Chapter 14

Social
Psychology
Social Psychology
Social psychology focuses on development and expression of
attitudes, attributions, how we are influenced and how we
influence, and how we interact.

Why study social psychology?

Social Loafing: The tendency for any individual of a group

to put in less effort as a result of being in a large group.
Social Psychology
Social cognition discusses attitude formation and attribution
theory.

The idea behind social cognition is that people act like

scientists; that is, they are constantly gathering data and
making predictions about what will happen, and trying to act
accordingly.

Attitude: An attitude is a set of beliefs and feelings.

Social Psychology
Do attitudes always predict behavior?

Richard LaPiere travelled around the United States in the

1930s with an Asian couple, and found that the Asian couple
was treated poorly due to their race only on occassion.

Later, he contacted the establishments they visited and asked

employees/management whether they would serve Asians;
the establishments said they would not serve Asians.
Social Psychology
Stereotypes: Are attitudes about what members of different
groups are like.

Prejudice is an undeserved, negative, attitude toward a group

of people.

Discrimination is treating categories of people of race, age,

sex, gender, or ability differently.

Ethnocentrism: The belief that one’s culture is superior to

others.
Social Psychology
If you change someone’s behavior, can you change their
attitude?

Cognitive Dissonance Theory is based on the idea that

people are motivated to have consistent attitudes and
behaviors.

When someone’s behavior does not match their beliefs, they

experience mental tension or ‘dissonance’.

Someone who wants to live a long healthy life will

experience cognitive dissonance if they are a heavy smoker.
Social Psychology
Leon Festinger & James Carlsmith conducted a
famous experiment where participants experienced cognitive
dissonance.

Participants completed a boring task (twisting, turning some

knobs).

After finishing, the participants were told that for either $1 or

$20, depending on the group they were in, to lie about the
boring task being great to the next participant (actually a part
of the experiment).
Social Psychology
After they were paid to tell the next ‘participant’ that the task
was interesting, their attitudes were record on a brief survey.

The group paid only $1, having known the task was boring,
but having to say it was interesting, experienced dissonance.

Those who had been paid $20, a high reward, did not
experience dissonance, and reported on the survey that the
task was boring.

Those who had been paid only one dollar, a small reward,
changed their belief about the task and said it was somewhat
interesting on the later survey.
Social Psychology
Attribution Theory tries to explain how people determine the
cause of what they observe.

Attributions are either dispositional (internal, referring to

one’s personality or set of skills, talent, innate ability, or IQ)
or situational (beyond the person’s immediate control).

Say someone cuts you off in traffic. Is it because they are a

terrible driver (dispositional) or because their driving to the
hospital for an emergency (situational)?
Social Psychology
Attributions can also be Stable or Unstable

Example: Robert is a math whiz and always does well in

math. This is a person-stable attribution.

Robert simply studied very hard for this test. This is a

person-unstable attribution.
Robert’s teacher, Mr. Smith always gives easy math tests.
This is a situation-stable attribution.
Mr. Smith, Robert’s teacher, gave one easy test. This is a
situation-unstable attribution.
Social Psychology
Harold Kelly explains that the kind of attributions people make
are based on three kinds of information: Consistency,
Distinctiveness, and Consensus.

Consistency refers to how similarly the individual acts over

time (does this person always do this?).
Distinctiveness refers to how similar some situation is to other
situations in which you’ve seen somebody act (did they act like
this before?).
Consensus refers to taking into consideration how others in the
same situation would have acted (would someone else have
done this?).
Social Psychology
Fundamental Attribution Error: When looking at the
behavior of others, people tend to overestimate the
importance of dispositional (personality) factors and
underestimate situational factors.

In addition, people are more likely to view others behavior as

dispositional, but in judging their own behavior, they are
more likely to say that their behavior depends on the
situation.
Social Psychology
Different cultures may commit the fundamental attribution
error less often.

Individualist cultures emphasize the importance and

uniqueness of the individual (error occurs in these cultures
more often).

Collectivist cultures emphasize a person’s link to various

groups like family or a company (error does not occur as
often in these kinds of cultures).
Social Psychology
Additional terms regarding social cognition and attribution
theory.

False-consensus effect: The tendency for people to

overestimate the number of people who agree with them.

Self-Serving Bias: Tendency to attribute our success to

personal/internal factors, but attribute our failures to
situational/external factors.

Just-world Bias: The belief that good things happen to good

people, and bad things happen to bad people.
Social Psychology

How can you make an argument more persuasive?

When presenting are argument, is it better to present the facts

in a straightforward manner or dress up the message with nice
sounds and images?
Social Psychology
Central Route of Persuasion focuses on details, statistics,
and facts about the object or service to persuade an audience.

Peripheral Route of Persuasion is using tactics other than

the facts or logical arguments to persuade an audience. These
could be using an attractive person, flashing lights, pleasant
sounds, an authoritative figure, or something else.

Psychology of Persuasion
Social Psychology
Social Psychology
Social Psychology
Some research suggests that people who have attained a
higher education are less likely to be swayed by the
peripheral route.

Research also suggests that when presenting to a uniform

audience, a one-sided message is better.

When presenting to a broader audience, it is better to show

both the pros and cons of the object or service.
Social Psychology
Another possible way to make a message more persuasive is
to repeatedly show it.

Mere Exposure Effect: Even if you’ve only seen something

once, you’re more likely to have a positive attitude towards it
over something that you’ve never encountered before.
Social Psychology
Is there anyway to increase the likelihood that you’ll do what
I ask?

