twin correlation
Neural Influences
Amygdala in limbic system triggers it
Frontal cortex inhibits it
Damage to or immaturity of frontal cortex?
Biochemical Influences
Testosterone levels and behavior – a 2-way street
Alcohol

34. Aggression Psychosocial Causes of Aggression
Frustration-Aggression Principle
Aversive stimuli such as hot temperatures, physical pain or foul odors
Reinforcement
Ostracism
Exposure to violent television or video games (disproving catharsis hypothesis)

35. Leadership Great person theory Right place-right time theory
Personal qualities qualify one to lead
Right place-right time theory
Circumstances are optimal for individual with particular characteristics
Fielder’s Contingency Theory
Depends on the traits of the leader, the circumstances, and the interaction of the group itself.
Task-Oriented vs. Relationship Oriented Leaders
In extreme circumstances – very good or very bad – best to be task oriented.
In moderate circumstances, best to be relationship oriented.