Chapter 12 Social Psychology

Chapter 12: Social Psychology Nonverbal behavior • Researchers have found that people can make accurate judgments based on only a few seconds of observation o Thin slices of behavior are powerful cues for forming impressions of others • Student assessments of college instructors’ teaching based on just 30-second film clips correspond accurately with end-of-the-semester ratings (Ambady & Rosenthal, 1993) • Videotapes of judges giving instructions to juries reveal that a judge’s nonverbal actions can predict whether a jury will find the defendant guilty or not guilty (Rosenthal, 2003) Facial expressions • One of the first things we usually notice about another person is the face • The face communicates information such as o Emotional state o Interest o Trustworthiness • Eye contact is important in social situations, though how we perceive it depends on our culture Attributions are our explanations for events or actions, including other people’s behavior Types of attributions • Dispositional attributions: People’s explanations for why events or actions occur that refer to people’s internal characteristics, such as abilities, traits, moods, or efforts • Situational attributions: People’s explanations for why events or actions occur that refer to external events, such as the weather, luck, accidents, or other people’s actions Attributions • Just world hypothesis: making attributions in a way that lead a person to think that victims must have done something to justify what happened to them Bias in attributions • Fundamental attribution error: in explaining other people’s behavior, the tendency to o Overemphasize personality traits o Underestimate situational factors • Actor/observer bias: o When interpreting our own behavior, we tend to focus on situations o When interpreting other people’s behavior, we tend to focus on dispositional attributes Stereotypes and perception • Stereotypes are mental shortcuts for rapid processing of social information • Once we form stereotypes, we tend to maintain them Stereotypes and perception • People are often not conscious of their stereotypes; they are also unaware of the influence of stereotypes on their perceptions • Stereotypes’ influence on perception may produce negative outcomes o Study by Payne (2001) o The Colgate University campus lock-down in 2017 Self-fulfilling prophecy • People’s tendency to behave in ways that confirm their own expectations or other people’s expectations o Rosenthal and Jacobsens’ (1968) bloomers study o Gentrup et al. (2020) found that self-fulfilling prophecy creates both positive negative teachers’ expectations for students Stereotype threat • The worry or fear about confirming negative stereotypes related to a person’s own group • It causes distraction and anxiety, interfering with performance by affecting memory and motivation Stereotype threat • Stereotyped groups perform worse than nonstereotyped groups when they are being evaluated • Interventions to reduce the effects of stereotype threat are often successful • Strengthening peer relations and social connections can help prevent stereotype threat • There is substantial evidence that interventions to minimize the effect of stereotype threat can enhance performance of negatively stereotyped groups on academic tests Prejudice • Negative feelings, opinions, and beliefs associated with a stereotype Discrimination • The inappropriate and unjustified treatment of people based on the groups they belong to Ingroup/outgroup • Those groups that we belong to are ingroups • Those that we do not belong to are outgroups Ingroup/outgroup bias • Social identity theory: our group memberships are an important part of how we view ourselves • Ingroup favoritism: • One consequence of categorizing people as ingroup or outgroup members • Strong ingroup favoritism even if the groups are formed by chance Competition and cooperation • Social psychology may be able to offer strategies for promoting intergroup harmony and producing greater tolerance for outgroups o Sherif and colleagues’ (1961) Robbers Cave study Cooperation in the classroom • In the jigsaw classroom developed by Eliot Aronson in the 1970s, students work together in mixed-race or mixed-sex groups • More than 800 studies of the jigsaw classroom have demonstrated that this program leads to more positive treatment of other ethnicities Perspective taking • Thinking about what other people believe and how they feel can reduce bias and help smooth potentially awkward interactions • Attitudes: People’s evaluations of objects, events, or ideas o Simple attitude: Your behavior is consistent with your attitude o Complex attitude: Your behavior is not consistent with your attitude Attitudes can predict behavior • In general, the stronger and more personally relevant an attitude is, the more likely it is to predict behavior • Attitude accessibility: ease or difficulty of retrieving an attitude from memory Attitudes develop in three ways 1. Mere exposure • Mere exposure effect: The increase in liking due to repeated exposure Attitudes develop in three ways 2. Learning • Because our associations between things and their meanings can change, our attitudes can be conditioned Attitudes develop in three ways 3. Socialization • Attitudes are shaped through socialization o Caregivers, peers, teachers, religious leaders, politicians, and media figures guide our attitudes about many things Explicit attitude • An attitude that a person is consciously aware of and can report Implicit attitude • An attitude that influences a person’s feelings and behavior at an unconscious level • Often revealed indirectly through behaviors • Implicit Association Test (IAT) o Measures how quickly a person associates concepts or objects with positive or negative words Cognitive dissonance • An uncomfortable mental state due to a contradiction between two attitudes or between an attitude and a behavior