Blue

Blue

Conformity and Obedience

HUL261
Yashpal Jogdand

Copyrighted material is being used for academic purposes only, and is intended only for students registered in IIT Delhi, and not for wider circulation.
 Overview
• Impression Formation

• Social Influence

• Conformity

• Obedience

2
Impression Formation

3
 Impression formation

• How do we form judgements and impressions of people?

• Are some types of information more important than other?

• What are the approaches to the study of impression formation?

4
 Asch’s
Experiment

5
 Asch’s Experiment

• Intelligent
• Skillful
• Industrious
• Participants read a list of words describing a
• ________ ß Warm/cold or polite/blunt
person and reported their impression.
• Determined
• Practical
• Cautious

6
 Asch’s Experiment

• Substituting the word "cold" for "warm"

• Intelligent
produced drastically different impressions of
• Skillful the target. One participant described the
• Industrious "cold" target as, "A rather snobbish person
• ________ ß Warm/cold or polite/blunt who feels that his character and intelligence
set him apart from the run-of-the-mill
• Determined
individual. Calculating and unsympathetic.“
• Practical
• Cautious
• Asch found that some traits seemed to be
more central. "warm“ and "cold," for
example, appear to be central traits

7
 Impression formation
• Asch’s (1946) Configural Model:

• Central traits: Traits that have disproportionate influence on the configuration

of final impressions

• Peripheral traits: Traits that have insignificant influence on the configuration

of final impressions

• Central traits influence the meaning of other traits and the perceived
relationship between traits

8
 Implicit Personality Theories

• Implicit Personality Theories—beliefs about what traits or

characteristics tend to go together

• These theories are similar to a schema (more details in next few slides)

• Implicit theories can influence the impressions of others more than people’s
actual traits.
• An example is the implicit personality theory people hold regarding the relationship between
birth order and personality traits (in western societies!).

9
Social Influence

10
Social Influence—efforts by one or more individuals to change
the attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, or behaviors of one or
more others

11
12
13
• Norms: Accepted ways of
thinking, feeling, behaving

• Why do we follow norms?

• Make life easier
• Rewards for following
norms
• Internalization of norms

14
 Leaders and Leadership
• Leader: The most
prototypical/representative member
of the group.

• Leadership: The process whereby one

or more members of a group
influence other group members in a
way that motivates them to
contribute to the achievement of
group goals (Haslam, 2004; Smith, 1995;
Rost, 2008)
15
Conformity

16
• Conformity—widespread tendency to act and
think like the people around us

• Conformity is a type of social influence in

which individuals change their attitudes or
behavior in order to adhere to social norms

• Peer Pressure: a direct influence on people

by peers, or the effect on an individual who gets
encouraged to follow their peers by changing
their attitudes, values or behaviors to conform to
those of the influencing group or individual.
(Wikipedia)

17
18
The Asch Line Judgment Studies

Solomon Asch (1951, 1956) had participants guess which line in

the right box is the same length as the line on the left. Almost
everyone easily gets this right – when alone.

19
 Conformity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyDDyT1lDhA 20
Would You Fall For That?

21
22
• 37 of the 50 subjects conformed to ‘obviously erroneous’ answers
at least once

• 14 conformed on more than 6 of the ‘staged’ trails

• On average, subjects conformed on 4 of the ‘staged’ trials.

23
76% of the participants conformed on at least one trial.
Why do people conform?

25
 Informational Social Influence:
The Need to Know What’s “Right”

Informational Social Influence

The influence of other people that leads us to conform
because we see them as a source of information to guide
our behavior.
We conform because we believe that others’
interpretation of an ambiguous situation is more correct
than ours and will help us choose an appropriate course
of action.
26
 Normative Social Influence:
The Need to Be Accepted
Given this fundamental human need for social
companionship, it is not surprising that we often
conform in order to be accepted by others.

Normative Social Influence

The influence of other people that leads us to conform in
order to be liked and accepted by them.
This type of conformity results in public compliance with
the group’s beliefs and behaviors but not necessarily
private acceptance of those beliefs and behaviors.

27
 Conformity and Social Approval:
The Asch Line Judgment Studies

• In a variation of his study, Asch (1957) demonstrated the power of social

disapproval in shaping a person’s behavior.

• The confederates gave the wrong answer 12 out of 18 times, as before, but this
time the participants wrote their answers on a piece of paper instead of saying
them out loud.

• Now people did not have to worry about what the group thought of them
because the group would never find out what their answers were.

• Conformity dropped dramatically, occurring on an average of only 1.5 of the

twelve trials.
 Factors that Affect Conformity
• Factors that Affect Conformity:

• Cohesiveness—the degree of attraction felt by an individual toward an influencing

group
• As cohesiveness increases, conformity increases
• Group size
• As group size increases, conformity increases
• Descriptive Norms (what most people do in a given situation) and Injunctive
Norms (specify what ought to be done)
• Both can increase conformity
• Normative Focus Theory predicts that people are more likely to conform to injunctive norms when
they are salient to them.
Q&A

30
OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY

31
 Definitions

• Obedience: compliance with an

order, request, or law or
submission to another's authority
(google dictionary)

• Authority: the power or right to

give orders, make decisions, and
enforce obedience. (google dictionary)

32
 OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY
• Obedience is a social norm that is valued
in every culture.

• You simply can’t have people doing

whatever they want all the time—it
would result in chaos.

• Consequently, we are socialized,

beginning as children, to obey authority
figures whom we perceive as legitimate.

33
 OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY
• We internalize the social norm of obedience
such that we usually obey rules and laws even
when the authority figure isn’t present—you
stop at red lights even if the cops aren’t parked
at the corner.

• However, obedience can have extremely serious

and even tragic consequences.

• People will obey the orders of an authority

figure to hurt or even kill other human beings.

34
 OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY
• How can we be sure that the
Holocaust, and other mass atrocities
were not caused solely by evil,
psychopathic people but by powerful
social forces operating on people of all
types?

• Stanley Milgram (1963, 1974, 1976)

decided to find out, in what has
become the most famous series of
studies in social psychology.

35
 Eichmann was an
“uninspired bureaucrat
who sat at his desk and
did his job”. He was not
“a dangerous and
perverted personality” but
“terrifyingly normal”

Hannah Arendt
German-born American
political scientist and
philosopher known for Adolf Eichmann,
her critical writing on the Nazi SS officer who organized
Jewish affairs and her Adolf Hitler’s “final solution of the
study of totalitarianism. Jewish question” 36
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of
Evil is a 1963 book by political theorist Hannah Arendt.
Arendt, a Jew who fled Germany during Adolf Hitler's rise
to power, reported on Adolf Eichmann's trial for The New
Yorker.

Arendt's subtitle famously introduced the phrase "the

banality of evil". In part the phrase refers to Eichmann's
deportment at the trial as the man displayed neither guilt
for his actions nor hatred for those trying him, claiming he
bore no responsibility because he was simply "doing his
job" ("He did his ‘duty'...; he not only obeyed 'orders', he
also obeyed the 'law'."p. 135).

37
“Just how far would a person go under the experimenter’s orders?

38
Stanley Milgram and his famous
shock machine

39
40
• When you arrive at the laboratory, you meet another participant, a 47-year-old,
somewhat overweight, pleasant-looking fellow.

• The experimenter, wearing a white lab coat, explains that one of you will play the role of
a teacher and the other a learner. You draw a slip of paper out of a hat and discover that
you will be the teacher.

• Your job is to teach the other participant a list of word pairs (e.g., blue–box, nice–day)
and then test him on the list.

• The experimenter instructs you to deliver an electric shock to the learner whenever he
makes a mistake because the purpose of the study is to examine the effects of
punishment on learning.
41
42
• The learner makes many mistakes.

• The experimenter instructs you to keep

shocking the learner increasing the level by
flicking the next switch.

If you hesitate –

The experimenter instructs you to go on

43
44
 OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY
• What would you do?

• Psychology majors at Yale University estimated that only about 1% of the

population would go to this extreme.

• A sample of middle-class adults and a panel of psychiatrists made similar

predictions.

• And how many people do you think would continue to obey the experimenter
and increase the levels of shock until they had delivered the maximum amount,
450 volts?

