BulletPointsummary of Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Managing Social Problems by Steg e.a. - 2nd edition

What is applied social psychology? - Chapter 1

• Social psychologists play an important role in fixing and preventing societal problems. They try to understand which behaviour causes the problem, what factors influence the behaviour and they try to make different interventions. For interventions, social psychology and applied psychology are important. Social psychology is the science that tries to understand the core and causes of individual behaviour and thinking in social situations. Applied psychology is the systematic appliance of social psychological constructs, theories, intervention techniques, research methods and research results to understand social problems better or to improve them. Social psychologists have to work often with scientists from another field to make an intervention.

• There are multiple similarities between fundamental and applied social psychology. One of those similarities is to develop and test theories. Another similarity is using scientific methods. There are four important values: Accuracy (search and evaluate information carefully), objectivity (minimalizing the bias when getting and evaluating the data), scepticism (the extent to which results are verified determines the accuracy of the results) and open-mindedness (accept the evidence, regardless of the consequences). There are also differences between fundamental and applied social psychology. Fundamental social psychological tries to develop tests and theories and it uses a deductive approach (to test if a theory is useful for understanding social behaviour). Applied social psychology tries to understand practical problems and solve them. It uses an inductive approach (which theories help us to understand a social problem). Applied social psychology is usually applied in the field.

• Within the applied social psychology there are different jobs. There are researcher jobs (to research which factors cause social problems), consultants (assisting groups, individuals and organisations in solving their problems, giving training and coaching) and policy advisor (giving advice to policy makers to change cognitions and behaviour).

How to use theory? - Chapter 2

• There are different theories about social influence in psychology. Social influence has to do with the way in which the social environment can influence our thoughts, behaviour and feelings. Some theories look at imitation (automatically, unintentionally cooping someone’s behaviour), other theories look at conformity (changing behaviour to be consistent with real or imagined social expectancies) and other theories look at obedience. Cialdini and Goldstein suggest that people give way to a request when obedience results in attaining goals. Three goals are: developing important social relationships, getting to know oneself and to decrease ambiguity. Obedience is the change of behaviour after an explicit question (Milgram’s experiment). People can react differently on persuading messages. The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) gives insight into how people can react on persuading messages. This model is important for interventions. A difference in reacting on persuading messages is caused by the route of conviction. When a message goes via the central route, it is processed elaborately. This is a strong route and it’s resistant to counter arguments. When a message goes via the peripheral route, it isn’t really processed. This is a weak route and someone’s opinion can be easily changed through this route (because the person doesn’t really think much about the strength of the arguments).

• There are also many different theories that have to do with social cognition. Social cognition is the way in which we acquire, organise and interpret social information. people try to explain their own behaviour and the behaviour of others. They can ascribe behaviour to internal attributions (caused by the person himself) or external attributions (caused by the environment). Unfortunately, people are biased and they ascribe their own good behaviour to internal causes and their own bad behaviour to external causes. When we describe the behaviour of others, the opposite is true. This is called the fundamental attribution bias. It is also often the case that people think much better about their own group than about other groups (ingroup bias). This can lead to discrimination. One way to prevent discrimination is the contact hypothesis. Groups need to come in contact with each other and they can then see that not all members of a group are the same and that members of the outgroup are not bad. Other ways to reduce prejudice is by giving the groups an equal status, giving them the same goal, making sure they work together and support from institutions to not be prejudiced.

• One must consider certain things when using theories in applied work. (1) Not all social problems are identical. Many variables need to change to solve a problem. (2) Sometimes, different theories need to be combined, which makes it harder to meet the boundary conditions for each theory. (3) Prediction and explanation are not equally accessible. (4) The complexity of the problem is the complexity of the theory. It is often difficult to apply in the real world, because it exists out of many parts. (5) it’s challenging to recognize the boundary conditions in the real world and it demands a certain extension. Research has two central dimensions: research of fundamental understanding (developing knowledge, not considering the applicability) and consideration of use (applied research, with the goal of solving problems and it also adds to theoretical knowledge).

How to apply behaviour-focused intervention? - Chapter 3

• Behaviour analysts try to change behaviour with the help of psychological principles (interventions). The analysts can look at different principles. The three-term contingency means that the sequence of antecedent-behaviour-consequences is used. They can also look at compliance principles: consistency, liking, reciprocity and social prove.

