Social Attribution Chapter 12.pptx

© 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved.
CHAPTER 12
Social
Behavior

12.1 PERSON PERCEPTION:
FORMING IMPRESSIONS OF OTHERS
Key Learning Goals
• Understand how physical appearance and
stereotypes can influence impressions of others.
• Discuss the subjectivity of social perception and
evolutionary explanations for bias in person
perception.

Person Perception: Forming
Impressions of Others (slide 1 of 2)
• Social psychology – The branch of psychology concerned with the
way individuals’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by
others
• Person perception – The process of forming impressions of others
Effects of Physical Appearance
• Attractiveness stereotype – Phenomenon whereby people tend to
ascribe desirable personality characteristics to those who are good
looking
– Research shows little correlation between attractiveness and personality
traits.
• Perceptions of people’s faces are particularly influential.

Person Perception: Forming
Impressions of Others (slide 2 of 2)
Stereotypes
• Stereotypes – Widely held beliefs that people have certain
characteristics because of their membership in a particular group
Subjectivity in Person Perception
• Illusory correlation – A misperception that occurs when people
estimate that they have encountered more confirmations of an
association between social traits than they have actually seen
• Individuals selectively recall facts that fit with their stereotypes.
An Evolutionary Perspective on Bias in Person Perception
• Ingroup – A group that one belongs to and identifies with
• Outgroup – A group that one does not belong to or identify with

12.2 ATTRIBUTION PROCESSES:
EXPLAINING BEHAVIOR
Key Learning Goals
• Distinguish between internal and external
attributions, and summarize Weiner’s theory of
attributions for success and failure.
• Identify some types of bias in patterns of
attribution, including cultural variations.

Attribution Processes:
Explaining Behavior
• Attributions – Inferences that people draw about the causes of
events, others’ behavior, and their own behavior
• Individuals make attributions because they have a strong need to
understand their experiences.
Internal Versus External Attributions
• Internal attributions – Explanations that ascribe the causes of
behavior to personal dispositions, traits, abilities, and feelings
• External attributions – Explanations that ascribe the causes of
behavior to situational demands and environmental constraints
• Internal and external attributions can have a tremendous impact on
everyday interpersonal interactions.

Figure 12.1
Figure 12.1
Weiner’s model of attributions for success and failure. Weiner’s model
assumes that people’s explanations for success and failure emphasize internal
versus external causes and stable versus unstable causes. Examples of causal
factors that fit into each of the four cells in Weiner’s model are shown in the
diagram.

Bias in Attribution
Actor-Observer Bias
• Fundamental attribution error – Observers’ bias in favor of internal
attributions in explaining others’ behavior
• Actors favor external attributions for their behavior.
Self-Serving Bias
• Self-serving bias – The tendency to attribute one’s successes to
personal factors and one’s failures to situational factors
• In failure, the usual actor-observer biases are apparent.
• In success, the usual actor-observer differences are reversed to some
degree.

Culture and Attributions
• Individualism – Putting personal goals ahead of group
goals and defining one’s identity in terms of personal
attributes rather than group memberships
• Collectivism – Putting group goals ahead of personal
goals and defining one’s identity in terms of the groups
one belongs to
• Compared to individualist societies, collectivist societies
are less susceptible to:
– Fundamental attribution errors
– Self-serving bias

12.3 INTERPERSONAL ATTRACTION:
LIKING AND LOVING
Key Learning Goals
• Understand the role of physical attractiveness,
similarity, and reciprocity in attraction.
• Discuss theoretical views of love and how
culture and the Internet relate to romantic
relationships.
• Understand evolutionary analyses of mating
preferences.

Key Factors in Attraction
• Interpersonal attraction – Positive feelings toward another person
Physical Attractiveness
• Matching hypothesis – The idea that males and females of
approximately equal physical attractiveness are likely to select each
other as partners
Similarity Effects
• Similarities attract more than opposites.
• People who are close become more similar (attitude alignment).
Reciprocity Effects
• Reciprocity – Liking those who show that they like us

Passionate and Companionate Love
• Passionate love – A complete absorption in
another that includes tender sexual feelings and
the agony and ecstasy of intense emotion
• Companionate love – Warm, trusting, tolerant
affection for another whose life is deeply
intertwined with one’s own
• Passionate and companionate love can coexist,
but they don’t necessarily go hand in hand.

