Module 3 ● Often ethnocentric

How do we form social beliefs? ● Cognitively adaptive

● Social cognition-cognitive ● Can be acquired at an early age
process on how we form ● Can be more pronounced and
impressions of the people & the hostile when there is social
world around us. tension and conflict

For a time social psychologists thought Accentuation Principle (Tajfel, 1959,

that: 1969)
● People strive for cognitive How we accentuate:
consistency 1. Similarities among instances within
● That we are Naïve scientists the same category
● That we are Cognitive misers 2. Differences between instances from
● That we are Motivated tactician different categories
3. Differences between different
SCHEMAS categories as a whole
Person Schemas
-idiosyncratic schemas about specific HOW WE USE & ACQUIRE SCHEMAS
people Using schemas
Role Schema - Basic level categories
-knowledge structures about role - Optimal distinctiveness
occupants Acquiring schemas
Scripts - Encounters with instances that fit the
-schemas about events categories
Self-schemas - Schemas can be quite resilient
- More complex and varied than Changing schemas
schemas about other people - People often hold on to original
Content free schemas schemas but can only change if they are
-“rules” about how to process entirely inaccurate
information

APPLYING SCHEMAS
● Categorizing an instance that
fits
● Categories that are fuzzy sets of
related attributes called
prototype are often used
● Some can be exemplars
SOCIAL ENCODING
1. Pre-attentive analysis
-An automatic, nonconscious scanning
CATEGORIES AND STEREOTYPES of the environment
● - Stereotypes: schemas of social 2. Focal attention
groups
-Once noticed, stimuli are consciously
identified and categorized
3. Comprehension
-Stimuli are given meaning
4. Elaborative Reasoning
-Stimuli is linked to other knowledge to
allow complex inferences
INFLUENCES OF SOCIAL ENCODING
Salience
-Property of the stimulus that makes it
stand out from other stimuli
Accessibility
-Ease of recall
Priming
-Activation of accessible categories or
schemas in memory that influence how
we process new information
SOCIAL INFERENCES
● Refers to the way we process
social information to form
impressions of people and make
judgments about them.
How?
1. Bottom-up processing
2. Top-down processing
Social Judgement & Decision Making
● Emerged as a reaction against
the rational actor model.
● Central goal: Create an
approximate description of the
human decision maker of how
people come to decisions in
their daily lives.
● Assumes that people show
systematic flaws and biases of
how they weigh evidence and
reach a decision.
● The model did not appear till
Simon (1957) noted that people
do not have the cognitive
capacity nor time to do all the
calculations that the rational
actor model often demands.
● He proposed that people often
fail to conduct an exhaustive
analysis of any decision but
instead often stop well before
they had completely considered
all evidence: satisficing.
● Edwards (1968) discovered that
people revised their beliefs too
relative to what basic statistical
principles said they should:
judgmental conservatism.
● Kahneman & Tversky (1979)
placed the rational actor under
close scrutiny to explain various
ways in which people differed
from the rational actor.
COMMON MISTAKES IN MAKING
SOCIAL INFERENCES
Illusory Thinking
1. Illusory Correlation
2. Illusory control
Moods & Judgments
-Participants in negative mood
performed worse than participants in
positive mood, but both groups were
outperformed by the neutral mood
reasoner s ( Jung et al, 2014)
Module 4 (Attitudes and Behavior)
Attitudes
● A relatively enduring
organization of beliefs, feelings
and behavioural tendencies
towards socially significant
objects, groups, events or
symbols.
 ● An evaluation-positive or
negative towards an attitudinal Modelling
object - Tendency of an individual to reproduce
the action, attitudes & emotional
Purpose of Attitudes responses exhibited by a real-life or
Psychological Functions of Attitudes symbolic model.
Types of Attitudes
● Utilitarian Self-Perception Theory (Bem, 1967)
*FSA - Inferring our attitudes from our own
-Helps the person to achieve rewards behaviour (i.e. making self-attributions)
and gain approval from others.
*Psychological Perspective How are Attitudes Revealed?
-Behaviorist
Physiological Reactions
● Knowledge - Can indicate feeling intensity but not direction
*FSA
- Helps the person to structure the world Action Clues
so that it makes sense - e.g. interpersonal distance
*Psychological Perspective - Can be measured by unobtrusive measures
- Cognitive
Implicit Attitudes Tests
● Ego defense - Bias in language use
*FSA - Attitude Priming
- Helps the person protect him/herself - Implicit Association test
from acknowledging basic self-truths
*Psychological Perspective Can Attitudes Predict Behaviour?
- Psychoanalytic ● Early research evidence suggested a
weak to moderate link between
● Value-expression attitudes and behaviour (e.g., LaPiere,
*FSA 1934; Wicker, 1969)
- Helps the person express important More recent research has examined moderators
aspects of the self-concept of the attitude-behaviour relationship, Including
*Psychological Perspective Attitude strength, Direct experience with the
- Humanistic attitude object, Attitudinal ambivalence,
Correspondence of attitudinal and behavioural
WHERE DO ATTITUDES COME FROM? (Attitude measures.
Formation)

Mere Exposure Effect

- Repeated exposure to a particular
object will lead to greater attraction to
that object
Conditioning
- Classical & Instrumental Conditioning
Theory of Planned Behaviour (Ajzen, 1991)
- This model posits an important mediator
of the attitude behaviour link, namely
behavioural ‘intention’
- The TPB holds that attitudes combine
with other important factors in
predicting intentions and, in turn,
behaviour:
*Perceived social pressure
* Factors that may facilitate or
inhibit performance of the behaviour
Theories of Attitude Change: Elaboration
Likelihood Model of Persuasion (Petty &
Cacioppo, 1986)
- ELM holds that there are two ‘routes’ to
attitude change:
*Central route to persuasion occurs
when we think critically about message
content and are swayed by the strength
and quality of its arguments.
*Peripheral route to persuasion occurs
when we do not do much thinking but
are swayed by employing heuristics on
the basis of non-content cues (e.g.,
“experts know best”)
- Whether persuasion results from the
central or the peripheral processing
route depends upon:
*Ability
e.g., attention, ‘receptive’
*Motivation
Personal Involvement
Theories of Attitude Change: Cognitive
Dissonance Theory (Festinger, 1957)
- This theory of self-persuasion holds that:
*Cognitive inconsistency creates a state
of psychological tension (i.e.,
“dissonance”)
*Such tension is aversive and motivating
(where it poses a threat to the self)
*Easiest form of dissonance reduction
will be adopted
Theories of Attitude Change: SelfPerception
Theory (Bem, 1965)
- According to Bem, attitude change does
not need to result from dissonance
- People infer their attitudes from their
behaviour
- Cognitive dissonance when
attitude-behaviour discrepancy large
self-perception when not so large
(Fazio, et al. 1977)
RESISTING PERSUASION
• Reactance
• Forewarning
• Inoculation Effect
2 kinds of defence:
1. Supportive Defence: Resistance is built by
adding additional arguments to support original
belief
2. Inoculation Defence: Learning the opposition
arguments are and then hears them demolished
Module 5 (Social Influence)
There are many different sources of power that
people can access to persuade others:
● Reward power: The ability to
give/promise rewards for compliance
● Coercive power: The ability to
give/threaten punishment for
non-compliance
● Informational power: The target’s belief
that the influencer has more
information than oneself
● Expert power: The target’s belief that
the influencer has generally greater
expertise and knowledge than oneself
● Legitimate power: The target’s belief
that the influencer is authorised by a
 recognised power structure to common
and make decisions.
● Referent power: Identification with,
attraction to/respect for the source of
influence
TYPES OF SOCIAL INFLUENCE:
Compliance
- refers to a situation in which you do
what someone asks you to do, or you go
along publicly with a request, but you do
not necessarily change your underlying
attitudes and feelings.
Obedience
- is one form of compliance: You do what
someone tells you because he or she is
in a position of power over you. (This
person has the power to reward and
punish you.)
* Membership groups — groups you are in by
some external designation only — produce
compliance.
In contrast to compliance is CONFORMITY.
You internalize a group norm as being relevant
to who you are.
Influence creates genuine, internalized attitude
change.
Reference groups (groups you feel you belong
to) produce conformity.
OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY
● Blind obedience to authority can cause
people to do terrible things they would
never do on their own. Obedience to
authority is often the mitigating plea
made by people charged with crimes
against humanity.
● In his classic obedience study, Stanley
Milgram found that very ordinary people
would ostensibly administer a massive
and deadly electric shock to a stranger
who merely got word pairs wrong,
simply because the experimenter
ordered them to do so. A major surprise
was that this willingness to shock far
exceeded expectations.
● Milgram's research stirred up a fierce
debate in psychology concerning the
ethics of doing research and has led to
the development of very stringent
guidelines for psychological research.
CONFORMITY
- Conformity is a process of internalized
cognitive change as the consequence of
influence, largely by group norms.
- Group norms obey the METACONTRAST
