Chapter 13

Question 1

What is social psychology?

Answer 1

– the branch of psychology concerned with the way individuals’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are influenced by others

Question 2

What is person perception?

Answer 2

• • the process of forming impressions of others

- - impressions are often inaccurate because of the many biases and fallacies that occur in person perception

Question 3

What are the effects of physical appearance on person perception?

Answer 3

• • Studies have shown that judgments of others’ personality are often swayed by their appearance, especially their physical attractiveness
• • attractive women were viewed as more agreeable, extraverted, conscientious, open to experience, and emotionally stable (lower in neuroticism) than less attractive women
• • In reality, research findings suggest that little correlation exists between attractiveness and personality traits
• • Karen Dion of the University of Toronto; found that not only were the attractive targets ascribed all those positive characteristics, but they were also expected to have better lives, to be better spouses, and to be more successful in their chosen careers
• • In another study, Dion showed that linking the beautiful with the good starts early. Three- to six-and-a-half-year-old children were shown pictures of attractive and unattractive kids, and were asked to make a series of judgments - the attractive kids were viewed more positively on a variety of dimensions
• • that people have a surprisingly strong tendency to view good-looking individuals as more competent than less attractive individuals; this pays off as attractive people are more likely to secure better jobs and earn higher salaries
• • observers are able to quickly draw inferences based on non-verbal expressiveness accurately; based on a mere ten seconds of videotape, participants can guess strangers’ sexual orientation with decent accuracy
• • observers can make accurate judgments of individuals’ racial prejudice, social status, and intelligence

Question 4

What are social schemas?

Answer 4

• • schemas are cognitive structures that guide information processing
• • Social schemas are organized clusters of ideas about categories of social events and people
• • Individuals depend on social schemas because the schemas help them to efficiently process and store the wealth of information that they take in about others in their interactions

Question 5

What are self-schemas?

Answer 5

• • self-schema is an integrated set of memories, beliefs, and generalizations about one’s behaviour in a given domain and self-schemas seem to operate the same way as any other type of schema
• • people with self- schemas in particular domains (ex. athletic) would show differences in how they processed and remembered information about themselves in that domain, affecting how efficiently they process information related to that domain, how easily they can make judgments about themselves in that domain, and how resistant they are to counter information about themselves in that domain
• • If you do not have a self-schema relevant to a particular domain, you are referred to as being aschematic in that domain

Question 6

What are stereotypes?

Answer 6

• • stereotypes are schemas that are part of a shared cultural background. Widely held beliefs that people have certain characteristics because of their membership in a particular group
• • Stereotyping is a cognitive process that is frequently automatic and that saves on the time and effort required to get a handle on people individually
• • Stereotypes frequently are broad over-generalizations that ignore the diversity within social groups and foster inaccurate perceptions of people
• • Most people who subscribe to stereotypes realize that not all members of a group are identical. However, even if stereotypes mean only that people think in terms of slanted probabilities, their expectations may lead them to misperceive individuals with whom they interact (perception is subjective, and people often see what they expect to see)
• • Study by Mark Zanna; our perception of others is also subject to self-fulfilling prophecy; If you hold strong beliefs about the characteristics of another group, you may behave in such a way so as to bring about these characteristics. In the first study, researchers had white undergraduate males interview either a black or white job applicant. In interviewing a white accomplice, they adopted what was referred to as an immediate style (i.e., sitting closer, more eye contact), but when they interviewed a black accomplice they used a non-immediate style (i.e., sitting farther away, making more speech errors, looking away). In the second study, students who had been interviewed in the non-immediate style seemed more anxious and did not per- form as well in the interview

Question 7

What are subjectivity and bias in person-perception?

Answer 7

• • Stereotypes and other schemas create biases in person perception that frequently lead to confirmation of people’s expectations about others
• • According to James Olson, if someone’s behaviour is ambiguous, people are likely to interpret what they see in a way that’s consistent with their expectations. So, after dealing with a pushy female customer, a salesman who holds traditional gender stereotypes might characterize the woman as “emotional.” In contrast, he might characterize a male who exhibits the same pushy behaviour as “aggressive.”
• • Illusory correlation occurs when people estimate that they have encountered more confirmations of an association between social traits than they have actually seen. People also tend to underestimate the number of disconfirmations that they have encountered (ex. I’ve never met an honest lawyer)
• • Often, individuals selectively recall facts that fit with their schemas and stereotypes

Question 8

What is the evolutionary perspective on bias in person perception?

