Psychology 2070A/B Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Warren Jeffs, Order Of The Solar Temple, Construals

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Chapter 1 Introduction to Social Psychology
A. What is social Psychology?
Social Psychology: The scientific study of the way in which people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors
are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people.
o The phenomenon of social influence that influence not only behaviours.
a. The power of Social Interpretation.
Construal: The way in which people perceive, comprehend, and interpret the social world.
o What social psychologists do research for
o How people’s interpretation on social environment influences their behaviours.
Naïve Realism: Believing other side is biased while ourselves are objective when each side recognizes
the other side perceives the issues differently.
o Reason: We always assume other reasonable people see things the same way that we do.
o A special kind of construal
o Defined by Lee Ross, who has been working closely with Israeli and Palestinian negotiators.
Experiment: Using peace proposals created by Israeli negotiators, labeled them as Palestinian
proposals, and asked Israeli citizens to judge them.
Result: The Israelis like the Palestinian proposals attributed to Israel more than they liked the
Israeli proposals attributed to the Palestinians.
Conclusion: When your own proposal isn’t going to be attractive to you when it comes from
the other side, what chance is there that the other side’s proposal is going to be attractive
when it comes from the other side?
Social psychology is an experimentally-based science.
o Our assumptions, guesses, and ideas about human social behavior are empirically and
systematically tested.
o No folk wisdom, common sense, or opinions and insights of other people involved.
o What is the difficult?
Conduct research to predict behavior of highly sophisticated organisms in a variety of
complex situation.
b. Some Alternative Ways of Understanding Social Influence
We might directly ask people why they behave in certain ways but the problem is that people do not
always aware of the origins of their own responses.
i. Folk Wisdom (Including Common Sense)
Folk wisdom Underestimate the power of situation.
Common Sense Frequently wrong or oversimplified
o Example:
In explaining the Solar Temple tragedy, people tend to focus on what had the cult leaders do
to make people obey them; however, they forget the influence the cult leaders might have as
majority of them are highly respected, well-functioning members of the society.
People believe the charismatic leaders and willingly hand over their children to be
mistreated, sexually abused or killed. It is one of the case conducted by Warren Jeffs, the
leader of the Yearning for Zion Mormon sect.
ii. Philosophy
Philosophy Historically major source of insight about human nature.
o Provide insight into the nature of consciousness and how people form beliefs about the social
world.
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