 This is part four of lecture one in this final part of the lecture We're gonna talk about the core concept of social psychology by now I think you understand how what social psychologists want to know we want to know why people do what they do So we want to understand human behavior. So what determines our behavior at the core There's one basic principle and the founding father of social psychology. You see him over here is Kurt Lewin He already came up with with this idea of to understand Final finally understand human behavior and this is the formula that he uses So here you see the formula and the B stands for behavior and behavior is a function That's the F of the person P times environment E So everything we do is basically can be understand in terms of who that person is the personality of that person and The environment in which this person finds him or herself and both concepts concepts are equally important in understanding human behavior So let's let me give you some examples of how we can see how this this formula eventually plays out So the situation and the environment are Super important so in the situation if you find find yourself growing up in a situation in an environment In which you have plenty of opportunities So in this area it would be for all the people that live on the left-hand side From the highway you see this is definitely the more wealthier parts of this area, right? You see swimming pools it's very green and You can understand that if you grow up in this part The likelihood for you to grow up in a stressful environment This is a bit lower than if you grow up in the right hand of the screen on the right side of the highway in which the circumstances are just Harsher it's much more difficult to develop yourself to get good education to get Good foods and to grow up into you know an individual in which you can feel like you can reach Your full potential So where you grow up this environment already is very impactful in understanding How humans eventually develop but also Even if we grew up and our environment shaped us we can find ourselves on a daily situation in Different environments. So for example, we know that We have a higher chance of showing Sort of a good moral behavior when we're in the presence of others and you can see this for example In a public public washroom that people actually wash their hands more thoroughly and better and longer If other people are present in the washroom as well compared to when they are there alone And also if you think about your own behavior, that's probably very depending on your surroundings yourself So let's imagine you go out on a certain night with your friends and you find yourself Enjoying a couple of beers and having a laugh You probably showed very different behavior on the very first night You're meeting your parents-in-law or when you are watching this this lecture right now You're probably not behaving in the same way So we are all very much aware of the fact that even though our personalities are relatively stable the aspects of our personality Personalities that stand out really depends on the situation that we find ourselves in so the situation Situation impacts a person it changes a person it changes our behavior But in the same way the situation can also be impacted by one person And you can see this on the video that's in the screen right now What you see is commemoration day on the 4th of May in 2010 So each year on May 4 in the Netherlands We agree for the people that died our kills in wars in the Second World War But also in other wars and this is a moment in which a lot of people gather in Amsterdam at Demsquare You see it here and everybody is always very calm and the intention is that we are all quiet and Stay calm for a short moment of time in which we really contemplate What these people went through and pay respect to the people that are killed and everybody's doing that and everybody is Behaving in the same way being quiet and then all of a sudden the whole situation Changed for all these thousands of people at Demsquare because one person started screaming And you can see it happening here and what you see is that the whole situation Dressically changes based on the behavior of one individual so one person in a situation Can change the behavior of everybody so you have a lot of power if you find yourself in a social situation As well so the situation has power over you But you also have power over a situation and you're dependent on the behavior of others in a certain situation Okay, so we know as social psychologists that you can never look at behavior of a person only by looking at the person You always have to consider the environment the situation this person is in but still if something really extreme happens We still often wonder What happens here is this a person or is this the situation for example? We asked this question if something really horrible happens for example if people are abused And sometimes even kills when they are imprisoned in Abu Ghraib prison for example in Iraq There were a lot of violations Against the prisoners there were really really extreme and you can wonder so what happened there were these guards? Just just evil where they really brutal or was it the situation that triggered this behavior in this Abu Ghraib prison? Also when something happens that shocks us all if there's a tech there's an attack for example What happens in Paris on? Charlie Hebdo there was an attack by terrorists and you might be thinking to yourself these terrorists are just the root of evil They are so bad. How can they hurt and kill so many people they don't have a conscience But is that the case or is it also partly due to the situation in which these these people find themselves? So this core question of understanding human behavior and putting them in certain situations that triggers extreme behavior that is also has been very appealing to social psychologists as well and There are very famous experiments for example the Milgram experiment that you're probably Already a bit familiar with we're gonna be talking lengthy about it later in this course I'm not gonna dive into it right now But this is also an example of an experiment in which people showed really extreme behavior And the question is then is this a person or is this what is the power of a situation? Another question that social psychology addresses is how a person experience