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Social Psychology
Social Psychology: The scientific study of how people think about, influence, and relate to one another.
Social Cognition: The mental processes we use to understand and interact with others.
Attribution
Attribution: The process of explaining the causes of behavior.
Situational Attribution: Attributing behavior to external factors or the situation. Example: "He's late because of traffic."
Dispositional Attribution: Attributing behavior to internal factors like personality traits. Example: "He's late because he's irresponsible."
Fundamental Attribution Error: Our tendency to overestimate the impact of personality and underestimate the influence of the situation when explaining others' behavior.
Example: Assuming someone who cut you off in traffic is a jerk (dispositional), rather than considering they might be rushing to the hospital (situational).
Self-Serving Bias: The tendency to attribute our successes to internal factors and our failures to external factors.
Example: "I aced the test because I'm smart" (internal), but "I failed because the test was unfair" (external).
Attitudes and Actions
Attitude: A belief and feeling that predisposes a person to respond in a particular way to objects, people, and events.
Components of Attitudes:
Cognitive: Beliefs or thoughts about something.
Affective: Feelings or emotions toward something.
Behavioral: The way we act toward something.
Attitudes Influence Actions: Our attitudes can predict our behavior, but not always perfectly.
Persuasion: The process of changing attitudes.
Central Route: Focuses on facts and logical arguments, appealing to people who are motivated to think carefully about the message.
Example: A car commercial showing safety features and fuel efficiency.
Peripheral Route: Focuses on emotions, attractiveness, or credibility of the source, influencing people who are less motivated to think deeply.
Example: A perfume commercial featuring a celebrity endorsement.
Attitudes and Actions: The Link
Attitudes Follow Behavior: Our actions can shape and strengthen our attitudes.
Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon:
Agreeing to a small request increases the likelihood of agreeing to a larger request later.
Example: Asking someone to sign a petition, then later asking for a donation.
Door-in-the-Face Phenomenon:
Starting with a large, unreasonable request, then following up with a smaller request that seems more reasonable in comparison.
Example: Asking for a $100 donation, then asking for $10 after being refused.
Cognitive Dissonance Theory:
We feel uncomfortable when our actions and attitudes don't match up.
To reduce this discomfort, we often change our attitudes to align with our behavior.
Example: You believe smoking is bad, but you smoke. To reduce the discomfort, you might convince yourself that smoking isn't that bad.
Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment
Aim: To study the impact of social roles on behavior.
Setup: Participants were randomly assigned to be prisoners or guards in a simulated prison.
Findings: The guards became increasingly abusive, and the prisoners became passive and distressed, demonstrating the power of roles and the situation to influence behavior. Experiment had to be called off early because of this.
Simplified Explanation: The experiment showed that even ordinary people can act in surprising and sometimes harmful ways when placed in powerful roles and situations. It shows the importance of understanding the social context of behavior.
Social Influence
Social Influence: The process through which individuals or groups change our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
Key Concepts:
Social Roles: Expected behaviors associated with a particular position or status in a group. Example: A student is expected to attend class and complete assignments.
Social Norms: Unspoken rules about how people should behave in a given situation or group. Example: Waiting in line, raising your hand in class.
Conformity
Conformity: Adjusting our behavior or thinking to match that of a group.
The Chameleon Effect: Unconsciously mimicking others' postures, mannerisms, and expressions.
Solomon Asch's Conformity Study
Solomon Asch conducted a famous line experiment where he set out to test levels of conformity. Participants were in a room with 9 other pseudo participants who all answered incorrectly, and gave the same answer. About one third of trial participates regularly conformed to the unanimous but erroneous group answers with an average of 75% of all participants conforming at least once throughout the experiment.
Reasons for Conformity:
Normative Social Influence: We conform to fit in and avoid rejection meaning we respect the norms of the group.
Informative Social Influence: We conform because we believe the group has valuable information, especially when concerning tough decisions, we don’t want to stand alone in tough decisions.
Compliance: Changing behavior in response to a request, even without authority.
Explicit: A direct request. Example: "Can you please pass the salt?"
Implicit: An indirect request. Example: A friend sighs and looks at the dishes, hoping you'll offer to help.
Obedience
Obedience: Changing behavior in response to a direct order from an authority figure.
Milgram's Shock Experiment:
Aim: To investigate how far people would go in obeying an authority figure.
Setup: Participants were instructed to deliver increasingly painful electric shocks to a "learner" (an actor) when they answered incorrectly.
Findings: A surprisingly high percentage (65%) of participants obeyed the experimenter's commands to continue, even when the learner expressed extreme pain.
Conclusion: People are often willing to obey authority figures, even when it conflicts with their personal conscience.
Group Dynamics
Social Dilemmas: Situations where individuals acting in their own self-interest can harm the group in the long run.
Example: Overfishing – individuals may benefit from catching as many fish as possible, but if everyone does this, the fish population collapses, harming everyone.
Social Facilitation: Improved performance on simple or well-learned tasks in the presence of others.
Example: A skilled musician performs even better at a concert than during practice.
