Social Psychology CHAPTER 14 CHAPTER OUTLINE

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1 CHAPTER 14 Social Psychology CHAPTER OUTLINE Social psychology is the scientific study of how people s thoughts and feelings influence their behavior toward others and how the behavior of others influences people s own thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Social cognition refers to the mental processes people use to perceive and react to others. I. SOCIAL INFLUENCES ON THE SELF How do we compare ourselves to others? We live in a personal and a social world affected by social and cultural environments. The selfconcept includes the thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about who we are and what characterizes us. Self-esteem consists of the judgments we make about our value as human beings. A. Social Comparison 1. Leon Festinger s theory of social comparison argues that self-evaluation is based on two types of questions: those that can be answered by objective measurements (e.g., height, weight) and those that cannot (e.g., artistic talent). When people lack objective ways to judge themselves, they evaluate themselves through comparisons with others. 2. Reference groups are the categories of people you feel you belong to and often compare yourself to. a) People sometimes choose to compare themselves to others who are not as good as they are a strategy called downward social comparison in an effort to protect self-esteem. b) People may also engage in upward social comparison, comparing themselves to others who are doing much better than they are. This may inspire them to improve, or they may protect self-esteem by believing the superior person is not in their reference group or by believing the ability is not that important. c) Relative deprivation is the sense that, when compared with others in your reference group, you are getting less than you deserve. B. Focus on Research: Self-Esteem and the Ultimate Terror Terror management theory is based on the notion that humans are the only creatures capable of thinking about the future, including their own death, and that they cope with the accompanying anxiety by developing self-protective psychological strategies. One strategy is to establish and maintain high self-esteem. What was the researchers question? Greenberg and colleagues asked whether high self-esteem would serve as a buffer against anxiety brought on by thoughts about death and pain. How did the researchers answer the question? Participants from North American universities went through one of three experiments that all followed a similar format. First, participants self-esteem was temporarily changed by false-feedback about their personality or intelligence. Half received positive feedback, and half received neutral feedback. Second, half the participants watched a film on death or pain

2 Chapter 14: Social Psychology 345 II. that was designed to provoke anxiety. Anxiety was measured by self-report and galvanic skin resistance (GSR), a measure of perspiration that reflects anxiety-related bodily arousal. What did the researchers find? In all three experiments, the self-reports and GSR measures showed that participants were significantly less upset by an anxiety-provoking experience if they first had esteem-building feedback about themselves. What do the results mean? The results support the idea that self-esteem can act as a buffer against anxiety. What do we still need to know? These experiments support one assumption of terror management theory, but more studies are needed to test other aspects of the theory. Also, the research had been done in North American individualistic cultures, where self-esteem is largely based on personal accomplishments. Although preliminary studies support the theory, more research needs to be done in collectivist cultures, where self-esteem tends to come from the performance and status of the groups to which people belong. C. Social Identity Theory 1. A personal identity is the set of characteristics that makes you unique. 2. Social identity is that part of the self-concept which consists of your beliefs about the groups to which you belong. Social identity leads you to feel pride when your groups succeeds and to engage in helpful behavior, but it also can lead you to think of situations in terms of us versus them. SOCIAL PERCEPTION Do we perceive people and objects in similar ways? Through social perception, people interpret information about others, form impressions of them, and draw conclusions about the reasons for their behavior. A. The Role of Schemas 1. The perception of people is similar to the perception of any object: We actively apply Gestalt principles and top-down processing, perceiving wholes and filling in gaps based on past experience and expectations. 