2nd Half Material Flashcards
Social Influence
The study of how individual’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are affected by others around them
Obedience
An individual who, in an unequal power relationship, submits to the demands of the more powerful person
Ex: red light at food counter telling you not to eat; people obey for no reason
Ex: strip-search scandal when criminal called different establishments and lied that he’s a detective and say a worked had to be searched
Situation matters, and obedience studies prove the importance; however, individuals tend to ignore situational influences (FAE)
Milgram Study
July 1961; research was largely motivated by events leading up to WWII and aftermath.
The learner and teacher were the pairs. The teacher was supposed to test the learner on word association. If the learner gets the answer wrong, the teacher is supposed to shock him.
The learners were all actors, and every true participant was given the role of teacher.
The actor gets strapped into the electric chair, and the subject sits in front of the shock apparatus. The shock apparatus had various levels of shocks it could give. From low to lethal.
Experimenter (authority figure) is in the same room as participant (teacher); if participant doesn’t want to continue, experimenter says:
1) Please continue.
2) The experiment requires you to continue.
3) It is essential you continue.
4) You have no choice but to continue.
Was the Milgram Experiment a true experiment?
No. This was a study and not an experiment because there was no random assignment and some self-selection because people had to answer the study flier
Milgram Study Expectations
- All subjects said they would personally disobey before reaching 140 volts
- Some said they wouldn’t deliver any volts.
- No one expected anyone to go past 300 volts.
- 1/1000 would reach “XXX”
Voice condition
Condition in the Milgram studies.
- At 180 volts, confederate claims he cannot stand the pain any longer; at 300 volts, confederate refuses to answer anymore word pairs.
- 63% obedience rate.
Remote feedback condition
Condition in the Milgram studies.
- No verbal audio, just pounding on the walls.
- 65% obedience rate.
Proximity condition
Condition in the Milgram studies.
- Confederate was in the same room as participant.
- 40% obedience rate.
Touch proximity condition
Condition in the Milgram studies.
- When confederate resfused to answer anymore word pairs, experimenter asked participant to take confederate’s hand and put it on the shock plate; direct involvement.
- 30% obedience rate.
No feedback condition
Condition in the Milgram studies.
- 100% obedience rate - up to XXX so death of confederate
- No feedback from confederate.
- 1st condition Milgram looked at –> had to look at ways to decrease obedience from here.
Gave orders to another shocker (middleman) condition
Condition in the Milgram studies.
- Actual participant is not in charge of administering a shock, only gives orders to another actor to.
- 93% obedience rate.
Absent experimenter condition
Condition in the Milgram studies.
- Gives initial instructions, but gets called away; delivers orders over the phone.
- 23% obedience rate.
- Some lied to the experimenter and said they were shocked when they weren’t.
Ordinary person (no lab coat) condition
Condition in the Milgram studies.
- The person giving orders was perceived as an ordinary person off the street (but was a confederate) assigned role of experimenter.
- 20% obedience rate.
- Suggests that orders need to be given by a legitimate authority figure.
2 other participants disobeyed condition
Condition in the Milgram studies.
- Participant overhears 2 others disobeying the experimenter.
- 10% obedience rate –> safety in numbers; being the first one to disobey is always the hardest.
Contradictory 2 experimenters condition
Condition in the Milgram studies.
- Participant overhears 2 experimenters arguing with each other over the morals/methodologies of the study.
- 0% obedience rate; not a single person administered the max. volts.
- HOWEVER, still, a mean voltage administered of 180 volts; was still high despite no one going up to the max.
Bridgeport condition
Condition in the Milgram studies.
–> Questioned whether the results were linked to Yale and academic authority?
- Removed all academic authority.
- 48% obedience rate.
Women condition
Condition in the Milgram studies.
- Original studying had only male participants.
- In original condition, 65% obedience rate; no different to men.
Shock the puppy
What happens if we use an authentic victim? Asked undergrads to shock a puppy in a learning paradigm.
Puppy response:
- Whimper
- Cry
- Howl
- Run away
Undergrad response:
- Whimper
- Pace/run around
- Hyperventilate
- Coaching puppy
- 75% of undergrads administered shocks up to the max. voltage. This would have killed the dog.
- Only men disobeyed
Shanab and Yahya (1977)
What happens if we ask participants to shock children?
- Highest obedience rate for shocking children 10-12yrs.
