Chapter 14 : social behavior
- why belonging to a group matters to us
- how the presence of other people influences our behavior
- how we perceive our social world
- how we form attitudes
- how we make friends
- These topics are the focus of social psychology, which studies the effects of the real or imagined presence of others on people’s thoughts, feelings,
and actions.
GROUP LIVING AND SOCIAL INFLUENCE
- Group living offered many advantages in human evolution, such as increased safety in the presence of danger, cooperation with others to
complete challenging tasks (such as hunting), and child rearing
- This heritage explains why people work to preserve group membership and why they modify their behavior when in the presence of others.
- Social facilitation occurs when the presence of others improves our performance.
- Social loafing is the opposite; it occurs when the presence of others causes individuals to relax their standards
Conformity
- Social facilitation is a subtle way in which the presence of others changes our actions
- More direct social factors also pressure us to act in certain ways
- Society imposes rules about acceptable behavior, called social norms
- social norms
- Rules about acceptable behavior imposed by the cultural context in which one lives.
- Most of the time we conform to the social norms of our culture.
- Conformity occurs when people adjust their behavior to what others are doing or adhere to cultural norms
- The reasons for conformity vary, depending on the situation
- Informational social influence occurs when people conform to the behavior of others because they view them as a source of knowledge about what
they are supposed to do.
normative social influence
- Conformity to the behavior of others in order to be accepted by them
- is the type of conformity that occurs when people go along with the behavior of others in order to be accepted by the group
- sometimes people go to great lengths to do what the group is doing, when it does not make sense, especially when groups are engaged in decision
making.
- This phenomenon, called groupthink, occurs when the thinking of the group takes over, so much so that group members forgo logic or critical
analysis in the service of reaching a decision
Minority Social Influence
- In social psychology, a single person or small group within a larger group is called a minority, while the larger group is referred to as the
majority. Just as the majority pushes for group unity, the minority can push for independence and uniqueness. After all, if people always
conformed, how would change occur?
- In order to change the majority view, however, the minority must present a consistent, unwavering message.
minority social influence
- When a small number of individuals in a larger group shifts majority opinion by presenting a consistent, unwavering message
, - refers to what happens when a small number of individuals in a larger group shifts majority opinion by presenting a consistent, unwavering
message.
Obedience
- Another kind of normative social influence, called obedience, occurs when people yield to the social pressure of an authority figure, complying
with their demands.
- Social psychological research on obedience emerged in response to real-life concerns in the aftermath of World War II. The horrific events of the
Holocaust raised troubling questions: How could an entire nation endorse the extermination of millions of people? Were all Germans evil? Adolf
Hitler did not act alone—a supporting cast of thousands was necessary to annihilate so many people. Former Nazi officers who testified in war
trials after the war said they were “following orders.”
Attribution
- We often wonder why people do the things they do, and we try to explain their actions.
- Attributions are the inferences we make about the causes of other people’s behavior.
- Internal, or dispositional, attributions ascribe other people’s behavior to something within them, such as their personalities, motives, or
attitudes. Let’s say that Chris flunked a test. A dispositional attribution would be “Chris flunked the test because he is too lazy to study.”
- People make external, or situational, attributions when they think that something outside the person, such as the nature of the situation, is the
cause of his or her behavior. If Jake says that Chris failed because the exam was too hard, Jake has made a situational attribution for Chris’s grade.
- If Chris had aced the test, however, it is likely he’d attribute his success to his own skills. Making situational attributions for our failures but
dispositional attributions for our successes is known as a self-serving bias
self-serving bias
- The tendency to make situational attributions for our failures but dispositional attributions for our successes.
- People tend to explain other people’s behavior in terms of dispositional attributions rather than situational ones, a bias in judgment known as
the fundamental attribution error
- This is not to say that dispositions don’t matter but rather that, when making attributions of other people’s behavior, we tend to think that
dispositional characteristics matter the most.
Detecting Deception
- Most people think that they know when people lie to them.
- According to the research most of us are not effective lie detectors.
- Most people perform no better than the accuracy rate of chance guessing in detecting deception from people’s behavior
Schemas
- People develop models, or schemas, of the social world, which function as lenses through which we filter our perceptions.
- We first discussed schemas in the chapter “Memory” and defined them broadly as ways of knowing that we develop from our experiences with
particular objects or events.
- In the area of social perception, schemas are ways of knowing that affect how we view our social world.
Stereotypes
- Schemas of how people are likely to behave based simply on the groups to which they belong are known as stereotypes.
- When we resort to stereotypes, we form conclusions about people before we even interact with them just because they are of a certain race-ethnicity
or live in a certain place. As a result, we end up judging people not by their actions but by our notions of how they might act.
dehumanization
- A tendency to portray a group of people as unworthy of human rights and traits—intended to make them feel unworthy.