• Some antecedent strategies are education and training, behavioural commitment (people are asked to formally agree with the behavioural change by making a commitment), modelling (showing a particular behaviour to the intended group) and prompts (verbal or written messages). Some consequence strategies are feedback (giving information about behaviour and consequences), penalty’s (identifying undesirable behaviour and giving negative consequences), rewards (a positive consequence after good behaviour) and incentives (antecedents that show the availability of a reward after completing a particular behaviour). There are also disadvantages of giving rewards/punishment. One is that the intended behaviour may stop when the rewards go away and another disadvantage is that rewards lower the intrinsic motivation.

• Compliance principles are techniques that enhance the chance an individual will comply the request of changing his/her behaviour. There are different compliance techniques. (1) Liking is that we do the things we know and like more easily. We accept opinions from people we know more easily. (2) Consistency is wanting to have internal consistency and a person wants to come over as consistent on others. Some consistency techniques are the foot-in-the-door-technique (someone who has said yes to a small request will be more willing to say yes to a bigger request) and cognitive dissonance (the uncomfortable psychological tension that arises when someone is aware of inconsistencies in his behaviour and attitudes). (3) Reciprocity is the norm that people who received certain advantages from others have to pay these people back. (4) Social evidence is that behaviour is being influenced by the behaviour of others. In unknown situations, a person follows the herd. Social norms are part of social evidence. Social norms are codes of behaviour that give information about how members of a certain group should behave in particular situations. There are descriptive norms (what members from a group typically do) and injunctive norms (what a group approves and disapproves of). People often think that their negative behaviour is caused by situational circumstances and that the negative behaviour of others can be ascribed to stable, internal attitudes. This is called the attribution error. (5) Authority means that people will be more likely to comply to the request of someone with authority than to the request of someone with a lower status. (6) Scarcity has to do with query and offer. When something is difficult to get, it’s value will probably be higher than the value of a thing that is easily acquired. People try to avoid losses, so techniques like a one-day-only sale or shortages in supply work pretty well.

How to design applied social psychological research? A case study – Chapter 4

• A researcher needs to know the unique pros and cons of every research design. He/she also needs to use a research programme with multiple designs in order to compensate for the weaknesses of every method. The researcher needs to conduct research that uses most advantages of every design and minimises the disadvantages of the design. Researchers want a research to be precise, generalizable to situations and generalizable to humans. Unfortunately, maximising one means minimising the other two. This is called the three-horned dilemma.

• There are different research designs. An experimental design is often used in fundamental research to test common theories. Cause and effect relationships can be established by manipulation and random allocation. The precision in experimental designs is high and it can be achieved by removing the influence of a third variable (confound), by removing personal confounds (an individual difference that may influence the dependent variable), this can be done with random allocation; and by removing procedural confounds (when a researcher unknowingly varies two variables or more every time). This can be reduced by conducting the experiment in a lab. A downside of experiment designs is that the generalisability isn’t that high. That’s because the sample is drawn from a homogenous population. The results you find in a lab, might not be found in the real world, because labs are artificial. A quasi-experiment is a combination of some parts of an experiment (high control) and correlational research (no random allocation). There is somewhat control over the independent variable and the allocation to conditions, by means of natural criteria. There is a high level of control over the dependent and external variables. The advantages of a quasi-experiment are that it’s a compromise between experimental and correlational research. It has control over confounds and external variables, and the measures of behaviour are natural. It can be used for independent variables that can’t be manipulated or when it’s not ethical to manipulate them. A disadvantage is that it isn’t really precise and not generalizable to situations. It can also be somewhat artificial.

• Correlational design: a relation between different measured variables in a natural situation. This is especially useful when there can be no manipulation. An advantage is that it maximises generalisability (because the behaviour can be measured in the real world). A disadvantage is the lack of control over the results, because the precision is low. No causality can be established. There is also no generalisability to other people. A survey research collects information of a sample of people that has been systematically selected to represent a bigger population. A survey gives quite accurate information about trends happening in a population. An advantage of a survey is that it’s efficient and flexible (doesn’t cost that much, participants from around the world). Disadvantages are that it doesn’t have precision/control and doesn’t generalise that much to situations. Sampling errors may also occur. It’s best to combine different designs. A disadvantage of combining different designs is that it costs more and takes much time.

