PSYCHOLOGY CH 12 BOOK NOTES 12 1 What is Social Psychology situation Social Psychology examines how people affect one another and it looks at the power of the Intrapersonal emotions attitudes the self social cognition Interpersonal helping behavior aggression prejudice discrimination attraction relationships Thoughts feelings and behaviors are influenced by social situations We take social cues from others Situational and dispositional influences on behavior o Behavior product of situation and the person o Situationism behavior and actions are determined by intermediate environment and surroundings o Dispositionism behavior determined by internal factors Fundamental Attribution Error o American culture favors this approach to explaining human behavior o Tend to believe that behavior trait fail to recognize situational variables their state Is the fundamental attribution error a universal phenomenon o People in invidualistic cultures have the greatest tendency to commit fundamental attribution error US UK Canada o Collectivistic cultures focus on communal relationships family friends community etc East Asia Latin America Africa Actor observer bias o Why do we underestimate situation of others Don t have all the info only what s observable o Tend to provide more dispositional explanations for friends behaviors Self Serving Bias o Following an outcome attributions that enable us to see ourselves in favorable light o In our best interest to use dispositional attribution to protect self esteem o Attribution belief about the cause of a result 3 main dimensions Locus of control internal vs external Stability vs unstable unlikely to change Controllability vs uncontrollable Ex Sports team victory Team is talented internal Consistently works hard stable Uses effective strategies controllable Ex Sports team loss Other team more experienced players unfair refs external Other team played at home unstable Cold weather affected performance uncontrollable Just world hypothesis o Consequence of dispositional explanations victim blame o Just world hypothesis belief that people get the outcomes they deserve o Allows us to feel world is predictable and have control over life outcomes 12 2 Self Presentation Social Roles o Pattern of behavior that is expected of a person in a given setting or group o We have several social roles o Defined by culturally shared knowledge o Behavior will likely be different when engaging in different roles Ex With parents with spouse Social norms Scripts o Groups expectation of what is appropriate and acceptable behavior for its members how they are supposed to behave think o A persons knowledge about the sequence of events expected in a specific setting Cultural norms Zimbardo s Stanford Prison Experiment o Demonstrated power of social roles social norms and scripts o Mock prison made from 24 healthy male college student volunteers paid 15 a day o Half prisoners half guards o Supposed to last 2 weeks didn t last that long prisoners revolted at day 2 study ended day 6 o Guards became harassing and abusive o Prisoners were stripped from their privacy and comfort o Some prisoners experienced mental breakdowns 12 3 Attitudes and persuasion Attitude evaluation of a person idea object o Three components Affective component feelings Behavioral component effect of attitude on behavior Cognitive component belief and knowledge What is Cognitive Dissonance o Maintaining positive self esteem powerful motivator of human behavior o Psychological discomfort arising from holding two or more inconsistent attitudes behaviors or cognitions thoughts beliefs opinions o When we experience a conflict in our behaviors attitudes or beliefs that runs counter to our positive self perceptions we experience psychological discomfort dissonance o Can also cause physiological arousal and activate regions of brain important in emotions and cognitive functioning o Ways to reduce cognitive dissonance Changing our discrepant behavior Changing our cognitions through rationalizations or denial Adding a new cognition o Difficult initiation into a group influences us to like the group more due to justification of The effect of initiation effort Persuasion o Process of changing our attitude toward something based on some kind of communication Most comes from outside forces Yale attitude change approach o Second world war Carl Hovland extensively researched persuasion for the US ARMY o Continued research at YALE o describes conditions under which people tend to change their attitudes o influences of persuasiveness of a message source content credibility of speaker o deemed trustworthy o more credible more persuasive attractiveness of speaker credibility of messenger subtlety quality of being important but not obvious o subtle more persuasive than direct messages sidedness non biased timing characteristics of audience attention intelligence self esteem age o lower intelligence easier persuaded o moderate self esteem easier persuaded vs high and low Elaboration Likelihood Model o Describes dynamics of persuasion o young adults easier persuaded o Central route logic driven and uses data and facts to convince people of an arguments Works best when audience is analytical and willing to engage in processing the worthiness info o Peripheral route Indirect route that uses peripheral cues to associate positivity with the message Relies on association with positive characteristics emotions Ex Product placement Foot in the door technique o Persuader gets a person to agree to bestow a small favor or to buy a small item only later to request a larger favor or purchase of a bigger item o Ex Election tactics 12 4 Conformity Compliance and Obedience Conformity o Solomon asch experiment how people are affected by the thoughts and behaviors of other people does not agree with the group o Conformity is the change In a persons behavior to go along with the group even id he o The size of the majority the presence of another dissenter and the public or relatively private nature of responses are key influences on conformity Compliance o when someones vote changes if it is made public vs private o Form of conformity o Going along with a request or demand even if you do not agree with the request Normative social influence people conform to the group to fit in to feel good to be accepted into the group Informational social influence people conform because they believe the group is competent and has the correct information