Social Psychology

1. Social Psychology • The scientific study of the ways in which the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of one individual are influenced by the real, imagined, or inferred behavior or characteristics of other people • Today’s class: • How you think about people • How you explain their behavior • Why you like them

2. Social Cognition: How you think about people? • Impression Formation – how do you construct your social cognition? • Primacy effect • Early information about someone weighs more than later information in forming impressions • We are “cognitive misers” • Self-fulfilling prophecy • A person’s expectations about another elicits behavior from the other person that confirms the expectations • “Hostile” partners continued to be more hostile • Randomly identified “bloomers” made greater gains • Schemata • Stereotypes

3. Impression Formation • Schemata • Ready-made categories • Allow us to make inferences about others (good for cognitive misers) • Also plays a major role in how we interpret and remember information • We will remember characteristics of our schema that weren’t there

4. Impression Formation • Stereotypes • A set of characteristics believed to be shared by all members of a social category • It is usually unfair • Most often applied to sex, race, occupation, physical appearance, place of residence, membership in a group or organization • Can become the basis for self-fulfilling prophecies

5. Self-fulfilling prophecy • (Snyder, Tanke & Berscheid, 1977) • Attractiveness Stereotype – sociability and socially savy • Men received “background” information about a woman they were about to talk with on a phone, info included a photo. Women received same info, but no photo. • IV: Photo of woman either attractive or unattractive • DVs: 1) Men’s expectations about the woman 2) Observers’ ratings of the woman’s behavior • Results: When men expected that the woman was attractive, she was judged as friendly, warm, and more animated than when men believed they were talking with an unattractive woman. (self-fulfilling prophecy)

6. Attribution: Why did he do that? • Attribution Theory: tries to explain how people make judgments about the causes of other people’s behavior • Three criteria used to judge behavior • Distinctiveness: Is this how the person treats everyone or are you different? • Consistency: Has the person always treated you this way or is this different? • Consensus: Do other people do this same thing or is this really different?

7. Attribution: Why did he do that? • Bob walks past you without saying hi. • Distinctiveness: Your explanation as to why Bob did this will be different if he does this to everyone in the hall or just you • Consistency: Your explanation as to why Bob did this will be different if he always says hi to you or if you don’t really know each other. • Consensus: Whether you’re in New York vs. a college of 600 will change how you explain Bob’s behavior.

8. Biases in Attribution: The errors to which your guesses will succumb • Actor-Observer Effect: attribute actions of others to internal factors and the actions of yourself to external factors • Fundamental attribution error: the tendency to overemphasize personal causes for others’ behavior and underemphasize personal causes for our own behavior • Defensive attribution • Self-Serving Bias: Tendency to attribute our successes to our own efforts and our failures to external factors • Just-world hypothesis: Assumption bad things happen to bad people and good things happen to good people • Attribution across cultures varies dramatically

9. Effects of Attribution How we explain someone’s behavior affects how we react to it.

10. Interpersonal Attraction Attraction is closely linked to • Proximity • Physical attractiveness • Similarity • Exchange • Intimacy

11. Psychology of Attraction • Proximity: Geographic nearness is a powerful predictor of friendship. Repeated exposure to novel stimuli increases their attraction (mere exposure effect). A rare white penguin born in a zoo was accepted after 3 weeks by other penguins just due to proximity. Rex USA

12. Proximity leads to liking • Moreland & Beach, 1992 • IV: Four female confederates attended large class 0, 5, 10, or 15 times • DV: How much liked slides of confederate at end of semester • Results: The more times confederate attended the class, the more she was liked.

13. Proximity leads to liking

14. Psychology of Attraction • Physical Attractiveness: Once proximity affords contact, the next most important thing in attraction is physical appearance. • Hatfield et al. (1966) • Couples randomly paired at “computer dance” • Assessed personality, aptitude, physical attractiveness • Results: Only physical attractiveness predicted liking and wanting to see the person again. (True for men and women.)

15. Physical attractiveness • Bias to like children who are attractive • Dion (1972) • IV: mild vs. severe misbehavior • IV: attractive or unattractive photo of child • DV: Rate typicality of behavior • Results: Severe misbehavior rated more typical when performed by an ___________child than an __________child.

17. Is attractiveness objective? • Arguments for Objective Standard • High consensus across countries, race/ethnicities • Agree on attractiveness of faces and body types (F: hourglass; M: v-shaped) • Particular features are associated with attractiveness • F: large eyes, prominent cheekbones, small nose, wide smile • M: broad jaw, large eyes, prominent cheekbones, wide smile • Babies look longer at faces rated as attractive by adults. (less likely to be affected by cultural standards

18. Is attractiveness subjective? • Arguments for Subjective Standard • Cross-cultural differences in ways to look beautiful • Face painting, plastic surgery, scarring, piercings, etc. • Variations in preference for female body size

19. Subjective? • Standards of beauty within a culture change over time • Marilyn Monroe versus Gwenyth Paltrow

20. Attractiveness Standards • Probably both universal and variable components of attractiveness • Overall, physical attractiveness predicts more positive evaluations (true in childhood and later in life)

21. Psychology of Attraction • Similarity: Similar views among individuals causes the bond of attraction to strengthen. • Finding others who agree with us strengthens our convictions and boosts our self-esteem • Opposites don’t attract – they don’t even meet • Complementary Traits – you complete me

22. Psychology of Attraction • 4. Exchange: The give and take of a relationship. • Social Exchange theory explains how we feel about a relationship with another person as depending on our perceptions of: • The balance between what we put into the relationship and what we get out of it. • The kind of relationship we deserve. • Contrast Effect – seeing something ‘better’ makes us temporarily devalue what we’ve got

23. Psychology of Attraction 5. Intimacy: closeness and trust achieved through communication • Must be mutual • Can’t be too much too soon

24. Pairing Game • Matching Hypothesis or Similarity Principle • Contrast Effect • Social Exchange Theory • Commitment can override the preference for alternatives.

25. Matching in physical attractiveness • People tend to pair with partners who are about as physically attractive as they are. • Predicts success of relationship (more similar in attractiveness, more likely to stay together) • However, women who marry less attractive men are shown to rate their marriage as more satisfying.