Social LOA

1. Social LOA Mandy Peterson 2010

2. The Individual and Societey Imagine a life of complete solitude Social Psychology - The study of how interactions with other people affect an individual’s thinking and behaviour.

3. Social Behaviour any behaviour which involves others or is implicitly oriented to wards others (ex: conformity and social expectations that become part of our mental schemata)

4. Social Influence A general term for the various ways in which an individual’s behaviour is affected by others, such as conformity pressures and group dynamics.

5. Social Influence • Conformity • adjusting one’s behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard • Normative Social Influence • influence resulting from a person’s desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval

6. 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 Number of times Participant Participant rubs face shakes foot Confederate rubs face Confederate shakes foot Social Influence • The chameleon effect

7. Social Influence • Asch’s conformity experiments

8. Social Influence • Informational Social Influence • influence resulting from one’s willingness to accept others’ opinions about reality

9. 50% 40 30 20 10 0 Difficult judgments Conformity highest on important judgments Percentage of conformity to confederates’ wrong answers Easy judgments Low High Importance Social Influence • Participants judged which person in Slide 2 was the same as the person in Slide 1

10. Social Influence • Milgram’s follow-up obedience experiment

11. Social Influence • Some individual resist social coercion

12. Social Influence • Social Facilitation • improved performance of tasks in the presence of others • occurs with simple or well-learned tasks but not with tasks that are difficult or not yet mastered • Social Loafing • tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling their efforts toward attaining a common goal than when individually accountable

13. Social Facilitation

14. Social Influence • Deindividuation • loss of self-awareness and self-restraint in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity

15. Social Influence • Group Polarization • enhancement of a group’s prevailing attitudes through discussion within the group • Groupthink • mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides realistic appraisal of alternatives

16. Social Influence • If a group is like-minded, discussion strengthens its prevailing opinions

17. Which is most true? • Birds of a feather flock together. • Familiarity breeds contempt. • Absence makes the heart grow fonder. • Opposites attract. • Read p. 104 (IB)

18. Issues in the Study of Social Behavior • Person-situation debate - Allport (1937) behavior is influenced more by personal characteristics than by the situation • proximal cause - factor is a direct influence on behaviour, such an one’s attitude or an aspect of the immediate situation. • distal cause - factor which has an indirect effect on behaviour, such as previous experiences in similar situations.

19. Perspectives on Prosocial Behavior • Altruism is one of many example of prosocial behavior - any behaviour intended to help others.

20. Social Relations • Bystander Effect • tendency for any given bystander to be less likely to give aid if other bystanders are present

21. Social Relations • The decision-making process for bystander intervention

22. Social Relations • Social Exchange Theory • the theory that our social behavior is an exchange process, the aim of which is to maximize benefits and minimize costs • Superordinate Goals • shared goals that override differences among people and require their cooperation

23. Social Relations • Graduated and Reciprocated Initiatives in Tension-reduction (GRIT) • a strategy designed to decrease international tensions • one side announces recognition of mutual interests and initiates a small conciliatory act • opens door for reciprocation by other party