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Social Psychology
CH 15
CHARACTER OVERVIEW
Joe Maggio
As a single father to a young daughter, Joe Maggio didn’t have much time to date. But
after joining Match.com, Joe finally found someone he was compatible with in Suzanne.
They shared the same interests and right from the start felt at ease together. After dating
awhile, they found that their initial attraction was on point and their relationship
flourished. Suzanne treated Joe’s daughter, Kristina, as her own, and the two fell in love.
After less than a year, Joe proposed and the couple was married. In addition to Kristina,
the couple now has infant triplets—two sons and a daughter. Despite a busy and full life,
the two remain very much in love.
Julius Achon
Growing up in Uganda was not easy for Julius Achon. At the age of 7 he barely survived a
case of measles, and at 12 he was kidnapped by a government resistance group known
as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and forced to become a soldier. In the LRA he was
compelled to raid villages and faced punishment if he did not comply with his captors.
After three months, Julius was able to escape and return to his home village, where he
began to concentrate on running. After running barefoot in his first race and winning,
Julius began to compete in, and win, races all over the world. Running allowed Julius to
attend high school in the capital city of Kampala in Uganda and to graduate from George
Mason University in the United States.
Despite his success, Julius didn’t forget about his home. While visiting in 2003 he came
across 11 orphans living under a bus. He took them home, fed them, and eventually his
family adopted all of them. Julius sent money home for their care. He didn’t stop with
those orphans. After taking a job with Nike in Portland, he gained the support of others
and began the Achon Uganda Children’s Fund (AUCF), a nonprofit organization dedicated
to improving the living conditions of children in the rural areas of northern Uganda. The
fund has built a clinic near Julius’s home, named for his mother, who was killed by the
LRA. He has taken his difficult childhood and made a difference for others like him.
BRIEF CHARACTER OVERVIEW
Joe Maggio
Raising his young daughter alone didn’t give Joe Maggio much time to date, so he turned
to Match.com. Through the site he met Suzanne, who was a wonderful match for him.
The two fell in love and were married and are now raising Joe’s daughter, Kristina, along
with their infant triplets. Despite a busy and full life, they are still very much in love.
Julius Achon
Growing up in Uganda was difficult for Julius Achon. At the age of 12 he was kidnapped
by a government resistance group known as the LRA and forced to become a soldier. He
was able to escape after three months and began a running career. After running his first
race barefoot, he went on to compete and win all over the world. He eventually
graduated from George Mason University in the United States. Visiting home, he came
across 11 orphans, all of whom his family then adopted. Wanting to do more for those
suffering in his home country, Julius gained the support of others and began the Achon
Uganda Children’s Fund (AUCF), a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the
living conditions of children in the rural areas of northern Uganda.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After reading and studying this chapter, you should be able to:
Over the last two decades, online dating has exploded, with the Internet becoming the
second most common way to connect with a potential partner behind introduction by
mutual friends. Because of this enormous change in how people meet romantic
partners, Internet dating has become a topic of interest in social psychology, the study
of human cognition, emotion, and behavior in relation to others, including how people
behave in social settings. Many ask how this differs from sociology; the answer is that
social psychology studies how people behave in relation to each other and in groups,
while sociology studies the groups themselves.
Social psychologists use the same research methods as other psychologists, but often
with added deception to prevent people from altering their reactions because they are
being observed. Social psychologists may use confederates, people secretly working for
the researchers, who play the role of participants, experimenters, or bystanders and do
and say what the researchers tell them to in advance. The deception used is most often
revealed when participants are debriefed at the end of a study. Even after learning of the
deception, most participants report that they would still take part in subsequent
experiments.
SOCIAL COGNITION
Attributions
Our interactions with the people around us are influenced by social cognition, the way
we think about others, attend to social information, and use this information in our lives,
both consciously and unconsciously. When meeting a new people, we evaluate them,
both consciously and unconsciously, and consequently make decisions about our future
interactions with them.
One critical facet of social cognition is attributions, which are the beliefs we develop to
explain situations as well as human behaviors and characteristics. The many types of
attributions can be difficult to differentiate between, and psychologists often describe
them along three dimensions: controllable–uncontrollable, stable–unstable, and
internal–external. In the latter, external attributions are referred to as situational
attributions, which is the belief that some environmental factor is involved in the cause
of an event or activity. In contrast, internal attributions come from within an individual.
These include dispositional attributes, which is the belief that some characteristic of an
individual is involved in the cause of a situation, event, or activity.
When making attributions, people are often guessing about the causes of events or
behaviors, leaving room for error. Social psychologists look at four common attribution
errors.
Attitudes
Attitudes are the relatively stable thoughts, feelings, and responses one has toward
people, situations, ideas, and things. Psychologists suggest that attitudes are composed
of cognitive, affective, and behavioral components—with cognitive referring to one’s
beliefs or ideas about an object, person, or situation; affective referring to one’s mood or
emotion; and behavioral referring to the way in which one responds.
