SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

I. Definition: How people are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others.

Two implications of definition:

#1 Your behavior always of interest to social psychologists because people are hyper-social animals. Even when we are physically alone, we are not truly alone because we are being influenced by the implied or imagined presence of others. For example, we may ask, "What would my partner, friends, or parents think if I did that?"

#2 Social psychologists study almost everything. See the main topics
The main topics fall into 3 general areas:

  1. Thinking about others and thinking about ourselves (e.g., attitudes, the self)
  2. Being influenced by others
  3. (i.e., conformity)
  4. Interacting with (helping, loving, hating, liking, and hurting) others.

II. Social psychologists get less respect than they deserve because they have an unpopular perspective: They look at the power of the situation, rather than the power of traits, character, or personality. That is, they look at external, outside, situational factors rather than internal, inside, personality factors. Rather than asking "What inside you made you do that?", social psychologists ask "What outside you  made you do that?" (As the famous social psychologist Marilyn Brewer said, "It's what's on the outside that counts"). That is, whereas most people ignore the situation, social psychologists focus on the power of the situation.

In a sense, it is like most people focus on the black (the people's faces) in the figure below  whereas social psychologists focus on the white (the vase). That is,  while others focus on personality and put the situation in the background, social psychologists focus on the situation and relegate personality to the background.

Cup or faces paradox  

Bryan Derksen, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons  

To get a sense of the power of situation, you might watch an episode of "What Would You Do?" or imagine how you would behave if you were put in some of the tense situation that the Borat movies have put people in.

To understand the social psychological view better,  you may want to watch the  28 minute "Power of the Situation" video.

3 Examples of the power of the situation

  1. Milgram's shocking examples of the situation being more powerful than personality differences.
  2. The Zimbardo Prison Experiment.
  3. Video of interview of Dr. Zimbardo, discussing relationship of the Prison experiment to American atrocities in Iraq (the Abu-Ghirab scandal).
III. People's ignorance of situational influences.

A. On themselves.

Implications: People often say, "I'm surprised I did that, " or "That's not like me."  --and people are often wrong about what they would do if they were in a certain situation.

B. On judging others--the fundamental attribution error: the tendency to overestimate the role of internal, dispositional causes (personality) and underestimate the role of external causes (the situation) in explaining the behavior of other people.

Examples of this error (people's ignorance of the situation):

Our willingness to believe commercials starring celebrities: We think the celebrity is endorsing the product because the celebrity believes in the product rather than because the celebrity was paid to do it.

Our legal system: We assume people who do bad things are bad people and must be put in prison, even though that is not always the case. In some cases, we even pay police to encourage people to break the law and then punish the people for breaking the law.

Many drivers don't seem to learn that the roads are slippery from seeing other drivers slide of the road.

IV. If situations matter, why do people talk about personality?

A. Maybe people are fooled.

How could they be fooled?

1. People like to see constancy because that means they think they know how others will act. So, by thinking Sam has a certain personality, they feel they can predict Sam's behavior (even though they may occasionally complain about "seeing the same old Sam.")

2. People see often only see others in a certain situation and role. (They see Sam in the same old situation and role, and assume that Sam's personality, rather than Sam's situation, that is causing Sam to act the same every time they see Sam.) For example, a student may only see a professor in the classroom.

3. People are so eager to believe in personality that they tend to believe phony personality descriptions. To see one way in which people are suckers for personality, try the following website which  illustrates  the Barnum effect. (Try that page's computerized "personality" test).

B. People are (partially) correct: Personality matters, but not as much as people think. To use an analogy, when we see someone riding a bike, we may view their speed as being due entirely to them. Although their speed does depend on them, their speed also depends on the wind, whether they are going uphill or downhill, their bike, and many other factors that we tend to ignore. Similarly, a person's actions are affected by both their personality and their situation.

V. Conclusions: 7 principles that may change how you see the world

  1. Do not assume that a person did something because of their personality. Instead, consider that they may be doing it because of their role or because of the situation. For example,  People do things because of factors inside them (e.g., their beliefs) and factors outside of them (e.g, the situation). If you ignore the impact of outside influences on people and decide that someone did something because "that's the way they are," you may be making the fundamental attribution error. By asking whether something besides their personality caused the behavior, you can fight the fundamental attribution error. By recognizing the power of the situation on people's behavior (perhaps by "putting yourself in their shoes"), you may understand others better. 

     

  2. Do not assume that your behavior is due to your personality: If you want to change, change  your situation.
  3. Do not assume that your finding evidence that you are right is proof that you are right. Instead, realize that you may just be displaying the confirmation bias. To fight that bias, ask how you might be wrong.
  4. Do not assume that your thinking you are rational means that you are rational: You could just be rationalizing. Because knowing that you are being inconsistent makes you feel an uncomfortable feeling called cognitive dissonance,  you will want to rationalize your inconsistencies. The result is that, by trying to convince yourself that you are being consistent, you may actually be foolish (To quote Emerson, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds"). To their credit, many people who voted for Trump in 2016 admitted that they were wrong and changed their vote in 2020. The following very short video is a spoof about what happened when several people suffered hypothermia after a Trump rally. However, note how the video captures the essence of how cognitive dissonance affects some Trump supporters
    More information about dissonance
  5. Conformity is common and complex.
  6. Awareness of a problem, "education," or knowing what should be done may not have any effect on what people do.  Among the reasons for the disconnect between knowledge and action are conformity and feeling that there is little that the individual can do about the problem. If you want to change other people's behavior, consider
  7. Our desire to to be right and to want to know the truth is sometimes in conflict with wanting to feel good and wanting to look good to others. President Trump has resolved this conflict by not being that concerned with the truth: He denies science and comforts himself by watching Fox News, holding rallies in front of his adoring fans, and surrounding himself by people who are afraid to disagree with him.



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