Module 25
Social Psychology
INTRODUCTION
• Social psychology
– Broad field whose goals are to understand and
explain how our thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and
behaviors are influenced by the presence of, or
interactions with, others
• Cognitive social psychology
– Subarea of social psychology that focuses on how
cognitive processes, such as perceiving, retrieving,
and interpreting information about social interactions
and events, affect emotions and behaviors and how
emotions and behaviors affect cognitions
PERCEIVING OTHERS
• Person perception
– Seeing someone and then forming impressions and
making judgments about that person’s likeability and
the kind of person he or she is, such as guessing his
or her intentions, traits, and behaviors
– Physical appearance
• initial impressions and judgments of a person are
heavily influenced and biased by a person’s physical
appearance
– Need to explain
• why a person looks, dresses, or behaves in a certain
way
PERCEIVING OTHERS (CONT’D)
• Person perception
– Influence on behavior
• first impressions will influence how you like or interact
with a person
– Effects of race
• members of one race generally recognize faces of other
races
• Physical appearance
– Attractiveness
• for better or for worse, a person’s looks matter: people
judged to be more physically attractive generally make
more favorable impressions
PERCEIVING OTHERS (CONT’D)
PERCEIVING OTHERS (CONT’D)
• Stereotypes
– Widely held beliefs that people have certain traits
because they belong to a particular group
– Often inaccurate; frequently portray members of less
powerful, less controlling groups more negatively than
members of more powerful, controlling groups
• Development of stereotypes
– Prejudice: an unfair, biased, or intolerant attitude
toward another group of people
– Discrimination: specific unfair behaviors exhibited
toward members of a group
PERCEIVING OTHERS (CONT’D)
• Schemas
– Mental categories that, like computer files, contain
knowledge about people, events, and concepts
– Affect what we attend to and how we interpret things
– Can influence, bias, and distort our thoughts,
perceptions, and social behaviors
• Kinds of schemas
– Social cognition
• how, what people learn about social relationships
– Person schemas
• our judgments about the traits we/others possess
PERCEIVING OTHERS (CONT’D)
• Kinds of schemas
– Role schemas
• based on the jobs people perform or the social
positions they hold
– Event schemas, also called scripts
• contain behaviors that we associate with familiar
activities, events, or procedures
– Self-schemas
• contain personal information about ourselves that
influences, modifies, and distorts what we perceive
and remember and how we believe
PERCEIVING OTHERS (CONT’D)
• Schemas: advantages and disadvantages
– Disadvantages
• schemas may restrict, bias, or distort what we
attend to and remember and thus cause us to
overlook important information
• are highly resistant to change because we
generally select and attend to information that
supports our schemas and deny any information
that is inconsistent with them
PERCEIVING OTHERS (CONT’D)
• Schemas: advantages and disadvantages
– Advantages
• contain information about how people think and
behave
• help people analyze and respond appropriately in a
particular social situation
• provide guidelines for how to behave in various
social events (event schemas) and help us explain
the social behavior of others (role schemas)
ATTRIBUTIONS
• Definition
– Things we point to as the cause of events, other
people’s behaviors, and our own behaviors
• Internal vs. external
– Internal attributions
• explanations of behavior based on the internal
characteristics or dispositions of the person
performing the behavior
– External attributions
• explanations of behavior based on the external
circumstances or situations
PERCEIVING OTHERS (CONT’D)
ATTRIBUTIONS (CONT’D)
• Kelley’s model of covariation
– Social psychologist Harold Kelley
– Covariation model
• in making attributions, we should look for factors
present when the behavior occurs and absent when the
behavior does not occur
– Consensus
• determining whether other people engage in the same
behavior in the same situation
– Consistency
• determining whether someone engages in a behavior
every time he or she is in a particular situation
ATTRIBUTIONS (CONT’D)
• Kelley’s model of covariation
– Distinctiveness
• determining how differently a person behaves in
one situation when compared to other situations
ATTRIBUTIONS (CONT’D)
• Kelley’s model of covariation
– Biases and errors
• fundamental attribution error
– our tendency to look for causes of a person’s
disposition or personality traits and overlook
how the situation influenced the person’s
behavior
ATTRIBUTIONS (CONT’D)
• Biases and errors
– Actor-observer effect
• tendency, when behaving (or acting), to attribute
your own behavior to situational factors
– Self-serving bias
• explaining our successes by attributing them to our
dispositions or personality traits and explaining our
failures by attributing them to the situations
ATTITUDES
• Definition
– belief or opinion that includes an evaluation of some
object, person, or event along a continuum from negative
to positive that predisposes us to act in a certain way
toward that object, person, or event
• Components of attitudes
– Cognitive component
• includes both thoughts and beliefs involved in
evaluating some object, person, or idea
– Affective component
• emotional feelings that can be weak or strong, positive
or negative
ATTITUDES (CONT’D)
• Components of attitudes
– Behavioral component
• involves performing or not performing some
behavior
ATTITUDES (CONT’D)
• Attitude change
– Cognitive dissonance
• a state of unpleasant psychological tension that
motivates us to reduce our cognitive
inconsistencies by making our beliefs more
consistent with each other
– Counterattitudinal behavior
• taking a public position that runs counter to your
private attitude
ATTITUDES (CONT’D)
• Attitude change
– Self-perception theory
• we first observe or perceive our own behavior and