Most of us come into contact with other people nearly every day of our lives both in
intimate and superficial ways. The way we are affected by others as evidenced in our
behaviors, emotions, and cognition is known as social influence. One example of social
influence is seen in the impact that others’ expectations has on us. The expectations that
parents, teachers, friends, and spouses have for us often influence the ways in which we
behave.
The elaboration likelihood model proposes that persuasion hinges on the way people
think about an argument, occurring via one of two pathways. In the central route to
persuasion, a person thinks critically about the content of the message. With the
peripheral route, the focus is on something outside of the content of the message, such
as the credibility or attractiveness of the source. To be most persuasive, both routes
should be employed, delivering a logical argument from a credible and attractive source.
The alteration of one’s behaviors due to persuasion is internal and related to a change in
attitude. Compliance, however, refers to changes in behavior at the request or direction
of another person or group who do not have any true authority. This often occurs
outside of our awareness when we absentmindedly respond to the requests of others.
Compliance is more likely when the request is accompanied by a reason, no matter what
that reason is.
There are several methods for gaining others’ compliance. One example is the foot-in-
the-door technique, which involves making a small request first, followed by a larger
request. After agreeing to a small request, a person is more likely to agree to a larger
one. Another example is the door-in-the-face technique, which is the opposite, making
a large request first, followed by a smaller one. The idea is that once you have refused a
large request, you will be more likely to comply with a smaller one. Compliance usually
involves a specific request, but social influence is not always so explicit.
Conformity
Conformity refers to the urge to modify one’s behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, and opinions
to match those of others. This might mean conforming to the norms, or standards, of
the social environment, like those of a group to which one is connected. Conformity
does not generally occur in response to a direct request but rather as a part of a desire
to fit in and belong. This is not necessarily a bad thing, and in fact we often rely on
conformity to ensure that day-to-day activities involving groups of people run smoothly.
Why do we conform? One reason is normative social influence, the desire for approval
and to be accepted and liked. Another is informational social influence, the desire to
behave correctly. We may also conform to match others because they belong to a
reference group we respect, admire, or desire to be a part of.
You can watch this video of the classic Asch experiment on conformity.
Obedience
The result of social influence can also be obedience, which occurs when we change our
behavior because we have been ordered to do so by an authority figure. Obedience is
the result of an imbalance of power and is often done in fear, out of respect, or out of
concern. Obedience can be critical, as in the case of parents relying on a child’s
obedience to keep him or her safe, but it can also be used to manipulate and control
those less powerful.
However, Milgram also found that if confederates were present who refused to obey,
other participants were also likely to refuse.
We have looked at how individuals think about and react to different others, but what
about group dynamics? Coming together in a group can help people to accomplish goals
not possible alone. In fact an individual’s abilities can be boosted because other people
are present. This is known as social facilitation, the tendency for the presence of others
to improve personal performance when the task or event is fairly uncomplicated and a
person is adequately prepared.
While coming together in groups can often help us to accomplish a goal, there are times
when the opposite is true. Social loafing refers to the tendency for people to give less-
than-their-best effort when individual contributions are too complicated to measure.
Some members of a group may rely on the work of the others rather than making their
full contribution. Social loafing can be the result of the diffusion of responsibility,
sharing duties and responsibilities among all group members that can lead to feelings of
decreased accountability and motivation. To avoid social loafing, it is better to assign
discrete tasks to each member of a group. Social loafing is more likely to occur in
individualist societies such as that of the United States than in collectivist cultures like
those in East Asia.
When group members are not treated as individuals, they may feel a diminished sense
of personal responsibility, inhibition, or adherence to social norms, known as
deindividuation. The research of Ed Diener demonstrates that children are especially
vulnerable to deindividuation; children were brought into a room with a bowl of candy
and told to take only one piece. If a parent were present the children most often did as
they were told; alone they more often took more than allowed; and in a group of other
children nearly all of them took more candy than they were instructed. Deindividuation
can also be seen in adults: consider the bad behavior of a post-game crowd of either
elated or angry and disappointed sports fans. It seems that people are also more
inclined to risky or uncertain options when in a group, referred to as risky shift.
People also tend to take a more extreme stance when in a group than they would
individually after deliberation and discussion, a phenomenon known as group
polarization. In fact, as a group becomes more unified, groupthink—the tendency for
members to maintain cohesiveness and agreement in their decision-making, failing to
consider all possible alternatives and related viewpoints—can occur. Groupthink can
have disastrous effects for people trying to work through life-or-death problems.
In the first video, a woman is in a hospital’s psychiatric waiting room when she
collapses to the floor. Despite the presence of other people in the waiting room,
and even medical staff walking by, nobody provides assistance to her for 45
minutes. Tragically, due to this lack of action, the woman died.
The second video is a clip of a staged child abduction. Television producers were
interested to see how the public would react to witnessing a child abduction in
the middle of a busy sidewalk. Unfortunately, had the abduction been real, the
girl would likely have been taken without much difficulty.
