Transcript Chapter 15: Social groups PowerPoint

Chapter 15:
Social groups
Slides prepared by
Randall E. Osborne, Texas State University-San Marcos,
adapted by Dr Mark Forshaw, Staffordshire University, UK
and Laura Smith, University of Bristol, UK
1
Social Behaviour:
Culture
2
The Role of Culture
• Modern Psychology uses evolution by natural selection
(Dawkins, 1976) as a framework for understanding
human behaviour
• However this approach fails to take account of the role of
culture
• A key example of cultural differences are those between
individualistic and collectivistic cultures
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Individualistic Vs. Collectivistic
• Japanese adults
recalled 60% more
information about the
backgrounds of
underwater vignettes
than US adults.
(Masuda and Nisbett,
2001)
4
Individualistic Vs. Collectivistic
• Japanese pay more attention to relative context
than US participants who live in Western
individualist societies (Triandis, 1995)
• Westerners fixate more on focal objects than
Easterners, who also fixate on the background
more (Chua, Boland & Nisbett, 2005)
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Social Behaviour:
Living in Groups
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Groups
• Law-abiding, rational individuals often
behave differently when they start hanging
around together in a group
• Why?
– Deindividuation
– social loafing
bystander intervention
diffusion of responsibility
– group polarization
‘groupthink’ hypothesis
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Groups
• One of the best predictors of a person’s general
happiness and life satisfaction is quality and extent of
social relationships and group memberships
• People who are excluded show brain activity similar to
pain!
– Social pain hypothesis (see Chapter 14)
– Dorsal anterior cingulate is activated when a
person is ostracized
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Social Identity Theory
‘part of the individual’s self-concept which
derives from their knowledge of their
membership of a social group (or groups)
together with the value and emotional
significance of that membership.’
–Henri Tajfel (1981)
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Theory of Self-Categorization
• Individuals can hold multi-layered notions of selfidentity depending on how they view their group
membership.
- At the basic level there is the individual who is
different from others. (Turner et al., 1987)
- Refer to Figure 15.2, pg. 594 in Psychology
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Behaving in groups
• Social facilitation
– improved individual performance in the company of others.
• Social inhibition
– where the presence of others inhibits or impairs performance
• Spotlight effect
– people’s over-estimation of the amount of attention others are
paying to them
• Evaluation apprehension
– performance is affected by how people think they are being
judged
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Behaving in groups
• Group work
– Social loafing
• when people expend less effort when working in a
group than when working alone
– Shame vs. Guilt
• In collectivist societies loafing behavior is considered to
be shameful because you are not meeting the
expectations of others, whereas in individualist cultures
people are more likely to experience guilt for failing to
meet their own standards.
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Deindividuation
• A perceived loss of individual identity
accompanied by diminished self-regulation
– Less self aware
– Less inhibited
– More impulsive
– Increased arousal
• The Lucifer effect - Zimbardo (2007)
believes that many acts of cruelty can be
explained by deindividuation
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Thinking in groups
• Groupthink
– where people set aside individual opinions and
doubts in favour of achieving a group consensus
• Group polarization
– where attitudes and decisions tend to become more
extreme than those held and made by individuals.
14
Influencing others
15
Influencing others
• Social influence:
– Linked to social acceptance
• Normative influence: following standard procedure
• Norm of reciprocity
• Door in the face technique
• Conformity
– Asch, Milgram, Obedience to Authority
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Attitudes
• Attitude
– An evaluation of a person or event that
endures
• Belief
– informational influence
– persuasion
– consistency
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Persuasion
• Systematic persuasion
– Changing attitudes using appeals to reason
– Logic, critical thinking
• Heuristic persuasion
– Changing attitudes using appeals to habit or
emotional response
– Non-logical
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Consistency
• Foot-in-the-door
technique
• Cognitive
dissonance — effort
justification
– dissonance and
attitude change
– hazing and cognitive
dissonance?
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Thinking about others
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Stereotyping
• Categorization
• Stereotyping
– often inaccurate
– overused
– self-perpetuating
– automatic
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Stereotypes — Can Be Inaccurate
• Form stereotypes
without direct
evidence
• Illusory correlation
– When rare things
happen in small
groups, we assume it
is typical of the group
somewhat
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Stereotypes – Can Be
Overused
• Because stereotypes are sometimes
useful
– A tendency to use them too often
– Most men are stronger than most women
• true
– Some women are stronger than most men
• true, but seen as counter to stereotype so less
likely to be asserted
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Stereotypes — Can Be SelfPerpetuating
• Perceptual confirmation
• Self-fulfilling prophecy
– expectations influence
actions which result in
outcomes that confirm
original expectations
– just asking people to list
their race before taking
the SAT can influence
performance
– stereotype threat
– subtype exceptions
24
Stereotypes — Can Be Automatic
• Can happen unconsciously and
automatically
• Cannot decide not to use that information
• Not inevitable — requires effort to stop
• Can be reduced with education
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Prejudice
• A negative evaluation of, and attitude towards
individuals based on negative group stereotypes
– Sexism
– Ageism
– Homophobia
– Racism
• Linked to a high need for structure and high
scores on measures of right-wing
authoritarianism.
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Robber’s Cave Experiment
– Boys at a summer camp were split into
groups with their own names and flags (Sherif
et al., 1961).
• Intergroup conflict in both competitive and noncompetitive situations
• Conflict only resolved when they had
superordinate goals
– These are goals that depend on the collaboration of the
two groups
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