Social Psychology I: Nature, Scope and History; Field Theory, Cognitive Dissonance, Sociobiology, Psychodynamic Approaches and Social Cognition; Social Perception — Communication and Attribution; Attitudes and their Change in Cultural Context; and Prosocial Behaviour

Unit 8 begins: "Nature, scope and history of social psychology. Traditional theoretical perspectives: Field theory, Cognitive Dissonance, Sociobiology, Psychodynamic Approaches, Social Cognition. Social perception [Communication, Attributions]; attitude and its change within cultural context; prosocial behavior." This chapter defines the field and traces its history from Triplett to the cognitive turn, sets out the five traditional perspectives with their founding studies, works through Kelley's covariation model and the attribution biases, explains attitude change by the Yale, elaboration-likelihood and planned-behaviour models with the evidence on culture, and explains when bystanders help.

1. Nature, scope and history

Gordon Allport defined social psychology as the attempt to understand and explain how the thought, feeling and behaviour of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of others. Its scope runs from the individual in a social setting (social perception, attitudes, the self) through interpersonal processes (attraction, helping, aggression) to groups and intergroup relations, and to applications in health, environment, law and organisations. It differs from sociology in keeping the individual as the unit of analysis.

A short history of social psychology
PeriodLandmarks
BeginningsNorman Triplett (1898): cyclists and children winding fishing reels performed faster in company — the first social-psychological experiment. The first textbooks, by William McDougall and E. A. Ross (both 1908); Floyd Allport's experimental text (1924).
1930s–1950sSherif's norm-formation studies (1936); Kurt Lewin, often called the father of modern social psychology — field theory, group dynamics, action research; wartime work on propaganda leading to Hovland's Yale persuasion programme.
1950s–1970sFestinger's dissonance, Asch's conformity, Milgram's obedience, Latané and Darley's bystander research; then the "crisis" of the early 1970s over relevance and laboratory artificiality.
1980s onwardThe social-cognition turn, European social psychology (Tajfel, Moscovici), cultural and cross-cultural social psychology, social neuroscience, and the replication movement.

2. Traditional theoretical perspectives

The five perspectives named in the syllabus
PerspectiveCore idea and classic evidence
Field theory (Lewin)B = f(P, E): behaviour is a function of the person and the environment together, the life space, described topologically with regions, boundaries, valences and forces; tension systems (the Zeigarnik effect — interrupted tasks are remembered better); action research and group dynamics.
Cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957)Holding inconsistent cognitions is aversive, and people reduce dissonance by changing a cognition, adding consonant ones or trivialising the conflict. Festinger and Carlsmith (1959): people paid $1 to tell others a boring task was fun later rated it more enjoyable than those paid $20 — insufficient justification. Also effort justification (Aronson and Mills, 1959) and post-decision "spreading of alternatives" (Brehm, 1956). Bem's self-perception theory offered a rival account.
Sociobiology (E. O. Wilson, 1975)Social behaviour is shaped by natural selection acting on genes: kin selection and inclusive fitness (Hamilton's rule, rB > C — help when relatedness times benefit exceeds cost), reciprocal altruism (Trivers, 1971) and parental investment; today's evolutionary social psychology.
Psychodynamic approachesFreud's Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921), identification with the leader; the frustration–aggression hypothesis (Dollard and colleagues, 1939); displacement and scapegoating; the authoritarian personality (Adorno and colleagues, 1950; the F-scale) as the root of prejudice; Bion's basic-assumption groups.
Social cognitionHow people encode, store and use social information: schemas, heuristics, priming and automaticity (Bargh), stereotypes and implicit attitudes (the Implicit Association Test, 1998); the person as "cognitive miser" and later "motivated tactician" (Fiske and Taylor); dual-process models.
⚠️ $1 beats $20
Reinforcement theory predicts that the $20 group should like the task more. Dissonance theory predicts the reverse: $20 is sufficient justification for lying, so no attitude change is needed; $1 is not, so the $1 group resolves the dissonance by coming to believe the task was fun. The reverse result is the famous one.

3. Social perception: communication and attribution

Communication in social perception is verbal and non-verbal — facial expression (Ekman's six basic emotions recognised across cultures), gaze, gesture, posture, touch, interpersonal distance and paralanguage (tone, pitch, pauses). Mehrabian's often-quoted 7–38–55 split applies only to messages about feelings in which words and tone conflict. In impression formation, Solomon Asch (1946) showed that "warm" versus "cold" in a list of traits changed the whole impression (central traits) and that early information weighs more (primacy); Kelley (1950) replicated the warm–cold effect with a real guest lecturer.

Attribution is the process of inferring the causes of behaviour. Fritz Heider (1958) distinguished internal (dispositional) from external (situational) causes. Jones and Davis's correspondent inference theory (1965) says we infer a disposition from an act when it is freely chosen, produces non-common effects and is low in social desirability. Harold Kelley's covariation model (1967) uses three kinds of information:

Kelley's covariation model: low consistency points to a transient circumstance
InformationQuestionInternal attribution when…External attribution when…
ConsensusDo others behave the same way toward this stimulus?LowHigh
DistinctivenessDoes the person behave this way only toward this stimulus?LowHigh
ConsistencyDoes the person behave this way on other occasions?HighHigh
  • Fundamental attribution error (Ross, 1977): over-attributing others' behaviour to dispositions — Jones and Harris (1967) found essays supporting Castro were taken as the writer's view even when the position had been assigned.
  • Actor–observer bias (Jones and Nisbett, 1971), self-serving bias (success internal, failure external), the false-consensus effect, Pettigrew's ultimate attribution error at the group level, and Lerner's belief in a just world, which leads to blaming victims.
  • Culture: Joan Miller (1984) found that American adults explained everyday behaviour more dispositionally, while Hindu Indian adults gave more situational and contextual explanations — the fundamental attribution error is weaker in collectivist cultures.

4. Attitudes and their change within the cultural context

An attitude is an evaluation of an object with affective, behavioural and cognitive components (the ABC model). Katz (1960) described four functions: utilitarian, knowledge, ego-defensive and value-expressive. Attitudes form through classical and operant conditioning, observational learning and mere exposure (Zajonc, 1968). Attitudes predict behaviour poorly when measured generally — LaPiere (1934) found that a Chinese couple was refused service only once in 251 establishments, although most later said by letter that they would refuse Chinese guests — and better when attitude and behaviour are measured at the same level of specificity. Ajzen's theory of planned behaviour (1991) predicts intention from attitude toward the behaviour, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control, and behaviour from intention.

Models of attitude change
Model of changeKey ideas
Yale communication approach (Hovland)Who says what to whom: source credibility (expertise and trustworthiness) and attractiveness, and the sleeper effect (a message from a low-credibility source gains impact over time as the source is forgotten); message factors — one- versus two-sided arguments, fear appeals that work when an effective remedy is given; audience factors.
Elaboration likelihood model (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986)When motivation and ability to think are high, people take the central route and are persuaded by argument quality, producing durable change; when low, the peripheral route, persuaded by cues such as source attractiveness or the number of arguments. Need for cognition raises elaboration.
ResistanceMcGuire's inoculation: exposure to weak counter-arguments and their refutation builds resistance to later persuasion; forewarning and reactance also reduce persuasion.

The cultural context shapes both attitudes and how they change. Advertisements stressing family and group benefits persuade more in collectivist cultures such as Korea, and those stressing individual benefits in the United States (Han and Shavitt, 1994). Dissonance after a personal choice is weaker among East Asians, but appears when the choice is made for, or observed by, close others (Kitayama and colleagues) — in interdependent cultures inconsistency threatens social standing more than private consistency. Norms (the subjective-norm component of planned behaviour) carry relatively more weight where the self is interdependent.

5. Prosocial behaviour

The murder of Kitty Genovese in New York (1964), reported as witnessed by 38 neighbours who did nothing, prompted Latané and Darley's research. In their seizure study (Darley and Latané, 1968), participants who believed they alone could hear a victim helped 85 per cent of the time, but only 31 per cent helped when they believed four others could hear — the bystander effect, explained by diffusion of responsibility. In the smoke-filled-room study, pluralistic ignorance — each person reading others' calm as a sign that nothing was wrong — kept groups from reporting smoke. Latané and Darley's decision model requires five steps: notice the event, interpret it as an emergency, assume responsibility, know how to help, and decide to help.

  • Why people help: kin selection and reciprocal altruism (sociobiology); the norms of reciprocity and social responsibility; Piliavin's arousal: cost–reward model (helping reduces unpleasant arousal when its costs are lower than the costs of not helping); Batson's empathy–altruism hypothesis (empathic concern produces genuinely altruistic motivation) versus Cialdini's negative-state relief model (we help to relieve our own sadness).
  • Situational factors: time pressure (in Darley and Batson's 1973 "Good Samaritan" study, seminary students in a hurry helped far less, even on the way to talk about the parable), good mood ("feel good, do good": Isen and Levin, 1972), similarity to the victim and models of helping.
  • Culture: Joan Miller (1990) found that Indian participants regarded helping in a wider range of situations as a moral obligation, whereas Americans more often saw it as a matter of personal choice; Levine's cross-national field studies found large city-to-city differences in helping strangers.

Key takeaways

  • Social psychology studies how the actual, imagined or implied presence of others shapes individuals; it runs from Triplett (1898) and the 1908 textbooks through Lewin to the cognitive and cultural turns.
  • Field theory (B = f(P, E)), dissonance (Festinger and Carlsmith's $1/$20 study), sociobiology (kin selection, reciprocal altruism), psychodynamic approaches (frustration–aggression, authoritarian personality) and social cognition are the traditional perspectives.
  • Kelley's covariation model: low consensus, low distinctiveness and high consistency give an internal attribution; high consensus and distinctiveness with high consistency an external one. The fundamental attribution error is weaker in collectivist cultures (Miller, 1984).
  • Attitudes have ABC components and functions (Katz); the theory of planned behaviour adds subjective norms and perceived control; persuasion follows the Yale factors and the central or peripheral routes of the ELM, and both are moderated by culture.
  • Bystanders help less in groups (diffusion of responsibility, pluralistic ignorance); helping follows a five-step decision and is explained by cost–reward, empathy–altruism and negative-state-relief models.

Practice questions (10)

Attempt each one before opening the answer. Every explanation names the tempting wrong option as well as the right one, because that is where marks are lost.

  1. In Festinger and Carlsmith's (1959) study, which participants later rated the boring task as most enjoyable?

    1. Control participants who told no one anything
    2. All groups rated it equally
    3. Those paid $20 to tell the next participant it was interesting
    4. Those paid $1 to tell the next participant it was interesting
    Show answer

    Answer: D — Those paid $1 to tell the next participant it was interesting

    The $1 group had insufficient external justification for lying, so they reduced dissonance by coming to believe the task was fun. $20 justified the lie, so no attitude change was needed.

  2. Only Ravi laughs at this comedian (low consensus); Ravi laughs at every comedian (low distinctiveness); and he always laughs at this one (high consistency). Kelley's model predicts an attribution to:

    1. No attribution is possible
    2. Something about the comedian (external)
    3. Something about Ravi (internal)
    4. The particular occasion
    Show answer

    Answer: C — Something about Ravi (internal)

    Low consensus, low distinctiveness and high consistency form the classic pattern for a person (internal) attribution. High consensus and high distinctiveness with high consistency would point to the comedian; low consistency to the occasion.

  3. Lewin's formula B = f(P, E) expresses the central idea of:

    1. Sociobiology
    2. Field theory
    3. Cognitive dissonance theory
    4. Correspondent inference theory
    Show answer

    Answer: B — Field theory

    Lewin's field theory treats behaviour as a function of the person and the environment together — the life space. Sociobiology explains behaviour by natural selection, dissonance by cognitive inconsistency, and correspondent inference by inferring dispositions from acts.

  4. Which of the following predict behavioural intention in Ajzen's theory of planned behaviour? Select all that apply.

    1. Perceived behavioural control
    2. Subjective norms
    3. Attitude toward the behaviour
    4. The sleeper effect
    Show answer

    Answer: A — Perceived behavioural control; B — Subjective norms; C — Attitude toward the behaviour

    Intention is predicted by attitude toward the behaviour, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control; the last also predicts behaviour directly. The sleeper effect is a finding about source credibility in persuasion.

  5. According to the elaboration likelihood model, a distracted viewer with little interest in an issue is most likely to be persuaded by:

    1. Nothing, because low elaboration prevents all persuasion
    2. The logical quality of the arguments
    3. Peripheral cues such as an attractive celebrity endorser
    4. A detailed statistical comparison
    Show answer

    Answer: C — Peripheral cues such as an attractive celebrity endorser

    Low motivation and ability send processing down the peripheral route, where cues such as attractiveness or the number of arguments matter more than their quality. Such change is less durable than central-route change.

  6. In Darley and Latané's (1968) seizure study, 85 per cent of participants who thought they were alone helped, compared with 31 per cent of those who thought four others were present. By how many percentage points did helping fall? Type a number.

    Numerical answer — type the value.

    Show answer

    Answer: 54

    85 − 31 = 54 percentage points. The drop illustrates diffusion of responsibility: the more bystanders there are, the less responsible each feels.

  7. Joan Miller's (1984) comparison of American and Hindu Indian adults found that the Indian participants:

    1. Made more situational and contextual attributions for everyday behaviour
    2. Refused to make any attributions
    3. Made more dispositional attributions than Americans
    4. Showed a stronger fundamental attribution error
    Show answer

    Answer: A — Made more situational and contextual attributions for everyday behaviour

    Americans explained behaviour more in terms of personal dispositions, whereas Indian adults referred more to roles, relationships and context — evidence that the fundamental attribution error is shaped by culture.

  8. Assertion (A): People are less likely to help in an emergency when many other bystanders are present. Reason (R): According to the empathy–altruism hypothesis, empathic concern for a victim produces a genuinely altruistic motive to help. Choose the correct option.

    1. Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A
    2. Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A
    3. A is true, but R is false
    4. A is false, but R is true
    Show answer

    Answer: B — Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A

    Both are true, but R does not explain A. The bystander effect is explained by diffusion of responsibility and pluralistic ignorance; Batson's empathy–altruism hypothesis concerns why people help at all, not why group size reduces helping.

  9. Which of the following are attribution biases? Select all that apply.

    1. Self-serving bias
    2. Inoculation
    3. Actor–observer bias
    4. Social facilitation
    Show answer

    Answer: A — Self-serving bias; C — Actor–observer bias

    The actor–observer and self-serving biases distort causal explanations. Social facilitation is a group effect on performance, and inoculation is a technique for resisting persuasion.

  10. Which researcher conducted what is usually regarded as the first social-psychological experiment, on cyclists and children winding fishing reels (1898)?

    1. Solomon Asch
    2. Muzafer Sherif
    3. Kurt Lewin
    4. Norman Triplett
    Show answer

    Answer: D — Norman Triplett

    Triplett found that people performed faster in the presence of others, the first demonstration of what came to be called social facilitation. Lewin, Sherif and Asch worked decades later.