Chapter 13 Part II Kendall

Psychology: From Inquiry to Understanding
Fifth Canadian Edition
Chapter 13
Social Psychology: The
Power of Social Influence
Copyright © 2020 Pearson Canada Inc. 13 - 1

Lecture Preview
• What is social psychology? (Cassidy)
• Social influence - conformity and obedience
(Cassidy)
• Helping and harming others (Kendall)
• Attitudes and Behavior (Kendall)
• Prejudice and Discrimination (Kendall)
– Review:
§ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGxGDdQnC1Y

Cassidy (your lead GA)
WATCH ME:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kf8xLdv-3vY

Helping and Harming Others
• Prosocial behaviour is
behaviour intended to help
others
• Antisocial behaviour is
intended to harm, includes
aggressive acts
• Personal and Situational

factors can influence which
one is displayed
Some things that can
lead to Aggression
• Frustration-Aggression
Hypothesis
• Media influences
• Alcohol and other drugs
• Temperature

Differences in Aggression
• Certain personality traits influence aggression
– Low in agreeableness, low conscientiousness, high in
impulsivity and irritability
• Males engage in more physical aggression,
females in more relational aggression (due to
gender role socialization)

Bystander Nonintervention
• Is there safety in numbers?
(NOPE)
• Kitty Genovese murder in NY
VIDEO 1: Bystander effect: The Case Of
Kitty Genovese – YouTube
Two factors help explain this:

1. Pluralistic ignorance: Is this a real
emergency? Do others think this is
an emergency?
2. Diffusion of Responsibility:
Passing the buck

Bystander Nonintervention
• VIDEO 2: The Bystander
Effect: The Death of Kitty
Genovese – YouTube
• Across three classic
experiments, the
percentage of helping a
person in real or imaged
DISTRESS was LOWER, in
GROUP SETTINGS and
was HIGHER when
ALONE.
Critical Thinking
Question
n Imagine yourself being attacked in the midst of

a crowd of onlookers.
n Based on the theories of pluralistic ignorance

and diffusion of responsibility, how could you
maximize your chances of receiving help?
Copyright © 2020 Pearson Canada Inc. 13 13-9

-9
Maximize your chance of getting help by
doing these things:
n Shout ‘I need help’ or ‘I’m being

attacked’, to identify the situation
as an emergency.
n Single out (pointing, eye contact)
a particular person in the crowd
to provide help (e.g., ‘YOU call
911’).

Social Loafing
• Does putting people into teams lead
them to work harder? (NOPE)
• People exert MORE effort when working
ALONE, than working in a group.
• Tug of War game!
• Due partly to diffusion of responsibility, cultural
factors, and belief that your contributions don’t matter.
• One antidote is to ensure that each person in the

group is identifiable (Jen-you do A, Kendall, you do B,
Martin, you do C).
Prosocial Behavior and Altruism
• Prosocial Behavious: voluntary acts that benefit

others (sharing, helping, comforting, etc.)
• In some cases, we help others primarily because
we feel empathy toward them (Dan Batson)
• Situational influences can impact helping
– When you can’t escape the situation
– Characteristics of the victim
• Enlightenment effect from exposure to
Psychological research (See how POWERFUL a
Psych major is!!)
Interview with DR. SENN:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_myaiLeKGZc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1allrEu8Dtw
Flip the Script

Attitudes and Behaviour
• An attitude is a belief that we have about people,
objects, and ideas includes an emotional
component
• Attitudes only moderately correlate (r=.38) with
actual behaviours unless.
– Specificity
– Accessibility
– Firmly held
– Personal experience with an issue
– And others….

Attitude Change
• Cognitive dissonance is an unpleasant state of
tension or discomfort between two opposing
thoughts.
– I am a MORAL person, but I cheated on an
assignment.
– I am a SAFE person, but I drove recklessly and
caused an accident.
• We are motivated to reduce or eliminate the
dissonance.

Studying Cognitive Dissonance
• Festinger and Carlsmith (1959)
$1.00
Perform Tell participant in
boring task the waiting room
that the task $20.00
rocked!
Participants then asked: How enjoyable did you find that task?
PAID: $1.00 à said they liked the task (WHAT!?) (had dissonance to wrestle with
so they changed their belief, and convinced themselves they liked it!)
(otherwise, I lied for a freakin’ LOONIE! eeek.)
Paid $20.00 à still hated it (no dissonance) (lied for 20 bucks: worth it)
Attitude Change
• Self-perception theory proposes that we
acquire our attitudes by observing our own
behaviors.
– “I told the other participant that I liked the task, and only
got paid a loonie, so I must have really liked it”.
• Impression management theory

– proposes that that we don’t change our attitudes (we
really hated the task), but we tell the experimenter
that we LOVED IT!
– (we hide our true feelings so that he doesn’t think we are
a hypocrite!)

