SOCIAL

PSYCHOLOGY
 Social Psychology

“Social thinking” or thinking socially refers to a process we all go through in

our mind as we try to make sense of our own and others' thoughts, feelings,
and intentions in context, whether we are co-existing, actively interacting, or
figuring out what is happening from a distance.
• Social Psychology - scientific study of how we think
about, influence, and relate to one another.

• Social Psychologistb- study on the situation, they study

the social influences that explain why the same person
acts differently in different situations.
 The Fundamental Attribution error
■ Attribution theory- proposed by Fritz Heider (1958) the theory that we explain
someone’s behavior by crediting either the situation or the person’s
disposition.
■ Fundamental Attribution Error- the tendency for observers, when analyzing
others’ behavior, to underestimate the impact of the situation and to
overestimate the impact of personal disposition.
- David Napolitan and George Goethals (1979) demonstrated the fundamental
attribution error in an experiment with Williams College students.
 WHAT FACTORS AFFECT OUR ATTRIBUTIONS?
• One factor is culture.
• Individualist Westerners more often attribute behavior to people’s personal
traits.
• People in East Asian cultures are somewhat more sensitive to the power of
the situation (Kitayama et al., 2009; Riemer et al., 2014).
• When we explain our own behavior, we are sensitive to how behavior
changes with the situation (Idson & Mischel, 2001).
• We also are sensitive to the power of the situation when we explain the
behavior of people we have seen in many different contexts.
• Two important exceptions to our usual view of our own actions: Our
deliberate and admirable actions.
 How Do Our Attributions Matter?
The way we explain others’ actions (attributing them to the person or the situation)
can have important real-life effects.
■ Attribution Matter
In one study, 181 state judges gave lighter sentences to a violent offender who a
scientist testified had a gene that altered brain areas related to aggressiveness
(Aspinwall et al., 2012).
The point to remember: Our attributions—to a person’s disposition or to the
situation—have real consequences.
• Attitudes and Actions
Attitude - feelings, often influenced by our beliefs, that predispose us to respond
in a particular way to objects, people, and events. The traffic between our
attitudes and our actions is two-way. Our attitudes affect
our actions. And our actions affect our attitudes.

• Attitudes Affect Actions

In any debate, people on both sides attempt to convert the opposition and sway
the undecided.
These efforts to persuade generally take two forms:
1. Peripheral route persuasion - uses attention getting cues to trigger
emotion-based snap judgments.
2. Central route persuasion - offers evidence and arguments that
trigger careful thinking.
■ Actions affects Attitudes
Now consider a more surprising principle: Not only will we stand up for what
we believe, we also will more strongly believe in what we have stood up for.
Many streams of evidence confirm that attitudes follow behavior (FIGURE
13.1)

FIGURE 13.1 Attitudes follow behavior

Cooperative actions, such as those
performed by people on sports teams
(including Germany, shown here
celebrating their World Cup 2014 victory),
feed mutual liking. Such attitudes, in turn,
promote positive behavior.
THE FOOT-IN-THE DOOR PHENOMENON the tendency for people who
have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request.
The point is simple: To get people to agree to something big, start small and
build (Cialdini,1993).

Role-Playing affects Attitudes - When you adopt a new role, when you
become a college student, marry, or begin a new job, you strive to follow
social prescriptions.

Role- a set of expectations (norms) about a social position, defining how

those in the position ought to behave.
 COGNITIVE DISSONANCE: RELIEF FROM
TENSION
Cognitive dissonance theory - the theory that we act to reduce the discomfort
(dissonance) we feel when two of our thoughts (cognitions) are inconsistent.
For example, when we become aware that our attitudes and our actions clash, we
can reduce the resulting dissonance by changing our attitudes.
■ The point to remember: We can act ourselves into a way of thinking about as
easily as we can think ourselves into a way of acting.
• SOCIAL INFLUENCE – Social Psychology’s great lesson due to its
enormous power. This influence stems in part from social norms—
rules for expected and acceptable behavior. When we knowhow to act,
how to groom, how to talk, life functions smoothly. But sometimes
social pressure moves people in dreadful directions.

