Social Psychology

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Social Psychology
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Todays lecture

• Social Influence
• How other peoples behavior affects our behavior
• Group Behavior
• How being in a group affects our behavior
• Attribution Theory
• How we explains others and our own - behavior

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Social Influence

• Conformity
• Acting at odds with your beliefs or perceptions
  because of pressure from others
• Compliance vs internalization
• Informational pressure
• Normative pressure

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Drisball MullerJaywalking Experiment
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Cialdini littering experiment
YES
NO
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Solomon AschConformity
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Aschs Lines
Stimulus
A
B
C
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You cannot be serious!
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Asch contd

• Results
• 33 went along with the group on a majority of
  the trials
• 25 remained completely independent
• 75 conformed at least once
• When tested alone (no confederates), subjects got
  more than 98 of the judgments correct
• When tested with confederates, they only got 66
  of the judgments correct

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Why conform?

• Confusion
• Informational pressure
• Embarrassment
• Normative pressure
• Compliance, not internalization

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Sherif (1936)

• Ambiguous situation
• Internalization, not compliance
• Autokinetic effect
• Informational pressure 1 year follow-up
• Version B of the experiment and what that tells
  us

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How to reduce conformity?

• Use Preferences, not Facts, as your DV
• Crutchfield (1955)
• Asch-type paradigm but with drawings
• No conformity
• Why?
• Use Lone Dissenters
• Devils advocates
• Other versions of Asch

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Bystander Intervention

• Kitty Genovese
• Why did no one help?
• Latané Darley (1970)
• Ambiguity of emergencies
• Pluralistic ignorance
• Princeton Drinking Study (Prentice Miller)
• Diffusion of responsibility
• Woman in Distress (Latané Rodin)
• Epilepsy Study (Latané Darley)

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Pluralistic Ignorance

• Princeton Drinking Study (Prentice Miller)
• How comfortable are you with drinking on campus?
• How comfortable is the average Princeton student
  with drinking on campus?
• Peer pressure?

5.33
7.00
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More Pluralistic Ignorance

• Woman in Distress, (Latene Rodin)
• IV alone vs. with someone type of person youre
  with is important
• Stranger
• Impassive confed
• Your Friend

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Woman in Distress Results
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Pluralistic Ignorance Meets Diffusion of
Responsibility

• Epilepsy Study (Latané Darley)
• DV helping within 2 minutes
• Alone
• 2 subjects
• 4 subjects
• The larger the group, the more diffusion of
  responsibility.

80
60
40
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Latané Darley 5-Step Model of Intervention

• Must go through all 5 steps to help

Notice the event
Interpret the event as emergency
Decide that you have personal responsibility to
help
Decide what you should do to help
Decide how to do it
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Stanley MilgramObedience
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Milgrams Obedience Studies

• Predictions
• Experts thought only 1-3 would keep going
• Expertswere sure that they themselves wouldnt do
  it
• Results
• 65 obeyed to the end (450 v.)
• Males and females obeyed
• More or less the same across cultures
• 100 obey up to 100 v.

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Why did they obey?

• Slippery slope
• Dissenters
• 2 other versions of the experiment
• Informational influence?
• Embarrassment
• Another version of the experiment
• Normative Pressure
• Distance from the Victim
• Yet another version of the experiment

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Why did subjects think they obeyed?

• Legitimacy of the experiment
• Another version of the experiment
• Fairness of the experiment
• Another version

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Social Facilitation

• Triplett (1898)
• Cycling individual time trials are worse than
  races against others
• Expt same thing with kids reeling in fishing
  lines
• BUT problem sometimes people do worse in groups
  than alone
• So, social psychology drops social facilitation

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Social Facilitation 2

• Zajonc (rhymes with science)
• New theory of social facilitation (and
  inhibition) stated in terms of physiological
  arousal and type of task
• Yerkes-Dodson Law

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Yerkes-Dodson Law
Optimal arousal Difficult task
Optimal arousal Easy task
Performance
Arousal
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Social Facilitation 3

• Michaels et al. pool-hall expt
• 2 groups of subjects categorized after
  unobtrusive observation (good vs bad players)
• 2 conditions (alone vs audience)
• Good players get better with an audience bad
  players get worse

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Should you play pool in public?
Shots Made
Alone
With observers
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Social Loafing 1

• Ringelmann (1880s agriculturalist)
• Coordination loss or loss of motivation?
• Ingham et al (1974) tug-of war study
• 4 conditions
• Subject alone
• Subject 1 confederate
• Subject 2 confederates
• Subject 8 confederates
• Supports lack of motivation hypothesis

130 lbs
118 lbs
106 lbs
102 lbs
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Social Loafing 2

• Why do people loaf?
• Diffusion of evaluation

VS
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Attribution Theory

• How do we explain others behavior?
• Fundamental Attributional Error (aka
  Correspondence Bias)
• Tendency to explain others behavior in terms of
  disposition, while ignoring situational factors
• Called Correspondence Bias because its a bias
  that an individuals behavior corresponds to
  their disposition

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FAE contd
Rating of quizmaster
Rating of contestant
100
50
Quizmasters Ratings
Contestants Ratings
Observers Ratings
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FAE, contd

• Expt pro- vs. anti-Castro essays
• Fred wrote the essay under
• Free choice
• No choice
• Was provided with arguments
• Copied an essay written by someone else
• Read the essay aloud, but didnt write it
• DV how positive is Freds attitude toward Castro?

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Castro Study Results
Freds Positivity Towards Castro
Pro Castro
Anti Castro
Args Supplied
Copied
Free
No
Read
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Misattribution of Arousal

• Now that we know a bit about how we try to figure
  out how OTHERS are feeling
• How do we figure out how WERE feeling?
• 2 sources of info about our own feelings
• Physiological arousal
• Situation information

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More Misattribution of Arousal

• Expt Schachter Singer
• 2 IVs
• Situation (euphoria vs anger conditions)
• Arousal (placebo, epi-informed, epi-uninformed)
• DV emotion measured by
• Self-report
• Facial expression
• When subjects were aroused but couldnt attribute
  their arousal to a drug, they attributed it to
  their situation.
• BOTH arousal AND a situational attribution are
  necessary to produce an emotion.

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Schachter Singer Results
Anger Condition
Euphoria Condition
Not angry
Placebo group
Not euphoric
Not euphoric
Not angry
Epi-informed
ANGRY!
EUPHORIC!
Epi-uninformed