Demonstration

What is Social Psychology?

• Social psychologists attempt to understand and explain how the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others (Allport).
• Intrapersonal & interpersonal.

Social Cognition

• What mechanisms underlie the formation of attitudes?
• How can attitudes be changed?
• How do we attribute causes to our own and other's behavior?

Attitudes

• An attitude is a learned, stable, and relatively enduring evaluation of a person, object or idea that can influence an individual's behavior.
• Cognitive, affective, and behavioral components.

Attitude Formation

• Classical conditioning
• Garcia effect; advertising
• Instrumental conditioning
• Parents; conversations with others
• Observational learning
• Political beliefs; adolescence.

Attitude Change

• Applications: Prejudice, health, financial responsibility, politics, etc.
• Three primary mechanisms:
• Persuasion
• Cognitive consistency
• Self-perception

Central Route to Persuasion

• Thoughtful arguments related to topic.
• Works for motivated recipients.
• Results in stable, long-lasting attitudes.

Peripheral Route to Persuasion

• Physical appearance of communicator, superficial contents of message.
• Works when people are unable or unmotivated to process a message deeply.
• Results in less stable attitudes.

"Memory" Route to Persuasion

• Repeat something enough, and eventually people will believe it.
• Repetition priming & attitudes
• Mere exposure effect (Zajonc)
  • Repeated faces & words were liked better
• Validity effect (Arkes)
  • Repeated statements were judged to be more valid.

Cognitive Consistency

• Festinger & Carlsmith (1959)
• Subjects engaged in boring task for 1 hour.
• Subjects in exp'l groups were told, and were asked to tell others, that the task was interesting.
• Paid $1 or $20 to do so.
• Afterwards, the subjects rated how enjoyable the task was.

Cognitive Dissonance

• The tension produced by acting in a way that is inconsistent with your attitudes.
• Attitude change may be a result of reducing cognitive dissonance.
• Cognitive dissonance occurs when the action is freely chosen, commitment to behavior is firm, and behavior has consequences for others.

Bem's Self-Perception Theory

• When we are not sure what we believe, we infer our beliefs from our behavior.
• Brussel sprouts.
• Analysis of Festinger & Carlsmith's experiment.

Cognitive Consistency vs. Self Perception

• Ironically, cognitive consistency emphasizes affective aspects of attitude change.
• Self-perception theory emphasizes cognitive aspects.

Attributing Causes to Behavior

• Attributions are inferences people make about the causes of behavior.
• Two major types: Internal, or personal, attributions and external, or situational, attributions.

Kelley's Covariation Model

• People search for causes of behavior in events that happen at the same time and place as the behavior.
• The locus of causality--internal vs. external--is determined by consistency, distinctiveness, & consensus.

Consistency

• Do the cause and the behavior occur together consistently?

Distinctiveness

• Does the behavior occur uniquely with the cause?

Consensus

• Would other people behave similarly in the presence of the cause?

Internal vs. External Attributions

• Internal attributions tend to be made when consistency is high, but distinctiveness and consensus are low.
• External attributions tend to be made when consistency, distinctiveness, and consensus are high.
• Examples.

Attribution Biases

• Fundamental attribution error: When people try to understand someone else's behavior, they overestimate internal factors and underestimate external factors.
• Self-serving bias: We tend to be generous in interpreting our own behaviors, emphasizing internal factors when outcomes are positive, and external factors when outcomes are negative.

Fundamental Attribution Error

• How many times did you circle "it depends" for the description of yourself?
• How many times did you circle "it depends" for the description of me?

Ross's experiment

• "College Bowl"; questioners vs. contestants determined by coin flip.
• Questioner asked difficult questions to which he or she knew the answer.
• Afterwards, questioner, contestant, and observers rated general knowledge of questioner and contestant. (Graph)

Self-serving bias

• Why did you get the grade you got on the second exam? Was it because you studied or didn't study hard, or was it because the exam was easy or hard?

Summary

• Attitudes are learned and affect behavior.
• Attitudes are changed by persuasion, by the drive for cognitive consistency, and by our perceptions of our behavior.
• People are eclectic in attributing causes to behavior, but often make attributions in a biased and self-serving manner.