In the summer of 1954, a psychologist named Muzafer Sherif ran an unusual experiment at a boys’ summer camp in Robbers Cave State Park, Oklahoma. Twenty-two eleven-year-old boys arrived — ordinary strangers who had never met. They were quietly split into two groups and kept apart at first. Within days, each group had invented a name, the Rattlers and the Eagles, a flag, and its own rules. The boys had become a “we”.
Then the two groups were introduced through a series of contests. Almost at once, friendly competition curdled into hostility. The boys traded insults, raided each other’s cabins and burned the rival flag. Strangers a week earlier now behaved like enemies — purely because they had been placed in different groups.
The most striking part came last. Sherif could not calm the boys with pep talks. What worked was giving both groups a problem that neither could solve alone: a broken water supply, and a stalled truck that had to be pushed together. Forced to cooperate, the “us versus them” feeling slowly faded.
Sherif’s boys had done nothing strange. They behaved the way people behave when others are around — forming groups, taking sides, judging outsiders, and adjusting their own conduct to fit in. That is exactly what this chapter is about: how the presence of other people shapes the way we think, judge and act.
Q1. The boys at Robbers Cave were complete strangers. Why did they turn into rivals within days, simply because they were sorted into two separate groups? Q2. When a classmate suddenly snaps at you, how do you decide whether it is “just the way they are” or “something that upset them”? Do we judge such things fairly? Q3. Why do we tend to take full credit when things go right, but blame bad luck or other people when things go wrong? Q4. Could an ordinary, kind person be persuaded to harm a stranger simply because a person in authority ordered them to? Q5. If you were certain of an answer but everyone around you confidently said something different, would you trust yourself or quietly go along with the group?
As you work through this chapter, you will find that psychology has careful, evidence-based answers to each of these questions.
6.1 Social Perception and Attribution
Human beings are social by nature. From the moment we are born we live among other people — family, classmates, neighbours, strangers on a crowded bus — and a large part of our mental life is spent making sense of them. The branch of psychology that studies how the actual, imagined or implied presence of others shapes our thoughts, feelings and actions is called social psychology.
Two threads run through the whole of this field. Social thought refers to the way we notice, interpret and reason about other people — the judgements and impressions we form about them. Social behaviour refers to how we actually act when others are present. The two are tightly linked, because what we think about a person usually decides how we behave towards them.
Before we can think about or act towards someone, we must first form some picture of who they are. The process by which we try to know, understand and form impressions of other people is called social perception. We do this constantly, often within seconds of meeting someone, reading their tone, expression and manner to guess what kind of person they might be.
Social perception is the process through which we seek to know, understand and form impressions of other people, chiefly by working out the reasons behind their behaviour.
But social perception goes deeper than first impressions. We do not merely observe what people do; we want to know why they do it. When a friend does not reply to your message, you at once begin to wonder — are they angry, busy, or simply forgetful? This search for the causes behind behaviour lies at the very heart of social perception, and psychologists have a special name for it, which we take up next.
6.1.1 Internal and External Attribution
When anything happens, we look for a cause; this is as true of people as it is of events. The process through which a person seeks to identify and explain the causes of others’ behaviour — and of their own behaviour too — is called attribution.
Attribution is the process of assigning causes to behaviour — deciding why a person (oneself or another) has acted in a particular way.
Broadly, the causes we assign fall into two kinds. When we trace behaviour to something inside the person — their personality, ability, effort, mood or intentions — we are making an internal attribution (also called a dispositional attribution, because it points to the person’s disposition). When we trace behaviour to something outside the person — the situation, other people, luck, or the difficulty of the task — we are making an external attribution (also called a situational attribution).
Consider a student who scores poorly in a test. One observer might conclude that she did not study or is simply not capable — an internal attribution. Another might conclude that the paper was unusually hard, or that she was unwell that day — an external attribution. The behaviour is identical, yet the two explanations are worlds apart.
This distinction is not just an academic exercise, because our attributions decide how we respond. A teacher who reads a student’s poor answer as laziness (internal) may feel irritated and punish; a teacher who reads it as the result of illness (external) may soften and offer help. Getting the cause right — or wrong — has real consequences for how we treat one another.
Internal vs External attribution | Feature | Internal (dispositional) | External (situational) | |—|—|—| | Where the cause is placed | Inside the person | Outside the person, in the situation | | Typical factors | Traits, ability, effort, motives, mood | Task difficulty, luck, others’ actions, social pressure | | Poor exam marks explained as | “She didn’t prepare / isn’t capable” | “The paper was unfair / she was ill” | | A late arrival explained as | “He is careless about time” | “The traffic was terrible today” |
6.1.2 Kelley’s Theory of Attribution
In real life we rarely have a single obvious cause in front of us; several explanations usually compete. So how do we actually decide whether a behaviour is internal or external? The social psychologist Harold Kelley offered an influential answer in the late 1960s with what he called the covariation model.
The word covariation means “varying together”. Kelley suggested that, to work out the cause of someone’s behaviour, we behave rather like informal scientists. We check whether the behaviour appears together with — covaries with — the person, or with the thing they are reacting to. To do this, we draw on three kinds of information.
Consistency asks whether the person behaves this way towards the same thing across different occasions. High consistency means they react this way every time.
Consensus asks whether other people behave the same way towards the same thing. High consensus means most people react this way too.
Distinctiveness asks whether the person reacts this way only to this particular thing, or to many things. High distinctiveness means the reaction is special to this one thing.
By combining these three, Kelley arrived at two clear patterns. When consistency is high but consensus and distinctiveness are both low, we make an internal (person) attribution — the person always reacts this way, others do not, and they react this way to many things, so the cause must lie in them. When consistency, consensus and distinctiveness are all high, we make an external (stimulus) attribution — the person always reacts this way, so does everyone else, and only to this one thing, so the cause must lie in the thing itself.
