Psychology-Chapter 13/social Psychology-Lecture Notes

Front 1

Social Psychology

Back 1

Study of how people influence others’ behaviour, beliefs, and attitudes

We tend to think others are vulnerable to social influence…but not ourselves

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Humans as a Social Species

•Predisposed to forming intimate interpersonal networks of a particular size

Back 2

•150 people or so

•Need-to-belong theory and biologically based need for interpersonal connections

•It literally hurts us to be isolated or rejected

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Humans as a Social Species

•Most social influence processes are:

Back 3

are adaptive under most circumstances

•They can turn maladaptive when they are blind or unquestioning

•Social influences should be evaluated critically

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Social Comparison Theory

Back 4

•We seek to evaluate our abilities and beliefs by comparing them with those of others

•Upward (superiors) and downward (inferiors) social comparison

•Both can boost our self-concept

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Social Facilitation

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When the mere presence of others enhances our performance

•Bicyclists racing

•Cockroaches running mazes

Can also experience social inhibition

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Fundamental Attribution Error Attributions are:

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assigning causes to behaviour

Internal vs external influence

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Fundamental Attribution Error When we look at others’ behaviour, we:

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•Overestimate impact of dispositional influences

•Underestimate impact of situational influences

Do the opposite for our own behavior

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Conformity

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The tendency to alter our behaviour as a result of group pressure

Classically demonstrated by Solomon Asch’s experiments in the 1950s

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Social Influences on Conformity

•Unanimity:

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increased conformity

•Lower conformity if only one other person differed from the majority

•Size of majority up to five or six people

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Deindividuation

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•The tendency to engage in atypical behaviour when stripped of your usual identity

•Become more vulnerable to social influence

•Wearing masks and concealing identity leads to deindividuation

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Stanford Prison Study

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•Recruited normal young men for a two week "psychological study of prison life"

•Randomly assigned them to be either a prisoner or a guard

•Prisoners were dressed as such, referred to by number and not name

•By second day, guards began to treat prisoners cruelly and dole out punishment

•Prisoners started a rebellion, guards became increasingly sadistic

•Had to stop study after only 6 days due to nervous breakdowns by prisoners

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Chaos in Real World

•Events at _______ _________ echoed those of the Stanford Prison Study

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Abu Ghraib

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Obedience

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•Adherence to orders from those of higher authority

•Essential ingredient in our daily lives

•Stop lights, parking signs

•Can produce trouble when people stop asking why they’re behaving as others want them to

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Stanley Milgram

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Wanted to know how the Holocaust could have occurred

Designed experiment to test the influence of obedience and authority on normal people

Became a landmark study

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The Milgram Paradigm

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•Voluntary subjects were taken to a lab and introduced to a fellow "volunteer" and the researcher

•"Teachers" (subjects) were supposed to shock the "learners" (confederates) when they did not successfully repeat words

•With each failure, the shock level increased

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The Milgram Paradigm-Study Set up

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The "learner" is hooked up to what appears to be a shock generating machine with 30 switches labeled from "Slight Shock" to "Danger: Severe Shock"

•The "teachers" were given a shock of 45 volts to convince them that the shocks were real

•Learner tells teacher he has "a slight heart condition" before any shocks

•The "learner’s" response to the questions is scripted (and played back on a tape recorder)

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The Milgram Paradigm pt-2

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•Learner tells teacher he has "a slight heart condition" before any shocks

•Learner soon misses some answers, researcher tells teacher to continue

•By 330 volts, he is yelling "Let me out of here!"; by 345 he is silent

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The Milgram Paradigm-

Predicted results

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•Experts/colleagues/students polled by Milgram predicted

•Less than 0.1% of subjects would give full dose of shock

•Only 4% would give more than 300V

•The majority would terminate the experiment before 150V

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The Milgram Paradigm-

Actual Results

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65% of the subjects obeyed the experimenter and shocked the "learner" all the way to 450 volts ("Severe Shock")

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The Milgram Paradigm

•Two key themes emerged from follow-ups

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•Greater the psychological distance between teacher and learner, the more the obedience

•The greater psychological distance between teacher and experimenter, the less obedience

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The Milgram Paradigm

Experiment Variations –

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High Obedience Rate

•The variation that produced the most obedience:

•The subject was ordered to administer the word-pair test, the shock was administered by another "subject."