2. Schemas mental representations that include beliefs and expectations about objects and people allow us to avoid perceiving each stimulus element separately, looking instead at meaningful patterns, and filling in missing information. a) Schemas influence what we pay attention to and remember about others. b) Schemas influence our judgment about the behavior of others. B. First Impressions 1. First impressions are formed quickly, usually change slowly, and typically have a longlasting influence. 2. Forming Impressions a) Existing schemas allow us to automatically infer a great deal about a person on very little information. b) When meeting someone new, people tend to assume that the new person holds attitudes and values similar to their own and are inclined to like that person. c) However, it takes very little negative information to form a negative first impression. If negative information is noted, it tends to carry more weight than positive information. 3. Lasting Impressions

3 346 Chapter 14: Social Psychology a) First impressions can change, but the process is usually slow. We tend to cling to our beliefs about the world, often using our schemas to preserve a reality that fits our expectations. We prefer to maintain existing impressions rather than go through the trouble of thinking through new ones. 4. Self-Fulfilling Prophecies a) A self-fulfilling prophecy is an initial impression, belief, or idea that causes us to behave in such a manner that other people, in turn, behave in line with our expectations. b) The reactions from an individual or a group that fulfill our expectations help maintain and strengthen the impressions that created them. C. Explaining Behavior: Attribution 1. Attribution is the process we use to explain the causes of behavior (including our own). 2. The explanations that people choose help them to understand a behavior, predict its future occurrence, and decide how to control similar situations. 3. Internal attributions explain behavior as due to characteristics of the person. External attributions explain behaviors as arising from the situation. D. Biases in Attribution Attributional biases, or errors, distort one s attributions about behavior. 1. The Fundamental Attribution Error a) The fundamental attribution error is a tendency to overattribute others behavior to internal factors. Example: A student gives an incorrect response in class. You infer that the student is not very smart. However, by doing so, you might be ignoring external factors (e.g., lack of study time). b) The ultimate attribution error is a related bias whereby good things done by people in a different group are given external attributions, but bad things done by them are given internal attributions. Good things done by people in their own group are given internal attributions, but bad deeds are given external attribution. The ultimate attribution error maintains poor opinions of other groups and good opinions of one s own group. c) The fundamental attribution error and ultimate attribution error are less likely to occur in collectivist cultures. Even within individualist cultures, some people are more likely than others to commit these errors. 2. Other Attributional Biases a) The actor-observer bias is the tendency to attribute others behavior to internal causes, but attribute our own behavior to external causes. This is because, when we act in a situation, the most salient stimuli are usually external and situational. But when we observe another s behavior, that person becomes a more salient stimulus. b) The self-serving bias is the tendency to take credit for success, attributing it to internal characteristics, but to blame external causes for failure. This bias is more pronounced in individualistic cultures than in collectivist cultures. Self-serving bias occurs, in part, because people are motivated to maintain self-esteem. (1) Self-protective cognitive biases help us temporarily escape from painful situations, but they also distort reality and create problems in the future. An example of a problem is unrealistic optimism, the tendency to believe that good things will happen to us but bad things will not. This belief can persist even when there is strong evidence against it, leading to potentially harmful behaviors.