Experiences a situation because this can really differ per person and this is the core idea of Gestalt psychology And you're probably familiar with these types of of pictures So in the middle you can either see two people that are nearly kissing or you can see a vase and what you see really Differs per person and both is correct So it's and the same goes for the other two pictures you can see for example on the very Left you can see either an old woman or you can see a young woman dependent on your perspective And both is true So it really depends on your own interpretation of a situation you can experience These pictures in different ways and in the same way people can experience social situations Very differently and this can also lead to a lot of miscommunication and problems so the idea of Gestalt psychology is that The subjective way in which an object appears in people's mind is studied So the problem with humans is that we find it very hard to Accept the idea that both perspectives can be right and for a Gestalt psychology for the face and the kissing people Then we feel like oh, yeah, okay. I see it now I see that both both is true But for our social worlds and decisions we make in our social worlds We are often convinced that the way that we perceive our environment is the real way is the only way And this is also what is referred to as naive realism We tend to underestimate how much we are interpreting or spinning basically what we see and this is also something of course You see a lot in In politics the roots of a lot of political arguments, but also in relationships You can be very convinced that your perspective is correct and this battle over who is right and who is wrong it's really at the core of many problems that humans face and The the irony is that oftentimes there's no right or wrong in these situations because both Perspectives are equally valuable and equally true So we spin the situation in such a way that is beneficial for us We spin the situation in such a way that we feel comfortable with But why do we do this? Well for in order to understand that it is important to understand two very basic human motives These are human motives that help us understand why people do what they do first of all There's the self enhancement motive and this is the motive the motivation that we all have to feel good about ourselves We want to protect our self-esteem. We want to protect our self you and experience ourselves as valuable people And because we have this motive to feel good about ourselves We spin the social world in such a way that is beneficial for us At the same time we also have an accuracy motive and this means that we also want to be accurate so we do have this desire to be correct and Sometimes actually quite often these two motives are competing with each other and How does our brain solve this? Well, we are actually very well able to change and and and sort of interpret a social situation in such a way that We feel like that we are either at the same time Protecting our self-esteem and at the other time also being accurate and this is Where illusions come in so that people are often? Very optimistic about their own behavior. They're very optimistic about their chances in life And I'm gonna give you some examples of that right now So first of all the first illusion that we have basically the way we sort of lie to ourselves and spin the situation in a beneficial way Is that we often experience that we are better than average? So if you ask a person for example random person How good of a driver are you and considering this person actually has his or her driver license? A lot of people would say I'm a little bit better than average. I'm not the best driver in the world Also, definitely not the worst and I think I'm just slightly over average and this not only Happens when you ask them about that driving potential But also for example if you ask students, so how good of a student are you a lot of students will say I'm just slightly better than average and of course this is Ironic because not everybody can be better than average because then the average would be higher So it doesn't make any sense, but a lot of people have this misconception about their own capacities We are also unrealistically optimistic. For example, we overestimate The the chances of winning the lottery and we underestimate the chances of getting sick We also saw this happening during the COVID pandemic that a lot of people underestimated their chances of getting the virus Which also led to a lot of problematic behaviors Well, if you look at the rates for example the chance for you to win the lottery It's actually 300 times smaller than the chance of you dying in a car accident This this these are thoughts are not very good. They're not in our favor and we tend to ignore it So we we tend to be realistic and opt sorry We tend to be optimistic about how our world and our life is gonna treat us These are all ways our brain works to to sort of protect our self view Other illusions that we have is the false consensus effect and the false uniqueness effect So what this means is that for some attributes some traits that we have we might be aware That these traits are actually not so good. They might actually be sometimes a little bit problematic So let's imagine you know for yourself that you tend to be a bit lazy Then what we then often do is use the false consensus effect and with the false consensus effect We mean that we have the tendency to overestimate how common this trait is so we say yes I'm a bit lazy. I like to sleep in I tend to be late But you know everybody likes to be late everybody likes to sleep in so this is not Unique this is something that is the same for everybody false consensus are bad traits It's something that everybody has so it's not a big deal On the opposite if something if we know that we have a very good trait Maybe you're very athletic and you like sports a lot then you might Oh, you probably Underestimate how common this is so you tend to say yes. Well, I'm very athletic I'm very sporty not a lot of people are as party sporty as I am So we interpret our traits and how common they are Also in a in a very positive way in such a way that protects our self-esteem and the way we feel about ourselves We'll talk more about the self and the way we we sort of try to maintain our self-esteem in In a lecture in a lecture later on the course. Thanks