I.Overview

 Social psychology is the study of the role of social factors in human interactions.  Behavior does not occur in a vacuum. It occurs within social arenas.  What we do affects and is affected by those around us and such effects can be very powerful.  We participate in the construction of the meaning of these social arenas.  Social psychologists seek to understand these dynamics.

Topics covered in social psychology typically include group behavior and group dynamics, aggression and altruism, attitudes, communication, obedience, conformity, interpersonal attraction and attribution. Choosing from these topics can be a difficult choice for the introduction to psychology instructor.  Time limits, however, demand that each instructor choose which topics to cover in a social psychology unit.

In this three-part introduction to social psychology, we will explore a few topics typically taught in social psychology courses. These topics include attitudes and attitude change, aggression, and social cognition and attribution. II.Learning Objectives

1. To explore the reasons why humans behave aggressively
2. To examine the role aggression plays in today's world and the forms it take
3. To explain how impressions are formed
4. To explore how and why we explain the way we behave
5. To examine how we form and change our attitudes
 

Each of the areas will be addressed separately.   Each unit can be used to cover 3 days of class or portions can be used from each to form a 3-day unit on social psychology. Each unit contains activities and assignments.

Section I . Social Interaction/Aggression
   Activities for Aggression
         Data Collection Activities:
       Create-Relate-Donate for Aggression
       Discussion Topics for Aggression
        Pair and Share Activities
        Critical Thinking Activities  for Aggression

Section 2: Attitudes and Attitude Change
    Activities for Attitututes and Attitude Change
        Social Reinforcement and Attitude Change
       Activities to Arouse Cognitive Dissonance
       Activities Re: Persuasive Communication and Advertising

Section 3:Social Congnition and Attribution Theory
         Critical Thinking and Active Learning Activities
 

The following materials contain an outline of a lecture on basic ideas about aggression and a collection of activities to supplement the lecture.

The outline is flexible, as material may be added or subtracted, depending on amount of course time available. The basic outline, without activities or much discussion, will take about a standard course hour to cover. Adding active learning components will expand the time needed to explore the topic.

 The activities are separated into categories of data collection, discussion topics, "create-relate-donate," integration, "pair and share," and critical thinking. These activities, however, are generally flexible and may be adapted to meet the needs of an individual class. Large or small group discussion may be replaced by a written report from small groups or individuals, for example. Most assignments may be done during class time or outside of class.

Mother: I refuse to take my child to the symphony!
Friend: Why??
Mother: There's too much sax and violins.

Parent: I refuse to allow my child to take this history course.
Principal: Why??
Parent: There's too much Saxon violence!

I. Definition: a behavior with intention to inflict harm

A. Not all behaviors which inflict harm are aggression  (for example, accidents)

B. Not all aggression may result in injury, but the intention to inflict harm is present (a 90 1b.woman may do little actual damage to an attacker, but the effort and intention make her efforts aggressive)

A. Random--no apparent reason for the aggression (the McDonald's mass murder)

B. Provoked/self-defense--reacting to aggression or perceived aggression (An Erie, PA, woman was recently sentenced to prison for defending herself against a would-be rapist--she was accused of exceeding self-defense and literally "kicking him when he was down")

C. Instrumental--aggression used to gain something of value (as might occur in a purse-snatching or mugging)

D. Antisocial--aggression used to undermine norms and values of larger culture (gang violence is a prototypic example)

E. Prosocial--aggression used to support norms and values of larger culture (as might be the case when police use legitimate force; or with vigilantism)

F. Indirect or displaced--aggression that is directed at person or thing other than the source of the anger or frustration   (The proverbial example is the male who is criticized at work by his boss, who returns home to verbally abuse his homemaking wife, who, in turn, scolds the child who then kicks the dog.)