45
 5 2 1 1 1 26

Ordinary people and ‘experts’ predict that virtually no-one will go all the way to 450v. In the ‘baseline
condition’ 26 out of 40 people (65%) go all the way

A full 80 percent of the participants continued giving the shocks even after the learner cried out seemingly
in pain, saying his heart was bothering him.

Note: No learners were harmed in the making of Milgram’s experiments. The learner was a confederate
working with Milgram, only pretending to get shocked. 46
47
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DxSKTSoA_E&t=3s 48
Obedience to Authority
• Why does destructive obedience occur?

Milgram’s Agentic state theory – people

allow others to direct their actions and then
pass off the responsibility for the
consequences to the person giving the
orders. In other words, they act as agents for
another person's will.

49
Eichmann was characterized by “sheer
thoughtlessness”
“the lesson of the fearsome, word and
thought defying banality of evil”

“The ordinary person who shocked the

victim did so out of a sense of obligation
- a conception of his duties as a subject -
and not from any peculiarly aggressive
tendencies”

50
51
 Discussion
• Each person is unique, and ultimately each of us makes
choices about how we will and will not act.

• But decades of research on conformity and obedience make

it clear that we live in a social world and that—for better or
worse—much of what we do is a reflection of the people we
encounter.

52
 Further Reading
• Haslam, S. A., Reicher, S. D., Millard, K., & Birney, M. (2014).
Just obeying orders? New Scientist, No. 2986 (September 13), 28-31.
http://www.bbcprisonstudy.org/includes/site/files/files/2014%20NS%2
0Milgram.pdf

• More resources and interesting material available here:

http://www.bbcprisonstudy.org/resources.php?p=138

53
End

54
 Culture & Emotion
[Yashpal Jogdand]
[HUL261]

Copyrighted material is being used for academic purposes only, and is intended only for students registered in IIT Delhi, and not for wider circulation.
What is Culture?
 Warmup Activity: Consider Your
Culture

▪ Imagine India through the eyes of a foreign tourist.

▪ What might they notice that would be different from

where they live?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWi9Z37AEuQ
 Similarities & Differences Across Cultures

• Many distinctions between cultures are harder to see

because they are psychological in nature.

• Just as culture can be seen in dress and food, it can

also be seen in morality, identity, beliefs, and gender
roles.

• Understanding cultural differences is important in

today’s globalised world.
What is Culture? Definitions

• Have you ever tried eating with

chopsticks?

• Would you feel comfortable

eating with chopsticks everyday?

• We all live by the collective

understanding of the way the
world works, shared by
members of a group and passed
down from one generation to
the next. This is “culture”
 What is Culture? Definitions
• Like the words
“happiness” and
“intelligence,” the
word “culture” can be
tricky to define.

• Culture is a word that

suggests social
patterns of shared
meaning
 “Culture” of The Yanomamö Tribe in South America

• The Yanomamö or Yanomami practise an

ancient communal way of life.

• Rituals, feasts and games are held in the

main, central area. Each family has its
own hearth where food is prepared and
cooked during the day. At night,
hammocks are slung near the fire which
is stoked all night to keep people warm.

• It is a Yanomami custom that a hunter

does not eat the meat he has killed. “He
shares it out among friends and family.
In return, he will be given meat by
another hunter,”

• The Yanomami consider all people to be

equal, and do not have a chief. Instead,
all decisions are based on consensus
after long discussions and debates.
Yanomamö tribe live in large, circular houses called yanos or
shabonos, some of which can hold up to 400 people.
 What is Culture? Aspects
There are several features of culture that are
central to understanding the uniqueness and
diversity of the human mind

▪ Versatile: Culture can change and adapt

▪ Shared: Culture is the product of people

sharing with one another

▪ Cumulative: Cultural knowledge is

cumulative. That is, information is “stored.”
This means that a culture’s collective learning
grows across generations.

▪ Patterns: There are systematic and

predictable ways of behavior or thinking
across members of a culture. ▪In Canada, it is more common to bring a bottle of wine to host’s home and for the gift
to be opened right away. In India, by contrast, it is more common to bring sweets, and
often the gift is set aside to be opened later.
The Self and Culture
 Individualism and Collectivism
• Individualist culture is a culture in which the goals of
the individual take precedence over the goals of the
group.

• Collectivist culture is a culture in which the goals of

the group take precedence over the goals of the
individual.

• Individualism and collectivism can further be divided

into vertical and horizontal dimensions (Triandis,
1995).

• Essentially, these dimensions describe social status

Harry Triandis, a cross-cultural
psychologist, studied culture in
terms of individualism and
collectivism
among members of a society. People in vertical
societies differ in status, with some people being
more highly respected or having more privileges,
while in horizontal societies people are relatively
equal in status and privileges.
 Individualism and Collectivism..contd

• These dimensions are, of course, simplifications. Neither individualism nor collectivism is the
“correct way to live.” Rather, they are two separate patterns with slightly different emphases.

• People from individualistic societies often have more social freedoms, while collectivistic societies
often have better social safety nets.
 The Self and Culture

The cultural patterns of

INDIVDIUALISM COLLECTIVISM
individualism and collectivism
The self is unique The self is part of a
are linked to an important group
psychological phenomenon: the
The self is relatively The self is relatively
way that people understand stable across fluid across
themselves. situations situations
Personal goals and Personal duties and
the opportunity to group well-being
Known as self-construal, this is
express one’s self are important
the way people define the way are important
they “fit” in relation to others USA, Canada, Japan, Korea, Taiwan
Germany
 Cultural Models of Self
• In a classic study (Cousins, 1989), American
and Japanese students were administered
the Twenty Statements Test, in which they
were asked to complete the sentence stem,
“I am ______,” twenty times.

• U.S. participants were more likely than

Japanese participants to complete the stem
with psychological attributes (e.g., friendly,
cheerful);

• Japanese participants, on the other hand,

were more likely to complete the stem with
references to social roles and
responsibilities (e.g., a daughter, a student)

• These different models of the self result in

different principles for interacting with others.
 Culture and the Self
(Markus & Kitayama, 1991)

Independent Self In individualistic cultures, people develop a

self-concept as separate from or independent of others.

Mother Father
x x xx
x Sibling
X Self x
x x xx
xx x
x
Friend xx
x
Co-worker
Culture and the Self - cont.
(Markus & Kitayama, 1991)

Interdependent Self In collectivist cultures, people develop a

self-concept in terms of one’s connections or relationships with others.

Mother Father
x x
x x
x Self
x x
x Siblin
x x x g
x x x
Friend Co-worker
Culture and Emotion
 Historical Background
Universalists
▪ All cultures share common
primordial ancestor
▪ Emotions are the same

Constructivists
▪ Humans have adapted to
different environments
▪ Emotions evolved too
▪ Cultural ideas and practices
are all-encompassing
 Historical Background
Studies by Paul Ekman (1970s)
▪ Ekman and Wallace Friesen devised a
system to measure people’s facial
muscle activity, called the Facial Action
Coding System (FACS; Ekman &
Friesen, 1978).
▪ Matching emotions
▪ Some variability
▪ Cultural causes –
▪ “Display rules”
Current research & theory
 Current Research and Theory
North American East Asian
Smile: greater frequency, Smile: lower frequency,
greater intensity lower intensity
 Current Research and Theory
North American East Asian
Prefer more arousing leisure Prefer calmer leisure activities
activities
 Current Research and Theory
North American East Asian
▪ Feel good after positive ▪ “Mixed” feelings after
event positive event
 Current Research and Theory
North American
▪ Emotional suppression leads to
more depression

East Asian
▪ Emotional suppression not
associated with depression
 Current Research and Theory
• In Western cultures, anger arises when
people’s personal wants, needs, or values are
attacked or frustrated (Markus & Kitiyama,
1994).

• Angry Americans sometimes complain that

they have been “treated unfairly.” Simply put,
anger—in the American sense—is the result
of violations of the self.

