2. Introduction
Social psychologists are concerned
with how we explains others’
behaviour and how others’ behaviour
affects us.
3. Attribution Theory
Hieder (1958)
People attribute others’ behaviour to
their dispositions (internal or
external).
Personality explanation.
Sometimes this is over course true,
we do have personalities after all
We overestimate the importance of
personality in others’ behaviour
4. Attribution Theory
We tend to do the other with us, so
when we do something we blame the
situation
The fundamental attribution error
• We have more data in essence
Attributions have big effects
• Do you blame the person or the
situation, and then do you generalize….
5. Attitudes
Attitudes are evaluative response
that predispose us to react in a
certain way to
Objects
Events
People
It has three components: cognitive-
Affective and Behavioral.
7. Balance Theory:
People tend to organize their attitude in
harmony.
Cognitive dissonance:
When two or more of our attitudes are
inconsistent with each other
8. Attitude change
Do we change the way people think?
Not necessarily
Attitudes guide actions if
• Outside influences are minimal
• Attitude is specifically related to the
behaviour
• Awareness of attitudes is important
9. Social Influence
Different ways to have power (social
power over others:
1- Authority.
2- reward.
3- Coercive power.
4- Charisma.
5- Expert.
10. Conformity and Obedience
Conformity is the agreement of
people with each others.
• Suicides go up after suicides are
published
• So do car crashes
• Airplane crashes
11. Factors that affect conformity
Made to feel incompetent
At least three people
High status group
Unanimity
No prior commitment
Our behaviour is in the open
Cultural effects
12. Social Influence
Normative social influence
• When it is clear what the norm is (goal
is social acceptance).
Informational social influence
• When we are not sure about what to do,
but we have to do the right thing
13. Milgram
Teacher and Learner
Learner was a confederate
Paired associates
Wrong answer, given a ‘shock’
‘You must continue’
63% completed!
Started a big debate about ethics
Most participants were happy to learn this
scary thing about themselves
14. What does it all mean?
People go against their beliefs under
the right circumstances
Under the right conditions people will
do awful things
• Don’t let this absolve anyone
15. Social Facilitation
Improved performance in the
presence of others of the same
species.
Probably due to arousal
16. Social Loafing
Doing things as a group and loafing
When you believe others are trying,
you may quit
Cultural effects
Less accountable
17. Crowded behavior and
Deindividuation
People feels to loose their identity
and belong to group (during football
matches).
Diminished responsibility
Less likely to help a stranger when
you are in a group
18. Crowd factors lead to
deindividuation:
1- Anonymity.
2- Diffuse responsibility.
3- decreased self awareness.
19. Group Polarization
Small differences between groups
tend to grow
More specifically you get an
enhancement of a group’s prevailing
tendancies
20. Groupthink
Overconfidence
Conformity
Self justification
Can be stopped by a good leader
that listens to others and welcomes
criticism
Minorities can affect the group if they
stick to their guns
21. Cultural effects
Of course, in social psych cultural
effects are going to be huge
Different cultures have different
norms
Personal space for example
There are cultural effects on gender
roles, though there are quite a few
universals too
22. Prejudice
Mixture of beliefs, emotions and
actions towards a group
Influences cognition
While blatant prejudice is on the
wane, subtler forms are still out
there
23. Victims
They experience a few different
things
Social inequality
Exclusion
scapegoating
24. Where does it come from?
We have a need to categorize stuff
The availability heuristic does not
help much
The just world hypothesis
• They deserve it
25. Aggression
There are genetic factors
There are biochemical factors
The frustration aggression
hypothesis
Learning effects
26. Conclusions
Social psychology is cool
Just because you think you know
something, does not mean you do,
lots of counter-intuitive data
The situation is important
The group is important
WE ARE DONE