Chapter 1 - Social Psychology Flashcards
Norman Triplett
first study of social psychology, effect of competition on performance
William McDougall and E.H.Ross
First textbooks on social psychology
Verplank
social approval influences behavior, contribution to reinforcement theory
Reinforcement Theory
Verplank, Pavlov, Thorndike, Hull, Skinner
behavior is motivated by anticipated rewards
Social Learning Theorists
Opposed early reinforcement theory, Albert Bandura
Albert Bandura
behavior is learned through imitation
Role Theory
people are aware of the social roles they are expected to fill and much of their observable behavior can be attributed to adopting those roles
Attitudes
cognitions or beliefs, feelings, and behavioral predispositions
Consistency theories
people prefer consistency, if there is inconsistency, people will try and resolve it
Fritz Heider’s Balance Theory
three elements are related: person whom we’re talking about (P), some other person(O), and a thing, ida, or some other person (X) - balance will exist if there are one or three positives
Leon Festinger’s Cognitive Dissonance Theory
behavior that conflicts with an attitude may result in changing one’s attitude so that it is consistent
- If a person is pressured to say or do something contrary to his or her privately held attitudes there will be a tendency for him or her to change those attitudes.
- The greater the pressure to comply, the less this attitude change. Ultimately, attidue change generally occurs when the behavioris induced with minimum pressure.
Free-choice Dissonance
a person makes a choice between several desirable alternatives
Post-decisional Dissonance
dissonance emerging after choice
Spreading of alternatives
relative worth of the two alternatives is spread apart (cognitive dissonance theory; accentuating the positive in a choice made reduces the value of a choice not made: choice A is better than choice B)
Forced-compliance dissonance
comes from anticipated punishment or reward, this dissonance is created by being forced into behavior
Festinger and Carlsmith (1959)
When behavior can be justified by means of external inducements there is no need to change internal cognitions (cognitive dissonance experiment)
Minimal Justification Effect/Insufficient Justification Effect
When external justification is minimal,dissonance is reduced by changing internal cognitions (cognitive dissonance theory)
Daryl Bem’s self-perception theory
people infer what their attitudes are based upon observation of their own behavior
Overjustification Effect
If you reward people for something they’re already doing, they may stop liking it
Carl Hovland
persuasion = the communicator, the communication, and the situation
Carl Hovland and Walter Weiss (1952)
study on source credibility, showed highly credible sources were more effective in short term, and sleeper effect
Sleeper Effect
Over time, persuasive impact of high credibility sources decrease and persuasive impact of low credibility sources increase (Hovland and Weiss 1952)
Petty and Cacioppo’s Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion
two routes to persuasion: central and peripheral
central: strength of argument matters
peripheral: surroundings and arguer matter
William McGuire
analogy of inoculation with cultural truisms - when not inoculated quite susceptible to attack
Belief perseverance
hold beliefs even after shown to be false
Reactance
try too hard to persuade someone of something they will choose to believe the opposite of yoru position
Leon Festinger’s Social Comparison Theory
we are drawn to affiliate because of a tendency to evaluate ourselves in relationship to other people
- People prefer to evaluate themselves by objective, nonsocial means. However when this is not possible, people evaluate their opinions and abilities by comparing them to those of other people.
- The Less the similarity between two people, the less the tendency to make these comparisons.
- When a discrepancy exists there is a tendency to change one’s position to move it in line with the group.
Stanley Shachter
greater anxiety does lead to greater desire to affiliate
Reciprocity Hypothesis
We tend to like people who indicate that they like us, and the inverse (dislike people who dislike us)
Aronson and Linder
Gain-Loss Principle
Gain-Loss Principle
Evaluation that changes will have more of an impact
Social Exchange Theory
People attempt to maximize rewards and minimize costs when making affiliation/attraction decisions.
Equity Theory
We consider not only our own costs and benefits of social exchanges but the costs and rewards of the other person. We prefer our ratio of costs to rewards be equal to the other person’s ratio.
Similarity
Correlations have been found between affiliation and similarity.
Need Complementarity
People choose relationships so that they mutually satisfy each other’s needs
Physical Attractiveness
A determinate of attraction
Attractiveness Stereotype
tendency to attribute positive qualities and desirable characteristics to attractive people
Spatial Proximity
People will generally develop a greater liking for someone who is closer in space.
Mere Exposure Hypothesis
Repeated exposure to a stimulus leads to nhanced liking for it
Robert Zajone
Key figure in mere-exposure research
Helping Behavior
Behaviors that benefit other individuals or groups of people, altruism is a type of helping behavior, so are acts motivated by egoism or selfishness
Altruism
person’s intent is to benefit someone else at some cost to himself or herself, type of helping behavior
John Darley and Bibb Latane
Bystander Intervention
Bystander Intervention
Darley and Latane, Tested social influence factors (steam from a radiator) and diffusion of responsibility factors (seizure over the internet)
Social Influence
Influence of other people present
Pluralistic Ignorance
Leading others to a definition of an event as a nonemergency
Diffusion of Responsibility
The fact that others are in a position to help may sway the person toward not helping.The more people present the less the likelihood that any individual will offer to help (Darley and Latane)
Empathy
ability to vicariously experience the emotions of another
Batson’s empathy-altruism model
In situations in which others may need help, people might feel distress and/or empathy, either can determine helping behavior
Subjects in the easy-escape condition reporting more distress than empathy tended to leave rather than help, subjects who reported more empathy than distress were more likely to help in both conditions.
Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis
When people are frustrated, they act aggressively
Bandura’s Social Learning Theory
Aggression is learned through modeling or through reinforcement, “Bobo” doll experiment
Modeling
direct observation
Autokinetic Effect
If you stare at a point of light in a room that is otherwise completely dark, the light will appear to move
Muzafer Sherif
Individuals conformed to the group (autokinetic effect); their judgements converged on some group norm.
Conformity
Yeilding to group pressure when no explicit demand has been made to do so
Soloman Asch
Length of Lines Conformity Experiment
Stanley Milgram’s Experiment
Results indicated that the drive to obey was stronger than the drive not to hurt someone against his will. In a separate study, two confederated defy the experiment, 90 % of subjects follow lead. With intermediary confederate to push button, more participants stayed until the end.
Foot-in-the-door effect
Compliance with a small request increases the likelihood of compliance with a larger request
Door-in-the-face effect
People who refuse a large initial request are more likely to agree to a later smaller request
Clark and Clark (1947)
Doll preference task
Doll Preference Task
Clark and Clark (1947) Majority of white and black children preferred white doll, used to argue against school segregation in 1954, later (1960s) black children held positive views of their own ethnicity
Personal Identity
The more salient the identity, the more we conform to the role expectations of the identities
Social Perception
Ways in which we form impressions about the characteristics of individuals and of groups of people
Primacy Effect
Situations where first impressions are more important
Recency Effect
Situations where the most recent impressions are the most important
Attribution Theory
Individuals infer the causes of other people’s behavior - Heider: dispositional causes and situational causes
Franz Heider
Balance Theory, founding father of attribution theory
Fundamental Attribution Error
General bias towards dispositional causes
Halo Effect
Allow a general impression to influence other more specific evaluationsabout a person
M. J. Lerner
tendency of individuals to believe in a just world, increases likelihood of blaming the victim
Theodore Newcomb
demonstrating the influence of group norms, Bennington College Study
Edward Hall
There are cultural norms that govern how far we stand from the people we’re speaking to
Proxemics
study of how individuals space themselves in relation to others
Zajonc
presence of others increases arousal, enhancing the emission of dominant responses
Social Loafing
tendency for people to put forth less effort when part of a group effort than when acting individually
Philip Zimbardo
people are more laikely to commit antisocial acts when they feel anonymous, prison simulation
Deindividuation
loss of self-awareness and of personal identity
Prison Simulation
Philip Zimbardo, overwhelmed by the roles they were playing, began acting out those roles forgetting that they were actually university students, deindividuation
Irving Janis
Groupthink leads to wrong decisions
Groupthink
tendency of decision-making groups to strive for consensus by not considering discordant information (ex. Bay of Pigs)
Risky Shift
Group decisions are riskier than the average of individual choices
Value Hypothesis
Risky shift occurs in situations where riskiness is culturally valued
James Stoner
Shift with group decisions toward caution instead of risk
Group Polarization
tendency for group discussion to enhance the group’s initial tendencies towards riskiness or caution
Leadership and Communication
Artificially increasing the amount a person speaks increases that person’s perceived leadership status
Kurt Lewin
Boy’s after school program leadership experiment -
Autocratic-quantity of work greater, hostile, aggressive, dependent on their leader
Democratic-motivation and interest stronger, satisfying, more cohesive
Laissez-Faire - least organized, least efficient, least satisfying
Cooperation
Persons act together for their mutual benefit
Competition
Person acts for his or her individual benefit for a goal that has limited availability
Prisoner’s Dilemma
Look up in terms of comp/coop
Muzafer Sherif
Cooperative activities promoted status hierarchy, role differentiation, norms for behavior, and self-adopted names, competition promoted name calling, physical encounters, and raids, contacts failed to reduce hostilities but superordinate goals were effective
Superordinate goals
Goals best obtained through intergroup cooperation
Aronson, E. Linder, D.
Proposed gain-loss principle(an evaluation that changes will have more effect than an evaluation that remains constant)
Asch, S.
Studied conformity by asking subjects to compare the lenghts of lines
Bem, D.
Developed self-perception theory as an alternative to cognitive dissonance theory
Clark, K., Clark, M.
Performed study on doll preferences in African-American children: the results were used in teh 1954 Brown v. the Topeka Board of Education Supreme Court case.
Darley, J., Latene, B.
Proposed that there were two factors that could lead to non-helping: social influence and diffusion of responsibility
Eagly, A.
Suggested that gender differences in conformity were not due to gender per se, but to differing social roles
Festinger, L.
Developed cognitive dissonance theory; also developed Social Comparison Theory
Hall, E.
Studied norms for interpersonal distance in interpersonal interactions
Heider, F.
Developed balance theory to explain why attitudes change; also developed attribution theory and divided attributions into two categories: dispositional and situational
Hovland, C.
Studied attitude Change
Janis, I.
Developed the concept of groupthink to explain how group decision-making can sometimes go awry.
Lerner, M.
Proposed concept of belief in a just world.
Lewin, K.
Divided leadership styles into three categories: autocratic, democratic, and laissez-faire.
McGuire, W.
Studied how psychological inoculation could help people resist persuasion.
Milgram, S.
Studied obedience by asking subjects to administer electroshock; also proposed stimulus-overload theory to explain differences between city and country dwellers
Newcomb, T.
Studied political norms
Petty, R., Cacioppo, J.
Developed elaboration likelihood model of persuasion (central and peripheral routes to persuasion)
Zajonc, R.
Studied the mere exposure effect; also resolved problems with social facilitation effect by suggesting that the presence of others enhances the emission of dominant responses and impairs the emission of nondominant responses
Zimbardo, P
Performed prison simulation and used concept of deindividuation to explain results
