Social Psychology Principles - 2012 Book Archive

759 Pages·2012·39.65 MB·English

Social Psychology
Principles
v. 1.0
This is the bookSocial Psychology Principles(v. 1.0).
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Table of Contents
About the Author.................................................................................................................. 1
Acknowledgments................................................................................................................. 2
Preface..................................................................................................................................... 3
Chapter 1: Introducing Social Psychology....................................................................... 7
Defining Social Psychology: History and Principles.................................................................................12
Affect, Behavior, and Cognition.................................................................................................................31
Conducting Research in Social Psychology...............................................................................................38
Chapter Summary........................................................................................................................................61
Chapter 2: Social Learning and Social Cognition......................................................... 64
Sources of Social Knowledge.......................................................................................................................69
How We Use Our Expectations....................................................................................................................89
Thinking Like a Social Psychologist About Social Cognition.................................................................115
Chapter Summary......................................................................................................................................117
Chapter 3: Social Affect ................................................................................................... 119
Moods and Emotions in Our Social Lives.................................................................................................124
Emotions, Stress, and Well-Being.............................................................................................................138
How to Feel Better: Coping With Negative Emotions.............................................................................153
Thinking Like a Social Psychologist About Social Affect.......................................................................176
Chapter Summary......................................................................................................................................177
Chapter 4: The Self............................................................................................................ 179
The Cognitive Self: The Self-Concept.......................................................................................................181
The Feeling Self: Self-Esteem....................................................................................................................195
The Social Self: The Role of the Social Situation....................................................................................214
Thinking Like a Social Psychologist About the Self................................................................................228
Chapter Summary......................................................................................................................................229
Chapter 5: Attitudes, Behavior, and Persuasion........................................................ 231
Exploring Attitudes....................................................................................................................................236
Changing Attitudes Through Persuasion................................................................................................250
Changing Attitudes by Changing Behavior.............................................................................................268
Thinking Like a Social Psychologist About Attitudes, Behavior, and Persuasion...............................290
Chapter Summary......................................................................................................................................291
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Chapter 6: Perceiving Others.......................................................................................... 293
Initial Impression Formation....................................................................................................................297
Inferring Dispositions Using Causal Attribution....................................................................................321
Individual and Cultural Differences in Person Perception....................................................................336
Thinking Like a Social Psychologist About Person Perception.............................................................347
Chapter Summary......................................................................................................................................349
Chapter 7: Influencing and Conforming...................................................................... 351
The Many Varieties of Conformity...........................................................................................................356
Obedience, Power, and Leadership..........................................................................................................376
Person, Gender, and Cultural Differences in Conformity......................................................................398
Thinking Like a Social Psychologist About Conformity.........................................................................408
Chapter Summary......................................................................................................................................409
Chapter 8: Liking and Loving ......................................................................................... 412
Initial Attraction........................................................................................................................................418
Close Relationships: Liking and Loving Over the Long Term................................................................439
Thinking Like a Social Psychologist About Liking and Loving..............................................................462
Chapter Summary......................................................................................................................................463
Chapter 9: Helping and Altruism................................................................................... 465
Understanding Altruism: Self and Other Concerns................................................................................470
The Role of Affect: Moods and Emotions.................................................................................................484
How the Social Context Influences Helping............................................................................................492
Other Determinants of Helping................................................................................................................502
Thinking Like a Social Psychologist About Altruism.............................................................................520
Chapter Summary......................................................................................................................................521
Chapter 10: Aggression.................................................................................................... 523
Defining Aggression...................................................................................................................................526
The Biological and Emotional Causes of Aggression..............................................................................535