A worked example makes this clearer. Suppose Riya laughs loudly at a particular stand-up comedian.
In one case, Riya laughs every time she watches him (high consistency), but nobody else in the audience finds him funny (low consensus), and Riya laughs at almost every comedian she sees (low distinctiveness). Here we conclude that the cause is in Riya — she is simply easily amused. This is an internal attribution.
In another case, Riya laughs every time she watches him (high consistency), everyone else laughs too (high consensus), and Riya rarely laughs at other comedians (high distinctiveness). Here we conclude that the cause is in the comedian — he really is funny. This is an external attribution.
There is also a third possibility. When consistency is low — Riya laughed today but not on other occasions — we tend to attribute the behaviour neither to Riya nor to the comedian, but to the special circumstances of that particular moment, such as her mood that evening.
Kelley’s Covariation Model of Attribution Proposed by: Harold Kelley (American social psychologist, late 1960s) Core idea: To judge whether behaviour is caused by the person or the situation, we act like informal scientists and check whether the behaviour covaries with three kinds of information. Key terms: consistency, consensus, distinctiveness; internal (dispositional) and external (situational) attribution Evidence: When people are given descriptions that vary these three factors, their attributions shift in the directions the model predicts. Limitation: In ordinary life we seldom have all three kinds of information at hand, and we often reach a snap judgement without any such careful reasoning — a gap that the biases discussed next make plain.
6.2 Biases in Social Judgement
Kelley’s model describes how we ought to reason about the causes of behaviour. In practice, however, we are not the careful scientists the model imagines. We take mental shortcuts, lean on quick impressions, and end up making the same errors again and again.
The whole set of mental activities by which we notice, store, recall and combine information about other people is called social cognition. Because our minds have limited time and attention, social cognition is prone to systematic errors — patterns of thinking that regularly tilt our judgements in one direction. Such an error is called a bias.
The syllabus focuses on five biases that shape how we judge ourselves and others. Understanding them is useful not to excuse poor thinking, but to recognise it in ourselves and correct for it.
6.2.1 Fundamental Attribution Error
Imagine a car cuts sharply in front of yours. Your first thought is probably “what a reckless, rude driver” — not “perhaps there is a medical emergency in that car”. That instant leap to blaming the person, rather than the situation, illustrates one of the best-known biases in psychology.
The fundamental attribution error is the tendency, when explaining other people’s behaviour, to overestimate internal (dispositional) causes and underestimate external (situational) causes. Because it makes us assume that a person’s actions “correspond” to their character, it is also called the correspondence bias.
The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to over-attribute others’ behaviour to their personality or character, while underplaying the situation they were in.
Why does this happen? When we watch someone act, the person is the vivid, attention-grabbing figure right in front of us, while the situation shaping them stays in the background, often unseen. We explain what we can see — the person — and quietly ignore the pressures we cannot.
The fundamental attribution error across cultures This bias is not equally strong everywhere. It appears more pronounced in individualist cultures, such as the United States and much of Western Europe, which stress the independent, self-driven person. In collectivist cultures such as India, China and Japan, where people are seen as embedded in families, duties and circumstances, observers more readily take the situation into account. A behaviour a Western observer might blame on “the kind of person she is”, an Indian observer may more naturally explain by “the situation she was placed in”.
Q2. When a classmate suddenly snaps at you, how do you decide whether it is “just the way they are” or “something that upset them”? Do we judge such things fairly?
A. We decide by weighing internal against external causes, ideally using information such as consistency, consensus and distinctiveness. But we often do not judge fairly. The fundamental attribution error pulls us towards blaming the person’s nature (“she is bad-tempered”) and away from the situation (“she had just received awful news”). Knowing about this bias helps us pause and consider the circumstances before we judge.
6.2.2 Self-Serving Bias
The fundamental attribution error is about how we judge others. When it comes to ourselves, a different tilt takes over. Notice how, after doing well in a test, most of us say “I studied hard” or “I’m good at this” — but after doing badly, we more often say “the paper was unfair” or “the teacher didn’t teach it properly”.
The self-serving bias is the tendency to attribute our own successes to internal causes and our own failures to external causes.
The self-serving bias is the tendency to credit our successes to ourselves (ability, effort) and to blame our failures on outside factors (bad luck, unfair conditions).
Why do we do this? Psychologists suggest that the bias protects and boosts our self-esteem, and satisfies our wish to look good to others. Taking credit for triumphs feels rewarding; disowning failures spares us pain. The same bias, though, can breed friction — in group work, each member may quietly feel they contributed the most while others fell short.
Fundamental attribution error vs Self-serving bias Both concern how we assign causes, but they point in opposite directions. The fundamental attribution error is about other people — we over-blame their disposition. The self-serving bias is about ourselves — we claim our successes as personal, yet blame our failures on the situation.
Q3. Why do we tend to take full credit when things go right, but blame bad luck or other people when things go wrong?
A. This is the self-serving bias. We attribute our successes to internal causes such as ability and effort, and our failures to external causes such as bad luck or unfair conditions — mainly because doing so protects our self-esteem and helps us appear capable to others.
6.2.3 False Consensus Effect
After watching a film you loved, have you ever been surprised that most other people disliked it? We tend to assume, quietly and without checking, that others see the world much as we do.
The false consensus effect is the tendency to overestimate the extent to which other people share our opinions, beliefs and behaviours.
The false consensus effect is the tendency to overestimate how many other people agree with our views and act as we do.
Because of this bias, a person comes to believe that their own opinions are ordinary and widely shared, when in reality far fewer people agree. Part of the reason is that we mostly spend time with like-minded family and friends, so the small circle we observe genuinely does agree with us — and we wrongly assume the wider world is the same. Assuming agreement also reassures us that our own views are normal and correct.
