Chapter 13: Social Psychology

Question 1

Social Psycholog

Answer 1

Scientific studies of how individuals behave, think, and feel in social situations; how people act in the presence (actual or implied) of others

Question 2

Need to Affiliate

Answer 2

Desire to associate with other people; appears to be a basic human trait

Question 3

Interpersonal Attraction

Answer 3

Social attraction to another person

Question 4

Physical Proximity

Answer 4

Physical nearness to another person in terms of housing, school, work

Question 5

Similarity

Answer 5

Extent to which two people are alike in terms of age, education, attitudes, and so on

Question 6

Mere exposure effect

Answer 6

the tendency to feel positively towards stimuli we have seen frequently.

Question 7

Evolutionary psycholog

Answer 7

the approach to psychology that aims to discover and understand why the mind is designed the way it i

Question 8

Adaptive problems

Answer 8

the issues that ancestors had to successfully deal with in order to survive and reproduce

Question 9

Our ancestors had adaptive solutions (called ———-) that they passed on to successive generations to help them survive and ——–.

Answer 9

adaptations; reproduce

Question 10

Buss

Answer 10

HUGE study about mate preferences
• 37 samples of people • 10,047 subjects
– drawn from 33 countries – located on 6 continents
• Rated 18 characteristics on a 4-point scale ranging from
– 0 = irrelevant – 3 = indispensable

Question 11

Women’s Mate Preferences

Answer 11

Women’s Mate Preferences
• Good Financial Prospects (GFPs)
– Cross-culturally and women value this about twice as much as men do. Why?
• High Social Status
– In the vast majority of the 37 cultures, women rated this as more important than men did. Why?
Women’s Mate Preferences
• Ambition and Industriousness
– In the vast majority of the 37 cultures, women valued this as more important than men did.
• Older Men
– In ALL 37 cultures, women preferred older men - roughly 3.5 years older than themselves
– With age comes: resources, physical strength, hunting prowess, wisdom, maturit

Question 12

Men’s Mate Preferences

Answer 12

• Youth - In ALL 37 cultures, men preferred younger women - roughly 2.5 years younger than themselves
• Physical Attractiveness - Men rate attractiveness as important in a LTM whereas women rate it as desirable but not crucial.
– Why the sex difference?
– Women’s looks signal their reproductive value and fertility and men’s looks do not
• Hence, men have evolved standards of beauty that correspond to those signals.

Question 13

Social Influence

Answer 13

a change in behavior caused by real or

imagined pressures from others

Question 14

Conformity

Answer 14

changing one’s behavior to match the responses or actions of other
- no pressure necessarily

Question 15

Solomon Asch (1955)

Answer 15

Which of the lines on the left most closely matches Line A on the right?
• What would you say if you were in a group of 6 others, and all agreed the answer was 3?
• When alone, 95% of participants answered every trial correctly.
• But 75% (!!!) went against their own eyes at least once if the group gave a wrong answer.
Conclusion: people faced with strong group consensus sometimes go along even though they think the others may be wrong.

Question 16

Compliance

Answer 16

changing one’s behavior in

response to a direct request

Question 17

Foot-in-the-door technique

Answer 17

increases compliance with a large request by first getting compliance with a smaller, related reques

Question 18

Door-in-the-Face Technique

Answer 18

A person who has refused a major request will be more likely later on to comply with a smaller request

Question 19

Low-Ball Technique

Answer 19

Commitment is gained first to reasonable or desirable terms, which are then made less reasonable or desirable

Question 20

Obedience

Answer 20

changing one’s behavior in response to a directive from an authority
figure

Question 21

Stanley Milgram (student of Asch) performed a series of studies on the Obedience to Authority

Answer 21

• Participant = teacher • Confederate = learner • task = word recall • mistake = learner receives shock from teacher
– with each mistake shock increased by 15 volts
– 65% still obedient at the end

Question 22

Group Cohesivenes

Answer 22

Degree of attraction among group members or their commitment to remain in the group

Question 23

Groupthink

Answer 23

Compulsion by decision makers to maintain agreement, even at the cost of critical thinking.
– It is a danger that lies in powerful pressures
group cohesion.

Question 24

Group Sanctions

Answer 24

Rewards and punishments administered by groups to enforce conformity or punish nonconformity

Question 25

Escalation of Commitment

Answer 25

Investing (time, money) to a failing course of action.

Question 26

Social responsibility norm

Answer 26

societal rule that people should help those who need their assistance

Question 27

Kitty Genovese’s Murder

Answer 27

– At 3:15 AM on March 13, 1964, Kitty was stabbed 17 times and sexually assaulted over @ 32 minutes in Queens, NY on a street outside her apt.
• 38 people witnessed it
– NO one helped

Question 28

Bystander effect

Answer 28

tendency for a bystander to be less likely to help in an emergency if there are other onlookers present

Question 29

Diffusion of responsibility

Answer 29

tendency for each group member to dilute personal responsibility for acting by spreading it among all other group members

Question 30

Darley & Latane (1968)

Answer 30

Via an intercom, NYC college students heard another
student having a seizure
• Independent variable = number of other
people subject knew could help
– no others = 85% of subjects helped – 1 other = 62% of subjects helped – 4 others = 31% of subjects helped

Question 31

Attributions

Answer 31

The thought processes we use to assign (attribute) causes to our own and others’ behavior

Question 32

Internal attributions

Answer 32

explanations based on an

individual’s personality - She’s weird; she’s cool; she’s carefree - These are dispositional

Question 33

External attributions

Answer 33

explanations based on the

current situation - She’s out of laundry money; she lost a bet - These are situational

Question 34

The Fundamental Attribution Error

Answer 34

• We also tend to make internal attributions for a person’s behavior despite the presence of possible external influences.
• The tendency for observers to: – Overestimate the causal influence of personality
factors on behavior
– And to underestimate the causal role of situational influences

Question 35

We experience ————— (an

unpleasant state of psychological arousal) when there’s an inconsistency within our important attitudes and behaviors.

Answer 35

cognitive dissonance

To relieve ourselves of this tension we need
to change our attitude or change our behavior.

Question 36

Festinger and Carlsmith (1959)

Answer 36

• Students first performed a boring task
– turning pegs in holes
• Then asked to tell next participant that it was
‘fun, enjoyable, & interesting’
• They were paid either $1 or $20 to do this
Festinger and Carlsmith (1959)
• Those receiving $1 payment came to see it as more enjoyable
• Those receiving $20 didn’t change their attitudes (from baseline) much at all – why?

Question 37

Cognitive Dissonance Theory

Answer 37

• Counterattitudinal action led to cognitive dissonance
• A behavior that is inconsistent with an existing
attitude.
• Telling others that a task is interesting and fun when it
really stinks.
• It will lead to change in that attitude ONLY when
actor sees no strong external justification for taking the action
• $20 provided adequate justification for misleading
another student
• $1 was insufficient justification, thus arousing