Unit 5 - Social Pyschology

Social psychology is the study of how we think about, influence, and relate to one another.

Social Thinking

Attribution Theory

• the idea that we give a casual explanation for someone's behavior
• we credit that behavior either to the situation or...
• to the person's disposition

Fundamental Attribution Theory

• the tendency to underestimate the impact of a situation or overestimate the impact of a personal disposition

Attitudes

• a belief or felling that predisposes one to respond in a particular way to something

Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon

• the tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to later comply with a larger request

Door-in-the-Face Phenomenon

• the tendency for people who say no to a huge request, to comply with a smaller one 

Cognitive Dissonance 

• we don't like when we have either conflicting attitudes or when our attitudes don't match our actions
• when they clash, we will change our attitude to create balance

Social Influence

Conformity

• adjusting one's behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard

Conditions that Strengthen Conformity

• one made to feel incompetent 
• the group is at least 3 people
• the group is unanimous 
• one admires the group's status
• one had made no prior commitment
• the person is observed 
• Normative Social Influence: influences resulting from a person's desire to gain approval or avoid disappointment 
• Informational Social Influence: influence resulting from one's willingness to accept other's opinions about reality

Social Facilitation

• improved performance of tasks in the presence of others
• occurs with simple or well learned tasks
• not with tasks that are difficult or not mastered yet

Yerkes-Dodson Law 

There is an optimal level of arousal for the best performance of any task:

• easy tasks- relatively high
• difficult tasks- low arousal
• other tasks- moderate level

Social Loafing

• the tendency for people in a group exert less effort when pooling efforts toward a common goal than if they were individually accountable 

Deindividuation 

• the loss of self-awareness and self-restraint occurring in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity 

Group Polarization

• the concept that a group's attitude is one of extremes and rarely moderate

Group Thinking

• The mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides common sense 

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy 

• occurs when one person's belief about others leads one to act in ways that induce the others to appear to confirm the belief

Social Relations 

Prejudice 

• An unjustifiable attitude towards a group of people
• usually involves stereotyped beliefs (a generalized belief about a group of people)

Social Inequalities 

• Ingroup Bias: the tendency to favor one's own group
• Ingroup: "us" - people wit whom one shares a common identity
• Outgroup: "them" - those perceived as different than one's ingroup  

Scapegoat Theory

• the theory that prejudice provides an outlet for anger providing someone to blame

Aggression

• any physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt someone 

Conflict

• a perceived incompatibility of actions, goals, or ideas

Love

• Passionate love: an aroused state of intense positive absorption of another
• Compassionate Love: the deep affectionate attachment we feel for those with whom our lives are intertwined 

Altruism

• unselfish regard for the welfare of others 
• Kitty Genovese Case
• Bystander Effect: bystanders are less willing to help if there are other bystanders around