Continuing and Distance EducationIntroductory Psychology 1023Lecture 5: Social Psychology

Reading: Chapter 13

Social Psychology: Why do people do what they do?

Attributions• People are motivated to seek causes and explanations

of behavior related to situations and dispositions• You ask someone to dance. They say no. Why?

– Because I am a loser (personal attribution)– Because they are talking to friends or do not like the music

(situational attribution)• Someone bumps you in line. Why?

– Because they are an !@?&#!!.. This is a fundamental attribution bias where we over-emphasize internal causes behavior

– They may have tripped and are not “evil”

Self-serving bias

• Internalize success and externalize blame• Winning a hockey game because “we’re a good

team”, losing because they were “lucky” or you “did not get the bounces”

• Self-handicapping is the opposite, e.g., pass a test because “it was easy”, fail “because I am stupid”

• Just-world hypothesis: People make sense of senseless events based on their biases, e.g., tornado hits a particular region, people say it was fate and deserved by those people

Bystander studies

• The murder of Kitty Genovese: No one intervened• The larger the group, the less likely someone will

intervene– Someone falls down in front of you at the bus stop.

You are more likely to help them if you are alone than if waiting with other strangers.

• Bystander effect leads to diffusion of responsibility, bystander apathy– Observers need to notice and define the emergency,

take responsibility, and act

Deindividuation• Once a sense of individual identity is lost, internal

constraints against socially prescribed behavior are reduced• Negative examples

– Urban riots and angry mobs commit open vandalism and theft– Unknown women in hoods act very aggressively

• Positive examples– Visitor to a small town may be very friendly as they are unknown– Talking to strangers on a bus– Helping in an emergency, as in Swiss Air Disaster

Group Competition • Unfavorable attitude towards other groups based on weak or

incorrect evidence• Ethnocentrism: Belief that one’s own cultural group is superior

to others• Groups compete, even when artificially created, e.g., summer

camp groups or cabins• Belief that everyone from another group is alike, e.g., residences• These issues apply to cultural/ ethnic groups• Why? Competition, identity, modeling

– Reduced by contact between equals involved in cooperative activity

Compliance and Obedience

• Compliance: Doing what someone has asked you to do– e.g., get on protest bus: what are we protesting?

• Obedience: Following orders– e.g., we can be cruel to others when ordered to be

so• Cults are examples of conformity,

compliance, and obedience out of control

Stereotypes

• Summary impression of a group– We exaggerate differences between groups, e.g., two

urban gangs feel very different– Underestimate differences within the other group

“They are all alike”• Usually strong because we encode information

consistent with our stereotypes, e.g., teenagers “hang out” in groups

• We often associate with people that hold similar stereotypes that reinforce one another

Basic principles of a group

• A number of individuals who interact• Social facilitation: joggers speed up• Social inhibition: first tee in golf• Arousal facilitates well-learned responses but inhibits

novel responses – Exam stress wipes out newly learned material but can

enhance well-learned strategies and material– Distraction-conflict: “Hey Mom watch!”

• Conformity: People tend to go along with the group, want to be liked, get along, identify with others

Other group processes • Social loafing: Individual energy expended goes down

as the number of people goes up, e.g., your science partner “goofs off” in group of 4, but not 2

• Illusion of unanimity: Group polarization, when in groups, views become extreme

• Conflict resolution: Is this at the expense or benefit of yourself and the other side?

• Groupthink: Isolated, biased leadership, and high stress can lead to unusual and close-minded decisions. Dissenters have pressure to conform