...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...
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...compliance with commands given by an authority figure. In the 1960s, the social psychologist Stanley Milgram did a famous research study called the obedience study. It showed that people have a strong tendency to comply with authority figures. Milgram’s Obedience Study Milgram told his forty male volunteer research subjects that they were participating in a study about the effects of punishment on learning. He assigned each of the subjects to the role of teacher. Each subject was told that his task was to help another subject like himself learn a list of word pairs. Each time the learner made a mistake, the teacher was to give the learner an electric shock by flipping a switch. The teacher was told to increase the shock level each time the learner made a mistake, until a dangerous shock level was reached. Throughout the course of the experiment, the experimenter firmly commanded the teachers to follow the instructions they had been given. In reality, the learner was not an experiment subject but Milgram’s accomplice, and he never actually received an electric shock. However, he pretended to be in pain when shocks were administered. Prior to the study, forty psychiatrists that Milgram consulted told him that fewer than 1 percent of subjects would administer what they thought were dangerous shocks to the learner. However, Milgram found that two-thirds of the teachers did administer even the highest level of shock, despite believing that the learner was suffering great pain...
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...Stanford Prison Experiment PSYCH/620 May 31, 2015 Dr. Al Clark Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment Dr. Phillip Zimbardo of Stanford University led a team of researchers to conduct a social experiment on the effects of imposed social roles in the penal system. Internal dispositions changed to adapt to the confinement of the prison. The behavior observed of the participants was morally repugnant and apprehensible in response to role of authority. Participants assigned to a prisoner role broke down in response to captivity. The study focused on behavioral attributes that attributed sadistic behavior to the prison environment opposed to an innate tendency towards a cruel personality (Zimbardo, 2007). The impact of Dr. Zimbardo’s study on social psychology Dr. Zimbardo’s classic psychological study relating to the psychological effects of the prisoner and prison guard relationship was momentous to social psychology. The study was influential to social psychology in the way that we were able to understand the circumstances that enable a normal, caring individual to carryout sadistic acts. Zimbardo’s prison experiment was a prison simulation based on Milgram’s research on obedience to authority. The study confirmed notions on how situations could completely corrupt human behavior (Stanley, 2006). Relevance of the Study in Relation to Contemporary World Issues The experiment influenced the sensitivity...
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...studied obedience to authority to learn new things about humans and our interaction with those giving the orders. For me exploring this topic has led me to believe that power has the ability to corrupt, situations are a key factor in decision making, and most people are inclined to obey authority. “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” is a popular quote from Lord Acton. This statement has been proven true time and time again throughout history. A few good examples come from the Stanford Prison Experiment, where some of the students that played the role of guard abused the power they had been given for the experiment. During the testing two main guards took it upon themselves to become the authority of the prison even though they were not asked to do so. This shows that even a small amount of power can start to affect the way you act. They began taunting the prisoners, calling them demeaning names, and even forced them to do unnecessary exercises at times simply because they had the power to. Not only does power have the ability to corrupt, but it has the ability to do it quickly at times. These guys had no history of anything linking them to abuse or misconduct of any sort, but once they received power it quickly changed the way they acted. The process that Dr. Philip Zimbardo had planned was expected to last about 2 weeks, but it actually on lasted 4 days, and one key factor to the experiment being cut short was the guards abusing their power. It led...
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...Stanford University. Zimbardo researching how prisoners and guards learned submissive and authoritarian roles. There was an ad placed in the newspaper by Zimbardo seeking male subjects to participate in his research experiment. There was a $15 per day compensation offered to the chosen participants. There were roughly 75 people to respond to the professors ad. However there were only 25 chosen to participate in the experiment needed for a study of prison life. Zimbardo designed his experiment to go the duration of 15 days. The men who were selected to participate in the experiment were separated into two groups, the prisoners in one group, guards in the other. Zimbardo informed them all their rights would be violated and they were to be harassed. Phillip K. Zimbardo’s reason for conducting the Stanford Prison experiment was to expand upon Milgram’s research. It was Zimbardo’s desire to further investigate the impact of situational variables on human behavior. According to Christian perspective with this study we as followers of Jesus Christ should avoid being disrespectful, confrontational and dehumanizing to one another no matter one’s current social situation(s). We should approach one another with an open mind and not judging one another for our sins or wrong doings. Approaching the situations when enforcing rules is one thing but to put one down, break ones’ spirits are not Christ like. The Stanford Prison Experiment would not be allowed to be conducted today...
