SOCIAL BEHAVIOR

Chapter 16

Muffy and Jake

Read the story of a couple, Muffy and Jake, on pg. 647. What is happening socially in this story? Describe at least two phenomena that you see in this story.

[Packet] Pride and Prejudice

Identify and explain at least 3 social phenomena you see while watching the following clip from Pride and Prejudice. Allow the following questions to guide your responses:1. What assumptions do the characters make about each

other, and are they objective?

2. How does social class impact the characters’ treatment of one another?

3. How do attitudes change, and why?

4. Why are certain characters attracted to each other?

5. How do the characters’ behaviors change when they’re in groups vs when they are interacting 1 on 1?

6. How and why do the characters conform or refuse to conform to the way they are supposed to behave?

The Characters

The Bennets: Jane: eldest, nice, blonde hair Lizzy: second eldest, witty, dark hair

The Gentlemen: Mr. Bingley: just moved into neighborhood, nice,

blonde hair Mr. Darcy: Bingley’s friend, super rich, dark hair

Pride and Prejudice Ctd.

Personal Perception Attribution Process Interpersonal attraction Attitudes Conformity and obedience Behavior in groups

[Packet] 6 Phenomena of Social Psych.

Make a chart with three columns and eight rows. Topic Description Story

1. Person perception

2. Attribution processes

3. Love and Liking

4. Attitudes

5. Conformity and obedience

6. Behavior in groups

Six Topics of Social Psychology

You will receive a number. Key:

#1 Person Perception, #2 Attribution Process #3 Love and Liking #4 Attitudes, #5 Conformity and obedience, #6 Behavior in groups

You begin on pg. 647 to find references to these topics, or any of the other pages in the chapter that describe your topic. In the final column, write a 1-2 sentence story illustrating the topic. You will eventually share this info with others in organized groups.

[Packet] Person Perception Pick one of these three people,

unless you can think of your own dynamic movie character.

Write a “character sketch” for your character of choice from the point-of-view of

1. A movie viewer2. This character’s spouse3. This character’s child or

relative4. Someone who works with this

character5. Someone who works for this

character

Pte. Snow’s Granddaughter from The Hunger Games

My grandpa is very powerful man. He is the President of Panem, and he is a great leader. He defeated the rebellion of the ungrateful districts when he was younger, and then he created Panem’s favorite past time, the Hunger Games. I like going over for breakfast at Grandpa’s mansion. We eat eggs and orange slices, and he asks me about school. Sometimes, when the Games are on, we sit and watch them together. He always complements my hair and tells me how pretty I am. I love my grandpa.

Person Perception:Forming Impressions of Others

Effects of physical appearance People tend to attribute desirable characteristics

such as sociable, friendly, poised, warm, competent, and well adjusted to those who are good looking.

Research on physical variables in person perception indicate that facial features that are similar to infant features influence perceptions of honesty (baby-faced people being viewed as more honest).

Cognitive schemas People use social schemas, organized clusters of

ideas about categories of social events and people, to categorize people into types.

Figure 16.1 Examples of social schemas

Person Perception:Forming Impressions of Others

Stereotypes A normal cognitive process involving widely held

social schemas that lead people to expect that others will have certain characteristics because of their membership in a specific group.

Ex. Gender, age, ethnic, and occupational Prejudice and discrimination Prejudice is a negative attitude toward a person

because of group membership, while discrimination is an action.

Memory biases are tilted in favor of confirming people’s prejudices.

Transmission of prejudice across generations occurs in part due to observational learning and may be strengthened through operant conditioning.

Person Perception:Forming Impressions of Others

Subjectivity in person perception Person perception is a subjective process. Stereotypes may lead people to see what they expect to

see and to overestimate how often they see it Ex. illusory correlation: “I’ve never met an honest lawyer.” Ex. the spotlight effect: the tendency to assume that the

social spotlight shines more brightly on oneself than it actually does. “How many people noticed that I’m wearing an AC-DC shirt?” Estimates are usually 2x reality!

Ex. the illusion of asymmetric insight: the tendency to think that one’s knowledge of one’s peers is greater than their peers’ knowledge of them. “I know my roommates better than they know me.”

Person Perception:Forming Impressions of Others

Evolutionary perspectives Evolutionary psychologists argue that

many biases in person perception were adaptive in our ancestral past

Ex. automatically categorizing others may reflect the primitive need to quickly separate friend from foe.

Attributions

Use pgs. 652-653 to answer these questions in your spiral: What is an attribution? What are the different kinds of attributions that we make (4)?

Examine the chart on pg. 653. Go back to each of the comments.

Classify them in terms of internal-unstable, internal-stable, external-unstable, and external-stable.

Attributions

Read through these comments. Are they internal or external?1. “They won because all of their team members must take steroids.