Figure 12.3
Figure 12.3
Attachment and romantic
relationships. According to Hazan
and Shaver (1987), people’s
romantic relationships in adulthood
are similar in form to their attachment
patterns in infancy, which fall into
three categories. The three
attachment styles seen in adult
intimate relations are described here.
(Based on Hazan and Shaver, 1986,
1987)

Culture/The Internet
and Close Relationships
Culture and Close Relationships
• Cultures differ in the importance of love as a prerequisite for
marriage.
– Collectivist societies put less emphasis on romantic love than do
cultures high in individualism.
The Internet and Close Relationships
• Virtual relationships can be just as intimate as face-to-face ones.
• Online matching sites expand opportunities to meet a potential
mate.

An Evolutionary Perspective
on Attraction
• Some standards of attractiveness are more consistent
across cultures than previously believed.
– Facial symmetry is a key element of attractiveness in highly
diverse cultures.
– Men seem to prefer women with a moderately low waist-to-hip
ratio (an “hourglass figure”).
• Gender differences in mating preferences appear to be
consistent across highly varied cultures.
– Men seek youthfulness and physical attractiveness in their
mates because these traits are associated with greater
reproductive potential.
– Women value prospective mates’ ambition, social status, and
financial potential because these traits are associated with the
ability to invest material resources in children.

12.4 ATTITUDES: MAKING SOCIAL JUDGMENTS
Key Learning Goals
• Analyze the structure of attitudes and the link
between attitudes and behavior.
• Distinguish between explicit and implicit
attitudes, and explain how implicit attitudes are
measured.
• Summarize how source, message, and receiver
factors influence the process of persuasion.
• Clarify various theories of attitude formation and
change.

Components and Dimensions
of Attitudes
• Attitudes – Positive or negative evaluations of objects of thought
• Attitudes can include up to three components.
– Cognitive component – Beliefs held about the object of an attitude
– Affective component – Emotional feelings stimulated by an object of
thought
– Behavioral component – Predispositions to act in certain ways toward
an attitude object
• Attitudes vary in the dimensions of strength, accessibility, and
ambivalence.
• Attitudes are mediocre predictors of behavior.
– People fail to factor in the influence of attitude strength.
– Behavior depends on situational constraints.

Implicit Attitudes:
Looking Beneath the Surface
• Explicit attitudes – Attitudes that one holds consciously and can
readily describe
• Implicit attitudes – Covert attitudes that are expressed in subtle
automatic responses over which one has little conscious control
• Many people express explicit attitudes that condemn prejudice but
unknowingly harbor implicit attitudes that reflect subtle forms of
prejudice.
• The Implicit Association Test (IAT) has shown that:
– 80% of respondents show negative implicit attitudes about the elderly.
– 75% of white respondents exhibit implicit prejudice against blacks.
– Implicit prejudice against gays, the disabled, and the obese are
common.

Figure 12.7
Figure 12.7
Overview of the persuasion process. The process of persuasion essentially boils
down to who (the source) communicates what (the message) by what means (the
channel) to whom (the receiver). Thus, four sets of variables influence the process
of persuasion: source, message, channel, and receiver factors. The diagram lists
some of the more important factors in each category (including some that are not
discussed in the text due to space limitations). (Adapted from Lippa, 1994).

Theories of Attitude Formation
and Change (slide 1 of 2)
Learning Theory
• Attitudes can be learned through:
– Evaluative conditioning
– Operant conditioning
– Observational learning
Dissonance Theory
• Inconsistency among attitudes propels people in the direction of
attitude change.
• Cognitive dissonance – A psychological state that exists when
related attitudes or beliefs contradict one another
• Effort justification – When people turn attitude somersaults to
justify efforts that haven’t panned out

Theories of Attitude Formation
and Change (slide 2 of 2)
Elaboration Likelihood Model
• There are two basic “routes” to persuasion:
– Central route – People carefully ponder the content
and logic of persuasive messages.
– Peripheral route – Persuasion depends on
nonmessage factors, such as the attractiveness and
credibility of the source.
• Attitudes changed through central processes:
– Lead to more enduring attitude change
– Are more resistant to change
– Predict behavior better

12.5 CONFORMITY AND OBEDIENCE:
YIELDING TO OTHERS
Key Learning Goals
• Understand Asch’s work on conformity and
Milgram’s research on obedience.
• Discuss cultural variations in conformity and
obedience, and describe the Stanford Prison
Simulation.