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...and belong to a group is an undeniable human need. But how does this need affect an individual? Social psychologists have conducted numerous experiments and concluded that, through various forms of social influence, groups can change their members' thoughts, feelings, and behavior. In her essay "Group Minds," Doris Lessing discusses our paradoxical ability to call ourselves individuals and our inability to realize that groups define and influence us. We, as humans, hold individualism in the highest regard yet fail to realize that groups diminish our individuality. Lessing writes, "when we're in a group, we tend to think as that group does... but we also find our thinking changing because we belong to a group" (p. 334). Groups have the tendency to generate norms, or standards for behavior in certain situations. Not following these norms can make you stand out and, therefore, groups have the ability to influence our thoughts and actions in ways that are consistent with the groups'. Lessing's essay helps set the context to understand the experiments that social psychologists Solomon Asch, Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo conducted to explain conformity and obedience. Solomon Asch's experiment in "Opinions and Social Pressure" studied a subject's ability to yield to social pressure when placed within a group of strangers. His research helped illustrate how groups encourage conformity. During a typical experiment, members of the group were asked by...
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...Some of those norms are not clear how they came about but they are part of our ways of life and they strongly affect our lives. Being different, is not that easy, we tend to conform in order to fit in, we tend to obey in order to achieve self-steam and to feel good about ourselves; we love to be part of the group, we worship our communities, we constantly look up to each other in order to move on. The human society that we have created is a society of dependency on the other, where we live our lives obeying to rules and conforming to our roles. But what happens when the authority in corrupted, the norms are abstracted and the group we look up to is up to no good? Just like in the smoke experiment carried by Latane and Darley, what to do when the group seems to be wrong, and the outcome of their wrongness could cost your life, or their own. Why would you still obeying someone who is clearly evil? Why would you stay in a room filled with smoke? There are no easy...
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...Social Psychology: Prosocial Behavior Social psychology is one of the wide topics in sociology that have been widely studied. Social psychology is the study of human behavior in a social context. Stangor (2013) has described social psychology as the scientific study of how people think, feel and behave around people and how people’s feelings, thoughts and behaviors are influenced by these people. It aims at studying and explaining how individual personalities change due to social groups. Social psychology helps one understand how individuals fit in the society. Social psychology exists in our daily life. When we make friends, when we argue with friends, how we live with people and relate with them, are all examples of social psychology. There are different study areas in social psychology and they are; prosocial behaviors, prejudice, discrimination and diversity, self and social behavior, social influence, cultural links, psychology of gender and violence, conflict resolution and peace. In this paper I will discuss prosocial behavior. Prosocial behavior is the opposite of anti-social behavior. While anti-social people will exclude themselves from the society, are selfish and don’t contribute much in conversations, prosocial people are philanthropic, obedient and cooperate with others. Prosocial behavior has been described as the phenomenon where people help each other, either willingly or with a hidden motive. Prosocial behavior should not be confused with altruism, which is...