• By contrast, Japanese are more likely to feel

anger represents a lack of harmony between
people. In this instance, anger is particularly
unpleasant when it interferes with close
relationships
 Current Research and Theory -
Similarities
Similar physiological response
after positive & negative
events

Positive emotions after

positive events
 Etic & Emic Approach
Emic = (m) = mono =
one
• Accounts, descriptions and
explanations used to understand a
culture in its cultural context.
• It is an attempt to learn the
concepts of a culture and see the
world the way they do.
Etic = (t) = two or
more
• Comparing two more cultures in a
cross-cultural approach
• Can be used as an attempt to find
cross-cultural similarities in
behavior or universal behaviors
Cultural Intelligence
§ The concept of cultural intelligence is
the ability to understand why members
of other cultures act in the ways they
do.

§ Rather than dismissing foreign

behaviors as weird, inferior, or immoral,
people high in cultural intelligence can
appreciate differences even if they do
not necessarily share another culture’s
views or adopt its ways of doing things.

§ In a world that is increasingly connected

by travel, technology, and business the
ability to understand and appreciate the
differences between cultures is more
important than ever.
Sum up Activity
 CAT: The Most
Important Point
▪What was the most important thing you learned during this
class?

▪What concepts you think caught your attention and

imagination?

▪Write down your answers in the chatbox.

End
 Helping and Prosocial Behavior
[Yashpal Jogdand]
[HUL261]
Copyrighted material is being used for academic purposes only, and is intended only for students registered in IIT Delhi, and not for wider
circulation.
 Today’s Learning Objectives
1. Learn which situational and social factors affect
when a bystander will help another in need.
2. Understand when and whom people are more
likely to help?
3. Discover whether we help others out of a sense
of altruistic concern for the victim, for more
self-centered and egoistic motives, or both.
 Warm up: Helping and Receiving Help
• Did you help anyone last week?

• Did you receive help from someone last week?

• Did you witness somebody asking for help or being

helped last week?

• Share your experiences

 Introduction
Prosocial Behavior & Altruism
Prosocial Behavior
Any act performed with the goal of
benefiting another person.

Altruism
The desire to help another person even
if it involves a cost to the helper.
 Introduction

§ Would you offer to help in this situation?

§ What are some obstacles to providing help?
 Overview
• Introduction
• When do People Help?
• Whom are we likely to help?
• Why Help?
• Conclusion
 Kitty Genovese

• Bibb Latané and John Darley (1970) are two

social psychologists who taught at universities
in New York at the time of Kitty Genovese's
prolonged murder, when 38 witnesses failed to
call police.
• Paradoxically, they thought, it might be that the
greater the number of bystanders who observe
an emergency, the less likely any one of them is
to help.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdpdUbW8vbw
 The Number of Bystanders:
The Bystander Effect

Latané and Darley (1970) found that in terms of receiving help,

there is no safety in numbers.

Dozens of other studies, conducted in the laboratory and in the

field, have found what they found: The greater the number of
bystanders who witness an emergency, the less likely any one
of them is to help the victim.

This is known as the bystander effect.

 Why is it that people are less likely to help when others are present?

Latané and Darley (1970) developed a step-by-step description of how people decide
whether to intervene in an emergency. Part of this description is an explanation of
how the number of bystanders can make a difference.
 Interpreting the Event
as an Emergency

• A key determinant of helping is whether the bystander interprets

the event as an emergency—as a situation where help is needed.
• If people assume that nothing is wrong when an emergency is
taking place, they will not help.
• When other bystanders are present, people are more likely to
assume that an emergency is something innocuous.

Pluralistic Ignorance
Bystanders’ assuming that nothing is
wrong in an emergency because no
one else looks concerned.
 Assuming Responsibility

Diffusion of Responsibility
The phenomenon whereby each bystander’s
sense of responsibility to help decreases as
the number of witnesses increases.

Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

 Deciding to Implement the Help
Even if you know exactly what kind of help is appropriate, there
are still reasons why you might decide not to intervene:

• You might not be qualified to deliver the right kind of help.

• You might be afraid of:

• Making a fool of yourself,
• Doing the wrong thing, or
• Placing yourself in danger

Costs and rewards

 Critique of Bystander Effect
Research
• Textbooks have got Kitty Genovese story
wrong. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBckLqe2c5Y and
this https://www.grignoux.be/dossiers/288/pdf/manning_et_alii.pdf

• As we learned in the last class, a focus on

individual and interpersonal factors do not
help in understanding helping across group
boundaries
 Overview
• Introduction
• When do People Help or not?
• Whom are we likely to help?
• Why Help?
• Conclusion
 Social Identity Approach to Helping

• Self-categorization theory (SCT: Turner et al., 1987):

Changes in self-concept are related to changes in immediate social context.

• SCT suggests that social identity changes as other groups or individuals enter (or
leave) the relevant social context. What becomes important for explaining both
perception and action is the particular self-definition that is salient at any given
time.

• When the victim of an accident is described as an in-group rather than an out-

group member, individuals are more likely to consider that the same fate might
befall them.

• In the same way, perceiving self and victim as members of a shared category may
increase levels of intragroup cooperation and thus increase the likelihood of
emergency intervention (Stapel, Reicher, & Spears, 1994).
Identity and Emergency Intervention: How Social Group
Membership and Inclusiveness of Group Boundaries Shape
Helping Behavior (Levine et al, 2005)
 Social Identity and Helping
• Social identity as you have learned is our idea of who we are
derived from our belonging to a social group.

• Social identity is derived on the basis of group membership (a

sense of ‘us ness’) is different from one’s individual identity (a
sense of ‘I’ or ‘me’).

• When the victim of an accident is described as an in-group rather

than an out-group member, individuals are more likely to consider
that the same fate might befall them.

• In the same way, perceiving self and victim as members of a shared

category may increase levels of intragroup cooperation and thus
increase the likelihood of emergency intervention (Stapel, Reicher, &
Spears, 1994).
 Experimental Set up

• Participants in the experiment are self-identified Manchester United

fans who witness the accident while walking between buildings on the
Lancaster University campus.

• The participants have already taken part in the first stage of a study in
which their identity as Manchester United fans has been made salient.

• They are walking between buildings at the request of the

experimenters who have asked them to go to a separate location to
watch a video.

• The social category membership of the victim is manipulated by the

clothing the confederate is wearing. He either wears a shirt that
designates him as an in-group member (Manchester United shirt), an
out-group member (Liverpool FC shirt), or that offers no social category
information (plain, unbranded sports shirt).
 Experimental Manipulation and Measurement

• As the participants travel between buildings, they see a confederate

come jogging into view. The confederate runs down a bank that leads
to a car park across which the participants are walking. The
confederate trips and falls in line of sight (although not directly in the
path) of the participants and about 15 feet away.

• The measures of intervention range on a 5- point scale from not

noticing the victim to physically assisting the victim out of the
experimental context.

• The behavior of the participants is assessed by three independent

observers, and it is predicted that intervention levels will be highest
when the victim is clearly identified as an in-group member and least
likely when the victim is clearly identified as an out-group member.
 Experiment 1

Frequencies for Helping by Shirt Condition

Manchester United Liverpool fc Plain t-shirt

No Help 1 7 8

Help 12 3 4

Salient Social
Identity:

Manchester United fan identity

 Experiment 2

Frequencies for Helping by Shirt Condition

Manchester United Liverpool fc Plain t-shirt

No Help 2 3 7

Help 8 7 2

Salient Social
Identity:

superordinate football fan identity

 Summary
• Recognizing the signs of common group membership in a stranger
leads to the increased likelihood that bystanders will intervene to help
those in distress.

• However, group memberships are not fixed.

• When we define ingroup more inclusively, previous intergroup rivalries

become submerged within a more inclusive or common categorization.
Those who were previously identified as out-group members are now
extended the benefits of group membership.

• Social identity and group membership are important determinants of

helping behavior.
 Overview
• Introduction
• When do People Help or not?
• Whom are we likely to help?
• Why Help?
• Conclusion
 Evolutionary Psychology: Instincts
and Genes

• Any gene that furthers our survival and increases the probability that
we will produce offspring is likely to be passed on from generation to
generation.

• Genes that lower our chances of survival, such as those causing life-
threatening diseases, reduce the chances that we will produce
offspring and thus are less likely to be passed on.
Evolutionary Psychology: Instincts
and Genes
Evolutionary Psychology
The attempt to explain social behavior in terms of
genetic factors that evolved over time according
to the principles of natural selection.
Evolutionary Psychology: Instincts
and Genes

Darwin realized early on that there was

a problem with evolutionary theory:
How can it explain altruism?

