2. Social Psychology
• Scientific study of how a person's
• Thoughts
• Feelings
• Behaviors
• Are influenced by
• Behavior
• Characteristics
• Of other people
• Real
• Imagined
• Inferred
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3. Social Psychology
• Examines
• Causes
• Types
• Consequences
• Of human interaction
• Interactions occur in a specific cultural
context.
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5. Social Psychology
• Dress
• Do you really dress the way you would like
to?
• What clothes to wear when?
• Accessories
• Shoes
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6. Social Psychology
• Space
• How close you stand to someone is culturally
determined.
• Exercise
• Closest?
• Farthest way?
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7. Social Psychology
• Speech
• Do's and don'ts
• What can you say to someone?
• Should you look someone in the eyes when
speaking?
• Should we speak the truth?
• Slang
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8. Social Psychology
• Eat?
•
•
•
•
What foods do you eat with your fingers?
Which foods accompany other foods?
What do we eat and how much?
What is cool to eat?
• Food PowerPoint
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9. Social Psychology
• Culture clash
• Parents
• Travel
• Moving from one part of the country to
another
• Country to the city
• Blue collar job to a white collar job
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10. Social Psychology
• Ethnocentrism
• A belief in or assumption of the superiority of the
social or cultural group that a person belongs to.
• Researchers sometimes guilty of
• Disregard cultural differences
• See other cultures as an extension of their own “superior”
culture
• Therefore will view another culture from our own
eyes
• Female Genital Mutilation
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11. Social Psychology and Culture
• Culture can influence
• Type of research problem we choose to
investigate
• Hypothesis
• Selection of the variables we choose to
manipulate & record
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12. Cross Cultural Study on Body Size
• Men's Body Image
• Women prefer the
same male body size
across cultures?
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13. Social Psychology and Culture
• Individualism
• Placing one’s own goals above those of the
group.
• U.S.
• Collectivism
• Placing group goals above individual goals.
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14. Social Psychology and Culture
• Degree of individualism or collectivism in
a culture can influence many aspects of
behavior
•
•
•
•
•
Interpersonal relations
Self-concept
Parenting practices
Self-esteem
Emotional expression
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15. Social Psychology and Culture
• Cultures vary widely
• Social psychologists need to conduct
cross-cultural studies
• Can results of research conducted in one
culture be generalized to others?
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16. How We View Others and Their
Behavior
• Impression formation
• Process of developing an opinion about
another person.
• Actor
• Perceiver
• Judgments you made of me and classmates
• Based on
• Stereotypes
• Set of beliefs about members of a particular
group.
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17. How We View Others and Their
Behavior
• Stereotypes
• Me
• Other professors
• Hair color
• Age
• Positive
• Professors are geniuses.
• Negative
• Blondes are stupid.
• In-group
• Our group
• Positive
• Out-group
• Negative
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18. How We View Others and Their
Behavior
•
4 features of the actor have been shown
to influence impression formation.
1) Physical appearance
2) Style and content of speech
3) Nonverbal mannerisms and nonverbal
communication
4) Perceiver’s prior information about the actor
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20. How We View Others and Their
Behavior
• Why do we all create stereotypes?
• Safe, not safe
• Easier on our on our brain
• Don’t have to continually process bits of
information
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21. How We View Others and Their
Behavior
• 2 reasons stereotypes persist
• 1. Believe that a group of people possesses
certain characteristics
• Note behaviors consistent with those
characteristics
• Fail to notice behaviors that are inconsistent
• Example?
• 2. Effects of our own reactions & behaviors
on the individuals in question.
• Treat people consistent with stereotype
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22. How We View Others and Their
Behavior
• Self-fulfilling prophecy
• When your behaviors influence others to
respond the way you expect
• Information that is available to you before you
meet someone can affect your impression of that
person.
• The activation of a stereotype can either enhance
or decrease (stereotype threat) an individual’s
performance.
• Stars demanding
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23. The Halo Effect
•
Named due to the
perfection associated
with angels.
Assumption
•
•
Attractive people are:
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•
•
•
More intelligent
Better adjusted
More popular
Research shows
attractive people:
•
•
More occupational
success
More dating experience
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24. The Halo Effect
• Alternative explanation for attractive
people achieving more in life
• We automatically categorize others before
having an opportunity to evaluate their
personalities
• Cultural stereotypes
• Attractive people must be intrinsically good
• Ugly people must be inherently bad
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25. The Halo Effect
• Cultural
stereotypes
• Attractive people
must be
intrinsically good
• Ugly people must
be inherently bad
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26. The Halo Effect
• “Beautiful is good” stereotype
• Assumes that attractive people have positive
characteristics
• Witty
• Intelligent
• Pleasing personalities
• Therefore attractive people can be expected
to make better impressions.
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27. The Halo Effect
• Elliot Aronson, social psychologist at
Stanford
• Self-fulfilling prophecies
• Person’s self-perception perpetuated by
feedback from others
• May play a role in success as well.
• People who feel they are attractive - not
necessarily rated as such–
• Just as successful as those judged to be
good-looking.
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28. How We View Others and Their
Behavior
• Research on self-disclosure
• The more a person reveals about themselves
• More positive the impression
• Too much early in a relationship
• May result in a negative first impression
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29. How We View Others and Their
Behavior
•
Communication
•
Nonverbal communication
•
Important in determining initial impressions.
