CH 1-4: Self, Social Beliefs, Behaviours and Attitudes

Question 1

Major themes of social psyschology (7)

Answer 1

• we construct our social reality
• our social intutions are often powerful but sometimes perilous
• social influences shape our behaviour
• personal attitudes and dispositions also shape behaviour
• social behaviour is biologically rooted
• relating to others is a basic need
• social psychologies principles are applicable in everyday life

Question 2

Social Psychology Theme: we construct our social reality

Answer 2

• Humans like to explain behaviour and attribute it to some cause
• Beliefs about ourselves also influence how we perceive things

Question 3

Social Psychology Theme: our social intutions are often powerful but sometimes perilous

Answer 3

• Our intuitions shape our fears, impressions, and relationships
• Thinking, memory, attitudes all operate on two levels- one conscious and deliberate, the other nonconscious and automatic- aka dual processing
• Intuitions can also be dangerous bc they cause us to misperceive others
• We often trust memories more that we should, misread our own minds, and mispredict our own feelings and future

Question 4

Social Psychology Theme: social influences shape our behaviour

Answer 4

• We respond to our immediate contexts and sometimes the power of a social situation can cause us to act in deviant ways
• Standards vary with one’s culture and we adapt to our social context

Question 5

Social Psychology Theme: personal attitudes and dispositions also shape behaviour

Answer 5

• Our inner attitudes also affect our behaviour
• Personality dispositions can also affect behaviour, and facing the same situation, different ppl may react differently

Question 6

Social Psychology Theme: social behaviour is biologically rooted

Answer 6

• biological and social influences need to be considered to understand social behaviours
• Social support strengthens immune system, social isolation increases bp, stress hormones affect how we act and feel
• We reflect interplay of our biological, psychological, and social influences

Question 7

Social Psychology Theme: relating to others is a basic need

Answer 7

• Our relationship with others can be an important source of stress and pain, as well as joy and comfort
• Being ostracised can cause drops in self-esteem and well-being
• When we help others can cause joy and comfort
• Our relationships form the basis of our self-esteem

Question 8

Social Psychology Theme: social psychologies principles are applicable in everyday life

Answer 8

• Social psychology can make visible forces that guide our thinking and acting and can offer ideas about how to know ourselves better, influence ppl and win friends

Question 9

Obvious ways that values affect social psychology

Answer 9

• social psychology reflects social history (reserach topics chosen based on social history)
• Values differ across time and across culture –> Europe focuses more on social identity, and NA focuses more in individuals
• Social psychologists investigate how values form, why they change, and how they influence attitudes and actions

Question 10

Subjective aspects, and hidden values of social psychology

Answer 10

• Science is viewed through the lens of preconceptions and because scholars share a common viewpoint their assumptions may go unchallenged
• Forming concepts- hidden values seep into psychology’s research-based concepts; certain labels reflect a value judgment
• Label​ling- value judgments are often hidden within our social-psychological language
• Naturalistic fallacy- sliding from a description of what is to a prescription of what ought to be (between scientific description, and ethical prescription) –> we inject our values whenever we move from objective statements of fact to prescriptive statements of what ought to be

Question 11

Two main criticisms of Social Psychology

Answer 11

• It is trivial because it documents the obvious (disputed by hindsight bias)
• It is dangerous bc its findings can be used to manipulate people

Question 12

Hindsight Bias

Answer 12

• hindsight bias (i-knew-it-all-along phenomenon) makes any conceivable result of a psychological experiment seem like common sense, after you know the result (events are more predicable in hindsight)
• We deceive ourselves into thinking what we knew more than we do, which is why science is necessary to help us sift reality from illusion and genuine predictions to easy hindsight

Question 13

Forming and Testing Hypothesis

Answer 13

• Theory- an integrated set of principles that explain and predict observed events (scientific shorthand); an organized set of principles used to explain observed phenomena
• Hypothesis- an educated guess about the nature of the relationship among the variables being tested (testable predictions)
• They allow us to test the theory on which they are based
• They give direction to the research
• Predictive feature of good theories (i.e., hypotheses) can make them more practical
• Operationalization- translating the variables that are described at the theoretical level into specific variables that we are going to observe (i.e., defining all the variables) –> must be valid and reliable

A good theory:

• Effectively summarizes many observations
• Makes clear predictions that we can use to do the following: Confirm or modify the theory, generate new exploration, suggest practical applications
• Theories are replaced not when they are disproven, but when a newer better theory comes along

Question 14

Non-experimental Methods of Research:

Answer 14

• Provide information on the association btwn 2 or more variables
• Archival study- examining existing records of past events
• Case study- a detailed examination of a single event
• Survey study- participants complete questionnaires
• Observational study- participants’ behaviours are observed (sometimes covertly), often in a naturalistic setting

Question 15

Correlation v Causation

Answer 15

• Correlational research allows us to predict, but cannot tell us whether changing one variable will cause changes in another
• Correlations quantify with the coefficient r, the degree of relationship between 2 factors
• Ranges from -1 to +1 (the closer to 0, the weaker the relationship)
• Longitudinal research is correlational research extended over time, and can begin to sort out cause and effect because we know that some things happen before others
• survey research is a type of correlational research, and experiments are causational

Question 16

Survey Research (and 4 potentially biasing influences)

Answer 16

• Random sample- every person in the population being studied has an equal chance of inclusion (appropriate representation of subgroups)

4 potentially biasing influences:
Unrepresentative samples- how closely the sample represents the population under study matters greatly –> reduced generalizability if not well represented

Order and timing of questions- ex., a study on travelling experiences will be more positive on a warm sunny day than a cold and snowy one

Response bias and social desirability- large array of options changes responses, people don’t to admit their true actions/beliefs, and social desirability will make ppl say what others want to hear or what they want to believe about themselves

Wording of the question- even when people say they feel strongly about an issue, a question’s form and wording can affect their answer (survey researchers must be sensitive to subtle biases)

Question 17

Experimental Research

Answer 17

• Social psychologists create lab simulations whenever feasible and ethical to determine cause and effect
• *Control: Manipulating Variables**
• By manipulating independent variables experimenter can pinpoint how changes in one or two things affect us
• Enables the understanidng and prediction of human behaviour
• *Random Assignment: The Great Equalizer**
• the process of assigning participants to the conditions of an experiment such that all persons have the same chance of being in a given condition; creating equivalent groups
• helps us to infer cause and effect, and generalize to a population

Question 18

Ethics of Experimentation

Answer 18

• In situations where it would be unethical to allow for random assignment, observational research methods are used where individuals are observed in natural settings, often without awareness, in order to provide opportunity for objective analysis of behaviour
• Experiments do not need to have mundane realism- degree to which an experiment is superficially similar to everyday situations- but must have experimental realism- it should absorb and involve the participants
• Sometimes to create experimental realism, deception is needed
• To reduce demand characteristics- cues in an experiment that tell the participant what behaviour is expected (e.g., words, tone of voice, gestures)- experimenters typically standardize their instructions or use a computer to present them

Question 19

External and Internal Validity

Answer 19

• Internal validity- the extent to which differences between groups in an experiment can be unambiguously attributed to the dependent variable rather than to other factors
• External validity- the degree to which one can generalize results obtained in one set of circumstances to another set of circumstances

Question 20

The spotlight effect

Answer 20

• seeing ourselves at centre stage, and thus intuitively overestimating the extent to which others’ attention is aimed at us
• in the study w the Barry Manilow T-shirt, only 23% of observers noticed compared to the 50% predicted by the students wearing the shirt (Gilovich et al.)

