Chapter 12: Social Psychology

Lecture PowerPoint Slides

Psychology in Your Life, 4th edition

© 2022 by W. W. Norton & Company
Chapter 12 Overview: Big Questions
• How Do You Think About Other People?
• How Do Your Attitudes Affect You?
• How Do Other People Influence You?
• How Can You Develop Strong Relationships?
Chapter 12 Overview: Study Units
• 12. 1 You Tend to Make Snap Judgments About Other People
• 12.2 You Make Attributions About Other People
• 12.3 You Tend to Stereotype Other People
• 12.4 Stereotypes Can Lead to Prejudice and Discrimination
• 12.5 You Form Attitudes Through Experience and Socialization
• 12.6 Discrepancies Between Attitudes and Behavior Lead to Dissonance
• 12.7 Your Attitudes Can Be Changed Through Persuasion
• 12.8 Groups Affect Your Behavior
• 12.9 You Conform to and Comply with Others
• 12.10 You Probably Obey People Who Have Authority
• 12.11 You May Hurt or Help Other People
• 12.12 Situations and Personalities Affect Your Relationships
• 12.13 Love Is a Key Part of Romantic Relationships
How Do You Think About Other People?
12.1 You Tend to Make Snap Judgments About Other People
12.2 You Make Attributions About Other People
12.3 You Tend to Stereotype Other People
12.4 Stereotypes Can Have Negative Effects
12.1 You Tend to Make Snap Judgments About Other People (1)
Nonverbal behavior
• Researchers have found that people
can make accurate judgments based
on only a few seconds of
observation
o Thin slices of behavior are powerful
cues for forming impressions of
others
12.1 You Tend to Make Snap Judgments About Other People (2)
Nonverbal behavior
o Student assessments of college
instructors’ teaching based on
just 30-second film clips
correspond accurately with
end-of-the-semester ratings
(Ambady & Rosenthal, 1993)
o Videotapes of judges giving
instructions to juries reveal
that a judge’s nonverbal
actions can predict whether a
jury will find the defendant
guilty or not guilty (Rosenthal,
2003)
12.1 You Tend to Make Snap Judgments About Other People (3)
Facial expressions
• One of the first things we usually notice
about another person is the face
• The face communicates information such as
o Emotional state
o Interest
o Trustworthiness
• Eye contact is important in social situations, though
how we perceive it depends on our culture
12.2 You Make Attributions About Other People (1)
Attributions are our explanations for events or actions,
including other people’s behavior

Types of attributions
• Dispositional attributions: People’s explanations for
why events or actions occur that refer to people’s
internal characteristics, such as abilities, traits, moods,
or efforts
• Situational attributions: People’s explanations for why
events or actions occur that refer to external events, such
as the weather, luck, accidents, or other people’s actions
12.2 You Make Attributions About Other People (2)
Attributions
• Just world hypothesis: making attributions in a way that
lead a person to think that victims must have done
something to justify what happened to them
12.2 You Make Attributions About Other People (3)
Bias in attributions
• Fundamental attribution error: in explaining other
people’s behavior, the tendency to
o Overemphasize personality traits
o Underestimate situational factors

• Actor/observer bias:
o When interpreting our own behavior, we tend to focus
on situations
o When interpreting other people’s behavior, we tend to
focus on dispositional attributes
12.2 You Make Attributions About Other People (4)

