Psychological Foundations

1. Psychological Foundations Social Psychology

2. Social Psychology Social Psychology: examines how people impact or affect each other, with particular focus on the power of the situation

3. Dispositionism vs. Situationism Dispositionism Situationism Perspective that behavior and actions are determined by the immediate environment and surroundings Promoted by social psychologists Asserts that behavior is determined by internal factors, such as personality traits and temperament Promoted by personality psychologists

4. Fundamental Attribution Error • Tendency to overemphasize internal factors as attributions for behavior and underestimate the power of the situation • In the quizmaster study, people tended to disregard the influence of the situation and wrongly concluded that a questioner’s knowledge was greater than their own

5. Collectivist Cultures

6. Actor-Observer Bias Phenomenon of explaining other people’s behaviors are due to internal factors and our own behaviors are due to situational forces

7. Self-Serving Bias • Tendency for individuals to take credit by making dispositional or internal attributions for positive outcomes and situational or external attributions for negative outcomes • Protects self-esteem • We emphasize internal, stable, and controllable explanations for our success

8. Just-World Hypothesis • Ideology common in the United States that people get the outcomes they deserve • Can lead to victim-blaming

9. Norms, Roles, and Scripts • Social norm: group expectations regarding what is appropriate for the thoughts and behavior of its members • Social role: socially defined pattern of behavior that is expected of a person in a given setting or group • Script: person’s knowledge about the sequence of events in a specific setting

10. Example: Stanford Prisoner Experiment Stanford University conducted an experiment in a mock prison that demonstrated the power of social roles, social norms, and scripts • 24 healthy college students with no psychiatric problems were randomly assigned to be prisoners or guards • Guards became authoritarian and sadistic • Prisoners became subservient, anxious, and hopeless

11. Attitude and Cognitive Dissonance • Attitude: evaluations of or feelings toward a person, idea, or object that are typically positive or negative • Cognitive dissonance: psychological discomfort that arises from a conflict in a person’s behaviors, attitudes, or beliefs that runs counter to one’s positive self-perception

12. How Cognitive Dissonance Works

13. Cognitive Dissonance Example: Initiation Effect A difficult initiation into a group influences us to like the group more, due to the justification of effort

14. Attitude and Persuasion Process of changing our attitude toward something based on some form of communication

15. Types of Social Influence

16. Social Influence: Conformity and the Asch Effect Conformity is when individuals change their behavior to go along with the group even if they do not agree with the group In the Asch effect a group majority influences an individual’s judgment, even when that judgment is inaccurate Factors affect the Asch effect: • The size of the majority • The presence of another dissenter • The public or private nature of the responses

17. Social Influence: Obedience Obedience: change of behavior to please an authority figure or to avoid aversive consequences Stanley Milgram’s Experiment: • Researchers told the participants to give electric shock. • 65% of the participants continued the shock to the maximum voltage

18. Social Influence: Groupthink Modification of the opinions of members of a group to align with what they believe is the group consensus. Symptoms include: • Perceiving the group as invulnerable or invincible • Believing the group is morally correct • Self-censorship by group members • Quashing of dissenting group members’ opinions • Shielding of the group leader from dissenting views • Perceiving an illusion of unanimity among group • Holding stereotypes or negative attitudes toward the out-group or others’ with differing viewpoints 

19. Social Influence: Social Facilitation and Loafing • Social facilitation occurs when an individual performs better when an audience is watching than when the individual performs the behavior alone.  • Social loafing is the exertion of less effort by a person working together with a group.

20. Altruism: When do people help others? Bystander intervention is when people intervene to help a stranger even if the intervention puts the helper at risk Three factors shape whether people will help: • Pluralistic ignorance • Diffusion of responsibility • Cost–benefit analysis

21. Altruism: Why do people help others? Reciprocal altruism: according to evolutionary psychology, a genetic predisposition for people to help those who have previously helped them Empathy–altruism model: people who put themselves in the shoes of a victim and imagining how the victim feel will experience empathic concern that evokes an altruistic motivation for helping Arousal: cost–reward model an egoistic theory claims that seeing a person in need leads to the arousal of unpleasant feelings, and observers are motivated to eliminate that aversive state, often by helping the victim

22. Triangular Theory of Love

23. Social Exchange Theory Social exchange theory: humans act as naïve economists in keeping a tally of the ratio of costs and benefits of forming and maintain a relationship, with the goal to maximize benefits and minimize costs

24. Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination

25. Types of Prejudice and Discrimination • Ageism: prejudice and discrimination toward individuals based solely on their age • Homophobia: prejudice and discrimination against individuals based solely on their sexual orientation • Racism: prejudice and discrimination toward individuals based solely on their race • Sexism: prejudice and discrimination toward individuals based on their sex

26. Why Do Stereotypes and Prejudice Exist and Persist? • Confirmation bias • Self-fulfilling prophecy • In-group bias • Scapegoating

27. Aggression Aggression: seeking to cause harm or pain to another person. • Hostile aggression: aggression motivated by feelings of anger with intent to cause pain • Instrumental aggression: aggression motivated by achieving a goal and does not necessarily involve intent to cause pain

28. Bullying A person, often an adolescent is treated negatively repeatedly and over time. Involves three parties: • the bully - experiences power and increased self-esteem • the victim – has increased risk of anxiety and depression • witnesses or bystanders Cyberbullying happens online. Bystander effect:situation in which a witness or bystander does not volunteer to help a victim or person in distress

29. Practice Question People are sometimes advised to yell “fire” instead of “help” if they are attacked Based on what you learned about bystander intervention and the bystander effect, why might this make a difference?

30. Quick Review • What are situational and dispositional influences on behavior? What are the fundamental attribution error and other biases, including the actor-observer bias, the self-serving bias, and the just world phenomenon? • What are social roles, social norms, and scripts and how do they influence behavior? How did the Stanford Prison experiment illustrate this? • Define attitude and recognize how people’s attitudes are internally changed through cognitive dissonance and externally changed through persuasion

31. More Quick Review • What is conformity? What is the different between normative and informational social influence? • What was Stanley Milgram’s experiment and what did the results suggest? • When is the presence of others likely to result in groupthink, social facilitation, or social loafing? • What factors influence human altruism? Why are humans altruistic? • What is the triangular theory of love? • How does social exchange theory apply to relationships?

32. More Quick Review • What are prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination? Give examples. • Why do prejudice and discrimination persist/exist? Include scapegoating, in-group, and out-group in your answer. • What are aggression, bullying, and the bystander effect?