G. Passive--aggression that is a product of not acting helpful or appropriate when the opportunity arises            (A person who will not come to the aid of a mugging victim who is of a different race)

    A. Instinct theories--emphasize innate and evolutionary nature of aggression

 Freudian theory proposes two basic instincts = "sex" and "aggression" or death instinct with psychic energy available for aggression always being produced and needing an outlet (hydraulic model)

Y chromosome (controversy over males incarcerated for violent crimes who have a greater likelihood of XYY chromosomal pattern than males incarcerated for nonviolent crimes)

testosterone correlated with aggressive behavior

brain structures associated with aggressive behavior (famous case of Julie who attacked a patron in movie theater during a temporal lobe epileptic seizure)

original hypothesis: frustration always produces aggression and aggression is always a product of frustration; it may be direct or displaced. Frustration is defined as a goal being blocked. For example, a bad grade on an exam produces a desire to strike out at the instructor but instead you play a heated game of racquetball.

current thought: frustration may cause behaviors other than aggression (such as persistence) and aggression may result from circumstances other than blocking of a goal (such as pain)

Processes by which aggression learned = observational learning or modeling--observe the child on the playground acquire the desirable toy by shoving another child

operant conditioning-- when aggressive behavior is reinforced because it works"--the observer above shoves a child to acquire a toy and finds it works for him, too

What is learned: "techniques" of aggression (any Three Stooges film)
"who" is a target for aggression (less able to retaliate such as physically smaller person, lower status person) "what contexts" such as church vs. school yard

Membership in groups may contribute to aggressive behavior in multiple ways: modeling the behavior of other group members such as "membership" in a lynch mob;   conformity pressures to support the consensus of the group such as in "gang violence;"   deindividuation--when group membership blurs the identity of individuals such as being a face in a crowd or through use of costuming such as Ku Klux Klan

I believe the topic of aggression is inherently interesting to most students. The quantity of theory, however, may be daunting. I find it particularly useful to find a theme to illustrate the various explanations of aggression. Current events are useful sources of such examples.   Likewise are biographies of serial killers. I am including excerpts from a newspaper account about Gary Heidnik as a quick example of material that addresses the variety of possible contributing factors in pathology (see below).

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In spring 1997 Gary Heidnik, found guilty of torture and murder, was to have been executed.  He was granted a stay of execution.

The following article was in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, April 4, 1987:

     "The younger brother of the man charged [and later found guilty] with torturing and killing women he held captive in a basement dungeon says their childhood was marked by hatred and by frequent beatings by their father.
    "It got to the point where we'd be afraid to pick anything up because he'd beat us if  we dropped something like a glass..."Terry Heidnik said of his father. "I was knocked unconscious once."
    "He said their mother was an alcoholic and their father beat them and was very prejudiced against African Americans.
    "Gary Heidnik is accused of digging a pit in the basement of his north Philadelphia home and torturing and raping six black women he lured there. Two died, police have charged. Three half-naked women were found shackled in the pit after a fourth managed to escape 10 days ago....
    "As he has since Gary was arrested March 25, Michael Heidnik, 74, contended that his sons were raised in a normal household. He denied beating his children or teaching them to be prejudiced.
    "Terry Heidnik said that after his parents divorced when Gary was 3, the brothers went to live with their mother...whom Terry described as an alcoholic.
    "During this time, Gary fell 20 feet from a tree, suffering a severe injury that left his head misshapen, Terry recalled. Children in the neighborhood began calling Gary 'football head’. He became more violent and his personality began to change.
    "About five years later, the brothers returned to with their father, who had remarried, but the abuse continued, Terry said.
    "Their father often tormented them and sometimes forced them to wear pants with a bull's eye on the seat. Terry said classmates and their father would kick the bull's eye.
    "Gary Heidnik was always trying to please his father, but nothing satisfied him, his brother said.
    "He spent his whole childhood trying to be the light of my father's eyes,' Terry said. Acceptance by their father is probably what Gary has been looking for his whole life, he said.
    "Eventually, Terry and Gary returned to live with their mother. But in addition to a succession of boyfriends and husbands, she had severe drinking problems and once was arrested for theft, Terry said. She committed suicide on Mother Day in 1971, he said.
    "Terry said he and his brother are schizophrenic and often have received psychiatric care. The two have tried to kill themselves on several occasions, he said...."

Top of Page

Data Collection Activities:

Television Aggression: Have students watch at least five programs on television and count the number of aggressive acts in different types of programs. Prior to starting the assignment, develop operational definitions of aggression in class so students know what to look for.

