PSYC 1101 Chapter Notes - Chapter 13: Deindividuation, Groupthink, Social Control
6 Jun 2018
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Notes on Social Psychology
Social Thinking
● Social psychology → the scientific study of how we think about, influence, and relate to
one another
● Act differently in different situations
The Fundamental Attribution Error
● Attribution Theory → the theory that we explain someone’s behavior by crediting either
the situation or the person’s disposition
● Fundamental attribution error → the tendency for observers, when analyzing others’
behavior to underestimate the impact of the situation, and to overestimate the impact of
personal disposition
What Factors Affect Our Attributions
● Attribution error is cultural
● Outside different roles people adopt different personalities
What Are the Consequences of Our Attributions
● Must make decisions in order to judge others’ actions
Attitudes and Actions
● Attitude → feelings, often influenced by our beliefs that predispose us to respond in a
particular way to objects, people, and events
Attitudes Affect Actions
● Peripheral route persuasion → occurs when people are influenced by incidental cues such
as the speaker’s attractiveness
● Central route persuasion → occurs when interested people focus on the arguments and
respond with favorable thoughts
● Persuaders try to change attitudes
● When outer influences are minimal, persuasion works best
Actions Affect Attitudes
● More strongly believe in what they have already acted on
The Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon
● Foot-in-the-door phenomenon → the tendency for people who have first agreed to a
small request to comply later to a large request
● Coaxed people into acting against attitudes or beliefs
● Racial attitudes follow same principle after civil war
Role Playing Affects Attitudes
● Role → a set of expectations (norms) about a social position, defining how those in the
position ought to behave
● Any time you take on a new role, you want to fit the norms of that role
● Striving to play certain roles can cause people to do terrible things
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Cognitive Dissonance: Relief From Tension
● Same brain regions active as with cognitive conflict
● Cognitive dissonance theory → the theory that we act to reduce the discomfort
(dissonance) we feel when two of our thoughts (cognitions) are inconsistent. For
example, when we become aware that our attitudes and actions clash, we can reduce the
resulting dissonance by changing our attitudes
● Convince ourselves that we actually believe in our actions
● Attitudes-follow-behavior principle - cannot directly control all our feelings but can
influence them by altering behavior
Social Influence
Conformity: Complying With Social Pressures
Automatic Mimicry
● Behaviors can be contagious
● Take on emotional tones of those around us
● This mimicry is called the chameleon effect
● Automatic mimicry helps us to empathize
● Mood linkage
Conformity and Social Norms
● Conformity → adjusting our behavior and thinking to coincide with a group standard
● Choose between social discomfort and getting the question wrong
● Normative social influence → influence resulting from a person’s desire to gain approval
or avoid disapproval
● Informational social influence → influence resulting from one’s willingness to accept
others’ opinions about reality
● Depends on whether countries value groups or individuals more
Obedience: Following Orders
● Milgram
● Obedience or morality?
● More obedient to:
○ Legitimate-seeming authority figures
○ Authority figure connected to prestigious institution
○ The victim was depersonalized
○ No role models for defiance
Lessons From the Obedience Studies
● Obedience and social pressures can cause normal people to do terrible things
Group Behavior
● Do things in competition and with others
Social Facilitation
● Social facilitation → improved performance on simple or well-learned tasks in the
presence of others
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● On harder tasks, people perform worse with others
● More likely to do well on easy things and bad on hard things
● Enthusiastic audience - home advantage in sports
● Mood during performances affected by the people there
Social Loafing
● What about group performances?
● Social loafing → the tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling
their efforts toward attaining a common goal than when individually accountable
● Why?
○ People feel less accountable
○ Individuals feel their contributions are dispensable
○ Free ride
Deindividuation
● Deindividuation → the loss of self-awareness and self-restraint occurring in group
situations that foster arousal and anonymity
● Hiding faces aids this
● I.e. cyber bullying
Group Polarization
● Groups generally start out similar but grow more different
● Group polarization → the enhancement of a group’s prevailing inclinations through
discussion within the group
● Happens with racial issues
● Extremism
Groupthink
● Groupthink → the mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a
decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives
● Political and national disasters happened because everyone abandoned their individual
ideas and agreed on a bad idea
The Power of Individuals
● Social control - power of situation
● Personal control - power of individual
● Negative reviews have often been directed at genious ideas
● Minority influence
Antisocial Relations
Prejudice
● Prejudice → an unjustifiable (and usually negative) attitude toward a group and its
members. Prejudice generally involves stereotyped beliefs, negative feelings and a
predisposition to discriminatory action
● Attitude that is a mixture of:
○ Beliefs (stereotypes)
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find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Fundamental attribution error the tendency for observers, when analyzing others" behavior to underestimate the impact of the situation, and to overestimate the impact of personal disposition. Outside different roles people adopt different personalities. Must make decisions in order to judge others" actions. Attitude feelings, often influenced by our beliefs that predispose us to respond in a particular way to objects, people, and events. Peripheral route persuasion occurs when people are influenced by incidental cues such as the speaker"s attractiveness. Social psychology the scientific study of how we think about, influence, and relate to one another. Attribution theory the theory that we explain someone"s behavior by crediting either the situation or the person"s disposition. Central route persuasion occurs when interested people focus on the arguments and respond with favorable thoughts. When outer influences are minimal, persuasion works best. More strongly believe in what they have already acted on.