Look at those muscles! They all look like East German Olympians!”2. “They won only because our best two athletes on the team were

out with injuries—talk about good luck!” 3. “They won because they have some of the best talent in the

country”4. “Anybody could win this region; the competition is far below

average in comparison to the rest of the country.”5. “We only lost because our star player was dehydrated. Did you

know she couldn’t even spit she was so dehydrated?”6. “They won because they get to practice with state of the art

equipment. Little rich kids!”7. “Our coach is incompetent. That’s why we didn’t win.”8. “They won because they put in a great deal of last-minute effort

and practice, and they were incredibly fired up for the regional tournament after last year’s loss.”

[Packet] Attractiveness KWL

(This should take a whole page). Split a page into 3 columns. K: What fosters interpersonal attraction?

What do you know about interpersonal attraction in general? Make five bullet points.

W: What are some questions you have about interpersonal attraction?

FLIP TO THE NEXT PAGE.

Factors in Attraction for Me

Think of 10 factors that attract you romantically to another person. You may write them down if you like. Then try to think of at least 3 categories in which to classify each of your factors. Where do each of these 10 factors fall within these categories?

[Packet] Are the Odds in their Favor?

We are going to prepare for an application activity on the next slide.

Read about the following 8 factors regarding attraction. Write down and summarize each one..

1. Physical attractiveness for men and women (pg. 657)

2. The matching hypothesis (pg. 657)

3. Attitude similarity (pg. 658)

4. Attitude alignment (pg. 658)

5. Reciprocity (pg. 658)

6. Self-enhancement (pg. 658)

7. Self-verification (pg. 658)

8. Romantic ideals (pg. 658)

[Packet] Are the Odds in Their Favor?: How likely would it be for each of these famous couples to get and stay together according to

research?Instructions: Pick five couples that you recognize, answer the

question, and support your answer with at least one of the “factors of attraction.” (pgs. 657-658)

Love and Liking Perspectives on love

Hatfield & Berscheid – Passionate vs. Companionate love: Can co-exist.

Sternberg - Intimacy and commitment are subdivisions of “companionate love.” Intimacy= warmth, closeness, and sharing and commitment=intent to maintain a relationship in spite of the difficulties and costs

Is attraction mostly determined by nature or nurture?

Nature Nurture

Look through pgs. 660-661. Begin a t-chart.

Is attraction mostly determined by nature, nurture, or both?

Attachment relationships: Ancestral societies’ infant attachment patterns reflect safety and richness in local environments and fostered mindsets about interpersonal relations and reproductive strategies (Belsky, 1999).

Culture (Hendrick & Hendrick, 2000): Consistencies in mate preferences all over the world.

Evolutionary perspective: physical attractiveness and similarities in mate preferences between men and women (Miller, 1998 and Buss 1998).

Attachment relationships carry over from infancy: We were conditioned as babies on what kinds of relationships to form with people (Hazan & Shaver, 1987)

Commitment= predictive of stability (Sternberg, 1988 and Sprecher, 1999)

Culture (Buss, 1989, 1994): cultures vary in emphasis on passionate love as a prerequisite for marriage.

Nature Nurture

Social Behavior:Attitudes?

What determines whether or not you form an attitude on something, how strong that attitude is, and whether or not you will change your mind once the attitude is formed? Use the picture prompts as idea starters.

About Attitudes

Instructions: Define at least 5 key terms from the next four slides. Underline and bullet each of the 5 terms. Here’s a fly-through of what you’ll see. Write down what interests you the most:

1. What Are Attitudes

2. What Attitudes Are Made Of

3. Factors in Changing Attitudes

4. Theories of Attitude Change

What Are Attitudes?

Attitudes: positive or negative evaluations of objects of thought. What are “objects of thought”?Social issues EX. Capital punishment, gun controlGroups EX. Liberals, conservatives, farmers, engineersInstitutions EX. The Lutheran church, the Supreme CourtConsumer products EX. Yogurt, computersPeople EX. The president, your next-door neighbor

What Are Attitudes Made Of?

3 components

Cognitive: beliefs about object of thought

Affective: feelings stimulated by object of thought

Behavioral: predispositions to act in certain ways toward an attitude object

Factors in changing attitudes

Factors in changing attitudes

Source: the origin of the information; the source has high credibility and is trustworthy and likeable.

Message: the content of what you’re saying; two-sided arguments that use only strong points and successfully arouse fear are effective.

Receiver: susceptibility to persuasion not linked with personality, but it is linked with forewarning. Receiver more receptive if the argument does not interfere with strong attitudes and beliefs. Receiver less receptive is he/she already knows something about the topic, b/c sparks analysis.

Theories of Attitude Change

Theories of attitude change

Learning theory: Attitudes may be shaped through classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and observational learning.

Dissonance theory: inconsistent attitudes cause tension and that people alter their attitudes to reduce cognitive dissonance.