What about the psychology of consumer behaviour? - Chapter 5

• Goods can have different functions for consumers. A continuum ranges from thinking goods that only have utilitarian functions, to feeling goods only have identity-related functions. People show also different buying behviours. First, following the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) it can be said that people buy with a pre-shopping intention called deliberate buying. Three factors have influence on the intention to buy: a person’s attitude towards the product, his/her subjective norms and his/her perception of control over his/her own behaviour. Also the identitity similarity plays a role (if the buying behaviour is consistent with a person’s self-concept). Second, when buying behaviour is not planned it is called impulsive buying. A person has a self-control dilemma in which a future reward conflicts with an immediate reward. Attitudes that play a role in buying behaviour can be measured in an explicit way (their meaning about given statement) or in an implicit way (the respondents are not aware of the goal of the experiment).

• Advertising has an influence on buying behaviour and it can work via three different routes. (1) Via the cognitive route, persuasion is used. Arguments are a form of persuasion and vary in how they are received or understood and how they are accepted by the consumer. Heuristic processing in another form of persuasion, in which heuristics help people to decide about whether they do or don’t believe the arguments. The Dual-processing Theory describes that the level of inspecting arguments depens on people’s motivation and people’s ability. (2) Via the affective route, evaluative conditioning is used (changing someone’s attitude without involving cognitions). This route works best when the consumers have a neutral attitude towards the product. (3) Via the sublimal route, the consumers are being influenced without being aware of it.

Can social psychology contribute to development aid? - Chapter 6

• Development aid is a large discussed topic because it has negative as well as positive effects. Psychological research has to be done on development aid projects. In impact evaluations for example, the long- and short-term impacts of projects are being assessed. A result chain is a logical frame in which aspects of an intervention are defined. These aspects of interventions are the inputs, the main activities, the outputs (these can be directly observed), the outcomes (cannot be directly controlled), the short-term impacts and the longer-term impacts. How a goal of an intervention will be reached by the activities, is explained in the theory of change. It describes a pathway of how activities work, it tests the effectiveness of the intervention and it makes people think about the goals of the intervention.

• Field experiments are useful to consider cultural contexts in testing the effectiveness of interventions. A intervention that is tested in one culture, doesn’t have to be successful in another culture. Qualitative as well as quantitative research can assess information about different cultural contexts. When an intervention causes effects in a certain place that are not planned by the organization, cultural change can take place. Side-effects of the intervention can have influence on a culture. Culture is not stable and located in individual and societal values. The individualism-collectivism dimension is about differences in values between societies. The independence-interdependence dimension of self-construals is about individual differences. Individualistic cultures emphasize independent self-construals.

• When activities of a traditional country become the same as those of industrialized countries, modernization takes place. Modernization theory describes how some values of traditional countries are likely to continue to exist and how other values are are likey to change. Values related to tradition and religion are not likely to change through the process of modernization. Research on the long-term effects of modernization is still missing. Most research on aid projects is done in WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic) countries, so research has to be done in less industriallized countries.

What about psychology and economic behaviour? - Chapter 7

• There are different reasons for people to buy something or to desire something. Utility measures pleasure. Disutility is the negative emotion people want to avoid. Hedonic utility is striving for pleasure and avoiding pain. There are different theories about economic behaviour. The subjective expected utility (SEU) is a dominant theory about making decisions. The costs and advantages of an option are multiplied with the perceived likelihood they will occur. The option with the best net-balance of costs and advantages will be chosen. According to the prospect theory, there is an asymmetrical relationship between wins and losses. Wins and losses are relative concepts and they are evaluated from a reference point. Losses are more painful than wins are pleasurable. When wins and losses occur in a longer period of time, people will adapt to the new situation.

• People have different incomes and they often compare their incomes to each other. People also have different motives when helping others with their welfare. Social reference is the comparison of your own income with that of another. A reference shift can occur: when friends/colleagues earn more for the same job, someone may become unsatisfied with his/her own income. People often use a personal reference: they compare their welfare with the welfare they used to have in the past. After an increase in income, people adapt to this higher income and take this income as their new reference point. People can also be altruistic. They show behaviour to increase the welfare of others, without self-interest. However, this isn’t a pure intention: it’s motivated by wanting a good relationship with people in future transactions. There is egoistic interest in people.