4 Chapter 14: Social Psychology 347 III. ATTITUDES Do attitudes always determine behavior? An attitude is a tendency to think, feel, or act positively or negatively toward objects in our environment. A. The Structure of Attitudes 1. The cognitive component is a set of beliefs about an object. 2. The emotional, or affective, component includes feelings about the object. 3. The behavioral component is the way people act toward the object. 4. Generally, people seek consistency between what they say and do, and their cognitive and affective attitude components. a) Attitude-consistent behavior is more likely when people see the attitude as important and relevant to their life. b) Attitude-consistent behaviors are more likely if the behaviors fit a subjective norm, a view of how important people in the person s culture want people to act. c) Attitude-consistent behavior is more likely when people have perceived control a belief that they do, in fact, have the capacity to perform the action. d) Direct experience with the attitude object makes attitude-consistent behavior more likely. B. Forming Attitudes 1. Social learning, including modeling, affects children. Parents show children what objects are, what they should believe about them, and how they should act toward them. 2. Classical and operant conditioning shape attitudes. If objects are paired with pleasant sensations, positive attitudes will develop. Attitudes that are rewarded will persist. 3. Attitudes are shaped by experience. In the mere-exposure effect, all things being equal, one s attitude toward an object gets more positive with more exposure to it. C. Changing Attitudes 1. Two Routes to Attitude Change In persuasive communication, attitude change depends on the characteristics of the communicator, the content of the message, and the nature of the audience. The elaboration likelihood model provides a framework for understanding when and how these factors affect attitude change. Persuasive messages can change people s attitudes through one of two routes: a) In the peripheral route, attitudes change in response to superficial persuasion cues (e.g., speaker s appearance), rather than the message s content. b) In the central route, attitudes change in response to the message s content and the validity of its claims. c) One important factor that determines which route is used is personal involvement. The more personally involving a topic is, the more likely that the central route will be activated. 2. Cognitive Dissonance Theory Cognitive dissonance theory holds that people want their thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes to be in harmony with one another and with their behavior. Inconsistency, or dissonance, among these elements makes people feel uneasy, motivating them to change something to make them more consistent. a) Because it is often difficult to change behavior, people usually change attitudes that are inconsistent with the behavior. This is mostly likely to happen when: (1) The inconsistency causes some distress or discomfort. (2) Changing attitudes will reduce that discomfort.

5 348 Chapter 14: Social Psychology b) Attitude-behavior inconsistency may cause discomfort because it harms a person s positive self-concept. c) In individualist cultures especially, behaving in ways that contradict personal beliefs creates dissonance. In collectivist cultures, dissonance may arise when a behavior causes the person to worry about his/her reputation with others. IV. PREJUDICE AND STEREOTYPES How does prejudice develop? Perceptions, beliefs, and expectations of whole groups of people are stereotypes. They usually contain false assumptions that all group members have the same (usually negative) features. Prejudice is a positive or negative evaluation of an individual, based only on group membership. Discrimination is differential treatment of members of different groups. A. Theories of Prejudice and Stereotyping 1. Motivational Theories For some people, prejudice against certain groups serves to meet certain needs and increases their sense of security. a) A personality trait called authoritarianism makes people more likely to be prejudiced. Authoritarian people tend to see the world as a threatening place, made less so by identifying strongly with in-groups and by looking down on and discriminating against members of out-groups. Authoritarianism has three elements: (1) Acceptance of conventional or traditional values. (2) Willingness to unquestioningly follow the orders of authority figures. (3) An inclination to act aggressively towards individuals or groups identified by authority figures as threats to values or well-being. b) Another motivational theory involves social identity. According to this theory, most people are motivated to identify with their in-group and tend to see it as better than out-groups. Prejudice may result when people s motivation to enhance their own self-esteem causes them to disrespect out-groups. 2. Cognitive Theories a) These theories hold that prejudice and stereotypes result from a complex social world, wherein such complexity is best dealt with by grouping people into social categories based on age, sex, race, occupation, and other detectable distinctions. b) Inaccurate stereotypes can result from the assumption that all members of a social category are similar to each other they all think and behave in the same ways. Therefore, negative characteristics of one group member imply an illusory correlation between such negative characteristics and the entire group. 3. Learning Theories a) Some prejudice is learned as a result of personal conflicts with members of different groups. b) Children can learn prejudices by watching and listening to parents, peers, and others. Movies and television can reinforce these experiences by showing groups in ways that support common stereotypes. B. Reducing Prejudice 1. According to the contact hypothesis, stereotypes and prejudices about a group will decrease as contact with that group increases. 2. Contact does decrease prejudice only under certain social situations: a) Members of the two groups must be roughly equal in social and economic status. b) The members need to work toward goals that require reliance on one another to achieve success.

