1. Thinking About Psychology: The Science of Mind and Behavior 2e
Charles T. Blair-Broeker
Randal M. Ernst

2. Person swapping social experiment by Derren Brown on Youtube
Derren Brown Trick or Treat - Car Salesmen
The Power of Situation
The Elevator + You Tube
Stop Labeling People: Tolle and Oprah

3. Variations in Individual and Group Behavior Domain

4. Social Psychology Chapter

5. Social Thinking and Social Influence
Module 34

6. Module 34: Social Thinking and Social Influence
Introduction
Module 34: Social Thinking and Social Influence

7. Social Psychology
The scientific study of how people think about, influence, and relate to one another
Complete Fact or Falsehood.
Why do you obey some rules & disobey others at your school?
Have friends ever convinced you to do something right or something wrong?
Do you consider yourself a conformist? A nonconformist? Why?
Activity 34-4

8. Module 34: Social Thinking and Social Influence

9. Module 34: Social Thinking and Social Influence
Social Thinking: Attributing Behavior to Personal Disposition or the Situation
Module 34: Social Thinking and Social Influence

10. Attribution Theory
Theory that we tend to explain the behavior of others as an aspect of either an internal disposition (an inner trait) or the situation
Do you think that I act the same with my family as I do with you? How do you imagine I act at parties with my friends?

11. Situational Disposition
Attributing someone’s actions to the various factors in the situation

12. Dispositional Attribution
Attributing someone’s actions to the person’s disposition, i.e. their thoughts, feelings, personality characteristics, etc.

13. Situational Attribution

14. Situational Attribution

15. Situational Attribution

16. Dispositional Attribution

17. Dispositional Attribution

18. Dispositional Attribution

19. Attribution

20. Fundamental Attribution Error
Tendency to attribute the behavior of others to internal disposition rather than to situations
People tend to blame or credit the person more than the situation
When we explain our own behavior, we tend to include the situation as part of our assessment. When we explain other peoples’ behavior, we tend to attribute it to permanent, personal qualities.
Would Jack Black or Dave Chappelle be believable if cast in a serious movie role?

21. Culture & Attribution Error
Culture affects attribution. Several banks and investment firms lost millions in the 1990s when employees make unauthorized transactions.
In the US, this was blamed on unethical individuals, a dispositional attribution.
In Japan, newspapers blamed a lack of organizational controls – a situational attribution.
Research shows that people raised in Western countries (like the US and Canada) tend to make attributions based on dispositions far more often than those from East Asian cultures.

22. Social Thinking: Attitudes and Actions
Module 34: Social Thinking and Social Influence

23. Attitude
Belief and feeling that predisposes someone to respond in a particular way to objects, people, and events
Attitudes have a powerful effect on behavior.

24. Attitudes Affecting Actions
Many studies suggest a person’s attitudes do not match their actions
Someone who says he is against cheating, but then does it…
Attitudes can predict behavior if:
Outside influences are minimal
People are aware of their attitudes
Attitude is relevant to behavior (if you say you believe exercise is essential for good health, but you dislike getting sweaty, you may avoid it. Your attitude toward exercise will guide your decision to exercise, or not).

25. Attitudes Affecting Actions

26. Actions Affecting Attitudes
Under some circumstances one’s actions can influence attitudes. They include:
Foot-in-the-door phenomenon
Role playing
Cognitive dissonance

27. Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon
Tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request
The fundraiser example: principal agreeing to small concessions first, then bigger ones.
Start small with your requests if you want someone to agree to something big!

28. Role Playing Playing a role can influence or change one’s attitude
Zimbardo’s Prison Study
College students played the role of guard or prisoner in a simulated prison.
The study was ended when the guards became too aggressive and cruel.

29. Zimbardo’s Prison Study
College students played the role of guard or prisoner in a simulated prison.
The study was ended when the guards became too aggressive and cruel.

30. Cognitive Dissonance Theory
Theory that we act to reduce the discomfort (dissonance) we feel when two of our thoughts (cognitions) are inconsistent
When our attitudes are inconsistent with our actions, we change our attitudes to reduce the dissonance.

31. Cognitive Dissonance Theory

32. Cognitive Dissonance Theory

33. Cognitive Dissonance Theory

34. Cognitive Dissonance Theory

35. So…Use it to your advantage
If you have an attitude you’d like to change, such as negative feelings towards people from different social groups, then start by changing your BEHAVIOR towards those individuals.
Therapists use when working with patients with depression; they encourage them to start talking and acting positively.

36. Module 34: Social Thinking and Social Influence

37. Social Influence: Conformity and Obedience
Module 34: Social Thinking and Social Influence

38. Conformity
Adjusting one’s behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard

39. Solomon Asch ( )
Social psychologist who researched the circumstances under which people conform

40. Asch’s Conformity Study

41. Factors Increasing Conformity
The person feels incompetent or insecure.
The group has three or more people.
The rest of the group is unanimous.
The person is impressed by the status of the group.
No prior commitments were made.
The group is observing the person respond.
One’s culture encourages conformity.

42. Demonstration Demonstration: Social Influence, page 34-12
Demonstration: Suggestibility
Video: The Wave Part 2 (Youtube)

43. Stanley Milgram ( )
Social psychologist who researched obedience to authority

44. Marshmellow Experiment
Good:

45. Obedience
Tendency to comply with orders, implied or real, from someone perceived as an authority

46. Milgram’s Obedience to Authority

47. Milgram’s Obedience to Authority (Data from Milgram, 1974)

48. Milgram’s Obedience to Authority

49. Gretchen Brandt
Some participants in Milgram’s obedience study confronted authority. Gretchen Brandt was a young medical technician and recent German immigrant. Several times she inquired of the experimenter whether she should continue, and was told yes each time. As she prepared to deliver a 210-volt shock, she announced firmly, “Well, I’m sorry, I don’t think we should continue.” Brandt never appeared tense or nervous; she simply stated that she “did not want to be responsible for any harm to the learner.” Milgram notes that her straightforward, courteous demeanor seemed to make disobedience a simple and rational deed. Brandt behaved differently because she grew up in Nazi Germany and was exposed to Hitler’s propaganda for the greater part of her youth. When asked about the influence of her background, she simply remarked, “Perhaps we have seen too much pain.”