Answer 8

• • some of the biases seen in social perception were adaptive in humans’ ancestral environment. For example, they argue that person perception is swayed by physical attractiveness because attractiveness was associated with reproduc- tive potential in women and with health, vigour, and the accumulation of material resources in men
• • humans are programmed by evolution to immediately classify people as members of an ingroup—a group that one belongs to and identifies with, or as members of an outgroup—a group that one does not belong to or identify with. Ingroup members tend to be viewed in a favourable light, whereas outgroup members tend to be viewed in terms of various negative stereotypes. Negative stereotypes move outgroups out of our domain of empathy, so we feel justified in not liking them or in discriminating against them, or even in some circumstances dehumanizing them
• • Evolutionary psychologists, then, ascribe much of the bias in person perception to cognitive mecha- nisms that have been shaped by natural selection.

Question 9

What are attributions?

Answer 9

• • inferences that people draw about the causes of events, others’ behaviour, and their own behaviour
• • People make attributions mainly because they have a strong need to understand their experiences

Question 10

What are internal vs external attributions?

Answer 10

• • Internal attributions ascribe the causes of behav- iour to personal dispositions, traits, abilities, and feelings. External attributions ascribe the causes of behaviour to situational demands and environmental constraints
• • For example, if a friend’s business fails, you might attribute it to his or her lack of business acumen (an internal, personal factor) or to negative trends in the nation’s economic climate (an external, situational explanation)
• -Internal and external attributions can have a tremendous impact on everyday interpersonal interactions

Question 11

What are attribution for success and failure?

Answer 11

• • According to Weiner, the stable–unstable dimension in attribution cuts across the internal–external dimension, creating four types of attributions for success and failure. For example, you might attribute your setback to external factors that are stable (too much outstanding competition) or unstable (bad luck). Or you might attribute your setback to internal factors that are stable (lack of ability) or unstable (inadequate effort to put together an eye-catching résumé)
• • when people analyze the causes of poverty, their explanations tend to fit neatly into the cells of Weiner’s model:
    1) internal‒stable (laziness, lack of thrift)
    2) internal‒unstable (financially draining illness)
    3) external‒stable (discrimination, inadequate government programs for training)
    4) external‒unstable (bad luck, economic recession)

Question 12

What is the fundamental attribution error?

Answer 12

• • refers to observers’ bias in favour of internal attributions in explaining others’ behaviour
• • observers have a curious tendency to overestimate the likelihood that an actor’s behaviour reflects personal qualities rather than situational factors because situational pressures may not be readily apparent to an observer. Also, explaining people’s behaviour in terms of situational factors requires more thought and effort and many people feel that few situations are so coercive that they negate all freedom of choice
• • Hence, actors are more likely than observers to locate the cause of their behaviour in the situation

Question 13

What’s actor-observer bias?

Answer 13

– actors favour external attributions for their behaviour, whereas observers are more likely to explain the same behaviour with internal attributions

Question 14

What’s self-serving bias?

Answer 14

• • the tendency to attribute one’s successes to personal factors and one’s failures to situational factors
• • In explaining failure, the usual actor‒observer biases are apparent (external attribution)
• • in explaining success, the usual actor‒observer differences are reversed to some degree: actors prefer internal attributions so they can take credit for their triumphs
• • Interestingly, this bias grows stronger as time passes after an event

Question 15

What’s defensive attribution?

Answer 15

• • the tendency to blame victims for their misfortunes, so that one feels less likely to be victimized in a similar way
• • an observer’s tendency to make internal attributions becomes even stronger than normal -blaming a victim helps people maintain their belief in a just world

Question 16

What is individualism and collectivism?

Answer 16

• • Individualism involves putting personal goals ahead of group goals and defining one’s identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group memberships
• • collectivism involves putting group goals ahead of personal goals and defining one’s identity in terms of the groups one belongs to (such as one’s family, tribe, work group, social class, and caste)
• • North American and Western European cultures tend to be individualistic, whereas Asian, African, and Latin American cultures tend to be collectivistic

Question 17

How does individualism versus collectivism relate to patterns of attribution?

