Psychology in Your Life

SECOND EDITION

Chapter 12Social Psychology

Sarah Grison • Todd Heatherton • Michael Gazzaniga

© 2016 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

12.1 How Do We Think AboutOther People?

• Nonverbal behavior– Researchers have found that people can

make accurate judgments based on only a few seconds of observation

• Thin slices of behavior are powerful cues for forming impressions of others

• Attributions are our explanations for events or actions, including other people’s behavior

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We Make Attributions About Other People (1)

• Types of attributions– Personal 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

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We Make Attributions About Other People (2)

• Bias in attributions– Fundamental attribution error: In explaining

other people’s behavior, the tendency to overemphasize personality traits and underestimate situational factors. The ‘Just World’hypothesis fits here, but blames the victim.

– Actor/observer bias: When interpreting our own behavior, we tend to focus on situations. When interpreting other people’s behavior, we tend to focus on personal attributes

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We Tend to Stereotype Other People (3)

• Maintaining stereotypes– Once we form stereotypes, we tend to

maintain them• When we encounter someone who does not fit a

stereotype, we may put that person in a special category (the exception) rather than change the stereotype

– This practice is called subtyping

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We Make Snap Judgments About People

• Facial expressions– One of the first things we usually notice about

another person is the face• The face communicates information such as

– Emotional state– Interest– Trustworthiness

– Eye contact is important in social situations. Cultural norms influence how much is appropriate, and vary dramatically.

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We Stereotype Other People (5)• Self-fulfilling prophecy

– People’s tendency to behave in ways that confirm their own expectations or other people’s expectations

• Rosenthal and Jacobsen, bloomers study

• Prejudice– Negative feelings, opinions, and beliefs

associated with a stereotype• Discrimination

– The inappropriate and unjustified treatment of people as a result of prejudice

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Stereotypes Can Make Us Feeland Act Certain Ways (2)

• Ingroup/outgroup bias– Those groups that we belong to are ingroups,

and those that we do not belong to are outgroups

• According to social identity theory our group memberships are an important part of how we view ourselves

– One consequence of categorizing people as ingroup or outgroup members is ingroupfavoritism

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Stereotypes Can Make Us Feeland Act Certain Ways (3)

• Stereotype and perception– Because people are often not conscious of their

stereotypes, they are also unaware of the influence of stereotypes on their perceptions

– Stereotypes allow us to process people or situations quickly, but are prone to errors.

– When a situation arises that violates our stereotype, we usually consider it an ‘exception’rather than changing our stereotype.

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Stereotypes Can Make Us Feeland Act Certain Ways (5)

• Modern prejudice– Modern racism: Subtle forms of prejudice that

coexist with the rejection of racist beliefs• Modern racism exists because the equal treatment of

minorities seems to challenge traditions associated with the majority

• Competition and cooperation– Social psychology may be able to offer strategies

for promoting intergroup harmony and producing greater tolerance for outgroups

• Eagles and Rattlers study started with competition10

Stereotypes Can Make Us Feeland Act Certain Ways (8)

• Cooperation in the classroom– In the jigsaw classroom, students work

together (promoted cooperation) 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

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How Do Our Attitudes Affect Us?• Attitudes

– People’s evaluations of objects, events, or ideas• Simple attitude

– Your behavior is consistent with your attitude• Complex attitude

– Your behavior is not consistent with your attitude• In general, the stronger and more personally relevant an attitude

is, the more likely it is to predict behavior

• Attitude accessibility– Ease of retrieving an attitude from memory

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We Form Attitudes Through Experience and Socialization (1)

• Mere exposure– Mere exposure effect: The increase in liking

due to repeated exposure• Conditioning

– Because our associations between things and their meanings can change, our attitudes can be conditioned

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We Form Attitudes Through Experience and Socialization (4)

• Social exposure– Attitudes also are shaped through socialization

• Caregivers, peers, teachers, religious leaders, politicians, and media figures guide our attitudes about many things

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Both Explicit and ImplicitAttitudes Affect Us

• 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

– Implicit Association Test (IAT)• Measures how quickly a person associates

concepts or objects with positive or negative words

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Discrepancies Between Attitudes andBehavior Lead to Dissonance (1)

• 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

• A basic assumption of cognitive dissonance theory is that dissonance causes anxiety and tension

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Discrepancies Between Attitudes andBehavior Lead to Dissonance (3)

• Postdecisional dissonance– Cognitive dissonance also arises when we

have positive attitudes about different options but must choose one option

• This effect occurs automatically, with little cognitive processing and apparently without awareness

• Insufficient justification– Classic Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) study

• $20 versus $1

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Discrepancies Between Attitudes andBehavior Lead to Dissonance (5)

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Discrepancies Between Attitudes andBehavior Lead to Dissonance (6)

• Justification of effort– Helps explain why people are willing to subject

themselves to humiliating experiences (e.g., hazing)

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Our Attitudes Can Be ChangedThrough Persuasion (1)

