Mary Jones. What is…? Social psychology -The scientific study of how we influence one another's behavior and thinking -Focuses on how situational forces

Mar

y Jo

nes

What is…?

• Social psychology- The scientific study of how we influence one

another's behavior and thinking- Focuses on how situational forces influence our

behavior and thinking• Social influence- Examines how other people and the social forces

they create influence an individual's behavior

In This Chapter

How Others Influence Our Behavior

How We Think about Our Own and Others' Behavior

How Others Influence Our Behavior

Why We Conform

Why We Comply

Why We Obey

How Groups Influence Us

Why We Conform

• Conformity- Is defined as a change in behavior, belief, or both

to conform to a group norm as a result of real or imagined group pressure

- Has negative connotations in Western cultures; some conformity is needed for society to function

Why We Conform

Major types of social

influence

Information social

influence

Situational factors

Normative social

influence

The Sherif Study and Informational Social Influence

• Participants were placed in a completely dark room and exposed to a stationary point of light

• The task was to estimate the distance this light moved• The light never moved (autokinetic effect), but

participants reported movement when alone and in a group setting- After several exposures, the individual estimates converged

on a common group norm- A year later, participants were brought back and made

estimates alone; these estimates remained at the group normWhat did this indicate about social influence?

The Sherif Study and Informational Social Influence

• This pattern of results suggests the impact of informational social influence that stems from the desire to be correct in situations in which the correct action of judgment is uncertain

• When a task is ambiguous or difficult and people want to be correct they look to others for information Results of Sherif's Study of Conformity

The Asch Study and Normative Social Influence

• In Asch's study, the visual judgments were easy visual discriminations involving line-length judgments

• In this study, the correct answer/behavior was obvious• When making such judgments alone, almost no

mistakes were made• Experimental confederates, part of the experimental

setting, made deliberate mistakes on certain trials.

An Example of Asch's Line-Length Judgment Task

The Asch Study and Normative Social Influence

• About 75% of the participants gave an obviously wrong answer at least once, and overall, conformity occurred 37% of the time

• This conformity occurred despite the fact that the “correct” answer, unlike in Sherif's study, was obvious

• Asch's results illustrate the power of normative social influence, influence stemming from our desire to gain the approval of and to avoid the disapproval of other people

Situational Factors that Impact Conformity

Unanimity of the group

Mode of responding

Status of group members

Situational Factors that Impact Conformity

• If the group is unanimous, conformity will increase. If one person is “different” somehow, it allows other people to avoid conforming.

• The mode of responding is also critical. Secret ballots lead to less conformity than public, verbal reports.

• The status of group members intervenes. More conformity is observed from a person that is of lesser status than the other group members or is attracted to the group and wants to be part of it.

Why We Comply

• Compliance- Involves acting in accordance to a direct request

from another person or group - Occurs in many facets of life

Compliance Techniques

Foot-in-the-door

Door-in-the-face

Low-ball That's-not-all


• Foot-in-the-door- Compliance to a large request is gained by prefacing it

with a very small, almost mindless request- Tendency is for people who have complied with the small

request to comply with the next, larger request- Technique works because behavior (complying with the

initial request) affects attitudes, leading to more positive helping behavior and a view of oneself as a generally charitable person

- Freedman and Fraser's (1966) classic yard sign study- Technique was used by the Communist Chinese in the

Korean War on prisoners of war


• Door-in-the-face - Opposite of the foot-in-the-door technique- Compliance is gained by starting with a large

unreasonable request that is turned down, and then following it with a more reasonable smaller request

- Success is due to tendency toward reciprocity and making mutual concessions


• Low-ball - Compliance to a costly request is achieved by

first getting compliance to an attractive, less costly request, but then reneging on it

- This works because many feel obligated to go through with a deal after agreeing to an earlier request, even if the first request has changed for the worse

- People want to remain consistent in their actions


• That's-not-all - People are more likely to comply to a request

after a build-up to make the request sound “better”

- Technique is often used in television infomercials- As in the door-in-the-face technique, reciprocity

is at work

Four Compliance Techniques

Why We Obey

• Obedience - Involves following the commands of a person in

authority- Good in some instances and bad in other

instances

Why We Obey

Milgram's experiment

The Astroten study

The Jonestown massacre

Milgram's Basic Experimental Paradigm

Experimenter tells student volunteers that the study is examining the effects of punishment by electric shock on

learning, and specifically learning a list of word pairs.

• One of the participants will be the teacher and the other participant will be the learner.

• Students draw slips for these roles, and all students draw the slip of the teacher, so the other participant (experimental confederate) becomes the learner

• Student teachers accompany the learner into an adjoining room and helps strap him to a chair and shock generator

• A test shock is given to all students to familiarize them with the shock stimuli• Student teachers believe they are administering increasing levels of shock

with each missed respond• Despite cries of pain, students continue with the shocks

Milgram's Initial Obedience Finding

Before this experiment

•Milgram asked various types of people what they and other people would do•Most thought people would stop at relatively low shock levels•Psychiatrists believed that maybe one person in a thousand would go to the end of the shock generator•In reality, almost two out of every three participants (65%) continued to obey the experimenter and administered the maximum possible shock of 450 volts

Interpreting Milgram's Findings

Why?