• The prospect theory states that an integrated loss has a smaller negative worth than two or more separate losses. The motivation of people is a loss aversion. The asymmetrical value function is higher for losses than for gains. Loss activates the amygdala (the centre of activation and danger). Sometimes it’s difficult to give up your own product. That’s why people often ask a higher price when they sell a product, then when they would pay for the product. This is called the endowment effect. Giving up a unique product is more difficult than giving up a set of equal items. People sometimes, when there are more options, go for the option they already have (default option). People are sometimes not highly motivated to gain and process all the information about the alternatives they could choose from. Then it’s easier to go for the default option. This is called the status-quo bias.

• Economist and psychologists think differently about economic behaviour. Economists especially use theories about utilisation maximisation under conditions of complete information and stable preferences. Psychologists use more theories and the theories are available to explain and predict behaviour in many situations and domains. The social psychology has to be aware of the boundary conditions of the applicability of these theories. Economy is focused on predicting consumer behaviour. Economists don’t describe actual behaviour, but they offer a normative guide and write how people have to behave. Psychology focuses on describing and predicting behaviour, with taking into account individual differences.

How to apply social psychology in the classroom? - Chapter 8

• In the previous thirty years there has been more research on the bridge between education and social psychology. People evaluate each other and compare each other on social concepts. Social comparison arises in the school years. Children see how teachers and parents react to other children. Social comparisons usually arise when someone is 9 or 10 years old. Observational learning is learning through observations. Social comparison can enhance motivation. One of the causes is that individuals identify with their successful comparison person. Another cause is that people take on a higher personal standard when they see that another person is successful. By seeing that others can perform well, individuals can get the feeling that they can also perform well and they confidence in themselves will grow. Festinger thinks that there is a preference in the comparison with others. The equality principle states that people want to compare themselves with others who have the same attitudes.

• Studies conducted in Dutch middle/high schools show that more than 90% of the students compares themselves to others of the same gender. Approximately 60% compares themselves to classmates who’s grades are just above their own. The upward comparison enhances mental gymnastics. Stereotype threat is the threat that confirms a negative stereotype that is associated with the group a person belongs to. Research shows that girls perform worse when they believe that a task measures mathematical skills and when they are in the self-threatening condition (they are told that girls are not good in maths), in comparison to boys, but they perform better in more neutral conditions.

• Most people have either an entity theory or a growth theory. The entity theory states that intelligence is a stable trait and that common accomplishments are restricted by innate attitudes. people with a growth theory believe that they can enhance their accomplishments by effort. Research has shown that it’s better for children to have a teacher who praises efforts than one who praises competence. The Big-Fish-Little-Pond-Effect states that pupils with equal accomplishments have a lower academic self-concept on schools who focus a lot on academic accomplishments than on schools with a lower focus on academic accomplishments. There are different strategies to prevent a negative academic reputation: (1) not showing the weaknesses of a pupil publicly, (2) a teacher needs to be careful when he gives a test back and (3) students with a positive attitude need to talk about themselves to others.

How to apply psychology on environmental problems? - Chapter 9

• Human behaviour has an impact on the environment, with some of the most serious effects around the world being air pollution, noise annoyance, freshwater shortages, overfishing, and loss of biodiversity. In an attempt to prevent or at least slow down global warming, applied social psychologists have been looking into ways to improve the way people treat the environment, by understanding all the reasons why we behave how we do. Indirect energy use refers to the energy used to collect raw materials, manufacture, deliver, and dispose of material goods. This, combined with direct energy use, forms the carbon footprint of the individual. Gains in energy efficiency are often overtaken by growth in consumption levels. Effective interventions can be arrived at after considering which behaviour most significantly contributes to environmental problems, which factors cause the behaviour, and which interventions can be applied.

• Environmental behaviour is the behaviour that changes the availability of materials and energy from the environment, or alters the structure of ecosystems and the biosphere. Almost all behaviour can be considered to fit this definition, but it is the task of applied social psychologists to discover which behaviour as the most impact, and to target that behaviour. Since pro-environmental behaviour is associated with high personal cost, it becomes pertinent to determine what conditions are needed to make a person sacrifice that cost.

