Chapter 18 Social Psychology

Persuasion (central route vs peripheral route)
Central Route to Persuasion Involves deeply processing the content of the message; Peripheral route involves other aspects of the message including the characteristics of the person imparting the message
Risky Shift Phenomenon
type of group polarization effect in which a group discussion leads to the adoption of a riskier course of action than the members would have endorsed initially
Belief in the superiority of one’s nation or ethnic group; practice of judging another culture by the standards of on’es own culture
Implicit Prejudice
Unfounded negative belief of which we’re unaware regarding the characteristics of an out-group
the act of treating somebody as if he or she was less intelligent than yourself (n) 206
Self-fulfilling Prophecy
a belief that leads to its own fulfillment; an expectation that causes you to act in ways that make that expectation come true.
Rosenthal and Jacobson experiment
randomly chose elementary classrooms and told teachers that the students probably would make significant intellectual gains during the year. students did have larger gains than normal. Data suggests existence of Pygmalion effect or self fulfilling prophecy
Instrumental aggression
Aggression as a means to some goal other than causing pain., Aggression motivated by the desire to obtain a concrete goal
Hostile aggression
Aggression stemming from feelings of anger and aimed at inflicting pain
Social learning theory (Bandura)
Modeling (Bandura-Bobo Doll exp)
A therapeutic technique in which the client learns appropriate behavior through imitation of someone else; Observational learning, also known as modeling, was studied a great deal by a scientist named Albert Bandura. Bandura believed that many of us learn through copying others. Modeling is said to have two components, observation and imitation. You watch somebody do something and then you attempt to copy it. Bandura set up a very famous experiment called the Bobo Doll experiment to elucidate his ideas.

The Bobo Doll Experiment

Bandura had children witness a model (man who was working for Bandura) aggressively attacking a plastic clown called the Bobo doll. The children would watch a video where the man would aggressively hit a doll and pummel it on the head with a hammer, hurls it down, sits on it and punch it on the nose repeatedly, kick it across the room, flings it in the air, and bombard it with balls. After the video, the children were placed in a room with attractive toys, but they could not touch them. Therefore, the children became angry and frustrated. Then the children were led to another room where there were identical toys used in the Bobo video (with Bobo dolls). Bandura and many other researchers founded that 88% of the children imitated the aggressive behavior. Eight months later, 40% of the same children reproduce the violent behavior observed in the Bobo doll experiment.

Social Scripts
Culturally provided mental guidelines for how to act. These are often used when in a new situation that does not have a defined way to act for such a situation as a fallback. Tendency to act like widely accepted social models in the face of a new social environment.
Catharsis hypothesis
In psychology, this hypothesis maintains that “releasing” aggressive energy (through action or fantasy) relieves aggressive urges; The catharsis hypothesis suggests that anger can be decreased by releasing it through aggressive actions or fantasies.
Win-Lose Orientation
the belief that conflicting parties are drawing from a fixed pie, so the more one party receives, the less the other party will receive;
Win-win orientation
The belief that the parties will find a mutually beneficial solution to their disagreement; assumes that resolution can results in gains for everyone. Goal is to find acceptable solution/comprimise
Passionate Love
Companionate Love
Intimacy and commitment; , An experience involving affection, trust, and concern for a partner’s well-being; , – a milder, more stable form of love than passionate love the is marked be feelings of mutual trust, dependability and warmth
Carol Gilligan Gender Roles
Gilligan argues that the sexes tend to think differently, particularly when it comes to moral problems….Gilligan found that women placed a stronger emphasis on caring in moral decision making…Gilligan’s work on moral development outlines how a woman’s morality is influenced by relationships and how women form their moral and ethical foundation based on how their decisions will affect others. She believes that women tend to develop morality in stages; Field: cognition; Contributions: maintained that Köhlberg’s work was developed by only observing boys and overlooked potential differences between the habitual moral judgments of boys and girls; girls focus more on relationships than laws and principles
Behaviors that benefit other people and for which there is no discernable extrinsic reward, recognition, or appreciation; A display of genuine and unselfish concern for the welfare of others
Pluralistic Ignorance
Defined as the tendency of people to look toward others for cures about how to act, particularly in emergency situations; often tested in bystander intervention studies; can be seen as a kind of modeling or conformity that occurs in emergencies
Social Exchange theory


Reciprocity Norm (norms of reciprocity) (also linked to compliance)
Norms of Reciprocity Compliance Strategy – One of the compliance strategies used to get others to comply

– Occurs when people think they ought to do something nice for someone who has done something nice for them.

– For example, you may feel compelled to send money to the charity that sent you free return address labels.

– The social norm of reciprocity dictates that we treat other people the way they treat us. People are socialized into returning favors and this powerful rule underpins compliance. Lynn and McCall (1988) found that restaurants who offered a mint or a sweet with the bill received larger tips.

Social responsibility norm
an expectation that people will help those dependent upon them; a social standard that says we will help people in need.

a social standard that says we will help people in need.

“The social responsibility norm looks at how we help people in need.”

