CH14 social psychology Social cognition behavior influenced by others despite social rules already set Ex elevator trick people walking in and facing the other way causes the next person to follow even though they know they re facing the wrong way Social pressure to conform Asch s social pressure experiment1 line on the left Look at the 3 lines and determine which line is equal in length with the left line Only 1 person is a subject the others were placed by the experimenters to say the wrong answer The 1 subj yields to the wrong answers in 37 of the critical trials but through interviews they went along with the group for different reasons they must be right there s 4 of them and 1 of me or goes along to avoid discomfort with the group even though he knows he s wrong With a partner the subject says the right answer saying that the other person had no influence on their decision Only 5 Only the 1 subject was told to write down their answer reduced their anxiety to conform the group wont see what they write so they write the right answer Social comparison look for others that guide us in our thinking o Ex are you going to vote for her Do you see that Cognitive dissonance avoid discomfort act o Ex there was a cult that believed the earth was going to be destroyed aliens would save them Knew the day and time it would happen Everyone assembled at the spot the aliens would come and get them When the aliens didn t show up they fell into an uncomfortable state The leaders had a meeting and said the aliens didn t come because they decided to save the whole planet Perceiving others o Forming impressions making good impressions o Pattern perception look for consistency across all the situations the person is in Ex seeing the same person in class union downtown bars Central traits some traits are more important than others they guide us o Wrote stories about individuals and write a list of traits o Intelligent skillful warm determined practical cautious etc o Intelligent skillful cold determined practical cautious etc These traits acted as central to determining completely different stories First impressions Illusory correlations from first impressions we have a guided perception and look for those characteristics o Ex seeing someone with their fly down and thinking they re doofy then we look for doofy traits Attributions when we make judgments about other people Attribution process Situation Disposition o Based on personality o The way we act is situationally determined Ex someone knocked your stuff over accidently what a jerk He s not nice o Fundamental attribute error you have to think about consider the situation Crowd Behavior behaving differently with a crowd than when alone Pluralistic ignorance belief that they re alone in thinking we shouldn t be doing this But in fact everyone is thinking the same thing o you re the only one that thinks it o When you think it s a bad idea but no one else thinks its bad so you do it Diffusion of responsibility the crowd is responsible you are not o Each individual person doesn t feel invested in responsibility Deindividuation o Ex KKK wearing masks to unite them as a group promote Deindividuation o Anonymity losing your sense of self o Social facilitation vs social loafing Social facilitation ex cheerleaders Social loafing ex group projects the ones who don t do anything in the group The responsibility spreads out and they don t feel personally invested Altruism The case of Kitty Genovese lack of altruism o Kitty was stabbed by a man repeatedly then dragged away and raped 38 people were watched in an apartment and they didn t do anything or call the cops o The crowd situation influenced them to act not act Bystander effect o Ambiguity weren t sure it was a real attack thought it was fake acting people fooling around o Pluralistic ignorance maybe it is real but these other people don t seem worried I guess it s fake o Diffusion of responsibility somebody will do something doesn t have to be me nobody did anything Nobody felt personally invested to do anything Panicky crowds Ex someone yells Fire even if it s not really a fire and smoke comes through the door people will run out the door and someone falls they ll keep running over them Governed by situational variables Try and understand situations doesn t mean people are innocent but try Obedience Obedience and personality Obedience and situation Milgram o Being another person s agent Milgram experiment man in lab coat the agent saying Go in continue to use as their agent to say they were just following orders o Reinterpretation routinization Milgram Experiment raising the volts by increments of 15 it becomes a routine If it s okay at 15volts it s okay at 30volts etc Makes it difficult to stop because it was okay during the last increment routine o Good manners Please sir go check on that man in there Please sir Polite Almost don t want to stop because they feel like it d be bad manners o Entrapment trapped in the behavior because the experimenters created the situation so perfectly I had no choice o Dehumanization Learner and teacher psychology distances the volunteers from the man being shocked shocking the learner instead of shocking a man Ex Nazi behavior tested for psychopathology to see if they had personality disorders Came out normal situational variables were manipulated to get Guards to follow orders to murder and torture o Regular people normal people can be manipulated The cultural context What is culture o Sum total of learning behavior in any given society What do cultural psychologists do o Look at different cultures to see if there are differences in all kinds of domains ex parenting child rearing courtship marriage patterns how we think feel about the elderly gender differences psychopathology sexual orientation etc Examples of cultural differences o Different cultures have different ways of behaving that may seem strange to us Gender and culture Circumcision o Few contradictory medical reasoning but majority of people in U S do it o Urinary tract infection prone o STI partners of men who are not circumcised who happen to be HIV the partners are more likely to get HIV o Cultural reasons even though we circumcise based on medical reasons other developed countries do not Clitoradectomy removal of clitoris or sewing the labia together o In other cultures this is common practice but it seems horrible to us Social interaction and culture Breastfeeding most women stop breast feeding