PSYC12H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Cognitive Dissonance, Social Cognition, Social Emotions
Document Summary
Humans have a tendency to form groups and they are not unique to humans. Membership in a group can be restricted on the basis of special skills, family relations, gener, power and a host of other factors. Humans have found lives easier due to membership in groups via specialization and leads to longer, happier and more fulfilling lives. Groups are the basic building blocks of society. Group membership has an adaptive evolutionary and practical utility. Complications from group membership: mate competition, mate rentention, in group bias or favoritism and out group derogation, hostility, violence, prejudice. Minimal groups: division of groups on arbitrary criteria (like shirt color or hair color) Important to study prejudice and stereotyping because they lead to negative behavior such as wars and group violence (holocaust, rwanda, armenia, yugoslavia genocide, slave trade) Most intense inter group hostility has been based on a difference in a religious beliefs.
