Social Psychology
•	Main themes
•	Phenomenology and social cognition
•	Social reality
•	Conformity and compliance
The main themes
•	Phenomenological
–	People respond to perceived reality
–	And not to objective reality
•	 Social reality is critical
•	Situations often affect behavior more than personal dispositions
The phenomenological approach
•	Objective reality less important than subjective
•	Social stimuli are ambiguous
–	What is objective about them is fairly unimportant
–	Require interpretation
–	Man from Mars approach
Interpretation of behavior
•	Domain of social cognition
–	Draws on more basic cognitive psychology
–	And contributes to it
•	Interpretations of others’ behavior depend on
–	Inferences about mental states
•	Beliefs and attitudes
•	Goals and intentions
–	Stereotypes about behavior and situations
Inferences about mental states
•	Almost all behavior can be caused by many different states
•	So deciding which one is important
•	Leads to different labeling
•	And to inferences about other mental states
Cues
•	Stereotypes about non-verbal behaviors
•	Stereotypes about people based on their categories
•	Situational information
Naïve realism
•	People think they are in contact with reality
–	Recruit and evaluate information consistently
–	Seek out supporting information
•	Therefore people who disagree with them must not be
•	Leads to intolerance 
•	Disagreements often less extreme than people think
The importance of social reality
•	Reality is what we take to be true
•	And certainly based on own experiences
•	But also on what others have told us.
–	Experts
–	Education
–	Mass media
•	This is known as social reality
Important distinctions about type of beliefs
•	Some are purely factual 
–	But these may also be based partially on others
•	Some facts we read about
•	And how we evaluate them may be cultural
•	But others are more matters of faith or cultural understandings
–	Religious beliefs
–	Values and morals
What social reality does
•	Allows us to focus on culturally important things
•	Often represents truth, honed from many centuries of experience
•	Teaches who experts are
•	Encourages ways of thinking that make us more accepted
•	And to avoid ideas and ways of thinking that lead to rejection
Social reality is powerful
•	Much of what we take to be true or assume is based on it
•	Can be localized
•	Without encouragement to think independently it leads to problems
•	Education
Social Influence
•	People under-estimate how much they are influenced by others
•	Why
–	Much influence is subtle and not direct
–	Some based on shared realities
Social influence powerful
•	Countless experiments
•	But also real life
–	Holocaust
–	Lynch mobs
–	Mob mentality
Several classic experiments
•	Sherif’s autokinetic effect
•	Asch
•	Milgram
•	Zimbardo’s prison experiment
Sherif’s autokinetic studies
•	Autokinetic effect
•	Individual norms
•	Group norms
•	Persist over generations
Conformity: Asch’s Studies
Yielding to Others
•	Conformity
–	Informational social influence
–	Normative social influence
General Results
•	Most people conformed on at least 1 trial
•	Results stronger when lines more ambiguous – informational influence
•	Conformity reduced when one person dissented
The Milgram Studies
The Milgram Studies
The Milgram Studies
•	15 volts to 450 volts (“XXX”)
•	At 120 volts learner shouts in pain
•	At 150 volts learner asks to stop
•	At 300 volts learner pounds on wall
•	At 330 volts learner stops responding
•	Question: how far will teachers go?
The Milgram Studies
•	Psychiatrists predicted 
–	2% would go to maximum level
•	Actual results
–	 65% of teachers went to the maximum level
•	Other factors
–	Lab coat
–	Proximity
•	The psychology of gradualism
•	Ethical issues
The Stanford Prison Experiment
•	Ordinary students recruited as prisoners and guards
•	Over time (less than a week) the guards became more abusive
•	http://www.prisonexp.org/slide-1.htm
Decision Making in Groups
•	Majority-win rule
•	Truth-win rule
•	Group polarization
•	Groupthink