Ch.12 Social Psych Flashcards
Soloman Asch (1907-1996)
Polish-American social psychologist who studied conformity, wrote social psychology (1952)
What was Asch interested in and studied?
Interested in perception and memory
Studied conformity/visual discrimination
Who used confederates in experiments?
Asch
Confederates
collaborators with the experimenter
Asch’s Conformity Study
Conformity: Changing bhvr as a result of real or imagined group pressure
Participants: Male college students in a study concerning visual discrimination tasks
Some participants began to give obviously wrong answers
What did they find from Asch Conformity study?
Found true participants went along with incorrect answers ⅓ of the time. true participants tested individually
Stanley Milgram
American social psychologist
Conducted controversial studies on obedience to authority
Who was a mentor to Asch?
Stanley Milgram
Obedience to Authority (1974) (Milgram)
where he proposed that participants had undergone Agentic shift
Agentic shift
proces in which people transfer responsibility for their own actions to an authority figure
Consequences of the obedience studies:
Review of ethical treatment,
Solidified that situation is the main determinant of behavior
Demonstrated that carefully scripted scenarios in the lab could be used to test hypotheses
Milgram’s Obedience to Authority Study (1963)
Obedience: following direct commands, usually from an authority figure;
Participants: 40 volunteers (20-50 years) at Yale University who became “the teacher” in a study on the effects of punishment on learning and memory
Procedure: Teacher chosen; learner is taken to another room; sample shock to teacher; paired-associate learning task and instructions for incorrect answers
What were the results of Milgram’s Obedience to Authority Study (1963)?
100% of the teachers’ administered some shock; 65% of “the teachers” obeyed he experimenter’s command to deliver 450 volts to the “learner”
Experimenter feedback from Milgram’s Obedience to Authority Study (1963)
First participant dropped out at 300 volts
Muzafer Sherif (1906-1988)
Turkish-American psychologist who studied the spread of social norms and the dynamics of intergroup conflict
Psychology of Social Norms (1936) (Sherif)
examined the ways perceptual judgements are influenced but social interactions
Sherif used autokinetic effect method:
stationary point of light appears to move; asked distance and direction
What did Sherif do when he went back to Turkey?
administered a special version of the Stanford-Binet to adolescents in urban and rural areas
What did the special version of the Stanford Binet test do?
to test the effects of exposure to modern technologies on intelligence
1949 Robbers Cave (OK) study (Sherif)
studied the processes that lead to conflict and cooperation among groups of boys attending a summer camp
What is phase 1 of the 1949 Robbers Cave?
first week of camp, groups name themselves the eagles and the rattlers, formed attachments to group members, not aware of the other group (randomly divided)
What is phase 2 of the 1949 Robbers Cave study?
group conflict with 4-5 days of competition plus 2 days of cooling off (losers get nothing)
phase 3 (robbers cave)
used conflict resolution: “continued” tasks-tasks requiring them to work together for 6-7 days
Realistic Conflict Theory (Sherif)
group conflict arises from competition over resources
social cognition (sherif)
typical thought patterns that people engage in as they interact with others (drives our social behavior)
Leon Festinger (1919-1989)
american social psychologist who developed social comparison theory and cognitive dissonance theory
Social Comparison Theory (Festinger)
the proposal that people evaluate their own opinions and abilities by comparing themselves to other people who are similar to them
who wrote their experiences from the alien story?
When prophecy fails (1956) by festinger, stanley, schachter and henry riecken
What happened in the chicago housewife story i’m 1954?
She said she had telepathic communication with space aliens who told her the earth would be destroyed
Theory of cognitive dissonance (festinger)
the mental discomfort that occurs when a person holds contradictory beliefs or when there is a mismatch b/w attitudes and behavior
ex: “i am on a diet, although i just at cake, it’s okay i’m not on a diet anymore”
Boring task experiment (festinger & carlsmith)
participants were paid $1 or $20 to complete the task, researchers wanted to see which would say the task was interesting those that were paid $1 said it was more interesting
What did the boring task demonstrate?
demonstrated how to construct dramatic social situations in the laboratory to test important hypotheses about human behavior
What needs to be changed for cognitive dissonance?
it’s not one thing you say, it’s your behavior that needs to be changed
Stanley Schacter (1922-1997)
american social psychologist who developed the two-factor theory of emotion, festinger was his mentor
Two-factor theory of emotion
the proposal that emotions consist of general physiological arousal and a cognitive evaluation based on the situation
deviation from group standards (schacter)
the reward for confirming is acceptance into group
social perceptions (schacter)
the ways that we make inferences about motivations and intentions
Harold Kelley (1921-2003)
american social psychologist who played importance roles in developed interdependence and attribution theories
Kelley’s classic thesis
how being told someone is “warm” or “cold” affected others attitudes and behavior toward that person
Who collaborated with John Thibaut?
Kelley did on “the social psychology of groups (1959)
interdependence theory (kelley)
is a description of how the costs and benefits of particular interactions lead to decisions about whether to cooperate or compete and whether to continue or leave the relationship
kelley’s covariation model
proposal that people make attributions by considering which potential cause best predicts the behavior
how many potential causes for behavior are there?
3
what is the first potential cause for behavior?
the personal characteristics of the person were making an attribute about
what is the second potential cause for behavior?
other people that make up the social situation
what is the third potential cause for behavior?
time-modality, the characteristics of the specific situation in which the behavior was taking place
ellen berscheld (1936- )
american social psychologist recognized as leader in the field of relationship science
What does ellen berscheld do for research?
looking at stability in relationship, satisfaction in relationships, emotional experiences in relationships
Who collaborated with kelley on “close relationships” 1983
Ellen Berscheld
Close relationships (1983)
dynamics of close interpersonal relationships/ romantic love
Lee ross (1942-2021)
american psychologist who discovered the fundamental attribution error
Why did lee ross call it “error”
because situational factors are ignored even when they’re important for explaining the behavior and salient to the observer
What do we tend to feel that drives behavior?
personal characteristics
social relations
study of interactions between two or more people, groups or organization
Robert Zajonc (1923-2008)
polish-american social psychologist who explained social facilitation, and discovered the mere exposure effect
social facilitation
it is the effect that the presence of others has on an individuals ability to perform a task
mere exposure effect
it is the observation that people tend to like familiar items more than unfamiliar ones
