Transcript P100Chap15.2

Psychology 100:12
Chapter 15.2
Social Psychology
Outline
• Perceiving others
• Attitudes
– Cognitive dissonance
– Persuasion
• Social Impact
Study Question:
• Describe cognitive dissonance. How can it be used as a
form of persuasion.
Social Psychology
• Biases in perceiving others
– Fundamental attribution error -> too much emphasis on
dispositional factors when attributing causes of other’s
behaviour
> Gives us a sense of control
– Actor-observer discrepancy -> we tend to make the
fundamental attribution error judging other’s but not our own
behaviour
– The self-serving bias -> Actor-observer discrepancy only
holds for negative behaviour
Social Psychology
– The primacy effect -> We weight first
impressions too heavily
>Asch’s (1946) experiment
 Intelligent & industrious, impulsive and critical,
stubborn & envious
 Stubborn & envious , impulsive and critical, intelligent
& industrious
– Undue influence of surface characteristics
>Attractive people: more intelligent, competent,
sociable and moral
 Neophyllus adults: more naive, honest, helpless, kind
and warm
Social Psychology
– Stereotypes -> Schema for identifiable
groups
E.g,
> Women are less competent than men
 Both men and women attribute successful
performance
• to luck (situational) for women
• to skill (dispositional) for men
Social Psychology
– Ingroup/outgroup -> We have different schema
for people in our group than for people out of our
group
>Ingroup is more heterogenous, rated more
favourably
 Ethnocentricism
>Outgroup is more homogenous, rated less
favourably
 Even when groups are defined arbitrarily
Social Psychology
– The “Just-world” bias -> defensively assume that
the world is fair
>Thorton’s experiment
 Women judged the fault of a victim in a rape
scenario
 Those who could see themselves in a mirror
blamed the victim
Social
Social Psychology
cognition
• Attitude: An evaluative belief
– LaPiere’s (1934)Study
> Visited 50 hotels and 200 restaurants with Chinese couple

Only refused service by one hotel.
> Wrote to same hotels and restaurants

92 % said they would NOT serve Chinese.
• Functions and components of attitudes
> Very influenced by social context
1. Attitudes are far removed from sensory experience.
2. Attitutes hold strategic purposes in social interactions.
– Three components
1. Cognitive: Beliefs
2. Affective: Emotional reaction
3. Behavioural: Actions
Social
Social Psychology
Cognition
– Other factors
> Subjective norms: Attitudes of people close to us.
> Perceived control: Perceived environmental constraints.
– The relationship between cognition and behaviour
> Three forms. E.g., A negative attitude towards GMPs.
 Irrelevant: e.g., Lobster for supper.
 Consonant: e.g., Grow your own vegetables
 Dissonant: e.g., Still eat lots of tofu, corn and canola oil.
– Cognitive Dissonance
> Festinger and Carlsmith’s (1959) forced compliance procedure.
Social Psychology
• Cognitive dissonance
– How do we resolve dissonance?
1. Change your attitude
 Towards eating worms (Comer & Laird, 1975)
 Towards spending a lot of money on a car
• Low balling and dissonance
2. Change your behaviour
 Quit smoking
Social
Social Psychology
Cognition
– Postdecisional dissonance
>We focus on the positive aspect of our choices
 E.g., University, car model, where we live, etc.
 Selective exposure and denial
• We seek out positive information and avoid
negative
• E.g., Smoking.
– Justifying effort
>E.g.s, Hazing and other cult initiations.
Social
Social Psychology
Cognition
• Persuasion: The active and conscious effort to
change attitudes through the transmission of a
message.
– The Peripheral and central routes to
processing
>Controlled and automatic processing
– The peripheral and central routes to
persuasion
>Langer’s experiment
 5 or 20 copies
 No reason, pseudo-reason, or logical reason
 “Because” is analyzed only for large requests
Social
Social Psychology
Cognition
Peripheral cues:
Source, content,
and receiver
Social
Social Psychology
Cognition
• Making attributions from behaviour
– Attribution: An inference about the cause of a
behaviour.
– Fritz Heider -> People are naive psychologists.
> We can attribute behaviour to:
1. Personality or internal characterstics (Dispositional)
2. External factors (Situational)
 E.g., Someone screams during a movie
– While watching Hostel -> Situational
– While watching Bambi -> Dispositional
Social
Social Psychology
Cognition
• Kelley’s model
– People take into account three factors
1. Consistency across time.

Does the person always scream during horror
movies?
2. Consensus across people.

Are other people watching the movie screaming
too?
3. Distinctiveness across situations.

Does this person scream in other situations as
well?
Social Psychology
– Three questions asked before making an
attribution.
Does she always
Scream at movies?
YES
YES
YES
NO
Is everyone
screaming?
Does she scream in
Other situations?
Attribution
YES
NO
NO
N/A
NO
YES
NO
N/A
Situation
Disposition
Both
Extraneous