6 Chapter 14: Social Psychology 349 c) Contact between group members must be one on one; people must get to know another individual to make a stereotype s errors apparent. d) The members of each group need to be seen as typical and not unusual examples of their group. 3. These conditions can be created through a teaching strategy called the jigsaw technique. Students from different groups are assigned to work together on some task. Each student is a given different part of the required information necessary to complete the assignment. The students must work together as a team to succeed. V. INTERPERSONAL ATTRACTION What factors affect who likes whom? A. Keys to Attraction Whether you like someone or not depends on both situational factors and personal characteristics. 1. The Environment a) As long as you do not initially dislike the person, your liking for that person will increase with additional contact. This is an example of the mere exposure effect. b) People are more likely to like each other if they meet in a pleasant environment the pleasantness of the situation can become associated with pleasantness in the individual. 2. Similarity a) People tend to like those perceived as similar to themselves in age, religion, behavioral characteristics, and attitudes. b) People prefer balanced relationships. Such relationships are partly defined by social networks. In a balanced relationship, the person you like also likes the same people as you and dislikes the same people as you. 3. Physical Attractiveness a) Physical attractiveness is an important factor in attraction, especially in the early stages of a relationship. b) According to the matching hypothesis, people tend to date, marry, or form other committed relationships with those who are similar in physical attractiveness. B. Intimate Relationships and Love Evolutionary psychologists suggest that the physical appearance of a partner tends to be more important to men, whereas the partner s intelligence tends to be more important to women. 1. Intimate Relationships a) Interdependence, when the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors of one person affect the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors of the other, is one of the defining characteristics of intimate relationships. b) Commitment, another key component of intimate relationships, is the extent to which each person is psychologically attached to the relationship and wants to remain in it. 2. Analyzing Love Romantic love and liking are separate emotions, in that they are associated with differing patterns of brain chemistry and activity. Romantic love and sexual desire also seem to be separate emotions with different patterns of physiological arousal. There appear to be several different types of love. a) Passionate love is intense and arousing, with both strong physical attraction and intense emotional attachment.

7 350 Chapter 14: Social Psychology b) Compassionate love, less arousing but more psychologically intimate, involves mutual concern for each other s welfare. c) In Sternberg s triangular theory, love has three basic components: passion, intimacy, and commitment. Various combinations of these result in different types of love. (1) Passionate love romantic love is intense and intimate but lacks meaningful commitment. (2) Companionate love is intimate and committed but has little passion. (3) Consummate love, the most complete and satisfying, includes high levels of all three components. d) Cultural factors influence how people think about love and marriage. In some cultures, people believe they should love the person they marry. In other cultures, people may marry someone based more on that person s qualities than on love. 3. Strong and Weak Marriages a) Long-term studies show that having a close, intimate relationship, similar attitudes, and realistic views of the other before getting married are predictive of marital success. b) Women tend to be more satisfied with their marriage when their partner talks a lot about the relationship. c) In general, partners in satisfying marriages perceive their relationship as fair and equitable. d) Long-term studies have identified some of the factors leading to divorce: (1) Early in marriages, lack of control over the expression of feelings, especially negative ones, are predictive of divorce. (2) After many years together, not expressing any feelings is associated with divorce. Such emotional distance can create a sense of isolation. VI. SOCIAL INFLUENCE What social rules shape our behavior? Social influence is the process by which individuals and groups directly or indirectly influence a person s thoughts, feelings, and behavior. A. Social Norms 1. Norms are learned, socially based rules that tell people what they should or should not do in various situations. Norms are often unspoken, and we often follow them automatically. a) The reciprocity norm is the tendency to respond to others as they have acted toward us. b) Since norms are learned from cultural experiences, they vary across cultures and over time. 2. Adhering to group norms can give order to social behavior but can also lead to deindividuation, a psychological state in which the person is submerged in a group and loses the sense of individuality. When people do this, it tends to increase emotional arousal and intensify feelings of cohesiveness with other group members. In such situations, they may relax their normal inhibitions. B. Conformity and Compliance Conformity is changing behavior or beliefs to match those of other group members, due to unspoken group pressure, real or imagined. Compliance is changing behavior due to a direct request. 1. Conformity and compliance are usually generated by spoken or unspoken group norms.

