Introduction to Social Psychology ppt.pptx

Introduction to Social Psychology

1. Social Psychology Power point By: Mehari Getahun

2. Course Objectives After successful completion of this course, students will be able to: Explain how social psychologists think about and study human behavior Understand social behaviors, self and social perception Analyze the causes and problems of prejudice, discrimination, etc.

3. Objectives of the course Comprehend perspectives of attitudes and apply persuasion and attitude changes. Differentiate social influence and facilitation. Identify group dynamics and processes. Evaluate perspectives of aggressive and pro-social behaviors. Apply social psychological theories and research to real life problems of the self and society

4. Chapter one Introduction to social psychology Defining social psychology Social psychology is the a discipline that uses scientific methods in an attempt to understand and explain how the thought, feeling and behavior of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others ( All port ,1985).

5. Historical development of social psychology As a scientific discipline, social psychology is only one hundred years old, with most of the growth occurring during the past decade. By most standards, social psychology is a relatively young science. It passed through four stages The Early Years 1885-1934 The coming of Age years 1935-1945 Rapid expansion years 1946-1969 Crisis and reassessment years 1970- to present

6. . Social Psychology’s Relation to Other Fields of Inquiry Social Psychology is related with: Sociology Social Anthropology Law Health political science

7. Theories of Social Psychology Practice alone will not suffice life, hence theories are crucial. A theory is an integrated set of principles that explain and predict observed events. Theories summarize countless factual observations by capturing underlying principles. Science is built with facts as a house is with stone.

8. Theories in social psychology But as a mere collection of stone is only a heap and not a house so does are mere collections of facts far from being science. So, if huge body of facts could be condensed to a much shorter list of theoretical principles, which predicts most of the observed fuels. Then we would have a more powerful and memorable theory than a long list of disconnected facts. Predictive feature of good theories make them very practical as well.

9. What a good theory comprises Predictive accuracy: should predict behavior. Internal coherence: there shouldn’t be any logical inconsistencies between any of the theoretical ideas. Economy: It should be economical, meaning that it only contains the principles or concepts necessary to explain the phenomena in question and no more. Fertility: the ability to fire the imagination of other scientists the ideas in the theory are tested and extended to a wide variety of social behavior.

10. Theories in social psychology Genetic theory Motivational Learning Cognitive Decision-Making Expectancy Value Interdependence Social exchange

11. Genetic Theorist : Genetic Theorist : they assume that large component of social behavior is related to unlearned genetic/heredity causes. To them social behavior is thought to be caused by instincts.

12. Motivational Theories Our needs influence our perceptions, attitudes, and behavior. For example, to enhance our self-esteem and satisfy a need to feel good about ourselves, we may blame others for our failures and take personal credit only for successes. The core idea is that situations can create or arouse needs that, in turn, lead people to engage in behaviors to reduce/produce those needs.

13. Learning Theories Classical conditioning theory : learning by association of stimulus and response Operant conditioning theory : Learning based on rewards or Reinforcement and punishment. Social /Observational learning Theory : Learning is based on Learning by watching others, reinforcement and modeling(Imitating or copying the behavior of another)

14. Cognitive Approach This is a direct opposite of the learning approach. In this theory internal mental processes are focused. The cognitive approach emphasizes that a person's behavior depends on the way he or she perceives the social situation. Emphasizing the importance of the social environment as perceived by the individual.

15. Decision-Making Theories Decision-making theories assume that individuals evaluate the costs and benefits of various actions and pick the best alternatives in a fairly logical, reasoned way. They choose the alternative that gives them the greatest rewards at the least cost.

16. Expectancy-value theory Expectancy-value theory extends the notion of costs and benefits by adding an assessment of the likelihood that each alterative will happen. This theory holds that decisions are based on the combination of two factors: (l) the probability or " 'expectancy, "' that each outcome will actually result from the decision and (2) the value of each possible outcome or alternative.

17. Interdependence Theories Interdependence theories shift the focus of analysis from the behavior of one individual to the behavior of two or more individuals who interact with each other. When people interact, they influence each other. When two people have mutual influence on each other's thoughts, feelings, or behaviors, they are interdependent. Interdependence means that the outcomes one person receives depend at least in part on the behavior of the other and vice versa.

18. Social exchange Theory The principles of social exchange build on the work of both learning theorists and decision-making theorists. Social exchange theory analyzes the interaction between people in terms of the benefits and costs the individuals exchange with each other. Sometimes people make explicit exchanges. For example, you may agree to help your roommate learn Spanish in return for help with your advanced calculus course.

19. Individual assignment (12%) Consider the following case and discuss the factors that trigger Defaru to theft money and shoots the police in relation with theories of social psychology . A police officer sees a robber named Defaru , coming out of the by side door of a super market with a bag full of money. The super market, like everything else in the neighborhood, has long been closed for the night. The officer yells at Defaru to stop and put his hands up. However, defaru turns, pulls a pistol from his pocket, and shoots the officer, wounding him in the leg. Defaru is later apprehended and ultimately sent to jail.

20. Research Methods in Social Psychology Experimental Method (knowledge through intervention): An independent variable : M anipulated by an experimenter to see its effects on a dependent variable. A dependent variable: T he variable which changes as a consequence of changes in the independent variable.

21. Groups in experimental research Experimental Group: which receive the independent variable. Control Group: not allowed to take the independent variable/treatment/.

22. Characteristics of Experiments Control : Those variables of interest in the research are controlled by identifying them as dependent and independent variable. Those of no interest will be either removed or made uniform or matching cases across groups to minimize their effects. Randomization : this refers to avoiding systematic difference by assigning participants in to the experimental and control group randomly. Replication: repetition and duplication, is an important method of challenging or verifying conclusions of a previous study. Replication is essential to the development and verification of new generalizations and theories

23. Correlation Studies (Detecting natural associations). This design helps to look at relationships among two or more variables. Correlations range from -1.00 to +1.00. A positive correlation shows that an increase in one variable will also be followed by an increase in the other and a negative correlation shows an inverse relation.

24. A correlation between two variables can have one of the following three meanings. A difference in the 1 st variable causes a difference in the 2 nd variable or A difference in the 2 nd variable causes a difference in the 1 st variable or A third unspecified variable causes difference in both the 1 st and 2 nd variable .

25. Case Studies (Case History ) Case studies are well suited to the examination of unusual or rare phenomena which could not be created in the laboratory, for instance bizarre cull*, mass murderers, or disasters. It uses few respondents’ analyses and their reactions in depth.

26. Archival study It examines historical account of a broad variety of incidents that had one or more features in common. We may search through newspapers, magazines, books and personal records about the social behavior of an individual or a group in a previous social context. If we found common behavior patterns we could generalize beyond specific cases. We use the information collected from our sample to predict and explain behavior in similar situations. Document Analysis.

27. Levels of analysis 1. The societal level of analysis: social behavior can be explained by such forces as economic hard times, class conflicts, clashes between competing ethnic groups, regional crop failures, governmental policies, or technological change. The goal of societal analysis is to identify links between broad social forces and general patterns of social behavior.

28. The individual level of analysis : According to this view point, personality traits and motives can explain why individuals behave as they do, and why two people may react quiet differently to the same situation. Emphasis is given to individual differences in childhood experiences, ability, motivation, and in personality and psychological adjustment. The individual approach explains violent crimes in terms of the unique histories and characteristics of the criminal.

29. 3. The interpersonal level. Social psychologists typically focus on a person's current social situation which includes the other people in the environment, their attitudes and behaviors, and their relationship to the individual. To understand violent crime, social psychologists might consider what kinds of interpersonal situations create feelings of anger that may increase violent behavior.

30. Unit Two Socialization Socialization is an interaction process whereby an individual's behavior is modified to conform to expectations held by members of the group to which he/she belongs to. Socialization is the process by which someone learns the ways of a given society or social group well enough so that he can function within it. It is a process by which people adopt the codes of conduct of the society and gain respect for its rules.

31. Socialization Socialization is a lifelong developmental process whereby the individual becomes a member of the society. It includes not only the process by which the child gradually acquires the ways of the adults around him but also the requirement of adults required to lake behaviors appropriate to expectations associated with new position in a group organization or society at large. Socialization is the means by which we become fully human.

32. Major Purposes of Socialization Survive : there is no one self sufficient, so we cannot produce or prepare everything we need to survive. So, socialization and social interaction is mandatory for survival, Obtain affection: one of the needs of humans next to basic needs and security needs is the need for loving and being loved. Through socialization we learn to love and to be loved. avoid the unpleasant; and be like specific persons

33. 3. Core Values and Social Roles: The major core values and roles are acquired through socialization as a vital part of being introduced to the ways of societal life.. 4. Personality Formation - Personality refers to organized and relatively enduring characteristics unique to an individual as revealed by his/her interaction with his her environment. Much of this personality of individuals is developed through socialization.

34. Differential socialization and the Effects of Isolation Differential socialization The question here is that are individuals socialized similarly.? Margaret Mead was interested in this. She noticed that in no society were children brought up or raised in the same way. Instead children are sorted in a variety of ways and socialized in different directions because they are expected to lead different lives

35. The Effects of Isolation When we say socialization has its own roles in making one a full human this would better understood by looking into what would happen if one lacks human interaction. Have a look at the examples here bellow.

36. The Effects of Isolation Example 1: A boy in Seattle was left alone by his family from few months after birth to six years. Only food was inserted to him in a cage. After six years he was discovered by police. The child was so wild; he does not know how to eat, where to urinate or defecate, how to walk, how to dress, how to clean himself...etc. He was more nearer to animals than to human beings. Such children are called feral (untamed, undomesticated. uncultivated) children The case of the boy demonstrates an important principle i.e. our biological heritage alone cannot make us adequate human beings.

37. Example 2: In 1938 Anna a girl of 13 in Pennsylvania was found enclosed in a second floor storage room. She was born from an abnormal lady who was living with her parents. The parents disappointed with their abnormal daughters giving birth to Anna, locked Anna in a second floor storage. When police discovered her Anna could not laugh, smile, speak and even show anger. She was unresponsive as if the world around her did not even exist. Not surprisingly, people initially thought she was deaf and blind. (Davis. 1940. taken from John J. Macionis 1993, Sociology). The second example too, though deplorable it is really an instructive case of a human being deprived of virtually all social context. Although Anna was physically alive she has none of the capacities associated with full humanity. Her plight revealed that, without social experience, an individual develops little or no capacity for thought, emotion, and meaningful behavior. In short, an individual who has no social interaction is likely to remain an object or wild animal rather than being a person.

