Social Psychology

Foundations of Social Psychology

Social psychology examines how people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of other people. It includes intrapersonal processes, such as social cognition and attitudes, and interpersonal processes, such as relationships, group behavior, prejudice, and helping.

A central idea is that behavior usually reflects an interaction between personal characteristics and situational forces. The same person may act differently depending on social roles, cultural expectations, group norms, authority figures, or the presence of bystanders. People first interpret a social situation and then act on those interpretations.

Takeaway: To understand behavior, consider both the person and the social situation surrounding the behavior.

Social Cognition and Attribution

People use social cognition to form impressions, interpret events, remember information about others, and judge why behavior occurs. An attribution is an explanation for behavior. A dispositional explanation emphasizes internal qualities such as personality, ability, motives, or effort; a situational explanation emphasizes external conditions such as pressure, opportunity, roles, or circumstances.

The fundamental attribution error occurs when observers overestimate dispositional explanations for other people’s actions and underestimate situational influences. For example, a late student may be labeled irresponsible even when traffic or a family emergency caused the delay. People often explain their own behavior more situationally and other people’s behavior more dispositionally. The self-serving bias involves attributing successes to one’s own abilities while explaining failures through external circumstances. The just-world hypothesis is the belief that people generally receive outcomes they deserve.

A schema is an organized mental framework that helps interpret information. Schemas make familiar situations easier to process, but they may also cause people to overlook information that conflicts with expectations. Social categorization can support identity and belonging while also encouraging in-group favoritism and broad judgments about out-groups.

Takeaway: Social judgments are efficient because they use mental shortcuts, but those shortcuts can produce inaccurate or unfair conclusions.

Attitudes, Dissonance, and Persuasion

An attitude is a relatively enduring evaluation of a person, object, group, issue, or idea. It commonly includes three related components:

• The affective component consists of feelings or emotional reactions.

• The behavioral component consists of actions or behavioral intentions.

• The cognitive component consists of beliefs or thoughts.

Attitudes can influence behavior, but the relationship is not perfect. Situational pressures, competing goals, and social expectations may lead people to act differently from their stated attitudes.

Cognitive dissonance is psychological tension caused by inconsistency among beliefs, attitudes, and behavior. A person who values health but regularly eats unhealthy food might reduce dissonance by changing eating habits, deciding that health risks are exaggerated, or treating occasional unhealthy meals as harmless. After making a difficult choice or taking an action, people may adjust their attitudes to make the choice seem reasonable.

Persuasion is an intentional effort to change attitudes, beliefs, or behavior. The central route to persuasion involves careful attention to evidence and reasoning. The peripheral route relies more on surface cues such as attractiveness, fame, emotional appeal, or apparent credibility. Central-route changes are often more durable because they are based on considered information.

Takeaway: Attitudes guide behavior, but behavior and persuasive situations can also reshape attitudes.

Conformity, Compliance, and Authority

Social influence occurs when the presence or actions of others affect a person’s thoughts, feelings, or behavior. Conformity means matching a group’s behavior or expressed opinions, even when privately disagreeing. Compliance means agreeing to a request or demand, usually from another individual. Obedience means following an order from an authority figure.

Normative social influence produces conformity because people want acceptance, want to avoid rejection, or want to maintain relationships. Informational social influence produces conformity because other people seem to provide useful information, especially in ambiguous or uncertain situations.

Conformity tends to increase when the majority is larger, responses are public, the group is cohesive, or the individual is uncertain. It tends to decrease when a person has a supportive dissenter or can respond privately. The pattern varies with the task, culture, age, relationships among group members, and other contextual factors.

Obedience is more likely when an authority is viewed as legitimate, responsibility appears to belong to the authority, and demands escalate gradually. These processes show how social settings can influence behavior even when individuals experience internal disagreement.

Takeaway: Acceptance needs, uncertainty, group context, and perceived authority all shape social influence.

Performance and Decision-Making in Groups

Groups affect individual performance, decision-making, identity, and responsibility. Social facilitation is the tendency for the presence of others to improve performance on well-learned or simple tasks but sometimes impair performance on difficult or unfamiliar tasks. An audience can increase arousal, making a person’s dominant response more likely.

Social loafing is reduced effort when individual contributions cannot be identified or evaluated separately. Clear responsibilities, meaningful goals, and individual accountability can limit it.

Groupthink occurs when a cohesive group values agreement and harmony more than careful evaluation of alternatives. Warning signs include self-censorship, pressure against dissent, an illusion of unanimity, overconfidence, and negative stereotypes of opposing groups. Group polarization is the tendency for discussion to strengthen members’ initial attitudes and produce a more extreme group position. This may happen because members hear additional supporting arguments and compare their views with those of other members.

Deindividuation is reduced self-awareness and accountability that can occur when people feel anonymous or absorbed in a group. It does not automatically produce harmful behavior; its effects depend on group norms and the situation.

Takeaway: Groups can improve performance and cooperation, but anonymity, weak accountability, and pressure for agreement can impair judgment.

Attraction and Relationships

Relationships can provide companionship, support, intimacy, cooperation, and belonging. Proximity creates frequent opportunities for contact and familiarity. Similarity in attitudes, interests, values, backgrounds, or lifestyles often supports relationship formation; this tendency is called homophily. Reciprocity refers to the tendency to like people who show that they like us. Self-disclosure can deepen intimacy when sharing is gradual, mutual, and appropriate. Physical attractiveness can influence initial impressions, although standards vary and attractiveness does not determine relationship quality.

Robert Sternberg’s triangular theory of love describes relationships through intimacy, passion, and commitment. Intimacy involves emotional closeness and sharing, passion involves physical attraction and arousal, and commitment involves the decision to maintain a relationship over time. Different combinations produce different forms of love: intimacy without passion or commitment is often called liking, passion without intimacy or commitment is infatuation, and all three components together are associated with consummate love.

Social exchange theory proposes that people evaluate relationships partly through perceived rewards, costs, fairness, satisfaction, alternatives, and investment. Rewards may include affection, companionship, and support; costs may include conflict, time, financial demands, or emotional strain. This perspective does not imply that relationships are purely economic.

Takeaway: Attraction and relationship maintenance involve familiarity, mutual responsiveness, shared qualities, emotional connection, and perceived fairness.

Prejudice, Inclusion, and Helping

A stereotype is a generalized belief about a social group. Prejudice is an evaluative attitude, often negative, toward people based on group membership. Discrimination is unjustified behavior or unequal treatment directed at people because of group membership. These concepts are related but distinct: a person may recognize a stereotype without endorsing it or hold a prejudice without acting on it.

Prejudice can be supported by social learning, conformity to group norms, in-group favoritism, perceived competition, and scapegoating, in which an out-group is blamed for problems or frustration. Social categorization can create an “us versus them” distinction even when group boundaries are arbitrary.

Intergroup contact can reduce prejudice when groups have relatively equal status, cooperate toward shared goals, interact personally, and receive institutional support. Cooperation that requires groups to work together can reduce hostility more effectively than competition alone.

Prosocial behavior is voluntary behavior intended to benefit another person or group. Examples include sharing, comforting, cooperating, donating, rescuing, and assisting. Altruism refers to helping motivated primarily by concern for others, even when helping involves personal cost. Empathy, or understanding and sharing another person’s perspective or emotional state, can increase the motivation to help.

The bystander effect is the tendency to be less likely to help when other people are present. Diffusion of responsibility helps explain this pattern: when several people witness an emergency, each may assume someone else will act. Helping also depends on recognizing the emergency, feeling capable, assessing risks and costs, following social norms, and receiving a clear request. Directly identifying a helper, describing the emergency, and making a specific request can increase the likelihood of assistance.

Takeaway: Social influence can produce exclusion and unfairness, but it can also support cooperation, empathy, and effective helping.