Social psychology Meeting II Mgr. et Mgr. David Havelka, Ph.D. 3.5. 2019 CONTENT OF THE LECTURE 1) Principles of social psychology 2) Communication 3) Social cognition Literature Social psychology ARONSON, Elliot & Robin M. AKERT. • http://www.academia.edu/34596742/Aronson_-_Social_Psychology_8th_Edition_c2013.pdf • LIBRARY • Chapters (exam): 1,8,9,11,12,13 Other sources Journals • Journal of Personality and Social Psychology • Journal of Experimental Social Psychology • Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin Web pages • http://www.spring.org.uk/ (et.) Assessment methods Attendance (10 %) Essay (40 %) Written examination (50 %) To pass: 70 % Essay What are the lessons from Blue eyes/ brown eyes experiment for my teaching practice Watch this movie: A Class divided https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mcCLm_LwpE&t=3s Write an reflective essay (2-3 pages) on the documentary and how it will affect your teaching practice – you can also use the articles about this experiment DEADLINE: April 26 May 10 „Flaschback“ to Scared Straight https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXRIR_Svgq4&t=1085s • Meta-analysis – see IS – study materials (doc 1 + 2) The Meaning and Importance of Social Psychology zóon polítikon - Aristotle Man is a „political (social) animal" In other words: without contact with others man would not actually develop. Social Psychology study the influence of social factors (socio-cultural environment) on the formation of human psyche. Three dimensions: intrapersonal, interpersonal and social Main topics of social psychology: • role behavior • Describe the role of teacher (duties, rights, expetations, behaviour, norms) • interaction and communication (e.g.: school environment) • perception of other people • opinions, attitudes and their change • formation of social groups and group dynamics. Interaction and Communication Core terms of social psychology! Interaction – the mutual relationship between individuals (groups; groups and individuals) Communication – basic condition for social interaction; without any form of communication society would not exist Interpersonal communication - schema Mr. Communicator Mr. Recipient message, communique feedback coding decoding Communication barrier Interpersonal communication We are not communicating just "information“, people also communicate their: • mental states • emotions • moods • beliefs • and so on…. Home study: Types of communication Communication in schools Educational communication can be defined as transactional process in which educators and students create a joint communication climate which changes from moment to moment as conversation unfolds and the thoughts, attitudes and behaviors of both parties influence each other in some way. To learn more: https://slideplayer.com/slide/13325574/ Social Cognition very interesting sub-topic of social psychology that focuses on how people process, store, and apply information about other people and social situations. It focuses on the role that cognitive processes play in our social interactions. „the scientific study of how individuals attend to, interpret, and remember information about their social worlds“ Little brain teaser: FACTORS INFLUENCING SOCIAL COGNITION Variables on the side of perceiving person • Mental state • Physical state • Previous feelings and knowledge about perceived objects • implicit personality theories, prototypes & schemas (stereotypes) • (...) Information about others: • physical appearance • expression • speech • Content of communicated message • (...) Basic terminology Prototypes are the tendencies of the characteristics that are associated with members of a category. Name one piece of furniture: Schemas organize knowledge about a concept and shape how people view and use information. a young child may first develop a schema for a horse. She knows that a horse is large, has hair, four legs, and a tail. When the little girl encounters a cow for the first time, she might initially call it a horse…. Once she is told that this is a different animal called a cow, she will modify her existing schema for a horse and create a new schema for a cow. Anchoring acts to incorporate new knowledge into preexisting systems. This involves abstracting thoughts and personifying aspects and creating visual representations. Specific effects in forming impressions of others • primacy effect “first impressions matter” The tendency to remember the first piece of information we encounter better than information presented later on. Example: Intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical XXX Critical, impulsive, industrious, intelligent • recency effect The more recent information is better remembered and receives greater weight in forming a judgment than does earlier-presented information Example: A person who is described in terms of three positive traits followed by three negative traits is subsequently evaluated more negatively than is a person described by exactly the same traits but presented in a reverse order (negative traits followed by positive traits). How knowledge about this effects can be applied in teaching practice? Social cognition – errors and biases • Implicit Personality Theories • Cognitive heuristics • Causal attribution • Correspondence bias (the Actor/Observer bias) • Self-serving attributions • The liking-similarity effect Implicit Personality Theories A type of schema people use to group various kinds of personality traits together Example: If someone is kind, our implicit personality theory tells us he or she is probably generous as well. XXX If someone greedy he is also irritable. Implicit personality theories help us with filling in the blanks. !BUT! Relying on schemas can also lead us astray • We might make the wrong assumptions about an individual. • We might even resort to stereotypical thinking, where our schema, or stereotype, leads us to believe that the individual is like all the other members of his or her group. „All gypsies refuse to work….“ „Every child with special needs means trouble….