- Study demonstrated high obedience rates even when shocking children.
Yes - Milgram Research Studies Were Ethical
- He surveyed people after and few complained
- The participants could have disobeyed
- The findings were an important contribution to science.
Ethical Research Timeline: Before 1945
- Research governed by personal conscience
- Little Albert Experiment was probably the first famous psychological experiment that should be questioned ethically
Nuremberg Code
Established in 1947 in response to ‘biomedical research’ in Japan and Germany during WWII; consent had to be voluntary and had to understand risks/benefits; did not technically apply to psychological research.
Stanford Prison Experiment
Zimbardo’s prison experiment
Occurred in 1971 at Stanford; goal was to examine situational variables of participants in prison study.
- Prison simulation (prisoners vs. guards) –> prisoners were dehumanized and traumatized.
- methods were deeply flawed because Zimbardo coached guards’ behaviors.
National research acts (IRBs)
Established in 1974; passed in response to the Syphilis Tuskegee Study.
- Provides oversight for all research conducted in a lab.
- Protection of human subjects for biomedical and behavioral research.
- Created ethical guidelines as to how participants should be treated.
Syphilis Tuskegee study
- Black men were told they had bad blood; compensated with free healthcare.
- Failed to tell them they had syphilis or treat them; wanted to test what happens if they go untreated.
Belmont report - IRB guidelines
Established in 1978:
1) Respect
- Informed consent.
2) Beneficence
- Do not harm; minimize risks.
- Risks must be outweighed by benefits.
3) Justice
- Research should be fair; all participants should receive an equal chance of risks/benefits.
Meta-Analysis of Obedience Studies (1961-1985)
- Men and women obey equally
- Women report more stress
- No change in rates of obedience by year
Chameleon effect
Unconscious mimicry of the postures, mannerisms, facial expressions, and other behaviors of one’s interaction partners.
Ideomotor action
The phenomenon whereby thinking about a behavior makes its actual performance more likely; when we see others do things, that action is brought to mind and makes us more likely to do it.
Over-imitation/high-fidelity imitation
- Unique to humans
- Humans imitate every action that a researcher does instead of doing only what is necessary to complete a goal (which is what chimpanzees do).
- Universal in humans.
- Idea behind this is that seemingly irrational tendencies to over-imitate is because humans have learned to rely heavily on complex technologies; thus, it is important to imitate because we don’t know what steps are crucial
Speech Alignment
Of the people we speak with, we mimic:
- Rate of speech
- Rhythm of speech
- Accents
Why do we mimic?
- Ideomotor Action
- Social Lubrication
- People like those who mimic them more than those who do not
Mimicry and Empathy
We mimic peers and those within our social group more often than other humans.
- We are more likely to yawn when our family and friends yawn
- Chimps are more likely to yawn when their social group yawns
- Dogs also yawn contagiously
Conformity
Changing one’s behaviors or beliefs in response to explicit or implicit pressure from others (pressure can be perceived or intentional).
Group Size’s Role in Conformity
Implicated in the line estimated task - conformity increases as group size increases, but stops at a certain point (i.e. 3 - 4).
Group unanimity
Implicated in the line estimation task - when subjects had at least 1 ally, conformity drops; if 1 person breaks (doesn’t have to be correct answer), it liberates others to break from the group.
Informational conformity
The influence from other people that results from taking their comments or actions as a source of information about what is correct, proper, or effective.
- We rely heavily on reviews (like yelp) that are out there; not necessarily a bad thing.
- More likely in ambiguous situations –> happens in emergency situations; we look to see if others are panicked (i.e. pluralistic ignorance).
- This type of conformity can lead to incorrect emergency situations (i.e. Phnom Penh stampede).
Normative conformity
The influence of other people that comes from the individual’s desire to avoid their disapproval, harsh judgments, and other social sanctions.
- Added in the public eye.
- There might be some cross cultural differences in conformity.
- Interdependent societies exhibit higher conformity.
Asch’s Line Estimation Task
- Which line is bigger? Obvious right answer.
- 12 of 18 trials confederates gave obviously wrong answer.
- 37% of the time participants conformed to the wrong answer.
- 75% of participants conformed on at least one trial.
Compliance
Responding favorably to an explicit request by another person
Norm of Reciprocity
Norm dictating that people should provide benefits to those who benefit them
Very universal.
