Introduction to Psychology

Introduction to Psychology

Chapter Eleven: Social Psychology Learning Objectives After completing this unit, you should be able to: 1. Discuss what factors influence conformity 2. Discuss how we form attributions 3. Discuss how we form impressions 4. Describe how attitudes and behavior are related 5. Discuss what factors influence group behavior 6. Discuss what causes prejudice 7. Discuss what measures can be used to measure prejudice 8. Discuss steps to help reduce prejudice and discrimination 11.1 Behavior in Social and Cultural Context Social psychology is the study of how the behavior of individuals is influenced by other people. This field is commonly broken into three areas: social cognition, social influence, and social relationships. Social Roles- Consist of a set of norms that characterizes how people in a given social position ought to behave. Social norms are shared expectations about how people should think, feel, and behave, and they are the glue that binds social systems together. Norms and roles can influence behavior so strongly that they compel a person to act uncharacteristically. Milgram’s Obedience Study- This famous research study was known as Milgram’s experiments or obedience experiments. Each study was descriptive in which all participants were exposed to the same situations and were observed under controlled laboratory conditions. Milgram, however, carefully changed (manipulated) different aspects of the situations, from one study to another, in order to identify factors that increased or decreased people’s obedience. The Milgram experiments on obedience to authority figures were a series of social psychology experiments. They measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts conflicting with their personal conscience. He had examined justifications for acts of genocide offered by those accused at the World War II, Nuremberg War Criminal trials. Their defense often was based on "obedience" - that they were just following the orders of their superiors. For his study, volunteers were recruited to investigate “learning” (re: ethics: deception). At the beginning, a volunteer was introduced to another participant, who was actually a confederate of the experimenter (Milgram). The volunteer was designated a “teacher” and the confederate a “learner”. The “learner” was strapped to a chair with electrodes. After he had learned a given list of word pairs, the "teacher" tested him. The teacher was told to administer an electric shock every time the learner made a mistake, increasing the level of shock each time. The conclusion of the study indicated that ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to the extent of killing an innocent human

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