“ Cognitive Heuristics A heuristic is a mental shortcut that allows people to solve problems and make judgments quickly and efficiently These rule-of-thumb strategies shorten decision-making time and allow people to function without constantly stopping to think about their next course of action. Heuristics are helpful in many situations, but they can also lead to cognitive biases. The Availability Heuristic Making decisions based upon how easy it is to bring something to mind ( a mental shortcut – estimating the likelihood of an event by the ease with which instances of that event come to mind) • When you are trying to make a decision, you might quickly remember a number of relevant examples. Since these are more readily available in your memory, you will likely judge these outcomes as being more common or frequently-occurring Example: You are thinking of flying and suddenly think of a number of recent airline accidents, you might feel like air travel is too dangerous and decide to travel by car instead. Because those examples of air disasters came to mind so easily, the availability heuristic leads you to think that plane crashes are more common than they really are. The Representativness Heuristic Involves making a decision by comparing the present situation to the most representative mental prototype Example: When you are trying to decide if someone is trustworthy, you might compare aspects of the individual to other mental examples you hold. A sweet older woman might remind you of your grandmother, so you might immediately assume that she is kind, gentle and trustworthy. How knowledge about this effects can be applied in teaching practice? The Causal Attribution Attributional theories tries to explain how people determine the causes of behavior According to attribution theory, we try to determine why people do what they do in order to uncover the feelings and traits that are behind their actions. This helps us understand and predict our social world. What may be the reasons these parents are shouting at children? INTERNAL OR EXTERNAL CAUSES? When trying to decide what causes people’s behavior, we can make one of two attributions: • An internal, dispositional attribution The inference that a person is behaving in a certain way because of something about the person, such as attitude, character, or personality. • An external, situational attribution. The inference that a person is behaving a certain way because of something about the situation he or she is in. The assumption is that most people would respond the same way in that situation. Satisfied spouses tend to show one pattern: • Internal attributions for their partners’ positive behaviors (e.g., “She helped me because she’s such a generous person”). • External attributions for their partners’ negative behaviors (e.g., “He said something mean because he’s so stressed at work this week”). In contrast, spouses in distressed marriages tend to display the opposite pattern: • Their partners’ positive behaviors are chalked up to external causes (e.g., “She helped me because she wanted to impress our friends”). • Negative behaviors are attributed to internal causes (e.g., “He said something mean because he’s a totally self-centered jerk”). Could this somehow be applied in teaching practice?  The Correspondence Bias One common attributional shortcut is the correspondence bias: The tendency to believe that people’s behavior corresponds to their dispositions. (people do what they do because of the kind of people they are, not because of the situation they are in) The correspondence bias is so pervasive that many social psychologists call it the fundamental attribution error. The Actor/Observer Difference (The actor-observer difference is an amplification of the correspondence bias) We tend to see other people’s behavior as dispositionally caused, while we are more likely to see our own behavior as situationally caused. The effect occurs because perceptual salience and information availability differ for the actor and the observer. Actors have more information about themselves than observers do. Self-serving attributions Explanations for one’s successes that credit internal, dispositional factors and explanations for one’s failures that blame external, situational factors. How knowledge about this effect can be applied in teaching practice? The liking-similarity effect Example: Newcomb(1961) rented a house and left a group of students who did not know each other. He ordered them to follow and record the evolution of their relationships. He found that with a degree of consent in attitudes, mutual sympathy grew larger. Stereotypes and biases •….and their impact on children - students Blue eyes / brown eyes experiment "When our leader J.F. Kennedy was killed several years ago, his widow held us together. Who's going to control your people?“ "Oh Great Spirit, keep me from ever judging a man until I have walked a mile in his moccasins." • Children were divided on blue eyes (superior) and brown eyes (inferior) BROWN EYES • Had to wear a blue collar • Could not drink from own cups • Could not drink from same fountain as blue eyes • Teacher saw only negatives and failures BLUE EYES: • Could have more meal during the lunch • Could go to gym during break • Sat in front of the classroom • Teacher saw only positives and successes Children could not play together What happened and why? ? Consequences • Superiors: arrogant, unfriendly to inferior • Inferiors: silent, frustrated, passive Performance Documentary: A class divided https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmXr-rC5F-4 1st day 2nd day Brown eyes 5:18 2.34 Blue eyes 3:15 4:40 Lessons for teaching practice…… Self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true, by the very terms of the prophecy itself, due to positive feedback between belief and behavior (initially inaccurate expectation leads to actions that cause the expectation to come true) Example: Teachers’ Expectations Rosenthal and Jacobson designed an experiment to discover whether teachers’ expectations of student ability would affect attainment. In an American Primary school, where approximately one sixth of the children were Mexican, they tested all the children in the school with a standard intelligence test. The pupils were streamed into fast, medium and slow streams. The teachers were led to believe that this test could predict intellectual “blooming”, 18 teachers were given the names of children in their classes who were predicted to show the most intellectual growth in the coming year. The children were, actually chosen at random. The difference between the children’s ability, therefore, was only in the mind of the teacher. Results: All the children were re-tested using the same test after 1 year and again after 2 years. The children who the teachers expected to bloom scored significantly higher in their tests than the previous year. Rosenthal and Jacobson called this the “expectancy effect”. Rosenthal and Jacobson stated that teachers’ expectations have a significant effect on student attainment. Teachers also described the high achievers as well-adjusted, happy and more interesting than other children. Those who had not been identified as potential high achievers but performed well anyway were described as showing “undesirable” behaviour by teachers. Pygmalion effect The Pygmalion effect, or Rosenthal effect, is the phenomenon whereby others' expectations of a target person affect the target person's performance Golem effect The Golem effect is a psychological phenomenon in which lower expectations placed upon individuals either by supervisors or the individual themselves lead to poorer performance by the individual.