Social Psychology & Development and personality

Social psychology

(the study of how we think about, influence and relate to one another)

Three parts include:

·        Thinking

·        Influencing

·        Relating

Attribution Theory

• ·         The idea that we give casual explanation for someone’s behavior
• ·         We credit that behavior either to the situation or…
• ·         To the person’s disposition

Fundamental Attribution Error

• The tendency to underestimate the impact of a situation and overestimate the impact of personal disposition

Attitudes

• ·         A belief or feeling that predisposes one to respond in a particular way to something

Foot in the door phenomenon

• ·         The tendency for people who have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request

Door in face phenomenon

·    The tendency for people who say no to a huge request, to comply with a smaller one

Cognitive Dissonance Theory

• ·         We do not like when we have either conflicting attitudes or when our attitudes do not match our actions.
• ·         When they clash, we will change our attitude to create balance

Social influence

Conformity

• ·         Adjusting one’s behavior or thinking to coincide with a group standard

Conditions that strengthen conformity

• ·         One is made to feel incompetent
• ·         The group is at least three people
• ·         The group has to be unanimous
• ·         One admires the group’s status
• ·         One had made no prior commitment
• ·         The person is observed

Reasons for Conforming

• Normative social influence
• ·         Influence resulting from a person’s desire to gain approval or avoid disappointment
• Informational social influence
• ·         Influence resulting from one’s willingness to accept other’s opinions about reality

Social Facilitation

• ·         Improved performance of tasks in the presence of others
• ·         Occurs with simple or well learned tasks
• ·         Not with tasks that are difficult or not yet mastered

Yerkes- Dodson Law

·         There is an optimal level of arousal for the best performance of any task:

·   Easy tasks- relatively high

·   Difficult tasks- low arousal

·   Other tasks- moderate level

Social Loafing

• ·         The tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling efforts toward a common goal than if they were individually accountable

Deindividuation

• ·         The loss of self- awareness and self- restraint occurring in group situations that foster arousal and anonymity

Group Polarization

• ·         The concept that a group’s attitude is one of extremes and rarely moderate

Group Think

• ·         The mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony in a decision- making group overrides common sense

Self- Fulfilling prophecies

• ·         Occurs when one person’s belief about others leads one to act in ways that induce the others appears to confirm the belief

Social relations

Prejudice

• ·         An unjustifiable attitude towards a group of people
• ·         Usually involves stereotyped beliefs (a generalized belief about a group of people)

Social Inequalities

(A principle reason behind prejudice)

• ·         Ingroup: “us” people with whom one shares a common identity
• ·         Outgroup: “them” those perceived as different than one’s ingroup
• ·         Ingroup bias: the tendency to favor one’s own group

Scapegoat Theory

• ·         The theory that prejudice provides an outlet for anger by providing someone to blame

Aggression

• ·         Any physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt or destroy

Conflict

• ·         A perceived incompatibility of action, goals, or ideas

Attraction

• ·         Proximity
• ·         Reciprocal liking
• ·         Similarity
• ·         Liking through Association

Love

• ·         Passionate love: an aroused state& intense positive adaption of another
• ·         Compassionate love: the deep affectionate attachment we feel for those with whom our lives are intertwined

Altruism

• ·         Unselfish regard for the welfare of others
• ·         Kitty Genovese case