PSYCHOLOGY

(9th Edition)

David Myers
PowerPoint Slides
Aneeq Ahmad
Henderson State University
Worth Publishers, 2010

Social Psychology
Chapter 16
2

Social Psychology
Social Thinking
Attributing Behavior to Persons or
to Situations
Attitudes and Actions

Social Influence
Conformity and Obedience
Group Influence
The Power of Individuals

Social Relations
Prejudice
Aggression
Attraction
Altruism
Conflict and Peacemaking

Focuses in Social Psychology

We cannot live for ourselves alone.
Herman Melville

Social psychology scientifically studies how we

think about, influence, and relate to one another.

Social Psychology:
Social Thinking
In what ways do you behave differently in various
situations?

Gym class
English class
On a date
With close friends
At home with your family

Why?
How might this affect peoples perceptions of you in such
situations? (Fundamental Attribution Error)
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Social Thinking
1. Does his absenteeism signify illness,
laziness, or a stressful work atmosphere?
2. Was the horror of 9/11 the work of
crazed evil people or ordinary people
corrupted by life events?
Social thinking involves thinking about others,
especially when they engage in doing things
that are unexpected.
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Attributing Behavior to Persons or to

Situations

http://www.stedwards.edu

Attribution Theory: Fritz

Heider (1958) suggested
that we have a tendency
to give causal
explanations for
someones behavior,
often by crediting either
the situation or the
persons disposition.
Fritz Heider

Attributing Behavior to Persons or to

Situations
A teacher may wonder whether a childs
hostility reflects an aggressive personality
(dispositional attribution) or is a reaction to stress
or abuse (a situational attribution).

http://www.bootsnall.org

Dispositions are enduring

personality traits. So, if Joe
is a quiet, shy, and
introverted child, he is
likely to be like that in a
number of situations.

Fundamental Attribution Error

The tendency to overestimate the impact of
personal disposition and underestimate the
impact of the situations in analyzing the
behaviors of others leads to the fundamental
attribution error.
We see Joe as quiet, shy, and introverted most of
the time, but with friends he is very talkative,
loud, and extroverted.
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Effects of Attribution
How we explain someones behavior affects how
we react to it.

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Attitudes & Actions

A belief and feeling that predisposes a person to
respond in a particular way to objects, other
people, and events.
If we believe a person is mean, we may feel
dislike for the person and act in an unfriendly
manner.

12

Attitudes Can Affect Actions

Our attitudes predict our behaviors imperfectly
because other factors, including the external
situation, also influence behavior.
Democratic leaders supported Bushs attack on
Iraq under public pressure. However, they had
their private reservations.

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Actions Can Affect Attitudes

Not only do people stand for what they believe in
(attitude), they start believing in what they stand
for.

D. MacDonald/ PhotoEdit

Cooperative actions can lead to mutual liking (beliefs).

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Small Request Large Request

In the Korean War, Chinese communists
solicited cooperation from US army prisoners
by asking them to carry out small errands. By
complying to small errands they were likely to
comply to larger ones.
Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon: The tendency
for people who have first agreed to a small
request to comply later with a larger request.
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Persuasion
Central Vs. Peripheral Route to Persuasion

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Role Playing Affects Attitudes

Zimbardo (1972) assigned the roles of guards
and prisoners to random students and found
that guards and prisoners developed roleappropriate attitudes.
Originally published in the New Yorker

Phillip G. Zimbardo, Inc.

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Actions Can Affect Attitudes

Why do actions affect attitudes? One
explanation is that when our attitudes and
actions are opposed, we experience tension.
This is called cognitive dissonance.

To relieve ourselves of this tension we bring our

attitudes closer to our actions (Festinger, 1957).

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Cognitive Dissonance

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Social Psychology:
Social Influence
What is cognitive dissonance?
Why does this occur?
Provide an example when you experienced
a state of cognitive dissonance.
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Social Influence
The greatest contribution of social psychology is its
study of attitudes, beliefs, decisions, and actions
and the way they are molded by social influence.

