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B11-00-8117 Tassy-Lewis Psy2012 3 May 2012 Chapter 15 Paper Social psychology in this chapter is defined by the way people behave alone, in a group, certain situations, and how these behaviors are attributed to people by their peers depending on how they act. The attitudes and actions of people also depending on their social role have great effects on other either good or bad and can be influenced by certain powers given to people and punishments. Obedience and conformity play their part when psychologists describe and experiment on how society reacts to being given a task and how well they obey the rules given. The relations mentioned in this chapter between people include prejudice, aggression, attraction, altruism, conflict and peacemaking which all have reasoning on how they affect people and what influences cause them. Are people nurtured to be aggressive by watching violent movies or playing violent video games? Or by people meeting online who are set up to be good for each other, does that mentally change their views on a person and helps them become more attracted to them? These social issues are not answered but hypotheses and theories are set in place, which can be possible answers to these questions. A sub-type of this psychology is Social thinking. Social thinking is people thinking about others especially when they do things out of the ordinary or unexpected. A perfect example would be the horrible event that occurred on 9/11. To Americans, the terrorists involved are evil and cold hearted for committing such a disaster (i.e. Social thinking of Americans) while to the

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rest of the terrorist group, they were heroes and such people were grateful for getting revenge on the U.S (or so they were told by their leaders.) This example of attribution comes from the attribution theory. I found this point very interesting in the sense that I believe everything is Social Psychology has to do with this theory. Fritz Heider (1958) suggested that we have a tendency to give casual explanations for someones behavior, often crediting either the situation or the persons disposition meaning their personalities. In other words, people tend to judge others based on simple behaviors committed, maybe only once or twice, and categorize them by such attributions given. An example in the chapter suggests that when one of our new friends acts grouchy, we as people may automatically decide that he or she is a grouchy person (humans disposition.) However, in reality her grouchiness may reflect her current situation such as losing her job, family issues, losing sleep over financial worry and other cases like these, which is called the fundamental attribution error. One very crucial point in this chapter that fascinated me was the idea of conformity and obedience. First and foremost, Behavior is contagious especially in a group of people, which most of the time is modeled by one (leader) and then followed buy the rest of the group or others in order to fit in or as it is in the human nature to adapt to certain behavior so that we may not feel exiled or different from everyone else. On the other hand, compliance towards people (most likely with authority) has shown how far people really obey to rules given to them by an authoritarian figure, despise going against their own beliefs and morals. One study designed by Stanley Milgram (1933-1984) displayed just how people react towards being given a command no matter how cruel and unusual it appeared to be. This study consisted of one person at a time who had to ask questions through a microphone to an actor (unknowingly) and every time the actor answered wrong the person being studied had to shock another human (actor) using electric

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voltages which increased in strength with every wrong choice selected. When the wrong answer was selected and the person was (electrocuted) a tape would record the person replying stop please stop, get me out of here, however the researcher would insist to the person being studied to continue with the task. Shockingly the majority of the subjects continued to obey to the end of the study, which in reality would kill any living human being, which may have proved that most people obey what they are being told to do under any circumstance as long as they are authorized to do so. The method of stereotyping is very much applied in our everyday living and occurs in all places such as businesses, schools, work, neighborhoods and etc. It is the overgeneralized belief about a group of people, which often leads to prejudices. For instance, in my fathers cell phone business in south beach, he has had many occurrences where African-American men have robbed him and everything in his store at gunpoint, which traumatized him. The actions he displays when African-American men walk in his store are not actions of prejudice but of stereotype and he just pays closer attention to the men for any signs of them carrying a weapon or bad intentions. On the other hand from a personal experience as being an Arab-U.S citizen I had encountered probably one of the biggest issues in United States history causing the majority of Americans to be prejudice against Islam and Middle Eastern societies. When traveling with my family, airport officials take extra precautions and check all of our luggage and items one by one which is definitely not done to, let say, White Americans or Latin Americans. Every country in the world today is prejudice against certain types of people or stereotype. These are just social ways that society lives with and how people interact with each other everyday.

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Reference: Myers, D.G. (2009). Exploring Psychology (Eighth Edition): New York: Worth Publishers.