PSY100H1 Chapter 12: Chapter 12- Social Psychology.docx

• School: UTSG
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY100H1
• Professor: Ashley Waggoner Denton

Document Summary

The standford prison study demonstrated the speed at which apparently normal university students could be transformed into the social roles they were playing. Social psychology is concerned with how people influence other people"s thoughts, feelings, and actions. Attitude: the evaluation of objects, events or ideas. Mere exposure effect: greater exposure to the item, and therefore greater familiarity with it caused people to have more positive attitudes about the item. Discrepancies lead to dissonance cognitive dissonance: an uncomfortable mental state due to conflicts between attitudes or between attitudes and behaviour; ex. Smoking when person knows smoking will kill them. Holding positive attitudes about 2 options but having to choose one of them causes dissonance. Motivates person to focus on one school"s the chosen school"s positive aspects and the other school"s negative aspects. One way to get people to change their attitudes is to change their behaviours first, using as few incentives as possible.