Social Psychology PDF

Social Psychology Introduction to Psychology Asst. Prof. Atanas Kirjakovski 1  Social Psychology SOCIETY: The aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community. SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY: The area of psychology that focuses on...

Social Psychology Introduction to Psychology Asst. Prof. Atanas Kirjakovski 1  Social Psychology SOCIETY: The aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community. SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY: The area of psychology that focuses on how people think and feel about other people, behave and interact in relationships and groups. It focuses on two general topics: social cognition—the way we perceive and think about others and social behavior—the way we act toward them, individually and in groups. SOCIAL INFLUENCE: The effect that the words, actions, or mere presence of other people have on our thoughts, feelings, attitudes, or behavior. 10 Sociology vs. Social Psychology vs. Personality Sociology Social Psychology Personality Psychology The study of collections of The study of the psychological The study of the characteristics people, organizations, and process people have in common that make individuals unique and societies, rather than individuals. that make them susceptible to social different from one another. influence. 11  Attitudes and Behavior ATTITUDE: An overall evaluation of some aspect of the world—people, issues, or objects. This evaluation has three components: Affective: Refers to your feelings about people, issues, or objects. Behavioral: Refers to your predisposition to act in a particular way toward people, an issue, or an object (note that this component refers not to an actual behavior but to an inclination to behave in a certain way). Cognitive: Refers to what you believe or know about people, issues, or objects. 12  Attitudes and Behavior Attitudes play an important role in how we process information and remember events. An attitude is more likely to shape behavior when it is: Strong Relatively stable Directly relevant to the behavior Important Easily accessed from memory Repeatedly asserting an attitude can make the attitude stronger. 13  Cognitive Dissonance COGNITIVE DISSONANCE: The uncomfortable state that arises from a discrepancy between two attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors. Methods of reducing dissonance — indirect strategies, direct strategies, trivializing an inconsistency. 14  Persuasion PERSUASION: Attempts to change people’s attitudes. MERE EXPOSURE EFFECT: The change—generally favorable—in an attitude that results from simply becoming familiar with something or someone. PERSUASIVE PEOPLE: Attractive person or expert, fast talker, seems honest. PERSUASIVE MESSAGES: Messages that arouse strong emotions are usually persuasive, but they also dependent on how much you are paying attention to it. SOCIAL COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE: The area of psychology that attempts to understand social cognition by specifying the cognitive mechanisms that underlie it and by discovering how those mechanisms are rooted in the brain. 15  Elaboration Likelihood Model ELABORATION LIKELIHOOD MODEL: Two routes of persuasion: central and peripheral. Peripheral route: Attractiveness of source, the number of arguments presented (without deeper analysis), other people’s reactions, etc. Central route: Relies on the content of the arguments. High-Involvement Cognitive Belief and Attitude Behavior Change Processing Responses Change Attention and Communication Comprehension Low-Involvement Belief Change Behavior Change Attitude Change Processing 16  Stereotypes and Prejudices To avoid drowning in this sea of social information, we create stereotypes, which organize information about people in useful ways. STEREOTYPE: A belief (or set of beliefs) about people from a particular category. Because stereotypes assign social information to a category, they can serve as useful cognitive shortcuts. But stereotypes are caricatures—not reasoned formulations of people’s character—and they are sometimes incorrect. We are less likely to process information that is inconsistent with our stereotypes. Sometimes the discrepancy between a stereotype and the actual characteristics of someone from the stereotyped group is too great to be ignored. However, rather than change the stereotype, people typically tend to create a new subtype within it. 17  Stereotypes and Prejudices PREJUDICE: An attitude (generally negative) toward members of a group. Prejudice includes two components: - Cognitive component (such as beliefs and expectations about the group) - Emotional component (generally negative feelings toward the group) Prejudice often leads to discrimination — negative behavior toward individuals from a specific group that arises from unjustified negative attitudes about that group. Reasons for prejudice: realistic conflict, social categorization, and social learning. - Realistic conflict: competition for resources. - Social categorization: the cognitive operation that leads people to sort others automatically into categories of “us” versus “them” (ingroup vs. outgroup). - Once a prejudicial attitude is in place, social learning theory explains how it can be spread and passed through generations as a learned stereotype. 