Psychology Case

Doreen Johnson

Colorado Tech University

Psychology

Personality

Phase 3 Task 2

Jennifer Madsen

December 10, 2010

There are three concepts to social thinking. The first one is Social perception. It is how an individual views their surroundings, such as the world and the people around them. Another concept is Attribution, which is the task of wanting to find out why an individual do, act or perform the way they do. The last is attitude. This is the concept that deal with individual’s behaviors. “Attitudes are beliefs or options about people, objects, and ideas (Sandrock, 2004).

Others can influence our actions several ways such as by the tone of their voice and body language. Out actions can be negative or positive depending on how other presents themselves to us. For example, if someone come up to you and say “move out my way” in a negative tone of voice and with a threatening body gesture, some people will perceive that individual as being hostel and respond back with the same tone and hostility. However, if a person states “can you please move or, thank you”, in a normal response would be in a pleasant tone of voice and a our body language would be relax.

Some of the aspects of social influences are conformity, obedience, group interactions and leadership. Conformity is when a person does what everyone else is doing just to fit in with the social group. There is a negative and positive side to conformity. An example of a negative side is throwing rocks at cars because everyone in your social group is doing it and you don’t want to feel left out. The positive side to conformity is obeying the traffic laws by not running past the red light because everyone else is not doing it. “The tendency to conform based on information social influence depends on two factors: how confident we are in our own independent judgment and how well informed we perceive the other people to be (Sandrock, 2004). Obedience is one of the aspects of social influence that has to do with behavior. It is doing what you are told by someone that has authority over you. Complying with the police officer and placing you hands on your head is a good example of obedience. Group interactions’ is when an individual join a group for self esteem, protection or just to satisfy their needs of companionship. The group various may vary. It could be a women’s group, men group, religious or ethnicity groups. Either way people join groups to have a sense of belonging to something that is meaningful to them. Leadership is the last of the aspect. It’s when an individual is in charge and has followers that believe in the