Answer 17

• • collectivist cultures may promote different attributional biases than individualistic cultures do
• • although people from collectivist societies are not immune to the fundamental attribution error, they appear to be less susceptible to it than those from individualistic societies
• • Research also suggests that self-serving bias may be particularly prevalent in individualistic, Western societies, where an emphasis on competition and high self-esteem motivates people to try to impress others, as well as themselves

Question 18

What is interpersonal attraction?

Answer 18

– refers to positive feelings toward another

Question 19

How does physical attractiveness influence interpersonal attraction?

Answer 19

• • Research shows that the key determinant of romantic attraction for both genders is the physical attractiveness of the other person
• • Many studies have demonstrated the singular prominence of physical attractiveness in the initial stage of dating and have shown that it continues to influence the course of commitment as relationships evolve
• • being physically attractive appears to be more important for females’ desirability
• • The matching hypothesis proposes that males and females of approximately equal physical attractiveness are likely to select each other as partners
• • Some theorists believe that individuals mostly pursue highly attractive partners and that their matching is the result of social forces beyond their control, such as rejection by more attractive others

Question 20

What are the effects of similarity on interpersonal attraction?

Answer 20

• • One study found that people sit closer to others who are similar to them on simple physical traits, such as hair length, hair colour, and whether they wear glasses
• • Married and dating couples tend to be similar in age, race, religion, social class, education, intelligence, physical attractiveness, and attitudes
• • The most obvious explanation for these correlations is that similarity causes attraction. However, research also suggests that attraction can foster similarity because people who are close gradually modify their attitudes in ways that make them more congruent, a phenomenon called attitude alignment

Question 21

What are the effects of reciprocity on interpersonal attraction?

Answer 21

• • In interpersonal attraction, reciprocity involves liking those who show that they like us
• • research indicates that we tend to like those who show that they like us and that we tend to see others as liking us more if we like them
• • Reciprocating attraction generally entails providing friends and intimate partners with positive feedback that results in a self-enhancement effect

Question 22

What is passionate and companionate love?

Answer 22

• • romantic relationships are characterized by two kinds of love: passionate love and companionate love
• • Passionate love is a complete absorption in another that includes tender sexual feelings and the agony and ecstasy of intense emotion
• • Companionate love is warm, trusting, tolerant affection for another whose life is deeply intertwined with one’s own
• • recent research suggests that in relationships that remain intact, the erosion of passionate love tends to be gradual and modest, with levels remaining fairly high in most couples
• • Interestingly, brain- imaging research indicates that when people think about someone they are passionately in love with, these thoughts light up the dopamine circuits in the brain that are known to be activated by cocaine and other addictive drugs
• • Passionate and companionate love can co-exist but don’t necessarily go hand in hand
• • as a general rule, companionate love is more strongly related to relationship satisfaction than passionate love
• • Robert Sternberg subdivides companionate love into intimacy and commitment. Intimacy refers to warmth, closeness, and sharing in a relation- ship. Commitment is an intent to maintain a relationship in spite of the difficulties and costs that may arise

Question 23

How can attachment relationships in infancy influence love?

Answer 23

• • Most infants develop a secure attachment. However, some are very anxious when separated from their caregiver (anxious-ambivalent attachment) and a third group of infants, characterized by avoidant attachment, never bond very well with their caregiver
• • romantic love is an attachment process, and people’s intimate relationships in adulthood follow the same form as their attachments in infancy
• • Hazan and Shaver’s initial survey study; adults’ love relationships could be sorted into groups that paralleled the three patterns of attachment seen in infants
    1) Secure adults found it relatively easy to get close to others and described their love relations as trusting
    2) Anxious-ambivalent adults reported a preoccupation with love, accompanied by expectations of rejection, and they described their love relations as volatile and marked by jealousy
    3) Avoidant adults found it difficult to get close to others and described their love relations as lacking intimacy and trust
• • attachment patterns are reasonably stable over time and between relationships
• • research has shown that securely attached individuals have more committed, satisfying, intimate, well-adjusted, and longer-lasting relationships than do people with anxious-ambivalent or avoidant attachment styles
• • studies have shown that people with different attachment styles are predisposed to think, feel, and behave differently in their relationships. For example, people high in attachment anxiety tend to behave in awkward ways that undermine their dating success, so they end up courting rejection by acting cold, wary, disengaged, and preoccupied with themselves. They also tend to overreact emotionally to conflict with their partner

Question 24

What are attitudes?