 Have students use a chart like the following:
 

Type of Program	Children's	Family	Sitcom	Sports	Other
Frequency of Agressive Behavior
Verbal Agression
Displaced Agression
Commited By:
Male
Female
Adult
Adolescent
Child
Animal(e.g. Cartoon)

Have students summarize their findings and compare them with findings reported in a journal article on this topic.
 

 News Accounts of Aggression: Have students peruse recent editions of the newspaper or a news magazine and count how many examples of violence or aggression are found in the issue.  They can compare this count to the number of items about helping or altruistic behavior.  Students should report which number is greater and what they think accounts for the difference. Ask students to indicate any methodological problems that may exist in conducting this kind of research.

Or, have students peruse recent editions of the newspaper or a news magazine to search for examples of aggression and violence that support the different theories of aggression.  Students should summarize the news item and show how supports one or more theory of  aggression.
 

Discussion Topics:

Road Rage: Highway violence has apparently increased dramatically in recent years. Ask students what they think may account for this increase. Ask how these factors compare with the textbook explanations of aggression. Ask how the situation may be remedied.

Science Fiction: Have students imagine they have been abducted by a group of  extraterrestrials on a mission to eliminate violence and inappropriate aggression in Earthlings.  Have students develop a plan for the ETs based on their knowledge about causes of  aggression. They should assume that they have unlimited technological support and vast resources to accomplish their goals. This topic may be addressed by an entire class or students may work in small groups.

Create-Relate-Donate:

Campus Aggression:

Many college campuses have problems with various forms of aggression, ranging from the production of graffiti, to destruction of college property, to rape. Have students work in groups to provide suggestions for reducing problems such as these on your campus. They should use the material in the course to guide their thinking. Students should prepare a document  that may he submitted to your student government or other leadership organization.

Integration: These file ideas to integrate the work; on aggression with other topics in the introductory course.

 One act play:

Have students create a one-act play that depicts Sigmund Freud working with a client who has problems with aggressively acting-out. Students should refer to course material on psychoanalytic approaches to treatment to ensure authenticity.

Pair and Share Activities

Theories of aggression: Give students the following directions: Using your personal experiences or experiences of people you know or know of, write down any examples you can think of that represent
    a) instinct experiences
    b) frustration-based experiences
    c) social learning experiences
    d) deindividuation experiences of aggression.

Share your ideas in a small group. Select the best example(s) to share with the entire group.

Types of aggression: Ask students to think about everyday examples of the different types of aggression and write them down. In small groups students can discuss which type is most common and why.

Historical and Contemporary Entertainment: Provide students with the description taken from A Distant Mirror by B. Tuchman (pp.141-142) (description of the 12th century)--

"In village games, players with hands tied behind them competed to kill a cat nailed to a post by battering it to death with their heads, at the risk of cheeks ripped open or eyes scratched out by the frantic animal's claws. Accustomed in their own lives to physical hardship and injury, medieval men and women were not necessarily repelled by the spectacle of pain, but rather enjoyed it. The citizens of Mons [in France] bought a condemned criminal from a neighboring town so they could have the pleasure of seeing him quartered [put to death by being pulled in four different directions]."

Offer other information about "cruel entertainment" from previous centuries, like the hanging days in London which were "picnic days" for families, cock fights and dog fights to the death, the parades of flagellants during the plague, and so on.

Cross-cultural comparisons: Have students explore violence and aggression in other cultures. For example, they may read Margaret Mead's account of the three tribes in New Guinea. Ask them to examine cultural differences in light of theories of causes of aggression.

         People are often asked how they feel about any number of objects. For example, you might be asked how you feel about environmentalism. Your feelings toward environmentalism is your attitude toward environmentalism. Thus, an attitude is defined as favorable or unfavorable affect toward an object, in this case environmentalism.

        Attitudes are generally thought to have three components: affective, behavioral, and cognitive. The affective component refers to all the person's emotions and affect toward the object. In the case of environmentalism, it might be your feelings about air pollution, the costs of environmental protection, and/or deforestation.

        The behavioral component refers to the person's behavioral intention toward the Object. With regard to environmentalism, this component might include your intentions regarding recycling, the use of fossil fuels, and/or littering. The cognitive component refers to the thoughts a person has about an object, including knowledge and beliefs. For environmentalism, then this component might consist of your belief about the severity of environmental problems, your knowledge about global warming, and/or your beliefs about "smart growth."