• If people’s overriding goal is to

ensure their own survival, why
would they ever help others at a
cost to themselves?
• Genes promoting selfish behavior
should be more likely to be passed
on—or should they?
Evolutionary Psychology: Instincts
and Genes
Kin Selection
The idea that behaviors that help a genetic relative
are favored by natural selection.

• People can increase the chances their genes will be passed

along not only by having children but also by ensuring that
their genetic relatives have children.
• Because a person’s blood relatives share some of his or her
genes, the more that person ensures their survival, the
greater the chance that his or her genes will flourish in future
generations.
• Thus natural selection should favor altruistic acts directed
toward genetic relatives.
 Evolutionary Psychology:
Instincts and Genes

• Survey research found that people reported that they would be more
likely to help genetic relatives than nonrelatives in life-and-death
situations, such as a house fire.

• Anecdotal evidence from real emergencies is consistent with these

results.
The Reciprocity Norm

Norm of Reciprocity
The expectation that helping others will
increase the likelihood that they will help
us in the future.

Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

 Learning Social Norms

Herbert Simon (1990) argued that it is highly adaptive for

individuals to learn social norms from other members of a
society.

The best learners of a society’s norms and customs have a

survival advantage, because a culture learns things like
which foods are poisonous and how best to cooperate.

The person who learns these rules is more likely to survive

than the person who does not.

Consequently, the ability to learn social norms has become

part of our genetic makeup.
 Social Exchange:
The Costs and Rewards of Helping

Social exchange theory argues that much of what we

do stems from the desire to maximize our rewards
and minimize our costs.

Social exchange assume that people in their

relationships with others try to maximize the ratio of
social rewards to social costs.
 Social Exchange:
The Costs and Rewards of Helping

Helping can be rewarding in a number of ways:

• The norm of reciprocity can increase the likelihood that someone
will help us in return.

• Helping someone is an investment in the future, the social

exchange being that someday, someone will help us when we
need it.

• Helping can also relieve the personal distress of a bystander.

• By helping others, we can also gain such rewards as social

approval from others and increased feelings of self-worth.

Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

 Social Exchange:
The Costs and Rewards of Helping
The other side is that helping can be costly:
• Physical danger
• Pain
• Embarrassment
• Time
Basically, social exchange theory argues that true
altruism, in which people help even when doing so
is costly to themselves, does not exist. People help
when the benefits outweigh the costs.
 Empathy and Altruism:
The Pure Motive for Helping

Empathy
The ability to put oneself in the shoes of another
person and to experience events and emotions
(e.g., joy and sadness) the way that person
experiences them.

Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis
The idea that when we feel empathy for a
person, we will attempt to help that person
purely for altruistic reasons, regardless of
what we have to gain.
3 basic motives

To sum up, we’ve identified three basic motives underlying prosocial

behavior:

1. Helping is an instinctive reaction to promote the welfare of those

genetically similar to us (evolutionary psychology).

2. The rewards of helping often outweigh the costs, so helping is in

our self-interest (social exchange theory).

3. Under some conditions, powerful feelings of empathy and

compassion for the victim prompt selfless giving (the empathy-
altruism hypothesis).
 Wrap Up: Conclusion
• The power of the situation that operates on potential helpers in real
time needs to be considered.

• What might appear to be a split-second decision to help is actually

the result of consideration of multiple situational factors (e.g., the
helper’s interpretation of the situation, the presence and ability of
others to provide the help, social identity and group membership,
the results of a cost–benefit analysis)

• A common categorization can extend helping across group

boundaries. Previous intergroup rivalries become submerged within
a more inclusive or common categorization.
End
 NATURE VS. NURTURE

Tutorial Week VII

HUL261 – Introduction to Psychology
 THE DEBATE

 For years, the nature vs. nurture debate has been an issue in
psychology.
 The debate is how genetic inheritance and environmental
factors play in a person’s development and characteristics
and which one plays a bigger role
 WHAT DOES “NATURE” MEAN?

Nature refers to an
individual’s qualities
based on their genes
 Physical traits
 Personality traits
 Etc.
These traits stay the
same regardless of
where you were born
and raised
 EXAMPLES OF NATURE

 A girl was born with

brown hair because
her parent’s hair was
brown too.
 Therefore; her brown
hair was inherited
 Genetic diseases
 Eye color
 Hair color
 Skin color
 Height
WHAT DOES “NURTURE” MEAN?

“Nurture refers to all

environmental
influences after
conception, i.e.
experience.”
 In other words
 What an individual learns by
its surroundings and
experiences
 EXAMPLES OF NURTURE

 Suppose a man had

parents who both
consumed drugs on a
daily basis, and their son
began to use drugs as he
got older
 This may have been a result
of “nurture”
 Because; he was around this
type of environment and this
is what he learned
 A child might observe
and be taught how to be
polite by saying “please”
and “thank you”
 VOCABULARY

 Behavioral Genetics: The science of how genes and

environments work together to influence behavior
 quantitative genetics: The scientific discipline in which
similarities among individuals are analyzed based on how
biologically related they are.
 heritability coef ficients: Measures how strongly dif ferences
among individuals are related to dif ferences among their
genes. Varying from 0 to 1 , it is meant to provide a single
measure of genetics’ influence of a trait.
 Adoption Studies: A behavior genetic research method that
involves comparison of adopted children to their adoptive and
biological parents.
 Twin studies: A behavior genetic research method that
involves comparison of the similarity of identical
(monozygotic; MZ) and fraternal (dizygotic; DZ) twins.
EXERCISE
 DISCUSSION

 Is your personality more like one of your parents than the

other? If you have a sibling, is his or her personality like
yours? In your family, how did these similarities and
dif ferences develop? What do you think caused them?
 Can you think of a human characteristic for which genetic
dif ferences would play almost no role? Defend your choice.
 Do you think the time will come when we will be able to
predict almost everything about someone by examining their
DNA on the day they are born?
 Identical twins are more similar than fraternal twins for the
trait of aggressiveness, as well as for criminal behavior. Do
these facts have implications for the courtroom? If it can be
shown that a violent criminal had violent parents, should it
make a difference in culpability or sentencing?
 CONCLUSION

 Is Human Behavior af fected by nature or nurture?

 Nature and Nurture both play a role in a person’s traits, they both
operate together and somewhat to an equal extend.
 For example
 Many families have genetics that gives them a great advantage in musical,
mathematical, or verbal intelligences
 However, this does not mean that you will have these advantages if you do
not practice them.
 If you are raised in a home with no sign of music, math, or verbal communication you will not
develop these advantages since you are not exposed to them.
 It simply demonstrates that you have a genetic possibility for being
outstanding in these areas.
 There is no telling whether If nature or nurture takes a bigger
role in a persons life. Without either of them, a person would
not be the way they are.
 THANK YOU

Media

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wd5Y3-F79LY

References

 http://psychology.about.com/od/nindex/g/nature-nurture.htm
 http://www.dif fen.com/dif ference/Nature_vs_Nurture
 http://www.simplypsychology.org/naturevsnurture.html
 http://curiosity.discovery.com/question/understanding-nature-
nurture-twins
 http://www.scpr.org/programs/airtalk/2012/07/18/27453/how -
twins-separated-at-birth-inform-the-nature-ver/
Prejudice, Stereotypes and Discrimination

Source of image: www.clipart.com

Jews during Holocaust African-American in US Untouchables in India

Common targets of prejudice and stereotypes

2
 Attitudes towards outgroup

Stereotypes Discrimination
Prejudice
(Cognitive component) (Behavioral element)
(Affective component)
 Nature and Origins of Stereotyping

• Stereotyping: Beliefs About Social Groups

• Stereotypes—beliefs about social groups in terms of the traits or
characteristics that they are believed to share
• These mental categories affect the processing of social information.

• Gender Stereotypes—the traits possessed by females and males,

and that distinguish the two genders from each other
• Contain both positive and negative traits and convey status
 Stereotypes:
The Cognitive Component
The distinguished journalist Walter Lippmann (1922), who was the first
to introduce the term stereotype, described the distinction between
the world out there and stereotypes—

“the little pictures we carry around inside our heads.”

