Social Psychology What is social p sychology’s f ocus? Social thinking Social influence

2. Social Psychology • What is social psychology’s focus? • Social thinking • Social influence • Social relations

3. What Is SocialPsychology’s Focus? • Social psychologists • Use scientific methods to study how we think about, influence, and relate to one another • Study social forces that explain why people act differently in different situations • Personality psychologists • Study personal traits and processes that explain why individuals may act differently in a given situation

4. Social Thinking • The fundamental attribution error • Attitudes and actions

5. Social Thinking • Fundamental attribution error • The tendency, when analyzing others’ behavior, to overestimate the influence of personal traits and underestimate the effects of the situation • Most likely to occur when a stranger acts badly • Has real-life and social consequences • Napolitan and colleagues (1979) • Students attributed behavior of others to personal traits, even when they were told that behavior was part of an experimental situation

6. Social Thinking Attitude most influences behavior when: • External influences are minimal • The attitude is stable • The attitude is specific to the behavior • The attitude is easily recalled

7. Social Thinking REUTERS/ VasilyFedosenko Attitudes follow behavior • Foot-in-the-door phenomenon • People agreeing to a small request will find it easier to later agree to a larger one • Principle works for negative and positive behavior ATTITUDES FOLLOW BEHAVIOR Cooperative actions, such as those performed by people on sports teams feed mutual liking. Such attitudes, in turn, promote positive behavior.

8. Social Thinking • Cognitive dissonance: Relief from tension • We act to reduce the discomfort (dissonance) we feel when two of our thoughts (cognitions) clash • Brain regions become active when people experience cognitive dissonance • Through cognitive dissonance we often bring attitudes into line with our actions (Festinger)

9. Driving to school one snowy day, Marco narrowly misses a car that slides through a red light. “Slow down! What a terrible driver,” he thinks to himself. Moments later, Marco himself slips through an intersection and yelps, “Wow! These roads are awful. The city plows need to get out here.” What social psychology principle has Marco just demonstrated? Explain.

10. How do our attitudes and our actions affect each other? When people act in a way that is not in keeping with their attitudes, and then change their attitudes to match those actions, theory attempts to explain why?

11. Social Influence • Conformity and obedience • Group influence • THINKING CRITICALLY ABOUT: The internet as social amplifier

12. Social Influence • Conformity and obedience • Chartrand and colleagues (1999) • Demonstrated chameleon effect with college students • Automatic mimicry helps people to empathize and feel what others feel • The more we mimic, the greater our empathy, and the more people tend to like us

13. Social Influence • Group pressure and conformity research findings • People are more likely to conform when they: • Are made to feel incompetent or insecure • Are in a group in which everyone else agrees • Admire the group’s status and attractiveness • Have not already committed to any response • Know that others in the group will observe our behavior • Are from a culture that strongly encourages respect for social standards

14. William Vendivert/Scientific American ASCH’S CONFORMITY EXPERIMENTS Which of the three comparison lines on the right is equal to the standard line? The photo on the left (from one of the experiments) was taken after five people, who were actually working for Asch, had answered, “Line 3.” The student in the center shows the severe discomfort that comes from disagreeing with the responses of other group members.

15. Which of the following strengthens conformity to a group? a. Finding the group attractive b. Feeling secure c. Coming from an individualist culture d. Having already decided on a response

16. Social Influence • Obedience • Milgram investigated the effects of punishment on learning • Experiments involved commands to shock someone using up to a 450-volt final level • More than 60 percent followed orders STANLEY MILGRAM (1933–1984) This social psychologist’s obedience experiments “belong to the self-understandingof literate people in ourage” (Sabini, 1986).

17. MILGRAM’S FOLLOW UP OBEDIENCE EXPERIMENT In a repeat of the earlier experiment, 65 percent of the adult male “teachers” fully obeyed the experimenter’s commands to continue. They did so despite the “learner’s” earlier mention of a heart condition and despite hearing cries of protest after they delivered what they thought were 150 volts, and agonized protests after 330 volts. (Data from Milgram, 1974.)