Answer 24

• • Attitudes are positive or negative evaluations of objects of thought
• • Objects of thought” may include social issues, groups, institutions (the Lutheran Church, the Supreme Court), consumer products, and people (the prime minister, your next- door neighbour)

Question 25

What’re the components/dimensions of attitudes?

Answer 25

• • The cognitive component of an attitude is made up of the beliefs people hold about the object of an attitude. The affective component consists of the emotional feelings stimulated by an object of thought. The behavioural component consists of predispositions to act in certain ways toward an attitude object
• • Attitudes also vary along several crucial dimensions. These include their strength, accessibility, and ambivalence
• • strong attitudes are generally viewed as ones that are firmly held (resistant to change), that are durable over time, and that have a powerful impact on behaviour. The accessibility of an attitude refers to how often one thinks about it and how quickly it comes to mind. Ambivalent attitudes are conflicted evaluations that include both positive and negative feelings about an object of thought. When ambivalence is high, an attitude tends to be more pliable in the face of persuasion.
• • When Wallace and colleague reviewed 797 attitude-behaviour studies, they found that the average correlation between attitudes and behaviour was 0.41. That correlation is high enough to conclude that attitudes are a meaningful predictor of actual behaviour, but they do not predict behav- iour nearly as well as most people assume

Question 26

What are implicit and explicit attitudes?

Answer 26

• • Explicit attitudes are attitudes that we hold consciously and can readily describe. Implicit attitudes are covert attitudes that are expressed in subtle automatic responses over which we have little conscious control. Implicit attitudes were discovered in research on prejudice and their role in various types of prejudice
• • in modern societies most people have been taught that prejudicial attitudes are inappropriate and something to be ashamed of. At the same time, however, people grow up in a culture where negative stereotypes about these groups are widely disseminated. Research has shown that these negative ideas can seep into our subconscious mind and contaminate our reactions to others
• • Implicit Association Test (IAT); A series of words and pictures are presented onscreen and subjects are urged to respond to these stimuli as quickly and accurately as possible. You measures how quickly people associate carefully chosen pairs of concepts
• • Ex. In the first series; press a specific key with their left hand if the stimulus is a black person or a positive word and to press another key with their right hand if the stimulus is a white person or a negative word. In the second series of trials, the instructions are changed and participants are told to press the left-hand key if the stimulus is a black person or a negative word and to press the right-hand key if the stimulus is a white person or positive word. Research shows that reaction times are quicker when liked faces are paired with positive words and disliked faces with negative words.
• • IAT scores are predictive of subtle but potentially important differences in behaviour. Implicit prejudice also predicts discrimination in hiring, negative attitudes about immigration, and aggression in response to provocation
• • Higher implicit racism scores in white subjects are also associated with decreased smiling, reduced eye contact, and shorter speaking time in interracial interactions

Question 27

What are some factors in persuasion?

Answer 27

• • The source is the person who sends a communication, – the receiver is the person to whom the message is sent.
• • The message is the information transmitted by the source
• • the channel is the medium through which the message is sent

Question 28

How do source factors influence persuasion?

Answer 28

• • persuasion tends to be more successful when the source has high credibility (expertise or trustworthiness)
• • Expertise is a plus, but trustworthiness can be even more important. Trustworthiness is undermined when a source appears to have something to gain
• • Likability also increases the effectiveness of a persuasive source
• -In addition, people respond better to sources who share similarity with them in ways that are relevant to the issue at hand

Question 29

How do message factors influence persuasion?

Answer 29

• • two-sided arguments seem to be more effective than one-sided presentations (just mentioning two sides can increase your credibility)
• • Fear appeals appear to work, if the message is successful in arousing fear. Research reveals that many messages intended to induce fear fail to do so
• • Fear appeals are most likely to work when your listeners think they are fairly probable if they don’t take your advice and are avoidable if they do
• • The mere exposure effect is the finding that repeated exposures to a stimulus promotes greater liking of the stimulus, so frequent repetition of a message also seems to be an effective strategy

Question 30

How do receiver factors influence persuasion?

