Honors
How we act when we’re with others.
Outline
· Observational Learning
- Observational Learning – When an Organism’s Responding is Influenced by the Observation of others, who are called Models.
- Observer stores a Representation of Model’s Behavior, and its Consequences. If the Consequences are Favorable, the Observer’s tendency to emit the Modeled Response will be Strengthened.
§ ALBERT BANDURA
- 4 Key Processes in Observational Learning
- Attention – To Learn through Observation, you must pay close Attention to another Person’s Behavior and its Consequences.
- Retention – You must Store a Mental Representation of What you have Witnessed in your memory.
- Reproduction – Enacting a Modeled Response depends on your Ability to Reproduce the Response by Converting your Stored Mental Images into Overt Behavior.
- Motivation – You will not Reproduce an Observed Response unless you are Motivated to Do so. Your Motivation depends on whether you think the Response will Pay Off in the Situation you are in.
Social Psych
· Overview
- Social Cognition
- We constantly gather data and make predictions about what will happen next so we can act accordingly
- Attitude Formation and Change
- Attitude
- a set of beliefs and feelings
- Attitude
- Mere Exposure Effect
- the more you are exposed to something, the more you will like it
- Persuasive Messages
- Can be passed through the central route or the peripheral route
- central route
- involves deeply processing the content of the message
- peripheral route
- involves other aspects of the message
- ex: the communicator
- The Relationship Between Attitudes and Behavior
- Lapiere 1934
- visited hotels and restaurants with an Asian couple
- observed how they were treated
- treated poorly only once
- asked the establishments about their attitudes towards Asians
- 90% said they wouldn’t serve Asians
- showed that attitudes don’t perfectly predict behaviors
- Cognitive Dissonance Theory
- People are motivated to have consistent attitudes and behaviors
- when they don’t, they experience dissonance
- unpleasant mental tension
- Experiment- Festinger and Carlsmith
- participants performed a boring task
- asked to tell next subject that they enjoyed it
- subjects paid $1 to lie had more positive attitudes toward the experiment than those paid $20
- they lacked sufficient external motivation to lie
- reduced dissonance by changing attitudes
- Compliance Strategies
- Strategies to get others to comply with your wishes
- Foot-in-the-door Phenomenon
- If you can get people to agree to a small request, they will become more likely to agree to a larger follow-up request
- Door-in-the-face Strategy
- After people refuse a large request, they will look more favorably upon a smaller follow-up request
- Norms of Reciprocity
- The tendency to think that when someone does something nice for you, you should do something nice in return
- Attribution Theory
- Goal
- To explain how people determine the causes of what they observe
- Types
- Dispositional/Person attribution
- the cause is due to the person’s innate qualities
- Situation attribution
- a situational factor is the cause
- Stable attribution
- the cause is something that has always been that way
- Unstable attribution
- Harold Kelley’s Theory
- Explains the kind of attributions we make on:
- consistency
- how similarly the individual acts in the same situation over time
- distinctiveness
- how similar this situation is to others we’ve seen the person in
- consensus
- asks us to consider how others would have responded in the same situation
- important for determining whether to make person or situation attribution
- Self-fulfilling Prophecy
- The expectations we have about others can influence their behavior
- “Pygmalion in the Classroom” experiment
- Rosenthal and Jacobson 1968
- administered an IQ test to elementary school students
- said it would measure who was on the verge of academic growth
- randomly picked a group of students
- claimed they were ripe for intellectual progress
- measured IQs again at the end of the year
- the scores of the randomly picked students improved more than those of their classmates
- Attributional Biases
- Fundamental Attribution Error
- People overestimate the importance of dispositional factors
- People underestimate the role of situational factors
- More common in individualistic cultures
- Less common in explaining your own behaviors
- False-Consensus Effect
- The tendency to overestimate the number of people who agree with you
- Self-Serving Bias
- The tendency to take more credit for good outcomes than bad
- Just-World Bias
- Thinking that bad things happen to bad people
- Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination
- Stereotypes
- Ideas about what members of different groups are like
- May influence the way we interact with members of these groups
- Prejudice
- An undeserved attitude toward a group of people
- Ethnocentrism
- the belief that your culture is superior to others
- Discrimination
- acting on your prejudices
- Out-Group Homogeneity
- The tendency to see members of the in-group as more diverse than members of the out-group
- Stereotypes
- In-group
- your own group
- Out-group
- all other groups
- In-Group Bias
- A preference for members of your own group
- Origin of Stereotypes and Prejudice
- Social Learning Theorists
- learned through modeling
- many prejudiced people have prejudiced parents
- Cognitive process of categorization
- people can’t avoid magnifying differences between groups
- Combating Prejudice
- Contact Theory
- contact between hostile groups will reduce animosity
- if the groups are made to work toward a superordinate goal
- superordinate goal
- benefits all
- needs participation of all
- Robbers Cave Study
- Sherif 1966
- divided campers into 2 groups
- had them compete in a series of activities to create animosity
- staged camp emergencies as superordinate goals
- improved relations between the groups
- Aggression and Antisocial Behavior
- Types
- Instrumental aggression
- the aggressive act is intended to secure a particular end
- Hostile aggression
- has no clear purpose
- Instrumental aggression
- Types
- Theoretical Causes
- Exposure to aggressive models
- Freud
- linked aggression to Thanatos
- the death instinct
- Sociobiologists
- the expression of aggression is adaptive under certain circumstances
- Frustration-Aggression hypothesis
- the feeling of frustration makes aggression more likely
- Prosocial Behavior
- People helping one another
- Bystander Intervention
- The conditions under which people are more or less likely to help someone in trouble
- Diffusion of Responsibility
- The larger the group of people who witness a problem, the less responsible any one individual feels to help
- Pluralistic Ignorance
- People decide what constitutes appropriate behavior in a situation by looking to others
- Attraction
- Fundamental Principle
- We like others who:
- are similar to us
- similarity
- with whom we come into frequent contact
- proximity
- who return our positive feelings
- reciprocal liking
- Self-Disclosure
- Sharing a piece of personal information with another person
- The Influence of Others on an Individual’s Behavior
- Social Facilitation
- The presence of others improves task performance
- Social Impairment
- The presence of others hurts task performance if the task is difficult
- Conformity
- The tendency to go along with the views or actions of others
- Solomon Asch 1951 Experiment
- brought participants into a room of confederates
- asked them to make simple perceptual judgments
- showed 3 vertical lines and asked which was the same length as a target line
- had to answer out loud
- confederates gave a unanimous, obviously wrong answer
- 70% of participants conformed on at least 1 trial
- Obedience Studies
- Focus on the willingness of participants to do what another asks
- The Milgram Experiment 1974
- told participants it was a study about teaching and learning
- participants were told to administer “electric shocks”
- over 60% delivered all possible shocks
- Group Dynamics
- Norms
- Rules about how group members should act
- Specific Roles
- Social Loafing
- When individuals do not put in as much effort when acting as part of a group as they do when acting alone
- Group Polarization
- The tendency of a group to make more extreme decisions than the group members would make individually
- Groupthink
- The tendency for some groups to make bad decisions
- Group members suppress their reservations about the ideas the group supports
- Deindividuation
- Groups members feel anonymous and aroused
- Loss of self restraint
- People do things they never would have done on their own
- Stanford Prison Experiment
- Philip Zimbardo (the devil)
- Simulated prison
- Students took to assigned roles too well
- Ended early