Within a given culture, these pictures tend to be remarkably similar.

 Stereotypes:
The Cognitive Component
Stereotype
A generalization about a group of people in which
identical characteristics are assigned to virtually all
members of the group, regardless of actual
variation among the members.

Once formed, stereotypes are resistant to

change on the basis of new information.
Source of image: www.clipart.com
 Stereotypes:
The Cognitive Component
Stereotyping is a cognitive process

Stereotyping does not necessarily lead to intentional acts of abuse.

Often stereotyping is merely a technique we use to simplify how we

look at the world—and we all do it to some extent.
 SPORTS, RACE, AND ATTRIBUTION
• POTENTIAL ABUSE OF STEREOTYPING’S MENTAL SHORTCUTS CAN BE
BLATANT AND OBVIOUS—AS WHEN ONE ETHNIC GROUP IS
CONSIDERED LAZY OR ANOTHER ETHNIC GROUP IS CONSIDERED
GREEDY.

• THE POTENTIAL ABUSE CAN BE MORE SUBTLE—AND IT MIGHT EVEN

INVOLVE A STEREOTYPE ABOUT A POSITIVE ATTRIBUTE.
 SPORTS, RACE, AND ATTRIBUTION
So what here is abusive to the minority?
What’s wrong with the implication that
black men can jump?

The abuse enters when we ignore the overlap in the

distributions—like when we ignore the fact that plenty
of African American kids are not adept at basketball
and a plenty of white kids are.

Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

SPORTS, RACE, AND ATTRIBUTION
So what here is abusive to the minority?
What’s wrong with the implication that
black men can jump?

The abuse
Thus, if we enters
meet awhen
youngwe ignoreAmerican
African the
overlap
man andinaretheastonished
distributions—like when we
at his ineptitude
ignore the fact thatcourt,
on the basketball plentyweofare,
African
in a very
American
real sense,kids are not
denying himadept at basketball
his individuality.
and a plenty of white kids are.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Nature and Origins of Stereotyping
How many women have become Directors of IITs and IIMs in India?
 “Glass Ceiling”

• Stereotypes lead to the glass ceiling effect.

• the “glass ceiling,” refers to the barriers that prevent qualified females
from advancing to top-level positions
• Female leaders tend to receive lower evaluations from their subordinates
compared to male leaders.
• Women who violate expectancies based on stereotypes are likely to be
rejected in male occupations.
• Women face greater obstacles than men do to achieve similar levels of
success.
• However, Men in traditionally female occupations do not face the glass
ceiling.
 Tokenism
• Tokenism: “the practice of doing something (such as hiring a person who
belongs to a minority group) only to prevent criticism and give the
appearance that people are being treated fairly” (via Merriam Webster).
• Consequences of token women in high places:
• Tokenism can be an effective strategy for deterring protest by disadvantaged
groups.
• Tokens serve purpose of maintaining status quo
• It can be used as evidence that employers are not really prejudiced and
maintains perceptions that system is fair
• Being a token employee can be upsetting and damaging to self-esteem
• Tokens are perceived negatively by their coworkers
Why do People Form and Use Stereotypes?
• Stereotypes often act as schemas
• Their use saves cognitive effort and they serve motivational purposes.

• How stereotypes operate

• They are easily accessible.
• They strongly affect how social information is processed.
• Information related to an activated stereotype is remembered better
• Stereotype-consistent information is more likely to be noticed
 • Stereotype-inconsistent information, if noticed, often is refuted or changed to
make it appear consistent with the stereotype.
• People who do not fit their group’s stereotype are put in a subtype and
the stereotype is not changed.

• Stereotypes contribute to the formation of illusory correlations, the

perception of a stronger association between two variables than
actually exists.

• For example, white Americans overestimate the crime rates of some minority
groups.
• One explanation is that infrequent events stand out and are easily
noticed, especially when they confirm existing stereotypes.
Forming Impressions of Others:
A Classroom Demonstration
Introduction
• This demonstration was created by Jackson (2000) and is based on an
actual study by Hamilton and Gifford (1979).
 Illusory Correlation
• Examples:
• It always rains on the week-end
• It always rains after you wash the car
• The phone always rings when you are in the shower
• Librarians are quiet
• Doctors are wealthy
Illusory Correlation
• The Illusory correlation may be one reason individuals become
prejudiced.
• Research has shown that White Americans overestimate the arrest
rate of African Americans (Hamilton & Sherman, 1996).
• African Americans = minority
• Arrest Rate = distinctive event
Do you think that the persons in the next picture look very similar?
• Another result of stereotype use
• Out-group homogeneity—members of an out-group appear to
be “all alike” or more similar to each other than are members
of the in-group
• In-group differentiation—members of own group are more
heterogeneous
• May be due to greater experience within one’s in-group and less
experience with members of other groups
• Its converse is the in-group homogeneity effect, which tends to occur
most commonly among minority group members who are uniting to
respond to perceived inequalities.
Stereotype Threat
 Stereotype Threat
• African Americans, women or many lower status groups in Indian
society - do poorly on standardized academic tests and other
academic performances.

• This has led to widespread beliefs about intellectual inferiority of

African Americans, women or many lower status groups in Indian
society.

• When African American, women or other lower status group

students find themselves in highly evaluative educational situations,
most tend to experience apprehension about confirming the existing
negative cultural stereotype of “intellectual inferiority.”

Source of image: www.clipart.com

 Stereotype Threat

• Stereotype threat is the fear or anxiety of confirming a negative

stereotype about one's social group.

• Stereotype threat is a situational threat

• Members of groups can feel fear or anxiety about being reduced to

negative stereotype.
 Stereotype Threat
Stone and his colleagues (1999) found that when a
game of miniature golf was framed as a measure of
“sport strategic intelligence” black athletes performed
worse at it than whites.

But when the game was framed as a measure of

“natural athletic ability” the pattern reversed, and the
Black athletes outperformed the Whites.

Source of image: www.clipart.com

 Stereotype Threat
• The common stereotype has it that men are better at math than women
are.

• When women in one experiment were led to believe that a particular test
was designed to show differences in math abilities between men and
women, they did not perform as well as men.

• In another condition, when women were told that the same test had
nothing to do with male-female differences, they performed as well as men.
The phenomenon even shows itself among white males if you put them in a
similarly threatening situation.
Prejudice
 Prejudice Defined
Prejudice refers to the general attitude structure and its affective (emotional)
component.
While prejudice can involve either positive or negative affect, social
psychologists (and people in general) use the word prejudice primarily when
referring to negative attitudes about others.

Prejudice
A hostile or negative attitude toward people
in a distinguishable group, based solely
on their membership in that group.
Source of image: www.clipart.com
 Prejudice:
The Ubiquitous Social Phenomenon
• Prejudice is ubiquitous: In one form or another, it affects us all.

• For one thing, prejudice is a two-way street; it often flows from

the minority group to the majority group as well as in the other
direction.

• And any group can be a target of prejudice.

 Prejudice:
The Ubiquitous Social Phenomenon
Many aspects of your identity can cause you to be labeled and
discriminated against:
• nationality
• racial and ethnic identity
• gender – weight
• sexual orientation – disabilities
• religion – diseases
• appearance
– hair color
• physical state
– professions
– hobbies
 Prejudice:
The Ubiquitous Social Phenomenon
• In addition to being widespread, prejudice is dangerous.

• Simple dislike of a group can be relentless and can escalate to extreme hatred, to
thinking of its members as less than human, and to torture, murder, and even
genocide.

• Even when murder or genocide is not the culmination of prejudiced beliefs, the
targets of prejudice will suffer in less dramatic ways.

• One frequent consequence of being the target of relentless prejudice is a diminution

of one’s self-esteem.
What Causes Prejudice?
 Origins of Prejudice

• Generally, perceptions of threat are involved.

• Threat to self-esteem or group interests

• Competition for scarce resources

• Self-categorization as a member of a group and others as

members of a different group
 Prejudice
• Threat to self-esteem
• Holding prejudiced attitudes toward an out-group allows people to increase their
self-esteem when they are feeling threatened.