8 Chapter 14: Social Psychology 351 a) A classic study by Sherif showed the creation of a group norm when people were asked to make judgments in a group setting. In a study by Asch, participants had to judge the length of visually displayed lines. About 70 percent of participants conformed at least once to a group norm, giving an incorrect response. Only 5 percent of control participants made any mistakes. 2. Why Do People Conform? a) In public conformity, people change behavior to fit social norms but keep their own beliefs or attitudes. b) In private acceptance, people actually change their beliefs and attitudes. c) Group norms are powerful. (1) People are motivated to be correct. Norms indicate what is right and wrong. (2) People want to be liked, and conforming to norms might lead to approval. (3) Conforming to group norms may increase a sense of self-worth. (4) Moreover, social rewards and punishments often depend on adherence to norms. 3. When Do People Conform? a) As the ambiguity or uncertainty increases, people rely more on others opinions, making conformity to group norms more likely. b) A unanimous majority exerts great pressure to conform. But if even one person dissents, conformity drops greatly. c) As the size of the majority increases, conformity to majority opinion becomes more common. The greatest growth in conformity occurred at three- to fourmember majorities. Larger majorities deliver very little additional conformity. d) Minority influence is when minority members in a group influence the behavior or beliefs of the majority. It is less common than majority influence, takes a while to occur, and may only involve a moderate adjustment by the majority. e) No male-female differences in conformity have been found in subsequent research using materials that are equally familiar to both genders. 4. Creating Compliance a) In the foot-in-the-door technique, compliance with small requests is followed by compliance to larger requests. b) In a door-in-the-face procedure, a very large request that is likely to be denied is followed by a lesser request (e.g., as in most bargaining situations). c) In the low-ball approach, an initial request is escalated after it is agreed to, but before it can be fulfilled. VII. OBEDIENCE How far will people go in obeying authority? A. Obedience involves changing behavior in response to a demand from an authority figure. B. Stanley Milgram s famous 1960s obedience studies recruited participants from newspaper ads. 1. Each participant was paired unknowingly with an employee of the experiment. The participant understood that each was to be assigned to be either a teacher or a learner. However, the experiment was rigged so that the participant was always the teacher. 2. The teacher (the participant) was ordered to shock the learner (the employee of the experiment) after each mistake in a word memory task. With each error, the shock increased by 15 volts. Voltage switches were labeled slight shock, moderate shock, strong shock, danger, severe shock, and XXX. 3. By 75 volts, the learner (out of view) moaned, by 90 he cried, by 150 he screamed and begged to be let out, by 180 he banged on the wall pleading for mercy, and soon

9 352 Chapter 14: Social Psychology thereafter became totally silent. At this point, the experimenter directed the participant to treat no answer as a wrong answer. Unknown to the participant, no shocks were ever delivered to the bogus learner. 4. Few participants stopped before 300 volts, and 65 percent went to the maximum Deciding to continue was difficult and stressful for all participants. C. Factors Affecting Obedience Milgram and others conducted numerous other studies to find out what affected obedience. 1. Experimenter Status and Prestige a) Obedience increased if the experimenter had high status or prestige. b) Yet 48 percent of participants were willing to harm others even if the authority figure was not seen as particularly reputable or distinguished. 2. The Behavior of Other People a) Milgram studied the effect of other people on obedience by having more than one teacher. When he had the other teachers (actually research assistants) disobey, teachers (actual participants) were more likely to also disobey. 3. Personality Characteristics a) Most participants were nice people who were influenced by the situation to behave in apparently antisocial ways. However, obedience was more likely in people high in authoritarianism. D. Evaluating Obedience Research Numerous real-world examples suggest that Milgram s findings are still relevant. 