Introducing Social Psychology

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1 Introducing Social Psychology Colin Fraser and Brendan Burchell Dale Hay and Gerard Duveen Polity

2 Contents List of Contributors xix Preface xxi Acknowledgements xxiii I A Brief I SodaHmJivMual 2 Personality and the Self 9 3 Cognition and Social Behaviour 34 4 Emotion 56 5 Language and Communication 76 Social Interaction and Relationships 6 The Development of Social Relationships 7 Interpersonal Relationships 8 Interaction in Groups 9 Altruism and Aggression 10 The Development of Moral Reasoning Perceiving and Understanding People Attitudes and Actions Attitude Organization and Change Social Representations 268

3 vi Contents PART IV Social Issues 289] 15 Prejudice and Intergroup Relations 16 The World of Paid Work 17 Health and Illness 18 Social Psychology and Policy PART V The Nature of Social Psychology 38 Ij 19 Research Methods 20 The Nature of Social Psychology Glossary Picture Credits References Name Index Subject Index M..

4 Detailed Chapter Contents 1 A Brief Colin Fraser A definition of social psychology The organization of this book Part 1 Part II Part III Part IV PartV The Social Individual Social Interaction and Relationships Understanding the Social World Social Issues The Nature of Social Psychology PART 1 The Social Individual 2 Personality and the Self David Good Traits, types and individual differences The beginnings in everyday speech Taxonomy, factor analysis and assessment The uses of assessment Consistency and the situationist critique Prospect Freud and the psychoanalytic tradition A classical cast 9 9 II

5 viii Detailed Chapter Contents A classic, but is it relevant? 26 The self 27 George Herbert Mead 29 Social identity and self<ategorization 31 The merely social self? Cognition and Social Behaviour 34 David Good 34 Perception 35 Ambiguity 36 Top-down and bottom-up 38 Memory and meaning 38 Effort after meaning 39 Autobiographical memory 40 Recovered memories? 42 Information or connections? 43 Judgement and reasoning 44 Availability heuristic 45 Representativeness heuristic 46 Anchoring and adjustment heuristic 47 Confirmation bias 47 Universality and specificity 48 Situated cognition 48 Do they think like us? 50 The evolved social mind 52 Autism: a cognitive and social deficit Emotion 56 David Good \ 56

6 Detailed Chapter Contents ix The intrapersonal side of emotion The beginning: William James William, Cannon Stanley Schachter The interpersonal side of emotion Darwinian beginnings Paul Ekman Facial feedback Cross<ultural differences Empathy Why do we have emotions? Emotional pathologies Psychopathy Schizophrenia Depression Language and Communication David Good Three basic properties Variation Indeterminacy Reflection The structure of human communication The structure of language and conversation The structure of non-vocal communication Summary Gender, language and interaction Gendered speech Sexist language?

7 x Detailed Chapter Contents PART II Social Interaction and Relationships 6 The Development of Social Relationships Dale Hay The emergence of interaction Readiness for interaction Mutuality in infancy The beginnings of cooperation and conflict Links between early social experiences and later social relations Attachment theory Measuring the security of attachment Effects of early experience: a gradient of privation Others than mother Fathers Siblings Peers MO Interpersonal Relationships Robert Hinde What is a relationship? Interactions and relationships The self-system Levels of complexity Describing relationships Dimensions of interpersonal relationships Content of interactions Diversity of interactions Qualities of interactions Relative frequency and patterning of interactions Reciprocity in interactions Complementarity in interactions Conflict Power /I*

8 Detailed Chapter Contents xi Self-disclosure 130 Interpersonal perception 130 Satisfaction with the relationship 131 Commitment 132 The dynamics of relationships 133 Individual characteristics " 133 Dissonance and balance 133 Attribution 134 Exchange and interdependence theories 134 Attachment 135 Positive and negative feedback 136 Social and other extra-dyadic issues 136 The diversity and complexity of relationships Interaction in Groups 140 Colin Fraser 140 What is a group? 140 How small is'small'? 141 Defining characteristics 142 Describing social influence processes in groups 143 Norms I43 Norm formation 144 Maintaining norms through majority influence 145 Changing norms through minority influence 147 Group decision-making and group polarization 149 Groupthink 151 Explaining social influence in groups 152 Social comparison processes 153 The law of social impact 153 Normative and informational social influence processes 154 Self<ategorization theory ,H

9 xii Detailed Chapter Contents 9 Altruism and Aggression 162 Abigail Buckle 162 Problems of definition I63i Are people genuinely altruistic? 165 The majority view: helpers profit from helping 165 The dissenters' view: helping for the sake of helping 166 The social context of helping 167 Why do people not help? 167 The presence of other bystanders 169 Who helps? ~ 170 Mood and helpfulness 171 Gender differences 172 The altrustic personality 173 Encouraging long-term helpfulness 174 Non-spontaneous helping: researching voluntary work 175 Helping people with AIDS 175 Future directions 177 Theories of aggression 178 Aggression as coercion 179 Power and dominance 179 Impression management 181 The cognitive neoassodationist view 181 Assessment of the theories 183 Individual differences 183 Institutional violence 186 Deindividuation and aggression 186 Aggression and dehumanization 187 Obedience and aggression 187 Genocide 189 Hard times 189 The continuum of destruction 189 Evaluation of Staub's analysis 189 Summary 190 w 1)1,