Conformity: Complying With Social Pressures

• Social Contagion - the spread of affect or behavior from one crowd

participant to another; one person serves as the stimulus for the
imitative actions of another.
■ Conformity and Social Norms
Suggestibility and mimicry are subtle types of conformity- adjusting our behavior
or thinking towards some group standard.
Tattoos: Yesterday’s nonconformity, today’s conformity? As tattoos become
perceived as fashion conformity, their popularity may wane.

Why do we so often think as others think and do as they do?

Frequently, we conform to avoid rejection or to gain social approval (Williams &
Sommer, 1997).
• Normative social influence - influence resulting from
a person’s desire to gain approval or avoid
disapproval.

• Informational social influence - influence resulting

from one’s willingness to accept others’ opinions
about reality.
Is conformity bad or good?
■ Conformity can be bad — leading people to agree
with falsehoods or go along with bullying. Or it can
be good—leading people to give more generously
after observing others’ generosity. The answer also
depends partly on our culturally influenced values.
• Group Behavior
How does the presence of others influence our actions, via social facilitation,
social loafing, and deindividuation?

Social facilitation - improved performance on simple or well-learned tasks in

the presence of others.
Social loafing - the tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when
pooling their efforts toward attaining a common goal than when individually
accountable.
■ Group Polarization
A powerful principle helps us understand our increasingly polarized world: The
beliefs and attitudes we bring to a group grow stronger as we discuss them with
like-minded others. This process, called group polarization.

■ Group Think
Groupthink -the mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a
decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives.
 ANTISOCIAL RELATIONS
Prejudice means “prejudgment.” It is an unjustifiable and usually negative
attitude toward a group and its members.

In prejudice, the ingredients in this three- part mixture are;

1. Negative emotions - hostility or fear.
2. Stereotypes - which are generalized beliefs about a group of people.
Often overgeneralized or exaggerate.
3. Predisposition to discriminate - to act in negative and unjustifiable
ways toward members of the group.
 Explicit and Implicit Prejudice
We have seen that our brain processes thoughts, memories, and attitudes on
two different tracks. Sometimes that processing is explicit or implicit.

1. Explicit – on the radar screen of our awareness.

2. Implicit - an unthinking knee-jerk response operating below the radar,
leaving us unaware of how our attitudes are influencing our behavior.
Implicit bias researchers noting that “unconscious prejudices” can
cause discrimination even when people do not consciously intend to
discriminate.
 TARGETS OF PREJUDICE
WHAT GROUPS ARE FREQUENT TARGETS OF PREJUDICE?

• RACIAL AND ETHNIC PREJUDICE Americans’ expressed racial

attitudes towards black americans, however it changed dramatically in the
last half-century. Support for interracial dating between Blacks and Whites,
for example, has increased from a 48 to 86 percent in 2012. (See FIGURE
13)
■ Gender Prejudice include the belief that one sex or genderis intrinsically
superior to another. Some people now say it is very important that women have the
same rights as men.

■ LGBTQ PREJUDICE In most of the world, gay and lesbian people cannot openly
and comfortably disclose who they are and whom they love.

■ BELIEF SYSTEMS PREJUDICE People who do not share their belief and
adhere to a different worldview. A different religious worldview or one that rejects
religion altogether
 ROOTS OF PREJUDICE

• SOCIAL INEQUALITIES AND DIVISIONS When some people have

money, power, and prestige and others do not, the “haves” usually develop
attitudes that justify things as they are.

Just-world phenomenon the tendency for people to believe the world is just and
that people therefore get what they deserve and deserve what they get.

ingroup “us”—people with whom we share a common identity.

outgroup “them”—those perceived as different or apart from our ingroup.
ingroup - bias the tendency to favor our own group.
■ NEGATIVE EMOTIONS Negative emotions nourish prejudice. When
facing death, fearing threats, or experiencing frustration, people cling more
tightly to their ingroup and their friends
Scapegoat theory - the theory that prejudice offers an outlet for anger by
providing someone to blame and it can provide a target for our negative
emotions.
• COGNITIVE SHORTCUTS Stereotyped beliefs are in part a by-product
of how we cognitively simplify the world. To help understand the world
around us, we sometimes form categories.