1. Questions About Ethics a) Participants were seen to sweat, stutter, tremble, groan, bite their lips, and dig their fingernails into their flesh. Also, participants learned an upsetting personal insight: They could harm innocent people simply because someone told them to do so. Is it ethical to impose such experiences and insights on people merely for scientific gain? b) Milgram argued that debriefing participants prevented lasting harm. On a followup questionnaire, 84 percent reported that the experience had been worthwhile. 2. Questions About Meaning Some say participants may have just been playing along, rather than truly obeying extreme demands. However, most psychologists believe that these experiments show that people are, under certain circumstances, capable of unspeakable acts of brutality toward other people. VIII. AGGRESSION Are people born aggressive? Aggression is an action intended to harm another person. A. Why Are People Aggressive? 1. The Freudian instinct and evolutionary natural selection theories seem too simplistic to fully account for human aggressiveness. Even if aggressive impulses are universal, the appearance of aggressive behavior reflects the influence of both nature and nurture. Cultural factors greatly affect the likelihood of aggressive behavior. 2. Genetic and Biological Mechanisms a) There is strong evidence for hereditary influences on aggression, especially in animals. (1) In humans, twins reared apart are still more likely to share similar aggressive tendencies. This may be due to their inheriting certain

10 Chapter 14: Social Psychology 353 temperaments, such as impulsiveness, which make aggressiveness more likely. b) Damage to areas of the limbic system, such as the amygdala or hypothalamus, cause defensive aggression, aggressive responses to usually nonthreatening stimuli. The cerebral cortex may also be involved in aggression. c) In both sexes, aggressive behavior increases or decreases with levels of the male hormone testosterone. Testosterone s most important influence on aggression appears to be its impact on early brain development. d) Drugs such as alcohol can increase aggressive behavior in some people. 3. Learning and Cultural Mechanisms a) Aggressive behavior is much more common in individualist as compared to collectivist cultures. Differences in the expression of aggression appear to stem in part from differing cultural values. b) Aggressive behavior can be learned by watching others and by being exposed to violent television and video and computer games. c) Rewards and punishments affect the frequency of aggressive acts. B. When Are People Aggressive? In general, people are more likely to be aggressive when they are physiologically aroused and angry, but aggression can also be caused by frustration, which occurs when we are prevented from reaching some goal. 1. Frustration and Aggression The frustration-aggression hypothesis suggests that frustration leads to aggression. Subsequent research has resulted in two modifications. a) One modification of this hypothesis proposes that stress in general produces a readiness for aggression. The aggression may be triggered if the right environmental cues (e.g., guns or knives) are present when someone is stressed. b) Another modification is that the direct cause of most kinds of aggression is negative feelings, or negative affect. The more people feel negative affect, regardless of what caused it, the stronger is their readiness to be aggressive. 2. Generalized Arousal a) Arousal from one experience may carry over to an independent situation, causing excitation transfer. For example, physiological arousal caused by jogging may intensify reaction to an insult. b) Arousal is most likely to lead to aggression if the new situation contains some reason, opportunity, or target for aggression. C. Thinking Critically: Does Pornography Cause Aggression? In both sexes, sexual stimulation produces physiological arousal. If arousal in general can make a person more likely to be aggressive, could stimuli that create sexual arousal be dangerous? 1. What am I being asked to believe or accept? Viewing pornography causes antisocial acts, including sex-related violent crimes. 2. Is there evidence available to support the claim? Convicted male sex offenders report being aroused by pornographic material just before committing their crimes. The men most aroused by aggressive themes in pornography are also the most potentially sexually aggressive. Some studies have found that arousal from watching sexually explicit films appeared to transfer into aggressive behaviors. 3. Can that evidence be interpreted another way?

