Introduction to Psychology PSYC 1200 (A01) PDF

Introduction to Psychology PSYC 1200 (A01) This PowerpointTM presentation is the exclusive copyright of Ryan Langridge at the University of Manitoba. These slides and the accompanying lecture may only be used by students enrolled in PSYC 1200, A01, Summer 2023, at the University of Manitoba. Audio a...

Introduction to Psychology PSYC 1200 (A01) This PowerpointTM presentation is the exclusive copyright of Ryan Langridge at the University of Manitoba. These slides and the accompanying lecture may only be used by students enrolled in PSYC 1200, A01, Summer 2023, at the University of Manitoba. Audio and/or video recording in any format is not allowed without official permission of Ryan Langridge. Unauthorized or commercial use of these lectures, including uploading to sites outside of the University of Manitoba servers, is expressly prohibited. Violations of these and other Academic Integrity principles will lead to disciplinary action. © Ryan Langridge Social Psychology • Humans are fundamentally social creatures • Kurt Lewin (1890 – 1947) • Behaviour = function of the Person and the Environment Social Environment © Ryan Langridge https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia /en/thumb/0/05/Kurt_Lewin_Photo.jpg /220px-Kurt_Lewin_Photo.jpg Social Psychology Synchrony • Occurs when two individuals’ speech, language, and physiological activity become similar during social interaction • Mimicry → Copying the behaviours, emotional displays, and facial expressions of others • Usually unconscious • Serves as ‘social glue’, helps coordinate behaviour in social settings © Ryan Langridge Social Psychology Social Norms • Guidelines for how to behave in social contexts • Usually ‘unwritten’, implicit, or implied • Why do we follow social norms? → Social approval, social pressures • To avoid ostracism → Being ignored or excluded from social contact • Powerful form of social pressure • • • • © Ryan Langridge Anger Sadness Low self-esteem, self-confidence In extreme cases, violence Social Psychology Social Roles • Guidelines that apply to specific positions within the group • E.g., Parent, child, student, professor • E.g., Stanford Prison Experiment © Ryan Langridge https://www.insidehighered.com/sites/default/server_files/m edia/Stan.jpg Social Psychology: Group Dynamics Social Facilitation • A group member’s performance is affected by the presence of others, E.g.: • Cyclists riding faster when racing against each other (Triplett, 1898) • Ants digging more when working with other ants • But, the presence of others may impair performance when the task is hard or skill level is low • Presence of others is emotionally arousing, occupies our attention → More of a distraction for novices than it is for experts © Ryan Langridge Social Psychology: Group Dynamics Conformity • Change in behaviour to fit in with a group • Can be unintentional • Similar in some ways to mimicry • Solomon Asch (1950s) Conformity Studies © Ryan Langridge Social Psychology: Group Dynamics Solomon Asch (1950s) Conformity Studies © Ryan Langridge Social Psychology: Group Dynamics • Reasons for conforming: • Normative Influence • Social pressure to adopt a group’s perspective in order to be accepted by the group • ‘Public compliance’ • Informational Influence • Genuine interest in the information provided by the group • ‘Private acceptance’ © Ryan Langridge Social Psychology: Group Dynamics Personal and Situational Factors Contributing to Conformity © Ryan Langridge Social Psychology: Obedience to Authority • Obedience, authority, compliance all topics of interest following World War II • Stanley Milgram Obedience Studies (1963, 1974) © Ryan Langridge Social Psychology: Obedience to Authority • Stanley Milgram Obedience Studies (1963, 1974) • Variations: • Experimenter gave orders from another room • ‘Teacher’ and ‘learner’ in the same room • Requiring ‘teacher’ to physically shock ‘learner’ Lowered obedience rates to approx. 30% • Three ‘teachers’ (2 confederates) vs one ‘experimenter’ • When confederates decided to stop, the participant agreed to stop (90% of the time) © Ryan Langridge Social Psychology: The Bystander Effect The Bystander Effect (aka ‘Bystander Apathy’) • An individual is less likely to help when there are other people present, who are also not helping • Latané & Darley (1968) • Participant engaged in conversation with 1, 2, or 3 others (actually confederates) via intercom • During the conversation one of the confederates reported having a seizure © Ryan Langridge • The more confederates involved in the conversation, the longer participants’ reaction times Social Psychology: The Bystander Effect • Possible Explanations: • Normative influences • “What happens if I try to help and end up embarrassing myself?” • Informational influences • “What if others know something I don’t? Am I overreacting?” • Diffusion of Responsibility • Reduced personal responsibility that a person feels when more people are present in a situation © Ryan Langridge Diffusion of Responsibility Social Psychology: The Bystander Effect • But, not always the case. • Altruism→ Helping others in need without receiving or expecting reward for doing so © Ryan Langridge Dual-Process Models: Social Psychology: Social Cognition Models of behaviour that account for both implicit and explicit processes Social Cognition → Combines influence of social context and cognition • 2 Major Processes in our consciousness: 1. Explicit Processes • I.e., Conscious thought • Deliberate, effortful, relatively slow, under intentional control 2. Implicit Processes • I.e., Unconscious thought • Intuitive, automatic, effortless, very fast, operate mostly outside of intentional control • “lower-level” processes, can lead to bias, stereotypes © Ryan Langridge Social Psychology: Social Cognition • Schemas → Organized clusters of knowledge, beliefs, and expectations • Influence our attention and perceptual processes → Biases • Heuristics → ‘Best guess’ problem solving strategies based on prior experiences Kind Lent me 5 bucks once © Ryan Langridge Intellectual Always asks how I am doing Has an advanced degree in thermonuclear dynamics Social Psychology: Social Cognition • Person Perception • Process by which individuals categorize and form judgments about other people • Can occur very quickly, unconsciously (e.g., first impressions) • ‘Thin slices’ of behaviour → Small samples of a person’s behaviour • E.g., Judgments about sexual orientation, political affiliation © Ryan Langridge Social Psychology: Social Cognition • Naïve Realism • Assumption that our perceptions of reality are accurate, and we see things the way they are • False Consensus Effect • Tendency to project one’s self-concept onto the social world • E.g., I feel this way, so everyone else probably does (or should) too • We tend to view the world (and other people in it) from the perspective of our own ‘self-concept’ • The way I am → The way people should be • ‘Us’ versus ‘Them’ © Ryan Langridge Social Psychology: Social Cognition • Self-Serving Biases • Biased ways of processing self-relevant information to enhance our positive self-evaluation • E.g., Taking credit for success, blaming other people, circumstances, or bad luck for our failures © Ryan Langridge Social Psychology: Social Cognition • Internal Attributions content/uploads/2015/09/road-rage.jpg • Also known as Dispositional Attributions • Explaining the behaviour of another person in terms of an innate quality • E.g., “That person made that error because they’re a bad driver” https://techcrunch.com/wp- • External Attributions • Also known as Situational Attributions • Explaining the behaviour of another person as the result of the situation • E.g., “That person might have been distracted by something, or are especially tired today, etc.” © Ryan Langridge Social Psychology: Social Cognition • Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE) https://techcrunch.com/wpcontent/uploads/2015/09/road-rage.jpg • Tendency to over-emphasize internal (dispositional) attributions and underemphasize external (situational) factors when explaining other people’s behaviour • Individualistic cultures (E.g., in Canada, USA) more likely to make this error © Ryan Langridge Social Psychology: Social Cognition Ingroups and Outgroups • Ingroups → Groups someone feels positively toward and identifies with • E.g., Family, home team, coworkers • Ingroup Bias → Extension of a positive bias toward the self to include one’s ingroups • Motivation to view ingroups as superior to outgroups • Outgroups → ‘Other’ groups someone doesn’t identify with, or dis-identifies with • Even when grouped based on seemingly meaningless, random criteria, people demonstrate preference for their ingroup, and demonstrate prejudice and discrimination toward outgroup © Ryan Langridge Social Psychology: Social Cognition • Stereotype • A cognitive structure, (i.e., schema) that guides how we process information about our social world • Set of beliefs about the characteristics of a specific social group • Can be negative or positive → Both potentially harmful © Ryan Langridge Social Psychology: Social Cognition Based on our stereotypes about a particular group... • Prejudice • Emotionally charged response toward outgroup members • Includes holding negative attitudes and making critical judgments of other groups • Discrimination • Behaviour that disadvantages members of a certain social group • E.g., Racism, classism, sexism, etc. © Ryan Langridge Social Psychology: Social Cognition Measuring Prejudice • Implicit Associations Test (IAT; Greenwald et al., 1998) • Measures how fast people can respond to images or words flashed on a computer screen © Ryan Langridge • Reaction time scores correlate with activation in the amygdala (emotion processing, fear response) Social Psychology: Social Cognition Improving Intergroup Relations • Evidence to suggest that people’s implicit networks can be “reprogrammed” with practice • E.g., Training to replace internal/dispositional attributions with external/situational attributions • Can help avoid stereotypical thinking • Contact Hypothesis → Social contact can help overcome prejudice, especially if: © Ryan Langridge a) Contact occurs in settings where both groups have equal status and power b) Meeting involves cooperating on tasks or pursuing common goals Social Psychology: Attitudes, Behaviour, and Effective Communication Changing People’s Behaviour: The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) • Dual-process model of persuasion that predicts whether factual information or other types of information will be most influential • Dual-Process models → Explicit vs Implicit thinking • When an audience is motivated/interested in a topic → Rational (Explicit) thinking • When an audience has time to make a decision → Rational (Explicit) thinking • When an audience is not interested, and has to make a quick decision → Less rational (Implicit) thinking © Ryan Langridge Social Psychology: Attitudes, Behaviour, and Effective Communication Central Route to Persuasion • Focuses on facts, logic, and the content of the message • But, audience needs both motivation and time to listen and think rationally about the message Peripheral Route to Persuasion • Focuses on the features of the issue/presentation that are not factual • E.g., Attractiveness of the person delivering the message, number of arguments made • ‘Style’ vs. ‘Substance’ of the argument © Ryan Langridge https://149352953.v2.pressablecdn.com/wpcontent/uploads/2011/01/milkbatman.jpg Social Psychology: Attitudes, Behaviour, and Effective Communication Construal-Level Theory • Information affects us differently depending on our psychological distance from the information • Messages that are made to feel more personally relevant (i.e., closer to the audience) are more successful motivators • E.g., Geographical distance, temporal distance, social distance, degree of specificity, certainty © Ryan Langridge Social Psychology: Attitudes, Behaviour, and Effective Communication Identifiable Victim Effect • People are more powerfully moved to action by the story of a single suffering person than by information about a whole group of people • Experiential System Dual Process Model: • Operates implicitly, quickly, and intuitively, predominantly emotional • E.g., ‘Intuition’ and ‘feelings’ • Analytic System © Ryan Langridge • Operates explicitly, slower and more methodical, uses logic to understand reality • E.g., ‘Understanding’ Social Psychology: Attitudes, Behaviour, and Effective Communication Reciprocity → Strong social norm to repay others • “Door-in-the-Face Technique” 1. Ask for something relatively big 2. Follow with a request from something relatively small (usually the goal from the beginning) Consistency → Hard to say “no” after saying “yes” • “Foot-in-the-Door Technique” 1. Make a simple request 2. After they say yes, follow-up with a larger request © Ryan Langridge Foot-in-the-Door Door-in-the-Face © Ryan Langridge