1. Unit 12: Social Pyschology
WHS AP Psychology
Unit 12: Social Pyschology
Essential Task 12-1:Apply attribution theory to explain the behavior of others with specific attention to the fundamental attribution error, self-serving bias, just-world hypothesis and differences between collectivistic and individualistic cultures
Logo Green is R=8 G=138 B= Blue is R= 0 G=110 B=184
Border Grey is R=74 G=69 B=64

2. Social Psychology Conformity Compliance Schema Attraction
Attribution
Attitudes and Persuasion
Impact of Others on You
Group Behavior
Fundamental Attribution Error
Self-Serving Bias
Just-World Hypothesis
Individualistic vs. Collectivistic Culture
Schema
Conformity
Compliance
Group Polarization
Group Think
In-Group/Out-Group
Attraction
Cognitive Dissonance
Routes to Persuasion
Unit 12:
Social Psychology
We are here

3. Social Psychology
The scientific study of the ways in which the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of one individual are influenced by the real, imagined, or inferred behavior or characteristics of other people
Today’s class:
How you think about people
How you explain their behavior
Why you like them

4. Social Cognition: How you think about people?
Impression Formation – how do you construct your social cognition?
Primacy effect
Early information about someone weighs more than later information in forming impressions
We are “cognitive misers”
Self-fulfilling prophecy
A person’s expectations about another elicits behavior from the other person that confirms the expectations
“Hostile” partners continued to be more hostile
Randomly identified “bloomers” made greater gains
Schemata
Stereotypes

5. Impression Formation Schemata Ready-made categories
Allow us to make inferences about others (good for cognitive misers)
Also plays a major role in how we interpret and remember information
We will remember characteristics of our schema that weren’t there

6. Impression Formation Stereotypes
A set of characteristics believed to be shared by all members of a social category
It is usually unfair
Most often applied to sex, race, occupation, physical appearance, place of residence, membership in a group or organization
Can become the basis for self-fulfilling prophecies

7. Self-fulfilling prophecy
(Snyder, Tanke & Berscheid, 1977)
Attractiveness Stereotype – sociability and socially savy
Men received “background” information about a woman they were about to talk with on a phone, info included a photo. Women received same info, but no photo.
IV: Photo of woman either attractive or unattractive
DVs: 1) Men’s expectations about the woman 2) Observers’ ratings of the woman’s behavior
Results: When men expected that the woman was attractive, she was judged as friendly, warm, and more animated than when men believed they were talking with an unattractive woman. (self-fulfilling prophecy)

8. Attribution: Why did he do that?
Attribution Theory: tries to explain how people make judgments about the causes of other people’s behavior
Three criteria used to judge behavior
Distinctiveness: Is this how the person treats everyone or are you different?
Consistency: Has the person always treated you this way or is this different?
Consensus: Do other people do this same thing or is this really different?

9. Attribution: Why did he do that?
Bob walks past you without saying hi.
Distinctiveness: Your explanation as to why Bob did this will be different if he does this to everyone in the hall or just you
Consistency: Your explanation as to why Bob did this will be different if he always says hi to you or if you don’t really know each other.
Consensus: Whether you’re in New York vs. a college of 600 will change how you explain Bob’s behavior.
ACTIVITY

10. Biases in Attribution: The errors to which your guesses will succumb
Actor-Observer Effect: attribute actions of others to internal factors and the actions of yourself to external factors
Fundamental attribution error: the tendency to overemphasize personal causes for others’ behavior and underemphasize personal causes for our own behavior
Defensive attribution
Self-Serving Bias: Tendency to attribute our successes to our own efforts and our failures to external factors
Just-world hypothesis: Assumption bad things happen to bad people and good things happen to good people
Attribution across cultures varies dramatically

11. Effects of Attribution
How we explain someone’s behavior affects how we react to it.

12. Collectivistic vs. Individualistic