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Social Psychology . Unit 7 Chapter 18 – Individual Interaction . What is Social Psychology?. The study of how our thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and behaviors are influenced by interactions with others. Friendships Families Relationships School/work interactions
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Social Psychology Unit 7 Chapter 18 – Individual Interaction
What is Social Psychology? • The study of how our thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and behaviors are influenced by interactions with others. • Friendships • Families • Relationships • School/work interactions • Everyday social interactions
Social Cognition • Focuses on how we perceive, store, and retrieve information about social interactions • Why did we choose the friends we have? • What attracted us to our significant other? • Why do we NOT want to be friends with that person or that group?
Why do we need friends? • We develop a sense of close association when we are infants. We crave human interaction. • We also need praise, respect, love and affection, and the sense of achievement. • We especially need/desire company we were are anxious. • Humans also enjoy company to share experiences when they are feeling unsure of themselves or their circumstances
How do we choose friends? • Proximity – the distance of one person to another person • Live on the same street • Go to the same school • Play on the same team • Have classes together
Reward Values – what do we get from our friendships? • (3 different types of rewards values)
Stimulation value: the ability of a person to interest you in or to expose you to new ideas and experiences
Utility value: the ability of a person to help another achieve his or her goals
Ego-support value: the ability of a person to provide another person with sympathy, encouragement, and approval
Let’s recap … • List the 3 different types of reward values we seek in friendships? • These are not the only reasons why we choose certain friends. We also choose friends/mates based on: • Physical appearance • Approval (back to ego-support value) • We have similar interests • Our personalities compliment one another
What other factors are involved when we choose people to socialize with? • First impressions! • Primacy effect – the tendency to form opinions about others based on first impressions • Teacher is strict the first day of school. You form an opinion that he/she is a mean, ruthless person. • How is your attitude/outlook affected when another student warns you about a teacher you have next semester?
Do you think first impressions are an accurate representation of that person? Why or why not? • Give examples of very good or very bad first impressions you’ve had or made.
First impressions cont… • Forming impressions about others helps us place these people into categories. This set of assumptions is known as a schema. We develop schemas for every person we know. • Schemas vary person to person. • Ex: some people may have a schema about smart people and assume they are all hard working, conscientious, humble. Others may think smart people are boastful, rude, socially inept. • Ex: You may love that one of your friends is talkative and energetic while someone else may think she doesn’t listen and is hyper. • Schemas can be dangerous as we can make prejudices about people we do not know that well.
Schemas in social situations … • You also develop schemas around events. • Ex: You can cheer and scream at a football game, but you need to be quiet and subdued at a funeral. • Can you think of other schemas you’ve formed around certain social events?
First impressions cont. • Schemas that encompass entire groups of people are stereotypes. Stereotypes are a set of assumptions about people in a given category summarizing our experience and beliefs about groups of people. • Think about stereotypes that exist within this school … Jacksonville … American
What other ways do we judge those around us? • Attribution theory: an analysis of how we interpret and understand other people’s behavior • Why is the person behind me honking his horn? Maybe he’s rude or maybe he’s in a hurry because his wife is in labor. • Why is that person quiet? Are they rude or do they have a sore throat and don’t want to talk?
Errors in attribution theory … • Fundamental attribution error: tendency to attribute others’ behavior to internal causes and discount situation factors. • Ex: man honking the horn is rude (internal cause) vs. his wife being in labor (situational factor) • Actor-observer bias: tendency to focus OUR behavior on outside causes • Ex: I wasn’t being rude, I was just in a hurry to get to my appointment so I didn’t have time to talk to the cashier
Errors in attribution theory… • self-serving bias: a tendency to claim success is due to our efforts, while failures are due to circumstances beyond our control. • Ex: I aced that test because I’m smart and I studied a lot. I failed that test because the teacher doesn’t like me and made the test way too hard.
How else might we judge those around us?? • Nonverbal cues: the process through which messages are conveyed using space, body language, and facial expressions • What are some of YOUR nonverbal cues? • Body language: the way you carry your body and the message it sends to others
Analyze the following photos and write down 1 or 2 words descriptions for the following categories: • First impression of the individual • Do they fall under any stereotypes you have? • What is their body language?
