Social Behavior In Different Age. The child’s ordinal position The child’s ordinal position in the family has its most important influence on receptivity.

Social Behavior In Different Age

The child’s ordinal position The child’s ordinal position in the family has its most

important influence on receptivity to accepting or rejecting the requests and ideas of legitimate authority. First-born children in most families are most willing than later-borns to conform to the requests of authority. They are more strongly motivated to achieve in school, more conscientious, and less aggressive.

The child’s social class affects the preparation and motivation for academic achievement. Children from middle-class families typically obtain higher grades in school than children of working or lower-class families because different value systems and practices are promoted by families from varied social class backgrounds.

The patterns of socialization The patterns of socialization used by parents also

influence the child’s personality. Baumrind suggests that parents could be classified as authoritative, authoritarian, or permissive. More competent and mature preschool children usually have authoritative parents who were nurturant but made maturity demands.

Moderately selfreliant children who were a bit withdrawn have authoritarian parents who more often relied on coercive discipline. The least mature children have overly permissive parents who are nurturant but lack discipline.

Our View of Self and Others

 The way we look at ourselves plays an important role in how we see the world.  The way we see the world plays an important role in how we see ourselves.  In this sense, our view of self and others is an ever-changing circle of influence. 

We know that those who are happy see more positive aspects of the world than those who are depressed.  We also know that living in an abusive household or an overly restrictive environment can both lead to depression. 

Social psychology explores the social areas of attribution (how we interpret those around us) and attraction (what we seek in a friend or partner).

Attribution Theory

We tend to explain our own behavior and the behavior of others by assigning attributes to these behavior.  An attribute is an inference about the cause of a behavior.  According to the Attribution Theory, we tend to explain our own behavior and the behavior of others by assigning attributes to these behavior.  

 There are basically two sources for our behavior; those influenced by situational (external) factors and those influenced by dispositional (internal) factors.  Imagine walking into your boss's office and he immediately tells you, in an angry tone, not to bother him.  An external explanation of this behavior might be, "He's really a nice guy but the stress is overwhelming.  He needs a vacation."  On the other hand, you might see the same behavior and say, "What a jerk, I don't know why is so angry all the time."  The same behavior is given two very opposite explanations.  

 Many factors play a role in how we assign attributes to behaviors.  Obviously our view of the world, our previous experience with a particular person or situation, and our knowledge of the behavior play an important role.  Other factors can influence our interpretation as well, and there are two important errors or mistakes we tend make when assigning these attributes.

Fundamental Attribution Error This refers to the tendency to over estimate the internal

and underestimate the external factors when explaining the behaviors of others. 

This may be a result of our tendency to pay more attention to the situation rather than to the individual and is especially true when we know little about the other person.  For example, the last time you were driving and got cut off did you say to yourself "What an idiot" (or something similar), or did you say "She must be having a rough day." 

Chances are that this behavior was assigned mostly internal attributes and you didn't give a second thought to what external factors are playing a role in her driving behavior.

Self-Serving Bias

We tend to equate successes to internal and failures to external attributes.  Imagine getting a promotion.  Most of us will feel that this success is due to hard work, intelligence, dedication, and similar internal factors. 

This bias is true for most people, but for those who are depressed, have low self-esteem, or view themselves negatively, the bias is typically opposite.  For these people, a success may mean that a multitude of negatives have been overlooked or that luck was the primary reason.  For failures, the depressed individual will likely see their own negative qualities, such as stupidity, as being the primary factor.

Attraction  Why are we attracted to certain people

and not others?  Why do our friends tend to be very similar to each other?  And what causes us to decide on a mate? 

Many of these questions relate to social psychology in that society's influence and our own beliefs and traits play an important role.  Research has found five reasons why we choose our friends.

Proximity The vast majority of our friends live close to

where we live, or at least where we lived during the time period the friendship developed. 

