SS3714
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
Dr Tina L Rochelle
Email: rochelle@cityu.edu.hk
Office: Y7515
Tel: 3442 8746
1
Course Overview
2
Course Outline
1
Date
11 Jan
Topic
Social Perception, Attribution & Social Cognition
Textbook
Chapters 3 & 4
2
18 Jan
The Self
Chapter 5
3
25 Jan
Attitudes & Strategies of Attitude & Behaviour Change
Chapters 6 & 7
4
01 Feb
Social Influence
Chapter 8
5
08 Feb
Aggression
Chapter 9
-
15 Feb
CHINESE LUNAR NEW YEAR
6
22 Feb
QUIZ I
Chapters 3-9
7
01 Mar
Chapter 10
8
08 Mar
Prosocial Behaviour
INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT SUBMISSION
Affiliation, Attraction & Close Relationships
9
15 Mar
Group Dynamics, Group Performance & Leadership
Chapters 12 & 13
10
22 Mar
Prejudice & Intergroup Relations
Chapter 14
11
29 Mar
Cultural Social Psychology
Chapter 15
-
05 Apr
EASTER BREAK
12
12 Apr
QUIZ II
13
19 Apr
GROUP PRESENTATION SUBMISSIONS
Chapter 11
Chapters 10-15
3
Course Outline
• Quiz I (25%)
• 22nd February 2021
• Individual Assignment (30%)
• 01st March 2021
• Quiz II (25%)
• 12th April 2021
• Group Presentation (20%)
• 19th April 2021
4
Individual Assignment
• Select one article from the six provided
• #1: ‘Lots of heart in new year gift for solo mom’….
• Identify 2 empirical journal articles using databases such as PsycINFO,
ProQuest etc.
• http://www.cityu.edu.hk/lib/
• Keywords: organ donation, gratitude
• # returns = 8
5
Individual Assignment
• Only use empirical articles, do not use review articles.
• Apply findings from the two selected studies to the issue described in the
chosen media article.
• Assignment should be ~3,000 (+/- 500 words)
• Submission deadline: Monday 01st March 2021 by 18:00
• Submit the softcopy to Turnitin via Canvas
6
Individual Assignment
Keywords used: organ donation &
gratitude
8 returns from database
Filter studies last
10yrs & peerreviewed
7
Individual Assignment
• Choose database carefully when searching for studies:
• Using same word search
• PsycARTICLES = 71 results, PsycINFO = 1,912, Google Scholar = 1,040,000
• Paper relevance, relatively recent (last 10yrs)
8
Individual Assignment
Use empirical studies only
9
Individual Assignment
NO review or meta-analysis
articles allowed
10
Individual Assignment
• One benefit using PsycARTICLES, normally can find full-text, psychologyrelevant.
11
Group Presentation
• Form groups of ≤5
• Submit list of groupmates via email by Monday 25th January.
• Those unassigned by 06th Feb will automatically be assigned to groups
• Submit selected social issue via email by Monday 08th February
• Identify a selected social issue
• Apply relevant psychological theories & empirical research to explain the selected social
issue
• Prepare a PowerPoint video/voice presentation of 15mins
• No need to present in class
• All group members must participate in recording
• Nominate one group member to submit presentation on behalf of group
12
Group Presentation
• Prepare 500-word critical reflection on personal learning acquired through
the group project experience.
• Only need to submit a softcopy
• Each group member required to submit to Turnitin by Monday 19th April 18:00
• Submit a hardcopy of group presentation either:
• My office (Y7515) has a letterbox
• My assignment locker in the Department: #59 (located on 7th floor of AC1 in blue zone)
• Submit softcopy of presentation to Turnitin by Monday 19th April 18:00
13
Quizzes
QUIZ I
QUIZ II
• Date: 22nd February 2021
• Date: 12th April 2021
• Time: 15:00 – 17:00 (120mins)
• Time: 15:00 – 17:00 (120mins)
• Location: Zoom
• Location: Zoom
• Section A: Short Essay Questions
• Section A: Short Essay Questions
•
•
•
•
5 sections (L1 → L5)
Each section contains 3 questions
Answer 1 question per section
Each question worth 20 points
•
•
•
•
5 sections (L6 → L10)
Each section contains 3 questions
Answer 1 question per section
Each question worth 20 points
14
Lecture 1
Social Perception, Attribution & Social Cognition
15
Social Perception
• How do we form impressions of what other people are like?
• We quickly arrive at impressions, despite the amount of information we need to
combine.
• Asch (1946) pioneered research into social perception.
