Psychology 111 Chapter 13 Social Psychology Study Guide social psychology the study of how people influence others behaviors beliefs and atti tudes may cause a person to doubt some of the things that they hear People tend to believe that others are vulnerable to sisal influences and fail to realizes that they themselves are vul nerable to such influences too Humans are a social species made to form social connections 150 the magic number the approximate size of most human social groups and the limit to the number of people we can know reasonably well Social Comparison Theory theory that we seek to evaluate our abilities and beliefs by com paring them with those of others upward when one compares themselves to someone that they view as a superior in some downward comparing yourself to somebody that views you as inferior can give one a boost way of self concept mass hysteria an outbreak of irrational behavior that is spread by social forces Mass hyste ria frequently leads to collective delusions or in many people believing in bizarre things that are not true urban legends false stories repeated so many times that people start to believe they are true Rumors tend to become less accurate as they are spread and are often surprising but plausible People focus on negative emotions with urban legends an example would be dis gust social facilitation enhancement of performance brought about by the presence of others Example bikers bike faster when they are racing with other bikers social disruption the worsening of performance in the presence of others especially when it comes to performing a difficult task An example would be choking up when going a presenta tion attributions assigning causes to behaviors The Fundamental Attribution Error internal vs external causes When looking at other peo ple s behaviors we overestimate the impact of dispositional influences or underestimate the impact of situation influences dispositional influences qualities of character or personality conformity tendency for people to alter their behavior as a result of group pressure The Asch Studies Set Up participants were brought in under the guise of a study on per ceptual judgements The subjects in the groups were asked to match and compare the lengths of the lines The Catch Confederates selected the incorrect line Results Over the 12 trials 37 of the time people selected the wrong line Conformity dropped when at least one other person was wrong deindividuation tendency for people to engage in uncharacteristic behavior when they are stripped of their usual identities This can result from feeling anonymous or feeling like one is lacking personal responsibility An example is the actions a person may perform when wear ing war paint The Stanford Prison Study The Set Up Normal young men were recruited fora two week psychological study of prison life The participants were randomly assigned to either be a prisoner or a guard The basement of the Stanford Psychology Building was converted into a mock prison The Study prisoners were arrested at their houses then dressed as pris oners and referred to by number instead of name Results By the second day of the experi ment the guars started treating the prisoners in a cruel way and they began to punish the prisoners The prisoners started to rebel which only angered the guards more After 6 days the experiment needed to be put to an end because prisoners started to have nervous breakdowns groupthink an emphasis on group unanimity at the expense of critical thinking The desire for everyone to agree Groups tend to lean towards focusing on shared information Group think can be dangerous or lead to dumb ideas group polarization tendency of group discussion to strengthen the dominant positions held by individual group members Can be treated by appointing a devil s advocate or having an independent expert evaluate decisions obedience following instructions from those of higher authority obedience is an essential part of our everyday lives The Milligram Paradigm Stanley Milligram was curious as to how the Holocaust could have occurred He believed it was simply the result of wicked minds Set Up Volunteers were brought in and told that they would randomly be assigned to a teacher or learner to test the effect of the punishments on learning The Study The teachers were supposed to shock the learners when they were wrong With each failure the level of the shock was in creased Most teachers stopped shocking at 150 volts Pluralistic ignorance the error of assuming that no one else perceives a situation the way we do Failure to recognize an emergency Diffusion of Responsibility reduced feeling of responsibility in the presence of others The more people there are around the less responsible you feel altruism the helping of others for unselfish reasons There are many factors that influence such behavior factors such as empathy inability to escape a situation characteristics of the victim in a good mood etc aggression behavior the is intended to hurt others physically or mentally Aggression can also be influence by many factors such as gender cultural differences outside factors etc belief confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rig orous proof attitude a belief with an emotional component When do attitudes predict behavior When attitude is highly accessible firmly held and stable over time if a person is low self monitoring or personality traits that asses the extent to which people s behavior reflects their true feelings and attitudes cognitive dissonance unpleasant mental experience of tension resulting from two conflict ing thoughts or beliefs When this tension is present we are motivated to reduce it The Peg Turning Experiment People do a really boring experiment and either get paid a lot or very little for doing it Those who were paid less liked the experiment more than those who were paid more because the people who got paid less had to convince themselves they liked it dual process model focuses on two main routes to persuasion the central route and the peripheral route central route evaluate the merits of something focus on informational content be moti vated to clearly analyze when making big decisions lead to stronger attitudes peripheral route focus on surface aspects of the argument Make snap judgments not mo tivated to carefully analyze and make big decisions weaker attitudes but effective short term foot in the door a persuasion
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