1. Psychology of Adjustment PSY100
Welcome to Psychology of Adjustment. In this week’s lesson, we are going to be discussing social thinking, influence, and intergroup relations.
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Social Thinking, Influence, and
Intergroup Relations

2. Objectives Upon completion of this lesson, you will be able to:
Define attribution and explain how the fundamental attribution error and the self-serving bias affect our attributions
Describe the factors which influence our impressions of others
Define impression management and self-monitoring
List some basic characteristics of persuasive messages
Define conformity, obedience and compliance, and describe well-known studies and findings about these concepts
List strategies for resisting persuasion, compliance and unjust authority
Define and relate the following concepts: social identity, in-group, out-group, ethnocentrism
Describe the reasons why people may develop prejudices
Discuss strategies for improving interethnic relations
Upon completion of this lesson you will be able to:
Define attribution and explain how the fundamental attribution error and the self-serving bias affect our attributions;
Describe the factors which influence our impressions of others;
Define impression management and self-monitoring;
List some basic characteristics of persuasive messages;
Define conformity, obedience and compliance, and describe well-known studies and findings about these concepts;
List strategies for resisting persuasion, compliance and unjust authority;
Define and relate the following concepts: social identity, in-group, out-group, and ethnocentrism;
Describe the reasons why people may develop prejudices; and
Discuss strategies for improving interethnic relations.
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3. Social Thinking Making Attributions Attributions
Why people behave the way they do
Fundamental Attribution Error
Overestimate traits
Underestimate situation
Self-Serving Bias
Exaggerate positive beliefs
Attribute failures to others
Among the many aspects of social life that engage people, one of the most intriguing is how people think about the social world. This area of social psychology, which is called social cognition, involves how people select, interpret, remember and use social information. Although everyone is unique, certain common principles govern how people process information in a social situation. The most important of these principles apply to how people identify the causes of behavior, form impressions of other people, and form impressions of the social world.
Human beings are curious, seeking answers to all sorts of questions. Our interactions with other people are shaped by what we think we know about why they do whatever they do. Attributions—thoughts about why people behave the way they do—are not always logical. Two of the most important tendencies in how people make attributions are known as the fundamental attribution error and the self-serving bias.
The fundamental attribution error is that observers tend to overestimate the important of a person’s traits and underestimate the importance of situations when they seek to explain someone else’s behavior.
In contrast to how we explain other people’s behavior, when we explain our own behavior, we are a bit more likely to attribute it to the situation. We maintain exaggerated positive beliefs about ourselves through the self-serving bias. Self-serving bias especially emerges when our self-esteem is threatened. We tend to attribute successes to our own characteristics but to attribute our failures to external factors.
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4. Social Thinking, continued
Forming Impressions
Importance of a first impression
Stereotyping
Generalizations about a group’s characteristics
Inaccurate perceptions
Attitudes
Evaluations of people, objects, ideas
Impression management
Self-presentation
Self-monitoring
One reason that first impressions endure is that we pay more attention to what we first learn about a person and less attention to subsequent information. Also, we tend to interpret later information in light of existing impressions. Whatever information we gather about a person, we tend to unify it into a whole and fill in the missing pieces.
To meet the demands on our limited information-processing capacity, we simplify the social world by applying our existing categories and schemas, or frameworks.
Often, the result is that we apply stereotypes without being aware of it. A stereotype is a generalization about a group’s characteristics that does not account for variations from one individual to the next.
Stereotypes often produce two very important problems. First, they lead us to inaccurate perceptions of people if we do not modify the stereotype when we deal with individuals. Second, stereotypes may lead us to develop negative attitudes toward whole groups of people. Attitudes are evaluations of people, objects, and ideas.
Impressions are a two-way street: while you are making an impression of someone, that person is probably trying to make an impression. Impression management, or self-presentation, is the process of acting a way that presents a desired image. In most instances, we try to present ourselves to look better than we are.
Nonverbal cues—facial expressions, patterns of eye contact, body posture, and gestures—are key elements in self-presentation.
Some people are more concerned about and aware of the impressions they make than others are. Self-monitoring is paying attention to the impressions you make on others and fine-tuning your performance to optimize those impressions.
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5. Social Thinking, continued
Changing Attitudes
The Communicator
Trustworthiness
Attractiveness
Likeability
The Message
Emotional
Rational
The Medium
Television thought to be most powerful
The Target
Age
Attitude strength
Despite the power of stereotypes and attitudes to influence our impressions of the social world, they can be changed. What makes people change an attitude? The following are a few findings, organized around the main elements of the communication process:
Who conveys the message,
How the message is conveyed, and
Who receives the message.
