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SOCIAL THINKING and BEHAVIOUR - Coggle Diagram
SOCIAL THINKING and BEHAVIOUR
Social thinking
Attributions, or the dudgments about the causes of ou rown and other people´s behaviour, play an important role in forming impressions of ourselves and others. Consistency, distinctiveness and consensus information jointly influence whether we make a personal or situational attributions for a particular act
The fundamental attributions error is the tendency to attribute other people´s behaviour to personal factors while underestimating the role of situaional factors. The actor-observer bias is the tendency to make situaitonal attributions to explain our own behaviour and personal attributions to explain theb ehaviour of others. The self-serving bias is the tendency to attribute one´s success to personal factors and one´s failures to situational factors
Cultural differences exist in the extent to which people are likely to attribute the causes of success or failure to either persona or situational factors
Impressions may change over time, but our firsta impression generally carries extra wewight. Sttereotypes and schemas create mental sets that shep oru impressions
Through self-fulfilling prophecies, our initially false expectations shape the way we act towards someone. In turn, this person responds to our behaviour in a way that confirms our initially false belief
Self-knowleege is obtained through observing our behaviour, through the process of social comparison and through examining what others think of us
An inidividual´s identity is based partly on idiosyncratic characteristics, personality traits and interpersonal relationships (personal identity) as well as on the knowledge of belonging to particular groups (social identity)
People has a pervaisve tendency to evaluate themselves as individuals, captured by the individual´s personal self-esteem, as well as the group they belong, captured by the individual´s collective self-esteem
Attitudes predict behaviour under specific circumstances, especially when situational infleunces are weak, when the attitude is strong and when we consciously think about our attitude
Counter-attitudinal behaviour is most likely to create cognitive dissonance when the behaviour is freely choosen and threatens our self-worth or produces foreseeable negative consequences
To reduce dissonance, we may change our attitude to become more cponsistent with how we have acted. When our attitudes are weak and counter-attitudinal behaviour does not threaten our self-worth, we may change ou rattitudes through self-perception
Communicator, message and audience characteristics influence the effectiveness iof persuasion. Communicator credibility is highest when the communicator is percepived as expert and trustworthy. Fear-arousing communictions may be effective if they arouse moderate fear and suggest how to avoid the feared result. The central route to persuasion works best with listeners who have a high need for cognition; for those with a low cognition need, the peripheral route works better
Social influence and behaviour in groups
The mere presnece of others can enhancre our performance in simple or well-learned tasks but hinder performance on complex or new tasks
People often use special techniques to get us to comply with their requests, such as the norm of receprocity, the door-in-the-face technique, the foot-in-the-door technique or lowballing
Milgram´s obedience research raised strong ethical concerns and found unexpectedly high percentages of people willing to obey destructive orders. Such obedience is stronger when the victim is remote and when the authority figure is close by, legitimate and assumes responsibility for what happens. Partoicipants in the Milgram+s studies do not seem to "blindly follow" an expereimenter´s orders. Instead, participants who "engaged followership", and seem to obey because they support and identify with science as a noble cause
A social norm is a shared rule or expectation about how group members should think, feel and behave. A social role is a set of norms that defines a particular position in a social system
People conform to a group because of informational social influence, normative social influence and informational referent social influence
The size of the majority and the presence or absence of dissenters influence the degree of conformity. Minority influence is strongest when the minority maintains a consisten position over time but does not appear to deviant
Ostracism produces negative psychological consequences and activates many of the same brain regions that underlie physical pain
Social loafing occcurs when people exert less individual effort when working as a group than when working alone. Loafing decreases when th egoal is valued highly and when performance wihtin the groups is individually monitored
When the members of a decision-making group share the same conservative or liberal viewpoint, the group´s final decision often becomes more extreme than the average initial opinion of the individual members
Cohesive decision-making groups that have a high sense of cohesiveness, are motivated to maintain a positie view of their group and within which a strong group norm emerges reagarding preferred solutions, may display groupthink: a suspension of critical thinking to maintain cohesion and reach agreement. Empiricla support for this phenomenon is mixed.
Deindividuation refers to a temporary loss of individuality that can occur when a person is immersed in a group. Anonmity to outsiders appears to be the key factors. Deindividuaiton enhances the individual´s tendency to focus on his or her social identity, making them more sensitive to emerging group norms
Crowd behaviour in emergency situations is often giuded by everyday social norms and rules of conduct, especially when the crowd is seen as a collective identity sharing a similar fate