Transcript General Psychology

General Psychology
Chapter 14
Social Psychology
Social Cognition:
Making Sense of the World
 Social Psychology – field of psychology
concerned with how others influence the
thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of the
individual
Social Cognition:
Making Sense of the World
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What information about the social nature
of the world do we have stored in
memory?
How does that information influence
social judgments, choices, attractions, and
behaviors?
Social Cognition:
Making Sense of the World
 Naïve realism – tendency for us to believe
that we see the world in a more rational,
objective way than other people do
Nature of Attitudes
 Attitude – relatively stable disposition
toward some object or event. Consists of:
 Affect
 Behaviors
 Cognitions
Attitude Formation
 Formed through learning:
 Observational Learning
 Classical Conditioning
 Operant Conditioning
Figure 14.1: A schematic diagram of how attitudes may be formed through classical conditioning.
Attitude Formation
 Mere exposure phenomenon – the more
one is exposed to an object, the greater
likelihood that he or she will develop
positive attitudes about that object
Attitude Formation
 Agenda setting:
 First level – media tells audience which issues
are important
 Second level – media works to shape the
audience’s attitudes about the issues it chooses
to discuss
Attitude Change Mechanisms
 Leon Festinger
 Cognitive Dissonance – a negative
emotional state arises when our attitudes,
thoughts, and behaviors are out of balance
or are inconsistent
Attitude Change by Persuasion
 Successful persuasion depends on nature of
message and the audience
 Rational appeal
 Emotional appeal
 Fear appeal
Attitude Change by Persuasion
 Elaboration likelihood model – model of
persuasion stating that there are 2
alternative routes to persuasion: the central
route and the peripheral route
Spotlight: Attitudes Toward
People with Disabilities
 A person with a disability has difficulty
performing certain functions (seeing,
walking, etc.), has difficulty with the
activities of daily life, or with certain social
roles (school work, work on a job, etc.)
Spotlight: Attitudes Toward
People with Disabilities
 Persons with disabilities:
 Are often the object of prejudice and
discrimination (even with laws prohibiting such
discrimination)
 Are often seen as less able in areas unrelated to
their particular disability
 Are often of lower-than-average economic
status
 May be seen as not just different, but also
damaged
Figure 14.2: Leon Festinger’s results.
Attitude Change Mechanisms
 Postdecisional dissonance – cognitive
dissonance that occurs after making a
decision between 2 mutually exclusive,
equally attractive, different alternatives
Attitude Change Mechanisms
 Darrel Bem
 Self-perception theory – we keenly
observe behavior, including our own, and
look for an explanation for that behavior
Attitude Change Mechanisms
 Persuasion – application of rational and/or
emotional arguments to convince others to
change their attitudes and beliefs
Attitude Change Mechanisms
 Yale communication model – considers the
influence of the source of a message, the
structure of a message, and the audience for
a message
 Source very important!
Prejudices, Stereotypes, and
Discrimination
 Prejudice – attitude that represents a
biased – often negative – disposition toward
groups of persons
 Racism
 Sexism
Prejudices, Stereotypes, and
Discrimination
 Stereotype – rigid set of positive or
negative beliefs about a group of people
 Rigid, over-generalized, often biased schema
 Explicit stereotypes
 Implicit stereotypes
Prejudices, Stereotypes, and
Discrimination
 Discrimination – behavioral component of
prejudice
 The (usually) negative behavior(s) directed
at a member of a group simply because of
that person’s membership in the group
Spotlight: Racial Profiling
of African Americans and
Hispanic Americans
 Profiling – when members of law
enforcement stop, search, or arrest persons
on the basis of their race or ethnicity,
national origin, or religion
Spotlight: Racial Profiling
of African Americans and
Hispanic Americans
 Blacks are stopped and searched about 20% more
often than are Caucasians
 Problem perceived as worse than it is
 Example of aversive racism
 Racial profiling is outlawed in U.S. and 30 states
Attribution Processes
 Internal attribution – explains the source
of a person’s behavior in terms of a
characteristic of the person (trait or
disposition)
 External attribution – explains the source
of a person’s behavior in terms of the
situation or context outside the individual
Attribution Processes
 Fundamental attribution error – tendency
to favor internal attributions rather than
external situational explanations
Attribution Processes
 Just world hypothesis – bias in which
people come to believe that good things
only happen to good people and bad things
only happen to bad people
Attribution Processes
 Self-serving bias – success or positive
outcomes are attributed to personal, internal
sources, and failures, or negative outcomes
are attributed to situational or external
sources
Attribution Processes
 Actor-observer bias – one tends to use
external attributions for his or her behaviors
and internal attributions for the behavior of
others
Interpersonal Attraction
 Reinforcement-affect model – people are
attracted to others who provide rewarding
experiences
 Social exchange model – what matters
most is a comparison of the costs and
benefits of establishing a relationship
Interpersonal Attraction
 Equity theory – extends social exchange
model to add appraisal of rewards and costs
for both parties in a relationship
Interpersonal Attraction
 Reciprocity – a person tends to value and
like others who like and value him or her
 Proximity – simple physical closeness
yields attraction
 Mere exposure phenomenon – liking
increases with repeated exposure
 Physical attractiveness
Factors Affecting
Personal Attraction
 Matching phenomenon – suggests that one
is often attracted to someone else of the
same level of physical attractiveness and
social status
 Opposites may attract, but similarity is more
powerful over time!