18. Social Influence: Obedience • Milgram’s later research: Obedience was highest when • The person giving orders was in close proximity and perceived as a legitimate authority figure • The authority figure was supported by a well-known institution • The victim was depersonalized or at a distance • No models existed for defiance

19. Lessons From the Conformity and Obedience Studies • Strong social influences can make people conform to falsehoods or give in to cruelty • Social control and personal control interact • Minority influence is most effective if a position is taken firmly

20. In psychology’s most famous obedience experiments, most participants obeyed an authority figure’s demands to inflict presumed life-threatening shocks on an innocent person. Which social psychologist conducted these experiments? In the obedience experiments, people were most likely to follow orders in four situations. What were those situations?

21. Social Influence akg-images /Newscom • Social facilitation • Responses on individual tasks are stronger in the presence of others (Triplett) • The presence of others sometimes helps and sometimes hurts (Guerin and others) GANDHI As the life of Hindu nationalist and spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi (right) powerfully testified, a consistent and persistent minority voice can sometimes sway the majority. His nonviolent appeals and fasts helped India win its independence from Britain in 1947.

22. Social Influence Spencer Grant/ age fotostock • Home team advantage • When others observe us, we perform well-learned tasks more quickly and accurately. • But on new and difficult tasks, performance is less quick and accurate.

23. Social Influence Lawrence Migdale/ Photo Researchers, Inc. • Social loafing • The tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling their efforts toward attaining a common goal than when individually accountable • Causes • Acting as part of a group and feeling less accountable • Feeling that individual contribution does not matter • Taking advantage when there is lack of identification with a group WORKING HARD, OR HARDLY WORKING? In group projects, such as this Earth Day beach cleanup, social loafing often occurs, as individuals free ride on the efforts of others.

24. Social Influence • Deindividuation • A loss of self-awarenessandself-restraintoccurring in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity • Thrives in many different settings

25. Lewis Whyld/ PA Wire URN:11349922 (Press Association via AP Images) DEINDIVIDUATION During England’s 2011 riots and looting, rioters were disinhibited by social arousal and by the anonymity provided by darkness and their hoods and masks. Later, some of those arrested expressed bewilderment over their own behavior.

26. GROUP POLARIZATION • If a group is like-minded, discussion strengthens existing opinions • Talking about racial issues increased prejudice in a high-prejudicegroup of high school students and decreased it in a low-prejudicegroup (Myers & Bishop, 1970) • How did researchers capture group polarization in the 2005 “Deliberation Day” experiment? (See page 348)

27. The internet as social amplifier • Negative • Can isolate people from those with different opinions • May create support for shared ideas and suspicions • Can foster abusive or violent behavior • Positive • Can connect friends and family members • Helps in coping with challenges • Fosters social ventures Hero Images/Corbis

28. Social Influence • Groupthink • Mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives • Examples • Escalation of Vietnam war • Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident • U.S. space shuttle Challenger explosion • WMD in Iraq

29. What is social facilitation, and under what circumstances is it most likely to occur? People tend to exert less effort when working with a group than they would alone, which is called ________. When a group’s desire for harmony overrides its realistic analysis of other options, ________ has occurred.

30. You are organizing a meeting of fiercely competitive political candidates. To add to the fun, friends have suggested handing out masks of the candidates’ faces for supporters to wear. What effect might these masks trigger?

31. Social Relations • Prejudice • CLOSE-UP: Automatic prejudice • Aggression • Attraction • CLOSE-UP: Online matchmaking and speed dating • Altruism • Conflict and peacemaking

32. Social Relations

34. How Prejudiced Are People? • Open prejudice lessens; subtle prejudice lingers • Prejudice can also be automatic and unconscious • Worldwide, gender prejudice and discrimination exist • Gays and lesbians cannot comfortably be themselves • Fathers are perceived as more intelligent than mothers • More women live in poverty; 163 million “missing women”

35. Prejudice Over Time Americans’ approval of interracial dating has soared over he past half-century. (Gallup surveys reported by Carroll, 2007.)