After viewing these videos, what factors do you think are involved in producing
the bystander effect. Why does it occur in some situations, but not in others?
AGGRESSION
We have seen that social interactions are not always positive. This is especially evident in
the case of aggression, intimidating or threatening behavior or attitudes intended to
hurt someone. There is research to suggest that aggressive tendencies have biological
roots, including studies showing identical twins are more likely than fraternal twins to
share aggressive traits. But environment is also influential. According to the frustration-
aggression hypothesis, aggression may occur in response to frustration. We all show
aggression sometimes, although there are gender differences. Men tend to show direct
aggression (physical displays), while women show more relational aggression (gossip,
exclusion, ignoring).
We often associate aggression with behaviors, but it can also be shown in our attitudes,
as evidenced by stereotyping. Stereotypes are conclusions or inferences we make about
people who are different from us based on their group membership, such as race,
religion, age, or gender. Stereotypes can be dangerous because they make assumptions
about people based on negative perceived characteristics of a group to which they
belong.
While belonging to a group can be a very good thing, believing that group to be superior
can lead to incorrect assumptions about outsiders. We tend to see the world in terms of
the in-group (the group to which we belong) and the out-group (people outside of this
group). Belonging to an in-group helps us from a young age to form our social identity,
the way we view ourselves within our social group. While social identity is important,
the view that your in-group is superior can lead to negative views about others. Seeing
the world only from the perspective of our own group is known as ethnocentrism and
can lead to discrimination, showing favoritism or hostility to others because of their
affiliation with a group. Those in the out-group are also vulnerable to receiving blame for
upsetting social situations by being used as scapegoats, the targets of negative
emotions, beliefs, and behaviors.
Those who believe in stereotypes and blame scapegoats are also likely to feel prejudice,
hostile or negative attitudes toward an individual or group. While the United States has
made great strides in ending overt prejudice, these negative attitudes still exist, and
their causes are complex. Cognitively, the just-world hypothesis may be an explanation
for negative thoughts about outsiders. Prejudice may come from a desire to conform to
a group with similar views. But research has shown that forcing people to come together
to work toward a common goal can reduce prejudice.
One of the most controversial psychology studies ever conducted was led by Philip
Zimbardo at Stanford University in 1971. In the experiment, a “prison” was set up at the
university. Some student participants were chosen to be guards and others to be
prisoners. Soon after the study began, the guards became abusive toward the prisoners,
with behavior so disturbing that the study was ended early. Some prisoners accepted
the abuse, and others were so distraught that they were allowed to leave the
experiment. In this instance it seems that both the guards and prisoners took their social
roles—positions held in social groups, and the responsibilities and expectations
associated with those roles—in the experiment too far. Since this experiment was
conducted, the ethical guidelines have been changed such that it would no longer meet
them.
Prosocial Behavior
We’ve talked about many negative aspects of human social interaction, but there are
positive aspects as well. Prosocial behavior is aimed at benefiting others, and there is
plenty of evidence of such behaviors in human interactions—from the love shared by a
happily married couple to the love shown to orphans by the families who adopt them.
Prosocial behavior can be evident in everyday acts and larger acts of great charity.
On the Up Side
Doing good for others can feel good, even if you get nothing in return. The desire or
motivation to help others with no expectation of anything in return is called altruism. A
major component of altruism is empathy, the ability to understand and recognize
another’s point of view. Children as young as 18 months have been observed showing
helping behaviors, so it seems altruism begins early in life, although researchers do not
know if it is innate or heritable. Research has shown that altruistic and prosocial
behaviors tend to reduce stress and increase happiness, so perhaps there is some
personal benefit after all.
Interpersonal Attraction
The factors that lead us to form friendships or romantic relationships with other people
are known as interpersonal attraction. But what exactly are these factors? This text
focuses on three: proximity, similarity, and physical attractiveness.
In order to be attracted to someone, you must somehow come into contact with him or
her, therefore proximity, or nearness, is an important factor in interpersonal attraction.
Of course, the Internet has changed how important physical proximity is in forming
relationships, allowing us to “meet” people who may be thousands of miles away. In
fact, research has shown that in addition to bringing people together despite physical
distance, social media can also reinforce friendships made offline. This would back up
the mere-exposure effect, which is the idea that the more we are exposed to someone
or something, the more positive a reaction we have toward it. While this may be true,
repeated negative exposures to a person or object may also reinforce dislike.
What Is Love?
In many ways, the idea of love varies from culture to culture. In America we tend to
believe that love should be the start of a relationship, where other cultures feel that love
should blossom after a marriage has taken place. Robert Sternberg studied love and
believed that there were elements at work in many combinations in a loving
relationship: passion (feelings leading to romance and physical attraction); intimacy
(feeling close); and commitment (the recognition of love). Sternberg defined these
elements as comprising different types of love:
I Urge you to use the material in this chapter in everyday life. All of us can strive to be
conscious of our behaviors when interacting with others and also of how others behave
when interacting with them.