social psychology Flashcards
define social psychology
is the study of how and why people, think, feel, and do the things they do depending upon the situation that they are in
group polarisation
when individuals are in groups with others who hold similar attituides or beliefs, discussion within the group tends to stengthen opinions
Myers and Bishop study
found that when students who were low in racial prejudice talked together about racial issues, their attitudes became more accepting. However when highly prejudiced students talked about the same issues they become even more prejudiced
henri tajfel - intergroup discrimination
conducted with the participants of 64 school boys ages between 14 and 15 years. They all attended the same school and were in the same house. They partcipated in a visual judgement test at were randomly categorised into over estimaters and under estimaters. when the boys had to choose between maxmimsing profit for their own group or sharing he profit they chose to maxmise their own group and tried to create the largest difference possible
conformity is
changing behaviour in response to group pressure.
normative social influnce
when we conform to group standards in order to be a part of a group and be accepted by the group
solomon asch - visual judgement task
8-10 people were shown 2 cards, on one there was a set of 3 lines of different lengths and on the other there was one line. participants had to choose which line matched with the other card. all participants but one were acting. The results were 75% conformed at least one trial and 50% one 6 more trials
2 reasons why we conform
1- normative social influnce: when we conform to group standards in order to be a part of group and be accepted by the group
2- informational social influnce: taking over cues on how to behave from watching people around us
factors increasing conformity
- size of the group
- difficulty of task
- status of majority group
factors decreasing conformity
- social support
- answer in private
an abstract is a..
summary of an experiment
obediance is
changing behaviour in response to a demand by an authority figure
stanley milgram experiment
milgram did an experiment on the effects of puishment on learning. Participants arrived in pair one allocated the student the other the learner. The learner had to learn a list of words in pairs. The teacher had to adminster an electric shock each time the learner have the wrong answer. 26 of the participants adminsterd 450 volts believing that they were hurting others, all participants admistered 300 volts but five refused to continue. 65% of people were willing to give the maximum shock
social facilitation
an improvment in performance produced by the mere presence of others
social inhibition
with complex tasks the presence of others either as observers or as people doing the same tasks often led to worse performance
summarise triplett studies
found that cyclists would race faster when they were competing against others than when they were competing against the clock
what type of tasks are likley to occur better in the prescence of others
- simple tasks
- well rehersed tasks
- cycling
what type of tasks are likley to occur worse in the prescence of others
- complex tasks
- tasks requiring concentration
2 types of attribution
1- internal attribution
2- external attribution
internal attribution
the inference that a person is behaving in a certain way because of something about the person, such as attitude, character or personaility
external attibution
the inference that a person is behaving a certain way because of something about the situation he or she is in
what is an attribution
a judgement about a reason for someones action
- how people infer the reasons behind the behaviour of others
why do we make attributions
- working out how to respond to other people and to determine the type of response to use
- to acquire a greater understanding behind human behaviour
- to determine why something has occured
heiders theory
1- dispositional (internal) attribution: is we infer something about the person - their attitude, personaility is responsible for their behaviour
2- situational attribution (external): is we conclude that some external cause is responsible for the behaviour
what does self serving mean
we distort facts and make situational attributions to maintain self esteem
what is the fundemental attribution error
is the general tendancy people have to make internal, dipositional attributes for others behaviour rather than external, situational ones, when there may be equally convincing evidence for both types of cause
what does corivation mean
that a person has information from observations at different times and situation they can perceive the associated variation of an observed effect together with its causes.
kelley - corivation model
he developed a logical model for judging whether a particular action should be attributed to some characteristics (internal) of the person or the environment (external)
3 types of evidence which influnces judgement (kelley)e
- consensus: the extent to which other people behave in the same way in similar situations
- distinctiveness: the extent to which the person behaves in the same way in similar situations
- consistancy: the extent to which the person behaves like this every time the situation occurs
according to kelley we fall back on past experiences and look for 2 things
1- multiple necassacy causes
2- multiple sufficient causes
when are we likley to show biases in attributions
fundemental attribution error: we favour a dispostional attribution for the behaviour
self serving bias: distort facts and make situational attributions to maintain self esteem
define cognitive dissonance
refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviours. This produces a feeling of discomfort leading to alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs or behaviours to reduce the discomfort adn restore balance.
CDT - Festinger and Carlsmith
investigated is making people perform a dull task would create congnitive dissonance through forced compliance of behaviour. They asked people to turn pegs for one hour, they got paid $1 or $20 to tell a waiting participant it was interesting. The people paid $1 rated the task higher than the people paid $20 dollars. Because they got less money their actions didnt match their thoughts so they changed their previous view of the expeirment to be good so that the thoughts matches with their actions.
3 ways of reducing inconsistancy between attituides
1- reduce the importance of the cognitions
2- change one or more of the attituides
3- acquire new information