Answer 30

• • The value of forewarning applies to targets of persuasive efforts; when you shop for a new TV, you expect salespeople to work at persuading you, and to some extent this forewarning reduces the impact of their arguments
• • the forewarning a receiver gets about a persuasive effort and the receiver’s initial position on an issue, generally seem to be more influential than the receiver’s personality
• • studies show that stronger attitudes are more resistant to change
• • Considerations that stim- ulate counterarguing in the receiver tend to increase resistance to persuasion
• • resistance can promote resistance; when people successfully resist persuasive efforts to change specific attitudes, they often become more certain about those attitude

Question 31

What is learning theory?

Answer 31

• • learning theory can help explain a wide range of phenomena, from conditioned fears to the acquisition of sex roles to the development of personality traits
• • Attitudes may be learned from parents, peers, the media, cultural traditions, and other social influences
• • The affective, or emotional, component in an attitude can be created through classical conditioning, just as other emotional responses
• • evaluative conditioning consists of efforts to transfer the emotion attached to a UCS to a new CS
• • Operant conditioning may come into play when you openly express an attitude. Agreement from other people generally functions as a reinforcer, strengthening your tendency to express a specific attitude. Disagreement often functions as a form of punishment, which may gradually weaken your commitment to your viewpoint
• • Another person’s attitudes may rub off on you through observational learning
• • Studies show that parents and their children tend to have similar political attitudes and that college students living in residence halls tend to show some convergence in attitudes

Question 32

What is dissonance theory?

Answer 32

• • dissonance theory assumes that inconsistency among attitudes propels people in the direction of attitude change
• • Festinger and Carlsmith had male college students come to a laboratory, where they worked on excruciatingly dull tasks
• • When a subject’s hour was over, the experi- menter confided that some participants’ motivation was being manipulated by telling them that the task was interesting and enjoyable before they started it
• • Then, after a moment’s hesitation, the experimenter offered to pay the subject if he would tell the person in the adjoining waiting room that the task was enjoyable
• • This entire scenario was enacted to coax participants into doing something that was inconsistent with their true feelings (counter-attitudinal behaviour)
• • Some participants received a token payment of $1 for their effort, while others received a more substantial payment of $20
• • Later, a second experimenter inquired about the subjects’ true feelings regarding the dull experimental task. The subjects who were paid $1 exhibited more favourable attitude change
• • cognitive dissonance exists when related cognitions are inconsistent, that is, when they contradict each other. This creates an unpleasant state of tension that motivates people to reduce their dissonance, usually by altering their cognitions
• • The subjects who were paid $20 for lying had an obvious reason for behaving inconsistently with their true attitudes, so these subjects experienced little dissonance. In contrast, the subjects paid $1 had no readily apparent justification for their lie and experienced high dissonance. To reduce it, they tended to persuade themselves that the task was more enjoyable than they had originally thought
• • Research has supported Festinger’s claim that dissonance involves genuine psychological discomfort and even physiological arousal
• • According to Bem’s self-perception theory, people often infer their attitudes from their behaviour. However, studies eventually showed that self-perception is at work primarily when subjects do not have well-defined attitudes regarding the issue at hand

Question 33

What is effort justification?

Answer 33

• • Cognitive dissonance is also at work when people turn attitudinal somersaults to justify efforts that haven’t panned out
• • For example, people who wait in line for an hour or more to get into an exclusive restaurant often praise the restaurant afterward even if they have been served a mediocre meal

Question 34

What is elaboration likelihood model?

Answer 34

• • asserts that there are two basic “routes” to persuasion. The central route is taken when people carefully ponder the content and logic of persuasive messages. The peripheral route is taken when persuasion depends on nonmessage factors, such as the attractiveness and credibility of the source, or on conditioned emotional responses
• -Studies suggest that the central route to persuasion leads to more enduring attitude change than the peripheral route
• • according to the elaboration likelihood model, the durability of attitude change depends on the extent to which people elaborate on (think about) the con- tents of persuasive communication
• • Research also suggests that attitudes changed through central processes predict behaviour better than attitudes changed through peripheral processes

Question 35

What is conformity?

