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Social Psychology
Social Psychology: Scientific study of how we influence one anothers behavior and thinking.
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Topics to Explore
1. How others influence our behavior 2. How others influence our thinking
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Social Influence
Social Influence: Changes in a persons behavior induced by the actions of another person. (Someone else influences your decision) Conformity: A change in behavior and/or belief to conform to a group norm as a result of real or imagined group pressure
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Why We Comply
Compliance: acting in accordance with a direct request from another person or group. Foot-in-the-door technique: compliance to a large request is gained by preceding it with a very small request.
Door-in-the-face technique: compliance is gained by starting with a large, unreasonable request that is turned down, and then following it with a smaller, more reasonable request.
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Obedience to Authority
Obedience: Following the commands of a person in authority. Classic Milgram study: Volunteer told to teach another person (actually an accomplice in the experiment) word pairs by applying an electric shock each time the learner was wrong. The learner also told the volunteer that he had a heart condition. 65% obeyed by going all the way to 450 volts on the shock machine even though the learner eventually could not answer any more questions.
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Group Influence
Social Facilitation: the presence of others leads to heightened arousal, in which our performance of simpler, familiar tasks is improved and our performance of more difficult, unfamiliar tasks is adversely affected. Social loafing: tendency to exert less effort when working in a group toward a common goal than when individually working toward the same goal. Diffusion of responsibility: the lessening of a sense of individual responsibility for a task when responsibility is shared among members of a group.
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Attribution Theory
Attribution: the process by which we explain our own behavior and that of others. We can attribute behavior to: External Causes (situational): Ones that lie outside of a person
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Actor-observer bias: the tendency to overestimate situational influences on our own behavior, but to overestimate dispositional influences on the behavior of others Self-serving bias: the tendency to make attributions so that one can perceive oneself favorably False-consensus effect: tendency to overestimate the commonality of ones opinions and unsuccessful behaviors (but not successful behaviors) False uniqueness effect: tendency to underestimate the commonality of ones abilities and successful behaviors
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Fundamental attribution error: the tendency as an observer to overestimate dispositional influences (internal causes) and underestimate situational influences (external causes) upon others behavior Just world hypothesis: the assumption that the world is just and that people get what they deserve Primacy effect: information gathered early is weighted more heavily than information gathered later in forming an impression of another person (I.e., first impressions count!)
Self-fulfilling prophecy: our behavior leads a person to act in accordance with our expectations for that person
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Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive Dissonance (Festinger): discomfort caused by inconsistencies between attitudes and behavior We need to have consistency in our thoughts, perceptions, and images of ourselves Underlies attempts to convince ourselves we did the right thing Justification: Degree to which ones actions are justified by rewards or other circumstances
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Social Roles
Social Role: Patterns of behavior expected of people in various social positions (e.g. daughter, mother, teacher, President (!)). Ascribed Role: Assigned to a person or not under personal control