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At this point have them generate their own examples of each component.

Also have them respond to The Environmentalism Scale. (Baneerjee & McKeage, 1994)

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        Now that we have defined attitudes there are several additional issues we will discuss. First, where do attitudes come from? Second, how can attitudes be changed? Third, what is the relationship between attitudes and behavior?

        Let us answer the first question. Most social psychologists would argue that attitudes are learned following the theories of learning presented in an earlier chapter. Thus attitudes can be learned by classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and imitation.

        With respect to forming an attitude about environmentalism through classical conditioning, your attitude might be learned by associating an otherwise nice day with smog.

        From an operant conditioning perspective the consequences of your behaviors may determine your attitudes. Consequences may either take the form of reinforcements or punishments. Thus, your attitude might be learned by the receiving of cash (a reinforcement) for recycling or the high cost of fossil fuel (a punishment) for driving your car to work.

        If your attitude is learned by imitation you may express the same attitudes as your parents or friends. Thus, your attitude may be learned because your family's viewpoints on government regulation.

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    At this point they could give their own examples of the three types of learning. They could also do the Social Reinforcement and Attitude Change Learning Experience.

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     How can attitudes be changed? We will focus on two techniques: cognitive dissonance and persuasion.

    Cognitive dissonance proposes that people like to have consistency between their attitudes and behaviors. Thus, if you feel that water conservation is desirable then you should take shorter showers. To illustrate this, Eliot Aronson conducted an experiment. He asked some students if they would be willing to sign a petition telling their fellow students why they should have shorter showers. The petition was then mounted on posters around campus. These students, who made the public commitment, were privately shortening their showers. Other students who were told about the water problem, but not asked to sign the petition didn't reduce the length of their showers.

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At this point they could do the Arousing Cognitive Dissonance Learning Experience.

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    In the case of persuasion, you may hear or read someone's arguments for or against a particular attitudinal position you hold. For example, if you are in favor of environmentalism you might read an editorial in a newspaper or hear a politician's message that is anti- environmental. To study attitude change, social psychologists have examined variables that should have an impact. One such variable is source: credibility, the expertise and trustworthiness of the person writing the editorial and making the speech. Research generally shows that people are persuaded more when the source is more credible.

    Findings such as this are explained and predicted by theories. We will examine two types of theories that predict that a high credible communicator will be more persuasive than a low credible communicator. One of these theories is a systematic process theory which postulates that an individual's thoughts about a persuasive message impact on its effectiveness. For example, several studies indicate that credibility influences the favorability of message-relevant thinking. Thus, people may argue against a message (counter-argue) less when it is from a high than a low credible communicator. Such a theory focuses only on one process.

    Other theories focus on dual processes. This type of process theory also predicts the impact of source credibility, but it postulates that in addition to systematic processing, simple decision rules called heuristics impact persuasion. Examples of heuristics include such thoughts as: experts can be trusted, majority opinion is correct, and long messages are valid messages. Thus, people may be more persuaded by a more highly credible source because of the heuristic, "experts can be trusted." Psychologists are examining when source credibility affects persuasion through systematic and heuristic processing (e.g. Chaiken & Mahesevaran, 1994) .

    Credibility focuses on the source of the message. >From the perspective of who says what to whom, researchers have also examined message and audience variables. Like source credibility, each of these have also been examined from single and dual process theories.

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 At this point they could do the Persuasive Communication and Advertising Learning Experience.

    The last question to address is the relationship between attitudes and behavior. In the case of environmentalism, what is the relationship between the way you feel about the environment and your behaviors. You may be pro-environmental, but do you recycle?

    Psychologists have generally found that it is difficult to predict specific behavior, such as recycling, from a global attitude about the environment. People may be pro-environment but not compost. This does not mean that attitudes don't predict behavior. For example, researchers have found that while a global attitude about the environment may not relate to any one specific behavior, it will relate to a set of behaviors. In the case of our environmental example a set of behaviors might include recycling, composting, and picking up litter.

    Researchers have even developed a theory to predict the relationship between attitudes and a specific behavior. This theory, referred to as the theory of reasoned action, will not be discussed here.