When you see Please think Fender bender example

Actor When you are the actor, I had a fender bender
you attribute the outcome because:
to the situation • The road was slippery.
• The other driver went
through the red light.
Observer When you are the That person had a fender
observer, you attribute the bender because:
outcome to another • He is a careless driver.
person's personality traits. • He is an aggressive
driver.
12.3 You Tend to Stereotype Other People (1)
Stereotypes and perception
• Stereotypes are mental
shortcuts for rapid
processing of social
information
• Once we form stereotypes, we
tend to maintain them
12.3 You Tend to Stereotype Other People (2)
Stereotypes and perception
• People are often not conscious
of their stereotypes; they are
also unaware of the influence of
stereotypes on
their perceptions
• Stereotypes’ influence on
perception may produce
negative outcomes
o Study by Payne (2001)
o The Colgate University campus
lock-down in 2017
12.3 You Tend to Stereotype Other People (3)
Self-fulfilling prophecy
• People’s tendency to behave in ways that confirm
their own expectations or other people’s
expectations
o Rosenthal and Jacobsens’ (1968) bloomers
study
o Gentrup et al. (2020) found that self-fulfilling
prophecy creates both positive negative
teachers’ expectations for students
12.3 You Tend to Stereotype Other People (4)
Stereotype threat
• The worry or fear about
confirming negative stereotypes
related to a person’s own group
• It causes distraction and anxiety,
interfering with performance by
affecting memory and motivation
12.3 You Tend to Stereotype Other People (5)
Stereotype threat
• Stereotyped groups perform worse than
nonstereotyped groups when they are being evaluated
• Interventions to reduce the effects of stereotype threat
are often successful
• Strengthening peer relations and social connections
can help prevent stereotype threat
• There is substantial evidence that interventions to
minimize the effect of stereotype threat can enhance
performance of negatively stereotyped groups on
academic tests
12.4 Stereotypes Can Lead to Prejudice and Discrimination (1)
Prejudice
• Negative feelings, opinions, and beliefs associated
with a stereotype
Discrimination
• The inappropriate and unjustified treatment
of people based on the groups they belong to
12.4 Stereotypes Can Lead to Prejudice and Discrimination (2)
Ingroup/outgroup
• Those groups that we belong
to are ingroups
• Those that we do not belong
to are outgroups
12.4 Stereotypes Can Lead to Prejudice and Discrimination (3)
Ingroup/outgroup bias
• Social identity theory: our
group memberships are an
important part of how we
view ourselves
• Ingroup favoritism:
• One consequence of
categorizing people as ingroup
or outgroup members
• Strong ingroup favoritism even
if the groups are formed by
chance
12.4 Stereotypes Can Lead to Prejudice and Discrimination (4)
Competition and cooperation
• Social psychology may be
able to offer strategies for
promoting intergroup
harmony and producing
greater tolerance for
outgroups
o Sherif and colleagues’
(1961) Robbers Cave study
12.4 Stereotypes Can Lead to Prejudice and Discrimination (5)
Cooperation in the classroom
• In the jigsaw classroom developed by Eliot Aronson
in the 1970s, students work together in mixed-race
or mixed-sex groups
• More than 800 studies of the jigsaw classroom have
demonstrated that this program leads to more
positive treatment of other ethnicities
12.4 Stereotypes Can Lead to Prejudice and Discrimination (6)
Perspective taking
• Thinking about what other
people believe and how they
feel can reduce bias and help
smooth potentially awkward
interactions
How Do Your Attitudes Affect You?
12.5 You Form Attitudes Through Experience and Socialization
12.6 Discrepancies Between Attitudes and Behavior Lead to Dissonance
12.7 Your Attitudes Can Be Changed Through Persuasion
12.5 You Form Attitudes Through Experience and
Socialization (1)
• Attitudes: People’s evaluations of objects, events,
or ideas
o Simple attitude: Your behavior is consistent with
your attitude
o Complex attitude: Your behavior is not
consistent with your attitude
12.5 You Form Attitudes Through Experience and
Socialization (2)
Attitudes can predict behavior
• In general, the stronger and
more personally relevant
an attitude is, the more likely
it is to predict behavior
• Attitude accessibility: ease
or difficulty of retrieving an
attitude from memory
12.5 You Form Attitudes Through Experience and
Socialization (3)
Attitudes develop in three ways
1. Mere exposure
• Mere exposure
effect: The increase in
liking due to repeated
exposure
12.5 You Form Attitudes Through Experience and
Socialization (4)
2. Learning
• Because our associations
between things and their
meanings can change, our
attitudes can be
conditioned
12.5 You Form Attitudes Through Experience and
Socialization (5)
3. Socialization
• Attitudes are shaped through socialization
o Caregivers, peers, teachers, religious
leaders, politicians, and media figures guide our
attitudes about many things
12.5 You Form Attitudes Through Experience and
Socialization (6)
Explicit attitude
• An attitude that a person is consciously aware of and
can report
Implicit attitude
• An attitude that influences a person’s feelings and
behavior at an unconscious level
• Often revealed indirectly through behaviors
• Implicit Association Test (IAT)
o Measures how quickly a person associates concepts
or objects with positive or negative words
12.6 Discrepancies Between Attitudes and Behavior Lead to
Dissonance (1)
Cognitive dissonance
• An uncomfortable mental state due to a contradiction
between two attitudes or between an attitude and a
behavior
12.6 Discrepancies Between Attitudes and Behavior Lead to
Dissonance (2)
Cognitive dissonance theory
• According to Festinger’s theory, cognitive dissonance occurs
when there is a contradiction between two attitudes
or between an attitude and a behavior
o A basic assumption of cognitive dissonance theory is that
dissonance causes anxiety and tension
• Postdecisional dissonance
o Cognitive dissonance also arises when we have positive
attitudes about different options but must choose one
option
12.6 Discrepancies Between Attitudes and Behavior Lead to
Dissonance (3)
Justification of effort
• Insufficient justification effect
o Classic Festinger and Carlsmith
(1959) study
o Helps explain why people are
willing to subject themselves to
humiliating experiences (e.g.,
hazing)
12.6 Discrepancies Between Attitudes and Behavior Lead to
Dissonance (4)
Justification of effort
• Explain why people are willing to
subject themselves to humiliating
experiences such as hazing
12.7 Your Attitudes Can Be Changed Through Persuasion (1)
Persuasion
• The active and conscious effort to change
an attitude through the transmission of a message
12.7 Your Attitudes Can Be Changed Through Persuasion (2)
Three factors affect persuasiveness:
1. The source (who delivers the message)
2. The content (what the message says)
3. The receiver (who processes the messages)
12.7 Your Attitudes Can Be Changed Through Persuasion (3)
Two routes of persuasion
• Elaboration likelihood model
o Central route: A method of persuasion that uses high
elaboration—people pay attention to the arguments
and consider all the information in the message. This
method usually results in the development of
stronger attitudes
o Peripheral route: A method of persuasion that uses
low elaboration—people minimally process the
message. This method usually results in the
development of weaker attitudes
12.7 Your Attitudes Can Be Changed Through Persuasion (4)
How Do Other People Influence You?
12.8 Groups Affect Your Behavior
12.9 You Conform to and Comply with Others
12.10 You Probably Obey People Who Have Authority
12.11 You May Hurt or Help Other People
12.8 Groups Affect Your Behavior (1)
Perhaps the single most important lesson from social
psychology is that the power of the social situation is
much greater than most people believe
12.8 Groups Affect Your Behavior (2)
Social facilitation and social
loafing
• Social facilitation: When the
mere presence of others
enhances performance