50. Obedience to Authority
Play “Obedience: The Milgram Study” (4:04) Segment #34 from Psychology: The Human Experience.

51. Social Influence: Group Influence Invisible Dogs Youtube
Module 34: Social Thinking and Social Influence

52. Social Facilitation
Improved performance of tasks in the presence of others
Occurs with simple or well learned tasks but not with tasks that are difficult or not yet learned
Ex: athletes tend to perform much better when competing, and especially in front of fans.

53. Social Facilitation

54. Social Loafing
Tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling their efforts toward attaining a common goal than when individually accountable
People may be less accountable in a group, or they may think their efforts aren’t needed.
TUG OF WAR

55. Examples
Students tend to exert less effort when they are doing a group thing with peers (when all members will receive the same grade).
Blindfolded students asked to pull a rope as hard as they could. When they believed three others were pulling behind them, they their efforts dropped by almost 20%.

56. What Would You Do?
If you could do anything humanly possible with complete assurance that you would not be detected or held responsible for, what would you do?

57. Deindividuation
Loss of self-awareness and self-restraint occurring in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity
People lose their sense of responsibility when in a group.
Soccer fans
Looting

58. 11 content categories: aggression, charity, academic dishonesty, crime, escapism, political activities, sexual behavior, social disruption, interpersonal spying and eavesdropping, travel and “catch-all”
Prosocial, antisocial, nonnormative (violating social norms but without specifically helping or hurting others) and neurtral .
Most frequent responses: 26% criminal acts, sexual acts 11%, spying behaviors 11%. Most common response was “rob a bank (15%), 36% were antisocial, 19% nonnormative, 36% neutral, 9% prosocial

59. The Who: 30 Years Later http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-p6Qu3vmL8
Lord of the Flies Chapter 5

60. Social Influence: Group Interaction Effects
Module 34: Social Thinking and Social Influence

61. Group Polarization
Enhancement of a group’s already existing attitudes through discussion within the group

62. Examples
Terrorism – doesn’t suddenly erupt. The mentality builds as people with the grievances gather and become more extreme in their views. In the absence of moderate influences, terrorism reaches the point of kidnapping, murder and suicide bombing.

63. Groupthink
Mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision- making group overrides a realistic appraisal of the alternatives
It’s worse than group polorization because it tends to paralyze us.

64. Group Think
Group makes faulty decisions because of group pressure leads to reality testing and moral judgment.
Ignores alternatives and dehumanizes other groups, as a consequence.
If the group members have the same background, are insulated from outside opinions, there is no devil’s advocate and no rules.

65. 8 Symptoms
Illusion of invulnerability (optimism that encourages risk-taking).
Collective rationalism (group discounts warnings & don’t consider their assumptions).
Belief in inherit morality (group believes in the rightness of their cause)
Stereotyped views of “outgroup” (negative view of “the enemy”)
Direct pressure on dissenters (members under pressure not to suggest something that is counter to the group’s opinion).
Self-censorship (members who may not agree feel pressured not to share that doubt).
Illusion of unanimity (members think (often mistakenly) that all they all feel the same way
Self-appointed “mindguards” (someone in the group protects the group and the leader from other info that might challenge their belief).
NOW, IN YOUR GROUP, GENERATE A LIST OF EXAMPLES WHEN YOU FEEL THIS HAS HAPPENED OR IS HAPPENING

66. EXAMPLES Bay of Pigs (Cuba and Kennedy)
US didn’t anticipate the attack on Pearl Harbour
US invasion of Iraq
Global Warming
Witch hunts in the Middle Ages
Nazi Germany
The Rapture
Religious Extremists (mainstream media always reports on religious extremists with the same brush, thus making them “the same” in the eyes of the public)
Space Shuttle Challenger
Blogosphere Chatter (the result is always the same: someone gets marginalized and ignored)
The Oil Spill (ignored risks for cheap oil, tax revenue)
Fracking in NB?
Challenger Video

67. Review the following consequences of groupthink and consider how many of them apply to the Bush administration’s handling of the ‘war on terrorism’ and the issues related to Iraq and Saddam Hussein:
      a) incomplete survey of alternatives
      b) incomplete survey of objectives
      c) failure to examine risks of preferred choice
      d) failure to reappraise initially rejected alternatives
      e) poor information search
      f) selective bias in processing information at hand
      g) failure to work out contingency plans
      h) low probability of successful outcome 
(Janis)

68. Social Influence: Our Power as Individuals
Module 34: Social Thinking and Social Influence

69. Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
When we believe something to be true about others (or ourselves) and we act in ways that cause this belief to come true
Example study that told some men that certain women found them attractive (when they hadn’t); as a result, the men were more kind and charming the women, in turn, DID find them more charming.

70. Minority Influence Minority groups can influence the majority
Minority groups must be firm in their conviction
Rosa Parks

71. The End

72. Name of Concept
Watch The Power of Situationhttp://
Constructing Social Reality, Learner
Gender Development
Hurting on the inside – Bell
Making Decisions and Being Assertive
Surviving Student Stress
The Cyber Self
20/20 Heavy Metal

73. Name of Concept
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