McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Social psychology : the scientific study of how people’s thoughts, feelings, and actions are affected by others McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Persuasion is the process of changing attitudes, one of the central aspects of social psychology. The ease with which we can change our attitudes depends on a number of factors, including message source (characteristics of a person who delivers a persuasive message), characteristics of the message (what the message is like: one-sided or two-sided), and characteristics of the target (i.e., intelligent people are more resistant to persuasion than those who are less intelligent). Attitudes influence behavior. Generally, people strive for consistency between their attitudes and their behavior. People tend to hold fairly consistent attitudes. Ironically, in some cases, it is our behavior that shapes our attitudes. McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
One of the dominant areas in social psychology during the last few years has focused on learning how we come to understand what others are like and how we explain the reasons underlying others’ behavior. How can we decide what’s important and what isn’t and make judgments about the characteristics of others? Social psychologists interested in this question study social cognition – the way people understand and make sense of others and themselves. McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Social influence : the process by which the actions of an individual or group affect the behavior of others McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
The classic demonstration of pressure to conform comes from a series of studies carried out in the 1950s by Solomon Asch. In the experiments, participants thought they were taking part in a test of perceptual skills with 6 other people. The experimenter showed participants one card with 3 lines of varying length and a second card that had a fourth line that matched one of the first 3. Participants had to announce aloud which of the first 3 lines was identical in length to the “standard” line on the second card. Asch found that in about 1/3 of the trials, the participants conformed to the unanimous but erroneous group answer, with about 75% of all participants conforming at least once. Subsequent research shows that conformity is considerably higher when people must respond publicly than when they can respond privately. McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
When we refer to conformity, we usually mean a phenomenon in which the social pressure is subtle or indirect. But in some situations, social pressure is much more obvious, with direct, explicit pressure to endorse a particular point of view or behave in a certain way. Several specific techniques represent attempts to gain compliance. They include foot-in-the-door (sign a petition, then get pressured to make a donation to a cause – since you’ve already signed the petition, you have a hard time turning this request down); door-in-the-face (someone makes an outrageous request which they expect to be refused – they follow with a more reasonable request, which is more often complied with); and that’s-not-all (salesperson offers a deal at an inflated price, but immediately thereafter offers an incentive, discount or bonus to clinch the deal). McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Compliance techniques are used to gently lead people toward agreement with a request. In some cases, however, requests aim to produce obedience – a change in behavior in response to the commands of others. Although obedience is considerably less common than conformity and compliance, it does occur in several specific kinds of relationships (boss to subordinate, teacher to student, parent to child). The classic experiment conducted by social psychologist Stanley Milgram in the 1960s had participants give increasingly strong shocks to another person as part of a study on learning. Most people who hear a description of this experiment feel that it’s unlikely that any participant would give the maximum level of shock, but in the experiment, some 65% of participants eventually used the highest setting on the shock generator (450 volts). McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
No one has ever been born disliking a specific racial, religious or ethnic group. People learn to hate, in much the same way they learn the alphabet. For example bigoted parents may commend their children for expressing prejudicial attitudes. Such learning starts early – children as young as 3 years old begin to show a preference for members of their own race. Other explanations of prejudice and discrimination focus on how being a member of a specific group helps to magnify one’s sense of self-esteem. McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Nothing is more important in most people’s lives than their feelings for others. Consequently, it’s not surprising that liking and loving have become a major focus of interest for social psychologists. This area, known more formally as the study of interpersonal attraction (close relationships) addresses the factors that lead to positive feelings for others. Some factors considered by social psychologists include: proximity, mere exposure, similarity and physical attractiveness. McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Drive-by shootings, robberies, and abductions are just a few examples of the violence that seems all too common today. But also common are the simple kindnesses of life: lending a valuable compact disc, stopping to help a child who’s fallen off her bike, or merely sharing a candy bar with a friend. Such instances of helping are no less characteristic of human behavior than are the distasteful examples of aggression. Sigmund Freud was one of the first to suggest, as part of his theory of personality, that aggression is a primarily instinctual drive. Little research has found evidence for the existence of a pent-up reservoir of aggression that needs to be released. In fact, some studies flatly contradict the notion of catharsis, leading psychologists to look for other explanations for aggression. McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Most of us need little introduction to the phenomenon of stress! All of us face stress in our lives. Some psychologists believe that daily life actually involves a series of repeated sequences of perceiving a threat, considering ways to cope with it, and ultimately adapting to the threat, with greater or lesser success. Although adaptation is often minor and occurs without our awareness, adaptation requires a major effort when stress is more severe or longer lasting. Ultimately, our attempts to overcome stress may produce biological and psychological responses that result in health problems. Stress means different things to different people. For example, bungee jumping may be perceived as “exhilarating” by one person, and “near-deadly” by another. For people to consider an event stressful, they must perceive it as threatening or challenging and must lack all the resources to deal with it effectively. A person’s interpretation of events plays an important role in the determination of what is stressful. McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Stress is a normal part of life, and not necessarily a completely bad part. Without stress, we may not be sufficiently motivated to complete the activities we need to accomplish. It’s also clear that too much stress can take a toll on both our physical and psychological health. Efforts to control, reduce, or learn to tolerate the threats that lead to stress are known as coping . We habitually use certain coping responses to deal with stress, and most of the time we’re not aware of these responses. People often employ several types of coping strategies simultaneously. They use emotion-focused strategies more frequently when they perceive circumstances as being unchangeable and problem-focused approaches in situations they see as relatively modifiable. McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
How can we deal with the stress in our lives? There’s no universal solution because effective coping depends on the nature of the stressor and the degree to which it can be controlled. Good coping strategies include turning a threat into a challenge; making the situation less threatening where possible; changing your goals; exercising to relieve stress; and preparing for stress before it happens. We can’t get away from stress while we’re alive. Our best bet is to be as proactive as we can in realizing that stress will be with us and the best we can do is cope the best we can. McGraw-Hill (c) 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
