Social Psychology Concepts

Social Psychology

• Social Psychology is the study of how thinking, emotions, and behavior are influenced by the presence of others.

Intrapersonal Phenomena

• Social Comparison Theory: People create their self-perception based on comparing themselves to others.
• Social Cognition: how we see others in a social context
  • Impressions: preliminary social cognitions that have a long-lasting effect on one's global evaluations (halo effect).
  • Attitudes: expressed global evaluations, likes, and dislikes.
  • Attributes: how one explains behavior of others and their own behavior.
  • Biases:
    • Fundamental Attribution Error (self-serving bias): blaming the situation for one's own mistakes, but blaming others for theirs.
    • Ultimate Attribution Error: attributing others' mistakes to their character, but one's own mistakes to the situation.
    • Confirmation Bias (self-fulfilling prophecy): looking for details to prove a prefixed idea or judgment.
    • Hindsight Bias: "I told you before" or "I expected this, but nobody listened to me."
  • Prejudice: pre-judgment before getting relevant facts, and how to reduce it through contact, common goals, interdependence, and equal status.
  • Stigma: social disapproval of characteristics not going with social norms.

Interpersonal Phenomena

• Group: 2 or more members connected by social relations (network/structure) aiming support and based on norms (implicit rules) and roles (implicit expectations from each individual) which render each member a social identity (status).
• Group Dynamics:
  • Social Exchange Theory: relations are based on whether the benefit from the relation is worth its duties (cost-benefit analysis).
  • Intergroup discrimination as regards roles may lead to group polarization (2 poles with conflicts in between).
  • Group Thinking: (better skills but more risk-taking).
  • Social Loafing/Bystander Effect: decreased tendency to achieve goals when in groups and crowd/mob de-individuation is reduced self-awareness and disinhibition when in a crowd.
  • Social Facilitation Theory: presence of others facilitates performance of familiar tasks and degrades performance of unfamiliar tasks.

Social Influence

• How others influence individual attitudes:
  • Congruence: attitudes and behaviors agree.
  • Conversion: attitudes and behaviors change by informative effect.
  • Conformity: change in behavior to get along with others even if attitude is unchanged due to normative effect (as peer influence) without explicit request or demand to do that.
  • Anti-conformity (reactance): deliberate challenge of norms (positive as pioneers or negative as misfits and outlaws).
• Latane Social Impact Theory: the larger the group and the latter to join it, the least you can influence the group.
• Asch Experiments: minority can influence majority if certain of their opinion.
• Compliance: change in behavior even if attitude or preferences are unchanged in response to direct explicit request from equals.
• Un-compliance is overcome by foot-in-door technique which is asking people small favors first then gradually more favors.
• Obedience: doing orders of authority figures (authority could be by reward, punishment, legitimacy, or expertise).
  • Milgram Experiment: people shocked the learner (obeying expertise).
  • Stanford Prison Experiment: students with guard roles abused students with prisoners' roles who passively accepted (authority abuse).

Social Relations

• Leadership: achieving a goal through organizing a team.
• Leader-Member Exchange Theory: leader provides benefits as task guidance, advice, support, and rewards, and followers reciprocate by respect, cooperation, commitment to task, and good performance.
• Friendship: mutual affection between 2 or more people as to proximity, similarity, and complementarity.
  • Necessary for child's development and lacks in psychiatric disorders.
  • Friendships starting in adolescence tend to last longer.
  • In adulthood, marriage, children, and career development render less time to hang around with friends.
  • In old age, friends' area increases again.
• Love Relation: Sternberg love triangle (matching).
• Parenting:
  • Parenting Styles (authoritative is assumed to be the healthiest).
  • Maccoby and Martin's Four Parenting Styles:
    • Demanding: Authoritative, Authoritarian
    • Undemanding: Indulgent (Permissive), Neglectful

Test your understanding of key concepts in social psychology, including self-perception, attribution errors, and cognitive biases. Explore how people create their self-image and how prejudices can be reduced.