Chapter 13 – Behaviour in a Social Context
• Social Thinking and Perception
o Attribution: Perceiving the Causes of Behaviour
Attribution – judgement about causes of our and other people’s behaviour
• Attribution about defendants behaviour influence guilt vs.
innocence
o Personal vs. Situational Attributions
Fritz Heider
2 Types of Attributions – Personal (internal) Attributions and Situational
(external) Attributions
• Internal – behaviour is caused by the person’s internal
characteristics
o Person behaves rudely because they are rude in character
• External – behaviour is caused by situations
o Person was provoked, so they insulted the other person.
Determining Type of Attribution
• 3 Types of info help with determination
o Consistency
Is the behaviour/response consistent, will it be the
same in 2 weeks
o Distinctiveness
Is the behaviour/response distinctive, is it specific
to one thing or does it apply to many other things
as well
o Consensus
How many other people respond the same way,
how do others respond?
• When consistency, distinctiveness, and consensus are high
situational attribution o External causes result in the response/behaviour
• When consistency is high and others are low Personal Attribution
o Internal causes lead to the response/behaviour
• Personal attributions sometimes result when person makes a
snap judgement without looking at the consensus and
distinctiveness, biasing their judgement
o Attributional Biases
Fundamental Attribution Error
• Underestimating impact of situation and overestimating role of
personal factors when explaining behaviour
People don’t take into account that sometimes people’s behaviour is such
because of their situation
• Students made to read pro-castro or anti-castro speech
o If the speech writer freely chose the role than the
behaviour is different from if they were assigned the role
People reading the speeches read by an assigned
writer don’t pay enough attention to the fact that
they were potentially forced to write a speech that
they don’t agree with
• Thus they attribute the forced pro-castro
writer to holding such beliefs
People believe that movie stars have same character traits as the
characters they play
• Don’t realize that they are in a situation where they are forced to
act like that
o Attribute an anti-social, attribution to Leonard Nimoy
because he played the emotionless spock.
Sometimes people pay attention to situational factors columbine
• People blamed situational factors like parenting and gun
availablilty and only 11% made personal attributions about the
shooters’ personality When you have time to think about some things you are able to reduce
the fundamental attribution error
o Self-Serving Bias
Looking at ones own behaviour – make more personal attribution for
success and more situational attributions for failure
• Sports players post game statements – when they win, they
attribute it to personal successes
• When they lose – bad referees, the other side was lucky,
everything the other side shot was going in.
Depressed are opposite – take little credit for successes and too much
credit for failures
• Enables a cycle of depression
o Culture and Attribution
Western culture is individualist tend to attribute other people’s behaviour
to personal factors
Americans and Brits more likely to make personal attributions for criminal
behaviour than Koreans or Nigerians who are more collectivist
Value of Modesty in some cultures affects how much crdit people will take
for their successes and will accept more personal responsibility for
failures
Causality and Holistic Thinking
• Some cultures believe that you cannot look at an event in isolation
o You need to look at a whole cahin of connected events
o Thus some cultures’ attributions reflect holistic thinking
Take much more info into account when making
attributions for people’s behaviour
Same underlying Psychological Principle – Link b/w Holistic thinking and
Causality differences between info that people take into account when
making attributions
• Forming and Maintaining Impressions o Primacy effect
Tendency to attach more importance to initial info learned about a person
Need a lot of info to reverse this opinion
Tend to be most alert to info we receive first
Why do we have this effect?
