Social Psychology

Social Psychology is divided three area:

• Social Influence,
• Social Cognition,
• Social Interaction.

Social Influence

• Conformity,
• Compliance,
• Obedience

The presence of other people interactions each others and influences on the others' behavior, thoughts, or feeling.

1. Conformity

changing one's own behavior to more closely match the actions of others

1) Asch's Classic studey on conformity
In his study, if a lot of people give more information for a person to decide something, he can change and match his own behavior or thoughts to others

• gender: Male are less matching to others than female

2) Groupthink

Thinking for a group, in which people feel it is more important to maintain the group's cohesiveness than to consider the facts more realistically, is called groupthink.

(1) Characteristics of Groupthink

• invulnerability
• rationalzaton
• lack of intrspection
• stereotyping
• pressure
• lack of disagreement
• self-deception
• insularity

2. Compliance

to change others' behaviors, feelings, and thoughts as a result of another or group asking or directing them to change.

• FOOT-IN-THE-DOOR TECHNIQUE
• DOOR-IN-THE-FACE TECHNIQUE
• LOWBALL TECHNIQUE
• THAT'S-NOT-ALL TECHNIQUE

3. Obedience

• to change others' behaviors, feelings, and thoughts at the direct order of an authority figure.

1) Milgram's study

• Milgram's shocking research: a huge effect of obedience to authority
• foot in the door technique
• damaged the self-esteem and serous psychological stress

4. Social Facilitation and Social Loafing

• the positive influence- social facilitation
• the negative influence- social impairment

For an example, a soccer player's just going to shoot in the goal for PK in front of a lot of people.

• If he practiced many times for it, a lot of people is good for him to shoot (social facilitation).
• If he didn't practiced at all, they is not good for him to shoot(social impairment)

5. Social Loafing

If a lazy person tends not to work well when he is working with others, which is called social loafing. However, when he is working alone, he can work well.

Social Interaction 3 - Aggression and Prosocial Behavior

Social Interaction 3- Aggression and Prosocial Behavior

The cause of aggression

• frustration, pain
• genetics: the lymbic system, especially the amygdala
• chemical influence: testesterone and serotonin
• alcohol
• learning aggression

1. Aggression and Biology

1) The Amygdala

• memory and resonse of fear
• to trigger aggressive responses
• to damage the amygdala: aggression

2) Chemical influence

• high level of testosterone, low level of serotonin

3) Alcohol

• make aggression
• to act as an inhibition of serotonin and decrease the serotonin

2. Social Learning Theory

In social learning theory for aggression, aggression is learned by watching aggressive models (Bandura), two imoprtant evidences are studied:

• Social role
• watching aggression

1) The Power of Social Roles

• the pattern of behavior that is expected of a preson who is in a paritcular social position
• Zimbardo's study: a participant of a guard role of the prison tended to do aggressively to others of prisoner roles of the prison.
• the guard, army, police and etc

2) Violence in the media and aggression

• social learning theory by Bandura
• watching aggression through the media such as a movie or TV.
• Violent videogame

2. Prosocial Behavior

Prosocial behavior is one of the social interactions: a person helps someone in the emergency without any expectation of reward.

• Altruism
• Bystander Effect
• Diffusion of responsibility
• Five decisio pointsin helping behavior

1) Altruism

A person see someone almost drowned in the water, and then decide to help him without any expectation of reward, Which is called altruism.

• cause: genetics
• in the emergency: helper/bystander

2) Five Decision Points in helpong behavior

• Noticing
• Defining an Emergency
• Taking responsibility
• Planning a course of action
• Taking action

3) Bystander and diffusion of responsibility

In the case of Kitty Genovese, there are 38 "bystanders" at the windows of the apartment and none of them helped her, which is called bystander effect. That is because the presence of other people interfere to take responsibility and then fail to help. That is to say, most of them think there're a lot of people to help her even if I don't help her, which is the diffusion of responsibility.

Social Interaction 1 - Prejudice & Discrimination

Prejudice & Discrimination

• The difference between prejudice and discrimination
• Types of Prejudice and Discrimination
• Learning to Prejudice
• Overcome Prejudice

1. The Difference between prejudice and discrimination

• Prejudice: an unsupported and negative attitude about the members of a particular social group, a kind of attitude
• Discrimination: to treat differently than others in situation that call for equal treatment, a kind of behavior with prejudice
• Discrimination as a behavior can be controlled and eliminated, but it is hard to remove the prejudice because that is a kind of attitude

2. Types of Prejudice and Discrimination

1) In-groups/ Out-groups:

Once a concept of in or out-group is formed, the members in the in-group tend to form the prejudice and discrimination soon

2) The realistic conflict theory:

• The prejudice and discrimination cause the degree of conflict between in and out group depending on the degree of the prejudice and discrimination.
• Ex) the conflict between the early Crusaders and the Muslims

3) Scapegoating

• When a member or members of the in-group frustrates and has a negative emotion, he or they try to find the target to cope with the frustration or a negative emotion. The target is mainly a member or members of the out-group. The member as the target is called a scapegoat and this behavior is called scapegoating. Especially, in some scapegoating such as a rioting, the people of the least power to resist are taken attack although they are not responsible for the frustration or the negetive emotion.
• Ex) the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles, California, 1992.