Answer 35

• • Conformity occurs when people yield to real or imagined social pressure
• • That said, conformity lies in the eye of the beholder, as people have a curious tendency to see others as more conforming than themselves. Thus, people tend to believe they are “alone in a crowd of sheep” because everyone else is so conforming.
• • group size and group unanimity are key determinants of conformity. As groups grow larger, conformity increases, up to a point
• • However, group size made little difference if just one accomplice “broke” with the others, wrecking their unanimous agreement. Apparently, the subjects just needed to hear someone else question the accuracy of the group’s perplexing responses

Question 36

Why do people conform?

Answer 36

• • Normative influence operates when people conform to social norms for fear of negative social consequences or when they are uncertain how to behave
• • Informational influence operates when people look to others for guidance about how to behave in ambiguous situations
• • Ultimately, informational influence is all about being right, whereas normative influence is all about being liked

Question 37

What is obedience?

Answer 37

– Obedience is a form of compliance that occurs when people follow direct commands, usually from someone in a position of authority

Question 38

What was Milgram’s study on obedience?

Answer 38

• • A diverse collection of 40 men from the local community. When they arrived at the lab, they drew slips of paper from a hat to get their assignments. The drawing was rigged so that the subject always became the “teacher” and an experimental accomplice became the “learner.”
• • participants were induced to use shocks on learners in a learning experiment as feedback when the learners failed at a rigged task
• • While the learners were in fact confederates and the shocks were nonexistent, participants believed that they had delivered potentially harmful shocks to another person because they were told to do so by an authority figure, the experimenter
• • Participants were induced to increase the shocks to what they believed would be dangerous levels as the learner continued to make mistakes in his task performance. Most participants went ahead and increased the shocks
• • As a whole, Milgram was surprised at how high subjects’ obedience remained as he changed various aspects of his experiment
• • That said, if the authority figure was called away and the orders were given by an ordinary person (supposedly another participant), full obedience dropped to 20 percent
• • In another version, the real subject was always selected to run the shock apparatus in consultation with the other two “teachers.” When both accomplices accepted the experimenter’s orders to continue shocking the learner, the pressure increased obe- dience a bit. However, if an accomplice defied the experimenter and supported the subject’s objections, obedience declined dramatically. If the situational pressures favouring obedience are decreased, obedi- ence declines, as one would expect.

Question 39

What is the ensuing controversy about Milgram’s experiment?

Answer 39

• • Critics maintain that the participants went along only because they knew it was an experiment and “every- thing must be okay.” And some have argued that subjects who agree to participate in a scientific study expect to obey orders from an experimenter.
• • Milgram replied by arguing that if subjects had thought, “everything must be okay,” they wouldn’t have experienced the enormous distress that they clearly showed.
• • As for the idea that research participants expect to follow an experimenter’s commands, Milgram pointed out that so do real-world soldiers and bureau- crats who are accused of villainous acts performed in obedience to authority
• • Overall, the evidence supports the generalizability of Milgram’s results, which were consistently replicated for many years
• • Critics noted that without prior consent, subjects were exposed to extensive deception that could undermine their trust in people and to severe stress that could leave emo- tional scars. Moreover, most participants also had to confront the disturbing fact that they caved in to the experimenter’s commands to inflict harm on an innocent victim

Question 40

What was Jerry Burger’s replication of the Milgram studies?

Answer 40

• • Burger screened participants with great care, excluding those who seemed likely to experience excessive stress, emphasized repeatedly that participants could withdraw from the study without penalty at any time, and provided instant debriefing after each participant completed the procedure
• • Most importantly, he enacted Milgram’s scenario only up through the level of 150 volts. Burger chose 150 volts as the maximum because in Milgram’s series of studies the vast majority of subjects who went past this point went on to administer all the levels of shock
• • Interestingly, in spite of the extra precautions, Burger’s study yielded obedience rates that were only slightly lower than those observed by Milgram 45 years earlier. Given Burger’s repeated assurances that participants could withdraw from the study (which one would expect to reduce obedience), it seems likely that people today are just as prone to obedience as they were in the 1960s.

Question 41

What Are The Cultural Variations in Conformity and Obedience?

