PSYB10H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1-2: Kurt Lewin, Polling Place, Fundamental Attribution Error
Textbook Notes PSYB10 Lec #1
Chapter #1 & Chapter #2
1
Chapter # - An Invitation to Social
Psychology
- Ian Turner – Founded computer science
o Was aested i 95 fo goss ideet – homosexual conduct
o Had the choice between imprisonment or chemical castration to reduce his
libido and cause impotence
- Until 1974 – the American Psychiatric Association held that homosexuality was a mental
illness
- 1994 – homosexuality was a necessary and sufficient cause of discharge from the
American military
Characterising Social Psychology
- Social psychology: the scientific study of the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors of
individuals in social situations
Explaining Behaviour
- 30 years before the atrocities at Abu Ghraib (American soldiers and their humiliating
acts towards Iraqi prisoners), Phillip Zimbardo – Stanford Prison experiment
o Flipped a coin to see who would be a guard and who would be a prisoner
o The guards wore green fatigue uniforms and reflective sunglasses
o The prisoners wore tunics with nylon stocking caps and had a chain locked
around one ankle
o The study was anticipated to last 2 weeks
o Guards – right away turned to verbal abuse and physical humiliation
o Study was terminated in 6 days
- Social psychologist study:
o situations in which people exert influence over one another, as well as the ways
people respond to influence attempts of various kinds
o Interested in how people make sense of their world
o how they decided what and whom to believe
o how they make inferences about the motives, personalities and abilities of other
people
o how they reach conclusions about the causes of events
- Research by social psychologists regularly influence government policy
o For example: research on the effects of different kinds of welfare programs is
used in shaping government assistance policies
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Textbook Notes PSYB10 Lec #1
Chapter #1 & Chapter #2
2
Comparing Social Psychology with Related Disciplines
- Personality psychology emphasizes individual differences in behavior rather than the
social situation & they try to find a consistent pattern in the way a person behaves
across situations
- Cognitive psychology – the study of how people perceive, think about, and remember
aspects of the world
o Differ from social psychologists in the topics they study – usual focus more on
categorization processes or memory for words or objects
- Sociology – study of behavior of the people in the aggregate
o Study institutions, subgroups, bureaucracies, mass movements, and changes in
the demographic characteristics of populations
o Focus on the how, while social psychologists focus on the why
The Power of the Situation
- 1963 – Hannah Arendt suggested in Eichmann in Jerusalem that we are all capable of
brutality – alled the aalit of eil
o Described the trial of Adolf Eichmann (the man who was the architect behind
Hitle’s pla to eteiate Jes
- Kurt Lewin – founder of modern social psychology
o Said that the behavior of people, like the behavior of objects, is always a function
of the field of forced in which they find themselves
- We rely on other people for clues about what emotions to feel in various situations and
even to define who we are as individuals
The Milgram Experiment
- By Stanley Milgram – study on learning and memory at Yale in exchange for modest
amount of money
o There was a teacher and a learner (the learner would try and memorize word
pairs such as wild/duck)
o Confederate played the learner
o Teacher was instructed to administer shocks from 15 – 450 volts each time the
learner made an error
o The teacher was given a 45volt shock to see the pain that the learner would be in
o The epeiete ould sa the epeiet euies ou to otiue atie
someone was questioning giving a shock
o 80% of participants continued passed the 150-volt-level at which point the
leae etioed that he had a heat oditio ad seaed let e out of
hee
o 62.5% of the participants went all the way to the 450-volt level
o The average shock given was 360 volts before the learner let out an agonized
scream and became hysterical
o The prediction was only 20% of participants would go past the 150-volt-level
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Textbook Notes PSYB10 Lec #1
Chapter #1 & Chapter #2
3
o The prediction was that 1% would continue past the 330-volt-level
Seminarians as Samaritans
- Experiment by John Darley and Daniel Batson
o Asked students at Princeton Theological Seminary about the basis of their
religious orientation to determine whether particular students were primarily
concerned with religion as a means toward personal salvation or were more
concerned with religion for its other moral and spiritual values
o Were asked to deliver a short sermon in another room – were told to follow a
certain route
▪ 1 group was told they had plenty of time to go there
▪ another group was told they were late and must rush
▪ There was a confederate planted on the route there who was in need of
help
o Only those not in a rush stopped and helped and low amount of those in a rush
stopped and helped
Fundamental Attribution Error
- People are governed by situation factors more than they assume (i.e. being pressured
by someone, if they are late)
- Internal factors have much less influence than most people assume they do (i.e. the kind
of person someone is)
- Dispositions: internal factors, such as beliefs, values, personality traits, and abilities,
that guide a perso’s ehaior
- Fundamental attribution error: the failure to recognize the importance of situation
influences on behavior, and the corresponding tendency to overemphasize the
importance of disposition on behavior
- “oial psholog eouages us to look at aothe peso’s situatio – try and
understand the complex field of forces acting on the individual – in order to fully
udestad a peso’s ehaio
Channel Factors
- Kurt Lewin introduced the concept of Channel factors: situational circumstances that
appear unimportant on the surface but that can have great consequences for behavior –
facilitating it, blocking it, or guiding it in a particular direction
- Study by Howard Leventhal on how to motivate people to take advantage of health
failities’ offeig a peetatie ae
o Attempt to persuade Yale students to get tetanus inoculation
o Convince them that the inoculation was in their best interest & had them read
scary material
o To grasp attention – they showed students pictures of people in the last stages
of lockjaw
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Document Summary
Psychology: was a(cid:396)(cid:396)ested i(cid:374) (cid:1005)95(cid:1006) fo(cid:396) (cid:862)g(cid:396)oss i(cid:374)de(cid:272)e(cid:374)t(cid:863) homosexual conduct, had the choice between imprisonment or chemical castration to reduce his libido and cause impotence. Until 1974 the american psychiatric association held that homosexuality was a mental illness. 1994 homosexuality was a necessary and sufficient cause of discharge from the. Social psychology: the scientific study of the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors of individuals in social situations. Social psychologist study: situations in which people exert influence over one another, as well as the ways people respond to influence attempts of various kinds. Research by social psychologists regularly influence government policy: for example: research on the effects of different kinds of welfare programs is used in shaping government assistance policies. Personality psychology emphasizes individual differences in behavior rather than the social situation & they try to find a consistent pattern in the way a person behaves across situations.
