Developmental psychology.pdf

Social Behavior 501
Briefcase
Dark clothes
Figure 18.14
A Sociogram. The most common
choices are Newton and, to a lesser
extent, New York City. The prominent
mutual pairs are the students in
ponchos and the two whose native
language is not English. The most
obvious isolate is the man in the
sport shirt.
Asia
Europe
Sport shirt
These observations might be verified by a sociogram, which is a method for
determining interpersonal attractions among group members. Each individual is asked
to nominate confidentially the other members with whom he or she would most like to
work, go on a trip, and so forth, and the results show each member in terms of acceptance
or rejection by the others. Sometimes there are two people who choose each other,
called a mutual pair, or three to six people who choose one another, constituting a
subgroup or clique. Individuals chosen by many are called stars, and still others, not
chosen at all, are isolates. Refinements of these procedures have been employed in a
variety of interpersonal situations, such as selecting compatible team members, developing
morale in political settings, and creating harmonious work relations among
class members (Figure 18.14).
PATTERNS OF INTERACTION
Let us review again. We have considered the formation and change of attitudes, the
consistency principle, and the role of stereotypes in thinking, noting that generalizations
may facilitate initial impressions. But when they are wrong or ethnocentric, and
when they obscure individual differences, generalizations can be extremely harmful.
In judging others, there is a strong tendency to attribute behavior to internal rather
than external factors; we tend to make the dispositional error. In relations with other
people, their similarity to us and the amount of contact we have with them are important
factors in interpersonal attraction.
At this point we should also be explicit about a transition taking place since
the outset of this chapter. We have been moving steadily away from the individual
toward people in groups, a perhaps imperceptible change that we now confront more
directly. In this section we consider these topics: conformity, in which the individual
adopts others' standards; altruism, by which personal ties are strengthened; and cooperation
and competition, which are most clearly group processes.