6.2.4 Automatic Vigilance
Read a report card with nine praises and one criticism, and it is almost always the criticism that stays with you. Our attention is quietly drawn to the negative.
Automatic vigilance is the tendency to notice and attend to negative information automatically, so strongly that it can interfere with our attention to neutral or positive information.
Automatic vigilance is the automatic pull of our attention towards negative or threatening information in a situation.
This tendency probably has deep roots. For our ancestors, missing a threat could be fatal, while missing something pleasant merely cost an opportunity, so minds that noticed danger quickly were more likely to survive. Automatic vigilance also explains why first impressions matter so much: because people are highly sensitive to negative information, anything we say or do at a first meeting that triggers a negative reaction can leave a lasting impression that overshadows our better qualities.
6.2.5 Counterfactual Thinking
After an event, we often replay it in our minds and imagine how it could have turned out differently — “if only I had left ten minutes earlier”, “what if I had chosen the other option”. These are thoughts that run counter to the facts.
Counterfactual thinking is the tendency to imagine alternatives to events that have already happened — the “what might have been”.
Counterfactual thinking is the mental habit of comparing what actually happened with an imagined alternative outcome.
Counterfactual thinking comes in two directions, and each brings a different feeling. In upward counterfactual thinking, we imagine a better outcome than the one we got, and this usually produces negative feelings such as regret and envy. In downward counterfactual thinking, we imagine a worse outcome than the one we got, and this usually produces positive feelings such as relief and satisfaction. Figure 6.2-1 sets out the contrast.
Upward thoughts are not only painful, though; they can be useful, because imagining how things might have gone better points to strategies for doing better next time. A student who narrowly misses a top rank may feel real regret, yet that regret can sharpen her preparation for the next attempt.
Medvec, Madey and Gilovich — why bronze medallists smile more than silver Question: Do athletes’ feelings depend not just on how well they did, but on what they imagine could have happened? Method: The researchers examined recordings of medal-winners at the 1992 Olympic Games and rated how happy the silver and bronze medallists appeared. Finding: Bronze medallists generally looked happier than silver medallists, even though they had objectively finished lower. Meaning: A silver medallist tends to think upward (“I almost won gold”) and feel let down, while a bronze medallist thinks downward (“I almost won no medal at all”) and feels relieved. Emotion here is driven by the imagined comparison, not by the result alone.
6.3 Groups and Group Influence
Human beings are sociable creatures who are naturally fond of company. Wherever people find themselves together for any length of time, they tend to form groups. But a group, in the eyes of a social psychologist, is far more than a random collection of bodies in the same place.
6.3.1 Meaning and Characteristics of a Group
A group is two or more people who interact with and depend on one another, who share certain goals and rules of conduct, and who see themselves as belonging together. It is this sense of “we”, along with mutual dependence, that turns a set of individuals into a group.
A group is two or more interdependent individuals who influence one another through social interaction, share common goals and rules of behaviour, and possess some degree of cohesiveness and a common identity.
Groups share a set of recognisable features. Its members see themselves as a single unit, distinct from other such groups, giving them a common identity. They share common goals, and they are interdependent — the action of one member has consequences for the others. They usually have a common need that is met by working together, and they interact by following a set of shared rules and roles that all members accept.
The strength of the bonds that hold members together, keeping them united and willing to cooperate, is called cohesiveness. Highly cohesive groups tend to stay together and act as one; loosely bound groups drift apart more easily.
Group vs Crowd A group shares goals and rules, its members depend on one another, and they feel a sense of belonging. A crowd is merely a number of people who happen to be at the same place at the same time — such as strangers waiting at a bus stop — with no common goal, no interdependence and no shared identity.
6.3.2 Types of Groups
Groups differ in size, in how members relate to one another, and in the functions they serve. Three important ways of classifying them are worth knowing.
Primary and secondary groups
A primary group is one an individual is usually born into rather than chooses. Its members share close physical proximity and warm emotional bonds, and the group deeply shapes the individual’s values, ideals and attitudes, especially in early life. The family is the clearest example, along with one’s caste and religious community.
A secondary group is one the individual chooses to join, and may leave by choice. Relationships here are more indirect, impersonal and occasional than in a primary group. Membership of a political party or a professional association is a typical example.
Primary group vs Secondary group | Feature | Primary group | Secondary group | |—|—|—| | Membership | Usually born into it | Chosen and joined | | Relationships | Close, personal, face-to-face | Indirect, impersonal, formal | | Emotional bond | Strong and lasting | Weaker and looser | | Examples | Family, close friends | Political party, professional body |
In-group and out-group
The social psychologist Henri Tajfel drew attention to the way we split the social world into “us” and “them” through his Social Identity Theory. An in-group is a group we identify with and feel part of; an out-group is any group we see ourselves as standing apart from. We tend to view our in-group favourably and the out-group less favourably, giving rise to the feeling of “us versus them”.
Remarkably, this division springs up on the flimsiest of grounds. Even when people are sorted into groups on some trivial basis, they quickly begin to favour their own group over the other. Such social categorisation can harden into intergroup rivalry and even open conflict.
Social Identity Theory Proposed by: Henri Tajfel (British social psychologist, 1970s) Core idea: A large part of our self-image comes from the groups we belong to, so we favour our in-group and downgrade out-groups to protect that identity. Key terms: social categorisation, in-group, out-group, “us versus them” Evidence: In “minimal group” studies, people divided on trivial grounds still favoured their own group when sharing rewards. Limitation: It explains bias between groups but cannot by itself predict when rivalry will turn into open hostility rather than mere preference.
There is a hopeful side to this. When rival groups are given a shared problem that neither can solve alone, the boundary between “us” and “them” can blur — a shift called recategorisation. You met this at the start of the chapter: the boys at Robbers Cave stopped fighting once a broken water supply forced both groups to cooperate.
