Understanding Social Psychology

What is Social Psychology?

• Deals with interactions between people.
• Encompasses a range of connections from confrontation to collaboration.
• Thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by social situations.
• Intrapersonal topics cover emotions, attitudes, the self, and social cognition.
• Interpersonal topics include helping behavior, attraction, aggression, relationships, prejudice and group dynamics.

Situation and Dispositional Influences

• Situationism states that behavior is determined by the immediate environment.
• Dispositionism states that behavior is determined by internal factors.
  • This includes personality traits and temperament.
  • Favorited in the U.S.
  • Used by personality psychologists.
• Modern social psychologists often consider both the situation and the individual.

Social Context

• Individuals operate within a social context.
• This context can be real, imagined, or implied.

Attribution Theory

• Attribution theory explains the causes of behavior in social interactions.
• Internal attribution infers behavior is due to dispositional causes.
• External attribution infers behavior is caused by situational factors.

Fundamental Attribution Error

• The fundamental attribution error is the overemphasis of internal factors when explaining others' behavior.
• It is accompanied by underestimation of the power of the situation.
• The Quizmaster Study highlights this:
  • Participants were assigned roles as questioner or participant.
  • Questioners created difficult questions with known answers.
  • Participants answered correctly 4 out of 10 times.
  • Participants disregarded the situation and overestimated the questioner's knowledge.
• There's a tendency to underestimate the role of situations and overestimate dispositions when explaining the behavior of others.

Actor-Observer Bias

• The fundamental attribution error occurs because there is not enough information to explain a person's behavior situationally.
• More information available when explaining our own behaviors makes us more likely to give situational explanations.

Self-Serving Bias

• Self-serving bias is the tendency to take credit for positive outcomes through dispositional and internal attributions.
• It takes blame for negative outcomes through situational or external attributions.
• Self-esteem is protected, leading to people feeling good about achievements and accomplishments.
• Attribution can be broken down into three dimensions.
• Locus of control: internal vs. external.
• Stability: the extent to which circumstances are changeable.
• Controllability: the extent to which circumstances can be controlled.
• When a team wins, attributions like talent, hard work, and effective strategies are used.
• When a team loses, external factors such as experienced players, home advantage, and weather are used as attributions.

Just World Hypothesis

• Belief is that people get the outcomes they deserve.
• The world is a fair place and good people experience positive outcomes, while bad people experience negative outcomes.
• The world is predictable and people have some control over life outcomes.

Social Roles

• Social role: A pattern of behavior expected of a person in a setting or group.
  • This can be expressed as being a student.
• Social roles are defined by culturally shared knowledge.

Social Norms and Scripts

• Social Norm: A group's expectation of what is appropriate and acceptable behavior for its members. - This incudes how we are supposed to behave, think, talk about, and wear.
• Script: A person's knowledge about the sequence of events expected in a specific setting. - These are influenced by what is expected when you walk into an elevator, on the first day of school, in a restaurant, etc.
• Scripts vary between cultures.
• Scripts are sources of information that guide our behaviour in situations.

The Stanford Prison Experiment

• Demonstrated the power of social roles, social norms, and scripts.
• Study Constructed a mock prison with male college students assigned as prisoners or guards.
• Guards harassed the prisoners in an increasingly sadistic manner.
• Prisoners began to show signs of severe anxiety and hopelessness.
• The two week study had to be ended after six days.

Attitudes

• Attitude is the evaluation of a person, idea, or object.
  • Can be positive or negative
• Influenced by external and internal factors that we control.
• There are three components:
  • Affective component – feelings
  • Behavioural component- the effect of the attitude on behavior
  • Cognitive component - belief and knowledge

Leon Festinger's Theory of Cognitive Dissonance

• Cognitive dissonance is psychological discomfort from holding inconsistent attitudes, behaviors, or cognitions.
• Believing cigarettes are bad, but smoking them anyway can cause dissonance.
• To reduce cognitive dissonance, individuals can:
  • Change behavior, such as quitting smoking.
  • Change belief through denial, such as discounting evidence smoking is harmful.
  • Add a new cognition, such as "Smoking suppresses appetite so I don't become overweight."
• Only conflicting cognitions that threaten positive self-image cause dissonance.
• Dissonance can also cause physiological arousal.

Justification of Effort

• The Aronson and Mills Experiment (1959) examined Justification of effort.

Persuasion

• Persuasion is the process of changing attitudes toward something based on communication.
• Occurs everywhere.
• Subtlety helps make a message more persuasive.
• Credible communicators are more persuasive.
• Presenting both sides of an argument is more persuasive.
• Individuals ages 18-25 are the easiest to persuade.
• Those paying attention are easier to persuade.
• Those with moderate self-esteem are easier to persuade.
• Those with lower intelligence are easier to persuade.

Elaboration Likelihood Model

• Persuasion can occur through Central or Peripheral Routes.
• The Audience decides which route will be used based off motivation, analytical ability, etc.
• Processing, persuasion, and the lasting effect of persuasion is dependent on route used.
• Persuasion through Central Route requires high effort and evaluating a message, ultimately leading to lasting changes.
• Persuasion through Peripheral route requires low effort and external cues, ultimately leading to a less significant change.

Foot-in-the-Door Technique

• The Persuader gets a person to agree to a small favor, only to later request a larger favour
• Our past behaviour often directs our future behaviour (desire to maintain consistency
• With the foot-in-the-door technique - A small request such as wearing a campaign button can turn into a large request, such as putting campaigns signs in your yard

Asch's Experiments on Conformity

• Conformity: Changing behavior to align with the group, even without agreement.

