Chapter 12: Social Psychology Flashcards
What is the “social brain hypothesis”?
One of the largest biological classes that humans belong to is the order primates, which includes great apes and monkeys. According to this theory, primates have large brains - in particular, large prefrontal cortexes because they live in dynamic and complex social groups that change overtime. Humans are at the pinnacle of the great apes in terms of neocortex and average group size. The size of a primate species’ standard social group is related to the volume of that species’ neocortex.
Describe the ingroup/outgroup bias and the outgroup homogeneity effect.
Those groups to which people belong to are ingroups; those that they do not belong to are called outgroups. Two conditions are critical for group formation: reciprocity and transitivity. Reciprocity: If A harms or helps B, B will also help or harm A. Transitivity means that if A and B are friends and A likes C but hates D, B will also tend to like C and hate D Because of the outgroup homogeneity effect, people tend to view groups they are not a part of as uniform and less varied hthan ingroup members. Ingroup favoritism is the tendency to favorably evaluate group members within the group more than the outgroup
What do studies using the minimal group paradigm reveal?
Minimal Group Paradigm - randomly assigning volunteers to two groups using meaningless criteria such as flipping a coin
Participants were given up a task where they divided up money. Not surprisingly, they gave more money to their ingroup members, but they also tried to prevent the outgroup members from receiving any money. These effects occurred even when the participants were told that the basis of group membership was arbitrary and that giving money to the outgroup would not affect how much money their own group obtained.
How does social facilitation work? (Note: this relates to the cockroach study we talked about inclass)
The presence of others of their own species will often cause arousal, which leads to enhancement of the dominant response. If the required response is easy or well learned, the dominant response will be good performance. Thereby performance would be enhanced by social facilitation. If the response is not well learned or difficult, the dominant response is poor performance and therefore performance is impaired.
What is social loafing?
Social loafing is the idea that people do not work as hard when in a group as when working along. Because of multiple peoples’ efforts being pooled, individuals do not feel personally responsible for group output. Consider study where 6 people with headphones on and blindfolded: when each was told there was no one around them, they shouted louder than when they were told they were shouting with other people. When other people know their efforts are being monitored, they do not engage in social loafing.
What is groupthink?
When groupthink occurs, it’s an attempt to maintain a group’s cohesiveness, and the group may make a bad decision for the sake of cohesiveness. Examples can include the Challenger incident in 1986 despite problems with a part and the Bush administration’s decision to go to war with Iraq over WMD when they didn’t actually exist.
When is groupthink more likely to occur?
Groupthink tends to occur when a group is under intense pressure, is facing external threats, and is biased in a particular direction. As a result, the gorup does not process the information available to it and instead assure each other they’re doing the right thing. It’s what happens when group members sometimes go along with bad decision to protect group harmony.
How can you make groupthink less likely?
To prevent groupthink, leaders must refrain from expressing their opinions too strongly at the beginning of discussions. The group should be encouraged to consider alternative ideas, either by having someone play devil’s advocate or by purposefully examining outside opinions. Carefully going through alternatives and weighing the pros and cons of each option can help reduce groupthink.
How did Sherif reduce prejudice in summer camp study? (p. 516)
Cooperation can reduce outgroup bias. In many cases, it’s difficult to change beliefs deeply embedded in cultural and religious values, but there have been successful stories such as the reconciliation of the Hutu and Tutsi as well as disaster relief efforts after Japan’s 2011 tsunami and the 2010 Haiti Earthquake.
Social psychology can be used to suggest ideas for promoting intergroup harmony and producing greater tolerance for outgroups. Sherif’s study was arranged for 22 well adjusted and intelligent boys from Oklahoma City to attend a summer camp at the lake. The boys did not know each other. Before arriving at camp, the boys were divided into groups. During the first week, each group lived in a separate camp away from each other. Neither knew each other existed. The next week, over a four day period, groups competed in athletic tournaments. The winning team would receive a trophy and great prizes, while losers would not receive anything. With the competitive nature, group pride was strong and animosity with the groups escalated. The Eagles burned the Rattlers’ flag, and the Rattlers in return trashed the Eagles’ cabin. Confrontations had to be broken up and all signs of prejudice emerged such as outgroup homogeneity effect and ingroup favoritism. This was phase 1, known as making people hate each other. Phase 2 explored if hostility could be undone. Sherif first tried to have the groups contact each other but that didn’t work out, as hostilities were too strong. Instead, the experimenters created situations where members of both groups had to cooperate to achieve necessary goals. Getting a broken truck to move required all boys regardless of group id to pull together. After tasks with cooperation, the boys became friends across the groups. Among enemies, cooperation created friends.