36. Social Relations • Social roots of prejudice • Social inequalities: Have often developed attitudes that justify the status quo • Just-world phenomenon: Good is rewarded and evil is punished • Stereotypes: Rationalize inequalities • Groups • Through social identities people associate themselves with others • Evolution prepares people to identify with a group

37. Automatic prejudice • Implicit racial associations: Negative associations linked to the denial of racial prejudice • Race-influenced perceptions:Perceptions influenced by expectations • Reflexive bodily responses: Telltale signs of selective body responses to another person’s race

38. Mike Hewitt/ Getty Images THE INGROUP Scotland’s famed “Tartan Army” soccer fans, shown here during a match against archrival England, share a social identity that defines “us” (the Scottish ingroup) and “them” (the English outgroup). • Ingroup: Social definition of who we are—and are not • Ingroup bias: A favoring of our own group

39. Emotional Roots of Prejudice • Scapegoat theory • Proposes that when things go wrong, finding someone to blame can provide an outlet for anger • Research evidence (Zimbardo) • Prejudice levels tend to be high among economically frustrated people • In experiments, a temporary frustration increases prejudice

40. Cognitive Roots of Prejudice • Forming categories • Humans categorize people by race: mixed-race people identified by minority identity • Similarities are overestimated during categorization; creating “Us and They” • Overestimation also occurs; other-race effect or bias

41. Dr. JaminHalberstadt CATEGORIZING MIXED-RACE PEOPLE When New Zealanders quickly classified 104 photos by race, those of European descent more often than those of Chinese descent classified the ambiguous middle two as Chinese (Halberstadt et al., 2011).

42. Cognitive Roots of Prejudice Remembering vivid cases The 9/11 Muslim terrorists created, in many minds, an exaggerated stereotype of Muslims as terrorism prone. People often judge the likelihood of events by recalling vivid cases that readily come to mind.

43. When a prejudiced attitude causes us to blame an innocent person for our problems, we have used that person as a ________.

44. Biology of Aggression • Biology influences aggression at three levels • Genetic influences • Evidence from animal studies and twin studies; Y chromosome genetic marker • Biochemical influences • Testosterone is linked with irritability, assertiveness, impulsiveness, and a low tolerance for frustration • Alcohol is associated with aggressive responses to frustration • Neural influences • Neural systems facilitate or inhibit aggression when provoked • Aggression is more likely to occur with frontal lobe damage

45. Psychological and Social-Cultural Influences onAggression • Reinforcement, modeling, and self-control • Modeling and rewarding sensitivity and cooperation at an early age fosters more positive behavior • Self-control curbs aggression; poor self-control is correlated with crime

46. Psychological and Social-Cultural Influences onAggression • Adversive events • Frustration-aggression principle:Frustration creates anger, which can spark aggression • Other aversive stimuli: Hot temperatures, physical pain, personal insults, foul odors, cigarette smoke, crowding, and a host of others

47. TEMPERATURE AND RETALIATION

48. Psychological and Social-Cultural Influences onAggression • Media models for violence • Repeatedly viewing on-screen violence tends to lessen sensitivity to cruelty and teaches social scripts • Social scripts provide cultural mental files for how to act • Research confirms that people sometimes imitate what they have viewed • Viewing explicit sexual violence is linked to men’s aggression against women

49. Psychological and Social-Cultural Influences onAggression REUTERS/ Andrew Berwick via www.freak.no/Handout Do violent video games teach social scripts for violence? • Nearly 400 studies of 130,000 people suggest video games can prime aggressive thoughts, decrease empathy, and increase aggression • Some researchers dispute this finding and note other factors: Depression, family violence, and peer influence COINCIDENCE OR CAUSE? In 2011, Norwegian Anders Behring Breivikbombed government buildings in Oslo, and then went to a youth camp, where he shot and killed 69 people, mostly teens. How is this related to effects of media violence?

50. What psychological, biological, and socialculturalinfluences interact to produce aggressive behaviors?