Q1. The boys at Robbers Cave were complete strangers. Why did they turn into rivals within days, simply because they were sorted into two separate groups?
A. Because of social categorisation, described by Tajfel’s Social Identity Theory. Once the boys were placed in separate groups, each became an in-group (“us”) and the other an out-group (“them”). People draw part of their identity from their group and so favour it and downgrade outsiders — which is enough to breed rivalry, even between strangers divided on trivial grounds.
6.3.4 How Groups Influence the Individual
The behaviour of an individual can change sharply once a group is present. Three well-studied effects show how: social facilitation, social loafing and group polarisation.
Social facilitation
More than a century ago, Norman Triplett noticed that cyclists rode faster when racing against others than when riding alone. The presence of others seemed to lift performance — an effect now called social facilitation.
Triplett — cyclists and the first social-facilitation experiment Question: Does the presence of other people affect how well a person performs a task? Method: Triplett observed that cyclists were faster when racing others, then tested children winding fishing reels, sometimes alone and sometimes alongside another child. Finding: People generally performed faster when others were present. Meaning: The presence of others can boost performance — social facilitation. This is often regarded as one of the first experiments in social psychology.
Why does this happen? The presence of others creates arousal, which makes us try harder, partly because we assume our performance is being judged — a feeling the psychologist Cottrell called evaluation apprehension. But the effect cuts both ways. If a person is skilled at the task, this arousal helps them do even better; if a person is unskilled or unsure, the same nervous arousal makes them perform worse than they would alone. When others are performing the same task alongside us, the situation becomes competitive — this is called co-action — and again the skilled do better while the unskilled do worse.
Social loafing
Groups do not always spur people on. When individual effort cannot be singled out, people often ease off. This tendency to put in less effort when working in a group than when working alone is called social loafing.
Latané, Williams and Harkins — social loafing in clapping and shouting Question: Do people work as hard in a group as they do alone? Method: Participants were asked to clap and shout as loudly as they could, sometimes alone and sometimes in groups, while the total noise was measured. Finding: The noise produced per person fell as the group grew larger — people were louder on their own than in a group. Meaning: When individual effort cannot be identified, people tend to slack off. This is social loafing.
Social loafing occurs because a person feels less individually responsible when the task becomes a shared responsibility, and because they realise their particular effort will not be noticed or recognised. It is stronger in non-competitive tasks and where members are poorly coordinated or weakly bound to the group. It can be reduced by making each person’s contribution identifiable, by helping members feel that their part genuinely matters, and it is much less common in highly motivated, cohesive groups.
Social facilitation vs Social loafing | Feature | Social facilitation | Social loafing | |—|—|—| | What happens | Presence of others changes (often improves) individual performance | Individual effort drops within a group | | Is individual effort visible? | Yes — the performance can be judged | No — contributions merge and are anonymous | | Effect on effort | Arousal raises effort (helps the skilled) | Reduces effort | | Everyday example | Playing your best in front of an audience | Half-heartedly rowing in a large team |
Group polarisation
When a group of like-minded people discusses an issue, the group’s final decision is often more extreme than the views its members held to begin with. This shift towards a more extreme position after group discussion is called group polarisation.
Suppose a group already leaning towards a strict punishment discusses a case together; they may end up deciding on an even harsher penalty than any single member first favoured. Polarisation happens for two main reasons. First, in discussion members hear fresh arguments that all favour the shared view, and these persuasive arguments strengthen their leaning. Second, wanting to be seen favourably by the group, and identifying with it as an in-group, members shift their stand to match — or even outdo — the group’s direction. Because of this, group polarisation can have dangerous consequences, pushing groups towards very extreme positions.
6.4 Social Norms and Conformity
So far we have looked at how the presence of others shapes our thoughts and our performance. We now turn to something more direct: the ways in which people deliberately or unknowingly change one another’s behaviour. The efforts by one or more persons to change the attitudes, beliefs or behaviours of others is called social influence.
Social influence is the process by which one or more persons change the attitudes, beliefs or behaviours of others.
Social influence is at work from the very first day of our lives, as family, friends and society gradually shape how we think and act. It can even operate through the merely imagined or implied presence of others. Its two most important forms are conformity and obedience, and we take them up in turn, beginning with the social norms that conformity revolves around.
6.4.1 Social Norms
Every society expects its members to behave in certain accepted ways. These expectations take shape as social norms — the unwritten, informal rules of behaviour that a group or society considers acceptable. Norms tell us what we should and should not do in a given situation.
Social norms are the unwritten, informal rules of behaviour that a group or society regards as acceptable, telling members what they should and should not do.
It is the presence of others that gives rise to these expectations. Norms differ from one situation to another, yet within each situation they define the proper way to behave. In doing so they provide order in society, and they are a powerful means of predicting and understanding how others will act.
Norms come in more than one form. Descriptive norms simply tell us what most people actually do in a situation — for example, greeting a person when you meet them. Injunctive norms tell us what ought to be done, marking out behaviour that is approved or disapproved — for example, that one should not deliberately harm others. Descriptive norms describe; injunctive norms prescribe.
People who break social norms may face consequences such as disapproval, exclusion or, in some cases, fines. Norms are not fixed forever, however; they change as society changes, and a person who can adapt gracefully to shifting norms is generally regarded as well-adjusted.
6.5 Obedience
Conformity is a response to the quiet pressure of a group. Obedience is a response to something far more direct — a command from someone with authority over us. It is the second great form of social influence, and one of the most unsettling.
6.5.1 The Nature of Obedience
Obedience is a form of social influence in which a person behaves in a particular way because they have been given a direct order by an authority figure. The authority may be a parent, teacher, employer, senior, police officer or the law itself.
Obedience is a form of social influence in which a person acts in response to a direct order from someone in authority.
A certain amount of obedience is necessary and even valued, because it helps maintain social order. From early childhood we learn to obey our parents, elders and teachers, and doing so wins us acceptance in society. The problem arises when obedience is demanded for harmful or unethical ends — for such orders too, disturbingly, are often obeyed.
6.5.2 Milgram’s Experiment on Obedience
How far would an ordinary person go in obeying an authority figure, if the orders required harming another human being? This was the haunting question the psychologist Stanley Milgram set out to answer at Yale University, USA, in a study published in 1963. The question was pressing in its time: people wanted to understand how ordinary citizens could be led to take part in the atrocities of the Second World War.
Stanley Milgram — obedience to authority Question: How far will ordinary people go in obeying an authority figure who orders them to harm a stranger? Method: Forty male volunteers were told the study concerned the effect of punishment on learning; its true aim was hidden. Each was made the “teacher”, while a confederate played the “learner”, strapped to a chair in a separate room. Whenever the learner gave a wrong answer, the teacher was ordered by an “experimenter” to deliver an electric shock — which was not in fact real — and to raise the voltage each time, on a panel running from 15 volts up to 450 volts. Finding: About 65% of participants continued right up to the maximum 450-volt level, and every participant continued to at least 300 volts, even as they believed they were causing serious harm. Meaning: Ordinary people may go a very long way in harming an innocent person, though unwillingly, when a legitimate authority orders them to continue. Gradual escalation of the commands made this obedience easier.
Whenever the teacher hesitated or wished to stop for moral reasons, the experimenter did not force them, but responded with a fixed sequence of increasingly firm prods:
- “Please continue.”
- “The experiment requires that you continue.”
- “It is absolutely essential that you continue.”
- “You have no other choice; you must go on.”
the ethics of Milgram’s obedience study Milgram’s study is as famous for its ethics as for its findings. Participants were deceived about its real purpose, were led to believe they were harming a stranger, and were placed under intense stress while the experimenter pressed them to carry on rather than letting them freely stop. Studies like this are a major reason that research today requires informed consent, a genuine right to withdraw, and review by an ethics committee before it may proceed.
Q4. Could an ordinary, kind person be persuaded to harm a stranger simply because a person in authority ordered them to?
A. Milgram’s experiment suggests, uncomfortably, that many could. Around 65% of ordinary volunteers continued to the highest shock level simply because a calm authority figure told them to go on — even though they believed they were hurting an innocent person, and even though most did so unwillingly. Obedience to a legitimate authority, especially when the harm feels distant and the orders escalate gradually, can override personal conscience.
6.5.3 Why and When People Obey
Milgram’s study, and later research, revealed several factors that make obedience more likely. The single most important, which Milgram highlighted, is how far removed the person obeying feels from the victim of their actions.
- Victim’s emotional distance: the further the victim is — in another room, unseen and unheard — the easier it becomes to obey, because the person feels little empathy or connection with the one being harmed. In Milgram’s study, obedience dropped when the learner was brought physically closer.
- Legitimacy of authority: orders are obeyed far more readily when they come from an authority seen as legitimate, such as one backed by a respected institution like a university.
- Liberating effect of group influence: just as a group can pressure a person into obeying, it can also free them from it; if even one other person in the group refuses, others find it much easier to disobey as well.
- Lack of personal responsibility: people obey more easily when they feel they are merely instruments carrying out orders, telling themselves “I am only following instructions” and shifting the responsibility onto the authority.
- Following social norms: from childhood we are taught to obey elders and those in charge, so obedience becomes a deeply held social norm that we follow almost without thinking.
- Consistency in giving command: commands that remain consistent over time and across situations are obeyed more than commands that keep changing.
- Foot-in-the-door phenomenon: an authority that begins with small, harmless orders and then gradually escalates them finds that people, having already complied with the earlier orders, are unwilling to refuse the later ones. This is the foot-in-the-door phenomenon.
6.6 Summary
- Social psychology studies how the actual, imagined or implied presence of others shapes our thoughts, feelings and actions. Social thought is how we interpret and judge others; social behaviour is how we act when others are present.
- Social perception is the process of understanding and forming impressions of other people. Its core is attribution — the process of assigning causes to behaviour.
- Attributions are either internal (dispositional), tracing behaviour to something inside the person, or external (situational), tracing it to the surrounding circumstances.
- Kelley’s covariation model says we judge causes using three kinds of information: consistency, consensus and distinctiveness. High consistency with low consensus and low distinctiveness points to an internal cause; all three high points to an external cause; low consistency points to the special circumstances of the occasion.
- Because our social cognition takes shortcuts, our judgements fall into systematic biases.
- The fundamental attribution error (correspondence bias) is the tendency to over-blame others’ disposition while ignoring their situation; it is stronger in individualist cultures than in collectivist ones.
- The self-serving bias is the tendency to credit our own successes to internal causes and blame our failures on external ones, mainly to protect self-esteem.
- The false consensus effect is the tendency to overestimate how many other people share our opinions and behaviours.
- Automatic vigilance is the automatic pull of attention towards negative information, which helps explain why negative first impressions last.
- Counterfactual thinking is imagining alternatives to what happened: upward thinking imagines a better outcome and brings regret, while downward thinking imagines a worse outcome and brings relief.
- A group is two or more interdependent people who share goals and norms, feel a common identity and have some cohesiveness; this distinguishes it from a mere crowd.
- Groups may be primary or secondary, formal or informal, and in-group or out-group. Tajfel’s Social Identity Theory explains how dividing the world into “us” and “them” breeds favouritism and rivalry.
- Groups tend to form through proximity, similarity, and shared motives and goals.
