Social Psychology: Bystander Effect & Social Cognition

• Social psychology studies how people think about, influence, and relate to one another.
• People's behaviors are influenced by the presence of others, whether real, imagined, or implied, demonstrating the power of the situation.

The Bystander Effect

• Individuals are less likely to help someone in need when multiple people are present.
• Diffusion of responsibility occurs in group settings.
• Pluralistic ignorance: when individuals in a group assume that there is nothing wrong because no one else looks concerned, even though they may feel unease or anxiety too.
• Fear of embarrassment can prevent bystanders from intervening.

Social Cognition

• Explores how individuals perceive, interpret, and form judgments about people and social interactions.
• Person perception involves using social stimuli to form impressions of others.
• Physical appearance, nonverbal cues, and first impressions contribute to person perception.
• Attribution involves explaining the causes of behavior and events, seeking to understand why actions occur.
• Stereotypes and biases impact social cognition.
• The halo effect is when people assume that physically attractive individuals possess other positive traits.
• Familiarity and exposure increase attractiveness.

Attributions

• Internal vs. External: attributing behavior to personality versus the environment.
• Stable vs. Unstable causes: attributing behavior to consistent factors versus unexpected variables.
• Controllable vs. Uncontrollable causes: attributing behavior to individual control versus situational factors.
• Fundamental attribution error: overemphasizing personality or underestimating situational factors when explaining others' behavior.
• Defensive attribution is when individuals believe bad things happen to others due to their choices, while maintaining their own internal characteristics are always correct.
• Heuristics are mental shortcuts used to make quick judgments about others and social situations.
• Representativeness heuristic: making judgments based on how closely someone resembles a typical case or stereotype.
• False consensus effect: overestimating how much others share one's beliefs, opinions, preferences, or behaviors.
• Self-serving bias: taking credit for successes and blaming external factors for failures to protect self-esteem.
• The Dunning-Kruger effect: a cognitive bias where people tend to overestimate their abilities and intelligence.
• Self-Objectification is when people view themselves primarily as objects to be evaluated based on appearance.
• Chronic self-objectification is associated with low self-esteem.
• Stereotype threat: anxiety about confirming negative stereotypes associated with one's group.
• Social comparisons: evaluating oneself by comparing abilities, opinions, or circumstances with others.
• Upward social comparisons can lead to motivation, self-improvement, or envy.
• Downward social comparisons can boost self-esteem and complacency.
• Attributions can be individual or collective.
• Individual attributions focus on personal responsibility, choices, and abilities.
• Collective attributions focus on group influences, social roles, and external factors.

Attitudes

• Learned opinions and beliefs about people, objects, and ideas.
• Attitudes can predict behavior when they are strong, when there is a strong awareness via rehearsing/practicing, and when the person has a vested interest.
• Behaviors can predict attitudes when cognitive dissonance occurs.
• Cognitive dissonance theory: Beliefs, behaviors, or thoughts can cause tension, where a person will try to resolve it.
• Self-justification involves defending or explaining actions to protect self-esteem.
• Effort justification involves rationalizing effort by increasing the value of difficult-to-attain things.
• Self-perception theory: deriving attitudes by observing one's own behavior.
• Self-presentation (impression management): controlling how others perceive oneself.
• Persuasion: the process of trying to change someone's attitudes or beliefs.
• Persuasion depends on the communicator, the medium, the target, and the message.
• The elaboration likelihood model explains persuasion effectiveness.
• Central route persuasion involves deep thinking and logical evaluation.
• Peripheral route persuasion involves shallow thinking influenced by surface-level cues.
• The foot-in-the-door technique involves smaller requests leading to larger demands.
• The door-in-the-face technique involves a large request followed by a smaller, more reasonable one.
• The reciprocation norm and contrast effect can also influence persuasion.
• Individuals can resist persuasion by forewarning, practicing reactance theory, receiving attitude inoculation, selective avoidance, and critical thinking.

Social Behavior

• Altruism involves selfless acts to help others without expecting anything in return.
• Altruism is the opposite of egoism and is linked from biological, psychosocial, and sociocultural factors.

Biological factors connected to Altruism

• Genetic factors account somewhere between 30-69% of altruistic tendencies.
• Chemicals like oxytocin, serotonin and dopamine are also factors.
• The midbrain where the pain center is, affects feelings of compassion.

Psychosocial factors connected to Altruism

• Feeling empathy is crucial as it can lead to compassion which leads to action
• Traits such as an agreeable personality, and a developed posterior cingulate cortex are linked

Sociocultural factors connected to Altruism

• Lower SES individuals are more likely to help, even children.
• Seeing positive/kind actions, and people behave those actions.
• Aggression is the behavior meant to cause harm or injury physically or verbally.