Answer 41

• • the phenomena of conformity and obedience seem to transcend culture.
• • many of the studies have reported even higher obe- dience rates than those seen in Milgram’s American samples. For example, obedience rates of over 80 percent have been reported for samples from Italy, Germany, Austria, Spain, and the Netherlands
• • Like many other cultural differences in social behaviour, variations in conformity appear subject to cultural influences (individualism versus collectivism )
• • Various theorists have argued that collectivistic cultures, which emphasize respect for group norms, cooperation, and harmony, probably encourage more conformity than individualistic cultures and have a more positive view of conformity
• • Consistent with this analysis, studies have found higher levels of conformity in collectiv- istic cultures than in individualistic cultures

Question 42

What is the Stanford Prison Simulation?

Answer 42

• • Zimbardo and his colleagues designed the Stanford Prison Simulation to investigate why prisons tend to become abusive, degrading, violent environments
• • After 70 volunteers were given an extensive battery of tests and interviews, the researchers chose 24 students who appeared to be physically healthy and psychologically stable to be the subjects
• • A coin flip determined which of them would be “guards” and which would be “prisoners” in a simulated prison set up at Stanford University
• • The prisoners were “arrested” at their homes, handcuffed, and transported to a mock prison on the Stanford campus.
• • The subjects assigned to be guards could run their prison in whatever way they wanted, except that they were not allowed to use physical punishment.
• • confrontations occurred between the guards and prisoners, and the guards quickly devised a variety of sometimes cruel strategies to maintain total control over their prisoners. Meals, blankets, and bathroom privileges were selectively denied to some prisoners to achieve control. The prisoners were taunted, humiliated, and called demeaning names. Pointless, petty rules were strictly enforced. Difficult prisoners were punished with hard labour. And the guards created a “hole” for solitary confinement of rebellious prisoners. Although there was some variation among the guards, collectively they became mean, malicious, and abusive in fulfilling their responsibilities
• • A few prisoners showed signs of emotional disturbance and had to be released early, but they mostly became listless, apathetic, and demoralized. The study was designed to run for two weeks, but Zimbardo decided to end it prematurely after just six days because he was concerned about the rapidly escalating abuse and degradation of the prisoners. The subjects were debriefed, offered counselling, and sent home

Question 43

How did Zimbardo explain the Stanford Prison Experiment behaviour?

Answer 43

• • They attributed the participants’ behaviour to the enormous influence of social roles
• • Social roles are widely shared expectations about how people in certain positions are supposed to behave
• • The participants had a rough idea of what it meant to act like a guard or a prisoner, and they were gradually consumed by their roles
• • Second, the researchers attributed their subjects’ behaviour to the compelling power of situational factors. Before the study began, the tests and interviews showed no measurable differences in personality or character between those randomly assigned to be guards or prisoners. As a result, Zimbardo, like Milgram before him, concluded that situational pressures can lead normal, decent people to behave in sinister, repugnant ways.
• • Some critics argued that the Stanford Prison Simulation was more of an elaborate demonstration than an empirical study that collected precise data. Other critics voiced concern that the guards were implicitly encouraged to be abusive, thus tainting the findings.

Question 44

What is a group?

Answer 44

• • a group consists of two or more individuals who interact and are inter- dependent.
• • the nature of groups is evolving because of advances in technology; Traditional groups usually had a designated leader, whereas modern groups often are self-managing, with shared leadership. Similarly, traditional groups tended to be created in a top-down fashion, whereas modern groups often coalesce on their own to explore shared interests.

Question 45

What is the bystander effect?

Answer 45

• • bystander effect: people are less likely to provide needed help when they are in groups than when they are alone
• • In the Darley and Latané (1968) study, students in individual cubicles connected by an intercom par- ticipated in discussion groups of three sizes. Early in the discussion, a student who was an experimental accomplice hesitantly mentioned that he was prone to seizures. Later in the discussion, the same accom- plice faked a severe seizure and cried out for help. Although a majority of participants sought assistance for the student, the tendency to seek help declined with increasing group size
• • the most important factor at work appears to be the diffusion of responsibility. If you’re by yourself when you encounter someone in need of help, the responsibility to provide help rests squarely on your shoulders. However, if other people are present, the responsibility is divided among you, and you may all say to yourselves, “Someone else will help.”

Question 46

What is group productivity and social loafing?