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30. How We View Others and Their
Behavior
• 1st Impressions
• How do they effect us?
• Hear something bad
about someone?
• Murder ?
• All the facts are in hard to
believe
• 1. Wealthy
• 2. Popular
• 3. Family man
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31. How We View Others and Their
Behavior
• Attributions
• Addresses how people make judgments
about the causes of behavior.
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32. How We View Others and Their
Behavior
• Internal Versus External Causes
• Internal attributions
• Behavior is seen as being caused by
factors that reside within a person.
• Stupid, smart, unfocused, critical, etc.
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34. How We View Others and Their
Behavior
• External
attributions
• Causes of behavior
are viewed as
residing outside an
individual.
• Environmental
• Wave
• Bright light
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35. How We View Others and Their
Behavior
• Fundamental attribution error
• Tendency to attribute the behavior of others
to causes within themselves.
• Example
• Driving
• He drives reckless because he is an asshole.
• Test
• She did poorly on the test because she is rather stupid.
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36. How We View Others and Their
Behavior
• Self-Serving Bias
• Defensive Attribution
• Tendency to attribute our successes to our own
efforts or qualities
• Failures to external factors
• Driving
• I drive fast because I am in a hurry.
• He drives fast because he is an asshole.
• Test
• I did poorly on the test because the room was noisy.
• I did well on the test because I am intelligent.
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37. How We View Others and Their
Behavior
• Actor-perceiver bias
• Perceivers more likely to make internal
attributions
• Actors more likely to make external
attributions.
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38. How We View Others and Their
Behavior
• Another aspect of the self-serving bias
involves the just world belief.
• Just world belief
• Bad things happen to bad people
• Good things happen to good people
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39. How We View Others and Their
Behavior
• Attitudes
• Relatively stable organization of
• Beliefs
• Feelings
• Behavior
• Directed toward something or someone.
• Position on something or someone.
• Can be positive, negative, or neutral
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40. How We View Others and Their
Behavior
• 3 components of attitude formation
• Think
• Feel
• Do
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41. How We View Others and Their
Behavior
• 1st component of attitude formation
• Evaluative beliefs
• Think
• Facts
• Opinions
• General knowledge
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42. How We View Others and Their
Behavior
• 2nd component of attitude formation
• Feeling
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•
•
Mad
Sad
Glad
Scared
Surprise
Disgust
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43. How We View Others and Their
Behavior
• 3rd component of attitude formation
• Behavioral tendency
• Approach
• Avoid
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44. How We View Others and
Their Behavior
• Example:
• Cell phone
• Think
• Feel
• Do
• Do we always act according to our
attitudes?
• Why or why not?
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45. How We View Others and Their
Behavior
• Social pressure?
• Does the Dare program work?
• Why or why not?
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46. How We View Others and Their
Behavior
• What variables help form our
basic attitudes?
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47. How We View Others and
Their Behavior
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•
•
•
•
Parents
Teachers
Media
Peers
Billboards
• Kids sponges
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48. How We View Others and Their
Behavior
• Advertisers
• Make sure our 1st exposure to product is very
positive.
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49. How We View Others and Their
Behavior
• Self-reports often used to measure
attitudes
• Influence responses
• Types of questions asked
• Way they are worded
• Attitudes can be measured by Likert scales
& evaluation of observed behaviors.
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50. How We View Others and Their
Behavior
• Likert scales
• Questionnaires
participants
indicate degree
of agreement or
disagreement
with statements.
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52. Social Influences on Behavior
• Obedience
• The initiating or changing of behavior in
response to a direct command of an
authority.
• In cases in which obedience will result in
harm to another person, obedience
increases with proximity to the source of
the commands but decreases with
proximity to the victim.
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53. Social Influences on Behavior
• Milgram
• More than 800 townspeople in New Haven,
Connecticut participated
• Scientist (the experimenter) wearing a white
laboratory coat
• Middle-aged man
• Confederate
• Learner
• Participant
• Teacher
• Real participant
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54. Social Influences on Behavior
• Teacher read a list of word
• Learner gave 1st word of a pair and asked the
learner to identify the second word from
among 4 words.
• Each time the learner gave an incorrect
answer
• Teacher instructed to administer an electric shock
starting at 15 volts
• Before the session began, each teacher
experienced a mild (45-volt) shock to
appreciate what the learner would feel.
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55. Social Influences on Behavior
• Ultimately 65% of all of the "teachers"
punished the "learners" to the maximum
450 volts.
• No subject stopped before reaching 300
volts!
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57. Social Influences on Behavior
• Milgram
• Authority figure
takes responsibility
for any harm
resulting from
obedience to
commands, the
likelihood of
obedience is high.
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58. Social Influences on Behavior
• Milgram's experiment
• Results:
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2/3 obeyed fully
Why do we obey authority?
Waco
Jonestown
Heaven's gate
Hitler
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59. Social Influences on Behavior
• Conformity
• Results from indirect social pressure on an
individual to change his or her behaviors
and thoughts.
• The nature of the authority behind
pressures for conformity is not as
obvious as it is in commands for
obedience.
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60. Social Influences on Behavior
• Selecting the
matching line
• 30% of Asch’s
participants chose
incorrectly to
conform with the
group.
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