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...Social influence occurs when one's emotions, opinions, or behaviors are affected by others.[1] Social influence takes many forms and can be seen in conformity, socialization, peer pressure, obedience, leadership, persuasion, sales, and marketing. In 1958, Harvard psychologist, Herbert Kelman identified three broad varieties of social influence.[2] 1. Compliance is when people appear to agree with others, but actually keep their dissenting opinions private. 2. Identification is when people are influenced by someone who is liked and respected, such as a famous celebrity. 3. Internalization is when people accept a belief or behavior and agree both publicly and privately. Morton Deutsch and Harold Gerard described two psychological needs that lead humans to conform to the expectations of others. These include our need to be right (informational social influence), and our need to be liked (normative social influence).[3] Informational influence (or social proof) is an influence to accept information from another as evidence about reality. Informational influence comes into play when people are uncertain, either because stimuli are intrinsically ambiguous or because there is social disagreement. Normative influence is an influence to conform to the positive expectations of others. In terms of Kelman's typology, normative influence leads to public compliance, whereas informational influence leads to private acceptance. [edit] Types Social Influence is a broad term...
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...reality in a systematic and controlled manner and evaluate the validity of their ideas based on observations. Objectivity plays the role of a reality check while subjectivity makes us set our priorities for research. The sociological approach to improving human welfare is based on the idea that the relations we have with other people create opportunities for us to think and act but also set limits on our thoughts and actions. Accordingly, we can better understand that what we are and what we can become by studying the social relations that help shape us. FOR EXAMPLE: even the most personal issues can be studied using a sociological approach Suicide could have been seen as an anti-social act caused by psychological distress but Durkheim studied it from a sociological perspective correlating it to “social solidarity”, how frequently people interact with others and share their beliefs, values and morals. Social forces then determine the likelihood to commit suicide. Sociologists use the sociological approach to identify: 1) A behavior that they are interested in 2) Social forces that influence that behavior 3) The larger institutional, political, etc – changes that improve human welfare with respect to that behavior CHAPTERS TO READ: * SIQ (Society in Question) Chapter 1 * Chapter 1 in NS (New Society) FOCUS ON THESE SECTIONS IN CHAPTER 1 OF NS * The...
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...Social behavior Lecture - 11 Reference; Chapter 16, Essentials of Psychology by Coon What Is Social Psychology ? • Scientific studies of how individuals behave, think, and feel in social situations; how people act in the presence (actual or implied) of others • Need to Affiliate: Desire to associate with other people; appears to be a basic human trait. • Experiment contd Experiment • We may conclude - „Misery loves company‟ • Later experiment – women expected to be shocked were given choice to wait with shock victims, others or alone. • In short „misery loves miserable company‟ • In General – We prefer to be with people in circumstances similar to our own Social Comparison and Attraction • Social Comparison: Making judgments about ourselves by comparing ourselves to others (e.g., comparing our feelings and abilities to those of other people) • Group membership fills needs for Social Comparison. • Compared notes after exam. • Example-Tennis player Interpersonal Attraction • Social attraction to another person. • Birds of a feather flock together, opposites attract • What does attract people to each other? Basically, we look for friends who are kind and understanding; have attractive personality, and who like us in return, and some other obvious factors Interpersonal Attraction • Physical Proximity: Physical nearness to another person in terms of housing, school, work place. – Closer people live to each other, more likely they are to become...
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...Chapter Overview 16.1 Social Thought and Behavior Groups Core Social Motives CONCEPT LEARNING CHECK 16.1 Describing 16.3 Attribution: The Person or the Situation? Fundamental Attribution Error Actor-Observer Bias Defensive Attribution Self-Serving Bias Social Roles 16.2 Person Perception Social Categorization Physical Appearance Stereotypes Subjectivity Culture and Person Perception CONCEPT LEARNING CHECK 16.3 Explaining Attributional Biases 16.4 Attitudes and Social Judgments Components of Attitudes Relieving Cognitive Dissonance Influencing Attitudes: Persuasion The Foot-in-the-Door Technique Role Playing Affects Attitudes CONCEPT LEARNING CHECK 16.2 Person Perception and Musical Tastes Culture and Attitudes CONCEPT LEARNING CHECK 16.4 Explaining Persuasion 16 Learning Objectives Social Psychology 16.1 16.2 16.3 16.4 16.5 16.6 16.7 Define social psychology. Compare and contrast social cognition, social influence, and social norms. Describe the core social motives. Illustrate social categorization. Discuss how stereotypes and subjectivity impact personal perception. Explain the various types of attribution. Describe the components of attitudes. Illustrate the different ways to influence attitudes. Differentiate between conformity, obedience, and compliance. Describe the biological, psychological, and sociocultural aspects of prejudice, aggression, and attraction. Discuss the pros and cons of group influence on an individual...
