PSYCH 202 1st Edition Lecture 11 Introduction to Social Psychology Social situations affect us powerfully both through direct effects on behavior and through how we judge others Social situations are more powerful determinants of behavior than are individual dispositions Social expectations create social reality and internalized individual psychological states When explaining or describing the behavior of others people tend to commit The Fundamental Attribution Error which is o When we blame and judge others for what we have seen with no context for why they did what they did and what they are thinking without any consideration for what they are thinking about A related concept is the Actor Observer Difference o Observers persons explaining the behavior of others tend to commit the fundamental attribution error o Actors persons explaining their own behavior commit the error much less frequently commonly explaining describing their own behavior as related to situational factors Tend to judge and blame and look at others as if some quality about them ex Being an immoral person caused them to engage in the behavior they did Illustration the Self Fulfilling Prophecy o Step 1 perceiver impression formation expectations are both actively formed and passively received Having that thought causes you to behave consistently with that point of view and you express communicate your ideas your bias o Step 2 perceiver behaves consistently with expectations perceiver expectations are communicated expressed often nonverbally and with minimal if any consciousness of sodoing o Step 3 target s behavior adjusts unconsciously reactively to perceiver expectation They talk about you behind your back Your judgments of them may cause them to keep their paranoid and distant behavior Rosenthal s Analysis of four purported causal factors mechanisms video clip o Climate teachers create a warmer climate for students they are in favor of based on what kids say and in nonverbal ways You feel like the teacher likes you o Input teachers teach more material to kids they are in favor of more o Response opportunity kids get more of a chance to respond if they are in favor they are called on more when called on they get to talk for longer amount of time These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor s lecture GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes not as a substitute o Feedback if more is expected of kid kid will get more feedback and more diverse and differentiated feedback teacher won t accept not great quality answers and will help to get kid to understand question teacher won t tell why an answer was wrong as much to a kid with less expectations and potential o Theoretical point social expectations beliefs influenced teacher behavior and relationships which came to shape and construct real external and internal realities for students o Results students who were told they would improve did in fact improve o Brief review of experiment Kids picked to show improvement were randomly selected Only the teacher knew the kids that were selected Given fake Harvard test o IV manipulated teacher s expectations o DV improvement of students who were told they would improve Another self fulfilling prophecy effect videotape of welding students o IV teacher s expectations o DV 1 absenteeism they missed class less If you re there more you can learn more you have more chances of being called on these variables are intercorrelated 2 learned more quickly 3 scored better on test 4 social nomination Who do you like in this class and who do you not like in class Who do you want to work with when you get job Those who were predicted to do better got social credibility and were nominated more Video clip on prejudice the social construction of differences and the formation and internalization of biased stereotypes o Jane Elliot s Riceville Iowa 1968 3rd grade experiment Separated class into two groups Superior blue eyed Inferior brown eyed IV eye color DV s Social Fact becomes objective fact Step 1 manipulation Step 2 abusive racist behaviors Step 3 kids feel inferior and discriminated against depressed upset You start to believe in the way they tell you to feel She is attributing causation to the children rather than looking at the whole situation which was that they were encouraged to be discriminatory fundamental attribution error Indicators of differences are o Institutionalized once the line is drawn between superiority and inferiority o Rules norms expectations are formed o Subjective social reality becomes THE reality o o o o In prejudice and stereotyping we see the operation of a confirmation bias wherein social perceivers differentially attend to and then store in memory social information as illustrated next Experiments are conducted that are in favor of the theory they are testing Seek confirmation of their own views Prejudices grows stronger when a social perceiver encounters information in their social world that is consistent with their prejudiced attitudes WHY When you see something that fits your view If you don t you overlook it your prejudice is unaffected you don t pay attention to it you don t use it to challenge your bias In the face of existing attitudes expectations beliefs prejudice consistent information is notices rehearsed and stored in increasingly elaborated however biased semantic networks which include schemas scripts and stereotypes in LTM