What the College Board is looking for: In this section, students first learn how the structure and function of a given group may affect the behavior of the group as a unit (as in the case of group polarization) or the behavior of the individual group member (as in the case of deindividuation).
Students then learn the basic concepts of social cognition. One of these is attribution, the ways in which individuals form judgements about other individual's behavior and about their own. Attributions of behavior are a blend of situational and dispositional factors. The influence of stereotypes on attributions of behavior is also considered. Students learn that attitudes are relatively stable beliefs and feelings that individuals may have about controversial political issues, other social groups, or other individuals. Prejudice, for example, is an unjustified attitude toward a given group or its cultural mores.
Students are also exposed to classic studies dealing with the concepts of conformity, compliance, and obedience and learn how findings in the laboratory setting can shed light on everyday behavior. For example, students discover from Milgram's classic study on obedience that people may defer to a perceived authority figure on a decision as important as one involving life and death. Students also learn about the etiology and expression of aggressive/antisocial behavior and its impact on both the aggressor and the targets of the aggression.
Social Influence: Conformity and Obedience
Conformity: A social influence that causes people to change their behavior as a result of real or imagined group pressure. This occurs because our own preferences become less important than fulfilling the expectations of others.
Milgram Study: The great study of Social Psychology! Performed like a play, with everything scripted, and proped. Designated subjects as "teachers" and an unthreatening Irish man as a "learner". The subject was to shock the "learner" each time they got a word association question incorrect. The only pressure placed on the subject to continue the shocking was the instructions of Stanley Milgram a professor at Yale University. The subjects had been previously shocked at 95 volts, so they were aware of the pain, however they didn't realize they weren't really shocking the confederate. A picture of the shock apparatus below shows the electracution range. It is important to note that 65% of subjects went all the way up to 450 volts!
The Asch Study: Enter a room with seven other subjects, supposedly taking part in an experiment on visual discrimination. Standing at the front of the room is a man holding up one card with three lines and another with one line. All asked which line on card "A" is same length as card "B". The first six say A; you say A; then the last says A! But wait, the correct answer was B! 75% of subjects gave into the wrong anwers.
Foot in the door Phenomenon: a tendency for people who agree to a small request to comply later to a larger one.
Social Facilitation: stronger performance in the presence of others. Only if the task is easy or you are well skilled at it.
Social Loafing: tendency for people in a group to exert less effort when pooling their efforts toward attaining a common goal than when individually accountable.
Deindividuation: loss of self awareness and self restraint. Abondoning normal restraint to power of the group.
Groupthink: The mode of thinking that occurs when the desire for harmony is a decision making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives.
Group Polarization: the enhancement of a groups prevailing attitudes through discussion within the group
Bystander Effect: the tendency to assume that someone else wil respond and act. AKA diffusion of responsibility
Attribution: Explaining Other's Behavior
Attribution are the principles people follow in making judgements about the causes of events, others' behavior, and their own behavior. If you conclude that people behave because of their own personal characteristics, motives, and intentions, you would be making a dispositional attribution. If you decide that people make choices in response to situational demands and environmental pressures, you would be making a situational attribution. The two major errors we make when forming our attributions are the fundamental attribution error and self-serving bias.
1. Fundamental attribution error: misjudging the causes of others' behavior because of overestimating internal personal factors and underestimating external situational influences. This is basically blaming the person. You overlook and underestimate the power of the environment. Ex. students, because I look relaxed and I lecture all the time, may think I am extroverted and then be suprised to see me outside of the classroom introverted and shy.
2. Self-serving bias: a way of maintaining a positive self-image by taking credit for one's success and emphasizing external causes for one's failures. It is motivated by a desire to maintain our self-esteem. Ex. do well on a test, take personal credit; fail a test, blame it on others
Attitudes: Our Learned Predisposition Toward Others
Attitude: a learned predisposition to respond cognitively, and behaviorally to a particular object. Attitude has three components: cognitive, affective, and behavioral. Cognitive: "Marijuana is as safe as alcohol." or "the dangers of marijuana are greatly underestimated." Affective: the emotional component, such as frustration that our legal system has not legalized marijuana or conversely, that it seems to even consider legislation. Behavioral: a predisposition to act in certain ways toward an attitude object. Ex. Positive attitude of marijuana; write books, smoke out Negative attitude of marijuana; write complaints and help teach others to avoid.