Understanding Attitudes and Relationships: Principles of Social Psychology

1. Chapter 10:How Do We RelateWith Others?

2. Social Psychology • The study of thought and behavior as influenced by social situations • Attitudes – an evaluative belief held about something • Acquired through learning; classical, operant and social learning

3. Classical and Operant Conditioning of Attitudes • Classical Conditioning • Learned emotional and physiological responses • Operant Conditioning • Attitudes strengthened if rewarded and weakened if punished • Consequences of direct interaction with object affect attitude • Social Learning • Observe a model and store mental representation of behavior • Attitudes tend to be most like those around us

4. The Link Between Attitudes and Behavior • Attitude-behavior consistency • Researchers interested in why this is often lacking • What variables affect attitude-behavior consistency? • Answers have practical social value • Politics, consumerism, safe sex, prejudice • How can attitudes be changed?

5. Cognitive Consistency and Attitude Change • Attitudes change as new knowledge is acquired and different experiences are had • Cognitive consistency • Desire to avoid contradictions among attitudes or between attitudes and behavior • Why?... Cognitive Dissonance theory

6. Dissonance Theory • Inconsistencies cause unpleasant physical state – dissonance • Motivated to restore state of consonance • Three ways to remove inconsistencies • Change behavior • Change attitudes • Bring new beliefs or attitudes to situation

7. Persuasion and Attitude Change • Persuasion = Direct attempts to change attitudes • Advertisements, media, politicians, friends • Exposed to multitude of persuasion attempts on daily basis • Cognitive processes engaged during the persuasive attempt influence effect • Central route where messages are critically evaluated • Peripheral route where superficial aspects of arguments influence

8. Other Variables Affecting Persuasion • Communicator variables • Credible, attractive, expert • Especially in peripheral route • Message variables • Present both pros and cons • Audience variables • Easier on peripheral route than central route • Positive moods use less careful evaluation • Easier to persuade: • low IQ, sometimes high IQ, younger

9. How We Form Impressions of Others • Impression formation = How we understand and make judgments about others • Attempt to determine what others are like so we can predict their behavior and guide ours

10. The Attribution Process • Attribution = Judging people by observing and determining cause of behavior • Trait attribution • Traits, abilities, characteristics of person • Situational attribution • Environmental causes

11. Heuristics and Biases in Attribution • Realistically, not always possible to make careful attributions • Humans are ‘cognitive misers’ • Often use heuristics or shortcuts to make conclusions about others • May lead to errors and biases

12. Fundamental Attribution Error • The tendency to rely more on trait attributions than situational • Reasons for this not entirely clear • Varies by culture • Individualistic cultures emphasize individual behavior and success over group; more likely to make fundamental attribution errors • Collectivistic cultures emphasize group over individual

13. Actor/Observer Bias • When observing own behavior take more situational factors into account • Appears self-serving, but not always • Factors: • Cannot see own behavior, focused outward • Have different knowledge about self than other

14. Self-Serving Bias • Tendency to make trait attributions for successes, situational attributions for failures • Helps protect self-esteem • May become too self-serving and hurt

15. Prejudice: How It Occurs and How to Reduce It • Prejudice hampers lives through violence, hate crimes or subtler forms (discrimination against minorities in home loans, women in workforce) • Of hate crimes, most common motivations are racial, religious, and sexual orientation • Prejudice is an attitude and develops like other normal cognitive processes; it is unique in its divisiveness

16. Prejudice and Stereotypes • Stereotype: formation of a schema for specific groups of people • Stereotypes can be helpful or hurtful • Prejudice is stereotype gone awry • Biased, negative stereotype + negative affect = prejudice • Discrimination: behavioral expression of prejudice

17. Stereotype Threat • Claude Steele • Stereotype threat - Fear that others will judge one based on prejudicial stereotypes • May end up reinforcing aspects of the prejudice • Can inhibit task performance • Stereotype threat impairs African Americans’ academic performance