Door in the face (reciprocal concessions) techniqu
Asking someone for a large favor that he or she will certainly refuse and then following that request with one for a smaller favor.
Techniques based on Scarcity
- Fast-approaching deadline technique (limited time only)
- Limited number technique
Foot-in-the-door
An influence technique based on commitment in which one starts with a small request in order to gain eventual compliance with a larger request
ex. if you give a mouse as cookie story
The effect of emotions on compliance
Positive mood: more compliant because we want to stay in that good mood so we avoid turning people down
Guilty: Increases compliance. Catholics were more likely to donate to the March of Dimes before Confession than after it
Negative State Relief: people engage in certain actions to feel better about themselves.
ex. People who thought they shocked the rat donated 3x as much to charity.
Persuasion
Attempt to change a person’s mind
Three technique variables
- Source of message
- The message
- The audience
Persuasive sources of message are:
- Credible
- Attractive
- Well Spoken
- Often similar to us demographically
Halo Effect
Hot people are more effective at persuading people
Sleeper Effect
Occurs when messages from unreliable sources don’t shift an opinion initially but do so when recalled later
What makes a persuasive message:
- Repetition
- Emotion: Humor
- Emotion: Fear (in moderation)
- Vividness (Identifiable Victim Effect)
- Appealing to reason: When the argument is structured, clear, logical, and depicts consequences for making the wrong choice.
Identifiable Victim Effect
The tendency to be more moved by the plight of a single, vivid individual than by a more abstract number of individuals.
What characteristics of an audience affect how it is persuaded?
- Intelligence/Higher “Need for Cognition”
- Mood
- Culture
ex. Individual oriented ads are more effective with Americans and collective oriented ads are more effective with Koreans
Need for Cognition
- Personally characteristic that reflects how much people enjoy effortful thinking, thinking deeply
- High quality messages have an effect on people with this need, but lower “need for cognition” people are more influenced by shortcuts
Elaboration Likelihood Model
Specifies when people are more likely to be influenced by the content of persuasive communication instead of superficial characteristics, and vice versa.
ELM Central Route vs. Peripheral Route
Central: Used when individuals carefully evaluate the merits of the message.
1. relevant issue, knowledgeable and responsible audience
Peripheral: Used when the audience uses little effortful thinking.
1. Complex issue, distracted audience
2. This group can be easily persuaded by volume, consensus, and attractiveness
Deception Facts
- People lie on average 3 times within 10 minutes of meeting someone
- College students lie to about 38% of people they interact with on a weekly basis
- Women lie more, but are less self-serving than men
- 92% of people admit to having lied to a romantic partner
Sender and Receiver Game
- Receiver has to choose between two options for payouts but has no knowledge about the outcomes of the two options
- Sender has knowledge of outcomes and has to tell the receiver what they are
- Men send 15% more deceptive messages than women for economic gain
Lying
Refers to the act by which individuals attempt to instill a false belief into the mind of another
Capacity to lie in toddlers
Lying increases a lot between the ages of 2 and 4. This is because children develop the Theory of Mind, the ability to infer and understand another’s mental state, from the ages of 4-5.
Random Allocation Game
- Flipping a coin by yourself, heads you give the coin to yourself, and tails it goes to a partner.
- Tests cheating behaviors because there is an expected binomial distribution
- Hadza cheated considerably
People with more omniscient and punitive gods cheat less
Detecting Lies
- People average only 54% chance of detecting lies across 5 decades of studies
- Deception “experts” like psychologists and investigators only average 55%.
The polygraph
- Measure of physiological arousal
- Not a valid measure of lying
Benefits of using Google over surveys for data
- Incentive to tell the truth because you need answers from Google
- Can find correlations between conditions and feelings (ex. contracting herpes and contemplating suicide)
- Google Trends maps everything
What were some of the trends that Seth Stephens-Davidowitz found using Google search data?
- Herpes and suicidal thoughts
- Jewish and Mormon populations mapped perfectly
- Racist search on google and trump voting in primary by area
- Child abuse increase and the 2008 Great Recession
Comparison of big data
- Google is Digital Truth Serum
- Facebook is Digital Brag to My Friends about how good my life is serum
Differences in Obama’s speeches on Muslim hate in the US
Speech 1: Spoke out against discrimination; led to doubled and tripled rates of anti-Muslim searches
Speech 2: mentioned that Muslims were our soldiers, sports heroes, etc. This led to searches for these things and people realizing that players like Shaquille O’Neal are Muslim. Anti-Muslim searches went way down
Insights from the Mappiness Project
Best activities
1. Intimacy/Making Love
2. Theater/Dance/Concert
3. Exercise
Overrated activities are all sedentary.