PRINCIPLE : They capture similarities
with a group and differences between
groups. Norms arise to regulate
behaviour; we use people’s relevant
behaviour as a frame of reference to
determine the norm.
- Experiments in which a single person
would take part surrounded by a group
of confederates of the experiment
- Sherif showed this in a series of studies
where people estimated the movement
of a light source in a dark room
(autokinesis); over time the estimates
converged on the average of the group,
and this norm persisted to influence
new members of the group.
- Norms are powerful. Asch showed that
people find it extraordinarily difficult to
resist being influenced by an incorrect
majority if that majority is consistent
and unanimous - even one dissenter can
dramatically reduce the majority's
power over the individual.
- Experiments in which a single person
would take part surrounded by a group
of confederates of the experiment
 ● Situational factors account for
considerable variance in the
tendency to conform.
● Conformity to group pressure is
much higher when the majority
is unanimous. It is also higher
when the size of the group
increases, though its at full
strength when you have a three
to five majority (Stang, 1976).
● Group size may have a different
effect depending on what type
of judgement is being made and
the motivation of the person.
E.g. if you are concerned about
being correct then you may be
swayed with less people
(Campbell & Fairey, 1989).
● Support also a situational factor
* Conformity is greatly reduced if a dissenter
gives truthful information compared to the
information held by a group. Thus, if there is a
competent supporter of information that is not
deemed as true by the group, conformity will
lessen.
CONFORMITY PROCESSES
● informational influence
● normative influence dual-process:
dependency model
● referent informational influence:
Challenge to the dual-process
dependency model
INFORMATIONAL INFLUENCE
- Accept information from others as
evidence about reality.
- People need to feel confident that their
perception, beliefs and feelings are
correct. Informational influence comes
into being when people are uncertain,
because either the stimuli is ambiguous
or there is social disagreement.
NORMATIVE INFLUENCE
- You may conform to gain approval and
avoid censure from others
- People have a need for social approval
and acceptance, therefore this explains
why people go along with the group.
- Normative influence becomes important
when the group is perceived to have
power, by being able to provide
rewards, or punishment (via social
disapproval).
DUAL PROCESS DEPENDENCY MODEL OF
INFLUENCE
(Informational influence + Normative Influence)
● Based on Social Identity Approach.
● You conform because norms define the
membership in a group that is an
important aspect of your self concept.
● Dual Process model focuses on
interpersonal dependency, while this
emphasises the social groups that you
belong to and group norms.
● Therefore you don’t conform to others,
you conform to what is expected from
your group norm.
MINORITY INFLUENCE
Social Change suggests minority influence
● Suffragettes of the 1920’s changed
public opinion that women got the
public vote
● Nelson Mandela in South Africa
● Greenpeace has slowly helped changed
our attitudes to the environment
*Moscovici and Faucheux (1972) have pondered
whether Asch and Sherif observed in their classic
experiments evidence of majority influence but
the extent of minority influence.
Moscovici has argued that there are three social
influence modalities in the occurrence of social
conflict:
● Conformity: majority influence
● Normalisation: mutual compromise
leading to convergence
● Innovation: minority creates and
accentuates conflict in a bid for
acceptance of the minority viewpoint

Moscovici developed the genetic model of

minority influence Whether a minority can win
over a majority depends on how the minority
goes about its task (its behavioural style)

The single most important behavioural style is

CONSISTENCY – all the members repeat the
same message
This leads to
● Disrupts the majority norm and
provides uncertainty
● Draws attention to itself as an entity
● Conveys the existence of a alternative
and coherent point of view
● Demonstrate certainty in, and
unshakable commitment to, its point of
view
● It shows that the only solution to the
conflict that has arisen is the adoption
of the minority viewpoint
● Eventually leads to CONVERSION
EFFECT.