Chapter 5 - Opinions

Question 1

Self-fulfilling prophecy

Self-fulfilling prophecy

Answer 1

behavior based on false belief about a situation causes that situation in the end.

Question 2

Self-fulfilling prophecy

Galatea effect

Answer 2

people who have higher self-expectations will have more positive outcomes.

Question 3

Self-fulfilling prophecy

Pygmalion effect

Answer 3

the idea that when people place greater expectations on an individual or a group, it will result in greater outcomes attained by the individual or group.

Question 4

Self-fulfilling prophecy

Thomas and Thomas Theorem

Answer 4

if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.
This means that the perceptions people have about reality influence their choice of actions. Whether the perceptions match reality is not what matters: people act as if their beliefs are reality.

Question 5

Self-fulfilling prophecy

Social context effects / complex aggregation

Answer 5

self-fulfilling prophecies emerge in an interplay between the individual (micro) and the social context (meso and macro).
The beliefs and behavior of one person affects the beliefs and behavior of others, which leads to a change in the collective outcome.

Question 6

Conformity

Conformity

Answer 6

tendency of people to copy the opinions and behaviors of other people in their environment.

Question 7

Conformity

Conformity in judgment

Answer 7

there is a tendency of people to conform to the publicly revealed judgment of the majority group in small-scale settings, even when this majority judgment is false.

(Empirical evidence for this is provided by the results of the Asch-experiment.)

Question 8

Conformity

Parental transmission

Propositions about conformity (generally supported by empirical evidence)

Answer 8

children tend to conform to the opinion and behaviors of their parents.

Question 9

Conformity

Peer transmission

Propositions about conformity (generally supported by empirical evidence)

Answer 9

students conform to the opinions and behavior of their peers.

Question 10

Conformity

Media transmission

& Werther effect

Propositions about conformity (generally supported by empirical evidence)

Answer 10

people conform to the opinions and behavior expressed in media.

• Werther effect: suicides reported in mass media increase the likelihood of actual suicides.

Question 11

Conformity

Conformity is a specific case of social influence

Social influence is___?

Answer 11

a process by which people’s opinions and behavior are affected by others.

Question 12

Conformity

Positive social influence

Answer 12

process by which people’s opinions and behavior develop in the same direction as the opinions and behavior of other actors in their environment.

Question 13

Conformity

Negative social influence

Answer 13

process by which people’s opinions and behavior develop in the opposite direction to the opinions and behavior of other actors in their environment.

Question 14

Informational and normative social influence

Informational social influence

Answer 14

influence to accept information obtained from another as evidence about reality.

Question 15

Informational and normative social influence

Normative social influence

Answer 15

influence to conform to the positive expectations of another

Question 16

Social learning theory

Social learning theory

Answer 16

people tend to conform to opinions of others in their environment in order to learn from them.

Question 17

Social learning theory

Individual learning

Answer 17

thing people try out themselves, without being influenced by others

Question 18

Social learning theory

Direct social learning

Answer 18

learning via communication with others (sharing opinions, exchanging facts).

Question 19

Social learning theory

Observational social learning

Answer 19

learning via observation of other people’s behavior (and presumed underlying opinions)

Question 20

Social learning theory

The dual-process model distinguishes two modes of social learning

Answer 20

1. System l: work of the irrational part of the human brain, processing information quickly,
   automatically and unconsciously.
2. System ll: work of the rational part of the human brain, processing information slowly,
   deliberately and consciously.

Most of the time, people use system l to process information. This makes them tend to process information not systematically and carefully and therefore makes them prone to cognitive errors.

Question 21

Social learning theory

Social learning biases

Answer 21

conditions that modify the degree of conformity.

Question 22

Social learning theory

Popularity bias (bandwagon effect)

Answer 22

the tendency to copy opinions from the social environment is positively affected by the number of supporters for a certain opinion.

• Majority effect: opinions that receive majority support are copied disproportionally more often.
• Social proof: the ‘evidence’ individuals perceive which arises when a group of people in the environment does something in the same way.

Question 23

Social learning theory

Exposure bias

Answer 23

the more strongly people are exposed to a certain opinion in the population, the more likely they are to conform to that opinion.

Question 24

Social learning theory

Status bias

Answer 24

people conform more strongly to a certain opinion when higher status figures support that opinion. (Status is subjective and who is a higher status figure differs from person to person.)

Question 25

Social learning theory

Susceptibility bias

Answer 25

the more strongly individuals in a certain social condition are susceptible (open) to adopting opinions, the likely it is that they will conform to the opinions in that social context. (Uncertainty about personality or about a situation increases susceptibility to conformation.)

• Simple contagion: diffusion of opinions that need few sources.
• Complex contagion: diffusion of opinions that need more sources.

Question 26

Social learning theory

Confirmation bias

Answer 26

people seek and find confirmatory evidence in support of already existing beliefs and ignore or reinterpret disconfirming evidence.

Question 27

Social learning theory

Adaption bias

Answer 27

the more certain opinions are adapted to the social environment (the more useful), the more likely it is that people will conform to those opinions. (So when social conditions change, people’s opinions may change too.)

Question 28

Popularity of cultural products

Cumulative advantage / Matthew effect

Answer 28

positive feedback process in which prior success increases the likelihood of successive success.

Question 29

Popularity of cultural products

Consequences of cumulative advantage

Hint: 2 answers

Answer 29

• Inequality in success: social influence makes people choose for things that have been reviewed positively, instead of things that do not have or have less positive reviews.
• Unpredictability: which things will become popular, cannot be predicted up front by measuring the quality, because popularity depends on social influence

Question 30

Diffusion of innovations

Innovation

Answer 30

a completely new believe, or some new practice or object that is based on new beliefs (knowledge), which is aimed to solve a certain problem.

Question 31

Diffusion of innovations

Diffusion

Answer 31

the transmission and spread of something.

Question 32

Diffusion of innovations

Tarde’s diffusion theory

Tarde’s S-shaped curve of cumulative adoption of an innovation represents three stages of the diffusion process

Answer 32

1. The diffusion process starts with a long period in which only a few people adopt the innovation.
2. After that period, a large group of people follow and many people rapidly adopt the innovation.
3. At the end of the diffusion process the speed of adoption slows as it reaches the remaining group of people in the population.

The diffusion of innovations is subject to social learning biases. The biases influence whether people are willing to believe or use the innovation.
Hearing about an innovation diffuses like a simple contagion: people hear about the innovation quite easily. However, adopting the innovation is a complex contagion: people want other people to try first, they first want to see whether it is necessary to adopt the new innovation, etc. These findings confirm Tarde’s diffusion theory and the social learning theory. However, Tarde’s theory only covers one-to-one social transmission, but one-to-many social influence also plays a big role in diffusion of innovations, especially in times of social media.