Active Learning Experiences

Social Reinforcement and Attitude Change Learning Experience

    A field experiment concerned with attitude change is conducted in guise of a campus opinion poll. Two participants are interviewed individually by each experimenter. In the interview the experimenter reads aloud a standard series of opinion statements concerning intercollegiate athletic competition and records each participant's agreement or disagreement with each statement. The experimenter's behavior is neutral and detached as he/she records the responses to the first half of the statements. As the experimenter records the responses to the second half of the statements; however, he/she selectively reinforces participants with nods, the word "good," and so forth.

    One of the participants is positively reinforced for making responses favorable to intercollegiate athletics; the other is positively reinforced for making unfavorable responses. No participant ever receives negative reinforcement. The difference in responses between the first and second halves of the questionnaire is the measure of the participant's attitude change. Attitudes toward intercollegiate athletic competition are expected to become more favorable among participants reinforced for "pro" responses than among participant's reinforced for "anti" responses.

Arousing Cognitive Dissonance Learning Experience

     Carkenord and Bullington (1993) suggest a technique for allowing students to experience cognitive dissonance. As they point out, students often miss the important point that dissonance is a state of arousal that motivates attitude change. They suggest that one make this point salient by choosing several topics and allowing students to see how they feel when their behavior does not conform to their attitudes. For example, students might be asked to rate their agreement on a seven point scale -with topics such as, "The government should insure that everyone has adequate health care," and "llliteracy is a serious problem that requires attention."

    After they have rated several such items (a measure of attitudes), they should be asked "yes" or "no" questions about their behaviors relevant to their attitudes, e.g., "Have you written your senator or congressman to express your views about health care?", "Have you personally done anything to help reduce illiteracy?" Most students will find that their behaviors are not congruent with their attitudes and will express discomfort about the fact. Discussion can then ensue about the nature of dissonance and how it may be resolved.
 

Persuasive Communication and Advertising Learning Experience

    Students enjoy examining advertisements for the characteristics of the source, content, and target audience that have been found to influence the effectiveness of persuasive communications. Such an exercise may be implemented in various ways.

    Students may be asked to bring ads from the print media to class to demonstrate each of the characteristics of source, content, and target audience. Alternatively, the instructor may provide the advertisements for student to comment on.

     Students may be encouraged to generate and test hypotheses about the source, content, and target of advertisements on various pages of the World Wide Web.
 
 

     Everyone makes social judgements, all of the time. For instance, we decide whether or not we like someone new by the way they dress or where they live or what kind of car they drive. These impressions are formed quickly and are frequently based on very superficial elements.

    Yet we all know that such impressions can be very important. Remember how your mother would urge you to dress nicely on the first day of school so that the teacher would form a good impression of you? Can you name other situations in which first impressions are important?

    Have students make lists of situations in which first impressions are critical.

    We also know that these impressions call be long lasting. Can you think of someone who made a bad impression on you and how difficult it was to change that impression even when you learned new, more positive, information about that person?

    Social cognition refers to the process by which we make sense of our world by interpreting events that happen to us and around us. Psychologists who study social cognition look to understand how we form first impressions, how we change our impressions, how information in memory affects those judgements and how all of this mental processing affects behavior.

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Activity 1

        Discuss how we form impressions (referring back to the skating photo), focusing on superficial elements. Include a discussion of the recency and the primacy effects. This activity engages students in impression formation, judgements we make about people based on superficial aspects such as dress, speech or penmanship. A related topic is impression management in which we attempt to manipulate the situation so that others form the impression we want them to form. Leary, Kowalski and Bergen (1988) discuss these purposeful attempts to control the impressions we make.

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Activity 2

    As you can see from these lists, a large portion of impression formation and management is nonverbal. Body language is one of the tools we use when we form impressions of others.  For instance, if you walk into a job interview and the interviewer is sitting in a chair, arms folded and a frown on his or her face, do you think you'll get the job? Probably not. Why?

    Give examples of other ordinary encounters with body language and how we interpret that language.

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Activity 3
 

Activity 4

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    Attribution theory is another area in social psychology that has received a great deal of attention in the last few years. An attribution is simply a belief about why someone does what they do. We all make attributions all of the time. President Clinton signed a particular bill because he is a Democrat. The Orioles lost the game because the umpires were calling strikes that weren't strikes. I failed that test because it was too hard and the professor doesn't like me. These statements are all examples of attributions. Can you think of some other common situations and attributions?

