PSY 202 Chapter Notes - Chapter 13: Mass Hysteria, Emotional Contagion, Fundamental Attribution Error
12 Mar 2018
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Chapter 13 - social psychology (the power of social influence) Social psychology: study of how people influence others" behaviour, beliefs, and attitudes. Gravitating to each other; to a point. Dunbar: the approximate size of most human social groups is 150. The need to belong: why we form groups. Baumeister and leary need-to-belong theory, humans have a biologically based need for interpersonal connections. How we came to be this way: evolution and social behaviour. Many social influence processes have been naturally selected because they"ve generally served us well over the course of evolution. Evolutionary perspective on social behaviour: conformity, obedience, and many other forms of social influence become maladaptive only when they"re blind or unquestioning (irrational group behaviour are by-products of adaptive processes gone wrong) We look to others when a situation is ambiguous to figure out what to believe and how to act (we act how those around us do) Mass hysteria: irrationality at a group level.
