Social Psychology: An Overview

Social Psychology

• It is a field that studies interactions between people, from confrontation to collaboration.
• Thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the social environment.
• Intrapersonal topics include emotions, attitudes, self, and social cognition.
• Interpersonal topics include helping, aggression, prejudice, attraction, relationships, group processes, and intergroup relations.

Situationism vs. Dispositionism

• Situationism explains behaviors as determined by the immediate environment.
• Dispositionism explains behaviors as determined by internal factors like personality.
• Modern social psychologists consider both situational and individual factors.

Social Context's Influence

• The social context influences individual behavior, whether real, imagined, or implied.

Attribution Theory

• It describes how individuals explain the causes of behavior in social interactions.

Internal Attribution

• It infers behavior is due to dispositional causes.

External Attribution

• It infers behavior is caused by situational factors.

Fundamental Attribution Error

• It overemphasizes internal factors when explaining others' behavior, underestimating the situation's power.
• Quizmaster Study: Participants disregard the situation, wrongly thinking the questioner's knowledge is superior.
• People often underestimate situations and overestimate dispositions when explaining others' behaviors.

Actor-Observer Bias

• People make fundamental attribution errors due to insufficient information for situational explanations.
• Individuals prefer situational explanations for their own behavior due to more available information.

Self-Serving Bias

• Individuals attribute positive outcomes to dispositional factors, but negative outcomes to situational ones.
• It protects self-esteem and enhances feelings about accomplishments.
• One attribution model proposes dimensions:
• Locus of control (internal vs. external), stability (changeable circumstances), and controllability.
• Teams often attribute wins to talent, hard work, and strategies.
• Losses are blamed on the opponent's experience, home advantage, and uncontrollable factors like weather.

Just World Hypothesis

• Belief that people get the outcomes they deserve.
• Good people experience positive events, and bad people experience negative events because the world is fair.
• It allows people to believe the world is predictable and that they can control the outcomes of their lives.

Social Influences

• Social roles: Expected behaviors in a setting or group, defined by culturally shared knowledge.

Social Norms and Scripts

• A social norm refers to a group's behavioral expectations for its members.
• A script is a person's knowledge of event sequences expected in specific settings.
• It is an important source of behavioral guidance.

Stanford Prison Experiment

• It demonstrated social roles, norms, and scripts powerfully influence behavior.
• Male college students assigned prisoner or guard roles in a mock prison.
• Guards began harassing prisoners sadistically in a short time.
• Prisoners showed anxiety and hopelessness.
• The study ended after six days instead of two weeks due to ethical concerns.

Attitudes

• Attitudes evaluate a person, idea, or object, can be positive or negative.
• They are influenced by external and internal factors.

Attitude Components

• Affective: feelings
• Behavioral: effect on behavior
• Cognitive: belief and knowledge

Leon Festinger's Theory of Cognitive Dissonance

• It states that psychological discomfort arises from conflicting attitudes, behaviors, or cognitions.
• Smoking despite believing it’s harmful causes dissonance.

Ways to Reduce Cognitive Dissonance

• Changing behavior
• Changing belief
• Adding a new cognition.
• Dissonance results from conflicting cognitions that affects the self-image, triggers physiological arousal, and activates emotional and cognitive brain regions.

Justification of Effort

• A study was conducted called the Aronson and Mills Experiment (1959).

Persuasion

• It is the process of changing attitudes through communication.
• A credible and attractive communicator is more persuasive.
• Subtlety and presenting both sides enhances persuasiveness.
• Ages 18-25, those paying attention, and those of moderate self-esteem, are easier to persuade.

Elaboration Likelihood Model

• With a high level of motivation and analytical processing of new information that results in a lasting change of attitude it goes through the Central Route.
• With a low level of motivation and non-analytical processing of new information that results in a temporary change of attitude, it goes through the Peripheral Route.

Foot-in-the-Door Technique

• If someone agrees to a small favor, later requesting a bigger one can be successful.
• Past behavior influences future actions, driving consistency.

Asch's Experiments on Conformity

• It occurs in a person when the group influences his or her behavior.
• Even if one knows the group answer is not the truth, that person may still conform.
• These experiments are to show judgment task in Asch's conformity study.

Asch Effect

• The group majority influences an individual's judgment.
• In Asch's study, only one naive subject agreed with confederates who gave the wrong answers.
• 76% of participants conformed to group pressure at least once.

Increase in Conformity Likelihood

• Larger majority size
• Absence of dissenters
• Public rather than private responses.

Motivations to Conform

• Normative social influence: Conforming to fit in, feel good, and be accepted.
• Informational social influence: Conforming when believing others have correct information, especially in ambiguous situations.