Collectivist v. Individualistic culture
Individualistic cultures, which value independence and define individuals in terms of their unique attributes. N America, Europe. A cultural orientation in which personal goals and preferences take priority over group allegiances;

Collectivism a cultural orientation in which cooperation and group harmony take priority over purely personal goals. venezuela, colombia, pakistan, peru, taiwan, and china

Harold Kelley
Harold Kelley’s Covariation Model of Attribution explains how we use social perception to attribute behavior to internal or external factors. It also explains what information we gather through perception, and how it’s used to form a judgment about someone’s behavior. The word ‘covariation’ refers to your ability to observe how two or more variables change in relation to each other. This attribution theory assumes that you have information from multiple experiences (at different places and times) that you use to determine what variables have changed and what has stayed the same., the attributions we make about our actions or those of others usually accurate; we base this on consistency, distinctiveness, and consensus of the action
Psychologist who found that behavior conflicts with cognition.1934, conducted an early study that illustrated the difference between attitudes and behaviors.A classic study of attitude-behavior consistency: This man toured the United States in 1934 with a Chinese couple, stopping at hotels and restaurants along the way. They were refused service at only one establishment. However, 92% of the institutions later said in a letter that they would refuse to accept Chinese people as guests. Hotel employees may have biases based on secondhand information. When they see them up close, their biases go away. Social norm: you don’t want to look bad in front of a caucasian person.
Attitudes do not always predict behavior.
Festinger and Carlsmith
conducted the classic experiment about Cognitive Dissonance in the 1950’s. Asked participants to perform a boring task and then tell the people beind them that the task was fun, some of the people in the first group were paid $1 and others were paid $20 to lie the people who were paid $1 have significantly more positve attitudes.
Rosenthal and Jacobson
Darley and Latane
The 1964 killing of Kitty Genovese was studied by; , Proposed that there were 2 factors that could lead to non-helping: social influence and diffusion of responsibility; The bystander effect, or bystander apathy, is a social psychological phenomenon that refers to cases in which individuals do not offer any means of help to a victim when other people are present. The probability of help is inversely related to the number of bystanders. In other words, the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that any one of them will help. Several variables help to explain why the bystander effect occurs. These variables include: ambiguity, cohesiveness and diffusion of responsibility; The case of Kitty Genovese is often cited as an example of the “bystander effect”. It is also the case that originally stimulated social psychological research in this area. On March 13, 1964 Genovese, 28 years old, was on her way back to her Queens, New York, apartment from work at 3am when she was stabbed to death by a serial rapist and murderer. According to newspaper accounts, the attack lasted for at least a half an hour during which time Genovese screamed and pleaded for help.
Asch- line test, conformity
-7 male students looked at 2 cards and had to say which line lengths matched, all but one of the participants were accomplices of the experiment; , 7 males with lines on a card. Clear right answer. 1/3 participants conformed to the group, 3/4 of participants conformed at least once;, -investigate whether perceived group pressure by a majority can influence a minority in an experimental set-u
Milgram obedience shocking experiment




Zimbardo roles, deindividuation prison
Deindividuation is a concept in social psychology that is generally thought of as the losing of self-awareness[1] in groups; Stanford Prison Experiment Zimbardo created a mock prison environment in the basement of Stanford University’s psychology building in which he randomly assigned 24 men to undertake the role of either guard or prisoner. The experiment, originally planned to span over two weeks, ended after only six days because of the sadistic treatment of the prisoners from the guards. Zimbardo attributed this behavior to deindividuation due to immersion within the group and creation of a strong group dynamic. Several elements added to the deindividuation of both guards and prisoners. Prisoners were made to dress alike, wearing stocking caps and hospital dressing gowns, and also were identified only by a number assigned to them rather than by their name. Guards were also given uniforms and reflective glasses which hid their faces. The dress of guards and prisoners led to a type of anonymity on both sides because the individual identifying characteristics of the men were taken out of the equation. Additionally, the guards had the added element of diffusion of responsibility which gave them the opportunity to remove personal responsibility and place it on a higher power. Several guards commented that they all believed that someone else would have stopped them if they were truly crossing the line, so they continued with their behavior.
Jane Elliot – prejudice/discrimination/self-fulfilling
A 3rd grade Iowa teacher who in response to assassination of MLK, she divided her class into blue eyes and brown eyes, brown eyes felt inferior to blue eyes, group favoritism, and racism; Brown eyes/blue eyes experiment, found that the kids who were inferior for the day did worse on their tests and those who were superior did better.
Muzafer Sherif’s Camp Study – Combating prejudice-superordinate goals
1966- Campers divided into two groups and made to compete so much that negative feelings established. Then several camp emergencies required groups to cooperate and solve the crises to improve relations.
-Robbers Cave Study: The experiment was divided into three stages. The first stage being “ingroup formation”, in which upon arrival the boys were split into two approximately equal groups based on similarities. Each group was unaware of the other group’s presence. The second stage was the “friction phase”, wherein the groups were entered in competition with one another in various camp games. Valued prizes were awarded to the winners. This caused both groups to develop negative attitudes and behaviors towards the outgroup. The third and final stage was the “integration stage”. During this stage, tensions between the groups were reduced through teamwork-driven tasks that required intergroup cooperation.[8]
Albert Bandura- aggresion modeling Bobo doll
1925-present, conducted a series of classic studies on how children model aggressive behavior towards an inflatable Bobo doll and developed the concept of observational learning