38. Agents of Socialization People Media Organizations Mother and father Sister and brother Grand pa and ma Aunts and uncles Friends/peers Teachers Neighbors ... etc Radio Movies Book Paintings Sculpture Drama/theatre Arts...etc School Church Scouts C lubs Sports team Political organizations Charity organizations Community in general...etc

39. Theories of Socialization Theory Importance of Heredity Nature of Human Being Early or later stage Importance Psychoanalytic Sigmund Freud Very Important Anti-social (negative) Early stage considered more important Cognitive Development . Jean Piaget Important Neutral (Zero) Throughout life, but early age is more important Social Learning Albert Bandura Not important Pro-social (Positive) Throughout life

40. Chapter Three The Self The self :- our sense of personal identity and of who we are as individuals. Self-Concept Who am I? The answer to this question is the driving force in our lives. The self may be thought of as a structure that contains the organized and stable contents of one's personal experiences. The self is “me,” the sum of what I am. All the ideas, thoughts, and information that we have about ourselves —about who we are, what characteristics we have, what our personal histories have made us, and what we may yet become—make up our self-concept.

41. Self-Knowledge: How Do We Know Thyself? Reflected appraisals : our view of how other people react to us shape our self-concept. It is related to Looking-glass self; The self derived from seeing ourselves as others see us. Social comparison process: A source of social knowledge involving how we compare our reactions, abilities, and attributes to others. Introspection: The act of examining our own thoughts and feelings to understand ourselves, which may yield a somewhat biased picture of our own internal state.

42. Personal Attributes and Self-Concept A person may think of herself as female, American, young, smart, compassionate, the daughter of a single mother, a good basketball player, reasonably attractive, hot-tempered, artistic, patient, and a movie fan. All of these attributes and many more go into her self-concept.

43. Questions to be raised to know self concept Tell us about yourself? Tell us what you are not? Tell us about school? Tell us about your family? I am……………….

44. Distinctiveness theory The theory suggesting that individuals think of themselves in terms of those attributes or dimensions that make them different—rather than in terms of attributes they have in common with others. People usually are aware of the attributes they have in common with other individuals. A male going to an all-male high school is aware that he is male. But being male may not be a defining part of his self-concept because everybody around him has that same characteristic. He will define himself by attributes that make him different from other males, such as being a debater or a football player.

45. The Self and Memory Autobiographical memory: Memory for information relating to the self that plays a powerful role in recall of events. Religion and the Self: Peers, school experiences, and involvement in religious activities and institutions may have profound effects on self-knowledge. Religious beliefs typically set standards for character and behavior, emphasizing positive behaviors and exhorting believers to refrain from negative ones.

46. The Self: The Influence of Groups and Culture The self: ‘I’ or ‘We’? Individual self: The part of the self that refers to our self-knowledge, including our private thoughts and evaluations of who and what we are. Collective self: The part of our self-concept that comes from our membership in groups.

47. Organizing Knowledge: Self-Schemas Whatever the culture one lives in, people don't think of themselves as just chaotic masses of attributes and memories. Instead, they arrange knowledge and information about themselves and their attributes into self-schemas. A schema is an organized set of related cognitions—bits of knowledge and information—about a particular person, event, or experience.

48. A self-schema is an arrangement of information, thoughts, and feelings about ourselves, including information about our gender, age, race or ethnicity, occupation, social roles, physical attractiveness, intelligence, talents, and so on. People have many different self-schemas for the different areas of life activities. self-schemas: Self-conceptions that guide us in ordering and directing our behavior involving how we represent our thoughts and feelings about our experiences in a particular area of life.

49. Self-Esteem: Evaluating the Self Self-esteem : An individual’s evaluation of the self, the positive (high self-esteem) or negative (low self-esteem) feelings that we have about ourselves. It refers one’s own feeling to him /her self. source of self Esteem : Internal and external

50. Maintaining Self-Esteem in Interactions with Others When interacting with others, human beings have two primary self-related motives: to enhance self-esteem and to maintain self-consistency. 1. Enhancing the Self : ( self-evaluation maintenance (SEM) theory): A theory explaining how the behavior of other people affects how you feel yourself, especially when they perform some behavior that is important to your self-conception.

51. Self-Enhancement and Coping with Disaster: Self-enhancement in this context refers to the tendency to have overly positive biases. Implicit self-esteem: An efficient system of self-evaluation that is below our conscious awareness. explicit self-esteem: Self-esteem that arises primarily from interaction with people in our everyday life.

52. Self-Control: How People Regulate Their Behavior Actual self: A person’s current self-concept. Ideal self: The mental representation of what a person would like to be or what a significant other would like him or her to be. Self-regulation: A critical control mechanism used by individuals to match behavior to internal standards of the self or to the expectations of others.

53. Self-Serving Cognitions Self-serving bias: Our tendency to attribute positive outcomes of our own behavior to internal, dispositional factors and negative outcomes to external, situational forces. 2. Maintaining Self-Consistency : self-verification : A method of supporting and confirming your self-identity.

54. Self-focus: The extent to which one has a heightened awareness of oneself in certain situations (e.g., when a minority within a group. Self-monitoring: The degree ranging from low to high, to which a person focuses on his or her behavior when in a given social situation. Self-handicapping: Self-defeating behavior engaged in when you are uncertain about your success or failure at a task to protect your self-esteem in the face of failure.

55. Self Awareness Self-awareness refers to the extent to which we are currently fixing our attention on our own self-concept. When the self-concept becomes highly accessible because of our concerns about being observed and potentially judged by others, we experience the publicly induced self-awareness known as self-consciousness.

56. The Social Self: The Role of the Social Situation Our selves are not created in isolation; we are not born with perceptions of ourselves as shy, interested in jazz, or charitable to others. Rather, these beliefs are determined by our observations of and interactions with others. Are you rich or poor? Beautiful or ugly? Smart or not? Good or poor at video games? and how do you know?

57. The Social Self: Those questions can be answered only by comparing ourselves with those around us. The self has meaning only within the social context, and it is not wrong to say that the social situation defines our self-concept and our self-esteem. We rely on others to provide a “social reality”—to help us determine what to think, feel, and do.

58. Social Comparison Social comparison is the process of learning about our abilities and skills, about the appropriateness and validity of our opinions, and about our relative social status by comparing our own attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors with those of others. We have : Upward and Downward Comparisons

59. Downward social comparison occurs when we attempt to create a positive image of ourselves through favorable comparisons with others who are worse off than we are. Upward social comparison occurs when we compare ourselves with others who are better off than we are.

60. Perceiving Others: Impression formation Impression formation is the process by which we make judgments about others. First Impressions Matter: The Primacy Effect: Information that we learn first is weighted more heavily than is information that comes later. Recency effect: Old Information affects perception.

61. Impression formation While impression formation two variables affect accurate impression 1. spotlight effect: A phenomenon occurring when we overestimate the ability of others to read our overt behavior, how we act and dress, suggesting that we think others notice and pay attention to whatever we do. illusion of transparency: The belief that observers can read our private thoughts and feelings because they somehow leak out. Hallo effect: Concluding about the whole based on unrepresentative quality.

62. Chapter- Four Attribution The Attribution Process: Deciding why people act as they do. Attribution is the inference about the cause of a person’s action. Attributions is the process of assigning causes to some one’s behavior or It is the process by which people use information to make inference about the causes of behavior or events. These causes might be either characteristics of a person or characteristics of the situation.

63. Types of causal attributions When we offer causal attributions, we look at either a external (situational) or internal ( dispositional) explanations. 1. Internal attribution: I s an attribution that locates the cause of an event to factors internal to the person such as personality traits, moods, attitudes, abilities, effort, belief, and so on; it is called person attribution.

64. 2. External attribution: is attributions that locate the cause of an event to factors external to the person such as other people, environmental stimuli, social pressure, and so on; it is also called situation attribution. E.g. what is the cause for a students low score in an exam? It lack of motivation and ability ( internal attribution) or physical and social circumstances ( external attribution).

65. Theories in Attribution A. Correspondence Theory by Edward Jones and Keith Davis: This theory states that we tend to conclude that a person’s overall behavior is caused by or corresponds to the person’s internal characteristics, beliefs or dispositions. We inter from the action if the act corresponds to an enduring personal characteristics. We make personal attribution (correspondence inference) depending on the following three factors: choice and intent, effect and social desirability.

66. Choice and intent: If we believe that the people freely choose and intended to do what he/ she has done, we end to make a correspondent inference (the individual really wants to do so). Choice: freely chosen behavior is more informative than coerced behavior correspondents inference is made when it is proved that the individual freely choose to do the act ( not forced by others).

67. Intention: we make internal attribution if the behavior is intentional ( not accidental). i.e. the person intended to do something. This shows that the individual wanted the behavior to occur if we believe that the act of the individual is not intentional, we are saying that the actor is less responsible for his/ her action.

68. Social desirability ( behavior approved by other people): Socially undesirable behavior i.e deviant or socially unacceptable behavior tells us more about the person than socially desirable or acceptable behavior or In other words, socially desirable behaviors tell us little about a persons disposition because it is considered to be controlled by social roles.

69. However, socially undesirable behavior is out of role and is thus a better basis for making a correspondence inference. E.g. keeping silent or crying of a funeral shows nothing about the true feeling of the individual laugh at the ceremony. But if the person laughs at funeral, This may show his/ her internal motives of the person may be intense hate for the died person.

70. Freely chosen Intended behavior Socially undesirable behavior Non common effects Internal attribution

71. B. Kelley’s Theory of Causal Attributions: The co- variation model The co-variation model explains attributions derived from multiple dimensions that is attributions of causality external to the actor as well as internal dispositions of the person. Co-variation principle: The rule that if a response is present when a situation (person, object, or event) is present and absent when that same situation is absent, the situation is presumed to be the cause of the response.