Question 21

Illusion of transparency

Answer 21

• the illusion that our concealed emotions leak out and can be easily read by others; we feel especially transparent when we feel self-conscious and worry about being evaluated negatively by others
• In an experiment using public speaking, individuals feel more nervous than they appear to be, and when individuals were informed about the illusion of transparency, they felt better about their speech and their appearance

Question 22

Other Interplay between our sense of self and our social worlds (4)

Answer 22

• Social surroundings affect our self-awareness- when we are the only members of our race, gender, or nationality in a group, we notice how we differ and how others are reacting to our differences
• Self-interest colours our social judgment- when problems arise in a close relationship, we usually attribute more responsibility to our partners than to ourselves, but when things go well, we see ourselves as more responsible
• Self-concern motivates our social behaviour- in hopes of making a positive impression, we agonize about our appearance and monitor others’ behaviours and expectations, and adjust our behaviour accordingly
• Social relationships help define the self- in our varied relationships, we have varying selves; how we think of ourselves is linked to the person we are with at the moment and when relationships change, so do self-concepts

Question 23

self-concept and self-in-action

Answer 23

• Self-concept = how we come to know ourselves
• Self in action = how our sense of self drives our attitudes and actions

Question 24

Self-schemas

Answer 24

• Self-schemas- the elements of your self-concept, the specific beliefs by which you define yourself
• Our self-schemas (perceiving ourselves as athletic, smart, outgoing, etc.) affect how we perceive, remember, and evaluate others
• You welcome information that is consistent with your self-schema
• Self-schemas help us organize and retrieve our experiences
• Attitudes and behaviour can change in different social contexts (the way we act and see ourselves depends on context)

Question 25

Social Comparisons

Answer 25

• Evaluating your abilities and opinions by comparing yourself to others
• We compare ourselves with those around us and become conscious of how we differ and then use others as a benchmark by which we can evaluate our performance and our beliefs
• Social comparisons can also diminish our satisfaction as we tend to compare up and not down, thereby raising the standards by which we evaluate our attainments
• When people think well of us it helps us think well of ourselves
• Looking-glass self - describes our use of how we think others perceive us as a mirror for perceiving ourselves (what matters for our self-concept is not how others actually see us but the way we imagine they see us)
• Our self-esteem corresponds with how we see ourselves on traits that we believe are valued by others

Question 26

Individualism v Collectivism

Answer 26

• sense of self is shaped by culture
• In industrialized western culture, individualism prevails – identity is self-contained, and becoming an adult means separating from parents and becoming self-reliant and defining one’s personal independent self (value self-sufficiency, uniqueness, autonomy)
• One’s identity remains fairly constant
• assumes life will be enriched by believing in your power of personal control
• Individualism flourishes when ppl experience affluence, mobility, urbanism, mass media, and when economies shift from manufacturing towards information and service industries
• Most countries native to Asia, Africa, Central and South America place a greater value on collectivism by respecting and identifying with the group
• Interdependent self- construing one’s identity in relation to others
• People are more self-critical and focus less on positive self-views
• Social rules focus on promoting selflessness, working as a group, doing what’s best for societies, families and communities have a central role

STUDIES (from lec):

• In highly individualistic cultures a certain part of the brain will activate, but not when they see a picture of their mother or close friend, but in an interdependent culture, the fMRI will light up in the same spot in response to a picture of themselves as well as a picture of a close friend/ family member
• In an individualist culture, when asked who they would save in a house fire, the answer was spouse (an extension of yourself, someone for you), and in a collectivist culture the answer is mother (you only have one mom but can find a new spouse)

Question 27

Culture and Cognition

Answer 27

• Collectivism results in different ways of thinking
• In Masuda et al. study, American participants rated the boy in the middle to be very happy in both cartoons (7/7 and 6/7) whereas Japanese participants said the boy was very happy in the first cartoon and very sad in the second as they took into consideration the facial expressions of the kids in the background (think more holistically)
• American more likely to explain the purpose of language as being for self-expression, and Koreans are more likely to say it allows for communication with others
• Collectivist cultures promote a greater sense of belonging and more integrating between the self and others
• Interdependent selves have many selves: self-w-parents, self-at-work, self-w friends –> interdependent self is embedded in social memberships, conversation is less direct and more polite, and people focus more on gaining social approval

Question 28

Culture and Self-Esteem

Answer 28

• In collectivist cultures, self-esteem is malleable (context-specific) rather than stable (enduring across situations)
• In individualistic cultures, self-esteem is more personal and less relational, and one will feel more threatened, and sad when a personal identity is threatened than when one’s collective identity is threatened
• Collectivists persist more on tasks when failing and make comparisons to facilitate self-improvement while individualist persist more when succeeding and make comparisons w others that boost their self-esteem
• Happiness in collectivist cultures is more associated w positive social engagement and for individualist it comes from disengaged emotions like feeling superior and effective
• When you move from a collectivist culture to individualistic culture, self-esteem tends to increase as sense of self/self-esteem is viewed as an individual concept so people from collectivist cultures tend to have lower self-esteem (bc it’s not valued/don’t care)

Question 29

Predicting Self-Behaviour

Answer 29

• One of the most common errors in behaviour prediction is underestimating how long it will take to complete a task (planning fallacy)
• The best way to improve self-predictions is to be more realistic about long tasks took in the past
• Another way is to estimate how long each step in a project will take

Question 30

Predicting Feelings

Answer 30

• Sometimes we know how we will feel but other times we mispredict our responses
• People have the greatest difficulty predicting intensity and the duration of their future emotions (e.g., how they would feel some time after a breakup, receiving a gift, winning a game, and being insulted)
• We are vulnerable to impact bias- overestimating the enduring impact of emotion-causing events- emotional traces of good tidings leave faster than we would expect
• We are especially prone to impact bias after negative events –> we adapt and cope quicker than we’d expect

Question 31

Wisdom and Illusions of Self-Analysis

Answer 31

• Our intuitions are often wrong about what has influenced us and what we will feel and do, but when the causes of our behaviour are conspicuous and the correct explanation fits our intuition, our self-perceptions will be accurate
• Overall, there is a modest correlation between predicted feelings and actual feelings
• We are more aware of the results of our thinking than the process
• Dual attitudes- our automatic implicit attitudes regarding someone or something often differ from our consciously controlled, explicit attitudes
• Self-reports are often untrustworthy even if people report and interpret their experiences with complete honesty (not always the truth)

Question 32

Self-esteem (definition)

Answer 32

• the sum of all our self-views across various domains, and when we feel good about the domains important to our self-esteem, we have high self-esteem

