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Social Psychology. Social Psychology. The study of how individuals think, feel, and behave in social situations. Social Perception. The process of evaluating and knowing other people. Impression formation. Impression Formation. Process: Categorize people (often automatically).
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Social Psychology • The study of how individuals think, feel, and behave in social situations.
Social Perception • The process of evaluating and knowing other people. • Impression formation
Impression Formation • Process: • Categorize people (often automatically). • Categories that stand out tend to be activated. • Perceiver may have certain categories primed. • Schemas associated with category become more accessible. **First impressions not always accurate.**
Biases in Impression Formation • Cognitive-confirmation bias: • Primacy effect = the tendency to be more influenced by initial information about a person than by information gathered later.
Biases in Impression Formation • Behavioral-confirmation bias: • Self-fulfilling prophecy – a person’s expectation (based upon first impression) can lead to it’s own fulfillment. • Teacher expectancy example (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968).
Impression Formation • Improving Accuracy: • Don’t adhere to your first impression! • Controlled Processing = Move beyond biased initial impression and consider more complete information.
Impression Formation • Controlled Processing: • Anticipated accountability = the expectation that you will be required to justify your response. • Can eliminate the primacy effect.
Attribution • Explaining the behavior of individuals.
Dispositional vs. Situational Attributions • Dispositional: • Assume characteristics of the individual influenced them to behave in a particular way. • Attitudes (likes and dislikes) • Traits (cheerfulness, competitiveness) • Goals
Dispositional vs. Situational Attributions • Situational: • Assume characteristics of the situation influenced a person to behave in a particular way.
Dispositional Social desirability; if behavior is disapproved of in current situation. Situational Distinctiveness of situation. When do we make dispositional/situational attributions:
Video Clip: • Stanford Prison Experiment • Zimbardo (1973)
Dispositional Bias • A tendency to attribute behavior to personal characteristics rather than situational influence.
Dispositional Bias • Actor-observer bias = dispositional bias when explaining other people’s behavior, but not our own. • Self-serving bias = success caused by disposition; failure caused by situations.
Social Influence • The change in behavior produced by the presence of others.
Social Facilitation • The tendency for presence of others to enhance performance on simple tasks and impair performance on complex tasks. • Zajonc (1965) • Presence of others increases arousal • Arousal enhances the dominant response… • “correct” if task easy • “incorrect” if task difficult
Social Loafing • The tendency for people to exert less effort in group tasks where individual efforts are “pooled.” • Group projects
Conformity • Changing your behavior to match social norms of groups when real or imagined social pressure is exerted.
Extent of Conformity • Solomon Asch (1951) • Compare three lines to “standard” line. • In first 2 rounds, everyone agrees. In next round, all other participants (confederates) choose obviously incorrect answer. • 75% of participants went with wrong answer at least once.
Why do we conform? • Informational influence = we want to be right. • Normative influence = we want to be liked. • Hazing
Why do we conform? • Social Impact Theory: • Strength (significance) of people who might influence you. • Immediacy (how often are you in the presence of the group) • Number (how many people are in the group)
Obedience • Milgram Obedience Studies • videoclip
Attitude • A learned evaluation of a person, object, action, or concept that may affect behavior. • 3 components: • Cognitive • Affective • Behavioral
Attitude-behavior consistency • Attitudes predictive of behavior when: • You identify and appeal to all the attitudes that provoke a behavior. • Situational factors don’t strongly intervene. • The attitude is strongly held.
Persuasion – Influencing Attitude Change. • The communicator: • Credibility • Likability
Persuasion – Influencing Attitude Change. • The message: • Moderate position. • Stir emotions • Fear • Two-sided arguments.
Persuasion – Influencing Attitude Change. Elaboration Likelihood Model: 2 paths to persuasion: Central route = effortful cognitive processing of information. Attitude change tends to be more persistent, resistant to change, and predictive of behavior. Peripheral route = less cognitive elaboration.