72. The presumed cause and observed effect must co-vary. E.g. If your girl friend becomes cold and irritable only when you spend extended time with others that is high co-variation. If she is only occasionally cold and irritable when you spend extended time with others that is low co-variation. Therefore, spending extended time with others is the cause for cold and irritable response (action) of girl friends.

73. In assessing co- variation, Kelley stated that people relay on three basic pairs of information. a. Consensus information : the extent to which reactions by one person is also shown by others to similar behavioral occurrences. b. Consistency : the extent to which the person reacts to this stimuli or entity the same way on other occasions that is across time i . e how often behavior co-varies or co- occurs with a stimulus.

74. C. Distinctiveness information: T he extent to which the individual responds differently to different stimulus in the same or different situations. It is the extent to which a person’s reaction is distinctive to a stimulus ‘x’ or is a common reaction to many stimuli. Kelley’s theory assumes that people are most likely to attribute another person’s behavior to internal causes when consensus and distinctiveness are low but consistency is high. On the other hand, circumstance attributions are most likely when consensus and consistency are low and distinctiveness is high. When all three kinds of information’s are high people are likely to make entity attributions.

75. Example: 1. while the teacher is lecturing, he noticed a student has fallen a sleep in class then he wonders why? Did the student have a bad night’s sleep ( circumstance attribution) Is this a lazy and unmotivated student ( internal attribution) Is the teacher boring ( entity attribution)

76. Example 2. your friend Admasu attended the film “AMEN” yesterday evening and he was too much surprised by the film expressing this to you now and then? You question your friend’s behavior and you will ask the following questions. Mamo and Biniam also have attended the film but are they also much surprised? Consensus. Does Admasu appreciate this film if he watches it again across time in his life or was the appreciation typical to the time he observed “AMEN”? Consistency. Did Admasu appreciate any film work or was he typical to this film? Distinctiveness.

77. Consensus Consistency Distinctiveness Attributions 1 Low: no other students fall asleep in the class High: the student has fallen a sleep in previous class the teacher Low: he fall a sleep in other teachers classes Internal/person attribution: the student is lazy 2 High: many students fall in a sleep in lecture class High: the student has fallen a sleep in previous class of the teacher High: the student doesn’t fall a sleep in other teachers classes Entity/situational : the teacher is boring 3 Low: no other students fall a sleep in the class Low: the student has not fallen a sleep in previous class of the teacher High: the student doesn’t fall a sleep in other teachers classes Circumstance: the student didn’t sleep last night

78. Errors in Attribution A. Fundamental attribution error (FAE): It is sometimes called correspondence bias, it is the tendency to overestimate or emphasis the influence of internal ( disposional ) causes and underestimates or minimizes the influence of external (situational) factors when explaining other’s behavior.

79. This is bias in attributing another’s behavior more to disposional (personal) causes than situational or environmental causes/. For instance: If a driver gets an accident people tend to attribute the cause to the driver alone ignoring the road condition and the car’s mechanical condition likewise, some people also show the tendency to attribute poverty and unemployment to a person rather than social conditions (environment).

80. B. Actor versus Observer Bias: people tend to attribute others behavior more dispositional than own and tend to consider others behavior to be more stable, predictable than our own. The actor is encouraged to take the role of the observer regarding the behavior to be attributed.

81. C. Self serving bias: This relates to predicting ones own ego and self esteem by attributing our success to internal factor (personal dispositions) and our failure to external (situational) factors such bias is meant to protect or enhance self esteem or self image. People tend to attribute internally and take credit for their success and attribute externally and deny responsibility for their failures.

82. It is really self ego serving. There is also cognitive component particularly for self enhancing people generally expect to succeed and thus correlate success with own effort and they generally exaggerate the amount of control they have over successful performances. Self handicapping is publicly making advance external attributions for one’s anticipated failure or poor performance in a forth coming event. It is generally the tendency to take credit for success and deny responsibility for failure.

83. D. Defensive attribution: This relates to protecting our security particularly in relation to the degree of responsibility one is facing. When the responsibility is minor that has little or no effect on our security or life we assume internal attribution and when the responsibility is sever high we attribute to external factors or to situational explanations.

84. Chapter Five Attitude The nature of attitude : It was derived from the Latin aptus , which means ‘fit and ready for action’. This ancient meaning refers to something that is directly observable, such as the way a fighter moves in a boxing ring. However, attitude researchers now view ‘attitude’ as a construct that, although not directly observable, precedes behavior and guides our choices and decisions for action.

85. The Nature of Attitude Attitudes are basic to and pervasive in human life without it, it would be difficult for us to construe and react to events, to make decisions and to make sense of our relationships with others. Attitude- A relatively enduring organization of beliefs, feelings and behavioral tendencies towards socially significant objects, groups, events or symbols. A general feeling or evaluation – positive or negative –about some person, object or issue.

86. Some definitions of Attitude Petty and Caccioppo (1981) defined attitude as a general and enduring positive or negative feelings about some person, object or issue. Stephen Robins (1993) defined attitude as evaluative statements or judgments concerning objects, events or people. Allport (1935) defined attitudes as a mental and neural state of readiness organized through experience exerting a directive or dynamic influence up on the individual's response to all objects and situations with which it is related.

87. Some Definitions of Attitude David G. Myers (1999) defined attitude as a favorable or unfavorable evaluative reaction toward something or someone, exhibited in one's beliefs, feelings, or behaviour . Baron and Byrne (1995) defined attitude as lasting evaluations of various aspects of the social world. Hogg and Vaughan (1998) defined attitude as a relatively enduring organization of beliefs, feelings, and behavioral tendencies towards socially significant objects, groups, events or symbols.

88. Components/Anatomy/structure of Attitudes A widely held view of an attitude’s anatomy is the three-component attitude model , consisting of: A cognitive (thinking) component – beliefs about the object of an attitude; An affective (feeling) component – positive or negative feelings associated with the object of an attitude; A behavioral (acting) component – a state of readiness to take action.

89. Purpose/Importance of Attitude They strongly influence our social thought- the way in which we think about and process social information, how we store, and use social information is affected by our attitude. They often function as schemas- cognitive frameworks that hold and organize information about specific concepts, situations, or events. These mental scaffoldings strongly influence what we notice, enter into memory, and later remember.

90. Purpose/Importance of Attitude The y influence behavior: this is the third and main reason that social psychologists have been interested in attitudes for-several decades and hence they use to predict how people behave in various social contexts. If attitudes influence behavior, then knowing something about them can help us to predict people's behavior in a wide range of contexts. For example, if you have positive attitude towards capital punishment, then you would vote for the party that states capital punishment in its law than the one that avoids capital punishment in its law

91. Additional Functions of Attitude Attitudes also serve the following functions Knowledge function of attitudes is used to organize and interpret diverse sets of information. Self identity function of attitudes is used to express ones central values and beliefs. From the attitude one has we can understand who he/she is. One's attitudes somehow show one's religion, political affiliation, and even ethnicity. Self esteem functions of attitude are used to enhance self esteem or image in the eye of others. The respect and evaluation that we have about others is largely based on their attitudes and behaviors.

92. Attitude Formation Where do attitudes come from? Attitudes are learned as an integral part of becoming socialized. They can develop through our experiences or vicariously through interactions with others, or be a product of cognitive processes. Generally, social psychologists have researched the nature of attitude formation rather than the content of attitudes that people develop.

93. Attitude comes from different sources- Many attitudes arise from our direct experience with attitude objects, and there are several explanations for its effect: mere exposure, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, social learning theory and self-perception theory. Direct experience informs us about the attributes of an object and helps to shape beliefs that influence how much we like or dislike it. According to Stuart Oskamp (1977), even a mildly traumatic experience can trigger a negative attitude and make some beliefs more salient. If your first visit to the dentist is painful, you may conclude that dentists hurt rather than help you, despite their friendly smile.

94. Mere exposure effect- Repeated exposure to an object results in greater attraction to that object.  Simply experiencing something several times can affect how we evaluate it – the mere exposure effect. The first time you hear a new song, you may find you neither strongly like nor dislike it, but with repetition your response in either direction will probably strengthen. However, the effect of continued exposure diminishes. For example, an increased liking for people based on their photos levels off after about ten repetitions. Mere exposure has most impact when we lack information about an issue. Sitting members of a government or an opposition party, for example, usually have an advantage over other candidates in an election simply because their names are more familiar.

95. Learning Classical conditioning : one way by which we learn attitudes is through association of various social happenings. For example most people in Ethiopia haw fear of snake. The fear of snake as an attitude is not largely a result of the direct experience of the danger of snakes. Rather the fear is a result of association. We heard about snake in many parts of the bible. Snake is associated with evil in most cases and hence we fear it.

96. Instrumental conditioning : One most important way of developing or forming attitudes is learning from consequences. A child may help his parents and the response may be very good like: thank you, this is a nice behavior. This would increase the likelihood of the behaviors. There are many do's and don'ts' from the society that shape our attitudes. In instrumental learning attitudes that have positive consequences or that remove negative consequences will be strengthened and those attitudes that are followed by a punishment or negative effect will be weakened.

97. Social learning or observation learning : One learn many altitudes by modeling, imitating, and identifying oneself with parents, peers, teachers, neighbors, and other people which one usually consider them as models. Genetic endowment (some researches indicate that identical twins breed in different places were found to have similar attitude than fraternal twins, siblings, and others). But the effect of heredity is limited with regard to attitude.  Attitude formation is largely a result of the socialization process as indicated in the previous chapter. The cognitive components of altitudes are assumed to be learned in the same way as are any facts, knowledge or beliefs. The basic processes of association, reinforcement, and imitation determine this acquisition.

98. Influential factors to the development of attitudes Family Influence - the influence of parents is very important in forming one's attitudes. This is because parents mediate between the individual child and the culture. The culture in turn continually influences the parent's attitudes. Parents spend a good many hours of the day in contact with the child Culture - it consists of the customs, values, attitudes and traditions of people. These cultural values influence each individual in diverse ways; through one's social class, social groups, schools, family, etc. One is a product of his/her culture. Our attitudes are reflections of our cultures.