- Social facilitation is the effect of others’ presence on performance: arousal and evaluation apprehension help the skilled but hinder the unskilled. Social loafing is the drop in individual effort when contributions cannot be identified. Group polarisation is the shift of a like-minded group towards a more extreme position, driven by persuasive arguments and social comparison.
- Social influence is the effort to change others’ attitudes, beliefs or behaviours; its two main forms are conformity and obedience.
- Social norms are the unwritten rules of acceptable behaviour. Descriptive norms describe what most people do; injunctive norms prescribe what should be done.
- Conformity is changing one’s behaviour to fit a group’s norms. People conform through normative influence (to be liked), informational influence (to be right), and by following descriptive norms (to be appropriate and adapt).
- Asch’s line-judgement study showed that about three-quarters of participants conformed to an obviously wrong majority at least once, revealing the power of social pressure over plain evidence.
- Conformity is affected by group size, status, cohesiveness, attractiveness, nature of the task, personality, unanimity of the group, cultural values and social respect.
- Obedience is acting in response to a direct order from an authority figure. Milgram’s study found that about 65% of ordinary volunteers obeyed to the highest shock level, showing that legitimate authority can lead people to harm an innocent person — while also raising serious ethical concerns.
- People obey more readily with greater emotional distance from the victim, legitimate authority, lack of personal responsibility, socialised habits of obedience, consistent commands, and gradually escalating orders (the foot-in-the-door phenomenon); the presence of a disobedient other can free them to disobey.
- Conformity comes from group pressure and is largely voluntary and may change private beliefs; obedience comes from authority, is largely compulsory, and usually produces compliance without changing inner beliefs.
6.7 Key Terms
- Attribution: The process of working out and assigning causes to behaviour — why a person acted as they did.
- Automatic vigilance: The automatic tendency to notice and attend to negative or threatening information.
- Bias: A systematic error in thinking that regularly tilts our judgements in one direction.
- Co-action: Performing the same task alongside others, which turns a situation competitive and affects performance.
- Cohesiveness: The strength of the bonds that keep a group’s members united and willing to cooperate.
- Conformity: Changing one’s attitudes or behaviour to fit in with a group’s existing norms (majority influence).
- Consensus: In Kelley’s model, whether other people behave the same way towards the same thing.
- Consistency: In Kelley’s model, whether a person behaves the same way towards something across different occasions.
- Correspondence bias: Another name for the fundamental attribution error.
- Counterfactual thinking: Imagining alternatives to events that have already happened — the “what might have been”.
- Covariation model: Kelley’s theory that we judge the causes of behaviour using consistency, consensus and distinctiveness.
- Descriptive norms: Norms that describe what most people actually do in a situation.
- Distinctiveness: In Kelley’s model, whether a person reacts a certain way only to one particular thing or to many things.
- Downward counterfactual thinking: Imagining a worse outcome than what happened, which brings relief or satisfaction.
- Evaluation apprehension: The assumption that others are judging our performance, which raises our arousal.
- External attribution: Explaining behaviour by causes outside the person, in the situation (situational attribution).
- False consensus effect: Overestimating how many other people share our opinions and behaviours.
- Foot-in-the-door phenomenon: When complying with small orders makes it hard to refuse the larger orders that follow.
- Formal group: A group with clearly specified rules, positions and roles, such as an office or university.
- Fundamental attribution error: The tendency to over-blame others’ disposition while underplaying their situation.
- Group: Two or more interdependent people who share goals and norms and feel a common identity.
- Group polarisation: The shift of a like-minded group towards a more extreme position after discussion.
- In-group: A group we identify with and feel part of (“us”).
- Informal group: A closely knit group with no fixed rules, held together by personal relationships, such as friends.
- Informational social influence: Conforming because we believe the group is right, especially when we are unsure.
- Injunctive norms: Norms that prescribe what should or should not be done — approved and disapproved behaviour.
- Internal attribution: Explaining behaviour by causes inside the person, such as traits or effort (dispositional attribution).
- Normative social influence: Conforming because we want to be liked, approved of and accepted.
- Obedience: Acting in a particular way in response to a direct order from an authority figure.
- Out-group: A group we see ourselves as standing apart from (“them”).
- Primary group: A close, personal group one is usually born into, such as the family.
- Roles: The behaviours a person is expected to perform because of the position they hold in a group.
- Secondary group: A larger, more impersonal group one chooses to join, such as a political party.
- Self-serving bias: Crediting our successes to ourselves but blaming our failures on outside factors.
- Social behaviour: How a person acts in the presence of others.
- Social cognition: The mental activities by which we notice, store, recall and combine information about other people.
- Social facilitation: The effect of others’ presence on performance — helping the skilled and hindering the unskilled.
- Social Identity Theory: Tajfel’s theory that we draw part of our identity from our groups, and so favour the in-group over out-groups.
- Social influence: The efforts by one or more persons to change others’ attitudes, beliefs or behaviours.
- Social loafing: Putting in less individual effort in a group when one’s contribution cannot be identified.
- Social norms: The unwritten, informal rules of behaviour that a group or society regards as acceptable.
- Social perception: The process of getting to know, understand and form impressions of other people.
- Social psychology: The study of how the actual, imagined or implied presence of others shapes our thoughts, feelings and actions.
- Social thought: The way we notice, interpret and reason about other people.
- Upward counterfactual thinking: Imagining a better outcome than what happened, which brings regret or envy.
6.8 Points to Ponder
- If the fundamental attribution error leads us to over-blame people’s character and overlook their circumstances, should the way we run schools, workplaces and courts be redesigned to keep the power of the situation in view?
- Milgram’s participants obeyed a stranger in a lab coat. In your own daily life, whose authority do you tend to obey almost without questioning — and are there orders you should be readier to refuse?
- Conformity brings acceptance and helps maintain social order, yet Asch’s participants denied what they could plainly see. Where does healthy belonging end and the loss of your own judgement begin?
