- Information
- AI Chat
Social psychology F2021
General Psychology (PSYC 10213)
Texas Christian University
Recommended for you
Preview text
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
Social Thinking:
Breakdown: o Social psychology o Fundamental attribution error o Dual-process theory of persuasion o Foot-in-the-door phenomenon o Stanford prison experiment; how a situation can override individual differences in personality o Leon Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance Cognitive psychology, personality psychology and clinical psychology tend to address the phenomena contained within a single person’s mind Social psych: focuses on the power of the situation. Examines how we think about, influence, and relate to one another in certain conditions o Gives us the tools we need to understand why people behave brutally o Helps us understand why we sometimes act heroically Attribution theory: we can explain someone’s behavior by crediting either their stable, enduring traits - also known as their disposition – or the situation at hand Fundamental attribution error: tendency of observers, when analyzing another’s behavior, to underestimate the impact of the situation and overestimate the impact of personal disposition Experiment: o 7/10 women report that men had misread their polite friendliness – when would be appropriate for the situation – as a sexual come-on We choose how we explain other people’s behavior every day and what we choose to believe can have big consequences o Ex: political views will likely be strongly influenced by whether we decide to attribute poverty or
homelessness to personal dispositions, like being lazy and looking for a hand-out, or social circumstances like lack of education and opportunity. These attitudes can, in turn, affect our actions. Attitudes can affect our actions Central route persuasion: involves calling on basic thinking and reasoning to convince people o When interested, people focus on the evidence and arguments at hand, and one persuaded by the actual content of the message Peripheral route persuasion: influences people by the way of incidental cues, like a speaker’s physical attractiveness or personal reliability o More of a gut reaction, not hard thinking o Happens more readily when you’re not paying much attention Attitudes can be affected by our behaviors/our behaviors affect our √BV o We don’t like to confuse ourselves This mismatch between what we do and who we think we are induces tension – cognitive dissonance – and that we tend to want to resolve that tension
Social Influence:
MILGRAM EXPERIMENT o Stanley Milgram o 1961 what might the average person be capable of when under orders? o Experiment: Leader was asked to memorize a list of word pairs, and the participant (teacher) was told he’d be testing the learners recall of those words, and should administer an electric shock for every wrong answer, increasing that shock level a little each time.
Groups influence our behavior in more ways than just conformity & obedience Social facilitation: stronger responses on simple or well- learned tasks in the presence of others o We may perform better/worse in front of a group SOCIAL LOAFING: tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling their efforts towards attaining a common goal than when individually accountable DEINDIVIDUATION: the loss of self-awareness and restrain that can occur in group situations o The less individual we feel, the more we’re at the mercy of the experience of our group, whether it’s good or bad GROUP POLARIZATION: the enhancement of a group’s prevailing indigitations through discussion within the group o The internet (ex) Connects like-minded people GROUPTHINK: the mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives o When a group makes bad decisions because they were too caught up in the unique internal logic of their group, and when a group gets wrapped in itself and everyone agrees with each other, no one stops to think about other perspectives. As a result, we get big and bad ideas While group behavior is powerful, so is individual choice
Prejudice and Discrimination:
SOCIAL PSYCH is how we relate to one another o What factors might cause us to help another person, or harm them, or fear them? What are the social, cognitive, and emotional roots of prejudice, racism, and sexism, and how do they shape our society? PREJUDICE: “prejudgment” – an unjustified, typically negative, attitude toward an individual or group
o Prejudicial attitudes are often directed along the lines of gender, ethnic, socioeconomic status, or culture o Prejudice isn’t the same thing as stereotyping or discrimination STEREOTYPE: an overgeneralized belief about a particular group of people o A more general cognitive process that doesn’t have to be negative. It can even be accurate at times o When stereotypical beliefs combine with prejudicial attitudes & emotions, like fear and hostility, they can drive the behavior (discrimination) A prejudice person won’t necessarily act on their attitude If you act on your prejudice & refuse to hire them for a job or don’t let them sit at your lunch counter, then you’ve crossed over into discriminating against them o Prejudice = attitude o Discrimination = behavior Prejudice can be non-conscious & automatic Implicit association test (IAT): 1990s, tries to gauge implicit attitudes, identifies, beliefs, and biases people are unwilling/unable to report o The core of the test is your reaction time o Predictive of discriminatory behavior in all kinds of experimental settings Why people are prejudicial: o Prejudices can come up as a way of justifying social inequalities This happens when people on both sides of the power & wealth spectrum start believing that people get what they deserve, and deserve what they get Just-world phenomenon o Prejudices can also be driven by the “us vs them”/in group – out group phenomenon This ingroup bias, or tendency to favor your own group at the expense of others, is powerful, even when it’s totally irrational
corner the market for openness; far more open to many different types of people, open to more ideas; more creative; more open to change What causes the differences between tight/loose cultures? o They don’t share obvious characteristics, like geography, language, religion, tradition, etc. o There’s a hidden rationale, and it has to do with threat Tight cultures have a lot of threat, whether it’s from mother nature, disasters, famine, threat from other humans (disease, high population density, etc.) When you have a lot of threat, you need rules to help coordinate to survive When you have less threat, you don’t need as many rules; you can be more permissive TIGHT-LOOSE cultures reflect the same trade-off at the state level o Tight cultures have a lot of order and stability, law enforcement, more self-control, less divorce, and less homelessness; more polite o Loose states corner the market on openness; more creative; much more tolerant; more rude but more fun Experiment with working class & upper class o Working class comes up with many positive associations (like good structure, safety, etc.) o The upper class that uses very negative connotation about rules (goody two-shoes, nuisance) o Working class is far tighter than the upper class They experience a lot of threat: worried about falling into poverty, work in more dangerous jobs where rules help to keep people safe; they live in more dangerous neighborhoods where rules can keep kids out of trouble The upper class, the rule breakers, are more creative and more tolerant of people who are different
They have a safety net – have less threats and can afford to be more of rule breakers The differences between working & upper class’ behavior arise very early Tightness & looseness can also help us to understand many really bewildering things happening in the world o Ex: rise of populism Threats don’t have to be real to tighten people up o Fake threats about disasters, invasions, etc. can tighten people up (they want stricter rules & strong leaders) Leaders around the world are using this tight psychology in order to be popular They’re amplifying & exaggerating threats and targeting the groups that are most threatened o It capitalizes them as very powerful, evolutionary principle of threat & tightness While groups have veer tight /loose for good reasons, groups that get too extreme in either direction have a lot of problems o When we get extremely loose, things become normal & unpredictable and unbearable o When we get too tight, it’s oppressive and unbearable Goldilocks principle of tightness & looseness We need a balance of the strength of norms in our everyday life for max happiness o In nations who are either too tight/loose, have more suicide & less happiness o Parents who are too over-controlling or parents who are too laissez-faire produced maladaptive kids o It’s the balance in households of tight/loose that produce healthy families o It also applies to organizations
Social psychology F2021
Course: General Psychology (PSYC 10213)
University: Texas Christian University
- Discover more from:
