Introduction
Social
Psychology, the scientific study of how people think, feel, and behave in
social situations. This area of specialization draws on two disciplines:
sociology, which focuses on groups; and psychology,
which centers on the individual.
Social psychologists seek to answer a wide
variety of questions, among them: Why do we help or ignore others in need? Why
are people romantically attracted to each other? How do people form stereotypes
about racial and ethnic groups, and how can they overcome them? What techniques
of persuasion do advertisers use to sell their products? Why do people usually
conform in group situations? What makes someone an effective leader?
As in other branches of psychology, social
psychologists use a wide variety of research methods, including laboratory
experiments, observations in the real world, case studies, and public opinion
surveys. Some social psychologists conduct basic research to test general
theories about human social behavior, while others seek to apply that research
to solve real-world social problems.
Social psychology and sociology are often
confused, because both fields study groups and group behavior. However, their
perspectives differ. Whereas sociologists strive to understand group behavior in
terms of society and social institutions, social psychologists focus on
individuals and how they perceive, interact with, and influence each other. They
study how individuals exert influence on groups and how group situations affect
the behavior of individuals.
Historical Overview
Social psychology is a relatively young
discipline whose origin can be traced to experiments conducted late in the 19th
century. These experiments, conducted separately by American psychologist Norman
Triplett and French agricultural engineer Max Ringelmann, investigated whether
the presence of other people disrupts or enhances an individual’s performance on
various tasks—a question that is still the subject of research today. The first
textbooks in social psychology were published early in the 20th century by
British psychologist William McDougall in 1908 and American sociologist Edward
Alsworth Ross, also in 1908. Another important textbook, published by American
psychologist Floyd Allport in 1924, extended the principles of conditioning and
learning to account for a wide range of social behaviors.
In the 1930s, German-American psychologist
Kurt Lewin introduced the notion that people are largely influenced
by how they perceive the world around them. Lewin proposed that behavior is a
unique function of the interaction between a person and his or her environment.
Lewin conducted pioneering studies of leadership styles. He also advocated the
practical application of social psychology in the workplace, the classroom, and
other settings. Today, Lewin is considered by many to be the founder of modern
social psychology.
A new era of social psychology began after
World War II (1939-1945). Driven by a need to understand the horrors of war,
many researchers began to study competition and conflict between groups,
aggression, stereotypes and prejudice, leadership, group dynamics,
obedience to authority, conformity, and the use of propaganda to change
attitudes. Others soon became interested in a broader range of topics, such as
affiliation with groups, interpersonal attraction, love, the development of
close relationships, and the influences of gender, culture, and evolution on
social behavior. Still others went on to apply social psychology to studies of
physical and mental health, education, business, law, political behavior, and
advertising.
Area of Research
Social psychology today is a diverse
discipline encompassing a broad range of research topics. This article discusses
some of the most important areas of research: processes of social influence,
social perception, and interpersonal behavior.
. | Processes of Social Influence |
Although born helpless, human infants are
equipped at birth with reflexes that orient them toward people. They are
responsive to faces, turn their head toward voices, and mimic certain facial
gestures on cue. It seems that human beings are inherently social animals. All
over the world, people experience joy when they form new social attachments and
react with loneliness and despair when these bonds are broken—as when separated
from a loved one by distance, divorce, or death. Research shows that people who
have a network of family and friends are happier and healthier and live longer
than those who are more isolated. People need people, which is why social
situations can have such a profound effect on our thoughts, feelings, and
behavior.
1. Conformity
Formation of Social Norms
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In 1951 American psychologist Solomon
Asch constructed a very different situation. In his studies, a subject sat at a
table with six research confederates (accomplices of the experimenter) posing as
fellow subjects. Each person in the group was asked to look at several sets of
lines and answer questions about them. For each set, the person was asked to
indicate which of three lines was similar in length to a standard line (see the
figure below).
The experimenter had the members take turns in order
of their seating position. In all sessions, the subject was placed in seat
number six. The task seemed easy at first, but then on certain sets all of the
confederates, according to plan, selected the wrong line. Faced with a conflict,
subjects went along with the incorrect majority 37 percent of the time. Most
subjects knew the real answer but chose the wrong one to avoid appearing
different. This study—and others more recently conducted—showed that people
often adjust their own behavior to conform with that of the group. People are
more likely to give in to conformity pressures in this way when the group is
unanimous, when the judgment to be made is difficult, and in cultures that value
interdependence and social harmony over individual goals.
