1. Dr. Jacqueline Pickrell
Social Psychology
Dr. Jacqueline Pickrell

2. The mere presence of others
How does the mere presence of others affect our behavior?
1898 Triplett
Social facilitation is the tendency for the presence of others to enhance our performance on simple tasks and impair performance on complex tasks

3. Social Norms: The rules of the game
Social norms are shared expectations about how people should think, feel, and behave.
Many are implicit and unspoken
Social roles consist of a set of norms that characterize how people in a given social position ought to behave

4. Conformity to Social Norms
Conformity – the adjustment of individual behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs to a group standard
There are both overt and subtle pressures on members to conform
Solomon Asch
2 types of social influence
Informational influence
Normative influence

5. Asch’s conformity experiments
Standard Line Comparison Lines

6. Factors influencing conformity
Group size
Presence of an ally (dissenter)
Our perceptions of social norms
Minority influence

7. Obedience to Authority
Inherently neither good or bad

8. Milgram's Obedience Studies
Social pressure has a strong effect on people's behavior and thinking, as demonstrated by conformity to group pressure and obedience to commands from authority figures.
Stanley Milgram performed a series of experiments to study compliance with orders from an authority figure to inflict pain on another person.

9. The subjects in Milgram's experiments are told they are taking part in a test of the effect of punishment on learning. Each teacher (the experimental subject) is ordered to deliver increasing levels of electric shock to a learner (the experimenter's confederate) who gives incorrect answers on a test.

10. Milgram’s Methodology
Confederate was always the learner
No electric shocks were given
(except demo in beginning to teacher- 45volts)
Confederate replaced by a taped recording
Slight heart problem
Confederate intentionally made mistakes

11. Factors that Influence Destructive Obedience
Milgram studies N>1,000
The authority
Closeness
legitimacy
The victim
remoteness
The situation
Cog in-the-wheel
Responsibility
No personal characteristics

12. Controversy… Deception Substantial stress Risk of long-lasting effects
Cost-Benefit analysis?
Would similar results occur today?

13. Group Influences on Performance
Social Loafing aka Failing to pull your own weight
The tendency for people to expend less individual effort when working in a group than when working alone.
Physical tasks
Cognitive tasks
More likely to occur when:
Believe not being monitored
Task has less value to the person
Group is less important to the person
Task is simple making effort redundant
Fatigue

14. When are Groups More Productive?
Social compensation
Diversity of resources
Better solutions developed
More opportunity to correct errors
When tasks are easily subdivided

15. Group decision making
Group polarization – when a group of like-minded people discusses an issue, the “average” opinion of group members tends to become more extreme
Normative social influence
Informational social influence

16. Group decision making
Groupthink – the tendency of group members to suspend critical thinking because they are striving to seek agreement
Under high stress to reach a decision
Insulated from outside input
Directive leader
High cohesion – closeness and ability to work well together

17. More Social Influence
Deindividuation – a loss of individuality that leads to disinhibited behavior
Anonymity to outsiders
Reduces feelings of accountability
Increases to risk of antisocial actions

18. Psychology of Bystanders
The rape and murder of Kitty Genovese on a street in Queens, New York, in 1964, witnessed by 38 neighbors, stimulated much discussion among social psychologists about bystander psychology.
By staging emergency events in field studies, researchers have found that an individual is less likely to offer assistance or call for help when other people are present than when he or she is the only witness. This is known as the bystander effect.

19. Detecting (and hopefully resisting) Persuasion Tactics
The norm of reciprocity
Expectation that when others treat us well, we should respond in kind
Door-in-the-face Technique
A persuader makes a large request, expecting you to reject it, and then presents a smaller request
Foot-in-the-door Technique
Shifting from a smaller to a larger request

20. Detecting (and hopefully resisting) Persuasion Tactics
Lowballing
A persuader gets you to commit to some action and then – before you perform the behavior, he or she increases the cost of that same behavior

21. Social Thinking and Perception
Attitude- a positive or negative evaluative reaction toward a stimulus, such as a person, action, object, or concept.
Evidence that attitudes do and do not predict behavior

22. Stereotype, Prejudice and Discrimination
Prejudice – a positive or negative evaluation of another person based on their group membership
Discrimination – a positive or negative behavior toward another person based on their group membership
The Eye of the Storm
Brown eye Blue eye Experiment