Chapter 16: Social Behavior

1. Chapter 16: Social Behavior

2. Social Psychology • the branch of psychology concerned with the way individuals’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by others.

3. Person Perception:Forming Impressions of Others • Effects of physical appearance: • Good looking people are seen as being more sociable, friendly, poised, warm and well-adjusted. • Baby-faced (large eyes, smooth skin, rounded chin) seen as more trustworthy.

4. Social Schemas: organized clusters of ideas about categories of social events and people. Stereotypes: Widely held beliefs that people have certain characteristics because of their membership in a particular group. In group: the group one belongs to. Out group: We see the in-group as superior. Schemas & Stereotypes

5. Figure 16.1 Examples of social schemas

6. Attribution Processes: Explaining Behavior • Internal Attributions: due to personal dispositions, traits, abilities and feelings • External attributions: due to situational demands and environmental constraints.

7. Attribution Processes: Explaining Behavior • Self-serving bias: tendency to attribute our successes to personal factors, and our failures to situational factors. • Fundamental attribution error: using internal attributions to explain other’s behavior. • Defensive attribution error: tendency to blame victims for their misfortune (so that we feel less likely to be victimized in the same way).

8. Figure 16.4 An alternative view of the fundamental attribution error

9. Close Relationships: Liking and Loving • Key factors in attraction • Physical attractiveness • Matching hypothesis • Similarity • Reciprocity • Romantic Ideals

10. Close Relationships: Liking and Loving • Matching hypothesis: males and females of approximately equal physical attractiveness are likely to select each other as partners • Reciprocity: we like people who show that they like us

11. Close Relationships: Liking and Loving Passionate love: complete absorption in another that includes sexual feelings and the agony and ecstasy of intense emotion. Companionate love: warm, trusting, tolerant affection for another whose life is deeply intertwined with one’s own.

12. Close Relationships: Liking and Loving • Intimacy: warmth, closeness, and sharing • Commitment: intent to maintain a relationship in spite of difficulties.

13. Figure 16.7 Infant attachment and romantic relationships

14. Attitudes and Attitude Change • 3 components • cognitive, affective, and behavioral • Factors in changing attitudes • source, message, and receiver • Theories of attitude change • Learning theory • Dissonance theory • Self-perception theory • Elaboration likelihood model

15. Figure 16.9 The possible components of attitudes

16. Figure 16.10 Overview of the persuasion process

17. Figure 16.12 Design of the Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) study

18. Figure 16.13 Bem’s self-perception theory

19. Yielding to Others: Conformity • Conformity – Solomon Asch (1950s) • Classic experiment • Group size • Group unanimity

20. Yielding to Others: Obedience • Obedience – Stanley Milgram (1960s) • Controversial landmark experiment • “I was just following orders” • presence of a dissenter

21. Behavior in Groups:The Influence of Other People • The bystander effect - Darley and Latane (1968) • Diffusion of responsibility • Group productivity and social loafing • Decision making in groups • Polarization • Groupthink

22. Figure 16.18 The effect of loss of coordination and social loafing on group productivity

23. Figure 16.21 The three potential components of prejudice as an attitude

24. Figure 16.22 Relationship between prejudice and discrimination

25. Figure 16.23 Bias in the attributions used to explain success and failure by men and women