2. | Obedience |
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During the 1960s, American psychologist
Stanley Milgram studied a form of social influence stronger than conformity:
obedience to authority. In a famous series of experiments that attracted
controversy about human research ethics, Milgram put each of 1,000 subjects into
a situation in which they were ordered by an experimenter to administer painful
electric shocks to a confederate (who did not actually receive any shocks). The
subjects in these studies were led to believe that they were acting as
'teachers' in a study of the effects of punishment on learning. Each time the
'learner' made a mistake on a memory test, the subject was supposed to deliver a
shock. The intensity of the shocks was to increase, beginning at 15 volts and
continuing in 15-volt increments to 450 volts. In most situations, the subjects
could not actually see the learner, but they could hear an audiotaped response
that sounded increasingly serious with each successive shock. The learner's
protests would begin with grunts of pain, progress to shouting and sometimes
even complaints of heart trouble, and eventually turn to agonized screams of
“Let me out of here!” After the teacher passed the 330-volt level, the learner
would fall silent and give no further responses. Yet at each step, an
experimenter ordered the subject to raise the level of shock to the
learner.
Many of the subjects in the experiment
felt extreme anguish over the pain they thought they were inflicting. They
sweated, trembled, bit their lips, or broke into fits of nervous laughter.
Despite their distress, an astonishing 65 percent of subjects in Milgram's
initial study delivered the final punishment of 450 volts. Other social
psychologists conducting similar experiments later observed comparable levels of
obedience among men and women all over the world. Apparently, many otherwise
decent people will cause intense suffering to others rather than disobey
authority.
Milgram designed this experiment in
order to understand the obedience of Nazi soldiers and officials in killing
millions of Jews and others during World War II. When interviewed after the
experiment, many of Milgram’s subjects said that they had obeyed largely because
they thought the experimenter would bear responsibility for any harm to the
learner. Similarly, Nazi death camp administrator Adolf Eichmann, when tried for
murdering thousands of innocent people, attributed his behavior to the fact that
he was merely following the orders of his superiors.
3. | Attitudes and Persuasion |
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While many social psychologists study
social influences on behavior, others focus on the changing of attitudes.
Attitudes are relatively enduring beliefs or opinions that predispose people
to respond in a positive, negative, or ambivalent way to a person, object, or
idea. In particular, social scientists study how people are led to change their
attitudes—the process known as persuasion. Persuasion is an integral part
of human social life. Many people have a direct interest in knowing how to
effectively persuade others: politicians trying to win votes, salespeople and
advertisers hawking their products, religious leaders seeking converts, trial
lawyers arguing before a jury, and fund-raisers seeking donations. Persuasion is
neither inherently good nor bad. Whether we see it as beneficial or harmful to
individuals depends on whether we approve of the message.
Persuasion can occur in two ways. First,
as you might expect, people often change their attitudes in response to strong
and logical arguments. However, research has shown that people may also be
influenced by a speaker's physical attractiveness, by the arousal of fear and
other emotions, by the reactions of others in the audience, and by other
superficial cues. Researchers have identified three main factors that contribute
to the effect of a persuasive communication: the source, the message, and the
audience. In other words, what matters in persuasion is who says
what to whom.
Sometimes people change their attitudes
not in response to a persuasive communication but by convincing themselves, a
process of self-persuasion. In 1957 American psychologist Leon Festinger
proposed cognitive dissonance theory, which says that people often change
their attitudes to justify their own actions. According to this theory, people
who behave in ways that contradict their own attitudes experience an unpleasant
state of internal tension known as cognitive dissonance. To reduce that
tension, they adjust their attitudes to be consistent with their behavior.
In a classic test of this theory in
1959, Festinger and his colleague J. Merrill Carlsmith asked college students to
engage in an extremely boring, repetitive task for one hour. Afterward, the
experimenters offered the students either $1 or $20 to deceive a prospective
subject in the experiment (actually a confederate) into thinking that the task
ahead would be interesting. Later, the students were asked to rate their
enjoyment of the task. Students who did not mislead a confederate admitted the
task was boring. So did those given $20—ample justification for their white lie
to the confederate. However, those paid only $1 rated the task as somewhat
enjoyable. Having lied without a sufficient justification, these subjects felt
internally pressured to view the task in more positive terms as a way to
reconcile their behavior with their attitude and reduce their cognitive
dissonance. Also consistent with the theory, hundreds of more recent studies
have shown that people change their attitudes to justify their own investment of
effort, money, or time. Thus, we come to love what we strive for.
