Psyc 1001 - Lecture 11
Psyc 1001 - Lecture 11
Social Thinking
● Social psychology: the scientific study of how we feel about, think about, and behave
toward the other people around us,and how those people influence our thoughts, feelings,
and behavior
○ Focus on social influences that explain why the same person acts differently in
different situations
Attribution theory
● We tend to give a causal explanation for someone's behavior
● Behaviors of others explained by credit either the situation or the person’s disposition
● Fundamental attribution error
Tendency for observers, when analyzing others behavior, to underestimate the impact of the
situation and to overestimate the impact of personal disposition
Conformity
● Complying with social pressures; adhering to asocial standard
● Types of conformity
○ Suggestibility
■ Social contagion (chameleon effect)
■ Mood contagion
○ Natural mimicry
■ Enable ability to empathize
■ Mood linkage
Group Behaviour
● Social facilitation: an observer improves performance on easy or well-learned tasks, but
hinders iron difficult or newly learned ones
● Social loafing: when people work towards a group goal together,they put in less effort
● Deindividuation: a psychological state when a group experience makes people
anonymous, and they become less self-aware and self-restrained, capable of things they
would not normally do
● If a group is like-minded, discussion strengthens its prevailing opinions.
● Talking over racial issues increased prejudice in a high-prejudice group of high school
students and decreased it in a low-prejudice group.
The Internet as SocialAmplifier
● The internet connects like-minded people
● These connections can bring emotional healing
● Online sharing can also strengthen social movements
● Electronic communication and social networking can encourage people to isolate
themselves from those with different opinions
● On social media, we often share political content with like-minded others
● Like-minded separation + conversation = group polarization
Groupthink
● Mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group
overrides realistic appraisal of the alternatives
● Studies have shown that groupthink—fedby overconfidence, conformity,
self-justification, and group polarization—can contribute to bad decision making
Antisocial Relations
● Prejudice
○ Prejudgment; unjustifiable and usually negative attitude toward a group and its
members
○ Can be explicit or implicit
● Racial and ethnic prejudice
○ Overt interracial prejudice wanes; subtle prejudice lingers
○ Implicit Association Test findings
● People viewed (a) a White or Black face, instantly followed by (b) a flashed gun or hand
tool, which was then followed by (c) a masking screen. Participants were more likely to
misperceive a tool as a gun when it was preceded by a Black face rather than a White
face. (KeithPayne, 2006)
Components of Prejudice
● Prejudice is a mixture of beliefs (oftenovergeneralized, and called stereotypes),negative
emotions (hostility, envy, or fear),and predispositions to action (to discriminate)
● Prejudice is a negative attitude;discrimination is a negative behavior.
Roots of prejudice
● 1. Social inequalities and divisions
○ Just-world phenomenon:victim-blaming
○ Ingroup: “us”
○ Outgroup: “them”
○ Ingroup bias
● 2. Negative emotions
○ Scapegoat theory: when things go wrong, finding someone to blame can provide a
target for negative emotions.
○ Research evidence
■ Economically frustrated people tend to express heightened prejudice
■ Experiments that create temporary frustration intensify prejudice
● 3. Cognitive shortcuts
○ Categorization by gender, ethnicity,race, age, and other factors may lead to
stereotype
■ Outgroup homogeneity
■ Other-race effect: tendency to recall faces of one’s own race more
accurately than faces of other races.
Bystander intervention
● Helping someone depends on the characteristics of the person, situation, an internal state
○ What contributes to the likelihood that a person will help another in
So...
● Happiness breeds helpfulness and
● Helpfulness breeds happiness