Transcript Social Behavior - Gordon State College

Social Behavior
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

Social psychology is the scientific study of how people’s
thoughts, feelings, and behavior are influenced by
others.
SOCIAL PERCEPTION

Social perception: the way we seek to understand
other people and events.


Impression formation: process by which we combine
various sources of information about a person into
overall judgment
Attribution: process by which we use information to
make inferences about the causes of behavior or events
IMPRESSION FORMATION: FIRST WE CATEGORIZE
PEOPLE INTO GROUPS

Human beings are categorizing creatures.
We identify objects—including other people—according to features
that distinguish them from other objects.
 In social categorization, physical features such as race, sex, age, and
attractiveness are most common ways to classify people, especially
during first encounters.


Social categorization often occurs without conscious thought or effort.
CATEGORIZING CAN LEAD TO STEREOTYPING

Stereotypes: fixed ways of thinking about people that
doesn’t allow for individual variation
Stereotypes are “shortcuts to thinking” that provide us with
information about individuals we do not personally know.
 These cognitive shortcuts also can inhibit our thinking.

EXPLAINING PEOPLE’S BEHAVIOR:
ATTRIBUTING MOTIVES
 Internal
attribution: any explanation that locates the
cause as inside the person (personality)
 External
attribution: any explanation that locates
the cause as outside the person (situation)
EXAMPLE OF ATTRIBUTION
ATTITUDES

Attitudes are positive or negative evaluations of objects.
“Objects” include people, things, events, and issues.
 When we use such words as like, dislike, love, hate, good,
and bad, we are describing our attitudes.

REPEATED EXPOSURE SHAPES
ATTITUDES
 Mere
exposure effect: tendency to develop
more positive feelings toward objects and
individuals the more frequently we are
exposed to them

People are more exposed to their mirrored facial
images than they are to their true facial images, thus
they tend to have more positive attitudes toward the
former than the latter.
CONDITIONING SHAPES ATTITUDES

Attitudes can be formed are through operant and
classical conditioning.

In operant conditioning, pleasant or unpleasant stimuli that follow a
performed behavior may respectively lead to positive or negative
attitudes.

In classical conditioning, attitudes may form by pairing a previously
neutral stimulus with another stimulus that naturally evokes a positive
or negative response in a person.
ATTITUDE CHANGE OCCURS WITH OR WITHOUT
COMPREHENSION OF THE PERSUASIVE MESSAGE
 Consciously
attempting to change attitudes through
the transmission of some message is called
persuasion.

The elaboration likelihood model: a theory that there are
two ways in which persuasive messages can cause
attitude change, each differing in the amount of cognitive
effort or elaboration they require
THE ELABORATION LIKELIHOOD MODEL:

HIGH ELABORATION

When motivated and able to think carefully about the message
content, we take central route to persuasion and are influenced by
strength and quality of the arguments

LOW ELABORATION

When unable or unwilling to analyze the message, we take the
peripheral route to persuasion, where we pay attention to cues that
are irrelevant to the content or quality of communication, such as
attractiveness of communicator or sheer amount of information
presented
ATTITUDE CHANGE CAN OCCUR WITH OR
WITHOUT COMPREHENSION OF THE
PERSUASIVE MESSAGE

When people take peripheral route to persuasion, it isn’t
important to comprehend the message:


Attitude change can occur without comprehension.
In comparison to attitudes formed through central processing,
attitudes formed through peripheral processing are:
Weaker,
 Less resistant to counterarguments, and
 Less predictive of actual behavior.

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE THEORY
LEON FESTINGER

Leon Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory contends that we are
motivated to change our attitudes because of an internal desire to
keep our attitudes and behavior consistent.

Cognitive dissonance: a feeling of discomfort caused by
performing an action that is inconsistent with one’s attitudes

To relieve this feeling of discomfort, we often change our
attitudes so that they are in line with our behavior.
Research suggests that expected cognitive dissonance effects are affected by cultural
upbringing & underlying psychological needs.
SOCIAL INFLUENCE

Social influence: the exercise of social power by a person
or group to change the attitudes or behavior of others in
a certain direction

Social power can originate from having access to certain
resources or from being liked and admired by others.

The three main behavioral consequences of social influence
are conformity, compliance, and obedience.
ASCH’S RESEARCH: THE POWER OF
CONFORMITY PRESSURE

Conformity: a yielding to perceived group pressure

Asch’s line judgment studies demonstrate that people often
find it easier to conform rather than challenge the
unanimous opinions of others.
ASCH’S LINE JUDGMENT TASK
PEOPLE WILL OBEY DESTRUCTIVE
ORDERS

Obedience:


performance of an action in response to a direct order (usually from
a high status person).
Milgram’s obedience research


Sixty-five percent of participants obeyed the
destructive commands of an authority figure (the
experimenter in a “learning study”).
Most people believe(d) they would resist the
destructive commands and openly rebel.
FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE OBEDIENCE TO
AUTHORITY
Source: Data from S. Milgram, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View, Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc.,
1974; and S. Milgram, The Individual in a Social World: Essays and Experiments, Addison-Wesley Publishing
Company, 1992.
HURTING AND HELPING OTHERS


Aggression: any form of behavior intended to harm
another living being
Helping: voluntary behavior that is carried out to
benefit another person
AGGRESSION: INTENTION TO HARM
ANOTHER LIVING BEING

Two types of aggression:
Instrumental aggression: intention to achieve a goal
 Hostile aggression: intention to cause injury or death to the
victim


In some instances no clear distinctions can be made
between hostile and instrumental aggression;
aggression might start out instrumentally but then turn
hostile.
GENDER DIFFERENCES IN STYLES
OF AGGRESSION
 Men
are more likely than women to engage in
physical aggression.
 They
also experience physical aggression
differently.

Women view their physical aggression as stress-induced, precipitated by
loss of self-control, and a negative experience.

Men perceive physical aggression as exercise of control over others,
provoked by challenges to their self-esteem. and a positive experience.
GENDER DIFFERENCES IN STYLES
OF AGGRESSION


Women more frequently engage in indirect aggression
than do men:
Indirect aggression is a form of social manipulation in
which the aggressor attempts to harm another person
without a face-to-face encounter
GENDER COMPARISONS IN AGGRESSION
BYSTANDER INTERVENTION: DECIDING
TO HELP
 The
model of bystander intervention (John
Darley and Bibb Latané) involves a series of five
decisions:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Notice that something unusual is happening.
Decide whether something is wrong and help is needed.
Determine the extent to which one has responsibility to help.
Settle on the appropriate form of assistance to render.
Decide to carry out the helpful behavior.
THE MODEL OF BYSTANDER INTERVENTION: A
FIVE-STEP DECISION PROCESS
PROXIMITY AND SIMILARITY MOST POWERFUL FACTORS
IN ATTRACTION

One of most powerful factors in determining whether a
relationship develops with another person is his or her
proximity to you.
One reason is opportunity
 Another reason is familiarity

PROXIMITY AND SIMILARITY MOST POWERFUL FACTORS
IN ATTRACTION

Another power factor in attraction is similarity. The Matching
Hypothesis says that we choose people who are similar to us.
One reason we seek similar others is for social validation.
 Another reason is the desire for consistency or “balance,” in our thoughts,
feelings, and social relationships. Balance is created when both parties value
same things—that is, when they have similar attitudes.
 A third reason is social comfort and absence of conflict.
