Behavior in Social

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Behavior in Social Cultural Context
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SOCIAL AND CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY

• Social psychologists
• Study how social roles, attitudes, relationships,
  and groups influence people to do things they
  would not necessarily do on their own.
• Cultural psychologists
• Study the origins of roles, attitudes, and group
  norms in peoples ethnic, regional, and national
  communities.

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Roles and Rules

• Norms
• Rules about how people are supposed to act.
• Roles
• Positions in society that are regulated by norms
  about how people in those positions should
  behave.

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Milgrams Obedience Study

• Method
• Subjects thought they were in an experiment about
  the effect of punishment on learning, and were
  instructed to give increasing levels of shock to
  another subject every time an error was made.
• No one received shocks, but the subjects did not
  know this.

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Milgrams Obedience Study

• Results
• Every subject administered at least one shock to
  the learner.
• Two-thirds obeyed the experimenter and gave all
  the levels of shock, even though they thought the
  victim was in pain.
• Many subjects were visibly upset by being asked
  to administer shocks, but continued anyway.

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Milgrams Obedience Study

• Subsequent studies examined conditions for
  disobedience.
• Nothing the victim said or did decreased the
  subjects compliance.
• Participants were more likely to disobey orders
  when
• The experimenter left the room.
• The victim was in the room with the subject, and
  the subject had to administer the shock directly
  to the victim.
• Two experimenters issued conflicting demands.
• An ordinary person, not an authority figure,
  issued commands.
• The participant worked with peers who refused to
  go further.

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Milgrams Obedience Study

• Conclusions
• Obedience is a function of the situation, not of
  personality.
• The nature of the relationship to authority
  influences obedience.

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Stanford Prison Study (Zimbardo)

• Method
• College students were randomly assigned to the
  roles of prisoners or guards.
• No further instructions were given on how to
  behave.
• Results
• Some prisoners quickly became distressed,
  helpless, and panicky others became rebellious
  and angry.
• Half of the prisoners begged to be let out of the
  study after a few day.
• Guards acted like guards one-third became
  tyrannical.
• Guards seemed to enjoy their roles.
• Researchers terminated the study early, because
  they had not expected such a quick transformation
  from college student to prisoner or guard.
• Conclusions
• Researchers say peoples behavior depends in part
  on their roles.
• Situations can outweigh personality.

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Why People Obey

• In both studies subjects behaviors depended on
  their assigned roles.
• Factors that cause people to obey when they would
  rather not
• Legitimization of authority
• allows people to feel absolved of responsibility
  for their actions
• Routinization
• behavior becomes normalize
• Wanting to be polite
• people do not want to rock the boat or appear
  rude
• Entrapment
• obedience escalates through a commitment to a
  course of action

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SOCIAL INFLUENCES ON BELIEFS

• Social Cognition
• Area in social psychology concerned with social
  influences on thought, memory, perception, and
  other cognitive processes.

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Attributions

• Attribution theory
• Theory that people are motivated to explain their
  own and others behavior by attributing causes of
  that behavior to a situation or a disposition.
• Situational attributions
• Identify the cause of an action as something in
  the environment.
• Dispositional attributions
• Identify the cause of an action as something in
  the person, such as a trait or motive.
• Fundamental attribution error
• Tendency to overestimate personality factors and
  underestimate the influence of the situation when
  explaining someone elses behavior.
• More prevalent in Western cultures.

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Attributions

• Self-serving bias
• When explaining ones own behavior, people take
  credit for good actions and attribute the bad
  ones to the situation.
• Just-world hypothesis
• People have a need to believe the world is fair
  and that good people are rewarded and bad people
  are punished.
• This can lead to blaming the victim.
• Most human actions are determined by both the
  situation and personality.

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Attitudes

• Relatively stable opinions containing a cognitive
  element and an emotional element.
• Affected by many social and environmental
  influences
• Some arise from the characteristic attitudes of
  each generation.
• Events that occur when a person is between the
  ages of 16 to 24 appear to be critical for the
  formation of generational identity.
• Attitudes and behavior can affect each other.

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Cognitive Dissonance

• Uncomfortable feeling that occurs when two
  attitudes or an attitude and behavior are in
  conflict.
• To resolve the dissonance most people will change
  one of the attitudes.
• Usually people restore cognitive consistency by
  dismissing evidence that might otherwise throw
  their fundamental beliefs into question.

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Persuasion

• A form of social influence.
• It is the process of guiding people toward the
  adoption of an idea, attitude, or behavior by
  rational and symbolic (though not always logical)
  means.
• It is strategy of problem-solving relying on
  "appeals" rather than strength.

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Friendly Persuasion

• Repetition of information increases the
  likelihood it will be believed--called the
  validity effect
• Exposure to an argument from an attractive person
  is also persuasive.
• Pairing a message with something pleasant also
  increases persuasion.
• Fear
• Often causes people to resist arguments that are
  in their own best interest.
• May aid persuasion if the information produces
  moderate anxiety levels and if message provides
  information on how to avoid the danger.

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Coercive Persuasion (brainwashing)

• Involves the following processes
• The person is put under physical or emotional
  distress.
• The persons problems are defined in simplistic
  terms and simple answers are offered repeatedly.
• The leader offers unconditional love, acceptance,
  and attention.
• A new identity based on the group is created.
• The person is subjected to entrapment.
• The persons access to information is severely
  controlled.