• The norm activation model (NAM) was developed to explain pro-social behaviour and can also be applied to pro-environmental behaviour. The model suggests that behaviour occurs according to personal feelings of moral obligation (personal norms). These morals are activated when people are aware of the consequences of their actions (AC), and believe that they can reverse these consequences (AR). The NAM is most applicable when the costs of the behaviour are low, as in the case of recycling. The higher the cost becomes, the more likely it is that the person will choose the self-serving behaviour. To justify this, self-serving denial, the denial of a moral obligation, allows the person to feel their behaviour is acceptable.

• One way to measure how concerned people are with environmental issues is to use the NEP: new environmental paradigm. This measures fundamental beliefs people hold about how humans and the environment interact. Those who endorse NEP see humanity as limited and the balance of nature as delicate. Values are goals that apply to many situations, serving as a guiding principle in life.

What are health and illness psychologically? - Chapter 10

• Health-specific models of behaviour include the health belief model (HBM), the protection motivation theory (PMT), and the health action process approach (HAPA). They can be used to explain the psychology behind healthy choices. At the broadest level, they cover the psychological categories of motivation and self-efficacy expectations.

• Motivation, unfortunately, is able to influence the formation of intentions, but not necessarily actions. People’s intentions do not specify where, when, and how they will initiate planned behaviour. Circumstantial and motivational factors may easily delay action. Implementation intentions involve a where and when and help people engage in behaviour when it’s not yet routine. Especially when implementation actions are written down the chance of them happening is increased. Another issue is that people sometimes do things without explicit intention, but out of behavioural willingness. This is the willingness to take a risk when the situation comes up, without having planned to. Depending on a person’s opinion of the prototype image of a person who engages in that behaviour will determine their willingness.

• The previously mentioned social psychological variables generally do not change instantly- change takes time. Stage models suggest that people move through stages of behavioural change and movement through the stages is caused by psychological factors. The trans-theoretical model (TTM) distinguishes five stages of behavioural change:

  • Precontemplation: no motivation for change.
  • Contemplation: begin thinking about change but postponing action.
  • Preparation: plan to adopt new behaviour on a short-term basis.
  • Action: start to adopt new behaviour but must actively prevent relapse.
  • Maintenance: new behaviour is integrated into life.
• One can move forward through stages, but cannot skip a stage. It often occurs that people regress to previous stages. People in different stages need different interventions.

• In order to promote healthy behaviour it is important to provide people with information that can persuade them to improve this behaviour. This can be new information, or a message designed to put already known information into a more convincing light. A fear appeal must convince people that a threat is real and there are things they can do to fight against it. But, fear appeal can have a side-effect: defensive and denying behaviours. To reduce this side-effect, a self-affirmation procedure can be done before the fear-appeal. When exposed to this a person will realize that threatening information should not be holded off.

How to look at immigration? – Chapter 11

• Acculturation is the process of adapting to a new culture. Models of acculturation fit into two categories – one-dimensional (seeing cultural change as linear) and multi-dimensional (seeing cultural change as an independent process). The host society plays in important role in the process of acculturation, by being adopted by the immigrants.

• The four main acculturation strategies are: (1) Integration: maintain cultural identity but relate positively with host country. (2) Assimilation: only positive relations with host country are important. (3) Separation: only maintaining cultural identity. (4) Marginalization: none of these are important. Berry’s Classification of Strategies Model suggests that immigrants change in six areas of functioning, modifying their behaviour, attitudes and beliefs, and at times alternating between these acculturation strategies.

• The instrumental model of group conflict suggests that intergroup antagonism occurs when access to resources is unequal and/or limited, especially if the inequality stems from social hierarchy. The salience of an out-group (the more noticeable and competitive it is) further affects conflict. In situations like this, a zero-sum outlook is taken on the out-group (they are taking what’s ours, not what’s free for the taking). This is a cognitive component of perceived threat. The common in-group identity model suggests that once people are defined as part of an in-group, they will be treated as such. The defining of an out-group person as an in-group member can be achieved by pointing out superordinate memberships (citizen of a nation, employee, etc.) and introducing a shared factor between the two groups (a shared fate). But we have to take into account the historical and contemporary demands of a country or in-group.

