Read Chapter 11.
How do all these different topics that are in this social psychology chapter come together to form an all encompassing understanding of human thought and behavior in the social world?? How has your understanding of social psychology changed since reading this chapter?
From your reading, which topic(s) are most interesting to you?
What was the most surprising or memorable thing you learned about in this reading?
Provide a list of psychological terms that you used in your comment at the bottom of your post.
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There are many things that are explained in this chapter that encompass one person’s behavior. They can be broken down though into with a group and how we behave by ourselves. These then combine to form a complete view on who we are.
First, I will talk about what influences our own behavior. We instantly make decisions on people just by seeing them. They are our first impressions and they are very important. Through first impressions we make attributions to those people. There are two types personal and situational attributions. Personal attributions include internal factors such as mood, ability, and effort. Situational attributions are based on external factors such as luck, accidents, or actions of other people. We as people contribute our own mistakes as situational attributions, and others as personal. This is exemplified in actor/observer bias.
As individuals we also make stereotypes. These are very large in every culture and are responsible for fights and even wars. We make stereotypes all the time and we maintain them. We subtype people that don’t fit into our known stereotype and we use self-fulfilling prophecy to confirm the stereotype. These make us discriminate and make us prejudice against others.
The last thing that effects our individual behavior is our attitudes. We have attitudes about a lot of things such as politics, food, and religion among other things. These can predict our behavior. The more used or accessible it is the better the predictor of behavior it is. Sometimes our attudes and actions get reversed. This is explained in implicit and explicit attitudes. Implicit attitudes are our unconscious attitudes. Explicit attitudes are attitudes you know and can report to others. When they get reversed it is hard for is to explain why.
As a group we act very differently. We do things that we would never do as an individual and groups have also been shown to limit personal behaviors. Deindividuation occurs when people are not self-aware and therefore are not paying attention to their personal standards. This makes us do many things good and bad in groups. It is exemplified in a Stanford study where researchers played prisoners and guards. They had to quit because the guards were being cruel to the prisoners. Also as a group you conform and don’t like to go against the majority of the group. This can cause some bad decisions and also good decisions if the majority is correct.
Groups can alter ones judgment too. According to the bystander apathy the larger the group the less likely the chance is that someone will help. This is prevalent in witnesses to crimes and other emergencies. People expect others to help and as a result nobody does. Then people weight the importance it is to them and sometimes don’t help because of that.
My favorite part of the chapter was when they would talk about how we act in groups. I was shocked by many of the studies done and results. I thought groups were very helpful, which they can be, but I didn’t know that they could make people do some outrageous things.
Because every human activity has a social dimension, therefore this chapter topics all come together as an explanation of how we can understand one’s behavior. It’s involving how people think of other people, how people’s attitudes affect other people, how people influence other people, and how people develop strong relationships with each other. All of these topics are very self-explanatory, we all could relate to how society influences us when it comes to something like decision making or just as simple as how we dress everyday. For example, we consider how people might think of us if we dress different than the rest of people in school, therefore we might as well go with the flow to avoid the judgemental from others.
After this reading, my understanding on “how we make attributions about other people” changes in a good way. I could understand more about attributions in term of different categories which involve personal attributions and situational attributions. Personal attribution is the explanation of an outcome based on one’s ability, mood, or effort. For instance, we could say that we fail an exam because we didn’t study hard enough. And situational attribution is the explanation of an outcome based on external factor, such as luck, accident, actions, etc.With the same example above, We fail an exam, but only this time we explain we fail the test because the test itself was too hard. I also understand the bias in attributions. The textbook explains that when we explain one’s behavior, we tend to overemphasize the importance of a personal factors and underestimate the importance of the situation which refers to the fundamental attribution error.
From the reading, the most interesting topic to me was stereotypes can make us feel and act certain ways. Stereotype can be positive, neutral, or negative. When it’s negative, it can lead to prejudice and discrimination. Both prejudice and discrimination are responsible for the conflicts and warfares in today’s society. However, research has shown people discriminates against others to protect their self-esteem. Also, social psychologists studies ingroups and outgroups. People who are belong to a group tend to have more confident and would do anything to support the group. Stereotypes can also influence our beliefs, behavior, and especially it can also influence our basic perceptual processes. It can be explained as how we normally think of a group of people will affect our perception on that group. According to the experiment, white participants were briefly shown a picture of either a white face and a black face, and then the person will classify either a gun or a tool to match with the face without thinking. If participants were shown a black face identified the gun more quickly. Which can leads to the belief that when people see gun, they will automatically think of black people.
The most memorable topic to me from this chapter was the last section of relationships. It is understandable that the more often we communicate and share the same interests, values, and beliefs will be more likely to have a strong relationship. But the part whereas a 6 months old children prefer to look at attractive faces, and young children prefer to play with attractive playmates was rather shocking to me. I would never thought of a child could perceive and identify their own standard of attractiveness.
Terms: personal attribution, situational attribution, fundamental attribution error, prejudice, discrimination, perceptual processes.
There are a lot of topics throughout this chapter that tell us how we as people act and behave. One major part of how people act is how people perceive each other. When someone sees another person, they are already creating situational attributions to people based on how they act and external factors. This is common in everyone because I believe it is a natural thing that happens. People also will naturally associate different people to groups of people based on what they are wearing or what kind of car someone may drive. As I was reading this part of the chapter, I thought about if I stereotyped at all and came to realize that I do a little bit. I don’t ever mean to stereotype different people but I think it is something that just happens naturally. Then there are the complex attitudes of people and how we act. There two different types of attitudes that everyone has. There are explicit attitudes that we can tell people about and implicit attitudes, which are our feelings and behaviors that are unconscious to us. Attitudes can also be persuaded by people life someone’s own family and friends. All these topics about human thought and behavior come together in a way that they work hand in hand with each other to form who someone is as a person. My understanding of social psychology has changed a little bit because I have a better understanding of what impacts our own behavior and decision-making. There are many factors that can change the way that a person acts and thinks when he or she is around a group of people.
There were a couple of topics that I found interesting in the chapter. One of the most interesting topics that I found was the cognitive dissonance theory. This theory was proposed by Leon Festinger and he thought that there could be a contradiction between two attitudes or between a behavior and an attitude. I find this to be something that happens a lot with people. They know that the thing that they are doing can cause harm to them, but they go ahead and keep on doing it. If you know something that you are doing can cause harm to you then why would you keep doing it? The concepts of social facilitation and social loafing are also very interesting to me. These are concepts that I have been accustomed to for a long time now and it is not something that I am very proud of. There are times where I wouldn’t work on stuff as hard because no one would be watching and I would get mad at myself for acting this way. The same goes for when someone would be watching and I would give an extra effort. I would keep telling myself that I need to work this hard all the time in whatever I am doing.
One concept that I find kind of memorable is the concept of normative and informational influence. People always go along with what is expected of them and they never want to stick out. For the most part this is an okay thing. There times when it isn’t always right because people need to be able to form their own identity and if they are always going along with what the group does, then they will never have an identity.
Terms: stereotype, explicit attitude, implicit attitude, cognitive dissonance theory, social facilitation, social loafing, normative influence, informational influence
Throughout this entire chapter, there are a lot of different topics that help us describe people’s behaviors and personalities. A major part of this chapter is how we distinguish people. For example, when we first see someone, we already are making assumptions of them based on how they look, dress, and act. We make stereotypes about these people. Most of the time, we don’t try to do it to be mean and judgemental, it is just such a common thing that we don’t even realize we’re doing it. We all look at people and make assumptions of them each and every day, even if we don’t fully realize it. Another thing we do is assume what groups people would belong in. We think of people that are like “jocks” or “nerds.” We really do this on appearance, which is pretty sad. Most of the time, we won’t even talk to people because of the assumptions that we have in our heads. If they don’t look like the type of person that we normally hang out with, then we will stereotype them for something else and not even bother getting to know them. A major part to how we interact and evaluate with other people is based on our attitudes that we have. It really puts us into the social groups that we are involved in. For example, if people were more religious growing up, then they probably will have a better attitude and interact better with people who are also religious and believe in the same things that they do. There are two main attitudes focused on in this chapter. They are called explicit attitude and implicit attitude. They both have different affects on people’s behavior. Explicit attitude is an attitude that a person is consciously aware of and can report it. Implicit attitude is an attitude that influences a person’s feelings and behavior at an unconscious level. These usually influence our feelings and behaviors at an unconscious level. My understanding of social psychology has changed a little throughout this chapter. I already knew that people always stereotype and assume things about people before they even have a conversation to it. But it’s a lot more complex than that.
Something from this chapter that was memorable was how groups affect individual behavior. I knew that you tend to act different while you are around different groups, but I didn’t know that it could actually change your lifestyle. Like if you like to be fit and be healthy, and you normally hang around people that like to eat a lot, you will eventually lose your ways and eat with them. Because it’s kinda hard to be around people that like to eat pizza all the time, and you say you want a salad. Their choices will eventually influence your own, whether you realize it’s happening or not.
Psychological Terms: Stereotypes, explicit attitude, implicit attitude, social psychology, behavior
Because of the complexity of human thought and behavior it is important to understand its many different components. All of the individual pieces are tied together and are needed to gain a thorough understanding of what we do and why do it. My understanding of social psychology has changed greatly since reading this chapter. I never knew all of the components that had to be taken into consideration when studying social psychology. Social Psychologists look at how and why people do the things that they do. To gain an understanding of this you need to understand how people’s thoughts, feeling and behaviors are influenced by actual, implied, and imagined presences of others. There are many components of this question, however, if you look at all of them you can gain a better understanding of human behaviors in the social world.
The most interesting thing that I read was the section on conformity. Conformity is when we change what we do in order to fit in and get the approval that we all desire. Studies have shown that there are two main reasons why people conform. The first reason is normative influence, which means we conform to be liked or accepted by a group. I find this very interesting because when I stop and think about this I realize that I see this happen every day. We have all been in situations where we change our behavior just to ‘fit in’ and be like everyone else. The other reason why we conform has to do with informational influences. We believe that a group knows the correct way to act, so we conform to their ways. I think of this as it relates to traveling. We change our behaviors to accept the local culture of wherever we are. I found this interesting because often we don’t even realize that we are conforming our behavior, it just sort of happens inherently.
The most surprising section to me was the one which discussed how being in a group can impact individual behaviors. Social facilitation and social loafing are two of the reasons that our behaviors are affected by group situations. Social facilitation is how the presence of others can enhance our behavior. Social loafing is when people don’t work as hard in groups as they would if they were working alone. De-individuation is the idea that our individuality, self- awareness, and attention are reduced when we are within a group. All of this was surprising to me because I never realized all of the different things that contribute to changing behaviors. After reading this chapter I have a greater appreciation for how deeply psychologists have dug into the reasons for human behaviors and all of the information that we have gained.
Terms: Social Facilitation, Social Loafing, Conformity, Normative Influence, Informational Influences,
The several topics in this chapter all help us understand thought and behavior of human beings. One major topic in this chapter is how we judge other people. One way we judge people is by simply observing them. After a few seconds, their body language can lead to certain judgments about their behavior, personality, etc. These quick judgments are called thin slices of behavior, a concept formed by Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal. Another way we judge people is by their facial expressions. An important facet of facial expressions is eye contact; using eye contact, we can show embarrassment, shamefulness, trustworthiness, or even use it to flirt. Attributions are another way of how we judge the actions of other people and ourselves. Personal attributions are explanations of behavior or events that are based on people’s characteristics, mood, traits, and efforts. Situational attributions are explanations for behavior or events that are based on external events, such as luck, the weather, accidents, or other people’s actions. We also stereotype other people, whether we mean to or not. Stereotypes are held throughout our entire lives (usually), even though we may say they do not. Stereotypes can be positive, negative, or neutral; negative stereotypes lead to prejudice and discrimination. Prejudice involves negative feelings, opinions, and beliefs that are associated with a stereotype. Discrimination is inappropriate and unjustified treatment of people as a result of prejudice. Another major topic in this chapter is attitude. A person’s attitude is their evaluation of objects, events, or ideas. Our attitudes affect our behaviors. The type of attitude we have affects our behaviors in different ways. The two types of attitude are explicit and implicit attitudes. Explicit attitudes are attitudes that a person is consciously aware of and can report. An implicit attitude is an attitude that influences a person’s feelings and behavior at an unconscious level. Implicit attitudes are similar to implicit memory, in that it allows us to act without thinking much about it. I feel like I understand a lot more about why we act the way that we do. I did not realize how much other people can affect our behaviors. The presence of others can greatly affect our performance. Typically, when others are present, our performance enhances. This is called social facilitation. But when we are grouped with other people, we tend to work less hard than we would individually. This is called social loafing. I thought the topic of deindividuation was very interesting. A study of this showed that under social roles, people lose sight of who they really are and ignore their personal standards. The most famous (or possibly infamous) example of a deindividuation study is one done by Philip Zimbardo and Chris Haney. In this study, participants were asked to play the role of either a prisoner or a guard. The participants chosen to play guards started acting like the stereotypical prison guard. They abused the prisoner; they were brutal and sadistic. They became so invested in this role play, that the study had to be cut short to avoid major psychological damage.
Terms used: Judgments, body language, facial expressions, thin slices of behavior, personal attributions, situational attributions, stereotype, prejudice, discrimination, attitude, implicit attitude, explicit attitude, social facilitation, social loafing, deindividuation
Human thought and behavior involve many different psychology concepts. We think, behave and base our decisions through others and our social lives. We tend to form first impressions quickly, based on body language and facial expressions. One concept is known as thin slices of behavior. Within a few second, reading body language can provide sufficient cues for us to form general impressions about people. Attitudes can affect us because they are created by the mere exposure effect, conditioning, and socialization. Mere exposure effect is the increase in liking due to repeated exposure. Our associations between things and their meanings can change, and our attitudes can be conditioned. We conform to match the behavior, opinions, or expectations of others. We also comply with requests and are obedient to authorities. Social facilitation is when the mere presence of others enhances performance. Social loafing is the tendency for people to work less hard in a group than when working alone. The last topic discussed in this chapter is about how passionate love and companionate love are both important aspects in romantic relationships. Passionate love includes intense longing and sexual drive, and companionate love includes strong commitment to supporting and caring for a partner. As you can see, all these topics can be related and shape our lives.
After reading this chapter my understanding of social psychology is a lot similar to what we are discussing in my sociology class. We talk about how individual behavior is heavily based on structure such as social norms, rather than agency. Agency is when people act as an independent agent to make their own decisions. Many times we obey people who have authority. This is known as obedience, which are factors that influence people to follow the orders given by an authority.
The most interesting topic to me was discrepancies between attitudes and behavior and how it leads to dissonance. An example of insufficient justification is when participants in one study performed an extremely boring task and then reported to other participants how enjoyable it was. Some participants were paid $20 to lie, and some were paid $1. Justification of effort is an example of hazing. Many know what they are doing is wrong, but do it anyways to join a group or cult. It's amazing what authority power can do to someone.
The most memorable thing I read about was the Kitty Genovese story and bystander apathy. Bystander apathy is the failure to offer help to people in need. In 1964, Kitty was walking home and was assaulted and murdered. At first the newspaper reported that 38 people had witnessed the crime and none of them helped or called the police. Later evidence showed that the story was wrong and that there were only a few witnesses and none of them could see what was happening. If the reporter were correct, this would be an example of bystander apathy. It's hard to imagine that anyone could watch something so horrific happen and not do anything.
Psychological Terms: thin slices of behavior, mere exposure effect, conditioning, socialization, social facilitation, social loafing, passionate love, companionate love, structure, agency, obedience, first impressions, body language, facial expressions, insufficient justification, justification of effort, bystander apathy
All the topics come together because every topic plays a role in how we view people and certain situations. This chapter was probably the most interesting to read so far because everyone can relate to several different topics within this chapter. I learned a lot throughout this chapter about stereotyping, different types of attitudes and what impacts our behavior towards ourselves and others. One topic that was interesting to me was the very first section on how we make snap judgements about people. Within the first couple of paragraphs, I learned about thin slices of behavior. This term means you judge someone just by a few seconds of observing them. The book talked about a research study conducted by Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal who told participants to rate a professor’s teaching ability. These results were similar to those observations of the professor’s real students. This section then goes and talks about facial expressions and eye contact. Having eye contact is very important I think when talking to someone because it lets the other person know you are interested to what they are saying. In some situations, however, making eye contact with someone can be awkward. Making eye contact is especially awkward when meeting someone new. If you are speaking with someone and do not make eye contact the other person might think you are rude and do not really care what they have to say and may become angry with you. The next section which I found interesting to read was We Tend to Stereotype Other People. I know I can personally relate to this section because I have judged people before and labeled them under certain categories, and people have done the same to me as well. Everyone at some point can relate to stereotyping another person and if they haven’t they are probably lying. Our society these days stereotypes everyone and everyone more than likely stereotyped another person at least once in their lifetime. Sometimes we judge people and just not even realize it because we stereotype so much it’s hard to detect it. In this section I learned about subtyping. Subtyping is we stereotype someone and realize they do not fit into that certain category, we put them in a “special” category instead of changing the stereotype. Sometimes when you stereotype someone, that stereotype can become true. THis is called self-fulfilling prophecy. An interesting research study was done by Robert Rosenthal to prove this. He had elementary students take an IQ test which would identify the ones who were more than likely to show a major increase in their IQ during the year. These kids were labeled as bloomers. The teachers received a list of the students who were picked to be bloomers and the bloomers were chosen at a random pick. At the end of the year the bloomers did have different scores than the beginning. This was a result of the teachers giving the student extra help and attention. I learned the difference between simple and complex attitude. Simple attitude is when our attitude matches our actions while complex attitude is when your attitude does not match your actions. I also learned through this chapter the difference between explicit and implicit attitude. Explicit attitude is something you know about and can tell others while implicit is an unconscious attitude.
Terms- Stereotyping, Implicit Attitude, Explicit Attitude, Subtyping ,Thin Slices of Behavior
Psych
Jacob Clark
November 2, 2014
Chpt 11
Based on this chapter, i have made a few observations of an all encompassing idea of human thought and behavior in the social world.
First, what i picked up right away, is that we consciously and subconsciously try to make everything easier. For example, In the realm of discrimination, we tend to believe stereotypes whether or not they are actually true. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy, because anything that contradicts our stereotype becomes an exception, not proof that we are wrong.
Another example of trying to make everything easier is our ability to justify things to ourselves. often to avoid dissonance. An example of this is a smoker thinking, “it is not that bad for me”. I feel like we seem to justify things subconsciously sometimes to. Like eating 9 cans of ravioli because you’re thinking, “oh, i could use some energy”. However, in retrospect you know you didnt need it.
Another part of my “all encompassing idea” is that we crave relationships, and are heavily influenced by this desire. Sometimes to a point beyond reason we commit ourselves to a group for the sake of belonging. Some examples of how far we can go is that study done in 1973 with the prisoners. It showed deindividuation, or our ability to do horrible things when we are with a group, the responsibility does not fall entirely on us, and we are given a measure of power. Just as well, the commitment we see with fraternities. People do some pretty sick crap to belong is all i am going to say.
As far as my understanding changing, it did in a few specific areas. First and foremost in the difference between passionate and compassionate love. I have been in a relationship for almost 4 years. As with many relationships that start in highschool, it started fairly physical. However, as time went on, we learn to love at a more personal level. The “puppy love” wears off and we are left with a true care and concern for another person. In all honesty, i believe when you can fart openly in front of your significant other, that you have reached compassionate love. Just a little anecdotal evidence for you.
What surprised me the most in this chapter was all that talk on the motivation of prejudice and discrimination. I primarily role with the evolutionary standpoint. I tend to favor this one because i am a very loving person. I befriend all types of people regardless of ethnicity, race, or religion. However, i do feel slight apprehension when first meeting someone “different” than me. This isnt a judgement of their character, and it is very automatic. So, i assume its a natural instinct.
Terms: Discrimination, stereotypes, self fulfilling prophecy, dissonance, passion, compassion
Cassandra Rutledge
Chapter 11
11/2/2014
All together this chapter shows us why and how we treat each other. It shows how we help or hurt one another. It also shows how situations and people influence the way we think and act. Lastly it shows us how we develop strong relationships with the people in our lives. I know about this subject because we have learned it in Sociology.
How do our attitudes affect us? Attitude is defined as people's evaluations of objects, of events, or of ideas. There are two types of attitudes simple and complex. Starting with simple attitude, which is when your behavior is consistent with your attitude; the oppisite of being a hypocrite. Complex attitude is when you behaior is not consistent with you attitude; which is exactly what a hypocrite is. Attitude accessibility is the ease of retrieving an attitude from memory. I feel like everyone has complex attitude every once in awhile due to how we are brought up in this world.
The most memorable thing is the explicit and implicit attitudes. Explicit attitude is an attitude that a person is consciously aware of and can report a situation. Implicit is an attitude that influences a person's feelings and behavior at an unconscious level. Our implicit memory is easier to recall from and also is quicker with little effort at all.
Terms: treat, influence, develop, relationships, Sociology, attitudes, simple attitude, complex attitude, attitude accessibility, explicit attitude, implicit attitude, memory, and recall
After reading this chapter I learned how we connect and interact with other people. Every person we see and meet, we have that first impression on them. This can be a bad thing because we might get the wrong impression of someone and miss out on the opportunity of meeting a new friend. We might place certain stereotypes on some people that will give us that bad impression on them. An example of a stereotype might be that all people that all bikers wear leather and have tattoos. In reality we know that is not true. Some people may not like certain groups of people with no apparent reason and that is called prejudice. Those people who are prejudice towards a group of people often discriminate against them. We know this is wrong of people to do, but some people think this way because of a bad experience with someone from that group and we think everyone that is in that group is that way. Our attitudes are something that we can control to evaluate something.
We all know the advantages and disadvantages in group activities. In sports it is beneficial to be in a group or have competition because it will help us preform to the best of our abilities because we don’t like losing. In a group project though it is different we think since that there is more people we don’t have to work as hard to get it done. Social facilitation is the group enhancing your performance and social loafing is when we want to work less.
Sometimes people meet someone brand new that they have never met before and they will fall in love with them. Sometimes you might already know someone you have known for a long time and fall in love with them. There are a few different types of love. There is passionate, companionate, and working to stay in love. People will feel these kinds of love for their significant other throughout their lives to find the right one for them. People interacting with others to form relationships between each other as friends or partners. We form all these opinions on people and have different feelings for everyone we meet.
Key terms: Passionate love, companionate love, working to stay in love, social loafing, social facilitation, stereotypes, prejudice, discriminate
For me social psychology is on one of the most interesting chapters in this book. Our planet populated by over than seven billions of people. Regardless of distance, cultural boundaries, ages, sex people tend to fall in love, make friends, form impressions of strangers, stereotype other people or help them and many other behaviors in society. So this scientific study explain how people's behavior, feelings, thoughts are influenced by implied or actual presence of others. All topics in this chapter come together to describe how people are influenced by others, how they act in society, how people become not self-aware in different situations, or what forces them to change behavior. For example some studies such as Milgram's Shock experiments on obedience are trying to describe what factors influence people to follow orders given by authority. These factors may help to understand why German citizens willingly obeyed orders to injure or kill innocent people during World War II. Thus, social psychology may explain even some historical facts.
My understanding of social psychology totally changed since I read the chapter. For example, I did not think that people are usually more affected by situations than they realize. We make attributions about other people. When a person act kindly, we assume he/she is kind person. As an example when a stranger will help people in accident, we tend to think that he/she is super kind and heroic person. Of course it is a very heroic action. However, firefighters, police officers, military almost everyday risk their lives to save others. Attributions are our explanations for events, or actions including other people's behavior. There are two types of attributions: personal and situational. People's explanations for why events or actions occur that refer to peoples internal characteristics such as abilities, traits, or moods are personal attributions. Situational attributions are explanations that based on external factors such as the weather, luck, accident and so on. One of the interesting facts that knew now is that when we make attributions about ourselves, we tend to focus situations rather than personal characteristics. For example, when we fail the exam we usually say that it was too hard, questions were tricky and the exam itself was unfair. However, when explaining other people's behavior we tend to overemphasize the importance of personal factors and underestimate the importance of the situation. For instance, if someone failed the same exam, we might say that he/she just did not study. From the standpoint of Social psychology, it happens because we know less about situations of other people and we tend to think that what happened was based on their personal traits. In contrast we know more about situations that we are involved in.
One of the most interesting topics in this chapter was stereotypes make us feel and act in certain ways. We tend to create mental stereotypes because they are fast, easy way to think about social information. However they are always correct and sometimes may have negative consequences. When stereotypes are negative, they may lead to prejudice and discrimination. Prejudice involves negative feelings, opinions, beliefs associated with a stereotype. Discrimination is inappropriate and unjustified treatment of people as a result of prejudice. There are different theories which have explained why stereotypes lead to prejustice and discrimination. For example one of them is saying that people discriminate against others to protect their own self-esteem, or according to another theory people threat others as scapegoats to relieve the tension of daily living. Also one of the interesting facts was about ingroup and outgroup bias. We are powerfully connected to the groups we belong to. For example during big football games we are wearing team’s colors, cheering ourselves hoarse, or doing silly dance. Sometimes we are not only cheering for them, we fight for them or even can die for them. Sometimes football or any other sport fans act aggressively to show that we are belonging to particular group. Those groups that we belong to are called ingoup. Those that we don’t belong to are outgroup. Our group membership is important part of our social identity. Ingroup favoritism is one of the negative consequences of categorizing people in ingroup and outgroup. It happens when we are more willing to do favors for ingroup members or forgive their mistakes.
One of the most memorable parts was about deindividuation and how society may negatively influenced our behavior. Deindividuation is a state of reduced individuality rediced seld-awareness, and reduced attention to personal standards. It usually occurs when people are part of the group. The most memorable example was Stanford Prison Study by Philipp Zimbardo. The participants in the experiment were 24 male college students. Some of the students were randomly selected to act “guard” and other half of students were acting as “prisoners” in the mock prison. The results were unexpected. The guards began displaying cruel and sadistic behavior toward the prisoners, while the prisoners became depressed and hopeless.” They continually humiliated the “prisoners” and forced them to engage in pointless and monotonous tasks. Although the study was scheduled to last 2 weeks, it was stopped after only 6 days. So this study shows how quickly ordinary normal people could be transformed into the social roles they were playing. When people lose their self-aware, it typically causes them to act in ways they are not consistent with their values and beliefs.
Terms used: Social psychology, stereotypes, Milgram's Shock experiments, attributions, personal and situational attributions, prejudice and discrimination, ingroup and outgroup bias, Ingroup favoritism, deindividuation, Stanford Prison Study, self-awareness.
I think that all the topics come together, because it is how we think about ourselves and other when we are with people in a social setting. The setting could range from a class room to standing and waiting in line at the store. I do not know anyone who has not said a stereotype about someone. It is in our everyday conversations. We use it to say a joke or even start a conversation. It is just a social norm for most people. Now it is not the nicest thing to do, but most people do it. Sometimes stereotypes are true about a person. We get stereotypes from every type of race or class. Stereotypes just happen to be the most general thought that comes to mind about a certain group of people. We may be discriminating and even making prejudices about people before we even know them. We get a different view about different groups from being from a certain group. I know I have my certain stereotypes that I think of when I see a person from a different ethnic group, not that I do not have friends from different groups, but we are all raise to think a certain way, even if we try not to conform to that thinking. I think that this chapter was really interesting to see the scientific view on social psychology, when reading the chapter I kept think about how I was relating to a lot of the chapters content. I tend to act different ways in front of my friends, family, coworkers, and in the class setting. I found the first part of this chapter about how we think of other people extremely interesting, since we unknowingly make prejudices about people before we even know them. We can even have personal or situational attributions that help make the stereotypes about ourselves. I think the most memorable part of this chapter was about how being exposed to anything can change our mood or attitudes. I have had friends that I did not like originally, but then I got to know them and was around them for a long time, and I ended up liking them and becoming really good, close friends with them. I have also found out that I recently liked chili, and probably a few months before I have never really liked chili, but I kept on trying it and now I really like it. I wonder if I keep studying that I will eventually like it…? That might be an explicit attitude, that I will never fully enjoy homework, and I do not think I could be persuaded to like it either. The one that I think that everyone can agree on is how we can get angry with people and that it can take a little or a lot to make us aggressive towards people, when things hurt us, annoy us, or make us frustrated. I think everyone, can get angry on a similar stand point no matter what their stereotype basis is.
The terms I used was: Personal attributions, situational attributions, prejudice, discrimination, attitudes, explicit attitude, persuasion, conformity, social norms, and aggression.
The topics in chapter 11 all come together to form the idea that most of us can relate to one another because we all experience the same emotions at some point in our lives and all go through the same feelings, although they may not be for the same reasons we all experience them.
The first part of the chapter discusses how people in general judge others by stereotyping others, noting facial expressions and looking at eye contact or making attributions about each other; either personal or situational attributions. Almost all of us can also think of a time we went through cognitive dissonance, otherwise known as a time where we become uncomfortable due to two attitudes or behaviors contradicting themselves. I know I personally go through this all the time, I know I shouldn't be doing something, but Ill go ahead and do it anyway. Another thing most people can note is things like social facilitation and social loafing; especially people who play sports. Some people will either play better when people are watching them, or they end up doing worse under the pressure. Social loafing is so relevant when it comes to school, most importantly in college. When we work in groups, we all kind of expect other people to do more work than others. When i'm working on things alone I work ten times harder than when i'm in a group. The list of things we all have in common is never ending with things like conformity, compliance, following social norms, aggression, and especially how we develop relationships. We all look for the same things in people like physical attractiveness and the need for a passionate love.
My understanding of social psychology changed after reading this chapter by noticing that we all go through the same feelings, sometimes I think i’m the only one that does that, so it’s nice to know other people experience the same things I do!
The most interesting thing I read about in chapter eleven is the section on how we develop strong relationships. It’s neat to learn about how we all go about finding a partner by looking at personal characteristics and attractiveness. I thought it was funny to read most happy couples play jokes on each other and make fun of them almost because that’s how I was with my boyfriend. It was interesting to compare what the book said to how I personally find somebody because it was very accurate.
The most surprising thing I read in this chapter was the story discussing bystander apathy, which is where a person will fail to help people in need. A girl named Kitty was walking home and ended up getting attacked and murdered on the way back! Evidence said 38 people had heard her screaming, but did absolutely nothing to help the young girl.
Terms: emotions, judgement, stereotype, facial expressions, eye contact, attributions, cognitive dissonance, persona/situational attributions, social facilitation, social loafing, conformity, compliance, social norms, aggression, developing relationships, physical attractiveness, passionate love, personal characteristics, bystander apathy
After reading chapter 11 I realized how many factors play a toll on our attitudes and feelings towards something. Attitudes are the way a person evaluates an object, events, or ideas. We all have different attitudes towards strong things like politics or religion and then we have more “laid back” attitudes towards things like movies or our favorite brand of nail polish. We discussed stereotypes again in chapter 11. Once our society forms a stereotype we tend to maintain that stereotype. Having these classic stereotypes has many affects. There are positive, negative, and neutral stereotypes. The self fulfilling prophecy is the tendency for us to behave in ways that confirm our own or other’s expectations. For example if a teacher is informed that a student is a slacker and gets bad grades they might not have as much confidence is this student as in other students. Negative stereotypes lead to prejudice and discrimination. Being prejudice is having negative feelings, opinions, and beliefs associated with a stereotype and discrimination is inappropriate, unjustified treating of other people because of prejudice feelings. Stereotypes affect our attitudes towards different people, groups, objects, ideas, or events. There was a psychology study done, the more exposure effect, this study proved that the greater exposure a person has to an item leads to greater familiarity therefore that person has more positive attitudes about it. For example if you’re parents introduce you to sushi at first you probably won’t love it, but once you’ve ate it multiple times you might develop more positive attitudes about it. Our attitudes can be conditioned or changed as well. The most surprising thing to me in chapter 11 was the theory commercial creators us. If we have neutral thoughts about a product (such as a new nail polish), but during a commercial a hot, well liked movie star (like Channing Tatum) advertises the nail polish we then develop more positive feelings towards the nail polish. It’s crazy how our feelings can be manipulated by something as simple as seeing an attractive person on T.V. Other people have major affects on the way we behave in our society. We, as humans, are motivated at all times to fit in. For example social facilitation is when the mere presence of someone else enhances one’s performance. This proves that if i were to be riding my bike with a group of my friends instead of riding along I would ride my bike faster. Just being around others in situations like this brings out a very competitive side in us and the need to fit in. Social loafing is the exact opposite; it is when an individual decides not to work as hard while working in a group. You often see this in group work; where there will be a few slackers in the group that just depend on the other members to get it done because that is the easiest way out.
