Social Psychology

By Kelsey McFee and Austin Mua

Social Psychology & Group Dynamics

Social Psychology: the study of people in interaction with each other.

Group Dynamics:

● the general term of some of the phenomena we observe when people interact

● Social Facilitation is an increase in performance on a task that occurs when that task is performed in the of others.○ EX: sports

● Social Inhibition: When the presence of others makes performance worse. ○ EX: speeches

● Social Loafing: the reduced effort group members put into a task as a result of the size group.○ Prone to social loafing when they believe their performance is not being

assessed or monitored.

• Group Polarization: The exaggeration of our initial attitudes. Occurs when a judgement or decision of a group a is more extreme than what individual members of the group would have reached on their own.

Social Psychology & Group Dynamics

• Research has been conducted on the resolution of conflicts within groups. The most effect method to resolve a conflict is to have them cooperate towards a superordinate goal.

• Another technique is GRIT (Graduated and Reciprocated Initiatives in Tension-Reduction). It encourages groups to announce intent to reduce tensions and show small, conciliatory behaviors, as long as as these reduced tensions and behaviors are reciprocated.

• Deindividuation: refers to the loss of self-awareness o Ex: Cults

Group Dynamics con’tIrving Janis came up with Groupthink: occurs when members of a group are so driven to reach

unanimous decisions that they no longer truly evaluate the repercussions or implications of their decisions.

o Symptoms of “Groupthink”

o Illusion of invulnerability –Creates excessive optimism that encourages taking extreme risks.

o Collective rationalization – Members discount warnings and do not reconsider their assumptions.

o Belief in inherent morality – Members believe in the rightness of their cause and therefore ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their decisions.

o Stereotyped views of out-groups – Negative views of “enemy” make effective responses to conflict seem unnecessary.

o Direct pressure on dissenters – Members are under pressure not to express arguments against any of the group’s views.

o Self-censorship – Doubts and deviations from the perceived group consensus are not expressed.

o Illusion of unanimity – The majority view and judgments are assumed to be unanimous.

o Self-appointed ‘mindguards’ – Members protect the group and the leader from information that is problematic or contradictory to the group’s cohesiveness, view, and/or decisions.

Attribution Attribution: refers to how people assign responsibility for certain

outcomes.o Dispositional: assumes that the cause of behavior or outcome is

internalo Situational: assigns the cause to the environment or external

conditions EX: When student fail a test, they might attribute that failure to

their own poor work habits or lack of intellectual abilities (dispositional) or they could attribute their failings to some external factor (situational) like bad instruction.

Self-serving bias would see this as Internal (dispositional) when the outcome is positive and external (situational) if the outcome is negative. Taking personal credit for success, but blames outside factors for our failures.

Attribution con’to Attribution Theory: explain how people determine the cause of

what they observe.o FAE (Fundamental Attribution Error): People are more likely to

overestimate the role of dispositional and underestimate the role of situational. EX: If you are waiting for your friend to show up to the movies

and they are so late that the movie is already starting, you would be more likely to to blame your friend’s lateness on their laziness or procrastination than traffic or a car accident.

o Self-fulfilling Prophecy (Rosenthal Effect) ————> When a person expects you to achieve or fail, you would most likely to do just that. EX: Education

o False Consensus: Cognitive bias of a person who believes that other people think the same way they do.

o Just World Phenomenon: Tendency to believe that the world is just and people get what they deserve.

Interpersonal PerceptionInterpersonal Attraction: the tendency to positively a person and then to gravitate

to that person.

• based on characteristics of whom we are attracted, bu may be subject to environmental and social influences. o Factors: positive evaluation, shared opinions, good physical appearance,

familiarity, and proximity to the individual

• Positive Evaluation: refers to the fact that we all like to be positively evaluated and we tend to prefer the company of the people who think highly of us.

• Shared Opinions: typically thought as a form of social reinforcemento If we are praised and rewarded by person of our opinions, then we would be

likely to be in their company.o Similarity factors like race and age are good predictors.

• Mere Exposure Effect: People prefer other people and experiences that are familiar to them

ConformityConformity: The modification of behavior to make it agree with a group.

• Solomon Asch performed studies on the nature of conformityo Naive people went along with the confederates when writing the

wrong answer even though they knew it was wrong.

• Factors influencing Conformity: group size, cohesiveness of group opinion, gender, social status, culture, and appearance of unanimity.o Unanimity: one person is less likely to conform if another person

doesn’t conform.o Women are more likely to conform than men

• The Chameleon Effect: Unconscious tendency to mimic the behaviors of others.

Compliance

• Compliance: A natural tendency to agree with someone’s requests, even at your own expense.o Justification: Present reasons why that person should comply

Norms of Reciprocity: The tendency to think that when someone does something nice to you, you feel the need to return it.

Foot-in-Door Phenomenon: Making small favors leading up to big favors.

Door-in-Face: Large favor down to small favors.o Resisting Compliance: 2 reasons.

Exposed to weak version of an argument, and are included to further attempts.