• Demographics are also changing as immigrant populations grow, making some cultures more heterogeneous. This can lead to new acculturation strategies. One of these strategies is creolization. When there is no clearly dominant group, two or more groups may merge to create a distinct culture. Creole cultures are often created by youth interactions that develop beyond a single generation. Another strategy is pluralism. This is when cultural maintenance and intergroup contact are both encouraged but no creolization occurs. National identity in multicultural societies is an important issue. Canada, for example, has a national identity founded on multicultural tolerance, a policy that allows immigrants to identify more with their host country.

How to deal with mental health? - Chapter 12

• Body image is our internal representation of our appearance. Disturbance of body image is a continuum ranging from no disturbance to extreme disturbance, with most people somewhere in the middle. There is a discrepancy between real and perceived body image, especially in those with disturbed body image disorders.

• Social comparison theory suggests that people have a desire to evaluate their opinions and abilities based on those of others. There are lateral comparisons, when a person compares themself with similar people, upward comparisons where a person compares themself with people who are better off, and downward comparisons. Depending on whom people compare themselves with, they may feel either better or worse about their body image. In society, women, especially, are confronted with many examples of beauty ideals and often make upward comparisons that lead to low body image. People with low self-esteem make more comparisons and are less satisfied. People differ in the extent to which and how much they compare themselves with others. This is called the social comparison orientation (SCO). Women that are high is SCO, tend to be more positive about themselves because of looking for similarities with (more) attractive women.

• Following the Self-discrepancy Theory, people can have three possible selves. First, the actual self is how someone sees him- or herself in the present. Second, the ideal self are the hopes and aspirations. Third, the ought self is the package of feelings of duty, responsibility and obligation. A discrepancy between the actual and ideal self or between the actual and ought self, can cause dissatisfaction. The feared self is the self that someone is afraid and avoiding to become. When it comes to body-changing behaviour, the feared self plays a larger role than the ideal self. In this theory, internal comparison between the selves are made. Though, the process of forming the selves comes mostly from social comparisons.

• The social exchange and interdependence theory suggests that people form and continue relationships on the basis of cost and reward reciprocity. Rewards and costs include love, sex, support, financial contributions, and household tasks. Feeling indebted to one’s partner or feeling one’s partner is in debt to one can cause guilt, obligation, and fear. Sex life lessens when there is a feeling on inequity in arousal. In social exchange theory, equitability and stability are key to satisfaction. Inequitable relationships often lead to an attempt to restore balance. This often presents itself in a demand-withdraw conflict. One partner demands, criticizes, or complains to get the other to change their behaviour, causing a defensive and increasingly passive response from their partner. The partner will withdraw further with every attempt. When women are getting the short end of the stick, this can lead to affairs as they try to take back some of the balance. Feelings of fairness are not based only on action, but also on how much actions are appreciated by the partner.

How does crime work over the life course? - Chapter 13

• All the committed crimes of an individual over time are called his/her criminal career. In this career are different dimensions like the frequency of offending, the onset of the offending and the duration of the offending, which is the time between the first and last offence.

• The Dual-Taxonomy theory states that next to stable individual factors, environmental influences are also important in shaping one’s criminal career. This theory is most influential in the Western society. In this theory there exist two pathways. The fist pathway is followed by the Life Course Persistent Offenders (LCP offender), who have an early onset, a high frequency and a long duration of offending. The second pathway is followed by the Adolenscence-limited offenders (AL), who have a late onset and short duration of offending. Most of the offenders are adolescence-limited. The pathways explain the age crime curve by putting the curves of the two pathways together. Second, the pathways explain the paradoxical finding that most adult offenders were already offenders in adolescence, but not all delinquent adolescents grow up as adult offenders.

• Most criminal careers of AL offenders take about 4-7 years. Several reasons can be given for the fact that around their twenties, they get rid off their criminal practises. First, it is given that many AL offenders show actions that are only prohibited to minors: they constitute status offences. When becoming older, many societal boundaries disappear and the opportunities within the society grow. The adult status becomes more available and this makes the maturity gap, which was most of the reason for them to start, disappear. Second, age plays an important role in the increase of offensive behaviour, as well as the decrease of offensive behaviour. First, teenagers seem too young to show adult behaviour, but at a certain age, (unspoken) rules state that they are too old to show deviant, egoistic and irresponsible behaviour.

