Social Psychology (Fifth International Student Edition)
A lecture summary of the course Behavior and Environment 1. This course is a continuation of the General Introduction to Psychology.
The summary is an overview of the most important theoretical and empirical insights about human social behaviour and the motivational, cognitive, and emotional mecha...
Behavior and Environment 1
Lecture 1 - Introduction
The behavior of people has many reasons. To name some factors that might have an
influence on behavior: culture, emotions, authority, norms, cloths, evolution, fellow students,
… . All those factors collaborate together and effect the behavior. Those are also divided in
two different reasons, which are:
- Proximal reasons, factors in the here and now, they have a direct effect on the
behavior
- Distal reasons, reasons that don’t result from the time now (evolutionary reason,
cultural reason)
Social psychology is the science that studies affect, behavior and cognition (ABC) of
individuals in social situations.
The power of the situation
Kurt Lewin was one of the first psychologists to systematically test human behavior,
influencing experimental psychology, social psychology, and personality psychology. He
states that one's behavior is related both to one's personal characteristics and to the social
situation in which one finds oneself.
- Bystander effect, individuals are less likely to help a victim when other people are
present, also the more people present the less likely help will offered. One
explanation of this effect might be diffusion of responsibility, that no one feels
responsible and thinks that the others could also help, or another explanation might
be misinterpretation, that people think help is not needed because no one helps.
Good samaritan study
Theology students were asked to give a presentation about the good samaritan. There were
two groups, both asked to do the same but the one group was not in a hurry and the second
group was told that they are in a hurry. On their way to the presentation room there was a
person who was clearly in need of help. Results showed that around 60 to 70% of the
students not in a hurry helped the person in
need but only approximately 10% of the
students in a hurry helped.
This shows that the situation has a great
impact on how people behave.
- Fundamental attribution error, the tendency to attribute behavior to the
person and not to the situation (one reason why this error is made can be
because of cognitive load) → people are underestimating the situation
How? 3-step process by Gilbert
1. Perceiving the behavior (unconscious) - ‘He does not help’
, 2. Categorizing the behavior (unconscious) - ‘He must be antisocial’
3. Correct the situation (controlled) - ‘He was in a hurry because he really had to be
somewhere at a certain time’
The first two steps (perceiving and categorizing) are automatic and unconscious processes,
the last one (correcting) is a controlled and non automatic situation which need some kind of
reflection.
Gilbert’s study
There was a film clip in which a person was telling something in a nervous way, but the
participants could not hear what the person was telling. The participants were divided in two
groups, but saw both the same video. One group of participants were told that she talks
about her holiday plans, the other group was told that she talks about her sexual fantasies.
The participants were asked how nervous they would rate the personality of the women in
the video. Results showed that she was rated as
having a less nervous personality when the
participants were thinking that she talks about her
sex fantasies, because they were correcting for
the situation and the situation is makes you
nervous so she is less nervous. Compared to the
holiday plans, which is not a nervous situation.
And if she reacts in such a pleasant situation
nervous she might have a nervous personality.
In another condition the same groups of
participants saw the same video without sound
but before they were told a seven digit number which they had to remember after the study.
Therefore, their cognitive capacity was occupied with the number. The researchers wanted
to know whether the correction of the situation requires cognitive capacity. And indeed the
results showed that with the cognitive load the participants were not able to correct for the
situation anymore.
→ This study shows the basic differentiation between automatic/unconscious and
controlled processes. This also shows that in daily life we are more likely to make
fundamental attribution errors, because our brains are occupied with many
things and we have almost always cognitive load and this prevents us from
correcting for the situation.
Dual-process models
- automatic processing, are unconscious, fast, unintentional, and effortless
processes → System 1
- controlled processing, are conscious, slow, intentional, and effort processes
→ System 2
→ these processes are dependent on the motivation and capacity a person has, if
someone is motivated he/she can contribute in controlled processes. For
example if a friend of yours is involved in some behavior you are more motivated
in controlling for the situation compared to if you don’t know the person. This
also explains a lot of human behavior like prejudice, aggression, persuasion,
attraction,...
, In one study researchers had four pair of socks next to each other and asked participants
which one of them they would choose, everyone chose the right ones and gave many kind of
explanations, like they feel the best, I like the color best, … . The participants didn’t notice
that all socks were the same. There may be some reasons why the participants chose all the
same one but it is for sure that it is not about the quality or color as the participants stated.
This is an example for many situations in our lives in which people think of explanations after
they have decided on something. But in reality we often don’t know what the real reason is
but thinking of post-hoc reasons gives us a good feeling and some kind of control and
consistency.
- Post-hoc reasoning, the fallacy that because one event follows another, the first
one must have been the cause for the second. Sometimes this might be true, but
also other factors might be responsible.
In another study participants had to choose between two fotos of a person. After they chose
one the experimenter gave them the picture (but actually he switched it with the other one)
and asked the participants why they have chosen this person. In reality they didn’t chose this
person but only 13% noticed this. But rather they gave answers like ‘I liked her earrings’,
‘Because she smiled’, ‘She reminded me of one of my aunts’, … . One can be absolutely
sure that the reasons they gave are not true because they didn’t chose the given person, but
still they give reasons and are convinced that it was because of this.
The power of unconscious
Many things we do in daily life are not involved in our conscious mind. The inner forces
outside our conscious awareness, our unconscious, controls and dictates many of our
thoughts, feelings and actions. There are three factors which have an influence on our
behavior, those are
- channel factors, small changes in the environment can lead to big differences,, the
changes lead to different behavior or thinking
One example of this is nudging, an attempt to move people in directions that will make their
lives better with small changes in their environment, for example, the board size affects how
much one will eat, so small board means less food and big board means more food. So a
nudge would be that it is more healthy to eat less so the intervention would be to give small
boards. Another example of a nudge are the colored trash bins, which is a small change in
the environment but it is an intervention which makes a significant change, because people
actually separate their trash if the bins are colored. It awakens the interest in people and
they think more about the meaning of the colors.
- schemas, organised set of knowledge about a situation or a person stored in long-
term memory. It is based on prior experiences about certain moments which help to
understand the situation or to rate a person so that the right behavior can be shown.
Schemas are useful for organizing current knowledge, which helps to understand future
knowledge. With them we can divide people in groups, can estimate personality traits more
quickly. These unconsciously affect our feelings, thoughts and behavior, which can be
positive or negative. In some ways it can be positive because it takes less effort to realize
threat, but this is how stereotypes occur.
- priming, the automatic influence of a stimulus influences the response to a
subsequent stimulus, priming works by activating an association or representation in
memory just before another stimulus or task is introduces, so the stimulus has an
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