3. Learning to Prejudice

1) Social Idenity Theory

• Social Categorization: the reference group is needed to compare
• Social Identity: identify the in and out-group
• Social Comparison: to improve one's own self-esteem, Festinger(1957), "Well, at least I'm better off than that person."

2) Stereotype Vulnerability(Steele, 1992, 1997)

• When a person in out-group recognizes that he or members in his group are treated in sterotyped way by others, he feels anxious and is influenced on his behavior negatively.
• Ex) In the IQ test, if a person of out-group was told the goal of the test is to compare with another of in-group, he feels discomfort and will get lower score than another of in-group.

4. Overcomeing Prejudice

The best way against is education.

1) Equal Status Contact(Sherif, 1961)

• Robber's Cave

2) The Jigsay Classroom

• collect and share the information with other member who has the other information to resolve the problem together

Social Cognition 2-Impression & Attribution

Social Cognition 2- Impression Formation and Attribution
1. Impression Formation
When you meet another for the first time, you will have the first opportunity to think and determine who he is. In your brain, the impression formation is formed about him.

• Social Categorization
• Implict Personality Theories

1) Social Categorization

For the impression formation, the information about a new person is categorised automatically and unconsciously.

Sometimes, this social categorization can make problems such as the following:

• Stereotype
• To resolve the stereotype, understand the sterotype and think carefully.

2) Implicit Personality Theories

You can organiae schemas such as categorising certain types of people. This schemas helps you to remember the people. The schemas can be stereotyped when you don't understand and have any experience with others. For an example, if you catergorize some types of people depending on the skin color.

2. Attribution

Attribution refers to the way to explain causes of one's behavior. For an example, you alway say he is a good guy because he showed you good manners or he has a lot of money.

• Situational cause
• Dispositional cause

1) Situational cause

If someone tends to explain cause of one's behavior from external causes such as the weather, traffic, or enviroment, it is said to be a situational cause.

• ex) When you tend to explain cause of your behavior from the situational cause, you always say to the teacher in this way, "I was late because the traffic was terrible".

2) dispositional cause

The cause of behavior is within the individual or internal cause.

• ex) When you tend to explain cause of your behavior from within the individual, the dispositional cause, you always say to the teacher in this way, "You're a great teacher because you're very kind and friendly to me".

3) Fundamental Attribution Error

tendency:

• overestimate the dispositional cause
• underestimate the situational cause

4) Strategies to reduce the attribution error

• Notice how many other people are doing the same thing- one: the dispositional cause, many numbers: the situational cause
• Think what are you doing in the same situation- If a lot of people behave in the same way, the cause of behavior is in the situational cause.

Attitudes

Attitude

1. The ABC Model of Attitude
2. Formation of Attitude
3. Cognitive Dissonance

Attitude

: is defined as a tendency to respond to the other person, idea, object, and situation

: Attitude can cause a person to predict the others' attitude, but sometimes, this predictation is wrong depending on the environment, or specificity. For examples, a poor person knows non-organic fruit is good for health and he always says about that. Therefore, you can predict his behavior or attitude, to buy and eat non-organic food. However, this food is expensive. He can't alway buy it. In addition, in the teacher's position, he always says to the students in his class don't spit on the ground. Therefore, you can predict his attitude of public manner. Can you predict he always obeys the public manner?

1. The ABC Model of Attitude

According to Eagly & Chaiken, 1993, 1998, attitudes are consisted of three components: the affective component, behavior component, and cognitive component (Ciccarelli, et al., 2005).

1) Affective component

Affective componet is a kind of emotional component, such as feeling good or bad.

2) Cognitive component

Cognitive component is the way of thinking about others.

2) Behavior component

Behavior component is to behave for something based on t both the affective and cogntive or either.

For an example, when you meet a person at the first time, you can feel attractive to him, which is called the affective component, and then you think he is very good, which is called the cognitive component. In addition, if you want to make good relationship with him and show him to do friendly, that is called the behavior component.

2. Attitude Formation

• direct contact
• direct instruction
• interaction with others
• vicarious contitioning (observational learning)

1)Direct Contact

For an example, when a person dislike a tomato from his chilhood, he can dislike it in adult.

2) Direct instruction

He learned a tomato is good for health from his parent, so he tries to eat it.