Obedience

• It is the behavior change due to an authority figure's demand.
• Milgram's experiments shocked "learners" (confederates) for incorrect answers.
• Participants believed they were shocking learners, up to 450 volts.
• 65% administered shocks to an unresponsive learner.

Groupthink

• It is the modification of opinions to align with perceived group consensus.
• Groups often act more extremely than individuals.
• Limited expression of diverse opinions leads to poor decisions.

Group Polarization

• It is the strengthening of an original group attitude after discussing views within the group.

Social Facilitation

• It means an individual performs better when an audience is watching compared to when the person is alone.
• It occurs when people perform a task for which they are skilled or an easy task.
• When people are nervous or less skilled, an audience hinders rather than helps.

Social Loafing

• It is when a person exerts less effort when working as a group.
• Occurs when individual performance cannot be evaluated separately from the group.
• Group performance declines on easy tasks, but when a task is difficult, the input is needed to do well on a challenging project.

Prejudice

• It is a negative feeling toward someone based on group membership.
• Stereotype: Specific belief or assumption about individuals based on group membership.
• Discrimination: Action against someone based on group membership.
• Prejudice and discrimination arise from social learning and conformity to social norms.

Types of Discrimination and Prejudice

• Racism: Prejudice and discrimination based on race.
• Dual Attitudes Model: includes explicit (conscious) and implicit (unconscious) attitudes.
• Modern racism is hard to detect because most people no longer show extreme bias, but measures of implicit attitudes often provide evidence of mild to strong racial bias/prejudice.
• Ageism: Prejudice and discrimination based on age.
• Homophobia: Prejudice and discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Sexism

• It is prejudice and discrimination based on sex.
• It includes gender role expectations.
• It exists at the societal level through employment and education opportunities.
• Women still face challenges in male-dominated professions.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

• It is an expectation that alters behavior to make the expectation true.
• Stereotypes can lead to discriminatory actions.
• Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) discovered that disadvantaged students performed better when teachers had higher expectations.

Groups

• In-groups: Groups with which one identifies.
• Out-groups: Groups seen as fundamentally different.
• In-group bias: Prejudice and discrimination due to group affiliation.

Promoting Reconciliation Between Groups

• Empathy expression
• Acknowledging past suffering
• Halting destructive behaviors.
• Scapegoating: Blaming an out-group for in-group frustrations.

Aggression

• It is an intention to cause harm or pain.
• Hostile aggression: Motivated by anger and intent to cause pain.
• Instrumental aggression: Motivated to achieve a goal without necessarily causing pain.
• When humans are prevented from achieving an important goal, they become frustrated and aggressive. This is called Frustration Aggression Theory.

Bystander Effect

• It is where a bystander does not volunteer to help a victim or person in distress.
• Diffusion of responsibility occurs because no one in the group helps because all believe that it is someone else's responsibility.
• Kitty Genovese (1964) - Attacked and killed with a knife outside her apartment building. Residents in the apartment building heard her scream but did nothing.

Prosocial Behavior

• It involves helping others voluntarily.
• Altruism: desire to help others even if it costs the helper.

Motivation to Help

• Empathy: Understanding another's perspective and feelings to feel what he/she feels.
• Altruism: Selfless helping not motivated by personal benefits (can still feel good after helping).

Forming Relationships

• Proximity: Forming friendships with those with whom one has the most contact.
• Similarity: Connecting with people sharing the same background who are similar to you in background, attitudes, and lifestyle.
• Homophily: forming social networks with similar people.

Important Components of Relationships:

• Reciprocity: giving and taking in relationships expecting returning benefits.
• Self-disclosure: sharing personal information.

Attraction

Universally attractive traits for women:

• Physical: large eyes, high cheekbones, narrow jaw line, slender build, and a lower waist-to-hip ration.
• Social traits: warmth, affection, and social skills.

Universally attractive traits for men:

• Physical: Tall, broad shoulders, a narrow waist
• Social traits: Achievement, leadership qualities, job skills
• Matching hypothesis- people tend to pick someone of equal physical attractiveness and social desirability.

Sternberg's Triangular Theory of Love

• Combines intimacy, passion, and commitment.
• Liking: intimacy
• Romantic love: passion + intimacy
• Consummate love: intimacy + passion + commitment
• Companionate love: intimacy + commitment
• Infatuation: passion
• Fatuous love: passion + commitment
• Empty love: commitment

Social Exchange Theory

• It assumes that people act like naive economists.
• That will keep track of the costs and benefits of forming and maintaining a relationship.
• Only those relationships in which the benefits outweigh the costs will be maintained.