Chapter 13 Flashcards
Social psychology
3 Components of Attitudes
- Cognitive component - belief and thoughts
- Affective component - your feeling/emotions towards it
- behavioural component - your action
Does Attitude predict behaviour?
IT DEPENDS on 3 components:
1. Attitude strength: How strong do you feel about this?
2. Attitude accessibility: How easily/often do you think about this?
3. Attitude ambivalence: Do you see the other side?
+ The situational constraints play a huge role on how attitudes reflect behaviours.
Cognitive dissonance theory
Describe
Unpleasant state of tension between 2 or more contradicting thought and behaviours. (when behaviour and attitudes don’t match)
- We don’t like the inconsistency, so we try to reduce the anxiety by changing he attitude
- I’m not changing the behaviour though.
4 Factors involved in persuasion
- Source factors - Who is trying to convince you?
- Message factors - What is used to persuade you?
- Channel factors - How is it presented?
- Receiver factor - Whom - who are you convincing?
5 Persuasion techniques
Reciprocity: a mutual exchange of privileges! It needs to be:
1. Unexpected
2. You offer first (The waitor gives candy before we pay tips)
3. Personalized (ONLY for you guys)
Foot-in-the-door: Follow a small reasonable request with a larger request
- The larger request is the main request
- Using guilt
Door-in-the-face: Start with unreasonably large request followed by a smaller request.
- It works because it makes the recipients become guilty from rejecting the initial large request.
Lowball: Providing an attractive offer (price) then changing the agreement to be something that is not as attractive (But that’s the original intention)
- Once the buyer agrees to purchase the product, the seller mentions all the needed “add-ons” that come along with the product.
- Has to be an ATTRACTIVE offer (while foot in the door doesn’t really need to attract someone)
But-you-are-free: Giving the sense that they’re free to choose whether to perform the act.
- “We’d like you to send $1 to this poor international student… but you are free to go
Don’t confuse between foot in the door and lowball!!
Stereotype vs prejudice vs discrimination
Stereotype: a generalized belief (+ or -) about a group of people, regardless of actual variation among the members.
Prejudice: negative attitudes toward people solely based on their membership in that group.
Discrimination: negative harmful action toward a member of one group simply cuz of their membership in that group,
Causes of prejudice
There’s big 2
Social categorization: us vs them
- Humans like to categorize things
- Evolutionary adaptation
In-Group Bias: tendency to evaluate in-group members more positively than out-group members.
- Social identity - stronger identification with ingroup = stronger ingroup bias = stronger outgroup discrimination
- Self-esteem benefts - ingroup bias raises self-esteem.
Overt discrimination vs covert discrimination
Overt discrimination: Direct and intentional discrimination
- Ex) physically assaulting
Covert discrimination: Subtle acts of prejudice
- Ex) Unequal pay and a lack of promotions for employees of colour
Psychological consequences of stereotyping, prejudice, discrimination
Perceptions of discrimination relate to symptoms of depression
Behavioural consequences of stereotyping, prejudice, discrimination
Self-fulfilling prophecy: an expectation of belief that can influence your behaviours, thus causing the belieft to come true.
- Not really related to “stereotypes” (it could be separate belief about individual itself)
Stereotype threat: When the individual is aware of the negative stereotypes about their group, so they experience fear/anxiety about confirming the stereotypes which ends up with reduced performance.
Causal Attributions
Dispositional / situational influences
How one explains behaviours of another person/group.
Dispositional influences: Finding the origin of the behaviours inside the person.
Situational influences: Contextual, environmental influencing the behaviour. (external)
Just world attributions
The world is a fair place and whatever it got them into that circumstance/behaviour, they deserved it. It’s their fault.
- The world is NOT a fiar place though.
- It leads to fundamental attribution error
Fundamental attribution error
Tendency to overestimate the dispositional causes of other people’s behaviours.
- We focus too much on the dispositional influences ignoring the situational influences
- If we’ve been in the situation, we are less likely to commit FAE.
- Culture influences too (Asians are more likely to look at the situational influences)
Ultimate Attribution Error
Mistake of attributing the negative behaviour of entire group to their dispositions.
- If there is a person who proves the stereotype wrong, it’s cuz they’re “lucky” or “exceptions”
Define
Conformity and why people conform
3 issues
Tendency of people to alter their behaviour as a result of group pressure
1. Normative influence - people conform to social norms for fear of negative consequences. You don’t want people to yell at you.
2. Informational influences - people look to others for guidance about how to behave when in ambiguous situations.
3. Deindividuation
Deindividuation
Tendency of losing one’s sense of personal identity in a group
What happens if deindividuation happens?
5
- Increases anonymity
- Decreases responsibility
- People become outward focused and less inward focused about ourselves
- May increase arousal
- Uniforms enhance group identity
Solomon Asch and his findings of what influence conformity
3
Unanimity
- If all confederates gave the wrong answer, the participant was more likely to conform
- BUT if even 1 person in the group said the right answer, the level of conformity dropped
Size
- Bigger group = more conformity
- After 3-4 people, the conformity is just super high.
Difference in the wrong answer
- If there was another wrong answer amongst the group, the participants were less likely to confrom.
Obedience
Adherence to orders and instructions from people who are above us in the hierarchy or authority
Key factors of Milgram study
3
- Physical distance between teacher & experimenter
- Psychological / physical distance between teacher & learner
- The credibility of the lab & experimenter