     Attribution theory seeks to explain why we draw the conclusions we do about behavior, both our own and that of others. It is an important area of study because our attributions cause us to see others as victims or as people with a say in their own actions and outcomes. Our attributions help shape our outlook on life. Harold Kelley (1972) believes that we make attributions that are either dispositional or situational. Dispositional attributions are internal, explained by internal reasons; while situational attributions are external or explained by external reasons.
 

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Activity 5

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    Another view on attribution theory comes from Bernard Weiner (1986). He identified three dimensions that explain social attribution. The first dimension is internal/external which is similar to Kelley's categories. The stable/unstable dimension refers to the stability of the factor to which the behavior is attributed, i.e. how likely the factor is to change. The third dimension is controllable/uncontrollable or how much can we control the factor to which we make the attribution. Weiner found that cultures around the world use these dimensions for making success/failure attributions.

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Activity 6

    There are three biases that are commonly made when we make social attributions. Since we don't always think rationally, we sometimes commit one or both of these errors in cognition.

     The first is the fundamental attribution error. This occurs because we tend to infer personality characteristics from behavior. The fundamental attribution error occurs when we attribute other people's behavior to internal factors. In other words, we think they behave as they do because they want to; they choose to behave like that. By focusing on internal factors, we may ignore the context in which the behavior occurs. A mother may yell at her child in the store because the child has already pulled 20 boxes from the shelves and has now knocked over a display of grapefruit. We decide that she is an ill-tempered person with no patience who probably shouldn't be a mother. The mother isn't necessarily an abusive parent or short-tempered or impatient. We don't know what may have provoked that particular behavior and so it is difficult to attribute a motive or cause to the behavior.

     The fundamental attribution error is related to the second bias, the actor-observer effect. The is the tendency for people to attribute their own behavior to situational or external factors while attributing the behavior of others to dispositional or internal factors. For example, you failed the big test because your roommate kept you up all night. When your lab partner fails the same test, you wonder whether you made a smart move in choosing that partner since he or she may not be as smart as you thought. You make an internal attribution about your lab partner's behavior while making external attributions for your own behavior.

    The third bias is known as the self-serving bias. This can sometimes be a way of saving face. The self-serving bias says that we attribute our successes to internal factors (I passed the exam because I'm smart and I studied hard) while attributing our failures to external factors (I failed the test because the teacher made it too hard and asked only picky information.) Such an approach can buffer our sense of self-esteem.

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Activity 7

Social cognition then attempts to explain why we make the judgements we make and why we sometimes behave as we do. It explores how we manage the impressions we give to others. As with other questions in social psychology, it focuses on behavior between individuals and in groups.
 

Activity 1

Bring in a photograph of Calla Urbanski and Rocky Marval in skating costume. (They are iceskaters and photos can be found in books about the 1992 Olympics. He was a truck driver; she was a waitress to pay the skating bills.).

 Ask the students to write a description of the people in the picture. What do they think the people do to earn a living? What are their hobbies, etc.? Collect these and read several aloud. Hopefully they will follow the stereotypes of figure skaters.

Activity 2

In groups, have students create lists of ways in which they manage the first impressions they create. Have them create lists for various situations such as first day of class, job interview, blind date and then specify what they did to manage the impression.

Activity 3

Have students read Article 4 in Lesko's book. The next day discuss its validity. Divide students into groups and have them discuss the critical thinking questions at the end of the chapter. This activity can also serve as a bridge back to the chapter on research. Have students evaluate the design of the study and then design a study to improve on this design.

Alternatively, have students design a study to look at cross-cultural elements in impression formation.

Activity 4

 A final research activity ties together these issues in social cognition: Have students pair up. They should then spend at least one hour at a mall or the Union or some other place that is busy and where a large number of people pass by. They should describe at least 20 people in terms of dress, demeanor, etc. Next they are to write down their first impressions of those people. They should then analyze what they find in terms of commonalities, related to nonverbal behavior, etc.
 