•37 of 40 (92.5%) allowed the "learner" to be shocked 450V x 3

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Milgram’s conclusions

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•"If in this study an anonymous experimenter could successfully command adults to subdue a fifty-one year old man, and force on him painful electric shocks against his protests one can only wonder what government, with its vastly greater authority and prestige can command of its subjects."

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Hofling’s Nurse Study (1966)

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•Nurses were given an order for 20 mg of a fictitious drug, Astroten, labeled: "Usual dose 5mg; Max daily dose 10 mg"

•They were not allowed to interact with anyone else in the hospital about the ordered drug

•1 of 22 nurses questioned the order (21 of 22 nurses were compliant)

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Rank’s Nurse Study (1976)

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•Nurses were given an order for 30 mg Valium IM (usual dose in PDR 2-10 mg) and were allowed to interact with colleagues normally regarding the order

•16 of 18 nurses questioned the order (2 of 18 nurses were compliant)

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Attitudes and Behaviour An attitude is a:

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a belief that includes an emotional component

Attitudes only moderately correlate with actual behaviours unless

•They are highly accessible

•Person is a low self-monitor

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Origins of Attitudes:

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Recognition heuristic

Personality traits

Political views

Religiosity

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Attitude Change

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•Cognitive dissonance is an unpleasant state of tension between two opposing thoughts

•We are motivated to reduce or eliminate it

•Festinger and Carlsmith’s "Measures of Performance" study

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Routes to Persuasion

•Dual processes model says:

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that there are two pathways to persuading others

•The central route focuses on informational content

•The peripheral route focuses on more surface aspects of the argument

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Persuasion Techniques

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•Foot-in-the-door

•Door-in-the-face

•Low-ball technique

•Reciprocity

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Prejudice and Discrimination

prejudice is:

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•Drawing negative conclusions prior to evaluating the evidence is

•Stereotypes can help us to process information easily and quickly, but can lead to prejudice

•Some may be accurate, but others are due to illusory correlations and the confirmation bias

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Prejudice and Discrimination

•Stereotypes can result in:

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•Stereotypes can result in ultimate attribution error, or attributing negative behaviour of some group entirely to their disposition

•Also attribute positive behaviours to luck or as rare exceptions

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Nature of Prejudice

•We all hold some types of prejudices (__________ ___________)

•In-group bias means that we favour those within our group compared to those without

•Out-group homogeneity is the tendency to view people outside of our group as similar

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adaptive conservatism)

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Nature of Prejudice

In-group bias means:

Out-group homogeneity:

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that we favour those within our group compared to those without

the tendency to view people outside of our group as similar

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Discrimination

•The act of:

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treating members of out-groups differently from members of in-groups

•We can be prejudiced against people without discriminating against them

•Can have wide impact on groups such as females and minorities

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Roots of Prejudice

•Scapegoat hypothesis –

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arises from a need to blame other groups for our misfortunes

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Roots of Prejudice

•Just-world hypothesis –

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implies that we have a need to see the world as fair, even if not

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Roots of Prejudice

•Conformity –

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going along with others’ opinions

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Underground Prejudice

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•While explicit prejudice are feelings we’re aware of, we’re unaware of implicit prejudice

•The Implicit Association Test and unconscious racism, sexism, and other prejudices

•True finding or unfalsifiable?

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Helping and Harming Others

Prosocial behavior:

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behaviour intended to help others

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Helping and Harming Others

Antisocial behaviour includes:

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aggressive acts

Humans display both, and situational factors can influence which one is displayed

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Bystander Nonintervention

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When people see someone in need but fail to help them

Kitty Genovese’s murder

Two factors help explain this

Pluralistic ignorance

Diffusion of responsibility

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Prosocial Behaviour and Altruism

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In some cases we help others primarily because we feel empathic toward them

Situational influences can impact helping

•When you can’t escape the situation

•Characteristics of the victim

Enlightenment effect from exposure to research

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Groupthink

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An emphasis on group unanimity at the expense of critical thinking

•Walkerton, Ontario drinking water

•Challenger explosion

Certain symptoms make it more likely to occur

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Groupthink

•Treated by:

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encouraging dissent

•Appointing a "devil’s advocate"

•Independent expert evaluate decisions

•Holding follow-up meetings

•Group polarization can cause views to become more extreme

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Social Loafing:

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•When people slack off in groups

•The whole is less than the sum of its parts

•Due partly to diffusion of responsibility and influenced by cultural factors

•One antidote is to ensure that each person in the group is identifiable