Social Psychology: Attitude, Prejudice, Group Processes and Interpersonal Relations
This domain covers how individuals think about, influence and relate to others. Expect questions that distinguish attitude from prejudice from discrimination, and that name the classic experiments - Asch, Milgram, Sherif.
Attitudes
- Components: affective, behavioural, cognitive (ABC).
- Formation: learning, reference groups, direct experience, media.
- Change: persuasion (communicator credibility, message framing, audience characteristics); cognitive dissonance (Festinger) - inconsistent cognitions create discomfort, reduced by changing the attitude, changing the behaviour, or adding supporting cognitions.
- Elaboration likelihood: central route (argument quality) versus peripheral route (cues).
Prejudice
- Prejudice is an attitude; stereotype is a belief; discrimination is behaviour.
- Causes: social learning, in-group/out-group bias, scapegoating, realistic conflict, authoritarian personality.
- Reduction: intergroup contact, superordinate goals (Sherif's Robbers Cave), education, legislation.
Group processes
- Conformity - Asch: a substantial minority of judgements conformed to an obviously wrong line length under unanimous group pressure.
- Obedience - Milgram: proximity, legitimacy of authority and group support affect obedience.
- Groupthink - Janis: cohesiveness plus insulation produces poor decisions.
- Social facilitation (audience improves simple tasks), social loafing (less effort in a group), deindividuation, bystander effect.
Interpersonal relations
- Attraction: proximity, similarity, physical attractiveness, reciprocity, self-disclosure.
- Prosocial behaviour and altruism; aggression explained biologically and by social learning.
Worked example
A smoker reads that smoking causes cancer and feels uneasy, then concludes, “many smokers live to ninety.” The conflict between the cognition about harm and the behaviour is dissonance; the reassuring belief is an added cognition that reduces discomfort without altering the behaviour.
Traps
- Conformity (peer pressure) is not obedience (authority command).
- Keep stereotype (cognitive), prejudice (affective) and discrimination (behavioural) apart.
- Social loafing and social facilitation are opposite effects.