Question 33

Self-esteem motivation

Answer 33

• Most people are extremely motivated to maintain their self-esteem (we dont want to be socially rejected)
• People with high self-esteem usually react to a self-esteem threat by blaming others to preserve their positive feelings about themselves while ppl w low self-esteem are more likely to blame themselves or give up in face of a threat
• Society values kindness and caring and women and people in romantic relationships, so for these people self-esteem trumps communal qualities
• Self-esteem depends on whether we believe we have traits that make us attractive to others and not necessarily on the traits that we value the most

Question 34

Bottom-up Theory of self-esteem

Answer 34

• Commonly accepted theory
• Everyone has valued domains that are important to them (including grades, athleticism, attractiveness)
• When we do well in your valued domain you will have high self-esteem, and when you are not doing well, you will have low self-esteem
• If you don’t care about anything, you will likely have low self-esteem

Question 35

Top-Down Theory of self-esteem

Answer 35

• We all have self-esteem; a way we view ourselves (whether that is positive or negative), which is affected by both genetics and our upbringing
• When we have high self-esteem we tend to focus and place value in what we do well in
• When we have low self-esteem we tend to value/focus on things you don’t have/do poorly in even if you have areas you do well in

Question 36

Terror Management theory of self-esteem

Answer 36

• Terror management theory argues that self-esteem is not only about acceptance, as people strive to be great rather than just accepted, and instead the reality of our own death motivates us to gain recognition from our work and values
• Fearing death is unique to humans and we overcome it by denying it
• Pursuing self-esteem is a way to create a version of ourself that will last past our death (create a legacy) which helps alleviate our fear of death

Question 37

Self-esteem maintenance (sociometer theory)

Answer 37

• Self-esteem tracks social acceptance/rejection, and is an indicator/ heuristic for how things are going
• Social support is a buffer for self-esteem, and when social acceptance is low, it motivates us to seek change
• A consistent impediment to self-esteem is social rejection (social isolation)

Question 38

How we maintain self-esteem (3)

Answer 38

• self-handicapping
• selective social comparisons
• self-affirmations

Question 39

Trade-off of Low v High Self-esteem

Answer 39

• People with low self-esteem are more vulnerable to anxiety, loneliness, and ED, and tend to take the negative view of everything when feeling bad or threatened
• They are quick to believe that their partners are criticizing or rejecting them and often are less satisfied with their relationships
• often low self-esteem correlates with a tough childhood
• When good things happen to people with high self-esteem they’re more likely to savour and sustain the good feelings –> self-preserving perceptions and feelings of superiority can motivate us to achieve
• High self-esteem fosters initiative, resilience, and pleasant feelings (not always good, gang leaders, terrorist)
• Self-esteem does not cause better academic achievement or superior work performance

Question 40

Narcisissm v High self-esteem

Answer 40

• narcissists usually have high self-esteem but do not value relationships with others and goes beyond self-esteem bc they think they are better than others which can lead to problematic social relations
• Narcissism is also included in the dark triad of negative traits along with manipulativeness and antisocial personality
• Narcissists’ deep-seated feelings of superiority may originate in childhood; parents believing their children deserve special treatment = narcissism, but not parents expressing feelings of love and kindness to their children
• Narcissists are often initially popular with others but as time passes, their antagonism and aggression towards others makes them less popular with their peers
• Narcissists seem to be aware of their own narcissism

Question 41

Self-efficacy

Answer 41

• A sense that one is competent and effective, distinguished from self-esteem, which is one’s sense of self-worth
• Children and adults with strong feelings of self-efficacy are more persistent, less anxious, less depressed, live healthier lives, and are more academically successful
• Self-efficacy leads us to search challenging goals and persist, and when problems arise a strong sense of self- efficacy leads people to stay calm and seek solutions rather than ruminate on their inadequacies

Question 42

Definition and types of self-serving bias (7)

Answer 42

• The tendency to perceive yourself favorably
• self-serving attribution
• better than average (favourable comparison)
• unrealistic optimism
• false consensus and uniqueness
• temporal comparison
• social comparison
• self-affirmation

Question 43

Self-serving bias: self-serving attribution

Answer 43

• Self-serving attribution- attributing positive outcomes to oneself and negative outcomes to someone else- is one of the most potent of human biases –> activates brain areas associated w reward and pleasure
• E.g. car accidents are the other persons fault, marital issues are the partners fault, marriage success attributed to themselves
• People claim they avoid self-serving bias themselves but readily acknowledge that others show this bias, and this bias can lead to consequences during conflict
• Those with depression do not display self-serving bias as they are more likely to believe they are to blame for negative events
• Depressed individuals have a negative explanatory style (a negative, pessimistic, and depressive explanatory)

Question 44

Self-serving bias: better than average (favourable comparison)

Answer 44

• Self-serving bias also appears when people compare themselves with others as on subjective, socially desirable, and common dimensions most people see themselves as better than the average person
• Self-serving bias is stronger for traits that are more subjective or difficult to measure as they give us leeway in constructing our own definitions of success
• 80% thinking they are above average drivers, 86% say they are at top 25% in teaching ability

Question 45

Self-serving bias: unrealistic optimism

Answer 45

• Most humans are more disposed to optimism than pessimism
• Unrealistic optimism about future life events occurs partly due to relative pessimism about others fates which makes students perceive themselves more likely to get a good job then their classmates, and less likely to experience negative events
• Illusionary optimism increases our vulnerabilities as believing ourselves immune to misfortune results in not taking sensible precautions like unsafe sex
• Optimism still beats pessimism in promoting self efficacy, health, and well being
• Most people believe they will be happier and live their lives in the future, pessimists however even die sooner as they are more likely to suffer unfortunate accidents
• Defensive pessimism anticipates problems and motivates effective coping and can sometimes save us from the perils of unrealistic optimism
• Success in school and beyond requires enough optimism to sustain hope and enough of pessimism to motivate concern

Question 46

Self-serving bias: false consensus and uniqueness

Answer 46

• We have the tendency to enhance our self-images by overestimating or underestimating the extent to which others think and act as we do
• On matters of opinion we find support for our position by overestimating the extent to which others agree- false consensus effect
• When we behave badly or fail in a task we reassure ourselves by thinking that such lapses are also common
• On matters of ability or when we behave well or successfully a false uniqueness effect occurs where we serve our self-image by seeing our talents and moral behaviors as relatively unusual
• We may see our failings as relatively normal and our virtues as relatively exceptional

Question 47

Self-serving bias: temporal comparison

Answer 47

• Comparisons between how the self is viewed now and how the self was viewed in the past or how the self is expected to be viewed in the future
• People maintain positive self-views in the present by disparaging distant past selves while complementing recent past selves, creating a sense of improvement
• We perceive positive past selves as psychologically closer in time and negative past selves as more distant

Question 48

Self-serving bias: social comparison

Answer 48

• Think of someone else who is doing worse than you to make yourself feel better

Question 49

Self-serving bias: self-affirmation

Answer 49

• Think about a domain where you are doing fine (change what you think is important)