Cognitive dissonance theory • According to Festinger’s theory, cognitive dissonance occurs when there is a contradiction between two attitudes or between an attitude and a behavior o A basic assumption of cognitive dissonance theory is that dissonance causes anxiety and tension • Postdecisional dissonance o Cognitive dissonance also arises when we have positive attitudes about different options but must choose one option Justification of effort • Insufficient justification effect o Classic Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) study o Helps explain why people are willing to subject themselves to humiliating experiences (e.g., hazing) Justification of effort • Explain why people are willing to subject themselves to humiliating experiences such as hazing Persuasion • The active and conscious effort to change an attitude through the transmission of a message Three factors affect persuasiveness: 1. The source (who delivers the message) 2. The content (what the message says) 3. The receiver (who processes the messages) Two routes of persuasion • Elaboration likelihood model o Central route: A method of persuasion that uses high elaboration—people pay attention to the arguments and consider all the information in the message. This method usually results in the development of stronger attitudes o Peripheral route: A method of persuasion that uses low elaboration—people minimally process the message. This method usually results in the development of weaker attitudes Perhaps the single most important lesson from social psychology is that the power of the social situation is much greater than most people believe • • Social facilitation: When the mere presence of others enhances performance Social loafing: The tendency for people to work less hard in a group than when working alone • • Social facilitation: When the mere presence of others enhances performance Social loafing: The tendency for people to work less hard in a group than when working alone Deindividuation • A state of reduced individuality, self-awareness, and attention to personal standards • This phenomenon may occur when people are part of a group Group decision making • Risky-shift effect: groups often make riskier decisions than individuals do • Group polarization: if most of the group members are somewhat cautious, then the group becomes even more cautious • Groupthink: used to describe an extreme form of group polarization; it typically occurs when a group is o Under intense pressure o Facing external threats o Biased in a particular direction Conformity • The altering of your own behaviors and opinions to match those of other people or to match other people’s expectations Normative and informational influences • Normative influence occurs when—to be liked, to be accepted, or to avoid looking foolish—we go along with what the group does • Informational influence occurs when we assume that the behavior of a group provides information about the right way to act Solomon Asch’s study on conformity (1955) • People conformed because they did not want to look foolish by going against the group o They conformed due to normative influence Social norms • Expected standards of conduct, which influence behavior o Social norms indicate which behavior is appropriate in a given situation and also how people will respond to those who violate norms o Groups tend to enforce social norms Compliance • The tendency to agree to do things requested by others, which includes these three powerful strategies: 1. Foot-in-the-door o If you agree to a small request, you are more likely to comply with a large request 2. Door-in-the-face o If you refuse a large request, you are more likely to comply with a smaller request 3. Lowballing o When you agree to buy a product for a certain price, you are likely to comply with a request to pay more for the product Obedience • Factors that influence people to follow the orders given by an authority Milgram’s classic experiment on obedience • A recent replication of the study found that 70 percent of the participants were obedient up to the maximum voltage in the experiment • Ethical considerations • Rethinking Milgram’s research Aggression • Any behavior that involves the intention to harm someone else Biology and the situation affect aggression • The biology of aggression has been studied primarily in nonhuman animals • Several lines of evidence suggest that serotonin is especially important in the control of aggressive behavior Biology and the situation affect aggression • Frustration-aggression hypothesis: The more frustrated we feel, the more likely we are to act aggressively o The more our goals are blocked, the greater our frustration, and therefore the greater our aggression Social and cultural factors affect aggression • Aggression may be part of human nature, but society and culture influence people’s tendencies to commit acts of physical violence • • Prosocial: Acting in ways that tend to benefit others Prosocial behaviors include o Offering assistance o Doing favors o Paying compliments o Resisting the temptation to insult others o Simply being pleasant and cooperative Altruism: The act of providing help when it is needed, with no apparent reward for doing so • People are most altruistic toward those whose genes they share • Reciprocal helping o One animal helps another because the other may return the favor in the future Bystander effect • The failure to offer help to people in need o The case of Kitty Genovese o Latané and Darley’s smoke study Years of research have indicated four major reasons for bystander effect intervention: 1. Bystanders expect other bystanders to help 2. People fear making social blunders in ambiguous situations 3. People are less likely to help when we are anonymous and can remain so 4. Deciding whether to help involves weighing two factors: • How much personal harm do you risk by helping someone? • What benefits might you have to