The most interesting thing to me in chapter 11 was the part about the study they did with Stanford students. They had them play roles of prisoners and guards in a fake prison. Right away they reported that guards became brutal and took control; they harassed the prisoners and made them do meaningless, cruel things. These students were normal and stable people, but they acted like animals. The studiers thought the students were probably just caught up in the moment; they lost their awareness. Deindividuation is a state of reduced individuality, reduced self-awareness, and reduced attention to personal standards; this phenomenon may occur when people are part of a group (such as this study).
Terms I used: Social facilitatio n, social loafing, deindividuation, more exposure effect, attitudes, self-fulfilling prophecy, discrimination, prejudice, psychology, stereotypes
After reading this chapter about social psychology I found how it really connected to how we as humans communicate and our behaviors. For example the way we act around people can be made by snap judgments we make against them. By looking at their facial expressions what they look like, or even what they say can have a huge impact on how we behave towards that person or group and how we choose to communicate with them. Sometimes we have a typical stereotype toward a person before we even meet them. For example, if you negative, feelings, opinions, and beliefs toward a person or group you maybe prejudice because they are negative feelings. If you contain these feelings you are most like discriminating against these people which is the unjustified treatment of these people which all affect how you behave toward them. I also found that our human thought and behavior is affect by the way that other people influence us. If a person decides to be confirmative they are altering their behaviors in order to match others. Another way our behavior and thought are affected is by what the social norms are. If cutting in line was a social norm many people would begin to do this and others would follow changing the behaviors of people.
Since reading this chapter I have learned what changes our thoughts and behaviors and how there are many different factors that affect this. But since I never knew that much about social psychology my perception about it has not really changed. By reading this chapter I learned new info on how we communicate with others.
The most interesting thing I learned was about Kitty Genovese case. This case led to the research of the bystander apathy which is the failure to help people in need. For example, if a person starts to have a heart attack in a subway people are less likely to help if other individuals are around to help. Although as they did more research on it they found that many people thought that someone else was helping or they were scared to help because they were scared they would do something wrong or they did not do the situation. After reading this section of the chapter though I found it interesting of how we would all assume that everyone would help when in reality when others are around we are less likely to help.
The most surprising thing I learned from this chapter was how there is a major distinction between compassionate love and passionate love. I found this surprising because I never knew these two types were different. In the book they say that passionate love is a type of a romantic relationship that intense longing and sexual desire. While compassionate love is a romantic relationship that includes strong commitment to supporting and caring for a partner. These both develop over time but I also found it surprising that they can decrease over time too.
Key words: discriminate, prejudice, social norms, confirmative, bystander apathy, passionate love, compassionate love
All of these different social behaviors are applied in many different ways when it involves the social world. Some examples of being social and applying gestures to show interest or disapproval are; facial expressions, attributions, stereotypes, and cooperation. Since everybody notices our faces when they first see, or have a conversation with us, it is a key aspect involving the social world. The most important part of a facial expression is the eyes. The eyes can say a lot, such as, anger, fear, flirting, sad, etc. I find this true in many ways, not just in the real world with strangers, but with those in real life situations that you know. For example when I used to have conversations with my grandpa, eye-contact was the only way he would acknowledge that I was talking to him. Again I found this true at work when talking to the elderly. I think it is just part of their generation to look someone in the eye to be respectful. Attributions are also important in the social aspect. It is how we describe ourselves, or others describe us and is key in the social world because with bias, or falsified attributions it could ruin a reputation. Some different branches of attributions are; personal attributions which we describe as internal characteristics like traits, moods, efforts, and the abilities we have. Another being fundamental attribution error, this is when we explain other people’s behavior, and overemphasize the personality, but underestimate the situational factors. The final aspect of attributions is the actor/observer bias. This according to the book is how we interpret our own behavior, focus on situations.
Another type of gesture that is applied in the social world are stereotypes. These happen daily because they are what others think we are, and make assumptions from that. A couple characteristics of this would be prejudice which is the negative feelings, opinions, and beliefs that others will distinct us too. Discrimination is also a factor because it is the judgment of other people for what we perceive them as. An example of discrimination is when someone of a different nationality comes into our social group.
Terms: gestures, facial expressions, attributions, stereotypes, cooperation, eye-contact, anger, fear, flirting, personal attributions, prejudice, discrimination, stereotypes
In this chapter the author explains a social aspects that affect us, other people, and the way we interact. In the first section, we talk about judgements and how we cannot help but judge someone. When we first meet someone you may notice how they are standing, what they are wearing, how they talk and act, facial expressions, etc. The list goes on. We virtually pick up these things subconsciously, and like we learned in a previous chapter, link these to past experiences or memories. This can affect our judgement through perception. We may also apply bias. A person may think that one person is more attractive than the other so they are more likely to talk to the one they think is more attractive. Many people have stereotypes. We may discriminate towards a certain group that has a similar characteristic. This is a for or prejudice. Our own attitudes affect us too. There are multiple kinds, and sometimes we arent even aware of our attitudes. When we arent aware of the attitude it is called implicit attitude, and when we are it is called explicit attitude. Attitudes can influence how someone will judge them too. If you’re frowning, you do not look as friendly. A big component is how others can change how we think and behave. Deindividuation can be observed is when a group of people are doing it you are less likely to care about yourself doing it. A place where this may happen is in student sections at a sporting event. Another phenomenon is groupthink. This is where people in a group do not want to cause controversy so they just agree with what is proposed. A common place that this can be observed is in during a group project for school. It is interesting to see how even the smallest little things affect the big picture. I would have never guessed how even a smile could affect someone's judgement of you.
I found the deindividualization to be the most interesting. I for sure have experienced this many times. It is easier to convince myself to do something if a group is doing it as well. This can be good or bad. If I am at a UNI football game it is easier to convince myself to yell loudly if others are doing it too. Otherwise, I may be a bit more nervous and embarrassed to do it.
The most memorable is the stereotypes and perception. The study with the black and white face and the gun or tool was interesting. A majority of the participants identified the black face with the gun more quickly than any of the other combinations. This may be because of the persons beliefs. This is also positive data for stereotypes taking an effect on perception.
Terms: judgements, facial expressions, subconscious, memories, experiences, perception, bias, stereotypes, prejudice, implicit attitude, explicit attitude, deindividuation, beliefs
Chapter 11 blog response
11/3/14
Well obviously this chapter is all related to one another because they are all talking about how an individual acts when in a group of people. Each section had a different idea of what a group of people meant. It talked a lot about how people made decisions differently when they were in groups. They also said that they become less of individual which is a phenomenon called deindividuation. They covered attributions, which is how a person tries to understand their own behavior and that of others, how people’s attitudes are toward one another, how we change in big groups as well as how we form relationships with people. All of them relate with how we interact with others.
At first, I was slightly confused, because this is psychology, not sociology; but I came to look a social psychology different by the end of this chapter. After reading a little bit of the chapter I discovered that it was definitely different than sociology do to the fact that it still studies the individual, just in a group setting. Also this chapter helped me to see why people may act the way they do! I think that this chapter applies well especially with us college students because we find our selves in group settings often, and we are faced with some decisions to be made, and it’s important for us to know and understand how being in a group can change who you are and what you choose to do.
Something that really interested me in this chapter was called cognitive dissonance. This was not a large portion of the book, rather it was a small paragraph, with the word cognitive dissonance bolded with the following definition; uncomfortable mental state due to a contradiction between 2 attitudes or between attitudes and behavior. The reason I found this to be so interesting, is because this “uncomfortable mental state happens to me very often! I am a person who has a hard time making decisions, so I find myself in a state of contradiction a lot, with what I want to do, and what I should do, etc. At least I know I’m not alone in those feelings!
A subject that I found to be memorable that I already mentioned above is deindividuation. I feel like this term can explain so many behaviors in today’s world. I’ve seen this exact thing happen again and again; a phenomenon that reduces individuality, self-awareness, and attention to personal standards when with a group of peers. It’s the answer to the commonly asked question “why do you act so differently when you’re around your friends?” There are also lots of other contributing factors in this according to our book though as well. There are three other things that definitely influence young people’s behaviors and attitudes today; conformity, social norms, and compliance. Theses three things discourage the individual and give praise to those who are deemed not normal, making deindividuation an easy trap to fall into.
Terms: Social Psychology, Deindividuation, Sociology, Cognitive Dissonance, Conformity, Social Norms, Compliance.
In the reading it talks about social psychology and how it varies. We read about how we think about other people, how are attitudes affects us, how we are influenced by other people, and how we develop strong relationships. When we look at how we think about other people we get into the topic of stereotypes and prejudices. A prejudice is a negative feeling or idea of a certain person or belief based on stereotypes that you may have of them. Growing up while in school we may have been taught to respect everybody and treat everyone equal, yet we still may have treated people who looked or acted different than us differently than those people that had the same attributes that we had. Because of research in social psychology they have developed a term for this, ingroup favoritism. In group favoritism is when we tend to be more willing to do something for someone who is in the same ingroup as you as well as being able to forgive them easier for something that they might have done. This can be contributed to when humans were evolving and would be more likely to help those that were the same as them because it would give them the greatest chance of survival. Next when looking at how our attitudes affect us we must first look at what an attitude is. An attitude is simply just a feeling or belief of something. People can have two types of attitudes they can have a simple attitude or a complex one. In a simple attitude you go along with what you believe, for example if you don’t think people should drink underage you won’t drink while underage. A complex attitude on the other hand is when you go against your own beliefs, so even though you don’t agree with drinking underage you do it anyways. This act of going against your beliefs may lead to having cognitive dissonance which is an anxiety towards that behavior. This anxiety can sometimes be strong enough to lead you to make excuses to yourself as to why it is okay to go against what you believe or just change your belief altogether. Other people have a great influence on us. Other people can lead to social facilitation which enhances are performance, or social loafing which leads us to not put in as much effort. Another way that groups can affect us is by making us conform to the rules that are in our society. With normative influence we do what the group is doing so that we don’t look foolish or stand out, with informational influence we do what the group is doing because we think that it must be right. Either way we tend to base our actions on what the people around us are doing. We develop relationships with people in many different environments. Those relationships can be in the workplace, in a friendship environment, or in a romantic environment. In all these cases you are more likely to form a relationship with a person the more time you are near them. Proximity is a very large part of forming relationships with other people. I didn’t really know what social psychology was before reading this chapter, so all the views that I had on it were pretty much formed while reading the chapter. The most interesting and surprising things was the story about Cory Booker saving the woman from the fire. I can’t really imagine that I would have the guts to do something like that in any situation.
Terms: prejudice, stereotypes, ingroup favoritism, ingroup, attitude, simple attitude, complex attitude, cognitive dissonance, social facilitation, social loafing, conformity, normative influence, informational influence, Proximity, social psychology
Reading this chapter there has been many topics that went over why humans think the way they do and also why they behave the way they do. All the topics covered in this chapter has formed a encompassing understanding of human thoughts because the brain and how humans think is very complicated and how the book went over each and every topic I think was important to get the whole idea. We think differently in different situations and about different subjects that each topic covered. From reading this chapter my understanding about social psychology has changed a lot. I know many of things that I didn’t even think of before. Like why we have stereotypes and if someone doesn’t fit the stereotype then what? Also, I have a better understanding about how we act when we are by ourselves and the decisions we make and also how we act when we are with a group of people. Our mindsets change and we make decisions that we would not make if we were alone.
The most interesting topic to me was about the stereotypes. The first part of the chapter went over stereotypes and why we have stereotypes. We make judgments about people before we even know them which the book referred to as thin slices of behaviors. We tend to create stereotypes because it is easier on ourselves to think of people that way if we do. When someone does not fit into that stereotype we still try to maintain it and think of people as being exceptions of the stereotype. that is called subtyping. When we first see someone we do make judgments about them until further knowing who they are. We all have our own personal stereotype about certain groups of people. We also expect them to live up to their stereotype. We also even live up to our own stereotypes at times which is called self-fulfilling prophecy.. When we do have stereotypes they can often lead to prejudice which is negative feelings, opinions, and beliefs associated with a stereotype. They not only lead to that but they can also lead to discrimination as well. We often put ourselves in our own group and we know who is in the group and out of the group. The book referred to this and said that personal survival has depended on group survival. That’s why some people will die for the people that are in their group.
The most surprising and memorable thing that I learned about this chapter was towards the end of the chapter when I was reading about relationships. I found it interesting that the book stated that we are simply attracted to people that are of our own attractiveness. People who have the same likes, personalities, backgrounds, and values are more likely to be attracted to one another. I also thought it was interesting about how you can be perceived based on your attractiveness level. People that are more attractive are less likely to be looked at as criminals, they are looked at as being happier, more intelligent, more successful, and less social deviant. I think that is interesting because our society is all based on looks about someone which I don’t think is right. That is why I think there are so many unsolved cases of murder etc. we overlook people.
Terms: social psychology, stereotype, prejudice, discrimination, self-fulfilling prophecy, in-groups, out-groups, subtyping
My understanding of social psychology has improved since reading this chapter. I realized that there are quite a few topics in this chapter that relate an understanding of thought and behavior in the social world. The main topics of chapter eleven include our thinking about other people, our attitudes affecting us, how other people influence us, and how we develop strong relationships. These four topics all relate to the way in which people act and behave in society. Thoughts and attitudes about anything are reflected in one’s behavior. A lot of these topics relate to the way people act towards one another.
With the topic of other people, humans automatically make snap judgment of others through facial expression, body language, and behaviors. People also make attributions about others, which include personal attributions and situational attributions. Personal attributions are ways people explain an outcome due to internal characteristics, like mood, effort, ability, etc. Situational attributions are ways people explain an outcome due to external characteristics, like accidents, actions of others, etc. People also have actor/bias tendencies, which make those situational attributions explain other people’s behavior. Stereotyping is another factor that affects the way humans think about one another. It can lead to many negative effects though, like prejudice and discrimination. First impressions, attributions, and stereotyping are all ways in which human thought affects behavior in the social world.
Attitudes are also huge factors that have an effect on us. They can be simple or complex, and they always affect our behavior. Attitudes are created from experience and socialization. The mere exposure effect is the increase in enjoyment due to repeated exposure. For example, I enjoy roller coasters because I have been on so many in the past and I have fun each time. Attitudes are shaped socially as well, like with media figures, leaders, teachers, and guardians. Society tends to instill many of its ideas in our own behavior. There are two types of attitude. The explicit attitude is one that a person is aware of and can report, like stating that they enjoy playing volleyball. The implicit attitude is one that influences a person’s feelings and behavior at an unconscious level, like purchasing a popular brand of perfume without even remembering that one saw that advertised brand. In general, our attitudes guide our behavior. Attitudes towards a particular thing affects the way we act towards it, therefore affecting the way we are reflected in a social setting.
People influence behaviors through social facilitation, social loafing, and deindividuation. Social facilitation is when one’s performance is enhanced due to the mere presence of an individual. For example, if Lebron James attended a high school basketball game, each player would want to impress the professional basketball star, therefore stimulating their motivation to play their hardest. Social loafing is working less hard in a group than when working alone. For example, one may work harder when they have to finish a math assignment on their own. When an entire group is assigned the same assignment, some people may slack off and let the other members do the work. Deindividuation is when people are not self-aware and they do not pay attention to their own standards. People become this way when they are in an anonymous situation, like at a game when the crowd starts cheering loud. Each of these three things all influence our behavior in the world. We choose to work harder so that we gain some kind of approval from society, we sometimes work less hard because other members of society can take control of it, and we also join anonymous group settings where we are not selectively picked out in society. These all contribute to the way in which we function in the social world.
Lastly, situational and personal factors affect the way in which people develop relationships. These factors include similarities between two people, attractiveness towards each other, and personal characteristics. There are two forms of love that help us enhance our current relationships. Passionate love is a state of intense doting and desire, and there is an overwhelming sense of companionship and chemistry between two people. Couples who have just started dating tend to feel very passionate towards each other. Companionate love is the strong commitment to provide care and support to a partner, and it is developed over time. Older married couples gain this kind of love through their experiences together. These two forms of love are both factors in the way people act around each other. It is how people maintain relationships, and it affects the overall behavior in the social world.
A topic that interested me from chapter eleven was the topic of deindividuation. I thought it was pretty interesting that people unconsciously do things that they would not normally do. Deindividuation is losing self-awareness and inhibitions. I know that I personally have experienced this. When I attend pep-rallies, I tend to get very excited and pumped up for whatever happens to be going on. However, on a daily basis, I usually do not pay much attention to that particular activity that was being promoted in the pep-rally. I realized that I experienced deindividuation because I normally do not care about sports games or other activities represented in pep-rallies, yet I get very excited when I attend the rallies because the whole crowd is roaring with excitement. I join in with the group without being consciously aware. I thought this was interesting because I could relate to this.
Something that was very memorable to me from this chapter was companionate and passionate love and how couples work to stay together. I have always been fascinated with the idea of love. I enjoyed reading about the changes in love over time. Of course, every relationship begins with a passionate feeling. However, that infatuation stage does not last, but it grows into something much deeper. Companionate love is much more fascinating to me because it is the foundation for all happily-married couples. I feel that it is very important to work at a relationship to maintain a strong sense of companionship and love. I know how easy it is to lose that passion, but it’s always interesting to me when couples are able to stay in love.
Terms: Situational factors, personal factors, deindividuation, passionate love, companionate love, social facilitation, social loafing, attitude, mere exposure effect, explicit attitude, implicit attitude, discrimination, prejudice, actor/observer bias, personal attribution, situational attribution.
All of the different topics that are in this social psychology chapter come together to form an all encompassing understanding of human thought and behavior in the social world because they all relate to how we view other people, ourselves, and how other people influence us. Our thoughts and behavior are highly dictated by the environment around us, how we are raised and the current situation we are in. The people around us also influence things that we do and believe. My understanding of social psychology has changed since reading this chapter because now I know a lot more about how our environment affects our attitudes and our beliefs, and how much we socialization we retain and have in our subconscious even if we really don’t realize it, like prejudice and discrimination, and even self-fulfilling prophecies.
The topics that are more interesting to me is the idea of conformity to social norms and compliance when faced with groups or an authority figure. It really is true that you can be easily influenced to do things that you wouldn’t necessarily do when you are in a group versus being alone, and the different studies about that topic were super interesting. When others do or say something, it’s been found that many find it hard to say something different because they don’t want to be wrong and stick out, which is definitely something that I have seen and been through. The study where the teacher thought that they were electrocuting the student was also very interesting. While they weren’t actually hurting them, they believed that they were a lot, but most of them still continued to do it just because they were being told to. What makes us do that? What makes us believe that “authority” figures know what is best or are telling us to do the right thing? Can we not question them and think for ourselves? Sometimes it’s hard to do because we instinctively believe that those who are authority figures know what they are talking about and we have to do what they say but I always feel as if it is important to question everything, even those, or especially those, who are “in charge”.
The most memorable thing that I learned from this reading was about stereotypes and prejudice. I really likely the program about the “jigsaw classroom” that helped students work together in mixed groups, reducing prejudice and increasing positive treatment of other ethnicities and sexes. This is super important for children to learn to work together and be in an environment with a variety of people from an early age.
terms used: attitudes, prejudice, discrimination, self-fulfilling prophecies, conformity, social norms, compliance
Chapter 11 touched on a lot of different topics, but all relating back to our individual thoughts and behaviors. The first section was about how we perceive other people. The book talked about the different things that affect our snap judgments we make about people. They talked about how big of an impact facial expressions and body language have on the way we are perceived by others. Stereotypes was a big topic in this section as well. Self-fulfilling prophecy was interesting to me because you see this type of thing happen a lot, whether it be movies or real life. Then in the next section they talked about attitudes and how we develop certain attitudes and how they affect our decisions. The cognitive dissonance theory is when you have a contradiction between an attitude and your behavior. They used the example of people knowing that smoking is bad for you, yet so many people continue to do this. In the last chapter we talked about smoking so this related to that. Then in 11.3 they talked about the influence people around us have on our behaviors and attitudes. The Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was really surprising and shocking to me. I had no idea this happened. But the book continues by explaining that deindividuation is likely the cause of this behavior. Then they talk more about the basic reasons why we conform. Normative influence defined as going along with what the group does to be liked or accepted and informational influence is when we assume that the behavior of a group provides information about the right way to act which pretty much means that if you see a crowd of people running and screaming in a certain direction, you will likely go that way too, or at least not go the way they are running from. The last section of this chapter was about developing strong relationships. Many factors play into developing strong relationships. The proximity, or how often you see them, is a big factor. Then things like similar interests, admirable qualities, and even physical attractiveness play into relationships.
The topics in chapter 11 that interested me the most was the different strategies people use to influence people to comply. The table on page 401 lays these different strategies out nicely. It was interesting to apply these things to my everyday life and to see if I do any of these things subconsciously, or if anyone does them onto me. Personally, I am most susceptive to the door in the face strategy because I tend to feel bad easily. So if someone asked me to do something and I said no, I would feel bad and obligated to do the next thing they asked me to do.
The most memorable thing that I read was in section 11.2. Here they talked about implicit versus explicit attitudes which was really interesting to me because it made me think about how big of an impact your family and how you grew up has on both your implicit and explicit attitudes. They even provided a link to a website that tests you and then tells you some of your implicit attitudes, and I actually went and tried this out. I only had time to do one test so far but it was surprisingly interesting and I will probably visit that website again. I did a test about whether I view myself as more calm or anxious and got told I was a fairly calm kind of person. I picked the first test that I saw, but there were some that looked more interesting that I will probably try out later.
Terms: implicit attitude, explicit attitude, snap judgments, facial expressions, body language, stereotypes, self-fulfilling prophecy, attitudes, cognitive dissonance theory, deindividuation, normative influence, informational influence, proximity, compliance, door in the face
To me, chapter eleven describes how are thoughts and behaviors impact others and also ourselves. The definition of social psychology is the study of how people are influenced by their interactions with others. The idea of this concept can be difficult to understand, but if you break it down in the way that the book does it may become easier to comprehend. The reading begins with talking about how we think about other people. Right off the bat us as humans tend to make judgments about others right when we see them. This is one reason I think first impressions matter so much. Our nonverbal behavior says a lot about us whether we like it or not. As we first meet another individual many thoughts probably run though your head some may sound like this. Wow he’s attractive; do you think he likes me? Or ew, what is she wearing? We think these things and begin to stereotype different sorts of people. Stereotypes are not necessarily good or bad, but depend on the way we interpret them. When they do become negative they can lead to prejudice and discrimination. In our society it is not socially acceptable to discriminate against others no matter what race, religion, or culture you belong to. According to the book social psychological research has shown that stereotypes can influence our basic perceptual processes. I found the experiment they did with this idea to be interesting. Basically participants saw a picture very briefly with a white and a black face. After that they were shown one picture of a tool and a picture of a gun. They were then asked to classify what the object was. Stereotypically participants who were shown a black face identified the object as a gun. I thought this study was intriguing and showed a perfect example of how stereotypes influence our basic perceptual processes. The next section discussed how our attitudes affect us. Ultimately we choose what we want our attitude to be about a certain subject. Our attitudes greatly affect how we evaluate and interact with others. There are two different types of attitudes: explicit and implicit. Explicit being that we are consciously aware and implicit being unconsciously aware. Both having an equal affect on how you go about doing something. Section three talked about how other people influence us. For me this section was the most memorable. Right now I am in a group project for another class. When I read the term social loafing I instantly thought of my group. This is when people work less hard in a group rather than when they are working alone. In our group its hard for us to make decisions and to get much accomplished because everyone thinks the other person is going to do the work for them and altogether it gets really frustrating. The last section talked about how we develop strong relationships and what factors go into determining the sort of relationship. All in all I thought these topics represented a complete understating of how our behaviors influence our communication and interactions with others. My view on this has changed from before because when I first thought of social psychology I only thought of people talking with others, but it is much more than that in the ways that it influences our attitudes, relationships, and thoughts on other people. The psychological terms I used were social psychology, nonverbal behavior, prejudice, discrimination, attitude, explicit attitude, implicit attitude, social loafing, relationships, and communication.
Chapter 11 dealt with social psychology and all of the topics in this chapter come together to form a large understanding of human thought and behavior in the social world because everything that was talked about in the chapter deals with us and how we act towards other people. There is an explanation for why we do anything that we do. Everything in this chapter deals with how attitudes effect us, how other people influence us, how we think about other people, and the strong relationships that we develop. The most interesting topic that I read about was how we make snap judgements about people. I thought that this was interesting because when you first meet someone you get a certain vibe about them, you may think that this person you are meeting is attractive or weird or even dumb, but you still act civil towards them. Your first impression about someone is very important because thats how you are going to think of them every other time you meet them as well. Recently, I met someone who apparently didn't like me for some reason and I didn't even realize it. Now I will say hi to her and she gives me short answers and is just plain rude to me. This is a good example of a snap judgement and a first impression. This also has to do with stereotypes. A common type of stereotyping is if someone had tattoos all over their body you just assume that they are weird and look funny without even knowing them, but in reality their tattoos are art on their body and they are probably a nice person but you just assume something about them without even knowing them. Everyone does this too, I will even admit that I do it because it is a normal thing and it all depends on how you are raised because it effects how we think. Stereotypes can make us feel and act a certain way and two examples of this are prejudice and discrimination like my previous example. A topic that I thought was memorable was in the chapter where it talked about our attitudes and then it when into talking about how we conform to the expectations of others. Conformity is when we alter our behaviors or opinions to match those around us to match what is expected of us. This also has to do with our social norms which are the expected standards of other people that we try to match. We often agree with the people around us or our family because we don't want them to get mad at us that we disagree about a certain type of topic. A common thing that people use these two expectation theories is the topic of government or even the idea of religion. The other topic that I thought was most memorable was the section on how we develop relationships and the part where it talked about physical attractiveness playing a big part of human communication especially in relationships. My understanding of social psychology has changed after reading this chapter because I never realized that other people actually influence how we act because I never even noticed myself doing it, but it is a completely normal thing.
Some psychological terms that I used were social psychology, human thought, human behavior, attitudes, snap judgments, stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination, conformity, social norms, relationships, attractiveness,
All of the topics in this chapter relate because they contribute to how we act. The beginning section describes how we make instant judgments about people. A person is judged by the first few movements, gestures, and facial expressions. The face is usually the first thing people look at when they first engage with someone. People also make personal attributions about them and the way some things happen based on their ability, mood, and effort. Situational attributions are explanations based on external factors such as weather, luck, or other people’s actions. Some of these attributions are biased, an example would be fundamental attribution of error which is when a person over emphasizes or underestimates a situation. The person who does this is an actor, or observer bias. A lot of people tend to stereotype other people and they remain around for years to come. A large portion of this is self-fulfilling prophecy, which is the idea of people tend to act in ways that confirm their own or other people’s expectations. People are also prejudice because they have negative feelings, opinions, and beliefs toward someone because of a stereotype. An inappropriate stereotype is discrimination because it is putting someone down. Our attitudes play a key role in the way we act as well such as how we evaluate objects, events, or ideas. An explicit attitude is an attitude that someone can report and an implicit attitude is unconscious. Although there are some poor attitudes and stereotypes, they can be changed by persuasion. Other people can persuade you to think differently from a group or social facilitation. They can in other ways like conformity which can change your behavior to match those around you. The most surprising thing to me is that people can be persuaded very easily, even if they that they are right. The most interesting thing to me is that frustration plays a huge role an aggression. I never would have that when someone gets frustrated they become more aggressive.
Personal attributions, fundamental attribution error, actor/observer bias, self-fulfilling prophecy, stereotype, discrimination, attitude, explicit attitude, implicit attitude, persuasion, social facilitation
There are a lot of topics that are explained in this chapter. All of these topics come together to explain how we think about other people, why we do things for people, and what things we like about other people. The chapter starts by explaining how we think about other people. We take thin slices of behavior and we make assumptions of people that are usually very accurate. On the other hand we often times stereotype people based on race or the group that they are involved with. These stereotypes make people act in certain ways that sometimes might go against their morals. This is most shown in ingroup bias situations. The group will often times do things that are much more risky then they would by themselves. Then it talks about our attitudes which relates to why we do things. Our attitudes towards things is the sole reason why we choose to do something. Explicit attitudes are when you like to do something and you express that by talking about it. The book gives the example of someone liking to bowl so they tell their friends that they would like to go bowling. The section also talks about how attitudes are formed. One thing is through conditioning which relates back to our chapter of learning. Our attitudes can be changed through conditioning. The book gives the example of putting a celerity on an advertisement to condition people to relate a product to that celebrity making it more appealing. Then we get into the part about what we think about other people and why we spend time with certain people. Birds of a feather is where people that have similar values and interests often spend the most time together. These people are most often some ones best friend. We tend to really value certain characteristics much more than others. We value things like honesty, loyalty, and intelligence much more than other characteristics. All of these things that were in the book connect back to how we think about other people and what decisions we make. After reading this chapter I better understand what social psychology really is. I never knew what kinds of things went into this category. I also did not know about how cultural factors are things that affect aggression. It says in the book that El Salvador has the highest amount of aggression and it is extraordinarily higher than other countries.
I think that the most interesting thing that I read about in this chapter was about social facilitating and social loafing. Social facilitating is when working in a group can really increase productivity. The example given is that cyclists pedal faster when they are in a group setting then if they were by themselves. Social loafing on the other hand though is when working in a group decreases productivity. This happens when the efforts are pooled so individuals do not feel personally responsible for the groups output. The example given is people were blind folded and instructed to shout. The people that thought they were shouting with other people did not shout as loud as the people that thought they were shouting by themselves.
The most memorable thing from this chapter was about the guy that went out and did all kinds of kind acts for no apparent reason. He did several tasks that were really great. The biggest one that he did was saved a women from a fire. While saving her he experienced second degree burns. There was no real reason why he did all of the acts. The explanation that was given was that maybe he was doing it because they would someday do something good in return.
Key terms: thin slices of behavior, stereotype, ingroup bias, attitudes, explicit attitudes, conditioning, birds of a feather, values, aggression, social facilitating, and social loafing
All of these topics are very different from each other yet they all lay under the subject of social psychology. This means that polar opposites such as love and prejudice are disused. I think that’s due to the wide range of human emotions and the complexity of our brains. A lot of what is discussed come down to the fact that humans fear what they don’t know, prefer what they do know, and act differently in a group setting. We fear what we don’t know and this causes stereotype group that are not our own. Most stereotype have prejudices. Prejudice is the negative correlation with a stereotype to a group of people. This leads to the discrimination of people unfamiliar or not relatable. On the other hand we as human are less likely to do these types of things if we are similar to a person or group of people. We even like the image of our faces that we see more often. This is demonstrated by the mere exposure effect. Humans also act vastly different in a group environment. We tend to work less hard and become part of a collective consciousness. The latter term is known as groupthink. Deindividuation is an important part of groupthink, and it is the tendency for individuals to do things not characteristic of themselves when feeling anonymous in a group.
My view of social psychology hasn’t been changed. That’s because I had no previous conceptions on the topic. I never took a psychology class in high school.
The most interesting topic to me was the last section. It explained a lot about relationships that I just had not known. For example I have never been in a relationship long enough to get into the compassionate form of love. I have always been in the more sexually driven type of love that is known as passionate love. It made me wonder if it is possible for a couple to hold both types of love fully at the same time or if that is reserved for Hollywood and daydreams. I also found the idea of proximity in relationships interesting. It makes sense to me. Almost all of my friends are either from my home town, in an activity with me, or live in my dorm. This saddens me a little bit. There is a plethora of awesome people out there that I likely will never get the chance to know due solely to the fact that I am not in close proximity with them.
The most memorable idea for me was the just world hypothesis. It claims that in order for humans to conceive the world as a just and orderly place, which by most accounts it is not, we give reasons to everything that happens. The text book talks how victims are blamed because it would not make any sense for a completely innocent person to have a wrong done to them. I feel like I am an exception to this in a lot of cases. I don’t feel the need to say everything happens for a reason, and I understand that messed up things happen sometimes for no apparent reason.
Terms: social psychology, prejudice, stereotype, discrimination, mere exposure effect, group think, individuation, compassionate and passionate love, just world hypothesis.