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...animal Books by Elliot Aronson Theories of Cognitive Consistency (with R. Abelson et al.), 1968 Voices of Modern Psychology, 1969 The Social Animal, 1972, 1976, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1995, 1999, 2004; (with J. Aronson), 2008 Readings About the Social Animal, 1973, 1977, 1981, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1995, 1999, 2004; (with J. Aronson), 2008 Social Psychology (with R. Helmreich), 1973 Research Methods in Social Psychology (with J. M. Carlsmith & P. Ellsworth), 1976 The Jigsaw Classroom (with C. Stephan et al.), 1978 Burnout: From Tedium to Personal Growth (with A. Pines & D. Kafry), 1981 Energy Use: The Human Dimension (with P. C. Stern), 1984 The Handbook of Social Psychology (with G. Lindzey), 3rd ed., 1985 Career Burnout (with A. Pines), 1988 Methods of Research in Social Psychology (with P. Ellsworth, J. M. Carlsmith, & M. H. Gonzales), 1990 Age of Propaganda (with A. R. Pratkanis), 1992, 2000 Social Psychology, Vols. 1–3 (with A. R. Pratkanis), 1992 Social Psychology: The Heart and the Mind (with T. D. Wilson & R. M. Akert), 1994 Cooperation in the Classroom: The Jigsaw Method (with S. Patnoe), 1997 Nobody Left to Hate: Teaching Compassion After Columbine, 2000 Social Psychology: An Introduction (with T. D. Wilson & R. M. Akert), 2002, 2005, 2007 The Adventures of Ruthie and a Little Boy Named Grandpa (with R. Aronson), 2006 Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me) (with C. Tavris), 2007 Books by Joshua Aronson Improving Academic Achievement, 2002 The Social Animal To...
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...Research with human subjects has a long and often troubled history in the United States (U.S.) and throughout the world. Chances are you already have heard of some of the most egregious and well-known examples of unethical research in the biomedical sciences, such as the experiments conducted by Nazi doctors and scientists on concentration camp prisoners during World War II, and the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) study titled "Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male" (Tuskegee Study). These abuses led to the creation of codes of research ethics in Europe and the U.S. In the wake of the Second World War, the subsequent Nuremberg Trials on war crimes produced the Nuremberg Code, which outlined ten points for conducting ethical research with human subjects. Nearly two decades later, the World Medical Association (WMA) developed a code of research ethics known as the Declaration of Helsinki, published in 1964 and subsequently revised. This document is built on both the Nuremberg Code and the physician's code of ethics known as the Declaration of Geneva. In the U.S., news that researchers deceived and withheld treatment from subjects who suffered from syphilis in the Tuskegee Study led to the creation of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research (National Commission or "the Commission"). The Commission was charged with establishing a code of research ethics for U.S. research involving human subjects. In 1979...
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...word ing general principles and researching specific cases,[3][4] psychology in English was by Steven Blankaart in 1694 and by many accounts it ultimately aims to benefit in The Physical Dictionary which refers to “Anatomy, society.[5][6] In this field, a professional practitioner or which treats the Body, and Psychology, which treats of researcher is called a psychologist and can be classified the Soul.”[12] as a social, behavioral, or cognitive scientist. Psychologists attempt to understand the role of mental functions in individual and social behavior, while also exploring the physiological and biological processes that underlie cognitive functions and behaviors. 2 History Psychologists explore concepts such as perception, cognition, attention, emotion, intelligence, Main article: History of psychology phenomenology, motivation, brain functioning, The study of psychology in a philosophical context dates personality, behavior, and interpersonal relationships, including psychological resilience, family resilience, and other areas. Psychologists of diverse orientations also consider the unconscious...
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