• This tendency is strongest among those who think their group’s interests are being
threatened.
 Prejudice
• Competition for resources as a source of prejudice
• Realistic Conflict Theory (Bobo, 1983)—view that prejudice
stems from direct competition between various social
groups over scarce and valued resources

• As competition increases, prejudice increases

• Can be reduced if cooperation is necessary (superordinate goals

are introduced)
 Prejudice
• Role of social categorization: The us-versus-them effect

• People easily divide the social world into us (the in-group) versus them (the out-
group).

• People considered part of the ‘us’ category are thought of more favorably
than those in the ‘them’ category.

• This process affects the attributions people make.

• Ultimate Attribution Error—tendency to make more favorable and

flattering attributions about members of one’s own group than about
members of other groups, which is the self-serving attribution bias at
the group level
 Discrimination
• Discrimination—differential (usually negative) behaviors directed toward
members of different social groups

• While blatant discrimination has decreased, but still does occur, subtle forms are
common.

• Modern racism—more subtle beliefs than blatant feelings of superiority, which consist primarily of
thinking minorities are seeking and receiving more benefits than they deserve and a denial that
discrimination affects their outcomes

• Involves concealing prejudice until it is safe to express it

 Why Prejudice is Not Inevitable
• Contact Hypothesis—view that increased contact between
members of various social groups can be effective in reducing
prejudice between them

• Increased contact can decrease prejudice by increasing familiarity and

reducing anxiety.

• Positive contact that involves cooperation and interdependence between

groups can result in the adoption of egalitarian social norms and the
reduction of prejudice.

• In fact, simply learning that members of one’s in-group have formed friendships
with out-group members can decrease prejudice.
 Why Prejudice is Not Inevitable
• Recategorization—shifts in the boundaries between an in-group and some out-
group

• People in a former out-group now belong to the in-group and are viewed
more favorably.

• Common In-group Identity Model—suggests that to the extent individuals in

different groups view themselves as members of a single social entity,
intergroup bias will be reduced

• This can happen when groups work together to accomplish shared goals.
END
 Social Cognition &
Attitudes
Dr. Yashpal Jogdand

Copyrighted material is being used for academic purposes only, and is intended only for
students registered in IIT Delhi, and not for wider circulation.
 Overview

• Social Cognition
• Schema
• Heuristics
• Potential Sources of Error in Social Cognition
• Attribution
• Attitudes
Sensation & Perception Processes
Sensation Perception

I
LOVE
PARIS IN THE
THE SPRINGTIME
Ca- yo- re-d t-is -en-en-e, w-ic- ha- ev-ry -hi-d l-tt-r
m-ss-ng?

Perception is an active, constructive process.

 Top-Down and Bottom-Up
Processing
• Top-Down Processing
• Perception is guided by higher-level knowledge,
experience, expectations, and motivations

• Bottom-Up Processing
• Consists of the progression of recognizing and
processing information from individual
components of a stimulus and moving to the
perception of the whole
 Context Effects
• The same physical
stimulus can be
interpreted differently
• We use other cues in the
situation to resolve
ambiguities
• Is this the letter B or the
number 13?
 The power of context

Top-down and bottom-up processing occur simultaneously, and interact with each
other, in our perception of the world around us. Bottom-up processing permits us
to process the fundamental characteristics of stimuli, whereas top-down
processing allows us to bring our experience to bear on perception.
 What is Social Cognition?
• The area of social psychology that
focuses on how people think about
others and about the social world
is called social cognition.

• Researchers of social cognition

study how people make sense of
themselves and others to make
judgments, form attitudes, and
make predictions about the future.
Warm-up Activity

• How do you act…

• When your parents are around?
• Studying in the library?
• Around a new roommate?
• With a stranger on a train/bus?
• At a marketplace?

• How do you know how to act?

• Schemas are mental structures that help organize knowledge about the
social world and guide the selection, interpretation, and recall of
information.

• Our schemas greatly reduce the amount of cognitive work we need to do

and allow us to “go beyond the information given” (Bruner, 1957).
We can hold schemas about
almost anything—individual
people (person schemas), We have scripts or event schemas about
ourselves (self-schemas), and what to do in a restaurant, how to reach a
destination using Metro.
recurring events (event
schemas, or scripts).
 Schemas
• Schemas have stronger effects on social cognition when they are strong
and cognitive load is high.
• Schemas can result in distortions in how the social world is understood.
• Schemas are resistant to change.
• Perseverance Effect—the tendency for beliefs and schemas to remain unchanged
even in the face of contradictory information

Schemas can be self-fulfilling.

Self-fulfilling Prophecy—predictions that, in a sense, make themselves come true.

Therefore, schemas help make sense of the social world, but they can result in inaccurate
processing of information.
 Cognitive capacity and Information Overload
• At any given time, we are capable of handling a certain amount of
information.

• Additional input beyond this puts us into a state of information overload

where the demands on our cognitive system are greater than its capacity.

• In addition, our processing capacity can be depleted by high levels of stress

or other demands (e.g., Chajut & Algom, 2003).

• people adopt various strategies designed to “stretch” their cognitive resources

 Heuristics

Heuristics: educated guess based on prior

experiences that helps narrow down the
possible solutions for a problem; also known
as a “rule of thumb”
 'Keeping the tigers away’

Nasrudin was throwing handfuls of crumbs

around his house.
'What are you doing?' someone asked him.
'Keeping the tigers away.’
'But there are no tigers in these parts.’
'That's right. Effective, isn't it?'
 Representativeness Heuristics

• Representativeness Heuristic:

• Judge likelihood by the extent it resembles the typical case

• i.e. comparing with existing prototype and then making an

inference.
 Availability Heuristics

• Availability Heuristic
• Judge likelihood by ease with which relevant instances
come to mind.

• “If I Can Retrieve Instances, They Must Be Frequent”

 Availability Heuristic Use: Images Like These Come Readily
People believe they are safer and less likely to get into an accident with a larger
SUV than a smaller car—in part, because images like these come readily to mind.
But, actually, SUVs are involved in more accidents than smaller cars.
 Anchoring and
Adjustment Heuristics

• This heuristic involves the tendency to

deal with uncertainty in many situations
by using something we do know as a
starting point, and then making
adjustments to it.

• “sale pricing” and highly visible

“reductions” in retail stores—the original
starting point sets the comparison so
shoppers feel like
they are then getting a bargain.
Potential Sources of Error in Social Cognition
 Why Total Rationality Is Rarer Than You
Think

While we can imagine

being able to reason in
a perfectly logical way,
Our thinking is we know from our own Keep in mind that
experience that often these “tilts” are not
not simply based always
on rational self- we fall short of this
goal. We now consider problematic, or
interest as reflect a certain
In our efforts to several of these “tilts”
economists have in social cognition defect, but they
long assumed understand others and can be adaptive
make sense out of the just like heuristics
(Akerlof & Shiller,
social world, we are
2009) subject to a wide range
of tendencies that,
together, can lead us
into serious error.
 • Most people tend to “see the world through rose colored
glasses,” which is known as the optimistic bias–a powerful
predisposition to
overlook risks and expect things to turn out well.
Our Powerful
Tendency to • Most people believe that they are more likely than others to
experience positive events, and less likely to experience
negative events (Shepperd, Carroll, & Sweeny, 2008).
Be Overly • Our strong leaning toward optimism can be seen in many
Optimistic specific judgments—most people believe that they are more
likely than others to get a good job, have a happy marriage,
and live to a ripe old age, but less likely to experience
negative outcomes such as being fired, getting seriously ill,
or getting divorced (Kruger & Burrus, 2004; Schwarzer,
1994).
 • Similarly, we often have greater confidence in our
beliefs or judgments than is justified—an effect
known as the overconfidence barrier.

• In one study, students were asked to indicate early

in the academic year whether they would perform
Our Powerful a number of actions (e.g., drop a course, move on
or off campus) and also to indicate how confident
Tendency to they were in their predictions (Vallone, Griffin,
Lin, & Ross, 1990).

Be Overly • The students were wrong a substantial proportion

Confident of the time, and even when they were 100 percent
confident in their predictions they were wrong 15
percent of the time! This study illustrates
illustrated how overconfident people can be in
their predictions about themselves.
 Attribution
“the reasons
we give”
 Attribution

Attributions - are the reasons we give for our own and

other’s behaviors.

• People are motivated to understand the causes of behavior.