Conformity
• Conformity – The tendency for people to yield to real or
imagined social pressure
• Group size and group unanimity are key determinants of
conformity.
• Normative influence – An effect that promotes
conformity to social norms for fear of negative social
consequences
• Informational influence – An effect that often
contributes to conformity in which people look to others
for guidance about how to behave in ambiguous
situations

Figure 12.14
Figure 12.14
Milgram’s experiment on
obedience. The photo on the
left shows the “learner” being
connected to the shock
generator during one of
Milgram’s experimental
sessions. The photo on the
right shows the fake shock
generator used in the study.
The surprising results of the
Milgram (1963) study are
summarized in the bar graph.
Although subjects frequently
protested, the vast majority
(65%) delivered the entire
series of shocks to the learner.
SOURCE: Photos Copyright © 1965 by Stanley Milgram. From
the film Obedience, distributed by The Pennsylvania State
University. Reprinted by permission of Alexandra Milgram.

Cultural Variations in
Conformity and Obedience
• Conformity and obedience are not unique to
American culture.
– Replications of Milgram’s obedience study have
reported similar or higher obedience rates in other
industrialized nations.
– Replications of the Asch experiment have found
somewhat higher levels of conformity in collectivistic
cultures than in individualistic cultures.

The Power of the Situation:
The Stanford Prison Simulation
• Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues investigated why
prisons tend to become abusive, degrading, violent
environments.
• College students became “guards” and “prisoners.”
– The participants quickly became confrontational.
• The guards devised cruel strategies to maintain total control over
their prisoners.
• Most of the prisoners became listless, apathetic, and demoralized.
• Participants’ behavior was attributed to:
– The enormous influence of social roles
• Social roles – Widely shared expectations about how people in
certain positions are supposed to behave
– The compelling power of situational factors

12.6 BEHAVIOR IN GROUPS:
JOINING WITH OTHERS
Key Learning Goals
• Describe the bystander effect and social loafing.
• Explain group polarization and groupthink.

Behavior in Groups: Joining with Others
• Group – Two or more individuals who interact and are
interdependent
Behavior Alone and in Groups:
The Case of the Bystander Effect
• Bystander effect – A paradoxical social phenomenon in
which people are less likely to provide needed help when
they are in groups than when they are alone
– The probability of getting help declines as group size increases.
– Diffusion of responsibility occurs in a group situation.

Figure 12.15
Figure 12.15
The effect of loss of
coordination and social loafing
on group productivity. The
amount of sound produced per
person declined noticeably when
subjects worked in actual groups
of two or six (orange line). This
decrease in productivity reflects
both loss of coordination and
social loafing. Sound per person
also declined when subjects
merely thought they were working
in groups of two or six (purple
line). This smaller decrease in
productivity is attributed to social
loafing.

Decision Making in Groups
Group Polarization
• Group polarization – A phenomenon that occurs when group
discussion strengthens a group’s dominant point of view and
produces a shift toward a more extreme decision in that direction
Groupthink
• Groupthink – A process in which members of a cohesive group
emphasize concurrence at the expense of critical thinking in arriving
at a decision
– Victims of groupthink tend to think in simplistic “us versus them” terms.
– Groupthink promotes confirmation bias.
• A key precondition to groupthink is high group cohesiveness.
– Group cohesiveness – The strength of the liking relationships linking
group members to each other and to the group itself

12.7 REFLECTING ON THE CHAPTER’S THEMES
Key Learning Goals
• Identify the four unifying themes highlighted in
this chapter.

Reflecting on the Chapter’s Themes
(slide 1 of 2)
• Psychology is empirical.
– The unexpected findings on obedience to authority, the
bystander effect, and dissonance provide dramatic illustrations of
why psychologists put their faith in empiricism.
• Behavior is shaped by cultural heritage.
– Cross-cultural studies of social behavior show that research
findings based on American samples may not generalize
precisely to other cultures.
• Behavior is determined by multiple causes.
– A variety of factors influence the processes of person perception,
interpersonal attraction, and persuasion.

Reflecting on the Chapter’s Themes
(slide 2 of 2)
• People’s experience of the world is subjective.
– Physical appearance can influence perceptions of a person’s
ability or personality.
– People tend to see what they expect to see in their interactions
with others.
– Pressure to conform can make people doubt their senses.
– Groupthink can lead group members down a path of shared
illusions.

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