Chapter 18

Social Psychology

Chapter 18 Reading Map

• Frid, April 20 2 essays in class

• Mon, April 23 695 – 702

• Tues, April 24 AP Exam

• Wed, April 25 702 – 709

• Thur, April 26 709 – 713

• Frid, April 27 714 – end

• Mon, April 28 Quiz/Cards/Study Guide

Social Psychology (695)

Social Psychology --- studies how we think about, influence and relate to one and other.

Attributing Behavior (696)

• Fritz Heider (1958) - proposed the Attribution Theory which says that people attribute other's behavior to

• their internal dispositions, or

• their external situations

Fundamental Attribution Error (696)

• when explaining our own behavior, we attribute it to the situation

• when explaining other's behavior, we attribute it to his disposition

• with people we know well and see in various situations, we are less likely to commit the fundamental attribution error

• Napolitan and Goethals (1979) - 1/2 told the women would act aloof and 1/2 were not told anything. Despite this nearly all attributed her behavior to her disposition (even though 1/2 had been told she was acting)

Effects of Attribution (697)

• happy spouses attribute snipes as situational.

• unhappy spouse attribute snipes as dispositional

• conservatives attribute poverty as dispositional

• liberals attribute poverty as situational

Do Attitudes Guide Actions? (698)

YES, if• outside influences on what

we say and do are minimal• the attitude is specifically

relevant to the behavior - (ie your attitude to fast food guides your restaurant choices)

• we are keenly aware of our attitudes

Do Actions Guide Attitudes? (699)

People come to believe in what they have stood up for.

Foot in the Door Phenomenon (699)

• the tendency for people who agree to a small action to comply later on with a larger one. (good or bad)

• Phenomenon came out of the Korean war. 21 US prisoners chose to stay with their captors after the war ended. Others returned home convinced that communism was a good thing. The prisoners were first asked to do trivial tasks and then this escalated up. Eventually they adjusted their beliefs to be consistent with their public acts.

Role Playing Affects Attitudes (700)

• We "play" wife, but eventually it feels natural.

• Executives turn into aggressive and confident people.

Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment of 1972

• Philip Zimbardo simulated a prison at the university of Stanford and asked for volunteers who were randomly assigned to play guards or prisoners. After a few days the simulation became too real - the guards too brutal - the prisoners began to break down. After 6 days Zimbardo had to stop the experiment because of ethical problems.

• Interview clip with Zimbardo (9 minutes) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAjJoorEaic

Zimbardo in Regina (2009)

Why Do Our Actions Affect Our Attitudes? (701)

• we feel motivated to justify our actions

• cognitive dissonance - when we are aware that our actions and attitudes don't coincide

Cognitive Dissonance Theory (701)

• Leon Festinger’s theory that to relieve cognitive dissonance we often change our attitudes to match our actions (we rationalize).

• The less coerced and more responsible we feel for a troubling act, the more cognitive dissonance we feel - and - the more dissonance we feel, the more we are motivated to change our attitudes to match our actions.

Conformity & Obedience (702)

• Chartrund an Bargh (1999) - the chameleon effect - we are natural mimics - the face rubbing/foot shaking experiment - the subjects copied the actions of the confederates.

• Totterdell (1998) - mood linkage - we share up and down moods

• Neumann and Strack (2000) - mood contagion - a neutral text read in a happy or sad tone will convey happy or sad

Copycat Crime/Suicide

• do people act the same because they are copying or because they are simultaneously exposed to the same events and conditions of the first shooter?

• 8 days following the Columbine shooting, every State except Vermont experienced threats of copycat violence.

Group Pressure and Conformity (704)

Conformity - adjusting your behavior or thinking toward a group standard

What Does This Have to Do With Conformity?????

Asch Experiment (1955)

• the line experiment • the confederates give the right answer the first 2

times and then give the wrong answer• more than 1/3 of the time people go with the

group even though they admit later that they thought the group was wrong

• 4 minute clip of experiment http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sno1TpCLj6A

Asch (continued)• Asch found people more likely to conform when:• one is made to feel incompetent or insecure• the group is at least 3 people• the group is unanimous (a single dissident or ally

will greatly increase social courage)• one admires the group• one has made no prior commitment to any response• others in the group observe one's behavior• one's culture strongly encourages respect for social

standards

Reasons for Conforming (705)

• Normative Social Influence - influence resulting from a person's desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval - because we respect norms

• Informational Social Influence - is when we accept other's opinions about reality

• Western society values individualism over conformity and the conformity rates are therefore lower.

Baron (1996)• show subjects a slide of a single person and then a

slide of 4 people - ask them to pick out the single person - some subjects told that this is just an experiment - others are told it relates to a police line up.

• when subjects believed that the task was important people rarely conform when the task was easy but conformed 1/2 the time when the task is difficult.