Conformity
 Modifying behavior under perceived
pressure to do so, so that it is consistent
with the behavior of others
Conformity
 Solomon Asch – found that people were
susceptible to social pressure when they
were in an ambiguous situation
 True partner effect – any social support for
one’s decision minimizes conformity
Figure 14.3: The type of stimuli used in Asch’s conformity experiments.
Conformity
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Factors influencing degree of conformity:
1. The more competent the majority, the greater the
conformity
2. The more ambiguous the situation, the greater the
conformity
3. Women conform more than men in some
circumstances
Obedience to Authority
 Obedience results when one yields to the pressure
of perceived authority
 Obedience demonstrated in the laboratory by
Stanley Milgram
 Teachers were asked to “shock” observers in a task
presented as a learning experiment
 Even when “learners” yelled in protest, many
participants continued with shocks when asked to do so
by the experimenter
Figure 14.4: Results from Milgram’s experiments.
Bystander Intervention
 Social psychology of bystander intervention
deals with the conditions under which
observers (bystanders) will come to the aid
of someone perceived to be in trouble
Bystander Intervention
1. First, the bystander must notice what is
happening.
2. The bystander must label the situation as
an emergency.
3. The bystander must decide that it is his or
her responsibility to do something.
4. The bystander must implement his or her
decision.
Figure 14.5: Bystander intervention model.
Bystander Intervention
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Bystander effect – social inhibition of
helping
Accounted for by:
1. Audience inhibition – tendency to be
hesitant to do anything in front of others,
especially strangers
Bystander Intervention
2. Pluralistic ignorance – one’s tendency to believe
that he or she is confused and does not know what
to do in an emergency, whereas everyone else is
standing around doing nothing for some reason
Bystander Intervention
3. Diffusion of responsibility – the greater the
number of people present, the smaller is each
person’s perceived obligation to intervene
Bystander Intervention
 Empathy-altruism hypothesis – empathy
is one reason for helping those in need
 Egoism – motive for helping someone in
need is to avoid personal distress for not
helping
Social Loafing and Facilitation
 Social loafing is the tendency to work less
(decrease individual effort) as the size of the
group in which one is working becomes
larger
Social Loafing and Facilitation
 Social facilitation – when the presence of
others improves an individual’s
performance
 Social interference – when the presence of
others leads to poor performance
Decision-Making in Groups
1. Groups tend to recognize answers faster.
2. Groups with high-quality members perform
better than those with low-quality members.
3. Groups bring more resources to problem-solving
tasks.
4. Interpersonal cohesiveness and task-based
cohesiveness increase productivity.
Decision-Making in Groups
 Risky shift phenomenon – groups make
decisions that are riskier than those made by
individuals
 Group polarization effect– group
participation will make any individual’s
reactions more extreme or polarized
Decision-Making in Groups
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Groupthink – 8 symptoms
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An illusion of invulnerability
Rationalization
Unquestioned belief in group’s inherent morality
Stereotyped views of the enemy
Conformity pressures
Self-censorship
An illusion of unanimity
Emergence of self-appointed “mindguards”