Psychology in Action (8e)

1. Psychology in Action (8e) PowerPoint  Lecture Notes Presentation Chapter 10: Social Psychology

2. Lecture Overview • Our Thoughts About Others • Our Feelings About Others • Our Actions Toward Others • Applying Social Psychology to Social Problems

3. Introductory Definition • Social Psychology(study of how other people influence our thoughts, feelings, and actions)

4. Our Thoughts About Others • Attribution (an explanation for the cause of behaviors or events) • To determine the cause we first decide whether the behavior comes from an: • internal(dispositional)cause, such as personal characteristics, or • external(situational)cause, such as situational demands.

5. Fundamental Attribution Error: misjudging causes of others’ behavior and attributing to internal (dispositional) vs. external (situational) ones Saliency bias may explain focus on dispositional causes. Our Thoughts About Others:Mistaken Attributions

6. 2. Self-Serving Bias: taking credit for our successes, and externalizing our failures Our Thoughts About Others:Mistaken Attributions

7. Our Thoughts About Others • Attitude (learned predisposition to respond cognitively, affectively, and behaviorally to a particular object)

8. Cognitive Dissonance: feeling of discomfort created from a discrepancy between an attitude and behavior or between two competing attitudes Our Thoughts About Others: Cognitive Dissonance

9. Attitudes Can Affect Actions Cognitive dissonance theory, proposed by Leon Festinger, argues that people feel discomfort when their actions conflict with their feelings and beliefs; they reduce the discomfort by bringing their attitudes more in line with their actions.

10. Our Thoughts About Others: Cognitive Dissonance (Continued)

11. Our Thoughts About Others: Cognitive Dissonance (Continued) • Festinger and Carlsmith’s Cognitive Dissonance Study: Participants given very boring tasks to complete, and then paid either $1 or $20 to tell next participant the task was “very enjoyable” and “fun.” • Result? Those paid $1 felt more cognitive dissonance, therefore, they changed their attitude more about the boring tasks.

12. Attitudes • Attitudes are feelings, often based on our beliefs, that predispose us to respond in a particular way to objects, people, and events. • For example, we may feel dislike for a person, because we believe he or she is mean, and, as a result, act unfriendly toward that person.

13. Attitudes Can Affect Actions The foot-in-the-door phenomenon is the tendency for people who agree to a small request to comply later with a larger one. Because doing becomes believing, a trivial act makes the next act easier.

14. Attitudes Can Affect Actions Influential Theory of Reasoned Action • The theory states that two major predictors of behavior are attitudes toward the behavior and subjective social norms. • A person’s attitude toward a behavior is a function of the desirability of the possible outcomes weighted by the likelihood of those outcomes. • Subjective social norms reflect one’s perception of whether significant others approve of the behavior weighted by the motivation to conform with those expectations.

15. Actions Can Affect Attitudes • One of social psychology’s most significant findings is that action shapes attitude. • For example, the low-ball technique (e.g., After a customer has signed on to buy a new car because of its very low price, the salesperson reports that the sales manager won’t agree because “we’d be losing money.” )

16. chapter 10 Attitudes A relatively stable opinion containing beliefs and emotional feelings about a topic. Explicit: we are aware of them, they shape conscious decisions Implicit: we are unaware of them, they influence our behavior in ways we do not recognize

17. chapter 10 Factors influencing attitude change Change in social environment Change in behaviors Need for consistency Cognitive dissonance: a state of tension that develops when a person simultaneously holds two contradictory cognitions or when a person’s belief is incongruent with his/her behavior

18. chapter 10 Influencing attitudes

19. chapter 10 Coercive persuasion • Person is under physical or emotional duress. • Person’s problems are reduced to one simple explanation, repeated often. • Leader offers unconditional love, acceptance, and attention. • New identity based on group is created. • Person is entrapped. • Person’s access to information is controlled.

20. chapter 10 Conformity Subjects in group asked to match line lengths. Confederates picked wrong line. Subjects went with wrong answer in 37% of trials. Conformity has decreased since 1950, possibly due to changing norms. Individualistic vs. collectivist cultures

21. chapter 10 Groupthink In close-knit groups, the tendency for all members to think alike and suppress disagreement for the sake of harmony. Symptoms Illusion of invincibility Self-censorship Pressure on dissenters to conform Illusion of unanimity Counteracted by Creating conditions that reward dissent Basing decision on majority rule

22. chapter 10 The anonymous crowd Diffusion of responsibility The tendency of group members to avoid taking responsibility for actions or decisions because they assume others will do so. Bystander apathy People fail to call for help when others are near. Social loafing When people work less in the presence of others, forcing others to work harder

23. chapter 10 Deindividuation In groups or crowds, the loss of awareness of one’s own individuality. Factors Size of city, group Uniforms or masks Can influence either unlawful or prosocial behaviors Depends on norms of specific situation

24. chapter 10 Disobedience and dissent Situational factors in nonconformity You perceive the need for intervention or help. Situation makes it more likely you will take responsibility. Cost-benefit ration supports decision to get involved. You have an ally. You become entrapped.

25. Actions Can Affect Attitudes Brainwashing: Writing things down, even if you disagreed with them, eventually you will begin to believe. • However, they soon seem to reflect our true self as we adopt attitudes in keeping with our roles.