- why belonging to a group matters to us
- how the presence of other people influences our behavior
- how we perceive our social world
- how we form attitudes
- how we make friends
- These topics are the focus of social psychology, which studies the effects of the real or imagined presence of others on people’s thoughts, feelings,
and actions.
GROUP LIVING AND SOCIAL INFLUENCE
- Group living offered many advantages in human evolution, such as increased safety in the presence of danger, cooperation with others to
complete challenging tasks (such as hunting), and child rearing
- This heritage explains why people work to preserve group membership and why they modify their behavior when in the presence of others.
- Social facilitation occurs when the presence of others improves our performance.
- Social loafing is the opposite; it occurs when the presence of others causes individuals to relax their standards
Conformity
- Social facilitation is a subtle way in which the presence of others changes our actions
- More direct social factors also pressure us to act in certain ways
- Society imposes rules about acceptable behavior, called social norms
- social norms
- Rules about acceptable behavior imposed by the cultural context in which one lives.
- Most of the time we conform to the social norms of our culture.
- Conformity occurs when people adjust their behavior to what others are doing or adhere to cultural norms
- The reasons for conformity vary, depending on the situation
- Informational social influence occurs when people conform to the behavior of others because they view them as a source of knowledge about what
they are supposed to do.
normative social influence
- Conformity to the behavior of others in order to be accepted by them
- is the type of conformity that occurs when people go along with the behavior of others in order to be accepted by the group
- sometimes people go to great lengths to do what the group is doing, when it does not make sense, especially when groups are engaged in decision
making.
- This phenomenon, called groupthink, occurs when the thinking of the group takes over, so much so that group members forgo logic or critical
analysis in the service of reaching a decision
Minority Social Influence
- In social psychology, a single person or small group within a larger group is called a minority, while the larger group is referred to as the
majority. Just as the majority pushes for group unity, the minority can push for independence and uniqueness. After all, if people always
conformed, how would change occur?
- In order to change the majority view, however, the minority must present a consistent, unwavering message.
minority social influence
- When a small number of individuals in a larger group shifts majority opinion by presenting a consistent, unwavering message
, - refers to what happens when a small number of individuals in a larger group shifts majority opinion by presenting a consistent, unwavering
message.
Obedience
- Another kind of normative social influence, called obedience, occurs when people yield to the social pressure of an authority figure, complying
with their demands.
- Social psychological research on obedience emerged in response to real-life concerns in the aftermath of World War II. The horrific events of the
Holocaust raised troubling questions: How could an entire nation endorse the extermination of millions of people? Were all Germans evil? Adolf
Hitler did not act alone—a supporting cast of thousands was necessary to annihilate so many people. Former Nazi officers who testified in war
trials after the war said they were “following orders.”
Attribution
- We often wonder why people do the things they do, and we try to explain their actions.
- Attributions are the inferences we make about the causes of other people’s behavior.
- Internal, or dispositional, attributions ascribe other people’s behavior to something within them, such as their personalities, motives, or
attitudes. Let’s say that Chris flunked a test. A dispositional attribution would be “Chris flunked the test because he is too lazy to study.”
- People make external, or situational, attributions when they think that something outside the person, such as the nature of the situation, is the
cause of his or her behavior. If Jake says that Chris failed because the exam was too hard, Jake has made a situational attribution for Chris’s grade.
- If Chris had aced the test, however, it is likely he’d attribute his success to his own skills. Making situational attributions for our failures but
dispositional attributions for our successes is known as a self-serving bias
self-serving bias
- The tendency to make situational attributions for our failures but dispositional attributions for our successes.
- People tend to explain other people’s behavior in terms of dispositional attributions rather than situational ones, a bias in judgment known as
the fundamental attribution error
- This is not to say that dispositions don’t matter but rather that, when making attributions of other people’s behavior, we tend to think that
dispositional characteristics matter the most.
Detecting Deception
- Most people think that they know when people lie to them.
- According to the research most of us are not effective lie detectors.
- Most people perform no better than the accuracy rate of chance guessing in detecting deception from people’s behavior
Schemas
- People develop models, or schemas, of the social world, which function as lenses through which we filter our perceptions.
- We first discussed schemas in the chapter “Memory” and defined them broadly as ways of knowing that we develop from our experiences with
particular objects or events.
- In the area of social perception, schemas are ways of knowing that affect how we view our social world.
Stereotypes
- Schemas of how people are likely to behave based simply on the groups to which they belong are known as stereotypes.
- When we resort to stereotypes, we form conclusions about people before we even interact with them just because they are of a certain race-ethnicity
or live in a certain place. As a result, we end up judging people not by their actions but by our notions of how they might act.
dehumanization
- A tendency to portray a group of people as unworthy of human rights and traits—intended to make them feel unworthy.
