Chapter 2 Social Identity

1. Chapter 2 Social Identity

2. Social Psychology the study of how people think about, influence, and relate to other people social cognitions social influences social relations

3. The Self as a Social Object Self-Esteem • positive illusions – views of ourselves that are not necessarily rooted in reality • self-serving bias – tendency to take credit for success and deny responsibility for failure • self-objectification – tendency to see oneself primarily as an object in the eyes of others

4. Self-Perception Theory Individuals make inferences about their own attitudes by perceiving their own behavior, especially if their attitudes are unclear. Both cognitive dissonance and self-perception theory explain the connection between attitudes and behavior.

5. Social Influence: Conformity Asch’s Experiment (1951) • factors that contribute to conformity - informational social influence - normative social influence Cognitive Neuroscience • fMRI images - when women found others disagreed, they responded as mistakes

6. Group Influence Deindividuation • erosion of personal identity and responsibility • anonymity Social Contagion • spread of behavior, emotions, and ideas Group Performance • social facilitation: arousal with well-learned tasks • social loafing: reduced accountability

7. Group Decision Making Risky Shift • group decisions are riskier than average individual decisions Group Polarization • discussion strengthens the individual’s position

8. Group Decision Making Groupthink • group harmony • impaired decision making and avoidance of realistic appraisal • symptoms of groupthink • avoiding groupthink Majority-Minority Influence • majority: normative and informational pressure • minority: informational pressure

9. Intergroup Relations • Group Identity -us versus them • Social Identity - define ourselves in terms of group membership • Social Identity Theory - in-groups versus out-groups • Ethnocentrism - favoring one’s own group over other groups

10. Social Identity