Activity 5

 Give students the following situation:

 You have been studying for 5 days for a big test in Professor Jiminy Cricket's class. Professor Cricket is well-known in his field and has published numerous studies. It is critical that you  get a high grade on this test since there are only 2 tests in the course and you did not get a high grade on the first test. You have spent at least 1 hour a day reading the chapters. When you get your test back, you have made a D. List reasons why you might have made a D. Next have groups exchange lists and identify the reasons as internal or external (dispositional/situational). Make a master list of the findings.

Activity 6

 Bring in the several days worth of the sports section of local newspapers. Divide students into groups. Give each group a newspaper. Have the groups find one (or 2) articles in the sports section in which an athlete or a coach discusses why they won or lost the previous game. Students should first summarize the article, including the outcome. Next they are to classify these attributions on the basis of both Kelley and Weiner's theories. Discuss the results in class.

 (Adapted from an activity by Diane Wiese-Bjornstal, Ph.D., U.Minnesota)

Activity 7:

 Have students generate examples of situations in which each of these biases has been used.

V. Resources and References

References

Baneerje, B. & McKeage, K. (1994). How green is my value: Exploring the relationship
to environmentalism and materialism. Advances in Consumer Research, 21, 147-152.

 Beers, S. (1997). Instructor’s Manual to Accompany Social Psychology by Charles G. Lord. Orlando, FL: Harcourt, Brace and Co.

 Chaiken, S. & Maheswaren, D. (1984). Heuristic processing can bias systematic processing: Effects of source credibility, argument ambiguity and task importance in attitude judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66, 460.473.

 Kelley, H-H- (1972). Attribution in social interaction. In E.E. Jones, et. al. (Eds.), Attribution: Perceiving the causes of behavior. Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press.

 Leafy M.R., Kowalski, R.M. & Bergfan, D.J. (1988) Interpersonal information acquisition and confidence in first encounters. Personal and Social/ Psychology Bulletin, 14, 68-77.

 Lefton, Lester (1997). Psychology, 6th ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Lesko, W.A. (1997). Article 4: Studies point to power of nonverbal signals. In W.A.
Lesko Readings in Social Psychology: General, Classic and Contemporary Selections, 3rd ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Myers, D.G. (1994). Exploring social psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Sdorow, LM. (1995). Psychology, 3rd ed. Madison, WI: Brown & Benchmark.

Ward, C.D. (1970). Laboratory Manual in Experimental Social Psychology. New York:

Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Weiner, B. (1986). An attributional theory of motivation and emotion. New York: Spring-Verlag.
 

There are a number of social psychology texts on the market which can be used to supplement introductory psychology materials. Prominent authors include Baron, Byrne, Lesko and Myers. A number of readings books accompany these texts. For samples, contact the major publishers.

Videos: Discovering Psychology
    Tape 19: Power of the Situation
        Segments on conformity, fundamental attribution error
    Tape 20: Constructing Social Reality
        Segments on cognitive control, prejudice, advertising compliance
Available from: 1-800-Learner or other PBS video catalogues.
Faculty guides available from HarperCollins 1-800-782-2664
 

Teaching Modules – Discovering Psychology
    Module 14 – Cognitive Social Psychology
        Segments on cognitive dissonance, attitudes
    Module 14 – Interpersonal Processes
        Segments on groupthink, violence, conformity
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

Candid Camera Classics in Social Psychology
McGraw Hill

The Psychology Show Laserdisc
Segments on obedience and compliance
Houghton Mifflin Publishers

 Television news shows such as 20/20, Primetime, Discover Magazine and Dateline often offer segments relevant to social psychology. Many have websites which list their upcoming segments.

VI. Contact Us
 

Section 1:

Barbara Herrington, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Psychology
LaRoche College
9000 Babcock Blvd.
Pittsburgh PA 15237
Fax: (412) 635-2724
HERRINB1@MARIE.LAROCHE.EDU
 

Section 2:

George I. Whitehead, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology
Salisbury State University
1101 Camden Avenue
Salisbury MD 21801
Fax: (410) 543-6068
GIWHITEHEAD@SSU.EDU
 

Section 3:

Diane L. Finley, Ph.D.
Department of Psychology
Towson University
Towson MD 20752
dfinley@nova.umuc.edu