Psych Test : Social

• human beings are social animals and we have a basic need to belong
• culture influences behavior
• because humans are social animals, they have a social self
• people's views of the world are resistant to change

• Theory says that the human being feels tension and discomfort when holding inconsistent ideas
• I want to get to x so I have to go through Y

how people interpret and explain the causes of behavior

Attribution of behavior depends on whether we are performing the behavior or observing it

• Attributing our successes to dispositional factors and blaming failures on situational factors
• protects our self-esteem (Greenberg)
• exception: those who are severely depressed make more dispositonal attributions

• Person's sense of who they are by identfying with a group
• sense of belonging
• Taijfel argued that people built their own identities from their group memberships, natural for us to be apart of groups

Theory that we learn social behaviour by observing and imitating and by being rewarded or punished

one of the key ways that a society or culture passes down its values and behaviours to its members.

Characterized by group members having a unaminous opinion on an issue, and they do not seek out alternative or dissenting opinions

based on the way people cognitively process information about a situation

conform to avoid rejection or gain social approval

Researchers immerse themselves in a social setting for an extended period of time and observe behavoir.

Participants know they are being obvserved

• Researcher is open about intentions
• Use of a "sponsor" decreases hostility

Observer Effect

William Whyte, Street Corner Society (1943)

Participants are not informed of being observed

• Access to Social groups who normally wouldn't give consent 
• No "observer effect"

• Ethical concerns: trust is gained through deceit, intentions are not discloses; no informed consent
• Difficulties
• data can be distorted ( no note-taking - data relied on memory, no interviews for fear of being discovered
• stressful for researcher
• Going "native" - become one of them

Festinger- When Prophecy Fails

We interpret behavior in terms of internal (dispositional) and/or external (situational) factors

• Underestimate situational factors and overestimate dispositional factors
• Jones and Harris, 1967

Explain failures in terms of lack of ability

• Americans tended to attribute success to their ability while Japanese attributed to their lack of ability
• More collective nature of Asian societies

Social identity theory states that the in-group will discriminate against the out-group to enhance their-self-image

• Henry Tajfel
• Aim of the experiment was to determine what degree of group distinction was necessary for partcipants to display intergroup discrimination; testing the idea that discrimination can occur between groups.
• A sample of 48 school boys 14-15 yrs old was collected, they were shown 12 slides of paintings, 6 by Kindinsky, 6 by Klee and were asked their preferences.

Theory of social representations

offers a new approach for studying the media and citizens. How they make up societal and political issues in our generation

• Brixton Study
• People living in Brixton enjoyed the place, people living outside said it was filled with crime and was horrible

• to inflict a particular trait or behaviour
• affects our moods behaviour because it tends to show people behave consistently with their sterotype.

When one person or group does something disruptive, they are identified with the whole group. They separated groups into racial stereotypes.

The differential perception of majority and minority groups could result solely from the cognitive mechanisms involved in processing information about stimulus events that differ in their frequencies of co-occurances

college students were asked to interview other students. First they were provided with info about the other student, some were told the other student was outgoing and sociable while some were told the other student was shy and turned inward. The results of the interview tended to confirm these expectations, although in reality the descriptions were matched randomly to the students being interviewed.

When a participant responds in accordance to social norms, or in a manner in which they believe the researcher would desire, rather than how they truly feel or believe.

learning by watching and imitating

• Social learning theory
• aggression study

• attention
• retention
• motor reproduction
• motivation

• Consistency: model behaves consistently across situations
• Identification with the model: we tend to imitate models who are like ourselves

• explains how behaviors our passed down in families and cultures
• children can acquire behavior without trail-and-error

• child might learn from a model but not exhibit the behavior for some time; how do we know the behavior's cause is the observation
• some people never learn a behavior they've observed  social learning theory does not explain this

the result of direct pressure to respond to a request

• authority
• commitment
• liking
• reciprocity
• scarcity
• social proof

• basic norm of human culture
• people feel they need to "return the favor"

one feels that the other person has already compromised on what he or she wanted, and that this compromise should therefore be acknowledged with some behaviour.

asking university students if they would be willing to chaperone a group of jouvenile delingquents on a day at the zoo. Then asked for counselors for 2 years and then agreed to chaperone

the longer people commit themselves to something, the less likely they are to abandon the goal

getting people to make a commitment to something small, with the hope of persuading them to agree to something larger.

shower survey ( you got this)

asked students to be part of study at 7 am, little were willing, second group asked same favor but not given time and then told 7 am, still participated even though they could drop out

a series of initiation rites in order to join an exclusive group

one of the key ways that a society or culture passes down its values and behaviours to its members  Indirect form of social influence

people part of a study, and they are unknown to the participant

• group size
• unanimity
• confidence
• self-esteem

• question of artificiality and ecological validity
• ethical considerations- participants deceived- made to feel anxiety about performance
• bias interpretation of findings
• culture has limited the validity of the study

• dissenting opinions produce uncertainty and doubt
• such opinions show that alternatives exist
• consistency shows that there is a commitment to the alternative

• person giving orders is close at hand
• authority figure supported by prestigious institution
• victim is depersonalized or at a distance
• no other participants were seen disobeying the experimenter

norms and values that define a society