Social Perception And Attitudes

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social psychology

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the subfield of psychology that deals most explicitly with how people are influenced by each other

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person perception

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the processes by which people perceive and understand each other and themselves

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attitudes

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the evaluative beliefs that people have about their social world

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attribution

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any claim about the cause of someone's behavior

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Heider

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pioneer in social psychology

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actor-observor discrepancy

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when person bias is weaker and situation bias is stronger for one's own behavior

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person bias

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the fact that people give too much weight to personality and not enough to the environmental situation making attributions

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schema

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the organized set of information or beliefs we have about any entity or event

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three levels stereotypes are split into

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public, private, implicit

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attitude

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any belief or opinion that has an evaluative component

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four functions that attitudes serve

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value-expressive function, social-adjustive function, defensive function, utilitarian function

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value-expressive function of attitudes

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part of a person's self-concept and help give meaning to the person's life

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social-adjustive function of attitudes

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help the person get along with the group because shared by one's social group

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defensive function of attitudes

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provide a sense of consistency and harmony and help calm the person's anxieties or boost the person's self-esteem

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utilitarian function of attitudes

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guide the person's behavior toward or away from objects or events in a useful way that increases rewards and decreases punishments

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values

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general, relatively abstract attitudes that people claim as guiding principles behind their more specific attitudes

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Newcomb's Bennington College experiment

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study that showed students who entered the college as conservatives became liberal at the end of their four years due to other peoples' influences (social-adjustive function)

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Leon Festinger

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came up with cognitive dissonance theory

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cognitive dissonance theory

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when we become aware of some inconsistency among attitudes we try to resolve the contradictions, tending towards new attitudes

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three ways of resolving dissonance

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avoiding dissonant information, firming up an attitude to be consistent with an action, and changing an attitude to justify an action

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insufficient-justification effect

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change in attitude that occurs because without the change the person cannot justify his already-completed action

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When is the insufficient-justification effect the strongest?

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no obvious incentive, free will, and when the original may have caused harm to others or to oneself

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just-world bias

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people believe life to be fair because if it wasn't it would be unberable

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four-walls technique

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salesperson asks customer questions consistent with idea that owning product would be a good thing

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Robert Cialdini

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studied usage of cognitive dissonance in sales pitches

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foot-in-the-door technique

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potential customer grants initial small request, which prepares customer psychologically to grant a subsequent larger request

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reciprocity norm

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people feel obliged to return favors

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pregiving

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giving a sample so that the customer feels obligated to do something in return (reciprocity norm)

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psychological reactance

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when pressure to behave in a certain way is too blatant, the opposite effect occurs

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overarching ideology

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faith in scientific research

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social loafing

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people involved in a group effort are more likely to slack off if their individual contributions are not identifiable to others

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shift in attention

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when an individual stops focusing on themselves and focuses instead on whatever has the group's attention

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deindividuation

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reduced accountabiility and shift in attention

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informational influence

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social influence that works through providing information

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normative influence

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social influence that works through the person's desire to be part of a group

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Stanley Milgram's experiment

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shocks; tested obedience

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Solomon Asch's experiment

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compared lines; tested conformity

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group polarization

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if a group is unevenly split on an issue, then the majority is pushed toward a more extreme view in the same direction as the initial view

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one-upmanship hypothesis

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group members vie to become the most vigorous supporter of the position most people favor, so group becomes more polarized

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group-stereotyping hypothesis

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people shift their position toward their belief of the average view, but misperceive that average as more extreme

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intergroup-conflict hypothesis

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people shift toward a more extreme view to distinguish themselves clearly from the opposing group