18. Social Transmission of Prejudice • Develop through classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and social learning • Jane Elliot’s “experiment” • Created prejudice within hours of beginning experiment • Children tend to adapt parents’ beliefs, more so for egalitarian beliefs than prejudicial beliefs • Shaped by peers

19. In-Group Bias: Us vs. Them • In-group bias: prefer groups of which we are members • Like group members more than others • Contributes to self-esteem • View out-group members as inferior • Affects way we perceive out-group members • Out-group homogeneity bias: perceive members of out-group as alike

20. Intergroup Conflict and Prejudice: It’s Their Fault • Realistic-conflict theory • Conflict amongst groups for resources (e.g. jobs, trophies) contributes to development of prejudice • Minority out-group can become scapegoats • Racial prejudice when direct competition between groups for jobs • Muzafer Sherif’s Robber’s Cave experiment • Competition between groups and affiliation with group led to prejudice

21. Does Social Contact Reduce Prejudice? • Contact hypothesis: contact between groups reduces prejudices • Contact alone does not reduce prejudice, must be cooperative contact • Superordinate goal: goal both groups want to achieve, but need help of other group • Become one group, with one mission

22. Group Contact Characteristics That Reduce Prejudice • Groups need each other • Have a common, superordinate goal • Work at same level on equal playing field • Contact is hospitable, informal, and free from negative emotional interaction • Contact lasts a significant period of time • Norm promote harmony and mutual respect

23. The Jigsaw Classroom • Real-life application of group contact • Elliot Aronson • Jigsaw classroom: students from different ethnic groups work together to complete a project • Reduces prejudice and hostility • Increases academic performance and self-esteem

24. The Nature of Attraction • Attitudes formed about a person determine whether or not we will be attracted • Affective component particularly important • Proximity • Physical closeness to person affects attraction (someone we see often, live near) • Mere exposure effect: the more often we see person or object, the more we like it • Similarity • Similarity predicts attraction across all cultures

25. The Nature of Attraction: Physical Attractiveness • Standards of attractiveness vary by culture, but is important factor in attraction • Important to both men and women, with men placing more emphasis on it • Matching hypothesis: involved with people whose physical attractiveness is similar to ours • True for friendships and romantic partners • Attractive people perceived as more interesting, kind, sociable, sensitive, and nurturing • May be part biological and instinctive

27. Groups and Group Influence • We belong to a multitude of groups • Functions of groups • Companionship • Security • Social identity • Helps in gaining information and achieving goals • Groups have power to influence behavior

28. Social Forces Within Groups: Norms and Cohesiveness • Norms: laws that guide behavior of group members • Explicit or implicit • Breaking norms results in unpleasant consequences • Cohesiveness: desire to maintain membership in group • High cohesiveness includes high pressure to meet group norms • Increases conformity

29. Conformity Within a Group • Solomon Asch • Subjects given series of lines and asked questions about them • Confederates deliberately chose incorrect answers • Subjects were most likely to follow confederates and choose wrong answer (74%) • Conformity increases as majority group increases • Maximum conformity with only 3 confederates

31. Factors Contributing to Conformity • Lacking confidence in own abilities • High cohesiveness in group • Responses are public, not anonymous • Group has at least 3 unanimous members • The idea of conformity is a cultural norm and/or no personal need to feel individuated

32. Explaining Conformity • During debriefing Asch asked why conformed • Normative conformity • Subjects who knew their answer was wrong, but went along with group • Desire to fit with group and be liked by others • Informational conformity • Subjects became convinced that their choice was actually wrong • Heightened when unsure of opinions or abilities

33. Stanford Prison Experiment: The Dark Side of Conformity • Phillip Zimbardo • Subjects assigned role of prisoner or guard in mock prison • Within days, disturbing behaviors emerged • Abuse on parts of guards • Prisoners became docile and depressed

34. Explaining the Stanford Prison Experiment • New setting, isolated from outside world and norms of society, new norms developed • Deindividuation – behavior controlled by external norms rather than internal values and morals • Several aspects of experiment contributed to deindividuation