Compliance Strategies:
Foot-in-the-door phenomenon
Door-in-the-face
Norms of Reciprocity
Social Psychology
Foot-in-the-door phenomenon: If you get people to agree to
a small request (do you have the time?), they will be more
likely to agree to a larger follow-up request (can you spare a
dollar?).

Door-in-the-face: If you want something, ask for something

really big before asking for what you really want (can I have
$5? “No” Can I have $1?).

Norms of Reciprocity: The idea that if you do something nice

for someone else, they’ll do something nice in return.
Social Psychology
Do others’ expectations affect our behavior and performance?

In the 1960s, Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson

hypothesized that a teacher’s expectation could influence a
child’s performance.

Study: They randomly assigned five children to the

‘spurter/bloomer’ group, but told teachers these students were
selected based on test performance that indicated future
success.

Findings: The children who were expected to ‘spurt’ made

larger improvements than the others.
Social Psychology
Self-fulfilling Prophecy, Pygmalion effect, or the Rosenthal
effect is the phenomenon whereby others’ expectations of a
person affect that person’s performance. Opposite of this
effect is called the Golem effect.
Social Psychology
Does performing in front of a crowd help or hinder us?

Social Facilitation: If it is an easy task, a person will perform

better in front of an audience.

Social Impairment: When the task being observed is a

difficult task, being watched by many people, performance
decreases.
Social Psychology
Psychology of Aggression & Prosocial Behavior

Instrumental aggression is when the aggressive act is

intended to secure a particular end.

Hostile aggression Has no clear purpose, like some acts of

vandalism.

Frustration-aggression hypothesis holds that the feeling of

frustration makes aggression more likely.
Social Psychology
Is there any way we can make hostile groups get along?

The Robbers Cave study focused on intergroup behavior,

observing 22 eleven- and twelve-year-old boys. The children
were split into two teams and forced to compete for rewards.
Eventually things became so hostile between the two groups
that researchers intervened.

Contact Theory if hostile groups are made to work toward a

superordinate goal that benefits all and necessitates
participation from all, then animosity will be reduced
between the two groups.
Social Psychology
Prosocial behavior: Are acts which help other people.

Bystander effect: The larger the number of people who

witness an emergency situation, the less likely any one is to
intervene.
Social Psychology
One explanation for the bystander effect is the diffusion of
responsibility.

Diffusion of Responsibility: The larger the group of people

who witness a problem, the less responsible any one
individual feels that they are for helping.

Pluralistic ignorance: People tend to assume that someone

else will take action so they need not do it themselves.
Social Psychology
What makes us like or dislike other people?

Research indicates that we like people who are similar to us,

with whom we come in frequent contact, and who return our
positive feelings.

Factors that influence liking are similarity, proximity, and

reciprocal liking.
Social Psychology
Psychology of Attraction

Research has demonstrated that attractive people are

perceived as having all sorts of characteristics and attributes
that you could not infer from just looks.

People may perceive this man as more honest, hard-working,

ambitious, etc.
Social Psychology
Bonus slide:

What makes someone physically attractive? Research

findings show that people who have very symmetrical
features are judged as more attractive.
Social Psychology
Psychology of Love

Love is hard to define.

Self-disclosure is when one shares a piece of personal

information with another.

Close relationships with friends and intimate others are often

built through a process of self-disclosure.
Social Psychology: Conformity
To what extent do social forces alter people’s opinions and
actions?

Soloman Asch’s Conformity studies

Groups of students participated in a simple “perceptual” task.

All but one of the participants were actors, and the true focus
of the study was about how the remaining participant would
react to the actors’ behavior.

Conformity studies by Asch

Social Psychology: Obedience
Stanley Milgram

Can you make someone more obedient?

Milgram measured the willingness of participants, men from

a diverse range of occupations with varying levels of
education, to obey an authority figure who instructed them to
perform acts conflicting with their personal conscience.

65 percent (26 of 40) of experiment participants administered

the experiment's final massive 450-volt shock.
Social Psychology
Psychology of Groups: How do people act in groups?

Norms are rules about how group members should act. Being
a lawyer at an established law firm means going into work
well-dressed, prepared, etc.

Roles are the actions we carry out in a group. The corporate

lawyer takes on legal cases dealing with business
arrangements/disagreements.
Social Psychology
In-group: Who you perceive as within your own circle.
People view the members of their own group as more diverse
than people of the out-group. There is also a preference for
member’s of your in-group. This is called in-group bias.

Out-group: Everyone outside your group.

Out-group Homogeneity: Viewing the out-group as all the

same.
Social Psychology
Group Polarization is the tendency of a group to make more
extreme decisions that individual group members would not
make on their own.

Explanations for group polarization include that in a group,

individuals may be exposed to new arguments they had no
previous exposure to and that the responsibility of the success
or failure of some plan is diffused among the group –
deindividuation (see slide ahead).
Social Psychology
Groupthink describes the tendency for some groups to make
bad decisions. Groupthink occurs when group members
suppress their reservations about the ideas supported by the
group, and, as a result, a false sense of unanimity is
encouraged.

Deindividuation: People may get swept up by a group and do

things they would never have done if on their own such as
rioting or looting.
Social Psychology: Bad Apples or
Rotten Barrel?
Philp Zimbardo & The Stanford Prison ‘Experiment’

The Stanford Prison Experiment was a social psychology

experiment that attempted to investigate the psychological
effects of perceived power, focusing on the struggle between
prisoners and prison officers.

Is the person inherently bad or does the

situation/role/institution make him bad?

The Stanford Prison Experiment

Social Psychology

Social Psychology Quiz