Whether or not we believe someone depends in large part on their expertise or credibility. Trustworthiness, power, attractiveness, likeability, and similarity are all credibility characteristics that help a communicator change people’s attitudes or convince them to act.
What kind of message is persuasive? One line of research has focused on whether an emotional or rational strategy is more effective.
The less informed we are about the topic of the message, the likelier we are to respond to an emotional appeal. However, most people are persuaded only when rational and emotional appeals are used together.
Whether an attempt to change attitudes will be effective also depends on the medium that is used for the message. Because it presents live images, television is considered to be a more powerful medium for changing attitudes.
Age and attitude strength are two characteristics of the audience that determine whether a message will be effective. Younger people are more likely to change their attitudes than older people.
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6. Social Influence Conformity Overview
Change in behavior
Coincide with standard
Factors that Contribute to Conformity
Normative social influence
Informational social influence
Confidence
Group perception
Unanimity of the group
Prior commitment
Personal characteristics
Cultural values
Conformity is a change in a person’s behavior to coincide more closely with a group standard. Conformity is at work when someone takes up mountain biking just because everyone else is doing it. Conformity is also at work when a teenager joins a gang because everyone else in the neighborhood who can join, does.
Although conformity has some unpleasant or unattractive aspects, it is not entirely a negative thing. People’s conformity to rules and regulations allows society to run more smoothly.
Many factors influence whether an individual will conform or not. But in general, people conform because of either normative of social influence.
Normative social influence is the influence to conform that other people have on us because we seek their approval or seek to avoid their disapproval.
Informational social influence causes people to conform because they want to be right. The tendency to conform based on informational social influences depends especially on two factors: how confident we are in our independent judgment and how well informed we perceive the group to be.
Researchers have found some other factors that are involved in conforming or not conforming:
Unanimity of the group,
Prior commitment,
Personal characteristics, and
Cultural values.
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7. Social Influence, continued
Obedience
Comply with explicit demands
Compliance
Reciprocation
Door-in-the-face strategy
Commitment and consistency
Foot-in-the-door strategy
Social proof
Bystander effect
Liking
Authority
Scarcity
Obedience is a behavior that complies with the explicit demands of the individual in authority. That is, we are obedient when an authority figure demands that we do something and we do it.
Obedient behavior can be horrifically cruel. People were gassed in concentration camps of Nazi Germany and in the Kurdish villages of Iraq because other people obeyed those in authority. Resisting authority can be difficult, but living with the knowledge that you compromised your own moral integrity may be more difficult in the long run.
Most of the time, we are not obeying orders from someone in authority. More often, we face requests or efforts to persuade us to do something. You have probably tried to get your friends to go to a movie or play a game that you are interested in. You are seeking compliance—a change in behavior in response to a direct request.
Robert Cialdini has identified the following six basic principles of persuasion and compliance:
Reciprocation,
Commitment and consistency,
Social proof,
Liking,
Authority, and
Scarcity.
The principle of reciprocation states that one person tries to repay, in kind, what another person has provided. The door-in-the-face strategy illustrates the principle of reciprocation. This strategy begins with an extreme request that is bound to be rejected; then the person retreats to a smaller request, the one that was desired all along.
Once people make a commitment, they are more likely to agree to requests that are in keeping with the prior commitment. The commitment-and-consistency principle is applied in the foot-in-the-door strategy, which consists of obtaining compliance with a small request in order to obtain compliance later with a larger request.
People examine what other people are doing in order to help them decide what to do; this is the principle of social proof. The bystander effect is the tendency for an individual who observes an emergency to help less when other people are present than when the observer is alone. Social proof is most likely to influence compliance under two conditions:
First, when people are uncertain what to do, and
Second, people are more likely to follow the lead of people they perceive as similar to themselves.
Individuals prefer to say yes to people they know and like. We tend to like people if they are physically attractive, if they are similar to us, or if they praise us.
Deference to authority often occurs in an automatic, mindless manner. Mere symbols of authority, such as titles, clothing, and automobiles, can produce compliance.
People value opportunities more when they are less available. To create the impression of scarcity, sellers often announce that they only have a limited number of whatever they are trying to sell. The scarcity principle works best when items are newly scarce, and when we compete with others to obtain scarce items.