• Adaptive value in making quick snap decisions in evaluating
stimuli
Decreases and gives way to recency effects
o Recency Effect
Giving more weight to recent information
• Usually gets more weight when we have time to make decisions
• When reminded to carefuly consider evidence
• Mental Sets and Schemas – Seeing What We expect to See
o Schemas – mental framework that help organized and interpret information
So when you get an impression of someone, if you have some pre-
existing Idea of who they are, you fit your interaction with them into the
schema
Mental set – readiness to perceive the world in a specific way
o Stereotype
Generalized belief about a group or category of people
Powerful type of schema
Preconceived thoughts which come from generalizations lead to biases in
perception of others’ behaviours
• Self-Fulfulling Prophecies – Creating What We Expect to See
o Occurs without conscious awareness
o Erroneous expectations lead one to act towards others such that the expected
behaviours are confirmed. o You act in a way such that the other person’s response fits your initial
impression/preconception of them
o Unfounded expectations influence how we behave shaping their behaviour so
that it confirms our expectations
• Attitudes and Attitude Change
o Attitude – positive or negative evaluative reaction towards stimulus (person,
action, object or concept)
Supported by ones personal belief and value system
o Do attitudes Influence our Behaviour
Some studies have shown that peoples attitudes don’t influence
behaviour
• Went around US with Asian couple, and they were only refused
service at a hotel once
o Wrote those same places letters asking if they would
provide service to chinese patrons, and those same places
said no
o Clearly attitudes didn’t influence behaviour ultimately
o Prejudicial attitudes did not directly relate to discriminatory
behaviour
In general though, attitudes do predict behaviour
Attitudes work well when the other counteracting factors in the situation
are weak
• But money, conformity, obedience pressures often lead us to
behave in ways which are different from our convictions
o Theory of Planned Bahviour
Intention to engage in behaviour is strongest when we have positive
attitude towards a behaviour and when subjective norms support those
attitudes
• Subjective norms – perceptions of what other people think we
should do
o Attitudes have great effect when we are consciously thinking about them Not when we act on impulse autonomically
Attitudes are also stronger when they are formed first hand
o General attitudes predict well general behaviour, Specific attitudes predict well
specific behaviour
• Does Behaviour Influence Attitudes
o Self – justification
Do experiment which is boring and then you are asked to lie to the next
person and tell them that the tasks are interesting
• Give you 1$ or 20$
• Those who took 1$ rated it as more enjoyable
Cognitive dissonance
• People strive for consistency in cognitions
o 2 cognitions contradict one another
o I am truthful, and I just told another student that those
tasks were interesting
• But, who wouldn’t tell a lie for 20$ - enough justification
• But 1$, is not enough to justify their behaviour
o So they convince themselves that the task was enjoyable
so they weren’t actually lying
• Change their attitude to bring in line with how they behaved
o Counterattitudinal Behaviour
Behaviour that is inconsistent with attitude
Dissonance only happens when did what we did with our own free will
o Dissonance doesn’t always happen
Make excuses, find external justification
• I may not be perfect but other people are still worse.
o Self-Perception Make inferences about our own attitudes by observing how we behave
Retroactively look at how you behaved so you must have felt a certain
way to behave like that
• Rejects cognitive dissonance
Agrees with idea of counterattidunal behaviour results in attitude change
• Dissonance believes that we are physiologically aroused by
tension from dissonance which self-perception theory doesn’t
believe
If arousal attitude change, reducing arousal should lead to reducing
change
• Told that arousal is due to pill, wont change their views
Dissonance – explains better when people change views because they
behaved in a way which challenged their attitudes
• Works best when the attiude threatens their self images
• When doesn’t challenge self-image no arousal , so cant explain
change
• This is where self-perception comes into the picture
• Persuasion
o Communicator – person who delivers message
Credibility – how believable the communicator is
Many times people pay little attention to the speech, but rather they will
just agree with the opinions of a credible source
2 Components to credibility
• Expertise and trustworthiness
o Need to appear to be both an expert and unbiased
o Needs to advocate point of view contrary to their own
sometimes
Things that help: attractiveness, likability, similarity • This is why campaigns afvertis
o Message –
Two sided refutational approach
• Discuss both sides of the issue
• Perceives it as less biased
When audience disagrees with you better to be moderately discrepant
with their viewpoint
• High credible communicators can do this
Arousing fear can sometimes be effective
Too frightening may deny the message and credibility of communicator
o Audience
Logical arguments can work for some audiences but not for others
2 routes to persuasion
• Central route to persuasion
o People carefully think about message
o Convinced by message
o Has stronger foundation
Attitude change lasts longer, predicts behaviour
better if convinced by arguments of the central
route
o More likely to follow message when there is personal
relevance
If it can affect you in some way
o Need for cognintion
People who need to think things through, follow this
route
Those who are willing to invest the mental effort • Peripheral route to persuasion
o People don’t scrutinize message look at other things like
attractiveness of speaker, message’s emotional appeal
o Works better for people of less need for cognition
Affected more by attractiveness of person
endorsing product or giving speech
• Uncertainty oriented look for info
o Central route
• Social Influence
o Mere presence of others
Energizes performance
People tend to perform better individually when in groups
When people are in each other’s presence they perform better
Coactor
• The other person present
Also observable in ants
• Carry more dirt in presence of other ants
However, performance on learning tasks worsen when audience is
present
o Arousal
When other person is present arousal increases
Behaviour becomes dominant response
• Dominant response – most typical response
Social Facilitiation
• Tendency to perform dominant response in presence of others
• With difficult tasks dominant response make errors • Simple task dominant response perform it well
• Occurs in many species
• Explains why in presence of audience experienced people
perform better and worse than average people perform worse
• Most basic of social influence processes
• Lesson to learn: when learning complex tasks minimize other
people’s presence
• Social Norms – Rules of the Game
o Social Norms
Shared expectations
• Based on how people should think feel, bejave
Cement social systems
Take them for granted
Regulate our day
Only notice them when they get violated
o Social Role
Set of norms
How someone ought to behave in their social position
• Teacher, professor, student, spouse are different roles.