As a whole, Chapter 11 on Social Psychology taught that the people and groups in someone’s life have a strong impact on their thoughts, attitudes, behaviors, and relationships. I learned that as soon as we see someone we begin forming judgments, whether conscious or not. These judgments can be driven by stereotypes, a cognitive schema that allows fast information processing about others that derives from their personal membership in a group. A person tends to flock with those who are similar to them, the in-group, so they tend to view others differently, the out-group. This can evolve into prejudice and discrimination in efforts to find a scapegoat or boost their own self-esteem. Concerning attitudes, I learned that we are affected by the groups we associate with, such as through mere exposure (meaning we tend to like the people and things we spend the most time with) and socialization. The power of peers greatly influences a person’s preferences in order to make friends and stay in the earlier mentioned “in-groups”. Sometimes this pressure to be in a group, however, has bad effects such as cognitive dissonance. This term refers to an uncomfortable mental state due to a contradiction between two attitudes. This occurs when the group’s interests clash with the individuals, placing them in the position to make a choice. Do they go with the group or follow their instincts? I know I have been in this situation before, and it is not fun. You have to push your own beliefs over the pressure to conform. And if a person does acquiesce to the group’s demands, they may try to justify their actions so they can curb the dissonance they feel. This longing to belong in a group and avoid being ostracized can even alter a person’s behavior, prompting them to engage in activities they would otherwise condemn. Their psyche can even be affected by deindividuation, a condition that reduces self-identity, awareness, and standards, almost brainwashing them to go along with the group, becoming transformed by the roles they play. Such a state is more likely when a person is aroused and anonymous and given an unclear responsibility. Finally, I learned how relationships influence of the human psyche. Things like proximity, similarities, characteristics, and attractiveness all impact who a person seeks out to form a relationship with. These aspects benefit a relationship and make the person come to love their significant for their personality and not just their passion. Such a change in love creates healthier, productive, and more compassionate relationships that last. This chapter taught me a lot about why and how groups affect our personalities and helped me to better grasp my own lifestyle and why I behave and perceive things the way I do.
For me, the most interesting thing in this chapter was the section about deindividuation. It mentioned that people tend to suffer from this loss of standards when they feel anonymous and not responsible for the consequences. For an example of this, it presented a photo of basketball fans wearing morph suits acting in crazy ways for since no one could tell who they were they became less self-aware and paid less attention to their personal standards. I recalled a time when I was at a football game and it was superhero night. I dressed up as batman and wore a batman mask. After the game, my friend drove me home and I put the mask back on and started screaming out the window at strangers. I am normally shy and do not like drawing attention to myself, but the mask empowered me to behave in this way. This can also be applied to why certain people behave the way they do online for they cannot be held accountable for their bullying and no one will ever know who they are.
My most memorable topic was the mere exposure effect concerning faces. The text states that the more we see something the more we tend to like it, and this has a huge effect on our facial preferences. People tend to prefer reversed photos of themselves because that it how they are used to seeing themselves in the mirror, while everyone else prefers the original photo because that is how they are used to seeing the person. I like this section because this is definitely true for me. For picking my class photo, my mom and I disagreed on which photo we thought was the best. The photographer had me tilt my head in different ways for different poses, creating the allusion of a reversed image. I liked the photos where I tilted my head one way better, while my mom liked the opposite kind. I could not comprehend why she loved the picture I felt I looked bad in until I read this section. I thought it was very interesting and I will remember it forever.
Attitudes, behaviors, stereotypes, in-group, out-group, prejudice, discrimination, mere exposure, cognitive dissonance, deindividuation, proximity, similarities, characteristics, attractiveness
This chapter combines all of the things that we do and think and explains how those things are the basis of how we develop relationships with other people. The chapter starts off by explaining how we form first impressions based on the way we view and perceive the behaviors and actions of others. The first thing people usually notice about someone is whether or not they are attractive, then based on our observation we might try to figure out why that is. For example, if we see a person who we think is attractive, we might think to ourselves, “that girl has pretty eyes.” In doing that, we have identified why we consider them to be attractive. Facial expressions are also another way to form a first impression. After all, the first thing we generally notice about people is their faces. After coming up with our first impressions, we form opinions based on the way that person acts. Attribution theory is described by two types of attributions: personal attributions and situational attributions. Personal attributions are the internal factors that we use to explain results, whereas situational attributions are the external factors that we use to explain results. Often times though, we unfortunately create specific stereotypes against certain people, which also alters the way we view a person. An example of a stereotype in today’s society is that blondes are unintelligent. This is a very ignorant and idiotic stereotype, and it causes us to ignore the diversity in particular groups. The worst part about stereotypes is that there is no evidence to prove that they are true. They are simply a wide spread view of a certain group of people. Stereotypes often lead to other problems such as discrimination. According to our textbook, discrimination is the inappropriate and unjustified treatment of people as a result of prejudice. In order to explain discrimination accurately, you have be familiar with the term prejudice. Prejudice is the negative feelings, opinions, and beliefs associated with a stereotype. We see discrimination all around us in our everyday life. African American people are still discriminated against today, even though they are no different than White Americans. Discrimination proves how dangerous and hurtful stereotypes can be. Another very important factor in our social psychology is our attitudes. Attitudes are our feelings and beliefs that we encompass. These are shaped by our social context and are a huge part in the way we communicate and act towards other people. Attitudes can be explicit or implicit, meaning attitudes that you can tell other people, or attitudes that you are unaware of, or unconscious attitudes. After reading this chapter, my understanding of social psychology has changed in the sense that I was unaware of how many aspects of our social lives come together to form the way we think and interact with others. It is almost crazy to think about how much social psychology is all around us everyday. It ranges from the way we first view each other (first impressions) to the way we form relationships based on of perceptions, opinions, attitudes, and so much more. The section of this chapter that was the most interesting to me would have to be the section about aggression. Aggression is the intention to harm someone else. I think that this section caught my attention because I am a criminology major, which means that I am very interested in what makes a person behave in aggressive and criminal ways. Aggression can be displayed either psychically or verbally. For example, a person might behave aggressively if another driver cuts them off while driving. They might do this verbally by yelling or screaming at the other driver through the window, or they could possibly display is psychically, by pulling over and psychically harming the other driver. We see verbal aggression on the road all the time. I have to admit that even I get verbally aggressive when I get into a highly stressful situation sometimes. The section of this chapter that was the most memorable thing that I read was the section about justification of effort. This section talked about hazing and initiation into college frats or sororities as a way to describe justification of effort. This was memorable to me because they mentioned that a boy who was a band member of a University in Florida was being hazed and was beaten to death. Other examples were of frats hazing members by abusing alcohol and mentally, emotionally and psychically harming the members. It’s sad to think that our society thinks it is okay to hurt others like that.
Terms: relationships, first impressions, attractiveness, facial expressions, attribution theory, personal attributions, situational attributions, stereotypes, discrimination, prejudice, explicit attitudes, implicit attitudes, aggression, justification of effort
As soon as we meet people we make a decision in that moment about them. Our first impression of someone or someone has of you is extremely important because you can ever do that over. With first impressions we make attributions to the people. The two types of attributions are personal and situational. Personal attributions is people explanations for why events or actions occur that refer to peoples internal characteristics, such as abilities, traits, moods, or efforts. Situational attributions are people explanations for why events or actions occur that refer to external events such as the weather, luck, accidents, or other peoples actions. Most people say situations attributions are at fault for their mistakes and others mistakes are personal attributions. I learned that attitudes greatly effect people. Attitude is defined as peoples evaluation of objects, of events, or of ideas. Someone attitude can effect their whole day. Having a positive one can make you feel better. If you think someone else has a positive attitude you are going to continue to want to be around them. Something interesting to me was that a persons attitude can be changed through persuasion. If we are bombarded by politicians trying to sway our vote out attitude can be changed to liking it or disliking it. Most people dislike voting season because you are constantly getting photo calls, emails, mail, and seeing commercials about them. Something that was most memorable to me was social loafing. Social loafing is the tendency for people to work less hard in a group than when working alone. I think that is so true. People tend to lack knowing there are other group members that will pick up the slack for them. That is one of the most negative reasons to work in a group. It can effect a persons attitude in a positive or negative way. Some people enjoy working with other where there are other people that dislike working in groups because they know that people tend to slack off in big groups.
Terms: negative, positive, attitude, first impression, attributions, personal, situational
11/3/14
There are many topics in this chapter of social psychology such as snap judgements, body language, attributions, stereotypes, attitudes, group influences, and love. Within these topics there are many subtopics. All of these topics and subtopics come together to help us form an all encompassing understanding of human thought and behavior in the social world. They come together through intertwining links. For example, one could make a snap judgement based on one’s body language. Group influences can often result in certain types of attitudes and these attitudes can evoke different use of stereotypes. All of these topics are a necessity in learning human thought and behavior in the social world. If one topic was taken out, there would be a missing link.
My understanding of social psychology has changed since reading this chapter. I now understand that there are two main types of attitudes. These are explicit and implicit. Explicit attitudes are the attitudes that we are consciously aware of. An example of this would be claiming that you like to go fishing. Doing so you are stating your explicit attitude toward fishing. Implicit attitudes differ from explicit attitudes because they are attitudes that influence a person’s behavior at an unconscious level. An example of this would be denying your friends every time that they ask you to go fishing with them. We use implicit attitudes with little conscious effort or control. If we look back at chapter seven we learned the idea of implicit memories. An example of an implicit memory is riding a bike. After doing it for so long we do not need to think about it as much. Researches use reaction time tests to measure how quickly one associates objects and concepts with positive and negative reactions.
The most interesting topic in this chapter in my opinion was the topic of love and relationships. I felt like I knew the difference between passionate love and companionate love before reading, however I was wrong. It was interesting to me to learn about passionate love. I think that this is the type of love that people expect to have and end up in disappointment. In relationships that I have had I have noticed the first stages to be similar to passionate love. The book states that passionate love turns into companionate love. I think that many people feel that “real” love is that which we find in passionate love. However I would say that this is not “real” love at all. This is our bodies instinct to reproduce. Real love to me is compassionate love. The kind where there is a commitment to be there for eachother. To care about and support each other. In relationships that I have been in I have seen the role that time plays in them. Sexual desire decreases and the need to constantly be around each other decreases as well. It is at this point where people in relationships feel that they do not care to be with their significant other anymore. I think it is incredibly important to remember that at this point your influence to be with your significant other should not rely on sexual desire. In other words, this is the point where people must really try to form strong friendships, social support and intimacy.
The most surprising topic to me authority. I learned about obedience, factors that influence people to follow orders given by an authority. Milgram’s studies seemed immoral to me. Although the learner was not actually receiving the shocks, the teachers were put in a very uncomfortable situation. I am glad that almost all of the teachers tried to quit. However I was even surprised that the word “almost” was in there. This means that there was at least one teacher that didn’t even try to stop. However, being put in that situation where you are continually told that the experiment requires that you continue.
Psychological terms: Authority, obedience, compassionate love, passionate love, explicit attitudes, implicit attitudes, implicit memory, snap judgements, body language, attitudes, attributions, stereotypes, and group influences.
There was a variety of topics covered in this chapter, but they were all linked together by a common link to human thought and behavior. Social psychology is a pretty wide and complex area of study, mainly because there are so many psychological factors/situations/social atmospheres to look at and to be considered, but it almost always comes back down to our personal perceptions of ourselves and others and how they conform to our comprehension and behavior in various social groups. In any given situation we apply attributes to events and other people, we are constantly explaining and justifying why things are happening the way they are. there are two main types of attributes that we apply to other people to make sense of and judge/asses their behaviors in certain situations. There are those relating to the personality traits of others and those that relate to situational external factors. When judging others, we tend to lean more towards over generalizing people’s actions in correspondence with our perception of their personality traits rather than situational factors. This is a common problem that is referred to as the fundamental attribution error. However, when we look into ourselves and judge our own actions we tend to relate them more to external situational aspects rather than our behavior always reflecting on the sort of person we are, this is referred to as the actor/observer bias. This information then is related to the fact that we tend to stereotype other people and make quick snap judgements on the “type” of person they are based on little information. The entire chapter is linked in similar ways to this - where one section provides information that can also be applied in another section and other situations.
I’ve always felt that I’ve had a good understanding of the concepts that come into play with social psychology, mainly because I’m a very social situationally observant and contemplative person. I love analyzing social atmospheres and trying to understand how people are feeling in relation to their behaviors and others’ around them (and vise versa). However, this chapter gave me a much better understanding and knowledge of the topic from a much less personal and more scientific view. This chapter brought things to my attention that I had never considered before,such has the concept of implicit attitudes - how there are actually subconscious emotions and factors that affect our behavior that we have no control over.
Something I found to be extremely interesting within this chapter was the section dealing with love and relationships. I’m always intrigued by the concept of “love” and the obsession and preoccupation that so many people seem to have with it. The section mainly dealt with passionate and companionate love and the difference between the two. Many people have perceptions on what they think love should be or feel like, and yes it is entirely personal and subjective to individuals there are certain general aspects to the emotions and behaviors linked to this thing people call love. Passionate love tends to be what many people strive for where compassionate love is much more concrete and lasting because it deals commitment rather than desire.
To me, the most surprising subject covered in this chapter was the section on bystander apathy and how even though as humans we usually tend to want to help others to maintain a sort of social balance, sometimes there are instances in which people outweigh their own personal gain and well being over the act of helping others. The story Kitty Genovese’s murder being witnessed by many people who didn’t attempt to help, struck a chord with me even though it was later proven wrong. People tend to be pretty selfish in life threatening situations.
Psychological terms: attributes, fundamental attribution error, actor/observer bias, passionate love, companionate love, bystander apathy.
This chapter includes many different topic that help describe people’s thoughts and behaviors. The first topic was about how we judge other people. When we first meet someone we very quickly make judgments about him or her, whether that be that they are attractive, someone to stay away from, or someone you might like to know better. Thin slices of behavior are powerful cues for forming impressions of others. Usually the first thing we notice about another person is there face. With that our eyes can say a lot, anger, happiness, or to catch someone’s attention. And when we communicate we tend to make eye contact with one another. People that don’t make eye contact, we believe, are embarrassed, lying, or ashamed. Whereas people that do make eye contact we assume are more truthful and friendly.
Another topic the book talked about attributions, which are our explanations for events or actions including other people’s behavior. One type of attribution is personal attributions, which are people’s explanations for why events or actions occur that refer to people’s internal characteristics, such as abilities, traits, moods, or efforts. Another type is situational attributions; people’s explanations for why events or actions occur that refer to external events, such as the weather, luck, accidents, or other people’s actions. Fundamental attribution error is the tendency to overemphasize personality traits and underestimate situational factors, in explaining other people’s behavior. When we interpret our own behavior, we tend to focus on situations. When interpreting other people’s behavior, we tend to focus on personal attributes this is all actor/observer bias. When we are the actor in a particular situation, our interpretation of a behavior or outcome is based on the situation. Whereas when we are the observer we interpret the same behavior or the same outcome, based on others’ personal attributes.
The book talks about stereotypes, which are mental shortcuts that allow for easy, fast processing of social information. It’s an automatic and outside of our awareness. Some tend to be based on truth but not all are true. Once they are formed they tend to maintain them. When someone does not meet this stereotype, we place them in a special category rather than changing the stereotype. Self-fulfilling prophecy is when people’s tendency to behave in ways that confirm their own expectations or other people’s expectations. When stereotyping is negative it can lead to prejudice and discrimination. Prejudice is negative feelings, opinions, and beliefs associated with a stereotype. Discrimination is the inappropriate and unjustified treatment of people as a result of prejudice.
My understanding of social psychology is a lot like what we talked about in my sociology class. In class we talked about how individual behavior is mostly based on social norms. We also talked about deindividuation, which is a state of reduced individuality, reduced self-awareness, and reduced attention to personal statndards. We discussed the study done by Zimbardo and Haney where they had male undergraduate student at Stanford play the roles of prisoners and guards. They were randomly assigned their roles. Within days the “guards” became brutal and sadistic to the “prisoners.”
The most interesting topic to me was about Kitty Genovese. She was walking home in a safe area of New York City, her assailant attacker her for half and hour, eventually killing her. A newspaper reported that 38 people have witnessed the crime, and no one tried to help or call the police. The report was wrong the number of witnesses was incorrect, and they couldn’t see what happened. After this happened Latané and Karley examined situations that produce bystander apathy, which is the failure to offer help to people in need. In one of their studies, only 10 percent of the participants went for help in the first 6 minutes, when smoke started puffing in through the heating vent.
The memorable thing to was about Cory Booker; he helped so many people and did good deeds. The mayor of Newark, New Jersey, and now a United States senator, rescued a young lady from a burning building. He also helped shovel driveway, and gave people that were hit by Hurricane Sandy by giving them a place to stay and a meal, at his home. Although he could make some one else do those deeds and have no one do them, he did them.
Terms: thin slices of behavior, personal attributions, situational attributions, fundamental attribution error, actor/observer bias, stereotype, self-fulfilling prophecy, prejudice, discrimination, deindividuation, bystander apathy
This chapter really emphasized just how much of our behavior is influenced by others. I am currently taking communications and we are learning about persuasive speeches, so I am really starting to realize just how much of our perceptions of the world are effected by others. For example, the idea of fundamental attribution errors is something I myself am guilty of. A person who walks in late to class every day is going to come off as being lazy and unprepared. However, I would not think that maybe this person struggles to find a parking spot every day or comes from a shift at work straight to class. I try to not do this actually, but I believe that a lot of us are guilty of doing this.
There are also some concepts that I have seen very evidently here at school. One such concept is groupthink and social loafing. These two phrases are key components of any group work. I was assigned a large group project in my humanities class. We had a day long briefing session on the project in which we were told the purpose and that we would need to find a primary source by next week. It was the sole purpose of the group, yet two people showed up in my group next week without a source. Not only that, but they did not even remember the project being assigned (it was clearly stated and it was also said to be 15% of our grade). These people clearly had heard “group project” and thought “Sweet! I don’t have to do jackshit!” Clearly these people were guilty of social loafing.
Not only have I been exposed to social loafing, but I have also been guilty myself of groupthink. I was assigned a group speech in communications. When we were drafting the speech, a girl would suggest some wording that I found to be clumsy or ineffective. But, because I did not want to disrupt the harmony of the group, I simply went along with it. This groupthink may have cost our speech some points, but it seemed rational to keep the group working well together.
I found it very interesting to read about love. I have recently come into a very serious and loving relationship. It has only been 4 months, but I have never been so sure of something in my life. We have talked about what it might be like down the road, if our love will fade or not. Right now we are certainly in the stage of passionate love, but I can definitely pick up on companionate love as well. It was really cool to read about ways to keep love going in a psychology book. I would say that’s a pretty good source of love advice! I am actually pretty excited to share it with my boyfriend. It is really just cool to see that love is real enough to be featured in a college level psychology text book.
Terms: social loafing, groupthink, passionate love, companionate love, fundamental attribution errors
Social psychology has to do with all of the different aspects of humans and the way in which they communicate and interact with one another. It does not end with communication. Interaction has to do with the way we perceive people and whether they are worth interacting with. The way we see people and what we think of them has much to do with how social we become with those individuals. I’m more likely to walk up to someone who has a suit on and ask for business advice than a guy wearing a toga. This has to do with how they appear to me. This perception is automatic and occurs as soon as we see each other. This creates an idea of who those people being observed are as people. Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal who are psychologists, studied how people make accurate judgments based on just a few seconds of observation. These “thin slices of behavior”, named by Ambady, are powerful cues in forming impressions of others.
Facial expression one of the first physical characteristics of a person that we see, making it a key aspect in perception. The face communicates different forms of information such as emotional state, interest, and trustworthiness; the eyes are the most noticeable when looking at these different expressions. Our eyes are pivotal in describing the way that we feel; we use them to show attention, anger, and attraction, among other things. Eye contact is key in social interaction, but the way in which we interpret this is based on the culture that we’re raised in. police officers wear sunglasses to hide their emotions in order to seem intimidating to criminals. This makes me think about the Stanford Prison experiment, in which Stanford university students were part of a social experiment where they were placed in a prison setting, half of the students guards and the other half inmates. The guards acting in very abnormal and disturbing ways because wearing the sunglasses helped them in creating a different personality for themselves, as if they were wearing masks. The results of the experiment exceeded expectations and was considered to be a success according to Dr. Philip G. Zimbardo, the conductor of the experiment.
While discussing the idea of perception and social interactions, one cannot forget to mention the idea of stereotypes. This was the section of the chapter that I found the most interesting. Stereotypes can be considered as the perception of certain groups of people or cultures. For example, many people believe that all African American men can succeed in all sports or that women are not meant to be rappers. Stereotypes are like mental shortcuts for information, requiring less effort to just describe a whole group instead of each person individually. Self-fulfilling prophecies are the tendencies to behave in ways that confirm these expectations that others have. Robert Resenthal conducted an experiment with a school principal, Lenore Jacobsen. During the study, they had elementary school students take a test that showed which student was more likely to show large increases in IQ during the academic year. They were characterized as “boomers”. These students were actually chosen at random; they might not have necessarily scored higher on the test. This increase in IQ ultimately resulted due to the extra attention and encouragement that students received during the year. The teachers’ expectations became reality, resulting in the self-fulfilling prophecy being a success.
Terminology: Social psychology, communication, thin slices of behavior, social interaction, perception, stereotypes, and boomers
There are many topics that help us learn and understand how we react when we meet new people. Some topics also tells us how we behave, feel,and think. The big part of this chapter is how we distinguish people and judge other people. When we meet someone new, we are quick to judge them like we may think that they are attractive or that we both have same personality. When I meet someone new I try to find things that we have in common and things that are different. Body language is also a big thing as well as facial expressions. Only in few seconds of observation, people can make accurate judgments. Face communicates information such as interest, happy, say, angry. We use our eyes to indicate these things. Attributions are also important. Attributions is when someone explains the cause of a behavior and events. There are four types of attributions personal attributions, situational attributions, fundamental attributions error, and actor/ observer bias. In personal attribution is when someone explains why the event or actions occur that refer to people's internal characteristics, for example abilities, traits, moods, or efforts. In situational attribution is when someone explains why that event or action occur that refer to external event, for example weather, accident. In fundamental attribution error it is when we overstate personality traits. In actor/ observer bias is when we focus on situations rather then on our personal traits. Stereotype is also a big thing in our society. I think that it puts pressure on people to act and feel certain way. Stereotype can be negative, positive or neutral; negative can lead to prejudice and discrimination.
The most interesting topic for me was the " we conform to the expectations of others" because this is what we do in out day-too-day-life. The book gave an example about how when we are in elevator we do not look at the people in it rather the floor or the door, which is so true. I use elevator everyday and I can related to that, it is something that I do in my day-to-day-life. Conformity is part of this topic; which is when we change our behavior or opinions to match with other people or to match with what is expected of us. Normative and informational influence are sub groups. In normative influence we go with the crowd, when we make a decision we go with what the majority goes with. in informational influences when you make a decision based on others, but you think first if it is correct or not. Social norms when someone is influenced based on society’s standard also know as social standard.
The most memorable thing for me was the persuasion. How our attitude can change through persuasive. There are two routes to it Central route and Peripheral route. In the central route, we elaborate the information while paying attention to the all the arguments, this attitude can last over time or we can actively defend them. In Peripheral route we have low elaboration while they do not pay any attention to the argument which then results for the attitude to change depending on the pressure of persuasion.
Psychological terms- Stereotype, Conformity, Normative influence, Informational influence, social norms, persuasive, central route and peripheral route, Personal attributions, situational attribution, fundamental attribution error, actor/ observer bias
All of the topics in the reading came together in the end to help understand the human thought and behavior in the social world. They did this because although they are all big important topics; they are just a subset of the bigger machine; our behavior and thoughts. I mean this by the fact that we have to know how we act to know how we act differently when around people. This is where our attitudes and prejudices come into play. Our thoughts about something is our own personal view and once we understand why we think things and see how we see things different; we will be able to better understand why or why we don’t change in a group setting. I think that once we enter the group situation we are easily persuaded from our views because we want to belong to that group. This is when we give up our personal beliefs and conform; this is also called deindividuation. This along with our obedience for authority seem to be a big problem for us when our morals are essentially put to the test when the authority tells us to do something immoral. Authority also helps give us societal norms in which our abnormal activities are frowned upon and help eliminate them from society to allow a more moral society. Those three subsets pretty much help make up why we think what we think and why we behave how we do in the social world. My understanding of social psychology hasn’t really changed since reading this chapter. I watch a lot of discovery channel and stuff like that that have shown that basically are experiments about how people react in group situations. So in the basic picture I knew that many people tend to stand around and don’t really do anything to help those in need when “someone else” can help. The most memorable thing to me about the reading was the study with putting people in an authoritative position at the prison and how fast they abused their power. I found it crazy that the test was supposed to go two weeks but was stopped at 6 because it was getting carried away. The topic that interested me was the information about stereotypes and the study about the fast image flashing up and how if the person was black they often said the picture was a weapon. I don’t know why but I just find stereotyping research extremely interesting and infatuating.
Psychological Terms I used were: stereotype, attitude, prejudice, persuade, deindividuation, conform, obedience, societal norms.
In Chapter 11, the topics all come together to form the idea that most of us can relate to one another simply because we experience the same emotions at some point of time in our lives. We also go through the same feelings, however they may all be for different reasons.
When it comes to the first part of the Chapter, it discusses stereotypes. Once our society forms a stereotype, we tend to maintain that certain stereotype. Types of stereotypes include positive, negative, and neutral. The self fulfilling prophecy is the tendency for us to behave in ways that confirm our own expectations. An example could be football coach who is told that a certain player on the team lacks effort. This then most likely leads to a lack of confidence from the coach towards the player. This would also be an example of a negative stereotype, which leads to discrimination and prejudice. Discrimination is inappropriate, unjustified treatment of other people because of prejudice feelings. Prejudice is a preconceived negative opinion that is not based on reason or actual appearance. Stereotypes can be very affective and have meaning when it comes to attitudes towards different people, as well as groups, ideas, objects, or events. Our own attitudes affect us too. There are two kinds of attitudes that I saw: simple and complex. In a simple attitude you go along with what you believe, while if you have a complex attitude, you go against your beliefs. Sometimes we aren’t even aware of these attitudes either. Not being aware of an attitude is called implicit attitude, and when we are aware, it’s called explicit attitude. It’s just like implicit and explicit memory, implicit meaning unconscious and explicit meaning conscious, which were in a previous chapter. Anyway, attitude can influence how someone will judge them too. If you’re smiling, people are going to think you are really friendly. If you’re frowning or look angry, people might think the opposite.
The topics that were interesting to me were the ideas of conformity to social norms and compliance when faced with groups or an authoritative figure. I can relate that you can be easily influenced to do things that you wouldn’t necessarily do when you are in a group rather than being alone, and the studies in the chapter that covered this was very interesting to me. There’s another name for this situation and it’s peer pressure. When others do or say something, it’s been found and proven that many find it hard to say something different just because they want to fit in, and not stick out, which is something that I believe all of us can relate to in some way.
One other thing I found interesting was the last section, where it talked about how we develop strong relationships and what factors have a lot to do about the sort of relationship we’re getting ourselves in. Overall I thought these topics represented a complete understanding of how behaviors influence our interaction with others. Before I read this Chapter, I thought social psychology was just interacting with one another, but there’s a lot more to it. It influences our attitudes, thoughts, and relationships with other people.
Terms Used: stereotype, positive stereotype, neutral stereotype, negative stereotype, self fulfilling prophecy, discrimination, prejudice, attitude, simple attitude, complex attitude, implicit attitude, explicit attitude, *implicit memory, *explicit memory, conformity, social norms
Ricardo Garza
Throughout all of the topics in this chapter, they all come together to describe the behaviors and personalities of individuals. Throughout the chapter the idea of seeing a person and put people into categories or we assume personalities and attributions about them before knowing them personally. My understanding of social psychology has changed since reading this chapter in a couple ways. The first way that my understanding changed was by how I learned about social norms. A social norm is basically the expected standards of conduct which influence behavior. I did not know that these norms influence our behavior. The norms indicate which behavior is needed or appropriate in a particular situation. I had no idea that if a person violates a norm, then our norms basically choose which behavior is needed to handle it. Another way that my understanding changed was the idea that we comply with requests of others. I did not know that compliance is a big thing and that many factors increase it for us. I always had that understanding that if I were to ask my mom for something when she was in a good mood she would usually give it to me or comply. But if I asked her and she was in a bad mood she would usually say know. I did not know that this had to do with compliance theories.
From this chapter, the topic that I found to be most interesting was the topic that explained we hurt each other. This topic covered aggression and how it is involved with the intention to harm someone else. The topic also explained biological and situational factors of aggression. It was said that biological aggression has been studied in non-human animals. But when humans were studied it was said that humans with low serotonin are associated with aggression and hostility. Situational factors is a more familiar topic. Situational aggression happens, for example, when you are sitting in traffic and you are twenty minutes away from work but work starts in five minutes. You then begging about the consequences of being late. Then as you are driving you are cut off by a driver and you begin to experience road rage. This form of aggression is frustration-aggression. Another factor of aggression is the social and cultural factor. This is the evolutionary approach. This factor says that society and culture have an effect on the tendencies that people commit.
The most surprising and memorable thing that I learned from the chapter was the topic concerning passionate and companionate love. I think that this topic was most memorable because of my parents. I see how they love each other and how they are passionate for each other. I learned through this topic that with passionate and companionate love we find the true way of being in a relationship. Passionate love is a type of romantic relationship that includes intense longing and sexual desire. Companionate love is a type of romantic relationship that includes strong commitment to supporting and caring for a partner. With these two forms of love, we can understand how they are important in a successful marriage and relationship, and that is why I found it memorable.
Terms: Passionate love, companionate love, relationship, frustration-aggression, situational aggression, situational factor, biological factor, behavior, personalities, norms, social psychology, social norm
All of the topics come together from this chapter to form an encompassing understanding of human thought and behavior in the social world. This understanding to me is that we all think about other people differently. As humans, we are all different and that seems to alter how we view everyone. If we were all the same, we would all most likely get along. Since we are different, we all perceive everyone else how we want to view them. A good first impression is very important in meeting someone. A good first impression can make or break a relationship or potential relationship from the beginning. Your appearance or mood may affect the way you think towards someone you are meeting for the first time. A negative or positive mood may portray you as a negative or positive person as well as alter the way you see the other person. This is all true and is very similar to the self-fulfilling prophecy, the tendency to behave in ways that confirm our own or others expectations. If you believe someone is annoying before you meet them, you might find them very annoying for no reason. If you think someone is perfect before you meet them when you finally do you will give them more chances when they do mess up. Another thing that can influence a first impression of someone are the people around us. When with others your opinion will more likely reflect theirs. These are some understandings that help form human thought in the social world.
My understanding of social psychology has changed after reading this chapter. After reading this chapter I realize that our attitudes and our thoughts about others are the source for all problems as well as all solutions. Our attitudes in everyday life reflect our feelings and influence our actions. Attitudes can be explicit or implicit. We are aware of our explicit attitude, but our implicit attitudes go on unconsciously. I also understand that the people around us have a great influence on our thoughts and that we conform to their ideas. I realize that we take part in stereotypes everyday that we aren't even aware of. These are all very eye opening things I now realize after reading this chapter.
The most interesting I read in this chapter was the section called stereotypes and perception. I think it is crazy that stereotypes can actually effect our perceptual processes! The experiment where participants were asked to identify a tool or weapon along with a white man or black man really upset me. I can’t believe stereotypes have become this serious to make people believe and actually processes them unknowingly. It really makes me want to speak out about prejudices and discrimination because they truly are serious, especially in a society with so much social media and other ways to poke fun at such serious things.
The most memorable thing I will take from this chapter is how we can change our attitudes through persuasion. Persuasion is a not only active effort to hang your attitude, but conscious as well. Whether it changes by using the central route of carefully processing information, or the peripheral route without processing information, the fact that it happens is what is most important.
Terms Used: Self-fulfilling prophecy, Attitudes, Explicit attitude, Implicit attitude, Conformity, Prejudice, Discrimination, Persuasion, Central route, Peripheral route
I think that our biological parents, the environment we grow up in, the people we surround ourselves with, and watching other in everyday life make up our thoughts and behaviors in the social world. You get a lot of things from your parents; one thing is your personalities is very well made up from little parts from your mom and little parts from your dad. The way we were raised by our biological parents is we watch them do things than copy it. For example if one of your parents or friends is racist most of the time you will grow up and watch that behavior and make it your own. People go off of behavior and thoughts through social norms. Social norms are expected standards of conduct, which influence behavior. Different parts of the world have different social norms. People see these social norms and have the need and want to be normal, so they follow these social norms of whatever they are where they live, so they can fit in and not be weird or different. Social norms really make us who we are because people really strive to be apart of those social norms even if they really aren’t something they like to do or believe in.