• He read out personality adjectives & instructed participants to form an
impression of the person described by the words.
16
Impression Formation
• Intelligent
• Skilful
• Industrious
•
•
•
•
Warm
Determined
Practical
Cautious
• Intelligent
• Skilful
• Industrious
•
•
•
•
Cold
Determined
Practical
Cautious
17
Impression Formation
• Single word change made a big
difference
• Participants who heard the word
‘warm’ more likely to describe the
target as generous, wise, goodnatured etc.
• Effects even extended to physical
characteristics (e.g. short, thin, pale
etc.)
18
Impression Formation
• In a 2nd experiment, Asch replaced ‘polite’ with ‘blunt’ instead of replacing
‘warm’ with ‘cold’
• New words didn’t yield greatly different impressions
• Suggests warmth seen as a central trait that alters the meaning of the target’s
whole personality, while politeness is perceived to be more of a peripheral trait
• Central Trait: Dispositional characteristic viewed as integral to organisation of
personality
• Peripheral Trait: Trait whose presence doesn’t significantly change the overall
interpretation of a person’s personality
19
Influences on Social Perception
• Primacy effect
• Order of information presented
• Earlier information has greater impact on impression → we don’t wait until we have all
info before we start to integrate it to form an impression.
• Personal Contact
• Verbal vs Sensory Data
• Transmitting info in words rather than sensory data (sights, sounds, smells) makes a
different to our impressions. Assumptions based on sensory info:
• Loud, high-pitched voices = more extraverted
• Young vs old, based on walk & gait (young more energetic)
20
Influences on Social Perception
• Baby Faced Features
• People with large, round eyes, short noses, high
foreheads, small chins typically perceived as
less dominant, more naive & warmer than
people with mature-seeming features
• Louder Voice/Higher Pitch
• People with louder or high-pitched voices often
perceived as more extroverted, more dominant
etc.
21
Influences on Social Perception
• Hold a pen between your teeth, making sure it doesn’t touch your lips
• Now grip the end of the pen firmly with your lips, making sure it doesn’t dip
downwards
22
Influences on Social Perception
• In an experiment by Strack, Martin & Stepper (1988), students read cartoons
while holding the pen with either their teeth or lips
• Compared to the control group who held the pen in their hands, those who
held the pen in their teeth rated the cartoons as funnier
• Those who held the pen in their lips rated the cartoons as less funny
• WHY?
Strack, F., Martin, L.L., & Stepper, S. (1988). Inhibiting and facilitating conditions of the human smile: A nonobtrusive test of the
23
facial feedback hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 768–777.
Influences on Social Perception
• Contagion
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60o3Aua0rfc
24
Influences on Social Perception
• Proximate Contributors to Feelings
• Our feelings are also influenced strongly by how we appraise a situation
• Who is happier following Olympic performances – silver, bronze or gold
medallists?
• Researchers analysed footage from Olympics & found that athletes who won 3rd place
were happier than those who won 2nd place
• Silver medallists talked about how close they had come to gold
• Bronze medallists imagined not winning a medal
• Counterfactual Thinking
• The process of imagining alternative versions of actual events
25
Influences on Social Perception
• Proximate Contributors to Feelings
• Happiness depends on where you focus it
• Fu Yuanhui won bronze for 100-metre women’s backstroke in 2016 Rio Olympics
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5_EUhsB0Y4
• Didn’t realise she’d won a medal & recorded a new personal best until informed by
post-race interviewer
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn0nPGfH1HI (subtitles)
26
Social Perception
• Why are feelings important?
• Alert us when something isn’t right
• Enable quick avoidance/approach judgements
• Positive emotions reduce stress of negative life events
• Feelings can be inferred from:
• Behaviour
• Clenched fist, frown
• Physiological measures
• Heart rate, blood pressure
27
Social Perception
• Cognitive Algebra
• Proposed process for averaging or summing trait info when forming impressions
of others.
• If a person is described as ‘warm’ & ‘boring’, the overall impression is less positive
than if the person was described as ‘warm’ & ‘interesting’, but more positive than if
the person was described as ‘cold’ & ‘boring’.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
• When an originally false belief leads to its own fulfilment.
• If you think someone is friendly, you may be more friendly towards them, leading to
the person reciprocating your friendly response.
28
Social Perception
• Attribution Theory
• Set of ideas on how inferences on the causes of action are made when observing
or hearing about a person’s actions.
• To make an attribution is to infer causality to someone/something.
• Usually involves an observer explaining an actor’s behaviour towards
someone/something.
