1. Chapter 14Social Psychology Ben YEEEEEEE DAWG NabeelZiauddin Clive Veerapal

2. Social psychology: A broad field devoted to studying the way that people relate to others Social Cognition is a major influence on attitude formation and the attribution theory Social Cognition: People go through their daily lives, gathering data and making predictions about what will happen next so they can act accordingly Overview: Social Psychology

3. An attitude is a set of beliefs and feelings Attitudes are evaluative: Our feelings toward things are positive or negative The mere exposure effect: The more one is exposed to something, the more one will come to like it Walk into super market, you’ll be more likely to buy a brand of potato chips that you’ve seen advertised before rather than one you’ve barely heard about Attitude Formation and Change

4. When it comes to communicating the message, the communicator has been found to influence the effectiveness of a message Famous and/or attractive people are among the most persuasive communicators Also, the way the message is communicated can tell how effective the message will be Some research suggest that messages that arouse fear are also effective to some extent Attitude Formation and Change (cont’d)

5. There’s actually not too much of a relation between attitude and behavior LaPiere’s Experiment: Prejudice in U.S against Asians was pervasive Traveled to hotels across nation with an Asian couple and asked if the hotels could accommodate them(the Asian couple) Almost all of the hotels said they could stay However, LaPiere contacted the exact same hotels a short time later and asked about their attitudes toward Asians…90% of the contacted hotels said they wouldn’t serve Asians. The Relationship Between Attitudes and Behavior

6. If you can change a person’s behavior, you can probably change their attitude as well Cognitive dissonance theory: People are motivated to have consistent attitudes and behaviors…if not consistent there will be mental tension Example: Bob believes studying is for geeks. If he studies for 10 hours for her AP Psych test, he will experience cognitive dissonance. Since he has already studied for 10 hours he can’t change his actions so the only way to reduce dissonance is to change his attitude and decide studying does not necessarily make someone a geek. The Relationship Between Attitudes and Behavior (cont’d)

7. Festinger and Carlsmith’s experiment: Subjects performed long boring task then asked to lie about it to another person that they enjoyed the task In one condition subjects were paid $1 to lie In other condition subjects were paid $20 to lie After, the subjects attitudes toward the task were measured Result: Those who had been paid $1 had a more positive attitude toward the experiment than those who were paid with $20. The Relationship Between Attitudes and Behavior (cont’d)

8. Why? Subjects who had had been paid the $20 experienced little dissonance; they lied because they were getting the $20 Those who were only paid $1 lacked the motivation to lie, they experienced dissonance In order to reduce the dissonance, they changed their attitudes and said they actually enjoyed the experiment The Relationship Between Attitudes and Behavior (cont’d)

9. People often use certain strategies to get others to comply with their wishes Foot-in-the-door phenomenon: If someone agrees to a small request, they will be more likely to agree to a larger follow-up request (Foot in the door = small request, opening the whole door would be the bigger request) Compliance Strategies

10. Door in the Face strategy: After people refuse a large request, they will look more favorably to a follow up request that is smaller Norms of Reciprocity: When someone does something nice to you, you feel compelled to do something nice to them Compliance Strategies

11. Attribution Theory: Tries to explain how people determine the cause of what they observe Dispositional/Person Attribution: A personal factor specific to that one person Situation Attribution: Situational factors Person-Stable Attribution: A constant/ongoing personal factor Situation-Stable: A constant situational factor Situation-Unstable: An irregular situational factor Attribution Theory

12. Consistency: How similarly the individual acts in the same situation over time Distinctiveness: How similar this situation is similar to other situations Consensus: How others in the same situation have responded Attribution Theory

13. Self-Fulfilling prophecy: We have about others can influence the way those others behave Rosenthal and Jacobson: Pygmalion in the Classroom Took random kids and informed their teacher that those students were ripe for intellectual progress The kids were the same as everyone else when it came to grades Researchers returned months later and took an IQ test of students The IQ of the randomly selected students from months ago had increased significantly The expectations of teachers caused students to outperform Attribution Theory

14. Fundamental attribution error: People tend to overestimate the importance of dispositional factors and underestimate the role of situational factors Experts say that this bias is less likely to happen in collectivist cultures than in individualistic cultures False Consensus effect: To overestimate the number of people who agree with them Self Serving Bias: Tendency to take more credit for good outcomes than for bad ones Just world belief: bad things happen to bad people, pushes fear away because if you’re “good” nothing bad will happen Attributional Biases

15. Remember self SERVING bias is about YOU overstating YOUR own positive effects and not taking credit for bad effects Self Fulfilling PROPHECIES…just think how a prophecy explains how ideas can shape the FUTURE behavior of others Attributional Biases*How to remember them*

16. Stereotypes: Ideas we have about members of different groups which may influence our behavior toward them Prejudice: An undeserved, usually negative, attitude toward a group of people Discrimination: An undeserved, usually negative, ACTION toward a group of people Remember: You can discriminate someone, but you can’t “prejudice” someone. Discriminate is an ACTION Stereotypes, Prejudice and Discrimination

17. People tend to see members of their own group, the “in group”, more diverse than members of other groups, the “out groups” This is called “out group homogeneity” Stereotypes, Prejudice and Discrimination

18. Research indicates that we like others who are most similar to us Similarity, Proximity and Reciprocal liking are three big factors in attraction Self – Disclosure: When one shares a piece of personal information with another Close relationships are often built through a process of self-disclosure Attraction

19. Social Facilitation: The presence of others improves task performance Social impairment: When the task being observed is a stressful one rather than a simple one, being watched by others can actually hurt performance Remember: Social = presence of other people/ Facilitation = to make easy, to improve “The presence of other people improves” The Influence of Others on an Individual’s Behavior

20. Conformity: The tendency of people to go along with the views or actions of others Solomon Asch conducted the conformity line test Milgram studied obedience studies and conducted the shock experiment The Influence of Others on an Individual’s Behavior

21. Groups have norms, rules about how group members should act Within groups is often a set of specific roles Social loafing: When group members don’t put as much effort as they do when they’re alone Group polarization: Group tendency to make extreme decisions than the group members would make individually Deindividuation: Loss of self-restraint when with a group Groupthink: Tendency for some groups to make bad decisions Happens when group members suppress reservations about the ideas supported by group Group Dynamics

22. The End LOLOL