chapter 13: social psychology 1 Flashcards
social psychology
the subfield of psychology that deals most explicitly with how we view one another and are influenced by one another
person perception
the process by which we perceive and understand one another and ourselves + attitudes + evaluative beliefs that we have about our social world and the entities within in + effects that those perceptions and beliefs have on our emotions and actions
what did fritz heider say
that human beings are natural psychologists - naturally come to understand the psychological world, make remarkably accurate observations and judgements about other people’s behavior
why are social psychologists interested in biases
clues about mental processes that contribute to accurate and inaccurate perceptions and judgements (analogous to interest in visual illusions), can promote social justice by helping people understand psychological tendencies that contribute to prejudice and unfair treatment of other people
attribution
any claim about the cause of somebody’s behavior
person bias in attribution
Heider - people tend to give too much weight to personality and not enough to the environmental situation
person bias in students experiment
college students listened to a student who was assigned to read a political statement written by someone else - even when they see that the reader chosen at random, observers rated the reader as politically liberal/conservative based on the text
how does a person’s social role have undue effects on the attributions that others make about that person
when we observe a police officer, nurse, teacher - accord with the person bias, attribute the action to the individual’s personality and ignore the constraints that the role places
manager/clerk experiment
volunteers randomly assigned to clerk/manager - managers got interesting tasks, clerks given routine boring tasks - those in manager roles judged more positively, higher in leadership, intelligence, assertiveness, supportiveness, and likelihood future success
the bias didn’t hold when subjects rated themselves
fundamental attribution error
by the mid 1970s, the person bias was called fundamental attribution by Lee Ross - underlies other psychology phenomena
when are person more likely to show the person bias
people much more likely to make errors if their minds are occupied by other tasks or if they’re tired, research subjects who’re told that their task is to judge someone’s personality are much more likely to exhibit the person bias than those who’re told to explain the observed behavior in whatever terms
when did social psychologists stop just studying the West
1980s
US vs India person bias
think of an action by someone they knew and then explain why the person acted in that way - Americans made more attributions to personality and fewer to the situation, the difference greater for adults
explanations for cultural differences in person bias
language, genes but most likely explanation is social orientation - Western cultures emphasize personal independence, Eastern cultures emphasize greater interdependence
the two most researched biases in facial features
attractiveness bias and the baby face bias
attractiveness bias
physically attractive people are commonly judged as more intelligent, competent, sociable and moral
attractiveness bias in teachers
fifth-grade teachers were given report cards and photos of children and asked to rate each child’s intelligence and achievement - rated physically attractive children as more intelligent when the grades are the same
attractiveness bias in judges
much less likely to give longer prison sentences to more attractive people
are East Asians susceptible to the attractiveness bias
less than westerners
longitudinal studies attractiveness bias
archival photos and IQ scores of people born between 1920 and 1929 and asked people to rate attractiveness and IQ - photos taken at 5 different times in the life span:childhood, puberty, adolescence, mid-adulthood, later adulthood - correlation between perceived attractiveness 0.57 with actual IQ 0.21
“good genes” theory
attractiveness signals good genes, people have evolved to judge attractive people as high-quality potential mates (but it accounts only for 4% of individual differences in IQ)
how is facial attractiveness related to symmetry and prenatal experiences
the more problems a fetus experiences, the less symmetrical their body will be, the less fit overall they can be expected to be
facial features that resemble those of a baby
a round head, a forehead protruding forward, large eyes, small jawbone
does baby face bias affect both east and west
yes (us and Korea) - perceived as more naive, honest, helpless, kind and warm
court cases baby faced bias
baby-faced defendants were much more frequently found innocent in cases involving intentional wrongdoing - difficult to think of them causing harm on purpose
facial features play a role in determining the results of US congress elections
photos of two top candidates for each 95 senate races and 600 House of Representatives races between 200 and 2004 - showed each pair of photos 1 second - predicted the winner of 72% Senate races and 67% of the House races
reagen vs kennedy experiment
when altered to increase their baby-facedness, perceived leadership qualities declined
why is the baby face bias useful
immature facial features may provide adults with cues regarding a child’s health and overall maturity level that influence the amount of time and resources devoted to a child
how is the correlation between internet use and sociability and emotional well being
positive
ex: college students meet on internet
the degree of liking between those who first met online increased more face-to-face, those who met in person liked each other less initially, second meeting didn’t do anything
how are meetings over the internet
more intimate, more revealing of what each person considers to be their true self - reduced social anxiety + biasing effects of attractiveness are absent (communication isn’t shut down by early negative judgements based on physical features)
identity
the aspect of the self that is accessible and salient in a particular context and that interacts with the environment
identity experiments
pretending to be somebody they’re not
idenitity experiments experiment
half of the adolescents admitted to pretending to be somebody else online, with it being more frequent in young er adolescents (9 to 12: 72%, 13 to 14: 53%, 15 to 18: 28%)
boys exaggerating their masculinity, girls pretending to be prettier and older
self concept
the way a person defines themselves, a fundamentally social product (to become aware of yourself you must first become aware of others of your species and then become aware you’re one of them)
“looking glass metaphor”
we all naturally infer what others think of us from their reactions, use them to build our own self-concepts
what supports the looking glass metaphor
people’s opinions and attitudes about themselves are very much affected by the opinions and attitudes of others
self fulfilling prophecies (pygmalion effect)
the beliefs and expectations that others have of a person can to some degree create reality
pygmalion in the classroom effect
elementary teachers led to believe that a special test predicted that some students would show a spurt in intellectual growth - 8 months later the “spurter students” showed a much higher IQ and academic performance - teachers became warmer, gave them more time to answer difficult questions, gave them more challenging work, noticed and reinforced their self-initiated efforts (created a better learning environment) + those children started believing in themselves more
