Social Psychology (Chapter 8)

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Social Psychology (Chapter 8)

• Second Lecture Outline
• Attibutions and Attitudes
• Attitude change
• Conformity

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Social Cognition

• How we perceive and interpret information from
  ourselves and others
• What attributions are made below?

3
Attributions

• People are motivated to seek causes and
  explanations of behavior related to situations
  and dispositions
• You ask someone to dance. They say no. Why?
• Because I am a loser (personal attribution)
• Because they are talking to friends or do not
  like the music (situational attribution)
• Someone bumps you in line. Why?
• Because they are an !_at_?!!.. This is a
  fundamental attribution bias where we
  over-emphasize internal causes behavior
• They may have tripped and are not evil

4
Self-serving bias

• Internalize success and externalize blame
• Winning a hockey game because were a good
  team, losing because they were lucky or you
  did not get the bounces
• Self-handicapping is the opposite, e.g., pass a
  test because it was easy, fail because I am
  stupid
• Just-world hypothesis People make sense of
  senseless events based on their biases, e.g.,
  tornado hits a particular region, people say it
  was fate and deserved by those people

5
Attitude

• Who here has had a market survey conducted over
  the telephone? What kinds of questions? What
  products or issues?
• All assessed attitudes, defined as learned,
  stable, relatively enduring evaluation of a
  person, object, or idea
• Cognitive, behavioral, and affective components

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Aspects of attitudes

• Cognitive dissonance Attitudes conflict,
  therefore must change to create balance
• O.J. Simpson Positive (great football player)
  vs. negative (domestic violence history),
  therefore you think either he is innocent or you
  now hate him
• Observational learning or modelling
• Michael Jordon wears Nike shoes
• But Joe DiMaggio and coffee makers?
• Beer commercials at the beach Classical
  conditioning or modeling?

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Attitude change

• Central route provide a direct argument
• Cigarette packaging (the latest smoking causes
  impotence
• Physical fitness ads participaction
• Direct appeals for votes during elections
• Peripheral route indirect messages
• Smoking posters in doctors offices
• Seeing active adults
• Photo-ops kissing babies, no silly hats

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Credibility and likability Who would you hire
to be in your running shoe commercial? Why?
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Coercive Attitude change Cults, pressure sales
tactics

• Person is put under physical or emotional
  distress, e.g., eat, sleep, activity disrupted
• Problems are reduced to a single issue which is
  repeated, e.g., do you want to be happy? Have a
  clean house?
• Leaders offer unconditional love, acceptance, and
  attention
• New identity results from group or purchase of
  product, e.g., cult identity, new product
  owner, Crotch-laker
• Entrapment Foot-in-the-door technique, e.g.,
  criticise your country, let sales-person in your
  door
• Access to other information is controlled, e.g.,
  cults are isolated, sales have to be right now,
  in the next 50 seconds

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In the early 1970's, two individuals (my task
partner and myself) from the Evolutionary Level
Above Human (the Kingdom of Heaven)
incarnated into (moved into and took over) two
human bodies that were in their forties. I moved
into a male body, and my partner, who is an
Older Member in the Level Above Human, took a
female body. (We called these bodies "vehicles,"
for they simply served as physical vehicular
tools for us to wear while on a task among
humans. They had been tagged and set aside for
our use since their birth.) -- Website excert
On its own, is this information persuasive?
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Certain psychological themes which recur in these
various historical contexts also arise in the
study of cults. Cults can be identified by three
characteristics 1.a charismatic leader who
increasingly becomes an object of
worship as the general principles that may have
originally sustained the group lose their
power 2.a process called coercive persuasion
or thought reform 3.economic, sexual, and
other exploitation of group members by the leader
and the ruling coterie.
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Basic principles of a group

• A number of individuals who interact
• Social facilitation joggers speed up
• Social inhibition first tee in golf
• Arousal facilitates well-learned responses but
  inhibits novel responses
• Exam stress wipes out newly learned material but
  can enhance well-learned strategies and material
• Distraction-conflict Hey Mom watch!
• Conformity People tend to go along with the
  group, want to be liked, get along, identify with
  others

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Other group processes

• Social loafing Individual energy expended goes
  down as the number of people goes up, e.g., your
  science partner goofs off in group of 4, but
  not 2
• Illusion of unanimity Group polarization, when
  in groups, views become extreme
• Conflict resolution Is this at the expense or
  benefit of yourself and the other side?
• Groupthink Isolated, biased leadership, and
  high stress can lead to unusual and close-minded
  decisions. Dissenters have pressure to conform