We must put in the effort to overcome the laziness and actually go out to have fun.
Ingredients for Humans’ Success
- Cooperation: Working together makes us better
- Cognition
- Culture: allows us to share and compound knowledge
The “puzzle of human cooperation
- Cooperation conflicts with the survival of the fittest
- Kin Selection
a. People choose to live with people that cooperate as much as they do
b. Cooperation if C<B*r
c. r is coefficient of relatedness
d. Percentage of genetic variation you likely share with someone - Direct Reciprocity (prisoner’s dilemma example)
- Partner Choice
- Cultural Norms
Why study cooperation in the Hadza?
- Live in camps of 30 or so individuals
- Cooperative group living, but no external monitoring and regulatory structures to enforce cooperative behavior
- They don’t have a super strong belief in an all-powerful god
- They can steal food in the middle of the night
- Hadza bend the rules in the random allocation game
Cooperation from the dictator game
- Even in a one-off game, across diverse societies, we see that people in general still care about the outcomes of others and cooperate
- They freely give some of their resources away
- This cannot be explained evolutionarily by Kin selection or direct reciprocity
Notes from the public goods game (Hadza)
- Similarly cooperative Hadza were 2.5x more likely to want to live together
- Generous Hadza were not more popular
- The best predictor of an individual’s cooperation is the average cooperation among their community
Morality
Ideologically driven behaviors that promote human cooperation
Situational Factors that reduce bystander intervention
Diffusion of Responsibility
Evaluation Apprehension- afraid of being judged
Pluralistic Ignorance
No time
RIsk of Injury
Legal liability
Worsen the situation
Lack of authority/power
(Kitty Genovese example in Kew Gardens, New York)
Theories of Morality
St. Augustine: Humans are born selfish and are saved through the power of the divine
Hobbes: Human nature is selfish and cooperation only comes about through the social contract of civil law
Rousseau: Humans are innately good. Society corrupts us.
Bystander Intervention
- In 9 of 10 public conflicts across the UK, Netherlands, and South Africa, at least 1 bystander will do something to help.
- Similar likelihoods of intervention were observed in the three countries, despite greatly differing levels of perceived public safety.
Aggression
Behavior with the intention to harm another individual
Hostile Aggression
Behavior intended to harm another that is motivated by feelings of anger
Ex. Road Rage
Instrumental Aggression
Behavior intended to harm another in the service of motives other than pure hostility
Ex. Batman beating up bad guys to save Gotham
Social Contract
Some think humans need social contract to regulate human aggression
Hobbes: human nature is selfish and needs society to regulate it
Rousseau: Humans are innately good; society corrupts
Warfare
- In many societies, the better a person is in war, the more kids they’ll have (Nyangatom and Yanomami tribes)
- Only in humans do we find very large groups of individuals organizing to fight each other. No chimpanzee armies of 1.5 million individuals.
Bonobos
- Humans are just as related to these guys as they are chimps
- Bonobos are much less aggressive than chimps, share food with each other, and are even friendly to strangers, which is probably where we get it from
Two different types of aggression
Reactive and proactive
Reactive Aggression
- Reaction to threat or frustratiing event
- Associated with anger
- Goal is to remove provoking stimulus
Ex. Insults, crimes of passion
Proactive Aggression
- Purposeful, planned
- Goals can be internal or external
- Action is initiated when cost is low
Ex. Bullying, ambushes, premeditated homicides
Humans have evolved to be less reactive and more proactive in our aggression.
The Two Sides of Humanity
In group vs. out-group morality
Rousseauian at home with family (cooperative and nice)
Hobbesian outside of our in-group (selfish)
Classic Theories of Aggression
Ultimate: Adaptive Explanations for Aggression
Proximate:
- Endogenous Drive (Hydraulic)
- Social Learning Theory of Aggression
Endogenous Drive (Hydraulic)
- Aggression just builds up in people, like hydraulic pressure, and just needs to be released in some sort of way
- This idea is false
- IN REALITY, letting off steam via aggression increases aggression, not decreases.
Does acting aggressively or viewing aggression decrease aggression?
