Social Psychology

3. Learning Outcomes
• Define social psychology.
• Define attitude and discuss some factors that
shape it.
• Define social perception and describe the
factors that contribute to it.
• Explain why people obey authority figures
and conform to social norms.
• Describe how and why people behave
differently as group members than as
individuals.
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4. Truth or Fiction?
 People act in accord with their consciences.
 We appreciate things more when we have to
work for them.
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5. Truth or Fiction?
 Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
 Opposites attract.
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6. Truth or Fiction?
 We tend to hold others responsible for their
misdeeds but to see ourselves as victims of
circumstances when we misbehave.
 Most people will torture an innocent person
if they are ordered to do so.
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7. Truth or Fiction?
 Seeing is believing.
 Nearly 40 people stood by and did nothing
while a woman was being stabbed to death.
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8. What is Social Psychology?
• Study of the nature and causes of people’s
thoughts and behavior in social situations
• Situationist perspective
Social influence goads people into doing things they
would not usually do.
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9. Attitudes

10. The A-B Problem
• Factors that affect the link between Attitudes
(A) and Behavior (B)
– Specificity
– Strength of attitudes
– Vested interest
– Accessibility
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11. Attitude Formation
• Learned attitudes
– Conditioning or learning by observation
• Cognitive Appraisal
– Form opinion after appraisal and evaluation of
situation
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12. Changing Attitudes
• Elaboration likelihood model
– Central route of persuasion
Inspires thoughtful consideration of evidence and arguments
– Peripheral route of persuasion
Associate with positive or negative cues
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13. The Persuasive Message
• Repeated exposure to things and people
enhances their appeal
• “Fear” appeal is more persuasive than facts
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14. Communicator and Audience
• Persuasive communicator
– Shows expertise, trustworthiness, attractiveness,
or similarity to the audience
• Positive context increases likelihood of
persuasion
• People with high self esteem and low social
anxiety are more resistant to social pressure
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15. Cognitive Dissonance Theory
• When attitudes and behavior are
inconsistent, individuals are motivated to
reduce that inconsistency
• Festinger & Carlsmith (1959)
– Attitude-discrepant behavior
• People paid less rated the task more
interesting
– Effort justification
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16. Prejudice and Discrimination
• Stereotypes – fixed conventional attitudes
– May be positive or negative
• Prejudice - attitude
Cognitive – expectation that members of target
group will behave poorly
Behavioral – avoidance, aggression and
discrimination
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17. Prejudice and Discrimination
• Sources of Prejudice
– Dissimilarity
– Social conflict
– Social learning
– Information processing
– Social categorization
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18. Interpersonal Attraction
• Factors contributing to attraction
– Physical appearance
• Standards for beauty are cross-cultural
– Gender differences in preferences
• Males – physical appearance
• Females – professional status
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19. Interpersonal Attraction
• Attraction-Similarity Hypothesis
– Our partners tend to be like us
• Similarity in Attitudes
– We are attracted to people who share our
attitudes
• Factors that influence our preferences
– Propinquity
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20. Love
• Triangular model of love
– Intimacy
– Passion
– Commitment
• Romantic love combines intimacy and passion
• Consummate love combines all three
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21. Social
Perception

22. First Impressions
• First impressions matter a great deal
– We infer traits from behavior
• Primacy effect
• Recency effect
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23. Attribution Theory
• Process by which one draws conclusions
about the influences on another’s behavior
• Dispositional attributions
– Internal factors
• Situational attributions
– External factors
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24. Attribution Theory
• Actor – observer effect
• Fundamental attribution error
– Attribute too much of other’s behavior on
dispositional
– Cultural bias – individualistic cultures
• Self-serving bias
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25. Body Language
• Communication through posture and
gestures
– Touching
– Gazing and Staring
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26. Social Influence

27. The Milgram Studies
When the “learner” makes an error, the experimenter prods the “teacher” to
deliver a painful electric shock.

28. Factors Contributing to
Obedience to Authority
• Socialization
• Lack of social comparison
• Perception of legitimacy of authority figures
• Foot-in-the-door technique
• Inaccessibility of values
• Buffers between perpetrator and victim
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29. Conformity
• Conform – when we change our behavior to
adhere to social norms
• Social norms – widely accepted expectations
concerning social behaviors
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30. Conformity
• Asch Study
– Most people will conform, even when they are
wrong
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31. Ash Study on Conformity
Which line on Card B – 1, 2, or 3 – is the same length as the line on
card A? Line 2, right? But would you say “2” if you were a member
of a group and six people answering ahead of you all said “3”? Are
you sure?

32. Conformity
• Factors contributing to conformity
– Collectivist culture
– Desire to be liked by group members
– Low self-esteem
– Social shyness
– Lack of familiarity with task
– Group size
– Social support
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33. Group Behavior

34. Social Facilitation
• Presence of others facilitates performance
– Increased arousal or motivation
– Evaluation apprehension
• Presence of others impairs performance
– Social loafing
– Diffusion of responsibility
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35. Group Decision Making
• Social decision schemes
– Majority-wins
– Truth-wins
– Two-thirds majority
– First-shift rule
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36. Polarization and the “Risky Shift”
• Polarization – taking an extreme position
– Risky shift
• Diffusion of responsibility
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37. Groupthink
• Unrealistic group decision making in which
external realities are ignored
• Influenced by
– Cohesiveness of group
– Dynamic group leader
– External threat
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38. Contributors to Groupthink
• Feelings of invulnerability
• Group’s belief in its rightness
• Discrediting of information contrary to
decision
• Pressure for group conformity
• Stereotyping of members of out-group
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39. Mob Behavior and Deindividuation
• Highly emotional crowds may induce “mob
behavior”
• Deindividuation
– Reduced self-awareness and lower concern of
social evaluation
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40. Altruism and the Bystander Effect
• Factors that influence decision to help
– Good mood
– Empathic
– Believe an emergency exists
– Assume responsibility to act
– Know what to do
– Know the people who need help
– Similarity to people who need help
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