Conformity
- A change in behavior or belief as a result of real or imagined group pressure
- Think or act like members of a group
- Negative in individualist culture
Solomon Asch
The Line Test
- Informational Social Influence
- Normative Social Influence
Informational Social Influence
- Influence resulting from one’s willingness to accept other’s opinions about reality
- People know something we don’t
- Have valuable info
Normative Social Influence
- Influence resulting from a person’s desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval
- Price we pay for being different can be severe
The Line Test
- Group judged line length
- All confederates except one person
- Confederates: people acting in experiment to give blatantly wrong answer
- Person would usually conform unless someone else in the group gave same answer
Conditions that strengthen conformity
- One is made to feel incompetent/ insecure
- The group has at least 3 ppl
- Group is unanimous
- If one person breaks this, others will follow
- One admires group’s status/ attractiveness
- One has made no prior commitment to a response
- If you state what you believe on record, more likely to follow it
- Others in the group observe one’s behavior
- One’s culture strongly encourages respect for social standards
Stanley Milgram
- If individuals would engage in risky behavior if asked by authority figure
- Obedience and shocking learners
Obedience is highest when…
- Person giving orders is close and legit authority
- Authority figure supported by prestigious institution
- Victim depersonalization or at a distance
- No role models for defiance
Social Facilitation
- Triplett
- Stronger responses on simple of well-learned tasks in the presence of others
- Ex: Race faster against a person as opposed to clock
- On tougher tasks, people perform worse when being observed
- Arousal strengthens the most likely response
Yerkes-Dodson Law
- Performance increases with physiological or mental arousal, but only up to a point
- Arousal is too high= performance decreases
Social Loafing
- Latane
- Tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling their efforts toward attaining a common goal than when individually accountable
Deindividuation
- The loss of self-awareness and self-restraint occurring in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity
- Less self-conscious, less restrained
- Ex: rioting, food fight
- Less self-conscious, less restrained
- Ex of diffusion of responsibility
Effects of Group Interaction
- Group polarization
- Groupthink
Group Polarization
- Enhancement of a group’s prevailing inclinations through discussion w/in the group
- When high-prejudice students disclose racial issues, they become more prejudiced
Group Think
- Mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives
- Ex: Ill-fated Bay of pigs invasion under JFK
Culture and Behavior
- Each cultural group has its own norms
- Ex: personal space
- North Americans, British prefer more PS than Arabs, French
Norms
-Understood rule for accepted and expected behavior
Prejudice
- Unjustifiable attitude toward a group and its members
- Mixture of beliefs, emotions, and predisposition to action
- Overt vs subtle, conscious vs. unconscious
Stereotype
-A generalized belief about a group of people
Discrimination
-Unjustifiable negative BEHAVIOR toward a group and its members
Social roots of Prejudice
- Social inequalities–> the “haves” justify the status quo
- Us vs. Them: ingroups and outgroups provides the benefits of communal solidarity
- Ingroup Bias
Ingroup Bias
-The tendency to favor our own group
Emotional roots of Prejudice
- Facing death heightens patriotism, produces loathing towards others
- Scapegoat Theory
Scapegoat Theory
-The theory that prejudice offers an outlet for anger by providing someone to blame
Categorization
- Cognitive root of prejudice
- Allows us to simplify the world
- Acknowledges differences in our own groups, overestimate similarity in other groups (outgroup homogeneity)
- They act/look alive, we are diverse
- Other Race Effect
Other-Race Effect
- Also called cross-race effect, own-race bias
- The tendency to recall faces of ones own race more accurately than faces of other races
- Emerges 3-9 months
- Reduced through increased exposure
Vivid Cases
- Cognitive root of prejudice
- Availability heuristic
- Influences our judgement of a group
- Vivid cases feed stereotypes
Just-World Phenomenon
-The tendency for people to believe the world is just and that people therefore get what they deserve, and deserve what they get
Hindsight Bias
- Story ending in rape of a woman has participants partly blaming woman’s behavior
- Story ending w rape deleted, don’t perceive behavior as inviting rape
Aggression
-Any physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt or destroy
Frustration-Aggression principle
-The principle that frustration– the blocking of an attempt to achieve some goal– creates anger, which can generate aggression
Social Script
-Culturally modeled guide for how to act in various situations
Culture
-The enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, values, and traditions shared by a group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next
Ingroup
- Us
- People whom we share a common identity
Outgroup
- Them
- Those perceived as different or apart from our Ingroup
Altruism
- Unselfish regard for the welfare of others
- Helping behavior
Bystander Effect
- Tendency for any given bystander to be less likely to give aid if other bystanders are present
- Due to:
- Social Loafing
- Diffusion of responsibility
- Informational social influence
Darley and Latane
- Ex of bystander effect
- Smoke filled room
- Participant alone:
- Sees smoke, automatically reacts
- Confederates and participant:
- Confederates do not react
- Participant doesn’t react
Best odds of our helping someone when..
