Title: 11.2 Self-Presentation – Introductory Psychology
Headings: 11.2 Self-Presentation
11.2 Self-Presentation
Learning Objectives
SOCIAL ROLES
Being a student is just one of the many social roles you have. (credit: “University of Michigan MSIS”/Flickr)
SOCIAL NORMS
Tweens, Teens, and Social Norms
Young people struggle to become independent at the same time they are desperately trying to fit in with their peers. (credit: Monica Arellano-Ongpin)
SCRIPTS
ZIMBARDO’S STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT
Iraqi prisoners of war were abused by their American captors in Abu Ghraib prison, during the second Iraq war. (credit: United States Department of Defense)
SUMMARY
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Exercises
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Personal Application Questions:
Glossary:
Key Takeaways
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Content: 11.2 Self-Presentation – Introductory Psychology
11.2 Self-Presentation
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to: Describe social roles and how they influence behavior
Explain what social norms are and how they influence behavior
Define script
Describe the findings of Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment
As you’ve learned, social psychology is the study of how people, real or imagined, affect one another’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. We have discussed situational perspectives and social psychology’s emphasis on the ways in which a person’s environment, including culture and other social influences, affect behavior. In this section, we examine situational forces that have a strong influence on human behavior including social roles, social norms, and scripts. We discuss how humans use the social environment as a source of information, or cues, on how to behave. Situational influences on our behavior have important consequences, such as whether we will help a stranger in an emergency or how we would behave in an unfamiliar environment. SOCIAL ROLES
One major social determinant of human behavior is our social roles. A social role is a pattern of behavior that is expected of a person in a given setting or group (Hare, 2003). Each one of us has several social roles. You may be, at the same time, a student, a parent, an aspiring teacher, a son or daughter, a spouse, and a lifeguard.