Social Behavior

Tania LopezManuel Tapia

Sean LehrChardannae Lujan

Prejudice

(1) : preconceived judgment or opinion 1

 (2) : an adverse opinion or leaning formed without just grounds or before sufficient knowledge 2

1&2: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prejudice

Causes of PrejudiceThere are many ways to develop prejudice, these being the most common:  

  Social Learning   Motivational Theory   Personality Theory   Cognitive Theory

 

http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/Prejudice.topicArticleId-25438,articleId-25409.html

Social Learning

•  Proposed by Albert Bandura. • Children learn prejudice by watching parents and friends. • This involves four stages of imitation:

close contact imitation of superiors understanding of concepts role model behavior

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_learning_theory

Motivational Theory

• Proposed by Frederick Herzberg.1

• People motivated to achieve success develop negative views about competitors and generalize those views to all members of the competitors' group. 2

• Four motivators are: initiative  drive intensity  persistence3

1&2: www.businessballs.com › leadership/management3: www.homeofbob.com/cman/general/motivation/motivatn.html 

Personality Theory

• Caused by positive/ negative experiences during development1

• For example: a person picked on at school by a larger boy with brown hair might grow to hate all boys larger than him/her with brown hair

http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/Prejudice.topicArticleId-25438,articleId-25409.html

Cognitive Theory

• Proposed by Jean Piaget• Developmental Stage Theory• "Piaget claims the idea that cognitive development is at the centre

of human organism and language is contingent on cognitive development."1

• Mental shortcuts that people use to reason their way through life2

• For example: “All homeless people are alike.” 3

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaget's_theory_of_cognitive_development2&3:http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/Prejudice.topicArticleId-25438,articleId-25409.html

Discrimination-positive or negative behavior toward another person based on his or her group

membership

Types of Discrimination

• Race• Sexual Orientation• Disability• Language • Gender• Employment• Religion• Appearance 

Examples of Discrimination: •  • Religious Discrimination

o Many people discriminate Mormoms because of the fact that they practiced polygyny.

 • Gender Discrimination

o Studies show that there is many discrimination in school based on your sex.

o In elementary school boys tend to get more attention in science and math classes, while girls tend to get more attention in language arts.

o Males still get paid more then woman do, even when they are doing the same job.

• Discrimination comes in all different shapes and sizes.

• Humans naturally evaluate people and situations based on their beliefs and life experiences.  

• Its much more comfortable to deal with people who share the same language, national origin, culture, etc. because we know with some confidence what are their values and how they will respond.

Classical Conditioning

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov Pavlov's Dog Experiment is based on four thing• Unconditioned stimulus• Unconditioned response• Conditioned stimulus• Conditioned response

  Based on people's passed experiences we tend to discriminate towards people with the same characteristics  

Conformity- is the act of matching beliefs, behaviors, and attitudes to what individuals perceive is normal of their society or group.

Reasons for conformity.

People often conform from a desire for security within a group-typically of similar age, religion, culture, or educational status.

People who are unwilling to conform carry the risk of social rejection.

In that respect conformity can be means of avoiding criticism from peers, and, or bullying. But this can also cause suppression of personality.

• Informational Influence•  Normative Influence•  Minority Influence

Psychologists Herbert Kelman identified 3 major types of social influence

Informational Influence• Informational  Influence occurs when a persons behavior is

influenced by another persons behavior because the latter provides what is good or true.

• When a situation is ambiguous people become uncertain about what to do and are more likely to depend on others for the answer.

Normative Influence

• Normative Influence occurs when one conforms to be liked and, or accepted by members of the group

• Acsh's Conformity Study pg 474 figure 15.5

 

Minority Influence

• Most of the time conformity generally leads individuals to act more like groups, but some individuals are occasionally able to reverse this tendency and change the people around them.

• Minority influence is a special case of informational  influence.

• Minority influence is most likely to occur when people can make a clear and consistent case of their point of view.

Conformity is most often associated with adolescence and youth cultures, but strongly affects humans of all ages.

Stereotype: Drawing inferences from categories

    Stereotyping: The process by which people draw inferences about others based on knowledge of the categories to which others belong.     Stereotype is a useful process that can often produce harmful results, and it does so because stereotype can be inaccurate, overused, self-perpetuating, and automatic.

Stereotypes Can be InnacurateHow can direct observation produce inaccurate stereotype?  •  Even direct observation  can produce inaccurate stereotype.

  • This mindbug has the potential to create disastrous 

consequences for societies  and for social relationships.         " In the process of inheriting the wisdom of our culture, it is inevitable that we also will inherit its ignorance."

 

Stereotypes Can be Overused

    Men vs. Women.

Stereotypes Can be Self-Perpetuating

• Perceptual confirmation is the tendency for observers to perceive what they expect to perceive.

  • Self-fullfilling prophecy is a phenomenon whereby observers

bring about what they expect to perceive.  • Subtyping is the process of creating a modification to a stereotype,

rather than abandoning it altogether, when confronted with evidence that clearly disconfirm that stereotype

Stereotypes Can be Automatic

    If stereotype are inaccurate and self-perpetuating then why don't we stop using them?     Stereotype can happen unconciously and automatically.

Test Question

• What two fundamental tasks does Social behavior revolve around?

  

Answer: Survival & Reproduction