Chapter 13 Psychology Notes Social Psychology Part 1 Social Psychology your friends How do you behave when you are with your grandparents Is it different when you are with How do you behave when you are at work compared to when you are at a party Have you ever listened to a political speech and felt angry or excited or ready to act only to feel less passionate and reactive later When you were a kid were you ever mean to a kid you didn t necessarily dislike because everyone else was and you wanted to be part of the group People real or imagined and social situations affect human behavior and thought Social psychology studies the phenomenon of others influencing human behavior Cultural Animal or Eusocial Human beings are a social species We are heavily reliant on other people for our survival and well being And the level of complexity of human social groups far outstrips that of other mammals Cultural Animal Eusocial We Need People Kip Williams Cyberball Social psychologist Roy Baumeister argues that we aren t merely social animals but our behavior is shaped by culture as well Human society has division of labor cooperative care for young and social hierarchy According to E O Wilson this makes humanity like super organism Social rejection causes pain in the same brain areas associated with physical pain A subject comes into a lab They start playing catch with two other subjects Eventually the other two start passing only to each other The mood and the self esteem of the third person drops dramatically Williams now does this with an online game It works when people know it s just a game It works when people are tricked into thinking the other two players are part of a disliked out group like the KKK Why Does Ostracism Hurt If we need other people to survive and reproduce ostracism can be dangerous in a small relatively isolated group like the ones early humans lived in Early people lived in groups of around 150 people Alpha Beta Hierarchy Doesn t Describe Human Social Structure This is a popular psychology myth I might as well dispel now While humans do have social hierarchies the dominant Alpha male structures fits humans relatively poorly o Examples The Most Powerful People in the World Crippled person in Egypt Old Pope Theodora prostitute Intelligent Alpha Males Who Ended Up Dead or In Prison Creaser was stabbed to death Napoleon family chose to go against him and allied with the opposing war wasn t very social Social Status Prestige Bests Dominance Status is complicated in human society and can be raised by having control over resources having a valuable skill the religious beliefs of a society interpersonal skill and strength dominance when strength is a valuable asset Social Comparison Theory We evaluate our abilities and beliefs by comparing them with those of others There are two types of social comparison upward and downward When we compare our abilities with those who are superior in some domain Comparing my When we compare our abilities to people who are less skilled in a domain Comparing my math Upward Social Comparison math skills to Stephen Hawking Downward Social Comparison abilities to those of a two year old Above And Below Average Effect assume we are below average at it Above and Below Average Effect When a task seems easy we assume we are above average at it When it seems hard we When a task seems easy we assume we are above average at it When it seems hard we assume we are below average at it Above Average Driving Most people think they are good at driving So they take more risks than their skills warrant Below Average Mass Hysteria Conformity Imposter s syndrome is the tendency for highly accomplished people to believe they are frauds Mass Hysteria When Using Others for Information Goes Wrong We look to others for information about our own abilities and social standing We also look to others in order to figure out how to feel about our environment Mass hysteria is when a few people panic about something that isn t threatening and it causes a rash of panic and reports Orson Welles Leonard Paez and Eduardo Alcaraz and War of the Worlds Another consequence of the power of social influences is that people are susceptible to conformity People conform to varying degrees Many of the early pioneers in conformity research were Jewish American psychologists who were disturbed by what is still one of the most troubling questions of the 21st century IN 1932 Germany was one of the most civilized and educated countries in the world Germany invented the modern PhD degree and people from all over the world traveled to Germany to get German degrees Conformity as a Topic of Study Germany 1932 Germany After 1933 Nazis took over Germany How Did Evil Take Over a Country The Asch Study Why did an educated technologically advanced country end up starting a massive world war and exterminating millions of its own people He had a participant sit in a group with fake participants They were shown pictures of lines Exhibit 1 was alike Exhibit A and there were people that were actors and they purposely chose wrong answers and there were people that choose the wrong answers because they conformed The actors would give the wrong answer This happened 12 times About 75 of the respondents conformed to the wrong answer at least once Across trials participants conformed about 37 of the time Asch found that group size increased conformity up to around five people Conformity was more likely if all of the actors gave the wrong answer The Milgram Study The Power of Authority Milgram rented out a sketchy office space and put an ad for a paid psychology experiment The Milgram Study Student teacher and experimenter At 75 volts learner grunts with pain Later he claims to have a heart condition At 330 volts he yells let me out of here At 345 volts he goes silent He s ostensibly dead About 62 of participates shock him up to 450 volts Video and audio recordings reveal many participants were visibly upset they had killed some on but continued to comply with the experimenter anyway We Were Just Following Orders Many war crimes like the Holocaust and My Lai Massacre happen because allow person s of perceived authority to convince them that they are not responsible for orders they were given What Reduced Conformity Another Person Stands Up Breaking the Echo Chamber Groupthink Group Polarization My Advice Table 13 2 has the various versions of the experiment and many things reduced conformity Only one reduced