- Person appears to need and deserve help
- Person is in some way similar to us
- We are not in a hurry
- We have just observed someone else being helpful
- We are in a small town or rural area
- We feel guilty
- We are focused on others and not preoccupied
- We are in a good mood (feel good, do good phenomenon)
Norms for Helping
- Social exchange theory
- Helping behavior is something we are socialized to do
- Reciprocity norm
- Social responsibility norm
Social Exchange Theory
- Our social behavior is an exchange process, the aim of which is to maximize benefits and minimize costs
- Helping others stimulates reward centers of the brain
Reciprocity Norm
- Expectation that people will help, not hurt, those who have helped them
- Compels us to give about as much as we receive
Social Responsibility Norm
- Expectation that people will help those dependent on them
- Even if cost outweighs benefit
- Ex: Homeless, children
Conflict
- A perceived incompatibility of actions, goals, or ideas
- Comprised of many destructive processes, such as social traps, distorted perceptions
Social Traps
- Situation in which the conflicting parties, by each rationally pursuing their self-interest, become caught in mutually destructive behavior
- Ex: Energy “blackout” during high temps (everyone turns temp too low, energy goes out in whole neighborhood. Avoided if people raised their temp a little bit)
Mirror Image Perceptions
- Mutual views, often held by conflicting parties, as when each side sees itself as ethical and peaceful, other side as evil and aggressive
- Self-fulfilling prophecy
- Escalating retaliation
Peacemaking parts
- Contact
- Cooperation
- Communication
- Conciliation
Peacemaking Contact
-Noncompetitive and between parties of equal status can reduce conflict
Peacemaking Cooperation
- Sherif
- Pitted two teams against each other to create conflict
- Superordinate goals: Shared goals that override differences among people and require their cooperation
- Contact not enough, cooperative contact needed
Peacemaking- Communication
-Go from “win-lose” to “win-win”
Peacemaking- Conciliation
- GRIT: Graduated and Reciprocated Initiatives in Tension-reduction– a strategy designed to decrease international tensions
- Osgood
- Slowly back down, responding in kind
- Conciliation for conciliation, retaliation for retaliation
Genetic influences of aggression
- If one identical twin admits to violent temper, other twin does too
- Fraternal twin= less likely
- Y chromosome= violent
Neural Influences
- Animals and humans have neural systems that inhibit or facilitate aggression when activated
- Ex: violent criminals have diminished frontal lobe activity, which controls impulses
Biochemical Influences
- Testosterone in bloodstream influences neural systems that control aggression
- High testosterone-> irritability, assertiveness, impulsiveness, low tolerance for frustration
- Correlates with delinquency, hard drug use, bullying
- High testosterone-> irritability, assertiveness, impulsiveness, low tolerance for frustration
- Aggressive people= more likely to drink alcohol
Aversive Events (Psychological and social-cultural factors of aggression)
- Those who are miserable make others miserable (frustration-aggression principles)
- Ex: hot temp, physical pain, personal insults–> agression
Reinforcement and Modeling (Psychological and Social-Cultural factors of aggression)
- In situations where experience has taught us aggression pays, we are more likely to act aggressively again
- Ex: children whose aggression intimidates= more likely to become bullies
Aggression-Replacement Program
- Taught both generations (Parents and children) new ways to control anger
- Led the youth re-arrest rate to drop
Media Models for Violence
- TV provides us social script used in new situations
- Ex: After viewing sexual innuendos and acts on TV, youth incorporate into their real-life relationships
Proximity
- Geographic nearness is friendships most powerful predictor
- Why?
- Convenience
- Repeated exposure to novel stimuli increases liking
- Familiarity breeds attraction
- Ex: People more likely to marry someone whose name (1st or last) resembles their own
- Familiarity breeds attraction
Physical Attractiveness
- After proximity, most affects our first impressions
- University of Minnesota: Random matching of students for dance, and gave them a battery of personality/ aptitude tests
- None of this mattered, looks were most important predictor of attraction
- University of Minnesota: Random matching of students for dance, and gave them a battery of personality/ aptitude tests
- Perceive attractive people as happier, healthier, more sensitive, more successful, more socially skilled
- Not more honest of compassionate
- Attractiveness predicts higher income
Universal Attractive Features
- Men in 37 cultures say more “youthful” women are more attractive
- Women attracted to healthy-looking men
- Especially attracted to those who seem mature, dominant, affluent
- People prefer physical features (nose, legs, physiques) that aren’t large or small
- Average face= attractive
- Studies take composite faces, judge most attractive
- Average face= attractive
- Symmetry is more sexually attractive
Feeling Impact Attraction
- If we like someone, or perceive them favorably, we view them as more attractive
- As time passes, imperfections of love ones become less noticeable and their attractiveness grows
Similarity
- The more alike we are, the more we like someone
- Opposites do NOT attract
Mere Exposure Effect
- Phenomenon that repeated exposure to novel stimuli increases liking of them
- Ex: people in magazines
Passionate Love
-An aroused state of intense positive absorption in another, usually present at the beginning of a love relationship
Compassionate Love
-The deep affectionate attachment we feel for those with whom our lives are intertwined
Equity
-A condition in which people receive from a relationship in proportion to what they give to it
Self-disclosure
-Revealing intimate aspects of oneself to others
Self-fulfilling prophecy
-A belief that leads to its own fulfillment
Bystander Intervention
- Darley and Latane
- We help in situations that enable us to:
- Notice the incident
- Interpret as an emergency
- Assume responsibility for helping