• Social loafing: The tendency

for people to work less hard
in a group than when
working alone
12.8 Groups Affect Your Behavior (3)
Deindividuation
• A state of reduced individuality,
self-awareness, and attention to
personal standards
• This phenomenon may occur
when people are part of a group
12.8 Groups Affect Your Behavior (4)
Group decision making
• Risky-shift effect: groups often make riskier decisions
than individuals do
• Group polarization: if most of the group members are
somewhat cautious, then the group becomes even
more cautious
• Groupthink: used to describe an extreme form of group
polarization; it typically occurs when a group is
o Under intense pressure
o Facing external threats
o Biased in a particular direction
12.9 You Conform to and Comply with Others (1)
Conformity
• The altering of your own behaviors and opinions to
match those of other people or to match other
people’s expectations
12.9 You Conform to and Comply with Others (2)
Normative and informational
influences
• Normative influence occurs
when—to be liked, to be
accepted, or to avoid
looking foolish—we go along
with what the group does
• Informational influence
occurs when we assume that
the behavior of a group
provides information about
the right way to act
12.9 You Conform to and Comply with Others (3)
Solomon Asch’s study on
conformity (1955)
• People conformed because
they did not want to look
foolish by going against the
group
o They conformed due to
normative influence
12.9 You Conform to and Comply with Others (4)
Social norms
• Expected standards of conduct, which influence
behavior
o Social norms indicate which behavior
is appropriate in a given situation and also
how people will respond to those who violate
norms
o Groups tend to enforce social norms
12.9 You Conform to and Comply with Others (5)
Compliance
• The tendency to agree to do things requested by others,
which includes these three powerful strategies:
1. Foot-in-the-door
o If you agree to a small request, you are more likely to
comply with a large request
2. Door-in-the-face
o If you refuse a large request, you are more likely
to comply with a smaller request
3. Lowballing
o When you agree to buy a product for a certain price, you
are likely to comply with a request to pay more for the
12.9 You Conform to and Comply with Others (6)

