Social Psychology

Dr. Jamie Franco-Zamudio

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 What is Social Psychology?
• Study of the nature and causes of people’s thoughts
and behavior in social situations
 Social Psychology and Culture
• Social psychology examines the causes, types,
and consequences of human interaction.
• Human interactions do not occur in isolation;
they occur in a specific cultural context.
– Location
– Time
• Have you ever traveled to another country or city and
realized there were cultural differences in behavior? How
did you respond? Did you attempt to change your own
behavior to fit in? Were you influenced by the way that
other people acted?
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 Attribution Theory
• Tendency to infer motives and traits of
others through the observation of their
behaviors (i.e., the causes of their
behaviors)
• Dispositional attributions
– Internal factors
• Situational attributions
– External factors
– Think about how you would describe a cashier if he or she were short with you and
not very friendly. Would you say, “what a jerk?”– dispositional attribution- or
would you say, “They must be having a bad day”- situational attribution

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 Attribution Theory
• Fundamental attribution error
– Attribute too much of other’s behavior on
dispositional (i.e., something within the person)
• Because we don’t have enough “cognitive energy” in our working memory- it
is much easier to just say that the cashier was a “jerk”- otherwise we might
spend a great deal of cognitive energy trying to figure out what happened to
the person or why they are acting in such a manner.

• Actor – observer effect

– Actor- situational; observer- dispositional
• We default to thinking we are acting a specific way based on the situation-
sometimes we can keep our feelings of self-worth if we are acting negatively
by blaming the constraints of the situation.

• Self-serving bias
– Attribute one’s success to dispositional and failures to situational causes. “YAY! I
got an A on the exam because I am so intelligent!” vs. “I got an F on the exam
because the teacher didn’t prepare us!” 5
 Social Norms
• Social norms are widely accepted
expectations concerning social behavior.
– Explicit: Rules and laws, i.e., spoken norms
– Implicit: Unspoken norms
• Conformity
– Many norms have evolved because they
promote comfort and survival

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 Conformity
• Factors that influence conformity
– Belonging to a collectivist society
– The desire to be liked by group members
– Low self-esteem
– Social shyness
– Lack of familiarity with the task

– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltaUpq_26U
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 Social Influences on Behavior
• Persuasion is the use of social influence to
cause other people to change their attitudes
and behaviors.
• The expertise, attractiveness, and
trustworthiness of the source of a message
are important determinants of persuasion.

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 Social Influences on Behavior
• The most persuasive messages are those that:
– Attract attention
– Draw conclusions
– Promote message acceptance
– Limit reactance
• Reactance is the tendency to react in the
opposite direction to the persuasive message
when compliance might limit personal
freedom.
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 Social Influences on Behavior
• Naive audiences that are unaware of the
intent of persuasive messages are more
likely to be influenced by these messages.
• If the audience has previously been exposed
to a mild form of the persuasive message,
persuasion will be more difficult.

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 Social Influences on Behavior
• Primacy Effect
• Recency Effect
• Sleeper effect occurs when the message
and its source become detached.
– Messages from sources low in expertise,
attractiveness, and trustworthiness may increase
in effectiveness due to the sleeper effect.

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 Social Influences on Behavior
• When you pay attention to the content of the message, the
central route of persuasion is being used.
• If you find that the persuasive message is not especially
relevant to you and you do not enjoy thinking about its
content, then you are more likely to attend to the attributes of
the presenter (for example, credibility or attractiveness).
– When you pay attention to these attributes, persuasion is following
the peripheral route.

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 Social Influences on Behavior
• Compliance refers to behavior that is
initiated or changed as a result of a request.
• The foot-in-the-door effect is a
phenomenon in which a person who has
agreed to a small request is more likely to
comply with a subsequent larger request.

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 Social Influences on Behavior
• In the door-in-the-face technique, people are first
presented with an extremely large request, which
they likely will refuse, and then they are presented
with a more reasonable request that they are more
likely to accept.
• The compliance technique known as reciprocity
involves doing something for someone else to
make that person feel obligated to do something in
return.
• Advertising: “That’s not all!”
• http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/six-
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principles-influence.htm
 For each video, think about how
the advertisers are attempting to
influence you to purchase their
product
• Which route to persuasion?
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYBz2befSfY
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vfSFXKlnO0
• Which tactics are being used?
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwRISkyV_B8&feature=&p=97880DA14
EBE0790&index=0&playnext=1

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 Social Facilitation
• Presence of others facilitates performance
– Increased arousal or motivation
– Evaluation apprehension
• Presence of others impairs performance
– Social loafing
– Diffusion of responsibility
 Groupthink
• Unrealistic group decision making in which external
realities are ignored
• Influenced by
– Cohesiveness of group
– Dynamic group leader
 Contributors to Groupthink
• Feelings of invulnerability
• Group’s belief in its rightness
• Discrediting of information contrary to decision
• Pressure for group conformity
• Stereotyping of members of out-group
 Conservative or Risky Decisions

• Conservative • Risky
– Knowledgeable – Polarization effect
group members – Diffusion of
– Explicit procedure responsibility
for making
decisions
– Process of give and
take
 Groupthink
• Excellent examples of groupthink
• http://www.psysr.org/about/pubs_resources/
groupthink%20overview.htm

• Also, think of cult behavior and the role of

groupthink
• Example: Jonestown
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notoriou
s_murders/mass/jonestown/index_1.html 20
 Mob Behavior and Deindividuation
• Highly emotional crowds may induce “mob behavior”
– Behavior becomes attitude-discrepant
• Deindividuation
– Reduced self-awareness and lower concern of social
evaluation
 Why Do People Help Others?
• Egoistic helping
– Wanting something in return for helping
– Negative state relief theory – help to reduce
your own distress
• Altruistic helping
– Expecting nothing in return for helping
– Motivated by empathy
 Bystander Effect
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4S1LLrSzVE

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 Altruism and the Bystander Effect
• Factors that influence decision to help
– Good mood
– Empathic
– Believe an emergency exists
– Assume responsibility to act
– Know what to do
– Know the people who need help
– Similarity to people who need help
 Five Steps to Helping
1. Notice that something is happening
2. Interpret meaning of event
– Pluralistic ignorance
3. Taking responsibility for providing help
– Diffusion of responsibility
4. Know how to help
5. Provide help
 Prejudice and Discrimination
• Stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination
– Distinct constructs
• Sources of Prejudice
– Dissimilarity
– Social conflict
– Social learning
– Information processing
– Social categorization
 Combating Prejudice
• Encourage intergroup contact and
cooperation
• Present example of admired individuals
within groups that are often stigmatized
• Attack discriminatory behavior
• http://www.understandingprejudice.org/link
s/reducing.htm
 Obedience to Authority
• Milgram Studies
– Majority complied to demands of authority even
when that required they ‘inflict’ a harmful shock on
innocent people

– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcvSNg0HZw
k&list=PLFD259C6C16CA23C3
 Factors Contributing to Obedience to Authority
• Socialization
• Lack of social comparison
• Perception of legitimacy of authority figures
• Foot-in-the-door technique
• Inaccessibility of values
• Buffers between perpetrator and victim
 Stanford Prison Experiment
• http://www.prisonexp.org/

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