Understanding Psychology 6 th Edition Charles G. Morris and Albert A. Maisto

1. Understanding Psychology6th EditionCharles G. Morris and Albert A. Maisto PowerPoint Presentation by H. Lynn Bradman Metropolitan Community College ©Prentice Hall 2003

2. Chapter 14 Social Psychology ©Prentice Hall 2003

3. What Is Social Psychology? • The scientific study of the ways in which the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of an individual are influenced by the real or imagined behavior of others. ©Prentice Hall 2003

4. Social Cognition • Impression formation • Attribution • Interpersonal attraction ©Prentice Hall 2003

5. Impression Formation • Schemata • Primacy effect • Self-fulfilling prophecies • Stereotypes ©Prentice Hall 2003

6. Schemata • The use of schemata speeds information processing. • Schematic processing aids in encoding and recall of personal information. ©Prentice Hall 2003

7. Primacy Effect • The theory that early information about someone weighs more heavily than later information in influencing one’s impression of that person. ©Prentice Hall 2003

8. Self-Fulfilling Prophecies • The process in which a person’s expectation about another elicits behavior from the second person that confirms the expectation. ©Prentice Hall 2003

9. Stereotypes • A special type of schema about members of a social category. • Stereotypes may contribute to self-fulfilling prophecies. ©Prentice Hall 2003

10. Attribution Theory • The theory that addresses the question of how people make judgments about the causes of behavior. • Behavior is typically explained as being the result of either internal or external factors. ©Prentice Hall 2003

11. Three Types of Information Used to Determine Causality • Distinctiveness: • Uniqueness of circumstances • Consistency: • Degree to which behavior is typical of the individual in similar circumstances • Consensus: • Degree to which behavior in this circumstance is typical of most people ©Prentice Hall 2003

12. Biases in Attributions • Fundamental attribution error • Defensive attribution • Just-world hypothesis ©Prentice Hall 2003

13. Fundamental Attribution Error • The tendency of people to overemphasize personal causes for other people’s behavior and to underemphasize personal causes for their own behavior. ©Prentice Hall 2003

14. Defensive Attribution • Sometimes referred to as the self-serving bias. • Our successes are attributed to internal factors • Our failures are attributed to external factors. ©Prentice Hall 2003

15. Just-World Hypothesis • An attribution error based on the assumption that bad things happen to bad people and good things happen to good people. ©Prentice Hall 2003

16. Factors Involved in Interpersonal Attraction • Proximity: • How close two people live to each other. • Physical attractiveness: • We tend to ascribe a host of positive qualities to physically attractive individuals. ©Prentice Hall 2003

17. Factors Involved in Interpersonal Attraction • Similarity: • We tend to be attracted to people who share our attitudes, interests, values, and beliefs. • Exchange: • We are attracted to those individuals with whom we exchange rewards. ©Prentice Hall 2003

18. Exchange • Equity: • We prefer to have equitable (equal give and take) relationships. • Gain-loss theory: • We prefer increases in positive evaluation by others to steady positive evaluation. ©Prentice Hall 2003

19. Factors Involved in Interpersonal Attraction • Intimacy: • The quality of genuine closeness and trust achieved in communication with another person. • Self-disclosure: • The revealing of personal experiences and opinions. ©Prentice Hall 2003

20. Attitudes • Attitudes are important because they often influence behavior. • We cannot always tell people's attitudes from their actions. ©Prentice Hall 2003

21. What is an attitude? • A relatively stable organization of beliefs, feelings, and behavior tendencies directed toward something or someone—the attitude object. ©Prentice Hall 2003

22. Three Components of an Attitude • Evaluative beliefs about the attitude object • Feelings toward the attitude object • Behavioral tendencies toward the attitude object ©Prentice Hall 2003

23. Self-Monitoring • The tendency for one to observe a situation for cues about how to react. • High self-monitors may change their behavior to meet the demands of the situation. ©Prentice Hall 2003

24. How Do We Acquire Our Attitudes? • From early, direct personal experiences • Parents, teachers, friends, famous people • The mass media ©Prentice Hall 2003

25. Prejudice and Discrimination • Prejudice: • An unfair, intolerant, or unfavorable attitude toward a group of people. • Discrimination: • An unfair act or series of acts taken toward an entire group of people or individual members of that group. ©Prentice Hall 2003

