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Chapter 13

Chapter 13: Social Psychology

Chapter Review

SOCIAL COGNITION

  • How we understand someone’s behavior depends on the attribution we choose for the behavior. Situational attributions involve factors external to the person we are observing; dispositional attributions focus on factors internal to the person.
  • People in collectivistic cultures emphasize the ways in which people are interdependent and tend to make situational attributions. People in individualistic cultures view themselves and others as independent and tend to make dispositional attributions; this tendency is so powerful that it is referred to as the fundamental attribution error.
  • We rely on implicit theories of personality when we think about or remember other individuals. These theories help us understand the situations we encounter but also leave us vulnerable to error. These errors are obvious when we rely on social stereotypes, which are transmitted to each generation both explicitly and implicitly.
  • Stereotypes can influence people’s behavior implicitly. By priming a person’s stereotype, the person’s behavior can be influenced in an unconscious and automatic fashion. Stereotypes can also create self-fulfilling prophecies, leading the person we are interacting with to behave in a fashion consistent with the stereotype. A related case involves stereotype threat, in which anxiety about confirming the stereotype undermines someone’s performance and in that fashion actually confirms the stereotype.
  • Attitudes are a combination of beliefs, feelings about the target object or event, and some predisposition to act in accord with those beliefs and feelings. Attitudes are learned, and they can be changed in several ways. The central route involves cases in which we care about the issue; what matters here are arguments and evidence. If we do not care much about the issue or are distracted, we rely on the peripheral route, in which we are influenced by how or by whom a persuasive message is presented. Other paths to changing attitudes include intergroup contact (in the case of prejudice) and cognitive dissonance, which involves a person’s changing her attitudes to bring them into line with her behavior.

SOCIAL INFLUENCE

  • Conformity, obedience, and compliance are often denigrated, but these three forms of social influence are necessary for the smooth functioning of any social group.
  • In studies by Sherif and by Asch, people’s perceptions of the world were shaped by the way others reported what they perceived. One reason for this conformity was informational influence—people’s desire to be right. Another reason was normative influence—people’s desire not to appear foolish. The informational influence is increased when the situation is genuinely ambiguous; this leads to increased social referencing.
  • Conformity is much reduced if there is any break in the group’s unanimity. In collectivistic cultures, people appear to be less distressed about conforming than people in individualistic cultures appear to be.
  • Some researchers propose that people with authoritarian personalities are more inclined to obedience. While there is some support for this claim, there is more powerful evidence for the influence of situations in producing obedience, as reflected in Milgram’s famous studies of obedience, in which participants obeyed instructions even if these seemed to lead to injury to another person.
  • Obedience is more likely if the individual believes he is not ultimately responsible for the actions, and it is increased either by a sense of psychological distance between one’s actions and the result of those actions or by dehumanizing the victim. These adjustments, however, are usually achieved gradually, as the person slides down a slippery slope toward total obedience.
  • Compliance with requests is often compelled by the norm of reciprocity. This is evident in the success of the that’s-not-all technique.
  • In mere presence effects, how people behave is influenced by the presence of an audience, although the audience can produce either social facilitation or social inhibition. This mixed data pattern is often explained by claiming that the audience increases an actor’s arousal, and this strengthens the tendency to perform highly dominant responses.
  • When people work as a team, often the contribution produced by each team member is less than the work she would have done if she were on her own—an effect known as social loafing.
  • The presence of other people can cause deindividuation, a state in which the individual gives in to the impulses suggested by the situation. Deindividuation can lead to riotous behavior in large groups of people, but it can also lead to increased good behavior if the situation happens to produce impulses promoting those behaviors. Deindividuation can be produced by anonymity or by just having an assigned role, as was shown in the Stanford Prison Experiment.
  • Group polarization refers to a tendency for decisions made by groups to be more extreme than the decisions that would have been made by any of the group members working on his own. This effect arises from several influences, including confirmation bias operating during group discussion and from each member of the group trying to take a position at the group’s leading edge.
  • Group decision making sometimes reveals groupthink, in which the group members do all they can to promote group cohesion; as a result, they downplay any doubts or disagreements, and they overestimate the likelihood of success.

SOCIAL RELATIONS

  • People in groups of strangers are less likely to help others than are people who are alone or with friends, and several mechanisms contribute to this bystander effect. One factor is ambiguity in the situation, with many individuals convincing themselves that help is not needed. Another factor is pluralistic ignorance, with each individual turning to the others to find out if help is needed; but, with all doing this, each is convinced by the others’ inaction that no help is needed. Yet another factor is diffusion of responsibility, with each group member able to think that others are the ones who should help.
  • People often choose not to help because they are concerned about the time needed or the risks involved. The fact remains, however, that people sometimes do engage in altruistic acts of helping—even if doing so puts them in considerable danger.
  • Many factors govern the ways people are drawn to one another, including physical attractiveness, proximity, and similarity. One reason physical attractiveness is emphasized is because of the halo effect, which leads us to suppose that people who have one good trait are likely to have others.
  • The relationship of love involves many elements, including intimacy, passion, and commitment. In addition, psychologists often distinguish two types of love—romantic love and companionate love. Romantic love is often tumultuous, and it involves a state of physiological arousal and a set of beliefs that leads the person to interpret this arousal as passion. Companionate love involves a similarity of outlook, mutual caring, and trust that develop through day-to-day living together.
  • Ideas about romantic love are found in many cultures, but romantic love plays a larger role in individualistic cultures than in collectivistic cultures, plausibly because collectivist cultures emphasize connection and loyalty to one’s group, rather than the personal fulfillment often associated with romantic love.
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