CHAPTER 11: SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

PSY 200 JsRCC

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

• Is the study of how people think about, influence, and relate to other people

• Is the branch of psychology that studies how people think, feel, and behave in social situations

SOCIAL COGNITION

• The area of social psychology that explores how people select, interpret, remember and use social information

• Is the mental processes people use to make sense out of their social environment

PERSON PERCEPTION

• Refers to the processes by which we used social stimuli to form impressions of others

• Is the mental processes we use to form judgments and draw conclusions about the characteristics and motives of other people

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

• Physical Appearance

• :Beautiful is Good”

STEREOTYPES

• Is a generalization about a group’s characteristic that does not consider any variations s from one individual to another

• Are a natural extension of the limits on human cognitive processing and our reliance on concepts in cognitive processing

SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY

• Expectations of a person, that we expect to be true

• Stereotyping people make people act the way that we stereotype them as

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

• People attended to remember the way people are when we first meet them

ATTRIBUTION

• Attribution theory views people as motivated to discover the underlying causes of behavior as part of their effort to make sense of the behavior

• Is the mental process of inferring the cause of people’s behavior, including one’s own. Also, refers to the explanation made for a particular behavior.

INTERNAL V. EXTERNAL

• Internal attributions include causes inside and specific to the person, such as his or her traits and abilities.

• External attributions include causes outside the person, such as social pressure, aspects of the social situation, and the weather

STABLE V. UNSTABLE

• Stable/unstable causes: Is the cause relatively enduring and permanent, or is it temporary? Did Aaron blow up at his girlfriend because he is a hostile guy or because he was in a bad mood that day?

FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR

• observers overestimate the importance of internal traits and underestimate the importance of external situations when they seek explanations of another person's behavior

• is the tendency to attribute the behavior of others to internal causes (personality, likes, and so forth), while ignoring or underestimating the effects of external,, situational factors.

• People fall prey to the fundamental attribution error even when they are fully aware of the situation’s impact

HEURISTICS

• are cognitive shortcuts that allow us to make decisions rapidly

• can be useful in processing social information

FALSE CONSENSUS EFFECT

• is the overestimation of the degree to which everybody else thinks or acts the way we do

• can be important in social interactions. Imagine for example that someone in a group to which you belong makes a racially insensitive remark

PERCEPTION OF SELF

• Self- Esteem

• Degree that we have positive, or negative feeling about ourselves

• Positive Illusions

• Favorable views of the self that are not necessarily rooted in reality

• Self-serving Bias

• refers to the tendency to take credit for one's own successes and to deny responsibility for one's own failures

• Is the tendency to attribute successful outcomes of one’s own behavior to internal causes and unsuccessful outcomes to external situational causes

• Stereotype Threat

• is an individual's fast-acting, self-fulfilling fear of being judged based on a negative stereotype about his or her group

• Social Comparison

• he process by which individuals evaluate their thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and abilities in relation to others

• helps individuals to evaluate themselves, to identify their distinctive characteristics, to build an identity.

ATTITUDES

• are our feelings or opinions about people, objects, and ideas

• an individual’s opinions and beliefs about people, objects and ideas how the person feels about the world

• A learned tendency to evaluate some object, person, or issue in a particular way; such evaluations may be positive, negative, or ambivalent

When Attitudes Predict Behavior

• When attitudes are specific

• When attitudes are strong

• When attitudes are frequently

• Vested interest

When Behavior Predicts Attitudes

• When behavior brings on a specific type of attitude

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE

• a concept developed by Festinger (1957), is an individual's psychological discomfort (dissonance) caused by two inconsistent thoughts

• is at the root of that uncomfortable feeling of being a hypocrite

• is an unpleasant state od psychological tension or arousal (dissonance) that occurs when two thoughts or perpceptions (cognitions) are inconsistent; typically results from the awareness that attitudes and behavior are in conflict

SELF-PERCEPTION THEORY

• is Daryl Bem's (1967) explanation of how behaviors influence attitudes.

PERSUASION

• involves trying to change someone's attitude—and often his or her behavior as well

• a deliberate attempt to influence tht attitudes or behavior of another person

The Communicator

• The Communicator

• Trustworthiness and expertise are credibility characteristics that help a communicator change people's attitudes or convince them to act

• How they tell you how to behave

• The Medium

• Another persuasion factor is the medium or the technology used to get the message across.

• TV, radio, newspaper, and internet

The Audience

• The Audience

• Age and attitude strength are two characteristics of the audience that determine whether a message will be effective

• age

• The Message

• The elaboration likelihood model addresses this question

• Goes towards your emotions

TECHNIQUES

• Central

• More decide message

• Base on logic and facts

• Peripheral

• Base on emotion

ALTRUISM

• Altruism

• Unselfish interest in helping another person

• Egoism

• involves giving to another person to gain self-esteem; to present oneself as powerful, competent, or caring; or to avoid censure, both from oneself and from society, for failing to live up to expectations

• may also entail helping another person because we want to increase the chances that the person will return the favor someday—that is, we may be kind to another person to ensure reciprocity.

• Reciprocity

• involves an expression of trust for another person, as well as feelings of obligation and guilt.