Self-perception theory: People infer their attitudes from their behavior.

Elaboration likelihood model: Central routes (when people carefully ponder the content and logic of persuasive messages) to persuasion yield longer-lasting attitude change than peripheral routes (persuasion depends on nonmessage factors such as attractiveness of the source).

(Spiral) Critical Thinking Application

Open to pgs. 684-685. Read the part of the article that you are assigned. Summarize your section in writing, and be prepared to share it with the class.

Now think of someone you need to be able to persuade in your present life or your future OR someone who might try to persuade you. Organize and write out a plan with the objective stated at the top.

SAMPLE OBJECTIVE: Persuade my boss to let me take my vacation in July.

Conformity Anticipatory Guide

Answer the following questions with someone sitting around you.

1. If a group you are a part of makes a decision that goes against your morals, do you feel better or worse than if you were to have made that decision alone?

2. Do you usually conform to the group, or do you usually dissent? Why?

3. If you were in the military, and someone in command told you to do something that went against your personal code of conduct, would you do it?

4. Under what circumstances, if any, would you be willing to kill?

5. Is torture ever acceptable? Why or why not?

Milgram’s Study (1965)

Read the article on Milgram’s studies on obedience on pgs. 673-674.

What was the reason for Milgram’s study on obedience?

Who was recruited to participate in the study? What were the subjects told the study would

measure? Describe what the experiment entailed,

including the set-up, the machinery, the consequences of a wrong answer, and the point at which the experiment ended for each subject.

What was the dependent variable in the experiment?

Summarize the results of the experiment. According to the article, what do the results of

this experiment mean?

Social Psychology: Conformity and Obedience, and the Mob

Conformity occurs when people yield to real or imagined social pressure

Example: You maintained a well-groomed lawn to avoid ticking off the neighbors.

Solomon Asch (1951, 1955, 1956)

1955: A group of seven subjects, all male undergraduate students, were shown a large card with a vertical line on it and were then asked to indicate which of the three lines on a second card matches the original “standard line” in length.

Solomon Asch ctd.

Everyone in the group are given a turn to match the line lengths, and then they announce their decision in a group.

The subject the 6th chair didn’t know it, but everyone else in the group is an accomplice of the experimenter.

All accomplices give the correct answer for the first two trials. Beginning on the third trial, they begin to give the wrong answer.

Out of the next 15 trials, the accomplices give the same incorrect answer on 11 of them.

What did the person in the 6th chair do?

This experiment was repeated with 50 different young men.

The 50 participants in the 6th chair conformed to the wrong answer 37% of the time.

13 never caved in to the group, and 14 conformed on over half the trials!

Why do people conform?

Stanley Milgram (1963)

How can regular citizens be persuaded to act in cruel ways?

Stanley Milgram ctd.

Subjects were a diverse collection of 40 men from the local community recruited through advertisements to participate in a study at Yale.

The subjects were told that the purpose of the experiment was to study the relationship between mental acuity and stress.

Each subject would meet the experimenter and another subject, a likeable, 47-year-old accountant. The accountant was actually an accomplice to the experimenter, but the subject didn’t know it.

The subject was “the teacher” and the nice accountant was “the learner.” These assignments were made through a rigged drawing.

Milgram ctd.

The subject watched as the accountant was strapped into an electrified chair through which a shock could be delivered.

The subject was told that the shock would be painful but “would not cause tissue damage.”

The subject was taken into a room next door that housed the shock generator that he was told to control.

The 30 switches varied from “Slight Shock” to “XXX.”

Milgram ctd.

The accountant was asked questions. When he answered them correctly, he was not shocked. When he answered them incorrectly, the subject was told to administer increasingly severe shocks for each wrong answer.

THE SHOCKS WERE NOT REAL, BUT THE SUBJECT DIDN’T KNOW IT!

As the severity of the false shocks increased, the accomplice would begin to scream, beat on the wall, and beg for mercy.

When the level of the false shocked was nearing its severest, the accomplice would all silent, as if he was no longer conscious.

Milgram ctd.

As the shocks continued, the subject would ask the experimenters things like, “Should I stop now?” or “Am I hurting him?” The subjects were told by the experimenters to continue until the end of the experiment.

65% of the subjects delivered the entire series of shocks.

Why?

“the essence of obedience is that a person comes to view himself as the instrument for carrying out another person’s wishes, and he therefore no longer regards himself as responsible for his actions.”

—Stanley Milgram

Julius Caesar Connection

Ask yourself the following questions as you view Julius Caesar:

Why do the senate members fear the main body of Roman citizens?

How do we see conformity among the conspirators, and what are the consequences?

How does Mark Antony persuade the people to revolt during the famous funeral speech? He doesn’t tell them straight up to revolt, so how does he do it?