Introduction To Social Psychology Lecture Notes PDF

INTRODUCTION & KEY CONCEPTS INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Iqra Naz Institute of Psychology BIOPSYCHOSOCIAL MODEL  The biopsychosocial model is a general model positing that biological, psychological (which includes thoughts, emotions, and behaviors), and social (e.g....

INTRODUCTION & KEY CONCEPTS INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Iqra Naz Institute of Psychology BIOPSYCHOSOCIAL MODEL  The biopsychosocial model is a general model positing that biological, psychological (which includes thoughts, emotions, and behaviors), and social (e.g., socioeconomical, socioenvironmental, and cultural) factors, all play a significant role in health/disease and human behavior. Introduction People have always sought explanations for human behavior Stories, parables, and folk wisdom have been passed from generation to generation, to explain why people do what they do and to prescribe behaviors to avoid or follow Social psychologists go beyond folk wisdom and try to establish a scientific basis for understanding human behavior Continued… They study situations in which people exert influence over one another Social psychologists are also interested in how people make sense of their world—how they decide what and whom to believe; how they make inferences about the motives, personalities, and abilities of other people; and how they reach conclusions about the causes of events  Person and Situation Person: When we talk about the person, we will typically be referring to features or characteristics that individuals carry into social situations Situation: When we talk about the social situation, we are referring to events or circumstances outside the person. These can range from fleeting events in the immediate social context to long-lasting influences Person-Situation Interaction Kurt Lewin formalized the joint influence of person variables and situational variables, which is known as the person-situation interaction, in an important equation: Behavior = f (person, social situation) Lewin’s equation indicates that the behavior of a given person at any given time is a function of (depends on) both the characteristics of the person and the influence of the social situation The Power of Situation Situations exert enormous influence on how we think, feel and behave. It influences us and it influences everyone around us (Schwarz and Clore 1983 Study) Yaacov Trope Study 1986: Participants were asked to rate sad and happy faces. Then rate the same sad faces in a funeral home and happy faces at wedding. These faces were rated sadder or happier. Most of the time we tend to underestimate the power of situational pressures (especially on other people) The reason this idea is so important is because most of the time situations are invisible The Power of Situation As social creatures, we respond to our immediate contexts Sometimes the power of a social situation leads us to act contrary to our expressed attitudes Powerfully evil situations sometimes overwhelm good intentions, inducing people to agree with falsehoods or comply with cruelty Other situations may elicit great generosity and compassion Social psychologist Hazel Markus (2005) sums it up: “People are, above all, malleable.” The Milgram Experiment Stanley Milgram (1963, 1974) Milgram advertised in the local newspaper for men to participate in a study on learning and memory at Yale University in exchange for a modest amount of money. When the volunteers— a mix of laborers, middle- class individuals, and professionals ranging in age from their 20s to their 50 s— arrived at the laboratory, a man in a white lab coat told them they would be participating in a study about the effects of punishment on learning. There would be a “teacher” and a “learner,” and the learner would try to memorize word pairs such as wild/duck. The volunteer, drew slips of paper to determine who would play which role. The pleasant- looking man was actually an accomplice, or confederate, of the experimenter, and the drawing was rigged so that he was always the learner. The participant “teacher” was then instructed to administer shocks— from 15 to 450 volts— to the “learner” each time he made an error. Labels under the shock switches ranged from “slight shock” through “danger: severe shock” to “XXX.” The experimenter explained that the teacher was to administer shocks in ascending 15-volt magnitudes: 15 volts the first time the learner made an error, 30 volts the next time, and so on. The teacher was given a 45-volt shock so he would have an idea of how painful the shocks would be. What he didn’t know was that the learner, who was in another room, was not actually being shocked.  Most participants became concerned as the shock levels increased and turned to the experimenter to ask what should be done, but the experimenter insisted they go on. The first time a teacher expressed reservations, he was told, “Please continue.” If the teacher balked, the experimenter said, “The experiment requires that you continue.” If the teacher continued to hesitate, the experimenter said, “It’s absolutely essential that you continue.” If necessary, the experimenter escalated to, “You have no other choice. You must go on.” If the participant asked whether the learner could suffer permanent physical injury, the experimenter said, “Although the shocks may be painful, there is no permanent tissue damage, so please go on.” In the end, despite the learner’s groans, pleas, screams, and eventual silence as the intensity of the shocks increased, 80 percent of the participants continued past the 150- volt level— at which point the learner mentioned that he had a heart condition and screamed, “Let me out of here!” Fully 62.5 percent of the participants went all the way to the 450-volt level, delivering everything the shock generator could produce. The average amount of shock given was 360 volts, after the learner let out an agonized scream and became hysterical. The Power of Situation The field of forces in the case of human behavior is the role of the situation, especially the social situation, in guiding behavior The main situational influences on our behavior are the actions— and sometimes just the mere presence—of other people Friends, romantic partners, even total strangers can cause us to be kinder or meaner, smarter or dumber, lazier or more hardworking, bolder or more cautious We rely on other people for clues about what emotions to feel in various situations and even to define who we are as individuals Stanford Prison Experiment (1971) The Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted by Dr. Philip Zimbardo in 1971 at Stanford University, was a seminal study exploring the psychological effects of perceived power and authority within a simulated prison environment. Zimbardo and his team recruited 24 mentally and emotionally