NON SEQUITER 2000 Wiley. Dist. by Universal

Press Syndicate Reprinted with Permission

21

Conformity & Obedience

Behavior is contagious, modeled by one
followed by another. We follow behavior of
others to conform.
Other behaviors may be an expression of
compliance (obedience) toward authority.

Conformity

Obedience
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The Chameleon Effect

Conformity: Adjusting ones behavior or
thinking to coincide with a group standard
(Chartrand & Bargh, 1999).

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Group Pressure & Conformity

Suggestibility is a subtle type of conformity,
adjusting our behavior or thinking toward
some group standard.

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Group Pressure & Conformity

An influence resulting from ones willingness to
accept others opinions about reality.

William Vandivert/ Scientifc American

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Conditions that Strengthen

Conformity
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

One is made to feel incompetent or insecure.

The group has at least three people.
The group is unanimous.
One admires the groups status and
attractiveness.
One has no prior commitment to a response.
The group observes ones behavior.
Ones culture strongly encourages respect for a
social standard.
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Video: Candid Camera

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Reasons for Conforming

Normative Social Influence: Influence resulting
from a persons desire to gain approval or avoid
rejection. A person may respect normative
behavior because there may be a severe price to
pay if not respected.
Informational Social Influence: The group may
provide valuable information, but stubborn
people will never listen to others.

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Obedience

Stanley Milgram
designed a study that
investigates the effects of
authority on obedience.

Courtesy of CUNY Graduate School and University Center

People comply to social

pressures. How would
they respond to outright
command?

Stanley Milgram
(1933-1984)
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Both Photos: 1965 By Stanley Miligram, from the

film Obedience, dist. by Penn State, Media Sales

Milgrams Study

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Milgrams Study: Results

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Individual Resistance
A third of the individuals in Milgrams study
resisted social coercion.

AP/ Wide World Photos

An unarmed individual single-handedly

challenged a line of tanks at Tiananmen Square.

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Lessons from the Conformity and

Obedience Studies
In both Asch's and Milgram's studies,
participants were pressured to choose between
following their standards and being responsive
to others.

In Milgrams study, participants were torn

between hearing the victims pleas and the
experimenters orders.
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Group Influence
How do groups affect our behavior? Social
psychologists study various groups:

1.
2.
3.
4.

One person affecting another

Families
Teams
Committees
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Individual Behavior in the Presence

of Others

Michelle Agnis/ NYT Pictures

Social facilitation: Refers

to improved
performance on tasks in
the presence of others.
Triplett (1898) noticed
cyclists race times were
faster when they
competed against others
than when they just
raced against the clock.
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Social Loafing
The tendency of an individual in a group to
exert less effort toward attaining a common goal
than when tested individually (Latan, 1981).

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Deindividuation
The loss of self-awareness and self-restraint in
group situations that foster arousal and
anonymity.

Mob behavior

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Effects of Group Interaction

Group Polarization
enhances a groups
prevailing attitudes
through a discussion.
If a group is likeminded, discussion
strengthens its
prevailing opinions
and attitudes.
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Groupthink
A mode of thinking that occurs when the desire
for harmony in a decision-making group
overrides the realistic appraisal of alternatives.
Attack on Pearl Harbor
Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis
Watergate Cover-up
Chernobyl Reactor Accident

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Power of Individuals

Non-violent fasts and

appeals by Gandhi led
to the independence of
India from the British.

Margaret Bourke-White/ Life Magazine. 1946 Time Warner, Inc.

The power of social

influence is enormous,
but so is the power of
the individual.

Gandhi
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Social Psychology:
Social Relations
When were you a victim of
prejudice/discrimination based on your:

Sex
Race/Ethnicity
Age
Religion
Sexual Orientation
Class
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Social Relations
Social psychology teaches us how we relate to
one another through prejudice, aggression, and
conflict to attraction, and altruism and
peacemaking.

