1. SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY How we think-feel-behave In social situations

2. Origins of social psychology World War II Desire to understand atrocities of war Work of Fritz Heider and Kurt Lewin

3. What can we learn from the Sneeches???

4. We live in a social world Established values Expectations Behavior patterns

5. It’s a small world Stanley Milgram 6 Degrees of Separation Small World Project

6. People need people Dr. Zilstein’s shock stop What would you do? Why?

7. Social Comparison Theory Leon Festinger

8. Social Perception We form judgments about the people we meet First impressions= strong and frequently lasting Based on limited information Lawyers-Professors-Teenagers-Athletes???

9. If we are so often wrong- why do we rely on our impressions at all? The world can be unpredictable- Think: the Red Sox winning the World Series-TWICE We like consistency We like stable “views” of people

10. How much of the environment do we actually see? Daniel Simons Agatha Christie

11. Not convinced?

12. Attribution Our effort to understand the causes of other people’s behavior.

13. Dispositional AttributionExternal Attribution View others behavior as related to their internal characteristics View others behavior as related to their environment or the situation

14. Fundamental Attribution Error The tendency to see other people’s behavior as dispositional (coming from their characteristics) and to underestimate the power of the situation. This is especially true when we judge our own behavior!

15. How we evaluate situations may be cultural…