Question 50

Explaining self-serving bias

Answer 50

• Potentially the self-serving bias exists because of errors in how we process and remember information ourselves
• Comparing ourselves with others requires us to notice, assess, and recall their behavior and ours which creates multiple opportunities for flaws in our information processing
• Trying to increase self-esteem helps power self-serving bias

Question 51

How people manage their self-presentation (4)

Answer 51

• self-handicapping
• impression management
• doubting our ability in social situations
• overpersonalizing situations

Question 52

Self-presentation management: self-handicapping

Answer 52

• sabotage chances for success by creating impediments that make success less likely; an excuse in case you fail
• self-protective rather than self-destructive
• If we fail while handicapped in some way, we can cling to a sense of competence; if we succeed under such conditions, it will only boost our self-image (succeeded despite the conditions)
• Handicaps protect both self-esteem and public imaging by allowing us to attribute failures to something temporary or external rather than to a lack of talent or ability

Question 53

Self-presentation management: impression management

Answer 53

• Self-presentation refers to our wanting to present a desired image both to an external audience an internal audience by managing the expressions we create
• In collectivist cultures it’s particularly true that social interactions are a balance of looking good while not looking too good as modesty is the default strategy
• In familiar situation self-presentation happens without a conscious effort while in unfamiliar situations we are acutely self-conscious of the impressions (less modest)
• high self-monitoring = social chameleons, more likely to express attitudes they don’t really hold and less likely to express their own attitudes
• low self-monitoring = care less about what others think, more internally guided, talk and act as they feel and believe
• False modesty phenomenon- we often display lower self-esteem than we privately feel-as in most situations modesty creates a good impression while unsolicited boasting creates a bad one
• Self-presented modesty is greatest in cultures that value self-restraint such as Asian cultures, and they also exhibit less self-serving bias

Question 54

Self-presentation management: doubting our ability in social situations

Answer 54

• Self-presentation theory assumes that we are eager to present ourselves in ways that make a good impression, thus we feel social anxiety when we are motivated to impress others but have self-doubts
• We feel most anxious when we’re with powerful high-status people, in an evaluative context, self-conscious, focused on something central to our self-image, or in novel or unstructured situations
• For most people the tendency is to be cautiously self-protective: talk less, avoid topics that reveal ignorance, be guarded, unassertive, and agreeable

Question 55

Self-presentation management: overpersonalizing situations

Answer 55

• shy, self-conscious people see incidental events as somehow relevant to themselves (over personalized situations)
• They are especially prone to the spotlight effect and maybe conscious of their self-consciousness
• To reduce social anxiety some people turn to alcohol and thus chronically self-conscious people are especially likely to drink
• Symptoms such as anxiety and alcohol abuse can serve a self-handicapping function

Question 56

Learned helplessness v Self-Determination

Answer 56

• Learned helplessness = helplessness and resignation learned when a person perceives no control over repeated bad events
• Depressed or oppressed people for example become passive because they believe their efforts have no effects
• Learned helplessness has been linked to illness –> stress diverts energy from immune system leaving us more vulnerable to infection and malignancy
• A strategy that works better than a list of New Year’s resolutions, is to start with one area and let your increased self-control spread throughout your newly improved life
• Another hack is to stop doing things you shouldn’t by reducing the possibility you’ll be tempted
• Systems of governing or managing people that promote self-efficacy will promote health and happiness

Question 57

How self-esteem makes us clueless

Answer 57

• all above average, think you can control the environment more than you can (gamblers), planning fallacy, affective forecasting, spotlight phenomenon

Question 58

Social media and self-esteem (2 studies)

Answer 58

• The affect of social media depends on how you use it

Gonzales and Hancock:

• After two minutes of looking in front of a mirror, at their own FB profile, or at nothing, they took the Rosenberg self-esteem scale (7-point scale)
• self-esteem highest when looking at FB profile (looking at best version of self), and lowest when looking at a mirror, but the effects are pretty small, so it’s hard to know if its meaningful in everyday life

Kross et al.

• Texted people 5x a day for 2 weeks asking how they felt, and what they were doing at that time
• FB use was associated with negative mood in the day and decreases life-satisfaction over the 2 weeks
• The effect depended on how the participant was using FB: active contributor = happy/neutral, passive user (lurker) = negative effect
• Depends on if you are using it to connect socially with others and are an active user, vs whether you are using it to see what other people are doing (lurker) which usually results in a negative effect

Question 59

Priming

Answer 59

• Even things that we don’t consciously notice (subliminal stimuli) can subtly influence how we interpret and recall events
• Priming one thought, can influence another thought or even an action (if you think of something at one time, you are more likely to think about that same thing or things related to that thing at time 2)
• seeing a concept once makes it more likely to leap to mind when you are facing an ambiguous circumstance where that same concept could potentially be the answer
• thoughts leaping to mind because it was rendered accessible in a prior event
• Most of a person’s everyday life is determined by mental processes that operate outside of conscious awareness and guidance
• Physical sensations, due to our embodied cognition- the mutual influence of bodily sensations on cognitive preferences and social judgments- prime our social judgments, and vice versa (e.g., the room feeling colder when eating alone, thinking people are suspect when the room smells fishy, thinking ppl are friendlier when holding a warm cup of coffee, thinking a topic is more important when holding a heavy clipboard)
• The brain systems that process our bodily sensations communicate w the brain systems responsible for our social thinking

Question 60

System 1 v System 2 Thinking

Answer 60

• System 1 = functions automatically out of our awareness (intuition)
• System 2 = requires our conscious effort and attention
• System 1 influences our actions more than we think

Question 61

Automatic Thinking: schemas, emotional reactions, expertise

Answer 61

• Schemas are mental concepts that intuitively guide our perceptions and interpretations of our experience; organize one’s knowledge and sets expectations about certain things
• We tend to have false memories because we categorize things using our schemas
• Schemas can lead to change blindness (often miss large changes that appear to be obvious) because our schemas tell us not to pay attention to something we don’t expect –> the experiment where the confederate changes partway through
• Schemas are important because they reduce the amount of information we are required to process and they help to reduce the ambiguity (much of what we experience is complex so schemas help to simplify things based on context)
• They also guide our attention and encoding: how quick we notice, what we notice, how we interpret what we notice, what we remember
• Emotional reactions are instantaneous and before there is time for deliberate thinking
• Given sufficient expertise people may intuitively know the answer to a problem
• Given little info about someone, peoples snap judgment can beat chance at guessing whether someone is outgoing or shy, straight or gay
• Facts, and past experiences we remember consciously, but skills and conditions we work implicitly
• Consciousness delegates, sets goals and priorities, often with little knowledge of operational activities that perform the actions and this delegation allows us to react to many situations quickly and efficiently

Question 62

Limits of intuition

Answer 62

• Subliminal stimuli can trigger a weak fleeting response, but there is no evidence that for example, a commercial subliminal audio recording can reprogram your unconscious mind
• We have the capacity for illusory intuition where we can fabricate explanations of our behaviour and it also appears in how we take in, store, and retrieve social information