pygmalion effect with adults
supervisors led to believe that some subordinates have “special promise” - extra attention and encouragement + self concepts
self-esteem
one’s feeling of approval, acceptance and liking of oneself, measured with questionnaires in which people rate the degree to which they agree or disagree with statements
sociometer theory
self esteem derives primarily from our perceptions of others’ attitudes toward us - it’s a meter to inform us of the degree to which we’re likely to be accepted or rejected
evidence for sociometer theory
individual differences in self-esteem correlate with differences in degree to which people believe they’re accepted, people’s self-esteem increases after praise social acceptance or other satisfying social experiences + feedback about a test had greater effect if the person was lead to believe that others would hear
evolutionary explanation sociometer theory
our survival depended on others’ acceptance of us and willingness to cooperate - it motivates us to act in ways that promote our acceptance by others (a decline in self-esteem may lead us to change our ways to become more accepted or seek another social group)
social comparison
the process of comparing ourselves in order to identify our unique characteristics and evaluate abilities
reference group
the group against whom the comparison is made
social comparison experiment
children’s self-descriptions were found to focus on traits that most distinguished them from others in the group (kids in homogeneous classrooms rarely mentioned race)
big fish in small pond effect
academically able students at nonselective schools have higher academic self-concepts than do equally able students at very selective schools
how many college instructors said they’re better than average
94%
positive illusory bias
adults’ overestimation of their abilities, associated with short term greater psychological well-being
self-serving attributional bias
tendency to attribute our successes to our own inner qualities and our failures to external circumstances
self-serving bias example
students who performed well on an exam attributed that to their own ability and hard work, those that didn’t attributed it to bad luck, unfairness on the test + college professors who were asked why their paper has been accepted/rejected
self-serving attributional bias, memory
better long-term memory for positive events and successes in their lives (not for other people) + strong in elders
maladaptive of self-serving attributional bias
when one’s self-concept is far in excess of accomplishments - US teenagers are slightly below the average in maths, first in math self-concept
attitude
any belief or opinion that has an evaluative component (judgement or feeling that something is good/bad, likable/unlikable, moral/immoral)
types of attitudes
explicit, implit
explicit attitudes
conscious, verbally stated evaluations (measured by traditional attitude tests)
implicit attitudes
manifested in automatic mental associations - gut level attitudes, the less we think about what we’re doing the more they influence
how are implicit attitudes measured
implicit association test (people can classify two concepts together more quickly if they’re strongly associated in their mind)
implicit/explicit example
vegan who used to eat meat - explicit negative attitudes have to override implicit positive ones
fMRI implicit/explicit attitudes
implicit - limbic system (emotions drives), explicit - prefrontal cortex (conscious control) - subcortical areas respond immediately to the stimuli, but the prefrontal cortex may dampen the response
Freud irrational people
reason is most often a rationalization designed to calm our anxieties and boost self-esteem
cognitive dissonance theory +who/when
1950s, Festinger - we have a mechanism built into the workings of our mind that creates an uncomfortable feeling of dissonance, lack of harmony, when we sense some inconsistency among the various explicit attitudes, beliefs, and items of knowledge that consistute our mental store
cognitive disonance example
favorable attitude about sunbathing, learn that it leads to cancer - cognitive dissonance - change attitude or introduce a third condition (sunbathing is safe if I use a sunscreen lotion)
people avoiding dissonant info example
senate Watergate hearings - Nixon - his supporters avoided, people who hated him sought out info, only influenced those who were undecided
what happens after a person makes a decision
sets their doubts aside even in the absence of new information - bettors at a horse race more confident that their horse would win if asked just after placing their bet + voters leaving the polling place more positively than people entering
insufficient-justification effect when
if people have no obvious high incentive for performing a counter-attiduinal action, done at their free will
insufficient-justification effect experiment
students given a very boring task, told to tell students that the task was exciting - some got one dollar some got 20 - the 1 dollar students later recalled it as enjoyable (couldn’t justify the lie)
free choice in the insufficient-justification effect experiment
students asked to write essays in support for a bill in the state legislature that they don’t support, some told they had to do it, some not - those who didn’t have to - started favoring the bill
personal identity
self-descriptions that pertain to the person as a separate individual
social identity
those that pertain to the social categories of groups to which the person belongs to
out-groups
groups we don’t belong to
in-groups
groups we belong to
stereotype
organized set of knowledge or beliefs that we carry in our heads about any group of people
how do we gain stereotypes
from the ways our culture depicts and describes each social category
types of stereotypes
public, private, implicit
public stereotypes
what we say to others about a group
private stereotypes
what we consciously believe but don’t say to others
implicit stereotypes
sets of mental associations that operate automatically to guide our judgements and actions toward members of the group in question, even if they run counter to our conscious beliefs
implicit association test (stereotypes example)
more quick when sorting male/violent and female/nonviolent than male/nonviolent and female/violent
implicit association test stereotypes experiment
photographs of white and black faces, along with good and bad words - white uni students take 200 milliseconds longer per key press on average when doing black/good
white us children as young as 6 perform similarly to adults - same-race bias in Japanese children
stereotypes priming experiment
white people categorized threatening and nonthreatening objects after being primed with white/black faces - faster decisions and fewer errors categorizing threatening objects when primed with black faces even in 5 year old children
stereotypes police officers
determine if they would shoot, people’s faces +guns/wallets - in the first 80 trials shot unarmed black people much more + but with practice during which they got immediate feedback they overcame it
diversity courses
reduction in both explicit and implicit prejudice toward black people - but two reductions not strongly correlated
most enlightened and greatest conscious desire to overcome prejudice - declines in explicit prejudice
those who made new black friends or liked the black professor - implicit prejudice