• Inoculated Theory Feel like they are being forced against their will to help.

• Psychological Reactance

Out-Group and In-Group

Out Group Homogeneity: The tendency to see members of the in-group as more diverse than members of the out group.

• In-group: Your own group

• Out group: All other groups

In Group Bias: A preference for members of your own group.

ObedienceObedience: performing an action under an authority figure (altering

your behavior)

• Was studied by Stanley Milgram.o Was fascinated by Asch’s experiment but wanted to see how far

people would be willing to go. He wanted to know, would people really harm other people if told to by an authority figure. Just how powerful is the pressure to conform? Found that people tended to be obedient to an authority

figure if certain criteria was met and found that people would less likely be obedient if they felt like they had an ally in standing up to the pressure.

Obedience vs Conformity

• How Obedience differs from Conformityo Obedience involves an order. Conformity involves a requesto Obedience involves with an order from a higher status than

you. Conformity involves going along with somebodyo Obedience relies on social power. Conformity relies on the

need to be socially accepted.

Attitudes and Attitude Changes

Attitudes: are the combination of affective (emotional) and cognitive (perceptual) reactions to different stimuli. The affective component is the emotional response to an item or issues and the cognitive component is what we think about the item or issue.

• Cognitive dissonance occurs when there is a contradiction between behaviors and attitudeso Leon Festinger studied the phenomenon and came to the

conclusion that people are likely to alter their attitude to fit their behavior. Tends to occur when the person feel he/she has a choice in the

matter

Attitudes and Attitude Changes

Persuasion: The process by which a person/group can influence the attitudes of others.

• The efficiency of the persuasion has to do with part of the persuader's characteristics. The other important part is the motive.

• Interpersonal Attractiveness: the more attractive, likeable, trustworthy, and knowledgeable people are viewed to be more persuasive.

• Nature of the Message:o Repetition is an effective toolo Fear

• People with high self-esteem are less easily persuaded than low self-esteem.

Altruism involves the unselfish concern for others. It involves doing something out of the desire to help instead of being obligated by duty, loyalty, or religious reasons

• considered prosocial behavior

• Kitty Genovese Case: Murdered inside in her appartment. 38 neighbors saw or heard what was happening when she was murdered, but they didn’t do anything to stop it or call the police. o Bystander Effect: the more people there are, the less likely anyone will help.

Occurs as a result of diffusion of responsibility. Each person assumes that someone else will help.

Pluralistic: People decide what constitutes appropriate behavior in a situation by looking to others.

Altruism and Helping Behavior (Prosocial) & Organizational Psychology

Altruism and Helping Behavior (Prosocial) & Organizational Psychology con’t

Organizational Psychology

• deals with what happens in the workplace.o Equity Theory: Worker evaluate their efforts versus their rewards.—

> Job satisfactiono Human Factors Research deals with the interaction of person and

machine. Job-related accidents are caused by design flaw in equipment related to expectancy of worker.

o Hawthorne Effect: Workers being monitored for any reason work more efficiently and productively

Antisocial BehaviourAnti-social behaviour: A behaviour that is harmful to society or others

and can be divided into two kinds: Prejudice and aggression.

Prejudice: Is the negative attitude toward members of a particular group without evidence. Result of pre judging others.

• Discrimination: Acting on the attitude and treating members of that group differently from members of other groups. (Behavioral)

Antisocial Behavior cont. • Stereotypes: Prototype. Occurs when people compare new stimuli or

people to pre existing prototypes in order to determine where the new group belongs. Can be harmful and lead to us making incorrect assumptions to incorrect conclusions.o Outgroup Homogeneity: Every member of a group other than their

own is similar.o Illusory Correlation: We tend to see relationships where there isn’t

any.

• Attempts to prevent Prejudiceo Contact Hypothesis: Assumes the fact that groups with stereotypes

about each other would lose these stereotypes if the groups were exposed to to each other. (No Data To Support)

AggressionAggression: Behavior direct toward another with the interaction causing

harm.

• Hostile Aggression: Emotional and impulsive, and is induced by pain or stress

• Instrumental Aggression: Committed to gain something of value.o Factors of Aggression:

Biological: Hormonal fluctuations —>Androgen (Testosterone) increases aggressive tendencies. Steroid abusers who use large quantities of synthetic hormones may have uncontrollable aggression.

Aggression con’t Vicarious Learning Theory (Observational Learning by

Bandura): Can learn aggression through watching and imitating.

Environmental: Experiencing pain and be surrounded by aggressive behavior, discomfort, and frustration have be shown to be possible causes of aggression. We also view victims of violence less than human (Dehumanization).• Dehumanization was studied by Phil Zimbardo who

did the prison experiment.

• Reducing Aggression:o Punishments don’t worko Observing nonaggressive models or diffusion of aggression

with humor or empathy is more effective at disrupting violent behavior.

Attraction

Fundamental Principle:

We have a tendency like other who...

1. Are similar to us (Similarity).

2. With whom we come into frequent contact with(Proximity).

3. Who return our positive feelings(Reciprocal liking).