Dr. Kalkstein
General Psychology

Unit: Social Psychology
Humans are social animals.
Social Psychology: study of how people think about, relate to, and influence each other * How we perceive ourselves and others * How we function in groups * Why we hurt or help people * Why we fall in love * Why we discriminate against certain people

Our biases 1) We tend to underestimate the power of a situation in determining our behavior (fundamental attribution bias)
2) A great deal of mental thought and behavior occurs automatically and without conscious awareness or intent. Test your implicit biases: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/

Confederates’ role in social psychology research: an accomplice of the experimenter for research involving deception, plays an assigned role.

Cognitive Dissonance: Uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory viewpoints. Particularly strong if your behavior conflicts with your attitude.

-Study: Festinger and Carlsmith, 1959 * Students performed extremely boring task for an hour. * Paid to lie to someone else about it being interesting. * Results:

Other example: fraternity hazing, adjusting values to fit behavior

Bystander Intervention Effect: failure to help someone observed to be in need.
Kitty Genovese story A person is less likely to help if there are other bystanders around.

-Study: Latane and Darley, 1968.
College students filling out survey while smoke coming in room. If confederates shrug it off, you are less likely to report.
-Study: Darley and Batson, 1973
A person in a hurry is less likely to help people, even if he is going to speak on the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Milgram’s Obedience Studies

Wanted to understand why Germans went along with Nazis. Obedience to authority.
Electric shock generator. Learner was confederate.