Chapter 14 Social Flashcards
Social cognition
How ppl think about themselves and others
Social psychology
Studies way ppl relate to others
Attitude
Set of thoughts feelings and actions, evaluative
- advertising industry devoted to changing ppls attitudes towards products
Affected by the
- mere exposure effect
- centeral and peripheral routes to persuasion
- harder to change attitudes of more educated ppl
- more educated audience should be shown acknowledgement and refuting of the opposing side, uninformed audience should be shown one side
Mere exposure affect
The more one is exposed to something the more one will come to like it (in advertising, more is better)
Central route
Persuasion technique that involves deeply processing the actual content of the message and why one should have this certain attitude towards it
Peripheral route
Persuasive technique involves focusing on other characteristic of the message(not the actual content) like the communicator
- attractive ppl famous ppl and experts work best
relationship bw attitude and behavior
Attitudes don’t perfectly predict behavior
- Richard lapiere’s study
cognitive dissonance theory
- Leon festinger and James carlsmith study
Richard lapiere
- conducted study that showed attitude wasn’t perfectly related to behavior
- establishments that served a Chinese couple later reported they would refuse such a couple service
Cognitive dissonant theory
Ppl are motivated to have matching attitudes and behaviors, if they don’t they have unpleasant mental tension or dissonance
Confederate
Ppl who work with the experimenter, but the participants don’t know this
Leon festinger and James carlsmith
- did study on cognitive dissonance
- ppl who described a boring task as interesting for $1 in compensation reported liking the task more than ppl paid $20
Compliance strategies
- Foot in the door
- door in the face
- norms of reciprocity
Foot in the door phenomenon
Compliance strategy
- if you can get ppl to agree to a small request they are more likely to agree to a follow up request
Door in the face phenomenon
Compliance strategy
- after ppl refuse a large request they will look more favorably upon a follow up request that seems in comparison a lot more reasonable
Norms of reciprocity
Compliance strategy
- ppl tend to think that when someone does something nice for them they ought to do something nice in return
Attribution theory
Explains how ppl determine the cause of what they observe
- dispositional/person or situation attribution
- can be stable or unstable
- Harold Kelley’s theory
Dispositional/Person attribution
Attributing an event to the person
- charley gets perfect score on a test, b/ he is so smart (stable)
- charley gets perfect score on test, b/ he studied a lot for this one test (unstable)
Situation attribution
Attributing an event to the situation
- charley gets perfect score on test b/ the teacher is really easy (stable)
- charley gets perfect score on test b/ the teacher happened to give one easy test (unstable)
Harold Kelley
Theory that explains the kinds of attributions ppl make based on
- consistency- how similarly the person acts in the same situation over time (determines stable or unstable attribution)
- distinctiveness- how similar this situation is to others we have watched from the person
- consensus- how others in the same situation have responded (determines situation or person)
Self fulfilling prophecy
- pre conceived expectations of ppl can influence the way they behave once you meet them
- Robert rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson experiment
Robert rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson
- studied self fulfilling prophecy
- teachers positive expectations led to increases in student iq scores
Attributional biases
- fundamental attribution error
- false consensus affect
- self serving bias
- just world belief
Fundamental attribution error
- Overestimating importance of dispositional factors and underestimating situational factors in other ppl actions
- In our own actions, we make a lot more situational attributions
- far less likely to occur in collectivist cultures than individualistic cultures
Collectivist cultures
A persons links to various groups such as family or company are stressed
- Japan’s
Individualistic cultures
Importance and uniqueness of an individual is stressed
- American
False consensus effect
Tendency for ppl to overestimate the number of ppl who agree with them
Self serving bias
Tendency for ppl to take more credit for good outcomes and have situational attributions to bad outcomes
Just world bias
- tendency for ppl to think good things happen to good ppl and people run into misfortune b/ they deserved it (expains victim blaming)
- defense mechanism so that we need not fear bad things happening to ourselves
- ppl unemployed b/ they are lazy
Stereotype
- some cognitive psychologists think they are just schemata about groups of ppl, others think schemata are easier to change
- negative or positive generalizations made about a group of ppl
Prejudice
Undeserved usly negative attitude towards group of ppl
- ethnocentrism- Belief that ones culture is superior to others, happens when one becomes so used to their own culture they use it as a standard to judge others
Discrimination
- involves acting on a prejudice(neg attitude)