• Attribution theory seeks to explain how and why people make

these causal attributions.
Why is this baby
smiling?
• Fritz Heider argued that there are two general types of
attributions that people make:

•Personal attributions

•Situational attributions
 Personal attributions
• Explanations in terms of personal characteristics. For
example:
• “The baby must be a happy baby.”

• Other examples:
• “He scored well on the exam because he is smart.”
• “She tripped because she is clumsy.”
 Situational attributions
• Explanations in terms of situational factors. For
example:
• “Someone must have just played with the baby
.”

• Other examples:
• “He scored well because it was an easy test.”
• “She tripped because a squirrel ran in front of
her.”
 The Fundamental Attribution Error
(also known as correspondence bias or over-attribution effect)

we tend to perceive others as acting

as they do because they are “that kind of person,”
rather than because of the many external factors that
may influence their behavior.
 Empirical Evidence
• Jones and Harris assigned participants to read out
loud either a pro-Castro essay or an anti-Castro
essay. A group of listeners rated the extent to which
the reader held pro-Castro or anti-Castro beliefs.

• Even though the listeners knew that the readers had

no choice in which essay to read, the raters judged
the pro-Castro readers as being more pro-Castro
than the anti-Castro readers.

• The listeners failed to take into account the strong

situational factor present (that the readers had no
choice about which essay to read).
 Critical Evaluation
• Fundamental attribution bias may not be universal across cultures.

• Miller (1984) found that while American children, as they grow older, place
increasing reliance upon disposition as an explanation of events observed,
the Hindu children of India by contrast based their explanations more on
situations.

• This finding is consistent with the theory that some countries, like the U.S.,
emphasize an individualistic self-concept. Raised in a society that places a
premium on individual achievement and uniqueness, Americans seem to
develop a tendency to focus on the characteristics of the individual in
making attributions (more on this in the chapter on culture)
 Why do people make the fundamental
attribution error?

• The situation is not salient when people make attributions for the
behavior of others, but the situation is salient when making
attributions for one’s own behavior.

• Thus, people are more inclined to take the situation into account when
explaining their own behavior.
Any Questions?
Attitudes
 Attitudes
Psychological tendency expressed with some degree of
favor or disfavor
our attitudes are our general evaluations of things (i.e.,
do you regard this thing positively or negatively?) that
can bias us toward having a particular response to it.

• The study of attitudes is a major topic within the field of

social psychology.

• They represent a very basic component of social cognition.

• They often influence behavior, especially when they are strong,

accessible, and long-standing.
 Attitude Functions

• Attitudes serve many functions.

• The Identity or Self-Expression Function—attitudes can permit the
expression of central values and beliefs and thereby communicate
personal identity.
• This can include group membership and identity.
• People are more likely to adopt the attitude position of someone with
whom they share an important identity.

• The Self-Esteem Function—holding particular attitudes can

help maintain or enhance feelings of self-worth.
• Attitudes based on moral convictions are good predictors of behavior.
 Attitude Functions
• Attitudes serve many functions.
• The Ego-Defensive Function—claiming particular attitudes can protect
people from unwanted or unflattering views of themselves.
• For example, when prejudiced people state that they are against prejudice and
discrimination they protect themselves from seeing that they are actually bigoted.

• The Impression Motivation Function—people can use attitudes to lead

others to have a positive view of themselves. When motivated to do so,
the attitudes people express can shift in order to create the desired
impression on others.
• Attitudes that serve an impression motivation function can lead people to
formulate arguments that support their views.
 Measurement of Attitudes
• Traditionally, attitudes have been measured through explicit attitude measures, in
which participants are directly asked to provide their attitudes toward various
objects, people, or issues (e.g., a survey).

• Self-presentation concerns or social desirability bias may influence responses

• An implicit attitude is an attitude that a person does not verbally or overtly

express.

• the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald & Banaji, 1995; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz,
1998), which does just what the name suggests, measuring how quickly the
participant pairs a concept (e.g., cats) with an attribute (e.g., good or bad).
 Key Points
• Decades of research on social cognition and attitudes have revealed many of the
“tricks” and “tools” we use to efficiently process the limitless amounts of social
information we encounter.

• These tools are quite useful for organizing that information to arrive at quick
decisions.

• As the research presented in this module demonstrates, we are adept and efficient
at making these judgments and predictions, but they are not made in a vacuum.

• Ultimately, our perception of the social world is a subjective experience, and,

consequently, our decisions are influenced by our experiences, expectations,
emotions, motivations, and current contexts.
What was your biggest takeaway from the
class?

•https://tinyurl.com/hul261oct
https://www.mentimeter.com/app/presentation/8b1a
4b76d1251c9cdf08bdd432e5b3bd
End
The Psychology
of Groups

Copyrighted material is being used for academic purposes only, and is

intended only for students registered in IIT Delhi, and not for wider
circulation.
 Overview
• Why Groups are Important for our psychology?

• When do Groups fight and When do they cooperate? Robbers Cave

Experiment

• Would we show bias towards our own group even when they are just in
our head? Minimal Group Experiment

• The concept of Social Identity

2
 ACTIVITY
• 1. Divide yourself into two groups - a group of those who were wearing
sports shoes and those who wen’t.

• 2. The “sports shoe” group is assigned to list as many reasons as it can think
of as to why the members of the other group did not wear sports shoes.

• 3. The non-sports shoe group is assigned to list as many reasons as it can as

to why the other group members are wearing sports shoes.

• 4. Choose three neutral observers from each group who will note the
positive and negative comments about their own and other group.

• 4. Which group is better than the other? Winner group will get a reward.
3
4
5
 Why Groups are
important for our
psychology?

6
Case studies of wild/feral children

Lack of social contact can hamper cognitive growth 7

 Evidence from Animal Behavior Research/Primate
Psychology

Harlow's Monkeys :
Chimps and apes brought up in
isolation cannot recognise
themselves in a mirror.

Apart from humans only chimps and apes will recognise their reflection in a mirror. But NOT when they had
been raised in isolation – no recognition, no sense of self….

However after 3 months of social experience and physical contact with other chimpanzees – they will start
to recognise themselves in a mirror. This demonstrates the vital important of others in the development of
self-consciousness (Zazzo, 1975).
8
 Who do you think you are?

• Charles Cooley (1902).

• Looking glass self – the

idea that people learn about
themselves by imagining
how they appear to other.

• Reflected Appraisals –
people come to think of
themselves in the way they
believe others think of them

9
 Psychological Significance of Groups
• The Need to Belong: Humans have a need to
belong and to satisfy this need they join groups,
live with other people, or interact socially.
People respond negatively when the need to
belong is not fulfilled.

• Ostracism: Excluding one or more individuals

from a group by reducing or eliminating contact
with the person usually by ignoring, shunning,
or explicitly banishing them.
!

• Can you think of a time when you were

ostracized from a group? What happened &
how did you feel?
social factors (e.g., social support, social integration) are far more important in predicting mortality than behavioral
risk factors (e.g., smoking, high alcohol consumption and lack of exercise).
When do Groups fight and When do they
cooperate? Robbers Cave Experiment
Groups can lead to both good and bad

13
 The Psychology of Intergroup Conflict
• Conflicts among human groups have occurred throughout our modern
history and still continue today

• Why do groups fight with each other?

• Aggressive Instinct
• Personality
• Prejudice and Stereotypes
• Individual Frustration

14
Robbers Cave Experiment

15
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PRuxMprSDQ&t=1s
16
 Robbers Cave Experiment (Sherifs, 1961)

• A field study attempting to better understand the causes and

consequences of intergroup conflict.

• Subjects:
• Normal boys of the same age, educational level, similar sociocultural backgrounds

• Group formation:
• Arrived in 2 separate groups (Rattlers and the Eagles). Remained apart for one week.

17
 Robbers Cave Experiment (Sherifs, 1961)

• Ingroup/outgroup rivalry:
• Occurred spontaneously when each group realized the other boys were there. It was
spurred by the Sherifs who set up competitive tournament.

