Principles of Social Psychology

605 Pages·2015·27.405 MB·English

Principles of Social Psychology
Principles of Social Psychology
[Author removed at request of original publisher]
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA LIBRARIES PUBLISHING EDITION, 2015. THIS EDITION ADAPTED
FROM A WORK ORIGINALLY PRODUCED IN 2010 BY A PUBLISHER WHO HAS REQUESTED THAT IT
NOT RECEIVE ATTRIBUTION.
MINNEAPOLIS, MN
Principles of Social Psychology by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

Contents
Publisher Information viii
Chapter 1: Introducing Social Psychology
1.1 Defining Social Psychology: History and Principles 2
1.2 Affect, Behavior, and Cognition 17
1.3 Conducting Research in Social Psychology 22
1.4 Chapter Summary 41
Chapter 2: Social Learning and Social Cognition
2.1 Sources of Social Knowledge 46
2.2 How We Use Our Expectations 62
2.3 Thinking Like a Social Psychologist About Social Cognition 83
2.4 Chapter Summary 84
Chapter 3: Social Affect
3.1 Moods and Emotions in Our Social Lives 88
3.2 Emotions, Stress, and Well-Being 100
3.3 How to Feel Better: Coping With Negative Emotions 114
3.4 Thinking Like a Social Psychologist About Social Affect 132
3.5 Chapter Summary 133
Chapter 4: The Self
4.1 The Cognitive Self: The Self-Concept 137
4.2 The Feeling Self: Self-Esteem 150
4.3 The Social Self: The Role of the Social Situation 165
4.4 Thinking Like a Social Psychologist About the Self 175
4.5 Chapter Summary 176
Chapter 5: Attitudes, Behavior, and Persuasion
5.1 Exploring Attitudes 181
5.2 Changing Attitudes Through Persuasion 193
5.3 Changing Attitudes by Changing Behavior 208
5.4 Thinking Like a Social Psychologist About Attitudes, Behavior, and Persuasion 224
5.5 Chapter Summary 225
Chapter 6: Perceiving Others
6.1 Initial Impression Formation 228
6.2 Inferring Dispositions Using Causal Attribution 248
6.3 Individual and Cultural Differences in Person Perception 260
6.4 Thinking Like a Social Psychologist About Person Perception 270
6.5 Chapter Summary 271
Chapter 7: Influencing and Conforming
7.1 The Many Varieties of Conformity 275
7.2 Obedience, Power, and Leadership 292
7.3 Person, Gender, and Cultural Differences in Conformity 310
7.4 Thinking Like a Social Psychologist About Conformity 319
7.5 Chapter Summary 320
Chapter 8: Liking and Loving
8.1 Initial Attraction 325
8.2 Close Relationships: Liking and Loving Over the Long Term 344
8.3 Thinking Like a Social Psychologist About Liking and Loving 363
8.4 Chapter Summary 364
Chapter 9: Helping and Altruism
9.1 Understanding Altruism: Self and Other Concerns 369
9.2 The Role of Affect: Moods and Emotions 381
9.3 How the Social Context Influences Helping 387
9.4 Other Determinants of Helping 395
9.5 Thinking Like a Social Psychologist About Altruism 409
9.6 Chapter Summary 410
Chapter 10: Aggression
10.1 Defining Aggression 415
10.2 The Biological and Emotional Causes of Aggression 422
10.3 The Violence Around Us: How the Social Situation Influences Aggression 437
10.4 Personal and Cultural Influences on Aggression 447
10.5 Thinking Like a Social Psychologist About Aggression 456
10.6 Chapter Summary 457
Chapter 11: Working Groups: Performance and Decision Making
11.1 Understanding Social Groups 462
11.2 Group Process: The Pluses and Minuses of Working Together 469
11.3 Improving Group Performance 496
11.4 Thinking Like a Social Psychologist About Social Groups 506
11.5 Chapter Summary 507
Chapter 12: Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination
12.1 Social Categorization and Stereotyping 514
12.2 Ingroup Favoritism and Prejudice 530
12.3 Reducing Discrimination 540
12.4 Thinking Like a Social Psychologist About Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Discrimination 553
12.5 Chapter Summary 554
Chapter 13: Competition and Cooperation in Our Social Worlds
13.1 Conflict, Cooperation, Morality, and Fairness 559
13.2 How the Social Situation Creates Conflict: The Role of Social Dilemmas 571
13.3 Strategies for Producing Cooperation 583
13.4 Thinking Like a Social Psychologist About Cooperation and Competition 593
13.5 Chapter Summary 594
Question Bank and Slides 596
Please share your supplementary material! 597
Publisher Information
Principles of Social Psychology is
adapted from a work produced and
distributed under a Creative Commons
license (CC BY-NC-SA) in 2010 by a
publisher who has requested that it and
the original author not receive
attribution. This adapted edition is
produced by the University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing through the eLearning Support Initiative.
This adaptation has reformatted the original text, and replaced some images and figures to make the resulting
whole more shareable. This adaptation has not significantly altered or updated the original 2010 text. This work
is made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.
viii
Chapter 1: Introducing Social Psychology
Mass Suicide of 39 Cult Members Shocks Nation
On March 26, 1997, people were found dead in a house on a hilltop in San Diego, California. The people were members
of a cult and were part of a carefully orchestrated suicide that involved sedatives, vodka, and plastic bags. There were
21 women and 18 men, and they had come to California from across the country. Most of the victims were in their 40s,
but ages ranged from 26 to 72.
The name of the cult was “Heaven’s Gate,” and it also operated a computer web service called “Higher Source.” The
victims evidently believed that they were going to meet a UFO hiding behind the comet Hale-Bopp, and the suicides
occurred during the time that the comet was closest to earth.
The suicide probably took place over three days and seemed to have been calm and ritualistic. One group of cult
members apparently helped some other members die, cleaned up after them, and then went on to take their own doses of
poison, which was mixed with apple sauce or pudding. The last two victims had plastic bags over their heads.