26. Sources of Prejudice • Frustration-aggression theory • Authoritarian personality ©Prentice Hall 2003

27. Frustration-Aggression Theory • The theory that under certain circumstances people who are frustrated in their goals turn their anger away from the proper, powerful target toward another, less powerful target that is safer to attack. ©Prentice Hall 2003

28. Authoritarian Personality • A personality pattern characterized by rigid conventionality, exaggerated respect for authority, and hostility toward people who defy society’s norms. ©Prentice Hall 2003

29. Two Types of Racism • Modern racism: • A subtle and less extreme form of prejudice reflected by agreement with statements that civil rights groups are too extreme or that African Americans receive more respect and benefits than they deserve. • Institutional racism: • Discrimination that occurs because of the overall effect of institutions and policies. ©Prentice Hall 2003

30. Using the Contact Hypothesis to Reduce Prejudice • Members of opposing groups must have equal status. • One-on-one contact is necessary. • Contact improves under cooperation. • The social norms should encourage contact. ©Prentice Hall 2003

31. The Process of Persuasion • Must attend to the message, • Comprehend the message, • And accept it as convincing ©Prentice Hall 2003

32. Four Elements of Effective Persuasion • The source • The message • The medium of communication • Characteristics of the audience ©Prentice Hall 2003

33. The Source • Must appeal to the audience • Must be credible ©Prentice Hall 2003

34. The Message • Novel arguments are more persuasive than old arguments. • The message is more successful when both sides of arguments are presented. • The use of fear sometimes works. ©Prentice Hall 2003

35. The Medium of Communication • The most effective medium is face-to-face appeals or the lessons of our own experience. • Writing is best suited for complex arguments. • Videotape or live media is best for an audience that already grasps the basics of an argument. ©Prentice Hall 2003

36. Characteristics of the Audience • Certain personality characteristics make some people more susceptible to attitude change: • People with low self-esteem are more easily influenced. • Highly intelligent people tend to resist persuasion because they can think of counterarguments more easily. ©Prentice Hall 2003

37. Characteristics of the Audience • Attitudes are most resistant to change if: • The audience has a strong commitment to its present attitudes. • Those attitudes are shared by other people. • The attitudes were instilled during early childhood by such pivotal groups as the family. ©Prentice Hall 2003

38. Cognitive Dissonance • Perceived inconsistency between two cognitions (a piece of knowledge or a belief). • An unpleasant psychological tension is created and we want to alleviate this tension. ©Prentice Hall 2003

39. Cognitive Dissonance • Attitude change can occur due to cognitive dissonance if a small reward is given for a behavior that is attitude discrepant. ©Prentice Hall 2003

40. Ways to Reduce Cognitive Dissonance • Increase the number of thoughts that support one of the beliefs. • Reduce the importance of one of the cognitions. ©Prentice Hall 2003

41. Social Influence • The process by which others individually or collectively affect one’s perceptions, attitudes, and actions. ©Prentice Hall 2003

42. Social Influence and Culture • Culture: • All the goods, both tangible and intangible, produced in a society. • Cultural truism: • The belief that most members of a society accept as self-evidently true. ©Prentice Hall 2003

43. Social Influence and Culture • Norm: • A shared idea or expectation about how to behave. • Cultural norm: • A behavioral rule shared by an entire society. ©Prentice Hall 2003

44. Conformity • Voluntarily yielding to social norms, even at the expense of one’s own preferences. ©Prentice Hall 2003

45. Asch’s Findings • Overall, subjects conformed on about 35% of the trials. • Two factors influence the likelihood a person will conform: • Characteristics of the situation • Characteristics of the individual ©Prentice Hall 2003

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47. Characteristics of the Situation • Size of the group: • Likelihood of conformity increases until four confederates are present • Degree of unanimity • Just one “ally” eases the pressure to conform • Nature of task: • When task is difficult, poorly defined, or ambiguous there is higher conformity ©Prentice Hall 2003

48. Characteristics of the Individual • Likelihood to conform increases when one: • Is attracted to the group • Expects future interaction with the group • Has low status in the group • Does not feel completely accepted ©Prentice Hall 2003

49. Compliance • A change of behavior in response to an explicit request from another person or group. • Foot-in-the-door effect • Lowball procedure • Door-in-the-face effect ©Prentice Hall 2003

50. Foot-in-the-Door Effect • Once people have granted a small request, they are more likely to comply with a larger request. ©Prentice Hall 2003