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Summary social psychology
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Summary of 38 pages for the course Sociale psychologie at Fontys
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SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGYINTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
Learning objectives
At the end of this lecture…
- You know what social psychology is, and how is it di erent from related disciplines.
- You know the following social psychological mechanisms:
- Cognitive dissonance
- Post-decision dissonance
- Lowballing
- Attribution (internal and external)
- Fundamental attribution error
WHAT IS SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY?
At the heart of social psychology is social in uence.
- Social in uence: the e ect that the words, actions, or mere presence of other people have on
our thoughts, feelings, attitudes, or behavior.
Social psychology: It os the scienti c study of the way in which people’s thoughts, feelings, and
behaviors are in uenced by the realtor imagined presence of other people.
WHY SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY?
Communication profesional want to in uence behavior. Therefore, it is important to understand
how other people in uence our behavior.
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY COMPARED TO RELATED DISCIPLINES
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL MECHANISMS
Cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957)
As humans, we strive to maintain a favorable view of ourselves. When confronted with an
unfavorable view of ourselves we experience discomfort.
The discomfort that people feel when two cognitions (beliefs, attitudes) con ict, or when they
behave in ways that are inconsistent with their conception of themselves.
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,Three ways to reduce dissonance
- Change behavior
- Justify behavior by changing one of the dissonant cognitions
- Justify behavior by adding new cognitions
Examples
, Post-decision dissonance
Post-decision dissonance: Dissonance aroused after making a decision, typically reduced by
enhancing the attractiveness of the chosen alternative and devaluating of the chosen alternative
and devaluating the rejected alternatives.
More important decisions = more dissonance
Greater permanence = more dissonance
Lowballing
Salesperson induces a customer to agree to purchase a product at a very low cost, subsequently
claims it was an error, and then raises the price.
Frequently, the customer will agree to make the purchase at the in ated price.
Three reasons why lowballing works
- Sense of commitment
- Sense of commitment triggers the anticipation of an exciting event
- Price only slightly higher than other prices elsewhere.
EXERCISE
Suppose: you know you should exercise more often because it is healthy. Nevertheless, you can’t
seem to manage to really do it.
Come up with 3 ways to reduce the cognitive dissonance:
- Change behavior: go and exercise
- Justify behavior by changing one of the dissonant cognitions: you are young and it is ne
if you don’t exercise every day because you don’t need it right now.
- Justify behavior by adding new cognitions: also none of your friends wants to go
exercise and you don’t like going alone
Attribution (Heider, 1958)
Attribution is a social psychology theory about the way in which people explain their own behavior
and that of others in terms of cause and e ect.
Attribution is deducing characteristics from behavior.
- Did something go wrong? You are likely to search for external factors. Did not pass the exam?
The rst reaction is often “what a bad lecturer” — external attribution
- Did something work out right? You are likely to search for internal factors. Exa, score 8’5? The
rst reaction: “I did excellent, not: “thanks to the lecturer” — internal attribution
Fundamental attribution error (Header, 1958)
The tendency to overestimate the extent to which people’s behavior is due to internal,
dispositional factors and to underestimate the role of situational factors.
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, CHAPTER 3- SOCIAL COGNITION
On Automatic Pilot: Low-E ort Thinking
3. 1. What is automatic thinking, and how are schemas an example of that kind of though? What
are the advantages and disadvantages of schemas?
People are very good at sizing up a new situation quickly and accurately. They gure out who is
there, what is happening, and what might happen next. When you attended your rst college
class, for example, you probably made quick assumptions about who people were and how to
behave.
Imagine a di erent approach: every time you encounter a new situation, you stop and think about
it slowly and deliberately.
When you are introduced in someone new, you have to excuse yourself for 15 minutes while you
analyze what you have learned and how much you like the person. We form impressions of
people quickly and e ortlessly, without much conscious analysis of what we are doing. We do
these things by engaging in an automatic analysis of our environments, based on our past
experiences and knowledge of the world. Automatic thinking is thought that is non conscious,
unintentional, involuntary, and e ortless.
People as Everyday Theorists: Automatic Thinking with Schemas
Automatic thinking helps us understand new situations by relating them to our prior experiences.
Most formally, people use schemas, which are mental structures that organize our knowledge
about the social world. These mental structures in uence the information we notice, think about,
and remember.
The term schema is very general; it encompasses our knowledge about many things— other
people, ourselves, social roles (e.g., what a librarian or an engineer is like), and speci c events
(e.g., what usually happens when people eat a meal in a restaurant). In each case, our schemas
contain our basic knowledge and impressions that we use to organize what we know about the
social world and interpret new situations.
Schemas are very useful for helping us organize and make sense of the world and to ll in the
gaps of our knowledge.
In short, being able to relate new experiences to our past schemas, is so important that people
who lose this ability invent schemas where none exist.
Schemas are particularly useful when we are in confusing situations, because they help us gure
out what is going out.
Of course, people are not totally blind to what is actually out there in the world. Sometimes what
we see is relatively unambiguous and we do not need to use our schemas to help us interpret it.
Which Schemas Do We Use? Accessibility and Priming?
The schema that comes to mind and guides your impressions of the man can be a ected by
accessibility, the extent to which schemas and concepts are at the forefront of the mind and are
therefore likely to be used when making judgments about the social world. Something can
become accessible for three reasons. First, some schemas are chronically accessible due to
past experience. This means that these schemas are constantly active and ready to use to
interpret ambiguous situations. Second, something can become accessible because it is related
to a current goal. The concept of mental illness might not be chronically accessible to you, but if
you are studying for a test in your abnormal psychology class and need to learn about di erent
kinds of mental disorders, this concept might be temporary accessible. Lastly, schemas can
become temporarily accessible because of our recent experiences. This means that a particular
schema or trait happens to be primed by something people have been thinking or doing before
encountering an event.
Priming is the process by which recent experiences increase the accessibility of a schema, trait,
or concept.
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