• When subjects believed the task was unimportant people conformed about 1/3 of the time.

• When we are unsure of what is right, and being right matters, we tend to conform

Obedience (706)

• Milgram clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHuI2JIPylk

Stanley Milgram Experiment (1963) at Yale University

• subjects thought experiment was about punishment's effect on learning.

• subject becomes the "teacher" and learner is strapped to an electric chair in other room

• teacher is told to go up in voltage with each wrong answer

• experimenter prods teacher to keep shocking• 63% of Milgram's teachers complied to the last

voltage switch - men and women complied similarly

Debate Over Milgram’s Research Ethics (707)

• none of his subjects appeared to suffer emotional after effects (they were interviewed by psychiatrists after the experiment). BUT …….

Remember our Research Ethics:1. Cause no harm2. Subjects can withdraw3. Subjects must consent4. Subjects must be debriefed5. Confidentiality

Obedience Highest When

• Milgram varied his experiment Obedience was HIGHEST when:

• the person giving the orders was close at hand and was perceived to be a legitimate authority figure

• the authority figure was supported by a prestigious institution (Yale v. Crappola College)

• the victim was depersonalized or at a distance• there were no role models for defiance - no other

subjects were seen to disobey the experimenter

Real Life Obedience

In history we have both examples of obedience

• Nazi soldiers

• French Resisters

Individual Behavior in the Presence of Others (709)

• Social Facilitation - fishing reel experiment (Norman Triplett (1898) - the phenomenon of stronger performance in other's presence

• However, on difficult tasks people perform worse when others are working on the same task

• Why? - other people arouse us - arousal strengthens the most likely response which is the correct response on easy tasks but the incorrect response on difficult tasks

• Therefore - expert pool players do better when watched but amateurs will do worse.

Individual Behavior in the Presence of Others (709)

• Crowding - social facilitation makes people laugh louder at comediens when they are in a crowd

• Social Loafing- the tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling their efforts toward a common goal than when they are individually accountable

Social Loafing (710)

• Inham (1974) - tug-of-war experiment - people blind folded - when people thought others were on the rope with them they pulled using 82% of the strength that they used when they thought they were alone on the rope

• Social Loafing is most marked among men in individualistic cultures

Deindividuation (710)

• abandoning normal restraints to the power of the group

• the group arouses you and diminishes your sense of responsibility

• less self-conscious and less restrained in a group

Zimbardo (1970)

• His experiment found that people dressed alike in Klan wear delivered twice the shock to victims

• the group makes people feel aroused and anonymous

Effects of Group Interaction (711) Group Polarization

• the strengthening of a group's attitudes through discussion within the group

• can be negative or positive attitudes - racism gets worse - tolerance gets more tolerant

• over time, the initial difference between groups tends to grow

Group Think (712)

• is harmonious but unrealistic group thinking

• The tendency of people to go along with a group decision even if they don’t agree with it --- harmony is more important

Group Think

• coined by Irving Janis after the Cuban Missile Crisis - when President Kennedy and his advisers blundered into a plan to invade Cuba with 1400 CIA-trained Cuban exiles. When the invaders were easily caught and linked to the US government, Kennedy wondered in hindsight how they could have been so stupid.

Group Think

Janis discovered that Group Think is fed by:1. Unduly high confidence2. High group morale3. dissidents are either self-censored or

suppressed by the group4. conformity and assumed support for the

idea5. group polarization

Group Think

Group Think is avoided when leaders -

• welcome opinions

• invite expert criticism

• assign people to identify possible problems

Power of the Individual (712)

• Social Control - power of the situation

• Personal Control - power of the individual

• Committed individuals influence groups.

• Minority Influence - the power of 1 or 2 to sway majorities

• An unswerving minority is more powerful than a waffling minority.

Prejudice (714)

• means to pre-judge• an unjustifiable and

usually negative attitude toward a group

• a mixture of beliefs (stereotypes), emotions and predispositions to action (to discriminate).

• are schemas that influence how we notice and perceive and interpret events

How Prejudiced Are We? (714)• in the last 50 years we are becoming less prejudiced• blatant prejudice is waning but subtle prejudice

lingers - ie in social intimacy settings many still admit they would feel uncomfortable with someone of another race

• Prejudice can be unconscious - ex. people in simulations more quickly "shoot" black people

• Racial Profiling• male v. female• sex-selective abortions

Social Roots of Prejudice (716)

• Social Inequalities - the "haves" develop attitudes to justify things as they are - ie the slaves had "traits" that justified them being enslaved.

