Transcript social & group influences (cont.)

Module 25
Social Psychology
INTRODUCTION
• Social Psychology
– broad field whose goals are to understand and
explain how our thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and
behaviors are influenced by the presence of, or
interactions with, others
• Cognitive Social Psychology
– subarea of social psychology that focuses on how
cognitive processes, such as perceiving, retrieving,
and interpreting information about social interactions
and events, affect emotions and behaviors and how
emotions and behaviors affect cognitions
PERCEIVING OTHERS
• Person perception
– refers to seeing someone and then forming
impressions and making judgments about that
person’s likeability and the kind of person he or she
is, such as guessing his or her intentions, traits, and
behaviors
– physical appearance
• initial impressions and judgments of a person are
heavily influenced and biased by a person’s
physical appearance
– need to explain
• explain why a person looks, dresses, or behaves in
a certain way
PERCEIVING OTHERS (CONT.)
• Person perception
– influence on behavior
• first impressions will influence how you would like
or interact with a person
– effects of race
• members of one race generally recognize faces of
other races
• Physical appearance
– Attractiveness
• for better or for worse, a person’s looks matter,
since people who are judged to be more physically
attractive, generally make more favorable
impressions
PERCEIVING OTHERS (CONT.)
• Social Neourscience
– an emerging area of research that examines social
behaviors, such as perceiving others, by combining
biological and social approaches
– focuses on the understanding of how social behavior
influences the brain, as well as how the brain
influences social behavior
PERCEIVING OTHERS (CONT.)
• Stereotypes
– widely held beliefs that people have certain traits
because they belong to a particular group
– often inaccurate and frequently portray the members
of less powerful, less controlling groups more
negatively than members of more powerful or
controlling groups
• Development of stereotypes
– Prejudice
• refers to an unfair, biased, or intolerant attitude
toward another group of people
– Discrimination
• refers to specific unfair behaviors exhibited toward
members of a group
PERCEIVING OTHERS (CONT.)
Schemas
– mental categories that, like computer files, contain
knowledge about people, events, and concepts
Kinds of schemas:
Social cognition
– studies how and what people learn about social
relationships
Person schemas
– include our judgments about the traits that we and
others possess
PERCEIVING OTHERS (CONT.)
• Kinds of schemas:
– Role schemas
• based on the jobs people perform or the social
positions they hold
– Event schemas, also called scripts,
• contain behaviors that we associate with familiar
activities, events, or procedures
– Self-schemas
• contain personal information about ourselves, and
this information influences, modifies, and distorts
what we perceive and remember and how we
believe
PERCEIVING OTHERS (CONT.)
• Schemas: advantages and disadvantages
– Disadvantages
• schemas may restrict, bias, or distort what we
attend to and remember and thus cause us to
overlook important information
• are highly resistant to change because we
generally select and attend to information that
supports our schemas and deny any information
that is inconsistent with them
PERCEIVING OTHERS (CONT.)
• Schemas: Advantages and disadvantages
– Advantages
• contain information about how people think and
behave
• help people analyze and respond appropriately in
a particular social situation
• provide guidelines for how to behave in various
social events (event schemas) and help us explain
the social behavior of others (role schemas)
ATTRIBUTIONS
• Definition
– things we point to as the cause of events, other
people’s behaviors, and our own behaviors
• Internal versus external
– Internal attributions
• explanations of behavior based on the internal
characteristics or dispositions of the person
performing the behavior
– External attributions
• explanations of behavior based on the external
circumstances or situations
ATTRIBUTIONS (CONT.)
• Kelley’s model of covariation
– social psychologist Harold Kelley
– Covariation model
• says that, in making attributions, we should look for
factors that are present when the behavior occurs
and factors that are absent when the behavior
does not occur
– Consensus
• determining whether other people engage in the
same behavior in the same situation
– Consistency
• determining whether the person engages in this
behavior every time he or she is in a particular
situation
ATTRIBUTIONS (CONT.)
• Kelley’s model of covariation
– Distinctiveness
• determining how differently the person behaves in
one situation when compared to other situations
– Biases and errors
– Fundamental attribution error
• refers to our tendency, when we look for causes of
a person’s disposition or personality traits and
overlook how the situation influenced the person’s
behavior
ATTRIBUTIONS (CONT.)
• Biases and errors
– Actor-observer effect
• refers to the tendency, when you are behaving (or
acting), to attribute your own behavior to situational
factors
– Self-serving bias
• refers to explaining our successes by attributing
them to our dispositions or personality traits and
explaining our failures by attributing them to the
situations
ATTITUDES
• Definition
– belief or opinion that includes an evaluation of some
object, person, or event, along a continuum from
negative to positive, that predisposes us to act in a
certain way toward that object, person, or event
• Components of attitudes
– cognitive component
• includes both thoughts and beliefs that are
involved in evaluating some object, person, or idea
– affective component
• involves emotional feelings that can be weak or
strong, positive or negative
ATTITUDES (CONT.)
• Components of attitudes
– behavioral component
• involves performing or not performing some
behavior
• Functions of attitudes
– predispose
• means that they guide or influence us to behave in
specific ways
– interpret
• means that they provide convenient guidelines for
interpreting and categorizing objects and events
and deciding whether to approach or avoid them
ATTITUDES (CONT.)