11 354 Chapter 14: Social Psychology Testimony of convicted sex offenders may be suspect. At best these reports are correlational, so they cannot show if pornography causes aggression. Because the pornography that was used in the excitation transfer studies was violent, the results may simply show that portrayals of violence influence aggressiveness. Some studies show that pleasant arousal from viewing nonviolent, mutually consenting sexual activity does not produce aggression in viewers. 4. What evidence would help to evaluate the alternatives? Effects of each aspect of aggressive pornography the sexual and aggressive acts must be separately examined. Also, factors affecting men s reactions to pornography must be better understood. Work on aggressive pornography found that viewing the material leads to an increase in aggressiveness directed specifically at women. Similarly, studies show that, after viewing films in which violence arouses rape victims, men are less sympathetic toward rape victims, but no such attitude shift occurs after viewing nonviolent sexual activity. Another line of research found that whether violent pornography alters men s behavior and attitudes depends on the viewer s personality. For men low in promiscuity and hostility, viewing pornography had little impact on sexual aggression. 5. What conclusions are most reasonable? The relationship between sexual arousal and aggression is neither consistent nor simple. Clearly, portrayals of sexual violence can lead to violence against women. However, for most men, sexual arousal from nonaggressive pornography has little effect on their behavior toward women. However, for men who are inclined to abuse and exploit women, viewing pornography might increase the chances of their acting on their impulses. 6. Environmental Influences on Aggression a) Environmental psychology studies links between people s physical environment and their behavior. a) Hotter temperatures are a source of stress and can increase the likelihood of aggression. Murder and other violent crimes are most likely during the hottest months. a) Living arrangements also influence aggressiveness. Crowding tends to create physiological arousal and to make people tense, uncomfortable, and more negatively emotional. This arousal and tension can lead to aggression. IX. ALTRUISM AND HELPING BEHAVIOR What motivates people to help one another? Helping behavior is an act intended to benefit another person. Altruism is an unselfish concern for another person s welfare. A. Why Do People Help? 1. Children learn to be helpful, often by the age of two, especially if encouraged to do so. Children follow examples set by people around them, use helping behavior to gain social approval, and are usually rewarded for helpfulness. Eventually, most children come to believe that being helpful is good and that they are good for being helpful. 2. Arousal:Cost-Reward Theory a) The arousal:cost-reward theory proposes that people find the sight of a victim distressing and anxiety provoking, and that this experience motivates them to do something to reduce the unpleasant arousal. b) Before helping occurs, a bystander will evaluate two aspects of the situation:

12 Chapter 14: Social Psychology 355 (1) The cost associated with helping. (2) The cost (to the bystander and victim) of not helping. c) Helping is most likely when the cost of helping is low and the cost of not helping is high. d) This theory helps explain several factors that affect helping. (1) Helping will occur more often as the clarity of the need for help increases. The clearer the need for help, the more the perceived cost of not helping. (2) The presence of others tends to inhibit helping behavior. The bystander effect is the finding that helping behavior tends to decrease as the number of people present increases. (a) The bystander effect may be due to the diffusion of responsibility, the tendency to assume that someone else will take responsibility for (b) helping. This lowers the perceived cost of not helping. Bystanders help more often when they know one another in some way. (3) The personality of the helper also matters. Helping is more likely among those who have more empathy (the ability to understand or experience another s emotional state), more concern for others, a greater sense of personal responsibility, and greater confidence that their actions would succeed. Empathetic people tend to estimate the costs of not helping as high, and people who are confident about their ability to help tend to rate the costs of helping as low. e) Environmental factors are also important. The higher the population density of an area, the less likely people are to help. There are two possible explanations: (1) The stressful environment leads to bad moods, which generally lead to less helping. (2) The environment creates too much stimulation. In order to cope, people pay less attention to their surroundings, including those who need help. 3. Empathy-Altruism Theory The empathy-altruism theory says that people are more likely to engage in unselfish or altruistic helping if they feel empathy toward the person in need. a) Debate continues as to whether people in studies of this approach helped because they were unselfish or just to relieve distress. 