• prejudices rationalize inequalities• discrimination increases prejudice through the reactions

it provokes in its victims (an example of the self-fulfilling prophecy)

• Blame-the-victim phenomemon• Brown eye/blue eye experiment clip (9 Minutes)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAv8JA_9uKI&feature=related

Us v. ThemIngroup v. Outgroup (716)

• we have an ancestral need to belong and so we are a group-bound species

• social identities - we associate with certain groups and contrast ourselves with other groups

• When we define "us" we also (by default) define "them"

Ingroup Bias (716)

• favouring your own group• We have an urge for the

ingroup to dominate and this predisposes us to a prejudice against strangers

• Even chimpanzees have been seen to wipe clean the spot where they were touched by a chimp from another group (Goodall, 1986)

Scapegoating (717)

• finding someone to blame when things go wrong

• gives us an emotional outlet

• a despised outgroup boosts the morale of the ingroup

• the lower your self-esteem, the more likely you will scapegoat

Cognitive Roots of Prejudice (718)

stereotypes are a by-product of how we cognitively simplify the world

Cognitive Roots of PrejudiceCategorization (718)

• we simplify our world by categorizing it ---- but ---- in grouping people we often stereotype them

• stereotypes bias our perceptions - we perceive a black basketball player as a better player

• stereotypes bias our perceptions of diversity

• “we" are diverse but "they" are all the same

Cognitive Roots of PrejudiceVivid Cases (718)

Availability Heuristic - we judge the frequency of events by instances that readily come to mind --- we overgeneralize from vivid, memorable cases

Cognitive Roots of PrejudiceJust-World Phenomenon (718)

• by-standers blame victims by assuming the world is just and therefore people get what they deserve

• ·we learn that "good" is reworded and "evil" is punished - so - if you are being "punished" (by a tsunami?) that must mean that you are "evil"

• we use hindsight bias and say that the victim should have known better

Aggression (718)

• physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt or destroy whether done reactively out of hostility or proactively as a means to an end

• behavior emerges from the interaction of biology and experience

• Therefore there is Biology of Aggression and Psychology of Aggression

Biology of Aggression (719)

• Freud says that aggression is a biological instinct• But, others say that aggression varies too much

from culture to culture and individual to individual for it to just be biological.

• Yet, biology does influence aggression:– genetic– neural– biochemical

Genetic Influences on Aggression (720)

• identical twins have the same tempers

• violent criminals are more likely to have the Y chromosome

Neural Influences on Aggression (720)• neural systems in our brain when stimulated will inhibit

or produce aggressive behavior• Amygdala - centre for aggression• all 15 death row inmates had had brain injuries (Lewis

(1986))• diminished frontal lobe (impulse control area) activity

in violent criminals (Amen (1996))• No one centre in the brain controls aggression. The

brain has a neural system that facilitates aggression and it has a frontal lobe system that inhibits aggression.

Biochemical Influences on Aggression (720)

• hormones and alcohol influence the neural systems that control aggression

• castration lowers testosterone and makes a bull gentle

• violent criminals tend to be muscular young males with lower than average IQ scores, low levels of serotonin and high levels of testosterone.

• drugs that lower testosterone also lower their violence

Testosterone

high testosterone leads to:• irritability• low frustration tolerance• assertiveness• impulsiveness

• as age increases testosterone decreases and aggressiveness decreases

Behavior & Testosterone

• each influences the other• in a test of fans after a

game - the winners have higher testosterone and the losers have lower

• alcohol increases aggressiveness - and - aggressive people are more likely to drink alcohol and to become violent when drunk

Psychology of AggressionAversive Events (721)

• when we suffer, we are more likely to make others suffer

• Frustration-Aggression Principle - being blocked short of a goal increases people's readiness to aggress - frustration brings out our fight rather than our flight instinct

• Other aversive stimuli - pain, insult, odor, heat - can also evoke hostility.

Psychology of AggressionLearning to Express/Inhibit (722)• learning can alter our natural aggressive reactions• aggression can be observationally learned (BoBo

Doll) or learned through rewards• different cultures model, reinforce and evoke

different standards of violence• absent fathers and violence are correlated• parents of delinquent children typically discipline

with beatings (modeling) AND typically cave into their children's tears and temper tantrums (reward)

Psychology of AggressionSexual Aggression and the Media (723)

• TV violence desensitizes people to violence and primes them to respond aggressively when provoked

• sexual aggression is on the rise - it correlates with a rise in violent film rentals -- videos depict rape as the woman first resisting but then enjoying the sex

• sex offenders report a higher viewing rate of porn

Psychology of AggressionSexual Aggression and the Media (723)

• Harris (1994) repeated porn experiment - makes your partner seem less appealing, makes a woman's friendliness seem sexual and makes sexual aggression seem less serious

• Zillman (1984) the group that watched the sex film recommends 1/2 the sentence for an actual rape case as the control group does

Psychology of Aggression (724)TV Violence and Pornography

Media provides a social script - when we are in a new situation and don't know how to act we rely on our social scripts.

