Chapter 13 Flashcards
Mimicry
Mimicry is the automatic imitation of others’ behaviors, enhancing social bonding. Key aspects include:
Copying Behavior: Imitating gestures, speech, or expressions.
Chameleon Effect: Subconsciously blending in to make interactions smoother.
Nonconscious Mimicry: Unintentional mimicry that builds rapport.
Ostracism
Ostracism is a strong form of social pressure involving exclusion or ignoring individuals, often leading to feelings of isolation and impacting self-esteem and well-being.
Group Dynamics
Social Loafing
Social facilitation
Group Dynamics
Social Loafing
- When individuals put less effort into tasks when working with others
Social facilitation
- When one’s performance is affected by the presence of others
The Asch Experiments: Conformity
Conformity: Adopting actions or attitudes due to real or perceived group pressure.
Normative Influence: Conforming to fit in and be accepted, avoiding rejection.
Informational Influence: Conforming because the group’s perspective is seen as informative or helpful in understanding a situation.
Follow-up Studies on Conformity and Group Influence:
Conformity and Group Size: Conformity increases with group size, reaching its peak when there are at least three people. Larger groups don’t significantly increase conformity further.
Power of Individuals: A single dissenter—someone who disagrees with the group—can significantly reduce conformity, empowering others to express their true beliefs.
The Bystander Effect:
Diffusion of Responsibility
The Bystander Effect:
a social phenomenon where individuals are less likely to help in an emergency when others are present, as they assume someone else will intervene. This effect gained attention following the story of Kitty Genovese, a woman who was attacked in New York City while bystanders reportedly did not intervene. Her case highlighted how the presence of others can reduce the likelihood of any one person stepping forward to help.
Diffusion of Responsibility: In groups, individuals feel less personal responsibility to act, assuming others will step in.
If ten people watch someone choking on a bus but do nothing, this is an example of diffusion of responsibility.
Researchers describe two types of social influences that lead people to conform:
and Brain Area
Normative Influence: The pressure to conform to gain social acceptance and avoid rejection.
Informational Influence: The influence of others’ opinions, which people may accept as useful information in uncertain situations.
When people resist conforming to a group’s incorrect judgments, the amygdala becomes active. This area is associated with processing emotional responses, suggesting that resisting group pressure may evoke feelings of discomfort or stress.
Pluralistic Ignorance:
occurs when individuals mistakenly believe that their own thoughts or beliefs differ from those of the group, so they conform to what they think is the group norm, even if that norm is not widely held. This can lead to inaction in ambiguous situations, as people look to others for cues on how to behave.
People may conform outwardly to perceived social norms even if they internally disagree, mistakenly thinking others support those norms. This can discourage action in ambiguous situations.
Main Outcome of Milgram’s Study:
The Milgram study revealed that ordinary people are often willing to obey authority figures even when instructed to perform actions that conflict with their morals, demonstrating how powerful authority can be in shaping behavior.
“The Banality of Evil”:
Sociologist Hannah Arendt used this phrase to describe how ordinary people can commit horrific acts not out of malice, but due to a tendency to follow orders or conform to roles without critical thought. This concept is related to Milgram’s research, as his study demonstrated how regular individuals could perform harmful actions simply by complying with an authority figure’s directives, highlighting how obedience can lead to morally questionable behavior.
Two Types of Cognitive Processes:
ex and im
Explicit Processes: Conscious, deliberate, and effortful mental activities, such as logical reasoning or decision-making that we are aware of and can control.
Implicit Processes: Automatic, unconscious mental activities, like intuition or habits, that occur without deliberate thought and influence behavior subtly.
Dual-Process Models: Theories suggesting that human thinking operates through both explicit and implicit processes, with one pathway for deliberate reasoning and another for automatic responses, allowing flexibility in how we process information.
Person Perception and Schemas
Person Perception: The mental processes through which we categorize and form judgments about others, helping us navigate social interactions.
Schemas: Cognitive structures that organize information and relationships, shaping our expectations and interpretations of people and situations.
Projecting the Self onto Others:
False Consensus
Naïve Realism:
Self-Serving Biases:
Projecting the Self onto Others: This involves projecting our beliefs and attitudes onto others, often through false consensus and naïve realism.
False Consensus: The tendency to assume that others share our views, beliefs, or behaviors, projecting our self-concept onto the social world.
Naïve Realism: The assumption that our perception of reality is objective and accurate, while others’ differing views are biased or incorrect.
Self-Serving Biases: These biases help us maintain a positive self-image, leading us to attribute successes to our abilities or effort and failures to external factors. This need to feel good about ourselves can influence how we interpret events and interact with others.
Attribution Theory:
Situational (External) Attribution:
Dispositional (Internal) Attribution:
Attribution Theory: This theory explains how people interpret and explain the causes of their own and others’ behavior by attributing it either to external (situational) or internal (dispositional) factors.
Situational (External) Attribution: Assigning the cause of behavior to external factors, such as the environment or context (e.g., time of day, surrounding environment, interactions with others).
Dispositional (Internal) Attribution: Attributing behavior to personal traits or motives (e.g., intelligence, personality, gender, ethnicity).
Fundamental Attribution Error:
The Fundamental Attribution Error is the tendency to overemphasize personal characteristics (dispositional factors) and underestimate situational factors when interpreting others’ behaviors.
Example: Assuming someone is rude because they are naturally inconsiderate, without considering they might be having a stressful day.
Cultural Phenomenon: This error is more common in individualistic cultures, where personal traits are often emphasized over contextual influences. In contrast, collectivist cultures are more likely to consider situational factors, leading to fewer instances of this attribution bias.