• Functions of attitudes
– evaluate
• means that they help us stand up for those beliefs
and values that we consider very important to
ourselves
• Attitude change
– Cognitive dissonance
• refers to a state of unpleasant psychological
tension that motivates us to reduce our cognitive
inconsistencies by making our beliefs more
consistent with each other
– Counterattitudinal behavior
• involves taking a public position that runs counter
to your private attitude
ATTITUDES (CONT.)
• Attitude change
– Self-perception theory
• we first observe or perceive our own behavior and
then, as a result, we change our attitudes
• Persuasion
– Central route for persuasion
• presents information with strong arguments,
analyses, facts and logic
– Peripheral route for persuasion
• emphasizes emotional appeal, focuses on
personal traits, and generates positive feelings
SOCIAL & GROUP INFLUENCES
• Hazing
– part of a group’s initiation ritual, during which
individuals are subjected to a variety of behaviors that
range from:
– humiliating and unpleasant
– potentially dangerous
– both physically and psychologically
• Conformity
– refers to any behaviors you perform because of group
pressure, even though that pressure might not involve
direct requests
SOCIAL & GROUP INFLUENCES (CONT.)
• Compliance
– kind of conformity in which we give in to social
pressure in our public responses but do not change
our private beliefs
• Obedience
– refers to performing some behavior in response to an
order given by someone in a position of power or
authority
– Milgram’s Experiment
SOCIAL & GROUP INFLUENCES (CONT.)
• Helping prosocial behavior
– also called helping, is any behavior that benefits
others or has positive social consequences
• Altruism
– form of helping or doing something, often at a cost or
risk, for reasons other than the expectation of a
material or social reward
SOCIAL & GROUP INFLUENCES (CONT.)
• Why people help
– Empathy
• identify with what the victim must be going through
– Personal distress
• feelings of fear, alarm, or disgust from seeing a
victim in need
– Norms and values
• feel morally bound or socially responsible to help
those in need
SOCIAL & GROUP INFLUENCES (CONT.)
• Why people help
– Decision-stage model of helping
– Five stages in deciding to help
1.notice the situation
2.interpret it as one in which help is needed
3.assume personal responsibility
4.choose a form of assistance
5.carry out that assistance
– Arousal-cost-reward model of helping
• make decisions to help by calculating the costs
and rewards of helping
SOCIAL & GROUP INFLUENCES (CONT.)
• Group dynamics
– Groups
• collections of two or more people who interact,
share some common idea, goal, or purpose, and
influence how their members think and behave
• Group cohesion and norms
– Group cohesion
• group togetherness, which is determined by how
much group members perceive that they share
common attributes
– Group norms
• formal or informal rules about how group members
should behave
SOCIAL & GROUP INFLUENCES (CONT.)
• Group dynamics
– Group membership
– Task-oriented group
• members have specific duties to complete
– Socially oriented group
• members are primarily concerned about fostering
and maintaining social relationships among the
members of the group
• Behavior in crowds
– Crowd
• large group of persons who are usually strangers,
can facilitate or inhibit certain behaviors
SOCIAL & GROUP INFLUENCES (CONT.)
• Behavior in crowds
– Facilitation and inhibition
– Social facilitation
• increase in performance in the presence of a
crowd
– Social inhibition
• decrease in performance in the presence of a
crowd
– Deindividuation in crowds
• refers to the increased tendency for subjects to
behave irrationally or perform antisocial behaviors
when there is less chance of being personally
identified
SOCIAL & GROUP INFLUENCES (CONT.)
• Behavior in crowds
– The bystander effect
• individual may feel inhibited from taking some
action because of the presence of others
– Informational influence theory
• we use the reactions of others to judge the
seriousness of the situation
– Diffusion of responsibility theory
• says that, in the presence of others, individuals
feel less personal responsibility and are less likely
to take action in a situation where help is required
SOCIAL & GROUP INFLUENCES (CONT.)
• Group decisions
– Group polarization
• phenomenon in which group discussion reinforces
the majority’s point of view and shifts that view to a
more extreme position
– Groupthink
• refers to a group making bad decisions because
the group is more concerned about reaching
agreement and sticking together, than gathering
the relevant information and considering all the
alternatives
SOCIAL & GROUP INFLUENCES (CONT.)
• Group decisions
– Ingroup
• includes only the immediate members of the group
– Outgroup
• includes everyone who is not a part of the group
AGGRESSION
• Genes and environment
– Aggression
• is any behavior directed toward another that is
intended to cause harm
– Social cognitive and personality factors
– Social cognitive theory
• says that much of human behavior, including
aggressive behavior, may be learned through
watching, imitating, and modeling and does not
require the observer to perform any observable
behavior or receive any observable reward
AGGRESSION (CONT.)
• Sexual harassment and aggression
– Characteristics and kinds of rapists
– Power rapist
• 70% of all rapes
• not to hurt physically but to possess
– Sadistic rapist
• fewer than 5%
• most dangerous because, for him, sexuality and
aggression have become fused and using physical
force is arousing and exciting
AGGRESSION (CONT.)
• Sexual harassment and aggression
– Characteristics and kinds of rapists
– Anger rapist
• impulsive, savage attack of uncontrolled physical
violence
– Acquaintance or date rape
• knows victim and uses varying amounts of verbal
or physical coercion to force his partner to engage
in sexual activities