SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Chapter 13

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY  Social psychology: The scientific study of how people think about, influence, and relate to one another.  Social Cognition  Social Behavior  Social Influence  Intergroup Relations  Close Relationships

SOCIAL COGNITION The area of social psychology that explores how people select, interpret, remember, and use social information. Essentially, it is the way in which individuals think in social situations.

SOCIAL COGNITION  Person Perception  Physical attractiveness  First impressions  Attribution  Attributional errors  Heuristics in social information processing  The Self as a Social Object  Self-objectification: The tendency to see oneself primarily as an object in the eyes of others.  Stereotype threat  Social comparison  Attitudes  Attitudes can predict behavior  Behavior can predict attitudes  Persuasion

PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVENESS  “Beautiful is good” (halo effect)  Averageness  Symmetry  Youthfulness

HALO EFFECT  A cognitive bias in which our overall impression of a person influences how we feel and think about their character.  In the work place: A bias, common in performance ratings, that occurs when a rater gives a person the same rating on all of the items being evaluated, even though the individual varies across the dimensions being assessed.

SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY  When expectations cause individuals to act in ways that serve to make the expectations come true.  Shows the power of stereotypes and other expectations  Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobsen Pygmalion Effect (1968)

FIRST IMPRESSIONS  Quick  Lasting  Primacy effect

ATTRIBUTION  The process by which we come to understand the causes of others’ behavior and form an impression of them as individuals.

ATTRIBUTION THEORY  The view that people are motivated to discover the underlying causes of behavior as part of their effort to make sense of the behavior.  Internal vs. external causes  Disposition vs. situation  Personal vs. environmental  Stable vs. unstable causes  Controllable vs. uncontrollable causes

FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR  Observers' overestimation of the importance of internal traits and underestimation of the importance of external situations when they seek explanations of an actor's behavior.  Actor  Observer  Individualistic vs. Collectivistic

FALSE CONSENSUS EFFECT  Observers' overestimation of the degree to which everybody else thinks or acts the way they do.

SPOTLIGHT EFFECT  People’s tendency to assume that the social spotlight (attention) shines more brightly on them than it actually does.  Barry Manilow T-shirt Experiment (2000)

SELF-SERVING BIAS  The tendency to take credit for our successes and to deny responsibility for our failures.  Individualistic vs. Collectivistic

STEREOTYPE  A generalization about a group's characteristics that does not consider any variations from one individual to another.  Social schemas

STEREOTYPE THREAT  An individual's fast-acting, self- fulfilling fear of being judged based on a negative stereotype about his or her group.  Based on stereotypical expectations  Claude Steele and Eliot Aronson (1995)

SOCIAL COMPARISON  The process by which individuals evaluate their thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and abilities in relation to other people.  Leon Festinger (1954)

ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIORS  Our feelings, opinions, and beliefs about people, objects, and ideas.  Internal  Everything people do that can be directly observed.  Actions  External AttitudeBehavior

WHEN ATTITUDES INFLUENCE BEHAVIOR  Strong attitudes  Strong awareness of attitudes & rehearses and practices attitudes  Vested interest

 An individual's psychological discomfort caused by two inconsistent thoughts.  Leon Festinger and J. Merrill Carlsmith (1957)  States that individuals make inferences about their attitudes by perceiving their behavior.  Daryl Bem (1967) Cognitive Dissonance Self-perception Theory HOW BEHAVIOR INFLUENCES ATTITUDES

ELEMENTS OF PERSUASION  Persuasion: Trying to change someone’s attitude (and behavior).  The Source- communicator  The Medium- method  The Target- audience  The Message

ELABORATION LIKELIHOOD MODEL (PERSUASION)  Works by engaging someone thoughtfully with a sound, logical argument.  Facts  High elaboration  More durable change  Involves non- message factors such as the source’s credibility, attractiveness or emotional appeals.  Low elaboration  Less durable change Central RoutePeripheral Route

PERSUASION TECHNIQUES  Strategy involves making a smaller request at the beginning, and then making the biggest request last (after the small request has been accepted).  Strategy involves making the biggest request at the beginning, and then making a smaller “concessionary” request last (after the big request has been rejected). Foot-in-the-doorDoor-in-the-face