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INDIVIDUALS IN GROUPS

• Conformity
• Taking action or adopting attitudes as a result
  of real or imagined pressures
• Aschs conformity study
• Judgment of line length--showed that many people
  will conform to incorrect judgments.
• Influences on conformity
• Prevailing social norms
• Culture
• Conformity increases when
• Others are people like us
• Number of people who disagree with the subject
  increases.

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Groupthink

• The tendency for all members of the group to
  think alike and suppress dissent.
• Occurs when the need for agreement overwhelms the
  need for the wisest decision.
• Symptoms of groupthink
• Illusion of invulnerability
• Self-censorship
• Direct pressure on dissenters to conform
• There is an illusion of unanimity

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Groupthink is less likely when

• Conditions explicitly encourage and reward the
  expression of doubt and dissent.
• Groups decision is based on majority rule rather
  than demand for unanimity.

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The Anonymous Crowd

• Diffusion of responsibility
• Tendency of individuals to fail to take action
  because they believe someone else will do so.
• Bystander apathy reflects diffusion of
  responsibility.

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Social Loafing

• Diffusion of responsibility in work groups
• Individuals slow down and let others work harder.
• Does not happen in all groups.
• Increases
• When members are not accountable for their work
• When working harder duplicates efforts
• When the work is uninteresting
• Declines
• With challenging work
• When each member has a different job

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Deindividuation

• Losing all awareness of individuality and sense
  of self.
• Increases under anonymous conditions.
• In anonymous situations, people are more likely
  to conform to the norms of the situation.

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Altruism and Dissent

• Altruism
• Willingness to take selfless/dangerous action on
  behalf of others.
• Factors that predict independent action and
  altruism
• The individual perceives the need for
  intervention or help.
• The individual decides to take responsibility.
• The individual decides that the costs of doing
  nothing outweigh the costs of getting involved.
• The individual has an ally the presence of
  another dissenter increases the likelihood of
  dissent.
• The individual becomes entrapped once initial
  steps have been taken, most people will increase
  their commitment.

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US VERSUS THEM GROUP IDENTITY

• Personal identity
• A sense of self that is based on our own unique
  traits and history.
• Social identities
• Aspects of our self-concepts that are based on
  nationality, ethnicity, religion, and social
  roles.
• Ethnic identity
• A persons identification with a racial or ethnic
  group.
• Many people face a dilemma of balancing ethnic
  identity (close affiliation with a religious or
  ethnic group) with acculturation (identifying
  with and feeling part of the dominant culture).

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Ethnic Identity and Acculturation

• Biculturalism/Integration
• Maintain ethnic identity incorporate majority
  culture.
• Assimilation
• Relinquish ethnic identity and adopt majority
  culture.
• Ethnic Separatism/Unassimilation
• Strong ethnic identity, weak acculturation.
• Withdrawal from majority cultures.
• Sometimes due to segregation.
• forced separation by large society
• Marginalized
• Lack of identification with booth ethnic and/or
  majority culture.

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Ethnocentrism

• The belief that ones own culture or ethnic group
  is superior.
• Generates us-them thinking

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Stereotypes

• Summary impression of a group in which all
  members of that group are viewed as sharing a
  common trait or traits.
• They help us quickly process new information,
  retrieve memories, and organize experience.
• Stereotypes lead to distortions of reality in
  three ways
• They accentuate differences between groups.
• They produce selective perception.
• They underestimate differences within other
  groups.

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PREJUDICE

• Consists of negative stereotype/s of a group and
  a strong emotional dislike of its members.

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Common Prejudices

• Racism
• Ethnocentrism
• Ageism
• Heterosexism
• Classism
• Elitism
• Ableism
• Anti-Semitism
• And many other

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Chauvinism

• Extreme and unreasoning partisanship on behalf of
  a group to which one belongs, especially when the
  partisanship includes hatred towards a rival
  group.
• A frequent contemporary use of the term in is
  male chauvinism, which refers to the belief that
  men are superior to women.

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• Homophobia
• Irrational fear of, aversion to, or
  discrimination against homosexuality.
• Xenophobia
• Irrational fear of, aversion to, or
  discrimination against foreigners or of people
  significantly different from oneself.

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Origins of Prejudice

• Psychological Functions
• Serve to ward off feelings of doubt, fear, and
  insecurity.
• Prejudice is a tonic for low self-esteem.
• Allow people to use target group as scapegoat.
• Social and cultural functions
• Social pressure to conform.
• Passed from generation to generation.
• Media influence.
• People use it to bond with others.
• Economic functions
• Justification of majority group in times of job
  competition.

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Reducing Conflict and Prejudice

• Both sides have equal status and economic
  standing.
• Both sides have opportunities to work and
  socialize together, formally and informally.
• Both sides have the moral, legal, and economic
  support of the authorities.
• Both sides cooperate in working toward a common
  goal.

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THE QUESTION OF HUMAN NATURE

• Bad people do bad things, but good people (in
  certain circumstances) also do bad things.
• The person in the situationthe eternal dialogue.
• I am the circumstance (José Ortega y Gasset,
  Spanish philosopher (1883-1955).