stable male college students and randomly assigned them to play the roles of prisoners or guards in a simulated prison. The study was set up in the basement of the Stanford Psychology Department, transformed to resemble a real prison. The participants adapted to their roles very quickly, with guards displaying abusive and authoritarian behaviors towards the prisoners, and the prisoners experiencing extreme stress and emotional distress. The guards enforced strict rules and engaged in humiliating and degrading actions, while the prisoners became increasingly passive and showed signs of emotional disturbance. Due to the escalating intensity of the situation and the concerning behavior of both guards and prisoners, the experiment was halted after only six days, instead of the planned two weeks. The study highlighted how individuals, even when initially psychologically healthy, can drastically change their behavior based on the roles they are assigned and the social context in which they find themselves. "Only a few people were able to resist the situational temptations to yield to power and dominance while maintaining some semblance of morality and decency; obviously, I was not among that noble class” Phillip Zimbardo (2007) Theoretical Perspectives of Behavior Evolutionary Perspective Sociocultural Perspective Social Learning Perspective Social Cognitive Perspective Evolutionary Perspective William McDougall took an evolutionary perspective, adopting the view that human social behaviors are rooted in physical and psychological predispositions that helped our ancestors survive and reproduce McDougall followed Charles Darwin’s (1873) suggestion that human social behaviors had evolved along with physical features Prominent need: to survive and reproduce Evolutionary Perspective Three steps of Evolution: 1. There are traits that are heritable 2. There is variability in those traits 3. Some traits are more adaptive than others Evolutionary Perspective The central driving force of evolution is natural selection, the process whereby animals pass to their offspring those characteristics that help them survive and reproduce New characteristics that are well suited to particular environments—called adaptations—will come to replace characteristics that are less well suited to the demands and opportunities those environments present Evolutionary Perspective – Example 1 Consider fear, for example. There is good evidence that fear is an evolved psychological reaction that helped our ancestors respond rapidly and effectively to threats such as poisonous insects, snakes, and other people who might pose a danger to them (Ohman, Lundqvist, & Esteves, 2001) Evolutionary Perspective – Example 2 Men and women in every human society, for example, establish long-term marriage bonds in which the man helps the woman raise a family (Geary, 2000). This might seem unsurprising until one looks at most of our furry relatives. Mothers in 95 to 97% of other mammalian species do it alone without any help from the male. Why are family values so rare among mammalian males? That may be because after fertilization fathers just aren’t all that necessary. Paternal care becomes useful, though, in species like coyotes and human beings, whose young are born helpless (Geary, 2005) Fig. 1.1 Universal Behaviors, Reactions and Institutions. Sociocultural Perspective The theoretical viewpoint that searches for the causes of behavior in influences from larger social groups Sociologist Edward Alsworth Ross (1908) argued that the basis of social behavior resides not in the individual but in the social group Sociocultural theorists focus on the central importance of social norms, or rules about appropriate behavior Social norm: A rule or expectation for appropriate social behavior Prominent need: the need to belong Sociocultural Perspective At the center of this perspective is the concept of culture, which we can broadly define as a set of beliefs, customs, habits, and languages shared by the people living in a particular time and place Each of us has been exposed to different cultural norms depending on our ethnicity, our socioeconomic status, the geographical region in which we were raised, and our religion  Social Learning Perspective A theoretical viewpoint that focuses on past learning experiences as determinants of a person’s social behaviors On this view, whether we love or hate another person or group of people, whether we are gregarious or reserved, and whether we desire to be a leader or a follower, are all determined by the rewards and punishments we receive from our parents, our teachers, and our peers We don’t need to learn everything from our own trials and errors though; we can observe what happens to the other people around us and the people we read about in books and magazines, or hear about on television Prominent need: the need for approval and emotional security  Social Cognitive Perspective A theoretical viewpoint that focuses on the mental processes involved in paying attention to, interpreting, and remembering social experiences During the 1930s and 1940s Kurt Lewin brought a different perspective to social psychology, arguing that behavior is driven by each person’s subjective interpretations of events in the social world Prominent need: Meaning making Social Cognitive Perspective By emphasizing subjective interpretations, Lewin did not mean to imply that no objective reality existed Instead, he emphasized upon the interaction between events in a situation and the person’s interpretations of them. Lewin believed that a person’s interpretation of a situation was also related to his or her goals at the time. If a teenage boy is itching for a fight, he might interpret an accidental bump as an aggressive shove  Big Ideas and Big Questions in Social Psychology I. We construct our social reality. II. Our social intuitions are powerful, sometimes perilous. III. Attitudes shape, and are shaped by, behavior. IV. Social influences shape behavior V. Dispositions shape behavior VI. Social behavior is also biological behavior VII. Feelings and actions toward people are sometimes negative and sometimes positive  Usefulness and Applicability Social psychology has the potential to illuminate your life, to make visible the subtle influences that guide your thinking and acting. It offers many ideas about how to know ourselves better, how to win friends and influence people, how to transform closed fists into open arms. Scholars are also applying social psychological insights. Principles of social thinking, social influence, and social relations have implications for human health and well-being, for judicial procedures and juror decisions in courtrooms, and for influencing behaviors that will enable an environmentally sustainable human future. Social psychology is all about life—your life: your beliefs, your attitudes, your relationships.