- If we favour our in-group partly just because it is “ours”, can loyalty to a group ever be wholly separated from unfairness towards outsiders?
- The self-serving bias quietly protects our self-esteem. Would a person who saw both their successes and their failures with perfect honesty be happier for it, or merely more discouraged?
- Online spaces often surround us with people who already share our views. How might this deepen the false consensus effect and group polarisation, and what might a person do to guard against it?
6.9 Objective Questions
- Kelley’s covariation model uses which three kinds of information? [1 mark]
- Consistency, consensus, distinctiveness
- Proximity, similarity, cohesiveness
- Compliance, identification, internalisation
- Deviance, distress, dysfunction
- The tendency to over-attribute another person’s behaviour to their personality while ignoring their situation is the — [1 mark]
- self-serving bias
- false consensus effect
- fundamental attribution error
- automatic vigilance
- A group that an individual is usually born into and which shapes their early values is a — [1 mark]
- secondary group
- primary group
- formal group
- out-group
- In Milgram’s obedience study, about 65% of participants continued up to — [1 mark]
- 150 volts
- 300 volts
- 250 volts
- 450 volts
- Putting in less individual effort in a group when one’s contribution cannot be identified is called — [1 mark]
- social facilitation
- group polarisation
- social loafing
- co-action
- Conforming because we wish to be liked and accepted by others is an example of — [1 mark]
- informational social influence
- normative social influence
- descriptive norms
- obedience
- Assertion (A): Conformity is usually strongest when a group is completely unanimous. Reason (R): The presence of even one dissenter sharply reduces the pressure to conform. [1 mark]
- Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A.
- Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A.
- A is true, but R is false.
- A is false, but R is true.
- Assertion (A): Obedience usually leaves a person’s private beliefs unchanged. Reason (R): In obedience, a person complies with an authority’s orders rather than being genuinely persuaded. [1 mark]
- Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A.
- Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A.
- A is true, but R is false.
- A is false, but R is true.
- Assertion (A): Bronze medallists often appear happier than silver medallists. Reason (R): Silver medallists tend to engage in downward counterfactual thinking. [1 mark]
- Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A.
- Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A.
- A is true, but R is false.
- A is false, but R is true.
- Match each psychologist in Column A with their contribution in Column B. [1 mark]
| a. Harold Kelley |
i. Obedience to authority |
| b. Henri Tajfel |
ii. Covariation model of attribution |
| c. Solomon Asch |
iii. Social Identity Theory |
| d. Stanley Milgram |
iv. Conformity (line-judgement task) |
Fill in the blank: Imagining a better outcome than the one that actually happened is called ______ counterfactual thinking. [1 mark]
Fill in the blank: The unwritten, informal rules of behaviour that a group or society considers acceptable are called ______. [1 mark]
State whether True or False: A number of strangers waiting together at a bus stop is an example of a group. [1 mark]
State whether True or False: In social influence through obedience, the pressure comes from a person in authority. [1 mark]
6.10 Check Your Concepts
Define attribution. [2 marks] (about 30 words)
State any two characteristics that distinguish a group from a crowd. [2 marks] (about 30 words)
What is meant by social loafing? [2 marks] (about 30 words)
Differentiate between normative and informational social influence. [3 marks] (about 60 words)
Differentiate between a primary group and a secondary group. [3 marks] (about 60 words)
Why does group polarisation occur? Give the two main reasons. [3 marks] (about 60 words)
Explain the fundamental attribution error with a suitable example, and note how it tends to differ across cultures. [4 marks] (about 100 words)
Describe how Kelley’s three kinds of information — consistency, consensus and distinctiveness — help decide whether a behaviour has an internal or an external cause. [4 marks] (about 100 words)
Describe Stanley Milgram’s experiment on obedience — its aim, method and findings — and discuss the ethical concerns it raised. [6 marks] (about 150 words)
Explain the five biases in social judgement discussed in this chapter, giving a brief example of each. [6 marks] (about 150 words)
Describe Asch’s study on conformity and explain the main reasons why people conform to a group. [6 marks] (about 150 words)
6.11 Case-Based Questions
- During a staff meeting, Rohan sharply criticises his manager. Several other employees also criticise the same manager. Rohan criticises only this particular manager and no other senior, and he has done so on many past occasions.
- Describe the level of consensus, consistency and distinctiveness shown in this situation. [3]
- Using Kelley’s model, is Rohan’s behaviour likely to be attributed to internal or external causes? [1]
- Name the psychologist who proposed this theory of attribution. [1] [5 marks]
- In a Class XII group project, Meera notices that when five students work together, each does far less than when they work on their own. The final poster is patchy, and no one feels responsible for the gaps in it.
- Which effect of the group on the individual is being shown here? [1]
- Give two reasons why this effect occurs. [2]
- Suggest two ways in which the teacher could reduce it. [2] [5 marks]
- Ananya moves to a new city for college. Within a few weeks she has changed the way she dresses, the way she speaks and even the food she orders, mainly so that she can fit in with her new classmates.
- Which form of social influence is Ananya showing? [1]
- Which type of influence — normative or informational — best explains her behaviour, and why? [2]
- Name two factors that could increase such conformity. [2] [5 marks]
- In an office, a manager instructs the team to carry out a task that the team members privately feel is unfair. Everyone reluctantly complies — until one employee openly refuses. Soon after, several others also refuse.
- Which form of social influence is at work when the team first complies? [1]
- Name and explain the factor that leads the others to refuse once one person does. [2]
- State two other factors that make people more likely to obey an authority figure. [2] [5 marks]
6.1 Social Perception and Attribution
Human beings are social by nature. From the moment we are born we live among other people — family, classmates, neighbours, strangers on a crowded bus — and a large part of our mental life is spent making sense of them. The branch of psychology that studies how the actual, imagined or implied presence of others shapes our thoughts, feelings and actions is called social psychology.