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8. Intergroup Relations Groups and Their Functions Group Identity
Group size
Satisfy personal needs
Reward us
Provide information
Raise self-esteem
Group Identity
Types of Social Identity
Ethnic and religious
Political
Vocations and avocations
Personal relationships
Stigmatized groups
Social Identity Theory
Ethnocentrism
Regardless of their size, groups serve useful human purposes. They satisfy our personal needs, reward us, provide information, raise our self esteem, and give us an identity. We might join a group because we think it will be enjoyable and exciting and satisfy our need for companionship. We might join a group because we will receive rewards.
Many of the groups of which we are members also provide identities. When asked who we are, we often answer in terms of which groups we belong to.
Conflicts between groups, especially ethnic groups, are rampant around the world.
Your social identity is the way you define yourself in terms of your group membership. In contrast to personal identity, which emphasizes a unique combination of characteristics, social identity focuses on our commonalities with others. To identify with a group means that we believe we share a number of features with other members of the group.
Many forms of social identity exist. Social psychologist Kay Deaux identified five distinct types of social identity: ethnic and religious, political, vocations and avocations, personal relationships, and stigmatized groups.
According to Henry Tajfel’s social identity theory, we can improve our self-image by enhancing our social identity; this occurs either by favoring members of our own in-group or by disparaging members of the out-group.
It is a natural tendency, called ethnocentrism, to favor one’s own group and believe it is superior to other groups. Ethnocentrism fosters pride and fulfills the need for a positive self-image.
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9. Intergroup Relations, continued
Prejudice and Discrimination
Defining Prejudice
Negative attitude toward a group
Defining Discrimination
Negative action toward a group
Sources of Prejudice
Personality
Competition between groups
Self-esteem
Cognitive processes
Cultural learning
Modern Racism
Aversive
Antagonism between groups is both reflected in and perpetuated by prejudice and discrimination. Prejudice is an unjustified negative attitude toward an individual based on the individual’s membership in a group.
Having a prejudice does not mean that you have to act on it. But if you do act on your prejudices, you may be guilty of discrimination, an unjustified negative or harmful action toward a member of a group simply because the person belongs to that group. Prejudice is a worldwide phenomenon that has fueled violence throughout human history. The most blatant prejudice in U.S. history was White prejudice against African Americans.
Why do people develop prejudice? Among the reasons given by social psychologists are the following:
Individual personality,
Competition between groups over scarce resources,
Motivation to enhance self-esteem,
Cognitive processes that contribute to a tendency to apply stereotypes, and
Cultural learning.
Overt discrimination is no longer acceptable in mainstream American society. But more subtle forms of racism have appeared, described by such terms as symbolic racism, aversive racism, ambivalent racism, and modern racism. They involve negative feelings about minority groups, but not traditional stereotypes.
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10. Intergroup Relations, continued
Immigration
Growing ethnic minorities
Uncommon Stressors
Language
Cultural struggle
Improving Interethnic Relations
Task-oriented cooperation
Intimate contact
Acknowledge Diversity
Put yourself in their shoes
Relatively high rates of immigration are contributing to the growth in the proportion of ethnic minorities in the U.S. population. Immigrants often experience stressors uncommon to or less prominent among longtime residents, such as language barriers, separations from social networks, and the struggle between keeping their cultural identity and to acculturate.
More focused efforts, such as task-oriented cooperation and intimate contact, are needed to break down barriers based on prejudice. It is not easy to get groups who do not like each other to cooperate. The air of distrust and hostility is hard to overcome. Creating goals that require cooperation of both groups is one viable strategy.
Intimate contact involves sharing one’s personal worries, troubles, successes, failures, personal ambitions, and coping strategies. When people reveal personal information about themselves, they are more likely to be perceived as individuals than as members of a category. The sharing of personal information often produces the discovery that others have many of the same feelings, hopes, and concerns that we have, which can help break down barriers between groups.
Prejudice and discrimination depend on negative stereotyping, which overlooks at least one important dimension of ethnic minority individuals: their diversity. Every person needs to take the perspective of individuals from groups that are different from theirs and think, “If I were in their shoes, what kind of experiences might I have had?” Such perspective taking is a valuable way to increase our empathy and understanding of individuals from other groups.
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11. Summary Making Attributions Forming Impressions Changing Attitudes
Conformity
Obedience
Compliance
Prejudice and Discrimination
We have now reached the end of this lesson. Let’s take a look at the topics we have just discussed:
Making attributions,
Forming impressions,
Changing attitudes,
Conformity,
Obedience,
Compliance, and
Prejudice and discrimination.
This completes the lesson.