Social influence
Chapter 1 Introduction to social psychology What is social psychology? Social influence: we are all influenced by other people Social influence extends beyond behaviour: includes our thoughts, feelings, and overt acts Social influence takes on many forms other than deliberate attempts at persuasion; we are often influenced by the presence of other people even when we are not in their physical presence Social psychologists are interested in studying how and why our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are shaped by the entire social environment Scientific study of the way in which people’s thoughts, feeling and behaviours are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people The power of social interpretation Social psychology is not concerned with social situations in any objective sense, but rather how people are influenced by their interpretation, or construal, of their social environment It is more important to understand how they perceive, comprehend, and interpret the social world than it is to understand the objective properties of the social world itself Social psychology is an experimentally based science Some alternative ways of understanding social influence Folk wisdom Journalists, social critics, and novelists saying interesting things about these situations “Bird of a feather flock together” and “opposites attract”; which one is correct? o Difficult to tell which folk wisdom is correct and which is wrong Cults are very powerful Philosophy Foundation of contemporary psychology Social psychologists look at similar questions but scientifically Social psychologists make hypotheses about the specific situations under which one outcome or the other would occur The task of the social psychologist is to design well controlled experiments, sophisticated enough to tease out the situations that would result in one or another outcome Social psychology compared with sociology Share a focus on social behaviour One difference is the level of analysis o Social psychology is a branch of psychology, rooted in the study of individuals, with an emphasis on the psychological processes going on in
their hearts and minds; the level of analysis is the individual in the context of a social situation o Sociology is more concerned with societal factors that influence events in a society; social class, social structure, and social institutions o The goal of social psychology is to identify universal properties of human nature that make everyone susceptible to social influence, regardless of social class or culture Social psychology compared with personality psychology Personality psychologists focus on individual differences Social psychologists take the situation into account The power of social influence Fundamental attribution error: the tendency to overestimate the extent to which people’s behaviour stems from internal, dispositional factors and to underestimate the role of situational factors Underestimating the power of social influence Feeling of false security BY failing to appreciate fully the power of the situation, we tend to oversimplify complex situations, and oversimplification decreases our understanding of the causes of a great deal of human behaviour This over simplification can lead us to blame the victim in situations in which the individual was overpowered by social forces too difficult for most of us to resist The subjectivity of the social situation Specify the objective properties of the situation, such as how rewarding it is to people, and then to document the behaviour that follow from these objective properties Gestalt psychology: a school of psychology stressing the importance of studying the subjective way in which an object appears in people’s minds rather than the objective physical attributes of the object o It is impossible to understand the way in which an object is perceived simply by studying the building blocks of perception o The whole is different then the sum of its parts Kurt Lewin is the founding father of experimental social psychology o He helped shape social psychology and directed it toward a deep interest in the exploration of causes and cures of prejudice and ethnic stereotyping Where construals come from: basic human motives Two motives are of primary importance o The need to be accurate o The need to feel good about ourselves Lean Festinger realized this it is when these 2 motives tug an individual in opposite directions that we can gain our most valuable insights into the workings of the human heart and mind
The self-esteem approach: the need to feel good about ourselves Self-esteem: people’s evaluations of their own self-worth; the extent to which they view themselves as good, competent, and decent Justifying past behaviour It is difficult to own up to major deficiencies in ourselves Distorted views of other people Suffering and self-justification Human being are motivated to maintain a positive picture of themselves, in part by justifying their past behaviour Under certain specific conditions, this leads them to do things that at first glance might seem surprising or paradoxical (may prefer people and things for whom they have suffered over people and things they associate with pleasure) The social cognition approach: the need to be accurate How people think about themselves and the social world; more specifically, how people select, interpret, remember, and use social information Social cognition Expectation about the social world Our expectations can change the nature of the social world Self-fulfilling prophecy: causing something to happen Other motives: ensuring our survival The evolutionary approach Natural selection: the process by which heritable traits that promote survival in a particular environment are passed along to future generations, because organisms that that trait are more likely to reproduce Evolutionary psychology: the attempt to explain social behaviour in terms of genetic factors that evolved over time according to the principles of natural selection Social psychology and social problems Social influence can best be understood by focusing on the major roots of human behaviour Social psychologists want to contribute to the solution of social problems
their hearts and minds; the level of analysis is the individual in the context of a social situation o Sociology is more concerned with societal factors that influence events in a society; social class, social structure, and social institutions o The goal of social psychology is to identify universal properties of human nature that make everyone susceptible to social influence, regardless of social class or culture Social psychology compared with personality psychology Personality psychologists focus on individual differences Social psychologists take the situation into account The power of social influence Fundamental attribution error: the tendency to overestimate the extent to which people’s behaviour stems from internal, dispositional factors and to underestimate the role of situational factors Underestimating the power of social influence Feeling of false security BY failing to appreciate fully the power of the situation, we tend to oversimplify complex situations, and oversimplification decreases our understanding of the causes of a great deal of human behaviour This over simplification can lead us to blame the victim in situations in which the individual was overpowered by social forces too difficult for most of us to resist The subjectivity of the social situation Specify the objective properties of the situation, such as how rewarding it is to people, and then to document the behaviour that follow from these objective properties Gestalt psychology: a school of psychology stressing the importance of studying the subjective way in which an object appears in people’s minds rather than the objective physical attributes of the object o It is impossible to understand the way in which an object is perceived simply by studying the building blocks of perception o The whole is different then the sum of its parts Kurt Lewin is the founding father of experimental social psychology o He helped shape social psychology and directed it toward a deep interest in the exploration of causes and cures of prejudice and ethnic stereotyping Where construals come from: basic human motives Two motives are of primary importance o The need to be accurate o The need to feel good about ourselves Lean Festinger realized this it is when these 2 motives tug an individual in opposite directions that we can gain our most valuable insights into the workings of the human heart and mind
The self-esteem approach: the need to feel good about ourselves Self-esteem: people’s evaluations of their own self-worth; the extent to which they view themselves as good, competent, and decent Justifying past behaviour It is difficult to own up to major deficiencies in ourselves Distorted views of other people Suffering and self-justification Human being are motivated to maintain a positive picture of themselves, in part by justifying their past behaviour Under certain specific conditions, this leads them to do things that at first glance might seem surprising or paradoxical (may prefer people and things for whom they have suffered over people and things they associate with pleasure) The social cognition approach: the need to be accurate How people think about themselves and the social world; more specifically, how people select, interpret, remember, and use social information Social cognition Expectation about the social world Our expectations can change the nature of the social world Self-fulfilling prophecy: causing something to happen Other motives: ensuring our survival The evolutionary approach Natural selection: the process by which heritable traits that promote survival in a particular environment are passed along to future generations, because organisms that that trait are more likely to reproduce Evolutionary psychology: the attempt to explain social behaviour in terms of genetic factors that evolved over time according to the principles of natural selection Social psychology and social problems Social influence can best be understood by focusing on the major roots of human behaviour Social psychologists want to contribute to the solution of social problems