Two threads run through the whole of this field. Social thought refers to the way we notice, interpret and reason about other people — the judgements and impressions we form about them. Social behaviour refers to how we actually act when others are present. The two are tightly linked, because what we think about a person usually decides how we behave towards them.
Before we can think about or act towards someone, we must first form some picture of who they are. The process by which we try to know, understand and form impressions of other people is called social perception. We do this constantly, often within seconds of meeting someone, reading their tone, expression and manner to guess what kind of person they might be.
Social perception is the process through which we seek to know, understand and form impressions of other people, chiefly by working out the reasons behind their behaviour.
But social perception goes deeper than first impressions. We do not merely observe what people do; we want to know why they do it. When a friend does not reply to your message, you at once begin to wonder — are they angry, busy, or simply forgetful? This search for the causes behind behaviour lies at the very heart of social perception, and psychologists have a special name for it, which we take up next.
6.1.1 Internal and External Attribution
When anything happens, we look for a cause; this is as true of people as it is of events. The process through which a person seeks to identify and explain the causes of others’ behaviour — and of their own behaviour too — is called attribution.
Attribution is the process of assigning causes to behaviour — deciding why a person (oneself or another) has acted in a particular way.
Broadly, the causes we assign fall into two kinds. When we trace behaviour to something inside the person — their personality, ability, effort, mood or intentions — we are making an internal attribution (also called a dispositional attribution, because it points to the person’s disposition). When we trace behaviour to something outside the person — the situation, other people, luck, or the difficulty of the task — we are making an external attribution (also called a situational attribution).
Consider a student who scores poorly in a test. One observer might conclude that she did not study or is simply not capable — an internal attribution. Another might conclude that the paper was unusually hard, or that she was unwell that day — an external attribution. The behaviour is identical, yet the two explanations are worlds apart.
This distinction is not just an academic exercise, because our attributions decide how we respond. A teacher who reads a student’s poor answer as laziness (internal) may feel irritated and punish; a teacher who reads it as the result of illness (external) may soften and offer help. Getting the cause right — or wrong — has real consequences for how we treat one another.
Internal vs External attribution | Feature | Internal (dispositional) | External (situational) | |—|—|—| | Where the cause is placed | Inside the person | Outside the person, in the situation | | Typical factors | Traits, ability, effort, motives, mood | Task difficulty, luck, others’ actions, social pressure | | Poor exam marks explained as | “She didn’t prepare / isn’t capable” | “The paper was unfair / she was ill” | | A late arrival explained as | “He is careless about time” | “The traffic was terrible today” |
6.1.2 Kelley’s Theory of Attribution
In real life we rarely have a single obvious cause in front of us; several explanations usually compete. So how do we actually decide whether a behaviour is internal or external? The social psychologist Harold Kelley offered an influential answer in the late 1960s with what he called the covariation model.
The word covariation means “varying together”. Kelley suggested that, to work out the cause of someone’s behaviour, we behave rather like informal scientists. We check whether the behaviour appears together with — covaries with — the person, or with the thing they are reacting to. To do this, we draw on three kinds of information.
Consistency asks whether the person behaves this way towards the same thing across different occasions. High consistency means they react this way every time.
Consensus asks whether other people behave the same way towards the same thing. High consensus means most people react this way too.
Distinctiveness asks whether the person reacts this way only to this particular thing, or to many things. High distinctiveness means the reaction is special to this one thing.
By combining these three, Kelley arrived at two clear patterns. When consistency is high but consensus and distinctiveness are both low, we make an internal (person) attribution — the person always reacts this way, others do not, and they react this way to many things, so the cause must lie in them. When consistency, consensus and distinctiveness are all high, we make an external (stimulus) attribution — the person always reacts this way, so does everyone else, and only to this one thing, so the cause must lie in the thing itself.
A worked example makes this clearer. Suppose Riya laughs loudly at a particular stand-up comedian.
In one case, Riya laughs every time she watches him (high consistency), but nobody else in the audience finds him funny (low consensus), and Riya laughs at almost every comedian she sees (low distinctiveness). Here we conclude that the cause is in Riya — she is simply easily amused. This is an internal attribution.
In another case, Riya laughs every time she watches him (high consistency), everyone else laughs too (high consensus), and Riya rarely laughs at other comedians (high distinctiveness). Here we conclude that the cause is in the comedian — he really is funny. This is an external attribution.
There is also a third possibility. When consistency is low — Riya laughed today but not on other occasions — we tend to attribute the behaviour neither to Riya nor to the comedian, but to the special circumstances of that particular moment, such as her mood that evening.
Diagram
Fig. 6.1-1 – a branching chart with the three information types (consistency, consensus, distinctiveness) on the left, leading to two labelled outcomes: ‘high consistency + low consensus + low distinctiveness → internal (person) cause’ and ‘high consistency + high consensus + high distinctiveness → external (stimulus) cause’
Q. Your friend alone complains that a restaurant is terrible; no one else complains, and your friend criticises every restaurant they visit. Where does Kelley’s model place the cause?
A. In your friend (internal). Low consensus and low distinctiveness, together with high consistency, point to the person rather than to the restaurant.
Kelley’s Covariation Model of Attribution Proposed by: Harold Kelley (American social psychologist, late 1960s) Core idea: To judge whether behaviour is caused by the person or the situation, we act like informal scientists and check whether the behaviour covaries with three kinds of information. Key terms: consistency, consensus, distinctiveness; internal (dispositional) and external (situational) attribution Evidence: When people are given descriptions that vary these three factors, their attributions shift in the directions the model predicts. Limitation: In ordinary life we seldom have all three kinds of information at hand, and we often reach a snap judgement without any such careful reasoning — a gap that the biases discussed next make plain.