My understanding of social psychology became much more knowledgably after reading this chapter. When I hear the word social psychology I think of the way people socialize, which is true by it goes in way more depth. It is your attitude towards things, your personality, how you interact with people verbally and through body language. It is so much more than interacting with one person. It deals with groups of people as in in-groups and out-groups as well as facial expressions. It is a very big idea of how people interact and what ways they interact.
Something that really interested me was the different types of attribution. There are three different types of attribution; personal attribution, situational attributions and fundamental attribution error. Personal attributions are people explanations of why events or actions occur that refer to peoples internal characteristics such as moods. An example of this is someone explaining why they are feeling sad on the inside. Situational attribution is people’s explanation for why events or actions occur that refer to external events such as peoples actions. An example of this is the weather and people explanations of why it is sunny outside today. The last one is fundamental attribution error, this is when we are explaining a behavior and overemphasize the importance of personal factors and underestimate importance of the situation. For an example we would wonder why someone is crying and call him or her a baby or think they look weird just crying in the corner by themselves, but we did not know the situation, which was a family member, had passed so we overlooked the situation and paid to much attention to the behavior, which was crying.
The most surprising or memorable thing I read was the sections about relationships. That people usually fall in love with people from the same area, have the same body type, and have the same attitude about things. Which makes sense because you want to love someone who is like you, so you can get along, but it goes deeper than that. People also fall in love with others who are the same race or have the same ethnicity background or even have to same social status background. This part was surprising to me because I feel as if in this generation people are more excepting of others, which would make people, fall in love with others from different areas or different backgrounds.
Behavior, Biological, Social Norms, Social Psychology, Attitude, Personality, Attribution, Social Attribution, Personal Attribution, Fundamental Attribution Error, Facial Expressions
This has been my favorite chapter that we have covered in this class. It brought everything together, and it was really interesting. I thought that it was cool how it tied in how we think about other people, how others influence us, what we do to influence our thoughts, and romantic relationships. It was a lot of information, but it flowed really well together. My understanding of social psychology has definitely increased since reading this chapter. I had vaguely heard about some of the terms in this chapter, but I now have a clear understanding of how it all connects and the details of each of the different ideas. For example, I have always heard that the more people that witness something morally wrong, the less chance that someone will help. I now know that this is called bystander apathy. I have also learned that the main reasons bystanders do not help is because they expect someone else to step up or they see the situation as unclear. I also learned that people prefer to step up if they can be anonymous. I find this slightly alarming. I think that stepping up and leading should be something people want to do. They should not feel the need to hide from a chance to be potentially influential to many people. Another thing that I read about that was cleared up in my mind was how individual situations influence the relationships that we have. I thought proximity was very relevant. Three months ago I did not know my roommate, but now she is one of my best friends. We are together so much and come into contact more than we do with our families, so it was natural. The reason that it works so well for us is because of all of our similar personal characteristics. We balance each other very well. It also helps that we fall into the birds of a feather category, as well. We like the same things and have the same living habits, so we do not have anything to argue about. Something in this chapter that has always been interesting to me is stereotypes. It was crazy reading about self-fulfilling prophecies and how stereotypes can affect someone, even if they did not initially meet the stereotypes. It is crazy how much what others say and think about a person can affect how they actually are. I also thought it was interesting how even if there is evidence that a stereotype is not true; people can still believe it is true. A stereotype maintains because people justify exceptions to the stereotypes. I think that stereotypes are not necessarily harmful unless they are taken too far, for example, when they lead to prejudice and discrimination. Discriminating is unjust and detestable. We have all experienced being a part of outgroups. Discriminating takes this to a whole new level. Although discrimination is bad, it was not the most surprising thing that I read about in chapter eleven. By far the most memorable thing was deindividuation, more specifically the Stanford prision experiment. I could not believe how much the students given “guard” positions did to the “prisoners” abused their power days after receiving it. I was also alarmed when I read about what the US soldiers did at Abu Ghraib. I cannot imagine how hard it would be to defend the country, but the things they did were not justifiable and I truly hope that this was a one-time occurrence. Overall, I was very intrigued by this chapter and am looking forward to learning more about social psychology.
Terms: Social Psychology, Bystander Apathy, Proximity, Personal Characteristics, Birds of a Feather, Stereotypes, Self-Fulfilling Prophecies, Maintaining Stereotypes, Prejudice, Discrimination, Outgroups, Deindividuation
This chapter on social psychology is something I can easily relate to along with almost everyone else. Social psychology deals with social interactions and the affect it has on people. Social psychology is made up of judgments, stereotypes, and attitudes that people have towards others. Judgments are something that we make everyday towards people we don’t even know or have ever talked to based on their facial expressions, clothes, or gestures. The judgments we have towards people lead to the social groups that people interact with. The ingroup/outgroup bias plays a major role in how we live in our everyday lives. Ingroup bias is described as people that you are powerfully connected to by cheering for them, fighting for them, and maybe even dying for them. Outgroup bias are the groups that we do not belong to. High school is where this idea is very prominent to me, because you always felt like you needed to fit in with a certain group of people and creating stereotypes for every “group” in the school. Some may take it as far as having a self-fulfilling prophecy, which is when you behave in ways to confirm our own or other’s expectations. This chapter taught me how people fit in with the crowd they do based on the judgment people make towards others and how well they interact. Before this chapter I understood how judgments of others lead to stereotypes worked, but I didn’t realize how in depth stereotypes could be or how they exactly came to be.
The most memorable thing about this chapter was about Cory Booker. He risked his life for a stranger inside of a burning house, shoveled an elderly man’s driveway, provided hurricane Sandy victims with shelter/food and entertainment, and saved a dog from nearly suffering brutally cold weather. His attitude towards people shows me that not everyone is cruel or out to get you, but there are positive people in the world and anyone can do the things he’s doing if they wanted to.
One thing that was interesting to me was that our attitudes can be conditioned by using operant conditioning. For example, Hardee’s has had some seemingly inappropriate commercials involving supermodels eating one of their burgers. However, I highly doubt any of those women eat those burgers on the regular or even ever, but the commercials are memorable because of that. The burger, being the neutral stimulus, is now remembered because of the positively viewed object being the women in these commercials.
The psychological terms I used were: social psychology, social interactions, judgments, stereotypes, attitudes, ingroup bias, outgroup bias, self-fulfilling prophecy, operant conditioning, neutral stimulus
Out of all of the chapters that we’ve read, this one is definitely one of my favorites. One reason I liked it was because it was filled with a variety of things that were interesting and the other reason is because I already knew about many of the topics so it was an easier read than some of the other chapters we have had in the past. One topic that was interesting was the thin slices of behavior and how you can make an accurate judgment of someone within seconds of meeting that person. Someone had told me something similar to this once it was how you can learn more from a person in a 30 minute one on one conversation than you will ever be able to you the rest of time you know that person, or it was something similar to that. I had always found that statistic mesmerizing but then I guess that’s how you decided if you want to be friends and have a relationship with that person moving forward or not. Another topic that I had found interesting in the chapter was the mere exposure effect which means that there in an increase in liking something due to repeated exposure. I can relate to this in particular because a year or so ago I had went to France and was exposed to so a new culture, people, and foods and ever since then I have wanted to go out and try as many things as I possibly can while before I was just content in my same old boring life. One thing that I learned in this chapter that really stuck with me was the actor/observer bias, personal attributions, and situational attributions. A personal attribution is an explanation for why things or action’s occur that refer to a person’s internal characteristics while situational attributions are an explanation for why an event or behavior occurred because of external events, luck, accidents, or other’s actions. Actor/observer bias means that when look and interpret ourselves and our behavior when tend to look at situations but when we interpret other’s behaviors we tend to focus on their personal attributes. Another section that I found memorable was that on self-fulfilling prophecy which means that there is a tendency to behave in ways that confirm our own or other’s expectations of us. I have heard that term before and it’s so relevant to everyone. It’s especially impactful at a young age because once you and other’s categorize you, you tend not to stray from that path and tend to not change who you are because that’s how everyone sees you. The final memorable section in this chapter was the one that explained what cognitive dissonance which is an uncomfortable mental state due to a contradiction between two attitudes or between an attitude and a behavior. Everyone experiences something like this in their lifetime and I finally have a word for the internal conflict/struggle. People may even experience this on a daily basis which can be quite overwhelming at times.
Terms: thin slices of behavior, mere exposure effect, actor/observer bias, personal attributions, situational attributions, self-fulfilling prophecy, cognitive dissonance
This social psychology chapter was really important to read because so much of human behavior is influenced by other human beings. Research studies have shown that most people will perform better on tasks in the presence of others. Social facilitation has always seemed like common sense to me because of course people are going to try harder to do better if others are watching. But it has always made me question why the presence of another person or people will either improve or worsen performance. I can think of times that I have felt more confident in myself and did really well at a task when people were watching but also times were it made me feel self-conscience and do worse.
The stereotypes that we have or even just know about, can determine how we behave towards certain people. We may not even be aware of the fact that we are treating certain people differently because of the general assumption of what a certain race is supposed to be like. It isn’t until we meet a person who doesn’t fit that stereotype, that we realize we even had it. The concept of implicit and explicit attitudes is very interesting. We all have certain qualities that we actively look for in relationships or friendships and when we meet someone with those qualities, we have a more positive attitude towards them. We are often aware of this process. Implicit attitudes are interesting because we are not aware of them. We may meet a person that reminds of someone we don’t like and for that reason we always feel uncomfortable around them. Most stereotypes are implicit attitudes. No one wants to believe that they are racist so they may not be aware of themselves feeling uneasy around a certain race or ethnicity. All the studies done that look at implicit attitudes and race are so fascinating. They just show how unaware we are of these attitudes and how we associate weapons with minorities.
This chapter has changed my understanding of social psychology because it has made me question what implicit attitudes I may have and how they have affect how I act towards certain people. What I found most interesting was how differently people behave in group vs. alone. The bystander affect can be very dangerous and something everyone should be aware of.
Psychological terms: social facilitation, stereotypes, implicit attitudes, explicit attitudes, bystander affect.
There are a lot of topics covert throughout chapter 11 that explain how we as a person act and behave. Human activity has a social dimension that bring together all of this chapters topics to help understand ones behavior. A major part of how we perceive each other is how people act. When someone sees another person we atomically start creating situational attributes on this person based on the outside external factors and how they act. This is a very common thing to do because I believe that it is automatic and semi-natural. We also atomically associate different people to groups of people based on their appearance, who they are around, what they drive, how their hair looks etc. We tend to to form a first impression very quickly based on this persons body language and facial expression as well. Within a few second by reading body language we can gain a pretty good impression of what they are like.
This chapter also focuses on stereotyping people and I believe that that is a huge way that we create an all encompassing understanding of humans is the social world. One key word really stuck out to me and that was Actor/observer bias, this means when interpreting out own behavior, we tend to focus on situations. When interpreting others peoples behavior, we tend to focus on personal attributes. We tend to precise yourself differently than those around us and that is why a situation happened to us differently than why it happened to a peer around us. Like the books example about the test and how we are more likely to say we failed because it was unfair but an observe would say they failed because they didn't study enough. This deals with stereotyping because when observing a tendency we might not know the reason behind but we will 'make up' one. It is a big part in our social world because stereotypes can make people act a certain way, both positively and negatively.
My understanding of social psychology has not changed much but after reading I am way more informed. I knew some of this before but this chapter brought the whole topic more in depth. For example the explicit attitude and implicit attitude were new vocab for something I knew we already did but it helped explain it more. Explicit attitude is one you know about and are aware of the attitude, like saying you like the color green. Implicit attitude is when an attitude that influences a persons feelings and behavior is unconscious level, like wearing green just because you own a lot of it because you like it, its just there.
The topic I found to be most interesting was how we develop strong relationships. When exposed to the same person multiple times or mere exposer effect, we are more likely to become better friends with them. We also are probably together so much because we are apart of the same clubs and organizations. I never thought about friendship before like that but its true! It also surveyed the top ten positive/negative person characteristics and those I found to be very true in my life and what I found to be true with what I see in people. So the least part of this reading I found to be very interesting. The part when they put together faces to make the 'perfect' face and what people found attractive and not. It states that more attractive people are less likely to be perceived as criminals and get a lighter sentence when convicted of crimes. The are also happier, more intelligent and social. Which I am like damn. You are lucky because you look good. Genetics.
situational attributes, personal attributes, actors/observer bias, Implicit attitude, Explicit attitude
All of these different topics in this chapter come together to form an all-encompassing understanding of human thought and behavior in the social world because without any of them humans wouldn’t be the way we are.
My understanding of social psychology changed since I have read this chapter because it has made me realize what impacts the things we say and do.
The topic that is most interesting to me is when they talked about stereotyping people. When someone stereotypes, it means that they are mental shortcuts that allow for easy, fast processing of social information. It says that stereotyping occurs automatically and outside of our awareness. For example, it says that a common stereotype is with men and women, a stereotype is all men are stereotypical and more violent, and women are less stereotypical and nurturing. I learned that when we form stereotypes, then we maintain them, like back in the day when people racist (and still are) and were really rude and judgmental to African Americans, and today people are more accepting towards them, and they have more freedom. People are still very racist and not very considerate of African Americans, but if they were raised to be that way, then it is something that they will maintain because it was consistent in how they were brought up by their parents. The next is Self-fulfilling prophecy, which is people’s tendency to behave in ways that confirm their own expectations or other people’s expectations. This just means that when people are categorizing people and having it not be true, and then it might end up becoming true. Psychologist Robert Rosenthal and a school principal, conducted impressive research on this process. This reminded me of the schoolteacher, Mrs. Elliot, who made a study that has been talked about ever since she did it with her 3rd graders. She recreated segregation and racism with the children. One day she would have the blue-eyed kids having to sit out at recess because they had blue eyes, and the brown-eyed kids being able to play on the play ground. They would go back to the classroom and reflect on how the children felt about it. The next day she would flip flop it and make the brown-eyed children sit out, and the blue-eyed children play on the play ground. Then reflect. She got them to all believe that everyone is the same, no matter what color they are, eye color, hair color, or what even bike someone had. It was a very interesting thing to learn about.
The most surprising and memorable thing I learned about this reading is simple and complex attitudes affect our behavior. An example they gave in the book was if you believe smoking is bad for you, and you do not smoked then your behavior is consistent with your attitude, which means you have a simple attitude towards the situation. Then on the other hand, if you think smoking is bad for you, and you smoke then you have a complex attitude.
Terms Used: Stereotype, social psychology, self-fulfilling prophecy,
There are many different topics within chapter eleven. By the end of the chapter, they all come together to explain why people think and act the way they do, and how society has an effect. Society can shape people’s way of thinking. They create prejudice attitudes and persuade conformity. Since reading this chapter, my understanding of social psychology has broadened. As I read the chapter, I felt as if I was reliving my middle school years once again. I searched for myself when I was in middle school. I had issues with being myself and not falling under compliance by my friends. I had many friends, but I tended to hang out with a certain group who were into things I was not. They were great people, and I’m still friends with them to this day, but in middle school I wanted to be just like them because I wanted to fit in. I began to deindividuation myself. I wouldn’t wear clothes I liked or wear the clothes I loved because my friends weren’t. I specifically remember buying these songs on iTunes that they had just bought and thinking to myself, “why on Earth am I buying this junk? I hate heavy metal!” but yet I bought the music so I could be “cool”. I was showing obedience to my friends by always trying to be like them. I believed them to be the definition of cool. After reading this chapter, I’ve realized that my actions were apart of my social development.
The topic that was most interesting to me was the section on social facilitation. As I read this, I immediately thought back to times at work when I’ve experienced this without even knowing it. Whenever my boss is around I try to work my hardest and sort of show off. I want him to see that I’m a good worker, and I really don't want to be fired. I also laughed a tad when I read about social loafing. I cannot explain how many times I experienced this in high school. TOO MANY TIMES. I was always the one in the group who was working their butt off while the others sat around and did nothing. That irritated me SO much!!! I know I’ll experience it here in college as well which is discouraging, I hate social loafing!!
The most memorable thing I read about was bystander apathy. I was shocked and appalled to read the story of Kitty Genovese. As I read on, I found out that the story was only partially true. Only a small amount of people witnessed the murder and “weren’t aware” that she was being killed. Nonetheless, I was still shocked by this idea of bystander apathy. The fact that someone could be in dire need of something but are ignored is appalling. But as I began to think about it more, I realized that I have personally demonstrated bystander apathy. I instantly remembered earlier today when I walked by a girl who had dropped her folder causing her papers to spew all over. I walked by without offering any help as so did others. I was participating in bystander apathy unfortunately. I was surprised to see that I had partook unknowingly in social psychology.
Psychological terms I used were prejudice, attitude, persuasion, social facilitation, social loafing, deindividuation, conformity, compliance, obedience, and bystander apathy.
There are a lot of things for the chapter that happen in the world. Attitudes are one thing. Attitudes can affect a lot of things. One thing is that they go with is relationships. If someone has a bad attitude about a relationship then they will probably not have a relationship. If someone has a good attitude about relationships then they will probably have one. In the relationship if you have the same attitude about the same things then you will probably have a good relationship because you agree. The influence part definitely makes sense. It comes to me more easily than others probably because I read the book Influence the Psychology of Persuasion for my book report. It makes sense though why people do the things they do. It works. I have seen advertisements for Subway that has someone important in them. I think that all of there commercials have someone important to them. That makes sense why they do it because they are trying to have us get their food. They are trying to condition us. They are trying to classically condition us. They are using someone important and then trying to have us think that the food is important so we will get it. Social loafing is something that I do and I should not. When I am playing Ultimate Frisbee I get tired and I stop playing as good. I have my teammates do the work. Social norms are something that affects all of us. We do not go doing something that is not normal because it is not normal. Other people will not be happy. Another thing is being prosocial. When Des Moines was flooding a couple of years ago my dad went to go fill sand bags. He was going to help people.
My thoughts of social psychology have not changed a lot because I read the book Influence the Psychology of Persuasion. Before reading the book and then after it made sense why people do things.
The relationship part of the chapter was interesting. It makes sense to me because a lot of these things can be seen in my friend. We both have some of the same views on things. I also saw him every day when I was in high school. The book says that those are important to relationships. I think that if we did not have the same views we would not be friends. It makes sense someone who you disagree with you are not going to be friends.
The most memorable thing is when I read about people’s expression on there face. It makes sense. It is not a good thing though because sometimes I am wrong. I use it, but it is not good because sometimes it does not work.
Attitudes, conditioning, classically conditioned, social loafing, social norms, prosocial
Our minds are very complex. Talking about thoughts and behaviors it has many parts to it. Decision is based on behavior and behavior I based in decisions. All the topics in the social psychology chapter come together to form an understanding that we tend to form first impressions which changes our attitudes on certain circumstances. My understanding of human though and behavior in the social world has been advanced due to the different types of ways we express our behavior due to our thoughts.
From the reading there were many topics that interested me. One was the story about Booker and how he expanded his social psychology by help in any way that he could even if that meant he would get possibly hurt. “Every day we hear about how people can be cruel to each other. We hear about bullying that leads to teen suicide, wars that victimize the innocent, gang shootouts-this list of horror seem endless (page 382).” This hit right on. All we hear about now and all people care about are the negative things going on in our world but we don’t take time out of our day to look at the positive things people do out of the kindness of their heart. Another topic interesting to me is mere exposer. This was mind blowing because I can relate to this. For the Figure they showed for an example of Maryl Streep and how a picture taken of her can be reversed and if she was asked to pick a the picture she liked the most she would pick the reversed picture because it’s what she would see in a mirror if she was looking, on the other hand a person that knows her like a close friend would choose the not reversed picture because that’s what they’re used to seeing. Lastly the Cognitive Dissonance Theory was interesting because this determines a lot of things like our lack of agreement, positive attitudes about different options, justifications and effort.
There were many surprising and memorable things I learned from this chapter one being the mere exposer. Another would be all the terminology that was given to different aspects of thought and behavior. One terminology would be how we maintain stereotyping which can involve subtyping this is when we encounter a person that does not fit the stereotype given to them but we put them in a special category rather than change their stereotype. Out-groups and In-group Bias also was memorable because I now have the vocabulary to support what I see when I witness this certain situations. In-group is basically what we would do for family like fight for them, die for them and other things that could harm them that we would prevent. Out-groups are those we don’t belong to this could be a stranger. Overall this chapter was one of my favorites not only because it gave me a lot of knowledge and terminology but also because I could relate to a lot of the examples.
Terms: Social Psychology, Mere Exposer, Thought, Behavior, Out-Group, In-Group, Cognitive Dissonance Theory
Chapter eleven explains how people interact with one another. How we deal with others, the influence we have on others and the relationships we create with others. The way we act around people is caused by our snap judgments made about them. And we show our preconceived judgements through our facial expressions caused by our attitudes. How we treat others is what builds or destroys relationships. All of these different topics that are in chapter eleven come together to form Social psychology .
I really enjoyed reading this chapter. It has helped me understand people a bit more, I have always wondered why some people do certain things. The story about Kitty Genovese amazes me. When I first heard her story I was just sicken, and stuck on the idea of how can so many people just let her die? Why wouldn’t anyone help her? Would I have helped her? So many questions ran through my head, then I learned about Bystander apathy. Bystander apathy is a term that refers to the failure to offer help by those who observe someone in need. The night that Kitty was being chased and murdered all those who heard her cry did nothing, 38 people heard her death, and 38 people did nothing, while hoping someone else was doing something. I wish more people possessed the trait of Altruism. The act of providing help when it is needed with no apparent reward for doing so.
The most memorable thing I learned has been about how Passionate love turns into compassionate love. This sticks out most to me because I feel as though I’ve found the one I want to marry. I love him more than I could ever explain but I wonder how people keep their love frown once they get married. This sections explains how our love evolves over time and how our bliss changes. Working to stay in love is about resolving all problems to the best of our abilities as quickly as possible. And I believe that to be true.
Terms Used: Love, Passionate, Compassion, facial expressions, interaction, relationships, judgements, attitudes, Altruism, Bystander apathy
This entire is the basis of describing of how we as humans act in the real world. There are many different topics and sub topics within topics to talk about in this chapter. A man named Fritz Heider had come to the conclusion that human beings have two types of attribution Personal attributes and Situational attributes. Personal attributes are the internal factors within humans that we use to explain different outcomes. Situational attributes are simply the external factors that explain the outcomes that happen in a persons' life. The thing that people need to realize is that they can't solely base their opinion of someone on just their personal or situational attributes, this error would lead to a fundamental attribution error. People also do this observation where they care about personal attributes when examining others, but when we examine ourselves we pay more attention to the external factors, and this is known as an actor/observer bias. The one thing that I see people do all the time is let themselves fall under the pressure of others views or their own views, and end up doing exactly as expected. This type of phenomenon is known as a self-fulfilling prophecy, and it happens often when we give into our own expectations or others expectations. Stereotype was often mentioned throughout this chapter because stereotypes do deal with peoples' social lives. The one thing that makes stereotypes mainly negative is the prejudice and discrimination that comes with it. This chapter dives into so many different things dealing with social life that really made me reflect on my own personal life. My understanding of social psychology has only improved after reading this chapter and I feel like a have a better grasp of my surroundings and what exactly is happening. The best way for people to have a good outlook on life is for people to have positive attitudes, positivity is one thing that is essential for happiness. One way to get a good mood going is to think of positive memories or experiences. If I ever feel down or sad I try to think about puppies and my family. This method is actually known as attitude accessibility. Sadly there are also other attitudes people can other than happy ones, and a few others are explicit attitude and implicit attitude. When a person is able to identify an attitude while they are conscious this is known as explicit attitude, and implicit attitude is an attitude that influences a persons emotions on an unconscious level. Sometimes other people try to change your attitude, usually when a person is having a bad day. This is simply known as persuasion, and it is best not to try this on women because they would rather have you agree with them and be angry. The most interesting thing about this reading was definitely the stereotypes, because I deal with stereotypes almost on a daily basis. Its never the good ones either, due to the fact that I Mexican. Thankfully it is jokingly amongst friends, and it is never out of hate or anger. The hateful side of stereotypes rarely happens to me when I go out, which is a good thing. The thing that I have actually observed from seeing it happen around me all the time that discrimination and prejudice are usually directed towards a group of certain individuals, it is rarely directed at a single individual. When I see a group of Hispanic people they tend to usually feed off of each other and act up, essentially leading back to that self-fulfilling prophecy mentioned earlier in the chapter. I myself am usually with a group of all sorts of different people, I don't limit myself to just a certain amount of friends, I try to stay as open-minded as possible. The one thing that was memorable to me the most in this chapter was reading about conformity and obedience. I consider myself to be a black sheep, but I am never in a pack of other sheep, I run with the wolves. I'm athletic and love working out, but also love video games and listening to music. Usually when people meet me, I am not what they expected. That is the thing I love the most because sometimes I may look like I have a menacing look, but I put that look up for a reason. I want people to read past the exterior and look inside, and see the genuine person I try to be. I have been taught and raised to never let be dethroned by systems of control, and to be exactly who I want to be. I don't let my exterior define me, and most of the time other people struggle with this. The thing I saw people do the most in high school was conforming to what people expected them to be, where cowboy hates and flannels and listening to country music. In Iowa, this seemed to be the social norm, but I was not interested in this type of behavior at all. I love video games, rock n roll, metal, and working out. I don't like working on the farm , I don't drive a lifted truck, and I sure as hell don't listen to country. The one thing I was able to accept and understand in school was obedience. In order to make it through some obstacles in life, such as work and school, you have to obey the laws and rules because that makes things so much easier. I knew too many people that acted out against teachers and professors because they thought it was cool to be badass and not listen to the rules. It was really just an annoyance and made them look stupid. Its not like anything was extremely hard, they were simple rules. Once in awhile there are things that are over the top ridiculous and should not be obeyed, but most of the times it was just and fair rules. It usually depends on the person who is making the rules because people do tend to have tiny power trips when given an ounce of power over people. When this does happen, it truly is best to just obey their ridiculous rules for the time being, because fighting against them makes things worse for you and everyone else. One saying that I live by is “Don't be dethroned by systems of control, just cross your fingers and get those locks of your soul”. This has improved my life immensely as I have continued to grow and expand my social life.
terms: personal attributions, situational attributes, fundamental attribution error, actor/observer bias, self-fulfilling prophecy, prejudice, discrimination, attitudes, explicit attitude, implicit attitude, explicit attitude, attitude accessibility, persuasion, social norms, conformity, obedience
Humans are social animals that interact with other people in a highly complex world. Our all thoughts and behaviors are affected by thoughts of other people, social norms, stereotype, attitudes and groups. At first, facial expressions affect our thoughts and behavior. The face communicates information such as emotional state, interest, and trustworthiness. Therefore, we can make decisions about one’s personality or know other people’s thoughts and feelings by seeing their facial expressions. Also, on the basis of facial expressions, body language, various situations, we can make attributions to people. There are two types in attributions. Firstly, personal attributions are that people’s explanations for why events or actions occur that refer to people’s internal characteristics. Secondly, situational attributions refer to external events, such as the weather, luck, accidents, or other people’s action. These internal and external factors affect our recognitions to evaluate for ourselves or other people. Besides, a lot of social exposures also affect our thoughts and behaviors strongly. For example, teenagers are heavily influenced by their peer’s beliefs, such as curiosity about drinking alcohol or smoking. After reading this chapter, I realized that really various factors are affecting my minds and behaviors. My every behavior is formed by social norms, stereotypes and recognition of others around me. I realized especially that I am affected by stereotype largely.
The most memorable thing I learned in this chapter is we conform to the expectations of others. This is because I have experienced it a lot. Conformity is altering our behaviors and opinions to match those of others of to match what is expected of us. When I do group project, I tend to follow group’s opinion to avoid looking foolish, as well as I tend to think that group opinion is right decisions. That is, I have experienced both normative influence and informational influence when I do group projects. The most interesting topic for me is about love. Nowadays, I am troubling with my romantic relationship because I can’t meet my boyfriend in Korea. Thought this chapter, I can know working to stay in love. To get positive relationships with boyfriend, I will try to interact with boyfriend frequently and express concern and make thoughtful gestures to him.
Terms: social norms, stereotype, facial expressions, personal attributions, situational attributions, social exposures, Conformity, normative influence, informational influence
I never really knew a whole lot on the topic of social psychology. Before reading this chapter, I hadn’t studied this subject so all of this information is new to me. There are four different topics in this chapter about social psychology: How do we think about other people?; How do our attitudes affect us?; How do other people influence us?; How do we develop strong relationships? I think they all come together because each topic forms the social aspect in us and how we work with and relate to those around us.
The topic that was most interesting to me is how we think about other people. I liked learning about initial impressions we have of others. A lot of times, I have heard people claim that “they don’t judge others”, but according to this reading, it is not really humanly possible not to judge others. From the first sight of someone, you can have personal beliefs or ideas of them based on their outer appearance and body language. Looking at the figure, it is quite obvious that these men are in some sort of strong willed discussion or argument. I can tell because the man on the right hand side is pointing his finger in the man’s face on the left side. The man on the left side has his hands open like he is trying to get his point across to the man on the right side. I have always been able to read body language fairly well, like when people I am close with are upset or happy, I can tell because they do certain actions to express it. For example, when my friend is upset or frustrated, he has his hands clenched up in a tight fist. This helps me make “snap judgements” on his emotions.
The most surprising thing I read about was passionate love and companionate love. Passionate love, I learned, is a type of romantic relationship that includes intense longing and sexual desire. On the other hand, companionate love is a type of romantic relationship that includes strong commitment to supporting and caring for a partner. I didn’t really know there were different types of love, I just thought love was love. I think after reading this, I learning that it is important in a partner type of relationship, opposed to a friendship, that both types of love need to be included, because without one of them, I don’t believe it would be a solid relationship. Either it would just be based on sexual desires, or it would be just a friendship. Some of the couples I know that have just one or the other, aren’t happy in their relationship because it is lacking on the other side. Overtime, I don’t think that the passionate, physical is as necessary just because the needs aren’t as high as old age comes. I just thought it was really interesting to learn this because I finally could put two and two together to understand strong relationships.
Psychological Terms: social psychology, social, body language, passionate love, companionate love
After reading this chapter, my understanding is that human thought and behavior is complicated. We are all complicated individuals. Humans can be judgmental, stereotypical, moody, conforming, hurtful, helpful, and loving amongst many other things. Like I said, humans are complex. We show wide ranges of emotions and behaviors according to interior and exterior motives. Some motives explained are why we make “snap judgments”. Our brains react to every slight movement of the face and body and make its first impressions. The word judgment is quickly thought of as a bad thing but in reality it’s just our brains priming our reactions in case of danger. Another motive explained are why we stereotype people. Our brains naturally group information together and like it said in the book, “in most cases, outside of our awareness”. Stereotyping isn’t good but our brains like to do it anyways so we are often time having to go against our brains natural instincts and tell it that it’s wrong and form our own unique ideas of people as individuals. My understanding of social psychology has changed because I now see that many of our relationships and experiences with people are often times dictated by the body and biology. Of course, free will is such a thing but we can’t deny that our biological makeup offers a lot of cause to the effect of our relationships. For instance, psychologists believe that many friendships blossom because of biological similarities. Whether that’s true or not, it is certainly interesting and makes sense. The most interesting thing is that our attitudes are largely formed by our social exposure meaning that the people we know or hang around as well as family have an impact on our values and beliefs and the way/ why we do things. Also, the most memorable thing is that exposure dictates our preferences. An example given in the book explains this well. Apparently, when shown pictures of people. The people whose photos were shown preferred the reversed picture in accordance to what they saw in the mirrors on a daily basis and the families and friends of the person shown in the photo preferred the original photo that looked normal because that’s the way they were used to looking at that person. All in all, exposure is an important part in the decisions we make. The psychological terms I used were behavior, judgmental, stereotypical, moody, conforming, emotions, interior and exterior motives, impressions, reactions, awareness, instincts, biology, relationships, and exposure.
After reading this chapter, my perception on human thought and action was enhanced. I learned the reasonings behind many of today’s actions. Prejudice, Stereotypes, and the reason we think about people the way we do was explained. Psychologists were able to collectively over time develop reasonings for why humans act and think the way we do. I also learned that humans believe reason is necessary for events to happen. This lays the foundation for how we as a organism think. Everything happens for a reason.
The way we think about other people is more complex than it seems. The first impression is the most influential decision on how we see someone. This impression can come from, or be changed by many factors. Body Language is one way ideas can be communicated and assessed. The body language of someone may develop an idea on how we think about them, and how they live. We are also faced with influencing factors such as stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination, and attributions. Attributions can be divided into two sub-categories: Personal and Situational. Personal attributions are ways that explain outcomes based on internal factors, such as someone ability, mood, or effort. Situational Attributions can be described as explanations based on external factors, such as luck, accidents, or the actions of other people. Attributions are the key point to how we view other people, but the others still hold psychological value, varied from person to person.