99. Example: Assume that you are presented with dog's meat, donkey's meat or horse meat. In the Ethiopian culture this is really abominable, disgusting, and you may even vomit by only thinking it. But these foods are few of the most delicious foods in Korea. This is a product of culture. 3. Peer influence - when the child gets older (puberty and adolescence) and spends less time with parents (meeting other people outside), his/her outlooks would be influenced by friends, to a larger extent.

100. Information - modern life is so intertwined with a lot of challenges and that information is the most important backbone. That is why communication systems are given due emphasis. Of other communication systems, adolescents are highly attracted and influenced by the audiovisual media (the TV and the computer) to get information (which is said to distract the relationship between adolescents and their parents). This means that whatever the parents tell out is not given due attention and importance.

101. Education - is the most important attitude formation factor. Liberalism (to be liberal) highly depends on how educationally qualified one is. In most cases, it is found that College (University) graduates tend to be more liberal than less educated ones. People, even with high socio-economic status, but with low educational level tend to be conservative. Schools are there to shape the attitude of people. Above any thing else education plays a tremendous role in transforming people by developing, shaping and changing their attitudes. It is for this very reason a huge proportion of the national budget for many countries is apportioned-to the education sector.

102. Measurement of Attitude Since attitude is more abstract which we cannot usually touch, sec or directly observe it: its measurement is so difficult. The most common way of measuring attitude is by asking people about their opinion, feeling, and emotions. These are self-report methods. We usually use questionnaires which might be open ended or close ended to get a self-report from people.

103. Example: Assume you wanted to measure the attitude of college students' towards people living with AIDS. You may ask such questions as do you like or dislike people living with AIDS? How much do you like or dislike them? Such questions are really very difficult loaded with social desirability.

104. People may not be genuine to these self report questions. Attitudes are feelings that change* and" are abstract so there measurement is really difficult. It is difficult for subjects in an experiment to express negative attitudes toward a colleague, it is difficult for subjects to express unpopular political opinions, and it is difficult for subjects to admit bigoted or other socially unacceptable attitudes. Despite all these difficulties, we cannot stop to measure it. Two ways of attitude measurement procedures are used as indicated below.

105. Direct measures which include Likert Summated Ratings: it is a device or technique for measuring or assessing the degree of strength of attitudes. Here attitude statements tike: premarital sex is immoral. I like hard working persons, all Jewish are aggressive people are presented and the participants will indicate their attitudes by stating strong approval, approval, undecided, disapproval, or strong disapproval. Turstone equal appearing intervals with usually nine scales which indicates one's level of liking or favoring an expressed attitude object or issue is also used.

106. Indirect Measures of Attitude Inferring attitude from people's performance on an objective test . For example a low performance in Maths or Physics or English may somehow show the individuals low attitude towards these subjects. Inferring from peoples psychological reactions to tests or an attitude object or person. For example people exhibit maximum test anxiety for a test in a subject they do not like. They may shiver or sweet when the exam approaches.

107. Using bogus pipeline : it is a technique by which subjects are induced to state their attitudes honestly in the belief that a machine has already registered their true attitudes. The essential feature of the technique is to convince participants that the investigators already know their true attitudes. Participants are made to pass through a machine in which they are told that the machinery is capable of measuring their attitudes toward an object. In this way subjects tend to disclose their true attitudes, for they believe that those attitudes have already been recorded by the machine. Despite all these the validity and reliability of attitude scales is usually less due to the subjective nature of attitude itself.

108. Attitude Change People are always adopting, modifying, and relinquishing attitudes to fit their ever changing needs and interests. It is very difficult to put a clear distinction between altitude change and formation of attitude. This is largely because when we are changing one form of attitude we are forming a different form of attitude. Thus these two are inseparable. There are everyday attempts to change the attitude of people. Advertisers, politicians, and other propagandists know that producing mass changes in attitudes is difficult. But there are still so many attempts as: Membership to parties , Voting for a candidate, Smoking a given kind of cigarette, Drinking a given brand of alcohol or beverage.

109. Attitudes Change When: When one receives new information which is largely a cognitive change. When one has direct experience with the attitude object which brings in touch with the attitude target that develops the affective change. When forcing a person to act this or that way which is a behavioral change. To change our attitudes, there are certain sources which include family, media, church, neighbors, and others which we look them as agents of socialization.

110. Steps of attitude change In the attitude change process there are four sequential steps. Attention -refers to giving focus to the attitude object. It is when we give attention that we can precede to the next step. Comprehension -this refers to understanding the issue. Retention- this refers to maintenance and elaboration of the attended information. Action -relates to taking action based on our understanding and retention.

111. Factors that Increase or Decrease Attitude Change In attitude change who said what to whom under what condition with what media and with what effect are essential. Four broader factors with specific details are included in most literatures.

112. Factors involving the source of communication (communicator) Prestige of the communicator Intentions of the communicator Likeability of the communicator It Similarity of communicator to audience Reference group: belonging to the group one belongs to. In bringing about attitude change who the communicator is plays a crucial role. The more prestigious, likeable and similar one is to the audience the more able he/she would be to influence us or change our attitude.

113. Intention of the communicator and his/her belongingness to the audiences group affects our change of attitudes. On top of this credibility, trustworthiness and expertise of the communicator is essential in attitude change.

114. 2. Factors concerning the communication (message) itself Discrepancy in current and new message Nature of organization of the message One sided versus two sided message Stating a conclusion for the communication Order of presentation: primacy and recency effects Novelty of information It Semantics or language use All messages are not equally effective, those messages which add something new to the former information we had are more attended to and more influential.

115. On top of that those messages which are well organized are more effective and that is why rhetoric skill and writing skills are given as courses in colleges and universities. For tough audiences presenting two sided messages are more important than one sided message. With regard to the order of presentation messages at the beginning and at the end arc usually more effective in influencing one: this is because the first information is attended with better attention than middle information. Owing to this communicators use anecdotes and attractive introduction with a comprehensive conclusion at the end.

116. 3. Factors in the surrounding environment (situational factors) The effect of reinforcement or reward Fear arousal messages are more effective Distraction Use of various channels Requests for attitude change which are accompanied by rewards will be more possible than those without reward. This is related to the operant conditioning theory about the formation of attitude.

117. In attitude change fear arousal messages are considered to be more effective. That is why religious leaders tell us about hell if we don't abide by the laws of God or Allah; medical practitioners show us the likelihood of death by showing a cancer affected lung to make us stop drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes. Distraction is also one reason for attitude change. When one is distracted he/she would be easily persuaded when he/she pays attention to the communicator's message.

118. 4. Factors involving the characteristics of the target audience Personality factors » Self esteem Intelligence Sex differences Defensive styles Commitment of the audience to the attitude Inoculation and support Forewarning

119. Finally, who the audience is remains pivotal in changing his or her attitude. Research has documented that individuals with high self-esteem and intelligence are very difficult to change their attitudes than those with low self-esteem and intelligence. In terms of sex females tend to be easier to change their attitudes than males.

120. On top of these in terms of personality some individuals are so defensive and others are submissive; so defensive personalities are difficult to persuade. Defenses mechanisms here refer to protection of the self or the ego from shame, inferiority, and anxiety. The level of commitment of the audience to the attitude is crucial to change attitudes.

121. If one is a committed member of the Catholic religion it will be very difficult to change him to Orthodox or Protestant religion. But if one is less committed to his/her political, religious or any other attitude s/he will easily be persuaded to change it. Inoculation refers to getting additional arguments to support our original position, this creates resistance to persuasion.

122. To change attitudes the following points are essential as suggestions for change A suggestion for change must be critically reviewed A suggestion should meet existing personality needs or desires A suggestion for change should be in harmony with valued group norms and loyalties The sources of the message should be perceived as trustworthy and expert Good rhetoric regarding order, presentation, organization and content is needed including the nature of appeal to be made.

123. Persuasion Persuasion refers to efforts to change others' attitudes. Persuasion occurs when a source deliberately uses communication to change a receiver's attitude. Persuasion is ubiquitous in many societies. A persuasive communication is a message intended to change an attitude and related behaviors of an audience; like commercial advertising, public relations, and political and government efforts to persuade.

124. For example advertisers try to convince us that their product is better than others; politicians try to convince us they deserve our vote for they are better than this or that 'party in various ways; some government and non-government organizations attempt to influence our attitudes towards environmental protection, abortion, civil rights and other heated topics. Baron and Bayrne (1997) have identified the following characteristics of communicators (source), communications (messages) and audiences that influence persuasion.

125. S.No . Findings Factor 1. Experts are more persuasive than non experts Communicator 2. Popular and attractive communicators are more effective than unattractive and unpopular ones. Communicator 3. People who speak rapidly arc often more persuasive than slow speakers. One reason for this is that rapid speech conveys impression of the speaker. Communicator 4. Messages that do not appear to be designed to change our attitudes are often more successful than one that seems intended to this goal. Message 5. Persuasion can be enhanced by messages that arouse strong message emotions especially fear in the audience. Message

126. 6. Individuals with low self-esteem are often easier to persuade than those with high self-esteem. Audience 7. People are sometimes more susceptible to persuasion when they are attracted by some extraneous event than when they are paying full attention to what is being said. Audience 8. When persuasion is tough-that is when the audience is hostile-it is more effective to present both sides of the issue than just one side. Audience + Message

127. Persuasion: On top of the above factors attitude functions, reciprocity, and message framing also affect our efforts of persuasion. Despite all these techniques for persuasion attitude change may fail. There is resistance to persuasion.

128. Propaganda The Webster's New World Dictionary defines propaganda: as “The systematic widespread promotion of a certain set of ideas, doctrines, etc. to further one's own cause.” In World Wars I and II, propaganda was associated with the information activists of the enemy. Today propaganda mostly connotes falsehood, lies, deceit, disinformation, and publicity-practices that opposing groups and governments accuse each other of employing. Some argue that it should be seen in a broadest sense to include advertising, and other public relation activities.

129. Propaganda is a deliberate attempt on the part of an individual or group to influence the attitudes, values, beliefs, opinions or actions of a large number of people. Propaganda also refers to the spreading of ideas, information, rumors, for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause or a person. Compared to persuasion; propaganda seeks some kind of response from the people who are the target audience.

130. Propaganda might be of two types: Command Propaganda which seeks a specific immediate response as buy this, sell this, vote for this, fight for this and others that require you to do it here and now. Conditioning propaganda which aims to mould public opinions, assumptions, and attitudes on a long term wide spread bases. Propagandists use several techniques commonly associated with propaganda.

131. Techniques of Persuasion Plain folks : an approach often used by individuals to show humble beginnings and empathy with the average citizen. The Ethiopian prime-minister may go to one of the universities in the country and tell students that he too was a university student and that he share's the problem they are facing now he is using the plain folk technique. Testimonial : is a frequently used device to achieve credibility. A well known expert, popular celebrity, or average citizen gives testimony about the value of a product or the wisdom of a decision.

132. 3. Bandwagon : the implication or the statement that everyone wants the product or that the idea has overwhelming support. When the Pepsi Company advertises "Pepsi the choice of the new generation" it is pressing people as a member of the new generation to have Pepsi cola. 4. Card-staking : the selection of facts and data to build an overwhelming case on one side of the issue, while concealing the other side. The advertising industry, for example, says a ban on beer advertising would lead to enormous reductions in network, sports programming, and a ban on cigarette advertising would kill several hundred magazines.

133. Transfer : the technique of associating the person, product, or organization with something that has high or low credibility, depending on the intention of the message. Glittering generalities : the technique of associating a cause, product, or idea with favorable abstraction such as freedom, justice, democracy, Ethiopian value, standard...etc. For example Anbassa shoe factory may advertise itself by saying the only inland and quality product.

134. 7. Name calling and use of loaded words : the propagandist will use emotionally toned words, and rich vocabulary and easily attract the audience's attitude. Appeal to prejudice and needs: the propagandist using initiative issues (try to address powerful issue) to persuade the audience through making the audience interested in. Like or dislike the issue.

135. Brainwashing Brainwashing is a conversion of an individual from an established orientation to another orientation. It is an intensive form of propaganda often used in prisons. According to Hogg and Vaughan (1998) brainwashing is the experience of extensive social isolation, broken sleep and intensive interrogation in which the outcome is said to be a high level of susceptibility to political propaganda. For example, to bring individuals from communist to capitalist, brain washing is useful to persuade.

136. Techniques of Brainwashing Debility: this is placing people in a physically weakened state or harsh physical condition like placing them in concentration camps, or isolated from access to social interaction, giving very little food and water so that s/he would change his/her attitude in fear. Dependent : this is subjecting people under complete dependency on the good will of the captures (prisons). E.g. Ignoring psychological necessities of captives.

137. 3. Dread : constantly frightening in physical punishment. For example telling prisoners that they will be killed. In such circumstances the person gets disoriented and his self-confidence and equilibrium gets disturbed thus captors will lead them in to the direction they want.

138. Resistance to attitude Change People maintain or preserve their attitudes and resist changing once they have been well formed. Some principal causes or mechanisms for self preservation of attitudes are: Selective interpretation Avoidance of information Social pressures and

139. Inoculation: is a way of making people resistant to persuasion by providing them with a diluted counter argument, they can build up effective refutations to a later stronger argument. Forewarning : is providing advance knowledge that one is to be the target of the persuasion attempt

140. Some additional resisting techniques to attempts of attitude change are: Refuting the arguments Rejecting the arguments Derogating the sources Rationalization and other defense mechanisms Avoiding the exposure for example missing the conference Assimilation and contrast

141. Cognitive Dissonance Two cognitions are said to be dissonant if one’s cognition follows from the opposite of the other. Consider the following examples: A person who is apathetic toward labor unions devoted his/her life to the union A man who believes in a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy makes an anti-abortion speech A child who dislikes chocolate ice cream buys a chocolate ice cream cone.

142. Cognitive dissonance is an unpleasant state that occurs when individuals discover inconsistencies between two of their attitudes or between their attitudes and their behavior. Baron and Byrne (1997) has also defined cognitive dissonance as an internal slate that results when we notice inconsistency between two or more of our attitudes or inconsistency between our attitudes and our behaviour .

143. Dissonance theory begins with a very reasonable idea: people don't like inconsistencies and are u ncomfortable when it occurs. Cognitive dissonance is a tension that arises when one is simultaneously aware of two inconsistent cognitions . For example dissonance may occur when we realize that we have with little justification acted contrary to our attitudes or made a decision favoring one alternative despite reasons favoring another.

144. Eg.1. An individual may say I am against prejudice, hut he may say I don’t want minority people living in my neighborhood. In Ethiopia one may say I like ethnic minorities, but if 's/he is requested to go to Gambella or Somalia Regional State to work there his/ her answer could he a strong no. Eg.2. One might express the deleterious consequences of unsafe sex but he she might practice unsafe sex. The magnitude of the dissonance depends on the degree of the discrepancy, the number of discrepant cognitions and the importance of the various cognitions

145. Reducing Cognitive Dissonance Three ways are identified by Baron and Byrne (1997) that are assumed to be helpful in reducing cognitive dissonance. These are: Attitude or behavior change : changing the inconsistent attitude or behaviour can be one way out of cognitive dissonance. Adding new information : this is finding new information that would help in crystallizing the attitudes and behaviors that we have.

146. 3. Trivialization: downplaying the importance of the inconsistent attitudes or behaviors. Trivialization is a technique of reducing cognitive dissonance in which the importance of attitudes or behaviors that are inconsistent with each other is cognitively reduced.

147. Chapter Six Social Influence Social influence refers to the idea that how we change others behavior and how they change our behavior. In its broadest sense social influence includes almost all of social psychology since it may be used to describe any change (physical, attitudinal, emotional or behavioral) that occurs in one person as a result of the real, implied or imagined presence of others.

148. Baron and Byrne (1997) defined social influence as an effort by one or more individuals to change the attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, or behaviors of one or more others. These efforts might be blatant, and obvious or more subtle and disguised. Social life is characterized by argument, conflict, and controversy in which individuals or groups try to change the thoughts, feelings and behaviors of others, by persuasion, argument, example, command, propaganda, or force. People can be quite aware of influence attempts and can form impressions of how influenced they and other people are by different types of influence.

149. Sources of Social Power Power is generally defined as the capacity or the potential to influence others and to resist-influence by others. The essential difference between power and influence is that influence actually changes the behavior of another person, whereas power is the ability to bring about such changes. Power can be interpreted as the capacity or ability to exert influence: and influence is power in action. For example a parent may have a great deal of power over a child but some parents exercise this power (influence) more than others do. Here in power we have to note that exercising power often brings the actor rewards bill it may also entail costs.

150. Potential Sources of Power People gain the potential to influence others through many routes. For example both a doctor and a policeman may be able to influence us to refrain from using certain drugs: however the bases of their influence ore very different. Power is usually derived from the resources the influencer possesses or from the norms that the target has internalized regarding the influences. Some of the most commonly used forms of social influence included in most literatures are:

151. Coercive Powe r- the potential to deliver threats and punishment to force another person to change his or her behavior. Coercive power is based on access to weapons or other resources that increase strength and credibility of threat. Reward Power - the ability to give positive reinforcement to produce change. It refers to the ability of one to influence a person for he can help a person accomplish a desired goal or to offer a valued reward. A boss might offer to pay a worker a bonus for finishing a project over the weekend.

152. 3. Legitimate Power - it is authority limited to a particular domain which one derives from being in a particular position. The targets believe that the influence is authorized by a recognized power structure to command and make decisions. Sometimes one person has the right or authority to ask another person to act a certain way.

153. Expert Powe r- this is power gained because others see him/her as being knowledgeable about a particular area. It is power derived from a reputation for special insight or knowledge about a particular area. Special knowledge, training, and skills are sources of power. We defer to experts and follow their advice because we believe that their knowledge will help us to achieve our personal goals. Referent Powe r- here people gain power derived from being admired and liked . It refers to identification with, attraction to or respect for the sources of influence. In such cases, we may voluntarily copy their behavior (conformity) or do what they ask us (compliance) because we want to become similar to them.

154. 6. Informational Power -is the power derived from possession of a specific piece of information. A friend might influence you to go to a concert by informing you that your favorite music group is performing. In this case, the influencer is not an expert. Rather it is the content of the message that produces the desired effect. The need for information can motivate conformity.

155. Major Forms of Social Influence: Conformity, Compliance and Obedience Conformity (social influence by norm and social pressure) It is a change in behavior or belief with regard to a group's standards as a result of the group's power. It is a change in behavior or belief as a result of real or imagined group pressure. It is the correspondence in form, manner, or character which means agreement with others. It is an action in accordance with some specified standards or authority.

156. Hogg and Vaughan (1998) has defined conformity as a deep-seated, private and enduring change in behavior and attitudes due to group pressure. Solomon Asch is the famous researcher in the area who made rigorous research on conformity. He made an experiment that shows the nature of conformity which goes as follows:

157.   He set a laboratory situation when' a target person was to be involved in judging the size of a set of sticks. The experimenter selected five confederates (people who collaborate with the researcher and knew the purpose of the research, accomplices to the experimenter). The target person was included in this group which he did not know about the purpose of the study The experimenter showed a standard stick to be compared with four other sticks hut it is only one of the sticks that are exactly equal to 'he standard. The other sticks were nearer in length but not equal to the standard one. The confederates one by one suggested a nearer hut not the standard stick. The target person was sure of the answer but as he sees each confederate giving a different answer he developed his doubt and finally confirmed to the group pressure. Usually we conform when we are in doubt and when we see many others conform.

158. When do people conform? We are more apt to conform in some situations than in others. Some major conditions under which people conform include: Judgment that need difficult requirements and feeling of incompetence Feelings of more insecurity Group size - in very few groups people maintain their identity. But as group number increases conformity increases particularly from four to seven members. If there are more than this number of members the degree of conformity will not increase much. The addition is less.

159. Unanimity - we fear to be alone in a group and to have our own position but if we get at least one supporter we stand on our own position. With regard to this Novalis has said "My opinion, my conviction, gains infinite strength and success, the moment a second mind has adopted it" and fear of deviance is one major reason to conform. 5. Cohesiveness - the more similar members of a group are the more individual members are likely to conform. 6. Status : high status people lend to influence in one way and low status people also influence in their own ways.

