PSY 3303 Lecture 4: introduction-to-social-psychology-lecture-notes-exam-1
Social Psychology: scientific study of the way in which people’s
thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or
imagined presence of other people
People assume that someone else will help, so chance of helping
is inversely related to number of people present
It’s not about personality, its about the situation (Social Influence)
What do we mean by social situation?
Identify objective properties of situation (factual)
Document the behaviors that follow from these objective properties
What do we mean by Social Influence?
Behaviorism: a school of psychology maintaining that to understand human
behavior, one need consider only reinforcing effects of environment
Every decision is based on cumulative effects of rewards/punishments
Life= summation of + and - situations
The objective situation
Doesn’t deal with cognition, thinking, feeling
Problem: ignores construals
Construal: how individual perceives, comprehends, and interprets the world around
them, particularly the actions of others towards themselves
Inadequate for understanding social world
Subjectivity of a social situation= focus on the construals
Gestalt psychology: a school of psychology stressing the importance of studying
the subjective way in which an object appears in people’s minds (the gestalt or
whole/aggregate) rather than the objective, physical attributes of the object
Kurt Lewin: founder of social psychology
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Applied gestalt principles to social perception
Stressed importance of taking perspective of the people in a social situation, to see
how they construe the environment
i.e. = illusions mind is actively interpreting perceptual input rather than passively
recording it
culmination of events in your life, current mood influence how you see the illusion (2
faces vs grail, old lady vs young lady)
An approach to perception
Emphasis on the subjective way in which an object appears in people’s minds
Social Psychology
How do people interpret a social situation?
Construal
Jane’s boss has not responded to her email for a week, how will Jane respond?
Depends on how Jane construes the situation
“My boss is a jerk”
“My boss has just been extremely busy”
My boss must trust me to make the decision on my own”
My boss must be angry with me or dissatisfied with my work”
The Fundamental Attribution Error
Tendency to overestimate the extent to which people’s behavior is due to
internal dispositional factors, and underestimate the role of situational factors
Attribute behavior to personality rather than considering situation’s external
factors
i.e. someone trips and falls = that person is a clutz, messy desk = that person is
disorganized
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Underestimates the power of social influence creates a feeling of false
security increases personal vulnerability to possibly destructive social
influence lulls us into lowering our guard
Oversimplify complex situations decreases our understanding of the true
root causes
Minor aspects of the social situation can have powerful effects and overwhelm
personality differences
According to “Name of the Game Study”, situational forces overwhelm personality
forces in governing behavior
If name is “The Wall Street Game”, players are more competitive
Where Construals Come From: Basic Human Motives
1) The need to be accurate
2) The need to feel good about ourselves
Motives may tug in opposite directions
The Self-Esteem Approach
The desire to feel good about ourselves
Self-Esteem: people’s evaluations of their own self-worth; the extent to which they
view themselves as good, competent, and decent
Most people have strong need to maintain reasonably high self-esteem
People will distort the world in order to feel good about themselves
Justifying Past Behavior
Distort past memories to preserve self-esteem
Acknowledging major deficiencies is very difficult, even when the cost is seeing the
world inaccurately
Put a slightly different spin on existing facts, putting self in best possible light
Suffering & Self-Justification
i.e. Hazing
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Document Summary
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