Social Loafing: The tendency for people in a group to exert less effort than when working individually.
Example: Group projects where some members don't contribute equally.
Deindividuation: The loss of self-awareness and self-restraint in group situations that create arousal and anonymity.
Example: Riots or online trolling, where people may engage in behaviors they wouldn't do alone.
Group Influence
Group Polarization: When discussing an issue with like-minded people, our opinions tend to become more extreme.
Example: If a group of people who are already in favor of gun control discuss the topic, their views are likely to become even stronger in favor of gun control after the discussion.
Groupthink: The desire for harmony within a group can lead to poor decision-making.
People suppress dissenting views to avoid conflict and maintain group cohesion.
Prejudice
Prejudice: A negative attitude or prejudgment toward a group and its members.
Social Identity Theory:
Ingroup: The group to which we belong and identify with ("us").
Outgroup: Those perceived as different or apart from our ingroup ("them").
Example: Students at your school might be your ingroup, while students from a rival school would be the outgroup.
Ingroup Bias: The tendency to favor our own group and view members of the outgroup negatively.
Jane Elliott's Blue Eye/Brown Eye Experiment:
A powerful demonstration of ingroup bias and discrimination.
Brief Description: Elliott divided her third-grade class based on eye color and created a situation where one group was favored over the other. This led to the "superior" group acting arrogantly and the "inferior" group experiencing discrimination and lower self-esteem.
Scapegoat Theory: Prejudice provides an outlet for anger by blaming another group for problems.
Example: Blaming immigrants for economic problems.
Just-World Phenomenon: The belief that the world is fair, and people get what they deserve. This can lead to blaming victims of misfortune.
Aggression and Altruism
Aggression: Behavior intended to cause physical or psychological harm.
Factors Influencing Aggression:
Frustration-Aggression Principle: Frustration (being blocked from a goal) can lead to anger, which can lead to aggression.
Excitation Transfer: Arousal from one situation can intensify emotional reactions in another situation. Example: If you're already agitated from a workout, you might react more aggressively to a minor annoyance.
Altruism: Unselfish behavior that benefits others without expecting anything in return.
Example: Donating blood, volunteering at a soup kitchen.
Factors Influencing Altruistic Behavior
Social Exchange Theory: We weigh the costs and benefits of helping before deciding to act.
Norms:
Reciprocity Norm: The expectation that we should help those who have helped us.
Social-Responsibility Norm: The expectation that we should help those in need, even if we don't expect anything in return.
Situational Factors:
Clarity of the Need: Is it clear that someone needs help?
Presence of Others:
Diffusion of Responsibility: The more people present, the less likely any one person feels responsible for helping.
Bystander Effect: People are less likely to help in an emergency when others are present.
Personality:
Feel-Good, Do-Good Phenomenon: People are more likely to help when they are in a good mood.
Altruism: Why We Help Others
Empathy-Altruism Theory: We help others because we genuinely care about their well-being and feel empathy for them.
Evolutionary Theory: We are more likely to help those who share our genes (kin selection), as this increases the chances of our genes being passed on.
Psychology of Attraction
Proximity: We are more likely to form relationships with people who are physically near us.
Mere-Exposure Effect: Repeated exposure to someone or something tends to increase our liking for them.
Environment: Positive circumstances (comfortable setting, pleasant experience) can increase attraction.
Similarity: We are drawn to people who share our attitudes, interests, and values.
Physical Attractiveness:
Plays a significant role, especially in the initial stages of a relationship.
Matching Hypothesis: We tend to form relationships with people who are similar to us in attractiveness.
Types of Love
Passionate Love: Intense, passionate feelings and sexual attraction often present at the beginning of a relationship.
Companionate Love: Deep affection, intimacy, and commitment that develops over time.
Key Components of Companionate Love:
Equity: A sense of fairness and balance in the relationship, where both partners contribute and receive equally.
Self-Disclosure: Sharing intimate thoughts and feelings with each other.
Sternberg's Triangular Theory of Love:
Key Idea: Love is composed of three components:
Intimacy: Closeness, connectedness, and emotional bonding.
Passion: Physical attraction and sexual desire.
Commitment: The decision to maintain the relationship long-term.
Different Combinations: These three components can combine in various ways to create different types of love (e.g., romantic love, companionate love, infatuation).
Self in Social Psychology
Self-Concept:
Our overall understanding of who we are, including our beliefs, values, and social roles.
Self-Concept vs. Self-Esteem:
Self-Concept: "Who am I?"
Self-Esteem: "How do I feel about who I am?"
Social Norms and the Self: Our self-concept is influenced by societal expectations and norms.
Stereotype Threat:
Key Idea: The fear of confirming a negative stereotype about one's group can negatively impact performance.
Example: Women performing worse on a math test when reminded of the stereotype that women are bad at math.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy:
Key Idea: Our expectations can lead us to behave in ways that confirm those expectations.
Example: A teacher believes a student is gifted, gives them more attention and challenging assignments, and the student excels, fulfilling the teacher's expectations. On the other hand, if a student believes that they will fail an exam, they will likely not study for it and then actually fail it.
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