• encourages us to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Reciprocity lies at the heart of the Golden Rule

BYSTANDER EFFECT

• the tendency of an individual who observes an emergency to help less when other people are present than when the observer is alone

AGGRESSION

• Refers to social behavior whose objective is to harm someone, either physically or verbally. Aggression is common in contemporary society

BIOLOGICAL FACTORS IN AGGRESSION

• Evolutionary Views

• certain stimuli release innate aggressive responses

• Evolutionary theorists believe that human beings are not much different from other animals

• basic theme of their theory is the survival of the fittest

• Genetic Basis

• Genes are important in explaining the biological basis of aggression

• selective breeding of animals provides evidence for genetic influences in aggression

• genetic basis for aggression is more difficult to demonstrate in humans than animals and may depend on the type of aggression studied

• Neurobiological Factors

• frontal lobes of the brain—the areas most involved in executive functions such as planning and self-control—have also been implicated in aggression

• Neurotransmitters—particularly, lower levels of serotonin—have been linked to aggressive behavior

PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS IN AGGRESSION

• include individuals' responses to circumstances, as well as cognitive and learning factors

Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis

• states that frustration—the blocking of an individual's attempts to reach a goal—always leads to aggression

Overt v. Relational Aggression

• Overt Aggression• refers to physically or verbally harming another person directly. Males tend to be higher in overt aggression than females.

• Relational Aggression• behavior that is meant to harm the social standing of another person through activities such as

gossiping and spreading rumors

• Relational aggression differs from overt aggression in that it requires that the aggressor have a considerable level of social and cognitive skill.

SOCIAL INFLUENCE

• Conformity

• is a change in a person's behavior to coincide more closely with a group standard.

• Conformity takes many forms and affects many aspects of people's lives, in negative and positive ways.

• Asch’s Study

• Solomon Asch conducted this classic experiment on conformity in 1951

• instructed the confederates to give incorrect responses on 12 of 18 trials

• found that the volunteer participants conformed to the incorrect answers 35 percent of the time

• research has supported the notion that the pressure to conform is strong

INFORMATIONAL V. NORMATIVE SOCIAL INFLUENCE

• Informational Social Influence

• Refers to the influence other people have on us because we want to be right

• Normative Social Influence

• is the influence others have on us because we want them to like us.

MILGRAM’S SHOCKING RESEARCH

• provides insight into such obedience

• Imagine that as part of an experiment, you are asked to deliver a series of painful electric shocks to another person

• In Milgram's experiments, the “learner” was strapped into a chair. The experimenter made it look as if a shock generator was being connected to the learner's body through several electrodes. The chart shows the percentage of “teachers” who stopped shocking the learner at each voltage level.

GROUP INFLUENCE

• Deindividuation

• The reduction in personal identity and erosion of the sense of personal responsibility when one is part of a group

• Social Contagion

• behavior involving the spread of behavior, emotions, and ideas

SOCIAL FACILITATION V. SOCIAL LOAFING

• Social Facilitation

• occurs when an individual's performance improves because of the presence of others

• Social Loafing

• refers to each person's tendency to exert less effort in a group because of reduced accountability for individual effort

• Social loafing commonly occurs when a group of students is assigned a class project, and it is one reason that some students intensely dislike group assignments

GROUP DECISION-MAKING• Risky Shift

• is the tendency for a group decision to be riskier than the average decision made by the individual group members

• Group Polarization

• is the solidification and further strengthening of an individual's position as a consequence of a group discussion or interaction

• may occur because, during the discussion, people hear new, more persuasive arguments that strengthen their original position.

• might arise because of social comparison

• Groupthink

• Refers to the impaired group decision making that occurs when making the right decision is less important than maintaining group harmony.

• can result in disastrous decisions

SOCIAL IDENTITY THEORY

• Social Identity Theory= the view that social identity is a crucial part of self-image and a valuable source of positive feelings about oneself

• Social identity refers to the way individuals define themselves in terms of their group membership.

ETHNOCENTRISM

• The tendency to favor one’s own ethnic group over other groups

• Ethnocentrism does not simply mean taking pride in one's group; it also involves asserting the group's superiority over other groups

PREJUDICE• Prejudice

• is an unjustified negative attitude toward an individual based on the individual's membership in a group

• Sources of Prejudice

• Competition between groups, especially when resources are scarce, can contribute to prejudice

• Cultural learning is also clearly involved

• underlie prejudice comes from the limits on our information-processing abilities

• Discrimination

• refers to an unjustified negative or harmful action toward a member of a group simply because the person belongs to that group

• results when negative emotional reactions combine with prejudicial beliefs and are translated into behavior

PROXIMITY

• Proximity

• Is a strong predictor of attraction

• Mere Exposure Effect

• Means that the more we encounter someone or something more likely we are to start liking thae person or thing even if we do not realize we have seen it before

EVOLUTIONARY FACTORS

• focus on gender differences in the variables that account for attraction

• the goal for both men and women is to procreate—to produce children

• For men, this evolutionary task is complicated by the fact that in the human species, paternity is somewhat more mysterious than motherhood

Romantic v. Affectionate Love

• Romantic Love

• is love with strong components of sexuality and infatuation, and it often predominates in the early part of a love relationship

• Affectionate Love

• is the type of love that occurs when an individual has a deep, caring affection for another person and desires to have that person near

SOCIAL EXCHANGE THEORY V. INVESTMENT MODEL

• Social Exchange Theory

• is based on the idea of social relationships as involving an exchange of goods, the objective of which is to minimize costs and maximize benefits.

• Investment Model

• examines the ways that commitment, investment, and the availability of attractive alternative partners predict satisfaction and stability in relationships