Hours 1 and 2 - What social factors account for how we explain and justify our actions?

1. Social Psychology 2 Hours 1 and 2 - What social factors account for how we explain and justify our actions? • Social determinants of behaviourcont: • The Stanford Prison Experiment (Philip Zimbardo) • Break • Attributional biases • The fundamental attribution error • The actor-observer bias • The self-serving bias • Explaining and justifying our behaviour: • Cognitive consistency • Cognitive dissonance

2. 90 80 70 60 50 Frequency 40 30 Guards 20 Prisoners 10 0 Resistance Insults Helping Questions Aggression Threats Deindividuating Reference Commands

3. Attributional Biases Fundamental attribution error The tendency to overemphasize internal causes and personal responsibility and underemphasize external influences when observing the behaviour of other people

4. 0.7 0.6 0.5 North America Attribution to internal dispositions 0.4 0.3 India 0.2 0.1 0 8 12 16 20 Age (years) Cultural Differences in Attribution

5. Attributional Biases Fundamental attribution error The tendency to overemphasize internal causes and personal responsibility and underemphasize external influences when observing the behaviour of other people Special cases of the fundamental attribution error • Actor-observer bias • Self-serving bias

6. Explaining and justifying our behaviour when it goes against our belief system • Cognitive Consistency • The match between one’s attitudes and behaviours • Cognitive Dissonance (Leon Festinger) • The mismatch between ones attitudes and • behaviours

7. 1.5 1.0 0.5 Rating of task 0 -0.5 -1.0 $1 $20 Control Payment for “selling” the task to others Cognitive dissonance: Festinger’s “boring task” experiment How enjoyable is the task? How willing am I to do the task again?

8. Cognitive dissonance happens when: • One freely chooses the behaviour • You have firmly committed to that particular • behaviour • Your behaviour has consequences for other people