Social Psychology

Crime Psychology

Social Psychology

AttitudesCognitive DissonanceGroup ProcessesDeindividuation

Attitudes

Attribution theory Dispositional explanation vs Situational

explanation Kelley (1967)

Consensus Consistency Distinctiveness

Jones and Harris study (1967) ‘essay study’ Actor-observer difference Jones and Nisbett

(1971)

Jones and Harris (1967)

subjects read either a pro- or an anti-Castro speech that was allegedly written under either free-choice conditions or at the experimenter's request. The subjects' task in the experiment was to infer the true attitude of the author of the speech.

Jones and Harris (1967)

Not surprisingly, the results showed that subjects inferred a pro-Castro attitude from a pro-Castro speech and an anti-Castro attitude from an anti-Castro speech when the speeches were said to have been written under conditions of free choice.

Jones and Harris (1967)

However, contradicting Jones and Harris' hypothesis, when the subjects were specifically told that the speech makers gave either a pro- or an anti-Castro speech solely as the result of a coin flip (random), the subjects still rated the people who gave the pro-Castro speeches as having, on average, a more positive attitude towards Castro than those giving anti-Castro speeches.

Actor-observer difference Jones and Nisbett (1971)

Cognitive Dissonance

Festinger (1957) Dissonance = confusion, uncertainty which once resolved leads us to reinforce our decision and stop us considering alternative courses of action.Bem’s Self-perception theory, if we behave in certain ways, we will restructure our attitudes to fit. (Unless forced).

Bem’s Self-perception theory

Bem is perhaps best known for his theory of "self-perception" as the most oft-cited competitor to Leon Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory. According to the self-perception account, people infer their attitudes from their own behavior much as an outside behavior might, so a person asked to give a pro-Fidel Castro speech would subsequently view themselves as being more in favor of Castro.

Group Processes

Conformity Asch Sheriff Non-conformity = rejection

Asch

Asch

Asch showed bars like those in the Figure to college students in groups of 8 to 10. He told them he was studying visual perception and that their task was to decide which of the bars on the right was the same length as the one on the left.Asch asked the students to give their answers aloud. He repeated the procedure with 18 sets of bars.

Asch

Only one student in each group was a real subject. All the others were confederates who had been instructed to give incorrect answers on 12 of the 18 trials. Asch arranged for the real subject to be the next-to-the-last person in each group to announce his answer so that he would hear most of the confederates incorrect responses before giving his own. Would he go along with the crowd?

Asch

To Asch's surprise, 37 of the 50 subjects conformed to the majority at least once, and 14 of them conformed on more than 6 of the 12 trials. When faced with a unanimous wrong answer by the other group members, the mean subject conformed on 4 of the 12 trials.

Asch

Sherif

Sherif's experiment involved the so-called autokinetic effect whereby a point of light in an otherwise totally dark environment will appear to move randomly. Subjects were invited to estimate the amount of 'movement' they observed.

Sherif

They made their estimates in groups where each member could hear the others' estimates. Ultimately, the group members' estimates converged on a middle-of-the-road 'group estimate'.

Non-conformity

Think about those who were not obedient in MilgramAnd the few prisoners who did not conform in Zimbardo’s prison experiment

De-individuation

Zimbardo 1969 In one study, participants were rendered

anonymous by clothing them in oversized lab coats and hoods, compared with normal clothes and name tags in the control condition.

The participants' task was to shock a confederate in a situation similar to the classic Milgram studies on obedience.

De-individuation

Zimbardo 1969 Using groups of female students,

Zimbardo demonstrated that anonymous participants shocked longer (and therefore more painfully) than identifiable participants, in confirmation of his theory.

De-individuation

Zimbardo 1973 Stanford University Prison Experiment

Key evaluation points

These social processes see the criminal as acting a social role within society and his behaviour being determined by situations, peer pressure and then attitude change leading to criminal behaviour.If this is the explanation of criminal behaviour, why do the majority not end up criminal? It does explain why they stay criminal while in the same social groups.

Key evaluation points

Methodological evaluation: Most of the research is experimental therefore lacks ecological validity, has high demand characteristics, may show experimenter bias by the choice of activity for participants and the participants can only show a limited range of behaviour.Can show cause and effect, is well controlled, careful sampling though usually university students and mostly male (but so are criminals).