copyright © 2010 pearson education. all rights reserved. introducing social psychology chapter 1...

Introducing Social Psychology

Chapter 1

What Is Social Psychology?

The Power of Social Interpretation

Social psychology differs from sociology or anthropology:

How Else Can We UnderstandSocial Influence?

• Journalists, Instant Experts, Social Critics

• Philosophy

Social psychologists differ from these by

Social psychology is an experimentally based science.

As scientists, our goal is to find objective answers to a wide array of important questions:

Social Psychology Compared with Personality Psychology

• When trying to explain social behavior—how an individual acts within a social context (in relation to others)—personality psychologists explain the behavior in terms of the person's individual character traits.

Social Psychology Compared with Other Social Sciences

The difference between social psychology and other social sciences in level of analysis reflects another difference between the disciplines: what they are trying to explain.

Social Psychology Compared with Sociology

Level of analysis:

• Social psychologists focus on the individual in the context of a social situation.

• Sociology looks toward society at large.

Social Psychology Compared with Sociology

What they are trying to explain:

The Power of Social Influence

Fundamental attribution error:

The tendency to explain our own and other people’s behavior entirely in terms of personality traits, underestimating the power of social influence.

Underestimating the Power of Social Influence

The Subjectivity of the Social Situation

Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

• Human beings are sense making creatures, constantly interpreting things.

• How humans will behave in a given situations is not determined by the objective conditions of a situation but, rather how they perceive it (construal).

What exactly do we mean by the social situation?

Behaviorism:

This emphasis on construal, the way people interpret the social situation, has its roots in an approach called Gestalt psychology.

Gestalt Psychology

Where Construals Come From:Basic Human Motives

How an individual construes a situation is largely shaped by two basic human motives:

The Self-Esteem Approach: The Need to Feel Good About Ourselves

Self-Esteem

Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

Justifying Past Behavior

Suffering and Self-Justification

The Social Cognition Approach:The Need to Be Accurate

The social cognition perspective takes into account how human beings think about the world.

Social Cognition

The social cognition perspective views people as amateur sleuths doing their best to understand and predict their social world.

Expectations About the Social World

• Our expectations can even change the nature of the social world.

• Rosenthal & Jacobson (1968) found

Expectations About the Social WorldHow does such a self-fulfilling prophecy come about? Teaching expecting specific students to perform well

often:•

This, in turn, helps these students feel: •

Additional Motives

• biological drives

• desire for rewards

• need for control

Why study social influence?

1. We are curious.

2. Some social psychologists contribute to the solution of social problems.

Social Psychology and Social Problems

Social psychological theories about human behavior have been applied to a range of contemporary problems, including:

• prejudice

• energy shortages

• AIDS

• unhealthy habits

• violence in schools

When recommending interventions to deal with serious social problems, it is imperative to act on the basis of scientifically grounded theories about human construal and behavior.

copyright © 2010 pearson education. all rights reserved. introducing social psychology chapter 1...

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