SOCIAL

PSYCHOLOGY
(CHAPTER 17)
What’s on the Agenda for this Week?
• What is Social Psychology?
• What are the subfields of Social Psychology?
– Social Influence
– Social Cognition
– Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination
• Some Questions from Former Students:
“Why are people so much affected by other
people around them?”
“Why do we conform to society?”
WHAT IS SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY?
OK, psychology of the crowd,
but is this crowd the right
crowd?
HAVE YOU EVER SEEN ANYONE
WHO LIVES LIKE THIS?
 The pandemic has once and for all
proven the centrality of this question!
• The human being is a social animal,
in constant need of other people
• S/he is also constantly influenced by others
and at the same time influence them
and this influence is continuous

Individual Group

It is this very interaction that

Social Psychology studies
So formally defined..

Social Psychology: The scientific study of

how people’s thoughts, feelings, and
behaviors are influenced by the real or
imagined presence of other people
 WHAT ARE THE SUBFIELDS OF
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY?
• SOCIAL INFLUENCE
At the heart of social psychology, lies
social influence:
We are all
influenced
by other people!
And, in turn, we
all influence them!
Conformity: Following What Others Do
Conformity
A change in one’s behavior due to the
real or imagined influence of other people
• It is yielding to social influence
 The Asch Experiment
Participants were placed around a table &
asked to indicate which line matches the
length of the reference line

Which line (1,2,3) is identical

to the reference line?
Reference 1 2 3
 All the confederates say 3
Reference 1 2 3

The real participant is baffled

• Asch found that in about one-third of the
trials, the participants conformed to the
unanimous but erroneous group answer
• About 75% of all participants conformed
at least once

https://ww
w.youtube.c
om/watch?
v=qA-
gbpt7Ts8
Asch’s experiment is very important in
demonstrating the extent to which social
influence can affect us
– The power of the group
– The power of the desire to be liked, to fit in
the group, and not to stand out and be
ostracized
I bet your parents told you this at least once:
“Will you also jump out of a window if
everyone else jumps?”
Obedience: Following Direct Orders
• How could the Nazi officers kill millions of
Jews in WW2?
Were all of them
inhumane
monsters who
enjoyed killing or
were they just
normal people
who could not
stand the power
of authority?
 Obedience
A change in behavior in response to the commands of
others
• It is a social norm that is valued in every culture
• People can not do whatever they want all the time—
it would result in chaos
• Consequently we are socialized to obey authority
figures whom we perceive as legitimate
 The Milgram Experiment
• Imagine that you were a participant Milgram’s
experiment
• When you arrive at the laboratory, you meet
another participant
• The experimenter, wearing a white lab coat,
explains that one of you will play the role of a
teacher and the other a learner
• You draw a piece of paper and discover that
you will be the teacher
• Your job is to teach the other participant a list
of word pairs (e.g., blue–box, nice–day) and
then test him on the list
• The experimenter instructs you to deliver an
electric shock to the learner whenever he
makes a mistake because the purpose of the
study is to examine the effects of punishment
on learning
• How many volts of electric shock would you be
willing to give to your fellow participant when
he gives a wrong answer?
• And how many people do you think would
continue to obey the experimenter and increase
the levels of shock until they had delivered the
maximum amount, 450 volts, which is a deadly
amount?
No one?
%1?
%2?
• The results of the Milgram experiment showed
that most of the participants yielded to the
pressure of an authority figure
• The average maximum shock delivered was
360 volts, and 62.5% of the participants went
all the way, delivering the 450-volt shock
• In reality no one was hurt, as the learners
were confederates of Milgram

https://ww
w.youtube.c
om/watch?v
=xOYLCy5PV
gM
Milgram’s experiment is very important in
demonstrating the extent to which the
influence of an authority figure can affect us
– Power of the need to conform to social
norms (“Obey the authority”)
– Power of loss of a personal responsibility
(“The experimenter is an expert, he knows
what is right, I am just doing as told)
 Take Home Message about
Social Influence

Our behavior is not always

determined by ourselves only,
social influences affect us more
than we might think!
• SOCIAL COGNITION
Social Cognition: The way people understand and
make sense of others, themselves, and the social
world
Attribution Processes: Answering the
“Why” Question
Attribution
How we infer the causes of other people’s
behavior
e.g., A friend did not say hi to you today so
you try to guess why
- He is very rude
- He didn’t see me
While trying to infer the causes of behavior, we make
two kinds of attributions:
1. Internal (Dispositional) Attribution
The cause of the behavior is attributed to
personality traits, character of the person
e.g., He has a bad temper
2. External (Situational) Attribution
The cause of the behavior is attributed to
environmental factors
e.g., He is under a lot of stress
 Why do we Make Attributions?
• Making sense of why people do what they do
helps us:
– Understand and predict our social world
– Respond appropriately
– Have a sense of control
! But we are not always correct in our
attributions!
 Attribution Biases: To Err is Human
– Self-Serving Bias: Tendency to
attribute one’s success to
personal factors and attribute
failure to outside factors

– Fundamental Attribution Error:

Tendency to over-attribute
others’ behavior to dispositional
causes and minimize of the
importance of situational causes
https://www.youtube.co (underestimating the power of
m/watch?v=AdrDAik86rc
the situation)
• STEREOTYPES, PREJUDICE, AND
DISCRIMINATION
Stereotype: Set of generalized beliefs and
expectations about a specific group and its members
e.g., All women are weak/too emotional
Prejudice: A negative (or positive) evaluation of a
group and its members
e.g., I don’t trust women

Discrimination: Behavior directed toward individuals

on the basis of their membership in a particular group
e.g., I do not hire women applicants for an executive
position
Almost all aspects of identity
(hence group membership)
can invoke stereotypes, and hence
prejudice and discrimination
Nationality/Racial and Ethnic Identity
Gender
Sexual Orientation
Religious Beliefs
Socioeconomic Status (SES)
Weight
Disabilities
Age
 The Foundations of Stereotypes,
Prejudice, and Discrimination
• Observational Learning and Conformity
e.g., Children learning stereotypes from parents
Mass Media
Institutional discrimination
• The pride and self-esteem derived from
belonging to a high status social group
e.g., We are better than the others
 Fighting Stereotypes, Prejudice, and
Discrimination
• Increase contact between stigmatized groups
• Provide information
about the targets of
stigmatization
• Make values and
norms of equality
more obvious
e.g., anti-discriminatory
legislation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh-xdZzyjVI
Social Psychology has many
other subfields that we
didn’t have time to cover
• Self/Self-Justification
• Attitudes/Attitude Change/Persuasion
• Group Processes
• Aggression
• Prosocial Behavior
• Interpersonal Attraction
Social Psychology is also interested in and is the source
science of..
• Group Identification – Voting Behavior (Political
Psychology)
• Gender Discrimination (Gender Studies)
• Consumer Behavior (Marketing)
• Worker-Employee Relationships (Industrial Psychology)
• Driving Behavior (Traffic Psychology)
• Legal Processes (Legal Psychology)
• Athlete Behavior (Sport Psychology)
• Religious Beliefs and Behaviors (Psychology of Religion)
SO IF ANY OF THESE
TOPICS ARE OF
INTEREST TO YOU..
 FOR EXAMPLE YOU CAN TAKE
PSYC 102
INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
NEXT SEMESTER
 ANY QUESTIONS?
ANYTHING YOU WOULD
LIKE TO ADD?