What is social psychology
Social psychology = Scientific investigation of how the thoughts, feelings and behaviours of individuals
are influenced by the actual imagined or implied presence of others
Natural selection = The principle that among the range of inherited trait variations, those contributing
to reproduction and survival will most likely be passed on to succeeding generations
Charles Darwin = Darwin argued that natural selection shapes behaviours as well as bodies
Evolutionary = How the natural selection of traits promoted the survival of genes
Areas of Social Psychology:
Social influence
The way in which behaviour can be affected by presences of others
Why do we conform?
Why do we obey authority?
When do we help?
Social cognition
How we process social information
How do we form impressions?
How do we interpret others behaviour?
How is our behaviour affected by our attitude?
Social relations
How we interact with others
How do we form bonds?
How do we feel about others?
Units of Analysis / Levels of Analysis:
Culture and environment (broad)
Economics and sociology
How do people spend their money?
What are the social norms (standard behaviours)?
Others
Social psychology
Self
Clinical and personality
What makes people more introverted etc
Five Big Ideas of Social Psychology:
Number 1: Situation are powerful! (Main idea of social psychology)
Situations are often invisible to observers
Known situations can influence our perception of others in unexpected ways
Trope, 1986
The situation others are in (e.g., funeral)
Showed pictures of sad faces to participants and asked participants to say how sad they were
2 conditions, one sad and another at a funeral
They said they were sadder when in the funeral condition
Lee et al, 2014
The situation we are in (e.g., weather)
Skin cancer study
Harden, 2012
History shapes the present (e.g., relationships)
Situations will come back, and you will react the same
Number 2: we often don’t know why people do what they do
Fundamental attribution error = bias in attributing other’s behaviour to internal causes over
situation
Actor-observer discrepancy = our own behaviour is due to external influences and others internal
Conscious experience is constructed and not always accurate.
This creates empathy gaps
Number 3: we often don’t know what we don’t know
Adaption = processing works best when fast, outside of awareness
,Number 4: it is amazing how accurate our judgements are
We do them well because we do them automatically
Ambady et al, (1999)
Thin slices e.g.
Judgements of sexual orientation, 55% accuracy on photos, 70% on 10s silent video
Might be able to see if someone is more introverted or extroverted
Number 5: people have two fundamental motivations
People want to be liked and need to belong
Self-esteem is our best guess of how we think others see us
People want to be accurate, consistent, and authentic
Consistent in the eyes of others and themselves
Social Psychology
Data science:
Internet usage dramatically increased from 1996 to 2018
Cyberpsychology:
Between 5-7 years of your life is spent on social media
Younger people use it more
Increased by 62.5% (or 1 hour) from 2012-2018
MMO’s
Online community forums
Our electronics have become social surrogates
If you’re not paying, you’re the product e.g., Google, twitter, Cambridge Analytica
Computer science:
Marketing psychology:
Traditional and cyber
Harvest your data
Human beings are social animals
Social psychology studies the causes and consequences of their social interactions
Humans are fundamentally social:
Spend almost all our time either with people
Observing other people
Thinking of other people
Being social = crucial for and often revolves around survival and reproduction
Happiest experiences are social:
Children born
Sports events
Concerts
Dates
Humans began to settle down in large groups at the end of the ice age around 20,000 years ago
Complex societies emerged that began to increasingly regulate how we behaved
Social animals that have evolved to live and thrive in groups
Social interaction revolves around the two fundamental tasks of survival and reproduction
Human beings engage in social interactions that range from hurting each other to helping each other.
Thinking about others:
Brain evolved to process other people and try to interpret and anticipate their thoughts and behaviours.
Enables us to understand and predict others.
Medial prefrontal cortex is activated when people think about the attributes of other people but not about
the attributes of inanimate objects such as houses or tools
Appreciate social interaction
Specialize in drawing inferences about other people = about their thoughts and feelings, their beliefs and desires,
their abilities and aspirations, their intentions, needs, and characters
Other people can provide us with the greatest benefits and exact from us the greatest costs.
Inferences we draw about other people are based on the categories to which they belong and the things
they say and do.
What is social influence?