Answer 46

• • Individuals’ productivity often does decline in larger groups
• • Two factors appear to contribute to reduced individual productivity in larger groups. One factor is reduced efficiency resulting from the loss of coordination among workers’ efforts. As you put more people on a yearbook staff, for instance, you’ll probably create more and more duplication of effort and increase how often group members end up working at cross-purposes.
• • The second factor contributing to low productivity in groups involves effort rather than efficiency. Social loafing is a reduction in effort by individuals when they work in groups as compared to when they work by themselves
• • To investigate social loafing, Latané and his colleagues measured the sound output produced by subjects who were asked to cheer or clap as loud as they could. Subjects were led to believe that they were either working alone or in a group of two or six, when in fact they were working alone and individual output was actually being measured (blindfolds and head- phones through which loud noise was played was put on). When participants thought that they were working in larger groups, their individual output declined.
• • Since lack of coordination could not affect individual output, the subjects’ decreased sound production had to be due to reduced effort. Latané and his col- leagues also had the same subjects clap and shout in genuine groups of two and six and found an additional decrease in production that was attributed to loss of coordination
• • Social loafing and the bystander effect appear to share a common cause: diffusion of responsibility in groups

Question 47

How can social loafing be reduced?

Answer 47

• • social loafing is less likely when individuals’ personal contributions to productivity are readily identifiable and when group norms encourage productivity and personal involvement
• • social loafing is reduced when people work in smaller and more cohesive group

Question 48

How do cultural factors influence social loafing?

Answer 48

– Studies with subjects from Japan, China, and Taiwan suggest that social loafing may be less prevalent in collectivistic cultures, which place a high priority on meeting group goals and contributing to one’s ingroups

Question 49

How is decision making influenced in groups?

Answer 49

• • good evidence that decision making in groups may sometimes display or accentuate important biases when compared to individual decision making.
• • research by Wilfrid Laurier University’s Roger Buehler and his colleagues has shown that the tendency of individuals to make optimistic predictions regarding how long it will take to complete a task is accentuated as a result of group discussion

Question 50

What is group polarization?

Answer 50

• • risky shift; Stoner asked individual subjects to give their recommendations on tough decisions and then asked the same subjects to engage in group discus- sion to arrive at joint recommendations. When Stoner compared individuals’ average recommendation against their group decision generated through discussion, he found that groups arrived at riskier decisions than individuals did
• • However, investigators eventually determined that groups can shift either way, toward risk or caution, depending on which way the group is leaning to begin with
• • A shift toward a more extreme position, an effect called polarization, is often the result of group discussion
• • Thus, group polarization occurs when group discussion strengthens a group’s dominant point of view and produces a shift toward a more extreme decision in that direction
• • One reason for group polarization is that group discussion often exposes group members to persuasive arguments that they had not thought about previously. Another reason is that when people discover that their views are shared by others, they tend to express even stronger views because they want to be liked by their ingroups

Question 51

What is groupthink?

Answer 51

• • Groupthink occurs when members of a cohesive group emphasize concurrence at the expense of critical thinking in arriving at a decision
• • groupthink doesn’t produce very effective decision making. Indeed, groupthink can lead to major blunders that may look incomprehensible after the fact
• • When groups get caught up in group- think, members suspend their critical judgment and the group starts censoring dissent as the pressure to conform increases. Soon, everyone begins to think alike. Moreover, some members serve as “mind guards” and try to shield the group from information that contradicts the group’s view.
• • If the group’s view is challenged from outside, victims of groupthink tend to think in simplistic “us versus them” terms
• • Groupthink also promotes incomplete gathering of information. Like individuals, groups often display a confirmation bias, as they tend to seek and focus on information that supports their initial views
• • individual members often fail to share information that is unique to them
• • What causes groupthink? Group cohesiveness refers to the strength of the liking relationships linking group members to each other and to the group itself. Members of cohesive groups are close-knit, are committed, have “team spirit,” and are very loyal to the group
• • Cohesiveness can facilitate group productivity but the danger of groupthink is greater when groups are highly cohesive.
• • Groupthink is also more likely when a group works in relative isolation, when the group’s power structure is dominated by a strong, directive leader, and when the group is under stress to make a major decision. Under these conditions, group discussions can easily lead to group polarization, strengthening the group’s dominant view