Chapter 14: Psychology in Our Social Lives

“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”

– Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)

Amber GilewskiTompkins Cortland Community College

Attribution Processes: Explaining Behavior

• Attributions – inferences made about the causes of events and behaviors– Internal vs. External: causes related to personal

dispositions vs. situational/environmental causes • Biases in attributions

– Fundamental attribution error - observers’ bias in favor of internal attributions in explaining others’ behavior

More Biases in Attribution– Defensive attribution – tendency to blame victims

for their misfortune– Self-serving bias - tendency to attribute one’s

success to personal factors & failure to situational factors

• Cultural influences

-Western cultures: fundamental attribution bias & self-serving bias

-Japanese culture: self-effacing bias; more self- critical & accept more personal responsibility

Yielding to Others: Conformity• Conformity – Solomon Asch (1950s)

– Classic experiment: participants asked to judge length of 3 lines; actually testing conformity to see if others would answer similarly; 76% conformed at least once• Group size: larger groups influence conformity• Group unanimity: strongly influences

conformity; people may also follow lead of a dissenter

• Replication study findings: less conformity now, individualistic societies conform less, people conform more in certain situations, variety of reasons for conformity, positive & negative sides to conformity, suppresses critical thinking

Yielding to Others: Obedience• Obedience – Stanley Milgram (1960s)

– Controversial landmark experiment: learner & teacher; administering shocks for incorrect answers; actually testing obedience; 65% administered all shocks

• Would people obey an authority figure & violate their own ethical standards?

• Subsequent study findings: people would disobey under certain conditions, but NOTHING the victim did made any difference

• Conclusions: obedience relates to situation, not personality & relationship to authority influences it

• Evaluating the study: very controversial due to deception and psychological distress; personality traits may be related to obedience; invalid to compare to Nazi ideology; made us more aware of uncritical obedience & its implications

Power of the Situation: SPE• Philip Zimbardo (1971) Stanford Prison Experiment

– Students were assigned roles of prisoners or guards

– Conducted in basement of psychology dept. @ Stanford University

– Was supposed to last 2 weeks– Had to be ended after 6 days – Why?– Similarity with Abu-Ghraib prison scandal in

Iraq

Behavior in Groups

The bystander effect - Darley and Latane (1968)

-Less likely to help when part of a group vs. alone

-Ambiguity also plays a role Diffusion of responsibility – everyone thinks

someone else will help; each person feels less responsible

Highly emotional crowds may induce “mob behavior”

Deindividuation– Reduced self-awareness and lower concern of

social evaluation

Altruism and the Bystander Effect

• Factors that influence decision to help– Good mood– Empathic– Believe an emergency exists– Assume responsibility to act– Know what to do– Know the people who need help– Similarity to people who need help

Behavior in Groups• Group productivity and social loafing: productivity

goes down as group size increases; reduced effort working in groups vs. alone

• Decision making in groups

-Polarization: extreme decisions influenced by discussions of dominant view

• Groupthink

- group has an illusion of invulnerability

- group self-censors

- group pressures dissenters to conform

- group creates an illusion of that they are unanimous