Attitudes also affect how we see people. If we have a certain attitude towards something, then the people associated with that idea, event, etc may be viewed positively or negatively depending on opinion. Attitudes can be used to predict the behavior of humans too. The attitudes used can be internal or external, depending if we are aware of them or not. Others may use their perception of our attitude to make impressions of us, which may influence interaction.
I thought the most interesting portion of this reading was how important first impressions are. It is crazy to believe that within the first 15 seconds of meeting someone, we already have an opinion on the person, that may or may not be changed. I also found it interesting that the first impression is often hard to take back. Generally after our mind is made up about a person, it takes a lot to alter the view. I thought it was neat how our brain operates like it does, making who we are seen, and who we are as a person, happen.
Psychological Terms: Perception, Human, Thought, Prejudice, Stereotypes, Discrimination, Reason, Psychologists, Attitude, Internal, External, First Impression, Attributions, Body Language
Human thought and behavior is so difficult to figure out. The social world is just as difficult if not more so. The different aspects come together in an interesting clump that seems to be slightly different for every human being and they literally shape the kind of world that we live in. For example: With rape we live in a world where people will blame it on your clothing or lack of responsibility rather than blame it on the person who committed the actual crime. Women in today’s society do not feel safe. I personally carry a knife on me at all times because I am afraid and as does my significant other who has been raped twice (within the last year) and now suffers from PTSD because of it. Another example is the expectations for women to be attractive and the expectations for women in general, really. What brought this together? Stereotypes, attitudes, attributions, discrimination, persuasion, the different routes of persuasion, conformity, social norms, aggression, physical attractiveness and different types of love. They combine to make our world into what it is. If you removed one it would alter the world so much that you would probably have a hard time believing that you are still on Earth. My understanding of the world (of social psychology) has definitely gone up after reading this chapter. Out of all of it I think the most interesting thing was the section on love. For starters, I had no idea that there were different kinds of love. It honestly really makes sense. My significant other and are currently in the passionate love phase while if you would look at my parents you would be able to tell that they are definitely in the compassionate love phase. How love changes clicked with me and I loved the tips on working to actually stay in love. I always knew that staying together, for example a married couple of 40+ years, is difficult. I know that there are ups and oh how there are downs but I also know that working through them together is what helps build and strengthen relationships.
The most memorable thing, though, was back in the stereotypes section. There were quite a few different things on it but what new information really hit home was the “self-fulfilling prophecy” on stereotypes. Honestly, it made sense with how I turned out. For the longest time I went through what I (and many others) call a “scene phase.” Its where you try very hard to be a “scene” kid by dressing, looking and acting in a certain way. Over time, when I thought I had “outgrown the scene phase” is when I found myself actually fitting into that mold better. Then people expected certain things from me, like cutting, hair dying and smoking, all of which I conformed to. Another example is a friend of mine was labeled as a stupid kid early on in the education system. As he grew into his high school years he quit trying and was getting D’s and F’s. Still today, even though he’s in college, he claims that he is too stupid to do things and that he is too stupid to be in college even though he can do anything he puts his mind to. Because of how he was treated early on, he over time conformed to actually believing he was stupid. Schools are supposed to remove prejudice but instead they seem to just make more of it. This then will later bring discrimination onto my friend because of his bad grades.
Terms: thought, behavior, stereotypes, attitudes, attributions, discrimination, persuasion, the different routes of persuasion, conformity, social norms, aggression, physical attractiveness, passionate love, companionate love, self-fulfilling prophecy, prejudice, discrimination.
All these different topics that are in this chapter about social psychology really come together to understand thought and behavior in the social world. This chapter really discusses the thoughts and behaviors of all humans. It talks about how we think about other people, how attitudes affect us, how other people influence us, and how we develop strong relationships. All of the topics in this chapter are somehow interlinked. For example, stereotyping is very common in society and it can also be connected to discrimination. Discrimination is the inappropriate and unjustified treatment of people as a result of prejudice. Stereotypes also can be part of prejudice along with discrimination. Prejudice involves negative feelings, opinions, and beliefs associated with a stereotype. Not only do stereotypes deal with discrimination and prejudice but they also have an impact on how we look at different kinds of people.. Attitudes are people’s evaluations of objects, of events, or of ideas. Attitudes have a big impact on someone's behavior. Also someone’s attitude towards a person can influence their future behavior around that same person. Attitudes can be changed through persuasion. Persuasion is the active and conscious effort to change an attitude through the transmission of a message.The persuasion of a person often occurs when the person pays attention to a message, understands it, and finds it convincing. The next section of the chapter deals with how other influence us. One major part of this section that stuck out in my mind was conformity. Conformity is the altering of your own behaviors and opinions to match those of other people or to match other people’s expectations. The main reason conformity stuck out so much to me was because of my age group. High school and somewhat college are major scenes for conformity because the desire for kids wanting to fit in with others or the”cool” crowd. Along with conformity is social norms, which are the expected standards of conduct, which influence behaviors. Social norms are not only a big part of teenagers lives but they are also a main part of our society today. Everything in this chapter connects and helps with the understanding of human thought and behavior in the social world.
My understanding of social psychology has changed since reading this chapter because it helped me to think about all of the human thoughts and behaviors in the social world are interlinked. It also helped me to understand more about how society has such an influence on people. Social norms have a great amount of impact on people because of today’s society and how everything is perceived dealing with the social world.
From my reading, the topic that was most interesting to me was the section dealing with love. I found the sections about love being the key part of romantic relationships to be interesting because I typically think of love just as a feeling instead of something you have to work for. The two kinds of love described in this chapter are passionate love and companionate love. Passionate love is a type of romantic relationship that includes intense longing and sexual desire and companionate love is a type of romantic relationship that includes strong commitment to supporting and caring for a partner.
Continuing on about the love section I also found the love section to be most surprising to me because of the section about working to stay in love. I have never really had the thought about having to work to stay in love , usually I just think of it as being a feeling that continues to happen naturally instead of something you have to work for which is something I found very shocking, interesting and memorable about this chapter.
Psychological terms used: passionate love, companionate love, attitudes, persuasion, stereotypes, discrimination, prejudice, behavior
From the reading of the chapter, people’s behaviors was broken down into a set of four “big” questions. The four questions covered how we think of other people, how our attitudes affect us, influence from other people, and our ability to develop strong relationships. The way we think of others is based on the judgments we make about a person due to their behavior, or facial expressions which lead to attributions. There are different types of attributions that we can make. There are personal and situational attributions one can make. These attributions can lead to biases depending on the situation. This tendency has been called the fundamental attribution error and by contrast there is the actor/observer bias. However, we also make stereotypes about people, which can be hurtful to certain individuals when they take offense to them. For example, if a women is perceived as dressing too revealing then she would be considered as easy, or a slut. Consequently, the stereotypes and everything we think about others can influence our behaviors. There is an interrelationship between our attitudes and behavior. For example, if a person is in a bad mood, and grumpy due to whatever reason they may have, they tend to behave in a way that many would portray as unapproachable. This could be the cause of one’s easy or difficulty to retrieve an attitude from memory, which is called attitude accessibility. The attitudes we develop are due to experience and socialization throughout our lives. This process is called the mere exposure effect which consists of explicit and implicit attitudes. All of this affects our behaviors. My understanding of social psychology changed after reading this chapter, due to the fact that I now have a better understanding of the concept and things that make up our behavior and everything associated with it.
The topic that interested me the most was the part on deindividuation, which states that when people are anonymous in either person, or over social media now-a-days, they tend to act differently than they normally would. From personal experience I truly believe this is true. Throughout high school I would super fan occasionally in a morphsuit, and I felt a lot more social in it since it seemed to grab everyone’s attention as to who was inside the suit.
The most surprising this that I learned from the reading was how we conform to the expectations of others. As we grow up, we are influenced by different things such as more fortunate people, TV, movies, etc. Which is why there are girl’s that suffer from anorexia, bulimia, and other illnesses due to what our society portrays “sexy” models to be.
Terms: behavior, social psychology, conform, deindividuation, explicit attitudes, implicit attitudes, personal attributions, situational attributions, fundamental attribution error, actor/observer bias, attitudes, stereotypes, mere exposure effect.
It is frequently stated that humans, above all else, are social creatures, and I believe this chapter has done all it could to drive that point home. Of course, the keyword here is 'social'. All of the topics in this chapter refer to the vast amount of interactions between individuals as well as whole groups and societies. Aggression stems from an intent to harm someone. Persuasion is all about changing someone's attitude(s) about something. Regardless of the topic, it discusses at least two people interacting in some way. Well, I suppose there is the subject of cognitive dissonance, the mental state that arises when two attitudes, or an attitude and a behavior come into conflict with one another. You don't necessarily need two people for that to take place. Unfortunately, since I'm taking an Intro to Sociology course along side this one, much of what has been revealed in this chapter has been discussed earlier in that class, albeit on a larger scale. In contrast, this had a greater emphasis on things like behavior and cognitive function.
Something that caught my eye in this chapter was the tale of Kitty Genovese, the woman who was murdered while supposedly 38 people simply stood by and watched it take place. Although I know it was proven to be an egregious exaggeration and only a few people witnessed 'something', it was still quite fascinating. Apparently these folks simply didn't step in because they only saw part of what was going on, and unfortunately for Ms. Genovese, she was obscured from view. The aggravating thing (although strangely unsurprising) about bystander apathy is that apparently the more people who are witnessing the event, the LESS likely someone is to step in and do something about it. This is apparently because the more people there are, the more they expect someone else to step up. Another explanation is that most people don't quite know the circumstances of what's going on so they're afraid of looking foolish by getting involved. It really puts a damper on the whole altruism thing.
Another thing that had drawn my eye was the types of attribution and their biases. Slightly different than stereotypes, attributions seemed to be more on a personal level. In particular I noticed the actor/observer bias, the rather vain practice of pinning our own behavior on situational factors, and interpreting other people's behavior based on their personal qualities. This bias suggests that if I total my car, I'm more likely to blame it on bad road conditions, old tires, or poor weather. If another person totals their vehicle however, I'd be more likely to assume their substandard driving was the cause of the crash. I find this to be a trifle narcissistic, even if I too am likely guilty of it. I'm reminded of a George Carlin quote: “Have you ever noticed that anyone driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone driving faster than you is a maniac?”
The keywords are: social, aggression, persuasion, interaction, cognitive dissonance, behavior, bystander apathy, altruism, attribution, stereotypes, and actor/observer bias.
All these different topics that are in this social psychology chapter come together to form an all-encompassing understanding of human thought and behavior in the social world. From the reading of chapter 11 Social Psychology, these topic are simply related to each other all of these topics come together to create a definition and describe human behavior and thoughts about others people as well as how the relationships are develop based on the judgment and the way we perceived from others. For example if we see someone walking pass up and in our head we will automatically judge them by what they wearing if there outfit looks dirty and the way they walk do not seem right we will tend to stay away from them this also known as observer bias. How has your understanding of social psychology changed since reading this chapter? My understanding of social psychology has not change much after reading this chapter. This chapter just help me clear up about why we act in different way toward different kind of people, and all the differences between the different types of attributions such as personal attribution which is we value what inside of a person not based on what they look like, situational attribution is the judgment we made based on the way a person react to a certain problem. Fundamental attribution error is when we explaining other people behavior, we tend to overemphasize the importance of personal factors and underestimate the important of the situation. From your reading, which topic(s) are most interesting to you? In chapter 11 the most interesting topic to me was how we develop strong relationship found from page 408 to 413, situational and personal factor effect the development of strong friendship, for example the more you know about your friends will help your relationship strengthen. The most memorable thing from this chapter was how the simple and complex attitudes affect our behavior, for example if you believe fast food is bad for you and will make you gain more weight, then you do not eat fast foods. That’s a simple attitude toward fast foods.
Terms: Observer bias, personal attributions, situation attributions, fundamental attribution error.
Many people communicate in very different ways. Communication can be understood not even through talking to one another but just by how our facial features are. Social psychologist can study how we judge other people. It’s crazy how someone in Japan and someone in the United States could understand each other and judge others the same even though they are half way around the world. I understand so much more about social psychology. We as a society can judge someone so nicely or so harshly based on what they look like, what they act like, or what their hobbies are. We may not even realize we are judging a person because it comes from our unconscious memory.
I understand that to live in our society today everyone needs to communicate with each other. Communication can affect our attitude. Communication can be a great thing and so can our attitude. Altruism is the act of providing help when it is needed with no apparent reward for doing so. Other times when we are in groups or with others communication can lead to bad things. Persuasion is the active and conscious effort to change an attitude through the transmission of a message. It can lead others to do things they don’t want to do or something they are uncomfortable with. Deindividuation also can lead to someone not doing something they should not do, but are persuaded through group surroundings. If an elder needs help with her grocery typically someone would go help her, but if you are with a group you may just stand back and watch her struggle.
The most interesting part I read was about the passionate love and compassionate love. I thought when you loved someone it’s one kind of love. Passionate love is a type of romantic relationship that includes intense longing and sexual desire. Passionate love is more towards the beginning of a relationship when get you butterflies in your stomach and you’re so into that person. Compassionate love is a type of romantic relationship that includes strong commitment to supporting and caring for a partner. Most the time when people get divorces it’s because of the lack of compassionate love. To have a long lasting and trusting relationship both partners need compassionate love. It is the type of love that couples have when they have been married for fifty years plus.
The most memorable thing I read was that simple and complex behaviors affect our memory. I knew if something is happening in our surroundings our attitude will shift, but I didn’t realize how frequently that happens. Attitude accessibility is an ease of retrieving an attitude from memory. For example if someone at school was mean to you and called you a bad name and then the next day you see them at school you may be more crabby because the memory of them being mean to you comes back. It is interesting that our attitude can change in a blink of an eye just because of someone or something.
Key Terms: Stereotypes, attitude accessibility, persuasion, deindividuation, attitude, compassionate love, and passionate love.
All the topics discussed in this chapter come together to form a bigger understanding and idea of the way we think and behave as humans socially. Each of the topics discussed in this chapter are the ways that we as humans communicate and also interact socially. It is because of all these separate ways that we interact and communicate. All social behavior is important and this chapter does a wonderful job of explaining the process and the behaviors of social humans.
My understanding has not changed all that much because I feel like I understood social humans from my psychology class in high school. I never learned, though, how many different types of social interactions there really are.
The most interesting topic to me is the Kitty Genovese and the bystander apathy story. It was about a woman named Kitty who was walking home from work in New York City. She was attacked and murdered on her walk home and after that a newspaper reported that an astounding 38 people stood by and just watched this happen to her. Later they found out that just a few people witnessed but they could not really see what was going on. Bystander apathy is when people fail to help when someone is in need. Two people eventually started testing their theories. I just found all of the tests they did very interesting.
The most memorable part of the reading in my opinion is the part about Cory Booker who is now a United States senator. He was very helpful and a very good person. He at one point saved somebody who was in a burning building and even helped people who were affected by hurricane Sandy. He helped them by letting them stay in his own home and giving them meals. He is a very good person.
The understanding of human thought and behavior in the social world come from the understanding of social psychology topics in this chapter. How we make judgmental/ stereotypes, our attitudes, how we are influenced by others, and how we develop strong relationships, all play a role in how we think and behave in the social world. For example stereotypes are a huge factor me on think about people and how we treat them in society. If you see a group of male African Americans in a downtown street, most people stereotype them as bad and to stay away from them. I’m not saying to not worry about that, but you shouldn’t be only worried about that just because they are African American. I watched a TV show that recorded live actors to play like the kid was being kidnapped, the sad thing is reacting this scene live over and over again, and people just ignored, but a group of young African American men stood up and went after the “kidnapper”. This proves that stereotypes are not true for everyone, or anyone of them. After getting a little side tract there, the way society think of people, most will take that and think that themselves because of the society, and when we do that we treat them differently even when we don’t even know them. My understanding of social psychology has changed a lot after reading this chapter. Before I didn’t know what social psychology was about other than maybe it was about the study of society, which it is but in more depth with knowing society and how that effects how we think. The most interesting topic to me was that love is a key part of romantic relationships, and all the factors. In this section they talk about different types of love. Passionate love has to do with really longing for that person and also sexual desire, with this type of romantic relationship. This is the first lovey dovey stages. The Companionate love focus more on the commitment to supporting and caring for that partner with still sexual desire but that more of an add or bonus to the relationship. The most memorable thing to me was kitty Genovese case. This is a huge example of bystander apathy. She was rapped then stabbed to death in town going to her house, people heard the screaming for help, but assumed others would help or didn’t want to get hurt themselves. It crazy to think that this could actually happen and that people can just ignore this kind of thing.
Term: Stereotypes, judgment, Passionate love, Companionate love, bystander apathy,
In this chapter, it brings together all the topics we have learned of how one understands others behavior. It explains how we interact with people and how other people influence with a better explanation. For example, when we someone new for the first time, you make a judgement based on what you see. That is how you see the person for the first time before you get to know them. We don’t try to be judgmental or mean, it’s just something you do everyday when we see people. When you look at people, you try to classify them as being someone they really aren’t. My understanding of social psychology changed by getting a better understanding of why and how we think of others and how we perceive others as well. It makes me think twice when I judge someone when I first meet them.
I found a few topics interesting in this chapter. The topic that was most memorable to me was the section called We Conform to the Expectations of Others. This section gave a great explanation of conformity. In the book it gives an example of how people can’t stand in the elevator without looking at the ground and if we look at others, it makes us uncomfortable. Conformity is altering our behaviors or opinions to match those of other or to match what is expected of us. With conformity, there are two primary reasons we conform. The two reasons are normative influence and informative influence. Normative influence occurs when we go along with what the group does so we can be liked and to fit in. Informational influence occurs when we assume that the behavior of a group provides information about the right way to act. Besides these two things, there is another aspect as to why our behavior is affected. Social norms also influence our behavior in many ways. Social norms are expected standards of conduct, which influence behavior.
The most memorable topic to me was the section called We Sometimes Hurt Each Other. Sometimes we hurt each other when we don’t mean to do it at all. We usually don’t mean to do it but it gets the best of us. Aggression comes out when we least expect it. Aggression is any behavior that involves the intention to harm someone else. There are three factors to aggression. They are biological, situational, and social and cultural. Biological factors is primarily studied in animals. But in humans, we have low levels of serotonin that have been linked back to aggression. Situational factors is liked to the frustration-aggression hypothesis. This hypothesis is the more frustrated we feel, the more likely we are to act aggressively. When something we want to happen really badly and it doesn’t follow through, we usually get frustrated. The social and cultural factors is an evolutionary approach to aggression would call for similar patterns of aggressive behavior to exist in all human societies. Different cultures have different ways to show honor. Some cultures use violence to show honor.
terms: aggression, frustration-aggression hypothesis, conformity, normative influence, informational influence, social norms
Chapter 11
When I first started reading chapter 11 I liked how it talks about judgment of people and facial expressions. When I did my book report I read a book about telling lies which targeted about judgment and facial expressions. We all judge people and use facial expressions without even noticing it. We also read facial expressions without people knowing such as if a person seems; happy, sad, and angry. The next part of the chapter that was interesting to me was the attributions how all people have a personal attribution and a situational attribution. Personal attribution is how a person is, such as one to study hard on a test. A situational attribution is one that is based on the environment such as having good luck. People stereotype often, and once we have created a stereotype we usually hold on to these stereotypes. Here at UNI we see the bar sharkey’s as a place where only young kids and “slutty” girls go to when in reality the bar can be a place to find any type of person at. When we think of a hockey player we might picture a rather thick man who is not from America. We all have similar and very different stereotypes which we can develop on our own or from our peers. I like the example the book gives when it talks about people who see a person who should be in one stereotype but is actually In another which is called Subtyping”. This explanation was used for our current President, how we was just lucky that he got to where he is today, but the amount of schooling, and hard work he did to earn his way to becoming president was not luck. The next part of this chapter that I liked was Social facilitation, which meaning preforming better when others are around. I am able to relate to this because when I did start I would run after when I could see runners around me then when I ran alone. I feel there is more to this topic though. If people are truly competitive and are performing with others around they might get a rush of adrenaline which can boost performance in a person. The two types of love were interesting to me because I feel the difference between the two develops with age. Passionate love is a type of romantic relationship that includes intense longing and sexual desire while companionate love is a type of romantic relationship that includes strong commitment to supporting and caring for a partner. These two type of loves I feel can be in one relationship. The desire for sex in a relationship is usually pretty high in the younger population and I feel that this type of love is easier to reach. Even though all of us young 20 year olds may think we would die for our lover but companionate love is one that must develop over many years and have many experiences and that this type of love is not one reaching for but comes nature. This chapter hit every key component to social psychology I feel. It made everything make more sense of why we do things from stereotyping people to something most people hope to have someday, love.
Terms- personal attribution-situational attribution- stereotypes- subtyping- social facilitation- adrenaline- passionate love- companionate love
I feel like chapter elevens topics all come together in explaining how we can understand peoples behavior. We behave, think, and base decisions through others. When we meet someone for the first time, we are already making assumptions on how we perceive him or her. Most of the time we don’t even realize that we are doing it. We just tend to form first impressions quickly. After reading this chapter I see that peoples behavior is heavily based on social norms. We tend to like people who have admirable personality characteristics. I learned that attitudes are the way a person evaluates an object, events, or ideas.
The most interesting thing from chapter 11 was Social facilitation and social loafing. Social facilitation is when being in the presence of others enhances performance, and social loafing is the tendency for people to not work as hard in a group than when working alone. We run faster, bike faster, swim faster in a group than when we are alone because presence of others enhances performance. Not in all cases. People tend to work less hard in a group. In social loafing, the presence of others impairs performance. When they are in a group work project, some people tend to slack off. I saw this a lot in high school, but I never knew the right terms for the behavior. It always seemed that people were always trying to improve their performance from who could run the fastest to who ate the fastest. Except for when it came time to do homework. There would always be those few people in your group who just sat back and relaxed while you did all the work.
The most memorable thing in chapter 11 was passionate and companionate love. I really wasn’t aware that people either loved passionately or companionably. I thought it was always head over heals passionate love. Passionate love is a state of intense longing and sexual desire, the stereotype of love we see in movies. Companionate love seems like your just friends. It develops slowly over time because it is based on friendship, trust, and intimacy. This kind of love is a strong commitment to care for and support a partner. Romantic relationships change over time. Their interest in sexual activity decreases. Typically partners tend to feel less passion for each other over time.
TERMS: Social Facilitation, Social Loafing, Behavior, Attitude, Passionate Love, Companionate Love
This chapter is an explanation of how we can understand a behavior. There are many different topics that are pretty much self-explanatory. These topics are involving how people’s attitudes affect other people, how people influence other people, how people think of other people, and how people develop relationships with one another.
We can relate society influences to pretty much everything. An example of society influences is dressing. We dress to meet the approval of other people. If we see people wearing all black, we assume that they are Goth If we see people wearing sporty clothing, then we assume that they are a jock. If we see people dress up like in mint condition, then we can assume that they are like the “Know it alls”. We all dress in a way to avoid the judgment from others. This also goes along with distinguishing people. This is when we base a person off of the first impression. An example, how they dress, act, or look. This is when we make the stereotype of a person. People make stereotypes all the time. Its just a thing that we can all do without knowing if. If we see a person that does not necessarily fit in with our friend group, then we just ignore them. I was well of aware of stereotypes, especially from high school, but after reading this chapter it changed my look on social psychology. If we all didn’t take the time to judge, and more time to actually get to know the person, we could all get along so much better.
I thought it was interesting reading about the study with the Stanford students. They had them play the roles of prisoners and guards in a “fake” prison. They reported that the guards were brutal and they always took control right away. They harassed the prisoners and made them do cruel things. The students were stable people but they ended up acting as if they were animals. The actually observers of the study just thought that the students were caught up in the moment and that they had just lost their awareness. Deindividuation is a state of reduced individuality, reduced self-awareness, and reduced attention to personal standards.
The most memorable thing that I read about in this section was the story about Kitty Genovese. Kitty was walking home and was murdered/assaulted. The paper reported that 38 people witnessed the murder/assault, but no one came forward to help out with the situation, Years later, the evidence actually showed that they story was wrong. There were only a few witnesses and none of them could actually see what was going on. If the reporter was corrected, this is an example of bystander apathy.
Psychological terms: society influences, stereotype, bystander apathy, Deindividuation, awareness
Many of the topics discussed within the chapter contribute to our behaviour and attitude towards other people. One of these topics is how we make snap judgements of others. For example, say you are walking to your next class and you walk past somebody dressed very nicely. Most likely you will pass judgement on them, maybe thinking they must be important, or they sure look good today. Now say you walk past somebody who looks like they haven’t changed the clothes they’re wearing in the past three days. Most likely you will pass negative judgement on them thinking, they’re dirty I’ll stay away, or they look a bit sketchy they probably do drugs. Which person would you rather try and get to know? The one that you think is important and looking nice, or the one that you think does drugs. This is exactly what snap judgement is. In the first instance when we see a new person we make many small judgements and inferences about them. Now these are not always necessarily true, but it influences whether or not you will try and interact with them in a positive way, a negative way, or not at all. Going along with first impressions there is also thin slices of judgement and facial expressions. Thin slices of judgement is actually the body language that we perceive in the first few seconds we meet somebody. This body language provides strong cues that help form our impressions of other people. For example, if somebody is slouched and avoiding eye contact, this will cause a less positive first impression. Compare that to somebody who is standing tall, and making eye contact. This person is more likely to cause a more positive first impression on others due to their confidence. Facial expressions are also extremely important. Considering we talk face to face this makes sense. Eyes are a large part of facial expressions. We use them for flirting, to show anger, or to catch the attention of somebody. Your face will let on more than you may even know.
The most interesting thing that I learned about was the maintaining stereotypes section. I found this interesting because I don’t understand why we can not seem to break these stereotypes. For example, America got rid of slaves during the Civil War. Later on we granted them equal rights, and yet, to this day there is still racism. There are still members of the KKK. There are still people out there who if given the chance would get rid of all African American’s. It fathoms me that in our day and age these people are still out there.
The most surprising thing I learned about was deindividuation. This is defined as a state of reduced individuality, reduced self-awareness, and reduced attention to personal standards; this phenomenon may occur when people are part of a group. This shows how people can fall into the wrong crowd. If you go to hangout with a group of new friends and they decided to smoke weed, even if you don’t, you are more likely to give in and conform to the group because you don’t want to be single out.
All of these factors contribute to our thought and behaviour in the social world. I did not know a lot on social psychology before reading this chapter, so my understanding hasn’t changed, it has just grown.
Key Words: Snap Judgements, First Impressions, Thin Slices of Judgement, Facial Expressions, Body Language, Eye Contact, Stereotypes, Deindividuation
This chapter dealt with a number of various subjects including attitudes, prejudice, social norms and love. While these things may not seem as though they have anything in common with each other they are all a part of social psychology. After reading this chapter I learned that there is a lot more within social psychology than I thought, even though most of the reading wasn't new to me.
If anything in this chapter didn't have enough written about it, it was love. The book discusses passionate love and compassionate love, how love between two people changes over time, and about working to stay in love. I hope that in future chapters they will talk about more of the biological and differing types of love.
The most memorable thing in this chapter to me was about in groups and out groups. And about the group of 22 intelligent, well-adjusted white fifth grade boys, none of whom knew each other. They were all part of an experiment on competition and cooperation. They were sent to camp and separated into two groups, and they formed strong bonds within their groups. At the end of camp the groups were set against each other in a competition. Fights became physical between the two groups. After the experimenters gave them tasks where they had to work together across the groups, and eventually everyone became friends. This to me stresses the importance of situations, and how much they impact the way we behave. I reminds me of times in elementary when I would get in fights with my best friend and our teacher would force us to be in groups together, reading this I see her understanding. Even though it worked, my best friend and I would make up, but only because we were so mad at our teacher for putting us in a group together when she knew we were in a fight.
Terms: attitude, prejudice, social norms, love, social psychology, passionate love, compassionate love, competition, cooperation
Every day we go through different social behaviors that make up all of our different days and shape us into how we act on our emotions as well as towards other people in our day to day experiences. With both good and bad types of experiences each day it creates an ever shifting image of how we act and how others perceive us and how we act when we are out and about each day. Not only do we use these social behaviors to shape our selves but we also use them in order to make guesses and judge other people in short amounts of time to figure out who they are and how they will act. Many times we have to make snap decisions on how we believe a person will act or what they are thinking by either their body language or their facial expressions when we first meet. This is a good thing to have when it comes to meeting new people for the first time, but sometimes it can be problematic for some people if they have had a history of being prejudice towards a certain people because of a stereotype and because of this they tend to discriminate against that persons race, sex, or religion. This kind of observation of a person can cause lasting damage if they continue to look at others and base their actions on prejudice towards their race, not only does it ruin the chance for a relationship between the two involved but also engrains the thought that the prejudice is correct. Another part that plays a major role in our social psychology is our attitude and how we act on it when with other people. What I did not know where the differences between our explicit and implicit attitudes when either making decisions or what we show to people. Our explicit attitudes are easier to explain as they are the ones that we are always showing to other people and are easily explained when questioned about it, on the other hand our implicit attitudes are ones that are formed in our unconscious attitudes, these attitudes are the ones that explain all of our feelings on the unconscious level.
Something that I found was interesting was the term deindividuation and how it can actually change how we act in certain situations when we are known to be anonymous in a crowd. Before this chapter I had already known that many people will actually act different when they are a part of the group but I never really knew that the term that would go with it and how it truly effects our psychology when we are in these situations. Since people are less self-aware when they are in a major crowd they can act however they want because they know that many do not know that that is not their usual actions when by themselves or with a smaller group that knows their usual routine and attitudes. I can personally say that I know the feeling behind this term, usually I am a very quiet person but when I am in an area that I know that no one would either easily recognize me or know how I would normally act I can become much louder and more active then I would normally be, this usually happens to me at sports games or things that I am extremely passionate about.
Terms used: Prejudice, Discrimination, Attitudes, Explicit Attitude, Implicit Attitude, Deindividuation
Throughout the chapter it talks about how social psychology forms who we are as a person. From my understanding there are two things that play a factor in how you act us. It’s our personal attitudes and the people around us. Being social is a big part of being human so it makes sense that our social being has to deal with other people and ourselves. We have an image that we want people to see and the image in most cases is for people to like us or accept us. I feel likes teens are altered in personality, attitude, and choices. They do everything they can to fit in and be accepted even if they are doing something they wouldn't normally do.
I thought the most interesting thing was how anything and everything can change your attitude on something. I know that if one of my friends doesn't like someone I then at that moment don't like them either. I would know nothing about this person but the fact that I was influenced by someone else is interesting.
Terms: Influenced, personality, social psychology
All these different topics that are in this social psychology chapter come together to form an all encompassing understanding of human thought and behavior in the social world because it shows how we think about other people. For example, when someone is walking and they see someone else, they are making a judgment based on how they are acting and what they look like. The book gives us an example of what some people may also think: This is someone attractive, or someone to be wary of, or someone about as intelligent as you are, or someone you’d like to know better. Many factors affect your initial impressions of someone and the way you react to them. These factors include how others describe them and how you feel about their nonverbal behavior or body language, their movements, gestures, and facial expressions. I believe that everyone is guilty for judging others because it is such a ‘natural’ thing. Our book explains one of the first things we usually notice about another person is the face. The face communicates information such as emotional state, interest, and trustworthiness. This ability to communicate is particularly true for the eyes. We use our eyes to show anger, to flirt, or to catch the attention of a passing waiter. As explained in our book eye contact is important in social situation, though how we perceive it depends on our culture. The next section in our book about social psychology and how it helps our understanding of human thought and behavior is humans tend to stereotype others. Once we form stereotypes we tend to maintain them. When we encounter someone who does not fit a stereotype, we may put that person in a special category rather than change the stereotype. This practice is called sub typing.
The topic that was most interesting to me was the topic about simple and complex attitudes affect our behavior. The example that our book gave was if you believe smoking is bad for you and you do not smoke, then your behavior is consistent with your attitude which is simple attitude toward smoking. On the other hand if you believe smoking is bad for you and you do smoke, then your behavior is not consistent with your attitude so therefore you have a complex attitude.
The most surprising thing I learned from this reading was how us as people let others influence us. We display our best behavior and try not to offend others. We have the desire to fit in with the group and avoid being ostracized so that under some circumstances, we willingly engage in behaviors that we otherwise would condemn.