Role conflict –
• Norms connected to different roles clash
• When people have trouble when they have different jobs/positions
o Like students who also have jobs
Zimbardo Prison Experiment
• Students – half were assigned to be guards and half were
assigned to be prisoners • Guards wore uniforms, Prisoners were kept in cells
• Led the guards to be be extra brutal in their treatment, and the
study had to be called off
• What happened was that the students who were guards were
generally OK people, but their new role as guard overrode their
values dehumanizing treatment of prisoners
o Culture and Norm Formation
Norms become visible when they are violated and also when we look at
other cultures
Different norms for personal space
Norms affect gender roles, sexual practices, views of love and marriage,
and social behaviour
How norms are formed:
• Took advantage of Autokinetic effect – where people stare at dot
and think its moving even thought its really stationary
• When placed individually- the subjects had very different
judgements
• When placed in groups of 3 – they discussed the distance the dot
moved and it converged on a norm.
o Different groups formed different norms
o Norms are not necessarily the average of the 3 people’s
perceptions
• Individuals were retested a year later, and they reflected the
groups norm
Thus without explicitly deciding on creating a norm, the norm happens
• Conformity and Obedience
o Why do people conform?
Motive – desire to understand world and
Informational Social Influence • Follow other peoples behaviour because we think its right
Normative Social Influence
• Conform to be accepted by other people
• Be rewarded
• Avoid rejection
o Solomon Asch’s Experiments
Used groups of university students
• All but one were confederates
• Asked to compare 3 lines to one standard line
• All confederates gave the wrong answer
• Causes the subject to wonder whether their judgements were
incorrect
• Participants conformed 37% of the time compared to 1% of the
time where the people judge the lines by themselves
• Felt group was wrong but didn’t want to get rejected by the group
o Factors that affect Conformity
Group size
• Increases from 5-35% when group size increased from 1 confed.
to 4
o Just as likely conform when 4 people to 15
Presnece of Dissenter
• When one confederate disagrees with others
• Reduced conformity
o Thus that person is a model for the subject
Collectivism
• More likely to conform in collectivist culture than individualist
culture • People want to be in harmony with the group its more important
o Minority Influence
Minority can influence the behaviour of the majority
Occurs best when:
• Minority are highly committed
• Independent in face of majority pressure
• Consistent over time
• Appear to have open mind
May cause majority members to privately change their views
If minority is unreasonable, negative or deviant, people hate them even
more though.
o Obedience to Authority
Sometimes its good sometimes its bad
You expect your co-pilot to follow the pilots orders
Nuremberg Trials – Nazis said they were just following orders
• We tend to reject these justifications
o Factors that influence Destructive Obedience
Milgram
Remoteness of Victim
• When learner was out of sight – obedience was out of sight
• When teacher and learner were in same room - obedience went
down
• When physical contact had to be made to administer shock,
obedience went down even more
Closeness and Legitimacy of authority figure
• If close and legitimate high obedience • If just a normal person/over the phone low obedience
Cog in the Wheel
• Someone else flipped the switch, and they just did some other
stuff they were more likely to be obedient
• But if made to feel responsible for the learners safety no one fully
obeyed.
Personal Characteristics
• Different jobs religious affiliation don’t really lead to major
differences in obedience
• No significant difference between men and women
• Milgram’s Experiment
o When conscience confronts malevolent authority
o Wanted to test whether people would conform to pressure and give shocks to
protesting victims
o Every time the learner (confederate) would make a mistake would get shocked
by the teacher (test subject)
o Was not actually shocked
They made a tape, so that each person was given the same standardized
recording of the sounds
o Full obedience – operational definition – will go up to 450 V
o Would have to increase voltage from 75V to 450V
Experimenter would tell the teacher (subject) – you must continue, or you
have no other choice
o Most protested at one time or another and wouldn’t continue.
o But 65% obeyed to the end.