Question 63

Overconfidence phenomenon

Answer 63

• Efficiency has a trade-off; as we interpret our experiences and construct memories, our intuitions are sometimes wrong
• Overconfidence phenomenon- the tendency to be more confident than correct- to overestimate the accuracy of one’s beliefs
• Can lead to overprecision where we cut things too close- arriving late, missing planes- in thinking we know exactly how something will go, we miss the window
• Incompetence feeds overconfidence –> ignorance of our ignorance sustains overconfidence
• People may rely too heavily on their intentions when predicting their future behaviour which causes them to have inaccurate self-predictions
• Overconfidence may persist because we like those who are confident: group members rewarded highly confident individuals with higher status, even when their confidence was not justified by actual ability
• We are not actually good at predicting how we will feel in future situations (affective forecasting)

Question 64

Confirmation Bias

Answer 64

• Refers to a tendency to search for evidence that confirms hypothesis and don’t look for evidence that disconfirms it
• Stereotypes –> pay attention to the info that reinforces stereotypes and don’t pay attention to what disconfirms it (can reinforce harmful stereotypes)
• Confirmation bias appears to be a system 1 snap judgment where our default reaction is to look for information consistent w our presupposition –> when we stop to think a little, we are less likely to make this error (contemplation curtails confirmation)
• Also helps to explain why our self-images are stable as people seek as friends and spouses those who verify their own self-views, even when negative (self-verification)

Question 65

Remedies for overconfidence

Answer 65

• Prompt feedback- groups that receive daily feedback like weather forecasters, do well at estimating their probable accuracy
• helpful to think about one good reason why their judgement might be wrong to reduce overconfidence and force consideration of disconfirming information
• Realistic self-confidence is still important harbour decisiveness

Question 66

Heuristics: Definitions and Examples (2)

Answer 66

• mental shortcuts that we take when making complicated judgements that enable quick and efficient judgments
• They are also subject to error and can cause us to make irrational judgments
• Our snap judgments are adaptive, and the speed of these intuitive guides promote our survival
• representative and availability

Question 67

Heuristics: Representative Heuristic

Answer 67

• Refers to judging something by intuitively comparing it to our mental representation of a category; judging the likelihood of something based on its similarity to a typical case
• Problematic when typicality is used instead of base rates
• Representativeness (typicalness) usually reflects reality
• e.g. cops looking for a black suspect bc they they believe it is more likley for black person to be involved in crime
• e.g. a woman is outspoken and majored in economics, and she was passionate about issues of equality and discrimination–> is it more likley that she works at a bank or that she works at a bank and is involved in feminist movements –> representative heuristic says b), but a) is more likely (b is a subset of option a so it cant be more likely)

Question 68

Heuristics: Availability Heuristic

Answer 68

• A cognitive rule that judges the likelihood of things in terms of their availability in memory; if instances of something come readily to mind, we presume it to be commonplace
• Judging the likelihood of an event based on the ease with which we can recall examples of it
• Problematic when ease of recall is not in line with actual frequency of event
• News won’t cover less exciting, more common causes of death, making plane crashes seem like a probable cause or lottery losses
• Dish politics –> you think you did the dishes the last time because its easier to remember what you did and not what your roommate did
• Thinking that the name of a celebrity is more common than it is, or thinking that LGBTQ members are more common than they are bc issues are talked about frequently
• Explains why powerful anecdotes seem more compelling that statistical information
• We worry about remote possibilities while ignoring higher probabilities (probability neglect)
• Availability heuristic can make us more sensitive to unfairness as our struggles are more memorable than our advantages

Question 69

Counterfactory Thinking

Answer 69

• Refers to imagining alternative scenarios and outcomes that might have happened but didn’t
• Imagining worse alternatives help us feel better, and imagining better alternatives helps us prepare to do better in the future
• Occurs when we can easily picture an alternative outcome and underlies our feelings of luck
• The more significant and unlikely the event, the more intense the counterfactual thinking
• More people regret over things they didn’t do rather than the things they did do

Question 70

Illusory Thinking: Illusory Correlation

Answer 70

• A perception of a relationship where none exists, or a perception of a stronger relationship than actually exists
• If we believe a correlation exists, we are more likely to notice and recall confirming instances and if we believe that premonitions correlate with events, we notice and remember the joint occurrence off the premonition and the events later occurrence
• Can help explain why clinicians continue to express confidence in uninformative or ambiguous test

Question 71

Illusory Thinking: Gambling

Answer 71

• Many instances of people acting as though they can predict or control chance events
• Gamblers attribute their wins to their skill and foresight and losses become near misses, flukes, or a bad call
• When experiencing a lack of control, people will act to create a sense of predictability, leading people to form illusory correlations in stock market information, to perceive nonexistent conspiracies, and to develop superstitions

Question 72

Illusory Thiniking: Regression Toward the average (mean)

Answer 72

• The statistical tendency for extreme scores or extreme behaviour to return towards the person’s average – when we fail to recognize this, illusion of control may rise
• When things are at a low point, we try every and anything, and this is more likely to be followed by improvement rather than further deterioration
• Extreme performance at time 1 is followed by less extreme performance at time 2
• Extremely good performance is picked by luck, and extremely good luck at T1 likely means less luck at T2 (luck is random)–> regression to mean will be more indicative of actual skill
• Commonplace in situations where luck and skill are both at play (sports, exams)

Question 73

Mood and Judgment:

Answer 73

• Social judgments involve our feelings as our moods infuse our judgments
• Unhappy people tend to be more self-focused and brooding, but a depressed mood also motivates intense thinking-a search for information that makes one’s environment more memorable, understandable, and controllable
• Happy people are more trusting, more loving, and more responsive
• Our moods colour how we see our world partly by bringing to mind past experiences associated with the mood
• if our attention is explicitly drawn to our moods, we may correct our judgments; if we acknowledge our moods we can keep them from biasing our judgments

Question 74

Perceiving and interpreting events: political perceptions

Answer 74

• we are mostly accurate and our first impressions are more right than wrong
• People perceive media and mediators as biased against their position (sports referees, politicians)
• When political debates have no clear-cut winner, they mostly reinforce pre-debate opinions
• We view our social worlds through the spectacles of our beliefs, attitudes and values –> our beliefs and schemas shape our interpretation of everything

Question 75

Belief Perseverance

Answer 75

• Persistence of your initial conceptions, as when the basis for your belief is discredited but an explanation of why the belief might be true survives –> it is difficult to demolish a falsehood once the person conjures up a rationale for it

Anderson, Lepper, and Lee:

• Implanted a false belief, and then the participants were told to explain why its true, and then the researchers discredited the info by telling them it was fabricated
• The belief survived approx. 75% intact
• The more we examine our theories and explain how they might be true, the more closed we become to information that challenges our beliefs

Question 76

Constructing memories of ourselves and our worlds: Misinformation effect

Answer 76

• we construct memories at the time of withdrawal using our current feelings and expectations to combine fragments of information
• We can easily (though unconsciously) revise our memories to suit our current knowledge
• Misinformation effect- incorporating misinformation into one’s memory of an event, after witnessing an event and then receiving misleading information about it
• False memories look and feel like real ones and can be just as persuasive
• Imagining childhood events can lead individuals to recall the event actually happened, and this imagination inflation occurs partly because visualizing something activates similar areas in the brain as does actually experiencing it
• False confessions are an issue that misinformation can explain