Strategy Behavioral Tendency Example

Foot-in-the-door strategy If you agree to a small request, you are You agree to help a friend move a couch.
more likely to comply with a large Now you are more likely to comply when
request. she asks you to help er move all of her
belongings into her new apartment.
Door-in-the-face strategy If you refuse a large request, you are When a marketer calls, you refuse to
more likely to comply with a small answer a product questionnaire that
request. takes 20 minutes. Now you are likely to
agree to answer 5 questions about a
product.
Lowballing strategy When you agree to buy a product for a You agree to buy a used car for $4,750.
certain price, you are likely to comply When the salesperson says there are
with a request to pay more for the some additional charges, you agree to
product. buy the car for $5,275.
12.10 You Probably Obey People Who Have Authority (1)
Obedience
• Factors that influence people to
follow the orders given by an
authority
12.10 You Probably Obey People Who Have Authority (2)
Milgram’s classic experiment on
obedience
• A recent replication of the
study found that 70 percent of
the participants were obedient
up to the maximum voltage in
the experiment
• Ethical considerations
• Rethinking Milgram’s research
12.11 You May Hurt or Help Other People (1)
Aggression
• Any behavior that involves the intention to harm
someone else
12.11 You May Hurt or Help Other People (2)
Biology and the situation affect aggression
• The biology of aggression has been studied primarily in
nonhuman animals
• Several lines of evidence suggest that serotonin is
especially important in the control of aggressive behavior
12.11 You May Hurt or Help Other People (3)
Biology and the situation affect aggression
• Frustration-aggression hypothesis: The more frustrated
we feel, the more likely we are to act aggressively
o The more our goals are blocked, the greater our frustration,
and therefore the greater our aggression
12.11 You May Hurt or Help Other People (4)
Social and cultural
factors affect
aggression
• Aggression may be
part of human
nature, but society
and culture
influence
people’s tendencies
to commit acts of
physical violence
12.11 You May Hurt or Help Other People (5)
• Prosocial: Acting in ways that tend to
benefit others
• Prosocial behaviors include
o Offering assistance
o Doing favors
o Paying compliments
o Resisting the temptation to insult
others
o Simply being pleasant and
cooperative
12.11 You May Hurt or Help Other People (6)
Altruism: The act of providing help when it is
needed, with no apparent reward for doing so
• People are most altruistic toward those
whose genes they share
• Reciprocal helping
o One animal helps another because the other
may return the favor in the future
12.11 You May Hurt or Help Other People (7)
Bystander effect
• The failure to offer help to people in need
o The case of Kitty Genovese
o Latané and Darley’s smoke study
12.11 You May Hurt or Help Other People (8)
Years of research have indicated four major reasons for
bystander effect intervention:
1. Bystanders expect other bystanders to help
2. People fear making social blunders in ambiguous situations
3. People are less likely to help when we are anonymous and
can remain so
4. Deciding whether to help involves weighing two factors:
• How much personal harm do you risk by
helping someone?
• What benefits might you have to forgo if we help?
How Can you Develop Strong Relationships?
12.12 Situations and Personalities Affect Your Relationships
12.13 Love Is a Key Part of Romantic Relationships
12.12 Situations and Personalities Affect Your Relationships (1)
Proximity
• Proximity means how often people come
into contact
• It might have its effects because we like
what is familiar
Similarity
• People with similar attitudes, values,
interests, backgrounds, personalities, and
levels of attractiveness tend to like each
other more than people who are
dissimilar
12.12 Situations and Personalities Affect Your Relationships (2)
Admirable personal characteristics
• We tend to especially like people who
have admirable personality characteristics
Physical attractiveness
• Some standards of beauty, such as preferences for
particular body types, appear to change over time
and across cultures
• Most people find symmetrical faces more attractive
than asymmetrical ones
• “What is beautiful is good” stereotype
12.12 Situations and Personalities Affect Your Relationships (3)

Most Positive Most Negative

1. Sincere 1. Unkind

2. Honest 2. Untrustworthy

3. Understanding 3. Malicious

4. Loyal 4. Obnoxious

5. Truthful 5. Untruthful

6. Trustworthy 6. Dishonest

7. Intelligent 7. Cruel

8. Dependable 8. Mean

9. Open-minded 9. Phony

10. Thoughtful 10. Liar

12.13 Love Is a Key Part of Romantic Relationships (1)
Passionate love: A type of
romantic relationship that
includes intense longing
and sexual desire

Companionate love: A type of

romantic relationship that
includes strong commitment to
supporting and caring for a
partner
12.13 Love Is a Key Part of Romantic Relationships (2)
Romantic relationships change over time, as the long-
term pattern of sexual activity rises and then declines
• Relatively few marriages meet the blissful
ideals that newlyweds expect
o “From the first year of marriage to second,
frequency of sex declines by about half
o Partners typically experience less passion. For
each other, which can lead to dissatisfaction or
even dissolution
12.13 Love Is a Key Part of Romantic Relationships (3)
Working to stay in love
• Do simple things like showing interest in your
partner, being affectionate, and showing you care
• While pursuing independent interests, still having
some activities and goals in common does help to
bring a couple closer
• Fighting, especially when it allows grievances to be
aired, is one of the healthiest things a couple can do
for their relationship
12.13 Love Is a Key Part of Romantic Relationships (4)
Working to stay in love
• Gottman (1994) describes four tendencies that lead
to discord or dissolution:
o Being overly critical
o Holding the partner in contempt (that is,
having disdain and lacking respect)
o Being defensive
o Mentally withdrawing from the relationship
o “Married people are meaner to each other than
they are to total strangers”
12.13 Love Is a Key Part of Romantic Relationships (5)
• Happy couples also differ
from unhappy couples in
attributional style
• Happy couples overlook bad
behavior or respond
constructively, a process
called accommodation
• Unhappy couples attribute
good outcomes to situations,
and they attribute bad
outcomes to each other
12.13 Love Is a Key Part of Romantic Relationships (6)
• People who fall in love and maintain that love tend
to be biased toward positive views of their partners
• Murray and colleagues (1996) found that those
people who loved their partners the most also
idealized their partners the most