Social Psychology Flashcards
Attitude
a positive or negative evaluative reaction toward a stimulus, such as a person, action, object, or concept
Prejudice
to judge, often negatively, without having relevant facts, usually about a group or its individual members
Conformity and influencing factors
Conformity – the adjustment of individual behaviours, attitudes and beliefs to a group standard
· Influencing Factors:
I. Group Size – increases with group size up to 5 members (no further increase after that)
II. Presence of a Dissenter – one person disagreeing greatly reduces conformity
III. Culture – greater in collectivistic cultures
Obedience and influencing factors
Obedience – the compliance with commands given by an authority figure
· Influencing Factors:
I. Remoteness of the victim
II. Closeness and legitimacy of the authority figure
III. Diffusion of responsibility: obedience increases when someone else does the dirty work/takes the blame
IV. Not personal characteristics
Social loafing and influencing factors
Social Loafing - the tendency for people to expend less individual effort when working in a group than when working alone
· Influencing Factors
I. More likely to occur when:
i. The person believes that individual performance is not being monitored
ii. The task (goal) or the group has less value or meaning to the person
iii. The person generally displays low motivation to strive for success
iv. The person expects that other group members will display high effort
II. Depends on gender and culture:
i. Occurs more strongly in all-male groups
ii. Occurs more often in individualistic cultures
III. Social loafing may disappear when:
i. Individual performance is monitored
ii. Members highly value their group or the task goal
Group decision making and influencing factors
Group Polarisation - tendency for people to make decisions that are more extreme when they are in a group as opposed to a decision made alone or independently (e.g. diving head first into a bollard because your mates tell you it’s a good idea)
· Group Think - the tendency of group members to suspend critical thinking because they are striving to seek agreement
o Factors influencing group think
More likely to occur when a group:
· Is under high stress to reach a decision
· Is insulated from outside input
· Has a directive leader
· Has a high cohesiveness
Bystander effect and how to overcome it
Notice the event and believe others will help solve the problem
How to overcome the bystander effect
Reduce restraints on helping
- Reduce ambiguity and increase responsibility
- Enhance guilt and concern for self image
o Socalise altruism
- Teaching moral inclusion
- Modelling helpful behaviour
- Attributing helpful behaviour to altruistic motives
- Education about barriers to helping
Leadership styles
I. Autocratic or Authoritarian Style – all decisions are made by a leader
II. Participative or Democratic Style – leaders make decisions after consulting a group
III. Laissez-faire or ‘Free Reign’ Style – leaves the group entirely to themselves
Asch- conformity
I. A subject was put in a room with several actors
II. They were asked to compare the lengths of lines and all the actors chose the wrong answer
III. Majority of subjects conformed, and in the control group less than 1% of people conformed§
Milgram- obiedence
I. There was one subject, an experimenter and an actor
II. The experimenter asked the actor questions, and instructed the subject to administer an ‘electric shock’ when the actor answered incorrectly
III. Even when the shock level reached lethal doses and the actor played dead, most subjects still obeyed
Darley & latane- bystander effect
I. Participants invited to take part in a ‘radio discussion’
II. An actor in the other room had a ‘seizure’
III. When alone, most subjects helped
IV. When in a group of 4, only 30% helped
V. When in a group > 4, almost no one helped