The Violence Around Us: How the Social Situation Influences Aggression........................................553
Personal and Cultural Influences on Aggression....................................................................................564
Thinking Like a Social Psychologist About Aggression..........................................................................577
Chapter Summary......................................................................................................................................579
Chapter 11: Working Groups: Performance and Decision Making......................... 581
Understanding Social Groups...................................................................................................................586
Group Process: The Pluses and Minuses of Working Together.............................................................594
Improving Group Performance................................................................................................................631
Thinking Like a Social Psychologist About Social Groups.....................................................................642
Chapter Summary......................................................................................................................................643
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Chapter 12: Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination......................................... 646
Social Categorization and Stereotyping..................................................................................................654
Ingroup Favoritism and Prejudice...........................................................................................................673
Reducing Discrimination...........................................................................................................................684
Thinking Like a Social Psychologist About Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Discrimination.................699
Chapter Summary......................................................................................................................................701
Chapter 13: Competition and Cooperation in Our Social Worlds........................... 704
Conflict, Cooperation, Morality, and Fairness........................................................................................710
How the Social Situation Creates Conflict: The Role of Social Dilemmas............................................725
Strategies for Producing Cooperation.....................................................................................................740
Thinking Like a Social Psychologist About Cooperation and Competition.........................................752
Chapter Summary......................................................................................................................................753
v
About the Author
Charles Stangor
Charles Stangor is professor of psychology at the
University of Maryland. He has also taught at the New
School for Social Research, Michigan State University,
and the University of Tübingen in Germany. He received
his BA from Beloit College in 1973 and his PhD from New
York University in 1986. Dr. Stangor is the recipient of
research grants from the National Institute of Mental
Health and from the National Science Foundation. He
has published seven books and over seventy research
articles and book chapters and has served as an
associate editor of theEuropean Journal of Social
Psychology. He is a charter fellow of the American Psychological Society. He has
served as the chair of the executive committee and is currently executive officer for
the Society for Experimental Social Psychology. Dr. Stangor's research interests
concern the development of stereotypes and prejudice and their influences upon
individuals who are potential victims of discrimination. Dr. Stangor regularly
teaches social psychology, research methods, and, at the graduate level,
Fundamentals of Social Psychology and Group Processes. Dr. Stangor is chair of the
undergraduate committee in the psychology department and has won the
distinguished teaching award from the University of Maryland. Dr. Stangor also
serves as the chair of the psychology department’s human subjects committee.
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Acknowledgments
This book is the result of many years of interacting with many students, and it
would never have been written without them. So thanks, first, to my many
excellent students. Also a particular thanks to Michael Boezi, Pam Hersperger, and
Becky Knauer atUnnamed Publisherfor their help and support.
I would also like to thank the following reviewers whose comprehensive feedback
and suggestions for improving the material helped make this a better text:
• Mark Agars, California State University, San Bernadino
• Sarah Allgood, Virginia Tech University
• Lara Ault, Tennessee State University
• Sarah Butler, DePaul University
• Jamonn Campbell, Shippensburg University
• Donna Crawley, Ramapo College
• Alexander Czopp, Western Washington University
• Marcia Finkelstein, University of South Florida
• Dana Greene, North Carolina Central University
• Melissa Lea, Millsaps College
• Dana Litt, University of Washington
• Nick Marsing, Snow College
• Kevin McKillop, Washington College
• Adam Meade, North Carolina State University
• Paul Miceli, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Marcie Miller, South Plains College
• Meg Milligan, Troy University
• Dean Morier, Mills College
• Darren Petronella, Adelphi University
• Lisa Poole, Northeast State Technical Community College
• Michael Rader, Northern Arizona University
• Diana Rice, Geneva College
• David Simpson, Carroll University
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Preface
When I first started teaching social psychology, I had trouble figuring out how the
various topics in this expansive field fit together. I felt like I was presenting a
laundry list of ideas, research studies, and phenomena, rather than an integrated
set of principles and knowledge. Of course, what was difficult for me was harder
still for my students. How could they be expected to understand and remember all
of the many topics that we social psychologists study? And how could they tell what
was most important? Something was needed to structure and integrate their
learning.
It took me some time, but eventually, I realized that the missing piece in my
lectures was a consistent focus on the basic principles of social psychology. Once I
started thinking and talking about principles, then it all fell into place. I knew that
when I got to my lecture on altruism, most of my students already knew what I was
about to tell them. They understood that, although there were always some tweaks
to keep things interesting, altruism was going to be understood using the same
ideas that conformity and person perception had been in earlier lectures—in terms
of the underlying fundamentals—they were truly thinking like social psychologists!
I wrote this book to help students organize their thinking about social psychology
at a conceptual level. Five or ten years from now, I do not expect my students to
remember the details of a study published in 2011, or even to remember most of the
definitions in this book. I do hope, however, that they will remember some basic
ideas, for it is these principles that will allow them to critically analyze new
situations and really put their knowledge to use.
My text is therefore based on a critical thinking approach—its aim is to get students
thinking actively and conceptually—with more of a focus on the forest than on the
trees. Although there are right and wrong answers, the answers are not the only
thing. What is perhaps even more important is how we get to those answers—the
thinking process itself. My efforts are successful when my students have that “aha”
moment, in which they find new ideas fitting snugly into the basic concepts of
social psychology.
