Analyze attribution, attitudes, persuasion, conformity, obedience, group influence, prejudice, aggression, altruism, and attraction.
A lesson of AP Psychology, in Clinical and Social Psychology, about 10 minutes.
Social Psychology
By the end of this lesson, you will be able to describe the major findings of social psychology, explain classic experiments on conformity, obedience, and helping behavior, and analyze how social contexts shape individual behavior.
The Power of the Situation
Social psychology studies how social situations influence individual behavior. Its key insight: situational factors often overpower individual personality in determining behavior.
Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE): overestimating the role of personality (dispositional factors) and underestimating the role of the situation in explaining others' behavior. We see a person stumble and think "they're clumsy" rather than "the floor is wet."
Self-serving bias: attributing our successes to our own qualities (internal) and our failures to situational factors (external). Protects self-esteem.
Actor-observer bias: we attribute our own behavior to situations but others' behavior to dispositions.
Social Influence
Conformity
Solomon Asch's Line Experiments (1951): participants judged which of three lines matched a standard line — an obviously clear task. When confederates gave the wrong answer unanimously, about 75% of participants conformed at least once; about 37% of all trials resulted in conformity to the obviously wrong answer.
Why conform?
Normative social influence: conforming to fit in and be liked; even when you know others are wrong
Informational social influence: conforming because you believe others have accurate information; especially in ambiguous situations
Factors that increase conformity: unanimity of the group (even one dissenter reduces conformity dramatically), larger group size (up to ~5 people), public behavior, low confidence.
Obedience
Stanley Milgram's Obedience Studies (1960s): participants were told to administer electric shocks (supposedly) to a "learner" (a confederate) whenever they gave a wrong answer, increasing voltage with each error. An authority figure in a lab coat said "Please continue" when subjects hesitated.
Results: 65% of participants administered the maximum 450-volt shock. Nobody did this in personal-trait predictions — "Only monsters would do this." But ordinary people did.
Why obedience?
Gradual escalation ("foot in the door")
Legitimate authority; lab coat; Yale setting
Responsibility diffused ("I was following orders")
Physical distance from victim reduced empathy
Milgram's conclusions: situational forces — legitimate authority, gradual escalation — can lead ordinary people to do terrible things. Illuminated the Nazi "banality of evil" (Hannah Arendt).
Factors that reduced obedience: victim visible; experimenter absent; other "teachers" refused; moved to a less prestigious setting.
Persuasion
Central route: uses careful, logical arguments; works when audience is motivated and able to process; produces more lasting attitude change.
Peripheral route: uses heuristics, emotion, and surface cues (attractiveness, liking, familiarity); works when audience is unmotivated or unable to think carefully.
Group Processes
Social facilitation: the presence of others improves performance on easy/well-learned tasks; impairs performance on difficult/novel tasks (Zajonc's dominant response theory).
Social loafing: people exert less effort in a group than individually. Reduced accountability → reduced effort. Opposite of social facilitation.
Deindividuation: in crowds or anonymous situations, people lose self-awareness and normal restraints; more likely to engage in antisocial behavior.
Groupthink: groups striving for consensus suppress dissent; symptoms include illusion of invulnerability, collective rationalization, and the pressure to conform. Examples: Bay of Pigs invasion, Challenger disaster.
Group polarization: after group discussion, members' positions become more extreme (not moderate). People who were mildly in favor of something become strongly in favor after group discussion.
Attitudes and Attitude Change
Attitude: evaluative response (positive or negative) toward an object, person, or situation.
Cognitive dissonance (Leon Festinger): discomfort when our attitudes and behavior conflict. Resolution: change the attitude to match the behavior.
Festinger and Carlsmith (1959): participants paid $1 or $20 to tell others a boring task was interesting. The $1 group changed their attitude more — needed to justify their behavior ("I wasn't paid enough, so I must have liked it"). The $20 group had external justification and didn't need to change their attitude.
Self-perception theory (Bem): we infer our attitudes from observing our own behavior (if I voted for her, I must like her).
Helping Behavior and Altruism
Bystander effect: the more people present, the less likely any one person is to help in an emergency. Kitty Genovese case (1964) — woman stabbed; 38 neighbors supposedly did nothing (the story was later found to be exaggerated but the effect is real).
Why the bystander effect occurs:
Diffusion of responsibility: "someone else will help"
Pluralistic ignorance: everyone sees others not reacting and concludes it's not an emergency
Darley and Latané: seminary students passing a "person in distress" — whether they helped depended almost entirely on how much of a hurry they were in. A person's "Good Samaritan" beliefs had almost no predictive power.
Social exchange theory: we help when the benefits outweigh the costs (rewards − costs).
Reciprocity norm: we feel obligated to help those who have helped us.
Social responsibility norm: we should help those who need help, regardless of payback.
Prejudice, Discrimination, and Stereotypes
Stereotype: a generalized belief about members of a group.
Prejudice: an unjustified negative attitude toward a group and its members.
Discrimination: unjustified negative behavior toward a group.
Just-world hypothesis: people get what they deserve; victims are blamed for their misfortune (justifies inaction).
In-group bias: favoring members of one's own group. Out-group homogeneity: "they all look alike"; we see more diversity in our own group than in other groups.
Implicit bias: unconscious prejudice; measured by the Implicit Association Test (IAT). People who explicitly reject racism may have implicit biases.
Reducing prejudice:
Contact hypothesis: equal-status contact between groups reduces prejudice; requires cooperation, institutional support, interpersonal acquaintance, and equal status
Summary
Fundamental Attribution Error: overweight personality, underweight situation.
Conformity (Asch): 37% of trials; normative vs. informational influence.
Obedience (Milgram): 65% gave maximum shock; authority + gradual escalation.
Group processes: social facilitation, loafing, deindividuation, groupthink, polarization.