• Tournament conflict escalation:

• Rejection, verbal insults, name calling and physical violence

18
Robbers Cave Experiment (Sherifs, 1961)

19
The Robbers Cave Experiment (1954)
by Muzafer Sherif

• “If an outside observer had entered the

situation at this point, with no information
about the preceding events, he could only
have concluded on the basis of their
behaviour that these boys (who were the
‘cream of the crop’ in their communities)
were wicked disturbed and vicious bunches
of youngsters”

20
 Intergroup Conflict Resolution
• Superordinate goals hypothesis:
• Situations that encourage groups to work together to achieve a common
goal can reduce conflict between these groups.

• Sherifs created a series of emergencies that could only be handled by the

groups working together

• After 6 days of this cooperation the tensions were fairly well wiped out!

21
Superordinate Goals

22
Happy Ending!

23
 Competition and Conflict:
Us versus them
1. Competition between groups for
resources

• Realistic conflict theory:

• Intergroup conflict is caused by competition
among groups over limited resources.

• Competition implicated in class struggles,

international warfare, racism...

Muzafer Sherif
24
 Competition and Conflict
• 2. Reciprocity of contentious strategies
• Groups also follow the norm of reciprocity – we hate them
because they hate us.

• A spiral model of conflict intensification accurately describes

Robbers cave:
• Verbal abuse
• Avoidance
• Discrimination
• Physical assault

25
 Competition and Conflict
• 3. Scapegoating
• Hostility caused by frustrating circumstances are sometimes
taken out on innocent members of other social groups

• Explains rise in prejudice when the economy takes a

downturn
• Study showing a significant negative correlation between the number
of black men lynched in the US and the price of cotton. (Hovland and
Sears, 1940)

26
 Social Categorization:
Perceiving Us and Them
• Ingroup/outgroup bias:
• We favor our own group and derogate the outgroup
• At Robbers Cave, when asked to name their friends Eagles picked Eagles, Rattlers
picked Rattlers

• Boys used negative characteristics to describe the outgroup, but rated their own
group more favorably

• Intergroup competition may be sufficient to create hostility, but is it

necessary? A number of studies through the 1960’s suggested not.

27
Would we show bias towards our own group
even when they are just in our head? Minimal
Group Experiment

28
Minimal Group Experiments:

29
Henri Tajfel 30
 Minimal Group Experiments

No history with the other group

No interaction with the other group
No personal gain from one’s actions
Actions are not a criterion of group membership 31
Minimal Group Experiments

• In the first phase, participants are told that

they have been divided into two groups on
the basis of either a trivial criterion
(preference for Klee or Kandinsky
paintings, overestimating or
underestimating the number of dots in a
pattern) or else on explicitly random
grounds - although in fact, allocation to
groups is always done randomly.

• All they know is what group they are

in; they have no knowledge of who
else is in which group, nor do they
have any interaction with members of
the ingroup or outgroup. 32
 Minimal Group Experiments

• They are then given the task of allocating points between two individuals, one
of whom is identified solely as a member of the ingroup and the other solely
as a member of the outgroup.

• The allocation task is performed using specially designed matrices that allow
one to distinguish between different allocation strategies used by the subjects.

33
34
35
 Minimal Group Experiments

• The key finding is that, among the strategies that

are used, there is a tendency to sacrifice
absolute level of reward to the ingroup in order
to increase the difference between the amount
allocated to the ingroup and the amount
allocated to the outgroup the so-called strategy
of maximum differentiation.

The findings were provocative and surprising: the individuals

displayed high levels of in-group favouritism - tending to give more
points (or money) to unidentified in-group members than to
unidentified out-group members, often at the cost of maximising
absolute gains to the in-group.
36
 Social Identity

• Why do we favour ingroup?

• Not because we are all biased or make error in

our thinking

• Group membership is meaningful to people

37
Social Identity:
“the individual’s knowledge that he (sic) belongs to certain social groups,
together with some emotional and value significance to him of the group
membership” (Tajfel, 1972, p. 31)

38
Personal Identity Social Identity

I/Me vs. You Us vs. Them

SELF-CONCEPT

39
 Summing Up
• Groups address some of our fundamental needs of belonging, security, growth. We are social beings!

• Robbers Cave Experiment: Intergroup competition is sufficient to create prejudice and hostility between
people.

• Minimal Group Studies: Ingroup bias can exist even on the basis of most trivial categorisations

• Why do we favour ingroup? people value their social identities as much as they value their personal
identity. People derive part of their self-esteem from group membership.

40
End

41
Helping during the Coronavirus
pandemic
HUL261: Tutorial
Quick recap
Prosocial behaviours versus altruism

When do we help someone? The bystander effect and the diffusion of

responsibility (Latané & Darley, 1970)

Whom do we help? The role of social categorisation: helping ingroup versus

outgroup members (Levine et al., 2005)

Why do we help others? Kin selection, norm of reciprocity, social norms,

empathy, cost-benefit analyses
The COVID pandemic
Salvation Army

Meals on Wheels

Save the Children

Khalsa Aid

Ventilator Project
Can the social identity approach help us understand such
instances of helping?
Recall: personal identity and social identity

Individual characteristics and demographic characteristics are important

predictors of prosocial behaviours.

But events like pandemics are marked by rapid increase in instances of

solidarity (as well as hate): analyses focusing on the individual level-
considering stable individual characteristics- fall short of explaining such
changes (Ntontis & Rocha, 2020).
The COVID pandemic and common fate
Pandemic-like events tend to be collectively experienced:

Image from: Together Apart: The Psychology of COVID-19 (2020)

The pandemic was a collective event: at least in the initial few months, COVID
was a threat to all of us regardless of our caste, class, religion, race,
nationality, etc.

Initial conceptualisations of the pandemic, though vastly varied, shared a

sense of common fate among all humans: all of us are under threat from a
common entity- the virus (“We are all in this together”).

It created a sense of common fate among us: being in a situation where the
same fate befalls all of us becomes a source of an emergent shared social
identity which promotes giving support and help to others (Drury, 2018).
When and why do we help in a pandemic? The role of shared
social identity
Threats make social identity salient and increase solidarity, cooperation
and norm compliance within the group (Dovidio et al., 2020).

At the beginning of the pandemic, our identities as humans or as Indians (or

Brits, Americans, etc.) were much more salient and contributed to the
large-scale solidarity seen at the beginning of the pandemic.

As the pandemic progressed, do you recall any changes to salient social

identities and their implications for helping?
Threat consolidates group boundaries and increases exclusion between
groups (Dovidio et al., 2020).

For ‘us’ to exist, there has to be ‘they’.

Are ‘they’ a source of threat?

When not: Ingroup favouritism but not outgroup derogation

When ‘they’ are perceived as a threat: e.g., Asian-Americans in the US

Balancing ingroup solidarity with outgroup exclusion: how inclusively or

exclusively do we define our ingroup? (Dovidio et al., 2020)

What is the source of the threat? Is it within the nation or outside it?

Recategorizing them >>>> Decategorizing them (Gaertner et al., 1993)

References
Dovidio, J. F., Ikizer, E. G., Kunst, J. R., & Levy, A. (2020). In J. Jetten, S. D. Reicher, S. A. Haslam, & T. Cruwys (Eds.),
Together apart: The psychology of COVID-19 (pp. 119-123). London, England: Sage.

Drury, J. (2018). The role of social identity processes in mass emergency behaviour: An integrative review. European
review of social psychology, 29(1), 38-81. https://doi.org/10.1080/10463283.2018.1471948

Gaertner, S. L., Dovidio, J. F., Anastasio, P. A., Bachman, B. A., & Rust, M. C. (1993). The common ingroup identity
model: Recategorization and the reduction of intergroup bias. European review of social psychology, 4(1), 1-26.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14792779343000004

Jetten, J., Reicher, S. D., Haslam, S. A., & Cruwys, T. (2020). Together apart: The psychology of COVID-19 (1st ed.). London:
Sage.

Levine, M., Prosser, A., Evans, D., & Reicher, S. (2005). Identity and emergency intervention: How social group
membership and inclusiveness of group boundaries shape helping behavior. Personality and social psychology bulletin,
31(4), 443-453. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167204271651

Ntontis, E., & Rocha, C. (2020). Solidarity. In J. Jetten, S. D. Reicher, S. A. Haslam, & T. Cruwys (Eds.), Together apart: The
psychology of COVID-19 (pp. 102–106). London, England: Sage.