This is known as a superordinate goal, which requires people to cooperate and work at a common goal to reduce individual barriers of the past
Under what conditions are attitudes more likely to predict behavior?
An attitude is a person’s evaluation of objects, events or of ideas. The stronger and more personally relevant the attitude, the more likely it is to predict behavior. The strong and personally relevant nature of the attitude will lead the person to act the same across situations related to that attitude. It will also lead the person to defend the attitude. For instance, someone who grew up in a strongly Democratic household which voiced disdain about Republicans were more likely to register as a democrat.
Moreover, the more specific the attitude, the more predictive it is. Your attitudes towards recycling are more predictive of whether you take your soda cans to a recycling bin than are your general environmental beliefs. Attitudes formed through direct experience also tend to predict behavior better. Parenthood: No matter what kind of parent you’ll be, by the time you’ve raise a child, you’ll have a strong attitude on how to raise children.
Mere exposure of affect
The idea that greater exposure to the item and therefore greater familiarity with it causes people to have more positive attitudes about them
Cognitive dissonance
dissonance which means lack of agreement, occurs when there is a contradiction between two attitudes or between an attitude and a behavior. People might experience cognitive dissonance when they smoke even when they know that smoking is bad for their health and can kill them. An assumption is that dissonance causes anxiety and tension. Anxiety and tension causes displeasure, which in turn motivates people to reduce dissonance by changing their attitudes and behaviors or by rationalizing or trivializing the discrepancy.
Explain the difference between central and peripheral routes to persuasion.
Persuasion is the active and conscious effort to change an attitude through the transmission of a message. Persuasion is most likely to occur when people pay attention to a message, understand it, and find it convincing. Persuasion takes the central route when people are motivated to process information and are able to process that information. That is, people are paying attention to the arguments, considering all the information, and using rational cognitive processes. This route leads to strong attitudes that last over time and that people actively defend.
When people are not motivated to process information or are unable to process information, persuasion takes the peripheral route. That is, people minimally process the message, and the route leads to more impulsive action, such as when a person decides to purchase a product because a celebrity has endorsed it or because of how an advertisement makes the person feel. Peripheral cues, such as the status or attractiveness of the person making the argument influence which attitude is adopted. Attitudes developed through the peripheral route are weaker and more likely to change over time.
Describe the difference between personal and situational attributions.
Attributions are explanations for events or actions, including other people’s behavior for why something might occur. People are motivated to draw inferences in part by a basic need for both order and predictability. People prefer to think that things happen for reasons and that therefore they can anticipate future events. Personal attributions are internal or dispositional attributions. These explanations refer to things within people, such as abilities, moods, or efforts. For instance, if you believe that Cory Booker rescued his neighbor from flames because he is brave, you are making a personal attribution. Situational attributions are external attributions. These explanations refer to outside events, such as luck, accidents, or the actions of other people. Booker said that he just did what most neighbors would do if they realized someone was trapped in a burning building. NEED A BETTER EXAMPLE AND MORE EXAMPLES
Explain the fundamental attribution error.
For example, someone who follows orders to inflict harm on another, such as the ones in the obedience study is assumed to be an evil person. This tendency is so pervasive that it has been called the fundamental attribution error. People generally fail to take into account that other people are influenced by social circumstances that lead to obedience to authority. Think of Jeopardy host Alex Trebek - viewers assume Trebek must be very smart because he knows so much but when viewers develop this belief based on his performance on the show, they neglect to take into account that he knows the questions and answers because they’ve been written for him on cards.
The fundamental attribution error is our tendency to explain someone’s behavior based on internal factors, such as personality or disposition, and to underestimate the influence that external factors, such as situational influences, have on another person’s behavior. We might, for example, explain the fact that someone is unemployed based on his character, and blame him for his plight, when in fact he was recently laid off due to a sluggish economy. Of course, there are times when we’re correct about our assumptions, but the fundamental attribution error is our tendency to explain the behavior of others based on character or disposition. This is particularly true when the behavior is negative.
