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Summary Social Psychology
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CHAPTER THIRTEEN: SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY● Social Psychology: the study of how people influence others’ behaviour, beliefs, and
attitudes.
○ Need-To-Belong Theory: proposes that humans have a biological need for
interpersonal connections.
○ Social Comparison Theory: humans are motivated to evaluate our beliefs,
attitudes, and reactions by comparing them with the beliefs, attitudes, and
reactions of others.
■ Upward Social Comparison: we compare ourselves to people who seem
superior to us.
■ Downward Social Comparison: we compare ourselves with others who
seem inferior to us in some way.
○ Conformity, obedience, and many other forms of social influence become
maladaptive only when they’re blind and unquestioning.
○ Mass hysteria and urban legends reflect outbreaks of irrational behaviour
spread largely by social contagion.
● Attributions: efforts to explain behaviour.
○ Some attributions are internal, others external.
○ Fundamental Attribution Error: the tendency to overestimate the impact of
dispositions on others’ behaviour. As a result of this error, we tend to
underestimate the impact of situations on others’ behaviour.
● Social Influence: Conformity and Obedience
○ Conformity: the tendency of people to change their behaviour as a result of
group pressure.
■ Asch’s Conformity Studies: underscore the power of social pressure,
although there are individual and cultural differences in conformity. These
are some of the social factors that influence how likely we are to conform:
● Unanimity: if all confederates gave the wrong answer, the
participant was more likely to conform. Nevertheless, if one
confederate gave the correct response, the level of conformity
plummeted by three-fourths.
● Difference in the wrong answer: knowing that someone else in
the group differed from the majority—even if that person held a
different view from the participant—made the participant less
likely to conform.
● Size: the size of the majority made a difference, but only up to
about five or six confederates. People were no more likely to
conform in a group of ten than in a group of five.
, ● Social Influence: Conformity and Obedience (CONT’D)
○ Deindividuation: refers to the tendency of people to engage in atypical
behaviour when stripped of their usual identities.
■ Ex. The Stanford Prison Study is a powerful demonstration of the effects
of deindividuation on behaviour.
○ Dangers of Group Decision-Making
■ Groupthink: a preoccupation with group unanimity that impairs critical
thinking. It can be “treated” by interventions that encourage dissent
within the group.
● Symptoms of Groupthink:
○ An illusion to the group’s invulnerability;
Ex. “We can’t possibly fail!”
○ An illusion of the group’s unanimity;
Ex. “Obviously, we all agree.”
○ An unquestioned belief in the group’s moral correctness;
Ex. “We know we’re on the right side.”
○ Conformity pressure (pressure on group members to go
along with everything else); Ex. “Don’t rock the boat!”
○ Stereotyping the out-group (caricaturing the enemy);
Ex. “They’re all morons.”
○ Self-censorship (tendency to keep mouth shut even when
they have doubts); Ex. “I suspect the group leader’s idea is
stupid but I’d better not say anything.”
○ Mindguards (self-appointed individuals whose job is to
stifle disagreement); Ex. “Oh you think you know better
than the rest of us?”
● Treatments for Groupthink: encourage active dissent within an
organization, appointing a devil’s advocate, evaluation from
independent experts, and follow-up meetings.
● Cults: groups of individuals who exhibit extreme groupthink,
marked by intense and unquestioning devotion to a single
individual.
■ Group Polarization: refers to the tendency of group discussion to
strengthen the dominant positions of individual group members.
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