Social Psychology
The Social domain tests how the presence of others, and our beliefs about them, change thought and behavior: attribution, attitudes, influence, group processes, and intergroup perception. Most items give a scenario and ask you to name the bias or predict the behavior.
Attribution
- Internal (dispositional) versus external (situational) causes.
- Fundamental attribution error: overweighting disposition for others' behavior. Actor–observer bias: situational for the self, dispositional for others. Self-serving bias: own successes internal, failures external.
- Kelley's covariation: consensus, distinctiveness, consistency. High on all three implies a situational cause.
Attitudes and influence
- Cognitive dissonance (Festinger): inconsistency motivates attitude change. Insufficient justification: participants paid $1 to praise a dull task later rated it more enjoyable than those paid $20, who had ample justification for lying.
- Elaboration likelihood: central route (argument quality, high involvement) versus peripheral route (cues, low involvement).
- Conformity (Asch): normative influence (fitting in) versus informational influence (being right). Obedience (Milgram): about 65% delivered the maximum shock.
- Compliance: foot-in-the-door (small then large), door-in-the-face (large then small), low-ball.
Groups
- Social facilitation: others' presence improves simple tasks and impairs complex ones (Zajonc, arousal).
- Social loafing: reduced effort when individual contributions are not identifiable.
- Groupthink (Janis): cohesion plus directive leadership suppresses dissent.
- Bystander effect: diffusion of responsibility; helping rises with clear cues and a single bystander.
Worked example
Students who told the next participant that a dull peg-turning task was interesting were later paid either $1 or $20. Those paid $1 rated the task as more enjoyable. Reasoning: $1 is insufficient justification for having lied, creating dissonance, which is reduced by changing the attitude ("it wasn't so bad"). The $20 group had sufficient justification, so no dissonance and no attitude change. Note the rival account: Bem's self-perception theory says people infer attitudes from behavior without arousal, and this design cannot separate the two.
Traps
- Mixing up the fundamental attribution error (about others) with self-serving bias (about the self).
- Confusing conformity (peer pressure) with obedience (an authority command).
- Confusing social facilitation (arousal, evaluation) with social loafing (diffused effort).