B. | Social Perception |
A second core topic in social psychology
is social perception, the process by which people come to know and
evaluate one another. Researchers in social perception study how we form
impressions of each other, how we explain the causes of our own and other
people’s behavior, and how we form stereotypes and prejudices toward social
groups.
1. | Forming Impressions and Making Attributions |
Research has shown that people form
impressions of each other in two ways. Sometimes people make quick and
effortless judgments based on others' physical appearance, facial expressions,
or body language. Studies have shown, for example, that people who are
physically attractive are perceived to be happy, warm, friendly, successful,
confident, and well-adjusted. At other times, however, people form impressions
based on a careful observation of a person’s behavior. According to this latter
view, people act like amateur scientists, gathering and analyzing behavioral
evidence before evaluating others. The explanations for behavior that people
come up with are called attributions, and the theory that describes the process
is called attribution theory.
Over the years, research into
attribution has shown that when we explain the behavior of others, we tend to
overestimate the role of personal factors and underestimate the influence of
situations. This bias is so universal that it has been called the fundamental
attribution error. In one demonstration of the fundamental attribution
error, experimenters randomly assigned subjects to participate in a quiz show in
the role of either questioner or contestant. Then in front of the contestant and
an observer, the experimenters told the questioner to devise a set of difficult
questions to ask the contestant. Not surprisingly, many of the questions—created
from the questioner's own store of esoteric knowledge—stumped the contestant.
Yet when asked to rate the general knowledge of both participants, observers
consistently saw the questioners as more knowledgeable than the contestants. The
observers failed to take the situational roles into account and attributed the
behavior they witnessed to each person’s level of knowledge.
In forming impressions of others,
people are subject to other biases as well. For example, a great deal of
research shows that people are often slow to revise their first impressions of
others even when those views are not supported by the evidence. Part of the
problem is that once we form an impression of someone, we tend to interpret that
person’s later behavior in ways that seem to fit our impression. Another problem
is that our first impression of someone may shape the way we treat that
person—which, in turn, may influence his or her actual behavior. This process is
known as a self-fulfilling prophecy. In a classic illustration of this
phenomenon, in 1968 American psychologists Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson
told a group of elementary school teachers that certain students were on the
verge of an intellectual growth spurt (in fact, these students were randomly
chosen from their classes). By the end of the school year, these designated
students—who had received more positive attention from the teachers—actually had
higher average test scores than their peers.
2. | Stereotypes and Prejudice |
“Whites Only” Waiting Room
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Seeking to understand the roots of
racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination, many social psychologists
study the causes and effects of stereotypes, generalized beliefs that
associate whole groups of people with certain traits. Stereotyping is widespread
and can be found in all societies. For example, many Americans assume that women
are nurturing, African Americans are athletic, librarians are reserved,
Californians are laid back, and used-car dealers are untrustworthy. Research
shows that we naturally sort other people into social categories such as race,
gender, occupation, and socioeconomic class. Furthermore, we see people as part
of either “us” or “them”—depending on whether or not they are members of our own
groups. In making this distinction, we tend to generalize from a single person
to a whole group and to assume that “they” (members of a particular social group
outside our own) are all alike. Although stereotypes can help simplify our
understanding of the world and may even contain a seed of truth, they are
usually overgeneralizations. Research shows that stereotypes can color our
judgments of others at an unconscious level.
Another prevalent and disturbing human
phenomenon is prejudice, the negative evaluation of others based solely
on their membership in a particular group. The tendency to stereotype is one
cause of prejudice, but there are at least two other causes as well. First,
prejudices often stem from direct competition for valuable but limited
resources. This competition between groups can trigger conflict, frustration,
and hostility. Second, people may demean others, without realizing it, in order
to boost their own sense of self-worth. Research shows that people derive pride
from their connections to successful others, and that berating “them” (other
groups) can make people feel more secure about “us” (their own group). This
finding may explain why people all over the world believe that their own
nationality, culture, and religion are better and more deserving than those of
other people.
C. | Interpersonal Behavior |
A third topic of social psychology
concerns interpersonal behavior, the ways that individuals interact with one
another. Social psychologists in this area are especially interested in group
processes, “antisocial” (aggressive, competitive) behavior, “prosocial”
(helpful, cooperative) behavior, and interpersonal attraction.