- No
- Venting your anger as a way of reducing aggression has virtually never been supported by research.
- Bushman study found that people who let off steam after being given inflammatory feedback were more likely to be more aggressive towards their lab partners than those who just had to sit and wait
Social Learning Theory of Aggression
- Aggressive behavior is learned primarily by observing and imitating the actions of others (and by being rewarded or punished for the said actions)
- Human children are over-imitators; they copy every detail of behaviors, even those that are pointless or inefficient
- Whether or not we express our aggression is influenced by social norms
Chewong People
- Live in the mountains and forests of Malaysia
- No words in their language for fighting, aggression, or war
- No violence in their mythology
- Threats of violence result in them retreating
Violent Crimes
- Peak in the late teens
- Occur least in New England
- Southern white males more likely to commit crimes than Northern ones
- South exceeds the North only in homicides that are argument or conflict-related
Culture of honor
A culture where individuals (primarily men) strive to protect their reputation through aggression
Most happen over stupid shit like being called a chicken
Asshole Studies
- UMich white male students were told to walk down a hallway to drop off a paper
- Some students had to pass a confederate in the hallway
- But the Confederate wouldn’t budge sometimes, and if he insulted a student, Southern students would give very little room to the Confederate on the way back
- However, Southern students gave more way if they were not insulted
- Southerners also gave firmer handshakes after being insulted, but Northerners did not
- Southern students also experienced a significant testosterone increase
Effects of Testosterone
- Evidence might be mixed, but there is a universal gender difference in terms of aggressive, violent crimes, and other things like competitiveness
- Boys engage in more physically aggressive play than girls around the world
- Boys die of more accidents and injuries than girls
- Hadza men show greater economic risk-taking than women
Testosterone
- steroid hormone mainly produced by the Leydig cells of the testes
- It’s responsible for the development and maintenance of masculine features and plays an important role in modulating male behavior including competition, risk and aggression
- It mediates reproductive behavior in males of many species- many of these behaviors used to attract females are aggressive, competitive, & risky
- Men from rambunctious fraternities have been found to have higher levels of T compared to men from responsible fraternities
- Higher T on average in violent crime prisoners rather than property crimes; prisoners who violated more rules in prison also averaged higher T levels
- Men from UChicago experienced an increase in T following a brief conversation with a woman
Group
A collection of more than two people who are doing or being something together.
- Shared common goals
- Beliefs
- Emotional Experiences
- Similarities
- Frequent Interactions
- Mutual Dependence
- Presence of Out-Group
Social Facilitation Theory
A phenomenon where people show increased levels of effort and performance when in the presence of others—whether it be real, imagined, implied or virtual—compared to their effort and performance levels when they are alone.
- If you think you’re good at something, an audience will make you better
- If you think you suck, you’ll choke
Social Loafing
The finding that people do not work as hard when their work is indistinguishable from that of the group. They think someone else will pick up the slack.
Coordination Loss (too many cooks) vs. Motivation Loss (social loafing)
Ingham Blindfolded participants
- Confederates were used as rope pullers (but didn’t actually pull)
- Effort decreased in individuals as the perceived size of the team increased. Leveled off after 3 individuals.
Deindividuation
Reduced sense of individual identity accompanied by diminished self-regulation that comes over people when they are in a large crowd
ex. mob mentality, suicide baiting (happens with bigger crowds and when dark)
Individuation
- Feeling hyper aware of one’s self
Example: Students are much less likely to cheat when in front of a mirror.
Induction
When traits from one person spread throughout a group, like dominos
Emotional Contagion
- Collective emotions spread, like babies crying in a nursery cause most of the other babies to cry
- Happiness tends to cluster in social networks, Fowler and Christakis found this over a 20-year longitudinal study, happiness spreads throughout a network, it’s not necessarily people choosing like minded friends.
What will make you happy?
- Spending time with people
- Enjoying socially connecting activities
- Helping other people
NO - Milgram studies were not ethical
1) Possible psychological harm (stress).
2) Participants may not have come out the way they went in (i.e. knowing something dark about themselves).
3) When surveyed down the road by people not associated with Milgram researchers, they said they were affected; contrary to what they said to Milgram.
4) The later obedience research on puppies and children was really messed up.
Mappiness Project
- Phone pinged at random times of the day
- How happy are you 1-100?
- Who are you with and what’re you doing
- 60,000 people and 3 million points of happiness assessment