We perceive outgroup homogeneity in uniformity of attitudes, personality,

and appearance.

Other-race effect - the tendency to recall faces of one’s own race more
accurately than faces of other races. Also called the cross-race effect and
the own-race bias.
■ REMEMBERING VIVID CASES We also simplify our world by employing heuristics—
mental shortcuts that enable snap judgments. The
Availability heuristic is the tendency to estimate the frequency of an event by how readily it
comes to mind.
Vivid cases are memorable and they come to mind easily, so it’s no surprise that they feed our
stereotypes.
■ VICTIM BLAMING As we noted earlier, people often justify their prejudices by blaming
victims. If the world is just, they assume, people must get what they deserve.
 AGGRESSION
Aggression - any physical or verbal behavior intended to harm someone
physically or emotionally.

The Biology of Aggression

Aggression varies too widely from culture to culture, era to era, and
person to person to be considered an unlearned instinct. But biology
does influence
aggression.
We can look for biological influences at three levels—genetic, neural, and
biochemical.
■ GENETIC INFLUENCES Genes influence aggression. People who have
low monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) gene expression tend to behave
aggressively when provoked.
■ NEURAL INFLUENCES There is no one spot in the brain that controls
aggression. Aggression is a complex behavior, and it occurs in particular
contexts.
■ BIOCHEMICAL INFLUENCES Our genes engineer our individual
nervous systems, which operate electrochemically.
 PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL-CULTURAL
FACTORS IN AGGRESSION
• AVERSIVE EVENTS Suffering sometimes builds character. Aversive
stimuli—hot temperatures, physical pain, personal insults, foul odors,
cigarette smoke, crowding—can evoke hostility.

Frustration-aggression principle the principle that frustration—the

blocking ofan attempt to achieve some goal—creates anger, which can
generate
aggression
■ REINFORCEMENT AND MODELING Aggression may naturally follow
aversive events, but learning can alter natural reactions. We learn when our
behavior is reinforced, and we learn by watching others.l
■ MEDIA MODELS FOR VIOLENCE Parents are hardly the only aggression
models. In the United States and elsewhere, TV, films, video games, and the
Internet offer supersized portions of violence. Media violence teaches us social
scripts.
Social script a culturally modeled guide for how to act in various
situations.
■ DO VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES TEACH SOCIAL SCRIPTS FOR VIOLENCE? Video
games can prime aggressive thoughts, decrease empathy, and increase
aggression.
 PROSOCIAL RELATIONS
Attraction - Social psychologists have traditionally used the term
attraction refer to the affinity that draws together friends and romantic
partners.
The Psychology of Attraction
We endlessly wonder how we can win others’ affection and what makes
our own affections flourish or fade. Let’s consider three ingredients of
our liking for one another: proximity, attractiveness, and similarity.
■ PROXIMITY Before friendships become close, they must begin.
Proximity—geographic nearness—is friendship’s most powerful predictor.
Can provide opportunities for aggression. But much more often it breeds
liking (and sometimes even marriage). Mating start with proximity breeds
liking partly because of the mere exposure effect.
– Mere exposure effect the phenomenon that repeated exposure
to novel
stimuli increases liking of them.
– MODERN MATCHMAKING Those who have not found a romantic
partner in their immediate proximity may cast a wider net by joining
an online dating service.
• PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVENESS Once proximity affords us
contact, what most affects our first impressions? The person’s
sincerity Experiments reveal that it is something more superficial:
physical appearance.

- Both the men and the women liked good-looking dates best
- Physical attractiveness also predicts how often people date and
how popular they feel.
- Most people perceive the person with the appealing traits as
more physically attractive.
■ SIMILARITY So proximity has brought you into contact with someone, and
your appearance has made an acceptable first impression.
– the more alike people are, the more their liking endures.

