Chapter 13: Social Psychology PDF

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Chapter 13:Social Psychology Chapter Overview  Social Thinking  Social Influence  Antisocial Relations  Prosocial Relations Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Social Thinking  Social psychology  Is the scientific study of how we think ab...

Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Chapter 13:Social Psychology Chapter Overview  Social Thinking  Social Influence  Antisocial Relations  Prosocial Relations Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Social Thinking  Social psychology  Is the scientific study of how we think about, influence, and relate to one another  Social psychologists  Use scientific methods to study how people think about, influence, and relate to one another  Study the social influences that explain why the same person will act differently in different situations Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Social Thinking  When explaining others’ behavior, especially from an individualist Western cultural perspective  Fundamental attribution error committed by underestimating the influence of the situation and overestimating the effects of stable, enduring traits  Behavior more readily attributed to the influence of the situation  Explaining and attributing actions can have important real-life social and economic effects Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Social Thinking  Fundamental attribution error  Is tendency, when analyzing others’ behavior, to overestimate the influence of personal traits and underestimate the effects of the situation  Is most likely to occur when stranger acts badly  Has real-life and social consequences  Napolitan and colleagues (1979)  Students attributed behavior of others to personal traits, even when they were told that behavior was part of an experimental situation. © Lee Snider/The Image Works Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images AN ATTRIBUTION QUESTION Whether we attribute poverty and homelessness to social circumstances or to personal dispositions affects and reflects our political views. Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Attitudes Affect Actions  Attitudes are feelings influenced by beliefs, that predispose reactions to objects, people, and events.  Peripheral route persuasion uses incidental cues to try to produce fast but relatively thoughtless changes in attitudes.  Central route persuasion offers evidence and arguments to trigger thoughtful responses Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Actions Affect Attitudes  Actions can modify attitudes.  Foot-in-the-door phenomenon involves compliance with a large request after having agreed to a small request  Role playing includes acting a social part by following guidelines for expected behavior Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Social Thinking  Foot-in-the-door phenomenon  People agreeing to a small request will find it easier to agree later to a larger one  Principle works for negative and positive behavior  Attitudes follow behavior  Cooperative actions, such as those performed by people on sports teams, feed mutual liking. Such attitudes, in turn, promote positive behavior. Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Social Thinking  When attitudes do not fit with actions, tensions are often reduced by changing attitudes to match actions (cognitive dissonance theory).  We act to reduce the discomfort (dissonance) we feel when two of our thoughts (cognitions) clash.  Brain regions become active when people experience cognitive dissonance.  Through cognitive dissonance we often bring attitudes into line with our actions (Festinger). Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Social Influence  Conformity and obedience  Chartrand and colleagues (1999)  Demonstrated chameleon effect with college students  Automatic mimicry helps people to empathize and feel what others feel.  The more we mimic, the greater our empathy, and the more people tend to like us.  This is a form of conformity. Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Conformity and Obedience Solomon Asch and others have found that people are most likely to adjust their behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard when • • • • • They feel incompetent or insecure Their group has at least three people Everyone else agrees They admire the group’s status and attractiveness They have not already committed to another response • They know they are being observed • Their culture encourages respect for social standards Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images ASCH’S CONFORMITY EXPERIMENTS Which of the three comparison lines on the left is equal to the standard line? The photo on the right (from one of the experiments) was taken after five people, who were actually working for Asch, had answered, “Line 3.” The student in the center shows the severe discomfort that comes from disagreeing with the responses of other group members. © Ted Horowitz Photography, 2014 Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images People May Conform For Many Reasons  Normative social influence: To gain approval  Informational social influence: To accept others’ opinions as new information CONFORMING TO NONCONFORMITY Are these students asserting their individuality or identifying themselves with others of the same microculture? Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Milgram’s Obedience Experiments  Stanley Milgram’s experiments  People obeyed orders even when they thought they were harming another person.  Strong social influences can make ordinary people conform to falsehoods or exhibit cruel behavior.  In any society, great evil acts often grow out of people’s compliance with lesser evils. Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Antisocial Relations Prejudice Components • Means “prejudgment” • Is an unjustified negative attitude toward some group and its members • Often targets different cultural, ethnic, or gender group • Beliefs • Emotions • Predispositions to action (to discriminate) Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Prejudice is a negative attitude. IMPORTANT DISTINCTIONS Discrimination is a negative behavior. Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images How Prejudiced Are People?  Explicit prejudice in North America has decreased over time.  Support for all forms of racial contact, including interracial dating  Social roots of prejudice  Social inequalities: Have often developed attitudes that justify status quo  Just-world phenomenon: Good is rewarded and evil is punished.  Stereotypes: Rationalize inequalities. Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Antisocial Relations  Groups  Through social identities people associate themselves with others.  Evolution prepares people to identify with a group • Ingroup: Social definition of who we are—and are not • Ingroup bias: Favoring of our own group Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Emotional Roots of Prejudice  Scapegoat theory  Proposes that when things go wrong, finding someone to blame can provide an outlet for anger  Research evidence (Zimbardo)  Prejudice levels tend to be high among economically frustrated people  In experiments, a temporary frustration increases prejudice Macduff Everton/The Image Bank/Getty Images Aggressive Behavior Social-Cultural Influences • deindividuation, or a loss of self-awareness and self-restraint • challenging environmental factors, such as crowding, heat, and direct provocations • parental models of aggression • minimal father involvement • rejection from a group • exposure to violent media Biological Influences Psychological Influences • genetic influences • biochemical influences, such as testosterone and alcohol • neural influences, such as a severe head injury • dominating behavior (which boosts testosterone levels in the blood) • believing that alcohol has been ingested (whether it has or not) • frustration • aggressive role models • rewards for aggressive behavior • low self-control Aggressive behavior