26. Attitudes Can Affect Actions Cognitive dissonance theory, proposed by Leon Festinger, argues that people feel discomfort when their actions conflict with their feelings and beliefs; they reduce the discomfort by bringing their attitudes more in line with their actions.

27. The Justification of Effort • Cognitive dissonance theorists have predicted that working hard to attain a goal makes the goal more attractive than the same goal obtained with no effort.

28. Abu Ghraib: an atrocity-producing situation • Philip Zimbardo states, “It’'s not that we put bad apples in a good barrel. • We put good apples in a bad barrel. The barrel corrupts anything that it touches.” • The following factors seem important in understanding the cruelty.

29. Abu Ghraib: an atrocity-producing situation • A prison is a place of enormous power differential. Guards have total power over prisoners who are powerless. • Aversive experiences predispose one to anger and aggression. • A novel environment without established norms for acceptable behavior lead us to look to others for direction, especially to those in charge.

30. Abu Ghraib: an atrocity-producing situation • “Peer modeling” also helps to define reality. When a few soldiers took the lead in abusing prisoners and establishing “appropriate” standards for behavior, the rest followed. • A “macho” culture was established for both male and female guards

31. Abu Ghraib: an atrocity-producing situation • Dehumanization of the prisoners as animals or scum was made easier in Iraq because of the foreign language and customs • A “we” versus “they” mentality existed.

32. Abu Ghraib: an atrocity-producing situation • The mechanics of “moral disengagement” were evident. In this process, normally moral people temporarily detach themselves from principle and reframe evil behavior as necessary and even worthy. Some minimized or underestimated the harmful consequences of their actions by relabeling or sanitizing it as “all fun and games.”

33. Abu Ghraib: an atrocity-producing situation • Deindividuation of the guards diffused responsibility and undermined self-restraint. • Unresponsive bystanders, who had private concerns, did not openly disagree or challenge the immoral behavior going on in the prison.

34. The Chameleon Effect The chameleon effect refers to our natural tendency to mimic others. • Unconsciously mimicking others’ expressions, postures, and voice tones helps us to empathizewith others. • Research participants in an experiment tend to rub their own face when confederates rub their face.

35. Asch’s Experiments on Conformity Conformity is adjusting one’s behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard. • Solomon Asch found that under certain conditions, people will conform to a group’s judgment, even when it is clearly incorrect.

36. Asch’s Experiments on Conformity • Experiments indicate that conformity increaseswhen we feel incompetent or insecure, admire the group’s status and attractiveness, have made no prior commitment to a response, are being observed by other group members, come from a culture than encourages respect for social standards, and are in a group with at least three people who are unanimous in their judgment.

37. Normative and Informational Social Influence • We are sensitive to social norms and so we sometimes conform to gain social approval (normative social influence). • At other times, we accept information about reality provided by the group (informational social influence).

38. Prejudice  (learned, generally negative, attitude toward members of a group) Discrimination (negative behaviors directed at members of a group) Our Feelings About Others: Prejudice and Discrimination

40. Our Feelings About Others: Prejudice and Discrimination (Cont.) • Three components of prejudice: • Cognitive (stereotype--set of beliefs about the characteristics of people in a group generalized to all group members) • Affective (feelings associated with objects of prejudice) • Behavioral(discrimination--negative behaviors directed at members of a group)

41. Our Feelings About Others: Sources of Prejudice and Discrimination 1. Learned response 2. Mental shortcut • in-group favoritism (in-group viewed more positively than out-group) • out-group homogeneity effect (out-group judged as less diverse than in-group) 3. Economic and political competition 4. Displaced aggression

42. Our Feelings About Others: Interpersonal Attraction • Interpersonal Attraction (positive feelings toward another) • Three Key Factors: • Physical Attractiveness • Proximity(geographic closeness) • Similarity (need complementarity vs. need compatibility)

43. Liking isa favorable evaluation of another. Loving can be defined in terms of caring, attachment, and intimacy. Our Feelings About Others: Interpersonal Attraction (Liking and Loving)

44. Our Feelings About Others: Interpersonal Attraction (Liking and Loving) • Sample items from Rubin’s liking and loving test:

45. Our Feelings About Others: Interpersonal Attraction (Continued) • Romantic Love(erotic attraction with future expectations) • Companionate Love (lasting attraction based on trust, caring, tolerance, and friendship)

46. Conformity (changing behavior because of real or imagined group pressure) Obedience (following direct commands, usually from an authority figure) Our Actions Toward Others: Social Influence

47. Our Actions Toward Others: Conformity Asch’s Conformity Study: • Participants were asked to select the line closest in length to X. • When confederates gave obviously wrong answers (A or C), more than 1/3 conformed and agreed with the incorrect choices.

48. Our Actions Toward Others: Conformity (Continued) Why do we conform? • Normative Social Influence (need for approval and acceptance) • Informational Social Influence (need for information and direction) • Reference Groups (people we conform to because we like and admire them and want to be like them)

49. Our Actions Toward Others: Obedience • Milgram’s obedience study: Participants serving as “teachers” are ordered to continue shocking someone with a known heart condition who is begging to be released. • Result? 65% of “teachers” delivered highest level of shock (450 volts) to the “learner.”

50. Our Actions Toward Others: ObedienceMilgram’s “Shock Generator”