160. 7. When the response is in public- people conform when they are requested in the public but they conform less if they are asked privately. 8. Prior commitment-made without prior commitment we reconsider our judgment but if we made a prior commitment we remain resistant. For example in Asch's Experiment if the individual was asked for his 1 st judgment and if the rest “the confederates” misjudge it the individual will maintain his/her initial judgment. A similar example is our everyday experience in which umpires or referees rarely reverse their initial judgments despite apparent evidences.

161. Why do we conform? Social psychologists give certain reasons for conforming. The most important reasons are Normative Influence and Informational Influence. Normative Influenc e-we call it the desire to be liked. Normative conformity is going along with the crowd to avoid rejection. To stay in people's good graces, or to gain their approval. It is motivated by the desire for social approval. We often want others to accept us, like us and treat us well. When we deviate from group norms we often pay a price in anxiety if not in rejection.

162. Informational Influence on the other hand, is guided by the desire to be right. We use the opinions and actions of people to guide us in our behavior and action. When reality is ambiguous other people can be a valuable source of information. Informational influence is motivated by the desire to be correct. The ambiguity of reality makes individuals to use information to disambiguate reality and resolve subjective uncertainty. Informational influence usually brings genuine change of behavior that helps to internalize the new behavior adopted. Some of the experiments on when do people conform have isolated either normative or informational influence.

163. For example- we have said earlier that conformity is greater in the presence of the group, this surely reflects normative influence . On the other hand researches have documented that conformity is greater when participants feel incompetent or when the task is especially difficult this again purely reflects informational influence . In summary it is essential to note that conformity is not simply acting as other people act rather it is being affected by how they act. It is acting differently from the way you would act alone if there were not others to influence you.

164. II. Compliance (Conformity by Request) One of the most common forms of compliance is in response to direct pressure to comply with a request. For example, when a friend asks a favor, a salesperson tries to induce us to buy a product, or a partner asks us to change our behavior. Think also some of the direct requests you may make to your friends as to lend you many, to refrain from smoking in front of you, to tell you what really they think of your new haircut or new clothes, to join the volunteer group you are organizing, and so on. Compliance is usually equated to a response to social influence when people conform by simply going along overtly with certain kind of social influence without genuine internal or private opinion change.

165. It is an overt behavioral conformity while maintaining one’s own attitude. Compliance is conformity that involves publicly acting in accord with social pressure while privately disagreeing. It refers to a form of social influence including direct requests from one person to another. Compliance according to Hogg (1998) is a superficial public and transitory change in behavior and expressed attitudes in response to request, coercion or group pressure.

166. Principles and Techniques for Gaining Compliance Robert Cialdini as cited in Baron and Byrne (1997) has identified five major underlying principles and accompanying techniques after he made a thorough study of compliance professional like sales people, advertisers, political lobbyists, fund raisers, con artists, trial attorney's, professional negotiators, politicians... etc. Tactics Based on Friendship or Liking: Ingratiation : In general we are more willing to comply with requests from friends or from people we like than from strangers or those we do not-know. Ingratiation is getting others to like us so that they will be more willing to agree to our requests. The impression management techniques we raised under social perception are largely meant for the purpose of ingratiation.

167. Tactics Based on Commitment or Consistency- once we have committed ourselves to a position or action, we arc more willing to comply with requests for behaviors that are consistent with that position. We generally want to behave in a consistent manner. People request us to be consistent and reliable so that our behavior would be partly predictable and we can make better interactions with others. Foot in the Door - A procedure for gaining compliance in which requesters begin with a small request and then when this is granted they escalate to a large one. Once the target person says yes to the small request it is difficult for that person to say no to a larger subsequent request.

168. The Lowball Procedure - Technique for inducing compliance in which a person who agrees to a request still feels committed after finding that there are hidden costs. For example you may go to a boutique where' you found an attractive leather jacket and it was offered for you with 600 Ethiopian Birr which you felt is an attractive price. You consented to buy it and confirmed that the jacket was one of the most you liked. But meanwhile the salesperson says sorry I have forgotten the VAT (the value added tax in calculating the price so the price is 650 Birr). Most likely you will buy it because you have expressed your liking of the jacket. So since you are partly committed you may agree with the additional request.

169. Bait and Switch Tactics - A technique for gaining compliance in which items offered for sale are unavailable or of very low quality. This leads customers to buy a more expensive item that is available.

170. Tactics Based on Reciprocity - If we do some favor to someone, then he/she is very likely to comply with a subsequent request because there is a strong norm to reciprocate. Reciprocity is a basic rule of social life; we shall see this in some details in social exchange. The Door in the face technique: A procedure for gaining compliance in which requesters begin with a large request and then when this is refused they will retreat to a smaller one (the one "you actually desire). You may request your friend to borrow you 100 Birr, when he/she refuses this you may retreat to 80, 70. 60. or 50.

171. That is not all technique - a technique in which a requester offers additional benefits to target persons before they have decided whether to comply with or reject specific requests. Here an initial request is followed by something that sweetens it which may be a small extra incentive before the target person can make up his or her mind. Zenith Cosmetics gives you a comb as an additional incentive when you buy them a bottle of cosmetics. Foot in the Mouth Tactic :-requesters establish some kind of kinship no matter how territorial the target person is. By doing so the former will increase the latter's obligation to comply.

172. Tactics Based on Scarcity :-it is a general rule of life that things that are scarce, rare or difficult to posses are viewed as being more valuable than those that are easy to obtain so we exert more effort and money to acquire such things. Playing Hard to Get: - it refers to efforts to increase compliance by suggesting that a person or object is scarce and hard to obtain. If you go to some supermarkets they tell you sky rocketing prices to some of their items and try to convince you that this item is available only in their supermarket and it is one of the scarce resources. Deadline technique:- is a technique in which target persons are told that they have only limited time to take advantage of some offer or to obtain some item. Many business firms advertise big discounts in the eves of big holidays like Easter, Epiphany, New Ethiopian Year, Arefa , Moulid , and so on, but they also tell us that the discount would stay only a week or two weeks.

173. Other tactics :-On top of the previous techniques other techniques are also used. These techniques are complaining, putting others in a good mood, and pique technique. Complainin g- Impressing discontent, dissatisfaction, resentment, or regret as a means of exerting social influence on others. You request a discount on an item by complaining that it lacks this or that quality, its colour is not attractive and it has this and that defects and so on. Pique technique -A technique for gaining compliance that focuses on gaining target person's attention and so preventing them from engaging in automatic or mindless refusal. Sometimes target persons may resist your request mindlessly without paying attention thus you need to get their attention.

174. III. Obedience-Social Influence by Demand Obedience is social influence by demand usually by authorities. It refers to conformity to direct orders from a person's/ of high status and authority. The individual who is commanded by a legitimate authority ordinarily obeys. In short it is acceptance of command. It is the act of submission to the demands or requests of a person or organization in authority. It is the act or process of adapting to the desires, demands or coercion of others. In any social group, organization or society, it is important that people obey orders from those who have legitimate authority. In war time, generals expect soldiers to obey orders, and they severely punish disobedience. We expect drivers to follow the orders of police officers directing traffic.

175. Most people believe that public health officials have the right to require the school children be vaccinated against polio and other communicable diseases. In general citizens obey the laws enacted by state federal governments. Compliance with authorities is increased when people believe that they are treated fairly, trust the motives of the authorities, and identify with the group or organization. In compliance, it is noted that often we are more willing to agree to request from persons with authority this principle underlies one major form of social influence called obedience. Obedience occurs when people obey commands or orders from others to do something. Obedience is less frequent than conformity or compliance because even persons who possess authority and power generally prefer lo exert it through requests rather than direct orders. Obedience drops sharply when the authority figure is removed.

176. Destructive Obedience- Some Basic Findings More powerful authorities get better obedience than those with less authority. Some orders are destructive. For example, we may be required to injure an innocent person. A number of disastrous acts happen in the world due to destructive obedience. The torture, killings and slaughter of 6 million Jewish by the Nazi's was largely a product of obedience. Of course life could have been meaningless without obedience. Many organizational activities require obedience, but we should question when, and to which orders we should obey. Many human sufferings emanate from acceptance of destructive obedience. There are extremely huge examples to this. Saddam Hussein's soldiers were willing to murder unarmed civil protesters in their country, in Ethiopia too during the. All this is a result of destructive obedience. Destructive obedience has some social psychological basis.

177. Why do people obey? Persons in authority relieve those who obey of the responsibility for their own actions. Those who obey orders say "I was only carrying out orders". This is a defense many offer after obeying harsh or cruel directions. It is the authority responsible for this, they say. The authorities also tell obeyers the same: that is it is authorities not obeyers that take the responsibility. Persons in authority often possess visible badges or signs of their status like uniforms, titles and similar symbols. Faced with such obvious reminders of who is in charge most people find it difficult to resist.

178. A constable is less likely to say no to a commander or to the vice commissioner. Gradual escalation of authority figures orders- this is a gradual increase in the intensity of command from authorities. An authority may first request politely, then somehow demand, then a strong demand, and finally may force the subordinate. When you do not obey, authorities will threaten you, deny your promotion, deduct your salary and even dismiss you from job. Finally events in many situation*involving destructive obedience vary quickly and the fast pace of some events or commands give participants little time for reflection.

179. What breeds Obedience Three major determinant factors are: The victim's emotional distance to the target- when the victim is not emotionally nearer to us we are less compassionate. We also choose and it is easiest to abuse someone who is distant or depersonalized. Imagine you had the power to prevent either a tidal wave that would kill 25,000 people in Bangladesh or an air crash that would kill 250 people at your local airport or a car accident that would kill a close friend. Which one will you prevent? 1 think people chose the last.

180. Imagine that you are a soldier and there is an enemy group in a civil war you are fighting. You would obey to kill a number of individuals in the enemy group, but if you suddenly see your brother on the enemy side: you would be shocked and it is very difficult for you to kill him. Suppose also that you are a police, and you are placed in your birth town. A chaos happened in protest against the government, and you are required by your boss to kill your own villagers who are involved in the havoc: I think this will be a challenge to your mentality.

