©Prentice Hall 200314-1 Understanding Psychology 6 th Edition Charles G. Morris and Albert A....

©Prentice Hall 2003 14-1

Understanding Psychology6th Edition

Charles G. Morris and Albert A. Maisto

PowerPoint Presentation byH. Lynn Bradman

Metropolitan Community College


Chapter 14

Social Psychology


What Is Social Psychology?

• The scientific study of the ways in which the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of an individual are influenced by the real or imagined behavior of others.


Social Cognition

• Impression formation• Attribution• Interpersonal attraction


Impression Formation

• Schemata• Primacy effect• Self-fulfilling prophecies• Stereotypes


Schemata

• The use of schemata speeds information processing.

• Schematic processing aids in encoding and recall of personal information.


Primacy Effect

• The theory that early information about someone weighs more heavily than later information in influencing one’s impression of that person.


Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

• The process in which a person’s expectation about another elicits behavior from the second person that confirms the expectation.


Stereotypes

• A special type of schema about members of a social category.

• Stereotypes may contribute to self-fulfilling prophecies.


Attribution Theory

• The theory that addresses the question of how people make judgments about the causes of behavior.

• Behavior is typically explained as being the result of either internal or external factors.


Three Types of Information Used to Determine Causality

• Distinctiveness: – Uniqueness of circumstances

• Consistency: – Degree to which behavior is typical of the

individual in similar circumstances

• Consensus: – Degree to which behavior in this

circumstance is typical of most people


Biases in Attributions

• Fundamental attribution error• Defensive attribution• Just-world hypothesis


Fundamental Attribution Error

• The tendency of people to overemphasize personal causes for other people’s behavior and to underemphasize personal causes for their own behavior.


Defensive Attribution

• Sometimes referred to as the self-serving bias.

• Our successes are attributed to internal factors

• Our failures are attributed to external factors.


Just-World Hypothesis

• An attribution error based on the assumption that bad things happen to bad people and good things happen to good people.


Factors Involved in Interpersonal Attraction

• Proximity: – How close two people live to each other.

• Physical attractiveness: – We tend to ascribe a host of positive

qualities to physically attractive individuals.



• Similarity: – We tend to be attracted to people who

share our attitudes, interests, values, and beliefs.

• Exchange: – We are attracted to those individuals with

whom we exchange rewards.


Exchange

• Equity: – We prefer to have equitable (equal give and

take) relationships.

• Gain-loss theory: – We prefer increases in positive evaluation

by others to steady positive evaluation.



• Intimacy: – The quality of genuine closeness and trust

achieved in communication with another person.

• Self-disclosure: – The revealing of personal experiences and

opinions.


Attitudes

• Attitudes are important because they often influence behavior.

• We cannot always tell people's attitudes from their actions.


What is an attitude?

• A relatively stable organization of beliefs, feelings, and behavior tendencies directed toward something or someone—the attitude object.


Three Components of an Attitude

• Evaluative beliefs about the attitude object

• Feelings toward the attitude object• Behavioral tendencies toward the

attitude object


Self-Monitoring

• The tendency for one to observe a situation for cues about how to react.

• High self-monitors may change their behavior to meet the demands of the situation.


How Do We Acquire Our Attitudes?

• From early, direct personal experiences• Parents, teachers, friends, famous

people• The mass media


Prejudice and Discrimination

• Prejudice: – An unfair, intolerant, or unfavorable attitude

toward a group of people.

• Discrimination: – An unfair act or series of acts taken toward

an entire group of people or individual members of that group.


Sources of Prejudice

• Frustration-aggression theory• Authoritarian personality


Frustration-Aggression Theory

• The theory that under certain circumstances people who are frustrated in their goals turn their anger away from the proper, powerful target toward another, less powerful target that is safer to attack.


Authoritarian Personality

• A personality pattern characterized by rigid conventionality, exaggerated respect for authority, and hostility toward people who defy society’s norms.


Two Types of Racism

• Modern racism: – A subtle and less extreme form of prejudice

reflected by agreement with statements that civil rights groups are too extreme or that African Americans receive more respect and benefits than they deserve.

• Institutional racism: – Discrimination that occurs because of the

overall effect of institutions and policies.


Using the Contact Hypothesis to Reduce

Prejudice• Members of opposing groups must have

equal status.• One-on-one contact is necessary.• Contact improves under cooperation.• The social norms should encourage

contact.


The Process of Persuasion

• Must attend to the message,• Comprehend the message,• And accept it as convincing


Four Elements of Effective Persuasion

• The source• The message• The medium of communication• Characteristics of the audience


The Source

• Must appeal to the audience • Must be credible


The Message

• Novel arguments are more persuasive than old arguments.

• The message is more successful when both sides of arguments are presented.

• The use of fear sometimes works.


The Medium of Communication

• The most effective medium is face-to-face appeals or the lessons of our own experience.

• Writing is best suited for complex arguments.

• Videotape or live media is best for an audience that already grasps the basics of an argument.


Characteristics of the Audience

• Certain personality characteristics make some people more susceptible to attitude change:– People with low self-esteem are more easily

influenced.– Highly intelligent people tend to resist

persuasion because they can think of counterarguments more easily.