4. Evolutionary Theory a) Evolutionary theory sees social behaviors such as helping as a reflection of actions that contributed to the survival of our ancestors. b) Inclusive fitness, the survival of one s genes in others, explains why helping behavior would be naturally selected. Kin selection, helping relatives who share some of our genes, increases the probability that some of our genes will be passed on through the beneficiary s future reproduction, even if it provides no personal benefits. B. Cooperation, Competition, and Conflict Cooperation occurs when people work together to attain a goal. Competition exists when people try to attain a goal while denying it to others. Conflict occurs when people believe that another person or group is interfering with the attainment of a goal. 1. Social dilemmas are situations in which an action that is most rewarding for an individual would, if adopted by all others in the situation, create problems for everyone. They reflect conflicts between the interests of individuals and those of the group, and between short-term and long-term interests. X. GROUP PROCESSES

13 356 Chapter 14: Social Psychology What makes a good leader? A. The Presence of Others 1. Social facilitation describes circumstances in which the presence of others can improve performance. In probably the first social psychological experiment ever done, Norman Triplett (1897) demonstrated this effect. 2. Social impairment describes circumstances in which the presence of others can hurt performance. a) Zajonc suggested that both social loafing and social impairment could be explained by the increased level of arousal or motivation caused by the presence of others. (1) Increased arousal increases the tendency to perform dominant behaviors. When the task is easy and familiar, arousal leads to increased performance. However, when the task is hard or unfamiliar, arousal leads to decreased performance. 3. Social loafing is the tendency for people to exert less effort when working with others on a task than when performing alone. a) Social loafing is most likely to occur when each individual s contribution is hard to evaluate, when the group is not close-knit, and when members do not see a direct connection between the amount of effort they exert and the amount of reward they receive. b) In Western cultures, social loafing happens in all sorts of groups. In Eastern cultures, social loafing is less likely, probably due to the collectivist orientation that emphasizes the importance of group performance. B. Group Leadership 1. In general, a good group leader has the following personality characteristics: emotional stability, agreeableness, extraversion, conscientiousness, intelligence, success orientation, confidence, and flexibility. However, effective leadership also depends on the characteristics of the group members, the task, and the interactions between them and the leader s style. 2. The two traditional styles of leadership are: a) Task-oriented leaders use very close supervision, give many orders, and discourage group discussion. b) Person-oriented leaders use loose supervision, ask for members ideas, and are concerned with subordinates feelings. 3. Additional leadership styles include: a) Transactional leaders actions depend on the actions of those they lead. They reward those who obey and punish those who do not. b) Transformational or charismatic leaders concentrate on creating a vision of the group s goals, inspiring others to pursue that vision, and giving their followers reason to respect and admire them. c) Females are more likely than males to display a transformational style. But even when they display a transactional style, women tend to focus more on rewards to modify behavior. Also, recent research suggests that overall women may be slightly more effective leaders than men. C. Groupthink 1. Groupthink is a pattern of thinking in which group members are unable to realistically evaluate the options available to them or to fully consider the potential negative consequences of the option they are about to choose. 2. Groupthink is most likely under four conditions: a) The decision is not based on all the facts at hand.

14 Chapter 14: Social Psychology 357 b) Group members all share certain values. c) Members who express disagreement with the majority view are punished or even ejected. d) The group leader puts pressure on the members to reach agreement. 3. There are ways to help groups avoid groupthink. a) Teach group members to imagine all the possible negative outcomes of each course of action. b) Designate someone to play devil s advocate and challenge emerging decisions to force consideration of all other facts and options c) Allow members to express their opinions anonymously. XI. LINKAGES: BIOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Social psychology was once thought to be separate from biological psychology (neuroscience). Recently, researchers in both fields have begun to focus on the influence of social processes on biological processes and vice versa. This new field is called social neuroscience, or socialcognitive neuroscience. A. Research has found that the availability and quality of social support can affect biological processes, such as blood pressure and the healing of wounds. B. Antisocial behavior is more common among abused men, but most common among abused men who also inherited characteristics associated with antisocial behaviors. C. Researchers found that European Americans who were prejudiced against African Americans show significantly more amygdala activity when looking at pictures of black people than when looking at pictures of white people.