Question 77

Constructing memories of ourselves and our worlds: Reconstructing Past Attitudes

Answer 77

• People whose attitudes have changed often insist that they have always felt much as they now feel
• The construction of positive memories brightens our recollections, and people often exhibit rosy retrospect- where they recall mildly pleasant events more favourably than they experienced them
• As our relationships change we also revise our recollections of other people (couples who break up view the partner negatively and couples who stayed together said it was love at first sight)

Question 78

Constructing memories of ourselves and our worlds: Reconstructing Past Behaviour

Answer 78

• Memory construction enables us to revise our own histories –> people recalling brushing their teeth more over the last 2 weeks after hearing out its benefits
• We tend to underreport bad behaviour and overreport good behaviour
• Sometimes our present view is that we’ve improved, in which case, we may misrecall our past as more unlike the present than it actually was

Question 79

Attribution Theory

Answer 79

• We analyze and discuss why things happen as they do, especially when we experience something negative or unexpected
• Men are more likely to attribute a woman’s friendliness to mild sexual interest which and can lead to behaviour women regard as harassment
• Misattribution is especially likely when men are in positions of power
• Attribution theory- the theory of how people explain the behaviour of others- for ex. by attributing it to either internal dispositions (enduring traits, motives, and attitudes) or to external situations
• Dispositional attribution- attributing behaviour to the person’s disposition and traits
• Situational attribution- attributing behaviour to the environment

-If we can make accurate attributions (the schemas we have ab other ppl), they can simplify our world by helping us to:
o Explain the causes of behaviour and outcomes
o Predict future behaviour
o Respond appropriately to social situations

Question 80

Inferring Traits

Answer 80

• We often infer that other people’s actions are indicative of their intentions and dispositions –> normal or expected behaviour tells us less about the person than does the behaviour that is unusual for situation
• Spontaneous trait inference- an effortless, automatic inference of a trait after exposure to someone’s behaviour

Question 81

Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE)

Answer 81

• Fundamental attribution error- the tendency for observers to underestimate situation influences and overestimate dispositional influences on other’s behaviour; aka correspondence bias bc we so often see behaviour as corresponding to disposition
• Even when people know they are causing someone else’s behaviour, they still underestimate external influences (thinking that someone who debates a topic agrees w it even when the side was assigned)
• We tend to presume that others are the way they act even when we don’t make the same presumptions about ourselves
• Intelligent and socially competent people are actually more likely to make attribution error
• Those with social power usually initiate and control conversations, and this often leads underlings to overestimate their knowledge and intelligence (e.g. ppl thinking doctors are experts in all questions unrelated to medicine)

Question 82

Why the FAE occurs: Actor-Observer difference

Answer 82

• We observe others from a different perspective than we observe ourselves (extension of FAE)
• We tend to take credit for our successes, but remove blame for our failure, and blame others for their failures but remove responsibility for their success (related to self-serving bias)
• The passage of time decreases the tendency toward the fundamental attribution error (i.e. less likely to attribute it to a person and more likely to situation after time passes)
• Because we are more acutely aware of how our behaviour varies with the situation, we see ourselves are more variable than other people

Question 83

Why the FAE occurs: Cultural differences

Answer 83

• Western worldview predisposes people to assume that people, not situations, cause events as internal explanations are more socially approved –> learn to explain behaviours in terms of other’s personal characteristics
• Eastern Asian cultures are more sensitive to the importance of situations, and are less inclined to assume that others’ behaviours correspond to their traits –> more leeway bc it is assumed that they do behaviours to maintain harmony in the society
• In collectivist cultures, people less often perceive others in terms of personal dispositions and are less likely to spontaneously interpret behaviour as reflecting an inner trait
• Dispositional attribution = more unsympathetic to the poor and unemployed, and situational attribution = tend to adopt political positions that offer more direct support to the poor

Question 84

Gilbert’s two state model of attribution

Answer 84

• If we see someone exhibit behaviour, system one will attribute it to dispositional factors (we start with S1)
• If we are motivated to think about the reasons for the behaviour, we are more inclined to attribute it to situational factors (S2)
• If we are not motivated to look for another reason, we will stick to our S1 attribution

Question 85

Victim Blaming

Answer 85

• When the victim of a crime or any wrongful act is held entirely or partially at fault for the harm that befell them –> issue for female SA victims
• Belief in a just world –> belief that the world is just and fair and people get that they deserve
• Form of self-esteem maintenance
• Bad things = they must’ve strayed from morality (drives victim blaming)
• Goes with FAE

Question 86

Self-fulfilling prophecies

Answer 86

• Self-fulfilling prophecies- beliefs that lead to their own fulfillment; when our ideas lead us to act in ways that produce their apparent confirmation
• The process by which one’s expectations about a person lead that person to engage in ways that confirm those expectations
• Reinforces notions you have about someone after giving them opportunities for them to prove exactly that
• Experimenter bias refers to the idea that sometimes research participants live up to what they believe experimenters expect of them

Question 87

Teacher’s Expecatations and Student Performance

Answer 87

• Teachers’ evaluations correlate w student achievement- teachers think well of students who do well (they accurately perceive their students’ abilities and achievements)
• Some studies have also found that it goes the other way too: students whose teachers expected them to perform well, performed well (teachers are the cause)

Rosenthal and Jacobson:
- Randomly selected children who were said to be on the verge of a dramatic intellectual spurt did then spurt ahead in IQ score

• School problems of disadvantaged children might reflect their teachers’ low expectations
• High expectations seem to boost low achiever’s, for whom a teacher’s positive attitude may be a hope-giving breath of fresh air
• Teachers may also teach more to their ‘gifted’ students, set higher goals for them, call on them more, and give them more time to answer
• Could also be a result of self-fulfilling prophecy that affected the teacher –> teachers were judged most capable when assigned a student who nonverbally conveyed positive expectations

Question 88

Fixed v Incramental Growth Mindsets

Answer 88

• Fixed = intelligence/ ability is innate –> we are good at some things and not others, and there’s nothing much we can do about it
• Growth = intelligence/ ability is developed –> you can get good if you try harder
  Kids praised for their ability = fixed mindset –> less persistence, enjoyment, performance on other tasks
  Kids praised for their efforts = growth mindset –> more persistence, enjoyment, performance on other tasks (praising children to embrace challenges)

Question 89

Behavioural Confirmation

Answer 89

• There are times when negative expectations of someone lead us to be extra nice to that person, which induces them to be nice in return (disconfirming our expectations), but for the most part, we get what we expect
• Usually, the way we expect another person to behave will induce them to behave in that manner
• Behavioural confirmation- once formed, incorrect beliefs about the social world can induce others to confirm those beliefs
• Social beliefs such as stereotypes about people with disabilities or about people of a particular race or sex may be self-confirming

Question 90

ABCs of attitude

Answer 90

• Affect (feelings, emotions)
• Behaviour tendency (history of behaviours)
• Cognition (thoughts, facts)
• there can be conflict btwn them (= cognitive dissonance)

Question 91

What is an attitude?