Reward theory of attraction: We will like those whose behavior is

rewarding to us, including those who are both able and willing to help us
achieve our goals.
 ROMANTIC LOVE
If love endures, temporary passionate love will mellow into a lingering
companionate love (Hatfield, 1988).
• PASSIONATE LOVE mixes something new with something positive. an
aroused state of intense positive absorption in another, usually present at
the beginning of a romantic relationship.
• COMPANIONATE LOVE As love matures, it typically becomes a steadier
companionate love—the deep affectionate attachment we feel for those
with whom our lives are intertwined.
Key to a gratifying and enduring relationship
- Equity a condition in which people receive from a relationship in proportion to
what they give to it. Their chances for sustained and satisfying companionate
love have been good
- Self-disclosure the act of revealing intimate aspects of oneself to others. As
one person reveals a little, the other reciprocates, the first then reveals more,
and on and on, as friends or lovers move to deeper levels of intimacy.
- Positive Support for happy couples in enduring relationships, positive
interactions (compliments, touches, laughing) outnumber negative interactions
(sarcasm, disapproval, insults).
• Altruism - is the unselfish concern for other people—doing things
simply out of a desire to help, not because you feel obligated to
out of duty, loyalty, or religious reasons. It involves acting out of
concern for the well-being of other people.

• Bystander intervention - is a form of helping that occurs when

onlookers intercede to. Provide direct or indirect aid to a victim.
• Bystander effect - the tendency for any given bystander to be less
likely to give aid if other bystanders are present. When more people
shared responsibility for helping—when there was a diffusion of
responsibility—any single listener was less likely to help.
■ Bystander effect the tendency for any given bystander to be less likely to give aid if
other bystanders are present. When more people shared responsibility for helping—
when there was a diffusion of responsibility—any single listener was less likely to help.
The odds of helping are highest when;
- the person appears to need and deserve help. the person is in some way similar
to us.
- the person is a woman
- we have just observed someone else being helpful.
- we are not in a hurry.
- we are in a small town or rural area.
- we are feeling guilty.
- we are focused on others and not preoccupied.
- we are in a good mood.
HELPING—SELF-INTEREST OR SOCIALIZATION?
Social exchange theory the theory that our social behavior is an exchange
process, the aim of which is to maximize benefits and minimize costs.
Others believe that a person help because he/she have been socialized
to do so, through norms that prescribe how he/she ought to behave.

Two such norms are the reciprocity norm and social-responsibility norm;
1. Reciprocity norm - an expectation that people will help, not hurt, those who
have helped them.
2. Social-responsibility norm - an expectation that people will help those needing
their help. Young children and others who cannot give as much as they
receive—even if the costs outweigh the benefits.
 Conflict and Peacemaking
Positive social norms encourage generosity and enable group living. But conflicts often
divide one another.
Elements of Conflict
To a social psychologist, a conflict is a perceived incompatibility of actions, goals, or
ideas. Conflict may seed positive change, or be a destructive process that can produce
unwanted results. Among these processes are social traps and distorted perceptions.
Social trap – situation in which the conflicting parties, by each pursuing their self-
interest rather than the good of the group, become caught in mutually destructive
behavior.
• ENEMY PERCEPTIONS Psychologists have noted that those in
conflict have a curious tendency to form diabolical images of one
another. These distorted images are, ironically, so similar that we call
them mirror-image perceptions.

- Mirror-image perceptions mutual views often held by conflicting

people, as when each side sees itself as ethical and peaceful and
views the other side as evil and aggressive.
- Self-fulfilling prophecies beliefs that confirm themselves by
influencing the other country to react in ways that seem to justify
them.
 Promoting Peace
■ CONTACT does it help to put two conflicting parties into close contact? It depends.
Negative contact increases disliking. But positive contact—especially noncompetitive
contact between parties of equal status, such as fellow store clerks—typically helps.
■ COOPERATION coordination of multiple individuals toward a goal that benefits the
entire group. Researcher Muzafer Sherif (1966) set a conflict in motion to see if
enemies could overcome their differences.
- Superordinate goals shared goals that override differences among people
and require their cooperation.
■ COMMUNICATION cooperative efforts to achieve shared goals are an effective way to
break down social barriers.
• CONCILIATION - understanding and cooperative resolution are
most needed, yet least likely, in times of anger or crisis.

Psychologist Charles Osgood advocated a strategy of GRIT

(Graduated and Reciprocated Initiatives in Tension-Reduction) —a
strategy designed to decrease international tensions.