• The labelling theory proposes that the society reacts to deviance in a way that is stigmatic, and a result of this is criminal behaviour. Primary deviance leads to labelling, and the label makes that people start to treat that person differently based on the negative image. When someone has been arrested or convicted, people are less likely to treat the person well, because of this bad reputation. The conventional opportunities of such persons are lowered and creates a risk of further crime: the secondary deviance. Their self-image turns into being a failure or being a delinquent, which causes that they start to act like a deviant by believer that they are one. This is called the self-fullfilling prophecy. It further increases the risk of prolonged deviance. An example of the Labeling theory is someone who has the label of imprisonment. After marriage, this person is at higher risk of divorce, because the person has the label and is treated in a negative way by society, which also has consequences for the marriage.

What about the social psychology of organizations? - Chapter 14

• A central assumption of the social identity perspective is that people strive to have a positive social identity, which can be reached by being associated with social groups that are positively valued. Through the process of social comparison between groups, every social group reaches a specific status. An important consequence of this process is the way people reach a positive sense of the self, by seeing themselves as a part of a successful organization, regardless of the individual input into the organization. Self-categorization is the process of using the group membership and the social identities to decide which information and opinions are important and relevant for them. This explains why individual characteristics sometimes seem to be less relevant within an organization.

• A new concept, work-family facilitation, was also found: the benefits of having this dual identity. It seems important for the employee satisfaction that the dual identity is supported at work, as well as at home. This is the relevance of the identity conflict versus the identity facilitation

What about the social psychology of political behaviour? - Chapter 15

• Among all psychological theories about personality, the Five Factor Trait model or The Big Five is the most widely accepted theory. Following this theory, the personality is compromised of five central dimensions: neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, openness to new experiences and conscientiousness. It seems that political orientation is associated with certain traits of the Big Five. It is challenging to measure personality of political leaders: self-report can be biased and motivation of political leaders to fill in questionnaires is low. Moreover, when political leaders have already died, this is not a possibility any more. One possibility is for other people to fill in questionnaires about the political leaders. Conclusions of this kind of research showed that for example successful presidents score high on the personality dimensions of openness, extraversion and neuroticism and low on agreeableness.

• To understand decision making that occurs in crisis times, it is important to understand how politicians deal with public opinion and group processes. The prospect theory is a response to expected utility theory, in that decisions deviate from expected utility when the people making the decisions do not want to experience loss and when the risk is high. They will take a risk to prevent potential loss.

• According to groupthink theory, certain circumstances lead to poor group decision making. These include group cohesion, isolation, directive leadership, and stress. This can limit alternatives and cause initial decisions not to be critically assessed. Groupthink leads to the opposite of what is known to cause greatness: openness to ideas. One method to counteract groupthink is to encourage ingroup members to challenge dominant views, and to make a “second round” of discussion sometime after the decision seems to have been made.

• While normal attitudes exist on the dimension of like-dislike, partisan attitudes exist on the dimensions of pro-Republican—pro-Democrat (in the American system). The Michigan model does not describe specific mental processes but acts as an explanation of voting behaviour. The Michigan model has been a basis for research in Europe, though it has been harder to establish stable party identification. Most European countries have far more than two parties, making the context significantly different.

• Ideological orientations impact prejudice. The general authoritarian psychological orientation involves in-group glorification, prejudice against out-groups, and pseudo-conservatism. People who score high in right-wing authoritarianism also score high in prejudice. The social dominance orientation also correlates with prejudice. It can be said that social situations are more easy to manipulate than personality, so fighting prejudice can be done by using social psychology.

What about the psychology of sport and exercise? - Chapter 16

• The physical self-worth exists of four subcomponents in the theory that Fox and Corbin proposed: (1) Bodily Attractiveness, (2) Physical Conditioning, (3) Physical Strength and (4) Sporting Competence. For children, the global self-worth can be best predicted by the physical self-worth. When developing interventions for children, there is need for looking at factors like embarrassment and fear of exercising (in public). For example, children may have high social physique anxiety.