forgo if we help? Proximity • Proximity means how often people come into contact • It might have its effects because we like what is familiar Similarity • People with similar attitudes, values, interests, backgrounds, personalities, and levels of attractiveness tend to like each other more than people who are dissimilar Physical attractiveness • • • Some standards of beauty, such as preferences for particular body types, appear to change over time and across cultures Most people find symmetrical faces more attractive than asymmetrical ones “What is beautiful is good” stereotype Admirable personal characteristics • We tend to especially like people who have admirable personality characteristics Passionate love: A type of romantic relationship that includes intense longing and sexual desire Companionate love: A type of romantic relationship that includes strong commitment to supporting and caring for a partner Romantic relationships change over time, as the long-term pattern of sexual activity rises and then declines • Relatively few marriages meet the blissful ideals that newlyweds expect o “From the first year of marriage to second, frequency of sex declines by about half o Partners typically experience less passion. For each other, which can lead to dissatisfaction or even dissolution Working to stay in love • Do simple things like showing interest in your partner, being affectionate, and showing you care • While pursuing independent interests, still having some activities and goals in common does help to bring a couple closer • Fighting, especially when it allows grievances to be aired, is one of the healthiest things a couple can do for their relationship Working to stay in love • Gottman (1994) describes four tendencies that lead to discord or dissolution: o Being overly critical o Holding the partner in contempt (that is, having disdain and lacking respect) o Being defensive o Mentally withdrawing from the relationship o “Married people are meaner to each other than they are to total strangers” • • • Happy couples also differ from unhappy couples in attributional style Happy couples overlook bad behavior or respond constructively, a process called accommodation Unhappy couples attribute good outcomes to situations, and they attribute bad outcomes to each other • • People who fall in love and maintain that love tend to be biased toward positive views of their partners Murray and colleagues (1996) found that those people who loved their partners the most also idealized their partners the most actor/observer bias The tendency to focus on situations rather than personality traits when interpreting our own behavior. dispositional attributions Explanations for why events or actions occur based on people's internal characteristics, such as abilities, traits, moods, or efforts. fundamental attribution error The tendency to overemphasize personality traits and underestimate situations when attempting to explain other people's behavior. situational attributions Explanations for why events or actions occur based on external factors, such as the weather, luck, accidents, or other people's actions. self-fulfilling prophecy People's tendency to behave in ways that confirm their own or other people's expectations. stereotype threat Apprehension about confirming negative stereotypes related to a person's own group. discrimination The inappropriate and unjustified treatment of people based on the groups they belong to. prejudice Negative feelings, opinions, and beliefs associated with a stereotype about people in a particular group. attitude accessibility Ease or difficulty of retrieving an attitude from memory. attitudes Feelings and beliefs about objects, events, and ideas. explicit attitude An attitude that you are consciously aware of and can report. mere exposure effect The increase in liking due to repeated exposure. implicit attitude An attitude that influences your feelings and behavior at an unconscious level and is often revealed indirectly through behavior. cognitive dissonance An uncomfortable mental state due to a contradiction between two attitudes or between an attitude and a behavior. persuasion The active and conscious effort to change an attitude by sending a message. central route A method of persuasion that uses high elaboration; that is, you pay attention to the arguments and consider all the information in the message. This method usually results in development of stronger attitudes that last over time and that you actively defend. peripheral route A method of persuasion that uses low elaboration; that is, you minimally process the message. This method usually results in development of weaker attitudes that are more likely to change over time. social facilitation An effect that occurs when the mere presence of others improves performance. social loafing An effect that occurs when people tend to work less hard in a group than they do when they work alone. deindividuation A state of reduced individuality, reduced self-awareness, and reduced attention to personal standards; it may occur when people belong to a group. conformity The act of altering your own behaviors and opinions to match those of other people or to match other people's expectations. compliance The act of agreeing to do things requested by others. social norms Expected standards of conduct that influence behavior. obedience The act of following the orders of a person of authority. aggression Any behavior that involves the intention to harm someone else. frustration-aggression hypothesis The idea that the more frustrated you feel, the more likely you are to act aggressively. altruism Willingness to provide help when it is needed, with no apparent reward for doing so. bystander effect The failure of bystanders to offer help to a person in need. companionate love A strong commitment to supporting and caring for a partner. passionate love A state of intense longing and sexual desire.