181. Closeness and legitimacy of the authority. Studies confirm that when the one making the request is physically close conformity increase. That is why in management people are usually requested to appeal in a face to face manner than other ways of communication. For example if your boss ordered you to do this or that by letter you can delay it, and even you may say I forgot it if you don't want to obey the order. If he/she told you by phone it will be relatively difficult but you still feel free but if he is near you and ordered you in front it is very difficult to disobey or delay the order. A mere observation of workers in many organizations has proved that employees easily obey order when they are ordered in face and directly than when they are told by others.

182. Institutional authority - some obedience is supported by some institutional authority that will threaten subordinates to do what they are ordered. This is a most common feature of military command.  

183. Destructive Obedience: Resisting Its Effects When we talk of destructive obedience it is something that we can control. Some specific ways of resisting and helping others resist destructive obedience include: Informing responsibility for action so that not only authorities but also doers are also responsible for their action. Many of the prisoners in Ethiopia who were members of the Derge regime are in prison not only for the destructive action they initiated but also for the destructive orders they obeyed.

184. Showing disobedient models, but appropriate disobedience. Such figures as Martin Luther King and Mahatma Ghandi could be examples. We have seen the role of modeling and vicarious reinforcement. So showing appropriate disobedient models who say "No" to a destructive obedience is helpful. But it has to be a non-violent one

185. Making individuals question the expertise and motive of authority figures. Before we obey orders we need to question the expertise of the authority. On top of that what is the motive of the authority figure? Is the authority requiring the order out of genuine demand for public cause or any other selfish desire? These and similar questions have to be inquired before discharging n destructive obedience.

186. Resisting Social Pressure People will not always conform, comply or obey, they also resist. There are two ways of resistance. Reactance : a motive to protect or restore one's sense of freedom. Reactance arises when someone threatens our freedom of action. Influence attempts will not always produce the desired effects. Sometimes too much pressure may actually cause a person to do the opposite of what the influencer wants. When people feel that their freedom is threatened they do whatever they can reinstate it.

187. Asserting Uniqueness : while not wishing to be greatly deviant, most of us express our distinctiveness through our personal styles like dressing, speaking, believing and many other styles! So we resist social pressure of any sort as conformity, compliance and obedience to maintain our identity.

188. Chapter Seven Interpersonal Relation Interpersonal Relation: is a basic human characteristic to be attracted to others, attract others, the to desire to build close relationships with friends and lovers. The Roots of Interpersonal Attraction and Close Relationships: Need for Affiliation and Intimacy Fear of Loneliness and Social Anxiety

189. Close relationships “ Intimate relationships cannot substitute for a life plan. But to have any meaning or viability at all, a life plan must include intimate relationships”.- Harriet Lerner Close relationships are relationships between people that are characterized by loving, caring, commitment, and intimacy—such as those between adult friends, dating partners, lovers, and married couples

190. Close relationship These relationships are determined by biological, evolutionary, individual, and cultural factors. Successful close relationships involve the positive influence of cognitive variables including perceptions of similarity with the other, interdependence, commitment, and the incorporation of other into the self-concept, as well as affective variables, including attachment, intimacy, and commitment. Our close relationships help us meet the goals of self-concern and other-concern.

191. Inter-personal Attraction Interpersonal attraction is the strength of our liking or loving for another person. Although interpersonal attraction occurs between friends, family members, and other people in general, and although our analysis can apply to these relationships as well, our primary focus in this chapter will be on romantic attraction—for instance, between boys and girls, between men and women, and between people in same-sex relationships.

192. Determinants of Interpersonal Attraction Physical Attractiveness: Overall, both men and women value physical attractiveness, as well as certain personality characteristics, such as kindness, humor, dependability, intelligence, and sociability; this is true across many different cultures. Similarity: We Like Those Who Are Like Us. Proximity: You’ll never marry someone that you never meet!

193. Close Relationships: Liking and Loving Over the Long Term In successful relationships, the partners feel increasingly close to each other over time, whereas in unsuccessful relationships, closeness does not increase and may even decrease. The closeness experienced in these relationships is marked in part by reciprocal self-disclosure— the tendency to communicate frequently, without fear of reprisal, and in an accepting and empathetic manner.

194. The Development of close relationship

195. Relationship Development According to the stage model of relationship development, proposed by Levinger and Snoek (1972), relationships evolve through the following stages: Stage 0, no relationship. This is a personʼs status with respect to virtually all other people in the world. Stage 1, awareness. We become conscious of anotherʼs presence and feel the beginning of interest. When Stein and Toklas first met in the company of friends, their conversation suggested to each of them that they might have much in common.

196. Stage 2, surface contact: Interaction begins but is limited to topics such as the weather, politics, and mutual likes and dislikes. Although the contact is superficial, each person is forming impressions of the other. Stein and Toklas moved into this stage the day after their first meeting and soon moved beyond it. Stage 3, mutuality: The relationship moves from lesser to greater interdependence.

197. Theories of Relation ship development Social penetration theory: A theory that relationships vary in breadth, the extent of interaction, and depth, suggesting they progress in an orderly fashion from slight and superficial contact to greater and deeper involvement. Social exchange theory: A theory of how relationships are evaluated, suggesting that people make assessments according to the reward (positive things derived from a relationship) and costs (negative things derived from a relationship).

198. Theories of Relation ship development A theory related to social exchange theory—equity theory—says that we evaluate our relationships based on their rewards and costs, Equity in a relationship occurs when the following equation holds: The rule of equity is simply that person Aʼs benefi ts should equal person Bʼs if their contributions are equal. However, fairness requires that if Aʼs contributions are greater tha Bʼs , Aʼs benefi ts should also be greater. Person Aʼs Benefi ts ( r ewards – costs)/ = Person Bʼs Benefi ts (rewards – costs)/ Bʼs Contributions Aʼs Contributions

199. Love and Close Relationships Triangular theory of love: A theory suggesting that love is comprised of three components— passion, intimacy, and commitment —each of which is conceptualized as a leg of a triangle that can vary. Passion is the emotional component of love. The “aching” in the pit of your stomach when you think about your love partner is a manifestation of this component. Passion is “a state of intense longing for union with the other”

200. Triangular theory of love Intimacy: is the component that includes self-disclosure—the sharing of our innermost thoughts—as well as shared activities intimate couples look out for each others’ welfare, experience happiness by being in each others’ company, are able to count on each other when times are tough, and give each other emotional support and understanding. commitment: is the long-term determination to maintain love over time.

201. Triangular theory of love

202. Types of Love Non love Liking Infatuated love Empty love Romantic love Companionate love Fatuous love Consummate love

203. Triangular theory of love

204. Triangular theory of love Kind of Love Intimacy Passion Commitment Non love No No No Liking Yes No No Infatuated love No yes No Empty love No No Yes Romantic love Yes Yes No Companionate love Yes No Yes Fatuous love No Yes Yes Consummate love Yes Yes Yes

205. Stereotypes, Prejudice and Discrimination Stereotypes  are beliefs about people based on their membership in a particular group. Stereotype s are sets of beliefs about the characteristics of people in a group generalized nearly to all group members. It is an over generalized and inaccurate beliefs about a group of people. It is a gross generalization acquired from misinformation which ignores individual differences and are resistant to change even in the light of new information.

206. Stereotypes are usually irrational and rigid ways of labeling people simply on the basis of the group they belong in. Stereotypes can be positive, negative, or neutral. Stereotypes based on gender, ethnicity, or occupation are common in many societies. Examples:  People may stereotype women as nurturing or used car salespeople as dishonest. People may stereotype French people as romantic. Ethiopian people stereotype England people as greedy.

207. Prejudice A  prejudice  is a negative evaluation or feeling about a particular group of individuals. Prejudice might be in race, ethnicity, religion, politics and other affairs of life. The Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture defines prejudice as unfair and often unfavorable feeling or opinion formed without thinking deeply and clearly or' without enough knowledge and sometimes resulting from fear or distrust of ideas different from one's own.

208. Worchel (1991) defined prejudice as a negative attitude toward a person or negative evaluation of a person based on one's membership in a group other than the evaluator’s own group. If a person dislikes another person simply because that, person is a member of a different race, ethnicity, religion, social class, hometown, college major, interest in music, interest in books, interest in sport; we are dealing with prejudice.

209. Prejudice is unreasonable feelings or attitudes especially of hostile nature directed against an individual for he belongs to a group the evaluated did not like. Racism - it is a term we use to prejudice based on race. Ethnocentrism- is the belief that in-groups are superior to out-groups. In sociology ethnocentrism refers to the feeling of an individual or a group that his/her/their culture, religion, or belief is superior to that of others.

210. Discrimination Discrimination - refers to negative often aggressive behavior aimed at the target of prejudice. Very often negative stereotypes or prejudice give rise to discrimination which can be defined as action taken to harm u group or any one of its members. It can be thought of as the expression of prejudice in behavior. It is unjustifiable negative behavior towards a group and its members.

211. Generally, Stereotypes are cognitive- beliefs about the typical characteristics of group members. Prejudice is affective- negative feelings toward a target group. And discrimination is behavioral- behavior that disadvantages individuals simply because of their group membership.

212. Causes of prejudice Baron (1994) listed the following as major causes of prejudice. Direct Inter-group conflict- competition as a source of prejudice It is an axiom of life that the things that people value most such as goods, jobs. nice homes, high status, are always in short supply. This serves as the foundation of the oldest explanation of prejudice called realistic conflict theory . According to this view prejudice stems from competition among social groups over valued commodities or opportunities. In short prejudice develops out of the struggle over jobs, adequate housing, good schools and other desirable outcomes.

213. Social Categorization- the ‘us’ versus ‘them’ effect People generally divide the social world around them into two distinct categories us and them. Social dominance theory is a cause of prejudice. Social dominance theory assumes that societies tend to be organized in hierarchies, with some groups at the top and others at the bottom. Some individuals especially high in it choose to enforce the hierarchy by serving in positions of authority, such as in police forces. Social dominance orientation proves to be a strong predictor of racial and ethnic prejudices among members of dominant groups. Dominant groups create and legitimize myths to explain why it is impossible to change the existing hierarchy.

