class

1. Essential QuestionEssential Question
•How are individuals
affected and influenced by
groups?

2. Social Psychology
Definition: Sub-field of psychology that
studies of how others influence our
thoughts, feelings and actions
Focuses on…
- How large social forces such as groups,
social roles and norms bring out the best and
worst in all of us
- Explaining why people act differently in the
same situation, and why the same person
may act differently in different situations.

3. Behavior in Groups: The Impact of
Others
Hawthorne Effect (Observer Effect): is a type of reactivity in which individuals
modify or improve an aspect of their behavior in response to their awareness of
being observed.
Social Facilitation: presence of others increases our performance on simple tasks
Ex.
Being watched while doing task vs. being alone when doing task
 better on simple tasks
 worse on complex tasks
Social Impairment: presence of others worsens our performance.
Social Loafing: tendency to put less effort in when working with others

4. Behavior in Groups
•Decision Making
•Group Polarization - when group discussion
leads to a more “polarized” point of view by the
group
•Groupthink - when feel pressure to conform
to the group, stops critical thinking to avoid
dissention in the group
•Ex: Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs

5. Group Polarization

7. Conformity: Social Influence
•Chameleon Effect: our tendency to unconsciously mimic
those around us
• Yawning when others yawn
• Picking up the mood of a happy or sad person
• Dress like your friends
• This automatic mimicry is an ingredient in our ability to
empathize with others

8. Conformity: Asch Line Study
• Conformity - yielding to social pressure
• Asch’s Conclusions
1) subjects often conform to a group, even when the group states
clearly inaccurate conclusions
2) conformity to a group increases with the size of the group, up to
five or six, but only when the group is unanimous in its beliefs

9. Behavior in Groups
•Deindividuation: People lose, to
some extent, their sense of self.
•Bystander Effect: less likely to
help others when in groups than
when alone

10. Percentage of Bystanders Helping
Victims & Time Taken

11. Bystander Apathy: Darley & Latane’s (1968) Smoke
Filled Room
•The Smoke-Filled Room (Latane & Darley, 1970) SS
showed up for an experiment and were asked to fill
out a set of questionnaires. While filling out these
questionnaires, the room began to fill up with smoke.
•SS were tested in three conditions:
• 1) Alone in room
• 2) w/ 2 confederates
• 3) w/ 2 other "real" subjects
•DV: % subjects reporting smoke within 6 mins

12. Diffusion of Responsibility
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
Alone 2 confederates 3 naïve subjects
Percentage
of SS
Reporting
Smoke

13. Diffusion of Responsibility
• Chair Study (Gaertner & Dovidio, 1977)
• Diffusion of responsibility among Whites may be heightened when
the victim is Black
• Chairs fall on a fellow subject (B or W)
• DV: % who help

14. Results
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
White Victim Black Victim
No other witness
2 other witnesses
Percentage
who help

15. ObedienceObedience
Role-playing: people who behaved in certain ways in
scripted scenarios have adopted attitudes in keeping
with those roles. (Philip Zimbardo’s prison experiment
Milgram’s Conclusions
situational pressures can
make people obey
instructions that go against
their belief systems

16. Obedience Experiment

17. Persuasion
• Factors in predicting the effectiveness:
• Source:
• Is the communicator credible, trustworthy, likable, attractive, similar to
individual?
• Message:
• Fear vs. logic: fear is more effective if they only produce a moderate
amount of fear and provide a way to avoid the consequence
• One or two sided: Usually more effective to present both sides if
audience is not yet committed
• Repetition
• Target Audience:
• Personality, expectations, preexisting attitudes, intelligence
• Teens to mid-twenties more susceptible to persuasion

18. Persuasion: Elaboration Likelihood
Model
• The ease of persuading an individual is linked to how they process
information
• People either:
• Elaborate (add information) to what they hear or;
• They do not. Instead paying attention to length, who delivered it,
and how attractive deliver is
• Two types of processing
• Central-route processing: individuals attend to the content of the
message
• Peripheral-route processing: relies on cues outside of the content.
• Message source, length, ect…

19. Compliance: Persuasion Techniques
•Limited time offer
•Everyone is buying!!!
•DEAL!!!
•Reciprocation
•Foot –in-the-door
•Door-in-the-face
•Lowball

20. Compliance: Foot-in-the-Door
• First starts with a smaller request
• Later followed by a greater request
• Individuals are more likely to comply because they want to
behave consistently with previous response

21. Compliance: Door-in-the-Face
• Opposite of Foot-in-the-Door
• Larger request comes first
(Normally refused)
• Followed by smaller, more
reasonable request
• Technique often relies on norm
of reciprocity
• If someone does something for a
person, the person should do
something in return.

22. Compliance: Lowball Technique
• Once commitment is made,
the cost of the commitment
is increased
• “Cost” is not always money.
(time, effort, ect.)
• Think buying a car. After the
initial decision, they often
offer many add-ons.