3) Interaction with others

If his parents have an attitude tomatos are good for health, you can be influenced on your attitude.

4) Vicarious conditioning (Obeservational Learning)

His parents always eat many tomatos, and he watched it from his childhood. To watch his parents behavior can lead him to recognise tomatos good for health althouth they didn't say to him tomatos are good for health and you should eat tomatos for your health.

3. Attitude Change: Persuation.

Persuation is to change a person's attitude through discussion, argument, or explanation. That is different from compliance and obedience. The compliance is to change his attitude by asking him to change directly without any authority or power of the authority, and the obedience is to change his attitude with the authority or power of the authority.

1) The factors of the persuation

• Source
• Message
• Target Audience

2) The elaboration likelihood model of persuation (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986)

• the central- route processing
• the peripheral-route processing

(1) The central route processing

If a person tends to concentrate on the content of the message, which is called the central route processing.

(2) The peripheral route processing

If he tends just to concentrate on the external cues of the message such as the length of message, which is called the peripheral route processing.

4. Cognitive Dissonance

According to Festinger, 1957, when attitudes and behavior clash, a person feels an emotioal discomfort such as upset, and then he tries to change his behavior or attitude to remove his discomfort, which is called the cognitive dissonance.

• Change the conflicting behavior to match a person's attitude
• Change the conflicting attitude new attitude to justify
• Form the new attitued to justify

For an example, you have an attitude toward smoking that is harmful and you have to stop. Someday, you find yourself to smoke again when you have a terrible stress and you are getting angry to yourself. To remove your upset, you can chose the following:

• First, you stop smoking right now (Change the conflicting behavior to match a person's attitude).
• Second, you justify yourself smoking is needed to you because you have a big stress (Change the conflicting attitude new attitude to justify).
• Third, you decide to smoke lighter cigarettes (Form the new attitued to justify).

The weaker attitude tends to make the cognitive dissonance, the stronger one tends to hold in the same way.

Social Congintion 2 - Interpersonal Attraction

Social Congintion 2 - Interpersonal Attraction ("PSYCHOLOGY" by Ciccarelli, et al., 2005)



Interpersonal attraction, such as liking and loving, is very important elements that influenced on a person's behavior.

• The Rules of Attraction
• Robert Sternberg's Triangular Theory of Love
• Aggression
• The Power of Social Roles
• Prosocial Behavior

1. The Rules of Attraction

1) Physical Attractiveness:

When a person see the other person at the first time, physical appearance is one of the main factors that he/she makes a relationship with the other ( Eagly et al., 1991; Feingold, 1992; White,1980).

2) Proximity

The proximity refers to a person's physical closeness and repeated exposure to the other person.

3) Similarity

The physical atrractiveness and proximity don't guarantee to keep a lone-term relationship. The similarity, however, can more make sense of a long-term relationship when a person and other people share the similiar or same attitudes and thoughts, which is called the similarity.

4) Complementary attractiveness

When a person feels a complementary emotion to the opposite people, he feels the attractiveness.

5) Reciprocity

The reciprocity is very powerful way when a person feel the attract with the other people (Curtis & Miller, 1986).

For examples, the other person feels the attraction to a person, he make the person friendly. His friendly behavior influences on the person behavior. The person is getting him friendly. However, if the person has a low self-esteem, he is supposed to doubt the other person's motives and then is getting the other person unfriendly. This reciprocity influences on interpersonal relationship (Murray, et al., 1998).

2. Robert Sternberg's Triangular Theory of Love

Fig. 1 ( retrieved from Wikipedia, Feb 11, 08)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Triangular_Theory_of_Love.gif

According to Sternberg (1986, 1988, 1997), there're three components of love: intimacy, passion, and commitment.

• Intimacy


• Passion


• Commitment
  

1) Intimacy

When a person meets with the other people and feels attract to the other for the first time, he wants to make the closeness with him.

2) Passion

Passion is the physical aspect of love. However, Passion is not simply sex; holding hands, loving looks and hugs can all be forms of passion.

3) Commitment

Commitment is the decisions one makes a relation for a long time such as a marriage.

2-1. The Love Triangles

Sternberg said "Love combined at least two of love components is maintaining longer and stronger than love based on one of love components."

1) Romantic Love

When the intimacy and passion are combined together, that is called romantic love.

2) Compaionate Love

When the intimacy and commitment are combined together, that is called companionate love.

3) Fatuous Love

When the passion and commitment are combined together, that is called fatuous love.

• Consummate Love: When all the love components are combined together, that is called consummate love: Intimacy + Passion + Commitment.
• In the western culture, when a person fall in love, he begins the intimacy, liking, becomes the romantic love and then the commitment is added to maintain a relationship longer: Liking -> physical touch including a sex -> marriage.