,Social Influence:
The process by which attitudes, perceptions and behaviours can be affected by the real or implied
presences of others Mechanisms that give situations their power
Social Norms
Conformity
Compliance
Overarching theme that ties the rest of the module together
Can be positive or negative social influences, depends on how we use them and how they impact you
Split in two:
Informational influence = Changes in a person’s behaviour due to the behaviour of others, which
provides information on what is good or true
Normative influence = Changes in a person’s behaviour due to a behaviour of others, which provide
information on what is appropriate
e.g., give and take rule; we try to repay what another person has provided us due to our abundant reliance on
“norms”
New Study
Majority of students reported that staff expressed liberal views
Only 10% reported that they felt pressure to align their views with their lecturers
Conservative students felt more pressure; possibility to function of major (e.g., medicine & psychology vs
business)
Medicine taught by more liberal lecturers because of topics taught such as abortion
Business more conservative
Most people don’t change, and conservative lecturers are more influential
How is Social Influence Exerted?
Social Norms
“Rules” or standards that are understood by a group that guide behaviour and expectations E.g., normative is that
students sit in lecture seats to take notes
Emerge naturally out of interactions with others - learn boundaries
May or may not be stated
Social consequences when broken
How are others Influenced?
Influence is the fundamental force that binds the individual members of any social species together, and without it
there could be no groups, no cooperation, and no altruism
A desire to be accepted and to avoid being rejected = the driving force behind becoming a member of a
group
Without social acceptance, we cannot benefit from group membership, and we also suffer the social pain of
ostracism
What is Normative influence?
Unwritten rules that govern social behaviour are called
Norms = customary standards for behaviour that are widely shared by members of a culture
Normative influence = occurs when one person’s behaviour is influenced by another person’s behaviour
because the latter provides information about what is appropriate.
Norms with exceptional ease and we obey them with exceptional fidelity because we know that if we don’t,
others won’t approve of us.
Norm of reciprocity = the unwritten rule that people should benefit those who have benefited them
e.g., Stranger helped you jump-start your car when the battery is flat, you would find it difficult to refuse their
request to use your mobile phone because you know that those who accept kindness without returning it do not
meet with social approval.
The door-in-the-face technique = is a strategy that uses reciprocating concessions to influence behaviour
You ask someone for something more valuable than you really want, you wait for that person to refuse
then you ask the person for what you really want
People were more likely to endorse the second request because they refused the first request
What is Informational influence?
Informational influence = occurs when a person’s behaviour is influenced by another person’s behaviour
because the latter provides information about what is good or true
Constant target of informational influence
Advertisements that refer to soft drinks as ‘popular’ or books as ‘best- sellers’ are reminding you that other
people are buying these particular drinks and novels,
, Emotional contagion such as laughing and crying provide strong informational cues about how to behave in
the company of other
What are group norms?
Norms = seen as stereotypes held by members of the group about themselves
People adhere to group norms if they want to be seen as members of that group
Attitudinal and behavioural uniformities that define group membership and differentiate between groups
What Social and Non-Social beliefs?
Beliefs about others
Social norms = property of a reference group
What is typical
What is appropriate
Non-social beliefs
Personal beliefs = Property of an individual
Attitudes
Factual beliefs
Moral beliefs
What is Conformity?
Conformity = Change in behaviour and or belief to conform to a group norm because of real or
imagined group pressure
The tendency to do what others do simply because others are doing it, and it results in part from
normative influence. e.g. film, everyone has a positive view, makes you change your view - social comparison
Changing one’s behaviour to match others
Internalisation = deep and private, change in behaviour and views (to align with other people)
Compliance = superficial and public, change in behaviour only
Can be due to obedience, but not necessary
May not firmly believe what you must be doing
Majority Influence = Internalisation Sherif (1935)
Makes use of autokinetic effect (optical illusion)
If you put someone in a dark room with a light on the wall, they will think the light is moving (due to
saccades in the eyes)
Estimate how much the light moves
Have some alone, then in a group
Have some in a group, then alone
Results demonstrated:
A convergence when moving from alone to a group - When started alone had very different answer, then in
group answers came together to form an answer - compliance
A maintenance of beliefs when alone - In session 1,2, and 3 - light moved 4 inches when in groups and then
alone - internalisation
Majority Influence = Compliance Asch (1952)
he did a vision task
Unambiguous task "vision test" of the lines, is the bigger line a b or c
1 participant, 7 confederates (Actors)
18 trials, 12 "critical trials" where confederates gave the same wrong answer (lies)
Conformity occurred
36% of critical trails show conformity
Individual Variation
75% conformed at least once
25% never conformed
5% conformed on every trial
Control (no pressure to conform) - less than 1% errors
Participants felt uncomfortable in the study
Answered out of fear of being "odd"
Want to be liked - saying something different makes you odd
Solomon Asch = Conformity experiments (1956)
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