Chapter 1 What is Social Psychology

Social Psychology NotesChapter 1 What is Social Psychology?  Scientific study of the real or imagined (social norms) influence of other people.  Emphasis on Social Influence: o The effect that the words, actions, or mere presence of other people has on our thoughts, feelings, attitudes, or behavior Social Psychology, Philosophy, Science, and Common Sense  Social psychology vs. philosophy o Address many of the same questions (e.g. social perception, attitude formation, love) o Social psychology explores them scientifically (empirical data, reach conclusions)  Social psychology vs. “common sense” o Common sense = folk wisdom (e.g. opposites attract) o Social psychologists predict behaviors by forming hypotheses and testing them scientifically (challenge folk) How Social Psychology Differs from Its Closest Cousins: (Table 1.1) Social Psychology versus Personality Psychology  Focus on individual differences: qualities (traits) of people that make them different from others and contribute to their behaviors  Both study social factors that influence human behavior  Ignores the powerful role played by social influence* o e.g. why the people at Jonestown ended their own lives and their children’s by drinking poison Social Psychology versus Other Social Sciences  Difference in level of analysis o Others emphasize anthropology, political science, sociology o Social sciences: How broad social, economic, political, and historical factors influence events in a given society (e.g. factors affecting homicide rate)  Social Psychology o Level of analysis is the individual in the context of a social situation Social Psychology versus Sociology  Sociology: Study of groups, organizations, and societies, rather than individuals o Also looks at the influence of social factors on behavior o Focuses on society at large (what macro conditions would cause …) The Goal of Social Psychology  To identify universal properties of human nature that make everyone susceptible to social influence o e.g. when frustrated, under what conditions will people aggress against another person  Goal of Sociology- to identify why a particular society or group produces behavior (e.g. aggression) in its members o e.g. The effect of dictatorship on societal violence The Power of the Situation (Ever do something out of character because of the situation?)  We often fail to consider the influence of the situation on our own and (especially) others’ behavior. The Importance of Explanation  Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE)- Tendency to explain our own and others’ behavior entirely in terms of internal dispositions or personality traits (e.g. Car cuts you off: they’re an asshole) o Underestimating the power of social influence o Ex. Prison- What comes to mind when you think of guards/prisoners?  Perhaps people become guards to exercise their cruel and callous personalities (or other dispositional views)  We might imagine prisoners to be rebellious or docile (dispositional) o There are pictures in our heads of what these people look like (schemas): most of us believe that they are both quite different from us in character and personality. Underestimating the Power of Social Influence- Why?  We gain a feeling of false security (“I could never do horrific behaviors.”) o Doing so may increase our vulnerability to potentially destructive social influence The Importance of Interpretation  Behavior in a given situation is not determined by the objective conditions of a situation but rather how they perceive it (construal)  Construal- the way in which people perceive, comprehend, and interpret the social world o Edward Snowden Subjectivity of the Social Situation  Emphasis on construal has its roots in Gestalt Psychology o School of psych. Stressing the importance of studying the subjective way in which an object appears in people’s minds rather than the objective, physical attributes of the object o Proposed that people solve problems and process information by looking at the whole, not the individual elements of the objective stimulus o Perceptual organization involves the principle of “gestalt” Gestalt Psychology  Formulated by German psychologists in the early 20th century  Late 1930s, several of these psychologists (e.g. Lewin) emigrated to the U.S. to escape Nazi Regime  Kurt Lewin- Founding father of modern experimental social psychology o Applied gestalt principles to social perception (how people form impressions of and make inferences about others Where Construals Come From: Basic Human Motives  Two Central Motives: o Need to feel good about ourselves o Need to be accurate  Motives may tug in opposite directions, creating internal conflict (e.g. when an accurate view of world would reveal we behaved selfishly, foolishly, immorally) The Self-Esteem Motive: The Need to Feel Good About Ourselves  Most people have a strong need to maintain reasonably high self-esteem o Self-Esteem- People’s evaluations of their own self-worth, the extent to which they view themselves as good, competent, and decent  People often distort the world in order to feel good about themselves instead of representing the world accurately (e.g. reasons for a break-up or immoral act) Suffering and Self-Justification  Humans are motivated to maintain self-esteem, in part by justifying (e.g. distorting) their past behavior  The need to view themselves favorably leads people to do things that might seem surprising (preferring people and things for whom they have suffered)  Research has shown that the more unpleasant the procedure (e.g. extreme hazing) the participants underwent to get into a group, the better they liked the group o E.g. heaven’s gate cult- WHY  To decide I don’t like the group after much effort and suffering would create great cognitive dissonance The Social Cognition Motive: The Need to Be Accurate  Social Cognition- How people select, interpret, remember, and use social information to make judgments and decisions o We try to gain accurate understandings so we can make effective judgments and decisions o But we typically act on the basis of incompletely and inaccurately interpreted information Cereal Box Short Cuts  We rely on a series of expectations and other mental short-cuts in making judgments about the world around us, from important life decisions to which cereal to buy at the store, a conclusion with which advertisers and marketers are very well aware. Expectations About the Social World  Our expectations and other mental short-cuts can even change the nature of the social world  Self-Fulfilling prophecy- Based on one’s expectations, acting in ways to make one’s predictions come true o Teachers expected certain students to do better- may have caused them to