In groups and out groups
In groups- Members of our own group
- ppl tend to see members of their own group as more diverse than out groups or ppl of other groups they have little familiarity with
In group bias
Stems from ppls belief that they are good ppl so that the ppl whom they share group membership with are also good
Origins of stereotypes and prejudice
- some suggest that ppl naturally magnify diff bw their own group and others as a cognitive function of categorization
- others think they are learned thru modeling, children raised by parents with prejudices are more likely to have these themselves
Contact theory
Theory made on how to lessen prejudices bw diff groups
- contact bw hostile groups will lessen animosity if the groups are made to work towards a common goal that benefits all and need teamwork
- muzafer sherifs camp study
Muzafer sherif
- illustrated the contact theory with a study
- campers in unfriendly competing groups cane to have positive feelings about each other when working towards a common goal
Aggression
- instrumental aggression- aggressive act intended to secure a particular result
- hostile aggression- has no clear purpose
Theories
- Freud- death instinct Thanatos
- sociobiologists- adaptive under certain circumstances
- frustration aggression hypothesis- feeling of frustration makes aggression more likely
- observational learning of aggression too
Pro social behavior
Acts of people helping one another
- most research in this area focused on bystander intervention
Bystander intervention
The conditions under which ppl nearby will help or not help someone in trouble
- studied by John Darley and Bibb latane
Bystander effect
Larger the number of ppl who witness an emergency situation the less likely anyone is to intervene
Why?
- diffusion of responsibility
- pluralistic ignorance
Diffusion of responsibility
Larger the group of ppl the less responsible any individual feels to help in an emergency situation
Pluralistic ignorance
If no one is intervening in an emergency situation, no one will do anything b/ they think It is the improper thing to do
What makes us attracted to others?
- we like others according to similarity, proximity, and reciprocal liking
- similar- ppl similar to us (attitudes, backgrounds, interests etc)
- proximity- whom we come into frequent contact(mere exposure affect)
- reciprocal likeness- the more they like you the more you like them
- physical attractiveness leads ppl to attribute all sorts of positive things about you
- loving and liking is difficult to explain but self disclosure (sharing personal info) is always a common denominator
Out group homogeneity
Ppl tend to view members of their own group as more diverse than other groups
Social facilitation
People perform tasks Better in front of an audience
The influence of others on a persons behavior
- Social facilitation
- social impairment
- conformity
- obedience studies
Social impairment
When a task is difficult, being watched by others can hurt performance
Conformity
Tendency of ppl to go with the views or actions of others
- Solomon asch studies
- more likely to occur when a groups decision is unanimous
- groups larger than 3 don’t significantly increase tendency to conform
Solomon asch
- conducted conformity experiment
- participant put in a room of confederates, asked to answer questions
- participants conformed 1/3 of the time the confederates held an obviously incorrect answer, 70% participants conformed at least once
Obedience studies
Focus on participants willingness to do what another asks them to
- Stanley milgram’s experiment
Stanley milgram’s
- obedience experiments
- participants asked to shock confederate weary time they got a wrong answer
- 60% participants gave all levels of shock amid feigned cries of pain from the confederates
- participant compliance decreased when the participant was able to see the confederate being shocked and when they had to force confederate’s hand on to the shock plate (30%)
- obedience also decreased when authority left the room, but most of all when one of the confederates objected to administering the shocks
- criticized on ethical grounds
Group
- should have norms and roles
- some are more Cohesive or exert more pressure on members
Social loafing
When individuals don’t put in as much effort when acting as part of group than when alone
- individuals performance less discernible in a group, so less motivated
- reap rewards of group effort without putting in uneccesarry effort
Group polarization
Tendency of a group to make more extreme decisions than group members would make individually
- responsibility for an extreme decision diffused across a groups many members
Groupthink
Tendency for some groups to make bad decisions
- made by Irving Janis
- group members suppress feelings about a certain flaw within a decision that everyone supports, false inanity made
Group dynamics
- group think
- group polarization
- social loafing
- deindividuation
Deindividuation
Loss of self restrain in a group when an individual feels anonymous and aroused (ex: looting and rioting)
- Phillip zimbardo’s experiment
Phillip zimbardo’s
- experiment on deindividuation
- Stanford students put into either prison guard or prisoner roles
- students got too into character, experiment ended early b/ of cruel guard treatment on prisoners