All of the different topics talked about in this chapter come together and relate to one another because they all combine to help us make judgements of people and define our behaviors in a certain situation. Whenever we meet someone new we immediately make snap judgements on who they are, or might be, and those can be either spot on or way off. We may try to not make judgements, because we don’t want to be wrong about the person, but sometimes it just happens. We make judgements or attributions of people by a lot of different things. They may remind us of a mean girl from high school, be into the same music as some people, or have a close personality to that of your best friend and these examples would be considered personal attributions, while traits based on external factors are situational attributions like when people are lucky and win the 50/50 raffle at a Brewer’s game like my family did about a month ago. Stereotyping is a big topic that has been brought up in many gun violence cases in the United States. In the shooting involving Michael Brown’s death, riots and vandalism broke out because he was unarmed, but was fatally shot by a white police officer. Because of his stereotype, an African American teenage male, the protesters thought discrimination played a role. Something else that affects our thoughts and our behaviors is our attitudes, our feelings and beliefs. We form our attitudes through experience like social exposure, conditioning, and mere exposure. Without our judgements, attributions, attitudes and little factors that fall into those categories, our thoughts and behavior would be completely different even though our thoughts could potentially be wrong.
My view of social psychology has changed because I didn’t actually know how much went into social psychology. I thought social psychology was the way we interacted with others which I guess I was kind of right, but there is way more that has to deal with it than I thought.
One of the topics that I found really interesting was social facilitation and social loafing. I thought it was cool how just when people were told they were going to be yelling in a group that they would yell louder than they would if were yelling alone. It makes sense though because at a football game for instance if there are a lot of super fans you yourself are probably going to yell louder so it sounds louder, but if it was just you yelling in the super fan section you might not yell as loud if at all because it’s only you. I think social facilitation happens a lot in sports and in many different ways. I have this friend, and I’m sure a lot of girls do this too, and whenever her boyfriend or crush would come to our basketball game she would always try harder than if he weren’t there. It’s nice to be able to have these terms actually relate to things in my life.
One of the most memorable things that I learned while I was reading is about deindividuation. I had never heard of the term before, but what really shocked me was the study that they did with the prisoners and guards. I couldn’t believe that in less than six days the guards had gotten so mean that they had to shut the experiment down. I was also very shocked at what happened at Abu Ghraib. It just amazes me that people can act so cruel to other human beings. I think these people acted this way because of stereotypes that guards and prisoners have. In a lot of prison movies there are guards doing really mean things to the prisoners, and I feel like once one guard does something another wants to do something to top it. This section relates to the Holocaust, the guards were told to kill the people and maybe in a different situation they wouldn't have, but their own personal standards were lowered because of what someone else was telling them to do.
Terms: Snap Judgements, Personal Attributions, Situational Attributions, Stereotypes, Discrimination, Attitudes, Social Facilitation, Social Loafing, Deindividuation
This chapter brings all the different topics together to show how we tend to think and see others, which in turn drives our behavior and social reactions. Some people see/stereotype someone as strange or weird may avoid interaction with that person just because of an assumption they make off of what they see. After reading this chapter I realized how much nonverbal language our body actually gives off and how this affects others decisions to perceive and label the people around us. Human behavior is very complex and is made up of many tiny pieces of nonverbal behavior such as our body language. Our facial expressions can communicate a lot such as our emotional state, interests, and trustworthiness. Eye contact is important in many social situations because we can use our eyes to indicate anger, to flirt, and to catch others attention. When we meet others we make snap judgments based on how they look such as how they are dressed, facial expressions, and the gestures and actions they use.
The most interesting part of this chapter was the section about how our attitudes can be changed through persuasion. Persuasion is the active and conscious effort to change an attitude through the transmission of a message. We see persuasion everyday in our lives through advertisements, political ads, and the people around us. Persuasion is affected by factors such as who delivers the message, what the message says, and who is receiving the message. We find the most persuasive ideas to come from sources that are both attractive and credible or similar to ourselves. There are two routes for persuasion to occur. The first route is the central route, which happens when we are motivated and able to process the information. Since we pay attention to the message and use cognitive processes it leads us to have stronger longer lasting attitudes that we actively defend. Another router is the peripheral route, which happens when we are unmotivated or unable to process the information. This route leads to more impulsive weak decisions that tend to change over time.
The most memorable part of the chapter was the section about Cory Booker. I thought it was truly amazing how he rushed into the burning how to save the life of a woman while discarding his own safety in the situation. Also I thought it was truly amazing how he also housed and fed 30 people a day in his own home following hurricane Sandy. Booker not only performed large scale acts of kindness but also little things such as shoveling an elderly mans driveway and saving a dog from being outside on an extremely cold day. His deeds are truly inspiring and his behavior helps to drive others behavior to be more compassionate and help those around them as well.
Terms used: stereotype, nonverbal language, behavior, body language, facial expressions, Persuasion, central route, attention, cognitive processes, peripheral route
This chapter ties in really well with the research study that I participated in yesterday, judging others. The section where it is titled ‘We Tend to Stereotype Other People’ followed by the next section dealing with how stereotypes make us feel and makes us act is a good representation of what actually happens. First impressions say a lot in our society and social world. There is a lot more that goes into social psychology than what I had originally thought. Not only is it the way we see someone and stereotype them, there are many different factors that build up to our social psychology.
When it discussed the way stereotypes make us feel, interested me. We become prejudice with negative feelings and opinions to that stereotype. We discriminate with unjust treatment to those whom we have stereotyped. Not only are these two aspects present in our social world, but in every other part of the world and life itself. We prejudice against many different aspects to a human being, without knowing it clearly, or on purpose. Another thing that interested me was the social facilitation and social loafing. Social facilitation is when the presence of others enhances performance. Social loafing is the tendency for people to work less hard in a group than working alone. I always figured that social loafing was just pure laziness. I feel as if social loafing is very common, actually too common in the group project environment. I feel that people that do this aren’t confident in themselves and don’t want to hurt the grade for the group. I believe social loafing is more common than social facilitation in the academic environment.
Most surprising and memorable things that I learned were with the mere exposure effect where you increase your like of something due to repeated and constant exposure. I knew generally the more you try a food, the more you will learn to like it as an example, but I never applied it to the social world. After I think about it more, I realize that I was friends with people not because I liked them as a person, but because I was basically forced to be friends and civil with them because I was around the all the time nonstop. High school friends would be a prime example of mere exposure effect for me. I was surprised to learn that conforming and complying were not the same things. Conformity is the altering of your own behaviors and opinions to match those of other people or to match other people’s expectation. Compliance is the tendency to agree to do things requested by others. Yet they don’t have the same definition, they are still closely related. We do so to please the social norms. Social norms are the expected standards of conduct. It surprised me when it stated that physical aggression is more common among young children than adults. I would assume that adults would be more aggressive than little children since they don’t have much stress built up as adults do.
Terms: stereotype, prejudice, discriminate, mere exposure effect, social facilitation, social loafing, compliance, conformity, social norms, aggression,
Our behaviors and personality shape who we are as individuals, but they also shape who we are in a society. How someone acts on a social level tells a lot about that person. We all have roles in society, and whether we like it or not we are constantly being judged by at least someone on how we are contributing. People tend to be influenced by these judgments because they want to be an important part in the social world. I have learned that our social psychology plays a big role in who I am as a person. There are so many elements that can affect who we are and whether we change to “fit in” or not. I believe that it is important to not lose site of who you are because you should be able to form your own opinions of who you are and who you want to be. It is not our right to tell someone who he or she should be.
Our society has typically categorized and grouped people into stereotypes. Whether they are positive or negative, they are all around us. It is a constant battle with trying to decide whether you want to fit in with that or be your own person and not abide by all the “rules”. I find it interesting how these stereotypes come about. Are they all just from history, and they just keep repeating themselves, or are they derived from people with power? There is always competition between people to have the most power and to be the most important, but in my opinion there is no need for that. As long as everyone take a part in contributing to society and mind their own business, competition and power wouldn’t be the most important. Now, that doesn’t negate the fact that stereotypes are always going to be around, but it lessens the gap between high, middle, and low class. No one should have to conform to these expectations.
We as humans have a natural ability to communicate. It can be verbal or nonverbal. Our attitudes can portray how we are feeling or how we feel about a certain someone or situation. It was surprising to read how easily persuaded we can be at times. These persuasions lead to a change in attitude, which could then lead to being stereotyped. Everything links together in some way or another, and that then leads to how we are and who we become as a person and our social psychology. At a young age, we are more likely to be persuaded by older people we know, or seeing celebrities on TV or on a billboard. It is important that these young kids don’t get influenced too much by someone they don’t even know because we want them to develop their own opinions and become their own person. If we create who we want to become it will most likely lead to being the most self-fulfilling.
Psych terms: social psychology, persuasion, communicate, attitude, behavior, personality, society, stereotypes, influence, self-fulfilling.
Forming this all encompassing understanding of humans in a social setting is such a vague concept, but I love it. I really love interacting with people and observing the way other people and even myself in a social setting is so important to me. This chapter starts by explaining the judgements we make about people when you first meet them. They talk about thin slices of behavior and this is interesting. This past week I went to a conference and we talked about thin slices of behavior in a social setting. For example, if you are talking to someone and their feet are point toward the door or the exit, that may give an indication that they are in a rush are do not want to talk right now. I think it is really cool that I can see examples that apply directly in life, especially when you talk about it outside of a psychology class. The book then goes on to explain and talk about attributions that we make about people. I think it is very interesting that book talked about personal attributions and situational attributions. Attributions relates directly to making snap judgements in the beginning of the chapter. For example, if I am meeting someone for the first time, I may judge them on situational attributions, rather than personal attributions. This is because in that instance I am meeting the person in a certain situation and moment, but I do not take their personal experiences or traits into consideration when I first meet them. If you proceed to look later on in the chapter, the books talks about attitude. I liked the idea of the implicit and explicit attitudes. Explicit attitudes are described as an attitude that you are aware of but and implicit attitude is described as an attitude that you may affect you on an unconscious level. This can be related back to the beginning when the book talked about attributions, and can be related to the whole chapter. When thinking about social psychology, one consistent idea that I am seeing is that there are always two ways of viewing social interactions. One perspective is from and intrinsic view and the perception of the people around you. You can see this in the examples i gave earlier. You can see it in stereotyping. There is a group of people that may be stereotyped but the fact that this impacts the individual's as well also strengthens the idea of their are always two perceptions in social interactions. The most important perception to me is the individual perceptions. This is because this outside view or perception is made up of a many other individuals perceptions, one may go as far as saying that social interaction is heavily based on individual interactions. I don’t think that may be 100% true, but there may be some validity to it. My understanding of social psychology has changed a lot. I used to be confused about the difference of sociology and social psychology, but now I think I have a better idea of social psychology is. To me social psychology is the understanding of how an individual can be affected in a social setting. It’s also the study of how the psychology affects the behavior where I think that sociology studies groups of people more, and the effects that groups have on individuals and other groups.
I found a lot of this chapter interesting but what really stood out to be was the idea of altruism and bystander apathy. Altruism is the act of helping when this no reward in sight. To me this is something that we don’t see a lot in our culture. I do know people who like helping for the sake of helping but this isn't usually the case for a lot of people. I never understood why some people are happy to receive nothing and some people are only happy if they receive something. I do understand that this has a lot to do with the individual, but it is interesting that so many people vary on this topic. The next topic that really interested me was the idea of bystander apathy. Bystander apathy is the idea that people sometimes fail to help others in need. To me if someone was getting murdered, my thought would be to call the cops, but I am now understanding that it may not be that easy. I relate this to people in danger. For example, everyone knows that if there was a burglar in your house, many people would say they would call the cops or get a knife. In some situations some people just freeze and do nothing. I don’t know if it is because of shock or if it is because of terror but they do nothing. I have related this bystander apathy to the burglar situation to better understand it. This also goes back to the idea of this chapter being related to itself in almost every way. The other idea I found very interesting in this chapter was idea of love. There is a sub title in the book the says “Love is a Key Part of Romantic Relationships”. Of course we all probably agree with this, but to me love is hard to define. It also about the different between passionate love and compassionate love and I had never thought about this before. I believe this goes back to the idea of the idea of “self” and the idea of an “outside individual”. Passionate love to me is a more individual idea that includes a longing for someone else or desire for them. Compassionate love is the idea of a togetherness and support system between two people. I really love this part of the book and now also see relationships differently.
The most surprising part of the book what when the idea of physical attractiveness came up. In one of the margin paragraphs it says that “Average” is attractive. Mixed 32 faces and people thought that the image that mixed 32 faces was more “attractive” than just the mix of 2. I found this to be super interesting and surprising throughout the chapter.
Terms: Behavior, attractiveness, average, compassionate love, passionate love, bystander apathy, altruism, explicit attitudes, implicit attitudes, personal attributions, situational attributions, stereotyping
All of the different topics in this chapter come together to form and understanding of human thought and behavior in the social world because our attitudes toward certain things determine how we act and behave. For example, if I am a religious person and grew up around religion I am more likely to be comfortable around a religious setting and be apart of social groups such as church or youth groups. Social exposure can really impact the way we act. If I wasn’t brought up around religion and going to church then I really wouldn’t be comfortable around that environment. Conformity is also a big factor in the way we behave. The book describes how we change our behaviors to “match those of others or to match what is expected of us.”, which is true because you don’t really see anyone swearing or using vulgar language in church because it isn’t what is expected or it isn’t acceptable. A person might swear a lot but in church their behavior would be changed. This chapter has changed my understanding of social psychology because I normally would just think of social as in the way we talk to each other. We don’t really put into consideration that there are many different factors that influence how we act in social situations. The topic that was the most interesting to me was how we stereotype people. Many of us say that we do not stereotype and would consider ourselves in this way even though when put in different situations we may be stereotypical. The most surprising part of this reading was how the students acted in the Stanford prison study. It’s crazy to me that when given a role of authority people may act out and transform themselves into someone else. These students became violent and the study had to be cut short because of how they transformed into someone else. I find this so surprising because as humans we act in ways that we find acceptable, but when given roles that are not norms to use we may transform because we believe that it is acceptable for this type of person to act.
Psychological terms: attitudes, social exposure, conformity, stereotype
This chapter was interesting to me because it shows how people and their attitudes influence themselves and others, and how others influence us. This chapter really comes to a full circle in the understanding of social psychology. For example, in competition and cooperation people or groups can be put up against an opposing team or person and regardless of whether we know the enemy or not both teams will try and physically and mentally beat the other team and be victorious. This is easy to connect to because of my involvement in sports throughout my life. Football is a good example of this because it involves both cooperation and competition. The cooperation aspect is working together as a team. Many other factors of this chapter tie into the overall outcome of a game. Like the obedience and compliance of the team to the coach and his orders help in having a positive outcome for the team. Another factor is social facilitation, which is very evident in a game, where just being around other people and having support from others can help an individual compete better. However there are also factors that can negatively impact the situation. Like being prejudiced and discriminating towards teammates because of who they might be outside of the sport even though everyone is working towards the same goal. This can cause cooperation problems within the team that will likely cause fights and in turn make a team worse. Social loafing of individuals is another good example of the negative impact the social psychology has. If a person thinks they can slack off because there are ten other guys out there that can make a play it’s likely that others on the team think that as well, and if everyone isn’t putting out a good effort the team will fall apart.
The most interesting topic to me was how we make unconscious judgements about people we see in a day and form impressions of them. In college where everyone walks to and from class this happens numerous times throughout the day and I never noticed how often I do it. It’s crazy how facial expressions and body language alone can be enough to form an accurate impression on a stranger that you happen to walk past, and also decide whether we would get along with that person or if they are someone to stay awake from. So, the saying don’t judge a book by its cover may not be as significant as I once thought after reading this chapter. Not that an impression of walking past someone is inevitably how I make friends...
The most memorable topic from this chapter was the story of the Newark mayor, Cory Booker who risked his life to save his neighbor from a burning home. When asked about it he thought of what he did as a social norm and said that firefighters and police officers do things like this everyday. These acts of kindness happen everyday no matter how big or small the act is. Although Booker acted in a very prosocial way when helping out the people of his town whether it was housing them or shovelling for them, it may have to do with altruism. Not to say that he isn’t a genuinely kind hearted man who truly cares for others, but there is a bit of a reward that comes with helping the people that he is in charge of. It makes his likelihood of being re elected and moving up the chain of power much more likely because people see what he does and will vote for him because of what he does.
Psych Terms: Competition and cooperation, obedience, compliance, social facilitation, prejudice, discrimination, social loafing, social norm, prosocial, altruism.
Chapter 11
This chapter reminded me of the behaviors and actions that I saw when I was in high school. It explained in the chapter the understanding of why people act and behave. They perceive each other to the point of judging them based solely on how they act and the external factors. It was based on their ability, mood, and effort of doing or saying things. In society everyone gets judged inside and outside before you introduce yourself. I feel sometimes I am judged based on my movements, what say, and facial expressions. I hate when people ask “Are you okay? “And I try so hard not to say things that are not friendly. Throughout the sections, I learned that situational attributions are based on the external factors and are biased because of what people think are right, when in reality it’s not. Stereotyping leadings to a lot of drama that most teenagers deal with on a daily basis. Self-fulfilling prophecy is an idea of people intending to act in ways that confirm their own or other people’s expectations. I thought this was being a push-over and acted out to become something that are really aren’t.
Inappropriate stereotype is a discrimination because of wanting to put someone down and to hate who they are. Explicit attitude is an attitude that someone reporting and is unconscious. Deindividuation is when people are not self-aware and do not pay attention to their own standards. For example, a girl being in a relationship who treats her wrong, but she still dates him. Social facitating is when working in a group increases because of the productivity. The example I have, is when a team works together to win and communication is good. Social loafing is when working in a group decreases in productivity. It could be from confusion and miscommunication. Love was brought up and talked about how there are two states in passionate love and can lead to intense doting and desire. Companionship and chemistry. Companionship love is the strong bond they have that provides care and support for the partner.
My favorite part was talking about love and the communication one has that can be misinnterrupted. This chapter taught me a variety of things that can go a long way in the future of my education. Psychology focuses on people and can range from the brain and the meaning of what we do every day.
Terms: situational attributions, Inappropriate stereotype, explicit attitude, Deindividuation, Social facitating, and social loafing.
All of these different topics in this chapter form an all-encompassing understanding of human thought and behavior in the social world through the development of relationships, how others influence us, how our attitudes affect us, and how we think about others. Human behavior affects the social world and the development of relationships. It affects our social world by how individuals make relationships and how they work towards being in a relationship. For example proximity is how often people come into contact, so that means if someone comes into contact with another person multiple times they are more likely to create a bond of friendship and it may also turn into love. Once someone has a friendship or bond, that person has to accommodate for the other to stay in that bond and if they don’t the friendship is over. Another effects for the social world is how other people influence ourselves. This affects the social world because the world is all about people and being social to others. An example would be groups. Groups affect everyone’s behavior based on what type of group you are associated with. For instance social facilitation is where the presence of others enhances your performance whether for the good or the bad. If someone does not have a lot of social facilitation they are more likely to feel left out or even depressed. Our attitudes can affect our self is another example of the understanding of the social world. Attitudes are the evaluations of objects, events, or ideas. There are two main attitudes that affect our behaviors every day, they are simple attitudes and complex attitudes. Whichever type of attitude you have that day can affect your behavior and your thought processes. The last example of the social world is how we think of others and how that affects our behavior and thoughts. The main topic in this section that affects everyone’s social world is stereotypes. Stereotypes can make us feel and act certain ways based on our beliefs of another group or person. Stereotypes are bad and they can affects your behavior and thought in a bad way in the social world.
My understanding of social psychology has changed somewhat after reading this chapter. It has changed my understanding by going more in depth with what social psychology is and how it affects our social life.
The most interesting topics that I read was about stereotypes and how it affects us in our daily life every day. Another topic that was interesting was about dissonance and the different examples of dissonance.
The most surprising thing that I learned while reading this chapter was about the bystander apathy and the story of Kitty Genovese. The story of Kitty Genovese was very hard to read because of the fact that thirty eight people saw or heard her screams while she was being murdered. This was very disturbing how no one did anything to help her and their only response was that they thought someone else would do something and help her. I know that the story was debunked and other a few people were witnesses but that’s even worse because a few people or a thousand does not matter. We need to learn to get over bystander apathy and help people in need and this will create a better world.
Psychological Terms: Relationship, Proximity, Accommodate, Social Facilitation, Simple Attitude, Complex Attitude, Stereotypes, Groups, Attitudes, Dissonance, and Bystander Apathy.
All of the topics within this chapter all come together to really provide a comprehensive understanding of the thought and perceptions of human beings. From attributions and stereotypes to attitudes and relationships, all of the topics provide insight upon the understanding of the human experience. All of the topics work with each other. Love, altruism, apathy all cover the basis that humans can be kind, loving creatures. Stereotypes, prejudices, attributions, all provide a sense that humans are naturally not very tolerant of those from different groups. I think it goes to show that the human experience is much more diverse than what most people think and that everything they do may be because of the natural human nature.
My understanding of social psychology has greatly changed after reading this chapter. Before this chapter, I thought social psychology was kind of like sociology such as studying what happens in society and why , After this chapter, however, it came obvious that social psychology is really about why we act in certain situations within society and how it affects our viewpoints of the world. Of all the different types of psychological study, social psychology is by far the most interesting to me. I think the study of social psychology is very important in studying the equality problem in the world and how we can change it, if we really can.
Stereotyping is a topic in this chapter that was the most interesting to me. Stereotypes are qualities assigned to groups of people based on many different social aspects such as race, nationality and sexual orientation. Stereotypes are tools used to inform give us an idea about a typical group of people or individual. Stereotypes can cause prejudice and discrimination, however. Stereotypes such as “fat people are lazy” or “black people are criminals” are examples of the stereotypes that are discriminatory and prejudice. Stereotypes tend to be shortcuts of judgement of other people that allow less time to produce a judgement.
I found it surprising that there was an evolutionary argument that explained why stereotypes have come into existence in the human experience. The argument that stereotypes or generalizations in general have helped humans survive is a very credible argument. When separate groups make generalizations of each other, usually negative, it will prevent mixing of different of groups which in turn could cause conflict within them.
Another interesting topic within the stereotype section of the chapter, was the ingroup/outgroup section. The common perceptions that some groups have towards other groups is one of the largest reasons that we have so much social discrimination in the world. People view people from outgroups with harsh consideration compared to those of their own groups. Humans naturally form lines between social divisions that cause conflict and increases the amount of stereotypes that are given to the outgroup. For example, when a group from one political party forms stereotypes of those from another political party there is an obvious discriminatory factor that is formed from the division of ideology. I think this makes sense evolutionary speaking because these natural division between ingroups and outgroups allows the people within the group to work together for the common cause rather than forming divisions within themselves. I think it’s really interesting how, even though so many people preach equality of all, no matter what they will still hold some sense of division between those who are not like them. Some people are better at it than others, but I don’t think anyone can truly have absolutely no sense of division between other groups not like themselves.
Terms: thought, perception, attitudes, relationships, attributions, social psychology, judgement, stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination, generalizations, ingroup, outgroup,
I think after reading chapter 11 on “Social Psychology” its probably one of our most important readings thus far. Mostly it discusses about our overall behavior with people and how we go about viewing them also how our own social impairment can effect us on a daily biases. My social understanding has changed from reading this because many of the things that were said in the book such as facial gestures, attribution, stereotypes, behavioral attitudes against one another are all things we tend to not grasp but are all almost an involuntary action I would say. From the reading the topic that I found most interesting to me was the section on “we make snap judgments on people”. With thin slices of behavior we can pick up someone’s mood. There are many factors one can pick up from just meeting someone such as non-verbal behavior, or body language, - his movements, gestures, and facial impressions. I find this fascinating because you don’t really think about all the factors you pick up when talking to someone. It’s kind of in your subconscious memory. I’d imagine mastering all of the factors above for a particular job your doing such as being a judge with in trial of a defendant would help see if the defendant is either lying/guilty. Another topic I found interesting to me was “we tend to stereotype other people” the reason why I find this so interesting is because as I see it its very true. Many people have no idea they are actually stereotyping some one because it’s out of our own awareness. Many stereotypes are also true but only on an average because not everyone does what you recall being stereotypical. If you catch your self describing the same stereotype its because everyone tends to maintain them. I find my self-doing this a lot but not in a horrible explanation. I think I also find my self stereotyping a lot is because I’m friends with a lot of different ethnic groups and we tend to joke around with each others race but we find that to be all okay because were close friends. Because I’m use to all the jokes of stereotypes we say to each other I easily find my self in an environment with out my friends that I say inappropriate stereotypes to people I do not know. This sometimes can cause a big dispute with who ever I said it to but I didn’t really mean it. The topic I found most memorable was also the same topic about stereotypes but with in the picture it provided where there is a girl white girl rapping. The white girl rapping is Iggy Azalea one of the best female rappers around. Many people if that wouldn’t known it was her would have judged her on her color of skin and that she’s a girl because many people typically think rappers are men who are African American.
Terms: Subconscious memory, slices of behavior, stereotypes, stereotypical, attribution
This chapter is made out of all the different concepts and characteristics that make up human behavior. These different aspects are what help us as humans understand and display human behavior. There are so many different and specific things that we posses that make human interaction and language possible. There is no room to subtract one or more of these aspects because they are all vital for the development and understanding of human thought and behavior in the social world. My idea of this concept has changed since reading this because I have realized that there is much more of our human behavior that goes into establishing our social world. For example even our own facial expression make a huge impact on the way people perceive us and make decisions about us. Facial expressions are typically the first thing that we notice about another person. In our culture eye contact is a very important indicator of someone's attention or feelings, however in some cultures, eye contact is avoided as a sign or respect which shows how non verbal's change between cultures. Facial expressions are so vital in fact that newborns have been shown to prefer to look at a picture of the face of a person opposed to just an outline of a face.
One of the things that I found most interesting about this chapter was the concept about stereotypes. Before reading this chapter, I had a pretty good idea of what stereotypes are. After reading the chapter I learned that once we form stereotypes, we tend to maintain them. And when we meet people who do not fulfill our original feeling towards that stereotype we tend to put them in their own group. An example of this would be someone who is racist and considers people od Asian decent unsuccessful might categorize Julie Chen as an "exception" because in their mind, they still believe the majority of this race still fits the stereotype and alone a few could break away from it. I think that stereotypes are unfortunate and prevent us from branching out and meeting new people at times, but the reality is that everyone creates stereotypes from time to time due to human behavior and nature.
The most memorable thing in this chapter would have to have been the concept of Bystander Apathy. This concept is described by the text by starting out with a story about a woman that was brutally attacked and eventually killed. It was printed in the paper that there was 38 people who witnessed the attack and murder and did not seek help or do anything about the situation. Of course this number proved later to be wrong, there was only a few people who were present at the attack and could not see what was going on, still the idea pf bystander apathy came into play. This term is defined as the failure to offer help by those who observe someone in need. Latne and Darley discovered that when people are with multiple others they are actually less likely to help someone in need. I found this very interesting because I would have thought that the more people there would be more chances of someone helping. Of coarse I can see why people may be less driven to supply help when with larger numbers because it makes the situation less urgent and daunting.
Psychological Terms: Bystander Apathy, Social world, Human language, human behavior, Latne and Darley Stereotypes, facial expressions, cultures.
Psychology Blog
Chapter 11
11/4/2014
in Social Psychology we make snap judgments about people because when we meet someone for the first time we automatically judge them based on what their wearing and what they look like. Sometimes people are to quick to judge someone and ruin an opportunity to be friends with them for a life time. A lot of a persons judgments can be based on what others think of that indivual. And people are quick to judge because they don’t ever give them a chance. These judgments especially in childhood can be really harmful to a persons self esteem. Social psychology is the explanation of peoples behavior feelings and thoughts interacted with others according to the book and people are generally influenced by others, whether it be by clothing choice, group of peers, what they eat, or any other type of judgment. For example when a new person who you have not meet before acts kindly to you, you assume he or she is a nice person. Stereo types just happen to be the common thing that comes to a persons mind when they think about a certain groups of people such as nerds, jocks, preps, Goths, etc. Normally these groups of people only interact with other people in the group or with other people who share the same interest often leading them to judge other people who are not in that certain group of peers. Most of us however can relate to pretty much everyone because we use the same emotions as everyone else and at some point in someone’s life they will experience the same thing as the other one did. I am guilty of doing this myself. Often I will find myself judging someone who I barely know based on who I hang out with and their judgments on that person and often I don’t know im doing it until ive already judged time.
The topic that I found the most interesting is that sometimes we hurt each other. I know this is a topic that most people already know but I think it’s a topic that most people say they are well educated on but yet the bullying never does stop. A lot of the times people say that they do everything to prevent it but it still occurs. This is because kids are so meant to one another.
Terms: stereotypes, social psychology
The all-encompassing understanding of this chapter about social psychology I had was that no matter how much social anxiety you have or how much you don’t want to be around people, you have to. You build your behaviors off of the behaviors of the people around you. It is where you learn who you like and who you don’t and how to judge others on their behaviors and actions. You find those people that you love and love you. You find your friends and the people who you want to be around. I have realized I probably don’t interact with people as much as I should, but that doesn’t matter; I have my good friends and my family and that is good enough for me.
The topic that I found most interesting was “We Help Each Other… Sometimes”. People act in prosocial ways meaning that they offer assistance, do favors, play compliments, resist the temptation to hurt/insult another person, or are simply just a pleasant person. These people are usually the ones that are used to/like being around and working with others. These people are the ones who are most willing to take part in a big group project, this part of the human could be just because it is a survival strategy. Those people in large groups tend to live longer. You can either have altruism or bystander apathy. Altruism is when someone provides help when it is needed even though they know nothing will come out of it for them. In these situations the person that is helping will put the safety of someone else before themselves. A situation of this could be when you see someone getting mugged and you jump in to help the person getting mugged get away, or when someone runs into a burning building to save someone that is inside. The Bystander Apathy is when someone does not take action when they someone in trouble. The reason this happens sometimes is because a person doesn’t want to act until someone does, and this happens in most people. Usually in these situations people are thinking about themselves and they don’t want to get hurt trying to help someone. The book uses the example of Kitty Genovese who was attacked and eventually killed while 38 people stood by not taking action.
Words: social psychology, prosocial, survival strategy, altruism, bystander apathy
In Chapter 11, I learned about the ins and outs of Social Psychology. This chapter covered everything from emotions and feelings towards one another and how they affect one another to how we act in group settings and finally how you can have a positive relationship with your partner. Social Psychology’s main focus is on why we do what we do to or for one another, why we act the way we do when stimulated by one another, and how we are able to become close and develop relationships with each other. One of the common consistencies I found in all sections were that facial expressions are particularly a large apart of all social psychology. Humans can make certain judgements based on just a few facial experiences on whether or not someone should be trusted or what kind of mood they are in.
Several different interactions can alter the way we feel or the attitudes we have. Many of these interactions can be found in everyday life. Stereotyping often times shapes people into the molds that we think they belong. If we do not agree or like this stereotype, we often have prejudice or discrimination towards this stereotyped group even though many people who should in theory fit the stereotype, do not in fact fit this mold. A common stereotype that I often face as identifying as a gay man, is that my music choices are going to be like every other gay person. I admit to absolutely loving Beyonce, but unlike most gay men, I cannot stand Lana del Rey! Although that is a ridiculous and minor example, you get the point. Stereotypes are a way of people not having to think and get to know the person and just assuming they are a certain way.
I think for me, the most interesting part in Chapter 11 was talking about how to have a strong relationship with your partner. In my own personal experience, or should I say the lack of, love has not really ever come my way. I do know that I am tired of games so it was good to learn in theory about how to keep a guy around if I ever decide to commit long enough. Relationships just are not usually my favorite thing, but knowing how people attract to one another and being to identify a happy relationship from an unhappy one was helpful. I found the example of in a happy couple, a partner brings flowers home and the other person is happy and praising them for their kindness/thoughtfulness. In an unhappy relationship, if that were to happen, the other person receiving the flowers might be wondering what their partner did, and what they are trying to say sorry for.
psychological terms: prejudice, discrimination, stereotype
Humans are a social creature that can be influenced by all sorts of things including but not limited to: How often we are exposed to something, who we are with, how many people we are with, what kind of prejudices we or others have, and what kinds of attitudes we are naturally prone to. From reading all of the bizarre examples in the chapter, I think that the correct all-encompassing understanding of human social activity is that we are pretty gosh darn weird, and we will continue to be weird in social situations, mostly because we are worried about what every other weird human is thinking about us. I read the examples about some crowds egging people to jump and commit suicide, the teacher shocking the student, the mayor of Newark shoveling snow, and people volunteering to help with hurricane relief, and the only sense I could make of any of it is that we really don’t make much sense at all. My hope would be that all humans would act logically to the best of their abilities in every scenario, but that is obviously not true. Why would anyone encourage a stranger to commit suicide? I guess it all boils down to how worried we are about other people. We act different when we have authority figures around, when we are acting as a crowd or a mob instead of an individual, when we want to be part of a social group, or how we were raised to see ourselves.