To help students better grasp the big picture of social psychology and to provide
you with a theme that you can use to organize your lectures, my text has a
consistent pedagogy across the chapters. I organize my presentation around two
underlying principles that are essential to social psychology:
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Preface
1. Person and situation (the classic treatment)
2. The ABCs of social psychology (affect, behavior, andcognition)
I also frame much of my discussion around the two human motivations ofself-
concernandother-concern. I use these fundamental motivations to frame discussions
on a variety of dimensions including altruism, aggression, prejudice, gender
differences, and cultural differences. You can incorporate these dimensions into
your teaching as you see fit.
My years of teaching have convinced me that these dimensions are fundamental,
that they are extremely heuristic, and that they are what I hope my students will
learn and remember. I think that you may find that this organization represents a
more explicit representation of what you’re already doing in your lectures.
Although my pedagogy is consistent, it is not constraining. You will use these
dimensions more in some lectures than in others, and you will find them more
useful for some topics than others. But they will always work for you when you are
ready for them. Use them to reinforce your presentation as you see fit.
Perhaps most important, a focus on these dimensions helps us bridge the gap
between the textbook, the real-life experiences of our students, and our class
presentations. We can’t cover every phenomenon in our lectures—we naturally let
the textbook fill in the details. The goal of my book is to allow you to rest assured
that the text has provided your students with the foundations—the fundamental
language of social psychology—from which you can build as you see fit. And when
you turn to ask students to apply their learning to real life, you can know that they
will be doing this as social psychologists do—using a basic underlying framework.
Organization
The text moves systematically from lower to higher levels of analysis—a method
that I have found makes sense to students. On the other hand, the chapter order
should not constrain you—choose a different order if you wish.Chapter 1
"Introducing Social Psychology"presents an introduction to social psychology and
the research methods in social psychology,Chapter 2 "Social Learning and Social
Cognition"presents the fundamental principles of social cognition, andChapter 3
"Social Affect"focuses on social affect. The remainder of the text is organized
around three levels of analysis, moving systematically from the individual level
(Chapter 4 "The Self"throughChapter 6 "Perceiving Others"), to the level of social
interaction (Chapter 7 "Influencing and Conforming"throughChapter 10
"Aggression"), to the group and cultural level (Chapter 11 "Working Groups:
Performance and Decision Making"throughChapter 13 "Competition and
Cooperation in Our Social Worlds").
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Preface
Rather than relying on “modules” or “appendices” of applied materials, my text
integrates applied concepts into the text itself. This approach is consistent with my
underlying belief that if students learn to think like social psychologists they will
easily and naturally apply that knowledge to any and all applications. The following
applications are woven throughout the text:
• Business and consumer behavior (see, for instance,Chapter 5
"Attitudes, Behavior, and Persuasion"on marketing and persuasion
andChapter 11 "Working Groups: Performance and Decision Making"
on group decision-making)
• Health and Behavior (see, for instance,Chapter 3 "Social Affect"on
stress andChapter 6 "Perceiving Others"on attributional styles)
• Law (see, for instance,Chapter 2 "Social Learning and Social Cognition"
on eyewitness testimony andChapter 10 "Aggression"on Terrorism)
Pedagogy
Principles of Social Psychology contains a number of pedagogical features designed
to help students develop an active, integrative understanding of the many topics of
social psychology and to think like social psychologists.
Research Foci
Research is of course the heart of social psychology, and the research foci provide
detailed information about a study or research program. I’ve chosen a mix of classic
and contemporary research, with a focus on both what’s interesting and what’s
pedagogical. Rather than boxing these findings, they are part of the running
text—simply highlighted with a heading and light shading.
Social Psychology in the Public Interest
Social psychological findings interest students in large part because they relate so
directly to everyday experience. The Social Psychology in the Public Interest
Feature reinforces these links. Topics include Does High Self-Esteem Cause
Happiness or Other Positive Outcomes? (Chapter 3 "Social Affect"), Detecting
Deception (Chapter 6 "Perceiving Others"), Terrorism as Instrumental Aggression
(Chapter 10 "Aggression"), and Stereotype Threat in Schools (Chapter 12
"Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination"). The goal here is to include these
applied topics within the relevant conceptual discussions to provide students with a
richer understanding within the context of the presentation.
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