• The actor & observer can also be the same person (self-attribution)
29
Attribution
• Dispositional Inferences
• People are most concerned with identifying personal dispositions
• Enduring characteristics that account for other people’s behaviour
• We want to know what leads people to act the way they do
• When we observe other’s behaviour, our 1st assumption is often that it was
caused by some characteristic within the person.
• When we want to simplify & conserve mental effort, we tend to see the behaviour of others as
stemming primarily from within.
• Advantages of making dispositional inferences:
• Allows integration of variety of info about others
• Allows prediction of future behaviour
• Knowing someone is a friendly person means I can expect a friendly reaction from that
person when I next see them
30
Attribution
• Correspondent Inference Theory
• Observers infer intentions & dispositions that correspond to the behaviour’s
characteristics
• To determine intentions, observers consider the range of behaviours available at
the time of making a decision
• Observers work out why actions are performed by comparing:
• Effects of the selected action with those of alternative unselected actions
• Taking into account their relative perceived desirability
• Actors are assumed to have selected their action on the basis of the effects from
this action alone
31
Determining Intentionality
• Analysis of non-common effects
• Comparison of the consequences of the behavioural options open to the
individual & through the identification of their distinctive outcomes
32
Determining Intentionality
• Correspondence Bias
• People overestimate personal causes (causal influence of personality factors) of
behaviour & underestimate situational causes (causal role of situational
influences)
• When we see a person doing something, we tend to assume that they are doing this
more because this is 'how they are' - because of their internal disposition - than the
external environmental situational factors
• When in a car & someone cut you off did you say to yourself "What an idiot" (or
something similar), or "She must be having a rough day.“?
• Chances are the behaviour was assigned to internal attributes, not giving a 2nd thought to
what external factors play a role in the behaviour
33
Determining Intentionality
• Correspondence Bias
• Four main reasons for correspondence bias:
•
•
•
•
1) Lack of awareness;
2) Unrealistic expectations;
3) Inflated categorisation;
4) Incomplete corrections
• https://spotlightstories.co/couple-posts-tip-receipt-to-waiter/
34
Covariation
• Covariation Theory
• Observers determine causes of
behaviour by collecting data/info
about comparison cases
• Causality is attributed to the
person/entity/situation depending on
which
of
these
factors
covaries/correlates with the observed
effect
• Distinctiveness: How we respond
to different entities under similar
situations
• Consistency: How behaviour varies
across different situations
• Consensus: How different people
behave towards the same entity
35
Access to Covariation Info
• We need to make inferences when:
• Information is incomplete
• No time to collect all the info we need
• We take shortcuts when time resources are limited.
• Augmenting Principle: Evidence has a disproportionate incremental effect when it is
unexpected, when it goes against what is normal.
• Discounting Principle: Works in the opposite way to the augmenting principle – when
we ignore evidence we expected.
36
Social Cognition
• Why is it so easy to jump to conclusions?
• Automatic Thinking:
• Occurs without intention, effort or awareness
• Doesn’t interfere with other concurrent cognitive processes
• Controlled Thinking:
•
•
•
•
Intentional
Under the individual’s control
Effortful
Entails conscious awareness
37
Social Cognition
• 4 main processes of social cognition:
• Attention
• Selecting information
• Interpretation
• Giving information meaning
• Judgement
• Using information to form impressions & make decisions
• Memory
• Storing information for future use
38
Social Cognition
• Attention:
• Attention is limited. Different people may focus on different features of the same
situation
• Depending on our goals, we pay attention to some people & things more than others
• Interpretation:
• What upsets people is not what happens but what they think it means. Many
social situations can be interpreted in more than one way
• Opportunity for misinterpretation in different kinds of communication → verbal vs
written communication
39
Social Cognition
• Judgement:
• The process of using information to form impressions and make decisions
• We gather information because we need to form impressions of people or make
important decisions
• Because we often have limited information, many social judgements are ‘best
guesses’
• Memory
• If we pay enough attention to something it becomes represented in memory
• Memories can directly contribute to new judgements & indirectly influence our
impressions & decisions by affecting what we pay attention to & how we
interpret it
40
Goals of Social Cognition
• 1. Conserving mental effort
• Huge amount of information available to us at any given moment, but we can
only think consciously about a few things at once.
• We need simple ways of understanding the world around us, strategies that help
us make satisfactory judgements expending minimal amounts of mental effort.
• We think in ways that tend to preserve our expectations.
• We pay attention to behaviours relevant to our expectations.
• We interpret ambiguous events/behaviours in ways that support our expectations.
• We tend to remember people and events consistent with our expectations.
