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Introducing Social Psychology
Chapter 1
What Is Social Psychology?
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The Power of Social Interpretation
Social psychology differs from sociology or anthropology:
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How Else Can We UnderstandSocial Influence?
• Journalists, Instant Experts, Social Critics
• Philosophy
Social psychologists differ from these by
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Social psychology is an experimentally based science.
As scientists, our goal is to find objective answers to a wide array of important questions:
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Social Psychology Compared with Personality Psychology
• When trying to explain social behavior—how an individual acts within a social context (in relation to others)—personality psychologists explain the behavior in terms of the person's individual character traits.
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Social Psychology Compared with Other Social Sciences
The difference between social psychology and other social sciences in level of analysis reflects another difference between the disciplines: what they are trying to explain.
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Social Psychology Compared with Sociology
Level of analysis:
• Social psychologists focus on the individual in the context of a social situation.
• Sociology looks toward society at large.
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Social Psychology Compared with Sociology
What they are trying to explain:
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The Power of Social Influence
Fundamental attribution error:
The tendency to explain our own and other people’s behavior entirely in terms of personality traits, underestimating the power of social influence.
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Underestimating the Power of Social Influence
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The Subjectivity of the Social Situation
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• Human beings are sense making creatures, constantly interpreting things.
• How humans will behave in a given situations is not determined by the objective conditions of a situation but, rather how they perceive it (construal).
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The Subjectivity of the Social Situation
What exactly do we mean by the social situation?
Behaviorism:
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The Subjectivity of the Social Situation
This emphasis on construal, the way people interpret the social situation, has its roots in an approach called Gestalt psychology.
Gestalt Psychology
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Where Construals Come From:Basic Human Motives
How an individual construes a situation is largely shaped by two basic human motives:
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The Self-Esteem Approach: The Need to Feel Good About Ourselves
Self-Esteem
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Justifying Past Behavior
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Suffering and Self-Justification
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The Social Cognition Approach:The Need to Be Accurate
The social cognition perspective takes into account how human beings think about the world.
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Social Cognition
Social Cognition
.
The social cognition perspective views people as amateur sleuths doing their best to understand and predict their social world.
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Expectations About the Social World
• Our expectations can even change the nature of the social world.
• Rosenthal & Jacobson (1968) found
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Expectations About the Social WorldHow does such a self-fulfilling prophecy come about? Teaching expecting specific students to perform well
often:•
This, in turn, helps these students feel: •
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Additional Motives
• biological drives
• desire for rewards
• need for control
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Why study social influence?
1. We are curious.
2. Some social psychologists contribute to the solution of social problems.
Social Psychology and Social Problems
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Social psychological theories about human behavior have been applied to a range of contemporary problems, including:
• prejudice
• energy shortages
• AIDS
• unhealthy habits
• violence in schools
Social Psychology and Social Problems
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When recommending interventions to deal with serious social problems, it is imperative to act on the basis of scientifically grounded theories about human construal and behavior.
Social Psychology and Social Problems