One of the stories that was eerie was the one about the student guards who became sadistic after a week of pretending to be a guard, so much so that the experiment had to be canceled. They saw themselves as guards filling a role instead of individuals and started to abuse their power. I had no idea that people were so easily influenced. I suppose it makes sense though, I always tend to lose my inhibitions when I am with a larger group of people because I know that it’s unlikely anyone will remember me specifically. Another part that was fascinating was the “Average is beautiful” section. I did not see that coming. I figured that most people would be more attracted to different instead of normal. If this is really true, why do we use words like plain, average, and normal to describe people who we are generally not attracted to (Maybe this is just me, in which case I need to expand my vocabulary)? I would like to see more studies on this.
Terms:Social creature, crowds, authority, influence, average, mob, logically
I found this chapter to be especially interesting. Social psychology consists of many different components that come together to form an all encompassing understanding of human thought and behavior in the social world. Four parts go into how we behave.
One of the first things that goes into behavior is how we think about other people. We use personal attributions which is peoples explanations for why events or actions occur that refer to people’s internal characteristics, such as abilities, traits, moods, or efforts. We also use stereotypes are mental shortcuts that allow for easy, fast processing of social information. Prejudices are negative feelings, opinions, and beliefs associated with a stereotype and discrimination is the inappropriate and unjustified treatment of people as a result of that prejudice.
The next component of social psychology is how our attitudes affect us. Attitudes are people’s evaluations of objects, of events, or of ideas. Both explicit attitude and implicit attitude affect us. Explicit is an attitude that a person is consciously aware of and can report. Implicit is an attitude that influences a person’s feelings and behavior at an unconscious level. Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable mental state due to a contradiction between two attitudes or between two attitudes or between an attitude and a behavior. Our attitudes can be changed through persuasion.
The third part of social psychology is how other people influence us. An aspect of this is social facilitation which is when the mere presence of others enhances performance. The opposite of this is social loafing. This is the tendency for people to work less hard in a group than when working alone. Deindividuation is a state of reduced individuality, reduced self-awareness, and reduced attention to personal standards, this phenomenon may occur when people are part of a group. Compliance, conformity, and obedience are all ways in which people form together and act.
The fourth and final part of social psychology is how we develop strong relationships. This includes love; both passionate love and companionate love. Situations and personalities affect our relationships. Proximity, birds of a feather, personal characteristics and physical attractiveness all affect our relationships.
The most interesting part of this chapter was about working to stay in love. This section talked about the four interpersonal styles that typically lead couples to discord and dissolutions. These are being overcritical, holding the partner in contempt, being defensive, and mentally withdrawing from the relationship. A satisfying relationship is more likely to stay calm and try to see each other’s point of view and try to deliver criticism lightheartedly and playfully. Unhappy relationships tend to view each other in the most negative way possible. This is interesting to me because I am in a somewhat new relationship and when we disagree or offer criticism it is pretty lighthearted. We are still very happy with each other and hope to maintain this lightheartedness for a while.
The most memorable part of this chapter was about maintaining stereotypes. According to the chapter once we create a stereotype we tend to maintain them. When we encounter someone that fits the stereotype it deepens this thought of what the stereotype is. When we encounter someone who does not fit a stereotype we may put that person in a special category rather than change the stereotype. This is called subtyping. This allows a racist person to maintain stereotype.
Psych terms: subtyping, stereotypes, four interpersonal styles, love, passionate love, companionate love, personalities, social psychology, social facilitation, Compliance, conformity, obedience, social loafing, Deindividuation, Attitudes, explicit attitude, implicit attitude, Cognitive dissonance, behavior, Prejudices, discrimination, social world
Chapter eleven pulls in all kinds of different aspects of our social life, the first being how we perceive each other. Contrary to what people actually think, people can actually make accurate judgments of others just by watching or interacting with them for only a few seconds. Usually people say things like ‘don’t judge a book by its cover,’ meaning not to judge someone after only a few seconds. Thin slices of behavior can actually be beneficial when meeting someone for the first time. Next are facial expressions, which are also important when meeting someone or a group of people for the first time. Another important aspect in social life is attributions. Attributions are our explanations for events or actions, including other people’s behavior. Personal attributions are ways that we explain our outcomes based on internal factors, such as someone’s ability, mood, or effort. The opposite of personal attributions are situational attributions. These are explanations based on external factors such as luck, accidents, or the actions of other people. Chapter eleven also touches on stereotypes, which everyone knows are judgments about people or groups. In the social world today, stereotypes are what causes issues between races. Whites have stereotypes about African Americans, and African American’s have stereotypes about white people as well. Without stereotypes, there is no doubt in my mind the world would be a happier, less stressful place, however; the elimination of stereotypes is all but impossible. So how do all of the topics in this chapter come together to form an all-encompassing understanding of human thought and behavior in the social world? In my opinion, this chapter brought out all of the different aspects of social life and explained them, causing me to pick out the good and bad ones I would like to keep present in my life, and which ones I would like to get rid of. My understanding of social psychology has definitely changed in this way. After learning about certain things like aggression and frustration-aggression hypothesis, I know how they play into my life and what I can do to minimize or even eliminate them. The most interesting I learned while reading was the stereotype section, which I mentioned above. In figure 11.6, the study shows the faces of a black man and a white man. Below the faces are a gun and a tool. During the study, people associated the black face with the gun, which is sad. This just goes to show how negative our stereotypes in today’s societies are. The most memorable thing I learned while reading chapter eleven was the snap judgment and thin slices of behavior. I never knew a person could make an accurate judgment of another person after only a few seconds of exposure. After learning this, I now know that first impressions can be very important. Terms: perception, thin slices of behavior, facial expressions, attributions, personal attributions, situational attributions, stereotypes, aggression, frustration-aggression hypothesis, snap judgments,
Chapter 11
In this chapter we read about man different topics having to do with social psychology. First of all, the topic of bias and stereotyping came up. This section taught me a lot about first impressions and how often we actually judge people without even realizing it. We can judge someone on how they look and think many different things about them even if all we see is a glance; things like: how attractive they are, and if they look threatening. The most interesting topic to me was the topic brought up was about how attitudes can affect our behavior without us even knowing. We also learned about things like persuasion and cognitive dissonance which is the state of being uncomfortable when in the situation where there is a conflict of attitudes. In regards to how others influence us, the result was bigger influence than I expected. Conformity is changing our behaviors to match up with someone else’s or their expectations. A type of conformity is called normative influence which is when we go along with what someone else does. The other type is called informational influence which occurs when we conform to the behaviors a specific group says is right. When reading the section on relationships, I definitely gained more information about the different kinds and parts. Things such as personal characteristics and physical attractiveness. People who are more likely to see each other more often are more likely to become closer. I knew that love is a key component of relationships, however I was not aware of the differences in passionate love and companionate love. Passionate love is when the romantic relationship is full of longing and sexual desire, while companionate love is one that includes commitment and devotion in supporting and taking care of the partner.
The most interesting part of this lesson was about how sometimes we can either hurt or help each other. One way we can hurt someone is with aggression, which is when we intentionally hurt someone. This can be used with physical or emotional harm towards another person. The physical kind of aggression is more common in children while emotional aggression is used more with adults. In regard to helping each other, sometimes people can be prosocial, which means helping out others. One type of this kind of behavior is altruism. This is when someone offers help when someone else is in need expecting no reward.
Key Terms: social psychology, bias, stereotyping, persuasion, cognitive dissonance, conformity, normative influence, informative influence, passionate love, companionate love, aggression, prosocial,
The way we think about anything begins with an initial judgement. We get cues from body language and facial expressions that help us decide if someone is something like friendly or dangerous. Sometimes we do things without much thinking, maybe even if they put us at risk, and these behaviors can show a lot about who a person is. An attribution is the explanation for these actions and behaviors. Personal attributions are ways that we explain outcomes based on internal factors like someone’s ability, mood, or effort. Situational attributions are people’s explanations for for why events or actions occur that refer to external events, such as the weather, luck, accidents, or other people’s reactions. We tend to have a bias when observing other people though. There is a fundamental attribution error, which is when we are explaining other people’s behavior we have a tendency to to overemphasize personality traits and underestimate situational factors. This is new to me because when I try to tell why someone is the way they are, most of the time I actually look at what their situation may have been, but then I form a bias based on a typical person in that situation and assume they must be similar. When looking at myself, the actor/observer bias shows how I tend to focus more on situations and less on my personality traits when observing my own behavior. Just as we form biases, we also form attitudes through experience and socialization. The mere exposure effect is the easiest way to relate this to my life. This mere exposure effect is the increase in liking something due to the repeated exposure of an item. My big experience with this was coffee. I hated it all the way up until the last semester of my senior year. That was when my parents bought a new coffee maker that made it way too easy to make a quick cup of any type of flavored coffee I wanted, and it wasn’t long before I was addicted. Attitudes can be either implicit or explicit. A person is consciously aware of and can report an explicit attitude. Implicit on the other hand is an attitude that influences a person’s feelings and behavior at an unconscious level. What I took away from this chapter was that we are a very judging society. We focus a lot on the nonverbal behaviors and form many different biases and stereotypes so that it is easier to classify someone a certain way.
The most interesting thing I read was the three ways of inducing compliance. This sparked my interest in that there’s ways of getting what I want, but more importantly, I know how people can try to manipulate me into getting what they want and I can avoid falling for their trap. The three ways are known as foot in the door, door in the face, and lowballing. My dad great at noticing when I try to use these, but my mom always fell for the door in the face. I used to ask for a long list of snacks when she went to get groceries, and she would always say no. I would then ask for just a small thing of ice cream, which was the only thing I really wanted anyway, and she’d get me it thinking she had just saved a ton of money. The most surprising thing I read about was how a judge can unconsciously sway a jury to think a certain way. This is done when small nonverbal behaviors like facial expressions are seen on the judge by the jury, and if they were to appear negative, the jury may be inclined to agree with the judge and think negatively about what was being presented as well.
Terms: Personal Attributions, Situational Attributions, Fundamental Attribution Error, Actor/Observer Bias, Mere Exposure Effect, Explicit Attitude, Implicit Attitude
Within this chapter, there are many aspects on social psychology that come together to form an all-encompassing understating of humans in the social world. These aspects are connected and link back to human thought and behavior. The major sections of the chapter explain how social psychology deals with how we think about people, how our attitudes affect us, how people influence us, and how we develop strong relationships. The whole chapter is essentially all about how humans interact and communicate with each other. The main part of the chapter talks about how humans judge each other, meaning too or not. We tend to make quick judgments of people when we first see them. Much of how we see people it defined by attributes. Attributes are our explanations for events or actions, including other’s behaviors. Basically, we judge people on their behavior. If we see someone help another, we will think that person is a kind and heroic person always; This is a personal attribute, how we explain outcomes based on someone’s ability, mood, or effort. Another big subject within the chapter is stereotypes. We make stereotypes because it is a fast and easy way to understand social information, although it may not always be correct.
My understanding of social psychology has changed. I would have thought about social psychology as just how we communicate with others and how we form relationships. I wouldn’t have thought all about stereotypes, attitudes, and our perceptions of people per say. There is so much that goes into understanding the social situation of humans. After reading the chapter, I’ve learned just how important this study is. I think if everyone better understood how the brain works within social contexts, people would form better relationships and we wouldn’t have so many problems with communication.
One of the most interesting parts of this chapter was the study of how we tend to obey people who have authority. Milgram studied obedience and how humans often willingly obey the orders of those of higher authority. Milgram had a “teacher” give fake electric shocks to another participant every time they answered a question wrong. When the participant yelled that they had a bad heart and that they couldn’t handle the shocks anymore, most of the teachers would continue the shocks if ordered to by the experimenter. The study showed that most people could be forced into obedience by demanding authorities. I think it is interesting how this study relates back to WWII when many German citizens tortured and murdered several innocent Jewish people. The Germans willingly obeyed orders to injure so many people. I always thought this was an interesting topic. I think one of the main reasons people willingly obey orders is because they do not want to get punished by the authority figure, compliance, especially in WWII, when the Germans would have been killed for disobeying Hitler.
I think the most memorable topic was about bystander apathy and the story about Kitty Genovese. Kitty was horribly tortured and killed by a man and it was said there were 38 people who watched, and didn’t help. Although that information is false, I thought it brought up an interesting topic on why bystanders often fail to help someone in dire need. I think the biggest reason for this is because people tend to worry about how much risk or harm they are in for helping, which makes sense. If I saw someone getting attacked like Genovese, I wouldn’t be super willing to help her because I could be attacked.
Psych Terms: attitude, attribute, personal attributes, stereotypes, obedience, compliance, bystander apathy
This chapter has brought together how we see others and how they influence us in our social lives. Without social psychology we would not be the way we are. In the first section it talks about how we judge and stereotype other people. The first thing we do when judging other people is their personal appearance and facial expressions. If someone looks as if they had just rolled out of bed in the morning you are going to judge them poorly, compared to if it was a nicely cleaned up person. Stereotyping is another thing that we do because it is the way we perceive that general population. For example, saying all Canadians like hockey. Even though most of them probably do like hockey, there are definitely people that do not like it, so we should not be so quick to stereotype everyone, even though that is what we do. In the second section it talks about how our attitudes affect us. The best example for this is what your attitude is on your political party. People are constantly trying to persuade you to change your vote and vote for the other party. Social exposure is one way that they try and do this, by going out in public and talking to you. The most interesting in this chapter in how other people influence us. Conformity is something that everyone is constantly doing even if they are un aware they are doing it. One example of this is how everyone wants the new IPhone, so when it came out everyone went and got it, to try and fit in.
Terms: Influence, Social Psychology, stereotype, judgement, persuasion, social exposure, conformity.
The topics describe behaviors and why we may act the way we do when situations come up. From the ways we express thoughts from body language, verbal or facial expressions to the way people act to how aggressive people can be. The different topics all relate because it is something everybody comes across. All the different types of these topics show how people handle things and how they act socially, show us how different someone else can be which makes us all unique.
I think the most interesting part was the section on snap judgement. We all make judgements based on appearance and facial expressions the first time we meet a person even if you are typically not a judgemental person. I’ve always wondered about reading body language, people think you can tell a lot of a person and their thoughts by looking at how they are moving without speaking. I think to an extent you can tell general moods, if someone is shifting uncomfortably they are most likely nervous or some people have traits that show they are lying like not being able to keep a straight face. My friends in high school always thought you could tell if someone was in love with you by body language, I don’t necessarily think that is true but you can tell things by observing people’s body language. The section on facial expressions was also interesting because they bring up a lot about eye contact, you can usually tell a lot from eye contact. Especially the lying, I typically find it hard to make that much contact with someone if I am not in the right. I catch myself using it to get someone’s attention, whether it is someone you find attractive in the street or like the book said to get a waiter’s attention, I use it in hopes of receiving an interaction with the person. Then the book told about the sunglasses, which brought up a point I didn’t think about but found to be true. There are times I can go without sunglasses but still wear them to avoid people because less people do approach you when you wear them than just walking down the street without them. I never thought about it but I now think eye contact can be used to tell a lot about a person especially in those situations where you want someone to approach you or where you are lying or telling the truth.
The most memorable part of the chapter I thought was the whole section on how we act toward each other. I learned more about my behaviors I tend to have toward others and that is what makes it memorable. I find myself getting frustrated often, especially when driving which makes me act more aggressive, always thought I was weird for that but seeing frustration-aggression hypothesis is a common enough idea to make it in the book, I know it is okay to feel that way. I think altruism is a very important thing people do for one another, I try to go out of my way to help people, if someone drops their books, I want to try and help without receiving a reward. It is something just to do for someone in hopes, there are people around who would do the same if you were in the situation also. Bystander apathy is something you unfortunately see and hear about often even though we are all probably guilty of it at one point.
I overall think this chapter was interesting because it is interesting to read about how different people act in similar situations, which makes us all different people.
Terms used- body language, facial expressions, eye contact, frustration-aggresion, altruism
Throughout this chapter all the social aspects that were talked about relate to each other very much. Social relationships and social aspects in our society play a huge role in almost everything we do and think about. In fact, we make snap judgments about people almost right away. The psychologists Nalini Ambady and Robert Resenthal found that people can make accurate judgments based on only a few seconds of observation. They refer to these quick views as thin slices of behavior, which are powerful cues for forming impressions of others. Something that is very important is facial expressions. Facial expressions communicate information such as emotional state, interest, and trustworthiness, especially by making eye contact. People make attributions about others very much and we are more effected by situations than we realize. Basically, attributions are our explanations for events or actions, including other people’s behavior. There are two types of attributions: personal and situational. Personal attributions are ways that we explain outcomes based on internal factors, such as someone’s ability, mood, or effort. Situational attributions are explanations based on external factors, such as luck, accidents, or the actions of other people. Attributions can be directly related to stereotypes. Stereotypes are mental shortcuts that allow for easy, fast processing of social information and occurs automatically. A stereotype that is very common is that African Americans are much more athletic than white people, which may be true, but is not always the case. Society has definitely turned to stereotypes to define themselves and others. The self-fulfilling prophecy is a great example of this, it says that it is the tendency to behave in ways that confirm our own or others’ expectations. People tend to lean towards things that society defines them or others as. Stereotypes can often times lead to prejudice and discrimination as well. When people create a stereotype, they tend to use that stereotype to hold against people. They limit the possibilities of others’ potential because of stereotypes. A huge form of being impacted by social psychology is by being involved in groups. This in called ingroup/ outgroup bias. A study that shocked me was the experiment where a black or a white face would be presented quickly followed by a gun or a tool. Participants who were shown a black face identified the gun more quickly and also more often mistook the tool for a gun. This study is a great example how our thoughts and ideas due to the social world can impact our unconscious thoughts and decisions. Something that is a very big factor in deciding opinions people have is how the stronger and more personally relevant an attitude is, the more likely it is to predict behavior. The book used an example of a person being raised a Democrat and was also exposed to hearing many negative comments about Republicans. That person is much more likely to be a Democrat as well when he/she is older. We are very influenced by our surrounding social cast which is probably the biggest factor of creating our own beliefs, thoughts, as well as stereotypes. Attitudes are also something I learned that are a big part of social psychology. We form attitudes through experience and socialization. The more we are exposed to something, we create an increased attitude about it. This idea is called the mere exposure effect. An example would be of a food someone didn’t like because they had never had it. Chances are they didn’t like it because it was new and unfamiliar to them. Once they become more exposed to it, they become more comfortable with it. Although someone may have a bad attitude about something, we can be persuaded. Persuasion is the active and conscious effort to change an attitude by sending a message, therefore something that is considered a “norm” in society could persuade us very easily. The things I found the most interesting in this chapter was social facilitation, which is when the presence of others enhances our performance. As a former athlete, I can relate to this very much. I am much more motivated to work harder when others are around me and competing against me. On the other hand, social loafing occurs when efforts are pooled, so individuals do not feel personally responsible for the group’s output. Although many people may not realize it, we are affected by our social world everyday very much. Everywhere around us there are factors that could make us change our minds or thought processes we have. Most of the time, we do not even realize it. People conform to the expectations of others and social norms are expected standards or conduct. We basically comply with society and people. Compliance is doing what someone/something requests. Most people throughout the world comply with people of authority over them even when they don’t agree with them. That is just a part of the social system because we feel the demand to respect those who hold higher power than us. Although the social world can have many negative effects on us, this chapter has made me realize that it can create many positive effects as well which is called prosocial which is acting for the benefit of others. Throughout this chapter I have definitely been made aware of how powerful social connections and the social world effect each person’s mind. Almost all of what we think and believe is because of one thing or another through the impact of the social world.
Terms: attributions, stereotypes, self-fulfilling prophecy, prejudice, discrimination, ingroup/outgroup bias, attitudes, mere exposure effect, persuasion, social facilitation, social loafing, compliance, prosocial
We are all different, from our favorite show we like like to watch to our least favorite human to talk to. This is mostly affected by our behavior and how we view people. Social Psychology is the study of how people view others and how this can affect those other people. I thought it was interesting that each person makes quick decisions on each person they meet. I knew this was true since I was quite young. Most people judge others on how they look, whether it is how they dress or their hairstyle, to what piercings they have. Some of these characteristics can lead to stereotyping people like those that have a lot of piercing are mean people or those that wear slacks and a sweatshirt don't care about whatever they are doing. This leads to false prejudice which is also leads to discrimination. Those people that have many piercings can be the nicest people out there, but also those that wear relaxed clothing might feel they need something comfortable to help them learn something quicker. There is always another side of the story. The only way to know these people is through exposure. These people may seem foreign, but through mere exposure, they may become someone you see on a regular basis. I want to stress that meeting these people and getting out there can help someone know what they are going through. Now it might not be the social norm to talk to these people because they are not ‘normal’. But what is normal anyway? Is is what society thinks is right or what society thinks is good looking? Normal is what you feel is right for you. I think normal is playing games for an hour and studying the rest of the time (with some exposure to social time in between). While others might think the normal is exercising, socializing and playing games.
Terms: Social Psychology, Snap decisions, Prejudice, discrimination, mere exposure, social norms
After reading the chapter it seems like social psychology has a lot to do with a person’s attitudes and beliefs and a person’s situation. The first two sections of the chapter had to do with how we view people and how our own attitudes effect our daily lives and our interactions with others. It is a natural reaction to make snap judgments of people we see or just met. We probably do this to ensure our safety or decide if the new person could provide anything for us. It may come in handy some times, but it may also become a stereotype. Stereotypes can influence how we interact with people or how we view that person. Then sometimes stereotypes can create prejudice and discrimination. The way we think about people will influence how we will either help or hinder another person. Another thing that the book brings up is how our morals fit into how we view people. If we have positive attitudes about certain morals we are more likely to stay consistent in those morals. It is interesting how some of our explicit attitudes may not match up to our implicit attitudes that we will want to change one or the other so that our minds can reach an equilibrium between what we believe and what we feel. Cognitive dissonance is not something that humans enjoy; it also shows how our attitude towards people or things can change with persuasion or the mere exposure effect. Then the book shows the flip side of how other people can influence us. In a group of people the individual can either create social facilitation, social loafing, or deindividuation. Being in groups can relieve responsibility or cautiousness so that the person’s beliefs can change to fit the beliefs of the group. Social psychology seems to be the mixture of how an individual thinks and how the environment influences the person or group of people.
As I noted before, the most interesting part of the reading for me was how people do not want to have an explicit attitude towards an idea or object and then have an implicit attitude that conflicts the explicit. It is like the body does not like to lie to its self. The most memorable part of the reading was how I could read about the effects of the different group situations made people act differently than they normally would if they were alone. It was memorable because I can see in my daily life how I could easily fall into groupthink or not worry about someone who has dropped some books when I’m in a group because someone else will probably come along to help the person with her books. Even when walking to class I will look right past the person walking in a different direction from me because it seems to be the social norm to not smile and act friendly to those who are walking by.
Terms Used: Social psychology, cognitive dissonance, attitude, stereotype, discrimination, deindividuation, explicit attitude, implicit attitude, mere exposure effect, social loafing, social facilitation, persuasion, social norm, groupthink
The thoughts and behaviors that people exhibit are extremely complex and they encompass many different aspects of psychology. A major theme in this chapter is how we judge people and how we come to these judgments. A lot of times we will judge a person based on something they've done, for example; a guy running into a burning building for his dog. There are many explanations as to why he would perform this heroic act: he could have loved the dog, he could have needed the dog for something, or many others. We call the explanations for events or actions, including other people's behavior, attributions. Personal attributions are how we explain outcomes based on a person's internal factors, like someone's ability, mood or effort. Situational attributions are explanations based on external factors, like luck, accidents or the actions of other people. We can also judge at the first sight of a person, we are immediately judging them based on nothing but their appearance and expressions. We use these judgments to determine what mood a person is in, what their social class is, what their interests are, and more. We make these judgments even if they are incorrect. People all dress, behave, look, and talk uniquely, but as a society we use stereotypes based on these observations to judge people, whether we know it or not. We use these judgments and stereotypes to judge how a person is and to categorize a person into a group even if we actually have no idea if they affiliate with a certain group. A modern and prevalent example of people being classified into a group would be with Muslims. A lot of people have been conditioned to see anyone wearing a turban as a terrorist, even though a large majority of middle eastern people have no connection with any sort of terrorist organization, but we still judge them and look at them differently whether we realize it or not. Before reading this chapter, I was aware that stereotypes existed, but I didn't think I was an active participant in judging people based on these stereotypes. I've now learned that even though I don't realize it I use these broad categories to judge people even if I don't realize it. Knowing this will make me more actively try to control these impulse judgments.
The most interesting aspect of this chapter, to me, was cognitive dissonance theory. Cognitive dissonance is when people hold conflicting attitudes about a subject, people need to make a decision about what to do. One way people are happy with the decisions we make is because of postdecisional dissonance, this happens after the decision between multiple choices is made, we tend to focus on the positive aspects of the choice we made, and only think about the negative parts of the ones we didn't choose. Another way to agree with decisions we made is through insufficient justification. Insufficient justification is when a person assumes they enjoyed something because they realize they didn't have any other incentive big enough to do the task. Finally a person can be satisfied due to justification of effort. Justification of effort is when a person decides to put themselves through something they normally wouldn't do, but they do it anyway because they think the reward will be great enough.
The part that was most memorable, to me, was the section on relationships. Before reading this I understood that teenagers and older preferred to be with physically attractive people, because I just assumed that it was an effect of puberty. But, I now know that children as young as six months have shown that they prefer to be with people who are more attractive. This surprises me because I can't think of why a baby would consider looks.
Psychological Terms: Attributions, personal attributions, mood, effort, situational attributions, expressions, stereotypes, cognitive dissonance theory, cognitive dissonance, postdecisional dissonance, insufficient justification, justification of effort
In this chapter, there are several different topics of social psychology that form an understanding of human thought and behavior. They all form together because most individuals can relate to each topic of thoughts and behaviors. As humans, we make snap judgements of people due to their facial expressions or their behavioral acts. We make attributions of other people based on their actions. There are two types of attributions. One is personal attributions which is, the way we explain outcomes based on someones ability, mood, or effort, and internal factors. The second attribution is situational attributions. This is when our explanations are based on external factors or actions of other people. As humans, we also tend to stereotype other people and this can happen even outside of our awareness. With stereotyping, prejudice feelings can occur and this leading to discrimination. We are also unaware of how stereotyping can influence our perceptions of other people. This chapter also discussed how our attitudes affect our behaviors. We forms these attitudes through our experiences and socialization. Being around an item and having familiarity causes and individual to have a positive attitude towards it, and this is how the mere exposure effect works. Our attitudes change when having social exposure to peers because they guide our attitudes about many things. A positive and negative affect on our attitudes is persuasion, which means, a conscious effort to change an attitude through a message. Sometimes, the persuasion of a message will change our attitudes due to an attractive individual or someone who we can relate to. This chapter has several different topics of social psychology and they have changed my views of it because I didn’t know it was such a broad topic. I thought it was just how individuals act socially to the world. Knowing all of these topics relate to one other, social psychology is how people's’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the presence of others.
The topic I found most interesting was how other people influence us. Social facilitation caught my attention because I have experienced this. In practice, you want to perform well so you push yourself to your limits because the coach is watching. I also have notice that when I work with a group of people I alter my opinions and thoughts to match other’s expectations, this is known as conformity. I think that it is important to have others influence us to some extent but, as individuals we need to develop and try to be ourselves to possibly influence others.
The most memorable thing I read and learned was how Cory Booker, a former mayor and now senator of the United States, has a helping behavior and is also a hero. His heroic acts of kindness show that he is very caring for people, animals, and other things. Booker has a passion for people and exemplifies his braveness when saving a woman from a burning building and letting a number of people live in his home after Hurricane Sandy. This is an inspiration for people and myself to help others, without making judgments, stereotypes, attributions, or having effects on our relationship.
Terms: Personal Attributions, Situational Attributions, Attributions, Prejudice, Discrimination, Persuasion, Mere Exposure Effect, Social Facilitation, Conformity, and Stereotypes.
Some of the things we do socially we don’t even realize we do. For example when we first meet someone, we immediately start judging them based on their looks, facial expressions, the clothes they are wearing, and even their skin color. This also leads into the stereotyping we do. We don’t really realize how much stereotyping we really do, but there is a lot. When we think of Canada we think of hockey and that all Canadians like hockey. When we think of a rapper we generally think of a male even though girls like Nicki Manaj and Iggy Azalea have been dominating rap music. Even when we see someone who goes against a stereotype we know, we classify them into another group. This is called sub typing. The stereotype that all blacks are lazy is obviously not true because there are many black successful people like Barack Obama, or even Beyonce. People think of them as lucky, or not like all blacks because they defy the stereotype. Two stereotypes that affect me are that all cheerleaders are whores, or that all white girls wear Uggs and drink Starbucks. I was a cheerleader but sure didn’t sleep around, I do love Uggs and Starbucks but that doesn’t make me a classic white girl. I have a friend who absolutely hates Starbucks. Some people live up to a stereotype because of a self fulfilling prophecy. Someone may not start as a part of a stereotype but eventually live up to it. For example if someone is stereotyped as a lazy person that will not amount to anything, and are reminded of that they are most likely going to become that. There was a study done in a class where teachers were given a list of ‘bloomer students’. It really was just randomly selected students. Because they are expected to do better there teacher pays more attention to them and they do better. My understanding has altered a little bit, I knew about things like self fulfilling prophecy but not the extent that I learned today.
The most interesting and surprising thing to me is how much we change to be like the group. Most people have standards they live by such as treating people right or not doing certain things due to beliefs you may have. When someone goes through deindividuation they are not self aware therefore do not pay attention to their personal standards. In a famous study some undergraduates at Stanford decide to take the rolls of prisoners and guards. The study was shut down after just six days because of the students being so vigorous with the roles they were scared for the well being of the students. They found that the guards quickly formed to the roles and became very brutal and sadistic towards the prisoners. This happened in a real prison in Iraq. They said it was only a few of the guards that were doing this, but it makes you wonder if that was really true because of the social pressure of others.
Stereotyping, sub typing, self fulfilling prophecy, deidividuation. social pressure
Everything in this chapter revolves around a relationship between oneself and another person/group, whether it be what we think about others, how attitudes about ourselves and others affect ourselves and others, how other people influence us, and how we build relationships. It’s all about how our mind perceives other people and ourselves and how they are connected. The way that the chapter is ordered really works how it transitions from us, to others, and then to relationships, which really ties everything together. I feel like my understanding of social psychology is much more widespread as a result of reading this chapter, and now I realize just how much social groups and society as a whole is a big part of our mental processes and what we think of the world around us.
I found deindividuation to be quite fascinating. I find it interesting that people will have less regard towards self-awareness and their own standards when they are excited to be part of a group and are anonymous. This is similar to social facilitation, where performance is increased when one is in a group. Deindividuation can be seen in most large-group situations, such as a sporting event or rally/protest, people will not only conform but act in ways that they would not normally act, for better or for worse.
I found it surprising/memorable that there are three ways of inducing compliance, and that I know all of them already. I knew about the foot-in-the-door phenomenon from my high school psychology class, but the other two I just recognize now because of the examples given. I guess it was never brought to my attention or I just didn’t realize that they are all ways to get people to comply. I have heard of lowballing, but the one I didn’t really know just by looking at it was the door in the face strategy, but the example made me realize I already knew what it was but that I just didn’t have a name for it yet. Compliance can be a good thing in some situations, but two of the ways it can be done seem like they are negative towards the target and are used only for the person using the method’s personal gain. Even the foot-in-the-door technique has been associated with situations like a friend who leeches off of you.
Terms: attitude, deindividuation, social psychology, social facilitation, compliance
In chapter 11 there are so many things that are explained that show and tell us how people act and behave. They talk about how people’s attitudes affect other people, how people think of other people, how people influence other people, and more. All of these come together to form a total view of who we really are. Right away, it talks about how we make snap judgments about people. We instantly think we know exactly who this person is and their interests from how they dress and act. This to me is the worst part about people. You have to at least give them a chance before you write them off as something.
