Social Psychology

Studying the way people relate to others.

Attitude AttractionAggression

Group Behavior

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Social Thinking

How do we think about one another?

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

1. Pygmalion Effect/Teacher- Expectancy Effect Robert Rosenthal &

Lenore Jacobson Teacher expectations affect

student performance.

2. applying self fulfilling prophecy to yourself

You believe that you are not good in math so you avoid taking any math class and therefore you will not get better at math

Explaining Behavior

• Attribution TheoriesTries to explain how people

determine the cause of the behavior they observe

Internal(dispositional) factorsExternal (situational) factors

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Fundamental Attribution Theory• The idea that we give a casual

explanation for someone's behavior.•We credit that behavior either to the situation or….

•To the person’s disposition.

Was my friend a jerk because she had a bad day or is just a bad person?

Fundamental Attribution Error• We tend to

overestimate the role of dispositional factors.

Individualistic V. Collectivistic Cultures

False Consensus Effect

Self-Serving Bias

How do you view your teacher’s behavior?

You probably attribute it to their personality rather than their profession.

But do you really know?When you start a

romance, you assume that they agree with your world views….honeymoon period.

If you win it is because you are awesome…if you lose, it must have been the coach or weather or….

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The Effects of Attribution• Social Effects• Political

Effects• Workplace

Effects

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Attitudes• A belief or

feeling that predisposes one to respond in a particular way to something.

How might different attitudes respond to this picture?

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Attitudes Can Affect Action

Not only do people stand for what they believe [attitude] in, but they start believing in what they stand for.

Cooperative actions can lead to mutual liking (beliefs).

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Foot-in-the-door phenomenon

• The tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request.

• In the Korean war, Chinese communists solicited cooperation from US army prisoners by asking them to carry out small errands. By complying to small errands they were likely to comply with larger ones.

If I give out an answer on a quiz, what happens next?

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Door-in-face Phenomenon

• The tendency for people who say no to a huge request, to comply with a smaller one.

If I ask my wife for the 1952 Topps Mantle card ($15k) she will say? NO

But she may let me buy an autographed Derek Jeter baseball..

Zimbardo’s Prison Study• Showed how we

deindividuate AND become the roles we are given.

• Philip Zimbardo has students at Stanford U play the roles of prisoner and prison guards in the basement of psychology building.

• They were given uniforms and numbers for each prisoner.

• What do you think happened?

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Actions Can Affect Attitudes

Why do actions affect attitudes? One explanation is that when our

attitudes and actions are opposed, we experience tension, called cognitive

dissonance.To relieve us of this tension we bring

our attitudes closer to our actions (Festinger, 1957).

Moral actions strengthen moral convictions