BEHAVIOR
SOCIAL AND CULTURE
Role of society and norms
Governed by norms to
regulate social life
• explicit laws and implicit cultural
conventions
• reinforced through reward, threatened by
punishment
HOW DO
YOU FEEL Start singing in class
ABOUT
THESE? Stand backward in line at
PDC
Pull your chair very close to
a stranger in the library
HOW DO YOU Start singing in class
FEEL ABOUT
THESE? Stand backward in line at PDC
Pull your chair very close to a
stranger in the library
What else feels this way?
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT
THESE?
Cousin marriages
Throwing trash from a moving
car
What else?
We also fill a lot of
THE ROLE OF social roles
ROLES
Social position is
governed by a set
of norms for proper
behavior
How do we know
when a role
requirement is?
WHY ARE NORMS AND
ROLES DIFFERENT IN
DIFFERENT CULTURES?
E.g., Why would cousin marriage be alright here
and taboo in the west?
Power of
roles,
norms and
culture
Obedience Study
The
Milgram
obedience
experiment
WHAT DO
YOU THINK
HAPPENED?
Did people obey?
When did people disobey:
When the experimenter left the room
When the victim was right there in the room
When two experimenters issued conflicting demands
When the person ordering them to continue was an ordinary man
not an authority figure
MILGRAM’S CONCLUSION
Obedience was more a function of the situation
than of the personalities of the participants.
They had given themselves to the authority
and merely saw themselves as executioners
Ordinary people, in the grip of social forces,
become the origins of atrocities in the real
world
Do you think obedience is good or Would you obey?
bad?
• Entrapment
Why do • a process in which individuals escalate
people obey? their commitment to a course of action
in order to justify their investment in it
The path followed is morally
ambiguous
Would you call the torturers Where do you draw the line?
bad people?
Social influences
on beliefs and
behavior
Attribution theory
The theory that people are
motivated to explain their own and
other people’s behavior by
attributing causes of that behavior
to a situation or a disposition
Attribution theory
Situational attribution
The theory that people
Blame the situation for the
are motivated to explain behavior
their own and other
people’s behavior by
attributing causes of that
behavior to a situation or
a disposition
Attribution theory
Situational Dispositional
The theory that
people are motivated attribution attribution
to explain their own Blame the situation Blame the
and other people’s for the behavior personality for the
behavior by behavior
attributing causes of
that behavior to a
situation or a
disposition
ATTRIBUTION
Why did the TA
snap at you
She is under She is mean
pressure and rude
(Situational) (Dispositional)
Ignoring influence of situation on behavior
and emphasizing personality traits alone
• While during groceries, you
see a boy steal. What will be
your first reaction?
• What if you find out that the
boy was an orphan who stole
to feed his sister who had
not eaten for days
• Someone you are not close to,
does not respond to you, when
you ask them a clarifying
question during a lecture. What
will be your initial reaction?
• What if your friend does it?
• What if another friend later tells
you that earlier person had an
accident coming to class?
Fundamental
overestimat overestimat attribution
e e situational
personality influence error
traits when when
explaining explaining
other's our own
behavior behavior
Why are we so
quick to judge
others?
SELF SERVING BIAS
The bias to choose
the most flattering
and forgiving
attributions of our
own lapses
SELF SERVING BIAS
The bias to choose the most
flattering and forgiving attributions
of our own lapses
The bias that we are better,
smarter, and kinder than others
SELF SERVING BIAS
The bias to choose the most flattering
and forgiving attributions of our own
lapses
The bias that we are better, smarter,
and kinder than others
The bias to believe that the world is
fair
E.g., attribution in relationships
Attributions have
huge
consequences
Attributing
Attribute lapses to partners'
partner's personality occasional lapses
to situation
E.g., attribution in relationships
• How can attribute appear in relationships?
Attitudes change
because of new
experience
We need to make
sense of these
new realities
Cognitive dissonance is the uncomfortable feeling that occurs when two
attitudes, or an attitude and a behavior, are in conflict (are dissonant).
To resolve this dissonance, most people will change one of their
attitudes.
COGNITIVE DISSONANCE
WHAT ELSE
• The tendency of
INFLUENCE people to feel
S OUR more positive
Familiarity toward a person,
BELIEFS effect: item, product, or
other stimulus the
more familiar
they are with it.
• The tendency of people to
WHAT ELSE believe that a statement
Validity is true or valid simply
INFLUENCE effect: because it has been
repeated many times.
S OUR
BELIEFS
“I keep seeing
this so it must
be true"
An extreme form
of influence
Brain washing: a sudden change of mind without
being aware of what is happening
How brainwashing works
• The person is subject to entrapment
• The person’s problems, personal and political,
are explained by one simple attribution,
repeatedly emphasized: Its others’ fault
• The person is given a new identify and is
promised salvation
• The person’s access to disconfirming
(dissonant) information is severely controlled
HOW DO GROUPS
INFLUENCE OUR
BEHAVIOR
Individuals
in groups
Conformity
We thrive to We tend to
belong conform
Need to be socially
acceptable; Need for more
information
Individuals in groups
GROUP THINK
The tendency to think alike and suppress
dissent
• Diffusion of responsibility
• Leads to the bystander effect
Individuals in groups
GROUP THINK
The tendency to think alike and suppress
dissent
• Deindividualization
• In groups or crowds, the loss of awareness of one’s own
individuality.
• Can lead to an Us Vs Them mentality
Question of
Human Nature