• Like other psychological theories, in sport psychology one basic assumption in theories is that the work of a team or group is essential to high performance. Groups are changing and developing. One relevant factor in understanding performance is the cohesion of the group. The conceptual model of cohesion consists of four components, on two dimensions. The first dimension reflects the group integration versus individual attraction to the group. The second dimension reflects the social aspects versus the task aspects. There appears to be a positive relationship (with an effect size of .65) between cohesion and individual and group performance. Though, the direction of the relationship is not clear: it may be a bi-directional relationship. This is researched by a number of cross-lagged panel studies. Performance may even have a stronger effect on cohesion than vice versa.

• It is found that sometimes a team with very talented individuals, together performs below their potential. When group size is increased, the average effort produced by every performer decreases. An explanation for this is the Ringelmann effect or loafing effect, in which performances are poor because of wrong coordination or motivation processes. This theory is for example tested in an experiment where individuals were asked to pull a rope. When performing alone, most effort was made and the performance was most high. When one, two or three others were positioned behind the individual, his/her performance dropped linearly. When with more than four persons, the effort was not additional decreased any more. This study proved the effect of social loafing.

• One explanation of loafing is that people lose their own sense of individual performance and motivation. In this way, the Collective Effort Model (CEM) suggests that working in groups lowers the motivation of individual performance, due to reduced feelings of responsibility and value to the group outcome. For athletes it is important to have a sense of importance, meaning and intrinsically satisfaction. Social loafing is independent of factors like gender, culture, age and the nature of the group.

• In the past, there have been mixed finding about the presence of others while performing and about the effects of the social interactions within the sport. Social facilitation theory explains why findings about the presence of others can be different. The basic assumption is that the (imagined) presence of others increases the levels of physical arousal, which makes it more easy to perform well-learned or easy behaviours. In turn, when difficult behaviour must be performed, these higher levels of physical arousal result in impaired performance. It might also be important how the presence of others is appraised, noting the importance of cognitive factors in the social facilitation theory. A conclusion from research on this theory can be that for athletes to perform best in the presence of audience, it is important to master the skills to make it an ‘easy’ task.

What about the social psychology of driving behaviour? - Chapter 17

• Aberrant driving behaviours can predict crash involvement. It is important for interventions to find the different factors that cause aberrant behaviour. There are three most accounting factors. First, violations are intentional and deliberate acts of not following the traffic rules, which can be ordinary or aggressive. Second, errors are actions of failure, without having the attention to disregard the rules. Third, lapses are (harmless) attention and memory failures. Of all three, violations are most predictive of traffic crashes. Note that predicting factors differ per country, so for driving behaviour cross-cultural research is needed. Moreover, an additional factor that increases violent driving behaviour is one’s attitude towards safe driving practices.

• People differ in their way of driving, called their driving style. People differ also in the way they perceive their own driving skills. Personality factors can predict differences in driving behaviour. A first predicting characteristic of is sensation-seeking. People high in sensation-seeking are looking for novel experiences despite risks, so they are more likely to take risks while driving. For them, some risky behaviours are not perceived as risky at all. These people seem to be more involved in car crashes. A second characteristic that is predictive for car crashes is aggression, often resulting from anger. When aggression is a relatively stable and pertaining characteristic, it is called trait aggression. When it is only induced in certain moments or situations, it is called state aggression.

• Drivers perceived riskiness of behaviour may be more important than the real riskiness of behaviours. Perceived risk are the subjective feelings of risk on a specific moment while driving and these are influenced by personal and objective factors. How subjective feelings of risk regulate driving behaviour, how risk is accepted and how thresholds of toleration of risks work are described in risk models.

• One way to promote safe driving behaviour is to use enforcement. This is the stationary and mobile identification of law violations and as a consequence, fines or incarceration can be used. The use of sanctions is particularly useful when the chance of being caught is high. Therefore, automated enforcement may be more useful than traditional enforcement. It seems to be the best practise for reducing driving violations, traffic crashes and fatalities.

• For most young and inexperienced drivers, driver education is offered or required. Goals of education are enhancing knowledge and increasing driving skills. One limitation of education as an intervention is that the motivation factor is not always included, but is needed for behaviour to change. Evidence about education is inconclusive and incomplete. The media also can be used to persuade audiences of changing risking driving behaviours into safe driving behaviours. Print, internet, radio and television media can be used. The messages can be used next to the use of enforcement.