• Persuasion– The active and conscious effort to change an

attitude through the transmission of a message

• Various factors affect the persuasiveness of a message

– Source– Content– Receiver

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Our Attitudes Can Be ChangedThrough Persuasion (2)

• Elaboration likelihood model– 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

– 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

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Our Attitudes Can Be ChangedThrough Persuasion (3)

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How Do Others Influence Us?• 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 and social loafing– 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

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Groups Affect Individual Behavior (3)• Deindividuation

– A state of reduced individuality, self-awareness, and attention to personal standards; this occurs when people are part of a group

• Stanford prison study and Abu Ghraib prison showed the power of roles in a given situation

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Groups Affect Individual Behavior (5)• Group decision making

– Groups often make riskier decisions than individuals do

• This phenomenon is called the risky-shift effect– If most of the group members are somewhat

cautious, then the group becomes even more cautious

• This process is known as group polarization– Groupthink is used to describe an extreme form of

group polarization• Groupthink typically occurs when a group is under

– Intense pressure, is facing external threats, or is biased in a particular direction 25

We Conform to the Expectations of Others (1)

• 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 26

We Conform to the Expectations of Others (3)

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We Conform to the Expectations of Others (4)

– Solomon Asch study on conformity (1955)• People conformed because they did not want to look

foolish by going against the group– They conformed due to normative influence

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We Conform to the Expectations of Others (6)

• Social norms– Expected standards of conduct, which

influence behavior• Social norms indicate which behavior is

appropriate in a given situation and also how people will respond to those who violate norms

• Groups tend to enforce social norms

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We Comply With the Requests of Others (1)

• Compliance– The tendency to agree to do things requested

by others includes these three powerful strategies1. Foot-in-the-door 2. Door-in-the-face3. Lowballing

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We Comply With the Requests of Others (2)

– Foot-in-the-door• If you agree to a small request, you are more

likely to comply with a large request– Door-in-the-face

• If you refuse a large request, you are more likely to comply with a smaller request

– Lowballing• 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

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We Obey People Who Have Authority (1)

• Obedience– Factors that influence people to follow the

orders given by an authority– The Milgram shock experiment

• 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

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We Obey People Who Have Authority (2)

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We Obey People Who Have Authority (3)

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We Sometimes Hurt Each Other (1)

• Aggression– Any behavior that involves the intention to harm

someone else• Biological factors

– 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

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We Sometimes Hurt Each Other (3)• Situational factors

– Frustration-aggression hypothesis: The more frustrated we feel, the more likely we are to act aggressively

• The more our goals are blocked, the greater our frustration, and therefore the greater our aggression

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We Sometimes Hurt Each Other (5)• Social and cultural factors

– Aggression may be part of human nature, but society and culture influence people’s tendencies to commit acts of physical violence

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We Sometimes Hurt Each Other (7)– Some cultures may be violent because they

subscribe to a culture of honor• In this belief system, men are primed to protect their

reputations through physical aggression

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We Help Each Other . . .Sometimes (1)

• Prosocial– Acting in ways that tend to benefit others– Prosocial behaviors include

• Offering assistance• Doing favors• Paying compliments• Resisting the temptation to insult or throttle another

person• Simply being pleasant and cooperative

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We Help Each Other . . .Sometimes (3)

• 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

• One animal helps another because the other may return the favor in the future

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We Help Each Other . . .Sometimes (4)

• Bystander apathy– The failure to offer help to people in need

• The case of Kitty Genovese• Latané and Darley smoke study

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Sometimes We Help Each Other . . .• Bystander apathy

– Years of research have indicated four major reasons for bystander apathy

1. Bystanders expect other bystanders to help 2. We fear making social blunders in ambiguous

situations3. We are less likely to help when we are

anonymous and can remain so4. Deciding whether to help involves weighing two

factors• How much personal harm do we risk by helping? • What benefits might we have to forgo if we help? 42

12.4 How Do We Develop StrongRelationships?

• Proximity– Describes how often people come into contact

• Might have its effects because of familiarity– People like familiar things more than unfamiliar ones

• Birds of a feather– People with similar attitudes, values, interests,

backgrounds, personalities, and levels of attractiveness tend to like each other more than people who are dissimilar

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Situations and Personalities Affect Our Relationships (1)

• Personal characteristics– We tend to especially like people who have

admirable personality characteristics• 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” stereotype44

Love Is a Key Part of RomanticRelationships (1)

• Passionate and companionate love– 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

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Love Is a Key Part of RomanticRelationships (3)

• Changes in love over time– 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

– “Married people are meaner to each other than they are to total strangers”

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Love Is a Key Part of RomanticRelationships (4)

• Working to stay in love– Maladaptive strategies include

• Being overly critical• Holding the partner in contempt (e.g., having

disdain, lacking respect)• Being defensive• Mentally withdrawing from the relationship

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Love Is a Key Part of RomanticRelationships (5)

– Happy couples also differ from unhappy couples in attributional style

– Happy couples overlook bad behavior or respond constructively, a process called accommodation

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