Results of Asch's Experiments

• Asch effect: The influence of the group majority on an individual's judgement.
• Study had one naive subject, the rest were confederates who purposely gave the wrong answer.
• 76% of participants conformed to group pressure at least once by also indicating the incorrect line.
• Factors that make a person more likely to conform
  • Bigger size of the majority
  • The presence of another dissenter
  • Public responses

Motivation to Conform

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

Obedience

• Obedience is the change of an individual's behavior to comply with an authority figure.
• Shock learners (confederate) for wrong answers to test items.
• Participants administer shocks, increasing up to 450 volts.
• 65% of participants continued to administer shocks to an unresponsive learner.

Social Influences

• Groupthink: Modifying opinions to align with the group consensus.
• Groups acting where the individual would not.
• Group decisions are often more extreme than those made individually.
• Members are less likely to express diverse opinions which can lead to faulty decision making.

Group Polarization

• Group polarization is the strengthening of an original group attitude after a discussion.

Social Facilitation and Social Loafing

• Social Facilitation: Better individual performance when watched by an audience.
  • Usually occurs when people are performing a task for which they are skilled or an easy task
  • However, when people are nervous or less skilled, an audience may hinder rather than help
• Social Loafing: Less effort exerted by a person working together with a group
  • Occurs when individual performance cannot be evaluated separately from the group
  • Group performance declines on easy tasks
  • However, when a task is difficult, people feel more motivated and believe that their group needs their input to do well on a challenging project

Prejudice

• Prejudice is an attitude and feeling toward an individual based solely on one's membership in a particular social group. -"I hate Toronto Maple Leafs fans; they make me angry.
• Stereotype: A specific belief or assumption about individuals based solely on their membership in a group. -“Maple Leaf fans are arrogant and obnoxious”
• Discrimination: A negative action toward an individual as a result of membership in a particular group. -"I would never hire nor become friends with a person if I knew he or she were a Leafs fan."
• Occurs because of Social learning and conformity to social norms.

Types of Prejudice and Discrimination

• Racism: Prejudice and discrimination against an individual based on race.
• A Dual Attitudes Model can be used to examine it:
• Explicit: Conscious and controllable
• Implicit: Unconscious and uncontrollable
• This can explain why modern forms of racism are harder to detect.
• Ageism: Prejudice and discrimination toward individuals based solely on their age.
• Homophobia: Prejudice and discrimination of individuals based solely on their sexual orientation.

Sexism

• Prejudice and discrimination toward individuals based on their sex.
• Common examples include gender role expectations and expectations for how a gender group should behave.
• Can exist on a societal level - employment and education opportunities.
• Women now have many jobs previously closed to them, though they still face challenges in male-dominated occupations.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

• An expectation that alters behavior to make it true.
• Stereotypes influence treatment, leading to fulfilling expectations.
• The Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) study showed that disadvantaged students performed better when teachers expected them to.

Groups

• In-groups: Groups identified with or belonging to.
• Out-groups: Groups viewed as fundamentally different
• In-group bias: Prejudice and discrimination from the out-group being perceived as different and less preferred.
• Factors that promote reconciliation between groups
  • The expression of empathy
  • Acknowledgement of past suffering on both sides
    • The halt of destructive behaviors
• Scapegoating: Blaming an out-group when the in-group experiences frustration or is blocked from obtaining a goal.

Aggression

• Aggression: Seeking to cause harm or pain to another person.
• Hostile aggression: Motivated by feelings of anger with intent to cause pain.
  • E.g., a bar fight.
• Instrumental aggression: Motivated by achieving a goal that does not necessarily involve intent to cause pain
  • Typically displayed by women
    • E.g., communication that impairs the social standing of another person
• Frustration Aggression Theory: When humans are prevented from achieving an important goal, they become frustrated and aggressive.

Bystander Effect

• Related to Kitty Genovese (1964)
  • She was attacked and killed with a knife outside her apartment building.
  • Residents in the apartment building heard her scream for help numerous times but did nothing.
• A witness/bystander does not volunteer to help a victim or person in distress.
• Based on the social situation, not personality variables.
• Diffusion of responsibility: No one because the responsibility to help is spread throughout the group.

Prosocial Behavior

• Prosocial behavior: Voluntary behavior with the intent to help other people.
• Altruism: People's desire to help others even if the cost outweighs the benefits.
• Theories on the motivation to help
  • Empathy: Capacity to understand another person's perspective.
    • Empathic people make emotional connections with others and feel compelled to help.
  • Altruism is a form of selfless helping (not motivated by benefits)
    • Feeling good after helping is a consequence, not a cause
    • Helping is self-serving because our egos are involved, and we receive benefits

Forming Relationships

• Factors that influence relationship formation.
• Proximity: The people with whom you have the most contact.
• Similarity: People who are similar to us in background, attitudes, and lifestyle.
• Homophily: The tendency for people to form social networks with others who are similar.
• Components of relationships
  • Reciprocity: The give and take.
  • Self-disclosure – the sharing of personal information.

Attraction

• Universally attractive features:
• Women:
  • Physical - large eyes, high cheekbones, a narrow jaw line, a slender build, and a lower waist-to-hip ration
  • Social traits – warmth, affection, and social skills.
  • Men:
  • Physical - tall, having broad shoulders, and a narrow waist
  • Social traits – achievement, leadership qualities, and job skills.
• Matching hypothesis: People tend to pick someone they view as their equal in physical attractiveness and social desirability.

Sternberg's Triangular Theory of Love

• Seven types of love can be described from combinations of three components:
  • Intimacy sharing of details and intimate thoughts and emotions
  • Passion physical attraction
  • Commitment by the person

Social Exchange Theory

• Examines what determines satisfaction, and whether we stay in a relationship.
• People track the costs and benefits of forming/maintaining a relationship.
• Only if benefits outweigh the costs will relationships be maintained.