Social tricks that make human behavior click

Participants believed they administered 450V shocks to a learner. 65% went to maximum when instructed by an authority figure. Proximity to the victim reduced obedience.

Someone cuts you off → 'they're a jerk' (not: 'they're rushing to hospital'). We do the opposite for ourselves — actor-observer bias. The most robust finding in social psychology.

Two mechanisms: diffusion of responsibility (someone else will help) and pluralistic ignorance (everyone looks calm so must be fine). Intervene by naming someone: 'You in the red jacket, call 911.'

When behavior conflicts with beliefs, we feel psychological discomfort. We reduce it by changing our attitude (not behavior) to match what we did. Smokers who know smoking is harmful often rationalize rather than quit.

Zajonc: presence of others increases arousal → improves dominant (well-learned) responses, impairs non-dominant (difficult/new) responses. Simple tasks: audience helps. Complex/novel tasks: audience hurts. Explains why athletes perform better in front of crowds on practiced skills but choke under pressure.

Janis: cohesive groups suppress dissent to maintain harmony. Symptoms: illusion of invulnerability (overconfidence), collective rationalization, stereotyped view of out-groups, self-censorship, illusion of unanimity. Historical examples: Bay of Pigs, Challenger disaster. Prevention: assign devil's advocate, seek outside opinions.

Steele and Aronson: when members of a stereotyped group are reminded of the stereotype before a test, performance suffers — even among high-achieving individuals. The threat consumes cognitive resources. Reduced by: affirming other identities, emphasizing that intelligence is expandable, reducing salience of group membership.

Central route: person carefully considers arguments → attitude change is lasting and resistant to counter-persuasion. Requires motivation and ability to process. Peripheral route: relies on heuristics — attractive spokesperson, celebrity endorsement, popularity. Less lasting. High-involvement decisions: central. Low-involvement: peripheral.

Tajfel's minimal group studies: people randomly assigned to groups based on trivial criteria (coin flip, art preference) immediately favored their own group in resource allocation. Social identity theory: self-esteem tied to group membership → motivated to see in-group positively. Foundation of prejudice and discrimination.

Anonymity + group membership → reduced self-awareness → weakened internal restraints → behavior more extreme (positive or negative depending on group norms). Explains crowd violence, online trolling, mob behavior. Zimbardo's prison study: uniforms and anonymity contributed to guard brutality.

When we succeed: internal attribution (I worked hard, I'm smart). When we fail: external attribution (the test was unfair, bad luck). Opposite of how we judge others (FAE). Protects self-esteem. Depression: often shows reversed pattern — internal attribution for failures, external for successes.

Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE): when explaining others' behavior, we overweight internal (dispositional) factors and underweight external (situational) factors. Actor-observer bias: we attribute our OWN behavior to situations but others' to their character. Self-serving bias: attribute successes to self (internal) and failures to situation (external) — protects self-esteem. Cultural note: FAE is stronger in individualistic (Western) cultures; collectivist cultures give more weight to situational factors.

Conformity (Asch): 75% conformed to clearly wrong group answer at least once — normative influence (fit in) + informational influence (maybe they're right). Obedience (Milgram): 65% administered what they thought were lethal shocks when ordered by an authority — situational factors overwhelm character. Stanford Prison Experiment (Zimbardo): normal students became brutal guards or helpless prisoners within days — situation shapes behavior profoundly.

Groupthink (Janis): pressure for consensus overrides critical thinking — illusion of invulnerability, self-censorship, illusion of unanimity. Symptoms: highly cohesive group, insular leadership, external threat. In-group bias: favor members of our own group. Out-group homogeneity: they all look the same to us. Social loafing: people work less hard in groups than alone. Social facilitation: well-learned tasks improve with an audience; difficult tasks worsen. Deindividuation: loss of self-awareness in crowds → disinhibition.

Central route (ELM): high elaboration — person carefully evaluates the argument. Strong arguments produce lasting attitude change. Peripheral route: low elaboration — person uses mental shortcuts (heuristics). Attractive source, celebrity endorsement, number of arguments (not quality). Central route change is more durable and resistant to counter-persuasion. Cognitive dissonance (Festinger): tension when behavior conflicts with attitude → change attitude to match behavior (post-decision dissonance). Foot-in-the-door: small request first → bigger request later.