42

Prejudice
Simply called prejudgment, a prejudice is an
unjustifiable (usually negative) attitude toward a
group and its members. Prejudice is often
directed towards different cultural, ethnic, or
gender groups.

Components of Prejudice
1. Beliefs (stereotypes)
2. Emotions (hostility, envy, fear)
3. Predisposition to act (to discriminate)
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Reign of Prejudice
Prejudice works at the conscious and [more at]
the unconscious level. Therefore, prejudice is
more like a knee-jerk response than a conscious
decision.

44

How Prejudiced are People?

Over the duration of time many prejudices
against interracial marriage, gender,
homosexuality, and minorities have decreased.

45

Racial & Gender Prejudice

Americans today express much less racial and
gender prejudice, but prejudices still exist.

46

Race
Nine out of ten white respondents were slow
when responding to words like peace or
paradise when they saw a black individuals
photo compared to a white individuals photo
(Hugenberg & Bodenhausen, 2003).

47

Gender
Most women still live in more poverty than
men. About 100,000,000 women are missing in
the world. There is a preference for male
children in China and India, even with sexselected abortion outlawed.

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Gender
Although prejudice prevails against women, more people
feel positively toward women than men. Women rated
picture b [feminized] higher (66%) for a matrimonial ad
(Perrett & others, 1998).
Professor Dave Perrett, St. Andrews University

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Social Roots of Prejudice

Why does prejudice arise?
1. Social Inequalities
2. Social Divisions
3. Emotional Scapegoating

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Social Inequality
Prejudice develops when people have money,
power, and prestige, and others do not. Social
inequality increases prejudice.

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Us and Them
Ingroup: People with whom one shares a
common identity. Outgroup: Those perceived as
different from ones ingroup. Ingroup Bias: The
tendency to favor ones own group.

Mike Hewitt/ Getty Images

Scotlands famed Tartan Army fans.

52

Emotional Roots of Prejudice

Prejudice provides an outlet for anger [emotion]
by providing someone to blame. After 9/11
many people lashed out against innocent
Arab-Americans.

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Cognitive Roots of Prejudice

One way we simplify our world is to categorize.
We categorize people into groups by
stereotyping them.
Michael S. Yamashita/ Woodfin Camp Associates

Foreign sunbathers may think Balinese look alike.

54

Cognitive Roots of Prejudice

In vivid cases such as the 9/11 attacks, terrorists
can feed stereotypes or prejudices (terrorism).
Most terrorists are non-Muslims.

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Cognitive Roots of Prejudice

The New Yorker Collection, 1981, Robert Mankoff from cartoonbank.com. All Rights Reserved.

The tendency of people to believe the world is

just, and people get what they deserve and
deserve what they get (the just-world
phenomenon).

56

Hindsight Bias
After learning an outcome, the tendency to
believe that we could have predicted it
beforehand may contribute to blaming the
victim and forming a prejudice against them.

57

Aggression
Aggression can be any physical or verbal
behavior intended to hurt or destroy.
It may be done reactively out of hostility or
proactively as a calculated means to an end.
Research shows that aggressive behavior emerges
from the interaction of biology and experience.

58

The Biology of Aggression

Three biological influences on aggressive
behavior are:
1. Genetic Influences
2. Neural Influences
3. Biochemical Influences

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Influences
Genetic Influences: Animals have been bred for
aggressiveness for sport and at times for research.
Twin studies show aggression may be genetic. In
men, aggression is possibly linked to the Y
chromosome.
Neural Influences: Some centers in the brain,
especially the limbic system (amygdala) and the
frontal lobe, are intimately involved with
aggression.
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Influences
Biochemical Influences: Animals with diminished
amounts of testosterone (castration) become docile,
and if injected with testosterone aggression
increases. Prenatal exposure to testosterone also
increases aggression in female hyenas.