• Lessons Learned : From Holocaust to Airline Safety
o People are not evil they became very stressed because they cared about the
safety of the victim
o Most people can be induced to follow orders from a legitimate authority figure o Holocaust
Most people responsible were cogs in a wheel
Victims were remote at time of murder
o Airlines –
Sometimes its good that a co-pilot challenges the pilots commands
Sometimes the fact that the co-pilot didn’t challenge has led to plane
crashes
• Detecting and Resisting Compliance Techniques
o Compliance techniques – techniques to manipulate you to say yes
Norm of reciprocity
• If someone treats us well, we should respond in kind
• Used by Hare Krishna
o Give flowers to people as a gift, and then asked for a
donation
o People feel pressure to reciprocate
Door in the Face Technique –
• Person makes large request assuming u will “Slam the door” in
their face
• Then they make a smaller request
o Refusing first request guilt complying with second
smaller request
Foot in Door Technique
• Ask for smaller request (getting their foot in the door)
o Then ask for something bigger, most people will comply
Lowballing
• Get you to commit to something and then raise the cost of it • Since you are already committed you are more than likely to
comply
o Might feel obligated to person to whom you made the
commitment
Difference between Lowballing and Foot in door
• Foot in door – leads to larger request after the smaller request has
been completed
• Lowballing – stakes are raised for same request, before you
consummate the behaviour
• Crowd Behaviour and Deindividuation
o When person sits on ledge and threatens to jump crowds tend to encourage the
person to jump.
o Why would people want/encourage other people to end their lives
LeBon
• Mobs anonymity of the individual weakiening of restraints of a
person
o People will behave in ways they would not behave as
individuals
Deindividuation – loss of individuality leads to disinhibited behaviour
• Explains cheating, stealine, riots, genocide
Key Leading Characteristic
• Anonymity to outsiders
o Makes person less identifiable therefore less accountable
o Increases risk of antisocial behaviour
Stanford Prison Study (Zimbardo)
• All guards wore same uniform, didn’t have name tags, and were
referred to as Mr. Correctional Officer
• Had mirrored lenses – so couldn’t even make eye contact o Disindividuation reduced anonymity less accountability
cruelty
• Group Influences on Performance and Decision Making
o Groups formed to accomplish tasks that are too complex or demanding for one
person alone
o Social Loafing – Failing to Pull Your Own Weight
When people don’t coordinate themselves well (timing) then theres loss of
efficiency
• Or also, each person exerts less effort in a group
People tend to pull 18% less force when they think that they are in a
group
• This is what social loafing is.
Social loafing – tendency for people to expend less individual effort when
working in a group than when working alone.
Even occurs on cognitive tasks, when people need to work together
Collective Effort Model
• People put forth effort to extent that they expect it to contribute to
obtaining the valued goal
• Happens when
o People believe that individual performance in group isn’t
monitored
o Task is less valuable to the person
o Group is not important to the person
o Task is simple, and the persons input is redundanct
Fatigue increases social loafing
Women tend to care more about groups
Individualist cultures – more likely to engage in social loafing than
collectivist (collectivists care more about the group)
Social Compensation – • For highly desired goal, will work harder in group than alone
• Especially if they think that colleages lack ability to slack off.
• Group Polarization – Going to Extremes
o Groups are more likely to be extreme (either conservative or liberal/riskier) use
of juries to handle criminal cases
o Group polarization – group of likeminded people discuss something, the average
opinion becomes more extreme.
o Why? – Normative Social influence
People want to be more extreme to gain others approval
o Why – Informational Social Influence
People hear other arguments supporting what they want that they have
never heard before.
• Groupthink – Suspending Critical Thining
o Tendency for group members to suspend critical thinking when trying to seek
agreement.
o More likely to occur –
High stress to reach decision
Insulated from outside input
Have directive leader with own personal agenda
High cohesion in group
o Occurs a lot when there is a collective threat
So they need to maintain positive view of group so they reach agreement
without looking carefully at opposing views
o Direct pressure
When members who express doubt are pressured not to rock the boat
o Mind Guards
People stop negative information from reaching the group o Self-Censorship
Withhold doubts
o Illusion of Unanimity
Everyone seems to agree with decision
o Can lead to fatal accidents, like the Challenger crash
o Could be prevented if leader is impartial, and encourages critical thinking
• Social Relations
• Affiliation and Interpersonal Attraction
o Maslow – belongingness and love – basic psychological needs
o Why do we affiliate?
Those who were predisposed to affiliate more likely to survive
• Evolution
More access to mates
More protection from predators
Division of labour
Knowledge gets passed trhough generations
Hill
• 4 Basic Reasons: Positive stimulation, emotional support,
attention and social comparison
• Social Comparison
o Comparing beliefs, feelings, behaviours with others
o Determines whether we are normal, cognitively and
physically
Need for affiliation
• A criterion which is tested on a personality test
• People with higher need for affiliation make more friends o More likely to be thinking about friends, wishing they could
be with people
• Stronger sense of community
o Feeling of being part of larger collective
o More likely to be in more extracurricular activities
Fear –Induced Need for Affiliation
• Emergencies – prefer to be with other people
• Many times people bond to strangers during emergencies
• Initial Attraction
o Proximity and Mere exposure
Proximit
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