Chapter 14 Flashcards
The scientific study of how we think about, influence, and relate to another
Social psychology
A belief and feeling that persists one to respond in a particular way to people, objects, or events
Attitudes
Inferences people draw about causes of events, others’ behavior, and their own behavior
Attributions
Adjusting one’s behavior or thinking to coincide with a group’s standards
Conformity
Persuation
Advertising
Any physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt or destroy
Aggression
Physical attraction, romantic ideas, attachment, culture
Relationships
Judgments of others can be distorted by their physical appearance, as we tend to ascribe desirable characteristics and confidence to those who are good looking
Halo effect
Broad over-generalizations that can lead us to see what we expect to see and overestimate how often we have seen that
Stereotypes
People tend to overestimate degree to which others pay attention to them
Spotlight effect
Argue that many biases in person perception, such as tendency to quickly categorize people into ingroups and outgroups, exist because they were adaptive in humans’ ancestral past
Evolutionary psychologists
Ascribe causes of behavior to personal traits
Internal attributions
Ascribe causes of behavior to situational demand and environmental factors
External attributions
Actors favor external attributions in explaining their own behavior, though observers favor internal attributions
Actor-observer bias
Refers to observer’ bias in favor of internal attributions in overt behavior
Fundamental attribution error (FAE)
Tendency to blame victims for their misfortune, so that one feels less likely to be victimized in a similar manner
Defensive attributions
Tendency to explain one’s successes’ with internal attributions and one’s failures with external attributions
Self-serving bias
Putting personal goals ahead of group goals
Individualism
Putting group goals head of personal goals
Collectivism
Tend to be less prone to FAE and SSB than people from collectivist cultures
Individualistic cultures
Key determinant of romantic attraction for both sexes
Biological attractiveness
Males and females of roughly equal physical attractiveness are likely to select each other as partners
Matching hypothesis
Tend to be similar on many traits
Married / dating couples
Shows that liking breeds liking and loving promotes loving
Reciprocity
Transcends culture
Traits people seek in prospective mates
Varies in ephasis as prerequisite for marriage
Romantic love
Influence attraction indicators of reproductive fitness
Good looks
Men emphasize
Youthfulness and attractiveness
Women emphasize
Financial prospects
Influence tactics that men and women use in pursuing romantic relationships
Gender gaps
Tend to under-estimate men’s relationship commitments
Women
Tend to over-estimate women’s sexual interest
Men
3 catagories of love attachmetn
Secure
Anxious-ambivalent
Avoidant
Tend to have more satisfying romantic relationships
Secure individuals
Made up of belief people hold about the object of an attitude
Cognitive component
Emotional feeling stimulated by an object of thought
Affective component
Predisposition to act in certain ways toward attitudinal object
Behavioral component
How firmly attitudes are held
Attitude strength
How often and how quickly an attitude comes to mind
Attitude accessibility
How conflicted one feels about an attitude
Attitude ambivalence
Poor to mediocre predictors of people’s behavior
Attitudes
More successful when a source has credibility, which may depend on expertise or trustworthiness
Persuasion
Tends to increase success in persuasion
Likeability
Only gives viewpoint advertised
One-sided arguments
More effective than one-sided
Two-sided arguments
Tend to work if they are actually successful in arousing fear
Fear appeals
More difficult when receiver is forewarned about persuasive effort
Persuasion
Greater when a message is incompatible with receiver’s existing attitudes and when strong attitudes are targeted
Resistance
Affective component of an attitude can be shaped by classical conditioning
Learning theory
Strengthened by reinforcement or acquired through observational learning
Attitudes
Inconsistency between attitudes motivates attitude change
Festinger
Explains attitude change after counter-attitudinal behavior or when people need to justify their great effort to attain something
Dissonance theory
Attitudes don’t determine behavior as much as people infer their attitudes from behavior
Daryl Bem
Depends on logic of one’s message
Central route to persuasion
Depends on non-message factors, such as emotions
Peripheral route to persuasion
Produces a more durable attitude changw
CPR
People are less likely to provide help when they are in groups than when alone because of diffusion of responsibility
Bystander effect
Often declines in groups because of loss of coordination and social loafing - reduced effort seen when people work in groups
Productivity
When discussion leads a group to shift toward a more extreme decision in direction already leaning
Group polarization
Cohesive group suspends critical thinking in a misguided effort to promote agreement
Groupthink
Often fail to share information unique to them
Individuals in groups
Showed people have a surprisingly strong tendency to conform
Solomon Asch
Becomes more likely as group size increases up to a size of 4
Conformity
Presence in a group greatly reduces conformity observed
Dissenter
Higher levels of conformity observed in
Collective societies
Factors affecting conformity
Status within group Public vs private Type of task Cohesiveness of group Gender
Shock range in Asch experiment
15 to 450
Increments of voltage in Asch experiment
15
Voltage at which psychiatrists, college students, middle class adults, all said taht they would stop shocking
135 volts
Percentage of men that continued shocking to 450
63%
Percentage of particepents that continued shocking when informed of subjects’ heart condition
65%
Helped stimulate stricter ethical standards for research
Generalizability of Milgram’ findings