Characteristics of the Audience

• Attitudes are most resistant to change if:– The audience has a strong commitment to

its present attitudes.– Those attitudes are shared by other people.– The attitudes were instilled during early

childhood by such pivotal groups as the family.


Cognitive Dissonance

• Perceived inconsistency between two cognitions (a piece of knowledge or a belief).

• An unpleasant psychological tension is created and we want to alleviate this tension.


Cognitive Dissonance

• Attitude change can occur due to cognitive dissonance if a small reward is given for a behavior that is attitude discrepant.


Ways to Reduce Cognitive Dissonance

• Increase the number of thoughts that support one of the beliefs.

• Reduce the importance of one of the cognitions.


Social Influence

• The process by which others individually or collectively affect one’s perceptions, attitudes, and actions.


Social Influence and Culture

• Culture: – All the goods, both tangible and intangible,

produced in a society.

• Cultural truism: – The belief that most members of a society

accept as self-evidently true.


Social Influence and Culture

• Norm: – A shared idea or expectation about how to

behave.

• Cultural norm: – A behavioral rule shared by an entire

society.


Conformity

• Voluntarily yielding to social norms, even at the expense of one’s own preferences.


Asch’s Findings

• Overall, subjects conformed on about 35% of the trials.

• Two factors influence the likelihood a person will conform:– Characteristics of the situation– Characteristics of the individual


Characteristics of the Situation

• Size of the group: – Likelihood of conformity increases until four

confederates are present

• Degree of unanimity– Just one “ally” eases the pressure to

conform

• Nature of task: – When task is difficult, poorly defined, or

ambiguous there is higher conformity


Characteristics of the Individual

• Likelihood to conform increases when one:

• Is attracted to the group• Expects future interaction with the

group• Has low status in the group• Does not feel completely accepted


Compliance

• A change of behavior in response to an explicit request from another person or group.– Foot-in-the-door effect– Lowball procedure– Door-in-the-face effect


Foot-in-the-Door Effect

• Once people have granted a small request, they are more likely to comply with a larger request.


Lowball Procedure

• First, one must be induced to agree to do something.

• Then, the cost of compliance is raised.


Door-in-the-Face Effect

• A person initially refuses to grant a large request, but agrees to grant a smaller second request.

• This technique may work because people interpret the smaller request as a concession by the person asking for the request.


Obedience

• A change of behavior in response to a command from another person, typically an authority figure.


Milgram’s Obedience Studies

• Classic work by Stanley Milgram showed that many people were willing to obey orders to administer harmful shocks to other people.

• This obedience to an authority figure was more likely when certain situational factors were present.

• For example, people found it harder to disobey when the authority figure issuing the order was nearby.


Milgram’s Obedience Studies

• They were also more likely to obey the command when the person being given the shock was some distance from them.

• According to Milgram, obedience is brought on by the constraints of the situation.


Factors Influencing Obedience

• The amount of power vested in the person giving orders.

• Surveillance: – Whether or not someone is watching you

• Whether or not responsibility for actions is shared. – If it is, then one is more likely to obey.


Social Action

• Deindividuation: – The more anonymous people feel in a

group, the less responsible they feel as individuals.

• Helping behavior• Group decision making• Organizational behavior


Helping Behavior

• Altruistic behavior: – Helping behavior that is not linked to

personal gain.

• Bystander effect: – The tendency for an individual’s helpfulness

in an emergency to decrease as the number of bystanders increase.


Factors Influencing Helping

• Situational variables– Presence of other people– Ambiguity of situation

• Personal characteristics– Amount of personal responsibility felt– Amount of empathy felt– One’s present mood


Group Decision Making

• Group polarization: – Group discussion leads attitudes to be more

extreme

• Risky shift: – Greater willingness to take risks in decision

in a group


Factors Affecting Group Effectiveness

• Nature of the task• Resources of group members• Interaction among members• Group size• Cohesiveness• Social loafing:

– Tendency to exert less effort on a task when working in a group


Leadership

• Great person theory: – Leadership is a result of personal qualities

and traits that qualify one to lead others.

• Today this theory is rejected because it ignores social and economic factors.


Transactional View of Leadership

• A number of factors interact to determine who becomes a leader:– Traits of the potential leader– Aspects of the situation in which the group

finds itself– Response of the group and the leader to

each other


Fiedler’s Contingency Model

• There are two types of leaders:– Task-oriented; Mainly focuses on doing the

task well – Relationship-oriented; Focuses on

maintaining group harmony and cohesiveness


Effectiveness of Leadership Styles

• The effectiveness of leadership style depends on:– The nature of the task.– The relationship between the leader and

group.– The leader’s ability to exercise the proper

amount of power over the group.


Effectiveness of Leadership Styles

• Task-oriented leadership is more effective when conditions are either very favorable or unfavorable for the leader.

• Relationship-oriented leadership is more effective when conditions are moderately favorable for the leader.


Industrial/Organizational (I/O) Psychology

• I/O psychology is concerned with the application of psychological principles to the problems of human organizations.

• Hawthorne effect: – The principle that people will alter their

behavior because of researcher’s attention and not necessarily because of any treatment condition.

©Prentice Hall 200314-1 Understanding Psychology 6 th Edition Charles G. Morris and Albert A....

Documents

Transcript of ©Prentice Hall 200314-1 Understanding Psychology 6 th Edition Charles G. Morris and Albert A....