Obviously friendships develop after getting to know someone, and this closeness provides the easiest way to accomplish this goal.  Having assigned seats in a class or group setting would result in more friends who's last name started with the same letter as yours

Association We tend to associate our opinions about

other people with our current state.  In other words, if you meet someone

during a class you really enjoy, they may get more 'likeability points' then if you met them during that class you can't stand.

Similarity On the other hand, imagine that person

above agrees with you this particular class is the worse they have taken. 

The agreement or similarity between the two of you would likely result in more attractiveness

Reciprocal Liking Simply put, we tend to like those

better who also like us back.  This may be a result of the feeling we get about ourselves knowing that we are likable. 

When we feel good when we are around somebody, we tend to report a higher level of attraction toward that person.

Physical Attractiveness

Physical attraction plays a role in who we choose as friends, although not as much so as in who we choose as a mate. 

These points are divided into categories such as physical attractiveness, sense of humor, education, and wealth. 

 We rate ourselves on these same categories and, at least at some level, know our score.  We tend to then pick friends and partners who have a similar score that we do. 

Obedience and Power

Power is typically thought of has having a certain attribute which gives one person more influence over another.  This attribute could be intelligence or experience, it could be job title, or perhaps money. 

According to most social psychologists, there are five types of power: coercive, reward, legitimate, expert, and referent.

Coercive power means the power punish.  Parents are said to have coercive power because they can place their child in time-out, for example; bosses have coercive power because they can fire an employee or assign an employee a less pleasing job. 

Reward power is almost the opposite; it is the power to reward.  In that sense parents and bosses have this type of power as well, as do many others in our lives. 

Legitimate power refers to the power granted by some authority, such as the power a police officer has due to the local or state government or the power a professor has due to the rules of a college or university.  

Expert power results from experience or education.  Those individuals with more knowledge tend to have more power in situations where that knowledge is important.  For instance, the physician will have more power in a medical emergency than the plumber.  But, when the pipes explode and the house is being flooded, the physician is not the person to call. 

Finally, referent power refers to admiration or respect.  When we look up to people because of their accomplishments, their attitude, or any other personal attribute, we tend to give them more power over us.  Imagine being asked to do something by your "hero" or your favorite movie star; we are very likely to comply out of admiration or respect.

The Role of Groups

We are concerned with our social image or how other people see us.

 When alone, we tend to be more relaxed, less concerned with the outward expression of our behavior, and are basically 'ourselves.' 

Research has found that when others are present, our level of arousal is increased.  In other words, we are suddenly more aware of what's going on around us.  Because of this, we tend to perform better at tasks that are well learned or simple.  When completing a difficult or new task, however, our performance level decreases and we tend to do more poorly.  

This phenomenon is called social facilitation, and as we try harder due to the presence of others, our performance actually decreases for difficult or unlearned tasks.  When others are watching you, however, you are more likely to be self-conscious, and therefore make more mistakes.  Professional basketball players, however, because the task is so well learned, perform better when others are watching and they are able demonstrate their confidence and ability.

Group Think and Group Polarization

If you've ever been involved in a group decision making process, you've probably seen such things happen:  either the group agrees on all of the major issues, or there is significant dissent that splits the group.  When we all agree, and are happy with that agreement, we typically do not want to hear opposing arguments.  This phenomenon is referred to as Group Think.  It can lead to impulsive decisions and a failure to identify and/or consider all sides of an argument. 

 Similar to this, Group Polarization refers to a groups tendency to talk itself into extreme positions.  In this case, a group gets so focused and energized about a decision, which pushes itself forward faster than originally intended. 

Social loafing

This theory states that as a group gets larger, the individual contribution decreases disproportionate to the group size.  This is due to the diffusion of responsibility created as the size of the group increases.  As more people are added to the group, you will end up with a small percentage doing a large portion of the work and a large percentage doing a much smaller proportion.  

Bystander Effect. The internal push to help a person in need decreases as the group gets larger, very similar to Social Loafing.  In this instance, however, people tend to be followers and will only get involved if they witness another person getting involved.