Segment 1:Sociocultural Perspective

T/F People act in accord with their consciences.

T/F We appreciate things more when we have to work for them.

T/F Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

T/F Opposites attract.

T/F Seeing is believing.

The scientific study of the ways in which the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of an individual are influenced by the real or imagined behavior of others.

Culture: Program of shared rules that govern the behavior of members of a community and a set of values/beliefs/attitudes shared by most. Individualist: “I” Collectivist: “We” Norm: rules that regulate social life, including explicit laws and implicit cultural

conventions. Role: a given social position that is governed by a set of norms for proper behavior.

Researcher: Stanley Milgram Study created to further understand the role of obedience in human behavior. Humans are wonderful and caring creatures, but in the right situation

they are capable of anything.

Factors that make people less likely to obey: Experimenter is not in the room Victim was right in front of you Two experimenters gave conflicting demands Experimenter was an ordinary man (No lab coat) When peer group was there who refused to go further

_____________________________________________________________________________________Researcher: Phillip Zimbardo Stanford Prison Experiment Study created to further understand the role of

membership roles in human behavior.

The amount of power vested in the person giving orders. Surveillance: Whether or not someone is watching you Whether or not responsibility for actions is shared. If it is, one is more

likely to obey.

Abu Ghraib: Baghdad Correctional Facility 2004Abu Ghraib: Baghdad Correctional Facility 2004

Factors that cause people to obey when theywould rather not: Allocating responsibility to the authority (Milgram) Making the task routine (Duty, role, behavior, feels normal) Wanting to be polite (Don’t want to be rude) Becoming entrapped:

Gradual process in which individuals escalate their commitment to a course of action to justify their investment of time/money /effort.

Attribution Theory: People are motivated to explain their own and other people’s behavior by attributing causes of that behavior to a situation or a disposition.

Situational: Identifying the cause of an action as something in the situation or environment.

Dispositional: Identify the cause of an action as something in the person, such as a trait or a motive.

Fundamental Attribution Error: (Explaining others behavior) Overestimate personality factors. Underestimate the influence

of the situation.

Self-serving Bias: Tendency, in explaining one’s own behavior, to take credit for one’s good actions and rationalize one’s mistakes.

Football/Basketball players after game: Winners vs. Losers

Just-World Hypothesis: Good things happen to good people, bad things happen to bad people.

If something bad happens to you, you must have deserved it.

Factors Involved in attraction: Proximity, Physical attractiveness, Similarity, Exchange

Factors involved in attitude formation: Familiarity effect: Tendency of people to feel more positive toward a

person/item/product/ other stimulus that they have seen before.

Validity effect: Tendency of people to believe that a statement is true or valid simply because it has been repeated many times.

Participants will give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them, but are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people.

Explains: Astrology Fortune telling Non-scientific personality tests

Prejudice: An unfair, intolerant, or unfavorable attitude toward a group of people.

Discrimination: An unfair act or series of acts taken toward an entire group of people or individual members of that group.

Other-Race Effect- People can recognize faces of their own race better than

they can of other races.

Must attend to the message. Comprehend the message. Accept it as convincing.

Certain personality characteristics make some people more susceptible to attitude change:

People with low self-esteem are more easily influenced. Highly intelligent people tend to resist persuasion because they can think

of counterarguments more easily.

Key aspects of coercive persuasion: Person is put under physical or emotional stress. Person’s problems are reduced to one simple explanation. (Which is

repeatedly emphasized) Leader offers unconditional love/acceptance/attention. New identity based on the group is created.

(Part of the whole) Person is subjected to entrapment.

(Start off small in demands but then they increase) Person’s access to information is severely controlled.

(Mainly contradictory information)

The audience has a strong commitment to its present attitudes. Those attitudes are shared by other people. The attitudes were instilled during early childhood by such pivotal groups

as the family.