Biological factors connected to Aggression

• Overactive amygdala, hippocampus damage, prefrontal cortex damage, hypothalamus stimulation, high testosterone, and low serotonin are possible factors.

Psycosocial factors connected to Aggression

• Low agreeableness, low conscientiousness, high neuroticism, high hostility, irritability.
• A frustrating situation and environment can increase aggression.
• Priming aggressive thoughts can make a person more likely think violently or act aggressively.

Sociocultural factors connected to Aggression

• Having a culture of aggression- where "a man's reputation" is an essential act of survival, and to compensate he commits violence, and redemption is murder".
• Links between media and aggression.
• Exposure to pornography can increase aggression.

Social Influence

• Social influence: how individuals or a group change each other's thoughts, feelings, behaviours or attitudes.
• Asch's conformity study shows 33% of participants will conform even if they know the answer is wrong.
• The brain feels better when we fit in- oxytocin is released, and reward centers light up.

Conformity happens because:

• Informational Social influence: We want to be right, so we follow other people because they "know better".
• Normative soical influence: We follow people because we want to fit in and obtain group harmony.

Obedience.

• Most people have a strong tendency to obey authority figures, so people easily yield their morals or conscience.
• Symbols of obedience are: lab coats and a structured/sterile environment.

The Standford prison experiment

• Abuse of power vs. the authoritarian act.
• Prisoners forced to conform and obey the systematic structure.
• Convergence, when groups become more similarly behaves- think of a contagion.

Group and Group influence.

• Groups exist when we say they do- think of "us vs them".
• Groups are often formed for inclusion, control, and affection (as ostracism/panic leads to primal death of despair and isolation)
• Deindividuation occurs when being a part of group erode personal identity and responsibility, think the opposite of self conscience.

Social facilitation affects:

• Imitative behaviour involving the spread of actions, emotions and ideas; how contagious yawning is!
• Arousal which improvs the presence of others- although high arousal leads to inefficiency of leaning.
• Social loafing- ppl exert less efforts due to lack of accountability

Perils of Group Decision Making

• Risky shift- when groups makes riskier decisions then if an induvial was making the decision.
• Group polarization effect- A group's opinion can become extreme
• Group-think: when a group prioritize harmony over critical thiking

Intergroup relations

• Social identity theort explores- how and induvial self concent and behaviour are influenced by a group membership.
• Intergroup occurs more when individuals: recognize an "in-group", recognizing how others do NOT identify with that group, and feel that group is distain.
• Ethnocentrism- The tendency to view and ecaluate a cuture with perspective of one's own culture.
• Predudice: unjustified negative attitude toward on induvial becuae of their "group".
• Discrimiation: Action based on the predudice, which directly harms or negatively affects them.

Close relationships.

• Attraction can be influenced by how closely you are (proximity), and how much you see them (the mere exposure effect)- more and more likely you fall for them.
• The two types of love are: passionate and companionate
• Passionate love: a feeilng of attraction
• Companionate love: deep, trust, and respect- longterm.
• Effective relationships are built from "social exchange theory" and can influence by commitment, and having a mutual investment and equity.

Health Psychology

• The effects of Biological/psycholocial/social factors on one's health and wellbeing.
• Using the BioPsychoSocial Model used in health psychology allows for a more holistic and complete view
• Mind body connecting reveals our body can get ill depending on "pns, sns, and enteric nercis systems".
• POSITIVE changes come from " changing attitudes"
• Change Requires speicic intentions, a positive outlook on the behaviour, and that their new behaviour look "favorable" to individuals in their "social roup".
• This helps one perceive they have control.

Stages of change model.

• It explores the importance- to implement a effective and consistent routine/plan, reinforcemt, social netorking, and alternatives.
• Remember the " majority of people who do cahnge dont get it on their first try"
• "internal drive/desire" is crucial!

Important:

• A short term " if then" statement can prove fruitful.
• Social support: emotional, psychological assistance from others.
• Religious practices are linked.
• Stress is stimulus; a "psycho biological process".
• GAS is a "common effect of stress on our body".

3 stages:

• Alarm stage: sns trigger and body hormones start to assist; but is most prone to illness
• Resistance stage: body focuses on coping and fighting efficiently with infection.
• Extaustion stage: body becomes "fatigued", increased "risk of heart diseate"

Systems of the brain:

• SAM
• HPA
• Stress can cause " more supetibility"
• Telomeres can shorten
• Decrease of immune system

Coping strategies

• Emotion-focused coping:
• "Controllling the emotional response"
• Mediation!
• Problem-Focused coping:
• The one can do fix the rpobelem
• Buffer people against harmful stress