1. | Group Processes |
When people assemble in groups,
profound changes often take place in their behavior. Perhaps the most basic
question in social psychology is “How does the presence of other people affect
an individual's behavior?” Seeking to answer this question, researchers have
discovered that the presence of others facilitates an individual's performance
on simple, well-learned tasks but impairs performance on new or complex tasks.
For example, people asked to solve simple multiplication problems solve them
faster with others around than by themselves, but they perform worse on more
complex math problems.
Research has shown that people often
“loaf” (exert less effort than they could) when they participate in cooperative
joint activities such as a tug-of-war. Studies also show that decision-making
groups often fall victim to groupthink, a phenomenon in which group
members excessively seek group concurrence, suppress dissent to maintain group
harmony, and blindly convince themselves that the group’s position is correct.
Groupthink is a process that can lead groups to make hasty, often bad
decisions.
2. | Aggression |
Learning Aggression Through Observation
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Over the years, many researchers have
studied the interpersonal problem of human aggression. Some research focuses on
the ways in which aggression is programmed into human nature by instincts,
genes, hormones, and other biological factors. For example, crime statistics all
over the world reveal that men commit more violent crimes than women do. One
possible basis for this difference is that aggression is linked to the male sex
hormone testosterone.
Most social psychologists who study
aggression emphasize the roles of family, culture, peers, and other
environmental factors. In particular, these researchers have found that
aggression can be triggered by frustration, noise, hot weather, physical pain,
and other unpleasant states. Other situational factors that may trigger
aggression include the sight of weapons, feelings of anonymity in a large
faceless crowd, and the consumption of alcohol and other drugs. Over the years,
hundreds of studies have also shown that viewing large amounts of television
violence can increase aggressive behavior, particularly in children.
3. | Altruism |
Focusing on a brighter side of human
nature, many researchers study altruism, helping behavior that is
motivated primarily by a desire to benefit a person other than oneself. Interest
in this topic began in earnest following the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese in
New York City. Thirty-eight of her neighbors, aroused around 3 a.m. by her
screams, came to their windows and watched over the next half-hour as her
assailant stabbed and raped her. Yet none of the neighbors came to her aid or
even called the police until after the attack was over. As a result of this
shocking event, social psychologists conducted experiments in which they staged
different emergencies, varied the conditions, and observed what happened.
Consistently, these studies revealed that the greater the number of bystanders,
the less likely anyone is to feel responsible and intervene. In emergency
situations, ironically, the presence of other people inhibits helping.
In contrast to studies showing that
bystanders often do not assist needy victims when in the presence of others,
there are situations in which people do intervene. For example, researchers have
found that individuals are more helpful to others when they are in a good mood,
when they have time to help, when they see someone else offer help, when they
are in a small town rather than a big city, or when they believe that the
help-seeker is deserving of assistance. Research also confirms that people
sometimes offer help to those who need it for purely altruistic reasons, out of
a sense of empathy and compassion.
4. | Interpersonal Attraction |
Married Couple
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Why are we drawn to some people more
than others? What sparks an initial attraction, and what factors then lead two
people to form and maintain an intimate relationship? Seeking answers to these
questions, researchers who study the process of interpersonal attraction have
observed some consistent human tendencies. For example, they have found that
familiarity breeds fondness, that people tend to like others who are physically
attractive, and that people get along best with others who have similar
attitudes and interests. Another research finding agrees with common sense:
People tend to stay in relationships that provide relatively more rewards than
costs. Rewards may include companionship, love, emotional support, and sexual
gratification. Examples of costs are conflict between partners, less
independence, and giving up opportunities in order to sustain the
relationship.
IV. | APPLICATIONS OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY |
Findings from social psychology have proven
useful for advancing the studies of law, business, health, advertising,
politics, religion, sports, and other areas. In law, for example, social
psychologists have studied how lawyers select jurors for a trial, how juries
deliberate to a verdict, and the ways in which jurors are influenced by pretrial
publicity and inadmissible testimony. In the workplace, social psychologists
study job interviews and employee selection, how employers can motivate workers,
and how managers can become effective leaders. Findings in social psychology
about how conflicts arise and how people can best resolve them have relevance to
diplomacy and the process of negotiating peace between nations. Researchers
interested in health have found that having friends and other social connections
promotes both physical health and mental well-being. Today, increasing numbers
of social psychologists are becoming interested in practical applications for
their work.
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