•The difference between what we say we will do and what we actually do illustrates the power of situational social forces on our behavior•The foot-in-the-door technique was used because participants started off giving very mild shocks (15 volts) and increased the voltage relatively slowly.•Similar results have been found with females and participants in other cultures.

Situational Factors that Impact Obedience

Can you explain how these factors impacted

obedience in the Milgram experiment?

•Physical presence of the experimenter •Physical closeness of teacher and learner•Setting of the study•Experimenter unanimity•Teacher responsibility

Results for Some of Milgram's Experimental Conditions

Criticisms of Milgram's Experiment

What do the critics say?

•Violations of ethical guidelines•Experimental obligation because of agreement to and payment for participation

The “Astroten” Study

Hofling and colleagues (1966)

•Participants were nurses on duty alone in a hospital ward •Each nurse responded to a call from a personally unknown staff doctor who authorized a potentially dangerous dosage of Astroten to be given to a patient in the ward•Of 22 nurses phoned, 21 did not question the order

The “Astroten” Study

A separate sample of 33 nurses were asked about this situation and what they would

do if they were placed in it•All but 2 said they would NOT obey the doctor's order•This demonstrated the difference between what we think we will do and what we actually do in a given situation

The Jonestown Massacre

In 1978, more than 900 people who were members of Reverend Jim

Jones's religious cult in Jonestown, Guyana committed mass suicide by

drinking cyanide-laced Kool-Aid•These were Americans who moved to South America from San Francisco in 1977•Using various compliance techniques, Jones developed unquestioned faith as the cult leader and discouraged individualism

The Jonestown Massacre

What techniques were used?

•Using the ________, Jones was able to increase financial support required of each member until they had turned over essentially everything they owned.

•Jones had recruiters ask people walking by to help the poor. When they refused, the recruiters then asked them just to donate five minutes of time to put letters in envelopes. This illustrates the ________.

•________ was also at work, as being moved from San Francisco to Guyana created an uncertain environment in which followers would look to others to guide their own.

How Groups Influence UsGroup

influence

Social facilitation

Social loafing the the diffusion of responsibility

Bystander effect

Deindividuation

Group polarization


• Social facilitation- Facilitation of dominant response on a task due

to social arousal- Leads to improvement on simple or well-learned

tasks and worse performance on complex or unlearned tasks when other people are present

- Occurs because the presence of others increases physiological arousal, and under conditions of increased arousal, people tend to give whatever response is most dominant


• Social loafing - Occurs when people pool their efforts to achieve

a common goal- Is the tendency for people to exert less effort

when working toward a common goal in a group than when individually accountable


• Diffusion of responsibility - Occurs when responsibility for a task is spread

across all members of the group so individual accountability is lessened


• Bystander effect (Darley and Latané)- Posits the probability of a person's helping in an emergency is

greater when there are no other bystanders than when there are other bystanders

• Kitty Genovese 1964 murder- When returning home from work late one night Kitty Genovese

was attacked and murdered in front of her apartment building- At least 38 neighbors heard her cries for help but no one

intervened and police were not called until the victim died.

- Do you think this was a case of “big city” apathy? Why? Why not?


• Bystander effect/college students Darley and Latané (1968)- College students ostensibly participated in a round-

robin discussion of college adjustment problems over an intercom system

- Suddenly, one student (confederate) starts having a seizure and cries out for help

- Participant willingness to help depended on how many other individuals the participant thought were available to help the student having the seizure

Can you explain why this occurred?

The Bystander Effect

The probability of helping decreased as the responsibility for helping was diffused across

more participants.


• Deindividuation- Involves loss of self-

awareness and self-restraint in a group situation that fosters arousal and anonymity

- Supports feelings of less restraint that enable people to forget their moral values and act spontaneously without thinking

- Allows action within anonymity of the group situation

Deindividuation and the Ku Klux Klan


• Group polarization- Involves strengthening of a group's prevailing

opinion about a topic following group discussion of that topic

- Is impacted by normative social influence


• Groupthink- Mode of group thinking that impairs decision

making- Occurs when the desire for group harmony

overrides a realistic appraisal of the possible decisions

- Leads to an illusion of infallibility or belief that the group cannot make mistakes

How We Think about Our Own and Others' Behavior

How We Make Attributions

How Our Behavior Affects Our Attitudes


• Attributions- Process by which people explain their own

behavior and the behavior of others- Poses the question: What do we think are the

causes of our behavior and the behavior of others?


• An internal attribution involves explaining behavior in terms of a person's disposition/personal characteristics

• An external attribution involves explaining behavior in terms of a person's circumstances/situation

Attributions for the Behavior of Others

Fundamental attribution error

Self-fulfilling prophe

cy


• Fundamental attribution error- Observer tends to overestimate internal

dispositional influences and underestimate external situational influences upon others' behavior

- External factors are ignored when explaining the behaviors of other people

Can you apply this error to the actions of the teachers in the Milgram experiment?