then, as a result, we change our attitudes
• Persuasion
– Central route for persuasion
• presents information with strong arguments,
analyses, facts, and logic
– Peripheral route for persuasion
• emphasizes emotional appeal, focuses on
personal traits, and generates positive feelings
SOCIAL & GROUP INFLUENCES
• Hazing
– Part of a group’s initiation ritual, during which
individuals are subjected to a variety of behaviors that
range from humiliating and unpleasant to potentially
dangerous both physically and psychologically
• Conformity
– Any behaviors you perform because of group
pressure, even though that pressure might not involve
direct requests
SOCIAL & GROUP INFLUENCES (CONT’D)
• Compliance
– Kind of conformity in which we give in to social
pressure in our public responses but do not change
our private beliefs
• Foot-in-the-door technique
– Technique of starting with a little request to gain
eventual compliance with a later request
• Obedience
– Performing some behavior in response to an order
given by someone in a position of power or authority
– Milgram’s experiment
SOCIAL & GROUP INFLUENCES (CONT’D)
• Helping prosocial behavior
– Also called helping; any behavior that benefits others
or has positive social consequences
• Altruism
– Form of helping or doing something, often at a cost or
risk, for reasons other than the expectation of a
material or social reward
SOCIAL & GROUP INFLUENCES (CONT’D)
• Why people help
– Empathy
• identify with what the victim must be going through
– Personal distress
• feelings of fear, alarm, or disgust from seeing a
victim in need
– Norms and values
• feeling morally bound or socially responsible to
help those in need
SOCIAL & GROUP INFLUENCES (CONT’D)
• Why people help
– Decision-stage model of helping
– Five stages
1. notice the situation
2. interpret it as one in which help is needed
3. assume personal responsibility
4. choose a form of assistance
5. carry out that assistance
– Arousal-cost-reward model of helping
• make decisions to help by calculating the costs and
rewards of helping
SOCIAL & GROUP INFLUENCES (CONT’D)
• Group dynamics
– Groups
• collections of two or more people who interact, share
some common idea, goal, or purpose, and influence
how their members think and behave
• Group cohesion and norms
– Group cohesion
• group togetherness; determined by how much group
members perceive that they share common attributes
– Group norms
• formal or informal rules about how group members
should behave
SOCIAL & GROUP INFLUENCES (CONT’D)
• Group dynamics
– Group membership
– Social comparison theory
• we’re driven to compare ourselves to others who
are similar to us, so that we can measure the
correctness of our attitudes and beliefs
– Task-oriented group
• members have specific duties to complete
– Socially oriented group
• members are primarily concerned about fostering
and maintaining social relationships in group
SOCIAL & GROUP INFLUENCES (CONT’D)
• Group dynamics
– Behavior in crowds
• crowd
– large group of people who are usually
strangers; can facilitate or inhibit certain
behaviors
SOCIAL & GROUP INFLUENCES (CONT’D)
• Behavior in crowds
– Facilitation and inhibition
• social facilitation: increase in performance in the
presence of a crowd
• social inhibition: decrease in performance in the
presence of a crowd
• deindividuation in crowds
– the increased tendency for subjects to behave
irrationally or perform antisocial behaviors when
there is less chance of being personally
identified
SOCIAL & GROUP INFLUENCES (CONT’D)
• Behavior in crowds
– The bystander effect
• individual may feel inhibited from taking some
action because of the presence of others
– Informational influence theory
• we use the reactions of others to judge the
seriousness of the situation
– Diffusion of responsibility theory
• in the presence of others, individuals feel less
personal responsibility and are less likely to take
action in a situation where help is required
SOCIAL & GROUP INFLUENCES (CONT’D)
• Group decisions
– Group polarization
• phenomenon in which group discussion reinforces
the majority’s point of view and shifts that view to a
more extreme position
– Groupthink
• a group making bad decisions because it is more
concerned about reaching agreement and sticking
together than gathering the relevant information
and considering all the alternatives
SOCIAL & GROUP INFLUENCES (CONT’D)
• Group decisions
– Ingroup
• includes only the immediate members of the group
– Outgroup
• includes everyone who is not a part of the group
AGGRESSION
• Genes and environment
– Aggression
• any behavior directed toward another that is
intended to cause harm
– Social cognitive and personality factors
• Social cognitive theory
• much of human behavior, including aggressive
behavior, may be learned through watching,
imitating, and modeling and does not require the
observer to perform any observable behavior or
receive any observable reward
AGGRESSION (CONT’D)
• Situational cues
– Frustration-aggression hypothesis
• when our goals are blocked, we become frustrated
and respond with anger and aggression
– Modified frustration-aggression hypothesis
• although frustration may lead to aggression, a
number of situational and cognitive factors may
override the aggressive response
PERCEIVING OTHERS (CONT’D)
AGGRESSION (CONT’D)
• Sexual harassment and aggression
– Characteristics and kinds of rapists
– Power rapist
• 70% of all rapes
• not to hurt physically but to possess
– Sadistic rapist
• fewer than 5%
• most dangerous because, for him, sexuality and
aggression have become fused, and using physical
force is arousing and exciting
AGGRESSION (CONT’D)
• Sexual harassment and aggression
– Characteristics and kinds of rapists
– Anger rapist
• impulsive, savage attack of uncontrolled physical
violence
– Acquaintance or date rape
• knows victim and uses varying amounts of verbal
or physical coercion to force his partner to engage
in sexual activities
AGGRESSION (CONT’D)
• Sexual harassment and aggression
– Rape myths
• misinformed, false beliefs about women
• these myths are frequently held by rapists