Unit III Social Psychology

Social Psychology

-The study of how we think about, influence and relate to one another

Social Thinking

• Social Thinking: how we think of one another
• Attribution Theory: the idea that we give a casual explanation for someone's behavior, we credit that behavior either to the situation or the person's disposition
• Fundamental Attribution Error: the tendency to underestimate the impact of a situation and overestimate the impact of a situation and overestimate the impact of personal disposition
• Attitudes: a belief of feeling that predisposes one to respond in a particular way to something 
• Foot-in-the-door Phenomenon: the tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request
• Door-in-face Phenomenon: the tendency for people who say no to a huge request, to comply with a smaller one
• Cognitive Dissonance Theory: we do not like when we have either conflicting attitudes or when will our attitudes do not match our actions

-When they clash, we will change our attitude to create balance

Social Influence

• Conformity: adjusting one's behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard
• Asch's Study
• Conditions that strengthen conformity:

1. One is made to feel incompetent
2. The group is at least three people
3. The group is unanimous
4. One admires the groups' status
5. One had made no prior commitment
6. The person is observed

• Reasons for Conforming:

-Normative Social Influence: influence resulting from a person's desire to gain approval or avoid disappointment 

-Informational Social Influence: influence resulting from one's willingness to accept others' opinions about reality

• Obedience: Milgram's experiment measures the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts conflicting with their persona conscience
• Social Facilitation:

-Improved performance of tasks in the presence of others

-Occurs with simple or well learned tasks

-Not with tasks that are difficult or no yet mastered

• Social Loafing: the tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling efforts toward a common goal than if they were individually accountable
• Deindividuation: the loss of self-awareness and self-restraint occurring in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity 
• Group Polarization: the concept that a group's attitude is one of extremes and rarely moderate
• Groupthink: the mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides common sense 
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: occurs when one person's belief about others leads one to act in ways that induce the others to appear to confirm the beliefs

Social Relations

• Prejudice: an unjustifiable attitude towards a group of people, usually stereotyped beliefs (a generalized belief about a group of people)
• Social Inequalities:

-Ingroup: "us"- people with whom one shares a common identity

-Outgroup: "them" - those perceived as different than one's ingroup

-Ingroup bias: the tendency to favor one's own group

• Scapegoat Theory: the theory that prejudice provides an outlet for anger by providing someone to blame
• Aggression: any physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt or destroy
• The Psychology of Aggression: 

Frustration-Aggressive Principle

• The blocking of an attempt to achieve some goal
• Creates anger which generates aggression 
• Goals can be: sports/work, relationships

• Conflict: a perceived incompatibility of actions, goals, or ideas

-Social trap or prisoner's dilemma

• The Just World Phenomenon: the belief that those who suffer deserve their fate
• Reciprocity Norm: expectation that people will help those that will help them
• Social Responsibility: the expectation that people help those that depend on them

• 5 Factors of Attraction:

1. Proximity: geographic nearness

• Mere Exposure Effect: repeated exposure to something breeds liking, mirror image concept

2. Reciprocal Liking: you are more likely to like someone who likes you

3. Similarity: opposites do not attract, similarity breeds concept

4. Physical Attractiveness

5. Love

• Passionate Love: an aroused state of intense positive absorption of another
• Compassionate Love: the deep affectionate attachment we feel for those with whom our lives are intertwined
• Equity: both are fair
• Self-Disclosure: no secrets

• Altruism: unselfish regard for the welfare of others
• Bystander Effect: only help others when others are around
• Social Exchange Theory: the idea that our social behavior is an exchange process, which we maximize benefits and minimize costs
• Peacemaking: give people super ordinate (shared) goals that can only be achieved through cooperation, win win situation through mediation, GRIT (Graduated and Reciprocated Initiatives in Tension Reduction)

Motivation and Emotion

• Motivation: a need or desire that energizes and directs behavior
• Instinct Theory: we are motivated by our inborn automated behavior, but instincts only explain why we do a small fraction of our behaviors
• Drive-Reduction Theory: the idea that a physiological need creates an aroused tension state (a drive) that motivates an organism to satisfy the need

-The need is usually to maintain homeostasis

-We are not only pushed by our needs but pulled by our incentives: a positive or negative environmental stimulus that motivates behavior

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

• Maslow said we are motivated by needs, and all needs are not created equal, we are driven to satisfy the lower level needs first.

Hunger

• Hunger: both physiological ad psychological 
• Biological Basis of Hunger

-Hunger does not come from our stomach

-Comes from the brain: the hypothalamus

• Hypothalamus

1. Lateral Hypothalamus 

-When stimulated it makes you hungry

-When lesioned (destroyed) you will never be hungry again

2. Ventromedial Hypothalamus

-When stimulated you feel full

-When lesioned you will never feel full again

• Two Theories

1. Leptin: is a protein produced by bloated fat cells
2. Set Point: 

• Hypothalamus acts like a thermostat
• We are meant to be in a certain weight rage
• When we fall below weight our body will increase hunger and decrease energy expenditure (Basic Metabolic Rate)

• Body Chemistry 

-Glucose: the hormone insulin converts glucose to fat, when glucose levels drop-hunger increases

• Hypothalamus and Hormones 

-The hypothalamus monitors a number of hormones that are related to hunger

• The Psychology of Hunger

-External: people whose eating is triggered more by the presence of food than internal factors

• Eating Disorder

-Bulimia Nervosa: characterized by binging (eating large amounts of food) and purging (getting rid of food)

-Anorexia Nervosa: starve themselves to below 85% of their normal body weight, see themselves as fat, majority are woman

Learn more about bulima nervosa and what it does to people:

Achievement Motivation

• Intrinsic Motivator: rewards we get internally, such as enjoyment or satisfaction
• Extrinsic Motivator: reward tat we get for accomplishments from outside ourselves
• Management Theory:

1. Theory X: managers believe that employees will work only if rewarded with benefits or threatened with punishment, think employees are extrinsically motivated, only interested in Maslow's lower needs
2. Theory Y: managers believe that employees are internally motivated to good work and policies should encourage this internal motive, interested in Maslow's higher needs

Theory of Emotions

1. James-Lange Theory: experience of emotion is awareness of physiological responses to emotion-arousing stimuli

• Emotion: we feel emotion because of biological changes caused by stress, the bod changes and our mind recognizes the feeling

2. Cannon-Bard Theory: emotion-arousing stimuli simultaneously trigger

• Physiological responses
• Subjective experience of emotion

3. Schachter's Two-Factor Theory: to experience emotion one must

• Be physically aroused 
• Cognitively label the arousal

Polygraph Lie Detectors

• Machinery commonly used in attempts to detect lies
• Measures several of the physiological responses accompanying emotion

1. Perspiration
2. Cardiovascular
3. Breathing changes

Experienced Emotion

• Catharsis

-Emotional release

-Catharsis hypothesis

-"Releasing" aggressive energy (through action or fantasy) relieve aggressive urges 

• Feel-good, Do-good Phenomenon: tendency to form judgments relative to "neutral" level

-Brightness of lights, volume of sound, level of income

-Defined by our prior experience

• Relative Deprivation: perception that one is worse of relative to those with whom one compares oneself