214. 4. Early experience - the role of social learning is crucial. We learn whom to hate and when to hate at different instances. In our own families, neighbors, ethnics. or country level we are told to like or hate this or that ethnic group, this or that religious group, this or that political group, this or that type of occupation and so on. Schools and the media play their own roles (negative or positive) in the development of prejudice. Role of parents, instrumental conditioning, classical conditioning, modeling, teachers, schools, and peer groups as major factors in learning prejudice, there are also some innate tendencies.

215. Cognitive Source of Prejudice - illusory correlations that is out-group homogeneity and in-group differentiation: feelings or mental associations or how we process social information is one source of prejudice. If we were to go somewhere in a dark evening and if we see bushes or other objects we feel that is a hyena or some other beast. Our mind begins to construct a leg, a head, and even a tail to the bush, and even we begin to feel that it is moving. All this is because of the cognitive schema we have that beasts go out in the night and they are dangerous to humans.

216. Some additional causes of prejudice include Ignorance and barriers to communication Unequal status and power between various groups breeds prejudice. Diversity between groups in terms of outlooks like religion, values, physical characteristics, language, etc. In-group favoritism including ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism which is a belief in the superiority of once ethnic group, including a bias for in-group members such as overestimating the quality of their performance. Institutional support and reinforcement Tendency to conform with the societal norms

217. Effects of Prejudice Four major effects of prejudice are pronounced in the literature. These are Self-esteem - social groups that arc the victims of prejudice and discrimination generally have relatively low status and little power in society, and find it difficult to avoid accepting society's consensual negative image of them. Members of these groups tend to internalize these evaluations and form unfavorable self image manifested in relevant context as low self-esteem. Failure and disadvantage - the victims of prejudice belong to groups that are denied access to those resources that society makes available for people to thrive and succeed-for example good education, health, housing, employment, etc.

218. Self-fulfilling prophesy - these are expectations and assumptions about a person that influence one's interactions with that person and eventually change that person's behavior in line with one's expectations. Violence and genocide - The targets of prejudice are considered for example as stupid, dirty, insensitive, repulsive, aggressive, and psychologically unstable. This is a constellation that evaluates others as relatively worthless human beings who do not need or deserve to be treated with consideration, courtesy and respect. Together with fear and hatred, this is a potent mix. It dehumanizes other people and given certain social circumstances, can permit individual violence, mass aggression or even systematic extermination or genocide.

219. How can prejudice be reduced? Some potentially beneficial steps to reduce prejudice suggested by Baron and Byrne 1997 are breaking it through learning not to hate, direct inter group contact, re-categorization finally reducing the boundary between "US" and "Them" and cognitive intervention In addition to those mentioned above the following suggestions will be helpful in reducing or eliminating prejudice Formal education system working towards better attitude Develop supportive norms Legislative measures (legal system) Develop contact systems programs Political system working for human rights, equality, etc Hold discussions, lectures, etc Media, and leaders working against prejudice

220. Aggression Aggression is an intentional infliction of damage or harm on a target. Sometimes the definition may focus on the act itself and say that aggression is any behaviour that delivers a noxious stimulus to another individual. Some may focus on intention and define aggression as any act that is intended to injure the target. Intention is very important, for example auto accidents, dental treatments, sidewalk collisions and other unintended harmful acts are not aggressive acts: on the other hand slaps, direct insults and even gossip are labelled as aggressive acts.

221. Aggression  According to Dollard and his associates, aggression is a behavior whose goal is the injury of the person toward whom it is directed. The aggression may be either physical, or verbal aggression may also be hostile or instrumental. Hostile aggression - Act of aggression stemming from a feeling of anger and intended to cause pain or injury such as hitting, kicking, or threatening to beat up someone. Instrumental aggression - An act of aggression that intends to hurt someone, but as a means to a goal other than causing pain.

222. Theories of aggression   Instinct Theory This was the first theory for aggression in sport and was defined by Freud, and Lorenz (1966). This theory is based on a nature approach; it argues that aggressive behaviour is innate, genetically inherited and as a result inevitable. It suggests aggression is due to our evolutionary development, our life instinct and our death instinct. Aggression is a trait of our self destructive death instinct and this clashes with our life instincts until it is balanced.  The theory suggests aggression is built up and needs to be released to maintain our well being. This aggression can be directed towards another person or displaced and it argues that sport allows this release through a Catharsis.

223.   Biological theory They also locate the seat of aggression inside the individual. They differ from the instinct position in that they attempt to identify specific biological mechanisms that excite people to aggression. They attempt to locate specific parts of brain that may trigger aggression. For example male sex hormones may be responsible for more male aggressive behavior . That is why usually males are more aggressive than females.

224.   Frustration-Aggression Theory A performer becomes aggressive when the goal is blocked and this leads to frustration in the performer and eventually aggression. They state that frustration will always lead to aggression and aggression is always caused by frustration. An example could be a performer’s aggression drive increases due the opponent playing well. As a result frustration in the performer increases so they commit an aggressive act e.g. a personal foul in basketball, the player is then satisfied as there has been a cathartic release, however if the performer is punished for the act then further aggressive acts may follow.

225.   learning theory For this group individuals learn aggressive behavior by imitating others and receiving reward for their aggressive act. Children learn when to aggress, how to aggress and against whom to aggress from parents, elders and friends. Although the belief this learning comes from observation of parents, additional learning of aggression comes from peer group, and from mass media portrayal of aggression and violence. The learning might be either a direct experience where the acquisition of a behavior results because the performance of an act leads to reinforcement for self. In most parts of our culture, a measure of braveness is fighting with others. In some cultures they encourage their children to be aggressive. In some cultures adults enjoy while children are fighting and the winner is rewarded and this makes children believe that aggression is a solution to most problems.

226. Reducing Aggression Parental training - parents can be trained to discipline their children. Particular1y. training on child rearing practices and parenting styles would be of greater help. Empathy - one way to reduce aggression is making those individuals who aggress to sense what he/'she feels if others aggress upon him. The biblical parable says "all things whatsoever you would want that men should do to you. In our culture also people say " Nege bene new" which is an Amharic equivalent 'tomorrow it will happen to me'. Sometimes an opposite will describe a concept better. Thus, a direct opposite of empathy is the Amharic saying " besew kusil enchet bisedubet ayamem " which means one will not feel the pain when he/she inserts a piercing object into one's wound.

227. Reducing Aggression Humour- the more humorous individuals are the less likely they are to be aggressive Ignoring aggressive behavior or reinforcing cooperative actions. one better way of controlling aggression particularly in children is ignoring their aggressive tendencies. Ignoring is a very good punishment to children and even to adults.

228. Chapter Eight Group Processes A group is a collection of individuals who interact with each other such that one person’s actions have an impact on the others. In organizations, most work is done within groups. Groups function has important implications for organizational productivity and success

229. Why Do People Join Groups? Typically, people do not randomly join groups; usually, they do so for more instrumental reasons . Another important point is that membership in a particular group may serve several purposes at the same time. Although organizations typically form groups in order to accomplish work-related tasks, work groups may serve a variety of other purposes for their members, such as affiliation and social support.

230. More specifically, people join groups for the sake of : A. Need for affiliation :- In fact, when people do not affiliate with others for prolonged periods of time, this may lead to psychological adjustment problems or even more severe forms of psychopathology. B. Need for power :- people often do join groups so they can hold leadership positions that allow them to exert power and influence over other group members.

231. C. Need for achievement :- people often join labor unions because they believe they can achieve higher wages and more favorable working conditions by acting collectively rather than negotiating with their employer as individuals . Moreover, being around other people often provides comfort and support. Particularly when people are anxious, or when they are experiencing stressful periods in their lives, being around other people can offer a great deal of support.

232. Types of Group I ). Informal groups : - Are made up of two or more individuals who are associated with one another in ways not prescribed by the formal organization. For example, a few people in the company who get together to play tennis on the weekend would be considered an informal group. II). Formal work group: - is made up of managers, subordinates, or both with close associations among group members that influence the behavior of individuals in the group. This group is basically oriented towards the achievement of organizations’ mission and vision.

233. Stages of group Development Just as an individual moves through developmental stages such as Infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood , so does a group, although in a much shorter period of time.

234. 1. Forming In the forming stage, the group comes together for the first time. The members may already know each other or they may be total strangers. In either case, there is a level of formality, some anxiety, and a degree of guardedness as group members are not sure what is going to happen next. “Will I be accepted? What will my role be? Who has the power here?” are some questions raised by members.

235. 2. Storming Group members begin to explore their power and influence, and they often stake out their territory by differentiating themselves from the other group members rather than seeking common ground. Discussions become heated as participants raise contending points of view and values, or argue over how tasks should be done and who is assigned to them. Questioning and resisting direction from the leader is also quite common. “Why should I have to do this? Who designed this project in the first place? Why do I have to listen to you?” In many cases, the group gets stuck in the storming phase. Hence, avoiding stuck is necessary.

236. 3. Norming “We survived!” is the common sentiment (feeling) at this stage. Group members often feel elated at this point, and they are much more committed to each other and the group’s goal. Finding themselves more cohesive and cooperative, participants find it easy to establish their own ground rules (or norms) and define their operating procedures and goals.

237. 4. Performing Galvanized by a sense of shared vision and a feeling of unity, the group is ready to go into high gear. At the performing stage, participants are not only getting the work done, but they also pay greater attention to how they are doing it. They ask questions like, “Do our operating procedures best support productivity and quality assurance? Do we have suitable means for addressing differences that arise so we can preempt destructive conflicts? Are we relating to and communicating with each other in ways that enhance group dynamics and help us achieve our goals? How can I further develop as a person to become more effective?”

238. 5. Adjourning Just as groups form, so do they end. For example, many groups formed in business context are project oriented and therefore are temporary in nature. Alternatively, a working group may dissolve due to an organizational restructuring. An ideal way to close a group is to set aside time to debrief (“How did it all go? What did we learn?”), acknowledge each other, and celebrate a job well done.

239. Assignment 1. Problems in group : Discuss on the following concepts : Group Polarization Group Think De- individuation Social loafing 2. The Effects of an Audience on Performance