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The Psychology of Aggression

Four psychological factors that influence
aggressive behavior are:
1. dealing with aversive events;
2. learning aggression is rewarding;
3. observing models of aggression;
and
4. acquiring social scripts.
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Aversive Events
Studies in which animals and humans experience
unpleasant events reveal that those made
miserable often make others miserable.

Jeff Kowalsky/ EPA/ Landov

Ron Artest (Pacers) attack on Detroit Pistons fans.

63

Environment
Even environmental temperature can lead to
aggressive acts. Murders and rapes increased
with the temperature in Houston.

64

Frustration-Aggression Principle
A principle in which frustration (caused by the
blocking of an attempt to achieve a desired goal)
creates anger, which can generate aggression.

65

Learning that Aggression is

Rewarding
When aggression leads to desired outcomes, one
learns to be aggressive. This is shown in both
animals and humans.
Cultures that favor violence breed violence.
Scotch-Irish settlers in the South had more violent
tendencies than their Puritan, Quaker, & Dutch
counterparts in the Northeast of the US.
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Observing Models of Aggression

Sexually coercive men
are promiscuous and
hostile in their
relationships with
women. This
coerciveness has
increased due to
television viewing of Rand X-rated movies.
67

Acquiring Social Scripts

The media portrays social scripts and generates
mental tapes in the minds of the viewers. When
confronted with new situations individuals may
rely on such social scripts. If social scripts are
violent in nature, people may act them out.

68

Do Video Games Teach or Release

Violence?
The general consensus on violent video games
is that, to some extent, they breed violence.
Adolescents view the world as hostile when
they get into arguments and receive bad grades
after playing such games.

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Summary

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The Psychology of Attraction

1. Proximity: Geographic nearness is a powerful
predictor of friendship. Repeated exposure to
novel stimuli increases their attraction (mere
exposure effect).

Rex USA

A rare white penguin born

in a zoo was accepted after
3 weeks by other penguins
just due to proximity.

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Psychology of Attraction
2. Physical Attractiveness: Once proximity affords
contact, the next most important thing in
attraction is physical appearance.

Brooks Kraft/ Corbis

Brooks Kraft/ Corbis

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Psychology of Attraction
3. Similarity: Similar views among individuals
causes the bond of attraction to strengthen.
Similarity breeds content!

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Romantic Love
Passionate Love: An aroused state of intense
positive absorption in another, usually present at
the beginning of a love relationship.
Two-factor theory of emotion
1. Physical arousal plus cognitive appraisal
2. Arousal from any source can enhance one
emotion depending upon what we interpret or
label the arousal
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Romantic Love
Companionate Love: A deep, affectionate
attachment we feel for those with whom our lives
are intertwined.
Courtship and Matrimony (from the collection of Werner Nekes)

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Altruism
An unselfish regard for the welfare of others.
Equity: A condition in which people
receive from a relationship in proportion
to what they give.
Self-Disclosure: Revealing intimate
aspects of oneself to others.

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Bystander Intervention
The decision-making process for bystander
intervention.

Akos Szilvasi/ Stock, Boston

77

Bystander Effect
Tendency of any given
bystander to be less
likely to give aid if other
bystanders are present.

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Conflict
Conflict is perceived as an incompatibility of
actions, goals, or ideas.
The elements of conflict are the same at all levels.
People become deeply involved in potentially
destructive social processes that have undesirable
effects.

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Enemy Perceptions
People in conflict form diabolical images of one
another.

George Bush
Evil

http://www.aftonbladet.se

http://www.cnn.com

Saddam Hussein
Wicked Pharaoh

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Cooperation
Superordinate Goals are shared goals that
override differences among people and require
their cooperation.
Syracuse Newspapers/ The Image Works

Communication and understanding developed

through talking to one another. Sometimes it is
mediated by a third party.
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Communication
Graduated & Reciprocated Initiatives in
Tension-Reduction (GRIT): This is a strategy
designed to decrease international tensions.
One side recognizes mutual interests and
initiates a small conciliatory act that opens the
door for reciprocation by the other party.

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