Do Video Games Teach or Release Violence (725)

• social script?• desensitizing us to violence?• catharsis?• Ballard and Wiest (1998) - observed a rising level

of arousal and feelings of hostility in college men as they played Mortal Kombat

• Anderson and Dill (2000) - those who spent the most hours playing violent games tended to be the most physically aggressive

• viewing/aggression.

Video Games (continued)

• These 2 studies tend to disconfirm the catharsis hypothesis which stated that if we watch violence we "vent" it and therefore don't have to do it. These studies suggest that if we watch violence we want to do it more.

• They theorize that we learn to like violence in video games and then we seek out what we like - violence - in real life.

• See the Close Up on page 726 for a parallel between smoking/cancer and violence

Conflict (726)

• a seemingly incompatibility of actions, goals or ideas

• in conflict people become enmeshed in a potentially destructive social process that can produce results no one wants.

• Examples of the destructive processes are social traps and distorted perceptions.

Social Traps (727)

• people get caught up in mutually harmful behavior as they pursue their own ends - ex - whaling

• the social trap challenge is to find ways to pursue our own interests and the well-being of all

Distorted PerceptionsEnemy Perceptions (728)

• Those in conflict tend to demonize one and other with distorted images

• Mirror-image Perceptions - these distorted images are similar to our opponent's images of us. Each demonizes the other

• As enemies change, so do perceptions. In WWII the Japanese, as enemy, were "evil". Now, as ally the Japanese are industrious."

Roots of Biased Perceptions1. Self-serving bias and scapegoating - we accept credit for good

and blame others for bad2. Fundamental Attribution Error - we see "their" weapon

hoarding as arising from their aggressive disposition but "our" weapon hoarding as necessary self-defense because of the situation.

3. Stereotypes - "their" actions are filtered through our stereotypes4. Polarized ideas about "them" form in our like-minded groups5. Groupthink - our group clings to an idea or decision about them6. Self-Fulfilling Prophecy - our perceptions of "them" are

confirmed when they react in ways that justify our initial perceptions

Psychology of Attraction (729)Proximity and Attraction

• geographic nearness is the most powerful predictor of friendship

• it provides opportunity for liking or disliking

Mere Exposure Effect

• Proximity more often leads to LIKING - WHY???• repeated exposure to novel stimuli increases our

liking of them -- this is the mere exposure effect• Moreland and Beach (1992) - had silent women

attend various numbers of the subjects' classes. The subjects were later shown slides of the women - they ranked as the most attractive the women who had attended the greater number of classes with them.

• So, if you want a date - have good attendance!!!!

Mere Exposure EffectEvolutionary Explanation

• For our ancestors, familiar meant safe and approachable - and alive!

• DeBruine (2002) - subjects were more trusting/ cooperative when their "opponents'" picture in a social trap game included parts of their own face morphed into it.

Physical Attractiveness and Attraction (730)

• In forming 1st impressions --- most important is proximity ---- and next is attractiveness

• We perceive attractive people to be healthier, happier, more sensitive, more successful and more socially skilled. We do not think that they are more honest or compassionate.

• Attractive people win job interviews.• YET, people's attractiveness is quite unrelated to

their self-esteem and happiness. WHY?

Physical Attractiveness

• people's attractiveness is quite unrelated to self-esteem and happiness. WHY?

• few people rate themselves as unattractive

• less attractive people attribute praise by others as relating to their efforts not just their looks so they take the praise as sincere. Attractive people are suspicious of people's praise

Beauty is Relative and Cultural (730)

Some Beauty Constants:• men find youthful women

attractive• women like healthy-

looking, mature, dominant, affluent men

• people rate "average" faces as more attractive

• we find people that we like attractive

Similarity and Attraction (732)

• Attraction is formed through:– proximity– physical attraction– similarity

• In real life, opposites RETRACT.

• Couples tend to share attitudes, beliefs, interests

• Also, we tend to like people who like us. (reward)

Romantic Love (733)

• Passionate Love --- arousal is a key part

• Companionate Love - giddy arousal fades and is replaced with compatibility and deep affection

• Good relationships require equity and self-disclosure

Altruism (734)

Unselfish regard for the welfare of others

Bystander Intervention (735)

• Famous case of Kitty Genovese• John Darley and Bibb Latane (1968)

attributed Kitty’s neighbors’ inaction to the situational factor of the presence of others!

• Their study concluded that we will help if:– 1. We notice an incident– 2. We interpret it as an emergency– 3. We assume responsibility for helping

Social Exchange Theory (736)

• Our social behavior is an exchange process, the aim of which is to maximize benefits and minimize costs

• If you see the rewards outweighing the costs -- then you help others

Superordinate Goals (738)

Shared goals that override differences among people and require their cooperation

ConciliationGRIT (739)

• Graduated and Reciprocated Initiative in Tension Reduction

• A strategy designed to decrease international tensions