Answer 91

• An evaluation of something that we have stored in our memory (like or dislike, agree or disagree)
• We pull out the memory every time we encounter that entity
• Attitudes predict behaviour –> helps predict actions of consequences in society

Question 92

Moral hypocrisy

Answer 92

• appearing moral without being so
• people are particularly likely to behave in an unethical manner if their identity is being publicly threatened
• motivation to appear being moral while avoiding the costs of being moral

Question 93

Attitude-behaviour problem

Answer 93

• Wicker (1969, 1971) examined 42 studies dealing with the attitude-behaviour relationship
• The average correlation was about 0.15 (explained less than 3% of the variance in behaviour) –> attitude predicting behaviour
• It may be desirable to abandon the attitude concept
• Lots of factors can affect whether you act out a behaviour (such as other conflicting attitudes, situational, social factors)

Question 94

Explicit Measures of Attitudes

Answer 94

• Clear, direct, and plainly stated
• People are asked to rate their attitudes about a certain topic, and list the thoughts they have corresponding to that topic
• E.g bogus pipeline- ppl are less likely to lie when connected to a fake polygraph, but it is labour intensive (one on one interview), and it doesn’t last long bc ppl know its fake when the studies are a success
• *Problems with Explicit Measures:**
• affected by social desirability bias- the tendency of survey respondents to answer questions in a manner that will be viewed favourable by others
• The surveys/ tests can be biased

Question 95

Implicit Measures of Attitude

Answer 95

• What is being measured isn’t obvious
• Unobtrusive measures- indirectly measure something that’s related to what they want to measure (e.g. will they sit beside the black or white person?)
• Lost letter/wallet- measures attitudes of a region/ group of people; vary aspects of the fake person by changing what is included in the wallet and see if it alters return rates (e.g., political attitudes of a region depending on the presence of a voter card and return rates)
• IAT- reaction time test; extent to which you associate things with goodness or badness (e.g. measure racial attitudes when white ppl take longer to associated positive words with blackfaces vs white faces)

Question 96

How attitudes are actually measured (intentions)

Answer 96

• Specificity of attitude is important such as matching the action, target, context, and time
• Davidson and Jaccard study about birth control –> when the specificity of the type and the time frame was more specific, it was more predictive of behaviour
• *Intentions:** represent whether a person believes that he or she will engage in a specific behaviour
• There is a stronger correlation between intentions and behaviour than attitudes and behaviour (intentions are a proxy for attitudes but not the same)
• Subjective norms- if everyone around you holds a different attitude, intentions, and thus behaviour can change
• Perceived behavioural control- the extent to which you have control over the behaviour –> If one has an attitude ab something, when control is limited, then intention can be overruled
• *Implementation Intentions:**
• When individuals identify precisely when and where the behaviour is to be performed, it is more likely the behaviour will occur (If X, then Y)
• E.g., when participants asked to mail a letter, if given specific implementation intentions (get a stamp from shoppers, go to a post office), 90% of the letters got mailed back, but in the control group, only 30% were mailed back
• Dieting with clear implementation intentions is much more likely to be successful
• *Difficulty Measuring Attitudes: Thinking Too Much**
• If an attitude is based on affect (emotion), trying to think of cognitive reasons for having the attitude can backfire
• E.g., Jam experiement –> control group had a 0.55 agreement with expert tasters, whereas those asked to come up with reasons for their opinions had only a 0.11 correlation

Question 97

Implicit v Explicit Attitudes

Answer 97

• Best way to classify attitudes as implicit or explicit is based on whether they are measured w implicit or explicit measures
• It’s not necessarily a matter of explicit attitudes being conscious (even though they generally are) and implicit being unconscious

Question 98

Implicit Bias

Answer 98

• Our mind tends to categorize things that go along with each other
• Society tends to overrepresent certain pairings which then conditions us to make quick automatic associations
• *Reporting an Attitude We Don’t Have:**
• Occurs due to social desirability
• E.g., description of an exercise and whether they would add it to their repertoire –> when font was easy to read they said the same exercise was easier and would take less time to do
• This relates to cognitive fluency that posits the ease/difficulty required to process info impacts our judgment about the info –> system 1 and tells us if we dislike or like something without actually having a strong opinion about it (like availability heuristic)

Question 99

When attitudes predict behaviour (3)

Answer 99

• when social/other influences on what we say are minimal
• when attitudes specific to behaviour are examined
• when attitudes are potent

Question 100

Attitudes predict behaviour: When influences are minimal

Answer 100

• Expressed attitudes can be affected by outside influences
• Implicit biases are pervasive, people are often unaware of them, and they can cause harm
• Implicit behaviours do predict behaviours and judgments such as exercise behaviour, and voting choices
• For attitudes formed early in life (like racial attitudes), implicit and explicit attitudes frequently diverge, with implicit attitudes being the better predictor of behaviour
• For attitudes related to consumer behaviour and support for political candidates, explicit- self-reports are better predictors
• the situation we face, and social influences play a large role in our behaviour, and can induce people to violate our deepest convictions
• Principle of aggregation- the effects of an attitude become more apparent when we look at a person’s aggregate or average behaviour (over many occasions) rather than isolated acts

Question 101

Attitudes predict behaviour: When attitudes specific to behaviour are examined

Answer 101

• When the measured attitude is a general one, and the behaviour is very specific, there is not usually a close correspondence between words and actions
• Better for predicting behaviour is the Theory of Reasoned Action- knowing peoples intended behaviours and subjective norms (what we think other people think about our behaviour)
• Inducing new intentions induces new behaviour

Question 102

Attitudes predict behaviour: When attitudes are potent

Answer 102

• Much of our behaviours and reactions are automatic as if frees our mind to work on other things
• *Bringing Attitudes to Mind:**
• People who take a few minutes to review their past behaviour express attitudes that better predict future behaviour
• Our attitudes become potent if we are given time to think about them
• Self-conscious ppl are usually in touch with their attitudes
• *Forging Strong Attitudes Through Experience:**
• When attitudes are forged by experience, not just by hearsay, they are more accessible, more enduring, and more likely to guide actions

Question 103

Role-playing

Answer 103

• Role refers to actions expected of those who occupy a particular social position, and each social position is defined by a set of prescribed norms for behaviour
• At first when entering a new role (like entering uni) we tend to feel self-conscious and hypersensitive of our environment, but eventually we fit comfortably into our new role and it no longer feels forced
• how we act in a role can shape our attitudes
• Our actions depend not only on social situations but also on our dispositions, but some social situations can move most “normal” people to behave in “abnormal ways”
• Prison study

Question 104

When saying becomes believing

Answer 104

• People often adapt what they are saying to please their listeners and often adjust their message towards the listener’s position when telling bad news
• When induced to support something they doubt, they begin to believe it to be true

Question 105

Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon

Answer 105

• The tendency for people to have first agreed to a small request to comply later with a larger request
• The initial compliance was voluntary; when people commit themselves to public behaviours and perceive these acts to be their own doing, they come to believe more strongly in what they’ve done