My understanding of social psychology has changed a lot since reading chapter 11. It’s changed due to some specific areas. The first would be the passionate and companionate love they talk about in 11.4. I’ve been in a relationship for about 4 months now. We started out with passionate love, and it’s still there of course. But companionate love is starting to settle in for the both of us. We talk about trust, respect, and just being there for one another. It’s a great feeling, and when you know you just kind of know.
The topics on obeying people with authority, and complying with the request of others were most interesting to me. First, I’ll talk about obeying people with authority. This talked about Stanley Milgram who conducted a very famous experiment on the Germans and why they obeyed the orders to kill innocent people in World War II. He did this to further his understanding and knowledge on obedience. The German civilians used conformity to change the behaviors to match the ones of the leaders. Lastly, I’ll talk about why we comply with the request of others. Joseph Forgas demonstrated that people in good moods are more likely to comply. If you do what people ask or request, than you are showing compliance.
The most surprising or memorable thing I learned from chapter 11 would have to be on how explicit and implicit attitudes affect us. Explicit attitude is an attitude that a person is consciously aware of and can report. An implicit attitude is an attitude that influences a person’s feelings and behavior at an unconscious level. We access implicit attitudes from our minds quickly with little effort. It amazes me the types of vocabulary and how many different things that psychology is used for.
Terms: Passionate love, Companionate love, Obedience, Conformity, Compliance, Explicit Attitude, Implicit Attitude.
When I think of social physiology I would have thought social skills, how we have the ability to talk to people we never met, or how conversations keep going by sending signals to the brain keeping you responding. When I was going through the chapter, and all the bold heading got my attention. Stereotypes, we make attributions about others, and many more.
These topics are all important because they all come together and form social psychology. When you first meet someone you are quick to judge. Maybe if they are wearing all black, and heavy dark makeup you may think that the person is emo, or gothic and has life problems. If you see a pretty blonde girl driving in a Mercedes you may think snobby. All of these attributes are what causes people to judge, over body language, gestures, and facial expressions. Along with that is facial expressions
Facial expressions are eye contact. If you are flirting you can bat your eyes, or if you need a waiter’s attention you make eye contact to get them to your table for the bill. We are so use to facial expression by being able to read someone by their facial expressions. If someone is angry you can tell, or sad there face is usually sluggish, and frowning, or if someone is happy they are “glowing” and smiling from check to check. These are what allows us to be social without even speaking.
There are more things that go along with social psychology, for example attitudes. You attitude can define who you are as a person, or what you think of someone. My attitude is always loud and obnoxious. If someone made me upset I get a snobby attitude. Or my attitude on cheating is I hate it. There a lot of things that make up attitudes, and how it contributes to being social or has a factor.
Just like quick judgment there is stereotypes. In the book it gives goof examples. Do all Italians have fiery tempers? Do all Canadians like hockey? Can white women rap? These are all different things that people assume from where they live, culture differences, and race. They base all these little factors into a characteristic and make assumptions out of them.
When I put all these topics together it all fits into social psychology. You first meet someone you quickly judge them, you put them into a stereotype by classifying them into different categories. You can get a feel of who they are and what they life by their attitude, and be able to define some ones mood by their facial expressions. All of these topics fit into simple conversations. If you are having conversations you can say something about a friend you made and the response could be a quick judgment, or facial expressions as if you are surprised. They are everyday little topics that make up being social.
The most interesting topic to me was personal characteristics. I can relate to this because I am a freshman in college trying to find and make friends. You tend to like people with similar personalities as you. You look for people that have good characteristics. Kindness, trustworthy, like to have fun. People that seem too perfect, or overly competent can make people feel uncomfortable, and not feel welcome to them. I relate to this now so it was cool to read more about it.
The most memorable thing I read was the guys that used his own instinct to save a women from a burning building. It shows that some people risk their lives for others. We hear a lot now a days about bullies, people being cruel, and teens committing suicide, so the man that saved this women can give us inspiration to better our society.
Terms: judgment, stereotypes, social psychology, personal attributions,
The topics in this chapter all relate to each other because they all have to do with how people tend to view and think about other people which also effects how we act in social settings. One of the first things discussed was how people make snap judgements. Usually right when you see someone you will notice what they are wearing and make a judgement about their life based on what they are wearing. If someone is dressed in lower quality clothing or cheaper clothes they are more likely to get looked at as weird or dirty while as someone who is dressed up real nice or in expensive clothes is more likely to get looked at as a popular person. These snap judgements can be bad especially for people who often make inferences based on what they see because they can tend to be racist or sexist. As a person we know we are being judged almost all the time and thats most of the time why we dress the way we do or act the way we do. I think theres too many things to worry about and people should just do whatever they think is socially exceptable because we are all different people with different interests and likes.
The most interesting part of this chapter to me was persuasion because this is something you see and experience almost every day. Persuasion is the effort to change someones attitude on someone or something through transmission of a message. We usually find things or people to be more persuasive if they have the same interests and likes as you or even if they have the same style as you. Persuasion is all around us in political campaigns and ads. As well as everyday life such as friends trying to get you to do something for the first time. In the chapter it talks about two different routes of persuasion. One route is the centralized route which is when we are able to process the information with motivation. This route is usually more long-lasting beliefs because they are motivated beliefs. The second route is the peripheral route which is unmotivated and makes you unable to process information as well. Peripheral route usually leads to decisions that will change over time because they are usually more impulse decisions.
I thought the most memorable thing in this chapter was the story about Kitty Genovese. Kitty was assaulted and murdered while walking to her home. After her death a newspaper came out with a story saying that 38 people witnessed the murder but wouldn't come out about it. Years later evidence showed there were very few witnesses and none of them could actually make out what happened. If the reporter had been corrected, it would be an example of bystander apathy, which is people make no effort to help a victim when other people are present.
Terms: Bystander apathy, persuasion, communicate, attitude, social loafing, stereo type
All of the information in this chapter comes together by telling us how we get along with other people. Social psychology is the study of causes, types, and consequences of human interaction. My understanding of social psychology has changed since reading this chapter because every little thing we do can effect someone else in a good or bad way. You have consequences of your action good or bad. The most interesting thing to me about this chapter was attitudes. Attitudes evaluate judgments about objects, people, and thoughts that include affective, knowledge, and behavioral components. It was interesting to see the function of attitudes. There are three distinct function: ego defense, adjustment, and knowledge. Ego defense attitudes protect us from threats to the self or ego. Adjustment attitudes can maximize reinforcements and minimize punishments from the environment. Lastly, knowledge attitudes can help bring order and meaning to one’s world. The most memorable thing about this chapter to me was attraction. Attraction is the extent to which we like or dislike other people. How often do you find yourself saying, “I was naturally attracted to that person”? Proximity to others is positively related to the establishment of friendship. People who live near us tend to become our friends. Like, people you went to school with, grew up in the same town with, or people you met at college where you live now. Terms used: Attraction, Social psychology, Attitudes.
Alberto Sveum
Everything discussed in this chapter points to one fact that is undeniable: humans are some of the most credulous, influenced, and easily swayed species on the planet. When humans are under the command of another human, or authority, they conform. One of the most annoyingly cited studies, the Milgrim experiment shows this faithful obedience in action. When we witness advertisements featuring attractive people we recognize, we unconsciously become more interested in the product. The mere exposure effect perpetuates this desire by repeatedly barraging us with the same ads and celebrity appearances. One that particularly comes to mind is a DirecTV commercial I have seen lately featuring Rob Lowe and a less attractive version of himself who apparently watches cable tv. Many of these terms, including central route and peripheral route, come up often in other areas; actually, both just mentioned are heavily relevant in my Oral Communications class because we are about to being persuasive speeches.
I think one thing that has definitely changed is how well I see the correlation betwixt social psychology and oral communication. Too often I read information and never really consider how it is verified. Some of the social experiments discussed, like the Prison experiment, likely weigh heavily on other areas.
I often find that when I choose to run on a public track with other people, I am more likely to push myself harder. I personally try my best to eliminate competitive nature in my behavior because I believe it undermines our human relations, but I still kind of get this happy little feeling when I pass someone. I think one thing that definitely will stick with me is this idea of social facilitation. It makes perfect sense. I remember when I weight lifted in high school, it was highly encouraged that students lift in pairs or groups. Not only would it drive students to get in and do the work, but it likely contributed to trying more weight and striving for improvement.
Most surprising was the fact that all couples likely go through the passionate love stage of a relationship. Thinking back, I don’t know if I have at other times, but in the current relationship I am in, this is definitely present. I also found it interesting when the book talked about seeing your partner in a positive light and not holding them at fault in order to better preserve a relationship. These seem like good ideas to keep in mind.
Psychological terms: Milgrim experiment, conformity, obedience, mere exposure effect, central route, peripheral route, social facilitation, passionate love
This chapter focuses on the how an individual’s behavior is affected by their social context. Much of this can be determined through attributions, or a person’s explanation for why events or actions occur. There are two main types of attributions: personal and situational. Personal attributions are attributions that refer to people’s internal characteristics, while situational attributions are attributions that refer to external events. However, attributions are not always positive. Fundamental attribution error is when we are trying to explain someone else’s behavior, but we focus more on the behavior than the situational factors. This is similar to the actor/observer bias, when interpreting our personal behavior, we will focus on the situation, but if we are interpreting other’s behavior we will focus mostly on their behavior. I think it is important to always look at the situation. It goes along with the saying, “Try walking a day in their shoes.” My mom was always good at this. I remember there was a time, by sister came home from school and was talking about a girl in her class who just left class and started screaming at the teachers. My mom reminded my sister to think about what the girls was going through. She had a very rough home life, and depending what happened in the class, something may have hit a nerve.
I think my understanding of social psychology has greatly changed. I have learned to look at more than a person’s behavior before judging him or her. I’ve also become more aware of stereotypes I have, and if those stereotypes are causing me to discriminate or to be prejudice. For example, I always had a stereotype that people who were speeding and weaving in and out of traffic were self-centered and more concerned about themselves than the other people around them. This lead to some prejudice, as I quickly became annoyed with these drivers. Sometime I would also discriminate against them. Such as when my brother got two speeding tickets, and he was determined that he was not speeding when he got the second one. I didn’t believe him at all, even though I had no proof that he was or was not speed, since I was not in the car with him. I’ve learned that not all people who are speeding on the road, may not be self-centered. They may have an emergency that they need to get to, or that they are late for something very important.
The most surprising thing from this chapter was the section on groups affecting social behavior. I almost started laughing when I read about social loafing. One of the most common stereotypes about group work is that there is always someone who doesn’t pull their weight. I did have a couple of issue with this throughout college, and I find it entertaining that there is actually a term for these scenarios. Social facilitation also caught my eye because I had a similar situation happen on yesterday. I have a professor that I struggle to understand his teaching because he goes very fast, and I can never seem to catch up. Yesterday, the department head came in to observe the class, and the professor taught way better! I actually could keep up with him, and understand things. It was a miracle…or just social facilitation.
Terms: Social facilitation, social loafing, prejudice, discrimination, fundamental attribution error, situational attributions, personal attributions, actor/observer bias
Social psychology by definition is a science that studies the influences of our situations, with special attention to how we think about, influence, and relation to one another. It asks questions and uses experimentation to study our social thinking, social influence and social relations. The ways individuals perceive, influence, and relate to others are due to the effects of social and cognitive processes. Social processes are the way that our thoughts, feelings, and actions are influenced by many factors. Factors include culture, parental guidance, peer pressure, intimate relationships, and peer groups in a social circle. Cognitive processes are the way our memories, perceptions, thoughts, emotions, and motives guide out understanding of the world and our actions accordingly. Behaviors, actions and reasoning in individuals affect the way individuals think; the individuals that surround them also have an effect. Social psychology has concepts or fundamental principles that factor in to the way that individuals relate to one another. Understanding what and how social psychology works is a very important factor to understanding the social world. Learning how different circumstances and social groups affect behavior gives insight. Socials psychology is applicable to everyday life and can help individuals hoping to work in the psychology fields understand individuals from a different perspective. Social psychology cannot hope to provide all the answers to problems that have strong historical and economic roots, but it has a part to play in helping us understand and shape our world, especially where issues of self, identity, and social interaction play a major role. Social psychology pertains to an in-depth study of socialization. Perception, interaction, and influence are the main focus. Social psychology studies individuals to examine how they view others. Along with the views, relationship studies allow researchers to see the effects individuals have on one another. The part of the reading I most enjoyed was the section on social loafing and de-individuation. The group dynamic has great influences on our social behavior. In the process of living, we don't just think and interact, we also influence and change other's behavior. Psychologists have identified such important forms of influence as conformity. In changing other's behavior, it's noteworthy to mention such processes as social facilitation and inhibition where it's vividly seen how our behaviors are changed or how we try to leave positive or negative impressions on others. After reading this chapter I have looked at the way we interact on an entirely new level. I see many claims the reading actually happening as I interact in groups. The most surprising part of the reading was how people conform to a group’s behavior. Terms: Social psychology, Parental guidance, peer pressure, perception, interaction, de-individuation, social loafing, group dynamic, facilitation and inhibition.
Chapter 11
All of the chapters come together in chapter 11. Society tries to conform within the social norm. A social norm is an expected standard of how we conduct ourselves. People consciously and subconsciously make judgments about other people. Those who don’t follow the norm become categorized into what we call stereotypes. Psychologist have shown that many people act according to their stereotypes, their beliefs and behaviors revolve completely around how they have been categorized. These different categories/ stereotypes then create what psychologist call ingroups and outgroups. Many people form relationships with like minded people, most likely people within their stereotype. An ingroup, a group of like minded people, are more willing to do things for one another rather than someone in an outgroup. They are also more likely to forgive someone within their ingroup more so than they would with someone in an outgroup.
My social psychology has changed because I did not realize how much of the way we think can be influenced by our surroundings. Some of the things that we believe in can be persuaded by the content of a message that someone relays to us. It amazed me that the human mind can be persuaded without much elaborate thinking at all, also known as peripheral route persuasion. I assumed that most people took the central route of persuasion, where it requires elaborate thinking and two strong arguments to change a person’s mind. I understood the idea of persuasion from the mere exposure effect, when we increasingly like something merely because we have had repeated exposure to it. I know that this has happened to me, especially when listening to a song. The way we think is highly effected by finding acceptance, maybe why we can sometimes be so easily persuaded. Human nature longs for relationships and comfort, and will sometimes change the way they act to find it. This is defined as deindividuation, where individuality is compromised when people become part of a group.
I found the examples behind the sports teams as the most interesting or surprising part of the chapter. I have been an athlete all my life, and know what it is like to define an opposing team as sort of “the enemy”. The interesting part that this chapter made me think about, was the fact that if I was in a different situation, on the “enemy’s” team for instance, my friends and enemies would be completely flipped around. I guess what this chapter taught me the most, was that social situations and stigmas (stereotypes) really do play a major role in the world that we live in.
Terms: Social Norm, ingroup, outgroup, stereotypes, peripheral route persuasion, deindividuation, mere exposure effect, peripheral route, central route,
Throughout chapter eleven there were a variety of topics which were all a common factor for making up the understanding of human thought and behavior. The chapter broke up these factors up into four main topics: how we think of other people, how our attitudes can affect us, how other people influence us, and how we develop strong relationships. All of these factors combine make up how we behave and think as human beings.
Of the four main topics I found two to be the most interesting to me. The first one being the very first factor this chapter started off with was how we think about other people. When we first meet a person we automatically make a quick judgment about them usually based off our first impression of them. The first thing we notice about a person is there face which communicates a lot especially through their eyes. Our facial expressions can communicate information such as emotional state, interest, and trustworthiness. Along with facial expressions we also make attributions about people in order to come up with how we think about them. There are two types of attributions that we use which are personal and situational attributions, originated theories of Fritz Heider. Personal attributions are ways that we explain outcomes based on internal factors, such as someone’s ability, mood, or effort. An example of this would be, “I got an A on my exam because I studied weeks in advance for it.” Situational attributions are explanations based on external factors, such as luck, accidents, or the actions of other people. An example would be, “It’s raining outside today because someone did the rain dance last night.” When making attributions we need to be careful because they tend to be very bias and overemphasized. Another tool that we use when deciding how we think of a person is stereotyping them. Unfortunately stereotypes usually involve negative thoughts and actions such as prejudice, discrimination, and self-fulfilling prophecy. Prejudice and discrimination go hand-in- hand because when you have negative feelings or beliefs about a certain stereotype that’s a prejudice and a result of this is discrimination which is an inappropriate and unjustified way of treating people.
The other main topic that I found to be interesting was how other people influence us. Some studies have been done to help theorize social facilitation and social loafing. In 1897 Norman Triplett showed that bicyclists pedal faster when they ride with in a group of other bicyclists than they do when riding alone. This is an example of social facilitation which the presence of others enhances performance. In other cases however people tend to work less hard in a group than when working alone. This effect is called social loafing which occurs when the efforts of a group are mixed together so individuals do not feel personally responsible for the group’s outcome. A study was shown that when six people were blindfolded with headphones on and were told to yell as loudly as they possibly could, the people told that they were with other people didn’t shout as loud as the people who were told that they were alone. The other effect that went along with how other people influence us was deindividuation. Psychologists Philip Zimbardo and Chris Haney did a study that showed deindividuation. In their study Zimbardo and Haney had male undergraduates at Stanford University play roles as either prisoners or guards. The students had been previously screened and were mentally stable before the study. What they found was very shocking. Within a short time period they found that the male students didn’t take long getting into their roles. The “guards” became brutal and sadistic towards the “prisoners” making them do unnecessary tasks and exercises. The study was supposed to last two weeks, the researchers had to stop after only six days.
Terms: Facial expressions, emotional state, interest, trustworthiness, communication, attributions, situational attributes, personal attributes, theories, prejudice, discrimination, social facilitation, social loafing, and deindividuation.
Human thought and behavior relies largely on how we perceive people, what our attitudes are, and what other people’s thoughts, behaviors, and expectations are.
We can assess others based on short observations of them, on their body language, and their facial expressions. To explain others' behavior, we apply personal and situational attributions, though often fundamental attribution error and actor/observer bias can hinder our accuracy. Finally, our perceptions of others can be influenced by stereotypes. This can be seen through prejudice, discrimination, and ingroup/outgroup bias. Through focusing on differences, our behavior is affected in the form of the occurrence of confrontations. Additionally, our perceptions of ourselves can be influenced be stereotypes, as seen through the self-fulfilling prophecy of adhering to others' expectations of us.
Our attitudes (or, our evaluations of objects, events, and/or ideas) affect out behavior. Our attitudes can be simple or complex, or explicit or implicit. They can also change depending on our attitude accessibility. Our attitudes toward a stimulus are influenced by our exposure to it and others' attitudes toward it, which can be seen through the mere exposure effect, conditioning, and social exposure. Our attitudes tend to heavily impact our behavior, and when one acts contrary to one's attitude, cognitive dissonance may occur.
Other people impact our thoughts and behavior greatly. This can be seen both through social facilitation and social loafing -- we tend to match others' behaviors. Additionally, people can experience group decision making and deindividualization through conformity, adhering to social norms, and/or being compliant or obedient to others' expectations or requests.
Looking at these three factors that may impact our behavior - our perceptions of others, attitudes, and others' actions and expectations - much of what we do is impacted by other people around us. Indeed, the reading states, "...almost every human activity has a social dimension" (382). Though I suspected as much prior to the reading, it was a bit different to see examples of just how accurate this really is.
The most interesting topic in the reading for me was that of physical attractiveness, and how the more "average" someone looks, the more attractive we find them. Though this made sense to me, I couldn't help but wonder what effect conditioning would have on this concept, and wish that we were going to study this topic further.
Most shocking from this reading was that of the study that determined that people tend to associate an African-American face to a gun and a Caucasian face to a tool. I was floored by this, and find it difficult to swallow.
personal attributions, situational attributions, fundamental attribution error, actor/observor bias, stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination, ingroup/outgroup bias, self-fulfilling prophecy, attitude, simple attitude, complex attitude, explicit attitude, implicit attitude, attitude accessibility, mere exposure effect, conditioning, social exposure, cognitive dissonance, social facilitation, social loafing, deindividualization, conformity, social norms, compliance, obedience
Chapter 11, Social Psychology, has many different topics about our social lives including stereotypes and perception, competition and cooperation social exposure, group decision making and much more. This chapter comes together by showing us how we judge and treat other people. Before reading the chapter I thought social psychology was the way people acted. After reading the chapter I have learned that it is not just the way they act, but the way we interact with one another in different environments. The topic that I had found most interesting throughout the chapter was the topic on justification of effort. In a social setting I thought justification of effort was the amount of effort one put into a group. After reading the topic I found that I was partially right. What I understood from the section was that justification of effort is how much effort, in a humiliating and painful way, which a person puts into getting into a group. The book says that hazing is a cause of this, and that hazing is big in sororities and fraternities. Friends of mine who have joined the Greek life have told me that they were not involved in any sort of hazing, but have acted like Greek life is the best thing in the world. The book talks about people who do get hazed by their frats, sororities, or even a cult they join to exaggerate how important it is so that they do not have a feeling of dissonance. This topic was also the most memorable for me. The reason this topic was so memorable for me was because of the experience I have had with my friends and some of the stories that they have had with initiations and other parts of their fraternity or sorority. This chapter, for me, was one of the most enjoyable to read. I felt like I learned a lot of information about other people when in a social setting. It is also weird to think about the ways that I could possibly get judged based on my attributes and also their attributes.
Terms: Stereotypes, Attributes, dissonance, justification of effort.
In this chapter we learned how we connect and interact with other people. Every time we see or meet a person, we have that first impression on them. This can be a bad thing because we might get the wrong impression of someone and miss out on the opportunity of meeting a new friend. We place people in certain stereotypes that give us the bad impression of them. A stereotype that all Asians are smart in math and science, but we know that is not true at all. Some people may not like certain groups of people with no apparent reason and that is called prejudice. Those people who are prejudice towards a group of people often discriminate against them. We know this is wrong of people to do, but some people think this way because of a bad experience with someone from that group and we think everyone that is in that group is that way. Our attitudes are something that we can control to evaluate something.
The most interesting thing I read about in this chapter was the section on how we develop strong relationships. It’s amazing to learn about how we all go about finding a partner by looking at personal characteristics and attractiveness. I thought it was weird to read most happy couples play jokes on each other and make fun of them almost because that’s how me and my boyfriend relationship is.
The most memorable part of this chapter was at the very beginning with Cory Booker. He was just a regular citizen who just like to help others. His behavior was very intriguing and I wonder what lead him to such behavior and is it possible for other to act the same in those circumstances.
All of the topics within this chapter were linked together with two common elements: human thought and human behavior. Social psychology is the study of how humans communicate with each other in everyday life, and how the method of communication has changed and evolved through human history. Social psychology also looks at how consciously and subconsciously we are always judging, assessing, and observing people, and how the gathered information leads to our attitude towards others. It looks at things like how people who dress alike are more likely than not to become friends, or at least be friendly with one and other. Many many components go into human interaction, most of which we don’t even realize. Another thing that goes into the human though process is stereotypes. Everyone is guilty of stereotyping, and it’s not an evil thing to do most of the time, its natural. The most surprising thing I learned is how easy it is to make someone feel wrong even when they are right, the need for acceptance is so great in many individuals that they will give up their own sense of right and wrong to fit in. People are easily persuaded by those who are regarded to as authorities, humans are extremely obedient. Another thing that was talked about in the chapter was passionate and companionate love. It was extremely interesting to me because I’m in a serious relationship, and it made me deeper understand my relationship and why I’m so committed to making sure my girlfriend is happy. There are many biological factors that play in to human relations, far far more than I had ever imagined. This has been the most interesting chapter so far, and it’s leading me to want to do further studying and reading outside of the coursework.
Terms: Companionate love, Passionate love, relationship, obedient, biological factor, communication, attitude, consciously, subconsciously, stereotyping, psychology, behavior, thought, evolved.
Chapter 11 focuses on social psychology and it’s influences in the world. We learn about stereotyping, attitudes, behavior, influences from others and the environment, social expectations, and relationships. Social psychology looks at all of this and try to determine how these different aspects in life contribute to everyday society. Social psychologists focus on attributions of people’s behavior. In stereotyping we see that previously inferred ideas of people may change how we perceive a group to which those previously stated people belong to. It can change how we act around different social groups and how we act towards these groups. Stereotyping is a block between humanity. It opens the doors of prejudice and discrimination. Most stereotyping is an implicit attitude, an attitude that is formed unconsciously. Implicit and explicit (conscious) attitudes lead to how we behave in everyday life, though sometimes our attitudes and behavior do not agree leading us to have a complex attitude.
What I found to be the most interesting part of chapter 11 was at the beginning when the book talks about judgement. It talks about thin slices of behavior which is a term given by Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal. This describes how after a few seconds of observations people can have accurate judgements of people. I guess this is why first impressions are always important. I wouldn’t say that I give accurate judgements of people, but I am quick to judge who they are and how they will act when I first meet people. I notice that I make these judgements more when I have a negative outlook towards them. I tend to think that people are stupid, lazy, and idiotic (as a behavior, not as intelligence) unless they prove me otherwise. Reading over the judgement section is somewhat hard for me because I am quick to judge and realize that it is wrong to do so, even though I like doing it. This is a perfect example of a complex attitude. Not only does the thin slices of behavior interest me, but I find it quite fascinating how fast humans can judge and determine a situation by only small ques. The book talks about facial expressions and body language and how just a hint of something can help us determine how a person feels. It crazy how fast we can analyze situations and people and make decisions based off our analysis.
The most surprising topic in this chapter was the section over bystander apathy. Bystander apathy is the failure to offer help by those who observe someone in need. To me this seems crazy. When put in situations with more than one person who could help but doesn’t, another person who could help is more likely to ignore the problem longer, conforming to the other bystanders. To me the internal thoughts that go through the bystander’s head is, “Well if no one else is doing anything then why should I?” or maybe, “If no one else is doing anything then maybe I shouldn’t either.” To a certain degree this makes sense to me. If an irritation was happening but no one else was reporting anything then I believe I most likely wouldn’t do anything, also. But, the book gave examples of studies they had done such as mock crimes, fake injuries, and people passed out in public places, and in all of these the results were similar: bystander apathy took place. I would hope that if something like this were to be happening at a time when I am around, that I would break bystander apathy and help out. Maybe now that I am more conscious about it I could actually break it.
Terms: social psychology, stereotyping, attitudes, behavior, influences, social expectations, relationships, implicit and explicit attitudes, (un)conscious, discrimination, judgement, impressions, thin slices of behavior, facial expressions, body language, bystander apathy
I believe that all together, these topics show how humans in the world operate on a little more than basic level. All the topics show our views of the world around us, but especially the other people we meet in our lives. Our behavior is influenced by things we are not even conscious of, as well as our prejudices, and facial ques. From the viewpoint of survival, it makes sense when we think about safety. When we see someone with body language that tells us “stay away” we do, and we avoid them, as well as people of other groups or races because of our primal instinct to protect and further the development of our own groups. I thought it was interesting that the book talks about how even if someone is not racist, they may feel more uncomfortable with someone of another race walking behind them at night, than someone of the same race. It was surprising to hear, but from the standpoint of survival again, it makes sense. My view point of social psychology changed a lot from reading this chapter, because I didn’t quite know what to expect, but I still had a feeling I knew what it would be about. I found that I was wrong, and that my expectations were only a very small facet of what social psychology is about. I had thought about how much there has to be involved with impressions, and how we see people, but I never really understood some of the real reasons why we think the way we do. I found it to be very interesting, and intriguing, because the things going on in my life related to some of the topics, and reading the chapter made the things I am going through a little bit easier to understand. I found the topic of relationships was the most interesting to me. It wasn’t that I necessarily liked reading about it per say, but it helped me understand why sometimes things change, and it’s just a normal part of life. Sometimes friends you used to have are no longer your friends, and sometimes that fact isn’t anyone’s fault. The fact that people can change and be influenced over time by social interactions is scary and not very comforting but it is nice to know why and the different reasons that contribute to changes in a lot of aspects throughout our lives. One of the aspects of this conditioning in social environments is social facilitation, and social loafing. Both of these have to do with how our behaviors change due to the group of people we are or aren’t around.
Terms: Prejudice, Social Facilitation, Social Loafing
Morgan Sowers
I enjoyed this chapter because I like learning about the social aspects of things that are usually more, for lack of a better word, bland. I find that when studying people, whatever subject I happen to be looking into is brought alive. I was pleasantly surprised with the chapters opening story about Cory Booker; his compassion is very touching and (especially considering he’s a politician) just as surprising. I was also really interested in the section that covers attributions, apparently I must be a bit odd because I have a hard time understanding the Just World Hypothesis, I understand the concept but I find it interesting that people essentially make things up in order to justify situations to themselves—I honestly feel as though justification is just a different type of encouragement that makes people think it’s okay to do things they know they shouldn’t do and justifying the actions of others in this way is detrimental. That being said, I am quite guilty of both the fundamental attribution error and the actor/observer bias—it makes sense though that people would focus on the situation when it happens to them because they are already familiar with themselves, but when it happens to other people the focus, understandably, is directed towards the other person because it is a more complex analysis.
When talking about stereotyping I found it interesting that the text talks about women being more nurturing than men (on average) because in my women’s history course we have talked about how the idea of women being more nurturing than men is a post-civil war concept. Therefore, I think it raises the question of are women more nurturing because they are expected to be? I think it is probable considering how incessant the ideas of society are, which leads to stereotyping. What struck me about this section was subtyping, which is just a way to maintain ignorance, nevertheless, it is interesting how people create the world that they want to live in by imposing their own beliefs onto people that they don’t even know. I think that stereotyping is an all around bad thing because regardless of if the stereotype is “good” or “bad” it can induce stress to live up to a stereotype (smart Asian) or distress and even prejudice and discrimination when it is assumed you’re up to something bad (black hoodlum); people need to realize that it’s okay to be who they are and they don’t have to satisfy a self-fulfilling prophecy. When reading about the social psychology experiment done by Muzafer Sherif I thought it was interesting the way dividing people up, especially people that would stereotypically be together (white boys) in a group, it created enemies and even though they didn’t like each other, when they had to work together they became friends. I think this type of activity should be implemented in the day-to-day life for every individual, especially in the Midwest where the views are more conservative and close-minded due to lack of exposure to different cultures.
When reading about bystander apathy I was reminded about a story my high school friend’s dad told me. They lived in California and one day, around the time she was five (1999/2000) an old woman was hit by a vehicle. Her dad, not having a cell phone, called for help, but nobody did anything and the woman died in his arms. I do not know how many people were around but this example of bystander apathy made me feel extremely uncomfortable but after reading the “explanation” as to why people did not assist the test subjects I can at least understand the situation that occurred in California.The aspects of social psychology make me feel like understanding other people comes down to the idea that people want to belong, they want to be liked, and they want their life to be easy. This is shown through the execution of social norms, compliance and stereotyping. People often do what is expected of them, they adopt attitudes/behaviors to fit in and they project their ideas onto other people to more easily understand them. My idea of social psychology hasn’t really changed any, it is pretty obvious that most people simply want to belong. It was nice to have a section over prosocial behavior, however, because the good qualities of people tend to be overlooked but the idea that all people are willing to do bad things, as discussed previously, is stereotyping.
The psychological terms that I used were: fundamental attribution error, actor/observer bias, prejudice, discrimination, self-fulfilling prophecy, bystander apathy, social norms, compliance, behaviors and prosocial.
People these days tend to jump to conclusions about other people or cultures without actually thinking about it. We may see someone walk by us that we have never met before and we already judge them. It is really sad that our generation has come to this point. The generations before us seemed to get along with every person in town and these days it is hard to do that because we jump to conclusions. We never give people a chance to explain themselves and always jump to conclusions based on what people look on the outside. I feel that since technology is improving, people are starting to worry more about other things rather than making connections with people. We tend to make stereotypes about other people based on images on social media. The images we see on these sights have changed our point of view on other people. We interact with people everyday and sometimes we do not realize how we talk to them. We also have the power to persuade other people to do things if we really want them to. For instance, if you really loved someone and wanted them to stop smoking you probably could get them to stop.
Social psychology deals with how we interact with other people in the world in many different ways. I knew before reading the chapter that we have to interact with other people in order to know what is going on. i also know that we need to be careful what we say to other people because it can hurt them in the long run. Our actions can also speak louder than words.
I thought it was interesting to learn about frustration-aggression. I have to admit that I do get frustrated when I drive sometimes. I try not to, but I can’t help it. I know that I need to learn to control my anger so that I can focus more on my driving and make it to my destination safely.
term: frustration-aggression