• Just-world hypothesis- Observer places blame on victims by assuming that

the world is just and that people get what they deserve

- This hypothesis helps justify cruelty to others• Primacy effect- Is partially responsible for the fundamental attribution

error- Occurs when early information is weighted more

heavily than later information in forming an impression of another person


• Self-fulfilling prophecy- Occurs when expectations of a person elicit

behavior from the person that confirms our expectations

Attributions for Our Own Behavior

Actor-observer bias


Actor-observer bias

Tendency to attribute personal behavior to

situational influences

Tendency to attribute the behavior of others

to dispositional influences


Self-serving bias

Tendency to overestimate

dispositional influences when the outcome of our

behavior is positive

Tendency to overestimate situational

influences when the outcome of our behavior

is positive

Self-Serving Bias

• Self-serving bias can also influence our estimates of the extent to which other people think and act as we do- False consensus effect- False uniqueness effect

Self-Serving Bias

• False consensus effect- Tendency to overestimate the commonality of

one's opinions and unsuccessful behaviors• False uniqueness effect- Tendency to underestimate the commonality of

one's abilities and successful behaviors

Attributional Bias

When Our Behavior Contradicts Our Attitudes

• Attitudes- Include evaluative reactions (positive or

negative) toward things, events, and other people

- Tend to guide our behavior• When the attitudes are ones that we feel strongly

about• When we are consciously aware of our attitudes• When outside influences on our behavior are not

strong


Festinger's Cognitive

Dissonance Theory

Bem's Self-Perception

Theory

Impact of Role Playing


Festinger and Carlsmith's study

In the study, participants completed

a boring task.

After an hour, the experimenter explained that the experiment was

concerned with the effects of a person's expectations on their task performance and that participants were

in the control group.The experimenter became upset because a student assistant didn't show up.

The assistant was to pose as a student who just

participated in the experiment and to tell the next waiting student that the task was enjoyable.

Students were asked to take the place of the

assistant and were offered pay of $1 or $20 for lying.

Before leaving, students were asked to rate their enjoyment and reactions

to study participation.

What did the students say about their participation?


• Festinger and Carlsmith's study: Findings- Participants who were paid only $1 rated the

boring tasks as fairly enjoyable- Participants who were paid $20 rated the boring

tasks as boring Why?


• Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory - Proposes that people

change their attitudes to reduce the cognitive discomfort created by inconsistencies between their attitudes and their behavior

Leon Festinger


• Let's apply cognitive dissonance theory to the participants in the boring task study who lied for $1- Why did they rate the task as enjoyable? - Their attitude was that the tasks were incredibly boring,

but this was inconsistent with their behavior—lying about the tasks for only $1

• This inconsistency would cause them to have cognitive dissonance

• To reduce this dissonance, the participants changed their attitude to be that the tasks were fairly enjoyable, relieving the inconsistency and resulting dissonance


• Another key aspect of cognitive dissonance- We don't suffer dissonance if we have sufficient

justification for our behavior- Participants paid $20 in the study had perfectly

good reason to be inconsistent but not experience dissonance

- Once people make a tough choice, they will strengthen their commitment to that choice in order to reduce cognitive dissonance


• Bem's self-perception theory - Proposes that when we are unsure of our

attitudes we infer them by examining our behavior and the context in which it occurs

- Contends that we don't change our attitude because of our behavior, but rather we use our behavior to infer our attitude

Cognitive Dissonance vs. Self-Perception

Cognitive dissonance theory is a better explanation for behavior that contradicts well-established attitudes.• Suc

h behavior creates mental discomfort, and we change our attitudes to reduce it.

Self-perception theory explains situations in which our attitudes are not well-defined.• We

infer our attitudes from our behavior

The Impact of Role-Playing

• Role- A social position that carries with it expected

behaviors from the person in it- Defined by the socially expected pattern of

behavior for it, and these definitions impact both behavior and attitudes


• Zimbardo's study (1970s)- In a now-classic study, Zimbardo recruited male

college students to participate in a study held in the basement of the Stanford University psychology building—renovated to be a mock prison

- The most emotionally-stable volunteers were selected for the study and then randomly assigned to play the roles of prisoner and prison guard.

- The participants began to take their respective roles too seriously

- Role-playing quickly became reality


• Zimbardo's study criticism- Not clear if participants

behavior was motivated by natural acceptances of situational roles or active leadership by Zimbardo

- Findings may be confounded by demand characteristics

- Only a few guards were abusive

A guard harassing a prisoner in the Stanford PrisonExperiment.

A guard mistreating a prisoner at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.


• Haslam and Reicher/BBC study- Recreated SPE study (with

ethical study)- Results: Guards failed to

impose their authority and rebelled after six days

- Guards and prisoners formed communal system that collapsed

- Findings via social identity theory: Power resides in group ability to establish sense of shared identity

The guards and prisoners who participated in the BBC Prison Study.

Documents

Mary Jones. What is…? Social psychology -The scientific study of how we influence one another's behavior and thinking -Focuses on how situational forces