10 Detailed Chapter Contents xiii PART III Understanding the Social World 10 The Development of Moral Reasoning Patrick Leman Learning morality from others Social learning theories Parents and moral development Society and morality Piaget's theory The rules of the game Heteronomy and autonomy Social relations Cognitive-developmental theory Kohlberg's theory The logic of moral development Moral and conventional rules Moral development in a cultural context Culture and morality Women's moral voice II Perceiving and Understanding People 216 Brendan Burchell 216 Simple impression formation 217 Attribution theories 218 Biases in attributions 221 The fundamental attribution error 221 The actor-observer error 222 Motivational biases 224 Other critiques of attribution models 226 Memory and recall for information about people 227 Categorizing people 229 Other knowledge structures used in person perception and categorization 230

11 xiv Detailed Chapter Contents The outcomes of person perception Attitudes and Actions Colin Fraser Might attitudes be irrelevant? Conceptions of attitudes One component Two components Three components Zero components Attitudes, actions and behaviour Are attitudes and behaviour unrelated? The theory of reasoned action The theory of planned behaviour. Attitude accessibility Self-monitoring and personality differences Attitude Organization and Change Colin Fraser The emergence of interest in attitude change Attitude organization as cognitive consistency A simple idea Festinger's Theory of Cognitive Dissonance A reformulation of dissonance theory Methods of attitude change other than persuasion Theories of attitude change McGuire's information processing model Greenwald's cognitive-response model Systematic and heuristic processing The elaboration likelihood model

12 Detailed Chapter Contents xv The heuristic-systematic model Attitude change or behaviour change? 14 Social Representations Gerard Duveen Characteristics of social representations The dynamics of social representations Reified and consensual universes The development of social representations of gender Social representations as organizations of meanings PART IV Social Issues 15 Prejudice and Intergroup Relations Colin Fraser The commonness of prejudice Definition of terms ~) Four types of theories Psychodynamic theories Freud's theory The authoritarian personality Cognitive analyses Acquisition theories Socialization analyses A social<ognitive developmental theory Intergroup theories Realistic group conflict theory Tajfel's social identity theory

13 xvi Detailed Chapter Contents Some conclusions from the theories What can be done? 312 Implications of the theories for change 312 Empirical evidence: the contact hypothesis The World of Paid Work 317 Colin Fraser and Brendan Burchell 317 Why do we work? 318 What might employees get from their jobs? 319 What do employees get from their jobs? 324 Surveys of job satisfaction 324 Indirect questions in surveys of job satisfaction 328 Methods of increasing job satisfaction 329 Job satisfaction and performance 331 The psychological effects of unemployment 334 Unemployment and psychological health: the evidence 334 Why does unemployment affect psychological well-being? 336 Environmental vitamins and latent functions 336 Personal agency 337 Unemployment, poverty and social exclusion 338 The psychological health of dependants of unemployed people L I 17 Health and Illness 342 Fraser Watts and Nicola Morant 342 Social psychological perspectives on health and illness 343 The social distribution of illness 344 Women and depression 345» Social distribution of schizophrenia 348 Predisposing factors 348

14 Detailed Chapter Contents xvii Childhood experiences and adult depression Dimensions of personality as predisposing factors Life events Depression Schizophrenia Social support Marital and family interactions Depression Schizophrenia Social integration and public attitudes Lay notions of illness Social Psychology and Policy David Halpern Objectives: what are we trying to achieve? Understanding social processes: the example of social capital Making judgements: if not rational, then what? The problem of individual differences in ability PARTY The Nature of Social Psycholoj 19 Research Methods Brendan Burchell So, what exactly is an experiment? Experimenter effects Demand characteristics The radical critiques of experimentation Field experiments and quasi-experiments MM

15 xviii Detailed Chapter Contents Surveys and interviewing people 392 Survey designs 394 Observation 395 Other methods 397 Quantification 398 Ethics 399 The research process 399 Research and theory 401 _ The Nature of Social Psychology 403 Colin Fraser < 403 A brief history of social psychology 403 An excursion into experimental psychology 404 Social psychology's immediate precursors 405 Influences from sociology and psychology 406 Critiques of scope and method 407 Alternative conceptions of social psychology 409 Broader and narrower views of social psychology Glossary 416 Picture Credits 439 References 440 Name Index 498 Subject Index 512

Introduction to Social Psychology p. 1 Introduction p. 2 What Is Social Psychology? p. 3 A Formal Definition p. 3 Core Concerns of Social Psychology

Preface p. xv Introduction to Social Psychology p. 1 Introduction p. 2 What Is Social Psychology? p. 3 A Formal Definition p. 3 Core Concerns of Social Psychology p. 3 Sociology, Psychology, or Both? p.