Question 106

Low-Ball technique

Answer 106

• A tactic for getting people to agree to something; people who agree to an initial request will often still comply when the requester ups the ante, while people who only receive the costly request are less likely to comply w it (variation of foot-in-door)
• This technique works even when we are aware of a profit motive
• There is a law now that allows people to think over their purchase (cooling-off period), but this is combatted by having the customer fill out the agreement, and people will then live up to their commitment

Question 107

Door-in-the-face technique

Answer 107

• A strategy for gaining a concession; after someone first turns down a large request (door in the face), the same sequester counteroffers with a more reasonable request
• Works through the principle of reciprocity –> we feel bad saying no because the person has already conceded, so now its our turn to concede

Question 108

Why does our behaviour affect our attitude? (3)

Answer 108

• self-presentation (impression managment)
• self-justification (cognitive dissonance)
• self-perception

Question 109

Self-presentation: Impression management

Answer 109

• For strategic reasons, we express attitudes that make us appear consistent
• To avoid seeming inconsistent, we express attitudes that match our actions, and we may pretend
• Feigning consistency may explain why attitudes shift toward consistency w behaviour; people exhibit a much smaller attitude change when bogus pipeline inhibits trying to make a good impression
• But ppl express their changed attitudes even to someone who doesn’t know how they have behaved

Question 110

Self-Justification: Cognitive Dissonance

Answer 110

• Cognitive dissonance theory- tension that arises when we are simultaneously aware of two inconsistent cognitions; cognitive dissonance may occur when we realize that we have, with little justification, acted contrary to our attitudes, or made a decision favouring one alternative despite reasons favouring another
• To reduce this unpleasant arousal, we often adjust our thinking to remain consistency
• One way we minimize dissonance is through selective exposure to agreeable information
• If we sense inconsistency in our behaviour and attitudes, we feel pressure for change, in either of the facets

Question 111

Cognitive Dissonance: Insufficient justification

Answer 111

• When participating in a boring experiment, those paid $20 said it was interesting but had sufficient reason for doing so (low dissonance), and those who were paid $1 didn’t have sufficient reasoning for saying that it was interesting, so they thought it might’ve actually been interesting (high dissonance)
• When external inducements are insufficient to justify our behaviour, we reduce dissonance by internally justifying the behaviour
• Attitudes-follow-behaviour effect was strongest when people felt some choice and when their actions had foreseeable consequences
• Attitudes follow behaviours for which we feel some responsibility

Question 112

Cognitive Dissonance: Dissonance after decision (and Effort Justification)

Answer 112

• After making important decisions, we usually reduce dissonance by upgrading the chosen alternative and downgrading the unchosen option –> retroactively attributing positive attitudes to what we chose
• Making decisions is one way we express ourselves, and once we make a decision, we are motivated to bolster our attitudes
• Our preferences influence our decisions, which then sharpen our preferences (choices-influence-preferences) –> we prefer things when the outcome of our choice is good, and if a choice disappoints, our attitudes towards it can change significantly in the negative direction
• E.g., rated how much they liked certain items –> get to choose between item 5 and 6 to keep –> rated again and the item they chose went up in rating and the one they didn’t pick went down in rating
• Choice justification occurs IRL in situations including: relationships, gambling, smoking, purchases, choices in Uni, choices in courses
• *Effort Justification:**
• Justification of the time, effort, or money one has devoted to something (especially when the effort was unpleasant or disappointing) –> motivated by dissonance
• We like what we suffer for more
• Liking a group more that required hazing to get into, sunk cost –> following through on something because the money has already been devoted to a course of action

Question 113

Culture and Cognitive Dissonance

Answer 113

Does a tendency for people to justify their decisions arise out of a western cultural desire to individually claim that they made a good decision?
- When western students rated a CD before and after choosing which one to keep, the ratings increased, but in Japanese students, it remained the same

Maybe ppl from collectivist cultures experience dissonance if their collectivist self-concepts were threatened
- Canadian students justified the choices they made for themselves but not the choices they made for their friends, but Japanese justified the choices they made for their friends but not the choices they made for themselves

• The experience of feeling cognitive dissonance may be shared across cultures, but culture can shape this experience

Question 114

Self-perception theory

Answer 114

• Self-perception theory– when we are unsure of our attitudes, we infer them as much as we would someone observing us- by looking at our behaviour and the circumstances under which it occurs
• Hearing ourselves talk informs us of our attitudes; seeing our actions provides clues to how strong our beliefs, which is especially true with the acts we freely commit
• We infer our emotions by observing our body and behaviours

Question 115

Self-Perception: expressions and attitudes

Answer 115

• Using electrodes to move face muscles, students induced to frown reported feeling angry, and those induced to make a smiling face felt happier
• For ppl w Botox it’s hard for them to know themselves or to mimic others’ expressions, so it’s harder for them to understand others emotions
• Going through the motions can trigger emotions
• Acting out another person’s emotion can help you understand how they are feeling and evoke empathy; to sense how other people are feeling
• Observing others’ faces, postures, and voices, we naturally mimic their reactions help us tune in to what they are feeling
• Movements can also influence our attitudes –>shaking head vs nodding

Question 116

Self-perception: over justification and intrinsic motivations

Answer 116

• Contrary to insufficient justification, self-perception theory says that people explain their behaviour by noting the conditions under which it occurs
• Unnecessary rewards sometimes have hidden costs; rewarding people for doing what they already enjoy doing may lead them to attribute their doing it to the reward (extrinsic motivation), thus undermining their self-perception that they do it because they like it (intrinsic motivation) (overjustification effect)
• unexpected compliments can actually boost intrinsic motivation
• When there is too much justification, children-driven learning may diminish

Question 117

Dissonance as arousal

Answer 117

• Self-affirmation theory- a theory that people often experience self-image threat after engaging in an undesirable behaviour, and they compensate for this threat by affirming another aspect of the self–> threaten people’s self-concept in one domain, and they will compensate by refocusing or by doing good deeds in some other domain
• Justifying our actions and decisions is self-affirming; it maintains our sense of integrity and self-worth
• People with secure self-concepts and high self-esteem engage in less self-justification
• Dissonance conditions arouse tension especially when they threaten positive feelings of self-worth, and this arousal seems to be necessary for the attitudes-follow-behaviour effect (disappears when drinking alcohol bc dissonance produced arousal is gone)

Question 118

Self-preceiving when not self-contradicting (when dissonance makes sense and when self-perception makes sense)

Answer 118

Dissonance theory doesn’t explain everything:

• When people argue a position that is in line with their opinion, although a step or two beyond it, procedures that usually eliminate arousal do not eliminate attitude change
• Does not explain the over justification effect since being paid to do what you like to do should not arouse great tension
• does not explain situations where action does not contradict any attitude

Dissonance theory successfully explains what happens when we act contrary to clearly defined attitudes: we feel tension so we adjust our attitudes to reduce it
- In situations where attitudes are not well formed, self-perception theory explains attitude formation: as we reflect and act, we develop a more readily accessible attitude to guide our future behaviour