35. Decision Making in Groups • Group decisions not necessarily better than decisions made by individuals • Groupthink: group fixates on one decision, without examining alternatives • Factors related to group think: • Group isolation (no outside information) • Group cohesiveness (don’t rock the boat) • Strong dictatorial leadership (can’t disagree) • Stress in group (may not think logically)

36. Compliance Techniques • Foot-in-the-Door • First asked to comply with small request, then bigger requests • Effective because most want to behave in consistent manner – compliance reduces dissonance • Door-in-the-Face • Large request followed by smaller request • High rates of compliance • Effective for may reasons: perceptual contrast, reciprocity, guilt

37. Obedience • Stanley Milgram • Research question: Is it possible that the average person could be influenced to hurt others if an authority figure gave order to do so? • Subjects asked to shock unseen participants (confederates) when mistake made on word list • 65% of subjects shocked up to the 450-volt mark (even when confederate appeared injured) • Studies have replicated results

38. Factors That Affect Obedience • Presence of perceived authority figure (relieves responsibility, intimidates) • Physical distance of authority figure • Timing of request (came quickly, little time to think) • Shock levels increase incrementally (foot-in-the-door phenomenon, slippery slope) • Psychological distances (don’t see consequences of actions)

39. Revisiting the Obedience Studies • Milgram’s study a demonstration of destructive obedience: that which leads to harm of others • Ethics of study? • Effect on subjects: stress-related behaviors, use of deception led to this • Actual purpose of research was disclosed to participants (debriefing), but they are left with knowledge of their behavior • Modern ethical principles guiding research

40. Aggression • Aggression: action intended to cause harm to another • Instrumental aggression: aimed at satisfying goal • Hostile aggression: motivated by desire to hurt • U.S. is considered an aggressive society

41. Biological Theories of Aggression • Males tend to be more aggressive then females • 80%+ of violent crimes, including murder • May be related to testosterone; correlation does not imply causation • Serotonin • Lower levels of serotonin found in two groups: survivors of suicide and adults institutionalized since childhood for aggression

42. Childhood Abuse and Aggression • Correlation between aggression and possible brain damage related to child abuse • Child abuse and neglect correlated with several structural brain abnormalities • Hippocampus, amygdala, left frontal and temporal lobes, cerebellum, corpus callosum

43. Learning Theories of Aggression • Albert Bandura’s Bobo Doll experiments • Aggression is learned by viewing an aggressive model

44. Does Television Portray Violence Accurately? • TV portrays aggression unrealistically • Portrays incidence of aggression as higher than actual rates • No negative repercussions for aggressive acts • Victims’ suffering not portrayed accurately • Least accurate portrayal in children’s programs • Leave children with false impressions regarding aggression, increasing likelihood children will model behavior

45. Situations That Promote Aggressive Behavior • Frustration-aggression hypothesis • When frustrated, we activate a motive to harm others or objects • Motives directed at what appears to be source of frustration • Abusive parents may be in stressful situations such as poverty

46. Helping Behavior: Will You Or Won’t You? • Just as humans can engage in negative behaviors, we can also be very generous • Altruism: willingness to help others without considering personal benefit • Capacity for kindness and compassion • What factors influence helping behavior?

47. The Murder of Kitty Genovese • 1964 Kitty Genovese was murdered in New York City while 38 of her neighbors heard • Not one contacted the police or intervened • Factors involved in decision to help • Noticing something is occurring • Correctly interpret events • Feeling responsibility to intervene • Deciding how to help • Implementing strategy

48. The Bystander Effect • Latane and Darley • Failure can occur at any stage in helping decision process • As number of bystanders increases, likelihood of intervention decreases • Diffusion of responsibility • With more bystanders, more diffusion • Pluralistic ignorance • Group failure to perceive problem

49. When People Choose to Help • People do choose to help total strangers • Many forms and examples of altruism exist • Failure to help not typically due to apathy or cruelty but to misunderstanding, confusion, or fear