“It seemed to be a group decision,” said Dr. Brian Blackbourne, San Diego County medical examiner.
“There were different stages, suggesting it was planned. They all had IDs. The house was immaculate.”
“We’re not talking about a drug-crazed, party-time situation…The drugs were taken for a very specific purpose and that
was to take their own lives.”
The victims all wore black pants and black Nike sports shoes, and their faces and chests were covered in purple shrouds.
The victims had carefully packed their bags and placed their few possessions at their sides. Most of the victims had a $5
bill and some quarters in their pockets.
There was no blood found at the scene, and the only weapon in the home was a 9 mm pistol packed in a bag.
Jerry Lipscomb of the San Diego Sheriff’s Department told CNN, “What we’re finding is that each and every one of the
members of the organization, prior to their death, gave a brief statement…The essence of those statements was that they
were going to a better place.”
“It’s our opinion that it was their intent—they planned to do this.”
Source: Mass suicide involved sedatives, vodka and careful planning. CNN.com. Retrieved from http://edition.cnn.com/
US/9703/27/suicide/index.html.
Social psychology is the scientific study of how we feel about, think about, and behave toward the people around us
and how our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors are influenced by those people. As this definition suggests, the subject
matter of social psychology is very broad and can be found in just about everything that we do every day. Social
psychologists study why we are often helpful to other people and why we may at other times be unfriendly or
aggressive. Social psychologists study both the benefits of having good relationships with other people and the costs of
being lonely. Social psychologists study what factors lead people to purchase one product rather than another, how men
and women behave differently in social settings, how juries work together to make important group decisions, and what
makes some people more likely to recycle and engage in other environmentally friendly behaviors than others. And
social psychologists also study more unusual events, such as how some people can be persuaded that a UFO is hiding
behind a comet, leading them to take their own lives as part of a suicide cult.
The goal of this book is to help you learn to think about social behaviors in the same way that social psychologists do. I
believe you will find this approach useful because it will allow you to think about human behavior more critically and
more objectively and to gain insight into your own relationships with other people. Social psychologists study everyday
behavior scientifically, and their research creates a useful body of knowledge about our everyday social interactions.
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1.1 Defining Social Psychology: History and Principles
Learning Objectives
1. Define social psychology.
2. Review the history of the field of social psychology and the topics that social psychologists study.
3. Summarize the principles of evolutionary psychology.
4. Describe and provide examples of the person-situation interaction.
5. Review the concepts of (a) social norms and (b) cultures.
The field of social psychology is growing rapidly and is having an increasingly important influence on how
we think about human behavior. Newspapers, websites, and other media frequently report the findings of social
psychologists, and the results of social psychological research are influencing decisions in a wide variety of areas.
Let’s begin with a short history of the field of social psychology and then turn to a review of the basic principles
of the science of social psychology.
The History of Social Psychology
The science of social psychology began when scientists first started to systematically and formally measure the
thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of human beings (Kruglanski & Stroebe, 2011). The earliest social psychology
experiments on group behavior were conducted before 1900 (Triplett, 1898), and the first social psychology
textbooks were published in 1908 (McDougall, 1908/2003; Ross, 1908/1974). During the 1940s and 1950s, the
social psychologists Kurt Lewin and Leon Festinger refined the experimental approach to studying behavior,
creating social psychology as a rigorous scientific discipline. Lewin is sometimes known as “the father of social
psychology” because he initially developed many of the important ideas of the discipline, including a focus on
the dynamic interactions among people. In 1954, Festinger edited an influential book called Research Methods in
the Behavioral Sciences, in which he and other social psychologists stressed the need to measure variables and to
use laboratory experiments to systematically test research hypotheses about social behavior. He also noted that it
might be necessary in these experiments to deceive the participants about the true nature of the research.
Social psychology was energized by researchers who attempted to understand how the German dictator Adolf
Hitler could have produced such extreme obedience and horrendous behaviors in his followers during the Second
World War. The studies on conformity conducted by Muzafir Sherif (1936) and Solomon Asch (1952), as well as
those on obedience by Stanley Milgram (1974), showed the importance of conformity pressures in social groups
and how people in authority could create obedience, even to the extent of leading people to cause severe harm
to others. Philip Zimbardo, in his well-known “prison experiment” (Haney, Banks, & Zimbardo, 1973), found
that ordinary male college students who were recruited to play the roles of guards and prisoners in a simulated
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