23. Compliance: That’s-Not-All
• Make an offer, but prior to
person having time to
decide, extras are offered.
• Often used in infomercials
• This also often activates
norm of reciprocity

24. Attitudes & Attitude Formation
- When we observe & respond to the world around us, it is never without
the influence of our attitudes (even if we don’t realize it).
- Advertisers spend millions because they know that
attitudes can be shaped & changed….to their benefit $$
• Definition
Positive, negative, or mixed feelings, based on our beliefs, that
predispose us to respond in a particular way to objects, people, and
events.
Ex: A friend tells you that they believe Coach Stove is a mean teacher. You
may feel dislike for Coach Stove, and act unfriendly.
• Components of Attitudes
• Cognitive: What you believe
• Affective: How you feel about it
• Behavioral: What you are willing to do about it

25. Components of Attitudes

26. Cognitive Dissonance
Definition: Sense of discomfort or distress that occurs when a
person’s behavior does not correspond to that person’s
attitudes.
Festinger and Carlsmith’s (1959) Experiment
• Asked to do hour long boring task
• Offered $1 or $20 to say it’s fun
• Results: Larger payment led to less dissonance b/c high payment could
account for ‘lying’.
• Those paid $1 convinced themselves the task was interesting and
fun. $1 was not enough to justify lying so those people changed
their attitude to saying they enjoyed the task
Example:
After you go to all the trouble of buying a new house you start to like it more

27. Social Categorization and ImplicitSocial Categorization and Implicit
Personality TheoryPersonality Theory
• Social Categorization:: assignment of a person one has just met to a
category based on characteristics in common with people you have
experienced in the past
• Stereotype: set of characteristics that people believe are shared by
all members of a group
• Implicit Personality Theory:: set of assumptions that people have
about how different types of people, personality traits, and actions
are related.

28. Attribution Theory (Heider, 1958)
Definition: Inferences that people draw about the causes
of events, others’ behavior, and their own behavior
Dispositional Attribution: we attribute a
person’s behavior to an internal state
(personality, abilities, etc.)
Situational Attribution: attributing a
person’s behavior to an external state
(stress, abuse, hardship, wealth, etc.)
• Function: People like to explain and understand behavior and the
events that impact their lives
• Attributions are made when an event is unusual and personal
• “Just world” phenomenon

29. Bias in Attribution
• Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE): Observer’s bias in favor of
internal attributions in explaining others’ behavior
Ex: Someone else drops out of college because “they couldn’t handle the
pressure or work load” – internal.
• Actor–observer Bias: An extension of FAE. Explains the errors that
one makes when forming attributions about behavior(Jones &
Nisbett, 1971).
• When people judge their own behavior, and they are the actor, they are
more likely to attribute their actions to the particular situation than to a
generalization about their personality.
• When an observer is explaining the behavior of another person (the
actor), they are more likely to attribute this behavior to the actors’ overall
disposition rather than to situational factors.
Ex. You drop out of college because “tuition was raised and you had to help
support your family” – external

30. Bias in Attribution
• Self-Serving Bias: Tendency to attribute one’s successes to personal factors
and one’s failures to situational factors
• Defensive Attribution: Tendency to blame the victim for their misfortune, so
that one feels less likely to be victimized in a similar way
• In-group bias- tendency to favor your own group over the out-group

31. Attribution
Example

32. Covariation Model of Attribution

33. Person Perception
• Definition: The process of forming impressions of others
• Impressions are influenced by:
• Physical appearance
• good looking people are seen as intelligent, friendly, and
confident
• Schemas: Organized clusters of ideas about categories of social
events and people
• 1st
Impressions: self fulfilling prophecy, primacy
• Stereotypes: gender, race, job

34. What conclusions are drawn?

35. Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination
• Stereotype: Thoughts and beliefs held about people strictly
because of their membership in a group
• Prejudice: A negative attitude held toward members of a group
• Discrimination: Negative actions towards a group
Theory in which the formation of a person’s identity within a
particular social group is explained by social categorization, social
group is explained by social categorization, social identity, and
social comparison
Social Identity Theory

36. Stereotype VulnerabilityStereotype Vulnerability
• The effect that people’s awareness of the stereotypes associated
with their social groups has on their behavior
• Self fulfilling prophecySelf fulfilling prophecy: the tendency of one’s expectations to affect
one’s behavior in such a way as to make the expectations more likely
to occur.

37. Essential QuestionEssential Question
•How are individuals
affected and influenced by
groups?

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40. ScapegoatingScapegoating
• Scapegoat: a person or a group, typically a member of an out-group,
who serves as a target for frustration and negative emotions of
members of the in-group.

41. Attraction
• Contributors to Attraction
• Proximity: Physical closeness (mere exposure)
• Physical Attractiveness: Pleasant physical appearance (often
different depending on culture), signs of health such as symmetry
(universal)
• Similarity: Commonalities between two people
• Opposites?: Complementary Qualities
• Reciprocity: The tendency to like those who like you

42. Triangular Conception of Love
As proposed by
Robert Sternberg

43. Aggression & Altruism
Aggression: Any form of behavior intended
to harm or injure another living being
Where does aggression come from?
- Instincts - Genes - Brain & Nervous System
- Substance Abuse - Mental Disorders - Hormones & NTs
- Aversive Stimuli (e.g. noise, heat, pain, bullying, frustration),
culture & learning, Violent media/video games
Altruism: Actions designed to help others
with no obvious benefit to the helper
Why are we altruistic?
Evolutionary Perspective: favors survival of genes
Egoistic Model: motivated by anticipated gain
Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis: sometimes for selfish gains,
other times truly selfless & motivated by concern for others
Kitty Genovese
Story…diffusion of
responsibility…

44. Candid Camera: Social Psychology at
Work