18  Attributions ATTRIBUTION: An explanation for the cause of an event or behavior. INTERNAL ATTRIBUTION: An explanation of someone’s behavior that focuses on the person’s beliefs, goals, or other characteristics; also called dispositional attribution. EXTERNAL ATTRIBUTION: An explanation of someone’s behavior that focuses on the situation; also called situational attribution. 19  Attribution Biases FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR: The strong tendency to interpret other people’s behavior as arising from internal causes rather than external ones; also referred to as the correspondence bias. SELF-SERVING BIAS: A person’s inclination to attribute his or her own failures to external causes and own successes to internal causes, but to attribute other people’s failures to internal causes and their successes to external causes. BELIEF IN A JUST WORLD: An attributional bias that assumes that people get what they deserve. 20  Relationships Some important factors in liking someone — physical attraction, repeated contact, and similarity. Types of love: Companionate love: An altruistic type of love characterized by expending time, attention, and resources on behalf of another person. Passionate love: The intense, often sudden feeling of being “in love,” which typically involves sexual attraction, a desire for mutual love and physical closeness, arousal, and a fear that the relationship will end. Attachment styles: Secure attachment style Avoidant attachment style Anxious-ambivalent style 21  Social Groups GROUP: A social entity characterized by regular interaction among members, some emotional connection, a common frame of reference, and a degree of interdependence. NORM: A rule that implicitly or explicitly governs members of a group. ROLE: The behaviors that a member in a given position in a group is expected to perform. 22  Social Roles Gone Rogue STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT: Students assumed different roles, of guards and prisoners, and things got wrong. The participants in this study were ordinary, middle-class, healthy students who were randomly assigned to the different roles. The situation alone seems to have transformed not only their perceptions and behavior but also aspects of their characters. 23  Going Along With the Group Part and parcel of human interactions is “going along to get along”—agreeing to people’s requests in order to minimize conflict or to achieve goals. CONFORMITY: A change in behavior in order to follow a group’s norms. COMPLIANCE: A change in behavior brought about by a direct request rather than by social norms. OBEDIENCE: Compliance with an order. INFORMATIONAL SOCIAL INFLUENCE: Occurs when we conform to others because we believe that their views are correct or their behavior is appropriate for the situation. NORMATIVE SOCIAL INFLUENCE: Occurs when we conform because we want to be liked or thought of positively. 24 Asch’s Conformity Study 25 Principles and Techniques of Compliance FRIENDSHIP/LIKING: People are more likely to comply with a request from a friend than from a stranger. COMMITMENT/CONSISTENCY: People tend to be more likely to comply when the request is consistent with an idea or goal that they’ve previously embraced. SCARCITY: People are more likely to comply with requests related to a limited, short-term opportunity (“Buy now, limited time offer”) rather than open-ended opportunities. RECIPROCITY: People tend to comply with a request that comes from someone who has previously provided a favor. SOCIAL VALIDATION: People are more likely to comply if they think that many others—particularly those similar to themselves—have complied or would comply. AUTHORITY: People tend to comply with a request if it comes from someone who appears to be in authority. FOOT-IN-THE-DOOR TECHNIQUE: A technique that achieves compliance by beginning with an insignificant request, which is then followed by a larger request. LOWBALL TECHNIQUE: A compliance technique that consists of getting someone to make an agreement and then increasing the cost of that agreement. DOOR-IN-THE-FACE TECHNIQUE: A compliance technique in which someone makes a very large request and then when it is denied (as expected) makes a smaller request—for what is actually desired. 26 The Milgram Obedience Study 27  Performance in Groups Decision making in groups: majority-win rule, truth-win rule. GROUP POLARIZATION: The tendency of group members’ opinions to become more extreme (in the same direction as their initial opinions) after group discussion. GROUPTHINK: The group process that arises when people who try to solve problems together accept one an other’s information and ideas without subjecting them to critical analysis. SOCIAL LOAFING: The group process that occurs when some members don’t contribute as much to a shared group task as do others, and instead let other members work proportionally harder than they do. SOCIAL FACILITATION: The increase in performance that can occur simply as a result of being part of a group or in the presence of other people. 28  Helping Behavior ALTRUISM: The motivation to increase another person’s welfare. PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR: Acting altruistically, which includes sharing, cooperating, comforting, and helping others. BYSTANDER EFFECT: The decrease in offers of assistance that occurs as the number of bystanders increases. 29