Social Psychology: Attitude, Group Processes and Prosocial Behaviour
This section tests how attitudes form and change, how groups shape behaviour, and when people help. Expect classic-study matching and applied scenarios on conformity, obedience and bystander intervention.
Attitudes
- ABC components: cognitive, affective, behavioural.
- Cognitive dissonance (Festinger): inconsistency motivates attitude or behaviour change.
- Persuasion depends on source, message and audience; the elaboration likelihood model distinguishes central and peripheral routes.
Group processes
- Asch: conformity to an incorrect majority.
- Milgram: obedience to authority.
- Zimbardo: role adoption.
- Social facilitation: better performance on simple tasks when observed; social loafing: reduced effort in groups.
- Groupthink (Janis), deindividuation, norms and roles.
Prosocial behaviour
- Bystander effect (Darley and Latane): helping decreases as the number of bystanders rises.
- Diffusion of responsibility and pluralistic ignorance.
- Altruism: empathy-altruism (Batson), reciprocal altruism, kin selection.
Worked example
On a crowded street fewer people help a fallen man than when one person is present. Reasoning: diffusion of responsibility, since each bystander assumes someone else will act.
Traps
- Conformity is pressure from peers; obedience is pressure from authority.
- Social facilitation and social loafing are opposite effects.
- The bystander effect concerns the number of witnesses, not personality.