Routes to Persuasion
• Persuasion: the communication of arguments
and information intended to change a
person’s attitude or belief.
• Dual processes model says that there are two
pathways to persuading others
– The central route focuses on informational content
and critically evaluate it.
– The peripheral route focuses on more surface or
superficial aspects of the argument

Persuasion Techniques
• Foot-in-the-door starts with small request and
moves to a larger one
– Can I borrow $10.00? (OK). Actually… is $20 ok
because….(OK).
• Door-in-the-face starts big or outlandish then
backs off (works equally well as foot-in-the-door)
– Can I spray paint VOTE FOR KENDALL on your
entire front lawn? (NO). Ok, how about this little
sign then (OK).
• Low-ball technique starts with a low price, then
“adds-on” all the desirable options
Persuasion Techniques
• Who is attempting to persuade you
can also have an impact
• Attractive or famous persons
• Highly credible people
– Mention degrees, years of
experience, training, etc.
• If messenger is similar to YOU

• Implicit egotism effect:
– We gravitate toward things that
resemble us—across many domains.
– Name-letter effect (e.g., Winston lives
in Windsor, and attends U of W)
Prejudice and Discrimination
• Prejudice: negative evaluation
of members of a particular
group
– In-group bias: we favor
those within our group
compared to those outside
of our group
– Out-group homogeneity is
the tendency to view people
outside of our group as
similar

Prejudice and Discrimination
• Social categorization: the process of classifying people
based on similar characteristics (age, nationality, gender,
etc.)
• Stereotypes can help us to process information easily
and quickly. However,….
• Stereotypes can result in ultimate attribution error (we
blame negative behaviours on inherent characteristics of
that group when it’s an outgroup—when it’s the ingroup,
we look for extenuating circumstances)
• Also attribute positive behaviours to luck, unfair
advantages, or as rare exceptions

Discrimination
• The act of treating
members of out-groups
differently (often poorly)
from members of in-groups
• Can have wide impact on
groups such as females and
marginalized groups and
communities

A Class Divided
• Jane Elliott (1968)

– 3rd grade teacher in Iowa.
– Wanted her students to understand the experience of
prejudice and discrimination.
– Divided students into groups based on eye-color
(arbitrary) (blue eyed vs. brown-eyed).
– Children who were labeled “superior” (blue eyes) treated
those who were labeled “inferior” (brown eyes) poorly.
– SHORT VIDEO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CtrpLh6TKk
– FULL VIDEO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mcCLm_LwpE
Combating Prejudice
• Robber’s Cave study (Sherif et al., 1961)
• Foster a context of cooperation, reconciliation,
and promotion of peaceful communities.

Combating Prejudice
• How can we reduce prejudice and discrimination?
– Start early
§ Jigsaw puzzle classroom
§ https://www.jigsaw.org/
§ 4-H and People to People
§ 4-H
§ People to People
– Promoting Diversity in Context
§ Employment
§ Community building

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Psychology: From Inquiry to Understanding

Fifth Canadian Edition

Copyright © 2020 Pearson Canada Inc. 13 - 1

Copyright © 2020 Pearson Canada Inc. 13 - 2

Copyright © 2020 Pearson Canada Inc. 13 - 3

• Personal and Situational

Copyright © 2020 Pearson Canada Inc. 13 - 5

Copyright © 2020 Pearson Canada Inc. 13 - 6

Two factors help explain this:

Copyright © 2020 Pearson Canada Inc. 13 - 7

n Imagine yourself being attacked in the midst of

n Based on the theories of pluralistic ignorance

Copyright © 2020 Pearson Canada Inc. 13 13-9

n Shout ‘I need help’ or ‘I’m being

Copyright © 2020 Pearson Canada Inc. 13 - 10

• One antidote is to ensure that each person in the

• Prosocial Behavious: voluntary acts that benefit

Flip the Script

Copyright © 2020 Pearson Canada Inc. 13 - 14

Copyright © 2020 Pearson Canada Inc. 13 - 15

• Impression management theory

Copyright © 2020 Pearson Canada Inc. 13 - 18

Copyright © 2020 Pearson Canada Inc. 13 - 19

• If messenger is similar to YOU

Copyright © 2020 Pearson Canada Inc. 13 - 22

Copyright © 2020 Pearson Canada Inc. 13 - 23

Copyright © 2020 Pearson Canada Inc. 13 - 24

• Jane Elliott (1968)

Copyright © 2020 Pearson Canada Inc. 13 - 26

Copyright © 2020 Pearson Canada Inc. 13 - 27

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