41
Goals of Social Cognition
• 2. Managing self-image
• The value of seeing oneself as effective
• The value of seeing oneself as having good relationships
• The value of seeing oneself as a good member of society
• Self-enhancement & protection strategies
•
•
•
•
Social comparisons
Self-serving attributions
Exaggerating strengths & minimizing weaknesses
Illusions of control
42
Goals of Social Cognition
• 3. Seeking an accurate understanding
• When people have a specific desire to have control over their lives, or want to
avoid making mistakes, we sometimes put aside simplifying & self-enhancing
strategies in hope of gaining a more accurate understanding of self & others
• Unexpected Events:
• The goal of accuracy stems from a need to increase control. When personal control is
taken away, people start to think more carefully.
• Because unexpected events threaten control, they typically lead us to think in more
complex ways.
• Unexpected events increase out search for explanations.
• Social Interdependence:
• We think carefully about other people when their actions have important
implications for us and when we’re accountable to others.
43
Social Cognition
• Tendency to group objects (including people) into groups based on shared
characteristics common to them.
• Categorization favours simplification, renders the world a more orderly, predictable
& controllable place
• However, this can have negative consequences.
44
Stereotypes
• Evidence suggests these can be automatically activated – but is this
inevitable?
• Spreading activation:
• Priming one stimulus (e.g. Starbucks) facilitates subsequent processing of related
stimuli (e.g. coffee)
• Chronically accessible concepts:
• Concepts that are routinely more accessible & sensitive to triggers
• Strongly held views about gay marriage, political views etc.
45
Schemas
• Cognitive structures or mental representations comprising pre-digested info about
objects or people from specific categories.
• A mental representation capturing the general characteristics of a particular class of
events or individuals
• Expectancies about objects or groups or what defines them.
• A young child may 1st develop a schema for a horse, knowing a horse is large, has hair,
four legs & a tail. When the child encounters a cow for 1st time, might initially call it a
horse because it fits in the schema for characteristics of a horse (large animal, hair, four
legs & tail). Once told this is a different animal, the child will modify existing schema for a
horse & create a new schema for a cow.
46
Schemas
• Several years ago a British newspaper ran an
advertising campaign
• Look at the 2 pictures
• What do you think happened next?
47
Schemas
• Most people, when asked, assumed
the next shot showed the skinhead
mugging the business man.
• He was instead rushing to save the
business man from a large pile of
falling bricks.
48
Schemas
• Potentially depicts what can happen once a category has been activated.
• Why did people jump to this conclusion?
• Spontaneous encoding of the situation.
• People see the skinhead, readily activate the pertinent skinhead schema (e.g.
anarchic, violent) & arrive at the mistaken conclusion that he may be about to
behave aggressively.
49
Reliance on Schemas
• Information presented early on can cue schemas – primacy
• We use schemas that:
•
•
•
•
Attract our attention → Salience
Have previously been primed → Accessibility
Are consistent with our current feelings → Mood
Relevant to controlling outcomes → Power
50
Regaining Cognitive Control
• Preventing stereotype activation:
• Processing goals
• Individual beliefs about prejudice etc.
• Attentional capacity
• Category activation appears to be goal dependent – arises from the interplay
of a range of cognitive, motivational & biological factors.
51
Regaining Cognitive Control
• What if stereotypes get activated?
• We have some choice in our social responses if:
• Aware of the potential influence of the stereotype
• Sufficient cognitive resources available to take control
• Motivated not to respond in a stereotypic way
52
Continuum Model of Impression Formation
• Impression formation depends on:
• Knowledge of a person’s category membership
• Female, elderly etc.
• Details of personal or individuating characteristics
• Honest, friendly etc.
• Perceiver’s evaluations of others fall somewhere along a continuum of
impression formation:
• From category-based evaluations at one end to individuated responses at other end
• Category-based responses have priority
• Movement along the continuum is a function of 3 factors: interpretational,
motivational, & attentional
53
Continuum Model of Impression Formation
• Motivational influences on moving towards individuated responses:
• Outcome dependency:
• Perceiver believes they will later meet the target & work together on a joint task
• Perceiver accountability:
• Perceiver believes they will have to justify their responses to a 3rd party & be held
responsible for their impressions
• Accuracy-set instructions:
• Perceiver is instructed to be as accurate as possible
• But these may be insufficient if cognitive resources are depleted.
54
Regaining Cognitive Control
• Control is possible if we:
• Are aware of the possibility of unconscious prejudicial influence
• Have sufficient motivation
• Have time available
55
THANKS!
See you next week^^
56